by Tony Roberts
She sighed. “Don’t go on a mad course of vengeance just for my sake, Scar-face. I wouldn’t feel comfortable being the cause of all that killing.”
Casey took her hands in his. “It’s not just that. If these animals can do this once, then what’s to stop them doing it to others? I don’t think you’d be happy knowing they were on the loose free to violate other women like they did to you. I certainly wouldn’t be. I have promised myself to hunt them down so that’s what I will do.”
She accepted his reasoning. “Thanks for coming for me today. It’s nice knowing there’s someone out there who’s looking out for you.”
He asked her what she was going to do with her life now. She shrugged and told him she would hook up with one of the local brothels. There was always work for someone like her. Casey smiled sadly and got up to go. She looked at him, then rolled over. Tired and worn out after the last few days’ adventures, she was due a decent night’s sleep.
He decided he needed help in tracking down the three men he was after. There wasn’t much for him to gain by pursuing Duggan and his two fellow violators but he had nothing better to do and, besides, as he’d said, it would be for the best that the three were put in a grave; they wouldn’t be any different as long as they lived.
The only problem to him was the Duggan family. They were big shots in the cattle business and they owned people in high places, so going to the law wouldn’t be any use, and he may well find himself behind bars. No, he needed someone along who had an equal gripe against the Duggans and who knew the local area, which he certainly did not.
A few enquiries in the local bars soon gave him a likely candidate. Duggan junior, the one he was after, had recently taken over the cattle drive through Idaho Territory in these parts. In the process he’d ruined a local family by the name of Cooper, and the old man had died of a broken heart, or so the gossip went. The mother had pined for him and within a few months had joined her late husband.
That left the sons. One had gone into the army and was God knows where, but the other, Abe, was still in town and spending what was left of his life drinking it away. Casey was pointed in the direction of a bar across the street and so he got up off his ass and crossed over, blowing hard in the cold air, and entered the new bar, looking around.
Over against the bar to the left were a number of patrons. The barkeep looked up at Casey and nodded him over. “What’ll it be, pal?”
“I’m looking for an Abe Cooper. I was told he was here.”
The barkeep turned to his left and indicated a solitary man on the end, slumped over the bar cradling a bottle of whiskey. “Taken up a permanent place there these past few days. You want to do something for him? Then pay his tab. He’s ten dollars behind and I ain’t gonna give him no more drink. Guy’s well sore, I can tell you, but he’s out of money.”
Casey sighed. So much for his money, but easy come easy go as they say. He flicked a note at the grateful man and loped over to Cooper, staring blearily at the bottom of his tumbler which was, inevitably, empty. The bottle was too. “Abe Cooper,” Casey said, sliding alongside.
Cooper looked up. His eyes were bloodshot but he was around twenty-five or thereabouts. Sandy colored hair, swept sideways but loose locks fell over his forehead. His slim, long nose sat over loose wet lips. “Whosh askin’?” he slurred.
“A friend. I understand you’ve got a gripe against Duggan?”
“Duggan!” Cooper spat. “Thievin’ bashtard! I’ll kill the bashtar’ f’I git hol’ d’him...”
“Now, now, Mr. Cooper,” a man sat nearby stood up, turning round as he did so. “Folks round here don’t like that kind of talk against Mr. Duggan. Too many owe their jobs to him.”
“Now there’s no need for that kind of talk,” Casey said, straightening up. He could see a couple of men backing the speaker up. Could be a fight. His blood began to course through his veins. Here in the territories, if you couldn’t defend yourself, then you quickly drowned. Casey was confident of taking all three on; he’d been in more bar fights in his time than he cared to remember. Some he’d won, some he hadn’t. Some had ended in fatalities. Too bad. “Mr. Cooper here has had a lot to drink and he’s clearly upset so cut him some slack, eh?”
“No call for him to go bad-mouthing Mr. Duggan all the same, so me and the boys here want an apology.”
“He wasn’t bad-mouthing you. Sit down and go back to your drinks.”
“And who are you to tell us what to do, bud?” the man asked belligerently.
Cooper meanwhile had managed to stand up – a feat in itself, given the drink he had on board – and made matters worse by spitting on the floor, not all that very accurately or neatly, and emitting a very unflattering description of Duggan and his forebears.
That kind of sealed it. Casey silently thanked Cooper for giving him the excuse to hit the man before him. In the words of an Irishman he’d once met, he got his retaliation in first. One full-bloodied punch to the jaw sent the man backwards over the chipped and worn table, legs flying.
The two others sprang forward, one at Cooper and the other at Casey. The man facing the Eternal Mercenary thought a couple of heavy slugs to the head would take care of things, but the first shock was that his first punch was blocked by some strange upwards movement of the arm. The second shock was the piledriver that smashed into his face. The man was the instant beneficiary of anaesthetic and struck the floor and didn’t rise.
Cooper though was a different story. His reactions were slow, so slow, and he was felled by one swing from the other man. Casey turned, stepped forward and grabbed the man by the throat, knocking his arms aside. He lifted the shocked man up off his feet, reversed him and sent him head down onto the table, sending it over onto its side and the man left in an untidy heap on the floorboards.
The first man climbed painfully to his feet, clutching his jaw. Casey pulled the table aside and took hold of the man’s cotton shirt and threw him against the ceiling support which shook. Two hefty punches to the guts sent the man sinking to the floor, trying not to throw up.
“Now boys, next time bite your tongues when you hear your not-so-lovely employer insulted. Chances are he deserves it, and you definitely deserved this. I’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of your evening. So long.” He grabbed the groaning Cooper, slung him over one shoulder and grinned at the barkeep. “Nice place you got here.” He left, bracing himself against the blast of frigid air as he emerged into the open. Cooper groaned some more but remained in a half-comatose state.
Casey took him to the horse troughs and sat him down, leaning against them. “Where do you live?”
Cooper groaned again, then shrieked as a splash of freezing water struck his face. “Christ! What the hell...?”
“Live? Where?”
“Uhhh... along there,” he waved a heavy arm to the right. “Rent a place.”
Casey pulled him up and aided the unsteady Cooper in his progress along the street. A little way along they came to a side alley and turned down this and the first door on the left was where Cooper was staying. He sank to his knees so Casey picked him up and got him up a flight of creaking unsteady steps to the door. Using a key he found on Cooper he got him inside and onto a sagging bed. The place smelt stale and slightly damp. Cooper was on the way down.
Casey checked the room over. In a cupboard were a few clothes but nothing much. He found the bathroom and used more water on the man. Cooper sat up clutching his head. “Oh my God, what happened?”
“Whiskey happened,” Casey said, sat in a chair. “That and picking a fight with some of Duggan’s cowboys.”
“Shit. That swine. I’d like to string the bastard up.”
“Maybe you can.”
Cooper looked at Casey in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I’m thinking you got more than a just cause to slaughter that piece of shit. So do I. Let’s say I got a gripe against Duggan junior and two of his side-kicks, Carberry and Stoneleigh. Know them?”
&
nbsp; Cooper moaned, clutching his head, nodding. “Think I’m gonna throw up.” He sprinted for the bathroom and was violently ill. Casey waited patiently. Eventually Cooper returned and slumped on the bed, sitting up. “Carberry is an enforcer, been with Duggan forever, so I understand. Beats people up who stand in the Duggans’ way. Stoneleigh is a newcomer, came from Kentucky or somewhere like that. Killed folk during the Civil War without cause, so I hear. Families. Was on the run and ended up working for Duggan.”
“So an unholy trinity then,” Casey commented. “Any idea where they might be holing up?”
“Uh? Holing up? Why?”
Casey briefly gave him details of what had happened to date. Cooper looked at him in amazement. “Shit – you got a death wish? Soon as old man Duggan gets to hear of this he’ll pay whoever needs to paid off in order to have your hide nailed to the town sign as an example. You really gonna kill his son?”
“Yes. Seriously. And the other two as well. Might as well, since I’ve killed half a dozen of his men already. No point in getting this far then giving up. I need help. Seeing as you’ve been stamped on heavily by them, I thought you might be willing to lend a hand, so to speak.”
Cooper stared at the floor for a moment. “Yeah, but I don’t feel up to it at the moment. I’ll need a horse, a gun and outdoor gear.”
“Can you get hold of any?”
“Mmm, got a couple of favors to call in. Give me two days and I’ll meet you at the eastern edge of town. By then I’ll have an idea where that snake is holed up. There’s ways of finding out. I know others who hate Duggan more than me, but they’re too scared to do anything.”
“They may not tell you.”
Cooper smiled wanly. “Oh they will, believe me. They’re old friends of mine. Hate those bastards with a passion, but are too scared to say so out loud. They know me though and I’ll never snitch on them. They’ll be too glad to give me any info, and guns and ammo, and maybe a horse too! Now let me sleep this hangover off. I feel like shit.”
“You look it too, Cooper. See you in two days then.”
Cooper waved at him dismissively and slumped onto the bed with a groan. Casey left and walked back to the hotel. Betty was looking more like her old self, and told Casey that she’d even had a bath. The proprietor had been all too willing to provide her with the means by which to do so.
“I bet he did,” Casey grinned. “Got his eye on you, I bet.”
“Well, he was taking quite an interest,” she tossed her long blonde curls and smiled at him. “So what are you gonna do from now on?”
“Oh, I thought about heading out somewhere. My work here is done. Duggan is still at large so I’ll try and find out where that piece of work is hiding. I won’t be back, that’s for certain.”
Betty gave him a long, slow appraisal. “I’d like to thank you for what you’ve done for me. The best way,” she added with a saucy smile.
Casey chuckled. “You sure you’re alright to do so? After what they did to you...”
“I’m tougher than I look, and thank you but I’m perfectly alright. It’s been a couple of days and I’m not too sore anymore. As we’ll be going separate ways in a day or so, I thought now would be the right time. That is, of course if you want to.”
Casey looked at her for a moment, then slid her dress off her shoulders and it slipped down her body, leaving her naked from the waist up. “What a stupid question,” he muttered, and laid her down on the bed.
___
As dusk approached on the second day Casey made his way to the edge of the town and spotted a lone horseman with a spare animal off to one side, waiting by a pile of rocks. He walked over to Cooper and nodded. “Got everything?”
“Yeah. Blankets, water bottle, guns, bullets. No drink,” he added as Casey surveyed the spare horse and saddle bags. “Now I’ve got a purpose and revenge in my heart, I don’t need the damned stuff. Doesn’t take the pain away but at least you’ve given me a reason to carry on. I did a bit of asking around and it seems the Duggan empire is still expanding. Cattle runs up through Wyoming means they have a ranch there. One of my contacts says Duggan junior is heading up there, and has sent messages to his old man in Fort Laramie. It’ll take time for the reply to get back, so we’ve got a week or two yet before they get organized.”
“Won’t someone find out you’ve been asking around?” Casey mounted up on the spare horse.
“Nope. They’re keeping their distance but are happy for me to go off on this suicide mission, as they call it. None of them expect to see me again, and to be honest, if I can kill that sonofabitch I don’t care what happens to me afterwards. One thing though before we start off.”
“What’s that?”
“Duggan is mine; you can have the other two.”
Casey shrugged. “Good enough.” He offered his hand and the two shook on it. They joined the trail and slowly made their way east. Cooper explained he knew the area reasonably well, and there were places they could water and hole up for the nights along the way.
Casey wasn’t too familiar with this part of the world, so Cooper set about explaining the territories and the recent history. The territories hereabouts were large sparsely inhabited areas, having been created during or shortly after the civil war. Idaho, where they were, had only been a territory for some three years, while the two to the east, Montana and Wyoming, had been created during the war.
The opening-up of the mid-west meant that land had become a struggle between the native tribes and the whites, and the natives were now being encouraged to settle in reservations, areas set aside for them to live. It often didn’t include their sacred lands or lands they had always been in, but the growing United States had other priorities, and only land of no immediate use to the emerging nation was put aside for the tribes.
An administration had been set up to provide food and shelter and other necessities for the natives, and promises were made that the agencies running the reservations would ensure the needs of the tribes were met.
Casey snorted. It sounded so much like the situation in the dying days of the Roman Empire. When the Huns had burst out of the east, they had driven the Goths headlong before them, and the chieftains of the Gothic tribes had appealed to the Romans to protect them. In return for allowing them land to settle in, providing them with food, shelter and clothing, the Goths would guard the Danubian frontier.
All very well, but the Roman administration in Thrace was incredibly corrupt and saw the refugees as a perfect opportunity to make enormous sums of money out of, so they exploited them, giving them poor quality food, when food was provided, charging extortionate rates for anything provided and reducing the once-proud people to the status of beggars. They pushed too far. The Goths rose up and destroyed the armies of Valens at Adrianople in 378AD, and it was regarded now that this marked the point of the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire.
The reservation agencies would have to learn from history if they weren’t to cause another Adrianople.
Casey wondered what the fate of the tribes would be. Outnumbered, out-equipped and terribly backwards in modern terms, the mathematics were against them. But if they turned on the American administration, they would cause a lot of trouble before being crushed.
Cooper went on to explain the state of the territories. “We have Oregon to the west as a state, and then we have Idaho Territory, Wyoming Territory and Dakota. Moves are to make them states too. The natives won’t be consulted and they don’t really count. Not my decision,” he added hastily, seeing Casey’s look, “you look at our leaders in Washington. That’s where the decisions are made. President Grant, and General Sheridan. They run the way things are done here.”
Grant and Sheridan. Two of the Union leaders in the civil war. Belligerent men, men who won the civil war through a pitiless campaign of total destruction. The more he thought about it, the more Casey reckoned the natives were finished. Their way of life was old-fashioned and out of date, not compatible with the moder
n way of thinking.
War was changing rapidly. He’d heard about the recent Franco-Prussian war in which the Prussians had destroyed the French armies at Sedan. Using more destructive methods and a faster rate of fire, the Prussians had surrounded the French armies with five of their own. The emperor, Napoleon III, had been advised by one of his generals that they were in the ‘chamber pot’ and were ‘about to be shat upon’. A surrender was inevitable and so the war had been decided.
It wouldn’t take too much for the US Army to do the same to the natives. Mobile warfare was the call of the day out on the plains; both sides utilized the horse and rode vast distances. The only thing holding back the white man were the widely scattered settlements but once more were constructed, the squeeze would be on.
“So where are we headed for?” Casey asked, staring at the desolate landscape. Much of it was frozen, with winter’s grip firmly upon them.
“Place called Rigby’s Crossing. Straddles a creek, a small settlement but used to be owned by a guy called Rigby who knew my father. He retired about ten years back. Place has grown bigger since then and the Rigby family don’t own much now, just their old place and a few acres here and there. Guess who bought most of it up.”
“Duggan.”
“Yup. So the Duggans have land and property there. We go there, look around and kinda find out who’s there now. Then maybe burn a few properties down.”
Casey laughed. “That’ll bring the Duggans running.”
“Absolutely. Including maybe the ones we want.” Cooper thought for a moment. “We’re gonna be in Wyoming Territory pretty soon, which is the real center of the Duggan power. It’s a big area and there’s plenty of places to hide out there. Clint Duggan may well be sent to lie low by his old man for a while; last time Clint shot someone he was sent away to hide. Guess that’s what’s going to happen again. You made a real mess of his operations in Idaho, but that’s just a side-show for the Duggans. Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana is where its at.”