Have Brides, Will Travel

by William W. Johnstone

  “You’re wasting your time,” Dyson said, but Cecilia nodded her agreement with Craddock’s statement.

  Bouma stepped aside as Dyson ushered the ladies onto the porch and into the hotel. For the first time, Craddock noticed the gunman, who lounged against a post with a smirk on his face. Craddock frowned, and Bo thought maybe the rancher recognized the sort of man Bouma was and realized what had almost happened just now.

  Quietly, Bo said to Scratch, “You go on inside and make sure the ladies are settled in their rooms. I’m going to talk to Craddock.”

  “Best be careful,” Scratch said. “That hombre’s half loco when it comes to Miss Cecilia.”

  “Maybe more than half,” Bo said.

  He walked over to Craddock, who said, “I didn’t expect to see you again, Creel, but maybe it’s a good thing you’re here. You can explain to me what the hell is going on in this town. I know there’s some sort of mining boom, but this seems like something else.”

  “You remember the ladies were coming out here to meet the men they thought they were going to marry?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “Well, that’s not the way it turned out,” Bo said. “The whole thing was . . . well, kind of a trick, I guess you could say.”

  “They don’t have husbands waiting for them, after all?”

  “They have a whole town full of potential husbands,” Bo said.

  He went on to explain about the competitions that would decide who won the right to ask for the hands of the young women.

  “A lot of the businessmen in town chipped in to pay Cyrus Keegan’s fee, and some of the men who signed up for the contests contributed, too.”

  Craddock stared at him as if he couldn’t believe what Bo had just said.

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “You mean to say that Miss Spaulding and the other ladies are going along with it?”

  “They haven’t promised to abide by the results of the competition,” Bo said, “but they’re at least willing to talk about it. To tell you the truth, I think some of them sort of like the idea. It seems romantic to them.”

  “It seems insane to me,” Craddock said.

  His men had been listening to the conversation as they stood in the street, beside the horses. One of them grinned and said, “Hey, boss, sounds to me like you ought to enter some of those contests. You’re a damn good shot. You’ve won a few turkey shoots back home.”

  “And we’ve got some fast horses, if they get a chance to rest up a mite,” another puncher said. “Might stand a chance in that horse race.”

  “Shut up,” Craddock barked at them. “I’m not entering some stupid contest to get a woman to marry me, when she ought to have the good sense to do it just because I want her to.”

  Now, that was a loco idea for any man to have in his head, Bo thought, and if Craddock genuinely believed in what he was saying—and he certainly seemed to—then Bo didn’t really see the sense in talking to him anymore.

  There was something else Craddock needed to know, though, so Bo said, “Did you see that fella who was standing on the porch when you turned around toward the hotel?”

  “Fella with the red shirt and black vest?”

  “That’s him,” Bo said. Bouma had faded from sight again, but he was probably still around somewhere close by. “His name’s Jack Bouma. He’s a gunfighter, and he works for Forbes Dyson. Last night he killed a man who got in Dyson’s way.”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?” Craddock asked.

  “Whether you’re scared or not is none of my business. I’m just telling you what happened, that’s all.”

  “I’m not worried about some shootist. I can take care of myself.”

  Craddock sounded confident. A couple of his men looked a little concerned, though. They were tough, swaggering cowboys, but they probably weren’t fast-draw artists.

  “Dyson’s got a lot tied up in this fandango he’s putting on,” Bo said. “He’s not going to let anything get in the way of it being successful. You might do well to remember that, Craddock.”

  With that, he turned away and stepped up onto the porch to go on in the hotel. He hadn’t had any obligation to warn Hugh Craddock, but he had gone out of his way to do so, anyway.

  Now whatever happened was on Craddock’s head, just the way it should be.

  * * *

  Bo met Forbes Dyson on the stairs in the hotel. The saloon owner was on his way back down from the second floor.

  Dyson stopped and said, “Did you get that lunatic to understand that he can’t just waltz in here and claim Miss Spaulding as his bride?”

  “He tried to do the same thing back in Fort Worth,” Bo said. “He’s used to being able to just take whatever he wants.”

  Dyson grunted contemptuously and said, “Well, he can’t do that in Silverhill.”

  That was probably because Dyson already filled that position in Silverhill, Bo thought. He didn’t like being challenged for it, either.

  “He’s liable to cause trouble,” Bo warned.

  Dyson shook his head and said, “I’m not worried about trouble. I can handle it.”

  “You mean Jack Bouma can handle it.”

  Dyson gave him a flat, angry look. “Bouma works for me. He takes my orders and is an extension of my will. Understand?”

  “Sure,” Bo said easily.

  “Anyway, don’t underestimate my personal capabilities, Creel. I’ve run into plenty of men who thought they could force me into doing what they wanted. But I’m still here, one of the biggest men in this town . . . hell, in the whole territory . . . and they’re not.”

  Bo changed the subject by nodding toward the second-floor landing and asking, “Did the ladies get into their rooms all right?”

  “They did. Your friend Morton checked every one of the rooms first and made sure no one was lurking in any of them.”

  Bo nodded. He was glad to hear that Scratch was being careful. He didn’t expect any less from his old trail partner.

  Dyson went past him and on down the stairs. Bo finished the climb to the second floor and found Scratch sitting in the armchair, which they had put back under the window at the end of the hall. The silver-haired Texan had his right ankle cocked on his left knee, but he put his leg down and stood up as Bo approached.

  “Were you able to talk any sense into Craddock’s head?”

  “What do you think?”

  Scratch chuckled and said, “I’d bet a hatful of pesos you didn’t. I ain’t sure you could drive any sense through that hombre’s skull with a sledgehammer.”

  “I warned him about Jack Bouma,” Bo said. “I figured he deserved to know what he was getting himself and his men into if he’s determined to be stubborn about this.”

  “How’d those cowboys take it?”

  “Some of them weren’t too happy about it, but I got the feeling they’d stick with Craddock, anyway, and do whatever he wants.”

  “You got to admire a man who rides for the brand, even if it ain’t always the smartest thing to do.”

  Bo leaned his head toward the nearest door to a room where one of the ladies was staying and asked, “Everybody get settled in all right for a while?”

  “I’d say so. I ain’t heard a peep from any of ’em since they went in their rooms. Miss Cecilia said they’d rest for a spell before they went to dinner.” Scratch grinned. “And then this afternoon is the strongman competition. You ready for that?”

  Bo frowned and said, “What do you mean? I’m not competing in that or any of the other competitions. At my age, the last thing in the world I need is a young wife!”

  “I meant just in case there’s any trouble.”

  “With Hugh Craddock in town,” Bo said with a sigh and a slow nod, “that could be what’s waiting for us, all right.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Philip Armbruster felt like a complete and utter fool as he rode down Silverhill’s main street on a mule with such a rough gait and bon
y back that every step the animal took jolted the reporter unmercifully.

  It was bad enough that he was riding this ugly beast, but in addition, he had traded his tweed suit for the rough homespun of a Mexican peasant’s pajama-like garb. The wide, ragged brim of a straw sombrero shaded his face, which had mud rubbed on it to darken it.

  No one who looked very closely at him was going to take him for a Mexican, but the odds of anyone paying that much attention to such a pathetic specimen were small, claimed Jaime Mendoza.

  To make discovery even less likely, Armbruster’s spectacles were hidden inside his shirt rather than perched on his nose. Not wearing them made his vision a bit blurry, but he could see well enough to get around without them.

  Now that they knew the two old men who had been with the young women before were also here in Silverhill, Mendoza deemed it too dangerous for Armbruster to walk around in his normal clothes. They had gotten too good a look at him during the confrontation. The old-timers might spot him, recognize him, and realize that if Armbruster was in Silverhill, Mendoza might be, too.

  “You have done well, Señor Armbruster,” Mendoza had said the night before, after Armbruster delivered his report. “The news you bring about this . . . this competition . . . is surprising, but I see no reason not to believe what you say.”

  “It’s the truth,” Armbruster had replied as they sat beside the campfire. “I’ve never really heard anything like it, either.”

  The men had been listening to Armbruster tell Mendoza what he had discovered. One of them grinned and called out, “Maybe you can win the señorita who has stolen your heart, Jaime!”

  Mendoza smiled and nodded at that gibe, but a second later, his gun slid swiftly and smoothly from its holster and rose to point at the man’s face. Mendoza’s expression turned suddenly hard as stone.

  “Jaime Mendoza does not compete for what he wants,” the bandit chief said in a low, dangerous voice as he eared back the revolver’s hammer. “He takes it.”

  Wide-eyed with fear, the joker stammered out, “Of . . . of course, Jaime. I meant no offense . . . Es verdad, Jaime, I meant nothing!”

  “A man who means nothing should keep his mouth shut.” Mendoza kept the pistol pointed at the man’s face for a moment longer, then lowered the hammer and pouched the iron. “You would do well to remember that.”

  “Sí, Jaime, I will remember—”

  Mendoza had swung back toward Armbruster, clearly dismissing the other man. He said, “Did you see many Mexicans in Silverhill?”

  “Some,” Armbruster replied. “The town seems to be mostly Americans, but there were a good number of your people, too.”

  “Then no one will notice a few more riding into town, one by one, eh?” Mendoza looked around at his men and got the expected mutters and nods of agreement.

  So that was the plan. The bandits would filter into town individually, at different times and from different directions, so it was unlikely that anyone would pay attention to them.

  None of them owned a fancy saddle except Mendoza, and he had a spare that was plain and strictly functional. He would use that one and ride in on one of the extra mounts instead of his fine black stallion. If he left off his ornately decorated charro jacket, the rest of his garb was nondescript enough.

  Armbruster was actually the one who had had to make the most changes to his appearance. That morning, they had stopped at a small homestead a dozen miles from the settlement and had “borrowed” the clothes and sombrero from the farmer who struggled to scratch a living out of the place.

  Mendoza had thrown the man a few pesos to compensate him for his trouble. He could have just as easily gunned him down, and the peasant had known that and had been appropriately, gushingly, grateful to have his life spared.

  He had thrown the mule into the deal, as well. Whether the animal or any of his clothing would ever be returned was doubtful, but at least he’d still been breathing as the bandits rode away.

  Now the reporter was in Silverhill, and as he drew back on the reins and brought the mule to a stop in front of a hardware store where there was a vacant space at the hitch rack, he thought once again that perhaps it would be better for him to find some hole and hide until whatever was going to happen here . . . was over.

  He had known when his editor sent him here to this godforsaken border country that the assignment would be dangerous. But if he was successful—if he wrote a series of dispatches about life with a band of Mexican bandits and it appeared in newspapers all over the country—his reputation as a journalist would soar.

  He could probably even turn those stories into a popular book, and fame and fortune would follow. Those rewards were worth the risk, Armbruster had decided.

  His confidence had been shaken when he rode into the bandit camp after a meeting had been arranged through a go-between in El Paso. Seeing the wild, careless killers who made up Jaime Mendoza’s band had made Armbruster’s belly go hollow. Mendoza had seemed to be the worst of them all, and Armbruster had been convinced he would never get out of there alive.

  Instead, Mendoza had taken to him right away, perhaps sensing that Armbruster was also an ambitious man, just like him, and by now he almost seemed to regard the reporter as a member of the gang.

  Mendoza certainly hadn’t hesitated to send him on that scouting mission into Silverhill the previous evening. He had trusted Armbruster to come back and report accurately . . . and that was what Armbruster had done.

  But it was probably a good thing the railroad hadn’t reached Silverhill yet. If there had been a train pulling out last night, Armbruster knew there was a good chance he would have been on it, putting all this insanity of pretending to be a Mexican bandido behind him.

  Hoping for the best, he swung down from the saddle and tied the mule at the hitch rack, then joined the crowd drifting toward the Silver King Palace.

  * * *

  At one of the poker tables in the raised gambling area inside the saloon, Kenton O’Keefe looked at the cards he’d been dealt, and with the experience of years spent playing in big games, he knew immediately what he needed to do.

  When the dealer came back to him, he discarded two cards, a five and a seven. The two new cards didn’t help, though. He’d had a pair of tens and a jack, and he didn’t catch anything that would improve them. A pair of tens wasn’t worth risking much on, but if the bets weren’t too big, he might stay in a time or two, just to assess the chances of bluffing with them.

  But when one of the other players pushed in a gold eagle and another raised that bet ten more, O’Keefe dropped out. No sense in throwing money away.

  And money was why he was here, after all. He had no interest whatsoever in “winning” a bride, although he had to admit that all five young women were very lovely. If he had been looking to get married, any of them might have tempted him.

  The life of a drifting gambler was nothing to subject a young woman to, however, and O’Keefe had been following the cards for too long to ever give them up. He would die at a poker table, or in some lonely hotel room, and he accepted that fate.

  Until then, he loved the competition, and he enjoyed taking money from less skilled players. The last man standing in this tournament got the right to ask one of those young women to marry him, but before it reached that point, Kenton O’Keefe would take his winnings and move on.

  One of the other players raked in the pot and said, “I don’t know about you fellas, but I could use a break to stretch my legs and move around a mite.”

  Mutters of agreement came from the other men. O’Keefe nodded and reached down to the floor beside him to pick up his hat. He flicked some dust off it with a finger and put it on as he got to his feet.

  “Back here in half an hour?” he asked.

  “Sounds good to me,” a man said.

  O’Keefe crooked a finger at one of Forbes Dyson’s men who stood nearby. The bouncer ambled over with a shotgun tucked under his arm.

  “We’re taking a short break
,” O’Keefe told him.

  The man nodded, understanding that he would stand guard over the table, with its piles of coins and greenbacks in front of each chair. No one would bother the money with the burly shotgun wielder watching it.

  And if the guard himself happened to be tempted, the thought of what would happen to him if Dyson ever found out would keep him from acting on the impulse. For this big competition to work, Dyson had to run clean, honest contests.

  Kenton O’Keefe went down the steps from the gambling area and walked over to the bar. The bartender knew his preferences by now and brought him a shot of rye whiskey and a beer.

  After downing the rye, O’Keefe picked up the mug of beer and half turned to look across the big room. As he did, Forbes Dyson came through the batwings and strode toward the stairs. The gunman Jack Bouma was with him, trailing behind Dyson with an easy, almost lazy stride. Arrogance radiated from him like a mirage rising from the desert sands in the heat.

  Like most gamblers—like most successful gamblers—O’Keefe knew when to play a hunch. He indulged the one he felt now. When Dyson and Bouma had disappeared up the stairs, he swallowed more of the beer but left the mug half full as he ambled toward the stairs and headed up after them.

  When he reached the landing, he looked along the hall toward the door of what he knew to be Forbes Dyson’s office. It was just swinging closed. Since Dyson and Bouma weren’t in sight, O’Keefe assumed both of them had gone into the office.

  His steps quiet on the carpet runner, he walked along the hall until he reached the door. He leaned closer to it so his keen ears could make out most of what was being said inside.

  “Biggest crowd for the boxing match,” Forbes Dyson was saying.

  Bouma responded, “And that’s when . . . make our move.”

  The gunfighter’s voice had faded out in the middle of that sentence because clinking sounds interfered with O’Keefe hearing it. The gambler knew by those sounds that someone in the office, probably Dyson, was pouring drinks.

  “It’ll be up to you to make sure all the men are in place,” Dyson went on.

  “I know the job, Forbes,” Bouma said with a note of irritation in his voice.