Bannerman the Enforcer 43

by Kirk Hamilton

  The train shuddered to a stop. It wasn’t the smoothest stop in railroad history but he figured the passengers wouldn’t mind being tossed into a heap once they knew there was no more danger from bandits.

  He turned to the man he had knocked down off the tender and threw him over one shoulder as he climbed down and walked back along the long line of cars, ignoring the questions from the white-faced and in some cases irate passengers hanging out the windows.

  He stopped beside the private car and a minute or so later the door opened and Mattie stepped out tentatively. She smiled widely when she saw Yancey and he dumped the still-unconscious outlaw as she ran towards him and he took her in his arms, hugging her to him. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and did a little of both.

  Looking past her head, Yancey saw the tall, lean form of his father standing on the car’s platform, looking down at him, the double action Smith and Wesson still in his hand. Yancey was shocked at his gaunt appearance but the same old hardness that he remembered was still there in the narrowed eyes.

  “Howdy, Pa,” Yancey said quietly, still holding the shaking Mattie.

  C.B.’s lips compressed. “I might’ve known you’d have a hand in nearly getting me killed!”

  After the first shock of the words had passed, Yancey’s own lips tightened and he felt his gaze harden.

  It looked as if nothing at all had changed; not even the prospect of death by disease, it seemed, had mellowed Curtis Bannerman in any way.

  He still hated Yancey and looked like doing that until the moment of his death.

  Yancey swore under his breath as he felt Mattie’s arm tighten convulsively about him. Then he said quietly, “Lucky for him I managed to board the train at the Arrowhead Tank—in time.”

  Five – Background

  The train was rolling once again. The caboose guard was an ex-engineer, seeing out his last years of service in an easier capacity for the railroad company, and he took over the driving, while a burly passenger volunteered to be fireman.

  The man Yancey had knocked out regained consciousness but hadn’t told them anything. Yancey had questioned him only briefly and then tied him up and dumped him in the caboose while he and several passengers took a look back down the track.

  Curtis Bannerman and Mattie were resting amidst the wreckage of the private car.

  Two of the men who had been shot off the train had apparently only been wounded. There were signs where they had fallen and later clambered to their feet and managed to get away into the brush. Some of the passengers were keen to go after them but Yancey told them not to bother. They had three dead ones and the live one back in the caboose: it was enough.

  He asked that the men search for the horses, those that had run off and any others they might find stashed away in the brush.

  The men were back in twenty minutes with half a dozen mounts. One of them was a piebald and Yancey would have sworn it was the same one that had been ridden away from that draw by the bushwhacker outside of Waco ...

  The private car was a shambles and C.B. looked strained and ill. He was dozing, one hand spread over his chest, when Yancey swung back aboard and the train got rolling. Mattie, slightly disheveled and pale, but bearing up well, considering, came down the length of the car to Yancey, a finger up to her lips, rolling her eyes towards the dozing C.B.

  She indicated that they should step outside onto the platform. Here in the sunshine, with a gentle breeze and the slight chill of the mountain air, the recent raid and thundering guns seemed a long way off—until they turned and looked at the bullet-scarred door and smashed glass.

  “Anybody else hurt on the train, Yancey?” she asked.

  The big Enforcer leaned his hip against the iron scrollwork of the platform rail and twisted up a cigarette, looking past his sister to the country rolling by. They wouldn’t have long before they pulled into Dallas.

  In answer to his sister’s question, Yancey shook his head slowly. “Nope. They seemed to concentrate on only two things, Mattie; the loco controls and the car here with you and pa. They’d have gone for the loco cabin, anyway, I reckon, if they’d planned to rob the whole damn train.”

  She stiffened, frowning at him.

  “That rather sounds like you think they only wanted to raid this car, Yancey.”

  He blew a plume of smoke as he shook out the vesta and flicked it over the rail. He removed the cigarette from his lips, nodding slowly to the girl. “Looks that way, Mattie.” He told her about the attempt on his life in Austin and again at the draw outside of Waco. “The feller there got away but he rode off on a piebald bronc. I’m tolerably sure it’s the same one those fellers brought in from the brush back up the track a way.”

  Mattie frowned again. “You—you’re trying to link these things together, Yancey? The attempts on your life and—the raid on the train?”

  He looked at her steadily. “Might not have if you hadn’t written in your letter that you figured pa was in more danger from outside influences than from his health.”

  She was silent, staring out at the last of the mountain range as the train rolled down onto the plains and began its long, straight run into Dallas.

  “Tell me about his health, Mattie,” Yancey asked quietly. “It’s more than six months since I got your first letter saying he was being treated for some sort of chest ailment.”

  Mattie nodded, still looking out at the scenery.

  “He complained about pains in the chest, Yancey. Constant pains. Sometimes they hit him so suddenly and so gripingly that he was stopped dead in his tracks, gasping, white as a ghost. Only after considerable rest and a warm brandy or two did he get some relief. You know, pa; stubborn as all get-out. Refused to see a doctor. Finally, I brought Doctor Carmody to the house on some pretext and, as luck would have it, pa had one of his attacks during dinner. Carmody examined him and said he thought there was a lot of undue tension there, muscle spasms. He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t something to do with his heart and asked pa to go to his office for a major check-up. I had to do a lot of badgering, but finally he did go along.”

  She paused and turned to face Yancey, her face showing some of the strain she had gone through. Her hands twisted together at waist level.

  “He did find some heart trouble. But pa had been wheezing and coughing a lot, too, and Carmody diagnosed lung disease. He’s reluctant to say outright that it’s consumption, but I’m—I’m afraid that’s what it is.” She paused again and cleared her throat, controlling the tremor that had crept into her voice, tilting her chin back in a typical gesture that Yancey remembered since his childhood. Mattie was used to putting on a strong face under all circumstances in her capacity as her father’s official hostess. Her strength showed through now as she continued, minimizing her own part in the nursing and care that Carmody had prescribed. “He was hell’s own trouble, as you’d expect,” she added, with a faint smile: “Papa being papa. Carmody prescribed some foul-tasting medicine that he refused to take. Finally, I managed to get him to use it when the pains got worse but—really, Yancey, his coughing is bad. He has a lot of congestion. There have even been traces of blood, mild hemorrhages. I think it’s what decided Carmody that the best thing would be for pa to get right away from the pressures of his ’Frisco business and the dank sea air there, and come out here to the dryness of Texas. He was hoping pa would delegate business responsibility, too, but he’s decided to audit the books of the Dallas branch of the bank and involve himself in the running of the Big-B ranch. He maintains it’ll be a change to his usual routine and I can’t deny it, but it’s still the sort of strain he should be avoiding.”

  Yancey smoked as Mattie fell silent for a spell. He examined his cigarette stub and then flicked it over the rail to fall to the cinders of the tracks.

  “What makes you think he’s in some sort of danger?” he asked finally.

  She took her time answering. “I—I’ve just had a—feeling. Suspicions, if you like. Something didn’t seem quite r
ight but I couldn’t—still can’t—put my finger on exactly what I mean, Yancey.”

  He nodded. “I’m kind of prone to hunches myself.”

  Mattie smiled faintly. “Yes. I guess you could call it a hunch.”

  “What sparked it off?”

  “It’s hard to say. There was a mysterious break-in at head office. Nothing seemed to be missing, but pa confessed he was sure someone had been through his private papers in the safe and then closed it up again.”

  Yancey pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

  “Then there were strange highs and lows on the Stock Exchange and it seemed that some Eastern groups were trying to take over Bannerman Holdings. Papa handled it in his usual astute way—don’t ask me how because I don’t know, or understand, the details—but the strain on him was tremendous. That’s when his health really deteriorated and Carmody insisted that if he didn’t move away from the coast he would be dead in a few months. He decided to make arrangements and was on one of his clipper ships in San Francisco Bay giving the captain some precise instructions when the ship literally blew up. They said later it was spontaneous combustion in its nitrates cargo and this is quite possible as it’s always a dangerous cargo to haul.”

  “But ...?” prompted Yancey as she paused again.

  “Well, pa was lucky: he was blown into the water and a fishing boat on its way out was passing within yards of him and plucked him aboard in a few minutes. Only three crewmen and the bo’sun survived the explosion.”

  Yancey’s face was very grim now as he waited for her to continue.

  “Then,” Mattie went on, dragging down a deep breath, “then our mansion on Telegraph Hill caught fire ...”

  “What!”

  “In the middle of the night. We still don’t know what was the cause, though it appears to have started in the kitchen area.”

  “You’ve got your doubts, though?”

  “Yes—while we do store coal oil there, we found two broken jars in the ashes well away from the usual storing place. And both pa and I were lucky to survive. Pa especially.”

  Yancey nodded. “Guess the smoke would play hell with his lungs.”

  Mattie’s blue eyes were unblinking as she stared at him. “Yancey, I couldn’t waken pa. It was almost as if he had been drugged. Felipe, the head servant, managed to get him to a window and lower him out on a rope. Otherwise he would have died. And so would I because I would’ve been trapped during my attempts to waken him.”

  “How could he have been drugged?”

  Mattie shook her head. “I don’t know. But even when he came round, he seemed—strange. Vague. Distant. His pupils were dilated and he said it was two days before he could see clearly.”

  “And the house?”

  “They managed to save most of it. The kitchen wing and some of the lower rooms were destroyed. We were lucky no one died. I simply can’t accept that these things are coincidence, Yancey.”

  He nodded. “Now we have the raid on the train; an all-out attempt to kill pa. I think you’re right, Mattie: someone’s out to kill him. They tried for me so I wouldn’t be around to protect him, I guess. Thing is, what’s behind it?”

  Mattie looked at her brother levelly. “Father’s made dozens of enemies over the years, Yancey. You know how ruthless he is in business.”

  “And everything else,” Yancey added with a bitterness he was unable to keep from his voice. He sighed. “Yeah. Well, I guess he won’t be happy about it, but I’m here now and I aim to stick around and see that nothing happens to him.”

  She put a hand on his arm and smiled. “I was hoping you’d be able to do that.”

  He gave her a faint, crooked smile. “Pa won’t like it, of course.”

  “That’s to be expected.”

  Yancey’s smile faded and he nodded silently.

  The train rolled around a curve in the track and in the distance, the buildings of Dallas began to appear, breaking the flat horizon.

  Yancey pushed off the rails. “I’ll go have a talk with that bandit I got hogtied in the caboose before we get to Dallas, I reckon.” But when he got there, the locker door had been smashed in and the man had been bludgeoned to death with an iron wrecking-bar that lay on the floor, blood-spattered with tufts of the man’s hair sticking to it.

  Six – Welcoming Committee

  The train slowed as it rolled in towards the depot in the late afternoon. Leaning out of the broken window in the parlor section of the private car, Yancey saw that the platform was crowded with folk now, many more than had been waiting for the train previously.

  He figured the man he had sent on ahead with the message about the attempted hold-up, had really spread the word through town. The Enforcer figured it best to go along with the generally accepted theory amongst the passengers that it had been a holdup for robbery and that the private car had been the bandits’ target simply because it meant whoever was travelling in it was richer than the regular passengers.

  Even Curtis Bannerman himself was willing to go along with the theory that there had been yet another attempt on his life. At first, he had tried to bluster and make out that he believed that the bandits had been someone being pursued by Yancey and that they had just happened to finish up shooting it out on the roof of his private car.

  Yancey had given him a hard look at that.

  “Don’t try to ram that kind of hogwash down my throat, Pa,” he had said, tersely. “You’re not that loco or simple. You know damn well that this coming on top of the ship explosion and the fire in the mansion is no coincidence, ’specially when you take into account the attempts on my life, too.”

  C.B. had chosen to direct his anger at Mattie, glaring at her as he sat up in the bunk.

  “You had to blab, didn’t you? You had to tell him everything! I suppose I have you to thank for him turning up here on the train!”

  “If you mean that I wrote ahead and notified Yancey when we would be arriving—yes, Pa, you can blame me for that. He’s your son. He has a right to know about things that concern the family.” C.B. had snorted, getting into his stride now that he had successfully diverted attention from the danger to himself.

  “He chose to sever all ties with the family a long time ago. Why should he have any rights where we’re concerned? Why do you think he’s even interested?”

  “Simmer down, Pa,” Yancey had said easily. “You’re not fooling anyone. We mightn’t get along, you and me, but you know I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. You know damn well I’ll do all I can to prevent any harm coming to you.”

  C.B. had turned his glare onto Yancey and he was so long in answering that the Enforcer thought that the old man wasn’t going to acknowledge that he had spoken. Then Curtis Bannerman said:

  “I didn’t come out here to die. I came here to get well. So, if you were hoping to pick up any kind of a legacy in the near future ...” He deliberately let the words trail off.

  Yancey felt his face reddening and Mattie gasped, the shock passing to rising anger. But the Enforcer held up a hand, stopping her as she made to speak, his chill gray eyes on his father’s challenging, lined face. Beneath the coldness and near-hatred, Yancey saw suffering, and this tempered his reply.

  “Pa—the hell with your empire. You know what I think of it. Like you said, I turned my back on it, long ago. I wouldn’t want any part of it. But you’re in my neck of the woods now, and you’re unwell, no matter how much you bluster and bully Mattie in your efforts to try to make her think otherwise, and while you’re here and I’m able to, I aim to look out for you. You don’t have to like it. I just aim to do it.”

  That was an end to it—for then.

  At Dallas, Yancey jumped out of the car and stood on the platform as the train rolled the last few yards into the siding. He stood back as the door opened behind him and Mattie came out with C.B. fussing because she wanted to take his arm.

  “But if I take your arm, it won’t look as if you’re needing support, but you’ll still be
able to lean on me,” she argued.

  “Damn it, girl, I don’t need to lean on you!” he growled, fighting a fit of coughing. He lost the battle and a violent spasm rocked him, wracking his frame so that he reached out to support himself against the car, face purpling, veins knotting in his forehead and standing out like ropes in his neck. The breath wheezed and howled in his congested windpipe and his eyes popped, watering. Mattie reached to put an arm around his shoulders but he thrust her away, doubling over the side rail, hawking.

  He hung there, dragging down great shuddering breaths and Mattie looked worriedly at Yancey who was frowning deeply.

  “Hell! Is it always that bad?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I just gave him some medicine. It often seems to make him worse, but Carmody says it clears the bronchial tubes.”

  “Near shakes him apart!”

  “Yes. I think he’s a little better since he gave up smoking, though.”

  Yancey couldn’t help but smile a little at the picture of his irascible father fighting the nicotine habit. It must have been sheer hell living within reach of him at that time.

  Yancey turned and saw the Dallas sheriff at the foot of the steps, looking up quizzically at the bullet-pocked car.

  “Some trouble up at the tanks, I hear,” the lawman said, addressing himself to C.B.

  The elder Bannerman jerked a thumb towards Yancey. “He knows all about it. He was there.” Then he took Mattie’s elbow and started down the steps to the cinders, gripping the rail tightly. The sheriff stepped back and watched them walk down the platform towards a knot of men who hurried forward. Yancey noticed that some of the group wore range clothes while two were dressed in claw hammer coats and striped pants. He recognized one of these as Lincoln Barnett, president of the Dallas branch of the Bannerman First National Bank.

  Then the sheriff was talking to Yancey again.

  “Understand you took one of the outlaws alive?”