The Dark Sunrise

“That door won’t hold for long,” Mackey yelled over the rhythmic pounding of the door.

Each blow shook more grout and dust from the wall around the door. Mackey knew the entire front side of the jail would cave in if they did not do something soon.

Jerry ran to Mackey’s desk and tried to push it toward the door, but Mackey knew it was no use. The desk was too heavy for two men to move, let alone one man and another with a hole in his side.

Mackey edged himself over to the rifle rack on the wall above his head and stabbed at the coach gun cradled there. He ignored the fire in his left side as he grabbed the shotgun.

Boom. Stop. Stop. Boom. Stop. Stop.

The blows were coming slower now. The men were tiring.

Mackey did not have to check to see if the shotgun was loaded. His guns were always loaded.

Jerry saw what he was doing and stopped trying to move the desk.

“After the next strike, throw the door open and get the hell out of the way.”

Jerry ran to the door.

Boom.

A beam in the ceiling cracked.

Jerry slid the latch open and threw the door open wide.

Mackey flopped onto his belly as Jerry fell back.

The attackers staggered in the doorway to keep control of the log.

Mackey cut loose with the right barrel of the coach gun.

The heavy log slammed down into the boardwalk as the men on one side of it were cut down in a cloud of gunsmoke.

The two men on the left side of the log fell toward the doorway, carried by the momentum of the falling ram.

Mackey fired the left barrel of the shotgun.

The men who fell past the door did not get up again.

The heavy wooden beams in the ceiling cracked again, and Mackey ignored the fire in his side as he cast away the coach gun and got to his feet.

He drew his Peacemaker from his belly holster and scrambled toward the door. He caught a Hancock man running away from the jailhouse toward the shelter of the Municipal Building.

The Colt bucked as Mackey shot him in the back. The fleeing man fell to his knees before skidding to a halt at the bottom step of the Municipal Building.

Mackey’s pain was gone. So was his fear. So was his rage. All he could see was that damnable fortress across Front Street. The gaudy monstrosity that had meant the death of all that he once held dear.

No, he was not afraid and could not feel pain as he stood on the boardwalk and yelled, “Is that all you bastards have? Send Grant out here and let’s finish it! Right now!”

He heard his own voice echo in the quiet street save for something else. Something that almost sounded like singing. He wondered if he might already be dead, when the pain from the wound in his side told him he was still very much alive.

But he bit off the pain as he yelled at the men he could see still crouched inside the doorway of the Municipal Building. “Are you going to send him out, or do I have to come in there and drag him out?”

The man in the doorway disappeared and, over the roar of his own blood in his ears, he heard the sounds of a scuffle from inside the building. He wondered if Grant was trying to come outside, only to be held back by his own men.

He kept watching the Municipal Building as he heard Jerry walk out onto the boardwalk beside him. “He still in there?”

Mackey would not take his eyes off the door. “Looks like. Anyone else on the street?”

“No,” Jerry told him. “But Billy’s walking up on your left.”

Mackey looked and saw his deputy come around the side of the jailhouse, his Winchester aimed at the Municipal Building entrance.

“Put it down for now,” Mackey said. “Sounds like they’re making up their minds.”

Billy reluctantly lowered his rifle, but kept watching the entrance, too. “Looks that way.”

Mackey suddenly felt tired and leaned against the doorframe for support. “How are you fixed for bullets?”

“Nearly out.” Billy stepped up to the boardwalk and looked at the five dead men scattered in front of the jailhouse. The log they had been using to ram the door had fallen and broken the steps. “You boys have been busy.”

“You too, from what I heard. You all right?”

“Fine.” He stopped when he saw the blood on Mackey’s shirt. “Damn it, Aaron. You’ve been shot.”

“I’m fine. Jerry patched me up using some old coffee grinds.”

Billy looked at Jerry. “Comanche teach you that trick?”

“I’ve picked up a few things along the way. Say, anyone else hear singing?”

Mackey was glad someone else had heard it, too. “Thought it was just me.”

The three lawmen looked up Front Street and saw a group of men and women walking toward them through the encroaching darkness. Many held torches as they moved along the width of the thoroughfare.

They were singing “Amazing Grace.”

Doc Ridley led them, his Bible clutched against his chest just as it had been when he had led Walter Underhill’s funeral procession a month before.

Was it only a month ago? Mackey wondered. It seemed decades ago.

Gunmen began to file out from the Municipal Building and the three lawmen crouched behind the log and the doorway of the jailhouse for cover.

“This is it,” Mackey told his friends. “This is how it ends.”

But the gunmen did not fire and neither did Mackey or Billy or Jerry. They all took cover behind the overturned wagon but watched as the ragged procession made its way toward them.

Hancock men filed out around both sides of the Municipal Building. All of them were armed, but none of them were raising their guns toward the jail.

Doc Ridley stumbled up to the ruined boardwalk as the procession of singing townspeople moved between the two buildings. He was still singing when he gripped Mackey’s arm and pulled him out from behind the doorway.

Mackey kept the pistol at his side as he found himself pulled down into the tide of humanity slowly moving along the thoroughfare. Billy followed. So did Jerry.

Mackey tried to see if Grant had come out of the building, but the crowd was too thick for him to see much of anything. They kept warbling through the old-time hymn as they moved past the buildings and up the hill that led to the cemetery.

That was when Mackey saw where they were taking him.

A mound of fresh dirt stood alone in an untouched part of the cemetery, just outside the patch of dirt that had become known as Mackey’s Garden.

There was no gravestone, just a wooden cross stuck in the ground with the name “Brendan Mackey” scrawled across it in black paint.

Doc Ridley held on to Mackey’s arm as the singing townspeople filled in around him. Billy was on his right. Jerry was on his left.

Mackey waited for the sight of his father’s grave to impact him, but it did not. He had been too accustomed to death to place much value in the resting place of earthly remains. Not even the place where his father had been buried could change that.

But what the townspeople had done certainly reached him. They had done the only thing they could do to end the carnage. They had come together to save him and Billy and Jerry. They had come together to save themselves from further bloodshed, too.

The people had just begun to sing the last part of the mournful hymn when James Grant was shoved to the front of the group ringing his father’s grave. The left side of Grant’s face was a bloody ruin, peppered with splinters and glass. Two Hancock gunmen were on either side of him.

Mackey tried to raise his pistol, but Doc Ridley’s grip on his arm was surprisingly strong for a man so frail.

“Dearly beloved,” the doctor called out, “we are gathered here this evening to bid a sacred farewell to a man who helped build the town we have been so humbled to call our home for these many years. A man whose grit and humor and determination helped forge a town out of the wilderness. A man whose courage was an example to all of those who were wise enough to see it and fortunate enough to bear witness to it.”

Doc Ridley closed his eyes and kept his grip on Mackey’s hand. “Heavenly Father, we commend the spirit of Brendan Mackey into thy hands and hope you will hold him in the palm of your hands.”

The people said, “Amen” as one.

Doc Ridley let go of Mackey’s hand.

Mackey raised his Peacemaker and aimed it at James Grant.

So did Billy. So did Jerry.

And every Hancock man in the cemetery aimed their guns at them.

Billy surprised Mackey by saying, “James Grant, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of a peace officer in the execution of his lawful duty.”

Grant looked at him with his good remaining eye. He smiled as the blood continued to trickle down his face. “You couldn’t prove it before, and you can’t prove it now.”

“Sure, I can. You shot at me up in the rocks, and I shot back.”

“Prove it.”

“Your face is all the proof I need,” Billy said. “And this time, I can swear to it in court with a clean conscience.”

“You’re talking about a courtroom?” Grant looked around at all the Hancock men aiming their guns at the lawmen. “What makes you think you’ll leave this place alive?”

One of the women in the group stepped forward and stuck a pistol against Grant’s belly.

Mackey almost dropped his gun.

It was Katherine.

“They’ve got more chance of making it out of here alive than you do, you son of a bitch.”

“Enough!” cried out Mad Nellie Hancock as she pushed her way through the crowd and into the clearing. “Everybody just hold on, here.”

No one lowered their guns.

Nellie said to Mackey, “I’ve lost enough of my own on account of you, Mackey. If we give you Grant, do you promise to leave us alone, for good and for all?”

“I’m taking him one way or the other,” Mackey said. “Straight up or over the saddle. It makes no difference to me.”

“But it makes a difference to me and mine,” Nellie said. “You kill him, all of you die. Thanks to your fancy lady here, now some of mine will die in the shootin’. You want Grant? I don’t want any more of mine dyin’. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next month or next year, either. I want it over for good and for all. What do you say?”

Mackey felt the weight of every eye in town upon him. He knew what he should do. And he knew what he had to do.

Unfortunately, they were not the same thing.

“Tell your men to lower their guns and move away,” Mackey said. “They’ll have no more problems from me.”

Nellie leaned forward. “I’ve got your word on that?”

Mackey gripped the Peacemaker tighter. “Any of yours play a hand in killing my father?”

“The Hancocks always claim their dead proudly,” Nellie told him. “If a Hancock had been killed along with your daddy, you’d have heard about it. We knew what Grant and Rigg were up to. We didn’t stop ’em. But we had no hand in it, either.”

Mackey imagined that was as close to the truth as he could expect Mad Nellie Hancock to get.

“Tell them to lower their weapons and go home. You’ll have no trouble from me and my men, but they lower their guns first.”

Nellie glared at the men as she gestured for them to lower their guns.

All of them did and began to slowly walk away from the cemetery.

One of the townspeople handed Billy a rope. He and Jerry set about tying Grant’s hands behind his back while Katherine kept her pistol against his belly.

“You damned fool!” Grant yelled at Nellie. “I’m the only chance you have in this territory. Without me, who’s going to rebuild this place? Who’s going to line your pockets? Cut these bastards down and let’s get back to work.”

“Enough Hancock blood has been spilled on your account, Grant. We’ll make do with what we’ve got.”

She looked at Pappy’s grave, then at Mackey. “I hope you ain’t expectin’ condolences, Marshal. I never did like that mouthy old bastard anyway.”

With Grant secured, Mackey holstered his pistol. “The feeling was mutual.”

Mackey waited for her to say more, but she did not. She simply melted in with the crowd and headed back home with her people.

Katherine rushed to Aaron and threw her arms around his waist. He jumped from the pain that spiked in his left side and she moved away from him. “Honey, are you hurt?”

“I’ll be fine.” He eased the pistol from her right hand. “Where’d you get this?”

“Lynch gave it to me before I got on the train to come down here,” she said as she lifted his shirt to look at his wound. “He didn’t want me to come but knew there was no sense in trying to stop me. I’m only glad I got here when I did.”

He pulled her close to him and wrapped his arms around her. She stopped worrying about his wound and embraced him, too. “You are some kind of woman, Mrs. Campbell.”

“Mrs. Mackey,” she said into his chest. “And don’t you forget it.”

“How touching,” Grant sneered as Billy and Jerry pulled the rope tighter around his wrists.

“What do you want me to do with him, Aaron?”

“Stick him back in the jailhouse where he belongs,” Mackey said. “Our jailhouse. Jerry, check on when the next train’s headed back to Helena. I’ve got a feeling Judge Forester won’t be so anxious to kick him loose this time around.”

Grant struggled as the two deputies yanked him in front of them as they walked down from the cemetery.

Doc Ridley touched Mackey’s arm as he joined the rest of the townspeople who trailed away from the cemetery. He did not say anything, and Mackey did not expect him to. He had already said plenty without saying anything at all.

As the last of the townspeople walked back down the hill to whatever was left of their town, Mackey and Katherine stood alone beside his father’s grave, holding each other as another night descended on Dover Station.