Bannerman the Enforcer 46

by Kirk Hamilton

  The girl gasped and ran forward, leaning on the fence, peering at the name carved into the wood.

  “Buck Gentry,” she read. “Died by the gun, same way he lived ...” Then she turned slowly to Coleman. “September third. Why that’s only two weeks ago!”

  Coleman nodded as Yancey waited patiently for an explanation. The rancher sighed and leaned his hips against the fence rail.

  “I knew both Kane and Gentry in the Pen, Ringo, too,” he began. “Not well, in fact, we didn’t get along at all. But we were cramped into the same cell and, after a couple years, a man gets to talkin’ to whoever’ll listen. I guess I must’ve mentioned my plans at some time for when I got out ... Anyway, couple weeks ago, Laramie Kane and Buck Gentry showed up here. They were on the run from some payroll massacre up north. Needed someplace to hide out. Figured to come in with me as partners, get a legitimate front, change their names and so on.” He sighed. “I said no, of course, and then they turned mean, said if I didn’t take ’em in they’d do a lot of bad-mouthin’ about me, so’s folk’d gimme a hard time, make me sell up. There was a lot more: lies they aimed to make up, threats about what they’d do to my herds and so on. It got past the arguin’ stage and Gentry slapped iron. I nailed him dead center and Kane changed his mind just in time; he was only a hair away from death when he dropped his gun ... I run him off, buried Gentry.”

  He gestured to the grave.

  “That’s it?” Yancey asked.

  Coleman nodded. “Kane rode out. I heard tell he’s taken up with the Loveless brothers.”

  “Who are they?” asked the girl swiftly. “Where could I find them?”

  Coleman looked uncertain. “Well, they hang around Antelope Bend, up the creek yonder, back towards Fort Worth. Got a cabin up there. But it’s a bad place. Outlaws hole-up there on the dodge. Lot of killin’s. Bodies come floatin’ downstream sometimes an’ the things that’ve been done to ’em ...”

  He broke off as he saw the girl pale.

  “It ain’t no place for a lady like you, ma’am. No matter what reason you figure you got for goin’ there.”

  “Can I have my guns back, please?” Emily asked soberly.

  Coleman frowned, looking sharply at Bannerman.

  “You can’t let her do it!”

  Yancey smiled thinly. “I’d like to see you—or anyone else—stop her.”

  The rancher was uneasy as they walked back towards the house.

  “Look, ma’am, let me send along some of my men. Mingo and Hoss are mighty tough. A little stupid, but I owe ’em and I’ve given ’em work an’ they’re grateful. They’ll do whatever I tell ’em ...”

  Texas shook her head adamantly. “Kane was the one who killed Lars. I have to get him myself. If there are a bunch of us, he might be brought down by anyone. I want him myself!”

  Coleman looked an appeal at Yancey, who shrugged and shook his head slowly.

  “You’re both loco!” Coleman breathed. He sighed resignedly. “But, okay: you get your guns and you can use them horses you rode in from the railroad ... Guess the least I can do is show you how to get to Antelope Bend.” He glanced at Yancey. “Seein’ as how you’re keepin’ your mouth shut. About me—and Hoss and Mingo?”

  Yancey smiled crookedly. “Those two clowns? They’re better off here out of the way than cluttering up the State Pen. Far as I know, the Wells Fargo dodger is the only one out on ’em ...?”

  “That’s all. They got kinda desperate, made a mess of things, as usual. Surprisingly, they’re top hands, punchin’ cows ...” The three of them rode out of the ranch yard and cut across the pastures a half hour later, saddlebags stocked with food, canteens filled with water, guns cleaned and loaded.

  Yancey and the girl were prepared for a long trail. Coleman rode along and kept studying the girl. Yancey detected more than passing interest in his looks.

  “Ma’am,” Coleman said as they splashed through the shallows of a creek, “I dunno what your plans are afterwards—after you—settle this thing, but I’d like to say that my sister is on her way here from Socorro, New Mexico, with her two kids, boy and a gal. She’s a widder-woman ... No. That ain’t quite true. She—never was married. Feller ran out. I aim to give her a home with me.” He glanced at Yancey. “Which is why I was prepared to fight, if anyone looked like tryin’ to take Broken Circle away from me. What I’m sayin’, ma’am, is if you wanted someplace quiet to—well, get things straight in your mind ...” He let the words trail off, moved awkwardly in the saddle when she said nothing, didn’t even look at him. “Well,” he finished lamely, “the ranch is there if you should want to stay ...”

  Yancey saw the man flush, but still Texas said nothing. Coleman turned his mount in the middle of the stream, walking it against the current.

  “Best if we advance straight down the creek,” he said, a little curtly, obviously hurt some by the girl’s silence.

  They rode for two hours this way, the water never any more than belly-deep on the mounts, their boots trailing. Then Coleman pointed to a stand of conifers and weeping willows.

  “Antelope Bend. The Loveless’ cabin is round there. Now, look, Bannerman, I ain’t foolin’ about the Loveless brothers. They’re butchers. If anythin goes wrong and they get their hands on the gal ...”

  “As long as I get Kane first,” she cut in, checking the loads in her Smith and Wesson and then sliding out the rifle from the saddle scabbard.

  Coleman shook his head, lips drawn into a razor thin line. He started to check his own Colt.

  They dismounted in the trees and made their way through the dappled shadows, smelling wood smoke. Crouching, Coleman pointed through a gap in the low branches and they saw the cabin, built of old clapboards and sheet iron, leaning away from the prevailing wind. The yard was cluttered and filthy and Yancey noted the large pile of stone whisky jugs around the door. There was no one in sight, but there were six horses in the makeshift corral.

  “Looks like you got ’em cold-decked inside,” Coleman said, and, hard on his words, a shotgun thundered and bark and wood erupted from the tree trunk just above his head. They threw themselves flat and Yancey spotted the gunsmoke even as the shotgun roared again and he rolled swiftly as leaves and stones stung his face.

  “On the roof!” he yelled. “A guard!”

  He spun over on his belly even as he yelled, and his rifle hammered out two fast shots. The man staggered in the act of reloading the shotgun. He stumbled, pitched off the roof-edge and his body, clad in rags, thudded to the ground.

  By that time, guns were blazing from loopholes in the walls of the shack, bullets raking the timber. The girl hugged the ground, her eyes alert, looking for a sign of only one man: Laramie Kane.

  She held her fire.

  Yancey and Coleman had moved away from her and were answering the guns from inside. A man dived across the doorway and Yancey fired instantly. He saw the man’s body jerk and was sure he had hit him. Coleman got to one knee and poured five fast shots through a section of sheet iron and the metal clanged, almost drowning out the agonized scream of a man inside.

  Two men suddenly burst outside, guns hammering, running for the horses. The girl came alert, lifting to her knees, but dropping flat again as she saw that neither was Kane.

  “The Loveless’,” called Coleman, shooting again and cursing as his rifle hammer clicked onto an empty chamber. He flung it aside and drew his Colt, thumbing back the hammer.

  Then he staggered as a bullet slammed into his shoulder and he was knocked flat on his back. He rolled onto his good side, got off a shot that winged one of the running men. The other leapt onto the corral rail, and then onto the bare back of a skittish horse. As he teetered there, trying to get his balance, Yancey brought him down, hurriedly reloading his rifle.

  The second Loveless, wounded, tried to get back into the cabin. Coleman shot him between the shoulders.

  There was a crash from in the cabin and Yancey leapt up abruptly, running for the door, rifle braced i
nto his hip, lever working swiftly, bullets punching through the thin timber.

  “Someone’s goin’ out the back way!” he bawled.

  Instantly, Texas was on her feet and running around the cabin. Yancey went in through the door in a headlong dive, caught a glimpse of a wounded man in a chair trying to lift a sawn-off shotgun to bead him and blasted his rifle one-handed. The man and chair went over backwards and Yancey spun, levering, but saw there was no one else left alive in the cabin.

  He got his legs under him, ran to the swinging rear door.

  He recognized Laramie Kane from Emily’s descriptions.

  The man had almost made it to the trees when the girl came around the cabin, her Smith and Wesson in her hand. Kane, clutching his own Colt, halted, staring wide-eyed in disbelief, recognizing her right away.

  Yancey lowered his rifle and stood in the cabin doorway. “He’s yours, Texas.”

  Kane snapped his head around and then back to the girl. He hefted his six-gun.

  “Put it away,” the girl ordered quietly. “Go on. Put it back in leather!”

  Yancey stiffened, knowing what she had in mind. “Texas, no!”

  “Shut up!” she snapped.

  Kane slowly put his Colt in his holster. Then the girl slid her own Smith and Wesson into the cross-draw holster, looking at him with chill, dead eyes.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” she said quietly.

  Kane looked around at Yancey, mouth curling. “I lose, either way!”

  “You do,” Yancey said coldly. “But Texas gets her chance first. If she misses, I’ll blow your spine in two.”

  Kane swore and lifted his left arm as if in a gesture of protest. His right hand streaked for his gun butt.

  Yancey saw the girl jump slightly to the right, crouching a little, left arm going out swiftly to help with her balance and then the Smith and Wesson blasted in one prolonged roar as she emptied all six of the chambers into the shocked Laramie Kane. His body jerked as the .38 slugs smashed into him. He was driven backwards. His mouth worked. Blood spattered the middle of his face, blossoming on his chest, streaked across his neck, spread rapidly just above his belt buckle.

  He was twitching like a demented puppet even as his legs buckled and he crumpled to the ground in a heap.

  Yancey frowned at the strange rapid clicking sounds. He looked up. Emily Svendborg, looking as if she was in some kind of trance, still pointed her smoking pistol at Kane’s bullet-riddled body and was continuing to pull the trigger, endlessly ...

  But she didn’t protest when he took the gun from her and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “That’s it, Texas,” he said quietly.

  She drew down a deep shuddering breath and walked away stiffly, past the wounded Coleman now leaning in the back doorway.

  Yancey went after her ...

  It was a slow, silent ride back to Coleman’s ranch house.

  Both men kept looking at the girl. She was bone white. Her jaw seemed to tremble uncontrollably at times. She shivered. But she said nothing in reply to their questions as to whether she was all right or not, rode staring straight ahead, holding the reins loosely.

  Then they saw a woman standing on the porch of the house, a rented buckboard in the yard. Coleman frowned.

  “That can’t be sis just yet!”

  “Whoever it is, she’s welcome,” Yancey said quietly, gesturing to Emily. “She’s close to breaking. She needs another woman.”

  Yancey was shocked to find it was Kate Dukes who, smiling, came down the porch steps to greet him.

  “John figured you’d be here if you weren’t at Fort Worth,” she told him warmly. She looked towards Emily. “I came to see if there was anything I could do for ... Mrs. Svendborg.”

  The girl snapped her head up at the name and abruptly her eyes filled with tears and her body was wracked with a rending sob that would live long with Yancey. After all these weeks, now that it was over, the reaction had caught up with her. She shook with uncontrollable sobs and Kate moved to her swiftly, taking her arm, hugging her to her, soothing her, leading her slowly into the house.

  “Kate,” Yancey said, and she paused to glance back. He smiled. “You always were one for bein’ around when you’re needed.”

  She smiled and went on into the house, comforting the distraught girl. Coleman looked at Yancey.

  “D’you think, later, mebbe she might ...?”

  Yancey nodded. “Mebbe. But later ...”

  About the Author

  Keith Hetherington

  aka Kirk Hamilton, Brett Waring and Hank J. Kirby

  Australian writer Keith has worked as television scriptwriter on such Australian TV shows as Homicide, Matlock Police, Division 4, Solo One, The Box, The Spoiler and Chopper Squad.

  “I always liked writing little vignettes, trying to describe the action sequences I saw in a film or the Saturday Afternoon Serial at local cinemas,” remembers Keith Hetherington, better known to Piccadilly Publishing readers as Hank J. Kirby, author of the Bronco Madigan series.

  Keith went on to pen hundreds of westerns (the figure varies between 600 and 1000) under the names Kirk Hamilton (including the legendary Bannerman the Enforcer series) and Clay Nash as Brett Waring. Keith also worked as a journalist for the Queensland Health Education Council, writing weekly articles for newspapers on health subjects and radio plays dramatizing same.

  More on Keith Hetherington

  The Bannerman Series by Kirk Hamilton

  The Enforcer

  Ride the Lawless Land

  Guns of Texas

  A Gun for the Governor

  Rogue Gun

  Trail Wolves

  Dead Shot

  A Man Called Sundance

  Mad Dog Hallam

  Shadow Mesa

  Day of the Wolf

  Tejano

  The Guilty Guns

  The Toughest Man in Texas

  Manstopper

  The Guns That Never Were

  Tall Man’s Mission

  Day of the Lawless

  Gauntlet

  Vengeance Rides Tall

  Backtrack

  Barbary Guns

  The Bannerman Way

  Yesterday’s Guns

  Viking With a Gun

  Deathwatch

  Rio Renegade

  Bullet for Bannerman

  Trail to Purgatory

  The Lash

  Gun Mission

  Hellfire

  Seven Guns to Moonlight

  The 12:10 from San Antone

  Only the Swift

  Die for Texas

  Dealer in Death

  Long Trail to Texas

  The Rawhiders

  Brace Yargo

  The Buckskinners

  Tame the Tall Hombre

  Texas Empire

  Death Rides Tall

  King Iron

  Call Me Texas

  … And more to come every month!