As Sheriff John Dance rode down to the river, Miguel, the Stagecoach agent, came up beside him. Dance gave him a skeptical look, and didn’t have time to get to the question before Miguel said, “I have responsibilities…”
Fair enough thought Dance. He cast an eye over Miguel’s horse and rig. It was packed light and well, and Miguel sat his horse easy. He looked like he knew what doing. Probably more than Dance did. Dance was no frontier hand or Indian fighter by nature. But the misadventures of his youth had taught him to travel fast and leave as little trace as possible.
When they got to the river Dance reined, and without taking his eyes off the other side, Dance said, “We’ll head north along the river, see if we can find a place to ford, and any sign of that ship. First sign of trouble, I’m cuttin’ and runnin’. You understand? This is a scout.”
Miguel nodded and said, “If I find a way across, I have to go to Bisbee.”
Dance said, “Miguel, you see any telegraph poles on the other side of that river?”
Miguel shook his head. “It makes no difference, I must go anyway. It is my duty.”
“It ain’t a duty, Miguelito, it’s just a job.”
“I may not have a Star like you,” said Miguel, “But I have my duties.”
Dance shook his head and decided he wouldn’t share his opinions about Duty and Bisbee with Miguel. Duty was just some horseshit made up by powerful people to get the little people to sacrifice themselves when it was convenient. And Bisbee? There weren’t no f****n’ Bisbee there anymore.
Give it a few more days, and everybody would see that. It was just that most people, normal people with their settled lives, were slow to adapt to change. They ignored it, argued against it, and tried to resist it. But it was all foolishness. Things changed, the man who changed the fastest was the one who made the best of them. That’s how Dance had wound up as Sheriff in the first place.
Everything on this side of the river was normal for the first mile and even though the opposite bank was an unknown land, the river was peaceful and cool and Dance found himself thinking of the day he had come to Grantham, three years ago.
He had ridden into town dragging a different name and a streak of bad luck that had felt a mile wide. If Dance was honest, right now, it felt like he was draggin’ something wider and worse.
At the livery stable, Eli Johnson hadn’t known what to make of him when he handed off the reins to a battered old nag and said, “Take good care of her.”
“Why?” asked Eli, not afraid of offending this stranger ‘cause any damn fool could see this horse wasn’t fit for anything but the glue factory.
Dance had flipped him a newly minted silver dollar and said, “‘Cause I owe her.” That settled, he nodded his battered hat at the building made of thick, irregular stone across the street and asked, “Would I be right in thinking that’s the Sheriff’s office?”
“Yessir, says so right on the sign,” answered Eli, thinking that this man had been out in the sun too long to have retained a grip on the obvious.
The Sheriff’s office had a wide porch and awning of unpainted, rough-cut lumber. The windows, such as they were were in those rough stone walls, were long and horizontal, with the occasional cross openings. The place was a fortress, gunportd and all.
Dance glided up the steps and pushed through the door without knocking.
Inside were two desks - a rolltop stuffed with correspondence and a leather-topped one on the left of the door. There was a table, a few chairs, a half-full rack of long guns on the wall and a pot-bellied stove. What Dance didn’t see were any deputies, or anybody at all. At first.
On the wall by the door was a collection of wanted posters, and as Dance was checking to see if his face was on any of them he heard the muffled cry of someone calling out through a gag.
The back of the room was a wall of thick steel bars that was further divided into two cells. In the cell on the right, a man with his hands bound behind his back and a bandanna tied through his mouth looked frantically at him and cried out again. “Mmmmmmm!”
Dance looked around to see if someone was playing some kind of trick on him, but the room was still empty. The man in the cell waved him over with his head. Dance eased across the room.
The prisoner waggled his head around, trying to indicate the gag with his eyes. Then he thrust the side of his face up to the bars. Dance took another look around the room, then hooked a finger through the bandanna. Still not taking any chances, he kicked the man's shin hard with his boot. The prisoner grunted in pain and slumped against the cell bars, all balance taken from him.
As Dance held the man up by the bandanna, he slid his knife under the fabric, along the man’s face, and cut it away with a jerk. The prisoner fell to one knee and spit out the gag. “Jesus Christ Mister, you didn’t have to do that!”
“Didn’t seem right to shoot it off,” said Dance.
“Are you with THEM?”
Dance didn’t answer the question. He considered the angry man in the cell who still had his hands bound behind his back. He was lean and sleepy-eyed, with stoop shoulders and a handlebar mustache. He looked strong enough but something about his skin and the set of his chin spoke of a weak constitution.
His eyes were wide with fear and anger when he spoke, but when he listened they drooped heavy and he might have been mistaken for being on the verge of sleep. Dance thought, he’s some kind of madman. Then he asked. “Where’s the Deputies?”
“Don’t you know anything?”
“I know I care much for your manners,” said Dance.
“Deputy. There’s only one deputy left and I’m him. Pete. I’m the DEPUTY, now let me out of this cell. They’re robbin’ the bank.”
“Well Pete, if you’re the Deputy Sheriff, then what on earth are you doing in there?” asked Dance, enjoying himself.
“They got the drop on me,” he said, looking down and away. “And I’m ashamed to say they locked me in my own cell. That enough for you to let me out?”
“How many were there?” asked Dance.
“Must have been five. Maybe more!”
“Five,” asked Dance, with a raised eyebrow.
“Maybe more!” said Pete, “Now get me outta here. I’ve gotta go stop them from robbing the bank.”
“You?!?” said Dance. “One man against at least five hardened criminals? Dangerous men? Outlaws?” Dance shook his head and sucked his teeth at the thought.
“Not one man,” said Pete, “one Deputy,” his chest puffing out with pride.
“Well, I’d like to see that Pete. I surely would. Just one thing. You gotta key to this cell?"
Pete rolled his eyes and cursed. “I only had the one. T’other was on the Sheriff when he got killed…” he trailed off, wide-eyed as if he had said something he shouldn’t have.
Dance didn’t bite. He said, “Tell me which bank?”
“Bank of Grantham. Only bank in town. Other end of Main Street. By the wash.
“I think I’ll go down there and have me a lil’ look. Count up these desperados for you. But I gotta warn you, I’m stopping at 10. That’s all the fingers I got to count on.”
As Dance strode down the street he whistled tunelessly and checked the load in his pistols, pulling back the hammer and spinning the cylinders to reassure himself that all twelve cartridges were present and accounted for.
A passerby looked at him with fear, and he holstered a pistol and tipped his hat, breaking neither stride nor musical performance.
From the outside, the First Bank of Grantham seemed just as sleepy as the rest of town on that sunny afternoon. But before John Dance could mount the steps, he heard a series of gunshots and two men exploded out of the front door into the street, carrying what looked to be very heavy saddlebags over their shoulders.
Dance stood very still as one of them whirled and pointed a pistol right at him. But when the desperado looked at the man in front of him, his eyebrows raised in surprise so much that his hat lifted more than an inch. “John-John, look who it is!”
John-John, who was scanning the other end of the street for trouble, turned quickly and said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” he s…
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