“Yeah. What’s wrong?”
The man was out of breath. “Some fellas are…bustin’ up Bella’s Place.”
“Again?” Bo said, recalling how he and Scratch had been summoned when the three Devery boys were wrecking the brothel. He recognized the man as Ernie Bond, who had brought word of the trouble that other night. “Who is it this time?”
“A whole gang of…prospectors.” The little townie puffed a couple of times as he tried to catch his breath. “I dunno…what set ’em off.”
Bo said, “All right, thanks. We’ll take care of it.” He sent Ernie on his way and hurried into the office.
Scratch and Biscuits looked up from their domino game, clearly startled by the abruptness of Bo’s entrance. “What’s up, Bo?” Scratch asked.
“Trouble,” Bo replied tightly. “Some sort of riot over at Bella’s Place.”
Scratch started to his feet. “More Deverys, you reckon? We don’t have all of ’em locked up yet.”
“No, according to what I was told, it’s a bunch of prospectors causing the ruckus this time.” Bo looked hard at Biscuits. “Sheriff, can we leave you here to guard the prisoners?”
Biscuits swallowed nervously. “By myself?”
“Load all three shotguns and set them on the desk,” Scratch suggested. “That’ll give you six barrels full of buckshot to discourage anybody tries to get in and ain’t supposed to.”
“Well, I…I suppose so.”
Bo and Scratch were thinking the same thing, that this might a trick to get them away from the jail so that the long-awaited attempt to break out the prisoners could take place. For some reason, though, Bo had his doubts this time. The Deverys, led by their patriarch, seemed to have their sights set on winning the election and solidifying their hold on the town that way. Bo wasn’t sure they would risk that on a jailbreak at this point.
He also knew that so far, Biscuits hadn’t been forced to take a real stand against the man who had put him in office. He might buckle if he had to face Jackson Devery. But sooner or later, the Texans had to find out where Biscuits stood, and now was as good a time as any, Bo decided.
“You’ll do fine,” he told the sheriff. “We’ll be back as soon as he can.”
“Load those shotguns,” Scratch added as he clapped his hat on his head and started for the door with Bo.
“And bar the door behind us!” Bo called back through the entrance.
As they started over toward Grand Street, Scratch said, “Maybe we should’a brought a couple of shotguns with us. They don’t call ’em riot guns for nothin’, you know.”
“We’ll be all right,” Bo said. “Probably just have to talk a little tough, and those miners will settle down.”
They heard the yelling and commotion coming from Bella’s before they even got there. Hurrying even more, they reached the building and had to duck as a chair came crashing out through a window just as they got there. Broken glass sprayed over the boardwalk around them.
“Son of a bitch!” Scratch said.
Bo drew his gun. “Reckon this might take more than a few harsh words.”
He yanked open the elaborate front door and plunged into the whorehouse with Scratch right on his heels. Chaos surrounded them, filling both the foyer and the parlor. Punches flew as men battled feverishly with each other. At least a dozen combatants were involved. Racket filled the air, a mixture of curses from the battling men, screams from the frightened soiled doves caught in the middle of the violence, and splintering crashes as furniture was grabbed, broken up, and used as weapons.
George, who appeared to be fully recovered from the pistol-whipping he had received at the hands of the Deverys, stood at the edge of the action, obviously eager to plunge right into it. Bella was beside him, though, both hands gripped tightly around one of his muscular arms as she held him back.
“You’ll just get yourself hurt!” she was saying. “Let the damn fools fight it out of their system!”
Then she saw Bo and Scratch. “Deputies! Do something!”
So it was all right for the two of them to risk life and limb, Bo thought, but not George. That was how it should be, he told himself. After all, they were paid to take such risks. But George probably was, too.
Scratch leaned close to Bo. “If we fire a couple of shots into the ceilin’, that might settle ’em down!”
Bo shook his head. “Yeah, but if any of them are packing irons, it might cause them to start shooting, too. Then we’d have a real mess here. Plus it’d leave some holes in Bella’s ceiling.”
Scratch shrugged and asked, “What do you think we ought to do, then?”
“Settle this down the hard way,” Bo said.
He holstered his gun, stepped forward, and grabbed the shoulder of a man who stumbled backward toward him after an opponent had landed a punch in his face. Bo hauled the man around and threw a punch of his own. His fist crashed into the surprised man’s jaw and drove him off his feet.
The man who’d been fighting with the one Bo had just hit glared at the Texan. “He was mine!” the man yelled. He lunged forward, swinging a wild, roundhouse blow at Bo’s head.
Bo ducked under the man’s fist, stepped in close, and hooked a right into the man’s belly. His fist sunk deep and made the man bend forward. That put him in position for the hard left hand that Bo brought almost straight up under the chin. The man’s head jerked so far back it looked like his head was going to come right off his shoulders.
Scratch whooped, “Now you’re talkin’!” and plunged into the melee.
