his sons and nephew be released. The prisoners complained incessantly, but they seemed to be getting used to being behind bars. Edgar visited Thad a few times, which perked up the young man. He began to get some of his natural piss and vinegar back, which Bo wasn’t sure was a good thing.
Thad’s sister Myra came to visit him, too. She was a pale, blond young woman who spoke in a shy half-whisper when she said anything at all and kept her eyes downcast. Her visits seemed to lift Thad’s spirits, too. Bo was convinced she was the person he’d seen peeking out through the curtains in the second-floor window of the old Devery house.
With one of the Texans keeping an eye on him nearly all the time, Biscuits O’Brien had suffered the torments of the damned. He had been sick at his stomach, he’d had the shakes, he had been drenched in a cold sweat. But by the time a week had gone past, he was sober…and mad as hell about that fact.
He was complaining about that very thing one afternoon when the office door opened and Lucinda Bonner came in. Bo and Scratch were straddling ladderback chairs, but they stood up instantly and nodded to her. “Ma’am,” Scratch said.
“You boys are too polite,” Lucinda said as she waved them back into their chairs, but her smile said that she liked the attention.
“That’s our Texas upbringin’,” Scratch told her. “My ma would’a kicked me from heck to Goliad if I didn’t stand up when a lady entered a room.”
“Mine, too,” Bo agreed.
“Well, that’s nice of you,” Lucinda said, “but you can sit down and relax. I brought something I want you to see.”
She had a stack of papers in her hand. They looked like handbills of some sort, Bo thought, and as Lucinda held one up, he saw that he was right.
The printing was big and bold and read:
ELECTION, JUNE 5
COLORADO PALACE SALOON
VOTE
Mrs. Lucinda Bonner
Dr. Jason Weathers • Harlan Green
Sam Bradfield • Wallace Kane
Col. Horace Macauley
VOTE for Progress
VOTE for Law and Order
VOTE for Mankiller’s Future!
“Well,” Bo said as he looked at the handbill and thought about how the Deverys might react to it, “that ought to do it.”
CHAPTER 24
It didn’t take long, either. Lucinda paid a couple of local boys to nail the handbills up around town, and as soon as they started appearing, folks began to talk. It was like a tidal wave of sensation washed over Mankiller. Everybody was talking about the impending election, which was only a week away.
Bo was in the cafe having a cup of coffee when the door opened and heavy footsteps sounded. The place was busy as usual, but silence fell as all the conversations abruptly ceased. Bo turned his head and saw Jackson Devery stalking toward the counter.
Devery didn’t appear to be armed, but his face was flushed with barely contained rage, as usual. He slapped one of the handbills down on the counter in front of Lucinda, who had been talking to Bo. It was torn in the upper corners where it had been ripped down.
“What the hell is this?” Devery demanded.
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, Devery,” Bo snapped. “There’s no law against cussing in town, so I can’t arrest you for it, but I can give you a thrashing if I have to.”
Devery sneered at him. “You could try.” He turned his attention back to Lucinda. A finger stabbed down on the handbill. “You can’t do this. It ain’t legal.”
Lucinda was staying calm in the face of Devery’s anger, and Bo admired her for it. She said, “Actually, it is legal, Mr. Devery. Colonel Macauley, who, as you may know, is an accomplished attorney, has advised us that the citizens of a town have the right to call an election. All it requires is that the majority of eligible voters sign a petition requesting that an election be held.”
“Petition?” Devery repeated. “What petition?”
Lucinda reached below the counter and brought up a stack of papers which she set beside the handbill. “This one. People have been signing it all week. There are copies at the general store and the assay office, too. Once we had enough signatures, we could set the election date and candidates could declare.”
The steady assurance with which she spoke took some of the wind out of Devery’s sails. Bo could see it. It didn’t take Devery long to recover, though.
“I can hire lawyers, too,” he said. “I’ll sue you. This has got to be illegal. Mankiller is my town.”
“You may own the land, but that doesn’t give you any sort of legal authority over the citizens. They have a right
