Shawn O'Brien Manslaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  “I’ll kill them,” Anderson said, grinning. “I’ve never shot me a couple of farm boys before.”

  “Shut your trap!” Jim Mulholland said. “Dave, give me them glasses.”

  “You don’t speak to me like that, you old coot,” Anderson said, his face pale with anger. “You want to climb off that bay and we’ll have it out?”

  Suddenly Mulholland’s Colt was in his hand, the muzzle shoved into the bridge of Anderson’s nose.

  “Don’t say another word, boy,” he said. “Not one more word.”

  “Billy,” Mason said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. His eyes flickered to Mulholland’s face and he saw death. “Don’t move and don’t say a word.”

  In that moment Billy the Kid Anderson realized he was a callow boy in the company of close-lipped, dangerous men. His eyes wide and frightened, he kept his mouth shut.

  Mulholland shoved his revolver back into its cross draw holster and lifted the glasses to his eyes. A few seconds later he lowered and said, “Let those boys be, Rank.”

  Suddenly Mulholland looked much older than his fifty years. His brown eyes were haunted.

  “They’re rubes, Jim, for God’s sake,” Mason said. “We ride down there and shoot them off the pony and we’re done.”

  “Not me, Rank. Not now, not ever.”

  Now Mulholland’s gun had been taken out of his face, Anderson found his courage and his sneer again. His hand was on his Colt. “You scared?”

  The older man sat his saddle in silence for long moments, gazing at the oncoming riders. A hawk glided overhead and for a moment cast an angular shadow that looked as though it had been razored from black paper. The kid had talked again and Mason expected a shooting, but Mulholland surprised him.

  “Yeah, I’m scared, and so should you be,” he said. He looked at Mason. “Ride away, Rank. Give them boys the road.”

  Mason read something in Mulholland’s face that deeply disturbed him. Nonetheless he said, “I can’t do that, Jim.” He made a lame attempt at humor. “Just following doctor’s orders.”

  Mulholland nodded. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small wooden crucifix on a silver chain. “Rank, are you a Roman Catholic?” he asked.

  The gunman shook his head. “Got no time for popery, Jim.”

  “Maybe that’s so, but this I can do for you. For old time’s sake, you understand?”

  Mulholland raised the crucifix and made the sign of the cross over Mason. “Requiescat in pace, Rank,” he said. Then, to the others, “Maybe I’ll see you boys around one day, but I doubt it.”

  Mulholland swung his horse away and rode south at a fast gallop. He didn’t even glance in the direction of the D’eth brothers, nor did he look back.

  When all that remained of Mulholland’s frantic flight was a drifting cloud of dust, Billy Anderson grinned and said, “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Maybe he’s scared of rubes,” Dave King said.

  Rank Mason stared at the two men on the yellow mustang, then said, “All right boys, let’s go get them.”

  Mason’s first mistake was to ignore Mulholland’s warning. Now he made a series of others.

  He should have stayed at a distance and cut down the D’eth brothers with rifle fire. But maybe Anderson’s exultant yell of, “This is gonna be fun!” influenced Mason’s thinking and gave him false confidence.

  The rubes had no weapons showing, and the big gunman assumed they were unarmed. That was his second error.

  His third and most fatal miscalculation was his belief that he, Dave King, and Billy the Kid Anderson were the top guns in the Wyoming Territory.

  The D’eth brothers would soon show him otherwise.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Billy the Kid Anderson, thinking this was going to be easy, opened the ball. He had his Colt in his hand.

  “Get off that pony, farm boys,” he said, grinning. “And start running”—he pointed back along the trail—“that away.”

  The D’eth brothers sat the mustang, their black Gypsy eyes unblinking, staring silently at Anderson.

  “I’ll make it sporting,” Anderson said. “If you make it to the dead wild oak without getting hit, I’ll let you go.”

  Dave King grinned. “Seems like they don’t understand plain American, Billy.”

  “Look like Greasers to me,” Anderson said. He spat. “Or breeds.”

  The sun had reached its highest point, and men and horse cast no shadow. The parched day was quieter than the quietest night, and oppressive heat lay on the land heavy as a Hudson’s Bay trade blanket.

  Rank Mason was about to spoil Anderson’s fun. He decided to end the game right then and he reached for his gun.

  The D’eth brothers rolled off the mustang, landed on their feet, and began firing, a sound of rolling thunder.

  Anderson went down, a cry of surprise and shock shrieking from his lips. Dave King died on his horse’s back but stayed in the saddle, wide-jawed in a silent scream.

  Rank Mason, the best of them, got off a shot that went high into the pine canopy. Bullets then tore great holes in his chest and hammered him into the ground.

  Milos stepped through a fog of gun smoke and shot Anderson, who’d been up on one elbow, whimpering, his left arm extended in a plea for mercy. Clemency of any kind for the fallen never entered into the D’eth brothers’ thinking, and Billy the Kid Anderson’s death was no nobler than that of the man he’d tried so desperately to emulate.

  The D’eth brothers reloaded their Colts and shoved them back into the bibs of their overalls. They had not exchanged a word, had not speculated on the identities of their attackers or their possible motives, because all that was of no interest to them. They had been threatened and had taken care of it. That was all that mattered.

  The dead men had nothing the brothers wanted, so they let the bodies lay where they fell. That is, except for Dave King who still sat his horse, his eyes wide open but blinded by death. That last mildly amused Milos, but brother Petsha didn’t spare the equestrian corpse a second glance. He climbed onto the bony back of the mustang and waited.

  The spotted pup, scared by the gunfire, lay in the middle of a grass clearing with his huge front paws over his eyes. Milos gently picked up the little dog, kissed the top of his warm head, and carried him to the horse.

  Petsha broke the silence. “How is he?”

  “Just fine. Trembling a little bit.”

  “Hold him close and he’ll calm down.”

  “What will we call him, Petsha?”

  “Otto. We will call him Otto,” Petsha said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s a German name, a good name for a dog.”

  Milos held the puppy up to his face and said, “Hello, Otto.”

  The little dog licked Milos’s face with his pink tongue, and the man smiled and said, “He likes that name.”

  “Then Otto it is,” Petsha said. “Now let us ride on, brother.”

  The livery stable man cackled like a scrawny old rooster.

  “You boys here to see the sights an’ spark the pretty gals, huh?” he said. “Maybe taste some real whiskey instead o’ that there moonshine y’all guzzle back home?”

  The D’eth brothers were born actors, very much a necessity in the hired assassins line of work. And from the New York ganglands to San Francisco’s Barbary Coast they were the best available. They worked quietly, efficiently, and offered a no-kill-no-fee guarantee. Not once had they been obliged to honor it.

  Milos D’eth let out a guffaw that sounded like the bray of a Tennessee mule. “Purty gals is what we want afore whiskey,” he said. “How much do they charge around these parts?”

  “Oh, about two dollars. You got two dollars?” the liveryman asked.

  Milos nodded an idiotic grin. “Me an’ my brother got fifty dollars in Yankee money. Ain’t that so, Petsha?”

  “Sure do. Pa gave it us afore he kicked us out of the cabin down on Muddy Gap and tole us to find our own
way in the world. He called that fifty dollars a legacy an’ that’s what it is.”

  “Take us a long time to spend fifty dollars,” Milos said.

  The old stable man was about to say, “Not in this town it won’t,” but he changed his mind and said, “You boys will have a time with all that money. See you save two bits a night for the hoss.”

  “We sure will,” Milos said. He brayed like a mule again. “Lead the way, brother Petsha.”

  Playing the country bumpkin tore up Milos D’eth, as though he was being dragged through a buckthorn wire fence, but he and Petsha had to get close to make the kill and sometimes playing the fool was necessary. Just a month before they’d disguised themselves as a pair of lacy maiden aunts to assassinate the whiskey-nosed, gouty old railroad magnate L. Justin Bennett, stabbing him to death with the sharped spikes of their parasols. He and Petsha were both six feet tall, and playing bent, elderly ladies had been a chore. But it was necessary, as was their current role of green hayseeds come to the big city to see the sights.

  The reflector lamps were lit along the street and the Streetcar Saloon was ablaze with light. The respectable element was at home in the bosom of their families, but the sporting crowd jostled on the boardwalks and the champagne whores were already practicing their profession. As they did every night, drums droned from the Rattlesnake Hills and men joked about the ghosts of Apaches and the lost Spanish army that had come this far looking for gold.

  It was a balmy evening, one made for men to roister among the whiskey and whores. That it would end in tragedy none knew, except the already drunk and perhaps the few Chinese who glided in the shadows and said nothing but saw everything.

  Keeping up their charade, the D’eth brothers stepped into the Streetcar and stood just inside the door and gaped at the splendor around them, jaws hanging open. Men in gold watch chains and broadcloth mingled with dusty cowboys, drifters, miners, gamblers, and professional drinkers. Saloon girls in candy cane dresses circulated among the crowd, and a cunning-eyed brunette spotted the brothers and said, “Howdy boys. You just standin’ or are you drinkin’?”

  “Drinkin’,” Milos said. Then, after a donkey bray, “I never seen nothing like you afore.”

  “How come that doesn’t surprise me?” the girl said. She petted the spotted pup and then said her name was Suzette and she was working to support her widowed mother. “Buy me a drink, boys?”

  Milos stepped to the bar and ordered whiskey. Suzette said she wanted champagne. The bartender nodded and gave the girl a wink. He was about to take a whiskey bottle from the shelf behind him but changed his mind and retrieved one from the floor where the cockroaches lived. He poured the rotgut into two glasses and said, “And champagne for the lady.”

  The champagne was fizzy water from an opened bottle, but what did rubes know?

  “That will be five dollars,” the bartender said.

  “Huh?” Milos said. He knew he was being taken but remained in character.

  “Big city, big prices,” the bartender said. “Comes as a shock to a country boy, don’t it?”

  Milos made a mental note to kill the man before he left Broken Bridle, but he paid the five dollars without too much fuss and Suzette said, “Let’s get a table, boys, and we’ll talk.” She smiled, promising much. “Unless you want to do something else.” She elbowed the silent Petsha. “Something real nice, huh, big boy?”

  “I guess we’ll have this whiskey first,” Milos said. “Me and my brother ain’t never tasted drinkin’ whiskey that came so dear.”

  Suzette laid her glass on the bar. “Well, I’ll be around when you boys get worked up enough to need me,” she said. She patted the pup’s head. “That doesn’t include you.”

  The serious drinkers were all upstanding men, and the D’eth brothers found a table without much difficulty. They sat straight in the cane-backed chairs like worshippers in church.

  Pete Caradas, a man with restless eyes, spotted the rubes before they sat down. One carried a slat-ribbed pup with a wet, inquisitive nose, and both wore denim overalls that were a size too small for them. They were both very dark, ink black hair and eyes that gave them the look of Gypsies, and their hayseed exterior was belied by their erect carriage and the slightly arrogant tilt of their heads. When the men sat, their pants legs rode up and exposed their boots, not the coarse brogans of country boys, but finely stitched riding boots that would cost a working cowboy three months’ wages.

  Caradas recognized the yellow and scarlet butterfly overlays that decorated the boot shafts and the radically under-slung, two-inch heels as the work of Sol and Abe Rosenberg of Abilene. A man wearing Rosenberg boots couldn’t hobble very far, but he surely cut a dash on horseback.

  A couple of ragged rubes wearing fancy boots set off an alarm bell in Caradas’s head. He pegged them as the D’eth brothers, Milos and Petsha, killers for hire who didn’t come cheap.

  But why were they in Broken Bridle?

  Burt Becker had left plenty of enemies on his back trail, and he was the obvious target. Could one of those foes be well heeled enough to buy the costly but lethal services of the terrible twins?

  It was possible. In fact Caradas considered it more than possible—it was damned likely.

  And now was the time to consider his next move.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Shawn O’Brien was worn out and Hamp Sedley was in no better shape, but they decided to give Burt Becker one more try before they called it a night.

  Cigar smoke hung in the Streetcar like a fog, and the wall-to-wall crowd was getting animated. Gambling was going on at three tables, and over by the piano player a saloon girl warbled, “The Quaker Lass Fallen in Shame,” but nobody listened. Shawn was hit by the familiar saloon smells of packed bodies, stale beer, cigars, and cheap perfume. White moths fluttered around the oil lamps like snowflakes, and a drunken rooster wearing a high celluloid collar balanced a glass of whiskey on the crown of his plug hat as he tiptoed along a chalk line drawn on the floor. When he tripped over his own feet and fell, the crowd laughed and one of his companions gave him a playful boot or two in the ribs.

  Shawn was big and significant, and he made his way through the crowd like a frontier Moses parting the Red Sea.

  Pete Caradas sat at his usual table, and he smiled and motioned Shawn and Sedley over. “Sorry for the dishes,” he said. “I guess they can’t find the time to clear them.”

  “Hey, Pete, you going to eat that last lamb chop on your plate?” Sedley asked.

  “Help yourself,” Caradas said.

  “Obliged,” Sedley said. He sat and with surprising daintiness picked up the chop and began to eat. “Good,” he said, chewing out the word.

  “You see them, O’Brien?” Caradas said. His elegantly booted foot pushed a chair closer. “Take a load off.”

  “Yes, I saw them,” Shawn said. “Pumpkin rollers wearing hundred-dollar boots catch a man’s eye.”

  “They’re not pumpkin rollers,” Caradas said. “Each of them has a gun stuffed into his bib overalls, and their hands have never been near a plow. They’re in disguise, and that’s how they work. Dredging up some old around-the-stove talk, I’d bet the farm those are the D’eth brothers, come to Broken Bridle to do somebody harm. I’ve heard about them, but this is the first time I ever saw them in the flesh.”

  “Those boys are looking at you, Shawn,” Sedley said. He had an odd, knowing expression on his face. “My guess is they don’t like what they see.”

  “Yeah, and they’ve been giving me the mean eye since they sat down as well,” Caradas said. “I’ve never met them, but they have me pegged. And now you, O’Brien.”

  “Pegged you fellers as what?” Sedley said.

  “Guns, just like themselves,” Caradas said. “I reckon they don’t harbor any animosity against us, but men in their kind of work hate complications.” The man smiled. “Kinda like me finding you in Broken Bridle, O’Brien.”

  “Do I need to guess who they’re aft
er?” Shawn said, ignoring that last.

  “No, you don’t need to guess. It has to be Becker.”

  “Then you have a hand to play, Pete,” Shawn said.

  “Seems like,” Caradas said. He smiled at Shawn. “The good news is I’m not scared.”

  “Why should you be, Pete?” Sedley said, amazed. “You shuck that Colt on your hips faster than anyone around.”

  “Let’s just say I had a bad experience recently and let it go at that,” Caradas said.

  Sedley opened his mouth to speak, but Shawn said, “And let it go at that, Hamp.” Ignoring Sedley’s disgruntled scowl, he said to Caradas, “Maybe the target is Thomas Clouston. Listen to those drums. Does he know they’re here?”

  For most residents of Broken Bridle the constant drumming had faded into background noise, like the hum of Chinatown or the constant rumble of freight wagons in the street. But since sundown the relentless racket of the drums had increased in intensity and was now more ominous, threatening, and aggressive.

  “Clouston did all his killing back East where it was legal,” Caradas said. “I doubt that back in Philadelphia a relative grieving for a deceased loved one would know how to hire the D’eth brothers, or if it even would enter his thinking. In the big cities you hire lawyers, not guns.”

  “Well, there’s one way to find out,” Sedley said. “I’ll go ask them.”

  The protest died on Shawn’s lips as Sedley rose and strode purposely in the direction of the D’eth brothers.

  Shawn’s hand dropped to the Colt on his hip, and beside him Caradas stiffened, watching. But the moment passed. As though of one mind the brothers rose, turned their backs on Sedley, and walked out of the saloon, closing the door quietly behind them.

  Sedley stood in the middle of the floor, baffled, as merrymakers milled around him. He turned on his heel and walked back to Shawn and Caradas.

  “I guess they didn’t want to talk to me,” Sedley said.