Ralph Compton West of the Law

by West, Joseph A. ; Compton, Ralph

  A buttercup, wilted, had strayed from Shannon’s hand and lay on the grass like a drop of gold fallen from the sun. McBride picked up the bloom and studied it for long moments. Finally he touched the flower to his lips, then carefully tucked it away in a pocket.

  Grief and a dark sense of loss took hold of McBride and he let out a long, shuddering sigh that had its genesis deep inside him where the worst of hurts dwelled.

  A flock of crows descended on the branches of the cottonwoods, wheeling like pieces of charred paper from out of the blue sky. They called out to one another noisily, for now ignoring the man who stood head bowed in pain, a gang of ragged ruffians who stood ready to mock him should he not quickly move along.

  McBride stepped into the saddle and resumed his ride to the northeast. Behind him, the sun began its journey to the western horizon and the shadow of man and horse stretched longer across the prairie grass.

  Three hours later, as the evening became night and the first stars appeared, McBride saw the light of a campfire ahead of him. He eased the Colt in his waistband and rode toward the camp . . . as around him the coyotes began to sing their requiem for the departed day.

  McBride dismounted when he was still two hundred yards from the camp. He covered the rest of the distance on foot, trusting to the darkness to keep him hidden. When he was close, he saw Shannon and Donovan standing in each other’s arms near the guttering fire. Shifting, scarlet shadows streaked the night around them and the wood crackled and snapped, sending up small showers of sparks.

  Donovan kissed Shannon hard and long, then pushed her away from him, holding her at arm’s length. He grinned and said, ‘‘I’ll have a lot more of that later, but right now it’s time for you to put some supper together.’’

  ‘‘Don’t bother.’’ McBride spoke from the gloom, his voice hollow as a death knell. ‘‘You won’t have time to eat it.’’

  Sean Donovan was an affable, talkative man, but in that instant he realized the time for talk was not then. He turned, drawing from under his coat, his wild, angry eyes flashing ruby red in the firelight.

  McBride drew from the waistband and his gun flared. Hit hard, Donovan staggered and tried to bring his Smith & Wesson Russian to bear. McBride fired again and the man fell heavily, his arm landing across the fire, throwing up a crimson fountain of sparks.

  Shannon cowered among the shadows, her horrified eyes on McBride. He stepped to the fire and kicked Donovan’s smoldering coat sleeve from the flames.

  Donovan’s eyes rose to McBride’s. ‘‘Damn you,’’ the man snarled. ‘‘Damn you to hell, McBride.’’

  McBride nodded. ‘‘Keep a seat warm for me, Sean.’’

  Donovan’s mouth opened to speak, but his lips pulled back from his gritted teeth in a death agony. He rattled deep in his chest, trying to kill McBride with his glare, and then his life left him.

  Swinging his gun on Shannon, McBride said, ‘‘Let me have the bulldog, Shannon. I don’t want to kill you.’’

  The woman had an arm behind her back and McBride watched her closely. ‘‘Don’t even try it, Shannon,’’ he said. ‘‘I have others close behind me. Even if you kill me, they’ll track you all the way to Las Animas and beyond if they have to.’’

  ‘‘What will they do to me?’’ the woman asked. All of a sudden, she looked scared, unsure of herself.

  McBride shook his head. ‘‘I don’t know. Inspector Byrnes will take you to the law and then it will be up for a jury to decide.’’

  ‘‘A jury!’’ Shannon almost spit the words. ‘‘They could put me away for years.’’

  ‘‘Yes. A long, long time.’’

  ‘‘I can’t let that happen.’’ Shannon stepped closer to McBride. She was smiling. ‘‘John, you can forget what happened between us. That . . . that was all a mistake on my part. We can leave—we can leave right now and be together just like you planned. I was wrong, I know it now. Please, John, give me another chance. I can make you happy, I know I can.’’ Her smile was warm, wonderful. ‘‘I will make you a good wife, John.’’

  McBride’s smile was without humor. ‘‘A wife who did her best to kill me back there at the saloon?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t try to kill you. I aimed wide on purpose.’’

  ‘‘I’d say that’s real good shooting,’’ McBride said drily. He saw a small defeat in Shannon’s eyes as she opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. ‘‘You made a sap of me once, Shannon. I won’t let it happen again.’’ He motioned with the barrel of his Colt. ‘‘Now, let drop whatever you’re holding behind your back.’’

  ‘‘There are no second chances with you, McBride,’’ the woman said. ‘‘Are there?’’

  ‘‘Not tonight, Shannon. Or any other night.’’

  ‘‘I thought so. Well, I can’t allow you to let me rot in a prison for forty years.’’

  The .44 bulldog came out quickly from behind Shannon’s back. McBride hesitated, reluctant to shoot.

  That was all the time she needed. Shannon shoved the muzzle of her gun between her breasts and pulled the trigger. She gasped and fell backward and McBride crossed the ground fast, taking a knee at her side.

  ‘‘I’d die a little death every day in prison,’’ she whispered, blood red against the paler pink of her lips. ‘‘I won’t let that happen.’’ She raised a hand and her fingers lightly touched McBride’s cheek and she smiled. ‘‘You poor sap,’’ she said.

  She died, leaving a void in McBride’s heart that he knew he would never fill, not if he lived for a hundred years.

  He was still kneeling beside Shannon’s body the next morning when Inspector Byrnes and another detective lifted him gently to his feet and led him away.

  ‘‘Are you sure you won’t come back to New York with us, John?’’ Inspector Byrnes asked.

  They were standing on the platform of the High Hopes train station, surrounded by a hundred females that Byrnes had taken under his wing, vowing to find good homes for all of them back along the line.

  McBride shook his head. ‘‘No, Inspector, for me that life is over and there’s no going back. The West has changed me. For better or worse, I haven’t discovered yet.’’

  ‘‘But surely you don’t intend to stay in High Hopes?’’

  ‘‘With Trask and Donovan gone and the Golden Garter closed, High Hopes is finished as a town.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘Maybe they can save it by attracting the cattle trade. I don’t know.’’

  ‘‘But what will you do, John?’’ The inspector’s eyes moved to the end of the platform where the mustang was tied, a blanket roll behind the saddle. ‘‘Just ride here and there on that ugly horse?’’

  ‘‘That’s about the size of it, Inspector.’’ McBride smiled. ‘‘But first I have to find a home for four young Chinese girls I left behind me. That might take time.’’

  ‘‘Huh, you think that’s hard? Try finding homes for a hundred caterwauling females.’’

  ‘‘Good luck, Inspector, and give my thanks again to the men who came here to help.’’ McBride took off the money belt Byrnes had returned to him and handed it to the man. ‘‘There’s around six hundred dollars there. Make sure Mrs. Stanton gets it.’’

  ‘‘But, John, that’s every penny you have.’’

  ‘‘I’ll make out,’’ McBride said.

  Later, after the train left with Byrnes and his girls, McBride swung into the saddle and headed west.

  The sun had begun its climb into the sky, heralding the dawn of a bright new day.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  Detective Inspector Thomas Byrnes created the first New York Detective Bureau on May 25, 1882. Byrnes hired forty detective sergeants at an annual salary of one thousand dollars and ordered them to use their powers of deduction rather than brute force to solve crimes. Something of a Sherlock Holmes himself, Byrnes later became a major dime novel hero who handily outsold his closest rival, Theodore Roosevelt.

  In the late 1860s and throughout the next fifteen or twenty year
s, ‘‘orphan trains’’ were dispatched west from Chicago, New York, Boston, St. Louis, Cleveland and Cincinnati. Funded by charities and religious organizations, the trains were packed with hundreds of children under the age of fifteen, removed from overcrowded city orphanages. In most cases this worked out well for all concerned, but many kids fell into the hands of pedophiles, pederasts and other perverts. Many were beaten to death by cruel adoptive parents or by people who posed as parents but were truly little more than task-masters.

  Some readers, especially those familiar with film noir, might be surprised at the use of the word ‘‘sap’’—as in fool or simpleton—in an 1880s context. The word was widely used in its present meaning as early as 1815, and probably grew out of the earlier word ‘‘sapskull,’’ a thick or stupid person.

  The railroad yard in the opening chapter of West of the Law is now the site of Grand Central Station.

  Heroin was first synthesized from morphine (a derivative of opium) in England in 1874. By the mid-1870s it was being imported in fairly large quantities from Britain and Germany to the United States, where the drug was touted as a ‘‘safe, non-addictive substitute for morphine.’’ It was then that the heroin addict was born.

  The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853 by Scottish doctor Alexander Wood. By the late years of the War Between the States the needles were in widespread use to administer morphine to wounded soldiers. Morphine had been used as early as the War of 1812, but was given orally. One result of battlefield morphine was that many soldiers went home with an addiction, taking their needles with them.

  The author is convinced that heroin was being mainlined in the West in 1882, but had not yet replaced the easier to get laudanum. When he researched what heroin was called back then, he hit a brick wall. It could be that the soiled doves and other addicts of Deadwood and Tombstone called the drug ‘‘heroic’’ or ‘‘heroic medicine.’’ But it’s more likely that it was already called heroin and that’s the name that was later trademarked by the Bayer Company in the 1890s. Overall, the author feels comfortable portraying his Chinese doves shooting up heroin with hypodermics in 1882, and that they and their handlers call the drug by that name.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from

  the next exciting Ralph Compton novel,

  Blood Duel

  by David Robbins

  Coming from Signet in December 2007

  The man who rode into Coffin Varnish did not look like a killer. If anything, he had more in common with a mouse. He was small like a mouse, not much over five feet, with stooped shoulders that lent the illusion he was hunched forward in the saddle when he was sitting as straight as he could sit. He wore a brown hat with so many stains that a person could be forgiven for thinking he used it to wipe his mouth. His buckskins were a mousey brown and his boots had holes in them, one at the toe, the other above the heel.

  The man rode a gruella, which was fitting, since a gruella is a mouse-colored horse, a sort of gray-blue more commonly called a mouse dun. The horse, like the man who rode it, was weary to its core, and like as not would not mind being put out to pasture, if only the rider owned a pasture. But all the rider owned were the clothes on his back and the gruella and a few odds and ends in his saddlebags, and that was it.

  The other thing the rider owned was a revolver. It was the one thing about him that was not ordinary. No common Colt, this was a Lightning, with a blue finish and pearl grips. The man had spent extra money to have it engraved. He had also filed off the front sight and removed the trigger guard. Since it was in a holster high on his right hip, no one noticed the modifications he had made to his hardware when he rode into Coffin Varnish. If they had, they would have known right away that he was not the mouse he appeared to be.

  The single dusty street was pockmarked with hoofprints and rutted by wagon wheels. Horse droppings were conspicuous, other droppings almost as plentiful. A couple of chickens were pecking at the dirt near the water trough. A dog lay in the shade of the general store. It raised its head but did not bark. When the rider reined to the hitch rail in front of the saloon, the dog lowered its head and closed its eyes.

  The rider stiffly dismounted. Putting a hand at the small of his back, he arched his spine, then looped the reins around the hitch rail. ‘‘Not much of a town you got here.’’

  The two men in rocking chairs under the overhang regarded him with no particular interest. They had not yet seen the Colt; its pearl grips were hidden by the man’s arm.

  ‘‘More of a town than you think,’’ Chester Luce replied. He was a round butterball whose head was as hairless as the rider’s saddle horn and shaped about the same. His suit was the one article in the whole town that did not have a lick of dust on it, because he constantly swatted it off.

  The rider studied him. ‘‘You must be somebody important hereabouts.’’

  Chester smiled and swelled the chest he did not have, and nodded. ‘‘That I am, stranger. You have the honor of addressing the mayor of this fair town.’’

  ‘‘Fair?’’ the rider said. He had a squeaky voice that fit the rest of him. ‘‘If this place was any more dead, it would have headstones.’’

  From the man in the other rocking chair came a chuckle. He had white hair and wrinkles and an unlit pipe jammed between his lips. He also wore an apron with more stains than the rider’s hat. He did not wear a hat, himself. ‘‘You do not miss much, do you?’’

  ‘‘I live longer that way,’’ the rider said, and came under the overhang. He pointed at the apron. ‘‘If you’re not the bar dog, you are overdressed.’’

  Again the white-haired man chuckled. ‘‘I do in fact own this establishment. My name is Win Curry. Short for Winifred.’’ Win stared at the rider expectantly, as if waiting for him to say who he was, but the rider did no such thing. Instead, he nodded at the batwings.

  ‘‘This saloon of yours have a name, too? There is no sign.’’

  ‘‘No sign and no name. I couldn’t think of one I liked, so it is just a saloon,’’ Win explained.

  The rider arched a thin eyebrow. ‘‘All the words in the world and you couldn’t come up with one or two?’’

  Win defended the lack. ‘‘It is not as easy as you think. Do you name everything you own?’’

  The rider looked at the gruella. ‘‘I reckon I don’t, at that. Anyhow, I’m not here to jaw. I’m here to drink in peace and quiet.’’

  ‘‘Go in and help yourself. I’ll be in directly.’’

  ‘‘Right friendly of you,’’ the rider said.

  ‘‘Coffin Varnish is a right friendly place,’’ Win told him. ‘‘Not a grump in the twelve of us.’’ His eyes drifted toward Chester. ‘‘Well, leastways most are daisies.’’

  ‘‘Twelve, huh?’’ the rider said. ‘‘Must make for long lines at the outhouse.’’ The batwings creaked as he pushed on through.

  Chester Luce frowned. ‘‘I don’t know as I like him. He poked fun at our town.’’

  ‘‘Hell, can you blame him?’’ Win responded. ‘‘As towns go it would make a great gob of spit.’’

  ‘‘Be nice.’’

  ‘‘We have to face facts,’’ Winifred said. ‘‘Another five years and Coffin Varnish will be fit for ghosts.’’

  ‘‘Five years is stretching,’’ Chester Luce said gloomily. ‘‘I will be lucky to last two.’’ He gazed across the dropping-littered street at the general store. ‘‘I haven’t had a paying customer in a month.’’

  ‘‘I’ve got one now,’’ Win said, and went to stand. He stopped with his hands gripping the rocker’s arms and squinted into the heat haze to the south. ‘‘Glory be.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ It was no small source of annoyance to Chester that the older man’s eyes were twice as sharp as his.

  ‘‘There are more riders coming.’’

  ‘‘You’re drunk.’’

  ‘‘The hell I am. I haven’t had but one drink all morning and that was for breakfast.’’ Win’s brown eyes narrowed
. ‘‘Two of them, by God. One isn’t much of a rider. He flops around something awful.’’

  ‘‘Three visitors in one day,’’ Chester marveled. ‘‘We haven’t had this many since I can remember.’’ He pried his round bulk from his chair and ran his pudgy hands down his jacket. ‘‘I better go to my store in case they want something. I would hate to lose a sale.’’

  ‘‘More than likely they won’t even stop,’’ Win said. ‘‘We’re not far enough from Dodge for them to have worked up much of a thirst.’’

  Chester scowled. ‘‘Don’t say that name. You know I hate it.’’

  ‘‘Don’t start,’’ Win said.

  ‘‘I will damn well do as I please,’’ Chester said heatedly. ‘‘And if I damn well happen to hate Dodge City for what it has done to us, you can damn well show me the courtesy of never mentioning that damn vile pit in my presence.’’

  ‘‘You are plumb ridiculous at times. Do you know that?’’

  ‘‘I know Dodge stole the herds from us. I know Dodge stole the railroad and the wagon trains and all the trade that goes with them.’’

  ‘‘Dodge stole nothing. It just happened,’’ Win argued.

  ‘‘When will you admit the truth?’’ Chester demanded. ‘‘Dodge has had it in for Coffin Varnish from the beginning.’’

  Win sighed. ‘‘Keep this up and folks will think you are touched in the head.’’

  Chester’s pie face became cherry red. He stabbed a pudgy finger at the saloon owner and snapped, ‘‘How come you always take their side? How come you never stand up for the town you helped found? You’re the one who named it.’’

  ‘‘I was drunk. We were all drunk. If we hadn’t been, maybe we would have come up with a better name than Coffin Varnish.’’

  ‘‘It is original. You have to give us that much. But there is nothing original about Dodge. And the gall, to call themselves a city when they are hardly a big town.’’