Stand Up and Die

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Breen lunged up onto the loam that made the ramp, and rolled over to the other side. He landed on a bed of prickly pear, and kept rolling over till he reached the far wall of the arroyo His pistol was cocked, the barrel pointed above. Breen sucked in a deep breath, held it, exhaled, and wondered how in the hell he was still breathing.

  “Hombre,” called Juan somewhere above Breen and to his left. “I have you in my gunsights, amigo.” He spoke English, though with a thick Mexican accent.

  Breen remained quiet, but he made himself turn around and look up and toward the road that led to Purgatory City.

  Naturally, the way this day was shaping up, he couldn’t see a damned thing on the road above him. He did hear Otto Kruger sobbing, saying that women never should be given the reins to a wagon, that he didn’t deserve this, and that he was in mortal agony.

  The Mexican named Juan snapped back. “You pathetic gringo coward. Of course you deserve this. You are a fool. An idiot.”

  Hearing that made Breen decide to take a chance. He called out,

  “Hey, Juan.”

  “Sí.”

  The man had not changed position. Unless he moved, he wouldn’t have a clear shot at Breen. On the other hand, Breen wouldn’t have a clear shot at old Juan, either.

  “Do you know who that pathetic gringo coward is?”

  “Mark Twain?” asked Juan.

  “Who?” Breen said.

  The bandit muttered something in Spanish. A moment passed. A longer pause. Finally, “No, amigo, who is that pathetic gringo coward?”

  Breen smiled. Juan had moved over closer toward him so he moved slowly, silently about twenty feet toward the south.

  “His name is Otto Kruger.”

  Breen moved farther down the arroyo as the Mexican asked just who in hell was Otto Kruger.

  “In your land, he’s no one. But to the Rurales, so to speak, of us norteamericanos, he is worth mucho dinero.”

  In Spanish, Juan asked, “How much is mucho dinero?” He had moved closer to Breen.

  The bounty hunter took two steps back to where he had been, cited the amount posted on the wanted dodgers, and quickly added, “And the woman in the wagon . . . she’s worth mucho dinero, too.”

  A long pause was followed by, “What did the señorita do?”

  “Hell, Juan,” Breen said after moving ten paces farther. “She has killed more men than Otto Kruger.”

  “I have not seen her up close, but la señorita must be very pleasant to look at.” Juan laughed. “Otherwise, Daniel would have killed her already.” He pronounced the name Dan-yell.

  “I suppose,” Breen said, “That Dan-yell, Tomás, and your other pard would bring in money if they were taken to the Rurales or a town constable in Mexico.”

  “Perhaps,” said Juan who kept moving one way or the other, trying to keep track of Breen’s position.

  “Well, we could become partners, amigo,” Breen said. “Split the bounties for Kruger and la patróna on this side of the river. Take your dearly departed amigos south into Mexico and collect the rewards for them. Split the profits even—except the girl gets two hundred and fifty dollars. She did help me capture Kruger.”

  Juan spit out multiple curses in Spanish. “If they plan to hang her anyway,” he said, “Why does she get any dinero?”

  “Because deep down,” Breen said as he moved in another direction, “I have a streak of honesty in me.”

  “¿Es verdad?” Juan asked.

  “It’s true,” Breen answered.

  Above, Juan laughed.

  Breen grabbed a handful of small stones in his left hand, his right still holding his revolver, and took two steps forward, making as much noise as he could without being overtly obvious. “Then let’s make a bargain, amigo. Fifty-fifty split. We can trust each other, is it not so?” The last sentence he called out in Spanish, kicked one stone forward, then flung the stones on the arroyo bed in front of him, while taking six long steps backward.

  Juan leaped down just in front of Breen, snapped a shot into the empty arroyo, then cursed and spun around, thumbing back the hammer of his pistol while dropping to his knee.

  Breen shot him plumb center in the chest and felt Juan’s shot fly over his head.

  The bandit crashed against the arroyo wall, let the revolver slip from his fingers, and then he rolled over and fell facedown on the dirt. Breen cocked the revolver and stepped to the Mexican in the denim trousers and colorful shirt with a purple sash around his waist. He wore no hat, but Breen figured he had taken that off before starting his ambush.

  Using his right boot, Breen turned Juan over onto his back.

  The Mexican’s eyes fluttered, and finally opened, focusing dully but steadily on Breen.

  “Amigo,” Juan said, laughed, and turned his head to spit out a glob of blood and pus. “You are too wily to be the partner of me.”

  “That’s a shame, amigo,” Breen said. “I’ve been working alone for so many years, I thought having a partner would be a good change for business.”

  The man coughed, shrugged, and smiled wider. “Qué será, será.”

  “I reckon so,” Breen told him, and put a bullet into Juan’s forehead.

  Leaving his spurs, hat, and Sharps in the arroyo for the time being, Breen climbed out of the arroyo on the ramp. Otto Kruger kept moaning, but Breen walked past him without pausing. He saw the young bandit lying spread-eagled. Breen’s shot had caught him dead in the throat, and ants were already marching to slake their thirsts—if ants ever got thirsty—on the river of blood surrounding the corpse who looked silently at the blue sky. The bullet had severed an artery and broken poor Tomás’s neck.

  When he looked at his horse, the wagon, the two other dead Mexicans and Charlotte Platte, Jed Breen broke into a hard sprint. He leaped over the body of the dead leader, lying facedown in the sand, a bloody hole staining the colorful serape and telling Breen that his shot had gone right through one of the Mexican’s lungs before drilling the fourth of the bad men in his gut. It likely had taken that poor slob some time to die, but there was no mistaking that he was dead.

  Breen slowed, realizing the danger had passed. Smiling, he knelt and holstered his revolver before reaching across the dead, gut-shot Mexican’s corpse to take the Winchester rifle—probably the weapon the gut-shot man had been wielding—from the hands of Charlotte Platte.

  She resisted Breen’s first tug of the Winchester, but let to of the carbine when he yanked harder the second time.

  “It’s a hell of a thing, Poison Platte. It’s just so damned hard to work a repeating rifle when your hands are in iron manacles.”

  Platte smiled and tilted her head toward the dead bandit. “If he hadn’t landed on the holster of his short gun, and had the flap of that holster not been fastened, and had your shot not blown that damned killer out of the saddle and sent his Colt sailing into the cactus over yonder, you, Jed Breen, would be a dead man.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I suspect you’re right.” He touched the wound over his eye from which he couldn’t see a damned thing. “But for the rest of this trip, which isn’t all that far, your hands are going to be cuffed behind your back.”

  She spit in his face.

  He punched her over her left eye.

  When she woke up, he did hand her that hat she wanted to keep her pale skin from burning more. And folks said bounty hunters weren’t gentlemen.

  Of course, the only reason it hadn’t blown out of the back of the wagon was because the stampede string got caught on a nail.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The last person Sean Keegan expected to see that evening in the Purgatory City marshal’s office and jail was Jed Breen. From the look on the bounty hunter’s face, the feeling was mutual.

  The door had opened just as Keegan was opening a bottle of Irish whiskey, which he had charged to the county sheriff’s office even though he knew it would look suspicious since the county sheriff, Juan Garcia, usually charged tequila to the sheriff’s office. A wom
an with a cut on her forehead sailed through the doorway and landed on the floor. She was real pretty, Keegan thought, despite her torn shirtsleeves and mangled, wind-blown red hair. Her hat hung on a stampede string around her neck, her arms were cuffed behind her back, and her feet were bound with pigging strings and reins. A second later a man flew inside. His was the ugliest face this side of Private Hoot Hanson’s after he ran into that pack of feral hogs down in the Big Bend Country. The man tripped over the cussing woman and knocked his head against the other desk in the office, and spit out profanity.

  “Shut up,” a voice yelled from outside, “Or I’ll stove in your heads.”

  The two newcomers turned mute. The third visitor then stepped inside, holding a Sharps long gun with a telescopic sight. He looked like he had just gotten the crap beaten out of him, like he hadn’t slept in a month of Sundays, and his pretty white hair was about to fall out or be pulled out. But he looked a hell of a lot better than the first two folks who’d come flying into the marshal’s office and jail.

  Sean Keegan would have known him anywhere.

  “Howdy.” He held up the bottle. “I was about to have a snort or thirty. Care to join me?”

  The surprise on Breen’s face was replaced with the look of eternal gratitude. After leaning the Sharps against the wall, he walked straight to Keegan’s desk, looked at the deputy’s badge pinned to his torn shirt but made no comment, and took the proffered bottle. He drank greedily, muttered his thanks, and then returned the bottle before busying himself dragging the woman into one cell, locking the door, then hoisting the incoherent ugly-faced dude and hurtling him into the neighboring cell. That door he locked, too, as though he had experience with these kinds of things. Sean Keegan had never locked anybody up in any jail, although he had been thrown into calabooses across the frontier and even civilized America more times than he could remember.

  After dusting off his hands, Breen tossed his hat onto the other desk, grabbed a chair, and dragged it to Keegan’s place of honor. Keegan drank long and steadily from the bottle, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and handed the bottle to Breen, who found a mug and let Keegan pour.

  They toasted, tin cup against glass bottle, and drank a healthy swallow, chased that one with another, and sighed. Both men leaned back.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Breen asked.

  With a shrug, Keegan said, “That’ll be hard to explain. Over just one bottle.”

  Breen accepted that, and sipped more whiskey.

  “Who’d you bring in?” Keegan asked.

  “The woman’s wanted for poisoning a bunch of miners in Arizona Territory,” Breen answered. “Precious Metal. Northern part of the territory.”

  “Yeah,” Keegan said “Fort Wilmont is close by. Pretty country I’ve been told.”

  “Compared to Purgatory City, Hell’s pretty.” Breen drank again, took in a deep breath, and after exhaling, he motioned to the other cell. “And that is Otto Kruger.”

  That elicited a whistle from the Irishman, who rose, crossed the room, and stared through the bars. He took a slug of Irish and steadily made his way back to his chair. After sitting down, he said, “It doesn’t look like Otto Kruger.”

  “It doesn’t look like Hans, either, and you can thank the woman for that. But it’s Otto.” Breen drank again, looked at the cells, then straightened. “Did they hang Tom Benteen?”

  “Sort of,” Keegan answered.

  “What does ‘sort of’ mean, Keegan?”

  “Well, Lovely Tom Benteen Lovely—or whatever the hell you want to call him—was hanged. We might be better off leaving it at that. It’ll take too long to explain.”

  “Where’s the marshal?” Breen asked.

  “Dead.”

  “The Rangers?”

  “The captain led them off chasing the Kruger brothers.”

  “Sheriff Garcia?”

  “He went off after the rest of the Benteen gang. They rode in and tried to free Tom. Killed Titus Bedwell and the marshal. Even the damned hangman.”

  Breen took the bottle from Keegan’s hand and refilled his cup. After returning the Irish to the old soldier, Breen drank and hoped the liquor might clear his head. Instead, he felt a headache coming on.

  “They killed the hangman?”

  Keegan nodded. “Well, I don’t think it was intentional. And for all I know, some citizen of Purgatory City might have done the dirty deed.”

  “Then who hanged Tom?”

  “Me.” Keegan drank greedily, burped, drank another swallow and grinned. “This is the nectar of the Gods.”

  “You hanged Tom?”

  “Aye. Buried him, too, so to speak. I guess you didn’t see the courthouse, or what’s left of it.” Keegan grinned. “Wind blew the wrong way. But the boys with the volunteer firefighters outfit did yeoman’s work. Saved much of it, especially since the walls are stone and adobe.”

  Breen drank greedily, tried to shake the senses back into his head, before finally giving up. “I think you will have to start explaining.”

  “Agreed.” Keegan nodded. “But that, Jed me boy, will take more than this one bottle. And since I don’t want to blow the budget of our county, I surely hope ye’ll be good enough to wander down to a fine saloon and return with a bottle. Maybe two.”

  * * *

  “You mean to tell me, Keegan, that you’re all the law there is in Purgatory City right now?” Breen should have been dead drunk by this time of night, but everything Keegan had told him made him feel cold sober.

  “More or less.” Keegan splashed whiskey into Breen’s mug, although he put about two shot glasses worth on the floor and desk top, then took a slug himself.

  “Well, I need to extradite the woman, Charlotte Platte, to Precious Metal, and I need to collect the five hundred dollars on Hans Kruger.”

  “Otto,” Keegan corrected.

  “Right. Right. Otto. Not Hans.” Good, Breen thought, at least I’m slightly intoxicated. “So how do I get this done?”

  “Beats the devil out of me.”

  “But you are a deputy?”

  “Sort of. At least till Garcia gets back . . . if he gets back.”

  Breen thought, griped, cursed, drank some more, cursed again. The prisoners griped, cursed, but did no drinking. Finally, just to get his mind on something else, Breen took time to untie the prisoners, although he considered leaving the manacles on the woman—his head still hurt like hell. He even fed them the food that Keegan had purchased on the county’s dime but could not eat all of the beans and potatoes.

  He was still thinking when he walked back from the cells to the wanted posters. Seeing the one for all the Kruger outfit, he ripped off the poster for Otto Kruger.

  “Well, well, well,” Breen said as he walked back to the desk and showed the placard to Keegan. “This says the Krugers once robbed a bank in Precious Metal of all places. In Arizona Territory. I suppose I could take them both to Arizona. Collect the reward there.”

  “It is a pretty town,” Keegan said. “Or so I heard.”

  “How do I get to Precious Metal?”

  “Take a bloody stage.”

  Breen snorted. “The last time I took in a prisoner I rode in a wagon—the last two times, actually.” He touched the knot and scab over his left eye. “Well, you were with me that time a year or so back.”

  “Aye, aye, aye, and so was Matt McCulloch. And that crazy actor.” He laughed. “A hell of a fight we had, Breen me pal. Hell of a fight.”

  “Hell of a ride, too,” Breen said. “Almost our last one.”

  “Aye, that’s the bloody truth.”

  They toasted and drank.

  “Have you seen McCulloch?” Breen asked.

  “Nay. Not in a while. Last I heard he had taken off into the Davis Mountains. Hoping to round up some mustangs. That kind of thing. Has dreams of rebuilding his life, I expect. That’s McCulloch for you. Never any quit in the man. Same as you, Breen.”

  The bounty hunter smiled at the
compliment and held up his mug. Keegan punched the tin cup with the bottle.

  After clearing his throat, Breen said, “I was asking for a refill, Keegan.”

  The Irishman laughed, and tossed in a couple more fingers of whiskey.

  “There’s not much quit in you, either, old man,” Breen said.

  “Aye, but don’t get too sentimental, darlin’ Breeney boy.” Keegan drank and tossed the empty bottle toward the trash, but hit the wall instead, shattering glass on the floor. “Not much work for an old army soldier forced to rip off his stripes. I’ve been doing odd jobs here and there, a wee bit of gambling, and finding ways to get a drink or a meal. Now I’d give me eyeteeth to do something grand, something bold, and adventurous.”

  The mood seemed to be turning maudlin, he began to think, but maybe that was just because the three bottles of whiskey they’d shared were empty. What a bloody shame. Drunk with nowhere to go.

  Keegan was about to fall asleep when the door opened. The face came without any focus, and a scarecrow followed the big man. Keegan was certain it was a scarecrow. The face looked like a damned Indian, long black hair and all, and one of his arms was nothing but planks of wood or something like that.

  Breen said, “Damn,” and reached for his revolver.

  The scarecrow stepped one way, and the big gent stepped right toward Breen and knocked the revolver out of the bounty hunter’s hand.

  “How much,” the Texas twang drawled, “Have you two featherbrains been drinking? And where the hell is Juan Garcia?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cursing but remaining determined, Matt McCulloch cooked up a second pot of coffee, making this one stronger by seasoning it with soot from the stove, a little bit of snuff he found in Sheriff Garcia’s bottom drawer, and the remnants of the Irish whiskey Breen—certainly not Sean Keegan—had left in a tin coffee mug.