Stand Up and Die

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “I was testing you, Sergeant-No-More. And you failed.”

  “Well, buster, ye is about to fail your next test, because we’ll be using what’s left of you in ten minutes to grease that broken-armed Comanche’s splint.”

  McCulloch stepped between them, but three men had left one of the saloons, and from the look of them, they had been drinking since late last night. They also looked like trouble, for one pointed at the corral and they all started walking straight for the stables. Right toward Wooden Arm. When a cowboy was drunk enough or mad enough to walk, McCulloch knew he meant business.

  “Excuse me,” McCulloch said, moving toward the street. “Whichever one of you is left standing, he’s hired.”

  The cowboy on the southwestern edge, the bowlegged cuss with the green shirt and brown hat, spotted McCulloch first, and said something to the other two. They kept walking for a few more paces before the man in the middle, whose six-shooter was tucked inside the waistline of his black and tan checked britches, nodded, adjusted his tan hat, and then all three made a slight turn and went directly toward McCulloch. The third man, young, weasel-like looking, with a two-gun rig, grinned with drunken eagerness.

  McCulloch stopped and waited, letting his right hand fall beside his Colt.

  They threesome spread apart before they halted about twenty-five feet from the former Ranger.

  “We don’t like injuns in our town, McCulloch,” said the middle man, who McCulloch recognized as Zebra Dave, a worthless man who probably earned his drinking money from the cows he rustled from the rancher who was paying him a dollar a day, a place to sleep, and three square meals every day.

  “He won’t be here for long.”

  “Oh,” said the weasel with a malicious laugh. “He’ll be here for a long, long time, Ranger.”

  The one with the green shirt said, “Like till . . . Judgment Day.”

  All three laughed, but that stopped when McCulloch saw their eyes move past him. He also felt the presence of a man on either side of him.

  The cowboy in the green shirt took a few steps back. Weasel criss-crossed his arms till his hands rested on the butts of the two revolvers that hung low on his hips.

  A laugh from McCulloch’s left indicated his friend had made the man easily. “I know you,” Jed Breen said, though McCulloch couldn’t tell who the bounty hunter was talking to. “Saw your likeness on a dodger in Cooter City nine months ago.”

  McCulloch knew that to be a damned lie. Cooter City had been wiped out in a flood along the Nueces River ten years ago. Hell, these days there wasn’t a place where a wanted dodger could be put. There hadn’t been much of a place to hang a wanted poster eleven years ago, either.

  “That’s a . . . lie,” the weasel said, but his face revealed doubt.

  “We don’t like injun lovers, either,” Zebra Dave said.

  McCulloch no longer looked at the kid in the green shirt. He figured that boy would be hightailing it for his mama in about thirty seconds. Besides, Sean Keegan hadn’t said one damned word, so McCulloch figured the old cavalry trooper had his eyes on the shaking punk.

  “Keegan?” McCulloch asked, just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, that it wasn’t wishful thinking that he felt a presence on his right. “That undertaker fellow, Percy something . . .?”

  “A. Percival Helton. What about him?”

  “He wasn’t among those killed during that raid by the Benteens, was he?”

  “Nay. The greedy worm is doing a bonanza’s worth of business lately.”

  McCulloch nodded. “I expect his boom will continue. In say . . . ten seconds.”

  The two-gun punk made the first move, but McCulloch paid him no mind. The one wearing the green shirt turned and ran, and probably would have made it, but he tripped and fell face-first in the street. By then Jed Breen was cutting lose with his double-action Colt, the bullets popping the kid in both lungs, turning him around so Breen’s next two slugs went damned close to the exit wounds the first two bullets had made.

  McCulloch took his time, knowing Zebra Dave, like most drunks, like most cowboys, would rush his shot. The bullet blasted dirt onto McCulloch’s boots before the Colt was halfway out of McCulloch’s holster. The second shot might have done some damage if McCulloch had not taken time to shave that morning. The third shot . . . well that might have hit the bell in the Catholic church’s front yard. McCulloch heard the chime, but surely even Zebra Dave couldn’t have shot that wild.

  One blast from McCulloch put Zebra Dave on his knees. Zebra Dave’s last shot went into his own knee. That, McCulloch reasoned, was one damned ugly wound, and would have require amputation of the lower part of his left leg. Knowing the quality of the doctors in Purgatory City, that likely would have killed Zebra Dave anyway, but it didn’t matter. Zebra Dave had fallen over to his side on the street and tried to clutch his shattered knee.

  “My leg,” he choked out, even though it was the bullet that Matt McCulloch had put in the lower part of his chest that killed him.

  That should have been the end of it, but the boy in the green shirt sat up, cried out, cursed, and jerked out his pistol.

  “Don’t be a bloody—” Sean Keegan said, but the kid shot anyway. Glass behind the three jackals shattered.

  Keegan put a bullet in the heart, and that was the last fired.

  “Idiot,” Keegan finished his sentence as the boy flattened onto the street, shuddered once, purged his bladder and bowels, and died with the two other damned fools.

  Undertaker A. Percival Helton rounded the corner a moment later, looking as though he hadn’t gotten much sleep as of late. His eyes started gleaming when he saw the three corpses, and he sprinted to the center of the melee.

  “They’re all yours, Worm,” Keegan said. “Resisting arrest. Charge it all to the county sheriff’s office.”

  “That’s quite a tab you’re running,” McCulloch said as he holstered his Colt. He looked at Breen. “Was that kid wanted somewhere?”

  The bounty hunter was busy chucking out his empties and replacing them with fresh cartridges. “Probably,” Breen replied. “But a punk like that, he’s hardly worth trying to claim a bounty on.”

  They turned around and walked back to the corral, ignoring the stares and whispers from people beginning to line the boardwalks and streets of Purgatory City. McCulloch saw Wooden Arm. No longer standing on the corral, he had moved to the center, staring with Comanche solemnity at the three approaching men. The mustangs ran wildly in the corral but soon began to stop as the sounds of gunfire quieted and the smell of gun smoke dissipated. The Comanche boy’s good hand moved.

  “What did he say?” Breen asked.

  McCulloch answered Wooden Arm with his own hands first, then looked at the bounty hunter. “He wanted to know what that was all about.”

  “How’d ye answer the lad?” Keegan asked.

  “I told him it was . . . an error in judgment.”

  “Aye.”

  McCulloch turned to the Irishman. “Are you with us or are you staying?”

  After a stutter, a stammer, and a sneer, Keegan smiled. “Aye. I’ll be riding with ye lads.” He looked at both boardwalks. “Sheriff Garcia will be coming back at some point, and he might question the charges that have been billed to his office. And I likely have friends at Fort Wilmont who’d buy me some fine Irish whiskey for I hear there are more saloons in that fine, bawdy town than there are in County Cork.”

  “All right. I think we’d best light out for the Pecos before noon.”

  “I’ll pack me gear,” Keegan said.

  “Do that. But before you end your account with the county, why don’t you charge up some grub? And a wagon with some supplies. But don’t splurge.”

  The former sergeant did an about-face and headed for the nearest store.

  “But Sean?”

  Stopping on a dime, Keegan spun around on his heel. “Sir!” he barked.

  “No whiskey. Not even a dram of beer. I’m serious.”

 
; “Ye’ll be a hard officer to serve under, sir.”

  McCulloch smiled. “I’ll buy enough to put you under in Precious Metal.”

  “A bloody fine deal. You’ll blow your four hundred and fifty dollars in one night, Matt.” Keegan practically danced across the street toward the general store.

  McCulloch turned to Breen.

  “What changed your mind?”

  The bounty hunter chuckled, tilted his head, and nodded at the Wells Fargo office.

  “Surely it wasn’t the price of three tickets on the stage to Precious Metal,” McCulloch said.

  “No, not that at all. I just saw those bullet holes and everything, and it reminded me that’s from the raid on the jail. The one that led to all that.” His head tilted to the county courthouse—the charred part—and the school kids pointing to the black spot where the gallows had been before Sean Keegan had gone into action. “Well, it just suddenly popped into my mind that, after what your pard Mr. Keegan did to Lovely Tom Lovely, the rest of the Benteen boys will be out for blood. Sean’s blood. And”—he eased the Colt into his holster—“the Benteens are worth a hell of a lot more than Otto Kruger and Charlotte Platte combined.”

  Breen’s right hand went up and punched McCulloch playfully in the shoulder. “I’ll gather my gear. Be back here with two more reluctant hired hands in fifteen minutes.”

  Spinning on his heel, Breen raced across the street.

  McCulloch turned around and saw the mustangs. Wooden Arm stepped into his line of vision and moved his hands.

  What did he say?

  McCulloch understood and tried his best to make his answer something that the young Indian brave would understand.

  He signed, This is going to be the damnedest thing you ever tried, and you’re one crazy maniac to try it.

  Wooden Arm studied McCulloch’s hands for a full fifteen seconds, then looked into the white man’s face for another ten, looked at the three dead men on the street, then back into McCulloch’s hard eyes. The boy grunted, nodded his head in agreement, and walked back to the mustangs in the corral.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Undertaker A. Percival Helton could not believe the fortune he had been reaping. He laughed at his three former competitors in the business who had either died or moved to what they figured would be a more profitable town where men and women were older, thus more likely to bite the dust. Helton had stayed put, and, by thunder, he felt so happy that he had. Those fools—except the poor soul who had died—overlooked three important factors that no profitable undertaker should have—

  Matt McCulloch.

  Jed Breen.

  Sean Keegan.

  The bell above the door to his office caused Helton to mutter a high-pitched curse. By thunder, had not he just sent that fool errand boy off to the general store to pick up more nails and the cheapest wood to be had and charge it to Helton’s Undertaker, Coffins, & Funerals? Certainly that kid could not be back yet. He must have forgotten something.

  Gosh darn it, Helton thought. He had three coffins to build.

  “What is it now?” he squealed.

  “You the undertaker?”

  He lifted his head. Why, that wasn’t that fool boy. That was a man with a hard Texas accent. Maybe he was bringing in yet another customer. The sun always shown on a businessman who knew his business.

  “Be right with you, sir. Have a seat. There are tissues handy if you need to cry, and an illustrated catalog of all our services.”

  That might keep the bereaved busy for a few minutes. Helton laid the pliers on the table, pulled the rag out of his back pocket, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Confound it, this shouldn’t be taking so long.

  He grabbed the tool again, gripping it tighter, and shoved open the corpse’s mouth. He found the tooth in the back, a big molar, and squeezed the pliers on that beautiful gold filling. He began tugging, twisting, trying his best to loosen the son of a gun. By thunder, there was just no sense in burying a man shot to hell like he was with gold in his mouth. Helton certainly did not expect any grieving family member to look into this gent’s mouth. No one had in all of Helton’s thirty-two years as an bona fide undertaker and mortician.

  Helton put his left hand on the dead gunman’s shoulder, using it as a brace. Good, good, excellent. Rigor mortis had set in, so this victim remained stiff as a stone block. Now, if he could just get that danged old beautiful gold tooth to cooperate.

  So attuned to his job, Helton failed to hear the tune the spurs with the jingle bobs played as the latest customer walked from the sitting parlor to the workroom, generally off limits to the bereaved family of the deceased. When the man grunted, A. Percival Helton panicked, and the pliers slipped, breaking off the top of an incisor—not that the gent on the table felt a thing.

  Helton slipped off his tool, banged into the counter that held all his other accouterments, even knocked over a beacon of his own concoction of embalming fluid. An oath slipped from his mouth. Those ingredients did not come cheap in a remote burg like Purgatory City.

  A. Percival Helton gave the big gent with the big mustache and a wicked scar over his left cheek the meanest look he could muster up.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Undertaker, but I got some boys of mine waitin’ outside and just need to ask you a few questions.”

  Helton tried to remember this man was troubled, grieving, and, well, any man still breathing could be a paying customer. Customers paid a whole lot better than the county, and this stiff and the two others waiting to be ready for burial were county pays.

  “Yes, of course.” Helton wiped his face. “Let’s go into the parlor and I can show you—”

  “Here’s fine.”

  The man suddenly didn’t look so upset by the loss of a loved one.

  “Well . . .” Something about the gent’s posture told Helton that argument would be futile. He found a pencil and a pad, and said, “Is the person you wish to be taken care of male or female?”

  “Male.”

  “How old?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Oh, how sad. In the prime of life. I’m so sorry. And your relation to the dearly departed.”

  “Cousin.”

  “And where are . . . umm . . . your cousin’s . . . remains?”

  The man straightened. “I figured you had him already.”

  Helton looked up, then at the corpse who had so fiercely refused to give up a gold tooth, a corpse whose front tooth had been busted by Helton’s clumsiness—although he could blame it on this big Texan . . . with . . . a . . . big . . . pistol . . . on . . . his . . . hip.

  “Well . . . I have . . . three new . . . um—”

  “My cousin’s name is Lovely. Tom Lovely. But folks in this part of the state called him Tom Benteen. My name’s Hank Benteen. Brother Bob and Uncle Zach is waitin’ outside. I’d like to make all the arrangements—burial, tombstone, all that—afore some of your citizens recognize my kinfolk. Cause us to shoot up this dung heap of a town to pieces agin.”

  Sweat poured down Helton’s forehead. His teeth clattered.

  “Can I see poor Tom?” the killer asked.

  “Well . . . you . . . see. . .”

  “I see that you’re the undertaker,” Hank Benteen said as he stepped forward and pulled the short-barreled Colt from his holster. “The only one in town.”

  Suddenly, A. Percival Helton prayed that that danged fool of a helper would come back through the front door and cause Hank Benteen to murder him so that he, unarmed, never-hurt-anyone-because-they-were-already-dead Percival Helton could escape before he was so foully murdered during the biggest undertaking bonanza of his career.

  He dropped to his knees, sobbing, wailing, clasping his hands as though in prayer. He begged, screamed, and pleaded for mercy.

  “Where’s my cousin, you snivelin’ pig?”

  “He’s not here!”

  “He’s dead. I gotta figure you boys hung him.”

  “Yes, yes, they hanged him—I didn’t
—I detest hangings, beheadings, all forms of execution. I detest prisons. No one should be incarcerated. I—”

  “Where is he?”

  “They . . . he . . . he . . . well. . .”

  “Where?”

  “Sean Keegan burned him, Mr. Benteen. He said it was a Viking funeral.” Helton fell onto the floor, curled in a fetal position, and continued to sob. “He hanged him. Keegan. The . . . Irishman . . . hanged him . . . and then . . . that’s why part of the courthouse is in ashes . . . he burned . . . burned the . . . whole gallows . . . with your . . . brother . . . still swinging from . . . the . . . gallows.”

  “He was my cousin. Not my brother. But cousins is as thick as brothers when you’re a Benteen. You say . . . Keegan?”

  “Sean Keegan. Oh, what a disgrace to the good name of Purgatory City.”

  “Horse apples. Piss on your damned city.”

  “Well . . . Keegan . . . you know . . . one of the so-called jackals our late newspaper editor and publisher called him. Sean Keegan. Used to wear the uniform of the United States Army.”

  “And where might I find Keegan now?”

  “He rode out. With Matt McCulloch.”

  “The Texas Ranger?”

  “Used to be. No more. Not in more than a year or so. They’re taking horses . . . mustangs . . . somewhere. Keegan joined McCulloch, some Indian and . . . the third jackal. B-b-b-Breen.”

  “Breen. That miserable bounty-huntin’ swine.”

  “Yes. They left earlier today.”

  Helton felt relieved when he heard the hammer fall safely on the Colt, and then the revolver slide into the holster.

  “All right. So it’s Keegan I want. Now . . . where are my brother’s remains?”

  “Your . . . cousin’s . . . you mean—”

  “I mean nothing. I tol’ you that Benteens are all brothers, cousins or not. He went by the name Tom Benteen, didn’t he, damn you?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. Benteen.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Well . . . he was burned.”

  “There’s ashes then. Ashes that need buryin’.”