Ralph Compton: West of the Law

by Ralph Compton

  It was Ebenezer’s voice.

  Warily, McBride stepped to the old man and looked down at him. His voice tight, he asked, ‘‘Why?’’

  ‘‘Every man has his price, young feller. Gamble Trask paid me mine.’’

  ‘‘Fool’s gold,’’ McBride said. Anger and compassion were fighting a battle inside him.

  ‘‘Best you saddle up the mustang and get out of here,’’ Ebenezer said, his voice unraveling into thin threads as his dying hastened closer. ‘‘They will be coming for you soon.’’

  McBride’s head moved, nodding to the dead man at the foot of the ladder. ‘‘Him?’’

  ‘‘His name is Harland. He’s the youngest of the Allison brothers. He told them he could take you by hisself, wanted to prove something, I guess.’’ The old man coughed blood into his beard and cackled. ‘‘He . . . he was wrong. . . .’’

  Then he groaned deep in his chest as death took him by the ear.

  McBride had not been long in the West, but he had come to know much of gunfighter arrogance. Trask and the Allison brothers would have heard the shots and think him dead. They would not come for a while, but he had no time to lose.

  He saddled and bridled the mustang in the dark, fumbling with straps and buckles in his haste, then spared a few moments to look for Ned Barlow.

  The man was lying on his back in an empty stall and his throat had been expertly cut. Whether Harland Allison or Ebenezer had killed him, McBride did not know, nor did he care. The end result was the same. He climbed awkwardly into the saddle and swung the mustang out of the stable.

  For the most part McBride had walked the little animal, uncertain of his horsemanship, but he ran him now. The mustang hammered at a fast, choppy gallop into the night and McBride, hanging on grimly to the saddle horn, was nonetheless glad to let the darkness of the plain swallow him.

  Chapter 24

  After fifteen wild minutes, the mustang slowed to walk, blowing hard, and McBride drew rein. He turned and looked behind him into the night but neither saw nor heard anything.

  He swung to the west, then looped to the south until he met the Santa Fe tracks. He followed the tracks back toward High Hopes, riding under stars and a still, dreaming moon. The wind tugged at him, eager to tell its tale, and out on the flat grass the coyotes were silent, listening.

  McBride followed the tracks for miles until the station came in sight. The platform was in shadow, but a lamp still glowed in the ticket office. Beyond the station High Hopes was a random scatter of lights, the buildings lost in the gloom. McBride listened and thought he heard men shouting his name, but the wind shredded their words so he was not sure.

  He drew rein on the mustang and sat the saddle, deep in brooding thought. He had to be near Shannon, and that meant he needed a place to hole up that was close to her. He thought of trying to reach Doc Cox’s house, but dismissed the idea. Why put the man in danger? Besides, he didn’t even know where he lived.

  He could try to find an empty shack or some other building, but that was an uncertain undertaking. He could be seen as he bumbled around in the dark like a fool, trying doors.

  It came to him then. . . .

  There was one man in town who might welcome him and hide him out, a fellow lawman—Marshal Lute Clark. The more he thought about, the more McBride decided it was his only option.

  He remembered that there was a small barn behind Clark’s house. He could stable the mustang there, where it would be seen by no one. A dying tin-star marshal of a two-bit town has few visitors.

  Still, it was with some reluctance that McBride swung away from the station and made his way to the edge of town. He knew danger rode with him and he was bringing that unwelcome guest right to Clark’s doorstep. But he was desperate. Shannon was depending on him and he had to be close.

  McBride ground tied his horse behind the Clark home, then walked around to the front and tapped on the door. It opened a few moments later.

  ‘‘Oh, it’s you,’’ Dolly said without evident surprise. She looked tired, worn. ‘‘Come to see Lute again?’’

  ‘‘How is he?’’ McBride asked.

  ‘‘He’s dying a little quicker today. That pleases him.’’

  ‘‘I need to talk with him.’’

  ‘‘I’ll tell him. He’ll say yes or no.’’ She looked McBride up and down. ‘‘You look like hell. Come in.’’

  Dolly opened the door wider and McBride stepped into the dark hallway. She closed the door behind him. ‘‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’’ The woman hesitated a moment, then said, ‘‘Talking about looking like hell, I was pretty once myself, can you believe that?’’

  ‘‘I can believe it. You’re still pretty.’’

  ‘‘No, I’m not. One time I was so pretty that Lute killed two men over me. How many women can say that?’’

  ‘‘Very few, Dolly. Maybe none at all.’’

  ‘‘I just wanted to tell you that, about the two men, I mean, not that it matters a hill of beans anymore.’’

  ‘‘I’m glad you did, because Lute told me the same thing.’’

  ‘‘I was a good woman to him, to Lute,’’ Dolly said.

  ‘‘You still are.’’

  ‘‘Not any longer. I’m leaving him, tomorrow, the day after, the day after that. I won’t stay around and watch him die.’’

  McBride shook his head. ‘‘Dolly, I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the words.’’

  ‘‘It’s not about words, McBride. It’s about feelings.’’

  ‘‘He told you my real name.’’

  ‘‘Lute tells me only what he wants to tell me.’’ She turned away. ‘‘I’ll speak to him.’’

  Dolly returned a few minutes later.

  ‘‘Lute will talk to you.’’ Her tired eyes lifted to McBride’s in the gloom. ‘‘You may be bringing death to this house, John McBride. I know it and so does Lute. That’s why he will welcome you. Just don’t expect me to do the same.’’

  ‘‘I’ll do my best to see that neither of you gets hurt.’’

  Dolly’s mouth stretched in a wan smile. ‘‘Then you’ll disappoint Lute and please me.’’ She waved a hand to the door at the end of the hallway, a small, lost gesture. ‘‘Go, have your talk. Afterward I’ll have hot coffee waiting. You look all used up, or did I already tell you that?’’

  ‘‘Yes, you did. More or less.’’

  ‘‘Well, it’s true enough.’’

  The woman left him then. McBride walked to Clark’s door, knocked once and stepped inside. A single lamp beside the marshal’s bed lit the room and he was propped up with pillows. His gray face, etched with shadow, was the face of a cadaver.

  ‘‘I warned you not to, but I figured you’d be back,’’ Clark said. ‘‘Dolly told me what’s been happening in town. Bucking a stacked deck, ain’t you? I mean taking on Trask and the Allison boys.’’

  ‘‘I killed Harland Allison earlier tonight,’’ McBride said. ‘‘He didn’t give me any choice.’’

  ‘‘That boy needed killing. So do the other two, Julius and Clint.’’ The cadaver head moved on the pillow. ‘‘They won’t be so easy.’’

  McBride smiled grimly. ‘‘It wasn’t easy. It was damned hard. Harland came close.’’ He thought about telling Clark about the deaths of Ebenezer and the blacksmith, but decided to let it go. Besides, the marshal was talking again.

  ‘‘Why are you here, McBride? It’s hardly to ask the help of a dead man.’’

  ‘‘I need a place to hide out,’’ McBride said. ‘‘I need to be close to Shannon Roark.’’

  ‘‘Still planning on taking down Gamble Trask, huh?’’

  ‘‘No. Right now my only plan is to get the woman I love out of High Hopes.’’

  ‘‘That’s good thinking on your part. You can hurt a man like Trask, burn a cabin or free a few Celestials, but you can’t take him down. Not alone, you can’t.’’

  ‘‘But, how did—’’

  ‘‘Dolly told me. No big
surprise, everybody in town is talking about your little foray into the bad-lands, you and Luke Prescott. A miner rode in on a lathered horse and told everybody that Stryker Allison had been killed.’’

  ‘‘Luke is dead too. Allison killed him. Did Dolly tell you that?’’

  ‘‘The word around town is that you shot Allison.’’

  ‘‘It’s wrong. If I’d taken on Stryker in a revolver fight, I’d be dead right now.’’

  Clark absorbed that in silence. The flesh had melted from his face and his temples and cheeks were sunken. It looked to McBride that the man was starving himself to hasten his death.

  Finally he waved McBride close and said, ‘‘Suppose I let you stay here. What do you hope to accomplish?’’

  ‘‘Watch, wait for my chance and when the time is right get Shannon out of town.’’

  ‘‘Watch?’’ Clark’s laugh was like ancient parchments being rubbed together. ‘‘Watch from where, McBride? My front porch? You have to be able to get around town, man.’’

  ‘‘I can hardly do that, Marshal. My face is too well-known.’’

  ‘‘You told me you were a detective, McBride. What the hell kind of shadow do they raise in the big cities?’’

  McBride did not want to rankle the man, and his reply was mild. ‘‘Good ones, I’d hope.’’

  Clark mimicked him. ‘‘Good ones, I’d hope.’’ He laughed again, a dry, unpleasant sound. ‘‘You claim to be a good detective yet you’ve never heard of a disguise?’’

  It was McBride’s turn to laugh. ‘‘Disguise myself as what?’’

  The marshal made no answer. He tilted his head back and bellowed, ‘‘Dolly!’’

  Almost immediately, as though she’d been listening outside, the door opened and the woman stepped into the room. ‘‘Do you recollect them four Texas cowboys that tried to rob the Mercantile Bank a few years back?’’ Clark asked her.

  ‘‘I remember you killed two of them,’’ Dolly said. ‘‘I recollect that.’’

  ‘‘They’d been notified,’’ the marshal said. ‘‘Anyways, they were wearing false theatrical beards and wigs and—’’

  ‘‘You stashed that stuff in the closet in the spare room,’’ Dolly said.

  ‘‘Yeah, that’s right. I kept the disguises as trial evidence, except they never got a chance to go before the judge.’’

  ‘‘What happened to them?’’ McBride asked.

  Dolly answered for the marshal.

  ‘‘Vigilantes did for them. A bank clerk was killed during the robbery, a man with a wife and three kids. Dr. Alan Cox, Theo Leggett, Ned Barlow, the blacksmith, and a bunch of others told Lute to go fishing for a couple of days. Then they dragged those two poor cowboys out of the jail and strung them up. I don’t think either one of them had seen his seventeenth birthday.’’

  ‘‘They were plenty old enough to hold up a bank,’’ Clark said. His eyes glittered as they moved in their shadowed sockets. ‘‘Dolly, bring them disguises here. Oh, and that old black hat I used to wear for gardening.’’

  The woman did as she was told, leaving McBride with a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Cox . . . Leggett . . . Barlow . . . men he’d trusted were vigilantes, in their own way just as ruthless and cold-blooded as Gamble Trask.

  Back at the train station when he’d first arrived in High Hopes, the ticket clerk told him nothing in the town was as it seemed. Now McBride was beginning to understand what he’d meant. The question now was, apart from Shannon, whom else could he trust in High Hopes? Even Ebenezer, who had seemed to be a harmless old man, had sold him down the river for thirty pieces of silver. Could he depend on Marshal Clark to keep silent? And what about Dolly? She’d need traveling money and Gamble Trask was a ready and eager source.

  McBride had plenty of questions and no answers and he felt like the walls of Clark’s room were closing in on him.

  Dolly returned with the disguises and handed them to McBride.

  ‘‘The gray beard and wig, try those,’’ Clark said.

  Feeling foolish, McBride hooked the beard onto his ears. It fell away from him in a frizzy mat, covering most of his chest.

  ‘‘Now the wig,’’ the marshal said. ‘‘The beard is a big improvement, McBride. Makes you almost look handsome.’’

  McBride was irritated, but said nothing. He placed the wig over his head and its ragged gray locks hung to his shoulders, covering the beard’s ear loops.

  ‘‘Now let’s see you walk,’’ Clark said.

  McBride took a few steps up and down the room.

  ‘‘Hell, man, you’re not in New York! You stand like a copper and walk like one,’’ the marshal said. ‘‘Hunch those shoulders and shuffle. Remember, you’re supposed to be an old codger.’’ He watched McBride for a few moments and said, ‘‘That’s better, but drag your feet a bit more. Now, put on the hat.’’

  McBride did as he was told, settling the battered, shapeless old Stetson on his head.

  ‘‘You look just fine,’’ Clark said. ‘‘Even your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.’’ His eyes moved to Dolly. ‘‘What do you think?’’

  ‘‘He’ll pass for an old, broken-down prospector at a distance.’’

  ‘‘What did you say you were, McBride? A detective sergeant?’’

  ‘‘Yes, that’s my rank.’’

  ‘‘Then I shouldn’t have had to give a big-city detective sergeant like you a lesson in police work.’’

  McBride bit back a sharp reply and said merely, ‘‘I’m obliged to you, Marshal.’’

  ‘‘Dolly, he’s staying with us for a spell,’’ Clark said.

  ‘‘I thought as much.’’ She turned to McBride. ‘‘You can sleep in the barn. Nobody will trouble you there. I’ll bring a pillow and blankets, and there’s a stall for your horse. Lute sold his dun a while back.’’

  ‘‘No need for it now,’’ the marshal said. He looked up at McBride. ‘‘Have you any money?’’

  ‘‘No, I was robbed of my money belt. I ran into a band of thieves headed by a man called Portugee.’’

  Clark was surprised and it showed. ‘‘Portugee Lamego? Where did you run into that damned pirate?’’

  ‘‘West of here, at Apishapa Creek. Do you know him?’’

  ‘‘I know of him. He’s pretty much a legend in the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco. Years ago he killed a man in New Orleans and got out of town just ahead of the law. Then he showed up in ’Frisco, calling himself a sea captain. He was hired on by a tea importer as first mate, led a mutiny and took over the company schooner. He hanged the captain from his own yardarm. Since then he’s been running slaves, opium, rum, whatever will turn a profit. But to my knowledge Portugee has never operated east of the Divide. What’s he doing in Colorado?’’

  ‘‘Busily robbing me,’’ McBride said. ‘‘That’s all I know.’’

  ‘‘Over on the dresser, McBride, a tin box. Bring it here.’’

  McBride found the box and brought it to the bed. ‘‘Open it,’’ the marshal said.

  ‘‘There’s money in here,’’ McBride said.