Confused and rattled, the guard looked at Caleb and his own holster a few times before realizing that it was Holliday who prevented him from drawing.
“Keep this up, Doc, and I might reconsider letting you go,” said a man from the other end of the hall.
Caleb tried to get a look at who’d spoken, but couldn’t see much of anything besides the two men standing directly in front of his cell. Pressing his face against the bars allowed him to spot the Texas Ranger making his way to the scuffle between Holliday and the young guard.
Ben Mays was a handsome fellow with light brown hair and a glimmer in his eyes that seemed to welcome whatever trouble he saw. Plain, battered clothes hung over his muscular frame, and a well-worn hat rested a ways back on his head. As he stepped up to Holliday, he kept his hand on the grip of his gun without drawing it. Even so, the threat was easy enough to read in his face.
“You’re an upstanding member of this community, which is why I don’t mind cutting you a little slack,” Mays said. “But if you don’t step away from that boy, I’ll have to toss you back into your cell.”
Holliday sucked in a breath and took a step back. Holding both hands up, he leaned against the wall opposite Caleb’s cell and nodded.
Mays nodded as well as he reached out to pat the guard on the shoulder. After a few good-natured slaps, he practically shoved the kid back down the hall to where the rest of the lawmen conducted their business. “Go on and collect Doc’s things,” Mays said. “That is, unless he intends to stay for a while longer?”
“I believe I shall be excusing myself,” Holliday said in a voice that was much more familiar to Caleb. “I was hoping my associate here could join me as well.”
Without looking at Caleb, the Texas Ranger shook his bead. “Not right now, he won’t.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he killed Mike Abel.”
“You mean Loco Mike Abel?” Holliday asked. At first, the sound he made was a cough. That cough shifted into a laugh. “Surely the man’s name speaks for itself. If I was defending myself in there, then surely my friend in the next cell was doing the same.”
“I’ll be needing to check on that.”
“And he’s supposed to sit in there and wait?”
“That’s how it works, Doc. You should know that by now. I hear you’ve had to sleep off a hard night’s drinking in every one of these cells at one time or another.”
“Hardly,” the dentist replied, sounding more like a southern gentleman now that he’d had a chance to collect himself.
Glancing over at Caleb, Mays took in the sight of the other man as if he was looking at a dog standing up on its bind legs. “Witnesses say this one here gunned down Mike after the fight was over. That’s murder in anyone’s book.”
“He was going for a gun,” Caleb said in a voice that was even rougher than Holliday’s. After clearing his throat and straightening up, Caleb added, “Mike was stirring up shit since the first time he walked into my place. He lost at cards and then started shooting. He’s not the first asshole to get himself killed like that.”
“No,” Mays said as he squared his shoulders with Caleb and stepped up to the bars, “but he’s the first asshole that you gunned down in front of a dozen witnesses. Doc here gets to leave because he’s an upstanding fellow with even more upstanding fellows to vouch for him.”
“And what does that make me?” Caleb asked.
“It makes you the fellow sitting in that cell waiting for me to do my job.”
“And if I don’t have enough upstanding folks to vouch for me?”
Mays narrowed his eyes and said, “Then you’ll be the fellow who hangs for committing murder.”
[8]
If Caleb’s cell had been a respite from the chaos of the Busted Flush, it was a sanctuary after Holliday’s coughing and snoring were taken out of the mix. After the dentist was released, Caleb managed to get back to his cot and catch some well-deserved sleep. His arm was aching, and the stitches in his jaw were still hurting, but the quiet of that cell was enough to beat it all.
Caleb was yanked from his sleep by the pounding of boots against iron bars. This time, it wasn’t the young guard who’d fetched Holliday earlier but another guard with long gray hair gathered up by a leather strap behind his head.
“Do I finally get something to eat?” Caleb asked.
The guard shook his head and grumbled in a voice soaked in gin. “You can get something to eat fer yerself,” he grumbled as he unlocked and opened the door.
Caleb got up from the cot, walked right up to the bars, and stopped just short of leaving the cell. “What’s going on?”
“You’re free to go.”
“But Mays said I had to stay.”
“I guess he spoke to enough folks to convince him you could leave. Anyways, I suggest you do just that before anyone changes their mind.”
It was hard for Caleb to argue with that logic, so he walked out of the cell and headed down the vaguely familiar hallway. The last time he’d walked through there, he’d been kicking and screaming with the blood pumping like a torrent through his head. Now that he was calmed down again, he barely even recognized the inside of the Texas Ranger’s office.
There wasn’t anyone else inside the place apart from the one, older guard. A clock on the wall said it was getting close to eleven at night, and the shadows outside the office’s windows verified that nicely. Caleb could already hear the rowdy voices that marked practically every night in Dallas, drawing his next thoughts immediately back to his saloon.
“I wouldn’t leave town if I was you,” the guard said as he lowered himself onto a chair behind one of the office’s three desks. “Until this clears up, you should stay where we can find you. Otherways, Ben will come looking for you.”
“Well, he knows where to find me.”
The guard let out a snorting laugh and said, “Sure he does. We can round you up quick enough if you step out of line.”
“Will I need to talk to a judge?”
“I reckon so.”
Caleb stood there for a moment. waiting to see if anything else would happen. With the threat of being hung still lurking in his mind, he half expected to be shot in the back as he walked out through the front door of the office. But nothing so dramatic happened as Caleb stepped out of the building and back onto the street.
It was a hot, sticky evening, and the crickets were almost chirping loud enough to drown out the voices and music coming from the entertainment district. Normally, Caleb heard those sounds and smiled at the thought of all the money that would be flowing through the Busted Flush.
Tonight, however, it was just noise.
“I believe I owe you a drink,” said a voice from the nearby shadows.
Caleb turned to look and found a narrow silhouette leaning against a post in front of the storefront across the street. Recognizing the figure immediately, Caleb crossed the street and approached the man who’d been waiting for him.
Holliday’s skin was even paler in the moonlight, and the darkness made his cheeks appear to be even more sunken. Even with all that, the dentist looked better than he had earlier in the day. His eyes weren’t so cold, and the angles of his face weren’t as sharp as they had been before.
As he got closer to the dentist, Caleb began to pick up on the reason for Holliday’s better mood. “You’ve already been drinking,” he said.
Straightening up, Holliday took a step forward and tugged on the lapels of his black waistcoat. Beneath the waistcoat, he wore a dark gray shirt and a black string tie. His black pants matched the rest of the outfit, making Caleb look like a vagrant in comparison. On his right lapel, he wore a gold and diamond stickpin that glittered like a star that had been plucked from the collection overhead.