Hart the Regulator 7

by John B. Harvey

  “Then go talk to them!”

  Hart heard the man moving away from the door and the dog changed from barking to a hungry howl. Hart stepped back and lashed his foot out at the door, kicking it hard; it hardly moved against its hinges. He cursed and turned away, angry that he was going to have to waste time. Even as he turned he saw the marshal heading diagonally across the street towards him.

  “What the hell you think you’re doin’ to that door?”

  “Kickin’ it.”

  “I can see that!”

  “Then why the hell d’you ask?”

  They faced up to one another. The marshal was five or so years younger than Hart and a few inches shorter; what he lost in age and height he more than made up for in weight, a good belly sagging low against his pants belt. The leather of his gun belt strained beneath the swell of it, as if it was holding it in place. He was wearing a black leather vest with the marshal’s badge pinned to it, not a six-pointed star like Fagan’s United States marshal’s badge, but a shield with fancy engraving to the centre.

  Hart looked from badge to belly to the hand that was close to the black-wood butt of a .45.

  He wasn’t about to let that sagging gut fool him none. You didn’t draw with your stomach.

  “Want words, marshal.”

  “What about?”

  “Men who took off from the State Pen.”

  “How in the Lord’s name are they to do with me – or my door?”

  “Happen they come this way.”

  “Who says?”

  “US Marshal Fagan for one. Malcolm Grant for another.”

  The marshal cleared his throat and looked around as though he were about to spit. He didn’t; he swallowed it instead. “Why didn’t you say so right off,” he said, “instead of wastin’ time?”

  He stepped past Hart and on to the boardwalk, calling out to the man inside to open the door. Passing through, he glanced a shade regretfully down at the scuff mark near the bottom of the woodwork.

  “Angus, what you playin’ at, not lettin’ folk in to see me?”

  The old timer wiped a little spittle from his face and belched into the air; suddenly the place stank of old wine. “You wasn’t here,” he said.

  Over towards the back corner, a tan-colored dog with a smooth coat and a head the size of a small bull’s stared at Hart and growled through clenched teeth.

  Hart looked back at it, wondering if he’d be quick enough to draw his Colt and fire, before the beast could sink its teeth into his throat.

  The marshal went over and patted the dog on the head and the animal lay down and looked peaceful. Still, it kept one eye on Hart, peering over the top of a paw that was folded round before its head.

  “Name’s Ben,” said the marshal.

  “Yours?”

  “No. The dog’s. Mine’s Tremlett. Jake Tremlett.”

  “Wes Hart.”

  They nodded at one another and exchanged a few pleasantries while the old man was making his exit.

  “Fagan sent you up here?” asked Tremlett as the door closed.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “He suggested I could do a job of work for Grant. Tracking these men down. One of ’em, anyway.”

  “What’s Grant’s interest in escaped prisoners?”

  “One of ’em raped his daughter, killed his son.”

  Tremlett pursed his lips for a whistle that never came; instead, he sat down on the swivel chair behind his desk and nodded his head a few times. Hart described the other prisoners as best he could and asked the marshal if he’d seen anyone suspicious around town or passing through any time inside the last three days or so. Tremlett hadn’t, but after a few minutes he reckoned it was worth telling Hart of a story he’d picked up from a rancher who worked a strip of land down past the Mulberry.

  “Place name of Ozark. Heard of it?”

  Hart allowed that he hadn’t.

  “Don’t matter. Bank got held up. One of Grant’s banks as it happens, though likely he don’t know about it yet. Didn’t get away with much, didn’t manage a lot more than make fools of themselves way I heard it told. But there was four of ’em. One black, three whites. Sheriff down there, John Dillon, he got one of ’em in the back, wounded him bad so he told it. Others were lucky to get out of town. They never even got the safe open.”

  Tremlett leaned back far enough in the chair to hook one of his boots up on to the edge of the desk.

  “Killed a young clerk, though. Wounded woman as worked there and beat up the manager pretty bad.”

  “Know which way they headed out?”

  “Uh-huh,” nodded Tremlett, “they went north.”

  Hart took a couple of paces back from the desk. It didn’t have to be the men he was looking for, but the time was right and the place. And if they’d been in Ozark round about … He went over the office to the map that was hanging from the side wall, tracing his finger north from Ozark to Cass and up from there in the direction of Garfield and the Missouri border.

  “How many days ride you call it?”

  “Garfield? Depends. Ridin’ fast, changin’ horses: two, three days.”

  Hart turned away from the map. “Not for them. They’re goin’ to be keeping out of sight as much as they can, they’ll know the longer they stay free the more chance there is of ’em bein’ spotted. This side of the border, anyway.”

  Tremlett pulled his leg back from the desk top. “Ain’t but the one you’re interested in, that it?”

  “Lloyd Majors is all.”

  “The rest?”

  Hart shrugged his shoulders. “Less’n they get in my way, I ain’t got no quarrel with them.”

  The marshal pushed his chair back a little, eyed Hart carefully. “They bust out of the pen. One of ’em was due for hangin’, weren’t he?”

  Hart stepped away. “I ain’t no lawman. Cast off my badge a time back.”

  Tremlett reached towards one of the desk drawers and pulled out a bunch of fliers. The one he was looking for was close to the top. He glanced at it quickly, refreshing his memory. Then he span it round and pushed it across the desk.

  The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad was offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the return of the money stolen from one of its trains amounting to six thousand dollars in total.

  “That don’t interest you?” Tremlett asked with a wry smile.

  “I told you what interested me. Majors.”

  “You’re gettin’ paid pretty good for that, huh?”

  “Enough,” Hart agreed.

  Tremlett stood up suddenly. “Well,” he said, “you can be sure there’ll be those who are interested enough. An’ they won’t be fussy how they get what they’re after. If they reckon you’re beatin’ ’em to it, you’d best watch your back as well as your front.”

  Hart nodded. “Thanks for the advice.”

  He tipped the brim of his hat quickly with the fingers of his right hand and moved to the door. Hand on the lock, he swung back round. The railroad – they got their own men out?”

  Tremlett smiled slowly. “I was wonderin’ when you’d ask that. Couple of ’em rode through here a day back. Pinkertons. Hired by the AT an’ Santa Fe. Miserable lookin’ bastards. Never cracked a smile the once. I wouldn’t let either of them get too long a look at my back either.”

  Hart nodded. “Thanks again.”

  ~*~

  Out on the street, the sun was hot, baking the packed earth. The air shimmered and the buildings more than fifty yards off seemed to shift on their foundations. The tall wagon was still where it had been when Hart had ridden into town, only this time Seymore Hardcastle was standing alongside, fixing the harness for the mules. Hart untethered the grey and walked her down the street.

  “Mornin’.”

  Hardcastle turned with surprise, recognized Hart immediately. He nodded a greeting and his top hat slid a couple of inches forward on his head. “You found the Grant place okay?”
/>   “Thanks.”

  “Ridin? on now, I guess?”

  “That’s right.” Hart looked as far as he could through the flap of the wagon, but he could see no sign of the woman.

  “She’s across to the store,” said Hardcastle, reading his thoughts. “Buyin’ things for the child.”

  “Uh-huh. She seems quite a woman.”

  “So she is.”

  Hardcastle looked past Hart to the general store across the street. At that moment, a man opened the door and Myra stepped out on to the boardwalk, lifting one arm to shield her eyes from the sun. The baby was slung across her front in a makeshift contraption which left the woman’s hands free. She saw Hart and started off across the street.

  “Ma’am,” said Hart, nodding in her direction.

  “You didn’t decide to buy some cure-all, did you?”

  “No, ma’am. Just passin’ the time of day.”

  “Bottle wouldn’t do you no harm,” said Hardcastle quickly, pleased at the possibility of a sale.

  Hart shook his head. “No offence. But I never did see how a patent medicine that’s supposed to cure everythin’ can be a lot of good. If it was, no one’d be goin’ around sick.”

  “I can’t agree—” Hardcastle began.

  “If you’d seen what it done a couple of days back, you wouldn’t be sayin’ that,” said Myra. “Seymore here more or less performed an operation on two men, using that cure-all as the only help he had. They were shot-up pretty bad and

  She stopped, seeing the narrowing of Hart’s eyes, the shift in the level of his attention. He wasn’t simply passing the time of day any more.

  “These men,” said Hart, “tell me about them.”

  “Well,” Hardcastle began, “that’d be difficult. Didn’t learn their names or nothin’. They didn’t give ’em and

  “One of ’em, was he shot in the back? That what you worked on?”

  Hardcastle nodded again and his top hat screwed round at an angle. “Not just one of ’em, both. Both shot in the back. Strange thing, but there it was. They—”

  “They didn’t say where they was headed?”

  “No, can’t say—”

  “Missouri,” Myra broke in. “Up Missouri way, that’s what he said.”

  “Who said?”

  “The one I was talkin’ to while Seymore was tendin’ to his friends.”

  “Just the three of them?” asked Hart.

  “Only the three.”

  Hart scratched the side of his chin. If it was the men from the State Penitentiary, they’d split up pretty fast, but that wasn’t too surprising. What interested him was which group Majors was in. He asked the couple to describe the men they’d seen as best they could and when they had, he didn’t figure any of them for Majors. Not the way he’d heard Grant picture the man who’d killed his son.

  “You interested in these men for some good reason?” asked Hardcastle.

  Hart nodded. “Good enough.”

  “You a lawman?” asked Myra, beginning to regret that she’d been so free with her tongue. She remembered how much she’d enjoyed talking with the man by the fire, how much she’d enjoyed the way he’d looked at her body.

  “Detective?” she asked, after Hart had shaken his head to her first question.

  That neither.”

  Her face colored with displeasure. “You must be a bounty hunter, then.”

  Hart shook his head and said he wasn’t exactly that, either. Hardcastle suggested to Myra that she might be well put to mind more of her own business.

  “You sure you didn’t catch a name?” asked Hart, staring at the woman hard.

  “I said so, didn’t I?” she flushed.

  “You said it, right enough. I thought maybe you’d forgot.”

  “Then you thought wrong.”

  Hart knew she wasn’t about to say any more. And he guessed it didn’t matter any too much. Wounded like they were, the three men wouldn’t be making much ground. He reckoned he’d catch up to them soon enough. Then the questions would get answered so there wasn’t any mistake.

  He touched his hat and turned away, heading for the livery stable to make arrangements for an extra horse. Behind him, the baby woke up and started crying and Myra struggled with her bad temper, taking the child into the wagon out of the heat. Hardcastle was looking at Hart, thinking that he wouldn’t care to be in any of those fellers’ boots when Hart caught up with them.

  Chapter Ten

  Hardcastle couldn’t have known that Hart wasn’t going to be the one who caught up to Loughlin and the others first. No one could. The chances of the two Pinkertons finding them weren’t a whole lot better than Hart’s. Sure, they had the advantage of time and distance, but they didn’t have such a close idea of the way Loughlin was travelling. Some folk think that once you call a man a detective, instead of a sheriff or marshal, or some other kind of lawman, that makes him something special. Singles him out as different, someone clever with his head, expert at tracking a person down and brighter than most at figuring out the whys and the wherefores of things.

  It isn’t necessarily true.

  About the only time Hart had run into a detective was when he was messing with the Lee Sternberg gang. There’d been a man name of Fowler - Hart had got to like him well enough. He’d even turned up with a trump card or two in the end, but he wouldn’t have said this Fowler had any special brainpower working for him. Most the only thing he had working for him was bourbon, and he drank so much of that in the course of a day that it was a wonder he could stand at all.

  As a matter of fact, a lot of the time he couldn’t. Just about the first occasion Hart even met him, Fowler fell flat on his face.

  Even so, he was a decent enough feller, which was more than anyone had ever said about Charlie Deuce and Norton Carey. When Tremlett said neither of them cracked a smile, it had been no less than the truth. He’d been pretty close when he’d made his warning about not showing either of them too much back as well.

  Charlie Deuce, he’d been a Pinkerton since the War Between the States, stuck with the agency even when they were having a bad time for losing more of the federal government’s secrets than they found from the Confederacy. The life suited him and he was tolerably good at it. He was a slim, thin-faced man with short-cropped grey hair and eyes that were cold as steel and cut right through a man like a well-honed knife. Deuce, he carried a little Remington on a hinged frame inside his sleeve. Tapped the frame on a table or some such and the gun snapped out plumb into the palm of the hand. Apart from that, all he had was a pair of rifles, sat either side of his saddle. One–the one he favored–was a Sharps .55, the other a Henry carbine. Deuce liked the Sharps better on account of it was accurate over one hell of a distance. With that weapon, and with the wind in the right direction, he could kill a man without even having so much as seen his face. Now, to Charlie Deuce, that was the way detecting should be.

  Norton Carey was six or seven years younger, twenty or so pounds heavier. He’d been a Pinkerton for less than three years and he’d been teamed with Deuce for the last two of those. Carey came from the north-east and he’d started his working life as a policeman in the city of Washington. He’d liked that well enough until one of his superior officers found him one starlit night with a wallet in his pocket that was bulging with dollar bills that were supposed to have been taken from a robbery Carey had been sent to investigate.

  All of a sudden, Carey had seen the sense in Horace Greeley’s words and gone west. A few jobs as a deputy had put him in contact with the St Louis branch of the Pinkertons, where he’d kept quiet about his dismissal from the Washington police and signed on as a detective. His first two partners had been so depressed by Carey’s miserable outlook on life that they’d got themselves transferred to work with someone else. It wasn’t till Carey was set to ride with Deuce that he found the perfect match.

  Together, they were the most miserable pair of bastards that ever worked for the eye that never sleeps.


  Together, they hit Tap Loughlin’s trail by that mixture of sheer luck and sixth sense that rides with the good detective and eludes the bad.

  That was what it mostly was – not brains, not training, luck.

  Despite the binding Seymore Hardcastle had strapped round it, Little Kinney’s back wound was still giving him trouble. It seeped blood from time to time and it caused him a deal of pain. At night, it kept him awake and his moaning didn’t allow Tap or Baptiste to sleep all that well either.

  They’d swerved wide of Cass and kept clear of the main trail north, keeping to the hills as best they could. Any time dust sprouted up from the horizon they’d take extra care, lay low and wait for whoever it was to pass. It was travelling this way that they came upon the shack. Built on to the side of a hill, it was a mixture of sod house and wooden cabin which didn’t look to have been regularly inhabited for years. It took them some time to clear out the stinking mess that had collected inside and a while longer to build a fire underneath the opening in the roof that served to let out the smoke. Most of it, anyway.

  Baptiste was all for riding on after they’d rested up an hour or so and had something to eat, but Tap reckoned that Little Kinney needed to sleep sheltered. Sweat was breaking out from the wounded man’s forehead and his limbs were shaking as if the fever were beginning to get them in its grip.

  Baptiste sat with his back resting up against the side wall, spooning beans and salt pork into his mouth and wishing to hell it tasted of something more than smoke and the bottom of a burnt pan. He broke off a few pieces of stale biscuit and dropped them down into the remnants of the beans, stirring them round.

  Tap was trying to get Kinney to eat something, literally spoon-feeding him, slow mouthful by slow mouthful.

  The coffee grounds had had most all the flavor boiled out of them, so it was like drinking dark hot water with a couple of shakes of sugar swilled round inside it.

  There were moments when both Baptiste and Little Kinney half-wished they’d stayed in the penitentiary instead of busting out and taking it on the run. Tap never got to feel that way, not even in his lowest moments: what he’d escaped from was something more permanent than ten years on a chain gang, slaving away on one work detail after another under a hot sun. And besides, there were other things: six thousand dollars in money, his share of it at least. Other things: he remembered Sara-Lee’s eyes, the curve of her mouth, curve of her body, the dip between rib-cage and hip, so smooth to his touch.