Hate Thy Neighbor

by William W. Johnstone

  “May I have the pistol?” Kate said, her chin determined.

  “Miss Kerrigan, have you ever killed a man?”

  Kate shook her head. “No, I have not.”

  “There’s no going back from a killing,” Hollister said. “After the deed is done, not all your tears, nor all your prayers, can bring the dead back again. For the rest of your life you live with it.”

  “I protect mine,” Kate said. “And when I fail to protect them, I will exact vengeance for them.”

  “Since you are Patrick’s daughter, I will do this for you,” Hollister said. “I think you will pursue this vengeance of yours no matter what I say.” He sighed and said, “Better you get the instrument of your revenge from me.”

  Hollister rose and stepped to a dresser. He opened the bottom drawer and brought out a rectangular walnut case. He opened the case and revealed the contents to Kate. A beautiful blue revolver with an elegant side-mounted hammer nestled in red velvet along with a powder flask, percussion caps, and both round balls and paper cartridges.

  The gambler said, “This is a Model 1855 revolver designed by a Colt gunsmith named Elisha Root. It shoots a .31 caliber ball and I had the barrel cut back to three inches.”

  “Will it suit my purpose?” Kate said.

  “I don’t know what your purpose is,” Hollister said.

  “I think you do, sir,” Kate said.

  “God help me, I have an idea,” Hollister said. “I have heard things, terrible, sad things.”

  The gambler closed the case lid, as though he had made up his mind.

  “I can’t dissuade you from this course?” he said.

  “No,” Kate said. “I am determined to see justice done.”

  “You have the face of an angel, Kate, an avenging angel.” Hollister sighed more deeply this time and said, “Then so be it. I’ll load the Root for you before you leave. Make sure the powder stays dry.”

  “I appreciate this, Mr. Hollister,” Kate said.

  He shook his head. “My God, you’re only a slip of a girl.”

  “As I told you before, I fight for what’s mine,” Kate said. “And I always will.”

  “The Root is not a man killer like the Colt .45,” Hollister said. “You’ll need to be close and aim for the broadest part of the body.”

  “How close?” Kate said.

  “Within spitting distance,” Hollister said. He stared at the girl. “Changed your mind?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “You have the makings, Miss Cotter. I sense a courage and a ruthlessness in you that I’ve found in few men,” Hollister said. “If it is His divine will, may God help you in this endeavor.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The evening after Kate Kerrigan’s meeting with Ben Hollister, her father retired to bed early with a bad cold.

  Kate quickly changed into a modest green cotton dress with a high collar and threw her late mother’s cloak over her shoulders. The dress had two deep pockets in front and into one of those she slipped the Root Colt. A white straw hat completed her outfit and she decided she looked like an innocent Irish girl just arrived in the Five Points.

  Shannon, still recovering from her ordeal, was asleep, whimpering every now and then as her bad dreams returned and tormented her.

  Kate kissed her sister on the cheek and then slipped out of the house.

  According to the chipped china clock on the mantel it was nearly ten.

  * * *

  The Cross Keys saloon was a smoky, noisy gin mill that smelled of sweaty, unwashed bodies, cheap perfume, spilled beer, and the usual background fragrance of urine and vomit.

  Kate had her bottom pinched five times before she reached the long, mahogany bar, backed by six bartenders, splendid creatures with slicked-down hair and diamond stickpins in their cravats.

  When one of the bartenders, among the aristocracy of the Five Points, deigned to look in Kate’s direction, she dropped a little curtsey and ordered a small sherry, “Sir, if you please.”

  “I’ll pay that for the little lady,” a rough-edged voice said behind her.

  A huge, hairy forearm reached out and a massive hand grabbed the sherry glass. It looked like a tiny, amber wildflower in his great paw.

  Kate turned and looked into the middle button of a man’s plaid shirt.

  She raised her eyes and saw a broad, red-veined face and fleshy wide nose broken to a pulp. The man had heavy-lidded eyes, pendulous, unshaven jowls, and the chest and shoulders of a village blacksmith.

  He seemed as huge and indestructible as a German ironclad.

  Kate thought of the revolver in her pocket and feared that its tiny ball would bounce off such a man and do him no more harm than a stinging gnat.

  “So what brings you to Five Points, dearie?” the man said, his hand already tracing the curve of Kate’s hip.

  She played her role to the hilt.

  “Oh kind sir, I’ve just arrived from old Ireland and I’m looking for a place to lay my poor head,” she said.

  “Well, am I not from the old country my ownself?” the man said. “And is my name not Bill Wooten? We are well met, indeed.”

  It was only now Kate noticed that he had a fresh scratch across his low, brutish forehead. This was one of them. One of the rapists. She’d thought it might take days to find him, but here he was, big and bold as brass.

  “I have the very place for you,” the man said. “It’s a boardinghouse run by Mrs. O’Hara, as respectable a lady as you’ll ever find.” He winked. “No gentleman callers, if such are to your liking.”

  “Oh no, sir,” Kate said. “It has been in my mind of late to enter holy orders.”

  “Is that so?” Wooten said. “And you’ll make a fine nun, I’ll be bound.”

  He grabbed Kate’s arm in his huge meaty fist.

  “Come and meet my friends, two Catholic, churchgoing gentlemen as ever was, lay to that.”

  As Wooten half-dragged Kate to a table, he shouldered a slatternly woman aside. She smiled at the girl, revealing black teeth, and said, “Watch your step, dearie.”

  “My associates,” the big man said. “The one with the white eye is Tom Van Meter and t’other with the warts all over his ugly mug is Chauncey Upsell.”

  Van Meter smiled at Kate. “I say we leave now,” he said. “Mrs. O’Hara locks her door early.”

  “Good idea,” Upsell said. He grinned at Kate. “You’ll be safe with us, me darlin’.”

  * * *

  The events that followed after Kate left the pub played out exactly as she feared and knew they would.

  Oddly silent, but constantly exchanging grins, as the three men walked her closer to what seemed an abandoned warehouse they began to glance over their shoulders.

  Satisfied that there were no prying eyes on the street, they stopped, and with considerable violence dragged Kate into a doorway.

  Van Meter kicked open the door open and threw her into a dark, echoing stairwell.

  “Oh sirs, what are you doing?” Kate cried out. “This is not Mrs. O’Hara’s.”

  “You can go there later,” Bill Wooten said.

  “If ye can walk, that is,” Upsell said.

  “Please,” Kate said, “I am a virgin, destined for the nunnery.”

  “Not for much longer,” Van Meter said.

  “Me first,” Upsell said. “Girlie, I’m gonna bust you wide open.”

  Convinced they had a terrified, cowering victim in their power, the grinning Wooten thumbed a match into flame and lit a stub of candle he’d picked up from the bottom step.

  For a moment, no one had a hand on Kate.

  “Damn you all to hell!” she yelled.

  Suddenly the Root Colt was in Kate’s hand and she fired.

  The bullet hit Wooten high in the chest, and he fell back, gawping at the blood pumping out of him. Deafened, her ears ringing, Kate thumbed back the hammer again, wondering at how steady was her hand. Chauncey Upsell charged toward her, cursing, his clawed hands reachi
ng for Kate’s throat.

  Kate’s ball, fired at a distance of a couple of feet, crashed in the thug’s forehead and dropped him like a felled steer.

  Tom Van Meter yelled that he was out of it.

  Like the other two who sprawled on the floor, one dead, the second coughing up frothing blood, Van Meter was a skull-and-knuckle fighter and good with the club and sap against any opponent. But fighting with a gun was alien to him. Kate Cotter’s revolver had turned a hundred-pound girl into more than his equal and even now, as he saw his death in her eyes, he couldn’t grasp what was happening to him.

  “Her name was Shannon. I am her sister,” Kate said. “You raped her.”

  “No . . .” Van Meter said. “I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”

  “You watched these two animals rape her and did nothing.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, put the gun away, and I’ll buy your drink.”

  “It’s way too late for sorrow, Van Meter. Yours and mine.”

  She shot into the man’s belly, fired again and watched him fall.

  Gunsmoke fogged the stairwell as Kate stepped to Wooten.

  The man was still alive.

  “For God’s sake get me a doctor,” he said, his eyes wild. “I don’t want to die like this.”

  Kate spat on him.

  She had one ball left—the one Bill Wooten took between the eyes and rode into hell.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Kate Kerrigan rose from her chair and stepped to the parlor window. Annie Oakley was a mannish-looking girl, but she always smelled like wildflowers, and that scent lingered as Kate watched a little paint gelding throw a cussing Shorty Hawkins for the seventh time that morning.

  Thrust to the forefront of her mind by the Ingrid Hult affair, the memories refused to leave her. The rape had made Shannon pregnant, and she died a few months later after giving birth to a stillborn child. Shannon had lost the will to live and had long sought death. She was buried during a roaring, flashing thunderstorm as though the gods were angry that she had met such a fate.

  Kate left the parlor and asked Flossie her lady’s maid to help her dress for riding. A gallop in the cool of the morning would help clear her head and rid her mind of the images of the past.

  * * *

  “The Indian visits Josiah Mosely’s grave every night and sings death songs,” Trace Kerrigan said. “Bill Cody says his people can hear him and it’s scaring the womenfolk, makes then think of Judgment Day.”

  Frank Cobb nodded. “That means Cloud Passing believes Josiah’s soul is lingering and he’s trying to send it on its way. As a great warrior his spirit must travel up the long fork of the Milky Way to Seana, the camp of the dead. If his spirit lingers, it will become evil and remain on earth.”

  Trace and Frank sat on the top board of the corral and watched Shorty Hawkins put a young paint cutting horse through its paces. Shorty had been bucked off a dozen times, but now the paint had accepted the saddle without fuss and seemed more tolerant of the man on his back.

  “Bill says he sent some men up there with one of his Sioux to chase away Cloud Passing,” Trace said. “But the Sioux refused to enter the cemetery and the others said they saw no sign of the Indian anyway.”

  “There’s no use chasing after a Cheyenne in the dark,” Frank said. “If he doesn’t want to be found, you won’t find him.” He smiled. “Lookee there. Shorty is a-settin’ and a-grinnin’ on that little hoss like he’s the king’s cousin. I reckon he don’t know what he’s in for. That pony has a mean eye.”

  “Ten dollars says Shorty stays with him this time,” Trace said.

  “You got it,” Frank said.

  “Shorty’s a bronc buster from way back,” Trace said.

  “Is that a fact?” Frank said.

  Suddenly the paint unwound like a coiled spring. All four hooves off the ground, it jumped three feet into the air, landed, and then bucked its way around the corral. Shorty held on, but he was being bounced around like a rag doll and had already lost his hat and most of his composure. “Stay with him, Shorty!” Trace yelled. “Ride him, cowboy!”

  Then two unfortunate occurrences happened within a couple of seconds. First Shorty Hawkins was bucked off and hit the dirt hard in a cloud of dust. The next moment the wild-eyed paint decided he didn’t much like the two humans sitting on the corral fence and sideswiped them, his heavy ranch saddle acting like a battering ram. Trace and Frank fell backward and thudded onto the ground in a tangle of chaps, spurs, and cusses.

  Frank was the first to recover. He sat up, found his hat, slammed it onto his head, and extended his open palm. “Give me my ten bucks,” he said. Then, groaning, he laid back and said, “Remind me to shoot Shorty Hawkins at the first available opportunity.”

  Before her morning ride Kate Kerrigan led her mare from the barn and chose that moment to pass the corral. She stopped and frowned at her son, her segundo, and bronc buster all lying on their backs on the ground.

  “I don’t pay you three to laze in the sun all day,” she said. “Frank, after I come back from my ride I’d like to talk to you at the house. That is, if it’s quite convenient and won’t interrupt your nap.”

  Kate led the mare away, her back stiff.

  Trace and Frank exchanged glances and then Trace said, grinning, “Good luck, Frank. I think you’re going to need it.”

  * * *

  “And that’s the whole story, Frank,” Kate Kerrigan said. “I had to tell someone and I trust you to keep it to yourself.”

  Frank Cobb had listened in silence and now he said, “Does Bill Cody know about this?”

  “No. I’m the only one Annie Oakley spoke to. Ingrid Hult is a killer, Frank, but God forgive me, I can’t blame her. I think what she did was completely justified.”

  “It was a reckoning,” Frank said. “And I can’t blame her, either. But she had a hand in the killing of Slide McKenzie. Jim Benson murdered a caged, defenseless man in cold blood.”

  “McKenzie was a snake, Frank,” Kate said. “Have you forgotten what he tried to do to me?”

  “No, Kate, I haven’t. But McKenzie was killed to keep him from talking. That was no reckoning, no eye for an eye.” Frank shrugged. “If Benson gets a good lawyer a jury may figure it differently, but I can only tell you how I see it.”

  “Frank, you’re saying to me that Ingrid Hult could hang for the McKenzie murder?” Kate said.

  “It’s possible. Not at all likely, but possible.”

  “That vile man still haunts us. There’s just no getting rid of him,” Kate said. She slapped her hand on the parlor table. “Ingrid Hult and Jim Benson work for Bill Cody. This is his problem, not mine.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Frank said. “Seems to me that rape and its consequences are every woman’s problem. But I’m a man, so what the hell do I know?”

  “A lot, apparently,” Kate said. “Well, what do we do? Wash our hands of the whole sorry business and let Mr. Cody handle it?”

  “Or we can say nothing at all. Come spring Bill Cody’s train will pull out and we can wave it good-bye and then get on with the business of running a ranch.”

  “In other words what Mr. Cody doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Or us.”

  “That’s the general idea,” Frank said.

  Kate was lost in thought for a few moments, but then she shook her head and said, “No, I can’t do it, Frank. I helped bring law and order to this part of Texas, and people depend on me as the only law west of the Pecos. Despite my sympathy for them, two murderers are right here, on my land, and I can’t turn my back on my principles. I’ll do what has to be done to resolve this situation, and I’ll do it within the limits of Texas law.”

  “Kate, you once told me about your sister and—”

  “I told you about Shannon,” Kate said. “The difference is that there was no law in the Five Points, and where there is no law the law can’t be broken.”

  “You were judge, jury, and executioner,” Frank said.


  “Yes, I was, back then in a lawless time and place. But we have laws in Texas, and I’m bound to uphold them. The Five Points was anarchy, disorder, chaos. I won’t visit that same hell on West Texas.”

  Frank thought that through and then said, “All right, then we bring matters to a head.”

  “By bringing in Mr. Cody?” Kate said.

  “No, Kate, by bringing in Ingrid Hult and Ducking Jim Benson.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kate said.

  But then Frank Cobb explained it to her, and she understood perfectly.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  “I want everybody mounted but the cook,” Frank Cobb said. “This has got to look good to Bill Cody and his people.”

  “Thirty riders to capture one raggedy Indian?” Trace Kerrigan said. “Cloud Passing will see an army coming and light a shuck.”

  “He won’t, because I’m going up to the cemetery to talk to him tonight,” Frank said. “You know what a Cheyenne Dog Soldier with a Winchester can do? He’s got to be on our side from the git-go. And Trace, make sure the hands share a few jugs of whiskey tonight. I want them likkered up good and smelling of whiskey tomorrow.”

  “There will be a few hangovers tomorrow,” Quinn said.

  “That’s all to the good,” Frank said. “Understand this, I don’t want respectable, God-fearing KK punchers riding with me.”

  “That ain’t likely anyhow,” Quinn said. “We don’t have any of them.”

  Frank smiled. “I know. But I need the hands to look and smell like a drunken lynch mob. You figure you can make that happen, Quinn?”

  “It ain’t much of a stretch,” Quinn said.

  “Isn’t . . . isn’t much of a stretch,” Frank said. “I don’t want your mother accusing me of not teaching you to talk proper.”

  “Ma wants me to go to college,” Quinn said.

  “And a good thing too,” Frank said.

  “I want to do what you do, Frank.”

  “My time is over, Quinn. Law and order has come to the West, and there’s no room left for fellers like me. We’re being crowded out.”