Scratch hesitated. In addition to wiping him out, the attempt on his life could have been a ploy to lure Bo away from the jail, so that the other Deverys could go in and free the ones who were locked up.
“No, just keep everybody away from this room!” Scratch called back to Green. “Might still be some lead flyin’ around!”
He didn’t think the bushwhackers would linger very long after their ambush failed, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility that they were still lurking out there. Since the bedspread was already ruined because the shotgun blast had blown a big hole in it, he pulled it off the bed and balled it up. Then he reached up, found the lamp and the matches on the table, and brought them down. He dumped the oil from the lamp’s reservoir onto the spread.
Taking the oil-soaked ball of cloth with him, Scratch crawled around the bed and over to the window. Being careful not to get it too close to the bedspread, he lit another lucifer. He held the match to the spread, which whooshed! into flame. Scratch heaved the blazing makeshift torch through the window into the alley and lunged up after it. He kicked out the last of the frame and leaned through the opening, confident that he had taken by surprise anybody who was still skulking out there.
As he swept the Colt and his eyes from side to side, Scratch saw that the alley was deserted. He climbed through the window and dropped to the ground, then stomped out the burning bedspread. Men clustered on the boardwalk at the mouth of the alley, calling questions to him. Scratch walked up to them with the gun still in his hand, ready if he needed it.
“Settle down,” he told the men. In the light that came through the windows of the buildings around them, he looked them over, pegging them as miners and townsmen. He didn’t see anybody who looked like a Devery.
“What happened, Deputy?” one of the men asked.
“Nothin’ much,” Scratch said. “Some fellas took a few potshots at me through the window of my hotel room, but they missed. Did any of you folks see anybody runnin’ away from this alley?”
He got head shakes and shrugged shoulders in response to the question. Either nobody had seen anything…or they were still scared to buck the Deverys. Of course, it was possible that the bushwhackers had fled the alley in the other direction.
Harlan Green came out onto the hotel porch, carrying a rifle. “Deputy Morton, is that you?” he asked.
Scratch stepped up onto the porch. “Yeah. Anybody hurt in there? The lead was really flyin’ around there for a minute.”
“Everyone’s fine, as far as I know.”
“Good. Can’t say the same for the window in that room, though. It’s busted all to pieces. Bed’s torn up, too. It caught both barrels of a shotgun blast that was intended for me.”
“Window glass and a bed can be replaced,” Green said. “I’m not sure an honest lawman can.”
Scratch grinned. “Sorry about the damage, anyway. I reckon you could send Pa Devery a bill for it, but I got a hunch he wouldn’t pay up.”
“You think he’s responsible for what happened?”
“I’m pert’ near sure of it.”
Not a hundred percent, though, Scratch thought. While the odds were mighty high that Jackson Devery was behind the ambush, Scratch couldn’t forget the deadly dustup he and Bo had had earlier that day with Finn Murdock and the other three hardcases they’d been forced to kill. It was still possible that some of Murdock’s friends had tried to even the score.
“I’ll send for a carpenter to board up that broken window,” Green said, “and of course I’ll find another room for you.”
Scratch shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t reckon it’s necessary. Think I’ll get my gear and mosey back on over to the jail. Probably better if both of us spend the nights there as long as we’ve got prisoners locked up. Especially those particular prisoners.”
“You might be right. Good luck, Deputy.”
“Much obliged,” Scratch said.
With the odds lined up against them, he and Bo were liable to need all the luck they could get.
CHAPTER 19
Bo had barely gotten settled down in the office when he heard the gun-thunder from somewhere not too far away. He bolted up from the chair, grabbing the shotgun from the desk. He was certain that the shots had come from the direction of the hotel, and Scratch had gone over there just a few minutes earlier. It was possible that somebody had been laying in wait to ambush him.
Bo took a couple of steps toward the door of the sheriff’s office, then stopped short. A grimace pulled at his mouth. Every instinct in his body called out for him to go to the aid of his old friend, but at the same time, alarm bells rang loudly in his brain.
Someone might be waiting in the darkness for him to yank the door open and rush out of the office, making a perfect target of himself as he was silhouetted by the light behind him. Or it might not be a lone rifleman lurking, but rather several killers armed with shotguns, ready to blast him out of existence.
And with him out of the way, Bo thought, it would be an easy matter for Jackson Devery to waltz in here and let his sons and nephew out of jail.
Bo knew he couldn’t allow that to happen. Deep trenches appeared in his cheeks as he heard a Greener roar, followed by more shots from a handgun. All he could do was pray that Scratch was all right.
Maybe the ruckus didn’t have anything to do with Scratch, Bo told himself. Mankiller was known far and wide as a boomtown, the sort of town where hell was in session nearly twenty-four hours a day. True, the settlement had been surprisingly peaceful today, but Bo suspected that was because everybody was sort of in a state of shock over the idea that somebody would actually stand up to the Deverys. That attitude would wear off, probably sooner rather than later, and Mankiller would return to its wild, wicked ways.
But even though Bo knew that made sense, he couldn’t bring himself to believe. The same instincts that wanted to send him charging out the door told him that Scratch was right in the middle of all that flying lead.
The shooting had stopped now, Bo realized grimly. But what that meant, he didn’t know.
“Hey! Hey, Creel! You hear them shots?”
That was Thad Devery’s voice coming from the cell block, through the barred window in the door between the two parts of the building. Bo’s head turned in that direction. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a savage snarl.
“That was the other old fool dyin’! You know that, don’t you, Creel? Why don’t you go and try to help him? See what that gets you! Haw haw haw!”
The donkeylike bray of laughter was all Bo could stand. He strode across the room, grabbing the key ring along the way, and unlocked the cell block door. The other two Deverys were laughing now, too, but Bo didn’t pay any attention to them.
Instead he stopped and swung the shotgun up, leveling the twin barrels as he aimed through the bars at Thad’s face. The laughter stopped like it had been chopped off by an ax. Thad’s eyes widened so much the whites showed all the way around the pupils. He had been standing beside the bunk. Now, he collapsed onto it as all the color washed from his face. His wounded arm bumped the wall and it must have hurt like blazes, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Bo squinted over the barrels and slowly cocked both hammers on the weapon, one and then the other. Thad panted in terror. A dark stain began to spread over the crotch of his jeans.
“Please,” he moaned. “Please don’t.”
“Damn it, deputy, no!” one of the other Deverys said behind Bo. “You can’t just shoot him down like adog!”
“Yeah,” Bo said through gritted teeth. “Yeah, I could. It’d be easy.”
“You…you’d n-never forgive yourself!” Thad stammered in desperation.
A smile as cold as a blue norther blowing through the Texas Panhandle spread across Bo’s face. “You stupid little chickenshit,” he said. “I could blow your brains out and never lose a minute’s sleep over it the rest of my life.”