Shootout of the Mountain Man (26 page)

From his prone position on the ground, Smoke fired at the new gunman and hit him in the kneecap. The gunman let out a howl and went down, but he still had his gun and he was still shooting.

Smoke threw another shot toward the gunman, but as his attacker was lying in the street now, he made a more difficult target.

“Boomer! Boomer! Are you still alive?” the gunman lying in the street shouted.

There was no answer.

Not knowing if there was anyone else after him, Smoke got up and ran three buildings down the street, bending low and firing as he went. He dived behind the porch of the barbershop, then rose to look back toward his attacker.

His attacker had also managed to get out of the street, and now he fired at Smoke. The bullet sent splinters of wood into Smoke’s face, and Smoke put his hand up, then pulled it away, peppered with his own blood.

“Listen to me!” the gunman shouted. “This here fella is a murderin’ bastard! He kilt mine and Boomer’s brother for no reason at all! I’ll give a hunnert dollars to anyone who helps me kill the son of a bitch!”

“That’s your battle, Clint, not our’n,” someone shouted back. “Do your own killin'!”

Smoke stared across the street, trying to find an opening for a shot, but Clint had managed to crawl behind the porch of Miller’s Feed and Seed Store. Smoke saw him get behind the porch, but there was no good shot for him. But that was a double-edged sword. He had no shot at Clint, which mean Clint had no shot at him, unless he showed himself. Smoke calculated the place along the length of the porch where he knew Clint would have to show himself. He took slow and deliberate aim, cocked his pistol, and waited.

Just as he expected, Clint’s head appeared above the edge of the porch. As soon as it did, Smoke squeezed the trigger. His pistol roared and a cloud of black powder smoke billowed up, then floated away. When the cloud cleared, Smoke saw Clint lying on his back, dead in the dirt.

Smoke heard someone running toward him then, and he swung around ready, if need be, to take on someone else. When he saw that it was Bobby Lee, he smiled in relief, then stood up. Bobby Lee joined him and the two men, with pistols drawn, moved to the middle of the street, looking around for any others who might be gunning for them. They saw several people looking at them from the positions of safety they had taken, but not one soul presented an additional threat.

“Damn, brother-in-law, I can see right now that traveling with you is going to be just real excit-in',” Bobby Lee said.

* * *

It was early afternoon and quiet in the Gold Strike Saloon. Nate Nabors was sitting at the piano playing the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven, Paul was behind the bar polishing glasses, Doc Baker and Byron Hughes were engaged in their eternal game of chess, sitting near the piano enjoying the music, and Minnie was reading the newspaper.

“Where is she?” a loud voice called, disturbing the quiet afternoon and bringing Minnie out of her reverie.

Looking up from the paper toward the batwing doors, Minnie saw Sheriff Wallace standing there.

“Ah, there you are,” Wallace said, looking directly at Minnie.

“Shh, Sheriff,” Doc Baker said. “Enjoy the music.”

“I don’t want to enjoy the music,” Wallace said gruffly.

“Well, maybe some of the rest of us do,” Byron Hughes said.

“What are you doing here?” Doc Baker asked. “Why aren’t you out looking for your escaped prisoner?”

“I am looking for him.” Sheriff Wallace pointed to Minnie. “And you are going to help me find him.”

“Me? How am I going to help?” Minnie asked.

“I want to talk to you.”

“All right, Sheriff, have a seat,” Minnie invited. “You won’t even have to buy me a drink,” she added with a smile.

“No, not here. Down at the jail.”

“What?” Minnie gasped.

The music fell off with a couple of resonant chords and Nabors turned on the bench to look at Wallace. “What’s going on here, Sheriff?” he asked. “Are you arresting Minnie?”

“Not now,” Sheriff Wallace said. “But if she won’t come down willingly, I’ll arrest her.”

“On what charge?” Nabors asked.

“For interfering with an investigation,” Wallace replied. “And if any of you give me any more of your lip, I’ll arrest you too.”

“Now, by damn, you just hold on there, Sheriff,” Doc Baker said. “You can’t just—”

“Never mind, I’ll come,” Minnie said.

“I thought you might.” Wallace made a motion toward the front door. “Let’s go.”

With a wan look toward her friends, Minnie followed the sheriff out of the saloon.

When they reached the jailhouse, Minnie noticed that the door was open between the front of the building and the cell area. Glancing through the door, she saw a bricklayer hard at work, repairing the hole.

“Have a seat, Miss—Smith, is it?” Sheriff Wallace began.

“Yes.”

“Is that your real name? I know that most of the time whores take on phony names because they don’t want their families findin’ out anything about them.”

“You know all about whores, do you?” Minnie asked.

“I know considerable about whores,” Sheriff Wallace said. “I’m a lawman. I have dealt with them quite a bit. Of course, I don’t blame whores for changin’ their name,” he continued. “I don’t reckon anyone who would whore has any pride left. But don’t you think you could’ve come up with a better name than Smith?” Wallace laughed. “That’s not what you would call just real original now, is it?”

“Why do you need to know my real name?” Minnie asked.

“Because I’m goin’ to ask you some questions,” Sheriff Wallace said. “And I’m going to have to know whether or not I can believe your answers. If I can’t believe your real name, how am I going to believe you?”

Minnie didn’t answer.

“Well, what is it?” Wallace asked, growing impatient at Minnie’s long delay in answering.

“Minnie Smith is my real name,” she said.

“All right, Miss—Smith,” Wallace said, setting the name apart from the rest of the sentence and coming down on it with an emphasis that told her he didn’t believe her. “I have a few questions for you.”

Minnie said nothing.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Buck West answered your telegram?”

“He didn’t answer my telegram.”

“Don’t be coy with me, Miss Smith. I don’t mean that he answered your telegram with one of his own. I mean that he came to Cloverdale.”

“He didn’t come to Cloverdale.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Sheriff Wallace shouted loudly, accenting his shout with the slap of his hand on his desk. “He damn sure did come here, and you know it! ”

Wallace pointed through the open door to the hole in the back wall. “Who do you think did that, if not Buck West?”

Minnie shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Somebody did it, because the blast came from outside the jail. That means somebody helped Cabot escape.”

Minnie said nothing.

“You and Cabot were friends, weren’t you?”

“I’m friends with a lot of men,” Minnie said. “You said it yourself, Sheriff. I am a whore. I am paid to be friends.”

“But you were sort of a special friend to Cabot, weren’t you?”

“Sheriff?” the call came from the back of the building, from the man who was laying bricks in repair of the wall. “Could you come back here a moment?”

“I’ll be right there,” Wallace shouted in reply. He turned back toward Minnie. “You stay right here,” he ordered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she answered.

“What do you want?” he called to the bricklayer.

“I didn’t know the jail cell door was locked. I’ve about sealed myself in,” the bricklayer said.

Wallace chuckled. “You’d be in a hell of a fix if I wasn’t here, wouldn’t you?” The sheriff opened the middle drawer to get the key.

“I’m not through with you yet,” he said, shaking his finger at Minnie.

Minnie nodded, then, glancing at the open drawer, saw something that made her gasp. There, in the sheriff’s drawer, was a letter from Bobby Lee, the mailing and return address on the envelope clearly legible.

She heard the talk from the back of the jail.

“Come back here,” the bricklayer said. “I want to show you how I’ve had to dovetail these here new bricks in with the old ones. I need your approval.”

“If the wall is strong enough to hold a prisoner, it’s good enough for me.”

“I want you to look at it anyway.”

As the sheriff and the bricklayer carried on their conversation in the back, Minnie thought of the letter that was in his desk drawer. Dare she to open it?

Getting up from her chair, Minnie moved to the back door to listen to the conversation between the sheriff and the bricklayer. The sheriff was asking about something and the bricklayer was trying to explain it. It sound involved enough to give her the opportunity she needed, so she returned to the desk, where the drawer was still open, then, with another look back, she reached in and removed the envelope. Opening it, she pulled out the letter and began to read:

So the sheriff had lied during Bobby Lee’s trial. He had received the letter. She knew it! Oh, why hadn’t the judge let her testify?

“Whatever you are going to do, do it,” Sheriff Wallace called back to the bricklayer. “And don’t take all day to do it.”

Minnie’s heart leaped to her throat and with nervous hands she replaced the letter in the envelope, then put it back in the drawer. But her hand was still in the drawer when Sheriff Wallace came back into the room.

“What are you doing in my desk drawer?” he asked.

Seeing a pencil and a blank piece of paper, Minnie pulled both from the drawer.

“I was going to leave you a note telling you that I was going back to the Gold Strike,” she said.

“You ain’t goin’ anywhere until I tell you that you can,” Wallace said. “Just put the pencil and paper back in the drawer.”

“All right,” Minnie said, relieved that he had not actually seen her with the letter. “It doesn’t matter now anyway, you are back.”

“Now, I’m going to ask you one more time,” Wallace said. “And if I find out you are lyin', I’ll send you to prison for helpin’ Cabot escape. He smiled. “Women don’t do well in prison.”

“I haven’t lied to you, Sheriff.”

“Did you send a telegram to Buck West?”

“Yes.”

“Did he reply to the telegram?”

“No, and if you knew I sent it, then you also know that he didn’t reply. I’m sure you checked with the telegrapher.”

“Did you meet Buck West?”

“No.”

It was easy for Minnie to say that she hadn’t met with Buck West because, although she thought she had, she quickly learned that his real name was Smoke Jensen.

“Look here, Miss Smith, are you telling me that Buck West did not come to Cloverdale in answer to your telegram?”

“I’m telling you there was no Buck West,” Minnie said.

“Do you know the penalty for lying during an official investigation?”

“Yes, I do. Do you?” Minnie asked pointedly.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You said you didn’t get a letter from Bobby Lee. I know that you did.”

“How do you know?” Sheriff Wallace challenged.

Minnie caught herself. She had almost given away the fact that she had seen the letter in his desk. If he knew that, all he would have to do is destroy it.

“I know it because Bobby Lee told me he mailed it to you.”

“No, all you know is that he told you that,” Sheriff Wallace said. “That didn’t work for Cabot during the trial, and it isn’t going to work now.” Wallace pushed himself back away from the desk, ran his hand through his hair, and sighed. “Get out of here, Miss Smith. I don’t have any more questions for you.”

“That works out fine then, doesn’t it, Sheriff?” Minnie said. “Because I don’t have any more answers for you.”

“If you hear from him, Miss Smith, I’ll know about it,” Wallace said. “Whether it’s a letter or a telegraph message, I will know about it. So I’m tellin’ you right now, if you do hear from him, you had better let me know right away.”

With an angry glare at the sheriff, Minnie left the sheriff’s office.

The gallows was still in place in front of the sheriff’s office, but the sign had been taken away. Now it was little more than an ugly piece of construction.

Doc Baker was gone by the time Minnie returned to the Gold Strike Saloon.

“Minnie! Thank God you are all right! “ Nabors said. “Doc and I were worried about you.”

“Where is Doc?”

“One of the workers down at the mine was hurt, Doc went to tend to him,” Nabors said.

“Nate, I saw the letter,” Minnie said.

“The letter?”

“The letter Bobby Lee had me send,” Minnie explained. “I saw it. It is in the middle drawer of the sheriff’s desk. I read it too, and it is exactly the way Bobby Lee told us. The letter tells what day, what time, and where the train was to be robbed. And in the letter, he asks the sheriff to be waiting in the express car with his deputies.”

“Lord, Minnie, you weren’t prowling around in Wallace’s desk, were you? What if he had caught you?”

“I wasn’t exactly prowling,” Minnie said. “The sheriff got called away for a moment and he left the middle drawer of his desk open. I saw the letter in the drawer so, while he was gone, I read it.”

Nabors hit his fist in his hand. “I knew he was lying,” he said. “He stood right up there in court, under oath, and swore that he had never received that letter. I knew then, he was lying.”

“What do we do with it now?” Minnie asked.