Hart the Regulator 4

by John B. Harvey

  As he sat on the fence his gut pushed through the front of his worn, blue, sweat-stained shirt, resting on the top of his belt; his belly swelled out against the gun belt that vas fastened on a sloping diagonal to where the Colt .45 was tied down at his leg.

  Little Fats hadn’t always been called Little Fats: there’d been a time when he’d been known as Little Mary.

  First job he’d had up in Utah Territory had been working for a cattle rancher named Brown who had a spread north of the Old Spanish Trail. One of the first cattle men in the region - back around fifty-five that had been. One of his jobs at round up had been to ride with the chuck wagon and help the cook; that was when he got called Little Mary. Soon no one around the place used his real name and after a while folk seemed to forget what it was.

  While he was still little more than a kid he’d met up with a Ute girl, slip of a thing with skin like honey and eyes as wide as Little Fats’ were narrow. Started following her about like she had him tied to a leash. Taking presents to her family, courting her real strong. Finally he rode out there with a string of horses and that was it. Little Fats brought her back to the ranch and old Norman Brown, he married them with a few words out of his bible and the hope that they enjoyed one another till death did them part.

  Death didn’t hang around too long wasting his time.

  One morning Little Fats’ young Indian wife was down by the stream washing clothes and laying them out on the rocks to dry when a bunch of immigrants rode by from a wagon train heading down towards Los Angeles. Five of them, big and greasy and thirsty for all manner of things that that stream provided.

  When Little Fats found her she was laid out across the rocks like she’d been left to dry only what had dried was blood and it coated her honeyed body like thick, rutted fur.

  He stood over her and wept and wept and when that was done he washed her clean with the clear water from the stream and then sat and held her in his arms. Just looking at her. Looking.

  When they found him in the morning his teeth were chattering inside his head and the girl was stiff and colder than ice inside his arms. They buried her in the pines near the river and Norman Brown got out his bible again and in the middle of what he was saying Little Fats just turned round and walked away.

  They weren’t calling him Little Mary any more by then; hadn’t been for almost a year. Not with stubble growing round his chin and his belly thickening out and starting to spread. They’d looked at his round face and his rounding stomach and rechristened him Little Fats.

  Well, Little Fats wandered away from the ranch and no one knew much where he spent the next six or seven years though there were some who claimed he’d gone to live with the Indians, with the girl’s people. But he never said and no one ever asked.

  He did turn up around Fort Defiance in sixty-two and worked for the cavalry as an Indian scout for a time. After that he drove a stage on the Central Stage route west from St Jo on the Kansas-Missouri border to Salt Lake City and back again. At what point in his life he changed from driving stagecoaches to robbing them isn’t clear either.

  These past five years he’d been riding with the Sternberg gang, holing up with them in the north-western corner of Indian Territory and coming out to raid up into Kansas, west into New Mexico, sometimes down south into Texas.

  They never overdid things, choosing their targets and making sure as they could that the pickings would be worth the ride. Dodge City, Pueblo, Taos, El Paso - all had known the Sternberg boys and regretted it.

  Boys? Hell, they were men!

  ‘Fats! Little Fats!’

  He slivered another piece of the hickory away and turned his head towards the cabin built against the side of the hill.

  Vonnie was standing a few feet outside the open door, the inevitable thin cigarette cupped in his hand, thumb of his other hand stuck into his gunbelt.

  ‘Get in here. Lee wants to talk to you.’

  Little Fats shrugged his shoulders, snapped the knife closed and slipped it down into his pants pocket. He got down from the fence, stuck the whittled stick through his belt and walked slowly up to the cabin.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Lee Sternberg was standing over by the stove, the enamel and blackened pot in one hand. He was an inch or so under six foot, broad, handsome. The hair of his head and his beard were silver-grey. One side of his face was scarred as a result of a dueling accident back in his native Prussia when he’d been not much more than a boy. He had shipped across to America with his parents, his father lured by advertisements promising free land and boundless opportunity.

  His mother had contracted typhoid on the boat and they had slipped her emaciated body into sacking and slid it into the Atlantic Ocean within sight of Manhattan Island.

  His father had gambled away the family savings after only a month in New York. He drank brandy instead of providing food for his family. He caught the pox from a one-eyed whore on the waterfront. Lee and his brother Joseph took what little was worth taking and headed west, eager for the opportunities the advertisements had promised. Plenty for all!

  Lee was still negotiating for his share.

  They left Creek City yesterday. Around noon.’

  ‘How d’we know that?’ asked Little Fats.

  ‘Turkey was there. He saw them.’

  ‘Yeah. I saw ’em.’

  It was easy to see how Turkey had got his name. When he came a few paces closer to the center of the shack the loose skin round his neck hung and wobbled. He was older than the others - somewhere close to sixty by the lines on his weathered face, lines partly covered by a multitude of freckles and warts that spread over his broad cheekbones. Turkey’s face was further noticeable for the broken, reddish veins at the end of his nose, the small, receding chin, the iron-grey hair swept back from his temples and whitening underneath.

  He was tall, well over six foot, and gangling, like an awkward youth who’d suddenly grown into old age. His legs seemed excessively long; his chest hollow as if his ribs bent inwards.

  Quite a few men had made the mistake of judging him on his appearance and thinking him little more than a garrulous old-timer who should have been put out to pasture years before.

  They learned from their mistake and they learned it fast.

  Turkey knew the West like it was his backyard. From the Pacific coast clear across to the wide waters of the Mississippi, he knew it better than most men alive. He’d ridden the ranges, stayed in the settlements and towns, sat down with the Apache and the Navaho same as he had with the Governor’s wife in Austin and at the mayor’s table in St Louis.

  He could track a man through woods or mountains or the most barren stretches of desert you could travel; could use a long-barreled Sharps with the skill of an artist; he was a wrangler second to none and so adept with a knife that he seemed to have been born with one in his hand - likely he was.

  One thing though - he did love to tell a tale.

  ‘How many guards?’ Little Fats asked.

  ‘One. I...’

  ‘Only one? How come?’ Little Fats looked at the rest questioningly.

  ‘Way I figure it…’ Turkey began.

  ‘You know Kennedy,’ put in Vonnie. ‘Tighter’n an old maid’s ass. He ain’t goin’ to pay no three or four men when he can get away with one.’

  ‘Reckons he can get away with it.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sides,’ said Lee Sternberg, ‘a bunch of men’ll draw attention. One man an’ a girl, that’s different.’

  Lee smiled: it was a handsome smile, but it wasn’t altogether trustworthy. More the sort of fine smile a man’d give you when he was looking down the barrel of his gun.

  ‘What’s this feller Kennedy’s hired like?’ asked Little Fats.

  Turkey cleared his throat by spitting on the floor and wiping the back of one gnarled hand across his lips. ‘Tall man, broad-shouldered. Wears a Colt Peacemaker with a pearl grip and looks as if he might be able to
use it. Couple of saddle guns...’

  ‘A couple?’ said Vonnie.

  ‘Yeah. Rifle and some kind of sawn-off shotgun.’

  Little Fats looked over at Lee and pursed his lips in a whistle; Lee’s smile just broadened.

  Turkey swilled some of the coffee round his mouth. ‘Tell you,’ he began, ‘seein’ him sittin’ there in the drivin’ seat next to that slip of a girl reminded me of a time down Sedalia way when.. .’

  ‘Hey, Lee!’ called Vonnie, ‘There any more coffee in that damned pot? Pass it over here.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Little Fats headed for the door. ‘There’s a shoe on my horse I want to check.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Lee, handing the enamel pot to Vonnie, ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Vonnie poured the coffee fast and set the pot back on the stove, hurrying outside after the other two and leaving Turkey alone with the slow mumble of his own words.

  After several moments he seemed to realize he was by himself and stopped talking, shaking his head to one side and stepping out into the sunlight.

  ‘Can we stop and buy me something to wear?’

  The dark eyes fixed on Hart’s face and wouldn’t let go.

  ‘You’re wearing something.’

  ‘I can’t wear this all the way to Denver.’

  ‘There’s clothes enough in them trunks to last all the way east.’

  ‘Yes. More dresses like this. That’s all’

  ‘What else do you want?’

  ‘Something more suitable. A shirt and a pair of pants.’

  ‘That’s boy’s clothes.’

  She opened her mouth to say something but at the last moment thought better of it; instead Alice settled for staring at him all the harder. Hart swung his head back towards the trail and flicked the whip over the horses, making them break into a trot.

  ‘Can’t we?’ Alice asked less than a mile later.

  ‘What?’

  She raised her eyes towards the sky in desperation. ‘Buy some different clothes.’

  ‘Where?’

  She looked at him and shook her head. ‘I don’t know. You’re the guide. There must be places, towns, something between here and Denver.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe? What about food? We’ll need...’

  Hart nodded backwards. ‘We’ve got everything we need right with us.’

  Alice sank her two prominent teeth down into her lower lip and looked at her feet in black buckled shoes pressing against the boards of the carriage floor. She was wondering how long it was going to take and why her father had hired such a stupid man to take her. But then, she thought, it was just like him. What else did she expect?

  ‘Why don’t you like him?’ Hart asked, as if he’d been reading her mind.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your father.’

  ‘Who said I didn’t like him?’

  ‘The way you go on about him...’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that I don’t like him,’ said Alice with a weary annoyance in her voice. ‘It just means he’s stupid. That’s all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Hart. ‘I see.’

  He clicked the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth and flicked the reins, not seeing at all.

  The trail they were following wound its way slowly towards a grove of oaks that stood out against the pale blue of the sky. Either side of where they rode was high with grass, every now and then the mass of green broken by the starred yellow prairie dock or the bright white tops of snakeroot.

  ‘Are we going to stop some time?’ asked Alice. ‘I need to take a walk.’

  ‘Take a walk? What for?’

  Alice rolled her eyes. ‘I want to piss.’

  ‘Damnation!’ Hart slapped the palm of his hand hard on his knee and turned on her with anger in his face. ‘Young girls don’t talk that way.’

  She smiled at him sweetly. ‘They do it though, don’t they? Piss, I mean. Why shouldn’t they talk about it?’

  ‘Because it isn’t ladylike.’

  ‘Well, I did say I needed to take a walk. You just didn’t understand me.’

  ‘Okay, let’s forget it. I’ll pull over when we reach the top of this climb.’

  ‘That may be too late.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to wet yourself!’

  ‘I suppose that’s your idea of funny.’

  Hart whistled and shook his head. ‘Look. I wasn’t being funny. I don’t think any of this damned thing is funny. Not you. Not your pa. Not drivin’ with some foul-mouthed brat all the way to Denver. None of it.’ He pushed his flat-brimmed Stetson further back on his head. ‘Now once and for all, you got that in that skinny little head of yours?’

  ‘My head is not skinny,’ she pouted. ‘How can a head be skinny? And as for driving me to Denver, you took the job for the money.’

  ‘Right. An’ if I’d known what a pain in the ass you were goin’ to be, I’d’ve asked a lot more.’

  ‘I suppose you think that’s the kind of language to use in front of a young girl - ass?’

  Hart tightened his grip on the rein in order to keep himself from taking a swing at her.

  ‘Alice,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  She did, but the look in her eyes suggested that whatever kind of contest had been going on she was sure that she’d won.

  Four men rode easily in single file along the track that followed the valley bottom at the other side of the oaks. It was too hot to hurry and, anyway, there wasn’t any sense of urgency about what they were doing. All there was was one man and a slip of a girl and they weren’t worth getting yourself into a sweat over.

  Lee Sternberg swatted a haze of small black flies away from his head and allowed himself the suggestion of a smile. He was wearing a coat despite the heat, a worn leather jacket marked with many such rides. Under it a striped shirt and in the gunbelt strapped over his tan pants was his Smith & Wesson Schofield .45, bought the last time he’d been across to Santa Fe. He’d only had one real chance to use it, other than on tin cans and bottles, and it had annoyed him by pulling a trifle to the right. Took a man’s eye clean out instead of blasting a hole in the center of his forehead - he was itching for the opportunity to test it again.

  Behind him Vonnie wore his lucky black shirt, dark pants tucked into black leather boots. The makings for his cigarettes bulged in the breast pocket of the shirt. A snub-nosed Colt .45 was holstered low on his right side and another Colt, a little .41 with a two-and-a-quarter-inch barrel was snug inside the top of his right boot.

  Vonnie was thinking about the last time he’d ridden to Denver himself. He hadn’t taken no girl with him, but he’d sure as hell taken a few while he’d been there. Vonnie licked at the corner of his mouth where a fleck of saliva had appeared at the memory.

  Little Fats rode with his head tucked down on to his chest, those narrow eyes of his staring at some point no one else could figure. Folk would see him like that and reckon he was being thoughtful, put him down as a man who weighed things deeply. Little Fats was aware of this impression and said nothing to contradict it, but to tell the truth most of the time he wasn’t thinking about any damned thing at all.

  Turkey, now, he was thinking about things all the time. Lived two lives, Turkey did - one in the past and one in the present and most of the time the past had it over here and now in spades. Turkey didn’t take to using handguns over much, though he carried an old Navy Colt high on his hip and wouldn’t change it, even though it had been discontinued back in seventy-three. There was a six-inch blade in a plain leather sheath at the back of his pants belt, covered now by the loose sway of the fringed hide coat he usually wore. The butt of his favorite Sharps .55 stuck up behind him on the left side, worn smooth and darkly shiny with use.

  At the head of the line, Lee raised his hand and brought the column to a halt.

  ‘If they’ve been makin’ the kind of time we figure, they can’t be too far off.’
>
  Vonnie and Turkey agreed; Little Fats sat in his saddle saying and doing nothing.

  ‘Okay.’ Lee smiled. ‘Turkey, get up here. I got an idea.’

  Chapter Six

  A clutch of boulders surrounded the eastern most spread of oaks, grey-brown scattered with splotches of near white that glistened every now and then in the rays of the sun. Northwards the land spread through a series of greens, deepening, darkening, finally folding into an almost blue mist.

  Alice stood uselessly by while Hart gathered wood for the fire; asking her to help he figured would only get him into some fresh and equally stupid exchange of words.

  After a few minutes of indecision she wandered off into the trees and Hart tried not to notice the small but definite sound of the girl relieving herself.

  When she came back she gave him a fleeting smile and offered to fetch things from the back of the carriage so that they could eat and brew coffee.

  Maybe, thought Hart, it had been a once in a while thing; maybe she’d be fine now she’d got that bit of temper off her chest.

  ‘I don’t want to go, you know,’ Alice said a while later, biting on a piece of soda biscuit.

  ‘Oh,’ replied Hart, keeping it as non-committal as he could.

  ‘I’ll hate it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  She pushed her front teeth down into her lip, a sign he was beginning to recognize. ‘You don’t care, do you?’ She stared at him. ‘Do you?’

  Hart reached the coffee pot from the fire. ‘Want some?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Okay.’

  He filled his own mug; she held out hers. Only at the last moment, her mug three-parts full, did he read the intention in her eyes, the sucking in of the right corner of her mouth.

  He dodged fast and threw himself to the left as the scalding hot coffee was thrown at him, most of it missing, splashes burning his right forearm and catching the side of his shirt.

  ‘Bitch!’

  She was up and running, one hand pulling her dress from around her feet so that she wouldn’t stumble. Hart thought she might have some madcap plan of taking the wagon and escaping, then, as he got to his feet, that she might be after the Henry that lay at the bottom of the seat.