It burned. But it did make Dooley feel a mite better.
“Have a drink, pard.” Buffalo Bill motioned at the shot glass in front of the last of the robbers, whose nose gushed blood.
“I can’t.” He sounded like a croaking frog.
“Very well.” Cody downed that shot, too.
Dooley realized he could talk again. The whiskey must have helped. “I don’t think,” Dooley said, “that you really came to Leadville to rob a bank.”
The man looked up. Blood seeped through his fingers that tried to keep his nose from sliding off his face.
To Dooley, it made a lot of sense. If Dooley happened to disappear, if he happened to be found dead by knife or gunshot or an ax to the back of his skull, folks might start thinking about that. But to be killed in a bank robbery—or two bank robberies . . . well, that would just be written off as a tragic crime. Not murder. Not conspiracy.
“Talk,” Buffalo Bill demanded.
“I can’t,” the man managed to croak out.
“Who hired you?” Dooley asked.
“I never seen him,” the man managed to say. “Bill just told us ’bout it. ’Bout him, I mean.”
Bill was one of the dead outlaws lying in the dust outside.
“My nose hurts,” the man whined.
Dooley said, “Then just nod or shake your head.” The man lifted his bloody face. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks onto his bloody chin.
“You boys were robbing the bank. That was part of your pay. The others were supposed to kill me. Because they weren’t taking any money.”
Dooley waited.
“Your head’s not moving.” Buffalo Bill touched the barrel of his Colt against the outlaw’s head.
The head nodded.
“If things somehow didn’t work out,” Dooley said, “then you were to kill me.”
This time, the head bobbed without any encouragement from Buffalo Bill Cody’s six-shooter.
That had been a wild stab in the dark from Dooley. To see the gunman’s head confirming what Dooley had suggested made his stomach queasy.
“Well?” Buffalo Bill asked.
“Let’s get him to jail,” Dooley said. He thought: This town does have a jail.
Cody nodded. The last of the outlaws turned slowly and, shuffling his feet, moved toward the busted door and Front Street in Leadville. Dooley and Cody followed, Cody still holding the Colt, and Dooley the bartender’s shotgun.
The surviving outlaw stepped outside. Then Dooley’s ears started ringing again from a pistol shot that was fired outside. The next thing Dooley knew, the last surviving outlaw was slamming against Buffalo Bill Cody and Dooley, and falling dead to the floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After digesting what had just happened, seeing the last bank robber lying on an overturned chair, sightless eyes staring up at the punched-tin ceiling, Dooley shot a glance at Buffalo Bill. The frontiersman saw Dooley out of the corner of his eye, but did not look away from the doorway. He kept his weapon trained in that general direction, but answered Dooley’s stare with a shrug.
Dooley kept the sawed-off scattergun trained at that busted door, too.
Eventually, a voice from outside called out in an uncertain tone: “Cody? Are you in there?”
As the bile rose in Dooley’s throat, he fought back the urge to step through that door and give county clerk George Miller the business end of the double-barrel he held in his now-shaking hands. They shook not from fear, but anger.
“Yeah,” Buffalo Bill answered. “Who’s out there?”
“George Miller,” the little weasel answered.
His next words tore at Dooley’s gut. “I’m out here with Richard Blue, a deputy United States marshal from Denver. And a reporter from the Telegram of Denver.”
Which would be Paul Pinkerton, if Dooley remembered that poor excuse for an honest journalist’s name right.
Still, neither Cody nor Dooley lowered their weapons.
Asked Cody: “Why did you shoot this owlhoot we had captured?”
“I didn’t shoot him,” George Miller said. “Marshal Blue did.”
Dooley groaned.
“We thought he had killed you, Colonel Cody,” George Miller lied.
“He was unarmed,” Cody announced.
“No . . .” This came from the crooked lawman. “He had a derringer. He was turning around to gun you down when I shot him.”
“Liar,” Dooley whispered.
George Miller called out in a hopeful voice: “Is that other fellow . . . did the outlaw kill him?”
“No,” Dooley and Cody said at the same time.
By then, Dooley could see bank executive John Price, bank president Tim Shaw of Denver’s other bank, the editor of the Leadville Ledger, and a few other local citizens of prestige and power standing on the streets. Not to mention plenty of men and women whom Dooley did not know. Too many witnesses now, Dooley figured.
Realizing the same thing, Buffalo Bill Cody walked through the busted doorway, and Dooley, reluctantly, followed.
The lawman was kneeling behind the water trough and smiled an unfriendly grin at both Dooley and Buffalo Bill when they stepped onto the boardwalk. Slowly, Deputy Marshal Richard Blue lifted a Remington over-and-under derringer with his left hand, high above the water trough, so the spectators could see.
Of course, Dooley thought. They can see you show off that pocket pistol. But they couldn’t see you plant the dang thing.
The blood started rushing to his head again, and he had to tell himself over and over again to calm down or he’d drop dead of a stroke right here and there. Then who would look after Julia?
Which reminded him. He scanned the faces, and the boardwalk and storefronts across the street. No Butch Sweeney. No Julia.
“Thanks,” Buffalo Bill told Marshal Blue, but the tone told Dooley that the great scout did not mean it.
“You’re a hero, Mr. Cody,” the Denver Telegram scribe said, laying it on thick. “You saved the honest citizens of Leadville all of their hard-earned money by shooting down these notorious scoundrels who dared to try robbing two banks at the same time. The story I write, sir, will be picked up across the nation, by the New-York Tribune, the Omaha World-Herald, every newspaper of substance, and many lesser publications.”
“I didn’t do a damned thing,” Buffalo Bill said, and finally shoved the pistol into his holster, even though that Colt wasn’t really Cody’s. His thumb bent toward Dooley. “It was Dooley Monahan here,” Cody said. “He did all the work. Saved my bacon, if you ask me. He’s the hero.”
Dooley shuffled his feet and stared at the shotgun he still wanted to use on Miller, Blue, and Pinkerton— but he had only two rounds in the shotgun, and those three finaglers were spread out too far to kill three with two blasts. That wasn’t the way Dooley recalled things. In his mind, Buffalo Bill had saved his hide.
“Well . . .” George Miller began, but the banker, Mr. Price, interrupted the no-account clerk.
“Buffalo Bill Cody’s right. It was this man . . . this Dooley Monahan . . . who stopped the brigands at my bank. He shot them all. Two dead upstairs. One in our lobby. Three on the side street.”
That was a lie, too, which the miner who had decided that he had no money to protect, pointed out.
“No, no, no. No, sir. It was another fella that killed one of those hombres. Redheaded boy.”
“That’s right,” said the grocer. “Ummmmm. The gent who took over Chester and Horatio’s stage line. Sweeney. Butch Sweeney.”
Now Dooley held his breath.
“Well,” the banker said, “that is right. But Dooley here sure laid the other five outlaws low.”
“Three cheers!” someone yelled. “Three cheers for Dooley Monahan!”
They cheered. Once. Twice. Three times.
Dooley at last lowered the shotgun. “Buffalo Bill,” he said, “deserves those cheers, too.”
“Three cheers for Buffalo Bill Cody!” a woman shouted, which please
d the frontiersman immensely.
“Hip hip, hurrah!”
“Hip hip, hurrah!”
“Hip hip, hurrah!”
Cody bowed like the showman he was.
Dooley managed to speak once the cheering stopped. “Are any of those robbers alive?”
Heads shook. Too much to wish for, Dooley figured.
Clearing his throat, George Miller stepped onto the boardwalk, to make himself look a little taller, although he was nowhere near as tall or as handsome—or as honest, loosely speaking—as William F. Cody. The crowd gave him the floor.
“Let’s not forget,” he said, and tilted his head at that dishonest federal lawman, Richard Blue, “that the deputy from Denver gunned down the last of the badmen—just before he was about to do in both Cody and this . . . this . . . this old bounty hunter.” The final two words came out the way a Lawrence, Kansas, man would call a Missouri bushwhacker or a Missouri farmer would call a Kansas Redleg.
Dooley thought about pointing out the little fact that while most of the shooting was happening, Miller, Blue, and Pinkerton had been inside the clerk’s office, door closed, shades pulled down. He didn’t have to.
Mr. John Price, banker, pointed that out.
George Miller turned a bit green, but the Telegram reporter thought up a lie and thought it up quickly.
“That was my fault,” he said. “For while Mr. Blue and Mr. Miller were heading for the door—to bring assistance sooner—I informed them that the shots were likely nothing more than blanks, for the Telegram had reported that a circus was coming to Denver next week.” He shrugged and looked like an idiot instead of a liar. “I merely assumed that this same circus had stopped in Leadville first, you see. Do not blame our gallant lawman or your valiant clerk. Do not blame the Denver Telegram, either, for it is the greatest newspaper for all of Colorado.”
It did its job, Pinkerton’s speech.
By that time, a few members of Leadville’s vigilance committee had shown up and began telling people to clear the streets, to let the undertakers—too many for just one—to start gathering the dead. To let the Silver Palace owners bring in some carpenters and handymen to fix up the joint so they could open for business later that afternoon. And to let Marshal Blue send telegraph descriptions to the Denver office and see if there might be any rewards offered on the dead robbers.
“That would suit you, wouldn’t it, Dooley?” Miller asked, and gave Dooley a cold, evil grin.
Someone offered to buy Buffalo Bill a drink. A liveryman said he would certainly look after Buffalo Bill’s palomino. Buffalo Bill Cody moved off toward another saloon—one of those that never really closed in Leadville—and the Denver Telegram scoundrel and plenty of other Leadville citizens followed.
The reporter for the Leadville Ledger, however, remained in front of the Silver Palace. So did one of the vigilance committee’s brass, a lean man in a black broadcloth suit and green satin tie.
“Is it true, sir,” the reporter asked, “that you are a bounty hunter?”
Dooley was about to answer that he was an honest, hardworking cowboy who happened to have recently lucked into a silver mine. But George Miller stepped in front of Dooley and answered the question.
“Fletcher,” he said. “Check the morgue for any papers you have from Arizona Territory from a few years back. You’ll see how my good pard Dooley Monahan got rid of the last of the Baylor gang. Go back even earlier, say to autumn of ’69, and you’ll see how Dooley Monahan gunned down the infamous Jason Baylor up Dakota way. And just last year or so, he rid the West of the Dobbs-Handley Gang. Isn’t that right, Dooley?”
Dooley did not answer. He should have just gone directly to the mine this morning.
“Is that true, Mr. Monahan?” the reporter named Fletcher asked.
“Ask the clerk here,” Dooley said. “He seems to know about my career better’n me.”
“And,” George Miller said, “I’ll be happy to tell you all you need to know, Fletcher. After all, I was with Dooley for quite a while down Arizona way back in ’72.” Then Miller handed the reporter a cigar, put an arm over the naïve inkslinger’s shoulder, and steered him to the county clerk’s office.
The man in the black broadcloth suit just stared at Dooley. He didn’t say anything, so Dooley walked down the street to get his belongings and maybe wash up back in the hotel before heading to the mine.
Butch Sweeney stopped him in the lobby of his hotel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“What the hell! Where’s—” Dooley stopped himself and turned rapidly on his heels. The desk clerk, who had just given Dooley his room key, stood staring, all ears. Dooley lowered his voice, but managed to get only a few incoherent words out before Butch said, “It’s all right. Let’s go upstairs to your room.”
That’s what they did, and inside, after Dooley and Butch managed to get the overly excited merle-colored shepherd settled down, Dooley found a bottle of rye in the top drawer of his dresser. He did not bother looking for any glasses, but simply pulled the cork and took a short sip. He tossed the bottle to Butch and filled the basin with water from the pitcher.
But he did not start washing his face . . . yet.
Instead, he made his way back to the door, cracked it open, and peered up and down the hallway. It was empty, and Dooley had to figure most guests and residents would be at work by now, or out on the street to gawk at the dead bank robbers.
When the door shut, Dooley found Butch holding the bottle with both hands.
“She’s all right,” Butch said.
Dooley snapped, “I told you to . . .” He fought back the panic, the anger, and tried to calm himself. “Where is she?”
“At her place.”
That caused Dooley’s face to flush with anger.
“Her servants—that’s right, she has servants—they’re good ladies. They said they’d take care of her, Dooley, and they also said it wouldn’t look good—and certainly wouldn’t help Julia—if her husband came around and found me at that place with her.”
Butch was sitting in the creaky chair. The cowboy turned stagecoach owner and jehu scratched Blue behind the ears. Dooley took a seat on the edge of his bed. Butch held up the bottle of rye as an offering. Dooley shook his head.
“Is she all right?” Dooley managed.
“Yeah. Beatrice, that’s her personal servant, she said she would come around . . .”
Dooley cursed. “Goodness, do they know what she did?”
Butch’s head shook rapidly. “No, no, I told them that she just saw most of the gunplay. I wasn’t even halfway to her place when more gunfire started up. I wanted to go back, help you, figured you could use another gun—but, damn it, Dooley, I’d already given you my rifle. I didn’t have nothin’ to fight with. And I just had to get Julia out of there. Out of harm’s way.”
Nodding, Dooley leaned forward and held out his right hand. Butch handed him the bottle, even though Dooley was trying to shake his old saddle pard’s hand. He couldn’t laugh, but since the bottle was in his hand, he lifted it and took a quick shot. He coughed. How could men, even cowboys, drink whiskey at this time of day?
Then he thought: What time is it?
“Somebody told me another gang was trying to rob Leadville’s other bank?” Butch’s head shook. “That don’t make no sense.”
Dooley set the bottle on the floor, away from his boots so he couldn’t knock it over. He started to explain his theory, but held back.
“Did they catch the boys?” Butch asked.
Dooley’s head shook. “They’re all dead.”
Butch again shook his head. “Man, when the papers write up that Julia kilt one of those hombres, that’s gonna . . .”
“They’re not going to write that up, Butch. They think I killed most of them. That Buffalo Bill killed some others. And a U.S. marshal murdered . . . shot, hell, the last one.” He paused, and looked Butch directly in his widening eyes. “And they know you killed one of them, too.”
/> “I did. I shot that cur before he gunned you down. And Julia . . .”
“Julia wasn’t there,” Dooley told him. “I killed the other one.”
“With George Miller’s Henry,” Butch said.
Dooley nodded. “With George Miller’s Hen—” He stopped. He felt sick again, but did not reach for the whiskey bottle.
He asked in a hollow voice, “George Miller’s Henry rifle?”
Butch’s head bobbed.
“Aw, hell,” Dooley said.
“Well, I figured if you could get me that rifle, I could get it back to Julia’s house. Even clean it and reload it so nobody’s the wiser, Dooley.”
It was time for another drink. Not that Dooley wanted to, but he found the bottle and brought it to his mouth and took more than a little sip this time. The whiskey burned his throat, and he stifled a cough. He thought back to all he had seen as he left the Silver Palace Saloon for his hotel.
People were picking up shell casings and anything else that looked promising for souvenirs—one kid ran onto the street and swiped the hat off a dead bank robber. The photographer in town was busy setting up his big box of a camera and yelling at people to stand still or get out of his way, that he was preserving history. Someone ran to a body with a pair of scissors and snipped off a lock of hair from one of the dead outlaws.
Now, to be clear, no one tried to take any of the money from the sacks the bandits had taken from Leadville’s other bank. And some even tried to stay out of the vigilance committee members’ and that rascal of a deputy marshal’s way—and even the newspaper reporter’s way—who tried to document all that had happened this morning.
And then there were all those weapons lying on the street and in the bank where Dooley had been and on the boardwalks. Men and a few boys and even a couple of saloon harlots picked up those guns. He tried to remember where he had last seen the Henry .44 caliber rifle.
Then he pictured it clearly. It wasn’t a saloon girl or a kid or a banker or miner or anyone like that who had been picking up that rimfire rifle. That might have been a good thing. But the person Dooley recalled lifting that rifle and studying it with serious intent . . . well, it wasn’t Deputy Marshal Richard Blue or George Miller himself or even that scalawag of a Denver Telegram reporter. It was the man in the black broadcloth suit who happened to be major brass for Leadville’s vigilance committee.
Hang Him Twice Page 20
