Shawn Starbuck Double Western 3

by Ray Hogan

  If the redhead’s mount had been shot, it showed little evidence of it so far, Starbuck decided, and reckoned it had been the man himself who had been wounded if Pete’s aim had been good.

  But a time later it became obvious that the animal had gone lame and was slowing its pace. Shawn roweled the buckskin to a faster lope, and shortly, with the sun beginning to drop low in the west, he crested a rise and drew to a quick halt.

  Before him on the powdery earth were the hard-set prints of a man’s boots along with the tracks of a horse. Close by were several dark splotches in the loose soil ... Red’s mount had been hit. He had stood up under the wound until he had labored to the top of the hill. There he had been forced to stop.

  The redhead had dismounted, done what he could for the suffering animal, and finally ridden on—still miles from Brewer’s Flat, if that was his destination.

  Shawn, his reading of the signs finished, shaded his eyes against the slanting rays of the sun and swept the distance with a probing gaze. Far ahead a dark mass laid a small scar on the gray-green flank of another rise ... It could be a patch of brush different in color from anything nearby, or it could be the redhead’s horse, finally dead.

  Going quickly to the saddle, Starbuck again searched the country with squinted eyes, hoping to get from that somewhat higher elevation a better view and possibly catch sight of a lone figure cutting across the low hills.

  But the land, except for the dark mass, was deserted, and spurring the buckskin, he rode on, hopeful now of sighting his objective in the empty sameness before darkness fell and brought an additional problem. If such did occur, he decided, he would have no recourse other than to hurry on to Brewer’s Flat and station himself between it and the direction from which Red would come.

  Reaching that point too late to make an interception would give rise to even larger problems—ones that would be difficult to solve ... But he would face them if and when the time came. He would concentrate now on overtaking his man before such could happen.

  It was Red’s horse.

  The bay had been shot in the hip. The wound had been only ordinary, and likely the animal could have recovered if he had not been compelled to continue, had instead been given some attention. But Red had no choice; he had ridden the bay as far as he could go, and when the animal had finally dropped, he had continued on foot.

  How long ago? Shawn dropped to the ground beside the horse. Kneeling, he placed a hand on its neck. Faintly warm ... Red, walking in boots meant only for riding, could not be far. That he had moved on hurriedly was indicated by the fact that he had not paused to remove his gear and take it with him ... It meant also that he was aware of the rider on his trail.

  Leading the buckskin, Shawn crossed to the edge of the small plateau and carefully went over the ground until he located a heel mark of Red’s boots. The earth there was hard and gravelly where the winds and rains had long since swept away the top-soil, but by patient persistence he found enough of the arched imprints to tell him that the husky redhead had struck out on a direct southeast line across the prairie.

  Starbuck climbed back onto the buckskin, threw a side glance to the west. An hour or so of daylight remained. He must act quickly or the advantage would swing to Red. He shifted his eyes then to the gear on the dead horse. The boot was empty. The man would be armed with both rifle and six gun. He had taken his canteen, also, and was prepared to make a stand if need be.

  Again Shawn swept the country before him. He had reached the area of heavy-browed buttes that lay this side of Brewer’s Flat, and spotting Red would now be a difficult task—even if daylight prevailed. It would be wiser to abandon pursuit, as such, follow the alternate plan he had of placing himself between his man and the outlaw settlement, position himself in the advantageous spot, and let Red come to him.

  The decision made, Starbuck cut away from the little plateau, swinging west to get the hill behind him, and began a fast circling to the south. He angled wide of the first line of buttes, doubling back finally when he judged he had put a good five miles between himself and the area where Red most likely would be.

  He rode more cautiously from there, holding the buckskin to a brisk walk, choosing the swales and washes that kept him below the horizon and the horse in the loose sand where hoof beats would be muffled.

  The prospect of coming face to face with Red, of likely having to shoot it out with him became more disturbing as he closed in to set up his ambush. He had liked the redhead even though he had known him but a short period. In that brief time, however, Red had become as near a close friend as he had ever had, and the probability of being forced to kill the man, even in the line of duty, was weighing heavily on Shawn’s mind.

  It had to be done—either capture or kill, his own feelings notwithstanding. He could only hope that Red would not put up a fight, would surrender himself and return willingly. It was a faint hope, Shawn knew; Red was a desperate man, likely would never throw down his weapons.

  Starbuck halted the buckskin. A broad, sandy arroyo well studded with brush clumps lay before him, one that curved down from the higher hills and buttes to the west. Red would be following the wash; it would afford the easiest and most direct route, from the point where his horse had gone, down to Brewer’s Flat.

  He glanced around. Shadows were lengthening. Darkness was not far off. He could set up his watch here, be well hidden by the brush while still having a good view of the arroyo. A man coming down it would be quickly visible even in the half-light of the stars.

  Swinging from the saddle, Shawn tethered the buckskin a safe distance back from the edge of the wash and, returning to the low bank, set to arranging a spot for himself in the brushy fringe. Grasping the stalk of a fairly large clump, he wrenched it free of its mooring and moved to place it in a barren gap that required covering.

  The dry scrape of a branch against cloth brought him around. His hand swept down for the gun on his hip, came up fast.

  Red, rifle leveled, stood before him. Evidently he had just passed that point chosen by Starbuck for ambush, had heard a rider come in, and had cut back, probably with the idea in mind of getting a much-needed horse for himself.

  A long sigh slipped from the redhead’s lips as he shook his head. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be you,” he said heavily.

  Twenty

  Etched against the pale light of dusk, Starbuck held himself motionless. Red, now utterly silent, remained equally unmoving. For a long, breathless half-minute the two figures, poised like tempered steel springs needing only a touch to uncoil and lash out, hung there in the fading day, eyes locked, guns leveled in a deadly standoff.

  And then abruptly the weapon in the husky redhead’s hands wavered. “The hell with it,” he murmured in a worn, frustrated voice, and tossed the rifle to the ground at Starbuck’s feet.

  Shawn’s tense body eased. Stepping down into the arroyo, he reached out, took Red’s pistol from its holster, and thrust it under the waistband of his pants. Putting away his own weapon, he faced the man. There was relief in his eyes, a thankfulness in his heart that the redhead had chosen not to resist.

  “I hate this,” he said. “I wish, too, that it could have been somebody else.”

  Red nodded woodenly.

  “Is what they say true—that you killed McGraw and Fisher?”

  Again the husky rider moved his head up and down. “Bart got in the way. I wasn’t gunning for him—only McGraw. They both dead?”

  “Both of them. Means a murder charge.”

  “What I expected—but I sure as hell ain’t sorry, not for cutting down McGraw, anyway.”

  Shawn studied the man thoughtfully. “Who hired you to kill him?”

  “Nobody—was a personal matter.” Red turned away, then moved to the edge of the arroyo and sat down on the grassy, littered bank. “Fact is, McGraw didn’t even know me.”

  Starbuck, arms folded across his chest, continued to study the redhead. His face sagged with weariness, and the film of dust
lying upon it turned him gray and old looking.

  “Expect you could use some grub.”

  Red looked up, hopefully. “Drink of whiskey’d do more of a job.”

  Shawn grinned. “Can’t help you there. How about coffee?”

  “I’ll settle for that—and don’t bother about grub. Not hungry.”

  Starbuck crossed to where he had picketed the buckskin. Unfastening the left pocket of his saddlebags, he obtained his sack of coffee and the lard tin and cup he regularly packed. Adding his canteen of water, he returned to the wash.

  Red had not stirred, simply remained stonily motionless on the bank of the arroyo. His eyes followed Shawn as he gathered a pile of dry branches and leaves, built a fire, and set the tin filled with water over the flames.

  “Reckon you’re wondering what it’s all about,” he said then.

  Starbuck did not raise his glance. “I know all I need to—that you were the one who killed McGraw and Fisher. The reason why is something for a judge to hear.”

  “I’d like for you to know the whole thing, too. I figure you for a friend of mine and entitled to it.”

  Shawn added another handful of wood to the fire. The darting tongues leaped higher around the lard tin, setting the water to simmering and spiraling a column of smoke up into the dwindling light in the sky.

  “Up to you,” he said.

  “Name’s Quist—Dan Quist,” Red said. “It ain’t often I’m called by it, but that’s what it is. Home’s in Arkansas, little place close to the Louisiana line. Folks had a farm there. There wasn’t much left to it after the war, but my brother and me—he was a bit younger—we’d just about got it back in shape when the trouble started.”

  Quist leaned forward, rested himself, elbows on knees. Starbuck waited, continued to work with the fire.

  “Began when Billy—my brother—married a girl we’d sort of grown up with. Name was Ellie—for Ellen, I think. Her people had a place north of us ... She was the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen—all bright eyed and rosy cheeked and put together the way that makes a man stop and turn around for a second look when she passed by.

  “Well, they took themselves a honeymoon. Went to New Orleans right soon after they was married, and it was while they was there that McGraw seen her. He had himself a place outside of town—one like the Babylon Palace, big and fancy and with a stable of pretty women on hand to keep the customers coming.”

  “Sounds like the same kind of a deal,” Starbuck observed, reaching for his neckerchief.

  Making a pad of the folded cloth, he lifted the tin of boiling water off the flames and set it aside. Taking up the sack of crushed coffee beans, he poured a generous handful into the container, returned it to the fire, placing it slightly to one side so that it could simmer without boiling over.

  “It was,” Red continued. “The second day Billy and his wife were in New Orleans, she disappeared. Just plain dropped out of sight. He hunted everywhere, even went to the police, but they couldn’t find her, either. Was like she’d stepped into a deep hole.”

  The coffee surged up. Shawn removed it again; taking up a twig, he stirred down the froth and sat back to let it cool.

  “Billy wrote me about it finally. I packed up and went there fast as I could, then the two of us started hunting Ellie, one going one direction, the other taking another. Was about a month later I just happened to go into McGraw’s place—after a drink. I was standing at the bar and I looked around and there Ellie was. She was coming across the floor, all painted up and dressed in mostly nothing, with some jasper hanging onto her arm. She seen me, too. Her eyes turned big, and a funny kind of look—pure shame—come over her. She turned and run up the stairs to where the women had their rooms.”

  Shawn took up the cooled tin, poured the cup full of the strong liquid, and handed it to Red. Cradling the container in his palms, he stared into it.

  “It wasn’t hard to figure what had happened. McGraw had grabbed her—kidnapped her, actually—and forced her to become one of his brothel women, same way as he kept the Babylon Palace stocked. After a few days I reckon she was too ashamed to leave the place and go back to Billy.”

  Quist took a long drink from his cup. Starbuck, compelled to use the lard tin, sampled the dark brew thoughtfully.

  “Is that why you came after McGraw?”

  “Only the start of it. I—I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have told Billy I’d found her. I know now it would’ve been better to just let it pass—but I did tell him, and he went there to get her. Ellie seen him coming and shot herself.

  “Billy went plumb crazy then. He got himself a gun and started after McGraw, but somebody warned McGraw. When my brother walked into the saloon, McGraw stepped up behind him and put a bullet in his back—killed him.”

  “Murder,” Starbuck murmured. “Police sure should’ve taken a hand then.”

  “Hell, the police always moves too slow. By the time they got on it McGraw had pulled out. He’d sold his half interest in the place to his partner and run for it. Just disappeared.”

  “And that’s when you started out to track him down—”

  Quist nodded and finished off the last of his coffee. “First I took Billy and Ellie back to the farm and buried them in the family graveyard where we’d put my folks. Then I took off. All I wanted was to find Amos McGraw and kill him. At first it was because of what he’d done to Ellie and my brother, and then it got to be a sort of—of—”

  “Crusade?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. McGraw made it a business of putting young girls to work for him. If he couldn’t talk them into it, he’d just grab them, make them do it anyway, and pretty soon my need to square things for Billy and Ellie got all mixed up with an idea that I had to kill McGraw and keep him from ruining the lives of any more girls.”

  “How long ago did this begin?”

  “Going on five years now. He was hard to run down, had a couple of other places in the time between New Orleans and Babylon. I almost got him at one—”

  Shawn frowned, stared into the fire. “If he saw you then, why didn’t he recognize you in Babylon?”

  “Never seen my face. I was wearing a flour sack with holes cut in it for eyes. I told him then I’d been hunting him and that I’d made up my mind to kill him if it took the rest of my life. Was right about there that a couple of his flunkies jumped me from behind. He ducked out, scared, leaving it for them to finish me off. I got away from them before they could find out who I was. When McGraw learned that, he moved on again.

  “It was quite a while later when I heard about the Palace. Rode there in a hurry, but again he’d got wind of me coming and had pulled out, but he decided to only hole up and hire a fast gun—you—to take care of me, this time instead of running. Didn’t work for him. I got to him anyway.”

  Dan Quist fell silent, his gaze lost in the darkness beyond the flare of the dwindling fire. Finally, “Not sorry for one minute that I killed him, Shawn—only sorry that I had to play a mean trick on you to do it. Feel I had plenty of reasons to put a bullet in him. Man like McGraw ain’t entitled to live on this earth with decent folks ... You agree with that?”

  Starbuck nodded slowly.

  “Then, the way it looks to me, I’ve done the country a big favor, and there ain’t no reason why I should have to go to jail and stand trial for something that wasn’t no crime ... You agree with me there, too?”

  Twenty-One

  Shawn mulled the words of Dan Quist about in his mind. There was truth in them—he could not deny that. The world was a better place without men like Amos McGraw. They were a blight, a curse that mankind should not be compelled to bear—but to judge another human being, regardless of what he had done, was wrong; such had been drilled into him time and again by his mother as well as by flint-edged old Hiram.

  “It’s not how I feel about it that counts,” he said slowly. “It’s what the law says—”

  “The law!” Red broke in impatiently. “Where was the law
when Billy was murdered? Took their goddam time getting on the matter—time that let McGraw run—go free!”

  “Can’t blame the law for that. It was the man or men in charge of it that failed.”

  “They were friends of his, all of them. They’d been bought off.”

  “Which only proves what I said. It wasn’t the law at fault but the kind of men representing it ... And they’d be the exception. Most lawmen are honest and try to do their job.”

  Quist’s pale eyes locked in on Starbuck. “Like you?”

  Shawn nodded. “Like me.”

  “But you ain’t even a real lawman!”

  “Afraid you’re wrong. McGraw and Fisher had the authority to hire a marshal—even hold court.”

  “You forget I was there when you took the job? Hell, you wasn’t even sworn in—no oath or anything.”

  “It works out the same. I accepted the oath and all it meant whether I spoke it or not. Far as I’m concerned there’s no difference.”

  Dan Quist shrugged. “I always heard you couldn’t cheat an honest man. Reckon there’s no talking one out of his principles, either ... There any of that coffee left?”

  Starbuck picked up his canteen, poured a small amount of water into the lard tin, and set it back over the fire. The flames had dwindled to a scatter of small tongues. He tossed another handful of sticks into the graying embers and fanned them with his hat.

  “Be a couple of minutes.”

  “No hurry,” Red replied. “I got plenty of time, all the rest of my life, I guess. Where’ll you be taking me? No sense going back to Babylon.”

  “Dodge City. The marshal there’s my friend. His name’s Earp. Sort of owes me a favor. He’ll see that you get a fair shake.”

  Red wagged his head. “Ain’t much for hoping.”

  “I figure a judge will listen to you—and he’ll know all about McGraw and Fisher. It was in Dodge that I heard about Babylon and the kind of place it was, so you won’t need to convince him of what McGraw really was.”