Sheriff Harlan Jones's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sheriff Harlan Jones had a name burned into the inside of his skull, and a horse saddled to chase it, when the first bottle shattered against the saloon wall across the street. He stood on the jailhouse steps and swore under his breath. Six months since a bullet took his last deputy in a dry wash outside town. Six months of dead trails. This morning a stagecoach driver had finally placed the shooter two days east. Harlan meant to ride at noon. Now drifters were tearing up Gritstown. He counted five horses at the saloon's hitching post that didn't belong there. Inside, men whooped. A woman screamed once, then went quiet. Harlan checked the loads in his Colt and crossed the street. The saloon smelled of spilled rye and sweat. Two drifters had a barkeep pinned to the counter. A third pointed a pistol at the ceiling and fired. Plaster rained down. Harlan heard boots on the balcony above and looked up. A small man in a wide brown hat stood at the wooden railing, watching the room like a foreman watches a crew. Red bandanna. Gray beard down his chest. He held a tin cup of whiskey and smiled at Harlan the way a man smiles at bad weather he predicted. "Sheriff," Mortimer Scofield called down. "You come to join the party, or break it up? Hah." Harlan knew the face from old bounty sheets. Knew the stories too. This wasn't a drifter problem. This was Scofield renting drifters. "Call your boys off," Harlan said. "My boys." Mortimer leaned on the railing. "Son, these ain't my boys. These are just men who like noise. I only bought the whiskey." He tilted the cup. "Town took everything from me once. Wife. Girl. You remember? No. Course you don't. Nobody does. So I remind 'em." The drifter with the pistol turned toward Harlan's voice. Harlan shot him in the shoulder before the barrel came level. The man dropped screaming. The other two let go of the barkeep and reached for iron. Harlan put one down with a shot through the thigh. The last threw his hands up. Harlan kept his Colt on the balcony. "Come down, Scofield." Mortimer set the cup on the railing. "I'll come down when it suits me. You got three men bleeding on your floor, Sheriff. You gonna leave town with me loose? Hah. Didn't think so." He stepped back into the shadow of the upper hall and was gone. Harlan heard a rear door slam. He didn't chase. He couldn't leave three wounded men and a wrecked saloon. He dragged the drifters out one by one and marched them to the jailhouse in irons. At the desk he unbuckled his saddlebags and set them down. His man to the east would have to keep. Mortimer Scofield had just made himself Harlan's problem, and Gritstown was the cage now.