After an hour, Hawkstone led the parade off the main trail and into raw sagebrush country with short, thick brown grass and mesquite and junipers all about.
‘I’m a lawman,’ Yates said. ‘A town marshal.’
Hawkstone half-turned in the saddle. ‘That supposed to impress me? You set up the bank job three years ago. I think you torched my house and shot Big Ears Kate. She might have been shallow on true affection and loyalty, but she was kind of a good old gal – soft on a cold winter’s night. She didn’t deserve to be gunned down.’
‘It’s complicated,’ the marshal said.
‘The hell you say. Uncomplicate it.’
‘Pearl Harp is coming in on the Tucson train tomorrow. She may have this hombre, Roscoe Dees, with her. They know how bankers and copper-mine ramrods set up payroll stagecoach deliveries. Set them up and deliver so nobody knows.’
‘That ain’t got nothing to do with me,’ Hawkstone said. ‘I’m done with that life.’
‘You figure to take your money and ride off someplace?’
‘That’s exactly what I figure.’
‘Pearl wants you in on this. It don’t help you killing Hobson, her old partner.’
‘I ain’t in the business of help.’
Another hour of walking the horses along, they were at a shallow canyon. They dismounted. Black Feather stood off, the rifle still on the marshal.
‘You can’t just kill a town marshal, Hawkstone. Killing a lawman will send a big posse after you. I can fix up the Hobson killing – say I done it ’cause he was resisting arrest. I’ll do it, too. You got no blame in it. And I’ll get the reward. You come in with Pearl and the rest of us, I’ll see you got no connection to the killing – hell, I’ll fix it so you weren’t even there.’
Hawkstone rubbed his chin. ‘Sounds good, but I ain’t got no trust. Hobson had to go, not only ’cause he took my money, but he shot me and left me hot and dry – couldn’t let that dangle out there without doing somethin’.’ He turned to Black Feather. ‘What you think, my brother?’
‘Can’t believe this one.’
‘And that’s the twist of it. Marshal, you just can’t be trusted. I’ll have to get back to you on your plan.’
Yates said, ‘Let’s call it a one-time offer.’
‘Take off your clothes,’ Hawkstone said.
‘What?’
‘Either that or the Apache here will shoot your foot.’
Leather Yates pulled everything off except his boots. He smelled in the clean air like a cavalry latrine. Black Feather stepped upwind, keeping the Winchester pointed to the flabby, fish-white belly.
‘Boots, too,’ Hawkstone said. He tied the smelly clothes together, and straddled them across the marshal’s horse’s saddle. ‘We’ll be taking your pony along with us – leave him at the Way Out Saloon. We’ll keep your boots, though. You’ll have a hard walk but you’ll probably make it.’
‘You can’t do this,’ Yates cried. ‘At least leave me my boots.’
Hawkstone and Black Feather mounted.
Hawkstone took the reins of the marshal’s horse. ‘I leave you with the words of an old friend – as best as I can remember.’
‘Ben Franklin,’ Black Feather said with a smile.
‘Let no pleasure tempt, no profit allure, no ambition corrupt, no example sway, no persuasion move you to do anything you know to be evil – that way you will always live jolly.’
Chapter Ten
Anson Hawkstone and Black Feather rode easy towards the Apache village, less than five miles out. The sun was setting and cast a scarlet spray across the landscape. Hawkstone didn’t carry good feelings about shooting down Boot Hobson, but the outlaw had shot him, and he felt satisfied now that he had his money back. He reckoned he might regret not doing the same to the marshal.
Black Feather said, ‘You churn inside – it shows on your face.’
‘What if pony soldiers from Fort Grant rode in to shoot up the village?’
‘Why would they?’
Hawkstone said, ‘Suppose they been enticed? Suppose somebody told them something to set ’em off, stir ’em up?’
Black Feather frowned. ‘Who? What?’
‘Say some fellas want a man to do something he don’t want to do. Say they got no more tricks to use against him, and he keeps saying no. What trail do they take?’
Black Feather pondered as the horses stepped along side by side. ‘They go after what’s his – what he cares about – those he worries over. They hold a gun to the head of the innocent.’
‘Lawmen think I don’t care about nobody or nothing.’
‘Not true. And that makes you vulnerable. There is the old woman and Hattie.’
‘And you, and Burning Buffalo, and Tommy Wolfinger – and the children and old folks. There are too many.’
With just enough light to see the trail, they rode in silence for a spell.
‘You have a path to track,’ Black Feather said, making it in a statement, not a question.
Hawkstone said, ‘I’m leaving the money with you. Tomorrow, early, I ride to Tucson.’
‘We ride together.’
‘No, you prepare the village for trouble. Most important, you show a path of protection for the old woman and Hattie.’
‘You intend Hattie to be your woman?’
‘She is like my young sister, but she is fodder for too many hungry fangs. In an attack she will be shredded of all innocence through every part of her.’
‘You are certain of an attack?’
‘I am certain of nothing, my brother. They want me as part of the hold-up. I’m thinking I got to do it, if they touch what I love.’
The old woman fixed rabbit, one of three that Burning Buffalo had shot and dropped at the wickiup door for Hattie. Hawkstone reckoned Burning Buffalo was the front suitor for her, and probably the best choice. When darkness came, and after food and water had been taken, Hawkstone met Burning Buffalo, Tommy Wolfinger and Black Feather along the bank of Disappointment Creek for whiskey and cigarettes, and talk.
Burning Buffalo lightly rubbed the lance scar along his left cheek. He tossed his long pigtail over his shoulder to hang down his back. Tommy Wolfinger turned down the offer of makings. At twenty-three, he looked lithe as a boy, with straight black hair. Like Burning Buffalo, he carried a Remington tucked in a belt around his buckskin. While both braves competed for the attention of Hattie Smooth Water, they carried no animosity towards each other.
Moonlight winked silver over the slosh of the creek, moonlight sharp and shiny as a knife blade. Shadows of cottonwood surrounded them. They sat on boulders the size of buffalo. Black Feather took a pull from the whiskey bottle and handed it to Hawkstone.
‘The cavalry got no gripe with us,’ he said.
Hawkstone drank and passed the bottle to Tommy Wolfinger. ‘A big payroll stagecoach hold-up with word the money is here might fire ’em off. Longfellow Copper Mining is big medicine – might roust out fifteen pony soldiers to come stampeding down on this village.’
‘We will move village,’ Tommy said. ‘We are only a band of thirty humans – mostly women and little ones – we cannot fight so many.’
‘I got to find out more first,’ Hawkstone said. ‘Day after tomorrow, you meet me in Tucson. All of you, dress like white men – heavy coats to cover your hair, cowboy hats, boots, ride with saddles. Be ready to do some hold-up.’
‘Rider coming,’ Black Feather said.
Hawkstone dropped the empty whiskey bottle in the creek. The three braves moved off silently, watching the rider come in, the rider sitting tall in the saddle, looking around as if he owned the land around him, and the village, and the people in it.
‘Anson Hawkstone,’ the rider said. One of his pearl-handled Peacemakers glinted in the moonlight. ‘Let’s go for a night ride.’
‘Federal Marshal Casey Steel, you on a kill raid?’ Hawkstone said.
The marshal waited silently while Hawkstone saddled the chestnut mare. They
rode from the village at a slow walk, moving in the direction of the burned house a mile away. Steel’s face was hidden from moonlight by the black Montana Peak Stetson pulled low over his eyes, a shadow with endless other shadows. His stocky frame rested easily in the saddle. Hawkstone had no intention of drawing down on a United States Federal Marshal.
Steel said, ‘Fresh outta prison and already in trouble. You hard cases never learn.’
‘What trouble?’
‘You made Leather Yates trek three miles back from the desert buck naked, cooked medium rare. You even kept his boots – that’s serious, keeping a man’s boots. He told me how you took your stolen saddle-bags after he shot Boot Hobson trying to escape capture. What’s in them bags?’
‘Personal things.’
‘Uh huh, whatever happened to Big Ears Kate?’
‘Took off with a fella, I hear.’
‘Ain’t seen nothing of Billy Bob Crutch, neither. You reckon they run off together?’
‘Mebbe – after burnin’ down my house.’
‘She didn’t exactly pine away for you over them three years. I hear she shared feathers with Boot Hobson, who was callin’ himself Pine Oliver at the time. Now what’s interestin’ to me is he was the same Boot Hobson used to run with Pearl Harp – her just fresh released from Yuma Territorial and on a train comin’ to Tucson. Is that interestin’ to you, Anson Hawkstone?’
‘Hobson is recently deceased. Their runnin’ together days are done.’
‘You gonna meet her at the station?’
‘Maybe Marshal Yates will take care of that.’
‘Why you reckon she’s coming to Tucson?’
‘I don’t reckon.’
Steel came out quick with it. ‘You dig up the money yet?’
‘What money?’
The tall black Stetson nodded. ‘Yeah, you got it, got it hid someplace else now.’
‘Marshal, I’m just trying to get settled after long, bad prison time.’
‘What you hear from One-Eye Tim Brace and Wild Fletch Badger?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I hear tell they in Tucson. If you go there, I’ll figure the old gang is gettin’ together again for some action. You coming to town, Hawkstone?’
Chapter Eleven
Pearl Harp stepped down from the stagecoach with a helping hand from the man riding shotgun. It would still be many months before train tracks reached the new station platform in Tucson, expected sometime before 1880. City fathers – including the young rich banker, Barron Jacobs – told newspapers Tucson would become more civilized with the coming of the train. He’d seen it in other towns where his family had built banks. These days Tucson was just as rowdy, filthy, noisy and deadly as that silver mining camp town, Tombstone, to the south.
For now, at tracks end, sixty miles north in Casa Grande, passengers were shuttled by fast stagecoach along a well-used track road to the downtown station. Pearl thought to see Boot Hobson waiting for her. The air wasn’t warm, the sun keeping a low glare with a cold wind heralding the coming winter.
From Yuma Prison she had hired a wagon to take her into Yuma, where money wired from her parents waited. Pearl bought a long-skirt chemise, and grey serge travelling dress and jacket, and heeled shoes. Inside the small carpet bag, along with a split riding skirt and boots and buckskin pants, and unmentionables, she kept a Remington .36 revolver. Another weapon, an eleven-ounce, double-barrel, single-action Remington .41 derringer, cost her eight dollars, and she carried it in a small pocket towards the back of her dress. She wore no bonnet. A decent range hat had to be available in a town the size of Tucson.
Off the stage, standing on the boardwalk holding the handle of her carpet bag, she watched a flush-faced, rotund city marshal sidle up to her.
He tipped his hat brim. ‘Pearl Harp? Marshal Leather Yates, at your service.’
‘I got to check in with you?’
‘Oh, no, I’m marshal of Wharton City, not Tucson. This greeting is personal. I got to tell you about the demise of your friend, Boot Hobson – gunned down by that back-shooting outlaw, Anson Hawkstone.’
‘So you say. My affection for Anson Hawkstone runs a little deeper than it did for Boot Hobson. I understand Boot habituated with Big Ears Kate in Hawkstone’s bed instead of her visiting Anson – he even changed his name.’
‘True, true – here, let me take that bag.’
‘The bag is fine. Where can I get me a hotel room?’
‘I got a reservation at the Orndorff Hotel. A coupla boys are waiting for us. You travellin’ alone?’
‘Roscoe rides in tomorrow, bringin’ my horse. He left a few days before me. The boys can stew for a day. How many you figure we got?’
‘For what?’
‘Boot and me wrote back and forth – and I had long pillow talk with Anson Hawkstone while we were in prison – so I know you ain’t no honest marshal. You planned the bank up there in Mineral City three years ago, and you want to ramrod this.’
The marshal squinted. ‘You got a problem with that?’
‘How many we got?’
They began walking down the boardwalk toward the hotel, the marshal partly limping and shuffling and waddling in sunburn pain. Pearl didn’t ask about his pain because she didn’t care. She noticed glances from men. She figured the dress was too tight in the waist and bodice – men liked to guess what was under. She wouldn’t be giving any intimate favours in Tucson. She’d keep giving it up to Roscoe, or switch over for Anson Hawkstone. She liked that idea. Anson had more experience on the sheets than Boot or Roscoe, or even the warden who had known only his fat wife. Anson plain knew more, and had that tall, lean body – must have been all them Indian maidens he coupled with when growing with the Apache. Maybe Apache women were better on the blanket than white women. What she knew for certain, it was sure pleasurable to be out, breathing clean, fresh, free air.
Marshal Leather Yates bounced beside her, trying to keep up. ‘How many? From the past we got One-Eye Tim Brace and Wild Fletch Badger.’
‘Sounds like a pair of first-class thinkers,’ Pearl said.
‘Good gun hands. We got you, and I assume, Roscoe.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I actually don’t take part.’
‘Then who needs you?’
‘I organize the job.’
‘That what you call it? Organize?’
‘Logistics. I can get better information, being a town marshal and all. Besides, those boys will be enough to get it done. We don’t need no more.’
‘Roscoe has information. Plus, there’s Hawkstone.’
‘I wouldn’t count on Hawkstone.’
‘I am counting on him, for sentimental reasons. I want him with me.’
‘He don’t show much enthusiasm.’
‘Then you do what it takes to enthuse him. Ain’t that what it means by logistics? Ain’t that organization?’
They reached the hotel and went inside.
The marshal said, ‘We may have to force him. Find some way to make him want to go along. ’Course, maybe you can. . . .’
Pearl sweetened her voice, noticing the marshal liked to stare at her bodice. ‘I’ll do what I can, Marshal. Only, I ain’t nothin’ really but a woman. I don’t know how much influence I’ll have on him.’
‘Oh, I think you do,’ Marshal Leather Yates said.
With Pearl Harp in her room, Marshal Yates saw One-Eye Tim Brace and Wild Fletch Badger in the lobby of the Orndorff. He pressed them outside to the boardwalk. ‘Let’s find a saloon.’
‘Won’t be hard. This town’s got one between every building,’ One-Eye said. He stood short, about five-five. His left eye had been shot out during one of his many lifetime robberies; he kept his black plains Stetson pulled low on one side to shadow the cavity. His Remington pistol was tucked down his cartridge belt.
Wild Fletch Badger chomped a bite from a plug of chewing tobacco.
Past the Congress Hall Saloon, where town legislatures had once gathered when Tucson was capital of
the Arizona Territory, was the Tucson Palace Saloon, an unpainted frontier watering hole, where clerks and interns and go-for runners tossed down mugs of beer and whiskey cut with some unknown substance. Next to that was where the two-dollar ladies hung out to ply their trade – the name usually with Gentlemen somewhere in it, though not many genuine gentlemen participated.
In the saloon, the three men took a corner table and ordered beer.
‘When do we do this?’ Wild Fletch Badger said. Fletch was raised by outlaws and had been a wild jasper his whole life – which was why Yates had chosen him. Skinny as a pole and just under six feet, he had a pinched buzzard face, dressed unclean and ragged, was quick to fight and quicker to shoot. He carried a Colt .45 on his right hip. His thinking came quick and shallow, and he took what he wanted without hesitation. His sudden movements usually showed thoughtless action.
The marshal said, ‘Looks like we gotta wait for this Roscoe Dees fella, be in town tomorrow.’
Wild Fletch spat a gob of juice to the floor. ‘How many we got so far?’
Yates glanced at them with his scarlet sunburned face, and at Fletch with disgust. He swallowed a slug of beer and wiped his mustache with the back of his pudgy hand. ‘You two, Pearl Harp, her friend Roscoe – and maybe Anson Hawkstone.’
One Eye said, ‘That’s a lot of pieces cut from the pie – plus your handsome share.’
‘It’s a big pie,’ the marshal said. ‘According to the late Boot Hobson, it might go for fifty thousand or more.’
‘Why do we need Hawkstone?’
‘She wants him.’ Marshal Yates grimaced in pain. His burned back hurt. His belly stung. Mostly, his swollen feet hurt from walking hot sand barefoot, scampering from shadow to shadow, now stinging and crushed in his new boots. Every movement made him catch his breath with pain. He wished to be in his room, the damned boots off, soaking his swollen feet in Epsom salts. Inside, his head burned with rage each time he heard Hawkstone’s name.
Fletch drained his beer. ‘I tell you one thing, I want the money that bastard got hid. At first, I just wanted a share on account of we got none of the bank robbery. Now, I want it all.’ He spat on the floor again, adding to the peppered surface.
Shadow Shooters Page 5
