Bannerman the Enforcer 20

by Kirk Hamilton

  Buck Harlan went down onto all fours and Rankin casually kicked his supporting arms out from under him so that the ex-convict spread out on his face. Buzz Rankin stepped back, fists still cocked, but hanging down at his sides now as he got his heavy breathing under control and waited to see if Harlan was going to get up or not. Harlan was starting to thrust upright when Susan Sawyer said, sharply:

  “Buzz ... that’s enough!”

  Rankin looked like he would argue but shrugged and opened his fists. He would have walked away then but Harlan looked up at the girl’s white face through the blood dripping into his eyes, and lunged for Rankin’s legs. He wrapped his arms about the man’s thick legs and groaned, trying to thrust upright. Rankin instinctively grabbed at Harlan’s short hair, found a grip, and balled up a fist, then drove it down into the middle of Harlan’s bloodied face. The ex-convict jerked and his grip loosened and he slid slowly down Rankin’s legs. The freight man kicked him contemptuously away and wiped his bloody knuckles on his torn shirt, knowing Harlan wouldn’t be getting up this time. He gave him one final glare and staggered back into the freight building.

  Yancey and Cato leapt down from the loading dock and got the half-conscious Harlan to his feet. His legs were rubbery and they supported him between them. He moaned and rolled his blood-streaked head. The girl gasped.

  “You’d—you’d better bring him inside,” she said quietly and held open the door for them.

  Yancey and Cato got Harlan into what was obviously Susan Sawyer’s office and eased him down into a chair at the girl’s directions. She said she would get some hot water and iodine and hurried out. As soon as the door closed behind her, Harlan sat up of his own accord, startling both agents, and grinned at them through the blood, working at a loosened tooth with his tongue.

  “Don’t always pay to win,” he growled thickly and tried to laugh when he saw their puzzled expressions. “Hell, I could have beat him ... He don’t know half the dirty tricks I picked up in the pen. But just as I was gettin’ ready to take him, I saw the gal’s face. She looked kinda worried about me, so I figured I might win even if I lost ... You savvy?”

  Yancey nodded slowly. “Sure ... While you’ve got her sympathy, you pump her about her uncle.”

  Harlan winked and then grimaced in pain as the swollen eyelid moved. “Ouch ... But you’re right. Now you two go find yourselves somethin’ to do and leave me alone with the gal. I guarantee I’ll know whether Sawyer’s my man or not in less than an hour!”

  Seven – Cattle King

  Yancey and Cato cooled their heels outside the freight line offices for maybe an hour and then they saw a paunchy, middle-aged man dressed in a gray broadcloth suit coming towards the building. He was smoking a cigar and wore a derby hat with a curly brim. His clothes looked expensive and made him stand out on the streets of Promontory.

  “I figure that just has to be Will Sawyer,” Cato opined as the man nodded briefly to them as he went through the main door of the office. Before the door closed properly, both agents caught a glimpse of the battered and bruised Buzz Rankin stepping out into the passage and confronting Sawyer. “Tellin’ him about Harlan, I guess,” Cato said and Yancey nodded.

  “Think maybe we better get around to that other office,” Yancey said, straightening off the walls.

  They started around to the loading dock area and saw another wagon being loaded, but no sign of Rankin. They climbed up onto the dock, ignoring the ‘Hey!’ one of the wagon men yelled, and moved on towards the door leading to the main building. They were maybe three yards from it when there was a shot, swiftly followed by an agonized yell from inside. Their guns were in their hands as they sprinted for the door, kicked it open and ran on down towards Susan Sawyer’s office. They stopped dead when they saw Buzz Rankin stumbling out the doorway, clutching a bleeding wrist, battered face contorted with pain. Behind him, in the doorway, Will Sawyer stood, white-faced, hands half-raised and, beyond him, in the office, was the white-faced Susan and, beside her, smoking Colt in hand, Buck Harlan.

  The enforcers turned as the two wagon men came down the passage. Cato grabbed Rankin and thrust him towards the men.

  “Get him to a sawbones!” he snapped. “And keep your mouths shut!”

  The men nodded and led the cursing Rankin away. Sawyer, at Harlan’s curt command, entered the office proper. Yancey and Cato crowded in, too, still with their guns in their hands. “What happened?” Yancey snapped.

  “My ramrod tried to warn me there was someone who had a grudge against me waiting for me here, but I wouldn’t listen,” the pale-faced Sawyer said. “I walked in and he was standing there holding my niece with one hand and a gun in the other. Rankin came in and tried to draw his six-gun but had it blasted from his hand ...”

  “You gone loco or something?” Yancey snapped at Harlan but the ex-convict slowly shook his head, mouth grim.

  “Not by a damn sight,” he growled and gestured to Sawyer with his gun barrel. “He’s the one, all right. I can even recognize him, but I doubt that he knows me.”

  Sawyer frowned, clearly bewildered. “I sure don’t, mister, and if you don’t tell me what in hell’s going on—!”

  “You’ll do nothin’!” snapped Harlan harshly. “Here ... read this. Then look at me again!”

  He tossed the crumpled paper with the fake freight order on it towards Sawyer. Frowning, the freight boss picked it up and read it swiftly. His face went even whiter and he groped for the back of a chair to steady himself as he looked incredulously at Harlan. Susan, went to him and held his arm but he didn’t even seem to notice her.

  “My God!” he breathed. “After all these years! You—you must be Buck? Nate and Pete’s brother ...?”

  “Damn right, Sawyer! I sweated it out for fifteen years in prison! Now I’m here to square accounts for you turnin’ Judas and takin’ our gold after you’d turned us in to the Yankees!”

  “Man, that wasn’t me!” Sawyer protested, sweating.

  Harlan snarled. “The hell it wasn’t! I’ve done some checkin’ around, mister. You started this freight line right after the war, when things settled down some ... You came here from a place named Oakville after your wife died, and set yourself up with our gold!”

  Sawyer shook his head slowly. “Most of that’s true, I guess ... But you didn’t check far enough, Buck. You think I cut out from the band one night without saying anything and not long after you were picked up by the Yankees, right?”

  “Damn right!”

  “All right, just where were we when I did cut out?”

  Harlan frowned. “North of Pigiron Bend, near as I can recall ...”

  “That’s it. And Chip Summers had been into town for supplies and picked up some mail for us.” He paused and carefully reached under his coat, taking out a worn pigskin billfold as Harlan’s gun lifted warningly. “Just want to show you this. It’s the letter Chip Summers brought back for me. From Susan’s mother. It was to tell me my wife was dying and she wanted to see me bad. I figured your brothers wouldn’t want me to head back into Yankee territory in case I got caught and made it bad for the rest of you, so I slipped away without saying anything. I got back an hour before my wife died. I kept this letter because Susan’s mother had written it on the back of one from my wife to me, her last, but she was too weak to finish it ...”

  There was silence in the office as Harlan took the letter and stared at it. Finally he thrust it angrily towards Susan. “I don’t read so good, not small stuff,” he muttered.

  Susan looked at him with compassion as she took the letter and began to read aloud softly. When she had finished, Buck Harlan stared coldly at Sawyer for a long minute, then slowly lowered his gun, holstering it, but keeping his hand on the butt.

  “Where’d you get the money to start up this freight line?” he asked quietly.

  “I had a little before I joined the Texas Brigade, and my wife and sister ran the small store I’d had with my brother-in-law, Susan’s father. He was kille
d at Broken Ridge. Susan’s mother died soon after my wife: blackwater fever. I sold the store and took Susan with me and came here. I’d enough cash to get a small team together and started the freight line at the right time. And that’s the truth, Buck.”

  Harlan frowned and looked at Yancey and Cato. “What d’you think?”

  Yancey had been reading the letter and handed it back to Sawyer. “I think it’s just the way Mr. Sawyer tells it, Buck.”

  Cato agreed and Harlan finally nodded towards Sawyer and included Susan in his glance. “I—I guess I owe you—I’m—I’m sorry.” Then his voice hardened. “Damn it, if it wasn’t you it had to be Brazos! Had to be! And I don’t even know his last name!”

  He slammed a fist into his palm and Sawyer stared at him. “Brazos?” he asked. “You mean. Brazos Catlin?”

  Harlan stiffened. “You know him?”

  “If you’re talkin’ about the Brazos who rode with the bunch, that’s his name. Brazos Catlin ... A mean one.”

  Harlan was straining forward eagerly now. “That’s him. He wasn’t caught by the Yankees and we heard he was seen in that area where the gold was buried …”

  Sawyer smiled faintly. “You know, I’ve often been tempted over the years to go back there and do some digging. But I figured it was likely long gone ... There was no mention of it, but I reckoned the Yankee Provisional must have gotten the gold after they rounded up you fellers. But they didn’t, eh?”

  Harlan shook his head. “They tortured us. Someone cracked and told ’em where it was buried, but there was nothin’ there. Brazos had to be the one. And that’s why he turned us in …”

  “This Brazos Catlin,” Yancey said slowly, “is he the cattle king from up north on the Red River? The one in politics, making all the fuss over the land being used to build a new railroad up there?”

  Sawyer nodded slowly. “That’s him. I’ve often thought if people knew the truth about him they might not be so keen to have him as a politico ...” He looked at Harlan. “He’s your man, Buck. Leastways, that’s the man called Brazos who rode with our bunch. And he’d sure be mean enough to turn in his own brother for a silver dollar.”

  Harlan nodded slowly, turned to Yancey. “How come you know of this Catlin hombre?”

  “Like I said, he’s in politics,” Yancey answered slowly. “He’s got ideas of becoming governor. And right now he’s throwing mud over Lester Dukes in connection with this railroad land deal. He’s big—and growing bigger.”

  “You seem to know a lot about politics, too, Mr. Bannerman,” Susan Sawyer opined, clearly puzzled.

  “A little, ma’am,” he said without further explanation.

  “You know just where this Catlin is, huh?” Buck Harlan asked.

  “We could find him,” Cato said.

  Harlan nodded, straightening. “You got a job.”

  Cato glanced at Yancey with eyebrows raised quizzically. Yancey seemed to consider it for awhile, hesitated, then finally nodded. They would take Harlan to Brazos Catlin.

  And heaven help them all, including Lester Dukes, if they were caught doing it, he thought grimly.

  By the time they reached the Red River, Buck Harlan no longer looked like he had recently been in prison. His hair was long and curled thickly about his ears and neck and his skin had taken on a weathered tan. He looked like any range rider on the drift. Which suited Harlan fine. Catlin owned the B-Link-C Ranch and Harlan aimed to get close to it.

  The town nearest the B-Link-C was Bowie, just south of the Red River and the Indian Territory. It had started out as a buffalo camp in the late sixties and had grown into a trading post and then a town. It had mushroomed when the cattlemen moved in after the big buffalo slaughter and the land was grabbed by the toughest and strongest. Brazos Catlin had laid claim to the largest area, thousands of acres, and he hired tough gunmen to see that he held every last inch of range. If a man with smaller ambitions moved in on good water or graze adjacent to Catlin’s, he didn’t last long. He either sold at Catlin’s figure or he was driven out, sometimes buried there. Either way his land was absorbed into the B-Link-C. He fought off Indian attacks and killed men personally in gunfights in the muddy streets of Bowie, then no more than a frontier settlement. His notoriety spread and people learned to leave him alone, to steer clear of land he might covet. Not that it saved some, especially the homesteaders who figured to settle along the fertile river bottoms, growing crops.

  Brazos Catlin reckoned this was strictly cattle country and, to prove his point, he mustered a hundred men and rode in on the homesteaders in one terrible night’s raid and burned them out and drove them out or killed them on the spot. He was generous, after that, to the men who had ridden with him. He divided the land equally, after taking a major portion for himself. But every man who took even a square foot of the blood-soaked soil was bound to him by ties that were not easily broken. For it was plain as a printed notice: by accepting that fertile land, a man was admitting he had taken part in the massacre. And blood spilled in company bound men together more strongly than anything else.

  It was this group, under Catlin’s leadership, who now opposed Lester Dukes so vigorously over the railroad land grant. To win more people to their cause, they faked survey maps, rode around the territory and showed them to ranchers who could barely write their own names, telling them that they would lose all their holdings if the railroad grant was allowed to go through. Catlin faked figures, too, to try to prove that Dukes pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the railroad. Catlin promised he would revoke the grant if he was elected the new governor of the State of Texas ...

  Brazos Catlin was a power to be reckoned with and Buck Harlan wasn’t long in finding that out. But even though he got most of this information in Bowie, people were very careful to point out that they had only heard these things and wouldn’t dare say that they were true. It was obvious that Catlin had Bowie buffaloed.

  Yancey and Cato were able to give Harlan a lot of the background concerning the railroad grant and the hornet’s nest Catlin was stirring up about it.

  “He aims to get Dukes out by any means he can,” Yancey told Harlan. “He’s clever. Nothing can be proved against him. He even had a man swear he stole those survey maps from the railroad company so that they would appear genuine ... The man’s doing time in prison, but his family’s been taken care of. His wife’s had an operation she needed and had to go back East for it; his kids are being educated in the best schools in Austin, and, when he comes out, he’ll have a house and land free of debt waiting for him ... It cost Catlin plenty, but he’s got plenty. And he’ll spend all he has just to get to be governor.”

  Harlan ruminated, then he said darkly, “And it’s our gold he used to get started!” He turned to Yancey and Cato in the small hotel room they were sharing in Bowie. “You two fellers have a stake in this now. It’s in your own interests, or Dukes’ interests, anyway, to get Catlin out of the way ... Together we can do it and make everyone happy!”

  He frowned as Yancey and Cato shook their heads.

  “What the hell!” he exclaimed. “Now, I’ve seen enough to know you fellers ain’t the kind to scare easy just because a man has got a hard reputation! So how come you won't back me in this? It’ll be in Dukes’ interest ...”

  “You’re wrong there, Buck,” Cato said. “Worst thing we could do is get ourselves involved in this. We likely did the wrong thing even comin’ here with you.”

  Harlan’s frown deepened. “I don’t get it!”

  “Simple enough,” Yancey told him. “You’ve just been telling us how you aim to go out and get at Catlin. You’re not loco enough to ride in and call him out and try to gun him down. But you aim to shake him up some, run off his steers, fire his pastures, maybe blow up a dam or two and hell knows what else ...”

  “So?” Harlan asked tightly. “I can do all them things alone if you won’t help me.”

  “It’s not a matter of won’t,” Yancey pointed out. “We can’t. Catli
n’s got a lot of friends around here, and there are a lot more who’re just plumb afraid of him. There’s a good chance you’ll be caught ...”

  Harlan snapped, “I’ll risk it! Thought you would, too, Yancey!”

  “Other times we might. Like I said before, we can’t now. Look, it didn’t take you much effort to find out we worked for the governor. It’d take Catlin even less time. And if it got out that two of Lester Dukes’ special operatives were up here, rousting the hell out of Brazos Catlin, his chief rival in the coming elections, how d’you reckon that’d look?”

  Buck Harlan looked startled. Obviously he had never even considered this angle. Now he blew out his cheeks and nodded slowly. “Now I get it ... Catlin would make somethin’ out of it ...”

  “Something? He’d ride home as governor,” Cato said. “If it got out that Dukes had sent two of his men up here to start raising hell with Catlin, especially two of his gunslingers, it’d look to most folk as if our job was to prod Catlin into a gunfight so we could kill him and get rid of Dukes’ rival. Sure, Dukes has got a fine reputation but it don’t take long for people to swing around in their thinkin’ when they got proof to help ’em.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean now,” Harlan said quietly.

  “So it looks like the end of the trail, Buck ... Catlin sure seems like your man, but you'll have to go after him alone from here on in.”

  “Yeah, well, that don’t bother me none,” Harlan said and gnawed thoughtfully at his bottom lip.

  Cato and Yancey exchanged glances.

  “What’s botherin’ you, Buck?” asked Cato.