He had expected Hagen to have some kind of witty comeback or better suggestion to the contrary. He was surprised when the gambler did as Trammel had asked without saying a word. He watched him ride toward the women slowly. They screamed when they heard his approach and their fear tore into Trammel something awful.
Hagen held his hands out from his sides as his horse slowly walked toward them. “You’ve nothing to fear, my ladies. The worst is over, and the bad men are gone. My friend and I are here to help. Now, I would be honored if you would allow me the pleasure of doing something about those nasty ropes.”
Trammel brought his horse around and rode back to strip the dead.
* * *
Hagen had chosen to make camp beside a rolling stream. By the time Trammel arrived with their horses, Hagen already had a large fire going where the women and children huddled around it for warmth. Trammel could smell coffee, beans, and bacon on the wind. He imagined they must have been from the stores the robbers had found in the wagons before they burned them.
Trammel picketed the animals outside the circle of light where there was plenty of grass to eat. He soon fed them grain from the stores Hagen had bought in Dodge City and made a bed for himself beneath an old oak tree, close enough to camp to hear anything, but far enough away so as not to bother the ladies.
He even heard a couple of them laugh as Hagen undoubtedly regaled them with one of his many stories.
About an hour later, Hagen brought him over a plate of food and a pot of coffee, which Trammel was glad to have. “How are they doing?”
“As good as you could expect, I suppose,” he said as he poured two cups of coffee from the pot. “Sad, terrified, mournful. But they’re strong. They’re trying to be strong for the children.”
Trammel shoveled a spoonful of beans into his mouth. “Children always get the worst of it.”
Hagen sipped his coffee in silence while he watched his friend finish his supper. When he was done, he asked, “And how are you?”
“Fine.” He set his plate aside and picked up his coffee. “Can’t believe we survived a scrape like that without a scratch between us. Ever been in anything like that before? You handled yourself pretty good for a rich boy.”
“A couple of times,” Hagen admitted. “When I was in the army. Never outnumbered like that, though.” He looked at his friend. “How are you, Buck?”
Trammel knew what he was getting at. “You mean about what I did to that fella who hit me?”
“The thought had crossed my mind. It was . . . unsettling to watch.”
“Up-close work like that always is,” Trammel said. “It’s one thing to shoot a man when he’s shooting back at you, but when it’s just the two of you, it’s a bit more personal. Guess getting hit like that has always been personal to me.”
“I’m just concerned that—”
But Trammel didn’t want to talk about it. “Leave it alone, Hagen. This world, the wilderness, the trail? That’s your world. Killing people? Killing them like I did back there? That’s my world. That’s what I do best. Don’t ask me how and don’t ask me why. It’s who I am, and it’s all I am.”
Hagen finished his cup of coffee and poured himself another. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But it does make me wonder, though.”
“Wonder what?”
“Wonder if we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing after all. Think of all the winding roads both you and I have taken before Wichita and since. Think of all the different choices we could have made along the way and how it ended up right here, with us rescuing those ladies and avenging the deaths of their men. Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t come this way or decided on another path. One could be forgiven for believing we were being guided by an unseen hand.”
“You mean God?” This time, Trammel did laugh. “Don’t go pulling the Almighty into this, Hagen. He’s got enough on his hands with those poor women down there.”
“Perhaps,” Hagen allowed, “but I’d say He has a damned fine sense of humor just the same. Now, you look just about ready to fall over. Why don’t you get some sleep and I’ll take first watch?”
“I’m fine right here. Got a fresh pot of coffee, and I’m too keyed up to sleep anyway. Get them bedded down for the night and take a good rest for yourself. I’ll come wake you when I’m feeling tired.”
“And with that, I’ll take my leave.” He took Trammel’s plate and his own cup as he stood. He paused before he left and said, “We did good work today, my friend. Have a good night.”
“Yeah,” Trammel admitted. “I suppose we did. Sleep well.”
He waited until Hagen had some of the ladies laughing again before he eased his Winchester out of his saddle and laid it across his lap. He quietly fed rounds into it until it was full. An empty gun was no good to anyone.
And neither was a former lawman with no one to protect.
CHAPTER 13
“Nothing!” Walt yelled as he slammed down his whiskey. “A whole damned week in this miserable town and no sign of Trammel or that drunk Hagen.”
Lefty Hanover ignored the boy. He knew the whiskey would kick in before long, and the loud-mouthed brat would have his head on the table, dead to the world.
Which was exactly what happened fifteen minutes later, leaving Lefty, Hooch, Parrot, Chico and Skinner practically alone once again at the back table of Mills Saloon in Dodge City.
“Never thought he’d shut up,” Hooch said, grabbing for the bottle in the middle of the table. “Damned kid sure likes to talk, don’t he?”
“And say nothin’ while he’s doin’ it,” Skinner added. “Complains about no action on the trail, then complains about Trammel now that we’re surrounded by action.” He looked over at one of the plump working girls tending to the gamblers at the other end of the saloon. “Could stand me a little action myself.”
“Damned right,” Chico said.
“Enough,” Lefty barked. “Got enough complaining from that damned kid to get my fill for a lifetime. I don’t need the rest of you bunch pickin’ up any of his bad habits.”
“Yeah,” Parrot said. “No bad habits.”
But as much as Lefty hated Walt’s griping, he knew the kid was right. Chico had lost Trammel’s trail outside of Dodge City and all signs pointed to them being in town. But after a week of buying drinks for every drover and gossip they could find, no one had seen anyone resembling Trammel’s description. It would be easy enough for Hagen to blend in anywhere, but a man like Trammel stood out, even in a place like Dodge City. They’d run into plenty of old friends who’d come up from Texas on the cattle trail. Some who’d come back down it from points north, too, and none of them had seen Trammel or Hagen. It was like the devils had just disappeared into the earth somewhere along the line.
He’d often wondered if that had happened. He wondered if maybe they’d been killed or captured and carted off someplace, but he knew better. The deaths of the two men Bowman had sent to track them was sign of that. They wouldn’t have gone quietly, especially Trammel. If he went down, he’d take two or more with him. It would likely take a buffalo gun to stop a man like that.
It was Hooch who stirred him from his thoughts. “How much of that money we still got left?”
Lefty trusted his men only so far. They had only gone through about a hundred of the thousand they’d taken off Matt Bowman, but there was no reason for them to know that yet. “We’ve got plenty. Why?”
“I say we ditch the kid here and head on back south,” Hooch said. “Why the hell should we carry on a dead man’s vengeance?”
The others grumbled their assent, all except Parrot, who hadn’t had an original thought since Noah stepped off the ark.
Lefty knew he had to put down this kind of talk now and forever. “This was never about Bowman or his kin, boys. It’s about what that big ape did to me. Remember?”
He picked up the leather strap covering his eye so all of them could take a good look at it. All of them looked away.
Skinner said, “Then what do we do next? I’m all for getting back at Trammel for what he done to you, but we don’t know where he is. I say we burn through the rest of that money, have ourselves a hell of a time, then go back on the trail like we’ve always done. We keep our ears to the ground and ask where he lands. Someone’ll hear something, and they’ll tell us when they do.”
“Worked pretty good all these years, I reckon,” Chico said. “It’s gettin’ so that I’m startin’ to miss Texas.”
Lefty perked up when he saw the man from the telegraph office enter the saloon. He was a spindly, fretful little man Lefty had buffaloed the first day they’d arrived in Dodge City. He’d given the man twenty dollars to keep him apprised of any telegraphs involving Bowman or Trammel or Hagen. Lefty took the clerk rushing into the Mills Saloon as a good sign.
Lefty stood up and yelled, “Boy! You looking for me?”
The man scurried over between the tables full of drunks and gamblers. Lefty felt a little excitement when he saw the little man was holding an envelope.
“Yes, sir,” he said when he reached the table. “Got me a telegraph here all the way from Wichita addressed to a Matt Bowman. No address given. Sent out to Newton, too. Figured you’d want to see it.”
Lefty held out his hand. “Give it here.”
The man eagerly handed it to him and stood where he was, waiting.
Lefty opened the envelope and realized the man was still there. He glared at him. “You waiting for a tip or a bullet, boy? I already paid you for this, now be on your way while you can.”
The man turned and hurried out the door as Lefty read the telegram. Unlike the rest of the bunch, he could read fairly well and write his own name.
The others leaned forward like children listening to a campfire story. When Lefty finished reading it, he put the telegram back in the envelope and slipped it into his shirt.
“Well?” Hooch asked. “What’s it say?”
“Yeah,” Skinner said. “What’s it all about?”
Lefty patted his shirt where the telegram was just beneath. “It’s from Old Man Bowman. He sent out a blind telegram asking Matt for an update on his search for Trammel and Hagen. Says he’s anxiously awaiting a reply.”
Chico drank his whiskey and poured some more. “He’ll be waiting a long time.”
“He’ll be shaking hands with him soon enough,” Skinner added, “him bein’ as old as he is.”
But Lefty ignored the banter as an idea began to form in his mind. “We can’t go back on the trail because too many in Wichita know Matt hired us. We can’t leave Walt here because he’ll just head back home and tell his people what we did. We’d have law on us from here to Christmas.”
Hooch said, “Could just kill him here in town. Make it look like he got rolled while drunk, which ain’t exactly a stretch.”
“That’s no good,” Lefty decided. “The entire Bowman party dead and us still alive wouldn’t look good. We’d be blamed for it, and Old Man Bowman would see us hang. We’ve always avoided crossing the law when we could, and I don’t intend to stop now.”
That’s when that idea that had begun to form in Lefty’s mind blossomed into a beautiful rose.
He got to his feet. “Time to get movin’, boys. And bring old Walt with you. I’ve got a feelin’ he might finally be good for somethin’.”
* * *
Lefty Hanover had always made a practice of staying away from the law whenever possible, mostly because he wanted to avoid answering the damned fool questions lawmen tended to ask men like him. He’d never had much respect for obeying the law, but getting caught breaking it was something else entirely. It was trouble he did not need in a life already filled with as much trouble as he could handle.
That was why he squirmed a bit as Sheriff Charles Bassett glared at him from behind his big desk at the county jail.
Lefty Hanover tried to put the final shine on his story as he brought it to a dramatic close. “And that’s just how it was, Sheriff. The six of us barely escaping with our lives while those mad-dog killers Buck Trammel and Adam Hagen bushwhacked us and killed our beloved employer and his men on the road to this here fine city of yours.”
“Yep,” Parrot said, “that’s just how it happened, too, on the road here to your fine city.”
Bassett’s hands remained folded across his belly, only his eyes moving across the six men crammed into his office. Lefty decided the sheriff was well named as his eyes were open and honest like a basset hound’s. But as wide as they were, it was clear they didn’t miss much, and the quiet man seemed intent on listening more than he was on talking.
“By my estimate,” the sheriff said, “you boys have been in Dodge City for more than a week. Why bring this to me now?”
Lefty kept playing the yokel. “Well, now, Sheriff, that’s a right good question and I aim to give you a right good answer. See, me and the boys didn’t ride into town with justice on our minds. No, sir. It was vengeance. Just about the only color any of us could see was red over the terror we met at the hands of Trammel and Hagen out there on the trail. And, although I always mean to abide by the law when I can, we sought to kill those men our own selves for what they done to us and poor Matt Bowman and the others.”
He laid a fatherly hand on Walt Bowman’s shoulders as the drunkard pitched forward. “Poor Walt here, Matt’s own cousin, has been beside himself with grief since the moment it happened. He’s been in what you might call a canonical state ever since. Why, it was all we could do to get him here tonight in a reasonably presentable fashion.”
Bassett’s eyes slid toward him. “The word is ‘catatonic’ and, as for the rest of your words, I judge them to be equally misplaced.” He leaned a few inches forward. “That means I think you’re lying.”
Lefty slapped the desk, feigning indignity. “Now just hold on right there, Sheriff. We was hired on, right and legal like, by Mr. Matt Bowman his own self in the main room of The Winter Star saloon back down there in Wichita. Walt here can swear to that fact, can’t you Walt?”
The boy lifted his head and mumbled as he nodded, before going back to sleep.
“See that?” Lefty continued. “And you can send one of your wires down to Wichita and ask the law down there to check our story. Why, there must be a dozen or more witnesses who seen Mr. Bowman hire us on and a few dozen more who saw us ride out of town with him. Now, I’m not going to sit here before you and tell you our intentions was pure. But I hope you won’t sit there and tell us we deserved to almost get killed by the men we was hired to pursue. Not to mention the dead souls those two left in the wilderness. Don’t they deserve justice?”
“Justice?” Bassett repeated. “You boys were only interested injustice, eh?”
“Yes, sir, we were, on account of how we know how much of a mad dog lunatic that Trammel can be. Why, I rode into Wichita with two good eyes and lost one at the hands of that killer. All the boys here can attest to that and more can do so back in Wichita.”
“Yes, I’m sure they can,” Bassett said, “just as I’m sure this mad dog Trammel attacked you while you were coming out of a church meeting one bright Sunday morning.”
“Can’t say that, sir, so I won’t. But he took my eye, and there’s no one who can say different.”
“No one,” Parrot said. “Took his eye, that’s for sure.”
Bassett groaned as he folded his hands on his desk. “I know about what happened to the Bowman boys in Wichita. I also know Trammel and Hagen were cleared of any wrongdoing and were advised by the deputies to leave town out of fear of exactly this kind of thing happening. What happened in Wichita was a matter of self-defense, however brutal that defense may have been. I’m inclined to believe that whatever happened on the trail was also in self-defense, even if it happened exactly as you say, which I sincerely doubt.”
Lefty had expected this. He knew Bassett hadn’t been a lawman in a place like Dodge City for so long by being a fool. He hadn’t walked in there e
xpecting the sheriff to swear out a warrant and mount up a posse just on his say-so.
No. Lefty Hanover had far less ambitious goals than that. “But I’d imagine you’d at least want to talk to Trammel and Hagen about it, wouldn’t you? I mean, they ain’t exactly walked in here their own selves and told you what happened, have they? And I’d wager they haven’t reported it happening anywhere else, either. I ain’t askin’ you to take our word for it, Sheriff. I’m askin’ you to ask your own questions.”
His mind expressed, he sat back humbly, clutching his hat close to his chest. “With all due respect for the law and your own good judgment, of course.”
Bassett closed his eyes and ran his hand across his brow. And when he opened his eyes, he looked directly at Lefty. “I’ll take your statement and expect you to sign it or make your marks. All of you.” He looked at Parrot. “Even that idiot there. I don’t believe a word of what you’ve told me except that Matt Bowman and his men are likely dead. How they got that way will be determined by me. Until that happens, you and your men are remanded to town. You’re not to leave unless I say so. Is that clear?”
“As clear as the Texas sun in August, your honor.”
“Don’t pander to me, boy. I think you had a hand in those killings, if they happened. And if I can prove it, I’ll have you dancing at the end of a rope as soon as legally possible.”
He dipped his pen in the inkwell and brought over a clean sheet of nice, white paper. “Now, tell it to me again and without all the flowery asides.” He pointed to Parrot. “And keep that imbecile quiet or I’ll lock all of you up for the duration.
Hooch slapped a hand over Parrot’s mouth.
Lefty smiled. “I’ll begin at the beginning, then.”
CHAPTER 14
The women were just finishing up singing a hymn when Hagen brought the wagon to a stop. A cluster of jagged buildings on the distant prairie rose from the morning mist. Hagen recognized this as their new and eternal Jerusalem, at least as far as the ladies in the wagon were concerned. Ogallala, Nebraska.
North of Laramie Page 8
