Bloodthirsty

by William W. Johnstone

  “He’s still breathing, I can hear him snore. Good enough, says I. It’s better than either of you deserve, so consider yourselves lucky and shut up with your complaining.”

  Nearly three hours had passed since the shooting in the street out front of the Silver Dollar Saloon. With Deputy Gates seriously wounded and no other lawmen readily available, Buckhorn and Orndecker had taken charge of things. The town’s only doctor was summoned. Like Hully had said, he temporarily treated the feuding cowboys right there in the street and then turned his full attention on Gates, having him moved to his office where he could work most effectively on the deputy’s more serious injuries.

  While that was going on, Buckhorn and Orndecker, relying largely on the latter’s familiarity with the procedures and layout of things from his days of wearing a badge, had marched the wounded cowboys to the jail, where they’d locked them in separate cells and waited for Banning to show up.

  “How about the ambush scene? Any luck out there?” Orndecker said after the sheriff had quieted the whining Hully.

  Banning shook his head wearily. “None to speak of. Couldn’t even tell for sure how many did the shooting. Whoever did it went to a fair amount of work to hide their sign and made a good job of it. We couldn’t tell which direction they came from or which direction they headed out, either one.”

  “Bad luck for all your trouble,” said Orndecker. “And then more bad news when you made it back here.”

  “Could be worse,” Banning said, his mouth twisting ruefully. “At least there ain’t nobody dead this time. And neither of the two cowboys you shot are Flying W riders.”

  Buckhorn’s mouth twisted. “I must be slipping. Last night only one of the two I killed was Flying W. Today, it not only wasn’t a Wainwright man I shot, but I didn’t even manage to kill him.”

  Banning gave him a look. “It’s a good thing I know you’re only joking. You are, right?”

  Buckhorn didn’t bother answering.

  Heaving a sigh, Orndecker shoved himself up out of the straight-backed wooden chair he’d been occupying. “I’m not joking, either, when I say I’d better get back over to the newspaper office or Justine will be coming after my hide. She wanted to add another piece about this afternoon’s incident into that special edition she’s getting ready to run, which meant having to write it and then shifting the layout to make it fit. She’s likely got that done by now, but there’ll still be some things I can help with to get the press ready. So if you gentlemen will excuse me . . .”

  As he started for the door, Buckhorn stood up, too. “Reckon I’m done here as well.”

  To which the sheriff quickly said, “If you can hold on another minute, Buckhorn, I’d like to have a word with you.”

  Caught a little by surprise, Buckhorn stayed where he was. Shrugging, he said, “All right.”

  Looking past him, Banning said to Orndecker, “Thanks again for stepping in and helping out today, Carl. I appreciate it. And I mean that.”

  Orndecker managed his own shrug. “Not a problem, Paul. It was the right thing to do, that’s all. Plus, hell, it felt kinda good to get back into the harness again.” He hesitated to jab a finger at the chair he’d been sitting in. “All except for that torture rack thing. Can’t the county afford better chairs than that for visitors to your office? I’d wager you got more comfortable accommodations in the blasted cells.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind and try to squeeze it into the next budget,” Banning told him.

  “You do that.” Halfway out the door, Orndecker paused again and cut a glance over at Buckhorn. “Don’t forget my offer from earlier.”

  When Orndecker was gone, Banning said, “I suppose whatever that was about is none of my business.”

  “You’d be right,” Buckhorn said. “But I’ll tell you anyway. Has to do with him offering to stand watch so I can get a good night’s sleep tonight without having to worry about it turning permanent from another round of gun blasts.”

  Banning considered that a moment before saying, “Comes to that, you couldn’t have much better than Carl Orndecker looking out for you . . . as long as he stays sober.”

  “He’s sober today,” Buckhorn said. “And he looked pretty darn good out there on the street earlier.”

  “Like I said, before the bottle started getting the better of him, there wasn’t hardly a better lawman and not too many gunmen better than Carl.” Banning gestured to the chair Buckhorn had only recently vacated. “Don’t know if those things are really as torturous as Carl let on but, if you sit back down, I’ll tell you a few things you might find interesting.”

  Buckhorn returned to his chair.

  “It was a woman who caused it. Caused Carl to crawl into the bottle, that is.” Banning jerked a thumb toward the holding cells. “Ironically, the final straw came as the result of a situation not too different from the one those two fools brought on today. A pretty little saloon singer showed up in town. You probably know the kind. She liked to play both ends against the middle when it came to men. Lead a couple different ones on and watch ’em squirm in their efforts to be number one.

  “Only trouble was, this little tease wasn’t careful enough or smart enough not to choose men who were too dangerous to be toyed with. One was a gambler named Lloyd, the other was Carl. Came the night Lloyd demanded she quit playing her silly games and say what was what. She laughed in his face so he shot and killed her. Then Carl shot and killed him. After that, even though everybody else was willing to overlook the whole thing, Carl couldn’t get over it. He didn’t blame the saloon singer, like he should have. No, he blamed himself for letting her get shot . . . and for not killing Lloyd sooner.”

  “So he crawled into a bottle to blot it all out,” Buckhorn summed up.

  “About the size of it. When he realized he was drinking too much to do his job proper, he turned in his badge and went away. He came back after a while, after Justine’s husband died, but he wasn’t much better. He goes in spurts where he can stay sober for a spell. But then . . . well, you got a firsthand look yesterday how he can take a dive.”

  “Sounds like a hard-luck tale,” Buckhorn said. “But most everybody’s got one, in one form or other. They find different ways to deal with it. As far as the ones who turn into drunks, it comes down to only one person who does the elbow bending and the pouring of rotgut down their throats.”

  “Kind of a hard way of looking at it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I got my reasons.”

  “I suppose you do.”

  Buckhorn shifted in his chair. “You didn’t ask me to stick around so you could tell me the sad tale of Carl Orndecker and get my sour outlook on it. So what else was it you wanted to talk about?”

  Banning started to say something but then stopped short. He cast a sideways glance over at the holding cells. Oney-Bob was still snoring loudly and Hully had rolled over onto one side, favoring his injured shoulder, to face the wall. Maybe asleep, maybe only feigning it.

  “On second thought,” the sheriff said, “let’s step outside and talk in the fresh air. We’ll have more privacy, plus it’s kinda rank in here.”

  Outside, the heat of the day still hung in the air up and down the length of Front Street. Afternoon shadows from the building peaks along the west side were just beginning to lengthen. Within one such shadow under the narrow porch overhang out front of the sheriff’s office, Buckhorn and Banning found moderate relief out of the direct sun.

  Banning put both hands to the small of his back and stretched his torso straight back and then to either side. “Hate to admit it, but I’ve allowed myself to get so damned deskbound lately the ride back and forth to the ambush site stiffened me up something fierce.”

  “It’ll happen,” Buckhorn said.

  Continuing to stretch, the sheriff said, “While we were there, Thomas Wainwright rode out to pay a visit. To check and see if we were going about our investigation properly, I reckon, since it was his men who got cut down and all. He didn�
��t complain, so I guess what he saw suited him well enough. Before he left, though, he gave me a message. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Buckhorn waited.

  “Before you ask,” Banning went on, “I don’t make a habit of serving as a messenger boy for Wainwright . . . though there’s plenty around who’d be quick to doubt that. They think I’m pretty much at Wainwright’s beck and call and that I hop whenever he commands. Maybe I do, at least to some degree, but so does just about everybody else around these parts.”

  “That’s your business,” Buckhorn said, getting impatient. “What’s the message for me?”

  Banning quit beating around the bush. “He wants to meet with you. He’s invited you for dinner at his place this evening.”

  Buckhorn normally did a pretty good job of hiding his emotions, but his surprise at those words showed plainly on his face. “What the hell brought that on?”

  “Beats me. Like I said, I’m just the messenger boy.”

  “Not much notice.”

  “Thomas Wainwright operates pretty much on his own schedule. Expects others to bend accordingly.”

  “And if I turn him down?”

  “He really didn’t give that as an option. Something else he don’t expect is people turning him down.” Banning cocked an eyebrow. “But if you was to make that choice, I’d advise you to plan on not wasting a lot of time riding wide of these parts.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “More like an interpretation. I could be wrong.”

  Buckhorn frowned. “Knowing the way he feels about Indians, what would make him extend an invitation like that to me?”

  “Making a guess, I’d say he just might want to offer you a job as one of his hired guns. He’s been bringing in top men from all over the West and here you turn up, right under his nose, showing yourself mighty handy with a shooting iron. Maybe he figures it just wouldn’t be smart, Indian or no Indian, to let you slip away and ride off.”

  “I keep hearing about this army of hired guns Wainwright is putting together,” Buckhorn said. “What is that all about, anyway?”

  It was Banning’s turn to form a frown. “Damned if I know. All I know is that I don’t like it. I’m being kept strictly in the dark. So much for me being in tight with Wainwright, eh?” The sheriff’s frown deepened. “I take that back. I do know something more, or at least feel it strongly enough so that it’s like I do know it. Whatever Wainwright’s brewing is something big. And it’s going to bust wide open before very much longer.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Buckhorn didn’t have a lot of time, but he didn’t need much to make up his mind. By the time he’d walked from the sheriff’s office back to his hotel, he knew he would accept Thomas Wainwright’s invitation to dinner. What was more, if the anticipated job offer was made, he would accept that, too.

  What better way to get a closer look at the Flying W operation and maybe determine what this “something big” was that so many people seemed convinced Wainwright was up to? Also, Buckhorn reminded himself, becoming part of Wainwright’s crew would surely put him in a better position for the ultimate confrontation that Haydon had hired him for.

  His time in Wagon Wheel had hardly been uneventful. Suddenly, it felt like it was picking up more momentum. That’s why he had to move fast.

  In the second-floor hallway of the hotel, instead of going directly to his own room, Buckhorn paused before the door to room three. No one else was in the hall, so he tapped lightly on the door. Martin Goodwin’s slightly muffled voice said the door was unlocked, to come in.

  When Buckhorn entered, the scene was an ironic mirror image of what had transpired in his own room only a few hours earlier. Goodwin was sitting at the writing desk with a revolver and an open box of cartridges before him.

  He looked up, his mouth twisting wryly. “You should be glad to see that your advice for me to arm myself sank in. The shooting in the street that you were part of drove home the point even more. You fellas out here in the West don’t mess around when it comes to settling your differences, do you?”

  “You seem to be catching on,” Buckhorn said. “Yet, you tell me to come on in while you sit right in the line of fire with an unloaded gun in front of you. If I’d been somebody with bad intentions in mind, what would you have done? Thrown the bullets at me, one by one? Remember what I said about the only thing worse than not having a gun is having one but not knowing how to use it?”

  “Yeah, I recall you telling me that.” Goodwin scowled. “I only just bought this thing a little while ago. I was hoping maybe I could get you to give me some pointers on using it. In the meantime, I was sitting here studying it and trying to get a feel for it on my own.”

  “Well, getting to know your weapon is never a bad idea,” Buckhorn had to admit. “At least you had the sense to leave the bullets out of it while you were handling it and looking it over.”

  “So you’ll give me some lessons, then?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have much chance for that. But I know somebody who could serve that purpose, and he fits with the rest of why I ducked in to see you, anyway. You mentioned the shoot-out from a little while ago. He’s the other fella who pitched in and helped take down those two troublemakers after the deputy got shot. Name’s Carl Orndecker. He used to be a lawman himself, as a matter of fact.”

  Goodwin nodded. “Sounds like a pretty good substitute.”

  “I’ll introduce you to Carl and also his sister. She runs the local newspaper.”

  Goodwin lifted his eyebrows. “I’ve seen her. Pretty gal. You can introduce me to pretty gals like her all you want.”

  “First things first,” Buckhorn warned him. “Carl and Justine, to name just two around this county, have no love for Wainwright, either. Our meeting with them will be strictly business. Any funny business you might have in mind will have to wait until later, on your own time.”

  “Sure. Understood.”

  “How soon would you be ready to start your dowsing?” Buckhorn asked. “Have you got all the equipment you need?”

  “Right there,” said Goodwin, pointing to a suitcase tilted against the base of a coatrack. “I can start tomorrow. I’d want to scout the land a little more closely before picking my actual starting point is all.”

  “One more thing. When you do this for real—”

  “I am doing it for real. The people around here are suffering. If I can find water, do something to ease their plight, I damn sure mean to do my best to accomplish that. Other motivations might have been involved in fetching me here but, now that I’ve arrived, I don’t intend any fakery when it comes to my dowsing.”

  “That’s real noble of you,” Buckhorn said. “But what I was trying to get at was how it is you usually take on a dowsing job. I reckon you get paid, right? Hired by some town council or group of ranchers or the like? So what’s your cover story for who hired you to come to Whitestone County?”

  “I don’t have one. Partly I didn’t think of it, partly it would have been hard for me to come up with something on my own until I had a better sense of exactly what the situation was out here.”

  “That’s all right. We can come up with something when we meet with Carl and Justine to go over the gun business and some other things that have come up.”

  “When is this meeting going to take place?” Goodwin wanted to know.

  “Pretty quick. I haven’t arranged anything with Carl or his sister yet, but I’m sure they’ll make time for us.”

  “You’re being rather mysterious.”

  “Just bear with me. I’ll give you the rest of the details, at least as many as I know, in just a little while. Give me about fifteen minutes. Then I want you to go over to the newspaper office, walk in like you want to conduct some business. I’ll be there by the time you arrive, but I’ll have used the back way to make sure no one notices we’re there at the same time. I’ll fill you in, along with Carl and Justine, the rest of the way.”

  “Go
t it. It’ll be good to get out and do something instead of waiting here and staring at these four walls. Fifteen minutes it is.”

  * * *

  “Going out there amounts to almost certain suicide. You’ve got to be crazy to even consider it.”

  Buckhorn smiled wryly. “There are those who’d say that’s already been established, many times over.”

  “Then all the more reason not to have to prove it yet again,” Justine said.

  “Stop and think a minute,” her brother suggested. “It’s far more likely Wainwright wants to hire him onto his crew of gunmen. If all he wanted was to kill Joe, he’d send hired killers to do the job away from his ranch.”

  “That’s the way I see it,” Buckhorn agreed. “Not to say he eventually won’t want me dead, but for the time being I get the sense he wants to save face and take me out of the picture, only not do it with more violence. What better way to do that than to bring me into the fold where he can keep a close eye on me—maybe even get some use out of me and my gun—and then deal with me when it’s a more suitable time.”

  “That seems awfully elaborate,” Justine said stubbornly. “What would make one time more suitable than another if he intends to get around to killing you anyway?”

  “Earlier, at lunch, you mentioned the recent surge in violence around here,” Buckhorn reminded her. “You also said how it might signal Wainwright getting ready to spring the next phase of his big plan, whatever that is. Sheriff Banning said something similar just a little while ago about how Wainwright and the army of gunmen he’s gathered feel like something big is ready to bust open. So more fringe violence, like the shooting this afternoon and the other stuff I’ve ended up in the thick of, could be the last thing Wainwright wants in order to keep folks from getting edgy and being on the lookout for signs of more trouble. Since I’ve managed to draw a fair amount of attention to myself already, him simply sending more killers after me would only attract added attention, sharpen the lookout of folks in exactly the way he wants to avoid.”