Gut-Shot

by William W. Johnstone

  It was a long shot, and the lawyer knew it. But it was better than sitting in his office twiddling his thumbs while he waited for others to make a move.

  Constable rose to his feet, put on his hat and grabbed his dragon cane. He carefully locked the office door behind him and stepped onto the boardwalk.

  The morning was hot and a haze of yellow dust hovered over the street. A dray trundled past followed by another drawn by an ox team, and a steady clang-clang-clang of a hammer came from the blacksmith’s forge. Over at the general store the proprietor had hung red, white and blue bunting to attract attention to the sign in his window that declared:

  SILK PARASOLS $2.

  All boots and shoes at cost.

  The new day smelled of dust and the heavy odor of ancient manure drifting from the cattle pens. Heat lay on everything and everyone, dense and draining, and legions of fat blue flies buzzed lazily behind the store windows.

  Constable crossed the street, his cane raised like a weapon, his thunderous eyes ready to intimidate any teamster who might take it into his head to drive too close to him.

  He safely made it to the alley and a few moments later tapped the silver dragon on Nancy Pocket’s door.

  “Come in, Mr. Constable,” Nancy Pocket said.

  And when the lawyer stepped into the cabin she smiled and said, “What can I do for you today?”

  “Information, dear lady,” Constable said. “Come now, I’m too old for anything else.”

  The woman looked disappointed. “What kind of information?”

  “The kind that deals with murder.”

  “I don’t know nothing about murders.”

  “A double negative. What a pity,” Constable said. Then, “I’m here to talk about the death of Polly Mallory.”

  “I told Marshal Lithgow all I know. She was pregnant.”

  “Who was the father?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Was it Lucian Tweddle?”

  Nancy looked like a wounded bird staring at a snake.

  “Well, speak up, woman,” Constable demanded.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nancy said.

  “Did Lucian Tweddle murder Polly Mallory when she told him she was pregnant? The truth now. Be frank. Be brief. Above all be honest.”

  “Get out of here,” Nancy said. A pulse throbbed in her slender throat. “Now!”

  “I can read the truth in your face.”

  “Get out!”

  The woman made a dive for the door but Constable stepped in her way. “If you’re covering up a murder, I’ll see you hang with Tweddle,” he said.

  Nancy’s shoulders sagged. Tears sprang into her eyes. “I don’t want to hang. All right, I’ll tell you all I know,” she said.

  “I thought you might,” Constable said. “And afterward we’ll talk with Marshal Lithgow.”

  The lampblack that darkened Nancy’s lashes mingled with her tears and gave her panda eyes. She dashed the mess way with the base of her thumb and said, “I must get a handkerchief.”

  “Please do, and try not to distress yourself so much,” Constable said, with all the warmth of a prosecutor addressing a witness for the defense.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman said.

  “No need to apologize for a display of female emotion,” the lawyer said. “Distressing as it is.”

  Nancy stepped to her tiny dresser, opened the top drawer and when she turned she pumped two .41 bullets into Frank Constable’s thin chest.

  The rounds tore great holes through the lawyer’s frail body and he fell back against the door, his face almost dreamlike, like a man who’d just taken his first step into a nightmare.

  Tendrils of smoke rose from the barrels of Nancy’s derringer and she stared at Constable in horror. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  But Frank Constable didn’t hear.

  He was already dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When Pike Reid stepped through the doors of the Gentleman’s Retreat he almost collided with a drunken reveler, both his arms around a giggling girl, one of them holding a fizzing bottle of champagne. But before the laughing, singing towhead lurched away Reid thought he recognized him. He looked like young Steve McCord.

  A moment later he dismissed the thought from his mind.

  Trace McCord would never allow his son to visit a cathouse, and besides, the word around town was that Steve mooned around writing sappy poems and his inclinations did not run toward ladies.

  Reid shook his head. It sure looked like him, though.

  His attention was distracted by the large and imposing figure of Madame Josette, who stepped toward him in some kind of flowing, flapping robe that made her look a frigate under full sail.

  “Monsieur Reid!” Josette cried, still at a distance. “Quel plaisir de vous revoir!”

  Reid had time to say, “Huh?” before Josette’s massive arms enfolded him and hugged him to her huge breasts.

  A moment later, six inches taller and two hundred pounds heavier than the scrawny, gasping deputy, she held him at arm’s length and smiled.

  “I said, ‘How nice to see you again.’”

  “Yeah, you too, Josette,” Reid said. “Here, did I catch sight of young Steve McCord when I came in?”

  The woman put a finger to her lips. “Some gentlemen wish to remain anonymous at Josette’s place.”

  She hugged Reid again, not as close this time. “I’ve been keeping a sweet girl just for you. She’s come all the way from France by way of Tangiers.” Josette’s hands fluttered like released white doves. “Her name is Lulu Le Mer and she’s as pure as milk . . . ’ow you say . . . in a bucket.”

  “Josette, I’m here on business,” Reid said.

  The woman scowled and shoved the deputy away from her. “Then why are you wasting my time?”

  “I’m here on Lucian Tweddle’s business.” Josette sighed and blinked. “Oh, mon Dieu, the fat man is not threatening to foreclose on me again.”

  “No, not this time.”

  “Then what is your business?”

  “I’m looking for Hank Stannic.” Then, for insurance, “On Mr. Tweddle’s account.”

  “He’s not here,” Josette said.

  “Then where is he?”

  “Je ne sais pas.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Tweddle won’t be happy.”

  “Come with me,” Josette said.

  She led Reid to a large, comfortable room furnished with overstuffed chairs, sofas and small tables. A bar had been set up opposite the door where a small, neat man with pomaded hair and scarlet arm garters stood polishing a glass.

  The young puncher Reid had seen earlier sprawled on a velvet sofa, nuzzling his girls. He laughed too loudly and seemed half drunk.

  Before the deputy could take a good look, Josette propelled him to the bar.

  “Drink?” she said.

  “Whiskey,” Reid said.

  The tidy bartender filled a shot glass and placed it in front of Reid.

  “Charlie, this fellow is looking for Hank Stannic,” Josette said.

  Charlie hesitated and the woman rolled her eyes. “Lucian Tweddle,” she said.

  The young man on the sofa leaned forward, suddenly alert. But nobody noticed.

  The bartender nodded, his face empty. “A couple of months ago Stannic was managing a stage stop for the Butterfield Overland Mail up by Bandy Creek. He’s living there with an Osage woman and has three, four kids by her.”

  Reid drained his glass then grinned. “A stage robber working for Butterfield. That’s rich.”

  “Maybe he got religion,” Charlie said. “A dollar for the drink.”

  “It’s all right, Charlie,” Josette said. “C’est sur la maison.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am,” Charlie said, looking displeased.

  “Hey, did I hear somebody mention Lucian Tweddle?”


  The youth had gotten off the couch and now stood, legs apart, in the middle of the floor.

  Pike Reid didn’t like what he saw.

  The kid was a poseur. His hand hovered close to his holstered Colt and his expression was both arrogant and belligerent. Reid figured Steve McCord, now he could see that it was indeed he, had once read a dime novel about a famous shootist and decided, Gee, I could do that.

  But it didn’t make the young man any less dangerous. The kid was on the prod, anxious to add to his score, if he had one.

  Josette drained the tension out of the air. “All of us here are friends of Mr. Tweddle,” she said.

  “How about him, Josette?” McCord nodded at Reid, besides himself the only man present who carried a gun.

  “I’m a friend of Mr. Tweddle,” the deputy said.

  “I asked the lady,” McCord said.

  Reid twigged it then. Urged on by alcohol, the kid was hunting trouble and he wanted it real bad. He needed to kill a man so folks would look up to him and say as he passed, “There goes Steve the Kid, the famous pistolero.”

  “Deputy Reid and Mr. Tweddle are very good friends,” Josette said.

  That gave the young man pause. The last thing he wanted right now was to upset the banker. He needed Tweddle . . . at least for a while.

  “That’s just as well for you, mister,” he said to Reid.

  Reid fought when he had to and killed only when the money was right. He’d gunned five white men and had nothing to prove.

  “No hard feelings, huh, kid?” he said.

  “Don’t call me kid,” McCord said.

  “Then it’s Steve. That set all right with you?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  Reid knew he was about to score a hit. “Everybody knows your name, Mr. McCord.”

  That did it. Steve smiled and said, “Buy you a drink . . . ah . . . ?”

  “Pike. That’s my handle as ever was. But I’ll have to refuse the drink.”

  He watched a scowl about to be reborn on the young man’s face and said quickly, “Mr. Tweddle wants me to bring in Hank Stannic.”

  “The outlaw?” Steve said. He searched his memory. “Ran with John Wesley Hardin for a spell?”

  “That’s him, though I’ve just been told he’s going straight.”

  The young man’s eyes flicked to the bartender then back to Reid.

  “He’s a gun?”

  One of the young women pulled on Steve’s arm and whined, “Come back to the sofa, honey.” He pushed her roughly away. “I said, is he a gun? How does he stack up?”

  Reid smiled inwardly. It was obvious that McCord was eager to measure himself against a gunman of reputation who once rode with Wes Hardin.

  “He’s good,” he said.

  “How good?”

  “I’d say at least a dozen men are pushing up daisies who found out the hard way just how good Hank Stannic is with a gun.”

  “I want to meet him. I’ll ride with you.”

  “Sure thing,” Reid said. “But ain’t your pa expecting you back at the ranch?”

  “He can go to hell,” Steve McCord said.

  Pike Reid was surprised at the bitter hate the kid conveyed in just five words.

  That was a thing Mr. Tweddle should know.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The barn was destroyed, the infernal machine burned beyond saving and Sam Flintlock felt glum.

  Jamie McPhee, trying to help, said, “Don’t worry, Sam. I’ll explain all this to Mr. Constable.”

  Flintlock gave him a look that would have withered a sunflower at ten paces and McPhee decided to keep his mouth shut. The young man picked up a piece of charred wood, studied it closely, sighed and threw it back onto the pile.

  “Why did you start the damned thing when you knew you couldn’t stop it?” Flintlock said.

  “Figured I’d learn by doing,” McPhee said. “A lot of men do that, learn by doing.”

  “I should’ve shot you right out of that cabin, you know,” Flintlock said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “My aim was off.”

  “Rider coming in, Sam,” McPhee said.

  Flintlock followed the younger man’s eyes. O’Hara came through the blue twilight at a walk. Like all Pawnee, he rode with a poker-backed posture that gave him the look of a Prussian Uhlan. But every now and then he leaned from the saddle and swatted the heads off wildflowers with the stick he carried.

  Flintlock adjusted the angle of the Colt in his waistband then he and McPhee walked as far as the cabin.

  O’Hara drew rein a few moments later. Without a word he held the stick upright then tossed it to Flintlock.

  “This is Frank Constable’s cane,” Flintlock said.

  The breed nodded.

  “Where is he?” Flintlock said.

  “Nowhere. He’s dead,” O’Hara said.

  Beside him Flintlock heard McPhee’s strangled gasp. “How did it happen?” the young man said.

  “And why did it happen?” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara lifted his head and stared at the pink sky. A few purple clouds drifted westward, as stately as adrift galleons. “I’m a man who’s partial to coffee,” he said finally. “A visiting man should always be offered coffee. It’s considered polite, even among the Pawnee.”

  “Light and set and come inside, O’Hara,” Flintlock said. He stared at the cane’s silver dragon, then at the breed. “Tell me this wasn’t you,” he said.

  “I don’t kill old white men,” O’Hara said. He returned Flintlock’s stare. “Only young ones.”

  O’Hara poised his cup halfway to his mouth. “Why did you burn the barn?” he said.

  “It was an accident,” McPhee said.

  The breed absorbed that, then said, “Dead men don’t cast blame.” He glanced at Flintlock. “Except Barnabas. That’s because they can’t keep him in hell.”

  When a man wants an Indian to tell him a thing, it’s best not to push it. Let him say it in his own time. “I saw Barnabas after Frank Constable was killed,” O’Hara said. “He sat at the top of the church spire and wore a black pointed hat.”

  Flintlock said nothing. Waited. McPhee bit his lip with anxiety.

  “Barnabas said he got the hat from a . . . stoo . . . a witch woman in the white man’s tongue.”

  “What did he say?” McPhee asked, breaking his silence.

  “He said he planned to cast a spell to make his grandson less of an idiot.” O’Hara shrugged. “Flintlock, I don’t know if he told me that before or after you burned down the barn.”

  Now irritated, Flintlock pushed it. “Forget the damned barn, what happened to Frank Constable?” he said, in a tone that was less than friendly.

  “Good coffee,” O’Hara said. Then, smiling at Flintlock’s anger, “He was shot twice in the back as he left the shack of the whore Nancy Pocket.”

  “Oh my God,” McPhee whispered. “First Mr. Wraith and now Mr. Constable.” He shook his head. “Sam, what does it mean?”

  Flintlock didn’t answer. “Constable was too old for whores,” he said.

  “Who decided that? You or him?” O’Hara said.

  “Who did it?” Flintlock said.

  “I don’t know. No one knows.”

  “What about Nancy Pocket? What did she say?”

  “Marshal Lithgow says that as Constable stepped out the door of her shack she heard two shots. The old lawyer fell back inside and died on the floor.”

  Flintlock thought for a while. Finally he said, “Cliff Wraith was getting too close to something and had to be gotten rid of. And the same goes with Constable.” He studied the dragon-topped cane. “I wish this thing could talk.”

  “Mr. Wraith talked to you, Sam,” McPhee said. “He said a big man was guilty of Polly Mallory’s murder.”

  “And Frank Constable discovered who the big man is?” Flintlock asked.

  “Seems likely,” McPhee said. “I have no other answer.” He bent his head and st
ared into the inky depths of his coffee cup. “Sam, now with both Mr. Wraith and Mr. Constable gone, you have no call to guard me any longer,” he said.

  “Don’t even think like that,” Flintlock said. “I took on the job and I’ll see it through.”

  “We’re dealing with a man who has a lot more power than we have,” McPhee said. “I don’t think I want to prolong the agony.”

  “What does that mean?” Flintlock said.

  “I think I should ride out of the territory and never come back.”

  “That was Constable’s plan in the first place, remember?” Flintlock said.

  “I know. But I was too bullheaded to see his logic.”

  “Hell, all you wanted to do was clear your name,” Flintlock said. “I can’t fault a man for that.”

  “I’ll ride out today,” McPhee said.

  “We’ll need to find your hoss first,” Flintlock said. “It’s probably halfway back to Open Sky by this time.”

  “I’ll search for your horse, McPhee,” O’Hara said.

  “Thank you kindly,” the young man said.

  “Except you’re not going anywhere on it, McPhee,” Flintlock said.

  Both O’Hara and McPhee stared at him in surprise.

  “When Cliff Wraith was murdered, this became personal,” Flintlock said. “I aim to find the man who did it and kill him.”

  “How will you do that?” O’Hara said. “The men who could have told you are both dead.”

  “I don’t know. Not yet, I don’t.”

  Flintlock poured coffee into his cup with a rock-steady hand. “I’m still not angry enough to raise a hundred different kinds of hell,” he said. “But by God I’m working on it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “It’s strictly a business proposition, Hank,” Pike Reid said.

  “What does Tweddle want?” Stannic said.

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “A Tweddle business proposition usually means a killing.”

  “I don’t know,” Reid said.

  “It must be something else. Mr. Tweddle knows I can do his killing for him,” Steve McCord said.

  “You’re Trace McCord’s son, huh?” Stannic said.