Fatal Justice

by Ralph Compton

The wind gusted and the stars sparkled.

  Ash got off his knees. He checked on the horses. He walked a circle around the camp. He sat with coffee in hand and waited for his three hours to be over so he could wake Olander and get some sleep. He thought of Gold Gulch and the coldhearted vermin he must confront, and a chill ran down his back. He was ready and yet he wasn’t ready.

  “I wish I may be shot if I don’t show grit.”

  A wolf howled, a long, lonesome cry that keened down off the mountain and echoed into nothingness, a cry that mirrored Ash’s feelings to where he threw back his own head and almost joined in. A snore reminded him he wasn’t alone.

  “It’s too bad I can’t take my Remington with me when I die,” Ash addressed the stars. “If I could the first thing I would do in the hereafter is shoot you dead. Right in the chest where you had me shot. And do you know what I’d do next? I’d stand there and laugh.” He felt silly saying it but said it anyway.

  Later, as Ash sat drinking coffee, another shooting star cleaved the night with fiery brilliance. Some people saw them as omens. Those same people saw nearly everything in life as a sign of heavenly guidance. To Ash, the shooting star was just a shooting star and life was as empty as the tin cup he drained with a final swallow.

  “Damn, I’m depressing even to me,” Ash said. He woke Olander and went to his blankets to turn in.

  “I’ve never heard anyone say they would shoot God before,” the lawman remarked with a grin.

  Ash frowned. “You heard?”

  “Afraid so. I wish there was something I could do for you but there’s not, so the best I can offer is my sympathy.”

  Ash used two blankets now where he had always used one. He considered using the hypodermic but decided to wait. “I used to be like you. Not anymore. A good man. A decent man.”

  Olander regarded him thoughtfully. “What have you done that isn’t good or decent that I don’t know of? The Fraziers and Judson needed to be put an end to.”

  “A good man would do it because they were evil. I did it for the money,” Ash confessed. “Money is why I came to Durango.”

  “Money is keeping you alive.”

  “Some life.” Ash shut up before he said worse. He rolled onto his side and tried to fight off a wave of self-pity. “You know,” he said, his back to the marshal, “nothing is ever as we think it is. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. When we get to the gulch you and the deputy hang back and let me go in alone.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I’m asking for a favor. Leave the law out of it. This is man to man. Will you at least think about it?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Then next day broke bright and clear. Ash was in good spirits as he saddled up. He didn’t use morphine even though every particle of his being craved it.

  Through force of will he blocked the need from his mind.

  Deputy Weaver had his rifle out and couldn’t stop fidgeting in his saddle. “We’re awful close. We could run into them any time now.”

  “Let’s hope we surprise them,” Marshal Olander said. “We need an edge and that’s all we have.”

  A last steep slope brought them to the mouth of the gulch. A bend fifty yards off hid whatever lay beyond.

  Pockmarks in the dirt showed where riders had been coming and going.

  “Must be them,” Deputy Weaver said.

  Ash turned to Olander. “Well?”

  “It goes against my grain.”

  “But you’ll let me?”

  “Let him what?” Deputy Weaver asked.

  “You will likely be shot,” Marshal Olander said.

  “A man can only take so much of dying slow,” Ash told him, and smiled. “No one need know but us.”

  “Need know what?” Weaver asked.

  Marshal Olander nodded. “All right. Go on ahead. When we hear shots we’re coming in.”

  Ash held out his hand. “Thank you.”

  “Thank him for what?” Weaver said as they shook. The gulch was narrow to the bend. A peek past it showed the gulch bed widened to three to four hundred feet. Bisected by the gurgling stream, the ground was sparse of vegetation and littered with rocks. A few plank husks marked all that was left of the booming camp.

  On a low rise on the east side of the stream sat the cabin. Deep in the shadow of the high gulch wall, it was long and low and had a crude stone chimney.

  Smoke curled into the air, and muffled voices carried to the bend.

  Ash debated. He had a lot of open space to cover. The window was covered with burlap but if anyone looked out they’d spot him. Or hear him. The roan was bound to make a racket crossing the rocks. Sliding down, he shucked the Winchester from the scabbard, levered a round into the chamber, and went around the bend on foot. Staying low, he crossed the stream to the east wall and moved along it toward the cabin, staying in deep shadow.

  Ash thought of the look that would be on Ben Sharkey’s face when Sharkey saw him, and smiled. “You’re mine at last, you son of a bitch.”

  At the side of the cabin was a corral. Horses were dozing or milling. A claybank raised its head, its ears pricked, and gazed in Ash’s direction. He hoped it wouldn’t whinny.

  Ash had forty yards to go and then twenty and then ten. He was watching where he stepped and he was watching the horses. He took another step and his chest exploded with pain. Pain so potent it brought him to his knees. He clutched at himself and dropped the Winchester. His senses swam.

  “No,” Ash bleated. Not when he was so close. Not when he could practically taste his revenge.

  The pain became a pounding hammer that beat at his mind and his body. He collapsed onto his side and smothered a scream. He thought this must be it. The slug had at last penetrated his heart and any instant he would pitch into a black abyss.

  Hammer, hammer, pain, pain. It went on and on until Ash groaned and gnashed his teeth and wished for the end. He had tried and he had failed. He had given it his best, though.

  Ash was dimly aware of being nudged. He looked up into a bearded face with a bulbous nose and thick lips, and the muzzle of a revolver. The man was saying something, but Ash couldn’t hear him for the hammering. The muzzle gouged him in the neck and then the man stepped back, studying him. Ash tried to speak but couldn’t. He closed his eyes and waited for the end. It wouldn’t be long. He was sure.

  As abruptly as it brought him down, the pain went away. The pressure eased. Soaked with sweat, Ash tried to swallow, but his mouth was bone dry. He didn’t open his eyes when he was poked, or even when someone rolled him onto his back. But Ash did when someone laughed and declared, “Well, what do we have here?”

  It was Ben Sharkey.

  Chapter 30

  There were seven men in the cabin and not a shred of sympathy on a single face.

  There certainly wasn’t any sympathy on the face of Ben Sharkey. There was only glee. He walked back and forth in front of Ash, who lay doubled over on the floor where they had dumped him, and chortled. “If this don’t beat all. If this surely don’t beat all.” He stopped pacing and bent down. “I didn’t recognize you at first. I doubt your own pa would, as pitiful as you look.”

  Ash had been stripped of his revolver and the pocket pistol. He was unarmed and weaker than a sick kitten and completely at the mercy of men who did not know the meaning of the word.

  “Can’t talk?” Sharkey said. Laughing, he kicked Ash in the side, then turned to the others. “Some of you might recollect me talking about my old friend Marshal Asher Thrall.”

  “The tin star you shot down in Texas?” a sour-faced man asked.

  “That’s the one and this is him.” Sharkey touched Ash with the toe of his boot. “I hate the bastard, but I have to admire his grit. He came all this way to find me, as bad off as he is.”

  “He must want you dead really bad,” another said.

  Sharkey stopped grinning and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “The questions is, boys, how did he find us? He can’t h
ave tracked us. We’ve been too careful. He had to know we were here.” Sharkey glanced at the burlap covering the window. “In fact, I doubt he came alone, not in his condition. Buck, Tyree and Kline, I want you three to go down the gulch and see if he brought friends.”

  “If he did?” a lump of flab responded.

  “Bring them back alive if you can. If you can’t, bring back their bodies and their horses. Go out the back door in case they’re watching and crawl until you think it’s safe.”

  The three outlaws moved toward the rear of the cabin.

  Ash struggled to sit up but couldn’t. He prayed that Olander was on his guard and wouldn’t be taken by surprise.

  “Now, then,” Sharkey said, and hunkered. “It will take them a while, so suppose you and me have us a nice talk.” He jabbed Ash with his finger. “You listening, Thrall?”

  Ash took a few breaths and licked his lips. “My ears still work.”

  “Ah. He speaks at last.” Cackling, Sharkey pushed his hat back and bent lower. “I thought I killed you that day in Mobeetie.”

  “You almost did.”

  Sharkey sniffed and crinkled his nose. “You look like hell and you smell like hell. What’s the matter with you? Did you come down with consumption?”

  “You,” Ash said.

  “Me what?”

  Ash dearly wished he was strong enough to make a fist and smash it against Sharkey’s smug face. “You are the matter with it. It’s not consumption. It’s your bullet.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Ash told him.

  Sharkey listened without comment, and when Ash was done he straightened and burst into peals of mirth, laughs that shook his whole body. He laughed until he was holding his sides. “Did you hear that, boys? He’s been suffering all this time on account of me. I am so happy I could bust.”

  “What do we do with him?” asked a tall man rolling a cigarette.

  Sharkey bent back down. “What do I do with you, Thrall? I could shoot you but that would only put you out of your misery. Or I could carve on you with my knife, but I doubt I’d make you suffer any worse than you already are.” He chuckled and shook his head. “No. I think the smart thing is to leave you be. It will amuse me to sit here and watch you die.”

  “You miserable bastard.”

  Sharkey laughed and stood. “This will be fun. We can bet on how long we think he’ll last. I say in ten hours he’ll be a goner.”

  “That long?” a man said. “From the way he looks I don’t reckon he’ll last one hour.”

  Ash was inclined to agree. He had never been this weak for this long before. He couldn’t lift his hand more than a few inches. The pain and the pressure were easing, though.

  Two of the outlaws sat at a table to resume playing the card game he had interrupted. The tall one went over to the stove to light his cigarette. Sharkey limped to the window and peered out.

  “Any sign of them?” asked the man at the stove.

  “No. But Buck knows what to do. Whoever is out there is as good as caught or as good as dead.”

  “I came alone,” Ash said.

  “Sure you did.” Sharkey snorted. “I haven’t lasted as long as I have by being stupid.”

  Ash glanced at the front door. If only he could make it to his feet and somehow get outside, he could yell to warn Marshal Olander and Deputy Weaver.

  Sharkey leaned against the wall. “Tell me something, Thrall. Was Horton right?”

  “Who?”

  The outlaw who had said that Ash must really want Sharkey dead looked up from his poker hand. “That would be me.”

  “He’s right, isn’t he?” Sharkey asked again. “The reason you came all this way was to kill me. It has nothing to do with the law, nothing to do with you once toting a badge. This was personal.”

  “This was personal.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Sharkey went to the table, took hold of a chair and dragged it over next to Ash. Straddling it, he laced his fingers under his chin.

  “Do you know what I think?” Sharkey didn’t wait for Ash to reply. “I think me and you are more alike than you’ll admit.”

  “Like hell we are.”

  Sharkey cocked his head as if listening and then went on. “All those years you wore the tin, you walked the straight and narrow. You were like a hawk sitting high up in a tree and looking down your beak at everyone, waiting for them to break the law so you could swoop down. You thought you were better than the rest of us.”

  “Like hell,” Ash said again.

  Sharkey seemed not to hear him. “You did love to swoop too. In Salina the folks used to joke that all it took was for a man to miss the spittoon and you would haul them to jail.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Remember that night when you shot me in the leg? You didn’t have to do that. You could have knocked me down with your pistol. Or fired a shot into the ceiling to warn me to drop my knife. But no. You drew your smoke wagon and shot me.”

  “I didn’t shoot to kill,” Ash justified the act. “I wasn’t trying to cripple you either.”

  “I believe you. I believe you are stupid enough to think that blowing a hole in my leg was an act of kindness.”

  Anger flared, and Ash rose onto an elbow. “How dare you, you son of a bitch. You sit there and put the blame on me when you were the one who was drunk. You were the one who drew his knife and was about to stab the marshal in the back. I was his deputy. I had to protect him.”

  “You didn’t have to shoot me,” Sharkey insisted.

  Ash’s anger brought newfound vitality. A burst of energy shot through him and he was about to push to his feet when he realized he shouldn’t. Instead, he slumped to the floor in shammed weakness. “Blame me if you want to but I was only doing my job.”

  Sharkey shifted toward the card players. “Do you hear him, boys? He crippled me and acts as if he did me a favor.”

  “Lawmen,” Horton said in disgust.

  “They always act so high and mighty,” said the other one.

  Sharkey stood and limped to the burlap. “What’s taking them so long? We should have heard something by now.”

  Ash moved so both his hands were in front of him, at his waist. Now came the crucial part. Could he make Sharkey mad enough? he wondered. “It’s my turn to ask a question.”

  “Only if we let you,” Sharkey responded, and the others laughed. “But go ahead. Amuse us. What do you want to know?”

  “Where are your parents?”

  Sharkey glanced sharply around. “What the hell kind of question is that? What do you care where they are?”

  “Do they know what their son has become? Do they know what you’ve made of your life?”

  “Be careful,” Sharkey said.

  “I bet they do. I bet they don’t want anything to do with you. Not with a son who turned out to be scum.”

  “I have killed men for less.”

  “I’m already dead so your threats don’t scare me.” Ash slowly sat up. He put on a show of barely being strong enough, then swayed a little as an added touch.

  “Answer me. Do your folks know how worthless you are?”

  Sharkey was red in the face, his expression carved from stone. Turning, he lowered his hands, his right brushing his Colt. “Keep it up and I’ll change my mind. You won’t get to die slow.”

  “It’s just like you to shoot an unarmed man,” Ash said sarcastically. “Want me to roll over so you can shoot me in the back? That’s how you killed that stage driver near Bixby, as I recollect. Come to think of it, there’s three or four you’ve gunned down from behind.”

  His jaw muscles twitching, Sharkey took a step. “I think it’s time I put it to the test.”

  “Put what?” Ash asked, hoping he would come closer.

  “A while back I got the idea to stake a man out someday and beat on him with a rock and see how long he lasts. That day has come. I’ll start with your fingers and your toes, then work my way up from y
ours wrists and the ankles. You’ll scream and squirm and beg me to stop, but I won’t.”

  Horton piped up with, “That would be a sight to see. I’ll stake him out. Just say when.”

  Ash needed Sharkey closer. “Do they shoot men in the back for you too?”

  Horton went to stand, but Sharkey gestured. “Stay put. He’s asking for it and he’s going to get it. I’ll do him myself.”

  Ash was ready. He tensed as Sharkey started toward him. The next moment shots boomed from down the gulch followed by shouts and more shooting and the squeal of a horse in pain.

  Sharkey spun and dashed to the front door. Flinging it open, he palmed his Colt. “Something must have gone wrong. Horton, Nickels, you two come with me. Slim, you stay and watch our guest. Not that he’s in any shape to go anywhere.”

  The tall outlaw over by the stove patted a Smith & Wesson revolver on his left hip. “Don’t you worry. He’ll be here when you get back.”

  All Ash could do was watch Sharkey and the other two hurry off. He had lost his chance—or had he? “Any objection to me having something to drink? Water will do but red-eye would be better.”

  “A last drink for the dead man?” Slim said. “Why not? I had a cousin who was hung once and they gave him steak and pie for his last request.” Puffing on the cigarette, Slim reached into a cabinet and flourished a bottle of whiskey. “There’s not much left, but you’re welcome to a swallow.”

  Ash held out his hand. “I’m obliged.”

  “Don’t tell Ben. He tends to fly into a rage at the drop of a hat, and he drops the hat.”

  “At least one of you has some kindness in him,” Ash said. “I didn’t figure you could all be like Sharkey.”

  Slim stopped a few feet away. “We are none of us saints, Mister. I’ll like watching him beat you to death, the same as the others.” He held out the whiskey. “It’ll be the most fun we’ve had in a coon’s age.”

  Ash accepted the bottle. He wiped his sleeve across the top and swirled the coffin varnish. Five or six swallows were left. He chugged and coughed and smiled. “It’s been a while.”

  “Go easy. I want a swallow when you’re done.”

  “Whatever you say.”