Rough Justice (20 page)

“So, you're what? Expecting a rebellion here, against the Union?” Abel asked him. “I'd have thought you would have learned your lesson from the war.”

“Oh, yes, I learned a lesson,” Coker said. “This time, I won't be trusting any outsiders, whether they come from North or South. A new Texas Republic's what we need, and we shall have it. Mark my words!”

With that, he turned and left, slamming the door behind him. Anna listened to his footsteps fading in the corridor outside, then said, “He's lost his mind.”

“All the more reason to get out of here,” her brother said, “if we can find a way.”

*   *   *

H
arlan Travis had started to tremble and hoped that the Yank with the gun at his back couldn't see it. Ashamed of himself for his fear, he still couldn't control it. Worse yet was the thought that Roy Coker had meant this to happen, had used him as bait, and would not miss him much if he died.

“You know—” he said, then swallowed it when Ryder poked him with the Henry's muzzle from behind.

“No talking!” Ryder hissed.

Against his better judgment, Travis stopped and turned to face his captor, stopping when he'd made three-quarters of the turn and found the rifle jammed beneath his flabby jawline, hurting him.

“You tired of living, Sheriff?”

Whispering, he told the Yankee, “Listen! Kill me if you wanna, but you need to know I wasn't in on Coker snatchin' them two what you're lookin' for.”

“So what? You covered for him.”

Travis nodded, best he could, the Henry gouging him. “Tha's true enough.”

“I'm not your priest, and this is no time for confession.”

“I can help you, though.”

“You're helping now. Shut up and move.”

“I likely know the boys he's got here, waitin' for you. I can try'n talk 'em out of it.”

“Are you their boss, or Coker?”

“He is. But I'm still the law in Jefferson.”

The smile that Ryder gave him back was harrowing. “All right,” he said. “Go on, then.”

“Gimme back my gun?”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

Travis managed a shrug without shuddering. “Okay, then. But if they start shootin'—”

“At
the law
?” said Ryder, mocking him.

“Awright, then. Have it your way.”

Travis turned back to the hallway, doors shut tight on either side. Ahead of him, if he kept going straight, he'd wind up in the dry-goods store and visible to anybody passing on the street outside. The hostages weren't there, as he'd already seen. That left the basement or the second floor, both served by stairs located thirty feet or so in front of him. One flight, serving the upper story, was located to his left and quickly accessed from the shop. The other, going down, was hidden by the third door on his right.

“Hey, boys!” he called out in a shaky voice. “It's me, the sheriff! Listen up! There's been a change of plans.”

No answer from the silent floor above him, though he thought he heard a floorboard creak up there. Somebody moving, or the building's normal settling noise?

“This thing has gone too far,” he told the silence. “We're
just buyin' trouble that we can't afford. I'm takin' the two carpetbaggers outta here, and you'd be wise to stand aside.”

He'd reached the point where it was time to make a choice. Stairs to his left, door to his right that opened on the basement. Even guessing where the captives were, he couldn't leave Roy's shooters at his back. He had to calm them first, persuade them to forget their orders and cooperate.

Travis turned left, to face the stairs, and peered up into murky shadows on the second floor. “I know you're up there,” he advised. “You best come down now, with your hands where I can see 'em.”

“Go to hell,” a gruff voice answered from above. He saw a shadow shift up there, and then a blinding muzzle flash, before a storm of buckshot ripped into his chest.

*   *   *

T
he sheriff died with a surprised expression on his face. Instead of rushing to him, Ryder waited, standing well back from the staircase, Henry at his shoulder and his index finger on its trigger. Overhead, a muffled conversation reached his ears.

“You get him?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“What about the Yank?”

“Don't see nobody else.”

“Well, get down there and look!”

“Why me?”

“'Cause I said so!”

Chain of command,
thought Ryder. It might work to his advantage, yet.

He stood and listened, heard footsteps slowly descending toward the ground floor. That would be the fellow with the shotgun, one barrel still primed and ready to release a spray
of lead. Fair fighting didn't enter into it from this point on. His focus was survival and attempting to retrieve the Butlers from captivity.

A pair of boots came into view, their owner edging down the stairs until his legs and rump were visible, and then the rest of him. He held the sawed-off shotgun at his waist, still pointed toward the sheriff's ventilated corpse. When Ryder shot him in the back, his finger clenched around the weapon's second trigger and another blast of buckshot ripped into the lawman, who was long past feeling it.

The shooter toppled forward, plunging headfirst down the staircase. When he hit, his neck snapped. It would be a toss-up whether Ryder or the fall had killed him, and it didn't matter, either way.

One down. How many left to go?

A voice called down from overhead. “Orville? You hear me?”

“No more Orville,” Ryder answered back.

“Goddamn you!”

“If you want what he got, come ahead.”

“Don't think we won't,” the angry voice replied, but no one started down the stairs.

“I haven't got all night,” Ryder advised his unseen enemy. “I need to grab your boss before he slips away and leaves you with the short end of the stick. Time now for you to make a choice.”

“What choice is that?”

“Whether you want to live or die.”

“Big talk for one man on his own!”

A lamp hung from the wall beside him, giving Ryder an idea. “Throw down your guns right now, and come down showing empty hands, I'll let you walk away. You want to fight, I'll burn the place and leave you to it. See if you get roasted.”

“I believe you're bluffing,” came the answer, but the speaker didn't sound convinced.

“So, call me on it.”

Raspy whispering upstairs, and then the same voice said, “Awright, we's comin' down.”

“Guns first!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

A pistol sailed through space and clattered near the bodies huddled at the bottom of the staircase. It was followed by two more, one striking Travis in his lifeless upturned face and gouging flesh.

“That's all of 'em,” the mouthpiece said. “Don't shoot, now. We's unarmed.”

Ryder stayed silent, rifle angled toward the stairs, and waited. Three men were descending, single file, hands down against their sides and hidden from him. When they'd nearly reached the bottom, they began to turn, half-hidden weapons rising, swinging in his general direction.

Ryder shot them each in turn, one round each from the Henry, rapid-firing with no need to aim at such close range. They fell together, dead or dying, in a heap beside their fallen friend and Harlan Travis, leaking blood and bile into the floorboards there.

He listened for a while, heard nothing more upstairs, and struck a match to light the hanging lamp before he took it down. Another moment, and he had the basement access door standing ajar, shouting downstairs.

“Anna? Abel?”

A muted sound came back to him, muffled by walls and doors.

Unhappy with his options, Ryder started down into the dark.

H
e found the Butlers in a dirt-floored room, behind a padlocked door. The lock was cheap and shattered at the first shot from his Henry rifle, loud in Ryder's ears below ground, with the whole weight of the world on top of them.

They sat together, up against a wall, hands tied behind their backs with rawhide thongs. Ryder unsheathed his Bowie, cut them free, helped Anna to her feet while Abel got up on his own. He noticed Abel wince a little, pressing one hand to his ribs.

“Are you all right?”

“I will be,” Abel answered, “once we're out of here and far away from Jefferson.”

“Get moving, then,” Ryder advised. “You think it's safe to stop at home and pack your things?”

“Should be,” said Abel. “Coker's people won't expect us there.”

“A few more minutes, and they won't expect you anywhere.”

“What's that mean?” Anna asked him.

“Never mind. Go on, now. And at least consider going home. I mean your
real
home.”

“Thank you,” Abel said, shaking his hand, then starting for the stairs. “Anna?”

“A minute.” She stepped close to Ryder, one hand on his arm. “Won't you come with us?”

“Sorry,” he replied. “I still have work to do.”

“Can't you just leave it?”

“That's not how it goes.”

She rose on tiptoes, startled Ryder with a warm kiss on the lips, then turned and fled, trailing her brother up the stairs and out of sight. He gave them a head start, then followed, pausing on the ground floor near the heap of corpses. There, he pitched his lantern at the nearest wall and watched it shatter, streams of flaming kerosene igniting wallpaper, woodwork, the stairway's narrow strip of carpeting.

How long before the whole place was ablaze, flames threatening its neighbors? It was built of wood, dried out by Texas heat and a relentless sun. The walls and floors were little more than tinder, ripe for burning. If a breeze came up, he thought the fire might spread to take out half the street and make a nice distraction for him as he went about his business.

Hunting Coker.

Where to find him? On reflection, as he cleared the back door, trailing smoke, Ryder decided that his best bets were at home or at the Red Dog. Of the two, he figured the saloon would be his better choice. Coker would want a crowd around him when the killing happened, witnesses to prove he didn't have a hand in it, Knights to help him if the play
went wrong. He might have money at the Red Dog, too, in case it seemed advisable to run.

The Butlers were long gone and out of sight when Ryder reached the street. He wished them well, the taste of Anna's kiss still lingering, and knew it was unlikely he'd see either one of them again. There'd been a moment, maybe more, when he'd connected with the woman, but it wasn't meant to last. She didn't fit his life, and Ryder knew he was a rotten fit for hers.

Too bad.

He put her sweet face and aroma out of mind and focused on the job at hand. The Red Dog, four blocks east and one block north, should have a decent early evening crowd of customers. He couldn't guess how many of them would be Coker's Knights, or simply innocents who didn't know they'd come to do their drinking on a battlefield.

Was
anybody
innocent in Jefferson, tonight?

Ryder reloaded as he walked, until the Henry's magazine was full once more, a cartridge in its chamber. With his pistol and the sheriff's, still tucked through his belt in back, he was as ready as he'd ever be to face a private army.

For the hell of it, he hummed “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as he passed on through the dusk.

*   *   *

R
oy Coker tossed a second shot of whiskey down and felt it sear his gullet on its way to calm his nervous stomach. It was disconcerting to be in the midst of friends, admirers, and to wonder if his plan might be unraveling beyond repair.

He trusted Henley and the others well enough to leave them on their own, let them dispose of Ryder for him, but he thought one of them should have come to fetch him back by this time. If they'd finished with the Secret Service agent, what was the
delay? They didn't have to bury him straight off, just tuck him in a corner somewhere, then tell Coker it was safe for him to come back and interrogate the Yankee prisoners.

Simple.

Except they weren't here yet, and he was getting antsy, his imagination painting pictures that disturbed him. One more drink, and then he'd walk back to the dry-goods shop. Find out what the delay was and correct it.

“Another,” Coker told the barkeep, smiling as three fingers of the amber fluid filled his glass. He lifted it, had almost pressed the rim against his lips, when someone barged in through the bat-wing doors and bellowed,
“Fire!”

“Where at?” somebody asked the new arrival.

“Felcher's dry goods,” came the answer. “Goin' up like Hell!”

The barroom emptied in a rush, civilians and Knights alike racing to catch the show, and maybe see if they could lend a hand in putting out the fire. His watchdog for this evening, Jeremiah Campbell, stayed at Coker's side and asked him, “Do you want to see it?”

“No. Those numbskulls couldn't do a simple job, we'll leave them to it. Flee or fry, I never want to see the four of them again.”

“No problem. What about the Yankees?”

“Two of them are likely cooked by now. The other . . . let's just wait and see.”

“What if he ain't, Boss?”

“Then we'll run him down and finish it. He's just one man, an outsider at that.”

Coker drained his whiskey glass, then let his hand drop to the butt of his LeMat revolver with its metal lanyard ring. He hadn't shot a man since late November 1864 but felt the itch now, in his gun hand, agitated by a churning in his gut.

If Ryder had survived the trap, it meant he'd dealt with Henley's crew and Travis. Maybe he'd be wounded, even dying. Coker wouldn't know until he saw the Yank, and maybe had a chance to speak with him.

On second thought, forget that. There would be no talking, if and when they met again. Just gun smoke and a bloody end for one of them.

“You okay, Boss?” asked Campbell.

“Fine,” Coker said. Thinking,
Come on. Let's get it over with.

*   *   *

R
yder watched from an alley as the crowd of Red Dog customers went streaming past him, toward the fire. Their voices jumbled all together, nothing he could make sense of in passing, even if he'd cared to try. He scanned the faces, didn't see Roy Coker's, and proceeded on toward the saloon as soon as they were gone.

Another problem when he reached it: how should he go in?

A quick peek through the street-side window showed him Coker and another fellow at the bar, glasses in front of them, both armed with six-guns. Add the bartender, who likely had a shotgun stashed away somewhere, and that made three. He didn't want to shoot an honest workingman, but that would be the barkeep's choice, if he sided with Coker in the fight.

It never crossed his mind that Coker would surrender voluntarily. It wasn't in him to admit that he was beaten, grant that he had failed. If Appomattox hadn't taken the starch out of him, he wouldn't back down now.

Given the atmosphere he'd found in Texas, and the odds against a jury of his Rebel peers convicting Coker, Ryder counted on a fight to settle things once and for all.

Whichever way it went.

He stood outside the Red Dog, breathing in the night, caught a tang of wood smoke on the breeze. More people shouting, back in the direction he had come from, and a bell was clamoring as someone tried to raise the fire brigade. He thought about the Butlers, wondered if they'd made it safely home or even tried, and knew their fate no longer rested in his hands. He'd done his bit and given them his best advice. Whatever choice they made, it would be their responsibility alone.

His job was here, a few yards distant, in the barroom.

Front or rear?

Without another thought, he shoved in through the swinging doors, rifle at his shoulder, with its barrel aimed midway between Roy Coker and his friend. They turned to face him, almost moving in slow motion, while the barkeep froze, a wiping rag in one hand and the other out of sight.

“I thought you might be joining us,” said Coker. “Where's the sheriff?”

“One of your men killed him. Add it to your bill.”

“What bill is that, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Murder and attempted murder, kidnapping, inciting riots.”

“Quite a list. Even if true, however, those are state offenses. Where's your jurisdiction?”

“I was just about to say rebellion against these United States.”

“Indeed? You make me sound ambitious.”

“That, or crazy.”

Coker's face grew dark at that. “If you're correct, it's never wise to prod a crazy man.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“Fair enough.”

Both of them drew at once, Coker's companion being quicker, and the barkeep ducked to grab his twelve-gauge
from a shelf behind the bar. Ryder triggered a shot and knew he'd missed all three, before he dived headlong below the nearest poker table, tipping it to cover him.

*   *   *

W
hich, as it turned out, didn't offer much in way of cover after all. The first shots from his enemies punched through the table, drilling tidy holes, but they were several inches high and only stung Ryder with splinters as they passed.

Too close for comfort, still.

Instead of giving Coker and his friends time to correct their aim, he rolled clear of the table, Henry rifle angled toward the bar, and triggered two quick rounds without much hope of hitting anyone. As luck would have it, though, his second round cut through the thigh of Coker's sidekick, spraying blood across the bar's wood paneling in front, above the brass foot rail. The man went down, howling, but still managed another pistol shot before his backside hit the floor.

Another miss.

Coker fired again, and now the bartender had found his shotgun, swinging it around toward Ryder with a pinched expression on his face, clearly unhappy to be there. His happiness went down another notch as Ryder shot him through the chest and slammed him back into the shelves of liquor bottles. Falling with a cry of pain, the barkeep fired both barrels of his weapon simultaneously, pointed toward the ceiling and the cribs upstairs. The buckshot blew a ragged hole some two feet square and loosed a rain of dust atop the dying shooter.

Coker's pistol gave a hollow boom, like something in its mechanism had exploded, maybe ripping off his fingers, but the sting of birdshot at his side explained the noise to Ryder
as he gasped and staggered. A LeMat, damn it, and he'd be lining up another shot—a solid slug this time—while Ryder tried to get his balance back. The only answer to it he could manage was a quick shot on the fly, wasting the fifth round from his Henry, but at least it spoiled his adversary's aim as Ryder dropped into an awkward crouch.

Meanwhile, the leg-shot gunman had recovered well enough to try again. He had his Colt lined up on Ryder, more or less, when Ryder grazed him on the run, a headshot gone astray to clip the lobe from his left ear. More blood splashed on the bar, another cry of pain, and when the Colt fired, it was high and wide.

Pumping his rifle's lever action, Ryder fired again at Coker, missed, then swung back toward the other shooter, slumped against the bar, down on one elbow now, his six-gun wavering in front of him. They fired together, Ryder's .44 slug drilling home beneath the shooter's chin, while Ryder felt another razor line of fire lancing across his wounded side.

Instead of running now, Coker was moving toward him, shouting angry words that didn't register with Ryder's ringing ears. His chunky-looking pistol blazed and missed again, despite the narrowed range, its aim betrayed by Coker's rage.

One chance,
thought Ryder, as he aimed his Henry through the gun smoke, squeezed the trigger, and saw Coker lurch backward, falling with arms outflung, a splash of scarlet on his white shirt, swiftly darkening. He hit the floor, heels drumming for a moment, then lay still.

Ryder rose slowly, painfully, and started for the exit, wanting to be gone before more Knights returned to tell their leader what was happening downtown. Outside, he left the smell of gun smoke and exchanged it for a pall of drifting
wood smoke, wafted on the wind blowing in his direction from the dry-goods store.

*   *   *

T
he town was burning. Not a lot of it, so far, but he could see flames leaping over nearby rooftops, work enough to keep the fire brigade and any volunteers engaged for hours yet, he guessed. They'd likely save most of the downtown district, but with blackened scars to tell the tale.

Ryder considered what to do next. He was wounded, bleeding, though he sensed his injuries were not life threatening. He hadn't met a doctor yet, in Jefferson, and didn't fancy wandering the streets until he found one's shingle hanging from a doorpost. Even then, he might pick out a sawbones who was friendly with the KRS, if not a member in his own right.