CHAPTER 5
Most of Flint’s first day on the job was spent calling on all the shops and businesses with Buck to introduce himself as the deputy sheriff. His reception was, in general, one of genuine welcome. He was not a stranger to many of the people, having traded with them for supplies or blacksmith services. Some of the merchants had witnessed his acrobatic response to Jed Tubbs’ attempted escape at the trial and saw a sharp contrast in the two lawmen. Hopefully, the two would prove to work well together and the peaceful reputation of Tinhorn could continue.
On this first day of Flint’s employment, he and Buck ate dinner at Clara’s Kitchen to introduce Clara and her staff to the new deputy.
“Well, you sure went to a lot of trouble just so you wouldn’t have to leave your gun on the table,” Mindy Moore had joked.
As before, the food was excellent, but Flint told Buck he would go back to the boarding house for supper to see how the food compared. That comment brought to mind another subject that Flint wondered about. “What about tonight? I mean, since we’ve got prisoners there in the jail, do you want me to bunk in the office tonight?”
“No,” Buck replied. “There ain’t no need for that. I’ll be right there on the other side of the wall from the cell room.” He laughed and added, “And Roy will be sleepin’ in the office, so he can handle any attempted jail break. No, Roy and I will guard the prisoners. I want you to keep an eye on the town until all the businesses have closed. That is, except Jake’s Place. Sometimes he don’t close until it’s damn-near mornin’. But there ain’t no use in you hangin’ around for some of the town’s old drunks and card players. The only time you might wanna stick around later is if there’s some drifters or saddle tramps you ain’t seen before suddenly showin’ up.”
Flint understood the general nature of his responsibility, so at supper time, he rode Buster back to Hannah’s for supper. He tied the buckskin at the back steps, then removed his gun belt and left it in his room before going into the house.
“Good evening, Flint,” Hannah greeted him when he walked into the dining room. “Sit anywhere you like.”
Three men were already seated. One was smiling at him broadly and Flint recognized him as a clerk he had met in Harper’s Feed and Supply that afternoon. He nodded to him and pulled the closest empty chair back and sat down.
“I hope you like pork chops,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am, I do,” he replied.
“We want to welcome our new guest tonight,” Hannah announced then. “This is Flint Moran, our new deputy sheriff.”
He received a friendly nod and a couple of comments wishing him luck. Then Hannah went to the kitchen door and said, “I think we’re ready to serve, Myrna. Mr. Arthur hasn’t come down yet. He’s havin’ one of his bad days. We might have to put a plate in the oven for him to eat later.”
Myrna went to the door to get a look at the new boarder then turned around and went back to work.
It was a pleasant supper, and the food was good. Flint wished everyone a good evening and excused himself. When he got back to the office, Roy had just returned from Clara’s after leaving the prisoners’ dirty dishes. Buck announced that he was going to retire to his room to study the latest Wanted notices.
“No problem,” Flint said. “I’ll drop my horse off at the stable, then I’ll keep an eye on the town and we’ll see you in the mornin’.”
“Right,” Buck said, “I might just turn in a little early.” He had a feeling that Flint already knew about his need for his medicine, but he was reluctant to own up to it. So he took the easy out Flint offered him.
Flint’s first evening on patrol was an uneventful one as he exchanged pleasantries with several shop owners as they locked up for the night. One of them went to Jake’s Place, instead of home, and Flint walked down there with him, where he politely refused the offer of a drink. He hung around the saloon for a while, talking to Jake then took a walk around town, checking the locked doors.
He could not avoid a question that kept trying to capture his thoughts, until finally, he spoke it aloud. “Is this what you want to do for a living?” I swear, he thought, farming is more exciting than this. He told himself the deputy job was only temporary until he decided what he was going to do for the rest of his life. In the meantime, he would be the best deputy he could be.
After even Jake’s Place closed for the night, he went back to the office where he found the door locked, but not with the padlock on the outside. He took his key, unlocked the door, and went inside where he found Roy asleep on the bench. Moving quietly to the cell room door, Flint unlocked it and took a quick look inside. Both Jed and Ralph appeared to be sleeping, so Flint quietly closed the door and locked it again. Still moving quietly to keep from disturbing Roy, he went out the door and locked it. Everything seemed to be quiet in the jail and in the town, so he figured he could call it a night.
It was a clear night with a half moon shining over the Neches River, and he permitted himself to enjoy it as he walked down the street toward the boarding house. His nine-pound Henry rifle was propped across his shoulder. He had considered leaving the rifle in the office when he made his rounds, but it somehow seemed more official if he was armed for whatever might happen.
No lights were burning in the house when he got there, but he wouldn’t have gone in the front door, anyway. He walked around to the back steps and went inside his room, a little surprised to find that he felt tired. Deciding it was simply because he normally went to bed much earlier, he propped his rifle against the chair, unbuckled his gun belt, and dropped it onto the chair, then sat down on the bed to take his boots off. A few gentle bounces on the bed pleased him to find it comfortable. Lying back, he was asleep before he could help himself.
It would seem the entire town of Tinhorn was fast asleep, but that was not the case. Rodents and varmints of various types were taking advantage of man’s need for sleep at night, one of which was standing in a wagon behind the jail. Tall and thin, Ada Tubbs was able to easily reach the little iron grill that fit inside the tiny window of the cell. Her problem was how to affix the stick she was attempting to tie securely to the grill.
“How much you got?” Jed Tubbs whispered from inside the cell.
“Half a stick,” Ada answered.
“Half a stick? You sure that’s enough?”
“Vike said it was,” Ada responded. “Keep your voice down, or you might not get the chance to find out.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Jed came back. “You could shout and do a little dance on the bed of that wagon and ain’t nobody gonna hear it. The sheriff’s passed out drunk and that old fool, Roy, is asleep. He wouldn’t do nothin’, anyway. So hurry up with that thing.”
“I’m hurryin’ as fast as I can.” A few moments later, she said, “There, that’ll do. It’s as good as I’m likely to get it. Are you and Ralph ready?”
“Near ’bout. Wait till I say when,” Jed replied, still not sure about the half stick. “I hope to hell you got enough.”
“Vike said it was,” Ada repeated.
“I wish he was in here with us,” Jed muttered as he and Ralph hurried to turn their cots over and wrap the mattresses around themselves for protection. “Go ahead!”
Outside on the wagon, Ada tried a couple of matches before she was able to strike one. Cupping her hands to keep it burning, she lifted it up to the fuse. As soon as the fuse sparked into life, she dropped the match, picked up the reins and yelled, “Mule!” punctuating it with a sharp slap of the reins across the mule’s croup.
The mule responded at once, lunging away at a gallop with Ada barely able to slow it down before it had run almost forty yards. She was able to turn the wagon around in time to see the success of her endeavor. Vike was right, it was more than enough dynamite to do the job.
Jerked out of a sound sleep, Flint wasn’t sure what he had heard but knew it was something big. And he assumed, since he was the deputy sheriff, he’d better go find out what had happened. He strapped his gun belt back on, grabbed his rifle, and headed for the jail.
At the scene of the breakout, Jed and Ralph were trying to recover from the explosion that had tossed them against the bars of the cell.
“Dang!” Ralph exclaimed, shaking his head in an effort to stop the ringing in his ears as small pieces of the wall, shattered studs, and siding fell in a smoky fog around him. “You think she used enough dynamite?” On his hands and knees, he stared at the night outside through the opening where half the back wall used to be.
Part of that wall was the corner post that the barred cell wall had been bolted to. The result was not only a casual walk out the back of the jail, but a simple opening around the end of the cell wall to get into the general cell room area. The only problem would be the heavy door that was locked. Their plan had called for the little ventilation window to be blown out, leaving a hole in the wall they could possibly climb up then crawl through. They would jump on the wagon and Ada would drive them to a couple of horses tied near the riverbank.
That plan was suddenly changed. The inconvenience of the heavy locked door was solved for them when they heard Roy frantically trying to unlock the door to the office to see what had caused him to be thrown from the bench in the office. That was a bonus. Although it had not been part of their escape plan, they realized they could now get their weapons. They slid around the loose wall of bars and positioned themselves on each side of the door.
Holding a short length of iron bar that had been pulled loose when the outside wall was blown away, Jed yelled, “Hurry, Roy, we’re dyin’ in here!”
In a few seconds, the door opened, and Roy rushed through, not expecting them to be out of their cell. As he ran past, Jed swung the iron bar as hard as he could swing it, catching Roy on the back of his head, knocking him unconscious.
“Hurry!” Ralph blurted. “Let’s get our guns and get outta here!”
“I wanna make sure this old buzzard is out,” Jed replied and hammered Roy’s head over and over. “He ain’t gonna bother nobody now.”
He ran into the office to find Ralph pulling their weapons out of a cabinet drawer. They strapped on their gun belts, picked up their rifles, then ran back through the destroyed cell room and out the gaping hole in the wall.
“What were you doin’?” Ada asked. “Another minute, and you wouldn’ta found no wagon waitin’ for you.”
“Shut up and get us to those horses,” Jed told her.
She whipped the mule again and drove across the rough ground between the jail and the river.
“Wait a minute!” he yelled. “My hat! I ain’t got my hat.”
“To hell with your hat,” Ada responded. “If you wanna go back to look for it, you can go back by yourself. I’m not goin’ back.”
“She’s right, Jed, we’d best cut outta here while we still can,” Ralph said. “You can buy another hat. With the mess that dynamite made of that cell, you most likely wouldn’t find it, anyway.”
Jed cursed in response but knew they were right. He and Ralph jumped down from the wagon and ran to the horses. Ada whipped the mule and drove it toward the north road out of town. Jed and Ralph passed her on their horses before she reached it.
* * *
Behind them, a half-drunk and totally confused Buck Jackson stumbled to the front door of his office and fumbled with his keys in an effort to unlock the door. He was still trying to fit the right key into the lock a few seconds later when Flint arrived.
“What happened?” Flint asked, but upon seeing immediately that Buck wasn’t sure what was going on, he stepped up to the door beside him. “Here, let me get it.” He inserted his key in the lock and opened the door. Stepping inside, he was met with the smell of gunpowder and a black mist that drifted through the open cell room door. “Oh, hell,” he muttered and cocked his rifle as he headed for the cell room.
“What the—” Buck was forced to struggle in an effort to sober up. “What the hell happened? Are the prisoners okay?”
“We ain’t got any prisoners,” Flint called back. “They’re gone and the whole back side of the jail went with ’em.” He paused, hesitant to report the rest. “That ain’t the worst of it.”
“What is it?” Buck was rapidly being compelled to sober up as he walked through the cell room door to discover Flint kneeling beside a body in the dark ruins, partially lit up by the moonlight coming through the missing wall. “Roy?” Buck asked, knowing it could be no one else.
“It looks like they beat him to death with something heavy,” Flint replied. “It’s hard to tell with it bein’ so dark in here, but that’s what it looks like.”
That was enough to clear Buck’s mind of his drunken state, leaving him with a throbbing headache as he grieved over the unnecessary killing. “There weren’t no call for that,” he mumbled. “Roy wouldn’ta caused them no problem.”
“I wonder how they got him to open the door to the office?” Flint said. “He might notta got hurt at all if he hadn’t unlocked that door.” Like Buck, he was sickened by the vicious murder of the harmless old man. He had only known Roy for a few days but felt the loss of the simple soul just the same, and wanted to make the two responsible for his brutal death pay for it.
Flint got up from his knee, walked through the debris left by the dynamite, and stepped down on the ground through the opening in the wall. He studied the ground behind the building in the faint light provided by the moon.
“Whaddaya see?” Buck asked when he walked back to the open wall.
“Wagon tracks,” Flint answered.
“Ada Tubbs,” Buck muttered. “I shoulda locked that witch up for that trick she pulled at the trial. Shoulda known she weren’t the poor victim of her husband’s abuse, like she made out to be.”
“Ralph and Jed jumped on the wagon and she drove it off that way.” Flint pointed toward the river. “Accordin’ to the tracks, she drove that wagon up behind the buildin’ more than once. She musta lit the fuse on that dynamite and drove away, then came back after it went off.”
“Most likely,” Buck agreed. “I don’t know why I didn’t hear all that goin’ on. I musta been really sleepin’ hard.” He felt a sharp pang of conscience, knowing exactly why he hadn’t heard anything right outside the wall of his quarters. It took a blast of dynamite to wake him from his drunken slumber. And he hadn’t even been in bed. He’d been asleep sitting at the table, his head down on his folded arms.
Flint could readily speculate on Buck’s failure to hear the beginnings of the jailbreak but was not inclined to say so. He’d known what the sheriff’s problem was when he’d decided to take the deputy job, so his immediate feeling was one of frustration. He wanted to give chase, but his horse was in a stall in Lon Blake’s stable, and even if he had his horse, he would unlikely be able to pick up the tracks of Ralph and Jed’s horses in the trees by the river until daylight . . . if even then.
He looked up at Buck standing in the open section of the wall and appearing to still be fighting his demons. “Whaddaya wanna do?” Flint asked. “I can’t do much till daylight, but I can go after them then.”
Buck didn’t answer immediately. When he did, he was really thinking out loud. “As sheriff, I’ve got no jurisdiction outside the town of Tinhorn, so I’m supposed to report their escape to the U.S. marshal, and it’s his job to catch ’em. Him or the Texas Rangers.” He turned to look at Roy’s body lying back near the door. “But it’s a different story now. Now, it’s a case of murder.”
“You can send me to track ’em,” Flint said. “I’ll bring ’em back, one way or another.”
“There are two of ’em and the woman makes three,” Buck replied. “I expect we’d both better go after ’em.”
“Might be best if I just went alone,” Flint said. “As sheriff, you’re hired to watch the town. It might not be good if both of us are gone. And, like you said, you ain’t got no authority to make arrests outside the city limits of Tinhorn.”
Buck knew Flint was right. He shouldn’t leave the town without a lawman, but it was such a senseless slaying of a harmless old man nothing short of a hanging would satisfy him. He looked at his newly hired deputy he thought of as a young mountain lion. Although he had no knowledge of Flint’s skill as a tracker, he would not be surprised if tracking was one more of his talents.
Buck hesitated. “I don’t know, Flint. They might be more than one man can handle.”
“I’ll bring ’em back,” Flint said again. “I did it when they stole my cows. They won’t all three stay together. Ada will go home to her daddy’s, and we can worry about her after we catch up with Jed and Ralph.”
“All right,” Buck said after a short pause. “You’re gonna be too early to get anything to eat, but Lon will be openin’ the stable right at sunup. You can get your horse then. You got anything at all to eat?”
“I’ve got some deer jerky in my saddlebags,” Flint recalled. “That’ll be enough to hold me for a while.”
With nothing else for them to do until daylight, they turned the cots back up and returned the mattresses on top. They carried Roy’s body into the exploded cell and laid it on a cot. Buck said he would get Walt Doolin, the town undertaker—and resident barber—to come pick up the body. He could push his little handcart around back and load the body out the back of the cell.
They lit a lamp and began picking up anything usable after the explosion, but little was salvageable in the outside cell.
“Here’s what they used to kill Roy,” Flint declared as he held the short length of iron bar up to show Buck.
It still had blood and patches of gray hair on the end of it. The sight of it was enough to raise the temperature in the veins of both men.
“We’re gonna need a new jail,” Flint said as if to remind Buck, in case he hadn’t thought about it.
“I reckon I’ll get Nolan Carson over here this mornin’ and have him work up a price to build a solid wall across the back. One without a window,” Buck decided. “That’ll give the town council something to complain about. Good thing we got you hired before this happened. At least the inside cell didn’t get tore up. Any arrests we make till we get this fixed, we’ll have one cell to lock ’em up in. They’ll have a great big view out the back till Nolan gets a back wall built, but they’ll be locked up. If we get too many for that one cell, we’ll have to put ’em in the storeroom behind Harper’s.”
They started back to the office and Buck took one more look at Roy’s body on the cot. “Reckon I’ll have to make my own coffee from now on.”