Jack 'Rattlesnake' Malone's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Jack 'Rattlesnake' Malone had ridden three days to reach a town that wanted him dead for a killing he never did. Somewhere in that town sat proof he was innocent. But a bounty hunter had found his trail two nights back, and the man was closing fast. Jack could not gather evidence while running. So he stopped running and rode straight into Yellowrock at dawn. The jailhouse stood weathered and quiet, its sign reading Sheriff's Lockup. Jack tied his horse and stepped up onto the porch. A dog rose from the shade by the door. It wore a harness and a battered collar, and it watched Jack the way a lawman watches a stranger's hands. It did not bark. It simply blocked the door and waited. The door opened before Jack could knock. Sheriff Wade Thornton filled the frame, thick through the shoulders, a star pinned to his shirt and grease still on his mustache from breakfast. He looked Jack over slow, then looked past him at the empty street. "Rattlesnake Malone," Wade said. "Man with a price on his head, walking up to my jail. That's either brave or stupid." "There's a bounty hunter a day behind me," Jack said. "He'll shoot me before I ever prove a thing. I need him pointed somewhere else." Wade snorted. "And I should help why?" Jack set a fold of bills on the porch rail. "Because you run this town. Folks believe what you tell them. Tell the hunter I rode north for the border. Buy me three days." The dog sniffed the money, then Jack's boots. Wade watched the animal, not the cash. "He trusts you or he don't," the sheriff said. The dog sat and leaned against Jack's leg. Wade's eyebrows lifted. He pocketed the bills. "North, then," Wade said. "I'll swear it on my badge if he asks. But hear me, Malone. You bring gunfire to my street, I forget we ever spoke." By noon the bounty hunter came. Jack watched from the loft window above the office. The hunter was lean and hard, a rifle across his saddle. Wade met him in the road. Jack could not hear the words, but he saw Wade point north, saw the sheriff spread his hands wide and shake his head. The hunter argued. Wade tapped his star. At last the hunter wheeled his horse and rode north, out of Yellowrock, chasing a trail that led nowhere. Jack let out a long breath. Three days. He climbed down into the office. Wade stood by a bare stretch of floorboards near the back wall. He toed one plank, and it shifted under his boot with a hollow knock. "You want proof you didn't kill that man," the sheriff said quietly. "Old records. Things the last sheriff buried before he died." He looked at Jack. "They're down there. But once you go down, folks will know you came. And I can't send that hunter north twice."