Dancing With Dead Men

by James Reasoner

  "Handley . . ." Radcliffe repeated. "Seems I've heard that name before. Lemme have a look at you, Mr. Handley."

  Logan lifted his head. Radcliffe stared down at him for a long moment. The lawman frowned.

  "Yeah, I've seen you before, I know it. Can't recollect where, but it'll come to me – " Radcliffe stopped short, then exclaimed, "Santa Fe! About four years ago, it was. I was a deputy there when you had that run-in with Dave Bardwell and his bunch! Logan Handley! Sure!"

  Logan didn't see any point in denying it. He remembered very well how Bardwell and three other gunnies working for a rival of the cattleman who had hired him had cornered him in a dance hall. That had been quite a stampede as the dancers tried to clear the floor before the bullets started to fly. When the smoke cleared, Bardwell and his three companions had been on the floor, bleeding their lives out, while Logan was still on his feet, albeit with a couple of nicks. He had never shot faster or straighter than that night. If Marshal Radcliffe had been packing a badge in Santa Fe at the time, Logan could see how he would remember the incident.

  "You were one hell of a pistol ar-teest, amigo," Radcliffe continued. "Some folks said you were as fast with a gun as Hickock. What happened to you?"

  "Life," Logan said. That just brought a puzzled stare to Radcliffe's face, but Logan ignored it. With a gesture, he asked one of the men to hand him his cane. When he had hold of it, he said, "Can I go now?"

  "Why, sure, I reckon I've got the story, or enough of it, anyway," the marshal said. "You may have to testify at the inquest, though. That be all right with you?"

  Logan pushed himself to his feet and leaned on the cane.

  "As long as I can get time off at the barber shop," he said.

  That made Radcliffe and the other men in the bank stare at him even more. They didn't know whether to be afraid of him, since they now knew that he was a famous gunman, or to feel sorry for him since those days obviously were behind him. Neither of those things made Logan feel any better.

  He started to limp out of the bank, then stopped and turned back. His pouch of coins still lay on the counter. All the bullets that had flown around the tellers' cages, and none of them had struck the pouch.

  "Would someone hand me that?" he asked.

  One of the tellers fetched it, the one who had started to wait on Logan, in fact. The man said, "You don't want to deposit it anymore?"

  Logan took the pouch, stuck it in his pocket, and said, "I'm not sure this bank is safe."

  He felt all their eyes on him as he stumped out.

  * * *

  Despite the gray clouds scudding through the sky and the chill in the air, Logan was sweating by the time he got back to the boarding house. Doc would be expecting him at the barber shop and he hated to disappoint a man he had come to consider a friend, but he had to think things through and figure out his next move.

  A ball of sick fear rolled around in his stomach. The bloody sensationalism of the botched bank robbery insured that news of it would be all over town in no time. More than half a dozen men had heard Marshal Radcliffe announce that the cripple who worked in the barber shop was really Logan Handley, the famous gunfighter. They would talk about it, too, to anyone who would listen. Logan was sure of that.

  How long would it be before someone who wanted him dead heard about it?

  Vengeful gunmen were going to start gathering around Hot Springs like vultures . . .

  "Mr. Handley, what are you doing here in the middle of the day?" Vickie Eastland asked from the parlor as Logan limped into the foyer.

  He didn't particularly want to explain, but when she saw how pale and shaken he was, she hurried out of the parlor and took hold of his arm.

  "Here, you should sit down and rest," she told him. "Don't try to climb the stairs to your room yet."

  He couldn't deny that he wasn't in very good shape at that moment, mentally or physically. He allowed Vickie to steer him into the parlor, and they sat down on the divan. She kept plenty of distance between them, but still, this was the most intimate they had been with each other since the night she had rubbed his neck and shoulder.

  And Logan remembered how that had ended.

  "What's wrong? Why aren't you at the barber shop?"

  He knew she would find out the truth anyway. Some of the other boarders would carry the news when they came back to the house, and even if they didn't, Vickie was bound to hear about it the next time she went to the market. He swallowed and said, "There was a bank robbery . . . an attempted bank robbery . . . and I got caught in the middle of it."

  She put a hand to her mouth and said, "Good Lord! Were you hurt?"

  "Not really. I – "

  Before Logan could go on, the front door burst open and Rusty Turner rushed into the foyer. He spotted Logan and Vickie in the parlor and swung toward them.

  "There you are!" he said. "When I heard about it, I went to the barber shop, but Doc told me you never came back from lunch. Dadgum it, Logan, I never knowed you was a gunfighter! Never even suspected it!"

  "A gunfighter?" Vickie echoed as her eyebrows rose.

  "You bet," Rusty continued, practically bubbling over with enthusiasm. "People are talkin' about it all over downtown. I heard all about how Logan shot it out with those owlhoots and ran 'em out of the bank – right into the gunsights of Marshal Radcliffe and his deputies! Blood was ever'where, folks are sayin'. Runnin' in the streets like rain. Never figured one of your boarders would turn out to be a famous shootist, did you, Miz Eastland?"

  Vickie looked both horrified and angry, Logan thought, but her voice was cool and steady as she replied, "No, Mr. Turner, I didn't. And I certainly wouldn't have expected it of Mr. Handley here."

  Logan could only sit there, numb and silent, as Rusty went on, "I should'a recognized the name. He's been in gunfights all over the West. Faced down some of the most dangerous men there was. Logan, how many have you killed?"

  As much as he liked Rusty, right now Logan wanted to clench his good hand into a fist and pound it into the garrulous veteran's face. Anything to shut him up.

  Instead Logan said, "To tell you the truth, I don't know. I don't dwell on it."

  "But Rusty is telling the truth?" Vickie said. "You shot it out with those bank robbers, and in the past you . . ."

  "I hired out my gun, yes. And those outlaws were going to shoot me. I just defended myself."

  "But how – " She stopped herself short.

  "How did a cripple fight a bunch of bank robbers? Instinct. Habit." His voice hardened. "When you know you're going to die, you do what you have to to stop it."

  She didn't say anything in response to that, but he noticed that she had drawn even farther way on the divan.

  There was nothing unusual about that reaction. He had seen it plenty of times in the past.

  After a moment, he said, "If you're worried about the reputation of your place, I can move out. I can understand why you'd feel that way."

  For a moment she seemed to consider the offer, but then she shook her head.

  "I can't ask you to do that," she said. "You've been a good boarder, always paid on time, followed my rules, never caused any trouble. It wouldn't be right for me to ask you to leave."

  Rusty said, "Shoot, havin' the famous Logan Handley livin' here will just draw more folks."

  That was exactly the problem, thought Logan. Infamous or notorious would be better words to describe him, and the attention he would draw to the boarding house would be the wrong sort. Some of the folks looking for him would want to kill him, and if he stayed here, there was a good chance someone would get hurt.

  Someone innocent.

  Someone like Vickie Eastland.

  He couldn't allow that to happen.

  But in order to move out of the boarding house and into a hotel, he would have to have more money. And that wouldn't be a long-term solution, either, since he would just be trading one set of potential innocent victims for another. He needed to find a place of his own, or else
he had to leave Hot Springs.

  He couldn't do that without finding out whether or not Dr. August Strittmatter actually could help him. That wouldn't come cheap, either.

  But he still had something to sell, he realized. He had a reputation. And he wasn't totally without gun-handling skill, even right-handed. He realized now that he had been going about this all the wrong way. He had been drifting and feeling sorry for himself, when what he should have been doing was taking what he still had and using it.

  He leaned his weight on the cane and levered himself to his feet.

  "Where are you going?" Vickie asked.

  "Upstairs."

  She stood up as well and said, "You're not going to pack or anything foolish like that, are you?"

  She didn't want him to leave, he realized. He wasn't sure why she felt that way, but evidently she did. He smiled and said, "Not just yet. I have to do some thinking."

  "Are you going back to the barber shop?" Rusty asked.

  "Not today. Tell Doc that I'm sorry, would you?"

  "Sure. I know he'd hate to lose you, Logan. He told me he's enjoyed havin' you around." Rusty paused. "And I reckon it'd be good for his business if you kept on workin' there, too."

  Of course it would. What fat, middle-aged storekeeper wouldn't want to have his hair clippings swept up by a famous gunfighter?

  "We'll see," Logan said. He limped out of the parlor and turned toward the stairs.

  As he did, he felt the hard lump of the money pouch in his pocket. Just as well that he hadn't deposited those coins after all, he told himself.

  First thing tomorrow morning, he needed to go out and see about buying a gun.

  11.

  Logan slept late the next morning. No dead men had danced through his dreams, but he seemed to see large, crimson pools of blood in the street outside the bank. When he woke and sat up to scrub his good hand over his face, he knew that blood came from the robbers who had been cut down by Marshal Radcliffe and the other deputies. Those deaths weren't on his conscience, Logan told himself. He hadn't killed any of those men.

  But they had died only a few steps away from him, after he had traded shots with them. Just being in the same vicinity with him seemed to bring death along with it.

  One more good reason to find another place to live.

  "Breakfast is already over," Vickie told him when he went downstairs, "but there's still coffee on the stove and I put aside a couple of biscuits for you."

  Her expression and voice were neutral, as if she would have done the same for any boarder, even one who had just moved in. Which she probably would have, Logan thought. He knew better than to read anything into the gesture.

  "Thank you," he said, just as coolly polite as she was. "I'll help myself."

  "You'll have to. I have laundry to take care of."

  He went into the kitchen, poured the coffee, and sat down at the small table in there to eat the biscuits. Vickie had done more than just set them aside for him, though. She'd left a jar of peach preserves beside the plate. Logan had to smile a little at that.

  He had just finished eating when Rusty came into the kitchen, seemingly in a hurry as usual.

  "Miz Eastland told me she thought you were in here," Rusty said. "My boss wants to see you, Logan."

  That announcement put a puzzled frown on Logan's face.

  "You work for Marcus Baldwin, the timber baron. I've heard a lot about him."

  It would have been impossible to be around Hot Springs for very long without hearing about Marcus Baldwin, even if he hadn't been friends with Rusty. The man owned vast stretches of timberland where a veritable army of loggers worked, harvesting the natural wealth, and if that wasn't enough, he also operated the freight company for which Rusty labored as a driver. Rumor had it that he was involved in other businesses as well. He had a reputation as a ruthless, but not necessarily dishonest, man.

  But most people wouldn't have been too surprised, either, to discover that some of his dealings were on the shady side.

  Logan looked up at Rusty and went on, "What in the world does he want with me?"

  "Now, that I couldn't tell you," Rusty said. "Mr. Baldwin had his private secretary find me and ask me to bring you to the office, though, as soon as I could. I went by the barber shop, since I didn't know whether or not I'd find you there, but Doc told me you hadn't been in. That's when I figured you were probably here."

  He wouldn't have been in just a little while, Logan thought. He still intended to see about buying a gun today. But he supposed he could go see Marcus Baldwin first. Chances were that he wouldn't need to be armed for that.

  He smiled a little to himself and hoped that he hadn't jinxed the meeting by thinking that.

  He drank the rest of the coffee in his cup, set it on the table, and got to his feet with the help of his cane.

  "All right," he told Rusty. "Let's go."

  The offices of the Baldwin Timber Company and the Baldwin Freight Line occupied a one-story building of brown sandstone a couple of blocks from the bank where the shootout had occurred the previous day. Next to the building was a large wooden barn with a spacious corral on the other side of it that served as the freight line's wagon yard.

  Rusty took Logan into the building, where a clerk led them along a corridor to the door to Marcus Baldwin's private office. The man told Rusty, "All right, Turner, you can go now."

  "Don't I need to stay with Logan?" Rusty asked. "I was sent to fetch him, after all."

  "And so you have," the clerk said coldly. "I assure you, we can take care of Mr. Handley from this point."

  "Well, all right," Rusty said with obvious reluctance. To Logan, he added, "I don't have to leave on a run today, so I'll be next door at the barn if you need me."

  Logan nodded and said, "All right. Thanks, Rusty."

  Rusty left grudgingly. Logan knew he wanted to find out what was going on so he could spread the word. As fond as he was of Rusty, Logan thought that maybe a little discretion would be better, so he was glad he would be meeting with Baldwin alone.

  He was still extremely curious what the businessman wanted with him, though. But he would be finding out soon, he thought as the clerk opened the door.

  An outer office lay beyond it, with another door leading to Marcus Baldwin's private sanctum. A thin man who looked like he was made out of steel and whalebone stood up from behind the desk in the outer office and said, "Mr. Handley? I'm Charles Stroud, Mr. Baldwin's private secretary. Please come in."

  Stroud didn't offer to shake hands. Instead he turned to the other door, rapped bony knuckles on it, and opened it to say, "Mr. Handley is here as you requested, sir."

  Logan heard a powerful, resonant voice say, "Bring him on in, Stroud."

  The private secretary stood aside from the door and gestured for Logan to precede him.

  Logan stepped into an opulent office paneled in dark wood. A large desk dominated the room. A table with a map spread out on it stood to one side. More maps were mounted on the walls in gilt frames. Logan wondered if they represented Baldwin's timber holdings.

  Marcus Baldwin himself was impressive as well as he stood up and extended a hand across the desk. Dressed in an expensive gray tweed suit, he was medium height, broad-shouldered, and looked like he might have swung a double-bitted ax himself in his younger days. A mane of gray and silver hair framed a face that wouldn't have been out of place on a Roman coin.

  "Mr. Handley," he said as Logan shook with him. "A pleasure to meet you. I'm Marcus Baldwin."

  "Logan Handley," Logan introduced himself, even though Baldwin obviously knew his name already.

  Baldwin waved him into a chair plushly upholstered in brown leather that stood in front of the desk and said, "Please, have a seat." As the two men settled down in their chairs, Baldwin went on, "I should say that it's an honor to meet you, sir, as well as a pleasure, after what you did yesterday. I have a considerable amount of money on deposit in that bank, and I hate to think of it being cleaned
out by those would-be thieves. I understand you deserve most of the credit for stopping them."

  Logan folded his hands on the head of his cane and said, "I'm not sure how much truth there is to that, Mr. Baldwin. I was more concerned with keeping them from dragging me out into the street as a hostage. I had a hunch that a lot of bullets might start flying around . . . and I was right."

  "Yes, from what I hear Marshal Radcliffe and his deputies were quite prompt once the shooting started. None of the bandits escaped except the one you rendered unconscious."

  "No, sir, they didn't."

  "Well, on behalf of myself and everyone else who has money in the bank, thank you for what you did."

  "I appreciate that, but I was more worried about saving my own skin."

  Baldwin waved that off with a well-manicured hand and said, "I've heard about your medical problems, Mr. Handley. You have my sympathy."

  Logan managed not to bristle at that comment. He hadn't asked for sympathy from anyone since the disease had struck him down that night in Aspen Creek. He didn't want it. But he nodded, appearing to acknowledge Baldwin's words politely without actually saying anything.

  "I'm sure it must be difficult for a man like you to have to face such things," Baldwin went on.

  "What do you mean by that?" Logan asked.

  "A man accustomed to being active, to doing things."

  "I have a job," Logan said. "Two of them, in fact."

  He didn't know if he would be going back to the barber shop or to Dumont's, but he still considered himself employed at both places for the time being.

  Baldwin chuckled and shook his head. "I hope you won't be offended by this, Mr. Handley, but when I heard about what happened at the bank I did a little looking into your background. You don't strike me as the sort of man who would be happy working in a barber shop or tending bar. That seems like a waste of your particular skills. I was wondering if you might be willing to take on a little job for me."

  Logan had had conversations similar to this with rich men in the past, but that had been when he was hale and fit. He said, "I don't see what I could do for you, Mr. Baldwin. I'm sure you've noticed that I'm . . . not the man I once was."