Hart the Regulator 4

by John B. Harvey

  One of the men let out a high whistle, followed by a holler from one of the others.

  ‘How many?’ demanded Lee anxiously, voice slightly hoarse. ‘How many?’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Vonnie announced. ‘What we have here … what, I repeat, we have here...’

  ‘Get it said, for God’s sake! You’re gettin’ as garrulous as Turkey.’

  ‘Hey! That ain’t...’

  ‘... are half a dozen of these little beauties.’

  ‘Oh, boy!’

  ‘Here - catch one!’

  Vonnie threw something high into the air and at last Hart saw what it was they were talking about. Lee’s hands reached up towards the blue of the sky, eager to catch the silver block as it came towards the earth.

  ‘Ain’t that one beautiful thing!’ He pressed the silver against his scarred cheek; kissed it. ‘Ain’t that a bitch of a beautiful thing!’

  Little Fats slapped his thigh and laughed and Turkey drooled at the mouth a little and then realized that something was beginning to burn and that it was the bacon in the pan. Vonnie did a dance on top of the carriage.

  Over to one side, Alice stood and stared, unable to understand or believe what she was seeing.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘You claim you didn’t know nothin’ about the silver?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Lee Sternberg laughed in Hart’s face. ‘That mean bastard Kennedy sure had you by the balls.’

  Hart stared back at him, saying nothing; knowing it was true. Kennedy must have realized that if he’d told Hart he was guarding that amount of solid silver as well as his daughter, Hart would have demanded more money than he’d been paid. He also must have figured that sending his daughter with only one man and a carriage would be unlikely to draw much attention.

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Hart.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The silver. You knew about the silver. How?’

  Lee laughed: ‘We got Vonnie to thank for that. See, Vonnie’s what you might call a ladies’ man. An’ one of his especial ladies, well she works at Kennedy’s whorehouse down in Creek City. One time when Vonnie was slippin’ it to her real nice an’ easy she mentions somethin’ he might like to hear. Happens she was listenin’ to Kennedy and that woman who runs the place for him. They were in that room of hers and apart from other carryin’s-on - and you ought to be real ashamed of your pa, girlie, the things he gets up to with that woman - the girl heard Kennedy say he was going to ship out some silver along with his daughter. Send it to the bank in Denver.’

  Lee grinned and glanced at Alice, who was blushing furiously, not knowing exactly why.

  ‘What d’you reckon to that Kennedy?’ asked Vonnie with a laugh.

  Hart moved his head to one side and spat. ‘I reckon he’s a mean bastard and he deserved to lose whatever you took him for.’

  ‘Well, now,’ said Lee, ‘that’s interestin’. I might be takin’ a shine to you after all.’ He turned his head. ‘Turkey, free one of his hands - his left, I reckon - an’ give him some of that food as is left. We don’t want him starvin’ none before he gets back to town.’

  Turkey hesitated. ‘We lettin’ him ride back to town?’

  Lee looked innocent. ‘Why, Turkey, what else did you think we was goin’ to do with him? Take him with us?’

  ‘Hell, no, only lettin’ him ride free ... ain’t that a mite dangerous ?’

  ‘Not if he feels ’bout Kennedy the way he says he does. An’ besides, if he don’t ride back how else we goin’ to get Kennedy the ransom note?’

  Lee said it real gentle, just letting the words slip from the end of his tongue like they were nothing special. The other three members of his gang stopped whatever they were doing and stared at him; Turkey’s mouth fell open and the skin beneath it gave a little tremble of surprise and excitement.

  Hart stared at him also, hardening inside.

  ‘You serious?’ asked Little Fats after a few moments.

  ‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’ replied Lee, a little faster than was necessary.

  Little Fats glanced over towards the girl. He shook his head. I guess not.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not as if she’d come to any harm … long as her daddy pays up like we say.’

  Alice realized for the first time what it was the gang were intending. She jammed the heel of her right hand between her lips and bit down into it, staring at the silver-haired figure of Lee Sternberg through the ends of her fingers. Staring at him and feeling sick inside, sick and cold and hollow.

  Lee nodded towards Hart. ‘Get him fed, Turkey. I’m, goin’ to get one of the kid’s books she’s been doin’ her schoolin’ in and write me a letter.’

  Turkey grinned and picked at the end of his red-veined nose, lifting the pan from the edge of the fire and taking it over towards the oak.

  Alice’s belongings had been thrown back into the trunks haphazardly, so that ends and corners hung loose from under the lids. Some of the supplies had also been reloaded, although the ground around the wagon was white with flour that had been spilled and strewn. The boxes of cartridges Hart had bought had been taken. His shotgun had been emptied; one shell left in the barrel of the Henry, one more in the Colt. Enough for some emergency on the trail back to town, Lee had laughed, but not enough for us.

  Little Fats sat well back in his saddle, Alice in front of him, clutching the pommel and her eyes flickering and dark, shiny with tears. Vonnie and Turkey were mounted and ready, watching as Lee loosened Hart’s ropes.

  ‘There.’ Lee stood back. ‘That’ll hold you half an hour, maybe more. Just remember, you ain’t got nothin’ against us. Nothin’ personal. We left you your horse and the money you got paid and we’re lettin’ you ride free. Any beef you’ve got is with Kennedy. All you got to do is make sure he gets the note an’ understands it9 then ride on your way. It’s a big country - ain’t no reason why we should run into one another again. If’n we do, maybe we can buy each other a drink an’ no hard feelin’s.’ He smiled. ‘You ain’t so different from us. Ain’t so different at all.’

  He walked away from the tree and climbed into the saddle, waving his men on. Hart waited until they were out of sight, almost out of hearing and then began to struggle with the bonds that held him.

  He thought about a lot of things on the ride back to Creek City. And through them all a kind of shame burned inside him that they had taken him and taken him so easy. Like he was some fool kid who’d didn’t know what he was doing. You got nothing against us, Lee Sternberg had said, nothing personal. Well, in a way that was so. But what he had against them was more than personal: it was professional. He earned his living by selling himself and his gun and when word got out what had happened he was going to have difficulty selling it again.

  It was a big country all right, just like Sternberg had said, but it was a country in which tales traveled fast and got embroidered on the way. Hart spat to the ground as he considered what would happen to the story about the top gun who allowed himself to be taken by one old man with a knife.

  No, he didn’t have nothing personal against the Sternberg gang, but he did have something to prove. Both to himself and to anyone else who got to know about it. And what he had to do was simple - he had to take back the girl and take back the silver and do those things on his own. If it came down to it and he had to kill any of those four in the process, that was too bad. They knew the rules of the game as well as he did.

  Jesus! thought Hart for the hundredth time. An old man! An old man with a knife!

  He shook his head - he had been so sure what he was doing was easy money.

  There was a scattering of lights as he rode down towards the town. Hardly any noise apart from the hoofs of the horses and the rattle of the carriage wheels. He rode past the dark, shadowed outlines of the first buildings, his chest tightening as though the rope still bound it fast. Of all the things he’d had to do, confronting Kennedy and telling him that his daughter had been taken -
not to mention his silver - was one of the least acceptable.

  Hart swung off the main street and headed for the corral. Inside, animals shifted uneasily as he unharnessed the carriage horses and led them towards it. He left the carriage itself, still loaded, alongside the livery barn entrance.

  His own grey he took inside and unsaddled, moonlight enough through the big open doors to fetch her water and feed.

  A noise outside spun him round, hand going automatically to the Colt at his hip; shadow became shape. ‘Was goin’ on in there?’

  Hart recognized the Negro’s voice. ‘Take it easy. It’s me.’

  ‘Who in the Lord’s name’s me?’

  The Negro limped further forward, brushing the air with his hand as though he was trying to clear the darkness away.

  ‘Hart. Wes Hart.’

  Close enough to see him, the black grinned a head full of teeth. ‘Hell, I thought you was some old saddle tramp come to sleep up in the straw.’

  In spite of himself, Hart laughed. ‘You didn’t get it quite right. Not yet.’ In the high barn the sound of his own laughter was oddly hollow.

  Hart’s footsteps on the boardwalk were the same: hollow: empty. He noticed that the lamp outside the saloon had been extinguished. Only a faint light showed through the curtained lower windows of the whorehouse. Hart tried the handle and was surprised when it turned. He opened and closed it carefully, not wanting to hammer the brass knocker against its rest.

  Chairs, sofas, all were empty. The single lamp was above the stairs. Hart went quietly to the small bar in the corner and helped himself to a slug of whiskey, taking it straight from the bottle.

  There was a suspicion of a noise from upstairs - the stairs themselves carpeted and leading beyond the shine of the lamp to darkness.

  He slipped the thong from the hammer of his Colt and climbed them.

  The sounds came from inside Mrs Mitchell’s room. Kate’s room. There was no mistaking their meaning. The restricted catch of breath and the sticky, wet agitation of flesh against flesh. Hart pushed the door open and stepped quickly inside.

  There was no light in the room. Two shapes and a muffled shout of surprise and outrage from one of them, turning. A yelp from the other. Hart made out a pair of legs, pale and dull, stretched out around a man’s leaning body. The woman on the table, backed on to the wall, an arm coming up now, waving wildly, voice beginning to quiver with shock.

  ‘I demand to know...’

  ‘That you, Kennedy?’

  The man hesitated, half-recognizing Hart’s voice.

  “Cause if it is, finish what you’re doin’ and get downstairs fast. I’ve got something important to tell you.’

  ‘I, hmm, hm … I...’

  Hart left the room and shut the door behind him, going back downstairs and over to the bottle of whiskey. A few moments later he heard the door opening again and the sound of harsh sobbing emerged, interrupted by the Scottish tones of a man’s edgy voice. Then he saw Kennedy at the head of the stairs, pistol in hand.

  ‘Put that away,’ said Hart scornfully. ‘You won’t be needing it. Not now.’

  The Scotsman came down to Hart’s level but he kept the gun pointing directly at him. The hair of his head was mussed and unkempt; his light colored eyes flickered constantly.

  ‘What is the ... hm, where is ... what are you doing here?’ His hand tightened on the butt of the pistol. ‘Where is my daughter? Is she taken sick? Is she all right?’

  Hart lifted the bottle away from his mouth scornfully. ‘Shouldn’t you be asking about your silver?’

  Kennedy’s mouth fell open; the arm with the gun at its end drooped towards the floor.

  ‘The silver … the ... what...?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Kennedy! The silver you stashed away in the bottom of that carriage, that’s what silver. The silver no one was supposed to know was there.’

  Kennedy was staring at him, eyebrows raised, silent. A grating, sobbing sound came from beyond the head of the stairs.

  ‘If you’d thought a little more about that daughter of yours and less about your damned silver, things might not have turned out the way they did.’

  Kennedy blurted: ‘It’s not for you to push the blame off on to me. You were the one guarding the child. You!’

  ‘An’ if I’d known what I was guarding - if you’d played straight, I’d have done my job a sight different.’

  Hart’s eyes stared at Kennedy and they were like ice.

  Kennedy bore the look for moments only before turning his head aside. Hart took a pace towards him and the Scotsman swiveled round and the gun that was still in his hand moved to cover him.

  ‘It was still your responsibility. You were paid.’

  ‘Not to take silver to Denver I wasn’t.’

  ‘No, damn it! You were paid to look after my daughter and you failed. You failed miserably. Why in heaven’s name didn’t you go after them and get her back?’

  Hart wanted to wrench the pistol from his hand and hit him, but he controlled himself.

  ‘They left me two bullets,’ he said, grim-faced. ‘And two bullets won’t go far against four men.’

  ‘Four,’ Kennedy repeated.

  ‘Besides,’ Hart went on, ‘I had to bring you the details of the ransom.’

  Kennedy looked at him sharply and Hart pulled the piece of lined paper from his pocket.

  ‘Five hundred dollars. Tomorrow at noon. You and one other rider. Off the main trail north-west from town. You take the money and they’ll give you the girl.’

  He passed over the note and Kennedy read it twice slowly.

  ‘You think they’ll keep their word?’

  ‘And hand over the girl? I think so. They won’t want to be stuck with her for longer than they can help.’

  One of Kennedy’s eyebrows arched upwards. ‘So if I refuse to pay they may just let her go?’

  ‘Sure,” said Hart softly. ‘If they don’t kill her.’

  Kennedy’s eyes closed for several seconds. When he opened them again, he said: ‘If I don’t get Alice back - or if she’s harmed in any way I’m holding you responsible. D’you understand that? Personally responsible.’

  Hart shrugged.

  ‘If she’s dead,’ said Kennedy tightening his grip on the gun, ‘I’ll have you killed.’

  Hart moved fast, a lunge and then a kick with his right boot which struck the underside of Kennedy’s wrist and sent the pistol flying towards the ceiling. Kennedy shouted out and grasped his wrist with his other hand. Hart grabbed him by the narrow lapels of his jacket and lifted him off his feet.

  ‘Don’t ever threaten me, Kennedy. Not ever. Not unless you’re prepared to back up your words yourself. And don’t …’ He released the man back to the floor. ‘...don’t ever try to hold out on me again either or you’ll regret it.’

  Kennedy stood with his head bowed, clutching his injured wrist and unable to look Hart in the face. The same harsh sobbing was coming from upstairs. Hart turned back to the bar and got hold of the bottle of whiskey he’d been drinking from; he took a quick swallow and pushed the cork back Into the neck, the bottle he gripped in his left hand.

  Kennedy raised his head a little and watched him go, staring at Hart’s back as it merged with the shadows around the doorway and wishing that the pistol was still in his hand. He didn’t question whether he would have had the courage to have used it - even with Hart’s back turned.

  When the door had closed and Kennedy was alone he found the gun and laid it on the curved counter of the bar; pushed several times at the lock of dark hair that fell down on to his forehead; took out the silver watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped it open; glanced at it, closed it, returned it. He realized that although he had seen the position of the hands the time had not registered.

  His daughter and his silver.

  His silver and his daughter.

  The crying from upstairs was growing more insistent. Kennedy sighed and began to walk towards the sound - n
ot because he wanted to but because there was nowhere else to go.

  Chapter Eight

  The Silver Giants needed one more score to win. The game against the Green Belts had been going on for something over three hours. The crowd were drunk and furious or drunk and ecstatic – depending upon who they supported and just how drunk they’d managed to get. A short bear of a man stepped up to the mark, flexing his arms to test the bat gripped in his hands. A smile of triumph was already beginning to light up his bearded face. The pitcher tossed the ball from hand to hand, confident of victory. A roar rose on the back of the throats of the spectators and grew and grew in volume until it threatened to obliterate everything else. The bearded man held his bat at the ready, moving it fractionally, watching, watching ... the ball was released from the pitcher’s hand in a high, wicked curve and the bat flashed, the sound of their meeting was clear and hard and then the ball was soaring away and the man was running, running, straining to pass the bases, the noise of the crowd dinning his ears as the hard ground slapped against the undersides of his feet and he strained every muscle in his body to…

  There was a thump and a crash and a single, alarmed shout as the bearded man fell to the floor and lay sprawling. His hands fumbled for the bat that was no longer there and only became tangled in a mess of blanket.

  R. G. Fowler groaned and rolled on to his back; opened his eyes gingerly and closed them again at once. The bed that he had fallen from loomed large and high above him and he saw no way in which he would be able to crawl back into it. Instead he pulled the blanket up around his head and went back on to his side, curling his legs up towards the soft bulk of his belly.

  After less than five minutes he knew it wasn’t going to be any good. He wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep and he wasn’t able to penetrate his dream; he would never know if he’d scored the winning strike, if the game had been won or lost.

  Fowler groaned and pushed the blanket away, wobbling up into a sitting position. He poked his fingers into the corners of his eyes, licked his furry tongue around his mouth and yawned. His head felt as if someone had been hitting it with a baseball bat. Not once, but steadily through the night. In fact, it felt the same as it did most mornings - which was why Fowler always tried to put off waking up for as long as was possible.