Webb's Posse (4 page)

Seeing the schoolhouse aflame, Sherman Dahl felt a sickness down deep in his stomach. Behind him he heard the younger children sobbing, and he heard Constance Melton trying to comfort them. There was nothing Dahl could do now to keep this dangerous situation from getting any worse but accept what had happened and remain as calm as possible.

“I reckon that makes you fighting mad, don't it, schoolmarm?” said Goose Peltry. “Bet you'd like to take out on my head right here and now, eh?”

“No, sir,” said Sherman Dahl. “I'm not a fighter. Not me, sir. I only want to take these children away from here.”

“I bet you do,” said Goose Peltry. The two riders slid their horse back in among the others as the schoolhouse became engulfed in high, swirling flames.

“All right, Goose,” said Moses Peltry. “You've had your fun. Now let him go.”

Fun
…? This was
fun
to them? Sherman Dahl felt the bitter taste of dark anger rise at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard and managed to keep himself in check.

“Just one more thing, brother Moses,” Goose said.

Dahl saw Goose's boot shift back an inch in the stirrup. He saw what was coming and could only prepare himself to take it. Even with the pistol shoved down in his belt behind his suit coat, Dahl knew he was powerless to take action, lest he cause harm to the children.

“Maybe this will teach you!” shouted Goose Peltry, his boot jerking back out of the stirrup and snapping forward, kicking Sherman Dahl full in the face.

Dahl fell backward; the children gasped. But Moses saw that the schoolmaster hadn't taken as hard a blow as it looked. Moses had seen the way the young teacher had managed to roll back away from the kick, taking it at a glance instead of full impact. Pretty quick and savvy for a schoolmaster, Moses thought, seeing Sherman Dahl roll up from the ground onto one knee, his hands going up to cover his mouth. Yet looking closely, Moses saw no blood seep down behind his fingers. A kick that hard could have cost a man a couple of teeth, Moses thought.

Constance Melton hurried forward from the rest of the children and threw herself between Dahl and the mounted gunman, her long, gangly arms thrown out as if to prevent Goose Peltry from getting past her. “You leave him alone,” she screamed. “He hasn't done anything to you…. Get away and mind your own business!”

The other children backed away as Goose Peltry stepped his horse closer, but Constance Melton appeared to have taken an unyielding stand. Moses Peltry chuckled under his breath, then called out to Goose. “Come on, brother Goose, before you get your eyeballs scratched out. We got lots of ground to cover before dark.”

Goose scowled and started to say something to his brother. “But—”

Frank Spragg cut in with a shrill, mocking voice. “
Yeah, you leave him alone! He hasn't done anything to you…. Mind your own business!
”

The men laughed. Goose Peltry stopped his horse and turned to Frank Spragg, grinning. “Frank, that voice was a might too shrill to be a put-on. We're going to check you out one of these days, make sure you're all there.” He jerked his horse away from Sherman Dahl and Constance Melton and shouted to
the wagon driver. “Get that rig rolling! Who the hell said for you to stop anyway?”

On the ground, Sherman Dahl looked up at Goose Peltry, seeing the cocked pistol level down at him. Still he kept his hands to his mouth, taking only a split second to push Constance Melton away, making sure she was out of danger should a shot come blasting out of the pistol barrel.

“Bang!” Goose Peltry shouted. Then he cackled aloud, let the hammer down on his pistol and holstered it as he spun his horse and rode away with the others.

Sherman Dahl drew the children up close around him. They huddled in silence, watching until the riders fell from sight below the roll of the land. Then Dahl stood up, dusting himself off and looking anxiously toward the black smoke in the sky.

“My pa must not have been in town,” said Eddie Duvall, giving Sherman Dahl a look of veiled contempt. “He wouldn't have let something like this happen.”

“Be quiet, Eddie,” said Dahl. He looked around at the other children and said, “Everybody listen to me.” He gestured a hand toward the drifting, billowing smoke. “We have to go see what we can do to help the town…but we must be careful and not get ourselves injured. Stick close together.” As he spoke, he adjusted his vest and brushed dust from it. Joel Stevens caught a glimpse of the pistol butt sticking up from Dahl's belt. His eyes grew large as he pointed at it. “Look! Mr. Dahl is carrying a gun!”

“Quiet, Joel,” said the schoolmaster. But the children all stared in awe, seeing the imprint of the pistol clearly now that it had been pointed out to them.

“A lot of good it did,” said Eddie Duvall. “You could have done something, but you didn't even try!
You just stood there and let them bully you, Mr. Dahl. You let them burn down our schoolhouse!”

“Children, that was a bad situation, and I did what I had to do. This is not the time to stop and explain it to you,” Sherman Dahl responded. “The schoolhouse is gone.” His eyes went to the twisting, spinning rise of flames and black smoke that only moments ago had been the Rileyville's first school, a structure that he, the townsmen and even the children themselves had built less than two years ago. As his eyes turned to it, he and the children saw the front wall collapse inward across rows of burning desks.

In the dirt twenty yards away, a shaggy brown housecat whose job it had been to keep down the rodent population sat staring as both her home and her livelihood disappeared before her eyes. “There's nothing we can do here,” Sherman Dahl said gently to the children. “Let's hurry into town and help put out the other fires. At least we'll be doing
something.
…”

In their haste, the Peltry Gang had not done their best work starting the fires. They had hurriedly set the fires at three random locations with no regard to the direction of the wind or to the structure of the buildings. Then the gang had left town quickly, without giving the fires adequate time to completely destroy the three large buildings. In spite of the overwhelming black cloud adrift above Rileyville, the fires were soon reduced to steam beneath the relentless efforts of the bucket brigade.

Abner Webb stood exhausted, his shirtsleeves rolled above his elbows, his face smeared with black soot. Beside him, Will Summers batted his wet hat against his wet trouser leg. Then he rolled the hat brim between both hands and put it on. “Looks like Rileyville has cheated the odds once again,” he said. “This is a tough town to kill.”

“Yeah, so it looks,” Webb replied, looking all around. Wooden buckets littered the muddy street. Charred dry goods from the nearly destroyed mercantile store lay in a smoke-streaked pile. A long hose lay serpentine from the front of the smoldering barbershop to the hand pump attached to the edge of an empty water trough. “If I was you, Will, I'd make tracks out of here before these men have time to catch their breath. They'll start blaming you sure enough.”

“Then I'm glad you ain't me, Webb,” said Summers. “Leaving would be like admitting I was guilty of something. If I'd done anything wrong, I wouldn't have come riding back when I saw all the smoke.”

“Suit yourself then,” said Abner Webb. “I've got enough to worry about, explaining to the sheriff what I was doing when all this came about.”

“You mean about you and the French woman, Renee Marie Daniels?” Will Summers asked in a lowered voice.

“How'd you know?” Abner Webb asked. “You weren't even here!”

“I just figured it,” said Will Summers. “Different times I've seen the two of you together without you knowing it.”

“You have?” Abner Webb looked crushed by the news.

“Sure have,” said Will Summers. “The fact is, so have a lot of other people. There's few secrets in a town this size, Deputy; you ought to know that. I only pass through here a few times a year, but I hear everything that's gone on between. People love to gossip.”

“Jesus,” Abner Webb whispered, stung by the revelation, “you mean there's others who know about it?” He hooked a thumb in the empty pistol holster on his hip.

“Oh yes,” said Will Summers. Taking note of Webb's empty holster, Summers took a Colt .45 from the shoulder harness under his left arm and handed it to him. “Here, take this. Ain't nothing looks more unnatural on a lawman than an empty pistol holster.”

“Much obliged, Will,” Webb said, taking the pistol, checking it and shoving it down into his holster. “It feels off balance too, going around with an empty holster—kept thinking I was walking in a circle.”

“This thing with you and Renee Marie: It's been going on a while, ain't it?”

“Well, yes,” said Webb, avoiding Summers' eyes with an embarrassed expression. “I thought we was pretty careful. But there's no denying it after today. We both might just as well have been caught in the act and raised up a flagpole. Goose Peltry made it worse, shooting his mouth off and waving Renee Marie's drawers back and forth.”

“Right in front of Edmund, I reckon?” asked Summers.

“Oh, of course!” said Abner Webb. “The whole town saw them! Lucky for me Edmund wasn't armed at that moment. He was awfully upset about it.”

“Lucky for you he didn't get his hands on you,” said Will Summers. “Edmund is an awfully big man, Deputy. I ain't sure he'd need a gun. I heard he used to fight in the bare-knuckle ring in Chicago. Fought under the name ‘Killer' Daniels, I heard.” He offered a sympathetic wince. “Why
his
wife of all people?”

“There's just something about French women,” said Abner Webb. “I never have been able to control myself around them.”

“Maybe you better learn to,” Will Summers suggested.

“Hell, it wasn't just her being French, I don't reckon,” said Webb. “Look around you, Will. Rileyville ain't exactly blessed with pretty women. Besides, I didn't go looking to fall for Renee Marie Daniels,” said Webb. “It just happened. It weren't neither one of our fault.” Webb looked down in remorse and shook his head. “I wish I could go and talk to her, see if she's all right…see if I can do something for her.”

“Sounds like you've done plenty. Best thing you can do now is keep your nose out of it…unless
you and her are serious enough to take up together and run off.”

“She knows I'm not looking for a wife any more than she's looking for a new husband. We just sparked a deep, passionate desire in one another, is the way she said it. We didn't mean it to ever go any further. Edmund would never have known, hadn't been for Goose Peltry.”

“Yep, I can just picture ole Goose,” said Will Summers, keeping himself from smiling, “waving them bloomers back and forth like a flag.”

“Cut it out, Will. It's no joking matter,” said Abner Webb.

“You're right. I'm sorry,” said Summers. He looked back along the street to where his string of new horses stood tied at a hitch rail. “Miss Renee Marie is a fine, handsome woman…. I can't blame Edmund if he comes looking for satisfaction one way or the other, guns or knuckles.”

“I know,” said Webb. “Don't think I ain't already pictured that in my mind. I look for it most any time.”

“At least you're not going to be caught unaware then,” said Will Summers. “Be thankful for that.”

“Believe me, I am. I won't be breathing easy until this gets settled between him and me some way or another. I just wish none of this ever happened.”

“When's the sheriff coming back?” Summers asked.

“Any time now, I would think,” said Abner Webb. “One man dead, another beat to hell, the town looted and burnt—I expect he'll want to put together a posse first thing. I sent Bobby Dewitt out to round up some horses and guns from the nearby ranches…if they've got any to spare.”

“Good luck on that,” said Summers. After a second's
pause, he asked, “Who was it the Peltrys killed here?”

“That was old Roy Krill. He teamstered freight twixt here and Montydale. Poor old man never knew what hit him, I reckon.”

“Never met him.” Summers spit and ran a hand across his mouth.

“Nobody knew much about him,” said Webb. “He was a quiet old fellow, kept to himself. Soon as our lines are back up, I'll wire Montydale and see if he had any kin there.”

“I don't envy you riding posse,” said Summers. “All those long hours in the saddle under a blazing sun.
Whew!
”

“Yeah, I know,” Abner Webb sighed. “I'll be living in the saddle for quite some time, I reckon.” But then he took a deep breath, finding some good in the prospect. “It might be the best thing for me though: get away from here a while, let things cool between Daniels and me.”

“Good idea. The Peltrys will be headed straight down across the desert badlands then on into Mexico is my guess,” said Summers. “Ever been there?”