Gunslinger 01, page 2
part #1 of Gunslinger Series
‘I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, that you are not used to the manners of a good society, and that alone will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.’
As she swept off out of sight the audience began to laugh, suppressing it with difficulty as they waited for the line that would rock them in their seats.
With his left hand, the man in the corridor began to inch open the main door to the box.
Left alone at the center, Trenchard remarked to himself, ‘Don’t know manners of a good society, eh? Well, I guess that I know enough to turn you inside-out, old gel. You sockdologising old man-trap!’
It never failed to bring the applause and laughter, filling the Washington theatre, drowning out the sound of the door opening. Feeling his heart pounding in his chest, the assassin took the short step to bring him directly behind his chosen victim. He levelled the Deringer at the back of the head.
And squeezed the trigger.
As Ryker squeezed the trigger to demonstrate the action, the hammer clicked forward.
‘No damned use as a target gun, sir, but it’s lethal at anything up to eight or ten feet.’
‘I guess that John isn’t going to be shooting at anything further away than that, Mr. Ryker. That surely is a mighty handsome little gun.’
‘Just about the best.’ He could have been handling a newborn babe, so proud was he of what he was showing. ‘Look at the workmanship.’
His customer had decided to buy the pistol, but the gunsmith wasn’t to be denied his talk about the virtues of the Deringer. It was swelteringly hot, not like the cool Springs of the north-east where the other man hailed from. And he wanted nothing more than to get out of the store with its stifling smell of oil and metal and polished wood, out into the open.
‘Two-and-a-half inches long. Carries a seven-sixteenths lead ball. Forty-four caliber. The mounting’s of German silver and there’s a percussion cap box in the butt. See? Just there.’
‘Yes. Lovely workmanship, Mr. Ryker. But I really should be—’
He was ignored.
‘Every Deringer pistol is well-constructed, sir. No better workmanship in the world of modern armaments, and I should know. John Ryker does not just purvey guns. I also manufacture them myself. So I pride myself I know what I’m talking about.’
‘Quite. But—’
‘Barrel’s attached by the usual small screw, going into the trigger plate through the tang of the barrel. Held by this flat bolt through the barrel loop and fore-end. Silly kind of fore-sight. Don’t ever guess your friend’s going to need to sight his pistol.’
The man laughed. ‘No. I guess you could say that one again, Mr. Ryker.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Figure of speech, Mr. Ryker. Just a figure of speech.’
‘I see. Where was I?’
‘Fore-sight.’
‘Correct. The stock’s black walnut, as you can see. This cross-graining is what makes for a typical Deringer. Don’t get that sort of workmanship on these derringers we were talking about.’
‘I see it says the name on the side, there.’
Ryker nodded. A stray beam of sunlight had broken through a side window, and bounced off the polished plugged dollar at the front of his hat, making the customer blink and shade his eyes.
‘It always says “Deringer Philadel” right there. Another way you know you’re getting what you pay for. The barrel’s a cut-down rifle barrel.’
The man took it in his hand, trying the cocking mechanism for himself, feeling the balance of the little pistol.
‘Kind of lethal, isn’t it?’
‘All guns are lethal, sir.’
‘Very true, Mr. Ryker.’
‘But only when they are handled in that way. Lay a gun on a high shelf and you can leave it there for a hundred years without it doing a speck of harm to a mortal soul. But give it to a man who intends to use it for killing, and there you have the danger.’
‘Yet you deal in death and carry guns yourself, Mr. Ryker. Is that not a contradiction?’
‘Possibly. But I have as one of my fundamental beliefs in life that it is better to carry a gun and not want it, than to want a gun and not to be carrying one.’
‘You’ve certainly convinced me, Mr. Ryker. I shall buy it from you. John will be delighted.’
‘You said that your friend was an actor. We don’t get many of that sort around Settlement. Is he well-known? I went to the theatre when we were in Richmond. Perhaps I know his name?’
The man was feeling in his pocket for money, but he stopped at the question. ‘It’s possible, Mr. Ryker. John isn’t a great leading man yet, but I would place a sizeable wager that it won’t be that long before the whole world knows of him.’
‘His name is ...?’
‘Booth. John Wilkes Booth.’
Booth’s shot exploded in the small box with the shocking concussion of a mortar shell. The forty-four caliber bullet burst from the broad muzzle of the Deringer and hit President Abraham Lincoln with the kick of a mule. It entered half-way between the left ear and the back of the head, shredding through the brain and finishing up immediately behind Lincoln’s right eye.
He had been leaning forward, all of his attention on the stage, and the impact of the bullet nearly threw him out of the rocking-chair. Then he slumped back, deeply unconscious, blood pouring from the head wound and threading from nose and open mouth.
His wife screamed, as did Clara Harris. Major Rathbone recovered quickly from the moment of stricken horror and tried to grapple with Booth, but the killer dropped the Deringer to the floor of the box and struck at the brave young officer with the English hunting knife, cutting his left arm.
Despite this Rathbone tried once more to reach Booth as he clambered to the rail of the box, but a second blow held him off. The walls were lined with engravings of Washington, and Booth caught a riding boot on one of them, throwing him off balance. His spurs caught in one of the flags that draped the Presidential box and he fell heavily to the stage.
Only a small number of the audience had the least idea of what was happening, but already there was screaming and men and women were out of their seats. The appearance of Booth caused greater consternation, verging on panic.
Despite having broken his left leg in the fall, Booth struggled to his feet, waving the bloodied knife, calling out in a harsh voice, ‘Sic semper tyrannis!’
The cry of ‘So perish all tyrants!’ alerted the crowd to the nightmare that had happened right under their noses, and the orchestra leader was one of those who made a desperate grab for the hobbling murderer. But Booth cut at him, tearing his jacket, and fled from the packed theatre into the blackness of the Washington night, clubbing down the lad holding his horse and making a miraculous and successful getaway.
He left behind him a dying President and the beginnings of a violent anger and bitterness that was to sweep the entire country in the desire for vengeance on any man who had played a part in the assassination.
No matter how small that part might have been.
It had been a good day for John Ryker, back near the beginning of the year. There wasn’t a whole lot of casual trade in Settlement, Arizona, and the sale of the Deringer had delighted him, so much that he closed up the store and went across to the small frame house where his widowed father lived.
The doctor’s house’s shingle outside was weathered and faded, though they’d only been there a couple of years. ‘Angus Ryker, M.D.’ was what it said. John made a mental note for the twentieth time to get up there and freshen the sign with a lick of paint.
But that could wait. He’d made a good sale, and the sun was shining. Good day for hunting.
As he stepped out back of the house, he felt the heat of the day baking his shoulders and he stretched under the black coat. It was good to be alive, with all of the dark shadows finally buried in the past.
Far above his head, a hawk hung circling on a .thermal, watching the dry land below.
Watching and waiting.
Chapter Two
John Wilkes Booth escaped safely from Washington, even finding time to break his flight and pick up a Spencer carbine that the conspirators had hidden in Maryland, at Lloyd’s Tavern in Surrattsville.
But the anger over the shooting of Abraham Lincoln, who had been carried to a tailor’s across the road from Ford’s Theatre where he died in the early hours of the following morning, roused the country, and it was inevitable that Booth would be captured.
His eighty mile trek, in agony from the broken leg, involved recrossing the Potomac and hiding up in a tobacco plantation across the Rappahannock River. There he was cornered and died just eleven days and five hours after he pulled the trigger of the silver-mounted Deringer.
Afterwards, swift and total vengeance reached across the country and all the conspirators were hanged. Even a Doctor Samuel Mudd, who had done nothing but dress Booth’s broken leg, received a sentence of hard labor for life.
There were riots in New York; anyone suspected of being a Confederate sympathizer was attacked and there were even lynchings. It took many long weeks before the flames of hatred simmered down to a smoldering glow.
However distant the connection, there were those men who were prepared to track down any person who had the remotest link with the butchering of the beloved President. And one of those many tangled threads finally pointed towards a gunsmith down in the South-West of the country, in the Arizona Territory.
The township of Settlement.
July 18th, 1864 had been much like any other summer day in Arizona. Cool morning with high light cloud. The sun towered like a brazen globe, baking the orange land, with a touch of a breeze to send the dust-devils scurrying around the dark mouths of arroyos.
The sun was setting way over the Santa Maria Mountains, behind Prescott, when the two men came riding into Settlement. Strangers weren’t a common sight. With a general store, a beat-up saloon with only two girls, a church that lacked a roof, a school that lacked a teacher, two dozen houses and a small livery stable, there wasn’t a lot that the place could offer.
Apart from the finest gunsmith west of the Mississippi. And maybe east of it as well.
A couple of snot-nosed children were playing in the dust, trying to encircle an ants’ nest with a fire of animal droppings. They looked up curiously as the horsemen cantered by. A woman cleaning the dirt off her porch also paused and watched them go past, resting on the handle of her broom.
The taller of the pair, shrouded in dust, tipped his hat to her, reining in his mare. ‘Beg pardon, ma’am. We’re lookin’ for a man named Ryker. John Ryker. Believe he sells guns.’
‘That’s his place, yonder.’
Both men looked where she pointed. ‘I’m obliged to you, ma’am.’
Before they could heel their horses forwards again, she spoke. ‘But Jack’s not there. Gone huntin’. Does that a lot when things are quiet.’
The shorter man laughed, then coughed, hawking a ball of red spit in the dirt. ‘This place don’t look like it’s anything but quiet! What d’you reckon, Al? High Jinks is if a pane of glass gets broke.’
‘It’s surely like that, Mr. …?’
‘Name’s Ned Hughes, ma’am. And this here is Al Varez. Sounds Mex, but he ain’t. Folks come from Spain.’
The taller man looked at his partner. ‘Guess you done enough talkin’ here, Ned.’
‘Maybe you fellows might like to come in and sit for a spell? I got some coffee on the go. Jack might not come back for some time. I can fix you up in our spare room. My husband’s gone to Tucson on business. Won’t be back for a couple of days.’
Unconsciously, the woman rubbed the flat of one hand down the front of her right thigh, pressing the thin cotton against herself and running her other hand up and down the handle of the broom in an unmistakable gesture.
The short man threw his head back and laughed. ‘That’s the best damn offer I had in weeks, ma’am. We left New York ’bout five weeks ago and we been on the trail ever since. I got sores in places where most folks just have places.’
‘You’re both welcome to come in a spell. I’d make you comfortable.’
‘I’m sure of that, ma’am. But our business don’t really allow that kind of thing. Not here. Be like a dog messin’ on his front stoop.’
The woman couldn’t hide her disappointment. ‘If you boys are sure ...?’
Varez tipped his hat. ‘We are, ma’am. And I’m real sorry not to take advantage of your hospitality, Mrs…? What’s your name, ma’am?’
‘I’m Mrs. Daughton. Lindy Daughton. And I’m real sorry as well. What kind of business you in, that takes you all that time on the trail? Must be kind of important.’
Hughes grinned wolfishly at her through a mouthful of chipped and blackened teeth. ‘Guess it is. But that trail might be endin’ right here. You could say we come all down here to the ass-end of nowhere just to settle part of a debt.’
‘Ned!’ Warningly.
‘Take it easy, Al. Mrs. Daughton here isn’t the kind of lady to go talkin’ her mouth around to everyone, now is she? I guess she’s not.’
‘You want Jack Ryker to pay or to collect? If you don’t mind my askin’ ?’
‘Don’t mind at all. Proud to have the chance of exchanging the time of day with such a fine lookin’ woman.’
She blushed and licked her lips, letting her tongue linger at the corner of her mouth. Hughes winked at his partner. In a bar-girl the gesture would have been more than interesting. In a dumpy, middle-aged woman in a torn print dress it wasn’t much more than pathetic.
But it had been a long, hard ride.
‘Al?’
‘Nope. We came here to do one thing, and then we get out of here.’
‘Sorry, ma’am. But you asked about the debt. You can say that we might be payin’ and we might also be doin’ a little collectin’. Sort of a puzzle, ain’t it?’
She smiled at them, uncertain if they were joshing her or not. There was a strand of hair hanging loose in front of her ear and she pushed it back, breathing hard, trying desperately to make herself attractive to the two strangers.
‘Soon be dark, Mrs. Daughton. If his place’s closed up, then where can ...?’
‘His pa’s place. Over there. The doctor’s shingle. Angus Ryker. End house. Beyond the church.’
‘That the church without a roof?’
‘Surely is. We didn’t have the money to finish it, and folks round here always have something else on their minds.’
Hughes sniggered. ‘I noticed that for myself, Mrs. Daughton. So we find the gunsmith there? I’m mighty obliged to you for your help. I’m sure that Jack Ryker will be just as grateful.’
They both tipped their hats once more to the woman and cantered easily down the street, raising a cloud of dust behind them so that they seemed like phantoms, hardly real, darker shadows within the shifting orange-red veil.
She watched them go, past the church, stopping at the weathered house of Doctor Angus Ryker. Only then did she breathe a deep sigh, and go inside, slamming the screen door behind her.
They had to knock three times on the scratched door before they got any response. The sun was sinking fast, throwing long shadows across the scrub at the front of the house.
Finally they heard shuffling feet. Both men reached down to their holsters and flicked off the leather thongs that held their Dragoon Colts in place, letting their hands rest down near the butts of the pistols.
‘Who are you and what do you want?’
The words were carried swaying towards them on a positive hurricane of whisky. Angus Ryker was an old man. Maybe not as old as he looked, but alcohol isn’t noted for making anyone look youthful. His hair was white, and streaked carelessly across his balding pate. His eyes were almost buried beneath red bags of puffy flesh, and his mouth sagged half-open. The hand that rested on the bolt of the front door was shaking.
‘You the Doc round here?’ asked Varez, unable to keep the note of disbelief from his voice.
‘Sure am. Don’t you read too good? That sign there says it all. Doctor of Medicine, graduated from the University of Aberdeen in eighteen thirty-three. That was four years before I married and moved to this wonderful country.’
Drunk though he was, the note of bitterness came through clear and unspoiled. The two men looked at each other. Their original plan had been to pretend that Ned was suffering from a stomach pain. That would have got them into the house. But now … maybe none of that was going to be at all necessary.
‘You live alone, Doc?’
‘Me and my son. Jack. Good boy. He’s out hunting at present.’
The years in America had not completely robbed Angus Ryker of the rolling “r” of his native land.
‘It’s really Jack that we wanted to see.’
‘You boys friends of his?’ There was an undisguised note of eagerness in the voice.
‘Yeah. We know him.’
Ryker moved out on the porch, so that the last rays of the sun soaked his face in its scarlet glow. They saw more clearly that his face was that of a man not all that far from the end of the line. His clothes were stained with tobacco ash and spilled food and drink. Mainly drink. His collar was off its stud and drooped open, showing the scrawny neck. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in weeks, and when he had last brought a razor near his face he’d missed whole parts of the stubble. So silvery patches showed around his nostrils and below the sagging lip, and in tufts in the folds of the neck.
‘He won’t be back tonight, boys. But I expect him some time tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.’
Varez spat in frustration. ‘I’m not sure that we can wait around that long, Doc. Can’t we find him?’
‘Nope. When Jack goes huntin’, then not even one of yon naked savages could track him down. But why don’t you come in for a talk? I’ve not seen a new face in too long. Folks here don’t chat much these days.’
