Winchester 1886

by William W. Johnstone

Caught red-handed. Saxon nodded, and let out a mirthless chuckle. Or maybe the stock detectives had brought along that running iron, just to make it look like Hyatt had been caught rustling. Of course, Jay Hyatt never had Noble Saxon’s luck. No doubt, he had been rustling when he had paid the piper.

  “Stock detectives, I reckon.” Saxon wished he had bought another bottle of Scotch in Belle Fourche.

  “Not the ones we’ve been dealing with,” Banding said. “This one stuck an ace of spades in Jay’s hand. I gave it to the sheriff.”

  Like that gutless wonder, a pawn for the big ranchers in the basin, would do anything about it.

  The big ranchers had brought in a hired killer.

  Saxon slid from the saddle, fell to his knees, and threw up all that good Scotch. Coughed, gagged, tried to throw up again, only he didn’t have anything left in his belly.

  “You all right?” Banding asked after a while.

  “Yeah.” Saxon’s knees didn’t want to cooperate, but he managed to stand, even got back into the saddle. He was sweating. Smelled bad. Maybe he should have taken a bath in Belle Fourche. “That all the news you got, kid?”

  “Well . . .” Banding shrugged. “I reckon. Figured you might ought to know. Mr. Lyman and Mr. Rivers. They don’t care much for you, you know.”

  “I know.” Lyman and Rivers were the leaders of the Thunder Basin Confederation of Stock Raisers.

  “Be careful, Noble.”

  He laughed. “Don’t need to be careful, kid,” he said, as he nudged the bay into a walk. “I’m lucky.”

  For the longest time, Noble Saxon studied his dugout and corral before riding down the hill to his place. He had decided that maybe he should be a mite careful, but the place looked deserted, and he saw no signs of anybody paying him a visit. He rode down at last, unsaddled the bay, turned the horse loose into the corral, and walked to the dugout he had cut inside the hill.

  He pushed the door open, and stepped inside, holding the Winchester in his right hand, and taking off his “Chief Moses” hat with his left.

  “I wondered,” a Scottish voice called out from inside the dark dugout, “if ye’d ever make it home, Noble Saxon.”

  The rifle fell to the ground, and Saxon backed into the wall.

  “Aye, that’s a good laddie, letting that rifle fall.”

  He almost vomited again. He could felt the sweat pouring from every pore as if someone had hit the lever on a beer tap.

  “Leave the door open, laddie, for so long ’ave I been waiting for ye, I feel like a blind man. No light and all, and, besides, the sky looks lovely this time of day, don’ ya think? Pick up the rifle, though, if ye don’t mind, Noble Saxon, me lad. I’d like t’ ’ave a look at ’er.”

  He obeyed, hoping he could get a look at the stranger, but the man moved back into the shadows. Saxon laid the ’86 on the table, then backed up, against the doorjamb, wondering if he could dive out of the dugout and get away.

  Right. Where could he run? No trees. He would never get to the corral before the gunman, this stock detective—no, this murderer for the Thunder Basin Confederation of Stock Raisers—gunned him down and stuck an ace of spades in his dead grip.

  “Aye. A fine rifle ye have here, Noble Saxon. What caliber? A .45-70?”

  “Fifty,” Saxon muttered, amazed that he could even speak. “Fifty-something.”

  “Impressive.” The man shifted in the chair, but Saxon could only see the gloved hands that rested on his Winchester. “Me? Been using a new Marlin, I ’ave. Shoots a .38 WCF. Not a bad rifle, but methinks how I could use one with a wee more punch. Do ye know what they say of the ’86 Winchester?”

  Saxon saw the rifle disappear, then saw that cavernous barrel sticking out of the shadows, pointed at his chest. He heard the lever being cocked.

  “They say”—the Scottish brogue chuckled—“that it kills on one end. And cripples on the other.”

  That reminded Saxon of just how much his right shoulder hurt from shooting that big rifle.

  It was the last thing Noble Saxon ever thought.

  Later, after sticking an ace of spades in the dead man’s right hand, the killer walked out with Saxon’s rifle. His right boot crushed the dead rustler’s expensive “Chief Moses” hat on the dirt floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Denver, Colorado

  “Jimmy, do you know who’s drinking in the Brown Palace right now?” Deputy U.S. Marshal Will Drake let out an exasperated sigh and jerked open the top drawer to his desk, hoping he could find the writing notebook.

  “Unless you tell me it’s Danny Waco, I don’t rightly care who’s drinking anywhere in this city, Will.” Jimmy Mann’s voice came out filled with intensity and anxiety.

  “It ain’t Waco.” Drake found the writing tablet and slammed the drawer shut.

  “I know Waco left Cheyenne and got to Fort Collins, then sold his horses and took a stagecoach here.” Jimmy sighed. It seemed the closest he had been to the outlaw since Ogallala, Nebraska, last winter.

  “He didn’t stay long, if he even got off the stage.” Drake was up, leaving the notebook on the desktop, hurrying to the window. He pulled back the curtain and watched people passing by the office on foot, in carriages, on horseback. Denver bustled. It always bustled.

  “Ian Nisbet,” he said to the window.

  “Who?” Jimmy turned in his chair, waiting.

  “The Ace of Spades.” Drake muttered an oath and let the curtain block out the light. “Hired killer for various outfits up north. Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas. Killed a bunch of rustlers. You know the type.”

  Jimmy did. Well, he had heard of men of such ilk, but in Arkansas and Indian Territory, he didn’t run into many cattle barons who killed small ranchers and rustlers. He ran into murderers who would kill for a nickel or half a bottle of rotgut. He ran into whiskey runners and drunks, train robbers and bank robbers. He ran into every type of cutthroat that had worn out their welcomes in Texas and Kansas. Stock detectives, though? No, those were to be found in Texas and mostly on the ranges of the Northern Plains.

  “Ace of Spades?” Jimmy asked.

  Drake nodded. He returned to his desk and opened another drawer. He pulled out a flask and two dirty glasses. “Most recently, he hired on with a conglomeration of ranchers in eastern Wyoming. He killed six men. Rustlers. A few of them caught red-handed. One or two, maybe they were honest small-timers, but we’ll never know.”

  The flask was opened and whiskey poured into the dirty glasses. Drake didn’t wait. He lifted his glass in a toast and killed the shot, then refilled the glass. That one, he sipped.

  Jimmy lifted his glass and took a small taste. He didn’t know what kind of whiskey it was, other than dark, and that it practically blistered his lips and tongue. “How do you know he killed them?”

  “He left a calling card,” Drake answered. “He stuck an ace of spades on each victim.”

  “So you’re looking for someone with a lot of playing cards?”

  Drake swore at Jimmy’s attempt at a joke.

  “I’m looking for a butcher who blew away a woman who stepped out of her shack to go to the well or privy.”

  That caused Jimmy Mann to kill his whiskey. “A woman?”

  “Carol Banding,” Drake said. “Nineteen years old. Married to a cowhand who had filed a claim in the Thunder Basin. The way everyone in Wyoming suspects it happened was that Nisbet was waiting for her husband, figured he was in the house. The kid wasn’t. Had gone out to work his herd. Came home, found his wife dead. And here’s where this Nisbet had gall. He stuck an ace of spades in her hand, too.” He polished off that statement with a vile curse.

  Jimmy had to echo that curse.

  “And he’s here.”

  Drake nodded.

  “You need help?”

  Drake sighed and shook his head. “That’s not the way we do things in Denver, Jimmy. This isn’t the Creek Nation. And we don’t have a Hanging Judge. We have”—he laughed, the whiskey having gone to h
is head—“law and order . . . justice. We’ll let Nisbet, the Ace of Spades, hang himself.”

  “All right.” Jimmy sighed. He stood up, extended his hand. “Been a long time since we rode together, Will.”

  Drake shook Jimmy’s hard grip. “Lot of water under the bridge since I left Parker’s court.”

  “You’ve done well for yourself. Read your book. Almost rode down to Dallas two years back to hear your lecture.”

  “Be glad you didn’t. And I know you didn’t read my book. I didn’t either. Didn’t write it. Didn’t read it. Just let some ink-spiller put my name on it.”

  Jimmy Mann had his left hand on the doorknob when Will Drake called out his name. Slowly, Jimmy turned, keeping his hand on the doorknob, but his right on the Winchester ’86.

  “Tascosa,” Drake said.

  “How’s that?”

  Drake started to pour another couple fingers of whiskey into his glass, but thought better of it, and screwed on the top, then dropped the flask into the drawer. “If you’re looking for Danny Waco, I’d make a beeline to Tascosa.”

  Jimmy’s lips pursed. His eyes then hardened. “It’s a long way to Texas, Will.”

  “It is. Word is, though, that German Stevens is planning on robbing the bank there when the ranchers get ready to pay off their crews. End of May, I’d say.”

  “German Stevens?”

  Drake’s head nodded again. “And I got a telegraph from the county sheriff in Trinidad. Seems that Danny Waco was through there a week ago. So was German Stevens. They were seen chatting in some bucket of blood. Waco left. Stevens stayed another day or two. But they shook hands before they parted company.”

  “You trust that lawman in Trinidad?”

  After a shrug, Drake said, “No reason not to.”

  “Why’d he send you that message?”

  Will Drake had to laugh. “I don’t know. I imagine he thought I might like to put it in my next book.”

  A few minutes after Deputy U.S. Marshal Jimmy Mann left Will Drake’s office, the reporter from the Denver Post showed up. Drake tossed him the notebook and left the office without a word, letting the reporter close the door and hurry to keep up.

  They made their way to the Brown Palace.

  By any city’s standards, The Brown Palace was an amazing structure. Built of onyx—the most used in any one building—it had opened for business less than three years earlier. Newspapers had proudly proclaimed it as the greatest hotel between St. Louis and San Francisco.

  They charged a pretty penny to get into one of the rooms, but they allowed anyone who had enough greenbacks stay there. Ian Nisbet had plenty of cash. By the time Will Drake and reporter Paul English had arrived at the hotel’s bar, he had also consumed a lot of the bar’s best bourbon.

  Drake gave English his orders and then pushed back his coattail and moved to the bar. He joined the drunken killer and extended his right hand. “Mr. Nisbet, I presume.”

  The man whirled. His eyes had trouble focusing, but he must have made out the badge on Drake’s lapel “Aye, and who might ye be?”

  “Will Drake.”

  Nisbet’s head cocked. “The author?”

  Drake bowed.

  Nisbet slid his bottle toward Drake. “Gunman, lawman, man of letters.” He laughed a drunken laugh. “Ye plan to put me in that book ye must be working on?”

  “Well, sir, we are two of the best of our business.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Come now, sir, let us not play games. You are the Ace of Spades.”

  Nisbet laughed. “Aye, and if I remember the note in The Wyoming Review, ‘Will Drake will never be a Hickok or Hawthorne.’”

  Drake laughed, too, although he had written a scathing letter to that imbecile who had written that vindictive article in that rag of a newspaper in Laramie.

  “It’s noisy, here, sir,” Drake said. “And crowded. I propose we retire to a place where we can speak in confidence. You have a room here, sir?”

  They made it to the fifth floor, and Drake had to use the key to open the door to Nisbet’s room. The gunman was seriously in his cups.

  The bed was unmade. Whiskey bottles littered the floor and dresser. The chamber pot had not been emptied.

  Drake was surprised, though he guessed that Nisbet had run off any maid. Only one thing appeared to be clean in the room, and that was an 1886 Model Winchester lying atop a chest of drawers. “Is that the rifle, sir?”

  “What rifle?” Nisbet staggered toward the chamber pot and began unbuttoning his britches.

  Drake had picked up the Winchester. It was a .50-100-450. He ran his fingers along the barrel and then the stock before he picked up an enormous cartridge as Nisbet’s urine splashed into the pot and onto the rug. He spoke up, raising his voice, making sure Mr. English would be able to hear in the room next door.

  “Is this your rifle? The one you used to kill all those notorious rustlers in Wyoming.”

  Nisbet cursed and turned. Not even trying to button his pants, he moved toward the chest of drawers. He slapped the cartridge out of Drake’s hands and opened a drawer, found a bottle, tossed it onto the floor because it was empty, then pulled out another. No more than three swallows remained in that bottle. Nisbet did not offer any to Will Drake.

  He crashed on the bed, scattering bottles and poker cards across the comforter, and leaned against the headboard. He drank greedily. “I used a Marlin. Till I met the leader of those swine who stole good men’s beef.”

  “Banding?” Drake asked.

  Ian Nisbet cursed. “Banding. No.” He laughed and hurled the empty bottle across the room. It shattered against the wall.

  Drake had to wonder, Did that scribe next door put that in his notebook?

  “I don’t recollect the name. Good rifle, though. Won a shooting match in . . . I don’t remember where. Girl shot it.” The word girl caused the drunk to close his eyes. They stayed closed.

  Drake tried to remember some of the names. “Hyatt?”

  No response.

  “Folsom?” No, Drake shook his head, cursed his stupidity. That was not the name, but he couldn’t think of that dead rustler’s handle. Another name came to him, and he asked, “Noble Saxon?”

  The drunkard’s eyes opened. He laughed. “Aye. Noble Saxon. Shot ’im at point blank range, I did. Blew ’is sorry hide out of the hole he lived in. Aye. Aye, yes, that was ’is name. Noble Saxon.” Nesbit waved a finger. “A good rifle. Shoots true.”

  “You proved that when you shot Carol Banding.”

  Nothing.

  “What was the distance? Five hundred yards? Seven?”

  Nothing. At least, not for a minute or two. But just when Drake was about to give up, consider this a fool’s game, Nisbet sniggered. “Nine hundred. Had to raise the sight. Adjust for the wind. Ye wouldn’t think a man of my ability would mistake a pretty woman child for a two-bit rustler at any distance shorter than five hundred yards, would ye?”

  “No.” Drake’s words were barely audible. He cleared his throat. “No.” He wet his lips. “So you shot her?”

  Nisbet held out his hand and closed it into a fist. “The hole that bullet left when it came out was bigger ’n this, it was. True. True, I say.”

  “But you still stuck an ace of spades in her hand.”

  He laughed, though his eyes were closed again. “Marry a rustler, die like a rustler. Makes no never mind to me, Will Drake.”

  A tapping came from the wall. Drake looked at it, knowing what it meant.

  “Rats.” Ian Nisbet had opened his eyes. “Rats in The Brown Palace.”

  Yes, Drake thought with disgust. Rats. “Yes, rats in The Brown Palace.” He felt like one, too.

  The door in the next room opened. Footsteps sounded down the hall. Will Drake felt as disgusted with himself as Ian Nisbet felt. That feeling of loathing. Years back, when he had left Judge Parker’s court, folks said that Will Drake was the greatest lawman in the West. Now look at him. Getting a confession from a
drunken killer, a man who had been something himself, a feared man, until he had accidentally killed a woman.

  He looked at the rifle in his hand. Nesbit, the “Ace of Spades,” had killed her with it.

  The reporter from the Post was going to the newspaper office to print his story in what the publisher would undoubtedly print as an extra. There would be a trial, a conviction, and a hanging in Cheyenne. After all the other newspaper stories. The extradition. All that legal bartering and politicking.

  People would laugh at Will Drake. The greatest lawman in the West had to resort to John Barleycorn to get an arrest. What would happen when the press found out that he had sent a former colleague, a veteran lawman himself, to Tascosa on a fool’s errand? Oh, sure, Danny Waco and German Stevens had met in Trinidad. And maybe Waco would join Stevens for that bank job in Tascosa, but what the lawman had also put in that telegraph was that Danny Waco was going to Elizabethtown, that old mining camp in the mountains of New Mexico Territory first.

  After all, the money wouldn’t be filling that bank in Tascosa until later this spring.

  “Do you have a gun, Mr. Nisbet?” Drake asked.

  The killer’s eyes opened. “Aye.”

  “Let me have it, sir.”

  He reached inside his coat, and withdrew a Harrington & Richardson’s self-cocking .32. He held it in his right hand. “I didn’t kill ’er with this, Will Drake.”

  “I know.”

  Nisbet tilted his head at the Winchester. “I didn’t mean to kill ’er with that.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Once,” Nisbet said, “ye an’ me, the both of us, we were decent men.”

  “Once.” Drake brought the Winchester up to his shoulder.

  “Kills on one end,” Nisbet said with a laugh. “Cripples on the other.”

  “Huh?”

  The drunk laughed. “Ye’ll learn.”

  His eyes closed a moment before Will Drake pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Elizabethtown, New Mexico Territory

  The way Will Drake figured things, he had done Ian Nisbet a favor, killing him in the room at The Brown Palace, saving him the shame of being hanged in Wyoming. Maybe, Drake thought, he had done himself a favor, too.