Bannerman the Enforcer 46

by Kirk Hamilton

  “Magowan, that’s the name,” Dukes said suddenly, tapping the papers. “Three brothers: Abe, Etham and Leith. Ohio boys originally. Cut a swathe of death and robberies clear down through Kentucky and Missouri, and now they’re said to have holed-up in Texas.” His eyes hardened as he looked at his Enforcers. “I don’t want ’em here. Their style is to recruit a dozen or so hard cases and then terrorize a section of a State, get all they can out of it and move on someplace else. They’re killers of the worst kind. You’ll never take ’em alive or escort ’em to the State line. You’ll have to go in with guns blazing. They’re all gunfighters, so it’s gonna be a tough one.”

  Kate frowned, glancing at Yancey, looking concerned. “Dad, wouldn’t it be best to have a troop of Rangers ...?”

  He held up a hand. “No good, Kate. They’d just move on and set up someplace else, more remote from law and order. It’s their style, according to these reports. They don’t mind makin’ a stand, but while there’s money to be made, they’ll just high-tail it till they get enough. Besides, they won’t show for a spell, not till they’ve got all their hard cases.”

  The Governor switched his gaze to Yancey and Cato.

  “I’m hoping you two fellers might get a lead on ’em and take care of things before they get their band together. It’s going to take a lot of undercover work. If necessary, I want you to let yourselves be recruited.”

  Kate gasped. “No, Dad! Not with men like the Magowans! There has to be another way!”

  Dukes met and held his daughter’s gaze. He spoke softly. “They have to be stopped before they get going, Kate. Have to be. Whatever the risks.”

  “But—I’ve read those files! They’re terrible men! They don’t just kill. They—they torture, do such—vile things!”

  Kate was pale and trembling.

  “Sounds like they need killing,” opined Yancey calmly.

  “Yeah,” agreed Cato quietly. “I’ve heard of ’em. Scum.”

  Kate looked from one Enforcer to the other. “That’s all you have to say? I mean, we don’t even know where the Magowans are right now. It may take weeks to find them! By that time, they may have all their recruits, and it’ll be just you two against a dozen cold-blooded killers!”

  Yancey smiled faintly and winked at Cato. “Odds sound about right, don’t they, Johnny?”

  Cato nodded, giving a faint smile.

  Kate sighed exasperatedly. “It’s no joking matter! This is one of the toughest assignments you’ve ever handled! It’s—very dangerous.”

  Yancey sobered at the catch in Kate’s voice. He nodded slowly. There was no use trying to josh about this deal it seemed.

  He stood up and walked across to her, took her shoulders gently between his big hands.

  “Johnny and me make a good team, Kate. You know that. We’ll pull it off. We always do.”

  There was no boasting in his words; he was simply stating a fact. Cato nodded in emphasis and Dukes worked up a reassuring smile for his daughter’s benefit.

  But Kate could not be comforted. She cared too much for Yancey Bannerman and couldn’t help the shiver that passed completely through her body.

  The canyon ran off the South Platte River and they had discovered it by accident when one of the horses had strayed during an overnight camp. Now they had decided to call it ‘Lucky Canyon’. Not a very original name, perhaps, but one that aptly described the place as far as Lars and Emily Svendborg were concerned.

  For, while trailing the wandering horse in here, Lars had seen the glint of yellow metal in the shallow waters of the creek that fed into the South Platte. A pan full of sand, a little expert twisting this way and that, spilling off the overburden of sand and gravel, and flecks of alluvial gold sparkled against the rusted metal.

  Deeper into the bend, where the water was quieter, Lars found a pocket of placer gold, pea-sized and thumbnail-sized nuggets.

  That had been three weeks ago and they had now moved permanent camp in here, living under the overhang of rock near the stream, the old Conestoga backed up for shelter against the wind that sliced in from the badlands each evening and moaned through the hidden canyon.

  The baby, little Erik, named after Lars’ father back in Copenhagen, Denmark, on the other side of the world, seemed content to lie and gurgle in his blankets under the shading canvas of the Conestoga while Emily helped Lars with the gold.

  They were getting some ore now as well as the small pure nuggets, and she was becoming quite expert at separating the yellow-metal from the matrix. Emily was from Dallas, Texas, and she had lost everything, including her parents, when the family boarding house had burned down one night. It was suspected that drunken cowboys had started the fire. Five people had died in the blaze and Emily had been lucky to escape with her life. She had been working as a waitress in a San Antonio cafe when Lars Svendborg had entered her life.

  A cattle buyer who had just closed a lucrative deal and who had been celebrating a mite too much with the whisky bottle had ordered a meal and tried to include Emily on the menu. She had fought off his drunken advances, but he had turned mean and struck her. Lars, big, blond, hard muscled, had smashed his fist into the middle of the cattleman’s face so hard that he had hurtled clear across the cafe and smashed through the front window out into the street.

  The manager had raised Cain, taking it out on Emily. Lars had thrust twenty dollars into the cafe-owner’s pocket to pay for the damage and then clubbed him to the floor with a massive fist crashing down on top of his bald head. He had picked up the stunned and weeping Emily under one arm and carried her outside where he had lifted her effortlessly into the seat of his high wheeled Conestoga wagon.

  “I be Lars Svendborg from Denmark,” he had told her in his quaintly accented English. “For five years I have been here, looking for gold. I came to make my fortune. Today, I feel I have found riches beyond my wildest dreams.” He grinned, thick lips peeling back from strong white, even teeth, startling against his mahogany-colored flesh from long months in the Texas sun. “I have been watching you.”

  Emily pushed a strand of midnight-black hair back from her face. She was still bewildered and her eyes were red and moist, but she was no longer weeping.

  “Yes,” she said slowly, nodding. “I remember now. You have eaten in the cafe several times.”

  “And you served me but did not speak,” Lars grinned. “Lost in your thoughts. You looked very sad. I decide I will make you happy.”

  She laughed briefly, unable to stop the sound bubbling out. “Well, you got off to a good start, putting that cattleman in his place!”

  “Aaah!” Lars dismissed that with a big hand chopping at the air as he lifted the reins and set the wagon rolling slowly down the street. “That man is animal. Forget him. I have little money saved. This wagon and what is in the back. I search still for gold. But Texas is not the place to find it. I must go north, to Colorado. I would be honored to take you as my wife.”

  Emily was stunned, stared at him, gape-mouthed, as the Conestoga rumbled on through San Antone.

  “I am twenty-four years, strong and healthy, with lots of dreams. Some folk here say I am stupid Dane with solid bone for head, but I am maybe little slow with language, that is all. English I must translate into Danish so I can understand, and then I must translate my reply from Danish back to English before I speak. It makes me seem dull, this I know. But I know what I want and I will get it one day. I am patient and not afraid to work hard. If I had wife—and family—I would work harder. And faster. I be good to you, Emily Harlan.”

  She blinked. “You know my name?”

  He laughed, a deep, happy sound. “I know lots about you. I find out, make it my business to find out. You are town girl, not used to frontier. So I must tell you it will be hard life with me. But only till I find my fortune. Then you will have every comfort. This I swear.”

  He looked sideways at her, serious now. She frowned, realizing he meant every word. Could she cope with such a man?


  “But you can’t do this! You’ve only just met me. Marriage doesn’t happen like this!”

  But it did in those days when men far out-numbered women on the frontier. This was the heyday of ‘mail-order’ brides, women sent for by strangers, their fare coming through the mail, arriving, and sometimes, being married right there on the railroad depot as soon as they stepped off the train. Whole wagonloads of women rolled westwards and took the marriage vows with men they had never laid eyes on before, within minutes or hours of arrival.

  It was the way it was done and suited some folk, not all, by any means. But men grew lonely in the wilderness and most made genuine efforts to settle down with the mate of their choice. There were, naturally, the unscrupulous ones who cleared off with whatever money or valuables they could lay their hands on, but mostly, these marriages survived. For a time, at least ...

  Emily, despite everything she had been taught, found herself married to the big blond Dane by the end of that week, and, by the end of the following week, they were crossing from Texas into Colorado and Lars Svendborg followed the elusive gold trail for almost a year before coming to the hidden canyon on the South Platte in the north of Colorado.

  By then, young Erik had been born and, even though only weeks old, seemed to thrive on the outdoor life, although he spent almost all his days in the back of the big Conestoga.

  One sundown, with the usual wind starting to moan through the canyon, Emily finished feeding the baby, burped him, and lay him in his swaddling clothes in the back of the wagon. Then she prepared Lars’ supper over the stone fireplace he had built in a sheltered part of the rock overhang.

  By the time it was ready, the big young miner came lumbering into camp and he couldn’t help from grinning from ear to ear, as he squatted down by his wife, dropped a thick arm about her slim shoulders and crushed her to him.

  “I’ll spill the coffee!” she protested laughing.

  “Spill it then!” he invited, kissing her soundly. “Soon we will be pouring it from fine china pots and stirring in sugar with solid silver spoons.”

  His hand appeared before her face and she jerked her head back so as to focus on the glittering object he held between thumb and forefinger. It was an arrowhead shaped nugget of gold, almost perfect in its outline.

  “This you shall wear about your neck on a gold chain,” Lars said, fumbling at his pocket, “which will be made into heavy links from—this!”

  In a small circle of chamois he held out two dozen small nuggets, each about the size of buckshot pellets.

  Emily snapped her head around, looking at him swiftly.

  “Lars! So much! you mean you’ve found—”

  He nodded. “The stringer, Emily.” He always pronounced her name ‘Em-il-ee’, elongating the last syllable. “I have discovered the stringer that will lead me to the lode from which all this gold has been washing. Already I am almost certain where it is to be found and tomorrow we will be truly rich! It is El Dorado, Emily! Our future, Erik’s future, is now assured.”

  He hauled her to her feet and swung her around effortlessly until she protested that she was dizzy. He set her down and had to support her as she sought to regain her balance. Emily smiled and clung to him.

  “Oh, Lars, I’m so glad you’ve found your bonanza! To be honest, I really wasn’t worrying whether you found it or not. I am happy as we are, as we have been. You’re a good man, a good husband and father. You deserve to find your gold, but I would be happy with you and little Erik if you only had two pennies to rub together.”

  “And I with you,” he boomed, “but think how much easier life will be for you now, Emily! Young Erik will have everything of the best: the best clothes and schools and care. I will learn about business. In Copenhagen, I was a freight clerk in my father’s shipping office. I can adapt that experience to this land, perhaps start a freight line with wagons, shipping supplies to the frontier people ...”

  He talked on far into the night about his plans and the future. Emily leaned her head against his shoulder and dozed, smiling even in her sleep.

  It was the last happiness she would know for a long, long time.

  Chapter Three – Wolves

  It was hard-earned money, that payroll.

  There wasn’t a man amongst Laramie Kane’s bunch of trail wolves who would disagree with that. No one could say just when things went wrong, but something happened on the second or third day after the massacre of the payroll escort. Whatever it was, it was subtle, for no one realized it until sundown that night and the glowing disc slid behind the hills fringing the badlands far to the left.

  Even then it was only a feeling of vague unease with a couple of the group, Kane himself and Boots Stacey. It wasn’t until breakfast the next morning as he watched the sun rise again that Kane realized what it was.

  They were travelling too far north.

  He was puzzled. He couldn’t make out how it had happened. He didn’t say anything, but he saw Stacey looking around him more than usual. Around high noon, Kane realized how it had come about.

  It was the heat haze.

  Dancing and blurring things in the distance, it also tended to distort vision, bend light waves, make things appear in different positions to their actual locations. And he had been working off a far-distant conical peak. Only now did he realize that during the intense heat of the day, that peak could appear to ‘change’ position anything up to a dozen times. He had been keeping it in sight, unconsciously changing direction each time he looked at it to take his bearings.

  Well, it didn’t seem like too big a need to worry. He would simply take his bearings in the morning and evening. That way he couldn’t be too far out.

  But already he was farther north than he wanted to be and Kane himself didn’t realize just how far he was until the troop of soldiers appeared on the morning of the fifth day, a long line of horsemen skylined on a ridge only a mile away. Even as the startled killers saw the soldiers, the line swung towards them and dust began to lift into the pale sky as they broke into a gallop.

  They had no choice but to turn back into the badlands.

  The robbers’ horses were weary. They had counted on being out of the alkali by now, back to good grass and water, but they had been getting along on meager rations and the animals weren’t in any shape for a prolonged chase across the wasteland.

  Obviously, by now, the Army pay wagon and its dead escort had been found. The troop they had seen were out searching for the killers and Kane and his men held no illusions about what would happen to them if they were caught. If they weren’t shot down, they would be dragged back to Fort Rogers and strung up as a warning to anyone else loco enough to think about trying to rob an Army payroll.

  A dust storm saved them. As was usual for that part of the country, it blew up out of nowhere, within minutes. It started with an increase in the hot wind. The nostrils began to sting with the hot, abrasive alkali that clouded upwards, clogging nose and mouth and eyes. Then, bare minutes later, the sun was obscured, little more than a hazy dull-orange blob wavering somewhere above the thick, billowing clouds of alkali that lifted into the sky. Progress was slow and direction was wherever the horses chose to go; the animals would not walk directly into the storm and, as it kept changing direction, so did they.

  It blew like hell for more than a day. The stars were still hazy that night, but, by the next morning, the sun was crisp and bronze, the land stretching gray and featureless away towards the sharp horizon.

  Behind them, they saw no sign of the Army patrol.

  Kane found his peak again and swung in a wide loop to the south and, as was usual after the wasteland storm, temperatures dropped some and he was able to keep more or less on a line to the south.

  They looked like they would make it clear of the badlands without further incident but Captain Hall from Fort Rogers didn’t aim to let the killers of his payroll escort escape.

  He had men waiting and there was a running gun battle between Kane’s
outlaws and the soldiers that lasted from midmorning until nightfall and, by that time, they had run close enough to the Powder River to make a wild, bullet-dodging dash for the water. They broke through the thin line of soldiers guarding the ford but, instead of going straight across, turned their mounts out of the shallows and into the deeper water, allowing the current to snatch them while they swam alongside, holding guns clear of the river.

  The soldiers rode across to the far side and into the timber beyond, believing the killers had gone in there to hide.

  By the time they realized they had been outfoxed, Laramie Kane’s group were far downstream, heaving out onto the bank and riding hell-for-leather into Wyoming. It wasn’t until later that they realized they had dropped several bags of gold during the chase down-river ...

  The word was out and it was sheer hell crossing Wyoming. Luckily, Buck Gentry had kinfolk who saw them through the rugged Robber Breaks, but it cost them a deal of money and their shares were diminishing rapidly now. And the heat was on. Army, lawmen, bounty hunters, all were after them.

  They got through Wyoming as quickly as they could, and each man killed a horse doing it. They raided a remote ranch, killed the old woman and her son who ran the place, took all the food, a few dollars, some ammunition, and a fresh bunch of horses.

  Then they broke through a cordon of posse men and made into the north of Colorado, stayed in the mountains for nigh on a week before riding into an ambush set up by a group of bounty hunters who had stumbled onto their camp by sheer luck—good or bad, depending on where you stood.

  As it turned out, it was bad for the bounty hunters, too. Only one of them lived to escape and he was toting lead in his back that would likely finish him in a couple of days unless he made it to a sawbones in time for the proper treatment.

  They couldn’t take the chance that he wouldn’t get to a town and raise the alarm, so they took to the hills again and rode out into the remote and beautiful country beyond the South Platte where there were only Indians and fur trappers, and no law other than what a man carried strapped to his hip.