Shawn Starbuck Double Western 3

by Ray Hogan

  “I asked you before—who’s gunning for him?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “He ought to have some kind of an idea—”

  Fisher shrugged. “McGraw’s been knocking around for a long time. The Babylon Palace is not the only big gambling house he’s ever owned or been connected up with. Expect he’s made plenty of enemies—and there’d be a few who’d like to put a bullet in him. Pretty hard for any man to pull himself a step up above the usual crowd without getting somebody sore. Like Dansinger, that gunman you buffaloed your first night on the job.”

  A fresh wave of anger swept through Starbuck. He was tired, his nerves were raw, and a bitter mood possessed him. “What about it?”

  “He sent word by some drifter. Said to say there wasn’t room around here for the both of you—that one of you had to move on.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At the hotel—staying there.”

  Shawn wheeled and started for the door. Fisher came up out of his chair.

  “That star—you aim to keep wearing it?”

  “When I quit, you’ll know it,” Starbuck snapped, and entering the casino, shouldered his way through the crowd, now beginning to thin with the approach of dawn.

  He went directly to the hotel and roused the clerk sleeping on a cot behind the high desk.

  “Dansinger—what room’s he in?”

  The elderly man, not fully awake, stared. “Who?”

  “Dansinger!” Shawn repeated irritably. “What’s his room number?”

  “Four—number four.”

  Starbuck wheeled and made his way down the faintly lit corridor to the designated door. Drawing his pistol, he gripped the doorknob with his free hand and twisted. It was locked. Temper soaring, he raised his foot and drove in the panel with a crashing kick.

  The gunman came off his bed in a quick bound. He lunged for the gun belt hanging from a nearby chair.

  “Touch that and I’ll blow you in two!” Starbuck snarled.

  Dansinger eased back slowly onto the bed. His features were indistinct in the dim light entering the room through the shade, but he never removed his hard eyes from Starbuck. Out in the hallway there was a faint scraping as the clerk shifted his position, apparently to get a better look at the proceedings.

  Shawn drew a match from his pocket, fired it with a thumbnail, and lit the lamp standing on the table. Pulling Dansinger’s pistol from its holster, he methodically emptied the cartridges from the cylinder, then dropped it back into place.

  “Get your clothes on,” he ordered, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “You’re pulling out.”

  The gunman stared at him coldly for a long breath and then began to dress. Finished, he reached cautiously for his belt.

  “Hang it on your shoulder,” Starbuck said quietly.

  Dansinger complied wordlessly. Shawn jerked his head at the door. “Let’s go ... I’m walking you to the stable.”

  The gunman turned at once, moved out into the hall, and, with Starbuck a stride behind him, entered the lobby, passed by the gaping clerk, and stepped into the street, now bright with the first rosy flare of the new day.

  The same drowsy hostler brought Dansinger’s horse, threw the gear into place, and aware of the brittle tension lying between the two men, hurriedly moved away. The gunslinger swung onto the saddle, cut his horse around, and started for the wide entrance. He drew rein, then twisted about to face Shawn.

  “This ain’t the last verse. Reckon you know that.”

  “I know ... Your kind never learns until it’s too late.”

  “Nobody rousts me and lives to brag about it. I’ll be looking to square up.”

  Shawn’s wide shoulders stirred. “Take my advice, forget it. You maybe’ll get me—but I’ll kill you doing it.”

  Dansinger nodded slowly as if considering the truth of the statement. “Could be,” he murmured, and rode on, turning south as he came onto the hardpack.

  Starbuck, the anger and frustration that had gripped him since he had walked in to face Bart Fisher earlier that morning finally diminishing, watched the gunman move off ... Another customer for Buffalo Brady. Like as not he would join Hake Dallman’s crowd. Shawn smiled grimly. The number of hopefuls seeking to put a bullet in his hide was growing.

  Twelve

  Starbuck slept until late afternoon. Rising, he treated himself to a shave and scrubbing in the tin tub provided for such; after which, feeling much better, he drew on clean clothing and went into the street.

  His belly was again clamoring for food. When Dansinger had ridden off, discredited and beaten to the punch by the very man he had challenged, Shawn had gone on to his quarters and retired, all inclination to partake of a morning meal lost in the splintery tension that had gripped him. Now that it was all behind him, hunger once more was an issue.

  Moving by the Palace, he nodded to several men standing at the hitch rack, gave no thought to their cool, remote response, and made his way to the restaurant.

  Bessie, a large blonde somewhere in her late forties, met him inside the doorway. Like the girls at the Palace she, too, went in heavily for cosmetics, and Shawn had wondered before if she at some previous time had not followed a similar occupation. That she had been a handsome, if not actually a beautiful woman was apparent; but the years had exacted their toll, withering the fairness, leaving only a grossness of sagging skin and harsh lines.

  “Your friend’s waiting,” she said, and pointed a thick finger at Red sitting near a window.

  Shawn crossed to the husky rider and smiled his greeting.

  The redhead yawned, stretched. “I’m glad to see you ain’t packing no lead,” he said as Starbuck drew up a chair. “I’ve been wondering what happened after me and the woman left, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Nothing,” Shawn answered. “Looked like they had the notion for a bit to start chasing us, then gave it up.”

  Red shrugged. “Not for long—you can bet on that.”

  “For sure—and they’ll have a new gun to take the Kid’s place.”

  “That jasper you run out of town this morning?”

  “The same ... How’d you know about it? Wasn’t anybody around.”

  “Well, everybody knows about it now. The hotel clerk and the hostler down at the barn—they spread the story fast.”

  Starbuck nodded slowly. That accounted for the attitude of the men he had passed at the rack. He was now one apart, a dangerous man best left alone. He had had a taste of it that first night; his encounter with Dansinger further isolated him ... It didn’t matter—was better that way, in fact.

  “What’re you having?” Bessie asked, halting beside the table. “Reckon Bart’ll want you to have the best in the house after what you done.”

  “Count Red here on that, too,” Starbuck replied. “He was there.”

  The buxom woman’s thick shoulders stirred. “Sure. I’ll fix you both up good,” she said, and turned away for the kitchen.

  Shawn felt the redhead’s eyes upon him. He grinned. “Don’t you go giving me the cold stare now! Not expecting it from my friends.”

  “You might as well get used to it—but I was thinking about something else, about what Jenny said.”

  “McGraw? I jumped Fisher when I rode in. It’s true. Somebody is out to put a slug in him, and they’re looking to me to stop it.”

  “They know who?”

  Shawn wagged his head and stared off onto the hardpack. The men at the hitch-rack had mounted, were swinging onto the east road that led to Wichita and neighboring points.

  “Fisher only said McGraw had enemies, plenty of them, who’d like to cut him down if they got the chance. Couldn’t tell me much else.”

  Red took a sip of his coffee. It was cold. He returned the cup to its saucer, pushed it away.

  “I sort of like working in the dark.”

  “That’s what it amounts to.”

  “You aim to stay on the job?”

 
“Reckon so. I was mighty hot and close to quitting when I collared Fisher about it; then I simmered down. I can’t see as it’ll be any different from handling somebody like Dansinger. Just have to watch sharper.”

  Bessie appeared, bringing a pot of fresh coffee. She filled Shawn’s cup, dumped what was left in Red’s into a nearby cuspidor, and poured him another portion.

  “Heard McGraw’d be coming back now,” the redhead said. “Guess they figure it’s safe.”

  “Due in tonight, so Fisher thinks. He’s been holed up in Dodge.”

  “If I ain’t wrong,” Bessie said mildly, “that’ll be the old tub-of-guts now.”

  Shawn gave the heavy woman a quizzical look and swung his attention to the cleared area. A buggy containing two passengers was rolling up to the stable next to the Palace. It came to a halt, and a thickset man, well dressed in a gray suit, polished Hyer boots, and a flat-crowned white hat, stepped down.

  A hostler appeared magically, caught at the bridle of the off horse to steady the team as McGraw moved to assist his companion, a young and pretty girl.

  “What I figured—he’s gone and picked himself a new one,” Bessie muttered in a low voice.

  Starbuck glanced again at the elderly woman, conscious of the bitterness that tinged her words. Evidently there had been a time when she and Amos McGraw had been close—a period when she had been the favored one—only to be shunted aside for another.

  “Quite a looker,” he said without thinking.

  “Always are,” Bessie snapped. “But she won’t last long. Too much of a kid.”

  “He ever bring in any other kind but kids?” Red asked dryly.

  The portly McGraw, offering his crooked arm to the girl, stepped away from the buggy. Together they moved toward the Palace, he gesturing at its ornate facade and speaking volubly as they drew nearer. Her round face was tipped up. She was smiling, and her eyes were wide with wonder as she listened in rapt silence.

  “How’s that star you’re wearing feel on you now, marshal?” the redhead asked, his tone faintly sardonic.

  Shawn watched McGraw and the girl cross the Palace gallery at a leisurely step and disappear into its interior. He shifted on his chair.

  “No different. What he does is his business. I draw my pay for keeping the peace around here. Seeing that he stays alive is a part of it.”

  “It don’t bother you that he talks, maybe even forces those girls into coming here so’s he can rent them out—make a part of his living off them?”

  “I would if I thought they were being forced. She sure wasn’t—she knows what it’s all about, and that part of him’s no concern of mine. I just have to keep him from getting filled with lead—”

  “Which he ain’t worth!” Bessie cut in flatly. “Was you smart, you’d move on, find yourself a good woman, marry her, and settle down. Hanging around trash like Amos McGraw and Bart Fisher ain’t for you! I can see that in your eyes.”

  “A job’s a job—”

  “This one ain’t. You’d be doing the country a big favor was you to let whoever it is after him, kill him!”

  Starbuck grinned. “You’re a bloodthirsty old woman, Bessie,” he said. “How about that grub? I’m flat-out starved.”

  The woman’s lips clamped shut, and whirling, she hurried off.

  “Don’t think she likes McGraw much,” the redhead drawled. “Ain’t you trotting over to shake his hand?”

  “No hurry,” Shawn replied, leaning back as Bessie reappeared almost immediately, bringing a platter of food in each hand.

  She placed the dishes before them in silence and moved away, evidently having said all she intended to say on the matter. Starbuck began to eat at once, finding the thick steak and gravy-smothered mashed potatoes exactly to his liking.

  The two men finished their meal, one topped off with hot apple pie and more coffee, and then rose to leave. Red paid his check over Shawn’s protest, and both moved out into the darkening street.

  “Reckon I’ll see you later,” the husky redhead said, angling for the hotel’s entrance. “After a pile of eats like that, I need a nap.”

  Starbuck nodded. It was early for making his rounds of the stores, but he felt an urge to walk and settle such a fine supper before taking up a stand inside the gambling hall.

  “I’ll be looking for you,” he said, and stepping off the landing, he cut right, crossed in front of the barber shop and its adjacent neighbor where guns and saddles were sold, repaired, and often pawned and trail supplies could be had.

  Rounding the corner of the low-roofed structure, he continued on, walking slowly, enjoying the cool breeze that had sprung into being ... He had not let working for men like McGraw and Bart Fisher worry him; his primary purpose there was to find out what, if anything, could be learned of Ben, and as he had been told, there was no better place than Babylon to accomplish that.

  He gained the end of the saddle shop, turned the corner into the alley that ran behind the structures, and halted. On to the west a short distance, where the cottonwoods and elms and dogwood stood thick along the creek, a dove was mourning into the coming night, the call plaintive and lonely in the hush.

  It was an evening that took him swiftly back over the years to Muskingum, to the farm where Ben and he had spent their growing years—the same quiet of late summer, the sweet smells of grass and clover, the light clean blue of the sky turning to velvet as the sun’s burnished flare softened and faded.

  Life had been good, pleasant. Their mother, tall and coolly efficient, would have been preparing supper; their father, his labors of the day finished, would be in the big cowhide-and-oak chair placed under the sycamore that spread its thickly leafed branches over the house. He would be smoking his curved-stem pipe, eyes thoughtful as he stared out over the land he loved so deeply.

  He and Ben would be finishing their chores, or if they had already completed their assigned tasks, they would be playing at mumblety-peg on the bench near the pump house or perhaps scuffling about in the soft mat at the foot of the haystack.

  Over all would be hanging the faint, amber haze that comes with late summer, but a noticeable sharpness would be tingeing the breeze as if reminding them all that winter was not far off and that soon the snows and cutting winds would lay a stillness upon it all.

  It had been a happy life, one that saw the beginning of the end when Clare Starbuck died, a victim of lung fever, one further hastened by Ben’s stormy departure two years later and that came to a final, irrevocable finish eight years later when old Hiram passed to whatever reward or punishment his Maker had in store for him.

  The completion of one lifetime, the beginning of another, that is what the death of the elder Starbuck had meant to Shawn—the finale of one phase, the rising curtain to another. But he had adapted, as he knew he must, embracing the new, hostile, grimly harsh style of existence with a calm resolution that would have made Clare and Hiram proud of him. He had set his mind—

  “Marshal, don’t turn around—please!”

  At the sound of the cautious words, Starbuck stiffened. It was a woman’s voice coming from the side of the building he had just moved past.

  “Who’re you?” he asked, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

  “Somebody you don’t know. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  It would be one of the girls from the Palace, he realized. “What’s this all about?”

  “Something you ought to know—”

  “About what?”

  “A friend of yours. Go to room number eleven in the hotel ... See for yourself.”

  Thirteen

  The guarded words were followed by the quiet rustle of cloth, then silence. Shawn turned about. There was no one in sight.

  He considered what he had heard ... Room eleven ... A friend of his. He thought back, tried to recall the voice, failed; he sought then to determine who the friend might be. He had actually made few so far during his short time in Babylon—Red, the bartender, Pete, and, of course, Bart Fi
sher. It could be a trap of some sort, but who would be at the bottom of it? Dallman and his crowd were not around; neither was the gunman, Dansinger.

  There was but one way to find out. He started for the street, hesitated. To enter the hotel by its front door meant drawing the attention of the clerk, and after his experience with Dansinger, he would as soon avoid that. Wheeling, he cut back down the alley to the rear of the building and let himself in through that entrance.

  The hallway was dark, a solitary lamp burning at its far end, just off the lobby, the only source of light; stepping up to the nearest door, he checked the number. It was twelve. He swung about to the one on the opposite side of the corridor ... eleven.

  Drawing his pistol, he moved in close and placed his ear against the panel. There was no sound. Reaching for the knob, he turned it carefully. There was a dry click, but the door failed to yield ... Locked. He heard a moan then as if he had aroused whoever was inside.

  Holstering his weapon, he slid his fingers into his left boot and procured the slim-bladed knife he carried. Forcing its point between the edge of the door’s frame and the lock housing, he pried. The tumbler gave, and the panel swung inward, releasing a gust of hot stale air.

  Shawn waited there, allowing his eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness. The shades were drawn, and he could make out little other than that there was a shape lying on the bed.

  “Who—who is it?” The voice was low, exhausted, and unmistakably Jenny’s.

  Shawn stepped into the room quickly and closed the door. Thumbnailing a match into life, he crossed to the table beside the bed and lit the lamp that stood upon it.

  Jenny, battered almost beyond recognition, stared up at him from pain-filled eyes that were all but buried in a swollen, discolored face. Her dress was in shreds, and the portions of her body visible through the tears were covered by dark welts. She lay flat, unmoving, as if to stir was painful beyond bearing.

  A gust of anger rocked Starbuck. “Who did this to you?”

  Jenny’s crushed lips scarcely moved. “Fisher—”