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CONTENTS
About the Book
One – “A Bit of Hellin’ ...”
Two – The Hunch
Three – The Answer
Four – The Search
Five – Brasada
Six – Broken-T
Seven – Capture
Eight – A Way Out
Nine – Uvalde
Ten – The Prize
About the Author
Series Page
Copyright Page
Piccadilly Publishing
Johnny Cato never could resist a damsel in distress, and that’s exactly what the beautiful redhead was … wasn’t she? Johnny’s fellow Enforcer, Yancey Bannerman, had his doubts. But Johnny was smitten, and no amount of straight talking could make him see things the way they really were.
Yancey wasn’t about to give up on him, though. They’d shared too many tight spots, saved each other’s lives too many times, for that. So he kept an eye on developments, and when the lead finally started flying, as he’d known it would, he was right in the thick of it, returning fire.
That, however, was only the start of it.
Duke Early was a career criminal whose entire crooked life had been dedicated to making himself very, very rich and anyone who opposed him very, very dead. Now he had his eye on the biggest score of his life, but to carry it off he needed a gunman. Not just any gunman, though … the very best that a fortune in stolen gold bullion could buy.
In order to stop a war between America and Mexico, the Enforcers had to track down an elusive target … the guns that never were!
One – “A Bit of Hellin’ ...”
Slim Vardis was damned if they were going to take him prisoner. He had had enough of stone walls and iron bars and he wasn’t going back this time. Besides, they would hang him.
He threw the shotgun to his shoulder and cut loose with both barrels. The thunder of the big gun drowned out the whip-crack of the lawman’s rifle outside and Vardis jerked back from his deadfall cover as a bullet clipped his right ear and spots of blood sprayed over his neck and shoulder. Great Godfrey! That was close! But the next one was closer. It went through the back of his left hand and Vardis screamed as he dropped the shotgun and held his shattered hand against his body.
Rolling in agony, he spun into the surrounding brush, knowing he had to get out of there fast or that damn manhunter would come charging in with guns smoking, and, though Vardis didn’t fancy a cell and a hangman’s rope, he had no hankering to die under a hail of lead, either. It was this thought that drove him to a last desperate move, despite the agony of his shattered hand.
He wrapped his kerchief tightly around the wound and stuffed his hand in his shirt. Then he snatched his six-gun from his holster and staggered to his feet as a hail of lead chopped branches and berries from the brush around him. Vardis ducked low, dropped to one knee long enough to send two shots back towards the lawman, then turned and lunged into the brush, not worrying about disturbing the branches, running in a zigzag pattern with his gun arm held up ahead of his face as he battered his way through. Bullets sang all around him and he heard at least two whine off in savage ricochets. He pounded on, knowing he must reach the clearing within the next few yards. The man out there just about had his range and if he didn’t get out of this brush that was marking his escape route, he might well stop lead in some place more serious than his hand.
He burst through the screen of brush into the clearing and pounded around the perimeter towards the clump of low butternut trees where his mount was tethered. He could see the rump of the gray and bared his teeth in a tight grin as he forced himself on. Once he was aboard that fast bronc he would clear this damn forest area and head straight out into the desert where he should have gone in the first place. The desert was the kind of country he knew best: he had been loco to try to shake his pursuers in the woods. Out there amongst the alkali and sand dunes he could find his way across tracts that most men figured as completely waterless and leading straight to hell.
Then Vardis skidded to a halt, shocked, as a smallish man stepped out of the brush near the horse, smiling crookedly, a bulbous, twin-barreled revolver held in his right hand.
“What took you so long, Vardis?” Johnny Cato asked. “I’ve been waitin’ for nigh on an hour.”
Vardis knew he was finished. Cato was one of Governor Lester Dukes’ top ‘Enforcers’ and that strange-looking gun was the famous ‘Manstopper’, the gun Cato had built himself on the frame of a Colt Dragoon. It held eight .45 caliber bullets that fired through a conventional barrel and the thicker barrel beneath fired a twelve gauge shot-shell that could blow a man all over the territory. Vardis hadn’t realized he was up against the governor’s men. He had thought it was a posse of local lawmen or maybe the Rangers who were after him. But the ‘Enforcers’ ...
“No, damn you!” he yelled, making his decision, firing as he hurled himself sideways, hitting hard on the point of his right shoulder and rolling in an awkward leg-flailing somersault, coming up unsteadily, his smoking Colt swinging into line for another shot at Cato.
The small Enforcer’s gun thundered and Vardis had an instant to realize that it was the shotgun barrel that had roared before his legs were smashed out from under him and he crashed face first into the ground, moaning in agony. Cato leapt forward like a cat and kicked the forty-five out of Slim Vardis’ hand, covering him with the smoking Manstopper. After firing the shot-shell he had flipped the hammer toggle that would now allow him to fire the eight cartridges in the cylinder if necessary.
But there would be no need to expend any more ammunition on Slim Vardis. The man was sobbing and groaning, clutching his bleeding legs with his good arm as he rolled around on the ground, face gray and screwed up in a grimace of pain. “Why don’t you—finish—me?” he gasped.
“I’ll leave that for the hangman, Vardis,” Cato told him easily. “Governor Dukes wants to ask you some questions first before they tie that hemp around your neck. Our orders were to bring you in alive.”
“Go—to—hell!” Vardis gasped and shifted his gaze as he saw Cato tense and swing towards the left where someone was coming through the trees. The hammer on the Manstopper snapped back to full cock and the twin barrels swung towards the sound, but then Cato eased down the hammer again as a big man holding a Winchester rifle with octagonal barrel stepped warily out of the brush. The rifle swung to cover Cato and Vardis and then the barrel dipped slowly towards the ground and the big man ambled across with easy grace.
“When I heard that shotgun blast from your Manstopper, figured you must’ve spread him all around the woods,” he said Cato, easing down the hammer on his Winchester. “Glad you remembered the governor’s orders to bring him in alive.”
“I got a good memory,” Cato said, stifling an exaggerated frown. “But I nearly went to sleep waitin’ for you to flush him out and get him runnin’ for his horse. Looks like I’ll have to be doin’ some work on your guns. Or give you target lessons.”
Yancey smiled faintly. “You try placing your shots just here you want ’em through woods like that.” He gestured back.
“Nothin’ to it,” Cato said, holstering his gun and looking down at the wounded Vardis. He sighed. “Well, guess we better it this hombre fixed up so he don’t bleed to death, and then head back for Austin.” He winked at Yancey. “Then for a bit of hellin’, eh, pard? It’s been a long time since we had some leave due and I sure am lookin’ forward to it.”
Yancey smiled as he propped his rifle against a tree. He too was looking forward to a break from manhunting. Not so much for the ‘hellin’ around’ that Cato fancied but because he would have time to sp
end with Kate Dukes, the governor’s daughter.
Slim Vardis yelled as Cato stretched him out and Yancey began to work on his shot-spattered legs.
Yancey was in for a disappointment, as he found out soon after arriving in Austin and turning the wounded Vardis over to Governor Dukes. The Texas governor was pleased that his two Enforcers had brought in Vardis more or less in one piece. The man was a well-known political extremist and there was evidence that he had been organizing a group of armed fanatics to assault the Capitol in Austin, and Lester Dukes wanted details of this before seeing Vardis hang.
The man had already broken out of prison on three occasions and, on the last time, he had killed a guard and a lonely rancher who had caught him stealing a horse. Now he would pay the penalty, but not until after he had given Dukes the information he wanted.
“Well, I guess you boys are looking forward to some leave,” the governor said, after having seen Vardis taken away to the interrogation rooms deep below the Capitol building. He sat down at his desk and looked at his two top men. They were trail-stained and looked weary from the long weeks of tracking down Vardis and others of his movement.
“We sure are, Governor,” Cato said in answer to Dukes’ question. “Feel like cuttin’ loose a mite, eh, Yance?”
Yancey smiled faintly and asked the question he had been wanting to ask ever since they had arrived over an hour ago. “I haven’t seen Kate, Governor. Is she around?”
Dukes looked at Yancey with a slight frown. “No, Yancey, I’m afraid she’s not in Austin right now.”
Yancey’s face sobered abruptly, his disappointment showing plainly. “Too bad, I was looking forward to taking her to the theater while we were still in town.”
“Well, I’ll want you both to stick around for a few weeks till I can bring Vardis to some kind of trial,” Dukes said. “She ought to be back by then.”
“Where is she?” Yancey asked quietly.
“Gone to New Orleans, Yancey. Meeting of governors of the Southern States. I couldn’t leave here with Vardis and his group running loose and Kate knows my views, official and personal, so she’s deputizing for me.”
“Why New Orleans?” Yancey asked, puzzled. “Seems to me it’d be better to have a meeting like that in Washington.”
“Well, they didn’t want it too formal. Also, the Mardi Gras Carnival’s on in New Orleans and the delegates figured to join in and have a time of it between meetings ...”
Yancey’s face stiffened and Dukes went on quickly:
“It’ll be just a ball or two, I guess, and some sort of stuffy dinner with a lot of speeches, that sort of thing.” He smiled. “Kate’ll likely be bored to death.”
Yancey looked at him soberly. “Sure ... too bad I missed her. How long you reckon the conference will go on?”
Dukes tugged at an ear lobe. “We-ell, ought to be finished in a week, but Kate will be staying on for a spell, maybe another couple of weeks. She’s got kinfolk there, on her mother’s side. Hasn’t seen ’em for a year or so. She’ll stay with them before coming back by ship.”
“Ship!” Yancey exclaimed.
“Why—yes. Her cousin owns riverboats and seagoing paddle-wheelers. Cotton freighters mainly. But they’ll be sailing back across the gulf to Galveston and then riding overland to Austin. It was a chance to give Kate a vacation as well as combining some official business, Yancey. She needs the break.”
Yancey nodded. “Sure, Governor. Couldn’t agree more. Hope she has a fine time. Ah—this cousin she’ll be seeing. Not Rupe Harwood, is it?” i
“We-ell, yeah. Like I said, on her mother’s side. But, Yancey, look, boy, you don’t have to worry about anything. Kate’s got far more interest in you than in Rupe.”
“Was a mite hard to tell when he was over here last summer,” Yancey said a little tightly.
“Well, he was just showing off. He’s rich, likes to try to make an impression. He’s a nice enough feller, but I reckon he’s not Kate’s type.”
Yancey wasn’t so sure. He recollected graphically how Harwood had monopolized Kate for the five weeks he had been in Austin last year, showering her with gifts, taking her to all the new shows in town, the best restaurants, even whisking her away to El Paso and Juarez for a spell. Kate had admitted she had had a ‘wonderful time’ and Yancey hadn’t realized until then that he was tolerably jealous of Harwood in spite of the fact that Harwood was unofficially ‘affianced’ to another girl. Not that he had any real claim on Kate’s affections. They were great friends and they got along fine when he was around town, went out together a lot, but she had made it clear she couldn’t think of marrying anyone while her father needed her. And need her he did, for he was a sufferer of a heart complaint and Kate’s promise to her mother on her death-bed had been that she would take care of the Governor for the rest of his life. Or hers. It should have been enough. But he couldn’t help feeling that Rupe Harwood, with his family tie, his charm and so on, might somehow get around this promise of Kate’s.
Yancey could likely match the man in wealth and backgrounds, for he came from the San Francisco Bannermans and his father was a giant in the financial world, banker, ship-owner, land developer, cattle rancher. But Yancey would never try to get Kate to make any compromise: he respected her point of view about her death-bed promise to her mother.
Now, he shook himself out of his gloomy mood. He grinned at Johnny Cato.
“Well, come on, then. Thought you were the one wanted to do a bit of hellin’!”
Cato glanced at Dukes and then stood up, smiling slowly. “That’s me, pard. You gonna join me?”
“Reckon I am.”
“Then let’s go. Adios, Governor. How long we got?”
“Till Vardis comes to trial, I guess,” Dukes said, frowning in Yancey’s direction. He added, a little pointedly: “Kate should be back before then.”
“With Rupe Harwood,” Yancey returned soberly.
Dukes shrugged. “Maybe. Well, have yourselves a time, boys. If you aim to move out any place, leave word before you go. And, once again—you did fine with Vardis.”
Cato and Bannerman went out and Dukes tapped his fingers lightly against his desk edge. Damn it, why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut about Kate’s cousin? He knew about Kate’s promise to his wife, and he would never hold her to it, but, he admitted to himself, if ever she did decide to take a husband, he hoped it would be Yancey Bannerman and not Rupe Harwood.
Trouble was, he knew Yancey and Kate had had some kind of tiff before the Enforcer had taken off on the Vardis assignment and he knew how Rupe could turn on the charm. He had been a fool to let her attend the conference in New Orleans. He sighed heavily. Well, it was too late now to do anything about it. He just hoped Yancey wouldn’t go too hog-wild.
But that wasn’t Yancey’s nature. He was mature enough to know that Kate was a woman who would make up her own mind in her own time. Nothing he nor anyone else did would ever have any lasting influence on Kate’s final decision.
So while he reckoned he would be loco to work at throwing a high, wide and handsome drunk, he figured it wouldn't hurt any to loosen up after the tension of the past few weeks. He and Cato hired a suite of rooms in the Lincoln Hotel on Alamo Street and soaked off some of the trail dirt in tubs of hot sudsy water. Then they had themselves a slap-up meal in the hotel’s dining room, with good bourbon whisky to wash it down. By then they were feeling ready to savor the delights of Austin.
They went out onto the street and cut across the Plaza around the edge of the park to the ‘wilder’ section of town where the saloons and gambling joints were located. It was a sort of unofficial red light district: most respectable people didn’t want to know it was there and as long as its nightly rowdiness was confined to that area, no one cared unduly.
Right now, when Yancey and Cato hit ‘the section,’ as it was called, it was simmering, no more. There seemed to be a lot of cowpokes whooping it up and they figured there must be a trail herd in the holding p
ens down near the railroad depot. These cowboys were well on the way to being drunk and Yancey could see that it wouldn’t take much to spark off a brawl. He stopped Cato as they were about to enter one of the saloons, his hand on the smaller man’s arm. “Johnny, I figure I’ll maybe cut out tonight, right here.”
Cato looked at him in surprise. “What in hell for? Night’s young. We got a few weeks’ leave, the governor said …”
“That’s what I meant,” Yancey said, “plenty of time for throwing a wingding. When you get right down to it, I’m just too damn tired to be spendin’ a night drinking and brawling, Johnny.”
Cato looked at him sharply. “Tired? Hell, man, I’m near ten years older than you!”
Yancey smiled faintly. “And got a string of women pantin’ for you from here clear to the Gulf.”
“So that’s it. You ain’t so mad at Kate as you was a couple of hours ago.” He grinned. “While Kate’s in New Orleans havin’ a good time, you don’t have to sit around twiddlin’ your thumbs, old pard.”
“Don’t have to go busting ’em up on some cowpoke’s thick head, either.”
Cato shrugged. “Well, just have a couple more drinks and then you can go home to bed. I might even come and tuck you in.”
“The hell with you!” Yancey grinned amiably. “No, if I have a couple more drinks with you here, you’ll want me to have a couple more in another saloon, then another one someplace else, and by that time you’ll be spoilin’ for a fight and a woman ... not necessarily in that order .... and I’ll, feel obliged to come in and help you ... with the fight, that is! And I’ll get my hands all busted up, maybe my head, too, and blood all over my fresh shirt, my clothes torn, maybe even shot!” He shook his head, grinning. “I must be getting old, Johnny.”
“Aw, you’re just pinin’ for Kate. She won’t be expectin’ you to sit around just waitin’ for her to come back!”
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