Mary Deverell was struggling hard to avoid becoming either angry or hysterical with her husband. “You must listen to me!” she said, stepping in front of him to block him from reaching the door. Outside, the sun was edging westward. “It’s no longer safe for you to go out, not after what Brady Kenton has done to you!”
“Brady Kenton’s done nothing, and your nephew’s words to the contrary don’t mean a thing. You’re foolish to trust Mark so much, Mary. You don’t know him for what he really is.”
“He’s a good boy, Squire—it’s you who’s wrong about him, not me. If he wasn’t a good boy, why would he have warned us about Kenton?”
“Because he’s a born liar. Mary, if Brady Kenton had been going around telling people I was really Briggs Garrett, you think I wouldn’t have heard of it by now? I don’t know what sort of trick Mark is trying to pull, but a trick it is, I assure you. Now, I’ve gone along with your worrying and fretting all day, but I’ve got business that needs doing over at Number Three”—the reference was to his newest mine—“and Willie will be gone from there within an hour. So let me pass, woman!”
Mary Deverell’s wrinkled face fell, but she stepped aside. “Please, Squire, be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” he replied, pulling aside his lightweight riding coat to reveal the Remington holstered beneath it. He left the house and trotted lightly down to the street.
“Uncle Squire!” Mark Straker’s voice came around the corner of the building. He had just descended from his upstairs quarters. “You shouldn’t be leaving alone—let me go with you.”
“I’d sooner have the devil by my side,” Deverell snapped. “Come to think of it, there would be little enough difference.”
“Please let Mark go with you,” Mary Deverell pleaded from the door.
“No—let him stay here. Protect you from all the gunfighters and bugaboos supposedly coming to get me.”
Straker, a sad expression on his face, walked up to his aunt’s side and took her hand, watching as Deverell rounded the house on the opposite side, heading for his stable. “I do wish he wouldn’t be so stubborn,” Straker said. “And I wish he would give me more of a chance. I’ve never understood why he dislikes me so. Sometimes I think the only reason he lets me stay is that you care for me, Aunt Mary.”
“Squire’s a hard man,” she answered. “Someday he’ll appreciate you. I know he will.”
Deverell came riding back around the house on his favorite chestnut mare. He glanced over at his wife and Straker as he passed, his sour feelings toward the younger man evident in his expression. An evening wind gusted through, sending the dust that Deverell’s mare kicked up blowing down the street. Straker’s quick eye caught something else blowing in that breeze—a broad sheet of paper, printed on one side.
“Let’s get you inside, Aunt Mary,” he said. “I’ll be right in and stay with you until Uncle Squire gets back.”
Mary Deverell, ever obedient to her beloved nephew, entered the house. Straker waited until she was well inside, then darted over and caught the blowing paper. He turned it over and by dusklight read the freshly printed title that spread across the top: CONFESSION OF A TRAVELING JOURNALIST.
Straker smiled. Shapiro had done his job well. Carefully folding the broadside, he tucked it under his shirt and headed back toward the Deverell house.
Squire Deverell usually enjoyed riding in the wind, but this evening there was something different in the restless atmosphere. The road out to the Number Three seemed lonely and long, and the darkening sky lowered Deverell’s spirits. Maybe it was all Mary’s keening and fretting affecting him, Deverell speculated. Maybe it was the vague chance that Mark had been telling the truth about Brady Kenton’s alleged storytelling.
Deverell did not know that Straker had evicted Kenton and Gunnison from the quarters he had lent them; Straker had urged his aunt to say nothing of it yet in light of Deverell’s obvious admiration of Kenton. So it was that Deverell was considering the possibility of riding back home by way of the new store building and asking Kenton man-to-man about Mark Straker’s talk when from a clump of trees on the left side of the road stepped a man with a gun on his hip. Deverell’s heart seemed to grab his ribs and shake them like a prisoner shaking cell bars. He pulled his mare to a halt.
“Hello, Squire Deverell,” the man said, his fingers twitching near the butt of his pistol. “Of course, that ain’t your real name, is it?”
Deverell let his own hand creep toward the flap of his coat, beneath which his own pistol was hidden. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?” he demanded.
“The name’s Raglow. Bill Raglow. You remember that name for as long as you’re able, which won’t be long. The rest of the world’s going to remember it a lot longer. Bill Raglow—the man who gunned down Briggs Garrett.”
Deverell said, “Briggs Garrett is dead.”
Raglow grinned. “That right? I hear different. What I hear is that Briggs Garrett is you.”
Deverell forced out a laugh. “That’s loco. Where’d you hear something like that?”
“Didn’t really hear it. Read it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Take a look for yourself.” Raglow reached behind him and pulled a folded piece of paper from a back pocket. Wadding it with one hand, he tossed it at Deverell, who caught it.
His hands shook as he unfolded it in the waning light. It was the broadside printed by Shapiro. He read the title line and a few lines of the body, then let the paper fall to the ground.
“Brady Kenton?” he asked weakly.
“Never gives no name, but who else could it be?” Raglow said. “Mr. Garrett, I’m right sorry to have to kill you. I’d love to hear you tell about some of them hangings you’ve done. But you know how it is.”
Raglow abruptly drew his pistol and fired. Deverell felt something hot and slicing sear his shoulder as the bullet plowed a shallow furrow. Letting out a piercing yell, Deverell ducked low in the saddle and spurred his horse forward. The mare, spooked by the shot, shied and almost reared. Raglow leveled his pistol again, stepping forward. Once more Deverell spurred, and this time the mare responded. Surging forward, she knocked Raglow to the ground.
Raglow swore and pushed himself up to fire at Deverell as he rode swiftly away. One bullet after another zipped above and around Deverell. Upon hearing shot number six, he jerked his horse to a stop and turned toward Raglow.
Raglow, barely visible in the last traces of daylight, was fumbling for bullets. Deverell spurred the mare, sending it charging forward. Raglow panicked, dropping bullets that just wouldn’t go into the chambers.
Deverell barreled down upon him relentlessly. Raglow finally got a fresh bullet in but realized at the same moment that it was too late to fire, too late to dodge. He threw his arms into the air as the mare slammed him to the ground and pounded over him with hooves that felt like hammers.
Deverell rode on over the man, pivoted the mare, and came back again. Raglow tried to crawl away, but the effort was hopeless. Once again the hooves hammered him into the dirt.
A few moments passed during which he lost consciousness. When Deverell ran his mare over him again and yet again, he did not feel it.
Panting, filled with both fear and rage, Deverell finally stopped his repeated trampling of Raglow. He had done it almost unwittingly, out of pure self-protective instinct. Now the sight of the battered body made him feel sick, and he leaned out of the saddle and emptied his stomach.
When that was done, he took several deep breaths and began riding as fast as the mare could run back toward Leadville.
Mary Deverell almost fainted when she saw the blood on her husband’s shoulder.
“Oh, Squire, what happened to you?”
“I’m all right, Mary, I’m all right.” Deverell turned to Mark Straker. “I believe you now. There’s a broadside that’s been published—apparently Kenton’s work. It identifies me as Briggs Garrett.”
“I found a copy of it on the street after you left. I tried to warn you, Uncle,” Straker said.
Usually Deverell despised it when Straker called him by that familiar designation, but this time he did not voice his usual protest. “It’s not safe for me here now,” he said. “One man has already tried to kill me.”
Straker’s brows lifted. “How did you get away?”
“I ran him down with my horse. But if there’s one like him, there’s probably a hundred. We’ve got to get out of this house, right now.”
“I know a place we can go,” Straker said. “An empty hut, well hidden, out toward California Gulch. The old Darwin place.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s go, right now. Mary, gather some food, clothing.”
Mrs. Deverell took a carpetbag from a wardrobe and retreated quickly to the kitchen to begin packing it with food.
Deverell looked at Straker probingly. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged you, young man,” he said. “I see now you were really trying to give me fair warning. Damn that betraying Brady Kenton—I’ll kill him when I see him next! And to think I’ve kept him under a roof of my own…”
“He’s already gone from beneath that roof,” said Straker. “I ran him out this morning, and challenged him about his accusations about you. He vowed he would make me regret it. Said he would make his accusations in print. I suppose he meant the broadside.”
The front door burst open, and a man came in carrying a copy of the broadside in one hand and a pistol in the other. His expression was wild as he lifted the gun.
“It’s gone far enough, Straker,” George Currell said. “It’s time for the lies to end.”