At the first clamorous peal of the church bell, Sidney Hallett came to his feet with an angry, startled expression.
“What’s that?” he demanded of the equally surprised Bull Hynman. “Who gave orders to ring the bell?”
“Not me,” Hynman said. “The posse ain’t due to ride till before daybreak.”
The bell kept up its strident, insistent sound, beckoning all within its hearing to gather round.
“By God,” Hallett said, “someone had better not be changing my orders! Come with me!” His orders were for an armed group to head for Booth’s ranch and reach it at the time when they would least be expected. Enos, meanwhile, had been dispatched north to alert the law in that direction. Another man was doing the same to the south.
“What’s up, Sheriff? They catch the crooks?” Hallett was asked now as he made the turn into Genesis Street. He gave the man no answer, observed the heavy turnout of people hurrying as he was to the church. Someone, he promised grimly, would pay for this. Enough had gone wrong already, and the man’s unruly temper was at a dangerous point.
And still the bell tolled, as if deliberately goading him to some act of violence.
“Go up in the tower,” he told Hynman furiously, “and haul that damn fool down here by the scruff of the neck!”
Hynman hurried on ahead to obey, shouldering the men and women of Salvation aside as he went. Jesus, he thought, I never knew how loud that bell was. It never occurred to him to wonder what size man it would take to produce such a prodigious loudness. It still didn’t as he mounted the steep flight of stairs to the belfry, climbed closer to the marvelous din. Then he was standing in the tower itself, staring at the two silhouetted forms in the place with him. One was unmistakably Ellen Booth. There could be no doubt of it. And the other, both hands engaged with the bell-rope …!
Bull Hynman knew he had him. Had him with an easy draw, a straight shot—but he didn’t have Ellen, whose warning scream went unheard, who shoved Buchanan with all her might. Hynman’s gun blast shattered the darkness and the bullet found some scant opening between the bodies of the man and girl across the way. Rattled, he fired again. Buchanan’s gun came up. The first slug doubled Hynman in two. The second and third drove all life out of him.
“Ellen!” Buchanan said hoarsely, bending to the girl who lay face down on the flooring. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Are you?”
“I think so,” he told her. “You sure are some handy in a pinch.”
“You’re some handy yourself, mister.”
“Some stupid,” he said, “not to have an eye out for company. Didn’t expect to get such a fast response out of them.” He lifted the girl to her feet.
“HYNMAN!” Hallett shouted from down below. “What’s going on up there?”
“You’re yelling in the wrong direction, Sheriff, if you want your deputy,” Buchanan called back.
“You!”
“Me, and I’m coming down. Stand clear.”
Buchanan started the descent unhesitatingly, Ellen close behind, shielded by his body. At the foot of the steps Hallett was paying strict attention to the unwavering gun in Buchanan’s big hand. Now he started to back away from it, into the circle of people gathered in the church foyer.
Then Buchanan was standing before them all.
“Glad to see such a nice turnout, folks,” he told them. “If you’ll go inside and make yourselves comfortable there’s something I think you ought to hear.”
“Hold on!” Sid Hallett said, stepping forward, turning his back to Buchanan and speaking with his familiar authority. “Return to your homes,” he told the sizable assemblage. “This man is a killer and worse. He’ll not give orders while I’m still the law in Salvation.”
A hand came down irreverently on his shoulder, turning him around.
“That’s one of the subjects on the agenda, Sheriff,” Buchanan informed him. “Lead the way inside.”
Hallett looked up into the other man’s face as if he might defy the flat command. Then, with an angry grimace, he pushed Buchanan’s hand from his shoulder and walked on inside the church proper with the air of someone still very much in command. His steps carried him to the pulpit, and he mounted it familiarly. Buchanan walked with Ellen to the other side, stood on the same spot that Juanita had during the farcical trial two nights before. He raised his long arm for quiet.
“This won’t take long,” he said. “First off, is Cyrus Martin among the present?”
“Yes,” a voice answered and the banker stood up in his regular pew. “What do you want of me?”
“Mrs. Booth found some money that belongs to your bank.”
“What?” Martin asked, raising his voice above the instant murmuring. “You have the stolen funds?”
“A gent named Pete Nabor is keeping an eye on them over at the rooming house.”
A happy cry went up from the spectators. Buchanan asked for silence again. Then, from his shirtfront, he took the envelope.
“Mr. Martin,” he said, “three years ago you wrote a letter. I’d like you to stand up in that pulpit alongside the sheriff and read it to these folks.”
“A letter …?”
“It was in the strongbox that was taken from the bank today. If you don’t want to read it, I will.”
Martin looked dazed, stood there shaking his head from side to side. Buchanan crossed over to the pulpit.
“Stand down, preacher man,” he told Hallett. “There’s a sinner wants to get something off his chest.”
Hallett looked down at Buchanan, then over to Cyrus Martin, his face wary.
“Stand down or I’ll pull you out of that pulpit,” Buchanan said. Hallett climbed down and Buchanan replaced him.
“This is a letter, folks,” he announced to the crowd. “It’s written ‘to whom it may concern’—and I think it concerns everybody here, myself included.” He unfolded the note and began reading:
“‘I live in constant fear of injury and even death at the hands of Sydney A. Hallett, the High Sheriff of Salvation. For that reason I am writing this document as a last means of defense against Hallett. If it fails in that, at least I will have had some measure of retribution from the grave.’”
Buchanan looked up briefly. “You sure you don’t want to read this yourself, Martin?” he asked. The banker, staring at Hallett, shook his head. Buchanan began again.
“‘Three months ago,’” the letter continued, “‘a young teller in the Salvation Bank was convicted of embezzling five thousand dollars of the bank’s funds. His name is Frank Booth and of that crime he is completely innocent—”
The stirring among the audience caused him to pause.
“‘Completely innocent,’” he repeated when it was quiet once more. “‘There was no embezzlement and no money is unaccounted for. Frank Booth’s ring, which was used as damaging evidence against him, was appropriated by me when Booth laid it aside in the washroom. A man identified as a U.S. Marshal was actually a former prisoner employed by Sidney Hallett for the trial and paid another sum to return east. There is no such woman living in San Francisco named Ruby Fowler. She was created by Sidney Hallett …’”
That was as far as Buchanan got. Two shots exploded over his voice. The first, fired from a Derringer pistol, struck Cyrus Martin in the chest. The second, fired into his own brain, killed Sidney Hallett.
The throng crowded around the body—curious, shocked, angry, above all, disillusioned. Buchanan came down from the pulpit and slipped out of the church unnoticed.
Except for Ellen, who caught up with him in the street.
“You’re leaving alone?” she asked.
“You got no reason not to stay here now,” he said.
“No, I can live here now,” she agreed. “But if you asked me, I’d go with you.”
“I’m not your style, Ellen. Too rootless.”
“You’re that,” she admitted in her frank way. “But you’ll also sink roots someday.”
“Someday. Not tomorrow, though. Going to work for the railroad tomorrow.”
Ellen held out her slim hand and he took it in his.
“I’m not even going to say thank you again, Buchanan. Just goodbye.”
“Goodbye to you, Ellen. It’s been a pleasure to know a real lady.”
She smiled at that, enigmatically, and as he rode off down Genesis Street he was left to wonder if he had said the right thing to her or not. Then he was abreast of the hotel and Pete Nabor hailed him from his all-but-permanent station.
“Get the job done, big feller?”
“Well, the job of sheriff is open. Interested?”
“Hell no! But why don’t you stay around and keep the peace?”
Buchanan laughed. “Keep the peace? Me? Old man, I can’t even keep a date in Sacramento.”
“That where you bound?”
“Yessir. And I’m going to get there if I have to tote this horse on my back. See you, Pete!”
“Hasta luego!” Nabor shouted after him.