by Scott Connor
He raised his hands to ward the person off, but the man slammed into him and with a leading shoulder barged him to his knees.
The sack tore down over his head and shoulders and firm hands pinned his arms to his side. His assailant wrapped an arm around his neck and attempted to wrestle him to the ground.
Lincoln kicked out and managed to loop a leg around the man’s ankle. He pulled back, tugging the man over.
Then he grabbed the sack, aiming to tear it away, but a rope landed over his head and pulled tight around his chest, securing the sack in place.
Several sets of footsteps stomped around him, giving Lincoln the impression that he was now surrounded.
Sure enough a solid blow from a stick thwacked into his back, making him stumble forward. A second blow to the back of the head sent him to his knees.
Groggily he tried to right himself, but hands splayed all over him, ropes were pulled tight around his legs, stomach, and another around his chest.
A man shouted out instructions for how they should secure him and Lincoln recognized Karl’s voice.
He also guessed that the other man was the remaining Humboldt brother. Worse, any hope that Jack would come to his aid fled when Jack spoke up.
‘I told you I could get him here,’ he said.
‘What do you want in payment?’ Karl asked.
‘Nothing over than the first punch before you deal with him.’
Karl chuckled. ‘That sounds like a fair deal.’
When they’d trussed him up, they dragged him to a horse. They bundled him over it, and then mounted up and headed outside.
Lincoln listened, hoping to hear someone sound an alarm on seeing the group head out of town – he even wouldn’t have minded if that person was Sheriff Curtis – but he heard nothing. So he had no choice but to settle down to suffering a journey to wherever they were taking him.
He judged that a half-hour passed before the group came to a halt. Around him he heard the men dismount. Then Karl tipped him off the back of the horse.
The river was gurgling close by and he guessed they’d brought him to a private location, perhaps close to the spot where he’d found Sheckley’s body last week. He also surmised that they intended to dispose of his body by depositing him in the water.
Karl tugged the sack from his head, and Lincoln saw that he did face the two Humboldt brothers along with Jack.
‘Can I kill him now?’ Heinrich asked, grinning as he paced up to Lincoln.
‘No,’ Karl said. ‘Move out the way. I want to rough him up first.’
Karl moved past Heinrich with his fist raised, but Jack spoke up.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘You agreed I’d get the first punch.’
Karl shrugged and feigned swinging a punch at Lincoln. Despite Lincoln’s determination to avoid reacting, it still made him flinch away.
Karl laughed and stood aside with an eager gleam lighting his eyes as he ensured he was in the best position to watch the punishment Jack delivered.
Jack wasted no time in pacing up to him and without preamble rocked back his arm. He thundered a low fist into Lincoln’s chest, the blow sending a bolt of pain lancing through his ribs and bending him double. Then he raised a foot and with his heel pushed Lincoln over onto his side.
‘That satisfy you?’ Karl asked.
‘Not yet,’ Jack said. He took a run at Lincoln and kicked him deep in the guts, blasting all the air from Lincoln’s chest and making him roll over twice before he came to a shuddering and painful halt. ‘Although that should be enough. Now you can make him suffer.’
‘I intend to,’ Karl said, cracking his knuckles and advancing on Lincoln. ‘He’ll be begging me to let Heinrich kill him before the night is over.’
Jack snorted and shook his head. ‘Don’t just make him suffer with your fists. Tear him up inside.’
Karl halted. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean tell him the truth. Tell him what you did to Sheriff Pringle before you finish him off. That’ll ruin him more than any amount of blows.’
Karl chuckled. ‘I guess telling him that would be fun. He’s spent all that time searching for the man who killed the lawman and he was right here all along.’
Lincoln twisted and managed to roll himself over. He looked up at the three men.
‘You and your brothers killed him?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Karl said, grinning. ‘He’d been tearing himself up about something for months and he thought I was behind it, but I wasn’t. I’d had enough of him pulling me in all the time so I shot him up.’
‘And Wesley Jameson?’
Karl shook his head as he advanced on Lincoln with his fist raised.
‘You don’t ask the questions. I get to ask them.’ He glanced at his fist. ‘This will do my talking for me.’
Karl took another pace towards him and despite the urge to roll away, Lincoln glared up defiantly at him. To Karl’s side, Heinrich paced in, while over Karl’s shoulder Lincoln saw Jack also move in.
Lincoln looked at each man in turn, wondering which one of them would attack him first, but to his surprise Jack slipped his gun from its holster. Lincoln looked away from him, hope flickering in his mind as to what he was doing, but not wanting to alert the brothers.
When Karl beckoned to Heinrich for him to drag Lincoln to his feet, Jack fired, blasting Heinrich in the side and sending him tumbling away. Then he swung his gun round to aim at Karl, who was turning at the hip, his gun coming to hand, but he was already too late.
A single gunshot tore the gun from his hand. Then Jack advanced on Karl with his gun now aimed at Karl’s head.
Karl stood before him, his stance uncertain as he darted his gaze back and forth between Jack and his dead brother. When Jack signified that he get down on his knees, Karl complied.
‘Why did you turn on us?’ he whined.
‘I got arrested because Lincoln reckoned I was behind the crimes you committed. I’ve now cleared my name. Now, if you want to live, tell Lincoln what you did to Wesley.’
‘We did nothing.’
‘You burned down the saloon when you thought Wesley wouldn’t give you an alibi.’
‘Alex did do that, but only because this man paid him to do it. None of us killed him.’
Jack stood over Karl and placed the barrel of the gun against his forehead.
‘Evidence gained under these circumstances won’t count for much,’ Lincoln urged.
‘Who cares about evidence?’ Jack snapped. ‘I just want the truth.’
‘But I didn’t kill Wesley, only Sheriff Pringle,’ Karl spluttered.
‘That’s your final word?’
‘Yeah.’
Jack shrugged and then fired, kicking Karl’s body away and to the ground. Lincoln watched the body roll to a halt, feeling no satisfaction in seeing the killer of his old friend meeting his end this way.
‘That was wrong,’ he said. ‘You push them to the brink to get them to talk, but you don’t kill them.’
‘I guess that means I won’t ever make a lawman, then.’ Jack holstered his gun and offered a smile. ‘So have you got a problem with what I had to do?’
‘The situation was fraught. You did what you had to do.’ Lincoln flexed his chest. ‘I just hope for your sake you didn’t bust my ribs while you did it.’
‘So you haven’t left here in a week?’ Lincoln said.
Mayor Ellison looked up from his desk. He was haggard, his clothes ruffled and slept-in, the rank smell in the office suggesting he really hadn’t left here since Lincoln had headed to Black Point. He glanced at Lincoln’s companion Jack and then back to Lincoln.
‘I haven’t,’ he said, his voice gruff and defeated. ‘Not while someone is out there waiting for us.’
‘There’s one less of the seven now.’ Lincoln waited for Ellison to react, but he just looked at him with blank eyes. ‘Judge Murphy is dead.’
‘I heard the gunshot . . . Did you see who did it?’
‘H
e did it to himself, like all the others have thought of doing in their darkest hours, except he had the guts to pull the trigger.’
Ellison glanced at the top drawer of his desk, his guilty expression suggesting he had also considered that option.
‘Or he’d had so much whiskey he didn’t know what he was doing no more.’
‘Or that.’ Lincoln provided a grim smile. ‘Sheriff Curtis is now in charge of the investigation so you have nothing to worry about.’
Ellison snorted. ‘I gather from your tone that you don’t approve of my decision to make him a sheriff.’
‘Nope, but that doesn’t matter to me. My time here is over. You called me in to find out who killed Ben and I did. It was Karl Humboldt, aided by his brothers.’
‘But they didn’t kill the others?’
‘Nope.’
Ellison got to his feet and came out from behind his desk to face Lincoln.
‘Then you have to stay to work out the rest.’
‘I don’t. There is no connection between Karl killing Ben and the recent killings of everyone in that photograph.’ Lincoln smiled when Ellison flinched. ‘Yes, I have several copies of the picture. Perhaps I’ll give them to Curtis before I leave. It might help him work out what’s happening before the killer gets you and Billy.’
‘Don’t go.’ Ellison dropped to his knees and in a parody of pleading held his hands out beseechingly and without pride. He even looked at Jack as if he might help him. ‘Please.’
Lincoln considered this once proud man, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Perhaps the killer won’t bother killing you. You’re a destroyed man already.’ Lincoln turned away, fully intending to leave and not look back, but then a thought came to him and he turned back. ‘How is Billy?’
‘Billy is fine. He’s looking into several ventures already. Nothing depresses him. He’s been bankrupt before and he’ll probably get it all back before he loses it all again.’
Lincoln nodded, sudden understanding coming to him.
‘Then he’ll survive, even if you won’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I know what the killer is doing.’ Lincoln glanced at Jack. ‘And I know who he is.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘When are you going to tell us why you brought us here?’ Mayor Ellison asked.
Lincoln didn’t reply immediately as he paced away from Destitution’s saloon to stand before the three gravestones. He stood with them at his back and faced his assembled group of Jack Porter, Mayor Ellison, Billy Stone and Sheriff Curtis.
‘Five people who were in this picture are dead.’ Lincoln withdrew the picture from his pocket and held it aloft. ‘A hounded Ben died at Karl’s hands, although that wasn’t how it was supposed to end for him. Wesley died after his saloon burnt down, Sheckley died after discovering the woman he’d fallen for gave her favors to everyone who passed through, and Lenox died after discovering the same truth. Murphy died after losing the faith of the townsfolk. That just leaves you two alive out of the original seven, one because you hid in your office, and the other because you’re in a good mood.’
Billy laughed. ‘I guess I am irrepressible, but why would that keep me alive?’
‘It only takes a bullet to kill a man, but if you want revenge maybe for some people that’s not enough. Whoever killed them wanted something more. He wanted to break them first.’
‘Then who is doing it?’ Ellison asked.
‘You two know already, or at least suspect, and it all depends on the fact that this photograph has a date on it that’s before the date on those graves.’
‘That could be a mistake,’ the mayor said, not meeting Lincoln’s eye.
‘Perhaps, but I prefer a simpler explanation. Quincy Allen was the man they couldn’t hang and the trouble with boasts like that is they’re a challenge, and so you decided to hang him anyhow. You couldn’t find a witness to his crimes who was brave enough to talk, so you invented a crime.’
‘He shot his brothers,’ Billy said with a shame-faced glance at Ellison.
‘He shot three of them, according to you, but I’m saying the truth is you invented a crime, sentenced him, and hanged him. Later, his brothers came looking for revenge and you killed them. Then you claimed that that was the crime you hanged him for. Nobody questioned your story when it was Quincy who’d died and you had the bodies and you had the photograph to prove it.’
‘You can’t prove that,’ Ellison said with an imploring glance at Sheriff Curtis, although the strangely quiet Curtis didn’t return that glance.
‘I can’t, not now the witness, the lawman, the bounty hunter, the judge, and the executioner are all dead,’ Lincoln said. ‘If you two want to take that secret to the grave, you can. Trouble is, that might be closer than you hope it’ll be because the one man you didn’t silence is now taking his revenge.’
‘Who?’
Lincoln paced up to the line of men and stood before Ellison.
‘Three brothers came looking for you, but I reckon there was a fourth brother who stayed behind.’
‘There was another one, but he was only a kid.’
‘Ten years on, he isn’t a kid no more. Can you even remember his name?’
‘No.’
Lincoln turned away from Ellison and paced down the line of men until he stood before Jack, who was watching proceedings quietly but intently.
‘What about you, Jack?’ Lincoln asked. ‘Do you know the name of this youngest brother?’
‘I don’t, but I believe you reckon his name was . . .’ Jack rubbed his chin and then winked. ‘. . . was Jack.’
Lincoln smiled. ‘I do.’
‘Why did you have to bring us all the way out here to present your theory?’
‘Because Destitution is where it all started, and it must conjure up memories for everyone that was involved, no matter how inscrutable a poker-face those men put on.’
‘Not for me it doesn’t,’ Jack said, shrugging. ‘I’ve never been here before.’
‘You came here ten years ago, except you were too young to help your brothers. You were here this week, and you were old enough to help me.’
For the first time Jack looked away. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘I don’t know, but before you tell me why, I’ll give you a tour of the town where these men hanged your brother and killed your other brothers when they came looking for revenge.’
Jack snorted. ‘You got this wrong.’
‘You sure did,’ Curtis said, speaking for the first time since arriving in Destitution. ‘If anyone arrests Jack, it’ll be me. You won’t question him no more.’
Curtis walked behind Ellison and Billy and placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. He moved to shepherd him away, but to Lincoln’s surprise, Jack squirmed away and turned to the saloon.
‘I have nothing to fear from Lincoln’s ridiculous accusation. I am not Quincy’s brother and being here doesn’t concern me.’ He walked towards the saloon and stood looking at it. ‘Where did they hang him?’
‘You can tell from this.’ Lincoln joined Jack and gave him the picture.
Jack glanced from the photograph to the saloon and then moved a few paces to the side.
‘I believe it would be there,’ he said, pointing to a spot beside the door.
Lincoln looked back at Billy and Ellison and received a shamefaced nod from Ellison. Billy lowered his head and wouldn’t meet his eye.
Curtis hadn’t followed them; he had also lowered his head and wasn’t looking at the saloon.
Lincoln beckoned for Billy and Ellison to join him and reluctantly they came over. The four men stood in a line facing the saloon.
It was now so peaceful and the saloon was such a wreck that Lincoln couldn’t imagine that the scene the photograph depicted had actually happened here. He hoped that those who had been here would be able to envisage it, and the guilty ought to react.
Unfortunately, the minimal reactions Lincoln saw didn�
��t help him.
Billy shuffled from foot to foot, Ellison frowned, and Jack, consummate poker-player that he was, looked at the saloon with the hint of a smile on his lips.
To try to force some sort of reaction Lincoln beckoned for the argumentative Curtis to join them, but Curtis was glaring at the backs of the line of men and ignored him.
‘Come on, Alan,’ Lincoln said. ‘Be useful for once in your miserable existence and see if you can help jog these people’s consciences.’
‘I’m not,’ Curtis spat out, his eyes flaring. ‘The sooner we leave, the sooner I can start a proper investigation.’
‘I just want everyone to remember the details of what happened here when a man died swinging on the end of the rope for no crime.’
Curtis swore and bunched his jaw, his anger out of all proportion to Lincoln’s request.
‘Quincy Allen committed plenty of crimes,’ Ellison said. ‘He deserved what happened to him.’
‘And his brothers?’ Lincoln asked.
‘They were as bad as he was.’
‘Then show me where you killed them.’
‘That won’t do no good. They were all worthless varmints and everybody breathed easier after we’d disposed of them.’
Ellison set his feet wide apart, gathering his courage and defying Lincoln to argue with him, while Jack swung round to look at Lincoln. His lively eyes and smile suggested he knew Lincoln was looking for a reaction in him. Then his smile died and he looked behind them at Curtis.
Lincoln moved, too, and saw that while they’d been talking Curtis had drawn his gun. Then Curtis fired.
He blasted a slug into Billy’s back, throwing him on his front, and then swung his gun on to Ellison.
Jack saw what he about to do and pushed Ellison away, his action saving the mayor from getting a bullet in the back; instead the slug caught him through the side and sent him spinning.
Lincoln drew his gun and in a fluid motion turned at the hip.
Curtis was now running for the trading post beside the saloon and Lincoln’s shot winged past his shoulder. Then Jack and the stumbling Ellison blocked his line of sight.
