CHAPTER 23
Grant placed the coffee cup back in its saucer before he threw it at Rigg. “You missed.”
“Just barely,” the Virginian said. “It won’t happen again.”
Mad Nellie Hancock sat quietly in the corner, slumped in her chair as she sipped a mug of beer.
Grant balled a fist and brought it slowly down on the table. Rigg’s calmness could be infuriating sometimes, but he dared not lose his temper. Not in front of the likes of the Hancock crone.
“You aren’t getting forty percent to miss, Rigg, and you aren’t getting forty percent for ‘barely.’ You’re getting forty percent to succeed. Now Mackey’s guard is up. He’ll have men around him constantly. If you had killed him like you were supposed to, his death would have been lost in the fog of all that happened. We’ll turn him into a martyr if we kill him now. You know what they do to martyrs, Nathan. They build churches to them.”
He made a conscious effort to open his fist. There was a time for anger and this was not it. “I needed that old man dead so I could put my plan in place. Now, the Purification will look too obvious. Too naked.”
“It’s my experience that people are embarrassed by nudity, Mr. Grant. They look at it when they see it, but are quick to look away out of modesty.” Rigg grinned. “At least outside of a whorehouse.”
Grant had finally had enough of Rigg’s smugness. “Everything was supposed to happen in the aftermath of the assassination! How will it look now if I put my plan into action?”
“Just like it would have if Pappy was lying on the mortician’s worktable,” Rigg said. “Nothing needs to stop. If anything, it should go on exactly as you planned. No one will remember when it started or how. They’ll be too taken by what happened to care, and you’ll be too powerful for them to dare question you by then.”
Grant ran his hands over the arms of his chair. Perhaps Rigg was right. Perhaps his plans were not ruined after all. “You really think we can still pull it off like we planned?”
“Like you planned, Mr. Grant. And yes, I do.” He glanced back at Nellie, who was sipping her beer like it was warm milk. “Madam Hancock, are you still ready to proceed?”
She looked up as if awoken from a sleep. “What’d you just say to me?”
“Are your people ready to start?”
“I’ve got my boys all over town, boss man,” Nellie slurred. “One nod from you and I’ll set them to work, so long as you promise none of my places get lost in the goings-on. I’ll need your word on that now.”
“You have it, my good woman.” Rigg casually opened his hands as he looked at Grant. “See? No harm done. At least, not until you give the order.
Grant suddenly began to wonder if this was a good idea. He was placing the fate of his future in a windbag dandy and a drunken crone in charge of an inbred horde of mongrels. But men had forged empires with less.
A feeling of excitement sparked deep in Grant’s belly. Perhaps all was not lost after all.
He pulled out his pocket watch and saw it was half-past three. “Spread the word, both of you. Have them start at six. A good hour, six.” He closed the watch and slid it back into his vest pocket. “Yes, a very good hour indeed. A good hour for the Purification to begin.”
Had he not been so consumed by his own thoughts, Grant would have seen the look of concern on Rigg’s face.
* * *
Despite his best efforts and a full pot of coffee, Jerry Halstead struggled to stay awake.
He had intentionally selected the least comfortable chair in the Mackey General Store to stand guard while the town’s newest mayor slept in the back room.
But the events of the day were finally catching up to him, and he found himself nodding off several times.
A shotgun blast and a bloodcurdling scream were enough to bring him to his feet. They were followed by several more yells and gunshots.
He scrambled behind the counter, grabbed the coach gun he had stashed there, and placed it on the display case. He had taken care to stash several rifles throughout the store in case he and Pappy needed them.
He set his Winchester against the counter beside him and aimed the sawed-off shotgun at the door. The scream and gunshots might be a Hancock distraction designed to bring him outside to investigate, but he was not going anywhere.
He and Pappy had spent the better part of the afternoon nailing all of the other doors in the general store shut, even the loading door in the back. If trouble came, it would come through the front door.
He had no intention of walking into a trap. He had every intention of killing anyone who kicked down the store’s front door.
He thumbed back the hammers of both barrels when he heard someone pounding on the door. “Jerry!” a familiar voice called out. “It’s Steve. I mean Ed. Open up, quick!”
“How do I know it’s really you?” It sounded like the chief, but he had to be sure. “What did I show you today?”
“A slug from Front Street,” the voice called back. “Open up, damn it. There’s trouble. Bad trouble.”
Deciding it really was Edison, he left the coach gun on the counter and grabbed his Winchester as he rushed to the door. He found the police chief outside with five of his men behind him. All of them looked nervous.
“What’s wrong?”
“All hell has broken loose on the north end of town,” Edison told him. “We’ve got a riot on our hands. Fistfights, looting, the works. Everyone’s been drinking since this morning and they’re goin’ wild. A bunch of my men are pinned down in the Campbell Arms and need our help.”
Jerry turned when he heard a noise behind him. Pappy was trudging out of his bedroom at the back of the store in his faded long underwear. “How bad is it?”
“Plenty bad,” Edison told him. “Ten of my men are holed up in the Campbell Arms holding back a crowd, but another group is smashing everything in sight. There’s talk of raising a group to hang Mad Nellie Hancock for what happened today.”
But Jerry did not believe it. “The Hancocks run the north end of town. No one’s looking to hang that hag. They’re trying to draw us out.”
“Whatever it is,” Edison said, “I’ve got most of my men trapped and only five to try to get them out. I need you, Jerry.”
“And you’ll have him.” Pappy pushed the deputy toward the door. “Go with them, boy.” He grabbed the coach gun from the counter and began hurrying back toward his room. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
Jerry did not like the idea of leaving Pappy alone. “I’ll wait for you.”
“Those boys in the hotel don’t have that much time,” Pappy yelled. “We haven’t a moment to lose. Now move! That’s an order. Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”
Jerry still did not want to leave Pappy alone, but knew the trapped officers were the only hope the town had to keep it from tearing itself apart. “You’re sure?”
“I haven’t needed a nursemaid in sixty years,” Pappy said. “Now get goin’ like I told ya!”
Jerry held off as long as he could, hoping Pappy would be ready, but the shouts and gunfire had erupted into a low thunder echoing through the streets. He knew every second counted.
“Hurry up, then!” he shouted back before joining Edison and his men as they ran up Front Street toward the sounds of chaos.
* * *
Pappy tossed the coach gun on the mess of bedclothes as he pulled up his pants and slid the suspenders over his shoulders. He sat on the edge of the bed, fumbling to pull on his boots. The rush of excitement was pumping hard through his veins. He hated the idea of what was happening, but the old soldier in him still craved the thrill of action that awaited him. Just like the war.
He froze when a voice from inside the store said, “I thought they’d never leave.”
Pappy’s head snapped around and he saw a stranger standing in the doorway of his bedroom. It was not Rigg, but one of the men who had been with him in the hotel lobby in Helena.
Pappy could not see well in the low light of his room, but could see more men in the store behind him.
“Who are you?” was all Pappy could think to say.
“To you?” the man grinned. “Death. Yes, sir. Nothing more pitiful on God’s green earth than the sight of a helpless old man in his drawers. A pitiful sight to behold indeed.”
The man’s eyes widened when Pappy raised the coach gun that had been hidden among the sheets. “Behold this.”
He fired. Both barrels caught the man in the chest, sending him flying back into the store.
Pappy dropped the empty shotgun and rolled across the bed as gunshots began ringing out from the store. Round after round struck the wall and floor around his bed. He ignored the fire burning in his calf as he dove for the door and slammed it shut. More bullets slammed into the door. He had just managed to throw the bolt before his leg gave way.
Slumped against the side of the doorway, he looked down at his leg and saw a gaping wound in his left calf. He almost cried out when he saw blood pouring from the place where his heel used to be.
The gunfire stopped as he caught the unmistakable smell of what every shop owner in the world feared most.
Smoke.
The bastards planned on burning him out if they could not kill him outright.
He eyed the Winchester that Jerry had given him to keep in his room. As bullets began to pierce the door, he knew that rifle was his only hope. He tried to get to his feet, but the pain in his leg and foot was too great. He knew if he tried to stand again, he would black out from the pain and die in the fire.
He crawled to the bed and used all of his strength to pull himself up. With one good leg under him, he hopped over to the dresser and grabbed hold of the rifle. He put all of his weight against the dresser in a bid to move it so he could block the door. But with only one good leg under him, the task was impossible.
And the smoke from outside was getting thicker and beginning to roll under the door.
The store he had built with his own two hands was burning around him.
It was at that exact moment that Brendan Mackey knew he had a choice. He could leave this world as a cowering old man, either gunned down in the corner of his bedroom and found choked to death by the smoke, or he could leave this world the way his dear old mother had told him he had come into it, kicking and screaming with everything he had.
In the end, he realized he had no choice at all.
Using the Winchester as a poor cane, Pappy hobbled to the door. He managed to keep his balance, even as a bullet pierced the door and caught him in the left shoulder.
He paused beside the door a moment to catch his breath. This was not the end he had envisioned. Not on the long, interminable boat ride from Ireland. Not at Rocky Face Ridge. Not at Adairsville. Not when he had fought the very land itself to help build what had become Dover Station.
It may not have been the end he had planned for, but it was the only one he had. Might as well make the most of it.
He slid the bolt aside and threw the door open. He screamed the name of the one thing in the world that meant everything to him. Words he had never been able to bring himself to voice before.
“I love you, Aaron!”
With that, Brendan Mackey stumbled into the smoke and gunfire, brought up his rifle, and killed the first man he saw.