Ragtime Cowboys (10 page)

“That's a laugh, that is.” Siringo frowned. “Why are you boys always racing your horses? What if the law shows up and they're bottomed out?”

“That's why this place is called Hole in the Wall. They got to ride in single-file, where Sundance can Winchester 'em off one by one. Meanwhile we keep lean. You ought to trade that bitty mustang. They might win races, but a big stud carries more.”

“You mean like a Wells Fargo box?”

Cassidy laughed and almost choked on his toothpick. “You keep after a man, Charlie, that you do. I'm starting to think you
are
a Pink.”

He won, too, by three lengths; Kid Curry, the cross-eyed son of a bitch, hated him for that even more than the other thing.

*   *   *

The blamed fool boy was running square toward his would-be killer. Siringo was sure Butterfield was the target, or the slug would have passed through an upper pane, aimed at the three people who were standing, and not one on the bottom, which had been in line with the seated stable boy's head. The old cowboy dug his heels deep into the gelding's flanks, and the horse found more bottom with a lunge. The wind stung Siringo's eyes. He felt a tug on his cheek; nothing stopped up a cut like a good hard run.

But, hell's bells! The fleeing boy stayed the same distance away, like a tree in the desert, its promise of water forever beyond reach no matter how straight you rode nor how long. One of those dreams where time was getting dearer by the minute and you were running in place.

And then he began to make progress.

The horse was galloping flat-out, leveling the slope, and Butterfield was losing steam. He looked back over his shoulder once, which slowed him even more. The burst of speed he put on in his fresh panic wasn't enough to maintain the gap. Siringo swatted his mount's right haunch with the coiled lariat. The animal snorted—contemptuously, Siringo thought—and their pace quickened. Where did the old ball-less wonder keep it all? It didn't seem fair somehow.

The youth slipped in the mud, but caught his balance in mid-stumble and made for the trees, his torn overalls flapping. But that little loss was a big gain for the man on horseback. Keeping his eye on Butterfield, he straightened, raised the rope, took a couple of swoops, paying out hemp between his thumb and palm, steered soft right with his knees as the boy zigged that direction, took a swoop, calculated the wind by the movement in the redwoods' branches, took a swoop, grinned in concentration, took a swoop, and let fly.

The stiff loop flew high and straight, the rope whizzing through his hand; but it drifted left. It was going to miss. The horse was slowing now, just a little, but clearly it had touched bottom at last. Age was their common enemy. If Butterfield made it into the trees and over the top of the hill, Siringo wouldn't get another chance.

But God abhors a horse thief.

The wind caught the rope, the boy zigged left, and the loop dropped over his head like a horseshoe scoring a ringer.

As soon as it cleared his shoulders, Siringo leaned back hard with a fistful of mane. With a painful whinny the horse ground to a stop, plowing furrows in the ground with its hooves as the rider gave the lariat a mighty backward jerk.

*   *   *

“That's the boy, Charlie!” Shanghai Pierce called out from outside the corral. “Set the hook deep! I got to take you with me fishing one of these days.
”

*   *   *

The world flew out from under Butterfield's feet. He executed an inverted U two feet into the air, lit on his tailbone, sprawled onto his back, and before he could recover from the stun of it all the man on the other end of the rope heeled Washoe Ban around and headed back toward the stable at a brisk lope, dragging the fight plumb out of the stable boy. Holy Christ, but life was a beautiful thing.

Then, as he slowed to a walk, he spotted the group of strangers standing between him and the stable, ugly bastards in dungarees, steel poking through the toes of their workboots. They were armed with scythes and sledgehammers and pitchforks. Siringo's hat was skewered on one set of tines.

 

12

He took a dally around the saddle horn to free his hands and drew the Colt, cocking it and pointing it at the man in the center of the line. The man had black whiskers that appeared to grow straight up from his neck all the way to his eyes, whose whites shone through the thicket. He held a sledgehammer near the end of the handle in throwing position.

“Six rounds, seven men,” Siringo said. “Which one of you thinks it's his lucky day?”

No one moved.

“Stand down, gentlemen. This man is my guest.”

Charmian had emerged from the stable behind the men, to stand beside Becky London; the plucky little squirt had made good on her promise to bring on the cavalry. She'd added a hat to her ensemble, with a velvet brim tilted toward one temple. Her stepmother held her late husband's revolver against one hip with the hammer eared back.

“That how you're fetching a man to supper now?” Black Beard pointed his hammer at the stable boy on the ground. He held the heavy tool straight out; three feet of hickory ending in four pounds of steel. Siringo would not want to take him on at wrestling.

The old detective let the others do the talking. He kept the pistol aimed at the man's breastbone.

“He's wanted in L.A. for horse-stealing,” said Hammett. He was inside the building, leaning on his forearms on the sill of the broken window. “You can come with us if you want, and share the charge. Me, I never made friends that fast.”

Black Beard turned his head far enough to see the .38 in the young detective's hand. He let the hammer slide through his hand until he was holding it more casually near the head.

The tension went out of the group then. Weapons lowered. Obviously the man with the sledgehammer was the leader.

“You can step down, Mr. Siringo,” Charmian said. “Yuri, help him with the prisoner.”

One of the other men, slope-shouldered, with a fine set of imperial whiskers, leaned his scythe against the stable wall and came forward.

Siringo uncocked and holstered his Colt and dismounted. Together he and Yuri got the dazed Butterfield to his feet and free of the lasso. The bib of his overalls hung down where a strap had broken, but he appeared unharmed except for scrapes and bruises. Black Beard dropped his hammer and took Washoe Ban's reins while the two men escorted the stable boy toward the building, a hand on each arm.

The man with Siringo's Stetson raised his pitchfork for the detective to jerk it loose of the tines. Siringo paused, scowled at the punctures, slapped the hat against his hip to knock loose the dirt, and put it on. As he stepped past the man with the pitchfork, he curled his free hand into a fist and swung. The man's nose collapsed and he sat on the ground.

“Respect a man's hat.”

Hammett laughed his snarky laugh.

*   *   *

Charmian hung up the gallows telephone in the combination dining room and parlor and went back to her seat. “That was a Sergeant Conifer with the San Francisco Police, returning my call. A horse answering Spirit Dancer's description was found half an hour ago in the livery stable of a man named Soo Lok.”

“That sounds like the place where we rented our mounts,” Hammett said. “We could've saved ourselves a trip.”

“I ain't complaining.” Siringo sipped beer, spat a hop back into the glass, and sat back in his rocker, admiring Charmian London. It was dark out, and lamplight was uncommonly kind to her cheekbones. “I was pretty sure Butterfield told the truth this time. No one wants to be drug by a horse twice.”

“That was barbaric.” Becky London didn't look up from
David Copperfield
open in her lap; on the other hand, she hadn't turned the page in twenty minutes.

Her stepmother ignored the interruption. “The resemblance wasn't so close at first, but the sergeant was thorough enough to apply a piece of wet burlap to the horse's forehead. He found Spirit Dancer's star-shaped blaze under the paint. Personally I doubt Abner had the intelligence to think of that; but I doubt the police will be able to prove it was Soo Lok, unless Abner implicates him. It was probably a crime of opportunity. He saw his client was nervous, guessed theft was involved, and took steps to protect himself and whatever profit he might draw from the situation. In any case, the fact someone went to all that trouble certainly redounds to the theory's credit.”

“Who goes to jail over it don't signify, though Earp'll likely want somebody to pay; he's vindictive. But he's more interested in getting the horse back. Now all we got to figure's who benefited from putting Butterfield in the ground before he could tell his story.”

“We know
who,
” Hammett said. “
Why's
the question.”

Charmian looked from one to the other. “What is it you think I'm too delicate to know? If having an assassin on my property doesn't entitle me, I don't know what would.”

“Mr. Hammett's just speculating. I'd like to run it past your sheriff before we go around casting stones. Can you trust your hands to make Butterfield stay put till he comes?”

“They're used to harder work. As I said, they're a fine bunch of pirates.” She looked at the clock on the big stone mantel. “He should have been here by now. What's keeping him?”

“Shaking every hand on the way,” muttered Becky. “He started running for reelection the minute he was sworn in.”

“Patience, child. You've a lifetime to learn about the world of men.” Charmian returned her attention to Siringo. “You know, you didn't have to break Ivan's nose. He and his brother Yuri have been working here since Jack brought them from a Russian settlement up north. They're sawyers by training, and between them they do the work of ten men.”

“It's a self-defense issue. In Texas, a fellow's hat can be the only thing between him and a set of fried brains.”

“Need I remind you this isn't Texas?” This time Becky met his gaze. She still had her own hat on, as if she'd forgotten about it. He thought she looked comical sitting around her own house wearing a hat.

Hammett turned from a shelf of books whose titles he'd been examining and smiled over his beer.

“Don't be too hard on him, miss. He's got an allergy to lynch mobs. And he could've shot Butterfield and saved himself effort.”

“He's a brute. This is Beauty Ranch, not some filthy mining camp.”

“All the more reason to see you came to no harm for harboring a thief without knowing it.”

Siringo could see his partner was sweet on the girl. He changed the subject before things got any more complicated.

“You pull a good brute yourself, Hammett. For a minute there in the stable I thought you was going to skin Butterfield like a jackrabbit.”

“It's the moustache.” He touched his upper lip. “All the picture villains wear them.”

“You're all impossible! I'm going home to Mother in the morning.” Becky snapped shut her book, got up, and left the room.

“She inherited Jack's temper,” Charmian said. “The rows he had with her mother were known to all the neighbors, but he never laid a hand on her. He was all blow, and so is Becky.”

Hammett said, “I think she's just about perfect.”

Pistons clattered outside. Charmian put aside her cup of tea.

“That will be the sheriff in his Dodge.”

The sheriff's name was Vernon Dillard; and five minutes' acquaintance was sufficient to make Siringo suspect he'd changed the spelling, substituting
i
for
u.

He wore a town suit and a homburg like the president's, but that was as close as he got to looking like a man in a responsible job. His coat barely buttoned across his paunch and his big ham face was red and streaming by the time they got to the top of the ridge. He squatted over the tread marks the truck had left, and made as much noise getting back up as a cow giving birth to a calf with a full set of horns.

“Good luck finding the man that belongs to that rig,” he said. “Half the property owners in the county own a Ford truck.”

Hammett shook his head. “The eel doesn't live in this county. He sleeps in the Frisco sewer and eats raw fish.”

“You big-city detectives read too many cheap magazines. If it's this eel character you keep jawing about, he's probably working for one of London's creditors. He left a lot of bills unpaid when he croaked.”

The young man opened his mouth again, but Siringo stared him into silence.

“Thanks for coming out, Sheriff,” he said. “You'll put a man or two on watch, in case he comes back?”

“Just for a day or two, and I don't mind telling you it's a waste of time. He was just trying to put a scare in the widow, and now he's done that, he won't be back. I'm short-handed enough sending men all over these hills hunting down alky cookers. I can't spare one to wet-nurse a couple of skittish women all spring.”

“Spoken like a true servant of the people,” Hammett said. “You can't step ten feet out your office door without stumbling into a speakeasy. What's the going rate to eliminate the competition from the sticks?”

Dillard's face reddened another shade. “How's about I run you in for lugging around that flask in your pocket?”

“Go ahead, sweetheart. The law says I can drink all I want, as long as it doesn't catch me selling any. It's been a long time since I lost sleep worrying what a tin badge thinks of me.”

The sheriff dug a sap out of his hip pocket and slapped his other palm with it. “Maybe I offered to take you in for questioning and you put up a fight.”

“Don't lie on my account.” Hammett reached into the pocket containing his brass knuckles. Siringo's hand shot out and clamped down on his wrist.