The pounding came closer. Levi listened. “Twelve riders,” he said. “Maybe thirteen.”
“Fine, we can take that many,” Clay said. “So don’t fuck up, Davis or you’ll clean up a blood bath here today and then send dead men back to their widows.”
Chapter Twelve
Marshall Davis stepped out on his porch and stretched far and wide, making a show out of the whole charade. With one-eye open, he squinted against the morning sun and counted as the angry posse flew by the house Percy once owned. Slow and sure, without the cause or the reason to hurry now since they’d all looked his way in passing, he started up the hillside.
Percy was on the front porch of the old rooming house. Davis passed off Clay’s words of wisdom or trickery, he wasn’t sure which and made his way across the dusty street.
“Marshall Coe?” he said.
Coe turned around in his saddle. “That’s me.”
Marshall Davis nodded once or twice. “Well, I reckon so. I see the badge now.”
“I saw you down there on your porch too. Marshalls around here live better than they do in our parts,” he said.
Marshall Davis nodded. “I reckon these mining people wanna keep their lawmen happy around here. Best I can figure.”
“Is that right?” Coe asked glancing around nervously. “Nice town you got here,” he said.
“We make it all right for now. As long as gold is pulled out of these mines, I guess we’ll continue to do for a piece.”
“Where’s our men?” one of the posse members asked.
“I reckon if you ride now, you’re about a day behind them,” he said cautiously.
“What do you mean we’re a day behind them?” Marshall Coe asked angrily. “You damn well knew we were riding in here to take them back with us. Where the hell did they go?”
“Couldn’t lock ‘em up here,” he said.
“Why the hell not?” Coe grunted out his inquiry. “That there’s a jail and you’re the Marshall, ain’t ‘cha?”
“I suppose I am but I didn’t have charges to file here in Cripple Creek,” Marshall Davis said.
“What do you mean you didn’t have charges to file in Cripple Creek?” Charlie, the farmer, asked. “I thought you knew the Justice boys cut up the woman and left her to die.”
Marshall Coe glared at Marshall Davis and he knew right then that the anger steaming out of the ears from those riding in the posse was there because they were sorely misinformed.
“What woman?” he asked.
Coe narrowed his eyes on Marshall Davis. “I reckon it don’t matter what the telegraph said or what is and what ain’t now. If they rode on out of here free as birds, we’ll have to catch up to them on a trail somewhere.”
“You might do it but I can tell you all right now. You ain’t gonna find a dead woman with those Justice boys.”
“We ain’t?” Charlie looked over at the others in their group and then looked back at Marshall Coe. “How come?”
Marshall Coe dropped his head. “Because, Charlie, they cut her up and left her for dead.” He took a deep breath and then pointedly asked. “Which way did they go and when did they leave?”
Marshall Justice rarely stood a long-standing Marshall down, no matter how crooked he was. Most of the older Marshalls could pull rank and make it stick. They always knew someone who could cause the younger ones some trouble. He didn’t care. Something about Coe using Emily to lie to his posse really didn’t sit well with him.
“Tell me more about this woman, Charlie,” he said.
Charlie smiled. “She took good care of me and my wife when the wife was passing. She brought her soup and made her fresh coffee every day. She was a fine looking woman too, Marshall. She would have made some man a mighty fine wife.”
“Uh-huh, I know her.” He looked down and then snapped his head right back up for effect. “Red hair?”
“You better believe it and ivory snow skin. A real pretty woman and a really sweet person.” Charlie beamed when he talked about her.
“I imagine so.”
“Too bad those outlaws cut her up and killed her.”
“Charlie, she ain’t dead. In fact, she’s riding with them and very much alive.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes on the Marshall. “Are you sure?”
“Why hell no, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Marshall Coe answered for him.
“The hell I don’t. A man remembers a woman like her.”
“I don’t think Miss Emily would take up with them fellas.”
Marshall Davis eyed Marshall Coe. “She would if she was running from the right side of the law and afraid of her own shadow.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Marshall?” another cowboy asked as he shifted in his saddle.
“Marshall Coe, why don’t you step on off that horse there and let’s me and you have a few words.”
Marshall Davis backed away from Coe’s horse and he glanced over at the telegraph office where Percy now stood taking a good look at the men there. If all went well, poor Percy would never know how Davis used him, almost as a human target.
Marshall Coe slid off the saddle and they took a walk down the street. “Got something on your mind, young’un?” He tried the tactic some of the older Marshalls used sometimes. When they were crooked as all hell, they tried to act like the young straight-up lawmakers were too wet behind the ears to know the difference between legal and illegal, right and wrong.
“Yeah, I do. And I hope you’ll listen and listen good.” He stopped in the middle of the street and nodded toward Percy. “That there’s a man of good time. He has a telegraph to send on my behalf in the event of my death.”
“You gonna die soon, Marshall?” Coe asked.
“Maybe, but it’d be a shame, Marshall Coe because if I die here today, you’re gonna hang for something I’m not sure you did.”
“What are you talking about?”
Marshall Davis thought back to the way Clay told him about Emily and his heart pounded into his chest. He wanted to kill the man with his own bloody hands but he knew the Marshall’s men would gun him down in the street. He’d play it safe and hopefully Percy’s presence would help make Coe a believer.
“Marshall Coe, I talked to Emily Masterson and those outlaws of hers. They aren’t harming her but they did save her. Now, I don’t know if you shot them fellas raping her or not but—”
“Nobody raped that girl! Hell, she passed out on them…from what I understand from the survivor…she…”
“Stop talking, Marshall, and start riding. Men like you make the bile rise in my throat and so help me if I ever see your blasted hide in my town again, I’ll have men waiting with guns coming at you from every direction. Do I make myself clear?”
“You got no idea who you’re talking to, boy,” Marshall Coe said.
“Oh no? I bet they do.” He nodded in his posse’s direction. “When I tell them what I know about Emily Masterson, the sweet little woman-child who made a dying woman comfortable and gave her poor husband something fond to remember about those dying days, I imagine they’ll look at you and know precisely who they’re speaking to. From what I understand this sort of thing happens a lot to your women folk.”
“You’re going to take the word of a no-count whore?”
“Emily Masterson, by what your rider said, is no man’s whore.”
Marshall Coe curled his upper lip under his teeth and grunted. “Tell that to those outlaws riding with her, or should I say ‘fucking’ her? They’ve made her one or else she wouldn’t be riding with Clay Justice. You can count on that.”
He turned his back and teetered his pudgy ass back down the street. A few minutes later, they rode back out the same way they came in. Right by the house where the Justice gang now lived.
Emily, Clay, Levi, Luke, and Davis stood in the back yard watching as the riders finally made it to the far end of the open range. A few more gallops straight ahead and the posse would disappear onto another stretch of wide open land.