Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter Dead Shot

by William W. Johnstone

  “Well, I don’t guess anybody can blame you for shootin’ him. He was gunnin’ for you, no matter what the reason, and if he’d pulled those triggers he likely would’ve killed poor Philomena, too. So I reckon you saved her life.” Dunbar paused. “You really weren’t up to anything with the gal when this gent busted in?”

  “I swear I wasn’t, Marshal. She was giving me a shave, that’s all.”

  Dunbar grunted. “You’re lucky ol’ Felipe ain’t a better shot. You can’t blame him for jumpin’ to the wrong conclusion when he went rushin’ in.”

  “Even with a dead man halfway in the tub, too?” Luke asked.

  “I don’t imagine he saw much of anything just then except his daughter and a naked gringo old enough to be her daddy.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Luke said with a sigh. “Don’t worry, Marshal, I don’t bear any ill will toward Señor Ortiz for taking a shot at me. These things happen.”

  Dunbar gave him a skeptical look. “It seems like they do around you, anyway.”

  Since Luke’s shave had gotten interrupted, Ortiz finished it in the barber chair once Calvin the undertaker had shown up to haul away the corpse. Ortiz tried to apologize for the misunderstanding, but Luke assured him that everything was all right. Ortiz told him that the bath and the shave were on the house, considering the circumstances, but Luke insisted on paying and added a nice tip to the sum.

  With that taken care of, he took his Winchester and saddlebags and walked across to the Rio Rojo Hotel, newly owned by the Widow Vanderslice. It was a two-story adobe building with a red tile roof and a balcony with decorative wrought iron railings along the second floor. Plants in pots hung from chains attached to that balcony where it formed a roof over the first floor gallery. The warm yellow glow of lamplight filled many of the windows.

  As Luke signed the registration book for the clerk at the desk in the lobby, he commented, “I was sorry to hear about the owner’s passing.”

  The young man nodded and pushed up the pair of spectacles that had slid down his nose. “Yes, Mr. Vanderslice was a good man to work for. He was one of the first American settlers in Rio Rojo, you know. But he’s been sick for quite a while, so his death came as no surprise. Still, it’s a sad day, Mr. . . . Jensen, is it?”

  “That’s right,” Luke said.

  The clerk’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You’re the man who brought in that dead outlaw earlier.”

  Luke nodded. “I am.”

  “I heard some shots a little while ago. Did you have anything to do with that?”

  Luke didn’t see any point in lying. The whole story would be all over town in no time, anyway. He knew how quickly gossip spread in little settlements like Rio Rojo. “A fellow tried to kill me. I discouraged him—permanently.”

  “There won’t be anything like that happening here in the hotel, will there?” the clerk asked nervously.

  “I doubt it.”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “Nothing is certain in this life,” Luke said. “If you’d prefer, I can seek other accommodations.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” the clerk said with a wan smile. “We’ll just hope for the best.”

  “I always do.”

  The clerk gave him the key to room eight. “To your left at the top of the stairs.”

  Luke carried up his gear. It was a good enough room, clean and with a bed that looked comfortable, along with a woven rug on the floor. The single window opened onto the balcony and overlooked the street. He didn’t care much for that. People had climbed onto balconies and taken shots at him through windows in other towns. But he figured the odds of somebody else in Rio Rojo being after him were pretty small, so he decided not to do anything about it at the moment.

  He thought he might make a pallet on the floor on the other side of the bed when he got back from supper and heap some pillows and blankets under the covers to make it look like a man was sleeping there, just in case.

  Marshal Dunbar had recommended Slade’s Restaurant in the next block. Luke was there eating a decent steak a little while later when the lawman came in, looked around the room, spotted him, and started toward him.

  “Avery at the hotel said you got a room and then left again but didn’t take your things with you, so I figured you’d gone to eat,” Dunbar said without any preamble. “I went through all the wanted posters in my desk, but I didn’t find that hombre with the shotgun. If he really is wanted, I don’t have paper on him, so I don’t reckon you can claim a reward on him.”

  “I’ll kill a man for free any time he’s trying to blast me with a shotgun,” Luke said dryly.

  Dunbar grunted. “Yeah, I reckon that makes sense.” He pulled out one of the vacant chairs at the table and sat down without being invited. “I sent that telegram to the Rangers in Texas. Don’t really expect to hear back from ’em until in the mornin’, though. How much of a reward did you say you was due for that fella Epps?”

  “Five thousand.”

  “Our bank ought to be able to cover that. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Rio Rojo ain’t very big. But we’re sittin’ right between some prime ranchin’ country to the north and some good producin’ silver mines to the south, so the bank does pretty well for itself. Has to keep considerable cash on hand for payrolls and such-like. Not to mention the occasional bounty.”

  “Have you ever had to pay one out before?” Luke asked in idle curiosity.

  “No, can’t say as we have. But there’s got to be a first time for everything, don’t there?” Dunbar laughed, but he didn’t really sound amused. “Hell, you might even get through a day without bein’ shot at.”

  “It could happen. But I don’t think I’m going to hold my breath waiting for it.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Luke still felt vaguely unsatisfied when he was finished with his meal, even though the food was good. The marshal had left after commenting that it would be nice if nobody else got killed tonight. Luke had agreed with that sentiment, but hadn’t made any promises.

  Pausing on the street outside the restaurant, he fished a cigar out of his pocket and struck a match to light it. When he had puffed the cheroot to life, he shook out the match and dropped it in the dust at his feet.

  The cigar was good, but it didn’t take care of the restlessness inside him. That left only two possibilities—a drink or a woman.

  Fortunately, there was a good chance both cravings might be satisfied at the same place, he thought as he looked up and down the street and his gaze came to rest on an adobe building with the word Cantina painted above its arched entrance. He moseyed in that direction, smoking the cheroot as he ambled along the street.

  The door to the cantina was open, allowing music and smoke to drift out into the night. The music came from the strings of a guitar being plucked by an expert musician. The smoke was a mixture of tobacco and the sweeter odor of hemp.

  With the cigar clenched between his teeth, Luke went through the little alcove at the entrance and pushed past a beaded curtain into the cantina’s main room. Unlike many such establishments he had visited, it had a real plank floor instead of hard-packed dirt. Candles had been stuck in the necks of empty wine bottles standing on several of the tables. The bar ran along the back of the room.

  In a rear corner near it, sat the guitar player. An old man, he stared straight ahead, and his milky eyes told Luke that he was blind. His fingers were bent and gnarled with age, but that didn’t stop them from moving over the guitar strings faster than the eye could follow as he coaxed lovely strains of music from the instrument.

  The cantina was fairly busy, with a dozen men drinking at the bar and at least that many at the tables scattered around the room. Luke scanned their faces, but didn’t spot anyone familiar. A number of the men glanced at him and he saw recognition in their eyes, but it probably came from watching him bring in the body of Monroe Epps a couple hours earlier.

  No one reacted violently to his entrance, and that was the only thi
ng that really mattered to him. Any time he stepped into a new place, especially a saloon or a cantina, he had to be ready for the possibility that somebody might recognize him and slap leather. Danger went with the job.

  It was possible none of the men in the cantina paid much attention to him because they were all busy watching the woman dancing to the music of the old, blind guitar player. She wore a dark red blouse even more low-cut than the one Philomena had worn. Several bracelets around each slender wrist clicked together as she swayed her arms above her head. Her long skirt lifted and swirled to the movement of her muscular brown legs. Waves of thick dark hair tumbled all the way down her back.

  She was darker skinned than Philomena, with more Indian blood mixed with the Spanish. The most important difference as far as Luke was concerned, though, was she was a full-grown and full-blown woman, while Philomena was still a girl.

  She twirled and spun toward him, and her lithe, agile movements suddenly faltered for an instant as their eyes met. The break in her rhythm was so tiny most of the spectators in the cantina didn’t notice, although Luke did. The dancer twisted away and began clapping her hands over her head as she worked her way back toward the guitar player.

  Luke walked across the room to the bar, where a lean man with a pockmarked face stood on the other side of the hardwood and asked, “Drink, señor?” The man’s left ear was missing its lower half.

  The severity of the scar told Luke that someone had carved it off with a knife.

  “Cerveza,” he said. Some instinct told him he would be wise to keep his wits about him, so it was smart to stick to beer.

  He had learned to listen to his instincts.

  The bartender drew a glass of beer and pushed it across the bar. Luke tossed down a coin to pay for it, then picked up the glass and half turned to watch the dancer as he sipped the warm, bitter brew.

  “Her name is Magdalena,” the bartender said. “And do not waste your breath asking if her time is for sale. She goes only with those she chooses. Anyone else risks danger even by approaching her.”

  “Is that so?” Luke asked wryly.

  The bartender touched his mutilated left ear. “I grew too bold with her one night and she gave me this. I watched her night after night from behind this bar, and my blood grew so enflamed that I was willing to risk the danger.”

  “Do you still feel that way?”

  “Sometimes . . . but then I remember the cold fire of her steel.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Luke sipped the beer and watched Magdalena dance.

  When the old man stopped playing, she gave a defiant toss of her long, midnight hair to bring the dance to a conclusion. Men whooped and applauded. Her face was expressionless, as if she didn’t hear any of the acclaim. She was not exactly beautiful, Luke thought, but any man who looked at her would have a hard time looking away, and not just because of her lush body.

  He wasn’t surprised when she came straight toward him, pacing across the room like one of the great cats that roamed the mountains south of the border. He had seen something flicker in her eyes during that brief moment they had shared. Disappointed noises came from some of the men in the room, as if they had been hoping she would choose them.

  One of the customers, a burly man with a jutting beard who looked like he might be a miner or a bullwhacker, started to his feet and reached for her as Magdalena walked past the table where he sat. “Wait just a damned minute.”

  Luke would have stepped in to teach the man a lesson in manners, but he didn’t have to. Before the man could touch her, she whirled around and her hand lashed out. The man jerked his hand back, yelping in pain. Bright red blood welled from a cut on the back of his hand.

  Magdalena turned and walked away as if nothing had happened.

  Luke caught a glimpse of the little knife in her hand, but then it disappeared and he couldn’t tell what she did with it.

  The wounded man sank back onto his chair, muttering as he nursed his bleeding hand. His friends at the table with him laughed, and one of them offered a bandanna to tie up the injury.

  Magdalena walked up to Luke and asked in English, “Do I know you?”

  “I doubt it. I’ve never been in Rio Rojo before today.”

  “Perhaps in another life, then. I feel strongly that we have been together before.”

  He shrugged. “It may be true. There are many mysteries in life.”

  “And many things that are true, like what happens between a man and a woman.”

  “Perhaps the greatest truth of all,” Luke said.

  She put a hand on his arm. “Will you come with me?”

  “A man would be a fool not to. But you have a certain . . . reputation.”

  Amusement flashed in her eyes. “Did that fool of a bartender tell you I cut off his ear?”

  “He mentioned it,” Luke admitted. “And I’ve seen for myself your skill with a blade.”

  “Do not worry, señor. I will not cut off anything that belongs to you.” Her lips curved in a sly smile. “Unless, of course, you disappoint me.”

  “I’ll do my best not to,” Luke promised with a smile of his own.

  What with one thing and another, it was long after midnight before Luke got back to his room in the Rio Rojo Hotel. The lobby was empty, and he saw no sign of the clerk. Avery, that was the man’s name, Luke recalled idly.

  He went upstairs, drew one of the Remingtons, and used his other hand to unlock the door as he stood to one side of it, just in case somebody was waiting on the other side to fire a shotgun through the panel at the first rattle of a key in the lock.

  Nothing of the sort happened. The room was empty. Working by the starlight that came through the window, Luke made the covers look like someone was sleeping under them, then bedded down on the floor as he had planned. The mattress would have been softer and more comfortable, but the floor was better than a lot of places he had slept.

  The restlessness inside him had been stilled. Tomorrow he would collect the reward he had coming for Monroe Epps and ride out of Rio Rojo in search of his next quarry. He would take with him fond memories of Magdalena . . . for a while, anyway.

  Luke dozed off quickly and was still sound asleep when the sun rose and a new day began in the settlement.

  Gunner Kelly knew the Rio Rojo bank opened promptly at nine o’clock every morning. He had been in the settlement for a week, keeping an eye on the place until Dog Eater got there. The Apache had shown up the night before, so there was no point in waiting any longer to go on about their business.

  The two of them stood on the porch in front of the general store and watched the bank manager unlock the door of the building across the street. The bank was the only building in town made of brick. It was supposed to make people think their money was safe inside, but that was the furthest thing from the truth.

  Kelly took off his battered old brown hat and ran his fingers through his red hair. His skin was so fair it never tanned, just blistered whenever he stayed out in the sun too long. “We wait until the manager has time to unlock the safe so he can take out some cash for the drawers in the tellers’ cages.”

  Dog Eater grunted.

  “Then we go in before he can close the safe again. That way we don’t have to waste time forcing him to open it. I know how long it takes for him to get the money out. I watched through the window the other day and counted it off in my head.” Those numbers were already ticking over in Kelly’s brain.

  When he’d gone to school as a kid, he had always had trouble with reading and writing, but numbers came as natural to him as riding a horse and shooting a gun. Everybody had their own strengths, he liked to tell himself, and he knew how to put his to good use.

  “The tellers won’t give us any trouble,” he went on. “I’m gonna pistol-whip the manager right away, so he won’t, either. We should be out of there in five minutes.”

  Dog Eater grunted again. He was short and stocky like most Apache men, although he had a habit of carrying h
imself sort of stooped over and was taller when he straightened up. He had a Navajo blanket wrapped around his body, concealing the faded blue shirt, the buckskin leggings, the breechcloth, the double gun belt, and the crossed bandoliers of ammunition he wore. He looked harmless, which was exactly how he wanted to look.

  Kelly wore range clothes and could have been mistaken for a drifting cowboy. The only thing about him that stood out, other than his pasty face, was the pearl-handled Colt on his hip.

  The gun was his pride and joy, and he was good with it. Good enough that he had killed three men back in his native Missouri and earned the nickname Gunner before he was twenty years old. During the past five years, while embarking on a career of outlawry, he had killed half a dozen more. And not lost one second of sleep over it, either.

  “There’s one of the tellers,” he said to Dog Eater. “And here comes the other one. We’ll give it a couple more minutes. . . .”

  The time seemed to pass slowly to Kelly as tension grew inside him. He wasn’t scared, just ready to get on with it.

  Dog Eater said, “Now?”

  And Kelly replied, “Now.” He started across the street with an easy, confident stride. Dog Eater shuffled along a couple steps behind him.

  When they walked into the bank the manager mistook them for the first customers of the day, or at least that’s what he assumed Kelly was. His gaze flicked over Dog Eater and then ignored him, except for a fleeting grimace of distaste. He smiled at Kelly from the teller’s cage where he was putting money in the drawer and said, “We’ll be right with you, friend.”

  Kelly walked up to the cage and drew his gun. “You’ll take care of us now.”

  Behind him, Dog Eater shrugged the Navajo blanket aside and raised both pistols. He covered the stunned tellers while Kelly leveled his revolver at the bank manager.