Outlaws of Ryker's Pool, page 1
Outlaws of Ryker’s Pool
By the same author
Raiders of Concho Flats
Outlaws of Ryker’s Pool
Matt Laidlaw
ROBERT HALE
© Matt Laidlaw 2000
First published in Great Britain 2000
ISBN 978-0-7198-2261-2
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.
CHAPTER ONE
Dragged along in the wake of the Iron Horse as it snaked its way through the mountains of eastern Arizona, the ever-present dust cloud caught up and drifted between the line of coaches and the peeling timber buildings as the steam locomotive pulled the train into Dragoon, slowed, and ground to a hissing, clanking halt.
Already standing with the door held wide against its strap, Blake Harness waited a moment then stepped down into the glare of the sun, a tall, lean man in an expensive dark suit, incongruously carrying, in one big fist, a tooled-leather, Spanish-rigged Mexican saddle that was scarred and misshapen with age.
The swirling dust quickly filmed his glossy shoes as he picked his way across the parched, rutted ground, turned left past the open door of the telegraph office and walked on for twenty yards to where the first of the town’s flimsy plankwalks began and he could step up onto its warped and splintered timbers.
There he paused. Behind him the train’s brass bell clanked. Steam hissed. A man called out dolefully, and a door slammed. And as the big wheels began to rumble on the iron rails and the train pulled out, Tucson-bound, Harness put down the bulging saddle-bags that hung from his other hand, tipped back his black Stetson and wiped away the thin film of sweat.
The sun was high overhead, a physical weight beating down on the exhausted town. Still holding the saddle, Harness stood hip-shot and gazed west up the short, curving slope of Main Street, taking in the flimsy false fronts that made grand structures out of humble shacks, the horses dozing at shaded hitch rails, the scattering of sombreros among the Stetsons to be seen on the few men going lethargically about their business in the heat.
Without surprise he found that as he drank in the sights and sounds he was breathing through flared nostrils, eagerly wiping out the lingering stink of hot metal and machine oil and stuffy railway carriages and replacing them with the smells and tastes of his Western home.
A wry smile twitched the corners of his wide mouth at the thought of the comfortable living he had willingly abandoned, the dirt-poor conditions he would now face. Then the smile was wiped away, to be replaced by a frown. For the truth, Harness admitted, was that he had travelled West to face the unknown. The urge to return home that for twenty years had been a deep, nagging ache inside him had suddenly become unbearable, stirred into fierce, unremitting pain by an unexpected letter that had screamed its urgency between every smudged line.
Blake Harness knew that his father would never have written, begging for help. That his mother had done so – secretly going against the rigid principles of self-sufficiency set in stone by her iron-willed husband – had left Harness in despair.
He was a successful Boston lawyer. But on the day he received the letter he had packed everything that he considered of value into the saddle-bags he hadn’t used for twenty years, and walked out on a dazzling career. There had been no second thoughts. Three thousand miles away, on the small spread to the north of Dragoon in Arizona where he had been born, something was badly wrong.
A hot breeze lifted his dark hair, disturbing his troubled thoughts. He settled his Stetson, squinted into the sunlight to locate the livery-stable, and had bent to pick up the saddle-bags when he saw the two big men step down off the far plankwalk and start across the street.
In that region of a man’s back that is close to being unreachable, Harness’s skin began to prickle.
‘Blake Harness?’
One of the men was up on the plankwalk in front of Harness, built like a bull, his face a hunk of chipped rock. The blue shirt, gaping open to expose a broad chest matted with black hair, was faded and torn, dusty pants tucked into high stovepipe boots. Harness looked at the big hands, the twin six-guns hanging low on muscular thighs, then lifted his gaze to meet the stare of eyes that were like cold, wet stones.
‘What’s this?’ he said quietly. ‘The Dragoon welcoming committee?’
The man turned his head to spit, flicked a glance sideways to where his partner was whistling tunelessly through his teeth as he stepped up onto the plankwalk some twenty yards away. Then, as if reassured, he returned his gaze to Harness and grinned.
‘You could say that,’ he said, and as the hard grey eyes eyes flickered a warning, his big fist came up in a sweeping roundhouse punch that landed solidly on the side of Harness’s head.
The mighty blow knocked Harness sideways. His Stetson flew from his head. His foot came up against the packed saddle-bags and, arms flailing, he crashed to the plankwalk. The Mexican saddle was torn from his hand to skid across the boards and flop heavily in the dust of the street.
Flat on his face, ears ringing, Harness’s blurred gaze fastened on the black stovepipe boots. The warped planks under his face shook as the man stepped towards him. As if in slow motion he watched the man shift his massive bulk onto one leg and draw back the other boot.
Desperately, Harness tried to roll away from the kick. The boot came at him in a vicious, swinging arc. The pointed toe caught the side of his head, slamming him back against the wall of the building. As it drove on past and thudded against the timber, his attacker’s foot twisted. The silver spur’s sharp-toothed rowel dragged across Harness’s ear, and he gasped at the searing agony of ripped flesh, felt the warm wetness of blood.
A groan was forced from between Harness’s clenched teeth as he twisted convulsively, struggling to rise. The man stepped to one side and slammed another full-blooded kick in under his ribs. The blow drove all the breath from Harness’s body. He fell backwards, mouth open, flopping like a landed fish. Then the clatter of boots announced the arrival of the second man. He came in with a rush. His carefully placed kick thumped into Harness’s thigh. Agony knifed down his leg from groin to ankle. Wheezing, a red film before his eyes, he instinctively curled into a ball and huddled against the wall, arms up protecting his head.
Dazed, hunched up in agony, Harness heard coarse, sadistic laughter. A shadow fell over him. His Stetson was slammed down on his head. A rough hand reached out and his face was slapped violently, from side to side, the man’s big knuckles cracking against his cheekbones.
‘You’ll need that to look respectable when you board the next train out, Harness. Make sure you get on it. If you don’t, we’ll be the first to know – and feller, we’ll come alookin’ for you.’
And then they were gone.
As the heavy footsteps receded, Harness came slowly and painfully out of his huddle, rolled onto all-fours, climbed unsteadily to his feet. Blood trickled down his neck, warm and sticky. He tested his weight on his right leg, grimaced, leaned back gasping against the wall and desperately bent to massage his thigh. The movement brought on a wave of nausea, acid bile rising in his throat. He swallowed, gritted his teeth, and gazed angrily across the street to where the men were climbing atop two horses outside the saloon.
As Harness watched, they swung away from the hitch rail and galloped up the slope of the street towards the edge of town. One of the men rode with his hand holding the reins high. From his other hand the tooled Mexican saddle that had bounced into the street dangled like a trophy of war, a deliberate taunt to the battered loser.
A bolt snapped behind Harness. A blind rattled. He swung about as it flapped to the top of the wide window, then relaxed with a wry smile. A skinny old-timer was peering out of the mercantile, white hair mussed from sleep, sharp blue eyes narrowed against the glare.
‘You always wait this long when someone’s kicking hell out of your premises, Sam?’ Harness said, still gingerly testing his leg.
‘If it’s the Lannigans causin’ the ruckus, Hell can freeze over before I poke my head out this door.’ The old-timer cocked his head on one side like an inquisitive bird, squinted at Harness and said ruminatively, ‘Twenty years ago, if it had been you out there I’d have felt the same, kept well out of your way even though you was a kid of sixteen. . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Good to see you, Blake. Been so long, I didn’t think you’d recall my name.’
‘Sam Blade. It’s scrawled up there in letters a foot high,’ Harness said. ‘If a man wants a tin of sardines, some lye soap or a box of .44 shells, there’s only the one place in Dragoon he’ll head for.’ He jerked his head up the street and said, ‘What about those two, Sam?’
‘Ike and Gil Lannigan. There’s five in the clan, all told, not countin’ their pa.’
‘And what was all that about?’
The old storekeeper squinted shrewdly at Harness. ‘They knew your name; there weren’t no mistake. I guess you had enemies you didn’t know about.’
‘Me – or my pa?’ And now it was Harness’s turn to put a question in his gaze. ‘You know anything about that, Sam?’
A la
‘Dusty Rhodes,’ Sam Hazell muttered behind Harness. ‘Dragoon’s marshal these past six months. I guess he saw the ruckus, aims to question the only one hung around. . . .’
His footsteps stamped the boards as he went back into the shop. Harness recovered his saddle-bags, and was with some difficulty hitching them over his shoulder and straightening his back when Dragoon’s marshal called to him from the street.
‘I could talk to you out here, feller, but I’m kinda weary of gettin’ my brains frazzled by the sun. There’s coffee in my office, ice cold water that’ll get the caked blood off your face. . . .’
‘If you’d hollered, I’d have saved you a walk,’ Harness said in the mildest tones he could muster and, as Rhodes shrugged indifferently, he stepped awkwardly down into the street.
The marshal swung on his heel and led the way. It was a walk of some fifty yards. By the time half that distance had been covered, Harness’s thigh muscles had loosened. He followed Dusty Rhodes into his office with most of the lightness back in his step, and the realization that if he needed to know what lay behind the Lannigan’s unprovoked attack, he was in the right place to start asking questions.
‘Wash bowl’s out back,’ Rhodes said. He dropped into the chair behind his desk, skimmed his Stetson expertly onto a high peg and jerked a thumb towards a door set in the office’s back wall.
Harness dumped his saddle-bags, went through into dim coolness, saw the table with pitcher and bowl, and quickly sluiced the drying blood off his face. Water trickled down onto his blood-soaked collar, and he guessed his shirt and suit looked a mess. But even as the thought crossed his mind he knew he was measuring his appearance against the high standards set by a Boston lawyer who no longer existed. It was in a somewhat sombre mood that he returned to the office, the rattle of cups, the harsh glare of sunlight.
‘Set,’ Rhodes said, his greying head wreathed in clouds of blue smoke. He was flicking ash from a thin cigar as Harness sank gratefully into the chair in front of the heavy roll-top desk, drank of his coffee and glanced quickly around the dusty office that had faded calendars and politician’s pictures tacked to the walls, a heavy iron safe in the corner and a rack of rifles and shotguns shiny enough to tell of loving care and a lot of use.
‘So,’ Rhodes said as Harness settled, ‘what the hell has a gentleman like you done to get the Lannigans all riled up?’
Harness pursed his lips, thought a moment, then said, ‘As far as I can tell, for me the story starts in Boston, a couple of weeks ago.’ He reached into his pocket, took out the crumpled letter, and passed the contents of the envelope to Rhodes.
The lawman perched a pair of wire spectacles on his beak of a nose, flicked open the paper. He nodded thoughtfully, handed the sheet of notepaper back to Harness.
‘Clear enough,’ he said, ‘without going into specifics.’ He folded the spectacles, tapped them against his chin. ‘Firstly, there ain’t no names mentioned. Secondly, I’ve got to know your folks passable well in the six months since I pinned on a badge. If Joe’s in trouble – bad trouble – all your ma has to do is ride into town, talk to me. Why send a letter to Boston, wait a whole two weeks?’
‘I can add to your confusion, or maybe let in a little light,’ Harness said, studying the lawman, letting his impressions of the man soak in. ‘The day that letter arrived – hell, no! the hour it arrived – I wrapped up, permanently, a career at law it took me twenty years to build.’
There was silence in the office. The end of the cigar glowed red as the marshal inhaled deeply. Eventually, Rhodes sighed.
‘I guess what you’re sayin’ is, when a fine woman makes a wide detour around the law and a man gives up his career on the strength of a letter, it means one of two things: either the trouble Joe Harness’s in puts his life in immediate danger, or what he’s involved in is in some way illegal.’
‘Wrong,’ Blake Harness said bluntly. ‘In my opinion it’s not one or the other, it’s both. Someone, somewhere, is out to kill my pa – and you know damn well there’s no way that can be lawful.’
Rhodes slipped the spectacles into their case, then spent a long time stubbing out the cigar in an ashtray fashioned from the lid of a tin can. When he looked up, the grey eyes that met Harness’s were level, and honest.
‘Your ma wrote that letter more than two weeks ago. The message was such that she was sure to keep it a secret – yet when you stepped down off the train, two of the Lannigans were waitin’.’ The marshal’s smile suggested a measure of contempt liberally spiced with wariness. ‘The oldest of the five boys, Ike, he rode with the Clantons before the Earps damn near wiped them out. Ike stayed clear of Tombstone that day – and that’s the brainiest thing any one of them ever did.’ He shook his head. ‘What I’m sayin is, I don’t know what the hell the Lannigans are up to, but whatever it is, someone else is pullin’ the strings.’
He stood up, and Harness uncoiled from his chair as the big marshal came around the desk. ‘I’m tellin’ you straight, Harness: no word of any trouble involving your pa has reached me, either before or since that letter was sent,’ Rhodes said. He pulled thoughtfully at his lower lip, said, ‘So far I’ve had no excuse to visit the Lannigans up there in the mountains. Now I have, so I’ll ride out to their place, ask some questions. If I dig up anything juicy I’ll cut across to Blue Hills before heading back to town, let you know. Otherwise, drop by next time you’re in Dragoon.’
They shook hands. Harness said, ‘Thanks for the coffee, and your help, Marshal. If one of those Lannigans is sitting astride a Mexican rig that looks maybe twice as old as he is, I’d be obliged if you’d take it away from the thieving son of a bitch.’
He picked up the saddle-bags, felt the comforting hardness of the contents bang against his leg. When he walked out of the marshal’s office and stepped out onto the plankwalk, the heat was like a solid wall. He paused there, listened to Rhodes’s boots scraping on the timber floor as he came up behind him, and waited patiently to hear the words that had been there, in the marshal’s eyes, ever since Harness had walked into the office.
‘They’ve been around maybe five years,’ Rhodes said quietly, talking to the back of Harness’s head. ‘Long enough, and that means they arrived way before my time. But, like I said, those boys are short on brains. So I guess they ain’t yet heard the whole of the Blake Harness story. If they had, big as they are they’d have handled things different: guns, ’stead of fists, shot you down like a dog from the safety of a dark alley. . . .’
‘I guess they would,’ Harness said indifferently.
He settled his Stetson, took a moment to get his bearings, then walked away from Dusty Rhodes and set off at an angle across the street towards Sam Blade’s mercantile.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Sonny Dean’s in town,’ Sam Blade said.
The man he was talking to looked different, felt different. Standing up against the wide counter, Blake Harness was no longer a Boston lawyer in a dark suit, a man out of place in the dusty main street of the crumbling Arizona settlement of Dragoon. If he ignored his bruises he felt fitter and leaner, and in a hard-wearing vest, blue cotton work shirt and denim pants he blended easily into the cool interior of Sam Blade’s mercantile. He also looked down on the stooped figure of Sam Blade from an impressive height that had been considerably increased by the heels of serviceable cow-puncher’s boots.
‘Sonny?’
‘Waco Dean’s boy.’ Sam’s eyes flashed in the gloom as he waited for the words to sink in. ‘So maybe you’d best strap it on,’ he said eagerly, jerking his head from Harness’s lean hips to the worn saddle-bags that were all that was left of the distinguished man who had got off the train. ‘I guess you got it stowed away in them bags, right, the way your pa always does, out of habit. . . ?’
