Bannerman the Enforcer 4

by Kirk Hamilton

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Twenty years earlier, Governor Lester Dukes had helped found the town of Rifle Ridge, Texas. The move had had him popular with many ... but a hated enemy to others. Along the way, Dukes had punished the wealthy ranchers who had grabbed millions of acres illegally by raising a land tax.

  Now, the town was about to celebrate its anniversary, and Governor Dukes was going to be the guest of honor. But for some, Dukes’ visit was an opportunity to settle old scores.

  Suspecting a possible assassination attempt, the Governor sent out his best Enforcers, Yancey Bannerman and Johnny Cato, to check out Rifle Ridge before he arrived. He didn’t dream that one of them would end up being buried alive, while the other would build the very weapon that would be used to kill him!

  BANNERMAN 4

  A GUN FOR THE GOVERNER

  About the Book

  Chapter One – Rifle Ridge

  Chapter Two – Spoils to the Victor

  Chapter Three – A Man Called Cayuse

  Chapter Four – Beyond the Law

  Chapter Five – Pressure Point

  Chapter Six – The Shaft

  Chapter Seven – Cave-In

  Chapter Eight – A Gun For the Governor

  Chapter Nine – Only One Way

  Chapter Ten – Fast Guns

  Copyright

  About Piccadilly Publishing

  The Bannerman Series by Kirk Hamilton

  Chapter One – Rifle Ridge

  The two riders topped the mountain range and reined in, slouching in their saddles as they reached for the makings. Bull Durham sacks dangling, they rolled their cigarettes and shared a vesta to light them, puffing smoke into the hot afternoon sunlight.

  Below them was the town, about halfway down the mountain-face, straddling a ridge. It was called Rifle Ridge after a bloody battle between cavalry and Indians in the late ’fifties. Right about that time, after the army drove the Apaches south and closer to the border, settlers moved in on this remote and virgin part of Texas. Timbered ranges with plenty of water and green grass along the fertile river flats, brought an influx of hopefuls. It seemed like a slice of paradise, just waiting for folks to come and make it their own. But it wasn’t that easy; nothing was, for a pioneer.

  The very fact that this was a remote area meant that it was a favored haunt of outlaws and men on the dodge. The last thing they wanted was a bunch of settlers coming in here with women and kids and throwing up sod huts that would one day become adobe and log ranch houses. For with settlement came law and order. With the Rangers roving the countryside and throwing hot lead at owlhoots, there weren’t a lot of places in Texas a man on the dodge could run to and hide in safety. The area around Rifle Ridge was one of the last of such places, and the outlaws were willing to fight to keep it that way.

  They made a bad mistake in raiding the newly arrived settlers, terrorizing their families, burning their houses, driving off their stock. Governor Lester Dukes was behind the settlement scheme and he promised the hopeful new ranchers protection. He threw in the army and the Texas Rangers. All hell broke loose in the ranges and the outlaws wondered what had hit them when punitive patrols came bursting into hideouts and hidden canyons, guns blazing and sabers slashing. It was like the Indian Wars all over again, except that the hunted men were white, at least, mostly so. There were a few half-breeds and full-blooded Mexican bandidos among them. Governor Dukes’ men cleaned out those hills and personally drove the first spike in the railroad spur track from Orogrande that would bring at least a link with civilization into the hills.

  Settlers came, unafraid now, and the town of Rifle Ridge grew and prospered. It was now ready to celebrate its first twenty years and Governor Lester Dukes was to be the guest of honor: there were still plenty of people living in the town and in the hills who owed their prosperity to the governor and they aimed to show their appreciation by honoring Dukes with weeklong celebrations.

  There were also those who didn’t want Dukes within a hundred miles of the place and would, in fact, be glad to see him put out of office. Recently, Dukes had been forced to legislate for a land tax in order to raise state revenue and men out here, greedy for land in the first place and grabbing thousands of acres, now found that, while their smaller neighbors weren’t hit so hard by the land tax of a few cents per acre, they had tax bills that were regarded as crippling. Dukes had stressed that there would be plenty of land for everyone if settlers weren’t greedy. But he had also declared the territory ‘free range’ and that left it wide open to men who lusted after property and power.

  In the early days, Dukes had let these men go their own way, fight their own battles while he looked after the smaller landholder and settler. He did not realize that these iron-hard men, virtually given the governor’s sanction to make their own laws, wanted to run things for themselves; liked to flex their muscles, test their powers. There were range wars between a few of the bigger men, and, finally, Dukes had had to send his army in again to bring law and order to the land.

  It had been quiet and peaceful for years now, but that didn’t mean these big-time ranchers or their kin had forgotten. And, when the new land tax hit them, old grudges came to the fore and Dukes received threatening, anonymous letters telling him to stay away from Rifle Ridge, that he wasn’t wanted there and, if he came for the celebrations, he would run into ‘real trouble’.

  The two men, smoking as they sat their horses on the mountaintop, were here to check out the town and see just how strong this ill feeling was. They were Dukes’ two top Enforcers, the best of his elite Special Operations Force, the men who went on secret missions that often put them outside the law itself with nowhere to turn should they need help. They were on their own, thrown on their own resources, and often it was only their speed with their guns, or their quick wits, that saved them and returned them to Austin in readiness for another assignment.

  The tall one, in his late twenties, and with brown hair and brown eyes in an open, amiable face, was Yancey Bannerman. The easy-going outward appearance was misleading, as many an enemy of Governor Dukes had found out too late. He was a man who had travelled all over the country, riding herd, felling timber, sweating in the boiler-rooms of paddle steamers, throwing logs into the insatiable maw of a locomotive’s furnace, a man who wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and get blisters on his hands or dung on his boots. A lot of men were like that, but Yancey Bannerman was also a qualified attorney-at-law, and was the son of Curtis Bannerman, the financial magnate in San Francisco who counted the President himself and foreign heads of state amongst his friends. Yancey could have had a high position in the Bannerman financial empire but had preferred the open, adventurous life, meeting frontier folk, sharing their lives. He would rather do any man a good turn than a bad one but cross him the wrong way and he was unstoppable and would trail his man to the ends of the earth where he would have his reckoning with guns or fists.

  And, when Yancey gave his loyalty to someone, he gave it all the way. This included some saddlebum he may have met along the trail, or the governor; it applied to a young whore he might feel sorry for, or Kate Dukes, the governor’s daughter, in whom he was more than mildly interested. It especially applied to his sidekick, Johnny Cato, the man beside him on the mountaintop above Rifle Ridge.

  Cato, too, was one of Dukes’ Enforcers, but he was different both outwardly and in character to Yancey Bannerman. Cato was only about five feet and eight inches tall and weighed no more than a hundred and forty pounds. He liked good clothes, good living and not-so-good women. In his mid-thirties, Cato had once been one of the finest gunsmiths in the country, based at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. His conversions of Colonel Colt’s
pistols from percussion to cartridge firing had been so famous throughout the West that he was known far and wide as ‘Colt’ Cato.

  A genius with guns, Cato could shoot them even better than he could construct them. His demonstrations of shooting skill had been a star attraction at many frontier town celebrations and hoedowns. Bored with run-of-the-mill work, Cato had set himself the task of making a really lethal weapon that a man could tote with him on the frontier’s most dangerous places. He had started with the most solid frame for a handgun in history, the Colt Dragoon in .44 caliber, the massive weapon developed by the late Captain Walker for use on sorties against the Mexicans in the war with Mexico. Weighing a massive four and one quarter pounds unloaded, the percussion pistol had not survived into the cartridge era, but Cato, like many other gunsmiths, considered the Dragoon frame the strongest and best ever made. On this frame, Cato designed his gun, which after many trials and modifications, ended as the massive weapon he now wore on his right thigh in a specially molded leather holster. It held eight .45 cartridges in the fat cylinder and, in the centre of that same cylinder, a twelve-gauge shot-shell that could be fired by means of a toggle on the hammer, through a smoothbore, underslung barrel, beneath the normal rifled one. It was a weapon of devastating power and had many times been the deciding factor when Cato and Bannerman were in a tight spot.

  Cato didn’t take life very seriously. He was dedicated to whatever assignment Governor Dukes sent him on, but if there were chances for diversions along the way, then Johnny Cato would take them. Especially if women were involved. Many a time, Yancey had had to pull him out of strife and the small Enforcer would swear he would never again trespass on another man’s territory where women were concerned, but the oath seldom lasted more than a week or so, or however long it took them to return to civilization if they were out in the wilderness somewhere.

  They made an unlikely pair, but there was a strong bond between them that gave them a high success-rate on all their assignments. When the need arose, they could be deadly killers and every bit as ruthless as the men they were up against.

  Now, their cigarettes burned down, they glanced at each other as they stubbed out the smokes against their saddlehorns.

  “Looks peaceful enough,” Cato opined. “Fact, looks kind of interestin’ ... I can pick out three saloons from here and that gaudy-lookin’ building behind the main drag sure has the look of a sportin’ house to it.”

  Yancey smiled faintly. “If you say that’s what it is, I believe you. Reckon you can sniff ’em out from fifty miles away.”

  “Come on! Twenty miles, maybe!”

  Yancey laughed shortly. “Well, I guess there’s not much use in sitting here any longer. Let’s get on down and check out those rumors.”

  They started down the steep trail and had to ride Indian file for a spell while they negotiated a boulder outcrop. Then the trail widened again and Cato put his mount up alongside Yancey’s. The small Enforcer looked quizzically at his tall partner.

  “What d’you figure about them rumors, Yance? You reckon anyone out here’d be loco enough to really try to attack Dukes when he shows up? I mean, he’s a pretty popular man hereabouts.”

  “Only with the smaller ranchers,” Yancey reminded him. “They’re all for him, but some of the bigger boys don’t take too kindly to him and they could be bringing in gunmen to start trouble.”

  “That’s the part I find hard to believe,” Cato said. “Why would they bother bringing in gunmen? These cattlemen are plenty tough. They don’t need gunmen to do their dirty work for them.”

  “They do if they want to stay out of jail. None of them are willing to chance the long drop for shooting Dukes. They’ll pay for someone to do it, if it’s gonna be done at all. Or, if the rumor’s true about a bunch of gunfighters drifting into town, then likely they’ve arranged for these roosters to start what looks like trouble between themselves and a ‘stray’ hunk of lead will just happen to fly in Dukes’ direction.”

  Cato had to admit there was some truth in that.

  “Then again,” Yancey went on, “if there are gunmen gathering in town, it might have nothing whatever to do with Dukes’ visit.”

  “Well, that ain’t anythin’ we can take a chance on,” Cato allowed.

  “Right. Which is why we’re here ... As bounty hunters, remember, Johnny. We can use our own names, but our cover is we’re bounty hunters. We’ve heard that these gunfighters are in Rifle Ridge and we’ve come to collect our blood money.”

  “How about local law?” Cato asked.

  “A sheriff, name of Kirby Steele ... Last word was that he was away on other business.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Kind of, but it seems legitimate. Some rustling and the killing of a ranch hand down in the southern part of the county. If you’d read your briefing you’d know all this.”

  Cato looked at him sideways and smiled crookedly. “I was kind of busy. And I had to leave in a bit of a hurry. Didn’t get much chance for readin’.”

  Yancey shook his head slowly, stifling a grin. “One of these days some husband’s gonna come home a lot earlier than you expect, Johnny. And you’re gonna be talking soprano.”

  Cato laughed. “Danger adds a touch of spice, didn’t you know that, Yance?”

  “There’s all kinds of danger. I’ll take the kind I can see over a .45’s foresight.”

  “One man’s meat … ”

  Yancey couldn’t help laughing and he shook his head again. “I figure you’re getting worse, the older you get, Johnny!”

  “Want to have plenty of interestin’ memories for my old age, is all.”

  “If you live that long!”

  The shadows were lengthening as the two Enforcers rode into the town. There were plenty of people about and there was a smell of fresh paint in the air. Balconies and false fronts were being decorated for Governor Dukes’ visit. Bunting was strung across the street, from building to building. One banner said,

  Welcome Governor Dukes To The Biggest Little Town In Texas!

  There were signs everywhere that most people were looking forward to Dukes’ visit to Rifle Ridge and the ugly rumors that had been reaching Austin didn’t seem to have any substance as Yancey and Cato rode slowly down the main street.

  Some men were still up tall ladders, stringing out the bunting and flags. Others were slapping on the last coat of paint for the day. People were beginning to prepare for sundown and supper, as Yancey and Cato turned their mounts towards the hitch rail outside the nearest saloon and dismounted. They figured the first thing they had better do was check out the town and see if there really were a bunch of gunfighters gathering here. If there were, and the men weren’t at each other’s throats, bracing and challenging each other, then the Enforcers would know something was on, that the gunmen were being paid to work together.

  Yancey straight-armed the batwings open and started into the big barroom, closely followed by Cato. They hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps into the room when there was a wild, drunken yell from outside and down the street. All the men drinking in the bar snapped their heads up and plenty of them looked worried as Yancey made for the batwings with Cato close behind.

  Outside, men crowding behind them, Yancey and Cato were in time to see a group of men charge out of another saloon, yelling drunkenly, as they ran out into the street and began to raise hell. One man kicked out the long ladder from under a townsman working on stringing up the bunting. The man yelled, grabbed at the rope as the ladder crashed from under his feet. He was left dangling above the street, yelling.

  One of the hellion group pulled out his six-gun and began shooting at the rope. He hit it on the third shot and the fibers snapped and the townsman screamed as he thudded down to the street. Yancey and Cato heard the bones in his legs crack from where they were standing. He moaned and writhed on the ground as the other men hauled out their guns and proceeded to shoot the WELCOME banner full of holes. One man grabbed a fleeing painter and
knocked him down, snatching the bucket of paint from him and pouring it all over him. Another tripped a second painter, grabbed the pail and pulled the lid off. He walked over to a newly painted storefront, bright yellow in the sundown glow, and sloshed black paint from the pail all over it. For good measure, he hurled the empty pail through the front window. He stood back and laughed as the glass shattered and the frightened storekeeper ran out to inspect the damage. The drunken man grabbed him and pushed his face against the wet paint on the store walls, smearing and grinding brutally. The storekeeper yelled.

  Yancey and Cato exchanged glances. There were six men out there, apparently drunk, raising all this havoc. They could shoot and they were brutal and deadly looking.

  Yancey turned to one of the townsmen behind him. “Who in Hades are those hombres?”

  The man, tight-lipped, glanced at him with fear showing nakedly in his eyes. “Hard bunch. Drifted into town over the past couple of weeks. All gunfighters it seems. That one who kicked the ladder from under Cahill, he’s Lew Downer; one tossin’ the paint about is a killer named Blaine; one who shot the rope is Dog Francis. The other three I can’t identify for you, but their names are Hawker, Slim Harney, and Turk Anson. Don’t get any notion about buyin’ in, mister. They’re makin’ our life hell, but they’re way too tough for us ordinary jaspers to tackle.”

  “That why your sheriff’s out of town?” Cato asked, eyes grim, watching the gunmen shoot up the street.

  “He says it’s legitimate business,” a man growled.

  Then the crowd scattered as the drunken gunfighters turned their attention to the crowds on the boardwalks and in doorways and began shooting wild, landing their lead close enough to send the spectators scattering. Yancey and Cato ducked back into the saloon with the others and Cato said, slowly:

  “Them roosters need teachin’ a lesson.”

  “Wouldn’t try it if I was you, mister,” warned a townsman.