Hart the Regulator 3 Page 3

  ‘And what about settin’ it all back on again?’

  ‘That’ll be okay. Once you’ve carried it to the top of the pass.’ He laughed, a good, open laugh, and threaded one end of the rope through and round, reaching another knot.

  In ten minutes the brothers had all of the packages stacked on the ground: salt, flour, sugar, dried meat, coffee, cartridges, gunpowder.

  ‘I wonder how Dan’s gettin’ on?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘He’ll be doin’ his best, that’s all you can say.’

  Jimmy wiped the sleeve of his shirt across his sweating forehead. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  They began to lift the bundles and stagger slowly up the muddy hill, the mule standing fast and shaking its head, watching them with less than understanding.

  The Waterfords had come west to Colorado twelve months ago, riding a wagon from New York where their family had lived for five years. Growing up around the Bowery had provided little joy, though none of the lads had starved and they had learnt to be quick and strong in a scrap. Had learned how to dodge bricks and stones, how to parry a knife arm, how to curl into a ball when you were being booted by half a dozen others and how to tease a girl just enough to make her smile and then what to do when she was smiling.

  It had been all right while their father had been in work at the brewery, the boys taking jobs when and where they could. But he’d fallen badly and twisted his spine, going down on black ice walking back from his work one December night. After that there’d only been what their mother could make doing cleaning up town and the irregular amounts the brothers brought in.

  As winter was fading away to spring, their father went out one night and didn’t come back. They found him two days later floating upside down in the river, face partly gnawed away.

  Their mother had dragged on until the fall, wearing black, fingering her rosary beads, thin lips forever mouthing prayer after prayer. One morning she didn’t get up at six and set the fire going and when Dan went in to see what was wrong, the fingers of her right hand were set rigidly about the small crucifix that normally hung over her bed.

  The boys lived hand to mouth through the winter and started out west almost a year to the day after their father’s death.

  They’d made a small stake north of Tago and had a little luck, but the work was almost overwhelmingly hard for what they got out. Low as they kept their living expenses, they had to eat; had to use tools; had to contend with the constant harassment of Beaumont’s men who didn’t like anyone else taking a share of what they thought should be Beaumont’s by right. What Beaumont thought should be his,

  Right now Dan was in town trying to persuade the bank manager to extend the loan he’d given them six months ago. If he refused it was doubtful how much longer they could hold out without making a big strike.

  Jimmy dropped the last package down to the ground and groaned, flexing his arm muscles and stretching his back.

  ‘Take it easy,’ called Frank, leading the mule up the hill. ‘We don’t want them things bustin’ apart.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Frank. You’re always worryin’. It’ll finish you one day, see if it don’t’

  Frank waved his hand in rebuke and hauled on the rope, dragging the mule clear of another sucking pool of mud.

  ‘It’s a wonder we didn’t have to carry this dumb beast on our backs as well.’

  ‘We may yet,’ laughed Jimmy. ‘That we may.’

  He turned towards his brother and reached out for the end of the rope. As his fingers touched it a rifle shot rang out and a bullet ricocheted off rock a foot above his head.

  ‘Get down!’

  Both of them flattened themselves fast, falling headlong into the mud and feeling it splash up around them, splattering over their faces and clogging their eyes.

  A second shot sniped away and then there came the sound of horses. Frank Waterford pushed himself up on to his hands and knees and wiped his hand across his face, smearing it further.

  ‘The gun! Where’s the gun?’

  Jimmy rolled over and tugged the heavy Colt Navy from his waistband.

  ‘Give it here!’

  Jimmy rolled back and threw the pistol towards Frank, whose hand reached out and grabbed it, fumbling at the butt, almost dropping it altogether.

  Through muddied vision he saw three men riding fast towards him and brought up the gun, steadying his aim with the left arm bent under his right. He cocked the gun and fired but apart from the sound of the explosion and the release of smoke, nothing seemed to have happened. The men kept coming.

  As they slowed their mounts the two brothers recognized them – they were Beaumont’s men.

  ‘Drop it, boy!’

  Frank’s hand tightened about the grip and he started to bring back the hammer once more. There was a roar and he was toppling sideways, gun thrown aside, clutching at his left arm.

  Jimmy sprang up and stopped, seeing the Colt .45 that was leveled at his chest.

  ‘I told you to drop it.’ Crazy John Carter threw back his head and laughed his raw-edged laugh. ‘Next time you best listen to what you’re told.’

  Blood seeped through Frank’s shirt and between his fingers, falling away towards the ground. More blood ran along the palm of his left hand and trickled into the center of a grey puddle already swilling with reddish-yellow mud.

  ‘Where you two headin’, anyhow?’ asked Noonan fiercely.

  ‘That ain’t none of your—’ Jimmy began, but his brother stopped him.

  ‘We’re goin’ back to our mine.’

  ‘Your mine?’ echoed Moody incredulously.

  ‘Sure our mine!’ Jimmy slithered to his feet, eyes bright and angry, fists bunched by his sides. He could have been back in the streets of the Bowery, challenging other kids for the right to some pile of ashes.

  Carter laughed. ‘Don’t you know this here’s Beaumont land?’

  ‘It ain’t no one’s land,’ said Frank. ‘It’s just a pile of rock an’ mud. It ain’t nothin’ to nobody.’

  ‘Then what you doin’ on it?’ asked Noonan.

  ‘Takin’ supplies to our camp. We told you.’ Frank Waterford was losing his temper now, too. He knew that they were baiting the pair of them, trying to goad them into something from which it would be impossible to step back, but that didn’t make it easy to take. Nor did the pain in his arm help. It was pinching, the nerves drawing in tight in quick spasms as the blood continued to pump through the wound. His hand was sticky with darkening blood; his left leg was splashed by it, his boot freckled through its covering of wet mud.

  ‘You’re the Waterfords, ain’t you?’ asked Moody, thrusting his face towards them, black hat pushed back from his forehead, curly hair hanging forward towards the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Sure we are.’ Jimmy’s bunched fists came up and he glared at the three men with pride. ‘Sure we’re the Waterfords.’

  Frank’s stomach hollowed out. He glanced hastily down at the Colt Navy nestled into the squelched ground. Crazy John Carter followed his glance and let out a manic laugh. His grey eyes shone with excitement; the thin, wide mouth was pulled wider than ever as the laughter grew and grew.

  Noonan and Moody freed their gun hands from the reins, sensing that Carter was about to explode over the edge.

  Frank Waterford could see it, too, but he wasn’t certain how to avert it. As the laugh was still ringing between the slabs of rock, Frank pointed across to his brother. ‘Come on, Jimmy, let’s get these things loaded up and be on our way.’

  He turned away from the three men and took a couple of unsteady steps in the direction of the mule.

  Jimmy hesitated, uncertain.

  ‘You Irish bastard!’ roared Carter. ‘Don’t you turn your back on me!’

  ‘Frank! Look out!’

  As his brother’s warning spun him round, Frank saw the pistol coming up from Carter’s side and his mouth opened to shout words that never came. The gun fired twice, one shot merging into the other. Frank wa
s hurled backwards, one of his feet up in the air, arm flailing wildly, two bullet holes torn through the left side of his chest. His body slapped down into the mud and water splashed up around him. He rolled to one side but fell back again, unable to move.

  Jimmy Waterford stared at his brother, lips set tight together, eyes wide with shock and fear.

  ‘That’ll teach you!’ Carter crowed. ‘That’ll teach you to turn your back on Crazy John Carter!’

  Jimmy turned his head and looked up at Carter. His eyes brimmed with sorrow and hate. He saw the Colt Navy on the ground and leaped towards it, diving into the mud and through it, right hand reaching out desperately.

  Carter smiled and swung his horse around so that his right side was towards the youngster. He watched as Waterford’s fingers closed about the heavy butt of the gun and tightened, watched as Jimmy’s arm swiveled and lifted, watched the expression in the white face.

  He aimed quickly and squeezed the trigger.

  Jimmy felt as if something had kicked him in the ribs, something invisible, hard in the middle of his ribs. His back slammed into the rock at the side of the hill and almost immediately he choked up a gout of fresh, bright blood. He stared at it in disbelief, bright and fresh on the ground between his legs. He coughed harshly. Through watering eyes he looked for the pistol that should have been in his hand but was no longer there. He tried to look at the man who’d shot him but all he could see was a blurred shape which shifted back and forth across his vision.

  Jimmy’s head dipped down and suddenly he was taking in thick, muddy water through his mouth and nose. Choking in it. He tried to push himself up but there didn’t seem to be any strength in his arms. His head came six inches off the ground and almost immediately sank down again.

  He could hear laughter and voices and he strained to listen, to listen to what they were saying because he was convinced it must be important. Words moved across his mind without catching, horses moved close to him and he tried to pull his arms above his head to protect it, thinking they were going to ride over him, trample him deeper into the mud.

  The voices faded and the hoof beats seemed to be more and more distant. The pain in his chest was like a saw now, the kind he and Dan had used to cut up firewood back on one of the lots in New York. Trundling it round the streets in an old pram, calling out, selling it for what they could get. He could see the saw, see the blade, the rusting teeth clearly; feel it driving jaggedly between his ribs. He opened his mouth to scream and blood flooded the puddle in which he was laying.

  Voices: the voices came back. Quarrelling, loud, saying things he didn’t want to hear. Blaming. Blame. Blame. And now softer, a woman’s voice saying a prayer. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...

  Jimmy trembled through his whole body. It couldn’t be his mother’s voice. No. Not there. His mother couldn’t be there. His mother was...

  The mule stood where it was for some time, waiting for either of the two men to move from where they were laying on the muddy ground. When they didn’t, it slowly wandered off, idly searching for food.

  Lacy sat in the rocker on the porch of the Beaumont house, reading the St Louis paper. It was more than a week old but that didn’t matter. News was news and news was interesting. He sat upright in the chair, not rocking it but maintaining balance. The newspaper was folded lengthways, once and then again. Lacy read it through wire-framed spectacles, their round frames seeming quite in place on his mild, pale face.

  It was almost as if, had the spectacles not been there, his face would have been featureless.

  He wore a neatly tailored grey suit with a thin cream stripe running through the material; a cream-colored vest with silver buttons and a silver watch chain looped from the vest pockets. A couple of inches of clean, white shirt cuff showed past the ends of his coat sleeves and the collar of the shirt was buttoned tight.

  Lacy turned the paper and refolded it, finding the second column of news about mining stocks. As he refolded the newspaper, he uncrossed his knees and then re-crossed them the other way about. The crease in his pants leg was level and the shine of his black shoes was recent and bright.

  He looked over the top of the paper when he heard the riders approaching, waiting until he’d identified them before returning to his reading.

  He continued to read as they brought their lathered mounts to a halt and jumped down from the saddles, tying the horses to the hitching rail in front of the porch.

  ‘Hey, Lacy!’

  Lacy waited until he had finished the paragraph he was reading before lowering the newspaper and acknowledging the men.

  ‘Tell you, Lacy, we just killed ourselves a couple of trash miners. Up there on the mountain.’

  Crazy John Carter squinted up at Lacy and giggled, the top of his body twitching nervously. He put the outside of his hand to his mouth and bit at it, head shaking.

  Lacy folded the paper and set it carefully on the floor beneath the legs of the rocker.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ demanded Carter. ‘We just—’

  ‘Where is he? In town at the hotel?’

  ‘He didn’t come,’ said Noonan flatly.

  Lacy peered at him through his spectacles. ‘You mean he didn’t ride in with you? He had business to attend to and he’ll be followin’ on.’

  Noonan shook his head. ‘No. I mean he ain’t comin’.’

  Lacy put his hands together in front of his face, palms apart, fingers barely touching. ‘Not at all?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  Lacy began to propel the rocker with his feet, moving it slowly, evenly. ‘Mr. Beaumont isn’t going to like this. He isn’t going to like this at all.’

  Carter snarled and went close to the end of the porch; the cast in his left eye was more noticeable than ever. Below it the side of his face was twitching as he bit down on the inside of his thin-lipped mouth.

  ‘To hell with that! What does it matter? Why don’t you listen to what I’m telling you? We run into two of them bastard Irish and gunned ’em down.’

  ‘Without reason?’ Lacy’s question was mild.

  ‘They was trespassin’,’ put in Noonan.

  ‘An’ one of ’em went for a gun,’ added Carter excitedly. ‘He was goin’ to use it on me.’ His eyes widened in mock surprise. ‘What else could I do?’

  Lacy stopped the movement of the chair with the flat of his shoe. ‘You could have done what you were sent to do. You could have brought back the regulator.’

  Carter’s right arm shot into the air, his fist grabbing and punching as if he was scarcely able to contain his anger. ‘To hell with it, Lacy! To hell with you forever tellin’ me what to do! I ain’t goin’ to take it. I ain’t!’

  Moody and Noonan recognized the moment and began to back away. Carter’s right hand stopped punching air and dived down, spreading as it came. His fingers were inches above the butt of his Colt when Lacy’s right hand emerged from inside his coat. There was a Smith and Wesson .38 steady in his grip.

  Nothing else about him had changed - his expression behind the wire-framed spectacles was as bland as before - only the gun. Even the voice was as mild.

  ‘If you give me opportunity enough, Carter, I’m going to have to kill you. But in the meantime I think the three of you should find some way of scraping the mud off your boots and step inside. I’m sure Mr. Beaumont would like to speak with you.’

  Chapter Four

  Mason Beaumont leaned back in the white leather chair, annoyed at having been disturbed. His pinkish face was drawn in about the mouth; the pupils of his eyes were small and rounded, dark. The thin cigar in his left hand sent a wraith of smoke up towards the ceiling. Tiny flecks of ash were specked down the front of his white suit.

  The room was painted white, framed paintings and daguerreotypes hung from the walls, along with sabers and sashes and other military paraphernalia. Immediately behind Beaumont’s head was a portrait, half-lif
e size, of his father in the full dress uniform of a major of the Army of the Confederacy. The black-bearded face was suitably stern beneath a grey hat with a blue-grey plume which rose from the left side of the crown to curl over the rear of the brim. The collar and buttons of the coat were yellow, as was the ornate piping on the sleeves. A yellow sash hung from the side of the belt, down the light blue trousers and almost touching the tops of the polished knee boots. The saber, hanging low and angled from the leather belt, was the same one that now hung from two wooden pegs in the wall.

  The subject of the painting lay beneath a marble monument in Nashville, Tennessee.

  His son had not fought in the War Between the States. Mason Beaumont had been commissioned but he had not fought.

  He looked up at Lacy and nodded. ‘You’d better get them in, if you must.’

  Lacy went to the door and held it open as Carter and the other two walked through. Carter seemed more controlled now, only the expression in his eyes suggesting otherwise. The three of them approached Beaumont uneasily, Noonan with his hat hanging down behind his head as usual, Moody with his in his left hand.

  ‘What went wrong, Carter?’ Beaumont’s voice was thin and slightly squeaky, like a door that was in need of oil.

  ‘They were tres—’

  The altered look in Beaumont’s face stopped him, told him he was wrong. He licked his upper lip and started again.

  ‘We found him okay. Hart. Told him everything just like you said. He didn’t want to do it, Mr. Beaumont. Didn’t want to work for you.’

  A length of ash fell away from the end of Beaumont’s untouched cigar.

  ‘He didn’t want to work for me? You explained everything to him and he didn’t want to work for me?’

  Crazy John Carter nodded. That’s right, Mr. Beaumont. Wasn’t anythin’ we could do, not without...’ He left the rest of it unsaid.

  Pink fingers reached out for the cigar and crushed it, flakes of dark tobacco crumbling about the rounded finger ends, the polished nails.

  ‘That man,’ he said slowly, ‘that shootist needs to learn some manners.’ He flicked the ash from his hand. ‘You’re going back.’