It was a harsh fate for any woman, a high percentage of the levee whores dying within three years of disease, morphine or drunken violence.
Garrett knew he would not let that happen to Jenny.
One way or another, it was all going to end—tonight.
Garrett stepped out of the saloon and gathered the reins of his tired horse. He looked around him as he crossed the street toward the livery stable, walking past a pile of stinking buffalo robes as tall as a man on horseback. He noticed that the jail had never been rebuilt, now an abandoned, empty shell missing two of its walls and the roof. But the gallows still stood, though the red, white and blue bunting was gone.
The street was still crowded, teams of mules and oxen and iron-rimmed wheels kicking up thick clouds of dust that hung in the air in a swirling fog. The town smelled of heat, raw timber, buffalo offal and the all-pervading stench of manure. Down by the levee a steamboat whistle screeched, holding its shrill note for almost half a minute, then fell silent, leaving Garrett’s ears ringing.
A young stable hand showed Garrett to an empty stall. He gave oats and hay to the grulla, then asked if there was a place he could eat. The youngster nodded his head in the direction of a timber building with a canvas roof. “That’s as good as any in town and better than most,” he said.
Garrett touched his hat to the stable boy and again walked into the street. So far he’d seen no sign of Simon Carter. The vigilante chief might be away from the settlement, which would greatly reduce Garrett’s chances of being recognized. He hoped that was the case. From what he’d learned about Carter, he was not a forgetting man.
Stepping well wide of the barbershop where he’d been shaved for his hanging, Garrett walked to the restaurant and stepped inside, a brass bell above the door tinkling. There were no customers at this time of day, the hours between lunch and dinner, and the benches on each side of a long pine table were empty.
A curtain opened at the rear of the cabin and an old woman stepped out, smiling. She was thin as a bird and looked too frail to lift the heavy cast-iron fry pans that were the tools of her trade. “Judging by the way your shadow has holes in it, I’d guess you’re ready to eat, young man,” she said.
Garrett nodded. “I could use some grub. I’m missing my last six meals,” he said.
“Then you’ve come to the right place.” The old lady turned. “Let me get you some coffee.”
She returned with a cup and a blackened pot and poured coffee for Garrett. “I have a beefsteak stew, first time in months,” she said. “The strangest thing, a buffalo hunter was up on the Teton and came on a shorthorn steer grazing along the bank as nice as you please. He shot it, of course, and packed back the meat. It’s good and fresh.”
Now Garrett knew the sad fate of at least one of his cows. “Got anything else?” he asked, a slight lump in his throat.
The old woman was surprised. “No beef stew?” She studied Garrett for a few moments, puzzled, then said, “Ah well, everyone to his own taste. Young man, I can burn you a buffalo steak and I’ve got eggs. Do you like eggs?”
“Sounds good to me.” Garrett smiled. “Maybe half a dozen over easy with the steak.”
“I think I only have five. Is that enough?”
“That will do just fine.”
When the food arrived the old lady sat on the bench opposite and watched him eat, her bright sparrow eyes curious. “You don’t look like a buffalo hunter to me,” she said. “More like a puncher.”
Garrett spoke around a mouthful of steak. “Uhhuh, I’m a cattleman. Just passing through.”
The woman nodded. “We had a cattleman here a while back, and that awful Simon Carter was fixing to hang him. But somehow the young man escaped. Blew up Carter’s jail doing it, and that made our vigilante chief real mad, I can tell you.”
Trying to keep his face expressionless, Garrett said, “Saw what looked like a jail when I rode in. I thought maybe it had burned after being hit by lightning or something.”
The old woman shook her head. “No, it was giant powder did that. Or so I was told.” She smiled. “Well, anyhow, I’m glad the young man escaped. There’s been too much hanging around here recently if you ask me. Maybe that’s to do with the fact that Carter is the town undertaker.”
She rose and disappeared back into the kitchen. Garrett finished his meal, then built a cigarette. He was drinking the last of his coffee when the woman reappeared, a plate in her hand. “Thought you might like a piece of apple pie. I baked it myself.”
She busied herself by removing Garrett’s dinner plate and when she came back to the table, she again watched him eat. When he’d finished the pie to the last crumb, she asked, “Feeling better now?”
Garrett smiled and nodded. “Considerable.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and extended the bent double eagle to the woman. “Sorry. I’ve nothing smaller.”
“I can make change,” the old lady said. She rose and walked to a cash drawer and returned with paper money and some coins. “Fifty cents for the steak and eggs. The coffee and pie are on the house.”
Garrett stuffed the change into his pocket and got to his feet. “I’m obliged, ma’am. Now I got to be moving on.”
“One thing before you go, young man,” the woman said. “Call it a word of warning if you like. Simon Carter is in town, and he prides himself on how he never forgets a face.”
“You know it was me he was fixing to hang, don’t you?” Garrett asked.
The old lady nodded. “As soon as you walked in the door. You see, I never forget a face either.”
Chapter 29
Luke Garrett walked slowly into the street, then turned right and headed toward the livery stable. He passed the saloon, which showed little signs of life, and threaded his way through a throng of freight wagons, horses and people before reaching the barn.
There was no sign of the stable hand and Garrett stepped to his saddle hanging over the partition of the grulla’s stall. He slid the Winchester from the scabbard, wiped off the action with his bandana, then fed extra shells into the chamber.
Satisfied, he retied the bandana around his neck and looked around him. The sun was still high in the sky and beams of light where dust shimmered angled into the barn through chinks in the pine roof. The grulla snorted and pawed the floor of its stall, and over in a corner by the door a restless rat rustled.
Suddenly weary, Garrett found an empty stall and stretched out. He tipped his hat over his face and laid the rifle by his side where it would be handy. He closed his eyes and, lulled by the quiet and drowsy heat, he let sleep take him.
Garrett awoke to the blue haze of twilight. He picked up his rifle and got to his feet. Despite the crowding darkness, everything around him stood out in sharp detail—the straw on the floor, the bulky shapes of the horses in their stalls, the shifting puddle of orange light cast by a lantern on an iron post just beyond the barn door.
He stood there for a few moments, taking everything in, appreciating the sights, the smells and the small noises made by the animals. A man who is about to face death takes stock of such things, knowing that soon, in a single hell-firing moment, they could all be taken away from him forever.
Luke Garrett had known little but hard work in his life, and nothing he owned had come easily. Before he’d taken to the Whoop-Up Trail, he’d been a young man with a ready smile and an easy-going way about him, his only real worry trying to raise the wherewithal to buy a Red Angus bull.
But the trail had changed him and he was not smiling now.
Temple Yates and Charlie Cobb might already be at the saloon across the street—and the time of the reckoning was racing relentlessly toward him.
Garrett settled his hat on his head, racked a round into the chamber of the rifle and stepped to the door of the barn. Across at the saloon the lamps were lit, two windows to the front casting rectangles of yellow light on the dirt of the street. Lamps were also being lit in most of the surrounding cabins and tents
against the crowding darkness, and over by the levee a steamboat was embarking passengers, its tiered decks made dazzlingly brilliant by scores of reflective lanterns.
Walking into the street, Garrett stepped slowly toward the saloon, his spurs ringing. Now, as darkness was falling, there was less traffic. He stopped to let a mule wagon piled high with buffalo bones pass, its driver smoking a reeking pipe that scattered tiny red sparks into the air.
Out among the coulees the coyotes were talking. Then, as he started to walk again, Garrett heard the long, drawn-out howl of a wolf. Mingan was out there someplace, a gray ghost that for reasons he could not fathom refused to leave him.
From the saloon, he heard a piano playing a tune he did not recognize, each note dying a separate little death as it failed to compete with the constant roar of drinking men.
Reaching the batwing doors, Garrett stepped inside, the Winchester ready in his left hand.
The saloon was crowded. Ragged buffalo skinners rubbed shoulders with sleek businessmen in broadcloth and miners wearing plaid shirts and mule-eared boots. Hunters in beaded buckskin talked robe prices with bearded mule skinners, and the few women in the place, their gleaming shoulders bare, were in demand by everybody.
No one noticed Garrett as he stepped inside, a long-geared man with searching green eyes who tried his best to mingle with the crowd and remain unseen.
Because of the press of bodies, he could not see the corner table where the bartender had told him Charlie Cobb held court. Carefully, so as not to offend anyone, he made his way slowly through the crowd, holding the rifle down by his leg.
But a tall, grim-faced man can’t go unnoticed forever. Eyes see, minds begin to wonder, and a timid few begin to fear.
Garrett was hardly aware of the crowd parting in front of him, the men not liking what they were reading in the tall man’s eyes, the women drawing back, sensing danger.
Temple Yates saw Garrett first.
The gunman was sitting near Cobb, his back to the saloon wall. Jenny, looking pale and tired, sat between them, her eyes downcast on the table in front of her, seeing nothing.
Yates unwound to his feet gracefully, like a poised rattler, a slight smile on his lips. In the sudden hush of the saloon his voice was very loud. “Well, well, if it ain’t the cowboy.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from me? Now I’m going to have to kill you.”
“Let it go, Temp,” Cobb said, his arm waving as though he was brushing away an annoying fly. “He’s nothing.” The man’s eyes sought Garrett’s. “What do you want?”
Aware of men moving away from behind him, out of any line of fire, Garrett said, “I want only two things from you, Charlie. I want Jenny and I want the twelve thousand dollars you stole from the miners at Fort Whoop-Up.”
“Harsh words, Garrett,” Cobb said. “Wounding words. You surely do disappoint me, boy. Such bald-faced lies, and in front of all these people too. Come, I’ll give you twenty dollars. Go get drunk in some other saloon.”
Before Cobb could say more, Yates asked, “And me, cowboy. What do you want from me?”
“Only your death, Yates,” Garrett said, his voice flat, emotionless. He lifted the muzzle of his rifle higher. “I aim to shoot you down like the wild animal you are. And I’ll be doing it for Annie Spencer and Abbie Lane and Paloma Sanchez, the women you murdered.”
As talk rippled through the crowd, Yates’ face turned ugly. “Now you’re beginning to get tiresome, Garrett,” he said. “It’s time I cut you down to size.” And he drew.
Garrett swung up the rifle fast and fired from the hip. His shot and Yates’ sounded as one. Something red-hot burned across Garrett’s left side, just above the gun belt. But as he levered the Winchester he saw that his own bullet had hit Yates hard. Bright scarlet blood was splashed across the front of the man’s shirt. The gunman slammed against the wall, recovered, and swung his Colt on Garrett. The young rancher fired again, this time aiming lower. His bullet hit Yates in the belly and the man screamed his rage, knowing he’d just received a killing wound.
Yates, his face gray, eyes wild, advanced on Garrett, his guns slamming. Behind him Garrett heard a woman scream and people stampeded for the door.
A bullet thudded into Garrett’s left thigh and he dropped to one knee, his rifle roaring. Hit again, Yates staggered a step back, an unbelieving horror on his face. In that instant he knew he’d lost. He’d lost everything, the miners’ money, his fearsome reputation as a gunman, Jenny. His life.
“Damn you, Garrett,” Yates shrieked. “Damn you to hell.”
“You first, Temp,” Garrett said. And he fired into Yates again.
The gunman stood on his toes, then fell on his face. He hit the ground hard and rolled on his back, his gun coming up. Garrett stepped to Yates and kicked the Colt out of his hand with a casual boot.
“I let a two-bit cowboy buffalo me,” Yates whispered, his stunned eyes seeking Garrett’s.
“I know,” Garrett said, smiling, no give in him. “And just as things were lookin’ up for you, too.”
Yates shook his head, still unable to believe the fact of his dying. Then life left him and his eyes were staring into nothing but darkness.
“Luke!”
Jenny leaped up from the table and ran toward Garrett, her face alight with a smile. But she never made it. Cobb drew from a shoulder holster and fired. He was aiming at Garrett, but his bullet hit the girl in the back and she fell at the young rancher’s feet.
Cobb was standing with his right leg extended, his Colt high and held out in front of him in the duelist pose. He thumbed back the hammer to fire again, but Garrett slammed a shot into him. Shooting from the hip, he hit Cobb three more times before the man slowly slumped to a sitting position on the floor, trailing a wide red streak down the saloon wall.
Garrett kneeled, laid aside his rifle, and cradled Jenny in his arms, gray powder smoke drifting around him. The girl’s face was white with shock and blood stained her pale lips. “You’re going to be all right, Jenny,” he whispered. “I’ll get you to a doctor.”
The girl smiled. “I knew you’d come for me, Luke. I just knew you would.”
One of the saloon girls leaned over Jenny. “You’ll be just fine, honey,” she said. She wiped blood from the girl’s lips with a tiny lace handkerchief. “Just you lie there real still now.”
Men were crowding into the saloon, some looking down at Jenny, others talking among themselves as they examined the bodies of Yates and Cobb.
“One of you get a doctor,” Garrett yelled.
From somewhere in the crowd, he heard a man say: “I’ll get Doc Shortridge.”
“Yeah, if he’s sober,” another man said.
Garrett gently shifted Jenny’s position and looked at the hand that had been on her back. It was covered in blood.
“Where’s that damned doctor?” he called out, fear and panic spiking at him.
“I’m here,” a man’s voice said. “No need to get uppity.”
A short gray-haired man in a frayed black coat brushed the saloon girl aside and kneeled beside Jenny. He unbuttoned her shirt and examined the wound in her back. When he finally looked at Garrett his eyes were bleak. “You the husband?”
Garrett shook his head, searched for the right word, and finally settled for “I’m a friend.”
The doctor took off his coat, folded it under Jenny’s head, and stood. “Step away,” he said. He nodded. “Over there. I’ve got to talk to you.”
With a lingering glance at Jenny lying still and pale on the floor, Garrett drew off a couple of steps and the doctor followed. “Will she be all right, Doc?” he asked.
Shortridge’s craggy face was stiff, like it had been chipped from granite. “Son, the bullet is in deep, maybe close to the heart. It would take a better doctor than me to cut it out of there, and even then the prognosis would not be good.”
Garrett shook his head, a vague anger rising in him. “What the hell does that me
an?”
“It means all you can do now is pray for a miracle.”
“I’m not a praying man,” Garrett said.
“Then you’d better learn how,” Doc Shortridge said. “And fast.”
“Take the bullet out of her, Doc,” Garrett said. “You can try.”
The man nodded. “Sure I can try, but I’d kill her. Right now she’s got maybe one chance in a thousand. If I start in to cut that deep, she’ll have no chance at all.”
Garrett opened his mouth to speak, but he heard a step behind him and something hard pressed into the back of his neck.
“Move a muscle and I’ll blow your head clean off your shoulders with this here Greener,” a cold voice said.
It was Simon Carter’s voice.
Chapter 30
“Turn real slow and let me take a look at you,” Carter said.
Garrett did as he was told and turned—and saw recognition dawn in the man’s eyes.
“What happened here?” Carter asked. It seemed to be enough for him at the moment that Garrett knew he recognized him. The vigilante’s eyes searched the crowd. “You, Simpson,” he said, nodding toward a buffalo hunter in fancy buckskins. “What happened?”
The man called Simpson shrugged. “Temple Yates drew down on the cowboy here. But the young feller upped his rifle and cut Temp’s suspenders for him.”
Carter turned to Garrett, with a look that was part disbelief, part admiration. “You killed Temple Yates?”
“He had it coming,” Garrett answered.
“Maybe so,” Carter said. He turned back to Simpson. “And over there, who’s that?”
The hunter turned his head and motioned to the corner. “That there is Charlie Cobb. He threw a shot at the cowboy but hit the girl instead. The cowboy bedded him down too. I’d say he don’t stack up to being any kind of revolver fighter, but he’s right slick and fast with the rifle.”
Carter thought all this through for a few moments, then said: “Well, if ever men needed killing it was them two.” His glance angled to Garrett. “I guess we owe you a vote of thanks for ridding the territory of that pair.”
The Tenderfoot Trail Page 20