Ride Tall, Hang High

by Chet Cunningham

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Willy Boy lay in thick leaf mulch which had cushioned his fall and looked up at Eagle. "Better get the rest of the men up here. Three pistol shots should do it. " Eagle shot in the air three times, and yelled a couple of times. He heard an answering shot, then ten minutes later the other four men rode into the small clearing around the big oak tree.

  Eagle told them briefly what had happened. "Wanna camp here?" Gunner asked.

  Eagle watched Willy Boy. "Or do you want one of us to stay here with you and the rest chase down Conover and bring him back here. He’s hurt, can’t get far. ""No! No, I have to be in on the capture and the kill. No! We’ll stay here and I’ll be traveling by morning. Then we can still find the bastard and I’ll enjoy myself for a couple of days remembering my Pa as I kill the son of a bitch. "

  They made camp and brought a cooking pot of water so Willy Boy could keep a cold, wet cloth on the bump

  on his head. It began going down an hour later and Willy Boy could sit up.

  "I thought we had him," Willy Boy said. "It should have worked. If I hadn’t been such a clumsy ox we would have captured him for sure. He was coming almost right at me. I’d have shot his horse and then run him down. He’s not a man, he’s a killing animal and I aim to put an end to his killing. "

  They didn’t put out a guard that night. Willy Boy and Eagle figured they were far enough off the main trail that no one would find them. If they did, Eagle said he would hear them coming for a quarter-of-a-mile.

  Morning broke bright and cloudless and they left with the dawn. Willy Boy still had a headache, but it seeped gradually away as Eagle tracked the horse Deeds Conover had been riding.

  "Galloped for a quarter of a mile," Eagle reported a short time later. "Then he settled down to a steady walk and went back to the wagon road heading east. He could be 40 miles ahead of us by now. Once he hits a town and his tracks get messed up with lots of others, I won’t be able to follow him. "

  "Damn him!" Willy Boy screamed. "Damn him to hell!" He rode up and down a short piece of road, jerking the mount around on the end of each dash. "What do I have to do to catch that bastard?"

  He stopped near Eagle who shook his head. "Probably be lucky. The bad thing is we’ve used up some of our luck finding him these two times already. "

  They rode east. When they hit the first small town they spread out checking hotels, eateries, the livery and the lawman in town. Nobody remembered seeing a man with a slightly lopsided face who was a bounty hunter.

  At the far edge of town where they gathered, Willy Boy pointed on forward.

  "He’s got to work, got to get another man he thinks he can pull in. He likes this area. Maybe we can sniff out a trail on him again. We just have to be patient and hope that we can dig him out. At the next town we’ll decide. Let’s ride. "

  It was 12 miles to the next settlement. There were more struggling farms now and fewer cattle ranches. The towns showed stress and struggle as well. When they came into Lamed on the Arkansas River they did a slow search, talking to store owners, the livery, the hotel people, and even the doctor and then the sheriff. Nobody had seen a sign of a man with a shot up shoulder who had a face slightly askew.

  They took rooms at the hotel two by two, then ate, and Willy Boy said they could be on their own for the rest of the day and the night. He had some thinking to do. He was fully recovered from his conk on the head now and sat in the Quiet Tiger Saloon working on a pair of beers.

  Gunner stayed close to Willy Boy, playing solitaire and sipping on a cold glass of water.

  After more than an hour of contemplating his bad luck and the strangeness of the fates, Willy Boy hadn’t come up with a single idea that he liked. He had half a dozen plans bouncing around in his head, everything from heading for Boise and the Fourteenth Cavalry Regiment to getting Juan Romero safely back to his people in Mexico.

  He eyed his watch and decided on an early supper at the hotel dining room, which the room clerk said was the best eating in town. Tomorrow he would determine exactly what they would do. He hadn’t ruled out the idea of taking out a couple more banks, then riding north to the Union Pacific railroad and taking the train out to Idaho, or as close as they could get. The idea interested him, but he wasn’t sure yet.

  Tomorrow, he’d talk with the men and decide. Yeah, he’d do it tomorrow.

  Michael Handshoe had missed the detour Willy Boy and his men took out to the cabin where they shot out the window. But with his ten men spread across a 30 mile stretch of Kansas land, they swept in every other clue they could find about six men riding eastward.

  Twice more they found inquiries about Deeds Conover with the local law. They pushed on. Seldom did they have any tracks to follow. Once they picked up what their half Indian scout said were six riders, but they wound up going into a small ranch where the men all worked as cow hands.

  Handshoe kept on figuring that he was closing the gap, but he was still over two days behind. Willy Boy’s Gang could go at any speed they wanted to, but Handshoe and his men had to move cautiously, not overlooking any chance that the gang had turned north or south, or perhaps even west. It was donkey work and he hated it, but that was how a real bounty hunter earned his pay.

  They swept through central Kansas like a clean broom. Twice they found fresh scents. Once they found that not only had the Willy Boy gang been in one town, but that Deeds Conover was there at the same time. Willy Boy was on a quest of his own. Good, Handshoe thought. They could slip up on him and shoot his bunch to pieces while Willy Boy was trying to get Conover. Perfect!

  They were at a small town seven miles from Larned when they hit a hot scent. Willy Boy had checked for the bounty hunter with the sheriff, and they had also contacted the local doctor. They were looking for a man shot in the shoulder, a tall man with a lopsided face. Conover, that was him. Handshoe would never forget his face.

  After talking to half the people in town, most agreed that the men who had asked about Conover had headed out of town toward Lamed.

  He sent riders to bring in the troops on the fringes of their search area. By ten o’clock that night he had his men gathered at the Kansan Hotel, seven miles from Lamed. He briefed them completely.

  They had been over it time and time again, but now he got down to specifics, giving them descriptions of each man and making them repeat it until each one could identify all of the men and call them by name.

  He told them to check their weapons, clean them and make damn sure they wouldn’t misfire or jam, and be ready to ride out of town at dawn.

  His plan was to hit Willy Boy and his bunch in the Lamed Hotel before they even knew he was in town. Hit them and kill them if need be. There was only one hotel in Lamed, and if they were still in town they would be there. They had been running hard, had one man shot up and should be ready for the rest.

  Handshoe thought about it as he lay on his bed trying to sleep. Evidently they had contact with Conover and wounded but did not capture him. Why not? Six against one. He’d find out. By now Conover should be dead.

  There had been a time or two in the past when Handshoe himself had plans for killing the man.

  Morning dawned chilly and cloudy. Handshoe and his men rode with the first light without breakfast. He told them they could eat like pigs when they bagged the six men. Each of his bounty hunters had been promised a $20 bonus for each of the Willy Boy gang captured or killed.

  He was putting ten percent of the total price on the line for the men and they appreciated it. They all would try that much harder to earn an extra half year’s pay in one deadly morning.

  Handshoe and his men rode into town in pairs before seven-thirty that morning.

  He went into the hotel and checked the register. None of the names of the Willy Boy gang showed. But Handshoe knew they had a habit of using different names each time they registered in a hotel. He talked to the desk clerk who who had been there the afternoon before.

  "Yeah, six guys registered. In
fact ten registered. "

  "Did some of them show up in pairs?"

  "Yeah, men come in that way all the time. Safer to travel that way. Fact is, all ten were in pairs. "

  Handshoe took a $20 gold piece out of his pocket and flipped it. The room clerk watched it with fascination.

  "I’ve got a letter that describes six men I’m hunting. They’re all wanted men. If you can tell me that they’re here, and which rooms they have, you get the double eagle. "

  The clerk read the letter slowly. He nodded, then looked at his register.

  "Can’t be sure which are which, but all six of them came in in a row. I’ve got a system for assigning rooms. The six of them are in rooms twenty-two and twenty- four, twenty-seven and twenty-eight, and twenty-nine and thirty. All on the second floor. "

  "You seen any of them this morning?" Handshoe asked.

  "Don’t remember any of them. You might check the dining room. "

  Handshoe flipped the coin and let it come down toward the room clerk who grabbed it.

  "You check the dining room and I’ll watch for them to come down the stairs. "

  Handshoe designated four men to watch the stairs with the desk clerk. They sat in shabby furniture, reading newspapers or magazines.

  Handshoe took five men with him and stared past the door to the dining room. He saw Gunner Johnson at"once. He was too big to be missed. A careful study of the other people in the eatery showed that none of the other Willy Boy gang was there. Handshoe walked into the dining room with four of his men and started to take the table beside Gunner.

  „ Handshoe bumped Gunner’s chair. When Gunner looked around, Handshoe excused himself. That was the signal. One of the men with him grabbed Gunner’s six- gun and pulled it from his holster. Handshoe put his revolver’s muzzle under Gunner’s chin before he could react.

  "Gunner Johnson, you’re under arrest for murder. You give me any problems and I’ll shoot you dead right here, you understand?"

  Gunner looked at them and relaxed and the men beside him grabbed his arms and lifted him out of the chair. As soon as Gunner stood, Handshoe started to move the six-gun to Gunner’s side.

  Gunner exploded, ramming one elbow back into the man behind him, breaking a rib and pushing the broken end into his lung. The man fell on the floor gasping for breath.

  The second man he punched in the face with his big fist, knocked out three teeth and slammed him over the table of a couple who was in the middle of breakfast.

  The woman who was knocked off her chair screamed, and screamed, and wouldn’t stop. Her husband helped her up and they hurried toward the only exit, the woman screaming and crying and yelling at the top of her voice all the way.

  Two more men rushed up. Handshoe had been jolted aside by the men trying to help him. He had no shot. Gunner spun around, kicked the third man in the leg, then pounding him with his fists, ducking and coming back to the standing man on the other side. From behind Gunner, one of the bounty hunters slammed his gun butt into Gunner’s kidney. He gasped in pain.

  With the momentary calm, Handshoe jumped forward and crashed the butt of his big .45 down on Gunner’s head and he went down in a wild flailing of out of control arms and legs. They had to carry him out of the dining room. But first they tied his hands together behind his back and tied his feet with rawhide. When he came to, he bellowed in alarm and surprise. Quickly they put a gag around his mouth and the four of them carried him out of the dining room.

  Handshoe talked with the room clerk a minute, handed him a ten dollar bill and they put Gunner in a small room just off the lobby. The clerk locked the door and kept the key.

  Handshoe pointed upstairs and all of them except the man with the punctured lung moved up the steps as

  quietly as they could.

  The first door they came to that they wanted was 22. Handshoe kept three men there with him and sent one man down the hall to cover the other five doors. He had told them they would kick in the doors all together. Shoot first and worry about it later.

  Handshoe raised his hand and brought it down. The biggest man with him kicked open the door and headed inside the room. A second man shouldered in behind him. Suddenly a shotgun blast ripped into both men and dumped them in the hall where they fell, now only a dead mass of flesh and bone.

  Down the hall the other doors jolted open under the boots but the Handshoe men came out quickly. No one was in any of the other rooms.

  Handshoe cowered in the hallway. He motioned his men to come toward him but they remained where they were. He bellowed in fear when a double barreled shotgun poked around the comer of the door.

  A moment later it blasted and the third man he had with him was almost cut in half by the 10 gauge load of double-ought buck balls. Handshoe ran down the hall to the steps and vanished. The other six men on Hand- shoe’s payroll stayed in the rooms they had kicked open not wanting to make themselves targets.

  In room 22, Willy Boy looked down the hall from his room and then stepped quickly to the window as he reloaded the sawed off shotgun that hung by a cord around his neck. He had already opened the window. Now he slid out, hung by his hands, dropped the six feet to the alley and ran down where the rest of his men waited on their horses. Only Gunner was missing.

  "They got Gunner but we didn’t have time to get him out," the Professor said. "Little shithead of a clerk locked him in a room off the lobby. "

  "We know which horses are theirs?" Willy Boy asked. "Not a chance," Eagle said. "Probably 30 horses on that block. "

  "Come on then, let’s ride. We want to leave a plain trail out of town so Handshoe will follow it. I don’t know how many men he’s got, but it’s three less than it was ten minutes ago. "

  Juan rode up and frowned. "We just leaving Gunner back there?"

  "For now. First we have to take care of Handshoe. If we can pick him off, there goes the paycheck for the others and they’ll scatter like flies off a kicked horse turd. "

  They rode down Main Street and at the end of it fired off half a dozen pistol shots harmlessly as if someone was after them. By the time they were out of sight, at least 50 people were in the street watching them ride off toward the Arkansas River.