Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
The Regulator is Wes Hart — ex-soldier, ex-Texas Ranger, ex-rider with Billy the Kid. He’s tough, ruthless, and slick with a .45. He’s for hire now and he isn’t cheap...
The good citizens of Caldwell had raised a fistful of dollars to pay for the railroad that would bring the Santa Fe thundering
to their town. It was not a popular idea with Clancy Shire, the local cattle baron. Then the money went like a dollar bill loose in a dust-storm. Carried off by three of the nastiest desperadoes even the border country had seen.
Which explains how the folk of Caldwell are paying out to the Regulator. They need his kind of muscle for protection. For Hart it’s another job, but not every job has a pretty widow woman as well as a payday.
Could make a man sentimental...
BLOOD ON THE BORDER
HART THE REGULATOR 5
By John B. Harvey
First published by Pan Books in 1981
Copyright © 1981, 2014 by John B. Harvey
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: June 2014
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.
Cover image © 2014 by Edward Martin
edwrd984.deviantart.com
Series Editor: Mike Stotter
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
For Caroline Upcher – who, when she isn’t reading books, likes movies, too
Chapter One
They weren’t taking short cuts and they weren’t taking chances. A two-horse rig with a couple of front riders and another one minding the tail moved north-east at no fast pace, following the main trail from Caldwell towards Wichita. The high wheels of the carriage spun the dust out behind like grey silk thread. Andrew Fairburn sat in the passenger seat, a silk kerchief knotted across the lower half of his face; even so the dust somehow infiltrated his protection, irritating his nostrils and the back of his throat. His brown hat was pulled down over his forehead and grey eyes squinted out from underneath it, their pupils at one with the dust.
Fairburn wished for the journey to be over and not solely on account of the discomfort. He sat with his legs hard against a black leather attaché case, one of his hands from time to time reaching down to touch the metal clasp as if ensuring that it were still locked. This gesture was rendered unnecessary by another, in which he patted the side pocket of his coat, feeling the small, single key on its ring.
Fairburn licked his lips beneath the kerchief and tasted a thin rime of dust: two thousand US dollars.
He coughed nervously and glanced round. Alongside him, Barcroft, who ran the largest of Caldwell’s three livery stables, grunted and flicked out with his whip. The horses broke into a trot which lasted for little more than a quarter of a mile before they resumed their walk.
‘Be at the river in ten minutes,’ growled Barcroft. ‘More or less.’
‘Hmm.’ Fairburn didn’t sound too convinced. ‘Do we have to travel at this snail’s pace? If we carry on like this we won’t reach even Wellington by nightfall.’
‘Long journey ahead,’ said Barcroft, not caring overmuch for the man’s tone, ‘don’t do to take it out of the horses too early. Better to get there later than not at all. Least …’ The driver turned his head at the last moment and spat tobacco juice into the air. ‘…that’s the way I see it.’
‘Mmm.’ Fairburn knew men like Barcroft well enough to realize it was a waste of time arguing with them or trying to get them to change their ways. He tapped the key through the material of his black coat. That was the trouble with so much of the territory – too many folk without the ability to see anything more than what was directly in front of their faces. No foresight. No vision. He grudgingly allowed himself the beginnings of a smile. At least some people in Caldwell had begun to see sense, the farmers in the area as well. Sense enough to provide a healthy subsidy to the railroad so that it would build an extension of the line down to Caldwell. That way the cattlemen who’d been driving their herds further north in Kansas - to Abilene and Dodge, to Ellsworth and Wichita - would stop at Caldwell, north of the state line. Then see the town boom!
Fairburn had been one of the first men to see the potential of the settlement. Yes, one of the first. Not the first, as he would willingly confess to anyone who cared to listen in the saloon of the Caldwell State Hotel, that honor went to Charles H. Stone and James H. Dagner, who surveyed and bought the land back in seventy-one. Bought and sold it at a good profit, too. No, he hadn’t been there that early, but nevertheless he was proud to think of himself as one of the founder-fathers of the town. Those had been Fairburn’s exact words at the dinner to celebrate his ninth term as president of the local Cattle Growers’ Association: one of the founder-fathers of the town.
Fairburn considered loosening his kerchief and lighting one of the small cigars he had sent regularly from Kansas City, but decided against it. He would wait until they made a stop, probably once they’d crossed the Chikaskia. Then he could stretch his legs and enjoy a smoke.
Seventy yards ahead of the carriage, Jay Cambridge was just finishing rolling a cigarette. He did this with his left hand, keeping the reins of his horse tight in the right. He set the paper against his thin lips and licked the edge down, setting one end in his mouth as he fingered a match from his waistcoat pocket and struck it against the metal of his pistol butt.
‘One day,’ said Seth Walker from alongside, ‘I’m goin’ to watch you do that trick an’ see all the makin’s spill out your fingers leavin’ you with nothin’ more than a scrap of paper. When that happens, Jay, I’ll laugh fit to bust.’
Jay cupped the cigarette in his left hand. ‘Seth, you’re such a jackass, you’d bust your fat gut watchin’ a mule piss on a fire in the middle of winter.’
‘Huh!’ Seth Walker rocked a little in the saddle and scowled at his partner, but Jay wasn’t paying him mind any longer.
Seth had been riding with Jay Cambridge, one way or another, for close on three years. They’d drifted into southern Kansas round the same time, Jay with a posse not far behind and Seth on the run from an angry wife and five kids. They’d got thrown together and neither of them had ever bothered to part; they just carried on insulting one another and occasionally the cussing would turn to fighting, but when the next job came round they’d sign on one after the other.
They’d ridden herd and they’d built mile after mile of fencing; even hammered steel for the Santa Fe Railroad until Seth had made one too many remarks about the Irish and after that it was dangerous for them to get too close to any of the work gangs. Now they were riding guard on high-and-mighty Andrew Fairburn, nurse-maiding him to Wichita and back for the meager sum of twenty dollars. Hell, it was a job!
Jay drew on the cigarette and swung his head slowly round; his eyes swept over the tapering plain, the tall grass that bent this way and that according to the wind. Westward it was just possible to see the beginnings of the hills and to know that beyond them, back out of sight, were the mountains. Jay turned in his saddle and looked at the carriage and at the slumped figure of Nesty forty or fifty yards behind that.
No one in Caldwell knew for sure why the old boy was called Nesty, but one of the rumors Jay favored was that it was on account of his beard. Never but combed it out once a year and one of those times he found a whole family of birds inside,
been there since the spring. Nesty hung around the stable, occasionally helping Barcroft to shift hay or currycomb, fetch feed and water for the horses. When there wasn’t any work he loafed around there just the same, keeping warm, scrounging beer, playing a hand of cards when any of the boys was feeling kindly and asked him over to sit in. One of the big problems with a tangle of hair and beard the way Nesty had it was that in any kind of heat he stunk more than somewhat.
Jay was glad he was riding up front with Seth and that Nesty was back there on his own; at least he knew for a fact that Seth had a bath every month or so.
If Nesty knew or cared that he was being looked at and thought about, he gave no sign. He rode with his body folded forward over the pommel of his saddle, head angled down towards the trail. He had an old Spencer carbine that had seen service in the War between the States crooked under his right arm, the barrel resting on the worn saddle leather and poking out past his left side.
For all the attention he seemed to be paying to what was going on, Nesty could have been asleep. Perhaps he was.
‘Whoa!’ Seth reined in and lifted his right hand, the animal stammering sideways under him, slewing its rump round and tossing its head. There it is,’ Seth said, pointing. ‘There’s the river.’
Jay reined in his mount also and looked down, shaking his head. ‘Damn, I mind a time when you had to swim through that beauty with water ‘bove waist high.’
‘Ain’t that a fact.’
The Chikaskia was a bank of cracked mud, sloping haphazardly down towards a central channel which ran sluggishly with a stream of water no more than a couple of feet wide and less than half a dozen inches in depth. The winter just past, the winter of seventy-nine, had brought with it a bastard of a drought which had clammed the country up tight. Stock had withered and died, hands scouring the ranges for carcasses of beefs that offered little more than a bag of worms and wind and brittle bones. The soil turned to dust and washed over the parched land.
Gradually, now, things seemed to be returning to normal. That two-foot width of water might not be a whole lot, but it was a whole lot better than nothing.
The far bank was lined with straggly young trees, just breaking from bud. Behind those the trail wound eastwards, the swerve of direction taking it around a low, stubby hill crowned by an outcrop of iron-grey rock. Seth and Jay turned and looked back at the carriage, which had also stopped.
‘Trouble?’ Fairburn had asked anxiously, bending towards the attaché case.
Barcroft waited a while, watching the two men up front; finally he wrinkled his face and slowly shook his head from side to side. ‘No. We reached the river is all.’
As Fairburn relaxed and sat back again, Seth and Jay began to move once more. Their horses quickened their pace, eager for the water which they could smell clearly. The two men were content to let the animals trot down to the mud of the bank at speed, wanting themselves to slake their thirst and wash the dust from their throats.
Thirty yards short of the river Seth pushed his Stetson back on his head and grinned across at Jay, feeling good.
Twenty-five yards short a .44 Winchester slug ripped through the thick flesh at the top of his left thigh. Seth screamed and the shrill surprise of his voice merged with the rifle report. His horse reared on its hind legs, whinnying with fright. Seth started to reach for his sidearm, hesitated, stared at Jay who was now ten yards adrift to his right and finally down at his leg.
‘Jesus above!’
Several inches of grey wool had been torn away and a good thickness of flesh with it. Fiber and tissue welled with blood that was all too bright and through it Seth could see the white hardness of the bone.
‘Hell almighty, Jay! Look at this bastard leg!’
Jay had other things to attend to. The rifleman hadn’t shifted from his position in the trees and it was reasonable to suppose that having put a shell through his partner, he was lined up for the next one himself. But quite apart from that, a group of riders had shown itself on the trail where the tree line broke. Jay could see four and all of them had rifles out and ready and they were coming slowly now, in no great hurry, real confident.
‘Jay, will you...’
A look was sufficient to shut Seth up. Behind them Bar-croft had braked the carriage to a halt and hefted the shotgun from where it had been lying by his feet up into his hands. Alongside him, Fairburn’s face was the color of fine parchment.
‘Why don’t they do something? Why don’t they fire back?’
Jay had gone as far as drawing his Colt and was sitting back in the saddle, the pistol resting against his leg, the hammer cocked. The riders were crossing the meager stream and beginning to climb up the near bank. There was a barely discernible movement in the trees to the left and a second rifle shot ploughed a groove through the ground less than a yard to the side of Jay’s horse. He knew that the man had put it there on purpose; if he’d wanted he could have set it between Jay’s eyes.
Jay slowly and obviously released the hammer of his Colt.
The four men were almost upon them.
Seth and Jay recognized two of the men, the flank riders, straight off. A couple of hands from the Four Bars ranch that straddled the land to the north-east; they came to town often enough, fetching supplies, spending wages in saloon and whorehouse, fighting. They were nothing out of the ordinary. But the other pair…
The one to the right was tall and angular, the lines of his face sharp and clear; his eyes were dark and sunk into their sockets, black hair slicked back down onto his scalp with some kind of oil or grease. He was the only one of the four not to wear a hat. He did have a smudged white coat, long, that flapped loosely past his legs as he rode. The leather of his gun belt shone through. A Winchester ‘73 rested across his saddle.
His companion also had a shiny Winchester, also wore a white duster coat. That was where the similarities ended. This one was a Negro, black and shining like the barrel of his gun, like the leather that he rode upon and wore. A tan-colored Stetson was angled down over his forehead and beneath it the eyes on either side of the flat, spreading nose were lively and bright. He held the rifle in his left hand, down by his leg and pointing at the dry ground.
Jay wondered who had hired them and why.
They stopped at the edge of the river and the pair in white coats nodded to one another and said something that didn’t carry across to the other side. Jay’s Colt was still in his hand, but angled downwards like the black’s rifle. There was a rifleman still partly hidden in the trees to the left. Up the slope Barcroft had his shotgun in his lap and beside him Andrew Fairburn was gripping the handle of the case with both hands. Old Nesty still could have been asleep.
‘You going to put that thing up, or what?’ The man’s voice was as sharp and angular as his appearance.
A nerve began to beat at the edge of Jay’s right cheek. Twenty dollars wasn’t worth dying for. He put up the gun.
That’s better. Ain’t that better?’
‘That’s better.’ The Negro’s voice was as round and full as the other’s was mean and thin.
Blood was continuing to quiver from Seth’s left leg and he swayed slightly in the saddle, momentary waves of nausea claiming him. There were moments when he thought he must faint with the pain.
The tall rider shifted his horse so that it covered the stream; he pointed the Winchester towards Seth’s leg. ‘You know that slug could’ve been between your fool eyes?’
‘He knows it,’ Jay quickly answered for him.
The tall man nodded. ‘Well, sooner we get this over, sooner you can get it bound.’
Seth winced, nodded.
‘Right. Just so’s we don’t have no heroes.’
The Negro laughed and the reins of his horse shook in his right hand.
‘You two,’ the tall man said, turning his head, ‘you watch ‘em close.’
‘Let’s get to it,’ said the Negro and spurred his horse across the mean trail of water and up the other side to
where the carriage was stationary. The tall man followed fast behind, swinging out to the side as he went and angling back in.
‘Do something!’ hissed Fairburn. ‘Don’t just sit there and let them take it.’
Barcroft glanced across at him with disgust. He lifted the shotgun into sight and threw it over into Fairburn’s lap. ‘You do something!’
Fairburn cursed, caught at the weapon awkwardly, the sawn-down barrel banging against the side of the seat.
‘You wait till...’ he began.
‘Don’t waste no breath threatening me,’ snapped Barcroft in a low voice. ‘Threaten them.’
Fairburn slipped his finger through the trigger guard and looked at the black horseman coming directly up the slope towards him, then at the second rider turning in from the left. The rifle in the black’s left hand came up and leveled; he grinned from ten yards off and called: ‘What exactly you fixin’ on doin’ with that, boy?’
Fairburn hesitated, fear sliding up his body until it stuck in his throat like a cold fist.
‘‘Cept give it over to me, that is.’
The Winchester was pointing at Fairburn’s chest; Fairburn blinked his eyes closed and- when they opened again he was handing the shotgun up to the man on the horse. Beside him, Barcroft grunted and spat to the ground with contempt. The Negro leaned down and gripped the end of the weapon in his right hand and hauled it clear.
He laughed: ‘I knew you weren’t goin’ to give us no trouble.’
Barcroft cleared his throat and spat again.
‘Now let’s have the money,’ said the tall man, coming in close.
Fairburn’s legs pressed the case flat against the wood beneath the seat.
‘Just like you did with the shotgun,’ said the Negro. ‘Real easy.’
Fairburn shook. The livery owner half turned towards him and told him to do as he’d been told. Down below at the river four men watched.
‘You don’t give it,’ said the Negro, ‘you’ll be dead. That’s the only difference.’
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