“Until you blazed in and interrupted, I was compiling the facts of the case.”
“How many facts do you need? Miss Wise described him to a tee.”
Everyone in the room gaped at him, Bill included. “What do you know about him?”
“I know I mistrusted him on sight,” he said. “I was reluctant to send him over there to your house,” he said, addressing Gabe. “But the ad was right there in Hancock’s window.”
Gabe placed his fingertips to his forehead. “Ad? For the room? I’d forgotten it was there.”
“He asked me for directions.” Then, in a defensive tone, the mayor added, “If I hadn’t told him, the next person he asked would have.”
“We stopped taking in a boarder a while ago,” Gabe said.
“I’m sure Mrs. Driscoll explained that to him, which means he had to look somewhere else for a place to stay.” Bill shouldered past the mayor and reached for his hat. “Scotty, stay with Dr. Driscoll. The rest of you, let’s go. Harold, bring a shotgun. Bernie, you can go on home.”
“You’ll need me to identify him.” Seeing that Bill was about to object, the mayor added, “Unless you’d rather take along Miss Eleanor Wise.”
Nine
When Thatcher had fallen asleep, it never crossed his mind that he would be awakened by having a gun barrel jammed against his cheekbone.
A German infantryman somehow had survived the no-man’s-land between his trench and the Americans’, and intended to chalk up at least one doughboy to his credit.
Thatcher flung up his hand and slammed the barrel of the shotgun into the soldier’s face. Flesh squished. Cartilage crunched. The man hollered.
Thatcher used that instant of the soldier’s shock and pain to come up out of the bed and leap over the foot rail, where he barreled into another of the enemy, previously unseen. This one was stocky and strong, but Thatcher had enough momentum to drive him back against a wall.
From behind, another wrapped his arms around Thatcher, pulled him off the stocky one, and wrestled him facedown onto the floor.
But there were more than just these three. Two others joined the melee. The five of them surrounded him, all shouting and grasping at him from every side, trying to secure his arms and legs. One had a hand on the back of his head, holding it down, his cheek against the floor.
He fought them with savage will. They may shoot him, bayonet him, but he was not going to be taken prisoner by these bastards.
He managed to throw off the hand holding his head down and escaped the others’ hold long enough to flip onto his back. Instinctually, he thrust his hands straight up into the face of the man straddling him. He had a thick mustache and a white cowboy hat.
Cowboy hat?
There was a five-pointed star badge pinned to his shirt. Engraved on it: Sheriff.
Jesus. The war was over. This wasn’t France. He was back in Texas. The men surrounding him weren’t German infantrymen. But he sure as hell had been in a life-or-death combat with them.
Before he could surrender himself, the backs of his hands were flattened to the floor on either side of his head. He took stock of the men encircling him. They were all breathing hard from having exerted themselves to restrain him. But even at that, he didn’t know what he’d done to warrant their judgmental bearing. They stared down at him with unsettling disdain.
All were strangers save one. Thatcher recognized the gold pocket watch chain strung across his vest. He was the most heavyset. Thatcher figured it had been him he’d crashed into and rammed into the wall.
He was the first to speak. “That’s him, all right.”
“You’re sure?” asked the one wearing the sheriff’s badge. He planted his hand on the center of Thatcher’s chest and pushed himself off him and to his feet. “What have you got to say for yourself, young man?”
“I woke up with a gun to my face. I was defending myself.”
“Or resisting arrest.”
“Arrest?”
The only light in the room spilled through the open doorway from the hall. These apparent lawmen cast long shadows across the bed and onto the ugly papered walls, enhancing the menace they conveyed. They meant business.
Thatcher repeated, “Arrest? What the hell for?”
“You’re sure this is him, Bernie?”
“Positive,” said the man with the gold watch fob. “I recognize him, and I recognize that bag. He had it with him.”
He motioned toward Thatcher’s army issue duffel bag, which he’d placed on the seat of the room’s one chair after deciding last night