Hart the Regulator 6 Read online

  Colley shifted the cigar across his mouth with his tongue, rolling it from one side to the other. ‘Rings,’ he said, with some relish. ‘Rings an’ things.’

  He smiled and B.J. winked at him and another man tossed a pistol down into the aisle.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Hart said quietly to Emily. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Shut it!’ The shotgun swung back to him. ‘Shut your goddamn mouth!’

  Hart stared back at Colley with faded blue eyes until Colley had to look elsewhere.

  ‘I ain’t got no key,’ said the conductor to Waite. ‘No key. They don’t issue us with keys. Not anymore. Not since—’

  The tip of the Smith & Wesson barrel pressed hard against the man’s right ear.

  ‘I know that,’ hissed Waite. ‘You take me for a fool?’

  The conductor tried to shake his head but the pressure of the pistol wouldn’t allow it.

  ‘No way I can get it open, mister. Honest now. If’n I could then I would. Ain’t my money in there. None of it. Ain’t—’

  ‘You hear this fool babble on?’ asked Waite.

  ‘Sure does like the sound of his voice, don’t he?’ said Walker with a grin.

  ‘Yeah! He does.’

  Waite lifted the gun away fast and brought it back faster. The side of the barrel slammed against the conductor’s temple and he jolted back, his legs beginning to fold under him. Waite stepped away and made room for him to fall.

  ‘Get that explosive set, Rafe,’ he said.

  Hart watched closely as the handsome one in the white shirt moved slowly along the opposite line of passengers, getting them to drop their money and valuables into a sack he held with his left hand. The second man was back at the door, using the shotgun to cover everyone else.

  Teresa sat close by Hart, her small hands every now and again reaching forward to touch his leg, but never quite doing so. Henry was in Emily’s arms and her face as she looked from one of her children to the other was ugly with fear. There was a splash of blood across her cheek like a vivid gash but it didn’t seem to be hers. Nor Henry’s. Nor Teresa’s.

  B.J. smiled graciously at a young woman as he helped her to free a necklace from her white neck.

  Doing this, he slid the pistol back into its holster.

  The holster was low at his left side, five or so feet along from where Hart was standing.

  Hart tried to fix Colley with his eyes but Colley wasn’t having any. He gave a warning jerk of the shotgun in Hart’s direction and then looked away.

  B.J. dropped the necklace into the sack and gave the woman a mock bow.

  ‘Get on with it!’ snapped Colley angrily.

  Hart tensed, seeing B.J. look away towards the end of the car; he shifted on to the balls of his feet, the butt of B.J.’s gun pointing towards him.

  Rafe stood up, away from the safe. He reached into his pocket, then struck a match.

  ‘What now?’ asked Walker, grinning.

  Rafe lit the fuse end. ‘We get the hell out of here!’

  Emily saw Hart’s body tensing and guessed that he was going to do something; she saw the outlaw with his back towards them and knew what it was going to be. Her breath caught and she clutched Henry to her and leant her body over him.

  ‘Only helping the lady,’ B.J. said down the car.

  ‘Just get on with it. We ain’t got time for that.’

  B.J. shrugged and turned back towards the woman and gave her a smile. He repeated his bow and moved down the line to the next passenger. The pistol remained where he had put it, in his holster.

  Hart’s throat was dry.

  The center of his palm tingled.

  Waite appeared in the empty carriage doorway.

  He recognized Hart instantaneously. Understood the way Hart’s body was angled, saw B.J.’s holstered gun, read the intention.

  The movement of the long off-white coat flickered at the furthest edge of Hart’s vision. His hand already committed to grabbing the gun, his head swung towards the door and again recognition was instant.

  The explosion rocked the freight car, splintering through the wooden sides, hurling the safe out through the open door and down alongside the track. The remaining windows in both passenger carriages were blasted inwards.

  Emily screamed.

  Hart’s fingers touched the butt of B.J.’s gun as the white-shirted figure began to spin round, an arm going up and across his face to protect himself from the flying fragments.

  Waite angled his Smith & Wesson up from the hip and fired down the aisle.

  Emily screamed.

  Hart dragged the gun clear, almost clear, the sight catching against the holster as both B.J. and himself fell sideways.

  ‘Kill the bastard!’ screamed Waite. ‘Kill him!’

  Colley jutted the sawn-off forward.

  Emily screamed.

  The roar of the shotgun seemed to fill the carriage.

  An arc of shot ripped through woodwork and upholstery, flesh and skin alike. The woman whose necklace B.J. had so ceremoniously removed was hurled back against one of the shattered windows, the front of her dress laced with blood. A man fell face down, clutching at the back of his neck and shouting in agony.

  Outside, Weston had ridden up with the horses; Walker and Rafe and Mace were stuffing the bills from the wrecked safe into sacks and saddlebags.

  Emily screamed.

  Waite thumbed back the hammer of his pistol and fired into the mess of bodies in the center of the aisle.

  Colley broke the shotgun and fingered two fresh cartridges from his back pants pocket and slipped them down into place. He snapped the weapon ready and looked to the far door for instructions. Waite was no longer there.

  Neither Hart nor B.J. were moving.

  A woman was still screaming, louder, more shrilly than the rest.

  Colley heard a shout from outside and turned, jumping from the platform. Three of the men were already mounted.

  ‘Where’s B.J.?’ yelled Weston.

  ‘He ain’t comin’.’

  ‘Then let’s ride!’

  ‘Move it!’ Waite waved his hand above his head. ‘Ride out!’

  One of the larger pieces of glass had sliced across the side of Emily’s neck, scoring a deep cut from which blood ran easily. Small shards had etched thin red lines across her cheeks and nose and forehead and had caught in her short reddish hair.

  The blood from her neck had already soaked the front of her dress, so that her breasts were steeped in it, the material red and bright. Cradled against her, Henry’s face was tattooed with the red impression of the dress’s surface. His hands and his little shirt were blotched with blood. His eyes were jammed tight shut and Emily had to shake him to open them; she shook him fiercely, terrified that something had happened to him, that the blood on him was not her own.

  He was all right; he opened his eyes and began to cry and she looked at him and he was all right.

  In the center of the aisle B.J.’s arm suddenly pushed up and Emily started, a cry half-formed, but the arm wasn’t moving of its own accord. B.J.’s face was still handsome, the cold blue eyes were open, staring at the roof of the car. One of Waite’s bullets had ploughed into his stomach and left through one of the cheeks of his backside. He was unconscious, but he wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t die for seven hours, the last three of which he would be awake and pleading for someone to put a slug through his brain. Nobody would.

  Hart squeezed out from between the unconscious B.J. and the corner of one of the seats. There was plenty of blood on him, too, and some of it was his own. Several of the shotgun pellets had dug into his left shoulder, some passing through, others embedding themselves in the flesh. Something had struck him on the temple - maybe it had happened when B.J. had fallen on top of him - and it throbbed like hell and blood ran steadily down along his jawline and dripped onto his shirt.

  He leaned his weight on B.J. and pushed himself to his feet.

  He swayed a little from the blow to the head
.

  The noise in the carriage was appalling. Up by the door, someone was vomiting through his hands.

  Hart saw Emily and the boy covered in blood and his breath gagged back in his throat.

  ‘Is he—?’

  She shook her head before the question was asked. ‘He’s all right.’

  When Emily spoke tiny bubbles of blood appeared along her lips and burst.

  Immediately Hart knelt in front of her and lifted up the hem of her dress, taking the end of her white petticoat between his teeth and tearing it through, pulling the length of material away and starting, as gently as he was able, to bind the wound in Emily’s neck. As soon as he wound one strand round, it darkened and brightened with blood.

  He couldn’t understand why she was still conscious.

  She looked at him as he tended to her, staring at him with eyes that gave no thanks, that did nothing but accuse.

  Accuse.

  Hart stood up and breathed deeply. He thought that if they got to a doctor before too long she might be all right.

  Teresa was dead.

  Half-lying, half-crouching, her head was a mass of bloodied curls. Hart touched them and, beneath, the skull gave too easily. A bullet had left it torn and broken, lifeless. The rest of her was perfect, unmarked, clean. She had been moving towards the aisle, towards him, looking for safety.

  Hart turned his head towards Emily, uncertain whether she knew. He didn’t complete the movement, did not want to face her.

  The memory of Teresa, alive, clutched at his arm.

  Because he didn’t want anyone to see his tears he went outside.

  Chapter Seven

  Wes Hart sat in the outer office and tried not to think about the nagging jolts of pain that shot through his left shoulder. The doc had spent the best part of an hour probing for the fragments of shot that had become stuck in the flesh, some close to the bone. Hart had stared at the ceiling and tried to think of other things, other places: all that had come to his mind had been a dead girl and a bitter, angry mother and beyond that, back way beyond that, Kathy.

  ‘I want to marry you. For you to come and live here. For us to have kids. ‘

  ‘I’ve told you. Not while—.’

  ‘Kathy, it’s not like before. I’m a Ranger, a lawman. That’s different. It’s—’

  ‘It isn’t different. It’s the same.’ She’d stared at the Colt holstered at his side. ‘That’s the same.’

  ‘Kathy, for Christ’s sake, you don’t understand!’

  She’d shaken her head, a strand of brown hair caught across her face.

  ‘No, Wes, it’s you that doesn’t understand.’

  ‘Look—’

  Hart had moved towards her and seen her flinch; flinch then freeze.

  Now he shifted marginally on the bed and concentrated on the pain in his shoulder, sharper, safer.

  ‘Hart?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The man in the doorway was broad, not very tall; he was wearing a three-piece suit with a silver watch chain looped across the vest, and his shoes shone enough to sparkle.

  ‘You better come in.’

  Hart followed the railroad manager into his office. There were wooden filing cabinets against one wall, a map of the sections of track opposite. On the floor, close by the desk, a large dog with a wolf-like head and a stone-gray coat looked up at him and, for a couple of seconds, growled in its throat and bared its teeth.

  ‘Take a seat.’

  Hart did so.

  ‘Cigar?’

  Hart shook his head.

  The manager flipped up the lid of a box and took a long, fat cigar out; he took a small pair of clippers from the side pocket of his coat and cut away one end; from another pocket he took a match and struck it against the leg of the desk. A few moments later he was puffing satisfactorily and blue-gray smoke was starting to cloud up towards the white ceiling.

  ‘Why d’you want to do this?’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  The cigar came out of the mouth. ‘It might.’

  Hart shook his head. ‘What matters is results.’

  ‘Namely?’ The cigar went back between the manager’s teeth.

  ‘You get your money back. As much of it that’s still around.’

  ‘Two thousand dollars.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And the gang that robbed the train? We can’t afford.. .’

  ‘They won’t stick up no more trains. Yours or anyone else’s.’

  A near-perfect smoke ring lofted upwards. ‘Because they’ll be dead?’

  Hart shrugged. ‘That matter to you?’

  ‘No. Only—’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘You’re reckoning on setting out after these men alone.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Seven of them?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘One man?’

  ‘They won’t likely be together. They’ll split up the money and then ride separate ways.’

  ‘You think?’

  Hart nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  The railroad man chewed on the end of his cigar for a little longer, concentrating his thoughts on a point somewhere above Hart’s head.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said finally.

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Anger bristled in Hart’s voice.

  ‘It’s too risky.’

  ‘For who?’ Hart was half out of his seat.

  ‘For the company. For the railroad. We stand to lose all that money while you go out on some one-man crusade. That and a bunch of desperadoes licks its lips and tries again.’ He shook his head decisively. ‘No. We got our own detectives. They’ll track ’em down.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Hart was on his feet, pointing at the man behind the desk. ‘How long you think that’s goin’ to take? One month, maybe two? I can ride out today while the trail’s hot an’ there ain’t nothin’ goin’ to stop me bringin’ those bastards in. One way or another. I swear to God I will.’

  The manager exhaled slowly, made calming gestures with his hands. ‘Sit down, sit down.’

  ‘To hell with that!’

  The railroad man closed his eyes a moment, rubbed at the lid of one with the heel of his left hand.

  ‘We’re wastin’ time,’ said Hart.

  ‘The woman, what’s she to you?’

  Hart hesitated before answering. ‘Nothing. We were travelling together, that’s all. Met her down Caldwell way a while back, her and her husband.’

  ‘Where’s he?’

  ‘She left him back there. Buried.’

  The manager raised his eyebrows. ‘She don’t have much luck, does she?’

  Hart ignored the question. ‘You don’t hear nothing from me inside a week, then send out your detectives. Soon as I strike one of ’em, I’ll wire you.’

  The manager rubbed his eye again.

  ‘I said, we’re wastin’ time,’ said Hart.

  ‘All right.’

  Immediately Hart turned for the door.

  ‘We didn’t discuss payment.’

  Hart stopped. ‘Ten per cent of whatever I recover. Expenses. Any bounty on the gang stays mine.’

  The railroad man nodded: ‘Okay.’

  Hart let himself out, the pain in his shoulder only hitting him again when he reached the street. Back inside his office the railroad manager chewed some more at his cigar and dragged on it heavily and thought he’d send a couple of detectives into the field anyway.

  The door to Emily’s hotel room was locked. Hart hesitated a while downstairs before going up and now he waited again, listening. The clerk had assured him that she was inside, her and the boy. She wasn’t taking meals, wasn’t receiving callers, hadn’t spoken a word more than was essential to a soul.

  Outside, hitched to the rail, Hart’s hired horse was saddled up and ready to go. The saddle bags were filled with supplies, salted beef, bacon, sourdough bread, biscuits, coffee, flour, .44 cartridges for his Henry rifle, .45s for his pistol, ten-gauge shot for
his sawn-off Remington. His water canteens were full. Time was passing by, the gang he was setting out after were getting further and further away and he was standing outside a Wichita hotel room waiting for something from a stubborn, hurt woman who’d locked herself behind the door.

  Something, he didn’t know what, some sign, some word.

  He shook his head and knew he was wasting precious minutes.

  There was nothing that she could do for him now, even less that he could do for her. What he was riding out to do, that was for himself and no one else.

  Skinny Jim’s Trading Post sat on the north bank of the Neosho like a fat, pink pig. Some years back Jim had got the idea of painting its walls so as to give the place a brighter look and attract more custom. Gradually the paint had peeled and chipped and faded away from its original red to the present color which resembled nothing as much as blistered skin.

  Hart came up upon the post from the east, following the bank of the river, riding slow, alert. There were half a dozen horses out back, four of them saddled. An old wagon rested on its tail end close to the nearest wall. Despite the heat of the day, smoke drifted up from the tin chimney that bent awkwardly from the roof.

  God knew who was inside, but Skinny Jim’s usually succeeded in attracting every down-and-out and no-good drifter in the territory. Maybe it had something to do with the paint.

  Hart dismounted thirty yards short of the place and led the horse on foot, treading soft as he could go.

  He looped the rein over the end of the long rail out back, gave the horses and saddles a quick check over to see if there were any that he recognized.

  There weren’t but Jim’s wasn’t a place where it paid to take chances.

  He checked the load in his Remington ten-gauge and stepped quietly up to the back door. The sound of voices came from within, none of them that he knew at once, not even any of the words making themselves clear.

  Hart leaned back, lifted his right leg and thrust it forward, hard and fast; the underside of his boot struck the door close by the frame and sent it swinging loudly back.

  Hart followed in fast, the shotgun already beginning to swing through an arc, covering right to left.