The Man From Lordsburg

by Peter McCurtin

  “Not that slop. I brought my own. Even brought a clean glass.”

  “Bejesus, this is a new one on me,” T. J. Murphy said, grinning like the raunchy old bastard he was.

  Cal Moseley tried to offer the lady his chair. Lassiter told him to stay where he was.

  “Thanks anyway,” Cassie said.

  Old Cal bobbed his twisted neck like a turkey trying to dodge the Thanksgiving axe.

  “Shit, Lassiter,” Winters said, glaring at Cassie. “You ain’t going to tell me this deal is run by a woman.”

  Lassiter took his time about fixing himself another drink. After he poured the drink he built a smoke, and he took longer doing that.

  “Howey,” he said finally, striking a woodie on the top of the dresser. “I guess I’ll just have to tell you again, since you wasn’t listening when I told you on that first job we worked on together. Any job I work on I run. I do the thinking. I do the talking. No woman—nobody—runs the show but me. You get that, do you, Howey?”

  “I’m no fool,” Winters snarled.

  Murphy mimicked him. “I’m no fool. It’s just that I’m the kind of a feller doesn’t like girls. Now boys with soft asses is something else.”

  Winters’ pale eyes narrowed. “You clodhopper son of a bitch,” he said.

  Murphy was drunk and he wasn’t afraid of Winters. Drunk or sober, he wasn’t afraid of anything. That was one of the things wrong with him, Lassiter decided. “Look, Howey,” he said. “You don’t like this deal—walk away from it. No hard feelings and there’s the door.”

  Winters was still staring at Murphy, but he spoke to Lassiter. “I come a long way, friend. I’d like to listen.”

  Lassiter was getting sick of the cross talk. “You listen, you know, Howey. Get in or get out. Take a minute to think about it. Only listen to this, sharpshooter, once you say in the only way out is dead.”

  Winters was scared of women and not much else. He wanted to kill the mouthy Irishman, but now he was talking to Lassiter. “I can break six marbles out of six,” he said.

  “Marbles don’t shoot back,” Lassiter informed him. “Now suppose we put the smart talk away and talk about this plan I have in mind.”

  Chapter Four

  The big herd was still two days south of Abilene when Texas Jack’s private train arrived from Kansas City. It didn’t come in quietly, early in the morning or after dark, but on the stroke of noon. Lassiter figured that was about when it would be, but the town didn’t know because Texas Jack hadn’t set any special time. Jack was learning political tricks all right. Men without a dollar in their Levis were all anxious and worked up about Jack Chandler’s money.

  Earlier that morning a wild rumor had gone around that the train had been run off the rails by a gang of bushwhackers led by Colonel Quantrill’s crazy son. Quantrill had no son, at least none given to robbing trains, but the name still meant excitement in Kansas, and it gave the town something to talk about.

  Going down to the Alamo, Lassiter saw a troop of cavalry with a colonel up front heading for the railroad depot. The colonel had Burnside whiskers and looked to be on an important errand. The troopers rode straight-backed in their saddles. Somehow they didn’t seem to be as impressed with the occasion as the colonel. The colonel would be the Army’s official greeter.

  Lassiter played cards until eleven thirty, then finished his drink and sauntered down to the depot. Already, there was a mob of people there, mostly cowboys, and they were getting up a good head of steam on the bottles being passed around. Up on a wide platform draped with WELCOME TEXAS JACK banners, a brass band in gaudy uniforms were sweating in the sun. They had been there since eight o’clock that morning.

  Lassiter rolled a cigarette. Putting a match to it, he spotted Kingsley and Murphy drifting through the crowd. It wasn’t hard to spot Murphy. The band had been drinking and the bandmaster looked ready to draw a gun on them when they bollixed up a fast run-through of “Zack, The Mormon Engineer.” After he yelled at them for a while, with the mob of cowboys offering some salty comments of their own, the band did better with “The Old Chisholm Trail”.

  They were doing fine with “Dixie,” the evergreen favorite of the trail hands, when a young rider came tearing down Texas Street yelling his head off. “Son of a bitch they’re coming!” Some of the ladies sweating delicately under their parasols looked shocked. Way out on the prairie a hooter started blasting. The crowd yelled, then simmered down, and in the quiet that followed they could hear a locomotive bell clanging. Well, so much for Colonel Quantrill’s crazy son, Lassiter thought.

  The mayor of Abilene, followed by the sheriff and other town officials, bustled down to the depot. The colonel Lassiter saw earlier had dusted off his uniform and combed out his whiskers. When he climbed up on to the welcome platform and shook hands with the mayor, the band exploded with brassy sounds.

  “Not yet, you bastards,” the bandmaster roared, shaking with rage and excitement. The mayor’s wife frowned at him. The music trailed off and the train bell got louder. The sound of money, Lassiter decided. He spotted Oren Kingsley again but Murphy wasn’t to be seen. There was no sign of any competition in the crowd.

  The train clanged to a stop and a blast of escaping steam drove the crowd back. “Now,” the bandmaster roared. “Dixie” added to the uproar as Texas Jack Chandler, magnificent as Buffalo Bill Cody in gray broadcloth and white boots, swung down from the train. Texas Jack took his time getting down. He held onto the grip-handle with one hand and waved his famous white Stetson with the other.

  Lassiter thought it would have been smarter of Texas Jack to have allowed his bodyguard, Dixon Quirly, to get down first. But Jack wasn’t about to let anybody spoil his moment of glory, even if it meant taking a bullet from some crackpot with a real or imagined grudge. Lassiter knew what Texas Jack looked like. Right now he was more interested in Quirly. He didn’t know Quirly: he knew about him. What he’d heard was good or bad, depending on whether you were behind Quirly’s gun or in front of it.

  Quirly was nothing like the man he killed for. Once upon a time he had been town marshal of Fort Griffin, and he still looked the way most town tamers did—quiet, soberly dressed in a black frock coat and string tie, slow moving. The light-blue eyes that looked out at the crowd were dead and expressionless. Even his gun rig was plain, like the man himself, just a single-action, rubber-handled Colt .45 in a worn holster.

  Even if Lassiter didn’t know about the score of men Dixon Quirly had killed, some legal, most not, he would have figured him as fast and deadly. Lassiter had a strong hunch that he’d have to kill Dixon Quirly before this business in Abilene was finished. And it wouldn’t be all that easy.

  Now Texas Jack had his arm around the big cattle buyer, Mathew Woodruff. Woodruff, a fat man with a high hat, looked put-off by all the attention. But Texas Jack gripped him around the shoulders and wouldn’t let go. “Here’s the man with the money,” Jack kept yelling. “Now come on, folks, let’s all say a big hello to your friend and mine—Mathew Woodruff.”

  The crowd did what it was told and, flanked by four of Quirly’s gunmen and four town deputies, Texas Jack pulled the pink-faced moneybags toward the welcome platform.

  The mayor was trying to make himself heard.

  The bandmaster raised his hand to wipe the sweat off his face. The music began again, two different tunes at one time. The bandmaster snatched off his kepi and threw it at the man playing the tuba. The noise kept building up until Texas Jack, showing all his buckteeth in a huge grin, pulled his matched, pearl-handled forty-fives and fired into the air.

  “Shut up, you mully-grubbers,” he roared, “goddamn it to hell’s fire—I told you shut up.”

  Jack grinned wider than ever to show he wasn’t mad. The crowd loved it. Texas Jack whacked the mayor between the shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of him. “Now you just air out your paunch, your honor,” he howled. “Spit it out, your excellency, only don’t take too long about it. We got some serious drin
king to do.”

  “Hurrah for Texas Jack,” an old man yelled. The cheering started again. It stopped when Texas Jack held up his hand. He looked down at the old man who was dressed in a greasy canvas coat and sweat-crusted wool hat. The old man was so drunk he could hardly stand.

  “How’s every old thing, Stinky?” Chandler asked the rum pot. “Been into the sarsaparilla again, have you?”

  The crowd thought that was the funniest thing since Clay Allison fell off that buckboard and broke his neck. The mayor made another crack at giving a speech.

  Looking at the train, Lassiter saw that the side of the caboose had been cut away. The long slit was covered with a hinged steel plate that could be raised or lowered from inside. It was raised part way now, and Lassiter thought he could see the muzzle of the Gatling gun. Cassie had said the Gatling was mounted on a swivel. That would mean there was another firing slit on the other side of the caboose. Unless he was mistaken the walls of the caboose were plated inside with steel.

  The mayor smiled weakly and mopped his forehead when Texas Jack stood up and told him to dry up. Chandler was a little more respectful with the colonel from Fort Riley, but he hurried him along too. “That’s just dandy, Colonel,” he allowed, winking at the crowd from behind the officer’s back. “And we surely do appreciate every word you just said. If I had the doing of it I’d make you a general right here and now.”

  Lassiter watched Oren Kingsley moping along by the train, just a harmless old galoot interested in locomotives and such. Kingsley might not know much about anything else, but he knew about trains. A little later, while Texas Jack was funning with the crowd, he caught sight of Howey Winters far back in the crowd. The little killer was staring at Dixon Quirly, standing behind the chairs on the platform where the dignitaries sat.

  Texas Jack was saying, “You folks didn’t come here to listen to a lot of hot air. You come here today to have a good time. And, by the Texas Christ, that’s what you going to have. I’m feeling right good today, ladies and you so-called gentlemen, and I want you to feel just as good. To be serious for a single minute, and I promise it ain’t going to be longer than that or shoot me, let me say when old Texas Jack Chandler makes money, the whole town of Abilene makes money. ’Cause if you think this herd of mine is something, you’re wrong. Why it ain’t but the beginning. Next time we going to cover the whole State of Kansas with cow-shit ...”

  Texas Jack paused to catch his breath and the old man called Stinky yelled, “The minute’s up, Jack. We going to have to shoot you.”

  The crowd roared at the old man, but Chandler held up his hand. “Harm not a hair on that greasy head,” he hollered. “It so happens that Stinky’s right.”

  Lassiter was getting sick of Texas Jack and his goddamned folksiness. If he’d known it was going to take this long, he’d have brought along a bottle. The thought of all that money eased his bad humor a bit.

  Texas Jack had hauled Stinky up on the platform and the mayor and the colonel were trying to make the best of it. It sure as hell looked as if Texas Jack was building himself up to run for some public office. Lassiter watched Oren Kingsley move away from the train and out through the crowd.

  The old man, Stinky, would have fallen off the platform if Texas Jack hadn’t held him up. Texas Jack was a son of a bitch, but he knew how to please a crowd. “Now looky here, Stink,” Texas Jack was saying. He snapped his fingers in front of the rum pot’s glassy eyes. Stinky came to life for a moment and yelled, “Remember the Alamo!”

  The crowd howled, no one there louder than Texas Jack. “Would that be the battle or the saloon?” he asked the old man.

  “Bring on the booze,” Stinky shouted just before his eyes closed all the way. Texas Jack threw him off the platform into the crowd, and they loved that too.

  “You heard the man,” Chandler called out. “Now everybody get themselves down to the Alamo and drink till you sick.” Texas Jack paused and closed one eye. “Drinks are on me!”

  Lassiter let the crowd rush by him before he started back for the hotel. When the mob thinned out, he saw the five buffalo hunters. Moving fast, he put a hay wagon between himself and the five men. Well, he thought, it had to happen.

  He watched Morgan Harpe and his four brothers looking at Texas Jack’s train. It had been a good three years since he’d run across the Harpe brothers down in Indian Territory. There had been six brothers then. Lassiter had killed Noah Harpe when all six of them had crept up on his camp at night and tried to do him in. The Harpes were like that. From the first day they’d climbed down out of the Ozarks they’d been murdering and stealing, but mostly murdering. It was said they would murder a man for an old pair of boots. Lassiter knew better than that. The Harpes would torture and murder a man for the fun of it.

  Lassiter edged away from the wagon and headed for the hotel without looking back. He knew damn well the Harpes hadn’t come to Abilene to listen to Texas Jack sound off about how big he was. The Harpes weren’t real buffalo hunters. It was more their style to wait until some other men loaded up their hides, then cut down on them. On the face of it, they were more suited to bushwhacking and night-crawling then robbing trains. They were just mean enough and dumb enough to try it, and spoil everything.

  Moseley and Kingsley were upstairs. Kingsley wanted to talk about the train. Lassiter cut him off. “Not now, Oren,” he said. “You go out and find Murphy and Winters. Never mind about Flowers. Tell them to get up here on the double.”

  Kingsley left without asking questions.

  “Trouble?” Moseley asked.

  “You know what Morgan Harpe and his brothers look like?” Lassiter demanded.

  Cal Moseley whistled. “Yeah, I know how they look. I guess you do too, from what I hear.”

  “That ain’t why I’m asking. They’re down at the depot right now. I think the crazy bastards mean to rob that train. What I want you to do is keep an eye on them. If they ride out of town you follow. If they’re still in the buffalo business, it’s likely they have some wagons out on the prairie.”

  “What you aim to do, Lassiter?”

  “What do you think?” Lassiter asked.

  “That’s what I thought,” Cal Moseley said, fingering his scarred, twisted neck, as if the talk of trouble brought back bad memories.

  “Don’t waste time, Cal,” Lassiter said. “We do this right or you can forget about the money. We move when you bring the good word.”

  Chapter Five

  Howey Winters had a heavy Remington-Schuetzen rifle with a detachable stock. The little killer took the blanket-wrapped weapon out of his trunk, clicked the stock into place, and worked the under lever five times—fast.

  The modified Remington-Hepburn was a beautiful gun. Lassiter had seen less than a dozen on the whole frontier. They used the Remington-Schuetzen in competition matches back east. It was a distance weapon, maybe the most accurate long gun in existence. Winters loved that gun as another man might love a woman. Lassiter didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t. It had brought him a lot of murder money in his time.

  With the big rifle in his hands, the pasty-faced killer was cockier than ever. “Look,” he said to Lassiter, “what’s all this fuss about these Harpes. Man, the minute old Cal says where they’re at, why I’ll just lay out there under a blanket and douse their lights one by one. Five shots, five dead brothers. With my baby here I don’t even have to get close. Those dirty birds won’t know what hit them.”

  Lassiter didn’t doubt for a moment that Handsome Howey could do it. Winters had knocked down more than a few good and bad men with the big rifle. He knew for a fact that Winters had dropped the Governor of a Mexican State and three of his aides at a range of nearly two hundred yards. Killing the Harpes would be no problem for Handsome Howey. Even if he missed one or two of them, which was goddamned unlikely, the rat-mouth killer would wait and nail them the first time they showed themselves.

  “Winters is right,” T. J. Murphy said, filling his glass so full it slo
pped over. “The little bastard is right, much as I hate to say it.”

  Winters knew better than to point the empty rifle at the Irishman. Instead he shook it, and said, “Look, you thick Mick ...”

  Murphy swallowed his drink and started to laugh. “Listen to the nance, will you.”

  “Everybody button up,” Lassiter said, knowing that Winters was right and piss-burned at himself for going against it. He was ready to do it, and do it ten times over, if there was absolutely no other way. He knew damn well there wasn’t but the final say on that was up to the Harpes. Killing—five clean bullets from the big rifle—was too good for the Harpes. A man didn’t have to be a killer like Winters or a savage like Murphy to know that. Even so, he didn’t work that way.

  The only one who didn’t have an opinion was Juno Flowers. The morose safe-blower sat nursing his drink, following the talk with his unblinking eyes. Lassiter wished the others would use him as a model.

  Kingsley said, “Trains, not guns, are my line. I’m no killer...”

  “Only seventy-three people,” Winters sneered.

  “Are you crazy, man?” the Irishman asked. “Them Harpes’ll cut you down soon as you show your face. After what you done to their brother, you’ll be lucky if they kill you quick. Besides, and I speak as the greedy feller I am, you’re putting this whole job in danger. Think of the money, Lassiter.”

  Winters had the same thought. “I didn’t come all the way from St. Louis so’s you can play gunfighter. Use your head, for Christ’s sake.”

  Lassiter finished his drink. “I just listened to more talk than I usually have a mind to. You all had your say and now I’m going to tell you something straight off. You do what I say or get out. I don’t give a stale dog turd if you came around the Horn for this job. Most likely you got the Harpes pegged right. Most likely and then some. And I don’t give an ounce of shit for that. We do it my way or we forget the whole thing. That way is out.”

  Nobody moved and nobody said anything.