Between Hell and Texas by Ralph Cotton

continued, his voice having lost most of its strength and determination. “Enough to know that we won’t tolerate such a thing happening here.”
    Lematte stood puffing his cigar, letting Freedman talk while the other two deputies slipped up behind him. When they were in position, Lematte shouted quickly, “Grab him, Deputies!”
    The deputies, Hogo Metacino and Eddie Grafe, grabbed Freedman by his arms and held him. He struggled in an effort to resist their grasp. But only for a moment. Then, seeing he was powerless against the two men, he turned to Lematte and said, “You won’t get away with this! I’ll see to it you face charges for this if it’s the last thing I do!”
    “Careful now,” Lematte warned, “it just might be.” To Joe Poole he said, “Get a rope.” Turning to the two deputies holding Freedman, he said, “Tie his arms out along the bar.” He cracked the whip again as if loosening it up.
    “Sheriff, please, for God sakes!” said one of the other councilmen. “You can’t do this! Freedman is the head councilman for this town!”
    “Oh, I see. Then perhaps you’d like to take his place?” Lematte asked.
    The two councilmen stepped back, a look of terror on their faces. They watched the deputies press Freedman against the bar and stretch his arms out along the edge. Deputy Hogo Metacino laughed and hooted aloud as he grabbed both tails of the councilman’s linen swallowtail coat and ripped the backopen all the way up to the collar. He did the same with Freedman’s white shirt. “Somebody do something, please!” Freedman pleaded, trying to glance over his shoulder at the other councilmen.
    “Just to clear up any further misunderstanding about whether or not I already
have
taken over this town,” said Lematte, disregarding Freedman and cracking the whip again in the air beside him. “I want everybody here to see that
I
and
I alone
crack the whip in this town from now on!” As the deputies tied ropes around Freedman’s wrists and stretched his arms out along the bar, Lematte stepped in close to the trembling man’s face and said, “You want to know what went wrong for me in Hide City? I’ll tell you what went wrong! I was too damn easy on the town leaders. But I’m not making that mistake again, no
sir
!”
    Lematte stepped back ten feet and, without another word, unleashed a vicious lash of the long bullwhip. Freedman screamed long and loud as the whip cracked against the pale flesh on his back.
    A few feet from the bar, Karl Nolly said to Henry Snead, “Come on, let’s gather the rest of the deputies.”
    “Right now?” Snead asked, as if stunned by such a suggestion. Nodding toward the gruesome exhibition going on before him, Snead said, “I don’t want to miss any of this! I love this kind of stuff!”
    “I said, come on, Snead!” This time Nolly put more force in his words. Snead tore his eyes away from the spectacle just as another loud crack of the whip resounded above the councilman’s screams. “We need to get our other three men here in case somebody in this town decides to be a hero.” He looked back at the whip flashing through the air as theyheaded out the door. “Damn it, Lematte,” he said to himself. Then to Henry Snead he said, “Don’t worry, I expect you’ll be getting your fair share of
this kind of stuff
if Martin Lematte has any say in it.”
    On the boardwalk out front of the Silver Seven Saloon, Karl Nolly looked both ways along the dirt street and saw the other three deputies walking quickly toward the saloon. Two of the deputies, Delbert Collins and Jewel Higgs, carried sawed-off shotguns. The third deputy, Rowland Lenz, held a pistol cocked in his hand. As they approached the boardwalk where Nolly and Snead stood waiting, they had to walk wide of two horsemen who had ridden up to the hitch rail. The two horsemen, Moon Braden and Cleveland Ellis, watched the gathering of deputies with curiosity as they listened to the sound of the bullwhip