Riding Shotgun

by William W. Johnstone

  “I just want to know. When I walked in here I took you for an Archibald.”

  “It ain’t Archibald. They call me Bill, and you call me Mr. Fowler.”

  “Well, Bill, I’m in a hurry and I’m really sorry to do this, but—”

  Red drew and clattered his Colt against the side of Fowler’s head. The men’s eyes got big, then small, and he spat out a mix of bread, bacon, and saliva and tumbled backward in his chair, sprawling with his legs tangled, out like a dead man.

  Red sighed and said, “See, Bill, that’s what refusing to be sociable gets a man.”

  He ducked behind the counter, retrieved the key for room 20, one of a pair on the hook, and then took the stairs two at a time. Now time was of the essence.

  Room 20 was the middle door on the left. Red used the key and stepped inside. He saw no sign of the carpetbag. A quick look under the bed. It was not there. Unless Stella Morgan had taken the bag with her, the only other possible hiding place was in the armoire. To Red’s relief, that’s where it was, covered only by the hems of Stella’s long dresses. Because of the summons from T. C. Lyons, she’d had no time to find a better hiding place, or, more likely, her arrogance was such that she believed no one would have the audacity to search her room.

  Well, she was wrong about that.

  Red hauled out the bag and then cussed under his breath. It was padlocked. From downstairs in the foyer she heard a woman’s voice yelling, cussing out the clerk, who must have regained consciousness. It was a heart-stopping moment, and Red didn’t hesitate. He flung open the window and dropped the bag outside. It was a long drop from the second floor, but he followed it. He landed hard on the boardwalk and then fell on his back, his breath gushing out of him. Groggy, his left knee and broken toe paining him, Red staggered to his feet. The carpetbag was a few feet away . . . in the hands of a drunk who looked skyward and yelled, “Thank’ee God!”

  “Not this time, pardner,” Red said. He limped to the drunk and said, “Give me that. It’s mine.”

  The drunk, his whiskey-hazed brain trying to focus on what was happening, held the bag tight to his belly and turned away. “No, it’s mine,” he said.

  Red didn’t have time to argue. He dropped the drunk with a chopping right to the chin, grabbed the bag, and hobbled into a nearby alley. He stood in shadow, his back to the wall of a hardware store, and listened for sounds of pursuit, but none came.

  After a few minutes, Red shouldered himself off the wall and then froze. The drunk man stood silhouetted against the bright rectangle of the street and then lurched toward him. Red held the bag’s handle in his left hand, drew with his right. “Stop right there or I’ll drill you,” he said.

  The slurred voice of the drunk answered. “I want my bag back. It fell from heaven right at my feet.”

  “It fell from a hotel room window,” Red said.

  “You’re lying, mister,” the drunk said.

  “And you’re drunk.”

  Red holstered his gun, reached into his pocket, and came up with two silver dollars. He held them out for the drunk to take. “Here, go buy yourself a drink.”

  The man grabbed the money, hugged it close to his chest, raised his eyes skyward and said. “You’re an angel, sent from heaven.”

  “No, I’m a shotgun guard sent by the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company. Time you left or you could get yourself shot.”

  “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” the drunk said as he made his uncertain way back along the alley. Then, thrown over his shoulder, “You’re an angel from heaven, shotgun guard.”

  “Right about now I reckon there are some who’d say different,” Red said.

  * * *

  “Were you seen?” Pip Ogden said.

  “By Stella Morgan? No,” Red Ryan said. “By a drunk member of the citizenry, yes.”

  “He won’t remember,” Ogden said.

  He and Red stood at a table in Ogden’s hotel room, the carpetbag between them.

  “How do we open the padlock? Do you have a pick you can use?” Red said.

  “ No.”

  “No? You’re a big-city detective, for God’s sake.”

  Ogden almost smiled. “Don’t believe all you read in the dime novels and the Police Gazette. This is a cast heart padlock, made of bronze, and it’s very strong. I’ve never known one to have been opened without a key.”

  “Maybe I can shoot it off,” Red said.

  “And your bullet will bounce off and ricochet around this room and kill us both,” Ogden said. “No, there’s a simpler way.”

  The little detective reached into his pocket and produced a pocketknife. He opened the blade, tested the edge with his thumb, then began to saw on the wide leather strap that covered the hasp and padlock. It was the work of a few minutes to cut the strap and open the bag.

  “I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Red said.

  “I’m sure you would have . . . eventually,” Ogden said. “Now, what have we here?”

  Red looked in the bag and whistled between his teeth. “Hell, no wonder it was padlocked.”

  “An astute observation, Ryan,” Ogden said. “Shall we inspect the Morgan loot?”

  It took a while to count the money, mostly in banknotes but also in gold double eagles, and then Ogden called on his police experience to put a value on the jewelry.

  Finally, Ogden said, “I put a value on the contents of this bag, money and the diamond jewelry, at a hundred thousand dollars. Martha Morgan was a rich old lady, and that is why Stella Morgan and Lucian Carter murdered her.” He stared hard at Red. “Ryan, as I expected, we have the motive for murder, but not the proof.”

  “We have the bag,” Red said. “Surely that proves something.”

  “It proves nothing. As any competent lawyer will point out, although she left everything to her son in her will, Martha could have given the money and jewelry as a gift to Stella.”

  Red thought that through and then said, “So, stealing the bag was a waste of time. I twisted my damned knee and hurt my sore toe for nothing.”

  “Not quite. We have the bag and its contents, so Stella Morgan will not profit from her crime. There is satisfaction in that. But wait . . . I just had a thought.”

  Ogden took time to light a cigar and Red followed suit by building a cigarette. The detective thumbed a match, lit Red’s smoke and then his cigar. “How discreet were you at the hotel, Ryan? Come now, be frank.”

  “I told you, nobody saw me.”

  “How about the desk clerk?”

  “Well, I . . . I mean . . .” Red’s face fell. “Oh, my God . . .”

  “You had a confrontation with the clerk?”

  Red nodded. “Yeah, over the room key.” He hesitated, then said, “I hit him over the head with my gun.”

  Ogden beamed. “Excellent, Ryan, well done.” A serious look crossed his face. “He can describe you?”

  “Yeah, he can, and more than that, I told him my name and that I was a representative of the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company.” Red shook his head. “How could I have been so stupid?”

  “It’s my opinion that you’re a man of action, Ryan, not much suited for cloak-and-dagger work, but your stupidity . . . if you want to call it that . . . will very much work in our favor.”

  “I’m not catching your drift, Ogden,” Red said.

  “Don’t you see? Stella Morgan can hardly go to Sheriff Lyons and report her carpetbag stolen. That could lead to some awkward questions that I’m sure she’d rather avoid.”

  “So, what does she do?”

  “Do? Why, she’ll come after you, or her henchmen will. I imagine the lady will be driven by desperation and will soon overplay her hand. The crux of the matter is to keep her here in El Paso until I gather the evidence I need to charge her with murder.”

  “And I could end up dead,” Red said, not liking a word Ogden had said.

  “Ryan, that is a risk we have to take.”

  “We? There’s no we, ther
e’s only me,” Red said. “She knows I took the bag, so I’m a walking target.”

  Ogden slapped his hands together. “Excellent, Ryan! You catch on fast,” he said. “This is our best hope of catching a cold-blooded killer and her cohorts.”

  “Over my dead body,” Red said, meaning every word.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “According to the stationmaster, we can get out of here by the morning train, seven o’clock sharp the day after tomorrow,” Lucian Carter said. “That’s how long we have to get the bag back from Red Ryan.”

  Stella Morgan nodded. “All right, get Seth Roper.”

  “You’re going to kill Ryan?”

  “Yes, and Ogden.”

  “Ogden?” Carter said. “Since we’re headed out of town soon, maybe we should leave him alone.”

  “No, we must kill him, Lucian. You heard what he said. He’s a bulldog. A man of his kind will follow us all the way to Washington.”

  “I can kill him in Washington, Stella. Hell, in the big city, it would be just another unsolved murder.”

  “No, I don’t want to take that chance. What if Ogden spoke to the Washington police before we could strike? Lawmen stick together, and his death would not go unnoticed.” She shook her head. “We’ll let Roper take care of this.”

  Carter’s face flushed with anger. “Damn Ryan, he’s always been a troublemaker.”

  “He’s a nobody, a stagecoach guard, but he has our bag. Roper can get rid of him first and get the bag back. When we step on the train I want to leave nothing behind us, except the good wishes of the Fort Bliss army officers bidding the heartbroken widow a fond farewell.” Stella smiled. “Boo-hoo.”

  “Let me do it, Stella,” Carter said. “I can eliminate Ogden and force Ryan to return the bag. A bullet to the kneecap is a powerful convincer.”

  “The answer is still no, Lucian. It’s a job for Roper. I don’t want any blunders. There’s too much at stake . . . at least half of our fortune.”

  Stella sat in a chair and looked out the hotel window at the street below. Carter rose, placed his hands on her shoulders, and began a gentle massage.

  “Get your hands off me, Lucian,” she said. “I’ll tell you when you can touch me, and now is not that time.” Stella rose to her feet and turned on Carter, frowning. “Now go and do what I told you. Bring me Seth Roper.”

  * * *

  Seth Roper listened as Lucian Carter bent over and whispered in his ear. Roper nodded and pushed his chips to the faro banker. “Cash me out, I have to go,” he said.

  Roper tossed the banker a ten, then stuffed his winnings into his pocket. “Step to the bar with me, Carter,” he said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “But Stella says for you to come right away,” Carter said.

  “She can wait,” Roper said.

  As usual, the Platte River saloon was busy with the early crowd, and deferential men made way on the floor when Roper waded through them to the bar. He ordered whiskey for himself and Carter and then said, “What does she want?”

  “Best you hear that from Stella,” Carter said.

  Roper smiled. “Then it’s a killing.”

  “I don’t know,” Carter said.

  “You do know, you just don’t want to tell me.”

  “Stella’s mighty nervous.”

  “She’s a woman. Women are always nervous.” Roper drained his glass.

  “There’s a lot of money at stake, Roper. I mean a lot of money.”

  “I’m aware of that, and I want my share,” Roper said.

  “And you’ll have it. You’ll get everything that’s coming to you,” Carter said.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Roper said. “All right, let’s go.”

  * * *

  Stella Morgan touched the back of Seth Roper’s hand with her fingertips. “You’ll do it for me, won’t you, Seth? I’ll be so grateful.”

  “Me, do it? No, I won’t.” Roper saw the disappointment on the woman’s face, smiled and said, “But I’ll have it done. Ogden is easy, but Ryan is a tougher proposition. It won’t be cheap.”

  “Seth, all my money is in the bag, and Ryan has it,” Stella said.

  “All our money,” Roper said.

  “Of course, that’s what I meant,” Stella said. Roper stared across the hotel room and said, “What about you, Carter? You got a problem with that? Our money, I mean.”

  Carter shrugged off the question. Now wasn’t the time or the place for a confrontation. “I have no problem. We’re all in this together, the three of us.”

  “So, Seth, how do we pay to have the killings done?” Stella said. “Ryan has my money, remember?”

  “I’ll fund the killings and get paid back later,” Roper said. “I have a couple of good men in mind who’ll cut Ryan’s suspenders for two hundred dollars.”

  “Make sure they get the bag back from him,” Carter said. “Then they can shoot him in the belly.”

  “You want him gut-shot, Carter?” Roper said. “Holding a grudge, huh?”

  “Yeah, I am,” Carter said.

  “And so am I,” Stella Morgan said. “Shoot the redheaded rogue in the guts. He’s plagued us for too long.”

  * * *

  Henry “Skull” Jackson’s face had been burned away by a forest fire as he lay wounded between the lines during the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. The scarred skin of his features lay tight to the bone, and this coupled with lidless eyes had given Jackson his dreadful nickname.

  Seth Roper could hardly bear to look at him.

  Along with Jackson at a table in the Platte River saloon was Danny Kline, a tall, loose-limbed man with a long, soulful face made remarkable by eyes the color of a blue sky in winter. Kline was a sharp dresser who had a growing reputation as a draw fighter, and like Jackson he was a killer for hire who wasn’t fussy about who he gunned so long as the money was right.

  Between them, Jackson and Kline had killed eighteen men, and all that Red Ryan represented was the two hundred dollars they’d earn to make him number nineteen.

  Jackson, who’d once been the possessor of a strong, baritone voice, had breathed in flames in the Wilderness that had scorched his vocal cords, and now he talked in a high screech, like an angry parrot.

  “Three hundred, Roper,” he squawked, struggling to form the words. “This ain’t just a killing, we got to take this Ryan feller alive and make him show us to the carpetbag.”

  “Yeah, I understand, Skull—”

  “Don’t call me that name, Roper. I don’t like it,” Jackson said.

  “Hank is sensitive about his face,” Kline said. “Hell, he carries a mask with him to the cathouse so he don’t upset the whores.”

  “Shut your trap, Danny,” Jackson said. Then, “Three hundred, Roper, and that’s my rock-bottom price.”

  Roper forced himself to look at the man. It was like coming face-to-face with death. “I’m agreeable,” he said. “Three hundred it is. Once you get the bag, gut-shoot Ryan. My clients want him to suffer a spell.”

  Jackson shook his nightmare head. “That ain’t happening, Roper. Gut-shot men can still talk, and I’m real easy to describe. Ryan gets it between the eyes like everybody else.”

  Roper shrugged off that last. “Fine by me, Jackson. The main thing is to recover the bag, compre?”

  “Yeah, I compre,” Jackson said. “What makes a damned carpetbag so important?”

  “That’s none of your business,” Roper said. “Just do the job you’re being paid to do.”

  “Your best chance of catching Ryan alone is at his hotel, The Inglenook,” Roper said. “He might have a scattergun, watch for that, and he has a sidekick goes by the name of Buttons Muldoon who’s handy enough with a pistol.”

  “I’ll bear all that in mind,” Jackson said. “I’ll have another whiskey. Roper, you’re buying.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  “Buttons, you’re buying,” Red Ryan said. “My throat’s dry after all the talking I’ve done.”<
br />
  Buttons ordered two more beers and said, “So now that detective feller has the bag with all the loot, what’s he gonna do with it?”

  “Right now, he’s hoping that Stella will come after me and make a mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “The kind that gets her hung.”

  “Big mistake,” Buttons said.

  “She’ll come after me to recover the carpetbag,” Red said. “Maybe Ogden hopes he can pin her with an attempted-murder charge.”

  “It’s only attempted murder if you survive, Red,” Buttons said. “If she kills you, it’s just plain murder.” He shook his head. “Damn, it all seems mighty thin to me.”

  “Ogden figures Stella and Lucian Carter killed the old rich lady in San Antonio. And he believes the murder of Major Morgan and the Rabinovich couple are connected, but he doesn’t have a shred of proof.”

  “He has the bag, though,” Buttons said.

  Red smiled. “Yeah, he has the bag. You don’t trust him?”

  “I don’t trust anybody, including the mean-looking ranny who just came in. He’s sitting over there on a high lonesome.”

  Red looked in the mirror behind the bar and saw what Buttons saw, a tall, lanky man dressed like a gambler sitting at a table, his long slender fingers manipulating the deck of cards that were lying on the table.

  “Gambler,” Buttons said, dismissing the man.

  “Maybe he’s a gambling man, but most of all he’s a gun,” Red said. “I reckon he followed us here from The Inglenook.”

  “That how you read him, a pistol fighter?” Buttons said.

  “That’s how he reads himself,” Red said.

  The Silver Slipper saloon was off the beaten track, known more for its quiet, its excellent selection of brandies and cigars and available out-of-town newspapers than its gambling, and mostly the sporting crowd avoided it. To see a gambler in the place was rare, like spotting a unicorn in church . . . a gambler who had the casual arrogance and careful eyes of a shootist was rarer still.

  “He’s taking a good look at you, Red, summing you up,” Buttons said. “You gun any of his kinfolk?”

  “Not recently that I recollect,” Red said.