“Got the shock of our lives when the Yankees busted in on us and told us they were chargin’ us with stealin’ that gold. Dragged us down to Fort Leavenworth and they sure weren’t any too gentle. I seen Nate and Pete only once or twice after they caught us and ... and …” He was breathing faster, his emotion catching in his throat at the memory even after all these years. “Well, they’d been worked-over pretty bad ... I was beat up every day, too. Never knew when it was comin’. You could be sleepin’ in the middle of the night and suddenly the cell door would be kicked open and they’d start in to beat the hell out of you ...”
His voice faded away as he relived those terrible days and he rubbed gently at his ribs on his left side, eyes cast down.
“Pretty rough for a fifteen-year-old kid,” Cato said quietly and Harlan snapped out of it, frowned at him, then nodded jerkily.
“Yeah. They wanted the gold, of course. Someone told ’em where to find it, one of the gang, I don’t know who. Could’ve been anyone, my brothers, even me ... I don’t know what I said half the time they was beatin’ up on me ... Anyways, they went there but the gold had gone.”
“Taken by the hombre who turned you in?” Yancey asked.
“Yeah ... but there were two men who were never caught, two gang members who knew where that gold was and they seemed to disappear off the face of the earth ... One or both of ’em turned us in and got my brothers killed.”
“And these are the men you aim to go out and kill now, huh?” Cato asked, though it was more of a statement than a question.
Harlan nodded. “My brothers’d still be alive and I wouldn’t have done all that time in prison if that gold had been found. That’s all the Yankees were interested in. They figured we were holding out, so they started shootin’ us one at a time, after some sort of a ‘trial’ ... The Confederate Army pushed for the death penalty, you know. Our own kind, Southerners ...”
He sounded puzzled by this and Yancey spoke quietly. “There were other things on that wagon train besides gold, Buck. A lot of Southerners died at Chase River because the train never got through with supplies and ammunition. That’s why the Confederate Army, or its remnants, pushed for the death penalty ...”
Harlan looked at him with hard eyes. “Mebbe ... All I know is the Yankees set up a Southerner as prosecutor because of pressure from the South, and they didn’t want any more trouble than they were already havin’ tryin’ to get Texas settled down, so the Yankee judge passed the death sentence on the lot of us ... One by one they started shootin’ us, hopin’ one of us would break and tell ’em where the gold was ... Because they hadn’t found it where we’d told ’em, they figured it had to be somewhere else. Well, pretty soon, I was the only one left and they decided not to shoot me.” He drew on the cigarette jerkily, mouth stretching out tight. “They gave me ten years in prison instead ... I guess someone figured that sooner or later I’d tell ’em about the gold because they kept at me for a couple of years from time to time. Then I got transferred around and there were changes of administrators and it all just seemed to slide into the past ... Except I never forgot. And I still know the names of them two who were never caught and I aim to find them and kill them ...”
Yancey and Cato smoked silently. Neither man could blame Harlan. They had both, at times, ridden the vengeance trail themselves. In fact, they had met in Los Moros over a year ago now, simply because Cato had trailed a man all the way down from Wyoming to kill him in that mean Mexican village. Yancey, too, had done his share of playing judge and jury and had trailed men for months before a gunsmoke reckoning.
No, they could understand Buck Harlan’s outlook, his need to go after these men, but it was hard for them to savvy that he had nursed a hatred for fifteen years. Maybe Cato could come to terms with it better than Yancey, for the small agent was in his middle thirties. But Yancey was only in his late twenties and fifteen years ago he would have been barely entering his teens. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been capable of an all-consuming rage at that age. But, then at thirteen, Buck Harlan had been growing up on the fringe of army camps during the Civil War, toting guns and powder in the midst of battle, seeing men dying all round him, growing up overnight from boy to man, hardened by the madness of the bayonet charge and stained with the blood of his friends.
Yancey’s life at that age had been very different. He had hardly known there was a war on, living out on the West Coast in San Francisco, while his father grew rich acquiring land and property and, finally, the Bannerman Bank which now had branches throughout the Union. No, he had had nothing to hate at thirteen, there had been very little ugliness in his life at that age, whilst Buck Harlan hadn’t known whether he would live another day, an hour or another minute ...
Then, fifteen years in prison, ill-treated, abused, a loner, having to grow up in his own way, with violence and the company of lawbreakers. It was a wonder the man wasn’t a loco killer, stalking the West like some wild animal in his search for the men he held responsible for his brothers’ deaths. Yet, maybe he was the more dangerous simply because he was going about it in a colder, more calculating way. He had used Yancey and Cato even while they had smugly figured they were helping him to some kind of rehabilitation. And he didn’t seem so worried about having spent all that time in prison so much as he wanted to avenge his brothers’ deaths.
And now they had shown him how to kill.
“You reckon you know who these hombres are?” Yancey asked abruptly.
Harlan hesitated slightly before answering. “Yeah.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“Well, it’s this way ... I know one’s named Will Sawyer, but the other one I only knew as Brazos ...”
Cato whistled softly. “Makes it kind of hard. I’d like a dollar for every Brazos I’ve known in my life.”
Harlan snapped his head up, eyes cold. “I’ll find him ...”
“You know where this Sawyer is?”
“No. Not yet. But I’ll find him easy enough. He was always worryin’ about his wife and he used to talk all the time about ownin’ his own freight line after the war. That’s what he aimed to do with his share, buy himself a freight line. I figure if he did start one, it’ll be known and I’ll track him down ...”
“Heck, Sawyer’s a common enough name down in Texas!” Cato pointed out.
“And he might not even be using his own name,” Yancey added.
“Could be,” Harlan conceded. “But there ain’t any real reason why he shouldn’t. No one ever told about him bein’ with the gang, nor Brazos neither ...”
“Just because Sawyer wasn’t caught, you figure he sold you out?”
“Well, he quit before we decided to split up. Just up and left one night. We were caught a fortnight later.”
Yancey nodded. “Sure looks kind of suspicious. How about Brazos?”
“He was with us right up till we split up, but he was never caught, is all. He was a mean cuss and there was talk about how he’d turned in a pard for a reward before the war when they were raidin’ ranches and they had a price on their heads.” Yancey scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw and looked across at Cato. “What do you think?”
Cato shrugged. “Well, I guess we ain’t got any real plans and he don’t know the state any too well these days ... I reckon we could ride along.”
Harlan frowned, stiffening up. “Wait up! I never asked you to side me ... I can handle this alone.”
“Sure. But maybe we can handle it faster and see you don’t get your fool head shot off. For instance, where you gonna start looking for Sawyer?”
“Wherever there’re freight lines, I told you.”
“Texas is a big state and a lot of it is crisscrossed by railroads now. Freight lines are only operating profitably in fairly remote areas. You know how to get there or even which areas?”
Harlan sighed and shook his head slowly. “But ... I don’t want you hombres to get involved in this. I mean, I ain’t got a hell of a lot to lose an
d it’s my chore ...”
“Wouldn’t feel right about lettin’ you tackle it alone,” Yancey said, starting to spread out his blankets. “It’s settled. We ride with you.”
Buck Harlan sat there, the cigarette stub burning down to his fingers unnoticed while he watched Cato and Yancey preparing to turn in. He sure would be glad of their company, but it bothered him that they were so willing to ride along with him. It seemed they didn’t want to let him out of their sight for some reason. He wondered why ...
“Better turn in,” Cato advised, settling back in his blankets. “We’ll make an early start.”
Harlan nodded, stood up and stretched and moved towards his own bedroll.
When Yancey and Cato awoke in the morning, he was gone.
They had spoken of a town called Musk Creek, about thirty miles from their camp, and Yancey and Cato figured this was where Harlan would head. His tracks seemed to indicate this but they lost them after a mile or so on sandstone flats and they could have branched off in any direction from that point on.
“He don’t know of any other towns out this way,” Cato said. “I reckon we’ll pick him up in Musk Creek.”
“Likely so,” Yancey agreed, though he sounded dubious. “He only said he didn’t know this neck of the woods, but you take to figuring some and it’s not that far north of the Chase River area where the gold raid took place.”
Cato glanced at him sharply and pursed his lips. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “But some of the towns weren’t there fifteen years ago. And he was only a kid. He likely wouldn’t recall the country any too well.”
“Depends. I can recall pretty clearly the small town and the country around it where I grew up before pa moved down to ’Frisco. I reckon I could find my way around there and I haven’t been back for close on twenty years.”
“All right. Reckon that’s a good point ... So, what do you think? Musk Creek or somewhere else? Point is, where else? Lots of wide open country to choose from.”
“Yeah ... Guess we can try Musk Creek first. There’s a railhead there, end of a spur-line, but beyond it the towns depend on freight lines and stage coaches. He could be headed out into that territory looking for a lead on Sawyer.”
“Think he’ll find him?”
“Reckon he’ll make a damn good try. What bothers me is if he does find him, what’s he going to do to prove Sawyer’s the man who turned his brothers in? I mean, if he makes a mistake and kills Sawyer ...”
He shook his head, knowing it was not necessary to spell it out any further for Cato. The small man raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips as he nodded slowly.
“You know, I’m kinda anxious to get back to Austin. But I kinda like Harlan, too. I know he’s had a raw deal and so on, but it goes deeper than that. I thought he was starting to trust us and I think he’s decent enough once he lets down the barriers ...”
Yancey nodded. “Reckon so and that’s likely why he rode out during the night ... He knew he was headed into trouble one way or another and he figured he’d keep us out of it. Likely he’d never say so, but I reckon that’s what he had in mind.”
Cato swore softly. “Then we gotta go after him and ride herd some more, if that’s the case.”
“Yeah. We don’t have to buy in on the deal, but we can sort of stand on the sidelines and see he don’t make too many mistakes ... I guess the governor would want that.”
So they cut across the sandstone flats and headed for Musk Creek. It was a good hunch. They found Buck Harlan there, all right—slowly circling a hard-eyed, scar-faced man in the middle of the dusty street outside the town’s biggest saloon, his hand hovering above the butt of the Colt strapped low on his right thigh.
Men were strung out along the boardwalks, watching silently as the two antagonists edged around, warily eyeing each other, the scar-faced man crouching almost double, his hard, beady eyes glittering in the hot sunlight. He was hatless and his partially bald head glinted with a sheen of sweat. He wore a striped shirt with paper cuff protectors and a string tie with a flowered vest buttoned over it.
“Gambler,” Yancey opined as he and Cato dismounted down the street aways and hurried back along the boardwalk under the awnings to get a closer view.
Neither Harlan nor the gambler said anything but there was tension growing as they continued to circle each other and neither made a move to draw first.
“Come on!” a man called from the crowd.
“Yeah, get it settled!” another voice cried. “Or call it off!” Harlan didn’t glance towards the voices but the gambler’s eyes flicked briefly towards the bunch of men gathered outside the saloon. Yancey and Cato pushed into the crowd and Yancey apologized for jostling one man and asked, “What’s it about?”
“Hand of cards,” the man answered, not taking his eyes off the circling men. “Tall ranny sat in on our game, started with a couple of bucks and hit a winning streak ... Deuce, the houseman, the hombre in the vest, figured he should take it off him but the big jasper caught him dealin’ from the bottom of the deck. Or so he says ...”
“If you were there, didn’t you see it?”
The man took a moment to answer. “It don’t pay to see them things with Deuce ... He’s a killer.”
Yancey arched an eyebrow at Cato. Could be Harlan had bitten off more than he could chew.
“Goddamn tinhorn!” Harlan said abruptly, stopping his movement and taking Deuce by surprise.
The gambler flushed at the insult and, because Harlan had stopped, figured he was also starting his draw. Deuce went for his gun first and there were fifty witnesses who would swear to it afterwards. He was good and he was confident, obviously having done this sort of thing before. Deuce’s hand dipped and palmed up his six-gun smoothly, with no wasted effort, the hammer spur cocking back under his thumb as the gun cleared leather and the barrel began to lift into line. He was incredibly fast.
Yet his gun barrel wasn’t yet horizontal when Harlan’s short-barreled Colt blasted twice and Deuce spun and flailed backwards under the strike of lead, his gun exploding and the bullet plowing into the ground. He crashed over onto his side in the dust, coughing, eyes wide in surprise or pain or both, his flowered vest streaked with ribbons of blood. He rolled onto his face and his limbs straightened out jerkily, twitched a few times, and then he lay still.
“Behind you, Buck!” Yancey yelled suddenly, seeing a movement in the alley between the saloon and the building next door, and shoving two men aside as he drove down for his own Peacemaker. But his gun wasn’t quite back to full cock when Buck Harlan spun, crouching, chopping at his gun hammer with the edge of his left hand, getting off that one disconcerting shot so that the bullet splintered the wall above the bushwhacker’s head and threw off his aim with the rifle. The gun exploded and the bullet sang off the edge of a stone horse trough as Harlan fired his swiftly-aimed second shot, gun arm braced against his hipbone. The bushwhacker threw up his arms, staggered out of the alley, dropping his rifle, stumbling out into the street. Harlan shot him again and the man went over backwards, boots lifting off the ground, and he landed flat on his back, arms spread-eagled, and lay still.
The crowd stared silently at the tall gunman as he turned slowly, gun hammer back under his thumb, the smoking Colt’s barrel sweeping along the line of spectators, silently daring anyone else to make a try. Yancey and Cato stepped out of the crowd, guns in hands, and lined themselves up with Harlan. He nodded to them slowly and began to reload as the crowd broke up and started to gather around the dead men.
“We’ve trained ourselves a real gunfighter, Yance,” Cato said, as he holstered his Manstopper.
Yancey nodded and holstered his own Peacemaker. “You caught him cold-decking, they tell me,” he said to Harlan.
The ex-convict nodded, thumbing the last cartridge into the cylinder and dropping the gun back into leather. But he kept his hands on the gun butt.
“That I did. Got me maybe four hundred bucks inside on a table to collect. Be able to pay
you fellers back for what you spent on me. Though I reckon there’s no real way of paying you back for teachin’ me how to use a gun.”
“You got a natural ability,” Cato said dryly, watching the townsfolk carry away the two dead men. “Were you tryin’ to run out on us?”
Harlan grinned faintly. “I reckoned you’d figure I came here. Wanted to try for a stake and, when I seen that tinhorn dealin’ from the bottom, I reckoned it was a good chance to see how I shaped up to somethin’ that could shoot back.”
“Judas!” breathed Cato, shaking his head slowly. “You deliberately prodded him into squarin’ off for a gunfight? Man, you’re loco!”
“Why? I’d only shot at rocks and such. Wanted to see how I’d go against another gun.”
“You went all right,” Yancey said soberly. “But Johnny and me didn’t teach you how to handle a gun so’s you’d go picking gunfights, Buck.”
“Well, thing is, you did teach me and I aim to make use of it. I found out somethin’ I wanted to know, too.”
“About Sawyer?”
Harlan nodded. “One of the poker players works at the freight depot. He told me there’s a Sawyer Freight Line over at a place called Promontory run by a Will Sawyer, and he got started just about the end of the war. I figure he has to be my man.”
“Sounds like a good bet,” Yancey was forced to admit. “But Promontory’s a long way from here, Buck. Over a hundred and twenty miles.”
Harlan looked at him levelly. “I wouldn’t care if it was a thousand, Yancey. And I’d walk if I had to.”
Yancey nodded. He guessed that was true enough. “You have to make sure you’ve got the right man first, Buck. No sense in riding in with guns blazing and then finding out you got the wrong hombre ...”
“I’ll make sure,” Harlan told him, grim-faced. He glanced at Cato and then jerked a head towards the saloon. “Come on in and I’ll collect what’s comin’ to me. Then I can square away with you hombres. Don’t like to be beholden to anyone.”
“One thing,” Cato said and Harlan paused with his boot raised to step up onto the saloon porch. “Where’d you learn about poker?”
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