William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

The flat roofs of the jail, feed store, and carpenter shop would serve as platforms for riflemen, as would the loft of the stable barn. Quantities of hay, oats, and water for horses were massed inside the enclosure, serving a double purpose of reinforcing makeshift walls.

Scores of horses were gathered for the penning. The Big Corral, as it was called, thronged with horses, stallions, mares, geldings, yearlings, colts, scrappy ponies, and massive quarter horses. A wealth of prime horseflesh—an irresistible target for Red Hand and his warrior braves.

A reserve stock was set aside to serve as a mounted force against the Comanches, and to carry out errands and make the rounds around town.

The Staffords and the Ramrod bunch were centered in the feed store. Store-owner Dickerson had grudgingly consented to house the Ramrod riders in the building. Vince Stafford had come out in favor of it and Dickerson didn’t want to go against him. Few did. A big building, it stood alone, sharing its lot with no adjacent structures, and almost directly opposite the Golden Spur and Damon Bolt, the special object (though not the only one) of Vince Stafford’s ire. It was the prime reason Vince had proposed the arrangement; he could keep the gambling house under observation while waiting out the Comanche onslaught.

Stafford was a big customer of the store. Having the Ramrod riders lodged in the store might well protect it from being sacked and burned. On the other hand, they were rowdies and Dickerson feared losses from pilferage and vandalism. Still, he personally opted to stay in the courthouse along with his family, pinning his hopes on the sheriff’s office being next door to the store where he could keep an eye on it. Besides, if they started tearing up the place, he could do nothing to stop them.

Ramrod men carried fifty- and one hundred-pound sacks of oats, grain, barley, and the like from the store, stacking them out in front of the building to form defensive breastworks. The Staffords were inside the store, well under cover, not showing themselves as potential targets of a well-aimed shot from the gambling house.

“What about the ranch, Pa? They’s only a handful of the boys there,” Quent asked.

“They got to take their chances like the rest of us. Here’s where the battle will be fought and won. Red Hand will go for the big prize. Take Hangtown and he can pick off the ranches later. With any luck we’ll break the Comanches here before they get to raiding the South Fork,” Vince said.

“Hutto’s sticking,” Clay said. “You don’t see him making any damn fool run for his ranch. Not with those scalp hunters out there.”

Quent was restless, not one to sit still for too long, if at all. He paced back and forth. “What about them Mexes in the Spur?” he fumed.

Several dozen Mexican-Americans males, youths and adults, were housed in the gambling house.

“What of them?” Clay said. “They’re here to fight Red Hand. When the fighting’s over they’ll go back to Mextown. They won’t mix in our feud. They don’t give a damn about white folks killing each other.”

“I don’t like it,” Quent said.

“Don’t get yourself in an uproar. When Red Hand’s whipped, we take the gambler,” said Clay.

“And his whore,” Vince said quickly.

Clay groaned. “You still harping on that? For God’s sake, Pa, let it go. It’s crazy talk.”

“Nothing crazy about doing what’s right,” Vince said. “It’ll get done, too.”

“I ain’t killing no woman. I got to live in these parts. Nobody’s hanging a woman-killer tag around my neck.”

“I ain’t gone kill her, if that’s what making you go all yellow, Clay. I’m just going to make her wish she was dead, like my boy—your brother Bliss—or did you forget about him already?”

“I didn’t forget, Pa.”

“See that you don’t.”

“You sweet on that gal, Clay?” Quent said, snickering.

“I wouldn’t have had nothing to do with her, if Pa hadn’t sent me to buy her off,” Clay said, coloring. “She’d’ve took the money, too, if it’d done any good. But Bliss would’ve gone chasing after her, no matter where she went. He just had to have her all to himself.”

“And now he’s dead, and they’s gone be a reckoning,” Vince Stafford said in a tone of finality.

Clay fell silent, exasperated.

Dusky shadows thickened in the feed store.

The Dog Star Saloon regulars, a hard-core nucleus of fifteen or so, clustered in and around the jail. Most of them had had more than a passing acquaintance with the hoosegow in the past, but this time things were different.

Using tables, chairs, barrels, and hay bales, they built a barricade in front of the stone blockhouse, with wings extending along the sides for a man’s length or so, forming a U-shape. Narrow openings at the sides allowed free passage. Finished, the men loitered around, loafing, smoking, talking, drinking, matching coins, and checking their weapons.

The sun had set, purple dusk deepening into night. Barton stood outside the barricade, smoking a cigar. He looked around. It was risky, putting the Ramrod bunch so close to the Golden Spur, but it kept both parties well away from the women and children forted up in the courthouse.

Closer to home, he eyed the Dog Star troops, shaking his head in mock disbelief. “What a crew! Looks like a posse should be chasing you fellows.”

“Funny, huh? Us boys making our stand here at the jail, that is,” Squint McCray said.

“Why not? For most of you, it’s your home away from home. I ought to charge rent for all the time you rannigans have slept off a drunk back in the cells,” Barton said.

“Rent? What do you think them fines were?”

Barton let it pass. “Where else are you and your crowd gonna light? Not in the courthouse with the respectable folk. They won’t have you. Not in the Spur, Damon wouldn’t chance all you booze hounds getting so close to his fine, high-priced liquor.”

“Hard words, Sheriff, hard words.”

“But true. And you sure don’t want to bed down with Vince and friends.”

McCray said a dirty word, then spat. “Shoot, I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”

“Maybe Red Hand’ll do just that, and set him on fire for you not to piss on him,” Barton quipped.

“I can hope. Anyhow, the jailhouse’s the place to be. Good solid walls,” reasoned McCray.

“You ought to know, you been behind ’em enough.” Barton puffed on his cigar, the smoke clouds wreathing his head.

“Say, Sheriff, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra seegar to spare, would you?” McCray wheedled.

Barton started to tell him where to go, then thought better of it for some unknown reason. He took a cigar out of his breast pocket. “Here.”

“Why, thankee!” McCray said, surprised.

“Don’t tell where you got it or all your pals’ll be trying to bum a smoke from me,” Barton warned.

“I’m a closed book,” McCray said solemnly. He bit off the end of the cigar, spitting it out. He lit up, puffing away. “You’re a gentleman, Sheriff.”

“Just remember to vote for me come Election Day.”

“I always do. Several times.”

“Make sure you keep on doing it,” Barton said. If we’re still around.

NINETEEN

“Do you know the Truce of God, amigo?” Latigo asked.

“No,” Sam said, “can’t say as I do.”

At midnight on the cloudy night, the moon was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. Bright silver moonlight alternated with ghostly silver-black gloom. A farmer’s old saw Sam had oft heard repeated during boyhood days in southwest Minnesota maintained that for the best crop yields, some planting was done by moonlight. He and Latigo were doing some planting of their own on the far west edge of Hangtown, sowing seeds of destruction to reap a crop of pure hell.