A Stranger in Town

by William W. Johnstone

  “I was,” Larsen answered after he tossed his drink down. “But we come up on some hard times of late. Me and Ben Trout went down to Texas for a spell, but Ben got shot by a deputy marshal in Muskogee, Indian Territory. I came back to Kansas and joined up with Earl and the boys. They had a little bank job lined up in Independence, but that went sour. The law got wind of it somehow and they was waitin’ for us. I reckon I can thank my lucky stars for that one, ’cause there was four of us and I’m the only one that got away. You remember Ike Bowers? He got shot for sure. Earl and Jake Roper either got shot, or arrested, I ain’t sure which, but I just got out by the skin of my teeth.”

  “Damn . . .” Roy drew out and shook his head. “That’s hard news.”

  “Yeah,” Larsen lamented, nodding solemnly. “They was all good boys.”

  “So I reckon you didn’t get away with any money,” Roy said, accustomed to drifters showing up at his saloon dead broke and down on their luck.

  “Not much,” Larsen said. “A little bit that was in one of the cash drawers. I didn’t have time for any more before the shootin’ started. But I got enough to pay for my drinks and maybe a little tobacco.” And more than twelve thousand besides, he thought to himself. It wouldn’t be smart to brag about how much money he got away with.

  “Well, that’s good,” Roy said. “In that case, that first drink is on the house.” He poured another shot in Larsen’s glass, set another glass on the bar, and poured one for himself. “I’ll have a drink with you to remember them boys that didn’t make it outta there.”

  “Amen to that,” Larsen said. “Sometimes I wonder why I was the lucky one that got away.” He held his glass up in salute, then tossed it down. Smacking his lips in appreciation of the cheap whiskey, he said, “I’ve got enough to rent one of your rooms upstairs for a few days until I decide what I’m gonna do.”

  “Fine,” Roy said. “Always glad to get the business. Ain’t nobody in that last room at the end of the hall. There’s a feller stayin’ in one of the other two rooms up there. Maybe you know him—Johnny Moody?”

  Larsen shook his head. “I don’t, for a fact, but I mighta heard of Johnny Moody—think I heard he was wanted by the law in Missouri.”

  “That he is,” Roy said, “and Colorado Territory as well. He was workin’ with some other fellers over that way before the law got too hot on their tails.”

  “What about the law around here now?”

  “Still the same,” Roy assured him. “There ain’t much across the river in Wichita, and there still ain’t none over here. And what law there is over there ain’t interested in comin’ over here to get shot.”

  Larsen nodded, thinking that he might be interested in hooking up with Johnny Moody. “Is he upstairs now?”

  “No,” Roy said. “He’s been gone for a couple of days, but he’ll most likely show up before long.”

  Larsen nodded again. “Who’s runnin’ the stable next door?”

  “Seth Thacker, same as when you was last here. Go on over and take care of your horses,” Roy said. “Then, why don’t you come on back and you can move your possibles into your room and take supper here. I’ll tell Flo you’re gonna eat here. She’s halfway expectin’ Johnny back here by suppertime, anyway.”

  “Thanks just the same,” Larsen said. “But I’ve got to go back into Wichita tonight. A feller over there is fixin’ the firin’ pin on a spare pistol of mine, and I’ll just catch some supper over there while I’m waitin’.” It was an outright lie, but Roy’s wife was not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, not much better than Larsen could do for himself. He felt like havin’ a good supper tonight, and he could certainly afford one. He slapped a quarter on the bar to pay for his second drink, glad that Roy didn’t ask why he had left the gun in Wichita.

  * * *

  Seth Thacker walked out to the open stable door to meet Larsen. “Wanna stable ’em?” he asked, eyeing Larsen up and down, trying to recall having seen him before.

  “Yep,” Larsen replied. “I expect so. I need an extra stall, too, ’cause I’ve got a lot of supplies in these packs I wanna leave here while I’m stayin’ at Roy’s place next door.”

  “If you’ve got the money, you can rent ’em all, and my shack out back, too,” Seth cracked.

  Larsen ignored Seth’s attempt at humor. “I’ve got food and stuff in these packs that I wanna keep dry.” He had a problem that was of most concern to him, and that was two large cotton sacks holding the stolen money from the bank. After leaving Ike’s body in a gully cut into a bank of the Arkansas River, he had repacked the money, hiding it in half a dozen different packs, underneath flour sacks, coffee sacks, rain slickers, clothes, and anything else he could find. He figured it would be less likely to be found in the stable and better than leaving it in the room at Roy’s. He felt pretty sure that either Roy or his wife would most likely take a look in his room as soon as he was not around. So after he had stacked his packs in a corner of the stall he stepped up into the saddle and headed for Wichita.

  * * *

  U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner rode into the wide-open cow town of Wichita late in the afternoon. As he reined Buster to a stop and sat there at the head of the street looking at the busy town, it occurred to him that it wasn’t going to be an easy task to find Larsen and his friend. There was nothing to do but start a search of every saloon in town, in hopes of sighting Brock Larsen. Thinking the two outlaws might stop at the first saloon they saw as soon as they hit town, Will decided that he would start there. And that would be the Chisholm Saloon, an establishment no doubt named in honor of the man the Chisholm Trail was named for.

  Accustomed to seeing new faces in town, bartender Barney Smith favored Will with a bored glance, and asked, “What’ll it be?”

  Will didn’t particularly want anything to drink, but he figured one wouldn’t hurt. “Whiskey,” he said. “Maybe that’ll take a little of the chill outta my bones.” He took the drink Barney poured and turned around with his back to the bar to survey the room again, in case he had overlooked something the first time. He didn’t see Larsen in the saloon, nor did he expect to, and he wouldn’t know the other bank robber if he was standing at the bar next to him. The room was not especially crowded, considering it was getting along toward suppertime. Most of the customers looked to be typical cowhands, probably riding the grub line after delivering a herd up from Texas. The one exception he saw was one table closest to the bar, occupied by a thick-shouldered brute of a man who seemed to know Barney pretty well, for he walked over to the end of the bar several times to exchange a few words with him. After one of these trips, Barney stopped to ask Will if he was ready for another shot.

  “I reckon I could use one more,” Will answered. He watched while Barney filled the glass, then reached in his pocket to pay. “I reckon I’d best cut it off at two drinks if I’m gonna find a couple fellows I’m lookin’ for tonight.” Barney didn’t seem interested, but Will went on. “I’m new in town and I’m supposed to meet a friend of mine. He’s ridin’ with another fellow, that I don’t know.” Barney waited him out, although not at all interested. “My friend’s name is Brock Larsen. I don’t reckon he’s showed up in here, has he?”

  Barney raked the coins off the bar. “Brock Larsen, huh? I couldn’t say if he has or not. A lot of strangers come in here every day. I don’t ask ’em their names. Sorry.”

  “Thanks just the same,” Will said. “I reckon I’ll just keep on lookin’.” He started to leave, then paused. “Where’s a good place to find supper?”

  “The Parker House,” Barney said, “right down the street on your left.”

  “Much obliged,” Will said, and started toward the door.

  “What was he jawin’ about?” Johnny Moody asked when Barney came down to the end of the bar to talk again.

  “Nothin’ much. He said he’s lookin’ for some feller and asked if he’d been in here. You know a feller named Brock Larsen?”

  “Brock Larsen
?” Moody repeated. “Nah, I don’t know nobody by that name.”

  * * *

  Will continued his rounds of the saloons, with the same results he had gotten at the Chisholm Saloon. After the third inquiry, he decided to play it straight and told the bartender in the fourth saloon that he was a deputy marshal, and he was after a murderer and bank robber. The bartender told him that he was probably wasting his time in Wichita. “You’d most likely have better luck in Delano,” he said.

  “Where’s Delano?” Will asked.

  “Right across the river,” the bartender said. “It’s a little ol’ town where all the hell-raisers congregate, ’cause there ain’t no law to bother ’em. And I expect you’ll find all the outlaws you can handle over there, but I’d think twice about tellin’ anybody you’re a lawman.”

  “Any particular place in Delano?” Will asked.

  “Any of ’em,” the bartender said. “Maybe the Rattlesnake Saloon, that’s about as rough as they come.”

  “Much obliged,” Will said, and took his leave.

  Outside, he stood by his horses for a few moments while he thought about what the bartender had told him. He was probably right about wasting his time in Wichita, but Jake Roper said Larsen was headed to Wichita. Maybe he meant Delano, but he said Wichita. For that reason, Will was reluctant to leave the town without taking a closer look around, even though Delano sounded a lot more likely the place that Larsen would be drawn to. According to what he had just learned, Delano was not that big, so it shouldn’t take long to find out if Larsen was there. If it’s as bad as the bartender said, he thought, maybe I’d best get myself a good supper. Might be my last one. He stepped up into the saddle and turned Buster toward the Parker House.

  CHAPTER 17

  “I’ll have to ask you to leave that gun belt here at the desk,” the manager of the hotel dining room informed the rugged-looking customer who stood in the doorway.

  “I’ll just hang on to it, I reckon,” Brock Larsen replied. “Kinda feel nekkid without it.”

  “I’m afraid that’s the rule here in the dining room,” the manager said. “Weapons in the room tend to unsettle the hotel guests. So we don’t serve anybody wearing a sidearm.”

  “Is that a fact?” Larsen huffed, prepared to challenge that rule. Roy Bates had told him that the Parker House was a fancy hotel, but he felt like he was in possession of enough money to buy the place. He was about to tell the manager that when a man wearing a badge and armed with a double-barrel shotgun stepped out of the door behind the counter. He was enough to cause Larsen to hesitate. “How come he’s totin’ a shotgun if nobody else can?”

  “He’s a deputy sheriff. He works here part-time to make sure everybody follows the rule and doesn’t disturb the other customers,” the manager said politely.

  Larsen was tempted to test the deputy. He didn’t like the idea of backing down, even if the man was a deputy sheriff. He continued to stand motionless for a long moment, making up his mind. When the deputy stepped closer to the desk, Larsen decided it wouldn’t be good for him to stir up trouble the first week in town. He planned to hang around Wichita for the winter, and shooting a deputy down in a public place wasn’t a smart idea. What the hell, he thought, and started to unbuckle his gun belt when he was suddenly stopped cold by someone he caught out of the corner of his eye. He turned to stare at a man seated at a table in the far corner of the dining room. Not trusting his eyes at first, he blinked several times, certain that it was an illusion, but the image remained. Will Tanner! Sitting at the table, eating supper right there in front of him. The relentless hunter had followed him! Larsen’s brain was too stunned to think. Then it registered that Tanner had not seen him, and the next thought was to pull his .44 and kill him before he did. His hand dropped to the handle of his pistol, but the move caused the deputy to take a step forward, raising his shotgun, alert to Larsen’s strange hesitation. It was enough to jolt Larsen’s common sense. “I don’t reckon I’ll eat here,” he mumbled, realizing that his best option was to leave before Tanner spotted him. He turned and hurried out the door, still in a serious state of shock.

  Outside, he hastened to step up into the saddle. He started to gallop away, but held up when he recognized the buckskin horse that Tanner rode. Again, he considered waiting for Will and shooting him down as soon as he came out the door. He looked around him at the busy street, crowded with witnesses, and decided it too risky. His instinct was to run, anyway, so he decided that was best. Then, thinking to prevent the lawman from coming after him, he reached down and quickly pulled Buster’s reins from the rail. Then, reluctant to waste any more time, he kicked his horse hard, headed for the sanctuary of Delano across the river.

  * * *

  Unaware of the closeness of a confrontation with the outlaw he hunted, and the possibility of a bullet in the chest when he came out of the dining room, Will finished his supper. He picked up his gun belt and rifle and walked outside. He had enough money to put Buster in the stable and rent a room in the hotel, so he decided to spend one more day checking out all the likely spots in Wichita before going across the river. He was mildly surprised to find Buster’s reins untied from the hitching rail, thinking he had been careless. It didn’t really matter, however, for the buckskin would not wander away from the spot where Will had left him. The bay packhorse was another story. He would have probably wandered down the street. He stepped up in the saddle then and took his horses to the stable.

  * * *

  “You sure it was him?” Roy Bates asked Larsen.

  “Damn right, I’m sure! The son of a bitch hauled me halfway to Fort Smith in chains before I got away. I ain’t likely to forget him.”

  “You said he was a marshal outta Oklahoma,” Roy said. “What’s he doin’ here in Kansas? Hell, he ain’t got no authority to arrest anybody in Kansas.”

  “That’s just how crazy he is,” Larsen replied. “He don’t know when to stop. He probably ain’t interested in arrestin’ me no longer—more likely lookin’ to shoot me.”

  “Like I said,” Roy repeated, “he ain’t no lawman here. He’s just another gunhand fixin’ to draw down on you. You shoot him down, and it’s just self-defense. The way I see it, you’ve got what you oughta been hopin’ for.”

  Larsen nodded as he thought about that, then had second thoughts about his decision not to ambush Tanner when he walked out into the street in Wichita. He was interrupted when he started to say as much by the arrival of a horse out front. He immediately drew his gun and stepped behind the bar for cover. “Hold your horses,” Roy said, “That ain’t nobody but Johnny Moody.” He walked to the door to be sure. “Don’t want you shootin’ my customers,” he added, half joking.

  “Whoa!” Johnny Moody sang out when he walked in to find a stranger with a drawn pistol behind the bar with Roy. He took a couple of quick steps backward as he started to reach for his .44.

  “Hold it, Johnny!” Roy exclaimed. “Ain’t no trouble here.” He turned to Larsen and told him to holster his weapon. He waited until Larsen did so, then explained to Moody, “This here’s Brock Larsen. He just thought you mighta been a lawman that’s tailin’ him.”

  “Is that so?” Moody replied. “For a minute there, I thought I’d walked in on a holdup or somethin’.” It occurred to him then. “Brock Larsen did you say? Damned if I don’t believe that’s the name a feller in the Chisholm Saloon was askin’ Barney about. Said he was lookin’ for a friend of his, name of Brock Larsen. That’s what he said.”

  “I ain’t got no friends,” Larsen said. “Was he a big feller with kinda sandy-colored hair?” He didn’t wait for Moody’s answer. “That was Deputy Marshal Will Tanner.”

  “Deputy marshal,” Moody replied, “and you led him to Wichita?”

  “I didn’t lead him anywhere,” Larsen retorted. “He just happened to come to Wichita. Maybe one of the fellers I was ridin’ with on a bank holdup told him I was headin’ here.”

  “Bank holdup?” Moody asked. “
Where? Was it that bank job in Independence?”

  “What if it was?” Larsen responded, not sure he liked Moody’s tone.

  “I heard about that holdup, heard a couple of fellers got away with over twelve thousand dollars,” Moody said. His remark caused Roy’s eyebrows to raise in surprise as he recalled the modest amount Larsen had claimed. He also remembered Larsen saying that he was the only one to escape.

  “Twelve thousand, is that what they said?” Larsen responded, forcing a chuckle. “I wish there hadda been that much. I reckon the bank would say they lost a lot more than was actually took. You know, for insurance or somethin’. They’re just a bunch of crooks, too, not much better’n the rest of us.”

  A long moment of silence fell over the room as Roy’s and Moody’s eyes were focused on Larsen. He realized that he was going to have to come up with something quickly. “There was a pretty good little haul from that job, all right, but there wasn’t near that much—closer to four thousand.”

  “Well, that ain’t a bad little payday,” Moody said, “is it, Roy?”

  “It was too much to tote around,” Larsen lied. “So I buried it where won’t nobody find it.”

  “Four thousand dollars,” Moody drawled. “And you’ve got a deputy marshal comin’ after you.” It was obvious that he was already thinking about how he could get a piece of Larsen’s haul.

  “Yeah, but there’s a little more to it,” Roy said. “That deputy’s ridin’ outta Injun Territory. He ain’t got no authority in Kansas. He’s climbed his butt out on a mighty skinny limb, comin’ up here on his lonesome.”

  “Whaddaya figurin’ on doin’?” Moody asked. “You fixin’ to start runnin’ again? If you asked me, I’d say it’s a pretty good chance to teach that Oklahoma lawman a little lesson about comin’ into Kansas territory to arrest somebody.” He studied Larsen’s face for his reaction to his suggestion and after a moment he continued. “Maybe this lawman is a lot for one man to handle, and you could use a little help. Well, I’m for hire. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little insurance, would it? We could let that son of a bitch walk between the two of us, and he wouldn’t know what hit him till his hide was cooked.” He let that sink in for a moment, seeing that Larsen was thinking it over. “And I work cheap, too. You say you got away with four thousand? Hell, I’ll help you put that deputy in the ground for a thousand. Whaddaya say?”