Bannerman the Enforcer 43

by Kirk Hamilton

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Business tycoon C. B. Bannerman – father of Governor Dukes’ top Enforcer Yancey Bannerman – was sick with lung fever. He could stay in the damp, foggy atmosphere of San Francisco and die, or move out to a drier, warmer climate for a while, in hopes that his health might improve.

  C.B. decided to travel west to Texas, where he had a ranch and the biggest bank in Dallas. But someone was determined that he should never reach his destination.

  Fortunately, Yancey was around to fight off the bushwhackers, but there was still a mystery to be solved. Who were the would-be killers, and why did they want C.B. dead?

  In the end there was no shortage of suspects, but to get to the bottom of it all, Yancey needed help. And when Yancey needed help, the gun-swift Johnny Cato and his awesome Manstopper were only a call away …

  BANNERMAN 43: TEXAS EMPIRE

  By Kirk Hamilton

  First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd

  Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  First Digital Edition: June 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.

  One – Death Sentence

  They were condemning Curtis Bannerman to death.

  That was the way the tycoon looked at the doctor’s advice, when the medic told him that the best thing he could do was get away from the seaborne fogs of the Barbary Coast and head for the dryer climes of the Frontier.

  “That chest of yours—and I include heart as well as lungs, C.B.,” the doctor continued, “is not going to get any better if you stay on the coast.”

  “What in blazes are you talking about, man?” roared Curtis Bannerman, moustache bristling, eyes clear and staring from a nest of crows’ feet, jaw jutting like the prow of a man-o’-war. “This is my home! I live here! I run my financial empire from ’Frisco. All my timber holdings, ranches, railroads, shipping lines, the whole blamed lot! You think I can just get up and hook my private railcar to a locomotive and head out West?” He shook his head vigorously, the thick silver hair coming adrift a little about his ears. “You’re loco!”

  Doctor Carmody narrowed his eyes but did not move from his seemingly relaxed position in his leather-padded chair across the desk. He toyed idly with his nickel-plated stethoscope and pursed his lips, sighing gently. Then he nodded.

  “I expected such a reaction from you, C.B., but it doesn’t change a thing. You can rant and rave all you like—though I advise against it, for your heart can’t stand up to your kind of rages—but the fact remains, your lungs are diseased and the tissues are inflamed, highly inflamed. Already there are pools of infection there that have not responded to treatment. It means chronic infection is setting in and there’s no telling when it may turn acute. Certainly, this West Coast climate is aggravating it.”

  “Hell, man, it’s spring! Not quite out of winter, not fully into summer. I always get chesty this time of the year. You just give me some of the usual medicine and I’ll be right in a few days.”

  Carmody shook his head slowly, drilling his cold eyes into C.B.’s gaunt face. He was a bald man, thick-chested, heavy-jowled; he looked more like a saloon bouncer than a medico but he was a good sawbones—otherwise Curtis Bannerman would never have hired him five years ago. Carmody had his own troubles, with a wife who was a permanent invalid and two growing children to educate. He dressed and lived frugally so that everything he earned went to his family. Not that any of that cut any ice with Curtis Bannerman; C.B. looked for value for his dollar and Carmody was a good medical man; that was all that Bannerman cared about. Whether the man was a pillar of the community or a grave-robber carrying out bizarre medical experiments outside of his office was of no never mind to the big financier.

  “It’s been several weeks already, C.B.,” the doctor told Bannerman quietly. “Your lungs should have cleared-up long ago with that medicine I gave you. I’m going to prescribe some new linctus and I’m going to prescribe it by the gallon.” He snapped his head up and smiled thinly as he caught the older man’s startled reaction to that. “That’s right; by the gallon. So you’ll have plenty with you when you move out West.”

  “You’re taking one hell of a lot for granted, Doc!”

  “You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong, C.B. If I tell you the only way to get your lungs back in shape is to head for the dryer climes of the Frontier, you know I’m not just talking to hear the sound of my own voice.”

  Bannerman frowned thoughtfully, long-fingered hands clasped over the silver top of his cane. He shook his head slowly.

  “Don’t know how in hell I’m going to arrange it. I’m in the middle of complicated dealings at the moment. Fact is, some eastern financiers—New York and Philadelphia—are trying to take me over on the stock market. Requires some massive application of every damn trick I know to keep them out of my hair.” He shook his head more vigorously. “No. Out of the question right now, Doc. I couldn’t leave for at least—oh, maybe seven weeks. Might be able to drop it back to six, but more likely have to stretch it to eight. Couple of months.”

  Carmody dropped his stethoscope on the desk with a clatter. “Then you’ll be dead by then,” he announced flatly.

  Bannerman stiffened, his frown deepening. There was a touch of color rising to his cheeks but, underlying it, was the gray pallor of shock.

  “It’s that serious?” he asked and cleared his throat angrily as his voice cracked a little.

  Carmody merely stared at him.

  “Great Lord above!” breathed C.B.

  “I’m sorry I have to hit you with it this way, Curtis,” Carmody said, his mouth pulled down at the corners, “but you’re a man who’s very direct, and I figured you’d like to have it straight from the shoulder.”

  Curtis Bannerman didn’t look up but he waved that aside with a curt gesture of his left hand. He stared at the floor at a point about midway between his feet and the legs of the medic’s desk.

  “Unbelievable,” he whispered. “I—certainly admit to feeling off-color. I cough a lot and there was that trace of blood that prompted me to come see you in the first place. But I never for a moment...” He shook his head and raised his gaunt face, looking levelly at Carmody. “You must’ve made a mistake.”

  Carmody spread his hands in an expressive gesture. “Feel free to consult any other medico in ’Frisco—or beyond, C.B. In fact, I’ll give you the name of a lung specialist, and also direct you to a heart expert. They’ll only confirm what I’ve told you.”

  Bannerman continued to stare at him but his eyes were focused on something only he could see. Then he set his gaze on Carmody’s tough face.

  “No mistake. I’ll accept that. You’ve got a reputation to back you up. But let me get the straight of it: I have lung disease, by which I guess you mean—consumption?”

  “I’d say it’s very possibly heading that way,” the doctor said cautiously. “Certainly you have consumptive symptoms and they must get worse in this climate. Also, you are under constant emotional strain with your many financial holdings requiring your attention and we’re le
arning that it’s not the physical things that put a strain on the heart as we once thought; they account for only a small percentage of heart trouble. Mainly it’s the emotional factors and ...”

  Bannerman held up his hand irritably. “All you’re saying is I have heart trouble, too?”

  “There are signs it is developing.”

  C.B. swore softly. “I wish you damn sawbones would give a straight answer! You’re so damn scared of coming right out and saying exactly what’s wrong! But let’s take it as read, I have lung and heart disease. Would you go along with that?”

  “Ye-es. Yes, most definitely.”

  “Not too many more shocks like that or I could very well keel over right here, with a direct answer like that,” scowled Bannerman and the medic smiled crookedly. “Could they be fatal, these things?”

  “Of course. Without treatment.”

  “And heading for a dryer climate—that’s part of the treatment?”

  “Most definitely. The dry air will help your lungs. When the coughing eases, that’s less of a strain on your heart. You’ll be away from Market Street and your Bannerman First National Bank, your shipping line and all the other dozens of pies you have your financial fingers in. It may take some time, but you’ll gradually ease off all that tension you’ve built up and I’m sure you’ll regain your health.”

  Bannerman bored his gaze into him. “How long?”

  The doctor hesitated. “Six months. A year.”

  “Out of the question! I’ll be robbed blind if I stay away from my offices for that length of time.”

  “Delegate responsibility, man!” snapped Carmody. “Learn to trust people instead of trying to do everything yourself! Isn’t there anyone you’d trust to take the reins in your absence?”

  Curtis Bannerman frowned thoughtfully. There was his daughter Mattie; but, no, she was too useful as a hostess for business dinners and she was a magnificent housekeeper, running the Bannerman mansion on Telegraph Hill with a cool efficiency that he often wished he could transfer to his office. But he would need to take her with him ...

  He tensed a little as he realized he was actually considering taking the medic’s advice.

  If Chuck were alive ... but that was ridiculous. For one thing, his eldest son had been dead these past ten months, and he had died as he had lived: gambling. If he had been alive, turning over the reins of the business to Chuck would have been like giving him an endless supply of money with which to gamble. He had never baulked at embezzling money from his father.

  Not like Yancey, Curtis’ youngest son. If he was in charge, Yancey would be scrupulously honest and he would run things efficiently, for he had a sharp analytical brain and a powerful will with an edge of steel to follow through any task he was given.

  Yancey was a qualified attorney: Curtis had put him through law school, with the idea of making him the company’s corporate attorney. But, typically, Yancey the young man had turned his back on a career in the Bannerman empire and had gone adventuring to the wild frontier. He had lived hard, fought hard, and displayed an unsuspected talent: speed with a six-gun.

  Yancey was now top Enforcer for Governor Lester Dukes in Texas, and was one of the toughest men alive anywhere in the world.

  There was a certain pride even in thinking silently about this, but Curtis Bannerman swiftly quelled it. He and Yancey simply didn’t get on. He was damned if he knew why he had even thought about him at all in the context of looking after his Barbary Coast offices. The man was a gunfighter, no more nor less; a glorified gunfighter—and he had about as much use for his father as C.B. had for his younger son; which was nil.

  Then, only realizing it as he spoke, he knew why he had thought of Yancey just now: C.B. had a vast empire in the State of Texas, comprising cattle ranches, railroads and land holdings.

  It was Yancey’s adopted State and almost before he knew it, C.B. was sighing, looking across the desk at Doctor Carmody and saying:

  “I guess I can arrange things here for a few months. What d’you think of Texas?”

  Carmody frowned, seeming to stiffen a little, and then he gave a crooked smile and made an expansive gesture with his hands.

  “As good a place as any. In fact, probably the best place you could choose.”

  C.B. nodded emphatically. “Good. Because that’s where I’m going.”

  He stood up and tapped his cane against his striped trousers leg as he looked soberly down at the medic.

  “And I’ll be back in three months. Fighting fit,” he said flatly.

  As he turned and stalked out of the office, he reluctantly allowed another thought to drift into his head: he might well run into Yancey out there.

  If he knew Mattie, she would write and let her younger brother know about C.B.’s condition: especially if she thought he didn’t want her to …

  He smiled thinly as he closed the door behind him.

  Maybe they didn’t get along, but it would be—well, good, damn it!—to see young Yancey again. It had been a long time and if C. B. really did have to go to Texas as a matter of life and death, it might well be his last chance to try to patch up the rift between them. The rift that had started the day Yancey had been born—and left his mother an invalid who had required constant nursing until the day she died a few years later ...

  The smile left Curtis Bannerman’s face at the memory and he began to cough as he started down the ornate wooden stairs away from the doctor’s office.

  Two – Bullets

  Mattie Bannerman’s letter to her brother in Texas was long delayed in reaching its destination.

  There had been flood rains and a landslide which had carried away a vast section of rail track around Pike’s Peak and even after it had been repaired, the mail train had been wrecked farther down the slope because the rains had undermined the ground supporting the rails. The iron ribbons had twisted, pulled some of their spikes out of waterlogged ties. The engineer hadn’t realized there was anything wrong until the locomotive’s front wheels hit the insecure rails.

  The train had plunged over the mountainside, dragging several of its cars with it. Eleven people were killed outright, seven more died later in an infirmary and seventeen were injured. Cattle on the train had been lucky: their cars had been towards the rear and only one had toppled down the slope.

  So it was several weeks after Curtis Bannerman had decided in Doctor Carmody’s office to go to Texas that Yancey Bannerman received the letter from his sister.

  He was in Austin. He had just returned from a grueling assignment that had taken him clear down into the Yucatan below Mexico and he was still recovering from a bout of jungle fever when he reported back to Governor Dukes and told him that the assignment had been carried out successfully.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, Yancey,” the old governor told him, rubbing gently at his left shoulder. There were needling pains there, for he was a sufferer of chronic angina pectoris, a painful heart condition he had learned to live with. “You’re not the type to give up easy. John Cato’s due back in town any day. He, too, has just completed a successful mission. Both of you are due some leave. I’d advise you to see Doctor Boles for something for that fever and then take a few weeks off. John doesn’t have as much time off due to him, but I’m sure the pair of you can be together for part of the time and put it to good use.”

  Yancey, a tall, wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped man in his late twenties, nodded wearily. He was still trail-stained, his clothes little more than rags, his face shagged with dark stubble, hair long and unkempt, wolfish face gaunt, with the yellowish tinge of jungle fever. His gray eyes seemed unnaturally bright, as he nodded now to the old governor.

  “Thanks, Governor. I could use a break, I guess. Uh—Kate around?”

  Dukes smiled thinly at Yancey’s question about the whereabouts of his daughter, Kate. He knew she and Yancey were discreet lovers and had been for some years; he also knew that while he lived, Kate would marry no man. She had promised her mother on her d
eathbed that she would take care of her father for as long as he lived. It saddened him sometimes that he was unable to release her from that promise: she would not back down, no matter what, not even when she loved someone as strongly as she did Yancey Bannerman ...

  Now the governor gestured to a side door of his office. “I think you’ll find her through there, Yancey. And—good job, son. A real good job.”

  Yancey smiled and went through the door. Kate was there in a smaller office and she rose and came into his arms without a word, just a warm smile on her open, tanned face, her arms tightly holding him to her. They kissed hungrily and she stepped back, pushing a wisp of hair off her face, the smile fading a little as she saw he was obviously ill.

  “It’s so good to have you back, Yancey!” she told him huskily, holding to his arms, feeling the iron-hard knotted muscles through the ragged cloth of his shirt. Her eyes searched his face. “You’re ill.”

  “Just the last of jungle fever. Had to chase Gonzales into the swamps. A crocodile finally finished him.”

  Kate grimaced. “As long as you’re back safe and sound.” She turned to the desk, opened a small drawer and handed him a thin bundle of letters. “Your mail. One has a San Francisco stamp on it and is in your sister’s handwriting.”

  Yancey’s face brightened. He shuffled swiftly through the letters and looked at the one Kate had referred to. “Mattie’s hand, all right.” He slipped it into a shirt pocket, placed the rest in his hip pocket. “I’ll read it while I’m soaking in a hot tub. Have to see Doc Boles for something for this fever, too. He’ll likely give me quinine. Makes my ears buzz.” He paused and took her shoulders between his hands. “Kate, I’ll move into my rooms in town. I need a few days to rest up and I won’t get them if I’m in my quarters here in the governor’s mansion. Be too many friends dropping by wanting to hear the details about Yucatan and so on. You mind?”

  “Of course I mind,” she told him candidly, smiling faintly. “But I understand, Yancey, and it will be best. I’ll come in tomorrow and well talk. Now, you go see Doc Boles and then head for that hot bath and bed. I expect to see you looking—and feeling—better than you do now when I come in tomorrow.”