He opened the door just far enough to see the street in front of them. Holt gunmen were pouring from the No. 8 Saloon. Tapan lay unmoving in the street, not far from his dead horse.
The black man drew his holstered second gun as he ran toward the alley.
Jaudon fired through the crack with both guns.
Fiss jerked and his left arm twitched as one of Jaudon’s bullets tore into it. The gun in his left hand popped free. He half turned and shot at Jaudon. His bullet thudded into the building wall a few inches from the opened door. Jaudon jumped back. Fiss fired again at the oncoming horde of gunmen up the street. A stunned Margaret Loren screamed for him to run.
At the far end of the alley, London Fiss jumped on his waiting horse and spurred it into a hard run. He had left the animal there, readied, just in case. He hadn’t planned on getting involved at all, but he couldn’t just let that poor woman lie in the street. He raced into the open plains, leaving the town behind him. There was a possibility some of Holt’s men might follow, so he wouldn’t ride directly to the Morgan Peale Ranch. Or go near the small pond where they were going to bury the dead Ranger, either. He would make it look as if he were leaving. For good. He swung his smooth-running horse to the south, running across soft ground wherever he could find it.
“Tapan! Tapan?” Jaudon finally stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk.
The handsome gunfighter didn’t move.
Four Holt gunmen caught up with Jaudon and three more moved to check on Tapan.
“What’s going on?” Lady Holt yelled from inside.
“I do not know, m’lady. Tapan is down,” Jaudon yelled back.
“My God! Is he shot?” she screamed.
“I do not know. Yet.”
“Get the bastards!”
“C’est ca.” He caught himself. “Right. There is only one. He is gone. Up ze alley. Had ze horse waiting.”
Lady Holt screamed, “I want him hanged.”
Jaudon holstered his guns and yelled for his men to ride after the escaping Fiss. He turned back to Lady Holt, who was clearly distraught. “Oui, it vas ze darkie working for ze Peale woman.”
“I want him hanged. Let all the bastards see it—and know the rage of…me.” Lady Holt stamped out onto the sidewalk.
“No! No, you will not.”
The challenge stopped Jaudon and his men. They turned to look at Margaret Loren. “He didn’t do anything except help me get up—after your man tried to run over me with his horse. That awful man in the street there. He came after him, too. Shooting.”
“Hell, lady, it’s just a darkie,” one of the Holt gunmen said.
That brought chuckles from the rest.
“Tapan’s coming around,” another said.
Jaudon looked back at Lady Holt for direction. If she wanted this bothersome woman killed, so be it. The cattle baroness licked her lips and turned her head slightly to the right.
“What, Iva Lee? Let the woman go? Why? Oh, sure.”
Jaudon and his men weren’t sure what they were hearing. He motioned for his men to get their horses. Margaret walked down the sidewalk to Lady Holt.
Lady Holt stared at her as if not seeing. Her face paled, then turned red, then normal again. She pointed at Tapan, who was now sitting with Jaudon talking to him.
“Get a doctor for him. And for this man…inside. He fell down and hurt himself.” She spun and went inside the editor’s office without waiting for Margaret to reach her.
The dry goods store owner grabbed the doorknob. From inside, Lady Holt screamed, “I’ll kill you if you come inside. Me an’ Iva Lee.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Hesitating, Margaret Loren opened the newspaper office door and stepped inside. “Mrs. Holt, I need to talk with you. I was hoping you’d see that this isn’t the way to build a community.”
Lady Holt stood a foot away from the printing press. Her eyes were wild, her complexion crimson once more.
“I told you to get out.” The words blurted from her mouth, leaving spittle on her lips.
The energetic store owner took a half step backward, refound her courage and walked closer. For the first time, she saw the unconscious editor on the floor.
“Oh my! Henry…is he…?” She rushed to his side.
Haughtily, Lady Holt said, “I have no idea. He slipped and hit his head. I called for a doctor to come.” She glanced away as if hearing a voice and looked back, “Oh yes, Iva Lee wants me to tell you that you have on a pretty dress.” She blinked twice. “I want to buy…ah, six custom dresses from you.”
Either Margaret didn’t hear the comments or didn’t care. “Find me a towel. Anything! Hurry!”
Lady Holt stared at her, not believing she had heard correctly. This woman had dared to command her to do something. She turned away and sat down at the editor’s desk. Taking a pen and stroking it in the inkwell, she began to write. At the top of the paper, she wrote:
The Caisson Reporter, scratched out Reporter and wrote Phoenix next to it. Below the heading, she scratched Town Enjoys New Peace as Ranger Captain Sil Jaudon Combines Forces with Major Rancher.
Taking a second sheet of paper, she wrote Arrest Warrants Issued for Emmett Gardner, Charles Carlson, Morgan Peale, John Checker, London Fiss and Rule Cordell.
Smiling, she grabbed a third sheet, dabbed her pen into the ink again and wrote Lady Holt Agrees to Take Over Three Small Ranches After Owners Are Killed.
She would write the stories later. It was important to get the overall sense of them down. Elliott would know how to set type, she told herself. Her most important task, right now, was getting the stories ready for a special edition. She had already written the proclamation of emergency law Jaudon had announced in the street. Elliott would set it first.
A knock on the door, answered by Margaret, brought Jaudon and the town doctor. The Frenchman barely noticed the store owner, moving to the editor’s desk to report Tapan Moore was going to be fine; he had merely had the wind knocked out of him.
Her eyes flashed and she mouthed, “Thank you, Great Phoenix.”
He ignored the supplication; legends were for people with too much time on their hands. He also reported one of his riders had left for the ranch and Elliott. All of the new newspaper copies had been collected and were being burned.
“All of them?” she asked, turning her head to the left.
“Oui. All that we could find, m’lady.” Jaudon bowed slightly.
Lowering the pen, she straightened her back and stared at him. “That is not all. Didn’t I say that I wanted all of them collected and destroyed?”
The Frenchman listened without speaking. He hated this kind of rebuke. How the hell would he know if they got all of the copies? Somebody might have one hidden somewhere. What difference did it make? He smiled and said he would personally check out the situation.
“Good. I will expect a report of perfection.”
Outside, he saw Luke Dimitry walking toward him from across the street. His horse had just been tied to the hitching rack.
“Couldn’t find the darkie,” he said. “Didn’t look like he was headed for Peale’s place, more like due south. Maybe he’s running.”
“How bad was he hurt?”
“Don’t know that. Never saw him,” Dimitry said. “The way he was riding, I’d say he wasn’t hurt bad.”
Jaudon resisted asking how he knew that. Lady Holt would have asked the question, but he wasn’t Lady Holt. The Frenchman stepped down from the sidewalk and onto the street. “I want the blacksmith dead. He might cause trouble. Later.”