The next morning, just as the sun was peeking over the eastern slope mountains, Angus and Macklin were knocking on Sheriff Wally Tupper’s door in Pueblo.
A sleepy Wally opened the door, his hair disarranged and his face creased with wrinkles from his pillow. “Yeah?” he asked gruffly before he saw who was on his doorstep.
Then it was, “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. MacDougal. Come on in and I’ll have the wife fix you up some coffee and breakfast.”
“Don’t have time for that, Wally,” Angus said, brushing past the sheriff into his house as if he owned it. “I need you to get dressed and help me round up ten or fifteen hard men to go on the trail with me.”
“You mean, like a posse?” Wally asked, covering a wide yawn with the back of his hand.
“Kind’a,” Angus replied enigmatically.
“Why . . . what for, Mr. MacDougal?” Wally asked as he pulled his trousers up under his nightshirt and sat on a couch to put on his socks.
“We’re going polecat hunting,” Angus said with an evil grin.
“What?” Wally asked again, pausing with one sock on and the other in his hand.
“My men were on the way back here with Smoke Jensen in tow, when he managed to get away. He’s on foot and running for the mountains as we speak. I need some men to help me roust him out of those woods if Cletus doesn’t find him first.”
“But Mr. MacDougal, Jensen ain’t broke no laws that I know of.”
“So what?” Angus asked.
“Well, I can’t hardly send no posse after a man who ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Angus reached over, grabbed the front of Wally’s nightshirt, and jerked his face close. “Wallace Tupper, if you don’t want to spend the rest of your miserable life shooting stray dogs for fifty cents a piece in this town instead of being sheriff, you’d better make up your mind who you’re gonna listen to . . . me or those goddamned law books you’re always reading!”
“But Mr. MacDougal,” Wally protested.
“But nothing, Wally,” Angus growled. “Now I’m gonna go on over to the cafe on Main Street and have myself some coffee and maybe some eggs and bacon. If you aren’t there with at least ten good men, by the time I finish, I’ll assume you’re out hunting for dogs to shoot.”
Less than an hour later, while Angus was still sopping up egg yolks with a folded piece of pancake, Wally Tupper appeared at the cafe with twelve men. All of the men had a hard look about them and all were armed to the teeth.
Wally walked into the cafe, his hat in his hands. “Uh, I managed to get you twelve men, Mr. MacDougal,” he said, not willing to meet Angus’s eyes directly.
“That’s a good man, Wally. I knew you’d come through for me as usual.”
“I told ‘em since this wasn’t an official posse, that you’d be paying them for the trip,” Wally said, his voice low and uncertain, as if he were asking Angus instead of telling him how it was going to be.
Angus waved a hand. “No problem, Wally. Since this is personal, I really can’t expect the town to pay for it, now can I?”
“Uh . . . no, sir. I guess not.”
“Now, while I’m finishing up here, I want you to get a couple of packhorses and go on over to the general store and get a couple of crates of dynamite, some cans of black powder, lots of extra ammunition of various calibers, and enough grub for the men to be gone a week or so.”
“Is there anything else?” Wally asked, struggling to keep his anger at being ordered around like he was one of Angus’s employees out of his voice.
Angus shook his head. “No, I think that ought to do it for right now.”
Wally put his hat on and walked from the cafe. As he walked toward the general store, he thought to himself, Crazy old coot! Serve his ass right if Jensen somehow manages to blow his fool head off. And just where does he get off ordering me around like I’m some ranch hand anyway?
By the time he got to the store, he was so mad he could hardly unclench his teeth to say hello to the proprietor when greeted.
He pointed behind the counter at the hundreds of boxes of ammunition. “Seymour, I’m gonna need a bunch of cartridges and other things, and I’m gonna need ‘em fast.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Sally sat on a wide settee in Dr. Spalding’s parlor holding Mary Carson’s hand. Mary was quietly sobbing into a lace handkerchief. Across the room, Pearlie and Cal sat in high-armed easy chairs, both of them acutely uncomfortable in the presence of a crying woman.
Finally, after what seemed like years but was only a couple of hours, Cotton Spalding emerged from his inner treatment room drying his hands on a towel. He looked dog-tired, with red, bloodshot eyes and dark circles under the eyes. He’d been continually by Monte’s side during the long night, and it showed.
Mary looked up quickly, an unspoken question in her eyes. Cotton smiled at her and moved to take her hand. “He’s going to be just fine, Mary. He’s awake now and I can find no evidence of any brain damage or other infirmity, other than a complete amnesia about the events of the last couple of days, which isn’t unusual in these cases.”
“Oh, thank God!” Mary breathed, looking skyward.
Sally Jensen looked over at the boys, her eyes brimming with tears of thankfulness, while both Cal and Pearlie grinned from ear to ear.
