Payback at Big Silver (23 page)

Sam seemed to consider it. The gunmen stood silent, watching, waiting, all except for Bob Remick.

“Ha!”
Remick scoffed, taking a step forward. “This is all one big bluff! Stone's not going to shoot Harper, and this Ranger ain't going to—”

Sam's rifle bucked and exploded in his hand. The shot hit Remick dead center, hurled him crashing backward through the large glass window of the Silver Palace. Remick landed inside, one boot resting on the window ledge. His boot rocked twice, then slumped onto its side.

The rest of the gunmen tensed, ready to start shooting. So did the Ranger, levering a fresh round into his smoking Winchester. But Centrila raised his hands to his men, stopping them.

“Everybody stand down!” he shouted. “Damn it,
stand down
!” he repeated, seeing Remick's cousin, Trent Baye, ready to leap forward with his rifle raised.

“Edsel, Bob Remick's my cousin,” Baye said. “I can't let this go unavenged!”

“I said stand down!” Centrila shouted. He shoved Baye's rifle down at the ground. “Charlie! If he raises his gun, shoot him!” he demanded.

•   •   •

Sam stood with his rifle ready, cocked and poised to fire again. He looked from face to face as if asking who wanted the next round.

“There's no room for bluffing here,” he said to everyone listening. “No bluffing, no payback games. I'm here for the law, nothing else.”

Centrila turned away from the gunmen and stepped down onto the dirt street, closer to the Ranger.

“You were thinking about it, Ranger, I could tell,” he said in a lowered voice, careful not to be heard by his gunmen. “Don't let that idiot spoil everything.” He gestured toward Remick's body lying inside the window frame.

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Stone's dove is unharmed?” he asked, as if making up his mind.

“Yes, she's unharmed,” Centrila lied. “Fresh as morning dew. You have my word on it.”

“Get her,” Sam said in a resolved tone. “Bring her to the jail. I want this thing over and done with.”

Dozing in their cell, Lon Bartow and Harper Centrila had awakened moments earlier to the sound of Sheriff Stone shouting at the Ranger, who had just closed the door behind himself. The two prisoners looked at each, at the sheriff standing cuffed to the window shutter, then at the gun and cell key lying on the oak desk.

“You two stay right where you are,” Stone said, seeing their intentions in their eyes.

“Yeah, sure, law dog,” Harper said over his shoulder. He picked up his wooden-framed cot and slammed it to pieces on the hard plank floor. As it broke, Bartow stooped and stripped the woven rope from among the debris and stretched it out between his hands. Harper found a broken corner piece of the bed frame and tied the rope around it.

Stone looked all around quickly. Seeing nothing else to do, he cursed the Ranger under his breath and stretched out as far as his handcuff would allow. He hooked his boot toe around the short leg of the desk and tried to drag it to him, farther out of the prisoners' reach. But it didn't work. Seeing what he was doing, Harper hurriedly swung the rope out from between the bars and hooked the corner bed piece around the short leg closest to him.

The sheriff and the prisoners played tug-of-war with the desk. The desk bumped up and down from the two opposing forces pulling against it. With so much pressure between the sheriff's boot toe and the prisoner's taut rope, finally the leg broke on the prisoners' end and the desk slammed down six inches to the floor. The weight jarred the entire office; the big gun and the cell key slid off the desktop and bounced and landed less than three feet from the barred cell.

“Yee-hi!”
Bartow shouted. He reached through the bars, grabbed the gun and handed it up to Harper.

Turned hefted the gun in his hand and gave Stone a menacing grin.

“Now it's
my
gun,” he said calmly. “You stand there like a
good boy.
Keep nice and quiet.”

Stone stood rigid, knowing what came next.

“Why?” he said. “What have I got to lose?”

On the cell floor, Bartow snatched the cell key in his fist and stood and held it up for the sheriff to see. He cackled with dark laughter and shuffled his boots on the floor in a strange little dance.

Harper took a deep breath, cocked the big Colt and held it out at arm's length through the bars, aimed at Stone.

“You've got a point there, Sheriff,” he said. Bartow stood with his arm already stuck through the bars ready to stick the key into the cell lock. He stopped long enough to watch.

“Shoot him
square in the head
!” he said, a sharp gleam in his widened feral eyes.

“Adios, law dog,” Harper said, holding tight aim, his left eye squeezed shut. He pulled the trigger; the hammer fell. Bartow flinched, but the gun only clicked in Harper's hand.

“The
hell . . . ?
” said Bartow.

Stone had tightened his chest for the oncoming blast. Now he released it. He stood staring.

“Damn misfire,” Harper said. He looked at the gun, then recocked and reaimed. He pulled the trigger. Still the gun only clicked in his hand.

“Jesus, Harper!” said Bartow, still holding the key ready.

“Shut up, Lon. I've got it,” said Harper. He shook the gun as if that might solve the problem. He recocked quickly and pulled the trigger again. “Damn it!
Damn it to hell!
” He tried twice more. Nothing! He slung the gun sideways in his hand and opened the gate, checking it. Bartow looked on intently.

“Son of a . . .” Harper's words trailed.

“Empty,” Bartow said. He looked up from the gun and over at Stone.
“Empty . . . ?”
he repeated. “What kind of sheriff
are
you?” he said skeptically.

“Shut up, Lon! Get this door open,” Harper ordered. “He'll have bullets in his desk.” He and Sheriff Stone stared hard at each other. “You're still dead, law dog,” Harper said. “You just don't know it yet.”

Bartow stuck the key into the lock and twisted it. But it stopped short and refused to turn all the way.

“Come on, Lon!” said Harper, hurrying him.

“It's stuck!” said Bartow, getting nervous, tense. He twisted the key back and forth madly. Nothing! He jerked the key from the lock and inside the cell. He inspected it.

“Give it here, Lon! Damn it!” Harper raged. He stuck Stone's Colt into his waist and yanked the cell key from Bartow's hand. Bartow watched as he twisted the key wildly back and forth, getting nowhere. Stone watched too, something dawning on him as he did so. The Ranger's words came to mind.

“When you figure how to get yourself loose, your gun is here waiting for you. By then you'll know I'm right.”

“Dang you, Ranger,” he murmured to himself as the two prisoners dropped their arms to their sides and stood slumped, staring at him. He patted a hand on his shirt pocket and felt the metal object there. He fished his fingers down beside his half bag of tobacco and his near-empty cough drop paper.

The key. . . .

He almost felt like laughing, but it wasn't funny, he told himself. He pulled the handcuff key from his shirt pocket and turned to his fettered wrist. The prisoners watched, puzzled, silent. He felt his face redden; he felt like saying something, but there was no one to say it to. As he turned the small key and let the cuff drop from his wrist, he looked out the window's gun port and saw the Ranger walking back from the Silver Palace.

Harper and Bartow watched the sheriff rub his freed wrist as he walked over to his badly tilted desk and jerked a drawer open. He gave them a knowing look and took out a box of bullets and set it down hard atop the oak surface. In silence he turned and walked to the cell. Without a word he looked at Harper and held out his upturned palm.

Harper pulled the Colt up from his waist, reached through the bars and laid it on Stone's hand. Behind Stone a hard, jarring crash caused him to spin around with the gun up even though it was empty. He saw his desk leaning forward now, the leg on the other corner having just broken off. He watched items slide off the desktop and plop one after the other onto the floor. The unopened box of bullets slid off into his chair. Stone turned back to the cell and yanked the key from the lock where Harper had left it. He looked it over, recognizing it as the key to the barred door of the ill-fated jail wagon.

“Figures,” he said aloud to himself, pitching the key over onto his desk chair with the box of bullets.

•   •   •

When the Ranger stepped inside the office, Stone had just finished loading his big Colt. He stood leaning back against the edge of the tilted desk, the gun still in his hand. Sam slowed a step, his rifle in hand. He noted the short broken desk legs on the floor, the wanted posters, letters, other items.

“Are we all right?” he asked. He stepped on inside and reached back and closed the door.

“I don't know how I fell for it.” Stone chuffed and shook his head. “Yeah, we're all right. I couldn't have looked at Edsel Centrila without blowing his head off.” He paused, then said, “I heard a rifle shot?”

“Yes,” Sam said. He picked up the box of bullets and the key from the chair and slumped down into the chair. “A gunman by the name of Bob Remick decided to hurrah everything. I saw it as a good chance to whittle the odds down some.” He looked at the two prisoners seated on the remaining unbroken cot looking out at them. Standing up, he nodded Stone toward the shuttered front window. Stone straightened and followed him, closing the loading gate on his Colt and holstering it.

“How does it stand with Mae Rose?” he asked. The slightest tension in his lowered voice told the Ranger the woman was his main concern, and rightly so.

“They're bringing her to us,” Sam said in the same lowered voice, rolling a glance out the gun port now and then toward the Silver Palace.

“What? They're bringing her to
us
?” Stone said, surprise in his lowered voice.

“Yep,” Sam said. “Should be here in just a few minutes. Soon as Edsel figures how he can get what he wants and still manage to kill you.” He pulled up a fresh rifle round from his pocket and shoved it into the Winchester, replacing the one he'd used on Remick.

“So
you did
make a trade with him?” Stone asked again.

“Not exactly,” Sam said. He switched the subject. “I had to do what I did to you, the handcuffs . . . ,” he said. “Edsel would never have dealt with you.”

“I know,” Stone said, “I saw Lyle Cady ride up and check on me. Anyway, you told me that before you left. I wasn't seeing this thing coolly enough to go face-to-face with a man holding Mae Rose. If he's bringing her to us, it looks like
you was.
” He took a deep breath. “I'm obliged, Ranger. I owe you a lot for how you've done this. As wild-eyed as I was, I'd have likely got us both killed, and Mae Rose too.”

“It's not done yet, Sheriff,” Sam warned. “There's still some twists and turns ahead of us.”

“What are you saying, Ranger?”

“Edsel knows Mae Rose is your gal,” Sam said. He studied the sheriff's face and asked, “How hard was it to get her to tell him that?”

Stone winced a little. His anger flared in his eyes.

“I'll kill that
lousy, rotten—!
” He caught himself and stopped. He took out a cough drop with trembling fingers and stuck it into his mouth. “All right, at least she's alive,” he said. He took another deep breath and calmed himself down. “I'm all right. Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I don't want you to do anything, except to cover me from inside here,” Sam said.

“Huh-uh,” Stone said. “If shooting starts I want to be right out there with you. I can handle my end. You ought to know that by now.”

“I do know it, Sheriff,” Sam said. “But I need you in here, covering me from the window.”

“What about when you make the trade?” Stone said. “What if Edsel crawfishes at the last minute, keeps Mae Rose just to spite me? Don't put it past him, Ranger,” he cautioned.

Sam let out a patient breath.

“Listen to me, Sheriff,” he said. “I don't put anything past Edsel Centrila. I can't count on anything he says. That's why it's important that I can count on us. He told me Mae Rose hasn't been harmed. I don't believe him. I'm prepared for what she might look like. Are you?”

Sheriff Stone didn't reply, which the Ranger took as a reply in itself.

“That's what I thought,” he said flatly. “That's another reason I want you in here, instead of out there.”

Stone glanced out the gun port toward the Palace.

“They're forming up, Ranger,” he said. He barely saw Mae Rose standing beside Centrila in a long cape, hood up so her face was hidden.

“What's it going to be, Sheriff?” Sam asked. “If you want the woman back alive, I'm going to need you right here by this window, just like you're still cuffed to the shutter.”

“All right, you've got it,” Stone said. They both looked over at the cell and saw Harper Centrila and Lon Bartow back on their feet, as if sensing trouble in the making.

“Give me your word that you won't come charging through this door if the woman's been badly beaten,” Sam insisted.

Stone glanced out the gun port again, then at Sam, and said in a resolved tone of voice, “All right, you've got my word on it, Ranger.”

The Ranger nodded; he held the box of bullets out for Stone.

“Here, you might need these,” he said.

They shared a look, then peered out the gun port at the Silver Palace. They saw Lyle and Ignacio Cady step down from the boardwalk with the woman between them. Ahead of them Edsel Centrila stood with Charlie Knapp, Silas Rudabaugh, Don Ferry and Trent Baye gathered around him. A few drinkers who had ventured to the saloon in spite of the impending trouble stood inside and stared out through the open doors at Centrila and his men.