Shotgun Charlie (20 page)

Despite Marshal Wickham's protests, Charlie insisted on pressing forward the next morning. “Lay around enough for the last couple of days, so you tell me. And I'm grateful for your help, I truly am. But I been wronged, Pap's been wronged, and most of all, there's a whole town of folks been wronged, some of them terribly. And all by one man.” Charlie leaned against Nub. “I can't let that be.”

“But, Charlie,” said the marshal, still hunkered over the campfire, rubbing his hands together and shaking his head. “You're barely able to stand. Look at you, man.”

“I got to try. Marshal, don't you . . . don't you feel nothin' for them folks?” As soon as Charlie said it, he knew it stung the old man, who slowly looked up at him with wet eyes.

“Yeah, Charlie. I reckon so.” He hung his head for a moment, then scratched his chin and pushed to his feet. “Okay, let's go.” He ambled toward his gear and began stuffing it into the saddlebags, rolling his blankets. “I still say you're off your bean. There's no way Haskell will be anywhere but gone.”

“Might be,” said Charlie, “but at least then we'll know. I ain't sure about you, but I can't abide the thought of knowing there was a chance and I didn't take it.”

“Okay, okay, you made your point. Now stop yammering and let's get on the trail.”

Within their first hour on the trail, the snow had dwindled to little more than a scant pelting nuisance. By the time nearly four hours passed, the low gray sky, which for two days had felt like a massive wet wool blanket pressing down on the world, had begun to show signs of fraying and splitting apart, revealing slices of lighter gray glowing through.

“In luck, eh, pard?”

It was the first time in an hour that either of them had spoken.

“How's that, Marshal?”

Wickham looked up, then back to Charlie, who was riding behind. “The weather. We're in for some honest-to-goodness sunlight, methinks.”

Charlie looked up. “I reckon. Be a nice change to this gloominess.” He was smiling when he looked back to the marshal. But his smile faded as he saw the man had stopped at a bend in the trail up ahead. It looked as if it was opening up, widening. “What's wrong?”

The marshal took a few seconds to respond, then said, “Charlie, you'd best gird your loins, son.”

“What?” Charlie didn't know what that meant, but from the man's tone, it couldn't be a good thing. “What are you seeing there?”

Marshal Wickham looked back. “Charlie. I think we may have found another of your friends.”

“Oh, Lord no.”

The marshal nodded, beckoned the big man to ride up beside him.

The scene before them was odd. A man was laid out on his back. Small drifts of snow had sculpted against his outstretched legs. At first glance it looked to Charlie as if Simp—for, from the coat and hat, the side of the face he could see, that was who it appeared to be—was stretched out, feet toward a campfire, taking a nap.

Surely the marshal was wrong. As Charlie recalled, ol' Simp was always a little dozey. But something prevented him from shouting, “Ho the camp!” And then he saw it, saw the scene for what it was. The fire wasn't smoking. The man's legs were akimbo. Blood stained his front.

“Aw, no. . . .” Charlie urged Nub forward.

“Charlie, hold up there!” The lawman had drawn a revolver and rode ahead of the big man, eyes scanning, neck swiveling. “Won't do to get ourselves killed, now, would it?”

But Charlie didn't hear him. He'd already dismounted and was making his way to Simp's side. But the man was stone cold.

Marshal Wickham came up beside him. “Ah, another one. Too bad, too bad.” He bent, nosed the man's coat with the barrel of his gun. “Killed before the snow came.” He stood, looked around the little clearing. “Dang snow, can't get a good set of tracks off fresh, untrod snow.”

“Don't need tracks,” said Charlie.

“How's that?”

Charlie nodded down the trail toward a long narrow cleft in the ragged hills flanking them. In the distance, rising from the center, stood a tall rock spire, nature-made, but unmistakable to anyone searching for something called the Needle.

“Huh,” said Wickham. “That's where Haskell's headed, eh?”

“That's what he said. Said to head to the Needle. Said there was the remnants of a little mine camp. The shack he'd be at would be a ways beyond that, off by itself. Near a draw, I think he said.”

Wickham nodded, said nothing.

Charlie began kicking snow off stones, prying them loose.

“Don't tell me . . .”

“Can't leave him this way, Marshal. It wouldn't be right.”

Wickham sighed, nodded. “At least let's drag him over there to that crevice, see if we can't make our work a little easier.”

They did, and then Wickham suggested Charlie go through the man's pockets in case there was something they might use to contact Simp's next of kin. Charlie's eyes widened.

“Charlie, if you don't want to, I'll do it. Ain't like I haven't dealt with the dead before.”

“No, it's not that. It's that . . . I forgot to do that for Ace.”

“Well, you said so yourself that the man didn't speak much of kin. It's likely he was alone in the world. You did the best a man could for him, Charlie. Take comfort in that.”

Charlie nodded glumly, and they dragged Simp to the gully in the rocks. As they gently piled stones atop him, Wickham said, “How come he trusted you with all this information anyway, Charlie? You don't mind me saying so, for an innocent man—and I'm not doubting you one bit, mind you—you seem to hold a whole lot of rare information.”

Charlie stood, stretched, and sighed. “I been asking myself that same question. I think he didn't know what to make of me. I told Pap all I could remember, not that it did much good.”

“It must have, Charlie. He didn't join them.”

“He wouldn't have anyway. I thought maybe I could get Pap away from them. But Pap, he up and told me to get gone.”

Wickham nodded. “He was saving you, Charlie. Plain as the nose on my face. He was making sure you weren't part of the mess.”

“I reckon. I did see Haskell one more time, though. That night, I left camp, and he followed me. We had words and I laid into him. Thought for sure he was going to shoot me, but he didn't. Now I see that his weapon of choice is a knife. We was close enough he could have used it on me.”

“Providence was with you, Charlie. That's all I can say.”

“If I knew what that meant, I might agree with you, Marshal.”

Wickham smiled. “Let's finish up here, say a few words, and then we best get going. There's another storm boiling up and we want to close in on this rascal before he comes to his senses and decides to vamoose.”

“What you suppose got into them so they named this town Tickle?” said Marshal Wickham, holding a jagged-edged plank at an angle, reading the crudely carved inscription: . . 
.
ELCOME
TO
TICKLE
. He set it aside, decided not to burn it. “What sort of notion would come into a man's head to make him do such a thing?” Then a slow smile spread across Wickham's face. He snapped a finger and leaned forward. “Well, now, it occurs to me I might know what they named it after. A sporting girl! Had to be.”

Charlie's face bloomed bright red.

The old lawman looked at him and smiled. “Aha! Weren't so dark out, I'd guess your face looks like a hammer-struck thumb, Charlie. I was you I'd spend a little more time with a sporting girl or two, wear off that modest edge you got built up since birth, I'd wager. A woman has a way of softening the edges of a man, taking the mean and irritable out of him, if'n the man allows for it.”

Charlie cleared his throat, looked away. Finally he said, “I . . . I wouldn't know about such things, but I do know you remind me of a man I knew . . . man who said the same sorts of embarrassing things.”

The marshal let it lie for a few quiet minutes, then said, “I'm guessing you mean that fella Pap you talked about.”

“Yessir, I do. He was a good man, you know. I know all those folks back in Bakersfield think they know what they know, but they're flat wrong, that's all.”

Wickham nodded. “I'm sure they are, Charlie. You tally up all the times a man thinks he's right, then isn't, in this life, you come up with a bigger number than when he's pure-dee right.”

“Could be.”

Wickham unscrewed the cap of his flask, took a last pull, and stared into the small, comforting fire. He, for one, was glad when they'd decided to call it a day and build a fire. After burying that poor fella Haskell gutted, why, it was all they could do to cover more ground. They'd made it another hour and a half before the storm came in hard and fast. It was a howler. That snow of the day before had been a mere tease.

He'd known women like that, not many, but it was enough to give him pause. They had to be close to Haskell, if as Charlie said the man would be waiting. But could he trust the boy's gut feeling? Why on earth would a man like Haskell, who'd left nothing but a trail of vicious, mindless slaughter in his wake, want to stay put and wait for the posse? Made no sense, but Charlie was convinced.

He sighed and leaned forward toward the cook fire at the front edge of the makeshift lean-to they'd constructed. There was an ample supply of downed and living pines that grew in thick patches hereabouts. They would not be investigating the trail anymore tonight. The weather had made sure of that. Well, the weather and the dead man Haskell had left behind.

As if reading his mind, Charlie said, “One more.”

“How's that?”

“One more to go. Fella by the name of Dutchy. Like I said with the others, I don't see him hurting someone for money.”

“I know, Charlie,” said Wickham, leaning in to stir the nearly bubbling pot of beans. “But sometimes when a man gets all caught up in a heated moment, he doesn't think so good for himself. He starts to think about what he could do with all that money and then he sees all the people who are in his way, and sometimes he commences to shooting.”

“But the boys . . .”

“Now, I'm not saying they would do such a thing, Charlie. I'm only telling you what I've seen in my years as a lawman.”

They were both silent a moment longer. Then the marshal said, “Goes by the name of Dutchy, eh?”

“Yes, sir. I don't know why. He don't look Dutch to me. Not that I know what that is.”

Wickham laughed, ran a finger under his eyes. “Charlie Chilton, if you don't beat all. I doubt even people who are Dutch know what it is they are.”

“And there's something else too, Charlie,” said the marshal, ladling up a dripping spoonful of beans and juice. “That first man you found, the one you know.”

“Yeah, Ace. I told you all I know about him.”

“I know, I know, but look.” The old man wagged the spoon at Charlie for emphasis. “What didn't you find when you found him?”

Charlie scrunched his eyes. “All due respect, but what sort of a question is that, Marshal?”

The marshal tapped the spoon against his hat brim. “Think, Charlie. Think.” He resumed eating.

Charlie shrugged. “I dunno. I reckon he should have had a hat. He wore a gray one, I recollect.”

“A hat? Charlie, the man was a bank robber and all you can come up with is a hat?”

Charlie snapped a finger and pointed at the marshal, smiling. “I got it, I got it. Money. He should have had money on him.”

“Now you're cooking with lard. But how much? What'd it look like? And how did he get it out of town?”

Charlie's brow knitted again. “A horse, he had a horse.”

“Yep, and where was it when you found him?”

Charlie shrugged. “I kind of figured it run off somewhere.”

“Not hardly, Charlie. Not up here and not for too far. Odds are it was taken.”

“Taken? By who? Indians?”

“Charlie, were you born this thick or is this something you picked up on the trail?”

“No need to get all rough-and-tumble with me, Marshal. Some of us ain't natural-born lawmen, you know.”

“Oh, I know Charlie, I know. I'm funnin' you.” He leaned forward. “Look. It's plain to me as the nose on my face, so I'll tell you what I think. We know this Haskell fella killed your friends, right? And he took the horses and he took the money those men had carried with them away from the bank heist. You see? Simple.”

“What's he want with all those horses?”

“To carry the money for a while. One horse would tire out. Likely he'll bundle it all up and put it on a packhorse, take one with him. He's been collecting them so far, though, you see?”

Then a fresh thought occurred to Charlie. “If he's only set on bringing a horse to ride and a packhorse, what'll he do with the others?”

“Knowing his kind as intimately I do, I'd say he'll likely kill them, bring some of the meat with him. Won't have to hunt that way.”

Charlie gasped. “But he can't do that to a horse.”

“He can, and if my money's still good in these parts, I'm betting he will do that.”

A new thought made Charlie's skin creep. “Marshal?”

“Yes, Charlie?” The marshal paused, a spoonful of beans halfway to his mouth.

“Marshal, if he's killed Ace and Simp . . . well, it ain't looking too good for Dutchy, now, is it?”

“No, Charlie, no, I reckon it's not.” The marshal sat quiet for a time, watching the fire. “And that's the start of it, I'm afraid.”

“How's that, Marshal? Start of what?”

“You don't see what he's all about, do you, Charlie?” The old lawman set his tin plate down on a rock. It wobbled, and the spoon slid to the edge, rattled off. He didn't pay it a bit of attention.

“Ain't you gonna pick that up?” Charlie looked at the spoon. His gran had always hated a mess, always despised mistreatment of her cutlery.

“What?” Wickham looked down at the spoon by his boot. “Fine,” He snatched it up and held on to it. “Look, Charlie, I'm talking about something important here and you're concerned with a spoon? Wake up, boy. This character, Haskell, he's playing for the pot. He won't be satisfied until he has it all, and has us all dead. I don't think for a moment that he's beelining for MacLaughlin Pass, which is the likeliest place for him to cross. No way. He's holed up at that old shack, waiting on us, like you said earlier.”

“How's he know we're the ones coming for him?”

The marshal stretched his legs out, rubbed his knees. “Oh, I don't think he's seen us from on high, but he's assuming—and rightly so—that the goodly folks of Bakersfield won't let his deadly shenanigans go unpunished. He's counting on them sending a posse, or more likely a rope-stretching brigade, to track him. And he'd be right, as I say. But he won't know how many or how far off his rowels they'll be. But I also know scurvy-ridden dogs like him, and it's rare they leave anyone behind who might track them. No, Haskell will hole up and kill all comers.”

“And that's us,” said Charlie.

Wickham nodded. “Near as I can figure, we're it.”

Charlie sipped his coffee, winced. It was piping hot and the bitter brew hurt his split lip. He blew across the top of the cup. “What about that posse?”

Before the marshal had a chance to answer, a strange voice cracked through the cold night air surrounding the little camp. “Yeah, you old goat, what about that posse?”

Marshal Wickham spun, his black duster flaring even as he stood, his hands reaching for his revolvers as he turned. But he was not fast enough.

A lithe, dark form strode into view and whacked the old man on the right side of his head, catching the ear and knocking Wickham's black hat off. It sailed a few yards away into the dark.

Charlie rolled backward off the log he was holding down, flinging his scalding coffee outward. But the stranger was too far away by a yard—the coffee did little more than arc in a spittle spray and cause the man to sidestep.

But the real damage had been done—Marshal Wickham stood bent over, groaning and holding his head.

“Marshal!” he hissed, scrabbling to get ahold of his knife. A sharp quick pain in his lower back stopped him short. He tried to turn, suppressing a groan, but another round followed, preventing him from doing much more than grabbing the log with one hand, clapping a big hand to his back with the other. He'd been kicked hard with a boot toe or a rifle butt—so there were two of them, at least.

“Get your hands up, you vicious killer!” said the voice behind Charlie. “I want to see your face as a bullet drives a third eyehole in your forehead.”

The first stranger spoke. “Stop your ruckus there, Marshal. You know and I know I caught you fair and square in the act of colluding with a known killer. Sitting here all chummy with him, telling him your plans, swapping plans betwixt the two of you to make off with the loot, no doubt.”

“Don't be an idiot, Randy Scoville. You know blamed well I—” The tall stranger delivered a kick to the marshal's breadbasket and the old man folded up like a dropped coat. His head hit inches from the little fire. The marshal groaned, tried to push himself to his knees, but he was not, from Charlie's perspective, doing a very good job of it

The stranger stepped close before Wickham could gather his wits and stripped the old lawman's revolvers from him. He tossed them behind him in the snow, then reached in again and ripped Wickham's belt knife free. The action spun the old man's body and he cried out in pain. It sounded to Charlie as if something bad had happened inside to the old man, as if the kick had damaged something vital. He'd be lucky if it had only cracked a couple of ribs.

“Now hush up, both of you criminals.” The man Wickham had called Randy strode closer to the fire. Charlie could see him now. He wore a sheepskin coat, leather gloves, and one of those wool caps with the earflaps Charlie had so long admired. He also wore a star pinned to the coat, right there on the outside.

The man behind him delivered another hot, dull boot kick to Charlie's back. This one glanced off bone, and it forced a surprised groan from his mouth. “Gaaah!”

“What did I tell you, killer man? You shut up until I give you permission to die.”

That was the man behind him, who now stepped over Charlie and into view. Even in the dark he could see the man was a haggard-looking mess. His face was puffy, eyes reddened. He wore no hat, and his darkish hair, long in places, stuck up as if it he'd been licked by a cow. His overall appearance was that of a man who'd been on a drunken spree for a week and had no intention of letting up.

“Randy,” gasped the marshal. “You got the wrong end of the stick.”

The tall man spun on the marshal, rapped the snout of the rifle lightly against the old man's wizened cheek. “Oh, that's the way of it, is it? Listen hard, old man. I heard you plain as day talking about all those wonderful things you were going to do up in the hills, talking about how you got horses all awaiting to carry the loot, how you and the killer, big boy over here, are going to head over some pass to live a fine old life. We heard all that, me and Hoy, and you can't deny it.”

“You heard wrong, Randy. You dumb son of a—”

The next blow was a hard, wracking one, again with the stock of the rifle, that caught the marshal in the chest. He sprawled backward, his elbows giving way as he collapsed. His head dropped to one side and his breathing became a labored thing.

Charlie struggled to his feet, lurched forward, bellowing, “Why don't you pick on me for a change!” His shins hit the log hard. He felt it happening and tried to raise one leg up over the log at the last second, but only managed to trip himself further. He lumbered as if time had slowed, falling over the log, then sprawling face-first beside the fire. Anger gripped him.

Despite the lancing pains in his back from the coward's kicks, he pushed himself up on all fours like a great bear, growling his anger. He tried to rise, spurred on by the sad sight of his new friend, Marshal Wickham, a sagged mess of an old man, struggling to breathe, sprawled on his back in the churned snow of the camp.

But Charlie's rage was a short-lived thing, for the second man, the one who looked so poorly, drove a rifle butt into the base of Charlie's neck, dropping him once more to the ground. The dim sights of the nighttime camp, the smells of the sputtering, smoky campfire, the sounds of agitated horses nickering and stomping all jumbled and pulsed together, wavering in and out, then pinching out altogether. He hoped, come what may, that Nub would be taken care of.

The last thing he was aware of before blackness and silence overcame him was the sound of laughter, two men guffawing as if they had done something mighty. But as the blackness hammered down on Charlie, he wished he could have told them how wrong they were.

. . .

“We got 'em, by Jove. We got 'em!”

“Ain't all of them, though.”

“Why you so sour, Hoy? I told you, didn't I, that Wickham was in on it from the start? And that other one, well, who would escape from jail if he wasn't guilty as sin?” Deputy Scoville upended the whiskey bottle and gurgled back a long swallow. He handed it to his companion, Hoy, who followed suit.

A howl, man-made, erupted out of the snowy night somewhere ahead of them. Hoy paused in dragging his hand across his mouth. “What was that, Randy?”

“Coyote?” But Scoville's voice was small and weak.

“Told you,” whispered Hoy, “we didn't get them all.”

In seeming response, the howl erupted again, closer, and tapered off into a cackling laugh. Then the voice shouted, “I see that campfire! You all must be posse!”

“Oh,” whispered the deputy. “What does that mean? Who do you suppose it is?” He looked left and right into the snowing night.

“Might as well shoot yourselves now,” growled the voice, closer but moving fast, off to their left. They heard snow crunching, branches snapping. “'Cause I'm about to do what you don't!”

“It's the head of them all,” whispered Hoy. “The boss of the thieves. The one who's done all the killing.” He stood up, ran a coat sleeve across his face to clear away the snow. His wet hair hung down in his eyes like strips of rag. Hoy pushed his coat aside, up and over his revolver. “The one who killed my twin brother, Hill.”

With that, Hoy stalked off in the direction from where they'd last heard the voice.

“Hoy! You can't do that! I'm the boss here. You stay put. It ain't prudent. . . .” Scoville watched his friend's black wool coat disappear into the swirling bluster of snow and night. “Hoy!” he shouted louder. But heard nothing.

His shouts roused Marshal Wickham, who groaned and blinked, scrunching his eyes as if to clear his vision. “Randy?” he said in a muffled voice. He tried to raise his arms, saw they were bound at the wrist, as were his ankles. Charlie lay beside him, a trickle of blood curling around his neck, down his shirt. But Wickham saw the big young man's chest rising, falling.

“Randy, son, you've made a terrible mistake.”

Scoville walked over to him, looked down at him. “Shut yourself up, old man.”

Wickham looked up at him, narrowed his eyes. “You're scared, aren't you? What's wrong?”

Scoville turned away. “Nothing of your concern. Hoy went out to kill a killer, is all.”

“What?” Wickham looked around the camp. “Randy, Haskell's out there. He's a murderer. He's insane, Randy. Don't let Hoy go out there alone!”

“What do you mean?” The deputy glanced down at Wickham, then out toward where he'd last seen Hoy. “Hoy?” he said.

“Randy, untie me. I can help. But we got to work together on this. Haskell's a ruthless killer. I'm guessing you saw the men on the trail?”

Scoville nodded blankly.

“That was Haskell's handiwork. Unless you want Hoy to end up the same, you'll cut me loose. That'd be three against one.”

“What about him?” Scoville nodded at Charlie.

“He's a kid, Randy. A big kid, but a kid. He doesn't know one end of a gun from another. Had nothing to do with any of it.”

Wickham held up his bound wrists, shook them toward Scoville. But the deputy's look of confusion and fear gave way to narrowed eyes. He shook his head and sneered. “You're trickin' me, old man. You're trying to play me false again. No, uh-uh. You are a bad seed.”