Killer, p.1
Killer!, page 1
Contents
About William S. Brady
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Also by the Author
Piccadilly Publishing
Copyright
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Chapter One
ROSE CITY WAS tucked between a couple of wedge-shaped hills just to the north of the Major River. The wind whistled down from the north-east, its strength heightened by the narrowing of the hills, and the hundred or so inhabitants bolted their doors and stuck furniture against the cracks and shivered. Other times, the sun seemed to stick up there in the center of the sky for days on end—no cloud, no let-up. The land would wrinkle up like an old maid’s cheeks and the river would be little more than a faint trickle over hardened mud flats. When the heat did eventually diminish, the wind would return, likely from the south-west. The ground would crumble beneath a man’s boot heel and the dust would be whipped up instantly into a cloud that would coat the skin, flail the eyes and shroud everything that didn’t move in a gray filter.
Now, the sails of the windmill at the edge of town moved easily in what was little more than a breeze. Clouds flecked the open sky with haphazard patterns of white. Way back behind the most distant hills thunder made a vague rumbling sound but no one believed it to be true.
The stranger who rode into town was thankful that the weather wasn’t tending to one extreme or the other. He had been riding a long way and his limbs were tired enough as it was. The sorrel mare that he was astride, a tall animal with a stubborn streak that showed itself whenever water was around, was streaked with a mixture of dust and sweat. So was the man’s face. His pores were clogged and his skin itched, especially between his legs and beneath his arms, and he was hankering after a hot bath and a shave.
He rode past the windmill and past the first of the town’s two livery stables, not seeming to pay a great deal of attention to his new surroundings, but not missing a thing: the cracked glass in the window of the draper’s store; the sandy-colored dog that lay curled into itself out front of the barber shop, its tail moving up and down a little as the man rode past. He nodded briefly in the direction of the aproned man outside the saddler’s, raised a hand in salute to the gray-haired old-timer who was loading sacks onto a wagon before the dry good store.
The residents watched him come through, careful not to stare too obviously, knowing that minding other folks’ business was as sure a recipe for getting into trouble as any they knew. But, without being too obvious about it, they all noticed with fascination the single-barreled scattergun with a specially rounded grip that sat in a cross-draw holster at his left side. Noticed, too, the black glove that was fastened about his left hand, despite the rider’s obvious warmth. Noticed something in his eyes, cold and calculating, that finally made them turn away and go back to their own affairs.
Just about the last resident of Rose City to notice the stranger was its sheriff, Charlie MacSweeney. Ten or more years back, he’d been known as High-Steppin’ Charlie MacSweeney, on account of his love of dancing. Every Saturday night they’d clear the floor at the center of the Rose City Hotel, one feller would tap his feet to make the tempo and then start fiddling, another would come in picking on his banjo, a third would get his mouth organ to his lips and blow. And Charlie MacSweeney would dance. Every Saturday night until the Livingstone Bunch from up Montana way came through twenty-four hours ahead of a posse of regulators and stock detectives. Charlie had been jammed up against the bar when the bunch got too much liquor and started swinging punches. Next thing someone had got cut up pretty bad and there hadn’t been anything left for the sheriff to do but holler stop and pull his gun. He was lucky they only shot him in the leg, the bullet tearing his knee-cap plumb away. Ever since that time, no one had called him High-Steppin’ Charlie MacSweeney—just Charlie, or Mac, or sometimes even Sheriff.
That was what the stranger called him now as he pulled the sorrel to a halt outside the lawman’s office.
‘Sheriff’
‘Mister.’
‘Got time for a few words?’
MacSweeney raised an eyebrow. ‘Reckon so.’
The man swung down from the saddle, stretching as he did so. He looped the mare’s reins around the hitching rail at the edge of the boardwalk and brushed the surplus dust from his clothes.
‘Come far?’
‘Pretty far.’
‘Headin’ on up Montana way?’
The man looked at him quizzically. ‘Could be. Why’d that be what you’d reckon?’
MacSweeney nodded at the stranger’s gun belt, the sawn-off Meteor at one side and the long-barreled Colt Frontier at the other. ‘Figured you might be out to hire them for a price.’
The stranger shook his head, no trace of a smile around the corners of his eyes or the edges of his mouth. ‘I ain’t no stock detective.’
‘Then what are you?’
They looked at one another for several moments.
‘Let’s step inside,’ MacSweeney suggested.
He swung his stiff leg round on the boardwalk and limped through the doorway and into his office, the stranger following.
There was a plain wood desk, part-covered with papers and a ramshackle pile of fliers. A ginger cat with a white smudge just above its nose sat on the chair. More fliers were tacked to a board on the side wall. Three rifles stood in a rack; a chain wound through the trigger guards but left unlocked. A blackened pot of coffee simmered on the stove. Off to the back there was another door, which led through to the three cells.
MacSweeney sat on the corner of his desk and was content to leave the stranger standing. He gazed at him for a few moments more, before nodding towards the fliers on his desk.
‘No use me lookin’ through that pile, I guess, see if you’re among ’em.’
The stranger shook his head curtly. ‘My name ain’t there.’
‘Your name bein’ what exactly?’
‘Hawk. Jared Hawk.’
MacSweeney made a quick snorting sound. ‘Some fancy name.’
Hawk didn’t say anything in reply, just waited.
‘What can I do for you?’ MacSweeney said at last.
Hawk looked past the sheriff towards the stove. ‘Sure could use a cup of that coffee. Got dust so far back down my throat, don’t feel as though it’s ever goin’ to wash away.’ He half-grinned. ‘Then maybe we can talk some.’
MacSweeney shrugged and took hold of a couple of chipped mugs; he poured out the strong, stale coffee and offered one of the mugs to Hawk. It didn’t taste much like coffee, but it did wash away the worst of the dust that was clogging his throat.
‘How well you know them fliers?’ Hawk asked several minutes later.
‘Thought you said you wasn’t on ’em?’
‘I ain’t.’
‘Then what’s your interest?’
Hawk leaned back against the side wall, midway between the rifle rack and a poster showing a stubbled, wall-eyed bandit who glorified in the name of the Pecos Kid.
Him and a couple of dozen others.
‘Feller by the name of Mahoney. Around five eight or nine. Like to be pushing a shade too much weight around his belly. Curly hair, brown shadin’ to gray. Used to pack a Smith and Wesson forty-four in a holster below his left hip an’ a cutthroat razor down inside the leather of his right boot.’
Charlie MacSweeney’s face had tightened the moment Hawk had started describing Mahoney. Now that the words were done, the side of the sheriff’s mouth nipped a little as a nerve tugged at it.
‘Mean anythin’ to you?’ asked Hawk.
‘Mahoney?’
‘Uh-huh. Mahoney.’
‘Should it?’
Hawk nodded: ‘I reckon.’
‘How come?’
‘Citizens and Stockgrowers Bank of Cheyenne put out a reward on him.’
‘Mahoney?’
‘The same.’
‘What’d he do?’
‘Held up the bank around noon a while back. Got clear with close to nine hundred dollars but not before he laid that razor across the face of the manager. Poor feller’s wife don’t take to lookin’ at him nights no more. Don’t like to feel his scar, neither.’
MacSweeney shifted the balance of his gun belt as he moved away from the desk.
‘You’re a bounty hunter.’
‘There’s worse things to be.’
‘Maybe,’ said the sheriff with a tone that suggested that it was less than likely.
Hawk looked at him with steely eyes and waited.
‘Why come here?’ MacSweeney asked eventually.
‘Got word a few weeks back. Someone passin’ through. Saw this feller behind the bar, swore he was Mahoney to a T.’ Hawk leaned forwards. ‘Course, you wouldn’t know anythin’ about that?’
MacSweeney shook his head. ‘That’s right, I wouldn’t.’
‘No Mahoney, huh?’
‘No Mahoney.’
Hawk stood away from the wall , spread his palms outwards in a failing gesture. ‘Oh, well, that’s the way it goes.’
‘Sorry not to be able to be of help.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘Guess you’ll be ridin’ back?’
Hawk’s face showed the first traces of a smile: it was a handsome face when he wanted it to be, lean and tanned, sharp-featured. ‘Got one or two things to do first, Sheriff.’
‘Such as?’
‘Get me a bath an’ shave. Steak. Somewhere to get that mare of mine tended to. Things like that.’
MacSweeney moved towards his office door, his leg trailing after him stiffly. ‘Chinaman runs a bathhouse down the street aways, close by Jack Small’s livery stable. Several places you can get a good steak.’
Hawk nodded, touched the tips of his fingers to the underside of his hat brim and stepped through the open door. On the boardwalk, he turned. ‘Got time, Sheriff, you might take a look through that pile of fliers. Just in case my description weren’t too near the truth.’
Charlie MacSweeney watched the stranger unloop the reins of the sorrel and swing easily up into the saddle. The rays of the sun glinted off the spur of his right boot as it swung in the air.
He rode down the street towards the livery stable at a steady pace and MacSweeney watched him every yard of the way.
There hadn’t been a deal wrong with Hawk’s description of Mahoney—except that he wasn’t called Mahoney any more. Wilson, he’d called himself when he’d ridden into Rose City maybe six weeks back. Ed Wilson. From Butte. Been a miner, laundry hand, worked in saloons behind the bar and in front. Jo Stannard down at the Rose City Hotel had sacked his Mexican bartender the week before and had been doing the job himself since. He liked the look of Wilson and gave him a week’s trial; then another week; finally hired him and told anyone who cared to listen that Ed Wilson was turning out to be the best damned employee he’d ever had. Knew his business, never served short measure or too long, and not so much as a cent missing out of the till. Wouldn’t even drink when he was on duty unless one of the customers forced a beer on him.
Yes, sir, industrious and honest, that was Ed Wilson.
Charlie MacSweeney turned over flier after flier. He was two-thirds of the way down the pile before he found Wilson’s face staring back up at him from what had to be a pretty good drawing.
Ed Wilson.
Eddie Mahoney.
Bank Robbery and Serious Wounding.
Two hundred dollars reward, dead or alive. The Citizens and Stockgrowers Bank of Cheyenne.
Charlie MacSweeney grimaced a little as his bad leg decided to remind him of its presence. He glowered. Every time that damned thing started acting up, he knew things were going to get worse before they got better.
Still, there wasn’t a lot more he could do. He checked the load in the Colt Peacemaker at his side and glanced for a moment at the five-pointed star on his shirt front. Never had known why he’d took the job in the first place.
He pushed open the door and stepped out onto the street. A couple of hands from the Taylor spread were riding in early and they waved in his direction and slowed long enough to exchange a few shouted remarks about how he wasn’t to throw them out of the bar until they’d spent every damned cent in their pockets.
Charlie MacSweeney laughed and nodded and stepped around their horses and headed diagonally across the dusty street.
Even by the time his hand touched the top of the batwing door, the sheriff hadn’t clearly decided in his own mind what he was going to do.
Hawk had.
He was midway through doing it.
His fingers tapped against the side of the tin tub, keeping time to some rhythm that he alone could hear. But then that was often the way he was: his own man. A wretched cuss when his heels got dug in, stubborn and arrogant like the proverbial mule. He’d been the same ever since he was a kid. Had needed to be, growing up the way he had on their farm back in Iowa. Hawk had been stubborn enough to leave home when he was fifteen, fed up with being told what to do by a drunken father who regularly set upon everyone in the family weaker than himself. Hawk’s mother, his sister Meg and his brother James—all had staggered away bleeding from the lash of the father’s tongue or strap. Hawk also.
Until the day he rode away at fifteen … and the day a year later when he rode back.
But that is to tell it too short.
The last fight between father and son was not to be forgotten or swept aside. In the barn of their farm, Caleb Hawk had seized hold of a pitchfork and charged wildly at his son. One of the tines had pierced the center of young Jared’s left palm, pinning it to the wall.
The tendons withered, the hand drew inwards upon itself and Hawk covered it with a black leather glove, which he kept on at all times.
He was wearing it that day he rode back to the farm, a year after leaving. Hatred heavy in his heart and revenge in his eyes. He knew what would happen if he went back … so, as soon as he saw him, did his father. It was almost with a feeling of resignation that he went up against his son that day: with a sense of fatality that Jared Hawk killed him. The funeral over, Jared Hawk left his mother and sister with his younger brother and rode away once more.
Since that time he had done a lot of riding.
A lot of killing.
He had spent time with a fine man, a man you could learn from, a peacemaker from Texas by the name of John T. McLain. McLain had been more than a friend; he had been like a father. More than his own father had ever been.
But now McLain was dead too, and Hawk was a lonely man.
He lifted the water inside his cupped hands and let it fall over his head, his shoulders and his back. He lathered himself and began to scrub the dirt of too many trails away from his still-young skin. When he was McLain’s age, he wondered, would some young gunfighter look up to him as a model, want to base his life upon the way he, Hawk, had lived?
Hawk sank down deeper into the tub and sighed shortly—why the hell did he have to let himself get to thinking? Thinking that way. It never did him any good. Never. Better to stick to what he knew he’d come for; better to concentrate on how he was going to persuade the man called Mahoney to come back with him.
Supposing that his instincts were right and that Mahoney was here in Rose City?
Supposing that the rumor was correct?
Hawk thought about the sheriff and the expression on his face when he’d listened to the description of the wanted man. He hadn’t wanted Hawk to know that he recognized it, but he didn’t have good enough control. Hawk reckoned the sheriff would be a poor poker player.
He wondered what he was like with a gun … and hoped, kind of forlornly, that before the day was out he wouldn’t be forced to find out the answer.
Around Hawk the water was getting cold; a thick rime of gray scum had formed on the surface.
Time to get out, dry down, and get on with it.
‘Ed?’
‘Yeah?’
Ed Wilson—the man known to Hawk and the Citizens and Stockgrowers Bank of Cheyenne as Mahoney—spun round from where he was crouched behind the bar, moving a new barrel of beer into place.
‘You got a minute?’
‘Sure thing, Sheriff. Just give me a second here, will you?’
Mahoney felt something tighten across his chest. Of course there was nothing in the sheriff wanting to talk to him that meant his game was up, but that damned constriction that made it suddenly difficult to breathe had to mean something.
He finished adjusting the barrel and came round the end of the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. Over to the left of the striped apron the butt of his Smith and Wesson .44 announced itself. He saw that Charlie MacSweeney had his gun buckled on at his hip, but that was normal, nothing to read into that. At least he hadn’t come in brandishing a sawn-off or nothing like that.
Maybe it was going to be all right.
Maybe …
‘Just talkin’ to a feller back at the office.’ MacSweeney spoke slowly—more so than usual, surely?—and seemed to be watching the barkeep’s face more closely than he normally did. ‘Seems to knows you,’ MacSweeney drawled on. ‘Reckoned it was you, anyhow.’
Mahoney’s mouth was suddenly dry, and he wet his lips with his tongue; but almost immediately they were dry again.
