The Outfit by Matthew P. Mayo

Author:Matthew P. Mayo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18: TROUBLE COMES UP SHORT

“Buford, you take the top end of the street, up along the deadline. I’ll be down around the south end. Saw a pile of bad seeds ride in today, so keep your ears and eyes wide. Likely we’ll not see the trouble until its hot and ready.”

“Sheriff?”

“Yeah, Clancy.” Sheriff Bullock looked up from the latest copy of the Black Hills Pioneer to see his other deputy poke his head through the open doorway.

“Bunch of strangers are kicking up a right fuss down at Dink’s place. They are a tough-looking lot. Mexicans, mostly, and they are armed plenty, with knives, guns, hatchets, you name it.”

“Well, hell,” said Bullock, pushing his chair squawking back across the floor. “I believe it’s already started.” He plopped his black hat atop his head and tapped the crown. “And here we weren’t invited.”

The young deputies were never quite sure when their boss was joshing with them, but they grinned and followed him anyway. If he were walking through the gateway of Hell itself, they’d tag along.

Bullock knew it was going to be a long night even before Dink’s bar came into view. He heard a gunshot, frightened shouts of men and women, then a high-pitched yi-yi-yi-yi-yi right before another shot.

“Hurry up, boys!” bellowed the sheriff over his shoulder as he drew his sidearm. To the staring men and women who’d come out on the sidewalks he pointed a long finger, waving them back. “Get back, back inside. You’ll catch a stray bullet!”

A few folks shuffled their feet, made to step back, but none went anywhere. He didn’t think they would, but he tried.

Dead ahead, a huge window blasted outward, glass erupting around a heavy, airborne chair. It landed in the street, and following it through the jagged hole flew a skinny miner Bullock knew as One-Eye Pete. He gained the name not because he had one eye but because he was poor in the hearing department.

Pete had an odd way of cocking his head to one side and leaning toward whoever he was chatting with, squinting one eye and opening wide the foremost eye. The sheriff found it unsettling, but Pete was a good egg. The man came into town frequently, as his claim was not far off, to the north. He didn’t cause much commotion, but he did like to drink and socialize.

And now here he was, gasping and sprawled on his back, half on the boardwalk, half in the dirt. “Clancy, get someone to tend to Pete. Buford, follow me.”

Bullock hustled up to one side of the establishment’s open door and with revolver chin high, peered around the frame. He saw a dozen or so folks plastered to the walls, most standing, a few in chairs. All had their hands up. Many he knew by sight, most by name. And most were not troublemakers any more than Pete was.

The objects of their wide-eyed stares were clustered in the center of the room, three hard cases, leather-wearing strangers he’d seen earlier in the day.

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