Debra
Petersen (Debra P.)
A GEM WITHOUT PRICE
DEBRA P.
FEEDBACK: Any and all strongly encouraged!
I
knew that new jewelry store in town, Maxim’s, was gonna
be trouble right from the start. It’s a shame too, ‘cause
The
day it happened didn’t start out no different from
most others. The morning had been pretty
quiet, and round about eleven I was takin’ my usual
stroll around town just tryin’ to pick up on whatever
might be happenin’ and generally keepin’
an eye on things.
When
I got to the Mercantile, there was Ben Cartwright, talkin’
over the counter to Manny the clerk.
“Howdy,
Ben,” I said. “Haven’t seen you or the boys around town for a couple weeks or so. Everything all
right?” He looked over at me and raised a hand in greeting.
“Hello.
I
nodded. I heard the same story from Ben, and
from the other ranchers around these parts just about every spring.
“Are
the boys in town too?,” I asked.
“Just
Adam,” Ben replied. “He had some sort of private business to attend
to. I’m not sure where he‘s gotten himself off to.” He
smiled. “Hoss and Joe are spending their day off visiting a new
neighbor...who just happens to have two quite attractive young daughters.
I think they were planning a picnic or something of the sort.”
That
gave me a chuckle.
“
I
was just openin’ my mouth to say I’d be happy to when
we were interrupted by young Billy Lawson who appeared at the door, panting
hard.
“Sheriff
Coffee, you gotta come quick!,”
he gasped. “Something’s happenin’ over at
Maxim’s Jewelry Store! Hurry!”
Well,
I didn’t waste no time. In about a half a second
I was out the door and heading down the street with
Ben close at my heels. We hadn’t gone but maybe twenty steps when we
heard shots being fired. People were runnin’
down the street away from the store, coverin’ their
heads or ducking into alleyways between the buildings. Tiny puffs of dust
rose in the street, marking where the bullets fell. As the gunfire
continued Ben and I drew our guns and took up position right across from the
door to the store behind a wagon that was parked there.
Someone
else had found refuge there too. Charles Bailey, a quiet young fella with curly brown hair who was a clerk at Maxim’s was
standing there tremblin’ all over. I laid a
hand on his shoulder, hopin’ to calm him down some.
“What’s
goin’ on here, Chuck?,” I
asked him.
He
took a deep breath and did his best to give me the story. “Mr. Tyler, the
manager, was in the back room with a messenger who had brought a shipment of
special items for the store. I was waiting on a customer. There was some
noise and shouting from in back, then I heard two
shots. All of us in the front room kind of froze when we heard
that. A few seconds later four men with kerchiefs over their faces and
guns drawn came busting out of the back room, shouting for everybody to get
down on the floor. I had just showed my customer out and was standing right
next to the door, so I managed to slip outside. One of the men took a
shot at me as I ran, but, thank God, he missed. Then they started
shooting out through the windows. I think they were trying to clear the
street to make a path for their getaway.”
“Any
idea who these men are?”
“The
biggest one, the one who was shouting the orders, was
called Jerome by one of the others. That’s all I know.”
Four
men with a leader named Jerome. That meant the Casey brothers. And
that was not good news.
“How
many people are in there? Besides the gunmen, I mean.”
“Well,
there’s Louis, the other clerk, and the couple he was waiting on. Then
there were a couple of other people who were just browsing. I think
that’s about it.”
“Thanks,
Chuck,” I said, giving him a quick clap on the back. I turned to
Ben Cartwright. “I’m goin’ out there, Ben,” I
said to him. “You keep me covered.”
He nodded and focused his attention on the storefront.
I
stepped around the wagon and into the middle of the street.
“You
in the store!,” I called out. “Jerome
Casey! This is the sheriff! You or your brothers
harm any of those people in there and it’s gonna
go hard with you. Come on out with your hands up and nobody will get
hurt!”
For
a long minute nothing happened. Then there was movement at the door and a
man who fitted the description I had received of Jerome Casey emerged, the
kerchief pulled down from his face, pushing another man roughly in front of him
while he held a gun to the man’s head. I heard a gasp from behind
me. Taking a quick glance back at Ben I saw that his face had gone
suddenly pale. Truth to tell, I felt a lump rising in my own throat.
The
man with Casey’s gun at his head was Adam Cartwright.
“Oh,
God,” I heard Ben murmur under his breath. “What in the world was Adam
doing in there?”
I
just happened to know something about that. Last time I spoke to Adam he
said somethin’ about wantin’
to check out this new place. He was thinkin’
about a new pocket watch for his pa’s next birthday. But I didn’t see how
knowin’ that was gonna help
Ben any, so I didn’t say anything.
Now,
Ben Cartwright’s boys have always been like family to me. They’re all
fine young men, of course, but I have to admit that I have a kind of special
regard for Adam. As a lawman I have good reason to appreciate that fierce
sense of justice he has. I’ve seen it in action often enough. Adam
has been helpful to me, probably more than
anyone in this town except maybe his own father. I have to confess that seein’ him in the hands of that desperado with his life
being threatened like that kinda sent a shiver
through me. I could only imagine what it was doin’
to Ben.
Casey
stepped forward, keepin’ Adam close and his gun
cocked. From the way Adam carried himself and the look in his eyes you
might have thought that he was the one holdin’ a gun
on Casey, not the other way around. He’s always been a cool customer, but
I’ve never been more impressed with that fact than I was at that moment.
He looked over at his pa, and it was clear that he was tryin’
to reassure him that he was all right.
“Sheriff,”
Casey called to me, “it seems to me like I’m the one with the high card
here. Now the way I see it is this. You are going to let me and my brothers ride out of here without any trouble. And
we’ll take this fella with us,
just to be sure you don’t play us any tricks. Unless you want to
see his brains splattered all over the street, that is.”
“You
won’t get very far. You know that, don’t ya?,” I challenged him.
Casey
gave a nasty laugh. “I guess as long as we get out of town all right, we
can take care of ourselves after that. I’ll take that chance anyway.”
I
wanted to shake my head. Why do criminals always think so much of
themselves - assume they can get away with
things? Course it’s a good thing they do. Us
lawmen would have a lot harder time of it otherwise.
I
took a minute to consider. At that point there didn’t seem to be much
choice. Sometimes you just gotta give in for
the moment to give yourself a chance to come
back later. This seemed to be one of those times.
I
nodded...reluctantly. “Get your ugly faces out of here then.”
Ben
had come up to stand directly behind me. “
“Take
it easy, Ben.” I tried to keep my own voice calm. “They ain’t about to hurt him. Not as long as they think he
can be useful to them. And this ain’t
over. You know that. It ain’t over by a
long shot.”
A
few minutes later Jerome Casey and his brothers were mounted up and heading out
of town, taking their loot and their hostage with them. Ben Cartwright
stared after them with a look in his eyes that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
The
other clerk and the other customers in the store were unharmed. One of
them, a young fella, told
us that Casey had been ready to take his pregnant wife for their hostage, but
Adam goaded him, saying she’d only hold them up in their escape, and that’s how
he wound up being the one chosen instead. Ben shook his head at that, as
if to say that was just what he might have expected of his son, but it didn’t
exactly make him happy.
The
manager and the messenger he had been meeting with were found dead in the back
room with bullet holes in their heads. There was also a paper listing the
pieces in the special shipment of jewelry that had been stolen. The total
value came to over seventy-five thousand dollars.
Of
course we got a posse together and went after the gang as quickly as we
could. There were five men besides Ben and me who were plenty eager for
the job. One of them was Charles Bailey.
Their
trail proved to be kind of hard to follow.
At one point there was a fork in the road and the hardness of the ground made
their tracks hard to pick up. It was Ben who noticed a few small shreds
of paper on one side of the fork and recognized them. Seems Adam liked to
carry a small notepad in the inside pocket of his jacket, and it looked like he
had somehow managed, right under the nose of his captors, to tear off a few
small pieces from it and drop them as an indication of the direction they had
taken. We found the same signal at several other points where there
was a question as to the right path. Wasn’t there a fairy tale where
someone left a trail of crumbs to mark their route? Strange as it might
seem, that’s what I was reminded of.
After
several hours of hard riding the trail led us up a rocky slope that passed the
entrances to a couple of old abandoned mines. Finally, just as the sun
was about to set, we rode through a gap between
two rises of ground into an open space surrounded by hilly ground on all
sides. In the middle of it there was a good size wooden shack that had
once been used by miners. And there were the gang’s horses, tied up next
to it.
There was light coming from inside, but the silence was almost
eerie. You could just feel that they were layin’
low in there and waitin’ for us. We pulled our horses
up behind some rocks at the edge of the area and dismounted, tryin’ not to make too much noise. The men stood
there lookin’ at me while I tried to decide how to
proceed.
The
first thing I wanted to do was to find out exactly where Adam was and see what
the situation looked like in general. I thought Charles Baily would be the best one to try to do that, so I
whispered in his ear and he took off toward the shack, keepin’
low to the ground, intendin’ to try to get a peek in
the window. He hadn’t covered more than about half the ground when we
heard the sound of shattering glass, and a second later a gunshot came from the
broken window. Chuck Bailey gave a little cry of pain and lay there,
still. He didn’t move again. The rest of us drew our guns, took
shelter behind the rocks and began firing back. The exchange of fire went
on for several minutes, then died down while everyone
reloaded their weapons.
And
then, suddenly, the situation just blew up in
our faces - literally. There was a tremendous explosion and the shack
blew apart with jagged pieces of wood falling all around us. We fell to
the ground, covering our heads while the rain of debris lasted.
Ben
was the first to scramble to his feet. “Adam!,”
he shouted, and ran right into the ruins, with the rest of us not far
behind. The badly burned bodies of the four
Casey brothers were sprawled there close together in the middle of the
destruction, but there was nary a trace of their hostage. Ben looked
around the scene with frantic eyes and continued to shout his boy’s name.
Finally, from somewhere under the floor there came a muffled sound. Ben
fell to his knees and his hand scrabbled through the dirt and debris until he
found the handle to a hidden door in the floor. He threw it open,
uncovering a small cellar.
And
sure enough, there was Adam, curled up in the cramped space, his hands tied,
looking up at us with eyes that squinted against the fading light.
“Hello,
gentlemen,” he said in a raspy voice. “May I have something to
drink, please?”
We
had him pulled up out of there and untied before you could say lickety-split,
and somebody handed him a canteen. He took a long drink, then poured a
little water into his hand and splashed it over his face. He was
dirty and thirsty, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. Ben embraced him so
fiercely that I was afraid for a minute that he might choke him, but somethin’ to my surprise, Adam didn’t seem to mind.
“Sheriff,
take a look at this!,” one of the men said. He
handed me a soft leather pouch that had also been pulled out of the hole.
I opened it, and there were all the pieces of jewelry that had been
stolen...all but one, that is. There was one
piece missing... a necklace with one very large pearl...a pearl of
great price you might say.
I
shook my head. The loss of that necklace wasn’t gonna
go down well with the
group that owned Maxim’s or with the insurer.
I
looked over to where Ben stood with his hands
still gripping his son’s shoulders, speaking into his ear so
quietly that noone else could hear. “What the
devil!,” I thought to myself. “We recovered the
most valuable thing...the thing beyond price. That’s what really
matters.”
I
guess that’s about it. One happy grace note to what was, at bottom, a
sorry situation. Seven men dead all told. And for
what? Nothin’ that was worth it, that’s
for sure.
There
are still a couple of mysteries about that day. The ruins of the shack
were gone over with a fine tooth comb, but we never did find that missing
pearl. You might have thought it would have survived the explosion,
but.... Was it somehow lost in the getaway? A search was made along
the trail we followed that day, but nothin’ was
found. The only thing I can figure is that it somehow fell out of the
pouch and was picked up by some poor passer-by before we got around to looking.
We prob’ly never will know for sure..
As I expected, the insurers weren’t very happy about it, but there wasn’t much
they could do except pay off to the owners.
But
the biggest mystery is what caused the explosion. Since the shack was
used by miners it’s not surprisin’ that there might
have been some amount of explosives left
there. But how did it get set off? Did they mean to use it against
any pursuers and did one of them get careless with it? Again, we’ll never
know for certain.
It
still isn’t sure whether the store will ever be opened up again. I don’t
know myself how I feel about that. I still
think that kind of place is an invitation to trouble. But then, I could
sure use a new pocket watch.
THE
END