Owen McCreedy was sitting at his desk in the jailhouse in Johnson City, smoking a thin cigar and going over his court docket. He’d just turned a page of the big book when he heard a yell from the cell block.
The sheriff set his cigar in the ashtray, stood, and walked to the door leading into the cell block. He opened the door and yelled, “I’m not getting you any more tobacco, Brown. You’ve smoked a whole bag since yesterday.”
“Look at the goddamn clock,” came the shout from the cell. “It’s supper time!”
“So it is,” McCreedy said without interest.
“I want my supper, goddamnit! I got rights!”
“I’ll fetch your supper when I’m goddamn ready to fetch it.”
Billy Brown’s voice came low and tight with emotion. “Why don’t you come back here, McCreedy? Why don’t you open up this door, so you and I can go at it the way we really want? Huh? Why don’t you do that?”
Knees quaking with rage, McCreedy walked down the short hall between the four cells, stopping at the last cell on the left. Billy Brown stood with his hands gripping the iron bars, his bristly cheeks spread wide with a grin. His blue eyes flashed demonically. “There you go. Now just open the door and step in here, and you and me, we’ll settle this thing once and for all.”
He was about two inches shorter than McCreedy, but the sheriff figured Brown outweighed him by at least twenty pounds.
“If I stepped in there, you’d never walk out. Ever.”
Brown chuckled. “You think so? Why don’t you try it? Come on, open the door.”
McCreedy stared at the man between the bars. His face was impassive, but he hated the stout, ham-fisted Irishman more than he’d ever hated anyone. Brown was a blight on the town—McCreedy’s town. As long as Brown was in business, Johnson City would not flourish the way it should ... peaceably, drawing civilized, honest citizens and their families. As long as Billy Brown was in business, McCreedy would continue to be the laughing-stock Brown thumbed his nose at, and Johnson City would be a hotbed of vice and underhanded business dealings, driving the honest folks out and replacing them with more no-accounts like Brown himself.
At the moment, however, what bothered McCreedy more was knowing that if he opened Brown’s cell door and took Brown’s bait, Brown would beat him senseless. Brown had been a street fighter who’d made his way with his fists. McCreedy had been a farm boy from Nebraska, who’d come to Montana when he was seventeen, to punch cows. He’d been in his share of fistfights but nothing like those that had forged Billy Brown.
McCreedy hated himself for it, but he was afraid of Brown. And what really burned him was that Brown knew it. Brown knew he wouldn’t open the cell door and accept the challenge. Brown knew he was afraid, and the challenge was just more of the criminal’s attempts at intimidation, which he’d honed on the town’s other saloon owners, whose earnings he regularly skimmed.
“You think so, do you, Owen?” Brown taunted, shadowboxing, fading this way and that. “Well, come on, then—open the door.”
McCreedy stared at him coolly, trying not to look intimidated, trying not to show his insecurities and his anger. What he wanted to do more than anything was draw the Colt on his hip and shoot Billy Brown through his forehead. The problem was, McCreedy was an honest, law-abiding man, which was why the majority of Johnson City’s citizens had elected him sheriff two years ago. If he shot Brown, he’d be no better than Brown. He’d be letting the honest citizens down.
“I’d love to tussle with you, Billy,” McCreedy said casually, “but that isn’t how I do my job.”
With that he walked slowly back toward his office, feeling a prickle around his neck.
“Yeah, I know how you do your job, you weak-kneed tinhorn!” Brown shouted after him. “You cower behind your badge! Now bring me my supper, goddamnit!”
McCreedy walked back to his desk and sat down in his creaky chair. He picked up his cigar and puffed away, trying to calm his nerves and distract himself, but it was no use. He knew he should go over to the Excelsior and get Brown’s supper. Mrs. Dornan would probably have it dished up and waiting for McCreedy, and as much as McCreedy wanted to keep Brown waiting, he couldn’t do that to Eunice Dornan.
“All right, goddamnit,” he grouched, stubbing out his cigar in the ashtray.
Standing, he retrieved his hat off the coat tree, and walked out the door. He headed across the street through the spare, late-day traffic. At the busy Excelsior, he found Mrs. Dornan in the kitchen, ladling soup into bowls. Her husband, Johnny Dornan, was manning the big cast-iron range, on which several steaks sizzled and potatoes sat in warming racks. A five-gallon kettle of green beans simmered, sending steam to the rafters.
“I’m here for my prisoner’s supper, Eunice,” McCreedy said, letting the louvered doors swing shut behind him.
“In a minute, Owen,” Mrs. Dornan said, turning toward him with a tray of bowls. “It got so busy today, I plum forgot.” She disappeared through the louvered doors, where a dozen or so businessmen, miners, and railroad surveyors were awaiting their meals. Their talk was loud and boisterous, and the cigar and cigarette smoke was thick.
“No hurry,” Owen called after her.
Flipping steaks, Johnny Dornan glanced at him. He was tall and spare, with thinning brown hair and a large birthmark on his long neck. His apron was splashed with blood and grease. “Still got ole Billy Brown locked up over there, eh, Owen?”
“Of course, I do. Johnny. What’d you think—I set him loose on good behavior?” Billy Brown had gotten to be a touchy subject for McCreedy, since almost everyone he knew thought he was a fool for tangling with the man. He knew they were only worried about his safety, but he could have used a little encouragement.
“Just seems like a mighty big chunk to chew, if you ask me,” Johnny said, shaking his head slowly.
Mrs. Dornan walked through the doors and set down her tray. Moving quickly, she retrieved a plate from a high slack by the range. “Put a steak on that for Billy, Johnny,” she said.
“How’s he like his steaks, Owen?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t care, but probably rare,” McCreedy said dryly.
“There, that should do it,” Johnny said, dropping a steak on the plate.
Mrs. Dornan forked a potato beside the steak, added a spoonful of green beans, and covered it all with a napkin. Handing the plate to McCreedy, she said, “If you’d only let me add a good dose of strychnine, Owen, your job would be finished.”
“Now, now, Eunice.”
“How’s Alice—have you seen her?”
McCreedy shook his head, a tired, drawn look stealing over his features. “No—I can’t leave the jail unattended. Besides, someone might follow me.”
Eunice Dornan acquired a pained look, shaking her head and squinting her eyes. The hair on her forehead was slick with perspiration. “Are you sure you want to do this, Owen?”
“It’s not a choice for me, Eunice. I have him on suspicion of murder. What do you want me to do, turn him loose because I’m afraid one of his gunslicks is going to shoot me in the back?”
“Yes!”
“I can’t do that, Eunice.”
“I’m so afraid for you, Owen. I’ve heard talk in here, late at night, among his men. They’re so ... brash! The things they say about you, what they’d like to do to keep him from going to trial—”
“They won’t do anything, Eunice. They know that if they did they’d have U.S. marshals in here in a heartbeat.” Not confident that were true—the nearest marshal was nearly two hundred miles away—he turned for the door. “Well, I’d better get this to my prisoner.”
She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You be careful, Owen. You and Alice ... you’re such good people.”
He forced a smile, inwardly resenting her apparent lack of confidence in his abilities. ‘Thanks, Eunice.”
“See ya, Owen,” Johnny called after him.
On his way through the dining area, faces turned his way. and he saw three distinct expressions: admiration, worry, and disdain. Outside he was met with more disdain as a gun fired to his right, so loudly it numbed his ears and set them ringing. He jumped, dropping the plate and reaching for the Colt Army on his hip.
“It’s all right, Sheriff—I think I got him,” said a man to his right, walking toward him on the boardwalk.
It was one of Billy Brown’s firebrands—a tall man in a cream duster, checked shirt, and wool vest, a pair of matched Colts tied low on his thighs. He grinned maliciously. “A rattlesnake slinking around under the boardwalk, ready to poke his head through a knot and bite you.”
McCreedy looked down at the fresh bullet hole in the board about a foot wide of his right foot. He had his hand on his revolver’s grips, but he had not drawn the gun. Looking around, he saw four more of Brown’s firebrands facing him around the street and on the boardwalks, heads tilted rakishly, mouths stretching grins.
“The only snakes I see are you and them,” McCreedy growled, aware of the restaurant’s open door behind him, and the faces crowded in the doorway.
Citizens up and down the street had stopped to see what the gunfire was about, and they were watching McCreedy expectantly, wondering what he would do. His face was flushed with anger, but he knew there was no action he could take. He felt weak and cornered, like a rabid coon trapped by dogs in a woodshed.
The firebrand who’d shot into the boardwalk shook his head mockingly. “No, I seen him ... a snake about to poke his head through a knot. Ain’t it somethin’. though—all the ways a man can die?”
McCreedy glowered at the man, wanting to shoot him, knowing he wouldn’t. “Why don’t you just come out and say what you mean?”
“That’s all I mean, Sheriff. Ain’t it awful to think about—all the ways there is to get killed around here?” With that, the man sauntered off the boardwalk, crossed the street, and pushed through the louvered doors of a saloon. Slowly, the other men followed him, several mockingly tipping their hats at the sheriff.
McCreedy stood on the boardwalk. Several townsmen stood around watching him.
“Why don’t you just go on about your business!” he grouched.
Then he kicked the overturned plate aside, damned if he’d get another for Billy Brown, and headed back to the jail. He slammed the door and stood with his back to it. He tried to quell the shaking in his knees to no avail.
He hoped Prophet got here before Brown’s men made good on their threat.