“Doolin! Doolin! DOOLIN!”
* * *
Late the next morning Tilghman prepared to leave town. An arraignment had been held earlier, and there was nothing more for him to do until Doolin was brought to trial. He planned to take a few days off and attend to personal matters. High on the list was time alone with Zoe.
After the arraignment, he’d borrowed a horse from Heck Thomas. His horse, which was still stabled in Perry, would have to be retrieved when time allowed. But now, before departing, he had a guard escort him back to the central cell block, where prisoners were allowed to gather during the day. He wanted a last word with the man he’d captured.
Doolin was seated at a table with several other inmates. When Tilghman halted in the corridor, he stood and walked to the bars fronting the bull pen. “Just been thinkin’,” he said with a wry smile. “You got yourself a real nice payday with that reward. How you gonna spend it?”
“I’ll think of something.” Tilghman paused, looking at him through the bars. “Wondered if you’d be interested in talking about the rest of the gang? Might work to your advantage when you come to trial.”
“Never kid an old kidder, Tilghman. They’re gonna hang me no matter what. We both know it.”
“Courts have been known to grant leniency before. You’ve got nothing to lose by cooperating.”
“Yeah, I do,” Doolin said firmly. “All my life, I never could stomach a turncoat. Too late to start now.”
Tilghman shrugged. “Well, you understand I had to try. Guess it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.”
“On that score, I was always a slow learner.”
“I reckon I’ll see you in court.”
Doolin stuck his hand through the bars. “I owe you one for that day in the bath house. You could’ve shot me easy as not.”
Tilghman accepted his handshake. “I didn’t do you any favor. Not if you’ve ever seen a man hanged.”
“Hell, marshal, it’s not over till it’s over. I take it one day at a time.”
Outside the lockup, Tilghman walked back to the front office. As he came through the door, he saw Edith Doolin talking to one of the guards. She looked pale and tired, and he imagined she had driven through the night after hearing of Doolin’s arrival in Guthrie. The guard motioned to Tilghman.
“This lady says she’s Doolin’s wife. You ever seen her before?”
“I’ll vouch for the lady,” Tilghman told him. “She’s Mrs. Edith Doolin.”
“Thank you,” she said. “After all the trouble I put you to in Kansas, that’s nice of you.”
“You and your baby get home all right, Mrs. Doolin?”
“Just fine, though all that seems a waste now. You caught Bill anyway, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tilghman said, nodding. “Took a while, but things have a way of working out.”
“I—” She hesitated, searching for words. “I want to thank you for not killing him. I know you could have, and no questions asked.”
“Just doing my job, Mrs. Doolin. No thanks necessary.”
Tilghman watched the guard escort her into the hallway. He idly wondered if she knew anything about the remaining members of the Wild Bunch. But then he put the thought aside, for in her own way she was as tough as Doolin. Perhaps tougher.
She would have to watch her husband be hanged.
CHAPTER 37
Tilghman sighted the outline of Chandler late that afternoon. Over the past hour he’d become aware of a steady rise in the temperature, unseasonably hot for September. The air gradually became still and close, without so much as a hint of a breeze. Trees along the roadside stood like statues of leafy stone.
A mile or so from town the land suddenly went dark. Tilghman turned in the saddle, staring off to the southwest, and saw a massive black cloud blotting out the sun. Even as he watched, the cloud spiraled earthward in a whirling funnel and swept northeast across the plains. He knew he’d just seen the birth of a tornado.
The funnel skipped along the earth at an astonishing speed. As it approached, the roar became deafening, and in the next moment, hailstones and torrential rain pelted the ground. Tilghman reined his horse off the road, spurring hard, and galloped into the mouth of a nearby ravine. A short distance ahead, hailstones bouncing around him like white cannonballs, he spotted an outcropping of rock jutting over the gully. He brought his horse to a halt beneath the ledge.
Some moments later, as abruptly as it began, the pounding hailstorm suddenly stopped. Tilghman reined about, gigging his horse, and rode to the top of the ravine. In the distance, he saw the tornado plow into the southern outskirts of Chandler, hurling the debris of flattened houses skyward. Timber and shingles, reduced in an instant to kindling, floated downward across the path of devastation. The funnel churned north through the downtown business district. He urged his horse into a gallop.
On the outskirts of town the destruction was complete. All through the residential area, the tornado had blown off rooftops and then battered the houses to flinders. It seemed another world, somehow demonic, the streets dotted with twisted rubble and cracking flames. Fire from cookstoves had ignited homes, and charred corpses, burned beyond recognition, still smoldered within the wreckage. Survivors clawed through the debris with a look of numbed horror, one of them staring blankly at a dead dog skewered onto a tree branch. The stench of death grew stronger.
An eerie calm, without a whisper of wind, had settled across the land. Ahead, Tilghman saw tendrils of smoke drift skyward, then hang there, suspended over Chandler like a dark shroud. Worse than anything he’d imagined, the funnel had savaged the residential area and then torn a swath along
