Gallows Express

by Peter Brandvold

  “Did you learn your lesson?”

  “Stow it,” Hawk growled, flipping open the loading gate of his Colt. He removed the two spent shell casings and replaced them with fresh from his cartridge belt. Spinning the cylinder, he pushed away from the scarp. “Sit tight.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to work my way around him.”

  Moving straight back away from the scarp, keeping the formation between him and the bushwhacker, Hawk tramped at a crouch down the incline, loosing gravel in his wake and holding one arm out to keep from losing his balance on the slippery terrain.

  “Please don’t get yourself killed, Mr. Hawk,” she admonished behind him. “I honestly don’t want to be stranded out here, afoot, with that gun-handy bushwhacker.”

  “Keep your frillies on,” Hawk said as he reached a narrow ridge that hugged the lip of the canyon.

  “I’ll thank you not to talk about my frillies, Mr. Hawk,” she said, the demand punctuated by another short burst of rifle fire from the ridge.

  Hawk negotiated the trail along the lip of the canyon for a good fifty yards, crouching, keeping his head below the shooter’s line of sight. He was relieved to find a notch that bore into the ridge and quickly took it, stumbling over rocks and shrubs that choked the cut, as the growing pain in his right calf made it difficult to walk.

  The shooter’s continued, sporadic rifle fire provided Hawk with bearings as he moved around to the ridge’s backside. When he’d gained a nest of rocks at the base of the ridge, he waited until he heard another short burst of fire, then, glad that the man hadn’t decided to leave his position for a better angle on the scarp behind which Regan was hunkered, Hawk started climbing the ridge.

  Amidst the rifleman’s sporadic, booming shots, Hawk heard a hollow, more distant crack, like that of a triggered pistol. He’d never heard his Russian .44 fired from a distance, and from behind a ridge, but something told him Regan was triggering the piece.

  Hawk paused, his heart thudding. Had the shooter moved on down the ridge, threatening her? The thought had no sooner swept across Hawk’s brain than he heard the rifle blast twice more from just above him. Hawk continued moving slowly as he heard another pistol shot, and then another.

  Then the reason for Regan’s shooting dawned on him.

  The rifleman was trying to leave his nest, and she was trying to keep him pinned down in spite of the pistol’s short range. . ..

  She’d fired three shots. She had only three more. Hawk had to hurry to be within accurate range with his own shooting irons before the bushwhacker left his position. He ran, ignoring the burn in his calf, nearly straight up the ridge. The grade was steep. He scissored his arms, pumped his knees, breathing hard, sucking large draughts of air through his mouth.

  Regan fired a fourth shot.

  Hawk took several more strides. The ridgeline was ten more strides away. . . .

  Regan’s Russian popped again. The bullet ricocheted off rock on the other side of the ridge, whining. She must have been shooting high enough, coming close enough to her target, that the rifleman wasn’t willing to take a chance that she wouldn’t hit him.

  The ridgeline was five yards away when Regan triggered her last shot.

  Hawk’s right boot came down on a rock. The rock rolled out from beneath him, and he dropped to his hands and knees with a grunted curse. He rose once more, grunting, breathless, his boots clomping and scraping on the loose gravel that carpeted the ridgeline.

  A shadow moved above him. He caught only a glimpse of the man’s hatted, coated figure silhouetted against the broad sky behind him, when Hawk threw himself to his right.

  The man’s rifle barked loudly, the bullet screeching out over the ridge behind Hawk.

  The Rogue Lawman rolled off a shoulder and pushed up on an elbow while rocking the Colt’s hammer back and then firing quickly, aiming by instinct.

  Pow! Pow! Pow!

  There was a sharp grunt. The rifleman lowered his rifle. His spurs raked the ridge crest with a dull ring, and then he sagged backward, letting the rifle drop at his feet with a metallic thud.

  He disappeared like a giant bird taking wing after prey in the canyon below.

  Hawk heaved himself up, wincing again at the burn in his calf, feeling a good bit of cool liquid in his right boot. Holstering the .44, he plucked several sharp goatheads and bits of gravel from the heels of his hands, then continued up to the ridge crest. Not allowing himself to be skylined, he took three strides down the opposite side of the ridge, and stopped beside a cracked boulder, and stared down into the canyon below.

  Nearly two hundred feet away, at the bottom of a narrow talus slide, the rifleman lay piled up at the hem of Regan’s skirts, who stood gazing down at the man, holding Hawk’s empty Russian down low in her right hand. The pistol’s silver chasing was bright in the sunlight.

  She lifted her head to gaze up at Hawk.

  She must have left her position behind the escarpment lower down the slope to shoot from several yards above the ridge’s base. Giving her bullets a better chance of keeping the bushwhacker pinned down while Hawk stole up on the bushwhacker from the other side of the ridge.

  Hawk ran the back of a dusty coat sleeve across his sweaty forehead. “Crazy damn woman.”

  It was almost as though she’d heard him. She continued staring up the incline at him, one hand on her hip, with what he assumed, though he couldn’t see her clearly from here, was a hard-jawed look of defiance.

  Hawk chuckled as he lifted his hat from his head, ran a hand through his hair, and headed back up and over the ridge to look for the dry-gulcher’s horse. “Pity the poor bastard who lands her.”

  He found the horse in a little hollow cut into the side of the mountain. It was cropping jimsonweed and lapping at water dribbling out from a spring deep in the rocks. It was a tall, cream gelding with a brown-spotted rump. The horse was ground-hitched but it sidestepped, tail raised, when it saw a stranger moving toward it. It rippled its nostrils and shook its head at the smell of blood in Hawk’s boot.

  The Rogue Lawman grabbed the horse’s reins and swung up into the saddle before the mount had followed through on its impulse to flee, and got it under a tight rein before walking it down along a game path and into the notch canyon carved into the ridge. The horse was high-stepping and snorting in confusion, likely wondering who this strange-smelling man astraddle it was, and where its owner was, when Hawk turned the beast out of the notch and headed west toward where he’d left the woman and the horse’s dead rider.

  As he approached the bottom of the ridge, where the dead man lay, Regan was moving toward him from up trail, riding her own mount while leading Hawk’s grulla by the reins.

  She had a smugly satisfied look on her face. They stopped ten yards away from each other, the cream swishing its tail but more interested in the strange horses than the dead man sprawled amongst the rocks up the ridge a ways.

  “That was a fool thing to do,” Hawk said, swinging down from his saddle.

  “He was trying to leave his cover,” Regan said. “I probably saved your life. So we’re even now.”

  “You oughta listen to what a man tells you. Especially one who knows his business.” Hawk winced when he put weight down on his right foot.

  “How bad is it?” Regan frowned down at his calf. The dark stain, about the size of a man’s palm, shone on the outside well of his right boot.

  “There’s a nice little scratch in there, but I’ll make it.” Trying not to limp—Hawk had developed the hunter’s as well as the prey’s revulsion of weakness—he climbed twenty feet to where the bushwhacker lay sprawled against the side of a boulder. The man lay across the slope, on his side, one cheek resting against his outstretched left arm, legs tangled.

  He’d lost his hat in the fall—a tall man with long, coarse gray hair tumbling down from a pink pate. A strange-looking hombre, Hawk thought. Not tall, but skinny, and he wore no gloves on his bony, white hands. His fin
gernails were untrimmed, and they curved down over the tips of his fingers like hard, yellow talons.

  He wore a duster over a vested serge suit and a collarless, white shirt that had likely been crisp before his tumble down the ridge. A gold watch lay near his belly, connected to a vest pocket by a gold-washed chain.

  The flaps of his duster were thrown back, revealing that the man wore no sidearm. At least none that Hawk could see. He might have a hideout weapon under his vest, but there appeared no telltale bulge.

  Blood oozed down from the three holes in his chest, staining the sand and rocks beneath him.

  “All three heart shots.”

  Hawk looked down the slope to where the woman sat her saddle, staring up at him coldly.

  “Nice shooting, Mr. Hawk. That’s Rance Harvin, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Never heard of him,” Hawk grunted.

  “Apparently, he’s heard of you. Harvin’s a professional killer, Mr. Hawk. A regulator. Roams this area, from Wyoming on down to Lyons, culling work from the larger ranchers, mine owners, and saloon proprietors. He rides through Trinity quite often, spends a day or two before moving on. A rather distinctive-looking gentleman.”

  She lowered her voice slightly. “Or, at least he was.” She quirked her mouth corners grimly. “Someone with money, apparently, doesn’t want you taking the lawman’s job in Trinity.”

  Hawk reached down, grabbed the dead man by his vest lapels, and hefted him over his shoulder. “Yeah, well,” the Rogue Lawman said with a grunt as he started down the ridge, “I just love being welcomed with open arms.”

  9.

  TRINITY RIDGE

  TRINITY Ridge sat in a broad bowl between the Laramie Mountains in the north, the Never Summer and the Snowy Ranges in the west, and the Mummy Mountains to the south. Several low mesas and bluffs surrounded the town, hemming it in from the broader valley beyond. Regan informed Hawk that one such ridge in the southeast, which earlier pioneers had called “Trinity Ridge” due to its being capped by three columnar rock formations, had given the town its name.

  Farther east was mostly the open country of the North Platte headwaters, spotted with low bluffs including the famous Steamboat and Signature Rocks, and shallow canyons, with the Bozeman Trail stamping it from north to south, and the Overland Trail from east to west.

  Because of the surrounding mountains, Trinity was out of the way commercially. When in a few years the gold pinched out of the nearby bluffs and streams, it wouldn’t exist as anything besides a supply camp for area ranches. But now it was joined to the Union Pacific tracks by a semi-regular spur line, and it was connected to Laramie and Camp Collins by a weekly stage line that hauled a few passengers now and then, and, of course, the mail.

  The town appeared relatively healthy, Hawk thought as he and Regan Mitchell rode along its broad main street sheathed in well-maintained, false-fronted business buildings with here and there a private home fronted by a leather-seated buggy and flanked by a hay barn and corral. Quiet, too. Now. Without a lawman around to keep a tight rein, the nights were probably another matter.

  Trinity appeared comprised of a good six or seven plotted blocks. The entire town, including original log cabins and adobe-brick shacks arranged willy-nilly on the fringes, probably occupied close to a square mile.

  Hawk, leading Rance Harvin’s cream by its reins, and Regan passed a church. Hawk was vaguely looking around for an undertaker’s shingle, as he’d like to rid himself of the dead regulator he’d tied belly down across the man’s own saddle. He’d have left the man where he lay along the slope of that ridge, but the killer had obviously been hired by someone to kill Hawk before the Rogue Lawman could reach Trinity and pin a badge to his shirt.

  And he wanted to make sure that the man—or men—knew what they were up against. Moreover, bringing Harvin’s carcass back to town was Hawk’s own way, albeit a semiconscious one, of telling the killer’s employer that he could kiss Hawk’s ass.

  “Other end of town,” Regan said, reading Hawk’s mind. “Hy Booker buries the dead in these parts. Maybe you and he could go into business together.”

  Ignoring the woman’s comment delivered in her customary cold monotone, Hawk reined the grulla to a halt in front of the Poudre River House Hotel, which sat in the middle of town and on the main street’s—Wyoming Street’s—north side. It was a big, three-story, white-clapboard building with a long row of front windows on the first floor. A big, beefy young man in coveralls and wool watch cap was sweeping the roofed front porch.

  “I was due here an hour ago for a meeting with my prospective employers.” Hawk turned to Regan and offered a dry grin. “Been a pleasure, Miss Mitchell. Maybe see you around again sometime.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Hawk—does the mayor know who you are?”

  “You mean—does he know my reputation? I wouldn’t know. I signed the letter I wrote him. See no need to hide behind an alias anymore.”

  Regan glanced at the hotel and shook her head in disgust. “They oughta know better.” She glanced at Harvin before pursing her lips and dropping her eyes to Hawk’s right boot. “You really oughta have that leg of yours looked at, Mr. Hawk.”

  “As soon as I know if I’m stayin’ or not.”

  “Dr. Blackman’s office is just on the other side of my house.” Regan canted her head to indicate a small, frame house down a side street intersecting Wyoming Street to the south and a similar structure just beyond it and with a sign attached to a post in the front yard.

  “Nice place you have, for a schoolteacher,” Hawk said.

  “Well, then,” she said with a sigh by way of parting, neck reining her horse away from the hotel but stopping suddenly when the hotel’s front door squawked open.

  Hawk swung his head toward the hotel, where a short, older gent with badly disheveled gray hair stepped onto the porch. He was followed by three other men—all well-dressed and conservative-looking. Hawk’s interviewers, most likely. Members of the Trinity Town Council. The three were casting wary, slightly befuddled looks at the dead man hanging over the cream gelding. The last man came out—the youngest of the three, though he looked to be in his late fifties, early sixties, and walked with a limp. He closed the heavy, green door behind him, and the beefy young man with the broom turned toward him and the newcomers, his dull eyes finding the horse carrying Rance Harvin.

  “Oh, my,” said the first man, adjusting his spectacles as he walked down the porch a ways to get a good look at the dead man, whose head and arms hung down that side of the cream.

  The others shifted around behind him, the youngest man smoking a cigar and stopping near the door to regard Hawk with bemused eyes.

  The older gent with the wild gray hair shifted his gaze from the dead man to Hawk, his ragged silver brows arching over his bespectacled eyes. “You must be Mr. Hawk.”

  Hawk nodded soberly and glanced back at the dead man. “And this here, I’m told, is Rance Harvin.”

  The four councilmen all looked at Harvin once more, then raked their gazes to Hawk before shuttling curious looks at Regan Mitchell, who sat her roan facing the hotel, both her gloved hands clamped over her saddle horn. Hawk said by way of explanation, “Ran into each other along the trail.”

  Regan said in a faintly sneering tone, “Someone else, apparently, didn’t want Mr. Hawk joining the ranks of Trinity’s illustrious citizens. Someone even more vehemently opposed to his presence than even myself, because they tried to have him killed.”

  Hawk gathered that the woman had previously vocalized her opposition at the city council meetings to the town’s hiring a town tamer. He was surprised these old gents had even allowed a female to partake in the formal debates that had obviously taken place.

  Before any of the councilmen could respond to the woman’s statement, she reined her horse around and booted it down the cross street, heading home. Hawk glanced back at her, vaguely admiring the way her thick hair bounced along her slender back, as well as the sand in her character,
before turning to the councilmen.

  “I do apologize, Mr. Hawk,” said the wild-haired man, shuffling over to the top of the porch steps while the others flanked him like bashful schoolboys. “Apparently the rougher element got wind of your coming—gossip spreads fast in a town the size of Trinity—and did something to try and prevent it. My guess would be it was one of the shadier saloon owners who had Harvin awaiting your arrival. Impossible to prove, of course.”

  He glanced at Harvin again, and scowled. “I guess it is a good indication of what you’ll be up against . . . if you’re offered the job, that is, after we’ve chatted a bit. And if you decide to accept.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been shot at before, Mister . . .”

  “Oh, pardon me.” The gray-haired gent flushed with chagrin. “I’m the mayor of Trinity—Malcolm Pennybacker.” He introduced the other three men as Benjamin Learner, Romeo Pike, and, the youngest of the four who was smoking the cigar at the rear of the small pack—Carson Tarwater.

  Each man nodded as his name was mentioned, and then Pennybacker turned to the big man holding the broom on the porch, “Reb, take Mr. Hawk’s horses to the livery stable, will you. And deliver Mr. Harvin to the undertaker, Mr. Booker.”

  The big man opened his mouth but tried several times before he was able to spit the words out like peach pits, “You got it, Mr. Mayor.”

  He smiled bashfully, eagerly, then carefully set his broom against the hotel’s front wall and approached the Trinity mayor, wiping his big, red hands on his coveralls. The mayor dug into his pants pocket and clanked a couple of coins into Reb’s open hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor,” the big, sweet-faced stutterer said with effort, stumbling on every word.

  “Don’t drink that all up at the Venus, now, Reb,” the mayor cautioned the big man, who hurried down the porch steps. “Joe Lundy will want you back here to finish up your chores before you start patronizing the drinking establishments—understand?”

  “Oh, no, sir, Mr. Mayor. I mean . . . I’ll be right back here to finish up my chores, Mr. Mayor.”