Lacour looked at him but said nothing, his mouth tight under his mustache.
A ribbon of game trail led through the draw, then wound through some thick brush and timber country toward a V-shaped gap in the hills. A long-ago lightning fire had blackened about ten acres of ground to the south, and the charred trunk of a wild oak still stood, a single skeletal branch pointing the way to the break.
The rangeland on both sides of the trail was dominated by sagebrush, but here and there sego lily, prickly pear, larkspur, and bitterroot added flowering splashes of red, yellow, pink, and orange.
The straw man was fixed to a stand of cactus.
Pete Caradas drew rein next to the prickly pear and took down the effigy. It was crudely made but was unmistakably a male figure.
“What the hell is that?” June Lacour said.
“A child’s toy maybe?” Little Face Denton said. “But what’s it doing all the way out here?”
“It’s not a toy,” Caradas said. “It’s a warning.”
“Strange kind of warning,” Lacour said.
“It must mean something to somebody,” Caradas said. “But I’m damned if I know what it is.”
“It’s one of us,” Denton said. “It’s a straw man, made to look like me or one of you.”
“It doesn’t look like anybody,” Caradas said.
The straw man was about a foot tall and hurriedly made. It had small black hairpins for eyes.
“How do we play this, Pete?” Lacour said. “I say we get the hell out of here.”
Caradas stared at the straw man for a few moments, then said, “I still think they’re trying to scare us away. They don’t want to fight.”
The drums suddenly stopped, leaving a strange, ominous silence.
“Pete, today is not our day,” Lacour said. “Like the drums, that straw man can talk. He’s telling us to light a shuck.”
Caradas tossed the effigy away, then said, “I reckon he’s saying just that, June.” His eyes searched the hills. “I don’t see anything.”
Denton said, “You two can do whatever you want, but I’m heading back to town.” He swung his horse around and kicked the animal into motion.
The horse trotted forward, but Little Face didn’t.
A loop snaked out of the brush and yanked him, yelling, from the saddle.
“What the hell?” Lacour said, drawing his Colt.
But a second loop pinned his arms to his sides, and a moment later Lacour left the saddle and crashed to the ground in an ungainly heap.
Taken completely by surprise, Caradas didn’t immediately react. A rope reached for him, but he turned his horse quickly, slipped the noose, and palmed his gun. He shot a man running at him with a rope in his hand, shot him again as he dropped the rope and reached for his revolver. His prancing horse kicking up clouds of dust, Caradas held his gun high and looked around for another target.
He found none. Both Denton and Lacour had disappeared, dragged into the brush. Dust slowly sifting back to the ground marked their last desperate struggles.
Heat hammered from the sun that burned like a red-hot coin in the denim-blue sky. A heat haze stretched to the horizons, and the Rattlesnake Hills shimmered and looked as though they floated on a lake. It was hot, stifling, and sweat trickled down Caradas’s back and his gun hand felt slick on the ivory handle of his Colt.
He stood in the stirrups and yelled, “June! Little Face!”
Echoes mocked him. Then the drums started again.
Pete Caradas had sand, but there’s a limit to every man’s courage and even to his foolhardiness. He kicked his horse into a gallop and took to the trail. After a couple of moments a rifle bullet buzzed past his left ear like an angry hornet. Then another stung his right, drawing blood.
Pete Caradas knew then that the marksman could easily have killed him. The shots were meant only to scare.
For the first time in his life the Texas draw fighter felt fear. No, much worse than that, he experienced a few moments of terror so bad that the gorge rose in his throat. He gagged, then leaned over the side of his running horse and threw up strings of green bile.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was an hour before noon when Shawn O’Brien and Hamp Sedley rode into Broken Bridle. Sedley’s face was solemn, a man nursing a grievance. And before leaving the Four Ace ranch he’d made it known to Shawn.
“Some men,” he said, “are worth saving. But the college boy sheriff isn’t one of them.”
“Don’t fold on him just yet, Hamp,” Shawn said. “I think Jeremiah Purdy is worth one last try.”
The upshot was that Sedley was determined to ignore Purdy and spend whatever time he had left in town in the saloon, fleecing the rubes. Or so he hoped. He’d been trying to outrun a losing streak for two years now, but a gambler is a man who makes his living out of hope, and Sedley figured Lady Luck, his fickle lover, was due to return to his side.
“Let the cards fall where they may,” he said as he and Shawn rode onto Main Street.
“Huh?” Shawn said.
“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud,” Sedley said. He turned his head to say something more, but the words died on his lips.
Beside him Shawn had stiffened in the saddle, his eyes fixed on the street ahead of him. He looked like a hawk about to swoop.
Sedley followed the younger man’s gaze. A couple of delivery drays passed each other and a woman shaded by a parasol crossed from one boardwalk to the other.
But then Sedley saw what Shawn had seen.
Burt Becker, his back to them, had just left the hotel and was crossing the street in the direction of the saloon, waving to people on the boardwalk as he went. Very few returned his salute.
Without a word, Shawn kicked his startled horse into a gallop.
“No!” Sedley yelled. He was too late.
Shawn drove his big sorrel directly at Becker.
The man heard the pound of hooves behind him and began to turn.
But the right flank of the horse slammed into Becker and knocked him sprawling on his back.
Shawn drew rein and swung off his rearing, wild-eyed stud. His ribs hurting, the bed weakness still on him, he knew he had to end this quickly or Becker would kill him.
Cursing, Becker scrambled to his feet and Shawn met him with a hard straight right to the chin. The big man staggered back but Shawn crowded him, jabbing with his left before landing another haymaker right to Becker’s jaw. The punch shook Becker, but he didn’t fall.
Suddenly Shawn was worried.
He’d not fully realized how huge Burt Becker was. The man was massive in the chest and shoulders and his hands and wrists enormous. He looked as formidable as an enraged grizzly.
And Becker was enraged, mad clean through and ready to kill.
“O’Brien,” he said through a bloody split lip, “I’m going to cripple you.”
Becker came in with both fists swinging, and Shawn took a wicked left to the chin. His head exploded with stars, and he was surprised to find himself on his back in the street.
Far off, he heard men roar and a woman cried out for the sheriff.
Becker stood with his legs spread, a triumphant grin on his face and a terrible, raging hatred in his eyes.
“On your feet, O’Brien,” he said. “You got a lot more coming. I’m gonna take you apart.”
Shawn forced himself to stand upright, his broken ribs paining him mercilessly. Becker stepped in on him, and Shawn threw a feeble right that the big man effortlessly parried. A sadistic light in his eyes, Becker pounded Shawn back to the ground and then stepped in quickly for the kill.
But Shawn rolled into Becker’s legs, and, unable to stop, the big man tripped and fell on top of him. Shawn, lean as a lobo wolf and flexible as an eel, wriggled out from under Becker and scrambled to his feet.
He had to end this thing. Now. Before it was too late.
As Becker pushed himself to his feet he dropped his head for a moment, and Shawn smashed a powerful
kick into the man’s face. Blood sprayed in a scarlet arc as Becker’s head jerked back, and Shawn stood wide-legged as the man staggered to his feet. Shawn measured the distance and then landed a roundhouse punch to the big man’s chin.
Becker fell on his side and Shawn waited for him to rise.
Groggy now, when he got up off the street Becker lowered his head and charged like a maddened bull. But he held his enormous fists low. It was a bad mistake and it cost him.
As the big man got within range, Shawn drove his hard, horseman’s knee upward into Becker’s face. He felt the man’s nose shatter.
Becker might have fallen, but Shawn stepped inside, held Becker upright by the lapels of his frockcoat, and head-butted him hard, smashing bone between the big man’s eyes.
Becker groaned and dropped. But there was much anger and no mercy in Shawn now. This was skull and boot fighting as it had been taught to the brothers O’Brien by wicked old Luther Ironside. The beaten man was not expected to walk away from such an encounter.
But there was no quit in Burt Becker that day.
He staggered up again with stony determination, his face a nightmare of blood and bone, both swollen eyes almost closed. For a moment Becker just stood there, swaying, and shook blood from his face.
Drawing on the last of his fading strength, Shawn hit him with a right that sounded like an ax hitting a tree trunk.
Becker staggered, then fell flat on his face, and Shawn knew the big man had no fight left in him.
Hamp Sedley handed Shawn his hat.
He glanced at Becker’s huge frame sprawled in the dust and shook his head. “Not one to hold a grudge, are you, Shawn?” he said.
“This was of his own making,” Shawn said. “He called it.”
A tall, middle-aged man detached himself from the crowd of gawkers and said, “I’m Doctor John Walsh.” He studied Shawn’s face and said, “I think you’d better come with me, young man.”
“I’ll be just fine, Doc,” Shawn said.
“The cut above your left eye needs a couple of sutures,” Walsh said. “And I can treat those swollen hands. Any jaw pain?”
Shawn shook his head and then nodded to Becker, who was now groggily sitting up.
“What about him?”
“A couple of strong men will carry him to my office. It’s at the end of the boardwalk with the hanging sign outside. Follow me, please.”
“Go ahead, Shawn,” Sedley said. “I’ll put up the horses.”
Dr. Walsh, a thin, austere man with a shock of gray hair, split his time between Shawn and Becker, after both men left their guns at the door.
He finished with Shawn first.
“No broken bones, but the fractured ribs you already have are still several weeks away from healing. I suggest no more fistfights for at least a month.”
Shawn smiled. “I’ve no great desire to try one of those again anytime soon, Doc.”
“Good. And the salve I gave you will work to reduce your swollen hands and eye.”
“How is Becker?”
“He took a bad beating,” the physician said, a slightly accusing note in his voice. “He has three fractured ribs, a broken nose, and, worst of all for a great trencherman like Mr. Becker, his jaw is broken.” Walsh shook his head and said, “The jaw will be bound up for at least six weeks, I’m afraid. He’ll need to eat soft foods and he’ll find it very difficult to talk.”
Shawn O’Brien flexed the fingers of his right hand. The knuckles were swollen and painful. “Becker brought this on himself,” he said. “You heard what happened in the saloon?”
“Yes, I did. Violence begets violence, I suppose.”
The doctor lifted his head and listened into the day. “The drums have started again,” he said.
Shawn nodded. “I think the violence you speak of is yet to begin,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pete Caradas left his horse at the livery and went looking for Burt Becker. The big man was not at his usual table in the Streetcar, and all of a sudden Caradas was troubled.
“Where is he?” he asked the bartender.
The man nodded in the direction of the street. “At his room in the hotel. Mr. Becker ain’t feeling too good.”
Caradas ordered a whiskey, drank it down, and ordered another. As his nerves settled, he said, “What ails him?”
“A feller by the name of Shawn O’Brien is what ails him,” the barman said.
Again anxiety spiked at Caradas. “He isn’t shot, is he?”
“Who?”
“Damn it, Becker, of course.”
“No. But O’Brien beat him up real bad.” The bartender made a motion of tying a bandage at the top of his head. “His jaw is broke and so is his nose. Ribs, too, I heard.” The barman laid down the glass he’d been polishing. “Sunny Swanson is with him. Taking care of him, like.”
“That’s what he needs, I guess, a whore with a heart of gold.”
The bartender snorted. “Yeah, that’s what you think. Becker is paying Sunny to be there in his hour of need.”
Caradas drained his glass. “I better go see him.” Then, “Is Shawn O’Brien still alive?”
“Sure he is. He won the fight, didn’t he?”
Caradas shook his head. My God, that was hard to believe.
He’d been told Shawn O’Brien was good with a gun, but also that he was a rich man’s son and something of a drawing room ornament. He’d heard nothing about him being a knockdown, drag-out, bareknuckle fist fighter. Who the hell had taught him that?
“I’ll go talk to Becker,” Caradas said. It seemed that this was a day to share bad news.
“He can’t talk back,” the bartender said, grinning slyly as he again made that tying movement above his head.
The barman’s name was Ferguson and Pete Caradas wanted to shoot him real bad.
Pete Caradas tapped on the door of Becker’s room.
A slender brunette in a plain gingham dress, her hair pulled back and held in place by a tortoiseshell comb, answered.
Sunny Swanson didn’t look like a whore. But she was. She let Caradas inside, then said, “He’s sleeping or unconscious, take your choice.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure, why not.”
Burt Becker lay in bed, and it looked as if a stampeding buffalo herd had trampled him. His face looked like a strawberry pie dropped onto a bakery floor, and a tight bandage was wound around his jaw and tied off at the top of his head. His breathing was labored, as though his throat was thick with blood.
“Did O’Brien have help?” Caradas asked.
“No,” Sunny said. She had a wide, expressive mouth that now showed the hint of a wry smile. “He did it all by his little self.”
Like most elite shootists, fist fighting was an anathema to Pete Caradas. As John Wesley Hardin once summed it up, “If God wanted me to fight with my fists he would have given me claws.” Caradas considered pugilists lowdown trash and knife fighters not far behind. At one time or another, he’d killed both and it did not trouble his conscience one bit.
Yet O’Brien was fast on the draw and shoot. Beating Becker with his bare hands meant that he was capable of using any means to win a fight, and that made him a more dangerous man than Caradas had originally believed.
Then a thought troubled Pete Caradas. Was Shawn O’Brien in Broken Bridle because he was somehow linked to the crazy doctor Thomas Clouston? Was there something in the Rattlesnake Hills they both wanted and would kill to keep?
He had questions without answers, and Caradas was a worried man when he left the hotel and made his way to Sheriff Purdy’s office.
The young lawman was not glad to see him. “What do you want now?” Jeremiah Purdy asked.
“You heard about Becker?” Caradas said.
“Yes.”
“He’s still unconscious and his jaw is broken.”
“Yes. I know.”
Caradas took a chair, then said, “I lost Little Face Denton and June La
cour in the Rattlesnake Hills.”
“I’m sure they’ll find their own way home,” Purdy said.
“I mean they were taken, roped, and dragged into the brush. I killed one of the attackers and barely made it out of there alive.”
“A white man?”
“Yeah, he was.” Then, “Is Shawn O’Brien in cahoots with the crazy doc?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Purdy said.
“Why does Thomas Clouston want those hills, Purdy?” Caradas said.
“I imagine for the same reason your boss wants them.”
“And why is that?”
“He hasn’t told me. But he says the Rattlesnake Hills are worth a pile of money. That might be why O’Brien is interested.”
“There’s nothing of value in those hills. I told O’Brien that already,” Caradas said.
“So he is interested?” Purdy sat back in his chair and sighed. “Caradas, I’ll wire the United States Marshal and see if he’s willing to investigate the disappearance of your friends.”
“Why not take a posse up there yourself?”
“It’s way out of my jurisdiction.”
Caradas rose to his feet. “We’ll see what Burt Becker has to say about that.” The gunman stepped toward the door, but Purdy’s voice stopped him.
“Where is Jane?” he asked.
Caradas turned, surprised. “I don’t know,” he said. Then, reading the expression on the young lawman’s face, he said, “She’s well. That’s all I know.”
“Where is she?”
“I told you, I don’t know. But the agreement stays the same, Purdy. Do as you’re told and your woman will stay well. Step out of line and Becker will kill her.”
“Caradas, how can you have a hand in this and still live with yourself?” Purdy said.
“For money, Sheriff. The best reason of all.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You two shall know the truth and the truth will make you madder still,” said Dr. Thomas Clouston. “It will drive you even more insane.”
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