Once an Outlaw

by Raine Cantrell

  He’d kept his pace easy, as much to save the horse as himself. He rode in the middle of the dirt street, having his choice of three saloons. He was thankful it was a weeknight and most of the miners would still be at their diggings. If this were Friday or Saturday night, he’d have his work cut out searching out Monte or any of the others.

  Neck-reining the horse toward the hitching post, he dismounted in front of Jager’s Muleshoe, the name of the owner, saloon and the rotgut swill he passed as whiskey. Taking his rifle with him, he pushed open the door.

  The place wasn’t crowded. His arrival caused a few heads to turn, and cool eyes took his measure. He returned the looks of the men seated around the tables, and they quickly returned to their card games. Logan hid his disappointment that the faces he most wanted to see weren’t numbered among these men.

  But there was always the barkeep. After ordering a whiskey, he sipped from the none-too-clean glass and engaged the man in small talk. Information was passed along from the stage-line drivers, miners and those passing through, and served as the most reliable source.

  When Logan finally got around to asking the questions he wanted, he didn’t get the exact answers that he needed.

  There had been no sign of Wheeler, or the men that rode with him, for almost a week. Logan left without finishing his drink and before the talk turned to why he was looking for him.

  The second place he tried earned him more of the same, until a lone man, a down-and-out cardsharp by the cut of his fancy duds, stopped Logan as he headed for the door.

  “Game, mister?”

  “Ain’t got the time,” Logan answered.

  “Right. You’re lookin’ in the wrong place for any man that’s got money burning a hole in his pocket.”

  “That so?” Although anxious to leave, Logan hesitated. He knew if the man had information, he’d have to wait until he was ready to name his price or tell it in his own way.

  “Nice-lookin’ rifle,” the gambler commented.

  “An’ I’m looking for a man with one just like it.” Logan pulled out a chair and held up two fingers to the barkeep. He half listened as the gambler remarked about the lack of a good game in Florence, then he paid for the drinks that were served and waited impatiently for the man to say his piece.

  “Like I was tellin’ you, if a man has money he’s gone over to Haskel’s place. He’s got a woman working his back room.”

  The word stirred Logan into a frown. Then he smiled. Billy Jack had a fondness for women, and he had money to spend.

  “Much obliged.” Logan shoved back his chair. He took a twenty-dollar gold piece from his shirt pocket. “For drinks or a stake,” he said, laying the coin on the scarred tabletop. “The information is worth that much.”

  He left the horse tied and walked along the street until he reached the end and saw Haskel’s, which stood alone from the other buildings.

  Logan went inside with the hammer cocked on his rifle and his finger on the trigger.

  “Monte been around?” he asked, approaching the bar.

  The barkeep’s eye went from the rifle to Logan’s face. “We don’t want no trouble in here.”

  “Ain’t gonna be any if you give me the right answers. If Monte ain’t here, then one of his men is.”

  “You the law?”

  “No.” Watching the man, Logan didn’t miss his darting glance toward the back of the nearly empty saloon. The woman he had was either a dried-up old whore or someone had bought her time for the night, because no one was lined up and waiting.

  “Who’s back there?”

  “Billy Jack. An’ he’s in a mean temper.”

  Logan started walking.

  “Hey! Wait up, mister! You can’t just go barging—”

  “Watch me,” Logan returned in a cool, deadly voice.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Logan kicked open the door on a dingy room no bigger than a birthing stall. Two candles cast flickering light over the rough wood walls. He ignored the scream from the woman bolting from the bed to cower in the corner.

  Billy Jack, stripped down to his sweat-stained union suit, was on the bed, his back to the wall, his legs sprawled open. He blinked, rubbed his eyes with one hand and lifted the bottle to his lips with his other hand.

  Suddenly he choked and spewed the liquor all over himself and the bed, shaking his head like a maddened bull.

  Logan angled the barrel of the rifle up so that there was no doubt that his target was Billy Jack’s flaccid flesh.

  “It would give me the greatest pleasure if you moved, Billy Jack.”

  “You’re a bad dream, sí?”

  “You’re gonna wish that’s all I am by the time I’m finished with you.” Then Logan said to the cowering woman, “Get your clothes and leave. My amigo and I are going to be busy.”

  “He didn’t pay me,” she returned in a sullen voice, hitching up the falling shoulder strap of her soiled chemise.

  “Then take his pants with you and keep whatever’s in the pockets.” Logan shot a quick look at the pants hanging off the footboard. “But leave the belt,” he added. “That’s mine.”

  “Amigo, have a drink. We are friends, sí? This is a way to share—”

  “No sharing, Billy Jack. I’m still deciding if I want to kill you now for leaving me to die, or wait until you answer a few questions for me.”

  A sly smile lit the outlaw’s face. “If you kill me, you have no answers.”

  “But I’ll have pleasure, boy, a great deal of it.”

  Logan heard the woman scurrying around behind him and watched her carefully as she came forward and took the pants from the footboard. Under his watchful gaze she stripped the belt off and replaced it over the board. Logan backed up behind the door as she ran from the room, then slammed it closed. To ensure it stayed that way, he grabbed hold of the straight-backed chair from the far corner and wedged its back beneath the door latch.

  His smile was chilling as he caught the darting look Billy Jack made at his holstered gun that lay on the floor near the bed.

  “Be my guest and go for it, Billy Jack.”

  “What ya want?”

  “Let’s start small. And to make it easy, all you have to do is nod. See, amigo, I won’t take no as any answer. Understood?”

  “Sí. The rifle—”

  “Stays right where it is, just like you’re going to while we talk. We all know how fond you are of the ladies, Billy Jack. You move and you’ll disappoint them all.”

  Billy Jack took a long swallow from the bottle and Logan allowed it. He knew it was calculated as a gesture of disdain for his threat, and perhaps a little boost of false courage.

  “Now,” Logan began when Billy Jack lowered the bottle and hugged it to his side. “Who gave the order to leave me to die?”

  Billy Jack took his measure. He’d faced his share of men and knew when one would kill and when he would not. Despite the fog induced by liquor, he stared long and hard at Logan. Every man would kill when pushed far enough. He didn’t know how far Logan had been pushed. He wasn’t paid enough to lose his life, or end up maimed so that he would wish for death himself.

  “It was Zach,” he said at last. “Not an order. He wanted the rifle. You would not trade him.”

  “He left me to die over a rifle,” Logan repeated, fixing him with a hard stare.

  “And I wanted your horse,” Billy Jack admitted with a shrug. “You were bleeding badly, amigo. We did not think you’d live.”

  “I had a flesh wound, Billy Jack. It wasn’t life threatening at all.”

  “Then it is good you found help.”

  “Did I say that? Not that it matters. I’m here now and I want to know where Monte is.”

  “He comes an’ he goes.”

  Logan stroked his left hand along the barrel. “I’m gettin’ mighty tired of holding this. And a man gets real careless when he’s tired. A hair trigger on such a fine rifle, well…” He paused, then smiled. “You get the drift, don’t yo
u?”

  “Monte goes up to an old line shack he found. The others, they wait for him there.”

  “More,” Logan demanded.

  “Monte, he is angry. He don’t hear from—” Billy Jack lifted the bottle and swallowed until it was empty. For a moment he held Logan’s steely gaze and thought of flinging the bottle at his head. He weighed his chances.

  Logan didn’t move.

  Billy Jack grinned and placed the bottle on the floor where the temptation of his gun waited. With a curse he flung himself upright on the bed.

  “I’m waiting,” Logan prompted.

  “It’s my life you ask me to risk.”

  “It’s your life if you don’t finish.”

  “The boss man. Monte don’t hear from him. He worries there is no more jobs. Zach an’ Tallyman get angry with him. He sends word for them to wait.”

  “And Monte rode off to see the boss man?”

  “Sí. This is all I know. I swear by my mother’s—”

  “Billy Jack, you could swear up one end of this territory and down the other and I’d still have to make the choice of whether or not to believe you.”

  “You have the gun. I tell you the truth. To show you I am still your amigo, I tell you your fine horse, he is out back. I will come with you. I show where the shack is.” He swung his legs off the bed, ready to stand.

  “Hold it.” Logan had to think fast. He couldn’t leave Billy Jack here, not on the loose. Tying him up wouldn’t give him more than an hour’s start if he was lucky. He didn’t want to kill him, and that meant Logan had to take Billy Jack with him. With a gun in his back the breed would be careful not to cross him.

  “Put on your boots, but that’s all.”

  “You make a joke, sí?”

  “Do I look like a man in a joking mood?” Logan kicked the chair away from the door. “Let’s go.”

  “You cannot mean to do this to me. I will kill you before—”

  “I warned you. You want to live, you march out of here just as you are.”

  Billy Jack reached for his boots and stomped into them. He buttoned up his fly and, with fury lighting his eyes, proceeded out into the saloon.

  Logan grabbed hold of his precious belt, slung it over his shoulder and followed him out.

  Spying the woman, Logan spoke to her. “You get enough out of his pockets?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Good. Then for the price of whatever his gear in the room will bring, go out back and get the horse he left there. Bring it around in front for me and I’ll toss in twenty dollars more.”

  Logan had no doubt that she would do it. The offer was more than she would make in a week. He prodded Billy Jack outside.

  Thinking about Zach looking for him had questions burning on Logan’s tongue. But he couldn’t ask Billy Jack without giving away that he knew. Billy Jack might be smart enough to figure out where Logan had been, and he didn’t dare endanger Jessie. Yet the more he thought about it, the more he needed to know if Zach had ever gone back to her place.

  As if his thoughts had somehow reached the breed, Billy Jack shot him a look over his shoulder. “You do not say where it was you stayed. Zach, he go looking for you. But he tells Monte there is no sign. Me, I figure the buzzards got you.”

  “I guess you figured wrong.”

  “But it puzzles me. You come here, so far from where we left you. And you have another horse. I ask myself, where does this horse come from? Where does another fine rifle come from? A man must have much money to buy these things.”

  Logan didn’t answer him. He worked loose the knot in his neckerchief, then pulled the bandanna free.

  “So I think long and hard about this, amigo. And I remember the señorita.”

  The woman came around the corner of the saloon just then, leading Logan’s horse, the one Billy Jack had taken.

  “What do you want me to do with him?”

  “Just wrap his reins over the post and go inside. My friend suffers his embarrassment poorly.” Logan was not about to wait for her to leave. “Get down on your knees,” he ordered Billy Jack.

  “Amigo—”

  “Cut the amigo. I’d rather have the devil call me his friend. Just do it and put your hands together over your head.” Logan kicked his knees apart, making it harder for Billy Jack to attempt to rise. “Now lean out and grab hold of that hitching post with your left hand. Stretch,” he added when he saw the man hesitate. “Now bring your right arm down and behind you.”

  Moves and timing had to be perfect. Logan knew he had seconds to tie Billy Jack’s hands behind his back, and he couldn’t hold the rifle on him. Cradling the rifle so that the barrel rested in the small of Billy Jack’s back, he looped and twisted the neckerchief around one wrist, then ordered him to bring his left arm back. He could almost feel Billy Jack weighing his chances once more, and the tension hummed through him until he grabbed the breed’s left wrist and finished tying his hands together.

  Logan felt the leash he held on his control begin to fray. The rage inside him was building and he had to struggle not to let it free. He kept thinking about the men who had lost their lives doing their job to protect the payroll, all because of this man’s taunting. He thought of the losses to his family.

  But it was the moments of stomach-lurching fear that had gripped him when Billy Jack mentioned a señorita. It had all come together then for Logan. That day Jessie went to Apache Junction to buy him a horse. Something had happened to her, something she had refused to tell him.

  And he knew Billy Jack’s fondness for anything in skirts.

  “You bastard!” Logan moved before he even thought about it. Using the rifle barrel, he swung low and hard at Billy Jack’s lower back, doubling him over with a cry of pain.

  “Tell me about this señorita. And while you’re talking, start walking.” Logan saw him through a red haze of rage. He didn’t know what stopped him from shooting the breed right then and there. Jerking him to his feet, he shoved Billy Jack into the street. “Move.”

  Billy Jack fell to one knee, and by the time he staggered upright, Logan was mounted on his own horse and had tied, to the saddle horn, the reins to the one Jessie had bought him.

  Logan had to prod him as he rode back the way he had come. He ignored Billy Jack’s whining that he was heading the wrong way. Logan felt as if he’d been in a fog and it had suddenly cleared.

  He blamed the thought of Jessie occupying his mind when he should have been concentrating on business.

  But he’d make it right. He had to. If anything happened to Jessie or those boys because of him, he’d never forgive himself.

  Yet it was Jessie in his thoughts as he led the breed out into the broken land. Jessie telling him about an abandoned line shack. It had to be the same one that Billy Jack claimed the outlaws were waiting in for Monte.

  “You need me!” Billy Jack cried out. “I will show you the way.”

  Logan ignored him and rode on. It wasn’t the punishment he wanted to give Billy Jack, but something held him back from killing him. So he kept riding out into land where the bushes rustled with sounds of the night predators hunting.

  And when the moon rode high, casting its light on the thorny heights of the cholla cacti, Logan, despite the danger of calling attention to himself, began firing his gun into the dirt at Billy Jack’s feet, ordering him to run.

  “I will die!”

  “That’s the idea.” Logan emptied the chamber and saw that he was backing away.

  “You cannot leave me without water. Without a weapon. At least cut me free.”

  “I’ve got a whole cartridge belt full of bullets here. I could get careless with my aim. The way I figure, I’m giving you a fighting chance, and that’s a hell of a lot more than you’ve ever given any man.”

  “It is the woman, sí? I did not touch her. Monte stopp—” He caught himself, quickly saying, “It was Zach. He went after her.”

  Logan’s hands shook as he reloaded his gun. His Jessie
. His sweet, sassy-mouthed Jessie had been terrorized by this animal. As he slid each bullet into the chamber, he thought of where on Billy Jack’s body he would fire it, and he talked.

  “I’ve heard of the men you left staked in the desert for the ants. Ugly way for a man to die. But then, you’re not a man, are you? A man never enjoys hurting things that are smaller than him.” It was with some wonder that Logan heard his calm voice when rage was erupting inside.

  But when he looked up, Billy Jack was gone.

  And Logan rode for the line shack where he would come face-to-face with Monte and the others.

  Two hours after Logan pulled out of Florence, Ty and Conner rode in. They fought off the bone-deep weariness that came from just failing to overtake their brother since they had set out to follow him.

  They split up, and Ty went to Jager’s Muleshoe, where the gambler excused himself from the card table to approach Ty where he stood at the bar.

  “You’ve the look of a man who did me a good turn for a few words.”

  “My brother,” Ty answered. “He’s been here, then?”

  “Not long ago. He was looking for a man, and I directed him to Haskel’s at the end of town. He’s got a woman there. That interested your brother.”

  Ty added the price of another drink to the coins on the bar. “Obliged. Have one on me.” He went to find Conner.

  “There’s only one saloon left,” Conner said as Ty approached him coming out of the second saloon.

  “And that’s where Logan is. Man said he was interested in hearing that Haskel has a woman there. I know my brother, it wasn’t the woman he was interested in, but maybe one of Monte’s men might be there.”

  “You can’t go barging in and give him away if he’s with them,” Conner warned.

  “Then what do you suggest? We stand here till sunup?”

  “Give me a minute, Ty. I don’t want to do anything that will get Logan killed.”

  “I thought that was why we came after him in the first place.” Ty thumbed back his hat. “For all we know he could be dead already.”

  “No. We’d know if there’d been a killing here. It’s all they’d be talking about. One of us has to go inside. One of us has the reputation to go inside Haskel’s place and ask questions.”