A Dangerous Man (22 page)

Tam Sullivan answered the knock on his hotel room door.

Isaac Loomis stood there excitedly waving a piece of paper in his hand. “You got an answer to your wire, young feller.”

“Come in,” Sullivan said, stepping aside. He took the paper and read it.

“A bit late, ain't it?” Sullivan said.

“Yup,” Loomis agreed. “Delayed going and coming. Bad snowstorms and the like.”

Sullivan lifted Posey's carpetbag onto the bed. “You heard anything along the line about Bill Longley?”

“Sure did, and no later than this morning. Seems he killed a man down Jasper, Texas, way then skipped across the Sabine into Louisiana.”

“We sure it was him?”

“Yeah, it was ol' Bill all right. The Rangers put his name out.” Loomis was quiet for a few moments. Then, his eyes probing, he said, “Heard about what happened up at the Wainright house.”

Sullivan threw his saddlebags over his shoulder. “Seems like everybody has.”

“Hard thing to kill a woman.”

“No, it wasn't. Not hard at all.”

“Everybody in town understood, depend on that.” Loomis looked tentative, like a barefoot man picking his way through a nettle patch.

“You trying to make me feel better, Loomis?” Sullivan asked.

The stationmaster smiled shyly. “Why, yes. I guess I am.”

Sullivan returned his smile. “Then I feel just fine.” He picked up his key from the desk, looked around the room one last time, and stepped to the door. “Will you give me the road, Loomis?”

The stationmaster stepped aside, smiling. “Sullivan, you sure livened things up around here.”

“Does that include the dead men?”

“And women,” Loomis said.

The big bounty hunter nodded. “Yeah, and the women.”

 

 

The slender little body, wrapped like an ancient mummy, lay on the examination table.

“I've done what I can to preserve him,” Dr. Peter Harvey said. “The cold weather will help.”

“He sure looks small, all wrapped up like that,” Sullivan said.

Harvey nodded, said nothing.

“Ebenezer had sand though.”

“Yes, he did,” the doctor said. “He fought for life very hard.”

“The town bought the buckboard and horse for you from Clem Weaver,” John York said. “It's outside. And there's a . . . coffin.”

“I appreciate it,” Sullivan said. “How is your wife?”

“Montana Maine is with her. That helps.”

“Yeah, I'm sure it does.”

“Montana Maine says there's another angel in heaven, and her name is Lisa,” York said.

Sullivan nodded. “I'm sure she's right about that.”

“And she says there are three new demons in hell.”

“She's right again,” Sullivan agreed.

Head down, York was silent for a while, composing his thoughts. He looked up at the bounty hunter. “Clotilde Wainright had to die, right Mr. Sullivan?”

“The woman that was Clotilde Wainright died a long time ago,” Sullivan answered. “Back in China, I'd say.”

York visibly bit the good Christian bullet. “Then may God finally give her peace,” he said, the words brittle on his tongue.

Sullivan ignored that. “I guess Ebenezer and me better go. We got a long trail ahead of us.” He passed his saddlebags and the carpetbag to Harvey. “Take these. I'll carry Ebenezer.”

“I'll help you,” York said.

“No. I'll do it myself.” Sullivan lifted the light burden of Ebenezer Posey from the table, carried him outside, and placed him in the coffin. He roped it down in the middle of the buckboard, next to his saddle.

York had already tied Sullivan's stud to the back of the wagon and the stone-faced Harvey handed him his bags. He placed them on the seat beside him, slapped the reins, and the buckboard trundled through the mud of the street, sleet borne by the north wind spinning around him.

A dog ran out from an alley and trotted alongside the passing wagon, barking furiously. It was the only farewell Tam Sullivan received from the town of Comanche Crossing.

Driving through snow that fell slowly in large flakes, Tam Sullivan was five miles west of the old Santa Fe Trail when he came upon Black Mesa and the dead packhorse. The carcass lay at the mouth of a narrow arroyo and the animal had been shot and its pack rifled.

Before he'd died, Booker Tate had stashed horses there and Bill Longley had already taken what he needed. Judging by the trampled mud and horse droppings, two animals had been there, the other probably a riding horse intended for Lisa York.

It was likely that Longley had left nothing in the pack, but to his joy Sullivan found a sack of Arbuckle, a round loaf of bread hollowed out and stuffed with sliced ham, and a paper package secured with a rubber band. Inside the package were four prime cigars. He smiled for the first time since leaving town and embarking on his high lonesome.

It seemed that Longley, fearing a posse, had been in a big hurry and overlooked some valuable items.

Sullivan raised his eyes to the iron-gray sky and said, “Thankee.”

In his eagerness to leave Comanche Crossing, he'd laid in no grub but some hardtack and beef jerky. This find was a heavenly bounty, indeed.

He walked back to the buckboard. “Lookee what we got, Ebenezer. Coffee, grub, and cigars. What do you think of them beans?”

The wrapped body lay perfectly still. Perfectly quiet.

Sullivan's gloved hand brushed snow off Ebenezer's chest. “You can't hear me, can you old fellow? Well, maybe you can see me. I sure hope so.”

The wagon creaked as Sullivan regained his seat and the floor under his boots immediately shed a long slat of rotted pine. “Damn you, Clem. Remind me to shoot you fer a hoss thief the next time I see you.”

 

 

The morning gave way to afternoon, but the snow didn't let up and the Santa Fe Mountains to the west were almost hidden behind a hard, ashy light.

Sullivan's breath smoked as he crossed the Mora River at a point where there were rocky, flat-water shallows. He swung due south into broken, desolate country, pine and aspen growing on the higher rises.

As the day began its shade into evening, he peered through the snowfall and saw the faint glow of a campfire. At first, he thought it was his imagination, a trick of the fading light, but after he drove closer he realized it was no mistake.

Odd though it was, someone had a fire going. Sullivan could even smell the wood smoke.

The glow came from a small, horseshoe-shaped ridge, its top crested by snow-capped pines. Since the fire was situated in the curve of the shoe, he saw only its glimmer and no sign of the builder.

When he was within hailing distance, Sullivan drew rein. “Hello, the camp!” he yelled.

In answer, a man's voice, roughened by age and living, called out, “You got coffee?”

“I got coffee, but no pot,” Sullivan said.

“I got a pot, but no coffee,” the man yelled.

“Then we're a good match,” Sullivan said.

“Come on in, an' welcome to ye.” A short, stocky man dressed in buckskin and furs stepped to the opening of the rise. He cradled a Henry in his arms. “Name's Faith Butler, an' if you say Faith is a gal's name I'll plug ya.”

“I have no such intention. Name's Tam Sullivan.”

“What you got in the wagon, hoss?” Butler asked.

“A dead man, friend of mine. I'm taking him to Santa Fe for burial.”

“Well, I got nothing agin' the dead, you understand, but I'd appreciate it if you don't bring him into camp. Might make me think about death and Judgment Day, like.”

“I'll leave the wagon right here in the shelter of the rise,” Sullivan said. “He'll be all right.”

“Put your animals back with my mule over there.” Butler pointed in the general direction of his animal. “I cleared away the snow and ice and there's good grass underneath.”

Sullivan did what he could for the horses then stepped to the hearty blaze of the fire, warming immediately. “How'd you find dry wood, Faith?”

“See the hole in the rock by the dead piñon yonder? I found plenty of wood stacked in there. Probably left by Apaches, but I'd like to think it was a white man done it.” The oldster's eyebrow lifted. “You said you'd coffee in your poke?”

“Sure do.” Sullivan reached into his pocket and produced the sack of Arbuckle, then from under the coat the bread and ham.

“Well, that's just top hole,” Butler said. “I'll get the coffee onto bile and then we'll have us a feast. Got me a chunk of salt pork I'll fry up. Ran out of coffee three days ago after I had to hole up because of the damned weather. A coffee-drinking man sure pines for it when he don't have none.”

He stared at Sullivan from under bushy white eyebrows. “Son, don't talk to me again until I got my first cup down me. That square with you?”

Sullivan nodded.

Pleased, Butler said, “Good. You catch on fast.”

 

 

After his first cup of coffee had gone down the hatch and he'd declared it, “Crackerjack!” Butler sliced and fried the salt pork, added the ham from the loaf, fried that, and then restuffed the sandwich after cutting it neatly in half.

“Good eating, Faith,” Sullivan said as he chewed.

The old man nodded. “I was tole that the salt pork came from a Kentucky hog. That's how come it tastes so succulent. Them hogs feed on nothing but corn an' beer, or so they say.”

“What brings you to this neck of the woods?” Sullivan asked, making conversation.

“Huntin', trappin', an' tracer gold. That is, when the Apaches let me be, which is most of the time.” Butler's shrewd glance fell on the younger man. “You'd be Tam Sullivan the bounty hunter, ain't you? One of them Texas draw fighters that gets his name in all the newspapers. You kilt Crow Wallace a spell back. That ain't him in the back of the wagon is it?”

“No. It ain't Crow.”

“Crow needed killin'. I'd have done it myself if he'd bothered me any.”

“You hear anything of Bill Longley?” Sullivan asked, no longer simply making conversation.

“He's in Louisiana, last I heard. They say the Texas Rangers are after him for a killing down in Bastrop County when he gunned some poor sodbuster that was staring at a mule's ass and pushing a plow. But I don't know the truth of any o' that. Folks talk.”

Sullivan reached into his saddlebags and produced a pint of whiskey, then the cigars.

Butler's face lit up and he grinned. “Hell, boy, are you some kind of angel come to visit old sinners like me? Pour a couple fingers of the who-hit-john into my coffee. Yeah, that's it. You're a white man an' true blue. An' here's to your very good health.” The old man lifted his cup and Sullivan did likewise.

They lit their cigars from a brand Butler took from the fire. “Heard a thing about Bill Longley that could be true.”

“I'd like to hear it,” Sullivan said. “If it ain't just loose talk.”

“Well, one of them Jesuit preachers tole it to me over to Las Vegas way right there in the plaza. He saw I was readin' the newspaper with the bit about Bill and the Texas Rangers in it.”

“He'd have pretty good bona fides I'd say.”

“Sure did, an' he was a real smart feller. Frenchman he was, and we had a nice parley,
puisque je parle très bien le francais.”

Sullivan didn't raise an eyebrow over an old mountain man like Faith Butler speaking French. Some of the fur traders spoke nothing else.

“Anyhoo,” Butler said, “the Jesuit tole me that Bill Longley was cursed by a Louisiana bayou witch on account of how her nephew had been shot down by Longley at a street dance in Texas. Now the witch is a voodoo queen, and the preacher said they're the worst kind.”

Sullivan said nothing, his eyes glittering as he stared across the scarlet campfire flames at Butler.

“The swamp witch cursed Bill to be hung three times for his crimes,” the old man continued.

“He's already been half hung once,” Sullivan said.

“Then he's got two more times to go, ain't he?” Butler smiled, then said behind a veil of cigar smoke, “I kin see you don't set store by curses an' sich, huh?”

Sullivan shrugged. “Until recent I didn't. Now I'm not so sure anymore.”

“You mind Handsome Jules Villemont, the gambler? Worked the Mississippi riverboats?”

“Can't say as I do,” Sullivan said.

“Before your time, I guess. Well, Jules trifled with the affections of a Creole gal and then left her with a broken heart and a big belly. Her mama didn't like it.”

“And she was a swamp witch,” Sullivan guessed. His front was toasty warm and his back was freezing.

“Damn right she was, and she laid a terrible curse on his man parts.”

“Inconsiderate of her,” Sullivan said, pushing his knees together.

“The curse took, an' ol' Jules wandered the streets of New Orleans for nigh on three years, wailing for his lost manhood. He tried everything of course, including powdered monkey bone, but nothing worked. He stayed limp as the little finger of an empty glove.”

“Poor feller. So what happened to him?” Sullivan asked.

“Jules begged the witch to raise her curse, but she refused. ‘Serves you right,' she said. Well, then he blew his brains out.”

“At least he went out with a bang.”

“Uh-huh. And there's a moral to what I've been telling you,” Butler said. “When a man in your profession asks for news of an outlaw like Longley, he has a reward on his mind and maybe a killin'. Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Partly right, I guess. I want to kill Bill Longley real bad, but not for the reward on his head.”

“You won't be the man to kill him. The only crew lowdown and heartless enough to hang a feller twice is the law.”

Sullivan smiled. “Maybe I'll get lucky and the curse won't take.”

Butler shrugged. “The Jesuit was in good with God and he said it will. And I believe him.”

Tam Sullivan slept fitfully under his blanket, rising every hour to throw more wood on the fire, check on the horses and the white bundle that was Ebenezer Posey's body. He got up for the last time an hour before dawn, melted snow in the coffeepot, tossed in the last of the Arbuckle, and set the pot on the fire.

Faith Butler, snoring slightly, didn't stir.

Coyotes yipped close, and snow fell in flakes as big as silver dollars and sizzled on the fire. The air was frigid, icy. When first light came, it revealed a sky as black as the inside of a cannon barrel.

Sullivan shook Butler awake. “Coffee's on the bile.”

“Damn ye fer a scoundrel, waking a man from the best dream he's had in a twelve-month.”

“About women and whiskey, no doubt,” Sullivan said.

The old man blinked, remembering. “Not any woman. It was Montana Maine herself come to visit me in a tent on the bank of the Canadian.”

Sullivan was surprised. “You've met Montana Maine?”

Butler sat up in his blankets. “Nope, never met her, but I sure hope to remedy that afore I die. They say she's a sight to see.” The old man scowled. “Here, have you met her?”

“No. Like you, I never have.”

“Well, she's no longer in my head. She just faded away like smoke when you woke me.”

Sullivan grinned. “Sorry.”

“Maybe it's just as well. They say once a man sets eyes on Montana Maine, he'll never settle for another woman. Now pour me a cup o' that coffee, young feller. It sure smells good.”