The Night McLennan Died (A Big Jim Western Book 1)

by Marshall Grover

  “Smart figuring,” approved Jim. “I’m thanking you, amigo, but I’m also inviting you to get the hell out of here, and I mean now—muy pronto.”

  “I go,” said Benito.

  Five minutes after the little Mex had departed, Jim was fully dressed; his Colt was strapped about his waist. He refrained from lighting his lamp and, by the light of the moon shining through his open window, rigged a rough but effective dummy. The best he could do was to stuff his spare underwear with his blankets, settle it in the center of the bed and cover it with a sheet. From the window, it looked reasonably convincing. His Stetson was perched on a bedpost. His rifle rested against the wall close to the head of the bed. He mentally congratulated himself for having thought to drape his vest over a chair back, with his badge of office clearly visible and gleaming in the moonlight.

  Clambering through the window, he walked across to the mound of rubble. It was not yet twelve-thirty, and he anticipated he would have to wait several hours for a second visitor. On the cattlemen’s pay night, it didn’t seem likely any Libertad saloon would close before midnight. It would be two in the morning, at least, he surmised, before the last house of entertainment locked its doors. But he wouldn’t mind the waiting. Patience—he was endowed with more than his fair share of that valuable quality.

  He squatted cross-legged beside the mound to become a silent, immovable monument of patience, listening to the night-sounds. From this angle, he could follow the furtive approach of any marauder, be he afoot or mounted. He could himself move when needs be, so as to keep the bulk of the mound between himself and his would-be assassin. Would Old Man Burdette jump to the bait? Jim was sure he would—and he was ready to cope.

  Seven – Six Bullets At 2.25

  In the kitchen of the untidy, musty-smelling Block B ranch house, the old man fed his ire with raw whisky and conversed with the visitor, the blond man who had discreetly remained in the background during the brief intrusion by Benito Espina.

  “I’ll tell you this, Clegg,” mumbled Burdette. “I won’t stand for it. I won’t let that sonofagun sheriff get away with it. Not him nor his new deputy.”

  “The way it all adds up,” drawled Clegg Seymour, “Hillary ain’t half as big a problem as the deputy. It was the deputy that listened to McLennan’s last words.”

  “You don’t have to remind me,” scowled Burdette. “Kyle Burt has made it clear enough.”

  “I’d offer to help, Cy,” frowned Seymour, “but it’s like I told you when you first took me in. I need to lay low, just can’t afford to show my face in Libertad—or any other town.”

  Cyrus Burdette’s nephew was two inches short of being a six-footer. The sandy hair and moustache were well tended and, while listening to his kinsman’s outburst, he kept his tapered fingers busy and in practice, shuffling a deck, dealing solitaire. A pearl ring gleamed on his left little finger. Under his left armpit, held in position by an elaborate harness that would be invisible under his buttoned coat, he wore a holstered Smith and Wesson of .38 caliber.

  “That the sons of Cyrus Burdette should be stuck in that tin-can jail!” fumed the old man. “And one with his jaw broke! It’s a humiliation, Clegg, and somebody’s gonna pay for it—in blood.”

  “What about all the jaspers that saw Arnie gun this McLennan?” asked Seymour. “Would they stand up in court?”

  “Calvert is the only one I could count on to lie for Arnie,” muttered Burdette. “The others might get to feelin’ brave—maybe brave enough to testify against Arnie—so it seems I’ll have to discourage ’em.” He grinned mirthlessly. “Kinda warn ’em off—you know what I mean?”

  “You can afford to take your time,” opined Seymour. “Judge Ford ain’t due for quite a spell, huh?”

  “Judge Ford wouldn’t dare quit Tucson and head for Libertad,” Burdette asserted. “We got him buffaloed—scared stiff. Last time he came south, my boys put a few forty-four-forty slugs through them stagecoach windows, and I hear tell the judge sweated so bad he looked like he took a bath with his clothes on.” His expression hardened and, again, his eyes had that unnatural gleam. “If they send for him now—if he heads south to sit in judgment on my boy—I swear that coach’ll never get any closer than Angle Butte.”

  “I never try to hand out advice, Cy, but ...”

  “Don’t start now. This is my problem, and I’ll handle it my way.”

  “I was only gonna say one thing, Cy.”

  “All right. You’re kin to us Burdettes, so I’ll hear you.”

  “It doesn’t pay to kill a judge, Cy. It’d be like gunnin’ a senator or a parson. You could stir up a whole mess of grief for yourself. And, anyway, you don’t need to kill the judge. You don’t even need to kill all those witnesses.” Seymour abandoned his cards, lit a cigar and eyed his kinsman intently. “The witnesses can be scared off—you said.”

  “By the time I’m through with ’em,” breathed Burdette, “they’ll be too fazed to go to court—let alone open their mouths.”

  “So, when you stop to figure it all out,” said Seymour, “your only big problem is a proddy deputy that heard what McLennan said, just before he cashed in his chips. If you’re gonna silence any hombre, Cy, silence the deputy.” He chuckled softly. “There’s no man so silent as the one in a six-foot hole.”

  “Big Jim, they call him,” mumbled Burdette. “Big—is he?” His eyes blazed. “No man is bigger than a Burdette. Not in this territory!”

  “Well?” challenged Seymour.

  The old man’s expression became crafty.

  “I could settle his hash long before sun-up, Clegg,” he mused. “And it don’t matter a damn if he’s gun-fast, or if he can hit a man so hard as to break his jaw. Did you ever know a hombre that could fight in his sleep? I sure didn’t.”

  “Handle it the easy way, huh?” prodded Seymour.

  “Like they always say,” muttered Burdette, “dead men tell no tales.” He got to his feet, trudged to the open doorway and bellowed a summons. “Waco Sammy! C’mon over here! Get a hustle on!” Returning to his chair, he grinned complacently at his nephew. “He’s a sure shot, this Harbin feller. Waco Sammy, we call him. Got a special hate for all lawmen. Yeah. If there’s one breed he can’t abide, it’s a hombre with a badge on his chest.”

  The man who slouched into the kitchen a few moments later was heavy-set and florid-complexioned, with bushy brows, cold gray eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. His shirt and pants—black like his Stetson—fitted him tightly. His sidearm, a walnut-butted, short-barreled Colt .45, was slung very low on his right leg with the holster thonged down. A closer study of the butt of his Colt would have revealed four notches. He advanced to the table and stood eyeing his employer expectantly.

  “You recall what the greaser said?” demanded Burdette.

  “I was listenin’, sure,” nodded Harbin.

  “To all he said?” prodded Burdette. “You recall, for instance, about where the deputy bunks at the Regio Hotel?”

  “Second window from the left on the south side,” grinned Harbin. “I got good ears, boss.”

  “He’s trouble for us, this new deputy-feller,” muttered the old man. “The way Kyle Burt talks of him, he’s big and rough and smart—and proddy enough to be a blame nuisance.”

  “Also,” frowned Harbin, “he hankers to see Arnie on a gallows, huh?”

  “Us Burdettes ain’t partial to talk of hangropes and gallows and law and order,” scowled Burdette. “I figured to take care of that do-gooder sheriff, but it seems I’ll first have to get rid of his deputy.”

  “You want me to handle it?” asked Harbin. “Rightaway,” nodded Burdette. “And get it done sure and slick, Waco. Finish him off, then head for home. Don’t hang around to search his pockets.”

  “I’m no two-bit thief,” said Harbin.

  “For this little chore,” promised Burdette, as Harbin moved out, “there’ll be a bonus for you, a handy passel of greenbacks.”

  “Easy money,” grunted Harbin
.

  ~*~

  Big Jim had extinguished his last cigarette around one forty-five. If Benito’s hunch was to prove well-founded, if some party or parties on the Block B payroll would seek his demise, it would happen any time from then on—but most likely after the saloons had closed.

  It was two-twenty-five and the town was still and shrouded in gloom, the moon having been obscured by a blanket of cloud some ten minutes before. He cocked an ear to the distant but clearly audible thudding of hooves, indicating the unhurried approach of a rider. Just one rider? He felt a twinge of disappointment; it would have been so much more satisfying to jail two or three of Burdette’s men on an attempted murder charge. The hoofbeats ceased and, for some time thereafter, the silence was unbroken. Easy to guess what was happening now. His would-be assassin had concealed his mount somewhere and was continuing his approach on foot—quietly, furtively. He remained perfectly still, until the next sound reached his ears.

  Keeping the bulk of the rubble-mound between himself and the approaching gunman was no difficult maneuver; he needed only to move a few feet to his right. Waco Sammy Harbin crept past the mound and onward, steering a straight course for the open window of Jim’s bedroom. Probing the gloom, Jim’s eyes fastened on the dispenser of death gripped in the killer’s right fist. Yes, there could be no doubting that Old Man Burdette’s emissary was here for purposes more violent than arbitration.

  Harbin crouched by the window, rested the barrel of his Colt on the sill and stared intently into the room. The killer now enjoyed a clear view of the room’s interior. He noted the bulky, sheet-covered shape on the bed, the vest hung over the chair back with the deputy’s star clearly exposed. He licked his lips, lined the barrel of his .45 on the shape in the bed and squeezed trigger.

  Simultaneously with the second report, Jim emerged from behind the mound and strolled towards the window. Harbin triggered a third and fourth shot and, by then, Jim was almost directly behind him. And then, hard on the echo of the fourth report, the killer triggered his fifth and sixth bullets into what he believed to be the body of Big Jim Rand, and Big Jim was standing beside him, calmly remarking:

  “Good shooting. I’ll bet you hit the bed with all six shots.”

  Harbin froze for a tense fraction of a second. A choking, startled gasp erupted from him when he finally galvanized into action. He whirled, prepared to lash out with his six-shooter. Loaded or empty, a Colt was as terrible an improvised club as any Jim had encountered, and he wasn’t about to let Harbin score on him. His brawny left arm swept out and upward to block the killer’s swing. Harbin grunted from the impact, and that was the last sound he would make for quite some time. Not all of Jim’s considerable muscle-power was thrown behind the driving right to Harbin’s jaw; he didn’t believe in over-exerting himself and, besides, he had no desire to fracture this man’s jaw.

  From this gunhawk, he wanted a verbal statement as to who had put him up to this homicidal endeavor.

  Even so, that driving punch knocked Harbin senseless. He hurtled eight feet before keeling over backwards and crashing to the ground. The proprietor thrust his head out of a second storey window, bawled a blunt question at Jim and won an answer equally blunt.

  “Forget it. Tell everybody to go back to sleep. It was only one of Old Man Burdette’s men delivering a message.”

  “All that shooting ...!” began the hotelkeeper.

  “He pumped six slugs into my bed,” drawled Jim.

  “Hell’s bells!” gasped the hotelkeeper.

  Others had been roused by that burst of shooting—uncommonly loud on the still air of early morn. When Jim reached Calle Central with the slumbering Harbin draped over his shoulders, a few doors and windows opened, a few lamps were lit and a few voices raised in query. Jim mildly suggested that everybody ought to mind their own doggone business, and continued his walk to the office of Sheriff Hillary.

  By the time he was climbing to the porch, a light was glowing and the street-door was being opened; he assumed the sheriff and his volunteers had been taking turns to sleep.

  “I heard the shootin’,” was Oscar Deitch’s mumbled greeting, “but I stayed put. We all stayed put—because we thought it might be a trick to draw us away from the jailhouse.”

  “Smart figuring, Oscar,” approved Jim, as he trudged in and, with scant ceremony, let his burden thud headfirst to the floor.

  Hillary was rolling off the couch and struggling to his feet, blinking incredulously. Ike Nash had been sleeping on a couple of chairs, the blacksmith was now rising from where he had spread a blanket in the far corner. They stared at the befuddled hardcase sprawled at Jim’s feet. Hillary whistled softly, grinned and said:

  “Well, well, well!”

  “Anybody you know?” enquired Jim. “And I don’t mean socially.”

  “Waco Sammy Harbin,” said Hillary. “One of Block B’s top guns. A real mean hombre.”

  Jim tugged Harbin’s six-gun from his waistband and passed it to the sheriff.

  “Empty,” he announced. “He pumped all six slugs into my bed at the hotel. I wasn’t in bed at the time—as if I need to tell you. There’s a heap of rubble in the vacant lot. It made a mighty handy shield. I was staked out and waiting for him.”

  “How’d you know ...?” began Hillary.

  “Benito put me wise,” frowned Jim.

  “Well, damnitall,” growled Hillary, “how’d he know?”

  “I guess you could say he set it up for us.” Jim grinned wryly. “All by his little own self. A rare hombre is Amigo Benito.”

  “That pocket-pickin’ little no-account …” Hillary shook his head in wonderment.

  “Rode out to Block B and planted the idea in the old man’s mind,” nodded Jim. He went on to recount everything told him by the little Mex, and concluded, “It all worked out just the way he figured it.”

  “That little jasper would make a fine lawman,” sighed Hillary, “if only he wasn’t a thief.”

  “As soon as this Harbin galoot wakes up,” said Jim, “I aim to coax a confession out of him. This was attempted murder, Luke. If he names the old man as the party that put him up to this ...”

  “You’d be wastin’ your breath,” opined Nash.

  “No Block B man,” Hillary soberly informed Jim, “would have the nerve to incriminate old Cyrus. You could try scarin’ him, for instance, but it wouldn’t help any. Harbin would be scared already—stiff-scared at the thought of havin’ to answer to the old man. Cyrus Burdette rules by fear.” He seated himself on the couch, stared moodily at the horizontal gunhawk, who was only now returning to consciousness. “We know the old man put Harbin up to it, Jim. But knowin’ it and provin’ it are two different things.”

  “Don’t look too disappointed, Deputy,” drawled the blacksmith. “I’d say your efforts weren’t—uh—entirely wasted—in a manner of speakin’.”

  “Not quite,” chuckled Deitch.

  “You’ve damn near cut old Cyrus’ forces in half,” Hillary pointed out. “This’ll make four in jail—and only a half-dozen left at Block B.”

  “A mighty rough half-dozen,” the barkeep quietly reminded him. “Every one of ’em is gun-fast and a sure shot. I don’t belittle what Big Jim’s done. He’s done more than anybody else ever managed to do before. Only it’s a mite too early for us to start celebratin’.”

  “Ike’s right,” frowned Durrance. “The old man’ll be ten times more dangerous now.”

  Harbin rolled over on his back, blinked dazedly up at them, then began struggling to his feet. His mouth was opening to voice a query, when Jim dryly advised:

  “Don’t ask it. I’d give you a true answer—and it would only confuse you.”

  “Who—brought me in ...?” demanded Harbin.

  “I did,” said Jim.

  “You ...?” began Harbin.

  “I’m the deputy,” drawled Jim. “You’re a sure shot, Harbin, but an empty bed isn’t much of a target, is it?”

  “How’d you kn
ow I was comin’?” Harbin heatedly demanded.

  “I guessed old Burdette would send somebody,” shrugged Jim.

  “Burdette? What Burdette? I never heard of any Burdette ...”

  “Well, Jim,” sighed Luke. “I warned you he wouldn’t talk.”

  “Harbin,” frowned Jim, as he took the key ring from its nail. “Do you have any notion how long we could put you away for attempted murder? The sentences are getting heavier every year. Of course—we might ask the judge to go easier on you—if you admit it was Old Man Burdette sent you to kill me.”

  “I dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” mumbled Harbin, and he raised a hand to his aching jaw.

  “Inside,” growled Jim.

  He unlocked the cellblock entrance, hustled the gunman along the corridor and, watched by the grim-visaged brothers and the bug-eyed Kramer, installed him in the cell previously occupied by Benito.

  “What the hell ...?” began Arnie Burdette.

  “Think of it as a reunion, Burdette,” Jim suggested, as he re-locked the cell door. “All the Block B hands getting together for a little celebration—except there’ll be no liquor, no fancy food, no women ...”

  “Go ahead and laugh, big man!” snarled the younger brother. “If you think my old man is gonna stand by and let you put a hang rope round my neck, you got another think comin’!”

  “Putting the hang rope round your neck will be a job for the executioner,” drawled Jim. He paused by the door of the cell housing the brothers, to roll and light a cigarette. “I may not wait to see you hang, Burdette. But I’ll certainly be on hand at the trial to give evidence, to repeat what McLennan told me just before he died.” He puffed a blue cloud, threw the wild-eyed murderer a scathing sidelong glance. “Your old man will do his damnedest to stop me.”

  “That’s somethin’ you can count on!” breathed Arnie.