Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats Read online

  The shouted warning had alerted the gunmen by the windows, though, and as they jerked around Bo yelled, “Freeze! Drop those guns!”

  A couple of the men ignored the command. One of them triggered his gun, sending a slug whipping past Bo’s head. Bo fired twice. Both bullets punched into the man’s belly and doubled him over.

  At the same time, another man fired and knocked splinters off the back of a chair just inches away from Reilly. The young man pulled the trigger again. This time the bullet plowed into the floor right at the gunman’s feet. That was enough to upset the man’s balance as he crouched and sent him toppling forward. Bo took a fast step forward and brought the barrel of his gun down across the man’s head, laying him out senseless on the floor. Bo moved back just as swiftly and covered the remaining hardcases. The fight seemed to have gone out of them.

  “In the name of the law, drop those guns!” Reilly called. Bo thought that was a nice touch. Maybe Reilly was getting more enthusiastic about posing as John Henry Braddock. At any rate, it worked, because guns began to hit the floor as the other men let go of them and put up their hands.

  “What about the man behind the bar, Marshal?” Bo asked as silence descended on the room. “Want me to check on him?”

  “I’ll do it,” Reilly said. He leaned over to look behind the bar and paled. “I can’t tell if he’s alive or not. There’s an awful lot of blood back there.”

  “Important thing right now is that he’s not going to get up and take a hand in this game again.”

  Reilly shook his head. “It’ll be a medical miracle if he does.”

  Bo herded the captured hardcases away from their guns and out through the bullet-shattered batwings, leaving behind the man Bo had shot. It had taken only a quick check for the Texan to confirm that he was dead.

  Across the street, Scratch and Rawhide Abbott marched their prisoners out of the Lariat Saloon. Scratch grinned at his trail partner and said, “Looks like we got the job done.”

  Bo said, “That’s right.” He turned to Reilly and added, “Your plan worked perfectly, Marshal.”

  If Rawhide remembered that it had actually been Bo who suggested the strategy, she didn’t say anything. Bo’s comment was overheard by people who were starting to poke their heads out of nearby buildings now that the shooting had stopped, just as he’d intended. He couldn’t think of a better way to introduce “Marshal John Henry Braddock” to the citizens of Whiskey Flats. Already, folks were pointing at Reilly and talking to each other in hushed voices. The new marshal was making quite an impression.

  Bo turned to the young woman and went on. “Since you seem to know everything there is to know about this settlement, Rawhide, can you tell us if there’s a jail?”

  “There sure is,” she said, pointing toward the bridge. “Just north of the creek, so it’s handy to where most of the trouble is. The town council had it built a couple of years ago, got a marshal’s office in it and everything. But nobody held the job long enough to even get the place dirty.”

  “Why’s that?” Reilly wanted to know.

  Rawhide looked at him and said, “Either they saw how impossible it was and gave up…or they got themselves dead.”

  Judging from the expression that passed across Reilly’s face, he wished that he hadn’t asked the question.

  “Well, Marshal,” Bo said, “what do you want us to do with these prisoners?”

  Reilly gave a little shake of his head, as if trying to forget what Rawhide had just told him. He summoned up a weak smile and said, “What else, Deputy? Take ’em to jail and lock ’em up!” His voice strengthened as he looked around and added for the townspeople’s benefit, “It’s time folks know that law has come to Whiskey Flats!”

  CHAPTER 10

  The man whose arm had been busted by Scratch’s bullet complained mightily about needing a doctor as the prisoners marched at gunpoint across the bridge.

  “We’ll see that you get medical attention,” Bo promised.

  “So quit your bitchin’,” Scratch added. “Anyway, I wouldn’t’a shot you if you hadn’t been tryin’ to shoot me first.”

  There was no arguing with that logic, so the wounded man fell into a sullen silence, broken only by the occasional moan. Bo turned to Rawhide and asked, “I reckon you do have a sawbones in this town?”

  “Sure.” She called to a sag-jawed bystander, “Tooney, run and fetch Doc Summers!”

  While the townie ran off up the street, another man hurried toward the group. Bo recognized him as the fella who had stepped out of the livery stable as they were coming into the settlement. He thrust out a hand toward Reilly and said, “Marshal Braddock?”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s right,” Reilly said.

  “I’m Mayor Jonas McHale!” The mayor grabbed hold of Reilly’s hand and began to pump it enthusiastically. “It’s an honor to meet you, Marshal! An absolute honor!”

  “Well, the, uh, pleasure is all mine, Mayor,” Reilly said.

  “We weren’t expecting your arrival in Whiskey Flats to be accompanied by such excitement,” McHale went on. “What happened down there on the other side of the bridge?”

  Rawhide answered, “The feud between the hardcases who hang out at the Lariat and the ones at the Top-Notch finally boiled over into a shootin’ war, Jonas. But the marshal and his deputies put a stop to that quick enough.”

  “Deputies?” McHale frowned at he looked at the Texans. “Marshal, I don’t recall you saying anything about bringing deputies with you.”

  “I just assumed I’d be able to hire whoever I needed to help me do the job,” Reilly said. His confidence appeared to be growing again. Any time the situation called for fast, glib talk, he was right at home.

  Of course, he had done surprisingly well with the gun-handling inside the Top-Notch, too, Bo reflected. He had known when he saw Reilly practicing with Braddock’s revolver that the young man had the makings of a decent Coltman. Facing danger had brought out that ability even more. Now, if only the masquerade as John Henry Braddock would bring out some of Reilly’s other good qualities as well…

  “Of course, of course,” McHale said quickly. “It’s just that the town council didn’t make any provision for extra wages…” He moved his hands rapidly from side to side. “But don’t worry about that, I’m sure we can come up with something that’ll be agreeable. We want you to have whatever you need, Marshal.”

  Reilly smiled. “Well, right now, I’d say that a good place to stay would be in order.”

  “Naturally, we’ve got the best room in the hotel reserved for you, for as long as you want it,” McHale said. “Of course, you might decide to settle down here and want something more permanent…”

  “The hotel room will be fine for now,” Reilly said.

  “And there are cots in the marshal’s office where your deputies can stay,” the mayor added.

  Scratch glanced at Bo, who knew what his old friend was thinking. Reilly got the comfortable hotel room, while all they got were cots in what was probably a drafty old marshal’s office. Bo just smiled, and Scratch shook his head, trying not to look too disgusted.

  The hardcase with the busted arm said, “Are you gonna stand around here jabberin’ all day, or are you gonna get me to the doctor before I plumb bleed to death?”

  “Doc Summers will be here in just a minute,” Rawhide told him. “Take it easy.”

  “Actually, Miss Abbott,” Reilly said, sounding more authoritative now as he warmed to his role, “why don’t you and Deputy Morton take the wounded man to the doctor’s office? Deputy Creel and I can jail these other fellows. Oh, and by the way, the undertaker will be needed for at least one man there in the Top-Notch, maybe two. Someone should check on the man behind the bar.”

  “A big fella in a flashy suit?” Rawhide asked.

  “That’s right. I was forced to shoot him when he jumped up from behind the bar and threatened us with a shotgun.”

  “That’s Big Mickey Tilden, the owner of the Top-No
tch. Did you kill him?”

  Reilly shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t give me a lot of time to place my shot.”

  “Someone had better check on him, too,” Bo suggested.

  “Here comes Ed Chamberlain,” McHale said, adding by way of explanation for the newcomers, “Ed’s our local coffin-maker and undertaker.”

  Chamberlain was a short, cherubic hombre with a pink scalp and a high-pitched voice, not at all like the cadaverous undertakers usually found in frontier towns. He grinned pleasantly as he asked, “Got some new business for me, Jonas?”

  “There’s at least one dead man in the Top-Notch,” McHale told him. “Mickey Tilden’s shot, too, and may be dead.”

  Chamberlain rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I’ll go see about that right now.”

  “Make sure he’s actually deceased before you haul him off to your place,” McHale called after him as the undertaker hurried toward the bridge.

  Chamberlain laughed as he asked over his shoulder, “Did you ever know me to plant a live one?”

  “Ed is a member of our town council,” McHale said to Reilly. “I’ll introduce you to him formally later, Marshal, along with all the other members of the council. I’m sure they’ll all be glad to meet you.”

  “And I’ll be glad to meet them,” Reilly said heartily. “Meanwhile, let’s get these prisoners behind bars where they belong. We’ll talk later, Mayor.”

  Scratch and Rawhide took the wounded man up the street to the doctor’s office, while Bo and Reilly marched the rest of the prisoners over to the squat, stone-and-log building that served as the marshal’s office and jail for Whiskey Flats. Despite the fact that no one had been able to occupy it for very long so far, the building had a solid look about it. The walls were thick, and the windows in the rear part of the building were all small and closed off with iron bars, so Bo knew the cell block had to be located back there.

  When they went inside, he saw that he was right. The office was rather sparsely furnished, with a rolltop desk and chair, a gun rack on the wall with a couple of Winchesters and a shotgun in it, a black potbellied stove in the corner, and an old armchair. A couple of cots were folded and leaned in a corner. Directly across from the entrance door was the heavy door to the cell block, which stood open at the moment because the four cells—two on each side of a short corridor—were empty.

  Not for long, though, because Bo and Reilly herded the prisoners into them, splitting them up so that the hardcases from the Top-Notch were on one side, the men from the Lariat on the other.

  “I saw the keys on a ring hanging from a nail beside the desk,” Bo told Reilly as he closed the cell doors with a clang.

  One of the prisoners complained, “If you’re gonna lock us up in here, you gotta feed us. It’s the law.”

  “Shut up,” Reilly said. “It’s a long time until supper, and if you cause any trouble, we’ll just see if you get anything to eat.”

  Another prisoner started to protest. “You damned high-handed badge toter! You can’t—”

  “Shut up, I said!” Reilly roared at him.

  The prisoners subsided, still muttering among themselves.

  Reilly grinned as he and Bo went back out into the office and Bo swung the cell block door shut. It closed with a solid thump. Bo took down the ring, found the right key, and locked it as well.

  “That was fun,” Reilly said, keeping his voice pitched low enough so that only Bo could hear. “Maybe I’m starting to understand why some fellas want to be lawmen.”

  “It’s a good job to have if you like bossing folks around,” Bo agreed. “But mainly, you should want to help folks, too.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Reilly looked keenly at the Texan. “You seem to know a lot about this marshal business, Bo. You sure you and Scratch haven’t worn badges before?”

  “As a matter of fact, we have, on a few rare occasions,” Bo admitted. “Most of the time, though, our encounters with the law have been from the other side of the bars, like those hombres back there in the cell block now. You see, whenever trouble breaks out, most star packers look for the nearest stranger to blame it on. And since Scratch and I are strangers just about everywhere we go…”

  “Yeah, I know the feeling,” Reilly said. “I’ve been blamed for a few things I didn’t do, too.” He chuckled. “But mostly for things that I did do.”

  Bo checked the drawers of the desk and found them empty except for a stack of reward dodgers that one of the previous occupants had left there. He flipped through them curiously, checking to see if he and Scratch were on any of them. They weren’t actually wanted anywhere at the moment—that he knew of—but at times in the past their pictures had turned up on reward posters as the result of misunderstandings or overzealous lawmen. He didn’t find any in this batch, though.

  He didn’t find any with Reilly’s picture on them either, although to tell the truth, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he had.

  “You know,” Bo said as he replaced the reward dodgers in the desk, “that hombre back there was right. We’ll have to feed them. That means making arrangements with a café or hash house and getting the town council to pay for it. Now that I think about it, there are probably a lot of little details to running a law office that aren’t apparent right off.”

  “You mean it’s not all fun and games like nearly getting our asses shot off?” Reilly asked with a smile.

  Bo chuckled and said, “No, there’s likely some actual work involved, too.”

  Reilly tugged his hat brim down. “Well, since you’re the deputy, I expect you’ll be handling most of that. I think I should go out and introduce myself to the townspeople. You know, let them see that there’s a new marshal in these parts.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. You might want to let one of us go with you, though. I’m sure Scratch will be back soon.”

  Reilly looked like he wanted to argue, but before he could do so, the office door opened and Scratch came in, no longer accompanied by Rawhide Abbott.

  “That fella you shot is still alive, Rei—” Scratch checked himself as he realized that the prisoners back in the cell block might overhear if he referred to Reilly by name. “Right enough,” he went on quickly in an attempt to cover the near-slip. “The doc came down to the Top-Notch to check on him and said he might pull through; then that pink-cheeked little undertaker hauled him down to the doc’s office in his meat wagon. Said it was a nice change havin’ a live one in there, but I didn’t really believe him. I reckon he was disappointed he only gets to plant one stiff, not two.”

  “The fella I shot didn’t make it then,” Bo said.

  “Not hardly. Not with two slugs in the gut.”

  Bo shook his head, a solemn expression on his face. He didn’t particularly cotton to killing, but sometimes there just wasn’t time to do anything else.

  Scratch thumbed his hat back and went on. “Anyway, I left that feisty redheaded gal down at the sawbones’ place keepin’ an eye on the fella whose wing I busted. Doc Summers said he’d patch it up and set it. He gave the fella a little morphine to tide him over whilst he tended to Tilden, so I don’t think he’s goin’ anywhere for a while. He looked about as groggy as a Chinaman in an opium den when I left. I’ll go back and get him later.”

  Bo nodded. “That sounds fine. We probably won’t be able to charge those fellas with anything except disturbing the peace anyway. Somebody will have to set a fine for them. We’ll talk to the mayor about that.”

  “See?” Reilly said with a smirk. “I told you you were good at all these little details, Bo. Now, let’s go take that walk around town, why don’t we?”

  Bo asked Scratch, “You mind staying here with the prisoners for a while?”

  Scratch shook his head. “Nope. ’Specially not if I can put my feet up for a spell.”

  “Go to it, old-timer,” Bo told him with a smile.

  “Old-timer!” Scratch snorted. “I ain’t but a couple months older’n you, Bo…disprovin’ that
old sayin’ about age before beauty.”

  There was nothing Bo could say to that, so he just chuckled, shook his head, and left the office with Reilly.

  The boardwalks were crowded with pedestrians now, and the whole settlement was buzzing about the brief but violent gun battle between the two groups of hardcases and the way the new marshal and his deputies had galloped into town and put a stop to it with some fast gunplay. As Reilly made his appearance and began strolling along with Bo at his side, well-wishers crowded around him, eager to shake his hand and introduce themselves. Reilly grinned widely, pumped every hand that was thrust at him, and tipped his hat to all the ladies, who seemed quite taken by his dashing good looks.

  Bo stayed in the background, letting Reilly bask in the glory. This was the part that Reilly was good at, glad-handing and showing off for the townspeople. Bo was happy to let him do it, since he wasn’t comfortable with such things himself.

  Mayor McHale must have been alert for any commotion, because he emerged from the livery stable again and came over to Bo and Reilly. Laughing, he raised his voice to be heard over the commotion and said, “Let our new marshal breathe, folks! There’ll be plenty of time for all of you to get to know him, because John Henry Braddock is going to be around Whiskey Flats for a long time! Isn’t that right, Marshal?”

  “We’ll be here until the job’s done, that’s for sure,” Reilly declared.

  McHale took hold of his arm. “I was hoping I’d get the chance to show you around. Come with me, Marshal.”

  Bo trailed a couple of steps behind as McHale guided Reilly up the street, pointing out all the businesses. The mayor himself owned the livery stable and wagon yard, as well as a freight line that ran between Whiskey Flats and Santa Fe.

  The settlement had just about everything such a frontier cattle town needed: two general stores (one of them, Abbott & Carson, would be the one that had grown from the trading post started by old Hawk Abbott, Rawhide’s grandfather, Bo noted), a butcher shop, a blacksmith shop, a saddlemaker, a gunsmith, a barber (HOT BATHS 50¢, ALSO TEETH PULLED, a sign next to the striped pole announced), a hotel, a café, the local newspaper, The Whiskey Flats Clarion (which Rawhide’s father had started, Bo recalled), an apothecary, the undertaking parlor run by Ed Chamberlain, the house where Dr. Edwin Summers’s medical practice was located, even a millinery shop that catered to the ladies in town. There were a couple of churches, a school that was open part of the year whenever the town could get a teacher, and a meeting hall where dances, political rallies, and town meetings were held.