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Falcon opened the door. “Then why don’t you just get out?” he asked.

“What?”

Falcon reached across the stage, grabbed the drummer by his collar, jerked him off his seat, then pushed him through the open door.

“Hey!” the man shouted as he fell from the stage.

“Oh, my!” Timmy’s mother said, putting her hand over her mouth.

Timmy laughed.

From outside, they could hear Johnson shouting. “Stop the stage, stop the stage!”

Either the driver or the shotgun guard heard him, because the driver started shouting at the team.

“Whoa! Whoa there!” he called.

The stage rolled to a stop.

A few seconds later, Johnson appeared alongside the coach, covered with dust and breathing heavily from the run, but otherwise none the worse for his ordeal.

“What the hell happened?” the driver asked. “How did you fall out of the coach?”

The drummer pointed toward Falcon with an angry expression on his face. Falcon looked back at him. Falcon’s face was as devoid of expression as if the two were strangers in a casual encounter on the street.

“I ... I,” the drummer started, then he sighed. “I don’t know what made me fall out. I must’ve leaned against the door, I guess.”

“Well, hell, Johnson, you’ve ridden my stage enough times to know better than that. Be more careful from now on,” the driver said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. I can’t be stopping every mile or so just to be picking you up.”

“I’ll ... be more careful,” the drummer said. He looked pleadingly at Falcon, who, without a word or a change of expression, opened the door.

“Thanks, ” Johnson said as he climbed back inside.

The stage got under way again, but Johnson pulled his hat down over his head, leaned back, and pretended to go to sleep.

CHAPTER 5

Back in the Calabasas jail, Fargo Ford was lying on the bunk with his hands folded behind his head, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him.

“Easy pickin’s, you told us,” Dagen growled. “There wouldn’t be nobody around at six in the mornin’, you said. There won’t be nobody there but just the expressman and his wife,” you said.

“Yeah, well, how the hell was I to know that the sheriff and both deputies would be there havin’ breakfast?” Fargo replied.

“You’re supposed to know things like that,” Dagen said. “That’s why you’re the leader.”

“Anytime you want to be the leader, Dagen, why you just be my guest,” Fargo invited.

“Yeah,” Ponci said. “How ’bout you leadin’ us, Dagen? You can lead us right up to the gallows!” He laughed out loud.

“Shut up, Ponci. That ain’t funny,” Dagen said. Almost unconsciously, he put his hand to his collar and pulled it away from his neck.

Ponci laughed again, but when Fargo heard the sheriff talking, he put his hand out as a signal to the others to be quiet.

“Shh,” Fargo said.

“What is it?” Ponci asked.

“Be quiet, I want to listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“To what the sheriff’s got to say. Now shut up,” Fargo ordered with a low hiss.

“Wilcox, keep an eye on things until Baker gets back,” Sheriff Ferrell was saying from the front of the office. “I’m going down to the Western Union and send a wire off to Judge Norton up in Tucson.”

“I’ll keep an eye on things, Sheriff,” Deputy Wilcox said.

The men in the cell heard the front door open and close.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” someone said from just outside the jailhouse. “You and your boys sure did a fine job this mornin’. You done the whole town just real proud. Yes, sir, that was a fine job you and the deputies done.”

“Thank you, Mr. Allen,” Ferrell answered. He chuckled. “Hope you remember that come next election day.”

“Oh, I’ll ’member it all right. The whole town will remember it, if you ask me. So, how about it? Are we goin’ to get to see us a hangin’ soon?”

“Looks that way,” Ferrell replied. “It sure looks that way. Course, that’ll be up to Judge Norton, but if I was a bettin’ man, I’d say we’ll be building a gallows within a week or so.”

“All right, that’s good,” Fargo said. He looked at the others.

“Good? What the hell are you talking about? All I heard the son of a bitch talking about was us hangin’,” Dagen said. “I’d like to know what the hell is good about that.”

“What’s good about it is, he was outside when he was talkin’,” Fargo replied.

“So he was outside. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Didn’t you hear the sheriff when he told Wilcox to watch things until Baker gets back?” Fargo said.

“Yeah, I heard it.”

“That means Wilcox is the only one here.”

“Hell, Fargo, it wouldn’t make no never mind if there wasn’t no one here at all. Case you ain’t noticed, we’re locked up in this here cell. And they don’t none of us have a key,” Dagen said.

“One of us has a key,” Fargo said.

“Who?”

“Wilcox.”

“Wilcox has a key,” Dagen said, scoffing. “That don’t make a lick of sense. What the hell good does it do us if Wilcox has a key?”

“I got me an idea,” Fargo said.

Up in the front of the sheriff’s office, Wilcox used a folded-up cloth to keep from burning his hand as he picked up the blue coffeepot from the top of the stove. He poured himself a cup of coffee, and had just taken a swallow when he heard a loud commotion coming from the cells in the back. Everyone was shouting at the same time.

“Deputy! Deputy Wilcox! Get back here quick! Hurry!”

Wilcox put the coffee cup down, then started toward the back.

“What the hell is goin’ on back here?” he called. “What’s all the shoutin’ about?”

As soon as he opened the door, he saw what had them all excited. One of the men had wrapped a blanket around his neck, then looped it over one of the overhead pipes. He was now hanging by the neck, twisting slowly in the cell.

“What the hell?” Wilcox asked. “Who is that? What is he doin’ up there?”

“That’s Casey and what he is doin’ is, he’s hangin’ hisself,” Fargo said.

“Son of a bitch, what’d he do that for? Couldn’t he wait for us to do it?”

Wilcox stepped up close to the bars, his eyes on the hanging prisoner. But his curiosity got the better of him, and he got too close. He was paying too much attention to the hanging man to see what happened next.

Dagen reached out to grab him by his gun arm while, at the same time, Fargo got a handful of his hair. Fargo jerked the deputy’s head hard against the iron bars, and though it didn’t knock Wilcox out, it stunned him enough for Dagen and Monroe to twist him around until his back was against the bars.

Fargo took a leather shoestring and looped it around Wilcox’s neck. He began tightening the string ... drawing it so tight that it cut into the deputy’s neck, causing blood to flow down on his shirt.

Fargo held it until Wilcox stopped struggling. Then he let him fall.

“Is he dead?” Casey asked.

“If he ain’t dead, he’s goin’ to be sleepin’ for about a thousand years,” Fargo replied.

Ponci laughed. “Sleepin’ for a thousand years. That’s funny.”

“Get me down from here,” Casey said.

There were three belts hidden behind the blanket that connected Casey’s neck to the overhead bars. Those three belts were buckled together, and attached to Casey’s own belt so that his waist, and not his neck, had borne the weight of his body.

Dagen and Ponci lifted Casey up to release the pressure on the belt; then they pulled the blanket down and let him down.

“Does he have the keys on him?” Monroe asked.

“Yes,” Fargo said. “They’re hanging from his belt. Help me get him twisted around here.”