Chapter 6 The Courthouse
Inside the bedroom upstairs facing the quiet, shady end of one of Denver's main streets lay Mrs. Delacourt. Tommy sat in a chair near the bedside, quiet and glum. He didn't have any idea where Maverick was, though he thought he must still have been in jail. He only knew that Bret had betrayed him, lying about his ma, saying she had left Denver. Sick in bed, but there she was. Though maybe Bret had heard things right, that Katie French had moved on. She was now Mrs. Delacourt. Tommy had many things to think about. If he had known what was planned for Bret Maverick, he would have had at least one more.
"Tom, bring me a glass of water," said Mrs. Delacourt.
"Right, ma."
He jumped up for the third time that afternoon. He had sat while she slept, or lay drowsing. When that attorney came, he'd been free for a while to roam around out back in the tree-filled yard, but he'd been warned not to go near the shed. Rats, he was told. He fetched another glass of water. She drank slowly and he had to hold the heavy glass at the bottom. Each time, when she was about half-done, his hand began to shake, but he held on, not wanting to spill even water on top of the frail, pale lady under the lacy coverlet.
"Could we talk now?" he asked.
"About what?"
"About why you left us."
"I thought you were too small to go away with me, all of you."
"Didn't that other man want us?" That 'other man' hadn't been Mr. Demarest. He'd been their pa. And the store owner was the third man that Tommy knew of in his ma's life.
"Kenneth, ah, Kenny? No, I'm afraid he didn't. Wasn't used to children, he said. Not much in the way of havin' his own family."
"So you didn't live in Denver?"
"No, child, not until I'd married Alfred."
"That's Mr. Delacourt."
"Yes. How's Janie, and Billy? You said they're now living on a farm. Where?"
"Don't know, exactly, right now, ma. Some miles west of 'ere. But they're with some nice folks. Good people, Maverick says."
Interest sprang up in Mrs. Delacourt's breast. Her yellow-colored, diseased eyes lightened. "Maverick? That's the first time you mentioned him. I know that name. Not Bret, the gambler who comes through here every so often?"
"That's him. He helped bring me to Denver, but he said you'd moved on."
"He'd have been right, as Katie French."
"Then he didn't lie, if you put it that way."
"No, how could he have known I'd been married? No one here knew me for who I was before. I'd left Drinkin' Springs with Kenny and returned from San Francisco as Catherine Delacourt." She laughed slightly, then sobered quickly. "When I was out for a short drive with Henry, I saw— Was that the man in the wagon? Was that Bret?"
"You know him, ma?"
'I did once. He worked for me on the house two days once, doing some painting, a little gardening. We sat for a while at one of the tables, had some tea and talked. He's a right good listener." She leaned forward in bed, bright milky-blond hair rustling, the silky bed jacket she wore catching some of the candles' gleam. "He's not in any trouble, is he? I saw him taken down to the jail."
"That's where he lives most of the time," said Tommy, gloomily.
Catherine laughed, then again became very serious. "He was hurt in some fall?"
"Yep, but first some men here in Denver beat him up. Then some others robbed him and tried to drown him while we were going back to the Jaspers' farm."
"Why would the men here want to beat him up? Over money?"
Tommy merely shrugged. Mrs. Delacourt lay back and then thought, rather late, of Tommy's supper. "You're sure to be starving by now, boy. Go down to the kitchen and get Betsy to rustle you up somethin' to eat."
Tommy left with his head down, thinking, "What I'd really like to do is go over to the jail and visit my friend, Bret." He felt like a prisoner here. Maybe he was, he reckoned.
When he passed by the dining room on his way to the kitchen, he glanced over at Demarest and two other men at the table, the same two men who had laid into Bret back in the stable. Tommy gasped a little, then hurried on, not wanting to attract their attention. He could make himself much smaller than he actually was when need be. In the kitchen, he asked the young black man in white gloves, "Who're those men out there, with Mr. Demarest?"
Tommy had to wait for answer.
"You lazy thing," the cook suddenly said, as Henry just then sat down at the kitchen table. She was displeased he wasn't mashing potatoes. "Get up! Useless as a chocolate teapot! That's what! I should've strangled you in your cradle." She turned back to a big bowl and drove in the masher, muttering, "Lucky for the devil, I didn't."
"His hired men," Henry said.
"But they're the same ones who beat up on Bret, my friend in jail."
"That ain't all they done," muttered Henry, chewing on a piece of pot roast with one glove off.
"Do they know where Bret is?"
"Oh, they know right enough. They put 'im in there."
"Where?"
"Out back. In the shed."
Tommy fled through the open kitchen door—open to let the air in, the fumes and the heat of cooking out—as quick as a spirit travels on Halloween night. The shed! The one they warned him about when he was taking a brush to a couple of horses in the stable. Now he sped towards it and pulled the latch back. He groped in the utter blackness—windy rain clouds had come up and blocked out the moon—and stumbling over Bret's leg, he fell across his lap, waking him. Bret cried out in a muffled way.
Tommy straightened himself up and knelt down next him, feeling of his face. He felt the gag and drew back, wondering for an instant if that wasn't torn flesh around Bret's mouth. Feeling around some more, he realized it was a gag, and that to have any kind of meaningful conversation with his friend, he had to somehow take it off. He reached around Bret's head, and with tiny pulls at the difficult knot, he untied the gag and threw it aside. All the while, Henry stood in the door.
"Bret!" called Tommy. "Can you hear me?"
Bret turned his head slowly that way and squinted, trying to focus on Tommy's face.
"Tommy?" He began to breathe hard again, licking his lips and swallowing to make talking easier. "Would you get help?"
"Where? From who?"
"From the Horse Trough. Tell the barkeeper about me. He'll find some men."
"Mister, that boy ain't goin' no place tonight," said Henry. "If he do, while I was s'posed to be watchin' him, I might as well hang myself."
Maverick threw his head back, suddenly gasping for air in the hot shed. He'd been breathing oil and tar fumes for too long. "I'm shot," he said. "Worn out. Now one of you go get help."
"I'll go," said Henry. "But I have to be back before dessert, or else."
He ran off into the night.
"Tommy, untie me, please. My wrists hurt so bad."
Gingerly, Tommy pulled at the ropes. The knot in the gag had been hard enough to fool with, but the blood-hardened rope around Maverick's wrists, binding his hands together behind him, was impossible.
"I can't untie it."
"Then look for a knife."
"Kitchen has one."
"No, don't go back there. Look around here. I don't care what you use. Even an ax."
Tommy found an ax easily enough. He dragged it over, then gripped the head—carefully, at Bret's behest—and sawed back and forth on the ropes. He did this in the dark, but Bret was indeed lucky that Tommy's fingers were as skillful in the job as a surgeon's. Strands broke, then more strands split, until the rope fell of Maverick's wrists. He couldn't move his arms, however. They were too numb.
"Tommy, try to work them a little bit."
He himself pushed his legs up and down along the floor, trying to restore life into them, too. Needles and pins hit him in all four limbs, especially in his hands and feet. When he could feel something, after many precious moments had passed, then came the lengthy battle to pull himself up the side of the iron pole behind him. He gasped with every inch he gained on it, holding onto Tommy's shoulders and leaning heavily on him. Maverick felt like an old man, with the debility of age gripping every part of him.
"Come on," he said. "We can make it now."
Tommy had some mixed feelings. "But ma—what about ma?"
"We'll come back after we talk to Sheriff Hardee. He'll help us, I'm sure. Now, come on!"
Leaning on Tommy the whole way, Maverick stumbled out of the door and into the fresh air of grass and moonlight. He breathed deeply in, feeling the fresh air go into his empty belly. It made him more fully realize that he hadn't eaten anything all day, or even since yesterday morning, quite early. But he had to gather strength and push on. If he didn't, then possibly he and the boy were both soon to be countable no longer among the quick, but among the dead.
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"Tommy," said Maverick, breathlessly returning from a spot behind some bushes growing along the streambank. He spoke hurriedly while buttoning the upper button on his denim pants. "We'll try to make it to the Horse Trough. There's a couple of other places where we might get help, but I prefer trying there first. Dorsey, who works there, would practically do anything for me."
Tommy looked over at him strangely as he said that, hanging back.
"Come on!" Maverick took the boy's shoulder and pushed him along.
Tommy shrugged his famous shrug and came along, although as they walked together down the road, he got a sudden idea and stopped.
"Why not just go back and tell ma about those men?"
"Go back there? After what I've just been through?"
"But I could go. No one'd stop me."
"They would if I turned up missing. Bad idea, boy. Mine's better. First, we get something to eat—at least I do. You've been eating all day with that rich lady."
"But I missed supper, running to find you in the shed!"
"Well, we both get something to eat and then we get out of town. Find Hardee someplace."
"The sheriff? Who's always out lookin' for those two men? Two times we've run into them."
"Can't possibly be a third," Maverick said.
Tommy only shrugged again.
Sliding through the night shadows, Maverick and Tommy finally reached the Horse Trough, taking a back way past the refuse barrels and old crates into a storeroom. The door hadn't yet been locked for the night, though it should have been. Maverick shook his head at the neglect, then left Tommy among the stock shelves as he crept into the kitchen. There he found Dorsey under a kerosene lamp polishing a few pieces of tableware with an old rag. Just as she blew on a fork, he seized her shoulders and bent over her. She turned with a lightning quick response, crying out slightly when she couldn't recognize the bearded man at her back.
"Who—who!" she muttered, taking hold of one of the hands on her shoulders.
"It's Bret. Be still, Dorsey. I've just got free from Demarest and his men."
"Bret? Demarest? The one who's going to marry Mrs. Delacourt sometime?"
"Not anymore." Maverick made his reply as he slipped into a chair on Dorsey's right, taking up a knife from the table. "Dorsey, I'm all done in. Got some leftovers from supper tonight. Stew, perhaps?"
"Yeah, there's some. Where have you been, in jail?" She bustled up from the table and went to the pot still on the cold stove. The fire had been put out an hour ago. Taking up a bowl from the counter, she filled it with a large spoon and brought it back. After that, she went to a cold box and fetched Bret a glass of milk, saying as she handed it to him, "I know you don't drink the harder stuff."
He smiled and drank it half-down, setting it beside the bowl and digging into the still-warm stew. "No, in a shed," he answered. "Tied up, for hours."
"That can't have been very pleasant. Why?"
"Because I know who Catherine Delacourt is. I wouldn't have, but Demarest just had to share the information with me." Maverick swallowed and continued, "He wants me dead. He's in control of the Delacourt money now and intends on doing harm to the children. Lose them somewhere until they forget all about the money. He might even do worse."
"Children, Bret?" Dorsey's dark-blond curls flapped around as she moved her head suddenly in inquiry.
Bret smiled at sight of those shining ringlets. "Three of 'em. Catherine's. Two are staying just outside of Ellicott City. That boy, well, he's the oldest. All of twelve, though you wouldn't think it to look at 'im. Been lookin' for his ma. Mrs. Delacourt. Finally found her, dying, of course. She won't marry Demarest now, though she's made him the children's guardian. He'll have his hands on their money as long as he likes. He'll do with the three of them just what he likes, too. None of them may be around to turn twenty-one."
"How awful. Would he do that? Get rid of three young'uns?"
"Dorsey, I believe he would. He's been talkin' about schools or something. The kind of place where you send kids you don't want."
"Like in Dickens?"
"Dickens?"
"Don't tell me, Bret, you haven't read him?"
"Not about any school? Have you?"
"Do you think all I'm good for is—"
"Don't have to say it, Dorsey."
"Then I won't, if it embarrasses you, Bret."
He smiled again and patted her hand lying close to his arm. At that moment, the door into the kitchen opened and Tommy stepped in. Bret drew his hand away quickly, but Dorsey got up and taking the boy by the arms, forced him into a chair.
"I forgot about you, Tom," Bret said, rather ashamed. "Forgot you were out there."
"No problem," said the boy. "Is that stew good?"
"It was."
"I'll get you some," said their helper, taking leave to go to the stove again, but first retrieving Maverick's own bowl for a much welcome refill.
"She's really nice," whispered Tommy.
Maverick nodded, looking over at Dorsey's back. She wore a nearly backless outfit of green satin and cream-colored lace, with a huge, bow-tied, red bustle hitched on. Arms were bare. There was a headpiece of more lace and some velvet threaded through her mop of golden brown curls. She looked ravishing even from behind, and when she turned around with two bowls of stew in her hands and a spoon for the boy, there were lights in her eyes, kind lights.
"She is that," Maverick replied. He could almost forget about eating that second bowl of stew now. Almost.
Tommy looked over at him strangely again. Perhaps someday he'd understand.
"What are you plannin' to do, Bret?" Dorsey asked, as she fetched some milk for the hungry, wide-eyed boy.
"Take the boy out o' town," he answered, speaking around another hearty mouthful. "Then go back to Ellicott City and see if Sheriff Hardee's there, or still busy chasing outlaws. I want to tell him what's going on."
"Will he help you? I mean, after all, Demarest's their legal guardian now, isn't he? Why not just tell Mrs. Delacourt about him."
"There's a hornet's nest waiting for me there, that's why. Oh, no!" said Maverick, thinking about it. He looked up suddenly, as wide-eyed as the boy, while Dorsey took her chair again. "Did Henry, Mrs. Delacourt's manservant, come by here? He was supposed to come for help when I was all tied up, but then Tommy helped free me."
"No, he hasn't been here. Though it's beginning to look as busy as the train station around here!"
"Sorry for the inconvenience, Dorsey. Just thought you'd be interested in keeping me alive for a while."
"You know I am," she said softly. "When're you plannin' to leave?"
"Isn't that a way to talk!" he said, kidding, to the boy.
Tommy laughed, and nodded, taking the last bite of his stew.
"Just as soon as butter melts in June."
"That's not very long," she said.
"I guess I'll just have to come back then sooner than I usually do."
"You promisin'?"
Maverick nodded and then looked sternly over at Tommy. Somehow, the boy got the hint and left the table. Wandering rather disconsolately into the storeroom, he turned around again as Maverick got up and shut the door. Within a few minutes, though, he was back, briskly shoving Tommy out the door into the raw night of early September.
"Tommy, keep quiet as much as you can. Go over to the livery stable now and start getting the horses ready. I forgot something."
When Maverick turned to go back through the side door of the Horse Trough, Tommy spoke up, in a rather injured way. "You're not goin' back in there, are you?"
Bret laughed. "Not for what you think. We'll need some food along the way. Dorsey can lend me a couple of dollars, too. I may need them just to pay the stable boy."
"Alright!" exclaimed Tommy, warming to their adventure now. "Just wonderin'."
"Stop wondering, and go!" Maverick gave Tommy's shoulder a playful shove. "We can't be at this all night."
Tommy sped across the street to the livery stable where their horses were. He met trouble there. Demarest and his men, just waiting for Maverick to show up. Leaning on the stall rails, the two younger men smoking cigarettes, they seemed to have been there a while. Tommy tried backing away. Both of Demarest's men threw down their lit rolled papers, ran over and laid violent hands on him, pulling him into a lantern's light.
"Catherine's brat." Demarest began laughing as he looked down at Tommy. His voice was very loud, like a shrieking hog's. "Where's your friend?"
"He's gone. Left town a while ago. I came in to get my horse."
"Why's his horse still here, then?"
"I don't know." The nervous boy twitched about in the hands of the two men, but they held his arms firm.
"I want to know where he is." Leaning over the much smaller boy, Demarest had more than a few pounds to spare. "He knows too much about Catherine. And about me."
"He won't tell. He's scared, Mr. Demarest," said one man.
"You bet he is," said the other.
"Why are you here and not on that farm, boy? Ah, ha! He tried to kidnap you, didn't he? He wanted to collect a ransom, knowing whose son you were."
"That's not true. I came—I came … because I wanted to!"
"Wanted to leave a rich ma, just when supper's on the table?"
"How did you find out we were gone?" Tommy asked, thrusting out his chin.
"One of my men stepped outside to have a smoke. He caught Henry slipping away down the street. We left 'im tied up in the pantry. Betsy's gone to bed in the attic. No one'll find him till mornin'."
"Then you had plenty of time to stop us. Why didn't you?"
"Why should I? I'll give Maverick enough rope to hang himself with. Running away with you in tow—now, that was foolish. Penalty for kidnapping happens to be twenty years."
Tommy gasped. "You'd put him away? How could you?"
"I know a judge. Sentence him quick. And he wouldn't talk, not after he finds out what danger you'd be in, if he did."
"You'd kill me, too?"
"Like a shot." Demarest laughed again, a greasy laugh like oily meat.
"Please don't hurt either of us."
"You, I need. How can I be your guardian, if my wards all die?"
Tommy shuddered.
"What about Maverick?" he said. "Bret."
"We'll wait here for him."
"What'll you do when he comes?"
"Take him to a ledge outside of town and drop him off. There! Does that satisfy you, boy?"
Tommy shook his head, saying, "No."
Exasperated, Demarest waved his hand and said to the others, "Put him over there. Don't let him squeal out."
Manhandled over to a corner of the huge stable, Tommy, with some help, fell into the straw. He looked worried, shadows from the lantern casting a dark glow over his wondering face. He wondered if he was going to be the death of his friend, yet."
"Jim, go get our friendly Denver cop and a couple of his men. Tell 'im to watch the other side of the street. Maverick could get away from us."
Jim departed. That left the second man and Demarest. Both watched the huge double door. The stable boy suddenly popped up on Tommy's right. He'd been lying in the straw. Probably scared witless.
"Is there another door?" Tommy whispered to him. The stable boy nodded, then pointed to the back of the stable. There was a door, hidden under the hayloft. Tommy inched out of his straw nook and started crawling past the stable boy. The older lad had turned pale in the lantern light. Then Tommy stopped, looking back at him. "Is it locked?"
A shake of the wiry, brown-haired head.
"Then here I go," said the small runaway. He got to his feet, ever so slowly, and started taking large, quiet steps over to the door. He'd have to figure the latch out when he got there. Once at the door, he found it was a simple one. He slid the iron latch back and pushed open the door. It creaked. When he saw that Demarest and his one remaining man had taken notice, he pushed it open as far as he needed, then slipped through and began to run behind the buildings on his right. Blocked by a stockade fence one house over, he ran through its narrow side yard and into the street, speeding across it towards the Horse Trough. He ran until a hand from out of the shadows in the middle of the street grabbed his arm and swung him around.
"Hey, where you goin' so fast?"
He recognized the voice of his friend, Maverick.
"Got to get out of the street, Bret! They'll kill you here. It's too open."
Tommy had figured right.
"That's Maverick, Jim!" called a voice from across the street. Demarest's. "Shoot at him. Don't hit the boy, though."
A crossfire of sorts had begun, with the tall gambler in the middle of Demarest's fire and that of his men. He ducked as bullets whizzed by him, then coming to one knee, he lifted Tommy up in his arms and ran toward the alley beside the Horse Trough. Once there, he set him down, turned the door knob and hurried both of them inside, running ahead into the kitchen.
"Dorsey, where's the key to that door?" She handed it to him, as she had been just then ready to lock it and go upstairs. Bret turned back into the storeroom, locked the door and came back. "Now!" he ordered the stricken-looking girl, "go upstairs with you."
"Bret—are they shooting at you?"
"Nearly at my ghost!" She followed him out of the room into the saloon proper. He turned abruptly and said, "Now, up you go." He shooed Dorsey towards the ornate staircase and watched as she took the runner-covered steps. Then he wheeled about, looking around the room, as if searching for something he hadn't given a name to yet. "Ah, wait," he stopped to say. She paused on the third step, hand on rail, looking disconsolate. "Take the boy with you. They mustn't get a hold of him, or I'm dead."
Dorsey waited until the doubtful boy caught up, then guided him up the stairs. Tommy watched Maverick all the way. He'd take a step and then turn to gaze through each pair of balusters in its turn.
"Dorsey, have you got a gun?" Maverick called up, but he was already racing toward the bar, stooping over and looking at the shelves under the counter. Old Billy, the saloon swamper, made his appearance just then, sleeping in a back room on the ground floor.
"Thought I heard voices," he mumbled, tiredly rubbing his belly and head at the same time. "What's goin' on, Bret? Did I hear gunfire? Street bein' shot up again?"
Bret turned to look at him, then ignored him, still pondering on his next course, trying to pick the safest. Dorsey whispered something to Tommy that made him keep going, but then she felt it was necessary to come back down into the main room. Taking Bret's arm, she said, "Look. Can you hold them all off? Who'll help you? Better to take the back way out of Denver. I'll send help. Billy might go." Billy looked dubious about that, but then Dorsey found it easy to ignore him, too. "Remember the old shack where we had our picnic that time?"
"Don't have time to think about that now, Dorsey."
Maverick had found the gun and was looking to see if it had a bullet in each of its chambers. He spun the cylinder around, just making sure.
"Bret, listen to me! You'll only throw your life away if you use that." She indicated the gun with a slim-fingered hand. Looking down at her slender hand, a hand he had felt against his forehead, cooling it on a summer picnic, Bret paused a moment, to reason it all out.
"Bret Maverick!" they heard Demarest shout. He sounded very close, though now he was across the street where he had joined his men.
Bret shut up the gun and ran to the letter-painted window in the front part of the saloon, right where the piano player would have been sitting earlier. He squeezed in between the side of the black, upright instrument and the curtain hanging to one side of the window and looked out. Arguably, there were four or five men across the street, maybe a tad-bit more. Shadows among the hitchin' rails.
Two of the saloon girls had languidly slid down the steps on the balls of their feet after Old Billy showed up. Bret took no more notice of them than he had Old Billy as they melted over to Dorsey's side, coming out into the open saloon even though they were both wearing but thin, lacy gowns.
"What's goin' on here," they said, echoing Billy almost exactly. Bret turned to stare harshly at them, then turned back to his window, craning his head around and in doing so, trying to see to the far left and right of it. Had any of Demarest's men come over to this side of the street?
"This won't be easy, Dorsey. But if I run, they'll hunt you up, to find out where I've gone."
"Then the only thing you can do, Bret, is kill some of them before they kill you." Dorsey threw up her hands. "What's the use of that? There's another way. You could give yourself up."
"That'd be quick," he said, wryly. "I'll tell you what. Go upstairs. Get the boy and get out of here."
"But the other girls. We can't have them rushing madly into the street."
"Old Billy, and you two, go back upstairs now. Keep still up there."
"If there's shootin' to be had, I want to see it!" shouted one of the girls.
Maverick ignored the comment. Indeed, he had to. For just then, the glass in front of him shattered as a bullet entered it. He ducked further behind the curtain, then turned to face the individuals still in the room. The two girls had fled. Probably, they'd keep the other girls upstairs with some frightening tale. More bullets pierced the remnants of glass.
"Do something about the lights in this place!" Maverick shouted back to Billy and Dorsey. "Then go upstairs! Stay with Tommy!"
"Maverick, don't shoot back," Dorsey warned him again, as she went about the darkening room, blowing out a few leftover candles on the playing tables and turning the already lowered kerosene lamps even lower. It was what she did every night. She turned and said something last. "I have a cousin in town who'll put us up until you straighten this whole thing out, Bret." After leaving it in his lap to fix, Dorsey then reluctantly filed up the stairs after the other three, including Billy, wondering if there even existed a possibility of getting the boy out of the saloon. The back stairs remained the only hope, but outside, around the back, some of them might be waiting …
Soon enough, Maverick was in the dark, a growing uneasiness filling his breast after Dorsey had gone upstairs. What if he did die, tonight? Could he face it?
Demarest shouted again, breaking into his thoughts.
"Maverick! Come out of there, before we have to come in."
The haunted man inside the dusky saloon struck the window with the nose of his gun and broke out part of a single pane. Then he took aim, squinting up one eye as he focused down the long barrel of the old Colt. He fired across the street at where he thought he could see the heavyset man crouching, Demarest, himself. There was a scramble for better cover, sure enough, over there, but then Maverick heard the sickening sound of a door bursting in, a breaking of wood and rattling of glass. The storeroom door. The two men who had broken in next ran into the saloon from the kitchen, firing their weapons at where he stood next to the piano. He crouched down beside it and shot back. More glass showered around his head as two or three additional bullets were fired from across the street, then the etched and painted front doors burst inward, their joint lock breaking. Demarest and his men poured into the room, aiming into the corner where Bret still huddled.
"Come out o' there!" yelled Demarest. Bret threw out his gun, raising his hands, then got up slowly and slipped past the piano, coming out into the open.
"What now, Demarest?"
"Jail."
"Jail, for what?"
"For kidnapping the boy. Jim told me all about what you'd done, running off with him from Mrs. Delacourt's place."
"I didn't kidnap anyone," said Bret, lowly. "And you know it."
"Then how about this? Breaking and entering, firing a gun into a public street—you want more, gambler?"
"No, that's plenty," he said, somberly, then moved at Demarest's signal out of the door ahead of him. His men followed.
A stray shot made Bret duck slightly, but then he straightened when he heard no more coming his way from across the street. He stopped next to the hitchin' rail and turned to face Demarest.
"You'll rue this day a long time, Maverick. Rot in jail for twenty years after taking that boy away."
Lifting his already high head, Maverick bitterly laughed.
"Where is he now?" asked Demarest.
"Upstairs, in the saloon. Or," he said, dipping his head, "he's already gone."
"Then you've got accomplices. They'll be punished, too. Go, get 'im," murmured Demarest to two of his men, "and bring him here." Then Demarest, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, and all five feet, nine inches, stepped in front of Maverick. Like the bully he'd been since grade school, Demarest grabbed up Maverick's shirt front and said, "If he's hurt in any way, Maverick, his blood will be on you."
Maverick thought about Dorsey, as he submitted to Demarest's rude grasp without murmur. She had a cousin, she'd said, hopefully somebody trustworthy enough to be a help—until Bret could communicate with Mrs. Delacourt. Kate, as he knew her. That day in the garden he'd been given permission—a lowly jailbird doing county work—to call her by her first name. He had taken advantage of the opportunity.
"No doubt," he replied to Demarest's melodramatic phrase about blood. "But he should be well, upstairs. He better be well when he comes down again if you find him up there."
Find him they did. Tommy hadn't wanted to run out on Bret, so he'd fought off Dorsey's attempts to make him take the back stairs with her. Bret wished that Tommy hadn't been so loyal. He wished that Dorsey could have hid him while he himself labored to work things out. But he had begun to think there was no way of working out greed.
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Maverick didn't see which way they took Tommy. He only heard his outcries as they dragged him into the street and upon hearing them, he felt a strong twinge around his heart. He didn't know why, but he felt a big brother kind of kinship with that boy. He had surely taken enough lumps on his behalf. More than anybody ever had, he reckoned. At the jail, he submitted wordlessly again as he was searched for weapons of any sort. His long dark frock coat found its way to a chair. Helpful hands had pulled it off his back. He himself unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his shirt tail out. With two fingers, the deputy on duty felt around his waistband for any concealed weapon, like a knife.
Bret grimaced, but went through the whole thing with telling quiet. Likewise, he pacifically acceded to being led through the door into the cell area. He stopped before a likely cell, but was surprised to find out that he was not going to be put in any of those available before him. Now he began to worry. He knew this part of the jail. It was familiar to him from the one or two times he was brought in on false charges of cheating at cards. He didn't want to leave it. Now he was led through a door he had noticed before, but not given much attention to. A sconce lit the wall along this new corridor. He paled at the sight of a door at the far end of the hall. It was of iron, bolted, riveted and quite secure. Behind it, what would he find?
A solitary cell, a hard cot or a dirt floor?
He had to be shoved towards it, down the granite aisle between the bars. Moved out of the way at the door, he watched as it was unlocked with a huge, iron key, almost medieval in shape. The door pulled outward. Inside, it was very dark. No light at all. He stumbled over the raised threshold and fell against another set of bars in front of him. Two cells in one. He waited while the bar door was opened, then walked inside the cell. A true solitary.
Turning around at the clang of the door, he sat down on the mattress over the cot and sighed, beginning to button his shirt again. He turned his head and looked up. A chill draught blew down on him from one side of the room. A single set of bars was up there, letting in the night air.
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At a hearing before the judge, Tommy was present, but Bret didn't think he would be. Demarest had all the cards in his hand. The boy was too young, Demarest informed the judge, for the nervous strain of a trial, so Maverick's only witness was not allowed to testify on his behalf. At the judge's suggestion of having the boy dictate or write a report of what happened, Demarest shot it down with more excuses. Bret missed them all. The judge, not a pocket type of judge at all, even suggested conducting the hearing in the parlor of Mrs. Delacourt's house, but that would be too much for the sick woman to handle. For once, Maverick had to agree. He regretted what was happening to Kate, feeling even more helpless when he thought of her.
Judge Barrows threw out the charge of kidnapping anyway, saying Bret was only looking after the boy's interests after Maverick explained what he had heard Mr. Demarest say. Especially the part about 'schools.'
"If there's any sending of these children away," he said, rather sternly, "I'll decide where they go. Mrs. Delacourt may have appointed you their guardian, sir, but I'll have the final say. As for the money, it'd better be soundly invested. I expect reports from you or your attorney as to how it's disposed of."
The judge cleared his throat and began to address Maverick.
"Sir, you have a shady occupation at best. What were you hoping to do with the children?"
"Save them, your Honor, that's all."
"You had no plans to raise them?"
"No, your Honor."
"They belong somewhere. Any suggestions?"
Sheriff Hardee, who had drifted in after depositing the two robbers in the Denver jail, got to his feet and spoke up. "I do. Why not leave them with the Jaspers? They're good people and need some young'uns around the house."
"For what purpose? To work for them?"
"That figures into it, your Honor, but I'd say just to be their new ma and pa."
"Their character is good? They run a good place?"
"They have one of the best of the smaller farms around."
"Would they agree?"
"I can only ask them."
"Then my judgment bears upon your doing just that. If they agree to take the children, that's where they'll be placed. Tommy, the eldest, is free to go there as soon after the inevitable occurs for Mrs. Delacourt.
Maverick coughed slightly, ready to take his 'medicine.'
"As for you, gambler, if I ever see you in my courtroom again, I'll turn the key on you myself!"
"You won't see me again, your Honor. From now on, I don't pick up any strays."
Everyone in the courtroom laughed, but most especially Tommy, who sat in the back of the room with Dorsey and Old Billy.
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As Maverick was leaving the courthouse, he walked slowly toward the street where the Horse Trough was. He was looking down at the sandy road, thinking of Kate, when a black, canopied, two-seat gig suddenly stopped in front of him. Glancing up quickly, he caught sight of a veiled lady in a blue silky dress. Mrs. Delacourt. Henry was driving her.
"I didn't feel well enough to come to the hearing, Mr. Maverick."
"Call me Bret." He smiled, slyly. "You did once."
"Bret, then. I heard from the sheriff about the Jaspers. They sound like good people. But I have a favor to ask of you."
"Dear Kate, you have only to ask. What is it?"
"I'd like you to bring the other children here. I want—I want to see them."
"Well, I was told not to interfere anymore with them, Mrs. Delacourt."
"Kate, like before, Bret. Who told you that?"
"Judge Barrows."
"I'll square it with him. And I'm willing to pay your expenses."
"That's not it. I'd gladly go. But while Mr. Demarest is their guardian, I'd be uneasy doing more than just stayin' out of it."
"Mr. Demarest is no longer their guardian."
Maverick considered. "That's a good thing, anyway. Who will be?"
"Judge Barrows. He's an old friend of my late husband's."
"He's a good choice."
"Will you do it, Bret? For me? I need to see them all once again before I die. I owe them that much."
Bret thought about it and finally said, "I'll do it."
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