Killer's Draw: The Circuit Rider

by Dani Amore

  As yet, she saw no sign of a group of men from Big River, so she brought Tower around to the front, and straight up to their room on the second floor. A first-floor room had been offered, but she didn’t like it for defensive purposes, which meant Tower had to climb the stairs. He succeeded at the chore, but sweat broke out along his brow and his face returned to the pale shade he’d been wearing when she’d found him by the side of the river.

  In the room, she got him into bed, then gave him a loaded pistol, which he laid by his side. Bird filled the empty whiskey bottle from the water pitcher by the door, and placed it next to Tower.

  She dug out her own bottle of whiskey, sat down, and looked at Tower while she took a long drink.

  “Try not to get into any trouble while I try to find you a doc,” she said. “Knowing you, you’ll probably ignore that order.”

  Bird was relieved to have Tower in a proper bed. Now, she could concentrate on finding out who was responsible, not just for the state Tower was in but for the entire situation.

  “I can’t make any promises,” Tower said. And then he smiled.

  Bird was surprised to find that she liked the sight of it.

  Seventy-Two

  The whiskey bottle on the table next to his bed took on new meaning for Tower. In the war, the doctors had repeatedly used morphine for pain. Now, he didn’t have anything. The only thing he could think of to dull the pain was the bottle Bird had thoughtfully left for him.

  He popped the cork and took a long drink. He winced as it burned his throat. He didn’t see how she could drink so much, and all the time. The idea of pouring this down his throat in the morning made him feel sick.

  He leaned his head back onto the pillow, the bottle of whiskey in his left hand, which was still swollen and tender but didn’t seem to be permanently damaged, and the gun in his right. He lifted the gun and took a good look at it. A Colt .45, impeccably cleaned and oiled, every bullet in the chamber. Some cowboys liked to keep one chamber empty, the one the hammer rests against, in case they hit a particularly hard jolt riding and the round goes off. But Bird, as in everything else she did, preferred to override caution in favor of more firepower. Tower couldn’t blame her; she’d survived plenty with that strategy.

  He put the pistol back down and drank again from the bottle. It was working, the pain was subsiding and a pleasant blanket of fuzziness descended on his brain and his body.

  Tower closed his eyes, saw the big man in the barn coming at him, and felt the whacking of the wood planks on his body. The axe handle that had been jammed up against his throat. He wondered about Evelyn Egans, or, actually, Rose Sutton. He prayed that they let her go. Too many people had been killed already. Besides, why wouldn’t they release her? She had nothing to offer them, just an actress playing a part.

  His thoughts returned to the men who had beaten him and the flour sacks they wore. Something about them tugged at his memory. They were nothing new in terms of disguises. Lynch mobs were known to use them. As were vigilante groups.

  Tower’s eyes snapped open. Hadn’t he seen a vigilante poster at the train station? When he had waited there with Morrison for Mrs. Egans’ arrival?

  Something else clicked in Tower’s mind. He tried to sit up, but the pain forced him back into bed. He drank again from the whiskey bottle.

  He remembered the men driving him out to where they’d dumped him. He recalled being pulled from the wagon, lifted into the air, swung back and forth, and then thrown off a ledge into the water below.

  But they had yelled something, at least one of them had.

  What had it been?

  His brain had been numb with pain from the beating and the loss of blood.

  He thought he’d been in and out of consciousness during the time, but he could have sworn that one of them men had yelled—

  Rectified.

  That’s what the man had yelled.

  Something about being rectified.

  Vigilantes. Wearing masks. The poster at the train station.

  The Rectifiers?

  Seventy-Three

  The Harlan’s Crossing general store was in the same place it had been when she’d first come here looking for Bertram Egans’ phantom girlfriend. Bird had seen virtually no one on the walk over from the hotel. Now, she entered the store, spotted the proprietor, and approached him.

  “This town have a decent doctor?” Bird asked. Her eyes immediately found the row of whiskey bottles behind the counter.

  “That depends. What’s ailing you?” The store’s owner looked like a former rancher. He had on the apron of a store clerk, but his broad shoulders and weathered hands spoke of a life lived in the open.

  “Well, right now I’m thirsty,” Bird said. She pointed at one of the bottles, which the owner retrieved. Bird paid, opened the bottle, and took a long drink, feeling the man’s eyes upon her.

  “You don’t need a doctor for that. You need a bartender,” he said.

  “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  Bird took another swallow.

  “No, I need a doctor for someone else, not for me,” she said. “Cowboy I ride with got himself thrown from a horse. Probably broke a few ribs, among other things.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the hotel. I left some whiskey with him. That’s the best medicine.” She threw back another drink.

  “Well, the way you’re taking that medicine you must be awfully ill,” he said.

  “Not at all, sir. This whiskey is preventive medicine. Soon as I stop I get sick.”

  The owner nodded.

  “Harlan’s Crossing isn’t big enough to merit a doc,” he said. “But I’ve learned a thing or two over the years about patching up cowboys so I can probably help your friend.”

  “I would very much appreciate it, sir,” Bird said. She was eyeing another bottle on the shelf. “And I’ll take a bottle of your best, most expensive whiskey. The other stuff isn’t good for you.”

  The store owner handed Bird a bottle, then called out. “Jimmy!”

  A young boy emerged from a stockroom at the rear of the store.

  “Mind the store,” the owner said. “I’ve got to wrap up a cowboy’s ribs.” He turned to Bird.

  “Thank you kindly,” Bird said. “What’s your name by the way?”

  “Theodore Putti,” the man said. “Call me Theo.”

  “And you can call me Bird.”

  Putti removed his apron and handed it to the young man at the counter. He walked over to a shelf, and began picking supplies and putting them into a leather case.

  When he was done, he turned to Bird.

  “Okay, let’s see a cowboy about some ribs.”

  Seventy-Four

  Bird knocked on the door, recalled the last time she’d entered a hotel room only to find the Conway brothers with a nice surprise for her, and pulled her gun from its holster.

  “Come in,” Tower said from the other side of the door.

  Bird nudged the door open with her boot and peeked around the corner. Tower sat in bed, the gun in his hand pointing directly at her.

  “That’s better,” she said. “See, you’ll get captured a lot less if you always have a gun in your hand.”

  She stepped aside and let a visibly nervous Putti into the room, then shut the door.

  “Mr. Theodore Putti, man of many trades,” Bird said. “Meet Cowboy Mike, thrown from a horse last night, probably because he was half drunk to begin with.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Putti,” Tower said. He started to sit up, winced, then fell back against the pillows.

  “What the lady is trying to tell you,” Putti said. “Is that I own the general store but am occasionally pressed into service for medical assistance. I don’t claim to be a doctor, but I can usually handle something simple. A long time ago, I was a trail boss and had plenty of practice tending to injuries.”

  “I appreciate it,” Tower said. “It’s mostly my ribs that hurt.”

  “Did this ho
rse kick you in the face, too?” Putti asked. He looked first at Tower, then back at Bird.

  “It always looks that way, doc,” Bird said. “It has since birth.”

  She crossed the room to Tower’s side and pulled the bottle of whiskey from his hand. She looked at how much had been consumed since she’d left. She nodded at Tower with respect, as if she was impressed.

  “Looks like I’m making progress with you,” she said.

  “Do you want to stay for this?” Putti said to Bird.

  “What the hell, I think I’ll stay.” She leaned against a table holding a washbasin, and drank from the bottle. “I always love a good show.”

  Putti went to Tower and together they managed to remove his shirt. Bird saw the pale skin of Tower’s back, inlaid with a wide swath of deep bruising and a variety of cuts.

  “Jesus Christ,” Bird said. “That’s going to take a long time to heal.”

  Putti rubbed some ointment on a cloth and dabbed the open wounds on Tower’s back. He did the same with some of the cuts on Tower’s face. He then wrapped long strips of white cloth around Tower’s body, pinning them together at the front.

  “She’s right,” Putti said. “You definitely have a broken rib or two, but they don’t appear to be horribly damaged, no bones poking through the skin, so I think they’ve stayed in place. And that’s the important thing. It’s when they break loose and start cutting up your insides that the real trouble starts. From what I can tell, you aren’t bleeding inside. Just keep these around your ribs for as long as you can and gradually they’ll heal. It’ll take at least a month or two. There’s no way to hurry it along.”

  Tower got his shirt back on and leaned against the pillow. Bird brought the bottle of whiskey over to him and he took a drink as Putti began gathering the items he’d brought.

  “How long have you lived here in Harlan’s Crossing, Mr. Putti?” Tower asked.

  “Oh, I suppose it’s been about ten years.”

  “Ever hear of a vigilante group called The Rectifiers?”

  Bird looked at Tower, wondering where this line of questioning was going.

  “Sure have. Everyone has around these parts,” Putti said.

  “Who are they?”

  “Well, no one knows for sure. But they cleaned this area up a few years back. They’d finally had enough of rustlers operating around the big herds near Big River, so they put a stop to it. And then some.”

  “What do you mean by ‘and then some’?”

  Putti held up his hands. “Just rumors.”

  “What kind of rumors?” Bird asked.

  “Look, I don’t want to say anything against them, they did a lot of good for this area, it’s just …” His voice trailed off as he searched for the right words.

  “They just what?” Tower asked.

  “Word was they took no prisoners, which is true for any vigilante group of course, for the most part. But some folks thought they didn’t work too hard to discriminate between the guilty and the innocent.”

  “Sounds like every vigilante I ever knew,” Bird said. She looked at Tower and noticed that he was watching Putti intently.

  “What happened to them?”

  “No one really knows. Their last roundup got a lot of attention because they shot a couple of rustlers, one of them a woman, and then no one ever heard from them again. But they didn’t need to go out and do any enforcement. Their reputation was known all over this part of the country. No cattle thief wanted to come within a hundred miles of Big River after that one.”

  “So, did they operate mostly around Big River?” Tower asked.

  Putti nodded.

  “Yes, sir. They even had a place named after them. All those people they killed? They dumped their bodies in the same place.”

  He went to the door and opened it, turned back to Bird and Tower.

  “Came to be known as Killer’s Draw.”

  Seventy-Five

  Bird and Tower decided to hole up at the hotel long enough for the preacher’s ribs to begin to heal and the bruises on his face to fade. They couldn’t go anywhere without attracting attention the way he looked now.

  In the mornings, Bird would get the supplies they needed, then return to the hotel. Tower had begun to get up and pace back and forth, as much as his ribs would allow it.

  Most of the time he was thinking.

  About what the store owner had told him. About the papers Jeffire’s widow had given him. About Killer’s Draw.

  He had returned Bird’s whiskey to her as the pain was now relatively mild compared to those first few days. The absence of alcohol made his mind clearer, sharper.

  But something danced just around the periphery of his intellect that he couldn’t wrangle into a cohesive thought.

  He needed just one final bit of information.

  Tower returned to the bed, sat on the edge, and then swung his feet up. The pain had dulled.

  Tower thought about the people he’d met in Big River. Mrs. Wolfe. Morrison. Chesser. Parker. The Conway brothers. Martin Branson.

  As a group, they left a lot to be desired—

  And then the pieces came together so firmly that his body jolted. He got to his feet, walked as quickly as he could to Bird’s room, knocked, and went in.

  She was on the bed cleaning her gun and looked up at Tower’s entrance. The other gun was loaded and in her left hand, pointed at Tower’s chest.

  “This better be important,” she said.

  Tower looked at her.

  “I know who killed Bertram Egans, and you’re not going to believe it.”

  EPISODE SIX

  Seventy-Six

  Tower closed his eyes.

  There were just too many thoughts, too many angles, to what may or may not have happened to keep organized.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw Bird looking at him.

  “That’s some serious thinking you’re doing,” she said. She hefted a bottle of whiskey, and he watched with morbid fascination as her throat pulsated with the effort of imbibing.

  The woman could drink; no doubt about that.

  His mind went back to the papers that Roger Jeffire had given him. He wished he still had them, and that he could remember the name of the prostitute mentioned in the article. There was something about that name that wouldn’t leave him alone. It was tormenting him.

  “What are you thinking about, specifically?” Bird asked. “And how much longer are we going to stay in this place?”

  She gestured vaguely around the room, but he knew she meant Harlan’s Crossing. Bird was anxious to get back to Big River and finish things once and for all.

  “I’m thinking Roger Jeffire had a good idea what happened, and I wish we had gotten more of the story. But it’s too late now.”

  “Too late for him, too,” Bird said. “Well, I’m packed and loaded, ready to go.”

  “I’m not,” Tower said. He was still in pain from the damage to his ribs, and even simple tasks like gathering his meager belongings took three times longer than normal. The good thing was, the pain had lessened somewhat and when he had looked in the mirror this morning, the bruising was much less noticeable. Not that he cared too much about how he looked. But he had a feeling things were going to happen fast, and he wanted his body to be able to respond.

  “Maybe it’s not too late for Jeffire,” he said.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bird asked. “He’s dead.”

  “I mean that if we can take what he had started, we might be able to finish the story for him, by finding out, finally, what really happened.”

  “Tell me again what you read in that newspaper story,” Bird said. She drank more whiskey and cocked her head at Tower.

  “The article was about a prostitute in Baltimore who had been arrested for running a brothel and that she had been put in jail. And then there was a second article that said she disappeared. I can’t remember if she escaped, or was released. In any event, it made it sound like she was
long gone. As in, good riddance.”

  Bird considered for a moment. “So, obviously, Jeffire figured she came to Big River,” she said. “Maybe set up a new brothel out here. The town has been booming with cattle and cowboys for years. Perfect place to peddle some flesh. I wonder if she changed her name. Those ladies have as many names as they do tricks in the bedroom.”

  Tower nodded.

  “I wasn’t sure if the article had anything to do, necessarily, with Bertram Egans’ murder. After all, the papers were separate, and Jeffire didn’t tell me anything. But when our friend here, Mr. Putti, mentioned a woman, well, it just made me think.”

  Bird leaned back in the chair and rested her head against the wall.

  “Let me put this all together,” she said. “So our prostitute gets into trouble with the law in Baltimore and heads west. She lands in Big River, sets up a brothel, and promptly runs afoul of this vigilante group, the Rectifiers, that our friend just told us about.”

  “No way to prove it,” Tower said. “But as far as theories go, it makes a certain kind of sense.”

  “The woman,” Bird said. “Putti said one of the last people executed by these vigilantes was a woman. Supposedly, they said she was a cattle thief. But maybe she wasn’t a cattle thief at all. Maybe she was a prostitute they were running out of town.”

  Tower began putting his things into his bag, the bible going in last. “Maybe. But we’re assuming this woman continued being a madam. But I know a lot of women who plied their trade back East, come out here to do the same thing and quickly find a lonely cowboy who wants to make an honest woman out of her. They get married and start a ranch. Not as likely, but I could see it happening.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, though,” Bird said. “The Rectifiers killed her because she started a ranch?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds like the Rectifiers didn’t always need a good reason to take the law into their own hands.”

  “Which brings us back to Bertram Egans.” Bird leaned forward, uncorked the bottle, and drank.