The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  He’d married one of the girls, but left her after two years, having found out she was nothing more than “a caterwauling harpy just like her mother!”

  Tobacco smoke hung in a thick cloud aglow with lantern light over the gamblers’ table. A pretty full-hipped young brunette in a loose sackcloth blouse removed empty glasses and bottles from the table and replaced them with fresh—when she wasn’t being pinched or nuzzled by one of Sartain’s fellow card players, that was.

  About ten o’clock, the Cajun glanced around the room. He was disappointed to see Brian Mangham sitting at a corner table with two other men. Mangham and the other men—fellow businessmen, judging by their neat, conservative attire—were engaged in a serious conversation, one that apparently didn’t go Mangham’s way. About fifteen minutes after Sartain had first spied the man, the stage line and mercantile proprietor got up heavily from his seat, grabbed his cane and his hat, and yelled, “In that case, I’ll find another place to drink! I won’t drink anywhere near the likes of you two ungrateful sonsofbitches!”

  He stomped his foot, lost his balance, and almost fell before righting himself with his cane. He swung around, red-faced with fury as well as drink, and strode out the doors into the dark mountain night.

  The crowd’s din had lowered during the outburst but rose to its previous pitch after Mangham had left.

  The German sitting beside Sartain wagged his head sadly and said, “Ja, he’s seen better days, old Mangham. Poor scudder was one of the first Anglos to settle here, too.”

  Sartain had been about to ask the man, Gunther Becker, what he’d meant by “seen better days,” but then someone nudged him to raise or call and he got busy trying to fill in a straight. But Mangham’s outburst haunted him for the next hour he remained in the gambling parlor, drinking, smoking, and losing the little bit of money he won until he finally broke even, folded, and excused himself around eleven.

  He walked along a crooked side street that climbed a low hill. The town was spread out across many such cedar-stippled rises. A thick, stooped figure stumbled out of a little dimly-lit saloon just ahead and to Sartain’s left. The man’s spectacles glinted in the watering hole’s lantern light.

  The Cajun slowed, scowling.

  The moonless night was dark, but Sartain thought he recognized the short, thick, lumpy figure of Brian Mangham, complete with cane, bowler hat, and uncertain gait. What made the man’s gait even more uncertain tonight was that he obviously had a few under his belt.

  He limped off ahead of Sartain, heading in the same direction as the Cajun.

  Christ.

  Sartain let the man get a ways ahead of him and then continued walking slower than usual, not wanting to overtake him. Mangham slowed his pace even more as he neared the top of the next hill. Sartain could hear the older man’s ragged breathing.

  “Don’t die here,” Sartain muttered under his breath. “That’s all I need.”

  Sartain stopped suddenly when a shadow lurched out of a break between two buildings. Another shadow followed, both shadows darting toward the wider shadow of Mangham.

  “Grab him,” said one of the shadows quietly but urgently.

  “Hey! Hey!” Mangham said shrilly, throwing up his arms.

  Sartain heard the man’s cane clatter to the ground. The two leaner shadows drew the thick shadow into the break between the two small adobe buildings that shone pale in the wan starlight.

  Mangham screamed, and there was the sharp smack of a fist hitting a cheek.

  Mangham yowled.

  “Hey!” Sartain bounded into a run as he continued to hear the sounds of fists hammering flesh—naked flesh, flesh clad in broadcloth or wool.

  Sartain leaped into the break between the adobes and grabbed the first of the three shadows he saw crouching over the shadow of Mangham. There was the shadow of a battered Stetson on this man’s head.

  “Who the...” cried the gent a half-second before the Cajun swung the man around and hammered his jaw with a hard right cross.

  As that man dropped, Sartain grabbed another one by his shirt collar and pulled him up from where he’d been smashing old Mangham’s face with both fists. He buried his fist in this gent’s belly, then pummeled each temple with right and left crosses. The man jerked to his right, then to his left. Then he stumbled backward, grabbing his head in his hands and mewling.

  The third man jumped on Sartain’s back, whooping wildly, and levering his right arm back hard on The Revenger’s throat. Sartain stumbled back with the man still on his back. The man had a stubborn grip. Sartain couldn’t draw a breath, and the two pale adobes wheeled around him as his brain begged for oxygen.

  Finally, the Cajun wheeled and whipped the man against one of the adobe walls. He heard the cracking thud of the man’s head hitting the wall and the man’s grip gave. Sartain ran him up hard against the wall once more, and the man slipped off The Revenger’s back to the ground.

  He rolled and moaned.

  Sartain slammed his right boot into the man’s ribs. The man yelped and flew onto his back, where he resumed moaning, though not as loudly as before.

  Sartain looked around. The other two were down. It was hard to tell in the darkness between buildings, but they appeared down for the count. Sartain turned to where Mangham was half-sitting up against one of the walls, grunting and groaning as he clutched his arms to his bulging belly.

  “Can you stand?” The Revenger asked him.

  The old man gulped air and said in a raspy, barely audible voice, “I’m...not sure.”

  Sartain crouched, wrapped an arm around the man’s back, and straightened, lifting the oldster as he gained his feet. Mangham sighed and fell back, passing out.

  “Crap,” Sartain said.

  He pulled the old man up by both arms, crouched deeply, and drew Mangham up and over his right shoulder. Stumbling under the old man’s considerable dead weight, he strode out of the alley and looked around. He could see the lights of what appeared a large house at the top of the hill.

  Maybe Mangham’s place.

  Grunting with the effort, he climbed to the top of the hill and swerved onto the circular drive that curved up in front of a two-story adobe house with a broad front gallery. A buggy shed sat off to the left of the house. Most of the first-story windows were lit as was a large glass lamp bracketed to the front wall near the door.

  As Sartain mounted the gallery’s steps, a shadow moved in a nearby window. Curtains jostled, then the front door clicked and squawked open.

  Sarah Mangham stepped out wearing a simple gray skirt and a man’s overlarge plaid shirt with the tails out, the big sleeves rolled up her arms. Her hair was down. “Oh, my God—is...is he...”

  “No,” Sartain said with a grunt as the girl stepped back so he could carry the old man over the threshold and into the house.

  “What happened?”

  “I caught three fellas working him over just down the hill a ways. Where do you want him?”

  Sarah pointed toward a door on the left side of a large, crowded but comfortably appointed parlor with a fire snapping in a brick hearth. Sartain crossed the carpeted room behind Sarah, who pushed the door open and stepped into the room, pointing at a large bed under a gold-framed ambrotype photo of a young man in a neat suit and a young woman in a wedding gown clutching a bouquet of wildflowers.

  Sartain eased Brian Mangham down onto the bed. The man groaned, shook his head and ground the heel of his right shoe into the bedding.

  “Poppa!” Sarah cried, crouching over the bed and brushing the tip of a quivering finger over the gash in the man’s mouth. Both eyes were swelling shut, and he had another cut high on his left cheek. “Oh, dear God! What did they do to you?”

  “Shall I fetch the doctor, Miss Mangham?”

  “No, no. I’ll be all right,” Mangham croaked out, stretching his lips back from his teeth. His glasses were gone. He must have lost them between the adobes. “No sawbones. I’m just sore. Nothing’s broken, I don’t think.
”

  He was holding a hand against the ribs on his left side.

  Sarah slid his hand away and probed her father’s side with her fingers. “Is this where it hurts?”

  “Yes!” Mangham intoned, lifting his head up off the pillow. “Please, Sarah, leave me be. I’ll be all right. I just need some rest, is all.”

  Sarah shook her head stubbornly. “You need a doctor, Poppa. You might have broken ribs.”

  “I can’t afford a doct...” Mangham let his voice trail off. The front door had closed and foot thuds sounded, crossing the parlor floor.

  Sartain closed his hand over his LeMat but left the gun in the leather when he saw Sarah’s brother Scott poke his bowler-hatted head into the room, frowning curiously. “What’s going on?”

  He looked at Sartain, and his frown deepened. He saw his father on the bed, and his expression turned to terror. “Poppa! What in the devil...”

  “Scott, fetch Doc Miller. Someone roughed up Poppa!”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Scott, he’s going to be all right, but I want the doctor to take a look at him. Hurry!”

  The young man, maybe a couple of years older than his sister, hesitated, then retreated haltingly to the door, wheeled, and strode back in the direction from which he’d come. The front door slammed.

  “This is frustrating,” Mangham said. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need a shot of brandy. Sarah, fetch the decanter, please.”

  The young woman left the room, leaving Sartain alone with Mangham.

  “Who were they?” the Cajun wanted to know.

  “Thugs, obviously.”

  “Why were they roughing you up, Mangham?”

  The businessman glared up at The Revenger through pain-wracked eyes. “Look, Mr. Sartain, I appreciate your help tonight, but you made your position clear. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m in no mood or condition for polite conversation.”

  Sarah returned with a cut-glass decanter and a brandy snifter. She splashed liquor into the glass. Mangham took it in a quivering hand, lifted his head off the bed, and threw back the brandy in two deep gulps.

  He gave the glass back to his daughter. “More.”

  Sartain glanced at the girl. When she’d splashed more brandy into the snifter, she turned to the Cajun, studied him skeptically, and said haltingly, “Thank you for your help, Mister...”

  “Sartain.”

  Running his fingers pensively around the brim of his hat, which he held down in front of his belly, he turned away from the Manghams and left the room. He went to the front door, donned his hat, and placed his hand on the doorknob. He thought for a moment as he stared at the door then released the knob and returned to the parlor.

  He slacked down into a rocking chair, hooking his hat on a knee. Sarah stayed with her father until Scott returned with a tall, frumpy-looking, older man wearing a heavy brown sweater and dress slacks and carrying a black leather medical kit. He wore no hat and his thick, gray hair was mussed, as though he’d been lounging comfortably around his home before Scott had summoned him.

  Neither man said anything to Sartain as they crossed the parlor to Mangham’s room.

  Shortly, Sarah came out alone, leaving the sawbones and Scott in the room with her father.

  Looking haunted, Sarah set the brandy decanter and empty snifter down on a low, round table beside an upholstered armchair. She didn’t seem to see Sartain as she walked to a settee and sat down on it, leaning forward and hugging herself as if deeply chilled.

  “What happened?” Sartain asked her.

  While she hadn’t acknowledged his presence in the parlor with so much as a glance, she didn’t seem surprised that he was still in the house. Even now, she didn’t look at him. She lowered her gaze to the floor and said woodenly, “You know what happened. Someone attacked Poppa.”

  “I mean to you.”

  Now she looked at him. She wasn’t a good liar. “What are you talking about?”

  “The black eye, the split lip, the way you move.” Sartain shook his head. “They paid you a visit first, didn’t they, Miss Mangham? Earlier today.”

  She looked at him again, her hazel eyes vaguely incredulous. Her lips parted slightly.

  Then she broke down in tears.

  Chapter 6

  A dam had given way in Sarah Mangham.

  She buried her face in her lap and cried, closing her arms over her head as though she wanted to hide from the world. Sartain wasn’t sure what to do. She continued to cry. He sat in the rocking chair regarding her helplessly.

  Finally, he rose stiffly and walked over to her.

  He’d merely placed a hand on her shoulder, however, when she lurched away from him, throwing up an arm and screaming, “No!”

  She leaned far back away from him, eyes wide and horrified as a trapped animal’s.

  The bedroom door opened and Scott Mangham lurched out, looking incredulous. “What’s going on?”

  Sarah stared at Sartain, then blinked and turned to her brother. “Nothing. I’m sorry. Everything’s fine, Scott.” She brushed tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

  Scott said something to the men behind him, then stepped out of the room, closed the door, and moved quickly to his sister, the same incredulous scowl on his harried face. “Sarah?” He looked at The Revenger. “What did you do, Mister?”

  “Nothing,” Sarah said, staring at Sartain. “He didn’t do anything. I was...I was being silly.”

  Sartain stared down at her for a time.

  Scott knelt beside his sister and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, sis. Poppa’s going to be just fine.”

  He looked up at Sartain and said crisply, “We’re much obliged for what you did for our father, sir, but perhaps you’d better go.”

  Sartain stared down at Sarah Mangham. He wasn’t seeing Mangham’s daughter, however. He was seeing his lover lying dead in the rocks and cactus around Jewel’s and her grandfather’s crude stone prospector’s shack in the Arizona desert.

  Jewel had been raped by the soldiers who later paid dearly for their transgressions.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Scott said. “I asked you to leave, mister. Perhaps I need to fetch Marshal Tucker...”

  “Scott, please,” Sarah said. “He didn’t do anything. I was just...”

  Sartain donned his hat and strode to the door. He glanced back once more at Sarah and her brother. They regarded him curiously. Sartain opened the door and went out.

  He strode back down the trail that led into the heart of Silver City. Stars washed across the firmament. Silhouetted hills bristling with cedars and the bulky shapes of small cabins rose and fell around him. The autumn breeze shepherded fallen leaves around his boots.

  The cool, metallic night air was touched with the mélange of cinnamon, cedar smoke, and sage.

  The Revenger’s brain didn’t register any of this. He saw only Jewel’s face transposed over Sarah Mangham’s.

  Where did battered men go?

  Usually, they slunk off looking for something to dull their pain and a place to lick their wounds.

  A saloon.

  Several were still open. None of the first ones Sartain checked had much for clientele. He saw none of the men he was looking for. He had a general idea of what they looked like. They were probably the same men who’d been laughing with the lawman earlier, standing outside the alehouse. He’d know for sure when he found them; they’d all be sporting the Cajun’s markings.

  When Sartain had peered over the batwings of one more saloon and saw only two bored whores looking all dressed up with no one to entertain and one Mexican snoring with his head on a table, he headed for the alehouse. His journey ended there.

  He peered over the batwings. His heartbeat slowed while the burn inside grew to a white heat just behind his heart. The only customers in the small, crudely appointed watering hole were three men looking worse for the wear and the lawman who’d been laughing with them earlier. The lawman stood
at the bar that ran along the room’s left wall. He was laughing now too.

  He held a half-filled shot glass as he stood with his back to the bar. He was facing the three men sitting at a table halfway down the room, tending their cuts and bruises with cloths moistened from a tin wash pan on the table before them. Apparently, they found little to laugh at. They cursed and groaned and flexed their injured limbs as though trying to assess the extent of the damage.

  They were also throwing drinks back as though the stuff would no longer be brewed after midnight.

  “Who was the son of a bitch?” the lawman asked, laughing and tipping his mug to his mouth once more. “You get a look at him before he stomped the crap out of both ends?”

  “His name is Sartain,” said the Cajun as he stepped through the batwings, hooking his thumbs behind his cartridge belt.

  The doors clattered into place behind him.

  The lawman dropped his shot glass, which shattered on the floor near his boots. “Oh, crap.”

  The three men jerked their startled gazes to the big shaggy-headed Cajun standing in the doorway. Two sat facing each other to each side of the table. One sat on the far side of the table, facing Sartain. He was lean and sallow-cheeked, with hard blue eyes set too close together and too deep in their sockets. They gave his head a skull-like look. One gold front tooth shone between his slightly parted lips.

  Both of his temples were badly bruised, and there was a long cut inside the bruise on the left one.

  He was Drew Jurgens from Mandan in the Dakota Territory. The Cajun had run into the outlaw before in Deadwood. They’d played cards with five or six others. There’d been no confrontation then, although something had caused The Revenger to see one in their future.

  Sartain didn’t recognize the men to the left and right of Jurgens.

  The man on the left resembled Jurgens except for a thick red mustache. The one on the right was short and bull-necked, and he’d lost the tip of his right ear. The lawman was maybe thirty, even-featured and brown-haired. He might have been handsome except for the perpetual sneer in his eyes and on his lips. Also, one eye was cast off-center, away from his nose, giving him a dim-witted look.