Peeler looked around at the now-silent crowd. “Yeah, I can see that somethin’s goin’ on. Some kind of celebration?”
“An election,” Bo said. “Mankiller just elected a mayor, a judge, and a town council.”
“Yeah, and the hombre who’s been runnin’ things around here ain’t gonna like it, either,” Scratch added.
Peeler’s rugged face hardened. “If you fellas got gun trouble, me and the boys’d be glad to pitch in and lend a hand.”
“We appreciate that—” Bo began, but a sudden outcry interrupted him. He swung around and saw a slender figure staggering down the boardwalk toward them. Even though he had seen her only a few times, he recognized Myra Devery, Edgar’s daughter. But something was wrong with her.
The girl seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Scratch sprang to catch her. As Scratch steadied her, Bo saw that Myra had a bruise on her cheek, and a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. Someone had beaten her.
“What happened, Myra?” Bo asked her. “Who hit you?”
She drew in a ragged breath. “My…my Uncle Jackson.”
“Why would he do a sorry thing like that?” Scratch asked as he frowned in anger.
“Because I tried to…to stop him…when he was hitting and kicking my pa.”
Peeler moved his horse closer to the boardwalk and said, “Is this the fella you were talkin’ about causin’ trouble, Creel?”
“That’s right,” Bo said. He turned back to Myra. “Why would Devery attack his own brother like that?”
“Because he’s gone crazy! He’s got all the men in the family stirred up and ready to come down here and kill everybody who’s been standing up to him. He said he’d burn Mankiller to the ground before he’d let anybody else have it!”
That was exactly the sort of thing Bo had been worried about. Devery was so full of pride and hate and arrogance that he couldn’t accept defeat. He would rather destroy everything, and everybody he considered an enemy, along with any innocent folks who got in the way.
“The only one who tried to talk sense to him was my father. He said they couldn’t just start burning and killing. Then…then Uncle Jackson hit him with a rifle butt, knocked him down, started kicking him…I tried to get him to stop, but he backhanded me and knocked me down, too. I got out of there and thought I ought to come warn you —”
A thunderous roar suddenly shook the ground and drowned out whatever Myra was saying. Bo and Scratch looked toward the jail in shock and saw smoke rising from behind it.
“Dynamite!” Scratch yelled. “They blasted the jail to bust the prisoners out!”
“Come on!” Bo said as he broke into a run toward the site of the blast. Behind him, Scratch pressed Myra Devery into Rushford’s arms and then took off after his old friend.
Big John Peeler twisted in the saddle and shouted to his crew, “We’re with Creel and Morton! Follow their lead!”
Echoes from the explosion still rolled through the town. Gunshots sounded through them. The shots came from the jail.
The dynamite blast was more than just an attempt to free the prisoners, however. It was also a signal, Bo realized as rifle-waving Deverys, led by their patriarch, burst from the house at the head of the street and started down the hill, yelling and shooting. Jackson Devery was trying to make good on his threat to destroy Mankiller for turning on him.
“Off the street!” Bo bellowed as screams and chaos broke out all around him. “Everybody get off the street!”
He thought fleetingly about Lucinda and hoped that she and her daughters and brother would lie low in the cafe, hopefully out of harm’s way. But there was no time to check on them, not with hell on the prowl in Mankiller.
Gunfire still came from inside the sheriff’s office as the Texans reached the front door. It wouldn’t budge, and Bo knew that Biscuits O’Brien must have it locked and barred on the inside.
“Around the back!” he told Scratch. As they started around the building, he saw that Peeler and the cowboys from the Circle JP had dismounted and were following, guns drawn and ready.
Smoke and dust clogged the air. Bo fought his way through the stinging, blinding stuff. As he reached the back of the building, he saw shadowy figures fleeing.
“Hold it!” he shouted, but the men didn’t slow down. Instead, flame spurted from gun muzzles. Bo heard bullets whining through the air around him. He returned the fire, but he couldn’t see where he was shooting. The men disappeared into the clouds of dust.
There had actually been two blasts set off at the same time, Bo saw, blowing holes in the walls of both cells. Those were desperate measures, because Thad, Reuben, and Simeon could have easily been hurt in the explosions. When Bo peered through the ragged holes, though, he saw that both cells were empty.
“Biscuits!” Bo shouted through the hole in what had been Thad’s cell. “Biscuits, are you in there?”
The only answer that came back was a groan.
“Sounds like he’s hurt,” Bo told Scratch. “He must’ve tried to fight them off from the office.”
“We can’t get in there,” Scratch said. “The front door’s locked, and so are those cells.” He jerked his head toward the street. “Besides, we got the rest of the Deverys to deal with.”
Bo knew that Scratch was right. Still, he hated to abandon Biscuits without even checking to see how badly he was hurt. That would just have to wait.
