McDaniel slumped to the dirt. He’d lost too much blood from the severed artery in his leg.
“Take him?” Curtis asked.
“No,” Bardwell said. “He’ll die before we could get him to a doctor. Let him remain here in this shithole that he created.”
Curtis understood and removed the iron cuffs from the outlaw’s wrists.
“I’ll see the both of you in hell,” McDaniel said, in the low weary voice of a man saying his last words.
“We may already be there, Black,” Bardwell said, biting off a plug of tobacco and stuffing the rest back down in his pocket.
They had gotten their man, both of them really. Sacramento had wanted Black McDaniel now he had been dealt with. Bardwell wanted both the pilot and the flying machine and they were now beyond help. The pilot dead and his beloved flying machine burning to the ground behind. Fires in the crop of long grass were burning themselves out as morning came on, lighting a nuclear gray sky.
“Hello,” Bardwell yelled in through a broken window. The lawman waited, there was no answer and the building was put to the torch.
Curtis did the same from across the street as the pair continued down the street.
“Sir,” Curtis yelled, “We’ve got bodies in here.”
Bardwell had a look inside. Children none of them older than fifteen were tied to makeshift pallets about the floor. Their eyes were empty and dull.
“Cut them loose,” Bardwell said, tossing one of the grenades to a band of McDaniel’s people returning from the fields and ducking inside for protection.
Inside it smelled of piss and sex and torture. These were most likely the children brought in from the fortified city of Los Angeles a week and a half previous.
“It doesn’t take long does it?” Curtis remarked as he cut the ties binding the hostages.
“No, it doesn’t,” Bardwell said, from the door watching for any more uninvited guests coming on the run.
The lawman reckoned that if there were others, by now they had seen the flames licking at their settlement and would be high-tailing it to safer ground. Folks were superstitious these days—had been for some time now—and would likely think that their God almighty had sent a crushing blow for the evil ways in which they had lived.
“Can you understand me?” Curtis asked as he shook the captives. “Can any of you talk?”
A healthier-looking young man rolled his eyes trying to focus his thoughts. “I can,” he said, in a tired stupor.
“Look, Man,” Curtis said. “I want you to take these kids through the field toward the mountains and travel opposite the sun. You got it?”
The young man nodded his head like he understood. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“There’s town in that direction,” Curtis said. “It’s called Desert Spring. You tell them you were taken by Black McDaniel and that you need help. Folks, there will see about you.”
The captives were herded between buildings that hadn’t yet burned in the direction of the hills to the west.
“You ready to finish this?” Curtis asked after the children were well on their way. Flames danced from the skeletons of the structures to the north. There were still several buildings standing between the lawmen and the end of the town once known as Broken Hill.
Bardwell smiled and spit a glob of tobacco juice in the dirt before he removed the last of the red flares they had purchased back in Desert Spring.
The lawmen made quick work of the buildings that remained on their pass through town Two barns that had once been used as the town’s livery now stored the crop of long grass. Bardwell pulled back the door to the larger of the two and put it to the match. Curtis did the same with the other, both stopping to look back over what they had done.
To the west, acre upon acre of what had once been six-foot stands of long grass was nothing more than charred black earth. Smoke still drifted upward as the morning sun grew brighter, but the fires were out after burning unhindered for the past two hours.
Metal bones of the flying craft lay in ruins along with the remains of a few steel oil barrels that had survived the heat at that end of town. The desert settlement was nothing more than a smoldering memory now. In one night, its evil ways had been wiped from the earth and not by a God, but by two men out to set things right in the world, a world that had once been peaceful, but where today lawlessness ruled with an iron fist.
“Sure wish that we would have parked those horses closer,” Curtis said, as the two lawmen walked away from the fires engulfing the town’s barns.
“It would have been nice,” Bardwell said, watching the morning sun.
“We did a lot of walking this morning, Sir,” Curtis said, striking a sulfur match to light the stub of a cigar that had gone out hours ago.
“I kind of wish that I would have taken that into consideration,” Bardwell said smiling.
It was close to a half rod—three miles—in getting back to their saddled horses tied to the small trees near the arroyo.
The lawmen climbed aboard never looking back at what had once been. If either would have, they would have seen nothing but the smoldering remains of Broken Hill a place where evil was manufactured nightly.
Chapter Thirty
Riding west of north into the range, Curtis reined in looking down at the desert floor where the sand met the low rolling hills.
“It looks like those kids are going to make it, Sir,” he said pointing to the faint outline of McDaniel’s captives making their way north and just a short distance from Desert Spring.
“The walk will do them some good,” Bardwell said. “Get it out of their system.”
As much as they needed a hot bath and good food, maybe a little whiskey and a night with a woman, the lawmen would steer well clear of the only village for miles. With what they had done overnight, they reckoned that some folks might not be so kind.
Both knew that they were skirting the law operating as they were. Bardwell had a piece of paper folded in his pocket stating that McDaniel was to be dealt with one way or the other, but taking it onto himself to destroy the crop, the flying machine, and the entire town was strictly something that he had come up with on his own.
Once home there’d be paperwork, mountains of it. Black McDaniel would be listed as DEAD IN FIREFIGHT, which wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Bardwell would mention the destruction of the flying ship and the death of the pilot and even the liberation of the children used in McDaniel’s sex trade, but no more than that would be said. This far out in the badlands, the authorities didn’t need to know. Hell, they most likely didn’t want to know.
“What’s next?” Curtis asked.
Bardwell removed his hat to swipe his greasy hair back behind his ears. “I reckon that Tulare is the next closest town of any size?” he said, putting the spur to his mount.
Bardwell was right. Tulare—the last settlement south in Sacramento—rested just at the edge of the borderland. Anything south of that place was lawless desperation these days and that was still more than a week away.
There was plenty of good grass on this side of the range and they’d cross a spring fed creek from at times. Rabbits were plentiful for roasting and they might even take a small antelope for supper from time to time.
As long as no dispatch rider met them with orders in a sealed envelope, they’d make the border and the new state of Sacramento in a few days’ time and that was all right with the tin star lawmen.
***
The lamps burned low in the Silver Dollar saloon. There had been no others in the place for hours as the night wore itself away.
“That’s some life you gentlemen are living,” Bose Mitchell said. “And I’m glad to know the both of you, but the hour is getting late and I probably should be getting home before the sun comes up?” He glanced at his timepiece, it was nearing two o’clock. “If you gentlemen are here in town come the morrow,” he added. “I’d enjoy hearing more of your stories.” He laughed, “I could listen to you
two all night…”
Bardwell laughed. “You damn near did, Bose?”
The lawmen stayed around till Mitchell turned down all the lamps and pulled the door closed behind. They would all walk together as far as the Far West Hotel. Between the dark buildings, a dark man slithered back into the shadows. Curtis was busy talking with the Mitchell. Bardwell noticed, though and kept his eye on the man till he could no longer be seen. The dark night had swallowed the man whole.
“This is about as far as we go, Sir,” Curtis said, stopping in front of the two-story boarding house.
“I thank you, Gentlemen,” Mitchell said, looking down the dark street in the direction of his home.
Two riders departed for the outskirts of town, up to no good Bardwell reckoned. What other reason would two cowboys, be heading out in such a hurry at this late hour.
No alarm was sent up into the night that anyone had been hurt or required the law.
“You have yourself a good night, Bose,” Bardwell said. “It’s always good to get by here and talk with friends now and again.”
Mitchell smiled reaching out his hand to both of the lawmen. “I look forward to it also, Dan.”
The barkeep started up the dark street. Curtis fumbled with the brass door latch. Bardwell watched his friend of old continue into the night wondering if someday he wouldn’t run across the wrong man out here alone in the dark as he was each night after closing up his shop.
Upstairs Curtis said good night pulling the door closed. Bardwell stepped into his room and raised the window to allow the cool early morning breeze in.
The lawman unfastened the clasp on his worn leather saddlebag and removed a glass bottle of whiskey and a tired leather-bound book that he’d carried for years. Turning the timeworn pages, he thought of the men who had once used the names contained within its pages, hundreds, thousands of men who had died at his hand over his lifetime. All were men who had broken the law, men who his superiors had sent him out to bring back dead or alive. Yes, he had a tendancy to skirt the law somewhat and more of those men returned home dead than alive, but it was his job and there weren’t many around these days to do it.
Bardwell took a good long pull from the bottle and sat it back on the table. He bit off some tobacco and sat back as the cool air blew in.
Next door, Curtis kicked off his boots and sat in a chair next to the open window. The boy reached deep into his saddlebag producing a leather-bound book that resembled the book in his superior’s hand at the same moment.
Curtis turned the pages looking across the names of the men that he had killed over his young lifetime wondering if his superior, Dan Bardwell, ever sat alone reading the names that he had penciled in. The Book of Souls the young cadets back in Sacramento called it, the fabled book that the lawmen of old used to keep the memories fresh as they rode the dusty trails from town to town.
The Book of Souls, he thought, striking a sulfur match and put the flame to a cigar, just inches in from his face, The Book of Souls. The fabled Book of Souls.
Chapter Thirty-One
Pine knots crackled in a small fire in the clearing between the trees. Three horses had been hobbled earlier while the daystar still gave off its warmth, they were happy enough to graze under a starry night sky.
The night was clear with no threat of rain. It had been raining for most of the past two weeks. Not much, it never rained much in this part of the country. The sorely needed precipitation was just enough to give hope to the mutant plants and trees that clung to life here in the borderlands.
An old tin can with a wire bail handle rested in the coals. The can had been carefully packed and carried for better than twenty years now. It was found once upon a time and repurposed much to the delight of its owner.
Throughout the long day, the grass had dried enough for the two lawmen to lay about on rubber ponchos and a wool blanket, leaning back against saddles that had surely seen better days.
Franklin Curtis—the younger man—reached for the wire bail. “Sir,” he asked. “You ever use anything but this can to boil coffee in?”
Dan Bardwell laughed. “You remember that modern percolator the officials up in Sacramento sent you out with?”
“I do,” Curtis said, drawing on a cigar clenched in his teeth. Squinting from the smoke, he continued. “The damned thing never did work.”
Bardwell continued to laugh. “They sent me out with one of those also, way back when.” He spit a wad of tobacco juice in the fire. “I never could figure the damned thing out either, didn’t drink coffee for the longest time.”
It was the boy’s turn to laugh. Franklin Curtis was well more than a boy now as he neared thirty years of age, but in Bardwell’s eyes, he’d always be a boy, a boy with a little learning ahead of him still.
“So what turned you on to using this old can, Sir?” Curtis asked.
“Deadeye Bob James,” Bardwell said. “If it weren’t for him, I would have surely got myself killed before I was twenty.”
“It was that bad, huh?”
“It was, Son,” Bardwell said. “I could shoot well enough when I graduated the academy, but being good with a shooting iron and being able to survive out here in the borderlands was altogether different.”
“Believe me, Sir,” Curtis said. “I understand that well. Hell,” he said. “If it weren’t for you, I would have died on my first trip out from the capital and you know that well.”
“That, I do,” Bardwell replied.
“They told me that you were a hard-ass, Sir,” Curtis said. “That you had broken more than a few young boys with a new five-pointed tin star on their chest. Why were you so patient with me?”
Bardwell smiled. “I guess that I saw a little of me in you back then maybe?”
“I mean,” Curtis continued. “What is there not to like about me? I’m a handsome young black man who—you have to admit—can cut a dashing way through most any crowd of outlaws out here in the middle of fucking who knows where.”
The senior lawman tossed a wood chip across the fire into the boy’s shoulder laughing. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe that’s it?”
“Was it James that schooled you in the ways of simple?” Curtis asked. “Because if it was, that man was fucking simple and I mean that in the kindest of ways.”
“Yes, Sir,” Bardwell said. “Old Bob James—rest his soul—was a simple man from a simpler time. He didn’t see any use in carrying that shit the authorities sent you boys out with. An old can to boil coffee, a wool blanket. He said that if things were simple enough, they couldn’t fail.”
“That’s pretty fair logic,” Curtis said. “You have to admit.”
“Oh,” Bardwell said, from his side of the small fire. He stopped long enough to bite off some tobacco before stuffing the rest down in his pocket. “I’m not arguing. It worked for Bob James and it’s worked for me for better than thirty years now, I reckon.”
“I would have liked to have met him, Sir,” Curtis said, in talking away the night. “I think that I would have liked him if you did.”
“He would have liked you, Son,” Bardwell said. “And I believe that you’d have taken right to him. He just had that way about him, you know? Hell, I’ve seen the man talk an outlaw into shackling his own irons and riding peacefully back into town without giving anyone trouble.”
“Bullshit,” Curtis said.
“Why do you say?” Bardwell asked.
“Because if the old man rubbed off on you even a little,” Curtis said. “You’d be able to do the same, Sir, and I ain’t ever known you to do anything but reach for your shooting irons and kill every man standing.” He paused. “And blow shit up,” Curtis continued. “Something always seems to blow up when you’re around?”
“Yeah,” Bardwell said. “You’re probably right, I do seem to reach for my Colts awfully quick and shit does seem to blow up when I ride in, but in my defense, I want you to know that quick action brings a quick end and lives are saved.”
“Is that
what you been telling Sacramento all these years?” Curtis asked.
“They can believe whatever they want to, Son,” Bardwell said. “But when they have their hands full they always call on me?”
Curtis nodded in thought. “They told us that you were probably the best lawman to ever ride out of Sacramento back when I was in school?”
“Don’t you go and believe that none,” Bardwell said, poking at the fire.
“After all these years we’ve been riding together,” Curtis said. “I think that I’d have to side with them fellows up there in the city?”
“Believe what you want to, Son,” Bardwell said. “I can’t change that none, but believe me when I say it. I’m not the best lawman that ever rode out of the city.”
“Was times that much different when you were a kid and just starting out,” Curtis asked. “Back when you and Bob James rode these dusty miles trailing some outlaw on the run?”
“They were and they weren’t,” Bardwell answered, spitting tobacco juice in the dwindling fire. “There have always been bad men in this world and there always will be, son. In time, I’ll stay a little closer to home and it will be up to you younger fellows to sort things out here in the badlands.”
“I just hope that you old guys have taught us well enough?” Curtis said.
“I believe that we have,” Bardwell said, removing the stop and taking a long pull from a bottle.
“So that’s it,” Curtis asked. “I believe that me and all the other old fuckers have taught you young punks all there is to know, now ride off and bring back some outlaw?”
“Watch it, Son,” Bardwell said, spitting into the fire again.
Curtis smiled. He knew how much there was in the rope before his superior would pull him in. “You know what I meant, Sir,” he said.
“I do,” Bardwell said. The Sacramento lawman had a lot on his mind and was only half in the conversation as Curtis continued to ramble.
The younger lawman had a lot on his mind as well. The two of them had been sent south to bring back one of the Red Owl Mining Company’s own, one Nathaniel Butterfield.
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