Free Deadly Road to Yuma by William W. Johnstone Page A

to open them this morning.”
    “Sure enough,” Flagg agreed. “I’ll go down to the hash house and see about gettin’ some breakfast sent up for the two o’ you…and for Shade, too, I reckon, although I hate to waste good food on a varmint like that. Wouldn’t be right to let a prisoner starve, though.”
    “I suppose not,” Matt said grudgingly.
    “I’ll see about gettin’ a message sent off to the court in Tucson, too,” Flagg promised. “Anything else you boys want in particular?”
    To be on the trail again, Matt thought, but that was going to have to wait a while. At least until Flagg received word that a circuit judge was on his way to Arrowhead.
    Flagg left, and came back a short time later with a cloth-covered tray containing platters of flapjacks, biscuits, and thick slices of ham. Matt had coffee boiling in the dented old pot on the stove by then. Shade’s yells still came from the cell block, but the three men just ignored him as they ate breakfast.
    “I did some askin’ around town while I was out,” Flagg said. “Nobody’s talkin’ about lynchin’ Shade.”
    “At least not that they would admit to the sheriff,” Sam pointed out.
    “Yeah, well, there’s that,” Flagg admitted. “I got pretty good instincts, though, and I don’t think anything’s goin’ on right now.”
    “But you believe it’ll build back up,” Matt said.
    Flagg nodded. “I do. Hear that?”
    He opened the door, and the blood brothers both heard the sound of someone hammering in the distance.
    “You know what that is?” Flagg asked.
    Matt and Sam shook their heads.
    “That’s Cassius Doolittle nailin’ together coffins in the yard behind his undertakin’ parlor. There’s gonna be a big funeral here in town this afternoon, for Charlie Cornwell, Harlan Eggleston, Yancy Baker, Bob McCall, and Rufus Nicholson. Those are all the fellas killed by those outlaws. Every time one of those boys is buried, folks are gonna look at each other and ask themselves why Joshua Shade is still drawin’ breath when he ought to be danglin’ at the end of a rope. They won’t be able to come up with a good answer for that question either, except that it’s the law…and after a while they just won’t give a damn.”
     
    That afternoon, Sheriff Flagg attended the mass funeral in the church at the edge of town while Matt and Sam remained at the jail. Later, when the last coffin had been lowered into the newly dug graves in Arrowhead’s cemetery, and while the undertaker and his helpers were busy shoveling dirt into the holes, Flagg returned to the sheriff’s office.
    He still wore the dusty, somewhat threadbare black suit he had worn to the funeral, with a gunbelt strapped around his ample belly under the frock coat. As he hung his hat on a nail near the door, he commented, “Shade’s quiet for a change.”
    “He’s been quiet all afternoon,” Sam said.
    “Reckon he finally wore himself out from all the carryin’ on,” Matt said. “Any problems at the funeral or the buryin’?”
    Flagg shook his head. “Not really, but I could tell that folks are mighty upset. Stan Hightower and all his hands were there, and Stan’s wife Margery never stopped cryin’. I didn’t like the look on Stan’s face.”
    “We don’t know who those people are, Sheriff,” Sam reminded him.
    “Oh, yeah.” Flagg went over to the stove and poured himself a cup of the coffee that was left from that morning, which was probably strong enough by now to get up and walk off under its own power. “Margery is Rufus Nicholson’s daughter, and her husband Stan owns the Diamond H. One of the biggest spreads in these parts. So Stan’s pretty much used to gettin’ whatever he wants around here.”
    Matt propped a hip against a corner of the desk and frowned. “That sounds like trouble brewin’.”
    Flagg sighed, sipped the coffee, and nodded. “Yeah, I heard Stan talkin’ after the service at the cemetery about how it’s a waste o’ time