Lost Banshee Mine

by Jackson Lowry

  He looped his horse’s reins around a large iron ring at the corner of the saloon and went in. If the lowlife thief he hunted was anywhere, this was the place. He never slowed as he entered. The light from behind turned him into a shadow. Jensen let the few customers in the bar study his silhouette and realize trouble had marched in. When he saw the bartender move to where he likely kept a pistol hidden under the bar, he strutted over and leaned down. He needed information, not gunplay. Not right now.

  “Beer. I got a desert thirst that needs quenching.”

  “Well, mister, there’s plenty of desert around here. You come in from Bisbee?” The man wiped his hands on a towel, made sure the mug was clean enough and then pulled the beer. It hissed and foamed. Jensen had never seen anything that looked better, not even that whore over in Mesilla who had let him slurp up tequila poured into her belly button.

  “You always run off at the mouth like that?” Jensen growled just enough to make the barkeep blanch. He enjoyed watching the effect he had on others. It came in handy. Having to shoot a man wasn’t as much fun as intimidating him. Usually.

  “No, sir, I . . . sorry to have offended you.”

  Jensen lifted the mug and drained it. He let out a huge belch and dropped the empty mug back to the bar with a loud clack. He had properly trained this dog of a bartender. The man refilled the mug without asking if his customer wanted another. Jensen poured this straight down his gullet, too, then gestured that he didn’t want another.

  “You want whiskey instead? We got—” The barkeep turned even paler when the polar-cold eyes fixed on him. “Sorry. No more talking. It’s my nature, part of the job. I—”

  Jensen reached across the bar and grabbed him by the front of his canvas apron. Using his impressive strength, he lifted the man onto the tips of his toes and shook him just a little to keep his attention. Sometimes fright made their minds wander.

  “I’m looking for a cowboy. He’d be new to town, within the last day or so.”

  “What do you want with him?” The barkeep immediately regretted the question. Jensen twisted his fist and pressed up under the other man’s chin. Choking, he turned red.

  Jensen judged what the man could tolerate, then loosened his grip. “We got business. Leave it at that.”

  “There was one fellow. He spent a while talking with a miner. John Cooley. They was over there at that table.” A shaking hand pointed. Jensen didn’t bother looking. The other customers who’d been at the end of the bar had crept out the back way. Other than the barkeep, there wasn’t anyone else in the large, empty saloon.

  “This Cooley fellow. Was he real friendly with the newcomer?”

  “I don’t think they knew one another, but they got to be friendly. Shared a bottle. Cooley got drunk, and his partner dragged him out. England Dan was real mad.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The other fellow stuck Cooley with the tab. I made England Dan pay for it all. Him and Cooley they got a mine—”

  “I don’t care about them. The fellow drinking on Cooley’s dime, did he wear a yellow bandanna?”

  “N-now that you mention it, he did. He left. Close to ten minutes back.” The barkeep shifted his pointing finger to the front door.

  Jensen released his grip and turned to leave.

  “Wait, mister. You owe me for two beers!”

  Jensen glared back over his shoulder, then smiled. Men had soiled themselves when he gave them that look. The barkeep was made of sterner stuff. He only turned whiter than a bleached muslin sheet.

  “Get Cooley’s partner to pay for it.”

  He stepped outside and considered where his quarry would have gone after leaving the saloon. Crossing the street, he went into the general store. His instincts were good. The yellow bandanna had bought some chaw using a fleck of gold. Jensen had no interest in looking at the speck of gold, but he did because the clerk insisted he look at it. It humored him to know that was supposed to keep him from shooting up the store—and the clerk.

  It worked good enough. He left the clerk with a whole hide and a store without holes in the ceiling.

  When he stepped back into the bright sun, he turned toward the livery stable. This was the only other place where he’d likely find the map-stealing no-account. Barely had he taken a dozen steps than the back of his neck began to tingle. He stopped and looked around.

  “Got you!” Jensen saw a flash of yellow and a man running down the alley. He lit out after him. The man ran fast. Jensen sprinted out of need. He had to retrieve the map. If he was this close to success, he wasn’t going to fail.

  He closed the distance between them and reached out his long arm. He gave the fleeing man a hard shove that caused him to lose his balance. Tumbling facedown, the man skidded a few feet in the dirt and garbage. As he came to a halt, he reached for his gun. Jensen stepped over him and stomped down hard. His boot broke bones in the other man’s gun hand. He howled with pain.

  “What are you doing! Take my money. I won’t put up a fight!” the man whined pitifully, making tiny mewling noises as he clutched his busted wrist.

  Jensen rolled him over and plucked the six-shooter from his holster. He tucked it into his own gun belt and turned his freezing glare on the man.

  “Here. Take it. It’s all I got.” With his left hand, the man fumbled out a small pouch. He dropped a few coins and a pair of greenbacks in his haste to fork over his worldly riches.

  “I want the map.” Jensen stuffed the money and gold sack into his coat pocket. “You stole it off Rivera. I caught sight of you looting his body, but you got away from me.”

  “I . . . Was he your partner?”

  “I hardly knew him, but he was supposed to give me the map. Where is it?”

  “I saw you searching him. I thought you were just a scavenger. A vulture like me.”

  “Robbing dead men’s nothing to brag on, but we all do it. Give me the map.”

  “I don’t have it. Honest!”

  “The map!” Jensen drew his six-gun and pointed it at the other man’s face. That usually lubricated a tongue and got the truth flooding out.

  “He took it. I . . . I sold it to him.”

  “Him? Cooley?” The name stuck in his head from what the barkeep had told him.

  “I don’t know his name. He was just another drunk. That’s where I got the gold. I . . . I spent some of it on tobacco. Got me some chew. You want that? Take it!”

  He was just wasting his time now. Without another word, Lars Jensen pulled the trigger and sent a bullet drilling into the man’s chest. A second slug, just an inch higher, went through his thieving heart. He had learned all he could and still didn’t have the map. Poke wasn’t going to like that.

  He went to the mouth of the alley, then ducked back as a man rode past. Jensen lifted his six-gun and started to pull the trigger but held his fire. The rider bent forward, spoiling the shot.

  By the time the rider passed, his chance at an easy kill gone, Jensen knew better than to stick around. That federal deputy marshal had been on his trail for the better part of a week. The more he tried to lose him, the closer the lawman got. He stuck to him like a dab of tar.

  Jensen ran back down the alley past the cowboy he had killed. He turned the corner and went for the livery.

  His horse shied when he approached. It needed watering and grain, but that had to wait. Right now he needed to concentrate on finding some galoot named Cooley.

  Cooley had to have the map. But he wouldn’t keep it for long. Lars Jensen would see to that because his brother, Poke, wanted it. And he wanted it bad. If there was anything Lars had learned over his life, it was never deny Poke Jensen anything he wanted.

  Especially if it was a map to a thousand dollars’ worth of stolen cavalry payroll.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WE’VE GOT TO tell someone. We can’t leave a body to
rot, not in the middle of town.” England Dan Rutledge turned over and over all the things to do. None of the options satisfied him. The man who had rooked his partner had been robbed, killing along with him any chance of getting their gold back.

  “There’s no law in Oasis,” Cooley said. He backed away uneasily. “Leave him be. This isn’t any of our concern.”

  “If there’s no marshal, maybe there’s someone at the jailhouse who can tell us what to do.”

  “You got a dollar you can loan me, Dan?”

  England Dan scowled. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled greenback. It was worth buying off his foolish partner if it kept him out of more trouble. Cooley bobbed his head up and down, took the proffered greenback and left without a word.

  England Dan stared at the corpse. It hadn’t moved. Flies buzzed around and bugs pushed past the flaccid lips. His partner was wrong. He had to do something, even if it wasn’t his business.

  By the time he got to the main street, Cooley had vanished. He considered asking the barkeep for help. The body was in the alley between the Thirsty Camel and the empty store. He shook his head as he realized Ray Hendrix had no reason to help. The body wasn’t inside his establishment, and he would loudly dispute any responsibility beyond his swinging doors. With a deep growl, Dan set off for the marshal’s office. There might be somebody there who could do more than direct him to the undertaker.

  He stopped and stared when he found the jailhouse. It was an adobe building with thick walls and vigas poking out in front along the edge of the flat roof. There had been an attempt to put up an awning to shade the entrance, but the lack of maintenance had long since caused the few yards of canvas to flap loose and turn into ragged streamers. The door stood open, but what made him hesitate was the black stallion hitched to the rail beside the jail.

  Approaching cautiously, he peered into the dim interior. The vaquero who had almost run down Cooley looked up from the stained desk. Wanted posters were spread in front of him like cards on a faro table. He pushed up the huge sombrero and glared.

  “What do you want?”

  “You the new town marshal?”

  England Dan moved his hand closer to the butt of the Webley slung at his side. The vaquero looked more like a bandido than a lawman.

  “I’m just passing through.” He pointed to the posters. “I keep up on who’s on the run.”

  “You a bounty hunter?”

  “You ask a powerful lot of questions. I’m no bounty hunter.” He pulled back his embroidered short jacket to show a badge fastened to his shirt.

  In the light leaking in from behind him, England Dan made out the words. “You’re a federal deputy marshal.”

  “So you’re able to read. Good for you.” He let his jacket slip back into place. “That didn’t answer my question. What do you want? I’m not going to throw out any drunk or break up a fight.”

  “It’s too late for that. I found a man in an alley with a couple bullet holes in his chest. He’d been robbed.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The question put England Dan on guard. Saying anything about the gold or the map might land him in jail instead of whoever had shot down the swindler. “His gun wasn’t in his holster. One pocket had been turned inside out.”

  “That pocket didn’t get that way because you searched the body, now, did it? You found the body and thought to steal anything because the dead man wasn’t going to spend that silver dollar or use that six-shooter.”

  The deputy’s mustache twitched as he talked. England Dan worried that this was a tell, and the lawman was getting ready to shoot him down on suspicion of murder.

  “Nothing of the sort. I’m just a citizen who thought to do his duty. Sorry to have bothered you.” England Dan backed away. The deputy had done nothing to hint that he was a back shooter, but then anybody could pin on a badge. There wasn’t any reason he had to believe the vaquero just because he said he was a federal lawman.

  “Hold your horses.” The man heaved to his feet, glanced at the wanted posters, then hitched up his gun belt as he came around the desk. “Show me the body. It’s out of my jurisdiction, but it just might be the owlhoot I’ve tracked all the way from Mesilla.”

  They walked side by side, both silent. England Dan kept his distance because of the broad-rimmed sombrero taking up so much space around the deputy.

  The crunch of their boots on the dried street finally wore on England Dan. He asked, “What’s the man wanted for? The one you’re hunting?”

  “I don’t have time to list every crime he’s committed. Him and his brother are a regular tornado blowing across the territory. Lars Jensen shot a man in the back over in Mesilla. Then he held up a stage and stole a bag full of US mail off a Butterfield stage. That’s what got my boss interested in him. Nobody steals mail and gets away with it.”

  “Lars Jensen, you say?”

  “You know him?”

  “Can’t say that I do, but the name’s sort of familiar.”

  “His brother’s Poke Jensen. He got locked up in Yuma six months back for some crime or other. I never paid any attention. It’s Lars Jensen I want.”

  “You are a single-minded man, from the sound of it.”

  The deputy stopped and stared at England Dan. He glared for a moment, then grinned and thrust out his hand. “Alberto Gonzales.”

  “Dan Rutledge.” He held his tongue. Telling Deputy Gonzales about the bogus map and John Cooley’s part in it only muddied the water. “I’m a miner up in the hills above town.”

  “You have the look of a Brit cavalry officer.” He took in the shoulders of the jacket where the epaulets had been ripped off. The gold frogs on the front hung torn, and holes throughout the jacket sorely needed patching.

  “I’m a long ride away from that part of my life. Digging gold from the ground is what I do now.”

  Alberto Gonzales nodded and looked around. “Where’s the body? If it’s not him, I want to get this over with so I can get back on Jensen’s trail.”

  England Dan went down the alley and stood a few feet away from the dead body. Gonzales came up and hardly glanced at the body.

  “That’s not Jensen.” He spun and stalked off.

  “Wait! What’re you going to do about him?”

  “You take care of it. You found him.”

  “But, Deputy Gonzales, I don’t know him. I never laid eyes on him before I found him.”

  “It’s not my job.” Alberto Gonzales turned the corner and headed back toward the jailhouse.

  England Dan stared at the dead man and shook his head. He had been a trained officer in the British army, even if he had been run out. Dealing with the unexpected had been a requirement when he served in India. But then there had always been someone higher in the chain of command or a local official to deal with dicey matters. Simply walking away from the dead man was an obvious solution to his problem. Let someone else find the body and solve the problem.

  He walked straight across the street, found a cross street and went down it to the edge of town. Hiram O’Dell was the town undertaker. England Dan had had few dealings with the man, but those that he’d had were never pleasant. The undertaker’s sour disposition was understandable since most of his customers ended up in the potter’s field.

  England Dan went into the office and almost backed out. The heavy incense O’Dell burned to cover the stench of death in the parlor made him wrinkle his nose and choke.

  “You finally kill that good-for-nothing partner of yours?” Hiram O’Dell pushed apart heavy curtains and left the viewing room.

  If England Dan ever killed Cooley, the body’d never be found. Burying him in Oasis was as alien an idea as paying for the planting.

  “There’s a body in the alley outside the Thirsty Camel. You’ll have to get paid from the city since the man didn’t have a dime
on him.”

  “I’m sure you checked.” O’Dell looked down his nose at the man who had brought such bad news.

  “The federal deputy marshal will back me up on that.”

  “What marshal?”

  “His name’s Alberto Gonzales, and he wears a huge sombrero. He’s on the trail of an outlaw from over in Mesilla.”

  “So he’s not our new marshal.” O’Dell sneered. “Obregon was hardly up to the task. There’s no reason to think a deputy from over in New Mexico Territory would do better.”

  “Tell the mayor to pay you. That’s what the money from all those fines is used for.”

  O’Dell said something England Dan didn’t hear. He bade the undertaker a good day since that was about the worst insult he could deliver without getting profane, then left. The late-day hot sun burned away. After all that had happened, it was time to leave Oasis and get back to the mine. The Trafalgar had another six months’ gold in it. All that he needed to do was put his back into it and keep his malingering partner working.

  As he went looking for Cooley, he worried that his partner would demand possession of the map supposedly showing the location of the Irish Lord Mine. This was the sort of myth Cooley bought into easily. While he didn’t doubt such a mine existed—or had at some time—he had never heard of anyone who knew the owner or had ever seen so much as an ounce of gold from the mine. He knew the legends of El Dorado. England had its own myth in the quest for the Holy Grail, and the Irish talked about wee folks and pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. That was more what Cooley wanted. To hunt and find that pot of gold.

  “Irish Lord Mine,” England Dan scoffed. “The Leprechaun’s Mine’s more like it.”