Son Of a Wanted Man (1984)

by L'amour, Louis

  “Take Billy the Kid, this Lincoln County gunman we’ve been hearin” about. Frank an’ George Coe, Dick Brewer, Jesse Evans, any one of them can probably shoot as good as Ben. The difference is that part down inside where the nerves should be. Well, that was left out. When he starts shootin’ or they shoot at him, he’s like ice.

  “Kerb Perrin is that way, too. He’s cold, and steady as a rock. Rigger Molina’s another kind of cat. He explodes all over the place.

  He’s white-hot but deadly as a rattler.

  “Five men cornered Molina one time out of Julesburg. When the shootin’ was over four of them were down and the fifth was holdin’ a gunshot arm.

  Molina, he rode out under his own power. He’s a shaggy wolf, that one! Wild, uncurried, an’ big as a bear!” Roundy paused, puffing on his pipe. “Sooner or later, Mike, there’ll be a showdown. It will be one or the other, maybe both of them, and God help you!” Listening to Roundy, Mike remembered that time and time again Ben Curry had warned him to confide in no one. Betrayal could come from anyone, at any time, for even the best of people liked to talk and to repeat what they knew. And there were always those who might take a drink too many or who might talk to get themselves off a hook. What nobody knew, nobody could tell. Obviously, Ben practiced what he preached, for until now Mike had not even guessed Ben might have a life other than the one he lived in and about Toadstool Canyon. Of course, he did ride off alone from time to time, but he was understood to be scouting jobs or tapping his own sources of information.

  Nobody knew what the next job was to be, or where, until Ben Curry called a conference around the big table in his stone house. At such times the table would be covered with maps and diagrams. The location of the town in relation to the country around, the possible approaches to and routes away from town, the layout of the bank itself or whatever was to be robbed, and information on the people employed there and their probable reaction to a robbery.

  The name of the town was never on the map. If it was recognized by anyone present he was advised to keep his mouth shut until told. Distances had been measured and escape routes chosen, with possible alternatives in the event of trouble. Fresh horses awaited them and first-aid treatment if required. Each job was planned months in advance and a final check made to see that nothing unexpected had come up just before the job was pulled.

  There were ranches and hideouts located at various places to be used only in case of need, and none were known criminal resorts. Each location was given only at the time of the holdup, and rarely would a location be used again.

  Far more than Roundy imagined had Mike Bastian been involved in the planning of past ventures. For several years he had been permitted to take part in the original planning to become acquainted with Ben Curry’s methods of operation.

  “Some day,” Ben Curry warned, “you will ride out with the boys, and you must be ready. I do not plan for you to ride out often. Just a time or two to get the feel of it and to prove yourself to the others. When you do go you will have charge of the job, and when you return you will make the split.” “Will they stand for that?” “They’d damn’ well better! I’ll tell “em, but you’ll be your own enforcer-and no shootin”.

  You run this outfit without that, or you ain’t the man I think you are.” Looking back, he could see how carefully Ben Curry had trained him, teaching him little by little and watching how he received it. Deliberately, Ben had kept him from any familiarity with the outlaws he would lead. Only Roundy, who was no outlaw at all, knew him well. Roundy, an old mountain man, had taught him Indian lore and the ways of the mountains. Both of them had showed him trails known to no others. Several times outlaws had tried to pump him for information, but he had professed to know nothing.

  The point Roundy now raised worried him. The Ben Curry he knew was a big, gruff, kindly man, even if grim and forbidding at times. He had taken in the homeless boy, giving him kindness and care, raising him as a son. For all of that Mike Bastian had no idea that Ben had a wife and family, or any other life than this. Ben had planned and acted with care and shrewdness. “You ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” Roundy suggested. “The law doesn’t know you or want you. You’re clean.

  Whatever you knew about those maps an’ such, that was just a game your pa played with you.” And that was how it had been for the first few years. It was not until recently that he had begun to realize those maps and diagrams were deadly serious, and it was then he had begun to worry. “Nobody knows Ben Curry,” Roundy said. “Any warrants there may have been have been forgotten. He ain’t ridden out on a job in fifteen year. When he decides to quit he’ll simply disappear and appear somewheres else under another name and with his family. He’ll be a retired gentleman who made his pile out west. his Roundy paused. “He’ll be wanted nowhere, he’ll be free to live out his years, and he’ll have you trained to continue what he started.” “Suppose I don’t want to?” Roundy looked up at him, his wise old eyes measuring and shrewd. “Then you’ll have to tell him,” he said. “You will have to face him with it.” Mike Bastian felt a chill. Face that old man?

  He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “if I could.” “Is it you don’t want to hurt him? Or are you simply scared?” Mike shrugged. “A little of both, I guess.

  But then, why shouldn’t I takeover? It’s an exciting life.” “It is that,” Roundy commented dryly. “You got no idea how excitin’ until you tell Kerb Perrin and Rig Molina who’s boss.” Mike laughed. “I can see them,” he said. The smile faded. “Has Ben Curry thought of that?” “You bet he has! Why’s he had you workin’ with a six-gun all these years?” Here, around the Vermilion Cliffs was the only world he knew. This was his country, but what lay outside? He could only guess. Could he make it out there? He could become a gambler. He knew cards, dice, faro, roulette, all of it. Or he could punch cows, he supposed. Somewhere out beyond this wilderness of rustred cliffs there was another world where men lived honest, hardworking lives, where they worked all day and went home at night to a wife, children, and a fireside.

  It was a world from which he had been taken, a world in which his father had lived, and his mother, he supposed, although he knew nothing of her.

  “Roundy? What do you know about who my parents were?” The old man stared at the ground. He had known the question would be asked someday. He had wondered how he would answer it. Now, faced with it at last, he hedged.

  “You were in Mesilla when he found you. The way I heard it, your pa was killed by “Paches. I reckon your ma was dead before that, or why else wouldn’t she be with you, young as you were?” “I’ve wondered about that,” Mike said quietly.

  “I suppose she had died before.” He paused.

  “I guess a man is always curious. Pa, I mean Ben, he never speaks of it.” They had reached their horses, grazing on a meadow among the aspen. Roundy spoke. “You’d better be thinkin” of the future, not the past. You’d best be thinkin’ of what you’re goin’ to tell Ben when he tells you you’re ridin’ out with the boys.” Roundy stared after Mike as he walked toward the horses. He had never had a son, none that he knew of, anyway. Yet for years he had worked with Mike Bastian, leading him, training him, talking to him. He had spent more time with him than most fathers did with their sons, and not only because it was his job.

  Now he was scared. He admitted it, he was scared. He was scared for more reasons than one, because Ben Curry had made a mistake., Roundy only heard of it after the fact. Usually he sat in on the planning, keeping well back in a corner and rarely putting in a comment, but in this case he had been out in the hills with Mike and had not heard until later. When they were alone, he faced Ben with it. “Moral You’ve got to be crazy)” Ben Curry pulled up in his walking across the room. “What’s that? Why?” Roundy had never spoken to him like that, and Ben was startled. He stared at the old man. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “You said Mora. You sent the boys into Mora.

  That’s Tye Sackett’s town.” “Who
?” “Ben, you’ve been back in the hills too long.

  You don’t listen anymore. Tye Sackett is that gunfighter who was in the land-grant fight.

  He’s hell on wheels.” “I never heard of him. Anyway,” he. added, “he was in Santa Fe. I made sure of that.” “And when he comes home?” “The boys will be long gone and far away.” “Ben, you don’t know him. He won’t stand for it, Ben. He’ll never quit until he knows who, how, and why. I know him.” Ben shrugged. “Too late now. Anyway, there’s no tracks. Rain washed everything out, and the boys never even raised a whisper. Sixty thousand on that one. Most of the town’s savings in one swoop.” Roundy said no more, but in the weeks that followed he grew increasingly worried. Mike would be going out soon, and the country was tightening up. That was bad enough without incurring the anger of a man like Tyrel Sackett, a man who was a master at tracking and trailing. A few months later, Ben had commented on it. “What did I tell you? Nothing came of that Mora business.” Roundy, squatted on his heels at the fireplace, nursing a cup of coffee, had glanced up. “It hasn’t been a year yet. You can bet Sackett hasn’t forgotten.” Approximately four hundred miles to the east a train was stopping even as he spoke, stopping at a small, sandblasted town in eastern Colorado, a town with only a freight car for a depot.

  One man stepped down from the train, a tall young man in a black suit. He stood there, watching the train pull away.

  Glancing out the window, Borden Chantry had seen the train slow, then come to a stop, and as it rarely stopped, he waited, watching. He had been doing his accounts, never a job he liked, but the taxpayers demanded to know where every dollar went, and as town marshal he had to account for every fine, every cent spent feeding those in jail. He saw the lone man swing down, and he got up. “Ma?” He spoke to his wife, Bess. “Set another place. We’re goin’ to have comp’ny. Tyrel Sackett just got off the train.” When the dishes were put away and the table wiped clean, Borden Chantry refilled their coffee cups. He swung a chair around with its back to the table and straddled it, leaning his thick forearms on the back. “This is a long way from Mora,” he suggested.

  “Things are quiet over there, and I’ve got a good deputy. Thought I’d ride the cars over and have a little talk.” Borden sipped his coffee, and waited.

  “Ever hear of Dave Cook?” “Officer up Denver way, ain’t he?” Borden paused. “My wife says I shouldn’t say “ain’t’ but I keep forgettin’.” “That’s right. Denver. He’s got an idea of organizing all the officers so we all’ work together.

  You know how it’s been-you keep the peace in your town and I in mine. If somebody kills a man here, why should I care if he keeps out of trouble in Mora? Well, Dave thinks we should all work together.” “I’m for it.” “About a year ago we had a holdup in Mora.

  Store holdup, but a store that banked money for folks. Had quite a lot of money, sixty thousand dollars, in the store safe. I was out of town,” he added.

  “Handy,” Chantry commented.

  “I thought so. Just too handy. Sixty thousand in the safe and the sheriff out of town. Makes for easy pickin’s, “specially when the note that got me down to Santa Fe was a fake.” “Forged?” “No, and that’s another interesting part. It was a note from my brother Orrin and it simply said, Need you. When a Sackett gets that kind of word he just naturally comes a-running. The trouble was that note was one Orrin wrote to his former wife a couple of years ago.

  “Now the question is, how did somebody get hold of that note and where’s it been all that time?

  “Orrin wrote that note. He remembered it well because it was a troublesome time, but he never saw it again.” Tyrel paused. “Seems to me somebody was mighty farsighted. They come on that note somehow, some way, and they just kept it against a needful time.” “It doesn’t seem reasonable. How would anybody know they might need such a note years in advance?” “Think of it, Bord. That note doesn’t explain anything and there’s no date, so somebody saw it might be useful and filed it away, and that somebody had to be a crook. his “They robbed your bank.” “Exactly. That says that somebody two years ago thought that note might be useful, somebody who was probably a thief at the time.” Sackett put down his cup. “Let me lay it out for you. At noontime folks are home eating. The streets are empty, only one man in the store, and then of a sudden there are three other men. The storekeeper was bound and gagged, money taken from the safe, as it was rarely locked in the daytime, and the shade drawn on the front door window. The three men leave by the back door. “Nigh onto two hours later a fellow comes to the store, finds it locked, and goes away. Sometime later another comes, only he don’t go away but walks around to the back door.

  He’s out of tobacco and he’ll be damned if he’s goin” to go without.

  “The back door is closed. He knocks and it opens under his fist and he hears thumpin’ inside. He goes in and finds the teller all tied up an’ the money gone.” “Any descriptions?” “Three youngish, middle-sized men, one of them wearin’ a polka-dot shirt. The teller says they moved fast, knew right where the money was, and weren’t in the store more than five minutes, probably not more than three. Nobody said a word amongst them, just to the teller to keep his mouth shut if he wanted to live.” “Nobody saw them cumin’ or goin’?” “Yes, a youngster playing in his yard. He saw a man settin’ a horse an’ holding the reins on three others. He saw three men come out of an alley and mount up and then another man rode in from the street and they all trotted off down the lane.

  “That youngster was nine years old, but canny. He noticed one of the horses. It was a black with three white feet and a white splash on the rump.” Borden Chantry put his cup down carefully.

  Then he looked across the table at Tyrel Sackett. “What are you sayin’?” “I described a horse,” “I know you did, and I have a horse like that.” Sackett nodded. “I know you have. I saw him when I was down here right after Joe was killed. A mighty fine horse, too. was Borden Chantry took up his cup. His coffee was lukewarm, so he went to the stove for the coffeepot. He filled Sackett’s cup, then his own. Returning the pot to the stovetop, he sat down, straddling his chair.

  “Sackett,” he said slowly, “maybe we’ve got something. Let’s run it into the corral and read the brands.” Chantry paused. “This here job was wished on me, but when it was offered I sure needed it. I’m no detective or even a marshal excep’ by the wish of these folks in town. I went broke ranchin’, Sackett. Drouth, rustlers, an’ a bad market did me in, and when I was mighty hard up these folks asked me to be marshal. I’ve done my best.” “You solved the murder of my brother, Joe.” “Well, sort of. It was kind of like tracking strays. You know where the feed’s best, where there might be water, an’ where you’d want to go to hide from some dumb cowhand. It was just a matter of puttin’ two an’ two together.” “Like this.” “Sort o* You done any work on this?” “A lot of riding an’ thinking. Sort of like picking up the cards and shuffling them all together again, then dealing yourself a few hands faceup to see what the cards look like.

  “Only in this case it wasn’t cards, but news items.” Tyrel Sackett reached in his breast pocket and brought out three clippings and spread them on the table facing Chantry.

  All three were of holdups, and the dates were scattered over the last two years. Robberies, no shooting, no noise, no clues. The robbers appeared, then disappeared. One robbery was in Montana, one in Washington, one in Texas.

  “Mighty spread out,” Chantry commented. Only in Montana had there been an organized pursuit, and the bandits had switched to fresh horses and disappeared. “Had the horses waitin’,” he commented.

  “The rancher says no. They were horses he kept in his corral for emergencies, like going for a doctor or something like that.” “And somebody knew it.” Chantry looked over the descriptions.

  They were vague except for a tall, slim man wearing a narrow brimmed hat. “Funny-lookin’ galoot” was the description of the man in the bank. “I think he was meant to
be,” Sackett suggested. “I think he was meant to be noticed, like that man wearing the polka-dot shirt in Mora.” “You mean they wanted somebody to be able to describe him?” Chantry asked. “Look at it. What happens is over in minutes, and your attention focuses on the obvious. You’re asked to describe the outlaws, and that polka-dot shirt stands out, or your tall man in the narrow-brimmed hat. You see the obvious and ignore the rest. You don’t have a description, just a polka-dot shirt or a tall man in a narrow-brimmed hat. What were the others like? You don’t recall. You’ve only a minute or two to look, so you see what’s staring at you.” Chantry ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Sackett, until now I’ve been wonderin’ if I’m foolish or not.” He got up and walked to the sideboard and opened a drawer, taking out a sheaf of papers. “Looks like you an’ me been tryin’ to put a rope on the same calf.” He sat down and spread out the papers.

  They were wanted posters, letters, news clippings.

  “Nine of them,” he said, “Kansas, Arkansas, Wyoming, California, Texas, and Idaho. Two in California, three in Texas.

  Seven of them in the last four years, the others earlier. Nobody caught, no good descriptions, no clues. “Nor were any strangers noticed hanging around town before the holdups. In four cases they got away without being seen so as to be recognized.” Chantry picked a wanted poster from the stack. “But look at this: Four bandits, one described as a tall man wearing a Mexican sombrero.” “The same man, with a different hat?” “Why not?” Sackett finished his coffee. “All over the west, the same pattern, clean getaways, and nobody saw anything.” Borden Chantry nodded toward the stack of papers. “Got two of those in the mail on the same day, and there seemed to be a similarity. I was comparing them when I remembered the wanted poster. Since then I been collecting these, and then I went over to the newspaper and went back through their files. They keep a stack of Denver and Cheyenne papers, too, so I ran a fairly good check.” Chantry got up and went over to the stove and, lifting the lid, glanced at the fire, then poked in a few small sticks, enough to keep the coffee hot.