Duncan’s numbness did not leave him for a long time. He lay there upon his pallet watching that sun shaft climb the forward wall beyond his cell with a kind of apathy holding him tightly in its grip. Even when old Parton asked again for some tobacco he didn’t move.
Parton said complainingly: “Listen, boy, that’s the way the cards fall. Ain’t much sense in bein’ all hateful-like about it.”
“Shut up!”
“Now put yourself in my boots, boy. You’d do as much if it was your son. Y’know you would.”
“You damned old goat!”
“So what’s a little tobacco?”
Duncan rolled his head to see if old Parton was sincere in this. He was. At least his expression was droll and relaxed, as though he were discussing something of no very great importance.
“Old man,” growled Duncan. “I don’t know what it was the Lord left out when he put you together, but whatever it is, I’m sure thankful he didn’t leave it out of more folks.”
Parton judged this remark thoughtfully before saying: “Son, you ain’t ever going to use up all that tobacco, anyway. Why, this time tomorrow I could be rollin’ me a smoke out of that sack and sayin’ a little prayer over the freshly turned earth you’ll be under. Now you just try and name me one other person in this whole of the countryside who’d do that much for you. Name me just one.”
Duncan rolled his head away from Parton. Outside somewhere, he heard some whooping cowboys lope into town. There were other sounds to hear, also. This was all he had to occupy himself with unless he continued morbidly to dwell upon that narrowing slot in time that was his own dwindling lifespan.
Some men were hammering westerly from the jailhouse. Abruptly a dog fight erupted outside in the back alley and shrill boyish voices broke out in accompaniment.
Duncan was lying there cataloging all these homely sounds and did not hear the cellblock door open. He was unaware that he and old Parton were not alone until Sheriff Berryhill said from outside: “Parton, I’ve got to warn you. There’s a lot of feeling in town about you.”
Duncan rose up, saw Berryhill’s uneasy expression, felt something like ice water drip down his spine, and got to his feet as the lawman resumed speaking.
“Folks are put out because the judge had one of his spells. If we could’ve held the trial like I wanted, early this morning, it’d all be over by now and none of the riders from the outlyin’ cow outfits would be ridin’ in, tankin’ up at the saloons, and talkin’ about a lynch party.”
Then old Parton got up and padded forward to press his shaggy face against the bars. It was difficult to see expression in his hawkish, hairy face, but Duncan thought Parton had a suddenly alert and concerned expression in his cold eyes.
“You warnin’ us, Sheriff?” the old man asked, his voice sharp.
Berryhill nodded, looking dourly from one to the other. “You got a right to know,” he stated.
Duncan said: “How bad is it?”
“Not bad yet and I’ve got Thorne out there trying to talk it down, but these things got a way of snowballing. It’s my duty to warn you, just like it’s my duty to do everything a man can to prevent trouble.”
“How many cowboys, Sheriff?”
Berryhill wagged his head back and forth. “Enough,” he muttered. “They’re still ridin’ in. That’s what Jack and I don’t like. By afternoon there’ll be a sizeable crowd of ’em.”
“And the townsmen?” asked Duncan.
“Yeah, a lot of them, too.”
“You got a telegraph office in Leesville!” Duncan exclaimed. “What the hell are you waiting for ... send for US marshals or soldiers.”
Berryhill put his skeptical eyes upon Duncan. “How’d you know we had a telegraph office? You told us you’d never been in Leesville in your life, remember?”
“That priest told me,” snapped Duncan. He threw a look at old Jeremiah in the next cell. “Didn’t he, Parton?”
“Well now, son, not that I heard, but then maybe he did and I just wasn’t listening real good.”
Duncan’s face gradually got brick red. He’d done it again. He’d walked right into another of the old man’s sly traps. He reached forth, gripped the cell bars with both fists, and squeezed until his knuckles showed white from the straining.
Sheriff Berryhill saw this fierce anger, ignored it, and swung all their thoughts back to his particular dilemma by saying: “If worst comes to worst, Jack and I’ve worked out a way of slippin’ you two out the back way and over to the next county for safekeeping. But that’s just in case ... I don’t figure we’ll have too much trouble until about three o’clock, and by then the judge ought to be feelin’ well enough to get court convened. If he does, that’ll be the end of this other trouble.”
“Yeah,” grated Duncan. “It sure will be the end, won’t it? Why didn’t you tell me your ‘sort of’ judge was that dead expressman’s brother-in-law?”
“I knew what you’d say, that’s why. But I’ll tell you this ... I’ve known Walter Sheay for twenty years. Where the law is concerned, he wouldn’t bat an eye at sentencing his own mother.”
Duncan let off a big sigh. He kept staring at Berryhill with futility filling him until he could have choked on it. “Why don’t you just let ’em hang me?” he said in a dull tone. “Get this damned farce over with.”
The husky sheriff nodded faintly with his gaze hardening against Duncan. “If I wasn’t behind this badge, Parton, I almost think I might go along with that suggestion. But since I am behind it ... no lynchings in my town, not even when they deserve it.”
Berryhill walked away.
Jeremiah Parton came to Duncan’s separating steel partition. He was no longer in his customary raffish, sly, and vicious mood. He looked in at the younger man from very sober and thoughtful eyes.
“You ever seen a lynchin’, boy?” he asked. When Duncan neither answered nor faced around, Parton emphatically bobbed his head up and down. “I have, and let me tell you, there’s nothin’ about ’em to joke over.”
Duncan twisted, saw Parton’s anxiety plain as day, and for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours he smiled. “Care for some of that tobacco now, you were so plumb sure you’d be smoking over my grave tomorrow?”
“You listen to me, boy, this here ain’t funny. There’s only that sheriff and his deputized friend out there. And I’ve seen brick buildings like this one dynamited before.”
Duncan went right on smiling. “Hell, old man, you wanted to buy your boy some time. I can’t think of a better way than by you doing the rope dance beside me tonight.”
Parton shot Duncan a venomous look, swung around, and began pacing across his cell. He continued to pace for some time, occasionally halting to cock his head in a listening fashion, before he would begin to cover the distance of floor again.
Duncan worked up a smoke, lit it, and blew smoke toward that high little barred window in the rear wall. “I’m feeling better for the first time since they tossed me in here,” he said loudly, catching old Parton’s attention and holding it with this loud talk. “It’s unreal how all those things piled up against me, but, by golly, I think some of that black luck is rubbing off on you now, and I sure like that, Parton. I do for a fact.”
“All they got on me,” snarled the old man, “is that my boy and Jerry Swindin tried to get the express office money cache. I wasn’t in on it and they can’t prove otherwise.”
Duncan’s smile deepened, his frosty stare brightened, turned sardonic and cruel. “Parton, you just try and tell that to a lynch mob. There’ll be so much shouting going on when those drunken range riders bust in here, you could shoot a cannon and no one’d hear it. Besides, all those lynchers have to know is that you’re in here. That’s all. Old man, they’ll stretch your scrawny neck until they can read a newspaper through it.”
Parton swore at Duncan, using savage profanity for the first time. He went to the back wall, stood there, head cocked for a moment, then shuffled back toward the front of his cell again.
“You think this is funny,” he snarled. “Go back there and listen. That bunch out there ain’t goin’ to wait until this here judge gets his pump back in workin’ order. Go on ... go back there and listen.”
Duncan didn’t go. He leaned upon his cell door, smoking and slowly losing his smile. He’d extricated all the grim pleasure he wished to out of this perilous situation, and turned next to wondering just how much of a chance Berryhill and Thorne would have at eluding a town full of half-drunk, excited cowboys and townsmen. He came eventually to the conclusion that the time factor was likely to prove important, perhaps even critical. Thorne and the sheriff could not hope to leave town with their two prisoners in broad daylight and he doubted very much, judging from the solid and increasing racket out front, if they could prevent trouble until after dark, when it would perhaps be safe to try and spirit their prisoners away.
He dropped his smoke, stepped upon it, shot a careless glance over at old Parton, crossed his cell to the rear wall, and leaned there. At once the old man said loudly: “Hear that? Well, you still think it’s funny?”
Duncan inclined his head. “It keeps getting funnier, you old goat. I’ve got nothing to lose. They’re going to hang me anyway. That’s been tickling you since last night. Now it’s my turn to smile a little.”
“Blessed little,” growled old Parton. “Why don’t that damned sheriff do like you said ... send for some soldiers or some US marshals?”
“That reminds me,” said Duncan. “Thanks for helping me out about that telegraph office.”
“By gawd, I’ll tell ’em I’m no relation to you ... that you killed their expressman on your own.”
“No good, Parton. You’ve already put on your act for both Berryhill and Thorne. It was real good play-acting, too. I could’ve strangled you then, but now I think I’ll just start calling you pa. In fact, if we get a chance to say anything just before they yank us, I’ll tell ’em you planned that job from start to finish. I’ll even say you told me to kill that expressman.”
Parton put up a hand and began swiftly, agitatedly to comb his beard. He crossed to his pallet, gazed down at it, turned, and took another three steps and listened at the back wall again.
Duncan lay down, tilted up his hat, and closed his eyes. He didn’t feel at all like sleeping, and actually old Parton was right. There wasn’t anything funny about those increasing catcalls outside at all. But he wanted to think and this was the best way.
He rummaged among all the things that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours for some logical explanation of how so many coincidences could dovetail around him so perfectly. He also thought back to everything that had been said between him and Sheriff Berryhill or Jack Thorne, which might give him some clue as to how—if that mob out there didn’t get him—he might still come out of this alive.
“Hey,” Parton breathed sharply, suddenly. “Get up ... someone’s coming.”
Duncan eased back his hat, looked up the corridor, saw Berryhill approaching with two tin trays, and arose. The sheriff pushed Parton’s tray under his door and moved to do the same for Duncan. He said not a word and his expression was grimly and tightly locked. Parton bombarded him with questions, seared him with insults and imprecations, and wheedled at him in a whining tone that inspired Duncan to say: “Shut up! You got a yellow streak up your back a yard wide.”
Parton went quiet but his cold old eyes never once moved off Sheriff Berryhill, who raised up from pushing Duncan’s tray in to him, and said: “You don’t hear so good, do you?”
“Good enough,” snapped Duncan. “You and that old goat over there got your guts running out your feet. I’ve heard mobs before.”
“Well, if you had a lick of sense, you’d be afraid of this one,” rapped out Berryhill. “There are close to a hundred men out there. Most of them have been drinkin’ steadily now for two hours. By three o’clock, if Walt Sheay isn’t on the bench in his courtroom ... ” Berryhill gravely wagged his head back and forth without finishing his last sentence, his steady gaze never departing from Duncan’s countenance.
“Hey, Sheriff, listen to me a minute,” Parton nearly shouted. “You got to send for help. That’s your job ... protectin’ your prisoners. You got to send ... ”
“Parton,” cut in the lawman harshly, “you should’ve made a better study of this countryside before you settled here to rob the express office. The nearest Army post is four days’ ride from here and the nearest marshal is six hundred miles away. Even if they could fly like a bird couldn’t any of them get here fast enough.”
Right after Berryhill said this someone out front hurled a large rock against the jailhouse street-side wall. This impact reverberated through the entire building.
Parton jumped. “Sheriff, you got to arm us. We got a right to protect ourselves. Sheriff, Sheriff ... ”
Berryhill was walking away. He turned, passed beyond sight, and a moment later Duncan heard the bar drop behind that massively separating oak door.
“You’re a preacher,” Duncan said to Parton. “Now’s the time to get down on your prayer bones and start working up a miracle.”