That crowd’s getting mighty rowdy,” Ike called out, hoping the marshal took notice. He wrapped his arms around the bars to pull himself up to peer over the window ledge. The number of men with torches had grown. He tried to count them and stopped at fifteen. For every torch-waving member of the crowd, a couple more milled around, mumbling and occasionally shouting that they wanted him strung up.
Leaving Houston had been a good idea. Penrose’s reputation for how he collected debts assured Ike of that, but he had flopped from the frying pan into the fire. Penrose might have killed him. A lynch mob was sure to hang him.
“Are they heating pots of tar and plucking chickens yet?” Marshal Granger looked up from the table where he pored over the papers from the second envelope he’d taken when he arrested Ike.
“I don’t see anything like that. So far, nobody’s waving around a noose, either. Just burning torches and making ugly sounds.”
“If they start plucking chickens, I can run ’em in. There’s an ordinance against doing that in public. We respect our poultry here in San Antonio.”
Ike dropped down and stared at the lawman, trying to decide if he was joshing or if he meant it. Chicken plucking was actionable but lynching wasn’t? He watched as Granger folded the letters into the envelope and pushed it aside. The marshal opened the leather wallet hesitantly. With an exaggerated motion, he held the leather wallet at arm’s length then snapped it shut and tossed it onto the table.
“Is this the only gun you’re toting?”
Ike blinked at the question.
“You searched me. You know it is.”
“A fellow never can tell.” Granger held it up and spun the cylinder. “It needs cleaning.”
“I’ve been busy.” Ike wondered how busy the marshal would be when the crowd broke into the jailhouse, coming to lynch his sole prisoner. He ran his fingers around his neck, imagining what the rope would feel like. Rough hemp, rope burns. Public executions used trained hangmen. A crowd was as likely to drape the rope over a tree limb and hoist him up. Ike didn’t want to choke to death real slow-like. Better to die fast.
Attacking the nearest pistol-toting man in the crowd gave him a chance to be shot to death. Or maybe they’d beat him to death. If he passed out quick, that was better than dangling by his neck and strangling bit by bit as the crowd jeered. He’d heard a man’s tongue lolled out and then got all swole up before turning black. And other parts of a strangled man’s anatomy puffed up really big before the brain was completely starved of blood and the victim died.
A dozen schemes ran through his head. Shouting wasn’t going to be heard over the roar of potential lynchers. Besides, one lone voice calling for mercy was unlikely to be heeded. Saving his breath to grab for one man’s six-shooter gave him the best chance of dying fast. That had to be his only goal. Die quick so he wouldn’t prolong the suffering.
Ike sucked in his breath when he realized what he was planning.
“I sent all my deputies over to the rail yard to investigate that second body, the one that’s got Schofield all fired up.” Granger ran his fingers over the envelopes. “You get a chance to talk to Gregorio? No, I reckon not.” He picked up one envelope and turned toward the cell. The marshal peered over the top of the grimy envelope. “How’d he think to send this to you?”
Ike had no idea what the marshal meant. Given enough time, he’d have read everything taken off his dead traveling companion. He hadn’t even kept the man’s gun long enough to put it to good use.
“That’s all right. No need to answer. I can figure it out myself. He’s a powerful man with tentacles going all the way back East. I’ve heard tell he even has coffee with the president himself whenever he can find the time. Yes, sir, a righteously powerful man who buys and sells senators like they was cords of wood.”
Ike frowned, trying to make sense out of the lawman’s words.
“You don’t need this anymore. What do you say about me keeping it? I know some folks who’d be real interested.”
“Help yourself,” Ike said. “I don’t expect you’d agree to swap it for the six-shooter? You keep the paper and give me the iron?”
Granger tucked the envelope into his coat pocket, just above the spot where he had his badge pinned to his vest.
“You want another six-shooter? I got a few I’ve taken off drunks in the past month. They never bothered asking fer ’em back. Naw, that’s not what you want. Don’t go anywhere.” Granger pushed himself to his feet and disappeared.
Ike heard the marshal’s boots clicking on the steps as he went downstairs to his first-floor office. When the echoes of those footsteps died, all that remained was the increasingly loud demand from the crowd outside for justice. He hoped the marshal hadn’t gone to let in the lynch mob, but steps returning caused him to stiffen.
“This one’s a good fit,” the marshal said. He held up a gun belt with the loops filled with spare ammunition. With remarkable dexterity, he picked up the six-shooter from the table and flipped it in the air. He thrust out the holster so that the pistol slid in snugly. Granger swung the gun belt around and around.
“The only way to know is if I try it on.” Ike hated his gallows humor, but the words leaked out.
“Yes, sir, you got that right.” Marshal Granger came over, unlocked the cell and kicked the door open. “Try it on. I’ve got another spare downstairs, but I remember taking that one off Ozzie Oswald. I swear, that man weighs three hundred pounds if he weighs an ounce. I never saw him after locking him up for drunk and disorderly a month back. He might have returned to the Panhandle. Heard tell his people are cotton farmers up there.”
Granger held out the gun belt. Ike hesitated taking it, sure it was a trap. If he touched the holster with the six-gun stuffed in it, Granger had reason to throw down on him and fill him with lead for trying to escape.
“Take it, won’t you?” He tossed the gun belt and pistol to Ike. He turned away and gathered everything taken earlier into a pile. With an almost reverent touch, he stroked over the leather wallet. “If the gun’s not good enough, I can give you mine. I keep it in tiptop condition, and it’s sighted in for ten yards.”
“You’d give me your six-shooter?” Ike held the gun taken off the body in the rail yard as if it had teeth ready to snap at his hand.
“I don’t have any attachment to it, not like a set of spurs my pa gave me for my tenth birthday. One rowel came off somewhere since then, but I’ve kept the set. But my gun? It might be time to get a new one, if you are looking to take this one.” Granger drew his gun, rolled it around the trigger guard and thrust it toward Ike, butt first.
“Th-that’s all right, Marshal,” Ike stammered. This had to be a trick.
“My deputies are likely to return any time now. You’d better hightail it down the back stairs.”
“The crowd . . .”
“Them? Don’t worry none about that. Schofield’s hired the whole lot of them to cause a fuss. He thinks he can make me do what he wants if enough people outside shout curses and call me ugly names.” Granger’s tone hardened. He and Schofield weren’t on good terms.
“Are you sure?” Ike strapped on the gun belt and settled the three pounds of smoke wagon on his right hip. He kept an eagle eye on the marshal to see if this sparked a gunfight. This had to be a setup so the marshal could justify cutting him down during an escape attempt.
Ike thought on all the plans he’d made just minutes earlier about getting shot so he wouldn’t be hanged. He doubted Marshal Granger had read his mind, but deciphering his intent from the expression on his face couldn’t be that hard. But why would the marshal go to such trouble? Better to let the lynch mob have his prisoner than explain how a loaded six-gun had come into his possession.