by Jack Martin
‘Then you’ll know I’m here on trumped-up charges,’ Arkansas said. ‘That those men deserved to die.’
‘Difficult to prove, though.’ The podgy man pulled a large cigar from his coat and took a match to it. He sucked hard on the thick tobacco. ‘In fact, with the amount of corruption around here I would say it’s impossible to prove. And whichever way you look at it, the fact remains that you killed those six men, four of whom were US Calvary, not to mention a prominent politician and his son.’
‘And I’d do it again.’ Defiantly, words spat out with real venom. ‘To a man those lot were skunks. They shouldn’t have done what they did.’
‘Tell me,’ asked O’Keefe, pacing the small room, ‘have you ever heard of the Pinkertons?’
‘Alan Pinkerton?’ Arkansas said, resenting the fact that O’Keefe was talking down to him, as if he were dumb. He was lettered and he read whatever he could get his hands on. ‘Started up his agency when Pinkerton foiled an assassination attempt on President Lincoln. They protected the President during the war. I met a Pinkerton once – rat-faced-looking guy. Can’t say I really took to him.’
‘They still protect the current President,’ O’Keefe said. ‘But they can’t be everywhere at all times and, since the war, the area west of the Mississippi is proving problematic. Which is where you come in.’
‘Go on.’
‘I represent the President himself and I’ve been given the task of forming a special force. A team of ten agents all working independently of each other to enforce the law in this increasingly hostile landscape. Civilization is coming to the West and we need men out there to do the civilizing. Men like Arkansas Smith, men who know the land, men of courage.’
‘But I’m a convicted killer?’ Arkansas pointed out, as if the fact had slipped the man’s mind. ‘Due to hang at dawn.’
‘Oh, that,’ O’Keefe said it as though it were a trifling matter of no real onsequence. ‘Are you willing to enlist with us? To sign on and take orders directly from me? You’ll have the powers of a territorial marshal and more besides. Seems to me you have a simple choice: join us or swing.’
‘Why do I feel as if I’m going to put a tighter rope around my neck than the one waiting for me?’
O’Keefe smiled. ‘Because you are perceptive, Mr Smith,’ he said, and left the room to make the necessary arrangements.
THIRTEEN
Seemed the hunch paid off. Not that he had ever doubted it, but Arkansas had a feeling of incredible fortitude as he pulled the sorrel into the bushes that grew the length of a natural banking above the Bowen ranch house. He tethered the horse to a thick branch and then crawled out of the bushes and lay prone on the ground.
The ranch house was an adobe building typical of most other properties in the area, though there were some concessions to the western style with a gable roof and a frame porch. A thin trail of wood smoke drifted out of the chimney and Arkansas lay there for some time, watching. There was someone in there. Didn’t have to be the men called Clay and Jim but somehow Arkansas knew it would turn out to be them.
That hunch again.
After a while with no sign of movement he decided he’d have to go down, sneak up on the place and find out for sure how many men were in there before he made a move. He went back to the sorrel and pulled his Spencer from the saddle boot and then started down the banking. He tried to keep himself behind cover as much as possible and he was almost at the foot of the banking before he found he needed to break cover.
There was a stone well halfway between the banking and the house and Arkansas ran for it and then bent down, resting a moment with the stone structure hiding him from view of anyone in the house. He worked the action on the Spencer and checked his Colt – there was no real need to do so since he’d done it twice already, but, like his hunches, he had his own little quirks.
He sat there for some time, his own breathing sounding impossibly loud. For a moment he thought he heard faint voices drifting from the house but he decided it must have been his imagination. He scooped up a few stones, stood up and pelted them at the door. They struck true to aim and he lifted the Spencer and pointed it directly at the door.
The door opened and Arkansas recognized the man as one of those he’d met in town – the man called Clay.
Once again one of Arkansas’s hunches had struck pay dirt.
The man was wearing the ornate handled Colt, the close relation to the knife Arkansas carried in his waistband. There was no sign of the other man, the one called Jim. If he was in there he didn’t come to the door and Arkansas’s eyes scanned the entire area, ready for a shot out of concealment.
Clay wore his gun down low on his hip and his hand coiled, over it. He was clearly battling with himself over his chances if he made a play.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Arkansas said. ‘Where’s your friend?’
‘Ain’t got no friends,’ Clay shouted back.
‘That’s a nice weapon.’ Arkansas pointed the eye of his rifle at the man’s gun belt. ‘Very pretty.’
The man stood perfectly rigid, unsure of where this was heading.
‘Loosen your belt,’ Arkansas ordered, ‘slowly, and then toss it into the dirt towards me. I’m a dead shot with this Spencer and it’s aimed directly between your eyes – no sudden moves, or I’ll blow your head clean into the next territory.’
Clay’s hand went to the clasp of his belt in a ridiculously slow movement. He paused for a second, seemingly calculating his chances were he to draw, but then deciding that the odds were not to his liking he released the clasp. He pulled the belt slowly around his waist and let it hang like a rattler from his hand.
‘Toss it,’ Arkansas said.
Clay did so, throwing the belt some ten feet in front of him.
‘Where’s your pard?’ Arkansas asked.
‘I told you,’ Clay said, ‘I ain’t got no friends.’
Arkansas shot and then quickly worked the action on the Spencer, sending another bullet into the breech.
Clay let out a scream as the bullet powered into the door frame barely inches from his head. Wood splinters and dust hit the side of his face and the smell of cordite struck his nostrils like the putrid aroma of hell.
‘I’m alone,’ Clay shouted in genuine terror. ‘Jim rode out this morning. He’s hunting and could be gone all day.’
Keeping the rifle levelled at Clay, Arkansas carefully stepped around the well and walked directly towards the man. Fully aware of what was happening around him, he took steady calculated steps. The shot of only seconds ago would bring the other man running if he was within range of the sound and Arkansas didn’t want be surprised by his arrival. He reached the discarded gunbelt and bent his knees, keeping the rifle aimed at Clay, and slid the ornate Colt from the leather.
Arkansas lowered the rifle while he probed in his pocket and retrieved the knife. ‘Snap,’ he said, holding the knife and Colt in the one hand and resting the butt of the rifle on his hip.
‘Where’d you—?’ The question ended abruptly as Clay realized where Arkansas had got the knife from and what it meant.
‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you here and now,’ Arkansas snarled.
‘Weren’t me shot your friend,’ Clay said, his voice heavy with fear.
‘You were there. Else how do you explain this knife?’
‘I was there,’ Clay agreed and then pleaded, ‘Weren’t me that shot him, though.’
‘Who shot the doc?’ Arkansas’s finger tightened on the trigger, just enough for the other man to notice it.
‘That was an accident,’ Clay said quickly and held his hands out before him as if they would protect him from the rifle.
‘Accident?’
‘We, my pard and me, were trying to get information out of him regarding your friend. If he was going to make it and such like. He wouldn’t talk. We waved the gun about to frighten him. That’s all.’ As he spoke, Clay’s shoulders slumped forward and he had to swallow hard to st
op himself gibbering like the yellow coward he was. ‘The damn thing went off. It was an accident.’
Arkansas walked slowly towards Clay, keeping his eyes directly into the other man’s. He could see the sweat on Clay’s face and his muscles twitching in fear.
‘Please,’ Clay pleaded, ‘weren’t my fault. Only meant to scare the doc a little.’
‘What about Will?’ Arkansas snarled. ‘Did you mean to just scare him too?’
‘Please, mister, I had no choice. I just do what I’m told.’
Arkansas smiled. That’s what he wanted to hear. There was of course more to come but that would do for now. The cowboy was scared, terrified and would talk volumes as long as he thought it would keep him alive.
‘By John Lance?’
Clay’s shoulders shrugged and he nodded. ‘Yes.’
Arkansas drew level with Clay and his smile broadened. The gesture seemed to terrify the man even further and his pants gave away the fact that he had just that second lost control of his bladder. Then, like a sudden flash of lightning in a clement sky, without warning Arkansas swung the rifle wide and brought the stock crashing in a powerful blow to the side of Clay’s face.
Clay let out a small yelp that could have come from a puppy dog and then his eyes rolled back in their sockets, his legs buckled beneath him and he fell to the ground unconscious.
Arkansas took a quick look around him but still there was no sign of the other man, the one called Jim. He bent and quickly dragged Clay into the house. He’d tie and gag the man and then get his own horse and hide it out of sight in one of the many outbuildings.
He figured he wouldn’t have to wait too long for Jim to return.
FOURTEEN
It was getting perilously close to sundown and still the other man had not returned to the small ranch house. Arkansas wasn’t comfortable with this development, or rather the lack of any real development whatsoever.
He didn’t want to be away from Will’s place overnight. The fact that Rycot was there made him feel a little easier, but with Lance due to ride in come dawn and attempt to take possession of the spread, he figured he’d better be there. Rycot seemed a good man, but Will was still on the mend and not up to a fight of any kind. No, he had to be there when Lance came with his fake papers and, no doubt, a heavily armed gang of men to back him up.
He was the only one who could stop John Lance and he was going to stop him: there was no question of that.
It had been a productive afternoon and Clay had sung like a bird. As soon as the man had regained consciousness and found his arms and feet bound with thick rawhide, Arkansas had started to question him. Initially the man had been reluctant to talk, but Arkansas had used the ornately decorated knife to persuade him.
’Course Arkansas didn’t have it in him to coldly slice a man up, to torture him with expertly placed slashes of the flesh designed to cause the maximum pain, but that didn’t matter. The fact that Clay had thought Arkansas capable of such depravity had done the trick. All Arkansas had to do to loosen the man’s tongue was effect a cruel stare and allow the blade to briefly touch the man’s flesh.
The attack on Will’s place had been on Lance’s orders. Clay had been there, together with his partner Jim, and several other men in Lance’s employ. The other men had run Will’s stock off while Clay and Jim ransacked the house. It was at that point in the telling that Clay became visibly agitated and the wet patch in his pants widened. He pleaded that he had not wanted to shoot Will, neither had Jim, but if they didn’t carry out their boss’s orders they would be shot themselves.
They’d had no choice. Arkansas had to understand that.
The doc had been an accident and nothing to do with John Lance. They, Jim and himself, figured on finding out what the doc had been doing at Will’s place and if indeed Will was alive or dead. Trouble was, the doc had come over all spunky and refused to tell them anything. They had been trying to scare him when the gun went off. Clay claimed that it was Jim whose finger had been on the trigger.
That last point was moot to Arkansas. In his opinion both men were as guilty as each other. He had assured Clay that if he testified to all this in a court he would be protected and, after a short jail term, be allowed to start again. The man wasn’t stupid and he realized that he was out of options. He nodded before breaking into tears and sobbing like a baby.
And now Clay was lying in the corner of the room, legs and arms still bound and a gag forced into his mouth. Whilst he had been co-operative thus far, Arkansas wasn’t going to take a chance of him screaming out and alerting his pard.
If the other man ever showed up that was.
Arkansas rolled and lit himself a quirly. He glanced out of the window at the horizon but there was no sign of anyone out there.
There were a number of possibilities for Jim failing to show up. Had he returned before Arkansas had hidden his horse away in one of the outbuildings and then fled before being noticed? Or was he simply taking his time with his hunting trip, going on till nightfall, chasing after some elusive prey?
Arkansas suspected the second option was the more likely.
He also knew that there was no way he’d wait until nightfall for the other man.
No, he’d have to leave now, take Clay with him. He’d have to get the man into Red Rock and then, after showing the sheriff his authorization papers, get Clay locked away. He suspected the sheriff and Lance were too close and that the lawman was not to be trusted, but Arkansas didn’t think the sheriff would go against him when he saw the legal papers he held.
He didn’t like leaving Jim out there, loose ends were to be avoided and he would have much preferred to lead both men into town, but there was little choice. It was unlikely that Will and Rycot were in any immediate danger, but if Jim had returned and saw him here and then ridden on and informed Lance, then things could get mighty tricky.
Would Lance panic that Arkansas seemed to be getting closer to him and ride out with a heavily armed gang to Will’s place for a showdown? That wasn’t a chance Arkansas wanted to take.
‘No choice about it,’ he said and looked at Clay.
The bound man mumbled something beneath his gag.
‘Guess I’m taking you into town,’ Arkansas told him.
He crossed the room and peered through the window once more but again all he was greeted with was the glorious never-ending landscape. ‘Don’t worry, Lance won’t get at you. I’ll make sure of that.’
Clay nodded and this time didn’t even bother to mumble.
‘I’m going to get the horses,’ Arkansas said. ‘You stay there and shut up and I’ll untie you when I come back.’
Clay did all he could do and simply nodded.
Arkansas led his sorrel and a black mustang to the ranch house and tethered both animals to the hitching rail. Once again he scanned the horizon for Jim and once more saw nothing, before going back into the house.
He took the ornate knife and sliced the bindings at Clay’s feet. He left Clay’s hands tied and then, before removing the gag, he pulled one of his Colts and pointed it directly into the man’s face.
‘Don’t try anything stupid,’ Arkansas warned. ‘Just like with the doc my gun could go off by accident if I stumble. ’Course if that happens then you won’t be around to know about it.’
‘Mister,’ Clay said, gasping for air, ‘I’m through with stupid things.’
‘Good to hear it,’ Arkansas said. ‘Now, up.’ He grabbed Clay’s still bound wrists and pulled him to his feet. He allowed the man to bend and straighten each leg in turn to work the cramp from his muscles. ‘Remember, nothing stupid, ‘he reminded the man.
Arkansas grabbed his Spencer and then placed the Colt back into leather. He prodded the barrel of the rifle into Clay’s back and pushed him towards the door.
‘Slowly,’ he said.
Clay moved on ahead – carefully, feeling the gun in his back with each step. He certainly wasn’t going to give any trouble and seemed terrif
ied of the man with the rifle.
Once outside he paused on the stoop.
‘Make your way to your horse,’ Arkansas ordered. ‘I’ll help you mount up.’
Clay reached his horse and stood beside the mustang.
Again Arkansas removed a Colt and lowered the rifle to the ground. ‘Now, no funny ideas,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna’ give you a foot up onto your horse and then bind your hands to the saddle horn. One wrong move and I’ll put a slug straight in the small of your back. At this range it’ll tear your organs apart. You’ll die quickly but it’ll be painful.’
‘Just get me on my horse.’ Clay said. ‘I don’t want to hear none of that kind of talk.’
Arkansas bent his knees and grabbed Clay by the back of his waist band. He lifted while the other man swung his legs over the horse.
The shot came from nowhere: breaking the afternoon air like a crack in the sky itself.
Arkansas hit the ground hard and grabbed the Spencer. He rolled and came up in a crouch, rifle ready to fire, eyes scanning for the shooter. There was another shot and Arkansas saw the rifle flash and let one off in that direction before running back for the doorway to the house.
At the sound of the first shot the mustang had bucked but had been unable to break free of its reins and it remained tethered to the hitch rail. Clay lay there, half on the horse and half off. He was completely motionless and Arkansas didn’t have to get any closer to know that the man had died. The way his lifeless eyes stared back at him told him that. Jim had returned and, crack shot hunter that he was, had missed his intended target and killed his pard.
‘Damn,’ Arkansas spat. With Clay dead his witness had gone and the case he had built against Lance had been instantly destroyed with the violent crack of gunfire. He poked his head around the doorway and fired a shot in the general direction of where he figured Jim was hiding.
There was fire in return and then Arkansas heard the sound of galloping hoofs. The man was attempting to flee, no doubt riding to warn John Lance that things were moving up a step or two.
