“I’ll be careful,” Ben said. He tightened the girth strap on the buckskin and gave his saddlebags a tug to make sure they were riding snug. He had decided to leave before the women got up to fix breakfast, so he wouldn’t have to justify his reasons for going to everyone. He nodded toward the late deputy marshal Barrett’s horse in Malcolm’s corral. “I’ll leave that Morgan here till I can come back for him. Tell Caleb and the women good-bye for me, will you? Tell ’em I’ll be seein’ ’em again.”
“I will,” Malcolm said, then stepped back to give Ben room to step up in the saddle. When Ben was settled, Malcolm shook his head and grimaced. “Boy, you be careful. You’re going up against a bad crowd in that gang that runs with Sam Cheney.” Ben touched his finger to the brim of his hat in salute and turned the buckskin toward the road.
Chapter 12
Marvin Thompson, owner of the Pair-A-Dice Saloon, glanced up when a customer walked into his establishment. What he saw caused him to take another, longer look. A stranger, the man commanded attention because of his powerful frame, but the cruel, scarred face was the reason for a startled second look from the bartender. Thompson’s saloon had become a hangout for many men of suspect morals, so for his own good, he had adopted a policy of no questions asked. Outlaws and saddle tramps were going to get their whiskey somewhere, he rationalized, so he might as well be the one to take their money. On their part, his questionable clientele were content to gather peacefully in his saloon, adhering to an unspoken rule that any trouble between customers should be taken outside. If he was looking for men of his element, this stranger looked as if he had found the right place. So Marvin welcomed him cordially.
“Howdy, stranger. What’ll it be?”
“A glass of beer,” Ben said. “My throat’s kinda dry. I think I musta breathed in too much of that damn smoke.” He took a casual glance at the men sitting around a table in the back of the room, playing cards.
“You come down from Deadwood?” Marvin asked. “That smoke is still driftin’ down the gulch.”
“Looks like it’ll be here for a while yet,” Ben said, making casual conversation. “Those buildings are still smolderin’.” He waited for Marvin to set his glass of beer on the bar, then took a long drink of it before continuing. “Feller up in Deadwood sent me with a message for somebody down here, said I’d find ’em in your place, but I don’t know ’em by sight, never seen the fellers before. All I’ve got is their names.”
“Well, maybe I can help you,” Marvin offered. “Who you lookin’ for?” Ben pulled the piece of cardboard from his pocket and recited the four names. “One of’em’s here right now,” Marvin said. “Frank Worley, he’s settin’ back there at the poker table, little, short feller with his back to the corner.”
“Much obliged,” Ben said, casually pulled the pencil stub from his pocket, and struck a line through Worley’s name. Then he took his time to finish his glass of beer before nodding to Marvin and ambling over to the back table.
All six of the cardplayers looked up to gape at the ominous-looking stranger approaching them, causing a pause in the card game. “You Frank Worley?” Ben asked, directing his question to the man Marvin had pointed out.
Surprised to be called by name, Worley responded. “Who wants to know?”
“I got a message for you,” Ben replied.
“From who?”
“Cleve and Jonah,” Ben said.
“Who?” Worley responded, baffled. “I don’t know no Cleve and Jonah.”
“Sure you do. They’re the two men you and your friends shot full of holes before you burnt their bodies up in that house you set on fire the other night. You remember now?”
Startled, Worley dropped his cards and pushed his chair back, fumbling to draw the revolver he had stuck in his belt. By the time he got his hand on the handle, Ben’s .44 was already in his hand and leveled at him. When the first shot smashed his breastbone, Worley’s reflex tightened his trigger finger and sent a bullet through his hip. Toppling his chair, he landed on the floor, still struggling to get his pistol out of his belt. Ben moved deliberately around the table and placed another shot between Worley’s eyes. Then he stood there for a few moments to make sure Worley was dead, taking only a quick glance toward the bar to make sure Marvin wasn’t reaching for a weapon under the counter. With his pistol still in hand, and held high enough for everyone there to see that he still had it out, he said, “Go on with your game, gentlemen. Sorry to interrupt.”
With no show of urgency, he walked back toward the door, his .44 held in a ready position, as he scanned the room quickly in case Worley had friends there who might gamble with thoughts of avenging him. As he had figured, no one there really gave a damn if Worley lived or died, and no one moved until he reached the door and went out. Outside, he moved much more quickly, holstering his weapon and jumping in the saddle, and was galloping away before anyone made a move to react.
That’s one of them, Cleve, he thought as the buckskin carried him swiftly away from the Pair-A-Dice Saloon. The other three might be quite a bit more difficult to deal with, for now they would be alerted to expect the deadly messenger. He was also aware at this point that his task had become almost impossible, since he could not identify the remaining three murderers. He was counting heavily upon the probability that the other three would likely come after him. They would sure as hell have a description of him, since everyone in the saloon who witnessed Worley’s execution could describe his scarred countenance. The question was, where would they search for him? He decided that he was going to have to give this some more thought. When he had come to the Pair-A-Dice this evening, he had hoped all four would be there. I should have waited until they were, he scolded himself in hindsight. He had been too impatient to administer justice when he saw Frank Worley casually playing cards. He vowed to be patient from now on, even if it took the rest of his life to track them all down. It was time to plan more carefully, so he tried to imagine what the other three men would do when they found out about Worley. They’ll most likely want to get me before I can get them, he thought. And they’ll probably go back to the house they set fire to and look around. They won’t know any place else to look. So I’ll make sure they find something. He couldn’t say it was the best of plans, but it was a plan, so instead of heading toward the mountains, he rode back to Deadwood.
It was well past dark by the time he reached the road where Jonah’s house had stood. He could see a lamp burning in the kitchen window of Malcolm Bryant’s house as he rode silently by. Someone was still up, and it was tempting to stop in and get a couple of Mary’s biscuits to go with some coffee, but he had no desire to let them know he was back at the house. When he arrived at the burned-out foundation of Jonah’s house, he paused for a time to decide the best place to set up his camp. He decided upon the level spot beside the two new graves and walked over to stand and look around him. The hill rose steeply behind the house, leading up to another street cut into the slope. There were few trees of any type on the entire hillside except for a line of young pines, clumped close together about halfway up between the two streets. The thicket did not provide much cover in the daylight, but it would do to hide a horse and rider at night.
Collecting small pieces of wood left unconsumed by the house fire, he built a fire to boil his coffee and roast some strips of venison for his supper. When he was finished, he made sure there were enough scraps of evidence to indicate someone had camped there. It was doubtful that the men he expected would be nosing around there this soon after Worley’s death, but to be safe, he took the buckskin to a stream several hundred yards away where he often watered the horse. Thinking it as safe a place as any, he spread his bedroll there for the night.
“Damn, Cheney,” Shorty Fagen said when he walked in the door of the saloon. “Where have you been? Me and Bull have been lookin’ for you all mornin’.”
“I’ve been lookin’ for that son of a bitch Beaudry,” Cheney replied. “He owes me money, and I can�
��t find the bastard. I figured he’da gone up to Lead City, since he’s supposed to be workin’ for the Homestake, but he wasn’t up there.” He was about to rant on, but he noticed the concerned looks on both their faces. “What the hell’s eatin’ at you two?” he asked.
“Worley’s dead,” Shorty said. “Somebody shot him last night when he was playin’ cards right here in the saloon.”
“Damn,” Cheney responded, surprised, but not overly concerned. “I don’t wonder. Somebody finally caught him cheatin’, I reckon.”
“No,” Bull Lacey was quick to respond. “Frank weren’t cheatin’; at least nobody caught him at it. It wasn’t one of the fellers he was playin’ cards with that done it. It was some stranger that just walked up to the table, asked him if he was Frank Worley, then pulled out a gun and shot him.”
“It was that feller with the scar,” Shorty said. This caught Cheney’s attention.
“That’s right,” Bull exclaimed, and repeated, “Marvin said he just walked right up to the table and asked him if he was Frank Worley. Then he said he had a message for him from them two fellers we shot and threw in the fire.” This served to capture Cheney’s full attention. Wanting more details firsthand, he walked over to the bar where Marvin was wiping some shot glasses with a rag.
Always a bit nervous when Cheney and his friends were all in his saloon at the same time, he repeated the story he had told Bull and Shorty before. Seeing no sense in disclosing every detail, he didn’t tell Cheney the part about Ben asking which one Worley was, and the fact that he had pointed him out. “He was a bad-lookin’ jasper,” Marvin went on. “Had a helluva scar across his face, like somebody had laid it open with an axe. Worley never had a chance. Before he pulled out his gun and shot him, he said you boys killed two fellers and burned a house down.”
Marvin’s last statement caused Cheney to cock his head around to fix him with a sharp stare. “You know that ain’t so,” he said, “’cause me and the boys were in here that night, playin’ cards all night.”
“Well, that’s right” Marvin quickly replied. “You boys were in here all night. You sure were.” He didn’t ask which night Cheney was referring to—it didn’t matter.
“Bring us a bottle over here,” Cheney said, then turned and led Shorty and Bull back to their usual table in the corner. He waited for Marvin to set the bottle and glasses on the table and leave them before getting down to discuss this unexpected threat. “Somebody saw us at that house, and one of them two we shot wasn’t who we thought he was. We were right about that.”
“Well, who the hell was he?” Shorty blurted.
“Don’t make no difference,” Cheney said, “but we sure know who the hell he wasn’t. Beaudry said one of them two gun hands had a scar on his face, and you heard what Marvin said. Some big son of a bitch with a scar on his face was the one that walked in here and shot Worley, and I got a feelin’ he ain’t gonna be satisfied with just one of us. So we better damn sure get him before he picks off another one of us.”
“Where we gonna find him?” Bull asked.
“Shut up and lemme think a minute,” Cheney barked. He was trying to recall if Garth Beaudry had told him who lived in the house he sent them to burn, and finally decided that he had not. “I don’t know who was livin’ in that house. Whoever it was hired those two gun hands for some reason, so the only chance we’ve got to find the bastards is to watch that house to see if they’re still hangin’ around there.”
Since neither of his two partners had any better suggestions, they decided to ride on up the gulch that afternoon to look around the ruins of Jonah’s house in the daylight. Following the dusty road up the hillside, they paid very little attention to Malcolm Bryant’s house as they rode past. A hundred yards shy of the blackened ruins of Jonah’s home, Cheney signaled for them to pull up, and he took a long look at the hill still before him. Satisfied there was no one about, he started forward again, constantly scanning left and right, looking for possible places where a man with a rifle might be waiting. In single file, they turned off the road and followed the path up to the front yard.
Twisted and charred, the remains of the house stared out at them like a ghostly monument to their evil accomplishment as they filed by the side of the foundation. “Look here,” Bull called to the others. “There’s a couple of graves back here.”
“That ain’t all,” Shorty said, and dismounted to look over the remains of Ben’s campfire. “Looks to me like somebody’s campin’ here. These ashes are still warm.”
“Well, now,” Cheney remarked, “I’d sure like to get a look at whoever it is. I might even be willin’ to bet he’s got a big ol’ scar across his face.” His comment caused all three to involuntarily take a quick look all around them.
Noticing the same pine thicket that Ben had spotted earlier, Bull pointed toward it and said, “That looks like the only spot around here where a man could hide to watch this camp. I say we oughta come on back after dark and see if he’s the one usin’ this place.”
Cheney looked at the huge man, surprised that the suggestion had come from such a simple mind. “That ain’t a bad idea, Bull. I was just thinkin’ ’bout somethin’ like that, myself.” He looked at Shorty then. “You got any better idea?”
“Nope, sounds as good as any to me,” Shorty replied, bringing a wide smile of pride to Bull’s face. “It’s a while before dark. Let’s go on back to the Pair-A-Dice and get a drink.”
“He might be back there, lookin’ for us,” Bull said. “Maybe we oughta go somewhere else.”
“Hell, I wish he would come back to the Pair-A-Dice,“ Cheney said. “But he won’t, ’cause he’s got a pretty good idea we know what he looks like now, and he knows there’d be three guns on the first scar-faced pecker-head that walks in the door.”
It was close to dusk when Ben guided the buckskin carefully down the slope toward the small thicket of young pines. Satisfied that no one was hiding in the thicket, he paused there for a few minutes to look at the ruins of the burned house below him, scanning the hillside all around it, as well as the road in front. There was no place for anyone to hide, so he urged his horse forward, leaving the thicket and descending to the house and the campsite he had left for Cheney and his partners to find.
Gambling that he had sufficient time before hard dark, he built up his fire and roasted some antelope jerky for his supper. As darkness began to settle in, he pulled the saddle off his horse and tethered it opposite the front corner of the foundation of the house, hoping it would be well out of the line of fire if there was any. Then he rolled his blanket and arranged it on his bedroll. After checking his rifle, he stepped into the ruins of the burned-out house, carefully making his way around and over charred timbers that lay in jumbled piles where the roof had collapsed upon the floor. In the middle of the remnants of the kitchen, there were a couple of partially burned ridge poles that had come to rest across the top of the stove, forming a shelter of sorts. This was the spot he picked for his ambush. Down on his hands and knees, he backed up under the poles and situated himself as comfortably as possible. With the iron stove between him and the campfire, he sat and waited.
As the time passed, and the flames from the campfire burned low, leaving only glowing coals, he began to wonder if his wait was in vain on this night. The iron stove before him caused him to recall the last stove he had found in the ruins of a house—his house, and Mary Ellen’s stove. Unlike the one here, her stove had been broken almost in two by a much heavier ridge pole than the two smaller ones forming his shelter tonight. The memory brought a moment of melancholy when he was reminded of all he had lost on that fateful day. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the silver chain, squeezing it in his hand until he could feel the heart attached pressing deeply into his palm as the image of Mary Ellen’s smiling face came to his mind. I miss her so damn much, he thought, and the terrible void her death had left in his life returned to settle over his cramped shoulders. For just a moment, he could not remem
ber how he came to be huddled under these blackened timbers in this dark, deathly place. In the next second, he was jolted back to the present by a sudden explosion of rifle fire from the pine thicket.
Waiting unseen in his cramped ambush, he watched the muzzle flashes from the pines as his blanket and bedroll were pummeled with shot after shot and bullets ricocheted from the hard ground of the hillside. Finally, the fierce volley stopped, and he heard the rustle of horses pushing through the pine thicket. Taking his time, he raised his rifle and steadied the barrel on the top of the stove. Still he waited, as one, then another, and finally the third rider descended to approach the camp and the bullet-riddled blanket cautiously.
“What the hell?” Shorty blurted as Bull pulled up beside him. “There ain’t nobody here. It’s just an empty blanket.”
Crouching in the ruins of the burned house, Ben waited patiently for the two horses to separate and allow him two clear targets, but they remained side by side with Bull’s horse and body, covering Shorty’s. Beyond them, Cheney walked his horse along the perimeter of the level spot. Ben felt he was quick enough to hit all three before they had a chance to bolt if Shorty and Bull would move apart, but it was almost as if the huge man was purposefully shielding his partner. It seemed to Ben that minutes had passed with the three riders lingering over the empty blanket. In reality, it was only seconds when suddenly Cheney realized the meaning of the deserted camp. “Get the hell outta here!” he shouted, and jerked his horse’s head to the side. It was too late for Shorty and Bull, for as soon as they started to run, both men were knocked from their saddles.
As quickly as Ben had gotten off the two fatal shots, it was not quick enough to get a clear shot at Cheney. “Damn the luck,” he cursed, and threw the timbers aside as he ran from the ruins to try to get a shot at the fleeing outlaw. He had no idea which name on his list was the survivor’s, but he was able to see a long ponytail of sandy hair flying as the man slumped low in the saddle, whipping his galloping horse relentlessly. With only a brief glance at the two bodies lying near the graves, he grabbed the saddle horn of Bull’s horse and jumped in the saddle. Off through the darkness he rode, urging the horse for all the speed it would give him. After a gallop of about a quarter of a mile, he came to the end of the road and reined the horse up sharply to avoid plunging off a twenty-five-foot drop. Cursing his luck again, he turned the horse back the way he had just come. Evidently, the man had turned off somewhere along the road and disappeared in the darkness. There was no choice but to wait until daylight and hope that he could find a trail to follow. As for now, however, he had to hurry back to get his horse and make his own escape before someone came to investigate the shooting. In the morning, he would search for the trail of the man with the long ponytail.
Left Hand of the Law Page 18
