Hart the Regulator 6

by John B. Harvey

The door slammed into a crate, knocking a couple of bottles from the top down on to the floor. Into the midst of their crash came several shouts and the sound of a chair hitting the ground.

  Hart didn’t need to speak: the sight of both barrels of the shotgun was enough.

  Off to the right, one of the men who’d been playing cards on the top of an upturned barrel had begun making a move towards his gun belt but the action froze before his fingers had got within six inches of the pistol butt.

  Hart looked them over carefully.

  The man who’d started his draw was around forty, graying, short; he wore a faded blue shirt with a long tear down the front which reached almost to his pants belt. The two men with him were about the same age, one bearded and balding, the other thin and gaunt.

  He wasn’t as thin as Skinny Jim who stood a few feet behind the door, just in Hart’s sight, a long skinning knife on the rough-hewn wood counter before him. One of Jim’s eyes was blue, the other brown, and they both flicked from Hart to the knife and back again.

  The only other person inside the trading post was crouching in the furthest corner, one arm sheltering his head, a slow wailing sound beginning to come from his open mouth. Hart tried to figure out how old he was, but it wasn’t possible. Not with him the way he was. The face seemed old and young at the same time, as though grandfather and grandson had somehow become merged in the same person.

  As the noise continued, Hart glimpsed the pink end of a curving tongue poking lizard-like between the man’s thin, wide lips, and something made him shudder inside.

  ‘That’s Carey,’ said Skinny Jim. ‘You don’t have to pay him no mind. He hardly got one of his own.’

  Even as he was talking, Jim’s eyes kept glancing down at the skinning knife.

  ‘You ain’t fixin’ on doin’ anythin’ with that knife, are you?’ asked Hart.

  Jim shook his head.

  ‘Then stop eyin’ it an’ just knock it out of reach with the back of your left hand.’

  Jim hesitated, blinked.

  ‘Do it.’ The Remington came round to point at the proprietor square on, and he did as he was ordered.

  ‘Okay. Now you—’ Hart pointed the shotgun at the short, gray card player. ‘You finger that Colt of yours up out of that holster an’ let it fall close. Then kick it over by the side wall, behind where you’re standin’.’

  ‘Hell, mister, I ain’t—’

  ‘You do like I said.’

  ‘I ain’t never give up my gun to no man.’

  Then you best remember there’s a first time for everythin’. Get it done.’

  The man chewed a little on his lower lip, scratched at his chest hairs through the rent in his shirt, then drew the gun carefully and dropped it to the ground. While it was still spinning, he kicked it backwards.

  That’s good. How ’bout you two doin’ the same?’

  They complied quickly.

  ‘An’ him in the corner?’ asked Hart, looking at Jim.

  ‘I told you. Carey, he’s madder’n a jackass on fourth of July. He don’t know from guns or nothin’. Honest.’

  ‘Okay. Now I got me some questions to ask and it’ll come better if you set me up a beer and a good shot of whiskey.’

  ‘You payin’?’ blinked Jim.

  Hart grinned. ‘You got a lot of gall, askin’ a man who’s standin’ over you with both barrels of a shotgun loaded if he’s payin’ for his drinkin’.

  Jim licked his dry lips. Gulped. ‘Well, are you?’

  Holding the shotgun steady, Hart took a silver dollar from his vest pocket and tossed it down on to the counter. That serve?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Skinny Jim picked it up fast and transferred it to one of his own pockets.

  The three card players slowly sat back down to their game, but they weren’t about to concentrate, not till they knew what was going on. In the corner, Carey carried on his wailing.

  ‘He have to do that?’ asked Hart.

  Jim set the glass of beer on the counter and readied a whiskey to go beside it.

  ‘Anythin’ sudden sets him off. He’ll quieten down after a while. I’ll give him some candy then he’ll be like a kid again. Go out and look to the horses, likely.’

  ‘He live here?’ asked Hart after taking a swallow at the soapy-looking beer.

  ‘Kind of. No one else wants him around an’ he don’t get in my hair much. Does odd jobs, helps out as much as he can. I feed him an’ he sleeps on some sacks over in the corner by the stove.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Used to be a clever man, Carey did. Read an’ write. Did a little medicine. All manner of things.’

  Hart nodded his head backwards. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Indians took him. Him an’ the woman he lived with. Don’t know if no preacher ever spoke words over ’em, but they’d been together best part of ten years when it happened. Them bucks they had theirselves a time with the woman while he was tied up an’ lookin’ on. Carved a few pieces out of him when the rotgut whiskey they was drinkin’ got to ’em. Finally rode out an’ left him half-starved, naked, out of his wits. Took him near four days to get the woman back to civilization, part carryin’ her, part draggin’ her over rocks an’ the like. She was kinda hard to move, he bein’ stiff an’ gone after the first day. Carey there was out of his head afore another white man met him. Ain’t said a word of sense since.’

  Hart swallowed down half the whiskey and turned to look at the young-old man huddled in the corner, an arm still wrapped around his head, the wailing sound subsiding.

  ‘You come in like you was expecting’ trouble,’ said Skinny Jim.

  ‘Lookin’ for it.’

  ‘How come?’

  Hart told him and he nodded. ‘Heard tell ’bout the train.’

  ‘Who from?’

  Jim jerked his head sideways. ‘One of them over there. Got himself a drink on the strength of the tale.’ Jim chuckled. ‘Do love a good tale.’

  ‘You’d been there,’ said Hart, ‘you’d’ve known there weren’t nothin’ good about it.’

  He finished the whiskey and took the beer glass over to where the men were sitting by the barrel. The cards had been gathered together but not dealt. The bearded man was shuffling them, over and over, waiting. They were all waiting.

  ‘Hear one of you knows somethin’ ’bout a robbery on the Atchison, Topeka couple of days back.’

  The cards roughed together in the man’s hands and several of them fluttered outwards and fell to the floor.

  ‘You?’ Hart stared at the bald man, beer glass in his left hand, right meaningfully close to the mother-of-pearl of his holster.

  The man gulped, nodded.

  ‘You one of ’em?’

  Sweat sprang from the pores on the man’s forehead along the dome of his largely bald head. ‘No, mister. Jesus, that ain’t … I … nothin’ to do with me, I heard a feller talkin’ about it is all.’

  ‘What feller? Where?’

  ‘Highwater. That’s ten or so miles upriver from here. Just a small pi—’

  ‘What was his name? What did he look like?’

  The sweating head shook and drops of perspiration flew on to the barrel, on to the backs of the cards that lay there.

  ‘No name. Don’t know no name. He was in the saloon. Ain’t but one. Big feller. Real big.’ He glanced up at Hart. ‘Taller’n you by a good four or five inches, I’d say. Heavy too. Big, big feller.’

  ‘Get on with it. What did he say?’

  ‘He’d been drinkin’ a lot. Most of the day, I reckon, an’ it was drawin’ in night time I was there. He was leanin’ that great weight of his against the bar like if he ever tried to move he’d keel plumb over. Told anyone who’d listen how him an’ some others stopped the train and blew the freight car to kingdom come. Run off with one hell of a lot of money. Bills in his pockets. Kept showin’ ’em to folk around.’

  ‘Ain’t there no lawman in this, this Highwater?’ asked Hart.

>   The bald head shook again and more sweat flicked away from it. ‘No. An’ even if there were, I can’t see no sheriff wantin’ to go again’ a man like that. ’Specially when he’d been drinkin’ like he had. Bullet hit him, it’d bounce back off or else he’d explode like kerosene.’

  Hart sank the remainder of his beer and left the glass on the barrel.

  ‘Nothin’ else,’ he asked. ‘No one with him?’

  ‘No, not as far as I could see.’

  ‘An’ this was when?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Hart backed away from the table, nodded to the three men, raised a hand towards Skinny Jim. ‘Any of that bunch get in here, you keep your mouth shut about me, you understand that? I might be passin’ back this way an’ I’d hate to think you’d been runnin’ off at the mouth.’

  Jim licked his lips and nodded. ‘You do come back,’ he said, ‘try the front door. I’m goin’ to have to fix this one back on its hinges straight.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Hart. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  He gave a final glance at the now silent, still cowering figure of Carey on top of his sacking and went out the front way. When he was sure that no one had interest in coming after him, he mounted up and headed up river for Highwater.

  Chapter Eight

  Hart dipped his flat-brimmed Stetson into the slow-running water and lifted it away, holding the gradually leaking container below the horse’s head. It was a good animal, strong and finely boned, but not the same as the gray that was waiting for him in the stables in Wichita. Hart ducked his head away from a swarm of small flies: the gray didn’t have to matter now. If the man at the trading post had been right and it had been one of the train gang at Highwater that had priority.

  Hart’s head turned at a sudden movement and caught a flash of blue, a shimmer of silver as a bird skimmed the surface of the river.

  He knelt and refilled his hat, this time pouring the water over the back of his head and then shaking himself, doglike. He drank and even as he did so the sun seemed to be drying the moisture back out of his body.

  Ten miles to Highwater. Beer that should be cold but would be luke-warm; food for himself and the horse; a big man who got drunk and shouted off his mouth about blowing up a train.

  Hart licked the remaining water from around his cracked lips and slipped down the stirrups from where they had been hooked over the saddle pommel. He tightened the horse’s girth and mounted up. Ten miles and then he’d know if he was on the right trail.

  The sign that someone had bothered to paint on three nailed pieces of planking and hammer down into the ground had sloped over to a sharp angle so that one of its corners was resting on the hard ground:

  Highwater, Kansas Populashon 179

  Hart wondered how recently the count had been taken. Away to his right, on an uneven slope of ground, some two dozen markers leant this way and that, their wood beginning to buckle and warp and whiten in the continual heat. In the uppermost corner a man bent over his shovel and closed his eyes. Hart dismounted, looped the reins over the town sign and walked up the sloping graveyard. ‘Recent, huh?’

  The gravedigger gave a start, as though he hadn’t heard Hart approach.

  Hart pointed at the hollow. ‘Recent?’

  ‘You kin?’ The voice was cracked and edgey, like a pot that has been fired in the oven too long.

  Hart shrugged. ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘Well, no, didn’t figure you was.’

  ‘Who’s it for?’

  The man wiped the sweat from his tanned, lined face, then covered first one nostril then the other with a knuckle and cleared them on to the pile of newly dug earth.

  ‘Drifter, lookin’ to pass through.’

  ‘How come you’re diggin’ his grave?’

  ‘It’s what I mostly do. ’Sides, couldn’t let him rot out on the street. Not this weather. Dogs tuggin’ at him. The stink. Just wouldn’t be right. Men took a collection in the saloon, paid for a box. I come up here to make the hole. They’ll drop him down soon as it’s ready.’

  Hart nodded and wiped the palms of his hands down the sides of his pants. ‘How’d he die?’

  The gravedigger scratched under his right arm. ‘You a lawman?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What the hell’s that mean?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  The man spat. ‘Figured it did.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘This feller, he was bummin’ drinks in the saloon. Botherin’ folk all the time. Bartender set him out three times but he kept crawlin’ back. Last time he knocked into this big feller standin’ at the end of the bar. Twice my size.’ The gravedigger paused and chuckled at the memory of it. ‘Big guy picked him up by the neck, near to throttled him there, an’ then flattened him on the bar and slid him down the whole length of it. Glasses an’ bottles flyin’ this way an’ that an’ men hollerin’—’

  He laughed and cleared his throat, scratched his armpit again and continued: ‘Drifter went head first over the end an’ everyone reckoned he’d be out cold. Sure enough, didn’t he climb back to his knees an’ a few moments later, his head showed over the bar top an’ he’s askin’ for a drink. Well, the big feller, he didn’t think that was funny. Thought when he had a man down the only right thing for him to do was stay down. He moved the length of that room faster’n he should’ve been able and punched the man’s face so hard it looked to come right off his shoulders. Slammed into the wall and the big feller caught him an’ pitched him out through the doors into the street. There was cheerin’ and laughin’ and a few folk offered to buy the big guy a drink but he turned round fast as if somethin’ had just struck him and went back over to the door. Swung one side back with his left hand, pulled his gun with the other and emptied the whole damn thing out into the street. Five shots there was, counted ’em right off. Stuck the gun back in his holster an’ then he went an’ had them drinks he’d been offered.’

  The gravedigger set his head to one side and looked up at Hart. ‘Strange damned thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Hart. ‘How many slugs went home?’

  ‘Three. Couple in the belly an’ the other through the side. Poor bastard lay out there most an hour hollerin’ and groanin’. No one was goin’ to go out an’ help him, scared what the big feller’d do, I guess.’ He coughed up a thin line of phlegm and failed to spit it all away clear, the grayish-yellow ends trailing down his sunken chin and onto the loose skin of his neck. ‘Know I was. Never did nothin’ till he’d stopped an’ I figured it was over. Went out an’ made sure, then come back in. Few others went round with the hat. Weren’t goin’ to ask him, but he threw in five dollars. More’n anyone else, but I guess that’s right. Don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Sounds to be.’

  ‘Does. It does.’

  ‘This big feller you’re talkin’ about. He from round here?’

  The man’s head shook from side to side. ‘Not long here hisself. Near enough lives in the saloon. Never saw a man drink so much an’ not fall down. Gets enough inside him, he—’

  The gravedigger stopped and pulled his spade out of the ground. He set his foot against the top edge of the blade and dug out another load.

  ‘You clemmed up all of a sudden,’ said Hart.

  The head cocked to one side: ‘You ain’t goin’ to believe this too easy, but there’s folk as think I talk too much.’

  ‘Nothin’ was stoppin’ you before.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s times it ain’t good to talk behind men’s backs.’

  ‘Like when they’re in the habit of puttin’ three slugs in a man as an afterthought? ‘

  ‘That’s close enough.’

  ‘He might not get the chance.’

  The gravedigger rammed the shovel end back into the earth. Sweat ran from his arms and his hands on to the handle. ‘You are a lawman?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You said that.’

 
‘I did.’

  ‘Bounty hunter?’

  Hart shook his hand.

  ‘For a man as wants others to talk, you sure don’t give much away.’

  Hart grinned. ‘You could say I was sort of workin’ for the railroad.’

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘An’ you ain’t linin’ track.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  The gravedigger went through his gamut of gestures: he hawked, spat, cleared his nose and dug with his fingers under his arm. ‘Okay. He was soundin’ off ’bout how he an’ some others stuck up the Atchison, Topeka a few days back. Blew the freight car sky high and caught the money when it come down. That’s the way he tells it.’

  The gravedigger stopped and pulled his spade out of the ground. He set his foot against the top edge of the blade and dug out another load.

  ‘You clemmed up all of a sudden,’ said Hart.

  The head cocked to one side: ‘You ain’t goin’ to believe this too easy, but there’s folk as think I talk too much.’

  ‘Nothin’ was stoppin’ you before.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s times it ain’t good to talk behind men’s backs.’

  ‘Like when they’re in the habit of puttin’ three slugs in a man as an afterthought?’

  ‘That’s close enough.’

  ‘He might not get the chance.’

  The gravedigger rammed the shovel end back into the earth. Sweat ran from his arms and his hands on to the handle. ‘You are a lawman?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You said that.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Bounty hunter?’

  Hart shook his hand.

  ‘For a man as wants others to talk, you sure don’t give much away.’

  Hart grinned. ‘You could say I was sort of workin’ for the railroad.’

  ‘Sort of?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘An’ you ain’t linin’ track.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  The gravedigger went through his gamut of gestures: he hawked, spat, cleared his nose and dug with his fingers under his arm. ‘Okay. He was soundin’ off ’bout how he an’ some others stuck up the Atchison, Topeka a few days back. Blew the freight car sky high and caught the money when it come down. That’s the way he tells it.’