Lone Star 01 (24 page)

“I hope to.”

They moved along the boardwalk, walking slowly, noting that despite the late hour, the Thundermug was still open. It didn't appear to be doing much business; no loud voices or harsh laughter filtered out its batwings, and there were very few people around in the street.

When they were still about fifty feet from the saloon, Daryl rushed up out of the shadows and stopped them. “There you are,” he said to Jessica. “That's twice now you've gone off on me.”

“I did not. I said I was going after Ryker, and I am.”

“Well, how could I know? When you didn't come back...” Daryl made a hapless little gesture, then grinned sheepishly. “You're all right, and that's what counts. Now, where's Ryker?”

“In the Thundermug,” Ki answered. “Putting his head together with Halford and Kendrick. We thought we'd stick ours in, too.”

Daryl's grin broadened.

Jessica, sensing what Daryl had in mind, shook her head firmly. “No, Daryl, I can't let you. Ryker's our game, always has been.”

“Yeah, but whose ranch is in hock to what crooked gambler?” Daryl spoke with hard, vengeful relish in his voice. “If there're going to be heads knocked, Kendrick's all mine to butt. Period.”

“You're getting in
over
your head, Daryl. Those are killers in there, desperate killers. This isn't going to be any picnic.”

“After you, Jessie,” Daryl said, opening a batwing.

“Picnic,” Jessica repeated, standing there in the saloon entrance as if momentarily dazed. “Picnic ...” And it was in that moment that the smoldering spark in the back of her mind burst into flame—the flame of rememberance. “That's it! I've got it!”

“Got what? Ki asked.

“Picnic in the park,” Jessica replied, and walked in, now so wrapped up in the solution to the puzzling scheme that she wanted nothing more than to get it over with, fast.

The crowd was thin, and somber at the tail-end of their drinking night. The same two white-aproned bartenders were at their stations, wiping down the counter and cleaning up the backbar. Halford was still under the painting of the nude, smoking another torpedo cigar, looking as if he were rooted to the spot. Seeing Jessica, Ki, and Daryl enter, his face turned pale and he sent a worried sidelong glance at his partner, Kendrick.

Kendrick was seated at a different gaming table, this one a bit closer to the front and to the bar. He was alone, and was idly riffling a deck of cards, a whiskey bottle and a glass next to his elbow. When he caught Halford's quick glance, he looked up and gave a slight wintry smile, placing the deck aside and moving a bottle and glass over to it.

“Ryker's not in here,” Daryl said to Jessica, as they walked between the tables toward the gambler. “He must be in the back.”

Jessica, glancing past Kendrick, saw what Daryl meant. There was a door set in the rear wall, which would undoubtedly open into the saloon's office and private quarters. “It'll be locked,” she responded in a low voice. “We'll probably have to break it in.”

“Once we get past these two,” Daryl added.

Ki was not walking with them. He was edging parallel to them along the far side of the large room, keeping a very close eye on Halford. He skirted around a billiard table nobody was using—then hesitated and went back to it. A pair of cue sticks were resting on the baize, and billiard balls were scattered around the surface of the table. He picked up two of the balls, palming them as he swiftly moved on.

Jessica and Daryl stopped in front of Kendrick's table; Ki halting quite a few feet in back of them, still watching Halford.

“Evenin‘,” Kendrick said. “Care for a hand or two?”

“I care for Ryker,” Jessica snapped. “Get him.”

“The good Captain Ryker hasn't blessed our establishment in ages,” Kendrick said blandly. “You must be mistaken, Miss Starbuck.”

“He's here. You've got him hidden in back, so you three can try figuring out ways to salvage your plans for that parkland.”

Kendrick jerked erect, staring at Jessica, while behind the bar, Halford gripped the counter, the cigar tipping from his mouth. And Daryl gasped at Jessica, completely baffled.

“Parkland? Jessica, there's no park hereabouts.”

“Not yet,” she replied in a short, clipped tone. “But think, Daryl, that huge block on Ryker's map could only represent an area the size of an Indian reservation—or a national park. Like Yellowstone. Bigger than Yellowstone! Ryker buys the land cheap, supposedly in the name of Acme Packers; then Acme merges with American Federated Development, while Senator Trumbull rams his bill through Congress establishing the area as a national park site. Then the government is forced to buy the land from American Federated at inflated prices.”

“Gawd! A nation-sized swindle!”

“An
international
swindle, Daryl. There's only one gang, one international ring of criminals wealthy enough and unscrupulous enough to be able to rig such a conspiracy. I've known for some time that Ryker works for it; and now I know that through his complicity, Senator Trumbull is another of its corrupt tools. And I remembered as I was coming in here just exactly who Trumbull is—the chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs.”

Kendrick, having regained his composure, sank back in his chair. “Preposterous. Insane. You don't know what you're saying.”

“Oh, but I do. I know this new park would be administered by the army, as Yellowstone is. I know the army's controlled by the War Department, and that the War Department is under the thumb of Congress. Through Trumbull's position, a powerful foreign cartel will not only reap a vast fortune, but will also be able to control a sizable chunk of America and our army garrisoned on it.”

“Ryker, Trumbull, foreign conspirators...” Scoffing, Kendrick reached for his glass of whiskey. “Pipe dreams, Miss Starbuck. But even if your fantasies were true, they've nothing to do with me.”

“You and Halford are up to your eyeballs in it,” Jessica retorted. “You two learned of this scheme while doing Trumbull's minor dirty work in Washington. So you robbed that bank and rushed out here, spending your loot to buy and option as much of Eucher Butte as you could, figuring to cheat Ryker and American Federated the way they and Trumbull are figuring to cheat our government—by squeezing them for all they're worth when they try to buy you out.”

“But Jessica, Kendrick hasn't taken my ranch.”

“Don't you see, Daryl?” Jessica cried. “He would have, as soon as it came time to sell it to Ryker or American Federated. Till then he doesn't need it, he doesn't want it. He'd let you keep running it, while making sure your father stayed strapped in his debt.”

“Yeah, I see now, Jessica.” Daryl leaned across the table, facing Kendrick. “I see it's more'n a swindle, it's treason.” His dark eyes were icy and bright, and there was no concealing the hatred he felt for the gambler seated before him.

Kendrick pursed his pouty lips and flicked his gaze for an instant past Daryl to the bar. Halford eased closer along the counter, his hands now dipping below and out of sight. A deep hush held the room, as the few drinkers present hastily pressed back out of the line of fire. The silence held, growing, tensing like a wire on the verge of snapping ...

Kendrick broke first. Cursing, he plunged his hand inside his coat for his stubby-barreled belly-gun. Daryl immediately dropped into a crouch, clawing for his old revolver, while Jessica swiveled aside and made to draw her custom .38. The customers and two bartenders dove for cover. Halford stayed where he was, his hands bringing up a sawed-off Ithaca double-barreled shotgun.

Kendrick, the first to break, was the first to fire. He misjudged in his haste, and the 32 slug from his Harrington & Richardson's Vest Pocket Self-Cocker plowed a furrow along the green felt of the table, a scant inch from Daryl's side. Daryl was still hauling out his Remington, ignoring the shot and heedless of another, his motions slow and methodical and virtually suicidal.

Yet the practiced speed of Kendrick's draw and fire was even too great for Jessica to match. She realized in that split second that she wouldn't be able to level and shoot before the gambler triggered a second time. And their backs were to Halford, and Halford was aiming his shotgun squarely at Jessica and Daryl, who were standing perfectly targeted for the two unchoked 12-gauge shells in its breech. Unfortunately for him, Ki was already throwing one of the billiard balls. Ki had begun his pitch at the same moment he saw Kendrick twitch his arm toward his coat. The ball smacked Halford in the mouth, sending gold-filled teeth flying with the sound of snapping tree branches.

Halford started falling, taking the shotgun with him and accidentally discharging one of its barrels. The blast flew high, shattering one of the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling near Kendrick's card table, the spray of glass and kerosene distracting Kendrick for a second. And Daryl shot him between the eyes. The gambler lurched and slumped to the table, spilling the glass and bottle and deck of cards, his snub-nosed pistol hitting the floor.

Ki killed Halford with his second toss, a whiplashing overhand that hurled the ball like an arrow. It struck Halford, who was still crumpling from the first ball, in the forehead and crushed the frontal plate of his skull. Fitting, Ki thought as he watched Halford plummet out of sight; it seemed somehow right to repeat the stoning Daphne had given Deputy Oakes.

“The door!” Daryl shouted at Jessica, lunging past Kendrick toward the rear. He never slowed, but rammed into the back door with his left shoulder, tearing the door loose from its hinges and popping its lock. He surged into the room with Jessica on his heels, their revolvers braced in their fists.

Two burly men were in the room, neither of them Ryker. Daryl cracked the first man in the face with the barrel of his revolver, but couldn't reach Jessica in time to save her from being attacked.

The second man, partially concealed behind the opening door, had leaped out and snagged Jessica by her gun-arm, and was savagely attempting to wrestle her pistol away. She wrenched back, kicking and scratching, but was unable to break free or bring her Colt to bear. In their struggle, she stumbled back against a bureau, almost upsetting it. Frantically she fought for her balance, clawing the bureau with her other hand, her fingers closing around the handle of a china water jug teetering on the bureau's top. She scooped up the jug and bashed the man over the head with it.

It was enough to send the man staggering, and Daryl dropped him with a bullet through the knee, then grinned at Jessica, and sprang for the partially open window along the far wall.

“Ryker may've gotten out here,” he said, raising the sash and poking his head out. But all he saw outside was Ki.

For Ki, back in the saloon, had had a different idea where Ryker might have gone. While Jessica and Daryl had run for the door, on the assumption that Ryker had locked himself in the rear quarters, Ki had the feeling that Ryker was already out and making his escape.

Sprinting in the opposite direction, out the front of the saloon, he veered around the side toward the weedy lot that abutted the rear of the building. He skirted a stack of beer kegs and jumped up onto a small loading platform, raised about four feet off the ground. Just past the platform were three horses, and Gurthied Ryker was mounting the middle one, while two other men stood cinching their saddles.

Ryker had his revolver out. “Damned Starbuck meddlers!” he snarled, and triggered his revolver three times, very fast.

Ki twisted in a low, rolling circle; the first of Ryker's bullets struck a beer keg, and the second splintered the platform deck between Ki's legs. The third went straight down into the earth next to Ryker's horse, because by then a thin, tapering dagger was protruding from Ryker's chest.

Ryker coughed, shaking from the impact of Ki's thrown dagger. He started mounting higher but couldn't quite make his saddle, and for a moment he clung with his hands grasping the horn, then slumped back.

The man on his left had danced away from the horses, and had dropped to his knee to sight his revolver. He was hunching like that, steadying his revolver, when a bullet from the rear window struck him in the side and toppled him over.

The third man fled out across the back lot, losing all interest in the confrontation.

Rising from the deck of the platform, Ki dropped off onto the ground and walked over to Ryker. The man remained in his strange position, a boot in one stirrup, both hands grasping the saddlehorn, the index finger of his right hand curled around the trigger of his revolver, preventing the pistol from falling. His whole body had a soft, sagging appearance to it. When Ki loosened Ryker's hands, the man crumpled to the ground, as if deflating.

Ki removed his dagger, wiped its blade on Ryker's shirt, and slipped it back into its pocket on the inside of his vest. Then, from another pocket, Ki took out one of his
shuriken;
he'd purposely brought it along for just this occasion, having taken it from his jammed device before leaving his hotel room. Bending down, he stuck one star-pointed edge into the dagger wound as a memento, as a warning sign to other members of the cartel. Straightening then, he walked to the front of the saloon.

Jessica and Daryl were waiting for him outside the batwings. “Daryl pegged one from the window,” Jessica said. “I didn't realize he could shoot that well at an angle.”

“I didn't either,” Daryl said. “Was it Ryker?”

“No, but Ryker's dead,” Ki replied. “I'm glad you got the one you did, though, because the man was about set to peg me.”