Chapter 17
Forty winks was all he got before someone started banging on the door, but the short nap seemed to give Ben the oomph he needed to keep going. “Hold your horses,” he grumped as he lumbered from the cot. “What?” he curtly demanded as he opened the door to Reverend Fredrickson.
“You better come quick. Oswold Jenkins is in a bad way, and Doctor Rooney figured you’d want a statement,” the minister rushed to say.
“I can’t leave the prisoners unsupervised.”
“I figured as much. I sent Otille for Aksel Voght and his brother. They should be a strong deterrent to anyone looking to cause trouble.”
The gunsmiths would undoubtedly give anyone pause – not just because of their size, but also because of their precision shooting.
“I’ll be over when the Voght brothers get here,” Ben promised as he went to the gun cabinet and pulled out a second rifle along with enough shells to meet any trouble. “You take this with you, pastor.” Then he pulled a tin star from his desk drawer and tossed it to the man. “This too. Anyone gives you trouble, you lock them in the icehouse.”
“You sure about this, Sheriff? If what we believe is true, Rassbach has a lot more men at his disposal than we do,” the man of God reminded.
“Guess you better put in a call to the Almighty then. We’re going to need a hand.”
Hyper alert, Ben and the two men he’d conscripted from the livery stable galloped past the railroad warehouses on the way to Oswold Jenkins’ mill. Disgusted with the lost time he’d spent looking for the injured man at the physician’s office, Ben hoped he wasn’t too late.
“I don’t know about this,” Luka Samaras said as they descended into the valley. “There’s many places for men to hide.”
The other Samaras brother nodded. “Maybe we are chasing shadows.”
Ben waved for them to quiet down as they followed the creek toward the millhouse. The water wheel was still slowly turning, but it wouldn’t be long before the creek froze solid. And when that happened, Oswold Jenkins would shut everything down for the winter and move to one of the lumber camps up north. If he survived.
“Hide the horses, then stand guard,” the worried Sheriff directed as he slid from his saddle.
The doctor met him at the door to the small office, and Ben surveyed the surrounding landscape before he followed the physician inside. “Any trouble since you’ve been here?”
“No. Whoever did this must have figured Jenkins would be out here alone until the spring thaw.”
Cringing at that implication, Ben looked at the man’s bruised face and torso before meeting the mill owner’s eyes. “How you doin’, Oz?”
“His jaw is broken, but he’s been trying to write a little,” Dr. Rooney interrupted. “Far as I can make out, a couple of men stormed in and took his strong box along with his record book. He didn’t recognize them, but he got off a single shot before he was ambushed.”
Ben couldn’t bring himself to ask the next question out loud, but the physician must have read his mind.
“We’ll need a wagon to get him back to town, and I’ll have a better idea of how he’s going to fair once I can get a good look at him.”
The simple curtains that covered the windows in Sheriff Danbury’s living quarters had been drawn before Roseanna laid down next to baby Sebastian. Still, when her eyes slowly opened, the plain brown bits of fabric were fluttering. A chill seeped through the window hangings, and for a moment, Roseanna was confused. Then, the rough sound of wood against wood brought her fully awake. Someone is trying to get in! her mind squealed.
Carefully easing away from Sebastian’s sleeping body, Roseanna slid off the edge of the bed and crawled to the doorway. After a quick prayer for deliverance, the frightened girl swung the door wide and jumped to her feet, intending to alert the Sheriff. But Ben’s cot was empty.
Swiping the rifle he kept propped up next to his makeshift bed, Roseanna turned back into the room and tiptoed toward the window. When a pair of hands appeared and pushed the curtains apart, Roseanna lifted the long nose of the gun.
Half in and half out, Shady Kit Gittins’ head snapped up when he heard the very distinctive sound of a round being chambered. Hung up on the window sill, the man pushed himself forward and landed in a heap on the floor. Swinging his body around, Kit drew his torso up and then went still.
“Even I can’t miss at this range,” Roseanna hissed, pressing the barrel of the rifle into the back of the stranger’s neck.
Pushing up, the intruder tried to unseat the cold, hard steel from his skin. Unfortunately, Kit had underestimated the scared woman’s instincts, and he heard the blast – smelled the gunpowder – before he felt the hot metal bore into his body.
Hilda jerked awake when the gun blast sounded a few feet away, and baby Jacob went crashing to the floor as the woman bolted upright.
More shots were fired from the front of the building, and everything devolved into chaos as children cried, women screamed, and men on both sides of the law scampered for cover.
“The cellar. Get them to the cellar,” an unknown male voice urged through the smoke of multiple gun blasts.