The Night Riders, page 1
The Night Riders
Jim Gatlin rode into Cedar Creek hunting the man who had framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. Pinkerton agent Charlie Pine had located the real train robber, called Hood, but outlaws Hidalgo, Wilson and River were also after him for the fortune locked away in a safe at Hood’s home.
Why was Hood’s location a dark secret – even in Cedar Creek? Why were Marshal Jax Silva and the two hard men, Green and Mundt, determined to keep it that way? Against overwhelming odds, Gatlin would have to face a bloody showdown and it would take all his skill and courage to unlock a truly shocking secret.
By the same author
Raiders of Concho Flats
Outlaws of Ryker’s Pool
The Robbery at Boulder Halt
The Deliverance of Judson Cleet
The Four-Way Split
The Night Riders
MATT LAIDLAW
ROBERT HALE
© Matt Laidlaw 2006
First published in Great Britain 2006
ISBN 978-0-7198-2279-7
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
This e-book first published in 2017
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Matt Laidlaw to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
For the Ryder boys
Peter, the lawman (Royal Military Police),
Graham Lee on the chuck wagon (head chef)
Both fine grandsons.
Prologue
The cantina was a sod-roof adobe hovel with one opening and no windows and had been old when Mexican president Santa Anna was waging a losing war against the United States. A rusting cannon ball was lodged in the outside wall. Blackened bullet holes were pock marks on the interior walls between torn, yellowing posters and reward notices and the huge cracked mirror behind the bar. That bar had been fashioned out of timber scavenged from ships wrecked on the Gulf coast, the tables from ships’ barrels. Smoke from a cracked, pot-bellied iron stove mingled with the fumes from cigars, cigarettes and cigarillos to create an atmosphere a man could chew and spit out into the chopped off tin cans serving as leaky cuspidors. The atmosphere was kept ripe by a sheet of stained canvas that was used for a door. It hung limp and heavy in the hot air, weighed down by filth.
The night before the three outlaws rode into the south-Texas trading post, the fat Mexican owner had used both barrels of a sawn-off shotgun to cut a Texan troublemaker down to size. The double charge of buckshot had ripped open the renegade’s belly and the dying man’s bright blood had splashed the bar and the barrels that served as tables and added flavour and colour to the glasses of cheap tequila and mescal. It had also dried in blackened runs on the mirror’s fly-blown glass, and liberally spattered the owner’s greasy countenance in which black eyes gleamed like wet river stones. That unshaven face remained unwashed.
‘Maybe,’ River said ruminatively, ‘he’s goin’ by what he sees in that mirror. A man looks in that, he’d figure the stains’re on the glass, not his face.’
Hidalgo grinned. ‘If that’s so, why has he not washed the mirror?’
‘Why don’t both of you quit idle speculation about a fat, no-account greaser’s personal hygiene, and get down to talking business.’
The man who had spoken last was a lanky, fair-haired gunslinger by the name of Wilson. It was a simple name, but he’d long ago figured that if he plugged enough men then one day he’d be as notorious as William Bonney but without the childish sobriquet.
So far, he’d sent five or six dead men to boot hill – he couldn’t be exactly sure of the numbers. That was satisfying, but notoriety and the cash he’d hoped would come with the killings were both eluding him: he had lately begun to realize that shooting penniless drifters full of holes merely to boost the name of Wilson was a losing game.
‘Business,’ Hidalgo said. ‘What damn business? So far, you’ve told us nothing.’
‘What I’ve told you is I was passed information by a man who got locked up in the pen a week before I walked free.’
‘And now you’ve been free a week of your own – and still we’re waiting.’
‘So now the waiting’s over. I tell you what I know. You get excited thinking of the rich pickings. This time tomorrow, we head north.’
‘North?’ River said. ‘Where north?’
‘Wyoming,’ Wilson said. ‘There’s a man living easy up there. Ten years ago, he was the brains behind a big train robbery. That train was taking cash to banks all along the Atchison Topeka line. But what that man did was so big, yet so easy, it taught him a lesson. Banks, he figured, were easy pickings. There and then, he vowed no bank would ever get a sniff of the money he stole. He’s got a big house. He keeps a safe in his bedroom. You want more cash than you’ve seen in your whole damn life – that’s where it is.’
‘Yesterday I was robbing banks,’ Hidalgo said. ‘Tomorrow I ride to Wyoming to rob bedrooms.’
‘Just the one,’ Wilson said. ‘Then we retire, say goodbye to stinking bars run by bloodstained Mexicans, dead worms floating in bad liquor, air so bad a man could choke to death.’
And he spat wetly, deliberately missing the nearest cuspidor.
Part One
Chapter One
Jim Gatlin rode down into Cedar Creek close to midnight, his slicker shiny in the light from the town’s swinging oil lamps. Warm rain was being driven by a strong north-westerly wind moaning down from the wooded hills, setting false fronts and signs rattling and creaking like a bad carnival band all the way down the steep twisting slope of Main Street. His roan picked its way delicately through deep ruts slick with mud. Light glowed in the open doorway of the general store, and he guessed the owner was up late checking his stock. The hitch rail in front of the saloon was unoccupied, the saloon itself in darkness except for a light at the rear seen through one of the dusty windows.
As he rode past, a dark shape appeared in that window, and stayed there. Watching, Gatlin thought, and he cursed softly. Without haste, he turned his head and looked the other way.
The time of his arrival had been chosen with care. This late, he knew most people would be at home in bed, business premises locked and deserted, Main Street empty. That had been a certainty, the heavy early-summer rain a stroke of luck. Put the two together and he knew few people were likely to witness his arrival; if he was seen, he knew damn well he would not be recognized. The poor likeness on wanted dodgers – if any were still around – would be more than nine years old. His soaking wet Stetson was pulled well down, and three-days’ dark stubble altered his looks and disguised the lower half of his face as effectively as a bandit’s neckerchief.
He was reasonably familiar with the town’s layout from talks with Charlie Pine. Pine had told him exactly where the marshal’s office was located. It happened to be at the bottom of the hill and directly opposite the hotel, Charlie said, where Gatlin should take a room while he took stock and got his bearings. Gatlin looked on that situation as both good and bad. Risky, because if anyone was going to recognize him it would be the marshal with those old reward notices gathering dust on his desk and their details lodged in his memory. But handy, too, because from a first-floor window he would be able to keep track of the marshal’s comings and goings.
Gatlin hugged the side of the street, ducking his head so that his dripping hat brim kept the worst of the rain out of his eyes. He’d left the general store and the saloon fifty yards behind him. Here, by the stone building that was the Cedar Creek bank, the street went off to the right at a shallow angle and plunged steeply downhill before levelling out in the trees on the town’s outskirts. As Gatlin eased the roan around the bend he could see, at the bottom of the hill, a single hitched horse dozing in the yellow light spilling from another stone building on the left, the vapour from its warm body like dispersing gunsmoke. The jail, and marshal’s office. Either the marshal or one of his deputies on duty. Opposite the jail, a three-storey timber structure clinging to the wooded hillside seemed to sag in upon itself in the pouring rain. Even from a distance Gatlin could see the sign clinging to its front, the writing on it weather-worn.
Cedar Creek Hotel.
Beyond it, on the same block, the town’s livery stable. A café. Between those two another business premises, with bold lettering high on the false front: Josh Notion. Guns. Pistols. Ammunition.
Gatlin took a deep breath, brought a hand out from under the slicker and dashed the water from his eyes.
There was no sign of movement at the jail as he drew near, but this was the first test of the many that were sure to come. This was when an empty street worked against him, when a solitary rider would not go unnoticed; when a keen-eyed town marshal would register the arrival of a trail-weary stranger and make a mental note to pay that man a visit.
Gatlin thought absently of the dark shape standing without movement in the saloon’s window. Then he heeled the roan forward and rode at an angle across the rutted street, away from the jail and towards the livery barn.
Halfway there he looked back at the jail. Through rain drifting across the open doorway he could make out an oil lamp suspended over a desk heaped high with papers, a newfangled typewriter, shiny boots crossed at the ankles, long legs and body leading to a blurred face and a thread of sm
Then he was all the way across the street and a little way downhill and the angle of view had changed. He dismissed the marshal from his mind. The livery barn’s big doors were open. He rode straight in to the smell of fresh clean straw, dragged the hostler out of his warm office and arranged for the care of his horse. Money exchanged hands. That done, Gatlin unstrapped his bedroll and slung it over his shoulder as he walked back up the street to the hotel.
The plank walk was wet, the boards warped. When he grasped the knob and pushed open the door he got the feeling knob and door were about to come off in his hand. He shut it behind him, heard it rattle and the latch click and stood for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
It was a small entrance hallway, with a passage leading to the rear of the building, stairs ascending to the upper floors. A half open roll-top desk stood against one wall, the roll-top’s slats coming off the canvas. On the writing surface Gatlin saw an open book – the register, he guessed – and a flat-domed brass bell, the kind you hit with the flat of your hand.
He trailed water across threadbare carpet to the desk and hit the bell. It clanked mournfully. But his arrival had been heard. The opening and closing of the door had been enough to alert the hotel’s owner, and footsteps were slopping down the passage.
He was a gaunt and bent old man, half dressed, with a straggling moustache and glittering eyes that peered at Gatlin from the black sockets of a skull decorated with strands of thin hair. An old percussion six-gun was poked into the waistband of baggy black trousers. The front of his torn undershirt was stained with tobacco juice.
‘Rooms’re a dollar a day,’ the apparition said, in a voice like hoarse breathing. ‘In advance.’
‘For a front room, first floor, and some secrecy,’ Gatlin said. ‘I’ll give you five dollars now. If I’m here longer, I’ll pay for each extra day. You keep your mouth shut, I’ll double what I’ve paid when I leave.’
‘You’re safe enough. My eyes are bad, my memory ain’t what it was and too many questions leave me confused. Sign the book, or let me get back to sleep.’
Gatlin reached under the slicker to his money belt and jingled five coins on the desk. There was a scratchy pen, and a bottle of ink. He scrawled his name, Jim Gatlin, making the signature almost unreadable. He hid a wry smile as the proprietor swung the book to scrutinize the page. The old man tossed him a world-weary glance, then poked dirty fingers into a pigeon hole and handed Gatlin a key with a tag.
The stairs were dark and creaking, the hand rail greasy. At the top there was a right turn into a narrow corridor stinking of mildew and coal oil. A lamp smoked on a table at the far end. Gatlin looked at the key’s wooden tag. Number two. He opened the second door along. Went in. Closed the door. Flipped his hat onto the chair, shrugged out of the wet slicker and draped it over the chair’s back, dropped his bedroll on the cot and hitched his Colt .45 to a comfortable position on his right thigh.
The light from the jail shone through rain-beaded glass and picked out the network of cracks in a ceiling stained a dull tobacco colour by years of cigarette smoke. Gatlin brushed past the cot and stood to one side of the window. When he hooked back the filthy net curtain and looked down he could see the sloping, rutted street shining in the rain, the far plank walk, the front of the jail and its iron roof. The door was still open but he was too high to see in as far as the desk; couldn’t tell if the man was still sprawled there, enjoying his cigarette.
Then his eyes was caught by movement directly below him. Breath hissed through his nostrils as he watched the bent figure cloaked in a blanket step down off the plank walk, start across the road, then pause to look back at Gatlin’s window.
The old man. After that quick backward look he turned away and seemed to dance across the ruts and the mud like a sprightly gnome, finally disappearing through the open door of the jail.
Thoughtfully, Gatlin let the curtain fall. When he turned, the jail’s light was strong enough to throw his faint shadow across the ceiling’s cracks. With sudden insight he saw them as rivers and trails criss-crossing a stained parchment map of the West, his shadow the giant shape of a man covering the route of an epic ride.
That long ride from Santa Fe had been the first leg of a journey to reclaim his soul. Over several weeks the roan had borne him through Pueblo and Colorado Springs, through Cheyenne and Laramie, along the eastern slopes of the Rattlesnake Range and across the Middle and North Forks of the Powder River. Cedar Creek was a settlement in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains close to Crazy Woman Creek. He had camped in those hills for a full day and ridden to town when the time was right.
The long first leg had been tough, but not beyond the capabilities of the average, hard-bitten range rider. What the second leg entailed was so far beyond Gatlin’s imagination that he had spent little time in contemplation.
Now? Well, now he knew for sure that he was in Cedar Creek – but that was all he knew. Until tomorrow.
Well, maybe not all. What he now knew for sure was that if his scrawled signature had been deciphered by the old man’s weak eyes, and if his memory lasted until he got across the street, the marshal sitting in his cosy office was listening to the news of a certain Jim Gatlin’s arrival in Cedar Creek. Which suggested that what happened next could prove very interesting.
Pensively, thinking of the task he had set himself and what lay behind it, Gatlin sat down on the bed and pulled off his wet boots. The rain had soaked through to his thick socks. He peeled them off, padded across the room and draped them over the edge of the stained basin on the wash stand.
He was standing like that, looking at his reflection in the cracked mirror, when outside in the corridor a board creaked. With a low, tight exclamation of chagrin, Gatlin drew his six-gun and swung to face the door.
Chapter Two
Josh Notion was sitting at the rough timber bar staring broodingly into his glass of warm beer. Light from the street struggled in through the saloon’s filthy windows to touch his broad back, the butt of a six-gun, the twists of the plaited leather band encircling his stained felt hat. The yellow light shining through the open door leading to the back room picked out high cheekbones, the black patch over his left eye, the gleam of white teeth under a bushy moustache.
‘We’ve seen strangers ride into town before today,’ Notion said, without looking up. ‘I’ve never mentioned it to Hood – never had cause to, never considered it my obligation.’
‘Yeah – but tonight I’ve got me a feeling.’
The woman who had spoken was on a high stool against the shelves behind the bar, in deep shadow. There was a sense of voluptuousness and, without looking directly, Notion could see the faint sheen of brassy hair, the glint of eyes like cool sapphires, the occasional glitter of gold rings and glass as she sipped whiskey.
Ten minutes ago, Notion had gone to the window to watch the stranger in the shiny slicker ride down the street in the slashing rain, and had immediately dismissed him as another drifter, an itinerant looking for a dry bed before pushing on north to Montana, or south to New Mexico. That was his opinion, even after he’d taken time to consider – but if Kitty Mac had got one of her feelings. . . .
‘Don’t ask me why but, according to Belinda, more than a year ago now Hood started actin’ worried, eyes distant, jumpin’ at the slightest sound,’ Notion mused. ‘I suppose for his daughter’s sake I should take a ride in the rain, tell him what I’ve seen. But it’s past midnight already, and that’d mean waking him up.’
‘You know what I think of the man,’ Kitty said. ‘Belinda’s a fine young woman, but if her pa got boiled in oil I’d be the first to raise a glass at his passing. Asking me to help him would be a waste of breath. But I can’t say what’s right or wrong. If you think dragging him out of bed is looking out for that daughter of his. . . .’
