by Adam Brady
Rogan wasn’t the one to blame, Hahn decided with some reluctance. The simple truth was that the blame rested on Harp McPhee’s shoulders.
If it wasn’t for McPhee, Melissa would never have become associated with a gunman like Wes Rudder. It was Rudder who lured her into doing things for McPhee, and from there things went downhill fast. Hahn had tried to tell his daughter more than once that she was getting in too deep, but by then, she was hooked.
The law office seemed small, cramped and stuffy now. He opened his mouth and gulped in air. Then he wiped his sweating face on his sleeve.
He could not believe that Melissa was dead. He did not want to believe it.
Wes Rudder was not to blame, Hahn admitted. McPhee had been the real architect of all the mistakes Melissa had made.
Then there was Halliday.
Melissa said Halliday had taken her by force in her own room at the boardinghouse, and Rudder said Halliday had killed her in the Red Rock Saloon.
Hahn drew in a quick breath and lifted his head. He stared out the doorway to the street. Everything was quiet. This had been his town. He had walked these streets with pride, and every man showed him respect. The change had come so slowly it was hard to say when decent folks stopped trusting him. He had let McPhee get a toehold, and then a foothold. Now McPhee owned everything in town ... including the law.
It was hard to say if the words he uttered were a curse or a prayer as Hahn wrenched open the drawer and rummaged through the contents. Finally, he found what he wanted—the linen handkerchief Melissa had embroidered for him when she was still in school. He folded it carefully and tucked it securely into his pocket.
Then he drew his gun and checked the cylinders.
His mind was made up, but even so, he hesitated. He looked around the seedy little office. It wasn’t much, but it represented years of his life.
He was going to find Halliday and then settle with McPhee, or he would die trying. It did not matter which way it went, not with his little girl dead.
Bob Rudder didn’t enter into his thinking. Sooner or later, he would end up just like his brother.
The sheriff straightened his shoulders and smiled. The planning was complete, and it was a relief to have it done ...
Buck Halliday stretched and yawned. The air was stuffy and still in the locked-up bank, and the place had that characteristic smell of all public buildings—ink, brass polish, dust that had lain undisturbed for years in nooks and crannies of the woodwork and plaster, stale cigar smoke.
The clerk had tried to keep him out until opening time, but Halliday had decided the bank was the perfect place to watch and wait. Now he had seen it all—Bob Rudder limping into town like the walking dead, Luther Hahn rushing off to the jail with the look of a desperate man ...
Looking over his shoulder, Halliday saw the clerk going about his business as though he was alone. He was counting money into the drawer in the teller’s cage now, always the last task to be completed before opening. The minute hand on the big wall clock was edging in tiny increments toward twelve.
“Thanks,” Halliday said quietly. “I’ll leave you to it now.”
The clerk interrupted his counting and looked up.
“You have a good day, Mr. Halliday,” he said.
“Always try to.”
Halliday eased open the heavy front door, intending to go to the law office for a word with Luther Hahn. Then he saw Rudder resting against a vacant hitch rail about a hundred yards down from the jail.
Halliday gave the man a wry grin. This was the start of that good day the bank clerk had wished him. Good or otherwise, it was the kind of day he had seen many times before.
He settled his gunbelt just right on his narrow hips and adjusted his hat to shade his eyes from the bright light in the street.
There was no sign of Harp McPhee, who was no doubt playing his usual cautious game. Finch Rogan had not showed up in town, and Halliday hoped that he would stay away. It seemed likely that Tom Mahoney was out on the prairie with his neighbors, preparing to defend their land. That was just how Halliday wanted it. The only way to settle with Rudder was alone.
Quietly closing the heavy bank door, Halliday went down the granite steps and onto the boardwalk below.
He was taking his time, sizing up the distance and the angle of the morning sun.
When he came to the chosen spot, he stepped into the street, planted his feet firmly and called;
“Rudder!”
The gunman turned and his body stiffened. For one short moment he seemed to hesitate, but then his chest swelled and he moved away from the hitch rail.
“So, you’re here,” he snarled.
“Been here awhile,” Halliday said, “waitin’ for you to show yourself.”
Halliday saw Jeff Leonard and two other men coming down the street from the Mercantile. When they saw him and Rudder facing each other, they stopped and backed away.
“You can still walk away if you want to,” Halliday said to Rudder, but the gunman was already going into a crouch.
In a blur of motion, Rudder’s right hand dipped down to his holster. He had the gun almost clear of leather when Halliday’s bullet took him in the chest and sent him sprawling in the dust of the street.
Rudder knew that he was dying, but he still struggled to lift his gun as he lay on his back. With terrible effort, he tried to level the .45, wanting now to take Halliday with him to hell.
His bony finger tightened on the trigger, but the next bullet came from Halliday and Bob Rudder was as dead as his brother.
Halliday heard footsteps pounding along the street behind him. He spun on his heel to face Luther Hahn. He holstered his gun, but the sheriff kept his in his hand.
“Damn you to hell!” Hahn shouted. “She was just a girl. Why’d you do it, you son of a bitch?”
“I didn’t kill her,” Halliday said flatly. “And it sure wasn’t me who led her astray.”
“Liar!” Hahn roared, and then he fired.
The bullet whistled over Halliday’s left shoulder and hammered into the wall behind him.
“If anybody ruined your girl, it was you!” Halliday said coldly. “She was your own flesh and blood!”
The lawman fired again, missed again, and then Halliday’s bullet brought him down.
Halliday simply stood his ground then, watching as Hahn continued to fire until his gun clicked on empty. With the last of his strength, and sobbing with rage and disappointment, Hahn threw the gun at Halliday. Like its bullets, the gun missed its target and fell harmlessly in the dust.
Halliday holstered his gun again and started in the direction of McPhee’s office, but before he could get there, a bunch of riders entered the street and reined-in hard just before they reached him.
“You all right, Buck?” Tom Mahoney demanded, but then he saw the bodies in the street beyond him and added, “Looks like you did fine without us.”
“Wait here,” Halliday told him.
Mahoney had it in his mind to speak again, but something in Halliday’s voice stopped him. He waved his companions back and they watched in silence as Halliday walked to the door of Harp McPhee’s office and turned the handle. It was locked. He pounded on the panels and waited. Then he drew back one leg and splintered the door with a powerful kick that tore it off its hinges.
McPhee was standing by his desk, cramming papers into a leather bag. All the old arrogance was gone, and McPhee shook with fear.
“You have visitors, McPhee,” Halliday said. “They’re here to talk business.”
McPhee’s face was as white as the shirt he wore.
“Everything I did was legal,” he whimpered.
Halliday grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and marched him into the street, releasing him with a hard shove that threw him onto his knees.
With grim deliberation, Mahoney took a coil of rope from his saddle horn and began to fashion a noose.
McPhee saw what the rancher was doing and scrambled to his feet.<
br />
“No,” he cried. “You don’t have to kill me to get your lousy town back—I don’t want any part of it.”
“Then you’re willin’ to sign over those mortgages?” Halliday asked.
McPhee spun around to face him, licking his lips nervously. His eyes darted from Halliday to Mahoney as he hesitated, torn between his greed and his fear.
“Let’s just try this on for size,” Mahoney said as he approached McPhee with the noose.
Then McPhee saw Finch Rogan pushing his way through the crowd, and he reached out to him desperately.
“Make ’em stop this, Finch!” McPhee begged. “You know I’m in the right ...”
“I don’t think so, Harp,” Rogan said calmly. “I don’t believe I know any such thing.”
McPhee’s shoulders sagged.
“All right, I’ll sign,” he muttered. “Nobody owes me anything, as of now ... just so you let me go.”
Halliday stood back, watching with satisfaction as the ranchers frog-marched McPhee back to his office to cancel out their mortgages.
“Halliday?” Jeff Leonard called as he came striding up the street, “we got somethin’ for you. Luther never did it justice. We think you can.”
Halliday looked at the badge in the storekeeper’s hand, and then his eyes went to Rogan.
“They’re right, pard,” Rogan said with a smile. “It’s about time you tried standin’ still for awhile. Redemption has its good points. It really does.”
Halliday shrugged and tossed the badge into the air, firing before it reached the top of its mark but deliberately missing. He caught it as it fell and pinned it to his shirt.
“Must be slowin’ down,” he said, but nobody took that seriously. Buck Halliday least of all.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Like Finch says, it’s somethin’ I oughta try.”
But for how long, he couldn’t be sure ...
About the Author
Sheldon B. Cole was one of many pseudonyms used by prolific Australian writer Desmond Robert Dunn (6 November 1929-5 May 2003). In addition to four crime novels published under his own name, Des was a tireless western writer whose career spanned more than fifty years and well in excess of 400 oaters. These quick-moving, vivid and always compelling stories appeared under such pen-names as Shad Denver, Gunn Halliday, Adam Brady, Brett Iverson, Matt Cregan, Walt Renwick and Morgan Culp. He is also said to have written a number of the ever-popular Larry Kent P.I. novels, but at this late date author attribution is almost impossible. He married and divorced twice, and had three children. He died at the age of 73 in Brisbane, Queensland.
The Halliday Series by Adam Brady
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