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“I hope Victor will be fine,” Rattigan said, facing Marshal Bishop through the bars. “It was an accident.”
“That makes you the most accident-prone man I’ve ever met,” Bishop said. “You accidentally brought a gunslinger back to town. Then you accidentally started a fight in the Sagebrush saloon. Now you’ve accidentally accosted the railroad boss.”
When Rattigan’s cellmate, the burly Thornton Packer, grunted with irritation, Rattigan decided the best way to deal with the accusation was lightly, as the story Victor must have told Bishop would have been at odds with what had actually happened. He shrugged and lowered his tone to a concerned one.
“I was heading to the station, but I wasn’t looking where I was going and I bumped into Victor.” He rubbed a bruise on his elbow and gave a hopeful smile. “I reckon I hurt myself as much as I hurt him.”
“You’re right about that. When I found Victor helping you to your feet, he was so groggy it looked like you’d dropped on him from a great height.”
Rattigan couldn’t think of an appropriate response so Bishop headed away from the cells. When the door between the jailhouse and the law office closed, Rattigan lay on his cot. Worryingly, Warner Earhart was in the next cell, and he clambered on to the cot that stood nearest to him and spoke quietly.
“I doubt Bishop will accept your excuses. He pulled me in for being one of the ringleaders behind the saloon brawl.” He gestured at the other cells and at Thornton, who was lying on his cot with his back turned, although he was so still he was clearly listening to him. “Most of these men are from that fight.”
As Rattigan remembered Thornton from the fight, he resolved to avoid catching his eye. He lay on his back and tried to will himself to sleep. With the many unresolved questions of the last few days, this proved to be hard and it was long into the night before he dozed, and even then he awoke to every sound in the jailhouse.
So he was already alert when at first light a creak sounded nearby, although he was surprised when two hands slapped down on his collar and hoisted him off his cot. He had just registered that his cellmate had accosted him when Thornton pressed him up against the bars.
“I’ve got a message from Victor,” Thornton said. “He says you stole something from him.”
Rattigan slapped his hands to Thornton’s wrists and tugged, but he couldn’t dislodge him and that only encouraged Thornton to gather a tighter grip and shove him up the bars until he was on tiptoes.
“I’ve got a message for Victor,” Rattigan said. “If you harm me, he won’t get it back.”
“That’s the wrong answer.” Thornton straightened his arms, thrusting Rattigan off the floor and mashing his head up against the cell roof. “If you’re dead, you won’t be able to use it.”
Thornton’s stranglehold around his collar was so tight, motes of light danced between them and Rattigan could draw in only a reedy breath. Blackness clawed at his vision, but then the pressure released when Thornton tossed him aside.
Rattigan slammed into the bars on the opposite side of the cell before sliding down them to lie in a heap on the floor. Thornton then loomed over him. Figuring that soon he’d be too weak to fight back, he flexed his shoulders and put all his strength into a manic charge.
He kicked off from the floor and, with his arms raised, he drove into Thornton’s hips and shoved him across the cell. Thornton stepped backward until he walked into the bars, but he recovered quickly and hammered two bunched fists down on Rattigan’s shoulders tearing him free.
Rattigan went to his knees where he struggled to gather enough energy to move away from his opponent, but Thornton didn’t take advantage of his weakened state, as behind him in the next cell, Warner had wrapped an arm around his neck through the bars.
“Give up or I tighten my grip,” Warner said.
Thornton shook himself, but when he failed to dislodge Warner, he slumped and gave a brief nod. Warner held on to him until Rattigan had moved back to his cot. Then he withdrew his arm. Thornton stood for a while, seemingly weighing up his chances, until he smirked.
“Neither of us are going nowhere, and your friend can’t protect you forever,” he said.
Thornton feinted a lunge at Rattigan, making him draw his legs up. He laughed confidently at his reaction before he headed back to his cot. Rattigan murmured his thanks to Warner.
When he settled down, he figured his only hope was to ask the marshal to move him to another cell. As the other prisoners had barely reacted to the fight, he presumed such incidents were common.
So he had yet to think of a valid argument that might persuade Bishop to listen to him when the marshal returned to the jailhouse. Lurking behind him was Deputy Crane, who was shaking his head with his shoulders hunched. As he had done in the railroad office, Bishop paraded down the row of cells, ensuring he had everyone’s attention.
“This morning I have eight prisoners,” he said. “That’s twice the number of bounty hunters who have collected information about Corbin Metz.”
Bishop smiled, as if he expected them to work out what was on his mind, but the prisoners stood sullenly until Orville Grant spoke up. He was a burly overseer who had whipped one of his charges half to death with a knotted rope for going to sleep on the job.
“All we care about is seeing eight breakfasts,” he said.
The prisoners laughed so Bishop raised a bunch of keys. His confident demeanor killed off the laughter.
“You could enjoy those meals as free men.”
“You’ve got our attention,” Orville said.
“You can leave your cells, the crimes you’ve committed will be ignored and you can earn some easy money. All you have to do in return is one simple thing.”
Bishop’s offer was so surprising that nobody spoke as he walked back along the row of cells to join Crane. The deputy sighed before Bishop faced the prisoners, giving Rattigan a warning that the offer might not be as good as it had sounded so far.
“Bring in Corbin Metz,” Bishop declared.
Derision broke the tension as the prisoners poured scorn on the offer. While Crane provided a knowing smile, everyone vied with each other to shout the loudest and to be the most scathing. Despite the catcalling, Bishop maintained a disconcerting calmness that made the laughter die out.
“If you do this, you’ll receive a share in the two-thousand-dollar bounty on Corbin’s head,” he said when he had quiet.
“If we were stupid enough to take that offer, we’d be the ones doing the dying,” Orville said.
“If you don’t take it, you’re the stupid ones.” Bishop chuckled. “Corbin has been killed. So you only have to bring in his dead body, and even you good-for-nothing varmints should be able to do that.”
The cheer that erupted confirmed the prisoners thought so, too. The merriment soon spread to Thornton, who turned to Rattigan.
“The best thing about this mission is I’m sure to get an opportunity to kill you,” he said with a grin.
––––––––
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Sister Mary said after relating the result of her meeting with Marshal Bishop. “You only lost an arm.”
“I lost more than that,” Bradley said.
“The marshal said that although he was grateful for what you did, the bounty would be paid to whoever brought in Corbin Metz. You didn’t do that.” Mary firmed her jaw as she failed to hide her disgust at Bradley’s activities. “Although no doubt someone will rectify your failure soon.”
“That won’t be me. My partner’s dead, and I’m half dead.” With his lip curled in disgust Bradley gestured at his body using his left hand, but when Mary shook her head, he sighed, chiding himself for being relentlessly negative. “I’m obliged you told me the truth, but you can go now.”
Bradley turned his head away making the sister mutter to herself. Then she came around the bed.
“Despite your disrespectful attitude,” she declared, “you appear to be a resourceful man who’ll cope with his new situation.”
Bradley fingered his flattened jacket sleeve. “I was once a resourceful man. You made sure I’ll never be that again.”
“When I first examined you, your arm was already dead. We had to take it or by now you’d be dead, too. Even then, we still had to remove a bullet from your chest, and wounds like that are serious enough to kill most men. So be grateful for the gift our Lord has bestowed upon you.”
“I’m trying,” Bradley snapped.
She pursed her lips as she presumably reconsidered her approach, although unfortunately that resulted in her becoming more pious.
“With one good arm, there are many useful things you can do in the service of our Lord.”
“I lost my right arm. I’m right-handed. When I got shot up, I was serving the Lord by tracking down a man for the bounty.”
“As I told you, there are many useful things you can do.”
Bradley forced a thin smile. “Name one.”
Mary softened her expression from her usual scowl to a more benign frown.
“I don’t know who saved your life. They placed you outside the mission door and left before we saw them. Finding them and conveying your gratitude would be a start.”
Bradley had been nodding in a distracted way, but Mary’s final comment made him flinch.
“Whoever they are, they didn’t claim the bounty,” he mused.
When Mary didn’t reply, Bradley flashed her a smile and settled down on his bed. Presently, she left him and, with no distractions, his mind raced. His two saviors didn’t appear to have told Marshal Bishop about Corbin, so they might not have found his body.
Even better, they might have found it, but they hadn’t known who he was and they’d buried him. If Corbin’s body was no longer lying in the saloon in Red Creek, it would take whoever got there first to claim it a while to find out where it’d been buried.
So if he were lucky, he could still be the one who brought it back to Bear Rock. He also had a way to start his search as, when he’d been dragged out of the saloon, he had been sufficiently conscious to hear his saviors talking, and if he heard their voices again, he’d recognize them.
Calmer now, he accepted his situation wasn’t as hopeless as he’d first thought, but he could only rectify matters if he healed quickly. So for the first time since his accident, he examined his left hand and flexed the fingers as he wondered how effective the hand was.
“I don’t know where you are, Corbin, but I hope you’re rotting in hell,” he said.