Outside, Sloan stopped. He said, “Gather the ones you want to help and bring them to the marshal’s office. I’ll wait there.”
He watched Dryden scurry away, then turned and limped painfully toward Texas Street. Going with Dryden might have helped, he realized, but he also knew he wasn’t going to do that much walking. Not with this injured leg. It would sap his strength, and come morning he was going to need all the strength he had. He wondered cynically how many Dryden would bring. He hoped for a dozen at least. Twenty would be better. But he’d probably be lucky if he got five or six.
He walked slowly along the street, turned the corner past the bank, and entered the marshal’s office. Wearily he lit the lamp. He was hungry and tired and scared. He hurt all the way to his shoulders from the wound, and wondered if it was becoming infected. He didn’t want to go out and meet that bunch in the morning. All he wanted to do was to find Merline. What would Burle do if he was successful tomorrow? There would only be one thing he could do. Run. If he was pressed, he’d probably take Merline with him as a hostage. If he thought he had plenty of time, he’d probably turn her loose.
Sloan sank down on the couch and closed his eyes. He thought of Burle, and hatred for the man surged through his veins like a flood. There was a Burle in every town, a power-mad, tin-god type that thrived on vice and crime and had his fingers in everything that went on. If there was law, he tried to keep it bribed so that he could operate without interference. It took the people to defeat a Burle, but they had to want to defeat him before they had a chance. As long as they were willing to pocket profits and close their eyes, the Burles would remain and grow more powerful with every passing day.
Sloan must have dozed. He dreamed that he heard Merline screaming and woke up soaked with sweat. To hell with the town, he thought. I’ve got to find her.
He shook his head, got up, and splashed water into his face. He was right back where he’d started—not knowing where to look, afraid to try for fear Burle would carry out his threat.
He walked to the door and stared up and down the street. It was dark and quiet. Most of the saloons had closed. Damn! There were a couple of dozen saloons in town, two or three hundred houses, several hotels besides the one across the street. There were thirty or forty shacks on the crib street. Burle might be keeping Merline in any one of the saloons, houses, hotels, or shacks. Or he might not even be in town. He might be out on the plain. He might be anywhere.
A group of men rounded the corner by the bank and marched along the street toward him. He stepped aside, and they marched inside. He grinned to himself at the expressions on their faces. Anger. Outrage. Whether at being wakened in the middle of the night or because they had been asked to help, he didn’t know. There were more of them than he had expected. Forty or fifty, at least. He went inside and closed the door.
A big, hulking, red-faced man spoke, “Dryden says you’ve threatened us!”
“Threatened you? Dryden made a small mistake. It’s the drovers that threatened you, not me.”
“Same thing, ain’t it?”
“Not exactly. I’m not going to tear up your town. I’m going to help you stop it.”
“That’s easy done. All you got to do is leave. And by God we mean to see to it … that you do leave.”
Sloan’s face hardened. “Come on then, blacksmith. You start it off.”
Dryden interrupted. “Now wait a minute, Ledbetter. Threats and bickering will get us nowhere.”
Sloan said adamantly, “Talk will get us nowhere, either. There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to stay. I’m going out at dawn and stop that bunch. With help or without it. Only I’ll tell you something. If I meet those trail hands out on the road, there are going to be some dead ones before they get past me, and Maverick Towner is going to be one of them. Think now, gentlemen. Think about what they’re going to do to this town getting even for Towner. And for two or three others besides.”
“You can’t do that! There’s women and children here!”
“So there are. And it’s time you started thinking about them.”
“We hired you to …”
“To do what I’m doing. If I can’t cut it alone, then it’s up to you to help.”
He stared harshly around from face to face. They were cowed and uncertain and afraid, but no longer were they angry or hostile. Now they needed encouragement, assurance that what Sloan wanted them to do was possible.
He said, “With a dozen shotguns I can stop that bunch. I can straighten them out once and for all, but they’ve got to know that the town is back of me. If they don’t accept that, we’ll have this same battle to fight again and again. Until in the end we lose.”
“There’re too many …”
“I doubt that. If every one of you brought a shotgun and came along, we’d have it in the bag.”
Back at the rear of the room a man said, “Not me. I ain’t paid three hundred a month to fight. That’s your job. I’m goin’ home an’ get some sleep.”
He was echoed by a couple of dozen others, who immediately began to inch their way toward the door.
Vast disgust flooded Sloan. He wouldn’t beg them for help. He was finished. He wouldn’t even plead. With a cold face and stony eyes, he watched them file from the room and into the street. Not one of those leaving would meet his eyes. They kept their heads averted and their eyes downcast.
Sloan made one more pitch. “There won’t be much left of the business houses on Texas Street by the time the sun comes up.”
That halted half a dozen of them. The others disappeared down the dark street, but the six remained. Sloan looked at them without approval. “You’re in, then?”
They nodded almost sullenly. Dryden said, “Have you got any plan? Or do we just go out and stand in the road?”
“I’ll have a plan. Go on home, but be back here by three o’clock at the very latest. If you’re tempted to change your minds or oversleep, just think what a hundred trail hands can do to a store or,” he stared at Dryden, “a bank.”
The six edged toward the door. Dryden left his ornate shotgun leaning against the wall and put the box of shells on the floor beside it.
Sloan looked at a man named Ericson, who owned the hardware store. “I want two kegs of black powder and a hundred feet of fuse. Get them over here before you go home and give Mister Dryden the bill.”
“What …?”
“Never mind. Just get it here”
He waited until the six had gone. Then he went out and walked down an almost deserted Texas Street toward the livery barn.
He wakened the hostler rudely by kicking on the tack room door. He said, “I want a buckboard and team.”
“Hell of a …”
“Shut up and get it.”
Surly, the man shuffled back into the stable. He led horses, one by one, to a buckboard and harnessed them. He hitched them up and led them out to Sloan. Sloan got up on the seat, picked up the reins, and drove outside. He drove to the marshal’s office and stopped.
The black powder and fuse were inside, sitting beside Dryden’s shotgun. Sloan carried out the kegs and fuse, then returned to blow out the lamp and close the door. A shovel. Damn it, he’d forgotten a shovel. But the light was still burning in Ericson’s Hardware, so he drove over there, went in, and got one. Ericson never opened his mouth.
Sloan drove swiftly out of town, taking the road that began at the lower end of Texas Street. He had a plan that might work. It had been born suddenly back there in the office, when he’d realized he was going to have to stop the trail hands with six men or less. You don’t pit force against force when you’ve only got six men against a hundred or more. You formulate a plan that will even the odds. A wartime trick—he was going to mine the road. Success of the plan, however, depended on a lot of imponderables. The trail drivers had to come in openly by the road—and by the southern road at that, or the plan would fail. But Sloan guessed they would come in openly, and they always used the southern road because it took them to the lower end of Texas Street. Yes. They would use the road. These damned Southerners had a monstrous pride. That pride would force them to enter the town openly and by the road.
Another imponderable was the charge of powder. Sloan had no experience with explosives, and didn’t even know how long a given length of fuse would take to burn. And the blast had to be exactly on time or its effect would be wasted. What was not imponderable was the effect the blast would have. If they came in by the road and if he could explode the charge exactly when he wanted to, it would bring utter chaos to their ranks. He doubted if a single one of their horses had ever heard anything louder than a shotgun blast. This, blowing up right in their faces, would drive the horses wild. That was, of course, only the beginning. With the odds evened to where he and those with him had a chance, there was still a fight to be fought. But one he’d have some chance to win.
Now, just outside of town, he began to search for exactly the right spot. He found it where the road dipped down into a dry wash to cross. He stopped the buckboard and ground-tied the team with the cast-iron weight. He unloaded the powder and blindly, in darkness, began to dig. A hole at either side of the road. A hole deep enough to conceal a keg of black powder, but not deep enough to muffle its blast.
When he had finished that, he put the powder kegs in the holes and knocked out the tops with his shovel. Retreating now to the shelter of the wash, he got out his knife, matches, and the coil of fuse. He cut a foot-length piece, lit it, and timed its burning with his watch. He cut another length a little longer. Another and another. At last he had it as close as he thought was possible. He cut two equal lengths, inserted them in the powder carefully and covered all but the tips with loose dirt.
Now he got up in the buckboard. Shielding a match with his hands, he looked at his watch, then blew out the match and began to drive—not toward the town but away from it. He drove at a steady trot until he reached what he was looking for, a mound with a pile of scattered rocks on top. He struck another match and looked at his watch.
Satisfied, he turned the buckboard and returned along the road toward town. He knew it was a touchy thing, where seconds would count, where seconds could spell out the difference between success and failure. But he could reduce the risk—by openly halting the trail drivers and making talk. He could soak up a few seconds of the risk that way, dangerous though it might be to himself.
A consoling thought—if he failed in the morning, at least Merline would be safe. If he were dead, there would be no reason for Burle to hurt her. But if he won—that would be the difficult and dangerous thing, for then Burle would be both panicked and enraged and likely to do anything.
He drove toward town slowly, more weary, more near the point of exhaustion than he had ever been in his life before. Lack of sleep had told on him, and lack of proper food. The wound had bled him of strength and accentuated the effects of hunger and sleeplessness. But he didn’t dare sleep now. If he closed his eyes, he’d sleep past the morning deadline and would arrive out here too late. He could eat, and would, if he could talk the clerk at the hotel into waking the cook. Thinking of that, he hurried the horse and drove across the tracks into town.
He returned the team and buckboard to the livery stable. He drove inside, unharnessed, and turned the horses loose in the corral behind the barn. Then he clumped wearily toward the hotel.
Fortunately, the cook was already up, starting his morning coffee. When he saw Sloan, he slung a skillet onto the enormous range and said, “Marshal, you look as beat as any man I ever saw. You sit down over there an’ I’ll have you a big thick steak before you know it.”
Sloan sat down. His eyes kept closing and he’d doze, only to snap out of it when his senses began to fade. Half a dozen times, while the scrawny hotel cook was frying the steak, he dozed off and snapped awake again.
The cook put a plate in front of him laden with steak, potatoes, and beans. Sloan wanted sleep much more than he wanted food, but he forced himself to eat, and after he had taken half a dozen bites he began to feel better. He ate ravenously after that, even finishing a quarter of apple pie the cook slid to him. He got up, but, when he reached in his pocket for money, the cook said, “No pay, Marshal. It’s on the damn hotel. Least I can do, an’ them, too.”
Sloan grinned. “Thanks …?”
“Willis. Jake Willis.”
“Thanks, Jake.”
He went out and crossed the street. Behind the marshal’s office he found a pump, and he stuck his head under the cooling stream. Then he soaped and dried his face and went inside.
He didn’t have a razor, and he’d probably cut himself if he tried to shave, but he felt a lot better for eating and washing up. Maybe good enough to do what he had to do when the sky got gray.
He looked at his watch. It was almost 2:00 a.m. Another hour and he’d have to leave. His face, right now, didn’t show the confidence he had expressed to Dryden and the others a couple of hours ago. He didn’t feel confident at all. Black powder or no, it was damned foolishness for half a dozen men to go out and face a hundred outraged trail hands who, while they might be overloaded with stiff-necked pride, were hard as nails, and tough. If they wanted to tree the town, they’d tree it, and nothing would stand in their way. Sloan cursed himself angrily. He was going to go out there at dawn and try, foolhardy or no. And there was no sense in hopeless thinking. It was too damned late for that.