“We won’t let you down, boss,” Talley said. “I want Jensen and his friends dead more than I’ve ever wanted anything else.”
“See to it, then. Take the sheriff along so it’ll be legal.”
Talley smiled. “Nobody’s going to question the killing of three fugitives.”
“Blast it, I can’t afford to have any stain of suspicion now! Not with the army coming in any time now.”
“The . . . the army?” Sanger quavered.
“That’s right. There’s a troop of cavalry on the way here right now. As soon as they arrive Halltown will be placed under martial law due to the Paiute uprising and the rampant lawlessness gripping the area.”
Sanger frowned. “What Paiute uprising?”
“The one that has the townspeople living in terror of an attack.”
“Nobody’s said nothin’ to me about—”
“They will. They’ll tell the soldiers how afraid they are. And the ranchers on the other side of Big Bear Wash will confirm the Indians have been stealing their stock and ambushing their cowboys.”
Sanger shook his head. “Walkin’ Hawk and his people haven’t done anything like that.”
“Good Lord!” Longacre exploded as his face darkened with anger. “Do you people want the railroad to come in here and make all your lives better, or not?”
“Well, sure, but—”
Longacre hit the table again, striking it with his open hand in a sharp slap. “Then it’s time for this farce to end. To save the town and the ranchers, the cavalry will wipe out the Paiutes. I’ll build my bridge, and everything will be fine. I just don’t want to take a chance on Jensen and his friends talking to the authorities.”
“But if they’re holed up with the Injuns, there ain’t no way to get ’em out,” Sanger protested. “Not until the soldiers get here, anyway, and then you run the risk of them gettin’ to the officer in charge of the troop.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, you addlepated old fool.” Longacre swung toward Talley. “Judd?”
“Leave it to me, boss,” the gunman said with a smile. “I know just how to get Jensen and his friends out where we can get rid of them once and for all.”
Chapter 30
After the excitement of Matt Jensen’s rescue from the foot of the gallows had died down, things went back to normal in Halltown. As normal as they were those days, anyway. The unsettled atmosphere of the town remained. The feeling that violence might break out at any minute still hung over the town.
Colin Ferguson sighed as he lowered himself into the chair behind the desk in his office in the hotel. His bad leg ached from weariness. He had spent the afternoon going around town trying to stir up some support for opposing Cyrus Longacre’s reign of terror. His efforts had ended in abysmal failure.
Some of the people he talked to were honestly baffled as to why Longacre’s actions were all that bad. The railroad represented progress and profit for the town, and it would be better if it could be extended through the lush cattle range between there and the mountains. What did it matter if the Paiutes were driven off their land . . . or even killed? They were just savages, after all, and rumors were already plentiful that they were planning to attack the town. It was just a matter of time before the Paiutes went on a bloodthirsty rampage.
Only a small minority of Halltown’s citizens felt that way. Most of the others were just scared of Judd Talley and the rest of Longacre’s hired guns. Give Longacre what he wanted, they argued. That would be best for the town, and more important, nobody else would get hurt. Most of them also genuinely believed Matt Jensen had killed that girl and deserved to hang. All the evidence had been against him, after all.
Ferguson could understand why they felt that way. If he and Maureen hadn’t gotten to know Matt as well as they had, he might have thought the young man was guilty, too. Nobody wanted to risk their own lives and maybe the lives of their families by standing up to Longacre over a no-good killer.
Ferguson opened a drawer in his desk and took out a bottle and a glass. He uncorked the bottle and poured a couple fingers of fine Irish whiskey into the glass. The liquor wouldn’t help the situation that plagued Halltown, but it might ease the ache in his leg a little. It might also allow him to forget for a moment that he and his niece were probably the only friends Matt Jensen had left in Halltown.
With a horde of ruthless killers after them, it was only a matter of time before Matt and his friends were brought to bay. Longacre wouldn’t take chances again. Ferguson was sure Longacre had given Judd Talley firm orders to kill their prey on sight.
Ferguson was about to lift the glass to his mouth when the office door opened. He looked up and saw Maureen standing there. “What is it, girl?” he asked. “Why aren’t you at the store?”
When he noticed how pale Maureen’s face was and saw the fear in her green eyes, he knew something was terribly wrong. He started up from his chair.
Maureen stumbled a little as she was pushed into the room. Judd Talley’s huge form loomed behind her, making her look almost like a child. The gun in his hand came up and pointed at Ferguson.
“Don’t try anything, old man,” Talley warned. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”
“Wh-what are you doing?” Ferguson sputtered. “If this is some sort of holdup—”
“You’re not even close,” Talley said. “The only thing I want is you and your niece. You’re coming with me.”
“Coming with you? But why?”
Talley grinned. “You and Maureen are the only friends Jensen’s got left in town.” He unknowingly echoed the very thought that had gone through Ferguson’s brain only moments earlier. “I figure you’ll make the best bait for the trap.”
“The hotel clerk’s name is Joseph Spivey, if I remember right from the trial,” Matt told Smoke and Preacher. “I don’t know where he lives, but I’m sure Mr. Ferguson can tell you. He knows just about everybody in Halltown. Once it gets dark, if you can make it to the hotel without anybody seeing you, Preacher, you can slip in the back door and talk to Mr. Ferguson.”
The old mountain man snorted. “Remember who you’re talkin’ to, boy.”
Walking Hawk nodded solemnly. “No one sees Ghost Killer if Ghost Killer does not want to be seen.”
“Dang right,” Preacher said.
Smoke said, “If we can get our hands on Spivey, we can take him to Carson City and go all the way to the governor if we have to, to get somebody in authority to listen to us. I’m sure we can count on the governor of Colorado to put in a word for us if need be.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Matt said, “as long as Longacre doesn’t come up with something else in the meantime. He’s bound to be frustrated enough now that I wouldn’t put much of anything past him.”
“From the sound of it, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to start with.” Smoke shook his head. “Having a woman killed just to frame you, Matt . . . A bullet in the head’s too good for a snake like that.”
The other three men in Chief Walking Hawk’s lodge nodded in solemn agreement.
As he came abreast of the Sierra House, Captain Edward McKee raised his hand in a signal for the troops following him to halt. McKee turned his head and said to his noncom, “Have the men dismount, Sergeant, but stand ready to ride again.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Haney said. He turned to the troop and bellowed, “Disss-mount!”
McKee took his gauntlets off as he went into the hotel. He held them in one hand and slapped them in the palm of the other. A clerk behind the desk stared at him. McKee approached the man and was about to ask for Mr. Cyrus Longacre, when a voice hailed him from the stairs.
“Captain?” The man reached the bottom of the stairs and came toward McKee with an outstretched hand. “I’m Cyrus Longacre. I believe you were supposed to meet me here.”
“Yes, sir, that’s correct.” McKee grasped the railroad man’s hand and gave it a brief shake. He much pre
ferred exchanging salutes, but you couldn’t do that when you were dealing with civilians. For that matter, he preferred not dealing with civilians at all, but he was a soldier. He followed orders, and his were to report to Longacre, assess the situation, and render all due aid to the man in putting down an uprising of the local Indian tribe.
“You arrived a little sooner than I expected,” Longacre commented.
“My orders were to proceed here without delay,” McKee explained. “My men can cover a lot of ground in a hurry when need be.”
“Well, I certainly appreciate that. Come up to my suite and have a drink with me,” Longacre invited.
McKee hesitated, but after the long ride he and his men had just made, a drink sounded very appealing.
“I have some excellent cigars as well,” Longacre added.
That made up the captain’s mind. “Lead on, sir,” McKee said.
A few minutes later, with his hat off, McKee was comfortably ensconsed in an armchair in the sitting room of Longacre’s suite. He had a glass of brandy in one hand and a fine Cuban cigar in the other.
“To the U.S. cavalry,” Longacre said as he raised his own glass. “The finest fighting force in the world.”
“I’ll drink to that.” McKee tossed back the brandy and enjoyed the warm feeling it kindled in his belly. That was what he needed. “So, tell me about these Indians who are causing trouble.”
For the next half hour, McKee listened as Longacre recited a litany of complaints about the Paiutes. According to the railroad man, the savages had attacked his surveying parties, attacked the men he sent out to negotiate a right-of-way agreement with Chief Walking Hawk, rustled cattle from the ranchers on the other side of Big Bear Wash, threatened the cowboys who tried to recover those stolen cattle, and promised to make war on Halltown itself, leaving the settlement’s citizens in a state of fear.
When Longacre was finished, McKee nodded. “The Bureau of Indian Affairs is supposed to send an agent out here as soon as possible, but that may be a couple months. Until then, my instructions are to pacify the Indians and move them off the land they currently hold, pending a review of their rights under the treaty they signed several years ago. Does that agree with your view of the situation, Mr. Longacre?”
“Very much so,” Longacre said.
“These orders come directly from the War Department, you know,” McKee commented. “From the office of the Secretary of War himself. That’s rather unusual.” McKee suspected there was some sort of connection between Longacre and the political bosses in Washington. He wouldn’t have had enough influence to have the army sent in to help with what was actually a business problem.
Those sort of things were none of his business, McKee told himself. He had his orders.
“Well, I’m just glad you’re here, Captain,” Longacre said. “I know this ordeal will soon be over and I can get on with the job of building my railroad line.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When do you expect to have the Paiutes moved out?”
“We’ll begin operations against them first thing tomorrow morning.” McKee shrugged. “Who knows, they may cooperate.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We’ll do whatever is necessary to compel them.”
“I think they’ll probably put up a fight,” Longacre warned.
McKee smiled. “Then they’ll pay the price for doing so.”
Longacre returned the smile and reached for the brandy bottle. “Another drink?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” McKee said.
Preacher rode out at dusk. In the uncertain light, the old mountain man in his buckskins and the rangy gray stallion he rode were hard to see, especially since he knew how to take advantage of every bit of cover there was. Talley had likely left some of the hired guns to keep an eye on the Paiute village, but Preacher figured they wouldn’t spot him. He might not be as young and slick as he once was, but he was still plenty slick enough to outsmart a bunch of cheap hardcases.
Like the phantom that had inspired his name among the Blackfeet, he slipped through the growing darkness until he neared Halltown. When he spotted the lights of the settlement, he dismounted and wrapped rags around Horse’s hooves to muffle the sound of the animal’s progress. It wasn’t the first time Preacher had done such a thing, so Horse didn’t spook at having his hooves wrapped.
Preacher led the stallion forward in almost complete silence. He stopped in a grove of trees not far from the edge of town and tied Horse’s reins to one of the slender trunks. Patting the animal on the shoulder, Preacher murmured, “I’ll be back for you, old fella.”
Then he catfooted toward the back of the building closest to him.
Matt had told him how to find the hotel owned by Colin Ferguson. Preacher studied the town’s layout as he approached, and plotted how he would get to where he needed to be, picking out the deepest patches of shadow and other cover along the course he would take. He moved slowly. Stealth was more important than speed.
When he reached the back of the building he knew was the hotel, he went to the rear door. It was unlocked, so he slipped inside with ease. He had to find Colin Ferguson’s office.
No light showed under the office door when Preacher found it. He could hear people moving around in the hotel and wanted to get out of sight before somebody wandered along the corridor and spotted him. He muttered a curse, then tried the knob. It turned under his fingers. He opened the door just long enough to slip into the darkened office.
What now? Preacher was a man of action. He didn’t cotton to standing around. Thinking maybe Ferguson had left something that would tell where he was, Preacher moved carefully. With one hand outstretched and the other resting on the butt of one of the Remingtons, he made his way across the room toward the spot where a desk should be sitting.
A moment later he bumped into what he was looking for, and he felt around to make sure it was a desk. When he was satisfied that it was, he fished a lucifer out of his pocket and used a thumbnail to snap the match into life. He’d just take a quick look around....
As the match flared up and its glow washed over the desk, Preacher cursed again at what his eyes, squinted against the glare, saw there.
The desk was littered with papers, and standing out in bold relief on them were several drops of blood, scattered in a curving line across the desk. The chair behind the desk was overturned.
There had been a fight . . . which meant wherever Colin Ferguson was, he probably hadn’t gone there of his own accord.
If he was even still alive.
Chapter 31
When a soft knock sounded on the door of his suite, Cyrus Longacre slipped his hand under his coat and closed his fingers around the butt of a small pistol in a shoulder holster. He went to the door and called, “Who is it?”
“Just me, boss.”
Recognizing Judd Talley’s voice, Longacre let go of the pistol and opened the door. The big gunman came into the room wearing his usual self-satisfied smirk.
“You took care of that matter we discussed earlier?” Longacre asked as he closed the door.
Talley took off his hat and tossed it casually on a side table as he nodded. “Yeah. Ferguson put up a little fight, but it didn’t amount to much. We’ve got him and the girl stashed where nobody’ll ever find them unless we want them to.”
“Not that same shack your men used before, I hope,” Longacre said sharply.
Talley shook his head. “No, Jensen knows about that one. They’re in a cave up in the hills. I left eight good men guarding them. There won’t be any slipups this time, boss.”
“Good,” Longacre said. “You’ve sent a rider to the Paiute village?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t too crazy about the idea, but I told him he’d be safe enough as long as Jensen knows we’ve got Ferguson and his niece. I just hope you’re right about Jensen and those other meddlers being with the redskins like you think.”
“Where else could they hide out as easily, and
still be relatively close to town?” With the certainty born of his natural arrogance, Longacre nodded. “They’ll be there. I’d bet almost anything on it.”
“Well, if they are, my man will deliver the message,” Talley declared.
“I’ve been thinking. I have another job for you.” Longacre took a cigar out of a vest pocket, bit off the end, and clamped the cylinder of rich tobacco between his teeth. “There’s another weak link we need to take care of,” he said around the Cubano. “Joseph Spivey.”
“The hotel clerk?” Talley asked with a frown.
“That’s right. He’s the only one who testified at the trial who actually lied. If he were to change his testimony about when he heard Virginia scream, it would cast doubt on the whole case. I don’t want to take a chance on him talking to any outside authorities, even though it’s unlikely such a thing will ever happen.”
“You want me to get rid of Spivey, just to make sure?” Talley asked the question casually, as if the idea of murdering the clerk didn’t bother him a bit.
Longacre nodded again. “That’s right. Don’t do it here in town, though. Take him somewhere out of the settlement and leave his body where it won’t be found.”
“I can do that,” Talley said with a chuckle. “Where is he? Working downstairs at the desk?”
“No, I already checked on that. He’s not working tonight. He has a little house on one of the side streets.” Longacre told Talley how to find the clerk’s place.
“All right, I’ll go take care of it right now. No point in putting it off.”
“None at all,” Longacre agreed. “I’ll feel better once it’s done. Captain McKee seems like an agreeable man, the sort that won’t cause any trouble for us, but I’d like to be sure there’s no chance of him hearing anything he shouldn’t.”
The Family Jensen Page 23