Free Rough Justice by Lyle Brandt

each with half a dozen oil lamps mounted equidistant from each other on its rim. If he could clip the ropes they dangled from and bring them crashing down, the lamps would likely shatter, spill their fuel across the wooden floor, and set the place on fire.
    If
he could make that shot, with pistols barking at him, enemies he’d never met before shouting their threats and curses, all intent on killing him.
    Sweating, he raised the Henry, tried to hold it steady, index finger curled around its trigger, praying that the rifle wouldn’t be shot from his hands.
    *   *   *
    C hance Truscott covered one full block before it hit him: if he ran away, how would his men, his Knights, ever have faith in him again? He was afraid, no doubt about it, but if he let
them
see that, he would be finished as their leader.
    Was it already too late, the way he’d bolted from the Southern Cross, shoving his men aside to save himself? Maybe. But if he went back now and rallied them, led them to kill the traitor who’d deceived him earlier that evening, he could likely win their trust back. Spin some story about going off to look for help, and then deciding he was needed more among his men than fetching reinforcements.
    That could work. But it meant going back
right now
.
    Reluctantly, he turned and ran back toward the Southern Cross, breath wheezing in his lungs. His mind was racing, searching for a handle on the situation. Rodgers, or whatever he was called in fact, had said he worked for somethingcalled the U.S. Secret Service. True or false, Truscott thought he could use that to distract his men from any doubts or disappointment they might feel toward him, directly.
    Paint it as another federal incursion on the sovereign State of Texas, once its own republic, now crushed under Yankee boots and likely to remain so, if a force of loyal native sons did not arise to sweep the blue plague from their soil. If Rodgers had credentials or a badge, it would confirm a charge of spies among them, undermining every aspect of the old traditions his supporters had been raised to view as part of God’s eternal plan.
    His courage was returning as he reached the Southern Cross—at least, until he heard the storm of gunfire echoing inside there. As he neared the bat-wing doors, the light appeared to shift in the saloon, immediately followed by a crash that shook the place. Men cursed and howled, more guns went off, and when he peered in through the nearest window, Truscott saw the place was burning now, its wooden floor a sea of spreading flames.
    Stupid to go in now,
he thought.
The place is burning. Anyone with any sense will make a break for it.
    But leadership and common sense were not always compatible. Sometimes a leader had to take a chance, risk everything, if he was going to inspire his men and hold their confidence. He couldn’t urge them into battle, when a situation called for him to lead them by example. If he didn’t joint the fight, those who escaped the Southern Cross tonight would carry two grim memories: their own fear, and his failure as their captain. They would shun him as a coward, maybe even seek revenge against him for deserting them.
    Truscott drew his pistol—nothing big, a Colt Pocket Police revolver in .31-caliber, weighing just over a pound and ahalf—and moved forward against his better judgment, shoving through the bat-wing doors into the anteroom of Hell.
    *   *   *
    R yder had missed the wagon wheel’s suspension line with his first shot but cut it with the second, while the raving drunks around him ducked and wondered what he had in mind. They found out seconds later, when the ring of lamps came plunging down and trapped one man beneath it, six lamps shattering on impact with the floor and spewing liquid fire. The man beneath it screamed and tried to wriggle free, his legs acrawl with biting flames.
    Ryder couldn’t get a clear shot at the second