He nodded and the others, mounted now, swung their horses and they thundered in a tight group down Sherman, back the way they had come.
A man skidded around a corner, two guns in his hands, a brass star gleaming on his shirtfront.
“Stop!” he yelled, planting his boots wide, bringing up his cocked six-guns. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Three of the mountain guns shook the town with their thunder as they fired together and the marshal’s broken body was blown back six feet by the smashing lead balls and bullets. They rode over what was left of the lawman and spurred their mounts to a gallop as they cleared the edge of town ...
Dysart snapped up his head irritably as the drapes were ripped apart and a white-faced, sweating man he vaguely recognized as his horse wrangler, came skidding in, gulping, his words almost unintelligible.
“Boss! They—they got her! Rode in, cut down folk all over the place and took her away!”
Dysart frowned, his mind on other things. He had heard the shooting outside but wasn’t interested in its cause. He was about to slam down his winning hand and scoop in that pool of money which was well over fifteen hundred dollars by now.
“Your wife, boss!” the wrangler said, pointing with a trembling hand. “A bunch of buckskinners rode in and kidnapped your wife!”
The others gasped and all eyes turned to Dysart. He frowned more deeply, stared unseeingly at the wrangler and then turned back to the table, raking the gambler and Barry with a cold stare.
Slowly, his lips curled upwards in a sneering smile of triumph as he laid out his cards on the table.
“Bluffed you both out of the biggest pot in four days!” he said with great satisfaction.
The houseman swore and paled, knowing he was in trouble with Big Momma for letting Dysart bluff him when he had had a better hand. Barry was in the same boat but merely cursed briefly, and then stood up, mouth tight as he watched Dysart collect his winnings.
“I’m riled that you bluffed me, Dysart, but damned if I’ll ever play with you again. No man who ignores what that feller said about your wife, just to finish a hand, is worthy of sitting at the same table as me!”
Barry wrenched away and stormed out of the room. Dysart chuckled as he pushed the money into his jacket pockets.
“Fool.” Then he stood up and when he faced the wrangler, his face was rock hard. “All right, I’ve finished my game now. Let’s have this again about my wife. You claim someone rode in and kidnapped her?”
“Judas, yeah! Boss, they killed half a dozen folk and rode off with her. You gotta move if you want her back.”
“What makes you think that?” Dysart demanded.
The wrangler held up a sheet of pliable birch bark that had been hidden behind the hat he held in his hand.
There was a message written on the inside in blood and charcoal and Borden Dysart’s color changed as he read it.
Three – Do a Friend a Favor
The bullet came close to tearing Yancey Bannerman’s head off. Another half inch lower and he would have been minus the top of his skull. As it was, the lead not only sent his flat-crowned hat flying, but ripped a line through his fair hair and creased his scalp.
The burning impact sent him falling backwards behind the sheltering rock, both hands clasped to his head.
Cato, crouched behind a boulder a few feet away, snapped his head around even as he levered a fresh cartridge into the chamber of the hot rifle he held. He stiffened when he saw the blood coursing down Yancey’s face and thought for a moment that his pard had bought it.
“Yance!”
The big Enforcer shook his head and his eyes crossed briefly before he was able to bring them into focus. He heard Cato’s breath hiss out between his teeth in relief as he sat up and looked around bewilderedly.
“Hell, thought you were hit bad!” Cato said.
“Bad enough. My head feels like a mule kicked me.”
They both ducked and Yancey scrabbled in close against the rocks as a fresh volley raked their shelter. Hugging the coarse sandstone, Yancey glanced over the clearing to where Howie Pepper lay white-faced and sweating and shaking under the lone tree. The horses were tethered in the brush behind the tree and, any moment now, Yancey expected the bandits to rake that brush and kill the animals. It did not happen. The Mexicans were concentrating on the men and it suddenly came to Yancey why.
“Johnny,” he said, holding a wadded kerchief against the crease across his scalp. “I reckon those hombres are on foot up there.”
Cato triggered two fast shots and then glanced at his pard, frowning. “How so?” He examined a slight bullet tear on his left shoulder.
“We never saw any of ’em on hosses. Just men on foot running from rock to rock up on the rim. They were already in position when we rode in and dismounted here, the logical camping place. They must’ve seen us tie-down the broncs in the brush, but not one bullet’s gone anywheres near there. They’ve concentrated on you and me in the rocks here. Howie’s more or less in the open and, even though he don’t have a gun, they sure wouldn’t ignore him completely.”
“But they’re doin’ just that.”
“Sure. Because he’s just in front of the brush where the horses are. Seems to me that they don’t want to risk sending some stray lead into the brush, so they’re not bothering about him.”
“Three broncs,” mused Cato. “Or two broncs and a mule to be accurate. How many men you reckon are on the rim?”
Both men ducked as a heavy volley sent screaming, flying lead through the campsite and rock dust sprayed over Yancey’s shoulders, stung Cato’s face.
“I’d say less than we figure. There’s been a lot of moving around up there on the rim. They wouldn’t need to do that if there were a lot of ’em. And if they had mounts, they’d have half of ’em down here charging in, to flush us out so the ones who stayed on the rim could pick us off. I reckon we only got three or four to worry about, Johnny.”
Cato pursed his lips. “Want to make a run for it?”
“Let’s wait till dark. Only an hour or so.” He ducked as a volley raked the rocks again. “Getting impatient. Want us nailed before night comes down.”
“Yeah. Reckon you might be right, Yance. They’ll make a try for the broncs on foot after dark.”
“And we’ll be waiting.”
They didn’t waste ammunition after that, only taking an occasional pot-shot as one of the Mexicans moved about on the rim. Then darkness fell with typical suddenness out there and Howie Pepper grew restless. He called out feebly:
“Hey, how about me? You gonna give me a gun?”
“I’ll give you a bullet if you don’t shut up!” snapped Cato.
“Hell, you can’t leave me lyin’ here exposed!”
“Who says I can’t?” the small Enforcer muttered. “How you makin’ out, Yance?”
“Ready.”
Yancey came sliding back through the brush on his belly. He had set up the three bedrolls with their hats on, around a small campfire, set the stage with coffee pot and mugs.
“Man, that coffee smell’s makin’ my mouth slaver,” Howie Pepper said.
“Just keep talkin’. Give away our true position. You’ll never see sunup!”
“Both of you hush-up,” Yancey said softly, “or none of us’ll see sunup.”
Even though they were waiting for the Mexicans to make their move, they were almost taken by surprise when the men suddenly appeared on the perimeter of the fake campsite and slashed at the blanket-figures with swinging machetes. Before the first slashed blanket roll had toppled, the bandits knew they had been fooled and there were shouts in Spanish as they brought up their firearms.
Yancey’s six-gun blazed and cut one man down from less than a yard away, the bullet taking the man in the neck. Lead whistled past his face as he ducked and rounded, gun hammering twice. His lead caught a man leaping at him with revolver spitting in one hand, the other swinging a murderous machete. The Mexican died in mid-leap and c
rumpled. Cato’s Manstopper shot barrel thundered and ripped a scream from a charging bandit. The fourth man ran into the dark and Yancey caught a glimpse of him leaping from rock to rock, briefly silhouetted against the stars. He fired, heard the man yell, saw him topple, but when he ran to the place, there was only a smear of fresh blood on the sandstone.
He turned back into the campsite where Cato was already saddling up.
“One got away, winged. Could be he’ll bring his amigos. We better be a long ways from here come sunup.”
“Amen to that,” Cato said.
“Don’t leave me, Yance!” cried Howie Pepper apprehensively as the big Enforcer saddled his own mount.
They set the wounded man on the mule, and Cato roped him roughly to the animal’s crude saddle frame, bringing grunts and protests of pain from Pepper.
“Take it easy, goddamn it!”
Cato yanked a knot tight and bared his teeth as Pepper groaned aloud.
“For mine, I’d leave you to rot.”
They mounted and rode away from the place as fast as they dared in the night. By mid-morning, they were in sight of the Rio and Cato scouted ahead, picked out landmarks and rode back, grinning from ear to ear.
“By hell, Yance, you sure can move good by the stars! We’re no more than twenty miles from Laredo, I reckon!”
Yancey nodded, scanning the country ahead.
“Good enough. We’ll leave you on the north bank of the Rio, Howie. You can make your own way after that. I’ve doctored that wound some but you’d better see a sawbones and make sure it’s gonna be okay.” The Enforcer took some money from his pocket and slipped it into Pepper’s shirt. “That’ll pay for it. I took back from El Solo what he stole from me before we lit out.”
Howie Pepper, a smallish man with a twisted upper lip from an old knife fight, nodded to Yancey.
“Won’t forget this, Yance. Anythin’ I can do, you just ask. I mean it.”
“How about drownin’ when you cross the Rio?” Cato suggested and Howie Pepper scowled at the smaller Enforcer.
“Not you, Cato. I wouldn’t spit on you if you was on fire.”
Cato smiled crookedly. “I’d throw coal oil on you.”
“Okay, okay,” Yancey said, half-smiling. “We split up here. See you sometime, Howie. If you don’t get your throat slit playing both ends against the middle.”
“I’ll be around when you want me, Yancey,” Pepper swore, throwing the big Enforcer a brief salute. He didn’t even glance at Cato again as he turned the mule and set it into the muddy waters of the Rio.
Yancey reached out and nudged Cato lightly.
“Let’s go, pard. We’d better be gettin’ back to Austin to make our report to Dukes. He ain’t heard from us for so long he likely figures we’re crowbait by now.”
They rode along the bank of the Rio and crossed at a shallow ford, riding on Texas soil for the first time in close on three months.
Lester Dukes, governor of Texas, had had long-standing heart trouble and today looked like being one of his bad days.
He was a tall man with the looks of an Abe Lincoln and his narrow features were pasty-gray, the deep-etched lines around his mouth looking like eroded gullies, lips turned down with the constant pain he fought to hide from those he came in contact with. Dukes was not one to complain and often his beautiful daughter, Kate, had to hound him into allowing Dr Boles, his personal physician, to examine him. As it happened, Boles had seen the governor that morning and prescribed an increased dose of digitalis tincture and some special fast-acting pain-killer pills that he had brought back from a recent visit to New York. The pills acted fine when the pain hit hard enough to stop Dukes in his tracks, but he was a man who hated medication of any sort and he put off taking them unless he had no other choice.
Now, as he sat behind his desk, gaunt-faced, right arm half-consciously rubbing at the constant numbing pain in his left shoulder, the governor of Texas looked ten years older than his sixty years. His eyes seemed sunken and burning as they regarded the two dust-spattered Enforcers standing before him, with Kate holding tightly to Yancey Bannerman’s right arm. She was barely able to suppress her smile of pleasure; she had missed Yancey. In truth, he had missed her plenty, too, but he didn’t let it show right now.
“You did well, gentlemen,” Dukes said huskily, nodding to show his appreciation of a chore well done, but unable to rake up his usual congratulatory smile and enthusiasm. “As usual. You’ve earned a break, but I have to ask you to do me a favor.”
He looked quizzically at the weary men, who exchanged a brief glance.
“Just name it, Governor,” Cato said.
Dukes lifted a hand a little. “Just hold up a mite, John. You’ve had a hard time these past three months and this chore I’ve got for you might mean a lot of trailing.”
He flicked his gaze to Kate and saw the smile leave her face. “I’m sorry, Kate. I have to ask it. I owe Borden Dysart a favor and he’s every right to expect to collect.”
“Dysart?” asked Yancey. “The cattle king?”
Dukes nodded. “He’s here, in the Mansion. You men go clean up. Take your time about it. We’ll meet at dinner and I’ll tell you all about it. Meantime, I think you’d better make arrangements to have horses on standby, fully equipped for what could turn out to be a long trail. I’m sorry about this, Yancey, John. But it is urgent and—well, you know I always square my debts.”
“That’s okay, Governor,” Yancey said. “We’ll see you at dinner.”
Outside in the corridor, Cato diplomatically took his leave of Yancey and Kate and said he would make arrangements for the stables to have two fast horses ready for the trail at a moment’s notice. Left alone, the girl and Yancey found a secluded corner away from the posted Ranger guards and he took her in his arms and kissed her hungrily. Kate clung to him and rested her head against his massive chest.
“Oh, Yancey, it looks as if we won’t have any time together after all!” she complained.
He nodded soberly, stroking her hair, smelling its sweetness. “By Godfrey, I’ve missed you, Kate!” He took her shoulders gently in his big hands and looked down into her face. “You know what’s goin’ on with this Dysart deal?”
She shook her head briefly. “No. He showed up here yesterday, very agitated, talked for hours in private with father. It didn’t help his angina one bit. He should have been resting but he insisted on hearing out Dysart. A Ranger captain was called in at one stage but everyone is close-mouthed. The best I can do is take an educated guess that it has something to do with Dysart’s wife, Dolores. He never goes anywhere without her, but she’s not with him now.”
Yancey frowned. “What sort of favor does the governor owe Dysart?”
Again Kate shrugged. “I don’t know. It goes back a long way, I guess. They’ve been in contact from time to time over the years and father always drops whatever he’s doing to see Borden Dysart. It’s not that they’re such good friends, don’t misunderstand me. But it seems as if it’s something he feels he—he ought to do, I think.”
“Governor feels strongly obligated to Dysart, you mean?”
“That’s the impression I get. So I guess it was a pretty big favor.”
Yancey studied her face. “You don’t like Dysart. I can tell by your tone.”
She shook her head. “He’s an arrogant man, a very powerful personality, single-minded, and ruthless. He couldn’t be so powerful unless he was those things, I guess, but I don’t much like him. And yet I feel sorry for him.”
“How come?”
“Well—he’s a friendless man. He has a lot of people working for him and who cultivate his favor, but I’d venture to say he doesn’t have one true friend in this world.”
“Except the governor of Texas?”
Kate frowned. “Ye-es. Perhaps. But I think it’s more obligation than friendship.” She placed a hand on Yancey’s forearm and raised her worried face. “Yancey—one other thing. I have a strange—hunch that mor
e than actually asking for a favor, Dysart is almost—well, blackmailing father into helping him with whatever problems he has.”
Yancey frowned down at her, his eyes narrowing. He looked upon the governor almost as a father-figure and he was ready to fight hard to protect the old man. More so, probably, than if it had been his real father who was threatened, for old Curtis Bannerman had long since disowned Yancey and there was little love between them, especially since the death of Yancey’s elder brother, Chuck. Each blamed the other and their differences seemed irreconcilable ...
But the thought of the frail old governor, in the midst of a prolonged heart attack, being threatened by some ruthless cattle baron got Yancey’s dander up.
Consequently, he went in to dinner already on the defensive, regarding Dysart coldly and acknowledging the introduction with no more than a curt nod. The governor noticed but said nothing.
Dysart made no move to shake hands, anyway. Cato had also seen Yancey’s coolness and frowned but offered his hand to the big cattleman who hesitated before shaking briefly.
Dinner was eaten without the subject of Dysart’s visit being raised, but after the men folk had retired to Dukes’ den with coffee, brandy and cigars, and Kate had gone off to supervise the next day’s official arrangements for the governor, Dukes surreptitiously slipped one of his pain-killing pills under his tongue and looked around at the Enforcers.
“Won’t beat around the bush, gentlemen,” he said, his voice raspy, his gaunt face more drawn than ever. “Borden Dysart has a big problem. His Mexican wife’s been kidnapped. By the Buckskinners, we think.”
“The Buckskinners?” echoed Yancey, seeing Cato frowning at the mention of the notorious gang of outlaws who lived in the rugged mountains north of Houston. They had defied all attempts to flush them out over the years, still lived like their forebears, the mountain men, and were a law unto themselves. They robbed and pillaged on raids, occasionally killed, and generally raised hell throughout the area of the Anvil Ranges. But this was the first time Yancey had ever heard of them kidnapping someone and he said so, staring directly at the big, coarse-featured cattleman.
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