Burning Daylight

by William W. Johnstone

  Ferguson agreed to clean up the bodies of Son Barton and Ed Logan. A search of their saddlebags turned up a spare shirt and trousers for each man, so Ferguson would dress them in those duds and burn the blood-soaked clothes. He named a price of two dollars per corpse for the service.

  Luke handed over a five-dollar gold piece he had also found in one of the saddlebags and got a silver dollar in change.

  “I ain’t sure I ever saw a bounty hunter quite so picky about the carcasses he hauled in to collect the blood money on ’em,” Marshal Hennessy commented as he and Luke stood on the boardwalk in front of the saloon watching Ferguson and his stocky Mexican assistant load the bodies onto a wagon.

  “It’s summer, and Singletary is half a day’s ride away,” Luke said. “I actually considered asking Mr. Ferguson to go ahead and embalm them, just to cut down on the stink, but I decided that would be too much of an expense. The bounty on the three I’m taking in only adds up to eighteen hundred dollars, eight hundred for Barton and five hundred apiece on the other two, and they had less than twenty dollars between them in their saddlebags. They went through the loot from their recent jobs quickly.”

  “Eighteen hunnerd bucks is a damn fine chunk of money.” Hennessy added sourly, “The town only pays me sixty dollars a month, plus half the fines I collect. That’s better than cowboying, but not by much.”

  “In that case, Marshal, let me buy you a drink,” Luke suggested.

  Hennessy shook his head. “My stomach won’t take whiskey no more. They call it rotgut, and it surely lived up to its name.” He inclined his head toward a small frame building diagonally across the street and went on. “I’ve got a pot of coffee on the stove in the office, though, if you’re of a mind.”

  “Thank you, Marshal. That sounds good.”

  The coffee probably wasn’t good—Luke had come across very few local lawmen who could brew a decent cup—but he didn’t figure it would hurt anything to accept Hennessy’s invitation. The likelihood that he would ever pass through Summerville again was small. He couldn’t rule it out, though, and being on good terms with the local star packer sometimes came in handy.

  They walked across to the marshal’s office. The coffee actually wasn’t as bad as Luke expected, although it would be a stretch to call it good. He thumbed back the black hat on his head and perched a hip on the corner of Hennessy’s paper-littered desk while the marshal sagged into an old swivel chair behind it.

  “Jensen,” Hennessy said musingly. “I reckon you get asked all the time if you’re related to Smoke Jensen, the famous gunfighter they write all those dime novels about.”

  “From time to time,” Luke admitted.

  “Well . . . are you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Luke said, “Smoke is my brother.”

  It was true. For many years, his younger brother Kirby—known far and wide as Smoke—had believed that Luke was dead, killed in the Civil War. In reality, violent and tragic circumstances had led to Luke carving out a new life for himself after the war, with a new name as well. Only in recent years had he gone back to using the name Jensen, but he kept the profession he had chosen—bounty hunting.

  Hennessy stared at him for a couple of seconds, then said, “You’re joshin’ me.”

  Luke shrugged. “It’s the truth, Marshal. I haven’t seen Smoke for a while. Mostly he goes his way and I go mine. He has a successful ranch over in Colorado to look after, you know.”

  “And you’re just a driftin’ bounty killer.”

  “We each have our own destiny. Some philosophers believe that our fates are locked into place before we’re even born.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. Seems to me that a fella’s always got the choice of takin’ a different trail if he wants to.”

  “It’s certainly nice to think so.” Luke took another sip of coffee and looked idly at the papers scattered across Hennessy’s desk. Most of them were reward posters. “You get these dodgers when the stagecoach brings the mail?”

  “Yep. Sheriff Collins sends ’em to me.”

  Luke moved some of the papers around and then tapped a finger against one of them. “There’s the reward poster for Son Barton. It’s possible the posters for the other three are somewhere in here, too.”

  Hennessy frowned. “What are you gettin’ at, Jensen? You think I should’ve known those boys were in town and tried to arrest ’em myself? I know Summerville ain’t a very big place, but I can’t keep track of every long rider who drifts in and then back out again.”

  Luke had a feeling the marshal didn’t want to know when outlaws were in his town. That would mean going out of his way to risk his life for a salary that certainly wasn’t exorbitant. As long as visitors to Summerville didn’t cause any trouble, Hennessy was perfectly content to let them go on their way.

  Luke couldn’t blame him for that. “That’s perfectly understandable, Marshal.”

  Something else among the papers caught Luke’s eye. He pushed some of the reward dodgers aside and picked up what appeared to be a piece of butcher paper. The writing on it hadn’t been done with a printing press, like the other wanted posters. Someone had used a piece of coal to scrawl in big letters at the top WANTED, and below that in slightly smaller letters Three-fingered Jack McKinney.

  “What’s this?” Luke asked.

  Hennessy leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Reckon the sheriff thought I’d get a laugh out of it. He sent a note sayin’ that they been poppin’ up around the county. Homemade wanted posters ain’t exactly legal.”

  “‘Wanted for being a thief and a killer and a no-account scoundrel’,” Luke read from the poster. “‘Reward’”—he looked up at Hennessy—“‘Reward $1.42 and a harmonica. The harmonica is only six months old.’”

  The marshal chuckled. “It’s a joke. Some kid wrote it. You can tell by the writing. He’s probably got a friend named Jack McKinney and figured it’d be funny to fix up a wanted poster with his name on it.”

  “Maybe. But you just said Sheriff Collins told you they’d been posted in other parts of the county. Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a joke.”

  “You can’t never tell what a kid will do. It can’t be real. Who’d ever go after an outlaw for a measly $1.42 bounty?”

  “And a harmonica,” Luke reminded him. “Don’t forget the harmonica.”

  “Well, if you want to go after this Three-fingered Jack, whoever he is, you just feel free to take that dodger with you. You might need it to collect the ree-ward.” Hennessy slapped his thigh and laughed some more about it.

  As Luke finished his coffee, he folded the handmade wanted poster and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

  The marshal didn’t even seem to notice.

  * * *

  After leaving the marshal’s office, Luke went by the undertaking parlor to see how Ferguson was coming along with the job on Son Barton and Ed Logan. Ferguson promised they would be done by evening, but since Luke wasn’t planning to leave until the next morning, the undertaker suggested, “I can put them down in the root cellar if you’d like. Keep them cooler overnight. That might help with the smell tomorrow.”

  “I’d be obliged to you for that.”

  “Only cost you another dollar.”

  Luke smiled as he handed back the silver dollar Ferguson had given him in change earlier. He suspected the undertaker had had that in mind all along.

  That left Luke at loose ends. Summerville didn’t have a hotel, so when he gathered up his own horse and the mounts belonging to the three outlaws and led them to the town’s only livery stable, he asked the hostler, “What are the chances that I can sleep in the hayloft tonight?”

  “If you’ve got four bits to spare, mister, I’d say the chances are real good,” the man replied. “And four bits for each of the horses, so that adds up to, uh . . .”

  Luke dropped three silver dollars in the callused, outstretched palm. “Give them a little extra grain and we’ll call it square.”


  This stop in Summerville was getting expensive, but for now he was using the money he had found in the outlaws’ saddlebags. If the total wound up going over that amount, he would recoup the funds when he collected the rewards in the county seat.

  With that taken care of, he drifted back to the saloon. Doolittle was still behind the bar. Somebody had mopped up the blood that had been spilled earlier, and the customers who had been chased out of the place by gunplay had returned.

  In addition, three soiled doves in shabby dresses sat together at a table, their services not in demand at the moment. All of them showed the wear and tear of the hard life they led. No amount of paint could cover that up.

  Doolittle cast a nervous glance across the bar at Luke. “You’re not plannin’ on shooting up the place again, are you?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it the first time.” Luke’s voice hardened as he added, “And I’d sort of like to know how Son Barton even knew I was here.”

  One of the doves spoke up. “I can tell you that, mister. He had just finished with me—and mighty damn quick, I might add—and got up to look out the window. He said, ‘It’s that damn bounty hunter’ and some other things that I’m not even comfortable repeatin’. Then he yanked on his clothes, grabbed his pistol, and ran out of the room. Nobody who works here tipped him off, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

  Luke nodded slowly. He hadn’t been aware that the outlaws knew he was on their trail, but he supposed someone he had questioned regarding their whereabouts could have gotten word to them to be on the lookout for him and described him.

  “Felicia’s right, Mr. Jensen,” Doolittle said. “We don’t mix in our customers’ affairs. Anybody’s got a problem with anybody else, we try to stay out of it.”

  “A wise way to be,” Luke said.

  Doolittle reached for a bottle and a glass. “Since you didn’t get to finish that drink earlier, how about you have another one now, on the house?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Doolittle. You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”

  Doolittle filled the glass and pushed it across the bar. “Not hardly, but I can pour a drink.”

  That was the only thing anybody in Summerville had offered to do for Luke without charging him for it.

  A little later, the soiled dove called Felicia went over to the bar and made it pretty clear she wouldn’t mind if Luke took her upstairs, but he wasn’t sure if she intended for it to be a business transaction or not.

  He had always had pretty good luck with women. They seemed to find him attractive despite his craggy features and the gray that was starting to appear in his dark hair. But unlike some men, being involved in a shooting scrape didn’t leave him puffing and pawing at the ground like a bull, so he diverted Felicia’s veiled suggestion as politely as possible.

  The only eating place in town was a hash house owned by a pigtailed Chinaman. Luke had supper there, then went back to the stable, climbed into the loft, and settled down to sleep.

  He wasn’t sure how long it was after he’d dozed off that an explosion woke him.

  CHAPTER 3

  The blast was powerful enough to shake the ground a little. Luke felt it through the hayloft floor. He rolled over and grabbed his boots. Along with his hat and his gunbelt, they were the only things he had removed when he turned in.

  He yanked the boots on, jerked the Remingtons from their holsters, and stuck them behind his belt, not taking time to buckle on the gunbelt. The explosion might not have anything to do with him or his prisoner, but that seemed unlikely if Summerville really was such a sleepy little place as the townspeople claimed. Hell had a history of breaking loose just about everywhere Luke showed up.

  He went fast down the ladder.

  The hostler stumbled sleepily from the office and living quarters at one side of the barn. He said in a groggy voice, “What the hell—” as Luke ran past him to the double-doored entrance.

  Luke pulled one of the big doors open and stepped out into the street, resting his hand on a gun butt. His hunch was right. The explosion had gone off down at the smokehouse where Jimmy McCaskill was locked up.

  As he pounded toward it, Luke noticed the squat building was heavily damaged. Flames shot up in places from what was left of its walls.

  A man holding the reins of two horses hopped around anxiously, darting closer to the smokehouse and then jumping back from the fire’s heat. “Jimmy! Jimmy, where are you? Come on! I’m bustin’ you out! Hurry!”

  Luke came to a stop about fifteen feet away and filled both hands with the Remingtons. “Roebuck, you damned fool. You probably blew him to kingdom come.”

  The flames cast enough garish light for Luke to recognize Deuce Roebuck’s angular features from the reward dodgers, but he would have been sure Roebuck was responsible for the explosion even without that. Nobody else had a reason to try to break McCaskill out of jail.

  “How many sticks of dynamite did you use, anyway?” Luke went on as Roebuck dropped the horses’ reins and whirled toward him.

  He didn’t really expect an answer to the question, but Roebuck yelled, “Four, you son of a bitch!” as he clawed at the gun on his hip.

  Luke lifted the right-hand Remington and fired first, just as the outlaw cleared leather. Roebuck slewed halfway around. The gun in his hand blasted as he jerked the trigger, but the bullet went into the ground only a few feet away from him. He tried to stay upright but fell to both knees and struggled to twist his head toward Luke. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times as he tried to form words, but no sound came out that Luke heard. Roebuck swayed once and then toppled forward on his face.

  Marshal Hennessy yelled, “What in the all-fired Hades!” as he ran up behind Luke. The lawman wore boots and a nightshirt that left his bony knees sticking out. He carried a shotgun. His white hair, askew from sleep, made him look a little loco.

  Luke used one of the Remingtons to point at the man he’d shot. “That’s Deuce Roebuck, the one who got away this afternoon. I guess he got to feeling bad about leaving his pards behind, because he turned around and came back. Must have talked to somebody and found out McCaskill was the only one still alive. He got the bright idea of using dynamite to bust him out of the smokehouse.”

  “Good Lord,” Hennessy muttered. “Looks like he blew the hell out of the place.”

  “And out of McCaskill, too, I expect.”

  A number of townspeople had straggled up behind the marshal to find out what all the excitement was.

  Luke looked at them and went on. “If somebody will fetch a lantern, I’ll have a look in there.”

  Someone handed him a lantern. As Luke had predicted, Jimmy McCaskill was dead. The explosion had filled the air inside the smokehouse with huge flying chunks of wood from the thick beams. At least half a dozen of them had punched holes through McCaskill. Luckily for Luke, none of them had struck the outlaw in the face, so his corpse was still recognizable.

  After Luke dragged the body out of the rubble and left it lying next to Roebuck’s, Hennessy asked, “You gonna have Clifford Ferguson clean up these hombres, too? He’s liable to charge you extra, it bein’ night now and all.”

  Luke didn’t answer the question directly. He just said, “The way things are going, stopping over in your sleepy little town is going to wind up costing me money, Marshal.”

  * * *

  Luke left Summerville early the next morning. He had strung the outlaws’ horses together with lead ropes so they trailed behind him single file, each carrying a blanket-wrapped burden draped over the saddle and tied in place. That made for a grim procession as Luke rode north toward Singletary, leading the first horse in line. He wasn’t sad to be leaving the settlement behind him.

  There wasn’t much to see out on the semiarid plains, and the company wasn’t very good, of course, so Luke was also glad the ride wasn’t that long. By midday he spotted smoke rising from chimneys and not long after that, the buildings of the county seat. He saw church steeples and even a few two-s
tory buildings.

  A man leading four horses obviously carrying dead men was going to attract a lot of attention anywhere, and that town was no exception. By the time Luke had traveled a block along the main street, he had a sizable audience of small boys and dogs trailing him. Men and women on the boardwalks stopped whatever they were doing and gawked at him.

  The street stretched for a dozen blocks to a redbrick railroad depot at the far end. Luke didn’t have to go that far. Right in the middle of town stood a stone courthouse on the street’s left side behind a lawn that was fighting to stay green in the summer heat.

  As he headed in that direction, Luke saw several men running the same way, drawing ahead of him as he moved along at an easy pace with the horses. He knew those townies were hustling to see who could get to the sheriff first and break the news that a man had just ridden into town with four corpses.

  By the time he drew rein in front of the courthouse, a stocky, middle-aged man in a sober black suit was striding across the lawn toward the street. He came closer, stopped, planted his feet, and hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. A neatly clipped, graying brown mustache decorated his florid face. He glared up at Luke and said, “You’d better have a damned good reason for parading through town like that and making a public spectacle of yourself, mister.”

  Luke rested easy in the saddle with his left hand on the horn and used his right thumb to push his hat back. “I have a very good reason, Sheriff. I have the bodies of four wanted outlaws here. I’d like to turn them over to you and file a claim on the rewards posted for them.”

  “I thought it had to be something like that. You should have left them outside of town and come in to report them. The undertaker could have gone out in his wagon and brought them in with the proper amount of discretion instead of subjecting the citizens to such a repulsive sight.”