Chapter Ten
They should have barred the door behind them, but Marie-Rose was more concerned about good folk looking for safe harbor from the troubles or the storm than of more trouble arriving on her porch. The heavy clouds had arrived, like a buffalo herd on the plain, endlessly loud and hugely wet and roaming just right outside the town.
She went round the building again, checking the lamps, the doors. She set herself to work in the kitchen, making up supper for whosoever might appear. From the saloon, the clock rang out seven. Set the stew pot to simmering, made up some biscuits. She burned her fingers twice for being distracted. At last, hating every bit of it, she gave in and went upstairs to her room to collect a thing or two. Then with a bit of chalk and a bit of camphor went about the building making the marks she remembered on the walls and doors. It made her queasy but if she really had wanted to eschew those ways she wouldn't have kept vetiver deep in that drawer, now, would she? Finally she came into the saloon, where Lisabet had called her urgently but quietly.
Lisabet was standing just inside the saloon entrance, the storm door opened, looking into the street, black clouds blanketing a bloody sunset, her face filled with horror. Marie-Rose came up beside her, and looking out, saw two horsemen riding slowly into town. One was the odious vermin Spinks, the other was Mister Cade Belrose. Trailing behind them, pulled along by a rope wound about the saddle horn of Belrose's horse, was Sheriff Milo Buell. Hatless, covered in mud, guns gone, hands knotted together by the rope, he looked battered but riled as a wet badger. Could have been rain, hard to tell in the storm-shrouded twilight, but it looked like blood on his coat. Lisabet grabbed and clung to Marie-Rose's arm. Belrose, stern and thick about the middle, wearing a sateen gray coat and vest, dismounted heavily outside the German's dark storefront. She would never sully her cards by naming one for Belrose. He unwound the rope from his saddle, and gave it a good yank to keep Buell moving. He tossed the rope to Spinks.
Marie-Rose moved forward, but Lisabet wouldn't let go, holding her in place. Marie-Rose was about to push past, but Lisabet gestured, and Marie-Rose saw what had caused her to hold her back.
A hand count or so of yards down the road to the east, in the center of the road, stood Sam Winchester. His long legs were planted firm, his shoulders back, pine straight and oak sturdy. Marie-Rose wanted to bawl, because his face looked so young and his eyes so old. The wet wind set his coat tails to crow-wing flapping to expose his gleaming Peacemaker, and his hair, as he'd lost his hat, but it didn't cover his eyes, so he didn't pay it any mind. It was as if the cold wind and dark water were part of him, or he of it, and he rose out of the earth to deny passage. Belrose stepped round his horse, hitched his horse's bridle to the post. Sheriff Buell leaned on his knees. The streets were otherwise deserted. She cursed her fool self for leaving her gun in the kitchen.
Belrose deigned to countenance Sam.
"You seem to be in my path, stranger. Best you not be." He had a voice like a wheelbarrow in a gravel pit, mostly from smoking cigars.
"Best you untie the sheriff." Sam Winchester's voice was stone.
Belrose affected surprise. "Well, now. A stranger comes to Gilead and starts giving orders. You have been causing much talk of late, Mister… Cartwright, is it? Mister Spinks, have you made the acquaintance of this fellow that's been causing so much talk?"
Spinks spat. "Yep."
Belrose's head turned slightly toward Spinks.
"Yes, Mister Belrose, I have had occasion to make this man's 'quaintence, sir."
Buell started to call out something, but Spinks kicked him sharp in the shoulder. Buell fell to one knee. Sam's jaw tensed, but he held steady, not letting his attention waver from Belrose. For all his being pent up, his lanky body was relaxed and ready, knees locked, hips tilted, shoulders sloped and slack. Lisabet had a grip on Marie-Rose's arm, and Marie-Rose herself was clutching the door frame. Both women were shaking.
"Let the sheriff go. Now." Sam Winchester didn't waste breath with ornament.
Belrose glanced around, his eyes lighting on the door of the Astoria. He smiled a reptile smile at the women,
"Good evening, Miss Rose, I mean to pay you a call, once I have—"
"HEY. Over here, creep!" Sam snapped Belrose's attention back to himself.
Belrose eyes widened, the interruption alone causing him grevious insult, never mind the epithet.
"Impertinence! Seems this stranger's of a mind to be troublesome, Mister Spinks. Step over yonder while I deal with this transgressor." Belrose spat into the dirt.
Spinks dismounted, apparently unarmed. He yanked the rope and moved to the porch. He reeled Buell in towards him, winding the rope around a post. Belrose stepped away from his horse, lining himself up middle of the roadway across from Sam Winchester, following the form in the traditional way of men and guns.
"This is a God-fearing town, boy, and we don't take to insolence. So you'd best pull in your horns. You're the one with the feisty brother, aren't you?"
Sam said nothing.
"He got himself into some trouble down at the jail, I hear. Clever cuss, but not clever enough. Condolences to your mother." Belrose smiled his viperish little smile from out of his fleshy jowls.
Marie-Rose shot a look at Sam, and from where she stood she could see his jaw was rigid, but he didn't flick an eye. She hated gunfights. She hated watching them, which was stupid dangerous to do anyway, she hated the waiting while the tomfool men measured each other's peckers and dared each other to go first. She could feel it, his need to turn and run to put his eyes on his brother, but he did not let his gaze waver. A lightning crack painted the scene silver and she jumped; she tasted copper from biting her lip.
Belrose may have looked like a hound dog in a fancy blanket, but he was good, very good, and she feared. Belrose set himself at an angle, flicking his coat back, gun hand to the side. And the women waited.
Belrose was done with waiting. "Last chance, boy. Shame for a mother to lose both sons—"
A gunshot rang out so close to her ear Marie-Rose and Lisabet both screamed and ducked. When she looked up, Dean Winchester was standing beside her, smoke rising from the silver six-gun he held straight-armed over the swinging door. He was gripping the door frame with his left hand, and had a look on his face that turned her soul to water. She looked out to the road. Belrose was flat on his back.
Marie-Rose's ears were ringing. Sam had leapt to one side at the gunshot, his own gun drawn, but when his eyes found the hand that held the gun that fired that shot, he straightened.
"DEAN!" Sam yelled. "The fuck?!?"
Sam looked at Belrose, cooling in the rain-spattered dirt, then turned back to his brother and produced a truly monumental glare.
"I can SHOOT a GUN, you know!"
Marie-Rose glanced at Dean. He was breathing shallowly, she noted, and still tightly gripping the door frame.
"Jesus, Dean." Sam's further consternations were lost to the wind as he stormed over to Buell and Spinks. Sheriff Buell's hands were still tied, but the rope that tied them was now also wound around the porch post and Spink's scrawny neck. Buell had one foot hard against the hitching post and was leaning back. Spinks' legs set to spasming.
"So could he," Dean said, very low and Marie-Rose and Lisabet heard him say it, and he noticed them hearing him say it, and released the door and set to the very complicated business of reloading one bullet which meant he didn't have to meet their eyes.
"You ladies okay?" he asked.
They nodded, though he still wouldn't look up, but they didn't mind. He stomped outside, shouting now into the wind. "We don't have time for you to play Wyatt Earp, Sam, town's being invaded!"
Sam said something in return; the tone was waspish but the words muffled as he was bent over Buell's wrists, working out the knots. Buell, flinging the ropes from him as Sam untied them, shrugged off Sam's attempt to appraise injuries.
Dean was scanning the street up and down, gun at the ready. He called to the women. "Looks like Belrose and others were aiming to make some changes in the town. Lock up and get upstairs till we set things right."
"Where is Tully?" Marie-Rose demanded.
"He's on look-out on the water tower. Get inside!" he called back. "Please?" he added. He wasn't looking right at her, so her expression must have just winged him.
The sheriff lurched over to Belrose, took a good look at the hole in the center of his forehead. Wasn't like Buell to spit on a corpse, must have been rain. Belrose's guns were summarily appropriated in the name of the law. He surveyed the street, unmoving Spinks hanging against the upright, and the Astoria, and then fixed his eye on Dean Winchester. Dean let a few raindrops spatter dark spots on his buckskin before he holstered his gun and walked over. Sheriff Buell stood, checking bullets. He assayed Dean with a heavy regarding, spoke a few words. Sam came up to stand in that accustomed post, one step behind and beside his brother. Buell gave Sam the same review. A thunderclap washed over the words Buell spoke to them, but Marie-Rose reckoned she knew what was said. Buell set off at a stride down the street towards the jail and the Crystal Springs. The boys looked at one another; Dean broke out a grin and an incredulous shrug. Sam's answering smile was taut and concerned as usual, but he shrugged in return. Gilead's two newest deputies set off to follow the Sheriff.
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