The Circuit Rider

by Dani Amore

  Bird raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Well, you don’t look like a…workin’ lady, if you know what I mean.”

  “You sure know how to flatter a lady,” Bird said.

  The cowboy suddenly looked flustered. “No, I meant it as a compliment.”

  “I know,” Bird said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, if you ain’t a workin’ lady, then who are you and why are you drinking in a saloon?”

  Before she could answer, the saloon doors swung open and two men walked in with a swagger and a collection of tied-down guns that immediately put Bird on edge.

  “Listen, you’re a good-looking youngster,” Bird said. “And ordinarily I might consider taking you back to my hotel room and turning you into a man. I’m sure it wouldn’t take but a minute or two.” Bird winked at him. “But not tonight. Take your free shot of whiskey and vamoose.”

  The cowboy took Bird’s advice, and she leaned back against the bar, watching the two men who’d entered as they commandeered a table at the back of the room. One of them looked terribly familiar to Bird, but she couldn’t place him. A bottle of whiskey arrived at the newcomers’ table and the men drank quickly, with little talk or wasted motion.

  Bird noted the way they sat at their table, one gun always free of obstruction so they could draw and shoot from a sitting position.

  It’s how she always sat.

  So a couple of hard cases in town. She knew they weren’t cowboys. Or gamblers. And from the dust on their clothes, they’d ridden a long way.

  Bird downed another shot of whiskey. She let her eyes roam over the others in the saloon. Every single man in the place seemed natural to her, except those two.

  Well, she wasn’t going to learn anything more here tonight, she thought. She threw another coin on the bar, showed the bottle she’d be taking with her, and left the saloon.

  She went back to the hotel, thinking about Mike Tower in jail.

  And how to go about getting him out.

  Fast.

  Thirty-Two

  It was a long night. Not the longest in Mike Tower’s life, but it ranked up there with the best of them. There was no quiet. Just shouts. Music. Pistol shots. Drunk cowboys stumbling down the street.

  It never ended.

  He closed his eyes from time to time, willing himself to get some rest, knowing that he would have to be ready to face whatever the next day might bring. He didn’t know what that would be: a lynch mob, an attorney, a pardon, or a bullet to the head by someone consumed with a maladjusted sense of justice.

  His eyes briefly closed in the early morning, just as the sun was coming up.

  It was a typical sleep pattern for him — brief and usually consisting of one of two nightmares.

  This time, it was the one from the war.

  It was the same dream, like always.

  He was behind enemy lines, posing as a Confederate soldier, spying on them for the Union. He had infiltrated a Virginia regiment and managed to sneak across and leave a message for his Union counterpart.

  In the dream, he had left a slip of paper detailing how the Confederate soldiers planned to approach the battle, the number of wounded, how much artillery was still operational, and how much ammunition and fighting spirit still existed.

  It wasn’t until he was riding back, across a narrow river into a thick stand of woods where the regiment was hiding, that he began to fear something had gone wrong.

  As he walked his horse back into the camp, he noticed the sentries were missing. The bedrolls were empty. The officers’ tents were open, revealing empty chairs and tables, no one sleeping in their bunks.

  He rode into the middle of the camp.

  And then the soldiers began to appear.

  From out of the woods, they emerged like ghosts. Men with soot-blackened faces, bandages seeping blood, eye patches covering empty sockets.

  They walked slowly toward him.

  They knew.

  The rope came from behind him, caught him around the neck, and he was pulled from his horse.

  They began to beat him until one officer approached, his long sword shining in the moonlight.

  They held him down and the officer lined the edge of his blade along Tower’s neck Then he raised his hand and the blade whistled through the steamy night air —

  A cannon boomed.

  The officer froze.

  A cannon boomed again and the scene evaporated. Tower opened his eyes; the sight of the jail cell’s ceiling brought him back to reality.

  A hammer began beating at the jail’s front door.

  This wasn’t a dream.

  They were coming for him.

  To kill him.

  Thirty-Three

  She knew.

  Her eyes snapped open at the sound of the cannon fire, and she reached out, grabbed the whiskey bottle from the table next to the bed, pulled the cork, and took a long drink.

  She knew.

  One day, maybe she would stop drinking the whiskey. Firewater, as the Indians called it. But there was something about it for her. Yes, it calmed the demons, the rage she felt for the man who had done things to her no man should ever do to a young woman, a girl really.

  But the whiskey worked.

  Even when her head was clouded and she could barely walk, nights when she fell face-first into a pillow or a bedroll or sometimes even the floor.

  She knew, and the reason she knew came down to one simple thing: the tent out by the river.

  There was no ranch. No farm. No sod house where Susan Arliss and her husband were making a go of it.

  That was a lie.

  And if she wasn’t really a farmer, then who was she? And why had she lied about what she was doing in Prosperity? Larkin, the store owner, had said he hadn’t met the husband, just Susan Arliss.

  After that trip to Rifle Creek, it started to fall into place.

  Bird got to her feet, splashed water on her face, rinsed her mouth out, then took another drink of whiskey.

  She strapped on both guns, thumbed more shells into the loops on her belt that were missing cartridges, and grabbed her Winchester rifle, which was leaning against the wall by the door.

  Bird hurried downstairs, wishing she had time to down a cup of coffee with a little extra something tossed in for good measure, but there wasn’t time.

  The big celebration was about to begin, along with another event the town of Prosperity hadn’t planned on.

  She walked down to the jail, where a group of men had clustered near the front door. She could see Sheriff Ectors standing in the doorway, talking to the group.

  When he saw her, his face immediately became rigid. He held up his hands.

  “Bird, we don’t want any trouble,” he said.

  The group of men turned as one. Bird immediately picked out the leader, the tall, thin man with the cruel mouth. He had on a bright-red shirt and a black leather vest. His face was sweaty, and Bird recognized the signs of a long night of drinking. She’d seen that same sick and exhausted look in the mirror many, many times.

  “Bird Hitchcock?” the leader said. “Shit, I don’t believe it.”

  Without breaking stride, Bird walked right up to him, drew her pistol, and whipped the barrel into the side of his head, a brutal crush of metal applied directly to the man’s temple.

  He folded to the ground like a sack of flour that had fallen off the back of a wagon.

  “I haven’t had my coffee yet, fellas. That means I am especially unpleasant. Right now, the quicker I shoot every one of you stupid sonofabitches, the sooner I can get in there and have Ectors’s coffee. You decide.”

  Two men reached down and picked up the red-shirted leader as the rest of the men scattered.

  Ectors looked at Bird.

  “One coffee, coming up,” he said.

  Thirty-Four

  “You really expect me to believe someone is planning on robbing the Bank of Prosperity?” Ectors said. “You need to explain it to me all
over again, because I’m having trouble understanding why you think that.”

  They were standing outside Tower’s cell. Bird thought he looked like cow shit.

  “I went out to question Susan Arliss,” Bird said. She’d had a quick shot of coffee, along with some of Ectors’s cheap whiskey, but it hadn’t done the trick. She was short on patience.

  “Everyone said she was new in town and that she and her husband, who no one had ever met, were starting a farm out near Rifle Creek. Well, I went out there, and there was no farm. No ranch. No sign of even any attempt at a farm or ranch. What I did find, however, was Susan Arliss. She’d been killed.”

  “What?” Ectors shouted. He started pacing. “This is horrible!”

  “Shut the hell up, Sheriff. I thought lawmen were supposed to stay calm.”

  She looked at Tower, who hadn’t said a word and was just waiting for her to continue.

  She pointed to Tower. “Look at Tower, Ectors. That’s how you should act.”

  Ectors slowed his pacing.

  “But it wasn’t just that she’d been killed,” Bird continued. “They’d put her body in the creek. Now, why did they do that? I asked myself that question. Only one reason to do that: to delay people finding the body. So why? Why did it matter when she was found?”

  Ectors and Tower looked at her.

  “Then I find out that a man named Smitty, who worked at the bank, had just been found dead after being tortured. This, all just before Prosperity’s biggest town event — payday for the cowboys as the last of the herds gets shipped off. And I bet that bank is full of the cattle buyers’ cash, just waiting to be paid out.”

  “I see where you’re going with this, but you have to have more,” Tower said.

  Bird nodded.

  “Two men were at the saloon last night. Real hard cases, gunfighters. I didn’t recognize him at first, but one of them is a man named Luke Dryer.”

  She saw Tower involuntarily flinch at the name.

  “He used to be a gun for hire, but then he started robbing trains and banks,” Bird said. “He was one of the men.” She looked at Tower. “You know him?”

  Tower sighed. “I do. I knew him during the war,” he said.

  A shot sounded outside from the street. Ectors flinched; neither Bird nor Tower did.

  “Now, I can’t explain why the woman attacked our preacher or why some cowboy tried to come in and finish the job, but I can tell you that Susan Arliss was here working, probably with Dryer’s gang,” Bird said. “Here’s how I figure it: They set up camp outside of town, far away enough that people won’t stumble across them, and they sent her into town for supplies. She probably told them about her run-in with Tower and they killed her. After all, she’d been their cover and now did nothing but draw attention to them.”

  Ectors looked at Bird, then at Tower, then back to Bird. Suddenly, it looked like he’d made a decision. He went to the rack of Winchesters and pulled one down.

  “Now, I heard there’s a big, fancy show from back east with singers and dancers to end this Prosperity celebration,” Bird said to the sheriff. “What time does that start?”

  Ectors glanced at the clock.

  “They’re doing it right now,” he said.

  “Where are your deputies?”

  “I gave them the morning off. They’re probably at the show, too,” he said.

  Bird pointed at Tower. “Let him out and give him a gun. I think he knows how to use one.”

  “No,” Ectors said. “He killed a man last night.”

  “Well, those men are going to rob, maybe even kill, some of your innocent townspeople if you don’t stop them. Right now, it’s just you. I’ll help you, but only if you let him help, too,” she said.

  Ectors rammed cartridges into the rifle’s magazine, then threw the keys to Bird. She unlocked the cell, and Tower walked out.

  He went to the gun rack and selected a Winchester. He grabbed a handful of cartridges.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Thirty-Five

  To Mike Tower, it was always interesting to note the difference between a gunshot fired in celebration and a gunshot meant to inflict great damage on a human being. Common sense said that you shouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but Tower felt that he always instinctively could.

  They were within spitting distance of the Bank of Prosperity when the first such gunshot rang out. The celebration was going on two blocks down the main street, on a hastily built stage where a band was playing, and no one paid much attention to the gunfire.

  Ectors, Bird, and Tower fanned out across from the bank’s front entrance.

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  The first man out carried nothing but a shotgun. Tower guessed he would be gathering the horses for a quick getaway.

  The man stumbled to a stop when he saw the three of them, Bird with her two guns tied down, Ectors and Tower each with a Winchester.

  The look of confused panic on the man’s face was almost comical, but Tower wasn’t laughing.

  Before the man could make his decision, two more men sauntered out of the bank, each with white cloth bags in his hands.

  When they saw the situation, they dropped the bags.

  Tower looked at the man in the middle. He recognized him. It was Luke Dryer. Dryer looked back at Tower.

  “She was right. That bitch was right — it really is you,” he said. His face became red with rage. “You sonofabitch.” He went for his gun.

  Tower brought his rifle to bear, but he couldn’t fire.

  Instead, a volley of gunfire sounded to his left, and he knew Bird had unleashed. Dryer and the man who’d come out for the horses were down.

  Ectors stumbled back, and Tower took aim against the last robber standing, adjusting the sight of the rifle to the man’s knee. He fired and the man’s leg blew apart.

  He fell to the ground.

  Tower saw Bird walk toward the men, both pistols in her hands, smoke curling from their barrels.

  Tower hurried to Ectors, who was holding his right arm. Blood was seeping out through his fingers.

  Tower helped him to his feet.

  Faces emerged from the bank as Bird took the last man’s gun from him and checked the other two.

  “Those two are dead,” Bird said, pointing at Dryer and the first man out of the bank.

  She kicked the third man, who was holding his leg where Tower had shot him.

  “Unfortunately, this one will live.”

  Ectors walked forward and looked up at the bank tellers now out on the boardwalk, picking up the bags of money.

  “Is anyone in there hurt?” he asked.

  A man with bright-green suspenders shook his head. “Just scared,” he said.

  Bird glanced up at the man.

  “Hey, there weren’t any dancers, but you still saw a damned good show.”

  Thirty-Six

  They left Prosperity behind them.

  Ectors had called off the territorial marshal once he’d confirmed that Susan Arliss was part of Luke Dryer’s gang, as was the man who had attacked Tower in his cell.

  “So you’re telling me you were a spy during the war and there was a bounty on your head?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Tower said. “One that quite a few men who fought for the Confederacy would still like to collect. Men like Luke Dryer. Seems they have a special hatred, and long memories, for soldiers like me.”

  Bird let out a low whistle.

  “Got any other surprises for me, Mr. Tower?” she said.

  He nudged his horse forward and spoke over his shoulder.

  “I just might.”

  Episode Three

  Thirty-Seven

  The horse stood in a meadow, surrounded by lush grass and wildflowers, eating without regard to the bloody body strapped to its back.

  Bird Hitchcock and Mike Tower sat atop the crest of a hill, looking down into the wide valley nestled below.

  “Could be a trap,” Bir
d said. She’d heard of people lured into thinking someone needed help only to find themselves surrounded by Indians on the warpath. Their last mistake.

  “Could be,” Tower said.

  They waited and watched the horse. It occasionally flicked its tail at pesky flies drawn to its passenger.

  The horse wandered slowly, eating as it went, only occasionally glancing up at the two riders gazing down upon it from their vantage point on the hill.

  “I’ll circle around, see if we’ve got any watchers,” Bird said. She nudged her Appaloosa to the south, gave a wide berth to the grazing horse, and scouted the only areas not visible from her earlier perspective, including a grove of cottonwood trees.

  She saw no one and nothing. She signaled to Tower, then walked her horse down the slope.

  Across the meadow, she saw Tower move down from the hill.

  As Bird drew closer, the nervous horse pivoted and raised its head. With nostrils flared, the horse switched its tail, and Bird could tell the beast was deciding whether to stand its ground or take off in a panicky run.

  She brought the Appaloosa to a stop and studied the animal. Bird saw blood streaked all over the horse’s side and neck; it even looked like some had splashed back onto the horse’s haunches.

  Bird could see that the person strapped to the horse’s back was a man and that he’d been stripped of most of his clothes. Great ragged gashes had been ripped into the man’s back. Chunks of flesh caked with dried blood lay in long furrows along his arms and shoulders.

  Bird also recognized something different about the person. The face was a bloody mess, puffed and distorted with cuts and bruises. But oddly enough, the head was completely shaved, save for a patch of hair pulled back and fashioned into a long braid.

  Chinese, she thought.

  Bird watched as Tower cautiously approached the horse, slid off his own mount, and talked softly as he walked up and gently grabbed the animal’s reins.