Bannerman the Enforcer 14

by Kirk Hamilton

  “What the hell did you do that for?” slurred Maguire.

  “Maybe Street’s a mite too eager for glory,” Yancey told him with steel edging his voice, “but you’re the damn fool, Maguire!”

  “Me!”

  “Yeah, you. You should’ve told him about Kennedy. Him being a greenhorn’s no excuse. In fact it’s the very reason why you should’ve taken him in on the deal, so he wouldn’t louse it up just the way he did. You were the one who made the mistake by not warning him to leave Kennedy be!”

  The sergeant’s fists clenched and unclenched down at his sides and his jaw muscles knotted as he glared at Yancey; but he said nothing. Kibbe rubbed at his neck, moving his head warily.

  “What did you hit me for?” he demanded.

  “You let yourself get hit,” Yancey snapped. “Hasn’t anyone told you you don’t move in close on a man with a gun in the back that way? You saw how easy I put you down. I could’ve killed you with your gun if I’d wanted to. Seems to me this is a pretty sloppy station one way and another.”

  Sergeant Maguire swallowed, detecting the veiled threat in Yancey’s words, remembering who Yancey worked for and how close to Governor Dukes he was said to be.

  “Aw, hell, Bannerman, we done our best ...”

  “I’m Wes Shannon,” Yancey cut in. “Remember that. Don’t call me by any other name while I’m here ... And if this is your best, Maguire, God help us all.”

  “Okay, okay,” Maguire said. “Mebbe I should’ve taken the kid in on the deal. But it’s past now. Thing is, we’ve got Kennedy in the cells. I figured the best way to contact you as Shannon, was to get Street here to start a brawl and we’d arrest you both and bring you here where we could talk. Perfect cover.”

  Yancey looked at him pityingly. “How long’s Street been a Ranger here in El Paso?”

  “Three and a half weeks,” Street said proudly, before Maguire could answer.

  Yancey looked at him. “And I bet your badge is the shiniest in the post and you practically wear it to bed.”

  Street’s face straightened some. “Well ... yeah, I do kind of polish it some ...”

  Yancey snapped his gaze back to Maguire. “You can bet every pimp and whore and cardsharp in the red light district and clear over into Juarez knows he’s a Ranger, by now ... So you send him to pick a fight with me and then ‘arrest’ him along with me! What do you aim to do now? Turn him loose? Put him back on the streets wearing his shiny badge?”

  Maguire swallowed, moved his boots uneasily. “Well ... guess it mightn’t be the—er—best idea ...”

  “Damn right it’s not!” Yancey snapped. He turned to the young Ranger. “Sorry, kid. You’re gonna have to share a cell with Kennedy and me for a spell.”

  Street looked bewildered, opened his mouth to speak but didn’t say anything. He glanced towards Maguire.

  “Guess that’s the way it’ll have to be,” the sergeant told him curtly. “We figured you might get Kennedy’s confidence in the cell right alongside him, Ban ... er—Shannon. Then maybe we could kinda ‘arrange’ your escape so’s he’d lead you to Stewart and the others.”

  Yancey nodded slowly. “Sounds okay. It’ll do for now. I’ll think on it in the cells. Has anyone tried to contact Kennedy?”

  Maguire shook his head. “Doubt if the rest of the bunch know he’s here. We clamped down on them gold pieces mighty fast. He opened the card game with ten and we got ten back after some hassle. We’ve kept it quiet about where they came from.”

  “You hope,” Yancey said. “How long were they in circulation before you got ’em all back?”

  “Coupla days is all.”

  “Could be long enough for someone to have noticed that mint-mark,” Yancey mused. “Have to take a chance on it. Anyway, if word does get to the Stewart bunch that some of the pieces have been dropped in El Paso by Kennedy, they might send someone after him.”

  “What, to break him out?” asked Maguire, frowning.

  Yancey shook his head. “To kill him. Stewart don’t take kindly to anyone going against his orders and I figure that’s the only way Kennedy got his hands on those gold coins. But we’ll see ... Listen, been thinking about the kid here. Maybe you could turn him loose again. Let him tell the truth, or some of it, leastways.”

  “You’re loco!” exclaimed Maguire.

  “Let him spread the word that he set me up. You heard that Wes Shannon, wanted outlaw, was hitting town. You knew you’d never get a Ranger near him, so you sent in the kid to start a brawl and then you moved in and took me without any trouble. The kid’ll be a hero round town and you two’ll get a pat on the back for jumping a real bad hombre so soon and cold-decking him.”

  Maguire thought about it, then finally nodded. “Yeah. Sounds okay.”

  “Be better than pulling the kid out of circulation,” Yancey added. He nodded to no one in particular. “Right, let’s get me across to the jailhouse with Kennedy.”

  “It’s across the yard out back,” Maguire said, going to the wall and taking down a bunch of keys. He looked at Kibbe. “You better come along and hold a gun on him.”

  Yancey took off his gunrig and dropped it onto the table and Kibbe covered him with his own Colt. He rubbed gently at the bruised swelling on his neck and looked like he wanted to use the gun on Yancey. The Enforcer checked as he made to move towards the rear door.

  “Before I go. You got any messages for me? Any telegrams?”

  “Aw, yeah.” Maguire went to a drawer in the table, took out a familiar yellow message form and handed it across to Yancey. The Enforcer glanced at the sender’s name and lifted his eyebrows as he saw Kate’s name there. He read the message swiftly and felt a cold knot form in his belly.

  MATTIE’S TELEGRAPH MESSAGE RECEIVED YESTERDAY STOP CHUCK RECOVERING, FATHER NOT EXPECTED TO LIVE STOP DEEPEST REGRETS STOP LOVE, KATE.

  Yancey’s jaw muscles writhed and he screwed up the message form with a soft curse and flung it across the room. Eyes narrowed and steely, he strode purposefully towards the door leading towards the cellblock. The two Rangers followed.

  ~*~

  Chuck Bannerman lay in his bed, both legs heavily bandaged and with a wire frame over them, reading yesterday’s San Francisco ‘Courier’. He glanced up as the door opened and Mattie came in.

  Her face was drawn and pale, almost as gaunt as Chuck’s own, and he could see her hands shaking as she came across the room, giving him a strained smile.

  “Hi, sis,” he said in a husky voice: it was still an effort for him to speak and he was as weak as a kitten. He lifted a hand slowly towards hers and she took it between her own and gripped hard. Her skin was cold and he frowned, searching her worried face with sunken eyes. “How is he?”

  Mattie sighed and dropped wearily onto the chair beside Chuck’s bed, still holding his hand.

  “Chuck I’m afraid ... I’m afraid ... well, we have to brace ourselves for the—for the worst ...” She shook her head slowly. “He’s sinking.”

  Chuck fetched a heavy sigh.

  “Don’t seem—possible!” he grated, shaking his head slowly. “Not possible ... Can’t ... imagine the bank without—C.B. Mattie ...”

  “Can’t imagine the house on Nob Hill without him, either,” Mattie said quietly. “But it’s no use fooling ourselves, Chuck. He’s an old man and he’s lung-shot and there are—complications ...”

  “What’s happened now?”

  “When he stopped breathing last night,” Mattie told him quietly, “the doctor started his heart again by pushing on his chest. He’s breathing again but coughing more blood than before and they—they think the pressure on the chest may have cracked more ribs and—pierced the other lung.”

  “God!” breathed Chuck, tightening his grip on Mattie’s hand, seeing her lower lip trembling as she told him.

  “The doctor saved his life last night by pushing on his chest,” Mattie went on, trying to keep her voice steady. “But it seems ... it seems that all he did was prolong things
a little. They say he can’t fight off pleurisy with both lungs damaged ...”

  Chuck gritted his teeth in a death’s-head grin.

  “Then—it’s just a matter of—waiting for him to—to die?”

  Mattie nodded, her lips compressed, tears in her eyes as she tightened her grip on Chuck’s hand and slowly lowered her head until her forehead was touching the edge of the bed.

  “It’s all we can do, Chuck,” she said in a muffled voice. “Just wait ...”

  Chuck said suddenly, “Yancey should be here!”

  Mattie looked up sharply.

  “The old man would surely want to see him. He can’t hate him as much as he makes out. He can’t, Mattie!”

  Mattie looked into his sunken eyes. “There was no point in sending for him, Chuck. We thought pa would be dead before Yancey could get here. It’s a miracle he’s hung on this long. And he doesn’t know anybody. He wouldn’t know who it was beside him. He’s ... very low, Chuck. Very low.”

  Then all the pent-up strain burst through and Mattie, the cool, efficient housekeeper who rarely showed emotion, burst into tears. She leaned forward onto Chuck’s bed, her body shaken with sobs. He slipped an arm lightly across her shuddering shoulders, looking blankly ahead.

  Despite his genuine concern for his father’s condition, he couldn’t help thinking that someday soon the huge Bannerman empire might well be his. Then he cursed himself for such thoughts and turned to comforting Mattie.

  ~*~

  Lew Kennedy sat on the edge of his hard bunk and looked across the cell at the long form of the man he knew as Wes Shannon, stretched out, hands behind his head, blowing smoke-rings at the high adobe ceiling.

  Kennedy studied him closely. He had never heard of Shannon, but one of the Rangers had dropped a creased and mud-spattered Wanted dodger just outside the cell door and Kennedy had been able to reach through and grab it. What he had read impressed him, seemed like Shannon was one tough hombre. There was only one thing that bothered Lew Kennedy: he wondered if, somehow, Shannon had been put in here deliberately, by Stewart or Catlin himself, so as to get to him. By now they likely knew he had kept some of the gold coins for himself and had been loco enough to use them in gambling. Not only use them, but lose them, too! Stewart would never let it ride, no matter what he did now. He could never hope to make it up to Brad Stewart and he would be a marked man, with a price on his head, maybe. Or maybe Stewart would simply hire some killer that Kennedy didn’t know, someone like this Shannon across the cell ...

  The big man had been positively unfriendly right from the start and had told Kennedy in no uncertain terms to shut up and mind his own business when the outlaw tried to probe a little. He was savagely angry at having been jumped by the Rangers and tossed in the cells, but no more so than Kennedy. He should have had enough sense to move across to Juarez ... Not that that would have stopped the Rangers getting him if they had really wanted to, despite the treaty with Mexico. More than one owlhoot had been known to be in the midst of a high time in Juarez and woken up in a cell on the U.S. side of the Rio. But that was all unofficial work.

  Still, this big hombre calling himself Shannon bothered Kennedy, the way he just lay there on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. It gave a man the creeps. He barely touched the food the Rangers brought him, hardly opened his mouth. It sent chills down Kennedy’s spine the way he looked at him with those ice-chip eyes. He must be planning something ...

  “Hey, Shannon!”

  Yancey didn’t move or make any sign that he had heard. He blew another smoke ring towards the adobe ceiling.

  “Hey, Shannon!” repeated Kennedy.

  “Shut up,” Yancey said tiredly.

  “Listen, I only wanted to ...”

  “Shut up!” Yancey snapped. “How the hell’s a man s’posed to think with you battin’ the breeze all goddamn day!”

  Kennedy tightened his lips and stood up, walking across the narrow cell to stand beside Yancey’s bunk and look down at him, hands on hips.

  “Listen, we gotta share the same cell we might as well try to get along, huh?”

  Yancey flicked his bleak gaze to Kennedy’s face. He blew a plume of smoke into the man’s eyes and Kennedy swore as he irritably waved it away.

  “Hell, you’re an ornery cuss, ain’t you? Damn it, you know who I am? ... I’m Lew Kennedy! One of the Brad Stewart bunch. Sidekick to Catlin ... toughest man in Texas!”

  “Catlin!” scoffed Yancey. “He ain’t even out of diapers.”

  Kennedy smiled crookedly. “I’d whisper that if i was you, Shannon!”

  “Well, you ain’t me. So shut up and leave me be!”

  “Judas! Listen, I was in on that big gold robbery in ’Frisco! You know that? That’s why I’m here! They traced some of the gold to me.”

  Yancey seemed unimpressed as he put his bleak gaze on the man again and swung his boots to the floor, sitting up and mashing out his cigarillo butt under his boot-heel.

  “Then you’re a fool,” he said coldly.

  “No more’n you!” Kennedy snapped. “You’re right in here alongside me!”

  Yancey lunged up and slammed a fist hard into Kennedy’s thick belly. The man grunted and stumbled backward. Cursing, he came back at Yancey and they stood toe to toe in the cramped space, slugging it out until the ruckus attracted the Ranger on guard. He yelled for help and three Rangers, including Kibbe, came running in, unlocked the cell and separated the fighting men. They slapped them both around and Kennedy was breathing hard as Kibbe slammed him down onto his bunk, gun barrel pressing beneath his ear.

  “Quit it right now!” Kibbe growled, looking at Yancey, whose arms were being held by the other two Rangers. “Shannon, sergeant wants to see you, anyway ... Take him in fellers, while I make sure this rooster settles on down.”

  Yancey was manhandled roughly out of the cell and Kibbe backed out, locked the door after him. He started to leave, then turned back and looked at Kennedy through the bars as the blocky man mopped blood from a split lip.

  “Better take it easy, Kennedy ... I wouldn’t tangle with that hombre Shannon if I was you. He’s a mean one. Ornery as all get-out.”

  Kennedy snapped his head up. “I ain’t no cream puff, neither!”

  “You are compared to him,” Kibbe told him easily. “I wouldn’t even want to go up agin him if I was Catlin.”

  Kennedy scoffed. “He ain’t that tough!”

  “Word says he is ... Fast as greased lightnin’. Downed Cougar Blaine over in Juarez before he hit El Paso, and Cougar’s gun hammer was startin’ to fall before Shannon reached for his gun.”

  “Aw, hogwash! Ain’t no man that fast!”

  “That’s what’s said by people who saw it. He’d be one good hombre to have as a sidekick, but a real bad one to have agin you ... You’d best try to get on with him.”

  “Hell, I’ve been tryin’! He’s about as friendly as a rattler!”

  “We-ell ... take it easy with him is my advice.”

  “Damn it, does he have to be in the same cell as me?” Kennedy crossed to the barred door.

  Kibbe smiled faintly. “Sergeant says for you two bobcats to share a cell, so that’s it.”

  “Goddamn sergeant!” snarled Kennedy. “Thinks it’s funny, I s’pose!”

  Kibbe laughed outright. “He sure does!”

  Kennedy swore some more and Kibbe moved away down the passage to the yard door. He paused as he went out and looked back at the outlaw.

  “Remember what I said: he’s mean. So play it smart, Kennedy!”

  He closed the door behind him and walked slowly back across the yard towards the Ranger post’s main building.

  He walked into Maguire’s office and nodded to his sergeant, sitting behind the desk. Yancey sat in a chair opposite Maguire, at his ease, waiting. His eyes were on Kibbe’s face.

  “Planted the seed, I guess,” Kibbe said quietly. “If he ain’t altogether dumb, he’ll get the message. Specially when you drop the word, Shann
on, that we let slip Catlin’s after Kennedy.”

  “Maybe,” Yancey said unsmilingly. “He’s edgy. Been trying to impress me with how tough he is and how important he is to the Stewart bunch. You tell him any reason for me being pulled down here to see Maguire?”

  “Nope. Just said the sergeant wanted to see you.”

  Yancey nodded and straightened in the chair. He looked at Kibbe and Maguire carefully. “Which one of you gents’d like to punch me in the face?”

  They both stared at him in surprise and a faint smile lifted the corners of Yancey’s mouth. “You heard me. Now, don’t both rush me at once! But the way I figure it, there’s got to be some excuse for you wanting to see me, Maguire. If I go back to the cell roughed up a little, I won’t have to explain things. I can just spend my time cussin’ you out and he’ll be on my side all the way. Won’t take much to make my nose bleed again. It ain’t healed yet from my brawl with Street. Is he back on duty, by the way?”

  Maguire stood up slowly and came around his desk. “Been transferred,” he said gruffly and as Yancey snapped his head up with a puzzled frown, the sergeant backhanded the big Enforcer suddenly, knocking him clear out of the chair.

  Yancey shook his head as he sat on the floor, blinking back tears of pain. He put a hand up to his nostrils and looked at the bright red blood on his fingers. He held the hand up and Maguire grinned at him as he reached for it and yanked Yancey onto his feet.

  “How’s that?” he asked with a tight grin.

  “It’ll do,” Yancey muttered, smearing the blood across his chin and cheek and letting it run onto his shirtfront. He looked at the disappointed Kibbe as he reached for a kerchief. “Maybe next time, Kibbe.”