Shawn O'Brien Manslaughter (12 page)

Burt Becker lay in a narrow cot in a crib only a little larger than a steamer trunk. Both cot and crib were not designed for comfort but for quick business deals.

The big man lay on his back, his tied-up jaw giving him the appearance of a corpse laid out for display. His wide-open eyes stared at the bright red ceiling. The tiny room smelled of women and of Becker himself, a heady mix of sweet and sour.

“Becker,” Shawn said. Then, aware that he whispered, he said in a normal voice, “I want to talk with you.”

He got no response.

Shawn moved closer and stared into Becker's face.

The man's features were blank, eyes flat, as though someone had placed silver coins in the sockets to pay the ferryman.

“Becker,” Shawn said. “Can you hear me?”

After a few moments, Pete Caradas said, “He's been like that for hours, not moving, saying nothing. He just stares at the ceiling.”

“Ol' Burt gets the same view as the girls, huh?” Hamp Sedley said, grinning.

“Hamp, is it just me or does anyone else think you're particularly irritating today?” Shawn said.

“He's irritating,” Caradas said.

“See if I talk again,” Sedley said.

“Becker isn't going to talk again, that's for certain,” Caradas said.

“Well, you've seen all you want, and now I want you all out of here,” Sunny said. “I don't know where Burt has gone, but I'm the only one who can bring him back and that will take time and patience.”

She glared at Shawn. “Why are you so all fired determined to talk to him?”

“Ma'am, this town is in grave danger,” Shawn said. “We need his help.”

“From the Chinese? We already know that.”

“No, from Thomas Clouston, the little drummer boy. He wants the Rattlesnake Hills, and Broken Bridle stands in his way.”

“What's that got to do with Burt?” Sunny said. “This town has already rejected him.”

“Perhaps if he tells where he's holding Jane Collins the folks will welcome him back to the fold,” Sedley said, a man who couldn't remain silent for long.

By the shocked look on the woman's face Sedley had hit a nerve. But she quickly shrugged it off.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Sunny said. “The little slut has probably lit a shuck with a whiskey drummer. Now all of you get out of here.”

Shawn remained where he was. “Listen, Miss Swanson, as far as I'm concerned, Burt Becker is a sorry piece of trash but he's a skilled revolver fighter, and so is Caradas. Who else is in town, Pete?”

The tall hired gun gave a languid shrug. “Coop Hunter and Uriah Spade. They're a pair of onetime lawmen up from the Arizona Territory.”

“Are they good?” Shawn said.

“They'll do.”

“Including myself and Hamp we can count on maybe half a dozen professional guns and the rest will be storekeepers,” Shawn said. “When Clouston attacks, Becker needs to be on his feet.”

“Let the sheriff handle it,” Sunny said. “That's what he's being paid for.”

“He can't handle it,” Caradas said. “That's the problem.”

“And that's why I'm willing to make a deal with the devil,” Shawn said.

“As soon as Burt is able to ride, him and me are getting out of here,” Sunny said. “Let this town fend for itself, I say. It isn't worth dying for.”

Sedley glanced around him. “What's that damned scratching sound I've been hearing since I came in here?”

“Rats,” Sunny said quickly. “They come in from the cattle pens and Chinatown.”

“Big rats,” Sedley said.

“Now, out, all of you,” Sunny said. The look she gave Shawn was less than friendly. “When Burt recovers I'll tell him your proposition.” She smiled. “Hell, what is your proposition exactly?”

“If Becker helps defend this town against Clouston, when it's done he can ride on out of here. I'll do nothing to stop him.”

“And what about Jane Collins?” Sunny said.

“I'll expect him to tell me where she's being held.”

“Dream big, mister,” Sunny said. “Burt will leave Broken Bridle when he feels like it. And he doesn't know where that little Collins baggage is.”

Shawn nodded. “You're lying. I think you know where the girl is.”

“Get out of here,” Sunny said.

On the cot Burt Becker groaned and twitched, his mind haunted by dreadful visions.

There was fortune to be made in the Rattlesnake Hills for men who were good with a gun and not overly squeamish about whom they shot with it.

Rank Mason was such a man. During an outlaw career that spanned two decades he'd killed both men and women for profit, and none of those murders troubled his conscience even a smidgen.

Mason was tailor-made for Thomas Clouston's enterprise as were the three hardcases that rode with him.

The oldest was Jim Mulholland, a bank robber, hired gun, sometimes lawman, and a vicious, unfeeling killer. He was fifty that year. Ten years younger, Dave King was an all-around bad man with rotten teeth and a worse attitude. He'd killed three men and considered himself an elite shootist. The youngest was William Anderson, an eighteen-year-old draw fighter and killer who liked to call himself Billy the Kid. The real Billy would have dismissed him as a coward and a braggart.

Following orders from Clouston, Mason led a routine patrol of the rugged hill country east of Fales Rocks. He planned to head southeast, pick up the middle fork of Casper Creek, and follow it back into the Rattlesnakes.

Mason had ridden that patrol seventeen times and was yet to come across a human being. Bears were scarce in the brush country and wolves generally kept to the high timber, so the land seemed empty, shimmering in the heat, the silence funereal as a fallen warrior's tomb.

But Clouston insisted that the patrols were necessary to keep interlopers at bay, and Mason had orders to shoot any such trespassers on sight.

Imagine the gunman's joy then when Billy the Kid Anderson's sharp young eyes spotted a couple of riders in the distance.

He cried out to Mason and pointed. “Rank, lookee there!”

The older man's gaze followed Anderson's pointing finger. He looked for a while, grunted, and raised the field glasses that hung around his neck—yet another Clouston precaution.

Mason studied the riders through the glasses for long moments, and Anderson, with the impatience of youth, said, “Hell, Rank, what do you see? Lawmen?”

Mason lowered the field glass and shook his head, a bemused look on his hard-planed, bearded face.

“Well?” Anderson said.

“Rubes. A couple of rubes riding two-up on a yeller hoss.”

Dave King spat a stream of chewing tobacco over the side of his mount and said, “What the hell are rubes doing out here?”

“Damned if I know,” Mason said. He passed the glasses to King. “Here, take a look for yourself. By the dead wild oak yonder.”

After a while King turned to the others and said, “Rank called it right. Two farm boys in overalls riding a mustang. Hell, now I've seen everything.”

“Must be on their way to Broken Bridle to see the bright lights and fancy women,” Anderson said.

“I reckon so,” Mason said. He sighed deeply. “Well, let's ride on down there and kill them.”

“I'll kill them,” Anderson said, grinning. “I've never shot me a couple of farm boys before.”

“Shut your trap!” Jim Mulholland said. “Dave, give me them glasses.”

“You don't speak to me like that, you old coot,” Anderson said, his face pale with anger. “You want to climb off that bay and we'll have it out?”

Suddenly Mulholland's Colt was in his hand, the muzzle shoved into the bridge of Anderson's nose.

“Don't say another word, boy,” he said. “Not one more word.”

“Billy,” Mason said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. His eyes flickered to Mulholland's face and he saw death. “Don't move and don't say a word.”

In that moment Billy the Kid Anderson realized he was a callow boy in the company of close-lipped, dangerous men. His eyes wide and frightened, he kept his mouth shut.

Mulholland shoved his revolver back into its cross draw holster and lifted the glasses to his eyes. A few seconds later he lowered and said, “Let those boys be, Rank.”

Suddenly Mulholland looked much older than his fifty years. His brown eyes were haunted.

“They're rubes, Jim, for God's sake,” Mason said. “We ride down there and shoot them off the pony and we're done.”

“Not me, Rank. Not now, not ever.”

Now Mulholland's gun had been taken out of his face, Anderson found his courage and his sneer again. His hand was on his Colt. “You scared?”

The older man sat his saddle in silence for long moments, gazing at the oncoming riders. A hawk glided overhead and for a moment cast an angular shadow that looked as though it had been razored from black paper. The kid had talked again and Mason expected a shooting, but Mulholland surprised him.

“Yeah, I'm scared, and so should you be,” he said. He looked at Mason. “Ride away, Rank. Give them boys the road.”

Mason read something in Mulholland's face that deeply disturbed him. Nonetheless he said, “I can't do that, Jim.” He made a lame attempt at humor. “Just following doctor's orders.”

Mulholland nodded. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small wooden crucifix on a silver chain. “Rank, are you a Roman Catholic?” he asked.

The gunman shook his head. “Got no time for popery, Jim.”

“Maybe that's so, but this I can do for you. For old time's sake, you understand?”

Mulholland raised the crucifix and made the sign of the cross over Mason. “
Requiescat in pace
, Rank,” he said. Then, to the others, “Maybe I'll see you boys around one day, but I doubt it.”

Mulholland swung his horse away and rode south at a fast gallop. He didn't even glance in the direction of the D'eth brothers, nor did he look back.

 

 

When all that remained of Mulholland's frantic flight was a drifting cloud of dust, Billy Anderson grinned and said, “What the hell was that all about?”

“Maybe he's scared of rubes,” Dave King said.

Rank Mason stared at the two men on the yellow mustang, then said, “All right boys, let's go get them.”

Mason's first mistake was to ignore Mulholland's warning. Now he made a series of others.

He should have stayed at a distance and cut down the D'eth brothers with rifle fire. But maybe Anderson's exultant yell of, “This is gonna be fun!” influenced Mason's thinking and gave him false confidence.

The rubes had no weapons showing, and the big gunman assumed they were unarmed. That was his second error.

His third and most fatal miscalculation was his belief that he, Dave King, and Billy the Kid Anderson were the top guns in the Wyoming Territory.

The D'eth brothers would soon show him otherwise.

Billy the Kid Anderson, thinking this was going to be easy, opened the ball. He had his Colt in his hand.

“Get off that pony, farm boys,” he said, grinning. “And start running”—he pointed back along the trail—“that away.”

The D'eth brothers sat the mustang, their black Gypsy eyes unblinking, staring silently at Anderson.

“I'll make it sporting,” Anderson said. “If you make it to the dead wild oak without getting hit, I'll let you go.”

Dave King grinned. “Seems like they don't understand plain American, Billy.”

“Look like Greasers to me,” Anderson said. He spat. “Or breeds.”

The sun had reached its highest point, and men and horse cast no shadow. The parched day was quieter than the quietest night, and oppressive heat lay on the land heavy as a Hudson's Bay trade blanket.

Rank Mason was about to spoil Anderson's fun. He decided to end the game right then and he reached for his gun.

The D'eth brothers rolled off the mustang, landed on their feet, and began firing, a sound of rolling thunder.

Anderson went down, a cry of surprise and shock shrieking from his lips. Dave King died on his horse's back but stayed in the saddle, wide-jawed in a silent scream.

Rank Mason, the best of them, got off a shot that went high into the pine canopy. Bullets then tore great holes in his chest and hammered him into the ground.

Milos stepped through a fog of gun smoke and shot Anderson, who'd been up on one elbow, whimpering, his left arm extended in a plea for mercy. Clemency of any kind for the fallen never entered into the D'eth brothers' thinking, and Billy the Kid Anderson's death was no nobler than that of the man he'd tried so desperately to emulate.

The D'eth brothers reloaded their Colts and shoved them back into the bibs of their overalls. They had not exchanged a word, had not speculated on the identities of their attackers or their possible motives, because all that was of no interest to them. They had been threatened and had taken care of it. That was all that mattered.

The dead men had nothing the brothers wanted, so they let the bodies lay where they fell. That is, except for Dave King who still sat his horse, his eyes wide open but blinded by death. That last mildly amused Milos, but brother Petsha didn't spare the equestrian corpse a second glance. He climbed onto the bony back of the mustang and waited.

The spotted pup, scared by the gunfire, lay in the middle of a grass clearing with his huge front paws over his eyes. Milos gently picked up the little dog, kissed the top of his warm head, and carried him to the horse.

Petsha broke the silence. “How is he?”

“Just fine. Trembling a little bit.”

“Hold him close and he'll calm down.”

“What will we call him, Petsha?”

“Otto. We will call him Otto,” Petsha said.

“Why?”

“It's a German name, a good name for a dog.”

Milos held the puppy up to his face and said, “Hello, Otto.”

The little dog licked Milos's face with his pink tongue, and the man smiled and said, “He likes that name.”

“Then Otto it is,” Petsha said. “Now let us ride on, brother.”

 

 

The livery stable man cackled like a scrawny old rooster.

“You boys here to see the sights an' spark the pretty gals, huh?” he said. “Maybe taste some real whiskey instead o' that there moonshine y'all guzzle back home?”

The D'eth brothers were born actors, very much a necessity in the hired assassins line of work. And from the New York ganglands to San Francisco's Barbary Coast they were the best available. They worked quietly, efficiently, and offered a no-kill-no-fee guarantee. Not once had they been obliged to honor it.

Milos D'eth let out a guffaw that sounded like the bray of a Tennessee mule. “Purty gals is what we want afore whiskey,” he said. “How much do they charge around these parts?”

“Oh, about two dollars. You got two dollars?” the liveryman asked.

Milos nodded an idiotic grin. “Me an' my brother got fifty dollars in Yankee money. Ain't that so, Petsha?”

“Sure do. Pa gave it us afore he kicked us out of the cabin down on Muddy Gap and tole us to find our own way in the world. He called that fifty dollars a legacy an' that's what it is.”

“Take us a long time to spend fifty dollars,” Milos said.

The old stable man was about to say, “Not in this town it won't,” but he changed his mind and said, “You boys will have a time with all that money. See you save two bits a night for the hoss.”

“We sure will,” Milos said. He brayed like a mule again. “Lead the way, brother Petsha.”

Playing the country bumpkin tore up Milos D'eth, as though he was being dragged through a buckthorn wire fence, but he and Petsha had to get close to make the kill and sometimes playing the fool was necessary. Just a month before they'd disguised themselves as a pair of lacy maiden aunts to assassinate the whiskey-nosed, gouty old railroad magnate L. Justin Bennett, stabbing him to death with the sharped spikes of their parasols. He and Petsha were both six feet tall, and playing bent, elderly ladies had been a chore. But it was necessary, as was their current role of green hayseeds come to the big city to see the sights.

The reflector lamps were lit along the street and the Streetcar Saloon was ablaze with light. The respectable element was at home in the bosom of their families, but the sporting crowd jostled on the boardwalks and the champagne whores were already practicing their profession. As they did every night, drums droned from the Rattlesnake Hills and men joked about the ghosts of Apaches and the lost Spanish army that had come this far looking for gold.

It was a balmy evening, one made for men to roister among the whiskey and whores. That it would end in tragedy none knew, except the already drunk and perhaps the few Chinese who glided in the shadows and said nothing but saw everything.

 

 

Keeping up their charade, the D'eth brothers stepped into the Streetcar and stood just inside the door and gaped at the splendor around them, jaws hanging open. Men in gold watch chains and broadcloth mingled with dusty cowboys, drifters, miners, gamblers, and professional drinkers. Saloon girls in candy cane dresses circulated among the crowd, and a cunning-eyed brunette spotted the brothers and said, “Howdy boys. You just standin' or are you drinkin'?”

“Drinkin',” Milos said. Then, after a donkey bray, “I never seen nothing like you afore.”

“How come that doesn't surprise me?” the girl said. She petted the spotted pup and then said her name was Suzette and she was working to support her widowed mother. “Buy me a drink, boys?”

Milos stepped to the bar and ordered whiskey. Suzette said she wanted champagne. The bartender nodded and gave the girl a wink. He was about to take a whiskey bottle from the shelf behind him but changed his mind and retrieved one from the floor where the cockroaches lived. He poured the rotgut into two glasses and said, “And champagne for the lady.”

The champagne was fizzy water from an opened bottle, but what did rubes know?

“That will be five dollars,” the bartender said.

“Huh?” Milos said. He knew he was being taken but remained in character.

“Big city, big prices,” the bartender said. “Comes as a shock to a country boy, don't it?”

Milos made a mental note to kill the man before he left Broken Bridle, but he paid the five dollars without too much fuss and Suzette said, “Let's get a table, boys, and we'll talk.” She smiled, promising much. “Unless you want to do something else.” She elbowed the silent Petsha. “Something real nice, huh, big boy?”

“I guess we'll have this whiskey first,” Milos said. “Me and my brother ain't never tasted drinkin' whiskey that came so dear.”

Suzette laid her glass on the bar. “Well, I'll be around when you boys get worked up enough to need me,” she said. She patted the pup's head. “That doesn't include you.”

 

 

The serious drinkers were all upstanding men, and the D'eth brothers found a table without much difficulty. They sat straight in the cane-backed chairs like worshippers in church.

Pete Caradas, a man with restless eyes, spotted the rubes before they sat down. One carried a slat-ribbed pup with a wet, inquisitive nose, and both wore denim overalls that were a size too small for them. They were both very dark, ink black hair and eyes that gave them the look of Gypsies, and their hayseed exterior was belied by their erect carriage and the slightly arrogant tilt of their heads. When the men sat, their pants legs rode up and exposed their boots, not the coarse brogans of country boys, but finely stitched riding boots that would cost a working cowboy three months' wages.

Caradas recognized the yellow and scarlet butterfly overlays that decorated the boot shafts and the radically under-slung, two-inch heels as the work of Sol and Abe Rosenberg of Abilene. A man wearing Rosenberg boots couldn't hobble very far, but he surely cut a dash on horseback.

A couple of ragged rubes wearing fancy boots set off an alarm bell in Caradas's head. He pegged them as the D'eth brothers, Milos and Petsha, killers for hire who didn't come cheap.

But why were they in Broken Bridle?

Burt Becker had left plenty of enemies on his back trail, and he was the obvious target. Could one of those foes be well heeled enough to buy the costly but lethal services of the terrible twins?

It was possible. In fact Caradas considered it more than possible—it was damned likely.

And now was the time to consider his next move.