Power in the Blood (54 page)

Clay was the only customer. While the barkeep poured him a drink, he asked, “Arch been around?”

“Say who?”

“Arch Powell.”

“Don’t know the feller.”

“Arch and me, we rode together some while back.”

“Don’t know him,” reiterated the barkeep, but Clay knew he was lying. While he drank, he watched the man closely, noting the casual way the barkeep did the same to him. By the time Clay ordered his third whiskey, the barkeep decided the tall man with the spectacles and scars was drunk enough to be pumped for the truth.

“Where’d you say you rode with this feller?”

“What feller?”

“Feller you said.”

“Arch? Oh, up around Montana way. Had some high old times, Arch and me. He most likely told you about that time with the pig.”

Archie Powell had shot a pig that blundered beneath the legs of his horse on the main street of Shelby, and when upbraided for the deed by the pig’s owner, had shot the owner, then slit open the belly of the pig and thrust the carcass over the head of the deceased, in full view of several dozen witnesses.

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Ham Deidsheimer, short for Hamilton.”

This was the name of Clay’s hundred-dollar man, one of Powell’s lesser sidekicks during his Montana days. The gang had specialized in robbing payroll shipments in the mining area around Butte, and had profited so handsomely they had not been heard from for more than a year. It was rumored that Powell was originally from Colorado, but that was not substantiated until Clay heard the name Killdeer from Ham Deidsheimer. Clay was hopeful the clue gave him an edge over the many federal officers and Pinkerton men also interested in running Powell to earth.

“He’ll know,” said Clay to the barkeep.

“Who’ll know?”

“Arch, he’ll know the name.”

“No Arch around here, mister.”

“Well, sure, I know that.” Clay winked, and ordered another shot of liquor. He smiled conspiratorially at the man with the bottle, but was met with a face of stone.

“You tell him,” suggested Clay, “you tell him I look even prettier than him nowadays, with these holes in my face. He won’t have seen them yet, since we split up, all the boys. Feller in Denver run a stick through my face on account of not wanting to pay up some dollars he owed me. He come out of it worse, though. Run a bullet through his, front to back.” He laughed and tossed down the drink.

Powell was a dandy and a womanizer, proud of his looks. Clay knew a description of himself and his scars, which Ham Deidsheimer had not had, would alert Powell to the deception, unless he explained them. Clay was also taller than Deidsheimer, but not by much.

“I guess I’ll just take a bottle and wait,” Clay said.

“Take as many as you want,” advised the barkeep, “and wait for snow in hell, far as I care.”

“You’re a real friendly feller.”

“Anyone pays for whiskey, I’m friendly.”

When the bottle was set before him, Clay grabbed the barkeep’s shirtfront and pulled him close. “I drink slow,” he said, “but by the time my bottle’s gone, I want Arch here, see, because I come a long way to see him.”

He released the man and went to a corner table to drink. The barkeep went to the back room, and Clay heard a woman’s voice. The woman came out and walked by his table, staring at him as she passed on her way to the door. He watched through one of the yellow-paned windows as she hurried along the street, arms hugging a shawl around herself against the cold. She returned within ten minutes, and ignored him as she passed through to the rear of the building. Clay guessed some intermediary had saddled up and was at that moment riding from Killdeer out into the mountains to alert Arch Powell.

Clay began making plans. By the time the outlaw came through the door and saw a stranger where Ham Deidsheimer was supposed to be, Clay would have a story ready, something to do with Ham passing on the Killdeer connection before dying, maybe following an attempted bank robbery with Clay. Powell would be suspicious, but Clay would spin the yarn with conviction, and be drawn nearer to Powell if all went well. If all did not, he could always shoot the man there and then, assuming Powell arrived alone, or at least without more than one henchman. Clay sometimes wished Colt or Remington would invent a shotgun with more than two barrels, or one capable of storing shells in a tube, like a repeating rifle. To pass the time, he composed a mental letter to that effect.

Through the afternoon, several customers came and went, but no one resembling Arch Powell arrived. Toward evening, two men rode up to the hitching rail and dismounted. Their indistinct figures sent a mild flutter through Clay’s heart, the instinctive warning of danger. He was prepared, had surreptitiously tipped most of his drinks from the bottle into the spittoon by his ankles. He watched through the window as the two men ran their eyes over his animals. They would probably demand to examine his packs more closely, but Clay was prepared for that eventuality also; he had burned every single outlaw flier in his possession many miles back along the trail to Killdeer.

The men entered and went to the bar. Clay was only slightly disappointed to see that neither was Arch Powell. Powell was being cautious, sending his men to sniff out a trap. Clay raised his glass to them, a gesture they pretended to ignore. They drank, speaking together softly, then approached Clay’s table. Clay hooked out two chairs with his boots. “Sit yourselves,” he said, smiling.

The men sat down. “Thank you,” said the first.

“Buy you a drink?” offered the second.

“Got plenty right here,” said Clay.

“Mort says you’re looking for someone.”

“That the barkeep? Well, he told no lies, gentlemen. Looking for someone’s my business here.”

“Mort says the feller you want, he’s not here.”

“Is that so. Maybe you two can direct me to where he’s at, and we can all share a drink.”

“Depends on the name,” said the second man.

“Arch Powell.”

“Not his. Yours.”

“Well, what I told Mort was Ham Deidsheimer.”

“And what’re you telling us?”

It was unclear if one or both men knew Deidsheimer by sight, so Clay smiled even more broadly and said, “Tell him Bill Adams, and I’m ready to work.”

“What kind of work would that be?”

“High-risk, high-paid work, the kind me and Ham got caught up in just recent, only Ham got the risk end of things, which was real unfortunate.”

“Telling us Ham’s dead, mister?”

“Afraid so.”

“Never heard about it, but I guess you can back up what you say.”

“Well, now, newspaper stories about the incident, that’d be a foolish thing for me to carry around, don’t you think? But I’ll show you something better.”

Clay produced from his vest a chain and a watch fob in the shape of a horseshoe. He had taken it from Ham Deidsheimer. The two men stared at it as Mort’s woman began lighting the lamps. Clay saw blankness disguising puzzlement in their faces. Neither one recognized the horseshoe fob. Clay turned it over to show them Ham’s name engraved on the back, and the motto
Tempis fugit.
They examined it closely, and returned it to him. Clay could tell that they had no clear idea what to do or say next, and he began to suspect the situation was not as he had thought.

“Come on, then,” he was told.

The first man stood, followed by the second. Clay picked up his bottle and went with them to the door. All three mounted their horses and began riding out of Killdeer. Clay’s escorts left the trail a mile from town and began threading their way in single file through the trees. Moonlight shone down on them, picking out the metal buttons sewn on the first man’s hatband. Clay was alert, pretending on occasion to swig from his bottle. When the leader stopped in a small clearing, Clay knew he was about to be interrogated. The appearance of pistols in the hands of both men did not surprise him. He grinned all the wider and tipped the bottle again, wetting his lips.

“Now, do I mistake your intentions, or are you fellers about to bushwhack me?”

“Get down and shuck that coat, mister, and don’t think to grab for that sawed-off.”

Clay dismounted and shrugged off his long coat.

“Ease it off,” he was told. Clay’s shotgun was detached from its shoulder harness and laid carefully on the ground.

“All right, now, you tell us some things we might like to know. You can start off with your real name. Bill Adams, that’s not it.”

“You seem mighty sure about that, and you two haven’t done me the courtesy of tossing a single name in my direction. That’s discourteous, and I believe I’ll lock my lip till you mend your ways.”

The second man got down from his horse and went directly to Clay. Avoiding his partner’s line of fire, he punched Clay hard in the stomach. Clay buckled, clutching himself, exaggerating the blow’s effect. He was hit again, and began slowly to sag. Moving in for another punch, the second man thought Clay’s clumsy lurching toward him was some kind of plea to stop, and was not prepared for the grabbing motion that plucked his gun from its holster, or the sudden smack of its cylinder alongside his jawbone. The barrel was against his windpipe before he could react, the hammer already cocked. He was between Clay and the first man, whose gun was leveled at them both. The first man hesitated. The standoff continued for several seconds while Clay recovered his breath.

“Now what?” said the first man.

“I’ll have those names,” Clay said, but none were offered. The man against whose throat he held a gun suddenly spun sideways, yelling, “Get him …!”

Clay and the man on horseback fired simultaneously. Clay felt a bullet pass by his neck, and fired again before seeing the first man begin to topple from his rearing horse. Clay couldn’t tell if he had hit him, or if the horse had thrown him. The second man was running. Clay’s skill with a pistol being minimal, he dropped it and grabbed for the shotgun at his feet. The running man was shot in the back at a distance of just a few yards. Clay went to the first man, lying still on the ground. This one was alive, without any wound that Clay could see in the moonlight, so it was probably the fall from his horse that had stunned him.

Clay kicked him in the hip. “Get up.”

The man slowly recovered his senses, aided by Clay’s boot, and sat up, then vomited. “Your name,” Clay said.

“Beecher … Willis Beecher …”

“And the other one?”

“Lee Hoyt …”

He vomited again. Clay had heard those names before, and reviewed in his memory the hundreds of fliers he had studied in the course of his work. Beecher wiped his mouth and stood. Clay kept the shotgun trained on him as Beecher looked across at the body of Hoyt.

“Kill him?” Clay was asked.

“I expect.”

“Then you’re in deep trouble, Adams, or whoever you are. May as well give me your real name right now.”

“What trouble?”

“The biggest kind, mister. You just killed a United States marshal.”

Clay heard a roaring in his ears, and felt momentarily faint. Now he remembered where he had come across the names—in a Denver newspaper detailing the embarrassment of the two federal marshals who had allowed Panther Stalking and Kills With a Smile to escape a month or more ago in New Mexico.

“You both should have told me before,” he said.

“Tell you what, mister! For all we knew, you were some partner to Archie Powell! Are you telling me now you aren’t? Just who the hell are you?”

“Bill Adams. I wouldn’t have shot him if I’d known.”

“You’re a bounty man, am I right? Looking to get Powell? You’re too late, Adams. He was shot nine days back. Hoyt and me were up here trying to get the rest of Powell’s bunch, hiding out hereabouts.”

“The barkeep in town, he knows?”

“He’s our man. Soon as you told him you’re looking for Powell, he sent for us.”

“I’m sorry about your partner. He never should have jumped like that.”

“You bounty hunters are liable to mess up whatever you touch. You’re a fool to think you can do what the law can’t.”

“Seems I can recall a couple of laws who let a couple of Apaches get away right from under their noses a little while back. You two get given this job to make up for that mess?”

“You keep your mouth shut about that. This mess is plenty big enough for you to worry about. Take the shells out of that sawed-off and hand it over. You’re under arrest, Adams, for the murder of a federal officer.”

“It was accidental, you know that.”

“You’ll get a chance to tell your story.”

“Beecher, I don’t think you’d make an impartial witness, somehow.”

“That’s too bad. You can do two things—kill me like you did Hoyt, and hope the barkeep doesn’t pass your description on to the authorities, which he will, or you can surrender to me right now and take your chances in a court of law. I know what happened wasn’t intentional, and I’ll say so, you can trust me on that. Now choose.”

Clay disliked Beecher intensely for the hold the man had over him, and for the way Beecher and Hoyt had set up their confrontation with him. True professionals would have disarmed Clay and then kept their distance while they asked questions of him, not put their own lives in jeopardy by moving close enough to punch him in the stomach and have one of their own pistols yanked into play. Beecher and Hoyt were responsible for Hoyt’s death, not Clay, and yet Beecher’s ultimatum was the only one Clay himself could think of—kill him or trust him. Clay’s dislike of Beecher was not sufficient to provoke the former, yet he was reluctant to accept the latter.

Beecher stooped to retrieve his hat and fallen gun. He was wise enough to holster the .45 and allow Clay his decision without the threat of more gunfire. Still Clay said nothing. Beecher went over to Hoyt and examined the gaping hole in his body.

“Back-shot. That’s bad news for you, Adams. They won’t believe that was an accident if I’m not there to testify for you. You anywheres near to making up your mind, mister?”

Clay broke open his shotgun and ejected the spent and live shells, then offered the weapon to Beecher.

“That’s good, Adams. That’s smart.”

Beecher swung the shotgun against the side of Clay’s head, a blow so hard Clay’s spectacles flew from his nose. “That’s for Lee, you son of a bitch!” He repeated the action. “And that’s for me!” Clay sank to the ground, clutching his head. A pair of handcuffs were dropped in front of him. “Get up and put these on yourself, you sorry piece of horsemeat.”