West Of Dodge (Ss) (1996) (22 page)

Tascosa shifted in his saddle, liking the effect his remark would have. "Boss, this here's Bill Tanneman."

Tom Banning felt the shock of it. Tanneman . . . the killer. No wonder he had not been worried by Rud Pickett.

Tom Banning sat very still feeling the cold hand of death. Whatever else he loved, he loved living, and this man would kill him. Not all his men, all his power, all his money and cattle could keep that bullet from his heart.

He was whipped and he knew it. He reined around. "Come on, boys."

"Banning!"

He drew up but did not look around. "You've one week to start building a six-room house with two fireplaces, corrals, and a barn. You'd best get busy."

Dust lifted from the trail as they walked their horses away. Defeat hung heavy upon their shoulders. "You've won."

Tanneman shook his head. "Banning would have gambled if you were not here."

One week ... He was stalling for his letter to reach Dan Cooper, stalling because he did not want to kill again.

Tanneman was worried by the tall, cool-eyed young woman who rode beside him back to town. What was her interest in this? Who was she, anyway? What was she doing here?

The town knew and the town waited. Rud Pickett was coming in ... Banning's hands would get Tanneman. The showdown would be something to see.

Tanneman was used to waiting. Trouble had been his way of life.

On the second day, four Banning riders appeared and entered the saloon. Bill Tanneman followed them in and ordered a drink. The riders felt his presence and knew why * he was there. They respected him for it. He was letting them know that if they wanted him, he would not be hard to find.

The fifth day dawned. It was hot, dry, brittle. The heat, left a metallic taste in the mouth, and there was no wind. Sweat broke out at the slightest move, yet men remained indoors despite the heat. When they appeared briefly on the street it was to hurry.

At noon, Tom Banning rode into town with fifteen men at his back. They left their horses at the corral and loitered along the streets, smoking idly.

Tanneman heard of their arrival and ordered another cup of coffee. Kate Ryerson brought it to him, and Penny watched him, her lips tight and colorless.

He pushed back his chair. Betty got up quickly. "Where are you going, Uncle Bill? Can I come?"

"Not this time." He touched her hair with his hand. "You stay with Penny."

It was the first time he had used her name, and when he looked up she was smiling at him. He turned quickly away and went out, swearing at himself.

He had to do this job, but he no longer looked forward to it. Once out in the still heat none of his old daring returned, the challenge, the urge to look death in the eye and laugh. How long had it been since he had felt that? That old love of a fight for a fight's sake. What happened to it? To love a fight as he had, one had to accept death, and that was something he found he could no longer do. Bill Tanneman knew what he had to do and he was ready, but he no longer enjoyed it. AH he could do was put on a good show.

Every eye saw him, every eye knew. This was Bill Tanneman, almost a living legend. Nobody wanted to be in his shoes now, yet all envied him a little. Each one wished that he could step out into a street of enemies with that air, and look as formidable as he looked now.

Tom Banning waited in the saloon. Rud Pickett was beside him. They could have guessed to the instant when Tanneman appeared on the street. And then his shadow darkened the door.

Outside there was movement, the stir of many boots as Banning men converged on the saloon.

Bill Tanneman faced them, faced Banning and Pickett, as they turned from the bar. He was utterly calm, utterly still. Only his eyes moved, alert, watchful. These two men and a dozen more. Would the dozen fight if Banning and his gunman were dead? If they did, Tanneman would surely follow them into the grave. A grim smile tightened across his teeth.

"Here it is, Tom," Tanneman said quietly, "and I see you're hiding behind a hired gun to the last."

Rud Pickett moved out a little from the bar. He was going to draw. He was going to draw now . . . only he didn't. He looked into the cold gray eyes of Bill Tanneman and the seconds ticked by.

"Any time, Rud."

That was it. Now . . . only he was frozen. He wanted to draw, he intended to draw . . . but he did not draw.

There was a stir at the door and a tall white-mustached man stepped into the room. His voice was sharp. "Stop this right now!"

Sweat broke out on Rud's face. Hesitantly, his eyes wide and on Tanneman's face, he stepped back. He started to turn and saw the contempt on the bartender's face. Banning did not look at him.

The man with the white mustache walked to the bar between Tanneman and Banning. "I'm Judge Dan Cooper," he said. "We'll settle this without guns."

Tom Banning cleared his throat. He was white and shaken. Slowly, Cooper began to explain. The old days were gone. Banning would face a court in the capitol. Cooper . suggested that if Banning were to do as Tanneman had asked he would recommend some leniency to the court, but like it or not Banning would stand trial for murder. "The sheriff'll have to come down to make the arrest," Cooper said. "You can try to run away if you want, but I figure with"* all you got you'll try to fight it out in court."

Banning walked from the room. Rud Pickett was on the steps. Banning did not pause. "You're fired," he said, and walked on.

Rud Pickett stared at him, then turned and stumbled off the steps. The sun was not on his shoulders as he walked slowly away up the street. He was not thinking, he was not feeling, he was just walking away.

The bat-wing doors opened and Penny came in. "Bill? You're all right?"

The tension was slowly going out of the big man. "I'm all right. I'm going up to my room, get myself a long night's sleep. I'd ... I'd like to see you tomorrow, maybe go riding, if you would."

"I'd enjoy that. You just let me know when, Bill." He smiled a tired smile and turned toward the stairs.

Thoughtfully Cooper looked from one to the other. "He's been a lot of things, Penny, but he's a good man. I've always known that."

"So do I," she replied seriously. "I knew it when I first saw him with Betty . . . and I knew he was my man."

The next morning the sound of curses and hammering echoed back from the quiet hills. Fifteen tough cowhands were hard at work on Betty Towne's new six-room house.

*

Rain on the Halfmoon
.

Jim Thorne came down off the Mules at daybreak with a driving rain at his back. But when he rode out of the' pines on the bench above Cienaga Creek he could see the bright leap of flames through the gray veil of the rain.

Too big to be a campfire and too much in the open. The stage bearing Angela should have left twenty minutes ago, but Dry Creek Station was afire.

Leaving the trail, Thorne put his horse down the slope through the scattered pines, risking his neck on the rain-slick needles. He hit the flat running, and crowded the dun off the trail to the more direct route across the prairie.

Flames still licked at the charred timbers with hungry tongues when he came down the grade to Dry Creek, but the station was gone. Among the debris, where the front of the building had been, lay the blackened rims of the stage wheels and the remains of the hubs, still smoldering.

His mouth dry with fear, Jim Thorne drew up and looked around, then swung in a swift circle of the fire. There was but one body in the ruins, that of a belted man. The glimpse was all he needed to know, it was the body of Fred Barlow, station tender at Dry Creek.

Where, then, was Angela? And where was Ed Hunter, who drove the run?

A splatter of footprints in the mud pointed toward the stable, and at their end he found Hunter.

The driver had been shot twice, once in the back while running, the second fired by someone who had stood above him and deliberately murdered the wounded man.

There was, nowhere, any sign of Angela.

Keeping to the saddle, he swung back. With a rake handle he poked at the ruins of the stage, rescuing a burned valise from which spilled the charred remnants of feminine garments. They were Angela's.

She had, then, been here.

He sat his saddle, oblivious to the pounding rain. Angela had reached the stage station, had obviously seen her valise aboard the stage. She must have been either in the stage or about to get in when it happened.

Apaches?

A possibility, but remote. There had been no trouble in almost a year, and the body of Ed Hunter was not mutilated.

The nearest help was in Whitewater, fifteen miles north. And with every minute they would be taking Angela farther and farther away.

Wheeling the dun, he rode again to the stable. The horses were gone. He swung down and studied the floor. At least one man had been in here since the rain, for there was mud, not yet dry, on the earth floor.

Four stage horses habitually occupied the stalls, but there was ample evidence that eight horses had been stabled there the night before. Knowing Barlow shod the stage horses, and his shoes were distinctive, Thorne studied the tracks.

The four draft horses were easily identified. Three of the other horses were strange, but the fourth had at least one Barlow shoe. The stalls of the four strange horses were not muddy, which meant the riders must have stabled their horses before the rain began.

It was not unusual for Barlow to stable the horses of travelers, but the horse with the Barlow shoe implied at least one of the riders had passed this way before.

Jim Thorne walked to the door and built a smoke. Going off half-cocked would not help Angela. He must think.

Four men had arrived the previous night. Angela must have arrived earlier and probably went to bed at once. Trouble had apparently not begun until after the arrival of the morning stage.

Fred Barlow and Ed Hunter had both known Angela. Both were old friends of his, and solid men. They would have seen no harm come to her. Therein, he decided, lay the crux of the situation.

Angela was not merely pretty. She was steady, loyal, sincere. But Angela had a body that drew the eyes of men. Suppose one of the strangers made advances? Barlow would allow no woman to be molested, and Hunter was stubborn as well as courageous.

Suddenly, Jim Thorne saw it all. And as suddenly as that, there was no remaining doubt. The Ottens and Frazer.

They were a Tennessee mountain outfit, surly, dangerous men who made no friends. Quarrelsome, cruel, and continually on the prowl after women. They had settled on the Halfmoon six months before.

"Tough outfit," Barlow had commented once. "Wherever they come from they was drove out. An' left some dead behind, I'll gamble."

Jim Thorne had seen them. Lean, rangy men with Ian- tern jaws and swarthy skin. The odd man, who was Frazer, was thickset and sandy. The leader was Ben Otten, a man with thin, cold lips and a scar on his cheekbone.

They raised no cattle, lived on beef and beans, rode a lot at night, and made a little whiskey, which they peddled.

A month after they arrived in the country, they had killed a man down at Santa Rita. Three of them had boxed him and shot him down. There had been some trouble over at Round Mountain, too, but since it was known that trouble with one meant trouble with all, they were left strictly alone.

When Angela left him, she had come here to catch the stage, just as she told him in the note she left on the table. The Ottens and Frazer must have ridden in; they often stayed over at the station when the weather was bad, although they were tolerated rather than welcomed guests. One of them had started some kind of trouble, and Barlow had been killed. They had murdered Hunter, burned the station, then taken Angela and left.

Tearing a sheet from his tally book, Jim wet his stub of pencil and wrote what he surmised and where he had gone. The stable door opened inward so he left the note fastened to the door out of the rain. Then he walked to the corner of the blacksmith shop, and drawing aside an old slicker that hung there, Jim took down Barlow's backup gun.

It was a Roper four-shot revolving shotgun with several inches sawed off the barrel. Checking the loads, he hung it under his slicker and walked back to the dun. It had undoubtedly been this gun Ed Hunter was running for when shot down.

Hesitating, Jim Thorne then walked back to the stable, sacked up some grain, and tied it behind the saddle under his bedroll. Then he led the dun outside and swung into the leather.

It was a twenty-mile ride to Halfmoon the way he would go, but almost thirty miles by the route they would be taking. He was quite sure the Ottens had not been in the country long enough to have scouted the route up Rain Creek and over the saddle to West Fork.

Two of his friends lay dead, a stage station burned, his wife kidnapped. There was in his heart no place for mercy.

Angela was an eastern girl, lovely, quiet, efficient. She had made him a good wife, only objected to his wearing a gun. She had heard that he had killed a man, a rustler. But that had been in Texas and long ago. There had been no black mark on their marriage until the arrival of Lonnie Mason.