CHAPTER 24
From the cover of an overturned wagon on the north end of town, Jerry Halstead shot a man who had charged at him brandishing a chair leg. Edison covered him as he quickly reloaded his Colt.
“They’re thicker than flies,” Edison said as he shot a man who was about to throw another flaming bottle of whiskey at the Campbell Arms. The top floor of the hotel was already engulfed in fire. Flames lapped out the broken windows and climbed up at the roof.
His Colt reloaded, Jerry holstered the pistol and grabbed up his Winchester. The mob in front of them had finally been pushed back close enough to Lee Street for Edison’s men to start making their way out of the hotel. The ten men dashed out the front door and joined Edison and the other deputies behind the overturned wagon.
Jerry took careful aim at the center of the mob and fired. A man cried out as he spun around and fell to the ground. The mob turned toward the direction of gunfire and, now that they had re-formed, howled as they ran toward their position.
All fifteen men were in place by then and opened up on the crowd. Their rifles cut down dozens of men in one volley. The crowd quickly ducked and broke at a dead run back toward Lee Street.
“We’ve got ’em turned, boys!” Edison cheered before turning to one of the men who had been trapped in the hotel. “You ready to get back some of your own?”
“Just say where, boss.”
“Right here and now. Take five of you and head down the next street. Hit them on Lee Street from the side, but don’t get boxed in again. Fall back to Front Street if you need to. We’ll hit them from the north end and finish them off.”
The men took off in the direction where Edison had ordered them to go.
Jerry had never seen action like this before, so he was more than happy to let Edison take the lead. “Where do you want the rest of us?”
“With me. Let’s keep pushing them back toward Lee Street,” Edison said. “We’ll keep them boxed in over there.”
Jerry followed Edison as he and his ten men broke cover and ran toward the head of Lee Street. They cut down a few stragglers who had fallen behind the main body of the mob like they were stepping on bugs.
One man brandished a knife, but Edison shot him dead before he got close enough to use it.
Another man popped out from a storefront and charged Jerry from the side. Jerry slammed him in the face with the butt of his Winchester, stopping him cold. Another swipe of the butt connected with the man’s jaw and put him down for good.
By the time he caught up with Edison and his men, they had already formed a line that stretched across Lee Street. Their open brown dusters billowed in the breeze.
Jerry looked down Lee Street and caught a glimpse of what he had always envisioned hell would look like.
The street was packed with people breaking everything there was to break and shooting at everything there was to shoot. Every storefront he could see had been shattered and its contents pulled out into the street. The boardwalk was littered with clothing and baskets and broken glass.
People who had been caught in the fray, or those who had been part of it, were slumped against buildings and in the street. No building had escaped the wrath of the mob except one.
The Ruby stood as untouched as the day it had first opened. A few Hancock men stood guard from the second-floor balcony, looking down at the scene the way one might watch a prizefight.
That was when Jerry’s deepest suspicions had been confirmed. The Hancocks had to have been behind all of this. Grant had probably planned it, just as he had planned on shooting Pappy.
The thought of raising his rifle and cutting down the men on the balcony where they stood suddenly seemed like a wonderful idea. He had no doubt The Ruby was packed with Hancock men who would be quick to finish him off, but suddenly, that did not matter.
The waste, the death, the bloodshed they had caused that day overwhelmed him, and killing as many of them as possible was the only thing that made sense to him, even if it cost him his own life.
Edison’s voice from the center of the line of gunmen snapped him out of it. “Boys, we weren’t lawmen when we got here, and we ain’t lawmen tonight. Not after this. Let’s show these animals what the Edison gang is all about.”
The men raised their rifles in unison and began firing into the crowd as they began to move down Lee Street at a slow, measured walk.
Jerry wanted to follow them. He wanted to join in the killing. He wanted to help them match blood for blood. Hate for hate.
But in that moment, he found himself rooted to the ground where he stood as if he was chained there. For over the shouts and screams and gunfire, he could have sworn he heard a high-pitched cackle come from The Ruby. The same cackle he had heard in the graveyard all those months ago, the day they had laid Walter Underhill in his grave.
The cackle of Mad Nellie Hancock.
And as he watched Edison lead his men on their murderous walk down Lee Street, Jerry Halstead saw something else. Something that he knew could only be one thing, but his mind was too slow to understand.
Flames shooting high into the Montana night like a dark sunrise, the darkest sunrise he could imagine. Flames rising from the Dover Station General Store and Mercantile.
“Oh God. Pappy.”
He broke back toward Front Street and ran faster than he ever run before.
* * *
The heat from the burning store laid Jerry Halstead flat in the middle of the street.
About a dozen townspeople had gathered to throw buckets of water on the building, but they could not get close. Jerry wondered where the fire brigade wagon was, but he knew it would not come.
It was the same overturned wagon they had used for cover in front of The Campbell Arms.
And although there was no way for him to know for certain, he knew Pappy was still in there, somewhere among the flames.
He slowly got to his feet, leaving his rifle on the buckled mud of Front Street and began to pull off his shirt. He would wrap it around his face and run into the building. Maybe Pappy was still in there, in a closet maybe, or a cellar though he had no idea if the store even had a cellar. He did not know anything, and that was the problem. He had to know for certain.
He had just pulled his shirttails free and was about to cover his face when he felt a bony hand grip his arm. He brought his free hand back to strike, but lowered it when he saw it was Doc Ridley. His thin face was blackened from the smoke. A thin trickle of blood flowed from a deep cut in his scalp.
“Don’t, son. Don’t. It’s no use. I already tried to get in as soon as I saw the flames. It was too hot then and it’s much worse now.”
His hand fell away from Jerry’s arm and dropped to his side. He looked around him and Jerry did, too. Everywhere he looked, fire danced in the darkness. “It’s gone, son. It’s all gone. Everything we did. All that we built. All gone. Ashes to ashes. Dust unto the dust.”
Doc Ridley looked at the flames that reached ever higher into the night. Jerry realized that for all his skill, for all of his bravery, he had no choice but to stand there and watch along with him.
“He’s gone,” Doc Ridley whispered among the shouts of the dying and the killing. “Brendan Mackey is dead. He was supposed to be indestructible. He was a force of nature. He can’t be gone but—.” He raised a trembling hand to his mouth. “My God. My God.”
He was sobbing when Jerry watched him walk away from the flames.
The ammunition in the store caught fire and exploded. The sudden burst of heat and force launched Jerry backward through the air until he found himself on his backside in the middle of the thoroughfare.
He wanted to get up. He wanted to make one last run at the burning building. He wanted to believe Pappy still had a chance. Doc Ridley was right. The man was a force of nature. The man was tough.
But for all of his toughness, Pappy was still just a man. And no man could survive that. Not even Brendan Mackey.
Jeremiah Halstead drew his knees up close to his chin, hung his head, and wept.