Moonlight set a trembling sheen on Papoose Lake and struck a tiny star of white off the rim of the big, fat turnip watch Turk Jory held in his hands.
Jory closed the watch with a snap that had finality in it. “A quarter off eleven!” he said aloud. “And those sons were supposed to be back by ten at the latest.”
He put the watch away and cracked his knuckles the way he always did when he was angry. Either something had gone wrong or those hardcases were disobeying orders. Well, he was going to find out; he was riding to town.
He was in the saddle and on the way before he realized he didn’t have a hat. Turk Jory was always bare-headed out of vanity, but maybe a hat would be a small concession to make to caution tonight.
Returning to the camp, he looked through Hogger Smith’s gear before producing a ridiculous derby hat that Hogger only wore when he was plastered.
But Hogger had a head of roughly the dimensions of a bull buffalo, so the hat came all the way down to Jory’s ears. Exactly what he needed. He also found a bulky old yellow poncho in Smith’s gear. Donning that to conceal his big twin, bone-handled six-guns, he fitted foot to stirrup and swung up.
Judge Haggerty was getting in everybody’s way as he stood in the middle of Front Street before the jailhouse among the milling men and horses, but nobody had the nerve to ask him to shift. The Hanging Judge had always been an intimidating personage, and he’d never seemed more so than right now. In fact, the judge looked as if a word or a touch might send him off like twenty pounds of dynamite.
So they just went around him as they got the posse together under sweating Seth Gulliver’s bellowed orders. Over an hour had passed since the alarm had been raised, triggering off a furious manhunt through the streets of Perona. Then the choleric Haggerty had declared that it was as plain as paint that the last thing Turk Jory would have done would be hang around town. Seeing the wisdom of this, Gulliver had immediately called for a mounted posse. The sheriff was miserable. Turk Jory had slipped out of his fingers for the second time, and Gulliver was bleakly facing the prospect of more months, perhaps years of humiliation as a consequence. He was stomping up and down now, roaring orders to one of the most reluctant-looking posses Diablo Valley had ever seen, just to keep the judge happy.
Finally they had some fifteen men mounted and under the charge of Deputy Barney Rudkin. There was of course no chance of the sheriff leading the posse personally, for many years ago Gulliver had grown too heavy for any horse to carry.
Gulliver was delivering his last-minute instructions and pep talk with as much authority as he could muster under the circumstances, when two tall men came into sight from the alleyway flanking the gunsmith’s. The sheriff promptly broke off his address, beckoned to the two and shouted:
“Duke, Hank! Been lookin’ for you boys. How’d you like to ride with the posse?”
Benedict and Brazos, who’d spent the past hour combing the town for Woodcock, looked sweaty, dusty and leg-weary as they came slowly along the street.
“Sorry, Sheriff,” Benedict said.
Gulliver’s toad face fell, for he knew that the bounty hunters would give the posse stiffening. And if ever a posse needed stiffening, it was this one. If by some miracle they should catch up with Jory, Gulliver anticipated a flock of heart attacks.
“But, gents,” he pleaded, “you brought Jory in once before. You know the man and his tricks and—”
“Perhaps tomorrow, Sheriff,” Benedict said. “We might take a ride out tomorrow, but tonight we’re just too disgusted to take any further interest in this whole messy business.”
“Plumb disgusted,” Brazos said with an accusing look at the sheriff.
Then they walked away, leaving Gulliver cringing in a sweat of humiliation under the burning eyes of the judge. They heard him resume his address to the posse in a hollow, miserable voice as they walked slowly past the lights of the Days of Glory and then on, heading wearily back towards the east end of town.
When they were out of earshot of all, Brazos, twisting a cigarette into shape in his big fingers, said heavily, “You still figure he’s in town, Yank?”
“He’s got to be. He wouldn’t have the nerve to leave on his own. And besides, there’s the horse. He left the horse, so I take that as proof that he’s still in Perona, hiding somewhere, most likely scared out of his wits.”
“Then we keep lookin’?”
“Do we have any choice?”
“I reckon not.”
They had reached the Cottonwood Street corner when they heard the horses. They halted under a street light to watch the posse men ride out.
“They’ll be back before daybreak,” Brazos predicted. He couldn’t suppress a grin as, with the hoof beats dying away, they clearly heard the rattle of Judge Haggerty castigating Gulliver. “You know, Yank, that Gulliver is as sly and tricky as they come, but I almost feel sorry for him with that sawn-off little judge fastened onto his ear thataway.”
Duke Benedict, who almost never shared his trail companion’s idea of what was humorous, certainly wasn’t in any mood for laughter at this point. He was tired, irritable and frustrated—and acutely conscious of what could happen if Arnold Woodcock was sighted by someone in this nervous town.
“We’ll check out Jackson’s barn again,” Benedict said. “If that fool Woodcock has any sense at all—which I’ve seriously doubted from the start—he should know enough to go there.” Brazos shrugged his heavy shoulders and followed his partner to the barn.
Woodcock wasn’t there, so once again they set out to search the town. Five minutes later, Brazos clapped a warning hand to Benedict’s shoulder as they moved along the narrow alley that flanked the National Bank. Benedict stared at Brazos in the deep moon shadow and the big Texan inclined his head in the direction of an old chicken house some ten feet ahead. His sharp ears had picked up a faint rustle of movement above the sound of their steps.
Throwing Benedict a wink, he said, “Reckon we might as well give it away, Yank.” He turned to snap his fingers at Bullpup who had drawn up some distance behind to check a side alley for cats. The dog came padding up, tongue lolling, yellow eyes gleaming—then the animal pricked his ears and stared at the chicken house.
It was all the confirmation Brazos needed. Signaling to Benedict to go past the chicken house, he walked slowly to the fence flanking it and called softly:
“That you, Arnie?”
No reply.
“Woodcock?” Benedict said. “If that’s you in there, this is Duke and Hank!”
There was still no answer. But there was a definite rustle of sound again, and Brazos felt his neck hairs stiffen at the scent of danger. Glancing across at Benedict to make certain he was ready, he dropped to one knee against the fence and whispered to the dog, “Sic him out, boy!”
Brazos uncoiled to his feet as Bullpup, a spotted flash, disappeared through a hole in the chicken house wall. Instantly there was a cry of alarm, followed by a loud curse. The wall of the fragile building shook at an impact from within and Bullpup growled. Another curse and then the rickety door crashed open and a man they thought was Arnold Woodcock burst out backwards.
Arnold had a six-gun in his fist. The man who was terrified of guns was swiping at Bullpup’s skull with a Colt!
“All right, Bullpup, down!” Brazos called, and the little redhead whirled and pointed his gun directly at Brazos.
Bullpup had been ordered to back off, but instinct overrode obedience when he saw the gun aimed at his master. The hound leaped and the Colt went off with a roar.
Neither Benedict nor Brazos had the faintest idea what had come over Arnold. All they knew was that somehow, between the time they’d lost him at Jackson’s barn and now, he’d gone completely loco; either that or the fool was raving drunk. Duke Benedict leaped forward, knocking the smoking cutter out of the redhead’s fist with a blow from his own gun, then slashed down.
But the runt ducked so fast and so expertly that Benedict almost fell as he followed through. Then the outlaw, his face a furious mask of violent wrath, uppercut Benedict to the jaw. Benedict staggered backwards across the alley, glassy-eyed. Astonished, aghast, Brazos set his jaw and lunged angrily as the bantam-sized baddie whirled to face him.
“You stupid jackass, Arnie!” Brazos hissed. “You’ve got yourself so drunk you don’t know what side is up any—”
He broke off abruptly as a hard right cross made contact with his rocky jaw. For a split second, big Hank Brazos was the most astonished man in Perona. In the next split second, he was the angriest. Ignoring the gun in his right hand as the outlaw tried to drive a knee into his groin, he belted the runt hard to the side of the head with a smashing left hook.
It was a blow to fell an ox, and it dropped this fellow. Yet, amazingly, he struggled to his feet as Benedict came back in to join the fray. The little man was groggy as a drunk as he came upright, but he swore with rare venom and made weak, wild attempts to land another punch. With a sorry-to-have-to-do-this look, Brazos hauled off and threw another bomb.
The bantamweight didn’t get up this time. He bounced against the wall of the chicken coop, curved slowly forward, then hit the alley with his face and lay still.
There was no time for post-mortems. Lights had gone on all over and they could hear men running in the streets. Holstering his Colt, Brazos seized the redhead and slung him over his shoulder. Then two men appeared at the barn end of the alleyway. With no alternative, Benedict and Brazos, with their unconscious charge turned and ran pell-mell for Front Street.
Despite his burden, Brazos was first from the alleyway. He almost cannoned into Sheriff Seth Gulliver who’d come pounding down Front Street at the sound of the shot with a straggle of towners at his heels.
There was one long, unforgettable moment of total silence as they all stood there in a frozen tableau; Brazos with the body draped over his shoulders, Benedict with a gun in hand and a trickle of blood running from his mouth, Gulliver blinking, and half a dozen wide-eyed towners gaping.
Then Seth Gulliver moved around to stare at the face of the man whose head hung down Brazos’ broad back.
“Great day in the mornin’—you’ve caught him again!”
Hank Brazos’ grin was a ghastly thing to see. “Yeah,” he admitted and his voice sounded as if his throat had turned rusty. “We’ve gone and done it again, right enough.”
Judge Myron Haggerty had said some very hard things earlier about the escape of Turk Jory, but now he was out to prove that he could be as generous with praise as he had been severe in censure:
“A unique achievement,” he assured his three-man audience. “An achievement that might well go down in the annals of law enforcement as one of the most memorable in the history of Diablo Valley.” He gestured at the two glum-faced “heroes” to whom he was directing his eulogy. “It wasn’t enough for these sterling gentlemen to bring the infamous Jory to the portals of justice once—no, they set out with zeal and idealism when the tide turned against us, and they flushed out the scoundrel right under our very noses, then delivered him into our hands again! Amazing!”
The judge paused, perhaps to search his mind for a few more glowing adjectives. At his desk, Gulliver, still wearing the faintly stunned expression he’d effected ever since the recapture, set to work on his sixth mug of coffee and peered curiously across at the heroes of the hour.
Gulliver was puzzled, for he’d never seen two men looking less triumphant in his life. Brazos, normally genial and easy-going—when he wasn’t kicking up the dust in saloons—sat under the gun rack with his broad back against the wall, his battered hat tipped so far down over his eyes that it covered his nose. Duke Benedict, the man of dash and style, stood against the far wall by the side window chewing on an unlit cigar and staring morosely at the floor. If Gulliver wasn’t aware that such an assumption defied all the rules of common sense, he could almost believe that Benedict and Brazos were actually sorry they had recaptured Turk Jory. It was really very confusing. But the judge didn’t sound at all confused, as, his eulogy over, he turned his attention to Gulliver.
“It is only too patently plain, Sheriff, that outside help was enlisted to engineer Jory’s escape. Therefore, now that we have the rogue safely behind bars again, I believe we can safely leave it to you to cross-examine the scoundrel to discover who his associate was.”
“As soon as he comes to, Judge,” Gulliver promised with some relish. “I’ll whomp it out of his hide if needs be.”
“Yes, well, perhaps you’d better not whomp too hard,” the judge cautioned. “At least not so hard that the villain might not be fit to stand up in court tomorrow and hear final judgment pronounced upon him.”
“Final judgment?” It was Benedict who spoke. It was the first sound he’d uttered in twenty minutes.
“The man is already under sentence of death, Mr. Benedict,” Haggerty announced happily. “However, I have decided to hold a ritual hearing tomorrow for the specific purpose of illustrating to one and all that the wages of sin is death. Yes, I intend to parade Jory before his peers at the courthouse tomorrow and reveal him as the miserable specimen he really is. His crimes shall be noted and sentence shall be reaffirmed. And then ...”
“And then?” Benedict echoed.
Judge Haggerty’s black eyes glittered. “Then, my heroic young friend—the gallows!”
Heroic Duke Benedict looked across at fellow hero Hank Brazos who reached up and tipped his hat down to cover his entire face. In that black moment, they heard a sudden clatter and a curse come from the cells where Hutch Stovey was sitting watch over the prisoner.
As all looked towards the archway, Stovey staggered into sight nursing a puffed lip. “He’s come to, Sheriff,” the turnkey said dazedly. “The varmint sat up, blinked, asked where the hell he was, and then before I could move, he jumped up and punched me through the bars.”
“Aha!” Gulliver exclaimed, not at all concerned about Stovey. “Now perhaps we will get a few answers. Come on, gentlemen.”
Benedict and Brazos followed the sheriff through to the cells with reluctance. They found Woodcock standing at the bars wearing a ferocious look. The prisoner’s baleful stare fixed itself on Brazos.
“You’re a dead man, mister,” he snarled. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re dead.”
Brazos’ eyebrows went up, then he scowled and shook his head warningly at the man in the cell.
“What the hell are you shakin’ your head for, you overgrown skunk?” the runt cried out. “You look and act like a loon to me. Imagine Turk Jory gettin’ nailed by a loon.”
“That will be enough out of you, killer,” Judge Haggerty said with all his courtroom sternness. “You will be silent until given permission to speak.”
The next moment the judge jumped backwards as the prisoner rolled spittle in his mouth and let fly. Incensed at such sacrilege, and mindful of what a real coward Turk Jory had proved himself to be, Seth Gulliver inflated his chest, squared his shoulders and strode to the door.
The next thing he knew he was being helped to his feet by Hank Brazos. Jory had pistoned a fist through the bars and had knocked the lawman off his feet.
“Hell and damnation!” Brazos admonished. “You shouldn’t ougnt to do things like that. Don’t you have no respect for the law?”
The prisoner cursed so violently that Brazos all but blushed. He was still cursing as an amazed Gulliver dusted off his clothes and said:
“It must have been the thumpin’ you fellers handed him. Why, he—he’s like a different feller to the one that was in here before.”
“You talkin’ about three years ago?” the prisoner asked.
“Now don’t act stupid, Jory. I’m talkin’ about before you busted out tonight and you damned well know it.”
“Busted out tonight? I haven’t seen your lousy stinkin’ jail in three years.”
“You can drop the masquerade right now,” Gulliver said. “I know you for a gutless swine, and you know I know. You are—” Gulliver suddenly broke off, his eyes brightening as he remembered the one sure way to reveal lurk Jory as the yellow-livered coward he really was.
Like a lion-tamer facing a recalcitrant charge, Gulliver faced the cell, stamped his foot, shouted “Hah!” and drew his six-gun.
The prisoner’s reaction to this bit of drama was to lunge through the bars with savage purpose, his clawing fingers almost touching the gun. Gulliver was astonished but Benedict and Brazos were astounded.
“So this is the caper is it?” the prisoner said. “Gonna shoot me down like a dog, are you?” He stepped defiantly back from the bars and tore open his shirt to bare his chest. “All right, go ahead and shoot Gulliver. Shoot and be damned, you fat goat—you’ll never make Jory crawl. Well, what are you waitin’ for?”
“But ... but you’re afraid of guns,” Gulliver gasped, taking a step forward. “You nearly passed out every time I showed you—”
The man who was afraid of guns suddenly leaped forward with bewildering speed as Gulliver’s step brought him just that much closer to the bars. The lightning hand flashed through the bars to seize the barrel of the Colt before Benedict jolted out of his shock and flung himself forward. As the redhead seized the gun, he punched through the bars with his free hand and caught Benedict on the side of the jaw. But the gambler managed to hold onto the weapon, then Brazos brought the side of his hand down in a chopping action across the runt’s straining right arm. The blow broke the grip, but then the prisoner had a fistful of Brazos’ purple shirt, and with an awesome display of power, he reefed the big Texan against the bars.
Brazos’ head clunked on steel, and he just had wits enough left to jerk away as a clawing hand went for his holster. The prisoner threw a punch at Brazos’ head, missed, saw that the bewildered Gulliver was still in range and landed a left to the jaw that bowled the sheriff over like a ten-pin.
With the prisoner’s foul cursing ringing in their ears, Duke Benedict and Hank Brazos toted Gulliver’s three hundred pounds out to the front office. They lowered him into his great chair as Haggerty grabbed a flask of whisky up and poured him a shot.
“He’s gone loco,” Gulliver gasped, holding the empty glass out for a refill. “We’ve got a madman locked up in there.”
“He’ll simmer down,” Hank Brazos said woodenly, looking at Benedict as he straightened and started for the door. “Might be an idea just to leave him be a spell, Sheriff.”
“Where are you two goin’?” Gulliver sounded close to panic.
“We have some urgent business to discuss, Sheriff,” said a strangely pale Duke Benedict. “And I do believe we need a drink.”
“But ... but ...”
“Just leave him be, Sheriff,” Brazos put in. “Don’t go near him. We’ll look in and see how things are going after we’ve had a drink.”
“How can they think of drinkin’ at a time like this?” the badly shaken Gulliver asked Haggerty, reaching for the bottle again.
“Pull yourself together, Gulliver,” the judge sternly said. Then, more pleasantly, “Do you have another clean glass?”
Outside Benedict and Brazos stared at each other and Brazos said, “It just ain’t possible, Yank, but it’s so.”
“I know,” came the flat reply. “That’s not Woodcock in there—so there’s only one other person it can be.”
“Jory.”
“But it ain’t poss—”
“And,” said Benedict, “because it is impossible, we won’t even try to work it out—not until we’ve had that drink at any rate.”
“Or twenty?”
“Quite possible.”
They turned and, walking like two old men, headed for the Days of Glory. It was two-thirty in the morning, but all Perona’s saloons were still open. They would conduct business all night, on this, the most eventful and exciting day in the town’s history.
But there was more to come.