Fighting Men

by Ralph Cotton

  “Lilly,” said Dahl, “let me introduce you to Farris, Mr. J. Fenwick Hatton’s personal assistant.”

  “Pleased,” Lilly said.

  The man acknowledged her with a curt nod, then directed his attention to Dahl and said, “Mr. Hatton awaits you in the summer house, Mr. Dahl.” When he’d spoken, he centered an expectant gaze back on Lilly.

  “This is Miss Lilly Jones,” Dahl said easily. “She accompanies me.”

  “Yes, of course,” said the houseman. “If you will both follow me, please.” He turned and swept an arm toward a stone walkway leading around the side of the hacienda and toward a smaller adobe structure standing amid a garden of cactus, exotic plants and blooming flowers. Inside the entrance foyer of the summer house, Farris excused himself to go announce the two to Mr. Hatton.

  As Dahl and Lilly stood waiting for a set of large polished wooden doors to open before them, Lilly whispered sideways to Dahl, “You seem right at home here, Sherman Dahl.”

  “Then I have fooled you, Lilly,” Dahl said. “This is my second trip here. The first was when I took the job. I believe Farris knew why I was here. I don’t think he ever expected me back.”

  “Yet here you are,” Lilly whispered. She patted his forearm proudly. Then she took his flat-crowned black hat from his head and helped him hold it cradled against the sling.

  Dahl gave a slight smile and whispered in reply, “And you right beside me.”

  In a moment the polished wooden doors opened in front of them, and Farris led them across ornate Mexican tiles to an open office where J. Fenwick Hatton stood up to greet them from behind a dark, gleaming desk. “Welcome back, Mr. Dahl. I understand you have brought me some good news.” He gave a gesture to Farris and added, “Along with some other items, of course.”

  As Hatton spoke, Farris stepped over to Dahl and stood waiting while Dahl took a leather pouch from inside his linen suit coat and handed it to him. With the leather pouch in hand, Farris took the crate from Dahl by its brass handle, walked over and set both items on the edge of Hatton’s desk.

  Hatton’s eyes had followed the pouch and the crate with a strange indiscernible look on his face. “So, here are the dastardly men who killed my beloved daughter,” he murmured.

  “To the man, sir,” Dahl said respectfully. He and Lilly stood quietly and watched while Farris unsnapped the strong wire catches of the wooden crate and lifted its long top and set it aside.

  “Yes, to the man . . . You did it, sir,” Hatton said as if awestruck, staring at the stark, pale face looking out at him from within the small, briny world Dahl’s hand had committed it to. Beside the desk Farris unrolled a wanted poster of Curly Joe and stared at it in comparison to the dead, pickled flesh, Curly Joe’s namesake dark hair afloat in the saline.

  With a confirming nod, Farris rolled the poster back up and laid it down. On the desktop, he spread out the string of partially dried ears from the leather pouch. “Sir?” he said to Hatton, holding out a silver letter opener for him to take.

  “Thank you, Farris, I will,” said Hatton in a grim yet rapt tone of voice, his eyes now fixed on the grizzly string of human ears.

  “Yes, sir,” Farris said quietly.

  Hatton took the letter opener and picked the string up on its shiny silver tip. He examined the ears closely, as the string turned back and forth on the point of the letter opener. Looking even closer at Duvall’s ears, blacker than the others even though all of them had darkened in six weeks of drying, he said to his assistant, “Mr. Dahl had no idea Pete Duvall was a Negro?”

  “No, sir, I never mentioned it to him,” said Farris.

  But Dahl cut in almost before Farris had finished answering. “Begging both your pardons,” he said. “In fact I did know Pete Duval was a black man. I found an old poster of him before I went tracking the gang.” He paused, then said, “But I had no idea that Sattler wore a Mexican ear bob.”

  “I’m quite certain that only you and I knew that, sir,” Farris whispered between him and Hatton.

  Hatton reached and lightly flipped the half-moon ear ornament still dangling from Sattler’s shriveling ear. He watched in contemplation for a moment, then stared at Dahl and said, “I see. . . .”

  Dahl said, “If these weren’t Hobbs’ men, they wouldn’t be here, Mr. Hatton. That’s not the way I do business.”

  Hatton stared at him for a moment longer until a look of appreciation came to his stern businessman’s face. He nodded, saying to Dahl, “Most commendable, Mr. Dahl—or should I now call you Teacher, as I understand many do across the Western frontier?”

  “Whichever you prefer, sir,” said Dahl. “My former profession was an honorable one. I take no offense at being called Teacher.”

  “As well you should not,” said Hatton, clearly impressed at what this mild-mannered young man had accomplished for him. “I use the name with the utmost respect and admiration.” He gave a tired smile and gestured toward Farris. “I daresay you have taught my man Farris to never underestimate you, sir.”

  “My congratulations, Mr. Dahl.” Farris bowed slightly, in respect and concession. He lifted the top of the wooden crate and lowered it over the glass jar, closing Curly Joe into his dark, watery tomb. Then he picked up a leather travel case standing out of sight around the corner of the desk. He brought the bulging case to Dahl and set it at his feet.

  Dahl and Lilly watched Hatton lay the ears, letter opener and all atop his desk and turn to them with a dismissing look on his stern face. “I know you’ll want to be getting on your way . . . ,” Hatton said. As if in afterthought he added, “You’ll find I’ve included a substantial bonus in there . . . for the remarkable work you’ve done.”

  “Obliged,” said Dahl. He put his hat atop his head as Lilly stooped and picked up the leather case by its strap handles. The two turned to follow Farris to the doors. But Hatton said, “Tell me, Mr. Dahl, if this Big Chicago brings any further trouble to me, may I count on your services once again?”

  “Of course, you have my word on it,” said Dahl. “And should that become the case, I must consider myself paid for such services in advance.”

  “Splendid,” Hatton said with admiration in his eyes.

  Dahl stood for a moment longer and said in a quiet and sympathetic voice, “I know what I’ve done doesn’t help you as much as you thought it would, sir. I wish it did.”

  Hatton only nodded his thanks and turned to the wide window behind his desk. “Good fortune to you, Mr. Dahl,” he murmured over his shoulder.

  Only when the two were back in the buggy—Lilly handling the team of horses—and well on the trail back into Santa Fe did Dahl reach down, open the leather travel bag and look at the bound paper money lying neatly stacked inside. After a moment, he said, “Stop, Lilly, we’ve got to go back.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lilly asked, already pulling back on the buggy reins as she veered the buggy to the side of the trail.

  “Hatton’s made a mistake,” said Dahl. “He’s given me too much money.”

  “Too much money?” Lilly asked skeptically. She looked down at the cash as the buggy rocked to a halt. “How much was he supposed to have paid you?”

  “Ten thousand for the lot of them,” Dahl said. “But there must be twice that.” He rummaged through the stacks of money.

  Lilly stared down, awestruck. But then she swallowed a knot in her throat and said, “He did tell you he’d included a bonus.”

  “A bonus, yes,” said Dahl, “but this is too much. . . .” He paused as his hand came up with a folded note. “Wait, here’s something,” he said. He opened the note and read it aloud to Lilly. “Mr. Dahl. May this additional ten thousand dollars serve to express my deepest gratitude for what you have done for me. Sincerely, J. Fenwick Hatton.”

  “So he didn’t make a mistake,” Lilly said with a breath of relief. “It is the bonus he was talking about. He knew that without the note telling you, you’d think it was a mistake and take the money back to him.” She paused,
then said, “And he was right, you were going to.”

  “Yes, I was,” said Dahl.

  Lilly shook her head and smiled. “I swear, Sherman Dahl,” she said, looking him up and down, his arm in a sling, his coat covering the countless other flesh wounds in his arms, his thighs, his lower back where it had been exposed beneath his bullet vest. “I’m starting to think you’re too honest for your own good.”

  Dahl folded the note, put it inside his coat and said quietly, “Honesty isn’t meant for my own good. It’s meant to serve the good of others.”

  “Yes, I know that, Sherman Dahl,” she said quietly. She jiggled the buggy reins and sent the horses forward onto the trail ahead. She smiled and closed her eyes, feeling a cool breeze blow down from the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. “There was a time I forgot it. But now I’ve started knowing it again . . . like it’s something all brand-new.”

  “Yes, it all feels brand-new to me too, Lilly,” he said, his injured arm resting in its sling against his stomach. He looked at her and squeezed her forearm gently with his good hand. The horses trotted along in the sunlight, their manes lifting on the cool, gusting breeze.

  In a six-week run up along the upper edge of Arizona Territory, Chester Goines had celebrated his recent and bold step up the ladder of crime. He, Russell and Thatcher had robbed a bank in the town of Cottonwood and killed its manager.

  A week later, running ahead of a Cottonwood posse, the three robbed, pillaged and burned to the ground Mama Chase’s Hotel and Bordello in the town of Rocking, on the stretch of badlands along the northwest border. From Rocking they had traveled east past a large bordering canyon, on toward Rimrock, fighting a town posse the entire way. When Big Chicago had put a well-aimed bullet from his Winchester into the posse leader’s chest, the robbers had gained some time while the posse stopped to attend to their wounded sheriff.

  Big Chicago led his two-man gang into the small supply town of Rimrock in search of food, whiskey and ammunition. Later in the night, in a dimly lit tent saloon, he stood at a plank-and-beer-barrel bar, drinking whiskey from a dusty bottle. When he and his two men heard someone call out, “Big Chicago” from the front fly of the big ragged tent, in the blink of an eye they spun toward the voice as one. Their side guns came out, up, cocked and pointed at the same time.

  “Whoa, men!” a tall, thin gunman said with a fearless chuckle. “If you shoot me, who’s going to buy the next round?”

  Recognizing the grinning man, Chicago said to the other two, “Relax, men, it’s only a rat.” Then he said to the gunman, “Bobby Candles, what you doing running loose when so many, including myself, would love to see you bleeding to death?”

  “What an ugly thing to say, Chicago,” said Candles, stepping inside, still grinning, keeping his gun hand away from the big Lemat pistol on his hip. “Here I came all this way just to catch up to you and tell you the posse from Cottonwood is no longer on your asses.” He shook his head. “It disheartens me to count you as a friend.”

  “Then don’t,” Chicago said bluntly. “What’s that about the posse?”

  “It’s gone,” said Candles. “I got rid of them for you. Don’t bother thanking me.” He lowered his gun hand back to his side, walked forward, stopped and rapped his knuckles on the plank bar top. “Whiskey, pronto,” he said to the sleepy-eyed bartender. “I rode with them as far as I could. They sent me and another fellow ahead to scout. I shot him in the head by accident. He fell over a cliff and under some rocks, as strange as it sounds. Anyway, here I am.”

  “Wait a minute,” Russell cut in. “You were riding with that damned posse, hunting us down?” His and Thatcher’s guns were still up and cocked even though Chicago’s Walker Colt had gone back down behind his waist sash.

  “Put your damn guns down,” Chicago said with irritation. “Beat him to death with sticks if you have to kill him. But don’t let word get out that you wasted a bullet on him.”

  “Yes, think of your reputations,” said Candles. He raised a bottle the bartender had stood before him. When he’d finished a long swig, he said to Chicago, “The posse was the only way I saw of ever catching you long enough to join up with you.”

  “Well, I’m honored as hell you’d want to join up with me, Candles,” said Chicago. “But Russell, Thatcher and me all three piss in the sand. . . . We’ve no need for somebody to empty chamber pots for us.”

  “Should I check back later?” Candles asked with sarcasm.

  “Suit yourself, but I see no need in it,” Chicago said. “Me and these two are rolling fast and bold. We’ve got no time to slow down and show you what to do.”

  “Yeah, you’re feeling cocky over killing the man who killed Curly Joe, I can see it,” said Candles.

  “Yeah? You really think so?” Chicago said with a short, tight grin. “Can you see cocky just oozing in my eyes?”

  “Sure enough, I can,” said Candles, “except the thing is, you didn’t kill him. You left the sumbitch alive on the main street.” He shook his head. “It’s the kind of stupidity that’ll be talked about for years to come.”

  “The hell are you talking about, Candles?” Chicago demanded. “I emptied my Walker into him. These men put a total of four shotgun loads in him. Geneva Darrows shot him a bunch of times. You can only shoot a man so much, and then your arm gets tired.”

  “He’s alive,” Candles insisted. “We heard it from more than one person in Pine Ridge. The man was wearing a bulletproof vest. Ever heard of them?”

  “Yeah,” said Chicago, “I’ve heard of them. But I never heard of one in this part of the country.”

  “You have now,” said Candles. “Sherman Dahl, the Teacher, was wearing one. You didn’t kill him.”

  “The Teacher?” said Chicago. “Damn, I’ve heard of him. He’s gotten himself quite a reputation in the Territories.”

  “Well,” said Candles, “from now on he can be known as the man you didn’t kill.”

  “Not after I see him again, he can’t,” Chicago said with a dark stare.

  To change the subject, Thatcher said to Candles, “Say, whatever happened to those idiots you used to ride with—Oak, Milo and Garr? What a bunch of turds, them three.”

  “They’re standing outside the tent listening, keeping their rifles on you three, in case things don’t go well in here.”

  Chapter 8

  In the light of a flickering campfire, Sheriff Lewis Morgan lay coughing up bloody bits of his shattered lung. The posse men surrounding him looked at one another gravely, each sure that the seasoned old lawman would not live to see another sunrise.

  “Sure to God there’s something more we can do for him,” whispered Owen Nichols, the blacksmith from the town of Cottonwood. “I can’t stand sitting here doing nothing. He deserves better than to die like this.” He turned a look toward the young deputy and said, “Eddie, do you suppose our two front trail scouts really did cut out on us?”

  “You saw the hoofprints, Mr. Nichols,” said Deputy Sheriff Eddie Lane. “They’re gone.” The young deputy sat with the dying sheriff’s head propped on his lap, to keep the blood from choking him when it surged up from his chest.

  “But I’ve know Stewart Wiser for years,” the blacksmith said. “He’d never run out on us when we need him.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Lane. “I won’t be surprised if we find Mr. Wiser lying dead somewhere down there.” He nodded out into the darkness to where the trail edge dropped off into a rocky canyon two hundred feet below. “I suspect Newton—if that’s really his name—and these other three killed Mr. Wiser.” He gestured toward the sets of hoofprints they had followed up the high trail.

  “Don’t even think something like that, Deputy,” said a townsman named Curtis Shepard. “I fear you are rushing to judgment against Mr. Newton. I drank with him and three other gentlemen at the saloon only two nights ago. I found all four of them most affable.”

  “I hope I’m wrong,” said Lane. He added with grim resolve, “But I’m not.
”

  On Lane’s lap, the sheriff gasped for another breath and said in a wet, wheezing voice, “You men . . . listen to my deputy. He knows . . .” His words fell away into a spasm of racking pain. Lane held him firmly as if to still his convulsions.

  The posse men exchanged looks in the flicker of fire-light. “Knows what?” one of them whispered under his breath.

  Lane looked at them in turn and said, “All right, here’s what it looks like.” As he spoke, he slipped the sheriff over to another man’s lap and stood in a crouch and moved along the hoofprints, boot scrapings and large circle of dried blood that they had found on the ground when they’d arrived. “This fellow Newton rode this far with Stewart Wiser. Once he figured the robbers were holed up in Rimrock, he called in these other three riders who’d been following close behind. They killed Wiser, and then they rode on.”

  “Jesus,” said a townsman named Art Fuller. “What have we gotten into here?”

  “We’re after these sonsabitches who robbed our bank, Art,” said a townsman named Wilson Densmier.

  “Yeah, and shot our sheriff, don’t forget,” said Nichols the blacksmith.

  “Don’t you go getting soft on us, Fuller,” said Densmier. “None of us wanted to be out here, getting shot at. But it had to be done, and it has to be finished.”

  “Keep running your mouth, Densmier,” Fuller said, anger rising in his eyes. “I’ll show you who’s getting soft!”

  “You’re not showing anybody anything!” Nichols said to Fuller, his rifle gripped tightly in his hand. The three men each took a step forward toward one another.

  “That’s enough,” said Eddie Lane, moving forward and taking a stand amid them. “All three of you stand down.” His voice was controlled, strong and level. His hand was not on his gun butt, but it didn’t have to be in order for the three townsmen to see he meant business.