Cold-Blooded, page 12
No one ever doubted Luke’s sand, but his eyes were haunted as he said, “Just suppose it is him, Kurt. Suppose Hiram Hartline really exists. They say the devil took his soul early and told him he’d store it in the lowest pit of hell for fifty years. They say Hartline is now just a shell of a man without a soul. But he’s still the fastest gun that ever lived or ever will live.”
Now Koenig was irritated and slightly spooked. “They say . . . they say . . . who says?”
“Folks around,” Luke said.
“Folks around are talking out of their butts.” Koenig laid down the glass he’d been polishing and said, “If Hartline is real, which I doubt, he’s come to the wrong town. He won’t leave here alive.”
Luke tossed down his whiskey, then said, “Kurt, how can you kill a man who’s already dead?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The realization that he hadn’t eaten a square meal in days drove Jess Casey to the restaurant for an early dinner. But even as he opened the door and stepped inside he wasn’t hungry.
Jess walked into an atmosphere as tense as a fiddle string. A dozen people, including a couple of women, sat in silence at their tables, and the usual kitchen noises were subdued.
“Did somebody just die in here?” Jess asked the waitress. He smiled when he said it.
The girl didn’t smile in return. Nervous as a whore in a confessional, she nodded in the direction of the window that looked out onto the street. Two men sat at a table, one of them older, austere, respectable-looking, the other a flamboyant creature in gambler’s frilly duds, ivory-handled Colts stuck into a scarlet sash around his waist, and falling over his shoulders was long, chestnut hair as thick and luxuriant as a woman’s. Jess had seen his kind before and they tended to be a touchy, dangerous breed. A frontier dandy who grew his hair that long and dressed like an effeminate dude had to be mighty good with a gun.
What drew the attention of the other diners was how the man ate. He forked chunks of bloody meat into his toothy, cavernous mouth, gulping them down without chewing, like a hungry wolf. He didn’t eat. He devoured.
Jess was as fascinated as the rest of the customers, but turned his attention to the eggs and bacon on his plate and discovered he was hungry after all. He completed his meal with bread spread thick with butter and honey then sat back, a satisfied man, and started to build a cigarette.
When he looked up from the makings, the ravenous wolf—for that was how Jess thought of him—was staring at him, a slight smile on his thin lips. But it was not a good smile. It was a contemptuous smirk, as though the man had looked deep into Jess’s soul and found him wanting.
Then he spoke. “You can smoke when I leave,” he said.
Every eye in the place was turned in Jess’s direction. He shrugged, thumbed a match into flame with his left hand and lit the cigarette.
It seemed that the man regarded Jess’s action as an act of defiance. He rose to his feet, tall, elegant and significant, and stepped to Jess’s table. “Put out your tongue and use it to douse that quirley,” he said. “Do it now or I’ll kill you.”
“Sheriff, that’s Hiram Hartline talking to you,” Gideon Thurgood said. “Be very afraid and do like he says. Wet your tongue and it won’t hurt so bad.”
“Wise advice,” Hartline said. “If I was you I’d take it.”
Jess smiled. “I’ve heard of you, but I thought it was just a big campfire story. I heard you sold your soul to the devil and you’re as fast as a demon with the iron.”
Hartline’s hands were on the butts of his revolvers. “You heard right, little man. And who are you? I like to be introduced to the wretch I’m about to kill.”
“Why, my name is Old Scratch,” Jess said. “And I’m here to collect my score.”
Hartline’s eyes narrowed at this affront but then opened wide as Jess’s bullet smashed into his right kneecap. The man screamed and fell. Jess rose to his feet, his Colt ready. Hartline, face twisted in pain, shrieked his rage and went for his guns and Jess shot him in the chest and then, to further discourage the man’s aggression, in the middle of his forehead.
Gideon Thurgood hurried across the floor and saw Jess’s gun swing on him. “Don’t shoot!” he yelled. Aghast, he looked at Hartline and then at Jess. “You killed him. He was . . . he was . . .”
“A piece of garbage,” Jess said. “I reckon he was a damned bully who made a reputation killing rubes and desk clerks.”
“You didn’t call him out. Your gun was under the table and you shot him.”
“I figured I should do that before he shot me,” Jess said.
“But he was the best . . . the best there ever was,” Thurgood said. “I can’t believe this. Nobody will believe this.”
“It just goes to show you that a man who’s sold his soul shouldn’t visit Hell, even a half acre of it,” Jess said.
“But . . . but you weren’t afraid,” Thurgood said. “Any man would have been afraid of Hiram Hartline.”
“Mister, I’m the sheriff of Hell’s Half Acre,” Jess said. “If this place has taught me anything it’s that I don’t scare worth a damn, especially when a loudmouth braggart is trying to do the scaring.”
“Sheriff? But I was told you’d quit.” This from the grease-spattered owner of the restaurant.
“I had. But now I’ve changed my mind,” Jess said.
* * *
Luke Short was the first to pay homage.
He stepped into the sheriff’s office that evening with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. “For the hero of the hour!” he declared as he laid the bottle on the table.
“You heard, huh?” Jess said.
“Heard? The whole town is buzzing,” Luke said. “You done for the most feared gunman the West has ever known. Here, let me open this.” He popped the champagne cork and then filled two fizzing glasses, one of which he passed to Jess. He raised his own and said, “To the man who killed Hiram Hartline!”
Jess left his glass untasted. “Luke, I’m not going to celebrate the taking of a man’s life.”
Luke was puzzled. “Hell, Casey, this will make you famous, the cock o’ the walk in Fort Worth. The big-city newspapers will want your story and Buffalo Bill will come calling, and he’ll pay plenty. Hickok and that Bill Bonney kid became famous and they never came up against a shootist like Hiram Hartline.” He raised his glass again. “Enjoy the champagne because you’ll never drink water again. Damn it all, you’re the baddest man in the West and from now on every ranny who wears a gun will step around you and touch his hat and call you sir.”
“Let it go, Luke. Let me be,” Jess said. “And take the champagne with you.”
Luke tried to wrap his brain around that, then, “I don’t understand you,” he said.
“That makes two of us, Luke,” Jess said. “I don’t understand me, either.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“This changes nothing,” Jasper Dunn said. “I’m almost ready to make my move and a two-bit sheriff won’t stand in my way.”
“You aren’t hearing me, Mr. Dunn,” Gideon Thurgood said. “He killed Hiram Hartline.”
“I’m hearing you real well,” Dunn said. “So the lawman got lucky once. It won’t happen a second time.” Dunn sat back in his chair. “Why did you bring in a second gun?”
“For my personal protection, Mr. Dunn. We’re in a dangerous business. In my capacity as a circuit hangman, I made many acquaintances among the law profession and Hartline was recommended to me.”
“He didn’t do a very good job of it, did he?” Dunn said.
“As you said, the sheriff got lucky.”
Dunn tapped the box that Thurgood had laid on his desk. “That’s the merchandise?”
“Yes, the first shipment.”
“When will there be another?”
“Soon. I can assure you of that.”
“Are you burying Hartline?”
“Yes, but the Oakwood Cemetery authorities say he can’t be laid to rest in consecrated ground, so I’ve arranged for a burial outside the town.”
Dunn smiled. “You believe Hartline sold his soul to the devil?”
“No.”
“Everybody else seems to.”
“He was a cold-blooded killer with a fast draw, that’s all,” Thurgood said. He laid a burlap sack on the table. “I brought you his Colts as a gift.”
Dunn looked around at his men. “Any of you boys want the devil’s guns?” He got no takers and men close to his desk stepped away, their horrified eyes on the sack.
“I don’t want them, either,” Dunn said. “Bury him with them.” Then, “Oh, by the way, I found customers already at a brothel on 11th Street. Whores will try anything that promises to ease the pain of their lives. If all goes as I expect it will, I’ll want more supplies in a hurry.”
“You’ll get them, Mr. Dunn, I assure you,” Thurgood said.
“Good, then I’ll be in touch. Now go bury the devil’s dead and take his guns with you.”
* * *
“Tell me about it, Jess,” Kurt Koenig said. He wore his city marshal shield on the front of his frock coat and he looked worried.
“You’re talking about what happened in the restaurant yesterday evening?” Jess said.
“I’m not here to listen to your life story, am I?” Koenig said. “This is official business.”
“Hiram Hartline was going to kill me just for the hell of it, so I killed him first.”
“Tell me about it,” Koenig said.
After Jess finished talking, the big man said, “I saw Hartline in action once. He put down four men in a saloon in the Arizona Territory, holding his gun in one hand, a whiskey in the other. He was hellfire that day, all right.”
“I heard he sold his soul to the devil,” Jess said.
“Heard that my ownself,” Koenig said. “Maybe it’s true.” He studied a wanted dodger on the wall and without taking his eyes off it said, “Somebody is moving in on me, Jess.”
“Is this anything to do with Hartline?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Who was the man with him?”
“I don’t know. Tall, thin, dressed in black, looked like an undertaker to me or a parson.”
“Is he a gun?”
“I don’t think so. Too old for that.”
“Three of my accounts quit on me,” Koenig said. “Said they’re buying their protection from somebody else, a man who scares them.”
Jess smiled. “Since forcing merchants to pay for protection is against the law, you can hardly expect me to be sympathetic.”
“This is the Acre. Everybody needs protection,” Koenig said. “I’m a businessman who provides that service. I also sell opium, a perfectly legal product.” The big man stepped to the window and looked into the busy, dust-churned street. “Somebody pushes me, I push back harder.”
“What are you telling me, Kurt?” Jess said.
“Suddenly I’m in the prophesying business, Jess. I see blood in the streets and I hear the cries of dying men. Somehow I think that your killing of Hartline marked the beginning of something . . . something bad . . . something ugly.” Koenig smiled. “There’s an old German saying that goes: Ein Unglück kommt selten allein. It means ‘One disaster comes rarely alone.’”
“When it rains it pours, huh?” Jess said.
“Exactly that,” Koenig said. “But when it rains trouble in the Acre it pours blood.”
* * *
The wagon creaked through the darkness and the lanterns on each side of the driver’s seat pooled light on the grass like spilled orange paint. Big Sal, dressed in a man’s shirt and overalls, a battered hat on her shorn head, urged on the reluctant Morgan in the shafts. Beside her, silent and morose, her assistant glanced back at Hartline’s rocking, sheet-wrapped body and shook his head.
“He’s got no soul, Sal,” he said. “A man with no soul can’t die.”
Sal spat tobacco juice over the side of the wagon, close to where Gideon Thurgood walked. “He’s got three .45 bullets in him. He’s dead, all right.” She said to Thurgood, “What do you think, hangman. Is he dead?”
Thurgood trudged on, his head bent. He said nothing.
“Then I’ll take that as a you don’t know,” Big Sal said. “Well, I’ve buried all kinds and none have ever come back to haunt me.”
“This one will,” the assistant said. He was a small, spare man and his high cheekbones and coarse straw-colored hair hinted at an Eastern European ancestry. “Bullets can’t kill a man who has no soul.”
The wind had picked up and black, silver-edged clouds scudded across the face of the moon. Coyotes had yipped earlier but had fallen strangely quiet and the air smelled of dampness and the odor of wormy earth.
Thurgood spoke for the first time since they left Fort Worth. “The wagon tracks are getting deeper,” he said. “The ground seems soft enough for the shovel.”
“Where do you want to plant him, hangman?” Big Sal said.
“Pull off to the side, closer to the trees,” Thurgood said. “He doesn’t need to be too deep.”
After the wagon lurched to a halt, Big Sal and her assistant climbed down from the seat. “We’ll dig the hole first,” she said to the little man. “Bring the lanterns.”
As the undertakers dug, their sweaty bodies outlined by bronze light, Thurgood stood by the wagon. Now the motion had ceased and Hartline’s body lay still, yet Thurgood had the feeling that he was being watched, that under the sheet the dead man’s eyes were open, aware. He shivered and stepped closer to the deepening, yawning chasm of the grave and the smell of dank earth.
The wind grew stronger and the trees shook their branches and moaned. The night seemed to grow darker, held back only by the lanterns, their flames dancing.
Big Sal climbed out of the grave and said to Thurgood, “I’ll get him.” She stepped to the back of the wagon, dragged out the body by its feet and then tucked the corpse under one massive arm. The woman carried the dead man to the grave and let him drop. “Well, he’s planted,” she said. “Now we can cover him, Stefan.”
“No!” the little man yelled. “We must destroy him. He is vampyr.”
“Hell, he’s just a dead man like any other,” Big Sal said. “Get your shovel.”
“He has no soul,” Stefan said. “He will rise from the grave and kill us.”
“Go on with the burial and we’ll get out of this infernal wind,” Thurgood said. “It seems like the whole world is about to blow down.”
“I will destroy him,” Stefan said.
He rooted around in the back of the wagon and rushed to the grave with a hammer and a sharpened piece of wood. The wind howled and the trees shook. Stefan yelled and jumped into the grave.
“Stop him,” Thurgood yelled above the gale. “He’s gone crazy!”
But Big Sal was strong, not nimble, and she was too late.
Stefan raised the hammer and pounded the stake into the corpse’s unbeating heart. Immediately a terrible, drawn-out groan rose from the grave.
Thurgood was horrified and lurched back, his arms up in a defensive gesture, and Stefan jumped out of the hole, shrieking in terror.
“Fools, it’s nothing!” Big Sal yelled to make herself heard above the wind. “Dead bodies do that all the time. It’s escaping gas caused by corruption.”
“He wasn’t dead long enough to corrupt,” Thurgood said. He tried desperately to hold on to his jangling nerves. “For God’s sake throw the dirt on him.”
As strong as any two men, Big Sal grabbed a shovel and got to work. Within minutes the grave was filled. Without a word she picked up the lantern, ran to the wagon and tossed the shovel into the back. She climbed into the seat beside the gibbering Stefan and cursed him for a pansy.
“Wait!” Thurgood yelled. He jumped into the wagon and roared, “Get the hell away from here!”
Big Sal needed no second urging and the old Morgan seemed to sense something was badly amiss, got the wind under her tail and lurched into a shambling canter.
Thurgood looked back at the grave. Was it Hiram Hartline standing on his grave or a trick of the fleeting moonlight? He didn’t know and had no wish to guess.
“Faster!” he yelled at Big Sal. “Damn you, faster!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
A shaken Gideon Thurgood jumped the next train out of Forth Worth and left Gabe Steel to look after his interests. Jasper Dunn was not pleased by this arrangement.
“Can I depend on the hangman to deliver as he promised?” he asked Steel.
“He told me to assure you that the shipments will arrive on time,” Steel said. “He’ll wire ahead to let you know.”
“I’ve sold all the product he sent me,” Dunn said. “I need more.”
“It will be forthcoming in the next day or two,” Steel said. His right cheek was bandaged where it had been laid open by the front sight of Hartline’s Colt. “When you move against Kurt Koenig and Luke Short I’m to give you any assistance I can.”
“You mean gun assistance?” Dunn said.
“Just that,” Steel said.
Dunn’s forefinger flicked to the man’s bandage, “You didn’t do much good against Hartline.”
“Had he lived, I would have killed him,” Steel said.
Loco Looper, who was standing close to Dunn’s desk, sneered, “Big talk is easy.”
“I can back it up,” Steel said. “Maybe you’d like to try me sometime.”
“No cross talk. Time for that after we take this town,” Dunn said. “Real or not, legend or not, Hartline was a big loss. We needed his gun.”
“He was fast on the draw,” Steel said, with grudging admiration from one draw fighter for another. Then, “Have you put together a plan yet, Mr. Dunn?”
Ford Talon had been sitting on the edge of his cot, but now he got to his feet and stepped closer to Dunn’s desk.
“Kurt Koenig will be a tough nut to crack,” Dunn said. “He’s fast with a gun and he’s got the backing of the Panther City Boys and probably the sheriff.” He took time to light a cigar then said, “Luke Short is the easier target. Apart from a couple of Irish bouncers he’s on his own.”
