Bannerman the Enforcer 11

by Kirk Hamilton

  “Does look kinda cold,” he remarked as Cato looked bleakly at the pair. “Maybe we should light him up so’s he can get warm.”

  He fumbled out some vestas and the man in the jerkin grabbed the whisky bottle and splashed some of the liquid onto Cato’s jacket sleeve. The small man jumped back as the big ranny struck a vesta and flicked it at him. The raw spirits roared and his whole sleeve was alight from cuff to shoulder in a split-second. The guffaws of the two men as Cato struggled to wrench off his blazing jacket brought men from the store and the ramshackle saloon across the street. They all seemed to think it was a good joke as Cato frantically tore off the jacket and stomped on it to put out the flames.

  “Aw, hell,” the big man in shirtsleeves said in disappointment. “He’ll freeze to death. Better warm him up some more, Ty.”

  The man in the jerkin lifted the whisky bottle to splash more liquid onto Cato but jerked back as Cato’s Manstopper appeared in his hand and blasted, smashing the whisky bottle out of his hand. The man yelled in pain and grimaced at his bleeding hand. The bigger man swore loudly.

  “You goddamn little runt! Can’t you take a joke?”

  “Sure,” Cato told him. “Can you?”

  He triggered again and the big man howled and hopped around on one foot as the bullet slammed into the toe of his boot. He fell, blood spurting through the ragged hole in the leather. Cato stood over him, reloading expertly and unhurriedly.

  “See if you find it funny hoppin’ around without your big toe,” he said easily. “Next time, I’ll blow your head out from under your hat. Now you owe me thirty dollars for a new jacket. You gonna pay?”

  The big man was too busy with the pain of his wound.

  Cato slugged him with the gun barrel, went through his pockets and came up with ten dollars. He moved to the ranny with the cut hand, held out his left hand, palm up. The man swallowed, used his good hand to bring out some coins and dropped them onto Cato’s palm.

  “Seven’s all I’ve got,” he bleated.

  Cato looked at him coldly, walked to the silent men gathered at the store door. “You fellers seemed to think I was good entertainment a minute ago. Now you got to pay for the show. I want thirteen dollars from you. You got till I count to ten. After that, a lot of you are gonna be limpin’ around like that big galoot in the street.”

  He had the full thirty dollars by the time he had reached six. The storekeeper had a new jacket out and ready for him when he walked back to the counter. Then, wearing the new jacket, Cato walked past the staring men and out into the street. They watched him lead his horse down towards the hotel.

  “Wolf ain’t gonna like a couple of his men bein’ shot up thataway,” one man opined to no one in particular.

  “They asked for it,” someone else said. “But I wouldn’t want to be in that tough little ranny’s boots, anyways.”

  The hotel was a lot better inside than it looked outside. The walls were unpainted timber but they had been varnished and glowed with a warm mellow hue that seemed to give the clerk a ruddy complexion as he languidly stood up and walked over to the pine desk. He pasted a mechanical smile onto his young, rakehell face.

  “Yessir?”

  “Want a room,” Cato said. “And some information.”

  “Room’s easy,” the clerk said, turning to take down a key from some hooks on a board behind him. “Number eleven, straight up.” He gestured to the stairs. “Dollar and a quarter a night, and that includes your supper and breakfast. Find your own lunch. Hot water extra. Want any more blankets, tell the Indian gal who does the rooms ... Deal?”

  He dangled the keys from his index finger, looking smugly at Cato. Then he added:

  “We’re the only hotel in town.”

  “Guess you’re my first choice then,” Cato replied, digging some money out of his pocket, counting it and giving the man two dollars fifty. “Couple of nights in advance,” he said, taking the keys. He didn’t put the rest of his money away, saw the clerk’s eyes holding to it greedily. “The information I want is simple. You reckon you’re the only hotel in town, so I guess you’re the man to ask if a friend of mine is stayin’ here.”

  “I’m your man, right enough,” the clerk said, looking at the money.

  “Bannerman. Yancey Bannerman. From Texas ... Gonna meet me here. My name’s Cato.”

  The clerk looked disappointed and shook his head slowly. “I hate to say it, but he ain’t checked in yet. Not under that name.”

  “Okay. It was an outside chance, anyways. Don’t worry, mister, you might still stand a chance of pickin’ up an extra buck. Know anyone hereabouts named ‘Wolf’?”

  The clerk’s face went blank and he stood all the way up, pushing off the counter. He looked worried, flicking his gaze towards the door. “Wolf? First name or last?”

  “Either,” Cato said flatly, eyes boring into the young man.

  The clerk drummed fingers against the counter top, teeth tugging gently at his bottom lip. He glanced at the money again. “Aw, hell, anyone can tell you, I reckon. Fact is, you tangled with two of his men outside the store there. Wolf Duane’s the hombre you want. Big cattleman hereabouts. Fights with everyone. Right now he ain’t gettin’ along so well with a lumber company that’s workin’ range he uses for winter graze.”

  “He drive his steers to Cheyenne?”

  “Sure. Closest market. Easier trail than down to Denver.”

  “He been there recent? Cheyenne, I mean?”

  “Said he was goin’ in for the openin’ of that new railroad. I dunno if he went or not. Some of his men’ve been hangin’ around town for a spell, so it’s likely he’s been away.”

  “Sounds like the man I want. Where’s he hang out?”

  “His spread’s way back in the hills, called the Diamond-D, and he runs a bunch of hardcases. I dunno just where it is, though. They might tell you over at the saloon. They get more custom from him than I do.”

  Cato nodded, peeled off some bills and dropped them into the clerk’s hand. He hefted his warbag, jiggled the keys in his hand and started up the stairs towards room eleven.

  He turned and called back over his shoulder, “Send up some hot water, amigo.” He smiled wryly. “You can take it out of that little bonus I just paid you.”

  The clerk waved acknowledgement and went through a doorway behind the counter, calling for someone named ‘Cindy’. Cato continued on up to his room and the Indian girl came shortly with a tin hip bath and followed it with two wooden pails of steaming water. She was slim and sloe-eyed and sober-faced, dressed in a long buckskin dress, her raven hair spilling halfway down to her waist, held in place by a beaded headband. She didn’t answer any of Cato’s mildly curious questions. He told her to bring him another pail of water and a bigger cake of lye soap. She went out silently and he stripped down and stepped into the tub and sighed as the warm water crept up his limbs as he lowered himself slowly. He grabbed the small piece of soap the girl had left him and proceeded to lather up. The suds and bubbles were more profuse than usual and he figured it must be the ‘softness’ of the snow fed water up here. He washed his hair and winced when soap ran down into his eyes. While he groped for a towel to wipe it out, he heard the room door open.

  “Hey, if that water ain’t too hot, pour it over my head, will you?” he called urgently. “Damn soap’s burnin’ my eyeballs.”

  Icy water was sluiced over him and, gasping, he opened his eyes, and saw the heavy wooden pail swing up again and next instant there was a bone-jarring crash against his skull and the world seemed to explode around him.

  Three – An Old Score

  When he started to come round, Cato had no idea where he was. It was dark. Familiar sounds began to filter into his mind through the roaring, pounding ache that throbbed all through his head and neck. There was a jolting that wrenched a sick moan from his lips.

  That seemed to be a mistake. Someone nearby stirred and he heard a grating voice. Next instant, the world exploded again in shatter
ing pain and he remembered nothing more until he struggled back to consciousness and barely tolerable agony.

  There was no jolting, no sense of motion this time. He was lying stretched out on something hard. Instinct made him try to move his arms and legs, just a fraction of an inch, but sufficient to tell him that he wasn’t bound or manacled. It meant little to him at present, at least to his conscious thought, for his thinking processes were blanketed by the sheer agony of waking up. His head felt under pressure from the inside. His eardrums seemed near bursting. His eyes bulged in their sockets. His nose was clogged, likely with his own blood, and his mouth had the taste of a dust-bowl cow yard.

  Then instinct took over and he stifled another moan that rose to his lips. He looked around slowly, lowering his eyelids to veil his eyes, it never hurt to make out a man was worse off than he actually was in situations like this.

  Wherever he was, it was dark and freezing cold. He still had his new jacket on. He started to sit up, moaned loudly and sagged back holding his head in both hands. Nothing happened: no one struck him again; no one came bursting in with a gun; there was no sound in his prison except his own ragged breathing. Relieved, he thought again about that jacket. He had been naked in the tub, when he had been doused with icy water and then knocked out with the heavy wooden pail. So someone had dressed him: pretty roughly by the uncomfortable feel of his clothes. Likely they had only taken the trouble so he wouldn’t freeze, for he vaguely recalled the brief impression of travelling in the back of a buckboard to get here, wherever ‘here’ was.

  Whoever his captors were they wanted him alive. And it had to have something to do with Senator Jonas Locke ...

  Cato tensed. He heard footsteps outside, boots crushing gravel, the rattle of a bar being lifted from across a door, and rough voices. A door crashed open and lantern light washed into the room. Squinting, he could see he was in a log-walled room or cabin with a puncheon floor, a window hung with a square of ragged burlap. Only then, after he had taken in his surroundings, did he look at the man holding the lantern. He recognized him at once as the big hombre he had shot in the foot in Wildcat Falls. Then two men pushed past, dragging a third between them. Cato recognized the senator’s silver-streaked hair as he was flung bodily into the room and he saw that the hand of one man was heavily bandaged and recognized the second man who had tried to prod him back in town.

  The one with the lantern limped into the cabin, dragging his wounded foot which was wrapped around with strips of burlap over bandages. He towered above Cato, looked down and saw the small Enforcer was conscious. His lips pulled back from his teeth as he leaned down, grabbed Cato’s jacket front and half-lifted the man off the floor. He began to shake the small man and Cato groaned as his head snapped back and forth on his shoulders.

  Then he was suddenly released and the big man reeled across the room to thud against the wall, the lantern almost dropping from his hands. He glared at a fourth man who had entered, a wolf-lean man with hatchet face, big, tough-looking, unshaven. He was wearing leather gloves and he backhanded the wounded ranny across the mouth, leaving marks on his pasty flesh. The other men said nothing. Cato glanced towards the senator but the man was huddled up in shadow, silent, unmoving, and he couldn’t tell what his condition was.

  “I’m Duane,” the hatchet-faced man said in a deep voice. “They call me Wolf Duane. You stuck your nose in my affairs and now you got to take what comes.”

  “What’s it all about?” Cato grated.

  “He’ll tell you,” Duane said, gesturing, but not looking at the prone senator.

  “You know I represent the Governor of Texas?”

  Duane’s thin lips twitched slightly. “I know all about you, Cato. Knew your rep as a gunsmith when you had a place in Laramie, Wyoming. ‘Colt’ Cato they used to call you. Seems you specialized in changin’ cap-and-ball Colts to cartridge-firin’ guns. Matter of fact, you did one for me, long time back, first cartridge pistol I ever had. Damn fine shooter. No, don’t try to recall it. My name wasn’t Duane then.”

  “You’ve bitten off a mighty big hunk of trouble, mister, grabbin’ the senator and me.”

  “Reckon not. This is my neck of the woods, my territory, Cato. I own ten thousand acres. I’m my own law hereabouts. Oh, there’s a county sheriff turns up in Wildcat Falls once in a spell, but he don’t give me any trouble. Knows better. No one gives me any trouble, Cato. And that includes the Governor of Texas.” He laughed harshly. “Governor? Hell, man, I’ve made trouble for the President himself!”

  He turned abruptly with a curt gesture to the others to follow. As they went out, Cato saw that the man with the bandaged hand was toting Cato’s Manstopper about his waist. At the door, Duane paused and took the lantern from the hand of the man with the wounded foot. He set it down just inside the door, his eyes glittering as he glanced back at Cato.

  “So you can see what you’re doin’,” he told him with a hard smile, and went out. The door slammed and Cato heard the heavy bar drop into place on the outside. Boots crunched away over gravel. He listened carefully. They were all walking normally. There was no limping, dragging step amongst them. He figured the man with the wounded foot had been left outside the door on guard.

  Cato found out it was agony to move but, grunting, he crawled over to the lantern, dragged it closer to the senator. The man was breathing heavily, evenly, and was covered in a filthy blanket. There were dark spots on the gray home-spun and Cato squinted, holding the lantern closer. He sucked in his breath through his teeth.

  Some of the spots were wet. And crimson. Tensed, the hand holding the lantern aloft shaking with the strain, He lifted the top of the blanket and pulled it back slowly. The senator’s body jerked and be gave a strangled groan of pain. His fingers clutched convulsively at the puncheon floor. Cato’s face twisted into a grimace as he threw the blanket aside.

  The senator was naked to the waist and his back was a mass of raw flesh, crisscrossed weals that had torn his skin and left his upper body looking like a piece of quartered beef in a slaughterhouse.

  Senator Jonas Locke had been flogged with a bull-whip. And the men who had wielded it must have been plumb loco with hate.

  “Wolf Duane,” he murmured, sitting back on his hams as he lowered the lantern, watching the light ripple and glint from Senator Locke’s wounds.

  ~*~

  “Yeah, he’s crazy, all right,” breathed Jonas Locke, leaning gingerly back into the corner that Cato had padded up with the blanket and some old potato sacks.

  They had the lantern turned way down to conserve the oil, but kept putting out their hands to feel the warmth of the glass chimney. It was freezing in their cabin and, though Locke’s warmer clothing had been left in the cabin, his back was too raw to put it on. Duane had sent over some brine and cold water and a pot of hot coffee not long after he had left and Cato had doctored Locke as well as he could. Now, sharing the senator’s last battered cheroot, Cato drained his coffee mug and hunkered down near the white-faced politician.

  Locke’s face was drawn, tinged with gray, deep lines of pain etched into the skin, the mouth curved down. He had been beaten and there were deep cuts over both eyes, one on his jaw, and his lips were split. Dried blood was caked around his nostrils.

  “They drugged me in Cheyenne and hauled me all the way here,” he went on, voice dull with pain. “Beat the hell out of me at every chance, then, just after they brought you in, Duane stripped me to the waist, hauled me outside and tied me to a tree. Then he gave me fifty lashes with a blacksnake whip.” He shook his head slowly. “Plumb loco.”

  “Sure looks mean as a snake, but there must be a hell of a lot of hate in the man over somethin’. Seems about the worst I ever did to him was sell him a Colt percussion pistol some years back, so he ain’t got much agin me. You’re a different story, senator.”

  Locke nodded slowly. “You’re here simply because you came looking for me. Fellers you shot up in town, big hombre’s called Hog, other’s Slip. T
hey found out from the hotel clerk you’d been askin’ after Wolf Duane. They were aimin’ to square with you anyway so figured they could do it better out here, seein’ as you were expectin’ someone to meet you in town. They figured it might be another lawman.”

  There was a question in the senator’s voice and Cato nodded. “Yancey Bannerman. You know him. I sent him a wire before I left Cheyenne. But I’ve thought since he might not get it in time. He was down on the border and might not have gotten back to Austin yet.”

  Locke sighed. “Well, let’s hope he does get it and comes here. But he won’t want to leave it too long or all he’ll find are our corpses. No, that’s not right. He won’t find any trace of us at all. Duane’ll kill us and dump our bodies somewhere they’ll never be located.”

  Cato’s face was expressionless as he absorbed this information. He had been in many tight spots and always managed to get out; not always with a whole skin, but mostly so. This time ... well, he would have to know more before he could decide.

  “What’s Duane got against you?”

  “Like I told you, I used to be a U.S. marshal. I put him away for ten years in Yuma. After I led a raid on his camp and his two brothers got killed.”

  Cato whistled softly. “Quite a score to settle with you, then.”

  “Sure, but that’s not all. His name’s not Duane, but that doesn’t matter, we’ll call him that for convenience. He was always a killer; hired his gun to the highest bidder. He likes to kill. Not clean and fast. He won’t even bring down game meat with a clean shot. He’ll gut shoot it, or blow a leg off, then sit down and watch it die.”

  Cato uttered an expression of disgust.

  “That’s the kind of mad-dog we’re dealing with. He sold his gun to a bunch of rebel politicos about two years back and his job was to assassinate the President ...”