Mankiller, Colorado

by William W. Johnstone

  Scratch kept his eye on the two card players while Bo went over to the bar. “You know a man called Duke Mayo?” he asked.

  The bartender shrugged beefy shoulders. “Sure, I know Duke. He plays in here sometimes.”

  “Seen him lately?”

  “Why’re you lookin’ for him?” The bartender gazed pointedly at the badge pinned to Bo’s shirt. “He in some kind of trouble?”

  “Not a bit,” Bo answered honestly. Duke Mayo was beyond ever being in trouble again. “Was he in here last night?”

  “Yeah. He sat in on a game that lasted most of the night. Cashed in and left here maybe three hours ago.”

  “Won quite a bit, did he?”

  The bartender shrugged again. “I’m busy servin’ drinks most of the time. I don’t keep up with how the games are goin’.”

  Bo’s gut told him the man wasn’t telling the truth. Not all of it, anyway.

  Before he could ask any more questions, a door in the back of the room opened, and a man came out carrying a bucket and a mop. He was short and frail looking, with wispy gray hair and a face ravaged by time and liquor. He wore gray striped pants and a shirt that had once been white, and he kept his head down and muttered to himself as he set the bucket down and started mopping the floor.

  Bo turned back to the bartender and asked, “Did anybody leave out of here right after Mayo?”

  The man scowled. “Look, Deputy, I told you, I do my own work and mind my own business. I didn’t see nothin’ or hear nothin’ and I don’t know a damned thing except that I’m sleepy. I can’t help you, understand?”

  Bo inclined his head toward the two men at the poker table. “Were they part of the same game as Mayo?”

  The bartender blew out an exasperated breath. “Why don’t you ask ’em yourself?”

  “All right, I will,” Bo said. “What’s your name?”

  “Ashton. Mike Ashton.”

  “You own this place?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Might be a good idea for you to start being a little more observant about what goes on in your business, Ashton.”

  The man shook his head. “That just shows how much you know, mister.”

  Bo turned away from the bar, stepped around the elderly swamper, and went over to the table where the game of showdown continued. The two gamblers deliberately ignored him and Scratch until Bo said, “We’d like to talk to you gents.”

  Without looking up, one of them said, “Go ahead and talk.”

  The other snickered. “That don’t mean we’ll listen, though.”

  Bo leaned forward and used his left hand to sweep the cards off the table, onto the floor. His right palmed out the Colt, and as he eased back the hammer, he said, “This means you’ll listen…and that you’ll talk, too.”

  Both men had reacted to Bo’s sudden, unexpected action. They stiffened in their chairs and started reaching under their coats. The sound of Scratch’s gun being cocked was loud in the smoky silence. Caught between the two weapons, the men froze, then slowly moved their hands back into plain sight.

  “On the table,” Bo ordered.

  They placed their hands on the ratty green felt and glared up at the Texans with murderous hatred.

  “What do they call you?” Bo asked.

  “I’m Stansbridge,” said the one who had spoken first.

  “Keegan,” the other man added.

  “All right,” Bo said. “Were either of you in the game Duke Mayo was playing in last night?”

  “We both were,” Stansbridge said.

  “How did he do?”

  “He cleaned up,” Keegan replied with a sneer.

  “Took your dinero, did he?” Scratch drawled.

  Stansbridge’s narrow shoulders rose and fell. “You win, you lose. That’s the nature of the game.”

  “Did you take it unkindly when you lost?” Bo asked.

  “Didn’t bother us a bit,” Keegan said.

  “If you’re accusing us of something, Deputy, why don’t you just come right out with it?” Stansbridge said.

  “All right, I will. Did you follow Mayo when he left here, cut his throat, and steal back the money he won?”

  “Of course not,” Stansbridge said in a cool, unruffled voice. “We’ve been right here. We haven’t set foot out of the place in more than twelve hours.” He raised his voice a little. “Isn’t that right, Mike?”

  Ashton ran a filthy rag over the scarred wood of the bar. “That’s right,” he said. “They been sittin’ right there, Deputy.”

  Bo glanced over at the Fan-Tan’s proprietor. “I thought you didn’t pay any attention to what was going on in here.”

  “Some things I see, some things I don’t,” Ashton said. “But I know those two haven’t left, just like they told you.”

  Bo didn’t believe what the three men had said, but he couldn’t disprove it, and he sensed that they wouldn’t budge from their stories. He had a strong hunch that he was looking at the murderers of Duke Mayo. There was a matter of proof, though.

  “All right,” he said heavily as he lowered the hammer of his gun and then pouched the iron. “I’m putting you on notice, though, Ashton. If we hear about any trouble in this place, we’ll shut it down. You understand?”

  Ashton looked like he wanted to come over the bar and tear into the Texans, but he controlled his anger. “I heard about you two. Comin’ into town and actin’ like you’re runnin’ things now. The Deverys’ll settle your hash. You just hide and watch.”

  Bo ignored that. “Don’t forget what I said.”

  As he and Scratch turned toward the door, the swamper’s foot suddenly bumped against the bucket and upset it. Dirty, soapy water spilled out on the floor. The old man jumped back, crying out in alarm.

  “You damned old fool!” Ashton bellowed at him. “Clean that mess up! Right now, you hear me?” He leaned forward over the bar and spat in disgust at the swamper’s feet. “I don’t know why I keep you around here in the first place.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike, I’m sorry! I’ll go get another bucket of water and clean it up right now!”

  The swamper grabbed the bucket and headed for the back door. Ashton swatted at him with the bar rag but missed.

  Bo could tell that Scratch wanted to go to the old-timer’s defense. He caught his friend’s eye and shook his head. They had more important things to deal with at the moment.

  Back out in the street, they paused in front of the Fan-Tan. Scratch said, “Bo, you know damned well those two killed that fella Mayo.”

  “I expect you’re right,” Bo admitted. “As long as Ashton backs their story, though—”

  The sound of someone hissing at them caught the Texans’ attention. They turned to see the old swamper standing at the corner of the building. He beckoned to them with a palsied hand.

  Bo and Scratch looked at each other and frowned. Then Bo shrugged, and they went over to see what the swamper wanted.

  “What can we do for you, mister?” Scratch asked.

  The old man licked his lips nervously. “Are…you boys really lawmen?”

  “Yeah, but I ain’t sure you could call us boys,” Scratch said. “Hell, I’ll bet you ain’t that much older than us.”

  The swamper shook his head. “It ain’t the years so much as it is the miles.”

  “We’ve put plenty of those behind us, too,” Bo said. “Now, what was it you wanted to tell us?”

  The old man’s fingertips rasped on the white beard stubble that poked from his chin. “I heard you askin’ about Duke Mayo. I was in there when he cashed in from that game and left. It was just a couple o’ minutes after that when them other two, Stansbridge and Keegan, left, too. They lied to you about that, and so did Ashton.”

  Bo felt his heart beat a little faster in anticipation. “You’d swear to that in court?” he asked.

  The swamper hesitated. “I dunno…I knocked that bucket over a’purpose so’s I could come tell you about it, but I don’t like the id
ea of standin’ up in court and sayin’ the same thing.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Ashton and those gamblers,” Scratch told him. “They’d be arrested by then. They couldn’t hurt you.”

  “Yeah, but what if they was to get loose for some reason? A jury might set ’em free, even though ever’body would know they was guilty.”

  Bo couldn’t dispute that. It wasn’t uncommon for the members of a frontier jury to ignore the facts of a case and just do what they wanted to do, whether it was convicting an innocent man or acquitting a guilty one. He didn’t want to let Stansbridge and Keegan get away with murdering Duke Mayo, though, and he was certain that was what had happened.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll arrest the three of them and tell them we have a witness, but we won’t say anything about who it is. Maybe once they’re behind bars, they’ll go ahead and confess.”

  “Maybe…” the swamper said, but he sounded doubtful.

  “We’ll do everything we can to protect you,” Bo promised. “Sooner or later, somebody’s got to stand up for what’s right. That’s the only way we can bring law and order to Mankiller.”

  The swamper took a deep breath, then nodded his head. “All right. Lemme get back in there before you come in, though, so’s they won’t have as much reason to think it was me you been talkin’ to.”

  Bo nodded and said, “Sure, we can do that.”

  Scratch added, “How come you want to see them get what’s comin’ to them? They treat you bad?”

  “Ashton’s a jackass, and pizen-mean. The other two ain’t much better. But Duke, he always had a kind word for me and slipped me a little dinero now and then. For a tinhorn gambler, he weren’t a bad sort. He had a wife, too, a gal named Janey, and she was pretty nice for a whore.” The swamper shook his head. “Folks go down some wrong trails sometimes—I done it myself, more often than I like to think about—but that don’t mean they’re bad sorts.”

  Bo put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You’re right about that, amigo. Now get back in there with your bucket, and we’ll wait a few minutes before we arrest those varmints.”

  The swamper nodded and turned to hurry toward the back of the building. He disappeared behind the Fan-Tan.

  “I just thought of somethin’,” Scratch said. “We’ve only got two cells in the jail, and they got prisoners in ’em already. If we arrest Ashton, Stansbridge, and Keegan, where’re we gonna put ’em?”

  Bo frowned. “That’s a problem, all right. If we’re going to clean up this town, we’ll need more space for prisoners. I’ll have to talk to Lucinda and some of the others about that. For now, though, I think I saw a smokehouse with a pretty sturdy door on it. We can put them in there and lock it up.”

  Scratch nodded and hitched up his gun belt. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go educate those hombres about how they hadn’t ought to go around cuttin’ people’s throats.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Three out of the four men in the Fan-Tan looked surprised when Bo and Scratch came back into the gambling den. The swamper kept his eyes downcast and watched his mop making damp circles on the floor, but there was nothing unusual in that.

  “Forget something?” Ashton asked from behind the bar. He didn’t look the least bit happy to see the Texans again.

  “Yeah, we did,” Bo said as he came to a stop beside the table where Stansbridge and Keegan sat. “We forgot to arrest these two four-flushers for murdering and robbing Duke Mayo.”

  Stansbridge’s face flushed with anger. “Damn it, we told you we haven’t been out of here for hours.”

  “And Mike backed us up on that,” Keegan added.

  “Yeah, but we got a witness who says that all three of you are lyin’,” Scratch said.

  “Witness!” Ashton repeated. “What witness?”

  “Never mind about that,” Bo said. “You’ll find out all about it later. We’re taking these two to jail, and you’re coming along, too, Ashton. You lied to a peace officer, and that’s against the law.”

  Ashton shook his head and rumbled, “I’m not goin’ anywhere.” He looked and sounded like an angry old bull.

  “We’d rather you came along peaceable-like,” Bo said, “but one way or another, you’re under arrest, too.”

  “The hell with this!” Keegan suddenly exclaimed. “You two are about to wind up dead in an alley just like Mayo!”

  “Damn it!” Stansbridge exploded. He realized what his friend had just done.

  A grim smile played over Bo’s lips. “We didn’t say anything about where Mayo’s body was found. How would you know it was in an alley, Keegan, if you didn’t have something to do with him dying there?”

  Keegan cursed and sprang to his feet. His hand darted under his coat and came out with a pocket pistol. At the same time, Stansbridge surged up from his chair. He thrust his arms out, twisting his forearms as he did so, and a pair of derringers leaped into his hands from under his sleeves, where they had been concealed in spring-loaded sheaths.

  Bo and Scratch were moving, too, splitting up and slapping leather at the same time. Colts blurred from their holsters. Muzzle flame stabbed through the dim interior of the Fan-Tan as gun-thunder echoed against the low ceiling.

  Both shots that crashed out from Scratch’s gun found their target. The slugs drove deep into Keegan’s chest and knocked him back, off his feet. The little pistol in his hand cracked wickedly, but the barrel had tilted up and the bullet went harmlessly into the ceiling.

  At the same time, a bullet from Bo’s gun punched into Stansbridge’s midsection. He doubled over in agony, hunched above the table. His fingers tightened involuntarily on the triggers of the derringers, causing both weapons to fire. The bullets struck the cards that the men had picked up to resume their game of showdown. The pasteboards scattered again. A second later, Stansbridge collapsed on the table and began bleeding on the green felt.

  “Look out!”

  The shout from the swamper made both Texans swing around. They saw that Ashton had grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from under the bar and pointed it at them. Before Ashton could pull the triggers, the swamper brought his mop up and struck the barrels of the deadly scattergun with the handle. That knocked the weapon up enough so that the double load of buckshot went over the heads of Bo and Scratch and tore into the ceiling and the wall behind them instead.

  Both Colts roared. Seeing the sawed-off pointed at them, Bo and Scratch had reacted instinctively and fired. Their slugs smashed into Ashton and sent him stumbling back against the shelves of liquor behind the bar. The bottles came crashing down, shattering and filling the room with the overpowering smell of spilled booze. It mingled with the acrid tang of gun smoke as Ashton dropped the shotgun, flopped forward onto the hardwood, and then slid off to land behind the bar.

  Bo hurried to the end of the bar so that he could cover the man, although he had a hunch Ashton wasn’t a threat anymore. Seeing the sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, he knew he was right. Ashton was dead.

  So were Stansbridge and Keegan. Scratch made sure of that, then reported, “These tinhorns have crossed the divide, Bo.”

  “So has Ashton,” Bo replied. He looked at the swamper. “Are you all right, mister?”

  The old man ran trembling fingers through his wispy white hair. “Y-yeah, I reckon so. I didn’t get hit by any of those shots.” He leaned over the bar to look at Ashton’s corpse. “You’re sure he’s dead?”

  “I’m sure,” Bo told him.

  The old man licked his lips. “That’s a lot of whiskey goin’ to waste, soakin’ into the floor like that.”

  “Yeah, but only a man with no dignity left at all would get down and try to lap it up like a dog. You’re better than that, amigo. You proved it by telling us what you knew about Duke Mayo’s murder.”

  The swamper sighed. “I reckon you’re right. Still, it’s a mortal shame to see all that whiskey spilled.”

  “I agree with you,” Scratch said. “Nothin’ we can do about it,
though.”

  The shots had drawn some attention. Bo and Scratch had left the door standing halfway open when they came back in, and now a couple of curious townsmen poked their heads in.

  “I’d be obliged if one of you gents would let Sam Barfield know that his services are needed here, too,” Bo said.

  “What happened?” one of the men asked.

  Bo snapped his gun’s cylinder closed after replacing the round he had fired. “The men who murdered Duke Mayo got what was coming to them,” he said. “And so did the man who tried to cover up for them and then threw down on a couple of lawmen.”

  “Take a good look, boys, and spread the word,” Scratch invited. “That’s what’s gonna happen to hombres who figure on breakin’ the law in Mankiller.”

  The two men looked at the corpses with big eyes, then disappeared. The sound of running footsteps came from outside. One of the men had probably gone to alert the undertaker that he was needed, as Bo had requested, and the other was probably going to be busy spreading the news about the shoot-out in the Fan-Tan.

  As he finished reloading his Colt, Scratch said, “Well, this solves one problem.”

  “What’s that?” Bo asked.

  “Now we don’t have to figure out where we’re gonna lock up these varmints.”

  “True enough. We can’t just kill everybody who breaks the law, though.”

  Scratch sighed. “No, I suppose not.” He paused. “I’m glad Biscuits ain’t here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Scratch nodded toward the bar. “Because I got a hunch that no matter what you said, he’d be down on his knees behind that bar right now, lappin’ up those puddles of who-hit-John like a dog!”

  News of the shoot-out spread like wildfire from one end of Mankiller to the other. In less than twenty-four hours as deputies, the Texans had killed seven men, wounded another, and arrested three members of the most powerful family in town, plus the shoot-out Scratch had had with the bushwhackers at the hotel. People couldn’t stop talking about how the new lawmen were going to either clean up Mankiller at last…