The Long Hitch

by Michael Zimmer

  “So you created a hero out of a murderer?”

  He stared at her as he would a stranger, unable to comprehend the viciousness of her attack. Then he recognized the intent behind her words and knew it shouldn’t have surprised him after all. He’d seen her this way before, with people she despised. Buck turned away sadly. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this. His affections for Dulce had always been genuine. Their differences had torn them apart, not circumstance; circumstance had only hastened the inevitable. Keeping his voice low, he repeated: “Do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes, everything.”

  He nodded, satisfied. He’d done what Jock had asked him to do. From here on, Dulce’s safety would reside in Robert Haywood’s hands, and Buck had no doubt that she would be well looked after. As he started to walk away, a discarded cigarette arched into the street from a dark alley across from the hotel. Its shower of tiny sparks briefly illuminated a tall, lean figure standing just inside the alley’s mouth. Reacting instinctively, Buck slammed into Dulce’s side, knocking her out of the way just as the sound of a gunshot cleaved the still night.

  Dulce cried out loudly as she and Buck tumbled to the floor. Her fall was partially cushioned by Buck’s body but he quickly pushed off, scrambling to the balcony’s edge just in time to see the tall figure across the street turn tail and run. Palming his Colt, Buck sent two quick rounds after the fleeing bushwhacker. but he knew even before the smoke cleared that he’d missed.

  He went back to Dulce’s side and knelt beside her. The look of terror in her eyes was only partially veiled by the coppery curls that fell across her face. Buck grabbed her shoulder, squeezing. “Are you hurt? Dulce, are you all right?”

  “Let me go!” she screamed, scooting away from him.

  “Dammit, Dulce, are you hurt?”

  A lamp’s pale light appeared behind them and a pistol’s muzzle was pressed into the back of Buck’s skull. “Get away from her, you brute!”

  Buck glanced over his shoulder. Robert Haywood stood above them, a chunky Webley revolver clutched firmly in his right hand, the lamp held high in his left.

  “McCready! What in thunder are you doing?”

  Buck got to his feet. “Someone took a shot at Dulce. I don’t think she’s been hit, but she’s scared. Look after her, will you?”

  “Someone took a shot at her?” Haywood looked stupefied. “Who?”

  Buck didn’t answer right away. He returned to the edge of the balcony to stare across the street. Then he said: “I’ll be damned, I think I might know.”

  There was no point in exploring the alley where the tall man had lain in wait. Whoever had taken the shot at Dulce—and Buck was convinced now that it was she, not he, who had been the intended target all along—would be gone by now.

  Pausing in front of the hotel, he punched the empties from his .44, then fed it fresh rounds. Returning the Colt to its holster, he started up the street in swift, determined strides.

  Elmer Poindexter wasn’t around when Buck entered the jail, but figures stirring in the deeper gloom of the single cell confirmed that the prisoners were still behind bars. Even in the poor light of a lamp turned low, Buck could see that Fleck and Kelso had been at it again. Both men were bruised and bloodied, and Nick’s eyes were nearly swollen shut from his broken nose. Arlen struggled to his feet when Buck approached, draping his arms through the strap-iron door. He grinned expectantly, then made a face and gingerly touched his split lip.

  “What happened?” Buck asked.

  Arlen’s smile returned; this time he ignored the pain. “I don’t think Nick is convinced yet that things have changed between us, but he’s learning.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothin’. That lawdog’s right. If Kelso knew anything, he’d be bragging about it.”

  Buck gripped the bars. “Tell me that story again, Fleck, about the night Mase was killed.”

  “Hell, I’ve already told you that.…”

  “Tell it again ”

  Arlen shrugged. “I was standin’ outside the Central Pacific depot waitin’ for Campbell to come out.…”

  “But you’d seen him earlier, right? In the International?”

  “Yeah, that’s where I heard about the Chihuahua massacre.”

  “After his argument with the big guy who threatened to cut off his ears?”

  “No, before that.”

  Buck’s fingers tightened, his knuckles like pale, knobby globes on the strap-iron. “Who was talking about it before the fight?”

  “Some fellas at a table behind me. I couldn’t see ’em, but I could hear ’em. Thing is, I was keepin’ my eye on Campbell and wishin’ like hell I wasn’t there.” He shrugged as if embarrassed. “I reckon I’ve never been too keen on that kind of work, but I needed the money.…”

  “Mase,” Buck interrupted tersely. “Why were they talking about Mase?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Was it the same guy who shot him?”

  “I told you, McCready, I don’t know who shot him. I was keyed up that night like I was gonna bust. I just plain damn didn’t pay any attention to who was doin’ all the talkin’.”

  Buck took a deep breath and lowered his hands from the bars. “All right, tell me what happened.”

  Arlen left out nothing, not the cold desert wind or the briny stink of the Great Salt Lake or the yellow-eyed dog with its matted coat. He described Mase’s exit from the saloon and the stranger’s unexpected appearance—a tall, lean, unidentifiable presence—materializing from the darkness of the alley like an apparition. Arlen hadn’t been able to make out the stranger’s features when Mase paused to light his cigarette and then, when the shot rang out and Mase had staggered and fallen, Arlen had fled down the road like a frightened rabbit.…

  He stopped there and his eyes widened. “What? McCready, what?”

  Buck’s heart was thumping like a drum as he stalked away from the cell. He’d known the answer was here, just waiting for him to open his eyes and see it.

  “Dammit, what is it?” Arlen called, but Buck didn’t reply. He didn’t even pull the front door closed when he left the jail. Loosening the Colt in its holster, he started down Main toward Carlson’s Saloon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Buck paused in front of the saloon to remove his jacket. He felt strangely calm as he loosened his Colt in its holster, then pushed through the batwing doors. Carlson’s was a long, narrow building with a high ceiling and a plain bar that ran down the left side of the room. Most of the tables near the front were filled with Box K teamsters; most of those in back were unoccupied.

  “Buck!” several of the drivers hollered, while others chimed in with cheerful invitations to join them. The long trip was behind them now, and for a while the hard, dangerous work was done. Tonight they could relax and drink and laugh about what only a few days before had nearly beaten them down.

  “C’mon and have a drink!” Ray shouted from one of the tables, waving for Buck to join him and Peewee and Joe Perry.

  “Have two!” Charlie Bigelow roared from the bar. “Hell, you’re payin’ for ’em.”

  The rest of the men laughed at Charlie’s joke, but their humor soon died. Buck tossed his jacket on a nearby table, then made his way down the length of the room.

  “What’s going on, Bucky?” Peewee asked in a hushed voice.

  The rear of the saloon, where the light was poorer, the air thicker, was occupied by a solitary individual, slouched over the bar as if trying to avoid attention. He looked up at Buck’s approach, a scowl flashing across his face. There was a glass of whiskey on the bar in front of him and he’d just finished rolling a cigarette that he hadn’t yet struck a match to. “What do you want, McCready?” he growled.

  Buck wrapped his hand around the Colt’s grip. “I’m wanting you.”

  Lyle Mead’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What for?”

  “For killing Mase Campbell and Thad Collins.”


  There was a murmur of surprise from behind Buck, then a deathly silence. Lyle guffawed. “You getting desperate now that the trip is over?”

  “It took me a while to figure it out,” Buck admitted. “It was Arlen Fleck who helped me put it together.”

  “Arlen Fleck doesn’t know his ass from a feedbag,” Lyle replied scornfully. “Besides, that skinny bastard’d tell you anything you wanted to hear if he thought it’d get him out of jail quicker.”

  “He heard you talking about Chihuahua in the International earlier that night, then he saw you stop Mase in the street to ask for a light for your cigarette,” Buck continued purposefully. “That was the kicker, the thing that’s bothered me ever since the first time I talked with Fleck. I just couldn’t put my finger on it until he told me the story again tonight. Maybe you’ve noticed, but there aren’t a lot of men out here who smoke cigarettes. Oh, they will. I hear it’s a growing fad down in Arizona and New Mexico, and Milo picked up the habit in Kansas from Texas drovers, but right now, along the Montana Road, just about everybody I know who uses tobacco either smokes a pipe or cigar, or chews it. Only you, Milo, and Paddy O’Rourke smoke cigarettes. Paddy’s dead and Milo doesn’t fit the description of the man who killed Mase. He’s not tall enough or skinny enough. But you are. You fit the description perfectly.”

  “Christ,” Ray Jones grunted, his chair scraping roughly across the wooden floor.

  “Stay where you are, Ray,” Buck snapped without taking his eyes off Mead. “This is between us.”

  “Is he the one, Buck?” Charlie asked in an awestruck tone, as if he was looking at a two-headed calf rather than a common killer.

  “Yeah, he’s the one,” Buck said flatly. “You’re the one who took a shot at Dulce tonight, too, aren’t you?” Buck pressed. “Just like you did the night of the bandit’s raid and that night along the Bear River.” His eyes dropped to the heels of Lyle’s drover’s boots, the same kind that had left the print in the soft soil of the Bear. It was all coming together except for one great big hole right in the middle. Why?

  Lyle’s eyes darted to the rear door, less than half a dozen long strides away. Escape lay just beyond those thin pine planks, but he didn’t make a run for it. Like everyone else in the room, he knew he’d never make it.

  “You didn’t hurt your hand falling off the wood wagon, either,” Buck said. “You hurt it that night in the International when the upstairs piano player blew the door apart in your face, after you gunned down Sally Hayes. It was you I saw in the dark above Portneuf Cañon, too, then chased into the thicket.”

  “You’re full of shit, McCready,” Lyle said shakily.

  “Am I?” Buck replied. “I saw you in the alley tonight. I know it was you who took that shot at Dulce. I saw you toss your cigarette away before you fired. But you missed her, Mead. You failed to kill her the same way you failed to kill Peewee or stop the Box K.” He smiled contemptuously. “I’m thinking whoever hired you will be wanting their money back.”

  A tic jumped in Lyle’s cheek and his head snapped back as if he’d been slapped, and in that same instant the wildness fled his eyes and his desire to flee, so evident only moments before, vanished. “Nobody hired me, McCready. I’m an independent, remember? I work for myself.”

  Lyle’s response caught Buck off guard. “Then what did you

  have against Mase that you’d kill him for, and what do you have against Dulce Kavanaugh?”

  Lyle sneered, beyond feigning innocence now, beyond caring. “I ain’t got a damn’ thing against that spoiled little bitch. It’s her daddy I wanted.”

  “Jock! You’d kill a woman just to hurt her father?”

  Lyle’s fingers drifted to the butt of his revolver, sticking out from under his jacket in a cross-draw holster. “You don’t have any idea who I am, do you?”

  Buck could hear the Box K teamsters shuffling out of the line of fire, bunching up against the far wall, but no one left and no one spoke.

  Shaking his head, Buck said: “No, I never heard of you before a month ago.”

  “Thirty years ago, Mase Campbell and Jock Kavanaugh killed three men in the Chihuahua desert. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?”

  “That was before you or I were even born, Mead.”

  “Not by much it wasn’t,” Lyle replied thickly. He eased away from the bar, his fingers closing around his revolver. “Five, maybe six months, but no more than that. Do you know their names, McCready … the names of those three men Campbell and Kavanaugh turned loose to their deaths? Don’t answer that, goddammit, don’t you dare answer it because now you do. Now every son-of-a-bitch in this room knows who they were.” Lyle’s voice lowered a notch. “It was my father and his brother, my uncle, that they killed. I don’t know who the third man was, but he was somebody’s son and maybe somebody’s father. Not that it would’ve mattered to Campbell and Kavanaugh. Not with their more-precious-than-God cargo at stake.

  “It took me thirty years to find out what happened to my father. The only clue I had was that he’d accepted a job freighting out West somewhere. That’s not much for an Ohio boy to go on, but I kept lookings and eventually I learned what’d happened … the whole story, McCready, not those fables Campbell and Kavanaugh wanted the world to believe.” His laugh was like a plank being ripped in half. “The truth prevails, McCready!” he shouted. “Sooner or later, it always comes back to bite you square on the ass.”

  “Good, God,” Buck breathed. “You killed Mase for a thirty-year-old mistake?”

  “I killed Mase because when I told him who I was, then asked if he remembered Samuel Mead … do you know what he said? Do you know what that worthless bastard said?”

  Buck shook his head, mesmerized by the power of Lyle’s story.

  “He said … ‘Who?’ Lyle drew in a ragged breath. “That was his response … Who? He killed my father and uncle and took away my mother’s life, caused her to die of old age before she was thirty-five, and that son-of-a-bitch couldn’t even remember their names.” Lyle laughed again, not loud or crazy, but like a man trying to expunge something darkly smothering within himself, to make room for air to breathe, for his heart to pump. “Yeah, I killed Mason Campbell,” he said softly. “But death was too easy for him, and I swore it wouldn’t be that easy for Jock Kavanaugh. I swore I’d cut a hole in his soul as big as the one he put in my mother’s.”

  “Lordy,” someone breathed, but Buck didn’t look around to see who it was. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the anguish and anger on Lyle’s face.

  “Kavanaugh’s already lost his wife, and his hip is shattered, his health failing, but he’s still got a daughter, the apple of his eye, and he’s still got what he worked a lifetime to build on the sweat and blood of others … the Box K. I’d have settled for destroying either one as long as Kavanaugh eventually knew why I took it away from him, but maybe this’ll work just as well … kill the son-in-law before he even gets a chance to enjoy the honeymoon.”

  He was wrong on that account, Buck knew, but Lyle Mead had passed the point of reason. His rage at an injustice that had occurred before his birth, that he’d witnessed in his mother’s face every day of his youth, had created a monster logic could never slay.

  Lyle’s thumb stretched for the hammer on his pistol but Buck had one more question. “Why Sally Hayes? What did she have to do with it?”

  Lyle hesitated, momentarily distracted by the direction of

  Buck inquiry. Frowning, he said: “She saw me, she knew my face.”

  It made sense. One of the few things that did. Buck didn’t have all the answers he wanted, but he knew now that he probably never would. It was clear that Lyle was finished talking. “You won’t escape, Mead,” Buck said. “Even if you kill me, you won’t escape.”

  “What the hell do I care?” Lyle said distantly, starting his draw.

  Buck’s fingers tightened on the Colt’s walnut grip, but time seemed abruptly to slow down and his limbs moved as if weighted with lead. He pul
led desperately at his revolver but Lyle’s old cap-and-ball Remington was already sliding free of its holster, its muzzle coming up like a cannon’s bore. Buck was sure he was going to die. He saw no way around it. Then the Colt bucked hard in his hand and powder smoke reached out to envelop Lyle’s features just as Lyle’s revolver belched its own smoke and thunder.

  The two thick, gray-white clouds merged even as the sound of nearly identical blasts smacked Buck sharply in the face. The percussion from the shots extinguished several nearby lamps, plunging the rear of the saloon into even deeper shadow. Buck saw Lyle stagger backward, then drop to his knees. His mouth opened as if to voice a protest but no words came. Then he tipped forward like a felled tree, the Remington clattering across the floor.

  Buck sucked in a deep breath and nearly choked on the sulphurous fumes of spent gunpowder. Coughing hoarsely, he backed out of the slowly spinning cloud. The Colt hung limply in his right hand and his chest heaved.

  “Buck!” Hands grabbed him, pulled him around. “Buck!”

  He blinked and saw Peewee standing in front of him. Ray and Joe and Milo were behind him. “Are you all right?” Peewee asked. “Are you hit, boy?”

  Buck shook his head as if to clear it, then shrugged free of Peewee’s grasp. He holstered his sidearm and headed for the batwing doors, but Peewee caught him and guided him to the bar.

  “Come on, Buck,” Peewee said gently. “Let’s have a drink while we wait for the sheriff.”

  Buck nodded wearily. “I could use a drink,” he said.

  It was chilly enough the next morning that Buck could see his breath as he crawled out of the back of the mess wagon. Even so, he knew the day would be a warm one; the air already had that feel to it. By the time the big Box K freighters were unloaded that afternoon, the men would be sweating and tired, most of them thinking only of the cool refreshments waiting for them at Carlson’s.

  Buck was strapping his bedroll behind the cantle of Zeke’s saddle when he saw Milo saunter down from the warehouse. Milo’s shirt tail was out and he was hatless, his wavy brown hair tousled from sleep. He eyed the bulky saddlebags and the weather-stained canvas war bag behind the saddle, the heavy coat strapped over the pommel where it would be easy to reach in case of bad weather, and the Remington rifle that poked up from its off-side scabbard like a dead branch. Mase’s bullwhip was tucked under the coat, nearly hidden from view. “Taking a ride?” Milo asked.