Last Lawman (9781101611456) (9 page)

“Leave me,” Erin said, her voice sounding like someone else’s.

“Uh-uh,” the outlaw leader grunted as he wrapped his hand around her arm.

Before she could stand and fight him, he’d jerked her away from the loading dock. She tried to hold on to Jim, but when Stanhope drew her closer to his horse, she dropped the child in the dirt.

She became hysterical. She swung around and pounded her fists against the outlaw’s knees and thighs, though most of her punches landed on the stirrup fender or on the grulla’s whither or on the barrel of the shotgun that had killed Jim. Despite her screams and her fighting, she felt her right arm being pulled out of its socket until she found herself lying belly down across Stanhope’s saddle.

Then the horse was galloping up the street. Each lunge was like a punch to her belly, the saddlebows digging into her middle while the horn raked her left hip raw.

The ground pocked with hoofprints swept past her. She could see her hair hanging toward it, the ends barely brushing the finely churned dirt and bits of straw. She passed a body lying dead in the street. Idly, staring beyond the grulla’s lunging legs, she recognized the banker, Earl Thornberg, a hole in his forehead, his open eyes glassy.

Then the town slid back behind her and she was carried off into the country to the west, screaming,
“Jimmy!”

Feeling old and grumpy, Spurr walked out of the Laramie House Hotel, drawing the door closed behind him and setting his battered tan hat on his head. The five riders who Abilene had spied from the dining room window sat their horses around Spurr’s big roan, who stood tied to the hitchrack, thrashing his thick tail in guarded greeting.

One of the newcomer’s horses was kind enough to pluck a bug of some kind from Cochise’s hindquarters, just behind Spurr’s blanket roll. Spurr did not recognize the man astraddle the thoughtful steeldust. He recognized only three of the five: Sheriff Dusty Mason of Willow City and two longtime Wyoming territorial marshals, Bill Stockton and Ed Gentry. The latter two were only a few years Spurr’s junior, warty oldsters in their own right.

They were all looking at Spurr, though it was Mason himself who said, “I’d recognize this old cayuse of yours anywhere, but I couldn’t believe he was standing here and not over
there.
What happened—you get kicked out of the Bighorn?”

“Hell, no,” Spurr said, walking down the porch steps. “I had me a civilized piece of cobbler and a cup of coffee.” He didn’t mention Abilene. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t.

Mason scrutinized him from the saddle of his buckskin. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up drinkin’. Can you track sober?”

“I can track standin’ on my head.”

Mason gave a quick glance to the others. “Ed and Bill here tell me they’ve ridden a few trails with you before.

“Hidy, Bill,” Spurr said, nodding. “Ed, you old ramshagger.”

“Spurr, ya plug-ugly peckerwood. Figured some jealous jake would’ve gut-shot you by now.”

Mason said, “These two’s Web Mitchell and Calico Strang. Wells Fargo detectives. Boys, this is Spurr Morgan.”

“You don’t say,” said one of the Pinkertons, Calico Strang. Despite being clean-shaven, he had a greasy look that Spurr didn’t like, though he was properly attired in a wool vest, white silk shirt, and bowler hat. He might have been thirty, but his eyes were young and brash. He had buckteeth. Long copper hair dangled from his crisp, brown bowler. “I beg your pardon, Marshal, but I thought you were dead!”

He looked at his partner, the taller and mustachioed and also properly attired Web Mitchell. Mitchell, appearing older, maybe thirty, smiled but not as brashly as his young partner.

Spurr had grabbed Cochise’s reins off the hitchrack, and now he narrowed an eye up at the two Pinkertons. Before he could grumble a proper reply to the younger man’s greasy hoorawing, Mason said, “Strang, do me a favor. Do us all a favor, and shut your fuckin’ trapdoor before I drive the butt of my hogleg through it. You men are here only as my personal favor to the Pinkerton agency. No one said you could track or even shoot, and I’m still not convinced you can ride. So don’t push me.”

The sheriff, all business as usual, looked at Spurr. “You ready for a hard pull?”

Spurr swung into the leather and turned Cochise away from the hitchrack. “What do you think I came out here for—pie and coffee?” He was surprised—no, stunned—at Mason’s having stuck up for him. Not that he needed the sheriff’s help with these two Pinkerton tinhorns. He could have pistol-whipped the pair till their brains dribbled out their ears. It just wasn’t like Mason to come to the aid of a man whom Mason saw as old and washed up.

At least, that’s how Spurr had figured the younger sheriff regarded him after their testy, often outright argumentative partnership during their long ride to the Mexican border a year ago. Mason, who Spurr saw as an unproven lawman often blinded by his distrust of federals and too pigheaded to take direction from a far more experienced badge toter, had fared little better in Spurr’s eyes.

The Pinkertons were flushed, their eyes indignant.

Spurr looked all the men over. “Your horses need a rest, water?”

“We gave ’em a blow and water at the Mud Creek Stage Station,” said Ed Gentry. “But me—I could use a bottle.” He was eyeing the saloon yonder with interest.

“No time for that,” Mason said.

Gentry, a skinny oldster about ten years Mason’s senior and Spurr’s junior, a good lawman from what Spurr remembered, spat a thick wad of chew onto a fresh horse apple. “Maybe no time to sit and play cards, but I’ll be damned if I’m ridin’ dry. Spurr, your holds got slosh?”

“I ain’t no juniper, Ed.” Spurr reached back to pat one of his saddlebag pouches, then offered the man a brotherly smile.

“You boys go on ahead,” Gentry said. “I’ll be along shortly.”

As the territorial marshal trotted his claybank off toward the saloon, Mason cursed, then tipped his cream Stetson
down low over his high forehead as he swung his buckskin out into the street and touched its flanks with his spurs. Spurr pulled Cochise up beside the sheriff’s mount. Stockton rode to Mason’s other side, rolling chew behind his lower lip. The two Pinkertons, looking ornery after Mason’s verbal assault, fell in behind.

As they rode past the saloon before which old Ed Gentry was just now dismounting, Spurr scrutinized the young sheriff riding on his left. Mason looked even more grim and serious than Spurr remembered. Spurr figured the man had a right. The worst that could happen to any lawman had happened to Mason. His jail and his town had been sacked. His prisoner, a notorious killer, had been freed by his equally notorious gang. They’d killed several innocent bystanders and kidnapped another.

Those were all the details that Chief Marshal Brackett had shared with Spurr. They were all he’d needed to know on the front end of the assignment. He knew the Vultures’ reputation, had even tracked them, in vain, twice before. He figured Mason would eventually fill him in on the rest of their most recent depradations.

“Go easy, Dusty,” Spurr said, staring straight ahead over his horse’s ears as they trotted on out of the fledgling town.

Mason glowered at him. “What’d you say?”

“I said go easy. Bring them beans in your pot back to a simmer. You goin’ off on a full boil like this ain’t the way to track killers of Clell Stanhope’s ilk.”

“You know about Stanhope?”

“Hell, Stanhope’s been runnin’ off his leash for nigh on ten years now. I once took down two members of his gang, but never did get close to the rest.” Spurr looked at Mason, who was still glowering at him. “I know his reputation.” He paused. “I also know what he did to your town.”

Mason looked straight off over the old horse trail they were following through a long valley hemmed in by ridges in all directions. They’d ridden nearly a quarter mile before
the sheriff turned back to Spurr, his pale blue eyes brightly anguished beneath his hat brim. “They shot down a whole posse, Spurr. Men—citizens of
my town
—who helped me run Stanhope down.”

His lips quivered a little as he spoke through gritted teeth. “They shot ’em down in front of their wives and children. I was on my knees. Handcuffed. I watched the whole goddamn thing and couldn’t do nothin’ about it. Nothin’.”

The sheriff stretched his lips, showing more of his teeth. “So don’t tell me you know his reputation. And please spare me all your sage advice. I didn’t request you for that. I requested you because, though you’re older than them mountains yonder and you’ll likely die on me tomorrow, you can track. And that’s what I need—a tracker.”

Mason turned his head forward, pulled his hat brim still lower on his forehead, and rammed his heels into his buckskin’s loins. The horse gave a whinny as it put its head down and stretched its stride into a full gallop. Spurr squinted against Mason’s dust, shaking his head.

The surly sheriff had amazed him once again.

“You requested me, didja?” he muttered. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

Spurr held Cochise to a trot, knowing they had a long trail to fog. The Pinkertons passed him, Calico Strang glancing back, his long, dark red hair bouncing over his collar as he sneered. “What’s the matter, old man—can’t you keep up?”

Spurr only grinned and shook his head as the two Pinkertons booted their own mounts into gallops after Mason. Bill Stockton held his horse back to a more reasonable pace. He met Spurr’s gaze, then shook his head in defeat and continued on up the trail.

After a time, when all four had disappeared over the far side of a hill a good half mile away, Spurr followed the trail halfway up a low hill, then stopped Cochise and curveted the horse so that he was facing south. He glanced behind,
saw Ed Gentry loping along Spurr’s back trail, about a half mile away.

Out of long habit, Spurr scrutinized the broad valley rolling between high, dark mountains. As Gentry and his dapple gray meandered toward Spurr along the curving trail, growing gradually larger so that Spurr could begin making out the man’s features, including his black wool coat that whipped out behind him in the wind, and his checked wool shirt and brown leather vest, Spurr spied movement behind the man.

Spurr’s eyes weren’t what they once were, but as he narrowed the blue orbs beneath his grizzled brows, he thought he could make out a dust plume along Gentry’s back trail. Gradually, as Gentry continued toward Spurr, who could now begin hearing the dapple gray’s footfalls, Spurr saw the two indistinct figures of what were most likely horseback riders.

He reached into one of his saddlebag pouches and pulled out his spyglass sheathed in elk hide worn soft as mountain ferns. He removed the old, brass-chased glass from the leather, brushed the lens across his neckerchief, and telescoped it. Holding it to his right eye, following the growing dust plume on Gentry’s back trail, he heard Gentry say dryly beneath the clomps of his horse, “You waitin’ on me or the busthead?”

Spurr lowered the spyglass slightly to the old, gray-beareded lawman coming up the hill, holding his reins loosely in his black-gloved hands above his saddle horn. Spurr was glad Gentry and Stockton were included in Mason’s posse. They were old, familiar faces, and there were getting to be fewer and fewer men he knew on this younger man’s frontier.

Spurr snorted. “What do you think, Ed?”

“I’m thinkin’ you look like you need a drink, you old mossyhorn.”

“Don’t normally imbibe this time of the day, but I’d take
a snort to be sociable. Since you got a fresh new bottle an’ all.”

Grinning, Gentry pulled the dapple gray up beside Spurr, on the downside of the hill, and reached back with a grunt into his left saddlebag pouch. “Where’s the others?”

“Lightin’ a shuck like there’s a passel of high-priced whores givin’ free pokes in the Wind Rivers.”

Gentry wrapped his reins around his saddle horn and pried the cork out of the bottle labeled Old Kentucky, with a low hill and a lone oak etched just beneath the words. “He won’t slow down till his horse throws a shoe or comes up lame.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Bill said he’d stay as close as he could, to keep him from gettin’ dry-gulched.”

Spurr was still staring through his spyglass, smiling with concentration.

“What you see back there?” Gentry asked him, holding out the bottle.

“You grew two extra shadows, Ed.”

The territorial marshal was indignant. “The hell I did.”

Spurr traded Gentry’s bottle for his spyglass. While Spurr tipped the bottle back, enjoying the burn as the southern bourbon washed down his throat and over his tonsils, instantly quelling his sundry and customary aches and pains in his rickety body, Gentry held the spyglass to his eye with both hands, adjusting it.

“I’ll be goddamned.”

Spurr took another drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You didn’t stir up any trouble in the saloon back there, did ya, partner?”

“Hell, no. Weren’t nobody in there but some paper collars off the local ranches.”

Spurr thought of the paper collar that Abilene had married. Abilene…or Martha? He preferred to think of her as Abilene, however, and he would forevermore.