Deserter (16 page)

They half carried, half dragged Billy from the cell. Mott pulled the door closed and the man with the key locked it. Two men pulled Billy along, trying to keep him erect between them. Two others picked up the lanterns. The sheriff stood back, shotgun hanging loosely from his hand. Jake found Mott's eyes. “You'd best pull the trigger on me right now,” he said. “Otherwise I'm going to kill you one day.” His voice was low but it carried to Mott and to his four men.

The gallows was a dark blur, indistinct in the moonless, cloudy night. It was a long time before Jake saw the men outside, saw them dragging Billy, saw them carrying Billy up the stairs to the platform. Jake
couldn't see the rope and the noose, but he knew it was there. One of the men carrying a lantern mounted the stairs to the killing floor and set his light down. Then Jake could see the noose.

Billy couldn't stand. The two men who'd carried him up the stairs held him upright. Another fit the noose over Billy's head, tightening it around his neck. Mott stood back, holding his shotgun. “Stand back offa the trap,” he said. “Hold him up until it drops.” The men shifted their positions, reaching out to hold Billy where he needed to be.

Jake's nails were gouging into his palms, his eyes not on his friend but on Jason Mott and the lever that protruded up through the floor next to him. Mott lifted the shotgun up over his shoulder with his left hand and reached out his right to the lever. For a long moment he looked at Billy's face. Then he grasped the lever, hesitated for a heartbeat, and jerked it back. Billy dropped. There was a loud snap—like that of a breaking stick—and then no sound at all.

Sinclair turned away from the window, from the execution tableau. He stood for a long time in the center of the cell, almost at attention, back straight. The weight on the gallows caused the fresh nailing to creak slightly as Billy's body turned below the trapdoor. Jake stepped back to the window.

Mott followed the other three men down the stairs to the ground. Jake watched him in the same manner a snake watches a cornered mouse.

Time didn't actually pass for Jake Sinclair in his cage. Instead, things around him changed: daybreak into midday into night, night silence to daylight city life to the revelry and off-key music at night, often interrupted by gunshots, the passing of a train that seemed to be on no particular schedule as to Fairplay. There was a thick-witted rhythm to his life that Jake was forced to accept, and he felt himself becoming as dull and as mindless as the events—or nonevents—of the sheriff's office.

Jake slept too much. He realized that, but sleep was safe, and it used up parts of the days and nights. He was losing weight. His pants hung loosely around his waist and he felt fatigued almost all of the time, regardless of the fact that he moved little in the course of a day. Even thinking came to be more trouble than it was worth. Staring at the brick back wall of his cell with a blank mind was easier.

Much of that changed late one night about ten days or two weeks after Billy's hanging.

“You! Jake!” The raspy whisper cut through Sinclair's light sleep, bringing him immediately to full consciousness. He stood and moved to the barred window. It was raining lightly, he saw, and there was little light. The whisper—louder now—drew him closer.

“Jake, goddammit! Wake up. I ain't got the night to spend out here.”

A wrinkled, wide-brimmed hat with rain running from it came into Jake's line of vision, followed by a wave of whiskey breath. There was a creaking sound from outside, a muffled curse, and another exhalation of booze.

“I'm here,” Jake whispered. “Who're—”

“We're gonna spring you out. We got it all figured. You just set tight till Friday night an' then be ready to haul ass. We'll have a horse for you. We'll—” The speech was interrupted by the creaking sound and then a sharp crack followed by a dull, wet thump. “Son of a bitch!” the outside voice cursed. “The goddamn crate busted. Hellfire! I cain't . . .”

The next thing Jake heard was boots splashing through mud and water. He could barely pick out a hunched form running in a weaving path away from the jail. All that remained was the fog that smelled like a saloon.
A drunk flapping his mouth, playing some kind of stupid prank? Or—one of Billy's Night Riders with a plan?

Tendrils of hope gathered around Sinclair. He tried to convince himself the chance of rescue was a real one—that the messenger had been chosen for his ineptitude, so that if he were caught, his drunkenness could explain his actions. “Jus' tryin' to cheer up this poor feller, Sheriff.”

Jake shook his head.
Nah. Who the hell would send a stumblebum with a message that important? Too drunk even to find a damn crate that'd hold his weight. It doesn't make sense.
He sat, back against the wall, under the window, pondering. His bit of hope didn't last long.
Still . . . stranger things have happened.

Mott made an appearance at Jake's cell door late the next day. “We'll be taking you to trial tomorrow night, all nice an' legal,” he said. Jake noticed that his bone-gripped Smith & Wesson rode in the sheriff's holster.

“Why not just go right to the gallows—save the time of a crooked trial?”

Mott chuckled. “Still porky, I see. That's good, I guess. A man can get tired of prisoners that act like aunties.”

“You enjoying my horse?”

The sheriff laughed again. “Ain't a bad mare, all in all. I had to take her down a couple of pegs, but she's behavin' now.” His eyes met Jake's. “That bother you? That I took a whip to that horse?”

Jake spoke slowly, controlling his voice, holding Mott's eyes. “You better make real sure you get me killed one way or another, Mott, because if you don't, I'll watch the light go out of your eyes. I'll watch you die like the snake you are. You hear?”

The laugh seemed slightly exaggerated this time. “I'm gonna like watchin' you swing, boy,” he said as he turned away. “Gonna enjoy pullin' the lever.”

The rest of that day passed, and so did the next.

Mott came for him after dark accompanied by one of his men, a young fellow who looked barely twenty, with a twitch in his left eyelid and canine teeth that were far too long for his face. He held a double-barreled
shotgun across his chest with his finger inside the trigger guard. Mott held a lantern.

“Come up close here and put your hands where I can reach 'em,” Mott told Jake. “Try anything an'Wolfie here'll put you outta bidness.” Jake stood a foot from the cell door and held out his hands. Mott reached through the bars and applied the heavy steel shackle-handcuffs. Then he keyed the door and swung it open. “You walk in front,” he said. “Wolfie an' me will follow. Go on up to my office.”

Jake stepped out of the cell. Wolfie jabbed the barrels into his back to start him moving down the aisle. Lantern light showed at the end of the corridor and the illumination from Mott's lamp stretched a long, narrow shadow of Jake on the rough wooden floor in front of him. He stopped at the partially open office door. Wolfie jabbed him again. “Move,” he said. “Over by the desk.”

The door was a heavy one, solid wood hung on large brass hinges. Jake eyed it quickly.
A full inch of good wood. It'll stop the shotgun and Mott's .44. If I can get in front of it and then slam it closed . . .

He tensed his shoulders and shifted his body weight to his left foot, which was a half stride behind his right. The shotgun barrels hit him in the back of the head this time, and they hit him hard. Jake stumbled forward, the starburst of white light from the blow blinding him for a moment, weakening his knees. He lurched into the office, dazed. Amazingly, inexplicably, the sheriff's big wooden desk lifted itself a good two inches off the floor and then crashed back down. A wrenching, screeching sound, like a good saw blade striking a nail, was followed by an explosion that was
louder than anything Sinclair had heard during the war. A ceiling beam twisted free and slammed downward, striking Wolfie across the shoulders, jamming him to the floor, the weight and power behind the beam crushing Wolfie's head like a stomped-on cockroach. Dazed, Jake instinctively covered his face as a whirling cloud of flame and dust and shattered boards rolled down the aisle like a stampeding herd of buffalo. Mott, taken down as Wolfie fell, screamed just as the concussion hurled Jake across the office floor and bounced him off the wall.

Jake picked himself up from the floor. He could hear Mott still screaming, even over the shrill screeching in his ears. The lantern that had sat on the desk lay shattered on the floor, and flames were already tonguing the scattered papers and the upended chair. Jake gaped dumbly at the door—it seemed to be dancing in its frame. Then it swung open.

“Jesus, boy, I'm glad to see you!” a sheet-draped figure shouted. “We kinda figured we buried you under the jail.”

Another hooded head appeared in the doorway. “Mighta gone a little heavy on the dynamite,” he said. “But come on—we got you a horse right outside.” The words cleared the clouds from Jake's mind and put the strength back in his limbs. He was through the door in a heartbeat. Eight or ten hooded and robed men on horseback were clustered in front of the sheriff's office, the barrels of their rifles and pistols sweeping the street. One held the reins to a saddled horse. Even with his hands restrained in front of him, Jake was in the saddle in a second, grabbing at the reins the other tossed over the horse's head. Some gunfire sounded.
Jake didn't know if it came from the weapons of the Night Riders or from Mott's men—and he didn't much care. He banged his heels into his mount's sides and galloped after the already fleeing group. When he reached the end of Main Street he dared a glance over his shoulder—and immediately hauled his horse around in a sliding turn at the full gallop. Before the dust from the turn had begun to settle, Jake was racing back toward the jail.

The scene was chaos: The sheriff's office was afire and the jail area was gone—disappeared, transformed into a low pile of smashed bricks, broken boards, and twisted steel bars. The front of the office remained standing, but perilously so—the whole of it listing back toward where the jail had been. The saloon had emptied and men and women clogged the street. Two men dragged a man—or a body—out of the front door.

Mare, a length of broken hitching rail flailing from the end of her reins, reared again, eyes wild, chest glistening with panic sweat. It was the same image Jake had seen seconds ago, the same one that had brought him back at a gallop. He dragged his mount to a sliding stop, cringing at how roughly he was forced to use the reins. He was off the horse and in front of Mare in a second. In another moment he'd freed her reins and hauled himself onto her back. Mare had every bit of the speed he remembered. Within a few minutes he'd caught up with the Night Riders.

Sweat glistened on the arms of the blacksmith, even though the fire in his forge scattered red-orange coals and he'd not yet swung his hammer. Jake's eyes went to the man's forearms: they looked like they'd been
carved from hardwood to represent the strength of some mythical god. “Look away—turn your head,” the smithy said.

“I'm not afraid you're going to miss and hit me instead.”

“That ain't the point. These hand shackles are made from good steel. When I lay my cold chisel to it, there might could be splinters. Lance your eye like an Injun tossed a spear.”

Jake turned his head and the blacksmith positioned the sharp edge of his chisel on the thick chain that held the two handcuffs together. He struck twice and each time Jake felt air move against him and heard its quiet
whoosh
.

“Now you gotta stand and rest the edge of the parts round your hands on the anvil.” This time Jake felt the cold steel ever so slightly touching the outside of his right hand as the smith positioned his chisel. A single stroke freed Jake's hand, and a moment later, his left was free also.

“Thank you,” Jake said. “You're Burdett, right?”

“Burgess. Most call me Bull. I didn't think you got the name when Billy's pa was introducin' everyone.” He held out a ham-sized hand. Jake took it and they shook hands. Burgess's grasp was light—he had no need to prove his strength in a handshake. “Let's go on in, have a drink with the other boys. One thing, though—I seen you go back and grab up your horse. That took a fair set of nuts, Jake. Seems like you'll be good for the Riders.”

Jake nodded.

Bull's big face broke into a grin. “You ain't said you'd join up yet. I know that. Here's the thing, though: We
sprung you outta jail an' no doubt cheated the hangman. I'd think you kinda owe us some time. No?”

“That's the way I see it, Bull. Now—about that drink you mentioned . . .”

Jake rarely felt short, but walking next to Bull from the barn to the house he was dwarfed by the sheer magnitude—the muscular immensity—of the blacksmith. Bull caught the curiosity in Jake's eyes. “I'm six feet an' seven inches tall, an' the last time I weighed myself on a stock scale at the train yard, I went 331 pounds.” He grinned. “I like to get that outta the way. It's only natural folks wonder, and it don't bother me none. Hell, I'm right proud of being what I am.”

“No reason not to be, Bull. I was you, I'd feel the same way.”

That seemed to please the big man. His smile broadened. He cuffed Jake lightly on the shoulder, almost knocking him over.

There were nine men in the living room of the house. Three lanterns provided more than enough light to see the small table in the middle of the room with the half dozen bottles and several glasses on it. The bottles were getting hard use. There was a celebratory giddiness to the conversations that struck Jake as odd. The Night Riders seemed more like a bunch of drunken college boys who'd just come back from their first sally to a whorehouse than a band of vigilantes who'd just destroyed a sheriff's office, killed a deputy for sure and maybe the sheriff, too, and freed a prisoner, to boot.