The Outlaws of Salty's Notch

by Will Keen

  Chapter Eleven

  Confusion. A jumble of sounds and impressions bombarding a mind numbed by gunfire that seemed to have battered Paladin’s consciousness from every imaginable direction. The close-range brittle cracks of handguns punching killing holes in the man called Flint had left his ears ringing and his senses sickened, but still he had heard that faint rattle of gunfire from the western end of the beach.

  As Paladin set off to investigate, pushing his horse to a gallop, he could hear behind him faint, measured hoofbeats as Shorty Long and Brad Corrigan rode away from the beach. Both men sat unsteadily in the saddle. Riding cautiously at a pace that would not jar their wounds, they would be calling in at the doctor’s house on the way back up to the lodge. This was at the insistence of Emma Bowman-Laing. The indefatigable widow had followed them down from the burnt-out shell of her antebellum home – as Paladin had known she would – had witnessed the shooting of Long and Flint and had been bitterly scathing in her comments when Corrigan emerged weak and bloodied from under the palms.

  Now, despite the thunderous pounding of his own horse’s hoofs on the coarse sand and the faint whisper of those behind him, Paladin could also hear hoofbeats up ahead. Those too, at first carrying clearly on the still air, were now rapidly fading. He was leaning well forward in the saddle, his hands holding the reins along the sides of his racing horse’s neck. His eyes were busy, scanning every inch of the moonlit beach.

  Far ahead, where the line of palms was broken by the opening of Salty’s Notch, Paladin thought he saw three horses, with just two riders. Then, as suddenly as wraiths passing through a stone wall, they were gone.

  The salt wind was in his face, clearing his head. The sea was flat but for a long swell, the water eerily luminous in the light of the moon. A dark smudge with pencil-thin masts cast a shadow half a mile off shore. Paladin could see the faint glimmer of the boat’s running lights, and his thoughts were racing. The vessel appeared to be at anchor. The water was too shallow for it to come closer. One of the boat’s crew would bring Alvaro Rodriguez and his stolen gold to the shore in a dinghy or row boat. The Mexican would be met by his brother and Bushwhack Jack Breaker. Three men. But unless Paladin’s eyesight was failing, he had seen just those two mounted men and one riderless horse.

  As Paladin drew level with the entrance to the Notch and pulled his horse back to a canter, the faint scent of cordite drifted to his nostrils. Almost at once he saw, midway between the palms and the sea, the inert body of a big man lying flat on his face in the sand. Close to him, another man was sitting cross legged. He wore a flat-crowned black hat. When he turned to look at Paladin his face was white, the pallor emphasized by the drooping black moustache.

  Bushwhack Jack Breaker. Alone, and wounded.

  ‘I’ll live,’ Breaker said. His hand was clamped to his bloody right arm, his lips tight against his teeth. ‘Devlin’s dead. Go tear strips off his shirt and bind this arm. Then we’re going after those Mexicans.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The kid Guillermo killed your three friends.’

  ‘Two. The town marshal lived.’

  ‘OK. But the kid shot all three in the back and two died.’ Breaker’s attempt at a grin was a painful grimace. ‘You were a bounty hunter. You and me catch ’em, we’ll split the stolen cash.’

  ‘There’s no gold?’

  ‘It’s a long story. I was taken in. What those fellers have got is a leather case stuffed with the proceeds of a Vera Cruz bank robbery.’

  ‘Then sooner or later the law will get them.’

  ‘It’s been tried, here, in La Belle Commune. Flint and Lomax gunned down three Texas marshals.’

  ‘And now Lomax and Flint are dead,’ Paladin said.

  ‘Ah. You got Flint?’ Breaker nodded. ‘Then the men I brought here are all dead except that Mex kid,’ Breaker said, ‘and him and his brother will give the law one hell of a run for their money.’

  His choice of words caused him to grin. Then, clearly thinking of a long and difficult pursuit across Texas, he attempted a dismissive shrug of the shoulders and drew in a sharp breath through clenched teeth as pain lanced through his arm.

  ‘What makes you think I’d ride with you anyway?’ Paladin said. ‘Go back, what, five or six years? I seem to remember you plugging me in the back and throwing me in the Red River to drown.’

  Rocking with the pain of his wounded arm, Breaker was shaking his head.

  ‘That was Rodriguez.’

  ‘What, the kid? He was with you, yes, but six years ago he’d be no more than twelve years old.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Breaker hissed, ‘will you do something about this goddamn wound before I bleed to death?’

  The dead outlaw Devlin was face down. Paladin rolled him over, ripped open his vest and dragged his shirt out of his pants. He tore off two strips. Then he used his folding knife to slash Breaker’s sleeve from wrist to shoulder, and bound the bloody groove the bullet had gouged across the outlaw’s upper arm muscle.

  With an effort, Breaker climbed shakily to his feet. He rocked, braced himself, then took a deep breath, again shook his head.

  ‘About Rodriguez, it was him shot you all right. Mexicans always look too damn young, or too damn old. I always called Guillermo a kid, but that kid’s pushing thirty, was in his early twenties when he left you to drown.’

  ‘But you were there.’

  ‘I’ve been a lot of places, a lot of times,’ Breaker said, ‘and time is what we’re wasting.’

  Part Two

  Twelve

  Paladin and Bushwhack Jack Breaker cut south of Houston a week after crossing the Sabine River, skirting Galveston Bay and pushing their gaunt horses on to the settlement of Bay City.

  Ten miles east of Houston, late afternoon, they’d stopped at an old staging post on a dusty trail along which tumbleweed skittered before the hot dry wind. A bearded man with a French accent served them with warm beer across a worm-eaten plank bar sagging between two barrels. When asked, he told them two Mexicans had passed through early that day. Eaten a meal in a hurry. A young kid with a flashing grin, an older man who was sober and reflective. Both were watching their back trail as if Indians were on the warpath with sharp scalping knives. The older man, he said, downed his ham, eggs and coffee without once entirely letting go of his worn leather case.

  It was the first time the question they’d grown sick of asking had drawn the right response. They had left La Belle Commune two days after the killings on the beach, two days after the Rodriguez brothers had left town. The night’s gunfire had disturbed none of the residents. Shorty Long was in his rooms behind the stables. Brad Corrigan, looked after by Bowman-Laing who had no faith in the drunken doctor, Forbes, had moved back down to the jail.

  ‘There’s a spare badge in a drawer,’ he’d told Paladin. ‘Shinier than the one Jack Breaker stole,’ he added with a grin, ‘so I guess while you’re away huntin’ those Mexicans I’ll just sit in that old rocking chair showin’ off and soaking up some sun.’

  Yet there had been a message lurking behind the marshal’s amused gaze that presented Paladin with both a puzzle and a sense of foreboding. Corrigan, though nursing wounds, had ridden down from the lodge without too much trouble. There was, Paladin knew, nothing stopping the wily old lawman from riding much further than that if he got ideas into his head.

  With that a constant worry at the back of his mind, it was little wonder that oft-times on the ride into Texas Paladin caught himself looking nervously over his shoulder.

  After a couple of days on the trail, Paladin and Breaker had begun to believe they were pursuing two men who had vanished off the face of the earth. No sightings, their questions always drawing reluctant, taciturn, negative responses. Now, if the owner of the staging post could be trusted, the Rodriguez brothers had reappeared: Paladin and Breaker were closing in on their quarry.

  In that week’s hard riding they’d gained a day and a half, but paid the price. In Bay City, wit
h the sun already down and shadows lengthening, they had first placed their head-hung horses in the care of the hostler in the town’s only livery barn. Then sheer bone weariness had forced them to book a room in the town’s only hotel, plod fifty yards to the only café and wolf down the first hot meal they’d had in days. By stopping overnight, a big chunk of the time they had gained would be lost. But, Paladin pointed out, if he and Breaker were keeping going through will-power and a bloody-minded determination not to give up, the two Mexicans could be faring no better. At some time they too would be forced to stop running.

  ‘Peasant stock,’ Paladin said, pushing away his greasy plate and sitting back with a sigh. ‘For them, mañana’s a way of life. Now they’re running for their lives, and it must be killing ’em.’

  ‘Can’t happen too soon for me,’ Breaker said. His drooping moustache was flecked with egg yolk, glistening with grease. The curling smoke from his cigarette was causing his black eyes to narrow, and he was absently rubbing the healing bullet wound in his arm.

  ‘Sit there, relax,’ Paladin said, pushing back from the table. ‘I’ll go check on the horses, make sure they’ll be fit by early tomorrow. I’ll see you back at the hotel.’

  He crossed the street to the livery barn with pools of light spilling into the street from hanging oil lamps, then into the big barn where horizontal beams held saddles of all kinds, and movement and the rustling of straw could be heard in most of the stalls. The sound of his boots on the hard-packed runway brought the hostler yawning out of his lighted office. He was a rangy man casting a long shadow. His bald head was tanned like old shiny leather, and deep lines like knife scars ran from each side of his bony nose.

  ‘Nothing oats, water, a good rub down and a night’s sleep won’t put right,’ he said in answer to Paladin’s question. ‘They’ve had the first three, now settling down to the fourth. If you can take advice, I’d say go easy on ’em. Or if you’re in that much of a damned hurry, take a couple of horses so you can change mounts from time to time.’ He grinned. ‘It worked for the Pony Express, and I can offer a good deal on a couple of horses’ll take you all the way across Texas.’

  Paladin nodded. ‘That’s something to think on; the men we’re hunting have a spare. Two Mexicans. They killed men in Louisiana, cold-blooded shootings. They’re also carrying a heap of stolen cash.’

  ‘You the law?’

  ‘A couple of the men they murdered were friends of mine.’ Paladin left it at that, paused. ‘We heard from a Frenchie running a bar in an old staging post that the Mexicans were heading this way. D’you see them pass through?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘You haven’t seen them?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Paladin rolled his eyes. ‘So what the hell did you say?’

  ‘I said I ain’t seen ’em pass through. Because they ain’t done that. They’re still here. If they’re not, they left town on foot, because that’s their horses you can hear movin’ about in the stalls next to yours.’

  Paladin left the barn fighting considerable unease. Cautiously, he stepped out into the street, then leaned back against the big doors that were folded open against the building. They creaked under his weight. Across the street the café’s window was steamed up, but Paladin could see enough to know Breaker had left. The room they’d booked in the hotel was second floor front looking down on the flimsy board covering over the gallery that stretched the full width of the building. There was a faint light in the window.

  Bay City was one main street, and it was deserted but for a cowboy walking unsteadily to his horse. Across from the hotel, a little way up from the livery barn, there was a saloon. A piano was tinkling. A woman was singing, off-key. The faint smell of beer and cigarette smoke reached Paladin. He wondered if the two Mexicans were in there drinking. Thought maybe not. If they were as tired as he was, they’d have bedded down for the night. But where?

  And then he allowed himself a sardonic smile because, by hell, wouldn’t it be interesting if they too had booked into the only hotel in town?

  For a couple of long minutes Paladin tossed mental coins, lips pursed in thought. Then, coming to a decision, he pushed himself away from the big doors and walked the short way to the low-slung stone building he’d spotted while eating his chow.

  The town jail.

  The door was open. He walked into a lamp-lit room that put Brad Corrigan’s office in La Belle Commune to shame. A safe, two old wooden filing cabinets, a big iron pot-bellied stove. The walls were adorned with Wanted dodgers, fading prints and notes scrawled in ink or pencil on scrap paper. A cuspidor looked like solid brass and was dusty from lack of use. A gun rack held rifles that had the sheen of oil regularly applied.

  There was a scarred oak roll-top desk with its back against the side wall. On it there was an ornate typewriting machine with a sheet of paper rolled in. The town marshal was sitting by the desk. He’d swivelled his chair and was watching Paladin with intelligent grey eyes. On the scattered papers by the typewriting machine a dove grey Stetson lay next to a Colt .45 which was within easy reach.

  ‘Jim Grey,’ he said softly, ‘at your service. You look like a man’s got troubles gnawing at his insides.’

  ‘I’m about to get rid of them. The hostler over at the barn—’

  ‘Johnson, by name,’ the marshal said, and winked. ‘Most folks call him Curly on account of all that hair.’

  ‘He said two Mexicans rode in, left their horses with him. They’re still there, so the men are still in town. They’re killers, making their way home toting a leather bag full of stolen cash.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Paladin frowned. ‘What’s that mean? You’re calling me a liar?’

  ‘Take a seat,’ Jim Grey said.

  ‘I feel more like taking a swing at your chin.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Jim Grey said, ‘a little after noon today those two greasers you mentioned were standing exactly where you are now, saying about you exactly what you just said about them. Told me your name, too. Paladin.’ He smiled sadly. ‘A man of my experience, that set some mighty loud warning bells ringing.’

  And with the easy familiarity of a man who knew exactly what he was doing he picked up the Colt, pointed it at Paladin and thumbed back the hammer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It didn’t take long for Paladin to figure out that Jim Grey had reached a comfortable middle age for a town marshal by always exercising extreme caution. Just about long enough for a cell door to clang behind him and a key selected from a big jingling bunch to turn in the lock. He’d been taken there at gun point. Even on a hot summer’s day with sweat beading his brow, Paladin mused, there would be no flies on the Bay City marshal.

  Grey wanted to talk. He’d made sure Paladin was under lock and key before he got down to business.

  Now he was leaning back against the wall opposite the cell, bathed in the warm light from the office’s oil lamp. Coming at him from the side the light accentuated the angular planes of his face, left the sharp eyes in shadow.

  ‘Despite the highfalutin name, this is a small town, Paladin. Not much goes unnoticed. So I know you rode in hot and dusty, accompanied by a feller looked meaner than a rattlesnake with toothache.’

  ‘His name’s Jack Breaker.’

  ‘Ah.’ Grey smiled. ‘Another bell’s clanging – real slow, like it tolls for a funeral. The moniker Breaker’s got tagged on to those given names suggests he’s a back shooter – and that from a safe distance.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not all that fond of greasers, but if you ride with a cowardly killer like Breaker I’m even more inclined to give credence to the story they told.’

  ‘I’ve tracked them all the way from a small town in Louisiana. Why would I do that, then call in here to talk to you if I’m a killer carrying—’

  ‘Jim.’

  The name was snapped by a stocky man who had followed hi
s shadow in from the office. A deputy’s badge gleamed on his vest.

  ‘There’s trouble over at the Al’s place. Ellie came over. You want me to go?’

  ‘Trouble, you say?’ Grey said absently. He leaned his head back against the wall. ‘This is Dave Ames, my deputy, Paladin, and that’s the hotel he’s talking about. Seems like this’ll go down as a red letter day in little ole Bay City. What kind of trouble, Dave?’

  ‘Those two greasers and this feller’s pard arguing hard enough to end in gun play.’

  Grey sighed. ‘We’ll both go,’ he said, and pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Paladin, you stay where you are, spend some time thinking up a story I might get close to believing.’

  Tall, raw-boned, he followed the deputy out. Their shadows went with them. The light from the office lamp fell in a pool on the floor outside the cell.

  Paladin stood up, walked across to the cell door. He poked his hand through the bars. Then he pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  The big bunch of keys was hanging in the lock.

  Grey and his deputy were striding out, crossing the street at an angle, dark figures in a town that at night was lit just enough to make objects visible without disturbing anyone’s sleep. His eyes on the two lawmen, Paladin stepped out of the office. Keeping tight against the walls, he made his way along the plank walk. His gun-belt had been hanging on a wooden hook. It was back around his waist. He’d checked the shells in his six-gun. All correct, though he wouldn’t have put it past Jim Grey to empty the weapon’s cylinder.

  Yet the contradiction was staring Paladin in the face: why would any marshal walk away leaving his prisoner in a cell and the keys in the lock?

  He was still juggling likely answers when the night’s comfortable silence was rent apart by a burst of shooting from the direction of the hotel. The second floor front window’s glass was lit by brilliant flashes in the room. Someone yelled, a blood-curdling roar that died away to a gurgle. There was another shot, and the window shattered, glass tinkling down on to the gallery’s paper-thin roof.