Hart the Regulator 8

by John B. Harvey

  For a moment, Taylor thought that Hardin was going to throw a punch at him. But John Wesley bit down his anger and turned away from Taylor, pushing the table back to force his way through.

  ‘I’m takin’ a walk along to Hanney Devlin’s,’ he announced. ‘Take a drink with my friend Charlie Webb. Who’s comin’ with me?’

  Without waiting to see which of the men would follow, Hardin went briskly down the steps and through the saloon, brushing off the advice and concern of well-wishers on his way to the door. Once in the street, he looked over his shoulder and saw the two Dixon boys. Bud and Tom, as well as his own brother, Joe. John Wesley’s face clouded over, seeing that Jim Taylor had decided to let him go in without his gun to back him up. Well, he’d show him!

  There were a few stragglers outside Devlin’s and a crowd packing out the doorway which broke inside when Hardin and the three other men neared the entrance. John Wesley hardly hesitated on his way into the low-ceilinged saloon and eating house. The door had no time to swing back before Deputy Sheriff Webb was walking through a bunch of onlookers to greet him.

  ‘Hardin, I heard you was comin’ over.’

  ‘You wanted to talk.’

  Webb held out his hand and Hardin didn’t even glance at it. After a couple of seconds, Webb pulled the hand back with a tight-lipped smile and invited Hardin over to his table for a drink.

  ‘Fine,’ said John Wesley, ‘only we’re drinkin’ champagne.’

  Webb shook his head with a laugh. ‘Hanney don’t run to champagne. But his whiskey’s better’n most. Come on over and try some.’

  Hardin shrugged his shoulders, glanced at the expectant crowd, and followed Webb to a table close to the center of the room. There were three others sitting there, only one of whom Hardin recognized. Inside the place were several of Sutton’s men, he knew that for certain, but with his brother and the Dixons to back him up and a quantity of champagne inside him, he felt confident enough.

  ‘You had your shirt on the winner today,’ said Webb, passing the bottle in Hardin’s direction.

  John Wesley waited for a clean glass, then poured himself a good shot, passing on the bottle to Joe.

  ‘Shirt and suit, the lot,’ he agreed, it’s been a good day.’

  ‘I’m sure it has.’

  ‘An’ it’s John’s birthday,’ said Joe Hardin, beginning to relax.

  Charlie Webb pushed back his chair at the news. He raised his glass and made a brief speech in Hardin’s honor, asking everyone to join him in a toast to the young man’s health.

  ‘Long life to you,’ said Webb, staring directly at him.

  John Wesley lifted his own glass. ‘And to you, Charlie,’ he said. ‘And to you.’

  For ten or fifteen minutes they gossiped about horses and cattle and the tension seemed to be evaporating; hangers-on around the saloon lost interest and wandered back to the bar or stood close by the various card games in progress. Heads that had been peering over the door disappeared. Webb stretched back in his chair, one booted foot resting on the edge of the table. A fresh bottle had been summoned from the bar. Then while the others were engaged in the merits of the afternoon’s riders, Webb leaned forward and spoke to Hardin quietly. Quietly, yet there was no mistaking the edge of steel to his voice.

  ‘We didn’t mention what happened in Albuquerque, John.’

  Hardin’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about it?’

  ‘That business with Helm, that was a bad business.’

  ‘For Helm,’ John Wesley agreed.

  ‘For the territory, John. A sworn office of the law being gunned down in the execution of his duty.’

  ‘Sworn officer of the law in a pig’s ass! An ’the only execution on Jack Helm’s mind was mine.’

  Webb shook his head, still leaning across the table, still keeping his voice low. ‘That ain’t true, John. There’s witnesses. Them as’ll swear to Helm’s intentions.’

  Hardin pulled back with a snort. ‘Witnesses! I bet you got witnesses who’ll swear to any damn thing you pay ’em to say.’

  The other conversation had mostly stopped now, men were watching Hardin and Webb; those close to the table silent and anxious.

  ‘Now, John,’ Webb continued, still soft in voice, ‘I thought we were here to talk about this man to man, discuss this as sensible folk and try to find some way of resolving the difficulties. It ain’t no use your goin’ off that way an’ losin’ your temper.’

  Hardin stared at the sheriff, hating the man’s reasonable manner, the smile about his eyes and mouth and the treachery he was certain lay behind them.

  ‘See, John,’ Webb continued calmly, ‘if you an’ me can’t find a way to talk this out, then there’s got to be other ways.’

  ‘Meanin’ what, Charlie?’ asked Hardin.

  Webb slid his hands along the table. Shrugged lightly. ‘Other ways,’ he repeated.

  Hardin’s eye was caught by a movement back of Webb’s shoulder, someone pushing through the tables with a purpose. He glanced quickly round and thought he recognized one of Webb’s deputies no more than a dozen or so feet from his back. As Hardin’s head swung away, he caught the quick, almost imperceptible movement of hand towards gun.

  Other ways.

  ‘Joe,’ yelled Hardin, it’s a trap!’

  Someone hollered loud and Hardin sprang to his feet, fingers diving for his .44. Charlie Webb didn’t try to rise; he arched himself backwards and pulled his pistol up from its holster. Both men seemed to fire at the same time. A slug ripped its way through John Wesley’s side, close above his left hip. Webb was smashed out of his chair with blood pouring from a wound above his temple.

  ‘John! John! Get out!’

  Jim Taylor had knocked one of Webb’s deputies unconscious and forced his way in through the rear. Bill Dixon alongside him, he ploughed through the crowd, gun drawn. Another of Webb’s men turned to face him and Taylor smacked him hard in the mouth with the barrel of his gun. The man went down spitting blood and fragments of broken tooth.

  Charlie Webb was on all fours, blood leaking from his head.

  Shouting filled the saloon.

  John Wesley was midway between where he’d been sitting and the street door. The man he’d seen reaching for his gun before seemed to have melted back into the crowd.

  ‘Bastard!’ yelled Jim Taylor. ‘Lyin’ bastard!’

  He lashed out his boot at Webb, kicking one of his arms away from under him. As Webb fell towards the floor, Taylor put a bullet into the back of his head from close range. Bill Dixon watched the pulped grey splash against his pants leg and laughed, thumbing back the hammer and firing into Webb’s back and sides.

  The dead man’s limbs jerked hard and his boots hammered the floor.

  John Wesley tried to see what was going down; he saw Jim Taylor waving him away; saw someone throwing a punch at his brother, Joe, and connecting with the side of his jaw. He tried to move back towards him, but found his path blocked. He turned and a punch landed low in his stomach and he doubled forward. A blow aimed at his head and narrowly missed. Several others had their guns out now and were firing indiscriminately.

  A hand seized John Wesley’s arm and he whirled round but it was Jim Taylor.

  ‘Thought you weren’t comin’.’

  ‘Save your breath,’ called Taylor. ‘There’s horses out front.’

  ‘Joe …’Hardin began, swinging round.

  The glass mirror behind the bar shattered into a hundred pieces. A shotgun was discharged over the heads of the crowd. John Wesley saw his brother going down under pummeling fists. Neither of the young Dixon boys seemed to have extricated themselves from the center of the crowd. Jim Taylor was still hauling on his arm. A pistol swung close to his head, missed and struck his shoulder instead, numbing the bone. He tried to bring up his own gun but his arm was knocked aside.

  ‘Now, John! Now!’

  John Wesley kicked one man in the leg, elbowed another in the face. He found room to swing his pistol and lashed
the sight across a man’s cheek, tearing the skin apart.

  He went through the door as a rifle started firing from across the street. He paused long enough to send a covering shot and then grabbed for the reins that Taylor was handing down to him. One boot in the stirrup and he dropped his gun into the holster, slapped the horse hard on the rump. As it started to gallop down the street. John Wesley swung his leg over and settled low in the saddle, head right down by the animal’s neck.

  Bullets whined through the air above and around them as they drove the horses away, making as much speed as the pair that had raced along the same street a few hours earlier.

  Chapter Eight

  January 1875

  The lean-to had never been finished. All it contained now was some three feet of snow, wedged tight. The front of the house was spotted with more snow and the edges of the windows were covered in ice. Part of the fence had been blown down by the wind and what remained was leaning at a perilous angle to the ground. The only things standing in the garden were two sticks, set there to support some growth or other, and left.

  Wes Hart swung down from the saddle and looped the rein over one of the surviving pieces of fencing. He slapped his arms back and forth across his body, clearing away the snow that the northerly had blown against him. He wore the Indian blanket over his coat, a wool scarf was wound about his neck and the lower part of his face. A length of string kept his flat-brimmed hat clamped tight on his head. Scuffed leather gloves failed to keep the cold from biting at his hands.

  The last time he’d come visiting at the Hardin place Lefty O’Neal had been with him. Now Lefty was dead: a lot of men were dead. Hart stepped through the gap in the fence where the gate had once been and walked briskly towards the door. This time there was no rifle barrel poking through the sacking at the side window and if it hadn’t been for the trail of chimney smoke he’d been seeing for the best part of a mile, he might have figured that Jane Hardin had quit Comanche County along with her husband.

  His knock on the door shifted a film of snow down its face.

  A voice called for him to wait.

  When the door opened, Jane Hardin was wearing shawl and coat and holding a small girl close to her side, the child’s hands lost inside the thick folds of her mother’s long dress.

  ‘What is it?’ She sounded weary, her eyes like her voice were filled with tiredness, a lack of sleep.

  ‘Just a few words, Mrs. Hardin.’

  Hart wondered if she recognized him, but the next thing she said made it clear that she did.

  ‘John said he’d kill you for coming bothering me when he was gone.’

  Hart looked at her. ‘He’s killed a lot of folk.’

  She stared back at him and didn’t say anything. The girl started to murmur and Jane pushed her fingers into her long, fair hair.

  ‘Shut the door,’ she told Hart. ‘Keep the warmth in.’

  He did as he was told and then unfastened the string and pulled off his hat, hanging it from one of the wooden pegs at the back of the door. He removed the blanket, snow falling across the floor as he did so. The colors were dark, subdued, the patterns all but lost.

  ‘Take off that coat, too,’ she said. ‘Set it to warm close by the fire.’

  Hart did so, noticing now that the little girl had moved away that Hardin’s wife was once again with child.

  ‘There’s a piece of pie on the stove,’ the woman said, turning her head.

  ‘There ain’t no need—’

  ‘I was brung up hospitable.’

  Hart nodded, albeit grudgingly. ‘Okay, Mrs. Hardin, I’d be obliged.’

  ‘An’ coffee?’

  She was already reaching the thick china cup down from the dresser and carrying it towards the bubbling pot. Hart realized that she had let her hair grow longer and now the ends touched the nape of her neck and were beginning to curl.

  ‘You know he ain’t been here this long time.’ she said, handing him the cup.

  Hart nodded, tasted the coffee; it was hot and strong. The little girl clung again to her mother’s skirts, staring at him, big-eyed. Jane Hardin cut a wide slice of pie and pushed it on to a tin plate. Before she gave it to Hart, she cut away a small piece, hardly more than a sliver, and handed it down to the girl.

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  She gestured towards the thick wood table and Hart pulled out a stool and sat up to it, accepting the plate and a fork. The pie was made from apples saved from the summer, wrapped in cloth at the back of a drawer.

  Jane hesitated a while, fussed over the little girl’s hair. ‘If you knew my husband weren’t here...’

  ‘I was passin’ close,’ Hart said.

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t treat me like a fool.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘Because I ain’t.’

  He sighed, eased the plate away. ‘Okay. I’m sorry. I figured if I come by you might know where he was.’

  ‘And tell you?’ she asked incredulously.

  Hart forked into the pie and lifted a section to his mouth, washing it down a few moments later with coffee. The fire sparked up and the little girl oohed and tensed and then cuddled down into her mother’s lap, head between her breasts. Jane Hardin glanced at Hart and he looked back at her and for a while there was silence between them.

  He finished the pie and she reached across for the plate, rousing her daughter to carry it to the bucket that waited alongside the stove. Feeling was beginning to seep back into Hart’s toes and finger ends, making them tingle. He cupped the coffee in his hands and drank.

  ‘You didn’t really think I’d inform on my own husband?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Not really. Only ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He seems to have left you to fend for yourself a long time.’

  ‘That don’t mind.’

  Hart turned his head to one side. ‘Woman alone, out here in winter, that’s hard.’

  She made a little shaking motion with her head. ‘What else d’you think a woman’s life is in this country?’

  Hart nodded. ‘A man can make it easier.’

  ‘Yeah. An’ he can make it a damn sight harder.’

  He looked full at her. ‘Which of them’s your man done?’

  Jane Hardin gave him her back; she rinsed the plate in the ice-cold water of the bucket and stood it on the dresser.

  ‘Are you married?’ she asked several moments later.

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘Maybe if you were you’d understand better.’

  ‘My father, he died when I was three years old. When I was five my mother married again, an Irishman who gave her three daughters and another son, one after another. I know when life’s hard for a woman.’

  ‘She had you to help her.’

  Hart started to say something but fell quiet. He didn’t want to try and explain to this woman how he had tried to help his mother at the birth of Sean, her last-born. He didn’t want to explain to the wife of a wanted killer how his mother had begun bleeding so heavily he had been terrified - eleven years of age -and had frozen with fear. How she had called and called for help and there had been nothing he could do. He had not dared to go closer, to touch her. All that blood!

  When at last he had arrived back with their nearest neighbor, his mother had been dead, the child, almost miraculously, alive.

  The dirt had been over his mother’s grave some six weeks before his stepfather had returned home.

  And here was Jane Hardin, heavily pregnant while her husband was in hiding, probably in some other county, even out of the state.

  She studied his silence, realized he was looking at her swollen belly and said: ‘He’s sending for me. In time, John’s sending for me. It’ll be all right.’

  Hart nodded curtly. ‘If he doesn’t?’

  ‘He will.’ Her voice sounded as though she believed it, her eyes testified that she believed it. But her fingers opened and closed nervously inside the fall of her skirt.

&
nbsp; ‘When I was here last,’ Hart said, ‘you told me your husband didn’t have no choice but to kill Jack Helm.’

  ‘That’s right. Nor did he.’

  ‘How ’bout Deputy Webb – that the same?’

  She pulled at the shawl a trace too hastily. ‘Of course. Webb was in Sutton’s pocket. He lured John into a trap. If he hadn’t shot his way out of there, they would have gunned him down.’

  ‘Mrs. Hardin, he never had to walk in there.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he go where he wants?’ demanded Jane Hardin, anger beginning to spark her eyes.

  ‘He walked into a bar crammed full of Sutton men. He knew that.’

  ‘Why would John...?’

  ‘He did it because he’d been drinking heavy and winnin’ heavy on the horses and he was feelin’ more pleased with himself than usual. He did it because he knew Webb was workin’ some kind of trap and he figured he’d look pretty big in the eyes of his friends if he stepped right into it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But the way I see it, your man acted out of stubborn foolishness an’ bravado and on account of that Charlie Webb got shot through the head, several others got bad wounded and three men got hanged.’

  She stared at him, jolted off course. ‘Hanged!’

  ‘Sure. Just something it looks like your beloved John Wesley forgot to mention.’

  Jane Hardin leaned across the table, staring at him. ‘Who was hanged?’

  ‘Couple of the Dixon brothers. And a young feller named Joe - maybe you got to meet him at your wedding.’

  Jane went pale. Her hands gripped the table hard and her daughter began to whimper, sensing something was wrong and not understanding what.

  ‘He didn’t tell you.’

  She shook her head slowly, lips parted.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t reckon it was too important. ‘

  Jane Hardin grasped the china cup and aimed it at Hart’s head. He ducked inside it easily, catching at her arm as she followed through, fingers flailing for his face.

  They were both leaning across the corner of the table, swaying slightly, their breathing forced and heavy. The girl tugged at her mother and started to cry, not understanding what was happening, but knowing that it was frightening. A trace of spittle showed at one side of Jane Hardin’s face; her eyes were wide with anger.