by Jory Sherman
“Maybe I can help you get out of that scrape, if you help me.”
“I’d be obliged.”
They rode double back to the stables where Dan had Dapper quartered. Dan was thinking that he had not only made a friend, but perhaps an ally.
Suddenly, life seemed a little brighter.
But he knew there were dark times ahead when he saw a horse that was just being put up, a horse he recognized.
The horse, a rangy red sorrel, belonged to one of Krebs’s men, Max Dooley.
And Dooley was a killer, just like Krebs, and was the one Dan saw when he was leaving the Double Eagle.
Chapter Fourteen
Dan saw to it that Socks was taken care of at the livery. At a dry goods store, he paid for new denims, shirt, socks, underwear, and a hat for Raskin. Then Dan took Pete to the Double Eagle and paid extra for him to share his room. The clerk rented them a cot, blanket, and a pillow.
“I’m not going to give you any cash because you might run off on me,” Dan told Pete. “But if you need anything, just holler.”
“I won’t run out on you.” Raskin set up the cot against one wall, well away from Dan’s bed. By then, the sun was going down, its rays slanting through the window and gilding the tops of the buildings across the way.
Dan pointed to the table and chairs in the center of the room.
“Sit down, Pete. I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dan smiled as Pete sat down. He took the other chair. “You can’t call me Dan here in Waco.”
“Huh?”
“I’m using a different name. You’ll have to call me Jason. I’m a wanted man, remember.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll call you Jason, Dan.”
Dan laughed. “Now, we’ve got to put our heads together, Pete. I have to know when the rangers are going to ride out of the fort with their witness, Jerico Jones. Any ideas?”
“Well, I been thinkin’ about what you said and I know you can’t show your face to them rangers. But I been here near a week. Ran out of money three days ago, but I was taking my meals at a place near the fort where the rangers eat and drink. And just settin’ there by myself, I heard a lot of talk. Didn’t make no sense at the time, but since you told me what was up, I figured it all out.”
“Figured what all out?” Dan asked.
“Well, sir, them rangers have been talkin’ about San Antonio a lot. I couldn’t make no sense out of it until today.”
“What were they saying, these rangers?”
“I heard one of ’em gripe about riding down to San Antonio acting as nursemaid for a real scared feller. Another one said that Jerico boy would have to tote several pairs of pants. They were all laughing and joking about taking this ‘Jerico boy’ down to San Antonio.”
“Did any of ’em say when they were taking the witness down there?”
“I heard some of ’em say Saturday.”
“That’s two days from now. When did you hear that conversation?”
“Yesterday,” Raskin said.
The windows darkened as the sun went down. Dan lit a lamp, while his mind raced with the plans he must make.
“I’ll get us provisions for the ride,” Dan told Raskin. “Let me take a look at the Navy you’re carrying.”
Without hesitation, Raskin drew his pistol, handed it to Dan butt first.
“This won’t do much, Pete. It’s .36 caliber, and a conversion to boot. Wouldn’t you rather carry a .45 or a .44?”
“Why, sure, Dan—I mean, Jason. But this is all I have. It belonged to my pappy and he gave it to me after he had it modified for centerfire cartridges. Shoots straight.”
“And makes small holes.”
Raskin grinned. “I don’t plan on shootin’ nobody.”
“Waco’s called ‘Sixgun Junction’, Pete. I know you don’t want to kill anybody, but if you carry a pistol with a larger caliber it might discourage a body from calling you out. Better to have a big old Colt than a peashooter like the one you got.”
“You forget, I don’t have any money.”
“I saw a pawn shop in town that had a whole window full of good-looking pistols. I think I can spare three or four dollars to get you a hogleg and a box of cartridges.”
“I’m already beholden to you,” Raskin said.
“You can owe me.”
Raskin grew thoughtful as Dan handed his pistol back to him. Pete turned it over in his hands and looked at its simple lines. It had no top trap and was lean, with some of the bluing worn off, and the hammer down on an empty cylinder.
“Did you ever shoot anybody?” Raskin asked. “I know you said you weren’t a murderer, but I just wondered.”
“I have. In self-defense.”
Dan found himself liking Pete. In a way, Raskin reminded him of his younger brother, Jason. Pete was about the same age as Jason when he had been killed. Because Dan was older than Pete, he felt somewhat like a teacher, a big brother, perhaps. So he didn’t mind answering his questions, questions that he would never tolerate from any other stranger. This gave Dan an odd feeling, but he accepted it. He was feeling responsible for Pete, as he had felt for Jason. Pete, he realized, was turning into his little brother, and it was not a bad feeling.
“Did you—did you ever kill anybody?”
“Yes,” Cord said.
Raskin holstered his Navy and breathed out in a rush of air.
“What did that feel like?” Raskin asked. “I mean shooting a man dead.”
“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” Dan replied. “It’s awful hard to pull the trigger on a living, breathing man. But when you’re looking down the barrel of a rifle or a six-gun and you think about dying yourself, you’ve just got to get over that. Or you’ll be dead yourself. So the blood rushes to your head and you shoot. Straight as you can. And then, you get sick.”
“You get sick?”
“Right afterwards, when you got the smoke in your nose and you see the blood and the hole, and smell what a man done in his pants when he dies, and you know you’ve taken a life just so easy and fast and it’s so final like. You can’t never go back to the moment just before you squeeze the trigger and bring breath back into that man lying there dead as a stone. So your belly kicks up and burning stuff comes up in your throat and you just want to puke all over the floor and then go find a hole to crawl in and pull that hole down in with you so nobody can see what you done. But, you can’t hide from God and you got that on top of you like a sack full of pig iron and maybe you got shame, too, and a bad feeling that won’t go away easy.”
“Cripes,” Pete whispered.
“At one moment, it felt like the ground had dropped out from under me and I was falling into a deep, dark hole—a black hole that I’d never get out of. I could feel that in my stomach as if I’d fallen off a cliff and left my belly somewhere up on the rim. Looking back on it, that first time, I think I felt that I had done something really huge, so huge it made me feel small. Do you understand any of this? It’s really hard to explain. And, I’ve never talked to anybody about it before.”
“Yes, I think so,” Raskin said. “I think I’d feel the same way if I had to take someone’s life.”
“I killed some Indians, too, on the ride back down from Abilene. They were killing white folks; women and children, as well as the men. It felt bad. I could see their eyes go empty and the blood, the lifeblood, pouring out of them.”
Raskin shuddered with the thought. “I don’t know if I could do it,” he said.
“You either do it, or you might die yourself.”
“I don’t know. Taking someone’s life…”
“Look, Pete, I shouldn’t be telling you all this. It might make your gun hand slow at the wrong time.”
“No, I asked the question. I wanted to know. Maybe I need to know.”
“Well, there’s one other thing you ought to know,” Dan said.
“What’s that?”
“After you kill a man, it feels like you killed everybody an
d everything in the world.”
“Huh? I don’t savvy that.”
Dan lowered his head. He kept it there, not looking at Pete while he spoke.
“Ah, it’s a strange feeling. The strangest. At that moment, just after you see a man down, dead, you’re all alone. All alone in the world—like you been orphaned or something. You feel alone, and you are alone. Hard to explain, maybe, but I remember that feeling. It was the same with the Kiowa. One minute they were there, and the next they were gone.” Dan paused. “And, I think you feel alone for the rest of your life. Even if you’re in a room full of folks.”
“Jesus,” Raskin said. “It’s just a damned awful way to feel.”
Dan got up and walked to the window, looked out into the darkness. “It’s the way I feel,” he said softly. “Ever since I killed my first human being.”
There was a silence in the room after that. Pete cleared his throat self-consciously and looked forlornly at Dan’s back. He wrung his hands as if washing them. He cleared his throat again. He coughed.
Dan turned around, took a deep sighing breath. “Let’s go down to the saloon,” he said. “Have a drink or two, maybe get something to eat.”
Raskin brightened. “Yeah, Dan. Let’s do ’er.”
“Don’t forget to call me ‘Jason’.”
“Yeah, I mean, Jason. A swaller would be good about now, I reckon.”
Dan laughed.
The two men walked downstairs and into the saloon. Leon Law was behind the bar, reading the newspaper. He looked up, continued reading.
“Two whiskies, Leon. We’d be obliged.”
“All right,” Leon said, dropping the paper behind the bar and walking over. “I thought I might have to close early, it’s so dead in here.”
“Where is everybody?” Dan asked.
“There’s cheaper drinks down the street, and pretty gals. Onliest ones who come in here are saddle tramps and owlhooters. Allison left town, I reckon. His club foot was bothering him last I saw him and he was in a temper.”
Law set two glasses on the bar, poured generously from the whiskey bottle.
“Four bits each. A buck,” he said.
Dan laid a dollar bill on the bar.
“You want the bottle?” Law asked.
“Naw,” Dan said. “We’ll sit at a table. If we want another we’ll come and get ’em.”
“Suit yourself. Who’s your friend, Jason?”
Before Dan could say anything, Raskin spoke up, a little too quickly, Dan thought.
“The name’s Ryan,” Raskin said. “Johnny Ryan.”
Law snorted. “Like hell it is,” he said. “But, it’s as good a name as any I hear in this place.”
Dan and Pete sat down at a corner table, well away from the bar.
“Ryan?” Dan said, trying not to snicker.
“Hell, I’m on the owlhoot same as you. Jason.” Pete put a hard emphasis on ‘Jason’.
Dan lifted his glass. “Here’s to Johnny and Jason,” he said softly.
“Yeah. Here’s to us, a couple of danged outlaws.”
The two men drank and talked. A little later, a man walked into the saloon without glancing at Raskin and Cord. He stood at the very end of the bar and put one foot up on the rail.
Law turned. “Well, I’ll be damned. Where’d you drift in from, Max?”
Dan froze and stared at the man who had come in and was standing there, a twist of a grin on his face.
“Uh oh,” Dan whispered, and Pete looked at him in alarm.
“What’s the matter?” Pete asked.
“Trouble, maybe.”
Dan let his right arm drop to his side. He loosened his pistol in its holster.
Max Dooley looked over then, at Raskin and Cord, his face half-lit by a lamp behind the bar. His stare was hard as bullets.
Chapter Fifteen
Dan stared back, knowing his own face was in shadow. And his stare was just as lethal as the gunman standing at the end of the bar.
To Dan’s surprise, the man touched two fingers to his hat brim in a silent salute.
Dan nodded and looked down at his drink.
Pete Raskin sat there, speechless.
The man was covered with trail dust, unshaven. He pulled out a snuff box and pinched some, then snorted the tobacco into both nostrils. He made a face then put the tin box back in his pocket. He plunked coins down on the bartop while Law held up a bottle.
“Some Redeye, or do you want Tanglefoot?”
“I don’t give a damn what you got, Leon. Just so long as it’s wet and burns some of this damned dust out of my throat.”
Law laughed and brought the bottle and a glass over, set them down in front of Max Dooley. He poured the glass almost full.
“You’re in a sweet mood, gent,” Law said.
The man walked over to the table where Cord and Raskin were sitting. He looked directly at Dan.
“Don’t I know you?” the man said.
“I reckon not.”
“Well, step up to the bar and I’ll buy you boys a drink. I don’t like to drink alone.”
Dan and Pete exchanged glances. Dan shrugged. “As soon as we finish these, we’ll come over,” he said.
“Good.” The man walked back to the bar and downed two fingers of whiskey.
“Leon, you sure do know the way to a man’s heart,” the man said.
“What’re you going to do?” Raskin said to Dan.
“We’ll go up, have a drink with him, and then be on our way somewhere else.”
“That’s a bonifided gunman, ain’t it?”
“He’s trash,” Dan said under his breath.
The two finished their drinks, took their glasses to the bar. They stood a few feet from the man at the end of the bar. Pete was closest to him.
“Leon, pour whatever they’re having,” the man said.
Law brought the same bottle up and poured drinks into Dan’s and Pete’s glasses.
“Thank you, Mister,” Pete said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Dan added.
The man drank another two fingers of his whiskey and then turned toward Dan and Pete and stepped away from the bar. Raskin whispered to Dan: “Uh oh, it looks like there might be gunplay.”
“Step away from the bar,” Dan told Pete.
He and Pete drank some of the whiskey. Pete stepped away from the bar.
“Buy you another, boys?” the man asked, looking straight at Dan.
“No thanks. I’ve got this one and that’s about my limit today.”
“I sure as hell know you.”
“No, you don’t, and I sure don’t know you.”
“The name’s Dooley. Max Dooley.”
Dan drank a small sip of his whiskey. In imitation, Pete did the same.
Then Dan turned to Dooley, stared him straight in the eye. Hatred boiled up in him, but he fought it down, knowing that if he started a fight with Dooley, it would jeopardize everything he had suffered for these long months. If Krebs found out there was trouble in the bar, that could spoil Alexander’s chances of catching him. Krebs would go into hiding and make it even tougher to find him. But he wanted to kill Dooley at that very moment. He wanted to put a bullet in him and watch him squirm as he lay dying on the floor. Still, he couldn’t resist throwing down the gauntlet. If Dooley opened the ball, then Dan was ready to pick up the challenge and blow the man to hell.
When neither Dan nor Pete said anything, Dooley spoke up again.
“I didn’t get your names. When a man buys another man whiskey, it’s polite to exchange names. Unless yours are both attached to a reward poster.”
Dooley dropped his right arm so that it was concealed from view. But Dan knew the man had his hand close enough to his pistol to draw it and start shooting.
“I’m Jason Martin,” Dan said. “My friend is called John Ryan.”
“So, I’m offering you another drink. How about it?”
“All right, Mr. Dooley,” Dan said. “Thank you for your offer.
But I’m at my limit and so is John Ryan. In exchange, I’ll give you some advice.”
“What’s that?”
“If you think that hogleg is going to earn you any money here tonight, just forget it. We don’t have our names on any reward flyers.”
“I ain’t no bounty man,” Dooley said. “I ain’t said nothing to give you that idea.”
“Not with your mouth, maybe, but your face has greed wrote all over it, Dooley.”
“You got a smart mouth.”
“And, last I heard, it was a free country. A man can speak what’s on his mind.”
“Long as it don’t get a feller’s dander up, maybe.”
“I can’t be held to the thickness of a man’s skin,” Dan said.
Dooley drew in a breath, held it for several seconds. For a moment, it looked to Dan as if Dooley might go for his gun. But he seemed to be studying Dan’s eyes, weighing his chances of beating the younger man to the draw. Then, Dooley switched his glance to Raskin. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw that Pete had gone into a fighting crouch and had one hand poised just above the butt of his pistol. Dan wondered if he had misjudged Pete. He didn’t look like a man who would run from a fight just then.
“Leon, I’ll have another,” Dooley said, forcing a lightness to his speech. “I ain’t got a two swaller limit like these boys.”
“Max, you ain’t got no limit whatsoever,” Leon said, picking up a bottle from behind the bar.
Law brought the bottle over to Dooley, poured him another four fingers. Dooley brought his right arm back up and grabbed the drink, but he didn’t bring the glass to his lips.
“Now, calm down everybody. That’s why we don’t have gambling in here,” Law said. “We don’t like arguments. We’re all friends here.”
“Far as I’m concerned,” Dooley said, smiling.
Law looked at Dan, his eyes flashing a warning, along with his broad smile.
Law stood there at the bar where Dooley was standing, as if to referee. He took a towel from his waist and began polishing the bar.
“Say, Max, where’s your pard, Bartlett? I didn’t think you and Lonnie ever rode separate. Kind of like two peas in a pod.”
Dan stiffened. He knew the name, Lonnie Bartlett. He was another of Jake Krebs’s henchmen. They had robbed the bank in Junction City, Kansas, and tried to frame Dan for it. Dan could almost feel another noose around his neck.