A Coffin Full Of Dollars

by Joe Millard

  "They call it 'jazz.' It was borned in the N'Awleans who'e-houses, the big, fancy ones with their own dance bands, and that's about the onliest place you hear it." He added softly, "I—I guess it's for folks like me that don't have a lot of big words that come easy. It does our talkin' for us—our talkin' and our singin' and our cryin'."

  CHAPTER 9

  South and west. Pionino. Las Quintas. Kreb's Notch. Burning Rock. And beyond that, Hangville, in the shadow of the Sierra Malhoras, the Misfortune Mountains.

  At almost every stop there was one or more overly ambitious young budding bad men to be taught discretion and respect for their betters. But it was not all charity work. At Kreb's Notch a familiar face in the crowd, a face he had first seen on a reward notice. This time the crash of gunfire was good for a thousand-dollar bounty.

  But it was at Burning Rock that he came within a hair's breadth of cashing in the Big Jackpot.

  Dandy was just climbing to the stage to begin his opening spiel when they came riding in—seven of the most vicious, cold-eyed killer types to be found anywhere. The hunter's eyes went wide with the shock of recognition. All seven of the newcomers were wanted killers whose ugly faces leered from the walls of every sheriff's and marshal's office in the Territory.

  Six had bounties ranging from two to five thousand dollars on their heads. But it was the seventh man, the leader, who rocked The Man With No Name back on his heels. Squat, thick-bodied, swarthy, with the unmistakable stamp of Indian blood on his features, he was the dread Apachito himself—Mister Fifteen Thousand Dollars, in the language of the bounty-hunting trade.

  Under the poncho the hunter's hand closed on the butt of his gun, ready and eager for the explosion of violence he expected to erupt at any moment. The bounties would be rich, and they would be his alone. The only rival with the nerve to challenge him was Shadrach and there had been no sign of him for days.

  To his stunned amazement the outlaws picketed their horses, paid Dandy the admission fee without argument and quietly found seat space on the ground. The bounty hunter was mystified but not lulled into lowering his guard.

  He considered it highly unlikely that the seven wanted outlaws would risk a bounty killer's bullet or a rope dance from the gallows just to see a circus. He had a strong hunch that he himself was the real object of their visit. At least two, and possibly all five, of the toughs he had gunned down at Los Ydros had been members of Apachito's gang. This could well be a mission of vengeance.

  The hunter kept a wary eye on the group but they merely sat, quiet and seemingly intent, while the performance moved smoothly toward its climax, Laura vanished from the closed coffin and Cora rode in to complete the illusion and take the bows. The thunderous applause finally subsided and the bounty hunter stepped up to his gun stand as Dandy launched into his introduction.

  This was the moment when The Man With No Name had half-expected the outlaws to make their move, but nothing happened. He knew, then, what their scheme was and when they intended to put it into action.

  Dandy wound up his flowery pitch and the hunter plunged into his act. During much of it, his back would be turned toward the seven while he stood out in the open, completely exposed. Nevertheless, he was not unduly concerned about the possibility of getting a bullet in the back. That would be too swift, entirely out of keeping with the bandit chief's sinister reputation. If, as he had guessed, this was to be an act of vengeance, his dying would be planned to take a very long time and be highly unpleasant.

  He made only one very small change in his act. As its climax he used the rifle to cut the cords suspending the empty bottles, as always, and as always he smashed six of the falling bottles with a pistol shot before it struck the ground. This time, however, he shattered the seventh bottle with another rifle shot as it fell.

  He laid the rifle on the stand beside the empty pistols and turned to bow acknowledgment to the storm of applause. Apachito and his six companions were on their feet and moving toward him, spreading out as they advanced, hands hovering over the butts of their guns. He ignored them, made his bow and turned as if to walk away.

  "Hold it, fella," one of the outlaws called sharply. "Hold it right where you are. We got business to discuss with you."

  The hunter turned back, his expression revealing only a mild, unworried curiosity. He brought out one of the stubby cigars and lit it with exaggerated care.

  "Make it fast, boys. I've got some business of my own to attend to."

  Apachito planted himself in front of the hunter as the others closed in from each side.

  "Your business will keep," he snarled. "A long time." He looked the hunter up and down with hooded, inscrutable Indian eyes. "So you are the one they call Senor Ninguno—Mister Nobody. I have heard many stories about your shooting, most of which I refused to believe. Now, after what we just saw, I believe them all."

  "Thanks, amigo, but can we get down to this business your friend, here, mentioned?"

  "That we can. A few days ago, Senor Ninguno, I sent five of my men to Los Ydros to attend to some important business for me. Instead, they chose to get very drunk and go to the circus first. There they got themselves killed by you. So the errand I sent them on was not done, and this made me very angry."

  "Those bums," the bounty hunter said. "It serves you right for trusting anything important to such miserable dogs."

  "I quite agree, Senor Ninguno. They deserved what they got. If you had not saved me the trouble, I would probably have killed them myself."

  "So?" the hunter said. "If you came here just to thank me, forget it. It was all in a day's work. Now, if you don't mind, I'll run along and tend to my affairs."

  He made as if to turn away. The nearest outlaw slapped a hand to his gun and snarled, "Stay put, smart boy! Try walkin' away and I'll blow your balls off."

  The hunter turned back, his face a mask of perplexity. "What's eating on you people, anyhow? You as much as said those no-goods gettin' themselves killed was good riddance. So I can't see what you've got to be acting sore about."

  "Are you also Senor Estupido—Mister Stupid? I am the terrible Apachito. Everywhere men cringe and tremble at the very mention of my name. Now you have put my reputation on the line. What if word spreads that anyone can kill five of Apachito's men without paying the price? Soon they will jeer instead of fear the sound of my name. Every two-bit bounty hunter in the West will be swarming after us. No, my friend, you must pay the price—a price so high that fear will spread and never again will any man dare defy one of us."

  "I hear you like your enemies to die slow," the hunter said. "What do you do, talk 'em to death?"

  Apachito's dark face grew even darker with his rage. He squawled, "You are almost as good with your tongue as you are with guns, Senor Ninguno, and with guns you are very good indeed. But how good are you when all the guns are empty, as those are now? You see, we sat there, counting your shots and awaiting this moment. Bring him along, men, and kill anyone who tries to interfere, even if he wears a badge,"

  The outlaws made the fatal mistake of grabbing for the bounty hunter instead of for their guns. He twisted away. His hand flashed under the poncho and out with his own .44.

  "You forgot to count these," the hunter said.

  His left hand was a blurr of motion, slapping the hammer of the Colt. The six shots sounded almost as one drum-roll of thunder, coming so fast that not one of the six got his gun clear of leather before he died.

  Apachito said softly, "Your bullets are counted now, amigo. Your gun is empty, but mine is not. I, too, am an expert in my way. I know many places to shoot you so you will not die for a very long time, but meanwhile you will suffer agonies you could never imagine. Even if I cannot wait to enjoy your screams, they will give me great satisfaction."

  There was a sharp whistle, ending in crack like a pistol shot as the lash of Molly Deever's bullwhip curled around Apachito's gun and jerked it out of his hand, almost taking his fingers with it.

  "The next one," Moll
y said, "will take your front teeth."

  Apachito's yell of anguish suddenly changed to a howl of pure terror. One of the twins had slipped out and opened the lion's cage. Elmer let go with a coughing roar, charged out and bounded happily to greet the bandit chief.

  The outlaw howled again, spun around and raced wildly back toward his tethered horse, with Elmer racing merrily at his heels. The Man With No Name dived at the nearest dead body, flipped the inert hand aside and snatched out the half-drawn pistol. Still on his knees, he cocked the weapon and leveled it at a spot between the shoulder blades of the fleeing outlaw, the vision of fifteen thousands beautiful dollars dancing before his eyes. His finger tightened slowly and carefully on the trigger.

  A single gunshot crashed from around the corner of the dressing tent a split second before his own shot. The slug tore the pistol out of his hand and sent it whirling. The bounty hunter hurled himself toward the next corpse and its loaded gun, using his left hand because his right was numbed by the impact.

  Apachito had already torn loose the tethered reins and leaped to the saddle, spurring wildly away with Elmer, enjoying this fine new game, rocking in pursuit. Before the hunter got a second gun free, his quarry was well out of range and racing away, Elmer's pursuit lending the added speed of sheer terror to his horse's flight.

  Shadrach came around the corner of the dressing tent, carrying the long-barreled pistol with its skeletal stock still attached. He was plucking out the spent shell casing and replacing it with a fresh cartridge.

  Still on his knees, the bounty hunter lifted the cocked gun he had snatched from the holster of the second corpse.

  "You son of a bitch! I had him cold in my sights—fifteen thousand lovely dollars' worth. If you're so gaddam determined to spoil my game, why in hell didn't you shoot him instead of me and grab it all? What kind of a crazy galoot are you, anyhow?"

  "Why," Shadrach said, smiling, "I'm the crazy galoot who just saved you from making a mistake we'd both regret for the rest of our lives." He slapped the cylinder back into the frame, unscrewed the stock and slid the gun back into the holster slanting across his left hip. "It's time you and I went somewhere completely private and had a heart-to-heart talk."

  "Any talk we have," the hunter said through his teeth, "will be out in plain sight—after I've checked my gun for possible damage and reloaded. I'm not forgetting you left word you intended to kill me on sight."

  "You left the same message for me," Shadrach retorted, "and I'm sure you meant it, just as I did. However, when a situation changes, I'm not too inflexible to change with it. I always follow one basic rule. I never kill a man who can be useful and profitable to me, until he is worth more to me dead than alive."

  CHAPTER 10

  Dandy was bawling through his megaphone, trying to calm the crowd and work up some interest in his games. The hunter retrieved his gun, found it undamaged and reloaded.

  "Wait here for me," he told Shadrach. "I'll be right back and we can walk out away from everybody. But I'll tell you right now, you'd better make a lot more sense than you have so far."

  "Money always makes sense," Shadrach said, "and that's what I'm going to talk about."

  The hunter walked over to where Molly and one of the girls stood in front of the dressing tent.

  "You ladies saved my life, whatever that's worth. I'm obliged."

  "It just puts us even," Molly said.

  "I'm mighty sorry you lost your lion."

  "Elmer? Don't worry about him. He'll be back at feeding time. The poor old codger's been declawed and most of his teeth have fallen out. He couldn't kill a rabbit for himself if he was starving."

  The hunter returned to Shadrach and together they dragged the bodies of the outlaws to a less conspicuous spot behind the wagons. Afterward they walked out away from the circus to a patch of woods. Shadrach indicated the trunk of a fallen tree.

  "Sit down and get comfortable. This will take time." He fired up his yellow meerschaum pipe while the hunter lit one of his short cigars. "I gather you don't know much about Apachito beyond what was on the reward poster."

  "That's right. Do you?"

  "Quite a bit. I've spent a lot of time reading old newspaper accounts of his past crimes and they gave me a surprising amount of information. If you had killed him today, you would have earned fifteen thousand dollars—and lost at least a dozen times that amount, probably forever."

  "Keep talking," The Man With No Name said. "Eventually some of it might just happen to make sense."

  "You shot six of his men today, but according to latest reports he has at least fourteen more somewhere, probably at that secret hideaway the law could never find, and every one of them has a price on his head. Altogether they total well over forty thousand dollars. Without Apachito to hold them together, they could scatter to the four winds and a man could waste a lifetime tracking them down. Or they could just hole up where they are and wait for the hunt to cool down. Nine posses have failed to find the hideout. Your chances would be slim unless Apachito's alive so you could trail him there."

  "He's alive now, so why aren't you trailing him? He's so scared of Elmer, he isn't apt to waste time looking over his shoulder to see if he's being followed."

  "Because he can't go directly there. Even pushing, it's a two-day ride. He probably has a dozen hideouts along the way and they don't interest me."

  "I don't see why not."

  "Because, my innocent friend, there's a ten-thousand-dollar reward for locating their main hideout in the Misfortune Mountains, and not one penny for finding any others. So, not being a charity worker, I'll wait to trail him when he's within range of his main base. It's that simple."

  "Why didn't I run across anything about ten thousand dollars for finding his hideout? If there is such a reward."

  "Oh, there is, I assure you. It was posted many years ago, but I checked and it's never been withdrawn. They simply quit advertising it because no one ever tried to claim it. A few years ago, big ranchers were using Crazy Woman Pass as the shortest route for driving trail herds north to market. Then suddenly whole herds began vanishing somewhere in the pass. That was when Apachito's gang was just beginning to make the headlines, striking from a hideout somewhere near the pass. So the Stockmen's Association posted the reward, but when it produced no results, the ranchers simply switched to a longer but safer route, but they'd still prefer the pass."

  "You've got all the answers, so let's have this one. Where do I fit in to all this?"

  "You'll hear in a minute, my friend, but there's more. In fact, the best is yet to come. The gang's richest haul was a freight wagon load of gold bars, en route from the smelter to the Denver mint. They slaughtered the driver and a squad of troopers guarding the load and made off with the team and wagon."

  "So?"

  "So—this gold all came from the same mine and has a unique chemical content that makes it readily identifiable. But not one ounce has ever shown up on the market. Either Apachito shipped it abroad, which is highly unlikely, or it is still at their hideout, being held until he can find a safe way to dispose of it. I got in touch with the smelter and they'll gladly pay twenty percent of the current market value to get their gold back."

  The hunter whistled softly. "You milk every tit on the cow, don't you? I still want to know where I fit in."

  Shadrach smiled and said, "Cheese."

  The Man With No Name stared at him. "What in hell are you smoking in that yellow engine—loco weed?"

  "You're the cheese, my friend."

  "For a few minutes there," the hunter said irritably, "you were almost making sense. And dammit, stop calling me your friend. Nobody who robs me, insults me and swears to kill me on sight is any friend of mine."

  "That," Shadrach said coolly, "is one of the points on which you and I differ. Any man who is going to make me a lot of money is my friend, regardless of what he says, does or tries. At the moment, you're that man—friend. Together you and I are going to make a great deal of money ve
ry fast. Afterward ... who knows?"

  "Do you get these spells frequently?"

  Shadrach chuckled. "I'm afraid you're thinking with your emotions instead of your brains. I don't have that problem because I don't have emotions. In the days when you were tracking down wanted outlaws for me to snatch, I had ample opportunity to kill you but you were valuable to me. Then you began to get rambunctious and became a threat. I was prepared to eliminate you as a dangerous rival, until you suddenly made yourself valuable to me again by gunning down those five roughnecks at Los Ydros."

  "In case you've forgotten," the hunter said, "I also collected bounties on two of them."

  Shadrach dismissed the statement with a gesture. "Pennies! My sights are set on at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and you're going to help me get it, friend. Those five neatly placed slugs made you the cheese—the bait in the trap that's going to catch Apachito."