Hell's Jaw Pass

by Max O'Hara

  Diggs glowered. Sonny chuckled.

  Russell looked at Wolf again and said, “Well, you got off on the wrong foot before you even got here, Stockburn. Now, you’d best take my advice and head back to Kansas City before—”

  “Holy cow!” a man shouted from the eatery’s front door. “It’s Kreg Hennessey. Him an’ three of his big hard-tails are headed this way!”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Ah, hell.” Marshal Watt Russell turned back to Stockburn, his eyes wide and dark. “Now you done it!”

  The restaurant got even quieter than before. An elderly couple eating together near the counter, shuffled up out of their seats then hurried out the back door. The others sat in hushed silence, muttering quietly among themselves, squirming in their seats. They were like church parishioners knowing the preacher was on his way and he had a holy mad on.

  From out in the street came the heavy thudding of boots—several pairs, the thuds out of step with each other. Gradually, the raucous sounds grew louder.

  Watt Russell took one step back from Stockburn’s table and turned slowly to face the front of the restaurant, hands hanging straight down his sides. Diggs, who’d been standing directly in front of Stockburn’s table, now stepped to the right, flanking the big-gutted town marshal. Sonny, standing just off Stockburn’s right shoulder, took a couple more steps in that direction.

  Stockburn stood rolling his sharpened matchstick around between his teeth. He felt right unpopular, all of a sudden, as though he were one of those parishioners whom the angry preacher had singled out for a particularly strident dressing down. He slid his right hand across his belly, reaching under his black frock coat to unsnap the keeper thong from over the hammer of his cross-draw Peacemaker.

  The boot thuds grew louder until a big man stepped into the restaurant. He was so large that for a moment he filled the doorway, nearly blotting out all of the outside light. He wore a three-piece suit that was one or two sizes too small; he was all muscular bulges. He stepped to the left of the door and stood like a sentry, high-topped boots spread a little farther than shoulder width apart.

  He held a double-barrel, sawed-off shotgun in both his meaty hands.

  Another man stepped into the doorway, filling it momentarily before stepping to the right, taking his own sentry-like position on the opposite side of the door from the first man. This fellow wielded no shotgun, but there was a tell-tale bulge under his coat where a gun in a shoulder holster would be.

  Another man came in, similarly clad and built. He took three or four steps straight into the restaurant then swung around to half-face the doorway. He held what appeared to be a hide-wrapped bungstarter in his right hand. He tapped it absently against the palm of his left hand.

  A fourth man stepped through the door and into the restaurant.

  He was tall but leaner than the three obvious bouncers who’d preceded him. He was also older by a good twenty years. He wore a checked, rust-color suit over a white silk shirt and black foulard tie. He wore no hat. His hair was black and coarsely curled and sitting close against his head. He wore long side whiskers that bowed up from his jaws to form a heavy mustache over his mouth.

  He walked about six feet into the restaurant then stopped and looked around. His face was doughy and pale, and it sagged on his broad cheekbones. His gaze landed on Marshal Watt Russell and then slid from Russell to Stockburn and held for several seconds.

  Stockburn saw that the man had been crying. That’s why his face looked so ravaged, his eyes severely red-rimmed.

  Kreg Hennessey lifted his chin slightly, drew a deep breath through his nose, then walked heavily forward, turning toward Stockburn, his shoulders slumped forward and down, as though he were carrying a heavy but invisible burden. He walked so uncertainly, shuffling his feet, that at times he appeared to nearly fall before catching himself.

  He staggered up in front of Stockburn and stopped three feet away. He was breathing through his mouth. His breath smelled like a warm wind blowing over something dead. It almost made Stockburn wince; he fought the urge to take a step back away from the man.

  “Are you Stockburn?” Kreg Hennessey finally asked. His voice was a wheezy rasp, as though he were out of breath.

  “That’s right.”

  “I understand you murdered my son.”

  “You’re wrong. I killed your son to keep him from killing an innocent young lady he’d pulled off the train that he and his friends were trying to rob.”

  “Liar!”

  “It’s not a lie,” Stockburn said.

  “Liar!” Hennessey glanced at Watt Russell who stood behind him, looking stricken, as did everyone else in the place. “Lock him up for the murder of my boy, Russell!”

  Stockburn kept his voice even as he said, “I won’t be arrested, Hennessey. The way I see it I was doing everyone in this town and probably the entire county—except you but maybe even you—a big favor.”

  “Why, you—” Hennessey stepped forward, bringing a roundhouse punch up from his knees. Stockburn caught the man’s right wrist in his own left hand then hardened his jaws as he rammed his right fist against Hennessey’s mustached mouth—three quick jabs that he thrust straight out from his shoulder.

  The three smacking sounds came swift and certain. Hennessey grunted with each one as he staggered backward and dropped to a knee, holding both hands across his mouth.

  There was a collective gasp as everyone in the restaurant filled their lungs and held their breath.

  The three bouncers took three or four steps toward Stockburn then stopped, looking from Stockburn to their boss, eyes wide and round with shock.

  Hennessey lifted his eyes to Stockburn. He removed his hands from his smashed lips. His hands were bloody. Rage fairly glowed in his eyes.

  His face turned from flour white to sunset red as he jerked a look to the three men behind him and bellowed, “Don’t just stand there with your thumbs up your bums—kill him!”

  “Ah, hell!” Stockburn heard Watt Russell complain, taking another step back away from Wolf’s table.

  Stockburn saw the marshal of Wild Horse in the periphery of his vision. He kept his eyes locked on the three bouncers. The one with the shotgun gritted his teeth as he raised the double-barreled gut-shredder and swung it toward Wolf but not before Stockburn slid his cross-draw Peacemaker from his holster, clicked the hammer back, and fired.

  The .45 round punched through the bouncer’s thick black necktie, flipping it up off his chest while throwing the man himself backward. The bouncer triggered both barrels of his shotgun into the ceiling just before he flew out the front door and onto the boardwalk.

  A roar of fear rose from the diners, who literally fell over themselves and each other as they scrambled from their chairs to the floor.

  The second bouncer who’d been standing at the door fished a pearl-gripped revolver from his shoulder holster and was hardening his jaws as he ran forward then crouched and raised the hogleg, clicking the hammer back.

  He, too, fired his weapon into the ceiling as Stockburn’s second Peacemaker bullet drilled through his heart and hurled him onto a table behind which two drummers cowered, one of them muttering a prayer.

  The third bouncer, nearer to Wolf by eight feet, bellowed an angry curse then hurled the bungstarter end over end toward the rail detective. The hide-wrapped mallet gave a wicked whorl as Wolf ducked, and it flew over his head to break the window flanking him before thudding onto the boardwalk fronting the restaurant.

  Straightening, Stockburn extended his Colt at the big man who’d thrown the mallet. The man froze with one hand inside his black silk jacket, his broad face red with anxiety.

  He smiled as he slowly pulled the hand out of the jacket, showed the empty palm to Stockburn, then let it drop low against his side.

  “Good decision,” Stockburn said.

  A shadow moved on his right—a man coming in fast and close.

  Wolf wheeled too late. He saw the grinning face of Sonny half a blin
k before the chunky kid thrust the butt of his shotgun against Wolf’s right temple. Stockburn grunted, stumbled backward against his chair, hearing the kid give a victorious whoop and howl, “There—take that Mister Wolf of the Rails!”

  Wolf clawed at the table but his fingers brushed the end without finding purchase, and then he fell over the chair, taking the chair with him to the floor with a heavy crashing thud. His head smacked the wall beneath the window and then a cave-like darkness wrapped itself around him.

  * * *

  “Wakey.” The voice came from far away but also from close by.

  Strange.

  “Wakey-wakey.” There it was again, both from far away and near. A girl’s voice.

  “Wake-wakey, Wolf. Rise an’ shine.”

  Someone pulled up Stockburn’s left eyelid. Light assaulted it. He wanted to close it, but the finger held it open.

  Finally, he wrestled it closed but then the girl’s voice came again. “Can you wake up, Wolf? Hey, Wolf, it’s Lori McCrae. I can get you out of here. I rather think it’s a good idea if you come now. If you wait till morning . . . well . . . there might not be a morning, if you get my drift . . .”

  She slid her face down close to Stockburn’s. One of her pretty, shimmering brown eyes looked into the one of his that she was holding open with her thumb.

  Stockburn groaned, pulled his head back. He opened both eyes though the lids felt as though they weighed as much as a blacksmith’s anvils. He looked around briefly.

  He was in a jail cell. The cell door was open and two men, silhouetted against a lantern burning on a square post, stood in the hall. Lori McCrae was squatting on her haunches beside the cot on which Stockburn lay, wincing and gritting his teeth against the large, tender heart throbbing in his head.

  Stockburn cleared his throat. “What . . . what’re you doing here, Lori?”

  “Busting you out of here, Wolf. What’s it look like?”

  “How, uh . . . ? How, uh . . . ?” Stockburn’s brain was foggy, thoughts as turgid as ice floes.

  “I got you a lawyer. A good one. In fact, Mr. Powderhorn represents my father.”

  “Can you stand, Mister Stockburn?” asked one of the men in the hall. It was the voice of a cultivated man.

  “That’s George Powderhorn,” Lori said. “Can you stand, Wolf?”

  “Yeah.” Stockburn pushed up on a hand, dropped his feet to the floor. “Yeah . . . I can . . . stand.”

  He wasn’t sure yet if he could but he was willing to try if the alternative was to spend the night in Watt Russell’s jail. He couldn’t remember how he’d got here, or why, but he could sense the answer skulking around in the back of his head, like a coyote sniffing around the perimeter of a fire over which a tasty spit of meat was sizzling.

  He rose with Lori’s help, and as soon as he was standing, the answer came to him. He remembered Sonny’s broad, dull-eyed, grinning face, and the butt of the shotgun hurling toward Wolf’s head.

  Lori handed Wolf his hat. Holding it, he frowned at her curiously. “How did you manage this?” He also remembered smashing Kreg Hennessey’s mouth and killing two of his bodyguards or bouncers or whatever the hell they were.

  “Ridiculous,” came the reply from the cellblock hall. One of the two men out there had spoken again. He was the smaller of the two, and he stood to the left of the other man, the man who was holding open the door and who, judging by the man’s big gut and long, greasy hair, was Watt Russell.

  “Lori told me the whole story,” George Powderhorn said.

  “I went to George’s house after I heard about Hennessey”—she cast a cold glare at the other man in the cell block hall—“and Marshal Russell locking you up.”

  Russell was a blocky shadow who didn’t say anything. His face was a grim, black oval beneath the brim of his black Stetson.

  Powderhorn said, “Lori signed an affidavit testifying to your killing Riley Hennessey because he was about to shoot Lori. I talked to the engineer and the brakeman, who was wounded by one of the gang’s bullets. They corroborated your story and have agreed to write out their own testimonies. Russell has no right to hold you here.”

  “Them two bodyguards of Hennessey’s are another matter,” said Watt Russell for the first time, his angry voice raspy. Stockburn could hear the heavy man breathing through his nose. “Same with the big fella’s assault of Mister Hennessey himself. Them smashed lips will go a long way to gettin’ you run out of town on a greased rail, Stockburn.”

  “One of the diners, a respected man in town, told me it was all in self-defense,” Lori threw in forthrightly.

  Powderhorn, who held a crisp derby in his hands, over his chest, turned to Russell. “We’ll deal with the doings in the Metropolitan later—before a judge, if Hennessey thinks it wise for him, a known outlaw, to be heard by a judge and jury. In the meantime, Marshal, I’ll be filing a complaint against you with the county sheriff in Rawlins and with Judge Orville McDermott in Cheyenne. The complaints against you for unlawful arrest are stacking up. Eventually, they will bring you down whether you have Kreg Hennessey behind you or not!”

  Russell glared at him but said nothing. The look was threatening enough.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Come on, Wolf,” Lori said, placing her hand against the small of Stockburn’s back. “Let’s get you over to the doctor’s office. He should have a look at you.”

  “He’ll just see a goose egg on my forehead,” Stockburn said, stepping out into the hall. “I just need a couple shots of decent whiskey and I’ll be finer than frog hair split four ways.” He glanced at Russell. “No thanks to that yellow-livered little deputy of yours, Russell.”

  “Yeah, well, Sonny did all right by Mister Hennessey.” Russell closed the cell door with a purposefully loud clang that made Stockburn’s head kick like a mule. “He’ll likely get a bouncin’ job over to Hennessey’s Wind River Saloon, seein’ as ol’ Kreg suddenly has a couple of holes to fill on his payroll!”

  Stockburn gave a caustic snort as Lori led him down the hall to the mouth of a stairs that apparently dropped to the building’s first story. George Powderhorn followed, still holding his hat. Russell tramped along heavily, breathing loudly and hacking phlegm from his throat and spitting it on the floor, behind the lawyer.

  Stockburn and Lori descended the stairs to a wooden door with three bars across the small window in the top of it. The door stood partway open.

  Stockburn followed Lori through the door and into the jailhouse’s lamplit office, where Sonny sat in a chair beside a cluttered rolltop desk. A pretty, blond-haired girl dressed like a boy sat in the swivel chair behind the desk. The tall deputy with the stylish but worn suit and dragoon mustache, which needed a trim, stood against the room’s back, brick wall and a large framed map of the Wind River Mountains and the town of Wild Horse sitting on the range’s south end.

  Sonny and Diggs could barely contain devilish grins.

  “When I heard there was trouble over at the Cosmopolitan, I didn’t know you were part of it, Miss Lori,” the blonde said, studying Miss McCrae with an insinuating sneer.

  Lori merely smiled at the girl, tolerantly.

  “Ivy, what’re you doin’ here, dammit,” Russell complained. “I told you to stay home after dark!”

  “Well, gee, Pa, when I heard there was a shootin’ over at the Cosmopolitan and it involved the Wolf of Wichita his own big, handsome self”—she raked her eyes up and down Stockburn’s rumpled frame several times, her baby blue eyes fairly glowing—“you know I couldn’t just sit in the parlor, practicing the piano. Besides, I knew Diggs needed pestering.”

  Diggs flushed, glanced warily at Russell, then averted his gaze, kneading his hat brim as though it was dough he was pressing into the lip of a pie pan.

  “Dammit, Ivy, I told you to stay away from Seth. He’s my deputy and that’s all he is to you and all he’ll ever be to you. He makes less money than I do, and you by God are going to marry a man of wealth if I have to lock you in o
ur cellar till the right man of wealth comes along!” The big-gutted lawman looked at Diggs and said, “Dammit, boy, eyes off my daughter!”

  “Ah, hell!” Diggs dropped his gaze to the floor. “I didn’t invite her here, but now that she’s here, you can’t expect me to not look at her, Marshal Russell!”

  Stockburn had to admit that the blonde was a heart-breaker if in a rough-hewn way. There was something particularly fetching in the way she carried herself, even sitting down. And in the way she wore her checked shirt, with her suspenders pulled taut against her ample bosoms.

  Stockburn felt Lori’s eyes on him. He looked down at her. Sure enough, she was scowling up at him with cold, jealous chagrin. She hugged his arm and started for the jailhouse door. “Come along, Wolf of Wichita. Let’s get you out of this snake pit and over to the hotel.”

  “Hold on.” Wolf stopped and turned to Russell, aware of the blonde’s eyes still on him. “My guns.”

  “How do I know if I give ’em to you, you won’t shoot Sonny?”

  “You don’t.”

  Sonny glared at Wolf and said in a low, throaty voice that was meant to be menacing but sounded more like the empty threat of a chicken-livered schoolboy bully: “I was just doin’ my job, Mister Wells Fargo!”

  “You’re a coward,” Stockburn told him. “You stay away from me, Sonny. If I spy you within hollerin’ distance of me again, you’ll get a Peacemaker enema free of charge.”

  “Hah!” Ivy laughed and, eyes glowing up at Stockburn, she slapped her hands jubilantly down on the arms of her chair. “I bet he would, too, sure enough!”

  Sonny’s face turned sunset red.

  “You be quiet, daughter!” Russell had pulled Stockburn’s gunbelt and Peacemakers out of a padlocked footlocker near his desk. Now he shoved them at the big rail detective and said, “Go on home, Stockburn. If you don’t, I won’t give you the courtesy of locking you up next time you get in trouble. And all the Miss McCraes and Mister Powder-horns won’t be able to put you back together again, despite the law reader’s threats!”