Ralph Compton Rusted Tin Read online

  The man charged like a mad bull that was blinded by the blood that poured into his eye. He was blocking the way to the front door, so she pushed him into a post that ran all the way to the roof and tried to get by.

  More foul language filled the livery. That, combined with the heavy sounds of struggle, caused the horses to shift uneasily in their stalls.

  “You’re only makin’ this harder on yourself!” he snarled.

  Lucy could make it to the side door in a quick series of running steps. It loomed in front of her like a gate to the Promised Land. If she could get to it, she’d be out of that livery.

  Furiously wiping the blood from his face, the man rushed at her and spat. “There ain’t no gettin’ away from me!”

  Even before those words were out, Lucy veered from the door. There was no salvation to be had through that passage. All that was on the other side of it was a cold night and a town full of drunks. She’d be either brought down before crossing her own fence or dragged to an alley somewhere a bit farther down the stretch. Either way, nobody would lift a finger on her behalf until it was too late. She grabbed on to the side of the closest stall and hauled herself up and over as quickly as her bulky clothing would allow.

  Now that he was up and moving again, the man was quickly gaining steam. He remained hunkered over to protect his aching privates with as much of himself as he could. “That looks like a real good spot,” he said. “Climb in and get settled. I’ll be right there.”

  Lucy’s fingers dug beneath the straw on the floor and scraped the boards beneath it. When the man pulled himself up over the low divider and into the stall, he found her huddled in the opposite corner.

  That sight only widened his grin.

  “Oh yeah,” he grunted while using the back of his hand to wipe away the fresh layer of blood that coated his face like tribal war paint. “Ain’t nothin’ better than a little taste of sugar after all this hard work.”

  Lucy flopped onto her side and twisted around to lift the pitchfork she’d uncovered beneath all that straw. Gripping it with both hands, she jabbed the rusty tines straight out until she felt them catch in something solid. Even as the metal points stabbed him in the upper chest, the man didn’t want to back off. Lucy pushed it in as deep as she could, but needed to lift the pitchfork up and out from her awkward position on the floor of the stall. She’d stuck him only a little, so she twisted the tool until she heard the man yelp.

  He grabbed on to the pitchfork at the top of the wooden handle, forced it away and shredded a portion of his sleeve in the process. “It’ll take more’n that to put me down, you stinkin’ little—”

  Before he could finish what was surely another unflattering comment, the man was taken down by a swift strike against his ankle. The instant she’d been able to pull the pitchfork away from him, Lucy used it to take his legs out from under him. On a clean floor, he might have been able to regain his footing. With all of the straw under him, however, it was a lost cause and his backside hit with a solid thump.

  The man was chuckling to himself as he started to sit up. When he tried to lift his head, he felt something sharp touch the middle of his throat.

  “You’d best stay put, mister,” Lucy warned him. “Or I may slip.”

  Keeping his head still, the man angled his eyes to get a look at what was holding him down. Even in the hands of a woman, the pitchfork was a threat. It wouldn’t take much strength to push one of those sharpened tines through the skin of his neck. “All right,” he said. “No need to get your feathers ruffled.”

  “My feathers ruffled? After what you did, that’s all you have to say?”

  “I didn’t do nothin’ more than chase you around this livery a bit. Ain’t you up for a bit of fun?”

  “That’s not the sort of fun you were after,” she said while pressing the pitchfork down a bit harder.

  Squirming like a rodent with its tail caught under a cat’s paw, he knocked the back of his head against the floor to give himself some breathing room. “I got carried away, is all. You wanna kill a man for that?”

  “No. I’d rather kill a man for trying to force himself on a woman.”

  “You do and you’ll swing for it,” he told her with a knowing smirk. “Awful big price to pay for somethin’ that didn’t even happen.”

  Lucy stared down at him from the other end of that pitchfork as if she were sighting along the top of a rifle barrel. Things raced through her mind, ranging from the reasons she had to make good on her threat all the way to the possibility that his words held some water. She was no killer, but she wasn’t a victim either. Whoever this man was, simply letting him go wasn’t an option.

  The side door rattled, announcing a set of footsteps that were almost loud enough to knock bits of dust from where they were lodged in the rafters. The boots making all that noise traded off between thumping against the floorboards and scraping the fallen straw into a pile in front of them as they moved farther into the livery.

  “That you, Lucy?”

  Without taking her eyes off the man on the floor, Lucy let out a breath. “Yes, Dale, it’s me. Come over here right now.”

  “I just came for that fee we collected from that fellow from Omaha who put up them horses.” More irregular steps drew closer to her and then stopped. “Why you standing in that stall, girl? Ain’t it Matt’s turn to clean ’em out?”

  “Someone tried to steal our horses,” she said, knowing that would be the quickest way to cut through the haze between her brother’s ears.

  Sure enough, Dale shook his head as if he’d been splashed with cold water and stomped to his sister’s side. “Who the hell is that?”

  “The man who . . .” Lucy stopped herself before telling him about the entire mess. Dale and Matt might have been lazy and irresponsible, but they still loved their sister. If either of them heard that someone had tried to force himself on her, they were likely to do something about it. Considering that Dale was drunk and the other fellow already had a pitchfork to his throat, the next course of action was bound to be harsh.

  Both of the Myles brothers were known throughout town and not for anything particularly good. The last thing they needed was a man’s death on his hands. On the other hand, if Dale was too foggy to jump at the chance to kill Lucy’s would-be rapist, she would never be able to look at her brother the same way again.

  “The man who what?” Dale grunted.

  “The man who tried to steal our horses,” she replied. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Yeah, I just—”

  “Get some rope. We can take care of him ourselves.”

  Chapter 2

  Dale marched down the street with the other man on display in front of him. Several lengths of rope were wrapped around the horse thief’s midsection, strapping his arms to his sides. Just for good measure, Dale had wrapped some more rope around the man’s neck to be used as a leash. The more of his drinking companions who spotted him with his new pet, the giddier Dale became. By the time he’d passed both of the saloons, he was waving to the drunks in grand fashion.

  Having traded in her pitchfork for a shotgun, Lucy followed the procession with her eyes dutifully affixed to the horse thief’s back. She stood a bit to the side with her finger on both triggers so her brother wasn’t blocking her shot. When Dale’s friends shouted at the makeshift parade, she ignored them. Matt was nowhere to be found. That part wasn’t much different from several other loud, aggravating nights in Sedley.

  Compared to the homes built between the livery and the saloons, the houses clustered between the saloons and the shops at the opposite end of the street were smaller and more expensive. There were frilly curtains in most of those windows and brass knockers on a few of the doors. The homes at Lucy’s end of town were generally larger because they’d been built by an entire family and expanded as that family grew. Shopkeepers, on the other hand, could afford to rent their homes, fill them with nicer things and move on.

  One of the shopkeepers
that had been in Sedley the longest was Dominick Moynihan. Not only was he an exceptional tailor, but he owned a shop named Fancy’s Emporium that catered to men and women of refinement. At least, that was what his sign proclaimed. Apart from the saloons, Fancy’s was one of the reasons Sedley hadn’t dried up and been blown away by the harsh prairie winds a long time ago. Dominick’s skill with a needle and thread brought customers from Dodge City and as far out as Montana or New Mexico. There had even been customers from New York City and Sacramento who’d ventured into town for a Fancy’s dress or suit. Those customers also needed to drink, gamble and eat, so the wealth was passed along. It wasn’t a system that could support a town with more than one street, but it suited Sedley well enough.

  Once it had become clear that Fancy’s wasn’t going anywhere, other people took interest in the place. Some tried to rob Dominick and others tried to extort him for a slice of his profits. One man in particular approached the tailor with a proposition that suited them both nicely. He needed a place to conduct his own business and Dominick needed someone to watch out for his.

  When they approached Fancy’s, Lucy looked through the window to find the curtains drawn and no hint of light from within. She looked up at the sign to find another smaller shingle hanging from it that read SHER-IFF’S OFFICE AROUND THE SIDE with an arrow pointing toward the proper half of the building. Nudging the horse thief with the barrel of her shotgun, Lucy followed the two men along the perimeter of the shop and to a side door marked by another shingle with the words Sheriff Ezekiel Wolpert painted in a hasty scrawl.

  “You think he’s even in?” Dale asked.

  The horse thief shrugged and said, “Probably not. Guess you might as well set me loose.”

  Lucy knocked on the door, thinking her chances were pretty slim that anyone would answer. Just casting an eye at the wild and untamed saloon district was enough to cast a disparaging light on any peace officers who took Sedley under their jurisdiction. After a few seconds, however, her slim odds actually paid off.

  A set of slow, yet heavy footsteps from inside approached the entrance. After a short struggle with a door that must have been cut to fit a different frame, a man answered the summons and studied the trio outside. He stood just over six feet tall, had broad shoulders and a few extra layers of bulk under his waistcoat and trousers that came from too much town cooking. Long hair hung to his shoulders in a style that could have been reminiscent of Wild Bill’s. On this man, it simply looked like a shoddy excuse to avoid paying a barber for a trim. A full beard covered a good portion of his face and intense, narrowed eyes stared at the bound prisoner as if through the glare of noonday sun. When his eyes angled toward Lucy, they took on a bit more of a sheen.

  “What’ve we got here?” the bearded man asked.

  “Horse thief, Sheriff,” Dale replied. “Wanna take him off our hands?”

  “Whose horses did he steal? Any from your livery?”

  “No,” Lucy said, “but not from lack of trying. I caught him red-handed in one of my stalls.”

  The sheriff’s eyes remained on her as he asked, “You all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes. For the most part.”

  He nodded slowly and shut the door.

  Lucy blinked in silent disbelief. Just as she considered knocking the door open with her shotgun, it swung on its hinges once more. The sheriff, now wearing a long black coat and a weathered hat, stepped outside and shut his door behind him.

  “Bit cold, ain’t it?” Dale asked in a fumbling attempt to gain some common ground.

  The sheriff’s reply was only a shrug. Recognizing a different spokesman of the group, he looked at Lucy and asked, “What did you catch him doing, exactly?”

  “He was trying to steal my horses,” she said.

  The thief rolled his head back as if it had suddenly lost its hold on his neck. “That’s a bunch of—”

  “Shut up, Frank,” the sheriff snapped. “Ma’am, you say you caught him red-handed?”

  “Yes. He even told me he meant to steal my horses.”

  “Is that all he did?”

  Lucy’s eyes fluttered open and shut and she glanced quickly over to her brother. Before she could decide how much more to say, the sheriff nodded and took the leash from Dale’s hand.

  “This isn’t the first time Frank’s pulled this kind of thing,” the lawman said while walking down the street. “Instead of bothering you any more than necessary, I’ll toss him in the jail and sort the rest out in the morning.”

  Nodding enthusiastically, Dale said, “That’d be great! We really appreciate it, Sheriff . . . uh . . .”

  “Wolpert.”

  “Right. Sheriff Wolpert. We really appreciate this. Don’t we, Lucy?”

  Following with her shotgun at the ready, she replied, “Yes, it’s very good we were able to find the law, rouse him from his nap and bathe in the good fortune that he was ready to do his job.”

  Reflexively swatting her shoulder the way most brothers batted around their little sisters, Dale snapped, “That ain’t no way to talk!”

  “It’s fine,” Sheriff Wolpert said. “I’ll take it from here. You might as well get back to whatever you were doing before.”

  “Really?” Dale said, reacting to the statement the way a hungry trout reacted to a worm dangling in front of its gaping mouth.

  “Sure. I doubt this one will give me any trouble.” Snapping the rope like a whip, Wolpert added, “Ain’t that right, Frank?”

  The horse thief grumbled a few unsavory sentiments, but didn’t dispute the lawman’s claim.

  All too happy to split off from the group now that the saloons were in sight, Dale tossed a wave at the lawman and rubbed his sister’s shoulder in the same spot he’d popped a few moments ago. “You need anything, you know where to find me,” he hollered.

  Lucy sighed.

  Walking down the street, the trio roughly retraced the steps that had brought the prisoner to the sheriff’s attention. This time, however, the procession didn’t garner half as much fanfare as before. When the locals caught the sheriff’s eye, they nodded once and found something else to occupy their time. Even the respectful tips of hats were quick and not accompanied by so much as half a welcoming smile.

  “The same goes for you, ma’am,” Sheriff Wolpert said. “If you’ve got something else to do, you can get back to it.”

  “I’d rather make sure this piece of trash is where it belongs.”

  The horse thief licked his lips as he glanced back at her, nodding as if listening to a whisper intended for his ears only.

  The sheriff clapped the back of Frank’s neck, forcing him to keep his eyes facing front. “Suit yourself.”

  It was a short walk to the end of the row of shops. A few older structures marked the unofficial line dividing the saloons from the finer homes. For the most part, those were unused smokehouses or shacks with just enough bricks at their base to remain standing. Sheriff Wolpert went to one of the latter while fishing a key from an inner pocket of his coat. The walls of the squat cabin were made of dusty brick and capped with a roof constructed of beams that were nearly petrified. The single window in sight was bricked up, leaving nothing more than a vertical slot just over an inch wide. When Wolpert pulled the front door open, Lucy could see all the way through to a window on the rear wall that was obstructed by a set of thick, rusty bars.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  After positioning the thief in front of him, Wolpert let go of the rope, placed his foot on the small of the other man’s back and shoved him in. Frank was still scuttling and ranting in the dark when the door was shut and locked. Turning to Lucy, the lawman said, “He’ll wait in there until I decide to have a word with him.”

  “If you remember he’s there.”

  “Did I do wrong by you sometime that I forgot about?”

  “Not directly,” she replied. “But I’ve hardly even seen you about town doing your duties. I doubt you even know my name.”

 
The sheriff extended a hand and said, “I know who you are, ma’am, but perhaps a proper introduction is in order. Zeke Wolpert. At your service.”

  Although she looked down at his hand, Lucy didn’t shake it. “If you would have been at my service, I wouldn’t have been attacked by that man in there. And if you were anything close to a proper sheriff, you wouldn’t allow thieving friends of yours to work openly in a town that’s small enough for you to stand at one end and toss a rock to hit the other.”

  “I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “No, but if you were anywhere other than that office of yours, the bad element might think twice before doing whatever they please to whomever they please.”

  The corner of one eye twitched. “Did he hurt you, ma’am?” Wolpert asked.

  “Stop calling me ‘ma’am.’ My name is Lucy Myles.”

  “Sorry,” he chuckled. “Does addressing you formally make you feel like a schoolteacher?”

  “No. It reminds me that you’re hardly more than a stranger in the town you’re supposed to protect.” Resisting the urge to put her shotgun to use after Frank pressed his face up against the window slot, Lucy turned and stomped away from the jail.

  Sheriff Wolpert watched her go while flipping his keys in the air. He caught them a few more times until Lucy was out of his sight. Then, he leaned against the door and asked, “What did you do to her, Frank?”

  “I didn’t do nothin’ to her,” was the muffled reply.

  “Did you attack her?”

  “If I attacked her, she wouldn’t be able to walk.”

  The sheriff’s head turned so slowly that his bones nearly creaked in the cold air. He made eye contact with the thief for less than a second before Frank moved his face away from the window. “I know better than that,” the lawman warned. “Speak up or I’ll assume the worst.”

  “There may have been a scuffle.”

  “Anything like the scuffle when you and Burt robbed that cathouse across the state line?”