‘How old are you?’ Bill asked, rubbing the goose egg on the back of his head. He had a splitting headache, and would not have been at all surprised if the blow to the head had left lasting damage.
‘I’m sixteen,’ Henry said, himself speaking through swollen and stinging lips.
‘Sixteen,’ Bill clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and then wished he hadn’t when the sound reverberated around his skull like gunfire. ‘And whatever possessed yourself this afternoon?’
The kid stared at Bill, incomprehension in his battered eyes.
‘What made you do it?’ Bill asked, translating into the idiot.
‘I wanted to kill Caleb Stanton,’
‘I gathered that much. Why though is the question?’
‘He disrespected my ma,’ was all the kid would say on the matter.
‘You two pipe down in there,’ came the sheriff’s harsh voice from the front of the building.’ The jailhouse doubled up as the sheriff’s office with the cells at the rear of the building and the office and living quarters out front.
‘Sheriff,’ Bill shouted and immediately had to grip his head against the pain the utterance caused. He made a mental note not to shout again for some considerable time.
Clumsily, his protruding gut colliding with several items of furniture, the sheriff came through from the front of the building and stood looking in through the cell doors.
‘You two ain’t a nice sight,’ the lawman said, spat tobacco juice onto the floor wiped the remaining spittle from his mouth with the back of a hand, and grinned.
‘I’d like some coffee, please,’ Bill said. ‘Strong, black and a cool compress for my head. The head you so kindly bashed in.’
‘Mister, you do talk gibberish,’ the sheriff said. He was a big man, both in height and girth, and aged somewhere around the mid Fifties. His head was perfectly bald and his protruding ears, made him look slightly ridiculous. He had small piggy brown eyes, and a bulbous nose. Beneath that nose he wore a fine looking, slate grey moustache. ‘You want coffee. I’ll get you coffee.’
‘Ddiolch ch’,’ Bill said and closed his eyes against the glaring daylight that came through the cell windows with all the subtlety of an old maid late for church on a Sunday morning.
‘I want to thank you,’ Henry said.
Bill turned his head and looked at the kid, the severity of his beating shocked Bill all over again. His young face looked as if a mule had kicked him.
‘Think nothing of it, boyo,’ Bill said and moaned when a fresh pain of pain rebounded within his head.
‘Are you a gunfighter,’ the kid asked, presently.
‘No,’ Bill groaned some more. ‘I’m a gambler.’
‘You handle your guns pretty good.’
‘I handle my cards better,’ Bill said. ‘The only bullets I’m interested in is a pair of Aces in the hole.’
The sheriff returned with the coffee, filled two tin mugs and slid them beneath the cell bars.
‘Drink up, boys,’ he said.
Bill crawled over to the coffee and drunk the mug in one go. He slid the mug back under the bars for a refill, and when the sheriff obliged he sipped the second mug.
He immediately felt a little better.
‘Smoke?’ he asked.
The sheriff frowned and went back through to the front and then a moment later returned with the makings. He slid them under the cell doors.
‘You sure are a lot of trouble,’ the lawman said.
‘I don’t mean to be,’ Bill replied and quickly put together a quirly. He looked around for a match, saw none and then looked again at the sheriff. And once more the lawman vanished and then reappeared with a match, which he again slid beneath the cell door.
‘Ddiolch ch,’ Bill said and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He coughed violently and then when his head cleared, the world seemed a much more stable place. The ground had stopped spinning in any case.
‘What gibberish is that?’ the sheriff asked.
‘It means, obliged,’ Bill said.
‘Well can’t you just say what you mean?’
‘I thought I had.’
‘Sheriff, can I have one of those,’ the kid had drained his coffee and pointed to the sheriff’s makings that were on the floor by Bill’s feet.
‘You old enough to smoke, boy?’
‘Sure am,’ Henry said, indignantly.
‘Then go ahead,’ the sheriff said. ‘If it means you two will give me some peace.’
‘What happens to us now?’ Bill asked.
‘You stand trial,’ the sheriff said.
‘For what?’
The sheriff looked at the Welshman for a moment before answering. He certainly was the oddest man he had ever come across.
‘Disturbing the peace, ‘ the sheriff said. ‘Threatening behavior, attempted murder.’
‘Attempted murder?’ Bill coughed and it hurt to do so. ‘I didn’t attempt to murder anyone.’
‘Not you, him,’ the sheriff pointed to the kid. ‘ Over a dozen people heard him say he was going to kill Mr. Stanton.’
‘And I’d still kill him given the chance,’ the kid said, which on reflection may not have been the wisest thing to say.
‘I’ll make a note of that,’ the sheriff said. ‘Keep it for the trial.’
‘Don’t matter, no how,’ the kid spat. ‘We’d never get a fair trial in Stanton.’
‘Would we not?’ Bill asked and surreptitiously slid the sheriff’s makings under his leg.
‘We went up against the Stantons,’ the kid said. ‘In a town named Stanton, what do you think?’
Until now, Bill hadn’t considered that. He’d barely taken notice of the town’s name as he’d ridden past the town marker. And back in the saloon, when the kid had challenged that man, calling him Stanton, the Welshman had made no connection. His chief concern had been that his poker game had been interrupted.
‘Duw, duw,’ he said and the kid had a pretty good idea what he meant by it.
‘It was Stantons who built this town,’ Henry said. ‘And Stantons who still run it. See, the sheriff there. One of them Stantons calls and he comes running. The whole town’s in fear of the Stantons.’
‘Shut your mouth, kid,’ the sheriff warned.
Henry ignored the sheriff. ‘Everyone’s afraid to go against the Stantons. They own most of the land around here and that which they do not own they simply take when they get the fancy. They extort money from everyone around here. Insurance, they call it. Those that stand against them usually end up dead or vanished.’
‘I won’t tell you again,’ the sheriff said.
The kid though was headstrong and ignored the lawman. ‘A few people have stood up to the Stantons, but they’ve either suffered some kind of accident or disappeared. The Stantons pretty much do what they want in this town.’
‘Oh well’s that just bloody marvelous,’ Bill grumbled and spirited the sheriff’s makings into his own pocket.