The Man From Lordsburg

by Peter McCurtin

  Lassiter rode up from Lordsburg to Abilene with money on his mind. Texas Jack Chandler—the richest, meanest bastard in the Lone Star State-was on the trail, heading north with a huge herd of cattle, and a fortune in gold. All that stood between Lassiter and the biggest haul of all time was Chandler—and the most vicious rag-tag army of killers ever gathered together in one place.

  THE MAN FROM LORDSBURG

  LASSITER 3

  By Peter McCurtin writing as Jack Slade

  First Published by Tower Publications

  Copyright © 1970, 2015 by Peter McCurtin

  First Smashwords Edition: May 2015

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book *~* Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  Chapter One

  Lassiter was in Lordsburg when the telegraph came from Cassie McCord. After he read it, he rode to the nearest railroad at Curzon City and sold his horse. Shouldering his saddle and rifle, he bought a roundabout ticket to Abilene, Kansas.

  It took him four days to get there, with changes at Volper Junction and Fort Marston. On the way, he played poker with a drummer, a retired cavalry captain with a bad cough, and a gun salesman. The gun salesman got off at a place called Mineville, and his place in the game was taken by a talky newspaper reporter who said he’d come West to look for local color.

  The newspaper writer asked Lassiter if he’d care to have his life story, which he guessed was pretty colorful, put down on paper. Lassiter explained that he was a Mormon missionary and there wasn’t much to tell. The consumptive captain smiled and the newspaper writer didn’t ask any more questions.

  It was dark when the train pulled into the Abilene depot, and Lassiter was good and sick of poker and stale cigar smoke when he stepped down and stretched his long legs.

  Abilene sure as hell had changed. Fifteen years before he’d come through here with a posse of Kansas Jayhawkers riding hard behind him. That was when the town was just a wide place in the road. Now it was blazing with light and shaking with noise. Long before the train pulled into the depot, there was the deep lonesome sound of thousands of Texas longhorns bawling in the loading pens up ahead. The whole town smelled of cow.

  He walked along Texas Street, the main stretch, looking for the Brazos Hotel. Abilene was in Kansas, but with hundreds of cowboys in town it was more like Fort Worth on a Saturday night. Out in front of the hotel a young Texas drover with a wispy yellow mustache and crossed gunbelts was calling a big cavalry sergeant a no-good Yankee bluebelly son of a bitch. Lassiter stepped around them and went inside.

  The room clerk had a bald head and a waxed mustache. After putting fresh points on his fool mustache, he checked the register and agreed that a room had been reserved in advance by a Miss Smith. He smiled knowingly at Lassiter and Lassiter smiled back. After that the clerk didn’t think the name or the situation was so funny. But he did say that Lassiter was lucky to get a room, any kind of room in Abilene. The clerk seemed quite proud of Abilene, and Lassiter knew the little bastard was fishing for a dollar. He didn’t give it to him.

  Upstairs, Lassiter locked the door and got a pint bottle of whiskey from his saddlebag and lay down on the bed. The pillow was thin and dirty, but it was better after he put his saddle behind it as a prop. After he built himself a smoke, he lay down again and drank some of the whiskey. While he drank he studied a weary-looking chromo hanging crooked on the wall. It was called Stag at Bay, and he had seen it in dirty and clean hotel rooms all the way from Butte, Montana to Benson, Arizona. In some hotels there was a choice—Stag at Bay or Custer’s Last Stand. This was the first Stag he had seen with bullet holes in him.

  Lassiter pulled at the bottle and waited for Cassie to show up. She hadn’t said when that would be, and Lassiter wasn’t anxious, about that or anything. Cassie had asked him to come, and here he was. She had mentioned big money, and that was enough to bring Lassiter all the way from Lordsburg or the hottest corner of hell. He didn’t ask himself what Cassie might have in mind. Time enough to think about that when he knew what it was.

  He drew his gun and got off the bed. There was another knock. By then Lassiter was out of the way of the door. “Miss Smith?” he called out. Cassie didn’t have much imagination.

  “You look older,” Cassie said when she came in. “Or maybe you look the same. I don’t know which.”

  “No need to argue about it,” Lassiter said. “You look fine, Cassie.”

  That was lying a little, not much. Cassie looked all right, but not fine, not the way he remembered her from the old days. She’d be in her early thirties now, still beautiful but sort of tired, as if some of the wildness had been knocked out of her. Even so, there was still a lot of woman behind the tired blue-green eyes, underneath the black dress. The dress was quiet and it looked like it had cost a whole lot more than the glittery, beaded dresses he’d seen her in, back in El Paso when he’d killed Jimmy Voss to get her.

  “Don’t say it, Lassiter,” Cassie said, opening the drawstring of a silk bag and taking out a square bottle and two glasses.

  “I won’t,” Lassiter said. “Whatever it is.”

  She put down the glasses and poured two drinks. “This is brandy, all the way from Chicago. We never drank that in the old days.”

  “The old days weren’t so bad,” Lassiter said. “Was that what you didn’t want me to say?”

  Cassie poured another drink. “I guess they weren’t so bad. They were all right when they happened. Now they stink.”

  “Not worse than Abilene,” Lassiter said.

  Cassie smiled, feeling better. “That isn’t cow-shit you smell, Lassiter. That’s money.”

  “My favorite smell,” Lassiter said, and they both laughed.

  “We had one hell of a time, didn’t we, Lassiter? It was like we could live forever. Taking what we wanted. Moving on when we got tired of a town.”

  “I still do, little sister,” Lassiter said.

  Cassie said, “It’s different for a woman. Anyway, it’s different for me. Time for me to get away from the guns and the killing and the whiskey and the cow-shit.”

  She looked at him. “Let me ask you something. Why in hell did you ride off like that?”

  “Must of been something important,” Lassiter said, reaching for her.

  “You bastard!” she said, but didn’t put up any more fight than that when he pulled her down on top of the sagging bed. “I came here to talk business.”

  “Then talk, honey.”

  “Later,” Cassie said.

  It was much later because doing what they had to do took some time, the way they were feeling, all those years to make up.

  Glistening with sweat, Cassie sat up in bed and began to fix her hair. She reached down and touched Lassiter. “You may be older,” she said, “but the years haven’t softened you a bit.”

  Lassiter figured since he had his pants off he might as well stay in bed. Cassie got up and got dressed. With the pink in her cheeks she looked more like the old Cassie McCord who had every hard-case in El Paso scratching on her door. She still hadn’t said anything about why he was here in Abilene. Right now, this was Cassie’s show and he wasn’t about to spoil it for her. She was what they ca
lled dramatic, like Lily Langtry, only more so.

  Finally, she stopped walking up and down. “What does a cow cost in Texas?” she asked, smiling.

  “Five or ten dollars, teacher, depending on the cow and the year and the time of year.”

  Cassie asked next, “And what does a good Texas cow fetch in Abilene?”

  Lassiter was beginning to get it. “Twenty-five, thirty dollars, depending again,” he said.

  “Thirty,” Cassie said decisively. “And when you multiply six thousand by thirty, what do you get?”

  “A lot of money,” Lassiter answered, knowing exactly how much.

  Cassie had worked herself up to another drink. “I’m talking about a hundred and eighty thousand, maybe more. Does that sound big enough for you?”

  Lassiter asked for the bottle back.

  “That’s the smallest it can be,” Cassie said. “The least is what I said and the most could be two hundred thousand. What do you think of that?”

  Lassiter sat up in bed. “I think it’s just fine,” he said. “Six thousand cows must be the biggest herd come up from Texas. I thought fifty-five hundred was the record fetched by King and Kennedy back in ’76.”

  “This is the biggest,” Cassie told him, sounding sure of herself. “The biggest and the most money Abilene is likely to see for some time. Texas Jack Chandler’s boys are driving the herd in right now. Ought to be here in about a week. About three thousand cows belong to Jack, the rest to small ranchers who throw in with him. You know how Texas Jack works.”

  “I know he won’t be easy to rob,” Lassiter said. He decided he’d been wrong in thinking that Cassie had no imagination, because Texas Jack Chandler was about the most unrobbable man in the State of Texas, or any other state or territory. Dick King and Miffln Kennedy were the biggest cattlemen in Texas, which made Chandler second biggest, but nobody would be likely to deny that Texas Jack was the biggest and meanest son of a bitch who ever came up the Chisholm Trail. On the surface he was as jovial as a tinhorn politician. Underneath he was as dangerous as a sick snake. He had put together his first herd of wild, unbranded cows in the brush country of South Texas. Now, fifteen years later, he was working on his second million, and was still a loudmouth, conniving, cow-stealing bastard.

  “What do you think?” Cassie asked.

  “I’m thinking it’ll take men and money to bust open Texas Jack’s money-box,” Lassiter said. “Now suppose you fill me in and we’ll think about it some more.”

  Cassie explained that Texas Jack wasn’t with the herd, which was moving up from the south. Chandler had arrived in town ahead of the drive. Then he had gone east to Kansas City in his new parlor car to bring back the chief buyer for one of the big meat packing plants, a man named Woodruff.

  “Woodruff has the money,” Cassie explained, “and Jack doesn’t want anything to happen to it. Besides, he wants to show off his private train, make a big hurraw for the moneyman. They’re supposed to get back here about the time the herd does. Texas Jack swaps the cows for the money—then we take the money.”

  Lassiter liked her nerve. “It sounds downright easy the way you say it. But listen. If the money’s on the train, why not take the train?”

  “Not this train, Lassiter.”I know what I’m talking about. Texas Jack may be just a poor cow millionaire, but he’s better guarded than President Hayes. The windows of the parlor car are made of Bismarck glass you can’t shoot through, and the doors are heavy steel faced with oak. Three guards ride in the parlor car itself, some more in the caboose. The caboose has a Gatling gun mounted on a swivel.”

  “No wonder President Hayes is kicking himself,” Lassiter said. “You’re probably right about the train. Tell me this—where does he keep this train when he’s in town?”

  Cassie said, “He has it switched to a siding down by the loading pens. It stinks there, but Jack says he likes the smell of cow-shit. Says it’s really the smell of money.”

  “That’s where you latched on to that expression,” Lassiter remarked. “I wonder how he smells himself.”

  Cassie got mad. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lassiter waved the half-empty bottle at her, making a peace sign. “Not a thing, sis. Just talk.”

  Cassie stopped fooling with her hair. She sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I guess you know anyway,” she said. “Or you know something. Jack and me were together three years. This is the third year I been with him. Least it was. I guess I was all right when Jack was just a dirty trail herder up from Texas. Now he’s got all kinds of big plans, sinking his money into businesses back East. And I’m just a wore-out whore.”

  There was nothing to say and Lassiter didn’t say it. Women were all the same—sore losers. Maybe that’s why they were no good at cards or any other kind of game. They walked into the game with their eyes and their legs open, then when the game went sour, so did they. He didn’t feel sorry for Cassie. For three years she’d been swinging on Texas Jack’s middle leg, and now she was getting set to use the knife on him.

  Cassie’s blue-green eyes glittered. “You know what that son of a bitch did! He handed me five hundred dollars for three goddamned years. Now what in hell am I going to do with five hundred dollars?”

  “You’re going to give it to me,” Lassiter said, “so we can get this new business of ours started.”

  Chapter Two

  The mob in the telegraph office was keeping two telegraphers busy. It looked like everybody in Abilene was trying to send a message. They were all talking about Texas Jack’s herd and making a lot of noise. After Lassiter finished writing the messages he wanted to send, he took the yellow sheets to the old man in charge and told him to get them off right away.

  The old man was bald on top and fringed on the sides, like a monk. His green eyeshade kept slipping, and so did his temper.

  “Rush! Rush! Everybody’s in a rush these days,” the old man whined. “And for what, mister? Let me ask you that.”

  He stopped complaining when Lassiter reached across the counter and stuffed a folded greenback in his vest pocket. The old man had false teeth carved out of bone, the kind nobody ever saw any more except in swaybacked station agents’ mouths. The old buzzard smiled a dollar’s worth.

  “Speaking of the telegraph,” he cackled, “you know what that writer feller, Truro, said back in Concord, Mass? That feller said it could be that Maine and Texas don’t have nothing important to communicate. That’s a good one, ain’t it?”

  “Right away means now,” Lassiter warned him. “Now you do it, grampaw.”

  “Just hold your horses, young feller,” the old man grumped, “and we’ll see if you got this telegraph business straight. A lot of you fellers come in here and send telegraphs and then come back and say you didn’t say what you said in the first place.”

  Lassiter waited while the old man read through the five names and addresses:

  T. J. Murphy. Murphy’s Saloon. Fort Smith. Arkansas.

  Juno Flowers. Locksmith. Denver. Colorado.

  Oren Kingsley. Bella Union Hotel. Omaha. Nebraska.

  Calvin Moseley. Moseley Leather Company. Amarillo. Texas.

  Howey Winters, c/o The Midway Theatre. St. Louis. Missouri.

  The message was the same on all five telegrams: Big business opportunity. Abilene. Kansas. Lassiter. Brazos Hotel.

  Lassiter told the old bastard that was fine. He told him he’d be back later for the replies, if any. Like he had told Cassie McCord the night before, time was getting short. If they were to do the job right, they would need good men fast. If they were going to take that hundred and eighty-thousand from Texas Jack, they would need more than a bunch of fast guns. Fast guns were a nickel-for-six in Kansas. That was the trouble with fast guns—all gun and no head.

  Picking his way across Texas Street through the churned-up mud and cow-shit, he listened to the kids hawking copies of the Abilene-Sentinel. In Abilene, Texas Jack’s herd was more important than the Second Coming of Chr
ist. Scraping off his boots on the boardwalk, Lassiter thought: Just what Abilene needs—six thousand more cows! But he wasn’t about to complain. The way he and Cassie had figured it, they would take half of the hundred and eighty-thousand and let the others split up their ninety-thousand five ways. Lassiter’s share would come to forty-five thousand, and for that kind of money they could fill the Missouri River with cow-shit and he’d swim across it with a rose in his teeth.

  He went into the first restaurant he saw and asked the waitress for ham and eggs, and she laughed at him. She looked like a Swede farmer from up Nebraska, and she spoke like it. “You must be new in town,” she sassed him. It was the same with the flapjacks he ordered. The bulge-chested Swede said it was steak or nothing, but he had a choice. He could have steak with pinto beans, or steak without. Lassiter wondered what she was like in bed, but he didn’t ask her.

  Some feeder had left a copy of the Abilene-Sentinel on the table and he looked through it while his steak was burning. There was an engraving of Texas Jack Chandler on the front page. The millionaire cattleman looked less like a dressed-up bear than he normally did. The engraver had trimmed Jack’s double-barreled mustache and taken two inches from his pugnacious jaw, adding them to his forehead. But it was Texas Jack, sure enough, the famous white Stetson stuck on the back of his head, and flashing the same bucktooth smile.

  Among other remarkable things, the Abilene-Sentinel declared that Texas Jack Chandler would make a fine Vice President. Texas Jack, an outstanding example of the go-getter spirit, was quoted as saying that he had started in the cattle business with nothing but a horse, a saddle, and ten dollars cash money. Lassiter figured he had stolen the ten dollars.

  He ate slowly, killing time. According to the Sentinel, which was publishing daily bulletins, Texas Jack’s record-breaking herd was due to arrive in five or six days. Cassie had said a week. That gave him one less day than he thought he had. Time didn’t mean much if he didn’t start getting answers to those five telegram messages. All he had so far was the sketchiest kind of plan. The fact was, it wasn’t even a plan, just a hard look at the situation. The way Lassiter saw it, it involved cows, horses, a train, a safe, and probably some killing. That was how it looked right now.