I felt that tingle, that little stirring of expectation, that promised whisper of action, of doing what some folk thought I was born to do, but I kept those thoughts to myself as I rolled another smoke and feigned disinterest. Beaufort waited, and I waited, and the silence between us grew until we both burst out laughing. It was the first real laughter heard on Wildcat for a long while.
‘Manhunt?’ I asked, killing the laughter.
‘More than that, Lucas, it could be one of the biggest cases Pinkerton has ever handled for the Feds. Big trouble coming to south Texas. You are familiar with Texas, are you not?’
We shared more laughter.
CHAPTER TWO
The Peaceful River Kid
I had spent the best part of an hour drinking with Beaufort and listening to the outline of a case undertaken jointly by the attorney general’s office and the Pinkerton Detective Agency before the subject of my unfortunate sobriquet came up.
‘Where the hell did you get that moniker, Lucas? You sure enough are not a kid; doubt that you ever were.’
I stared up at the ceiling, thinking while looking through the smoke hanging in the wooded roof. ‘It was a while back. You ever hear tell of an Arizona gunfighter called One-Eyed Jack Temple?’
‘Sounds familiar. A while back since I heard tell of him, though.’
‘Well, one time I was in a poker game in Cheyenne and it turned ugly. Only five us in the game: three hard-assed no-account yahoos and this big old one-eyed man with a black patch over his right eye. I was holding good hands, and it turned real nasty and ill tempered when I scooped in the pot on a bluffed and very busted flush. The only bad hand I had all evening and it was still a winner.’
‘Not always good to be a winner, I guess.’ Beaufort examined the contents of his near empty glass and refilled it.
‘It looked real dark there for a minute or two when this gent pipes in, his voice little more than a whisper and his words precise, and asks me, “Say, boy, are you not the mean sonofabitch they call the Peaceful River Kid?” I just stare at him and he goes on, “The hombre that shot and killed dead the Yancy brothers up around Wyoming someplace, as I recall?”
‘The poker players went dead quiet and he fixed me with that one obsidian black eye. I let my coat fall open so them assholes could see my shoulder rig and the fancy Colt .32 Rainmaker snugged away there. I did not answer the old man with but a slight nod of my head, and those boys settled down real friendly like and quit the game soon after.
‘Later, I met the old man at the bar and bought him a drink or two before asking him who the hell the Peaceful River Kid was. Again, he fixed me with that one twinkling eye and says, “I guess you are now, my friend. It is surely strange; you add the word kid onto a fellow’s name and he sure enough becomes someone to walk around.”
‘I offered him my hand and told him I was Louis Bassett out of Wichita, a name I sometimes use. The original Bassett was a friend of mine, a lawman of some repute. He taught me how to shoot and, more importantly, when not to pull. He was working as a part time deputy and he took a blast from a sawed-off shotgun fired from an alleyway in Dryburg, New Mexico. A deadbeat named Sy Randolph bragged on the killing and he was later found shot to death in a dry wash outside of the town limits. He was buried in a shallow grave with a sawed-off for a marker, barrels in the sand and his hat on the cut down stock. His killer was never apprehended.’
Beaufort looked at me long and hard. ‘That a true story, Lucas?’
‘Yes, it is, hand of God and you can take that to the bank. I use it now and again just to see if it still has any currency, and it appears so.’
‘You know who gunned down this Randolph character?’
I ignored the question, and I fired and drew deeply on the cigarette in the long silence that followed.
‘And the old man, this One-Eyed Jack Temple,’ Beaufort eventually broke that silence. ‘You ever see him again?’
I shook my head. ‘Never saw him again after that night, but I guess he’s still out there somewhere.’
He waited some more, then asked, ‘You carry a Rainmaker? I heard they are unreliable.’
‘They can be in double action, but I had mine worked on by Art Brewer in Cheyenne. He’s a master gunsmith and friend of Harry Beaudine. He hand-forged some new parts and it works like a dream; never had a misfire yet. It’s slim and tucks away without revealing itself. Pretty, too.’
‘I would like to see it later, top man is our Art, did he cut down that big old Sharps on your rack for you?’
‘Yes, took that from a trigger-happy Montana wolfer I caught trespassing on Wildcat. It makes it a fine saddle gun.’
‘Do you fancy a return visit to south Texas, Lucas?’
It came out of the blue. I thought about that for a minute or two before replying, ‘Josh, did you ever wonder why queens and kings of hearts, spades and the jack of clubs have two eyes and the poor old king of diamonds and the jacks of hearts and spades only have the one?’
He shook his head. I let it hang there a moment or two and said, ‘Me neither.’
CHAPTER THREE
South Texas again
Beaufort, as always, was passionate and convincing, making me believe everything he said but, deep down, I knew he was very uncertain about that of which he spoke. I guessed if it had been clear-cut they would not have called me in. It wasn’t that I was expendable, it was because my methods were a little more direct and sometimes a tad beyond the law; so much so that there was paper on me in some states and a county warrant or two besides.
‘It isn’t exactly the south Texas, you know, but thereabouts, and well below the New Mexico border and close enough to the Rio to spit across the line,’ Beaufort said.
‘Country is much the same: unfriendly, hot and often dry, rocky and with a sky filled with ravens,’ I said.
‘New Mexico and Texas border country: sounds about right. There is a small, no-account town down there on our side that is around half the size of the one on the Mex side. It’s complicated.’
‘Its name?’ I asked.
‘That’s another part of the problem. It’s called San Pedro on both sides, which only adds to the confusion. Our side was once a gold town that never happened. It dried up and died before it was born. Their side is bandit country: Yaqui, the worst kind, and a no-go area to us by order of the US Attorney’s office. Hence, Beaudine cannot go in there and we don’t really have an agent with your Mexican experience to work it.’
He was referring to the fact that, on several occasions, I had crossed the border to apprehend a fugitive without papers from the Mexican authorities. Some called it kidnapping. But me, I saw it as a job, and the Rio Grande as just another river to cross.
‘So, why is this one a problem to the US? Sounds a pretty familiar story all along the border, where those towns were once part of Mexico anyway.’
‘Truth to tell, Lucas, we do not know.’ He sounded apologetic.
‘You don’t know? So why the hell are you passing it down the line to me?’
‘We have heard tell of unrest down there from Tad Jones, the sheriff of Patterson County. He’s based in Sentinel, the nearest law. The US part of San Pedro is actually in Riverton County and is a no-account town twenty miles or so to his south, but well within our borderline.’
‘Unrest?’ I didn’t care too much for that word.
‘Random killings, rustling, illicit trade in alcohol and God knows what else. General lawlessness, more so on the Mex side of San Pedro than on our side, but Washington does not want it to spread north more than it already has. Bottom line is, I guess, the railroad is headed that way and the US Government has a good deal of money invested in that enterprise through various companies. Too much to ignore, but not enough to do too much about. Things are a mite strained with Mexico at present, as you know. Troopers appearing down there would raise a hell of a lot of dust, so to speak.’
‘Could be a land grab,’ I offered. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time
news of a possible railroad has triggered such a move. Lot of government money to be made from real estate on a right of way.’
Beaufort shrugged. ‘Maybe so, but Beaudine thinks it may be more than that, and he needs to be sure before he runs any obvious interference with the local law.’
‘Fee or wages?’ I asked.
‘Same set-up as usual: your fee and anything you can legally make on the side.’
‘And exactly what do you want of me?’
‘Well, to be clear, there could well be a little more to this caper than just a land grab. We have codenamed it Operation Diablo.’
‘Colourful,’ I said.
‘I thought so.’
‘Why Diablo?’
‘It’s a whispered word a couple of our agents have picked up. They work undercover with the great and the good, the banking set of San Antonio. We do not know exactly what it means, but every case needs a name, so Benbow gave it that one.’
‘Imaginative lad, that corporal.’
‘Not so much a lad anymore, Lucas; a man full grown in every way. A little hasty at times, but one hundred per cent reliable.’
‘You want me down in south Texas right away?’
‘Yes, the sooner the better. Go see Tad Jones in Sentinel. He’s not a man to exaggerate a situation; he can only observe as it is out of his bailiwick. Go down there, get a feeling for it, and check out a man named Frank Vagg, a local bigshot. Get back to me in San Antonio so that we can assess the problem and find a solution, if one is actually required. I’ve seeded the mine some for you,’ he smiled. ‘It may be all smoke in the wind, but we have the job through Beaudine and, all things considered, we think you are the man for the job.’
‘Why me, exactly?’
‘The usual reasons. You think outside of the rules. You’re not tall, and not short; not fat and not skinny; your age is undetermined. You are a chameleon, a shadow; you fit in and yet you don’t; and you speak a little Spanish.’
‘And I’m expendable?’
‘You know better than that, Lucas. No Pinkerton man is expendable.’
‘Will I be working alone?’
‘No, not exactly: we already have an agent in San Pedro setting things up for you.’
‘Benbow?’ I asked.
‘Hell no,’ he grinned, ‘Agent Henri Larsson.’
‘Henry Larsson? A good man?’
‘Not a man; that’s Henri with an “i”, as in Henrietta.’
‘A woman?’
‘I do believe so.’
‘A Dutchy?’ I asked.
Beaufort nodded.
‘Didn’t turn out too well for the last female agent I worked with, did it?’
It was not really a question.
He smiled sadly. ‘No, it didn’t, but we have moved on some since then.’
‘Taught them to dodge a bullet?’
‘I know you blame yourself for her death, Lucas, but you should not. Line of duty deaths are inevitable in our kind of work, for men or women. We know the odds and you brought her killer to justice. It’s all we can hope to do.’
‘She was a bonny lady,’ I said, not wanting to go back to the day an agent named Kathleen Riley took rounds in the back from a hired gun when we had gotten a little too close to his employer.
‘She sure enough was, and the department has grown. You don’t get to carry a Pinkerton shield unless you are able and willing to take that risk.’ He raised his glass. ‘To Kathleen,’ he said, and we drank the bottle dry, each lost in his own thoughts.
That night, I lay on my bunk listening to the breeze ruffling the leaf-laden branches of the live oak out back of the ranch house. It was where I had built the swing seat for Annie and me to sit and grow old together. Of course, in my line of business, it would never have worked out that way. We’d be sitting there one day, and the next my bedroll would be packed and I would be off somewhere, sometimes long gone and faraway. But I always came back, and she never tried to change me in any way, hoping, I supposed, that the times spent at home with her on Wildcat would grow. I fancied for a brief moment, as I drifted off to sleep, that I heard her gentle voice softly whispering Lorena, the old Civil War song, to me from faraway, her voice carried by that Wyoming breeze.
CHAPTER FOUR
Shave and a haircut six bits
The long train ride to San Antonio was only a shade more comfortable than the Overland stage ride to Sentinel for a short stay and briefing from old-time sheriff Tad Jones. He was as Beaufort described him: a no-nonsense lawman intent on keeping his county line clear of any possible trouble. He confirmed his report to Beaudine that he had nothing firm to offer, other than the fact that a man named Frank Vagg called the shots in San Pedro and that he was not a very approachable man, he’s surrounded at all times by a personal bodyguard, and his ranch by a bevy of pistoleros; hired guns, mostly. They were men he considered to be border trash, but nevertheless men to be reckoned with. They were paid top dollar and were ready to earn it if needs be. He did not know too much of Vagg and had never met the man. Other than the fact he had been around for some years working a dubious trade across the Mexican border defined by the Rio Grande, he was something of an enigma.
Vagg was, by all accounts, a frail and elderly man, running San Pedro both south and north of the Rio. The Riverton County sheriff, one Billy Hunt, was Vagg’s man, although there was little call for a lawman in San Pedro. Word had it that Vagg was the law, and any wrongdoer in his eyes tended to disappear. Jones was not judgemental, saying only that it would not be the way he would run the town were he the county law there. He bought me fine supper, and we shared a drink or two and memories of better days.
The next morning I was back on the Overland stage, San Pedro bound.
For a ‘no-account town’ as described by Beaufort, San Pedro was larger than I had been led to believe. A tree-lined Main Street, a bank, a saloon, billiard hall, two hotels, the drovers club, a large livery stable and corral, general store, blacksmith’s shop, newspaper and Wells Fargo office, real estate office and, dominating the far end of Main Street, a well-maintained white painted church. Many of the business premises appeared to be constructed from freshly painted lumber. Even the Overland office, which also served as a post and telegraph office, did not fit the description given me of a dead or dying gold camp.
I have always found the most information gathered is either from a bartender or from a barber working on your head, irritatingly feeling the need to talk, even if you were not much in the mood to listen. However, in this case, I was. It was a small shop tucked away between a hardware store and the undertaker’s: Harry’s Barber Shop, its red and white pole faded in the Texas sun. The sign said, ‘shave and a haircut six bits, two bits extra for a hot towel’. The barber was, as most of them seem to be, almost bald, with a wisp of hair clinging to the top of his bony head and a scattering of grey at the back and sides. It gave his head a white-framed skull-like appearance. He was skinny, round shouldered, with pale blue eyes and wore wire-rimmed spectacles. There were two chairs and no customers, so I walked in, hung my hat on the hat rack and my pistol belt beside that, within easy reach of the nearest chair.
‘You Harry?’ I asked, making it clear I was happy to jaw a while.
‘No, sir, I’m Ben. Harry got himself shot last fall.’
‘He give someone a bad haircut?’
‘No, sir; Harry was a lot of things but he was great barber. Bad taste in women is all. Picked the wrong one and she shot him dead. Now doing ten to fifteen in the state Pen.’
‘So, it looks like you are short one barber?’ I said, nodding to the two chairs.
‘No, sir, short of customers is all. What will it be: haircut or shave?’
I looked at my reflection in the cracked mirror. ‘Both,’ I said.
‘That’ll be a dollar even if you want the hot towel.’ He waited seemingly expecting an objection.
‘Just a trim around the ears and the back on the hair. Leave the moustache be when you
shave.’
‘That will still be a dollar even,’ he repeated.
‘Fine,’ I said, and settled back in the chair as he draped a white cloth around me and tucked the back in just below the hairline. ‘Kind of quiet for a border town.’
‘Most of the action is across the river on the Mex side. You can get a haircut, a shave and get your bell rung for a dollar down there.’
‘It looks to be a busy town to me.’
‘Look closer. You will see the newspaper office is closed; permanent, I guess. The millinery and the attorney’s office are very part-time and the jail is usually empty. The undertaker is busy, though, and the church is full of hypocrites come Sunday morning.’
He spent a couple of minutes snipping at thin air to make me think I was getting my silver dollar’s worth, and then brushed the debris from my collar. He placed a towel on my chest, lathering up my face and stropping the open razor.
‘You come far?’ he asked.
‘Far enough.’
‘You going far?’
I didn’t answer. I don’t like moving my lips when an open bladed razor is scraping away at my jaw.
He was gentle and efficient, wiping my face with a warm towel and rubbing something that burned; it smelled vaguely like horse liniment on my cheeks.
‘Anything else I can do for you, sir?’
I looked at the shelf to where a closed jar held some red and white hard rock candy sticks.
He followed my gaze. ‘It’s for the kids. Keeps them quiet while I cut. Never understood why kids don’t like to get their hair cut.’
‘I’ll take a stick,’ I said. ‘Don’t much like getting my hair cut, either.’
He smiled, reached up for the jar, unscrewed the lid and shoved two sticks into a paper bag. ‘They will cost you two bits; free to the kids, but you should know better.’
I gave him two dollars and told him to keep the change. I set my hat on my head and strapped on my gun-belt, settling the holster on the left side of my belly with the ivory grips forward.
Where No Ravens Fly Page 2