Hart the Regulator 7

by John B. Harvey

  Gideon and Joseph looked at one another and shrugged. Then Joseph went outside to get the blanket, Gideon used his boot to turn Majors slowly over on to his back.

  Hart stepped across to the bar and ordered a whiskey: he figured he’d earned it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ride back down to the Arkansas border was made quickly enough, but from there to Cass it was nothing more than a drag, a slow penance for some sin Hart remained ignorant of yet was being forced to atone for. Midway between Garfield and his destination Hart crossed tracks with the Hardcastle wagon. He was sure to tether the pinto and its burden some distance off before riding across on the grey and saying hello, passing the time of day. Hardcastle himself looked as battered and care-worn as his top hat and Hart would have suggested a double dose of cure-all had he imagined that it would have done any good. Whatever benefit it had been to Loughlin’s men had worn off soon enough at the end of the Pinkertons’ guns.

  “You got what you was lookin’ for then?” said Myra from the depths of her fur coat. The baby was asleep in her lap, thumb in mouth.

  Hart said nothing, nodded.

  “That feller who I was talkin’ with while his friends were getting patched up - that ain’t him?”

  “No.”

  “You run into him, though?”

  Hardcastle swished at a couple of flies playing tag in front of his face and tried not to get edgy about the wistfulness that was creeping into Myra’s voice.

  “Yeah,” answered Hart. “I saw him.”

  “He survived the meeting?” asked Myra, sarcasm giving the question a cutting tone that made Hardcastle grind the heel of his boot hard into the boards.

  “He survived,” said Hart. “Rode north far as I know. Springfield way. Something about a woman up there.”

  Myra twisted up the right side of her mouth and shifted her shoulders beneath her coat. Hardcastle only prevented himself from smiling—a gesture he figured might bring him trouble—by starting to whistle through his teeth.

  “Be seein’ you folk,” said Hart, touching his hat and wheeling the grey away from the wagon.

  Hardcastle raised his hand in a salute; Myra glanced at him once and then began fussing the baby. Before Hart had regained the pinto, the child’s cries were clearly heard.

  ~*~

  Tap Loughlin had indeed headed for Springfield. On two occasions he’d almost run into trouble: once he narrowly avoided riding smack into a posse combing the country for a bunch of cattle rustlers; another time he rode into a small trading post no more than half an hour after a couple of straight-faced Pinkerton men had been in there asking questions about a couple of outlaw blacks.

  Tap bought some food and ammunition and lit out quick, making sure he didn’t follow in the same direction the detectives had taken. He was pretty shaken up by coming that close to them, but not displeased at what he’d heard. If they were running down Gideon and Joseph that meant it was likely the feller he talked with at Cooper’s Stand had lived up to his word and seen that Majors wasn’t running loose. It also likely meant that the railroad money wasn’t stashed away at Shadow Point any more - if it was, then no Pinks were going to be wasting their time chasing after a couple of niggers. No – he was steering clear of the old hide-out. It was Springfield and Sara-Lee and the sooner he got there—without taking any unnecessary risks—the better.

  Tap eventually reached Springfield on a Sunday night, long after the bell for services had sounded and been forgotten. After those folk who had gone to listen to the Word had changed back out of their go-to-meeting clothes and the preacher’s words were faded and past.

  There was no light showing through the windows of the small single-storey house where Sara-Lee lived, and Tap hesitated, surprised. She might have gone calling on friends, but by that time of night...

  He tied up the horse and walked around back. No light: no sound. Back at the front he tried the front door and it gave to his touch. Swung back with a grating sound as the underside rubbed over the floor. Tap felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickle and he drew the pistol from his belt. He waited. Listening, he cocked the hammer and the click was like .the snapping of dry twigs underfoot.

  Tap stepped inside.

  Nothing moved. He stood inside the doorway, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the light. Gradually, Sara’s armchair emerged from the gloom, the small table, round and polished, at which she wrote. Tap imagined he could smell the lavender from the small vase of dried herbs which stood at its centre. He saw the dresser, with its cups and plates neatly displayed; the straight-backed chairs. The fireplace was bare and the rug in front of it where he and Sara had first...

  Tap closed the door behind him and took a match from his pocket. The lamp stuttered to life. The only shadows moving inside the room were Tap’s own. He went into the bedroom, the pantry, the outhouse. None of the furniture had been moved, nothing of substance had vanished. But of anything personal to Sara there was no trace. No clothing; no pictures remained hanging from the walls; the bookshelves she had made from stray planks of wood and packing cases now held only a few unused sheets of paper and a quantity of dust. The leather-bound volume of Shakespearean plays that had been her most treasured possession no longer held pride of place in a section of its own.

  Tap’s head swam. He went, not quite steadily, to the armchair and sat down. He knew there had to be a good reason, a sensible explanation – all he needed to do was sit for a while and figure it out.

  ~*~

  Bright sunlight fell across the clearing, sending sharp, knife-edged shadows across the house. The walls gleamed yellow and white.

  Despite the warmth of the day, smoke nevertheless drifted skywards from one of the chimneys. Hart unfastened the low gate and remounted, leading his grisly burden towards the flight of steps and the high brick archway. Before he came to a halt, the door had opened and Grant stepped out. He was wearing a dark suit, the jacket unbuttoned, his shirt loose at the neck and tieless. His eyes were unnaturally bright within the fleshy spread of his face.

  “That’s him?” A pink edge of tongue showed between his lips and his fleshy hands toyed with the lapels of his suit.

  Hart nodded, dismounted. The body was stiff as boards hammered carelessly together but it stank like nothing imaginable.

  Grant descended the steps quickly, his excitement clear. He grasped the reins of the pinto and hauled on them hard so that the animal tried to twist away.

  “You’re sure it’s Majors?” Grant’s fingers were at the end of the blanket. The material had dried to the body, glued fast with congealed blood. Hart didn’t know what the banker intended to do or how; he didn’t care. All he wanted was to get his payment and leave. Ride as far away from there as he could and fast. He wanted to put some distance between the Grant place and himself and then soak himself in water that was hot enough to scald the pervading stench away from his skin. Away from his mind.

  “You’re not gettin’ down,” said Grant.

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That don’t matter. Just bring me what we reckoned an’ I’ll leave.”

  “Now? You stay. We’ve got somethin’ to celebrate. This miserable bastard took my son and daughter both - don’t you forget it!”

  Hart wasn’t about to forget: not any of it. “The money,” he said.

  Grant looked at him and saw from the set of the lean, leathered face that Hart wasn’t about to change his mind.

  “All right.” The banker went back up the steps and into the house. In less than five minutes he returned with a small cotton bag. Hart reached down and took it from him, stuffed it immediately into one of his saddle bags.

  “Surely you’re going to count it?”

  Hart didn’t answer. He didn’t nod his head or touch the brim of his hat. He turned the grey away and as he did so he saw what he had not wanted to see: the silhouette of the girl against the far window, held there by the brightne
ss of the sun. The image clung to Hart’s mind as he sought the trail south - the girl and what he had brought back to her.

  ~*~

  Tap had fallen asleep in the armchair and not woken until well past dawn. Nothing in the room had changed. He sat there for a long time, his mind uncertain and unfocused. Then he went into town and began asking questions. He went to the general store, to the school; he asked anyone he imagined might have some idea where Sara-Lee had gone. No one knew: no one had heard her say a goodbye or a farewell. She had said nothing to the other teacher at the school, she had bought no supplies from the store that suggested a journey. No ticket had been booked in her name at the stage line. There was nothing to give Tap the slightest clue until he went to the railroad station and spoke with the clerk.

  The clerk was a bald, bumbling man who was deaf in one ear and could pretend to be deaf in his good ear too if it suited him. He was quite deaf to Tap’s questions until some money appeared on the table between them. Then he remembered—or thought he did—that a woman who might have been Sara-Lee had bought a ticket east. No, he didn’t think it was St Louis - Chicago sounded more like. Even more money couldn’t make the clerk more definite than that. After all, it had been weeks ago and with all the folk who used the railroad.

  So she had caught the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. The same train she had persuaded him he ought to hold up. Big money, real money, she had said: then we can go away together. Leave this place behind us.

  She hadn’t waited for him.

  On his way back to the house that evening, his mind fuzzy with drink from an afternoon’s morose session in the saloon, a head came out through the window of the place close alongside. A woman who remembered Sara-Lee having a couple of visitors, men who’d ridden up early one morning. They hadn’t stayed long, the woman assured Tap. It was as if they’d been delivering something. She had no idea what. But after that day, she didn’t see Sara-Lee again.

  Tap asked the woman if she could recall what either of the callers had looked like.

  At first she didn’t think she could, but then she remembered that one of them—the younger one—had a lot of fair hair that fell down across his face as if it might go in his eyes. She recalled that clear as if he was standing there now.

  “I don’t know what they could have brought that made Sara-Lee leave so sudden,” said the neighbor. She smiled hesitantly at Tap and then went back to her own affairs.

  Tap went inside the house and closed the door with a slam behind him: he could guess what Bluey and Jeff had brought – they had brought Sara-Lee his share of the money. She had got her train money after all.

  Tap pulled a half-bottle of whiskey from his pocket and took a long swallow. He shut the blinds against the outside and sat deep in the armchair. He knew nothing about the other questions that were being asked in Springfield that afternoon by two grim-faced men whose interests very much coincided with his own. He was sitting greyly in the chair with the bottle tilted in his hand and the memory of Sara nagging at his brain when they approached the house.

  Charlie Deuce and his partner had caught up with the two blacks sleeping rough close to the Kansas border. They had got close enough to be able to shoot them where they lay, a bullet apiece in the head and neither Gideon nor Joseph had woken up.

  Now they stepped carefully up to the Danziger house, Deuce to the front door and Carey towards the back.

  The sound of the back door opening spun Tap round.

  “Sara!” he called.

  ~*~

  Wes Hart sat back in the enamel bath tub and scrubbed at his body. A chair stood close to the right side of the tub and his gun belt hung over it, the butt of the Colt within easy reach. He wasn’t about to risk any more visits from Marshal Fagan nor anyone else who might want to get the drop on him, send him off on a job of work. The money he’d got from Grant was in his pants pocket: the image of the silent, unmoving girl was still imprinted on the back of his mind.

  There was no way of Hart knowing, but were he able to return to the house outside Cass, the picture he would see would be slightly different. Katherine Grant’s silhouette still clung close to the window of her room, only now it was not quite still. Rather, it swayed with the movement of the rope, her feet tapping against the glass. Again, again, again.

  Her father had got his hanging, though not as he had imagined, not with his own hands.

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