The devils work, p.13
The Devil's Work, page 13
However much Rance disliked Angie putting herself at risk, he had to acknowledge that the sudden intervention changed things. The covering fire could only have come from Thomas, which meant that there were now three of them actively in the fight. Steeling himself against the pain, he launched himself away from the livery and ran for the telegraph office. It was more of a stagger, but he made it without coming under fire. Thumping up against the timber wall, he allowed himself to drop down to its base. From inside there came muffled cursing and then a single heavy calibre bullet punched through the boarding.
Thinking rapidly, Rance bellowed out, ‘Better say your prayers, Bodeen. There’s a stick of dynamite coming through with your name on it.’
Heavy footsteps sounded in the office and then a crash, followed by gunfire from over by the bank.
Angie’s chest was heaving as she dropped down next to the boardwalk outside the town’s only bank. Thomas’s burst of rapid fire had obviously worked, because her frantic dash had not attracted Bodeen’s malevolent attention. She was safely situated in time to witness Rance’s ungainly sprint over to the telegraph office. His collapse by the wall was followed by a loud report from inside. Tucking the Henry into her shoulder, she desperately searched for a target. Then a holler came from Rance that she couldn’t quite catch, but it seemed to include the word dynamite.
The rear door of the telegraph office burst open with tremendous force. Instinctively she opened fire. As the bullet struck the door, she levered another cartridge in just as Bodeen appeared at the run. Instinctively she snapped off another shot. Her spirits soared as she saw him jerk under the impact of her bullet and fall on to his right side. Reloading, she screamed out, ‘I’ve hit him, I’ve hit him!’
She frenziedly tried to line up another shot, but somehow he’d just managed to crawl out of sight. Looking over to where Rance was back on his feet, she bawled, ‘He’s on the run!’
The lawman smiled grimly as he clambered painfully to his feet. His little ploy had worked. Between them they now had to either bring Bodeen down or at least keep him on the move. The self-styled regulator was being hunted down like a wounded timber wolf. Edging cautiously round to the rear of the telegraph office, he spotted fresh blood in the snow.
‘Good girl, Angie,’ he muttered.
At that moment she appeared on his left flank. Silently, he indicated that she should move up the main street and then sweep down the next alley. They had to keep the pressure on.
Agony coursed through his left shoulder. The bullet was lodged deep against the joint. It would require a sawbones to get it out. The whole left side of his body was greasy with blood. Only sheer cussedness had enabled Bodeen to regain his feet and keep moving. For some reason he headed for the north end of town, back towards the flames. Still clutching the Truthful Sharps and grinding his teeth against the intense pain, he staggered on. He couldn’t hear anyone following, but he knew that they were there.
Thomas cautiously left the livery building. The new rifle felt good in his hands. It had been fifteen years since he had last used one in anger, serving his new masters as a Yankee soldier. Slowly he crossed the deserted street, all the time searching for any sign of life. This really wasn’t his fight, but something about Bodeen’s bullying, domineering character had triggered bad memories from his past. The former slave didn’t just want to hear about the Southerner’s death, he wanted to see it.
Rance Toller and Dan Bodeen spotted each other at the same instant. They were both at the rear of the dry goods store, one at each end of the building. Both raised their rifles, took rapid aim and fired. Bodeen was marginally faster in getting his shot off, but he just couldn’t keep his left arm steady and the heavy bullet slammed into a section of wood cladding. In Rance’s case, his side wound pulled his aim to the left so that his projectile passed by his enemy at waist height. Fuming with frustration, Bodeen then did the unthinkable: he dropped his cherished single shot Sharps rifle into the slush, turned away and ran.
Cursing his poor marksmanship, Rance levered in another cartridge. He couldn’t believe the direction that his foe was taking: the regulator was heading for the alley between Pearsall’s and the hotel. Yet that area was now a sea of flame. The fire had spread over to the saloon, so that part of the large structure was also a fire. Then the marshal remembered: his Winchester and two others lay in that alley, along with a couple of corpses.
As Bodeen approached the alley the heat became unbearable. Yet without a repeating rifle he couldn’t hope to hold off the stinking jackals following hard on his heels. Pulling the collar of the heavy coat up around his ears, he plunged into the opening. Steam came from his clothing. He could feel the hair on his head singeing. He was in the midst of a firestorm and he was going to die. Then his right foot stubbed into a hard object. Reaching down, he grabbed the barrel and fore stock of a Winchester and screamed. The heat from the metal burned into his unprotected hand but he would not let go. Struggling past the scorched bodies of his men to the other end of the narrow lane, he flung himself well out into the main street and dropped to his knees in the mud. Cradling the rifle in his left arm, Bodeen plunged his tormented flesh into a pool of melted snow.
Angie Sutter found him like that as she crept along the boardwalk in front of the dry goods store. With his broad back to her, she had no idea what he was up to, nor did she care. The man before her had shot down her husband in a very similar position only three days earlier, but at much greater range. Her kill was going to be far easier. Slowly and deliberately, she sighted down the barrel of her rifle. She was so close that the foresight seemed to be almost resting on his body. Such was her intensity that the roaring fire and groaning of timbers faded into the background. Her finger tightened on the trigger and then she just froze. Despite her fervent desire for vengeance, Angie just couldn’t do it.
Some sixth sense alerted Bodeen to her presence. Ignoring the unremitting pain in his right hand, he took hold of the Winchester and shifted in the mud, so that he was suddenly presenting his left side to her. He sized up the situation in an instant and a leer spread to his awfully burnt features.
‘You just ain’t got the cojones have you, missy?’
A loud gunshot crashed out some little distance behind her and the top of Bodeen’s head appeared to lift off in a welter of blood and brain matter. As if in a dream, she heard the working of a lever action and then there was another detonation. A second bullet caught Bodeen in the torso and this was rapidly followed by a third. Only at that point, with her tormentor sprawled lifeless in the mud, did she slowly turn around. It was then that Rance, holding a smoking long gun, chose to answer Bodeen’s question.
‘Maybe not, but she’s got one thing that you haven’t. Decency!’
The two of them, the bloodied and battered but ultimately unbowed town marshal and his very attractive deputy, regarded each other in contemplative silence for some moments. Then with a broad smile Rance remarked, ‘Looks like the local law had the edge on those regulators!’
Such was their absorption in each other that neither of them spotted the Spencer repeating carbine as it appeared over the false front of the dry goods store. Slowly it lined up on the unsuspecting figure of Marshal Toller. The face of its owner wore an expression of undiluted hatred. Yet he was so intent on his deadly purpose that he failed to notice his own impending doom.
The single gunshot followed by a heavy thump took everybody by surprise. Rance and Angie whirled around, rifles at the ready. A little way down the street stood Thomas, a smoking Winchester in his hands. Directly in front of the couple, embedded in the mud was Rance’s missing Spencer. Stepping off the boardwalk, the lawman peered up at the false front. Jed, the saloonkeeper, lay slumped on the edge of it. Blood trickled over the hoarding. The man was quite obviously very dead.
Thomas grinned. ‘That man should have stuck to tending bar, Mr Rance,’ he remarked. Then he burst into an overly loud fit of laughter. It held an edge of hysteria that suggested great discomfort at having killed a fellow human being.
Rance limped over to join him. Reaching out, he took the other man’s right hand firmly in his. ‘You did just fine, Thomas. Just fine. Now there’s one last thing I would ask of you. There’s a mighty big fire here that needs fighting. I’d take it kindly if you’d let those sorry-looking citizens know that the killing’s over.’
The stablehand willingly agreed to the request, which of course served more than one purpose. Activity would act as a balm to the anguish that he was feeling over his first act of violence in many years. Like a bit player in a theatrical play, Thomas strode away purposefully leaving Rance and Angie to their thoughts. The marshal retrieved the unfired Spencer and then the two of them backed well away from the conflagration’s relentless advance.
Angie had only one question. ‘Why did that saloonkeeper take against you so?’
With the cessation of bloodshed, Rance felt a crushing fatigue beginning to overwhelm him. All he wanted to do was sleep. Favouring her with a tired smile, he replied, ‘Guess I rode him too hard yesterday. Some men will take it and then back shoot you the first chance they get. Then again, maybe he just didn’t like that I’d burned down his life’s work and put him out of a job.’
Angie stared at him open-mouthed. He had uttered that without any apparent sign of humour. His chillingly ruthless approach to life again bore a startling similarity to that of the man lying in the mud not twenty yards away. The question was, could she tolerate that permanently?
Chapter Seventeen
Mister Rance Toller and Mrs Angie Sutter sat their horses outside the livery and looked up the length of Main Street. It was two days since the momentous confrontation had taken place. Christmas Day had come and gone with only scant acknowledgement. With the absence of any threat, there was a deal of activity on the thoroughfare, but it was noticeable that everybody studiously avoided eye contact with the two of them.
Despite the cold, the ashy remains of four buildings were still smoking. A pall of death seemed to hang over Devil’s Lake, as though the water’s mythical monsters and spirits had come to extract a deadly toll. The flesh of the many individuals who had been cremated in those structures had unpleasantly tainted the air. Sadly they weren’t all hired guns. To Rance’s certain knowledge, a much-abused lady of ill repute had met her end in Pearsall’s Emporium. The fire had finally been brought under control by the use of a firebreak. This had meant using some more of Silas Breckinridge’s dynamite to level the dry goods store. Its owner had pleaded long and hard against such action, but it had to be. Either that or the flames would have claimed it in any case on the way to the next building.
‘This should do you, folks,’ proclaimed Thomas, as he appeared from the livery with two sacks of oats. His role in the final showdown was unknown to the townsfolk and he intended to keep it that way.
Angie accepted the feed with thanks and hung them behind her saddle. The mounted couple were about to undertake a journey, one that would take them a considerable distance from Devil’s Lake. They had both agreed that there was no longer anything for them in Dakota Territory. Whatever negotiations took place between the town’s citizens and big business held no interest for Rance. At best he would be left quietly alone, but the more likely scenario was that he would become a target for the kin of the many men who had perished in the conflict. As for Angie, she just wanted to be as far removed as possible from the dreadful events that had befallen her.
Rance leaned down cautiously from the saddle to take Thomas’s hand. The wound in his side was healing but still very tender. ‘You’ve been an unexpected friend, Thomas,’ he remarked earnestly. ‘We shall miss you.’
That individual had the good grace to appear slightly embarrassed and so looked down at his feet for a second. However, when he looked up again, he features registered honest interest.
‘Are you going to settle an old fieldhand’s curiosity and tell me where you’re headed?’
‘Well I reckon you can keep a secret,’ replied Rance. ‘We’ve both had enough of cold and snow. We’re going south to Arizona. I’ve heard tell there’s a nice town down there that welcomes industrious folk like us. Goes by the name of Tombstone. Sounds kind of quiet, don’t it?’
Paul Bedford, The Devil's Work
