The Murdock's Law

by Loren D. Estleman

  He made no reply. In the hollow, the lonely shack cast a shadow solid enough to trip over. Miles away a coyote hurled its sad challenge at the moon.

  I blew on my fingers and worked the stiffness out of the joints. “Where do you know Abel Turk from?”

  “Centralia, eighteen sixty-four.” He was watching the shack.

  “You were riding with Quantrill then.”

  “Anderson.”

  “Was Turk a guerrilla?”

  “He was second in command.” His voice was low. “We’d been picking Centralia all morning and was feeling pretty good. Along about noon we stopped the train from St. Charles and ordered everybody out. There was twenty-five armed Yanks aboard, going home on furlough. We lined them up and made them strip to their flannels. Anderson found out one was an officer and ordered him out of line. Then he told Turk to muster out the rest.”

  The broad brim of his hat drenched his face in darkness. His breath curled in the brittle air.

  “I was pretty fresh then,” he said. “I thought that meant Anderson was going to turn them loose. I laughed to think of all them bluebellies hobbling down the tracks in their long handles and stocking feet. Then he started shooting at them.

  “He blasted away with a pistol in each hand, and Yanks fell like dominoes. Some of them tried running and went down with holes in back. One blubbered and stuck out his hands like he thought he could stop the lead. There was this yellow-haired sergeant that let out a roar and charged Turk when he was reloading. Turk didn’t hurry. He finished and shot the sergeant twice in the chest and once in the neck, and even then he had to step back or the Yank would of fell into his arms.

  “By this time we was all shooting, me included. It wasn’t hard at all. You’d be surprised how easy it was when everyone else was doing it too. Thing is, I don’t think any of us could of touched it off except Turk. When it was over, the only Yank left standing was the brass-buttons Anderson took out of line.”

  He chuckled dryly. “Old Bloody Bill, he did hold a soft spot for brother officers.”

  We listened to the coyote again, farther away this time, the mournful note warped by distance. When it had ended I said, “Is Turk the reason you came to Breen?”

  He didn’t answer. We waited in silence for the sun.

  CHAPTER 22

  It’s quiet at that time of year, with no crickets singing or bugs thumping through the grass. We lay there watching the shack while the cold sniffed at us and crept down our collars and up our pants legs and lay like metal against our skin. Even the faraway coyote had ceased crying. I warmed my hands in my armpits and creaked my toes in my boots when they grew numb. The grass crackled when I changed positions. Shedwell didn’t move a hair.

  For a long time I watched a leaden sliver on the eastern horizon before it lost its hard edge and melted into the black that surrounded it, spreading with the painful slowness of a bad dream drawing to a close. The sky bled gray, then pale blue, and then a wedge of red sun appeared like a raw wound in the Little Belts. The shadow cast by the line shack shifted and shortened, becoming more dramatic as coppery light washed the foothills.

  I waited while the sun cleared the mountains and its glare grew less direct. Then I gathered my legs beneath me and, squatting on one knee, drew a bead on the shuttered window. Beside me, Shedwell remained prone, supported on his elbows, with the Spencer trained on the door.

  My own voice surprised me, booming out over the hills after so much silence and bounding off the tall rocks to east and west. “Surrender” continued to ricochet long after I finished speaking, altering its shape each time it struck until it was just a grumble in the distance, then a whisper, then nothing. More minutes passed before my answer came screaming straight at me and buried itself with a whump in the earth at my feet. Blue smoke slid sideways from the port in the shutters.

  “Open fire!” On “fire” I squeezed one off, levering another into the chamber and shooting again even as the silvery tinkle of collapsing glass reached me. The door jumped in its frame as Shedwell’s bullet smashed through the weathered wood.

  Reports crackled across the surrounding hills. Balls of smoke were blown elliptical and shredded by the mounting wind. Pieces of shingle flew from the shack’s roof. Lead whined off solid objects inside and clanked against ironware. The horses in the exposed stable screamed and kicked at the posts supporting the roof, the impacts sounding like small explosions even at this distance.

  The men trapped inside returned fire sporadically. A black snout would poke itself through the port, sneeze fire and smoke, then withdraw as more bullets chewed at the shutters. Reports from the opposite side testified to the existence of at least one other window. Meanwhile, hurtling bits of metal hammered the weatherboard. I remember thinking of a magician I had once seen in St. Louis who shut a pretty girl up in a box and proceeded to thrust swords through the sides at all angles, and I wondered now, as I had wondered then, how anyone could survive such an assault. But the answering fire continued.

  I was reloading when the shutters and door burst outward simultaneously as if a powder charge had gone off inside. Four men spilled out, arms and legs uncoiling like loosely baled rags as they struck the ground and straightened running, revolvers and rifles blazing. Bullets tore up grass all around me.

  The one who had come through the door, working the lever of a Henry now and backing with the others toward the stable, wore a dark beard. Turk. Shedwell recognized him too, but before he could take aim the earth heaved in front of his face, spraying dirt into his eyes. He cursed and rubbed at them with his fingers.

  I chambered a cartridge and got a bead on Turk just as he darted around the corner of the shack. My bullet splintered wood. One of the men who had leaped out the window was down, spread-eagled on his stomach with his six-gun still in his hand. Seconds later two horses bolted from the stable, their riders hugging their necks bareback. I fired and one horse went down with a scream. Its master leaped clear. It was Turk again.

  I had him in my sights when his partner swung his horse around and crossed in front to give him a hand up. Someone on the other side squeezed off at the same time I did. The rider arched his back and slumped forward. Turk pushed him off and mounted in the same movement. He was a hundred yards away before his rescuer stopped bouncing. Dark geysers erupted around horse and rider. They disappeared over a hill, and when they came into view again atop the next they were well out of range. A number of desultory shots were hurled after them nonetheless.

  Then it got quiet.

  I waited for the appearance of the fourth escapee. When he didn’t show I assumed one of the others had gotten him. I learned later that the others were thinking the same thing on our side. The missing man would be found draped over the hitching rail, where he had succumbed to a wound suffered while still in the building.

  I asked Shedwell about his eyes, red-rimmed now and blinking. He waved the question aside.

  “Turk get clear?”

  I said he had. “He’ll head toward Périgueux’s for supplies and a fresh mount. It’s closer than Mather’s house.”

  “Don’t shoot!”

  The shout came from the shack, where moments later a rifle and two revolvers flew out the open door in order and landed on the ground twenty feet away.

  “We’re unarmed!” The voice was hoarse and desperate. “We’re coming out!”

  “Hands on your heads!” I shouted.

  I gave the order to cease fire. Two men staggered out the door one after the other, hands clasped on top of their heads. The second man was limping. Blood slicked his right pants leg to the knee. I called for them to halt and stood up. Brass casings tinkled from my lap to the ground.

  “What about the others?” I kept them covered.

  The uninjured man answered. His hair and short beard were snarled as if he’d just risen from bed.

  “One’s dead. The other, almost. He got it in the lungs and he’s coughing up bloody pieces. That’s it.”

  I
called for Cross. There was a pause while his name banged around the mountains, and then a solid figure rose from the ridge on the other side of the shack. He waved the Spencer he’d taken from the rack at the jail and started down the slope. Terwilliger and his men followed suit. I was waiting for them when they got to the building, having taken possession of the prisoners and their discarded weapons. As he was closing in, Cross pivoted suddenly and smashed his rifle stock across the wounded man’s face.

  I dropped the confiscated guns and lashed out even as the man fell, catching the deputy full on the chin with my left fist. This was the same hand I had used to silence Colleen and Earl. I felt tiny bones snapping when it connected. My bones.

  He staggered back a dozen steps, roared, and brought up the office Spencer. I sailed a bullet past his ear from the Winchester before he could pull the trigger.

  “I don’t miss twice,” I barked, when it looked as if he was going to try again. He dropped his arm. Blood trickled out a corner of his mouth. I turned to Shedwell. “Can you handle things here?”

  “You handle them,” he said. “My business is with Turk.”

  Terwilliger was roughly helping Cross’s victim to his feet. The night rider’s nose was broken and bleeding copiously. “You’re in charge,” I told the rancher. “Try and see that no one gets lynched while we’re gone.”

  The sun was clear of the peaks and losing its bloody color when Shedwell and I rode within view of the massive skeleton of the Marquis’ new chateau. The numbness had worn out of my left hand, and each time the road lurched, tiny bursts of pain shot straight up my arm. In spite of this we drove our mounts hard for the next half hour and thundered into Périgueux’s yard just as Turk was emerging from the ranch house.

  In his arms he cradled a bedroll bulky with foodstuffs. A sleek dun was ground-tethered by the corral, saddled and ready to run. We drew our revolvers and fired over its head. It whinnied, reared and took off at a mad gallop toward the hills, reins flapping.

  Turk dropped his bundle and answered with his Smith & Wesson, backing away fast. I’d never seen anyone get a gun out that quickly. A furrow appeared across the horn of my saddle, exposing dull lead under the leather. Shedwell circled to the end of the porch and whipped his horse up onto the boards, ducking to clear the roof and block that line of retreat. We had him between us now.

  The foreman sank into a half-crouch, swinging his gun to cover us both as he backed toward the corner of the house. I danced the roan in that direction, herding him in the other direction like a contrary bull.

  My hat was snatched off my head by a bellowing explosion from above. Startled, I glanced up and met Ed Strayhorn’s gaze at an upstairs window, behind the sight of his big Remington rifle. I’d completely forgotten about Périgueux’s bookkeeper. I snapped off a hasty shot before he could take aim again. He ducked behind the wall and the window frame splintered.

  A battering ram struck my chest. My horse reared and I cartwheeled from the saddle, turned over with agonizing slowness as in a terrifying dream, and stopped suddenly with an impact that dwarfed the first. What breath I still had left me with an animal grunt.

  When my senses returned I raised my head to look for my horse and pain tore through me. I laid it back down, but not before noting that my shirt front was clotted with gore. I knew I was dying. I had seen what a bullet from a .44 could do to bone and muscle too many times to believe otherwise. Vaguely, not too far away, I heard a series of reports, a pause, and then one more. The last one carried the finality of an exclamation point. I remember thinking that that was important, then reminding myself that it wasn’t, not any more, not to me. I could hear the squishy sound of blood pumping through the hole in my chest.

  I may have blacked out. In any case, I don’t recall any other thoughts until I heard a crunching and Chris Shedwell moved into my field of vision. His expression was grim and he was plodding like a man in the final stages of exhaustion. His right arm hung limp at his side with the Remington revolver dangling at the end. His other hand was clasped to his rib cage, where a red stain was spreading around his fingers. He stopped, looking down at me, and opened his mouth to speak.

  A shot rang out, very close. His mouth opened a little wider along with his eyes. For a long moment he remained like that, back arched, elbows drawn in, and then the gun dropped from his hand, his knees buckled, and he fell out of my line of sight. Behind where he had been standing I now saw young Arnie Strayhorn holding the rifle his father had taken from him until he could show he deserved to carry it. The last thing I was aware of was his thin, bespectacled face wreathed in blue smoke.

  CHAPTER 23

  I dreamed of naked women and oceans of blood, of diabolic, laughing faces erupting from the muzzles of guns and scaly hands slippery to the touch that grasped my limbs in grips like steel cables and strained to pull me apart. One of the laughing faces belonged to Doc Ballard. The hands belonged to Alf, the bartender at the Glory. The blood was mine and so were the naked women, dredged up from my imagination and forgotten since I was fourteen years old. From time to time I’d see a man strapped to a bed and raving. I felt sorry for him, and sympathetic tears would roll down my cheeks and leave burning furrows. I found myself dreaming of him more and more often. He wasn’t raving any more and the straps were gone.

  “Murdock?”

  It was the first time I’d heard human speech in my dreams. I strained to understand what was being said.

  “Murdock? Wake up.”

  My eyelids were weighted at the bottoms, like curtains on a saloon stage. When I got them pried open, I was looking through a red haze. I closed them again and opened them. Again. The haze dissipated slowly, like frost on the inside of a window as a room warms up. The doctor’s face hovered over me. He wasn’t laughing.

  “I’ve been having some crazy dreams.” It came out gibberish. I started again, but he’d understood.

  “That was the laudanum. You’ve been out for six days. You were feverish when Terwilliger’s men brought you in. I didn’t dare drug you until it broke. I had to get someone to hold you down when I extracted the bullet. You screamed bloody murder.”

  “Alf?”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, it was Alf. I didn’t think you’d remember. The Glory had the nearest bed. That’s where you are now, in the back room. You were delirious for days; I didn’t think we’d pull you through.”

  I glanced down at my chest. I was shirtless. A white bandage swaddled my right shoulder above a coarse gray blanket.

  “You took a bullet in the chest,” he explained. “It just missed your right lung.” He held up a conical lump of dull metal. “You were lucky twice. Ordinarily the lead would have pierced the lung, glanced off the shoulder blade, and torn a path through your vital organs before coming to rest. In this case it entered at an upward angle, scraped along the bone and became entangled in the muscles and ligaments of your shoulder. There was substantial tissue damage. You may lose some of the use of that arm. It’s too early to tell. But it beats dying.”

  I lifted my left arm. My fingers protruded from a plaster cast that reached to my wrist. Cross’s jaw had been harder than expected. The doctor smiled.

  “When you decide to hurt yourself, you don’t stop halfway. It’ll take six weeks for those bones to finish knitting, but you can write and feed yourself.”

  “When can I get out of here?”

  “Whenever you want to. But you won’t want to for a while. You lost a lot of blood and you don’t take too well to being fed, as this eye can attest.” He indicated his left eye. It did look a little discolored and puffy.

  “Shedwell,” I said.

  He looked grave. “There was nothing anyone could do for him. He died instantly.” He paused. “Major Brody is gone too. He lived for a day after his arm was amputated, but the shock was just too much for his heart. He had an attack a couple of years ago. I guess you didn’t know that.”

  I said I didn’t. His manner lightened.

  “Yo
u have a visitor. Shall I show him in?”

  I don’t remember how I answered. I must have said yes, because he went out and a moment later Yardlinger appeared at the foot of the bed. He was carrying his hat and had a patch over his eyebrow. I levered myself into a sitting position, stifling an exclamation as pain streaked down my weakened right arm.

  “How’s the head?” I asked.

  “Stuck together with crepe and spit.” He fingered the patch. “I won’t be as pretty as I used to be, but few people are. How’s the shoulder?”

  “Ask me again when the laudanum wears off. I’m sorry about the Major. For a bloodthirsty guerrilla he had the makings of a first-class lawman.”

  He smiled wearily. “Just as well he didn’t live to hear that. You know you left me in the lurch. Randy and I have had the devil’s own time keeping our prisoners from being lynched. We had to club a couple of heads last night, but it looks as if they’ll live long enough to face the circuit judge this afternoon.”

  “Who’ve we got?”

  “Well, Périgueux’s the star. It was his idea to form the band of night riders. The two survivors have confirmed that and we’ve got Mather’s testimony that he sold a string of black horses to the Marquis a month before the raids started. He suspected the Frenchman was involved but was afraid those horses would implicate him so he kept quiet. I’m convinced he wasn’t in on the raids and that he didn’t know his own foreman was leading them. If he’s guilty of anything, it’s being afraid to ask questions.”

  “Where’s Périgueux now?”

  “Terwilliger’s men are guarding him at his place. They’re still sworn and they know what’s in store for them if anything happens to their prisoner. The jail’s at capacity.”

  “Who’s there, besides the two night riders?”

  “Actually, there’s only one. Doc Ballard’s treating his partner at the Freestone for a hip wound. Both the men who were still in the line shack were dead when Randy and the others found them. Three Circle T hands involved in the raid on Mather’s ranch. The other two rode out that night. I don’t have any evidence other than my testimony that they were with Pardee when his brother was brought into Fitch’s, but I’m going with that. Then there’s Ed Strayhorn and his nephew Arnie.”