A Dangerous Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “You mind Handsome Jules Villemont, the gambler? Worked the Mississippi riverboats?”

  “Can’t say as I do,” Sullivan said.

  “Before your time, I guess. Well, Jules trifled with the affections of a Creole gal and then left her with a broken heart and a big belly. Her mama didn’t like it.”

  “And she was a swamp witch,” Sullivan guessed. His front was toasty warm and his back was freezing.

  “Damn right she was, and she laid a terrible curse on his man parts.”

  “Inconsiderate of her,” Sullivan said, pushing his knees together.

  “The curse took, an’ ol’ Jules wandered the streets of New Orleans for nigh on three years, wailing for his lost manhood. He tried everything of course, including powdered monkey bone, but nothing worked. He stayed limp as the little finger of an empty glove.”

  “Poor feller. So what happened to him?” Sullivan asked.

  “Jules begged the witch to raise her curse, but she refused. ‘Serves you right,’ she said. Well, then he blew his brains out.”

  “At least he went out with a bang.”

  “Uh-huh. And there’s a moral to what I’ve been telling you,” Butler said. “When a man in your profession asks for news of an outlaw like Longley, he has a reward on his mind and maybe a killin’. Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “Partly right, I guess. I want to kill Bill Longley real bad, but not for the reward on his head.”

  “You won’t be the man to kill him. The only crew lowdown and heartless enough to hang a feller twice is the law.”

  Sullivan smiled. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and the curse won’t take.”

  Butler shrugged. “The Jesuit was in good with God and he said it will. And I believe him.”

  Tam Sullivan slept fitfully under his blanket, rising every hour to throw more wood on the fire, check on the horses and the white bundle that was Ebenezer Posey’s body. He got up for the last time an hour before dawn, melted snow in the coffeepot, tossed in the last of the Arbuckle, and set the pot on the fire.

  Faith Butler, snoring slightly, didn’t stir.

  Coyotes yipped close, and snow fell in flakes as big as silver dollars and sizzled on the fire. The air was frigid, icy. When first light came, it revealed a sky as black as the inside of a cannon barrel.

  Sullivan shook Butler awake. “Coffee’s on the bile.”

  “Damn ye fer a scoundrel, waking a man from the best dream he’s had in a twelve-month.”

  “About women and whiskey, no doubt,” Sullivan said.

  The old man blinked, remembering. “Not any woman. It was Montana Maine herself come to visit me in a tent on the bank of the Canadian.”

  Sullivan was surprised. “You’ve met Montana Maine?”

  Butler sat up in his blankets. “Nope, never met her, but I sure hope to remedy that afore I die. They say she’s a sight to see.” The old man scowled. “Here, have you met her?”

  “No. Like you, I never have.”

  “Well, she’s no longer in my head. She just faded away like smoke when you woke me.”

  Sullivan grinned. “Sorry.”

  “Maybe it’s just as well. They say once a man sets eyes on Montana Maine, he’ll never settle for another woman. Now pour me a cup o’ that coffee, young feller. It sure smells good.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  A Grieving Widow

  After taking leave of Faith Butler, Tam Sullivan headed south as far as Barillas Peak where he swung due west though rugged high country that slowed the wagon in places. It was already growing dark when he reached the Pecos with the temperature hovering somewhere around zero.

  Three surviving walls of a burned-out cabin promised meager shelter of a sort, but he spent the last of the light searching for a place to cross the river. He found a narrow point with a stand of shivering willows on the opposite bank, their leaves the color of old gold.

  Satisfied that he could get across without too much trouble, Sullivan returned to the ruined cabin. He tried to build a fire with damp wood, failed miserably, and contented himself with a meal of jerky, the last inch of whiskey, and a cigar. For a while at least, the cigar’s glowing tip gave him the illusion of warmth.

  Ebenezer Posey was beyond feeling cold, but Sullivan carefully brushed snow from his wrapped body. “Sleep well, old timer. It’s going to be a miserable night.”

  And it was.

  Sullivan woke from shallow sleep, stiff and cold, frost in his bones.

  The morning offered nothing. Snow fell, the air hurt to breathe, and black clouds hung on the mountain peaks. The Pecos barely moved, flat as a sheet of glass.

  His fingers numb in his gloves, Sullivan harnessed up the Morgan, tied his stud to the rear of the wagon, and steeled himself for the last twenty miles of his journey.

  Behind him, Ebenezer Posey’s body swayed back and forth with every movement.

  Sullivan’s arrival at the Butterfield stage depot in Santa Fe caused a major stir. Pale clerks, their hands fluttering like moths, worried managers, and even the company’s hard-bitten drivers and guards crowded around the wagon, staring in stunned silence at Ebenezer Posey’s small, still body.

  Finally, a pink-faced man in broadcloth with a silver watch chain across his ample belly took Sullivan aside. “Who is he?”

  “One of yours. His name is Ebenezer Posey.”

  Recognition dawned on the man’s face. “Yes, he was one of our junior clerks.” His eyes flicked to the wagon. “You’d better come inside . . . Mister . . . ah . . .”

  “Sullivan.” He grabbed his saddlebags and the valise, and followed the man into the depot.

  After waving Sullivan into a chair opposite his desk, he introduced himself as Walt Dexter. “What happened?”

  “I could sure use a cup of coffee,” Sullivan said.

  “Of course.” Dexter yelled for someone to bring coffee. After watching Sullivan take his first few sips, he said, “Well?”

  Using as few words as possible, Sullivan told Dexter how his employee had died.

  The Butterfield man sat in shocked silence for a few moments then said, “And the perpetrators of this vile crime?”

  “They’re all dead,” Sullivan said.

  Dexter looked into the younger man’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw. His quick intake of breath was loud in the room.

  “All but one.” Sullivan answered the question on Dexter’s face. “His name is Bill Longley and I plan to kill him. Real soon.”

  “The outlaw?” Dexter frowned.

  “None other.”

  “I heard he was in Louisiana.”

  “Heard that too, but I’ll find him.” Sullivan tossed the carpetbag onto the desk. “In there you’ll find what’s left of the money Crow Wallace took from the stage robbery and the reward Ebenezer had with him. We couldn’t find the body so he couldn’t identify it from the dodger to pay me. Oh, and a passenger’s gold watch.”

  Someone tapped timidly on the door and Dexter bade him enter.

  The clerk was tall and thin, and his pale face was flushed across the cheekbones. “Sir, about the body . . . it’s attracting a crowd.”

  “Then get an undertaker, Swenson. Use your initiative,” Dexter said. “Later, I’ll ask Mrs. Posey what she wants done with her dear departed.”

  Looking slightly overwhelmed, the clerk left.

  Dexter dived into the bag and counted the money. “It would seem, Mr. Sullivan, that a large amount of the ten-thousand dollars from the robbery is gone.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Crow was a big spender.”

  “What did we say about the recovered monies?” Dexter asked.

  “We said I get ten percent, plus five hundred dollars for the watch.”

  “It does seem a little excessive, seeing how much of the money was, as you say, spent.”

  Sullivan smiled and got to his feet. In the dusty, businesslike atmosphere of the Butterfield office the .44 on his hip stood out like a Gatling gun in a convent library. “Elev
en hundred dollars, give or take, is coming to me, Dexter. I’m not a friendly man and I’m in a particularly unpleasant mood this morning, so I don’t want to hear any argument. On top of that, you make lousy coffee.”

  He took Crow’s wanted poster from the inside pocket of his coat and threw it on the table. “Read it.”

  Dexter did. “Ah, I seem to have misunderstood.”

  “Misunderstanding a tired, irritable ranny like me can get you killed, Mr. Dexter.”

  The man immediately counted out the eleven hundred and Sullivan shoved the bills into his pocket. “Where can I find Mrs. Posey?”

  “It’s quite all right, I’ll break the news to the poor woman,” Dexter said.

  Sullivan shook his head. “Ebenezer Posey was my friend. I’ll be the one to tell his wife.”

  “And I think you should also know that your husband was a hero,” Tam Sullivan said.

  “My Ebenezer was a hero?” Mrs. Posey asked, her round, tear-stained face surprised.

  “Yeah, he saved a stagecoach from Apaches. They say he killed a half-dozen savages with a borrowed pistol.”

  “I don’t . . . I hardly know what to say. Mr. Posey was the most meek and mild of men.”

  “Well, I guess a hero lurked inside him, just waiting to break free.” Sullivan knew how melodramatic that sounded.

  As Mrs. Posey again dissolved into tears, he looked around him.

  The Posey parlor had a shabby genteel look, as though the couple had strived to keep up middle class appearances on a clerk’s salary and whatever Mrs. Posey made from her bloomers. It seemed that Ebenezer had exaggerated his wife’s prowess with the needle and her thriving business. Just one step down and the Posey home would be poor indeed.

  “I just don’t know what I’ll do without Ebenezer.” Mrs. Posey shook her head. “I’m lost. He was my life, my everything.” She stared into Sullivan’s eyes, seeking solace. “And he died such a terrible death.”

  “The doctor said Ebenezer didn’t suffer,” Sullivan lied. “It was so fast, you understand.”

  As many very large women do, Mrs. Posey held a scrap of a handkerchief no bigger than a postage stamp to her reddened nose.

  For a few moments Sullivan thought about what he was going to say. Then, “Can you manage financially, Mrs. Posey? Now that . . . the breadwinner has passed on.”

  “Ebenezer has no pension, but I do make women’s undergarments for the upper classes. But then, the reason they are upper class is because they refuse to pay much, if at all.” Mrs. Posey looked around her. “Ebenezer provided me with this home, but now that I am alone in the world, I will have to find cheaper accommodation.”

  “Do you have relatives?” Sullivan asked.

  The woman shook her head. “No. None. On either side.” She broke down again. “Mr. Sullivan, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m quite alone.”

  Sullivan felt a pang of sympathy for the woman and it angered him. Damn it Ebenezer!

  “Well, Mrs. Posey, I know it can’t compensate you for the loss of your husband, but the mayor and citizens of Comanche Crossing raised a fund for Ebenezer after he so bravely saved the stage.”

  “They did?” It was the incredulous question of a woman who’d never before been helped by anyone at anytime.

  “Yes, and I was asked to give it to you.” Sullivan reached into his pocket and held the money out to Mrs. Posey. “It’s eleven hundred dollars. I contributed myself.”

  That last wasn’t any kind of lie.

  “But . . . but it’s too much,” Mrs. Posey said, eyeing the stack of bills as though they might fly up in her face and smother her.

  “It’s not too much. It’s not enough, Mrs. Posey.” Sullivan laid the money on the table beside the woman. “I have to leave now and see to my horses, but I’d like to attend Ebenezer’s funeral.”

  “Of course you shall, Mr. Sullivan. Ebenezer would want that.”

  “Then I’ll take my leave of you,” Sullivan said. “If you need anything . . .”

  The woman nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  Sullivan saw that Mrs. Posey wished to be alone in her grief. He stepped to the door and left.

  Behind him, a forlorn fat lady sat in a darkened room with her head bowed.

  And for the first time in his life Sullivan managed to share the pain of another human being.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Colt .45

  Ebenezer Posey was laid to rest in a freezing rain under high-banked, gray cloud. Before the preacher finished his words, the rain turned to sleet.

  To Tam Sullivan’s surprise, Butterfield did right by Posey. The entire depot staff turned out to stand at the graveside. When the burial ended, a knot of mourners murmuring their sympathies surrounded Mrs. Posey and Sullivan stepped away unnoticed.

  Later that day, he sold the wagon and the Morgan for a hundred and fifty dollars to a liveryman who must have taken lessons in larceny from Clem Weaver.

  Sullivan booked a room in a rundown hotel then headed for the sheriff’s office. Despite the weather, the streets were thronged with people and the roadside markets filled the air with the tang of spices, peppers, and the gritty Mexican hot chocolate.

  The local lawman was a tall, lanky man who went by the name Card Adams. He wore one of the newfangled cartridge Colts in a shoulder holster. Sullivan envied his mustache, bigger and fuller than his own.

  “Sullivan . . . you’re the ranny who brung in Ebenezer Posey,” the sheriff said. “Rough trip from Comanche Crossing, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  Adams threw himself onto his chair. Behind his head stood a rack of rifles and scatterguns, each one gleaming with a sheen of oil.

  “Hell, Sullivan, all the halfway decent outlaws have left the territory on account of the weather. I got nothing for you. Wait . . .” The sheriff reached into a drawer and tossed a dodger onto the desk. “There’s him. His name is Dancing Dan Privette, tap dances and plays the banjo at the same time. He’s a pretty good turn.”

  “Three hundred dollars reward offered by the Texas Rangers,” Sullivan said, casting his eye over the wanted poster. “A gentleman of color.”

  “Yeah, Privette’s black as the earl of hell’s waistcoat. He cut up a whore down Nacogdoches way and that never sets right with the law.”

  “You got a lead on him?” Sullivan asked.

  “A lead? Why, man, he’s right across the street. Ol’ Dancing Dan’s the main attraction at the Night Owl saloon.”

  Sullivan frowned. “So why haven’t you nabbed him?”

  “And take him all the way to El Paso for three hundred dollars? I think not. Besides, he hasn’t broken any laws in Santa Fe or the New Mexico Territory.”

  “Did you wire the Rangers?”

  “Sure, but they got more to do than ride up from Texas to arrest a black man for cuttin’ on a Mexican whore.”

  Sullivan thought for a few moments, then he said, “It’s better than nothing, I guess. I’m headed for Texas anyway. I’ll take Privette with me.”

  “You’re going to make yourself real unpopular, Sullivan. Folks at the Night Owl set store by him.”

  “Popularity doesn’t enter into my line of work.”

  Tam Sullivan was a man who learned from his mistakes. It was three hundred hard miles to El Paso and for this trip, he laid in plenty of supplies—coffee, tortillas, bacon, cans of peaches, a frying pan, and coffeepot.

  He stashed the supplies in his hotel room, then painfully aware that he was down to his last few dollars, he followed the desk clerk’s directions to Dirty Sammy’s Rod and Gun store on St. Louis Street.

  “Nasty out there today, huh?” the grubby man behind the counter said when Sullivan entered in a blast of wind and sleet.

  I reckon it is.” Sullivan stepped to the counter. “I’d like to see one of them new cartridge Colts they’re all talking about.”

  Sammy smiled. “Got a couple in the case right here.” He laid two beautiful revolvers on the glass, sympho
nies of blue steel and walnut. “The one on the left with the shorter barrel is the Artillery Model, t’other with the seven-and-a-half-inch was the model carried by the gallant Custer and his band of heroes at the Bighorn.”

  “Didn’t do them much good, did it?” Sullivan picked up the shorter barreled revolver and like every ranny who’d ever handled a Colt Single Action Army, he fell in love like a man with a new mistress.

  “It’s .45 caliber an’ she’s a shooter.” As though Sullivan needed convincing, Sammy added, “Carry her on your hip and fear no man.” From long experience around belted men and guns, he read the bounty hunter’s eyes and said, “I got a place out back where you can try her. If you don’t mind shooting in a blizzard.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Yeah, I’d like that.” Aware of his precarious finances, he asked, “How much?”

  “To you, only twelve dollars.”

  “A bit steep, ain’t it?”

  “At that price, my wife and kids will go hungry. I’ll throw in a box of cartridges and that means they’ll starve and I’ll go out of business.” Sammy looked as though he was about to launch into more of his woes when the bell above the front door opened.

  Sheriff Adams stepped inside carrying a Yellow Boy Winchester and a scowl. He nodded to Sullivan then said, “Sammy, you told me you’d fixed this rifle, but it’s still throwing my shots a foot to the left of target.”

  He slammed the rifle on the counter so hard, Sullivan thought the glass had cracked for sure.

  The sheriff glared at the shop owner. “Damn you fer a rogue and a swindler, Sammy. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Did you go see the doc about your eyes like I told you?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Well, you’re going to shoot a foot to the left until you get a pair of spectacles. It ain’t the rifle, Sheriff. It’s you.” Sammy picked up the Winchester, levered a .44-40 round into the chamber, and looked around. “See the mouse creeping along the picture shelf above the door?”