Tin Star

by Jackson Lowry

  “Drop the gun, Audrey. Surrender and I’ll take you in. I’m taking you in and you’re going to prison for a long, long time—if the judge doesn’t sentence you to hang!”

  Luke jerked back. He had made another mistake. In spite of her obvious familiarity with a six-gun, he dismissed it all in his rush to humiliate her for all she had done to him. He scrambled behind the wall of brush until he came to a dead one to shoot through. Luke swung his gun back and forth, hunting for a target.

  Audrey was nowhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  LUKE STEPPED OUT from behind his shrub cover, wary that he walked into an ambush. He turned his good ear toward the camp. He heard the slow rain causing a loud hiss as it extinguished the campfire. In the distance the thudding of a galloping horse receded. Audrey had eluded him.

  He made a quick circuit of the camp. Benedict’s gear was untouched. Audrey hadn’t wasted an instant heading for the hidden gold once she killed Benedict. Luke stopped and stared at the outlaw’s body. He shook his head sadly. This would have been him if he had stayed with Audrey even a day longer.

  “Thanks,” Luke said. “You don’t know it but you saved my life.” He touched the spot on his chest where Benedict had shot him. “I only wish I’d been the one to put you in the ground.”

  He resisted the urge to kick Benedict. Audrey had done that for him. Truth was, she had done more than kick him. Luke paused, considering how long it would take to bury the outlaw. It was more than he deserved.

  Memory of the last hoofbeats fading away decided him. Let the wolves and coyotes and buzzards take care of Mal Benedict.

  “Just don’t get sick on the putrid meat,” he said. A quick spin oriented him. He’d have to ride through a storm, at night, following a woman whose only goal was to recover gold from a bank robbery before hightailing it north. Uncertainty and danger were going to be his trail companions, but he had come this far. Luke Hadley wasn’t the kind to quit. He touched the bloody spot on his chest to reassure himself of that. Twice he’d been shot there and twice he had survived.

  She had mentioned Canada, he remembered. Or one of the gang had. Rhoades had intended to go south into Indian Territory, but she had suggested the opposite direction. Once she retrieved the gold, she had no reason to follow any plan laid out by Rollie Rhoades.

  It took him close to fifteen minutes to find his horse and convince it to leave a nice patch of succulent blue grama. He tugged and slapped and spoke softly and yelled. Finally the old horse gave in and let him hit the trail after Audrey.

  Luke pulled down his hat and turned it just a little so the hole in the brim leaked water to the side of his face. The warm rain turned colder as he rode, and all too soon he began to ache and downright hurt all over. Worst was his half-shot-off ear. He had never been a vain man, or so he told himself, but showing his face in public now meant ridicule. Children would point and snicker and women would turn away to avoid looking at him directly. In his day he had seen enough men with wounds worse than this. A few jokes at his expense tested how he reacted. If he ever showed that it hurt him, he’d either be an outcast or have to practice his draw. Survive a few drunks insulting him, buy a few rounds, then he’d fit in.

  Among those similarly shot up or deformed.

  He pulled his hat down a little tighter around his head. The brim scraped the ragged top of his left ear to remind him what Audrey had cost him. Finding her and the gang had almost taken his life. When he finally caught up with her, nothing more mattered.

  “There, go there,” he said to his horse. The stolid animal changed direction slowly. It slogged through fetlock-deep puddles and kept moving. Luke lifted his face as a lightning bolt ripped through the sky.

  In the afterimage he saw a solitary rider. Audrey? He wasn’t able to tell because of the sheets of rain and the distance, but who else braved the elements this night? He tried to spur the horse to a quicker gait. It refused. Its one speed suited it, and that meant it had to suit Luke, too.

  He wanted a mount that flew. He wanted this to be over. Most of all he wanted to reach a point in his life where he no longer thought of Audrey or their wedding or anything to do with her. Recovering the stolen loot from the bank robbery meant less than simply washing his hands of her.

  His hand moved and touched his gun butt. How he won free of her was still something to determine. As he rode in the rain, the sound of drops spattering against his brim stole away any chance to hear her horse. The increasing number of lightning bolts and the thunder rumbling from them made his ears ring almost constantly. Worse, the flashes and noise spooked his otherwise staid horse.

  Riding in his own bubble, the world of storm enveloping him, he began to dream of the map on Marshal Hargrove’s desk. The marshal had been sure the Rhoades gang was planning a bank robbery, but not in his Podunk town. That hadn’t stopped him from trying to figure where the real robbery would take place. Hargrove had been all het up because of the way station being burned to the ground and the deaths of three locals. In his way, he had better reason to come after the gang than Marshal Wilkes, and it had been his town suffering the robbery.

  The thought of the map caused Luke to strain to remember more details. Where he had killed Rhoades had been marked with one X. Others around it had to mean something. Hiding places favored by the outlaws? He got his bearings before the heavy rain started and headed for another of the X’s on that map.

  Since Audrey rode the same direction, and she claimed Rhoades had spilled the beans about where he had stashed the gold, he felt more confident about continuing the hunt in spite of the foul weather.

  Trying to remember the map suddenly became a moot point. He heard the spark of a horse’s hooves against rock. It came through the steady drone of the rain clear and sweet. His horse turned toward the sound, and he spotted a dim figure ahead. The sheets of water and the dark prevented him from identifying the rider. He nudged his horse to a slightly faster gait, knowing this was about the maximum speed the plow horse had in him.

  To this point he hadn’t considered the best way of proceeding. The gold mattered very little to him. He still had a small fortune, for him, in gold dust sewn into his battered coat. What penalty to extract from Audrey tore at him, though.

  “Had loved her.” His words were buried under a thunderclap. He wished his confused emotions were as easily hidden. Somehow, a new crackle of lightning working its way from cloud to cloud and turning the landscape into a purpled haze decided him.

  He reached the rocky patch that had betrayed the woman. Finding her trail amid the rocks proved easy, even for a novice trailsman like himself. The path through the rocks was limited as it worked higher on a hill. As he rode, he fumbled about in his coat pocket and found the fake tin star. He worked the leather backing down into a vest pocket so the star with its bullet hole rode on his chest, as if he were a real lawman. He might pretend, but for a short time he would work as a real Pinkerton agent.

  Reaching the crest of the hill gave a strange view of the plains all around. As the wind whipped the clouds about, curtains of rain drew back and showed the prairie in black and white. He sat a bit straighter when he saw movement far to the north. He settled down when he realized he saw a small herd of buffalo weathering the storm, moving slowly, heads lowered and downwind.

  He caught his breath when he looked along the ridge in the other direction. A horse tethered to a tree limb tugged and whinnied and tried to break free and run. The vivid bolts and snapping thunder spooked it. But its rider was nowhere to be seen.

  Luke dismounted and walked his horse. For all the weather, the horse remained sedate. Not much spooked it. He swung the reins around the limb next to those of Audrey’s horse and studied the ground. Footprints on a muddy trail were so fresh they hadn’t even filled with water.

  He rested his hand on the butt of his Schofield. Months tracking Audrey, praying she was still alive
, came to a sorry conclusion now. Taking the same trail, he almost slipped in his haste. He slowed and then stopped when he saw a figure crouched ahead. Two trees bent toward each other, forming an X. Directly under the intersection someone had built a small rock cairn.

  Advancing slowly, he drew his pistol and let it hang loose at his side.

  “That’s real smart,” he said. “Hide the gold in what looks like somebody’s grave. Nobody who doesn’t know what’s there is likely to dig it up. And it’s easy enough to find.”

  Audrey spun about so fast, she lost her balance and sat heavily on a grassy patch. She reached for her pistol, then saw Luke raise his six-gun. He cocked it to let her know how close she came to getting plugged.

  “Luke! I—”

  “You didn’t expect to see me because you shot me down like you did Benedict?”

  “He made me do terrible things, Luke. You saw what power he had. He controlled me. I was helpless!”

  He moved a little closer. She had removed the rocks where the corpse’s feet would be. A slab of wood caught the rain and sent droplets bouncing.

  “You want to go on and open the grave?”

  “I don’t know what got into me. It’s wrong to desecrate a grave.”

  “Stop it! I’m not that stupid. I fell for your lies. I even asked you to marry me. That’s all crazy and dumb. But I’m not so dumb that I don’t know what’s hidden here. Rhoades told you where to find the stolen gold, and that’s it.”

  “Look, Luke, I still have it. I’m wearing your wedding ring.” She held up her left hand. A flash of lightning reflected off a tiny gold band.

  He swung his six-gun around and fired. The bullet kicked up mud and grass between Audrey’s reaching hand and her pistol.

  “I swear, if you’d not gone for your gun, I’d have been fool enough to take you back.”

  She shifted her weight to her knees and knelt as if praying. Her face burned with contempt for him.

  “Now who’s the liar? You came hunting for me to kill me.” She turned her head a little and looked at his chest, then locked her gaze with his. “That’s a badge. You’re a deputy?”

  “It’s a Pinkerton badge.”

  “No!”

  This produced more reaction from her than he expected. It both pleased him that it agitated her so and also made him a bit sorry for her.

  “What’s the agency want you for? What’d you do back in Chicago?”

  She spat.

  “You’re one of them Pinks. Allan sent you to find me, so you know what they want me for. I’m not going back. Not ever, and you can’t make me.” She lowered her head, then looked back at him. “No more lies, Luke. You know I don’t love you. You know that me and Mal were married for more than a year and that makes our wedding a fraud.”

  “Why are you trying to get me to shoot you?” His hand trembled the slightest amount. The rain was slowing and the intense lightning moved farther south. In another half hour there wouldn’t be any hint in the sky above that the storm had ever existed. The stars would show and the clear sky would show the best a Kansas summer night had to offer.

  “I’m not. I think we can be partners—not lovers!” She looked panicked at that notion. His stomach did a flip. She rushed on with her plea. “We’re survivors, me and you. I don’t know how you kept from dying with so many bullets in you, but you did.” She peered hard at his chest, just to the right of the star rising and falling with his heavy breathing.

  Luke stiffened when he saw her look away from him and her eyes go wide. Not much, but not subtle, either. He feinted right and dived left as three shots tore through the air where his head had been.

  “If you don’t die with a bullet to the heart, I’ll blow your fool head off!” The voice was one he recognized all too well.

  More bullets sought to perforate his hide. He hit the ground and skidded along. Jerking hard, he twisted around. Pain shot through his tortured body. Then he sprawled on his back, furious at what he saw.

  “Benedict! How’d you survive?”

  “She shot me but like everything else, she never finished the job.” Benedict kept firing until the hammer fell on a spent chamber.

  Luke struggled to sit up. Waves of pain blasted through him. He lifted his six-gun using both hands and got off a shot. He missed by a mile, but he forced Benedict to look up. For an instant he stopped working to reload his Colt.

  “I won’t miss this time,” Luke promised. “Rhoades outdrew me, but I was the better shot. And by the stars above, I will not miss you.” His hand steadied and a coldness seeped into him. This had to be what gunfighters felt in a fight. No nerves, confidence, even the arrogance that they were good enough to take another man’s life.

  “Don’t listen to him, Mal. Kill him!” Audrey scurried about, hunting for her pistol in the dark.

  Luke looked from her back to Benedict and knew where the real danger lay. He fired at the outlaw again. This time he either winged his target or came close enough to send him blundering away into the night. Scissoring his legs in a powerful kick gave him enough momentum to turn over and come to his hands and knees. From there, he climbed to his feet.

  “You might be a cat and have nine lives, but I’ll take them one by one till you ain’t got anything left!” Benedict snapped the gate on his six-shooter shut with a click as loud as a gunshot.

  The threat allowed Luke to home in on where Benedict had taken cover. Bushes moved just a bit to tell him he was being gulled into thinking the outlaw was in one place when he was a yard away. But which way? If he fired, the muzzle flash would give away his position in the dark.

  “Shoot him, Mal. Don’t let him take the gold!”

  Luke glanced at Audrey. She still searched for her gun. Of all the things she might have done, she chose the worst. If she’d kept her mouth shut, Luke would have ignored her and kept after Benedict. As it was, she goaded her husband on to kill the man who’d have let her live. Luke knew there wasn’t any chance after what she’d done that Benedict would let her live. However much gold had been buried spent a whole lot better if one hand passed over the gold coins rather than two.

  Moving deliberately, he tried to get Benedict to give himself away. The outlaw was too cagey for that. The bush moved again. Droplets of water from the rain cascaded off the leaves. Luke still couldn’t see where Benedict waited in ambush.

  The longer he waited, the more dangerous his position became. If Audrey found her pistol, there’d be two guns trained on him, and they’d have him in a cross fire. Though he knew she would shoot Benedict if she had the chance, the woman’s treachery knew no bounds. Both he and Benedict—her two husbands—were corpses with a gun in her grip.

  She was dangerous. Benedict was the real threat. Luke judged how far on either side of the moving bush a man might hide. He fanned one round off to the left, spun and fanned another round the same distance to the right. The second shot rewarded him with a grunt. Then Benedict blazed away. The foot-long tongues of orange flame gave him away as surely as Luke’s firing had flushed him like a quail.

  The difference was in mobility. Benedict had lain flat on the ground to set his trap. Luke, as painful as it was for him, moved away from his initial position. He advanced until a silhouette formed to his right.

  He fired twice more. This time Benedict cried out in utter pain. Then came silence. Deathly silence.

  “Mal! Are you hurt, Mal?”

  Luke swung back to the woman. She had her pistol in her hand. She froze when she saw that Luke had the drop on her.

  “I need to poke him to be sure, but I suspect Benedict is more than hurt. I finished off the chore you started back at your hideout.”

  “You got me all wrong, Luke. They held me prisoner!”

  “You said no more lies.”

  “All right. What I was saying before is that we can split the gold. We can
each go our separate way, but together we can get rich. We can use the gold as a stake to buy a ranch. Not a farm. Cattle. We can raise a whole herd of longhorns. That’s where the money is, in beef. Or we can go to San Francisco. You can use the money to stake yourself in poker games. You’re smart. You can clean the lot of them tinhorn gamblers out in nothing flat.”

  “I don’t know how to play poker.”

  “I can show you. Partners, Luke, we can be partners!”

  “That’s enough of your lying, Audrey. I don’t want to hear another word.”

  He lifted his six-gun and pointed it squarely at her. He had moved close enough so he couldn’t miss. His finger had drawn back on the trigger when he heard movement behind him.

  A cold voice said, “Drop the gun, Hadley. Drop it or I drop you!”

  He hesitated. A single quick jerk on the trigger ended Audrey’s miserable existence. What else did he have to prove?

  “Luke, he means it.” This was another voice he recognized.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Marta Shearing stood beside Marshal Wilkes. Both had their guns drawn and aimed at him. She lowered hers. The lawman drew a bead. Luke took a deep breath, eased down the hammer on his six-gun and slipped it into his holster. He turned, hands raised.

  “She’s yours,” he said, not sure who he directed it to. From the delighted expression on her face, Marta got custody.

  “You’re gonna pay!” Audrey shrieked.

  Luke heard Audrey moving, then crashed forward facedown onto the ground. Her weight kept him from moving. She pinned his shoulder down with her knees. The hiss of a knife slipping from a sheath told him what was next. She had stabbed him in the back before, but not with a steel blade. This time she’d finish the job that Rhoades and Benedict had failed at before.

  Fight or die. Those were his only options. He grunted as he pushed straight up against her weight. Muscles strained and popped but he wasn’t going to die like this. As suddenly as Audrey’s weight had crushed him, it disappeared.