The Man From Lordsburg

by Peter McCurtin

  “All right then,” Lassiter said.

  There was a knock and Kingsley let Cal Moseley in. The old twist-neck stock thief had been riding hard. “Give him a drink,” Lassiter ordered.

  “They got a camp about three miles out,” Mosley said. “Two wagons with mules. And five horses. That country is mighty flat out there. It ain’t going be easy to ambush them fellers.”

  “What else?” Lassiter asked.

  Moseley was indignant. “What else? What else is there?”

  ~*~

  Juno Flowers didn’t come along. Murphy, Winters, Kingsley, and Moseley left their horses in a narrow draw about a quarter of a mile from where the Harpe brothers were camped beside a creek. Kingsley stayed with the animals while the three others started out, crouched low at first, then, when it got too close for that, crawling on their bellies.

  Lassiter gave them thirty minutes to get set. From the mouth of the draw where he sat astride his horse, he could see the Harpe camp plain enough. He was still piss-burned at himself for doing what he had to do. He didn’t think at all about not doing it.

  The Irishman took the left spot, Moseley the right, with Winters in the middle. When they were in position, Lassiter walked his horse out of the draw and headed toward the buffalo camp four hundred yards away. Before he had gone a quarter of that distance, somebody in the camp let out a yell. He began to wonder if he’d make it all the way to the wagons. Before he got close enough for them to see who he was, the Harpes might start shooting, figuring some kind of local law was coming out to take a look-see. There was a saying that a man didn’t have to be shot more than once with a .54-caliber buffalo rifle. That big bullet powered by ninety grains of powder didn’t just kill a man. It took him apart.

  Lassiter kept closing the distance between himself and the camp. If he’d been more than one man, the Harpes would be hunkered down behind those wagons by now. One man didn’t look like much, so they stepped out, bold and big.

  Morgan Harpe was the oldest and biggest of the five brothers. With a beard that reached to his chest and hair that hung to his shoulders, the leader of the bushwhacking family might have been an Old Testament prophet, except nobody in the Bible or anywhere else stank like that. The wind was coming from the direction of the camp. It brought with it the stench of rotting buffalo hides and black blood.

  Suddenly, Morgan Harpe yelled something Lassiter couldn’t make out. He didn’t have to understand the words. He knew what it was. The Harpes knew who was coming to call. Lassiter remembered what the Irishman said back in the hotel room: You’ll be lucky if they kill you quick.

  After the first outburst of yelling it was quiet. Lassiter kept coming. Now he knew how Custer must have felt when he woke up that morning and saw those five thousand Indians looking down his throat. They stood there in front of the wagons by the creek, waiting. Every man jack of them had a Big Fifty Sharps in his hands. It was hard to decide which of them looked dirtier and meaner. Morgan was supposed to be the smartest, but that wasn’t saying much.

  Morgan Harpe decided Lassiter was close enough. “Climb down and turn loose of that animal,” the bushwhacker said, mild enough for someone looking at the man who’d killed his brother.

  “You sure it’s him?” one of the others asked.

  “It’s him certain,” Morgan Harpe said. Lassiter decided the only thing worse than being killed by the Harpes would be having to live with them.

  “Unbuckle the gun belt,” Morgan said, showing rotten, snaggled teeth in a wide smile. “Then we have ourself a nice visit. Just walked right in, didn’t you. Look to be as how the Lord is answered our prayers. I told you to drop it, mister.”

  “No,” Lassiter said. “No gun. I come here to talk. You want to listen or not.”

  Morgan Harpe still couldn’t altogether believe it, having Lassiter fall at his feet this way. “Tell you the truth, mister,” he drawled in his Ozark way. “I been looking for you so long I don’t rightly know what I wants to do first. Only believe this good—you going to suffer for what you done to little Noah.”

  Lassiter recalled that “little” Noah stood six-one and weighed two hundred pounds. And, excepting the rest of the Harpes, a meaner man never burned a homestead. Lassiter said, “I guess little Noah got what was coming to him. Night-crawling a man’s camp that way. I just wish it could have been more of you, Morgan.”

  Lassiter didn’t know the names of the other Harpes. One of them, maybe the youngest, raised his rifle. “I claim his boots,” he announced.

  “Ease up there, brother,” Morgan said. “After the way he done Noah—you want to just shoot him. The Comanches wouldn’t do some of the things I have in mind for this feller. Only that can wait a bit.”

  Morgan Harpe asked, “What was that you wanted to talk about. Speak your piece before we take off your pants.”

  Lassiter said it all together. “You’re here to have a go at Jack Chandler’s pay-off money. So am I. I think I can do it and you can’t. Killing homesteaders and selling Indians to the Mexicans as slaves is one thing. You boys are good at that. Why don’t you stick to it?”

  Morgan Harpe said with a broad grin, “You mean you ain’t even ready to split half the money should we decide to leave this lay, which, naturally, we ain’t about to do. Well, listen here, friend, you couldn’t buy back your life with twice the money Jack’s got. Oh no, sir, you ain’t going to die this day, could be not even tomorrow. But we going to start soon with the cutting and burning and you going to eat your knackers and say you like it. Now does that answer your question?”

  “Sure,” Lassiter said, and shot Morgan Harpe twice through the chest. Out behind him two Winchesters started to crack and there was the boom-boom-boom of Howey Winters’ big rifle. Morgan was dead when he hit the ground and the four other brothers dropped like stones. Two of them weren’t altogether dead. Lassiter swung his gun and put bullets through their heads. Just to make sure, he reloaded and did the same for the rest of them.

  Howey Winters came through the tall grass at a run. The little killer’s eyes were bright with excitement. He slapped the curved stock of the Remington-Schuetzen, saying, “How’d you like that? What d’you think of that? You see the way I dropped the sons of bitches?”

  Lassiter looked at him coldly and Winters shut up. “Turn loose the animals,” he told Cal Moseley when he and Murphy got there.

  “Had fun, did you Howey?” the Irishman jeered. “Just as good as straddling a woman, ain’t it?”

  “Drop it, T. J.,” Lassiter warned him.

  Kingsley brought up the horses and they headed back toward Abilene. The bit of business with the Harpes couldn’t have gone smoother. Time had been wasted, but there was no helping that. Lassiter rode up front, keeping to himself. Behind, Winters and Murphy were arguing about one of the shots. Handsome Howey was claiming all four kills. The Irishman had killed plenty of men, white and Indian, in his time, and he didn’t like the way Winters was carrying on.

  “For the love of Jesus,” Murphy was saying. “Didn’t I see my bullet knock the brains right out of the man’s skull? My bullet took that Harpe feller right below the eye.”

  “Bullshit,” Handsome Howey commented.

  One thing about these boys, Lassiter thought with sour humor, they got the right spirit.

  They split up about two miles from town. Lassiter went in directly by the main trail. Moseley and Murphy circled around so they’d come into town at the other end. Winters and Kingsley spaced out and came in later. Sooner or later, the law would find those five dead buffalo hunters lying out there on the prairie. Lassiter didn’t think the law would be interested in the Harpes. Buffalo hunters were always killing or being killed.

  He was still some distance from town when he heard the thunder of hooves. It started more like a shaking of the earth than as a sound. The air shook too, a silent shaking at first, then the thunder of a great herd moving began. The thunder grew near and strong until it filled up the whole sky. He reached the end of
Texas Street just as the town went wild. That same brass band was playing down by the loading pens. A locomotive whistle tried hard to drown out the band. Six-shooters fired in the air sounded like a small battle. Something like a cannon boomed. Lassiter thought it was a cannon until he recognized the sound as railroad torpedoes being struck with a hammer. It was more than enough noise to start a stampede. Six thousand wild steers wouldn’t leave much standing in Abilene if they took it into their bony skulls to go for a run.

  Lassiter had been thinking about that for days. He thought it would be one hell of a shame to have a stampede at that particular time. He wanted those six thousand steers ready and waiting when he needed them. If there was any stampeding to be done, he wanted to do it.

  Lassiter knew what a cow looked like. He didn’t need to see six thousand more. He went upstairs to the room and waited for the others to get back.

  Chapter Six

  Cassie was waiting for him in his room. Always, after he killed a man, Lassiter found the only way to ease the tension was to put away some whisky or take a woman to bed. Cassie was available and that was better than any bottle. He thought she was available. She would have been if she hadn’t been so tensed up. Lassiter said he had a sure cure for that.

  Cassie didn’t smile. “Is the plan definite now? I’m like to bust if you say no.”

  “Pretty definite,” Lassiter answered. “Unless something happens to change things—we do it tonight.”

  “There’s one change you should know about, Lassiter. Texas Jack has moved into the Drover’s Hotel, so Woodruff the cattle buyer can have the parlor car all to himself. Jack wants him to have all the comforts while he’s in town. The pay-off for the cows will begin soon as Woodruff’s men count them.”

  Lassiter didn’t see that anything had changed, except now they’d be robbing the cattle buyer instead of Texas Jack. The money was Woodruff’s responsibility until the sale went through. That was fine by Lassiter. He was just as ready to rob a man he didn’t know as a man he didn’t like.

  “I guess Texas Jack is just plain lucky,” he said to Cassie. “He’ll still have his six thousand steers when this is over. If it’s any consolation, sis, we’ll have to make a mess of his fancy trail.”

  There was bitterness in Cassie’s face. “The bastard’s got it insured.”

  Lassiter saw the funny side of it. “I’d like to help you put the boots to Jack, but we ain’t got the time this trip.”

  Cassie shrugged. “Forty-five thousand should take some of the edge off. Anyhow, it won’t be so easy for Jack to sell his cows once word gets ’round Abilene isn’t a safe town for cattle buyers.”

  Lassiter didn’t see it that way. “They can hardly blame Jack. Nobody gets the kind of protection he’s giving Woodruff.”

  A thought came into Lassiter’s mind, but he didn’t dwell on it. There were thoughts like that before every big job.

  Cassie didn’t have her brandy bottle along this time. Some of Lassiter’s red-eye seemed to make her feel better. She was more like the old raunchy Cassie when she said, “They can brand his butt and sing ‘Oh, Promise Me,’ for all I care. As long as I get my share of that money.”

  “Now you’re talking, honey,” Lassiter said.

  The whisky and the money-talk brought the roses back to Cassie’s cheeks. She looked young again, just as greedy. Lassiter didn’t mind that. Greedy women were greedy for everything, especially in bed.

  “You ever been to San Francisco?” she asked him.

  “Not lately.”

  “Maybe we could go there. What a time we could have.”

  “Could be,” Lassiter agreed.

  Cassie’s skittishness had passed, and now she was doing her damnedest to make sure he didn’t run off with her share of the money. Lassiter hadn’t even thought about it. When somebody played square with him, so did he. That was how he worked. Besides, a man with the name of double-crosser didn’t last long in his business. Cassie knew that or she wouldn’t have sent for him. But like all women, she wanted to be extra sure.

  “Get those pants off, Lassiter,” she said.

  Cassie had always been good in bed. Lassiter couldn’t remember any time she was better than now. She used every bed-talent she had to buy extra loyalty. Lassiter was only too happy to lie back and let her persuade him. Cassie was some persuader. He thought he might go with her to Frisco. It would get stale after a week or two, as it did with every woman he had ever known. A man stayed the third week, he started looking for something fresh to chew on. Why the hell not go to Frisco? He was a man of means, with forty-five thousand as good as in the bank. Or at least in his saddlebags.

  “Time you got started, sis,” he said finally. “We meet as arranged at the farmhouse on the Dillon Road. We can talk about California after the loot is divvied up.”

  “When do you think you’ll get there?” Cassie wanted to know. “Make it quick, will you?”

  Pulling on his pants, Lassiter said, “No later than midnight. If we don’t make it by twelve, the latest one, we won’t be coming.”

  “So long, Lassiter,” Cassie said, putting strength into the goodbye kiss. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”

  After she left, Lassiter went down the hall to the other room. They were waiting for him. Now that the big job was dead ahead, they were acting more like a team of professionals. Even Murphy and Winters had stopped their cross-talk.

  “We been over this before,” he began. “Now we go over it again, one step at a time. From Cassie we know the money is in a Salamander safe in Texas Jack’s railroad car. The only change is—Jack’s moved to the Drover’s for the time being. That leaves Woodruff and two guards inside the car. Outside, there are six or eight men with rifles. The parlor car is uncoupled from the locomotive and braked now on the private siding. The caboose with the Gatling gun is standing on another siding, right beside the parlor car. The locomotive’s been moved down to the roundhouse.”

  Lassiter nodded to Kingsley. “Right or wrong?”

  “That’s how it was fifteen minutes ago,” Kingsley answered. “Looks like it stays that way till Woodruff leaves town.”

  “Maybe,” Lassiter said.

  He continued: “We could take the six or eight riflemen if that’s all there was. Same thing, maybe, for the Gatling. One sure thing—we can’t do it cold. So what’s the answer?”

  He looked at Cal Moseley.

  Moseley started to talk. “First we start a stampede. I start a stampede. With a help from Juno’s firecrackers I get that six thousand-cow herd running and point it straight at the depot where the parlor car is. After the cows trample the guards they knock down most of Abilene. That gives us time to do what we came for.”

  “Maybe,” Lassiter said. “You sure the cows ain’t heavily guarded.”

  Cal Moseley grinned, a toothless fox. “Certain,” he said. “Just a few punchers. Guess they figure the pens’ll hold them.”

  “Make sure you do it right, Cal,” Lassiter warned the old cowman. “We don’t get that stampede we don’t have a prayer. That whole town’ll climb all over us. And it can’t be just any old stampede. Them cows got to be right on target.”

  Old Cal was pissed-off. “I was running off herds before you was born, Lassiter.”

  Lassiter knew Moseley could do it, if any man could. But there was nothing like a pinch of ginger up the glory hole to make a man bust a gut trying to do better than last time.

  The Irishman looked impatient.

  “What about the horses?” Lassiter asked him. “You sure you got the right animals?”

  T. J. refused to be needled. He knew they still talked about him in the Cavalry as the best horse-handler around. “They’re in a boxcar ready to roll soon as Kingsley here provides the transportation. The station agent thinks they’re going to Missouri. If you ask me, this is an awful fancy way of doing things. Why can’t we just take them animals and ride out of here? All this mucking about with locomotives!”

  “I al
ready told you, T. J.” Lassiter reminded him. “This ain’t just a small town bank we’re fixing to rob. Woodruff works for the McCoy Company. Old Joseph McCoy won’t sit on his hands once he hears what’s happened to his money. Old Joe ain’t never been robbed nor bested in a deal. Not yet anyhow. He’ll have more rewards on us and more bounty hunters on our tail than the whole James Gang put together. Not to mention every rancher and farmers that owns a weapon. We got to have an edge—and the train gives us that. Gives us a forty mile start and fresh horses.”

  “Do we have to meet the woman?” Howey Winters complained.

  Lassiter ignored him. They’d been over that several times. “What about it?” he asked Kingsley, the trainman. “If you don’t think it’ll work, say it now. Don’t say it later because I won’t listen.”

  Lassiter thought it was funny the way they all came to life when they talked about what they did best. Kingsley was that way now.

  “I can do it,” he answered. “Right before the stampede we knock out the telegraph going south. Everything’s going to be wide open in the wake of that herd. I doubt there’ll be many men fretting about railroad property. Man, it’ll be a slaughter. All me and Murphy got to do is dress the part, walk in there, and help ourself to Texas Jack’s fast locomotive. After that I throw a few switches and couple the car with the horses.”

  “Then you wait,” Lassiter made it plain. “You wait fifteen minutes after the shooting stops. Then you let her roll.” He gave Kingsley and the big Irishman a mean grin. “’Course you can always come and look for us if we don’t show up.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Murphy said.

  Kingsley went on. “Once we get clear of the yards we dynamite the southbound track. The rails out, the wires cut—we have a clear run to the jumping-off place.”

  “That sounds fine, Oren,” Lassiter said. He grinned maliciously. “Now comes the hard part. Here’s how it goes. While the rest of you are doing your chores, Flowers, Winters and me go into action. Fifty yards across the tracks from Texas Jack’s parlor car is that old stone storehouse. Kingsley here says the railroad kept blasting powder and dynamite there until the town made them move it out. You are sure it’s empty, ain’t you, Kingsley?”