The man with the bad leg was sitting on a hay bale, fingers tracing a slow path up and down the stick.
Hart caught hold of his shirt and hauled him to his feet so hard that he all but tumbled him over. Fear rose fast back of the man’s eyes.
‘What the hell happened?’ Hart shouted, the echo of his voice booming away from the roof. ‘What happened here?’
~*~
The trail of the three riders had led a little over a mile to the Ross river. Hart tracked the stream for several miles in either direction, checking both sides of the bank, and came up with nothing. In places the hoofmarks were too few, in others too many and mingled with those of cattle crossing. Whoever had ambushed Lefty O’Neal was well clear and settled snug in some shack that could be located anywhere in three counties.
Lefty’s dead body was strapped over the back of his horse and wrapped in sacking and a sheet of tarpaulin. He could have been buried in Paradise Spring, but Hart hadn’t figured Lefty would have reckoned much to that.
He’d pieced together what he could from the feller in the livery barn and several of the other townsfolk. Rumors that rustlers had been using Paradise Spring as a stopping-off place seemed to have been largely correct. They’d varied in numbers between three and half-a-dozen and it had been no more than chance that a bunch of them had been in town when the Rangers rode in. They’d picked out Hart and Lefty for what they were and made a run for the livery, telling the old timer with the bad leg that if he didn’t front for them, they’d shoot the other one so full of lead he’d never be able to walk at all.
Hart rode into Rangers headquarters with the image of Lefty’s perplexed face clear before him, almost as definite as the bulk beneath the heavy tarpaulin tied to the trailing horse. Those men who were around stared on in silence, saying nothing nor needing to. There could be only one thing under that cover, only one thing that made that kind of shape. And they knew who Hart had ridden out with.
Captain Armstrong stood in the doorway of his office, leaning one hand against the frame and favoring the leg that had picked up more than its share of gunshot.
His face was a grim mask as he waved a couple of men forward to take charge of Hart’s burden. Later there would be a burial detail, men standing stiffly to attention, flags and an oration, words from the good book. Then there would be letters to write, details to be altered, trivia to be attended to. But before all of that he wanted to hear Hart’s report.
The Captain motioned Hart into his office and closed the door behind the pair of them.
‘Coffee?’
Hart shook his head. ‘Let’s get it over.’
Armstrong nodded, suppressed a sigh; he pulled some sheets of paper across his desk, selected a pencil, told Hart to sit down and tell it straight as he could. When it was over he tapped the pencil several times on the edge of the desk and stood up. He poured them both mugs of black coffee from the pot which stood on the stove at the back of the room.
‘No trace,’ he repeated, his eyes fast on Hart’s face.
‘No.’
‘We’ll catch up with them.’
Hart nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Some day.’
Hart drank some of the coffee. He wanted to tell the Captain about the expression on Lefty O’Neal’s face when he’d found him but didn’t see how he could. He scraped the chair back and stood up. Armstrong looked at him, half-guessing what he was thinking.
‘There ain’t no blame, Wes
Hart nodded. ‘Maybe.’
‘Comin’ up against Hardin that way, there weren’t nothin’ you could do for Lefty.’
This time Hart didn’t say anything.
‘Sides, not many folk gazed down the end of John Wesley Hardin’s gun an’ lived to tell the tale.’
Hart still didn’t answer. Armstrong shifted himself round in his chair, the unease getting through to him. He figured that even if Hart had made it out of the saloon when the first shots were fired he’d still have been too late to prevent his colleague being killed. He thought of saying so, spelling it out, but reckoned it was better to let Hart figure it out for himself.
Instead he asked, ‘No way Hardin was tied in with them as got the drop on Lefty?’
‘Not as far as I could see.’
Armstrong nodded: ‘Okay.’
Hart turned to the door.
‘Wes.’
‘Yeah?’
‘That business with Hardin’s wife – I reckon he meant what he said, ’bout killin’ you for it if he gets the chance.’
‘Yeah, I reckon he did.’
Armstrong waited until the echo of the door being shut hard into the frame had subsided. Then he gave a short sigh and reached into one of the drawers of his desk for a stubby cigar. He struck a match and lit the cigar and pulled a few papers towards him and tried to concentrate on what was printed upon them. He’d seen a lot of good men brought back tied across their saddles but that didn’t make it one jot easier.
Chapter Seven
26 May 1874 Comanche, Texas
The rising thunder of hoofs threatened to be lost in the swell of sound from the cheering, raucous crowd. Of the four horses that had started, only two were in contention, but they were racing neck and neck up the length of main street, eager for the finish. Both riders were straining forward in their saddles, feet pushed hard into their stirrups. Whips cracked through the air, slashed down against the animals ’flanks. Saliva flew from the mouths and nostrils of the horses, sweat lathered their coats. Roan and chestnut: chestnut and roan.
The tape was seventy yards off and seemed a mile away.
Sixty.
Fifty.
A man jumped out from the crowd thronging the sidewalk and held a glass of frothy beer aloft and yelled the roan home. Voices drowned him and hands, angry or merely restraining, hauled him back. The beer splashed into the man’s face and down his already-stained shirt front. Others called for both riders to use their whips, their spurs, knock the man alongside clear from the saddle.
Thirty yards and there was still nothing to choose between them; a straw could not have been placed that would have divided them cleanly. The man on the chestnut had his head right over the horse’s fine, broad nose as if he was attempting to drag it across the line through his own physical effort. His rival sat slightly further back and worked his whip hard, flicking it from one side to the other so fast that all that could be seen was a blur of fan-like movement.
‘Come on, you bastard!’
‘Do it, for God’s sake!’
‘C’mon! C’mon!’
‘Sayer! Sayer! Sayer!’
As the chant of his name was roared out, the roan’s rider worked his whip even harder and just when it seemed that neither horse could possibly pass the other within the ten yards remaining, the roan somehow found an extra kick, an extra stride.
As it nosed out the chestnut the sound of Saver’s name became lost in a tremendous shout of exaltation like a thunder clap. Already men were leaping off the sidewalk and running to where both horses were now cantering, slowing, beginning to turn. Boots trampled the broken tape into the broken dirt of the street. Faces were charged with excitement, disappointment. The rider of the chestnut leaned well back in his saddle now and tried to avoid the glances, the threats from those who had lost their money, the occasional cries of sympathy and condolence. Mostly the crowd broke around him and reformed in its dash towards the winner.
Arms reached out towards Sayer and lifted him bodily from the saddle, hoisted him shoulder-high and proceeded to parade him down the street in the direction of the saloon. The horse’s owner, three hundred dollars better off, looked with a certain touch of bitterness at the bloody weals on the roan’s sweating coat before ordering one of his men to lead the horse to the stable and tend to her. That settled, he readjusted his hat, fidgeted his cravat into position and followed the triumphant party through the losers and the mere onlookers.
Some yards off, a younger man hailed him and,
hand still raised in greeting, stepped off the sidewalk towards him.
The pair shook hands warmly, clasping arms.
‘You had your coat on her, I hope, John?’
‘Coat an’ hat an’ britches.’
‘That’s good. You’re comin’ to celebrate victory?’
‘I’ve been celebrating all day,’ the young man laughed.
The owner raised an eyebrow and looked at him carefully. ‘You were that certain, John, my roan would win?’
‘It’s not that. Though I was sure enough about your horse. But today’s my birthday.’
‘I’m damned if it is!’
‘Twenty-one,’ John Wesley Hardin laughed. Twenty-one and a damn sight richer now than I was when the day started.’
‘Ain’t we both?’ exclaimed the horse owner, ‘ain’t we both.’
They laughed and Hardin called over his friends and introduced them: there were three of the Dixon boys, Bill, Bud and Tom, Jim Taylor, and John Wesley’s own brother, Joe Hardin.
The men swopped versions of the race a while and then Jim Taylor asked why they were standing around in the street and talking when they could be doing it much more comfortably inside the saloon.
Nobody came up with a good reason so they swaggered off in the direction of the Lone Star.
As they approached the already swinging batwing doors, Joe Hardin stood aside and waited for his brother, intercepting him and saying quietly, ‘You don’t think maybe we should take our winnings and do our drinkin’ elsewhere?’
John Wesley allowed more than a hint of anger to glint in his pale eyes; the taut skin of his handsome, mustached face tightened over his cheekbones even further.
‘What the hell you talkin’ ’bout?’ Unsurprisingly, John Wesley’s voice showed signs of slurring. He had been drinking and celebrating since before breakfast, egged on by his friends to make his twenty-first birthday an occasion to remember.
Joe hesitated, but went ahead anyhow, his hand blocking his brother from stepping on to the sidewalk. ‘You know that bastard Webb’s in town?’
John Wesley shook his head, as if to clear it. ‘So what?’
‘You know he’s sworn to get you for what you done to Morgan?’
John Wesley laughed aloud. ‘Charlie Webb ain’t comin’ near me! Not today. Not any day.’ He jabbed his brother with his index finger. ‘He sure ain’t fool enough to try nothin’ with all you boys around. Is he, now?’
John Wesley draped an arm about Joe’s shoulders and turned towards the saloon. ‘There’s champagne in there, Joe, and it’s waitin’ for some fine person to call a toast to my health. Let’s quit fartin’ around and get to it!’
Joe held his tongue and allowed himself to be propelled through the doors towards the cheer of greeting that met them on the other side. Jim Taylor held the magnum of champagne between his legs and pushed the cork free with both thumbs. There was a single crack like gunfire and the cork flew high towards the smoke-ringed ceiling. Someone pushed a glass into John Wesley’s hand and Taylor filled it past the brim, champagne running down on to the floor.
‘Easy! Easy!’ John Wesley shouted. ‘I don’t want no bath in the stuff!’
‘Then drink it down, why don’t you? Make room for some more. We got a whole crate over there wants takin’ care of.’
A roar of laughter and encouragement went up as Hardin finished the contents of the glass and held it towards Jim Taylor to be refilled. Soon they were sitting at a table on the low balcony, a bunch of rowdy, raucous men with nothing on their mind but getting drunk and making as much noise as they knew how doing it.
‘Don’t you wish Jane were here, John?’ asked his brother at one point.
Hardin grinned and shook his head and carried on leering at the woman in a red fur-trimmed dress who was sitting close to the downstairs bar.
They were just about half-way through their crate of champagne when a skinny feller wearing spectacles and a long, threadbare coat pushed his way through the batwing doors and blinked across through the smoke. He adjusted to the noise and the light and then filtered his way between the race day crowd, heading towards the bar.
For answer to his question, the bartender looked at him sharply and then cast his eyes high at the rear of the room.
The skinny man nodded and wet his lips and took a couple of paces away from the counter. He hesitated, turned, patted his side pocket. The two dollar pieces Deputy Sheriff Webb had given him jangled against one another. He took one out and fingered it down on to the bar top, trying to avoid the patches of wet that were almost everywhere.
‘Change your mind?’ asked the barkeep.
The man fidgeted with his glasses and said: ‘Whiskey.’
His voice was so low and the clamor so loud, the bartender had to ask him to repeat it twice.
It took the man some little time to down his whiskey, the burn of it strong enough to bring tears to his eyes. The bartender seemed to be using the excuse of the largely drunken crowd for ridding his supplies of whatever inferior stock he had -and there was plenty.
‘Thanks,’ said the skinny man to no one in particular.
No one heard him.
He fussed with the sides of his spectacles some more and set off towards the back of the saloon. He blinked along the table, trying to figure out which of the three younger men with moustaches was the one he had the message for.
Finally, he sidled up close to a girl in a red dress and leaned towards the man at her back. ‘You John Wesley Hardin?’ he asked.
Bud Dixon hollered with laughter, spittle splashing off his tongue into the man’s face.
‘You got the wrong boy,’ he called. ‘He’s right there in the middle. It’s his party, ain’t it?’
The skinny man backed off a couple of feet, removed his glasses and wiped the spray off on to his sleeve, set them back on his thin nose and asked the woman to excuse him.
After three attempts she still didn’t seem to have heard him, so he resorted to squeezing past her, with the result that she jabbed an elbow into his midriff and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing.
The man apologized and said he was trying to get to Mr. Hardin.
‘Which Mr. Hardin?’ asked the man who was stroking the woman’s arm.
‘Mr. John Wesley Hardin.’
The hand ceased stroking and reached out fast, grabbing one side of the long coat and pulling its owner down to the table. Glasses spilt and shouts roared. Hardin laughed and swayed and hauled the man even closer, dragging him to his knees, the frightened bespectacled face inches from his own.
‘Wha’ is it?’
‘Message. I got... message.’
‘Who from?’
‘Sheriff.’
Hardin thrust the face away to arm’s length, stared at it as if suddenly meaningful then pulled it sharply back, nearly sending the man’s glasses off his nose.
‘What sheriff?’
‘Webb. Sheriff...’
‘Charlie Webb.’
‘Yeah.’
John Wesley Hardin reached round for a drink, found his own glass was empty and took Jim Taylor’s. Empty, he passed it back.
‘What the hell’s he want?’
‘He said …’faltered the man.
‘Yeah, c’mon, spit it out. What the fuck’s he say?’
‘Wants to see you. Talk. No ... no tricks. No gunplay. That’s what …’
But Hardin had stopped listening. He was on his feet, waving his arms to shut the others up, the woman in the red dress forgotten, his drunkenness already falling away, as if it had been a comfortable coat he had borrowed and worn for a while but could now cast aside.
‘You hear that? You hear that?’ He pointed from one man round the table to another. ‘There’s someone out there wants to speak to me. Wants a talk. Friendly little talk.’ Hardin winked broadly. ‘No gunplay an’ no tricks, ain’t that right?’
He grabbed hold of the skinny man’s arm and twisted it behind his back, the
man’s face banging hard against the table, one of the lenses of his spectacles cracking across but remaining in its frame.
‘Ain’t that right?’ Hardin demanded. ‘No tricks an’ no guns. Ain’t that what you said?’
The messenger tried to answer but with his face forced into the table, all he could manage was a few muffled grunts.
Hardin pulled him away and pushed him staggering away from the table. The man grasped hold of the balcony rail and hung there for several moments.
Joe Hardin went over to him and asked him where Webb wanted the meeting to take place.
‘Hanney Devlin’s,’ replied the man, catching his breath.
‘When?’ called Jim Taylor.
‘He’s there now. I’m to ... to tell him if you’re comin’.’
Taylor laughed. ‘I’ll tell you what you can tell Charlie Webb - you can—’
‘You can tell him I’ll be there.’
All the men stared at John Wesley, for a moment silent. Then, when they raised their voices in urgent protest, he called over the top of them, Tell him I’ll be right over. In just as much time as it takes to finish off another bottle of champagne.’
The skinny messenger nodded and scrambled his way down the stairs and towards the door. The news followed in his wake and rumor and counter-rumor spread through the saloon and out on to the street. Someone was taking bets and offering Hardin better odds than the favorite that afternoon.
‘You’re jokin’, John,’ said Jim Taylor, moving his chair alongside Hardin. ‘You’d be walking into a trap.’
‘I ain’t afraid of Webb. He’s been shootin ’his mouth off about what he’s plannin’ to do to me for long enough. Now I’m goin’ to face him out an’ show folk he ain’t nothin’ but wind an’ water.’
Hardin stood up and Taylor stood with him, closing on him further. ‘No one’s saying you’re afraid. Just this ain’t the right time. You know what Devlin’s place is, well as I do. It’ll be packed with Sutton’s cronies an’ trash like that. You can’t walk in there.’
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