The Vengeance Seeker 2

by Will C. Knott

  He hurried across the long room toward his closet to get dressed.

  After breakfast he met Lassiter on the front porch. The foreman had just finished passing out the day’s assignments to a half dozen Snake Bar riders. They were riding off in a tight bunch, a cloud of dust settling down behind them as Lassiter mounted the verandah steps and came to a halt in front of Blackmann.

  “I thought I told you I wanted to see you after breakfast,” Blackmann said.

  “You didn’t say how soon after breakfast.”

  Blackmann looked at his foreman for a long moment, then decided to let it go. “What have you heard about Hanson?”

  Lassiter’s broad face flushed. “I guess I just winged him at that,” he said. “He’s back at the Double B. This guy Wolf Caulder’s running the spread for him now.”

  “That don’t look to me like much of an improvement. Just how tough is this Caulder?”

  “He’s tough.”

  “The kid don’t think much of him.”

  “The hell he don’t. Caulder only wiped the floor up with him, that’s all.”

  “I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

  Lassiter shifted his feet impatiently. “You wanted me for something?”

  “I want you to ride in and bring that fool sheriff out here. I don’t begrudge Dundee a drink now and then, but he’s becoming the town joke. That don’t look so good, not with Snake Bar footing the bill.”

  “You want me to get him?”

  “He was your choice.”

  Again Lassiter’s face darkened. Though the big man hated to be reminded of it, Dundee had been his choice for the sheriff’s job. “You want me to talk to him?”

  “I want you to haul Dundee’s ass out here. I’ll talk to him. I suggest you start for town pronto—before the man is no longer in a condition to ride.”

  Lassiter nodded curtly, spun around, and hurried down the porch steps. He was angry. But Blackmann didn’t give it a thought as he looked around the yard, wondering where his son was. He hadn’t seen Josh at breakfast.

  He left the porch and hurried gratefully into the morning coolness of his house. As he started up the wide stairs to his room, he smiled. He didn’t blame Lassiter for being upset. It was going to be a long hot ride—both ways.

  Close to noon Blackmann pushed aside the deeds and the tally sheets he had been working on and leaned back with a sigh against the cold leather-backed swivel chair.

  Dim, unpleasant tendrils of that nightmare still clung to him—like a bad taste in his mouth.

  He found himself taking from the side drawer the large silver box and opening it. Hesitating for only an instant, he took out the letter, unfolded it and began to read.

  John:

  No, I’m not dead, John. Though you did your best to kill me. And oh that poor cowboy, John. We were just friends. He was so lonesome for his girl back East. He couldn’t write, so I wrote out his letters to her. Was that any reason for killing him—and nearly beating me to death?

  You are a cruel and heartless brute, John, if you will not at least admit your error and ask that God you are always preaching about to forgive you.

  I forgive you, John. Yes, I do.

  And now I must ask you to allow me to return to Willow Bend. I want so to see Josh again! He must be grown now! I never got a chance to say goodbye to him! Oh John, what an ache there is in my heart to see Josh once more!

  I promise I will cause no trouble. I just want to see him, that’s all. If you insist, I will stay out of sight and will not show myself to Josh.

  But please, have mercy on the woman who is the mother of your only son!

  You may write to the above address. It is not my address, but the letter will get to me. You know why I take this precaution, I am sure. I fear that you will come after me to finish the job you have already so cruelly begun—for I have not been well at all since that terrible beating when you left me by the road to die.

  So you see, I may not have long on this earth, John. That is why you must grant me this request.

  Kathy

  He read the letter twice, then folded it grimly and placed it back in the box. He had told her not to come, of course. He pointed out that if she did, he would finish what he had botched earlier. He did not believe her plea of innocence.

  He knew. He knew she had been faithless. His vitals cried it out.

  Was she still alive, he wondered. Would she someday appear at his gate to accuse him, to explain her disappearance to Josh? It was this uncertainty that kept the nightmares alive, he realized.

  This was what came of unfinished business ...

  The clatter of hoofs in the yard below his window caused him to hurry from his desk and look down. It was Lassiter returning with Dundee. Good.

  “Lassiter!” he called down through the open window. “Up here!”

  The two men left their mounts at the hitch rail in front of the house and started up the verandah steps. As Blackmann pulled back from the window, he caught sight of the kid leaving the horse barn with one of the wranglers.

  At once he knew that he needed the kid up here as well.

  He called to the kid, beckoned to him, then left the window as the sound of the two men’s heavy tread on the stairs came to him through his still closed door. He went back behind his desk and waited. Lassiter’s knock came on the door.

  “Come in!” Blackmann thundered, warming to his task.

  As the door swung open, he saw at once that Dundee was properly chastened by the summons. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot—the nose purpled from the long ride. The sight of him filled Blackmann with weary disgust.

  “Don’t get too damn close, Dundee!” he snapped. “I can smell you well enough from there.”

  The fellow pulled up hastily, looking like a blowed horse.

  “You’ve been eating booze long enough, Dundee,” Blackmann said coldly as the kid entered the room as silent as a shadow and drifted over beside Lassiter. “You’re at the stage where you’re seeing things that ain’t there.”

  “No. That ain’t true, Mr. Blackmann,” Dundee protested. “I’m just fine. I ain’t touched a drop in almost a week.” He shifted his feet unhappily and glanced sidelong at Lassiter, as if he were afraid Lassiter would contradict him.

  “You’re a damn liar, Dundee,” Blackmann said brutally. “But that don’t matter now. What matters is the weeks ahead. You savvy?”

  Meekly, Dundee nodded.

  “Obermeyer’s ordered a freight wagon load of fence posts and barbed wire for the Double B. But I told him why I didn’t want him selling it to the Double B, and it looks like he understands my reasons—him and Gibson. But damnit! I need to be sure. Gibson is in my pocket. I own him like I own you. But Obermeyer’s got a stubborn streak and that daughter of his is cut from the same block.” He leaned forward to emphasize his next words. “That means I’m counting on you to keep Obermeyer honest!”

  “You can count on me, Mr. Blackmann.”

  “You’re Goddamn right I can count on you. Like I said, I own you! So I don’t want to hear of Obermeyer or Gibson weakening. If they do—especially if Obermeyer lets the Double B get its hands on that wire—it’ll be your neck, Dundee!”

  Blackmann glanced significantly past Dundee at the kid standing to one side by the window. “You hear that, Kid?”

  “Sure, Mr. Blackmann,” the kid said respectfully. He allowed a small smile to light his pale features. “I heard you real clear.”

  Dundee looked from the kid to Blackmann, licking suddenly dry lips.

  “You can count on me,” Dundee protested frantically. “I’m on the wagon from this moment on. You got my word on that, Mr. Blackmann.”

  “Come here!” Blackmann ordered.

  Quaking, the lawman approached Blackmann’s desk. Blackmann hauled his Bible over to the edge of the desk, strode around it, and grabbed Dundee’s right hand and slapped it down upon the Bible.

  “Swear to it, Dundee!” Blackmann said. “Swear
to it by Almighty God!”

  “I swear to it!” Dundee cried. “I swear to it! I’m on the wagon.”

  “By Almighty God!” thundered Blackmann, his voice cutting through the air of the room like a thunderclap.

  Dundee seemed ready to collapse. “By Almighty God!” he quavered. “I swear to it by Almighty God!”

  “Fine!” snapped Blackmann.

  He returned to the other side of his desk and sat down in his swivel chair.

  “You can ride back to town now; Dundee. I have full confidence in you.” His cold eyes flicked momentarily in the kid’s direction. “So does the kid. And Lassiter too. We all know that when you’re sober, you’re the best lawman in the territory. Ain’t that right, Lassiter?”

  The foreman nodded grimly.

  “Don’t you think so, Kid?”

  The kid nodded silently.

  “See that,” said Blackmann. “You don’t have a thing to worry about—just so long as you stay sober.” He paused to let that sink in, then barked, “Come here, Dundee.” Blackmann turned in his swivel chair and with quick, deft fingers flicked the combination and opened the door to his safe. Reaching in, he took out one of the many heavy, squatting bags of gold, slipped the string and poured out a handful of gold coins and passed them to Dundee.

  “Here,” he said. “Buy yourself some new duds—boots, especially. Get a shave and take a bath. Take two baths. And purchase what you need in Gibson’s. Here.”

  Dundee was astonished. “Yes, Mr. Blackmann. Thank you, Mr. Blackmann.”

  “All right then. Get back on your horse. I want you in town before nightfall.”

  Dundee turned hastily and scuttled from the study. In a moment the sound of his feet running hastily down the stairs filled the room. Blackmann looked at the kid and saw at once how impressed he was by the gold and Blackmann’s use of it.

  “That should do it,” Blackmann said, slamming shut the safe and spinning the lock. “If it don’t, Kid, you know what I want you to do.”

  “Sure, Mr. Blackmann.”

  “Lassiter here says you didn’t come off so good against this fellow Caulder. That right?”

  The kid glanced sullenly at the foreman, then looked back at Blackmann. “You don’t have to worry, Mr. Blackmann. I can take the son of a bitch.”

  “I hope so, Kid. You’re sure as hell not another Dundee. Too bad you weren’t around when we were looking for a sheriff.”

  The kid’s eyes gleamed at the thought and Blackmann knew he had struck fire. Already the kid was imagining himself strutting down the streets of Willow Bend, a bright star pinned to his vest—all the authority he needed to use his Smith & Wessons.

  The swift clatter of Dundee’s horse in the yard below brought Blackmann back to business. “All right, gents,” he said. “That’ll be all for now.”

  Lassiter hung back and waited for the kid to leave before he stopped and looked resentfully at Blackmann. “You didn’t have to tell the kid what I said, John. That don’t make it no easier for me around here.”

  “Why should it be easy for you, Lassiter?”

  Lassiter drew in his breath as if to make some retort, then shrugged. Blackmann watched him closely. As his foreman turned to go, his eyes caught for an instant the silver box on Blackmann’s desk. At once Blackmann sensed that Lassiter was aware of the box’s contents. The son of a bitch has been in my desk, he thought. But he said nothing as he put the silver box back in the drawer and watched Lassiter leave.

  It was after dinner and Blackmann was just riding through the main gate on his way to the north forty when he heard a horse behind him and turned to see Josh riding after him across the meadow.

  It was a welcome surprise. Blackmann had been wondering all morning where his son had gone, and now as he watched Josh ride closer, he found himself admiring the way his boy sat his mount. In the last year or so Josh had filled out well. Blackmann had been so used to thinking of him as a gangling kid that it came almost as a surprise to realize that his son had suddenly stretched out and grown up.

  Blackmann pulled up. Josh flicked his reins lightly and guided his mount alongside his father.

  “Where you been, Josh?” Blackmann asked, squinting through the afternoon’s brightness at his boy.

  “Just riding,” Josh said. “It’s pretty land we got here, Pa. Bountiful land.” He looked shrewdly at his father. “Should be enough here for everybody—including the Hansons.”

  “Damnit, boy! There you go again. The Hansons are the enemy—the beginning of the end for all of us, for the open range. They’re barbed wire ranchers, no better than sodbusters. You know that, son.”

  Josh frowned. “Are they the enemy, Pa?”

  “Of course they are!”

  “So we’ve got to fight them?”

  “How else do you propose we get rid of them, Josh?”

  Josh looked away and thought a minute before replying. “I keep remembering what Ma used to tell me—the best way to get rid of an enemy, she said, was to make him a friend.”

  Blackmann felt his face darken. Mention of Kathy from his son’s mouth always upset him; but he didn’t want to lace into the kid ... not now, he didn’t. He slapped his horse with his quirt and spurted ahead without a word, rode a ways by himself until he had cooled off some, then pulled up and waited for Josh to catch up.

  The boy rode beside him for a spell without saying anything more about the Hansons and his mother. For that Blackmann was grateful. But he knew Josh was troubled—and it seemed to be something considerably deeper than the Hansons.

  “What’s eating at you, Josh?” Blackmann asked abruptly.

  They had pulled up on the crest of a ridge. The Snake Creek twisted away into the sun-hazed distance. In the grass that stretched to the horizon large patches of dark hides gleamed as Snake Bar cattle grazed.

  “Last Wednesday, Pa,” Josh said, “you sent me in with Lassiter to spring the kid. Remember?”

  Blackmann nodded. He thought he knew what was coming.

  “Dundee mentioned Betsy Hanson was coming in on the stage the next day and I saw right away what Snake Bar would most likely do. Lassiter lit into me—and so did the kid.”

  “Lassiter told me about that, Josh. He said you rode off after that, hell bent for leather. Where’d you go? I remembered you riding in pretty late that night.”

  “I rode to the Hansons. I had some fool notion I was going to kill that Wolf Caulder.”

  Blackmann looked quickly at his son, astonished. “You were going to what?”

  “Kill Wolf Caulder.”

  Blackmann tipped his head. “What happened?”

  Josh shook his head in wonder. “I still don’t know for sure, Pa. For some reason Caulder refused to take me on. He dropped his rifle and invited me to shoot him down.”

  “And you couldn’t.”

  “That’s right, Pa. I couldn’t. I’m not like the kid. I’m not a killer.”

  Blackmann looked away from Josh. No, Josh wasn’t a killer. That was for sure. But he was tough—and he was getting tougher. “That’s all right, Josh. I wouldn’t have expected that of you. I’m glad you didn’t kill Caulder. The kid will take care of him.” He looked closely at Josh. “Why wouldn’t he take you on, Josh? Do you have any idea?”

  “I asked him. He said something about a promise he’d made someone.”

  “A promise?”

  “That’s right.”

  Blackmann frowned. It was odd, very odd. This man, coming out of nowhere, siding with the Hansons. And he was a tough one, hard-bitten, dangerous. He felt a momentary apprehension, then thrust it aside.

  “Forget what the kid said in that jailhouse, Josh. Lassiter told me. The kid’s excitable, that’s all. Pay it no mind. Blood is thicker than water. You know that. The kid’s just a hired hand, like all the rest. He’s a tool. Right now, I happen to need him. But soon maybe I won’t. And then it will be just the two of us—and Snake Bar. Someday this will all be yours, Josh, every bit of it.” Black
mann could tell that Josh was relieved, and Blackmann felt good about it himself. It was about time that he had spoken like this to his son—that he had told him what he had been getting ready for all these years—all these years without a woman to distract him, all these years with only his Bible to help him point the way.

  “Okay, Pa,” Josh said. “I guess you know that’s what I want. It’s been my dream too. I love this land, and I’d be proud to ride it alongside you.”

  Blackmann hid his pleasure from his son by stroking his yellowing mustache and swiping away a fly that had lit on his horse’s neck. He didn’t rightly know what to say. But it sure felt good to hear his boy talk like that.

  He was saved having to say anything by a shout that came to them from off to his right. He looked up and saw a Snake Bar rider riding hard across the flat toward them, waving his hat to attract their attention.

  Blackmann and Joshua nudged their horses down the slope to meet the oncoming rider. As Blackmann got closer to him, he recognized Peter Bonner, a pretty steady hand.

  “What is it, Pete?” Blackmann asked, reining up as the puncher pulled in between them.

  “I found quite a passel of Snake Bar beef up in the mountains. They’re trapped in a box canyon and don’t seem to have enough gumption to get out. They’ve been long since out of grass, looks like.”

  “How many head would you say?”

  “Close to fifty.”

  “Go on back to the ranch and get yourself a couple of men. See if you can’t rustle them out of there by sundown.”

  “Pete don’t need to go on to the Snake Bar, Pa. The two of us can handle it.” Josh looked at Pete. “Right, Pete?”

  “Sure Josh.”

  Blackmann smiled. “Fine. Go to it, boys.”

  Blackmann watched them ride back across the flat. For a moment they were out of sight in a draw. Then they were visible again, still riding hard. They were racing, Blackmann realized with a grin.

  Yessir, Josh was really turning into some rider—and maybe a lot more than that too.

  Still smiling, Blackmann hauled his mount around and started back to Snake Bar.