Bannerman the Enforcer 7

by Kirk Hamilton

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Table of Contents

  About the Book

  One – Texas Army

  Two – Canyon of Death

  Three – Oath of Vengeance

  Four – A Place Called Ironsite

  Five – Funds

  Six – Dangerous Boredom

  Seven – Offer

  Eight – Decoy in Blood

  Nine – Target

  Bannerman the Enforcer Series

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Lester Dukes, the Governor of Texas, felt that the time had come to expand his group of Enforcers—the go-anywhere, fight-anyone squad that maintained law and order in the Lone Star State. So he handed the chore to his two best men, Yancey Bannerman and Johnny Cato. They came up with Ironsite, a center where new Enforcers could be trained, and then set about recruiting the best of the best from the Texas Rangers.

  But then Yancey and Cato found themselves caught up in a race against time.

  A fanatic named Sam Burdin was fixing to invade the town of Van Horn with his twenty-strong army of so-called ‘Texas Freedom Fighters’, and they planned to give Governor Dukes a bullet-welcome when he came to take part in the Texas Independence Day celebrations.

  Burdin said he was a patriot, a man who only had the welfare of Texas at heart. But the truth was very different. Burdin was a psychotic killer, and a mass-murderer in the making. And all that stood between him and total anarchy were … the Enforcers.

  One – Texas Army

  Yancey Bannerman rode hell for leather over the low ridge so as to cut off the escape of the fleeing man on the big, long-striding sorrel. Yancey’s mount was weary from long trails, but that sorrel had been resting in an all-weather stall with a bin full of grain and oats up until a quarter of an hour ago. That was when Yancey had burst on the scene, shot down the man at the shack who had tried to shotgun him and

  charged in to nail Calhoun.

  But, as ever, Calhoun had his escape planned and he went out through a secret door in the root cellar and thundered out of the yard while Yancey wasted precious, wary minutes searching. But Yancey knew this part of Texas and, in particular, he knew the winding canyon Calhoun was riding through. There were unexpected turns and rocky ridges in there that could slow a man way down. Maybe Calhoun knew of them too, but he would still lose time negotiating them and Yancey figured the up-and-over trail via the ridge ought to bring him out at the canyon’s exit just a shade ahead of his quarry.

  He was right. And he was also wrong. For, while he reached the canyon exit first, and waited with rifle in hand behind a sandstone barrier, he suddenly realized, as his breathing steadied and the panting horse quietened a little, that there was no hoof-clattering sound from in the canyon. Calhoun had pulled a smart one again: he had gone to ground halfway through.

  Now Yancey was the hunter once more and he was also the target, for Calhoun would be holed-up in good cover, waiting, sights lined up, most likely in a narrow defile where he would have Yancey dead to rights.

  But there was no choice. He had to get Calhoun and he had to get him alive. It didn’t matter if he died in the end, but Yancey had to talk with him first. He had to get the location of Burdin’s renegade Texas Army from the man before he cashed in his chips. If he didn’t ... well, the governor wasn’t paying him to fail in his mission. He would get the location out of Calhoun some way.

  Right now, though, he had to get into that canyon and find out where the man was. He dismounted, ground-hitched the weary mount, and took a spare carton of rifle ammunition from his saddlebags. Checking his Peacemaker and that all the loops in the cartridge belt were filled, Yancey took down a canteen of water and slung it across his shoulders. It would be like an oven in there in a couple of hours and a man pinned down in the heat beating back from those walls could dehydrate in half a day.

  He went in cautiously right from the start. It would be just like Calhoun to set himself up only a few yards from the exit. Another ten steps and Yancey had this confirmed when a rifle blasted and flicked dust from the brim of his hat. He dropped flat instantly, having already picked out his cover before venturing into the canyon. He had to roll across a section of open ground and Calhoun saw him. His next three hammering shots bracketed Yancey’s rolling form as the big government man spun through the dust. He skidded in behind his cover as a fourth bullet ricocheted, slanting upwards and hitting the crumbling shale wall above his head, dropping some flakes of rock down onto his shoulders.

  Yancey didn’t hesitate. He brought the rifle over, dropping the barrel between two rocks, right thumb flicking the hammer spur back. He laid the blade foresight just under the small cloud of drifting gray-white smoke coming from halfway up a rockslide. The blade centered between the arms of the buck-horn rear sight and he dropped the muzzle just a fraction so that the tip was level with those iron curves. It was all done in one clean, fast motion and the instant the sights lined-up, his finger caressed the trigger and the highly tuned weapon whiplashed, jumping in recoil with the special-load cartridges that his pard, Johnny Cato, had prepared.

  The bullet flew on a flat trajectory and went between the rocks where he had also seen a flash of dull color, like the gray of a man’s faded denim shirt. He didn’t hear it ricochet and knew he had either hit the man or the lead had gone by and thunked into the soft earth behind him.

  He hadn’t hit the killer; leastways, not fatally, for the gun opened up from the slope again in a hammering volley, and lead raked Yancey’s shelter. He ducked, withdrawing the rifle barrel, ducking his head low as bullets whined off the rocks in front of him. Then there was a pause and he looked up swiftly, in time to see Calhoun making a dash across the face of the rockslide, limping, holding his right hip. So, it looked as if his lead had winged his man.

  The wound, slight though it must have been, didn’t slow Calhoun much, though he slipped and skidded in a cloud of dust. Yancey was sighting down his Winchester barrel even as he saw where the man was heading. Calhoun was making for a clump of jumbled boulders just a little higher and to the right. From there he would command a better view of Yancey’s position and likely would even be able to see behind the Enforcer’s shelter. But he never had a chance. Yancey triggered and Calhoun went cartwheeling down the face of the slope, starting a miniature landslide and lifting a cloud of choking dust.

  Yancey leapt across the rock barrier and ran forward, another shell already levered into the chamber. He was at the front of the slope by the time Calhoun’s body came skidding down and the man landed almost at his feet. He still retained a grip on his rifle and the first thing Yancey did was leap forward and stomp a boot down on the man’s hand, pinning the weapon. He dropped his own smoking rifle barrel and held it only inches in front of Calhoun’s pain-filled eyes. The bullet had taken him through the chest and Yancey reckoned he must be badly torn-up inside, for the bullet had exited under his left arm, leaving a blood-pulsing ragged hole and there was a froth of red bubbles at his mouth. Calhoun’s lungs had been punctured and he had only minutes to live.

  Yancey dropped to one knee, easing down the hammer on his rifle. He wouldn’t be needing that now. If Calhoun didn’t talk, there was nothing he could do about it. The outlaw coughed a ribbon of blood, staring up at Yancey, fear mingling with the pain in his eyes. He lifted a hand and tried to grab Yancey’s shirtsleeve but did no more than touch the loose cloth. He had little strength left.

  “Burdin’s hideout, Calhoun,” Yancey said quietly. “That’s all I want before you die.”

  Calhoun’s eyes widened and he tried to talk but went into a fit of coughing. Yancey shook his head slowly.

  “Sorry. There’s nothing I
can do. You’re all torn up inside. Come on, Calhoun. It’s been a long trail and I’ve nailed you. It won’t do anybody any good for you to take the location with you.”

  The dying man’s mouth worked and there were some guttural sounds but Yancey couldn’t make any sense out of them. He grimaced when he saw how much blood was staining the earth under Calhoun.

  “You don’t have long,” he said quietly. “I’d let you go in peace, but I’ve got to know where Burdin’s got his army.”

  Calhoun seemed to be collapsing in on himself, growing smaller, and his eyes were glazing. Yancey sighed. He wasn’t going to get the information he wanted. Then Calhoun lifted his arm weakly again, one forefinger rigid. He let the arm fall back to the ground beside his head and the finger pointed up-slope. As Yancey frowned, puzzling about this, the outlaw coughed and a spray of red droplets wet the back of Yancey’s hand. Calhoun was dead in thirty seconds, his finger still pointing up the slope.

  Frowning, Yancey stood up, looked up the loose earth of the slide, and began climbing. He went to Calhoun’s original hideout but all he could find there were empty cartridge cases. He thumbed back his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead, staring back down the slope at the dead man. He was sure Calhoun had been trying to tell him something. Then he heard the whinny of the big sorrel and he spun towards the sound. Maybe that was it. He started across the slope, skidding a little in the loose shale and earth, stumbling around behind a large, egg-shaped boulder.

  Beyond, was a flat area and there was the big sorrel, ground-hitched, ears pricked, eyes watching warily as he climbed down towards it. There were bulging saddlebags draped over the heavy Denver saddle. With any luck, Yancey figured, as he went to the horse, talking soothingly to it, they would contain more than just grub and ammunition.

  He sure hoped so, anyway. The fate of Texas itself depended on him tracking down Burdin’s renegades.

  ~*~

  Johnny Cato knew Keller was somewhere in the cantina, but the man had a lot of friends amongst the Mexicans and it was unlikely that they would help him find the outlaw. The cantina was two-storeyed, long and rambling, the biggest in town, and Juarez wasn’t noted for smallness in anything. It would take a long time to search all the rooms and the alarm would be raised long before he had reached the halfway mark.

  But Keller had to be located and he had to be made to talk, at any cost.

  It was a desperate situation and called for desperate measures. So Cato downed his tequila, licked the salt off the back of his hand and sucked the slice of lemon. He nodded his thanks to the agate-eyed Mexican behind the counter and stood up, hitching at the heavy gun-rig about his slim hips. The gun was the famous Manstopper, a weapon of his own design, having over-and-under barrels. The top one fired the normal .45 caliber cartridge, but the underslung one was smoothbore and fired a twelve-gauge shot-shell, housed in a chamber drilled in the center of the over-sized cylinder. The Manstopper held eight .45 cartridges instead of the normal six. The whole rig, fully loaded, tipped the scales not much under five pounds, even heavier than the old Colt Dragoon, on which design it was based. But the gun was so finely balanced that the weight was barely noticed once a man had it in his hand and it pointed true. It was one of the deadliest handguns on the frontier and a lot of men had fallen to its thunder.

  Cato wasn’t a very big man, only five-eight tall, tipping the scales at maybe one-hundred-fifty pounds, but he was compact, iron-muscled, a wiry, hard-eyed man in his late thirties, the spring in his cat-like movements speaking of honed strength and agility.

  It was doubtful if the two men who moved in on him from either end of the bar took this into consideration. All they saw was a man smaller than themselves, a man suspect because of the questions he had been asking about Keller in El Paso, just across the bridge in Texas. They figured he was close enough to their compadre drinking in this cantina while Keller hid upstairs. It was time to stop Cato dead. Literally.

  Cato caught the flash of steel, the lights from the swinging wagon-wheel lamp glinting from the metal. Other patrons were moving away silently. The barkeep was reaching under the counter. It looked like Keller’s friends were willing to kill for him, thought the gringo as he swiftly assessed the situation. He reached up to adjust his hat brim and the men closed in from either end of the bar, all pretence gone now, the knives naked in their hands.

  Cato sprang back away from the bar, the Manstopper palming up even as one man lifted a hand and threw his knife. Cato fired at the same instant as he tried to dodge and his bullet only clipped the man’s shoulder. But the blade buried itself in Cato’s upper arm and he staggered, stumbling into some tables as the second man closed in, yelling. Cato shot him through the middle of the face, then slipped, grabbed at a table edge but it tilted, and he went down amongst splintered furniture. The man he had winged was coming in with a broken-off tequila bottle held in front of him. Cato fired upwards and saw his lead tear into the man’s pelvic area. He went down screaming and Cato rolled over and bounced up to his knees as the barkeep threw down on him with a sawn-off shotgun.

  Cato’s Manstopper thundered and the man was flung back into the shelves of bottles in front of the mirror. He went down with his gun blasting into the ceiling, glass shattering. Cato thumbed the toggle on the hammer that would allow him to fire his shot barrel, spun around, tilted the barrel over the heads of the scattering patrons, and fired at the chain that held the nearest wagon-wheel lamp. The gun reared up in his grip as it thundered and adobe dust flew as the chain was blown out of its ceiling support. The men below scattered faster still as the wheel crashed down onto tables and glass lamp chimneys shattered. Coal oil sprayed out across the floor and burst into flames with a sodden ‘thump’. Cato flicked the hammer toggle, gripped his right wrist with his left hand, steadied his aim and shot through the chain of the second wagon-wheel lamp. It, too, crashed down with an explosion of flames and splintering timbers.

  There was panic as the big barroom became a sea of flames and men smashed in windows and jammed up the doorways in their efforts to get out. Men and women came pouring down the stairs from the upper floor, shouting, half-dressed, wild-eyed. Cato slugged a man in his path with the heavy gun and fought against the surging tide of fleeing folk as he struggled to climb the stairs. His eyes were going over the crushing, shoving, screaming, swearing throng, looking for Keller. But there was no sign of the man. Could be he was still upstairs or he might have gone out one of the windows. Cato had to make sure.

  He kicked and slugged and cursed and managed to fight his way to the top of the stairs. A naked girl flung herself at him, incoherent as she shrilled at him in Spanish too rapid to follow. While at another time he would have been delighted to have her clinging to him, right now there was no time for anything but going after Keller. Regretfully, he wrenched her hands from his neck and pushed her into the throng of people still pouring out of the rooms and crowding along the passage to get down the stairs.

  He suddenly found himself clear of the mad crush about halfway down the passage. He looked at the rooms with their open doors on either side, but before he’d made up his mind where to begin searching, he caught a glimpse of movement up ahead, in a shadowed area between two wall lamps. A gun blasted and a bullet ripped plaster and adobe from the wall near his head.

  Cato dropped to one knee, triggered, heard the lead thud into a wall somewhere. He saw his man then. Keller was running into a room right at the end of the passage, pausing only long enough as he went through the door to snap another shot at Cato. The smaller man leapt to his feet, holding his fire, racing down the passage to flatten himself against the wall beside the door. He made a slight sound as he did so and the door shuddered and splintered as three shots blasted from inside, ripping the panel.

  Johnny Cato crouched, kicked the lock hard and the door smashed back into the darkened room. He caught a glimpse of Keller throwing a leg over the windowsill. The man threw down across his body, awkwardly, firing simultaneously with C
ato. Keller yelled as his body seemed to be lifted over the sill and he toppled out with a wild yell. Cato straightened, untouched by the outlaw’s lead, though his arm was bleeding from the knife wound. He couldn’t even remember yanking the blade from his flesh.

  Now he lunged across the room, flattened against the wall and eased up to the window. There was an awning under the window and Keller was thrashing around on the shingles, trying to keep from falling off the edge. Cato climbed out, his gun covering the man as he fought for a hold on the splintery shingles. There was a smear of blood on the roof that glinted redly in a sudden burst of flames coming from one of the windows further along the wall of the building. The fire was eating rapidly into the second floor. This was the only way out now.

  Johnny Cato walked easily across the slanting roof, looked down at Keller’s narrow, pain-wracked face. He kicked his hands free of the ridge he was grasping and the outlaw yelled as he skidded and rolled down the roof, hit the guttering and dropped into the darkened yard. Cato heard the splintering of timber and figured there were a lot of empty crates down there. He went to the edge, saw the dark shape of Keller lying amidst a pile of tumbled, shattered crates, and then holstered the Manstopper briefly, while he grabbed the guttering edge and swung himself over. He hung from his arms, the pain tearing through his shoulder from the knife wound, then let go. He dropped a few feet and picked himself up, drawing the Manstopper again, as he heard Keller thrashing about, trying to get to his feet.

  Cato stumbled across. There was a hellish red glow in the sky now, lighting the low-hanging clouds. Bells clanged out the front of the cantina and he knew the volunteer fire brigade from El Paso had rushed across the bridge to try to do battle with the raging inferno of the cantina. The reflected light threw the yard into deep orange relief, flickering as shadows of dark, billowing smoke rose in choking clouds from the building behind them. Keller lay back, breathing hard, blood on his shirtfront, staring up at Cato and the big Manstopper menacing him.