He put down the Spencer, mopped his face, and reached for the gun. Dust stirred on the floor and he wheeled, his grasp closing on the shotgun. Comanche George Cobb stood in the side door, his pistol in his hand.
Bowdrie saw the man’s eyes blaze, and the pistol thrust forward; he saw the man’s thumb bend as it pulled the hammer back, and Bowdrie squeezed both triggers on the shotgun.
Cobb’s body jerked as if kicked by a mule, and he took a staggering step backward before he fell, a spur hooking itself on the doorjamb.
“Two gone,” he muttered, “and maybe one wounded.”
He started to move, then froze in mid-stride as his nostrils caught the faintest smell of smoke.
Smoke, and then the crackle of flames!
Grabbing up shotgun shells, he jammed them into his pockets; then he reloaded the shotgun itself. Testing the sheriff’s pistols for balance, he thrust them into his waistband.
Flames crackled outside and smoke began to curl up from the floor and into the windows. Evidently they had gotten under the building and set fire to it.
Outside, men waited to cut him down the minute he showed himself. He might get some of them, but they would surely get him.
Suddenly he remembered something seen earlier. He glanced up. A trapdoor to the loft over the office. Now, if there was only a second trapdoor to the roof, as was often the case when access was left for possible repairs …
Leaping atop the desk, he shoved the trap aside, and grasping the lip of the opening, he pulled himself up. Though smoke was gathering even there, Bowdrie made out the square framework of a trapdoor in the roof. Closing the trapdoor behind him, he raced along the joists, shotgun in hand, unfastened the hasp, and lifted himself to the flat roof.
The rooftop slanted down slightly to allow rain to run off. Bowdrie looked over the edge. There was no one in sight, as they evidently believed Comanche George was still there.
Swinging his legs over, he hung for a minute, then dropped, knees bent to absorb the shock. He hit the ground, staggered, recovered, looked quickly around, his shotgun poised for firing.
There was nobody in sight.
A quick dash and he was behind the Longhorn Saloon. Opening the back door, he stepped in. A half-dozen men stood near the wide front window, watching the street. Opposite, plainly visible in the window across the street, was John Bishop.
The bartender turned his head, and when he saw Bowdrie, his face paled. He drew back, his hands falling to his sides.
Bowdrie walked quickly to the front door. The fire destroying the sheriff’s office could be plainly heard.
“Hope it don’t burn the whole town!” somebody commented.
“What started Bishop on a rampage? Who’re those fellers with him?”
“Don’t know any of ’em. Strangers. Somebody said that Ranger killed Walt Borrow.”
The roof of the building collapsed suddenly, and John Bishop stepped into the street, a red-haired man beside him. From down the street Hardy Young was approaching.
“Stand aside, men!” Bowdrie said, and as they turned, he said quietly, “Red Bishop robbed your bank. John Bishop murdered Borrow because your sheriff had found him out. The dead man out there is Jack Latham, the outlaw. Keep out of this!”
He stepped into the street as Hardy Young came up to the Bishops. Where was Decker, the man Bowdrie had shot when he fell from the roof?
Bowdrie stepped off the walk. “Bishop! I arrest you for robbing the Bank of Kimble, for the murders of Josh Phillips and Walt Borrow!”
The three men turned, staring as if at a ghost. John Bishop had an instant of panic. “How in …!”
“Drop your guns. You will get a fair trial!”
“Trial, hell!” Red Bishop’s gun started to lift, and Bowdrie fired the shotgun. One barrel, then the other. The group were close together, the distance no more than sixty feet.
Red Bishop was shooting when he took the shotgun blast. John Bishop caught a good half of a load of buckshot and toppled back against the hitching rail. He was fully conscious, fully aware.
Hardy Young was running away down the street. He was running, crazed with fear, when the horsemen rounded the corner into the street. He glimpsed them and tried to turn away, and they saw him and tried to rein in. Both were too late.
The charging horses ran him down and charged over his big body, trampling him into the dust.
Rip Coker was in the lead, McNelly right behind him. “Bowdrie? You all right?”
Automatically Bowdrie extracted the shells and reloaded the shotgun. “All right,” he said. “Case closed—no prisoners.”
“Where’s Cobb? And Decker?”
Bowdrie explained in as few words as possible. “Borrow finally figured it out. There’s a draw comes in from the south on Bishop’s land. Riders could come right up from Mexico, then follow that draw right to his ranch. Nobody need see them at all.
“Once you forgot who Bishop was and just looked at the situation, it almost had to be him. Borrow left a note in my bedroll just in case. He should have the credit for this one.
“I think,” Bowdrie added, “you’ll find the bank’s money in Bishop’s house. If they aren’t carrying it on their bodies.”
“Good job, Bowdrie!” McNelly said. “Thanks!”
Bowdrie lifted a hand. “There’s coffee waitin’ for me inside. Come an’ join me, if you’re of a mind to.”
He turned toward the restaurant, suddenly tired. It was cool inside, and Ellen was standing by a table with the coffeepot in hand.
Someday, he thought, someday he might find a town like this, a place where he could stop, get acquainted, and build something.
“Your family will be glad you’re safe,” Ellen said.
“I’ve got no family,” he replied. “I’ve got nobody. Only the Rangers and a mean roan horse. That’s all I got. Maybe it’s all I’ll ever have.”
As he sat down, she was pouring his coffee, and he was tired. Very tired.
The Killer from the Pecos
It was early afternoon, but the town was already up and sinning when Chick Bowdrie left his roan at the Almagre livery stable.
Every other door was a saloon or gambling house. Five different nickelodeons blared five different tunes into the street. The rattle and bang of the music was superimposed upon the crack of teamsters’ whips, the rattle of chips, and the clink of glasses. Occasionally the tumult was punctuated by the exultant bark of some celebrant’s six-shooter.
Almagre, born of a silver outcropping, exploded from nothing into hearty exuberance, a town born to live fast and die hard but smoking, with many of its citizens setting the example. At the age of ten months the town had planted thirty-three men on Boot Hill, led by a misguided newcomer who tried to fill an inside straight from a boot top.
The founder, a wiser man than those who followed, had raced a pack of yelling Comanches to the railroad and departed for the East with his scalp intact. Behind him all hell broke loose. Strangers who hit the town broke knew fifty ways to make money, all of them dishonest, and among the gentry who now kept the lid off the town was one Wiley Martin. It was his trail from Texas that brought Chick Bowdrie to Almagre.
The reason was simple. Martin—or supposedly Martin—had used his six-shooter at the Pecos Bank to withdraw six thousand dollars. In the process he had shot down in cold blood both the cashier and the president of the bank.
There was a catch in it, of course, as there nearly always was. There was no adequate description of the outlaw.
A description of sorts: a big man—and at first glance all Almagre’s citizens looked big—and he had a girl’s head and the name “Marge” tattooed under his heart.
Standing on the street, Bowdrie eyed the passing crowds with disgust. “If you go to pulling the shirts off every man in town, you’ve bought yourself some trouble!”
It began to look like the goosiest of wild-goose chases. Aside from the vague description, the escaping outlaw had dropped a letter addressed
to Wiley Martin, and he had left a trail of sorts. Few trained men could have followed the trail, but a good many Apaches could have, and Chick Bowdrie did.
He had taken but two steps toward the nearest and largest saloon when the batwing doors exploded outward and a man landed in the street on his shoulder blades. He came up with a lunge, grappling at his gun, but the doors slammed open again, revealing a bearded man with a gun. He fanned his six-shooter, and four shots exploded into a continuous roar. The first shot smashed a window four feet to the left of the man in the street, the second and third shots obliterated his belt buckle, and the fourth grazed the hip of one of the two broncs hitched to a buckboard.
The bronc leaped straight up and forward, coming down across the hitching rail, which splintered beneath it. The horse went down, threshing wildly in a snarl of harness and broken rail. Its mate backed away, snorting. The girl in the buckboard grabbed at the reins, and Chick lunged for the downed horse. A grizzled prospector moved in to lend a hand.
“Looks like a live town,” Bowdrie commented.
“This one?” The old man spat expressively. “She’s a lalapalooza! A real wingdingin’ hot tamale!”
The wounded man in the street made a futile effort to rise, then sagged back. Nobody approached him, not sure the shooting was over. Bowdrie’s quick estimate told him the girl was in more need of help than the unfortunate battler, for he had only a minute or two to live.
“That’s only the first one today!” the old man said cheerfully. “Wait until Bonelli gets in! Things’ll pop then!”
“Who’s Bonelli?”
“He makes big tracks, son.” He gave a glance at Bowdrie’s guns. “If you’re huntin’ a gun job, there’s only two ways to go. You work for Bonelli or you become town marshal. The first job can last a lot longer. We just buried our third town marshal.”
“Bonelli hires gunhands?”
“He surely does! He’s revolutionized the cow business in this neck of the woods. He drove fifty head into the hills three months ago, and now they all have four or five three- to six-month-old calves!”
Bowdrie chuckled. “Sounds like an enterprising man. What the marshal’s job pay?”
“A hundred a month, cabin, an’ cartridges. Of course, you’d be sleepin’ in a dead man’s bed!”
They had the horse on his feet and quieted, so he broached his question: “Ever hear of a man named Wiley Martin?”
The old man put his pipestem between his teeth and started away on his short legs without another word. Mildly astonished, Bowdrie stared after him, then turned to help the girl from her buckboard. An older man, probably her father, was coming to help.
He looked like any other man except that he was freshly shaved and seemed prosperous. The girl could have been nobody else in the world, for they never made two like her.
“Thanks for helping to get my horse up,” the older man said. “I am Jed Chapin. This is my daughter, Amy.”
“Proud,” Bowdrie said. “Folks call me Tex.”
“I ranch south of here, JC brand. If you’re down that way, drop in an’ see us.”
Bowdrie glanced again at Amy. “Might be. Right now I’m thinkin’ of applying for the marshal’s job.”
“Don’t do it. Marshals don’t last long around here. Erlanger doesn’t like ’em.”
“Who is Erlanger?”
“Foreman for Bonelli. He and that prison-mean Hank Cordova make life a misery for folks.”
“How about Wiley Martin?”
Chapin’s face changed. “Get up in the buckboard, honey. It’s time we went home.”
Bowdrie’s dark eyes met Amy’s. For an instant she searched his eyes; then she spoke softly. “Don’t ask that question. There’s trouble in it.”
“I’ve a message for him.”
“Forget it. There will be no answer in Almagre.”
“I’ll be riding your way. Maybe we should talk.”
Her eyes relented a little. Her eyes became warmer, even curious. “Maybe we should,” she said. “Please come.”
He crossed to the saloon. Three men played cards at a table near the wall. One of them had a narrow, triangular face with a crisp blond mustache, the ends drawn out to fine points. His eyes were gray and steady, and their expression when they glanced up at Bowdrie was direct and probing. One of the others was the bearded man who fanned his pistol.
Three men followed him into the room and came to the bar near Chick. The biggest man spoke, immediately placing all three of them for Bowdrie. “Get Chapin for me, Jeff. Bring him here.”
“I think he just left town.” The speaker was slender and dark, not the man addressed. “I saw the buckboard leavin’.”
“Then go get him and bring him back, whether he likes it or not!” The big man was obviously Bonelli, his face like polished hardwood, his eyes bright and hard.
Erlanger went out, and Bowdrie leaned his elbows on the bar. In the mirror he caught Bonelli’s sharp, inquiring glance. The air had an electric feel like something about to happen.
Two of the men at the card table cashed in their chips and left quietly. The bearded man exchanged a brief, questioning glance with Bonelli. The man with the gray eyes riffled the cards with agile fingers, then lighted a long black cheroot.
“Who’s the mayor of this town?” Bowdrie’s question was unusually loud in the quiet room. Bonelli glanced at him as if irritated, but did not reply.
Cordova looked at Chick. “What you want with the mayor?” he asked.
“I heard the town needed a marshal. I’m huntin’ a job.”
The man with the gray eyes took the cheroot from his teeth, glanced at it, then at Bowdrie. He seemed amused.
Bonelli turned sharply and looked Bowdrie up and down. The skin around his eyes seemed to tighten a bit. Bowdrie’s back was to the bar, his elbows resting on its edge. He returned Bonelli’s look with a blank, hard stare.
“You’ll do well to keep movin’,” Cordova said. “That job doesn’t need fillin’.”
“Some folks might feel otherwise. I saw a man shot out there a bit ago. Men shouldn’t carry guns in town. They might shoot the wrong people.”
“I suppose you’d take ’em away?” Cordova commented contemptuously.
“I’d ask ’em to hang ’em up when they came in. If they didn’t, I might have to take them away. There’s decent folks in every town, and mostly they like it quiet.”
A buckboard rattled to a stop before the saloon; then the doors pushed open and Chapin came in. He looked pale but angry; Erlanger was right behind him. “What’s this mean, Bonelli?” Chapin demanded.
“It means that I am buyin’ you out, Chapin. I’m offering five thousand dollars for your place and your stock.”
“Five thousand?” Chapin was incredulous. “It’s worth fifty thousand if a dollar! I am not selling!”
“Sure you are.” Bonelli was enjoying himself. “My boys found some misbranded stock on the range today. My brand worked over to yours. We hang rustlers, you know.”
“I never rustled a head of stock in my life!” Chapin’s fury did not prevent him from speaking with care. “That’s a put-up job, Bonelli. You’re tryin’ to force me to sell.”
“Are you callin’ me a liar?” Bonelli spoke softly. He stepped away from the bar. His intention was obvious.
Chapin knew he was marked for death if he said the wrong thing. He was a courageous but not a foolish man, and he had a daughter waiting in the buckboard outside. “I am not calling you a liar. I am not selling, either.”
“Reilly said he wouldn’t sell. Remember?”
“Look, Bonelli. I am not bothering you. Leave me alone.”
The man with the gray eyes had stepped to the bar. His eyes caught Chick’s, and he took something from his pocket and slid it along the bar. Chick covered it with his left hand. Neither of the men with Bonelli had noticed; all their attention was on Chapin, whom they apparently expected to kill. Chick Bowdrie pinned the badge to his vest, then hooked hi
s left thumb in his shirt pocket so the palm covered the badge.
“You don’t have to sell if you don’t want to, Jed.” He spoke quietly. “As for that rustling charge, Bonelli, you’d have to prove it.”
Bonelli turned irritably. “Keep out of this!”
“This is my affair, Bonelli.” His eyes were on Erlanger. “Get in your buckboard and go home, Chapin. Bonelli’s through pushing people around. He isn’t the big frog in any puddle. He only looked big for a little while because the water’s mighty shallow. You go on home, now.”
“You heard me,” Bonelli said. “Stay out of this!”
Bowdrie moved his left hand, revealing the badge.
“I’m in, Bonelli. I’ve drawn cards.”
Erlanger moved toward him. “I don’t like marshals! I don’t like the law!”
“Bonelli!” Bowdrie’s tone was stern. “Take your boys and ride out of town. The next time you come in, check your guns at the marshal’s office when you reach town. Otherwise, don’t come to town at all.”
Erlanger and Cordova both moved toward him, but Chick’s reaction was swift. Grabbing Erlanger’s wrist, he jerked the man toward him, pulling him off balance. As Erlanger staggered toward him, Bowdrie deftly kicked his feet from under him and shoved him into the other two. Then he stepped back quickly, drawing a gun.
“Next time you start something with me, Erlanger,” Bowdrie said, “better fill your hand first. Now, you three get out of town and don’t let me hear of you makin’ trouble or I’ll come for you.”
Bonelli’s astonishment had turned to fury. “Why, you cheap tinhorn! I’ll run you out of town! I’ll strip you and run you into the desert!”
“Erlanger! Cordova! Unbuckle your belts and drop your guns … now!”
With infinite care the two men unbuckled their gunbelts. “Now, get over there and face the wall. Be very, very careful! This here’s a hair trigger an’ you might make me nervous.”
When they stood against the wall, hands above their heads, Bowdrie’s eyes shifted to Bonelli. “All right, Bonelli. You just threatened to run me out of town. You’re said to be a bad man with a gun. You want my hide and you’ve strutted around here runnin’ roughshod over some good people. Now, right here in front of your bold bad men I’m going to give you a chance to see how mean you are. Now, I am goin’ to holster my gun. I’m goin’ to give you an even break.” As he spoke, he dropped his gun into its holster. “Come on, Bonelli! Let’s see what you’re made of!”
The Chick Bowdrie Short Stories Bundle Page 25