‘I already told you, banker,’ Hawkstone said, ‘and you can tell this to the marshal. There ain’t gonna be no arrests.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Saturday night, ten miles before Fort Webster, Hawkstone heard the whoop and holler of gathered men a quarter mile before he reached the horse change way station. When he left the bank, he slept four hours by the Rio Gila, and thought about riding the trail out of his way towards Fort McLane, to Rachel Good Squaw, the medicine woman. But that would take too long, and Black Feather waited.
At least twenty horses were tethered outside the one big room with attached living quarters; so many that the rail couldn’t hold them, so a rope string tie stretched from the rail to the corral fence. Two wagons sat across the road. Inside, blue uniforms dominated windows and the open door as young soldiers worked to out-shout each other. Four youthful women with experience beyond their years drank ‘corn liquor’ and laughed hollow and allowed themselves to get pawed. Hawkstone knew Black Feather would not be allowed inside. He’d be looking for the chestnut, knowing it was a two-day ride from Tucson. Beyond the strung horses and room noise, Black Feather stepped out on to the road and waved a hand. Hawkstone rode over and tied his chestnut to the corral fence next to the appaloosa stallion.
Together off their mounts, they watched a young pony soldier stagger out the door and vomit on his boots. They moved behind the end horse on the string.
‘They are bunched together,’ Black Feather said.
‘Who?’
‘This is where the regulators come to eat and drink. The three are in there now.’
In lantern light from the door and windows, Hawkstone pulled his Colt. He slid a cartridge into the chamber kept empty for the hammer to rest when moving about. The Peacemaker was so sensitive a bump or fall or fist fight might have the hammer send a bullet into a man’s leg or foot. Now, he needed all six – twelve shots with Black Feather’s Colt. The Winchester was too cumbersome for close quarters. He rotated the cylinder to make sure he had a full load. ‘We can’t take them inside.’
‘They drink apart from the blue bellies. They are not alone.’
Hawkstone frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The five murdering soldiers drink with them.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I watch them through the window. They are drunk and they brag. They show silver and gold they found in the village. It is as if they are an exclusive club, as if they share what they did with pride.’
Hawkstone saw the fire in Black Feather’s dark eyes, and stepped out from the end horse to the road. The soldier with vomit on his boots went back inside. Hawkstone looked hard at his blood brother. ‘I want them dead. I don’t want to know what they look like, or how they dress, or what spawned them, or what future they look to, or their plans or dreams or who or what they love. They got to die for what they done to our village. How do we get them out here?’
‘With bait.’
Hawkstone nodded. ‘The girl, Charlotte. The family lives in the back. There’s got to be another entrance. Cauley and Rose-Marie work the counter. The girl must be in there with the soldiers.’
‘You talk to the boy.’
‘Sled.’
Hawkstone moved away from the front of the building and went round the back. There was a porch with a roof at the back door. Sled, in pants only with bare feet, sat on a porch step smoking a rolled Bull Durham cigarette.
Sled looked up at Hawkstone and started to flip the cigarette, then stopped and nodded. ‘I know you. You come to visit a while back. You helped me with the team.’
‘The name is Hawkstone.’
‘You was with the Apache.’
‘He’s waiting by the horses.’ Hawkstone sat next to Sled on the step. He pulled the makings for his own smoke. ‘Sled, I got an ugly story to tell you about some men inside. I want you and Charlotte to help us out. You each got a five dollar gold piece if you do.’
Sled ran fingers through his tousled brown hair. ‘Who we got to shoot?’
‘Not shoot, bait. Me and my blood brother will do the shooting.’
Hawkstone told Sled about the village slaughter and plunder, told who did it, and where they now stood, laughing and showing trinkets and slapping each other with guffaws of pride in victory over savages who no longer belonged and had to be exterminated. The whole time Hawkstone talked, Sled nodded and smoked.
Leaving Sled, Hawkstone went unnoticed through the front door and among them. The room smelled like lilac, as sickly perfumed as a funeral parlor. Some soldiers didn’t bathe or splash on lilac water, and offered a different scent. A girl stumbled into his arms spreading her honeysuckle aroma and blinked with little success to get his face in focus. She was coming out of the top of her velvet red dress and a scar creased the side of her neck. She had squinty brown eyes and needed much paint to look pretty. She asked if she knew him, then stumbled away without an answer. He pushed through uniforms towards the counter where the eight men stood in a tight circle. Cauley broke past him without recognition, his face drawn with worry as he carried bottles of ‘corn liquor’ and glasses on a tray. The ma, Rose-Marie, stood behind the counter with her raw red hands clutching her neck to frame her drawn face. Her nervous eyes darted around the room, as if she felt surrounded by hostility.
Four of the eight men leaned back against the counter, faces flushed with drink, and friendly. The three civilian-dressed regulators wore their guns handy, one low, two high on their hip, all tied tight. Their friendly looks appeared false and did not show in their eyes. They studied the room, where each soldier stood, where the girls were. The five soldiers stood close on both sides of the regulators, their young eyes staring at soiled doves with hunger. All of them watched the fourteen year-old girl approach in her short pink calico dress.
One regulator leaned low to the girl cupping his ear with his hand. ‘Happy to meet you, Charlotte, I’m Whit. Show us what, sweetie?’
The girl stood on tip-toes to talk again in his ear. His palm rested flat on her back. The other men kept their eyes on her.
‘Out the back?’ Whit asked. ‘You want us to follow you? All of us?’ He stood straight. ‘Honey, you can’t be that experienced.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It ain’t like that. Well, not exactly. I wanna know who kisses best.’
A dark-skinned soldier pushed between the girl and Whit. ‘Hey, fellas, she’s only fourteen.’
‘She sure don’t look like no fourteen,’ Whit said. He leaned toward the girl again. ‘Sweetie, we can take care of any kissin’ business right here. No need to go outside.’ He moved his hand down her back.
Charlotte ducked away. ‘Too noisy,’ the girl said, ‘my ma and pa can see. Come on.’ She moved around the counter and danced towards a kitchen, bedroom and the back door.
The eight men looked at each other, shrugged, and followed Charlotte.
Hawkstone walked five steps behind them, the rawhide loop off his Colt. He watched their backs. The regulators looked in their early thirties. Not one of the soldiers appeared past twenty-five. As his breath quickened, Hawkstone eased out the Colt and had to ask himself, why? What would possess young army men to ride through a small village shooting children and women, and then steal whatever they might find? Did the mind behind their white skin hate the Apache that much? Or did they listen to tall tales by old sergeants about the evils of the heathen? None of it mattered now. The men were little more than moving targets. The soldiers had flaps on their holsters which would slow their draw. The regulators had to go first.
When they reached the back porch, Sled waited. ‘This is the way, boys.’
Sled and Charlotte took off at a run towards the string of horses, each five dollars richer. They ducked under the string and disappeared.
Black Feather stood in front of the men with his Colt in his hand. ‘You murdered and looted my little village,’ he said.
‘Fill your hands, buzzards,’ Hawkstone said coming down the steps
and moving to the right.
Whit grabbed his pistol. ‘It looks like we ain’t done with killing.’
Black Feather shot him through the head.
‘Over here, sheep dips,’ Hawkstone said.
All pistols came out. Hawkstone shot one, then another. They twisted and fell. Two of the three regulators died quick and first. Black Feather made each of two shots count. The snap of pistol fire caused horses to jump and yank against the string line until it broke. Dirt and dust from shuffling boots and falling men, and white gunsmoke clouded the back of the station as horses panicked and ran off down the road past the entrance. Men inside the building shuffled and shouted and demanded to know what was going on.
One soldier stared, his face wrinkled in tears, his eyes not believing, fiddling with the flap, his gun still in his holster. The third regulator next to him aimed at Hawkstone.
The soldier boy fumbled with his pistol and tried to get it clear.
‘Pull it out, son,’ Hawkstone said. ‘You got to pay like the others.’
Black Feather shot the boy through the back of his head. Hawkstone ducked as two bullets zinged and slipped past close to his temple. He returned fire and the regulator and two more soldiers stumbled and fell. Surprise and drunkenness kept them from being sharp, kept them from staying alive. Pistols dropped from their hands. Hawkstone fired against anyone on the ground moving. He kept at it until all six cartridges sent bullets into a body or head. Twenty seconds had passed. He was ready to reload but all three regulators and five young cavalry soldiers lay dead in the dirt.
Feet stomped as men came running out the front door. By then, Black Feather had already reached his appaloosa and swung his leg on up. Hawkstone had the chestnut running as he jumped into the saddle, ignoring pain from his healing wounds. They galloped as fast as their mounts could run away from the front of the building, riding hard towards the hills, towards the copper mines. Hawkstone saw Black Feather up ahead sway as the appaloosa pounded the dirt road in a fast run, and knew his blood brother had been hit.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Wharton City Marshal Leather Yates sat in his office chair listening to the groans and cries from the Apache they had found. The marshal’s desk was cluttered with old ‘Wanted’ posters and messages and filled-out complaint forms – work he had been too busy to address, what with holding up stagecoaches and lighting fires and shooting male and female culprits and raiding hostile villages and such. Since One Eye Tim Brace and Wild Fletch Badger were recognized deputies now – and too proud of their badges – the marshal didn’t have to ride to the Way Out Saloon for whispered meetings: they met locally at Slim’s Saloon, which carried higher class and even had three friendly upstairs women, or they met in the marshal’s office. The office, a lean-to connected to the much larger Gentlemen Kingdom building, run by Vicki Verona, stood about twenty-five feet wall to wall with the desk and chair, three wooden armed guest chairs and a locked cabinet holding old rim-fire rifles and a double-barrel twelve gauge. All windows had bars. Down a sixteen-foot hallway were the two eight-foot barred cells, with the Apache in one of them, getting worked over by One Eye Tim Brace and Wild Fletch Badger.
Wild Fletch came into the office from the cell rubbing the buckskin leather glove-covered knuckles of his right fist. His cheek puffed with a wad of tobacco. He turned his head to spit.
‘Use the spittoon,’ Yates said.
Fletch tried but missed. ‘The neck is too small. You need a bucket.’
‘You spit all over my cell block floor?’
‘Not too much. We got his name. He’s called Burning Buffalo. When we hauled him from the funeral fire, I reckon the old woman burning was like the matriarch, like the leader of the village that once was. Mebbe this Burning Buffalo was the last of the village hostiles.’
‘No. The late Anson Hawkstone’s young sidekick, Black Feather, is lurking about someplace. Mebbe gettin’ ready to dig up that payroll cash, plus the ten thousand from the Mineral City bank job three years ago. We got to deal with him soon.’ The marshal sat stiff. ‘Uh oh.’
They watched through the barred window as a man with a handlebar mustache stomped with purpose to the door and came in. He stood in front of the desk, his flat round face shining bright red with anger under the black bowler hat.
‘Marshal!’ he said. ‘If you don’t do somethin’, I’m gonna shoot somebody dead.’
The marshal held up his chubby hands. ‘Now, Piver, ain’t no use gettin’ in a tizzy fit.’
‘You got my complaint there in that pile on your desk. I tell you his fence is two feet across my property. I told him and told him but he don’t pay no attention.’
‘Got it right here, Piver.’ Yates slid papers around and glanced at Wild Fetch, who stood quiet. The marshal gave up looking. ‘I’ll get right on it.’
Piver glanced at Wild Fletch. He squinted when a groan came from the cell out behind the office. He looked back at the marshal. ‘You been away so much, some of us wonder why we re-elected you. How come you don’t stay in town and mind the business here?’
Yates pushed his bulk back out of the chair. He waddled around the desk and patted Piver on the shoulder. ‘I will. I had out-of-town business to tend to, but from now on what happens in Wharton City will be my top concern. You get what I’m saying, Piver? You understand?’
Piver sighed. ‘Well, that fence has got to go. When you gonna tell him?’
‘Today, or first thing tomorrow morning.’ Yates put his arm around Piver’s shoulders and eased him to the door. ‘Now, you go on over to Slim’s and get yourself a good stiff drink, on me – how is Amy, that sweet darlin’ wife of yours?’
‘Just as upset about that fence as me. Marshal, you got to. . . .’
‘I know, I know, and I will.’ Yates got Piver out the door and headed for Slim’s Saloon.
Wild Fletch said, ‘Want me to look into it, Marshal?’
Marshal Leather Yates jerked straight and leaned back against the door, his brow wrinkled in surprise. ‘You?’
‘I’m a deputy. It’s part of my job.’
‘You, a deputy? You ain’t that kind of deputy. You’re a hired killer deputy, and don’t you forget it.’
Wild Fletch tapped his badge. ‘This here says I’m a regular lawman. I can do all the normal stuff a lawman does. I can. I want to prove it.’
The marshal returned to stand by his desk. ‘Just prove you ain’t as stupid as your sidekick in there. Come on. Let’s hope One Eye hasn’t killed the savage yet.’
Back by the cell, Yates saw the savage in a heap on the cell floor. Burning Buffalo had a lot of blood around him. One Eye stood tall and turned to them, breathing hard, his gloved fists doubled, stained with blood. His hat was on the cot and he looked like a one-eyed scarecrow.
Wild Fletch said, ‘What you find out?’
The one eye blinked as his breathing slowed. ‘I don’t answer to you, dung spitter.’ He jabbed his tin star with his thumb. ‘I’m a deputy jest like you.’
Wild Fletch bit a plug of tobacco. ‘I got seniority. I got made deputy afore you.’
The marshal said, ‘Don’t be slippin’ off the rails, boys. The payroll – we got to think about the payroll we didn’t find on the stagecoach.’ He nodded to the Apache on the floor. ‘What’d he tell you?’
One Eye stared at Wild Fletch as if waiting for the first spit. ‘I got equal seniority. Marshal, you tell him we’re the same level of deputy.’
Marshal Leather Yates sighed exasperated. ‘I’ll yank them badges from the pair of you and shove ’em where no light ever reaches. You fellas got to be thinkin’ what’s important – and it ain’t tin stars shinin’ on your vest. Do we know where Black Feather’s tepee used to stand?’
‘Not yet,’ One Eye said. ‘He’s an Injun, he ain’t saying a hell of a lot.’
Yates looked from one to the other, then at the lump on the cell floor. ‘The money is buried someplace in that village. I figure somebody got the shot-up villa
ge bodies buried by now, or they’re at it. We got to take shovels out there, and you deputies start digging. It’s either under where Black Feather’s tepee stood, or someplace next to the old woman’s wickiup. Bring good shovels ’cause you got some holes to dig. We’ll find it, boys, I know we will. We deserve it.’
One Eye kicked the curled bulk of Burning Buffalo. ‘I’ll get him to talk. He knows where the cash is.’
‘I need some coffee,’ the marshal said, ‘laced with good spirit.’ He waddled down the hall back to his desk chair, and poured coffee and whiskey in a cup half-and-half. With a grimace he rubbed the back of his leg at the dog bite – it stiffened his leg on occasion, the way a cramp had a man pounding his foot and rubbing to get rid of it. He sat, while the noise of the beating continued in the cell. He rifled through papers looking for Piver’s complaint, then gave up and tossed the papers aside.
When the second cup of coffee was about done, the marshal nodded, eyelids heavy, his pudgy hands resting on his ample belly, his pork-chop whiskers bobbing with his head, a snore coming out. He no longer listened to the beating. He dreamed of young girls at Gentlemen Kingdom next door, of him having the youngest just starting out. He remembered the young girl by the river, Hattie Smooth Water. She’d been brand new and he’d been first. He’d carry the fond memory for the rest of his life. He’d never been first before with anyone. He relived each moment with her, smiling because of the details. His teeth clamped tight when he caught the vision of what Wild Fletch Badger did to her. The gunslinger should have died for that. Not too late. He saw a future minus his two deputies. Someday. Soon. When they found the money.
One Eye Tim Brace came down the hallway from the cell. He bounced from wall to wall as if he was drunk. A gag came out of him as if he was about to vomit. He stumbled into the office, bumped into the side of the desk and fell, more than sat, in an office chair. ‘Christ,’ he said. His face was white as sheep wool. The one eye stared big as a quarter. ‘The Injun went and died on us.’ The cavity looked like the inside of a small ashtray, always carrying dirt and dust and debris of one kind or another.
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