Sally and Tyree walked along the town’s main street, a few people on the boardwalks stopping to look at them curiously as they passed, a tall young man who wore his gun like it was part of him and a pretty, sunburned girl in men’s clothing, holding a Winchester, hammer back, in her right hand.
Above them, the darkening sky was banded by streaks of white cloud, their edges trimmed with burnished gold, and the air smelled of dust, pine resin from the planking of the buildings, and the sage and rabbit bush of the brush flats.
They stopped outside Bradley’s, taking stock of what awaited them. Inside someone was playing the saloon’s battered piano, picking out the notes of Chopin’s beautiful Nocturne no. 2 in G Major. It was an incongruous sound against the roars of whiskey-drinking men and the hard laughter of the girls who had come down from the line behind the courthouse to welcome home the posse, aware that most of them were Quirt Laytham’s highly paid, free-spending riders.
Tyree adjusted the position of his gun and turned his head to look at Sally. The girl had a determined set to her chin and the knuckles of the hand that clutched her rifle were white.
She looked very young and pretty, the kind of girl who should be married, happily busy in her kitchen baking apple turnovers, not standing in a dusty street with a rifle in her hands about to confront a deadly gunman.
Suddenly Sally stepped toward the boardwalk. “Let’s go do it,” she said.
Tyree followed Sally into the saloon, and at first no one noticed them, every man present concentrating on his whiskey or a woman. But gradually eyes were drawn to the pair standing silent and significant at the saloon door. The chatter slowly died, laughter fleeing the painted lips of the saloon girls, the piano faltering note by note into silence.
“Luther Darcy!” Sally called out in the sudden hush. “Show yourself.”
The girl’s voice opened up the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, men and women stepping back until Darcy could be seen standing alone at the bar, a glass half-raised to his lips.
Sally held the Winchester level, pointed at the gunman’s belly. “I told you I’d kill you someday, Darcy,” she said. “Now turn around and look into my eyes as you die.”
For a few moments Darcy didn’t move, then he slowly placed his glass on the bar, staring at it all the way as though it had become a thing of consuming interest to him.
The saloon’s railroad clock ticked loud in the silence, like a racing heartbeat, and Tyree could hear the short, nervous breaths of a woman standing close to him.
Without turning, Darcy said, “Tyree, I guess you’re taking a hand in this play?”
Tyree nodded. “You called it.”
“Damn you, Darcy!” Sally yelled. “Face me like a man instead of cowering there like a mangy yellow dog.”
The gunman slowly turned and smiled at the girl. Then he moved.
Darcy dived for the floor, rolled, then came up on one knee, his guns out and spitting flame. Sally’s shot splintered the wood of the bar where Darcy had been standing. But the girl was hit immediately, the Winchester spinning out of her hands. Tyree drew and fired. His bullet thudded into the pine boards of the floor. A miss. Lithe as a cat, Darcy had rolled a second time. The gunman slammed hard against the red-slippered feet of a saloon girl. The girl screamed and tried to step away, but she stumbled on high heels and fell on top of Darcy. Tyree hesitated a split second, momentarily uncertain of his target. Then something hard crashed into the back of his skull and he sank to his knees, the room spinning around him.
He tried to raise his gun, but suddenly it felt too heavy for him. He was roughly dragged to his feet, then, from out of nowhere it seemed, he saw Nick Tobin. The big lawman pulled back his fist and crashed it hard into Tyree’s chin. Then the men who had been holding him stepped away and let him fall.
Chance Tyree woke with a pounding headache. He lay still until his surroundings swam into focus. He was lying on his back, and above him he saw a sagging timber ceiling, dusty gray triangles of spider-webs gathered in the corners. He shifted his position slightly and the iron springs of the bunk under him shrieked in protest.
Tyree moved his head, looking around him. To his left was an iron door set into a redbrick wall with a barred opening less than a foot square. But, like the roof, the three remaining walls were constructed of heavy pine logs, and iron bars secured the small, narrow window high on the wall opposite his bunk.
Now came the dawning realization of where he was—he was in Nick Tobin’s jail cell.
Slowly, like in a hazy dream, the events at Bradley’s saloon came drifting back to him.
Sally!
Tyree rose to his feet, an effort that made his head reel. He staggered to the door, pounded on its unyielding iron and yelled through the opening, “Tobin!”
A couple of minutes passed before the sheriff opened the door to his office and stepped to the cell. The man was not wearing his hat, and his hair was snow white, falling in untidy tangles over his ears. His eyes were lost behind his dark glasses, and the sagging, pasty face was expressionless. Tyree caught the disgusting stench of the man, the odor of ancient sweat and unwashed clothes.
“Wondered when you’d wake up,” Tobin said. “Been out for an hour, I’d say.”
“How is Sally?” Tyree asked, a taut fear in him even as he asked the question.
The lawman shrugged. “She’s over to the hotel, locked in a room, on account of how I don’t have a cell for females.”
“How is she?” Tyree asked again, his voice edged by anger.
“She took Luther Darcy’s bullet.”
“Where, Tobin? Where was she hit, damn you?”
The sheriff’s pudgy white hand strayed to his left shoulder. “Here. Luther’s bullet hit the chamber of her rifle, ricocheted off an’ struck the lass in the shoulder.” Tobin grinned. “Luther wasn’t trying to kill her, just disable her Winchester, but his bullet bounced the wrong way. See, he has plans for that little gal, big plans. He isn’t even pressing any charges against her. Says he’ll teach her the error of her ways with a horsewhip when the time comes.”
“Is Sally hurt bad?” Tyree asked, his anger bubbling to the surface. At that moment he wanted to kill Darcy in the worst way.
“Doc Neary says she’ll live. Be up and around in no time at all.”
Tyree rubbed the back of his neck. “Who hit me?”
“I did. Slammed the stock of my Greener into your fool head then I slugged you. And just as well I did, because ol’ Luther was mad clean through and he would have killed you fer sure. Why, he wanted to put a bullet in you whilst you were lying there, all fast asleep, like. But I convinced him it was best to wait for a proper hanging.”
“Hanging? I haven’t even had a trial yet, Tobin,” Tyree said.
“Oh, yes, you have. You had it about an hour ago while you was still asleep. John Rawlins told Judge Hay what he saw at Bradley’s when you killed the bartender. Then two others told how you killed poor Chet Austin over to Luke Boyd’s place, and Chet just trying to do his sworn duty by arresting you. Well, Judge Hay listened to all this, said as how you was as guilty as sin and set the hanging for noon tomorrow.”
“So the judge is also in Laytham’s pocket, or yours,” Tyree said bitterly.
Tobin grinned. “Remember I tole you to take the thousand dollars and then scat? You should have listened to me, Tyree.”
“Tobin, you go to hell,” Tyree said.
The sheriff laughed. “I like you, boy. I really like you, but hell, I’m gonna hang you just the same. Hey, but don’t you worry none, it won’t be like the first time when those idiots Clem Daley and Len Dawson bungled it. I’ve got you a new rope, the best three-quarter-inch Manila hemp all the way from Salt Lake City. And I already boiled it and stretched it to get rid of all the spring, stiffness and the inclination ropes have to coil. Then I lubricated the knot and noose with melted paraffin so it will slide real easy.” Tobin grinned and slapped his thigh. “Oh, I tell you, boy, you’re gonna think it a real pleasure to be hung by me.”
“Tobin,” Tyree said, ignoring the man, “take me to see Sally. I give you my word I won’t try to escape.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Boy, you won’t see Sally Brennan again until both of you meet in the sweet by- and-by. Besides, now she’s Luther Darcy’s woman and he don’t cotton to her seeing other men.”
Tobin turned and began to walk away. Tyree called out after him, but the sheriff waved a dismissive hand
