Shawn O'Brien Town Tamer # 1

by W. , Johnstone, William

  “How about you, Hamp?”

  “Draws a blank with me,” Sedley said. “Morrow said he’s a gun, huh?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “We’ll take care of . . . whatever the hell he’s called,” Platt said. “You concentrate on Cobb.”

  Shawn swung into the saddle and looked down at the little man.

  “I think Morrow believes that I can’t shade him,” he said.

  “We can always get the marshal involved,” Sedley said.

  “And tell him what? That we need his help to kill a man?”

  “I can arrest him,” Platt said. “I have the power.”

  Shawn smiled. “Something tells me that Hank Cobb won’t care to be arrested today.”

  Platt’s face was deeply lined by conflicting emotions.

  “Shawn, if you want to ride away from this, there isn’t anyone here going to blame you,” he said.

  “I appreciate that, Ford,” Shawn said. “But the man who was responsible for Holy Rood and the deaths of so many still walks the earth. So long as his shadow falls on the ground, I can’t step away from it.”

  Platt nodded. A fly buzzed around his head. “Well, you got sand, Shawn.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m scared to death. Now mount up and let’s ride.”

  The main street of Silver Reef was busy with people, but they walked slowly in the building heat as though they’d lost their sense of purpose.

  The rapid closing of the silver mines had gutted the town and everyone but the most hopeful or unintelligent knew it was headed for oblivion.3

  A pretty woman wearing a green silk morning dress, a lacy white parasol shading her porcelain skin, gave Shawn a bold look from under the black fans of her eyelashes as he rode past.

  But he didn’t notice her. His mind was focused on Hank Cobb.

  Chinatown was a collection of shacks sprawled hit or miss across a sandy flat, hemmed in to the west by rolling hills, to the east by the timbered breaks of the Hurricane Cliffs.

  It was in the heart of silver country, a vast area where glittering fortunes had been made and lost for a decade.

  The Chinese, most of them former railroad construction laborers, had lived south of Silver Reef since 1879. They’d found work in the mines and now many were packing up and getting ready to move on, some of them back to China.

  When Shawn and the others rode into the dusty settlement, about two hundred people still remained but the only stores in town, a grocery and a dry goods, were as yet open for business.

  The sun was bright, the sky blue with only a few cotton ball clouds, yet a pall seemed to hang over the town, and Shawn knew that the cause could only be Hank Cobb.

  A few men and woman, slender as reeds, walked around, but they did not raise their heads or show any interest when the three white men dismounted outside the grocery store and stepped inside.

  The store smelled sharply of spices and of the dried ducks that hung like little brown soldiers in an orderly row above the counter.

  Behind the counter stood a young, pretty girl with coal-black hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her huge brown eyes moved to Shawn’s guns and she breathed rapidly, her small breasts rising and falling under the pink silk shirt she wore.

  Without a sound, the girl reached under the counter and dropped a small, white coffee sack on the counter that clinked in the silence.

  “That is all there is,” she said. “My grandfather has no more.”

  Shawn picked up the sack and hefted it in his hand. When he opened it up, he saw a dozen gold and silver coins.

  “Why did you give us this?” Shawn said.

  The girl looked frightened.

  “My grandfather has no more. It’s all been taken.”

  “Who took your grandfather’s money?” Shawn said.

  “The white man who killed Qiang Cheung, our mayor.” The girl’s eyes flashed. “As if you did not know this.”

  “The man who killed your mayor, is he called Hank Cobb?” Shawn said.

  The girl shook her head and looked lost.

  “I do not know what he’s called.”

  Shawn laid his left arm across his chest.

  “Does he carry his arm like this?”

  This time the girl nodded. “Yes, it hangs from his shoulder in a cloth.”

  “That’s our man,” Ford Platt said.

  “Where is he, this man?” Shawn said.

  The girl opened her mouth, but the words died on her lips.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Shawn said. He pushed the sack across the counter. “We don’t want your grandfather’s money.”

  “The man you seek lives in the house of Qiang Cheung.”

  An old Chinese man walked through a bead curtain that swayed back into place when he stepped behind the counter.

  He had a wispy white beard that hung from the pointed chin of a wrinkled face the color of parchment. He wore a plain white shirt over a black, floor-length robe of some kind and a round cap balanced on the crown of his tiny, well-formed head.

  “Is he there now?” Platt said.

  Beside him, Sedley made a show of studying the dried ducks, but his hands were clutched in front of him, betraying his growing anxiety.

  “He is there,” the old man said. “The people bring him tribute.”

  He shrugged thin shoulders. “All the young men have gone to find other work, and only the women and the old like me are left. Who is to tell this man Cobb no?”

  “I will,” Shawn said.

  “He will kill you if he can.”

  “I know.”

  The old man reached behind his neck and untied a jade medallion, carved with the symbol of an eagle perched on a rock amid a turbulent sea.

  “If you were my own son I would give you this,” he said, extending the talisman to Shawn. “It is reserved for heroes and it will give you strength and protect you in battle.”

  “I am honored,” Shawn said. He tied the string around his neck and the medallion hung on his chest.

  “Warrior,” the old man said, smiling as he stepped back. “I have offered sacrifices to the great goddess Mazu to send me a man such as you and she has answered my prayers.”

  “Well, let’s hope so, mister . . . ah . . .” Shawn said, slightly embarrassed.

  “My name is Tian,” the old man said.

  Shawn touched the medallion. “Thank you for this, Tian.”

  “Yeah, thank you, Tian,” Hamp Sedley said. “Something tells me we’re gonna need it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Tian’s granddaughter pointed out the mayor’s house, a low, timber building that didn’t look even vaguely Chinese. A hastily built pole corral at one end of the cabin held two horses, a long-legged buckskin and a paint mustang.

  The place seemed deserted, but thin smoke trailed from the chimney and the smell of coffee hung in the air.

  “So what do we do, O’Brien?” Sedley said after they’d stopped at a distance from the cabin. “Knock on the door and wait until they ask us in for tea?”

  “I’m calling him out,” Shawn said.

  “Suppose he doesn’t want to come out?” Sedley said.

  “Then I’ll kill him at a distance,” Shawn said.

  “No, Shawn, I’ll call him out,” Ford Platt said.

  “I’m here in my official capacity as a representative of Wells Fargo. It’s my sworn duty.”

  “Hell, it don’t matter a damn who calls him out,” Sedley said. “It’s what happens when he comes out that’s the problem.”

  “Sedley, is that the first or second sensible thing I’ve ever heard you say?” Platt said.

  “Second, I think.”

  “Good, then you’re improving.”

  Platt stepped toward the cabin, Shawn and Sedley behind him.

  The afternoon was hot and near the cabin the branches of a dead, overturned piñon gleamed like scattered white bones in the sun glare. Crickets rasped in the bunch grass and, a ways off, a solitary buzza
rd flapped to an untidy landing and regarded the three men with a cold, merciless eye.

  Platt stood in front of the cabin, spread his legs and filled his chest with air.

  “Hank Cobb!” he yelled. “Do you hear me, Hank Cobb? I’m calling you out!”

  There was no answer.

  A dust devil spun around Platt’s legs and tugged the bottom of his pants.

  “Oh, well, there’s nobody to home, O’Brien,” Sedley said. “Better luck next time, huh?”

  “They’re to home,” Shawn said. “Their horses are in the corral and they sure didn’t go anywhere on foot.”

  “Hank Cobb!” Platt yelled again, leaning heavily on his cane. “Get out here and take your medicine like a man.”

  Shawn saw a curtain twitch in a window to the front of the cabin and then from somewhere inside a man’s voice droned followed by a laugh.

  Then, “Who the hell is out there?”

  Hank Cobb’s voice . . .

  “My name is Ford J. Platt, and I’ve been deputized to arrest you for complicity in the murder of a Wells Fargo passenger on the Silver Reef to Cedar City stage. What is your reply?”

  Cobb made no answer, and Platt raised his voice even louder. “Do you hear me, Hank Cobb?”

  “I hear you,” Cobb yelled.

  “Then state your intentions.”

  “I’m a wounded man who’s feeling right poorly, but I’m coming out.”

  Shawn stepped closer to Platt and Sedley did the same.

  But the gambler swallowed hard and he looked pale and Shawn wondered if he’d stand.

  He didn’t blame Sedley. The man wasn’t a gunfighter and this would be close and sudden work, calling for quick hands and steady nerves.

  Concerned for the man, Shawn said, “You all right, Hamp?”

  Sedley’s face settled into a scowl.

  “Don’t worry about me, O’Brien,” he said. “I’ll stand.”

  “I never thought other wise,” Shawn said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Well, maybe I did.”

  Sedley face cleared and he managed a smile.

  “And so did I,” he said.

  The cabin door opened and Hank Cobb stepped outside. With him was a lean, hawk-faced man with careful eyes, wearing a two-gun rig, a rarity on the frontier at that time.

  “I see you cut yourself shaving, Hank,” Platt said.

  Cobb’s fingers strayed to the bloodstained triangle of newspaper on his left cheek.

  “I enjoy a shave before I kill a man,” he said.

  Cobb’s eyes crawled over Shawn and Sedley like snails and his thin mouth widened in a smile.

  “Well, well, well, all my dear friends are here, just like old times,” he said. He adjusted the hang of the sling on his left arm.

  “Cobb, you’re a piece of human garbage,” Shawn said. “And I’m not your friend.”

  “No, I guess you’re not at that,” Cobb said.

  His gaze dropped to the Colt in Shawn’s waistband.

  “The hell if that’s not Mink Morrow’s gun. Did you kill him, O’Brien?”

  “No. He gave it to me as a gift.”

  “Generous of him.”

  “I thought so.”

  Platt spoke slowly as though he was deliberately choosing his words.

  “Well, Cobb, will you come quietly?” He read the scorn on the other man’s face and said, “I can promise you a fair trial.”

  “And a first-class hanging, huh?”

  “If that is the jury’s decision, then yes.”

  Cobb turned his head to Simon Badeaux.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you tell him to go to hell.”

  Badeaux had a heavy French accent that would have been at home in a café shaded by the horse-chestnut trees along the Champs-Elysees, and he had a tightness around his mouth that Shawn didn’t like.

  Cobb stared at Platt. “You heard the man. He said go to hell. So cut loose your wolf!”

  And he went for his gun.

  Cobb’s draw was fast and smooth and he targeted Shawn, having long before pegged him as gun slick.

  In that, he was right.

  Shawn drew from the waist and had a bullet into Cobb’s chest an instant before the man fired. Shawn took the hit on the top of his left shoulder. Cobb’s bullet burned across his skin like a red-hot iron.

  Cobb’s eyes were wild, shocked. He knew he was hit hard, but couldn’t believe it had happened to him.

  He staggered back a step, his face grim and worked his Colt.

  He fired.

  A miss.

  Shawn, past and present angers driving him, was relentless.

  He fired, fired again.

  Hit in the belly and again in the chest, Cobb screamed his rage and dropped to his knees. Scarlet blood and saliva ran from his mouth and his eyes were murderous.

  He tried to bring up his Colt. . . .

  Then something happened that Shawn, Cobb . . . no one could have anticipated.

  The old Chinese man named Tian darted from the corner of the cabin, running at a speed that belied his age.

  A moment later, with tremendous strength, he swung a flat, wide-bladed sword, a red tassel hanging from the hilt, and the honed steel bit into the right side of Cobb’s neck . . . and kept on going.

  Cobb’s head seemed to jump a foot from his shoulders. It rolled in the dirt and came to a stop close to Shawn, who kicked it aside.

  He turned and caught the last moments of the gunfight between Badeaux and Ford Platt.

  Platt, pulling a gun from the pocket of his coat, had been slower than Badeaux. But he’d taken his hits, remained on his feet, and gamely got his work in.

  But now he was down on one knee, his chest splashed with blood.

  Hit, Badeaux had staggered to the cabin and shoved his back against the wall.

  Now he shouldered himself off, steadied his stance, and took deliberate aim at Platt.

  Shawn and Sedley fired at the same time.

  Hit twice, Badeaux fell against the cabin and slowly slid down the wall to a sitting position.

  His eyes were wide open . . . but he saw nothing.

  Cobb’s eyes were also open . . . but God alone knew what they were seeing. . . .

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Shawn O’Brien glanced at Tian.

  The old man wiped his bloody sword on Cobb’s back and then looked at Shawn and grinned.

  “Warrior,” he said.

  Shawn put a hand on Tian’s shoulder and nodded. “Warrior.”

  He stepped to Ford Platt and took a knee beside him.

  The little man’s lips were bloodless and he was obviously trying hard to conceal the pain that nonetheless showed in his eyes.

  “How badly are you hit?” Shawn said, looking for a wound.

  “Bad enough,” Platt said. “I reckon I’m all shot to pieces. I think one bullet went clean through me and the other . . .”

  He glared at Sedley. “Hit me up the ass.”

  Hamp Sedley was gracious enough to look guilty.

  “I’m not used to this fast draw stuff,” he said. “Damn gun went off by itself.”

  “Next time stand in front of me, preferably bending over,” Platt said. “Maybe my gun will go off by itself.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Sedley said. He tossed his Colt into the dirt. “I’m finished with that. Seems like I always miss my enemies and shoot my friends.”

  “You got a bullet in Badeaux, Hamp,” Shawn said. “I’d say you did all right, apart from shooting Ford that is.”

  Ignoring Sedley’s groan of remorse, Shawn examined Platt’s wounds.

  After a couple of minutes, he said, “You’re right, Ford, Badeaux’s bullet hit you high in the chest and exited just above your right shoulder blade.”

  Shawn, his face empty, said, “The second bullet is still lodged in your left butt cheek.”

  “Then I’m done for,” Platt said. “It’s all up for me.”<
br />
  He angled Sedley a look that would have shriveled a thornbush.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Shawn said. “But you need a doctor real quick. Can you handle the ride back to Silver Reef?” Shawn put his fingers to his mouth. “Oh, sorry, I forgot.”

  “My ass didn’t let me forget,” Platt said, irritated.

  Tian, the sword hanging by his side, looked down at Platt and said, “We have a doctor who can treat your wounds.”

  Platt narrowed his eyes. When he spoke his voice was barely a whisper.

  “Is he a good Christian? I will not submit myself to heathen pokings and potions.”

  Tian shook his head. “Not Christian, but Dr. Chang is a fine physician.”

  “Then I’ll pass,” Platt said.

  “If you don’t see a doc, you’ll pass away, Platt,” Sedley said.

  “Advice from my murderer,” Platt said. “That’s all I need.”

  “Hamp is right. You need those bullet wounds treated, Chinese doctor or not,” Shawn said. Then to Tian, “Where is he located?”

  “I will show you the way. Can the patient walk?”

  “Hell no, I can’t walk,” Platt said.

  “Then we’ll carry you,” Shawn said. “Hamp, help me.”

  He and Sedley cradled Platt, each holding a leg, and followed Tian. A crowd of excited Chinese gathered to watch, while others busily ransacked Hank Cobb’s cabin.

  Buzzards, as elegant in flight as fallen angels, quartered the sky above the town and a north wind carried the smell of pine and sage from far places.

  “You two are delivering me into the hands of the heathen,” Platt protested in a thin whine.

  “Lucky for you, huh?” Shawn said.

  Sedley, still wracked by guilt, bit his lip and said nothing.

  Dr. Chang’s cabin looked no more Chinese than the others.

  But inside told a different story.

  The doctor himself was a small, frail bag-of-bones with an impossibly yellow skin networked by wrinkles. His eyes were black, as bright and alert as a bird’s, and he could have been any age upward of a hundred. He wore traditional Chinese dress: a crimson silk robe decorated with a dragon motif and a mandarin hat with a red tassel. He wore a wispy mustache and beard and a plaited pigtail hung down his back.