The Vigilance Man Page 9

  A number of people recognized Archie and greeted him by name. He in turn introduced them to Cutler as a friend of his and by the end of the evening everybody was getting on famously, which had of course been Archie’s intention all along. As the evening progressed, it became increasingly clear just how cunning Archie had been. By ten o’clock, they were all such good friends, that nobody would have consented for a moment to seeing old Archie’s friend dragged out the saloon and hanged. It also became obvious just what lengths Archie had gone to to protect Cutler from danger, perhaps even hazarding his own standing in the town as he did so.

  ‘Let’s drink up, gentleman,’ said the barkeep, as the hour of ten approached. ‘Come on now, I don’t want any friction with the safety committee.’

  ‘Come on, Jim,’ cried one of the drinkers, ‘just another quarter-hour won’t do no harm.’

  ‘Not to you maybe, but I already had Mark Seaton in here, reading me the Riot Act. No siree, I aim to have this place closed up promptly at ten.’

  While this good-natured banter was taking place in the Lucky Man, four strangers were walking around the streets outside. They had divided up into pairs and were taking pains not to attract attention to themselves. These men were the advance party of the comancheros and their single aim was to locate two or three suitable carts or wagons which they might steal.

  The other eleven men were prowling around the outskirts of the town, marking down buildings which looked as though they would be likely to burn without too much trouble. They too were divided up into parties of no more than two or three. One of these little groups, that consisting of Juarez and two other men, had a rare stroke of good fortune while investigating an alley off Main Street. They discovered a shed at back of Jack Carlton’s general store, which, when the lock was forced, proved to contain drums of lamp oil.

  ‘I say that the Mother of God has smiled upon our enterprise,’ said Juarez facetiously. ‘There must be forty or fifty gallons here.’ He delved into the darkness and emerged clutching some earthenware pitchers. ‘We can decant the oil into these jugs. I might say as there’s enough lamp oil here to make a fine blaze. With good fortune and providing the rain holds off for a few hours, we should be able to destroy their damned town entirely.’

  CHAPTER 9

  The crime of fire-raising, which lawyers call arson, has traditionally been seen as deserving of the most condign punishment; up to and including the death penalty. The reason isn’t hard to fathom. Fire is indiscriminate and when once you set fire to one field or house, it can swiftly spread and destroy a good deal of property and claim the lives of innocent people. The course of action which Juarez and his companions were about to embark upon would be enough to get them hanged practically anywhere in the Union. In a town like Greenhaven, with such a strict set of vigilance men, they were all but sitting up and begging to be lynched if they were detected in the act.

  As the patrons of the Lucky Man wandered off into the night, they were wholly unaware that three men were at that very moment lurking behind the saloon. They had piled up pieces of wood, scraps of paper and handfuls of straw against the wooden wall and had splashed lamp oil liberally over this collection of garbage. Having done this, the men moved on to the back of the general store and repeated the process there. Meanwhile, across the town, other little bonfires were being prepared near barns, houses and other wooden buildings. When the moment came to strike, twenty fires would spring up at once, in widely separated parts of Greenhaven. With no official firefighters in the town and little provision for such an emergency, the results would be catastrophic.

  And still the storm, which had now been brewing in the mountains for over twenty-four hours, had not reached Greenhaven. The rumble of thunder was now more or less continuous and growing louder by the hour, but as yet, not a drop of rain had fallen. There had been no rain in the area since the spring had begun and all the buildings were as dry as tinder. Even without the mischief being planned by the comancheros, there was a perpetual risk of fires starting from something as inconsequential as a discarded cigar. If the gallons of oil were to take, then it was by no means improbable that the whole town could go up in smoke.

  Archie had taken a room in the same corridor as Cutler’s and before they turned in for the night, he begged the favour of a few words with him. When he entered Cutler’s room, his eyebrows rose as he surveyed the rich, but faded curtains and the fly-spotted pier glass at one end of the room. He said, ‘I reckon you can tell that this place used to be a cathouse. I should think your room must have belonged to a twenty-dollar whore.’

  ‘Looks that way,’ said Cutler, with a laugh. ‘Thanks for introducing me to all those people tonight. I know what you were doing and I’m grateful for it.’

  Caught out in a charitable endeavour, the old man looked abashed and said, ‘Hell, that’s nothing. Anyways, that ain’t what I wanted to talk ’bout. You brought that pistol with you that you had when I met you? Leastways, I surely hope you have.’

  Cutler bent down and fumbled in the carpet bag in which he carried his change of clothes. ‘Yes, here it is.’

  ‘Show it me.’

  Archie took the gun and broke open the cylinder; checking to see that all the cartridges were unfired. Then he spun the cylinder and checked the action of the trigger a couple of times. ‘You know how to shoot?’ he asked.

  ‘I shot two men just before I met you. I can shoot well enough.’

  ‘You got a rig for that thing? Or were you fixing to stick it in your belt like some desperado?’

  ‘I don’t have a gunbelt, no.’

  Archie stumped out of the room and went across the corridor to his own room. He returned with a holster and thick leather belt. In the other hand, he had a cardboard box of forty-five shells. As he crossed the threshold to the room, he paused and cocked his head to one side. ‘What’s wrong?’ said Cutler.

  ‘Listen, son, you ain’t out o’ the woods yet, not by a long sight. That was the sound of shooting, away ‘cross town, by the sound of it. You best get this on now, just on the off chance that somebody takes agin you. Understand?’

  It was as Cutler was buckling on the belt and filling his pockets with spare cartridges that they heard a shout from nearby. Somebody was yelling, ‘Fire! Fire!’

  The storm that had been threatening for so long looked as though it was going to arrive at any moment. Lightning was flickering through the clouds to the east and it surely wouldn’t be long before the rain began. The plan had been to fire the town at midnight, but waiting an hour struck Juarez as tempting fate. The wind was picking up and the cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning were separated by only a few seconds. The wind would help fan the flames, but the rain would be the ruination of the plan. At a little after eleven, according to the clock on the church tower, Juarez said, ‘It would be madness to wait further. All of you, go and set your fires.’ The two that he spoke to went off to pass the word to the others.

  The streets were almost deserted. It was a weekday evening, which meant that most folks went early to bed any way and on top of that, the wind was blowing hard and rain was expected at any moment. It was no time to be out and about; not unless you had good reason to be so. The fifteen comancheros moved through the dark streets like ghosts, unmarked by any of the residents of Greenhaven.

  Two of the men had another job. They had been scouting round in search of some carriages or wagons which could be used to transport the eleven girls south to the border. At first, things had not looked too promising. It was when they peered into a large barn on the edge of town that they hit pay dirt, for within were two wagons which looked to be in perfect condition. They were just standing there, side by side; two old fashioned ‘prairie schooners’. It was the most tremendous stroke of luck and the two of them could at first scarcely believe the evidence of their senses.

  Really, the wagons were meant to be pulled by four oxen or horses, but at a pinch it wasn’t difficult to make do with two apiece. This would
mean that when they left town, each of the wagons would have to carry the two men whose horses had been pressed into service. It would be a finely balanced operation to ensure that the men of the town were so preoccupied with fighting the threats to their town that they had no time to spare to challenge those riding away with these wagons. They would have to harness the wagons up and be ready to ride off at the height of the fires.

  There was every hope that the comancheros’ plan would be successful and when it failed, it was not through any fault of those who devised it. As the others were starting fires in many different spots, the men whose job was to commandeer the wagons led the four horses to the barn and then opened the doors. They were taken aback to find the owner of the property which they were about to carry off, standing behind the doors, in the darkness, as though he were waiting for them. In his arms, he cradled a sawn-off scattergun.

  ‘Saw you fellows, poking about earlier. Didn’t think nobody had seen you, huh? Well lemme tell you, nobody steals from Jed Arkwright, no sir. Not never!’

  It is generally a mistake to get carried away with one’s own eloquence, especially when facing two desperate bandits who would kill a man as soon as bandy words with him. Without troubling to say a word in defence of their actions, both comancheros pulled their pistols and began firing. The man who called himself Jed Arkwright fell back, dying. In his final extremity, though, his finger twitched convulsively, loosing off both barrels of his shotgun. The pellets from this went wide of their target, but the brief exchange of fire was audible across the whole of Greenhaven.

  The sharp crack of pistols, followed almost instantly by the dull boom of the scattergun caused dogs to bark and windows to be thrown up, as people leaped from their beds to see what was happening on the streets of their quiet town. It had been some years since anybody had dared disturb the peace in this way.

  One of those who was peering out into the darkness saw a flickering orange light behind the saloon. He rubbed his eyes and established that this was more than somebody carrying a lantern. By this time, the flames were leaping high enough to be clearly visible. He yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Fire! Fire!’

  At the sound of gunfire, Juarez began swearing furiously. He knew immediately that his carefully laid plans were about to unravel. Nevertheless, for want of any alternative, he carried on splashing oil over a pile of junk behind somebody’s house before setting it alight. It might yet be all right, he thought. That was before he felt the first drop of rain falling from the clouds which hung low over the town.

  ‘Hurry it up and stop fooling round with that belt,’ said Archie urgently. ‘There’s mischief afoot. Turn down that lamp and don’t go nigh to the window ’til you done so.’

  Swiftly, Cutler trimmed the lamp and went to the window. He saw at once that flames were licking the wall twenty feet below. ‘There’s a fire for sure,’ he said. ‘We best rouse the place.’

  ‘I wish I’d o’ brought my rifle with me,’ declared the old man fretfully.

  ‘Your rifle? What use would that be in fighting a fire?’

  ‘It ain’t just the fire as I’m afeared of. There’s more to this than meets the eye.’

  Together, the two men ran through the corridors, banging on every door and yelling that there was a fire. The building, though, was all but deserted, with only the barkeep and his wife sleeping on the premises. When he was awoken, that individual raced downstairs. The Lucky Man was his livelihood, life savings and security for his old age all rolled up into one. He didn’t aim to have it destroyed by fire, not without taking any steps necessary to avert catastrophe.

  The four of them, the woman doing as much as any of the men, managed to bring the fire outside under control by filling buckets, ewers and even vases with water and dowsing the flames with them. As they worked, the rain began, which aided matters. By the time the fire was extinguished, all four of them had come to a similar conclusion: this had been a deliberate act. In effect, a bonfire had been constructed against the rear wall of the saloon, the obvious intention being to burn down the building. ‘It don’t make a speck of sense,’ said the barkeep. ‘Who’d want to burn down this place?’

  After killing the owner of the two wagons, the men wasted no time in harnessing up the horses to them. They knew that after gunplay things often tended to get a little ugly and lawbreakers tended to have a hard time of it in that town. Once the wagons were ready, they jumped up and set them moving. It had been agreed that they would pick up the owners of the other horses down at the eastern end of Main Street. It would be slow travelling in these things and they would have to hope that the fires that had been set would keep the vigilantes busy to give them a head start in escaping from the town. One thing was certain; they would need to travel all night now. There would, by morning, be a large number of very angry men in Greenhaven.

  The sound of shooting had alerted many men to the fact that something uncommon was taking place in their town. The members of the safety committee had a standing arrangement for such an event and when an unforeseen emergency like this erupted, it was the agreed thing that they would muster outside the general store, which occupied a central position on Main Street. After they had hastily dressed, some dozen of these men began making their way through the town to Main Street. As they went, they could see here and there the glow of flames. It was plainly obvious that something very serious was happening and so they did not go off to investigate, but carried on to their meeting place. As they went they shouted out to rouse their neighbours, calling, ‘Fire! Get from your beds, the town’s in danger!’

  As they reached the general store, the scale of the threat was still not clear to the men; most of them thought that this might just be a sort of hooliganism or high jinks by some young folk. It was when two covered wagons came careening around the corner and began rumbling full pelt down Main Street towards them, that they knew that this was going to be a night to remember.

  Mark Seaton was among the first to reach the store and welcomed the others as they arrived. As usual, he was faultlessly dressed in black garb, which hinted at a clerical background. Nobody had ever seen Seaton dishevelled or even wearing anything more casual than his regular, black, Sunday-go-to-meeting suits. When Seaton saw the two wagons thundering down the street in their direction, he didn’t hesitate for a moment. You could say a lot of hard things about Mark Seaton, that he was a stiff-necked, self-righteous and humourless individual, among other things, but nobody had ever questioned his courage. He stepped straight out into the middle of the street and held up his hand, shouting at the same time, ‘Whoa, there!’

  The twelve men standing outside the general store watched in awestruck horror, it being tolerably clear to them that those driving the wagons so furiously down Main Street had not the slightest intention of halting their vehicles. Nobody felt able to interfere with Seaton, though, and if he chose to get himself killed in this way, well that was his affair. For a moment, they were all frozen in a tableau, watching the tragedy unfold before them.

  Just as it seemed quite certain that the town would shortly be seeking a new leader for their safety committee, there was a blur of movement. A shadowy figure shot past the men standing by the store and cannoned into Seaton, knocking him to one side. The wheels of one of the wagons passed only inches from Seaton’s legs as he lay sprawled in the dust. Then they had passed and Seaton, who had resigned himself to death, turned to look at the man who lay next to him.

  The reason that Seaton had appeared on the streets looking as starched and proper as ever was that he had not been to bed that night. Instead, he had paced his house in an agony at the wicked course into which he had fallen. It was not only that he was set fair to lose his position as leading citizen of Greenhaven; he had actually sought an innocent man’s death for his own purposes. More than that, he had been directly responsible for the deaths of the two members of the safety committee, who he had set after Brent Cutler. After praying about this weighty business, he had resolved
to step down from his position of authority the following day and make a public speech of repentance in the chapel on the following Sabbath.

  Having, with a heavy heart, come to these decisions, Seaton made his way, when once the alarm was raised, to Main Street. It was when he saw the two wagons bearing down that he made a split second choice and leapt in front of them. For a moment, he had forgotten all the scriptural teaching, that touching upon suicide, and saw a quick and clean way out of the disgrace which was about to engulf him.

  When he realized that he was not, after all, about to die that very minute, Seaton got to his feet and dusted down his clothing. The young man who had knocked him down and delivered him from the awful sin of self-destruction did the same and the two men stood facing each other in the middle of the street. The rain was falling in earnest now, which perhaps meant that there was no urgency in arranging to fight the fires which had been seen. Seaton said, ‘Well, I guess I owe you a debt of gratitude. You saved my life.’

  ‘It’s nothing to speak of. I thought you were in peril and I acted. There’s no more to it than that.’

  The man who had rescued him was staring at Seaton with what struck him as an intense, almost hungry look that made him feel uncomfortable. He said, ‘New to the town, are you? I don’t recollect your face.’

  ‘My name is Brent Cutler. You hanged my father some twelve years back.’

  Stunned, Mark Seaton stood gazing stupidly at the man who he had come to think of as his own personal and particular Nemesis. Hearing mention of hanging in connection with the name Cutler brought it all flooding back to him now. He knew that the name Cutler had rung a bell somewhere. He even recollected the name of the town they had carried out that hanging in. Grant’s Landing. But what strange freak of chance had brought the man’s son to his own town now, to relieve him of his post? Seaton looked into Cutler’s eyes and said in a resigned voice, ‘You’ll have come for revenge, maybe?’