by Lyle Brandt
* * *
* * *
THEY’RE ALL UNDER his thumb, then?” Gavin Dixon asked.
“I won’t say all,” Bill Pickering replied. “We only met the blowhard mayor, the marshal, and his deputy. Stark owns all three of them, no doubt.”
“When he says, ‘Jump,’ they ask, ‘How high?’”
“You got it in a nutshell, boss.”
“What feeling did you get for how much weight Stark carries?”
“In the county or beyond it, I can’t answer that. Big frog in a small pond would be my guess. Statewide, unless he’s richer than he looked today, I’d reckon there are some who overshadow him. The banks and railroads, for a start.”
“Does us no good,” Dixon replied. “No state police or rangers, not that we’d have time to find them if there were any.”
“Whatever you decide, the men are with you, Mr. D.”
“Because I led them to a swamp and got ’em stuck in quicksand?”
“No, sir. They’ve been through a lot already, but my read is that they’re standing firm.”
“I wish to hell we’d gone another route, Bill. Hindsight. A lot of good that does us now.”
“You’re not a quitter, Mr. D.”
“That’s true enough. O’ course it ain’t like I could quit out here, supposing that I wanted to. Just up and leave the herd to Stark and run off with my tail between my legs? Screw that.”
“When we were riding in, I wondered if he’s switched out watchmen in the time Bishop and me were gone.”
“I kept an eye on that,” said Dixon. “One guy came from the northwest and sent another of ’em home. Since then, they’ve just been cooking supper, making coffee.”
“Watching,” said Pickering.
“Keeping an eye on nineteen hundred steers ain’t hard. But no moves otherwise.”
“Stark wants his payday.”
“Sure he does. Money for doing nothing and it’s open-ended. Bastard won’t say how much land he owns or claims to own. We say yes to his terms, we could get dunned for five, six days. Who knows? And he’d have witnesses to back his play in court, if it came down to that.”
“You think it would?”
Dixon could only shrug at that. “Or he could put the county sheriff on us for trespassing, maybe swindling him out of what he’s owed and we agreed to pay.”
“You think he’d try that? Suing in a court of law?”
“Why not, if he’s pulled this before and got away with it? I’m guessing there’s no court in town?”
“Not that I saw. They label everything, but there was no sign for a justice of the peace. One thing, the mayor’s also a lawyer.”
“Ain’t that sweet? He files a case in Ozark, maybe gets the sheriff to attach the herd pending a resolution. Slip some money to the judge, and we wind up paying a fine besides his goddamned toll.”
“You mean to turn around, then, boss?”
“I thought about it,” Dixon said. “But there’s no telling how much property he claims to own, how far we’d have to double back or veer off to the east before we’re shut of him.”
“Well, like I said . . .”
“You and the rest are with me. Right. Now all I have to do is figure out my own damn mind.”
“Same watch as always, overnight?” asked Pickering.
“Keeping it normal,” Dixon said. “If Stark’s men venture any closer, treat them as you would a pack of rustlers.”
“Understood, sir. “I’ll go get the first shift ready now.”
Dixon watched Pickering retreat, calling out names to take first shift.
And wondered how he’d face tomorrow when the sun came up.
* * *
* * *
JAY COTHRAN HAD been on the Stark payroll for nigh on five years now and liked it fine. The pay was good, and when his boss was in a mood to punish someone for offending him, Cothran was favored with permission to extend himself beyond the normal terms of his employment, working off his own grudge toward the world at large.
Nobody ever asked him how he got that way, what he was riled about much of the time, and if they did, it only would have led to trouble, probably a broken jaw or worse.
A few times—more than that, if he was honest with himself—it had been much worse. Warrants on him out of Colorado and the Territory of New Mexico were evidence that it could be much worse indeed.
The wonder of it was that Hebron Stark saw past that. No, better than overlooking it, he valued Cothran for his personal peculiarities and how his temper, once unleashed, could rage like wildfire in a prairie windstorm.
Most times, though, Jay kept himself on a tight rein and did as he was told.
Why not, when he was happy with the way things were in Christian County, managing the Stark spread, handling any dirty work his boss required?
Tonight, for instance. Mr. Stark had passed the trail drive’s leader off to Mayor Rogers and Marshal Tilton in Cold Comfort. What a pair they were, so crooked they could swallow nails and spit out corkscrews, both of ’em. They followed orders, took their cuts from any game they played a part in, and never bitched about it.
Why would they? Rogers loved to pull a cork and smelled of red-eye half the time. In Jay’s opinion, anyone who’d hire him as a lawyer must be stupid, never mind the sheepskin on his office wall from something called Straight University in New Orleans.
Cothran wondered whether that was meant to be a joke, as if a school named “Straight” would turn out such a low-life snake-oil salesman.
Harley Tilton, now, was something else entirely. Back before the war, he’d been an overseer on an Arkansas plantation, Franklin County, if you could believe a word he said. He liked to reminisce about the good old days of whipping slaves for this or that minor infraction, lording over them, and how he loved to get one of their women off somewhere alone. Teaching them the fear of God, he liked to say.
It was a comedown when he had to put his whip away and light out to avoid conscription in the Rebel army, ducking into Indian country for the duration, then drifting to Missouri and hawking his gun as a lawman to whichever backwater settlement needed a bully with a badge to calm things down. From what Jay understood, Tilton had never lasted long in any town, being too heavy-handed for the storekeepers and homestead types—at least, until he’d come to Mr. Stark’s attention and they’d cut a deal.
The upshot: Tilton had a lot of free time on his hands, unless Stark needed him for something special—the fat man who liked to throw his weight around.
None of that mattered now. Jay had his orders, crystal clear from Mr. Stark’s own lips. The mayor and marshal had no role in that, unless somebody had to step in afterward and swear it all was legal.
Meanwhile, Cothran had a job to do.
His tool of choice was a Whitworth rifle manufactured between 1857 and ’65, favored by Confederate snipers and credited with killing at least two Union generals during the war, John Reynolds at Gettysburg in 1863 and John Sedgwick a year later, at Spotsylvania. Although a muzzle loader, only capable of firing two or three rounds per minute in skilled hands, it fired a .451-caliber slug from its thirty-three-inch barrel and could kill out to two thousand yards.
For sniping at that range, Jay had a William Malcolm telescopic sight mounted atop the Whitworth’s barrel, thirty inches long, which magnified a target six times over from the shooter’s point of view. The only difference with shooting after sundown was the requirement of a light source near the mark he planned to hit.
A campfire, Cothran thought, should do just fine.
Now all he had to do was pick a man at random, line him up, and put him down.
See how that played with a trail boss who didn’t want to part with precious cash.
* * *
* * *
BISHOP MADE NO comp
laint when Pickering assigned him to the first watch. He wasn’t sleepy anyway and had an interest in keeping track of Hebron Stark’s lookouts.
The word was out from Mr. D and Pickering: Any advance upon the herd would be considered hostile and treated as such. From there, they’d let the chips fall where they may. That meant more gunplay, probably more killing, and to what end?
Bishop couldn’t answer that and didn’t try. He had inked a deal to work for Mr. Dixon and the Circle K until they reached St. Louis and sold off the herd. Whatever he was asked to do during the drive—within reason, of course—fell under the terms of his contract and Mr. Dixon bore the ultimate responsibility.
Not that a paid-off marshal or his deputy would see it that way, much less some judge who might be on Stark’s payroll or harboring a mad-on against people traveling around Missouri without living there. That was a crapshoot, and whoever claimed he could predict the outcome of it was either a liar of a fool.
Bishop was neither, in his own opinion of himself.
With all they’d been through since leaving Atoka, he believed the other Circle K hands would stand with their boss and fight if it came down to that. He wasn’t wishing for it, but what good had wishing ever done him, anyway?
Before he went on watch, Bishop saw to his guns. They didn’t need another check-over, since Toby always kept them clean and loaded, but it helped to put his mind at ease. Fifteen rounds in his rifle’s magazine and one inside the chamber, six more in his Colt, and twenty more in loops around his pistol belt. That gave him forty-two before he had to root around inside a saddlebag for spare rounds in a cardboard box.
The trip had cost him some already, but Bishop still had enough on hand to fight awhile, if he made each shot count—and that had always been his goal. There was more ammunition in the chuck wagon, although he hadn’t taken stock of it and couldn’t say how long the drovers could hold out against a full-blown siege.
With any luck, it wouldn’t come to that. But if it did . . .
Then he would cross the River Styx when he got to it.
When the shot came, rumbling through the darkness, Bishop thought it sounded like artillery firing from miles away. There was a rolling echo, but it didn’t spook the longhorns like the close-range fire that started their stampede five nights ago. He didn’t hear the bullet whistling past, but when a cry was raised from camp, some thirty yards from where he sat at ease on Compañero, Bishop wheeled in that direction, making for the fire.
Dixon and Pickering were armed and at the ready, grouped with other hands around one drover lying on the grass. A glance identified the wounded man as Isaac Thorne, shot through the side above his left hip from what Bishop could make out. Most of the men were jabbering at once, till Mr. Dixon hollered for them to pipe down and keep their eyes peeled for another muzzle flash.
That made them duck and scramble, with a click-clack of their rifles cocking, all hands likely thinking that they didn’t want to wind up getting drilled like Thorne.
Isaac was bleeding, Varney keeping pressure on the wound site with a towel from the chuck wagon. Bishop didn’t need a medical degree to know that Thorne was seriously hurt and needed expert help to make it through the night.
Almost before he knew it, Mr. Dixon was beside his Appaloosa, looking up at him and asking, “Do they have a doctor in that town?”
“I saw a sign for one,” Bishop replied. “Can’t promise he’s a good one, given what they have for mayor and marshal.”
“For a thing like this, he has to be more skilled than we are,” Dixon said.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s plain we can’t be hauling Thorne to town. We’d have to send the wagon, and he likely wouldn’t make it halfway there. You need to fetch him back here, Toby.”
“If he’ll come, boss.”
“Make damned sure he does. Promise him silver first, then lead if that don’t work.”
“The marshal may try horning in.”
“Uh-huh. Where’s Sullivan? Deke?”
“Right here, boss.”
“Get saddled up and go with Toby. Bring that sawbones back, no matter what.”
“Yes, sir!”
And here we go, thought Bishop. Back into the firing line.
* * *
* * *
YOU SAW ONE of them drop?” Stark asked.
“Yes, sir. No question,” Cothran answered him.
Behind the foreman, Ardis Newcomb chimed in, “That’s a fact, boss. I can vouch for it.”
“Who asked you?” Stark inquired, shutting him up. Then, back to Cothran, “Could you tell if he was dead?”
“No, sir. Too dark and far away, plus all them others ganged around before I had a chance to see if he was moving.”
“And you came straight back here?”
“Straight through town,” Cothran corrected him, “then swung off this way.”
“Better still. Too bad we couldn’t leave the others back to watch awhile.”
“You likely would’ve lost ’em, sir. The drovers were riled up, and no mistake.”
Stark nodded, sipped dark bourbon from the glass he held, but didn’t offer drinks to anybody else. What good was status if you shared it out freely?
“You played it right,” he told Cothran. “No one can say who shot him, or who sent you.”
“Nope. No way at all, sir.”
“So, all we have to do is wait for morning now. See if the man in charge is leaning toward a deal or wants to make a run for it.”
“And if they run?”
“That many longhorns take a while to move. I wouldn’t be surprised if we inherited the whole damned herd.”
* * *
* * *
NO ONE WAS moving on the main street of Cold Comfort when Bishop and Sullivan arrived, no lights showing shop or office in the town aside from the nameless saloon. In there, an out-of-tune piano jangled, and subdued laughter was audible beyond the batwing doors, as from a relatively quiet party going on.
They led a third horse, saddled, just in case the doctor had no transportation of his own.
“What day is it again?” Deke asked Bishop.
“Friday.”
“They don’t exactly live it up, do they?”
Again, the town’s name came to Toby’s mind as fitting, but he knew it didn’t necessarily mean anything. During his travels, he had passed through other settlements with quirky names, and he’d heard tell of others without laying eyes on them. Missouri had another town called Tightwad. There was Hell, in Michigan; Pray and Big Arm, in Montana; Rough and Ready, California; Cut and Shoot, Texas; on down to No Name in Colorado.
Some were jokes, he guessed, while others sounded like expressions of regret by those who’d put down roots and lived to rue the day. Right now, he couldn’t say about Cold Comfort and he didn’t care.
As far as Bishop knew, no one had spotted them when they reined in outside the building labeled DOCTOR, dark up front but with pale lamplight showing from a window at the back, into a narrow alley to the south. Bishop left Deke watching their horses on the street while he walked down there, found a side door, loosening his holster’s hammer thong before he knocked.
It took the best part of a minute for a male voice from inside to ask, “Who’s that?”
“You don’t know me,” Toby replied, taking a chance. “I’m from the longhorn herd outside of town. We’ve got a man hurt bad.”
The door opened a crack, to show half of a man’s clean-shaven face. He was approximately Bishop’s age, with dark hair drooping over his right eye, above a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles.
“Hurt how?” he asked.
Toby responded with a question of his own. “Are you the doctor?”
“Reuben Pratt. And yes. What kind of injury?”
“A rifle shot,” Bishop r
eplied.
“Some kind of accident?”
“Deliberate, from far off.” Bishop rolled the dice again, adding, “From one of Hebron Stark’s men.”
“Goddammit!” Dr. Pratt stepped back and opened his door farther, letting Bishop see a modest kitchen with a dining table in it and a single chair, nobody else in evidence. “You brought him with you?”
“No, sir. Judged him hurt too bad to ride. May be too late already, but I’ve got my orders, Doctor.”
“Which are?”
“To bring help double-quick. We brought a horse in case you don’t have one.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Pratt, peering around Bishop into the alley’s darkness.
“Me and backup from the camp, in case we ran into more trouble.”
Pratt frowned. Asked, “Is this some kind of test from Mr. Stark? Trying to judge my loyalty, or—”
“No, sir.” Bishop cut him off. “Stark doesn’t order me around and he’s no friend of mine, I promise you.”
“All right. Where did the bullet strike your friend?”
“Right about here,” Toby replied, brushing a hand over his side near the beltline. “When Mr. Dixon sent us, he was bleeding bad.”
“And how long ago was this?”
“The time it takes to ride five miles from camp.”
Doing the calculation silently, Pratt said, “You realize it may be too late as we speak?”
“My orders are to try, no matter what.”
“Of course. I’ll need to put some items in my bag.”
“Quick as you can, Doctor.”
“And coming back?”
“Can’t let you keep the horse,” Toby replied, “but one of us will see you home.”
“No time to waste, then,” Pratt said, moving quickly toward his office facing on the street.
* * *
* * *
AS THEY DREW near to camp and Mr. Dixon’s herd, Bishop tried picking out Stark’s watchers where he’d seen their fire before the shooting, but they’d either doused it, to stop making targets of themselves, or they had left entirely. Even so, he kept expecting shots out of the shadows, riding with his shoulders hunched in readiness, hand on his holstered Peacemaker.
