"Cass! Take cover!"
A lanky youth with blond hair was trying to draw the sniper's fire. Collie had entrenched himself with his rifle and coon behind a stack of slate tiles on the courthouse's construction site. The boy's fire blew the sniper's derby off his head. In retaliation, the sniper sheared off the top few layers of slate. Cass could hear the boy cursing like a muleskinner as sharp, red shards rained down around him.
"Take him out, boys!" bellowed an authoritative voice from the south side of the Square. Shielded from the sniper's view, Sid Wright ducked into Third Street. He was sprinting beneath porch roofs with his deputies.
As the tin-stars opened fire, the grocer's sign quickly turned into the wooden equivalent of Swiss cheese. Outgunned and out of cartridges, the sniper fled, ducking behind façades as he headed west. Cass finally had the diversion he needed to drag Poppy through the batwings of the saloon. He emerged a heartbeat later with both guns and a vengeance.
"Baron!"
The senator waved. He appeared to be all right. He was squatting beside the pasty-faced Pendleton, who looked like he might spew his breakfast as he tied a neckerchief around Tito's bloody arm.
Cass muttered an oath when he realized Sid's panting, pot-bellied deputies had become less concerned with apprehending the sniper than a passel of looting adolescents. The Public Square was in chaos. Matrons were shrieking; toddlers were wailing; and sodbusters were raging against "the depraved morality of city folk." If Cass wanted the sniper caught, he'd have to do it himself.
Squinting against the sun, he scanned the eastern skyline until his watering eyes spied a two-legged shadow, sprinting through the undulating heat waves.
Found you, you bastard!
Charging into the middle of the Square, Cass nearly got flattened by a rearing horse and its surrey before he reached his destination: the grocer's porch. Ignoring the red-faced merchant's threat to press charges, Cass vaulted for the rain spout and scrambled onto the roof.
"What the hell are you doing, Cass?" Baron yelled. "You're not deputized!"
Sid yelled something similar, but Cass was burning with vigilante vengeance. The sniper had made him look like a gun-waving bumpkin. Worse, the renegade had nearly plugged Baron and Poppy, who were counting on him for protection. No way was Cass going to let that gunman escape!
The sniper was four stores ahead, bounding toward Live Oak Street like a suicidal jackrabbit. Gritting his teeth, Cass did the same, clawing for purchase at chimneys, ripping shingles from roofs with his spurs. Collie was sprinting across the construction site, firing his Winchester, because Cass's .45 was out of range.
"Hey, kid!" Cass yelled when Collie's cartridge pinged off Boomer's barber pole. "Who taught you how to aim?"
"You did!"
"Then you didn't learn squat! Toss the rifle here!"
Collie obliged, and Cass caught it on the run, snapping the breechblock.
"It's only got one cartridge left!" Collie shouted, his voice fading as he fell behind.
Never warn the enemy, kid.
Cass slid to a halt on the building's edge. He had seconds—fractions of seconds—to steady his stance and take aim before the sniper jumped down to the hay wagon parked conveniently outside the livery. Cass could see a saddled bay, waiting patiently in the shadow of the iron horse sign that wobbled in the wind.
A numbing calm swept over him.
"That's bully, Pa," he remembered his 10-year-old self praising the 12-point buck his father had felled. "Caught him on the run, too! Not even a Ranger could shoot so good! You could be a Ranger, Pa. Why don't you wear a badge?"
"Cause I got family, Billy. A Ranger would never risk the people he loves. Too many vengeance-minded outlaws prey on a lawman's kin. 'Sides. It takes more than fancy shooting to be a Ranger."
"It does? Like what?"
"Like respect for life, boy. Like knowing right from wrong. A Ranger keeps the peace. He doesn't take the law into his own hands."
Not long after that, Matthew Cassidy had been caught in the crossfire as feuding neighbors did the very thing that he'd warned his son not to do.
And Pa wasn't the only Cassidy who got murdered by a menace the law was too chicken-livered to punish.
Hardening his jaw at the bitter memories, Cass squinted through the rifle sight. Shooting a man in the back was a death sentence. He'd learned that the hard way. Since the fleeing sniper wasn't likely to turn around and make the shot defensible in court, Cass had to devise another plan. And fast. The bastard was getting ready to jump. Cass didn't have the protection of a badge if he missed.
So it's a good thing I never miss.
With a feral snarl, he pulled the trigger. Sparks flew as the cartridge ripped the iron horse from its mooring. The swinging sign slammed into the sniper with a clang. He yiked, dropping his Winchester. The rifle clattered down the shingles and plunged into a watering trough. A heartbeat later, both the sniper and the sign went crashing through the damaged timbers of the roof.
"Cassidy!" It was Sid's voice. "So help me God, I'll throw away the key to your cell this time!"
Cass gave the lawman a cheeky salute. "He's all yours, marshal. Wrapped up nice and pretty with a bow."
Lumbering into the livery yard with a deputy, Sid warned Collie and Vandy to stay out of harm's way, a warning which they obeyed for roughly 90 seconds.
In the meantime, Cass shimmied down a porch pillar. When he caught up with Collie inside the stable, he was dumbfounded to see Sid and his deputy wading through straw, poking their rifles into hay bales, and generally looking perplexed.
"He got away?" Cass said incredulously. "What the hell happened?"
Collie rolled his eyes. "Your lawman friend moves slower than a three-legged tortoise. My guess is, the sniper was disguised. He threw off his granger clothes and disappeared through the tack room into the crowd."
About two minutes later, Vandy proved Collie right by sniffing out a ratty brown wig and sack coat, stashed under the straw.
But by that time, the sniper was long gone.
Chapter 6
Cass had two things on his mind the rest of that day: identifying the sniper and tracking down Sadie.
In Cass's opinion, the sniper had been a professional. He'd positioned himself so anyone returning his fire would be sunblind. He'd even pre-planned his escape. So why had the bastard been such a lousy shot?
That question plagued Cass for hours. Baron hypothesized that his would-be assassin had hit Tito because the big man was in the way, but Cass wasn't so sure. The sniper had taken numerous potshots at Tito, while Baron, who'd been returning fire, only dodged two bullets.
In any event, Baron was too canny not to milk the incident for every ounce of publicity he could get. He awarded Tito a medal. Poppy all but smothered the big man with her maternal fussing. She dressed his wounds and vowed she would only have a hero as her bodyguard.
Thus, while Cass was relegated to Baron Duty, he kept his ears pricked—and not just for sniper news. He figured he owed Sadie a colossal comeuppance.
Cass couldn't forgive the Devil's Daughter for kicking him in the gut, and worse, for laughing at him while he'd flailed like an oaf on the hotel carpet. He imagined how the hellcat must have hidden in the stairwell, watching in delight as Rexford Sterne slapped him with cuffs.
But Cass's good humor was restored around dinnertime, when Collie returned from his Sadie Hunt. Apparently while whittling critters and trading quips with Joaquin, the shoeshine boy from Boomer's Barbershop, Collie had heard some juicy gossip: