A Coffin Full Of Dollars

by Joe Millard

  "That's mighty big of you, Sheriff. Where does this Apachito character hole up when he ain't out being a boil on the heel of progress?"

  "If we knew that, the price on him'd tumble considerable. They've got a hideout somewhere down in the Sierra Malhoras—the Misfortune Mountains—but danged if we could ever find it. A dozen times we've chased 'em into Crazy Woman Pass and had 'em vanish into thin air, practically under our noses. Figurin' out the answer'll either get you rich or drive you crazy."

  "I'll settle for rich," the hunter said. He flipped a casual salute and strolled out.

  The sheriff glared at his departing back, muttering under his breath about "goddam smart-ass bounty killers." His irate gaze dropped to the desktop and discovered the pad of receipt forms. He shot to his feet.

  "Hey, hey, you with the poncho and the sawed-off seegars! You forgot to give me your name and sign the receipt for the reward money."

  He snatched pad and pencil, hurdled the remains of the deceased No Nose and charged out the door, only to glare up and down an empty street. The bounty hunter, like the elusive Apachito, had apparently vanished into thin air.

  Swearing, he stamped back to his desk, scrawled "Man With No Name" on the receipt and signed it himself with an angry "X."

  On the crest of a low ridge overlooking the flat, the bounty hunter reined in and sat looking down on the busy scene below. Although he had heard a great deal about the little wagon shows that were fast becoming an institution in the West, he had never managed to be in the right place at the right time to see one and he was naturally curious. He was equally curious to watch the fast-talking Dandy Deever in action. Also, he reasoned that a circus could be a powerful magnet to lure wanted outlaws from hiding and into range of his gun.

  Practically the entire population of Los Ydros, from doddering oldsters to screeching children, had turned out to see the circus. There was no main tent and no seating with the exception of a wooden chair on which the sheriff was enthroned as guest of honor. The remainder of the audience stood, sat or sprawled on the ground in a rough semicircle facing the center of attraction.

  The three circus wagons, parked end to end, formed the backdrop. In front of this stood a small, square dressing tent with its sidewalls lowered and the caged lion drowsing in its shade. Adjoining it a high trapeze stood beside an elevated stage of rough lumber on which was the organ and its stool, Dandy's bass drum, a large megaphone and a table with a cover of faded purple velvet. A white horse with a spangled bellyband in lieu of a saddle was picketed behind the stage.

  The hunter touched spur to his horse and rode down the slope and across behind the assemblage to a patch of woods adjoining the lot where the circus teams and a few saddle horses were tethered. He found shaded space for the bay and walked back to the crowd. He selected a spot at one end of the semicircle and a little apart, where he could watch both the performance and the audience.

  Dandy Deever, elegant in tailcoat and silk topper, was working his way around the semicircle, collecting money and passing out tickets. Eventually he reached the bounty hunter and began automatically,

  "Welcome to Dandy Deever's circus, friend. That'll be five dol—" He broke off, his fixed smile of welcome curdling. "Oh, it's yiu! Somehow I didn't really expect to see you out here."

  "You wouldn't have if I'd known what you charge," the hunter said. He got out a drawstring purse and extracted a gold coin. "All I can say is, your show had better be good."

  "So had this half-eagle," Dandy said, biting the coin. "But I wouldn't want you to cry yourself to sleep over being a wild spender, so hang around after the performance and I'll give you a chance to win your fortune back, ten times over."

  "Now," the hunter said to Dandy's retreating back, "we're getting down to business."

  Dandy had taken a half-dozen steps. Suddenly he whirled around, cupping something in his hand.

  "By the way, friend, do you happen to have a light?"

  The hunter nodded and got out one of the wooden matches, scratching it to light it with a thumbnail. Dandy opened his hand to reveal one of the stubby cigarros. He put it in his mouth and bent to the flame.

  "Thanks for the cigar, friend. It's a little strong, but really quite good." He opened his hand again to expose a glistening silvery star. "And I must remember to give the sheriff back his badge before he misses it."

  The hunter's mouth opened and then closed without uttering a word. After all, at the moment there was really nothing to say. His hand roved under the poncho, checking to make sure he still had his gun and the shells in his cartridge belt. He had, but Dandy Deever was definitely a character to be watched. A pickpocket that accomplished could be dangerous.

  He studied the faces of the audience, alert for any that could mean either danger or profit. His narrowed gaze suddenly settled on the face of a tall man in a frock coat who stood a few paces back from the crowd.

  It was an arresting face, deeply bronzed, with wide, high cheekbones and a pointed chin that gave it a distinctive wedge shape. The bounty hunter was positive he had never seen that face before, either in person or on any reward poster, yet it was somehow tantalizingly familiar. He was annoyed and disturbed, since the instant recall of faces was a basic tool of his trade.

  The stranger was also scanning the faces of the crowd with more than idle interest. His slitted gaze eventually found the figure in the poncho, lingered on it for a few long moments, then abruptly whipped away. But in those moments a telltale widening of the eyes had clearly betrayed recognition.

  Years of living by his wits and gun had endowed the bounty hunter with a kind of sixth sense, a premonition of impending danger. He felt it strongly now and knew that for some unguessable reason this stranger was a mortal enemy—one as deadly as a snake. Under cover of the poncho he twitched the butt of the .44, making certain that when the chips went down the weapon would slip smoothly and freely from its beeswaxed holster.

  On the stage Dandy was shouting through the megaphone, introducing the members of the troupe. The big blonde proved to be his wife, Molly Deever, and the slimmer counterpart their daughter, Laura. The huge and talented trumpet player was Hunk Bannister. There was also an unexpected fifth member who had not been previously seen—a clown known as Bobo, dressed in a grotesque, padded costume and thickly smeared with greasepaint. The lion was solemnly introduced as Elmer the maneater and the white horse as Milky.

  The four launched into a lively tune while the clown ambled around getting into mischief, pulling Elmer's tail, making clumsy, futile attempts to mount the white horse. The hunter divided his attention between the performance and the mysterious stranger who was also watching him with covert intensity. Under the concealing poncho his hand hovered close to his gun, although the possibility of a fight erupting in the midst of such a crowd seemed remote.

  The music had stopped and Dandy was introducing Molly as the "undisputed queen of bullwhip artists." In her strong and capable hand, the twenty feet of rawhide seemed imbued with a life of its own. It whistled and sang and exploded in gunshot reports, keeping time to a brisk tune played on the organ by Laura.

  She was better than good—so good, in fact, that the hunter almost forgot to keep an eye on the man in the frock coat. He became suddenly aware that the mystery man had been quietly easing back, away from the seated audience and a few racing, yelling children darting in and out of the crowd.

  On the stage the snapping whip was methodically shredding strips of paper held in Dandy's hand. He had donned a gun belt and pistol and put a stump of cigar between his lips. The whip cracked once and the cigar went flying. It cracked again and the heavy sixgun flew out of its holster and landed on the ground, yards from the stage. As a climax, Dandy wedged six wooden matches into a crack at the end of the stage, with their heads up. Molly lit them in succession by snapping each head with the tip of the lash.

  The hunter was stepping slowly backward, away from the crowd and out of the path of two boisterous boys, who were happily p
ursuing a screeching girl in pigtails. The stranger's frock coat was now unbuttoned, his hand inside, positioned for what was unmistakably a cross-belly draw. The sight started a bell of faint recognition ringing in the mind of the bounty hunter. It was almost, but not quite, crystallized when the other turned his head just far enough to reveal his left cheek for the first time.

  Slanting back and up across the leathery flesh was a scar in the shape of a Y, with the base starting above the corner of the mouth and the upper tips terminating below the eye and in front of the ear.

  With the sight, all the bits and pieces of the puzzle clicked into place and a name blazed up in letters of fire on the screen of the hunter's mind.

  Shadrach!

  The two men had never met, yet each had openly vowed to kill the other on sight.

  Shadrach!

  Throughout much of the Southwest the name had grown to the dimensions of a sinister legend, a synonym for pure evil.

  Shadrach the bounty killer, whose gun was as swift and sure in pursuit of a fifty-dollar reward as for one of five hundred or five thousand.

  Shadrach the executioner, whose deadly skill was for sale to the highest bidder, and ever ready to switch allegiance at the hint of a better offer.

  Shadrach the conscienceless, whose only god was gold and whose only motive was greed.

  Men talked of him around the night fires, recounting and probably magnifying his exploits. They spoke with awe of his custom-made guns, the rifles and shotguns in the saddle roll that would unfurl at a twitch of the tie-string, the pistol with its fourteen-inch barrel and detachable shoulder stock that gave it almost the range and accuracy of a rifle. Voices dropped when they talked of his lightning-swift cross-belly draw that no gun-hawk had ever challenged and survived.

  The bounty hunter had heard most of the stories about the fearsome Shadrach and had discounted the majority, knowing how legends tend to fatten upon themselves with each retelling. He was neither greatly impressed nor seriously concerned, since their areas of operation were widely separated and there seemed little likelihood that their trails would ever cross. After all, rival bounty hunters were becoming a dime a dozen as outlawry flourished with the boom in mining, the spread of banks and the expansion of stage and freight lines.

  Then suddenly the mythical Shadrach was no longer remote and impersonal, but a very present and very deadly menace. He remembered all too clearly how it had begun....

  CHAPTER 4

  For more than a month The Man With No Name had patiently tracked the outlaw, Scarse, whose bloody misdeeds had earned him the dubious honor of a five-thousand-dollar bounty. Now, at last, the trail was coming to an end, the Big Payday only a matter of hours away.

  From the spine of a high razor-back ridge he looked down and saw his quarry, clear and unmistakable through the lenses of his spy glass. The outlaw's hideout camp that had eluded searchers for more than a year was superbly chosen for its purpose. It lay at the foot of the ridge, a broad, shallow cave under a rock overhang that shielded it from direct view from above. Great heaps of jagged rock, shaken down from the ridge in some ancient cataclysm, masked it from sight at ground level.

  The outlaw was hunkered on his heels by a cookfire, watching a frying pan of meat and a battered coffee pot. A steady mountain wind, whipping along the ridge, dispersed any betraying smoke or smell. Nevertheless, Scarse was taking no chances. His rifle leaned against a rock close to his left hand. His cocked pistol lay on another rock, inches from his right hand.

  The bounty hunter nodded with satisfaction, undisturbed by the availability of the weapons. What did disturb him was the fact that for at least two weeks, while he trailed the outlaw, someone was also trailing him.

  The sense of being spied upon day and night was overpowering and infuriating. Only twice in that time had he caught fleeting glimpses of his shadow but both times the distance was too great for recognition. On several occasions he had back-trailed a mile or more without success. Although he had failed to sight the tracker, he found plenty of fresh signs, clear hoof-prints, horse-droppings still steaming, underbrush recently broken.

  Back-trailing early one morning, the hunter came upon his shadow's night camp. The ground was trampled with fresh hoof-prints and boot tracks. The ashes of the morning cookfire were still warm. The hunter had a strong feeling that the mysterious trailer was somewhere close by, watching him and jeering at his frustration.

  Since there had been no signs of hostile intent, the hunter finally forced himself to ignore the baffling pursuit for the time being. His primary objective was to garner Mr. Scarse and the five-thousand-dollar bounty, anyhow, and he disliked being diverted from so worthy a purpose. Once it was accomplished, he could concentrate on the identity and purpose of the mysterious tracker.

  Nevertheless he delayed long enough to search the opposite side of the ridge with his glass. He saw no sign of life or movement except his own horse, grazing placidly where he had left it ground-haltered. Yet the feeling of being watched was strong. He swore under his breath and worked his way down to his horse. All that remained to be done now was to swing around through the pass, take the outlaw by surprise and ride into town to collect the bounty.

  He started to swing in to the saddle and froze. Tucked under the cinch strap was a folded paper. He pulled it out and unfolded it. The paper was completely blank but its presence conveyed the message clearly. The mysterious and elusive shadow had been there and was mocking him.

  The hunter mounted and headed for the pass, spurred by a sudden sense of urgency. As he entered the deep, shadowed slot his ears caught the faint sound of a single distant gunshot. He swore thickly and raked his spurs.

  At the site of the outlaw's hideout, he sprang down and scrambled over the rocks, gun in hand, ignoring stealth. A sharp premonition warned him of what he would find on the other side.

  Nothing!

  The meat was burning on the fire, the coffee pot boiling over. The rifle and pistol were gone. Where Scarse had squatted, there was a puddle of blood not yet congealed. Neither the outlaw, nor his body, was anywhere in sight.

  Back in town the sheriff confirmed his defeat with relish. "Feller toted in Scarse's re-mains and collected the bounty not two hours ago. Said his name was Shadrach. He left an envelope for you. He didn't know your name but he said you'd be in right behind him and he described your togs to a T."

  The envelope contained a ten-dollar bank note and a brief, taunting message. "Please accept this for your trouble in locating the late Mr. Scarse for me. If you will track down some more good kills you will find me equally generous in sharing the rewards." It was signed simply, "Shadrach."

  In the ensuing weeks two more rich prizes were snatched from his grasp by the same phantom figure. Each time there was the same jeering note, the same infuriating ten-dollar bill. It was obvious that the legendary Shadrach had moved in with a vengeance. It was equally obvious that he was deliberately goading The Man With No Name into a showdown gunfight that he confidently expected would leave him the undisputed master of the outlaw bounty field.

  Yet, by some irony of fate their paths had never again quite crossed, although each had come to know his rival intimately by description. The last time he was thwarted, the hunter had raged to a deputy,

  "If you encounter that goddam Shadrach character again, give him a message for me. Tell him when we do meet, I'll kill him on sight."

  The deputy had tilted back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, a half-smile on his lips.

  "It's sure as hell a small world, ain't it? Would you believe it—that fella Shadrach left the identical same message for you?"

  Now, at long last, here the rivals were, not a dozen yards apart, each with his hand on his gun and slaughter in the forefront of his mind. And between and around them were hundreds of men, women and racing, screeching children.

  CHAPTER 5

  Dandy climaxed an exhibition of expert juggling by keeping five plates spinning in the air at once. He h
ad deftly recaptured four of them when his attention was distracted and the fifth crashed to bits on the stage floor. Dandy ignored it, staring upward, and virtually everyone in the audience looked up to see what he was staring at.

  Five horsemen had suddenly appeared on the crest of the low ridge. They reined in and sat stirrup-to-stirrup, looking down at the scene on the flat. Sunlight glinted on a whiskey bottle being passed from hand to hand. For some curious, occult reason the appearance of the five seemed vaguely disturbing to most of the crowd.

  Suddenly one of the riders loosed a wild Rebel yell and drove in his spurs. His horse bolted downslope, straight at the crowd, with the others pounding behind, whooping drunkenly and using their hats as whips. In the crowd there was a moment of shocked paralysis, then pandemonium as cursing men and screaming women fell over one another in a frenzied scramble to open a path for the racers.