Cotton's Law (9781101553848) (13 page)

Then, he didn’t like what he was hearing in the constant bleary-­eyed blathering of Plink Granville, nor his inability to crawl out of the bottle of whiskey he carried with him everywhere he went. Plink was a loose cannon, and Sleeve knew that if the kid went off half-­cocked, Sleeve would end up bearing the brunt of Havens’s fury. It was beginning to look like he’d made a mistake in his choice of enlisting the brother of the man Cotton had shot in self-­defense. If Bart figured Plink for a liability, he could make Sleeve’s life a living hell. It had happened before.

As he rode, he thought about all the ways he might insulate himself from any possible misstep along the way to Havens’s plan to disembowel the town of Apache Springs. And while he knew a little about Bart’s hatred of Cotton Burke, he didn’t completely understand the full scope of such hatred. It was much more than that, even, almost as if the devil himself was inside Havens, directing his every move. What Sleeve did understand, however, was the tenuous nature of his own relationship with his employer, and the consequences of any perceived failure. He wasn’t in it just for the pleasure of killing the sheriff; he was in it for whatever money he could take away from Havens, thus ensuring his future, a future free of work and worry.

Although there had earlier been a half moon, clouds now began to obscure the trail, and the calm darkness surrounded him like a blanket. The trail was anything but a clear-­cut, easy-­to-­follow set of wagon tracks, more like a deer path often edging too close to steep drop-­offs. He could envision his horse stepping off the edge and dropping him hundreds of feet into a rocky chasm and a certain death. So, since there had been no specific day assigned for him to make his report, Sleeve decided to set up camp for the night in a copse of cottonwoods nestled along a stream. He’d no sooner gathered an armful of dead and broken limbs, gotten a small fire started to brew some coffee, into which he’d pour a significant amount of whiskey to settle his nerves, than he heard a sound of something crashing through the underbrush. He dropped his hand to his gun
butt and backed against a boulder to await whatever was sure to emerge.

Suddenly, from the shadows stepped a man the size of a mountain, wearing a dark cotton shirt and a bandolier across his chest, filled with twelve-­gauge shotgun shells. He carried the short-­barreled instrument of death those shells were meant to feed, and it was aimed directly at Sleeve. A bushy beard covered the man’s face like a tangle of creeping vines. Sleeve moved his hand away from his gun so as not to spook the intruder. He knew better than to try drawing against a shotgun aimed at his gut.

“Howdy, stranger,” the man said with a big grin and a gravelly voice. “Got any grub in that bag hanging from your saddle?”

“Some.”

“Then I believe I’d like to share a meal with you.”

“I don’t recall any invitation.”

“This here’s all the invitation I need. What’s on the menu?” The man waved the shotgun in Sleeve’s face. The look in his eyes didn’t suggest ambivalence.

Sleeve was torn between the strong desire to try pulling his revolver before the man could pull the trigger, and acquiescing to his demands. When the man cocked both hammers, Sleeve made his decision, one in favor of his continued good health. At least for the time being.

“Look for yourself. I ain’t runnin’ no restaurant.”

The man lowered the shotgun and strolled over to the burlap bag Sleeve had tied to his saddle horn. Before he left town, knowing the trip to Las Vegas would take at least two days, he’d stocked up on some coffee, beans, and a couple cans each of tomatoes and peaches. As the man lifted the bag from the saddle, he carefully kept the scattergun aimed back at Sleeve. He brought his purloined find over to the fire. He dropped it on the ground, whereupon one of the cans rolled out. His eyes were instantly diverted from Sleeve to the can’s label, one which proclaimed it to be filled with peaches in syrup.

Sleeve saw his opportunity and started to draw his six-­shooter,
but the man was not to be denied his meal. He spun around, discharging one barrel into the ground a foot from Sleeve’s left boot.

“Next one’ll be mid-­chest. Now, hand me that knife and we’ll get to openin’ this can full of heaven. Peaches is my favorite, you know.”

Sleeve let out a low growl as he let his revolver slip back into the holster. He slipped his knife from its sheath and handed it to the man, handle first. “Anything else, Your Majesty?”

“You can unbuckle your gun belt with your left hand and let it drop on the ground, too. That’s just so’s we can get to know one another without bullets flyin’ every which way,” the man said. “And, you ain’t told me your name. Folks eatin’ together ought to get acquainted.”

“Sleeve Jackson.”

“Ahh, the gunslinger. Got yourself quite a reputation over Texas way. What’cha doin’ in New Mexico?”

“It ain’t none of your business.”

“A might touchy, ain’t ya? But then, I reckon I’m forgettin’ my manners, too. Folks just call me J.J.”

Sleeve’s eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped. “Y-­you ain’t J.J. Bleeker, are you?”

“Uh-­huh. You heard of me?”

“Who hasn’t heard of J.J. Bleeker, the man killer? What are you doin’ out thisaway?”

“Well, I got myself in a bit of trouble in Louisiana, and a posse and a troop of cavalry convinced me that the best way to keep my skin intact was to skedaddle.”

“I hear tell you’ve killed a dozen men. That right?”

“More or less. Course that don’t count soldiers. Or Injuns.”

“What are you up to now?”

“Beggin’ food off’n strangers in the woods, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Sleeve’s eyes lit up and his mind began racing. Sitting right in front of him might just be a chance to get off the hook for choosing Plink Granville. He didn’t know J.J.
Bleeker, but he’d sure heard about him, and none of it flatterin’. The man was a stone cold killer. Not a man to trifle with. Sleeve knew he had to choose his next words carefully, but it seemed at the moment that fate had finally dealt him a winning hand.

“Hmm. How’d you like to make some
real
money doin’ what you do best? You see I’ve got a sweet little deal brewin’ over in Apache Springs. I think you might just fit in fine. It’s a simple job of pullin’ those triggers at the right time. There’s a thousand dollars up front if you agree to the proposition.”

J.J. squinted with suspicion as he said, “And what do I have to do for this money?”

“Just kill a sheriff.”

J.J. burst out laughing.

“What’s funny? This particular sheriff ain’t goin’ to be all that easy to kill.”

“And what sheriff might that be?”

“Sheriff Cotton Burke.”

“Never heard of ’im.”

“Even better. He won’t know who you are, either, especially when you stroll down the street, pretty as you please, and blow him to kingdom come with that cannon. Oh, and did I mention that if you are the one who gets Burke first, there’s another two thousand in it for you?”

“Gets him
first
? Is there to be others gunnin’ for this hombre besides me?”

“Uh, a couple. Includin’ me, of course.”

“If you got all those others backin’ you up, what the hell do you need me for?”

“Insurance.”

When J.J. Bleeker agreed to the proposal, Sleeve’s desire heretofore to continue on to meet Bart Havens evaporated. Bringing his boss up-­to-­date on the bank’s construction progress could wait a couple more days. He and Bleeker could just ride back to Apache Springs together and join the others in anticipation of Havens’s arrival. Sleeve was almost joyous as he thought about
shedding himself of the unreliable and drunken Plink Granville.

“How far is this Apache Springs?” Bleeker asked.

“We’ll be there by sunup. Town sits in the middle of a wide valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Lots of ranches up in the higher elevations where the grazing is good and there’s plenty of water. Town itself ain’t much to look at, but it can boast of havin’ all the things a man needs to survive: whiskey and women.” Sleeve laughed at his own attempt at humor.

“The whiskey appeals, but most women don’t take to me. Don’t know why,” J.J. said, quite innocently.

Sleeve knew exactly why, since he’d found it necessary to ride upwind of the giant ever since breaking camp, but he damned well wasn’t fool enough to put it into words. Bleeker was clearly a man to be handled with kid gloves, and Sleeve Jackson was no man’s fool.

F
or two weeks Apache Springs had been as quiet as a prayer meeting. None of the gunslingers hanging around the town had shown even the slightest inclination to cause trouble. Except for one, that is—­the kid with a nasty habit of half-­pulling his six-­shooter from its holster, then letting it drop back almost as if to show how limber his shooting hand was. Of course, Cotton also noticed how much whiskey the kid consumed. He figured the kid’s capacity to maintain some semblance of civility toward others in the saloon night after night suggested he was in control of his personal demons, but he doubted it. Thus, he kept a watchful eye on the kid at every opportunity. He’d seen this type before: an aimless kid with nothing but an eager gun hand and a short fuse. If he expected
any
of the gunslingers hanging around Apache Springs to do something stupid, he figured this kid to be the one, even though Cotton had yet to learn his name.

Keeping watch over the influx of gunslingers the past weeks had brought him to two conclusions, but neither of
them was worthy of hopeful thinking. First, evidence was growing that Bart Havens would soon be arriving, to the detriment of all around him, and, second, Cotton still didn’t know the names of any of the potential threats he’d observed loitering about. It was for the latter reason that he sauntered into the saloon seeking whatever information he could glean from anyone drunk enough to blurt out anything they might know about the crooked banker and his deadly followers. As he entered, he saw Melody at the top of the new stairway leading to the cribs on the second floor, gazing down on the activity below like a queen surveying her subjects. She turned away when he looked up at her.

When Cotton walked up to the bar, he was greeted by the bartender, a man with almost no hair and a nose that appeared to have been broken several times. “What’ll it be, Sheriff?”

“Draw me a beer, Arlo.”

The sheriff looked over the evening’s crop of drunks, cardplayers, and whoremongers. He had to admit Melody had spruced the place up nicely, and the crowd seemed appreciative. The woman did know how to please a man while at the same time making money, and lots of it. But with her fractious temper, he failed to see what Jack saw in her, other than a superb body, which Cotton, too, had enjoyed on occasion several years back. When his beer came, he asked Arlo if he had any idea who the youngster was sleeping off a drunk at a table in a far corner.

“Nasty fellow, that one. Says he’s Plink Granville, as if anyone here ever heard of him. Fancies himself a shootist, I’ll wager. Personally, I don’t see how he could hit the floor with a rock as drunk as he is all the time . . . dawn to dusk.”

The name “Granville” hit Cotton like a sucker punch. His theory that Havens was behind the sudden influx of gunslingers in town, here to do his dirty work, had just been confirmed. And his blood was beginning to boil. He drank his beer in two big gulps and stormed out the bat­wing doors, heading for the jail and a talk with his deputy.

Bart Havens had been confidently anticipating his arrival in Apache Springs. All of his hired assassins were already there, just in case Cotton Burke saw him get off the stage and decided to run him out of town immediately. He’d have plenty of protection. The coach rolled to a stop in front of the hotel. The driver called out that they’d reached their destination and everyone could climb out. He emphasized that he was a driver, not a doorman.

Havens saw Sleeve Jackson sitting in the shade of the porch overhang at the hotel, leaning back in a rocker. When Sleeve gave him a subtle nod, he figured it was safe to disembark the Butterfield coach. He stepped down, brushed his long black coat of its accumulated dust, and turned to ask the driver to send his luggage to the hotel. He had already arranged to have the best room available, the one that looked down on everything that happened along the main street.