Trammel looked at Abernathy’s belly and grinned. “Sounds like a hell of a recommendation. Thanks.”
Abernathy helped March down from the wagon and handed him off to another deputy who had come outside, then Madam Pinochet. “Mention my name and you’re likely to get a free glass of beer on the house.”
Elmer climbed down on his own steam and walked beside Trammel’s horse toward The Longhorn. “Looks like this day is shaping up to be quite somethin’, ain’t it, Sheriff?”
Trammel couldn’t ignore the bad feeling spreading in his belly that wasn’t from hunger. “Yeah. Something.”
* * *
Trammel found a vacant spot at the hitching rail, and Elmer was kind enough to wrap his horse’s reins around it for him.
Hagen was already up on the boardwalk, leaning against a post as he smoked a cigar. “Elmer, I’ve got bad news.”
The town drunk frowned. “You mean I ain’t gettin’ paid for transportin’ them prisoners.”
“Not that,” Hagen said. “I was just inside and found out this place only serves beer.”
“Beer?” Elmer said as if the word itself was enough to poison a man. “What kind of place only serves beer?”
“The kind that doesn’t want customers who get crazy on liquor, and the Longhorn here is one of them. Olson’s down the street is a whiskey establishment. I think you’ll be happier there.”
Elmer looked up at Trammel for permission. “Go ahead, Elmer, but don’t wander or get too drunk. We’ll be needing you to drive that wagon back home tonight.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Sheriff. Feels good to be needed again.” The town drunk of Blackstone shook Hagen’s hand. “You saved me from an afternoon of disappointment, Mr. Hagen. I’m grateful.”
The two of them watched Elmer toddle off in the general direction of Olson’s, surely to be found somewhere amid the sea of buildings and people that was Laramie.
“You hear all that between me and the sheriff just now?” Trammel asked Hagen as he stepped up to the planking.
“Every word,” Hagen said. “Saw that deputy’s expression, too. Johnny. I think they were all mighty surprised to see you’d made it here alive.”
Trammel stretched his back. The ride from Blackstone may not have been long, but it was long enough to make him sore. He didn’t know how the cowpunchers could spend so long in the saddle and not hurt for days. “Don’t know why he’d be surprised. The trail was clear.”
“The trail was littered with Clay’s men. Twenty by my count.”
“What?” Trammel took a step back, almost falling off the boardwalk. “You said it was clear!”
“I told you it was clear,” Hagen explained. “Or rather, I told you it was clear for Pinochet’s benefit. I didn’t want her knowing her friends were around and trying something. Since there was no way of telling you without her finding out, I’m afraid I had to lie to you. I’m sorry about that, but I hope you’ll understand it was for the best.”
Trammel didn’t know whether to thank Hagen or punch him. He knew he didn’t like being kept in the dark about being so close to danger but understood why his friend had done it. “How come they didn’t hit us?”
“Because they were watching the main road to Laramie, not the way we took. They were close enough in places, but were too busy with their cook fires and coffee to pay attention to what was happening behind them. I’m just glad we had Elmer gag them when we did or else it would’ve meant trouble.”
Trammel didn’t like the implication that they couldn’t have handled themselves. “We’ve lived through scrapes before, Adam.”
“When we had the element of surprise and suitable cover.” Hagen flicked his cigar ash off the boardwalk. “But all bets are off in a heavily wooded area, just like in the woods outside of Wichita, remember? The men along the Laramie road had us outgunned, out mounted, and outmanned by five to one. Those aren’t odds anyone would take, much less a gambler like me.”
Hagen smiled as he clapped Trammel on the shoulder. “Forgive me for lying to you? Please.”
A part of Trammel knew he should be angry, but it was difficult to be angry with a man who had just saved his life. Again. “Just don’t make a habit of lying to me, even if it’s for my own good.”
“You have my word, for whatever it’s worth.”
Trammel’s stomach reminded him he was hungry, and he was eager to forget all about it. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat. Elmer might need his whiskey, but I need food, and Abernathy says the steaks here are the best in town.”
But Hagen didn’t budge. “Laramie’s a funny town.”
Trammel sensed more bad news coming. “In what way?”
“Seems Laramie’s town elders, in their infinite wisdom, passed an ordinance saying that a proprietor’s name had to be clearly displayed on the front of each business. The Longhorn Saloon is no different.” He waved his cigar toward the door. “Take a look at that sign and tell me what you see.”
Trammel already had a good idea of what he’d see before he actually looked at the sign, so he wasn’t surprised when he read: LUCIEN CLAY—Proprietor—1875.
The sheriff felt his anger spike. “Abernathy, that scalawag. Trying to set me up.”
He was about to step off the boardwalk to storm back over to the jail and confront the sheriff when Hagen grabbed his arm. “That would be unwise, my friend. Think about what you’d do when you got there.”
“Kick the hell out of him, for starters.”
“That’s right. And you’d cut through his deputies, too, like a hot knife through butter.”
Of that, Trammel had no doubt.
Hagen continued, “And where would you be then? You’d have the entire town against you and a judge who’s probably not going to be inclined to convict Pinochet or March even with all of the evidence we have, since much of that evidence is based on your testimony. The testimony of a man who had just killed or wounded the local constabulary.”
Hagen’s words did little to prevent Trammel’s temper from beginning to rise. “There isn’t a man alive who can say he made a fool out of me and I’ll be damned if some dung-kicking sheriff from Wyoming thinks he got the jump on me.”
“So prove him wrong,” Hagen offered. “Not by beating him up but by showing how wrong he is.” The gambler smiled. “And you can show him by going inside anyway.”
Trammel was beginning to understand the way the gambler thought. “The element of surprise, right?”
“Do what the enemy least expects you to do, my big friend.” Hagen pushed open the batwing doors of the saloon. “Come on. First round is on me.”
“Wait a minute.” Trammel stepped off the boardwalk and pulled his Winchester from the saddle. “I’m bringing a friend along with us. Just in case.”
CHAPTER 37
The Longhorn Saloon was certainly larger than any of the saloons in Blackstone, but, to Trammel’s thinking, served the same purpose.
A spirited crowd of gamblers and drovers and drunkards huddled together over whiskey and cards. No fallen doves near as he could see, but he was sure they were somewhere upstairs plying their trade.
The interior was plainer than Trammel would’ve expected. No fancy mirror behind the bar or paintings from back east. Just a bare wooden interior with dozens of tables filled with men looking to escape the pressures of frontier living for a while. A few soldiers on leave stood at the bar, trying to act more sober than they were.
All of them grew quiet when they noticed the big man with the star on his chest and the Winchester in his hand walk among them. Trammel took little notice of it. He was used to people staring at him before he was a sheriff. He saw no reason why it should be different now. He was more interested in allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the saloon.
He had no idea what Lucien Clay looked like, and neither did Hagen, if Hagen could be believed. He could be any one of the men looking up at him now or none of them. But Trammel needed to be ready in any cas
e.
Trammel followed Hagen to a table in the darkened corner of the saloon. Men eagerly moved their chairs out of the way for him. Some of them even nodded up at him as they passed.
Hagen and Trammel sat in the corner chairs facing the rest of the saloon. From there, they had a perfect view of the front door and everyone in the place. There was a stairway that led up to the rooms, but Trammel noticed the balcony didn’t extend behind them, only over the front of the saloon. If anyone tried shooting down at them from there, they’d be spotted.
Trammel waited for the din of saloon noise to rise again when he told Hagen, “I don’t like being backed into a corner like this.”
“Like I learned in the Point,” Hagen explained, “sometimes you have to sacrifice maneuverability for clarity. No one can get behind us, so for our purposes, these are the best seats in the house.”
Trammel looked over the saloon from beneath the brim of his hat. “Which one do you think is Lucien Clay?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Hagen said. “Given the reception we received, I would have expected to see deference to his position. A clamoring around him of protection or some such thing. Why, at this very moment, someone may be dashing off to warn him strangers are about.” He flicked his cigar ash on the floor. “But I’m sure the devil will show himself in some form or another if we just give him enough time.”
Trammel kept his head still when he heard a commotion just behind them on the other side of the wall. Probably by the back door he had noticed when they walked inside. A large man with long greasy hair cleared the wall and headed straight for the bar. He was pulling up his suspenders as he did so, though his shirt wasn’t tucked in.
The man’s hair was in the way, so Trammel couldn’t see his face, but he saw the gun on his hip plain enough.
The man yelled at the barman, “You see a big ass stride in here? Bigger ’an me, even? Name of Trammel?”
The big sheriff ignored Hagen’s plea to sit still. He came out from around the table and shoved his way through the men and chairs between him and the bar. Men scrambled out of the way, forgetting about the cards they had been dealt and the money they had on the table.
The loudmouth at the bar didn’t turn at the sound of commotion behind him.
Trammel stopped a good ten feet away from him. “I’m Trammel. Now who the hell are you?”
The big man slowly turned. Trammel didn’t recognize him at first until he saw the filthy bandage over his eye.
Trammel heard himself say the name before he remembered it. “Hanover. You finally caught up with me.”
“Glad you remembered the man you crippled,” Lefty sneered. “And the man who’s going to kill you for takin’ my eye.”
“You lost that eye to an infection,” Trammel said, “not on account of—”
Trammel didn’t have time to finish his sentence before Lefty’s right hand slapped at his holster. The sheriff stepped forward and fired a loping left hook that caught Lefty in the jaw, snapping his head back as he sprawled back against the bar.
Trammel took the gun from Hanover’s holster and stepped back. “That’s enough, damn it. I didn’t do anything to you except throw you out of the Lilly a couple of times.”
He looked at the barman, who had pinned himself against the liquor shelf. “Get some coffee into this fool before he hurts someone.” He opened the pistol’s cylinder and spilled out the bullets into his hand. He tossed the gun to the barman, who flubbed it and let it fall to the floor. “And don’t give that back to him until after his hangover is gone.”
Lefty emitted a primal scream and leapt at Trammel, catching him dead center in the ribs.
He only managed to push the big man back a couple of feet before Trammel buried two hard right hooks into his left kidney. Hanover cried out before he crumpled to the saloon floor. Trammel reached down and grabbed Lefty by the collar as he dragged him out of the saloon, making a wide, crooked trail in the sawdust on the floor as he did so.
He pushed through the batwing doors and yanked Hanover to his feet, only to kick him in the backside and send him sprawling into the thoroughfare. He was surprised by how winded he was, but given Hanover’s impressive deadweight, he realized there was a reason.
When he got his wind back, Trammel stood to his full height and pointed down at Hanover. “I’m warning you for the last time. Go dry out someplace before you get killed.”
Hanover spat a mouthful of blood into the mud as he got to one knee. “The only one dyin’ here today is you!”
He reached under the back of his shirt and pulled a pistol.
Trammel drew his Colt and fired before the one-eyed man had a chance to aim, striking him in the left side of the chest. Hanover tumbled backward into the dense mud of the Laramie thoroughfare. He died looking up at a cloudless sky as the hole in his heart leaked blood into the mud.
Trammel looked at some of the people on the boardwalk gaping up at him. He was as surprised as they were. He had known Lefty and his men had been tracking him and Hagen from Wichita, but he thought they would have given up after their trail ran cold in Dodge.
Trammel ducked when a rifle shot from inside the saloon struck the doorframe next to his head. Wooden splinters pierced his skin as he dropped to the boardwalk and rolled away.
“I got him,” yelled a man with a Mexican accent from inside the Longhorn. “I killed him for what he done to Lefty!”
Trammel ignored the pain as he got to a knee and saw a scrawny Mexican barrel through the batwing doors onto the boardwalk, a rifle at his shoulder.
Trammel raised the Colt and fired. The shot caught Chico in the temple. The impact sent him spinning as he fell. His rifle skittered to Trammel’s feet. The people on the other side of the boardwalk screamed as the spray hit them.
“Chico!” screamed a man from inside the saloon. “Chico, are you hit?”
Trammel holstered his Colt and picked up the dead man’s rifle. He checked the breech and saw there was at least one round in the chamber. Being more comfortable with a rifle than a pistol, he decided he’d use it instead.
He was beginning to wonder where Hagen was in all of this when a shotgun blast tore out the window above his head, covering the sheriff in glass. He felt some shards had fallen down his shirt as he dropped flat on the boardwalk. Another blast boomed, and a hole exploded through the saloon wall.
Trammel ignored the pain in his back and rolled until he was in a prone position under the batwing doors. He saw the shooter—a tall, rawboned man with a heavy beard—feeding more rounds into a double-barreled shotgun. Trammel fired from beneath the door and hit the man in the center of the chest. He staggered back but didn’t fall. He didn’t drop the shotgun, either. Trammel fired again; the round caught the man beneath the chin and sent him down for good.
A pistol shot struck the boardwalk next to Trammel’s leg. Another sailed high above him. Trammel got his feet under him and somersaulted into the saloon as more shots peppered the doors and frame. The sheriff got to his feet just as the man put a shoulder into the doors.
Trammel slammed him in the head with the butt of his rifle. The man dropped the gun as he staggered back against the porch post. Trammel burst through the doors and hit him in the nose with the butt. The man fell back against the post, slumped to the boardwalk, then flopped sideways off the boardwalk. The look in the man’s eyes told the sheriff he was dead.
Trammel ignored the crowd of people who had begun to swell around the boardwalk now that the shooting was over and pushed through the doors into the saloon.
His hands were shaking from the excitement and fear coursing through his veins. He glowered at every man in the Longhorn, but none dared meet his gaze. Blood streamed from the wooden splinters that had peppered his cheek.
He wanted the man who had been trying to kill him. He wanted him right now.
“LUCIEN CLAY!” he bellowed. “Show yourself, you coward!”
From the back of the saloon, a tall, swarthy man w
ith curly black hair and neatly trimmed muttonchops wearing a red brocade vest edged through the crowd. He walked stiffly and with his hands away from his sides, though Trammel could see he was unarmed.
“I’m Lucien Clay.”
“And I’m Sheriff Trammel.” He tossed the rifle aside and set his hand on the Peacemaker on his hip. “You’re under arrest.”
Hagen stepped out from behind Clay, and Trammel could understand why the saloonkeeper was so stiff. Hagen had Trammel’s Winchester stuck in the small of his back. “I’m afraid not, Buck. He had nothing to do with those men attacking you. They were customers, not employees. They got here yesterday looking for you. Rode up here clear from Wichita. They planned on riding up to face you in Blackstone once they shook off some trail dust with the help of Mr. Clay’s lady friends.” He dug the rifle barrel deep into Clay’s back, causing him to almost cry out. “Isn’t that right, Lucien? Speak now before the good sheriff here beats you to death. He’s a force of nature when his blood is up, and I think you can see his blood is up now.”
“He’s right,” Clay yelled. “Those cowpunchers came in here yesterday talking about how they were going to Blackstone to wipe you out.”
Trammel’s temper didn’t abate. “And what about the men you sent to kill me in Blackstone yesterday? The ones you sent to free Pinochet?”
“Don’t know anything about that,” Clay said. “Or the twenty men your friend here says were waiting for you on the trail.”
The room gasped when Trammel drew his Peacemaker and aimed it at Clay. “I think you’re a liar.”
Hagen stepped out from behind Clay and placed the Winchester barrel under the saloonkeeper’s chin. “A fact I intend to find out soon enough, Buck. Now please, lower the gun and let me do what I do best.”
Trammel froze when he heard three rifles rack behind him. Sheriff Abernathy said, “Holster your iron, Sheriff. What happened ’til now was self-defense. Shooting Clay would be murder. I won’t cotton to murder in Laramie. Not while I’m sheriff. Now tuck that hog leg back where it belongs and do it real slow. I’d hate to have to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”
North of Laramie Page 26
