After a long moment, she turned back to the mirror. Studying her image, she smiled. If lecherous old Buckhout was proving stubborn about selling out, then perhaps all he needed was a little gentle persuasion ...
With the sun a hammerhead across his shoulders, Brazos tore the edge off the next parcel he took from his saddlebags and called, “Biscuits!” and let it drop.
Barely recognizable as the portly, well-dressed figure they had rescued from the renegades four days earlier, the leaner, bearded Elroy Smart caught the parcel with an agility that would have been impossible in his heavier days.
“Why?” he panted, staring up. “If I only knew why!”
“Pork pie!” Brazos called back, and another parcel went plummeting down. “Sorry, but all I can tell you is that what we’re doin’ is in the interests of justice, Elroy. You believe a man ought to be ready to suffer for justice, don’t you?”
“I detest justice!” cried the hangman, who was fast coming apart at the seams. “How long will I be left here? That’s all I want to know. How long?”
Hank Brazos was forced to remind himself that this pitiful figure below had reputedly hanged over a score of men.
“Depends, Elroy!” he called, taking out another parcel.
“On what?”
“On whether we get lucky or not!” Brazos replied—which really wasn’t much help at all to a man who was being called upon to suffer so much in the cause of justice. “Fruit cake!”
Sooner or later every drifter, hardcase and big spender found his way to Billy Mack’s. The gambling den stood right on the river in the heart of the roughest quarter of town, and was no place for the faint-hearted. Men with knife-scarred faces frequented Billy Mack’s, and occasionally a heavy winner at the tables was found floating downriver with empty pockets and a slit throat. None of the killings was ever solved. The sheriff held to the opinion that any man who went gambling and drinking down at Billy Mack’s and couldn’t look after himself, deserved what he got.
Being of the unsavory stamp, Tim Fenner had always felt at home in the fetid dive, but that feeling was missing tonight as he sat in a corner watching Jim Crow Ritter play dice.
He’d been getting a little desperate at the end of a long, fruitless day when he spotted the ’breed heading down River Street for Billy Mack’s just on sunset. He’d tabbed strangers aplenty during the day, but nobody who shaped up as killer-for-hire material. And then he’d spotted Ritter, a familiar face from the border where he’d spent some time unloading stolen cows with Dusty last spring. Along the border they said Ritter would take care of anybody for a hundred dollars ...
They were playing dice on a billiard table in the center of the dimly lit room. The gamblers were packed around the table beneath the smoky glare of a brown-shaded drop light. The bookies sat at each end of the table. A bald-headed man named Harry the Gimp sat at one end and sepia-skinned Billy Mack himself was at the other. Harry the Gimp bet the dice to lose and took any bet. Billy Mack just watched to make sure nobody switched dice.
Jim Crow Ritter was betting big; he seemed to have plenty of money.
Sweating hard and keeping his nerve geared up with whisky and thoughts of the thousand dollars, Fenner watched the game for some thirty minutes. During that time, he saw Ritter talking and drinking with a hulking stranger with a face like an uncured ham. Then another man came in and joined them and Tim Fenner felt his heart begin to miss beats.
The third man was a stranger, but he had a look about him that sent shivers down Fenner’s spine. Young and lithe with coal-black hair, a pale, pocked face, and eyes that cut like broken glass, he moved with a cat’s grace and he wore a thonged-down gun. A killer? He looked the part all right.
But how to find out who and what they were for sure? Fenner stared around him at the grim faces watching the play. He trusted nobody and nobody trusted him. He had to be careful who he started questioning. The trio seemed to be together, but he couldn’t be sure they didn’t have other friends among the clientele at Billy Mack’s.
Finally he saw Sim Power drain his glass and make for the door. Sim was one of Spearhead’s losers, a drunken wreck who was even smaller than runty Fenner. Fenner wasn’t afraid of Sim, and he knew he couldn’t be connected with men like the three at the table.
He rose—unobtrusively, he thought—and followed Power into the night.
Sim Power yelped when the hand fell on his shoulder in the starlit yard. Then, seeing who it was, the drunk swore and pulled free.
“What the hell are you about, Fenner?” he rapped. Even threadbare little bums had no time for Tim Fenner. “What—?”
He broke off with a yelp as Fenner grabbed a handful of his shirt.
“I want information, Power,” Fenner said toughly, relishing the rare feeling of being bigger and stronger than an adversary. “Those three jokers in there at the table. I know the ’breed, Ritter, but who are the pair with him?”
“I don’t damn know ... and if I did I wouldn’t tell—”
Fenner punched him in the nose. Blood flew. The sight excited Fenner. He grabbed Power’s shirt again and slapped him twice across the chops, tough-guy style.
“Names, Power, you little punk. You live in this dive. You know everybody that comes and goes. So let’s hear it. Who’s the feller with the face the color of a dead fish?”
“My name’s Raven.”
The soft, whispery voice came from directly behind Fenner. His fingers relaxed their grip on the shirt and Power shot off like a startled rabbit. Fenner sensed he knew who the man behind him was even before he turned. And he took a long time turning, as if suddenly gone stiff in the joints.
It was the stranger with the chalk-white face. He stood with his hands hooked close together in his shell belt, his feet planted wide. Behind him was the big man with the face like a ham, and Jim Crow Ritter.
Ritter nodded. “That’s the party right enough, Raven. He was the one who dogged me down here from Blacksmith Street. Never thought much of it at the time, but just as well I told you as things turned out, huh?”
“Just as well,” the man called Raven said as Fenner went cold all over. The thin lips quirked. “You see, we saw you follow the bum out and thought we’d tag along. We heard it all, runt. Now we’d like to hear the rest ... like how come you’re so all-fired interested in me and my pards.”
Like a man locked in ice, Fenner tried to get his voice working. He failed. He couldn’t draw his eyes away from Raven’s; he was mesmerized with terror. Then he felt adrenalin pump through him, and he turned to run.
Too late. Jim Crow Ritter and Sam Hogan had had plenty of time to walk behind him. Hogan slapped him to the side and Ritter caught him. The ’breed pinned his arms to his sides and swung him around to face Raven. Fenner started to scream when he saw the dagger in the gunman’s hand. But Ritter’s hand went over his mouth.
Raven smiled as he touched Fenner’s cheek with the cold, sharp blade. Then he whispered, “You’re gonna do some talkin’, ain’t you, little man?”
Chapter Nine – At The Big G
THE PINK-CHEEKED clerk at the Frontier Hotel ran his finger down the ledger columns.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Smart is in room 24, first floor.” He looked up into the pale face. “I’m afraid Mr. Smart isn’t in at the moment, Mr., uh ...?”
“That’s too bad. Where is he, do you know? I’m a friend of his.”
“He left here some time ago with Miss Whitney. I believe I heard them discussing supper.”
“Well, thank you for your trouble.”
“Not at all.”
Raven left the lobby, walked the length of the gallery, then cut down the shadowed alleyway that flanked the Frontier Hotel. Reaching the outside stairs in the back, he glanced left and right, then climbed the stairs two and three at a time.
Room 24 was locked as he’d expected, but a lock proved no obstacle for a man of Raven’s talents. The skeleton keys he’d taken from the body of a thief he’d killed in the Sonoras la
st year proved their worth again, and within a few minutes he was standing inside the room.
He drew the blind before making a light. As he turned up the lamp wick, he noted a splash of crimson on his right wrist. “Careless,” he muttered, then he brushed the blood away with his kerchief before turning to look around the room.
There was no doubt in his mind now that Smart wasn’t who he claimed to be. Hangmen didn’t get sneaks like Fenner to go skulking around for information. From what Fenner had told him, Smart and the big Texan could be just about anybody. Certainly they were dangerous, and too damned nosy to suit either Raven or the men who employed him. Too bad Fenner hadn’t known the fake hangman’s real name. Brazos had called him “Yank,” at Boothill but that didn’t help at all. Maybe something in this room would throw a light on the mystery.
Raven went through the clothes in the bureau and the papers on the dresser, then he spotted the heavy saddlebag under the bed. Dropping the bag on the bed, he unbuckled it and drew out the most beautifully worked double gun rig he’d ever seen. In each cut-away holster nestled a white-handled Colt Peacemaker .44, each weapon well-polished and oiled.
A gunfighter’s rig.
Raven permitted himself only a brief moment of self-congratulation. The moment he’d clapped eyes on Elroy Smart, he’d tabbed him as one of his own deadly trade, just by his style and his look.
He examined the belt closely. No stamped initials or name. Then he drew the right hand Colt, admiring the beautiful balance of the weapon before checking it out. Nothing on the chamber, barrel or butt. He reversed the gun and there, embossed on the base plate were the initials D.B.
It came to him with a jolt. Deep lines appeared at the corners of his bloodless mouth and his eyes glittered. He’d been looking too far down from the top. He should have realized that his man had the style of one of the very best.
His cold lips moved.
“Duke Benedict!”
J. Repose Buckhout’s hands were unsteady as he drew the calico covering over the body of Timothy Leroy Fenner. The undertaker had spent all his adult working life among the dead, and he’d thought he’d developed an immunity to the sight of corpses. But what they’d done to Fenner with the knife before they finished him off and threw him in the river was enough to shake anybody.
It was early morning, but already it was hot in the offices of Dignified Funerals. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, and dust motes danced around the figures of Duke Benedict, Hank Brazos, Jubal Trogg and the sheriff as Buckhout gestured towards the front office. They went through and Buckhout closed the door behind him, then headed directly for the liquor cabinet. The undertaker was so shaken that he even poured a drink for Trogg. Jubal needed it, having been snared by Brazos sneaking into his rooming house at daybreak. Then he’d been brought here to the parlor to view what fisherman Hudd Stroder had found bouncing against his jetty at first light.
Sheriff Calvin swallowed half his drink and ran the back of his hand across his mouth, staring back at the door to the work room. “A dirty business,” he muttered. “Mebbe the dirtiest I’ve seen. Who could do a thing like that?”
“The men who killed Clanton and Channing would be my guess, Sheriff,” said Benedict, lighting a badly needed cigar. They had already informed the sheriff on what Fenner had been doing yesterday, though naturally there had been no mention of Dusty Lane. The marshal had not been at the jailhouse when Benedict reported the finding of the body. Calvin had told him that Brand had gone off hunting stolen cattle.
“Incredible,” Buckhout muttered, and Benedict noted that the undertaker was a bad color. Somebody had told him J. Repose Buckhout had a bad heart; looking at him now, he could believe it.
“I suggest that you take care of Fenner’s remains, Jubal,” Benedict suggested, moving to the doorway to look out. “Mr. Buckhout looks as if he needs a rest.”
Jubal’s dark head bobbed. “Sure ... sure, I’ll take care of it, Mr. Smart.”
“And don’t vanish afterwards either,” Benedict said without looking at the man. “I wish to talk with you later.”
Trogg made a sickly attempt at a grin. “I kinda figgered you might, Mr. Smart.”
The sheriff looked from one man to the other. “Somethin’ goin’ on that I don’t know about?”
Benedict looked over his shoulder, briefly considering whether or not he should confide in the sheriff. He decided against it. Instinct told him that he could trust Jobe Calvin, but the lean, leathery-jawed Marshal Milt Brand was another matter. He’d had cause to be wary of Brand from the start, and the city marshal’s absence on this of all mornings didn’t do anything to increase his confidence in the man. It followed that if he didn’t trust the marshal, it would be foolish to put his faith in Calvin.
“A business matter, Sheriff,” Benedict said casually, then he leaned forward from the doorway as a mounted figure appeared around the Longhorn Street corner. “You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen.”
Calvin scowled as Benedict went out; then, grunting to Buckhout and Trogg, he followed. Benedict was going down the steps, the sunlight sending glints from his immaculately brushed hair. Coming towards them was Hank Brazos astride his big appaloosa, hat tipped forward against the rays of the sun and a Bull Durham cigarette dangling from his lips. Bullpup trotted ahead of the appaloosa, tongue lolling as if he’d been running. Horse and rider were dusty, and dust dulled the sheen of the harmonica big Brazos wore about his throat.
The lawman stood frowning at the approaching horseman for a long moment, then he crossed to Benedict.
“You mind tellin’ me where your helper’s been, Mr. Smart?”
“Searching for sign of the killers, Sheriff.”
“In that case you won’t mind if I stick around and hear if he picked up anythin’?”
“On the contrary, I do mind, Sheriff. Mr. Brazos and I are taking an interest in the business as private citizens. I’m afraid it has nothing to do with the law office.”
The lawman flushed. Brazos reined in before the parlor, dust drifting from around the appaloosa’s legs. Bullpup greeted Benedict with his traditional sniff of indifference and mounted the porch to get into shade. Taking the cigarette from between his lips, Brazos started to speak, but a warning glance from Benedict silenced him.
Catching the look, Calvin’s flush deepened. “All right, Mr. Smart,” he said thinly, starting off. “Keep it to yourself. But you might as well know that I’m beginnin’ to think you’re actin’ mighty peculiar for a hangman, and maybe I’ll let your superiors know about it.”
“That’s your privilege, Sheriff.”
“What’s eatin’ him?” Brazos grunted as the lawman walked off.
“Nothing important,” Benedict said. “Well?”
The Texan swung down, let the reins drop and fingered back his dusty hat. “Pay dirt, Yank ... of a kind.”
Benedict’s gray eyes brightened. He’d sent Brazos scouting for a lead on the killers immediately after Fenner’s body had been found. He’d done so confidently, secure in the knowledge that Hank Brazos was in a class of his own when it came to tracking and sign reading. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
“I figgered there was no point wastin’ time in town,” Brazos said, leaning his broad back against an upright, “so I started to circle the town. Mebbe you noticed there was a heavy dew last night? Well, I figgered there wouldn’t be many fresh tracks over the dew, and that was how it turned out. I cut the tracks of one horse pokin’ south and followed ’em five miles until I caught up with the mail rider. Then I come back and found the sign of a wood-cutter’s wagon and a hide freighter. And that was all—except for the tracks of four horses pointin’ west.”
“And they were?”
“Don’t rightly know. But I followed ’em fifteen miles to a place called Wilson’s Pass. I struck an old prospector down there and he told me the only folks who use the pass are the hands from the Big G Ranch.” Brazos’ blue eyes were intent on Benedict’s face a
s he paused before going on. “I figured we’d better talk it over before I went any further.”
Benedict’s voice was soft. “The Big G … that’s the Garroway Ranch isn’t it?” Brazos nodded and he went on. “And Garroway is a member of the Combine.” He reached out and clapped the Texan on the shoulder. “Johnny Reb, I do believe things are beginning to add up. Of course, there is no guarantee that the tracks you followed were made by the horses belonging to the men who killed Fenner, but in my opinion the situation is encouraging.”
Brazos nodded in agreement, then he flipped his butt away. “There’s somethin’ else. I reckon I recognized the hoof-prints of one of the horses. It had diamond-shaped nails, and they’re mighty rare.” He paused for effect. “Marshal Brand’s horse is shod like that. I noticed that the day of the hangin’. Brand’s horse has also got a back hoof that turns out a touch more than the other. I’d be willing to bet money Brand’s horse made that sign.”
Benedict let a held breath go. “The marshal isn’t about this morning. The sheriff said he’s out of town.”
“Then that clinches it. So what’s it add up to, Yank?”
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