Ride Tall, Hang High Read online

  Chapter THREE

  A million harpies beat their big wings at him and a thousand of them screamed in his ears setting his head on fire, the thundering sounds dulling his other senses until he figured he was half dead, but through it all came a white hot anger that little by little forced the harpies away and the sounds to fade until it was nothing more than a pounding headache which sounded through his skull like a thousand hoof beats.

  When he tried to open his eyes the whole world w&s black, and when his hands touched the floor it was sticky. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, moving slowly so his head wouldn’t explode right off his shoulders. At last he could make out the faint outline of the windows, high up with bars on them.

  Sticky, what was so damn wet?

  What in hell was he doing back in the block of jail cells?

  Slowly he remembered. That damn Willy Boy. That goddamned Willy Boy! He had been damn near dead, hanging that way in his bunk, his throat held by a tight noose of cloth, body suspended, his face as blue as the sky and his tongue lolling out . . .

  That’s when Deputy Seth Matthews remembered. Willy Boy had grabbed his gun and shot him in the head. So he must be dead. The problem was that he hurt too damn much to be dead. They must have blown out the lamp usually left burning in the jail cell corridor.

  Seth knew he had to get out of there, out to the front. Willy Boy must be gone.

  "Anybody ... " The sound of his voice came blasting into his head and he closed his eyes and let a spasm of pain gush through touching every one of his million sensitive nerve points.

  "Anybody here?" he said on the second try.

  Silence. He had to do it himself. Willy Boy must have cleaned out the jail, all six prisoners gone and it was his own goddamn fault.

  Seth tried to get his feet under him. Sticky, slippery. How much did he bleed anyway? He grabbed the bunk and got on his knees, then a minute later he got one foot under him. When he tried to heave upward he almost blacked out.

  "Christ, I might as well be dead," he said softly. Then he tried again, got his second foot under him without standing. Slowly he came from his squatting position upright gripping the top bunk as he worked up gradually.

  "Made it, by damn!"

  He shuffled carefully to the end of the bunk, then teetered until he got across the three feet to the cell door and into the aisle. It took him another five minutes to work his way slowly to the door of the mid-room, then on to the office.

  There at least a lamp still burned. At once he saw a body sprawled beside the front door, just inside. He could tell it was Deputy Chris Gerber by the side of his head. A pool of blood under his chest told a deadly story.

  Seth automatically felt for his six-gun.

  Gone. Still had the belt. He looked at the gunrack. Empty. Goddamn. Six escaped prisoners. Three set to be hung, three to go to prison soon.

  He got to the front door with the last of his strength and pushed it open. Seth had no idea what time it was. Still dark out. He checked but didn’t see anyone on the street. Not a chance he could walk the block and a half to Sheriff Dun woody’s house. Anyway, there were four steps up to the front door. He’d never make them.

  Seth felt his strength slipping away. He couldn’t even fire some shots to attract attention. He leaned against the wall of the jail and slid down the wall to a sitting position. Somebody would be out and around early, see him, call the sheriff. Somebody.

  Seth tried to stay awake. He was afraid if he went to sleep he’d die. But he was so tired. His head thundered again, blasting at him with deadly throbbing pain. He must have lost a lot of blood, too. How much could a man lose and not die? He didn’t know. Head wound, he could feel it now. And smell the singed hair. Powder bums, too, hurt like hell. Head wound, lots of blood, not much damage, but enough. Paid to have a thick skull, told his wife that a thousand times.

  Damn him, damn Willy Boy! Killed Gerber. Where was the other man on duty, the new one, Bowden? Why wasn’t he here? As the mists of sleep and unconscious­ness closed in on him, Seth realized that Bowden must be dead, too, or wounded. If Bowden wasn’t down he’d

  be at the jail, he would have found Seth. Damn.

  That Willy Boy, damn him.

  "I’ll get you, Willy Boy. I’ll get you if it’s the last goddamn thing I ever do. "

  The pledge made, Deputy Sheriff Seth Matthews of Oak County, let his head roll to the right and drifted off to sleep.

  "Seth! Seth, wake up! Good God, are you dead, too? Seth?"

  "What? Huh?" Seth came back to reality as someone shook his shoulder. He blinked and worked the fog out of his eyes and looked up.

  "Oh, God, that hurts!" Seth bleated.

  Sheriff Dunwoody knelt beside him on the boardwalk.

  "Seth, what happened? Jail’s open, the prisoners are gone. I got two dead deputies and you look worse than dead. "

  Doc Famam scurried up with his little black bag and knelt on the boardwalk.

  "Now, this one I can do something for. " He looked at Seth’s head and came back in front of him. "Seth, now you can tell everyone that you’ve been shot in the head. Bullet tore the skin and scalp off your head a quarter of an inch wide, but never did much damage. I’ll wager you think it nigh killed you. "

  "No jokes, Doc. Hurts enough to kill me. "

  "Powder bums’ll be what’s hurting the most. Burned off some hair, blistered your scalp. You’ll wear a hat for a while. Losts of blood on a hurt like this. "

  "Doc, he’s gonna be all right?" Sheriff Dunwoody asked.

  "Good as new in a few days, minus a little hair. "

  "Seth, who did this?"

  "Willy Boy. Tricked me. Hung himself on his bunk. Face all blue, tongue lolling out, not breathing. I put Gunner down on the floor then went in the cell. Tried to lift him off the noose. Then he grabbed my gun and shot me. "

  "We don’t even know which way they went," the sheriff said. "You know all six of them got away?""I’ll be ready to go on the posse in an hour, Sheriff," Seth said.

  "Not a chance. You get over to Doc’s and get patched up. Come back in two days. The day crew’ll be here at seven. We’ll put a posse together. Any guess which way they might go?"

  Seth started to shake his head but it hurt too much"I’ll send out a tracker to make a circle around town soon as I can find somebody. We’ll get a posse together to leave about nine. Damn! We got to get them men back. Two of them are scheduled to hang next week!"

  By nine that morning, Sheriff Jim Dunwoody led out his posse of 25 men. All were getting a dollar a day from the county and all brought their own rifles and pistols, their bedrolls and enough food for five days.

  Before they left, Sheriff Dunwoody talked to them. "Men, this won’t be the usual one day posse. I figure these men will run long and hard. We might not even catch them for three days. When we do, they have rifles and shotguns and we know they’ll fight. Hell, three of them been sentenced to hang, so they have nothing to lose. Anyone who doesn’t want to go on that kind of a ride better back off right now. "

  He waited and two men changed their minds and rode out of the group.

  "All right, we still have 24 of us all together. Our tracker has given us a direction. They headed out toward the old Paulson ranch. Let’s get moving. "

  Deputy Seth Matthews sat in Doc Famham’s office and watched out the window as they rode away. "Watch out for that little bastard," Seth mumbled. "He’s a killer, nothing but a goddamned killer. "

  Sheriff Dunwoody rode at the head of the posse the way he always did. He was 41 years old, tough as old leather and worked at keeping fit. He rode every day and could shoot with the best of them. In his boot he carried a Spencer repeater and a Blakeslee Quickloader from the army with 13 tubes filled with 7 rounds of .52 caliber each for the Spencer.

  He carried on his hip a 1860 Army Percussion Revolver bored out to take solid cartridges in the .44 caliber. It had an 8-inch barrel and he claimed that on two shots out of three he could hit a man
at 40 yards with it.

  The posse wasted no time at the vacant Paulson ranch. Their scout and tracker, who rode ahead of the main party, waved them on past when they came to it. The scout, Adolph K. Scoggins, rode back and talked with the sheriff.

  "They heading on north. Won’t find six tracks anywhere, they’re trying to be cute, splitting up into six trails, but I cut all six of them riding north. ""What’s up there, Adolph?"

  "Six or seven miles out there’s a three-hand little ranch. Forget the guy that owns it. But as I remember, he was one of the men on the jury who found at least one of the fugitives guilty. "

  "Could be a bloody scene we find. Let’s pick up the

  pace," the sheriff said.

  Adolph went on out to scout the trail and the sheriff lifted the riders to a trot for two miles, then eased off.

  They found the Frank Galloway ranch a little before noon. The place hadn’t been burned down. The sheriff and scout rode in and Frank Galloway came out of the bam with a pitchfork.

  "Figured you’d be along before now," Frank said. "They was here?"

  "Yeah, they were here," Frank said. "You just tracked them in. We fed them some coffee and some bread and jam and they moved on north," Frank said and grinned. "Looks like somebody cleaned out that whole damn jail of yours, Sheriff Dunwoody. ""Looks that way. They know you was a juryman?""Might. If so, they didn’t say nothing. Offered to pay for some food they wanted. "

  "They get it?"

  "Damn right. I know when I’m outgunned. They asked nice like. If I’d said no, I’d probably be dead now, and you’d have three or four graves to dig. "

  "Yeah, probably. Watch your hindside with them six on the lose. They might remember you was one sentenced them to hang. "

  The posse swung north with the tracker finding the six fugitives all riding together again.

  "They stayed what was left of the night at the first ranch, left about daylight, I’d guess," Scoggins told the sheriff. "Which puts us about three, maybe three and a half hours behind them. "

  "Nothing much else up this way is there?"

  "Indian Territories another thirty, forty miles," the scout said. "Couple of small towns, nothing to speak

  of. "

  "So where the hell they going?"

  "The Territories. Place where lots of wanted men go. Nobody wants to go in there after them but a few U.S. Marshals. "

  "We’ll go in. I can’t face the judge if they all get away. Strange how they keep together this way. Usually six men running from a posse will take off six different ways. "

  "This gives you a chance to catch all six at once," Scoggins said.

  "Also gives them six times the firepower if it comes down to a firefight. "

  They kept quiet then and pushed ahead a little faster. The land was mosdy flat grasslands here, with a small rise now and then and two miles to the front some low hills.

  "Smoke ahead," the scout reported to the sheriff when they were about a mile from the hills.

  "Smoke, I don’t see any," the lawman said.

  "Neither do I, Sheriff. But you should be able to smell it. Figure they must have decided they were away clean and settled down to a camp and cook some of the grub they got off Galloway back there. "

  "Possible. If so, we should slip up on them easy like. Ride out front and see what you can figure on them. "

  When the scout came back he was grinning.

  "Be damned, Sheriff, you must be living right. I got within a quarter mile of the place. They holed up in a little valley between some ridges. It has a creek and they’ve built up a good sized fire. I spotted at least three horses in the brush. Fire’s in behind a thicket I couldn’t see through. Also know something else.

  "Somebody down there is cooking some beef. Smell comes through good enough to eat. We’ve got them!" Sheriff Dun woody grinned. "By damn, I think we have. " He turned to his Deputy Kenny. "Keep the men here, out of sight, and keep them quiet. No smoking or gunfire. "

  He turned to Scoggins, the scout. "Take me up there where you were. I want to check out the situation. " Twenty minutes later Sheiff Dunwoody bellied down in the grass and looked across at the little valley. ‘‘Now I can smell that beef cooking. Yes, I see horses, two at least. The fire is just behind that heavy brush. ""Sheriff, we could get on the little ridges on both sides and pour fire in there and kill everything alive. ""Might, might not. We got to be sure it’s them. Could be a couple of rawhiders in there or some sodbuster family with six kids looking for a farm. That’d be a hell of a note killing them kids. We got to be sure. We ride in with guns up and ready and when we see it’s the fugitives, we let loose. We’ll go in like the cavalry, a company front all stretched out in a line so nobody shoots our own men. "

  A half hour later the posse was lined up and ready to go.

  "No shooting until we’re sure these are the jailbirds," Sheriff Dunwoody admonished. "Then we blast anybody who moves or shoots back. I’ll give the order to fire. Nobody shoots before I do, is that clear?" The riders all nodded.

  Sheriff Dunwoody took his place in the center of the line and they came up over the small rise and into the valley. Now the 24 riders were in full view of the brushy camp but there was no sign they had been seen. They moved ahead at a walk. When they were 100 yards from the brush .and still nothing had happened, Sheriff Dunwoody whistled and waved forward with his hand and spurred his mount into a gallop.

  Twenty seconds later the horses crashed through the brush around the camp and the men saw the fire and the two horses but no men.

  "Oh, Christ!" Sheriff Dunwoody said just before the first rifle fire came from both of the ridges.