Hart the Regulator 6 Read online

  Hart looked at her flatly. ‘He said, go to Hell!’

  Chapter Ten

  Contrary to rumor, Hell was a hard place to find. Hart kept Rose with him the best part of two weeks, riding together from settlement to settlement, from ranch to ranch. Nobody had seen three men wearing white dusters; no one had seen an angular man with a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth and a fondness for wielding a sawn-off shotgun.

  Finally Hart decided to hit Wichita and rest up a day or so, ask some more questions, get his gray out of the stables. He told Rose he was parting company with her there.

  ‘Like hell you are!’ She rounded on him - and then smiled, seeing the joke.

  ‘Looks like, Rose,’ he said, ‘I just ain’t goin’ to get to hell as long as you’re around.’

  Rose shook her head and avoided Hart’s eyes.

  They reached Wichita that evening, just about dusk.

  Early the following morning, Hart was the first customer in the barber shop, easing down into the leather chair and closing his eyes as the barber began to lather his face. He opened them again less than a minute later as footsteps halted on the boardwalk outside and the shop door opened. Hart’s hand slid down beneath the white sheet that covered most of his body and slipped the safety thong away from the hammer of the Colt. He kept his hand close.

  In the tarnished glass of the mirror he watched the men as they came and stood a short way behind his chair. One of them was wearing a dark gray suit, creased and grimed with trail dust, a black bowler hat angled right to left on his head. The second man was dressed in a white shirt and a hide jacket that was so new it creaked a little each time he moved; his wool pants were tucked inside his boots. Hart could see the second man’s pistol holstered uncomfortably high at his right side; he guessed the one with the suit to be wearing a shoulder holster, but the way his jacket was buttoned he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘You gentlemen want a shave?’ asked the barber, leaning back up.

  Two heads shook from side to side.

  ‘You Hart?’ the suited one asked, looking at the back of Hart’s head.

  Hart gave a quick grin into the mirror. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We got things to say.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Not here,’ put in the second man. He moved his arm and the leather groaned.

  Hart laughed and some of the lather blew away from his upper lip. ‘You want to get close enough to somebody to make an arrest, you’d best get rid of that damned coat. Deaf Indian’d hear you a mile off.’

  The man he was speaking to looked aggrieved; his companion chuckled and got a black look for his troubles.

  ‘How d’you know who we are?’

  ‘You got to be detectives or bankers, one of the two.’

  ‘Don’t get so smart,’ snapped leather-jacket, moving closer and creaking as he did so.

  His colleague laughed out loud.

  ‘Knew a detective once, name of Fowler. R.G. Fowler. Either of you heard of him?’

  Neither of them had.

  ‘Well,’ said Hart, ‘I guess he wasn’t what you’d call an ordinary detective. He sure didn’t look as good at his job as you two fellers.’

  Both mouths narrowed in anger.

  ‘The joking’s over,’ said one.

  ‘Yeah, we said we got things to talk over.’

  ‘Serious things.’

  Hart nodded, dislodging a few blobs of drying lather. ‘An’ I got to get me shaved. Let’s do the talkin’ over breakfast.’

  Leather-jacket came in close enough for Hart to smell the hide. ‘Let’s do it now.’

  ‘I talk better on a full stomach. Later.’

  The detective’s hand shifted in the direction of his holster; Hart saw the move and started to draw his Colt under the sheet. The one in the suit saw it too and touched his colleague on the arm.

  ‘Later,’ he said, firmly.

  The two of them stepped back, leather-jacket grudgingly. Hart saw his face in the wide mirror and grinned. ‘I’ll have a steak, couple of slices of bacon, couple of eggs and a lot of hot coffee.’

  The suited detective ushered his companion out through the shop door, muttering.

  Hart lay back again in the chair. ‘Better wash this off an’ start over again.’

  Hart chewed on the last mouthful of steak at the same time as he wiped a hunk of bread round the mixture of juice and egg yolk that remained on the plate.

  The two detectives drank their coffee slowly and watched as Hart lifted the dripping piece of bread to his mouth; a slightly bloodied yellow trickled down the edge of his lower lip and ran on to his chin. He wiped it free with his finger, licked it away, drained the large coffee cup and called down the dining room for some more.

  ‘So,’ he said to the detectives. ‘You ain’t exactly earned your pay as yet.’

  ‘That’s enough smart ace—’

  ‘We’re running them to ground. Steadily.’

  Hart raised an eyebrow. ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By the time you run ’em to ground that’s where they’ll be. Underneath it.’

  ‘On account of you put ’em there, I suppose?’ broke in the one in the new jacket.

  Hart nodded. ‘Right enough.’

  ‘Just watch out someone don’t do the same for you!’

  Hart looked him full in the face and laughed.

  The detective in the suit leaned back as Hart’s fresh cup of coffee was set on the table; then he leaned forward and said, ‘You got three of ’em accounted for.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And somewhere under half the money.’

  ‘Near enough.’

  ‘And the trail’s run cold.’

  Hart hesitated a moment, tried the coffee. ‘Yeah. For now, but—’

  ‘Cold.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The detective leaned back again. Then maybe we could do business, agree to help each other out.’

  Hart shrugged and gave a quick glance at the second man. ‘Maybe, but I doubt it.’

  ‘How come you’re so jackass obstinate?’ asked the second man.

  ‘How come that feller up at the railroad office sent you two sniffin’ round when my deal was that I finished this on my own?’

  ‘That was your deal. Not his.’

  ‘Besides, from what we heard you ain’t exactly been workin’ on your own.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means you needed some dancehall whore to do your killing for you.’

  The detective saw Hart’s punch coming but there wasn’t a great deal he could do about it. Hart’s bunched fist struck him on the side of the jaw as he managed to turn his head and drove him out into the gangway between the tables. His chair skidded out from under him and collided with another one behind.

  Hart pushed the table hard into the suited man’s chest, coffee flying up and across, plates and cups clattering and cracking. His left hand grabbed the sleeve of the new leather jacket and hoisted it up until the detective was on his knees. Blood ran from the side of his mouth in the same position as the egg yolk that had dripped from Hart’s lips earlier. He didn’t think about that: neither did the detective. Hart punched him hard enough between the eyes to stop him thinking about anything else for a long time. The back of his head hit the boards with a crack that was as clear as a man stepping on a brittle twig by moonlight.

  The other detective had coffee stains on the vest of his dark suit and a Remington-Elliott rimfire .32 four-barrel derringer tight in his right hand.

  Hart straightened up and looked at the gun and then the man holding it. ‘What you fixin’ on doin’ with that?’ he asked flatly.

  The detective stared back at Hart. The half a dozen or so customers and couple of hands from the kitchen stared at the two of them. After a minute in which most of those present held their breath the detective slipped the small gun back into its shoulder holster.

  On the floor, the second man had
n’t moved.

  ‘He works with his mouth too much,’ said his colleague, glancing down at him.

  Hart nodded. ‘Maybe this’ll learn him.’

  The man shook his head. ‘I doubt it.’

  Hart dropped some coins on to the table for the meal. ‘Keep him out of my way,’ he said. ‘I got enough to be lookin’ out for without the likes of him. An’ tell him to get rid of that damned coat.’

  Hart walked out, leaving the two detectives behind, the one trying to bring round the other.

  When he got back to his room the door was partly open and Rose was waiting for him. She looked as if the night just gone she’d had anything but sleep. The shadows beneath her eyes were purple shading into black and thin bloodshot twigs etched round the pupils. She was still wearing the same green dress.

  ‘You look great,’ said Hart, taking off his Stetson and flipping it on to the bed.

  T feel it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I got a job,’ she said. ‘At the saloon.’

  ‘I can see.’

  She looked at him and was about to say something, but instead she wiped sleep from the far corners of her eyes and said nothing.

  ‘You look as though you could do with some rest.’

  Rose nodded. ‘I heard something.’

  Hart started listening.

  ‘It may not be anythin’, but—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This feller, last night, he’d been drinkin’ heavily, the way they all do before … Well, anyway, he said he’d run into three men like the ones you’re looking for.’ Her tired eyes met Hart’s for a moment. ‘Three men wearing dusters. A fourth with them. They was in a place east of here, out towards the Flint Hills. Whiteland. Some name like that.’

  Hart sat down on the bed, facing her. ‘He didn’t say?’

  She nodded. ‘He said. I forget.’

  His hands gripped her arm. ‘Then remember.’

  She looked at him. ‘I’m tired. I forget.’

  Hart lifted his hand away. ‘All right. What else did he say?’

  ‘Nothing else ’Cept they was actin’ mean as hell and he lit out as fast as he could.’

  ‘Whiteland, huh?’

  ‘Some name like that. A good day’s ride east of here.’

  Hart stood up. ‘This feller, he still around?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Know where I’ll find him?’

  Rose shook her head.

  Hart scooped his hat off the bed and set it in place. At the door Rose stopped him. ‘There’s a place back of the Five Aces. Drunks and down-and-outs and no-hopers. You might find him there.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He gave Rose a brief smile but she was no longer looking; her body had slumped back in the sagging chair and her eyes were already closed. She was as close to sleep as anyone awake can be. The building down the alley from the Five Aces saloon had chinks in the walls which let the morning air in and the stench of the night out: when Hart got there the fresh air was still fighting a losing battle. Most of those who’d slept there had gone, soiled blankets in heaps here and there over the floor. Straw mattresses were lined up around the walls. Three sleeping bodies lay closed to the world, two of them snoring out of time with one another. Hart heard voices coming from the furthest room.

  There were more men in there, five of them and two didn’t belong. They were too well dressed - a dark suit and a new leather jacket. The detectives were standing on either side of a rumpled drunk who was still clinging with one hand to the bottle he had emptied the night before.

  The detective in the jacket turned towards Hart and growled through badly swollen lips. A piece of cotton stuck down from one of his nostrils, dark with congealed blood.

  His companion grinned.

  ‘How come you got to him so fast?’ asked Hart.

  The grin became a laugh. ‘We’re detectives, remember?’

  ‘Does he know anythin’?’

  ‘Ask him!’ snarled leather-jacket and turned towards the door.

  The detective in the suit stopped close by Hart and smiled. ‘Ask him.’

  The stink that rose from the man’s body and the tattered blanket he had wrapped round his torn and patched long-johns and vest was strong enough to make Hart avert his head. He was used enough to bunkhouse smells and cheap hotel living, but not this. The room smelt so strong that if you’d struck a match in it the place would likely have gone up in flames.

  It took Hart something short of three minutes to get out of the man what little he knew and that was nearly three minutes too long.

  By this time he’d picked up his things from his rented room and got to the livery stable, he’d seen the two detectives riding east down the main street and out of town. He’d expected Rose to be asleep in his room when he arrived but she hadn’t been there, only some strands of red hair on the back of the old armchair.

  Hart pushed the gray harder than he’d normally have liked but the detectives were either determined to keep good their start or for some reason they’d changed direction. Here and there he picked up signs of their passing, then lost them for a while, picked them up again, seemed to lose them for good. He couldn’t be sure and it didn’t matter a great deal either. What did was getting to Whitelands before the trail ran cold again.

  It wasn’t only the trail that was in danger of running cold.

  After days - weeks - of almost oppressive heat, the sky was the color of slate and the wind that bit across the open plain was bitter and chill. The tops of the grass bent low with it, each fresh burst breaking a swathe through the prairie like a crested wave.

  Hart rode with his Indian blanket draped diagonally across his body, knotted below his left hip. The wool bounced and shifted as he rode, making the blue, red and white colors ripple and merge into ever-changing patterns. His flat-brimmed black hat was angled low over his eyes, held in place beneath his chin.

  Ahead of him the burgeoning mass of the Flint Hills were a dark hump against the already dull horizon.

  He wondered how long it would be before the rains came. With one eye at the sky, he urged Clay on, patting the gray’s neck and flanks and talking to her.

  ‘C’mon, Clay. C’mon.’

  Whitelands was called Whiteplains. There was no sign to tell him so, but the lamp that burned over the door of the one saloon showed the words Whiteplains Hotel painted in shaky lettering on the wall. The world is full of optimists.

  Hart knew who the two horses outside belonged to.

  The detectives were sitting over by the back of the room at a small square table, a bottle between them. A man and woman stood behind the bar and stared at Hart as he entered. They were sufficiently alike to be more than just brother and sister - twins. Apart from that, the place was empty. If you didn’t count the flies.

  ‘Whiskey,’ said Hart and pushed a quarter-dollar silver piece along the counter. It gathered flakes of sawdust as it went.

  He swallowed half the glass and stood at arm’s length from the bar.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said one of the detectives, a slicker open over his suit.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not sure. Earlier today maybe.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Don’t tell him,’ said the other detective shortly. The cotton wedge had gone from his nose but his lips looked just as swollen and in the dim light of the saloon they were almost black.

  ‘We looked,’ said his colleague, ignoring him.

  ‘That it?’

  The detective pointed to the couple behind the bar. ‘They said they rode out some time after sun-up.’

  Hart turned his body. ‘That right? What he says?’

  First the man and then the woman nodded, dark-eyed. Neither of them spoke.

  ‘Three men in long white coats. Another with ’em.’

  They nodded again, in unison this time.

  Hart downed the rest of his whiskey and began to walk towards the door.

&nbs
p; ‘You won’t pick up their trail in the dark,’ said one detective.

  The other one snorted and tipped the bottle over his empty glass.

  As Hart reached the doorway a rifle shot broke the pall of dusk and sheered inches of woodwork away from the wall immediately above his head. Hart threw himself backwards and began to roll almost before he hit the ground. Two more shots seared the space he’d been seconds before. Glasses smashed behind the bar and the couple ducked and screamed.

  Hart shifted so as to reach his pistol

  He glanced over his shoulder at the two detectives, both on their feet and weapons in their hands. ‘They’ve gone, huh?’ he said.

  Neither man answered him.

  Another rifle shot came through the door and a line of bottles crashed off the shelf behind the bar as if it was a county fair.

  The one window with glass in it was shattered and this time it was a pistol shot; another and another and then a volley which shook the side of the saloon as though it might collapse.

  Behind the bar counter the woman screamed again, more shrilly than before. Hart glanced round but couldn’t tell if she’d taken a deflection or was simply becoming increasingly scared.

  One of the detectives took a window, the other the door. Hart used the barrel of his Colt to knock away the glass which remained in the nearest corner.

  ‘The horses…’ one of the detectives began and before he could get any further, one of them slewed heavily sideways into the hitching rail, sending the others into a noisy panic. It wasn’t clear if the animal had been shot by accident or on purpose, but that didn’t matter to it now as its legs gave way, front and then back, its head turned and its mouth frothed with dying.

  ‘Cover me!’ Hart yelled and dropped his gun down into the holster. He gave a quick glance at the men. ‘Do it good!’

  They began firing as he ducked out, keeping low, grabbing for Clay’s reins first and then those of the remaining horse. Bullets seemed to whiz close to his ears. Both animals thrust their heads into the darkening air and whinnied loudly. Hart tugged at the reins and dragged them along the side of the saloon.

  He’d re-tethered them and was by the back door when a lance of orange flame spurted from thirty or so yards away and the roar of a .45 echoed from the walls. Hart dropped and his hand dived for the butt of his Colt, firing as soon as the gun came level, two shots aimed in the direction of the flame. He heard one go whining away into the distance as it ricocheted from wood to wood; the other buried itself with an emphatic thud.