The Messenger

by Bill Brooks

  It was like most of our conversations; it wasn’t going anywhere important. There’s nothing quite so onerous as the drag of a long night waiting for something.

  “Have you thought how you want to play it when we catch Davy and Belle?” Dew Hardy said.

  “I was thinking just head on . . . do what needs doing,” I said.

  “And now?”

  “I guess some of my hate’s let up for what they did.”

  “Let up?”

  It was true. There was something about being in that infirmary and the kindness of strangers that had changed me in no way that I could explain to anyone, most especially a fellow like Dew Hardy.

  “Hate and anger are hard for me to hold onto any more . . .”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The flyer rolled into Cheyenne just after noon and we stepped off through a cloud of steam, glad to stretch our legs. Folks stared at the shotgun I was carrying. It felt like part of my arm by now.

  “My, my,” Dew Hardy said, looking around. “This place has grown some since I was last here in pursuit of a bunko artist and counterfeiter named Bunny Snow. Caught him taking a bubble bath with a married woman and nobody was more surprised than him.”

  “Let’s go see the local law,” I said, and asked a porter if he knew where the local law office was. He pointed a bony finger toward the town proper.

  “Right on up the street three blocks and take a left,” he said.

  And up the street we went like the two lost and horseless men we were, tramping through the already hardening muck from overnight rain but now baking under a blazing sun. We found the lawman’s office easy enough.

  Out front a dozen men sat horses, armed with rifles, shotguns, pistols, anything that would fire a bullet. It was easy to see that most of them were not hardened manhunters by the way they were dressed: paper collars and straw hats.

  A frosty-eyed man stood before them, holding court.

  “We need to find those murdering dogs who killed our people and I ain’t overly choosy about what we all do to them when we do find them. Blood has been spilled this day and I aim we spill more of it, but this time theirs and not our own.”

  He was a little long in the tooth, with a shock of white hair that fringed from under his abused Stetson, and had the posture of an old fence post. His appearance and basso voice gave the impression of Moses shouting from the mountaintop.

  Dew Hardy and I stood on the fringe, listening, then the Pinkerton said: “I know that fellow. His name is Bob Coin and he was once a Texas Ranger, and, when he was with that organization, he had a reputation of being judge and jury.”

  He seemed to be revered by the crowd of men who sat their horses being hoorayed on by him. He might have seemed old, but I had the impression he was hard as hickory itself and preferred to keep things simple. Why waste time with a judge and jury?

  “Sounds like we might have got here too late,” Dew Hardy said.

  “You think it’s Gypsy Davy they’re after?”

  “Who else but Gypsy Davy would cause a ruckus that would raise a posse this big?”

  “Pardon me,” I said, working my way past the mounted men and tapping the old marshal on one bony shoulder. “But what’s gone on here?”

  Those ancient lawman eyes went first to my weapon, and then to me.

  “Our bank was robbed this morning and the folks working it were shot like dogs, all but for one woman who, I suppose by dint of some odd compassion, they let live. You boys want to join our posse?”

  “We’ve got no horses,” Dew Hardy chimed in.

  He looked past me to the Pinkerton with the same steady gaze of suspicion.

  “Well, we ain’t got no time to wait until you get some,” the old man said, then untied his mount from the hitch rail, and threw himself into the saddle, spry as a younger man, and led the bunch off to the north, their rifles and shotgun barrels poking the air like quills.

  “Let’s find that woman they didn’t kill,” I said.

  After a bit of asking around, we learned of her residence—a small house a block off the main drag with flower boxes and a picket fence.

  Once we arrived, I stepped up and knocked on the wood door and was soon greeted by a large busty woman with a bun of iron gray hair and apple cheeks.

  “Yes?” she said, looking me up and down with the same suspicion the lawman had.

  “Are you the lady from the bank that was robbed this morning?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not me. Sadie,” she said.

  “I’d like a word with her,” I said.

  “She’s in quite a state. I’d just as soon she not be disturbed.”

  “I’m looking for the men who shot up the place,” I said. “It won’t take but a moment. One question and then we’re gone.”

  She looked at Dew Hardy, then called back in the room.

  Another woman appeared. She was petite and skittish with mud brown eyes and quite pretty in spite of her sorrowful countenance. She stood close to the larger woman, almost like a child standing next to her mother.

  “Pardon me, ma’am, but I understand you were in the bank that was robbed this morning,” I said.

  She remained silent. I guess she could still see the dead, the pools of blood, and hear the bang of pistols being fired off. She had that sort of look.

  Dew Hardy stepped forward and said: “Was one wearing a big sombrero?”

  “Oh, God . . .” she muttered.

  “And had a good-looking woman with him?”

  She shrugged.

  “I did not see a woman,” she said.

  “But a big sombrero nonetheless?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s him, like I said,” Dew Hardy told me.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  We walked back to the town.

  “What now?” Dew Hardy said. “Any ideas how we’re going to catch up to them horseless?”

  “You got any money left?”

  “Not enough to buy a pair of nags.”

  “How much?”

  Dew Hardy counted his dough.

  “Eighteen dollars and thirty-two cents total.”

  We stood, studying the streets. They seemed calm, considering. Still there was commerce, wagons driven by teamsters, horseback riders, cabs. Funny, I thought, but a slaughter can take place and the world hardly pauses to draw a breath. Life goes on without you no matter who you are.

  “I could stand a stiff one,” Dew Hardy said, pointing across the street to a saloon.

  The truth was, I could stand a stiff one, too. The problem was, could I keep it down to just one and not two or three or more?

  We stepped in and stood at the bar. The place was quiet. I figured most of those who might have been patrons were in that posse. The barkeep asked what we were having and Dew Hardy said—“Anything but lemonade.”—which caused the barkeep to blink. He was missing a thumb on his right hand.

  “Make it two whiskies,” I said, “and only two.”

  He poured and set them before us, and Dew Hardy paid.

  “You boys going after the bank robbers?” the barkeep asked. “I hear there is a one thousand dollar reward on them. I’d go myself, but Mister Orvis wouldn’t like me closing the bar.”

  He was young and way too eager.

  “Best you take Mister Orvis’s advice, son,” I said.

  We tossed back our drinks and I said to the Pinkerton: “Come on.”

  We walked back outside.

  “You come up with a plan yet?” Dew Hardy said.

  “I guess we’ll have to borrow some horses,” I said.

  “Borrow some? Who is going to let two yahoos they’ve never seen before borrow their horses?”

  “I guess whoever is busy doing something,” I said, looking up the street at a hitch rail with three saddle horses tied up in front of a mercantile.

  “You mean steal them?” Dew Hardy said.

  “Something you’re pretty good at,” I said.
>
  “I told you already I didn’t steal Miss Winesop’s horse. She lent it to me in good faith.”

  “So you keep saying. Those two on the left seem best. I’ll take the dun and you take the sorrel.”

  “Suppose I prefer the sorrel over the dun?”

  Only two fools would argue who was going to steal which horse, I thought.

  “Take whichever damned horse you want, but just take one and let’s ride.”

  * * * * *

  An hour later we caught up to the posse. It was resting beneath a grove of chinaberry trees where a creek cut through and the switch grass was as tall as a man’s knees. Most of them were reclining in the grass and smoking, but the old lawman stood apart from the others, just staring off. They had run their mounts hard and they were all lathered with sweat, their tails swishing flies off their quivering hides.

  “I see you boys found you some horses,” the old star packer said when we rode up.

  “We felt it our duty to help you catch whoever robbed your bank,” Dew Hardy said quite innocently.

  “Why is that? That you feel it your duty?” The old man had that curious lawman’s nature: distrustful of strangers. “You ain’t from Cheyenne . . . least I never seen you around these parts. So why pitch in?”

  Dew Hardy shrugged, then produced his Pinkerton badge.

  “I am a detective and sworn to uphold the law and bring to justice lawbreakers. Besides, the man you’re after is the same one we’ve been after. His handle is Gypsy Davy.”

  The aged marshal eyed the badge, leaned forward, and spat, striking a grasshopper eating the blade of grass it clung to. The spit knocked it off.

  “Well, ain’t that something,” the old man said. “I reckon I’m supposed to be impressed. But what I want to know is, who are them others with him?”

  “One’s a woman,” Dew Hardy said. “Belle Moon. You ever heard of them?”

  The old man nodded his head.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of Davy, but not Belle Moon.”

  “Well then you know what sort of fellow you’re after,” Dew Hardy said.

  By now the others had pricked up their ears and were curious.

  “I don’t have to know the names to know how bloody they are,” the lawman said. “They shot in cold blood three of our finest citizens. You know them is some hard customers who would do a thing like that . . . murder unarmed men. Sadie said they wanted what was in the vault but that the vault would not open and so they shot everyone to rags except her.” He shook his head and spat again. “Why is it they let her live? Hell if I know. I guess I’ll ask ’em just before I kick the horses out from under them with a rope around their necks.”

  I found all the conversation a waste of time.

  “While you all are taking your leisure, they’re putting daylight between you,” I said.

  The lawman tossed me a hard look.

  “Don’t try and tell me my business, son. I’ve been doing this a long time.”

  “Maybe we’ll just ride on ahead,” I said.

  “You do whatever you like.”

  “I’m told there is a reward for them,” Dew Hardy said.

  “Why, yes,” the lawman said, patting the butt of his pistol. “This here.”

  We rode away.

  “I don’t think that bunch, except for that lawman, could catch a cold,” I said to the Pinkerton. “And even if they did catch them, I don’t believe any of them would stand up to a gunfight except for him.”

  We kept a steady pace so as not to ruin our mounts but pushed them as hard as we dared.

  “These are some good horses,” Dew Hardy said.

  “For stolen stock they ain’t too bad.”

  “What do you think that hard ol’ hickory would do to us if he knew we stole these horses?”

  “Same thing he’d do to Davy and them,” I said.

  “I reckon.”

  “Keep a sharp eye in case they turn off the road.”

  “I’m all about tracking a man,” Dew Hardy said.

  “You can prove it to me.”

  “I will.”

  “Talk is cheap.”

  He looked at me.

  “Ain’t it, though.”

  In spite of everything, I sort of took to the son-of-a-bitch.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Hell,” Dew Hardy said just as the evening sky became streaked with something akin to the color of watered blood. We heard quail cooing off in the sage. “Following these hombres is about the easiest thing I ever did. Four fast horses on this road tearing up clots. Look yonder how them tracks meander off down that trace yonder.”

  I turned off where he pointed and he came up alongside me.

  “We could ride ourselves right into an ambush,” he said.

  “I reckon that’s the chance we’ll have to take.”

  “What if they stand and fight?”

  “Then I guess somebody is going to get killed.”

  “I like that idea, but only if it ain’t me that’s the one who gets killed.”

  We followed the trace down over rough low hills, the evening air closing around us.

  “We could get lost in the coming dark,” Dew Hardy said.

  “These horses will see well enough.”

  “You’ve a mighty big trust in horses.”

  “More so than in most men I’ve known.”

  An hour more and we saw lights on in a house that sat low in a narrow valley surrounded by the dark shapes of trees.

  “You reckon . . .?” Dew Hardy said in a low voice.

  “It would seem about right, wouldn’t it?”

  We pulled up, dismounted.

  “We’ll leave the mounts here,” I said. “There’s bound to be other horses down there and I don’t want them talking back and forth to each other.”

  We tied the reins to a low branch of a tree.

  “What if they run off?”

  “Easy come, easy go,” I said.

  We eased our way toward the cabin, our boots crunching on the caliche. The darkness had now surrounded us, but a moon had lifted into the night sky and cast down a ghostly light over everything.

  When we reached the lip of an overhang, we could see better the squares of yellow light falling through the windows of the cabin. There were some shapes of men standing outside, smoking, the glow of their cigarettes like fireflies. We were close enough to hear their muted voices. Then we saw a door open and two more shapes came out, one holding a lantern, walking away from the house, then back again in a little while.

  We saw other shapes moving behind the windows.

  “How many yous figure?” Dew Hardy whispered.

  “More than four by my count,” I said.

  “You think we ought to just wait for the posse?”

  “It would just get confusing if we got into a firefight in the dark with that many folks running around . . . even if they were fighters, which I doubt they are. I’d just as soon it’d be you and me against those others. Leastways we know who is who.”

  “It’s be hell fighting in the dark like this, no matter if it’s just us.”

  “It’ll be to our benefit if we do it right.”

  “I don’t know . . . it’s a lot of men down there.”

  “It’s not going to get any less if we wait.”

  “You want to just go in shooting?”

  “You see them two smoking?” I said.

  “Yeah, what about them.”

  “They’re still outside, the others are inside.”

  “You want to take them first?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Just eliminate them right off.”

  “Unless they want to surrender quiet.”

  “I doubt they will.”

  “Let’s go find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Blackbird and Little Dick stood smoking outside the cabin, leery of being inside, sure a conspiracy of some sort might be taking place among that strange brood of white m
en. Blackbird’s head was full of jangled considerations. It was Belle’s plan that he kill Gypsy Davy and Little Dick, too, and that they’d take the money and head off toward San Francisco. But neither had counted on being introduced and staying among a bunch of bad fools like the Corns.

  Blackbird was thinking he might have to kill everyone but Belle if they were to get away clean. It was a lot more killing than what he had planned on. The question was whether it was worth it. Something in him kept being tugged back to the Oklahoma pistol barrel, that Indian wife of his, and all those squalling kids. He didn’t know what it was, or why, he just knew that it was.

  It was Little Dick who suggested they sleep outside away from the house. Blackbird agreed.

  Inside the house Gypsy had concluded his business with Belle and said in a panting manner: “It’s time.”

  “For what?” she said.

  “To tie up loose ends.”

  She was caught off guard by this sudden notion.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kill Blackbird and Little Dick, then these Corns, if they raise a fuss.”

  She did her best to come up with a quick alternative plan and set it in motion. She’d already told Blackbird the plan to kill Davy and Little Dick, but hadn’t counted on these lust-starved Corns. Now she and Blackbird would have to kill them all, a thought that she relished if she could figure out quickly how it was to be done—and how to alert Blackbird of Gypsy Davy’s plot.

  “Wait,” she whispered, as Davy dressed and armed himself. “What if we wait until tomorrow when we’re shut of this place?”

  “Why put off tomorrow what can be done tonight? Besides, those boys will never suspect it. And you know what the beauty of it all is? I’m going to have the Corns kill ’em, and then I’m going to kill the Corns. I told you I was a thinker.”

  She swallowed hard. Gypsy was no kind of lover compared to Blackbird and she figured in the long haul she could manipulate Blackbird a lot easier than she could the wily Gypsy.

  “It’s all set,” he said, and turned himself out of the room.

  Damn it all to hell! she thought, her mind a scramble as she shucked into her clothes.