33

“You’re all under arrest.”

Becky London giggled, clapped a hand over her mouth.

Hammett grinned. It was the first flash of humor to appear on the girl’s grave pretty face.

Siringo told him to keep still.

Hammett was straddling a chair in the cottage kitchen, stripped to the waist, gripping the back of the chair with both hands, as the old Pinkerton finished cleaning his wound with hydrogen peroxide. Hammett’s skin jumped at the contact.

They had a clear view through the doorway into the dining room/parlor of Vernon Dillard and his men standing unarmed with their hands raised, staring at the weapons in the hands of the grim-faced ranch laborers, the shotgun Charmian held. The residents of Beauty Ranch had kept the posse at bay while Siringo climbed down from the concrete silo and up the wooden one to assist Hammett.

Dillard repeated his announcement.

“Did you bring that warrant?” Charmian asked.

“No, ma’am, I sure didn’t. I don’t need no scrap of paper to keep the peace in my county.”

“The law says you do. It says also that a citizen has the right to defend herself on her own property with all force necessary against an armed intrusion.”

“Those men in the kitchen don’t live here. They ain’t got the right to attack a sheriff and his deputized officers.”

“They do, because I asked them to help. But the only attacking done here was by you and your men, including that creature of yours on the silo.”

“He ain’t my creature. I don’t even know who he is.”

“Then you’re a fool as well as a liar. You brought him here, turned him loose on my property, and you claim he’s a stranger. On whose authority did you take that chance?”

“You can’t prove I did nothing of the kind.”

“It’s a small village. I imagine someone saw you both in the car.”

“Anybody says he did’s a damn liar.”

Becky seemed to grow weary of the circling conversation. She came into the kitchen. “Is it bad?”

“It’s never good when metal hits flesh.” Siringo unwound two yards of gauze from the roll from the first-aid kit and tore it loose with his teeth; the ones up front were complete and sound. “It’s just luck the man that shot him was using a pistol. It was near the end of its range and the slug only went in an inch: A rifle round would of gone straight through and come out the front. It’s there in the basin if you like souvenirs.”

She looked at the bloody lump of lead and shuddered. “No, thank you.”

Hammett said, “Good. I’ll hang it on my watch chain.”

“You’ll need it. Your bump of good fortune’s big as mine, but I wouldn’t trust it.”

“I should be the one tending him,” Becky said.

“All due respect, miss, you’re a whiz with a blistered foot and a cracked head, but I was patching up gunshot wounds when your father was in knickers. I’m good for something, if not sharpshooting. Good thing I tried for the back and not the head, or I’d of got sky. Mr. Hammett done the rest with his pocket jewelry.”

“It was too good for him at that. I wish he’d kept breathing long enough to take the same trip he sent me on.”

“That ain’t Christian, boy.”

“Daddy would approve,” Becky said. “He believed in praying only to humanity.”

Charmian’s voice rose in the other room.

“I will offer you a bargain, Sheriff. Tell me who sent you and I’ll promise not to prosecute.”

“Nobody sent me. A complaint was made and I carried it out.”

“Very well.” She turned. “Becky, use the telephone and get Mr. Rance at the Morning Call. He was an admirer of your father’s. I doubt even Mr. Clanahan’s friends in Sacramento will interfere with the process of justice once the world’s read about the Battle of Beauty Ranch.”

Dillard’s big face lost its high color, but only for a moment.

“You don’t want to do that. There’s a little matter of a murder committed.”

She slid her gaze along the men of the posse, shifting their weight from foot to foot with their hands near the ceiling.

“You all saw what happened. Will you testify under oath that Mr. Siringo acted from any other motive than to defend his partner’s life from a man who will certainly prove to have been implicated in murders of his own?”

To a man they all looked down at the floor.

“Mr. Siringo, what’s the penalty for perjury in a homicide trial?”

“I can’t answer for today, but in my time it was the rope, same as accomplice to murder.”

“We’ll err on the side of mercy and agree it’s life imprisonment. Gentlemen, I ask you, is it worth it?”

“It wasn’t murder. It was kill or see murder done.”

The man who had raised his eyes to hers was the man in the tweed suit Siringo had sent scurrying back to the trees with one shot. His pugnacity seemed to have been spent in that failed attempt at glory.

“Becky, place that call.”

“Hang on.” Siringo had tied off the bandage binding the gauze to Hammett’s shoulder. He stepped into the main room, looking up at the ceiling. There was a yawing noise just above the roof, close enough to vibrate the panes in the cottage windows.

Charmian said, “There’s a private aerodrome just down the road. We’re always being disturbed by amateur pilots pretending to be Eddie Rickenbacker. It upsets the hogs.”

He went to the window and looked out. “You better hope this one’s no tenderfoot. He’s coming in for a landing, and them hills don’t look any too accommodating.”

Charmian leaned her shotgun in a corner beyond reach of the captives and joined him at the window, followed by Becky and Hammett, drawing on one of Jack London’s shirts. It was too big in the collar and too short in the sleeves.

It was dusk and the biplane had its running lights on, but its pale fabric-covered wings and fuselage were visible in the rays of the setting sun. It flew east. It seemed to float entirely on the air, a fragile-looking thing of wood and canvas that resembled nothing so much as a box kite. The moaning sound of its engines seemed separate from the craft, as if added as an afterthought, in case it failed to stay aloft forever on nothing more substantial than warm air from the ground. It bore no markings.

It descended gradually, the wings dipping on the right side, then trading places with the left by way of some adjustment by the pilot. Just as the wheels seemed about to touch ground, its engines swelled and the nose pointed skyward, placing more space between it and the horizon. It shrank in the distance, then turned back westward, its nose flashing as it caught the sunlight. From that point on it seemed to grow steadily, its propellers roaring louder, its course stable, wobbling only when its wheels encountered a wave of heat escaping from the earth. They touched down, bounced, touched again and stayed. Siringo heard the hogs squealing and snuffling in the pens.

The plane continued directly toward the cottage, its engines slowing, until it turned in a lazy half-circle facing east again and then there was silence. The propellers slowed, seemed to rotate briefly in the opposite direction, and stopped.

The man in the front cockpit vaulted down to the ground easily and strode around the machine, working the tail rudder manually and kicking the tires. The man in the rear climbed out more awkwardly, found his land legs, and started toward the cottage, unstrapping his leather helmet, which didn’t match his business suit. The last patch of scarlet sunlight flashed off the round lenses of his spectacles.

“Well, scald me live and call me pork,” Siringo said. “I never saw such a one for gall since Billy Bonney.”

“Who is it?” Charmian asked.

Hammett’s teeth bared in a wolfish grin.

“It’s himself. Joseph P. Kennedy, Senior.”