Hart the Regulator 4

by John B. Harvey

  Men were approaching through the half-light, no more than outlines that moved against the rear of the buildings along Main Street, occasionally a face was picked out by the moonlight. At the back of the crowd someone was carrying a lantern.

  ‘Bring it over here,’ Hart called.

  Inside the envelope of light, the cowboy’s face was strained and thin; he looked ten or more years older in as many minutes. The broken nose for some reason was less curious than before. Blood seeped through the fingers of his left hand, pulsing steadily out of him where Hart’s slug had smashed through the side of his chest. There would be more blood on the dusty ground beneath his back.

  The cowboy’s eyes closed and his head jerked back sharply. One of the bystanders knelt down beside him and listened for his breath.

  ‘We had a run-in at the saloon earlier,’ Hart explained to those around him. ‘I took his gun away so’s this wouldn’t happen.’ He glanced down at the cowboy. ‘I guess he got hold of another.’

  There was talk of carrying the wounded man to the doctor as Hart stepped through the crowd and back towards the main street. Men stood well clear to let him pass.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed in Milly Cooper’s rooming house, Hart lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a long pull of whiskey. It was raw enough to burn the back of his throat and to make him cough a little, but not enough to clean out his mind and let him sleep.

  What the hell was he thinkin’ about?

  He brought the bottle down to the floor with a hollow-sounding thump on the boards.

  What he liked about Kate was the fact that everything had been easy and open between them. She hadn’t been like some of the other women he’d known in that she’d never tried to lay a claim on him. Not of any kind. So what right or reason did he have to complain about the fact that she’d ridden off without leaving word? Had he said anything to her about coming back to Creek City?

  And that feller he’d shot in the shadows - hadn’t he done his best to make sure it hadn’t worked out that way? Hadn’t he been doing no more than defending himself?

  Hart lifted the bottle. What was troubling him was not Kate but someone else further back in the past before he and Kate had ever met. It wasn’t the cowboy with the shattered ribs and the hole in his back the size of a man’s fist, but others in an earlier time.

  Hart swallowed hard and shook his head.

  To Hell with it!

  To Hell with everything!

  He swung his legs round and lay down, arm trailing over the side of the bed, a sliver of light shining in through the top corner of the window.

  Chapter Four

  The sun had risen a pale yellow through the blur of mist that lay over the eastern horizon. Around it the sky was lightening, opening to the work of another day. Already men were loading wagons, saddling mounts, leading stock from fenced corrals. The wind blew through Creek City from the north-west and much of the coldness of the night still clung to it.

  Wes Hart shrugged the Indian blanket on to his right shoulder, looping it in a deep knot below his left hip. The blanket had been woven from red, white and dark blue wool yarns, patterned in stripes and a row of irregular star-shapes at the center and along the edges.

  The brim of his hat was pulled low over his eyes, almost shielding their faded blue.

  When he pushed back the door to the dining room he was surprised to see R. G. Fowler already seated at one of the tables along the far wall, plate cleaned and pushed away, a thin black cigar cupped in the curling fingers of his hand.

  ‘Come over,’ he said in a voice that seemed even deeper than that of the previous evening.

  Hart pulled out the chair opposite and sat down, loosening the blanket and draping it behind him.

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘Fresh enough.’

  ‘Want a drop of this?’ Fowler nodded towards the bottle at the side of the table. ‘Warm you up some.’

  Hart shook his head. ‘No. Thanks anyway. I’ll stick to coffee.’

  ‘Okay.’

  A woman with short brown hair and a flower-patterned apron appeared alongside Hart and asked him for his order. As he asked for ham and eggs, bread and lots of hot coffee, she scribbled signs in the small book in her hand.

  ‘You want coffee?’ she asked Fowler.

  The bearded man shook his head.

  ‘Tea? You want some tea? We can make you some tea. China tea.’

  ‘No, thank you. I only ever drink bourbon.’

  The woman’s eyes widened. They were, Hart thought, nice eyes. ‘Only ever?’ she echoed, questioningly.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Not even water?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Not even water.’

  ‘Well, I can’t imagine.’ And she wandered off towards the kitchen, clutching her book to her apron, head lowered as if she were giving the question of the bourbon serious thought.

  Fowler grunted and poured some more of the stuff into the china cup he was drinking from.

  ‘Sorry ’bout last night,’ said Hart later, cutting through a slice of thick ham.

  ‘S’okay.’

  ‘Get you in trouble with the agency?’

  ‘No more than I am already.’ He grinned, teeth surprisingly white between the thick hairs of beard and mustache. ‘Why else d’you think they send me out to this godforsaken hole?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Hart got on with his eating, leaving the man to drink in peace; it was the least he could do.

  He was wiping a piece of bread around the plate and mopping up the remains of egg yolk and mustard when Kennedy came purposefully through the door. He looked this way and that and then frowned on seeing Fowler and Hart together. But he came over anyway and stood close to the table.

  He had changed his suit since the day before; this was in a pepper and salt material, a shirt with a stiff collar underneath it and a dark blue cravat stuck with a pearl pin. The watch chain hung in the same position from the pockets of his vest.

  ‘Mr. hm, Hart. Mr Hart, is it?’

  Hart glanced up at his face.

  ‘I wonder, hm, if we could speak in private.’

  Fowler growled under his breath and finished the bourbon in the cup, reaching for the bottle and stuffing the base of it down into his side pocket as he stood up.

  ‘You don’t have to spare my feelings, Kennedy, I know what you’re going to be saying.’ His voice was heavy with sarcasm. ‘But I’ll be on my way anyhow.’

  The detective nodded once at Hart and brushed close enough to Kennedy to knock the man’s arm and make him move aside. Kennedy watched him go distastefully, sat down, called for some coffee and took out his watch, flicking the cover off to see the time.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Hart. ‘You’re a busy man.’

  ‘I wasn’t...’

  Hart pointed at him with his index finger. ‘I’ve met quite a few men like you, business men, and that’s one thing I’ve noticed about all of them - they never have enough time.’

  ‘Time is money,’ said Kennedy with an effort at a smile.

  ‘And they never have enough money, either.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Kennedy’s eyebrows rose an inch and stayed that way until his coffee arrived.

  ‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ he said, stirring sugar into his coffee.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Kennedy shifted his seat closer to the edge of the table and leaned his head forward. Hart could smell something ripe on his breath.

  ‘You know I sent for a detective and was forced to fire him when I saw the kind of man he was.’

  ‘Fowler seemed okay to me,’ put in Hart. ‘All he’d been doin’ was drinkin’ a little hard.’

  ‘And so exactly the wrong person for the task I, mm, had in mind.’

  ‘Which was what … exactly?’

  Kennedy lifted the cup halfway to his mouth and then seemingly forgot about it. ‘I heard about your exploits last night, Mr Hart. I was impressed.’

  Hart
looked back at him and said nothing.

  ‘Am I to understand that given the right, hm, financial reward you are for hire?’

  ‘That’s right. Depending on the job you’ve got in mind.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Kennedy drank a little of the coffee, a very little. ‘My daughter is here with me in Creek City. I had thought that she might be able to live here with me, her mother being dead these three years, but I find it is impossible. Even with someone as God-fearing and Christian as Mrs Mitchell to attend to her, things are far too primitive here. There is no school, no church, very little civilization of any kind.’

  ‘Apart from your whorehouse.’

  Kennedy pulled his head back as though he had been stung. He stared hard at Hart and raised his eyebrows slowly and purposefully. But he let the remark ride.

  ‘Where d’you want her taken?’ Hart asked after a few silent moments.

  ‘Denver.’

  ‘Denver? That ain’t so...’

  ‘It’s a way over two hundred miles.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And there is no reasonable stage route to which I could trust her.’

  ‘Okay, but Denver ain’t so fine a place, if that’s what you’re after.’

  ‘Mr Hart,’ the eyebrows lowered and the mouth made a small movement of irritation at one corner. ‘I have friends in Denver who have already agreed to transport my daughter back east, through Omaha to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. There she will be well cared for at a reputable boarding school.’

  ‘So the only problem is the first leg of the journey?’

  ‘Precisely. And if you will take that responsibility...’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘One hundred and fifty dollars.’

  Hart set his cup down firmly and pushed back his chair. ‘Sorry to have wasted your time.’

  ‘I don’t under...’

  ‘You think about it.’

  ‘Is it the money? You don’t, ’em, consider it enough?’

  Hart stared down at him coldly. ‘You weren’t gettin’ no detective out of Sacramento for no hundred and fifty dollars.’

  ‘Aye, but you are not a registered detective working through a reputable agency.’

  Hart slammed his fist down on the table and everyone in the dining room looked round. ‘Kennedy, you’re full of shit! You just fired your damned regular detective for being irregularly drunk. Now you can hire me for a good wage and I’ll do the job for you, or send off for someone else and keep you’re precious daughter hanging round the whorehouse a month or so longer. What’s it to be?’

  Kennedy tried to match Hart’s stare but he couldn’t.

  ‘Two hundred and …’ The words crawled from his mouth as if they tasted bitter as ashes.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty and expenses for setting up the journey.’

  Kennedy sighed and slowly stood up; Hart held out his hand and Kennedy shook it, firmly enough but without enthusiasm.

  The carriage was strongly built from seasoned timber, the rear set of wheels taller than those in front. There was a double seat up by the front, boxed in at the back and across the top by tarpaulin fixed to a metal frame. Behind this there was plenty of room for the two trunks and sacks of supplies that had been carefully tied there and covered with another sheet of tarpaulin. Two sturdy horses stood in harness, one a dun mare and the other a black gelding with a shaggy mane and a single white blaze on its left front leg.

  Hart had supervised the ordering of supplies, making sure there was plenty of food and ammunition. Boxes of cartridges for his Colt, as well as .44 shells for both the Henry rifle and his second pistol, a Starr double-action .44 that he had taken from a Union soldier during the War between the States. Not that it was a time in his life that he looked back to with many good memories. Too many of those he had known and ridden with had had their lives and their bodies shattered totally and without apparent reason.

  He had also bought some 10-gauge shot for the sawn-off Remington that sometimes lay out of sight in one of his saddle bags, but which now sat snug in a specially made holster attached to the saddle, close by his right hand as the Henry was close to the left.

  All that was missing now was the girl.

  Hart sat easy in the saddle, the sun warm and high, his Indian blanket rolled and tied behind, leather vest unbuttoned and first lines of sweat running down his face and staining his shirt at the arms and along the center of his back.

  It was okay, she could take her time as much as she liked. For now. Once they were out of Creek City and on the trail to Denver she’d listen to him and jump to what he said. He wasn’t having any trouble from a kid, nothing that was going to make this anything more than an easy ride, an easy way of making two hundred and fifty dollars. Just escort the carriage and its passenger to Denver and that was all there was to it. The country wasn’t any too rough and no one was going to be bothered about getting in his way. No one.

  Like he said, it was going to be easy.

  ‘Kindly stand still, young lady, while I brush your hair.’

  Mrs Mitchell’s voice was sharp as her nose. She towered over the girl by almost a foot, standing behind her and bringing the brush down through the brown hair as though she were trying to loosen it at the roots.

  Alice Kennedy winced and clenched her small-boned fingers tight into the palms of her hands but she would yield nothing more. As her head was pulled back by the rhythmic, positive movements of the brush, she kept her arms by her sides and braced her body with her legs slightly apart.

  ‘Now turn around.’

  Mrs Mitchell attacked the fringe of hair at the front, sweeping it sideways in both directions, doing her best to resurrect a center parting.

  ‘When you get settled into that school back east, you’ll have to look after your appearance properly. And if you don’t, it won’t be this side of the hairbrush you’ll be feeling.’

  Mrs Mitchell stepped back and examined the girl disapprovingly, tutting a little and shaking her head from side to side. Alice looked back at her, mouth open to show two top teeth protruding at the center, her eyes wide and dark.

  ‘Mrs Mitchell,’ came Kennedy’s voice, ‘is Alice ready yet?’

  ‘Almost.’

  The woman pulled at the puffed sleeves of the green dress Alice was wearing, adjusting next the belt that held it in at the waist, tugging at the skirt to see the hem dropping back just above her shoes.

  Alice was thinking how ridiculous it was that she was setting out on a long journey overland wearing a dress instead of a shirt and pants. But she didn’t say anything - she knew of old that most adults were not worth arguing with and Mrs Mitchell maybe the least of all. Less so even than her father.

  Kennedy came into the room and gave her a grudging smile. ‘You’d best be hurrying along now. You’ll be wanting to get a good distance before dark.’

  ‘Yes, father.’ The girl’s voice was quiet, showing hardly any trace of her father’s accent.

  She followed him out of the room, Mrs Mitchell coming to the landing to watch them go down the stairs and towards the front door.

  Hart turned in his saddle and watched the couple also as they made their way to the carriage. The girl was short, an inch perhaps under five feet, and built as if a strong wind would blow her away. She glanced up at Hart with disinterest and allowed her father to lift her up into the carriage.

  Hart dismounted and tied Clay’s reins to the post at the back of the carriage, slipping the Henry free from its scabbard and taking it with him to the driver’s seat. He set the rifle on the floor, behind their feet.

  Kennedy said, ‘Don’t worry, my dear, it’s merely a precautionary measure.’

  Alice didn’t look worried.

  Kennedy climbed up and kissed his daughter on the cheek and in return she pecked at the air close to his face.

  ‘Take good care of her now,’ he said to Hart.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Goodbye, Alice. Be certain to write to me f
rom Denver, mind.’

  Alice turned towards him and nodded.

  ‘Come on,’ called Hart to the two horses. ‘Let’s move out!’

  He flicked the heavy reins and whistled and the animals began to pull away down Main Street. Kennedy stepped back on to the boardwalk and raised his hand. A dozen feet behind him Mrs Mitchell appeared, her hand also waving goodbye.

  Hart glanced at Alice and noticed that she wasn’t waving at all.

  As they passed beyond the town limits and struck the northwest trail, Hart pushed the brim of his Stetson back on his head and eased his back against the tarpaulin.

  ‘It’s goin’ to be one hot afternoon.’

  Alice didn’t respond, but continued to stare ahead. He tried to figure out if she were feeling sad or upset but couldn’t detect anything from the expression on her face.

  A couple of miles later he tried again.

  ‘You sad ’bout leavin’ your pa?’

  Alice turned her head slowly and looked up at him with her big, dark eyes. ‘No,’ she said in a small, clear voice. ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘Well,’ replied Hart, ‘he is your father, after all.’

  ‘He may be my father,’ said Alice demurely, ‘but that doesn’t stop him being an asshole!’

  Chapter Five

  Little Fats sat on the corral fence whittling away at the piece of hickory. His boot heels were hooked over the middle pole and the rest of his body balanced evenly on the top one. He worked away with the small-bladed knife in his right hand, holding the length of wood in his left, every now and then turning it this way or that and squinting down at it through eyes which were already narrow enough to make you suspect his grandpa had spent more time than he should have down round the docks of San Francisco when he should have been setting up his family in their new home of California. The way his small, dark pupils were set into those thin, slanting eyes gave Little Fats more than a hint of the Chinese and you didn’t get that from simply drinking tea.

  For the rest of him, he had a round, almost flat face with a high forehead that was made higher by the fact that his brown hair had begun to thin and drop away. What remained fell down on either side of that moon face until it reached his shoulders and neck. A trimmed beard and mustache surrounded his mouth.