Bannerman the Enforcer 5

by Kirk Hamilton

  “And you never knew him to have gambling trouble, huh?” The man shook his head and then continued through the timber towards the trail at Yancey’s curt order.

  “You ain’t told me yet why you figured I might be here looking for him,” the Enforcer said.

  The one-eyed man shrugged. “I seen him over at Vernon a few days back.”

  “You saw Cato? In Vernon? Where is that?”

  “Day’s ride northwest. Yeah, I seen Cato there. He was with Waco Wyatt, the gunfighter. You know who I mean?”

  Yancey nodded tightly. “I know him. Steve Blayne’s man.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Well, Blayne’s got him a ranch outside Vernon. Fact, Vernon’s his town, that’s why I never thought much about it when I seen Cato’s hands were tied to his saddle horn and he wasn’t wearin’ that giant-killer gun of his. What’s he call it again?”

  “The Manstopper. You’re sure it was Cato?”

  “Hell, yeah. When I seen you comin’ in, I knew you and him usually worked together and I figured you must be lookin’ for him and that he was in trouble with Wyatt. I sure hoped he was, leastways. Be no skin off my nose.”

  Yancey nodded and saw that they were back onto the trail out of the valley now. He stopped and looked back towards the settlement but there was still no sign of pursuit. He turned to his guide. “You can stop shaking now. I’m not going to kill you.” The man looked as if his legs would give way with relief and he started to speak but Yancey stretched him out with a swing of the heavy rifle barrel and, as the man lay groaning, the Enforcer swung up into the saddle, grunting a little at the pain in his chest, lifted the reins and raced his mount out of the outlaw valley.

  All in all, it had been a profitable visit.

  Chapter Six – Ride South

  Cato stirred in his bunk as a hand roughly shook his shoulder. He was fully awake before he opened his eyes and sat up, making out he was having trouble coming round. It was a precaution he had followed many times and it had saved his life on a few occasions, his apparent sleepiness throwing the other man off-guard just long enough for Cato to get the advantage.

  But this morning it was unnecessary. Waco Wyatt was the man who had awakened him and he stepped back from the bunk as Cato went through his art of coming out of it slowly; he figured it wouldn’t hurt to give the impression that he was a man who always came round slowly. He saw that Wyatt held something in his hand, half-hidden behind his back and as he stood up and pulled on his pants, Wyatt held out the Manstopper gun-rig. Cato glanced at him sharply then took the rig swiftly and buckled it around his waist. He checked the big gun and saw that it was empty. He looked quizzically at the gunfighter.

  “Just playin’ it safe,” Wyatt told him. “Get on up to the house. Blayne wants you.”

  Cato nodded and proceeded to load the chambers in the Manstopper. He thumbed in eight .45 caliber cartridges and then walked down the long aisle of the bunkhouse and out into the sunlight of the yard. Instead of heading for the house, he turned towards the stables and Wyatt ran to catch up with him.

  “I said the house!”

  “In a minute.”

  “Now!”

  Wyatt was in a menacing attitude, looking as if he was about to draw. Cato looked him over and his mouth moved slightly in a crooked smile.

  “Not just yet, Wyatt,” he said quietly, and continued on to the stables. He went inside and to the stall where his horse was. Wyatt’s shadow was thrown down the aisle from the doorway and his hand was on his gun butt now. But Cato wasn’t running out. He went to his saddlebags and rummaged inside. He brought out three or four shot-shells and took out the Manstopper again. He broke open the gun and thumbed a shell into the massive chamber in the center of the cylinder and snapped the action closed. He holstered the gun and dropped the spare shells into his shirt pocket.

  Then he walked out into the yard past Wyatt without even giving the man a glance. The gunfighter’s face tightened as he swung across the yard after Cato. He passed the smaller man and jumped up nimbly onto the porch and strode across and opened the door. He managed to time it exactly so that when he closed it, it slammed right in Cato’s face. The small man smiled faintly, shook his head slowly, and opened the door, going inside.

  He found Blayne’s office crowded with gunmen that he had seen around the ranch during his stay here. No one greeted him and Blayne himself, seated at his desk, merely glanced up and nodded briefly. Wyatt stood beside and a little behind Blayne, arms folded, his face hard as he looked challengingly at Cato. The small gunfighter ignored him.

  “All right,” Blayne said. “We’re all here now and I guess you’re all anxious to start earning the money you’ve been promised. Well, there’ll be no more delay. We ride out in an hour and, from this minute, you’re earnin’ gunfighter’s pay.” He looked around expectantly. “Any questions?”

  “Sure,” said a man with a deep scar across the back of his gun hand; he wore his six-gun in the cross-draw position. “Where are we headed?”

  “South,” replied Blayne succinctly.

  “Where south?” the man growled.

  “Towards the Rio. That’s all I can tell you right now.” Blayne raked his cold eyes around the group. “I wouldn’t want anyone talking out of turn and giving the game away. I can say we’ll likely be going down into Mexico but I don’t know for certain sure myself yet. Got to pick up a wire along the way that’ll give me more details. Just take my word for it, you’ll come back a lot richer than you go down.” He looked around again, eyes resting briefly on Cato before moving on. “That all?”

  “Am I on gunfighter’s pay too?” Cato asked.

  Blayne smiled slowly. “Your case is a little different, Cato, but, yeah, I guess you could say you are. Instead of hard cash, you get your notes back and stay out of jail. How’s that sound?”

  Cato shrugged. “Guess I prefer some hard cash. I could always bust out of jail.”

  That got a laugh out of the men in the room and Blayne smiled, though his eyes remained steely. “All right, Cato, relax. I’ll see you right. You’ll ride back with plenty of dinero. Provided you earn it.”

  “You just tell me what you want done,” Cato replied, deadpan, slapping a hand against his Manstopper. “But maybe I won’t be ridin’ back with you. Could be good for my health to spend a little time south of the border.”

  “It could keep a lot of us healthier!” admitted the man with the scarred hand; Cato knew him as Chola.

  There was a brief wave of laughter and Blayne stood up, lips curved in a smile, but his eyes still hard. “Okay, we’ll get under way in an hour.” He raked his hard stare over them one more time. “Now’s the time for anyone who feels like it to drop cut. Once we ride out of this here ranch yard, that’s it. You go all the way or get a shallow grave beside the trail. Savvy?”

  There was no laughter this time.

  ~*~

  Governor Lester Dukes waited impatiently at his desk, tapping the fingers of his left hand rapidly against the polished woodwork while his right fingers massaged the nagging ache in his left shoulder. The medicine seemed to be containing it, but there was a twinge or two down his left arm that had him a little worried. He sure didn’t want a major attack at this time—or any other, for that matter, but especially not just now.

  He snapped his head up and dropped his right hand away from his shoulder as there was a perfunctory knock on the door and then it opened and Kate came hurrying in, her face showing concern as she crossed the big room.

  “What is it, Dad? I was told you wanted to see me urgently.” He nodded and forced a smile, motioning to a chair. “Sit down, Kate. Sorry if I alarmed you. I’m all right if that’s what you were thinking.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Kate said as she sat down, her eyes closely studying the governor’s gray, lined face. “I can read the signs by now, Dad. You’ve got angina pain, haven’t you?”

  “Well. Maybe a twinge, but that’s all. Just a twinge. That wasn�
�t why I sent for you.”

  Kate arched her eyebrows puzzledly.

  Dukes lifted a familiar yellow, dog-eared telegram message form and handed it across the desk. Kate took it slowly, but read swiftly. She was still puzzled when she looked back across the desk at her father.

  “It’s from Yancey and he says ‘assignment completed, full report following’. What’s wrong, Dad? It seems he’s done the job a lot faster than anyone expected. He must have traced the man who had been threatening Senator Adams and ended the matter one way or another. Why did you send for me?”

  “Those words, ‘full report following’, Kate,” Dukes said grimly, unable to keep a grimace from his face as pain stabbed through his neck and shoulder. But he lowered his head in an effort to cover up. “Why the devil doesn’t he say, ‘full report on my return’? Or give some indication of when he’ll be arriving back in Austin?”

  Kate was frowning deeply, not only at the wording of Yancey’s message, but at that fleeting grimace of pain she had observed on Dukes’ face.

  “I don’t really see what you’re getting at, Dad. Do you want a dose of your medicine?”

  “No, damn it, I don’t! It’s only a twinge. Forget the angina. What I’m getting at, Kate, is that from the tone of Yancey’s wire, I’d say he has no intention of returning here in the near future. Wouldn’t you say that’s a pretty fair sort of impression from that wire?”

  Kate nodded slowly. “Well, it’s possible, I suppose. But, why isn’t he coming back here now that the assignment’s completed?” Dukes locked at her hard and for a long time. Then he seemed to relax a little, or, at least, seemed less tense. He sighed as he toyed with the message form. “Kate, I got the distinct impression from Yancey’s wire that he’s going after Cato.”

  The girl looked startled at his words. “What?”

  “Well, what else would keep him away? He says here that the assignment’s been completed. Not ‘near’ or ‘almost’, but completed. And the report is ‘following’. Which sounds to me like he’s going to write it out and drop it in the mail. Not at all like Yancey.”

  “But why would he go after Johnny? In fact, I doubt if he’d know where to start out after Johnny. He was hurt pretty badly by Cato’s behavior but I think he’d come to accept it.”

  “No!” Dukes said flatly. “He has not accepted it. He asked for leave and he had the intention of going after Cato then and ‘trying to straighten him out’, Kate. I’m sure that’s what he’s done now.”

  Kate stiffened a little. “I see. And you sent for me, because you thought Yancey might have said something to me about doing this before he left for San Antone?”

  “It had occurred to me.”

  “Well, he didn’t say anything to me, Dad. If he had, I would, of course, respect the confidence, but he didn’t. I’m as mystified as you by the wire.” She frowned again. “But is it so bad, him going after Cato, if what you suspect is true?”

  “Damn it, yes it is!” Dukes snapped and he sagged back in his chair, grimacing openly now, clawing at his left shoulder.

  Alarmed, Kate hurried to the cabinet and poured him a dose of medicine, carrying it back to him and forcing it between his purpled lips. Slowly he relaxed and his face straightened out and his breathing steadied down. She used her lace kerchief to wipe a dribble of the brownish medicine from his chin.

  “Oh, Dad, I’m calling Dr. Boles, no matter what you say.” He grabbed at her hand as she made to move away and the girl turned to him worriedly. “I’ll—be all right. You can fetch the damn sawbones in a minute if you want. But I want Yancey back here in Austin, Kate. Send him a wire, tell him to get back here pronto!”

  “Yes, of course, Dad. Where is he?”

  He pulled the message form towards him and glanced at it. “Looks like this was relayed from Vernon. That’s down south. Get a message off right away, Kate in case he moves on. And get him back here, pronto.”

  The girl nodded and looked at her father closely. “Have you got another assignment for Yancey, Dad?” she asked casually.

  “Eh? Oh, yes. Yes, I’ve got another one I want done in a hurry.”

  Kate held his gaze a moment longer then nodded and started towards the door. She stopped when her father spoke again.

  “Kate, how’s young Marnie bearing up?”

  “Not very well. She’s very broken up about Johnny. I’m trying to get her to stay on here for a while, but she’s talking about leaving. I know she has nowhere to go, nowhere in particular, but I don’t think she should go off in this frame of mind.”

  Dukes frowned and sighed heavily. “No, of course not. Do all you can for her, Kate. And get that wire off to Yancey.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Kate said slowly and she looked very thoughtful when she went out of the room.

  ~*~

  Yancey hadn’t known it before, but he learned mighty quickly that Vernon was Steve Blayne’s town. When he had ridden in after quitting the outlaw valley in the Medicine Hills, he had been treated like any other stranger and had had no trouble in sending his coded wire to the governor.

  But, after that, when he had started asking the way to the Blayne ranch, he found out that questions about Blayne weren’t welcomed. At first they lied straight out and said he had been misled, that there was no ranch hereabouts run by anyone called Blayne. But the name ‘Blayne’ appeared on so many of the business awnings that it was only a matter of minutes before Yancey disproved this. So then they had been vague about directions: try north a’ways; or, hear tell there’s a big place to the south or southwest that Blayne’s got an interest in; or, why not try the next county? A man don’t necessarily have to live in the same county as his business interests.

  And so it went on. But Yancey kept hammering away, going to the same people, making them angry, irritable, nervy, with his repeated questions. He knew what would happen: someone would be sent to the Blayne place, wherever it was and a man would turn up in town to take care of Yancey—one way or another.

  So Yancey waited, but it was a hard wait. The saloon had ‘just run out’ of the brand of redeye he wanted; the beer he finally got was warm and more than half of it was froth. The crackers he bought in the store were full of weevils and the jerked beef could have doubled as boot leather. There wasn’t a stall available in the livery—or so the stable hand told him—for his horse and they couldn’t sell him any hay or grain. The hotel was full up and so was every rooming house he tried.

  They let him sit a spell on the porch of the store but then the owner came out and asked him to move, said he was obstructing the customers. He said nothing to the four other townsmen lounging around on the potato sacks and rain-barrel, legs sprawled out onto the porch.

  But Yancey waited them out. He moved on without fuss when they asked him, took the bad food and warm beer, found himself a place under a shady elm, tethered his horse nearby, and stretched out, waiting, knowing the whole town was watching and waiting, too. For by now they must have sent for someone from Blayne’s.

  Yancey stirred as someone asked, “Your name Banner?”

  He sat up, seeing the man in cuff protectors and eye-shade from the telegraph office. He was holding out a dog-eared message form for him.

  “Addressed to you.”

  Yancey stood and took the message. As he had expected, it was a summons for him to return to Austin right away. It was coded, signed with Kate’s cover-name. He screwed up the form and threw it away; he had no intention of returning to Austin yet.

  “Bad news?” the telegraph man asked.

  Yancey merely stared at him.

  “Well, I had to take the message. Seen where you was wanted someplace in a hurry. Guess you’ll be quittin’ Vernon right soon, huh?”

  “Guess again,” Yancey growled and sat down with his shoulders pressed against the elm, tilting his hat forward over his eyes.

  The telegrapher hesitated, started to say something, then, frowning and muttering to himself, turned and strode back across the street. He
shook his head at the group of people watching from the boardwalks. No, Banner wasn’t moving on yet.

  Yancey was rolling a cigarette when he saw the man he had been waiting for. There was no doubt about it; he rode in slowly from the north and he walked his mount down the center of Main, not looking in Yancey’s direction but the Enforcer would bet that he had been spotted the moment the man had started into Main. He was a hard-eyed, hard-faced hombre, wearing two guns on crossed gun belts, using only one hand to hold the reins, the other resting on his thigh not far from his six-gun butt. Yancey would put him in his early thirties and he had the look of a man who had seen plenty of violence and survived, maybe not always in one piece, but he was still walking around and able to use those guns.

  Yancey could see the notches carved into the walnut butts from here.

  The Enforcer finished rolling his cigarette and fired it up. He sat and waited, watching the gun hung man step down from his mount outside the store. The storekeeper and the four men who had been lounging on the porch, gathered around him swiftly and Yancey saw a hand gesture in his direction. In another half-minute, the gun hung man began to saunter across the street towards Yancey. The people gathered expectantly on the walks behind him. Yancey lounged easily, smoking, his eyes taking in the set of the man’s gun-rigs, noting the bases of the holsters were tied down with rawhide, that other little rawhide loops were attached to the tops of the holsters to hold the guns in place by looping over the hammer-spurs, They were loosened off now as the man approached.