Shadow Shooters

by George Arthur

  ‘You do not have five horses or a wedding bed for her.’

  ‘There is the house.’

  ‘And are there the horses?’

  ‘Perhaps the old woman might take fewer than five.’

  ‘Hattie is a Chiricahua princess. Burning Buffalo will offer more.’

  ‘I might buy horses with the stolen money.’

  Black Feather squinted at him. ‘Others will come looking for that money. You think they forget in three years?’

  ‘Has anyone been around?’

  ‘Marshal Leather Yates – twice – wanted to know if you come here when you get out, and exactly when you get out.’

  Hawkstone rubbed his jowls. ‘Yates,’ he said.

  ‘You know, he is the marshal at Wharton City.’

  ‘Why would he care?’

  ‘You better take the money and ride out. Keep riding.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave Saguaro Claw just yet.’

  ‘The old woman is used to your wanderings – and the outlaw trail you ride. I will go with you if you wish.’

  ‘Somebody has to look after her.’

  Black Feather nodded. They rested in silence for a spell, looking down at the ground. ‘I put fire water in the saddle-bag,’ he said, talking silly Indian as a joke.

  ‘That is a bad place.’

  Black Feather stood and pulled the bottle. He opened it and handed it to Hawkstone. He squatted again beside his blood brother and took his turn when offered. ‘What you do now?’

  Hawkstone said, ‘Tomorrow, I deal with the house.’

  ‘You want another gun?’

  ‘I understand there’s just the one man – and Big Ears Kate.’

  ‘You may not want to shoot anyone with a marshal sneaking around.’

  ‘If a marshal comes poking into something that ain’t none of his business – maybe I’ll shoot him, too.’

  Chapter Three

  On the floor of the wickiup with his wool blanket, Hawkstone listened to the soft sigh of the sleeping old woman. He tried to keep his tossing quiet.

  Hawkstone’s thinking went back to Rachel Cleary – Rachel Good Squaw, who in that cave so many years ago, had told him there was no future for them because he was married. For a brief moment he had thought about sending his young wife Susan and his son Michael back to her parents. He had married her because he couldn’t find his Rachel. But Susan was a loving and worshipping woman – no man would find a better wife. He had immediately dismissed the thought of leaving her, and hated himself for even thinking it. He had then accepted there was no longer any future with Rachel.

  He had left Rachel in the cave with her pinto nearby, and rejoined the cavalry.

  When he returned to Santa Fe, he learned that Susan and his son Michael were no more. A week before they had been in a bank when it was robbed, and a dynamite explosion to blow the safe had torn mother and son and two others beyond recognition. He had stared at the shredded remains, recognizing blonde woman curls and the jagged remnants of a boy’s small foot, while the marshal touched his shoulder and talked low with sympathy. Because of what he had been thinking about his wife and son, he hated himself enough to go to pieces – emotion and human morality sucked out of his chest, leaving it hollow, with nothing inside him but empty hatred, much aimed at himself. He didn’t ask the marshal about his lost family – he asked about the robbers.

  In the time it took to find the killers, Anson Hawkstone turned no good.

  He found and gunned down the four bank robbers without mercy. He stampeded along the outlaw trail, killing others good and bad. Eventually back with the old woman and Apaches, the year became 1863, and there was a war on. Texas and New Mexico Territory had gone with the Confederacy, and it looked as if Arizona Territory would do the same. Some Fort soldiers went north for new duties fighting against the Johnny Rebs, and Hawkstone reckoned he might as well kill for some cause he didn’t care about – so he joined the grey coats, and his life became more blood and gunsmoke.

  There truly was no possible future with Rachel Good Squaw.

  The sleeping fox catches no poultry.

  An hour before dawn, Hawkstone left the old woman’s wickiup and rode towards his house, letting the chestnut slowly pick her way in the dark. Halfway there he heard Black Feather ride his pinto up behind.

  ‘I think you need another gun,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You are digging up the money, right?’

  ‘I am. A shovel is hidden in the pine growth.’

  ‘There is much guessing over the amount.’

  ‘Guessing by who?’

  ‘By me and the old woman – and likely others we can only reckon.’

  ‘It is ten thousand dollars.’

  Black Feather sat tall. ‘Is that it? I was only twenty, but the bank said you robbers took fifty thousand.’

  ‘The bank lied. It was half that, and Federal Marshal Casey Steel grabbed fifteen thousand after my so-called fellow bandits turned me in.’

  ‘Still, that might be enough to kill a man for.’

  ‘I did three years for it.’

  ‘You think that makes it yours?’

  ‘When I have it in my saddle-bag it will be mine.’

  They rode in silence through fading darkness. When Hawkstone saw the dark shadow of his lean-to one-bedroom shack, he turned the chestnut to the left to skirt round the back. Twenty yards beyond began the strand of pines. He circled so the pines stood between him and the house. Black Feather followed. Back beyond the pines, they dismounted. Hawkstone located the rusty shovel. With Black Feather watching, he paced off fifty steps to an open trench and started to dig. Two feet down the shovel hit the canvas bank bag with worm holes. Hawkstone pulled it up and opened it. Cut-up newspaper from three years ago showed inside. He set the bag on the ground. Under the bag was a tin box. When he opened the lid a wood box showed inside. He opened that, and fingered the cash.

  A man coughed in the house. He grumbled something.

  A woman murmured in a voice thick with sleep, ‘I don’t hear nothin’.’

  Lantern light flickered through pine trunks from the back window. Chairs scraped. The man coughed again. ‘I tell ya, somebody is out there.’

  ‘Nothin’ is out there,’ the woman said. ‘Come back to bed. I got this itch.’

  ‘Don’t he get out soon?’

  ‘He won’t come here. You’re too mean for him.’

  ‘It’s his house. He’ll be comin’ for the money. I swear he’s got it hidden somewhere in here. Mebbe he’ll want to take care of your itch.’

  ‘Nobody does that good as you. Come on. Leave the lantern lit. Here, have yourself a good look.’

  ‘Damn,’ he said.

  ‘You like what you see? Come here to mama. Get yourself in this bed.’

  Grunts came from the house.

  Hawkstone left the open hole unfilled, leaving the empty, wormy bank canvas bag. He carried the metal box and the money-stuffed wooden box to the mare, and shoved them in saddle-bags. He nodded away from the pines and mounted. Black Feather threw his leg on to his pinto.

  A high, long scream came from the house. ‘Oh, Pine, you’re the best,’ the woman cried.

  ‘Better’n him?’ the man asked.

  ‘Oh, way better.’ She screamed again.

  Hawkstone eased the chestnut away, while Black Feather chuckled.

  ‘That will be Big Ears Kate doing what she does best – lying,’ Hawkstone said as they rode off.

  Sunrise greeted them back at the old woman’s wickiup. She had scrambled eggs and antelope strips in a pan over the campfire. The girl, Hattie Smooth Water, helped her spread wooden plates and stolen silver spoons on logs around the fire. Beyond the space humans gathered, while the half-wild wolf-dog, Volcano, lay staring, his gaze seldom leaving the princess maiden.

  Hawkstone watched the old woman move slowly – a great-grandmother she had to be, crawling towards ninety. By contrast, Hattie moved, sitting and standing,
with the lithe smoothness of dance steps. She watched Hawkstone tie the chestnut to a juniper. When he turned, she threw her arms around his neck and clung to him.

  ‘You are back to me, Anson. I am not a girl of sixteen any longer, I am a grown woman.’

  Hawkstone stepped away from her. ‘Almost,’ he said. ‘But can you cook?’

  Even the old woman allowed a slight smile.

  Hattie Smooth Water, the Chiricahua princess, indeed made Anson Hawkstone think of her as a woman – at least physically. The top of her head came to his chin. Her frame was long and willowy because of her youth, and her skin showed the smoothness of polished redwood. Her straight, shining black hair hung straight to her buckskin-covered waist. Dark, smoky, sultry, almond-shaped Apache eyes locked on his face and never left, with a bold, open, honest expectance.

  Food was dropped on their wooden plates, and they sat on logs to eat.

  Hattie said, ‘Now you will buy the horses so we can join together.’

  Hawkstone smiled at her. ‘I’m thinking maybe I’m too young to marry.’

  She used her thumb to push her hair behind her ear. ‘There will only be you, Anson, and I have waited long enough.’

  Black Feather said, ‘You talk foolishness, little girl.’

  The old woman looked up at Hawkstone. ‘You tell a Ben Franklin now.’

  Hawkstone said, ‘Twenty is the age of will, thirty the age of wit, forty the age of judgment.’

  Chapter Four

  Wharton City Marshal Leather Yates rode out to the Hawkstone house. The day eased up towards noon and was hot. He didn’t like riding in the heat. His barrel belly likely caused some discomfort for his horse, too. Over his striped shirt he wore a silk vest with the star badge prominent, while his pudgy hands held the reins. Cheek whiskers grew down from his temples to cover his sagging jowls. The hair had turned grey under his black bowler hat – too grey for a man not quite fifty, and not quite wealthy.

  But he might have a second chance at wealth.

  Ahead across the flat prairie he made out the shack against a shimmering horizon. He wondered if Anson Hawkstone had been there yet. The money surely waited where he had hidden it, unless Pine Oliver and Big Ears Kate had found the hiding place. There was something off-centre about that Pine Oliver – the marshal didn’t think it was his real name, and he reckoned the polecat was there for more than a poke at Big Ears Kate in a convict’s house – and maybe besides the hidden money. Yates had never met the man. Since it wasn’t quite noon, Kate might still be in night clothes and he’d get a good look at what was big besides her ears.

  The marshal election was coming up. He’d have to do the rounds again – glad handshake, buy merchants and the regular boys drinks to get their vote. He didn’t mind because there were advantages to being town marshal. One thing was free breakfast at the café with that cute Suzy running about with the coffee pot, and an occasional free drink was offered at Slim’s Saloon. For another he got a free poke with every new whore that came to town and joined the Gentlemen Kingdom run by Italian madam, Vicki Verona – usually real young and sure better looking than Vicki’s usual crop of buffaloes.

  Ahead he saw the house, with sunlight glaring against the front window. A tethered roan stood outside the door, its neck glistening in the noon-day sun from running.

  The marshal rode close. ‘Hello, the house!’

  The door opened and Billy Bob Crutch stepped out. ‘It’s Marshal Yates from town.’

  Billy Bob dressed trail hand, with a ten-gallon Stetson and wool vest, and his chest covered by a bright red kerchief. He carried double-draw Peacemakers. Half his left ear was missing. He was joined in front of the door by a slick, skinny gambler-type hombre with a weasel face and soft hands.

  ‘Step on down, Marshal,’ the hombre said. ‘Come in for coffee.’

  Billy Bob said, ‘Marshal Leather Yates, mebbe you don’t know him – this here is Pine Oliver. He’s been staying with Kate, sorta keeping her company.’

  As Marshal Yates swung down from the creaking saddle, he figured Pine carried an in-vest Derringer, as he did – no hip Colt like the marshal, though.

  Yates stepped inside the house looking for Big Ears Kate in her bedclothes. Either Anson Hawkstone lived like a pig three years ago, or these two had added litter over the two years they had squatted in his shack – around a rough table and four chairs were clothes, dirty dishes, greasy stove, fly-specked windows, empty whiskey bottles, wadded newspaper, tobacco spit – he reckoned Big Ears Kate as not much of a housekeeper, and he wouldn’t want howdy-do time or acquaintance conversation with her off the mattress. Some women affected a man that way. He decided not to sit – he stood just inside the door.

  Billy Bob said, ‘He come and got the money, Marshal. Sometime in the night he rode in and got a shovel someplace and dug it up and took it with him. We seen the hole out back at mid-morning – just a worm-eaten bank bag full of paper.’

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ Pine said.

  The marshal took the cup of coffee. ‘You didn’t go see?’

  ‘Kate was in one of her moods.’

  Big Ears Kate parted the curtain from the bedroom wearing a tight, faded blue travelling dress that covered her from throat to ankle but could not hide her ample curves. Besides her oval peachy face with rouge cheeks, her dominant feature – besides those curves – was the wild, sagebrush, corn-shaded hair that fluffed out and down and not only covered her large ears but both sides of her face. She took a cup of coffee and nodded to the marshal. ‘We might have been killed in our sleep, Marshal. That criminal was here to the house, digging out back by the pines – taking the money.’

  ‘It’s his house.’ The marshal had his fill of looking at her. Wearing that dress, what good was she? He was there for a purpose and he figured he ought to get on with it. To all three he said, ‘You know where he’s staying, don’t you?’

  Billy Bob said, ‘With the old Apache woman. I been watching the village. On my way into Wharton, I seen her and him come in in that old buckboard of hers. She picked him up from prison.’

  Marshal Leather Yates took another sip of coffee, while his eyes looked back to stare at Kate. ‘He’s there with the money. Don’t you think he’ll come back to revisit parts of Kate?’

  Pine took a step towards the marshal. ‘That ain’t there for him. And for nobody else, neither.’

  The marshal half smiled, as if the gambler-weasel thought he would actually make a move. There was something familiar about the polecat that he couldn’t quite grab. He shrugged. ‘Just sayin’ somebody ought to go on over there and take that money away from him.’

  ‘You go right ahead, Marshal,’ Billy Bob said. ‘The jasper’s too mean for me. And he’s got all them Apache around him. I don’t intend to get myself scalped over money I don’t know about. We never had chance to count or split the take. The bank told reporters fifty thousand. And no split. If the feds took twenty-five thousand, does that mean Hawkstone got another twenty-five? Or more? Or less? We don’t know.’

  ‘How come we don’t know, Billy Bob?’ Yates said.

  ‘He got hisself captured and never said how much or where it might be.’

  Leather Yates said, ‘And how come he got hisself captured, Billy Bob?’

  ‘Somebody shot off their big mouth to get freedom – One Eye Tim Brace or Wild Fletch Badger turned in poor Hawkstone to the feds so they could ride away free.’

  ‘Who shot off their big mouth around Wharton City?’

  Billy Bob blinked. ‘You think it was me?’

  Pine Oliver said, ‘I’ll get the money. I ain’t afraid of no Anson Hawkstone.’

  The marshal put his coffee cup down on one of the few table spaces, and frowned at Pine Oliver. ‘Just who the hell are you?’

  ‘I know I wasn’t part of that robbery three years ago – but I’ll be part of the next one coming up.’

  Billy Bob stiffened. ‘What next one?’

  The marshal squinted. ‘W
hat do you know? Who do you know?’

  Billy Bob looked back and forth, from Pine Oliver to the marshal, and shook his head. ‘Look, whatever you fellas got cooking, you can just leave me out. My robbin’ and killin’ days is over. I got me a sweet live-in whore and I don’t intend. . . .’

  The marshal said, ‘I don’t intend, neither. . . .’ He drew his Colt .45 Peacemaker and shot Billy Bob through the heart.

  The gunshot cracked inside the small shack. Billy Bob’s eyes widened as he jerked back, both hands over his bleeding chest. His ten-gallon hat flew off his balding head. Pine Oliver’s hand started under his vest. Big Ears Kate swung her arm behind her, then immediately brought it forward with a small revolver. She’d have to be next. Without really aiming, Yates fired, hitting Kate through the throat. She spun around and dropped the pistol as she bent and folded head first. By then, Pine Oliver had apparently had a change of mind. He pulled his hand from the vest empty, and raised it with the other.

  ‘I ain’t drawin’ on you, Marshal.’

  Breathing heavily, Yates kept the Colt on him. ‘You got maybe five seconds to tell me who you are, and what you been doing here with Kate.’

  ‘Can we see if she’s OK?’

  ‘She ain’t OK. She’s bleeding quicker’n a hand pump – gone beyond to wherever unpaid whores like her go.’

  ‘I got to see.’

  ‘You just threw out three seconds. Two more and you’re with her.’

  ‘OK, I ain’t Pine Oliver like I been tellin’ everybody. My name is Boot Hobson.’

  Yates squinted. The name sounded familiar, and the weasel face put with that name cleared the matter right up. ‘I got a poster on you in my office – five hundred dollars. You held up stages with Pearl Harp.’

  ‘She’s about to get released. We got somethin’ workin’ for when she gets here.’

  ‘Boot Hobson,’ Yates said.

  ‘So what happens now, Marshal?’

  ‘Now that we got a revenge killing here outta Hawkstone, I take you to jail and get my reward. Then we might rig an escape and talk about this thing you got with Pearl Harp. But right now you’re goin’ to help me burn this house to the ground. When them two bodies are cooled and crispy, you and me is gonna bury them so nobody knows until I’m ready. Hawkstone will get blamed. But first I’ll take that pea shooter in your vest – nice and slow.’