Plattner was getting into it again. “Keep sounding off and you’ll wind up like your pal here,” he said, meaning the dead man.
“My brother! He was my brother! Now he’s dead and one of you killed him!”
When Smalls was in place, Barton made his move. He horned in, mindful of the lawman’s cautionary proverb, Hapless are the peacemakers for they’re sure to get both sides mad at them.
“Careful how you go about making accusations, boy, especially when you can’t prove them,” Denton Dick said, trying to cool things down, perhaps taking notice of the lawman’s approach.
Barton got between the two knots of men, putting himself to the left of Denton Dick. Now that he was closer, he recognized more familiar faces among the Hughes bunch—the weaselly Henshaw, swampman Moss Roberts, and the ox-like lunk Plonk—all Texas guns and very bad native sons.
Cal Lane didn’t like being called “boy,” a word with loaded connotations south of the Mason-Dixon line. He blustered, “You see a boy here, knock him down!”
“I aim to do just that.” Plattner started forward, but Denton Dick stopped him again.
Plattner moved to shake off the restraining hand on his arm. Denton Dick indicated Barton by a curt nod of his head. Again Plattner backed off, not liking it, but stepping back all the same.
“I’m Marshal Barton, the law in Hangtree,” Barton announced, making it clear from the start who he was and where he stood. He nodded to Brooks and Hurley, with whom he had friendly relations, acknowledging their presence. He also nodded to Denton Dick and Plattner. He’d crossed paths with both several times in the past, though they’d never tangled. “What happened here?” the marshal demanded.
“Why, looks like somebody got his self kilt, Marshal!” That came from Henshaw, trying to be funny, touching off a few snickers from the Hughes men.
Firelight made Barton’s eyes narrow to glittering slits in a dour spade-shaped face. He gave Henshaw a hard look, which said, I’ve got you marked down in my bad book.
Henshaw slipped back into the press of his fellows, making himself scarce.
“There’s nothing funny about a killing.” Barton nudged the dead man, looking down at him.
The deceased lay on his side, face a mask-like grimace, a line of blood hanging down from a corner of his mouth. He was bareheaded, his hat laying upside down on the ground nearby. He was about thirty, with wavy black hair and a bearded rough-hewn face. He looked like a decent-enough fellow, but veteran lawman that he was, Barton knew looks could be deceiving.
On the other hand, being on the opposite side of a tilt with Denton Dick’s bunch spoke in the dead man’s favor, for what that was worth. The Hughes men were a bad bunch.
The victim’s eyes were open, staring. He wore a brown-and-green flannel shirt and baggy brown pants. He was armed with a gun holstered at his side, undrawn.
Barton hunkered down beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder and turning him over on his back so he lay chest-up. Even in the unsteady mix of flickering firelight and deepening darkness, Barton had no trouble making out that the deceased’s middle was pretty well shot to pieces, pierced by a line of bullet holes—three in the belly, two in the chest. One in his left breast killed him fast; the other wounds were all mortal but he might have lingered on in agony for some hours.
Barton straightened up, stifling a groan caused by his aching knees. His joints weren’t as flexible as in the golden days of youth. “Who was he?” Barton addressed his question to Brooks, whom he knew he could trust for a straight answer.
“Bob Lane, Marshal,” Brooks said somberly. “He’s with the group I’m taking to California. Regular fellow, minded his own business, did his share of the work and more, so far as I could tell. Not a troublemaker.” He cut off his words with a sharp finality that suggested he could name a few troublemakers on the other side, but he wasn’t going to.
“He was all right,” Hurley said, a pretty fair compliment coming from the tight-lipped scout, a man of few words.
“See what happened?” Barton asked.
“It was over when I got here, Marshal,” Brooks said, glum.
Scout Hurley shook his head no.
Barton looked at Cal Lane. “You see it?”
“No, but—”
“Hold your horses, mister. I want to find out a few facts,” the marshal said, not unkindly but firm.
“I didn’t see it,” Cal said, falling silent, unhappy, fidgeting with unease.
Barton established that neither Pete nor Stan Burgess had witnessed the shooting, either.
“They killed him!” Cal Lane said, starting up again, meaning the Hughes bunch.
“We didn’t kill anyone, sonny,” Denton Dick said coldly.
“One of you did!”
“Who? Show him to me if you can,” Denton Dick challenged.
Cal Lane looked ready to burst. He looked around wild-eyed, staring in the hard unfriendly faces of the Hughes bunch.
“Well?” Denton Dick prodded.
“I-I can’t!” Cal blurted.
Denton Dick turned to Barton. “You see how it is, Marshal. Nothing to it. The kid got himself crossed up. Just because his brother got killed over here don’t mean any of us did it. Anyone could have done it. Even someone from his own outfit.”
“That ain’t so!” Cal said.
“The youngster saw smoke and figured it for fire,” Denton Dick concluded.
“Sometimes that ain’t a bad way to figure it,” Barton said noncommittally. “The dead man didn’t kill himself, Dick.”
“Well no, he didn’t, Marshal, and that’s a fact—”
“Who did?” Barton demanded, turning on Denton Dick, pinning him.
The other seemed thrown for an instant but quickly recovered. “Derned if I know. I didn’t see it myself . . .”
“Uh-huh,” Barton murmured.
Cal Lane got his feelings under control enough to continue. “The killer rode out after the shooting!”
“I seed someone ride out a minute after the gunfire,” Tim Hurley volunteered. “Rode out of their camp.”
“That’s what you say,” Plattner spat.
Hurley stepped forward, deceptively casual, hand hanging loose over the butt of his holstered gun. “I do say so, mister.”
“Listen, you—”
“Pull your horns in, men. We already got one dead man here,” Barton barked. “I don’t aim to get caught in a crossfire, neither.”
Denton Dick stepped in front of Plattner, effectively blocking him out of the exchange. “Could be the shooter stole one of our horses, that son of a gun,” he said reasonably.
Barton nodded, smiling with his lips, a cynical twist at the corners of his mouth, as if saying, That’s a good one.
“I’ll tell you who done it, Marshal,” a high-pitched voice crackled, brittle but strong. The speaker was a small, spry, bird-like, white-haired old woman. Cal Lane and the Burgesses clustered protectively around her.
The oldster’s advent provoked some mocking laughter from the Hughes bunch.
“Shut your mouths,” Barton snapped, not even bothering to look their way. The snickering was stilled.
“Who might you be, ma’am?” Barton asked the elder.
“My name is Alberta Stonecypher,” she said. Her hooded eyes glittered, hard, bright, unforgiving. “Bob—Bob Lane—that’s him lying there shot dead. He’s my son-in-law, married to my daughter Katy.”
“You saw it, ma’am?”
“I know something,” Alberta said, not answering directly. “One of them-all”—she pointed to the Hughes bunch—“was messing with Cherry, my granddaughter. She’s all of fourteen.”
Barton nodded, indicating for Alberta to continue.
“Cherry went to the creek by herself to fetch a pail of water. We didn’t think nothing of it. It’s only a stone’s throw from camp. Some no-good caught the girl alone, tried to . . . well, tried to interfere with her.” She paused, almost speechless with indignation but managin
g to choke it back.
“Randy! The one named Randy. That’s his name. He done it. He messed with Cherry and kilt poor Bob!” Alberta accused shrilly.
“How do you know that, ma’am?” Barton pressed.
“He told her, the no-good horndog! He was trying to make up to her at first, sweet-talking her with that serpent’s tongue, that Old Serpent the Devil, but Cherry was raised up right. She’s a good girl. She seen through his honeyed words, his lies, and tried to get away.
“He grabbed aholt of her, wouldn’t let her go, but she scratched his face, clawed him up good! She got shreds of his skin under her fingernails and marks on her face where he hit her with his fist, but she got away from him, Praise the Lord!
“Look for Randy. Randy with the clawed-up face and you’ll have your man, Marshal!”
“Where’s the girl now?”
“She’s in our wagon with her mother, trying to comfort each other. They’re all tore up,” Alberta said. “Cherry came back crying her eyes out, the side of her face all bruised and swole up where that dog hit her. She’s crying and carrying on.
“Bob—her pa—Bob got the name from her and went looking for this Randy, only Randy got him first,” Alberta concluded. “Now what you aim to do about it, Mr. Lawman?” she demanded.
Long years as a lawman had taught Barton that the truth is an elusive thing, yet he had no doubt that no matter how the matter had actually fallen out, Alberta Stonecypher believed in the absolute truth of the story she told.
He also tended to take any version coming out of the Hughes bunch not with a grain of salt but with a pound of it. More, the name Randy stirred up memories.... “This Randy got a last name, ma’am?”
“He must, but I don’t know it,” Alberta said.
“Does the girl know?”
“Cherry didn’t say nothing ’bout no last name. All she said was, ‘Randy, Randy.’ That’s all I got from her. But she might know,” the woman added hopefully.
Barton shifted position so that while he was looking at Alberta he could also see Denton Dick and Plattner. “The name wouldn’t be Randy Breeze, would it?” he asked, watching the two bad men out of the corner of his eye.
Plattner stiffened. Denton Dick had better control of himself. He started at the mention of the name but remained poker-faced.
“‘Randy Breeze?’” the old woman said, studying on it, thinking it over. “Sorry, Marshal, it don’t ring no bells. I ain’t saying Cherry heard a last name or no, but she might have.”
“Thanks. I’ll talk to her later.” Barton turned toward Denton Dick and Plattner, moving within arm’s length of them.
Denton Dick looked shifty, evasive; Plattner openly hostile.
“What about you, Leo? You know Randy Breeze?” Barton asked.
“Never heard of him!”
“Tsk, tsk. Now you know it ain’t polite to lie, Leo. Especially not to an officer of the law.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“I just did.”
“That tin star don’t give you the right to insult me to my face, lawman—”
“Keep your head, Leo!” Denton Dick said sharply. “Remember where you are and don’t start nothing now.”
“Nobody calls me a liar, Dick, lawdog or no.”
“Leo—” The icy chill in Denton Dick’s voice got through to Plattner, forcing him to break off.
He muttered something under his breath.
“So you don’t know Randy Breeze, huh?” Barton pressed, returning to the subject.
“I may have heard of him,” Plattner allowed at last, grudgingly as if the words were being dragged out of him.
“May have heard?” Barton echoed, incredulous. “You ain’t talking to no pilgrim now, Leo. I know, know, that Randy Breeze is one of your main bowers.”
“All right, I know him,” Plattner admitted. “So what?”
“Seems to me I recollect him spending a two-year stretch behind those big stone prison walls for rape not too long ago.”
“That was a frame-up.”
“The way I heard it, the only reason he skipped a date with the hangman was because the gal was a woman of the town, a soiled dove, as they say, and not part of the respectable element.”
“She lied. They all do. He went off with another gal and she wanted to get him in trouble so made up a story about him.”
“Way I heard it, Leo, your old pard Randy was lucky to get out of town without a neck-stretching. Seems some of the concerned citizens wanted to elevate him with a grand necktie party. But the Parker County sheriff sneaked him out of town in time for him to cheat the noose.”
“I don’t know nothing about it.”
“Here in Hangtree we’re not so easygoing. We hang rapists,” Barton said, which wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t possible to always know which way a judge and jury were going to jump. But they had hanged men for rape, more than a few in Barton’s time.
“Good for you,” Plattner sneered.
“If memory serves and I believe it does, Randy Breeze served his term and got out of the hoosegow not more than a month or two ago. He went home to his old haunts in Weatherford.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No? You’re from Weatherford, Leo.”
“What of it?”
Barton stepped back. Standing with hands on hips, he slowly surveyed the solid wall of stony, stubborn, unyielding faces of the Hughes bunch. There were exceptions, of course. Plattner sneered, Henshaw smirked, and Denton Dick looked like he wished he were elsewhere.
“Come to think of it, a lot of you boys hail from Weatherford,” Barton said as if mulling it over. “Weatherford and Parker County. Leo, Henshaw, Swampman Ross, Plonk . . . A couple more of you rascals look familiar, though I can’t quite put the names together with the faces just yet. Oh yes, and one more. Randy Breeze. He’s one of the old hometown crowd, too.”
“I tell you, Randy Breeze ain’t with us!” Plattner exploded.
Denton Dick cast him a warning glance.
“I believe you . . . now,” Barton mocked. “As for the rest, it remains to be seen.”
He turned his attention to the leader. “Now we come to you, Denton Dick. Funny that with all these Parker County fellows around, they bring in an hombre from Denton, Texas, to honcho them. Why’s that?”
“You know how it is, Marshal—cream always rises to the top,” Denton Dick said, trying to make a joke out of it.
“Scum, too,” Barton shot back, his tone jocular, but meaning it, too.
“That ain’t right. You got no call to talk to me like that, Marshal, no call at all,” Denton Dick said, his face clouding.
Barton shrugged. “Never figured to see you ramrodding a line of freight wagons, Dick. What’re you hauling?”
“A wagonload or two of supplies for ourselves, that’s all. The rest of the wagons are empty,” Denton Dick said through clenched teeth, sullen. “You don’t believe me, take a look for yourself.”
“Since you offered so nicely, it must be so. I’ll let it pass.”
“Nice of you to take it on account, Marshal.”
“A curious business. Can’t make much on empty wagons.”
“We’re going down to Midvale.”
Midvale was a town south of Hangtree in Long Valley that had been sacked and burned by the Harbin gang the last spring.
“We’re going down there to salvage some scrap lumber,” Denton Dick continued, trying to regain his poise. “Good money in scrap lumber—planks, boards, and beams. Should be plenty in what’s left of the town.”
Barton smiled, making no secret of his disbelief. “Whew! Sounds like hard work. It’s like to ruin some of you boys.”
“We’re not afraid of a little hard work.”
“That ain’t how I heard it.”
Leo Plattner had been on a slow burn. He was a man with a low boiling point and he was fuming. His eyes blazed, nostrils flaring. He breathed hard like he was running a race. He did everything but paw t
he ground with his feet.
Barton resumed working on him. “Been quite a day here for the Parker County set, Leo. You and the boys must be in mourning for Terry Moran and friends.”
“We don’t like it,” Plattner said through clenched teeth.
“Tell me about it. I’m the official Hangtree Jail Complaints Department.”
“What kind of law you running in this two-bit cow patty of a town, Barton? Here you are picking on us for trying to make an honest dollar while you let Terry Moran’s killers run around free as air!”
“Moran and his two guardsmen got beat in a fair draw. A fair draw, Leo! Johnny Cross burned them down one-two-three, that’s what I heard. Must’ve been some show,” Barton said, wistful. “Wish I’d seen it!”
“What about the Randle brothers?” Plattner demanded. He took a step forward, big fists clenching and unclenching. “Butchered in an eatery for trying to eat their lunch!”
“That ain’t exactly the way it went down, Leo. They put the café under the gun to do a little bushwhacking, but it blew up in their faces. Poetic justice, I’d say.”
“Bah! This ain’t no town, it’s a slaughterhouse!”
“Some say yes and some say absolutely. You all might want to keep it in mind while you’re in Hangtree.”
“We ain’t forgetting,” Leo said ominously.
“Good,” Barton said. “Seeing as you’re so broken up about the passing of the Moran gang, maybe you want to take up a collection to pay for the funeral. Them being part of the old hometown crowd and all.”
“That ain’t the funeral I’d like to buy!”
“No? Whose funeral might that be, I wonder.”
“Guess,” Leo said with heavy breathing and teeth-gnashing menace.
Denton Dick intervened once more. “Leo.”
“Back off, Dick, I’ve stood as much guff as I can stand off this lawdog!”
“Leo,” Denton Dick repeated.
“Let it go, let it go,” Barton said, chuckling with false good humor. “By the way, Leo, don’t worry about the funeral. We’ll give the boys a real nice send-off—one-way to Boot Hill.”
“You’re prodding me, Marshal, and I don’t like that!”
“Well, you let me know when you’ve had enough,” Barton said, his smile widening.
Rebel Yell Page 16
