Deadly Road to Yuma (7 page)

“You savvy what we’re sayin’?” demanded the man with the gun pressed to her head.

Tom’s mouth had gone bone-dry, but he nodded, and after a second had worked up enough spit so that he was able to say, “I savvy. Just tell me what you want, mister. I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt my family.”

The gunman chuckled. “You’re a smart hombre. Now listen close…”

A door at the far end of the corridor in the cell block led to the room that Sheriff Cyrus Flagg called home. He had a folding cot, though, that he carried into the office and set up for the blood brothers.

“One o’ you fellas can get a little sleep while the other one stands watch,” he told Matt and Sam. “I’ll take my turn, too.”

“It’s after midnight,” Sam pointed out. “Not that long until morning. Why don’t you go ahead and get some rest, Sheriff? Let Matt and me worry about watching the jail until morning.”

Flagg stifled a yawn. “You sure?”

“We’re sure,” Matt told him.

“All right then. I can’t tell you boys how much I appreciate your help.”

Flagg opened the cell block door, and Shade, who had finally quieted down, immediately began haranguing him again through the window in the cell door, clutching the bars as he did so.

Flagg slapped the Winchester’s barrel against the bars, which made Shade let go of them and jump back. The outlaw began yelling even louder.

“Keep it up, Shade,” the sheriff growled. “I might just toss the keys out the front door and let the folks in town do whatever they want to you.”

“Sinners, filthy sinners!”

Flagg shook his head and walked on back to his quarters, closing the door firmly behind him. Matt closed the cell block door. Shade kept yelling.

Matt ignored him and said to Sam, “What was the idea of volunteering us to stay up the rest of the night?”

“The sheriff’s a lot older than we are,” Sam pointed out. “I’m sure he needs the sleep more than we do.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Matt yawned himself. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now. You can take first watch, though.”

“Fine.” Sam went behind the desk and sat down, while Matt pulled his boots and gunbelts off and stretched out on the cot. He placed the shotgun on the floor within easy reach.

A few minutes later, Shade stopped yelling, and soon after that, Matt was sound asleep.

When he woke up, sunlight was slanting through the front window of the sheriff’s office. Matt sat up abruptly and said, “What the hell! How come you didn’t wake me up for my turn on watch?”

Sam still sat behind the desk, with his feet propped on it now as he leaned the chair back against the wall. “I wasn’t all that sleepy,” he said, “so I didn’t see any point in it.” He grinned. “After the way you complained last night, I didn’t want you being too tired and cranky this morning.”

“Cranky! Why, I’ll cranky you, you—”

Shade must have heard them talking. He started yelling again. Matt and Sam heard the door at the other end of the cell block corridor open, and Sheriff Flagg shouted, “Shut up in there!”

“The word of God will not be silenced!” Shade screeched back at him.

He was still carrying on when Flagg came into the office a few minutes later. The sheriff wore his overalls again and looked more like a farmer than a peace officer.

“Mornin’, fellas,” he said with a friendly nod for Matt and Sam. “I reckon the rest of the night was quiet?”

“It was,” Sam said, not pointing out that Matt had slept through it, too. “I heard a little loud talking from the street a few times, but no one tried to get in.” He nodded toward the window. “We had the shutters closed most of the night, but we figured it was all right to open them this morning.”

“Sure enough,” Flagg agreed. “I’ll go down to the hash house and see about gettin’ some breakfast sent up for the two o’ you…and for Shade, too, I reckon, although I hate to waste good food on a varmint like that. Wouldn’t be right to let a prisoner starve, though.”

“I suppose not,” Matt said grudgingly.

“I’ll see about gettin’ a message sent off to the court in Tucson, too,” Flagg promised. “Anything else you boys want in particular?”

To be on the trail again, Matt thought, but that was going to have to wait a while. At least until Flagg received word that a circuit judge was on his way to Arrowhead.

Flagg left, and came back a short time later with a cloth-covered tray containing platters of flapjacks, biscuits, and thick slices of ham. Matt had coffee boiling in the dented old pot on the stove by then. Shade’s yells still came from the cell block, but the three men just ignored him as they ate breakfast.

“I did some askin’ around town while I was out,” Flagg said. “Nobody’s talkin’ about lynchin’ Shade.”

“At least not that they would admit to the sheriff,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah, well, there’s that,” Flagg admitted. “I got pretty good instincts, though, and I don’t think anything’s goin’ on right now.”

“But you believe it’ll build back up,” Matt said.

Flagg nodded. “I do. Hear that?”

He opened the door, and the blood brothers both heard the sound of someone hammering in the distance.

“You know what that is?” Flagg asked.

Matt and Sam shook their heads.

“That’s Cassius Doolittle nailin’ together coffins in the yard behind his undertakin’ parlor. There’s gonna be a big funeral here in town this afternoon, for Charlie Cornwell, Harlan Eggleston, Yancy Baker, Bob McCall, and Rufus Nicholson. Those are all the fellas killed by those outlaws. Every time one of those boys is buried, folks are gonna look at each other and ask themselves why Joshua Shade is still drawin’ breath when he ought to be danglin’ at the end of a rope. They won’t be able to come up with a good answer for that question either, except that it’s the law…and after a while they just won’t give a damn.”

That afternoon, Sheriff Flagg attended the mass funeral in the church at the edge of town while Matt and Sam remained at the jail. Later, when the last coffin had been lowered into the newly dug graves in Arrowhead’s cemetery, and while the undertaker and his helpers were busy shoveling dirt into the holes, Flagg returned to the sheriff’s office.

He still wore the dusty, somewhat threadbare black suit he had worn to the funeral, with a gunbelt strapped around his ample belly under the frock coat. As he hung his hat on a nail near the door, he commented, “Shade’s quiet for a change.”

“He’s been quiet all afternoon,” Sam said.

“Reckon he finally wore himself out from all the carryin’ on,” Matt said. “Any problems at the funeral or the buryin’?”

Flagg shook his head. “Not really, but I could tell that folks are mighty upset. Stan Hightower and all his hands were there, and Stan’s wife Margery never stopped cryin’. I didn’t like the look on Stan’s face.”

“We don’t know who those people are, Sheriff,” Sam reminded him.

“Oh, yeah.” Flagg went over to the stove and poured himself a cup of the coffee that was left from that morning, which was probably strong enough by now to get up and walk off under its own power. “Margery is Rufus Nicholson’s daughter, and her husband Stan owns the Diamond H. One of the biggest spreads in these parts. So Stan’s pretty much used to gettin’ whatever he wants around here.”

Matt propped a hip against a corner of the desk and frowned. “That sounds like trouble brewin’.”

Flagg sighed, sipped the coffee, and nodded. “Yeah, I heard Stan talkin’ after the service at the cemetery about how it’s a waste o’ time waitin’ for a judge to come all the way from Tucson. He said why bother with a trial when Shade’s just gonna hang anyway.”

“And I’ll bet people listened to him, didn’t they?” Sam said.

Flagg shrugged. “Like I told you, Stan’s one o’ the big skookum he-wolves around here. Folks want to stay on his good side. And if he rides into town with a dozen tough, gun-hung cowboys right behind him, ready to back his play, some of the good citizens o’ Arrowhead will find it mighty easy to fall in with ’em.”

“When do you think this is liable to happen?” Matt asked.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if it was tonight.”

“We’ll just have to put a stop to it then,” Sam said.

“You’re talkin’ three men against forty or fifty,” Flagg pointed out.

“I’ll admit, those aren’t very good odds. But we have the law on our side.”

Matt grunted. “That won’t stop a bullet…not unless you’ve got a big thick law book stuck in your pocket.” He turned to Flagg. “You could always just step aside and let them have Shade.”

Flagg scratched his beard and nodded, then said, “Yeah, but let me ask you somethin’, Bodine. If you’d done swore an oath to uphold the law, would
you
step aside?”

“The things that Shade has done, I might, yeah.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Sam said. “I know you, Matt. You’re too stubborn to ever do anything like that.”

Matt had to grin. “Well, you’re probably right about that. But we didn’t swear an oath, now did we?”

“We told the sheriff we’d help him. That’s giving our word. It’s the same thing.”

“Damn it, Sam! I hate it when you’re right.” Matt looked at Flagg. “We’ll stick, Sheriff.”

“Nobody’d think any less of you if you didn’t…” Flagg began.

“We would,” Sam said.

“We’ll stick,” Matt said again.

The settlement had been so crowded because of the mass funeral held that afternoon that no one had paid any attention to Tom Peterson as he mingled with the townspeople and talked to everyone he could. Most of the folks in Arrowhead knew Tom, so they didn’t think anything of it when he asked about what was going to happen to the notorious prisoner who was locked up in the town jail.

Now as he rode back toward his hardscrabble ranch, fear filled Tom. Frannie and the boys and little, seven-year-old Abigail had been out there at the ranch alone with those outlaws all day, and there was no telling what might have happened while he was gone.

He’d had a long talk with Beau and Chad before he rode out that morning and told them to cooperate with the owlhoots. The boys were scared, but they were also mad that anybody would ride in and take over like that bunch had done. Tom didn’t want them trying anything that might get them killed.

He didn’t even allow himself to think about what might have happened to Frannie while he was gone. As long as they hadn’t killed her, anything else could be gotten over, or at least put in the past. That’s what he’d been telling himself all day, to the point where he almost believed it.

Maybe nothing had happened. That man Garth seemed to be in charge of the gang, and he kept a pretty tight hand on the reins as far as Tom could see. He had told Tom all they wanted was to know everything he could find out about Joshua Shade. Since Tom had information to report, that gave him a shred of hope.

But it wasn’t good news he was going to give to Garth, and that prospect worried him greatly.

Everything looked peaceful as he came in sight of the ranch. A tendril of smoke curled up from the stone chimney, just as it normally would. The outlaws had put their horses in the barn the night before, so there was no sign of them.

Tom rode up to the house, reined his mount to a halt, and swung down from the saddle, nervously eyeing the house as he did so. Normally, he would have tended to his horse before doing anything else, but he was too anxious to do that. He dropped the reins and hurried to the door.

As he jerked it open and stepped inside, a cold ring of metal was pressed to the side of his head, just in front of his right ear. Tom stopped short, knowing that it was a gun barrel prodding him.

“Take it easy, sodbuster,” the outlaw called Jeffries drawled. He was the one Tom feared the most, since he’d made no secret of how he felt about Frannie, practically licking his chops every time he looked at her.

Jeffries went on. “If anybody happens to be watching, we don’t want you acting like anything’s wrong.”

“Sorry,” Tom breathed. His eyes were adjusting to the dimness inside the house now, and to his huge relief he saw Frannie, Abigail, and the boys all sitting at the table, apparently unharmed. Wide-eyed with fear, but not hurt.

The six outlaws stood or sat around the room. Jeffries, Garth, and the Mexican, Gonzalez, had their guns drawn. Garth pouched his weapon, though, and motioned for the others to do the same.

“What about it?” Garth demanded as he came toward Tom. “Is Joshua still alive?”

Tom forced his head up and down in a nod. “He’s alive. Sheriff Flagg’s got him locked up, just like you thought.”

“What are they gonna do with him?”

“The sheriff sent word to Tucson about what happened and asked for a judge to come out so they can put your boss on trial.”

“When’s that supposed to happen?”

Tom shook his head. “Hard to say for sure. Whenever the judge gets there. A week or thereabouts from what I heard. Maybe a little less.”

Gonzalez said, “
Bueno.
That gives us time to get the rev’rend out o’ there.”

Tom grimaced, and Garth noticed the reaction. “What?” the outlaw asked.

“I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to bust Shade out of there,” Tom replied honestly. “The whole town’s worked up over the men who got killed last night, and every able-bodied man is walking around with a gun. The sheriff’s got lookouts on top of the hotel and the bank again—”

Jeffries laughed. “That didn’t do them much good last time, now did it?”

“Everybody’s more alert now,” Tom went on. “Plus Sheriff Flagg’s got a couple of gunfighters helpin’ him out. They’re holed up inside the jail with the prisoner.”

“Gunfighters?” Garth repeated with a frown. “What gunfighters?”

“Matt Bodine and that half-breed sidekick of his, Two Wolves.”

Garth let out his breath strongly enough so that it fluttered the mustache hanging over his mouth. “Bodine and Two Wolves,” he said in disgust.

“Who are they?” Jeffries asked. “I never heard of them.”

“Bodine’s a slick iron artist,” Garth replied. “Supposed to be damn near as fast on the draw as Smoke Jensen. And Two Wolves is right behind him. They’re a pair o’ first-class fightin’ men, that’s for sure.”

Jeffries shrugged. “Two men against all of us. With odds like that, it doesn’t matter how good they are.”

“Yeah, you can say that all you want, but nobody’s gonna want to be among the dozen or more of us they’d kill before they went under,” Garth pointed out. “I’m gonna have to do some thinkin’ about this.”

He winced as if the idea of thinking itself gave him a pain.

Tom took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to hold anything back from these men. Complete cooperation was his best chance of getting his family out of this alive.

“That’s not all,” he said. “A lynch mob tried to take Shade out of the jail last night.”

“That don’t surprise me none. What happened?”

“The sheriff talked them out of it…and I don’t reckon anybody wanted to try Bodine and Two Wolves either. But there’s a rancher named Hightower who won’t be turned away so easy. His father-in-law was one of the men who was killed, and from what I heard in town, Hightower wants to settle the score for the old man.”

“Can he do it?”

“He’s got a tough crew. And the townspeople are liable to throw in with him. They’ll have a better chance of gettin’ to Shade than you fellas would.”

“Only they want to string him up, not bust him out of jail.”

Tom nodded. “Yeah. That’s exactly what they want.”

Something stirred inside Garth’s brain, and it was a moment before he recognized it for what it really was—an idea. “Maybe we ought to let this Hightower hombre do the work for us,” he said slowly.

“What you talkin’ about, Garth?” Gonzalez demanded. “We can’t let no lynch mob have the rev’rend?”

“We can let them do the bustin’ him out of jail, though,” Garth said. “Then, before they have a chance to lynch him, we swoop in and snatch him away from ’em. Nobody’ll be expectin’ us to strike right then.”

“That might actually work,” Jeffries said with a tone of grudging admiration in his voice.

“Once it’s dark, we could make our way along the bed of the river that loops around the town,” Garth went on as more details formed in his mind. “That way, we can get close enough to keep an eye on what’s goin’ on without anybody spottin’ us.”

He looked around as if waiting for someone to argue with him or point out the flaws in his plan, but Jeffries, Gonzalez, and the other three outlaws remained silent.

“All right then,” Garth said with a nod. “That’s what we’ll do. We’d best get on back to the rest of the boys and let them know the plan.”

Jeffries waved a hand at Tom. “What about the sodbuster here? We can’t let him ride into town and warn everybody about what we’re going to do.”

“No, o’ course not.”

Fear leaped up in Tom’s chest as the burly outlaw reached for his gun. He knew now that he had been a fool to trust these men, to believe that they would honor their word to leave him and his family alone if he helped them. He lunged toward Jeffries and reached out in a desperate attempt to snatch the man’s gun from its holster.

Tom had barely moved when he felt what seemed like a punch in his back. Cold fire speared into his body. He staggered forward, reaching awkwardly behind him as he did so. His fingers brushed the hilt of the knife that protruded from his back. Gonzalez must have thrown it, he thought as he fell to his knees and then pitched forward on his face as the rest of his strength deserted him.

“Good idea, Gonzalez,” Garth said as Tom struggled to hang on to consciousness. “We’ll use knives on ’em. Quieter that way.”

Frannie and the kids were screaming, but the sounds were far away and fading now in Tom’s ears. The pounding roar of his own pulse rose until that was all he could hear.

Then it stopped. He heard that, too, as he died, but that was all. He missed all the terrible sounds of what happened to his family after that, and the swift rata-plan of hoofbeats that came through the open door as the killers rode away afterward.

Once those hoofbeats had dwindled away to nothing, the ranch was quiet again…quiet with the eerie hush of death.