“Damn, don’t you ’member me? After all the ridin’ we did together?”
“What ridin’ would that be?”
“Ridin’ with the best cavalry in the whole Union army. I’m talking about the Jayhawkers.”
Kingsley smiled. “That what you’re callin’ it now? Cavalry?”
“What you doin’ in this part of the world, Kingsley? I thought you would be back in Missouri. That is where you’re from, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. That’s where I’m from, but the folks there don’t take too highly to me yet. You’re Byrd, ain’t you? Loomis Byrd?”
Byrd smiled upon being recognized. “Yeah, that’s me all right. What you been doin’ with yourself?”
Kingsley bought a bottle of whiskey and the two men retired to the back of the saloon where they found a table and began catching each other up on old times.
“You know what I miss?” Byrd said. “I mean, what I miss the most? It’s the ridin’ with a bunch of men like the ones we was ridin’ with then. You know, we went where we wanted to go, took what we wanted to take, and there wasn’t nobody with gumption enough to stand up agin’ us.”
“Yeah, them was good days, all right,” Kingsley agreed.
“There’s two more of ’em that rode with us that live here, you know, them bein’ Curtiss and Rawlins. And not more’n twenty miles from here is Jones and Wales. That would be six of us, countin’ you and me,” Byrd said.
“Six of us for what?”
“I don’t know. I reckon we’d let you figure it out. But if you had an outfit of six good and experienced men, I’m sure we could come up with somethin’ we could do.”
“Like what?”
Byrd looked around the room before he spoke again. “Look, I heard tell you was on the dodge. To me, that means you’re ridin’ the outlaw trail. All I’m suggestin’ is, as long as you’re goin’ to be ridin’ that trail, you may as well do it with company. All these men has rid the trail before, and what’s more, they have rode the trail with you.”
“You still ain’t said what we could do.”
“Well, hell, with an outfit like that, there ain’t nothin’ we couldn’t do. We could rob banks, trains, stagecoaches, just like in the old days. Only this time it would all be for us.”
Kingsley drummed his fingers on the table as he considered it. He had fifteen thousand dollars now, more money than he had ever had in his life. It had been incredibly easy to get. On the other hand there was something to what Byrd was saying. An outfit of experienced men could do just about anything it wanted to do. And it would take more than a sheriff and a temporary posse to stop them.
“What do you think?” Byrd asked.
“I think I want to get me a whore and think about it for a while.”
“Elmer, look over there,” Duff said.
Looking in the direction where Duff was pointing, Elmer saw a horse without a rider coming toward them. They urged their own horses into a trot until the caught up with it. The horse was saddled, but there was no sign of a rider anywhere.
Elmer got down and examined all four of the horse’s hooves before nodding and making his pronouncement.
“This is the horse we’ve been following, all right,” he said. “The question is what is he doing out here without a rider?”
“And where is the rider?” Duff added.
“Could be that he was throwed,” Elmer suggested.
“Or, it could be that he let the horse go, just to throw us off.”
“Yeah, that, too.”
“We’re no more’n five or six miles from town. This horse came from that same direction. I’m sure that when he decided to abandon the horse and walk the rest of the way into Lincoln, he was probably no more than a mile away,” Duff suggested.
“Which means he is probably there now,” Elmer said.
“Let’s hurry it up. I’d like to catch up with him before he gets a train,” Duff said.
“What about this horse?” Elmer asked.
“I have a feeling it is a stolen horse, and I also have a feeling that he knows where he is going. I’d say let him go.”
“Good idea.”
Clouds had been building up all day, and by late afternoon the rain had started. There was nothing Duff and Elmer could do but break out their slickers and hunker down in the saddle. They were soaked thoroughly when they reached the outskirts of Lincoln, and the thought of getting out of the rain was quite an incentive. There was a banner spread across the street as they entered town.
COUNTY FAIR, AUG 4, 5, 6.
RACES, WRESTLING, PATRIOTIC SPEECHES.
One corner of the banner had come loose, and the banner was furled like a flume, so that a solid gush of water poured from the end.
The first thing they did was go to the livery to get their horses out of the weather. After that, they walked over to the railroad station.
“No, sir, there ain’t been nobody like that bought a ticket today, or in the last two or three days,” the ticket agent said.
“Thank you, ’tis appreciative I am for the information,” Duff said. He turned to Elmer.
“I’m bettin’ he’s still here,” Elmer said.
“Aye, ’tis a good bet I’m reckoning. He’s got money and it does a man no good to have money if he can’t spend it, and the only place he can spend it is in town.”
Elmer chuckled. “You got that right,” he said. “Speaking of which, what do you say me ’n you spend a little money now and get us somethin’ to eat?”
“Sounds good to me,” Duff replied.
Duff and Elmer picked their way across the muddy, horse-apple-strewn street, and headed toward the café.
Kingsley crawled out of the whore’s bed and walked over to relieve himself in the chamber pot by the window. As he stood there, he glanced out the window and got a start from the two men he saw picking their way through the rain and across a muddy street.
“Son of a bitch!” he said.
“What is it, honey?” the whore asked. “You ain’t got the burns, have you? ’Cause I’m clean, and if you got the burns you didn’t get it from me. And if you got it, and you give it to me, that’s goin’ to cost me some money, ’cause don’t nobody want to bed with a woman if she’s got the disease.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kingsley said. “I ain’t talkin’ about nothin’ like that.”
The two men went into Kirby’s Café, just across the street from the Cow Lot Saloon. Kingsley was a little surprised to see MacCallister; he thought he had hit him hard enough to have killed him. But what really surprised him was the other rider he saw with him. Was that Elmer Gleason? No, it couldn’t have been. Gleason was dead. Kingsley was sure he had heard that. Still, it looked an awful lot like him.
Dressing quickly, Kingsley went back downstairs. He saw Byrd sitting at a table with a couple of other men and started to call Byrd over to him, then he thought he recognized them. They were much older, but he was sure they were men he had ridden with during the war. Byrd had said their names were Curtis and Rawlins, though he had no idea which was which.
When Kingsley walked over to the table, the three men stood up and Curtis and Rawlins stuck out their hands.
“Do you remember us?” one of them asked.
“I remember you,” Kingsley said. “You’re Curtis and Rawlins. Don’t remember which of you is which, though.”
“I’m Curtis,” one of them said. He was bald, which would make it easy to remember.
“Byrd was tellin’ us you’d like to start a gang,” Rawlins said. “If you do, me ’n Curtis want to be in it.”
“I haven’t actually said that I was goin’ to,” Kingsley said. He thought about MacCallister and Gleason being in town. He had no idea how it was that they were together, but he was pretty sure why they were here. They had come after him. Maybe putting a gang together, if for no other reason than protection, might not be a bad idea.
“You said you was goin’ to think about it, though,” Byrd said.
“Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? All right, I’ve thought about it. Are you willin’ to do what I ask you to do?”
“Yeah, hell, a gang has got to have a leader,” Rawlins said.
Kingsley nodded. “I’m glad you see it my way.” Kingsley reached inside his shirt and took out a packet of money, the one thousand dollars he had taken from the satchel.
“I don’t want anyone who works for me to think I’m cheap,” he said. He counted out one hundred dollars apiece for the three men, then he put the rest of the money back inside his shirt.
“What’s this for?” Rawlins asked.
“There are a couple of men in town who are lookin’ for me,” Kingsley said.
“What do they want with you?” Curtis asked.
“They want to kill me. And they will, unless we kill them first.”
“We?” Rawlins asked.
“Yes, we,” Byrd said. “We just took his money, which in my book means we just signed on with him. So if someone is after him, that means they are after us as well.”
“Rawlins, when you think about it, Byrd is right,” Curtis said. “If we took the money, that means we are all together.”
Rawlins thought for a moment, then he smiled. “Yeah, well, the way I see it, we’re four against their two. And they prob’ly don’t know that Kingsley has took on any partners.”
“You got that right,” Kingsley said. “There don’t nobody know about you three at all.”
“All right, who are they?”
“Like I say, there’s two of ’em. The young one is as big as a tree. His name is MacCallister. The old one with him is Gleason. Elmer Gleason.”
“And you say they are in town now?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“Right now, they’re in the café across the street. I reckon they’ll be comin’ in here pretty soon.”
“How do you know they’ll come in here?”
“Because they are lookin’ for me,” Kingsley said. “And when you are lookin’ for someone, the best place to start is a saloon.”
“I got me an idea,” Byrd said.
“What’s that?”
“We’ll split up, one of us sittin’ in each corner of the saloon. Soon as they come in, why, you can give us the signal. We’ll have ’em surrounded, an’ they won’t have no idea that they are in danger.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Rawlins said. “What about you, Kingsley? What do you think?”
“Yeah. I say we can give it a try,” Kingsley said.
Across the street in Kirby’s Café, Duff and Elmer were just having their dinner. Outside, the rain had stopped, but it was still dark because of the heavy cloud cover.
“Elmer, look at that table over there, in the ash tray,” Duff said.
The table Duff pointed out was one of the smaller tables that were set up against the wall with only two chairs. In the ashtray was half of a cigar. A waitress was walking by then, and Duff got her attention.
“Yes, sir, something else for you?” she asked with a practiced smile.
“Could you be for tellin’ me, lass, about the man who left the cigar in the ash tray there?”
“Oh,” she said. “How awful. Who would want to eat there with a smelly cigar butt in front of them? Thank you for calling it to my attention.”
“Yes, ma’am, but ’tis more interested I am in the man who left it there. Was he tall and gaunt? And did he have a scar, here?” Duff traced his face where young Harley had said there was a scar.
“Yes, oh, quite a frightening thing he was, what with the scar. And his eyes. I’ve never seen eyes like his. They were like the eyes of a snake.” She shivered as she explained them.
“Thank you, lass, you have been most helpful.”
“Did you see where he went when he left the café?” Elmer asked.
The waitress shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t notice.”
“He went over to the Cow Lot,” one of the others in the café said.
“The Cow Lot?”
“That’s the saloon just across the street.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Behind the bar of the Cow Lot Saloon there was a sign that read: “We insist upon honest gambling. Please report any cheating to the management.”
Just above the sign was a life-size painting of a reclining nude woman. Some marksman had already added his own improvement to the painting by putting three holes through the woman in all the appropriate places, though one shot had missed the target slightly, giving her left breast two nipples.
To either side of the painting, there was a long glass shelf upon which stood several bottles of various kinds of liquor, their number doubled by the reflection in the mirror behind. There were also several large jars of pickled pigs’ feet on the bar.
The saloon had an upstairs section at the back, with a stairway that led up to the second floor. A heavily painted saloon girl was taking a cowboy up the stairs with her.
The upstairs area didn’t extend all the way to the front of the building. The main room of the saloon was big, with exposed rafters below the high ceiling. There were several tables in the saloon, nearly all filled with men who were drinking and talking, some of whom were playing cards.
The piano player wore a small, round derby hat and kept his sleeves up with garter belts. He was pounding on the keyboard, though the music was practically lost amidst the ambient noise of the saloon.
Duff and Elmer stepped up to the bar.
“You men look pretty wet,” the bartender said. “Is it still raining outside?”
“Not at the moment,” Duff said. “Would you have any Scotch?”
“A Scotch man, are you? Well, I’m a rye man myself, but I do have Scotch for them that fancies it. And you, sir?” he asked Elmer.
“Sonny, I’ve drunk ever’thing from coal oil to champagne. Whatever you put in front of me will be just fine,” Elmer said.
The bartender chuckled. “Since I have the Scotch bottle out, that’s what you’ll get.”
Suddenly a shot rang out and the bottle of Scotch exploded in the bartender’s hand. Passing through the bottle, the bullet slammed into the mirror behind the bar, sending cracks all through it. The women in the saloon screamed, and several of the men shouted out in alarm. Many of the men ran, though a few dove to the floor. A second shot hit the bar between Duff and Elmer, erasing any doubt, if there had been any, as to who the targets were.
“Go that way!” Duff shouted, pushing Elmer toward one end of the bar to get him out of the line of fire. Duff ran toward the other end of the bar, pulling his pistol as he did so. Now two rounds were fired at the same time, but, as before, the bullets missed.
When Duff reached the end of the bar, he stepped around the end of it, then squatted down. He saw one of the shooters, a man standing in the corner and holding a smoking gun in his hand. For the moment, it was as if the man was confused and was trying to make up his mind whether to shoot at Duff or Elmer. Duff took one shot and the man fell back into the corner, then slid down to the floor.
Elmer fired, and from the corner of his eye, Duff saw another man go down.
“Kingsley!” someone yelled. “This is your fight. Don’t you run from this, you cowardly bastard!”
Duff looked toward the back door just as Kingsley slipped through it. He started toward him, but was interrupted by a shot from the man who had yelled at Kingsley. Duff had to retreat momentarily to the relative safety of the corner of the bar.
There was another exchange of shots. Duff’s adversary missed. Duff didn’t.
For a long moment after Duff’s final shot, there was total silence in the saloon. Men, and the few women who were there, stayed absolutely still. Duff ran to the back door and looked out, but saw nothing. By the time he turned back toward the saloon, the patrons, those who had run and those who had dove to the floor, were beginning to be animated.
“Duff, are you all right?” Elmer called.
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“Aye, I’m fine. And you?”
“I wasn’t hit.”
“How about you, bartender?” Duff called, and the bartender, who had dove for cover after the opening volley, was now standing up, examining himself carefully.
“I’m all right,” the bartender said, tentatively. Then, when he realized for sure that he was unhurt, he repeated it, much louder and with more enthusiasm. “Yes, sir, I’m all right! I ain’t hurt at all!”
“That there is Loomis Byrd,” one of the saloon customers said, pointing to Byrd’s body.
“This here is Lou Rawlins.”
“And this one over in this corner is Gordon Curtis.”
“What the hell! Why are they all scattered out like that? They was all sittin’ together when I come in here a while ago. I mean, they was all good friends, you purt nigh always seen ’em sittin’ at the same table. But lookie here, they’s one of ’em in ever’ corner.”
“I’ll tell you why,” someone said. “They was all spread out ’cause they was set up special to bushwhack them two fellers that just come in to the saloon.”
Now the attention turned to Duff and Elmer.
“Who are you fellers, and why was they shootin’ at you?” the bartender asked.
Before they could answer, two officers from the Lincoln police came into the saloon. Both had their guns drawn, but seeing that the shooting was over and relative peace had been restored, they holstered their pistols.
“What happened in here?” one of the policemen asked.
A dozen men started talking at once, trying to tell what happened. It took a while for the police to get the story all sorted out, but when they did, they were convinced that Duff and Elmer had acted in self-defense.
“Do you know any of these men?” the police sergeant asked.
“I’ve never seen any of them before,” Duff said.
Elmer went over to look at all of them before he replied. “I don’t know any of them either,” he said.
“Their names are Byrd, Curtis, and Rawlins,” the sergeant said. “They are locals, and all of them have been in trouble at one time or another. But as far as I know, they’ve never shot anyone. Why do you suppose they tried to shoot you two?”
MacCallister, The Eagles Legacy: The Killing Page 19
