Brotherhood of Evil (3 page)

Chapter 5

The hotel had a dining room, but Ramon suggested that they eat supper at the Espantosa Café instead, claiming that the food was much better there. It was run by his cousin Tomas and Tomas's wife Maria. He offered to look after Dog if they wanted to leave the big cur there at the stable with the horses.

Smoke, Luke, Matt, and Preacher followed the old liveryman's advice and found that the food was indeed quite good, with a distinctive blend of chillies. The meal was pleasant enough that it almost made them forget about the bodies waiting for them at the livery stable.

Those bodies were wrapped tightly in canvas Smoke had gotten from the general store. The store had been closed for the night, but Ramon had volunteered to roust out the owner and get him to open up.

They were all glad it was going to be a cold night. That would help with the smell when they had to lash the corpses to the horses and take them half a day's ride to Taos.

The journey turned out to be uneventful. As they rode into the old town nestled at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos, the procession of horses with their grisly burdens drew a lot of attention. People followed them along the street.

When Luke asked, “Which way to the undertaker's?” half a dozen pointing fingers indicated the direction.

The local law intercepted them before they could get there. A stocky man with a squarish head strode out into the street and lifted a hand to stop them. A tin badge was pinned to his vest. He must have heard the commotion caused by the arrival of the strangers, living and dead.

“I'm Marshal Lopez,” he announced. “What the hell is all this?”

“We have some business for your local undertaker,” Luke explained.

“I can see that,” Lopez said with a frown as he looked along the line of dead men's mounts. “Who are they? For that matter, who are
you
, señor?”

Luke inclined his head toward the bodies. “That's Jack Shawcross and his gang. My name's Jensen and these are my brothers and an old friend of ours. Shawcross and his bunch jumped us in a little settlement west of here called Espantosa.”

The lawman's frown deepened. “I count nine of them and only four of you.”

Preacher drawled, “Yeah, the odds weren't hardly fair . . . for them.”

“Jensen, Jensen . . .” Lopez mused. “There's a gunfighter up Colorado way named Smoke Jensen. . . .”

“That would be me,” Smoke said. “I'm just a rancher now. My gunfighting days are behind me.”

Preacher let out a scornful grunt that showed how little credence he put in what Smoke had just said.

Luke went on. “Marshal, I'm sure you have wanted posters on all of these men in your office. If you'd like to come along with us to the undertaker's, you can take a look at them and identify them. That way you can confirm my claim when I put in for the rewards on all of them.”

“You're a bounty hunter,” Lopez said disdainfully. Evidently, like most star packers he considered bounty hunters little better than outlaws themselves.

“I've never denied it,” Luke said. “Now, would you like to come with us or not? These bodies need tending to.”

They were fortunate that even though the rain had stopped, the day was overcast and still on the chilly side, but there was only so much cool weather would help with the inevitable processes of nature.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Lopez said. “I'll be down at Claude's place in a few minutes.”

Luke nodded and heeled his horse into motion again. He was leading three horses, and his companions had two each. They rode slowly along the street until they reached the undertaking parlor, where they found a pudgy, round-faced man in a dark suit waiting for them.

“I heard that customers were on the way,” the man explained with a smile. “Take them on around to the back, gentlemen. My helpers are waiting to unload them.”

By the time Lopez arrived a few minutes later, the canvas-shrouded corpses were all laid out on boards in the yard behind the undertaking parlor. The marshal had a sheaf of badly printed reward dodgers in his hand. Clearly, he had gone back to his office and found all the paper he had on the Shawcross gang.

Luke, Smoke, Matt, and Preacher waited off to one side while the marshal checked each body, comparing them to the wanted posters.

When he straightened from that grim task, he turned to Luke and nodded. “All right, Jensen, I'll confirm that these men are who you say they are. You want me to wire the capital and see about getting your money?”

“That would be very helpful, Marshal,” Luke said. “I'm much obliged to you.”

Lopez looked at the other three. “Are you bounty hunters, too?”

“Nope, just giving Luke a hand,” Smoke replied.

“I still don't see how the four of you managed to gun down nine hardcases like this.”

“We're good at what we do,” Preacher said.

Chapter 6

In a cantina on the edge of town, Petey Tomlin had been sitting and staring gloomily into a glass of tequila when he heard a commotion outside. He was in such a blue mood that it took several moments for the sounds to penetrate his sullen reverie.

He had ridden in the rain from Espantosa to Taos the previous evening, arriving even more soaked than he had been. Two emotions had warred within him the entire way—fear that the Jensens would change their minds and come after him and self-loathing because he had turned yellow and run away when the shooting started, then descended even further into craven cowardice by surrendering when he could have gone down fighting like his partners in the gang.

The booze he'd consumed since stumbling into the cantina the night before hadn't helped his mental state. Eventually, he had passed out and slumped over the table. The proprietor had allowed him to stay right where he was until he woke up and started drinking again.

Whatever was going on outside had drawn several men to the entrance, where they opened the door and stood looking out. Tomlin heard one of them say something about corpses, and that perked up his interest enough to make him climb unsteadily to his feet. He stumbled over to the entrance and rasped, “What's goin' on out there?”

One of the cantina's curious customers looked over his shoulder and said, “Some hombres are leadin' in a bunch of horses with bodies draped over the saddles.”

“What?” Tomlin pushed into the doorway, then felt sobriety hit him like a bucket of cold water in the face. The sight of Luke, Smoke, and Matt Jensen, along with the old-timer called Preacher and that damned dog, drove the drunkenness right out of Tomlin. He took a quick step back, putting himself in the shadows inside the cantina again.

The Jensens hadn't warned him that they would kill him if they ever laid eyes on him again, but Tomlin didn't want to take a chance on that. They had reputations as tough, deadly, unforgiving enemies. He retreated to the table and his bottle and glass, shame burning in him at the knowledge those canvas-wrapped corpses were those of his former friends.

Maybe Shawcross should've left well enough alone and not gone after Luke Jensen, thought Tomlin, but what had happened still wasn't fair.

He knew that if he hadn't scurried back to the saloon from the livery stable to tell Shawcross what he'd seen, the rest of the gang might still be alive. That didn't actually make their deaths his fault, but he'd had a hand in the whole mess and he couldn't stop thinking about that.

What could he do, though, he asked himself as he tipped more tequila into the glass. How could he fix this? He was only one man.

A shadow fell over the table, and a man's voice said, “You look a mite upset, amigo. What's wrong?”

Tomlin looked up, saw two men standing there. Their stances were casually arrogant, thumbs hooked in their gun belts and hats pushed back. They had a strong enough resemblance between them for him to guess they were brothers. Just looking at them was enough to make him uneasy, because he sensed that they carried trouble with them.

“It's nothin',” he replied with a shake of his head.

“Didn't look like nothing,” one of the men said. He drew out an empty chair at the table, reversed it, and straddled it. The other man did likewise as the first one went on. “You saw somebody you know out there, and you're not happy about it. Nate and me, we saw those fellas ride by with those dead bodies. Friends of yours?”

“Hell, no,” Tomlin said. “They're no friends of mine.”

“What about the dead men?” the one called Nate asked. “Maybe
they
were your pards.”

The first man nudged the bottle, which had only about an inch of liquor left in it. “Let me get you another bottle of tequila, and you can tell us all about it.”

Tomlin thought about it then licked his lips. “Yeah, sure. Why the hell not?”

 

 

It had been a mistake telling the Riordan brothers what had happened in Espantosa, Petey Tomlin thought later that day as an early dusk was settling over Espantosa. At first, he hadn't seen what it would hurt. Nate and Chuck had been so friendly, grinning and plying him with tequila and assuring him that none of the bloody violence had been his fault.

He hadn't realized at the time that all they were really interested in was making names for themselves as gunmen.

Standing in the gathering shadows just inside the mouth of an alley, nervously clutching a shotgun while he waited for his quarry to come along, he gave thought to what had happened.

 

 

 

 

He shook his head to get rid of the memory and his uncertainty. Maybe Nate and Chuck were right.

Anyway, it was how Tomlin came to find himself standing in the gathering shadows just inside the mouth of an alley, nervously clutching the shotgun, too late to back out. He had followed the Jensens as they left the hotel, walked a couple blocks to a restaurant for supper, and were on their way back to the hotel. He had thought they might go to one of Taos's saloons and have a drink after they'd eaten, but that didn't appear to be their plan.

 

 

As they walked out of the restaurant, Luke took a thin black cheroot from his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. He didn't set fire to the gasper, just left it there unlit. He was pleasantly full from the meal they had just enjoyed, and while the weather was a little raw, at least it wasn't raining anymore.

Despite that good feeling, he hadn't changed his mind about his future plans, and he figured it was as good a time as any to broach the subject. “I guess you boys will be starting north for Colorado tomorrow.”

“We don't mind waiting here until your money comes in, Luke. That shouldn't take more than a few days.” Smoke paused, then added, “But that's not what you were talking about, is it?”

Luke chuckled around the cheroot. “Nobody could ever put anything over on you, Kirby, even when you were a kid.” He was the only one who used Smoke's given name, and then only when something put him in mind of their childhood back in Missouri.

“What are you getting at, Luke?” Matt asked. “Aren't you coming back to the Sugarloaf with us?”

Luke shook his head. “No, I don't think I am. I believe once my money has come in, I'll head on over into Texas.”

“And do what?” Smoke asked. “Look for more outlaws you can bring in dead or alive?”

“That's what I do,” Luke replied, his voice a little sharp.

 

 

Tomlin saw the four of them a block away, walking at a deliberate pace and talking among themselves as they passed in and out of blocks of light coming from the windows of the buildings they passed.

He used his thumb to cock both of the scattergun's hammers. The Riordan brothers had told him he didn't really have to shoot. They would take care of that, they claimed.

But he wasn't going to let them do everything, he vowed. He wasn't going to threaten the Jensens and spew a lot of bravado. No, he was just going to throw down on them and feed them a double load of buckshot. Maybe if he did that, he could forget about everything that had happened back in Espantosa. . . .

He swallowed hard, glanced across the street to where Chuck and Nate were hidden behind a parked wagon, and tightened his grip on the shotgun. The Jensens were close enough he could hear them talking. He took a deep breath and steeled himself to step out and start the ball.

 

 

“Are you sure you're in good enough shape to be hunting up outlaws?” Smoke asked.

“I'm fine,” Luke insisted. “I'll be back up to my fighting weight before you know it.”

“Sally won't be too happy if you don't come back with us,” Smoke warned him. “She knew we were going off to give you a helping hand, and when I wired her after that whole business was over that you were all right, she replied that I should bring you home with me. She said she'd fatten you up in no time.”

Preacher added, “And Miss Sally's bear sign 'll sure do it, too.”

“My mouth's watering just thinking about it,” Matt put in.

Luke said, “I appreciate all that, but I still think it's time for me to go my own way again. No offense, but I'm used to being by myself—”

He didn't have a chance to say any more. At that moment, a figure scuttled out of the alley mouth ahead of them and swung the menacing twin barrels of a Greener in their direction.