Hot Lead, Cold Justice

by Mickey Spillane

  The sound became less abstract, revealing itself as a buckboard approaching from behind them, the wheels and reins making a slow but distinctive rhythm.

  The four outlaws turned and stood and watched the buckboard emerge from the swirling white, like a mirage on wheels. A man in a wool-lined sheepskin coat, his hat tied under his chin just as Burnham and his boys had theirs, was driving two horses that looked fresh, considering the circumstances, gray Vs of steam curling from their nostrils. The beasts even had some whinnying left in them.

  Next to the driver sat a boy of perhaps twelve, similarly attired. Neither had their faces covered, their cheeks bright red.

  The driver slowed the horses to a halt, then called, “Hop in back, you men!” He was husky and in his thirties. “My son and I saw your dead animals back there! Damn shame.”

  “We were headed for Trinidad,” Burnham said.

  “You’re almost there. Five mile or so. My name is Horton, John Horton. I have a small ranch near here. We’re heading into town to get supplies while we still can. This blizzard is going to last a while. Ever see anything its like?”

  “Can’t say I have,” Burnham said.

  The rancher gestured behind him. “Got an empty wagon here. You boys climb in now. We’ll get you somewhere safe and warm.... You need help with that one feller?”

  Sivley was only barely conscious, and stopping like this had only made it worse. Warlow was steadying the weaving man by an arm.

  “No, thanks,” Burnham said. “We can manage.”

  “Well, we’re glad to help,” the rancher said, and Burnham shot him in the face.

  Scarlet blossomed in the white, then wilted to nothing. Next to the man, the boy’s eyes grew big and the lad sat there frozen, not with cold but with fear and surprise as his father slumped over, almost falling from the buckboard. A rifle between the dead father and the boy just leaned there, doing nobody any good. The son didn’t even think to reach for it when Warlow shot him, twice, both times in the head. Scarlet again blossomed briefly.

  Father and son were awkwardly hugging now, doing a decent job of it, considering they were dead men.

  Burnham said to Warlow, “You and Jake get them down from there. Drag ’em away from the road a mite. I’ll get Ned in back.”

  The outlaw leader helped his frail follower up and into the buckboard, empty of anything but a tarpaulin, with which Burnham covered him. Killing the lunger would have been possible, and profitable, but the raider was enough of a military man not to leave the wounded behind. He had certain principles.

  Fender rode in back with Sivley, who was unconscious, and covered himself some with the tarp, too. All the saddlebags of money were stowed back there, as well. Pity to lose the saddles.

  Warlow took the reins and Burnham helped himself to the rifle.

  In half an hour they were in Trinidad.

  * * *

  By nightfall, Bliss Maxwell was fairly certain that Lucas Burnham and his little gang would not show.

  The pleasant-featured merchant, with his prematurely gray hair, was seated on a sofa in the sitting room of his quarters above the Maxwell Boots, Saddle, and Harness Depot. He wore his suit, though not his tie, staying warmly clad as even with his coal stove doing its considerable best, the cold outside was finding cracks through which to squeeze.

  A kitchen (with that stove) was adjacent through a wide archway; a short hallway led to a pair of bedrooms. The apartment boasted comfortable chairs, a settee, several framed landscapes in oil, and a reading lamp on a table by the sofa, the lamp affixed by a tube to the gas chandelier (he was in the middle of Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace, former governor of New Mexico Territory). The pink-and-light-blue floral wallpaper provided a cozy gentility that took some of the edge off the hoarse cry of the storm rattling the windows at his back.

  The apartment’s furnishings—dark wood with cushions, its carpet a large Oriental—were all reflective of the status Bliss Maxwell had achieved in Santa Fe, before competition forced him to sell his general store. The fine things around him were a reminder of what he’d had in the past, and an inspiration for what he intended to have in the future.

  He was dating the local preacher’s pretty daughter and hoped a real dwelling, not just an apartment, would soon house his things and her.

  With so many good possibilities in the offing, Maxwell had been reluctant to be party to the scheme his old gang leader, Luke Burnham, had proposed in the cantina two days before. He had no moral objections to the Las Vegas bank robbery, and would not have been surprised to learn two men had been murdered in its commission. Nor would the father-and-son Samaritans killed on the snow-choked road to Trinidad have come as a shock.

  How could he have been surprised or shocked, having ridden with “Burn ’Em” Burnham for two years?

  But Maxwell would have preferred not to risk his new identity and his respectable reputation on some reckless criminal enterprise.

  No—that wasn’t a fair way to put it—Burnham was a careful planner, nothing reckless about his crooked ways. The problem was the outlaw’s ruthless disregard for the lives of others. That kind of thing could bring down the law on them.

  Of course, Maxwell should be safe enough. He had, after all, played no role in the robbery. He had merely collected provisions, as instructed by Burnham, to prepare for the four outlaws to hole up in this apartment until the storm blew over and the heat from the law died down. He was troubled that Burnham had expressed a desire for taking revenge upon Caleb York while in Trinidad.

  But what did that have to do with Bliss Maxwell?

  And if any of this came to light, he could claim to have been a hostage, not an accomplice.

  Still, as the day turned into night, Maxwell assumed the enormity, the severity of this freak storm had swallowed up the Burnham gang. Either they’d encountered conditions in Las Vegas that made carrying out their plan impossible or at least unwise, or they had gone through with it and ridden for Trinidad despite the hazard.

  And, in this case, they had run into a hellish blizzard that had likely frozen them dead somewhere between here and Las Vegas.

  He laughed humorlessly. What kind of horses on God’s earth could have endured what Burnham would have put them through? An all-night ride to Las Vegas in snowfall that threatened to become a storm? And then an all-day ride back to Trinidad in the midst of the deadly threat that storm had carried out?

  Absurd.

  If they’d been dumb enough to do that,“Burn ’Em” Burnham had finally bitten off more than he, and his little crew, could chew.

  And frankly Bliss Maxwell would shed no tears over that. Yes, he could have used his share of a hundred-thousand-dollar take. Who couldn’t? But he still felt confident that when the railroad spur came in, the market for the saddles that his man Juan Salazar made, and the harnesses he himself skillfully fashioned, would make him one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants in town.

  In the Territory!

  Right now, however, demand for his wares was modest. Many in Trinidad couldn’t afford a horse—a work animal cost a hundred fifty, and you had to add another fifty dollars for a decent saddle horse. Saddles themselves cost thirty dollars for a functional model, and sixty or more for the fancy hand-tooled ones.

  But as Trinidad grew, and became a railhead with swells stopping for a while, spending big, and cowboys passing through, wages burning a hole? Why, those saddles would almost ride out of his shop on their own. And the harnesses would shake themselves on the way out the door.

  Still, his savings from the sale of his general store were wearing thin. So the Las Vegas bank haul would have been a blessing, no question. Trouble was, having Luke Burnham in your life, even temporarily, was a risky proposition.

  Nonetheless, Bliss Maxwell had done what his old outlaw leader had asked of him. For one thing, he’d gotten his saddle maker out of the way, telling the little Mexican to take some time out to visit family and friends in Chihuahua. “After this weather,
” Maxwell had told Juan yesterday, “we won’t sell a single saddle for a month.”

  Juan was about forty but retained a boyish look and attitude. “You are right, Señor Maxwell. But I can add to our supply. It take time to make the fine saddle. You will have more to sell when things get better.”

  “No, Juan,” he’d said, putting a fatherly hand on the small man’s shoulder. “You have worked very hard, and for little pay. You deserve a vacation.”

  Finally Juan nodded, then said with a grin, “When the train comes to Trinidad, it will pay us both well, Señor Maxwell.”

  “I know, I know. But this snow will have to melt first, and the mud it leaves behind dry out, before work on the spur can continue.”

  So Maxwell had insisted, and Juan—smiling and grateful—had gone off, borrowing the boss’s own horse.

  And much of today had been spent with the merchant making room in the workshop behind the building, which was somewhere between a big shed and a small barn, for the horses the Burnham boys would ride here.

  Would have ridden here.

  No real harm had been done. He had bought several bales of hay from Lem Hansen, supposedly for his own horse, whose stall in the workshop was empty with Juan off riding the animal, though of course Lem knew nothing of that. So there would be hay on hand when Juan returned. What did that hurt? Having flour and jerky on hand wasn’t a bad thing, either.

  Maxwell returned to Ben-Hur, where the hero had just rescued his Roman captor from the sinking ship on which Judah had been a slave. Exciting reading. He had almost forgotten his own adventures and woes when a knock came at his door, off the kitchen; an exterior staircase with landing was alongside the building.

  “Yes?” he said to the door. “Who is it?”

  Burnham’s voice growled: “Who the hell do you think? Open this damn thing, fool!”

  Hell! They’d made it!

  Maxwell did as he was told. Covered in icy white, the four who stumbled in might have been ghosts, bedraggled ghosts at that. Burnham came in first, followed by Jake Warlow. Moody Fender dragged a barely conscious Ned Sivley in. They shed their dusters and unwrapped their heads from the ice-crusted mufflers that had secured their hats, all of the apparel unceremoniously dumped on the possum-belly table, along with saddlebags from each man.

  Without a word, Burnham dragged chairs over from the table and set them around and facing the cast-iron coal-burning stove as if it were a campfire. In a way it was, but this campfire had several cooking and warming ovens, and a coffeepot going. The kitchen was small but modern, with a soapstone sink, copper hot-water tank, and black-tin security safe to keep foods from pests.

  Warlow, Fender, and Sivley settled into chairs, but Burnham took Maxwell by the arm and walked him the few steps into the sitting room.

  Whispering harshly, the outlaw leader said, “What’s the sleeping setup?”

  Maxwell gestured vaguely. “Two bedrooms. Accommodate two to a bed. Sofa out here—I can take that. There’s a room off the shop where the Mexican sleeps, if you want privacy. I got rid of him like you said.”

  Burnham, who seemed muzzy, said, “I didn’t tell you to kill him!”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Maxwell said, rearing back. “Good God, man. I sent him out of town. To spend time with his relatives south, where it isn’t snowing like a bastard.”

  Burnham gathered himself, then put a hand on the merchant’s shoulder. “You get your coat on and go out and deal with the horses. All we have is two, but they’re in good shape. Hitched up to a buckboard. Left ’em by that little barn in back. You got room in there?”

  Maxwell nodded. “That’s our workshop. I cleared it some, made room. There are two stalls, enough for those horses. Not room enough for the buckboard, though.”

  Burnham sighed. “Well, get those horses inside before they freeze, too. We had four Trotters drop under us.”

  “I admit I’m surprised you made it under these circumstances.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Burnham said.

  Both men knew that wasn’t true, unless you counted the towns the raider had burned to the ground.

  Maxwell bundled himself up in his frock coat and gloves, tied his derby on with a muffler, and went down to deal with the horses. Getting them unhitched and taken into the workshop, one at a time, through its rear double doors and into its stalls, was a job as tedious as it was damn cold. Took him a good forty minutes.

  When he returned, the outlaws had helped themselves to cups of coffee, which they had laced with rye whiskey from expensive bottles that their host had laid in, buying them from the Victory in expectation of their arrival. All but Burnham were still seated before the stove. The leader was in the nearby sitting room, on the sofa at the reading table with Ben-Hur pushed onto the floor. Stacks of money were before the outlaw, cash and coin, and at first it made Maxwell smile.

  Then it didn’t.

  Slowly, the merchant settled beside the outlaw leader, who was counting the money on the reading table before him, frowning.

  Maxwell asked, “How much is that?”

  “Just over twenty thousand.”

  “So . . . that’s my share, right?”

  Burnham shook his head. “Wrong.”

  “You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that five into one hundred thousand is twenty thousand.”

  Burnham’s head swiveled toward Maxwell, his glowering gaze—half of which was that milky eye in its scarred setting—an unsettling thing. “And five into twenty thousand is four grand.”

  Maxwell frowned in confusion. “You’re saying . . . that’s the whole haul?”

  “This is the whole haul.”

  The merchant felt red rise up from his neck. “What the hell happened to that bank always keeping one hundred thousand in its safe? You had it on good authority, remember?”

  The head swiveled back, and the outlaw resumed to recounting the money. “Seems I was misinformed. Some folks just like to exaggerate, I guess.”

  Maxwell kept his voice down as he said harshly, “So I’m putting my reputation, my damn life, on the line, having your rabble as house guests for God knows how long . . . for a lousy four thousand bucks?”

  Burnham stopped counting. He folded his hands. Turned his head toward Maxwell and the milky eye seemed to stare harder than the working one. “Four thousand is a small fortune. Not so small, really. You rode with me, Silas.”

  Silas was Maxwell’s real first name.

  The raider went on: “You know the risks this life entails.”

  Maxwell said nothing. His insides boiled with rage, but he feared this man, and only quietly said, “How long do you intend to stay?”

  Burnham shrugged. “Till the storm lets up, likely. Thing like this could stop in two seconds, or two days. Or, hell—two weeks.”

  Maxwell closed his eyes and kept them closed for a while, as if maybe all of this would go away when he opened them. But when he did, it didn’t.

  “I laid in provisions,” Maxwell said quietly. “And I have indoor plumbing. So you can wait this out, if your boys don’t get cabin fever on me.”

  “They could get a mite restless.” The outlaw leader grinned. “But I have an idea. Had plenty of time to think on that lazy ride we took to Trinidad, y’know.”

  Already Maxwell didn’t like the sound of this. “What idea, Luke?”

  Burnham nodded toward the windows behind them. “This town is pretty well slowed to a halt, I’d say. You agree, Silas?”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “Fine. Fine. But rolling into town, seems like Main Street’s one big damn drift, the whole place snowed in and snowed under, and honest folks are just as holed up as we reprobates are.”

  “That’s right. This town is as frozen over as the Purgatory River.”

  Burnham pushed the money-piled reading table away and turned to Maxwell with a smile, sitting sideways on the couch. Folded his arms. Looked at him with two eyes, only one of which saw. “Tell me abou
t the bank.”

  “Tell you about . . . what about the bank?”

  “Any idea—as a man not prone to exaggeration—what the cash on hand might be?”

  “Well . . . probably at least ten thousand, maybe as much as twenty. Could be more, I suppose. You’re not thinking . . .”

  “Let’s call it twenty. Which is better? Five shares of twenty, or five shares of forty? I’m no mathematician either, but that’s eight thousand, when it’s forty grand you’re dibbyin’. That really is a fortune. Not small at all. A man could live in Mexico a long, happy time on eight thousand American dollars. And a merchant tryin’ to weather tough times till things turn in his favor, that’s a lot of cushion to lean back on.”

  “No.”

  “No, it isn’t? Or was my cipherin’ off-kilter?”

  “Of course it wasn’t, but I live here. I won’t have you robbing the bank in my own town and then hiding out with me.”

  Burnham shrugged, gestured around them. “We’re already doing that. And four people are dead, ol’ partner, on the bank robbery that you are already in on. The Las Vegas one?”

  Maxwell didn’t even bother to ask how the gang had managed to kill four people. Instead he said, “The money will be in the safe, and the bank won’t be open for business. Do you have the wherewithal to blow that safe? No. We’ll just have to settle for our small fortunes.”

  “Where does the bank president live?”

  “Here in Trinidad, of course.”

  “Where in Trinidad?”

  “I’m against this.”

  Burnham smiled. Somehow that milky eye seemed even worse hovering over a smile. A smile like that, anyway. “Silas, do you recall that upstanding gent in Lawrence who refused to tell us where to find that Jayhawker leader? And do you recall just how I went about convincin’ him to share that information with me?”

  “Name is Peter Godfrey. He lives on the third floor of the bank building.” Maxwell shook his head. “Luke. Be reasonable. You had a hell of a day, I’m sure. You need rest so you can think straight. We should explore this idea in the morning.”

  “Are you saying I’m not thinking straight, old friend?”