by Chuck Tyrell
"Well, I guess they figured an old coot like me couldn't never eat enough for two men. Besides. No body ever turned up at the undertaker's."
"Donovan's still here, ain't he?"
"You ever know Pappy Holmes to lose a prisoner? He's in there. Don't seem worried neither. None atall."
"He'll change his tune when he finds out we got the gold back and one of the Valenzuelas to boot."
"I'll have to see it." Pappy turned to peer out the window at the Carrion saloon across the plaza.
Havelock heaved his foot off the battered desk and reached for the ring of keys on the wall. "Let's go see the prisoner," he growled.
Donovan was stretched out on the bunk, hands behind his head. He whistled "Sweet Betsy from Pike" through his teeth. He didn't even look up as the marshal entered.
"How'd it go, 'breed boy?" The outlaw's voice was soft-toned and pleasant.
Havelock stiffened at being called "'breed boy." Donovan remembers me.
"Not bad for us, not good for you." But somehow, his words seemed hollow.
"My. My. We seem very confident of ourselves don't we?" Donovan peered up at Havelock. “Or are we, 'breed boy?”
"Innocente Valenzuela is dead. Tom Morgan's on the trail of Francisco. And we've got the gold back. Good try, Donovan. But you won't get another." Anger tasted bitter in the back of Havelock’s throat. He hacked and spat at the spittoon.
The outlaw’s grin grew into a smug smile. "We'll see, 'breed boy. We'll see."
"Havelock!" Pappy's bellow came through the thick wooden door between the jail and the marshal's office. "We got trouble."
"Donovan, people in this town want your hide. But they'll have come over me to get it. You just sit tight."
"I'm not going anywhere." Donovan's smile broadened. “For now, that is.”
Havelock went through the door to the sound of Donovan's laughter in his ears. He hated that sound. A twitch of pain shot through his left knee as he twisted around to slam the door.
"What's up, Pappy?"
A fist pounded on the door before Pappy could answer. "Havelock. Marshal Havelock. It's Belton Phelps. Open up!"
The rumble of angry voices came through the thick door. Havelock held out his hand and Pappy handed him the Greener.
Havelock raised his voice. "Back off a step, Phelps. I'm coming out." The marshal opened the door just wide enough to edge through, shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm with the hammers cocked.
"I don't know what you men figure on doing here, but the first one that even looks cross-eyed gets a gut full of BB shot." He turned to the owner of the Vulture Mine. "What do you want, Phelps?"
"One hundred thousand dollars in gold bullion." The florid face of the mine owner flushed brighter than usual, perhaps from the effort of hauling his three hundred and more pounds across the plaza. "And I want Donovan's neck, too." he snapped. “I might’ve known a Cherokee breed didn’t have what it takes.”
"You got your gold, Phelps. I saw it myself. And Donovan will stand trial. If the judge hangs him, that's fine. But there'll be no more necktie parties while I’m marshal of Vulture City."
"You saw gold, did you? Well, just look at this." The mine owner thrust out a golden ingot.
Havelock turned the ingot over in his hand. There, beneath paper-thin gold, a long scratch gleamed silvery-gray.
The ingot was lead.
2
Jaysus! Donovan had figured the dumb Cherokee marshal wouldn’t be able to spot the hoax. Shit! Havelock handed the counterfeit ingot back to Phelps.
"So that’s why Donovan was so smug when I told him we got the gold back." Havelock's voice turned harder. "Phelps, you can’t hang him without a trial. Donovan didn’t kill Chambers and Judd."
A new voice butted in. "We got a jury, Havelock. Them two’s dead, Donovan's alive, and we got us a hanging tree. Don't you get in the way now, else you get hurt."
Havelock shifted slightly so the Greener was pointing straight at the belly of the speaker, a black-bearded miner with shoulders that would do Paul Bunyan proud. When Havelock first put on the marshal’s badge at Vulture City, a mob of miners had lynched a drifter—just a boy—and Havelock couldn’t stop them. He’d sworn then it would never happen again as long as he was the law.
"Okay, Hunter. Forget all your friends because there’s just the two of us in this. You wiggle so much as your pinky finger, and this Greener will spread your guts all over the plaza."
The miner stared at Havelock, then swallowed hard. He didn't move. Minus Hunter’s bravado, the crowd quieted down and started to melt away.
"You win this one, Havelock," Hunter growled. "But even Injuns got to sleep sometime. We'll git that bastard. You can count on it." Hunter stalked back across the plaza to the saloon and made his way through the batwing doors beneath a sunbaked sign that read CARRION.
"Don't go stirring up trouble, Phelps. I'd hate to have to permanently stop any of your men. But they come after Donovan and you'll find yourself shorthanded."
"I don't give a whit about Donovan, though Chambers and Judd were good men and loyal. I want that bullion." The mine owner’s priorities were exactly where Havelock thought they were—gold, first, second, and last.
"Tom Morgan's out after Francisco Valenzuela. If there's a way to make him talk, Morgan will know it. He didn't spend ten years with the Apaches for nothing."
"If he doesn't know, he can't talk. Or, he'll make up some story just to get Morgan off his back. Mexicans tell lies from habit."
"Then don’t let Donovan get hung. Dead, he can't say word one about where that bullion is. I'd say you'd better have a talk with your boys, calm 'em down a bit." Havelock nodded at the Carrion, where angry voices suddenly rumbled louder.
"On second thought, Phelps, get out of the way. Those boys in the Carrion are coming, and you might get hurt."
The portly mine owner scurried quickly across the plaza. The door of the bullion room no more than closed behind him when the batwing doors of the Carrion exploded outward and the mob surged through.
"They're coming, Pappy," Havelock called.
"I'm ready," Pappy replied.
The marshal let the leaders of the mob start across the plaza. They came at a run. Havelock heard Reb Carson's Confederate cavalry yip-yip in the van, followed by Hunter's throaty roar. He let them get halfway across the plaza, then triggered the Greener. BB shot howled into the hard ground a yard in front of the mob. Two men went down, clutching at their shins where ricochets hit them.
The leaders stopped short, pushed unwillingly forward by those behind them. By the time they recovered, Havelock had shoved home two new shells and snapped the Greener closed. The twin clicks of hammers being eared back sounded unnaturally loud in the abrupt silence. Suddenly, the mob seemed to be just a group of silent, confused men who didn't want to face Havelock's shotgun.
This is too easy, Havelock thought. He shot a glance at the rooflines across the plaza. Three second-story windows were open: one in Garth's store, one in the Vulture Mining Company headquarters, and one in the hotel. Havelock noticed a flicker of movement at the lace curtains in the window above the store. The kind of movement slipping a gun barrel between the curtains makes.
The window was too far for the shotgun and a chancy shot with a revolver. The sharp planes of Havelock's face tightened. He shifted his weight to his good right leg, the one with a kneecap. He'd forfeited his left kneecap to a Yankee bullet fifteen years ago in the closing days of the Late Unpleasantness.
"Marshal." Hunter spoke. "We'd rather not hurt you. But we're gonna get that crazy Donovan. Chambers and Judd won't rest easy until his carcass swings on that there hanging tree, rotted and black. So stand back. There's just too many of us."
"No there's not, Hunter. We narrowed it down before, remember? It's just me and you. You may have a way figured to get me, but any way you look at it, you're a dead man."
Hunter’s face said he didn't like the idea, but his pride wouldn’t let him
back down.
Someone in the crowd hollered "Go! Do it now. Take him!" The yell triggered the mob.
Havelock took another step to his right, a big one this time, dropped to his knee, and shoved his back against the stone wall of the jailhouse. A slug plowed into the sun-baked ground on a line from Garth’s second-story window. He held the Greener low and triggered both barrels.
Blue smoke, BB shot, and the acrid smell of gunpowder spread from the sawed-off barrels. Several men went down in the street. Havelock drew his Frontier Colt and snapped a shot at the upstairs window. The bullet ricocheted away with a whine.
From the jailhouse came the roar of the long Sharps. A man crashed through the curtains of Garth’s second-story window and fell to the plaza like a sack of grain. His rifle clattered to the rock-hard clay. He lay still.
Damn. Too many people dying. Havelock levered himself to his feet, holstered his pistol, and broke open the Greener. The crowd rumbled.
"I wouldn't do it, Reb." Pappy's voice stopped the lanky Southerner in mid-draw.
The Greener snapped shut on new cartridges and Havelock thumbed the hammers back.
"You all are mighty lucky," he said. "No one's dead. Now, throw out your weapons, and we'll get Doc Withers down here to pick the BB shot out of your butts, or wherever else they hit you."
The men piled their weapons in the center of the plaza, Havelock sent a miner for the doctor.
"Get these men outta the sun," Havelock ordered. He waved toward the Carrion. The miners carried their wounded in through the batwings they’d burst out of minutes before.
By the time Havelock arrived with Doc Withers, the three men who needing doctoring were in the dim saloon. Hunter, with a tourniquet on his right leg, lay on the gaming table in the rear of the room. Saxbe, a gaunt hanger-on, was stretched out on the bar. And a third man, a German who spoke almost no English, groaned on a pallet thrown across three chairs. Six other hastily bandaged miners sat waiting as the fiery doctor walked in and went straight to Hunter’s side. Havelock stopped just inside the batwing doors. He held the sawed-off shotgun in the crook of his arm, and his face said he’d use the scattergun if the situation called for gunfire.
"Hunter, you're a fool,” Doc Withers said. “You should have known better than to rush Marshal Havelock. You could be dead."
"I know that Doc. What say you put me back together. I'll repent later." The big man's voice was jovial, but his face was pasty gray. Large drops of moisture beaded his brow. The smell of raw flesh reminded Havelock of fighting bluebellies at Caulder Mountain.
Doc Withers's eyes narrowed as he cut away the trousers from Hunter's wounded leg. From two inches above the knee to more than halfway up the thigh, it looked like fresh ground beef. But no major artery had been damaged, so the doctor removed the tourniquet. He took a bottle of milky liquid from his satchel.
"Here."
"What's that?"
"Laudanum. And you'll wish you had more before I get through."
Hunter clutched the bottle, upended it, and took a big swallow.
"That's enough." The doctor took back the bottle of narcotic.
The big miner squeezed his eyes shut. His huge frame shuddered. But after a moment, a contented smile came over his face. Then he giggled. Doc Withers went into his leg with a pair of long tweezers. The leg twitched, and the smile left Hunter's face, but he didn't make a sound.
Havelock watched twenty-three BBs come out of the mangled leg before the doctor bandaged it. Hunter went to sleep.
"Pretty well chewed up," Doc said. "Still, the tendon's not severed and the bone is okay. He'll limp, and it’ll be stiff, but I think if he’ll work at it, he should recover completely."
The medic went to the other wounded men. Havelock turned to the bartender. "Send me word when Hunter's awake and can talk."
"Sure thing, marshal." There was a time when the bartender would have said: No dirty Injuns in the Carrion. Now, he brimmed with good will.
Outside, the plaza baked in the afternoon sun. Havelock wiped the sweat from his face with the red bandana he wore around his neck as he strode toward the jailhouse. He squinted at the Big Horn Mountains in the west. Somewhere out there is a hundred thousand in gold, he thought. And on the heads of my Cherokee fathers I swear…I will get it back.
Inside the jailhouse, not a breath of air stirred. The heat hung thick enough to slice. Pappy swiped at his brow with a bandana that was more holes than cloth.
"It's about time you showed up around here, Garet Havelock. A man would think the marshal never comes into his own office."
Havelock grinned. “I’m gonna get some sleep, Pappy. Wake me if anything comes up.”
"Say, Havelock. You ever hear of Bones Wilson? He's one o' them what came into this country with me and Henry Wickenburg back in '64. Thing is, the Apaches got him in '73 just afore Tom Jeffords and Cochise made that peace treaty. Sure enough, he went straight to Hell. Three days later, his ghost come back to Vulture. Seems it was too cold in Hell for him. He was looking for a couple of blankets to take back with him."
Havelock grinned. "Pappy, you got a hatful of the wildest yarns I ever heard."
"God's truth, ever' one. I ain't never been caught at a lie. Specially not by a lawman."
Havelock smiled again. "Like I said, wake me if anything comes up."
He slept in a little room off the office, came with the badge, and he took his meals at the Golden Skillet, the town's only restaurant. Havelock got the same fare as the prisoners, if there were any in jail.
The marshal pulled his boots off on the bootjack and lay back on the cot. The air was close and stifling, but it didn't matter. Havelock was asleep in an instant, closing his eyes for the first time in nearly two days. And in his dreams, he once again faced Barnabas Donovan.
****
"Red Legs is coming! Red Legs is coming!" Johnny Havelock, Garet's younger brother, spread the alarm, but the thunder of hooves on hardpan soon drowned out his voice.
CSA Major Rothwell Havelock, Garet’s father, died on the field of battle, killed with Johnson at Shiloh. The major lay with his men in a mass grave below Bloody Pond, one of more than ten thousand Southern boys who died that day.
Marybelle Havelock died of the bloody flux not long after Rothwell. She rested beneath the cottonwood tree with the three baby girls she'd lost.
Johnny—Johannes was his name—Garet, and an old black woman named Mixie occupied the Havelock home, with Garet nursing half-healed wounds suffered fighting Sherman's men.
For defense they had an old Hawken rifle, a .45 caliber Dance Bros. revolver, and a .44 caliber Walker Colt left over from Rothwell Havelock’s Texas Ranger days, before he married his Cherokee sweetheart and moved to the Indian Nations.
"Mixie, you'll want to get out of the house and stay out of sight. These here Yankees may be lookin' for blood, any blood." Garet checked the load in the Hawken, put priming powder in the pan, and thumbed back the flintlock hammer. "Johnny, take the Dance Bros. and the extra cylinders. Make yourself scarce. I'll meet the Yankees. Don't you come back 'til they leave, y'hear?"
Johnny pocketed the cylinders, picked up the heavy pistol, and ran through the back door to the wooded hills beyond.
Garet stepped out of the front door as a dozen Kansas Red Legs came riding up to the house. They were in high spirits, like they'd found Rufe Wilkinson's hideaway still on the way.
"Howdy, boy." The captain was big and red-headed, with a reckless gleam in his blue eyes.
"Howdy." The Hawken was ready.
"And why are you not out with the other Rebel rabble?" The captain seemed to enjoy the sound of his own voice.
"Gen'l Watie sent me home. Sherman's boys put me out of the war."
The captain chuckled. Then he laughed.
"Good." Then the Red Leg leader's face went hard. "We have intelligence that Quantrill's raiders are in these parts. Would you have any further information?"
"No, sir."
"I suspe
cted as much. But you’d say that regardless of the facts, would you not? Now, speak the truth." The captain's hard blue eyes stared down at Garet's black ones. "Put down the flintlock, boy. You haven't a chance."
"No, sir. Long as I got my gun, you die before me."
Garet felt the cold steel of a Green River knife under his ear.
"Drop it," a voice growled next to his ear. At seventeen, he was still too young to die. He reluctantly lowered the old rifle.
"Rasmussen, Hardy." The captain swung off his big horse. "Bring that boy down here." The Yankee walked over to the big cottonwood that stood not far from the house.
Two blue-clad troopers grabbed Garet by the elbows and turkey-trotted him down to stand in front of the captain, who pulled on a pair of light-colored doeskin gauntlets.
"I queried you concerning Quantrill," he said pleasantly. "Have you anything to add to your reply?"
"No, sir. I haven't heard, and I don't know."
Still smiling, the captain drove his right fist into Garet's gut. The breath exploded from his lungs. The captain's left fist smashed his nose, and blood splattered the doeskin.
The captain drew back his left fist again.
Garet saw the punch coming and dropped, taking all the weight off his legs. The swinging fist went over his head to smash into the trooper holding his left arm. The trooper's grip loosened, and Garet tore his arm free. He spun back around to the left until he was behind the other trooper, his right arm still held in the trooper's big hands. As the soldier followed Garet around, he found a hip in his belly. He flew over Garet's back to land hard on his shoulder.
The captain took a step forward, drew his Dragoon Colt, and cracked Garet over the ear with the long barrel.
Garet regained consciousness to find himself bound hand and foot to the big cottonwood tree. The house burned and it looked like the Red Legs were ready to leave. Wind blew smoke from the flaming house across the yard and into Garet’s nose and eyes. It carried the odor of burning wood and a smell that signaled the end of a way of life.
The captain noticed Garet's open eyes and reined his bay over in front of the tree. He gazed down at Garet for a long time. "You have intestinal fortitude, boy. But we can't have youngsters such as yourself stirring up trouble." The captain once again drew his Dragoon Colt and cocked the heavy weapon.