Bannerman the Enforcer 14

by Kirk Hamilton

  Yancey stood up, holding the manila folder. “I’ll sure give it a try, Governor. Better fix it for me to get in contact with the Rangers somehow so they bring me right up to date when I arrive.”

  “I’ll arrange it. You will take a room in the Snapping Garter. They’ll get in touch with you there.”

  Yancey smiled crookedly. “I’m really gonna live it up. That’s the toughest whorehouse this side of the Barbary Coast!”

  The governor regarded him soberly. “Just the kind of place an outlaw like Shannon would go.” He thrust out his hand and gripped firmly with his Enforcer. “Good luck, Yancey.”

  “Thanks, Governor ... Thanks, too, for giving me the job. You know how much it means to me to nail those bastards.”

  Dukes nodded. “Just keep Kennedy out of trouble long enough either to take you to the rendezvous or tell you where it’s going to be. Then we’ll move in. There’ll be Rangers standing by waiting for your word.”

  Yancey paused near the door, turned to look back at Dukes. “Just one thing. With the owlhoot cover of Shannon, there’s no way I’ll be able to find out about pa and Chuck.”

  The governor nodded soberly. “I’m sorry, Yancey. I’ve tried to figure a way but it’s just too risky. It might blow everything up in your face. Maybe I can arrange for a news item to appear in the El Paso ‘News’. I’ll work on it, but you might have to work blind as far as news of their condition is concerned. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll find some way to get word to you.”

  Yancey nodded, jammed his cigarillo between his teeth and went out, a tall square-shouldered man with the fingers of his right hand brushing lightly against his gun butt.

  ~*~

  Mattie Bannerman was almost out on her feet. She had been awake for long hours each day, trying to help out with her father’s business affairs as well as relieving the nurses in the sickroom. On top of this, she had her normal household duties to attend to as well as letters to write.

  To add to her troubles, one of the nurses had twisted her ankle on the stairs and couldn’t manage the night duty shift, so Mattie had taken it over herself. It was too late now to get a nurse at this time of night, but come morning she would try to find another, possibly two, so she could be at least relieved of sickroom duty. Chuck’s leg was past the stage where amputation had been thought necessary, thank God. The infection was clearing up and the doctors had decided to leave things at present. But, they warned, at the first sign of new infection, the leg would have to come off or Chuck would die a terrible death by gangrene.

  Chuck figured that death in any shape or form would be better than getting around without his legs. For he feared that if the doctors took one leg, the other might well become infected, too, and they would want to saw it off as well. He doubted if he could survive an amputation, anyway. He had no illusions about his tolerance to pain and, though the new-fangled chloroform was in restricted use, he reckoned he fancied neither being put to sleep with some drug no one knew much about, nor being fully conscious when the doctors began to saw off his leg ...

  He was gaining strength slowly despite the infection in his leg, but he was terribly weak and often was so dizzy he could not even sit up in bed. He was not yet strong enough to feed himself and he showed little interest in the pretty day nurse who did this and other chores for him, so he knew, deep down, he had a long way to go yet to reach full recovery.

  C.B. was another matter entirely. The doctors seemed to think it some kind of a miracle that he had survived thus far. The internal bleeding seemed to have stopped, but he had trouble breathing. His cheeks had high color and he rolled his head from side to side on the pillow, muttering incoherently, frail hands plucking at the sheet, lost in some delirious dream.

  Mattie wearily sponged his face and changed his damp nightshirt. Almost exhausted by her efforts, she collapsed in the straight back chair against the wall and sagged there, hands in lap, head tilted back, eyes closed, listening to the rattling, wheezing sounds of her father’s breathing. She slipped into a doze and her hands fell limply to her sides, the damp cloth falling unheeded to the floor. She began to dream. There were confused visions of her long-dead mother, a childhood that seemed to be dominated by a series of governesses and by a father who was too busy building his financial empire to have time to spare for his young daughter. She dreamt of Yancey, wild and fun-loving, up to all kinds of mischief, taking the brunt of his father’s anger whenever something went wrong in the mysterious world of high finance, or when Yancey himself committed some small sin. C.B. had always vented his anger on Yancey: it seemed that he held him responsible for the death of their mother ...

  Chuck, on the other hand, seemed to get away with anything. He could get into any kind of scrape and, like as not, C.B. would get him out somehow. He might berate Chuck afterwards but there was very little real sting to it. Chuck took it in his stride and went on to his next scrape ...

  She seemed to be seeing in her mind a series of flashes of her past life and that of her brothers. It disturbed her, set her head rolling on her shoulders and her face contorted in grimaces as she relived unhappy moments and, suddenly, she was in nightmare, with ghouls and monsters that bore the features of her father and she awoke with a jerk, her heart pounding,

  Then she realized it had only been a dream and she was sitting beside her father’s bed.

  Mattie looked sharply towards the bed, starting to rise out of her chair. Apart from the pounding of her own heart in her ears, there was no other sound in the room. No wheezing sound of labored breathing; nothing.

  Fearfully, she looked at her father’s sunken features as he lay sprawled on his pillows, unmoving.

  ~*~

  Ranger Milt Street was young and enthusiastic, an impatient man, eager for promotion and glory. He was stationed at the El Paso Ranger post and, because of his inexperience, he was only on the fringes of the Lew Kennedy deal. He had heard the more experienced Rangers talking about undercover men keeping the outlaw Kennedy under surveillance, waiting to move in. He had heard that Kennedy was involved with the Brad Stewart bunch and had dropped some of the stolen gold pieces during a poker game somewhere in the Red Light district. He had heard one veteran Ranger remark to another that once they had Kennedy where they wanted him, they could move in and wipe out the Stewart bunch.

  Street couldn’t figure out why no one had arrested Kennedy when they had had him in their sights. He learned, by discreet enquiries, that Kennedy was mighty fast with a gun and a killer, and reckoned it must have been this reputation which had lost the man to the Rangers following him. They had been fazed by his gun speed and had hesitated just too long before closing in and he had gotten away ...

  Milt Street reckoned that was a damn shame. He knew the President himself was somehow involved in this gold deal and wanted the matter cleared up as quickly as possible. He figured that any Ranger who could wipe out the Stewart bunch would have more glory than he could handle. The President would reward him personally, most likely, and promotion would come as a matter of course.

  It was the kind of challenge that appealed to Milt Street: action, glory and promotion. All his ambitions realized at one time.

  So when it came time for his tour of duty on the streets of El Paso, he went down into the Red Light district and shook up every informer whom he knew, banged a few heads together and made a lot of threats. The result was that within an hour a one-eyed Mexican pointed out Lew Kennedy to Street as the outlaw staggered out of a whorehouse, drunk and singing off-key as he made his weaving way down the dark street. The young Ranger tossed a peso at the Mexican, drew his Colt and cut through two alleys so he could get ahead of the drunken outlaw.

  Kennedy stumbled towards him and Street pressed back against the alley wall, tightening his grip on his gun. He held his breath as the slurred words of Kennedy’s bawdy song reached him. There was a clatter as the outlaw stumbled over a crate, a curse, and then the man was rearing up in front of him, turning his back to the hid
den Ranger as he swore loudly and kicked viciously at a mangy alley cat which had tangled his feet

  Milt Street figured he wouldn’t have a better chance. He stepped forward swiftly and slammed the side of his Colt down on the top of Kennedy’s head as hard as he could. Lew Kennedy stiffened, remained upright like a statue for a few moments, and then his legs folded and he slowly spread out on his face in the mud of the alley. Street leaned over him and clipped him again for good measure. Then he holstered his gun, took the outlaw’s Colt from him and heaved the unconscious man across his broad young shoulders.

  His face was split in a beaming smile as he strode off down the alley towards the main street, Kennedy’s bleeding head banging up and down against his hips.

  “When you wake up, feller, you’re gonna be in a cell where we can work on you and find out just where this Brad Stewart and his sidekick Catlin are hangin’ out! And I guess I should thank you for obligin’ me with promotion and glory and, mebbe, a trip to Washington to meet the President hisself!”

  He whistled happily to himself as he swung out of the alley and turned into the main drag with his burden.

  Four – Caged

  Yancey figured the best way to draw attention to himself as ‘Wes Shannon’ was to get into some kind of trouble as soon as possible after hitting El Paso.

  He was supposed to be on the run, so he rode his sorrel into the Rio southeast of Chaparral Flats and swam it across into Mexico. He hadn’t ridden three miles west before he was sighted by the Mexican Border Patrol and he rode for another five miles with their bullets singing about his ears until he was able to lose them in canyon country he had used once when on an assignment to smash a band of gunrunners. The snaking, rugged canyon layout came back to him and he rode fast and confidently, finally choosing a trail that took him up and over a razorback ridge and then dropped down into brush country. Here he covered his tracks, headed back to the Rio and rode along in the shallows at its edge, coming out again on hard lava where no tracks at all were left.

  Then he continued west for two miles more, turned north and eventually rode into Juarez, hell town of the border, a couple of hours before sundown.

  If a man was looking for trouble, Juarez was the place to find it. It was directly across the Rio Grande from El Paso, the two towns linked by a wooden bridge, loosely patrolled at each end by lounging lawmen. Unless a wanted outlaw was actually recognized, few people were bothered on their bridge crossings, either going north or south. At times, Customs made searches but, generally, wayfarers passed back and forth from one town to the other without hindrance.

  Juarez was one big red light district and there were brawls and killings and robberies almost every night so, with typical Mexican logic, the authorities turned a blind eye and just let things pass. There were times when they had a savage purge and brought in the soldiers with their sabers and old bolt-action Mauser and Snider rifles, then went through the town in a brief, bloody rampage that quietened things down considerably for a while. But gradually the town came back to its old level of lawlessness and stayed that way for as long as the men who ran the town could keep the gold flowing into the right pockets in government.

  Juarez was one place where a man could always find trouble if he wanted it.

  Yancey chose a cantina on the main drag directly south of the river bridge that led to El Paso. He had ridden his sorrel casually around the Mexican end of the bridge, noting that there were two soldiers leaning on their rifles there, talking to a couple of painted señoritas, while at the Texas side there was a single Ranger sitting on the rail, smoking, watching the passersby with little interest. Then Yancey turned and rode back down the strip, hitched the sorrel outside the cantina that was already crowded and went inside, hitching at his gunbelt. He was wearing a faded blue shirt with a tan leather vest over it, decorated with conchos and split rawhide thongs, brown whipcord trousers were tucked into scuffed half boots, and his normal gunrig with the Colt Peacemaker rested in the specially molded holster made for him by Johnny Cato. With his brown, curl-brimmed hat pushed to the back of his head, and a half-smoked cheroot jutting from between his teeth, Yancey looked plenty tough as he sauntered down the crowded room, towering head and shoulders over most of the patrons, easing his way through with his left hand, keeping his right resting on the butt of the Peacemaker.

  He bellied up to the counter, deliberately being rough in forcing his way through, and thumped the flat of his left hand down on the woodwork.

  “Hey, amigo!” he bawled to the sweating Mexican barkeep. “Redeye!”

  The barkeep made a gesture to indicate that he had heard, served two Americans, and then came along the bar to where Yancey stood. He mopped his face and fat neck with the same cloth he had been using to polish the drinking glasses.

  “Señor?” he enquired.

  “Damn it, you deaf?” growled Yancey, slapping his hand down on the countertop again, looking mean. “I said redeye. Pronto!”

  The barman shrugged heavy shoulders. “Sorry. No whisky.” He pointed north. “El Paso if you want whisky. We serve only tequila and pulque ...”

  Yancey’s mouth twisted. “I’m sick of that damn greaser hogwash. Been drinkin’ it too long. I want a decent shot of redeye.”

  “Not here, señor,” the barkeep said carefully, gauging Yancey as a man not to rile. “I am sorry. But just a few more yards and you can cross the bridge into El Paso—”

  “You tryin’ to be funny?” Yancey demanded and the Mexican’s eyebrows shot up as he stepped back hurriedly and shook his head.

  “No, señor, I only suggest ...”

  “Don’t!” growled Yancey, turning angrily away from the bar, shoving aside the Mexicans and their girls.

  There were protests but Yancey dropped his hand to his gun butt and glared coldly. A passage began to open up through the crowd: obviously they figured the sooner this tall gringo left, the better for all concerned. But Yancey had been watching the two Americans all the time and he recognized one, a lean man with a lantern jaw and crooked nose, as an escaped convict from the Texas Territorial Prison, a killer who called himself Cougar. He was quite safe here, within yards of the United States, for even one yard onto Mexican soil could prevent U.S. law officers from apprehending him, thanks to a restricting treaty between the States and Mexico that prevented lawmen from either side from crossing the border without special warrants that took a long time to procure.

  The man with him Yancey didn’t know, but he looked of the same caliber, hard-eyed, mean, gun-hung. They were watching him, too, obviously wracking their brains, wondering if he was some gringo lawbreaker they should know. But their looks were all Yancey needed now. He stopped shoving his way through the Mexicans and crossed to Cougar and his companion. They straightened slowly, making room, getting ready for trouble, for Yancey was obviously on the prod. He stopped before them, raked them with cold eyes.

  “What you hombres starin’ at?” he demanded truculently.

  They continued to stare for a spell and Cougar’s companion, smaller than his sidekick, downed his tequila with a flourish. Cougar returned Yancey’s stare.

  “Dunno what it is,” he replied, his lips scarcely moving. “How about you, Chip?”

  Chip couldn’t hold Yancey’s gaze and he lowered his eyes, muttering something as he shook his head.

  Yancey didn’t speak again. He had been right in his assumption and had picked a couple of hard hombres who wouldn’t back down in front of these Mexicans they had likely been lording it over for weeks. They had likely made their reputations early and now had to live up to them. Which suited Yancey fine.

  Mexicans were already getting out of the way, recognizing the signs of coming trouble. Yancey’s hands both shot out together, startling the other men as he grabbed their shirtfronts and hauled them both forward, off-balance. He shook them and then banged them together and while they were still mildly stunned he shifted his grip and smashed their heads together with a crunch that was heard cle
ar through the room. The men staggered apart, Chip clinging to the bar edge with one hand, holding his pounding head with the other. Cougar rolled away along the edge and his flailing arms knocked bottles and glasses from the bar top. He snatched at one bottle and heaved away off the bar violently, lunging back at Yancey with the tequila bottle gripped by the neck.

  Yancey dodged the swing but felt the wind from the base of the bottle, it came so close to his face. Cougar stumbled forward with his effort and Yancey drove a short blow into his midriff that stopped the man dead and left him kind of hanging on the end of Yancey’s big fist. The Enforcer’s other fist chopped down on the hand holding the tequila bottle and Cougar yelled as he released his grip. At the same time, he staggered back a couple of steps, gagging, and Yancey moved in, hammered him up against the bar edge and backhanded him across the face The blow sent Cougar staggering to the right and Yancey bunched his fist and brought it back in a heavy swing that connected with Chip’s jaw as the smaller, blocky man heaved off the bar and lunged at Yancey. Chip’s own forward momentum added to the impact as the fist caught him flush on the jaw and his head snapped back, eyes rolling up, as he floundered along the bar for ten feet before sitting down with a thump at the feet of the excited, yelling Mexicans. He stayed there, blinking, jaw already lopsided with swelling, mouth bleeding, virtually out to it with his eyes open.

  Cougar had straightened and came lunging back at the Enforcer with a roar, arms spread wide. He ducked under the blow Yancey threw at him and the top of his head caught the big man just over the belt-buckle. Yancey’s breath whooshed out of him and he doubled up. Cougar brought up a knee that caught the side of Yancey’s head and sent him crashing back into the bar. His boots slipped in spilled drinks and he went down on one knee. Cougar aimed a kick at his head that went close enough to knock Yancey’s hat off. The Enforcer, hands pressed against the floor, heaved up and forward, using his hard-muscled legs to drive his big body into Cougar. He caught the man about the hips, wrapped his arms around him and straightened, lifting the outlaw clear off the floor and continuing the upward movement until Cougar was yelling and kicking above his head. Then Yancey bared his teeth and threw him across the bar. Cougar hit the counter top, spun and skidded along it for several feet, then rolled off and crashed to the floor on the far side.