Hart the Regulator 6 Read online

  Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  The Regulator is Wes Hart — ex-soldier, ex-Texas Ranger, ex-rider with Billy the Kid. He’s tough, ruthless, and slick with a .45. He’s for hire now and he isn’t cheap...

  The train had a very special cargo as far as the Regulator was concerned. His lady and her two young kids were aboard as it burned up the cold steel rail.

  Then the desperadoes came. He’d fought them before, back in the town of Caldwell. Lead flies like a red-hot hailstorm and one of the victims is one of those kids.

  Hart has a vengeance run on his hands now. Those killers will pay in blood and he will do the debt collecting. With a little help from a friend called Rose, a lady of the night with her own reasons to get even...

  RIDE THE WIDE COUNTRY

  HART THE REGULATOR 6

  By John B. Harvey

  First published by Pan Books in 1981

  Copyright © 1981, 2014 by John B. Harvey

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: September 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Cover image © 2014 by Edward Martin

  edwrd984.deviantart.com

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  This is for Alan Brooks: man of woods, man of words – gone back to find the wider spaces

  Chapter One

  Orange-green ears of switch grass folded round the horses as they moved slow across the plain. The riders wore long, once white, duster coats which hung open and trailed back through the long stemmed grass. There was no sense of hurry, no urgency, just three mounted men making their way under a sky whose blue was so light it seemed as if it might crack. They rode into the north-west, the sun as yet behind them, orange-red. The shadows that slid along the tops of the grass were almost sharp.

  The blue heron watched from the branch in the spread of the white oak. Its long feet were gripped tight, long -legs folded thinly down. Gradually the ‘S’ of the neck twisted back and the deep beak opened and closed on the air. The plumage at the front of that strange curving neck was striped gray through white; at the back orange-brown. The bird’s head jerked back, and inside the soft white feathers of the head the small black pupil swiveled and stared. The twin strands of the heron’s crest shook. Its feet relaxed and tightened, the blue-gray wings spread wide.

  The tallest of the three riders turned in the saddle at the flat flap of wings and watched for a few seconds the heron’s lazy flight outlined against the sky. Beneath the sound of the bird and that of the horses there was only the low running of water, a stream invisibly making its way down the slope to the south. On that slope the shorter grass was cut through with color: cornflowers, wild roses, wild indigo, larkspur.

  The tall man saw all this without noticing it. His head swung back and before him the prairie extended unbroken to the horizon. He eased his head round, left and then right, attempting to unstick the collar of his cotton shirt from his neck where a constant sweat had welded them together. Uncomfortable, he reached up and tugged the shirt clear, cursing under his breath. With the same hand he wiped at a few beads of sweat that hung to the bridge of his sharply angled nose.

  He wore no hat to protect his eyes from the light; black hair clung close to the domed scalp, sweat intermingled with the grease he used to smooth it down each morning.

  The man’s eyes were dark and sunk deep into his head, the bones of the sockets pressing hard against his sallow skin.

  ‘God damn!’

  Neither of the men riding alongside him reacted as the curse rolled out over the prairie and faded to silence.

  The man slapped at an insect feeding on the back of his neck and succeeded in squashing it flat against the skin.

  ‘Damn!’

  He smeared the tiny speck of blood and matter off on to the leg of his brown wool pants, cleared his throat and tried to spit. He was too dry.

  ‘God damn!’

  A smile flickered on the handsome face of the Negro at the man’s right side. His lively, bright eyes glimmered with the beginnings of laughter.

  There was sweat on his face, too, making the skin glisten, gathering about his broad, flat nose.

  ‘Jesus, I hate this country!’

  This time the laugh broke and its sound echoed across the prairie.

  ‘What in God’s name you howlin’ at?’

  The Negro laughed louder. ‘For a while there, I thought as how you was reckonin’ on turnin’ preacher.’

  ‘What the hell you on with, you dumb-assed nigger?’

  ‘All them times you callin’ the Lord’s name. Minds me of the times my old mammy’d take me down by the river an—’

  The tall man aimed a blow at the Negro’s head, but the black was too quick for him, ducking sideways, the tan Stetson shifting slightly on his head.

  ‘No call to get angry, Waite. My ole mammy, she always reckoned them as heard the Word inside of ’em were called to Heaven for sure.’

  The sunken eyes blazed with dark anger and for a moment the tall man started to rein in his mount. Walker watched him carefully, always ready to ride him, to drop into an exaggeration of his southern Negro accent and draw him on. Trouble was, with Waite you were always walking a narrow line.

  The third man watched, too, his head angled round so that he could see them clearly with his left eye. The right was covered by a triangular patch of black leather held in place by a leather thong. Beneath the patch there was only an empty socket.

  ‘One of these days…’ threatened Waite. ‘One of these times—’

  ‘Yeah,’ Walker nodded, ‘I know. I know.’

  Waite flicked at the reins and touched his spurs to the horse’s flanks. He moved a few yards ahead of the others, anger evident in the set of his head, the angle of his back.

  Walker suppressed a further laugh and contented himself with a rich smile. The smile faded as he got to wondering what would happen when the line he tightroped with Waite finally snapped. He’d seen the tall man use the Smith & Wesson Schofield he kept holstered low at his right hip enough times to know that he was good. Good and fast. Walker had never been sure how fast, exactly. He knew that he was fast himself. Walker had stood up against some half-dozen men .and it had been the speed with which he’d made his own left hand draw which had been the reason he’d been the only one to walk away.

  But Waite?

  He shook his head and looked again at the man’s back.

  No: he didn’t know.

  He wondered if he ever would.

  Beside him now, Weston glanced at the Negro with his one eye and read what was going through his mind. He could understand why. It had been coming for a long time. A constant riling that had begun as light-hearted joshing around and had gradually become more serious until the things Waite and Walker said to one another at those times were the things they felt about one another deep down.

  That was when the growing hate between them welled out and Weston couldn’t figure how long it would be before it had to be settled some other way. Not words.

  He chewed on the remnants of tobacco that had been clamped down next to the right side of his mouth. Most all the flavor had gone and he only chewed it now to fetch up a little fresh saliva.

  W
aite was right about one thing: mile after mile of unbroken prairie might be fine for buffalo or cattle but it didn’t suit him. He was no cowhand.

  Weston shrugged his shoulders: who ever heard of a one-eyed cowboy? If, like Walker, he’d been a laughing man, he’d have laughed.

  As it was, the muscles of his face hardly moved as he continued riding.

  It was four hours later when the way station came in sight. The sun was more or less directly overhead and it was feeling hotter than all hell. Waite pulled in his mount and licked his tongue across his parched lips. He slid the watch from his coat pocket and snapped open the silver front.

  ‘We on time?’ asked Walker.

  Waite nodded. ‘Got best part of an hour till she’s due.’

  Walker nodded. ‘Fine.’

  He unwound the leather strap of his water canteen from the pommel of his saddle and removed the top. Walker tilted back his head, closing his eyes against the sun and swallowing several mouthfuls. The last he retained in his mouth, swilling it round for some moments before he turned his head to one side and spat the water out.

  ‘Here.’ He offered the canteen to Waite, who shook his head and continued to free his own.

  Walker shrugged and held the canteen towards Weston.

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘You ain’t hot?’

  ‘I’m hot.’

  ‘But you ain’t drinkin’?’

  ‘That’s right. I ain’t drinkin.’

  Walker shook his head. ‘Damn.’

  He had a final swallow before refastening the canteen and looping the strap back round the pommel.

  ‘We ain’t waitin’ out in this fool sun?’ Walker asked.

  ‘No.’ Waite cleared his throat and spat.

  ‘That’s good.’

  Waite took a final glance at his watch before dropping it back into the side pocket of his white coat.

  ‘One day,’ Walker began, ‘one day you’re goin’ to lose that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That fancy silver watch of yours.’

  Waite scowled. ‘Walker, don’t you ever tend to your own affairs? You worry about your own watch.’

  Walker’s eyes widened in mock innocence. ‘I don’t have no watch of my own to worry about.’

  Waite turned his head away and kicked the horse into motion. Walker let him get a few yards and then caught up with him.

  ‘Always meant to ask an’ never did. Where you get that watch of yours?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What the hell’s that got to do with you?’

  ‘Hey, now, don’t get angry, I—’

  ‘I ain’t gettin’ angry.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I was just interested in the watch, is all. Ever since we been ridin’ together you’ve had that silver watch an’ I never knew how you did get it.’

  ‘Why the hell should you?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘Then—’

  ‘’Cept there’s got to be a story. Watch like that has to have a story, stands to reason.’

  Waite turned in the saddle. ‘Walker, ain’t you never goin’ to shut that mouth of yours?’

  The Negro grinned. ‘Just thought it might pass a little time is all.’

  Waite scowled some more and rocked his body in the saddle; the horse broke into a trot and Walker let him go, talking to himself though just loud enough for the others to hear. ‘Fancy silver watch… man’s got to get it somehow … got to be a whole history with a watch like that … real interestin’ findin’ out ’bout that watch’s past—’

  Weston listened to the Negro’s ramblings for a while and then caught up to Waite, the pair of them leaving Walker further and further behind as the stage station got closer and closer.

  The way station had been built some ten years back, solid and meant to last. The front and back door and all the windows had been reinforced with thick, split logs, those for the windows in the form of shutters which could be lifted away or quickly set in place.

  There were two barns to the side and rear and a large corral in which half a dozen horses now stood aimlessly cropping at non-existent grass.

  When the station had been set there trade had been brisk and constant. Now the railroads crossed the state - the Kansas Pacific to the north and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe to the south - and the number of stage coaches making the run had fallen off more than a little.

  But there was a run every couple of days between Dodge and Wichita and a regular weekly schedule that moved from Dodge north-east through Ellsworth and Abilene, took in Fort Leavenworth and finally dropped down again to Kansas City. Here it took on goods that had been shipped up the Missouri from St Louis and beyond.

  It was the St Louis run that the three men were anticipating.

  Zeke Daniels was waiting for it, too. The watch he used wasn’t as fancy as the silver one that Waite kept in his pocket, but it kept pretty fair time and had ever since Zeke had bought it from one of the drivers who was down on his luck. That was seven years back and in that time it had only stopped once. Hands stuck where they were for a whole day, twenty-four hours exact. Thirteen minutes after noon, Zeke recalled. At thirteen minutes past on the following day it just carried on as if nothing had happened.

  Zeke hadn’t understood it at the time and when he’d shown Millie, his wife, well, Millie hadn’t just not understood it, she positively hadn’t liked it. She’d urged Zeke to sell it as soon as he could - a watch like that, she’d told him in no uncertain terms, is cursed. There’s witchcraft to do with it .You mark my words. Those had been her words, Zeke remembered, pretty much, anyhow.

  He’d marked her words right enough, but he hadn’t sold the watch. It kept near perfect time so why should he? Not on account of one missing day.

  Zeke had often thought about that, too. How there were quite a few days in his life he wouldn’t have minded missing. Like the one the Jayhawkers had come riding through and his boy, Willard, his and Millie’s boy, Willard, had gone running out from the place they’d lived in at the time. Just an old soddie that had been cut from the side of a hill. Willard had gone chasing in front of them Jayhawkers’ horses, not meaning anything, not meaning trouble or anything and one of them had pulled a pistol and shot him like he was a dog.

  Worse than a dog.

  Two bullets through his arm and side and then another that lanced through the back of his neck.

  And the Jayhawker laughed.

  It had been a good few years back but Zeke could remember the laugh, the smell of gunsmoke and the echo of the shots, and he could see the blood beginning to seep from Willard’s body on to the dirt of the flattened ground in front of the sod house.

  Millie had run at the man, straight at him with nothing but her two hands bunched into tight little fists that hit at his leg, at his boot, time and time until he laughed some more and pointed to the others and then casually kicked her clear.

  She fell to the ground and Zeke had started towards her but he’d been frightened. He could remember that too, vividly. His fear that now it had begun the Jayhawkers would shoot them all. So he’d waited close by the house, watching as Millie’s head came up and there was spittle running from one side of her mouth and anger in her eyes and her voice and she’d called him murderer, murderer and he’d laughed and ridden his horse so close by her Millie had been forced to protect her head with her hands.

  When they’d ridden a way down the track, Zeke had gone across to where Millie was and helped her to her feet and she’d looked at him, still shaking as she was - as they both were - and though she’d never said anything, the accusation in her eyes had never quit him.

  If he thought now he could see it still.

  It had taken Willard seven hours to die and Millie had sat with him all that time, talking to him quiet, like a mother to a new-born child when she knows it can’t understand the words but needs the reassuring sound of the voice.

  She’d carried on talking when Zeke had thum
bed down Willard’s eyelids that last time. She was still talking when he lifted her gently up and took her over to the straw-filled mattress that acted as their bed.

  Zeke sighed: there were times even now when Millie talked to their son still.

  Zeke turned his head in the direction of the way station that had been their home ever since it had been set up. Millie was inside stirring a big pot of stew for the driver and guard and whatever passengers were travelling. There were loaves of bread she’d proved and finished baking early that morning. Salted beef. A blackened coffee pot that was ready close to the stove.

  He’d checked the horses himself, having a little trouble with the shoes of one of them, fixing it patiently the way he did most things now. One thing most folk got with age - them that didn’t get all scratchy - was patient. Your bones didn’t seem to leave you much choice.

  His back was aching as he went towards the barn, thinking to look over the spare harnesses he kept there; a pain down near the bottom of the spine which he did his best to keep from Millie, except she could tell from the way his eyes dilated and narrowed every once in a while when it caught him just so.

  Still, Millie knowing was one thing - the company finding out was another. If they thought he wasn’t a fit enough man for the job someone younger would be brought in and then there’d be nothing left for Millie and him at all.

  The day might come, Zeke knew, but he hoped it wouldn’t. He hoped he’d go one day when he was working, sudden, no pain for himself and none for Millie either. Here one minute and the next—.

  Like that watch of his that suddenly stopped only this time there wouldn’t be any starting again twenty-four hours later. Not in this world there wouldn’t.

  He stopped by the barn door, alerted by the sound of horses. It wasn’t the stage, the sound was wrong, direction wrong. A shadow passed over Zeke’s face.

  The three men became shapes rising out of the tall grass, two side by side and then a third. Something strange about them. The clothes they were wearing. Long coats, like the kind of dusters some riders took to using down in the Southwest to protect their clothes. Here, in this part of Kansas, it didn’t make sense.