Hart the Regulator 8

by John B. Harvey

  Hart waited. Then said: ‘Him and Jim Taylor galloped out of town and left ’em to be stretched. It weren’t nice. Nothing legal. Just a mob.’ He released her arm. ‘If they hadn’t tied hemp round their neck, they’d’ve torn ’em to pieces with their hands.’ He stood back. ‘There’s them as reckon your husband uses his gun in a right cause, but there weren’t many of them there that day.’

  Jane controlled her breathing, shushed her child. For a few seconds a wave of nausea swept through her and she thought she would vomit. Her mind swung round. Hart moved fast enough to catch her before she hit the floor. The child crying and beating at his legs with little fists, he lifted the woman into his arms and carried her through the sacking partition and laid her on the quilt-covered bed.

  The he reached down and picked up the little girl and tried to tell her that her mother would be all right if they allowed her to rest quiet for a time and didn’t fuss.

  When Jane Hardin came round, no more than minutes later, the width of sacking was pulled back and she could see Hart and her daughter sitting on opposite sides of the table, eyeing one another with suspicion.

  As soon as he saw she had come to, Hart took her a glass of water which she accepted with a slight nod of the head and sipped cautiously before levering herself round on the bed and touching her feet to the floor. The child ran to her and lost her face alongside the swelling belly.

  ‘Why don’t you go?’ Jane said, not looking at him.

  ‘I’ll stay a while till you’re feelin’ better.’

  Then she did look at him and already some of the heat was back in her eyes, ‘I am better!’

  Hart continued to look at her, all the while remembering the expression of pain on his mother’s face as she lay back with her legs forced high and the bed got redder and redder.

  ‘Please go! Leave us.’

  He nodded and stood up, reaching for his coat, the Indian blanket, his hat. The child peeped out at him from under one arm. Only at the door did he pause and turn.

  ‘Those friends of his,’ Hart said, ‘he’ll need them to stand by him now. There’s four thousand dollars on his head. That sort of money can win over a whole lot of people.’

  He went out fast, shutting the door hard, slamming out the hate in her eyes. It was misting with snow and the wind had changed direction, shifting towards the west. It had been a long time since he’d wished maybe he had a woman of his own, but God he was wishing it then.

  ~*~

  Hart had no way of knowing that before that New Year was out he’d meet Kathy: nor that before John Wesley Hardin was finally taken prisoner, she would have left him again.

  Chapter Nine

  Late summer 1876

  Ollie Halverton leaned his skinny body against the door frame and watched the boy turning the onions round the skillet. No more than twelve or thirteen and not above average height for his age, he stood on a wooden box set close by the stove, never taking his eyes off what he was doing. As the onions began to brown, he reached over to where the pork chop was resting in the bottom of a thick pan and dropped it amongst the onions with a splash of fat. The smell that hissed up into the doorway made Ollie’s mouth all but slaver.

  ‘Let him get on with it without you starin’ at him, Ollie,’ called Lamar from the main room. ‘Won’t taste no better for havin’ to see your miserable face.’

  ‘You hush up your tongue, Lamar,’ said Ollie with a pretense at anger. Tm just lookin’ after our interests, that’s all.’

  ‘What you got in there, steak or gold workin’s? That don’t need no watchin’.’

  The chop was turned on to its other side and the fat hissed; the boy moved the onions off to one side of the skillet and reached over for the bowl of fresh-laid eggs.

  ‘Two or three?’ he asked without turning his head.

  Ollie’s tongue moved around the edges of his mouth. ‘Three,’ he said, smiling. ‘Three looks about fine.’

  ‘Three what?’ called Lamar. ‘Three steaks?’

  ‘I ain’t eatin’ steak. You’re the one who’s havin’ steak.’

  ‘Three what, then?’

  ‘I’m takin’ the pork chop,’ said Ollie with relish.

  ‘Three pork chops?’ asked Lamar, amazed.

  Ollie shook his head in desperation. ‘Three eggs.’ He jutted his index finger at the other Ranger. ‘You want eggs on your steak?’

  ‘Course I do.’

  ‘How many?’

  Lamar grinned. ‘Couple.’

  Ollie nodded and called in to the boy, ‘Two eggs on the steak.’

  The boy already had them in the pan. A couple of minutes later he lifted out steak and chop, eggs and onions and slid them on to a couple of plates. He used a ladle to set portions of beans on to each plate, reached for four thick slices of corn-bread and somehow found a space for them as well. They were big plates.

  He carried them through from the kitchen, one balanced on the palm of either small hand, Ollie watching him closely, sure that the boy must drop one or the other or both before he reached the table. Of course, he dropped neither.

  Lamar wiped at his heavily bearded mouth by way of expectation and leaned forward in his chair. Ollie waited until the boy had stepped back from the table and slid into his seat fast.

  ‘Damn! ’he said with a deal of feeling. ‘Don’t that look good?’

  ‘Uh!’ Lamar grunted, cutting a chunk a couple of inches square off the end of the steak. ‘Uh-huh!’

  The meat was half-way to his mouth when they heard footsteps coming fast along the side alley that led to the dining room door. Lamar glanced at Ollie, dropped his fork and reached for his pistol. Ollie scraped back his chair and started to stand, his hand making the move for his own gun.

  Hart stood inside the open door, glanced at the other diners, saw the two Rangers and took a couple of paces towards them. Lamar and Ollie forgot about their guns, started to relax.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Hart urgently. ‘Let’s ride!’

  ‘Ride!’ echoed Ollie loudly. ‘Ride! Now! We just ...’He stared at the food on his plate, unable to say more.

  Lamar picked up his fork, the piece of steak still attached, a little blood and juice dripping slowly from it. ‘Ain’t we got time...?’

  ‘No! It’s now. He’s pinned down about three miles north of town.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Ollie, looking regretfully back at his pork chop.

  ‘Who’s so all-fired important?’ asked Lamar, squashing his Stetson down on to his head.

  Hart spoke without looking back at either man, intent on getting to his horse. ‘Hardin,’ he said. ‘John Wesley Hardin.’

  ~*~

  The cabin was through a sparsely wooded hollow and then some hundred yards up the uneven side of a scrub hill. Back of it were a few trees making a pretty unconvincing job of spreading their branches generously over the angled sod roof. The place itself was the usual notched-log building, low and long, with a couple of uneven rectangles hewn out for windows and a warped door that leaned a few inches to one side. The only thing around the shack was a stout but crooked post around four feet high which looked as if it could have been used as a hitching post. There wasn’t anything tied to it right then. The only horse that might have been, a big old creature with a white blaze down its head and an almost-white tail, lay dead in its own blood. From the way the flies were humming round it, the animal had been like that for some little time. It looked to have been gut shot with a shotgun from pretty close range. It stank.

  The three Texas Rangers had tethered their own mounts down in the hollow and clambered up to see what was going on. They were met by a crowd of glory boys out for the reward, one Comanche County deputy, a couple of men who claimed to be state policemen but didn’t hurry to show any proof, and a pair of Mexicans whom Lamar recognized as running with some of the Sutton crew.

  Hart figured if he had to talk with anyone, then it had best be the deputy. He’d far rather have cleared the whole mess of them out
and gone about things his own way. That was about as likely as getting invited to the state governor’s thanksgiving dinner, so he did what he could.

  The deputy was an anxious-seeming man with a hare lip and more weapons than any three usually carried. Aside from the sawn-off Remington 0-0 gauge shotgun which had likely finished off the dead horse, he had a Winchester rifle in his other hand, two pistols holstered at either side of his belt, one more pushed down into his pants and a Bowie knife in a sheath at his back.

  ‘Got an army in there?’ asked Hart, glancing obviously at all the armament and then over towards the shack.

  ‘Five, six of ’em. Maybe more.’

  Lamar pointed at the men who were mostly hunkered down behind the rim of land that made an irregular semi-circle in front of the shack. There was a spread of open ground between the rim and the building, maybe fifty yards at its farthest point.

  ‘You got the men,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you rush ’em?’

  ‘We did,’ said the deputy. ‘Didn’t do too well.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Stopped a couple of bullets,’ he nodded to his left. ‘They won’t go head-on in again, I doubt. Besides, they can’t seem to make their minds up as to who’s givin’ the orders.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Ollie quickly. ‘We are.’

  The deputy scowled at him and seemed about to argue, but thought better of it and kicked his heel into the ground instead.

  ‘We was told Hardin was in there,’ said Hart, ‘that’s the story got back to town.’

  ‘Why else d’you reckon all these rats come out like some vigilante posse?’ the deputy asked, looking around him. ‘They ain’t interested in nothin’ but the reward.’

  ‘Hell!’ exclaimed Lamar. ‘What you out here for? Justice?’

  The hare lip pushed out and the man’s eyes narrowed, but still he didn’t say anything in return. Three Rangers was clearly more than he liked to handle, even with all that weaponry on him.

  Hart and Ollie had moved a few feet away and were studying the shack. Rushing it was asking for trouble, right enough, but getting round back of it wasn’t easy without being spotted. One man could do it, though, as long as he was careful and didn’t get too impatient. If he could get on to the roof, it ought to be possible to drive at least some of them out. The less guns there were inside, the less covering fire they could give.

  ‘How ’bout it?’ said Hart with the beginnings of a grin at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Why me?’ asked Ollie.

  ‘Because you’re less of a target than I am?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘Okay. Because Lamar an’ me got a year’s more service than you.’

  Ollie shrugged resignedly. ‘That I can’t argue with. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I don’t fancy opening that place up just so a bunch of no-goods and bounty hunters can drag Hardin off and string him up from the nearest cottonwood an’ claim the reward.’

  Hart agreed. ‘Let’s get ’em together. Spell it out.’

  They called the men back down towards the hollow, leaving Lamar behind to keep watch for any signs of a break. He sent the occasional shot skimming off the walls to give the occupants something to think about.

  ‘Whoever’s in there,’ said Hart meantime, ‘John Wesley Hardin or anybody else, they come under our jurisdiction. We take ’em in. You fellers want to stay around and lend a hand, that’s fine. But we’re givin’ the orders and you’re obeying ’em. Otherwise it’s a ride back to town and that’s all you got comin’ to you.’

  Murmurs and grumbles and a lot of pained faces showed Hart his speech hadn’t gone down too well. He glanced at Ollie, both of them conscious that there were a dozen men there and that if they decided to take matters into their own hands, there might be trouble.

  Hart picked out the one who was making the most noise – a hefty half-breed Mexican with crossed gun-belts and a spreading gut that was giving the buttons at the front of his shirt a lot of trouble.

  Hart got to him smartly and asked him good and loud what he was bellyaching about.

  The breed hung his lip and scratched his stomach and told Hart he didn’t have any right to come riding in after they’d spent a day and a night chasing Hardin down and steal all the glory. Not to mention the reward.

  When he’d said his piece it was pretty quiet.

  Everyone was looking at Hart to see how he’d take it.

  He made good and sure they all were before showing them.

  He was a couple of feet away from the half-breed before the man had even thought about moving. Hart’s left hand was already bunched into a fist and he drove it hard into the man’s spreading gut. There was little swing to the punch, little back-lift, but it jolted him back gasping open-mouthed as his head jerked forward and down. Hart swayed back on his heels and this time he allowed himself the room to whip his right arm well back before bringing it back on to the side of the breed’s jaw.

  There was a solid sound, bone on bone, and the man’s head wrenched sideways on his neck and his eyes jammed shut. Hart opened them again with a stiff-fingered poke under the Adam’s apple.

  Eyes opened sure enough - hands clawed at the fleshy throat and a scream shrieked out.

  Only then did Hart draw his Colt. It moved from holster to hand so fast that most of those watching failed to follow the movement. The gun was simply there, its barrel tip less than six inches away from the breed’s gasping, pain-stricken face.

  The triple click of the hammer sounded awfully loud. To the breed it was the loudest sound he had ever heard.

  Hart rested the gun against the man’s forehead and told him to open his eyes. The breed complied only slowly and as soon as he did so his lips began to move almost soundlessly in prayer.

  ‘No rights, huh?’ Hart said, and he looked around the watching men. ‘No rights?’

  The half-breed was still praying, staring at the barrel of the Colt like he was hypnotized. Hart stepped away and slowly and deliberately released the hammer. The breed collapsed to his knees and clutched his stomach, murmuring and mumbling.

  ‘Any of you,’ said Hart, turning his head slowly, ‘think they want to do this their own way best say so now. Otherwise, you take orders from us.’ He slipped the pistol back down into its holster. ‘You want to ride out, that’s fine by me. If you want to stay, that’s fine too. Just remember what I said.’

  No one was likely to forget: what Hart had said or what he’d done.

  ‘All right, Ollie,’ Hart called a moment later, ‘let’s make it now,’

  Ollie gestured acknowledgment and moved off in the direction of the trees. Hart eased himself up alongside Lamar while half a dozen men mounted up and rode off in search of easier pickings. The rest resumed their positions around the broken rim of land.

  ‘You reckon he’s in there?’ asked Lamar.

  Hart shook his head. ‘Who knows? Some of this crew’ve been chasin’ someone long and hard. They think Hardin’s in there.’

  Lamar laughed roughly. ‘Some of these buzzards’d chase their own grandmothers for bein’ Hardin in disguise, they want the reward money so bad.’

  ‘Yeah. I guess you’re right. Damn rewards are more trouble’n they’re worth half the time. Bounty hunters all over the country. Folks givin’ information that proves to be a pack of lies when you follow it up.’

  Lamar laughed again. ‘You remember that feller who tried to convince us he’d got Hardin trapped in his loft and all the time it was some half-crazed cowpoke who’d been slippin’ it to his wife an’ he found out. Wanted us to bust in there and blast him to kingdom-come.’

  ‘You reckon that’s what this is?’

  Lamar shrugged. ‘We’ll know soon enough. Ollie should be round there by now.’ He slid his rifle further forward on the ground and levered a shell into the breech.

  Hart elbowed forward a foot or so and cupped his hands round his mouth: ‘You hear me in there?’

  His voice was loud across
the space between the waiting men and the shack, loud and oddly flat. Whether they heard or not, there was no reply.

  ‘You know we got the place surrounded. We can starve you out or blast you out, it don’t make no difference. Either way you ain’t got no chance.’

  He paused for a couple of moments and one of the men off to his left said, ‘We tried talkin’ ’em out. You’re wastin’ your breath.’

  Hart ignored him. ‘We’re Texas Rangers. Surrender to us an’ we’ll guarantee you safe conduct an’ fair trial. There won’t be any lynchin’.’

  Gun metal glinted at the bottom corner of one of the irregular windows and a couple of shots raked the air above Hart’s head. They’d been listening right enough - they just hadn’t taken to what he’d had to say.

  Hart levered himself back. ‘Spotted Ollie yet?’

  Lamar nodded. ‘Tree back of the roof. Here he comes now.’

  Ollie set foot carefully on the sod roof, pistol in hand. He moved cautiously towards the hole center and rear through which smoke was allowed to escape. Could be that one time there’d been some kind of stove pipe sticking up there, but now there was nothing but a funnel of dark which gradually lightened as his eyes became accustomed to it.

  ‘You got your last chance!’ Hart called.

  His reply this time came from both windows, one lucky shot well wide of himself but nicking another man on the elbow and causing him to yell and let loose his weapon.

  Instantly three or four men close by opened fire in return, spraying the front of the shack. Ollie crouched low on the roof and turned his head anxiously. Lamar shouted for the shooting to stop but those who heard him right ignored him, and others thought he was calling on them to open fire. Ollie threw himself flat and angled his arm so that his pistol was pointing down through the gap in the roof but he had no chance of taking aim.