Unlike the gaggle of beauties to be found at MacGrearey’s, one lady was sitting quietly alone on the porch of that house. She was dressed in a white slip and wore a shawl over her shoulders. When she saw the two men walking toward the house, she crossed one leg over the other and hiked the slip up just enough to give them a peek at her thigh.
Lem took his hat off and waved it at her. Now that she knew the men were definitely coming to pay her a visit, the woman on the porch got up and went in through the front door. Judging by the shadows moving behind the front window, the other girls inside were all getting ready for a night’s work.
“This way,” Jarrett said as he took a sharp turn to the left and headed for the neighboring house. Once he and Lem were able to keep an eye on the house with the lanterns without standing in the open, Jarrett drew his Colt and pointed it at Lem.
Recoiling more out of surprise than fear, Lem asked, “What’s this about?”
“What’s your angle?”
“That’s what I was trying to figure out before we got here!”
“Not in regard to those men,” Jarrett said. “In regard to me. Whatever you got in mind, I want to get it out in the open right now.”
Lem squinted at Jarrett. “I already told you all this. If you don’t believe me, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“How about you tell me if you’re one of Clay’s men? Why don’t we start right there, huh?”
Lem’s reaction was barely noticeable. He hardly seemed to move as he snarled, “Where’d you hear that?”
“Sol told me, just as he was about to be taken away by Ackerman.”
“And you put any faith in what that man had to say on the matter?”
“The only thing I have any faith in anymore is what I can see and hear for myself,” Jarrett said. “Some things with you didn’t seem quite right, but I went along with them because my whole damn world was turned on its ear. Now that I’ve had a bit of time to catch my breath, things are clearing up a bit. If I didn’t believe what Sol had to say about where to find them others he came to Muriel with, we wouldn’t be alive. And if I didn’t believe what he told me about you, I wouldn’t have this gun in my hand. So now it’s your turn to tell me something, and if you know what’s good for you, you’d better make certain I believe it.”
“First things first,” Lem said. “Sol got it wrong.”
“Did he?”
Lem nodded. “I’m not one of Clay’s men. I used to be one of his men. That’s an awfully big difference.”
“Strange, but it doesn’t seem so big from where I’m standing.”
“Well, it is. I don’t want a thing to do with Clay Haskel,” Len said. “Not after what happened to your family.”
“Oh, so now you go from killer to saint?” Jarrett scoffed. “All on account of some pang of guilt you’re supposed to feel?”
“I wouldn’t put it in such theatrical terms and I sure wouldn’t use the word saint when talking about me,” Lem said. “But apart from them things, that’s about right.”
Jarrett shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t buy it.”
“I’ve killed plenty of men. I’ve stolen from plenty more. I’ve taken horses, money, cattle, and any number of things that didn’t belong to me and called it all a part of the business I’d chosen.”
“Business? Is that what you call it?”
“Yeah,” Lem replied. “That’s all it ever was for me. Business. Just a way to earn a living.”
Jarrett’s face darkened as his thumb began to apply pressure to the hammer of his Colt.
Before that hammer could be cocked back, Lem said, “I’m not about to apologize for the things I’ve done. It’s too late for that. It’s also too late to make amends to you or any of the others out there who deserve that and more from me. When Clay took the job he was given, most everyone else who rode with him thought it was going too far. Speaking for myself, I guess I thought Clay would treat it like any other job and tell the man who hired us to go to hell if he didn’t like it. Wouldn’t be the first time such a thing happened.”
“What man hired you?” Jarrett asked.
“John Brakefield. He’s some Kansas cattle baron who wants to put as many competitors out of business as he can. Your spread was one of a dozen names on a list that was split up and doled out to Clay and others like him. The instructions were to tear the ranches apart, burn them down, and leave nothing behind. It was meant to be as ugly as possible so nobody would consider taking over in your place. We’d keep the cattle and anything else we could carry, all for a bounty that was paid for every spread brought down.”
“I’ve . . . never even heard of this man,” Jarrett said. “Why would he single me out for something like this?”
“You and the other men on that list are other ranchers who proved to be competition to him in some way or other. All he cared about was clearing you out and making sure nobody was left to stand in his way once he came around to buy up what Clay and the others left behind. Just business.”
“If you use that word to describe murder one more time, I’ll shoot you on principle.”
Lem nodded while keeping his hands where they could be seen. “At first, I thought Clay and the rest of us would just go and steal some cows. Maybe rob whoever owned the spread. Same as always. When I saw that Clay meant to follow through on the craziness that Brakefield wanted us to do, I couldn’t be a part of it. At first, I thought it would be enough to leave Clay and the others to fend for themselves without any more help from me. But none of the others followed my lead and your place was burned anyway.”
Jarrett’s trigger finger reflexively tightened, but not enough to send a bullet down the barrel.
“When I saw the flames from a distance,” Lem continued, “I came back and, to be honest, wasn’t really certain what I could possibly do. But then I saw you riding away from that spread and knew you must have killed at least one of Clay’s men to get that far. I couldn’t believe anyone could get away from there, but . . . there you were.”
Lem lowered his hands and turned to face the wall directly behind him. The wind had picked up and there was enough rustling nearby mixed in with noise from the raucous part of town to keep their voices from drifting very far. Jarrett took a quick look around the corner of the house to see what was happening at the place with three lanterns. The woman wearing her slip was back on the porch, leaning on a rail and looking out at the shadows nearby. Not seeing much of anything, she took her seat to rock back and forth on the chair’s rear legs.
Placing his hands on his hips, Lem shook his head. “At first, I thought I’d follow from a distance just to make certain you arrived safely to wherever it was you may be headed. But that wasn’t going to be enough. Not if you were headed after Clay instead of going somewhere safe. I didn’t have to think about it too long to know that I would’ve done the same thing in your place.”
“So you’re trying to reform,” Jarrett said in a terse voice. “Is that it?”
Lem shook his head while turning around. “No. It’s too late for that. What Clay did to you was . . . I don’t even have the words for what it was, but he can’t get away with it. We never did nothing like that before.”
“Did he ever mention something about selling women prisoners to some fella in Canada?”
“Yeah. He did.”
Jarrett surged forward and had his hands around Lem’s throat before he even knew what he was doing. Although he loosened his stranglehold once he got his wits about him, he didn’t relax it by much. “You knew about that?” he asked.
Lem took hold of Jarrett’s wrists without making an attempt to pull the hands away from his neck. “Clay talked about a lot of crazy things,” he said after making just enough room for him to get some air into his lungs. “That didn’t mean he was going to follow through on any of it.”
“Those are my
brother’s children,” Jarrett snarled. “My family!”
“I know. That’s why I’m doing this. We’re already heading after Clay. You need all the help you can get, and knowing this would have only sidetracked us.”
“Sidetracked? It’s done a hell of a lot more than that. I can hardly think of a good reason not to shoot you right now.”
“Simple,” Lem replied. “I may be the only man capable of helping you to save them.”
“I heard enough from Sol to know where to look. Why should I trust you?”
“Because I had no reason to go this far in the first place,” Lem pointed out.
“Maybe you’re just waiting for a moment to shoot me in the back.”
“I could’ve done that a dozen times by now. What possible good would that do for me?”
Unable to come up with an answer for that, Jarrett asked, “What happens when you meet Clay again?”
“Clay used to work by a set of rules. Now he’s just a mad dog and there’s only one thing to do to a mad dog.”
Staring straight into Lem’s eyes, Jarrett said, “That’s right. It’s the same thing I’ll do to you if I get the first notion that you’re gonna double-cross me.”
If Lem was at all uncomfortable by having a pistol pointed at him, he kept that fact very well hidden. He didn’t so much as look at the Colt in Jarrett’s hand as he took another look at the house with three lanterns. “So it seems like we’re right back where we started.”
“Except now anyone inside that cathouse probably knows we’re coming,” Jarrett said.
“It’s too dark out here for that girl to have seen much of anything other than two strapping young men approaching the front porch. She probably just thinks we lost our nerve. As far as anyone else in there besides the girls is concerned, they’d be on the lookout for one man on his own.”
“They might be taken off their guard if we got close enough to get the drop on them.”
Lem nodded. “Possibly. They’re probably still wound pretty tight. We gotta figure they’ll see us. We could’ve tried sneaking in, but—”
“No,” Jarrett interrupted. “If we snuck in, we’d have to go in there to face them down.”
“Wasn’t that the reason for coming here?”
“If there’s to be a fight, I don’t want it to happen in that house. Too much of a risk of someone else getting caught in the cross fire. I want to bring them outside.”
“I suppose we could pay that girl to fetch them,” Lem offered.
“When they take a look outside, it might be best for them to see a familiar face.”
It didn’t take long for Lem to catch on. “I haven’t been gone for long, but they might have already figured I left the gang. Either way, I suppose they’ll want to have a word with me. There’s always the chance that I was seen in your company by one of Clay’s men before now. If that’s the case, things won’t go very well for either of us.”
“All I need is to get them outside. Whatever happens after that don’t matter. Just as long as I bring them animals down with me.”
“You don’t strike me as a man who wants to die.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
Lem shook his head. “There are much easier ways to get yourself killed. Besides, Clay is still out there.”
“Do you have a point or are you just trying to waste time?”
“My point is that we can get this job done, but not if one of us is distracted by watching the other instead of the men pointing guns at him.”
“Exactly,” Jarrett said. “That’s why you’re going to give me your gun.”
“What use would I be to you without it?”
“Your use for now is as a distraction. Also, if we’re to continue this job together, we need to trust each other.”
“Trust isn’t a problem with me,” Lem pointed out.
“But it’s a mighty big one for me,” Jarrett replied. “Handing over your gun will go a ways in settling that problem.”
Lem let out a long, grating sigh as he slowly reached for his pieced-together pistol. Skinning it with a quick motion, he flipped it around to hand it over butt-first. “There,” he said. “Feel better?”
“Not all the way,” Jarrett said as he took the gun, “but it’s a start.” After tucking Lem’s weapon under his gun belt, he reached into one of his pockets for something else.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Sol’s bandanna. Let’s see how quick these two can think on their feet.”
Chapter 29
Lem and Jarrett approached the house again. This time, when the woman on the porch saw them, she stood up without moving toward the door. Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders without covering too much, she asked, “You coming in this time or are you just out for a stroll?”
“Actually we’re meeting someone here,” Lem said. “Should be two men inside. One’s about my age with beady eyes. Both will be armed.”
“We get a lot of men through here,” she said. “They all look the same after a while.”
Lem reached into one of his pockets. “I just bet they do,” he said while taking out a small wad of dollar bills. As he approached the porch, she came to meet him at the steps. Holding out the cash, he asked, “This make it easier for you to tell us menfolk apart?”
She took the money and smiled. “They’re inside. Want me to get them?”
“That’d be splendid.”
Jarrett was sweating profusely beneath the bandanna he wore. Even though he was doing nothing more than standing in one spot, his heart thumped against his ribs as if he’d run there all the way from Flat Pass. The hammering sound filled his ears, growing worse the more he thought about it. All he could do at that point was try not to think too much.
Lem, on the other hand, couldn’t appear any calmer unless he was asleep. “This may be hard to believe,” he whispered, “but I kinda wish Ackerman was still here.”
“So we can arrest these two?” Jarrett asked.
“No, so he could draw some gunfire away from both of us.”
Jarrett’s laugh was a small one, but it felt good all the same. That single bit of air he let out was enough to calm his nerves so they at least weren’t jangling in every corner of his skull.
The front door swung open, allowing two men to step outside. One of them wasn’t familiar to Jarrett. He was tall and had a face that would make him look perpetually ten years younger than his true age until the day he sprouted gray whiskers from his chin. The other was Dave Massey. After both men were on the porch, the woman who’d summoned them stood in the doorway with her shawl wrapped even tighter around herself than before. The worried expression on her face gave Jarrett an inkling of what had been said inside the house.
“I’ll be damned,” Dave said. “That you, Lem?”
Lem stepped forward to place one foot on the edge of the lowest step. “It sure is. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Where you been hiding?”
When Jarrett looked at Dave, his mind became flooded with memories of that man and Clay dragging him through his house to get one last look at Jen and those children. One last look. The finality of that turn of phrase had never hit him harder. Feeling a pain in the side of his face, Jarrett realized he’d been clenching his jaw so tightly that he could have bitten through a leather strap.
“Hiding?” Lem said with just enough of an edge in his voice to put a look of concern on the second gunman’s face. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”
“Isn’t that what you’re best at? Hiding in the bushes like a snake, waiting for Clay to give the signal for you to shoot a man from a hundred yards without him ever getting a look at your face?”
“Why, Dave . . . you don’t seem pleased to see me.”
“Why the hell would I be?” Dave growled as he came to st
and at the top of the steps. “You ran off like a yellow dog.”
“That ain’t what happened.”
Dave took one step down so he was lording down at him from a scant couple of inches away. “Yeah? Well, why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“How about I buy you a drink?” Lem offered. “Or do you still prefer to discuss business matters in front of whores? I’d think after what happened in Fresno, you’d try to be more careful.”
Whatever had happened in Fresno, the mention of it put a sour look on Dave’s face. He pushed Lem aside and stomped down the steps while setting his gaze on Jarrett. Lem looked to the gunman with the baby face and said, “Good to see you, Brian. I thought you were killed back at that ranch.”
“Does it look like I’m dead?” Brian spat.
“No,” Lem replied as he raised his eyebrows. “Surprising.”
Brian attempted to assert himself by shoving Lem in a manner similar to what Dave had done. He would have had more success in trying to push down the house behind him. Not only did Lem remain where he was, but he immediately shoved Brian with enough force to send him stumbling back toward the house’s front door.
Jarrett stood several paces away from the steps leading to the front porch. As Dave approached him, he fought the urge to make a move right away. Dave still had his hackles up when he asked, “That you, Sol?”
“Yeah,” Jarrett replied in what he hoped was a passable impression of Sol’s voice.
It must have at least vaguely resembled Sol’s tone, because Dave’s features relaxed somewhat as he asked, “You get what we were after?”
Jarrett recalled just enough of what Sol had told him to reply, “The Brander’s all set.”
Jarrett’s impersonation must have passed muster, because Dave was all too anxious to turn back to Lem and say, “You see, Brian? Some men can be counted on to do their jobs while others run at the first sign of trouble.”
Vigilante Dawn Page 20
