Last Lawman (9781101611456)

by Brandvold, Peter

  He bit off his right glove and, holding his horse’s reins in his other hand, squatted over the fire ring and poked two fingers into the ashes. “Shit!” He pulled both appendages out quickly, snarling and rubbing the tips of both fingers across his checked trousers.

  The others laughed. Spurr scowled down at the young Pinkerton. “Now, that was the most cork-headed thing I seen you do yet.”

  Ed Gentry, sitting his horse beside that of his fellow territorial marshal, Bill Stockton, said, “I think we oughta start callin’ him Jim Bowie.”

  “Mister Jim Bowie,” added Stockton, shaking his head and laughing.

  Strang poked both fingers in his mouth and snarled at the others.

  “All right, all right—joke’s over,” Mason grouched, soberly looking around. “Judging by them apples over yonder, and them tracks around the fire ring, it wasn’t no gang that stopped here last night. It was just one man. One man, one horse.”

  Spurr said, “You act like you might know who’s makin’ you spooky.”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I just know we gained a shadow somewhere along the trail. I’m thinkin’ it must be one of the Vultures.”

  “What would be the point?” asked the second Pinkerton, Web Mitchell. “I mean, if he ain’t bushwhacked us yet, what’s he waitin’ for?”

  “And why would ole Clell only send one man back?” added Stockton, lifting his head to look a little anxiously around at the surrounding forested ridges.

  “Who knows?” Spurr, too, was looking around and working his lower lip between his teeth. “One reason I and no other lawdog been able to run that pack to ground is they always seem to do the unexpected. Clell don’t always do what you think he’s gonna do. In fact, he hardly ever does.” He hacked a wad of phlegm from his throat and spat it toward the fire ring. “I’ll be damn glad to either kill that son of a bitch once and for all, or see him in leg irons.”

  Gentry removed his hat from his head and ran a red bandanna around the inside of the sweatband. “You know, fellas, if there is indeed someone shadowin’ us, it don’t have to be one of the Vultures. Could just be a line rider from one of the big ranches in these parts keepin’ an eye on us, makin’ sure we ain’t throwin’ long loops over their beeves with the intention of sellin’ ’em to a crooked Injun agent over Dakota way.”

  Stockton nodded. “I’m gonna throw in with Ed on that one. He can’t play stud for shit, and the whores in Casper say he hasn’t gotten his pecker up since the end of the Civil War, but he occasionally comes up with a good idea.”

  “Why, thank you, Bill.”

  Web Mitchell chuckled at the two old-timers.

  Spurr looked at Mason. “That’s likely the best explanation.”

  “Yeah, pro’bly.” Mason wasn’t convinced.

  Spurr canted his head to one side, and narrowed a shrewd eye. “You’re thinkin’ it’s the hombre who kept your oysters out of the fire back in Willow City, ain’t ya?”

  “I reckon I am.”

  “What’s that?” asked Web.

  “Nothin’,” said Spurr.

  “Let’s go.” Mason booted his horse on across the wash.

  Behind him, Spurr said, “Hold on.”

  Mason halted his grulla and gave the older lawman an impatient look.

  Spurr canted his head up the wash, which carved a narrow gap through the northern mountains. “If memory serves, Sweetwater is on the backside of this range.”

  “So it is,” said Mason.

  “If the Vultures rode through where you think they rode through, they would have rode through Sweetwater.”

  Mason thought about it. Spurr was right. The sheriff felt a little annoyed that the older lawman knew more about Mason’s own territory than Mason himself did.

  “So?”

  “If they rode through there,” said Gentry, catching Spurr’s drift, his eyes gaining a serious cast, “they might have wreaked holy havoc. They tend to do that to towns.”

  “Or, hell,” said Web Mitchell, smoothing his ostentatious handlebar mustache with two black-gloved fingers. “Maybe they liked it so much they decided to stay.”

  Spurr turned to Mason. “Let’s you and me head up the wash and check in on Sweetwater. If nothin’ else, we’ll pick up Stanhope’s trail there.”

  Mason felt frustration tugging on him like two opposing ropes around his neck. He looked up the wash, then toward the forested ridge rising on the other side of the canyon.

  A game trail angled up the ridge through the conifers and aspens, skirting a small talus slide and curving around a lightning-topped pine. It beckoned him onward, farther west toward Utah where the Vultures were likely headed. Sidetracking to Sweetwater held little appeal for him. The Vultures had probably ridden straight on through, which meant Mason would only be wasting time, letting the outlaws who’d made a fool out of him get farther and farther way.

  Farther and farther out of his jurisdiction.

  Spurr was right, though. Damn the old lawdog. But that’s one reason why Mason had wanted him around. To talk sense the mossyhorned federal had acquired through long experience, to keep Mason from becoming his own worst enemy in his haste to run the Vultures to ground and assuage his badly battered pride.

  He turned to the others. “You fellas keep riding west while Spurr and I head on up to Sweetwater. Stanhope just might hole up somewhere around here to rest his horses for a day or two, so you might run into him. If you do, don’t engage him till Spurr and I get there.”

  Mason winced against his frustration and booted the grulla on up the wash.

  Spurr glanced at the fire ring. “Keep an eye out for our friend there, boys.” He looked at Strang. “How’re your fingers, Calico? Maybe you oughta put some lard on ’em.”

  “Fuck you, old man!”

  “You’re purty, but you ain’t that purty,” said Spurr, booting Cochise after Mason.

  The others chuckled as they started up the forested ridge.

  TWELVE

  Spurr felt a rock drop in his belly as, two hours later, he and Mason followed a winding trail northward out of the mountains and spied a black wagon driven by a black-clad gent in a high hat moving toward him from the settlement of Sweetwater.

  Folks on foot appearing dressed in their Sunday best followed the wagon, singing. Spurr could hear the mournful notes on the hot, still air. While he couldn’t make out the words from this distance of a quarter mile, he recognized the melody of the old funeral song—“The Old Rugged Cross.”

  “Ah, shit,” Spurr said under his breath.

  Mason said nothing as he ground spurs against his grulla’s flanks and headed down a shallow slope toward the funeral procession. The cemetery was on a low, bald hill on the left side of the trail, and just as the two horses leading the hearse began turning onto the two-track trace leading up to it, Spurr and Morgan caught up to the hearse and checked their sweaty horses down.

  The driver wore a black clawhammer coat, white shirt, and black cravat. His round, steel-framed glasses glinted dustily as he regarded Spurr and Mason from beneath his black bowler.

  “Well, it’s about damn time, Sheriff!”

  “Who you buryin’, Crawford?”

  “The banker, Earl Thornberg!” said another well-dressed man walking up from the rear of the wagon. He was short and fat, and a short, fat woman with curly white hair was trailing up behind him, holding a parasol that matched her gaudy black-and-pink outfit. “Just one of the folks the Vultures killed as they stormed through our once-fine town, Sheriff Mason—looting, robbing, killing, and kidnapping our citizens!” The fat man glowered, red-jowled, up at Mason. “Didn’t you get my telegram? I sent it day before yesterday though I never got a response!”

  “That’s because I’ve been on the trail of the Vultures since they rode through Willow City,” Mason said. Spurr noted the faintly sheepish tone of his voice and almost felt sorry for the sheriff, whose jurisdiction Sweetwater was in. Mason had no reason to feel as guilty as he did. The law alw
ays had an uphill battle on the frontier, especially in a place as remote as Sweetwater.

  Especially when one of your own men turns on you like Mark Finn had. Spurr knew that Mason had a bullet with Finn’s name on it. He knew, because that’s what he’d do…

  Another man walked up from the group behind the wagon, his face pinched with anger. He removed his beaver hat and pointed it like a finger at Mason. “Those men wiped out my gunshop of nearly every box of ammo I had on hand! Not only that, they broke out all my windows! I incurred several hundred dollars worth of damage!”

  The man who was obviously the undertaker glowered down at the gunshop owner from the leather seat of his hearse. “Good lord, Dave—so you incurred a little damage! What about that poor Wilde boy? He was gunned down right in front of his poor mother’s eyes!”

  Mason turned to Crawford sharply. “Wilde? Erin Wilde’s boy?”

  “Sure enough. Shot the boy down on the mercantile’s loading dock. After they finished ransacking that store as well as several others, and stole around five thousand dollars from the bank—after shooting poor Thornberg here!—Stanhope himself grabbed Erin and rode off with her kickin’ and screamin’ over his saddle horn!”

  “Good Christ!” Mason said, pausing a moment to take it all in, his horse leaping around beneath him as though sensing the sheriff’s exapseration.

  “We’re waitin’ to bury the boy,” the undertaker said, “hopin’ his ma returns home first.”

  “Mercer go after ’em?”

  “Hell, no,” said yet another man from the funeral procession. “Mercer’s back here!”

  Spurr turned to follow the man’s hooked thumb toward another wagon, this one a buckboard. It was driven by a grizzled oldster in a threadbare suit. Mason heeled his grulla on back to the buckboard, and Spurr followed him.

  He and the sheriff looked down at the open coffin riding in the buckboard’s box. The coffin was open, and a suited gent lay inside, holding a spray of wildflowers in his knobby, sun-browned hands against his chest. A silver watch and a bowie knife with a carved bone handle rested in the coffin beside him. His brown eyes were half open and staring straight up at the sky. His salt-and-pepper hair, shiny and fragrant with pomade, was parted in the middle. He had a puckered, dark blue hole the size of a silver cartwheel in his forehead.

  Spurr vaguely noted that his blue-checked suitcoat didn’t match his brown broadcloth trousers that bore one patched knee. A middle-aged woman stood in the trail behind the wagon. She was dark, appearing to have some Mexican blood, and dressed all in black, with a black mantilla. She was leaning forward against the tailgate, both hands hooked over the top of the tailgate, sobbing as she stared at the man in the coffin. In one of her hands was a worn, leather-covered Bible. In the other she clutched a crucifix.

  Mason opened his mouth to speak to the woman. Apparently seeing that there were no words that could comfort a woman so obviously bereaved, he turned to the townsfolk who’d formed a ragged semicircle around him and Spurr, regarding both lawmen expectantly, a little angrily.

  Mason stared at the crowd, not saying anything. He looked chagrined; he didn’t seem to know what to say. Spurr felt the burn of anger and stepped Cochise forward and a little in front of the sheriff.

  The old lawman raised his voice as he said, “Did anyone back this man?” He canted his head to indicate the dead town marshal of Sweetwater.

  The men and the women just scowled at him, their expressions growing faintly skeptical, as though they weren’t quite sure what he’d said.

  “I take it that’s a ‘no,’” Spurr said. “Anyone go after this group at all?”

  A light hum rose from the crowd. Finally, a man several yards away raised his voice to yell, “Hell, no! Them’s the Vultures, fer chrissakes! They shot ole Mercer down like he was a duck on a millpond! Besides, we ain’t gettin’ paid to go after ’em!”

  “It’s you’s gettin’ paid to risk your necks!” shouted another man from somewhere off Spurr’s right shoulder. “If you was doin’ your jobs, they wouldn’t be runnin’ around like a pack of wild wolves, anyhow!”

  Spurr sighed.

  Mason said, “Let it go, Spurr. Let’s ride.” He started walking his grulla forward.

  Spurr ignored him as he hardened his jaws and cast his angry gaze at the well-dressed crowd milling around him. The Mexican woman sobbed uncontrollably against the tailgate of the wagon hauling her dead husband.

  “That gang rode through here and killed a boy,” Spurr said, feeling his old ticker skipping beats. “They kidnapped a woman whom they likely promptly raped and are still rapin’ every chance they get…”

  Several women in the crowd gasped.

  One of the men said with an air of self-righteous indignation, “Now, look here, sir!”

  “You look here, you little pipsqueak!”

  The pipsqueak stepped back. His wife closed her hands over the ears of her pigtailed daughter.

  Spurr pointed a gloved finger at the pipsqueak. “You and every man in this town who didn’t do nothin’ to back the play of your lawman is a yellow-livered coward. The law is only as strong as the citizens who stand behind it—especially when you got only one man wearin’ a badge. The wolves outnumber us one hundred to one, and the only way we can keep a foot forward is if everyone does their part, and if that means risking your lives by formin’ a posse, so be it!”

  “We heard what happened to that posse over in Willow City!” the pipsqueak shouted. “Word spread like wildfire!”

  Spurr looked at Mason, who had ridden slowly through the crowd and curveted his horse at the far edge of it, scowling impatiently over the hatted, bonneted heads toward Spurr.

  “That’s right,” Spurr told the pipsqueak. “They paid the price for attempting to keep their loved ones safe, for standin’ up against evil and maintainin’ a foothold on their freedom. What you boys done—lettin’ the Vultures run off with an innocent woman and not even makin’ a decent effort to track ’em at the risk of your own sorry hides…hell, you all deserve what happened to the posse over to Willow City. Cowards, every damn one of you!”

  He snapped the words like a whip, causing the men and even the women to collectively wince. The old lawman cursed and ground his moccasined heels against Cochise’s ribs. The crowd parted in a sudden panic, making way for the enraged lawman, and Spurr trotted on up the trail and past Mason staring at him skeptically.

  “Come on, Sheriff!” Spurr snarled. “What the hell we wastin’ our time on these hoopleheads for?”

  Mason decided to wait until they were on the other side of town and had picked up the two-day-old trail of nearly a dozen galloping shod horses before, riding abreast of the older lawman, he said, “You gotta remember you’re from another time, Spurr.”

  “I been reminded of that every goddamn day of my life, Sheriff!”

  The sun was almost down later that same day when, having ridden a good thirty miles west of Sweetwater, Spurr and Mason both reined their horses down sharply.

  “What in hell was that?” Mason said.

  As if in reply, the sound came again—a man’s agonized scream. Spurr thought the scream was enough answer of its own, so he merely booted Cochise on down the grade they’d been descending between ever-darkening walls of evergreen forest. He couldn’t run the horse too fast, because while the grade wasn’t particularly steep, it was rocky, with here and there a blowdown they had to skirt and plenty of fallen branches.

  The scream sounded once more, much nearer now. It was followed by several voices, and Spurr looked to his left where a stream threaded through the forest and crossed the trail he was on by way of a crude wooden bridge. Four horses stood along the edge of the stream, idly cropping grass, while four men were milling nearby. They appeared to have one man down and were working him over pretty good.

  A bushwhack and robbery, Spurr thought.

  He’d just reached for the butt of his Winchester when one of the men with a shelflike chin turned toward h
im, and he saw the round, brown-eyed face of Bill Stockton. Then he saw Ed Gentry standing over the man on the ground, tugging on one of the downed man’s arms while Gentry braced himself with a boot on the man’s chest.

  The down man was one of the two Pinkertons—the older one, Web Mitchell. The younger detective, Calico Strang, stood a ways back from his partner and Gentry who, Spurr realized now, was trying to pop Mitchell’s arm back in place. Judging by the shrill scream that loosed itself from Mitchell’s wide-open mouth, and the faint wooden pop that accompanied it, Gentry finally got the shoulder bone yanked back in its socket.

  “What happened?” Spurr asked as he swung down from his saddle with a grunt.

  Bill Stockton was smoking a cigar butt, the aromatic blue smoke wafting around his gray head. His silver-streaked, dark brown hair hung to his shoulders. “The Pinkerton was attacked by a serpent. Downright biblical.”

  Gentry was breathing hard as he glanced at Spurr and Mason approaching the group. “Struck at him from atop a flat rock, and his horse spooked—threw him clear to last Sunday. That shoulder was damn near hangin’ down the middle of his back.”

  “Woulda had an easier time wipin’ your ass that way, eh, Mitchell?” Stockton said through a cloud of cigar smoke, prodding the white-faced Pinkerton’s hip with his boot and laughing.

  “He’ll be fine now,” Gentry said as he walked over to his horse and fished around in one of his saddlebag pouches.

  He popped the cork, took a pull, then carried the bottle over to Mitchell. “Here ya go, Detective. Take you a swig of that. You’ll be feelin’ like you’re shittin’ in high cotton again in no time.”

  “Forget about shittin’,” Spurr said as the detective took a hard pull off the bourbon bottle. “Can he ride?”

  “We’d probably best camp here,” said Gentry. “Give him a few hours to mend, then send him back to his home office.”

  The Pinkerton lowered the whiskey bottle and glared at the older men around him. His thick dark hair was mussed, a wing of it hanging over one gray-blue eye. “I’m just busted up a little, not dead,” he said, taking another sip of the healing elixir. “And I’m not going back. The Pinkertons have a sizeable stake in running the Vultures to ground. I’ll make a sling for this arm and be good as new.”