Latigo 3, page 25
Behind the closed door, Theodora gasped when her husband’s voice reached her through the solid panel. She felt sick.
Sheriff Cady Dolan gave Cole a worried look. “Did you know that Max is here in New Sodom?” Dolan asked as if in pain.
“I heard.”
“You know why he’s here?”
“I don’t give a damn, Dolan,” Cole snapped impatiently.
“The boys is fixin’ to honor him by changin’ the name of this place to Maxville.”
“That makes him less a murderer?”
Dolan winced. “He never fired no gun ...”
“He paid somebody to do it.”
Dolan thoughtfully ran the folded edge of Bend’s confession across his fingertips while staring out the office window at the crowded walk, the street with its wagons and horsemen, and the railroad tracks that ended abruptly at the log barrier. He looked hard at an ashen-faced Bend, then questioningly at Cole. He started to speak, but Cole had been waiting for what he considered the right moment, and decided it was at hand.
“If we could promise Billy Bend prison instead of the rope,” Cole said, “I think he might take the stand in court against those bastards.” He turned casually to Bend, who was still against the wall where Cole had hurled him, fingers of his bound hands working spasmodically. “What do you say, Bend?”
For a moment Bend couldn’t find his voice, then managed, “Y—y—yes.”
Cole nodded and turned to Dolan. “He overheard Max tell Gattling to kill Helen, to shut her mouth. It’s in the confession. But it’ll be even more effective if he swears to it in court.”
Dolan sighed. “Reckon sheriffin’ is like walkin’ barefoot in a corral. Sooner or later you’re bound to step into somethin’ you don’t like.” He beckoned at Bend. “You’re the first one I got to lock up.”
“I ... I won’t hang?” Bend pleaded with his watery eyes. “Don’t reckon, if you tell your story straight. But we’ll see what the judge says. He’s outa town ...”
After Bend had been locked in a cell next to that occupied by the vocalizing drunk, Dolan said, “I’d ruther throw red pepper in a wildcat’s ass than to face up to Max.”
“How long will it take the judge to get here?”
“He’s over to Vermillion. I’ll telegraph him.”
“I hope you’ve got a strong gallows. Max is no lightweight.”
“He ain’t hung yet.”
“Maybe folks were set to name the town after him, but I have a feeling a lot of them hate him. It’s from them I hope we can draw a jury. And end this once and for all.”
“Might end me along with it, Cantrell. But I took the badge an’ I swore the oath. I’ll go find my deputy, then we’ll get Gattling an’ Max ...”
But it wasn’t necessary. A beaming Claudius Max walked into the sheriff’s office and closed the door. The sight of him seemed to stun Dolan for a moment, but the sheriff recovered quickly. He didn’t waste time on preliminaries but showed him the confession without letting him get his hands on it.
Max dismissed it with an amused gesture. “A notorious liar like Bend is dragged in off the street, and somebody puts him up to writing a confession? Who’d believe such a story?”
“Bend is your man, Max,” Cole said. “There’s five Crow chiefs who’ll swear that Broken Lance confessed he and Bend drew your pay. Also Grubb and Gattling.”
“Who would believe Indian scum?”
“That is an insult to my mother. A lady you murdered.”
Max laughed. He looked over his shoulder, out the door glass, as if seeking someone in the crowd. Dolan cleared his throat. “Mr. Max, much as I hate to do it, reckon I got to lock you up till the judge gets here.”
Max was suddenly no longer affable. He flew into a rage. “Lock me up in your filthy jail? Never!” He started for the door, but Dolan got him by an arm.
“I don’t know much about the law, Mr. Max. Only to arrest drunks an’ troublemakers. But there’s two men here swear you paid Rego Gattling to murder a woman named ...” Dolan scanned the confession. “Helen Lydia Horney.”
“A common slut!”
Cole’s fist flashed. Knuckles made a popping sound against a jowl. Max sailed back against the wall and crashed to the floor. His cheek bled.
Dolan jerked a thumb at the door. “Cantrell, you better clear out afore somethin’ is said that’ll make you kill him. Then I’ll have to lock you up!”
Max’s eyes were slightly crossed as he shook his head several times. Then he groped for his hat and walking stick. He got to his feet, a scowling hulk in black, face bleeding. “You are dead, Cantrell,” he said softly. “D-e-a-d.”
Dolan blocked Max from the door. “The only lawyer we got is outa town. But soon’s him or the judge gets here, whichever is first, then I’ll have a talk. Meantime I got to lock you up.”
“I refuse to be locked up!”
“Got no choice, Mr. Max. I got to be sure you don’t run off afore I can git to the bottom of this ...”
A man screamed hysterically on the far side of the street. Cole saw the man come running recklessly through the press of horses and wagons, waving a paper overhead. His face was pale and drawn.
“Sheriff! Sheriff! Telegram says runaway freight cars ...” All movement on the walk and the street jarred to a standstill. Heads jerked around; everyone stared at Jeff Tweedy, the C-P telegrapher stationed at New Sodom. A tall, gangling man with button nose and an underslung jaw, he burst breathlessly into the sheriff’s office, yelling, “Cars loose on the grade!” He slumped against the wall, narrow chest pumping air. The telegram he had brought seemed garbled, it had been taken down so fast. But the threat of disaster was plain, Cole realized as he read the telegram over Dolan’s shoulder.
If the cars didn’t derail on the downgrade they’d crash into the barrier at end of track; there was no estimate of how long it would take the runaway cars to reach town.
Cole only had to glance through the open doorway to see that the barrier of logs was less than fifty feet away. Some four feet of logs projecting above ground had been intended to prevent any cars from coasting across the busy street, should their brakes fail.
Dolan nervously wiped sweating hands across his paunch, leaving damp streaks on the clean shirt. “I seen ’em pull out. Fifteen cars. I counted ’em. Oh, gawd ...”
“You’re right, Sheriff,” Tweedy panted. “Fifteen cars. They’ll jump them logs sure’s Christ hung up the stars in heaven!” Others had crowded into the office, white-faced, apprehensive.
“We got to clear everybody out!” Dolan yelled hoarsely. “Where in hell’s my deputy!”
“Saw Woodruff a few minutes ago,” Tweedy wailed, gesturing vaguely toward the west end of town.
Dolan rushed into the street, waving his arms. “Railroad cars loose!”
Cole added his own voice. There was instant pandemonium. Riders wheeled their horses and galloped back the way they had come, causing a snarl of wagons and teams. Those afoot ran wildly. A woman fell headlong, and two men on the run paused long enough to grab her arms and drag her to safety. Cole herded several women and two children out of danger. Everything else was forgotten. Cole glimpsed Max running, crashing into people, his hat gone. Max cleared a path through the frantic crowd by swinging his walking stick. Men ducked, cursing him. A woman was knocked down.
Cole emptied stores of people in the area that was endangered. He bounded into the Four Aces, shouting a warning. He saw Aspen rush with other girls out the rear doors.
“Get away, clear away!” Cole yelled through cupped hands.
Cole was back in the street, his mouth dry. Woodruff, the town’s only deputy, came pounding through the mob, a big, squint-eyed man. Dolan was still shouting orders. When Cole burned his head he saw Grubb at the far edge of the crowd. Towering over everyone else, eyes with the puckered scars at each corner, searching the panicked throng. And fifteen feet to his right was Gattling.
“There he is!” Gattling’s voice carried above the thunder.
Grubb flung up a carbine that looked like a toy in the large hands. Cole felt a whisper of wind against his neck. Behind him a man yelped with pain. Grubb’s rifle shot only added to the panic. By then Cole was trying to find a spot where he could have a clear shot without endangering others. He nearly crashed into Sheriff Dolan, who had wheeled and was loping toward his office.
“Just remembered my prisoners!” he shouted over his shoulder and dashed into the building.
For some minutes sounds of the approaching runaway cars were unheard in New Sodom as the yelling and screaming throng parted like the Red Sea for Moses. Now the cars could be seen, sweeping down the mountain like projectiles fired from a giant cannon.
“Run!” Cole was yelling at those transfixed by the sight of the roaring cars. On they came, with incredible speed.
First to near the barrier was the caboose. Seconds before it crashed, onlookers glimpsed a terrified face, belonging to the one member of the train crew who had lost his nerve and not jumped when it was possible. With a great crunching of wood and jangling metal the caboose slammed into the barrier. Those speeding cars directly behind it telescoped, spewing wheels and axles and splintered wood skyward. But cars at the tail end of the train leaped the initial tangle of wreckage and shot into the sir. As they passed overhead, their wheels were still spinning furiously.
The lead car tore free of its coupling, turned over slowly in the air and ripped off the roof of the sheriff’s office. Another car caved in the front of the building as if it were made of matchsticks. Two of the flatcars sailed sideways at an angle and tore off part of the upper floor of the Four Aces. Shattered window glass rained like hailstones. Bedsteads and floor rugs and chamber pots looped into the air. Shattered planks to which floral wallpaper had been pasted were hammered into a series of sheds behind the saloon, leveling them.
Cole felt a sharp pain in his right shoulder. Something from one of the splintered cars had struck him a glancing blow. He had seen it coming, ducked his head. At least it hadn’t dented his skull.
Suddenly it was over, and all was still. A woman began sobbing. Another whimpered. At first there was worry of fire. Had it happened after dark, glowing lamp wicks would have fired spilled coal oil. New Sodom might have become like Scalplock.
Cole recovered quickly from the shock of havoc that had destroyed or severely damaged half a block of buildings. Legs of some of those who had defied danger and lingered to watch the crash were sticking out from under the wreckage. Cole looked for Grubb, for he would be easier to spot in the crowd than Gattling. But there was no sign of him.
He leaped over a set of iron wheels and axle near the ruined sheriff’s office. Incongruously, part of the front wall was still standing. Gingerly he climbed over the wreckage. “Dolan,” he called, knowing it was probably futile, because Dolan had rushed inside just before the cars struck. About all that was recognizable of Dolan was the badge. Cole made his way over fallen timbers, splintered planks, to the jail section. A fat man Cole assumed to have been the singing drunk was on the stone floor, part of a boxcar wall in his lap. Billy Bend was flattened under the barred door of his cell. A sliver the size of a broom handle had pierced one of the eyes. Bend’s skull reminded Cole of a stepped-on grape.
Sounds of someone retching caused Cole to spin. Tweedy, the telegrapher, was staring at Dolan’s body. “Terrible, terrible,” he wailed.
“Don’t look at him,” Cole said sharply.
“How can you just ... stand there and not be sick at your stomach?”
“I was in a war. Maybe you weren’t.”
Since leaving the street, Cole had been moving his right shoulder in a circle, trying to get out the soreness. His body was tense. He still had two men to face. They were somewhere in the milling crowd; sounds of their approach could be dimmed by the moans of injured, the wailing for the dead.
Through a ruined wall he could see that the Intermountain building was intact. At least that much was good news. He worked his shoulder again, wondering if whatever had struck him had chipped a bone.
Woodruff, the deputy, had survived and was trying to bring some semblance of order. His urgings to the crowd reached Cole from a distance. Cole hunkered down and began to move wreckage away from Dolan’s body. Because of his arm he wouldn’t risk trying to lift timbers that pinned the legs. Someone else would have to do it. But he finally had access to the upper body, which was what he wanted. Trying to keep away from the blood, he gingerly searched Dolan’s pockets. His heart dropped like a lead ball when he found no confession. With Bend dead he had little enough of a case against Python, but if he failed to locate the confession, he had none at all. What had happened to it? Had it fallen out of Dolan’s pocket when the sheriff was rushing around?
Where the front wall had been flattened, Cole could see across the street. A knot of men using crowbars were trying to free the body of the railroad man who had been trapped in the telescoped caboose. Cole felt sickened that a string of runaway cars had ended another life and ruined what very well could have meant the finish of Claudius Max.
He knew without being told that if he tried to finish with Max on his own there’d be enough Python power left to see that he climbed the thirteen steps of a legal gallows.
He saw two things in the next moments that whipped his mind back from its abyss of defeat. White-faced girls had gathered on a balcony at Mamie’s and were staring in awe at the wreckage half a block away. Seeing the girls reminded him of Helen. “Bragged about cuttin’ her throat,” Bend had said of Gattling.
Cole’s jaw muscles tightened. He turned away. On a side street he saw an Indian and his squaw riding double on a paint pony, which brought memory of a dead chief whirling back. Tall Tree had been his friend, had counseled him as a boy. Grubb and Gattling had killed him.
He went looking for them. Settlement with Max would have to be postponed for another day. But not so with Rego Gattling and Grubb.
At the Four Aces swampers were sweeping up shards of window glass from the floor. A few smashed windows appeared to be the only damage to the saloon proper. Part of the upper floor had been sheared off, but the saloon ceiling was intact. The usual crowd of drinkers was collecting again to discuss the town tragedy.
Through one of the shattered rear windows Cole saw Gattling running along the alley toward the wrecked sheriff’s office. Cole spun away from the bar, where he was about to order a drink. Aspen screamed at him to come back, but Cole plunged on, his boots crunching bits of glass and splintered wood.
He fought his way through the milling crowd of still-frightened people to the sheriff’s office. Tweedy, the telegrapher, was still there, rigid with shock, staring at Rego Gattling, who stood with back turned. Gattling was tearing to bits a sheet of paper blackened with ink. They drifted like ebony flakes.
Tweedy was moaning, “Poor Sheriff Dolan ... terrible, terrible!”
He saw Cole and seized him by the arms. Cole, eyes riveted to Gattling’s rigid back, thrust the hysterical telegrapher aside. But the wreckage underfoot shifted. Cole fell hard, and the sound of it brought Gattling swinging around. Gattling let the last of the torn paper drift to the wreckage. He laughed.
“No confession, Cantrell. No nothing!”
Tweedy fled at a stumbling, screaming rush to safety, skirting that part of the front wall which partially shielded Cole and Gattling from the street.
Gattling drew his gun, but Cole snatched at one of the planks where Gattling’s boots were anchored. He pulled hard, and the plank shifted. A bullet whistled through the crown of Cole’s hat as Gattling toppled backward, legs flying up as he crashed hard. But he retained his grip on the gun.
Tweedy’s hysteria, plus the sound of the gunshot, produced renewed sounds of panic from the street and began to clear it.
Before Gattling could spring to his feet, Cole dove headfirst, locked fingers of the left hand around the gun wrist. Exerting all possible power, he bent the arm far back. With fingers of his own stiffening right hand, he seized a piece of jagged tin from the wreckage. He pressed it hard against Gattling’s throat.
“That’s the way you killed her, you son of a bitch!” Cole cried. He saw the manicured nails of hands that had touched Helen, brutalized her. In that moment of madness Cole slashed with the piece of tin to one side of the Adam’s apple, but not deep enough. Blood spilled over his fingers. Lying flat as he was and with Gattling struggling to free his trapped gun wrist, Cole failed to get the necessary leverage to drive the ragged edge of metal into the jugular.
Then Gattling yelled, “Grubb ... brain him!”
Cole instinctively pulled in his head, and the hard sweep of a rifle stock knocked off his hat. Discarding the piece of tin, Cole levered himself by the left elbow. Somehow, despite the pain of shoulder and arm, he ripped his .44 from leather as Grubb was reversing a carbine into firing position.
But the .44 slug smashed his breastbone. A foolish look stamped his face, and the heavy body smashed into the debris.
In that moment Gattling freed his wrist. Teeth bared, he scrambled back out of Cole’s reach.
From the street came the bellow of Claudius Max. “Face up to each other ... like gladiators! Otherwise it’ll be murder!”
Gattling slowly straightened up, not losing his cold smile. “I’m game, Mr. Max! Cantrell, your injun blood yellow or red?”
Deliberately Gattling holstered his gun and stood waiting. He knew as well as Cole that Max had uttered a truth. To face up to a man and beat him to the draw was one thing. But to gun down a man whose gun is holstered would be called murder. Cole swallowed, looked toward the street, saw Max’s gloating face in the awed crowd. Next to him was Sid Woodruff, now acting sheriff, staring, ready to pounce should the law of the West be breached.
Cole’s right arm throbbed as he holstered his gun. In those few seconds he touched the medicine pouch under his shirt. He thought of his father, Badger Cantrell, his mother, White Elk. He thought of poor Helen and the gaping second mouth at her jugular, made by Gattling’s merciless knife.
