Broken Nose was putting the hypodermic in the kit. “Twenty sleeps, as my people would say.”
“I was out that long?” Ash reached up to scratch his chin in bewilderment and discovered he had the start of a beard. “I’ll be damned.”
“You were almost dead when I found you. I did what I could and brought you back.” Broken Nose smiled. “I must like you to go to all this trouble.”
“How did we get to your lodge?”
“We flew.”
“What?”
Broken Nose laughed and patted Ash’s shoulder. “I made a travois and tied you on it and here we are. Your horse is outside. Your saddle and guns and other things are over there.” He indicated the pile. “The man from Denver has been here two times and will come again tomorrow.”
“What man from Denver?”
“The one you talked to at Ute City.”
“That journalist from the Rocky Mountain News? What the hell did he want?”
Broken Nose moved off. When he came back he was holding a newspaper.
“He said now all whites will know of you.”
The front-page headline was in large bold type: FRAZIERS DIE IN GUN BATTLE WITH HEROIC EX-LAWMAN.
“God, no,” Ash breathed.
Broken Nose set the paper next to him. “Read it when you want. You have made the man very happy. He said they have sold a great many newspapers thanks to you.”
“How did they find out?”
“When we came down the mountain there were men with wagons. Miners. They asked how you got hurt.” Broken Nose grinned. “You know how whites love to talk. Word spread. I could not move very fast with you on the travois and when we got to Ute City a lot of people were waiting to see you. The man from Denver was one of them. He asked me many questions.”
It took effort, but Ash sat up. He put the paper in his lap and read the account. It was remarkably accurate. “How did you know all this? You weren’t even there.”
“I saw everything except what they did to you when you were inside.”
Ash looked up. “You watched the whole fight? You saw Templeton get killed? And you didn’t help?”
“You did not hire me to fight, only to track.” Broken Nose stepped to the pile and returned with a poke that bulged and jangled, a poke Ash never set eyes on before. “This is the money the newspaper put on the Fraziers. I kept three hundred dollars for myself.”
Too much was being thrown at Ash too fast. He sank down. “Three hundred is an awful lot.”
“Your life is not worth that much?”
Ash let it drop. He should be grateful. He should be thankful to be alive. Relaxing, he sank into morphine-induced pleasure. He welcomed the feeling into every fiber of his being. How long he was immersed in the sensation, he couldn’t say. A persistent shake on his shoulder intruded on his ecstasy, but he kept his eyes closed and said, “Leave me alone, Broken Nose.”
“It’s not the old Indian, Marshal Thrall. It’s Horace Smithers, with the Rocky Mountain News. Remember?”
Ash reluctantly opened his eyes. “You can leave me alone too.”
Horace was ready to scribble. “You don’t mean that. Haven’t you read the accounts in the paper?” He reached down and showed the copy of the News that Broken Nose had given to Ash.
“I’ve read that one.”
“You’re a hero, Marshal. Everyone in the territory has heard about what you did. Taking on the Frazier gang and wiping them out. That took uncommon courage.”
Ash marshaled his energy. “Let’s get some things straight. First, I’m not a lawman anymore. I had to give up my badge. Second, going after the Fraziers was stupid. It got Rin Templeton killed and damn near got me killed too. I don’t want to hear I’m a hero when I’m no such thing.”
“You’re too modest. I know about the slug near your heart. How you are slowly dying. How you went after the Fraziers because you wanted to do something worthwhile before you meet your Maker.”
“Hell,” Ash said.
“It’s in the other accounts.”
“What others?”
“You haven’t read them? I’ve done a whole series on you. I dug up all I could find out and guessed a lot of the rest or made it up but I assure you it’s all quite flattering.” Horace beamed. “I’ve made you famous, Marshal. Painted you in glory for all the world to admire.”
“Hell, hell, hell.”
“Why are you so bothered? You should be flattered. People will remember you long after you’re gone.”
Ash wanted to punch him. “That’s where you’re wrong. The glory men do is buried with them. Five years after I’ve been planted not a soul will remember me.”
“You’re wrong. You’ll see.”
“Not from the grave I won’t.” Ash was tired and wanted him to go. “Why are you here, Smithers?”
“I’d like to do a last account. Give it a personal touch. Tell about your life growing up. How you were as a boy. Why you pinned on a badge. The loves you’ve had. Those sorts of things.”
“If I had my pistol I would shoot you.”
Horace cackled. “You don’t mean that. I like your sense of humor though. It’s very droll.”
“God in heaven.”
“You’re a religious man? I’ll be sure to put that in. The folks admire a man who speaks adoringly of the Almighty. That’s why politicians do it all the time.”
“Broken Nose?” Ash called out.
“Yes?”
“Throw this nuisance out.”
“Throw him out yourself. I am drinking.”
Horace did more cackling. “You two are a caution. Now, then, shall we begin? Where were you born and what were your parents like? What forces molded you as you grew up? Would it be safe for me to write that you value honor above all else?”
Ash had enough. He closed his eyes and turned his head.
“I understand. You’re not feeling well. I’ll come back when you are.” Horace clasped Ash’s wrist. “You’re a good man. It’s rare I meet such a decent human being.”
“There is one thing you can write for me,” Ash said.
“Really? What? I’ll write anything, anything at all.”
“You can tell your readers that this world is hell and everyone in it is loco. You can tell them there’s no point to any of it. We’re born, we suffer, we die. That’s all there is.”
“Oh, Marshal. I could never write that. My editor would throw a fit and our readers would be offended.” Horace stood. “Besides, you don’t really mean it. That’s the morphine talking.”
“Thank you, Smithers.”
“For what? My articles?”
“For proving my point.” Ash rolled over so his back was to him and listened to the journalist go out. Good riddance, he told himself. “Broken Nose?”
“I am still here.”
“I don’t ever want to talk to him again. Don’t let him into the teepee. Throw him out if he tries to come in.”
“You keep forgetting. I am red. He is white. Whites don’t like it when a red man is uppity, as you call it. Throw him out yourself. I will hold the flap for you, but that is all I will do.”
Ash swore. To hell with Broken Nose and to hell with Horace Smithers and to hell with the whole damn world, he thought. He didn’t want anything to do with any of them. He would find a hole somewhere and crawl into it with his morphine. It sparked a troubling thought. “Broken Nose?”
“You are fond of my name today.”
“How much morphine do I have left?”
“I would say a week, maybe ten sleeps, and you will not have any.”
Panic welled but Ash quelled it. He had plenty of time to get to Denver and get more. “Broken Nose?”
“Where is my candle? I need wax to plug my ears.”
“In case I forget later,” Ash said, “I want to thank you for all you’ve done. For keeping me alive and bringing me back.”
“I did not do it for you, white man. I did it for drinking money.”
Chapter 22
Life was grand.
Ash spent his days in morphine stupors. In the evenings he roused out of bed and spent most of each night making the rounds of his favorite haunts in the area known as the Street of a Thousand Sinners.
Ash drank, and drank heavily. He had been warned not to but he didn’t care. The alcohol helped him forget. He gambled too, but he was careful not to lose too much. He needed his money for other things, namely morphine, whiskey and women.
Ash couldn’t get enough of perfumed bodies and perfumed sheets. He gorged on soft flesh and softer lips. Every night it was a new lady. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, short, tall, skinny, not skinny—he had them all and enjoyed the having.
To a casual observer it might seem Ash was another of the many wallowing in the mire. There was more to it. He was living life to the fullest because death was knocking at the door to his heart.
The pain, the pressure, never went way. They were always there, constant reminders that he was dying. He hated it, but there was nothing he could do except live and wait for the inevitable.
Few knew who Ash was. He seldom gave his name. When he did, he made one up. He learned that lesson the first night he was back in Denver and made the mistake of saying who he really was in a saloon. Before he could stop them, men were clapping him on the back and offering to buy him drinks for ridding the territory of the Fraziers. He tried to tell them that he hadn’t done anything to merit their praise, that it had been a god-awful blunder, but no one listened. He was a hero, they said.
Ash didn’t feel like one. The killing left scars. Often he woke up in cold sweats, torn from slumber by nightmare images of Jochebed being shot to ribbons or him blowing a huge hole in Elisheba or what was left of Jotham’s face after he got through smashing it. So what if they deserved to die? Ending their lives hadn’t made him feel as if he had done something worthwhile. It made him feel twisted and empty.
So Ash injected and drank and womanized. He lived each moment as if it were his last. He was content even if he wasn’t happy. He might have gone on savoring the Street of a Thousand Sinners until the slug in his chest got around to puncturing his heart, if not for an incident that brought him out of himself.
Ash started the evening as he did every other. He shuffled from bed and washed in the basin and combed his hair and dressed.
The new boardinghouse where he was staying was comfortably furnished and the landlady minded her own business. She was on the front porch in a rocking chair when he came out.
“Good evening, Mr. Smithers.”
“Evening, ma’am.” It had amused Ash to use the journalist’s name. “Nice breeze.”
“That there is,” she agreed.
Ash started down the steps.
“Say, did that man ever get hold of you?”
“What man?” Ash wondered if the real Horace Smithers had tracked him down.
“He wouldn’t give his name. He came into the parlor this morning, about ten it was, and asked if you were staying here. Said a friend of his had read about you in the paper and was interested in finding you.” The landlady paused in her knitting. “At least I think he meant you. Are you famous?”
“If I am it’s news to me,” Ash said. “What did this gentleman look like, might I ask?”
The landlady sniffed. “He was no gentleman, Mr. Smithers. He was rude and coarse. Why, he didn’t even have the decency to take his hat off in the presence of a lady.”
“What was he wearing?”
“I didn’t look too closely. His clothes were dirty and he dearly needed a bath. He reminded me of one of those hitters.”
“Hitters, ma’am?”
“You know. The men who work with cows.”
“Oh. You mean punchers. He reminded you of a cow puncher?”
“His clothes did, yes. But not him. I’ve seen a few punchers and they are generally young and carefree and almost always polite. This man was older, I’d say in his thirties or forties, and as I told you he wouldn’t know polite if it bit him on the ass.”
Ash laughed.
“Pardon my language, but he irritated me so. He wanted to know what you looked like and what room you were in and what your habits were and when . . .”
“Hold on.” Ash went over. “He asked all that?”
The landlady bobbed her white-haired head. “He was terribly nosy. I didn’t like his eyes. They reminded me of a snake’s. Then there was that revolver he had under his jacket in violation of the city ordinance.”
“That’s all you can tell me about him?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
Ash thanked her and again started down the steps.
“Oh. There is one more thing. As he was leaving the parlor he sort of chuckled to himself and said something half under his breath. I only caught part of it.”
“What did he say?”
“Something about wait until the Shark hears. What on earth could he have meant by that? There aren’t any sharks in Colorado.”
Ash was jarred to his marrow. “Could the word have been ‘Sharkey’? Could that have been it?”
“I honestly couldn’t say. I suppose. Really, though, his mother should have taught him better manners.”
Deep in thought, Ash drifted along the street. Could it be? he asked himself. It had to. Ben Sharkey had read Smithers’ accounts. Sharkey must still be in Denver and wanted to settle accounts.
“Damn,” Ash said. Here he had about given up on ever getting his revenge. He headed toward a restaurant he liked and was halfway there when his stupidity hit him like a punch to the gut. Stopping short, he turned to a display window and pretended to smooth his jacket.
Night was falling. Many windows were bright and the streetlamps were being lit. Pockets of darkening gray were broken by shards of light.
Ash scanned the street. No one matched his landlady’s description. He walked on, glad he had the Remington pocket pistol. He pulled his hat brim down so when he glanced in the windows he passed no one would notice. He’d about decided he was taking a pointless precaution when he casually looked over his shoulder.
A figure almost a block behind him darted into the shadows.
“So,” Ash said, and smiled. An old saying popped into his head, a saying he tweaked. “Good things comes to those who spend their days on morphine.” A silly joke, but he laughed and rounded the next corner. He ducked into the first recessed doorway he came to and slid his hand under his jacket. He didn’t have long to wait.
Boots slapped, and past him ran the spitting image of the landlady’s visitor.
The man rose onto his toes, peered ahead and swore.
Ash gave him an ample lead and swung out after him. The hunter had become the hunted. Plenty of people were out and about so it was simple for him to nearly always have someone between him and his stalker. The man never once glanced back.
For the next quarter of an hour Ash played cat and mouse. He couldn’t believe his luck. Fate had practically thrown Ben Sharkey into his lap. All he had to do was not lose sight of the man who had been shadowing him.
The man took to looking into the front window of every saloon and bawdy house and gambling hall. When a woman bumped into him, he shoved her so hard she nearly fell. Plainly he was mad at having lost Ash and was growing desperate to find him.
Ash could guess why. Sharkey would take it out on the man’s hide. That was the trouble with people like Sharkey; they had no loyalty to friends.
Ash had to admit, though, he was a fine one to talk after what he did to the Fraziers. Maybe he wasn’t the badman that Sharkey was, but he would be a hypocrite to cast stones.
Ash had always prided himself on living by the letter of the law. Part of it was that as a lawman he had to set an example. The other part was his own nature. He’d long refused to take a life. Only as a last resort, he told his deputies. Look at him now. He’d killed and killed again, women as well as men.
Ash shook his head in disgust. He was becoming a man he didn’t know, a man he didn’t like.
He looked up and stopped. His stalker was only twenty feet away, peering into the window of a gambling hall. Ash turned away and shammed an interest in a store display until the man hurried on.
Ash debated jumping him and questioning him. A revolver barrel did wonders for loosening tongues. But if something went wrong, if the man fought back and forced him to shoot him, he might never find Sharkey.
By now they were in the heart of the Street of a Thousand Sinners.
Over the hubbub of voices, music blared. Women in enticing dresses or in few clothes at all beckoned from doorways and balconies.
Just when Ash was wondering if the man would ever stop searching for him, he entered a saloon. Ash walked past and on around to the side. There must be a back door, he reckoned. It opened into a hall that took him past a kitchen and a storage room to a door. He opened it.
The saloon was packed. People mingled and talked and joked, having a good time.
Ash tried to spot the man he was after. There were so many. Clouds of cigar and pipe smoke hung heavy in the air like fog. The milling, the comings and goings, made it next to impossible. He was about to step out when he spotted his man over at a table. Three others were there.
Ash’s hand swooped under his jacket.
None were Sharkey.
Ash swore. He must wait. He joined some people watching a dice game, his back to the table.
Ash had been so caught up in finding Sharkey that he hadn’t thought once about his chest. A sharp pang reminded him. He thought it would go away but it didn’t. More morphine would help. The hypodermic was in his jacket but he wasn’t about to use it right there in front of everybody.
Ash needed privacy. Although loathe to leave, he went down the hall to the storage room. No one tried to stop him. He took out the hypodermic. Taking off his jacket, he rolled up his shirtsleeve.
“Here I go again,” Ash said with a mix of bitterness and anticipation. He located a good vein and jabbed the needle in, flinching at the sting. He slowly pressed on the plunger. Then he leaned back against a wall. Usually it didn’t take long. Warmth flooded his body, followed by the welcome sensation of pure pleasure.
Fatal Justice Page 16
