Lawless Breed

by Ralph Hayes

  The fellow called Eben picked the Colt up and turned it over in his hand. Brushed it off. ‘Nice balance.’ He stuffed it into his belt. ‘I reckon the Rikers sent you.’

  ‘What?’ Sumner asked impatiently.

  ‘Are there more coming?’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’m on my way to Dodge. I have important business there and I’d like to be on my way.’

  ‘He’d like to be on his way!’ Lenny cackled. ‘You hear that, Eben? This boy thinks he’s going somewhere!’

  ‘I heard,’ Eben responded. ‘Take it easy, boy.’

  ‘You said I could have the next one,’ Lenny pleaded. ‘Don’t go back on your word, Eben.’

  This is different,’ Eben said, still looking Sumner over. ‘This boy come here after us. Because of what we done to that Riker boy.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of the Rikers,’ Sumner said rather loudly. Inside, something had coiled tight. ‘Look, I’ve got money I can give you. You can have it all. Just let me go on my way. I have to get to Dodge City.’

  ‘If we want your money, we’ll take it,’ Eben said coolly. ‘Now, you just turn yourself around and get right back in that cabin, mister.’

  ‘Now, wait—’

  Lenny stepped forward and leveled the Winchester at Sumner’s face. ‘He’s just asking for it, ain’t he, Eben? Can I?’

  ‘You better get your butt inside, mister,’ Eben told him. ‘While I still got control of this excited brother of mine.’

  Sumner took another look at breathing-hard Lenny, and at the rifle aimed at his belly, and with a heavy sigh, turned and went into the cabin again. The other two right behind him.

  ‘Hold it right there,’ Eben’s voice came to him. He was in the center of the room, beside the old table. ‘Now turn around.’

  Sumner turned and saw that Eben had stationed himself against the front door, which he had closed. He had never taken the shotgun off Sumner.

  ‘Go get that rope over in the corner there,’ he directed Lenny. ‘And cut a couple feet off the end. Then bring it over here and tie his hands up.’

  Lenny holstered the rifle and followed his brother’s orders eagerly, scurrying about on what appeared to be a deformed left leg. There was only one gun on Sumner now, but Eben was watching him like a hawk with that big gun. Sumner knew that if he made the slightest move, he would have a hole in him you could stuff your fist through.

  Lenny came over to Sumner with the rope, facing him with an unnerving grin.

  ‘Not in front, you fool!’ Eben growled at him. ‘Tie them in back!’

  Lenny limped around Sumner and tied his hands back there. Sumner tried with modest success to keep his hands slightly apart while the rope was being secured.

  ‘You should’ve took the coat off,’ Eben complained. ‘But never mind now. You can go get that billy we keep in the box.’

  Lenny left him again, and Sumner began to worry about what they might have in mind. But at least they had made a small first mistake. If they had removed his black jacket, they would have discovered the Harrington Derringer at the small of his back, in its special, thin cut-down holster.

  When Lenny returned, he was carrying a billy club used by town marshals to subdue drunks. It was ten inches long and made of oak, with a leather loop at its handle end. Lenny stood before him, smacking it into his other hand.

  ‘Now, Eben?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Eben told him. ‘Set yourself on that chair, Riker.’

  Sumner followed his command, seating himself on a rickety straight chair near the table. ‘My name is Sumner,’ he said heavily. ‘And I have nothing to tell you about the Rikers. I just rode up here from the Territory. I’m looking for two US Deputy Marshals.’

  Eben squinted down on him. ‘Better tie his ankles up, too,’ he said in a thoughtful tone.

  In just moments, Lenny had cut another length of rope and bound Sumner’s feet together. Now he was almost helpless.

  Eben came over and laid the shotgun on the table. There were no guns on Sumner now, but both men were armed on their gun-belts. Eben’s sidearm was a Joslyn .44, which was an accurate gun. He came over to Sumner, unafraid of him now.

  ‘Are you an older brother? To the boy we dealt with here?’

  ‘Are you hard of hearing?’ Sumner said darkly. ‘My name is Sumner. I’m originally from Texas. I’ve never met a Riker in my life. When did you – when was this other Riker here? How long ago?’

  ‘You know the answer to that,’ Eben said.

  ‘He’s funning with us, Eben!’ Lenny shouted wildly.

  ‘You don’t level with us, Lenny will commence on you,’ Eben told Sumner, leaning toward him.

  ‘Humor me before you turn him loose,’ Sumner said heavily. ‘When was the Riker boy here?’

  Eben shrugged. ‘A couple years back. But we heard from you boys since then.’

  ‘I was in Texas State Prison two years ago. Then I was working for Clay Allison. You can check. I couldn’t have known anything about Riker, or what you did to him.’

  Eben nodded to his brother and suddenly the billy club came at Sumner’s head. It struck him on the left side of his head and face, fracturing the cheek bone under Sumner’s eye. Raw pain rocketed through Sumner’s head, and a dark chasm welled in on him. He saw a movement where Lenny’s arm was being raised again, and heard Eben’s voice as if through a long tunnel.

  ‘No. That’s enough for now.’

  Sumner almost fell off the chair. Sharp daggers of pain stabbed at him under his left eye, where his eye was swelling shut fast. He didn’t quite lose consciousness, but was breathing raggedly.

  ‘You . . . sonsofbitches.’

  ‘Did you hear what he called us, Bubba?’

  But Eben was ignoring Lenny. He came and sat down on a second chair, facing Sumner. ‘He’s still with us. Listen, stranger. Maybe I believe you. Anyway, we’ll just hope you’re the last of them. But it’s kind of unlucky for you. That you come past here. ’Cause Lenny’s ready for some entertainment again. And I don’t like to deprive him too long. He could turn on me, you see.’

  Sumner was coming around, and he now stared hard at Eben, and then at the psychopath grinning at him. What the hell have I fallen into, he asked himself. Now it looked like all his plans were aborted, and Corey’s death would go unanswered. All because he stopped at this loony bin.

  He couldn’t let that happen. It would be an indescribable abomination. He had to do something. But he was helpless. In their power.

  ‘If you’ll let me go,’ he gasped out, ‘I can get you more money than I have with me. I can promise you that.’

  ‘We never really needed money,’ Eben assured him. ‘We just get along by ourselves And I just have to give Lenny his way sometimes. To keep him calm, you know.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Sumner mumbled.

  ‘Can I use the iron, Eben?’ Sumner heard the younger brother ask.

  ‘Oh, all right. But don’t make it last forever. I’ll be getting hungry pretty soon here.’

  Sumner saw Lenny scurry over to the fireplace, and throw a couple of logs onto the fire, making it crackle and flare up. Then he took an iron rod used for stirring up the fire, and laid an end of it on the flames. He turned and flashed a twisted grin at Sumner.

  ‘It will be ready for you directly,’ his reedy voice announced.

  It was clear to Sumner now what they had planned for him. Eben was going to let his deranged brother murder Sumner. In a most unpleasant way. Which was undoubtedly what had happened to that Riker they talked about. Eben was busy now getting some canned goods down from a shelf. Lenny hovered over Sumner, grinning psychotically. He had found a sharp-pointed table knife and now held it up to Sumner’s right eye, an inch or two away.

  ‘I could give this a shove, and you couldn’t see what’s going to happen,’ he said.

  Sumner held his breath. One jab from that knife and he would be half-blind. Two jabs and his life was substantially over, wh
atever else occurred.

  ‘I’d rather see it happen,’ he managed.

  ‘Good,’ Lenny hissed. ‘Better for me.’ He left Sumner and returned to the fireplace.

  Sumner had begun working at the rope that held his hands, with little result. The effort, also, was causing the rope to cut into his flesh, and his wrists were already hurting from the trauma. As he worked at it, though, he felt a sharp sliver of wood protruding slightly from an upright that formed the back of the chair. While Lenny was engaged at the fire, Sumner manipulated the knot in the rope so it caught on the sliver, and when he pushed downward, the sliver caught the knot and pulled at it.

  He had to be careful. When Lenny was at the fire, he had a view of Sumner’s back from the right side. Sumner worked the knot.

  ‘Don’t take it out of there till it’s good and hot,’ Eben said from across the room. ‘I want to get this over with.’

  ‘All right, Eben,’ Lenny responded. He came over to Sumner, and Sumner stopped working the knot. Lenny came around to face him again.

  ‘The end of that poker will be red hot, Riker. Do you know what that does to a man’s flesh?’ A wild look.

  Sumner carefully resumed working the knot. He felt it loosening slightly. But he couldn’t make a movement that could be seen from Lenny’s viewpoint.

  ‘I asked you a question, Riker. You want it in the face first? I think the belly is a soft spot o start.’ He leaned forward and ripped Sumner’s shirt open, making buttons fly across he room. Sumner flinched but said nothing. The knot was loose now, and he reached out with a finger and began pulling the rope free.

  Lenny returned to the fire just as Eben spoke to him. ‘Get on with that. I’m going outside in a minute to look in his saddle bags. I want it over when I get back in here.’

  ‘All right, Eben,’ Lenny grunted.

  Eben exited the cabin then, and Sumner realized they had made their second mistake. Now Lenny came back from the fire, and he was holding the iron poker that glowed red at its end. Lenny held the other end with a gloved hand.

  ‘Now,’ he was saying. ‘The fun begins. This is like a party, ain’t it?’

  Behind his back, the rope fell off Sumner’s wrists. ‘I like parties,’ Sumner said quietly. ‘But it looks like your brother is in trouble out there.’

  Lenny frowned. ‘Huh?’ He turned just for a moment to peer through the open doorway.

  In that moment, Sumner pulled his jacket up in back, grabbed the Derringer with his bloody right hand, and brought it around to level on Lenny just as he turned back to Sumner.

  ‘Surprise!’ Sumner growled out. Then the one-shot Derringer barked out in the room and blew a small hole in Lenny’s lower face, just beside his nose.

  The lead traveled through Lenny’s brain and blew bone and matter out of the back of his skull. His head whiplashed, a deep frown taking over his face. Then he toppled to the floor at Sumner’s feet, the hot poker lying on his chest and slowly burning a hole in it.

  Sumner heard Eben yell, ‘What the hell!’ from out in the encroaching dusk, then he came running back to the cabin, gun drawn.

  Sumner, though, seeing the American shotgun still on the kitchen table, grabbed it from his sitting position, turned its muzzle toward the door, and squeezed one of its triggers just as Eben came back in. The shotgun blasted its thunder into the close confines of the cabin, and Eben was struck at waist level, the shot almost tearing him in half. He went flying back out of the cabin as his revolver went off once and tore a chunk out of the overhead rafters behind Sumner.

  Sumner rose from the chair. His wrists were bleeding and his left eye was almost swollen closed. There were still sharp stabbing pains from the busted cheek bone. But, miraculously, he was alive.

  He walked around the table and looked down at Lenny’s lifeless body with the poker smouldering on it. He savagely kicked the corpse in the side. Then he walked outside the door and examined Eben.

  The older brother, the man who criminally gave his psychotic sibling the licence to kill savagely, lay with his torso in one direction and his legs in another. There was almost nothing in between but shredded flesh. He lay in a widening pool of blood.

  Sumner saw double for a moment, then his focus returned. ‘That’s for all those others, you soulless sonofabitch!’ he spat out.

  He went back inside, and smelled the odor of burnt flesh where Lenny’s chest was vulnerable to the poker. Sumner picked the poker up and hurled it into the fireplace, where the fire angrily reacted.

  Sumner stepped over the body of his tormenter and went over to a shelf on the wall, where Eben had deposited his Colt, and retrieved and holstered it. Then he found a pot of stew sitting near the fireplace. He heated it up, found a spoon, and sat down at the table and ate a meal there, ignoring the corpses littering the area.

  When he was finally finished, he left the cabin and quieted the stallion, which was still waiting patiently for his return, but seemed skitterish. He boarded it painfully. Thinking that this was beginning to look more like an odyssey than a mission.

  ‘Well,’ he said to his mount. ‘Our goal is still the same. And we should still be in Dodge City tomorrow. Let’s find us a good place to rest tonight.’

  He figured he would need it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sumner found a campsite in a small grove of trees a couple of hours after he left the cabin, and spent a restless night with his left eye waking him regularly. There was no water for the stallion, and Sumner drank what was left in his canteen. When dawn broke across the eastern horizon with pastel brush strokes of lavender and crimson, Sumner felt as if he hadn’t slept at all. His eye and cheek, though, had quit attacking him with sharp needles of pain and the swelling in his eye had subsided. Blood had caked on his wrists and he had found a second shirt in his saddle-bags to replace the torn one. By the time he rode out, he was feeling just a little better, and still very grateful to be alive. When he first awoke, he had had the strongest urge to return to the cabin and kick Lenny’s corpse a last time.

  It was just a few hours’ ride to Dodge City, and Sumner arrived there in early afternoon. Riding along the main street, Sumner was impressed by the lively look of the town, a mood that belied the trouble the city was experiencing now. Carriages and buggies rolled along the broad street, and stores were busy with customers. He passed a saloon called the Long Branch and a couple smaller ones on his way through town, and found the city marshal’s office in a weathered building at the end of the street. He stopped the tired stallion just in front of the entrance and situated it at a hitching post.

  ‘You’ll get a rest now,’ he told it. ‘I’ll get you bedded down shortly.’

  When he entered the place, there was nobody in sight. He was in a cluttered room, with papers piled on an old desk and boxes stacked in a corner. There were two poster boards on a back wall, with wanted posters and others that looked as if they had been there for years. A corridor led from the room to holding cells at the rear of the building. Sumner walked down the corridor to the cells and found a bulky-looking man there taking a mattress off a cot in one of the cells. The fellow looked up when he heard Sumner approach.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Sumner greeted him.

  The other man came out of the cell and looked Sumner over with a wary stare.

  ‘You another of them hired guns that Luke Short brought in?’ He wore a badge prominently on his vest.

  ‘I don’t know Luke Short,’ Sumner said.

  ‘Hmmph.’ He studied Sumner’s face. It was black and blue around his left eye and on his cheek. ‘Did you run into a post or something?’

  ‘My horse kicked me,’ Sumner said.

  ‘I’d get me another horse,’ was the response. ‘I’m Marshal Hartman. You ought to have that looked at.’

  ‘It will heal,’ Sumner said. ‘You think we could talk for a minute, Marshal?’

  L.C. Hartman nodded. ‘Come on up front. I got coffee on if you want some.’

  ‘I’ll pass.
’

  They went back to the office and sat at Hartman’s desk. Hartman poured himself a cup of coffee. ‘Now. How can I help you, young man?’

  ‘I’m looking for a couple of fugitives, and thought you might be able to help me with it.’

  ‘Oh. You’re one of them.’ With disdain.

  ‘I’m not looking for bounties. It’s personal.’

  ‘Well. Who are these men?’

  Sumner told him about the twosome, and Hartman listened carefully. ‘As it turns out, I just got posters on them two. From Fort Sill. They both got bounties on their heads. I ain’t seen either of them, but I hear a gunfighter-type rode in here a few days ago. He was alone.’

  ‘Did you hear what he looked like?’

  ‘Not really. I think he tried to hire on for Luke Short.’

  Sumner frowned. ‘Who is this Luke Short?’

  Hartman settled back on his chair. ‘You obviously ain’t from Kansas, boy. You landed yourself right in the middle of what they’re calling the Dodge City War. The reformers moved in here lock, stock and barrel some months ago. To close down the saloons in accordance with state law. And rid the town of prostitutes. And they expected me to do their dirty work. Well, I got rid of the saloon girls. But if I closed them saloons down, I’d have a cowboy riot on my hands.’

  ‘Sounds like quite a mess,’ Sumner offered.

  ‘That ain’t the half of it. In the middle of all that, I tried to arrest Luke Short. He owns the Long Branch. And he actually drew down on me. We both fired, and he got a nick on his arm. Me and my deputy sent him packing then, as an alternative to a jail term. But a month ago he was back here with two gunfighters and reopened the saloon. He says I broke the law by going against him. That Mayor Webster won’t lift a finger to help. The gunmen Short brought back with him are Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson.’

  ‘But they’re both lawmen themselves.’

  ‘They say they’re just here to keep the peace. A couple of the reformers have vowed to burn the saloons to the ground.’

  ‘Didn’t Earp wear a badge here once?’

  Hartman nodded. ‘He cleaned this town up almost single-handed. The mayor thinks he’s a damn hero. Of course, that was a few years back. Since the reformers heard of his return, they’ve vowed to hire their own guns. Somebody is going to get killed here right soon, you can count on it. And this fellow you’re after, if he’s here, might be the first one to pull the trigger.’