Carey nodded, registering what his partner said without reacting. “You know,” he said a moment later, “there must be fifteen, sixteen slugs in this big ox’s body.”
“Got away,” said Deuce. “Bust through the back while this was going on and got clear away.”
Carey stood up, brushing the dirt from his pants. “Could be if we look round, we’ll find he’s got no further than the nearest ditch.”
“We’ll look all right, but we won’t find him.”
Carey looked at him questioningly.
Those horses wouldn’t have run far. We should’ve hobbled them while there was time.”
Carey shrugged. “Didn’t figure it was going to be an issue.”
“No. Didn’t figure that bull there for doing what he did.”
The two detectives stared at Baptiste for a moment, his inert body still leaking blood into the soil.
“Why d’you think he done that?” asked Carey.
“Why?” Deuce came a few paces closer, shading his eyes from the sun. “Why? How the hell should I know why? He went berserk. Ran amok. Who knows why men like that know what they do.”
Carey shook his head, rubbed the side of his jaw. “Almost as if ...” he began and then stopped.
“As if what?”
“As if he done it on purpose. Came out and drew our fire so’s whoever was still alive in there could get away.”
Charlie Deuce let the idea run through his mind for a little, but not for long. He couldn’t see the sense in it. Nor, to tell the truth, could Norton Carey. The two detectives soon shunted the thought from their minds for good.
“We get Loughlin?” asked Carey, coming down towards the shack.
“I don’t think so. It certainly isn’t the one out front, doubt if it’s him inside. Descriptions don’t fit with what we got.”
Carey rubbed his chin, turned in the doorway. “You think Loughlin was the other one?”
Deuce looked past him towards the spot where the boards had been torn away. “Who knows? We can check the tracks. Make sure it was only one got away and one of them horses weren’t carrying double. Do what we got to do here and take off after him.”
Carey looked at Deuce with his head set to one side. “We ain’t buryin’ these two, are we? No point in haulin’ ’em all over the country, neither.”
“We’ll make sure there ain’t no money stashed around. They took a bank down south, remember, even if they didn’t get free with much. Then we’ll drag the guts in here and give this place the torch. Even that’s more’n what they deserve.”
~*~
The timber was little more than a blackened shell when Hart came to the ridge of land behind the trees. He was astride the grey, a long-legged pinto that he’d hired out from the livery on a rope behind. Riding the horses in turn, he’d made good time. Sleeping just a few hours and moving off again before dawn had helped too. He’d seen the smoke from the burning building for a good couple of miles now, changing trails towards it with an ever-increasing feeling in his gut that he was heading towards something important.
The two men were sitting away from the fire, positioned clear of the smoke that was being tugged by the wind. They’d built a small blaze of their own and looked to have been breakfasting well. Hart could catch the occasional tang of saltback bacon and the smell of good coffee.
Hart stared down at the shack and wondered what had been burned inside it; he thought about the distant gunfire he’d heard earlier. The way he had it figured, the two men below must reckon they’d earned their good meal.
He slipped the leather thong free from the hammer of his Colt .45, shrugged back the Indian blanket from his left shoulder so that it trailed behind and he was free to move his hand to the holstered sawn-off.
Clicking his tongue at the grey, he set off down the slope.
He hadn’t made more than a few yards before both men had sat up, jumped up, made a move towards their weapons. Hart lifted both hands clear for a moment to show he had no intentions of going for his own guns, then returned them to reins and saddle pommel.
“That’s close enough, stranger.”
Hart looked at Charlie Deuce as the detective spoke and nodded in reply, but didn’t stop.
“I said—”
“I heard what you said,” snapped Hart. “I just wonder what you got to be so damned jumpy about.”
Hart was no more than ten yards off now and he brought Clay to a halt. The pinto shuffled alongside, turned its head towards that of the grey, sniffed the air, then backed off a few strides and pawed the earth, shaking its mane.
“Sometimes,” said Carey, stroking his pistol butt almost negligently, “It don’t pay to let folk get too close till you know what they’ve a mind to.”
Hart nodded, grinned, “I heard that.” The grin disappeared as swiftly as it had come.
“What’s your business?” asked Deuce, angling his right arm round so as to be able to use the hideaway derringer if necessary.
Hart followed the move and guessed the reason behind it. Another smile flickered across his face. “Maybe,” he said evenly, “it’s the same as yours.”
Charlie Deuce lifted his enamel mug from by his polished boots and held it in both hands; he set it to his mouth and spoke over the rim. “You saying you’re a lawman?”
Hart wasn’t saying anything.
“Show us your badge,” said Carey.
“You got a spare cup of coffee?” asked Hart. “Sure is a cold mornin’ after the heat we had last couple of days.”
Carey spat, neatly and precisely, into the centre of the fire. “Got a lot of gall.”
“Else he’s a mite short on sense,” suggested Deuce, talking about Hart as though he weren’t there.
“How ’bout that coffee?” Hart repeated.
Carey shrugged, threw what remained in his mug over his shoulder and shook it clear. He tossed the mug up towards Hart with his left hand and set his right firm on the butt of his pistol. Smiling, Hart caught the mug with his left hand and mirrored the gesture with his right.
When the move was stalemated, Hart swung down from the saddle, keeping his gun hand clear to move.
Charlie Deuce, unsmiling, poured black coffee from the pot.
“We got sugar,” said Carey.
“Uh-uh. Thanks.”
Hart stood and drank; the coffee was nearly as good as it had smelt. He was sorry that he’d arrived too late for the bacon. His eyes drifted towards the burned-out shack. Sorry he’d arrived too late for other things.
“You were saying something about how we might have, er, mutual interests,” said Deuce, looking at Hart keenly.
“Uh-huh. Could be.” He drank some more coffee and let the pair of them wait a little longer.
Hart didn’t like the look of either man and he certainly didn’t trust them. What the lawman had said back in Cass about not turning his back made a whole lot of sense now that he met up with these two face to face. The older one didn’t appear to be carrying a gun, which meant that he surely was and that it was stashed away somewhere, ready to take someone unsuspecting by surprise. From one of his movements earlier, Hart figured the man to have one of them little derringers up his sleeve – he wouldn’t have been surprised if there weren’t another in a shoulder rig. The second man had a Smith & Wesson Schofield holstered high on his right hip and the way he was hugging it suggested there wasn’t much else he’d rather do than put it to some use right there. From the bulge under his black coat, Hart didn’t have to guess at the presence of a shoulder holster – he could see it and be certain.
He still wanted to know what else was burning inside that old shack.
“Working for the railroad, huh?” he asked, keeping his voice on the lazy side.
The two men glanced at one another and after a moment, the grey-haired one said: That’s a possibility.”
Hart tossed the remnants of the coffee into the fire and the flames hissed and spat little yellow flames. “Possibility, shit!
You’re ridin’ for the Atchison and Topeka. You ain’t likely regular railroad detectives, you probably draw your pay from the Pinkerton Agency, that’d be the way the railroad would do it. You’re chasin’ down the bunch that broke out of the State Pen on account of the fact they made a pass at one of the AT and Santa Fe’s trains and there’s still around six thousand dollars runnin’ loose.” Hart paused and looked from one man to the other. “Now you tell me to hold my tongue if I’m talkin’ out of turn.”
Charlie Deuce got up. He did it slow enough and neat enough and the expression on his face never changed. Hart reckoned it was some kind of signal between them and he didn’t want to get caught in the middle of some snappy cross-fire. He took a couple of paces back and let his body drop into the beginnings of a crouch. His right arm curved out from his side, the fingers arched and perched above the pearl handle of the Colt Peacemaker; his eyes were little more than slits in his face.
“I ain’t interested in nothin’ more than talkin’,” he said. “But if you want to insist...”
Deuce and Carey exchanged another glance, quicker, sharper than before. Charlie Deuce stared at Hart hard enough to cut an ordinary man, make him turn away. Hart kept on looking. After a while, Deuce sat back down.
“What’s your interest?” he said.
Hart nodded beyond them at the charred shell. “Who was in there when it took fire?”
“Couple from the Pen,” Carey answered.
“Ran with the train gang,” said Deuce.
“Loughlin’s gang,” Carey went on.
“We tried to take ’em in.”
“Peaceable.”
“Gave ’em every chance to come out.”
“Didn’t take it.”
“Shame.”
“Every chance.” Carey shook his head as if he were, indeed, disappointed and upset.
“That all there was?” Hart asked. “Two?”
“Ye—” Deuce began, but Carey had already started: “One other.”
Deuce gave his partner one of those looks and Carey turned his head aside and fidgeted with his belt buckle.
“That one,” said Hart, “that would be Loughlin?”
Carey wasn’t about to say anything. Deuce took a clay pipe from his side pocket and reached for a sack of tobacco. He pushed some stuff into the bowl and began to tamp it down, taking his time.
“Could have been Loughlin,” he said eventually. “No way of knowing for certain.”
He struck a match and held it above the pipe, flame hovering. “You still didn’t say what your interest was in all this.”
“Okay. When Loughlin’s bunch broke out they took a couple of blacks with ’em and a feller named Majors. Lloyd Majors. He’s the one I’m interested in.”
“How come?”
Hart told them, briefly, about Grant, mentioning Marshal Fagan along the way; he didn’t figure that would hurt any.
Deuce drew on his pipe. “The train money – that don’t hold no interest for you at all?”
Hart laughed: it wasn’t a sound either of the detectives were used to overmuch. They looked at Hart as though he’d just farted in church. “I come across six thousand dollars, I ain’t goin’ to leave it lay.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Carey, turning back into the conversation.
“Why, turn it into you fellers and claim the reward. What else would a law-abidin’ citizen do with six thousand dollars of the railroad’s money?”
Hart laughed again and his eyes shone as they reflected the blue of the sky; small lines etched themselves away from the corners of his eyes and mouth. He was still laughing when he swung back into the saddle and touched the brim of his hat. “Good-day, gents. Obliged for the coffee. If I catch up with this Loughlin before you, I’ll be sure and tell him you’re lookin’ for him.” He turned the grey around, pulling on the pinto’s rope. “And if I find that money...” Hart’s voice died on the wind. Charlie Deuce stood up fast and stared after him; he looked down at Carey and said: “Get this gear stashed away. Gone time we were on the move. We just might teach that cocksure bastard a lesson!”
Chapter Twelve
Tap Loughlin followed the course of the White River up towards Beaver Lake; once the lake was in sight, he’d ride along the western shore and drive north towards Garfield. Except that Garfield wasn’t a place he intended to visit. That was where the remnants of his gang had come to grief and Tap didn’t fancy adding to that total. He would skirt round it and get himself across into Missouri as fast as he could. Once there he had a pretty good idea where Jeff and Bluey would have hid out, where they would have stashed the money. And that was awful close to Springfield. He saw the foam bubbling where the river water hit the rocks and saw Sara-Lee’s smile in the middle of it, heard her laugh. Oh, God! What did it matter if she sat up in bed reading some damn play by Shakespeare till the candle guttered and died?
It didn’t matter a two-cent damn.
Tap had been moving off the trail at intervals, checking the land at his rear. Occasionally he’d seen sign of what might be pursuit. One rider coming on alone - what looked like a pair of men riding together. He didn’t have to work hard to guess who they might be. No, he didn’t have to guess at all. Whoever had trapped Baptiste, Little Kinney and himself inside that shack wasn’t about to give up. He could still hear the shooting echoing through his memory, the firing that had been going on when he’d sneaked out the back and made a run for it. All those bullets hailing into Baptiste - more than most anything else he was relieved he hadn’t had to see that. See the big man’s body riddled the way it must have been.
Tap pushed his tongue up against his teeth, fidgeting with a piece of dried beef that had got trapped. Baptiste had died for him, given his life so’s he could get free. All right, he owed him to stay as far from the law as he could. And that pair of riders, they were the law certain. Some kind of law, private as like as not. Railroad detectives, likely.
Tap freed the beef and spat it to the ground.
Let them try and catch him. Let them ride their animals till they dropped. They wouldn’t get him in a stinking fire-trap again; wouldn’t catch him at all.
When he checked back down the trail next they were still there, two puffs of dust like tiny clouds rising off the land. Losing ground. Tap smiled: he hadn’t seen sight of the other man’s dust for seven or eight hours. Either he’d given up or he hadn’t been interested in him anyway. Whatever the case, Tap felt pretty bucked.
He was still feeling good when he read the board stuck up alongside the trail that read:
COOPERS STAND ONE MILE UP AHEAD
As soon as he saw it his throat felt more parched and the trail dust seemed to clog the back of his throat. He had time for a couple of beers and maybe a plate of stew, something to keep him going until he reached the lake. He might even be able to do a deal with the horse, throw in what cash he had left and get a fresh mount. That would give him even more of an edge than he had already.
~*~
Cooper’s Stand had been on the west bank of the river some fifteen years and in that time it had changed owners four times. Twice that had been occasioned by the untimely death of the proprietor, once it had been lost in a game of five-card stud and in the last instance the cause had been a heart-attack, brought about by lifting a heavy barrel of beer off the back of a flat-bed wagon.
No one remembered who Cooper was and where he’d come from. All that remained of him was his name, which is more than most men get to claim in the way of immortality.
On the day that Tap rode up and hitched his horse to the rail that ran at a diagonal to the front door, there was quite a crowd inside. Aside from Seth Franklin, who was the present owner, there were a couple of cowhands from a spread over the river to the east, a whiskey drummer who’d lost his way travelling to Fort Smith and had been holed up for three days now, patiently working his way through his samples; there were a man and woman who were travelling by buckboard from Memphis to Joplin to co
llect on the man’s inheritance; a couple of travelers who’d ridden up independently and were now standing up to the bar and talking together over a couple of shots of whiskey.
Quite a crowd.
Tap Loughlin checked the pistol tucked into his belt and, instinctively, glanced back the way he’d come. The trail was in sight for a good way and it was clear. He shrugged his shoulders, allowed himself a smug grin, and pushed open the door.
Inside, he gave the customers the once over and stepped up to the bar.
Seth Franklin excused himself from the conversation about the relative merits of Winchesters and Henrys and asked Tap what was his pleasure.
Tap said it would be a beer followed by another beer.
He laughed and Franklin tugged at one of his drooping ear lobes and laughed along with him. It paid to keep the customers satisfied.
Tap swallowed half the contents of the glass and turned so that his back was leaning against the edge of the bar. The whiskey drummer raised a glass a little shakily in his direction and Tap returned the salute. Somewhere, he could smell food cooking. A pot of stew simmering on the stove; he imagined thick chunks of potato, pieces of beef, the juice thick and bubbling. He drank another mouthful of beer and turned to ask the bartender for some food.
With a start, he realized that one of the men who’d been talking down the bar had moved in close. Tall, broad-shouldered, high cheekbones that stretched the tanned skin tight across his cheeks, eyes a faded blue that held a man and didn’t let him go.
Tap’s breath caught deep in his throat.
“Let’s talk,” Hart said, his voice low and friendly.
Tap started for his gun and a hand shot forward and fingers seized his wrist hard, trapping it still against his chest.
“Not here,” said Hart. “Not with so many folk around.”
The pressure on Tap’s wrist increased rather than diminished. The solitary rider back down the trail, Tap was thinking, the one I’d shaken off, the one I hadn’t picked up for hours. Well, that was why. He got round in front.
“Just talk,” said Hart. “Nothin’ more.”
Tap looked at the faded blue eyes disbelievingly.
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