“Cyril, how’s your brother?” Bellford asked. “I heard he was shot.”
“Doc Pritchard thinks he’ll be all right. You look like you’re hurt, too, Ed.”
Bellford shook his head. “This is nothing. What really hurts is that the robbers cleaned us out.”
Luke took the telegram from Cyril’s hand and set it on the desk in front of the bank manager. “This wire authorizes you to pay me a five thousand dollar reward on behalf of the State of Texas.”
Bellford stared at him for a couple seconds, then started to laugh. “Mister, I told you they cleaned us out. I couldn’t pay you a five dollar reward right now! You’re just downright out of luck!”
CHAPTER 6
Losing his temper wasn’t going to do any good, and Luke knew it. Despite that, he couldn’t stop himself from picking up the telegram and crumpling it in his hand. He threw it on the floor, turned, and stalked out of the bank.
He had planned to go after Gunner Kelly and Dog Eater, anyway. Now he had even more reason to do so. He couldn’t collect what he was owed for Monroe Epps unless he recovered the stolen money.
Luke headed for the stable. He had left Cyril Dunbar behind at the bank, but that didn’t matter. He was used to saddling his own horse.
When he walked in, Hobie, the young hostler, paused in mucking out one of the stalls. “What can I do for you, Mr. Jensen?”
“Not a thing,” Luke snapped. “I’m taking my horse. Your boss and I should be square on the bill.”
“Yes, sir, I know. Are you goin’ after those outlaws?”
“Damn right I am.” Luke went into the stall where his horse was stabled, pulled the saddle blanket off the partition between stalls, and threw it over the horse’s back.
“I’d be glad to do that for you,” Hobie offered. “Isn’t your gear still over at the hotel? Let me saddle up for you, and it’ll save you a little time.”
The suggestion actually made sense, Luke realized. He had been so mad at potentially losing the reward for Epps, he hadn’t been able to think straight for a moment. He nodded. “Thanks, Hobie. I’m obliged to you.”
“I’m glad to do it. I’d like to be a bounty hunter myself, someday.”
Luke looked at the skinny, gangling young hostler with his mop of brown hair and thought Hobie looked about as much like a bounty hunter as President Grover Cleveland did. But he didn’t see any point in saying that, so he just gave the young man a curt nod and headed for the hotel to get his saddlebags and rifle.
The desk clerk wanted to talk, too. The whole town was still buzzing about the robbery and the marshal’s shooting. Luke brushed aside Avery’s questions and went upstairs to get his gear from his room.
When he came down to the lobby again, he was surprised to see the Widow Vanderslice standing beside the desk with the bank manager, Bellford. It was obvious that she was waiting for him. “Mr. Jensen, I want to talk to you.”
Luke had his saddlebags thrown over his right shoulder and his Winchester in his left hand. He didn’t want anything slowing him down, but his upbringing wouldn’t allow him to be rude to any woman, let alone one who was mourning her husband. He took his hat off and told her, “Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss.”
She was dry-eyed and looked stern and angry, especially in that black getup. “If you’re talking about my late husband Lucius, then I appreciate your condolences, Mr. Jensen. If you’re talking about the money those scoundrels stole out of my bank, I’ve come to make you an offer.”
“Actually, ma’am, I thought you would still be at the funeral.”
“Once I calmed down from having Marshal Dunbar shot while he was right beside me, I realized that Lucius wouldn’t want me to neglect our business. I told Calvin Dobbs the service would have to be postponed for a short time, and I came to find you.”
“Me, ma’am?” Luke said with a frown.
“I realize that you’re a . . . bounty hunter.” She couldn’t quite keep a tone of disapproval out of her voice. “At the same time, with Cyrus Dunbar laid up, you’re the closest thing Rio Rojo has to a representative of law and order at the moment. You’re also the only man in this town who’s qualified to go after those bank robbers.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do, Mrs. Vanderslice. My horse is being saddled right now—”
“I understand you were going to collect a five thousand dollar reward from my bank.” Mrs. Vanderslice paused. “I’ll see that five thousand, and raise five thousand. That’s the correct parlance, isn’t it?”
Luke’s frown deepened. “For what, ma’am?”
“If you go after those outlaws and bring back the money they stole, I’ll see to it that you receive not only the reward that’s already owed to you, but I’ll also pay you an additional reward of five thousand dollars. That’s ten thousand, over and above whatever you might collect for those two men.”
Luke understood and nodded. “That’s very generous. I was going after them, anyway, but an extra five grand certainly doesn’t hurt.”
“In situations like this, the rewards are usually paid whether the fugitives are brought in dead or alive, correct?”
“That is correct,” Luke admitted.
The widow’s blue eyes were cold and hard as chips of ice as she said, “Then I’ll simply ask this as a favor to an old woman, Mr. Jensen . . . bring them back dead.”
After picking up his horse at the livery stable and some supplies at the general store, Luke rode to the edge of town where the bank robbers had galloped out of Rio Rojo. Picking up their trail wasn’t difficult for his experienced eyes. He had tracked fugitives in all sorts of places, under all sorts of conditions. Gunner Kelly and Dog Eater had been in a hurry to get out of town, so they hadn’t worried about concealing their tracks.
That wouldn’t hold true later on. Once they had put some distance between themselves and the settlement, they would slow down and start trying to cover their trail.
Because of that, Luke knew it was liable to be a long chase. He was prepared. Mrs. Vanderslice had written a note for him to give to the manager of the general store, telling him to let Luke have whatever supplies he needed at no charge. If he was successful in his quest, she had said, she would take the cost of the supplies out of what she owed him later on.
Luke smiled faintly as he thought about that provision in the deal. He wouldn’t want to do any horse trading with Mrs. Aurora Vanderslice. He had a hunch he would come out on the losing end of any such negotiations.
If he lost out on the deal, though, it would be because he was dead, so he didn’t figure he needed to worry about anything as piddling as the cost of a few supplies.
The temperature rose as midday approached. Luke continued following the trail westward as it led into a wide stretch of salt flats that shone a dazzling white in the sunlight. The ground had been baked so hard by the sun that it didn’t take tracks easily. The sign left by the fleeing outlaws was a lot more sparse. He had to concentrate harder in order to not lose the trail.
Despite that concentration, he was still alert to things around him, and a sudden prickling of the skin on the back of his neck warned him that someone was watching him. He reined in and hipped around in the saddle to look behind him.
Nothing but the salt flats and the gently rolling hills to the east where Rio Rojo was located met his gaze. As far as he could see, nobody was back there.
But his instincts said otherwise. Having learned to trust them, his eyes narrowed as he thought about what that might mean.
Someone could have followed him from the settlement. It was also possible that Kelly and Dog Eater, or at least one of them, had peeled off and lay in wait to let any pursuit pass by. Then they could follow and bushwhack anybody who was trying to trail them.
Such an attack didn’t seem imminent to Luke. For one thing, there wasn’t enough cover to try something like that. But he was sure that somebody was behind him, so he was going to remain doubly vigilant.
When the time
came, maybe he would set up an ambush of his own.
A little later, he came across an area where the ground was slightly softer. Kelly and his Apache partner either hadn’t noticed the change or were so confident they were going to get away they hadn’t gone to the trouble to avoid it. They had ridden straight across that stretch. Luke had no trouble making out the tracks of both horses.
He knew they belonged to the mounts being ridden by the bank robbers. He had studied the tracks enough to recognize the little nicks and irregularities in the prints those horseshoes made.
That meant if someone was following him, as he was still convinced was true, it wasn’t Gunner Kelly or Dog Eater. Those two outlaws were still ahead of him.
Knowing that made Luke even more curious about who might be trailing him. He had a pretty good idea, but would deal with that problem when the time came.
Meanwhile, he had some bank robbers to catch.
The afternoon passed slowly. From time to time, Luke came across horse droppings and dismounted to take a closer look so he could get a better idea how far ahead of him his quarry was.
Kelly and Dog Eater had had about an hour’s lead on him when he started out from Rio Rojo. They seemed to be maintaining that.
Luke’s horse was fairly fresh after spending the night in Cyril Dunbar’s livery stable, but Luke had been on the move quite a bit in the past few weeks so the animal didn’t have deep reserves of strength and stamina. He didn’t know what condition the outlaws’ horses were in, but it stood to reason that Kelly and Dog Eater would have made sure they had well-rested mounts before they robbed the bank.
During one of his stops, Luke looked up at the sky. The afternoon was fairly well advanced and the chances of him catching up to the outlaws before nightfall were pretty slim. Almost nonexistent, in fact, he judged. He would have to stop once it got dark because he wouldn’t be able to follow the trail by starlight.
Kelly and the Apache, on the other hand, could push on if they wanted to. Eventually, they would have to stop and let their horses rest for several hours, but even taking that into consideration, by morning they would have widened their lead.
It was a setback, Luke thought, but not an insurmountable one. It would have been nice to catch up to them, but when he had ridden out on their trail, it was with the knowledge that the chase might take days or even weeks.
A stubborn persistence was one of the best qualities a bounty hunter could have.
The real worry was that Kelly and Dog Eater might manage to get their hands on fresh horses. If that happened, they could stretch out their lead even more.
There were a few isolated ranches spread out around there, Luke recalled with a frown as he continued riding west. The two men might be able to make a trade. If not, they wouldn’t hesitate to take whatever they wanted and kill anybody who tried to stop them.
The sun dipped lower and lower as he left the salt flats behind, finally touching the horizon in front of him. He knew it wouldn’t take long for darkness to descend over the rugged landscape. He started looking for a good place to make camp while the fiery orb slid the rest of the way below the curve of the earth.
He found a shallow dip where enough water had collected in the past to nourish a little grass and a couple scrubby mesquite trees, although no moisture was to be found at the moment. He picketed and unsaddled the horse, poured some water from one of his canteens into his hat so it could drink, then left the animal to graze.
Taking a folding shovel from his gear, he dug a fire pit deep enough to conceal the flames of the small blaze he built of mesquite twigs. He figured Kelly and Dog Eater would assume someone was on their trail, but there was no point in confirming that and telling them exactly where he was.
He boiled a pot of coffee and fried some bacon. After he had washed down his meager supper with a couple cups of Arbuckle’s, he sat and mused as he peered into the darkness and let the fire burn down. He craved a cigar, but more than once he had aimed a gun just above the glowing coal of an unwary owlhoot’s cheroot. He didn’t want to provide a similar target for some unknown enemy.
When he saw a little flash of light in the distance, he thought he had imagined it. But it came again and then again. On the third time the light caught and held, it grew stronger. Luke’s eyes narrowed as he studied the glow.
Something was on fire about a mile away from him. He remembered those ranches he’d been considering earlier. It was possible Kelly and Dog Eater had stopped at one of the spreads, enjoyed the hospitality of the settlers, and tried to make a horse trade.
It was also possible they had just ridden in, gunned down the rancher and his family, and taken what they wanted, setting the place on fire as they left.
Either way, the knowledge that his quarry might be that close drove Luke to his feet. “Sorry about this, fella,” he told his horse as he started saddling up again. “I know you were ready to eat your fill of this grass and get some rest. Maybe you still can before the night’s over.”
Once he had everything packed and the horse ready to ride, he headed for the still-visible light. Something was definitely burning and that was a bad sign.
When he got close enough to make out the actual flames, he saw that a long, low ranch house was on fire. The roof and the insides were burning, but the adobe walls prevented the fire from spreading to the barn and corrals off to one side. Lit up by the flames from the house, Luke could see the spread was a small one, the sort of outfit a man would run alone or with his wife.
Luke reined in about fifty yards from the burning ranch house and raised his voice, shouting, “Hello! Is anybody here? Hello!”
There was no reply, and he didn’t see anybody moving around the house. It hadn’t set itself on fire, he thought. Kelly and Dog Eater could have touched off the blaze and then moved on. He would see if he could find any sign they might have left, but first, make sure no one needed help.
He turned toward the barn and rode up to the open double doors. He called, “Is anybody in there?”
He got an answer right away, in the form of a spurt of orange flame from the muzzle of a gun as a bullet whipped past his ear.
CHAPTER 7
Luke jerked his horse aside and yelled, “Hold your fire, damn it! I’m a friend!”
He didn’t know that for sure. It might have been Kelly or Dog Eater who took that shot at him. He heeled the horse into a run toward the corner of the barn as he drew one of the Remingtons.
Luke kicked his feet free of the stirrups and dropped to the ground as his mount reached the corner. He let the horse run on into the darkness as he pressed his back against the rough wall and drew his other gun. Watching the barn doors, he listened intently.
At first, all he could hear was the roaring crackle of flames from the house. Then what he thought was a muffled cough came from inside the barn. The gunman was still there.
Luke began edging toward the doors. He heard another cough, followed by some muttered words. After a moment, he realized they were half-incoherent curses. The man inside the barn sounded like he wasn’t in very good shape. He might have been drunk, but more likely he was hurt.
“Damn outlaws,” the man slurred. “G’damn owlhooss . . . Show yourselves again . . . Kill you for what you done . . . send you both to hell . . .”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. The man in the barn was cursing two men. Gunner Kelly and Dog Eater seemed pretty likely. The man probably was the owner of the ranch. The bank robbers could have wounded him, stolen some horses, and left him in the barn to die.
But he wasn’t dead yet. When Luke had ridden up, the man could have mistaken him for one of the outlaws returning, especially if he was wounded and in bad shape. But why was the house on fire? Were Kelly and the Apache responsible for that, too?
The basic theory made sense, Luke decided, so he risked calling out again to the man in the barn. “Hey! Mister! I’m not one of the men who did this. I’m on their trail. Like I told you, I’m a friend!”
“Why?” the man called back.
Luke realized the question wasn’t exactly directed at him when the man went on. “Why’d you have to do it? We give you ever’thing you asked for . . . Why’d you have to do that to Martha?”
That anguished question made Luke frown. In his profession, he had seen so much ugliness, so many examples of utter depravity, that he realized there were no depths of horror to which human beings could sink when they chose to. He had learned to steel himself to that fact.
But reminders of it still affected him. He heard the agonized grief in the man’s voice and realized the poor fellow was suffering from that as much as from any physical injury the outlaws had inflicted on him. In that state, it was unlikely Luke would be able to get through to him.
He wanted to help the man if he could, might be able to patch up a bullet wound even if he couldn’t do anything else. And he wanted to know how long ago Kelly and Dog Eater had been there. He had to at least try to get that information out of the man in the barn.
Luke pouched both irons. The man’s muttering seemed to be getting weaker, he thought as he listened for a moment longer.
Then he took a deep breath and exploded into action, driving hard around the edge of the door and going into the barn low and fast.
He knew he would be silhouetted for a second against the flames, but was counting on his speed and the inability of the wounded man to react very quickly. Even so, the man got off a shot, his rifle cracking as the muzzle flash lit up the barn for an instant.
Luke didn’t have any idea where the bullet went. All he knew was that it didn’t hit him. Using the rifle’s flash as a guide, he reached out and the back of his hand hit the weapon’s barrel. He grabbed it and wrenched it to the side as he rammed into the man. His other hand twisted in the man’s shirtfront, and he swung him around. When the rifle came free, he slung it away.
“Take it easy!” Luke said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’ll help you if you let me.”
Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter Dead Shot Page 5