Hart the Regulator 3

by John B. Harvey

  The single report cut clear through the air and for a few seconds horse and rider continued on their way. Then the whipping arm flailed wildly, boots slipped from the stirrups and the man toppled to the ground, bouncing heavily, rolling, then still.

  From the corner of his eye Hart noticed that Lacy had caught up with him and was standing close by the storefront.

  He ignored him and carried on into the square. The side wall of the bank had been blown out into the alley alongside. Two men on horseback churned the ground in front of the bank, three other animals milling around close by. The front windows of the bank had been shattered by the blast and now men were kneeling behind them, firing out. Pistol shots came back at them from the Silver Star opposite and from one of the first floor windows in the assay office.

  People stood at the entrances to the square, watching the shooting, waiting to see what the regulator would do. His first decision was made for him. Someone ran through the bank door and hurled a sack up to one of the mounted men, ducking under the hitching rail and trying to grab at the dangling reins of one of the free horses.

  Hart ran diagonally, making sure he didn’t give his back to whoever was snapping off shots from the saloon. The Colt was still in his right hand and he brought it up fast, snapping off two shots. The first cut through the air close by the head of the rider who’d grabbed the sack, the second screamed along the boardwalk and made the man who’d come from the bank scuttle back towards the doorway.

  Both mounted men wheeled their horses round, trying to control their fear.

  ‘Hold it!’ Hart’s voice struggled to rise above the clamor.

  The two men turned their horses and drove them towards the far side of the square. Hart jumped out towards them, slipping the Colt back into his holster and bringing up the shotgun. He saw one startled face, a mouth which opened wide and eyes that stared down. He steadied the shotgun with his right hand and fired.

  The face disappeared. The man’s body was smashed back from the saddle, lifted into the air and suspended while the horse galloped on. While he was still falling, Hart turned fast, drawing the shotgun away and diving his hand back towards his Colt.

  It wasn’t necessary. A volley of shots from the doorway of the saloon rocked the second rider in the saddle. Slugs shook him like a rat in the mouth of an angry dog. Chest and arms leaked blood.

  In the middle of the square the man Hart had blown from his horse was slowly, painfully trying to crawl. His arms were crooked out in front of him, fingers bent and seeking purchase in the mud-packed ground. He lifted his head as if to see but he could see nothing. His eyes, his face, no more than a shredded pulp above his lacerated body.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’

  Hart ducked down behind the double doors, lifting his Colt and reloading. He recognized the squat figure of the banker behind a table he’d overturned for cover, a couple of other men he knew by sight - all three with pistols drawn.

  ‘I was in here taking a drink,’ said the banker, ‘Next thing I knew there was this explosion and when I got to the door here half the bank wall had been blown away.’

  One of the men angled himself tight against the wall beside the doors and fired across the square. An answering shot skimmed through the space above his head and ended up in the plaster of the far wall.

  ‘One man was outside holding a bunch of horses. It was obvious what was going on. I pulled my gun and Ben and Roy chimed in.’

  ‘Yeah, we sure put paid to one of ’em,’ laughed the man by the door. ‘He rode this way an’ we took him down out of his saddle like it was a Sunday shoot.’

  ‘You got no idea who they are?’ Hart asked.

  The banker shook his head. ‘Sorry. All I seen is what you can see from here. One thing, though, weren’t no one hangin’ round when I closed up. Whoever it was must’ve ridden in and gotten on with it straight off.’

  Hart nodded. ‘Like they knew exactly what they was goin’ to be doin’.’

  A couple more shots came from the bank and the two men now at the doors gave answering fire.

  Hart moved away from the table. ‘This could go on half the night,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk ’em out of there.’

  He stood beside the left side of the doors and cupped his hand to his mouth. ‘You over there in the bank. There ain’t no way you’re gettin’ out alive. Throw out your weapons an’ walk clear.’

  For several moments there was no reply and Hart thought he was going to have to try a second time. Then: ‘There’s only me an’ one other feller. He’s wounded pretty bad.’ A pause followed in which it was possible to hear the low moanings of one of the men lying out in the square. ‘How do we know we can trust you? How do we know you won’t cut us down as soon as we come out?’

  ‘You got my word.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m the regulator here. Now toss out your guns and step out with your hands high.’

  Hart stepped back from the doorway a little. The banker looked up at him with his round face shiny with sweat, ‘You don’t trust them do you?’

  Hart shrugged. ‘Maybe. Much as I’d trust anyone.’

  He cupped his hand to his mouth again. ‘You folk out there, you make sure you keep your guns up when they come out. Don’t interfere now.’

  Again a moan of pain from the square. The man whom Hart had shotgunned out of his saddle was still trying to crawl, blindly, painfully across the ground.

  ‘There’s someone movin’,’ called one of the men at the opposite side of the door.

  ‘Okay.’

  Hart watched as first a rifle, then a pair of pistols were thrown out on to the sidewalk in front of the bank. He paused then stepped outside, Colt drawn and raised. There was a scattering of people down at the end of the saloon, pushing back into the alley. More men were over by the dry goods store. Whoever had been firing from the upstairs window of the assay office had put out the light and lowered the blind.

  ‘Come on out with your hands high.’

  They came through the broken door slowly, one man leaning heavily against the other, dragging his leg behind and grasping the other round the neck. They moved off the boards and on to the square, coming cautiously forward. Hart went to meet them.

  He could see that both men were wounded. The one who was walking straight looked to have been hit in his right arm; the other had a shattered leg which jerked pain through him with every fresh movement. Their faces came out of the shadow and Hart knew that he’d not seen either of them before. Some of the townsfolk began to follow him out into the square, moving behind him on his right.

  Hart stood his ground and dropped the Colt back down into its holster. The gunned man had ceased moving, ceased moaning. One of the bank robbers was lean, stubbled, his nose razored down his face; the second, crippled one was younger despite his face, contorted as it was with spasms of pain.

  Someone came close up on Hart’s right and he glanced round, seeing that it was Lacy. As his vision shifted he realized the lean man was pushing his hand towards his coat pocket. Hart swung his head back, hand covering his Colt, making sure. Before he could be certain what was happening, two shots sounded close behind, The lean man jumped backwards as if he’d been hit, surprise flooding his stubbled face. He jerked away from the second man, who fell sideways to the ground, shot again himself, a fresh wound high in his chest.

  Hart stared at Lacy, standing composed, Smith and Wesson .38 still in his hand, still leveled forward.

  Hart’s fingers grazed the mother-of-pearl on his gun grip. ‘What the hell was that for, Lacy?’

  Lacy looked at him mildly. ‘He was pulling a gun. You were looking round at me. There wasn’t anything else to do.’

  ‘I told everyone to keep out of this. It was my play.’

  Lacy nodded. ‘And you were going to lose.’

  Hart turned away. A crowd was beginning to circle the dead men. The banker paused, then hurried past, heading back to see exactly what had happened,


  ‘You sure it was a gun he was reachin’ for?’ Hart asked over his shoulder.

  Lacy shrugged. ‘See for yourself.’

  The stubbled face stared up at the evening sky blankly. A splash of blood smeared his lips and the end of his sharp nose. Lacy’s slug had taken him inches above the heart. He had keeled over backwards, legs folded underneath him, arms spread wide.

  Hart looked at the wound and considered - Lacy had drawn and fired accurately as fast as any man he’d ever seen. It was something worth thinking about?

  He bent down and reached into the dead man’s coat pocket. His fingers closed around the metal of a small pistol; he lifted it clear and turned slowly, tossing it down on to the ground in front of where Lacy was standing.

  ‘Looks like you was right,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Looks as if you might owe me an apology. Or at least your thanks.’

  Hart stared at him a moment longer then turned on his heels and walked over to the bank. The banker was standing in the midst of a pile of rubble and torn and crumpled papers, carefully counting dollar bills into neat piles. Coins littered the floor. A dark green metal safe was on its side by what remained of a partition wall. Hart could see that the rear of the safe had been blown away.

  Hart looked down at the banker’s balding head, pink skin glowing in the light of the kerosene lamp he’d lit and stood nearby

  ‘They get away with anything?’

  The banker finished counting a pile of bills before answering. ‘It’s impossible to tell exactly. But I … I mean how could they? Didn’t we stop them all from getting away?’

  Hart shrugged quickly. ‘Maybe. Only we don’t know for sure how many of them there were.’

  The banker looked up at him, blinked and wiped the edge of his hand down the side of his face.

  ‘Were you holding a lot of money?’

  The banker nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Yes. A great deal. You see–’

  ‘Jake Henry was in here earlier this evenin’, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes … yes. Why?’

  ‘Sort of late.’

  ‘Well ...’

  ‘I mean, after normal business hours.’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  ‘Was that usual?’

  The banker wiped at his face again, sweat coming from his pores easily. His small eyes blinked inside his round face. ‘Sometimes. If Mr. Henry needed to make a special payment. A large sum of money, from a silver shipment, say, he’d come after banking hours. So as not to draw attention to the size of the sum he was depositing.’

  Hart nodded, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. ‘Then no one’d know Henry made one of these special deposits this evenin’ - no one except you an’ him?’

  The banker jolted backwards as if someone had poked him in the stomach hard.

  ‘No more’n an hour before the bank was raided.’ Hart fixed the banker with a stare. ‘Raided by a gang who just happened to know the way the safe was backed up against that side wall there.’

  ‘Look! I mean … what … what are you suggesting?’

  The banker looked at Hart and then away; he rubbed his hands together, fingers intertwining, separating, locking. In the square behind men were carrying away the bodies.

  ‘I’ve worked for Mr. Beaumont since the bank opened and in all that time there’s never been a single complaint. Never one suggestion that there was anything, er, anything reproachful in the way I conducted the business.’

  Hart nodded. ‘How much Beaumont pay you for all this good service?’

  The banker looked at him puzzled. ‘Two hundred dollars a month.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Maybe you got to thinkin’ a couple of hundred dollars weren’t enough for all that honest work.’

  ‘No, I ...’ Between his lips, the banker’s tongue was pale pink, flickering spittle.

  ‘Or maybe someone suggested it to you. Someone in a position to use a little pressure.’

  ‘No!’ It was a shout of defiance – the kind that a man made in spite of everything when he could see the ground crumbling away from under his feet.

  The pink, sweating face stared up at Hart, eyes blinking fast. ‘No!’

  Hart turned away, leaving the man there in the midst of the wreckage of his bank, leaving him there shaking, crying.

  Chapter Eleven

  The squirrel wrinkled its nose up at horse and rider. The copper-colored head inclined to one side. Hart looked at the broad black-and-white stripe along the animal’s side, it’s stomach moving gently in and out. He clicked his tongue at the dapple grey and the squirrel turned and raced for the safety of the nearest pine, scrabbling quickly up the trunk and disappearing from sight along one of the branches.

  The pine was succeeded by another and another, tapering steeply down the side of the canyon. Green scrub marked the far side of the canyon wall. Two thirds of the way down, the ground had been leveled out and a log cabin built, the ends of the logs jutting out and overlapping, the roof a low-angled V. Thirty or so feet below the cabin a mine entrance had been shored up. Another unsuccessful attempt to reap as much silver as the Beaumont mine.

  Hart had been out to the Beaumont mine earlier, looking for Jake Henry, but no one had seen him since the previous afternoon. It seemed likely that, despite what he’d claimed, he hadn’t returned there after depositing the money in the bank.

  Hart had checked the Beaumont place too, but Lacy had denied seeing him and when he’d asked to talk to Beaumont the message had come back that Mason Beaumont wasn’t admitting any visitors no matter what their business. Hart had ridden back along the avenue of trees, leaving Lacy on the porch, smart and smug.

  He’d thought about riding on to see Dan Waterford, but after their last meeting in town there didn’t seem to be a lot of point. Instead he’d come higher into the hills, just riding and thinking, mostly letting the grey choose her own path.

  Now as he stared down at the cabin something beyond it caught his eye. The peak was sheer in places, the rock weathered and flaking, reddish brown and bare. A sudden flash of silver, it could have been the rump of a deer, a bird’s wing, the reflection of something metallic, a rifle.

  Hart dismounted and led the horse along the narrow trail towards the cabin, keeping the animal between himself and whatever he’d seen on the mountain. Presuming it was still there.

  He kept his eye on the rock ahead but there was no further sign of anything moving. Whatever it had been was apparently there no longer.

  He considered turning back and riding around the canyon rim but since he was so far down towards the deserted mine he decided to continue. As the path angled round he could see a little of the far side of the cabin, the end of a wagon poking out.

  Something triggered inside his head.

  Once when he’d been riding for John Chisum down in Lincoln County he had come in on a cabin just the same. Not a sign of life, no smoke, no horses, not a single sign. Billy Bonney and Dick Brewer had been riding at the head of the bunch and Billy had been all for riding straight in, but Dick had held them back. There was a flat-bed wagon alongside the cabin, nothing loaded on it, just sitting there in the Pecos sun.

  ‘What the hell!’ Billy had ranted. ‘It’s no more’n a fuckin’ wagon!’

  ‘That’s right,’ Dick had agreed. ‘And a wagon’s somethin’ you can move. Cabin you can’t. Man brings things in on a wagon an’ if he leaves he takes it with him. Less’n it’s bust up an’ that one ain’t.’

  Dick Brewer had pulled his rifle from the saddle scabbard and worked the lever. That wagon’s fine. It just might mean whoever brung it’s still around.’

  Billy had spat at the ground and cursed some more but he’d done it Dick’s way anyhow. They’d split up and moved in real careful. As it was one of them had to make the first move across the open space and that was a greaser named Angelo. He made five yards before a slug from a Henry took his right eye clean out. He was the only one Dolan’s men did get though - at least. that day.

  Hart
pulled the mare to a halt and reached up for his own rifle. He wondered what had happened to Billy Bonney. He’d been wondering ever since he’d walked out on him and ridden out of New Mexico and into Indian Territory; had been wondering ever since Billy had sent two men after him and he’d had no choice but to draw on them and leave one for dead.

  He looped the ends of the reins around a piece of dark green scrub and started to move down the sloping path.

  Rifle in his left hand, he flicked the loop from the hammer of his Colt. The cabin was a hundred yards away now, no more. A bird hovered on the air stream above it, wings spread wide, head down, watching.

  Suddenly the bird swooped and Hart stood quite still. After a few moments it rose into the air on the far side of the cabin and flew across the canyon, a small animal held tight in its claws.

  Hart made the rest of the approach slowly, making as little noise as possible. He could see most of the wagon now and knew that it could be the same as one of those the group of trappers had ridden into Tago and out again.

  Out again to where?

  There was no reason for them to stay around, but...

  He looked at the wagon and tried to remember, tried to be certain.

  Hart sprinted the last twenty yards, stopping himself against the jutting ends of log at the angle between side and front wall. He listened and heard nothing other than his own breathing. Soft crunch of his own boots on the gravel strewn around the cabin. He tried to lift the latch on the door, but it was held fast by four nails driven deep into the timber.

  Moving past the door, he pushed the rifle barrel against one of the wooden shutters at the window and it squeaked back.

  Again, he waited, listening.

  Heard, instead, the cry of Angelo as a rifle bullet drove through his head, splitting the eye socket; the insistent moaning of the bank robber he had shotgunned from the back of his horse in the town square. He set the rifle down, leaning it against the wall.