Hart the Regulator 5 Read online

  ‘Dead before you touch the ground,’ added his companion, bringing his own rifle up level with his chest.

  Fairburn’s right hand took hold of the case and he lifted it out from between his legs; slowly he stood up, the horses harnessed to the rig shifting sideways and unsettling him so that he nearly fell. Fairburn held the case in front of him like a talisman, gripping the handle tight.

  ‘Hand it over,’ said Barcroft, his voice harsh with fear. If the two gunmen cut loose on Fairburn he was close enough to take a stray bullet.

  ‘Do like he says.’

  ‘Do it!’

  Fairburn extended his right arm cautiously. The Negro pushed the shotgun down under the rim of his saddle and moved closer to take the case. When his fingers were only inches away, Nesty turned his body faster than he should have been able and the Spencer fired once, the bullet passing so close to the Negro’s head that he jerked back at the wind of it. The case tumbled from Fairburn’s grasp and bounced on the hard ground.

  The tall man swiveled the top half of his body in the saddle and his Winchester swung through an even arc. One shot also. Nesty rocked back and his arms jerked outwards; the Spencer carbine started a dipping curve out of reach. Nesty’s head twisted up and back and the rifle bullet which had pierced his neck immediately below the Adam’s apple tore a ragged hole beneath the base of his skull. Blood splashed over the horse’s dark coat and down Nesty’s shirtfront; it stained the grey tangle of beard like too much cheap wine.

  At the river, Jay’s hand strayed towards the butt of his Colt just a little and the quick movement of a covering gun stopped it where it was, resting against his belt.

  Nesty tumbled sideways from the saddle and rolled underneath the belly of his horse. He lay, face down, one arm trapped beneath his chest, not moving.

  ‘Pick up the case,’ said the Negro, who was no longer smiling. Even his eyes were flat and dull. It wasn’t funny any longer.

  The tall man levered a fresh shell into the chamber of the Winchester.

  When Fairburn got down from the rig, his limbs were shaking. His fingers fumbled with the case as he picked it from the ground and handed it up to the gunman.

  The Negro took it, looked at it and scowled.

  ‘Key,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  Fairburn got it out of his pocket at the third attempt. The Negro balanced the case against the pommel of his saddle and unfastened the lock. He lifted the lid and looked at the piles of dollar bills, mostly new, all fastened round with folds of bank paper. The smile came back to his face.

  ‘All there?’ called the tall man.

  The Negro shrugged and grinned. ‘Looks like. We ain’t goin’ to stop and count it?’

  The tall man glanced at the body of the old timer he had shot. He shook his head in a quick movement. ‘Not now, we ain’t.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The Negro relocked the case; he turned and pushed it down into one of his empty saddlebags so that it jutted out but was held fast.

  ‘You got no ideas of following?’ the tall man said.

  ‘No,’ answered Barcroft emphatically. ‘Not a one.’

  Fairburn said nothing, only looked away.

  At the river, the two men gestured for the cowhands to move out. ‘What about these two,’ asked one of them, ‘shouldn’t we take their guns?’

  The Negro laughed. ‘What for? They ain’t about to use ‘em. Are you, boys?’

  It was clear enough that neither Seth nor Jay wanted to do a thing other than get back to town.

  ‘That’s what I call sensible.’ The Negro laughed again, louder this time, and as he went close past Jay he reached out and slapped him on the back of the shoulder.

  There was a movement over in the trees along the river and Jay guessed that it was the rifleman moving away. Sweet damn, he thought to himself, they hadn’t been about to take any chances. He leaned back and watched the four men as they rode back up the trail as unconcernedly as they had come down it.

  ‘Seth,’ he said.

  ‘Um?’

  ‘How’s that leg?’

  Seth looked at him as though he was asking a fool question, which he probably was. ‘It hurts like there’s a hornet’s nest bust loose inside it. That’s all.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Jay looked at where the blood had already begun to thicken and stiffen around the edges of the entry wound. He could still see fragments of white bone. He said: ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  They moved their horses up the slope away from the river and paused for a moment alongside the rig, watching as Bar-croft settled old Nesty into the back. Then they headed back for Caldwell at a walk, knowing that anything else would make Seth’s leg scream with jolts of pain. Andrew Fairburn had still not spoken since the gunmen had ridden off, but the anger and embarrassment were clear behind his eyes. When the town was reached he would have things to say and plenty.

  Chapter Two

  The back room of the Kansas Star was thick with cigar smoke. It rose in grey-blue columns high through the yellow lantern light and spread over the stained ceiling, coiling into wreaths in the corners. Several bottles stood on the table, more empty than full. Voices clamored for attention, occasionally a bunched fist hammered the heavy wood table and glasses shook against one another.

  Harry Miller leaned back in his chair, levering it onto its rear legs; he tilted the glass of sour mash whisky to his lips and swallowed it down. The way they were going at it, they were likely to be there the rest of the night. Squabbling and arguing like a bunch of kids, not one of them who was listening to what anyone else was saying, each of them sure that what he was saying was the only thing that made any sense.

  As far as he could tell, not one of them was making a lot of sense at all. There were times when he found it difficult to understand how they’d got where they had, how they’d made their money, achieved their position. Huh! Times, too, when Miller wondered how he’d got where he was too. Marshal of Caldwell these past two and a bit years, silver shield on his waistcoat to prove it, the lettering engraved there for anyone to read. An office down the street with a jailhouse out back; money in an envelope from the bank on the first day of each new month.

  Harry Miller shook his head: marshal of Caldwell.

  Since he’d been appointed the town had grown, job had grown – if the other men in the room had their way both would grow a whole lot more. He looked round at them. Caleb Deignton, florid-faced, the leader of the town council and owner of a good third of the grazing land south from the town limits to the border with Indian Territory. John Philip Marquand, a mild-mannered, silver-haired banker who had recently bought up the section of town where the railroad would build their station and adjoining stockyards. Jules Weinstein, who wore gold stick pins and sweet-smelling toilet water, who had a pretty young wife with a taste for fast horses and younger cow hands, who owned three stores, one saloon, a dining room, a saddlers, a gunsmiths, a barber shop and a few other places Miller reckoned he might have missed at the last count.

  There were others — and loudest amongst them was Andrew Fairburn, who as President of the Cattle Growers’ Association had probably pushed harder than anyone else to open up the two to the railroad. A spur line down from Wichita would make Caldwell a cattle town to rival Abilene, Ellsworth, Dodge City and Wichita in their heydays. The cattlemen driving their herds up from Texas would be able to sell their stock not too many miles north of the Kansas border and save themselves time and trouble. More profits for them on account of the drive being shorter; bigger profits for the railroad company, the town, seemingly for everyone. Such a good idea, who could possibly be against it?

  Well: there were the Kansas cattle ranchers who claimed that Texas stock carried disease and contaminated their own herds; there were the groups of moral reformers who said that the Texas cowboys had the morals of fornicating lice and spread certain contagious diseases through the community — and especially through the rooms of those establ
ishments which were there solely to cater for their excessive and perverted needs; there were the Cheyenne and Arapaho who felt cheated at the meager grazing rights they were paid when the Texan herds moved up through their territory; there were the members of the Farmers’ Protective Association; there were the Grangers; there were... but that was enough to be going on with.

  Suffice to say that not everyone thought Fairburn’s plan to bring the railhead to Caldwell was a good idea. Even the railroad companies weren’t too sure. They were not prepared to commit themselves to the expense of building the spur line without the townsfolk paying high subsidies. The latest installment of which had been in the black attaché case Fairburn had been so anxious about. Neither were they in agreement about which company would run a line down: the Santa Fe Railroad and the Kansas City, Burlington and South Western Railway were currently in dispute about this.

  You might, thought Miller as he tipped some more mash whisky into his glass, say there was a deal of conflict on the matter.

  ‘... and those two cowardly bastards...’ Fairburn’s voice rose momentarily above all others, ‘who were supposed to be guarding the money never as much as fired a shot. A stinking drunk from the stables did more than they even attempted.’

  ‘And got himself killed in the process,’ someone put in, but Fairburn ignored the remark if he ever heard it.

  ‘Now they’ve got the gall to be asking for the twenty dollars they never did a thing to earn.’

  ‘Thought one of them took a bullet in the leg?’ a voice asked, but Fairburn waved the consideration aside.

  ‘Men like that don’t deserve a cent,’ he said, ‘and I’ll see that they don’t get one.’

  ‘Pay them!’

  Harry Miller followed his shout with a crash as the bottom of his glass hit the table.

  ‘Pay them!’

  Voices stilled gradually; Andrew Fairburn looked across the table at the marshal as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  ‘You think twenty dollars is good payment for a man’s life, Fairburn?’

  Fairburn flushed and blinked. Someone else coughed. Smoke continued to rise towards the ceiling.

  ‘Huh? Twenty dollars?’

  ‘That isn’t the…’

  ‘It damn well is! How much money did you have in that case? ‘

  Fairburn licked his lips; his grey eyes flickered nervously. Miller didn’t usually interfere in meetings and the fact that he was now was unsettling. ‘You know how much. Two thousand dollars.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And some of that yours, right. Came from your pocket.’

  ‘Yes, I...’

  ‘How much belonged to them two, Jay and Seth?’

  ‘None of it.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No stake?’

  ‘No. Look, Miller, I don’t…’

  The marshal stood up and leaned the fingertips of both hands down onto the table. ‘They stood to earn twenty dollars lookin’ after that two thousand and you expected ‘em to get shot to save it when even though some of it was your own you didn’t have the spunk to do one damned thing to keep it.’

  Andrew Fairburn put one hand to his mouth; he had gone pale. All of the men at the table were staring at him now.

  ‘You didn’t do a thing.’

  ‘It … it wasn’t my job,’ Fairburn stammered. ‘We were paying them to guard the money.’

  ‘Yeah,’ sneered Miller. ‘Twenty bucks.’

  The marshal glanced round the table and sat back down. ‘Pay ‘em,’ he said, ‘you pay ‘em.’

  In the silence that followed cigars were relit, glasses replenished. John Philip Marquand set his match against the edge of the table, adjusted his rimless spectacles and hemmed a couple of times to make sure he had everyone’s attention. When he spoke it was with a soft voice, soft like the swish of green dollar bills being rubbed together as they passed from hand to hand.

  ‘It seems to me that the reason for the theft is clear. If the subsidy we are due to pay to the railroad company fails to arrive, they are less likely to carry through with their projected line. There are, unfortunately, a great many people who feel they have good reason for doing this. Which of them is behind this particular act is, I think, a matter for later consideration. A matter for our marshal.’

  Several eyes drifted towards Miller, who had rocked his chair back on to its hind legs and was watching the banker with an expressionless face. ‘What we have to recognize is that for the first time gunfighters and outlaws have apparently been hired to work against our best designs for the community.’

  ‘And yourselves,’ murmured Miller, but no one appeared to hear him.

  ‘In this circumstance,’ Marquand went on, ‘I propose that we have no alternative but to take similar action.’

  As the meaning of Marquand’s words sank in, their impact, quiet though they had been, was as great as the marshal’s earlier outburst.

  ‘Now, John,’ said Caleb Deignton, surprise in his voice, ‘you surely aren’t suggesting we hire ourselves a gang of desperadoes?’

  ‘Apart from any other considerations,’ added Weinstein quickly, ‘think of the ammunition that would give to those folk who are always holding meetings and parading round with placards.’

  ‘Once you get men like that in town, once you’ve invited ‘em in,’ said Miller, ‘it ain’t goin’ to be easy to get ‘em out. Knew a feller out past Butte, he did the same. Willsson his name was, maybe you heard of him. They cleaned up his trouble for him – stayed to make him a whole lot more. Poisoned the whole town.’

  There were murmurs of agreement round the table at the marshal’s words; even Fairburn seemed to agree. But Marquand waited until the objections had stilled and his soft voice spoke again.

  ‘You misunderstand me, friends, I wasn’t thinking of bringing a bunch of outlaws into Caldwell, not outlaws at all and no more than one.’

  ‘One?’ echoed Deignton.

  The silver-haired banker nodded modestly. ‘One man. A pistoleer. A shootist. A man who is fast and accurate with a gun and who will use it to do our bidding.’

  ‘If it’s a question of a single man,’ asked Weinstein, ‘why can’t the marshal here take on another deputy? Someone fast with a gun, just until this business blows over.’

  John Philip Marquand leaned forward, arms folded. ‘It might be useful if our man were not too strongly associated with the official law in the town. I mean, we might know for certain who’s behind bringing in these men, but not be able to prove it. Now that would tie Marshal Miller’s hands, but not those of our shootist...’ The banker looked up and coughed into the back of his hand. ‘… our regulator.’

  The hut had been empty when Wes Hart had come upon it. The door had been swinging in the easterly wind and clung on by no more than half a hinge. The square holes cut for windows never seemed to have had anything covering them but sacking and all that had remained of that had been a few scraps left attached to the nails which had held it in place. The inside of the place had stunk with the leavings of animals and another, stranger smell which Hart had not been able to identify.

  If the boarding house in Pinto hadn’t been burned down a month back, Hart would never have been interested, but if it was a choice between this and sleeping on the straw at the stable then the hut might be the better. He’d cleaned it out with a makeshift broom and set his bedroll alongside one wall; gathered wood and made a fire in the grate. Now smoke spiraled lazily up through the hole in the roof. A chair had been left behind when the previous occupants had moved on. One leg had been broken off but it still served, so Hart had dragged it outside and was sitting on it as it lurched three-legged towards the ground.

  The sun shone down from a sky that was bright blue and cloudless. Hart’s flat-brimmed black hat was eased forward so as to keep the brightness of the sun from the faded blue of his eyes. The brown stubble round his chin was almost a beard; the moustache was thicker and fuller, more recogniz
able. Cheekbones forced themselves high against the tanned skin of a lean face.

  Hart held a tin pan in his left hand, a fork in the right. The beans he was eating were hot and tasted of salt bacon from the fat he had cooked them in. They tasted good. He wished he had a wedge of bread to wipe around the inside of the pan and take up all of the juice but he didn’t. Instead, when he’d forked out all that he could, he slid his finger down the inside of the pan and scooped the leavings up and sucked them into his mouth. More than just good.

  Finally, Hart dropped pan and fork to the ground and watched the small cloud of dust rise up several inches in the air. The land was recovering from the dry winter but it was slow and gradual. The greens of grass were less deep, the buds on the trees less open. If the summer was too fierce then everything might be burned out.

  Hart unbuttoned the final button of his leather waistcoat and scratched at his ribs through the rough flannel of his grey shirt. He was wearing brown wool pants with buckskin sewn over the seat and down the inner thighs. The pants were held tight at the top by a leather belt; another belt, wider and stronger, held the holster for his pistol. The thin thong of leather which kept the end of the holster tight against his leg when he was walking now hung loose. A smaller thong had been slipped over the pistol’s hammer.

  The gun itself was a Colt Peacemaker .45, indistinguishable from so many others save for the mother-of-pearl grip on which was carved an emblem showing a snake gripped tight within the beak and claws of an eagle. It was not the only weapon that Hart possessed, but it was the one he liked most, the one he trusted, the one that most felt a part of him whenever he moved into action.

  Two other guns leaned against the wall inside the hut, an arm’s reach from the door. The first of these was a Henry .44 rifle, the saddle gun which Hart preferred to the Winchester. Alongside, shorter, the ugly sawn-off double barrels of a Remington ten-gauge shotgun which Hart liked to use when the odds were high against him or when he was having to work in a confined but crowded space.

  Work.

  Hart’s first job had been with the Butterfield Overland Mail when he was a boy of fourteen. Wes had quit home, his mother already dead in childbirth and his father meaner-tempered with every month that passed. He had left his three sisters and his brother, Sean, and since that day he had not seen hide or hair of one of them. Three years with the stage line drove him hard and he learned about horses, began to learn how to use a gun – began to learn about the ways of other men.