A Dangerous Man (4 page)

The weather was no damned joke, Tam Sullivan told himself as he stared morosely from the shelter of the hotel porch at sleet blowing inside the wind. To his left a big man with the features of a belligerent ape sat in a rocker and used a fingernail rimmed with dirt to fish cigar ash out of his coffee.

Sullivan turned. “Lousy weather, huh?”

“So you say,” the man said.

“You don't agree?”

“Rain, hail, or shine, it makes no difference to me.”

“If I was a guessing man, I'd say your name is Booker Tate,” Sullivan said. “And I'd say you're running with Bill Longley.”

Tate watched a lumber wagon trundle past, mud lacing off its wheels. The driver sat hunched over, huddled inside an old Confederate army greatcoat that still bore the faint scar of three stripes on the sleeve.

“I never give out my name,” Tate said. “Are you some kind of law?”

“No, not any kind of law.”

“But you're a stranger in town. You the man that brought in Crow Wallace?”

“Maybe.”

“He was a good man, was Crow.”

“Yes. Those of us who knew and loved him will miss him terribly.” Sullivan was being sarcastic.

Tate rose to his feet. He was big all over, huge in the shoulders, chest, and belly, and he had the dull, merciless eyes of a carrion eater. An engraved Colt with carved ivory grips he could never have come by honestly was shoved into his waistband.

Handy for the draw, Sullivan noted.

His own revolver, holstered under his coat, was out of reach for the draw and shoot. The extra seconds spent unlimbering the gun could be the death of him. It was a rube's mistake and he cussed himself for his carelessness.

“I don't like you, mister. It all of a sudden come on me, like.” Tate had the piggy, hostile eyes of a rutting boar.

“I'm afraid that if you don't take a bath soon, the feeling will be mutual,” Sullivan was on the prod, despite the voice inside him that whispered
You'll be too slow. Step back from this, Tam.

But Tate saw something in Sullivan's eyes that troubled him. With the air of a man resigned to postponing an important task for another day, he shrugged and let it go. “You stay out of my way, bounty hunter.”

“Until you take a bath, depend on it.”

Death glinted in Tate's eyes as he turned away and stepped into the hotel.

Sullivan watched the man go then smiled at his uncanny knack for making enemies in low places.

The growl in his stomach told him the time was nigh for breakfast, but the sea of mud between him and the restaurant on the opposite boardwalk kept him on the porch.

He considered his options. Apart from going hungry, he had none.

Back in the Dark Ages, a philosophizing monk might have gazed at the iron sky and tumbling sleet and said to his fellow friars, “That's it, boys, down on your knees. Seems like God's destroying the world again.”

In Tam Sullivan's opinion, the monk could have been right.

There was no sign of a letup in the bad weather. The sky was one gigantic bruise, swollen masses of black, mustard, and purple smeared together like oil paint on a mad artist's palette. The gusting north wind continued to fuss and fluster the sleet, blowing it in every direction but straight down.

It was a morning for a brandy bottle, a couple of inventive ladies who were a credit to their profession, and a scarlet fire crackling in the grate.

Sullivan had none of those things. Only the bleak prospects of the aborning day.

He sighed, removed his spurs, and prepared for his muddy odyssey.

It seemed the good folks of Comanche Crossing had decided not to hazard the weather, preferring to stay warm and dry at home and forgo steak and eggs for buttered toast.

Besides himself, there were only a few customers in the restaurant, a businessman of some kind in broadcloth and brocade, a couple of drifters who looked like hardcases, and a young blond girl who sat at the counter talking with a woman twice her age and three times her size.

“You tell your pa that the state of the street is a disgrace,” the woman was saying as Sullivan stepped inside and chose a table in a corner where he could sit with his back to a wall.

“Pa's talking about bringing in crushed shell rock, Ida Mae,” the girl said. “Spread it around, like. Put up our taxes a few dollars, though.”

“Shell rock ain't the answer, Lisa. And neither is new taxes.”

Sullivan thought the girl's frown was real pretty.

“Then what do you suggest, Ida Mae?”

“Don't ask me. Your daddy's the mayor and he's being paid to figure these things. If he won't do anything, speak to your ma. Polly will get to the bottom of the problem.”

“Shell rock will work,” Lisa said, her little chin stubborn. “All we have to do is build up the level of the street a couple feet.”

“That's a lot of shells. I don't think there's that many shells in the ocean.” Ida Mae pushed herself off the counter, grabbed the coffeepot from the stove, and walked to Sullivan's table.

She was a thick-bodied woman with heavy black eyebrows and a wide thin mouth that seemed compressed, as though she was forever holding back an insult that sulked on the tip of her tongue.

She filled Sullivan's cup. “Hi, sweetie. What can I get you?.

“Burn me a steak then add four—nah, make it six—fried eggs.”

“Takes a lot to feed up a man as big as you, huh?”

“Well, at a guess, I'm missing my last six meals,” Sullivan said.

“Then you've come to the right place to fill that hole. The girl's name is Lisa York, by the way. She's the mayor's daughter.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“Other men look at her the way you do. Nothing new in that.”

“Anybody walking out with her?” Sullivan wanted to know.

“All the single men in town and the occasional army officer passing through.”

“A heap of competition, I'd say.”

“What do you expect? Have you ever in your life seen a gal prettier?”

“Maybe just once. A spotted pup down El Paso way. But it's a close run thing.”

Ida Mae smiled. “Mister, if you think that, you've got rocks in your head. Talking about that, what do you know about crushed shell rock?”

“Nothing,” Sullivan said.

“Me, neither,” Ida Mae said, walking away.

The coffee was good, but the steak, eggs, and sourdough bread spread thick with butter were better. After he'd eaten, Sullivan leaned back in his chair, a contented man.

The girl was gone, her bustle swaying and ankle boot heels pounding on the wood floor after she and Ida Mae got into another heated discussion about the muddy street, the duties of a mayor, and the advantages, or lack thereof, of shell rock as a paving medium.

Sullivan felt a pang of disappointment that Lisa hadn't even glanced in his direction. He'd shaved close and trimmed his mustache just that morning.

He was about to call for his bill when a tall man who'd stopped on the boardwalk to kick mud off his boots opened the door and stepped inside.

Sullivan pegged him at a glance. By his high-headed arrogance and bully's swagger, the tall man was a gun.

The man carried a Henry rifle. He removed his dripping Army cape and hung it on a peg. His coat was open, revealing a pair of revolvers butt-forward in a fancy two-gun rig.

Sullivan reckoned he could only be Bill Longley.

The two hardcases that had been sitting by the window glanced at the man, did a double take, and decided it was no time or place to linger over coffee. They paid their score and left in a hurry.

Longley stared at Sullivan as though he expected him to do the same. The bounty hunter merely smiled and said a good morning.

Longley grunted then crooked a finger at the waitress.

Ida Mae filled his coffee cup and Longley said, “What you got to eat besides steak and eggs?”

“The cook can make you a nice bacon or salt pork sandwich.”

“Two slices of toast. One dry, the other spread thin with molasses. And don't burn the toast.”

“Will that be all?” Ida Mae said, her face stiff.

“Yeah, pour me more coffee. This is cold.”

Ida Mae protested. “I just took the pot off the stove.”

“I don't give a damn when you took it off the stove. It's cold. Now do as I tell you.”

Ida Mae stepped back into the kitchen, making more noise than was strictly necessary.

Driven by need and covered in heavy coats against the sleet, more basket matrons shopped along the boardwalks. The skirts of their morning dresses flapped in the wind, revealing lacy petticoat hems that swirled around their ankles like snowflakes.

Outside Tom Archer's dry goods store, a dog stared balefully at the black and white cat in the window. The cat's name was Precious and the dog had chased her a hundred and seven times, catching her once. After what had turned out to be a painful and humiliating experience, he'd licked his wounds and vowed off bird-dogging cats forever.

Tam Sullivan returned his attention to Longley. The man's uneaten toast was turning to leather on his plate.

Irritated at the way he'd treated the waitress, Sullivan said, “So you're Wild Bill Longley. Heard about you.”

The eyes Bill Longley turned on Tam Sullivan were cold as the muzzles of a Greener shotgun. “What did you hear?”

“Damn it all, Bill, I've been sitting here racking my brain trying to recollect,” Sullivan said. “Nothing too interesting, I guess.”

“Well, don't rack too hard. You'll give yourself a headache.” Longley picked up his plate, stared at it for a while, then tossed the toast on the floor.

“I'm sure there must have been something good, you being such a nice feller an' all,” Sullivan said.

Ida Mae stepped up to Longley's table. “I'll have to charge you for that.”

Longley glared at her. “The hell you will. In this town everything Bill Longley wants is on the house.”

“Not in this restaurant, it isn't,” Ida Mae said. “Simeon!”

A tall, well-made man with a blue-black skin and dark, wounded eyes, seen so often in his kind, stood behind the counter. He wore a white apron, much stained, and a blue bandana with a paisley pattern around his neck.

“This man won't pay his bill,” Ida Mae said.

“Seen you when I first came in,” Longley said. “I won't eat food a black man's hands have touched.” He rose to his feet, the two Dance revolvers on his hips exclamation marks of danger.

Five years before he'd arrived in Comanche Crossing the man called Simeon had fought an unsanctioned, bare-knuckle bout with the great American champion John Camel Heenan. All the New York smart money was on Heenan, at that time a tough, six-foot-two, 200-pounds brawler who was hard to put down.

Two inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter, Simeon took Heenan to twenty-four rounds in a fight that lasted two hours and twenty minutes. Finally, with five ribs broken and his battered face a bloody mess, Simeon's seconds threw in the towel.

Heenan's manager gave him a cigar and a silver watch.

As he faced Bill Longley, the watch was in Simeon's pocket and his face bore the scars of every punch of John Heenan's that cut him to the bone. The black man didn't lack for sand, but a draw fighter like Longley was a visitor from hell that was beyond his experience.

Longley grinned and ground the two pieces of toast into the floor with the heel of his boot. “Pick it up, boy.”

Sullivan saw Simeon's fists clench and it looked like the man was willing to walk into a wall of lead to land a punch.

“Hell, Bill, now I recollect what I heard about you,” Sullivan said. “It was in the summer of sixty-seven down in Lexington, Texas, way.” He slapped the table. “I know I'd remember eventually.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Longley said, his eyes ugly.

“Mind that time you, Johnson McKowen, and Slick Williams lost all your money at the racetrack? I remember hearing about it because I later had the pleasure of killing Slick when he was on the scout with five thousand dollars on his head for rape and murder.” Sullivan shook his head and made a
tut-tut-tut
sound. “Poor ol' Slick, where did he go wrong? Maybe it was you led him astray, Bill.”

Longley's eyes went to Simeon, then back to Sullivan. “Back there in Lexington, you're talking about darkie shooting.”

“Why yes, you do remember,” Sullivan said. “You shot up a street dance as I recall. Left five or six dead and twice that number wounded, woman and children among them.”

“Yeah, well say your piece, but darkie shooting ain't murder. It's a long overdue reckoning, the damned scalawags.”

“Bill, Bill, I'm surprised at you,” Sullivan said. “What an awful thing to say. How cold.”

“Well, you tell me what right them savages had to hold a street dance when the South was bleeding and the tears on the faces of our widows and orphans wasn't even dry yet?”

Sullivan smiled. “You're a patriot, Bill. True blue.” He raised an eyebrow. “You sure you don't have paper on you? How about Booker Tate?”

“Go to hell.”

“Then I'll take that as a no. But I don't believe you.” The bounty hunter rose to his feet, coat open, hand close to his Colt. “Pick it up, Bill.”

For a moment Longley looked like a man who's just had a sewing needle rammed into his ass. “Are you talking to me?” His startled eyes were big as coins.

“I certainly am, Bill. The cook is too busy to clean your mess, what with lunchtime coming up an' all. I'm sure you understand, huh?”

Longley jabbed a furious forefinger at Sullivan. “You go right to hell. And stay out of my way.” He stomped to the door, trailing mud, grabbed his cape and walked into the street.

After the door slammed, rattling its glass panes, Ida Mae smiled at Sullivan. “Thank you, stranger. You put the crawl on him.”

“I didn't put the crawl on him. He just postponed the day is all,” Sullivan said. “He didn't pick up the toast and he didn't pay his score. I'd say he won that round.”

Simeon grinned, revealing teeth as large and white as piano keys. “Mister, I was about to tackle him, take the hits, and keep on coming. If you hadn't intervened, I reckon I'd be dead right now.”

“From now on leave Bill Longley the hell alone,” Sullivan said. “You see him come into the restaurant, leave by the back door.”

“I'm not scared of him,” Simeon said.

“You should be. You heard of the Marquis of Queensberry Rules?” Sullivan said.

“Sure,” the black man said.

“Yeah, well just remember there ain't no Marquis of Queensberry rules in a gunfight.”

The big chocolate-colored dog that had earlier stared into the window of the dry goods store, bitterly lamenting his fate at the hands of its belligerent cat, nosed around the restaurant door.

Sullivan opened the door to the dog and pointed to the toast on the floor. “Pick that up.”

The dog's brown eyes stared into Sullivan's face with a
You-got-to-be-kidding-me
expression. He cocked a leg, pissed against the door, and trotted away.

Tam Sullivan shook his head and studied the puddled floor at his feet. “This just isn't my day.”