Monahan's Massacre

by William W. Johnstone

  When she had gone, Dooley said, “I was. Then decided to light out after breakfast.”

  The waitress returned with a cup of coffee. She was fast. Maybe because the stove was just a few feet away, but perhaps because Dooley Monahan had brought five outlaws to town for burial.

  Dooley added some cream to his coffee, stirred, sipped, and smiled across the table. “And it seems that I recall you saying you were going to skedaddle, too.”

  The lawman ate some eggs, snapped off a bite of bacon with his hand, and reached for his own coffee cup.

  “I intend to. Tomorrow. First light.” He drank some of the strong brew. “Figured to let you put some distance between me and you.”

  “We’re not going in the same direction, though,” Dooley reminded him. “You’re bound for Scottsbluff, same as those sodbusters from Rhode Island. I’m heading toward Denver.”

  Maximilian tugged his napkin out of his shirtfront and dabbed his mouth before telling Dooley, “They’re miners. Going to Fetterman City.”

  Dooley shrugged.

  Maximilian tilted his head and studied Dooley with a lot of suspicion. “You did eat with them last night, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Dooley said. “That Mrs. Abercrombie makes a mighty fine apple pie.”

  “Canned apples?” the lawman asked.

  “What else?”

  “They didn’t tell you their sad story?” the lawman asked.

  “They did, but I’m a drifting cowboy. Didn’t pay attention to what they said. And . . .” He gave his best sheepish look before taking a long pull of coffee that drained the cup. “Well, for religious folk, they can drink liquor with the drunkest waddies I’ve ever worked with.”

  That got the lawman to smile. Dooley’s plate arrived, and the two men ate in silence. The marshal, of course, finished first, but instead of leaving, he rocked back in his chair and rolled a cigarette. He was smoking his second when Dooley finished eating. The lawman just studied Dooley, a look that made Dooley think that maybe Marshal Maximilian was more than some ten-cent lawman in a two-bit town, that perhaps he did not believe anything Dooley had told him.

  When the waitress came by, Dooley brought out his gold piece and handed it to her. “Pay for my meal,” he said, “and Marshal Max’s.”

  She raced off to the cashbox to fetch Dooley’s change.

  “Generous,” Marshal Maximilian said.

  “This ain’t Delmonico’s,” Dooley told him, and he rose. “Good luck, Marshal.”

  “You, too,” the lawman said, and asked the waitress for another cup of coffee. The legs of his chair fell back to the floor as Dooley crossed the café, grabbed his hat, opened the door, and stepped carefully onto the boardwalk.

  Blue barked, Dooley looked up, and saw the two men who had just dismounted in front of the Julesburg Café.

  The one with the patch over his left eye and missing the pinky finger on his right hand was, Dooley thought, called Newton, but he had taken that name, Zee Dobbs had told Dooley, because he had killed his first man at the train depot at Newton, Kansas. He carried two .36 caliber Navy Colts stuck butt-forward in a yellow sash. The blond-headed man with him wearing a dark sack suit was called Miserable Jake. Dooley did not think either man had been baptized with those names.

  Miserable Jake spit tobacco juice into one of the holes in the boardwalk.

  Newton tilted his head toward the door that Dooley had just closed. The one-eyed badman asked, “Mr. Dobbs in there?”

  After wetting his lips, Dooley quickly looked down the street toward the railroad tracks. Nothing. Then down the street near the livery. Clear. His eyes fell back on Newton, then Miserable Jake, back on Newton, back on Miserable Jake, and through the glass in the upper half of the door to the restaurant. When he turned back to Newton, he said, hoping his voice would not crack and betray his utter fear, “Yeah. Finishing his breakfast. Y’all could join him if you want. I’m going to fetch my—our—horses.”

  Another spit came from Miserable Jake, but not much tobacco juice.

  “Where’s Doc?” Dooley whispered. “Frank come with you? Zee?”

  Newton took two steps back, and Jake slid down the street.

  Dooley sucked in a deep breath, held it just a moment, and exhaled.

  “What’s the matter, boys?” Dooley tried to sound his most relaxed, most friendly, but understood that he had most likely failed miserably.

  “Ya seed ’em big mounds at dat boneyard when we rode in, Newton,” Miserable Jake said. It was not a question.

  “Five.” Newton’s head bobbed. “No markers. Just dirt.”

  “Fresh earth.”

  “Yep.”

  Newton jutted his chin toward Dooley. “Means you kilt our boss, you low-down cur.”

  “What . . . why . . . er . . .”

  Miserable Jake raised his left arm, fully outstretched, and pointed a long, dirty finger at Dooley’s face.

  “Dobbs don’t never take no breakfast, ya lyin’ boss-killin’ bandit. Says it gives’m indy-gestin’.” The gunman’s right arm was already reaching across his stomach toward one of the Navy Colts. One-eyed Newton was pulling the long-barreled Remington .44 from his holster.

  Dooley was falling.

  It had not been intentional. Dooley had just stepped into a hole in the boardwalk. His foot crashed all the way to his knee, and he toppled over to his left as the two men who rode with the Dobbs-Handley Gang were killing the hell out of the front door to the Julesburg Café. Wood splintered. Glass broke. Men and women and the waitress and Marshal Max cried out and dived for cover inside the restaurant.

  Dooley’s body crashed into the boardwalk, and even over the scent of gun smoke, he swore he could smell the pitch, the turpentine odor of the lousy pine planks that splintered into dust or bits of wood. Blue leaped over him in terror.

  The gunmen, professional murderers and thieves, quickly adjusted their aim, and now began riddling the remnants of the boardwalk with lead. But Dooley had disappeared through a haze of smoke and dust and filth. He landed on the ground, saw the brown boots of Newton dancing, saw the legs of Blue on the ground, disappearing as the dog leaped up, reappearing as the dog came down. He couldn’t hear Blue’s barks, or the curses of the killers, just a ringing in his ears.

  He pulled the trigger and saw the left brown boot of Newton explode in a gory mix of leather, bone, and blood.

  Dooley did not even recall drawing his Colt, but he must have while he was falling and before he hit the earth because he squeezed the trigger almost instantaneously.

  Down went Newton. A bullet from Miserable Jake tore through wood and carved a furrow across Dooley’s right calf.

  Biting back pain, Dooley thumbed back the hammer, tilted the barrel upward slightly, and pulled the trigger.

  “Ummpfh,” Miserable Jake grunted. “I be kilt.”

  Newton was quickly sitting up, finding his other Navy. Dooley heard Blue yelp, caught a few of Newton’s curses, and saw the gunman leveling the Navy in Dooley’s general direction. The gunman fired first, but the pain from having his big toe and maybe a couple of others blown off spoiled his aim. The bullet lodged in a chunk of boardwalk to the top of Dooley’s head. Dooley’s round caught the gunman right in the center of his forehead, just as Blue was diving for the outlaw’s throat. The dog missed, landed, turned around, and stopped.

  Newton had fallen hard to the ground, still clutching one of the old Navy Colts, but not able to do a damned thing with it because he was dead.

  Scrambling from underneath the boardwalk, Dooley aimed his recocked weapon at Miserable Jake, only to discover that that blackguard lay spread-eagle in the dust. The two horses had shied away, backing up to the other side of the street. They didn’t run, but fear shined in their wild eyes as they skittered about this way and that.

  What was left of the door to the Julesburg Café swung open, and Dooley turned his Colt toward Marshal Max, who removed the cigarette from his lips, glanced at the dead man, and the dying
one, and Blue, and then Dooley.

  “Who are they?” the marshal asked.

  “Two of the Dobbs-Handley bunch,” Dooley said. He did not holster the Colt, did not even lower the hammer, but moved to the gut-shot Miserable Jake.

  “Hell,” Dooley heard Marshal Maximilian say, “I guess I’ll have to give you another voucher for their bounties, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Blue growled at the dying man until Dooley told his dog to stop. Kneeling beside the man, he bit his bottom lip and regretted that, once again, it had come to this. One man dead, another about to be, and this time Dooley’s leg was bleeding and burning like the hottest hinge in Hades. On top of that, Dooley had splinters in one of his earlobes, in his neck, arm, and the fleshy part of his side. One sleeve had been ripped, and he still tasted pine on his tongue and smelled like he had just bathed in turpentine.

  Miserable Jake groaned, and turned his head to look at Dooley. By then, Dooley was squatting, keeping the barrel of his Colt trained on the man’s crooked nose while his left hand reached down and removed Jake’s uncocked pistol from his hand. There was no resistance. Dooley tossed the gun a few feet into the street. Blue went over to sniff the revolver.

  Dooley left the dying killer for a moment, made his way through what once had been a boardwalk, and pulled open the door to the Julesburg Café. It fell off the hinges and crashed at his feet.

  The inside made him grimace. A coffeepot had been blown to pieces. Round tables rolled across the scrambled eggs and hash browns and coffee and napkins, and two of those tables had been ventilated with bullets. The waitress poked her head over one table.

  “Anybody in here hurt?” Dooley asked, only to understand that the only person having breakfast in the restaurant when Dooley had walked out the door was Marshal Max, and he was standing on the boardwalk, or what remained of it, rolling a smoke. The waitress appeared shaken, but not bleeding.

  Dooley yelled, “In the kitchen? Is anyone hurt?”

  No one answered, and Dooley felt nauseous as he moved to the door, pushed it open, and found the kitchen empty. The back door was open. Obviously, the cook had run for his life. Dooley didn’t blame him.

  Dooley walked across the floor, his boots crushing eggs and bacon and hash browns that had been left on the tables by other customers who, luckily, dined early and left before the gunplay. Broken mugs and shattered plates also crunched underneath his weight as he hurried back outside.

  * * *

  “Where are Handley, Watson, and the others?” Dooley asked.

  “Go to hell,” the man said.

  “You’ll be there shortly. Where are they?”

  The man moved his head and stared at the sky.

  “They send you?”

  Remorse must have got the better of the wicked killer, or maybe the assurance that, yes, he would be dead directly with an express ride down to the fiery pits. “My name,” he said, as blood trickled out of the left corner of his mouth, “is Valiant. Ain’t joshin’. Was my ma’s maiden name. Valiant Noble Engledinger. Put that on my cross. Will ya?”

  “If it’ll fit. How do you spell Engledinger?”

  “Hell if I know. Just do yer best, pard.” So now Dooley was pards with the man who had tried to gun him and his dog down. “Where are the boys . . . and Zee?”

  His head shook.

  “That’s not the way to go about getting your last request granted, Valiant,” Dooley tried.

  “No.” The man’s face tightened in agony. His eyes squeezed shut, and for a moment, Dooley feared they might never open. But the pain must have subsided, because his face relaxed, the eyes opened, and Miserable Jake turned toward Dooley again.

  “Mean . . . don’t know. Newton an’ me . . . just come . . . of our own . . . accord. Thought . . . maybe . . .” He grinned. “Thought Dobbs would kill ya, fer the re-ward . . . Wanted . . . Newton thought . . . if we kilt Dobbs, be a . . . fine joke. Get the money . . . he gots . . . fer ya . . . and collects here that . . . big money . . . on ol’ Hubey.”

  “All you would’ve gotten here is a voucher,” Dooley told him.

  If Miserable Jake heard, he did not let on. Instead, he stared at the sky, looking for angels, perhaps, and said, “I think . . . Engle-dinger is E . . . n . . .” But that was it.

  Dooley reached over and closed the dead killer’s eyes. He stood, and saw Marshal Maximilian staring at him. The lawman sighed, shook his head, and said, “Let’s go to my office and sort through this.”

  * * *

  Sorting did not take long. The lawman had a whole box of posters on the known members of the Dobbs-Handley Gang, which Marshal Max had scratched through the name Dobbs. Apparently, he did not think Zee would take her father’s place. He found the posters on Newton and Miserable Jake, slid them toward Dooley, and said, “Bounty on those two might—might cover the cost of the new door and window and all the other damage done to the Julesburg Café. And the boardwalk we’ll have to fix.”

  Dooley did not care.

  “So I won’t give you a voucher for those two carcasses. We’ll just say it’s all even.”

  “Suits me,” Dooley said.

  “But you’ll have to pay for their burial.”

  “Catch up their horses, Marshal,” Dooley said. “Their traps, weapons, bounty . . . that should cover everything.”

  The lawman grinned. “Pleasure doing business with an understanding bounty hunter, Dooley.”

  “I’m no bounty hunter. I’m just a cowboy.”

  The grin turned into a belly laugh. “Yeah. Right.”

  When Dooley rose, the lawman pointed at the street. “Ride out. You say you’re going to Denver?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Good. I’ve decided against Scottsbluff. I’m heading south. As soon as I pack up all my possibles.”

  “What about the Cheyenne Indians down that way?”

  The marshal shook his head. “Rather deal with them redskins than Frank Handley. You’ve done killed his pard and two of his men.”

  “Three,” Dooley corrected, but did not expand on the death of that big brute in Yankton. He was just relieved that the marshal had not found a wanted dodger describing Dooley’s likeness in that batch of posters of known members of the Dobbs-Handley Gang.

  “I don’t care. I’m just getting out of here. When Handley, Watson, and that crowd come here and find out what’s happened, this town’ll go up like a tinderbox.”

  The way Dooley smelled right now, he had no doubt about that.

  * * *

  For a few miles, Dooley rode west along the U.P. rails. When he reined up, he stood in his stirrups and looked back toward Julesburg. He held his breath momentarily when he saw dust drifting that had not been raised by General Grant or Blue. The breath exploded out of his lungs with relief as he sank back into the saddle, realizing that that dust was coming from maybe one horse, and it was moving south at a pretty fast lope. Marshal Maximilian had not been lying after all.

  Of course, Dooley had.

  He never had any intention of going to Denver. Last night, he and the Reverend Granby had concocted what both agreed was a pretty good plan. And it did seem fine . . . until Miserable Jake and Newton showed up outside the Julesburg Café.

  The way things were supposed to go was that Dooley would return that night to the livery, sleep in, get up in the morning, and watch the wagon train leave town. Dooley would let folks know that he knew nothing about those gallant Cincinnatians, who were headed straight up the trail toward Scottsbluff, while Dooley was bound to start a hard ride toward Denver. So when Frank Handley and Doc Watson and Zee Dobbs and all those killers who rode with them—less Newton and Miserable Jake, as things turned out—and found out what had happened to Hubert Dobbs, the murderers and dirty, rotten, rabid dogs would light out hard and furious for Denver. After they left Julesburg in flames.

  Well, Dooley hoped that wouldn’t happen. Besides, Frank Handley had never showed a whole lot of kindness, affec
tion, or even loyalty to Hubert Dobbs, while neither Miserable Jake nor Newton seemed to rank as high lieutenants in the chain of command.

  Relaxing, he decided now that Miserable Jake had been telling the truth, meaning that Dooley still had a day or two to pull away from the killers who would be coming after him. Still, he dared not tarry, so he dismounted to answer the call of nature, picked up his loyal shepherd, and got back into the saddle. For another two miles, he walked, with the dog on his lap. He put the bay gelding into a trot for another mile, slowed back to a walk, and guided the horse into the South Platte River. If Frank Handley had any good trackers riding for him, they would find it hard to follow Dooley in a river.

  The water remained shallow, and Dooley kept General Grant in the south side of the Platte for a few miles, moved to the middle, and eventually the north side, staying in the water. Often, he would stop and let the mud settle, and peer into the river. Maybe an expert tracker could follow a trail in water, but Frank Handley did not hire expert trackers. He hired expert killers.

  Dooley rode a little farther, and kept going until around dusk. That’s when he found what he had been seeking all this time.

  A herd of buffalo had crossed the river, moving north. He saw the path they had carved, and it had to be a great herd, for the trail covered maybe two hundred yards in width. Dooley let Blue down, and the dog decided to take a bath while Dooley opened the saddlebags and found the soft leather hides and thongs he had packed the previous night. While still in the water, he lifted each one of General Grant’s legs and wrapped the hooves in leather, securing them with a thong. Finally, assured that this would work, he called Blue back to him and picked up the sopping wet shepherd and eased him into the saddle. Carefully, Dooley climbed back up, pulled the dog back onto his lap, and moved out of the river and followed the trail left by buffalo.

  He rode only about ten yards before he looked back. Relief let a “whoopie” escape, and he laughed and rubbed Blue’s wet hair. No obvious trail as far as Dooley could see. As far as most men could tell, only buffalo had crossed the river here and moved north. Dooley put the horse into a trot, stopped, and again looked back. He still saw no sign. The leather was still hiding General Grant’s hoofprints. For the next hour, until the light faded so that Dooley couldn’t really tell anything in the dirt, the ruse kept working. When the moon rose, Dooley rode with ease. He might have done it. He might have fooled the men who would be coming to kill him.