Chapter Fifteen
Marshal Hinkle was almost back at his office when a figure stepped out of the gathering shadows at the mouth of an alley. He stopped short. Most Westerners, if confronted by that situation, would have reached instinctively for a gun. Henry Hinkle’s first instinct, which he controlled with an effort, was to turn and run.
“Marshal,” Billy Ray Gilmore said as he materialized out of the gloom. “I thought you were going to lock up that fella Sixkiller.”
“I . . . I spoke to him,” Hinkle said. “He claimed that your friends Rudd and Logan started the trouble by shooting at the mayor’s feet and making him dance.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Well, I don’t know. Evidently there are witnesses to the incident who’ll back up Sixkiller’s story. I told him I’d have to conduct an investigation and ... and warned him not to leave town.”
“Well, I guess that’s about all you can do, then,” Gilmore said. “Meanwhile, poor Duke and Sam are laid up with those bullet wounds in their feet. It’s a real shame. But I did what I could to get justice for ’em, I reckon. I went to the marshal and lodged a complaint, just like law-abidin’ folks are supposed to do.”
Despite his fear, Hinkle was angry again. He knew Gilmore was mocking him. He and the rest of those outlaws did what they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it, and never worried for a second about the law. Everybody in Purgatory knew that. All Gilmore was doing now was rubbing Hinkle’s nose in how powerless he really was.
Hinkle ducked his head and started to move past Gilmore. He muttered, “I hope your friends get better.”
Gilmore put out a hand to stop him. With an effort, Hinkle didn’t flinch from the touch on his sleeve.
“You’ll let me know how that investigation of yours turns out, won’t you, Marshal?” he asked.
“Sure.” Hinkle swallowed. “Sure, I will.”
“Fine. Good evenin’ to you.”
Gilmore sauntered away along the boardwalk without looking back. Hinkle turned to watch him go. The marshal sleeved sweat from his forehead despite the fact that it wasn’t a particularly warm evening.
Maybe it was time for him to leave Purgatory behind, he thought. He probably would have before now if it weren’t for certain arrangements he’d made. Because of that, he was sort of stuck here. He had to wait and see what was going to happen.
And hope that he didn’t wind up dead first.
* * *
The Silver Spur wasn’t the only saloon in Purgatory, just the biggest and best. But there were several other places where a man could find a drink, a game of cards, or a woman, depending on what he wanted at the time. One of them was called Red Mike’s, after the Irishman who owned it. Smaller and more squalid than the Silver Spur, nonetheless it was still popular among the settlement’s more unsavory element.
The Gilmore gang certainly fit into that category.
Billy Ray Gilmore saw half a dozen of his men in the room when he came into Red Mike’s. Two of them were at a table playing dominoes, while the other four leaned on the bar, nursing mugs of beer. The man closest to the door noticed Gilmore and nudged his neighbor, who looked around and then passed on the news that the boss was here. When all four men were looking at him, Gilmore silently inclined his head toward the rear table where the other two outlaws sat.
They drifted back to the table, carrying their drinks with them. Gilmore joined them. The table was big enough for all seven men, but just barely. Gilmore had to swipe a chair from a vacant table. He turned it around and straddled it as he sat down.
“How are Duke and Sam doin’?” Junior Clemons asked. Junior was a big, jovial man who looked like somebody’s friendly cousin. He’d killed his first man at the age of twelve. Cut his throat while the unlucky gent was sleeping.
“They’ll be all right, I expect,” Gilmore replied. “I’m pretty sure Duke will limp the rest of his life, and Sam may, too. But at least they’ll still be able to get around some.”
“What about the marshal?” Jack Bayne asked. “Did he arrest the fella who shot ’em, like you talked about, Billy Ray?”
Gilmore smiled ruefully and shook his head.
“The marshal claims he’s gonna conduct a full investigation.” Gilmore waved a hand. “I never expected him to do anything about it. Mainly, I just wanted to see the look on his face when I asked him to, and I have to tell you, it was pretty amusing.”
Another of the outlaws, Ben Morton, spoke up.
“So what do we do now, Billy Ray? You talked to that bastard Sixkiller. What’s he like?”
“Cool,” Gilmore said. “So cool butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And a good hand with a gun, too, although we already knew that. Sam’s feet are pretty good-sized, but as a target for a gunshot, they’re on the small side. Duke’s are even smaller. Sixkiller didn’t hit ’em where he did by accident, though.”
“We can’t let him get away with what he done,” Junior declared. “If he does, folks won’t be a-scared of us no more. Not scared enough, anyway.”
“What do you suggest, then, Junior?” Gilmore wanted to know.
“Let me kill him. I’ll take care of the son of a bitch.”
“I want in on it, too,” Bayne said. “And when he’s dead, we’ll hang his body up by its feet from that tree down by the well and leave it to rot. If folks have to see that every time they go to get water, they’ll damn sure know they better not step out of line with us.”
Gilmore thought about it for a moment and then nodded.
“You boys think you’ll need any help?” he asked.
“Hell, no,” Junior said. “We can take care of him, can’t we, Jack?”
“Count on it,” Bayne said.
Gilmore said, “Go to it.”
It would be interesting to see how this turned out, too.
* * *
John Henry decided to eat in the hotel dining room. By doing that he could find out right away if the food was any good. Since he was going to be here in Purgatory for several days, maybe as long as a week, it wouldn’t hurt to settle on several places to eat.
An attractive young woman with red hair came to his table to take his order. She wore a blue dress and a crisply starched white apron and gave him a friendly smile as she asked, “What can I get for you, sir?”
“What’s the best thing you have on the menu?” John Henry asked.
“The roast beef and potatoes, I’d say.”
He nodded and told her, “That’s what I’ll have, then. And coffee.”
“I’ll see to it right away.”
She brought the coffee first, then a basket of rolls, then a plate full of thick slices of roast beef, along with chunks of potatoes and carrots swimming in gravy. John Henry dug in eagerly. It had been a long day on the trail, and he had an appetite.
The food was as good as he’d hoped it would be, but not all of his attention was focused on it. Without being too obvious about it, he had a look at his fellow diners, too. Most of them were hotel guests, he suspected, although some might be townspeople who had chosen to dine here. The ones who interested him the most were three middle-aged men who sat at a table in the rear of the room, talking among themselves as they ate.
Back in Fort Smith, Judge Parker had given him the names of the three men who owned the big mines in the area. John Henry wondered now if he was looking at Jason True, Arnold Goodman, and Dan Lacey. True was the only one of the three Judge Parker knew personally; the man with the iron-gray hair and neatly clipped mustache might be him, John Henry reflected. But there could be a dozen men in Purgatory who would match that same general description, so he couldn’t be sure.
His instincts told him he was right, though. All three men were well-dressed, and when the stocky one with a face like a bulldog spoke to the waitress, he had the curt tone of someone used to giving orders. They just looked like captains of industry, John Henry thought dryly.
He could stand up right now, walk over there, make sure who they were, and introduce himself. That would certainly be the simplest course of action.
But would it be the most effective? Or should he remain unknown to them for the time being, unknown to everyone in Purgatory except as the man who had ridden into town and plugged two of Billy Ray Gilmore’s henchmen?
He would play things along a little further and see what happened, he decided.
After he finished eating, he complimented the redheaded waitress on the food. She smiled a little more warmly than was absolutely necessary and said, “You come on back any time you want to, sir.”
“I’ll do that,” John Henry said. He picked up his hat from the table, settled it on his head, and strolled out of the hotel.
Royal Bouchard had invited him to return to the Silver Spur and have a few more drinks. That sounded like a decent way to pass the evening. Besides, the saloon was probably the busiest place in town once the sun went down. By spending more time there, John Henry might be able to get an even better feel for what the situation was in Purgatory. He started in that direction.
His route took him beside a parked wagon with an arching canvas cover over its back, a Conestoga wagon like immigrants used to travel west. He had just walked past the apparently empty vehicle when the smell of recently-smoked tobacco drifted to his nose. There was nothing unusual in that—somebody could have walked along here a minute earlier puffing on a quirly—but John Henry’s keen mind asked what if somebody sitting inside that wagon had been smoking instead? Why would somebody just sit there inside a darkened wagon?
There could be a number of different reasons, but at least one of them wasn’t good. Following his instincts, John Henry started to turn around. His hand moved toward the butt of his Colt.
Muzzle flame lanced through the darkness and split the night as shots roared from inside the wagon.