“It’s a good gun if we can’t get anything better. I’d like to get fifty .44-.40’s for my men. So we can all shoot the same bullet.”
Dowling said that could be arranged. “Now,” he said, “about the money?”
McCain, looking at Lassiter, said to the Yankee, “We’ll get it Major Lassiter has a few more banking appointments.”
Dowling’s old maid face was bland. “I understand,” he said. “When the money is ready I will forward the guns. You will be notified as to the time and place.”
“About the other matter?” McCain asked, “How good are the chances of getting help from the Americans?”
Lassiter was pouring another drink. Dowling glanced at him and coughed nervously. “Anything I say will be officially denied if it is repeated. Naturally, I will deny it myself. Certain Senators—no names mentioned of course—have assured me that help will be forthcoming. If the fight goes well, you can expect a considerable amount of help.”
Lassiter didn’t like politicians of any kind, from chicken-eating county sheriffs to windbag senators. “They want to wait and see, is that it?” he asked the Yankee.
The Irishman cut in smoothly, “Well now, you can’t blame them for that. Let me say, Mr. Dowling, that we are pleased by the interest of your friends in Washington.”
The Yankee’s thin mouth puckered like a prune, the closest he could come to a smile. “And now I must be getting back. It’s a long ride. I will be waiting for your message.”
Dowling gave McCain a weary handshake. Lassiter waved with his glass, and the Yankee went out.
The Irishman sat down behind the rough table, rubbing his hands together like a man about to tackle a mountain of work. “Now that calls for a drink,” he said, laughing without noise.
Passing the bottle, Lassiter asked, “You trust that old bastard?”
“Maybe, maybe not. We need those guns and any other help we can get. That brings us back to the subject of banks...”
Chapter Eight
Lassiter made a deal with McCain—ten per cent of all the money he took for the cause, as the Irishman called it. He didn’t give a dry cow-flop what they called it so long as he got his money. According to McCain, the whole province was in a panic as the hastily trained guerilla units from Fort Liberté and other strong points moved out to raid small towns, burn and blow railroad bridges—to hit the enemy where he didn’t expect to be hit, and sometimes where he did.
Lassiter wanted to talk about money, McCain couldn’t stop reporting on the goddamned rebellion. They were in the commandant’s office, drinking whiskey. The half-breed, Baptiste was sulky because McCain told him to go to hell when he asked if he could have a drink. Baptiste got more angry when McCain, pleased with himself, told him to and piss against the wind if he wanted a drink that badly.
McCain swirled the whiskey in his glass. “That’s an old Irish expression,” he informed Lassiter, giving out with the old jailbird’s chesty laugh. “Piss against the wind—you get it?”
“I don’t want it,” Lassiter said, thinking that he’d made a deal before the second robbery—this time a mail car job—and thinking the Irishman would have to be crazy, or have some new edge he didn’t know about, to want to walk away from it. Lassiter was gut-sick of McCain and his goddamned expressions. One thing he couldn’t stand was a man who didn’t act like a professional. McCain might be a professional trouble-starter all right, but he wasn’t a professional when it came to giving, and keeping, his word.
“If you argue about it, it’s twenty per cent,” Lassiter told him sourly. He asked McCain to pass the bottle.
“For Christ’s sake, man, forget about the money,” McCain said. “We’re doing fine. Everything’s going like clockwork. Our friend Colonel Cameron of the provincial militia couldn’t be more helpful. Telling the high mucky-mucks back in Ottawa that what’s happening here isn’t really a rebellion”—the Irishman’s chest heaved—“but an outbreak of organized banditry.”
“Twenty-five per cent,” Lassiter said.
“The colonel doesn’t want control taken out of his hands,” McCain said. “Tells the high mucky-mucks he has the situation well in hand. Should be only a matter of time before he catches and hangs the ringleaders. That’s us, Lassiter. And the daft thing is Ottawa believes him. By the time they stop believing him it’ll be too late. Now doesn’t that excite you, man?”
Lassiter said thirty per cent.
McCain put down his glass and motioned for the bottle, half gone now. He took it and poured. “All right,” he said, “you get the ten per cent and—no real offense—damn you for a dollar-loving Yankee.”
Lassiter wished these foreigners north of the border would stop calling him a Yankee. Where he came from, originally but not lately, a man who called another man a Yankee when he wasn’t could get himself shot.
There was no use trying to educate the educated Irishman, so he said, “I was up to thirty per cent. You’re the one talked about ten.”
“Ten it is,” McCain stated, the whiskey making the mad eyes no madder than they were.
“You’re sure about that? You’re really sure?”
“Absolutely sure, man. Do you doubt me?”
Lassiter looked at the half-breed, thought about the dead fool and patriot Felix Papineau rotting in his wet grave outside the walls of the fort. He said, “I don’t doubt you for a minute, McCain. I don’t doubt anything about you.” Lassiter put a glass of whiskey down his throat. “Not a thing.”
McCain knew what he meant and took it the other way. “Fine, Lassiter,” he said. “Ten per cent it is. Absolutely and finally.”
“You didn’t say positively.”
“Positively, if you like. Now does that please you?”
“No,” Lassiter said. “But I’ll make it do. What pleases me, McCain, and it doesn’t please me much, is money.”
The half-breed knew some English, not enough to keep him interested. He took out a skinning knife and pared his dirty nails. The blade looked sharp enough to shave with. Lassiter noticed that every time Baptiste had the knife in his hand he looked around for somebody to dream about. Now he was looking at Lassiter.
McCain, getting back to the talk about money, told Lassiter he was missing a lot with that kind of attitude. Didn’t Lassiter ever dream about bigger things? Not just whiskey and women but wanting to make a name for himself. To change things so people would remember his name after he was gone.
Lassiter grinned, thinking of all the reward posters with his name and face on them. They would remember him all right, not that he wanted to be remembered or gave a damn, but he guessed they would remember him sure enough. More or less, he knew what the Irishman meant, and he didn’t like it. Men who thought that way gave him a worse pain than a boil on the backside.
He wasn’t grinning when he said so.
The Irishman shook the bottle, measuring how much was left. He poured some, left enough for Lassiter. “You’re a good man, Lassiter,” he decided, “but we don’t think the same.”
Lassiter didn’t want any more of McCain’s whiskey. He stood up feeling fine and lousy at the same time. He said, adjusting his gun rig, “We don’t, and we won’t.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Lassiter. I like you, and I don’t like to hear that.”
“No, you don’t, Mac. You think you’re just fine the way you are. I think maybe you been too long in jail.” Lassiter thought he might as well say it. They both knew it anyway. “Just don’t try to do me like you did old Felix.”
McCain had been expecting something like that. But what he said was, grinning, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lassiter shrugged and went out. It was early in the morning, cold and hard, and the pale sun didn’t do much to make it different. Some new men were in from the States and he wanted to look them over. He knew one of them, Johnny Bannerman, somebody he knew from Zack Myler’s old bunch before they finally tamed Missouri.
Lassiter walked over to
the mess hall where Bannerman and the new men were waiting. Bannerman held out his hand. Lassiter shook it. He remembered Johnny Bannerman as having less gray in his sandy hair. Bannerman had a face like an axe, sharp and long and no-colored. Like an old axe—mostly gray and now mottled with rust spots. Bannerman didn’t look as tough as he used to be. Some men got older and tougher, others just got older.
There were ten men with Bannerman. After looking them over without appearing to, Lassiter decided they were a fair bunch of gunmen, stock-thieves, outlaws, drifters. A few were about Bannerman’s age, which was forty-five or so. The others were younger. Lassiter didn’t know any of them.
Lassiter explained the situation. Counting the new riders with Bannerman, the outfit now totaled forty-five men. The Indian would lead fifteen men, Bannerman another fifteen, and he would lead fifteen men himself. “Any questions?” he asked Bannerman, not the others. “The time for questions is now. McCain may be running the war, but I’m running this outfit. Anybody goes against orders gets shot. Anybody holds out money from a job gets shot.”
“Sounds fair enough,” Bannerman said. “When do we go to work? The boys are itching to earn some of that bonus money you mentioned.”
“You start right away,” Lassiter told him. “Soon as Brigham Colmar gets back. Colmar’s been here longer than I have. And he knows the country.”
Bannerman was from Texas, and he didn’t like Apaches. “I don’t need that frigging Indian,” he complained. “Me and the boys are sort of tight-knit—used to working together—and we don’t need no frigging Mormon Apache. Just tell us where the work’s at and we’ll find it.”
Lassiter pointed a thin, hard forefinger at Bannerman. He hoped he wouldn’t have to explain how Greeley and two other men got out of the First Irregulars.
Lassiter and his boys had come in late after the mail car job. The long ride and four hours sleep hadn’t filled him with brotherly love. “Bannerman,” he said wearily, “a minute ago I asked if you had any questions. You didn’t ask if we had any Mormon Apaches in the outfit. You asked about money, and I set you straight on that. Now suddenly you’re telling me how to run the outfit. Is that it?”
“Hell no, Lassiter. It ain’t that. It’s like I said. Me and the boys don’t need no Indian.” Bannerman turned to the hard cases sitting at the mess tables. “Ain’t that right, boys?”
“Don’t ask the boys,” Lassiter said harshly. “Ask me. And I say the Indian goes along. The Indian and five of his men. So you won’t get lost with the money.”
Lassiter wanted to show Bannerman who was boss. He didn’t want to push him too hard in front of his men. If he did that without altogether having to, there could be problems later. What he said next took some of the bite out of it:
“It ain’t that I don’t trust you, Bannerman. Let’s just say you got the name of being an enterprising feller when it comes to money.” Bannerman didn’t mind being called a smart thief.
He grinned at Lassiter and some of his boys started to laugh. “The bossman got you pegged pretty good, Johnny,” one of them said.
Bannerman said sure—send the goddamned redskin along. Send a whole tribe if he had a mind to. That got more laughs, and Lassiter went out thinking Bannerman wouldn’t ask any more questions for a while.
Heading back to his quarters, Lassiter heard the Indian and his men ride into the fort. McCain came out of the commandant’s office at the same time. Lassiter counted the men in the column. There were four missing, but the Indian had the money in a sack tied across the front of his saddle. The other men looked dead from the long ride back through the mountains. The Indian looked the same as always except for a bloody rag wrapped around his left arm.
Colmar’s men headed for the mess hall. Colmar himself followed McCain into his office and Lassiter went after him. McCain was always trying to break down the Indian’s habit of silence. It was just like McCain to try to charm a Mescalero Apache with his shop-worn blarney.
“Dammit, man, you’re hurt,” McCain started up, trying to take the Indian by the good arm. “Let me pour you a drink.”
The Indian took his arm away and said he didn’t drink. McCain shook his narrow head like a proud uncle. It was all wasted on the Indian. “Well, by God, I see you brought back the money.” McCain slapped the sack of money lying on the table, then stroked it like a cat, saying as he did: “How’d it go? Was the money in the mine superintendent’s safe? Like our man said it was?”
The Indian wouldn’t even sit down. “Not in the safe,” he stated. “The superintendent had hidden it in another place. I got him to tell where it was after a time.”
McCain’s chest heaved. “You persuaded him, did you?”
“I persuaded him,” Colmar agreed, adding nothing else. Mormon or not, Colmar had the Apaches ancient knowledge of torture. “How much is there?” McCain wanted to know.
“I don’t know. A lot. There was no time to count it.”
McCain was full of good nature. “Well, there’s time to count it now. Why don’t you get over to the mess hall and get something to eat.”
The son of a bitch, Lassiter thought. Colmar stayed where he was.
McCain knew he wasn’t about to fool the Indian with a bear steak and a plate of beans. He got up and loosened the drawstring of the money sack. The Irishman counted the bundles of money and Lassiter checked the count. The half-breed, always there, took out his knife and went to work on his dirty nails. The Indian watched the count but didn’t touch the money.
“I make it sixty-two thousand,” McCain declared.
Lassiter finished a moment later and said, “Sixty-two is right.”
The Indian didn’t often ask questions. Now he had one, except that it wasn’t really a question. Colmar knew how much money they’d taken, how much more was needed. But, with an Indian’s politeness, he asked how much more was needed to get the guns from Dowling.
McCain added and subtracted figures in his head. “With this we have enough—even when Major Lassiter’s ten per cent is deducted from his personal take.”
Lassiter and McCain had given up the Colonel and Major routine some time before. Calling Lassiter Major was supposed to needle him. Talking about the ten per cent to the Indian was supposed to make Lassiter look like a dollar-hungry bastard, definitely not a man to like or trust. McCain knew Lassiter and the Indian worked well together, not out of friendship but because of the respect one professional fighting man had for another. Mentioning the ten per cent was McCain’s way of trying to put some bad feeling between them.
The Indian didn’t seem to be interested in Lassiter’s reasons. Lassiter was sure of that—anyway, pretty sure. Unless the Indian said something or did something, there was no way to be dead-sure. Lassiter decided to push McCain back and see how he liked it. He asked for his money—now.
“I brought in close to a hundred thousand,” he stated. “That gives me ten. Mix it up, Mac. Nothing bigger than a hundred, nothing smaller than a ten.”
It got quiet in the room. The half-breed held the knife close to the point and scratched his head with the haft, in the throwing position—if he needed to throw. The Indian did nothing. Finally, McCain put a twisted grin on his face.
“Ten thousand. Make that nine thousand seven hundred. If I may say so, you’re in one hell of a hurry.”
Lassiter grinned back. “Don’t hurry,” he told the Irishman. “Take your time. Count slow.”
McCain counted out hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens. He handed the pile of bills to Lassiter, who counted it again. “Much obliged,” he said.
“You’re going somewhere?” McCain enquired.
Lassiter turned around. “That’s right, Mac,” he said. “I’m going to go to my quarters, lie on the bed, drink some whiskey. Maybe recount my money. You know—for the fun of it.”
McCain wanted to know about the new men. Lassiter said they were all right. “I was going to send them after that other bank we talked about three days ago. If Colmar isn’t up
to it, I’ll go myself.”
“I thought you wanted to lie on your bed?”
“Maybe I’ll do that first.”
McCain socked one fist against the other. Lassiter knew he was holding something back. He waited, and McCain let him wait.
“No more jobs for a while,” McCain said, the pale eyes mad with excitement. He slapped the pile of money, knocking some of it to the floor. McCain dragged out his surprise. “We’re moving out of here in the morning.”
Lassiter rubbed his scratchy chin.
McCain almost yelled, “To get the guns, man! To Ringo Junction to get the god-blasted guns! They’re due there in five days time, coming in boxes marked farm tools. I was to send word to have them stopped if any difficulties came up. Meaning a shortage of money. It was all arranged while Dowling was here. I gave him that fifty thousand you took as a down payment.”
It seemed like there was no end to the Irishman’s double-dealing. There was nothing to do with a man like that but smile. Or kill him. Lassiter smiled, reserving the right to kill him later, if need be.
“Thanks for telling me,” he answered.
McCain made the socking motion again, a sure sign that he was pleased with himself. McCain was most dangerous when he thought things were going well. Maybe they were. Lassiter still had doubts—not strong doubts—about Grainger P. Dowling. Just as he always had doubts about middlemen and go-betweens.
McCain said, “Guess it must have slipped my mind. Anyway, I’m telling you now. This is a big day for the cause.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” Lassiter told him. “Maybe it will be when you get the guns. Maybe you’ll get the guns.”
McCain had an answer for everything. “I know you don’t trust our friend Dowling. That’s because you don’t know the people Dowling is working with. You may not know it but certain people in Washington have had their eye on Canada for a long time. Haven’t you ever heard of the Annex Canada Movement?”
“Sure I have,” Lassiter said. “Why don’t they put up some money if they’re so goddamn interested?”
Lassiter 4 Page 9
