“I always wanted to be mayor, you know,” Clara said at the end.
“Looks like you got your wish,” said Dog-ear, forcing a smile.
Clara waited until she was back home before reading the note; she had to, really, since the printing was too small to manage without her magnifying glass. She ran it over the wrinkled page methodically, shocked and excited by the enlarged letters passing before her:
Not enough space to explain everything. We got weapons to use in here but they won’t do the town any good unless we can get out and bring help. Need two things from you and Ike T. if we’re going to pull this off: a distraction to draw the attention of the guards here in the jail. And a jeep parked somewhere near enough to reach in a hurry once the shooting starts. I know you got lots of questions I wish I had the space to answer. But I know you’ll get this done somehow anyway. We’ll be waiting. Try to make it tonight after ten when the guard shift around town drops a little. See ya then.
Clara sat back to think.
Dog-ear and Sheriff Junk had almost given up hope by eleven, but a commotion in the streets at 11:15 drew them to the barred window of their cell. It wasn’t easy, but if they strained their necks they could see almost the whole street.
And coming down it right now, six-guns strapped to his side in an ancient leather holster, was Isaac T. Hall. The pistols were his prized possessions, said to have once belonged to Wyatt Earp himself, and there wasn’t a better use for them than the one he was about to provide. He’d nodded his head dimly at Clara’s plan for his original role in the distraction, knowing all the time that the whole plan stood no chance of working. So he’d come up with this alteration by himself without telling her because he knew she would have argued him down.
He used to practice with the guns every day until the arthritis got too bad and the best he had been able to manage for the past few years was once a week when he remembered. The guns were oiled and loaded, twelve shots at his disposal. If he got them all off he’d consider it a victory even if none found their mark.
“Look, it’s Clara!” Sheriff Junk whispered to Dog-ear.
There, across the street, Clara was waddling in the shadows toward one of three parked jeeps. She ducked down out of sight when she reached it.
Down Main Street, in front of the bar, Ike Hall had stopped and drawn his pistols outside the fringed jacket that was probably a century old.
A dozen or so soldiers on patrol in the streets had sighted their rifles on him, waiting. One ran to get Major Paz.
Outside the jail cell, the three on-duty guards’ eyes were glued to the proceedings. Sheriff Junk slid away from the cell window and moved to the cot, beneath which lay a pried-open crate of grenades.
Ike Hall didn’t know where he found the strength to draw both guns in a single motion or why he chose that particular moment to do so. The swiftness of the action surprised the soldiers, and they hesitated long enough for Ike to get a shot off from each as he dove to the ground and rolled for cover behind a parked jeep. One of his shots actually winged a soldier in the instant before a dozen of them opened fire. Ike might have been shot; he hurt so much already he couldn’t tell.
Inside the jail cell, Sheriff Junk pulled the pin on the grenade he had lifted from the crate and rolled it across the floor toward the three guards by the window. It exploded with Heep and McCluskey pressed tight into the comer with their faces covered. The explosion rocked the jailhouse and caught the attention of the guards who were moving on Ike.
It was then that Clara settled her bulk low in the driver’s seat of the jeep and felt blindly for the key. She’d driven jeeps plenty of times back in the old days, but she hadn’t driven anything in the six years since her eyes went, so it was with eyes closed and a silent prayer in her mind that she depressed the clutch and gunned the engine.
Ike T. Hall felt the bullets. A burst of energy surged through him, and he swung around with both guns firing at the same time. Wyatt himself would have been proud. He thought he might even have hit one of the soldiers, but he crumbled over before he could be sure.
The soldiers were rushing the jail from all sides now, some appearing in T-shirts and still zipping up their pants. But Heep already had an armful of Laws rockets ready and as expected they were simpler to use than any bazooka he’d ever seen. He flipped a catch, extended a stock backwards from which the thrust exhaust would belch and aimed the Laws for the middle of Main Street. A single squeeze of the trigger and the projectile hit on macadam and sent debris showering upward. A number of soldiers went down writhing and screaming.
“Another!” Heep yelled to McCluskey, who tossed a second Laws up to him.
Sheriff Junk had it cocked and ready an instant later, his target the empty K Mart across the street from which a number of soldiers were still emerging. The whole front of the building went up in a single blast of orange and black, with shattered glass flying in every direction. The soldiers were on the defensive now, searching for cover instead of culprits. But Junk wasn’t finished with them yet.
As he readied his third Laws, Clara Buhl brought the jeep around in a screeching U-turn to the front of the jailhouse. Heep’s third target was the telephone pole containing the junction box for all of Main Street. The pole shattered as if struck by lightning, and all of Pamosa Springs was plunged into total darkness. With that, Heep rushed to the door and hoisted a heavy boot into the latch. The rusted catch gave on contact, and the cell door flew outward. He started to grab crates.
“You mean, we coulda done that anytime since we been here?” wondered Dog-ear.
“I don’t tell you everything, Mayor.”
By then they were out the cell and heading for the front room. Heep toted crates under both arms, barely feeling the sting in his ankle, while Dog-ear grabbed a pair of the guards’ scratched-up rifles. They seemed in good enough working order and he led Heep forward with one ready in either hand.
Outside the jailhouse, Clara had just screeched the jeep to a halt. But the soldiers were regrouping and the mayor found himself with plenty of targets when he led Sheriff Junk out of the building. Both rifle barrels blazed orange, aimed at similar colors flashing in the darkness or at moving shapes. By the time the clip of his first rifle was exhausted, Heep had gotten the crates into the jeep and was signaling him forward.
“Come on!” Sheriff Junk screamed, and Clara backed the jeep up alongside him.
McCluskey leaped in and bumped his head on the extended stock of an attached .50-caliber machine gun.
“Well, I’ll be damned….”
He yanked back the bolt and balanced himself precariously as Clara spun the jeep around for the other side of town. The .50-caliber had more of a kick than he remembered — or maybe he had just gotten older — but with the jeep picking up speed, McCluskey kept pointing the weapon toward anything that moved, holding the trigger and feeling his teeth gnash together from the gun’s kickback.
The soldiers were giving chase now. Up ahead was Bill Hapscomb’s filling station and from there a road that would lead part of the way into the San Juans.
McCluskey was still firing, the clip melting into the machine gun and shells flying everywhere, when Sheriff Junk grasped another Laws and popped the stock out as they drew near Hapscomb’s. He fired as they moved, aiming at the first of the three gas pumps. His aim was good enough.
First a flash of flame and then a huge mushroom of black smoke sprouted from the pump island. Gasoline sprayed outward from the ruptured lines, spreading the flames, until a wall of fire stretched across Main Street between their fleeing jeep and the charging troops, effectively blocking the enemy behind it. The flames climbed higher as numerous secondary explosions added fuel and heat.