Chapter 12
"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 ofthemmight 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.
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.
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.
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."
30
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