by Abe Dancer
‘What is that ruckus?’ Harper again asked aloud. ‘Damn it all! I know that sound. What is it?’
He knew that he had heard it many times before but now his brain refused to tell him what he was listening to. He knew that if he were not so damned exhausted he would have already worked this puzzle out. But in the searing air through which he tried to see, his brain was filling with overheated blood. Blood that was cooking his very reason.
He gulped.
There was only one way to find the answer.
Reluctantly, Hal Harper led his horse on through the heat haze and towards the place where he knew the sound was coming from.
He had never been quite so scared in all of his short life.
But he kept walking defiantly.
If it were to end now, at least it would be on his terms.
FOUR
Tate Talbot had not taken long to work out a plan, a plan which, he knew, would more than double his personal wealth overnight in one single swift and bloodthirsty action. He had waited for Hal Harper to dismount from his horse and enter the cantina before hurriedly leaving his office and walking along the long busy street to the Broken Branch saloon. With each step the lawman could feel his plan becoming a reality.
Even though it was only minutes since the desert sun had set, the popular drinking hole was full to overflowing. Sombreros made up a third of the hats which nodded at the bar and over the green baize poker-tables. Bargirls plied their trade in and around the tables with keen eyes on the men with the biggest stacks of chips before them.
Few heads turned as the man with the star pinned to his shirt pushed his way through the swing doors and crossed the sawdust-covered floor towards a door marked PRIVATE. Since taking office as sheriff Talbot had leased the small room in the Broken Branch so that his gang could do their drinking in private. Men like those with whom he had ridden for so many years had short fuses and fast guns.
There was no way that the man once known as Diamond Bob Casey wanted his men to ruffle the feathers of those who now found themselves paying him a percentage. Only when the saloon and whorehouses failed to pay their dues did Talbot unleash his gang upon them.
But keeping four men like them fenced in had proved harder than he had expected. They wanted to quit Senora and get back to their old ways. Get back to the open ranges where they could rustle prime beef on the hoof and drive it north to the plentiful supply of buyers. Buyers who never asked any questions.
Upon reaching the door Talbot turned the handle and entered the small smoke-filled room abruptly. He nodded at the four outlaws around the wet-topped circular table.
Will Henry, Frank Smith and the Davis brothers Liam and Ken all sat with cigars in their mouths and glasses full of whiskey in their hands. Two empty bottles remained beside an ashtray so full it could no longer be seen beneath the cigar butts and ashes.
‘Tate!’ Henry acknowledged the sheriff with a touch of his hat-brim.
The others looked up as Talbot dragged a hardback chair from the wall and sat down at the table.
‘Boys,’ Talbot said as he chewed on the remnant of his cigar and pushed his hat off his temple. ‘I was hoping that you’d all be here.’
‘What does our prim and proper Mr Talbot want?’ Smith asked coldly. ‘I thought you had forgotten all about ya old gang. We thought ya was out with them fancy friends of yours drinking tea and suchlike.’
Both Davis boys chuckled at the same time.
Talbot grinned. His eyes darted across the four faces as he silently reinforced his authority over the men who for the previous four years had been his gang.
‘I got a job for you,’ Talbot said.
Henry looked interested. He eased himself towards the man he had followed blindly in the latter part of his career as a rustler. The outlaw rested both elbows on the wet surface of the table and stared at the sheriff.
‘OK! I’ll bite! What kinda job ya talking about, Tate?’ he asked. ‘Rustlin’ or bank hold-up? My gun finger is darn twitching for some action.’
‘Neither,’ Talbot replied.
‘Neither?’ Smith downed his whiskey, poured himself another three fingers and stared at the man he felt had deserted them by becoming a lawman. ‘Then it must be a killin’ ya want us to do. Right?’
Talbot smiled. ‘I just want you boys to back up my play.’
Liam Davis looked at the sheriff. ‘What kinda money we talking about, Tate?’
‘A hundred bucks apiece,’ Talbot told them. ‘For maybe ten minutes’ work.’
‘I’m game,’ Liam Davis said, nodding.
Smith pulled his chair closer to the lawman. ‘A hundred bucks? Who we gotta help ya kill, Tate? The mayor?’
‘Nope. A varmint called Diamond Bob Casey,’ Talbot replied. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Ever heard of him?’
Will Henry scratched his whiskered jaw. ‘That handle rings a bell. He from up north?’
Talbot diverted his eyes from his top gun. ‘I ain’t too sure, Will. But I want him dead.’
Smith got to his feet. Cigar in mouth, he paced around the table and the four seated men as he sipped at his liquor. ‘What’s wrong, Frank?’ Ken Davis asked.
‘Now that’s a damn good question, Ken.’ Smith paused behind Talbot. He rested a hand on the back of the chair and looked at his fellow outlaws. ‘Something’s sure wrong but I can’t quite figure out what.’
‘Tate’s offering a hundred bucks to back up his play,’ Henry observed. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
Smith continued on his way until he reached his own chair again. He raised his right boot and placed it on the seat. His eyes burned across the table at Talbot.
‘Something’s gnawing at my craw, Tate. I figure ya ain’t telling us the whole truth about this job. Why would ya give us a hundred bucks apiece to back up ya play? What’s in it for you?’
Talbot grabbed hold of the bottle and took a long swallow of the whiskey before placing it back down.
‘Don’t you trust me, Frank?’
Smith smiled wide.
‘I never have trusted you, Tate. Ya devious. Like a damn sidewinder. Devious.’
‘Fair enough.’ Talbot spat his cigar at the floor and rose back to his feet. He stared at Smith and then took two steps closer to the outlaw. ‘What exactly is troubling you about this deal?’
‘Who exactly is this Diamond Bob Casey character?’ Smith asked. ‘Is he a gunslinger and ya ain’t telling us about it? I don’t cotton to going up against no gunslinger.’
‘I ain’t too sure about that but I don’t reckon he is a gunslinger.’ Talbot was being honest for the first time as he thought about the look of the stranger whom he had seen enter the cantina. ‘He don’t look like a man that can handle a gun too well.’
Henry tilted his head. ‘Ya seen him?’
Talbot nodded. ‘Sure enough. He’s in the cantina right now.’
‘And ya want us to kill him?’ Liam Davis asked.
‘I’ll kill him, but if I don’t then I want your four guns to finish the critter off,’ Talbot said blankly. ‘Simple as that.’
‘Why do ya want him dead, Tate?’ Smith probed.
Talbot drew in his gut, clenched his right fist and swung his arm. The fist hit the outlaw square on the jaw. The whiskey glass flew from Smith’s hand. Smith hit the wall behind him to the sound of shattering glass. He fell to his knees as blood poured from his mouth. His hand went for his gun but Talbot’s hand was faster.
Within the blink of an eye Talbot had drawn and cocked his weapon and aimed it at Smith’s head.
Frank Smith stared into the barrel of the cocked Colt .45.
‘Easy, Tate! You win!’
Talbot nodded, spun his gun on his finger and dropped it expertly into his holster. He glared at the kneeling outlaw and then at the three others who sat watching.
‘Two hundred bucks each,’ Talbot snarled. ‘No more questions and no more bucking. I’m still the boss of this outfit. Savvy?’
Smith slowly got to his feet. He rubbed off the blood from his mouth on his sleeve and watched as Talbot opened the door.
‘C’mon!’ Talbot growled. ‘I want that varmint dead!’
Will Henry stood up. ‘You heard him. C’mon! We gotta kill some joker in the cantina.’
The Davis brothers stood up, finished their drinks and rammed their cigars in their mouths.
‘Let’s do it,’ Liam Davis said, and smiled.
‘Nothing like a killing before supper to give a man an appetite,’ his brother added.
The five men walked out of the room into the saloon and towards the swing doors. They had a man to kill. None of the quartet knew why but they still trailed their leader all the same.
Tate Talbot led them towards the cantina. It would prove to be the beginning of a long hard journey.
FIVE
Hal Harper had not heard anything except his snorting horse and his own pounding heartbeat for more than a half-hour as he defiantly made his way through into the drifting haze. The gun in his hand had started to feel like a cudgel as weariness drowned him in his own sweat.
The sun was getting lower and he was walking straight into its blinding rays. Harper glanced back and saw the smoke of a campfire drifting up into the cloudless heavens. His hunters had indeed stopped to eat, he thought. He pressed on knowing that men with full bellies travelled more slowly than those with nothing but memories in their guts.
Eventually he could not walk another step and he paused beside the shoulder of his exhausted mount. He leaned against the muscular creature and lowered his gun.
‘I’m done, boy,’ he croaked.
Whatever had been making the elusive sounds earlier had ceased. Harper slid the Colt into its holster and tried to remain upright.
There was no breeze but he swayed all the same.
It was not as easy as it seemed to stay sure-footed when every drop of moisture had been sucked from your soul and the ground beneath your boots refused to quit moving.
The dense, foglike air confused his already weary eyes. If there was something to be seen, he sure could not locate it. Yet there had to be something out there. Something which had made the noises and lured him to it like flies to an outhouse.
Mustering what remained of his dwindling strength, Harper turned his head and looked back again. Hoofmarks and bootprints were all there was to be seen in the smooth dry sand. Once the five men started out after him again they would have no trouble following the trail he had left.
He rubbed a gloved hand over his sunburned neck and tried to create some spittle to moisten his throat, It was useless.
Again he forced himself away from the horse and gritted his teeth, He looked ahead once more.
‘Anyone out there?’ he croaked feebly.
Then he heard it.
The strange sound again. Closer now. Much closer.
Even in his bewildered condition Harper sensed that there was no danger from whatever was ahead of him. No bullets had come at him out of the heat haze.
Like a drunken man he began to stagger towards the noise he was starting to think he recognized. Step after faltering step he crossed the soft sand towards where his ears had told him the sound had come from.
But his legs began to buckle. They were not obeying his will any longer. He had to pause and steady himself every few yards. He had once been drunk in Laredo. Compared to this though, he had been sober.
‘Where are you?’ Harper’s hoarse voice asked the mist. ‘I ain’t in no condition to hurt you. Show yourself!’
He had only just finished talking when his left boot got itself tangled up in something. He toppled and fell face first on to the sand. Whatever had tripped him up he neither cared nor worried about.
For what felt like a lifetime Harper lay trying to push himself back up on to his feet. But the sand was so welcoming he could not move. All he wanted to do was sleep. Sleep the sleep of the dead.
‘OK, I quit! Stay dumb! I don’t care no more,’ Harper muttered into the sand. ‘Hide, you yella dog! Hide!’
Then he felt the sand moving around him. He opened his eyes and saw legs. An instant later a hand rested on his shirt back.
Harper tried to raise his head but it was useless. Whatever it was that had kept him on his feet for so long had evaporated like his sweat into the late-afternoon desert air.
‘White eyes!’ a voice said above him.
Harper blinked hard. Sand fell from his eyelashes as he stared at the feet of one of the men beside him. Although he had never seen a real Indian before he had heard the stories of the soft leather shoes they wore.
‘Moccasins! he gasped.
Then hands gripped his sore body, lifted it from the sand and began to carry him. He wanted to protest but was too tired to utter another word. His head dropped. His eyes stared at the sand below him. Then he saw the feet again. Four sets of feet. All with the same footwear.
Hal Harper wondered where they were taking him.
Then everything went dark as he fell into a pool of delirium.
A pool so deep there seemed to be no bottom to it.
SIX
They had been like a pack of rabid wolves by the time the evening air hit them. Tate Talbot led his four hired guns from the saloon with his gun already drawn and cocked. He was ready to put his once in a lifetime chance into action. There was no mercy in his heartless soul. Only greed. Within seconds of their crossing the wide street the five heavily armed men were outside the small cantina. Talbot was first to move close to the beaded drape which hung across the open doorway. The aroma of Mexican food filled his nostrils. His followers soon hung over his shoulders in readiness. Then the man with the tin star paused and held his free arm out wide as if to stop the others. This had to be fast and deadly, he had told himself. He had already decided to aim every one of the six bullets in his .45 at the stranger’s head. He wanted there to be no argument that it was Diamond Bob Casey they had slain. The obvious age difference would be obliterated by lead. Hot, uncompromising lead.
But something had stopped the sheriff’s progress. Something was wrong. Something had changed in the five or ten minutes since he had last seen the drifter dismount.
‘What is it, Tate?’ Will Henry had asked.
Talbot looked at the hitching pole and pointed. ‘His horse is gone,’ he replied.
Frank Smith glanced at the weathered wooden rail and then at Talbot. ‘Ya sure there was a horse there?’
Talbot gritted his teeth and went to swing with his gun to smash the insolence off the face of the outlaw. Only Henry’s hands prevented his angry boss from striking out at Smith for the second time in only minutes.
‘Easy, Tate,’ Will Henry implored. ‘Don’t waste no sweat on Frank, ya hear? He ain’t worth it.’
Talbot looked into his top gun’s eyes. He nodded. ‘Yeah, Will. Ain’t worth the effort.’
Liam Davis poked his head around the corner of the doorway and stared through the swaying beads into the busy cantina. He then turned and looked at Talbot.
‘I see a stranger in there, Tate,’ Davis said. ‘Is that Diamond Bob Casey?’
Talbot brushed Smith out of his way and stood against the whitewashed doorway. His eyes narrowed. He looked in hard and long. The stranger whom he had seen ride into town only ten minutes earlier was indeed sitting down at a table with a plate of chilli before him. Talbot eased himself back.
‘That’s him OK,’ Talbot nodded to the others.
Ken Davis shook his head. ‘But what happened to his horse?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I can’t figure. I saw him tie the damn thing up to that stinking pole,’ Talbot insisted.
‘It ain’t here now.’ Smith spat at the ground and sneered. ‘Maybe the nag untied its tethers and went and rented a room in the hotel, Tate.’
Undaunted, Talbot checked his Colt. He then looked at his four men. His eyes told them what they had to do.
‘It don’t matter none. We’re going in and we’re g
oing in shooting.’
Henry sighed. ‘If that’s what ya want, Tate, that’s what we’ll do.’
‘Ya gonna go in first, Tate?’ Smith taunted. ‘Or are ya gonna be like one of them Yankee generals and hang back and take notes?’
‘Damn right I’m going in first, Frank,’ Talbot snarled back. ‘I’m going in first like I’ve always done.’
The cantina was warm. The aroma of cooking filled the entire room. Hal Harper sat with his back to a low wall as the buxom female cook came close and placed a plate of fresh-baked bread down next to his chilli.
‘Did your son take my horse to the livery, ma’am?’ Harper had asked innocently.
‘Sí, señor!’ She smiled, toying with the white lace trim of her bodice. ‘Pepe is a good boy.’
Harper slid a silver dollar to the woman. ‘That’s for him when he gets back.’
‘Gracias, señor,’ she said as she picked up the coin and dropped in between her large breasts. ‘I give to Pepe when he come back.’
Suddenly, as the words left her lips, the sound of raging men rushing through the beaded curtain into the cantina drew their eyes. As promised Tate Talbot was at the head of the five gunmen. His gun was first to unleash its fury and send a deadly bullet at the seated Harper. But as his four followers fanned their hammers, it was the stout cook between them who took the full impact of the venomous volley. She staggered and turned. Blood suddenly trailed from her as one after another lead bullet penetrated into her ample frame. She was being torn apart. She spun on her slippered feet on the tiled floor and started to fall.
Screams echoed all about the cantina. Some were cries of fury, others were shrieks of shocked horror.
A stunned Harper felt the warmth of her blood as it sprayed over him. He dragged his own Colt from its holster, ducked beneath the table and blasted back across the expanse of the room.
White-hot flashes spewed from the gun barrels in both directions in furious engagement. The cantina rocked under the deafening crescendo.
Within a very few seconds the peaceful cantina had filled with the acrid stench of gunfire. Clouds of grey smoke hung in the air.