Colman made a click in his cheek. “You musta felt bad about that.”
“Not really. Honest mistake.” Dave cleared his throat to announce changing the subject. “Who do you have needs killin’, Clay?”
“A war’s brewing near Trinidad. Two ranchers fighting over water. Does it matter to you who’s in the right?”
“Doesn’t not matter.” He shrugged. “But I ain’t particular, if the dimes stack up.”
“How many you killed in your time, Dave?”
He frowned, thinking. “Does Mexicans count?”
Colman grinned. “Better not let ol’ Silva hear you say that.”
Dave grinned; it was an awkward, yellow thing. “Oh, he ain’t touchy about such things, nor is I. Most of the White Caps is Mexican and they’s as good a men as most. It’s just when you’re calculatin’ kills, there is some folks don’t count Mexicans. Or Indians.”
“They count when they’re comin’ at you with guns or knives.” He shifted in the hard chair. “Dave, let me fill you in on the particulars.”
“Oh, like I said, I ain’t particular.”
“No, I mean . . . you’ve got the job, if the money sounds right to you.”
“Money don’t never sound wrong.”
Dave was the first man Colman hired.
Billy Bassett was maybe ten years older than Dave Carson, a skinny character with a full mustache that looked like it might weigh near as much as he did. He wore a battered canvas jacket over a gray twill shirt, chaps over denims, and a low-slung Remington revolver. By way of introduction, he told a story of an encounter in a saloon not as posh as the Imperial.
“I have killed my share,” he told Colman in a low drawl. “Maybe the one people talk about is when the four brothers of a man named Drew come to Wichita lookin’ for me. But I found them first.”
“Is that the time you just stepped through the Long Branch doors and just started shooting?”
Billy snapped his fingers. “That’s the one! Two died on the spot. Two others died later that night from me shootin’ ’em earlier. Hell, I was gone afore the smoke cleared. And I killed nary an innocent bystander, not that many in that particular drinkin’ hole was what you might call innocent.”
No bystanders. Billy had one up on Dave.
Colman hired Billy, who was fine with the money and whose side he was fighting on made no matter.
The next potential recruit announced by Silva was an Indian, the “Chiricahua Kid,” his jaw square, cheekbones high, eyes narrow, and a cold, cold unblinking blue. Ebony hair hung unbraided to his shoulders, his surprisingly tall, narrow frame decked out in a red- and white-man hodgepodge of black sombrero, weathered army jacket, silk bandanna, and knee-high cavalry boots. This “kid” pushing thirty kept a knife high on one hip and a .45 Peacemaker low on the other, and looked every bit as friendly as a rattler, the only difference being this one didn’t show his teeth.
Colman told the Indian that he would be expected to kill, sometimes in a general melee on the banks of Sugar Creek, but also might be enlisted for skullduggery.
“What is skullduggery?”
“Back-shooting and throat-slitting.”
“White men?”
“Mostly. Maybe a black here or a Mexie there.”
“Extra dinero?”
“For that, yes. Would that offend your scruples?”
“What is scruples?”
“Some call it conscience.”
The bronze figure thought about that briefly. “Means . . . right and wrong? Yes. This I have.”
Not what Colman wanted to hear. “Give me an example of that.”
The Apache nodded slowly, then spoke the same way. “Near Fort Grant, woman in small covered wagon sell her ranch. She have boy and baby with her. And money. I shoot her and boy and take money.”
Colman blinked. “How the hell’s that show me you got scruples?”
The shrug was barely perceptible. “Not rape her. Not kill baby. Later, men say coyotes eat. No right and wrong, coyotes.”
Colman hired him on the spot, and then two others, though no other candidates matched the Chiricahua Kid.
* * *
That afternoon, Bill Jackson took the chair that earlier had been Clay Colman’s, although of course neither man knew of the other’s recruiting efforts.
The first candidate, Frank Duffy, was older than Jackson had in mind—well into his forties, but striking nonetheless, six-three easy, and looking even taller because of a ridiculous, somewhat battered top hat. He had broad shoulders and a muscular look, his eyes and hair black, his tanned face narrow and grooved.
Yet he was soft-spoken.
“I have done my share of killing,” he said, “but I am no assassin. I have been a soldier fighting Indians and a lawman in Arizona jailing outlaws. So if that disqualifies me, I understand.”
“But you ride with the White Caps?”
He frowned, obviously offended. “I do not, sir. I recently took up residence in Las Vegas and have become friendly with Mr. Silva. Despite his . . . sideline, he seems trustworthy.”
“Yeah, he does.”
“And he is understanding of my frailty.”
“What frailty is that?”
He pulled air in, then let it out. “I can get obstreperous when I imbibe. Rest assured I do not drink on the job. However, I may become rowdy after work. I say this openly.”
That amused Jackson, who nonetheless said, “This is rough work. You understand that? You’ll shoot and be shot at. Give and take no quarter.”
Duffy took off the top hat, held it in both hands. “There was five youngsters, the Scranton brothers, who ran with the Heath rustler gang, who also indulged in holdups. They operated out of Sulphur Valley. In Bisbee they knocked over a mining company store. Half stayed outside, half went in. Alarm went off and indoors shooting commenced. A woman was killed by bullets exiting the front window. My deputy walked up, not knowing the two youngsters outside were part of the gang, and as he headed in to do his duty, they back-shot him. A goodly number of times. My deputy was so dead he didn’t have time to know it. What I did in retaliation wasn’t strictly legal.”
“What was that?”
“Got a lead from a saloon gal that those boys went down to Chihuahua, Mexico, which is where I found them holed up in a bordello. Three I killed in the cantina. Two in bed with wenches. I took no innocent lives, but as I say, my activities were not strictly legal. I lit out. Have not set foot below the border since.”
“Is that a true story, old man?”
Duffy went slowly for his gun and Jackson began to rise, but the candidate held out his .44, butt first. Thirteen notches were cut in it.
“The middle five,” Duffy said, “are the Scranton brothers.”
The story had both convinced and entertained Jackson enough to hire the old boy.
In a vest, collared shirt with loose bow tie, canvas pants with a Colt Lightning .38 worn cross-draw fashion, “Buck” O’Fallon was of medium size but carried himself with a lithe confidence, removing his wide-brimmed hat and planting himself before the seated Jackson.
“Before we start,” he began, in a medium-range, flat voice, “you should know I’m not one of Silva’s ruffians.”
“But you’re aware that Silva is not what he pretends to be, to the good citizens of Las Vegas?”
“I am. It’s his business. If the ‘good citizens’ were to hire me to enforce the law, I would make it my business. But otherwise . . . no. He’s aware of who I am.”
“Can’t say the same. Who are you?”
A single-shoulder shrug. “Many things. Lawyer for one. Newspaper editor at times. Judge, sheriff, soldier. I’ve run for office. I have gambled in the various meanings of that word, including the literal, which is what puts me in my current impoverished condition.”
“You understand the nature of this work.”
“I do.”
“You’ll kill if need be.”
His nod was curt. “If
need be. Fired upon I will fire back. Just don’t ask ambush of me. That’s a line I won’t cross.”
“Are you the O’Fallon who tracked those train robbers?”
“Tom Horn and I did, yes.”
Jackson, like most in the West, knew of legendary tracker Horn.
O’Fallon was saying, “We rode through country few white men had visited. Much gunfire over several weeks was exchanged. I killed one, Tom the other. The brothers split up, so we did, too. Finally I walked into their campsite in Wah Weep Canon, with them sitting round the fire, and just told ’em to stick ’em up. A pair of ’em, that is. They did as told. The other two had gone off another way, and Tom brought them in.”
“Four brought back alive.”
“And two buried on the trail. That’s how it goes in this country. Or anyway, it did. Times do seem to be changing.”
Jackson grunted. “Not right now they aren’t. You have a job, Mr. O’Fallon.”
The man’s smile was slight but there. “Call me ‘Buck.’ ”
The two men shook hands.
The final candidate was on the small side, his uncreased black hat riding at an angle, his shirt of the many-buttoned cavalry-style, his trousers duck. On his hip, neither high nor low, rested a Colt .45 Single Action Army revolver—a good choice, Jackson thought.
The slightly cross-eyed young cowboy—and he had the modest stature and bowed legs that made him one—wore a mustache so thick and black it overpowered the rounded-off square of his face. He had a rough, sinewy look, despite his cockeyed look.
“Manning Clements,” he said, in a thin, reedy voice that was almost a whine, somewhat at odds with a tough-looking exterior. “Maybe you heard of me.”
“Don’t believe I have.”
“I’m Wes Hardin’s cousin.”
John Wesley Hardin was, of course, the notorious gunfighter who many considered not just cold-blooded but crazy. Not a relative to be proud of, really.
Jackson filled the prospect in on the job.
Then Jackson asked, “Do you run with the Forty Bandits?”
“I do. I’m one of the White Caps, yessir. And you need me for this work.”
“Is that right?”
“It is. You see, these others you been talking to, they can handle a gun. But they got no experience with cows. I bossed a trail herd once.”
“Mite young for that.”
Clements shrugged. “I made mistakes, I grant you.”
“Such as?”
He shook his head, laughed at himself. “I hired these boys, Rance and Lou Raine, as drovers. They was miserable and mouthy louts. Caused trouble all the way. Wouldn’t work! Just stayed in camp and played cards and ate the grub and slept and such like. I was put out, and finally I said, ‘If you’ll just go, I’ll pay both of you off for the whole shebang, just like you made it to the end of trail. But then git!’ They just laughed at me. Then I heard from the other boys that the Raines was talkin’ about killin’ me. I slept away from camp that night. Hopin’ they’d light out.”
“Did they?”
He smirked in disgust. “No. And even now I can hear ’em talkin’ and laughin’. I lay there and keep thinkin’ and thinkin’, and I know it’s come to a showdown. I went back into camp and shot them sons of bitches.”
“In their sleep?”
“No! I woke ’em. It was a . . . a duel, a fair fight. Two against one, but I got them both. I’m fast, Mr. Jackson. And I can shoot. Wes taught me how.”
Well, Wes would know.
“And,” the infamous gunfighter’s cousin said, “it was Wes that got me out of the jam.”
Jackson frowned. “With the Raines dead, what jam were you in?”
“Some said it was murder. Among the drovers, you know? So I get word to Wes and he has his friend Bill Hickok arrest me and stick me in the Abilene hoosegow. Then Wes slips me a key. I was off for Texas before you could spit.”
Jackson had his doubts about this one, but the day was dying, so he hired Wes Hardin’s cousin on.
At least this hombre was something of a cattleman.
CHAPTER SEVEN
On an unseasonably cold spring afternoon, a small group gathered half a mile north of town on that even stretch of desert known somewhat improbably as Boot Hill. Like a row of massive gravestones, distant buttes provided a somberly beautiful backdrop for the elite group of citizens from Trinidad and the surrounding area who had made their way here by horseback, buggies, and buckboards.
Wearing the same silk mourning dress she’d assumed for her own father’s graveside service late last year, Willa Cullen—accompanied by the black foreman who had so recently hired gunfighters to protect her from the woman whose son was being buried—was among those paying respect, though she stood off to one side. In a dark suit, wearing no sidearm but with a rifle handy, Bill Jackson leaned against the buggy and waited.
A disrespectful wind stirred tumbleweed and other brush through the scrubby flat ground, raising a fog of dust that gathered itself at the ankles of mourners. A mesquite tree shivered but otherwise ignored the breeze, resolute in its mission to oversee the wooden crosses and markers and the occasional actual tombstone, for which relatives of a few of the well-off dead had sent away for as far as Denver.
Someone—volunteers from Missionary Baptist, possibly, or perhaps the undertaker and his assistant—appeared to have organized an effort to spruce up the grounds, and to upright any grave indicators knocked over in the brutally hard winter.
As had been the case at her father’s service, the entire Citizens Committee—the City Council, they were calling themselves now—were clumped together, with no spouses or offspring accompanying, strung along one side of the grave. This included Mayor Hardy, druggist Davis, hardware man Mathers, mercantile owner Harris, and bank president Burnell. Raymond Parker was there, too. All in their Sunday best.
Noticeably absent was Caleb York.
Not surprising, Willa thought, since Caleb had shot and killed the boy being buried.
A selection of cowhands from the Circle G were on hand, but also noticeably absent were the ranch’s rougher customers, some of whom were reportedly veterans of the Earp/Clanton conflict in Tombstone—so-called Cowboys with a capital C. These less threatening cowpunchers were dressed in whatever suit they could manage, hats in hand, awkward yet oddly reverent.
The graveside service had been announced by way of a placard in the undertaker’s window. Willa hadn’t been sure she should attend. But it was at least a small gesture she could make, a tiny peace offering. Perhaps something human could pass between her and the grieving mother.
Bible in hand, lanky, mutton-chopped Reverend Caldwell stood by the wooden marker, which a Denver tombstone would surely replace, although undertaker Perkins had already provided his best brass-fitted mahogany coffin to designate the importance of the deceased young raper. Beneath the mesquite, Perkins and his adolescent helper waited patiently with two Mexican gravediggers for their turn to take center stage.
“I read to you today from Hebrews two: nine-ten,” Caldwell intoned. “ ‘Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone. God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory.’ ”
Along the other side of the grave stood the boy’s mother, Victoria Hammond, in a black lace-trimmed satin gown and a mantilla that served as a sort of veil. But the woman’s perfectly chiseled features were visible and she showed no signs of tears. Instead her features were so composed as to look frozen, her eyes not on the preacher or the coffin in the hole, but straight ahead.
Next to her were two men in black suits and droopy black bow ties, one on either side, each holding an arm of hers—the woman’s sons, someone had whispered to Willa before the proceedings began. One was slender and weepy, and looked to be in his midtwenties and resembled his mother; the other, a few years older, did not. Willa had no way of knowing it, but the older son—burly, firm of jaw, cold of eye—looked like his late father, An
drew Hammond.
The religious words were few. A young woman from the church sang “Amazing Grace.” Handfuls of dirt were cast into the grave by each of the three family members. A final prayer and it was over.
Citizens just paying their respects to this new but important player in the area’s cattle game (the living mother, not the dead boy) merely nodded and made their way to their horses and conveyances. The city fathers lingered to individually offer their condolences, and bow their heads. Already Victoria Hammond was being paid tribute by Trinidad, which Willa frankly resented, even while feeling mild guilt for such thoughts at the grave site of the woman’s youngest son.
The Bar-O’s mistress waited until the cemetery had cleared of everyone but the deceased’s family and the undertaker with his retinue. The reverend had been the last to go, and could be seen riding alone in a carriage back to town, at an easy pace.
The Hammonds spent no time at William’s grave for private thoughts or good-byes. Instead they headed toward a waiting buckboard, watched over by a blond cowboy on horseback—Clay Colman, although he was no one Willa recognized. The cowboy stood out not only because of his good looks, but in being new to the Trinidad environs, at least so far as Willa knew.
She approached the trio in black and Victoria held up a “stop” hand that her sons honored, the younger one almost stumbling to stay in line quickly with his mother.
Willa said, “We have not met, Mrs. Hammond. I’m Willa Cullen.” She extended her hand.
The woman accepted it—both wore black lace gloves—and their right hands briefly clasped.
The younger surviving son—whose features were so like his mother’s but compressed onto a narrower face, as if the attractiveness had been squeezed out like the juice of a lemon—glared openly at Willa with eyes red from tears.
The older brother seemed bored and didn’t look at Willa at all. Nor did he appear to have been crying.
Willa said to the bereaved woman, “You have my sincere condolences,” then nodded to each of her attendants. Neither acknowledged her.
“Thank you, Miss Cullen.” The voice was almost as low as a man’s, yet still quite feminine. “It’s kind of you to honor us with your presence. Were you acquainted with my brother? Had you met?”
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) Page 8