by Rusty Davis
“Not yet,” Kane said. Reason. Need a reason they would accept. “Not goin’ anywhere. If she thinks she out-foxed us, let her think so. Not sayin’ it’s her, though. Not sure of that at all. No, sir. Not at all.”
“You know best, Sheriff. Whatever you need from me, say the word.” Conroy clapped him on the shoulder and left to follow a customer into his store.
Kane was glad to escape.
“You’re back!” Janie’s grin was welcome. When no reply came, she asked, “Is something wrong?”
“Another man killed at the Wilkins ranch,” he said.
“Who?”
“Clem Ferguson. Foreman.”
“What about Clem?” Pete Haliburton interrupted. Kane told him.
Haliburton shook his head. “Good man. Wilkins was—Well, don’t speak ill of the dead, but never heard of any reason anyone would have cause to shoot Clem. He came ’round here ’bout every time he came to town, didn’t he, girl?”
But Janie was no longer there. She had retreated, sobbing, to the part of the stable that served as the house where the family lived.
Haliburton shrugged.
“Guess she was sweeter on him than she let on,” he said. “Nobody ever tells me nothing!” He stalked off back to his shop.
Kane stabled Tecumseh and gave him a good brushing. He heard her feet.
“Who shot him?” He was very aware he never said Ferguson was shot. Still, it was the most common way men were killed.
“Not sure, yet, Janie. Sorry if he was your friend.”
“He was nice,” she said. “He didn’t smell bad, and he didn’t drink a lot, and he didn’t try to . . . well, like Kevin. Nothin’ for a girl to do! Nothin’ in Rakeheart but town drunks and the Company Riders.”
He kept hearing those words. No meaning yet. Not the time. Later. But soon.
“Sheriff!” The young man at the door to the stable was breathless. “You got to come quick!”
The saloon had one word painted over the door. Noonan’s. No piano jangled now. The hinges squeaked his arrival.
His boots were loud on the wood in the hushed room, where riders and drifters were giving two men at a table all the room they could want while two other men at the table looked scared and trapped.
“Problem, gentlemen?” he asked, sauntering over as though the two men were old friends instead of each poised to pull guns—the cowboy from the holster at his hip, the black-coated gambler from inside his coat.
“He cheated!” the cowboy said.
Kane wondered why a fool cowboy who played cards with a gambler was surprised that the man did what every man knew gamblers did. Either the gambler was having a bad day or the cowboy was cheating, too, and was bested by a more devious opponent. Fools. A world of fools. And he was in charge. For a moment he wondered if he told them to go outside and shoot each other dead for the good of the town if they would do it. Probably they’d miss, and he’d have to clean up the mess anyhow.
“Look at me, both of you,” Kane instructed. The cowboy complied.
“Got a name, silver vest?” Kane called.
“Reynolds Parker.”
“Then Reynolds Parker, look at me or join the parade to the churchyard.”
The gambler’s eyes moved, bird-like, from one foe to the other.
“Git, you two,” Kane said to the others. “Grab what was yours that you haven’t already lost, then go.”
They needed no second invitation.
Kane walked, slowly crossing behind the cowboy, then behind the gambler, as he circled closer until he was about three feet away and between them both. They were both now following his moves. Wonder if this works, he thought. He heard a story about it one time.
Time to find out.
He kicked hard at the leg closest to him and pushed the table over with his right boot, sending cards, coins, and a few greenbacks sailing into the air and onto the floor. Each man leaned away to avoid being hit. By the time they were reaching for their weapons as they rose from their chairs, Kane was on them.
Grabbing the gambler’s coat and the cowboy’s shirt, he pulled them together. Their hands came up instinctively to block each other as they collided instead of fighting against Kane. As they rebounded from their collision, Kane shifted his grip to the backs of their necks.
It sounded painful. It was. After the second time Kane slammed head into head, there was no resistance. After one more time for luck, he shoved them both down.
Even dazed, they were each interested in continuing the fun as they tried to rise, but Kane was not having any more dancing for the evening.
Their scrambling stopped as they saw the .45 pointing at them.
“By my count, we already got six aces in that deck,” Kane said, looking from the cowboy to the gambler. “Figger you got more stashed places I don’t want to touch. You both cheated. You both lost. It ends. Either one of you disagree, I can kill you here.”
The gambler, who knew his breed were often subject to whims that included hanging when a local cowboy was unwilling to be fleeced, agreed quickly.
“I need to recover my stake,” he said.
“You need to recover your horse and go,” Kane said. “Money goes to the town. Unless you have an objection?”
Living to steal another day beat every other alternative in front of the gambler.
“Let him through, boys,” called Kane, who motioned for the gambler to leave.
“And now for you, you fool. Trying to cheat a gambler at his own game? Doesn’t end well often, son.” Kane raised his voice. “Anybody here with this fella?”
Two riders raised their hands.
“What outfit?”
“Bar Seven.”
“Get him back there. Holiday’s over, boys. Go!”
With a look of hatred, the cowboy rose from the floor as his two comrades came to walk with him. Kane watched him wobble out.
“Drink up, boys!” called a man in a black frock coat with a white shirt and a small bow tie. “On the house. A cheer for the sheriff!”
Whether they knew what they were cheering or not, there was a round of noise.
“Sheriff!” The man, who from the slicked hair and twirled mustache could only be Silas Noonan himself, held out a hand to Kane.
“Mr. Noonan,” said Kane, accepting the warm, fleshy hand. “Did I pass?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have been here for years. Your boys, like those four by the bar, could bust up anything. You called me. Is your curiosity satisfied?”
Noonan’s smile only widened.
“I confess you have caught me.” He chortled. “Clever! Yes. My men tend to be a little hard on the windows, although they get the job done. As you may have noticed the noble and upright leaders of Rakeheart, who are quite happy to make money off of my customers and often are my customers, are less happy with the fact that cowboys come to saloons and towns to run wild and let off a little steam in some rather violent and not very moral ways that towns trying to grow and seem all dandy and proper consider abhorrent.”
“What if I had shot them both dead and a few of your customers as well?”
“Ahh, Sheriff, but you did not,” replied Noonan. “And so all is well that ends well. I know you have so recently returned with Clem Ferguson’s body. He was a good man. You must be busy, but we shall talk again.”
Kane watched Noonan walk through his saloon into a back room. Noonan did not try to pretend he was a saint. But is a snake any less dangerous because it likes being a snake? Something to chew upon another time.
Janie was waiting at the stable. Her eyes were no longer red, but her face was still puffy. She tried very hard to hide it with a smile.
“Can you have supper with me and Pa tonight? One of the men paid Pa in steak, and we never get company, and I can make biscuits, and there’s real coffee?”
His irritation at the thought of company warred with his reaction to a smile. “Why not?”
“Good! I’ll com
e call you.” Off she marched.
Kane took a few minutes to walk down to the far end of Rakeheart, where the pen was built for the stock to wait for the trains. There sat the train station, a small wooden structure that looked like a good wind could blow it down.
A man on the raised wooden platform looked at Kane. Frowned as if he was unsure of Kane’s purpose or that Kane was interfering in a daydream. Then a glimmer of amusement flitted across his face as he hooked his thumbs in the waist of his pants.
“Where ye from?” Irish. Even in Wyoming.
“Texas.”
“Who ye huntin’?” Kane’s blank look inspired another comment. “The badge.”
“I’m your new sheriff.”
When the man’s laughter ended, he looked at the visibly annoyed Kane. “No offense, Friend Badge. You aren’t joshing an old man?”
“Like to know the joke.”
“Lad, lad, lad. Would not us all?” He appeared to give Kane a close scrutiny.
“New ye are.” He paused. “Are ye not the one who sent poor Bud Franklin to his grave? Talk of that was grand.”
Kane shrugged.
“They said a friend ye are to the Wilkins clan.”
Aware this was turning from a conversation into an interrogation, Kane spoke carefully.
“I knew him in the war. Fine family.”
“A family that deserves better,” Halloran said grimly before lapsing into brogue once again. “But find ye will that men change, Friend Badge, and not always for good.”
Halloran continued his inspection.
“How’d they talk you into this?” he said at last.
“Got my reasons.”
“Better be good ones, lad. That lot.” He spat. “A deep game it is, Friend Badge, and they are the ones with the rules. They use you for their own ends, they do, the lot of them. Those riders . . . Ooh, I could tell you . . .”
A white-shirted man with a black vest emerged from the station. Buford. The old man no one respected at the town council meeting. “Halloran! You were supposed to clean out the baggage room. You won’t get a nickel until you do.”
The Irishman elaborately winced at the door slamming shut.
“You would think a body would have pity on a man with a head in my condition,” he said ruefully. “To work I must go, Friend Badge.” He put his right hand over his heart and then raised it high. “Farewell!”
Raving about something, the man toddled off into the station.
Kane asked about the man when he sat with the Haliburtons at supper.
“Seamus Halloran owned a saloon. Drank the profits, they say,” said Pete Haliburton. “He never worked much after his wife died, or so I was told. He was one of the early settlers, back in the days they called the town Rakehell. That was long before I came here. Now he does odd jobs. I let him sleep in the stable when it is cold. They all say he’s a drunk, but he is not a bad man. He mostly acts like he does not care anymore about anything other than eating when he is hungry and sleeping out of the rain and snow. I have never seen him act hungry, though. He seems pretty content with his lot.”
“He’s nice to me,” piped up Janie. “He has a million stories. I don’t know if any are true, but they are good stories. He really does not like Mr. Brewer or Mr. Noonan. I think he knows everyone in town and all of their habits. He is someone you can talk to about everyone in town, and he understands. He knows more about those Company Riders than anyone else. He is awake all hours, so I guess he sees them the most.”
“Strange, though,” commented Haliburton. “He goes away for weeks at a time now and then. Maybe he goes on a drunk and goes some other place, but I don’t know how he gets there. Was a man at the hotel once talking to him about Denver and some fancy hotel there and Halloran acted as though he knew everything the man was saying about the place. Struck me as odd, but I suppose when you have nothing holding you down, there’s no law against getting around.”
Kane thought that over. Did Halloran hate from an old grudge, or what he saw around him? He would have to ask the older man about Wilkins. Men no one saw were the ones who saw behind the façade. Later.
For now, he was eating very good food, and a young woman was doing her best to make him feel welcome, and her father—unlike fathers Kane could recall from the long-distant days when he had an interest in young women—seemed to tolerate it all.
“You never really said how you came to be here,” Janie asked. He hesitated. Only Rachel knew the real reason.
“Thought you knew,” he said. “Wilkins. Me ’n him were in the war together.”
“Oh. I forgot. You said that when you killed Bud Franklin.”
He kept on eating.
“Are you staying?”
“You are direct.”
“Kane, here is the way it is out here. When a girl gets to be seventeen she usually has a family, or she is going to be one of those old maids you see. I don’t want to be an old maid. A lot of the boys, like Kevin, make me feel dirty just to be near them. You don’t.”
“I appreciate the compliment.”
She swatted his arm.
“I’m not looking to get married next week,” she said, “so don’t ride out in the morning, but I . . . I don’t want to think I am going to die old, alone, and wrinkled.”
“Promise, Janie, that I will shoot the first wrinkle I see.”
Swat. “Men!” But the smile was real. And it felt good.
Emelia had been gone now eight years. They had never really gotten far in the making of plans when the fever came, and she was gone in two days. At first there had been no room in his mind for anyone. Then came Carolyn, who wanted to kill him when she learned his true identity, and his realization that there was no room for somebody else in a life always lived by pretending to be someone he was not. Now? Time would tell.
Janie had a roan mare saddled and waiting when he got up. She had ridden everywhere, and he still had no sense of the range limits. She had volunteered to show him.
They rode toward the shack he had thought might be habitable.
Her face spoke volumes when she saw the trail to the southeast that showed the traffic of many horses. She was clear that their ride would not take them that way, nor should Kane ride that way alone.
The shack was not far from a stream that trickled along a rocky bed. Not much water, but enough to live on. The roof had a hole that could be patched. Mud that had chinked in the gaps along the walls had fallen out but could be replaced. It was one room with a small fireplace. Nothing had moved in except, Kane could tell, some birds that left the chimney when they arrived. He had lived in worse.
“You should stay with us,” Janie said after barely giving the place a look.
“Company Riders?” he guessed.
Dead center.
“What do you know about them?” she challenged, real fear showing.
“Nothing except that I hear about them everywhere. Who are they?”
“They can get you killed.”
“Franklin was one.”
“Are you from the territory? You know a lot for someone who showed up one day.”
“Janie, the same game gets played in lots of places. Franklin used his gun for a living. The way people talk, these Company Riders do the same thing. Tell me.”
“Check outside.” She got a raised eyebrow. “Please?”
He did.
“Might be a wolf half a mile off with an interest. Nothin’ else.”
“Don’t laugh about them,” she said. “They . . . they kill people.”
“Tell me.”
It took a while, but the story emerged. Rakeheart, like the other towns that were pushing and shoving with each other to get ahead, make a name, and become a place that was important, now and then played tricks on the other towns.
“That’s how it started,” Janie insisted.
Cowboys would shoot up the other towns now and then. Nobody got hurt, but if they did it when the wagon trains or the immigrant trai
ns were coming, it scared off newcomers. Riders would tell wagon trains how unlawful and dangerous other towns were.
She said Brewer, the banker, and Jeffries, who owned the hotel, were the prime movers in pushing other towns aside, along with Gallagher, who owned the saddle shop. Rakeheart pushed hard, she said.
Then other towns pushed back. Pushing and shoving escalated. By that point, Kane knew where it was going. The towns stopped playing tricks and hired toughs to do real damage. Then toughs to protect against the other toughs.
“They formed what they called the company. The men they pay. They don’t come to Rakeheart very often, but when they do, they are the worst of anyone I have ever seen. Pa loads his shotgun and sits in the stable,” Janie said. “Sometimes they ride through late and fire at the stores when they get drunk. They don’t do much damage, but it gets really scary.”
“They can’t control them.”
She nodded. “They don’t have lots of gunfights. That was an excuse because of what happened with Bud and Kevin. The town people want you to be there to stop the Riders the next time they come in. Pa thinks so, too. Mr. Brewer told Pa the Company Riders were ‘too big for their britches’ a while before you showed up, and they were talking about how to get rid of them without leaving themselves defenseless against the other towns that do what they do.”
“And if I live out here, once they figure out the man who killed one of ’em lives out here alone, I’m a target.”
“You would not last a week,” Janie said. “There are ten or twenty of them. Maybe more; no one really knows. I don’t know if they are watching now. The old drunk, Mr. Halloran, used to say they had men in the hills watching every move anyone made. He always made it sound like they could never be beaten.”
Janie’s words made him wonder. It had been more than a week since he had killed Bud Franklin. No one had sought retribution. Maybe all of Rakeheart was scared over a shadow. Didn’t take much to scare town people.
He promised Janie he’d think real hard about moving. She wasn’t sure where their hideout was. All she knew was that anyone taking the trail she pointed out was shot at before they could get very far.
