It was pitch dark as the two men came down the back stairs of Kitty Dechine’s Sporting House For Gentlemen on Cottonwood Street and stood in the yard.
It was a fine, mild evening in Perona. The air was cool and clean, pungent with the last of the sun-distilled odors of grasses and sage. From the building they’d just left came the busy, muffled sounds of Kitty’s girls getting ready for the night’s business.
It had been comfortable enough at Kitty’s, and Kitty hadn’t asked any questions. She’d been happy enough to let them spend the afternoon upstairs for a modest twenty dollars, and it had been the ideal place to lie low. On the instructions of Sheriff Gulliver and Judge Haggerty, men had been hunting all over for them since they’d vanished after the attack on the bank, but nobody had thought of looking in at Kitty Dechine’s for Perona’s heroes.
Benedict, who could generally make the best of any given situation, was in good spirits as he took out a cigar and set it alight. He’d enjoyed the company of the idle girls, and had been amused by their attempts to interest him in the special sort of relaxation that Kitty Dechine specialized in.
Brazos, by contrast, was something less than his normal, easy-going self. A man of strict ideas where that sort of thing was concerned, he’d been uncomfortable and fidgety amongst the perfume and silk all afternoon. He’d promised his mother never to frequent that sort of place, and despite the necessity of a hideout, he’d felt that he’d betrayed that promise.
But that was all behind them. It was dark, the town was quiet, and there was work to be done. They hadn’t deserted Arnold in his hour of need. They’d simply realized there was nothing they could tell Gulliver and Haggerty about their two Turk Jorys that wouldn’t endanger their own freedom, so they’d chosen to stay out of sight until darkness when they could do something positive.
Brazos had some reservations about the whole business all along, but he felt free of them now. For they had indeed captured Turk Jory, so the bounty money, every cent of it, was now legally theirs. Certainly they had given the good gentlemen of the law a deal of trouble—and would have to give them more before they were through—but the Texan felt that was cancelled out by their saving the bank. All that remained now was to spring Arnold, let Jory be dealt with by the law, then make tracks north.
They had ample time to plan the break during the afternoon. There would of course be a risk involved, but they’d taken so many risks over the past few days that a few more didn’t matter. If they moved fast, with surprise as their ally, they should be able to pull it off.
“What time do you reckon’d be best?” Brazos asked softly as they walked from the yard.
“Just as soon as things are quiet enough,” Benedict said through cigar smoke.
“So, soon as things are quiet enough,” Barton Frank announced, peering through the screen of river willows at the lights of Perona, “we’ll make our play.”
“How’ll we handle it, Barton?” asked Shorty Gilpin, nervously picking at the bandages that encased his wounded shoulder.
“We’ll set fire to the goddamn schoolhouse,” replied Frank, who had figured it out on the ride in from the Kaw River ranch house at dusk. “That’ll draw everybody away and give us a clear crack at the jailhouse.”
“What about the lawmen, Bart?” asked Hogger Smith, a hulking shape in the shadows.
“What about them?” Barton Frank said. “We’ll blast the sons of bitches, that’s what about them.” Barton Frank was a hard hellion at the best of times, but the failure of the bank job and the capture of Turk had put him in a really murderous frame of mind.
The mood of his henchmen wasn’t much different, but Shorty Gilpin had some reservations. “Well, I guess we could handle Gulliver and the deputy all right, Bart,” he declared as they moved out of the trees and into the clearing where their horses grazed under the first stars. “But those two gunslingers, Benedict and Brazos—what if we bump into them?”
“Judas, but Turk always said you didn’t have what it takes, Gilpin,” Frank said roughly. “Get nicked up a little and you’re ready to run for cover.”
Gilpin flushed. “That ain’t so, Bart. I’ll go as far as you or Hogger, but we could run into heavy odds if we come up against that pair as well as the lawdogs.”
“Don’t give me any arguments, Gilpin,” snapped Frank. “We’ve got to get Turk out and we’ve got to do it tonight, before they hang him. And there’s no easy way.”
Chastened, Gilpin fell silent. Then Hogger Smith said, “Bart, about this pilgrim they’ve got hold of that looks like Turk—we don’t want to snatch him by mistake, do we?”
“Judas, you’re as bad as Gilpin, Hogger,” came Frank’s testy response. “Do you mean to stand there and say we wouldn’t know Turk from this fool they were claiming to be him?”
It did sound pretty unlikely, but during the tense afternoon they had spent at the Kaw River ranch house, Hogger Smith had been prey to some disturbing thoughts. Like how different Turk had seemed last night and this morning, and how he had refused to even wear a gun to the bank job. It had even entered Hogger’s mind that maybe the man who’d led them into Perona this morning hadn’t been Turk at all.
But meeting Barton Frank’s stare now, and taking stock of the whole thing again, he knew that such an idea was loco. Tonight, when they got to see Turk and the stooge together at the jailhouse, they would surely find out that they didn’t really look alike at all. There was, after all, only one Turk Jory.
The jailhouse was quiet except for the restless padding of Turk Jory’s feet as he paced to and fro across his cell. Across the corridor, exhausted after the wildest day of his life, Arnold Woodcock lay snoring on his bunk. Out front, there was an occasional stir of sound as Gulliver shifted his weight in the chair. The distant piano music from the Days of Glory drifted in through the high barred window, as did the sudden furtive rustling sound from outside that brought Jory to a halt in the middle of his cell, gaze going up.
The rustling sound was repeated, and then came an urgent whisper: “Woodcock?”
Jory glanced across the corridor. Arnold slept on undisturbed. Jory moved closer to the wall. “Yeah?”
“The coast clear?”
Jory looked about him. He supposed the coast was as clear as it was ever going to be. “All clear,” he whispered back.
There was a grunt in response, then a pair of hands reached up from the darkness outside to secure two stout ropes to the bars. Jory had a momentary glimpse of Hank Brazos’ face in the window. A wink and then it was gone.
A moment later there was a tearing clatter and the barred window jerked free of the mortar and fell with a thump outside. With the agility of an acrobat, Jory bounded up on his bunk and hurled himself through the window as his fellow prisoner across the aisle sat up blinking and Seth Gulliver’s roar of surprise sounded from the office.
Landing with the agility of a cat in the alley outside, Jory bounded into the saddle of the horse Duke Benedict was holding. With a “Let’s dust!” from the Texan, they stormed away.
“We did it!” Brazos exulted when they cleared the alley and were riding along the back street.
“Indeed we did!” Benedict laughed. “You all right, Arnold?”
The escapee only nodded.
They rode hard and fast until reaching a cross street, when they saw angry tongues of flame leaping up from the far side of town. In the same instant they heard shots that came from the direction of the jailhouse. Benedict, who was leading, slewed his horse to a halt.
“What the devil is going on?” he gasped, then he whirled in the saddle as the escapee’s horse slewed into his and a desperate hand grabbed for his right-side six-gun.
“Woodcock, what the—?” he shouted into the twisted face. Then the stunning realization of truth hit him as the gun came jerking up. “Jory!”
Jory’s finger was whitening on the trigger as Hank Brazos hurled himself from the saddle and hit him with bone-cracking force. The gun went off as they crashed to the ground. A strangled cry broke from Jory’s lips as he hit with two hundred and twenty pounds of Texan on top of him. Even so, he struggled with a fury that was a frightening thing to see as he tried to bring the smoking gun on Brazos. But Brazos, who’d tangled with this wild hellion before, didn’t give him a chance. A smashing right crashed against Jory’s jaw and the brutal left that followed hard on its heels crashed the redhead’s skull back against the earth. Turk Jory went limp.
Struggling to his feet, Brazos shook his head in bewilderment as he looked up at Benedict. “How the hell did this happen, Yank? They must have switched cells. I figured—”
“Never mind the post-mortems just now,” Benedict said. “Lash him on the horse and let’s go see what’s happening down the street.”
By the time they reached Front Street, the building two blocks along Fargo Street was a raging inferno and the town was alive with running, shouting men. A crowd had gathered down by the jailhouse, where a wagon had overturned. As they sat their horses, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, they glimpsed horsemen pounding across a side street behind the jail, heading for open country. Moments later, they saw the huge figure of Gulliver lumbering afoot in the dust of the racing riders, blasting after them with twin guns.
Three men approaching from the east end of town came running down Front Street. They halted when they saw the riders with the limp figure draped across the saddle of the third horse.
“Duke! Hank!” ejaculated Matt Baylor the gunsmith. “What on earth is happening? Who ... who’s that man you’ve got there?”
It was plainly time to get out of Perona, regardless. Whatever other tremors were shaking the town, they couldn’t hang around any longer; not with Turk Jory.
“You wouldn’t believe it if we told you, Mr. Baylor,” Benedict replied, and, jerking the lines of Jory’s horse, he led the way back along Fargo Street.
They broke into a swift lope as they cornered and headed for the east trail. They couldn’t hear the shooting any more, but as they pounded east with Bullpup leading the way, they caught another glimpse of the riders Gulliver had been pursuing as they swept across the prairie beyond the town, following a course roughly parallel to their own.
“Who are those jokers, Benedict?” Brazos asked as the last of the houses fell behind them and the open trail stretched ahead.
“I believe, if for no other reason than to satisfy our curiosity, we should find out,” Benedict replied coolly. Then he cut his horse off the trail and they swept across the open country towards the racing riders.
Less than a quarter mile separated them when a sudden shout from the band of riders warned them that they’d been seen. The moonlight was bright and as the four horsemen swung in their saddles, Benedict and Brazos recognized the tall figure of the man who’d followed Woodcock to the bank doors that day, and, two riders back, the flaming red head of Woodcock himself!
There was no time to marvel at this further crazy twist in a crazy night as Barton Frank opened up and Shorty Gilpin and Hogger Smith followed suit.
There was no chance of accuracy at that range, so Benedict and Brazos left their guns in leather as they crouched low over their horses’ heads and booted them into top speed. They didn’t speak as they thundered on. There was no need for words. That was Arnold out there, and those gunnies were the Jory bunch.
It was the sound of the bullet that hit Barton Frank dead center that jolted Arnold Woodcock back to reality. Woodcock had been riding in a daze at the bad man’s side when Benedict and Brazos stormed into gun range and opened up with their Colts. There was a dim recollection of Jory’s sudden disappearance through the torn-out window of the jailhouse. He remembered the lawmen storming out in pursuit, and then came the frightening sight of Frank and then Gilpin and Hogger Smith bursting in with drawn guns. He’d tried to resist when they unlocked the cell, but Frank had reefed him out, his head striking the door in the process. Everything had been dim since; the recollection of the short clash of arms with the towners as they’d rushed for the horses, the headlong flight ...
But now, with Barton Frank sagging in the saddle at his side, eyes bugging wide and clawing feebly at his horse’s mane, Woodcock came back to reality. Swinging his head around, he saw Gilpin and Hogger Smith blasting at the onrushing riders behind, and he identified the massive, purple-shirted figure of Hank Brazos astride his appaloosa.
That was enough for Arnold. There might have been one brief, crazy time when he’d actually believed he had what it took to become a genuine bad man, but not anymore. He was little Arnold Woodcock, a boozer and dirt farmer, and more than anything he wanted to stay alive so he could go back to being just that.
Arnold was dead sober and as frightened as he’d ever been in his life, but somehow he found the nerve to reef his horse sideways as Barton Frank pitched lifeless from the saddle. He heeled wildly away from the blasting guns.
“Turk!” Shorty Gilpin roared above the thunder of Colts and the drumbeat of hooves. “Turk, what the—”
Gilpin’s shout was chopped off as the lead found him. Until then, Benedict and Brazos had had to fire with care for fear of hitting Woodcock, but now they were able to unleash full firepower, and a lethal volley it was. Gilpin was punched over his racing horse’s head and as the smoking Colts swung on the last survivor, big Hogger Smith dropped his Colt, leaned over his horse’s neck and raked viciously with his spurs.
There was no point in pursuing Smith as he went hammering across the prairie heading for the Atlantic Ocean. Holstering smoking guns, Benedict and Brazos hauled their horses to a halt as white-faced Woodcock rode up.
“Duke! Hank!” he panted, overcome with gratitude. But the joy of reunion was a one-sided thing.
Benedict and Brazos were sitting their saddles looking down with grim faces at the dead, and then they were staring cold-eyed at the cause of it all. Brazos juggled the gun in his big fist and the look in his eyes sent a tremor through Woodcock’s runty frame.
“Fellers, I’m sorry,” he whined. “I know I shouldn’t have got mixed up with them fellers and tried to rob the bank, but ...” His voice trailed away.
“Yeah, we’re sorry, too, Woodcock,” Brazos said flatly.
Duke Benedict took his eyes off the dead and hipped around in the saddle to see the riders coming from the distant town. “It could have been worse,” he reflected philosophically. “It could have been a hell of a lot worse.” He turned and gestured east. “Let’s ride.”
Perona was quiet in the gray light of pre-dawn The false-fronts stood tall and the tin roofs gleamed the color of gunmetal. Nobody was abroad. Perona was locked in exhausted sleep after the most eventful night in its history. The posse men had returned at four with the bodies of the dead outlaws—and no Turk Jory. It was a time of peace after all the violence, a time for cats to prowl, when the early rising dogs had the run of the streets. From a hundred windows drifted the sound of heavy sleep. The air was fresh and cool. Coyotes started singing far out on the flats, and, as if that was his signal, old Shep Beckett, the man who was letting everything go, emerged from his shack behind the general store to blink owlishly at the big hitch rack in front of the hotel.
Sheriff Gulliver was sitting slumped across his desk at the jailhouse when he heard running feet on the street. All Perona might have slept, but the sheriff had not closed his eyes. He’d been there brooding under the massive weight of his misfortunes all night long. He’d even been too disgusted to upbraid the deputy when the man returned with the posse two hours back. And, all things considered, he could hardly be blamed for not showing much pleasure when Shep came rushing in, blabbering like a fool.
When he was drunk, which was most of the time, Shep was quite lucid. But, at this time of day and under the stress of shock, he was anything but. Gulliver caught something about a hitching post, and then, “It’s him, Sheriff!”—but he wasn’t much interested. However, when the old boozer showed no sign of shutting up or going away, he rose wearily and went outside to see What the hell it was that had stirred the man up.
Still brooding, he made his elephantine way along the main stem. In the dim light he could see the hitching post in front of the hotel, but it wasn’t until he was close that he realized somebody was squatting against it. He halted, frowned, then went forward cautiously. Now he could see that the man sitting on the ground against the post, was securely roped to it.
Gulliver felt the tingle in his flesh as he halted. Something clicked in his head when he caught the dull, burnished gleam of red hair, then the man turned to him and his blood ran cold.
It was Turk Jory!
The sheriff gulped as he met that baleful glare. Then his gaze swept around. He was looking for another one.
But there was only one, and he mouthed a bitter curse as the lawman approached, trembling with disbelief and excitement.
“Jory?” he said softly.
“Why don’t you go and cut a vein, you gross-gutted, over-stuffed son of a lawdog bastard?”
It sounded like Jory. It looked like Jory. But how could he be sure? How could a man who had endured such humiliation and frustration from a surfeit of Turk Jorys, be really sure?
Suddenly he knew how.
Hesitantly, almost afraid of what the result might be, he drew his big six-gun. His hand shook a little as he poked the weapon at the angry face. The bound man’s head jerked forward and his big teeth snapped as he tried to bite the taunting gun.
Sheriff Seth Gulliver felt a lump rise in his fat throat. He didn’t know why or how this miracle had taken place, but this was Turk Jory—a fact that made him feel twenty years old and a slim, youthful 130 pounds.
A tear of happiness ran down Sheriff Seth Gulliver’s fat cheek as the sun came over the rim to bathe his happy world in soft light.
Standing by his horse in the grassy basin far to the north of Perona, Benedict counted money into Arnold Woodcock’s greedy hand and said, “You don’t deserve it, Woodcock. But we agreed on a three-way split and that’s what you’ve got. You should be able to stay drunk for years on that.”
Beaming ear to ear, Woodcock thrust the money into his pants pocket, then he suddenly scowled and jerked a six-gun from inside his shirt.
“I plan to stay drunk all my life, Benedict, you high-steppin’ cardshark! Hand over the rest!”
It was seldom that Duke Benedict could be taken totally by surprise, but he was the most stunned man in all Diablo Valley as he stared at the naked gun and the hard face behind it. The second most bewildered man in the valley stood at his shoulder with his jaw hanging open.
“Arnold!” Brazos gasped.
“Turk,” the redhead said.
Suddenly the man with the gun was laughing fit to kill. He passed the Colt across to Benedict. “Hey, it was only a gag, feller,” Woodcock chortled. “I feel so damned good this mornin’ I just had to have me a little fun.”
Benedict and Brazos exchanged a glance. Then Benedict said, “Wait a minute. The gun. You’re scared to death of guns.”
“Was,” the grinning Woodcock corrected. “But I had Gulliver jab that Colt of his at me so often yesterday when he was tryin’ to find out which one of us was Jory that I guess it plumb wore off. I knew I was over it last night when Gilpin shoved a gun into my fist after we busted out and I never even worried about it.” Woodcock stopped laughing. “Hey, why are you lookin’ at me like that, fellers? Surely you don’t reckon ?”
Benedict snapped his fingers. “Reb, get some whisky.”
“Now don’t be loco,” Woodcock said as Brazos went to his saddlebags. “I’m Arnold. You left Jory back at Perona trussed up like a hog.”
Stony-faced, Brazos came back with a flask. He knocked off the cork and thrust it into Woodcock’s hands. “Drink, joker.”
“But there’s no need for—”
“Drink!” two voices said in unison.
Reluctantly Woodcock tipped the bottle to his lips, then lowered it. They waited. Woodcock’s nose wrinkled. His eyes closed. A shattering sneeze rent the air.
“Well, I guess that does it,” said Brazos.
“I guess it does,” Benedict added.
Even so, they kept Arnold Woodcock riding ahead of them all the way back home to Hatch.