T. J. Murphy was one of the best horse-handlers in the Army before he went to Leavenworth for ten years for killing a man in a saloon, A vicious, moody drunk, Murphy loved horses and hated men; out of prison three years, he had worked with Lassiter on several big jobs. That was how he managed to buy the saloon in Fort Smith.
Juno Flowers knew locks and safes. A shaky, nervous man, the only time he seemed to steady up was when there was danger. He seemed to need it. Lassiter thought it had something to do with the war. Flowers operated a locksmith business in Denver between jobs.
Oren Kingsley was an old railroad man who had worked at everything from tracklayer and gandy dancer to locomotive engineer and section boss. If he hadn’t wrecked a train and killed seventy-three people, he might have been president of the railroad by now. They said he had worked with the James boys, robbing trains after he got out of jail. Recently, he had been tending bar in the Bella Union Hotel in Omaha.
Old Calvin Moseley, now running a harness and leather shop in Amarillo, had worked as a trail boss for Washington Malone, and, later, Charles Goodnight. Once they hanged him for running off stock. He dangled ten minutes before a tame Indian happened along and cut him down. They hadn’t bothered to hang him again. As Charles Goodnight always said, a man with a twisted neck was living proof that it didn’t pay to rustle cows.
Thinking about it while the waitress brought the third cup of coffee, Lassiter decided he didn’t like any of them; but the one he liked least was Howey Winters, or Handsome Howey, as they called him behind his narrow back. Lassiter knew Winters from all over. Handsome Howey was a trick shooter, a perfect, natural, nerveless shot with both hands, with rifle or pistol, and he was also a hired killer. When he wasn’t killing somebody he didn’t know, he dazzled the rubes at the Midway Theatre in St. Louis, in which he had a small interest.
A real nice bunch of fellers, Lassiter decided with a sour smile. Every one of them twisted or gone wrong in one way or another. Just the kind of men he needed to take away that bale of money from Texas Jack. Taking it wouldn’t be easy, no matter how many or what kind of men he had. Fort Riley was only twenty miles away, and though robbing Texas Jack wasn’t strictly an Army matter, the Army would probably get into it somehow because of Chandler’s important connections.
It was still too early to go back to the telegraph office. It was nine o’clock in the morning and the saloons and whorehouses along the gaudy main stretch of Texas Street were running wide open. Lassiter paid for his breakfast and took a walk down by the marshal’s office. Up ahead of him on the boardwalk two deputies were dragging a prisoner toward the jail. Most of the fingers on the prisoner’s right hand had been chopped off neatly below the knuckle. The wounded man was still drunk and didn’t know or didn’t want to know that his fingers were missing. He kept clawing his empty holster and that made the bleeding worse.
Lassiter followed the trail of blood down to the marshal’s office and jail, and stood looking at the old wanted posters out front. While he was doing it, the marshal, a barrel-chested man in his fifties, came out and looked at the blood on the boardwalk. He went back inside without taking any interest in Lassiter. Lassiter grinned at some of the familiar faces in the sheaf of yellowing posters, but there was no picture or description of him. This far north he didn’t think there would be, unless there were newer ones inside. And there was no easy way to check that.
Besides the marshal, he figured, a town like Abilene would have five or six deputies, with maybe four extra men to handle the cuttings and shootings on Saturday night. That was the professional law, and by itself it wasn’t so bad. But when you added in Texas Jack’s hired gunmen and the soldiers at Fort Riley, and allowed for the fact that Jack Chandler was Abilene’s leading citizen, the odds went way up. For a smaller take it wouldn’t be smart to go up against all that gun power; but in this game, Lassiter figured, the money pretty well balanced the odds.
The thought occurred to Lassiter that he might not be the only interested party in town. The smell of money brought them in from all directions, just as it had brought him, and that was something else he had to consider. Competition from another gang could interfere with his operation even more quickly than the law. He didn’t know many gangs with brains or guts enough for a job like this, but you never knew. It was something to think about.
He walked down to the depot, then past that to the huge loading pens where the longhorns were prodded aboard cattle cars for a one-way jaunt to the slaughterhouse. Extra trains had been brought in to clear the pens of cattle. New pens were being built, and there were freshly printed posters with the ink still wet stuck up everywhere. The posters said: WELCOME TEXAS JACK. Lassiter figured there hadn’t been so much excitement since Sherman burned Atlanta.
The office of the Texas Jack Chandler Cattle Company was in a two-story frame building. Just beyond it was a short railroad siding with a wide gate. That was the place Cassie had mentioned. And that was where the money would be. The siding was empty now.
Making a map in his head, Lassiter walked through the pens, then made a wide swing and came back into town by one of the side streets. He drifted down Texas Street on the west side of the street, past the Drover’s Hotel, past filled-up saloons with names like Old Fruit and The Pearl. Cassie had a room at the Thompson Hotel, the best place in town. Down past that was the Alamo Saloon where Wild Bill and John Wesley Hardin had their famous showdown. Lassiter went into the Alamo, figuring to kill another hour before he went back to the telegraph office.
The Alamo was something to see. They called it the Alamo to bring in the Texas Trade, and it looked like the name was a success. The bar was as long as a Mexican funeral, and ten times as lively. Five bartenders, working with both hands, just about kept even with the demand for drinks. On a raised platform the loudest band Lassiter ever heard was topping off the uproar with piano, fiddle, trumpet, and bull fiddle. All the tunes in the Alamo were “Texas” tunes. The band buffaloed its way through “Lorena” and gathered speed with “Lone Star Girl.”
Lassiter elbowed his way to the bar and ordered a beer. A man he didn’t know turned to him and said, “Well now, ain’t that Texas Jack something? Ain’t that old boy something.” Lassiter said he sure as hell was. The man turned away, still running off at the mouth. There was nobody Lassiter knew to talk to. The competition, if there was any, was keeping out of sight.
Three beers and four smokes later, at eleven o’clock, Lassiter left the Alamo and went back to the telegraph office. When he gave his name, the old man cackled and said, “You got right lively business associates, mister. The last one just sent a reply five minutes ago.”
Chapter Three
Lassiter didn’t do anything special while he waited for the others to get there. He lay on his bed and smoked, nipped on a bottle, and cleaned his guns. When he got sick of that he slept. The surest way to get noticed in any town was to stay holed up in his room all the time, so when he had enough of the hotel he went down to one of the saloons and sat in on a poker game. He won some, then lost some of it back.
The big-tit Swede waitress had taken a fancy to him, and he was all for that. Without being asked, she told him her name was Marta Lindstrom. She liked him so much he could have ham and eggs, if he came to the restaurant early or late enough. Miss Lindstrom explained in her backcountry Minnesota accent that the other customers would get mad if they saw him wolfing down ham and eggs while they had to make do with the same old standby—fresh, tough steak and pinto beans.
Lassiter couldn’t recall any reason why he should dislike Swedes—he had killed a man once named Charlie Clingman, but maybe he was a German, not a Swede—and he was ready to do anything to get away from that goddamned steak. Besides, this Swede girl with the hourglass figure wasn’t as bad as having a red-hot Comanche arrowhead shoved up his ass. Butter and eggs had made her hefty, but she was a damn sight better than the pock-faced saloon girls along Texas Street.
Marta’s widowed mother owned the restau
rant and they lived upstairs. While the mother snored in the next room, Lassiter ate the ham and eggs the top-heavy Swede girl fixed for him, and later he straddled her on a curve-backed sofa that threatened to collapse under their weight. Lassiter decided he liked that as much or even more than the ham and eggs.
They got up and Marta apologized for having only whisky to offer him, not aquavit like her dead father had made on their fine farm up in Minnesota. Lassiter didn’t know what in hell she was talking about. He said the whisky was fine.
The Swede girl was dreamy and Lassiter drank fast. It was good to have a lot of whisky when you finished with a woman and had to listen to her talk, because you figured it might be handy to have her around again. The old woman in the next room stopped snoring and started to cough. Lassiter hoped the old biddy would stay asleep. Sheriffs, back-shooters, bounty hunters, Comanches, and whores with knives he was ready to face. White-haired Swede widows and mothers were something else.
Marta Lindstrom filled Lassiter’s glass again and asked him if he had enough to eat. Lassiter said he was as tight-bellied as a poisoned pup, but if she let him wait a while he might like to have a second helping of something else. He meant it as a compliment and the girl took it that way, after about an hour had passed.
Lying there, Lassiter thought he might go down to the Alamo and drink some whisky and play a little poker before he turned in. Twice in two hours wasn’t much with some women. With this iron-thighed Swede it was enough or nearly enough.
Marta sighed, got up, and put on her dress. “Why is it,” she asked no one in particular, “that the men who have the money don’t have the other thing?”
Thinking of his forty-five thousand to be, Lassiter said, “That ain’t altogether right, sis.”
“Well, you ain’t rich, are you?”
“Not in the fleshy commodities of this world, honey.”
“Like hell you aren’t,” the Swede girl said. “But what I want is the firm flesh and the big money. That’s what I want and that’s what I aim to get.”
Lassiter said there was no reason why they shouldn’t get together while she was waiting, and the Swede girl agreed.
The way Swede girls and certain mothers are, she asked him again if he had enough to eat. Lassiter said he had enough ham and eggs, if that was what she meant. The girl blushed, and Lassiter buttoned up his pants and went down to his poker game.
It wasn’t much of a game and Lassiter drank no more than a quarter of a pint of whisky before he pulled off his boots and went to bed.
~*~
Murphy got to Abilene before the others. Drifting through the depot, Lassiter saw the big Irishman get off the train. A colored bag-carrier ran forward to snag the Irishman’s single bag. Murphy looked mean-tempered and sick with last night’s whisky. He hit the colored man with the side of the bag and sent him flying. “Leave off, Rastus,” Lassiter heard the big horse-handler say. The Negro scurried out of Murphy’s way, eyeballs rolling.
The best Lassiter could do was to get two rooms for the five of them. It had taken an extra twenty dollars to get that much. Personally, Lassiter wouldn’t like to bunk in with any of them, especially Murphy and Winters. He followed the Irishman along Texas Street. Murphy was the biggest man in sight, getting a bit old now but still tough as chuck-wagon steak, and he walked as if he knew it. All those years in the cavalry must have given the Irishman a hate for wide-brimmed hats. Lassiter had never seen him wearing anything but a curve-sided derby.
Lassiter walked on past the hotel to the Alamo Saloon. He stayed there most of the morning, drinking and playing poker. Later in the day he got his horse and rode out along the railroad right of way, in the direction of Junction City and Fort Riley. Texas Jack’s train would be coming back that way. It was getting dark when he rode back into Abilene.
The next day Winters, Kingsley, and Flowers arrived. The day clerk, with the waxed mustache and itchy palms, told him when he came down for breakfast. Lassiter told him he was doing a fine job of room clerking, to keep up the good work.
Lassiter wanted to think, and he couldn’t do that with the Swede girl fussing over him. So he drank bad coffee in a three-stool hole-in-the-wall run by a one-legged veteran. After that he had the kid at the livery stable saddle his horse.
This time he rode with the rails going south. A general plan was coming together in his head. That was how he usually worked. The thing to do was look the situation over real good; when it came time for doing instead of talking, a plan would more or less suggest itself. Lassiter usually liked to work in country less thickly settled than central Kansas. Sometimes a mob of farmers with shotguns and pitchforks could be as much trouble as the best-organized posse.
When he got back it was late, and the night clerk told him that Calvin Moseley had just come in on the last train. Lassiter hunted up the kid who swept up around the hotel and sent a message over to Cassie at the Thompson Hotel. Then he went upstairs.
Handsome Howey Winters opened the door and Lassiter saw they were all there. Already the room was thick with tobacco smoke and whisky stink. Most of the whisky stink was coming from Murphy, who looked red-eyed and truculent as ever.
“How do, Howey?” Lassiter asked Winters, coming in. “How’s the murder business these days?”
Winters had been raised in a rotting wooden tenement on the St. Louis docks, and he looked like what he was—a vicious, pasty-faced city rat. Handsome Howey’s taste in clothes ran to brownish suits with yellow checks and Jefferson ankle-shoes. Like the Irishman, Winters always wore a derby hat.
“A bit slow lately,” Winters said. He sneered at Lassiter’s trail-worn duds. “But I’m still a ways from being a hobo.”
“I’m real delighted to hear that,” Lassiter told him. He didn’t offer to shake hands with any of them. Old Cal Moseley, who liked to play the old Texas cowhand when he wasn’t off stealing cows or back-shooting some rider, stuck out his leathery hand. Lassiter ignored it.
Juno Flowers, the safe blower, looked as morose and shaky as ever. He looked at Lassiter and didn’t say anything. One good thing about Juno—he was quiet. And that was all you could say for him.
Murphy was hogging one bottle all to himself. There was another bottle and some glasses on the dresser. Oren Kingsley had been fixing himself a drink when Lassiter came in. He filled the glass all the way up and put it away in one gulp. Going down, it made him shudder. Lassiter wondered how much liquor Kingsley had taken aboard the night he killed those seventy-three people in the train wreck.
“Good to see you, Lassiter,” Kingsley said.
Lassiter nodded.
The old cane rocker creaked under Murphy’s huge bulk. The Irishman drank straight from the bottle. Murphy was the kind of bigmouth clodhopper who would knock the neck off a bottle even when it was just as easy to pull out the cork.
“Jesus, boys,” he said. “If it isn’t Colonel Lassiter finally come to pay us a call. Such an honor. Think of it, boys.”
To Lassiter he said, “What in hell’s the matter with you, cowboy? I been sitting ’round here most of two bloody days. Couldn’t you least have the manners to come up and have a drink with a man, and say hello?”
“If you were lonely, T. J.,” Lassiter said, “why didn’t you go out and stomp somebody to death?”
The Irishman heaved himself out of the chair. Even by himself he would have made the hotel room look small. “You got a bad mouth, Lassiter,” he said. “A dirty mean mouth and it gets bad instead of better. Maybe I’m the boy to give it a whole new shape.”
Lassiter walked over to the dresser and poured himself a drink. His back was to the Irishman. “Sit down, Timothy J.,” he said easily. “I don’t like you and you don’t like me, but that ain’t why we’re here. Later you’re welcome to fix my bad mouth if you have a mind to.”
The chair creaked as the Irishman sat down. Lassiter turned around. “Here’s looking at you,” he said.
“May it choke you,” Murphy said.
�
��Why are we here?” Howey Winters asked. Winters had pale hair and eyes. Everything about him was pale, cold as a gravestone by moonlight. His hands were long and pale and once in a while they twitched as if closing over the butts of guns you couldn’t see.
Lassiter drank some of the whisky paid for with Cassie’s money. Murphy was red and Winters was slug-belly white. Old Cal Moseley was a sneaking thief and hypocrite. Kingsley had killed seventy-three men, women and children, and he still whined about the bad luck life had brought him. Juno Flowers was a shifty-faced weasel. They were a fine bunch of men. Just down home folks.
“What about it, Lassiter?” Winters asked again. “You mentioned this here business opportunity.”
“It’s big,” Lassiter said, stalling to give Cassie time to get there. He mentioned Texas Jack and the hundred-and-eighty thousand dollars.
“Holy Jesus,” Murphy said, shaking his head.
Lassiter looked at Winters.
Cal Moseley massaged his twisted neck and said, “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.”
“This one could get us killed,” Howey Winters said.
There was no comment from Juno Flowers and Oren Kingsley.
Lassiter explained about Cassie McCord.
There was no use trying to go ahead unless he did.
There was a knock on the door. Winters took a long-barreled .32 from under his coat so fast that Lassiter hardly saw his hand move.
“Open it,” Lassiter said.
Kingsley opened the door and Cassie came in.
“A woman!” Winters protested. “A goddamned woman!” He turned to Lassiter, putting the gun away. “Oh no, Lassiter, I don’t want any part of this.”
“Who is this fool?” Cassie asked, not a bit put off.
“You want a drink, Cassie?” Lassiter asked.
The Man From Lordsburg Page 2