Fatal Justice

by Ralph Compton

  Ash didn’t mind the delay. He liked the Minters. He liked that once they were over their initial shock at how he looked they treated him as they would treat anyone else. He liked that the kids enjoyed his company. He liked being with them so much that when it came time to part company, he felt terribly lonely.

  The rain pattering on his hat and shoulders, Ash drew rein at a hitch rail and stiffly dismounted. His symptoms had grown worse. He had also picked up a cough and would have coughing fits that left him weak and breathless. His morphine use had tripled. He had reached the point Doc Peters had warned about, the point where the morphine didn’t actually help. All it did was keep him alive while it was killing him at the same time.

  Ash craned his neck to the cloudy sky and let the rain wet his face. He liked being alive. He liked it more than anything. He wanted so desperately to go on living.

  The sight of the church spire made Ash frown. He tied off the roan and the packhorse and clomped into a saloon. He didn’t bother to read the name. It was early yet and only a few customers were drinking or playing cards. He went to the bar and asked for a bottle.

  The bartender gave him a glance and then a closer scrutiny. “I hope you won’t mind me saying this, Mister, but you look like hell.”

  “No fooling.” Ash took a long swig. Once it would have given him considerable pleasure but now the whiskey tasted flat and didn’t warm him as it should.

  “Maybe you should see a doctor. We have a good one down the street. Doctor Adams can patch up just about anything.”

  “Not me he can’t.” Ash tried another swallow with the same result. “Hell,” he said.

  The bartender misunderstood. “Don’t get mad. I was just saying.”

  “Where would I find the marshal?”

  “You go up two blocks and turn left and you can’t miss it. His office is right on the river.”

  “What kind of man is he?”

  “Lucas Olander? He’s honest enough and fair enough that most folks think he makes a fine lawman. Why do you ask?”

  “Curious.” Ash tried a third swallow and gave up. “I reckon I’ll go have a talk with him.”

  “The marshal won’t be there. A mine payroll was held up yesterday. He’s off with a posse looking for the outlaws.”

  “Damn.” Ash started to turn. He needed to find lodgings for him and his animals.

  “Word is that they know who is to blame. A hard case by the name of Sharkey.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You were standing right there. Didn’t you hear me?”

  Ash had to restrain himself from reaching across and grabbing the bartender by the shirt. “Did you say Sharkey?”

  “Ben Sharkey. Or so they tell me. He and his gang showed up not long ago and have been giving Marshal Olander fits. They’ve killed two people and stolen pretty near fifty thousand dollars. Don’t ask me what they do with the money. If I had that much I’d stop stealing and go off somewhere to live out the rest of my days quiet.”

  A flush of fury coursed through Ash. No wonder he couldn’t find a trace of Sharkey in Denver. The bastard had run out of spending money and was back to his old ways.

  “Mister, are you all right?”

  “Never better,” Ash lied, and left. He stepped out from under the overhang to untie the horses and again raised his face to the rain. It felt wonderfully good.

  So did the fact that he had been given another chance. His last chance, because he wouldn’t live long enough to have another. He must settle accounts with Sharkey once and for all.

  “Thank you,” Ash said to the clouds, and went in search of a livery.

  On the other side of the street was a hotel called the Lost Soul. The clerk was polite enough not to comment on how he looked. He went up to his room, shrugged out of his slicker, took off his boots and sank onto the bed on his back fully dressed. He was too tired to take off his clothes. He was too tired to even inject morphine. He closed his eyes and almost instantly was asleep.

  Pain woke him up. Pain in his gut so bad that Ash sat up and then doubled over and groaned. He had been a fool not to inject. He swung his legs off the bed and went to stand but the pain brought him to his hands and knees. For a few moments he thought this was it. He was dying. But after a minute the pain subsided enough that he made it to his feet and to the morphine.

  Caked with sweat, Ash lay back down. A coughing fit left him weaker still. He took his handkerchief out and mopped his forehead and pressed it to his mouth and when he drew it away there was blood on it.

  Ash closed his eyes. He was in the final stages. Somehow he must find Sharkey quickly or he wouldn’t find him at all.

  The lassitude that came over him wasn’t as potent as it normally would be. He wasn’t awash in pleasure. He wasn’t hurting as much either, and that was what counted.

  Ash drifted off. When next he awoke the window was dark and he was clammy and shivering. Tugging on his boots, he went down to the lobby. “I’d like a hot bath.”

  “We have a washtub in the back. The boy will fill it for you. It will cost you extra, though.”

  “I don’t care. I really need one.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, sir,” the clerk said.

  A shave and a change of clothes and Ash almost felt like a new man. The mirror, though, didn’t lie. He was a walking cadaver. His face, especially, was awful; a thin-lipped skull with burning eyes, like some creature straight out of hell.

  Ash made the rounds of a few saloons but his heart wasn’t in it. He visited the marshal’s office where a deputy told him the marshal wasn’t expected back until late the next morning.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any idea where I could find Ben Sharkey, would you?” Ash asked.

  “Mister, if the marshal knew that, he’d find him his own self.”

  Ash had a good night, for once. He injected and slept the sleep of the dead, awaking more refreshed than he had felt since he could remember. He dressed and went to a place called Ma’s where he stuffed himself on scrambled eggs and a slice of ham and toast and coffee. He paid and walked out and hadn’t taken six steps when his stomach revolted. Ducking around the corner of the building, he was so sick it left him too weak to stand. Gasping for breath, every part of him hurting, he sat on a barrel until he felt strong enough to walk.

  Any hope Ash had that he might not be as near to death’s door as he feared was dashed. Not being able to keep food down was another sign of the end.

  He was breathing on borrowed time.

  The deputy wasn’t in the marshal’s office. Another man was, bigger and broader with gray at the temples and the stamp of hardship in the lines of his craggy face. The badge on his shirt told who he was.

  “So you’re Lucas Olander,” Ash said by way of greeting.

  Olander looked him up and down. “And you must be the gent Carl was telling me about. The one who came in asking about me. The one who wanted to know about Ben Sharkey’s doings.”

  “That would be me,” Ash confirmed. “I’m after him. Before you ask, I’ll tell you why. I aim to buck him out in gore.”

  Marshal Olander sniffed several times and raked Ash from head to foot appraisingly. “Don’t take this wrong. Are you sure you’ll live long enough? You look fit to keel over.”

  “If I do he’s to blame.” Ash chronicled his clashes with Sharkey in Kansas and Texas and how he had come to Colorado looking for him. He left nothing out. He even told about the slug in his chest. “I don’t have much time left, Marshal. I’ll be grateful for any help you can lend me.”

  Olander had listened with his arms folded across his chest. Now he stirred and said, “You’re the one I read about, aren’t you? The one who put an end to the Fraziers and Judson?”

  “That would be me,” Ash confirmed a second time. “I went after them because I couldn’t find Sharkey. Now I can, with your help. But I need to do it quick.”

  “I have no objection to us working together,” Olander informed him. “But
the ‘quick’ might be hard to do. I just spent four days chasing Sharkey and his men and all I caught for my effort was a handful of empty air.”

  Raw emotion tore at Ash. Placing his hands on the desk, he leaned toward the lawman. “You can’t begin to know how much this means to me. There has to be someone somewhere who knows where they lay low. There has to be some way of bringing them to bay.”

  “I am open to suggestions.”

  Ash pondered. What did he know about Sharkey that might help? “He is powerful fond of painted ladies. Have you sent a man around to all the brothels?”

  “Surely Sharkey isn’t stupid enough to come into Durango, knowing that I am looking for him.”

  “That’s exactly what he would do,” Ash responded. “He is arrogant. He likes to hide right under the nose of the law.”

  “Then I will go myself,” Marshal Olander said, “and if I learn anything I’ll contact you.”

  Ash supposed that was the best he could do for now. He thanked the lawman and returned to his room. He crawled into bed, curled into a ball and spent the afternoon in the limbo of the afflicted.

  A gunshot out in the street woke him. Ash went to the window and heard gleeful yelling and whooping. A miner or some other well-lubricated individual on a spree, he reckoned.

  Ash splashed water on his face and went out to taste Durango’s nightlife for himself. By Denver standards it paled. The saloons were busy enough and a steady flow of humanity paraded the streets, but there was something missing. Ash couldn’t put his finger on it until a dove sashayed past wearing an expensive dress and smelling of costly perfume.

  “That’s what it is.”

  Durango and Denver were sisters in everything, but Denver dressed better. Brass and glass and carpet and chandeliers were the ribbons that made Denver more attractive. Her saloons and bawdy houses were classier.

  Not that Ash found anything to complain about in Durango. Lust and vice were on plentiful display. A greasing of a palm and a man could have practically anything—or anyone—he wanted.

  Ash bucked the tiger until near midnight. He had it in mind to treat himself to a lady but oddly enough he lost the urge. Yet another sign he was at the end of his rope. Doc Peters had warned that his carnal cravings would die right before he did.

  Since he wasn’t tired Ash walked the dusty streets from one end of Durango to the other and back again. Once, on a side street, two men came out of the shadows as if to pounce just as he stepped into the glare of a lamp. They both took one look and got out of there. He laughed for quite a while. Then his eyes moistened.

  Mood swings were another sign.

  It was past one a.m. when Ash bent his boots to his room. He stripped, resorted to more morphine and lay on his back waiting for sleep to claim him. It proved elusive. So did the pleasure the morphine usually gave him. He felt little different after sticking the needle into his arm than he had felt before he injected.

  When slumber did finally come so did chaotic dreams. “Nightmares” was a better term. Weird images flitted and flowed. Creatures that never existed chased him to rip and rend. Along about four in the morning he snapped awake, dripping sweat and shaking. He couldn’t get back to sleep so he got up, washed and dressed.

  He sat in a chair, staring out the window and remembering. People, places, joys, sorrows, all as real as when they happened.

  “God, I hate this.”

  Dawn was breaking when a knock on his door drew Ash from the chair. He opened the door. “You’re up early.”

  “I have a long ride ahead of me and I reckoned you would like to tag along,” Marshal Lucas Olander informed him.

  “Don’t tell me,” Ash said, tingling with expectancy.

  “How would you like another chance at Ben Sharkey?”

  Chapter 29

  Once, it had been a gold camp.

  Gold had been panned from a stream in a gulch in the San Juan Mountains. Those who first found it tried to keep it secret but as always happened word got out and others eager to be rich poured in to file claims of their own. The camp seemed to sprout overnight. Made up mostly of tents and a few hastily built buildings, Gold Gulch, as it was optimistically named, lasted all of six months. By then it was apparent that the gold already taken from the stream was all the gold that would ever be taken from the stream. Off buzzed the swarm in search of more-golden pastures. They took their tents with them but left the buildings.

  Only one of the structures was made of logs and sturdy enough that it survived through the next winter. The others had thin planks for walls and plank ceilings and were about as sturdy as dry twigs. A chinook blew all of them down save for the cabin.

  Gold Gulch became another ghost camp. No one went there. It was too far from the main trails and had nothing to offer but cold water and the ghosts of those who had been slain during the camp’s short existence.

  Since no one went there, when a prospector happened to pass the gulch on his perpetual hunt for yellow ore, he thought it strange that the cabin windows were aglow with light and there were horses in the corral. Curious, he tied his mule in the pines and went for a look-see. The prospector thought it must be fellow ore hounds but when he took the precaution of sneaking up to a window and peeking in, the men he saw weren’t prospectors. Each was an armory and all were gathered around a table where one of their number was counting out money from a bag stamped THE LOST SOUL’S MINE.

  The prospector got out of there. He knew cutthroats when he saw them and he was partial to his neck.

  A couple of weeks went by and he went down to Durango. He decided to treat himself to a night at a bawdy house. He happened to be in the parlor with a delightfully plump bundle of lips and breasts on his lap when in came the marshal. He overheard the marshal talking to the madam about a gang of outlaws and that made him think of the men in the cabin in Gold Gulch. He told the marshal about them.

  “That’s as much as I know,” Lucas Olander ended his account as they were making for the livery. “Deputy Weaver and me are ready to head out as soon as you are.”

  They were under way by nine. Ash brought his packhorse.

  Deputy Weaver wasn’t used to a lot of riding. He was a softy, fleshy man who always seemed to roll out of his blankets on the wrong side. Nothing suited him. By the second day he complained of blisters on his backside and of stiffness in his lower back.

  Ash was annoyed by Weaver’s constant complaining but Marshal Olander took it in stride and told his deputy to quit being a weak sister.

  “Wait until we find this Sharkey,” Weaver replied. “Then you’ll see how puny I am.”

  “If you’re not, stop your griping,” Olander said. “Besides, those blisters won’t hurt half as much once they pop.”

  Weaver had another trait Ash didn’t like. He showed the trait that evening when they were sitting around the campfire and he looked across at Ash and declared, “You look like hell.”

  “Hush,” Marshal Olander said.

  “But he does,” Weaver insisted, with a jab of his thumb. “He should be in a hospital. And he stinks. When I’m near him I can’t hardly stand to breathe.”

  Ash was sipping coffee. He put down his tin cup and placed his hand on the Remington revolver. “I can still draw a six-shooter.”

  “None of that,” Olander quickly said. “We’re on the same side.”

  “Bluster all you want,” Weaver told Ash. “Your skin is like white paint and you sweat and smell and your arms have more needle marks in them than a sieve has holes.”

  Olander was losing his temper. “Damn it. You know about the lead in his chest.”

  “I was only saying.”

  From then on Ash talked to Weaver as little as possible. He suggested to the marshal that they could do without the deputy but Olander reminded him that Sharkey’s pack consisted of five or six curly wolves and they would need Weaver when the time came.

  The San Juans were gorgeous. Ash would ride for hours at a time admiring the scenery. He had n
ever paid much attention to landscape before he was shot; he must have missed an awful lot in his travels.

  On the morning of the fifth day Ash was trailing the others, his packhorse in tow, when Marshal Olander slowed so he could catch up and then matched the roan pace for pace.

  “We’ll be there by noon tomorrow.”

  “I figured from what you’d told me.”

  Olander gave Ash a strange look. “Are you up to this? Before you say anything, I’m not my lunkhead of a deputy. I’m only asking because I saw you struggling to lift your saddle this morning.”

  “I will do what I have to.”

  “I figured,” Olander said with a grin. “Only thing is, the odds are on their side. We have to work together or we’ll become worm food together. So I ask you again. Are you up to this?”

  “Nothing this side of the grave will stay me from my vengeance,” Ash vowed. “I have waited too long. I have come too far.”

  “About that,” Olander said. “It could be you don’t get the chance. It could be that Weaver or me has a clear shot or Sharkey surrenders. It might be you don’t get to squeeze the trigger on him.”

  “God couldn’t be that cruel.” But Ash knew better. He hadn’t prayed in so long, he had forgotten how. But that night after the other two were asleep he shifted onto his knees, clasped his hands and raised his head to the heavens. “I’ve learned not to ask for much but I have to ask for this. I want it to be me. I need it to be me. Do this for me and I won’t hold the other against you.” Ash caught himself. “No, that’s not true. I hate you for letting this happen. I didn’t deserve it. Not this I didn’t.”

  A gust of wind fanned Ash’s sunken cheeks.

  “It’s some life you give us. We’re born so we can die. Along the way a wrong step or bad luck and we die that much sooner.” Ash’s voice broke. He coughed and swore. His eyes were damp. They were damp a lot of late. Another thing he hated. “It’s all I ask. Sharkey and me. Do this one thing and I can go to my grave holding my head high.”