CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IT WAS DECIDED Eli Rayburn would serve as a lookout from a position in front of the livery. If he saw movement or the horses in the corral became suddenly agitated, he was to fire a warning shot to alert Clay and Jonesy.
“Shooting straight up in the air’s about all I’m good for,” he said. “With a little luck I can at least hit the sky.” At sunset he got a lantern from inside, lit it, and set it on his bench alongside his coffeepot. And waited.
A man who had avoided violence all his life, Rayburn had no idea what role he might play in the event that was to unfold. Still, he’d volunteered without hesitation. Madge had been a good friend for years, and though he didn’t know Jennie well, he and her father had come to Tascosa at about the same time and had gotten along well from their first meeting. He’d occasionally had a drink with Jennie’s grandpa after he’d closed the mercantile for the day.
Too, in the brief time he’d known Clay Breckenridge and Jonesy Pate, he’d come to admire them. Watching them as they interacted, joking one minute, arguing the next, made him long for a close friend of his own.
It was well past midnight, and he was fighting to keep from nodding off when the sound of a high-pitched voice sent a chill down his spine.
“Let that shotgun slide to the ground and kick it away,” Top Wilson said. He was pointing his pistol at Eli’s head. “Any coffee left in that pot?”
Wilson had taken a slow zigzag route from his hideaway, sometimes even crawling on hands and knees. When he reached the barn, he slowly slid against the wall that faced away from town. He barely breathed. The familiar night calls of birds and insects were the only sounds Eli heard until Wilson stepped into the yellow light of the lantern and spoke.
Taking Rayburn by the shirt collar, he pulled him inside. “What I’m wanting to know,” Top said, “is who it is down there in the saloon.”
“Saloon’s closed.”
Wilson delivered a backhanded slap that sent Eli to his knees. “I know Jennie’s hiding there, and Madge is likely keeping her company. But who are the menfolk, and what’s their interest in this matter? They part of Baggett’s crew, maybe?”
Still on his knees, Rayburn raised his palms and shrugged. Wilson cursed and kicked him in the chest. “Old man, you’re going to tell me what I’m asking for,” Top said. “Only question is how bad hurt you’re gonna be before you get around to it.” He leaned forward and delivered a stinging blow to the side of Eli’s head, then began to laugh. “I’m in no real hurry, so just go right ahead and bleed all over yourself while I have me some coffee.”
After retrieving the pot and lantern from the bench outside, Wilson squatted in front of the moaning Rayburn. “Hey, I know you, don’t I? It’s you who used to shoe my horses for me back when I was working for that devil down in Palo Duro Canyon.”
And with that, he was again off on a rambling harangue about the evils of Ben Baggett. “I’m going to kill him, you know? Kill him and cut his tongue out. Maybe worse than that. Whatever it will be, I’ll make sure it hurts. But first, I got business to tend to over at the saloon.”
CLAY STEPPED OUT onto the porch and saw that Rayburn’s lantern was no longer burning. The bench was empty. Rushing back inside, he shook the dozing Pate awake and called out to Madge and Jennie.
“Something’s happening,” he said. “Eli’s no longer sitting outside. . . .”
“Could be he just had need to stretch his legs or tend to personal matters,” Jonesy said. “If there was trouble, wouldn’t he have fired a warning shot like we discussed?”
Breckenridge didn’t bother to answer. Nor did he voice his concern that Rayburn might be in serious trouble.
“Madge, you and Jennie go back in the kitchen and stay put. Jonesy, there’s stairs out back that lead up to the roof. Leave Madge her shotgun, and you take my Winchester. Anything you see from up there that doesn’t look right, shoot it.”
Clay positioned himself by the front door, squinting into the darkness. “He’s out there,” he said. “Close.”
WILSON’S PATIENCE HAD run out. He stuffed a gag in Rayburn’s mouth and tied him to a spare wagon wheel that was leaned against the livery wall. “I’d shoot you now and get it done with,” he said, “but I fear the noise would alert your no-name friends.”
Rayburn, unconscious, heard nothing he said.
Wilson struggled to concentrate on his next move, his head throbbing. Why did a simple matter like getting Jennie Broder have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t he just walk up to the front door of the saloon, politely call her name, take her by the hand, and be on their way out of this good-for-nothing town? Why were people always making things hard for him?
Now there was probably going to be shooting and some killing before his job was done.
The more he assessed the situation, the angrier he got. Yet for a moment he was suddenly thinking clearly. He checked that he had ample ammunition for his Peacemaker and filled one of his pockets with shells for Rayburn’s shotgun. Anticipating need for a quick getaway once he had Jennie, he saddled a horse being kept in a nearby stall and tethered it near the livery doorway. Probably a better mount than the one he’d left down in the gulley anyway, he thought.
After taking inventory of his arsenal, he extinguished Rayburn’s lantern and dug in the battered owner’s pockets for his matches. From a shelf, he took down a jug of coal oil.
One way or another he was going to get Jennie and her defenders out of the saloon.
The first shot rang out after he’d made it just a few steps from the livery door. It had come from the rooftop of the saloon and had missed by a considerable margin. Slowed by the load he was carrying, Wilson stumbled to a water barrel and hunched down behind it. More shots kicked up dirt.
In return, Wilson emptied both barrels of Eli’s shotgun toward the roof before abandoning it to lighten his load. “Listen up,” he yelled. “I ain’t aiming to hurt nobody. Just send Jennie out the front door, and we’ll be on our way without nobody getting shot.”
The reply was three quick pistol rounds.
The moonless night and the fact he was wearing all black worked to Wilson’s advantage. Hunched over, he ran toward the mercantile as shots buzzed past. Safely there, he shoved his shoulder into the locked front door, breaking it down. Inside, he knelt beneath a window and fired a rapid volley of shots toward the nowdark saloon.
“Can’t neither of us get a decent shot,” Jonesy said as he moved to sit next to Clay. “From up on the roof, I didn’t even have sight of where he’s holding up.”
“We may be here until daylight,” Clay said. “If he’s got a thought-out plan other than hunkering down and waiting, I got no idea what it might be.” As he spoke, two more shots thudded into the saloon wall.
Wilson, in fact, was already putting a plan in motion. Crawling through the darkness, he found a wooden barrel filled with mops and brooms for sale. Holstering his pistol, he lifted two of the mops, then continued crawling toward the rear of the store, taking with him Eli’s lantern and the coal oil.
He’d decided there were only two people shooting at him from inside the saloon. There had been no activity from the rooftop since he’d reached the mercantile. If Wilson was lucky—and God knew it was time for him to have some luck—the attention of the men shooting at him would remain trained on the front of the store.
Before slipping out the back, he doused the heads of the mops with coal oil. Then, carrying them, the lantern, and the can of fuel, he slowly crept down a pitch-black alleyway that led to the toolshed behind the saloon.
Pate was getting impatient. “I can’t say I don’t mind not being shot at,” he said, “but this waiting makes me nervous. Think we’ve got us a standoff?”
Breckenridge was also getting impatient—and puzzled. He fired a shot in the direction of the mercantile and waited for one in return. Instead, what he heard was the breaking of glass in the back, near the kitchen.
Pressed against the building, Wilson had sloshed the coal oil against the wall until the can was empty. He then lit the lantern and set the heads of the mops afire. He hurled the lantern through a window and tossed the mops, spearlike, onto the roof of the saloon. Finally, he put a match to the wall of the building before running back toward the mercantile.
There was a loud whoosh as the night wind sent flames racing along the wall. Inside, Jennie screamed when smoke began filling the kitchen.
“Oh, my God,” Clay said as he raced toward where the women were hiding. He cursed himself for not having realized the degree of Wilson’s insanity. He thought he heard someone laughing in the distance, yelling, “Now you’ve got to come out.”
Which was true.
Flames were spreading fast, and the smoke was making it difficult to breathe. Jonesy’s eyes were red and watering as he turned to Clay. “What now?”
“I don’t see we’ve got much choice.”
Outside, Wilson had taken advantage of the mayhem to reposition himself behind a water barrel in front of the burning saloon. The night sky had turned red orange as the flames ate away at the ancient lumber. Occasionally, a series of popping sounds could be heard as liquor bottles exploded.
“Come on out, Jennie,” Wilson shouted. “I’m waiting. Come out, come out, wherever you are. . . .”
“We can’t wait any longer,” Clay yelled to Pate. “You and me, we’ll walk out shoulder to shoulder, shielding the women. Figure on starting to shoot as soon as we clear the door, ’cause he’ll most likely do the same. We gotta count on him not taking us both down before one of us kills him.”
When they stepped onto the porch and fired their first shots, Wilson began yelling, “Hey . . . hey . . . let’s don’t have us no gunfight. I ain’t here to kill nobody or be killed myself. I’m protected here, so odds are in my favor. All I want is for Jennie to step forward.”
“Ain’t happening,” Clay replied.
“Then you do your best to shoot me, because I ain’t leaving without her.”
As he spoke, there was a flash of movement in the shadows behind him. In the rush to exit the burning saloon, Madge had turned away from Pate’s protection and slipped out a side window.
Top Wilson was unaware that she was standing behind him when she raised her shotgun and pulled the trigger. It was the first time she’d ever fired it. Instantly, his head disappeared in a crimson burst of blood and torn flesh. For a split second he was a grotesque statue, standing headless, before he pitched forward.
Smoke was still coming from the barrel when Madge let it slide from her hands. She was dazed and crying as she stood, watching her saloon burn, then looking down at Wilson’s limp body.
“Good riddance,” she said.
IN THE LIVERY, Rayburn was struggling to free himself when Clay and Jonesy entered. They untied him and removed the gag. “It’s over,” Clay said.
“Anybody get hurt?”
“Only the man who done this to you. He’s dead.”
Eli smiled. “You finally got him.”
“Nope, wasn’t me.”
Pate brought Jennie and Madge to the livery and did his best to make them comfortable. He tried to lighten the mood, but soon realized it was a futile task. There was little talking. At one point, Jennie walked over and gave Madge a hug and whispered, “Thank you.”
Clay sat near Madge but said nothing, even when she asked Eli if he had some salve and bandages in the livery that she could apply to his wounds. He told her he would find something as soon as he unsaddled the horse Wilson had planned to ride out on and returned it to the stall.
Down the street, the blaze was beginning to go out and would soon be nothing but smoke and embers, a charred hole left in the heart of Tascosa.
The quiet remained throughout the remainder of the night. Daylight would come soon, time enough for talk and considering what the future held.