For a minute or so, the room felt like a vacuum, empty of all but breath from the other two occupants. Paul watched, as if anticipating some reaction.
Then, suddenly, he pushed back and uncoiled his formidable height.
“Your weapon, Mr. Justice.”
“Huh?”
“I said, give me your weapon.”
Scowling, the man considered disobeying a law official’s direct order, then reconsidered. The Colt was handed reluctantly over, butt first.
“Thank you.” Paul, rarely anything but courteous, even to the worst of miscreants, pulled away from his desk, crossed the room, and disappeared through a back door few people knew existed. Again, silence. Again, a waiting period.
Without warning, there came the muffled sound of three gunshots, off in the distance, in the gentle hills bordering Main Street. Reese, who had remained to do his part as support for the corner wall, exchanged a befuddled glance with his would-be captor. They were still staring at each other when Paul returned as swiftly and quietly as he had departed.
On his way back to desk and chair, the sheriff extended the Colt to its owner. No explanation. Only a nod. “Enough noise goin’ on at my church fandango to cover the bang,” he commented.
It took just a very brief time before Ben, accompanied by a slightly winded physician, came charging through the door, loaded for bear. Within a split second he had had absorbed and assessed the scene, uttering merely a stifled, “Ah,” before taking his cue from the man in charge.
“Gentlemen,” Paul acknowledged. “Thank you for comin’ along so fast. Everything okay back at my weddin’ celebration?”
“Our ladies were put out at first, wonderin’ where their men folk had disappeared to.” Ben responded only to the timbre of an anxious husband, and not that of a lawman under duress, partially due to sight of the revolver once again resting so plainly in a stranger’s hand. “Then they began gettin’ the wind up. Nervous about stuff goin’ on that don’t include them.”
“Nervous? We were fightin’ insurrection,” Gabriel countered testily. “They know somethin’ is up, and they’re hostile. Good thing we could leave Marty and your deputies there to soothe their feathers.”
Paul was sitting up, now, with hands moved from his middle to the center of his desk where the telegram still lay. “Ahuh. I may not get Molly to bed tonight like I wanted to,” he murmured in tones of deep regret. “Like she deserves. However. We got a predicament to deal with here, as you can prob’ly guess.”
“And it involves these two.”
“So it seems. Listen, Ben, I gotta ask: d’ you happen to have a spare thousand dollars layin’ around that you can get hold of real soon?”
Chapter Twenty
“IT WAS A NICE FUNERAL.”
“It was a lovely funeral. As funerals go, of course.”
“Plenty of flowers, for this time of year.”
“And the Reverend Beecham gave such a stirring eulogy.”
Mrs. McKnight and Mrs. Tucker, both attendees at said service, paused to exchange glances. “I wonder why. He didn’t really know the man at all, did he?”
“Well, no. I don’t see how he could have. Word around my circle is that the outlaw slipped into town and hid out somewhere until this here bounty hunter tracked him down.”
Grace Ellen gave a little shriek of dismay. “Imagine, we could have been slaughtered in our beds if he’d continued his trail of crime in Turnabout.”
“And if,” said Florence McKnight, with a great deal of satisfaction, “Forrester hadn’t been shot down dead when he tried to escape.”
“Flo,” murmured her companion, as they trudged along the path through Eternal Rest Cemetery, “why do you suppose he even showed up in town?”
The lodging house lady shrugged shoulders crammed into rather tight black mourning. Worn for decorum, of course. It was what one did to show respect, even if the decedent were unknown to anyone. “Sounds like he was just a drifter, Grace Ellen, only a few steps ahead of the law. Good thing this Justice feller took things into his own hands. Saved the rest of us a lotta problems.”
“Ah, well,” the Society President sighed. “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. It’s only Wednesday; hard to believe practically everyone in the area helped celebrate the sheriff’s weddin’, just last Saturday.”
“For sure,” agreed Mrs. McKnight. “Dunno when I had a nicer time. And now, here we are, so much goin’ on... Good afternoon, Elvira. You wanna sit with us at the church dinner?”
“Why, yes, thank you.” Elvira Gotham, approaching under the trees, accepted with alacrity. “It was very thoughtful of Ben to provide funds for everything today, wasn’t it?”