Bannerman the Enforcer 39

by Kirk Hamilton

  “First time I been hungry for days, gal,” he said at the breakfast table, wolfing down beans and bacon and eggs. “I got you to thank for that, I reckon. I know enough about wounds to figure that thigh of mine needs some attention regular and often for a spell. So I guess you got yourself a little reprieve for a spell. I was gonna work on you, but I’ll keep workin’ on your brother.” He gave her a crooked grin. “Yeah, it come to me durin’ the night that I was goin’ about this the wrong way. You ain’t the one to crack, no matter what we do to Tate. But he’s gonna come apart at the seams before we work you over very much. He’s that kinda hombre. But now you got me to look after so you’re safe for a while. Meantime, we’ll keep our hands in on your brother—and Bannerman.”

  Jordan lifted his face and wiped the back of a hand across his chin as he jerked a head towards the bedroom door.

  “Wilt, go bring ’em all out here,” he rasped.

  Eagles wolfed down the last of the food on his plate and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee before getting up from the table and going to the door, picking up his Hawken as he went. The Counselor ate more slowly as he watched Eagles unlock the door and push it open with his foot.

  “Get out here, you,” he growled. “Kid! You, too!”

  Yancey and Tate struggled to their feet and exchanged a glance as they shuffled past Eagles, hands still bound tightly behind their backs. The bearded outlaw swore as he stepped into the room and reached out with the Hawken to roughly dig at the shape under the blankets on the bed.

  “Damn it, kid, I said on your feet—What the hell!” The Hawken’s foresight snagged the blanket and pulled it off the bed, revealing the punched-up pillow and a rolled sheet arranged on the bed so that, with a blanket covering them, they resembled the shape of a small body. “Kid’s gone, Mace.”

  Eagles lunged for the window and looked out, then threw it up in its warped frame. It only rose about ten inches. He swore as he turned back into the kitchen where the Counselor was already moving out into the yard, carrying his rifle. Jordan was tensed in his chair, injured leg up on a chair. Deborah, by the fireplace, checked with a ladleful of beans poised above a tin plate.

  Jordan glared at Yancey and Tate. “When did he go?”

  “Right after the Counselor collected the supper things last night,” Yancey answered readily. “He’s long gone, Jordan. You’ve nothing to fear from him.” He half turned so the Major could see his still-bound hands. “Wouldn’t turn us loose before he went. He’s scared sick of you. Figured if he didn’t do anything more to rile you, you wouldn’t bother with him.”

  Mace Jordan muttered a curse and then sighed as the Counselor came hurrying back in.

  “Looks like he took a horse. Fresh tracks leading from the corral, going west,” he announced. “I’d say he was making for one of the other ranches. Long as he gets fed regular, he won’t be any worry to us, Mace. Fact, he never was any worry. He did what he was told and just sort of—hung around, didn’t he?”

  “He done what he was told ’cause he was scared of me, like Bannerman said!” growled Jordan. He seemed to think about it. “Yeah. The kid’ll be all right. Fact that he wouldn’t turn these two loose proves that.”

  “Makes me wonder why they didn’t give him away, though, when he refused to help them,” the Counselor said slowly.

  The Major frowned as he turned to face Yancey and Tate Jarrett. “Yeah. Makes me wonder, too.”

  “You’re judging others by your own standards, Jordan,” Yancey told him curtly, swaying a little, for he had lost a lot of blood from his re-opened wound. “He was only a kid, mite on the touched side. What was the use in sicking you onto him?”

  Mace’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well maybe I can savvy you not doin’ it, Bannerman. Be in keepin’ with you. But that son of a bitch beside you ain’t got the same code, I’ll bet!”

  Tate shuffled his feet slowly. “Well—I was riled at him, sure. I said if he didn’t turn us loose I’d give the alarm soon as he tried to squeeze out the window.”

  “Tate!” exclaimed Deborah. “How could you! He was only a child! A poor dumb thing just trying to survive!”

  “That poor dumb thing got us into this trouble!” Tate retorted. Then he shrugged, calming down. “Anyways, Bannerman kicked me in the belly so’s I didn’t have voice enough left to yell a warnin’ an’ threatened to kick my skull in if I tried to rouse the others.”

  Deborah’s mouth was pulled into a tight line as she regarded her brother with distaste, but he wouldn’t look at her directly.

  “Well, it don’t matter, anyways,” Jordan said, feeling better since Deborah’s treatment of his wound. “I’m feelin’ chipper an’ I still got Bannerman an’ you two. The kid can go to hell for all I care.”

  Yancey kept his face blank. For all he knew, that was exactly where the kid was headed. Salty hadn’t even given any sign that he had listened when Yancey had tried to spell out the special coded message he wanted sent to Cato. He had made it as brief and as simple as possible, so that the lad wouldn’t have much to remember. But Salty wouldn’t even answer when Yancey asked if he understood. All he had done was ease up the window in its warped frame and then Tate had started threatening that he would yell for the Major or Eagles if the kid didn’t turn them loose first.

  Yancey had kicked him in the belly and concentrated on telling him what he would do if Tate was stupid enough to try to give away Salty’s plan. When he looked up again, the window was closed and the kid was gone. By the time Yancey had struggled to the window and up to his knees so that he could look out into the dark yard, there had been nothing to see.

  He hadn’t even known until now if Salty had been successful in taking a horse from the corrals or not. But the Counselor’s information that the tracks led west was disappointing to say the least.

  It looked as if Salty wasn’t going to Longbow to get away that message.

  Yancey swore silently. If only the kid had managed to send the message, Cato would already be on his way here by train. It would take him to Longbow and then he would hire a mount to get here. All the necessary information about Yancey’s situation had been contained in those few words.

  If only ...

  Yancey’s body jarred as the heavy Hawken’s barrel slammed into his back and sent him staggering halfway across the kitchen. He sprawled to his knees and Deborah helped him up, looking defiantly at Mace Jordan and his pards.

  “This man’s wound needs attention again!” she exclaimed. “You’ve re-opened it!”

  “Nothin’ to what I’m goin’ to open up on Bannerman,” the Major told her with a cold grin. “We got a lot of old scores to settle an’ when you see my handiwork, you’ll maybe think twice about holdin’-out on me any longer.”

  “You’re an animal!” Deborah told Jordan.

  He laughed. “Mebbe. Mebbe. I live the way I want to live, is all. It’s my choice. An’ I don’t like no one tryin’ to stand between me an’ what I want. Killin’ never has bothered me, gal, not right from the first. Fact is, I feel kinda good when I see someone hurtin’. Specially a woman.”

  He laughed as she involuntarily cringed back, going pale.

  “Sis ...” started Tate but shut up at a warning look from the girl.

  “He could be right, you know, young lady,” the Counselor said. “I believe he was about to say why not tell us what we want to know? I must admit it would save an awful lot of bother.”

  “We’ll die no matter what happens!” she replied.

  “Ah, yes, my dear, but as the Major pointed out last night, there are some rather—unpleasant ways of going about it. You’ll see as the day progresses and Bannerman gradually succumbs to the Major’s expert—treatment.”

  The girl was flour-white now as she glanced at Yancey and then looked away swiftly, flushing a little. She obviously had some guilt feelings about his predicament.

  Yancey himself felt tight as a fiddle string inside, like his belly had a stone in it. He knew Mace
Jordan’s reputation for torture. The man had fought in the Indian Wars as a free-roving scout and there had been a bounty on Indian scalps at that time. It was said Jordan had grown rich on his claims for bounty and he had dealt out worse torture than the Indians themselves had given to captured troopers.

  Yancey reckoned he was in for one hell of a day and he would be lucky to survive it. Even if Salty had gotten his message off, Cato couldn’t possibly get her before dark.

  And the whole long day stretched ahead of him.

  Yancey survived, but not because Jordan had lost any expertise in inflicting pain or went easy on him in any way.

  Tate Jarrett saved him.

  Jordan’s leg had to be tended every couple of hours by Deborah, and Yancey had a break from Jordan’s sadism during these times. But, by mid-afternoon, he was hardly aware of it. His body was one mass of throbbing pain. His senses were reeling, in a permanent coma-like state, from which he was jarred frequently by some new pain being forced on him.

  Deborah was physically sick and refused to watch, demanding that she be allowed to be locked in her room, hands covering her ears with a pillow over her head.

  Yancey was stripped to the waist, hung up by his wrists from a tree in the yard. He was barefoot, too, and Jordan had burned the soles of his feet at one stage.

  It was this, and the reek of singeing flesh that had broken Tate Jarrett.

  Suddenly, tied to an awning post, he began struggling against his bonds and screaming.

  “Stop, stop! Stop it, damn you! I’ll tell you where the gold is! I’ll tell!”

  He began to sob and Jordan, Eagles and the Counselor stared at him in shocked surprise. Deborah’s white, startled face appeared at her bedroom window. Yancey, semi-conscious, had heard Tate’s screams and he stirred, lifting his head slowly to see the young man through a red haze of agony, sobbing where he was tied up.

  He savvied what had happened before any of the others. Yancey realized that Tate, compelled to watch the torture, was leaping ahead in his imagination and seeing himself in the same position as Yancey, suffering the same agonies at Jordan’s fiendish hands. To be charitable, maybe Tate saw Deborah in that situation rather than himself.

  Either way, the thought was more than he could stand and he had broken and now Jordan grabbed his jaw between thumb and finger and, bracing himself on his walking stick, wrenched Tate’s head back.

  “Talk, you son of a bitch!” he growled.

  “It—it’s buried,” Tate sobbed. “Up in the foothills. You’ll never find it!”

  They turned slowly as Deborah banged a fist on the window, screaming at Tate to shut up. Jordan smiled faintly. The girl’s reaction was all the proof he needed that Tate was telling the truth.

  “You take us to it,” Jordan told Tate.

  The young man nodded eagerly. “Too late now—No! Gospel! We’d never get there till dark an’ we’d have to camp out till sunup. First thing in the mornin’. We’ll be there in a few hours.” Jordan looked steadily at Tate for a long time and then shoved his face away roughly. “We better be, yeller belly!” Breathing hard, he turned to the others and smiled crookedly. “Now that’s what I call real gentle persuasion, huh? Never even laid a finger on him yet he broke like a rotten egg!” He laughed harshly. “All right. Cut Bannerman down and that’ll be somethin’ to amuse ourselves with tomorrow—No, wait. Let him hang there. No sense in exertin’ ourselves any more than we have to. Leave him dangle.” Mace Jordan poked Tate in the belly with the walking stick. “But bring this one inside an’ sit with him all night. He’s valuable. So’s the gal. Till we get the gold, leastways.”

  Then, humming ‘Dixie’ quietly to himself, he limped towards the house, dragging his wounded leg after him.

  Deborah’s pale face was pressed against the window of the room where she was a prisoner, not looking at the men cutting her brother loose, but staring at Yancey’s battered, bleeding body dangling by the wrists from the tree branch.

  She felt sick to her belly.

  Yancey had little recollection of the night. It was one of flaring pain and moans, the bite of mosquitoes and other night insects. By morning, his face and eyes were lumpy and swollen with the bites and the wounds on his flesh were on fire. His arms felt about a yard long, his body the weight of a prime steer. Luckily he had been able to just reach the edge of a nearby water trough by swinging his legs during the darkness and he could rest his toes on the edge and ease some of the weight. But the rest of his feet were all blistered and sore and he couldn’t bear any weight on them.

  It was the longest night he could remember and his spirits plummeted when Cato didn’t show up. When the first sun washed over the yard and there was still no sign, he knew Salty hadn’t gotten away that message.

  Cato wouldn’t be coming, so there could be no rescue.

  He heard them stirring in the house and the kitchen door opened once when Eagles poked his head out to look at Yancey. He could smell breakfast cooking, hear the rattle of dishes. His mouth filled with saliva at the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee.

  Then they came out. Jordan, using his stick; Eagles with his Hawken cradled in his arms; Counselor holding his rifle on Tate and the girl. Tate’s wrists had been untied now and he was still rubbing them as they stepped out onto the porch.

  The Counselor stood on the steps as Jordan and Eagles stopped in front of Yancey. The girl looked pale and sick, gazed at the ground between her feet.

  “We’ll be back later with the gold, Bannerman,” Jordan told him, sounding very pleased with himself. He laughed. “Don’t go away!”

  The other outlaws laughed, too. Tate and Deborah exchanged glances. Yancey tried to speak but his throat was too dry and constricted. Jordan scooped a pail of water out of the water trough and threw it into Yancey’s face, jarring him to full consciousness. He licked hungrily at the water as it trickled down his puffy cheeks.

  “You ought to be nicely sun-cooked by the time we get back, Bannerman. Adios!”

  Jordan turned, still laughing, and then the laugh choked back in his throat and he stopped dead. Deborah Jarrett gasped and Eagles and the Counselor spun away from Yancey.

  Johnny Cato had stepped out of the trees across the yard and stood there, boots spread wide, hands hanging easily down at his sides.

  Yancey lifted his throbbing head, weak with relief flooding through him. But he felt the tension hit him again when he saw Cato wasn’t carrying his legendary Manstopper. He had a newer, smaller gun in a strangely-angled holster high up on his hip. What the hell! thought Yancey. That was no fast-draw rig! Must have something to do with Cato’s injured wrist. Hell, the one thing he had reckoned could turn the tables on Jordan was Cato’s Manstopper! Now the small Enforcer had only what appeared to be an ordinary Colt six-gun against these killers ...

  “No need to say anythin’, Jordan,” Cato said quietly. “You know you ain’t goin’ no place but to hell!”

  Jordan was leaning heavily on his walking stick now and Deborah heard the breath hissing through the pinched nostrils. She took Tate’s arm and they slowly stepped back and away from the three outlaws who didn’t dare take their gazes from Cato.

  Yancey shook his head to clear it. He wanted to see this but he was afraid Cato was going to go down under superior firepower ...

  Jordan let out a wild curse and suddenly drove down for his gun. Counselor brought up the rifle. Eagles lifted the massive Hawken, the large hammer already cocked back, a percussion cap in place.

  Yancey couldn’t rightly tell what happened afterwards. It wasn’t because he wasn’t lucid or aware. It was just so blamed fast and furious that he wasn’t able to sort out the action properly.

  Cato’s right hand just seemed suddenly to be poking out in front of his hip with a blazing gun in it. There were two stabs of flame from the top muzzle of the twin-barreled Manstopper Two, the sharp crack of .44 caliber cartridges firing. The Counselor staggered and fell to his knees, his rifle exploding into the ground, bullet ki
cking up dirt and dust as he pitched face forward.

  Jordan’s Colt was roaring and then Cato’s gun blasted again in three swift shots that threw the mad Major clear into the air his stick flying one way, gun the other, his broken body cartwheeling before it hit the ground in a threshing, flailing heap that slowly grew still.

  The massive Hawken boomed and Cato’s hat brim sheered off completely on the left side, sending him staggering. Eagles dropped the big mountain rifle and snatched up his Colt. Then Cato’s thumb pushed the firing pin selector down and when the Manstopper thundered this time, it was the ear-shattering roar of a shotgun. The twin barrels kicked high in the air and Yancey noticed that gunsmoke spurted from under the bottom barrel, jetting straight down and at an angle from each side. He didn’t know this was Cato’s new muzzle brake, but he saw the results of the shot shell’s charge of buckshot.

  Wilt Eagles’ big body shuddered and jerked and lifted clear of the ground, legs kicking high as he went over backwards, tilted by the thrust of buckshot taking him high in the chest. When he hit and skidded, he seemed to have no more substance than a rag doll...

  There was still the reek of powder smoke in the air but the weight was gone from Yancey’s arms and wrists now, though he could still feel the bite of ropes around his hands. He blinked up through a haze and saw Cato, Deborah and Salty bending over him.

  “Howdy, kid,” he grated. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “He waited for me to arrive after sendin’ your message,” Cato told Yancey. “Just as well he did. I jumped a cattle train from Albany and it was derailed. I arrived in town late and I wouldn’t’ve gotten here as fast as I did if the kid hadn’t waited around to show me the way.”

  “Obliged, amigo,” Yancey said, trying to muster up a grin for Salty. Deborah was working on his many wounds. “We got us something of a problem, Johnny, with this lady and her brother.”