Lassiter 4

by Peter McCurtin

  Always when Lassiter killed one man he was ready to kill another. And he hadn’t killed just one man. In the chamber of his gun there was still a single bullet. The gun was still in his hand. He hadn’t forgotten to put it away. He looked at the gun, then at McCain. Living or dying didn’t mean a whole lot to him. He knew the kid would have been a problem. Even so, he wasn’t much on killing kids.

  McCain, seeing the look in Lassiter’s eyes, tried to be oily about it. “You had to do it,” he said. “I’d have done the same myself.”

  Lassiter put the gun away. “Sure you would. For you it’s better than a woman. That right, Colonel, sir?”

  McCain stiffened, and the ruddy face grew pale. It was an effort to put his face back the way it was. The red faded, not fast but gradually, and then he was the same again. The smart Irish mucker who’d read all the books and knew all the answers.

  The kid was dead, but a contracting muscle in his leg caused a boot heel to drum on the wooden floor. Neither of them looked at it. Suddenly Lassiter didn’t give a damn about the kid any more, about the Irishman, about anything. He was here and he had just killed three men and he was tired. The nearly full bottle standing on the table looked good.

  “You want a drink?” he asked the Irishman.

  McCain was tired, too. “Absolutely,” he said.

  Lassiter asked how many men Greeley had in his outfit. He had seen five, he said. McCain said there were more than that. Fifteen, at least. They were all Americans. Lassiter asked where the rest of them were. McCain said out on patrol. Lassiter said it didn’t seem like much of an outfit. McCain said Greeley didn’t want anyone but Americans in his outfit. Greeley said —or had said—there were more men, more American gunmen, coming from the south to join them.

  “That’s no good,” Lassiter said, passing the bottle to McCain. “The outfit’s too small as it is. About fifty men would be right. What kind of other men have you got?”

  McCain drank and passed the bottle back. “All kinds,” he said. “It’s your outfit—you look them over.”

  The bottle was empty when Lassiter stood up. “That’s what I’ll do,” he said.

  So did McCain. “When will you be ready to move?”

  “Move to where?”

  “To rob a bank. A fat bank.”

  Now the Irishman was talking Lassiter s language. A pint of whiskey was heating Lassiter’s blood. For the first time since he’d been in Canada he didn’t feel cold. That was something to be thankful for. The bank was something to smile about.

  “This bank,” he said, with a wolfish smile that matched the Irishman’s. “Does all the money have to go to this rebellion?”

  “Within reason,” McCain answered. “Nobody can say I’m not a reasonable man.”

  McCain couldn’t hold his liquor as well as Lassiter. A belch followed. A foggy grin came after the belch. “Nobody can say I’m not a fair man.”

  Lassiter turned to look at the dead kid stiffening on the dirty floor. The dead kid had sounded as if he came from, maybe, Ohio. Lassiter thought of how McCain had killed the old Scotchman. He didn’t include the little boy the Irishman had tried to shoot. The Scotchman and the kid were comparison enough.

  “You’re a broth of a boy,” he said. He thought about it some more. “And so am I.”

  McCain left. Lassiter waited for the three troopers from the late Captain Greeley’s outfit to report back to the mess hall as ordered.

  Lassiter pointed to the dead man on the floor. “There’s another one,” he said, enjoying the way their faces turned to putty again.

  They started toward the dead man. “He’ll keep,” Lassiter said. There was dizziness in his head when he took a step. Last night he’d traveled all night, the night before that Colonel Cameron—Canada was full of colonels—had rearranged his face.

  “What do they call you?” he asked, his eyes gritty and dry from lack of sleep.

  They gave their names—Canaday, Riggs, Tolliver. While he was asking them questions the rest of the so-called First Irregulars came back from wherever in hell they’d been. All ten of them. Irregular was exactly the right word for this outfit, Lassiter decided.

  The fur-faced old Canuck who had ducked out when the trouble started was back at his post behind the stew pots when the patrol rode in. Lassiter hadn’t asked about Greeley’s second in command. He knew him when he saw him. A lot of years had gone between since the last time they met, but Lassiter knew him all right.

  Brigham Colmar—that was the name the runaway Mormon colonists in Chihuahua who raised him gave him as a name. The name Colmar went fine with his Indian face and nobody still alive, as far as Lassiter knew, had ever laughed twice, maybe not even once, at the given name Brigham.

  Raised by the Mormons, Colmar still dressed like one, from habit or from misplaced pride. The Rurales killed Colmar’s foster parents, just as they had massacred that particular Mormon settlement near the border at the request of the American authorities. Remembering the kindness of his Mormon foster parents, more real to him than real parents, Brigham Colmar had turned mean. Lassiter remembered Colmar all right, had never had any trouble with him. He recalled that Brigham Colmar knew more about horses than any other man of his acquaintance. Colmar was quiet, didn’t say much at any time, and he never went anywhere without a Book of Mormon in the saddlebag.

  Colmar, for all his Mormon raising, still moved like the full-blooded Mescalero Apache he really was. The rest of the patrol clumped into the mess hall. Colmar was last, and he came quietly, even in boots. Lassiter thought it was kind of odd to see a Mexican Apache in British Columbia.

  The Mormon Apache was direct, simple-acting, far from simple-minded. When he saw Lassiter standing with the three men—Canaday, Riggs, Tolliver—he didn’t do anything special. There was no surprise, no change in his dark face. He saw Lassiter and he came over. The Mormons who had liaised him were as open-faced as the Indians.

  “Lassiter,” he said. No greeting, no welcome, no demand for answers.

  “Brigham,” Lassiter said. “How’s the world?”

  “The same,” Colmar said. “Not as good as it should be. And you?”

  “I’m your new commanding officer,” Lassiter informed the Indian.

  Colmar didn’t blink, didn’t move. There was no friendship between him and Lassiter. Maybe there was a kind of half-thought-out respect. Colmar knew Lassiter was many things. But not a man to lie. Not a man to lie when it was easy to tell the truth.

  The Mormon Apache didn’t drink, smoke, or use coffee. Lassiter knew the Mormons liked their women, to increase the congregation, of course. It was a thought without purpose. Lassiter smiled, for himself and his thoughts, not for the Mormon Apache.

  “What’re you, Brigham? A lieutenant?” he asked. “They made me a major.”

  There was no smile from Colmar. “I’m still a sergeant. Just as you knew me as one of General Crook’s scouts. Greeley didn’t think an Indian should be an officer.”

  Lassiter said, “You’re an officer now, Brigham. Not a lieutenant. A captain.”

  Colmar didn’t thank Lassiter, and there was no thanks expected. There was no smile either. Brigham Colmar never smiled, never grinned, never attempted to do either. The dark face, as always, remained smooth, wide, open. There was no humor and no disapproval and no praise either in his voice when he spoke.

  “You have been busy, Lassiter,” he said. The dark face had seen the dead man on the floor and having seen him once didn’t have to look again. Only an Indian could say a thing like that without sounding funny.

  Lassiter knew you didn’t explain to an Indian, no matter where or how he was raised. The Mormons hadn’t taught Brigham Colmar to love horses or to use a gun—and he was as good with one as he was with the other. The Mormon Indian had killed men, many men, but he wasn’t a killer. They had something, not much, in common, Lassiter decided. There were Indians you could threaten, not Brigham Colmar. The happy hunting grounds or the thought of losing heaven mea
nt nothing to him. The Mescalero who spoke New England English—his foster parents had come from Hillsboro, New Hampshire—might not even believe any more in the Book of Mormon.

  Colmar said to Lassiter, without pride: “I must tell you. I am not in this for the money. I must tell you this also. I did not like Greeley, and I do not know you. I do not want to know you. That is said without offense. My concern is only for freedom. I will follow you only so long as you ...”

  Lassiter didn’t want the Apache to forget his place in the great world. Nothing was as dangerous as a silent man who suddenly decided to talk.

  “Call me Major,” Lassiter said. “So you can get used to the sound. Call me Major—Captain.”

  It was a test. Lassiter didn’t want to make it. Not with Brigham Colmar especially. But the palaver had gone on long enough. Now the test had to be made. It was double-dumb, like everything else having to do with armies and officers, titles and tally sheets.

  There was no hurrying the Indian, and the new title of captain didn’t impress him. Tell a man like that about a pit of tarantulas waiting for him, and he still wouldn’t change his mind unless he wanted to.

  “Any orders—Major?” he said.

  Lassiter told Colmar to sit down. Lassiter raised his voice and told the rest of the men to take their plates and eat outside. Knowing about the death of Greeley and the others, they were prompt about it.

  Lassiter went to get a mug of coffee. “We’re going to increase the size of the outfit,” he told Colmar. “To at least fifty men. Men are supposed to be coming from the States, but we can’t wait. They’re watching the border—that’s how I got caught. You’ve been here longer than I have. There must be other men we can use.”

  Colmar considered what Lassiter said. “There are some. Most of them are better with rifles than pistols. Many of them are fanners. They can ride but not well.”

  Colmar didn’t sound enthusiastic. He never did. Yes, he said, he thought he could pick some likely men from the infantry squads. But he would need authority. Because of Greeley there was much bad feeling against the Americans.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Lassiter said, thinking what a dumb thing to tell an Apache who was afraid of nothing and no one. “Pick your men, then we’ll look them over together. If they have the wrong kind of guns, get rid of the guns. Every man must have a carbine. Anybody gives you trouble, send him to me. Even the Irishman.”

  Colmar nodded gravely.

  Lassiter asked, “What about horses. A lot of the animals I saw riding in here look like farm plugs.”

  “We stole ten horses last night,” the Indian said. “Good ones—I picked them myself. Tonight, with your permission, we could do better.”

  Lassiter said he thought they would get along fine.

  The Indian reserved judgment in his dark eyes.

  Chapter Six

  At the head of twenty horsemen Lassiter rode along the side of a timbered ridge. It was a week later, just before sunup, and cold mists drifted across the river far below. They had been in the saddle for two days. Two days and sixty miles from the fort.

  There was a town on both sides of the river, the two parts connected by an iron bridge. The sun hadn’t burned off the mist yet, and the outlines of the buildings were blurred with white. Some of the windows showed lights, and two dogs started a barking contest as they rode quietly, the horses hooves wrapped in sacking, along the ridge.

  The column stopped when Lassiter raised his hand. Colmar stopped his horse beside Lassiter. “It would be better if we could go in from both sides,” Lassiter told the Indian, who nodded agreement. “But there’s no way to cross that river. Too fast and deep. Not unless we ride on and ford where it gets shallow.”

  The Indian knew he wasn’t being asked for his opinion.

  Lassiter reached into his coat and took out a folded sheet of map paper. Under the dripping pines, with the mist blowing, they had to squint to read the Irishman’s map of the town. They had gone over it many times during the past two days. It was a simple map of a small town, the center of a gold mining and logging district.

  Running his finger along the lines of the map, Lassiter reexamined the layout. There was the main street. It ran across the bridge and continued on the other side. A few short streets straggled off the main stretch, and didn’t get very far. The bank was there, a steepled church on one side, a commercial building on the other. Dots on the map were supposed to show where the militiamen guarding the bank would be. Lassiter wasn’t too sure about the dots. The buildings would stay where they were, but the dots, being men, could be moved around. According to the Irishman’s information, the provincial militia was well supplied with the new rapid-fire Maxims. Back in the States they were still using the hand-cranked Gatlings. North of the border they were more progressive. The light, recoil-operated, belt-fed Maxim could fire six hundred rounds a minute, and it didn’t have to be moved around on wheels like the old Gatling.

  Lassiter wished the Irishman’s spies knew more about the Maxim guns. That was the trouble in working with amateurs. A real spy would be more interested in the rapid-fire guns. Just one Maxim placed in that church steeple could make things awfully messy.

  Lassiter told the two dynamite men, Mullins and Ritter, to come forward. Mullins and Ritter were two of the eight new men the Indian had picked from the infantry squads. Both were old soldiers, Mullins ex-Union Army, Ritter ex-Prussian, and they both knew something about demolition work. Ritter, the German soldier-turned farmer, was the smart one, and he was in charge.

  The biggest part of the town and the militia barracks were on the far side of the bridge. Lassiter said, “No matter what else we do, you got to blow that bridge. Rob the bank or not, they’ll be coming after us if you don’t knock out the bridge. They will anyway. The bridge will slow them down. Four men will give you cover. Don’t let me down, boys. Get yourself killed if you have to, but don’t let me down. Any questions?”

  There were no questions.

  The next two men he questioned were Mapes and Kittridge, from Greeley’s old outfit. Mapes, a heavy man made uglier than he was by a large birthmark on his face, had a pack horse in tow. Two burlap sacks were slung over the animal’s back. The sacks were loaded with whiskey bottles filled with kerosene and sugar, one part sugar, two parts kerosene, and the necks were plugged with kerosene-soaked rags. The fire-bombs were Lassiter’s idea. The Mexicans had been using them for years. Petroleum made a better fire-bomb than kerosene, but there was no petroleum at Fort Liberty.

  “Remember,” Lassiter said, “they won’t work if you try to use a lit cigar. You got to use a wood match. One more time, boys. Let’s see those matches.”

  Mapes didn’t smile. Kittridge did. Both reached into their pockets and showed handfuls of wooden matches.

  The steel-gray sky was beginning to brighten. Soon the mist would clear. At Lassiter s command the men dismounted and untied the sacking on the horses’ hooves. They reached the end of the ridge, walked their horses down onto the road. The road sloped down from where it passed through a break in the ridge, then spread out where the main street began. Lassiter patted the five sticks of dynamite stuck inside his belt. He lit a cigar.

  The noise of the barking dogs came through the thinning mist. Other dogs, sensing something, joined in.

  “Now!” Lassiter yelled. The spurs dug in, and the horse jumped forward. They came down the slope yelling like Comanches. They reached the beginning of the main street. A man came running out of the first house. He had a red nightshirt on, and he tripped and went down like a shot rabbit. Lassiter killed him with one shot when he got up. Riding hard, they fanned out, keeping the two dynamite men in the middle. A bell started clanging. A man with a blue uniform and a military rifle shot at Lassiter from an alley between two buildings. Lassiter and the Indian shot him at the same time. The force of the bullets knocked him out of sight.

  The first of the fire-bombs smashed against the side of a hardware store, splashing liquid
fire. The second fire-bomb didn’t break. It bounced onto the boardwalk and rolled. The Indian hit it with a bullet before it stopped rolling. The dry wood, coated with the fierce-flaming sticky mixture of sugar and gasoline, burned like paper. Lassiter saw the bank, brick-built and solid, heavy bars on the windows. Glass shattered and rifle barrels poked out through the bars and fired.

  Lassiter cursed the Irishman. The guards were supposed to be outside, not inside the bank. He slowed his horse, reaching for a stick of dynamite, and Colmar rode past him. The men in the bank had bolt-action repeaters and the fire, after the first surprise, was heavy. Lassiter saw Mapes setting off another firebomb. The big man was digging into the sack for another bomb when a bullet hit the sack of bottles and man and horse exploded in a sheet of white flame. Mapes gave a long, high scream. The screams of rider and horse blended together. Mapes was screaming for Jesus. Lassiter had to ride fast, slashing with the spurs, to catch up. He swung the gun and killed Mapes with two shots. He put the bullets in the burning man’s back. Mapes didn’t fall off the horse. Lassiter shot the running horse in the head. Another bullet brought it down. He wheeled back through a rain of bullets from the bank. The stick of dynamite was still in his left hand. A bullet burned the back of the hand that held the dynamite. He grinned at that. He touched the burning cigar to the short fuse and tossed it at the window of the bank. It bounced off the bars and exploded in the air. The boardwalk was blown to matchwood and splinters of brick sang like hornets and smoke and dust boiled up in a blinding cloud. When his ears stopped ringing Lassiter heard a bugler blowing his brains out.

  Fighting to steady his horse, he fired another stick and threw it through the smoke. He didn’t see the stick after it left his hand. He knew it went through the window. This time the explosion was dull, heavy, contained by the heavy brick walls. Another alarm bell added its noise to the bugle blasts. No more bullets came from inside the bank, but there was heavy firing down by the bridge. His face twitched when the Maxim gun started firing down by the bridge. It had taken them a while to get it going. Now it was going good, and the gunner, firing in controlled bursts, knew his business. Two riderless horses raced past him, eyes flared with fright.