by Ralph Cotton
“Stick with me, Delbert,” he said. “Who knows? Someday I might own this bank instead of just managing it for Big Jack.”
“I expect the only way you’d ever get this bank away from Big Jack is to kill him for it,” said Fisk.
“So?” said Pindigo. “Nothing wrong with that.” He grinned, with a shrug of his shoulders. “This is the land of opportunity—a man does what he has to do to get what he wants. If it takes a killing or two, that’s just the cost of doing business.” He laid his cards down faceup. “Three lovely ladies,” he said.
“Damn it!” said Lyle Fisk. “I would’ve sworn you were bluffing.” He threw his cards down and reached for the bottle of rye standing midtable.
Pindigo chuckled and raked a small pile of cash and coin to him.
“Speaking of killing,” said Sweeney, “why didn’t you send me along with Frawley instead of Rudy?”
“Rudy likes that kind of work,” said Pindigo.
“So do I,” said Sweeney.
“No,” said Pindigo, “you do it. But you don’t enjoy it. Leastwise not the way Rudy does.” He grinned. “Besides, I wanted you here where I can take all your money.”
“I’ve got five dollars says Rochenbach didn’t tell the horse trader anything,” said Sweeney.
“Why do you say that?” Pindigo asked.
“Rock ain’t the kind of man who’ll tell anybody a damn thing,” said Sweeney. “He might have been a Pinkerton at one time. But he’s a hard case now. He didn’t say nothing about you. It ain’t his nature.”
“Rock, is it…? I didn’t know you admired the man so much, Sweeney,” said Pindigo.
“That’s not it,” said Sweeney. “Whether I like him or not has got nothing to do with it. I got to know him some last year. He’s not the kind of man who would jackpot a fellow. That’s all I’m saying.”
“We’ll know before long,” said Pindigo. “If he did mention my name to the horse trader or anybody else, Rudy and Frawley will get it out of him.”
“So, is it a bet?” Sweeney asked.
“No, it’s not,” said Pindigo. “That’s me betting against my own interest. “I’m hoping he didn’t tell anybody I put him in touch with the others on the bank job. Why would I bet good money that he did?”
“Just for sport,” Sweeney said. He shrugged and reached for the bottle of rye.
“After tonight he’s never going to tell anybody anything ever again,” Pindigo said with a dark chuckle. “Now, there’s something I’ll bet on.”
“No,” said Sweeney, “I’m out of the notion now.”
“That’s what I figured,” Pindigo said, shuffling the deck of cards in front of him. He looked back and forth between the two. “Either one care to double the ante?”
“Dang,” said Fisk, “now you’re out for blood.”
“Have you ever seen me when I wasn’t?” Pindigo spread a thin, sinister grin in the shadowy lamplight.
Inside his cell, Avrial Rochenbach’s eyes jumped open at the sound of the key turning inside the iron door lock. He stared at the dusty back wall two feet in front of him. They were here, he told himself. The waiting and wondering was over. He knew what came next.
“Wake up, wake up, you sleepy boyo,” Dade Frawley said in the mock voice of an Irish minstrel.
“On your feet, you son of a bitch,” Rudy Purser said, more direct and to the point. “We’re going to take a little walk, the three of us.”
Rochenbach rolled onto the edge of his cot and sat staring at him in the moonlight through the cell window. The welt across his forehead from Summers’ rifle butt still throbbed when he first awakened. He cupped his good hand to it and squinted in the dim light.
“Where are we going?” he asked. But his question was a deft response, a learned skill from a lifetime of counter and query, all of it a means of staying alive—the odds of which looked awfully slim right now, he told himself.
“What do you care?” said Rudy Purser, a hard-boned gunman with thick red curly hair springing from beneath his hat brim. A bristly red beard covered his face to within an inch of his eyes. “You’ll know when we get there.”
“It’s not far,” said Frawley. He pitched a pair of handcuffs onto the cot beside Rochenbach. “Put these on one wrist,” he instructed.
Rochenbach looked at the cuffs, then picked them up, turning his gaze back to Frawley as he clamped one loosely around his left wrist, keeping his right hand free should he see a chance to save himself.
Frawley grinned, reached down and pulled him to his feet by the dangling handcuff. He reached around Rochenbach’s left wrist and clamped the cuff down tighter.
“You’re not the only one reads Police Gazette,” he said. Jerking Rochenbach’s right hand out and clamping the other cuff around his wrist, he yanked him toward the open cell door.
“Can’t blame me for trying,” Rochenbach said. He glanced back over his shoulder on the way out of his cell. “What about a coat? It’s awfully cold out there.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Rudy Purser. “You won’t need it.”
“So, this is it for me, eh, fellows?” Rochenbach said.
“That all depends on you,” said Frawley, nudging the prisoner forward with his rifle barrel. “Rudy here is busting to know who you told about Roe Pindigo sending you to Grayson and the others, to rob the bank.”
Rochenbach stopped at the rear door while Rudy stepped in front and opened it, keeping a shotgun he’d taken from the sheriff’s gun rack tipped against Rochenbach’s chest. On Rudy’s hip behind his open coat, the bone handle of a bowie-style knife stood in a leather sheath.
Rochenbach’s eyes went first to the knife, then darted away. He weighed his chances of making a play for the knife with his cuffed hands, swinging it around fast enough to slice Frawley’s throat and keep turning until he planted its blade deep in Rudy Purser’s chest. The opportunity was there, but only a brief second, and then it was gone as Rudy stepped outside ahead of him and to the side, the knife handle getting farther from Rochenbach’s reach.
Damn it, now what? Rochenbach kept searching, weighing odds, his chances growing slimmer with each passing second.
“What if I said I didn’t tell anybody?” he said.
“You’d be lying, right off.” Rudy Purser grinned, standing waiting until Rochenbach was outside and in front of him. He touched the tip of the shotgun barrel between Rochenbach’s shoulder blades and nudged him along the alley toward the livery barn.
“Rudy hates a liar worse than anything,” Frawley threw in with a dark chuckle.
“Of course, if you still say the same thing after I carve a few parts off of you,” said Rudy, “I might gain a whole new respect for you, start thinking, ‘Hey, ol’ Rock here is telling the truth.’”
They walked on toward the barn.
“But I’m dead either way, is that it?” said Rochenbach, keeping them talking, knowing the more they talked, the more chance he would find to do something, anything, he thought.
“Depends on what you call dead,” said Rudy.
Frawley gave another dark chuckle.
“Or on what you call living,” he said grimly.
At the barn, Rudy stepped forward, opened the door and watched as Frawley shoved Rochenbach forward with the tip of his rifle barrel.
“Right there’ll do,” said Rudy, motioning in the darkness toward a thick center post.
Frawley raised his rifle butt and slammed it into the back of Rochenbach’s head, hard enough to stun and send him falling forward against the post. Rochenbach felt the world swirl around him. He struggled to remain conscious. But by the time he regained a grip on himself, Rudy had loosened his cuffs and recuffed his hands around the post.
Frawley stood three feet away from the downed prisoner. He touched a match to the wick of an oil lamp and hung it on the post above Rochenbach.
“Let’s commence,” said Rudy, stooping down beside Rochenbach as he jerked the big bowie knife from its sheath. H
e grabbed a handful of Rochenbach’s disheveled hair and laid the sharp edge of the blade along the side of his nose. “Who knows that Pindigo put you in with the robbers?”
“Nobody! You can ask me an hour from now, you’ll get the same answer. Or you can kill me right now, save yourself the trouble,” Rochenbach said, his head throbbing front and back, the front from Summers’ rifle butt, now the back from Frawley’s.
Rudy looked up at Frawley and grinned in the glow of the lamp overhead.
“Why, it’s no trouble at all,” he said in a tone of feigning cordiality. To Frawley he said, “I vote for an hour from now. What about you?”
“I don’t really care,” said Frawley, “but I could use some shut-eye.”
“Don’t be a wet blanket—” said Rudy, his words stopping short as they both heard a rustle of hay coming from an empty stall.
“Who’s there?” shouted Frawley, swinging his rifle around toward the stall. Rudy dropped the big knife and snatched the shotgun up from against the post. He stood up, cocking both hammers toward the stall.
“D-don’t shoot, please!” Danny Kindrick stammered, standing in the grainy darkness, his arms straight up above his head.
“That damn idiot hostler!” said Frawley.
“What are you doing here, boy?” Rudy demanded, the shotgun butt to his shoulder, his finger over the triggers ready to fire both barrels.
“I—I live here,” Danny said in a shaky voice.
“Not from now on, you don’t,” Rudy Purser said menacingly.
At the shotgun in Rudy’s hands, Danny’s eyes widened in terror.
“Oh my God” he said. “Don’t pull that trigger! I beg you!”
“There goes our plan, Rudy,” said Frawley. He turned his rifle away from Danny and back to Rochenbach lying on the ground. “You kill him…I’ll kill this one. Let’s call it a night.” He took aim down at Rochenbach’s head, just as Rochenbach had managed to get his cuffed right hand around the handle of the big knife.
Before Frawley had time to pull the trigger, both he and Rudy froze, hearing another rifle cock, this one just inside the barn door.
“Pitch it away, mister,” Summers said in a low, determined tone.
But Frawley held his ground. He slid a sidelong look at Summers.
“When I make my move, take him down with me, Rudy,” he said.
Rudy turned slowly with the shotgun.
“My God, mister, please don’t shoot!” Danny said again to Rudy.
“Shut up, idiot!” said Rudy. “It’s not pointing at you!”
“But still—” Danny said.
“Drop down, Danny!” Summers demanded, cutting him off.
Danny dropped like a rock.
Frawley still had his rifle aimed down at Rochenbach. He studied Summers coolly with his sidelong stare.
“Well, horse trader, you must not have heard what Pindigo said about the next time you pointed a gun at any of us.”
“I heard him,” Summers said. “Did you hear me?”
The Winchester bucked in Summers’ hands; Dade Frawley’s head jerked sideways with the bullet’s impact. The other side of his face burst open like an overripe melon.
Frawley’s rifle flew from his hands as he spun a full circle, slammed into the post above Rochenbach and collapsed on him. Rochenbach scrambled upward, knife in hand, spitting blood, brain and bone matter.
As soon as Summers had fired, he’d swung the rifle toward Rudy Purser, who had taken a step forward with the shotgun aimed straight at him. In that split second Summers realized he was too late. He saw both shotgun hammers drop. He pulled the trigger on the Winchester as he clenched his teeth against the bite of oncoming death.
Summers saw both barrels blossom in a blue-orange belch of smoke and lead pellets. But instead of the explosions coming at him, they blew upward into Rudy Purser’s face, all but skinning his face, hands and shoulders to bare bone. The shotgun, minus its twisted scraps of wire twist barrels, fell to the floor as Rudy screamed loud and long through a bloody, lipless, toothless hole of a mouth and staggered to where Rochenbach stood with the knife in his cuffed hand. With all of his strength, Rochenbach swung himself around the post and plunged the blade into Rudy’s throat, silencing him.
Summers stood stunned for a moment. In the darkened stall, Danny Kindrick stood up slowly. He stared in horror at the half bone, half shredded meat that had become Rudy Purser’s face.
“That was…strange,” Summers said quietly, stepping over to the post where Rochenbach stood trying to wipe the gore off his face.
“I—I’ve got a handcuff key,” Danny said, badly shaken. He hurried out of the stall, taking the key from his trouser pocket.
Summers took the key, unlocked Rochenbach’s handcuffs and let them fall to the ground.
“I cleaned that shotgun today, and I broke a cleaning rod and cloth wad off in the barrel!” Danny said shakily. “I—I meant to tell somebody, but I forgot.” He looked pleadingly at Summers and said, “I begged this man not to shoot it—but he wouldn’t listen.” He shook his head, staring down at Rudy Purser’s mangled face. “Is—is Deputy Stiles going to be mad at me?”
“It’s possible, Danny,” Summers said. “Do you have kin near here?”
“Yeah, my ma and pa,” said Danny. “They live about thirty miles out.”
“Why don’t you go visit them a few days?” said Summers, knowing this was going to be no place for the young man until things settled down. “I’ll see what I can do to get things cleared up around here.”
“Thanks, Mr. Summers,” Danny said, already backing away toward the rear door. Before he stepped outside, he picked up a saddle and a set of reins and stopped and looked back when Summers called out to him.
“Danny?” Summers said. “From now on be more careful with firearms.”
“You can bet I will,” Danny said.
Rochenbach stood wiping his face on his shirttails.
“What brought you here, Summers?” he asked as the rear door closed behind the livery hostler.
Summers stared at him and said, “You were telling me the truth, you are working undercover.”
Rochenbach stared back at him and let out a breath of relief.
“Thank God,” he said. “I was afraid I was going to die undercover—leave here with everybody thinking I was a thief, like the rest of Jack Warren’s men.” He continued wiping his face. “What finally made you believe that I’m a lawman?”
“I don’t know,” Summers said. “I might’ve thought so sooner had you tried a little harder to convince me.”
“I couldn’t risk it. I was in a tight spot,” Rochenbach said. “What if I had tried harder? What if the others believed it and you didn’t? If they wanted me dead because I might have mentioned Pindigo’s name, imagine what they would’ve done had they known I was a detective.”
“I take your point,” Summers said.
“I took a big chance trusting you at all, Summers,” the detective said. “A man has to walk a fine line in this game, be careful who he talks to.” He paused, then said, “I’ve got to ask you still to keep it a secret.”
Summers shook his head. “I’m not certain yet that you are what you say you are,” he said. “But I knew these men would have killed you the way things were going. If I’m wrong about you, I can live with it easier than if I let you die—always wonder if you really were a Pinkerton agent working undercover.”
“So, what the judge told you about the law makes more sense when you look at it close up and more personal?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s it,” said Summers. He glanced in the direction of the main street. “You best get going before they come to see what the shooting was about.”
“Two shots?” said Rochenbach. “They’ll take their time, figuring it was these two killing me.”
Summers noted how cool and calm he seemed to be now that he was free.
“What about you, Summers?” Rochenbach asked, stooping to take Frawley’s
bloody coat from his back and throwing it around himself. He hurriedly yanked Frawley’s boots off and stepped into them and pulled them into place.
“I’m here until tomorrow,” Summers said.
“Why tomorrow? Why not right now?” Rochenbach said.
“I gave Sheriff Goss my word,” said Summers. “I won’t leave him alone with Stiles and these snakes. Stiles wants his job. I suspect he tried to kill him, but I just can’t say for sure. The judge is sending men here from Camp August. They’ll get here tomorrow. Then I’m gone.”
“Whatever you think is best, then,” Rochenbach said. He jerked a big revolver from a holster on Frawley’s hip, the same model as the Remington he had carried on the bank robbery. He checked it, then took the dead man’s gun belt from around his waist and slung it over his shoulder.
Summers looked him up and down.
Rochenbach saw a look of doubt come into his eyes.
“Go ahead and ask one last time if it makes you feel better,” he said.
“All right, I’m asking,” Summers said, but he asked with his rifle hanging loosely in his hand. At this point Rochenbach knew Summers only wanted reassurance.
Letting out a breath, Rochenbach said, “I worked undercover so long and so deep that everybody knew who I was. So my new cover had to be that I was an undercover agent gone bad.” He gave a short, wry smile. “It worked so well, nobody knows what I am anymore—sometimes I have to stop and remind myself.”
“Okay, you best leave now, Rock,” said Summers, seeming again satisfied with his decision.
“I’m gone, Will Summers,” the blood-smeared detective said. But he paused and said, “Let me ask you a question. If I wasn’t a Pinkerton agent working undercover, do you think I would admit it to you right here, right now?”
Summers chuffed and shook his head. He walked away from Rochenbach to gather his dapple gray and the string of horses from the stalls where they stood intently. The gunfire had spooked them, but they were settled now.
“Get out of here, Detective Avrial Rochenbach,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re making my brain hurt.”
Chapter 22