by J. T. Edson
‘What’s curious about it?’ asked Dusty. ‘A man coming from a deliberate killing would likely try and shoot it out.’
‘He’d fired five shots in the Fair Lady and had only one gun.’
‘Which same makes nine shots, happen you’ve got the right of it.’
‘It was right,’ Freddie put in. ‘I’d bought a new bar and there wasn’t a bullet hole in it. He would check.’
‘Sure, Magluskey fired off two shots, his gun was there. Six bullets in the men at the bar, one in the bar away from them enough so it couldn’t have been caused by a ball going through one of them. It made seven, two from Magluskey and five from the pale-faced dude.’
‘With the four outside made nine shots he fired. Figgers he wouldn’t have time to reload before he lit out. He using a revolver?’
‘What else could he be using?’ asked Beauregard.
‘A Volcanic pistol, they hold ten shots, or a sawed down Winchester.’
‘Neither, it was a revolver,’ Freddie answered. ‘I saw it before I went under a table.’
‘I never saw a ten shooter though,’ remarked Beauregard. He did not disbelieve Freddie, knowing her to be cooler than most men when there was shooting going on.
‘I did,’ Dusty replied. ‘In the War. European-made, pin-fire guns. Uncle Devil brought one home with him for his collection. I tried it and didn’t like it. A man’d have to like one of them to keep on toting it when he could get a Colt. Mind, they weren’t bad guns, as guns go, but they couldn’t touch the old Army Colt for easy pointing or accuracy.’ He paused, looking at the others. ‘You’d best finish it off for me.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Beauregard. ‘He threw his shots fast and he was good with it. I felt the wind of the bullets and it must have put me off. Anyway, he lit out and by the time I got up he was gone. I couldn’t find hide nor hair of him and as soon as I saw what happened I got every man I could lay hands on looking for the killer. We went through every room of every house in town, didn’t hardly leave a stone unturned without looking under it. Mr. Shepherd here’s head of the railroad and his men did the same with every inch of railroad property. A train left town just after the shooting but we got word ahead and brought it back again, with the train crew watching that nobody got off.’
‘You didn’t find the man?’ asked Dusty.
‘We didn’t. We know for sure he didn’t leave by train. The railroad crews didn’t like the Magluskeys and don’t hold with cold-blooded murder. They made sure the dude wasn’t hidden either on a train or on railroad property and he didn’t get picked up by a train outside town. He couldn’t have been in town the way we searched and there was no stage out during the night. To make sure I had men pick each stage up a couple of miles out of town and search them for two days after. Told the guards to hold any man who tried to board them within four miles of town. Nothing came of it.’
‘He could have pulled out on a hoss,’ Dusty pointed out.
‘He didn’t. I sent riders out of town, good men. Besides he was a dude and not fixed for riding and he didn’t go on a horse, not from the Fair Lady. He’d have brought one to the saloon if that was how he aimed to escape. At dawn I had men who could read sign making a circle of the town limits, looking for a sign that left about the time of the shooting. No sign of a horseman leaving. And a man isn’t going to ride across country, not alone and in dude’s clothes. Attract some attention if he did. If he went south he’d be likely to run into cattle drives and to the north the Cheyennes are out.’
‘Looks like you didn’t search the town well enough, Kail.’
‘We searched the town well enough,’ Beauregard replied. ‘I’ve notified every town within two hundred miles and the Town Council put a bounty of a thousand dollars on his head. Folks gave their co-operation when they heard who was killed and I let it be known Clay Allison’s coming up trail. That dude couldn’t have paid to hide out here.’
Dusty agreed with the words. Clay Allison was well enough known to get the required cooperation. Allison was a tough Texas rancher with a penchant for treeing towns and killing Texas-hating Kansas lawmen. He was not the sort of man who would mildly overlook the killing of one of his kin. Under normal conditions Allison’s visit to Mulrooney would be carried out with none of the wild hoorawing any other Kansas trail-end town received. Allison liked and respected Freddie Woods and knew that she ran a clean town, so behaved himself in it. However, if he came and found one of his kin murdered he would tear the town apart board by board and Kail Beauregard would not stand by to allow it. That would mean more killing.
Freddie Woods showed once more that she knew men and how they reacted to certain circumstances. ‘You know what it will be if Clay comes and finds we haven’t got the man, Dusty. But if we can tell him you’ve gone after the man he’ll be willing to hold off until you get back.’
That was true enough. Clay Allison and Dusty were friends, members of the select group who wore gun belts made by old Joe Gaylin of El Paso. They were a select group, the men who wore the Gaylin gun belts, for the old leather-worker would make a gun belt only for a man he felt was worth the honor. For a man to be wearing a Gaylin belt meant he was someone to be reckoned with, one of that magic-handed group who could draw, shoot and hit their mark, in less than a second. So, if Allison knew Dusty was hunting the killer he would hold his men in check until he heard the result of the search.
‘Look, Kail,’ Dusty drawled, seeing the difficulties of the search. ‘If he didn’t leave town by rail, stage, on hoss or foot, he must have found something new by way of transport. And I’ve not a helluva lot to go on. How about a description of the man. He got wings or something?’
‘We learned something about the man,’ Shepherd put in. ‘I got the section boss. Shamus O’Toole, and we questioned a few friends the Magluskeys made. Shamus can get persuasive when he has to. Apparently one of the men got the idea the dude didn’t like the idea of it. The man didn’t know what was going to happen, for they turned him away from them.’
Dusty smiled, remembering Shamus O’Toole. He could imagine how the questioning took place, punctuated by the thud of hard fists most likely. O’Toole could be very persuasive with his hard fists when he needed to be. ‘This man who gave you the voluntary information, he describe the dude?’
‘He did his best. Said the man was tall, slim and pale skinned, with pale blue eyes. Real mean eyes, he reckoned.’
‘Did the man come in off the railroad?’ Dusty asked Beauregard.
‘Nope.’
‘By stage?’
‘Try again.’
‘Born the day before the shooting and aged real fast,’ grunted Dusty, getting tired of it all. He’d just come off the trail from a hard drive and was in no mood to play guessing games.
‘Nope,’ replied Beauregard, grinning. ‘He came in by train all right. One that runs on four wheels. A wagon train. At least, that’s how he’s travelling, with a westbound wagon train. It didn’t come into town and camped about a mile and a half out, beyond that big bosque out there. We never even heard anything about them until last night when a buffalo hunter got to joshing Miss Freddie about how much money she must be making, with his sort, railroad men, trail-drive hands and wagon train folks all coming into town.’
‘I hadn’t seen any wagon train, so asked him about it. He said there’d been one camped out there on the night of the shooting, found sign to prove it. So I told Kail right away,’ Freddie put in.
‘Sure, at dawn I went out with the buffalo hunter, he could read sign near on as well as the Ysabel Kid. Showed me tracks of one man on foot coming to town. My men must have missed, or overlooked them, looking for sign of a man on a horse. He walked in direct but took a roundabout line back. That makes me sure it’s the one we want. So we want you to go after the train and bring him in.’
‘How about these Magluskeys? What does the railroad know about them?’
‘Nothing much. They did their work well enough, weren’t liked and were
under suspicion of dealing in the sale of arms to the Indians,’ Shepherd replied. ‘Nothing was proved, although they were thought to be mixed in with a ring who sold arms to the Confederate Army during the War.’
It was then Dusty’s tenacious memory got what was bothering him, some half-forgotten thought at the back of his mind. He remembered that night when he stopped the lynching of Elizabeth van Bruwer. Remembered the description of the two men who tried to start the lynching. A tall, thin, pale man with a pair of mean, light blue eyes. Dusty did not mention his thoughts on the matter, it was hardly likely they were the same men. Although a man who dealt with running arms to the Confederacy might still be in the same business, selling to the Indians. It was highly likely he would be running guns still, for he would have a source of supply ready laid on. Dusty looked at the other three.
‘So you reckon the man went with the wagon train?’
‘Everything points that way,’ Beauregard agreed.
‘They’ve got a four-day start, allowing them travelling twenty-five miles a day, they’ll be near enough a hundred miles from here, in the Cheyenne country,’ said Dusty thoughtfully. ‘A man on horseback’d make better time and catch up with them.’
‘He will also have to be either brave, or plumb loco to go in there alone,’ Freddie stated, knowing Dusty would go.
Dusty grinned at her, a grin she remembered from the days when she was trying to keep the town from folding through lack of trade and she first met him.
‘Why sure. But I don’t reckon to be going in alone. I’m taking a Comanche with me and the Cheyenne was never born that could show a Comanche any tricks.’
Freddie smiled, looked relieved for the first time since the killings. ‘You shouldn’t talk about the Kid like that.’
Chapter Three
The wagons formed a white-topped circle in the bottom of a valley. It made a peaceful sight, a community on wheels, a town going west to the new land and a new home. The sun was sinking and the cooking fires blazed, wafting pleasant smells of food in preparation as they would in homes across the country, except that here the kitchen was in the open, roofed by the sky. Small groups of men gathered, talking as they waited for the evening meal. The groups were made of men who spoke with the hard accents of New England and the northern states and the drawls of Virginia and the south. Men who eight years before might have been shooting at each other in the War now banded in harmony, all with a common bond, the land to the West.
Seated by her wagon in a rocking chair an old woman knitted with quiet concentration, unbothered by the hustle and the talk around her. A shadow fell across her and she looked up at a big, bluff looking, yet somehow reliable man who stood by her side.
‘Evening, Grandma Brewster,’ he said.
‘Evening, Major.’
Major Chris Brant, wagon master of this train, paused in his nightly walk, as he always did, by the side of Grandma Brewster’s rocking chair. He stood there now, a big, self-reliant man, hard, tough and capable, yet with a knowledge of human nature which stood in good stead on the long trip west. This was his fourth trip as a wagon master and he’d taken a mixed variety of people west, but this woman the train called Grandma Brewster, surprised him. She was far older than was usual in one starting to go west, a slight, frail-looking woman with a thin, gentle face that always wore a smile. Her passage was paid for, her Conestoga wagon one of the best and her team as good as money could buy. She was accompanied by an old Negro couple who cooked for her and drove the wagon. Who she was and why she was making the long and arduous journey to the California coast no one could say. She was going and she made herself useful and no one questioned her as to her reasons.
Almost everyone on the train liked the soft-spoken, gentle old woman. She’d become a kind of mother-confessor for anyone who needed a problem solving or wanted a shoulder to cry on. This was something Brant appreciated, for the women would have brought their little problems to him had not Grandma Brewster been along to listen and offer advice to them. She also helped with any nursing and acted as a midwife when it was called for. She gave her gentle wisdom, told the children stories and ran a Sunday bible class for them.
‘Everything all right with you?’ Brant asked, as he’d done every night of the trip.
‘Fine, thank you, just fine. And you?’
‘Easy so far. Tracy came in just now and told me there’s no sign of the Cheyenne. They’re likely further north.’
‘I’ll tell the ladies’ sewing circle when we meet later tonight. That young Mrs. Raikes is all a’twitter, sees Indians behind every rock and tree. It should be a relief to her to hear there are none—but I doubt it. That young lady dotes on misery and worry.’
Brant laughed. He’d come to rely on Grandma Brewster to keep twittering young wives like Mrs. Raikes out of his hair, it was one of her many self-appointed duties. He was about to remark on the fact when a woman hurried by them, making for a wagon further down the line. She was a scared-looking, painfully thin woman with straggly dark hair and a pinched face. Her thin gingham dress was torn and old, clinging to a figure which bore only the last vestiges of womanhood. She scuttled by, head bowed and eyes on the ground as if afraid someone might stop and speak to her.
There was pity in Brant’s eyes as he looked at the woman and Grandma Brewster shook her head sadly.
‘Poor Mrs. Holman,’ she cried. ‘I never really disliked anyone until I saw her husband. He’s as near a beast as any man could be.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Brant, breaking one of his prime rules. He would never have thought of discussing one traveler with another, not to any other person on any train he took west. Somehow this woman was different. He did not think of her as one of the travelers, but as much a part of his staff as his cook, driver, second-in-command or scout. ‘I think we’ve stopped him mistreating her. I threatened to turn him off the train the next time it happened. Well, I’d best finish my work, old Joel told me not to be late for my meal.’
Brant walked on, greeted by and speaking to the various people who were by their wagon fires, politely refusing invitations to eat with them. The Holman wagon stood in the circle, yet, as always, gave the impression of being separate from it. Mrs. Holman was working on the fire but there was no sign of men folk.
Holman was a big, burly brute of a man who always looked as if he wanted a shave, even though he took a razor to his face at least once every day. This was surprising in a man who seemed so careless of his appearance. He was a sullen, surly man, unfriendly when sober, mean and harsh when drunk. His drunken treatment of his wife almost caused trouble and only Brant’s stern warning brought an end to the ill-treatment which roused the other men of the train to anger.
Holman was not liked, nor was his son, a tall, slim and sullen youth who always wore a Colt in a low-tied holster. It was a significant rig, the lip of the holster cut away to allow easy access to the trigger of the weapon, even as it was being drawn. He also tied down his holster and in the west they said, ‘A man who ties down his holster doesn’t do much talking with his mouth.’ Frank Holman spent hours in the practice of fast draws. He was a trouble-causer who relied on a gun to back any foul play he made.
There was another man with the Holman wagon. A paying passenger, it was assumed, for nobody knew for certain. He was a thin, pallid dude who always wore dark-tinted glasses and was disinclined to do work of any kind. He was rumored to be almost blind and was supposed to be going to California for his health.
They were not a sociable group, the Holmans, never joining in any of the fun or activities of the other travelers. Brant watched them early on and found they knew far more about living in a wagon than any of the other families. The very way Holman escaped the pitfalls which trapped many of the other people made Brant suspicious. He did nothing to prove or disprove his suspicions and by the time the train was settled down to the trail he’d all but forgotten them.
Brant’s walk ended by his own wagon, at the right side of the main entrance
into camp. His cook was setting out the plates for the evening meal and the scout of the train lounged by the wagon side. Suddenly Tracy Wade stiffened and looked towards the rim. He was a tall, lithe young man wearing buckskins and belting an old Army Colt at his right, a bowie knife at the left.
‘Riders coming, Major,’ he said.
Brant looked up the slope at the two men who were riding slowly towards the wagons. He frowned as he looked at the men. It was unusual to see a group as small as two men in this country. Occasionally there might be a fast moving dispatch rider, or an Army scout, but they travelled alone. These two men were none of that kind. They wore a style of dress Brant had never seen this far north and west, the dress of cowhands, Texas cowhands at that.
Brant watched them as they came closer, an oddly contrasting pair in appearance, but each mounted on a big, powerful and fine looking horse. The taller rode a huge white stallion, one of the finest looking horses Brant could ever remember seeing. He was a tall, slim, lithe youngster, his clothing all black, even his gun belt. The walnut grips of the old Colt Dragoon gun at his right side, butt forward in the holster, and the ivory hilt of the bowie knife sheathed at his left made the only contrast in color against the blackness. His face looked young, very young, and the features were tanned nearly Indian dark.
The other man hardly attracted more than a single glance from Brant. He was small, handsome, young looking, yet insignificant. It seemed strange that so small a man should be riding such a fine looking animal as the big paint stallion. The hand-tooled buscadero gun belt with the bone handled Army Colts in the holsters, their butts turned forward for a cross draw, did nothing to make the boy look more noticeable. Brant hardly gave him a second glance, turning his eyes once more to the Indian dark boy on the big white.
Tracy Wade stood by Brant’s side a smile playing on his face, as he watched the two men. He’d been surprised to see two riders coming in like this, until he recognized them. Those two could ride any place they wanted and were fully capable of backing their decision to do so. They were men skilled with the revolvers they belted and with the Winchesters which were booted under their legs.
