Chapter 31
The next morning, Henry Toole woke in a foul mood.
He often woke in a foul mood, especially when he’d had too much to drink the night before. Right now, it felt like someone hammered a sixteen-penny nail into the top of his skull and pounded it flush.
Beyond the hangover, he was sick of the company he’d been keeping.
Dog was an idiot. A useful idiot in a fight. But an idiot. He barely talked and breathed real loud through his mouth.
There was something wrong with Chester Duncan. He liked hanging folks. Hurting them, too. When they hit that farm, he cared more about hurting the woman than having his way with her. That was just weird.
Then there was Jesse Turpin, who had a reputation as a quick draw with those pearl-handled Colts of his. The way he looked at Henry sometimes, you could tell he was thinking about going for it.
Henry had half a mind to shoot him dead right now and be done with it.
Meanwhile, the mine stunk.
That was another thing he was sick of. Not just their stink but also the mine. The dust, the dark, all that rock pushing in from all sides. It was like camping in a grave.
He hadn’t become an outlaw so he could hide in a hole in the ground.
But he knew they had to hide here for at least a little longer. There was no telling how folks might react to the fun they’d been having.
Until he figured out what was happening out there, he reckoned they should stick to the hideout. Which is why he’d sent Dog to town for a paper.
Henry walked over to where Duncan and Turpin were passing a bottle. “Give me that.”
Duncan and Turpin quit talking.
Turpin took one last pull, looked at Henry sideways with those green eyes of his, then handed over the bottle, taking his sweet time about it.
Yeah, he was fixing to be a problem.
Henry considered killing him on the spot. But a gun would be awful loud in this stinking mine, and his head already hurt. He’d kill Turpin later.
He carried the bottle away from the men, wanting to get away from their stink and the sound of their voices and figuring that would bother them, him walking off with the bottle, which Turpin had brought along.
Let him say something. Just let him open that wise mouth of his.
Henry walked out the shaft. It bent hard then ramped up toward the surface.
He’d hated working here. The toil, the dust, the sameness. Just remembering that life, he hurried up and out of the mine and filled his lungs with fresh air.
He took a sip of the whiskey, listening in case Turpin or Duncan or both of them followed him out, wanting to start trouble over the bottle.
But it was silent back there.
Then, faintly, he heard the low drone of their voices. It sounded like they were still back in the camp around the bend. Sitting there, chatting away like a couple of old ladies.
Either that or plotting a mutiny.
He wouldn’t put it past them.
Especially Turpin.
Duncan didn’t want to run a gang. All he wanted was…
Henry shuddered at the thought. Was Turpin back there talking Duncan into doing something? Telling him to help him take Henry down and promising that Duncan could do whatever he wanted to Henry?
That woman’s screams echoed in Henry’s mind.
He remembered the eager look on Duncan’s face as he’d hurt her and the way he’d snapped around wild-eyed, like a dog about to bite, when Henry had grown sick of the screaming and the weirdness and told him to let her go.
Yeah, Duncan would like to have Henry under his power. He’d like to make him scream.
And who among these men was decent like Henry? Who would even try to stop Duncan once he got started on him?
Nobody, that’s who.
Certainly not Turpin.
Maybe Dog. Maybe. But probably not. He was too stupid.
At that moment, Dog rode into view.
Even from a distance, Henry recognized the man’s slack face, broad shoulders, and rust-colored beard. And that stupid-looking, little hat he wore.
But he clutched a paper in one hand. So he’d done his job.
That was something Henry liked about stupid people. If you kept things simple, they did the job.
Unlike Turpin. He wasn’t smart, but he thought he was, and that was just as bad. Maybe even worse, when you got down to it.
Henry lifted Turpin’s bottle to his lips and took another sip, hating the taste of the whiskey. It was terrible. Just terrible.
But he drank some more out of spite.
Dog rode up and handed Henry the newspaper. It was all wrinkled because Dog had carried it clutched in his fist like a towel.
Henry shook his head. That’s what he got for asking an illiterate numbskull to fetch reading material.
“Any trouble in town?” Henry asked.
Dog shook his head and just sat there, staring at him with an open mouth, breathing and staring, breathing and staring, like he didn’t have a single thought in that big, lumpy head of his, like he was fascinated by what Henry might do with the wrinkled newspaper he’d carried from town.
“Go on around back and hide the horse,” Henry said.
Without so much as a grunt, Dog rode off.
He was a good man that way. Obedient. And he didn’t wear you out with talking like the other two.
Maybe call them up here? Call them up then shoot them as soon as they came out of the mine? Shoot Turpin first. Put him down then plug Duncan.
The idea appealed.
What would Dog do, though?
Maybe pull him in on it? Give him the command. Tell him to shoot Duncan as soon as Henry shot Turpin?
Maybe.
Tell him he heard them talking. Tell him they were planning on killing them. Or maybe say they were wanting to kill Dog, that they had tried to talk Henry into helping them.
Might work.
But then, reading the newspaper’s headline, he reckoned maybe he’d let them live a little longer. He might be needing the help.
SULLIVAN KILLS ANOTHER KILLER.
Sullivan?
Henry felt a stab of unease.
Sullivan was the name of the man they’d hung, the tall one outside Fairplay. Had the man survived somehow?
No. It wasn’t possible. He’d been as dead as dead can be.
Henry’s eyes flashed back and forth.
Conn Sullivan’s vow of vengeance progressed again yesterday afternoon, when he and two other men, William Sheffield and Rudy McKay, both of Fairplay, caught up with Benjamin Blake, one of the eleven men accused of murdering Conn’s brother, Cole.
Henry read the whole article then read it again.
Apparently, this Conn Sullivan was the twin brother of the man they’d hung. The first man, that is, the one with the pretty wife who’d got away.
Apparently, her name was Mary. She was quoted in the article, saying she was confident that Conn would wipe them all out.
Which made Henry chuckle.
Let Sullivan and his buddies come.
But there was something in the article that bothered him.
First was Mayfield. Apparently, Marshal Andrews, who was about as deadly as a throw pillow, had wired the U.S. Marshal.
And unlike Andrews, Mayfield was plenty deadly. Everybody knew that.
It gave Henry a creepy crawly feeling, thinking Mayfield might be coming for him.
He lifted his eyes and studied the scrubby hillsides around him, half-expecting to see the wink of a barrel.
But of course, Mayfield had no idea they were here. No one did.
So he quit scanning his surroundings and read the newspaper article a third time.
Because something was nagging at him, the vague sense that he had overlooked a detail. That there was a danger here he hadn’t anticipated…
And then, suddenly, he had it.
Ben Blake.
Conn Sullivan had killed him and a couple of his brothers. Was that all he had done? Or had he talked to them?
Ben Blake knew Henry was headed here. So did Rafe and Toby, those traitors.
Henry shook his head and spat. For years, he’d dreamed of running a gang. He finally gets his chance and look at the bunch of fools and miscreants he’s saddled with.
Some guys get all the luck. That’s the way he saw it. And he wasn’t one of them.
Oh well. When life dealt you bad cards, you just had to play them well.
You had to make your own luck.
And realizing the situation here, he was about to make himself some luck. And make this Conn Sullivan some decidedly bad luck in the process.
Because Ben Blake would’ve jumped at the chance to rat Henry out. Even if those were his dying words, he would’ve been sure to sell out his old friend, Henry.
Which meant Conn Sullivan would come here.
He thought about the article, the timing of Sullivan hitting the Blake farm, everything.
He could be here anytime, any minute.
He went back over to the entrance of the mine and hollered to the others.
Waiting for them, he considered drinking more of Turpin’s whiskey, but it was like drinking kerosene, so he just poured half of it into the weeds. That way, Turpin would think he’d drunk it.
Let him chew on that.
He’d deal with Turpin later.
First, he had to get ready to welcome Conn Sullivan.