Leaving the empty lot, Falcon went to get George and Sherman Canfield, Bill Cody, and Prentiss Ingraham so he could bring them back to the scene of the shooting. George Sherman was carrying a lantern and he held it down low, enabling them to see the faces of the three men Falcon had shot.
“Do you know them, Falcon?”
“I can’t say as I know them,” Falcon said. “But I know the names of two of them.” He pointed. “That one is Billy Taylor. Last time we saw him, he was in jail back in Bismarck.”
“And this fella is named Slayton,” Ingraham said. “Last time we saw him, he was in Sheridan.”
“I wonder how Taylor got out of jail,” Cody said.
“From what I overheard, this man is one of the ones who attempted to hold up the train,” Falcon answered, pointing to Dewey’s body. “And they broke Taylor out of jail.”
“
“Yes.”
“That means the rest of them might be here.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Falcon said.
“Seems strange that Slayton was with them though,” Ingraham said. “I mean, how do you suppose that came about?”
“My guess is they were looking for us, and when they came through Sheridan they recruited Slayton,” Falcon said.
“Yes, I can see that,” Cody said. “It’s for sure that Slayton had ill feelings toward you.”
“What will we do with them?” Ingraham asked.
“We could strap them to a board, stand ’em up in front of the hotel with a sign asking if anyone knew who they were,” Sherman suggested.
“Heavens no, Sherman,” George said. “Most of the people who come through here are from back East. Something like this would scare them off for sure. If you ask me, the best thing to do would be to just let Marv Welch bury them. It won’t be the first time he ever buried someone without knowing who they are.”
Within an hour after the shooting, everyone in Cinnabar, at least those who were still awake, knew what had happened.
The bodies were not embalmed, so the idea was to get them buried as quickly as possible. Because of that, Marv Welch began preparations right away. Welch was not a real undertaker; he was a carpenter, and he had assumed the position of undertaker only because he was able to construct simple wooden coffins. And even though the bodies were not strapped to a board and stood up in front of the hotel as Sherman had suggested, that didn’t mean that they were not objects of attention. Morbid curiosity caused two score and more people to come out of the night and wander through Marv Welch’s carpentry shop to view the bodies. Marv, who had three coffins to build, paid no attention to his nighttime visitors.
Not only did Welch not embalm the bodies, he made no effort to clean them up in any way, so those who came to view them saw them just as they fell, bloodied from their bullet wounds and smudged with dirt from the ground where they fell.
It made a rather macabre scene: visitors strolling through the carpenter shop to view the bodies while the flickering kerosene lanterns cast disproportionately large and grotesque shadows against the wall, giving the illusion of otherworldly wraiths come to earth to welcome their new residents. All the while the visitors arrived and departed, Marv Welch continued to saw and hammer together the three traditionally shaped coffins, flared at the top to accommodate the shoulders and torso, then narrowed toward the bottom for the legs.
Three of the viewers who came through were Ebersole, Hawkins, and Peters.
“MacCallister kilt ’em,” Hawkins said once they went back outside into the night. “He kilt all three of ’em.”
“How did he do that?” Peters asked.
“He shot ’em,” Hawkins said.
“I know that. What I mean is, how could one man kill all three of them like that? Taylor and Dewey weren’t no slouches with a gun. And Slayton was supposed to be pretty good.”
“Ahh. Slayton was probably pretty much of a loud mouth,” Ebersole said. “I wouldn’t have brought him at all, except for the horses.”
“Still, MacCallister must be awful good to have kilt all three of them, though,” Peters said.
“I’ll tell you how he did it,” Ebersole said. “He did it because the damn fools didn’t listen to me. I told them just to keep an eye on ’em, until we could come up with a plan.”
“Yeah, well, what plan can we come up with now?” Peters asked. “I mean if MacCallister kilt all three of ’em, and he’s only one man, what are we goin’ to do now? There’s only three of us and when you count Cody and that writer, that makes three of them. I would like it a lot better iffen the odds was on our side.”
“Just because someone has a reputation, that doesn’t mean he is invincible,” Ebersole said. “Look at Wild Bill Hickok. They say he was about the deadliest gunfighter of all of ’em, and how many men did it take to kill him? Just one.”
“Yeah, just one, but from what I heard, the fella that kilt him snuck up on him while he was playin’ cards and shot him in the back.”
“Front, back, it don’t matter. The point I’m making is, Hickok is still dead, ain’t he?” Ebersole said.
“So, what you’re sayin’ is, wait until MacCallister is playin’ cards then sneak up behind him?” Hawkins asked.
“No. What I’m sayin’ is, wait until the son of a bitch goes to sleep, then sneak up on him,” Ebersole said. “He’s spending the night in the Cinnabar Hotel. All we got to do is find out which room it is.”
