Raiders of Concho Flats, page 2
‘No.’ Lane allowed himself a thin smile. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s likely to be on offer, but you always were better with a gun than a rope.…’
Saddle leather creaked as Rockwell Lane eased the big gelding forward and took up slack in the trail ropes. He turned as he moved the three horses towards the pines and the far side of the knoll, then yelled, ‘Just so’s you know where you’re going, if I recall the name right, you’ll be ridin’ into the Running Irons.’ He saw Rivers’s wave of acknowledgement, and watched the slim ranger splash through the shallow waters of the Concho.
Then, with a final grim look back at the cargo he was carrying, Rockwell Lane turned towards the decaying settlement on which someone with a twisted sense of humour or a mountain of optimism had bestowed the pleasant name of Concho Flats.
TWO
From some distance out the outlines of the town appeared through the forming heal haze like a wide-spaced cluster of crude timber crates that, countless years ago, had fallen heavily from an ox train and been left on the plains by the weary wagonmaster to bleach in the sun.
Far beyond to the south-west, almost lost in the shimmer, the ruined adobe buildings of the Mission San Luis were like buff-coloured rocks poking up out of the limitless grass.
As Rockwell Lane led the two horses at a walk past the outlying shacks he saw that Concho Flats boasted no main street but instead had at its centre an open space – eighty or ninety yards across – which, in one of the grander towns across the border, might have served as a plaza.
But in place of the sturdy, white adobe dwellings and stores that would have lent a picturesque charm and grace to such a square, false-fronted business establishments that had never seen a lick of paint leaned drunkenly in haphazard groups around this uneven area dotted with patches of parched grass and criss-crossed by old wagon ruts. Here and there a rickety plankwalk was shaded by an overhang supported by uprights bearing scars inflicted by bullet and knife. Alleyways between those structures that adjoined one another were choked with refuse.
As far as Lane could see, the only stone building in the town was the Concho Flats bank, which stood alongside a single-storey timber café with a sagging shingle roof. His failure to find the barred windows of a jail only confirmed what he had expected: if a citizen of Concho Flats wanted the assistance of the law, he would need to ride to San Angelo.
Eddies of drifting dust caused Lane to squint as he rode into the heart of Concho Flats, for with the sun a light wind had arisen that swirled erratically around and between the buildings. A tumbleweed skittered across his path and was bowled on before the breeze until finally coming to rest against the side wall of the town’s livery stable behind which a big corral stood empty. An unseen dog howled, sending a shiver down Lane’s spine, and through narrowed eyes he looked beyond the stable to a general store.
As he bore down on it, two men heaving a sack of grain onto a buckboard glanced up, and were about to return to their lifting when their eyes were caught by the following horses and their gruesome loads. Shock hit them as they saw the girl’s dark hair, the blood-soaked shirt. The sack of grain fell, and burst open. Ignoring it, both men leaped up onto the gallery and ran into the store, and as Lane passed by he saw the flash of a white apron in the shadowy interior. He was aware, without looking back, that the man wearing that apron had emerged to watch his progress.
Rockwell Lane stowed that knowledge for future reference, tacked onto it the reminder that in small towns the general store would stock new weapons, and their ammunition – then deliberately put those thoughts to the back of his mind.
Then he was drawing close to another two-storey building, set back from the dust bowl that was Concho Flats’s square. Its first-floor windows were blinded by filthy muslin curtains. Below them, set back under the overhang, batwing doors opened off a canted plankwalk. The flaking sign nailed above this gallery told Rockwell Lane he was approaching Reilly’s Pleasure Palace.
As he dismounted and tied up, Lane noted that two of the half dozen horses at the hitch rail, a rangy buckskin and a big bay, were lathered, the white sweat now dried to a hard crust by the hot sun. On one of them, the bay, that dried sweat was streaked with blood. The other wrung-out horse, the buckskin, was rigged with a McClellan saddle whose left fender was also streaked with blood.
And it was only after long moments of staring thoughtfully at those clear messages of guilt that he had known all along he would find here that Rockwell Lane became aware of the creaking of the batwings’ hinges, the measured tread of boots on loose timber.
‘Hell, you’ve got some gall!’
The man was tall and lean, his voice breathless. A sweat-stained black hat shaded a face that was unshaven and scarred and inherently vicious. A liberal film of trail dust coated the man’s hat, his filthy woollen shirt, the faded blue trousers with the yellow stripe down the outside of each leg. Twin Colts in greased leather holsters encircled the man’s hips, and even the jolt glass of whiskey held loosely in his right hand – that might, conceivably, Lane thought, slow his reactions – did nothing to detract from their menace.
‘Since when does bringing dead folk into town for a decent burial require nerve?’
Lane stepped up onto the plankwalk, and with a swift glance into the tall man’s colourless eyes he brushed past and went on into the thick gloom that reeked of stale beer and cigarette smoke, and was as silent as the grave. A red-haired, red-faced, blue-eyed barman about the size of an average buffalo watched his approach, big hands flat on the heavy oak bar. Behind the bar a fly-blown mirror threw Lane’s reflection in his face as he picked his way through the empty tables, a dark silhouette outlined against the bright rectangle of the door.
A second shape filled that brightness as the tall gunman followed him inside and stood blocking the exit.
‘You Reilly?’ Lane enquired of the barman.
‘Mick Reilly, or my mother was a liar, but as she died before I was born and I never knew my father.…’ The blue eyes twinkled. ‘What was the question again?’
Feeling the muscles in his back begin to crawl, Lane said amiably, ‘What justifies that sign over the door, Mick?’
The big man cast a glance over at the battered piano and the dusty faro tables, then winked broadly. ‘I suppose it all depends on your notion of pleasure – or maybe it’s just that you’ve walked in at the wrong time of day.’
‘Maybe I have at that,’ Lane agreed. ‘A beer, Mick, cold if you’ve got it, otherwise as it comes.’
‘As it comes is what you get,’ Reilly said, pouring beer from a jug while maintaining a straight face, ‘because the only certain cold place in Concho Flats is the widow Logan’s bed. Although,’ he added, ‘I’d rather you didn’t tell a certain Lije Coombs I said that.’
Lane used his left hand to accept the glass, washed the dust from his throat with a copious draught of the lukewarm liquid, then turned to face the room as a man coughed drily.
Sprawled in a chair behind a table close to the window, a slender man with a sweeping black moustache was watching him with amused, liquid dark eyes of the kind that are apt to switch instantly from good humour to controlled fury, from a spurious friendliness to intense hatred. Lane figured him to be part bad Mexican, part renegade Indian, with maybe some mean white tossed in to dilute the mix without reducing the strength. The man was hatless – hell, he would be, Lane thought: his hat’s ten miles back, punctured by one of Charlie Rivers’s bullets. A silk vest decorated with silver conchos was open to expose a faded black shirt. Tight Mexican pants were tucked into expensive, tooled leather boots.
His left leg was propped up on another chair, the black pants torn and stiff with blood. One of the man’s slim hands rested on the table. A cocked six-gun held in it pointed lazily at Rockwell Lane’s belt buckle.
The tall gunman who had followed Lane into the saloon remained by the door. His shadow lay long across the sawdust.
‘What Zac Slaughter really means when he talks about nerve,’ the man at the table explained casually, ‘is foolishness. Because only a fool’d ride into Concho Flats with two bodies, one of them Jake Arkle’s top gun, the other the only daughter of the biggest rancher on the Concho.’
‘Did I miss some signal?’ Lane asked, his mind freezing at the mention of Arkle’s name, ‘or can you see clear through walls? I made no mention of any woman.’
‘You denyin’ it, friend?’
‘Just askin’ how you know.’
‘Settin’ that to one side for a while, why don’t you tell us how you expect to get away with this. You can’t walk out of here with my pistol pointin’ at your belly – and don’t tell us you’ve got friends waitin’ outside, because you ain’t.’
Lane drained the glass, set it down on the bar.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I rode in alone. I’m a drifter, spent the night bedded down on a knoll alongside the middle Concho, woke up in time to watch three men gun down that girl.’
‘So if they was gunnin’ down an unarmed girl, what did Hackett do – shoot himself by accident?’
Lane shrugged, and looked pointedly at the man’s injured leg. ‘If he did, that makes two of you before the sun was all the way up.’
The man at the door chuckled breathlessly and stepped further into the room. The empty shot glass formed a glittering arc cutting through the shaft of sunlight as he tossed it to the bartender.
‘Why don’t we just string him up, Quatro,’ he said, ‘before he chokes himself to death on all them accusations and lies?’
‘Maybe you’d better check with Jake Arkle before you join in all that foolishness you mentioned,’ Rockwell Lane said casually. He looked directly at the seated man as he spoke, saw renewed interest in the dark eyes. With his back resting easily against the bar he took a sack of Bull Durham from his shirt pocket and began to roll a smoke while listening with some amusement to the sudden silence.
He knew full well that there was no way Arkle could have ridden from wherever the hell he’d vanished to inside Mexico and beaten the two rangers to the Concho. But if the dead man was Arkle’s top gun, then somehow Jake Arkle had a hand in whatever was going on around Concho Flats, and these two men would be wary of moving without his say-so. Both of them had been in on the killing at the Concho, and it was Lane’s guess that they were aware that two men had opened fire on them from the knoll. They were suspicious, thought he might be one of them but couldn’t be sure. If he was, they wanted to know the whereabouts of the second man – and killing Lane wouldn’t give them the answer.
Abruptly, the man called Quatro kicked his injured leg off the chair, climbed stiffly to his feet and pouched his six-gun.
‘Zac, you get over to the store, let Olsen and Patchet know what’s happened. Get them to load Jean Wallace’s body onto the buckboard and take her out to the Running Irons. If we ride fast, we’ll overtake them on the trail. Arkle needs to know what’s happened before the buckboard gets there. Sam Wallace’ll blow his Lop – which ain’t no problem – but when he cools down he might start thinking all the wrong thoughts.’
As Slaughter nodded and left the saloon, Quatro fixed Lane with a glance that was both angry and puzzled.
‘So what the hell do you know about Jake Arkle?’
‘Only that, wherever he is, he ain’t out at the Running Irons.’
‘How come you’re so sure of that?’
‘I already told you I’m a drifter. A man passing through makes a point of keeping his eyes and ears open. Last I heard of Jake Arkle, he was heading down the Bravo towards Juarez.’
Again Quatro’s black eyes looked speculatively at Rockwell Lane, taking in the tall man’s lean, muscular frame, the steady eyes with their cool, fearless gaze, the relaxed hands going about their work with paper and tobacco; the single Colt in the tied-down holster.
‘You always drift?’ he said softly. ‘Or, at the right time, and in the right place—’
‘And for the right money?’ Lane suggested, and cocked an eyebrow as he applied a match to the cigarette and looked at Quatro through the flame.
‘Yeah,’ Quatro said, and now the dark gaze was knowing, the thin lips twisting into a satisfied smirk. ‘I had you figured, feller. If the money’s right, that gun’s for hire – ain’t that right?’
Tongue in cheek, but with complete honesty, Rockwell Lane said, ‘It’s been for hire for the past ten years. A man has to make his living the best way he knows how—’
‘Don’t he just!’ Quatro turned away and limped towards the door. As Lane followed and they stepped out onto the sun-drenched plankwalk and looked across towards the store he said, ‘My advice to you is get the hell out of Concho Flats. All right, you look like a feller can handle himself when the shooting starts. But the man bossing the show out at the Running Irons ain’t going to be too damn happy about what happened to Hackett—’
‘I told you,’ Lane said carefully, ‘I saw what happened, but had no hand in the girl’s death.’
‘And I’m telling you,’ Quatro said, laughing, ‘forget the girl, start worryin’ about your own skin.’
Zac Slaughter had unhitched the dead girl’s horse and led it across the square. The two men who had hard-eyed Lane as he entered Concho Flats were lifting the limp form and laying it between the sacks of grain. Voices drifted on the hot air, and to Lane it seemed that Slaughter was arguing a point with the man in the white apron who had charged out of the store like an angry bull. Then, as the two men climbed aboard the buckboard and set it rolling away towards the edge of town, Slaughter jerked on the reins and swung his mount angrily around in a tight circle to send a swift glance over towards the saloon.
‘This feller you mentioned out at the Running Irons,’ Lane said innocently, as Quatro acknowledged Slaughter’s impatient wave and stepped around to mount his horse on the Indian side in order to kick his stiff left leg over the saddle. ‘Would that be Jake Arkle?’
‘Didn’t you just tell me?’ Quatro called over his shoulder as he wheeled the big bay and headed across the square towards the store. ‘Jake’s heading down the Bravo to Juarez.’
‘Yeah,’ Rockwell Lane said softly, as the two men rode after the buckboard at a fast gallop. ‘That’s what I thought – but now, well, I guess someone’s lyin’ through their back teeth, or me and Charlie have wasted time chasing a mirage.’
The squeak of wheels and the sound of a horse blowing issued from a shaded alley alongside the livery stable, and Lane stared in astonishment as a magnificent black hearse of glass and timber burst forth into the sunlit square and a bone-thin man wearing a battered top hat and long frock-coat brought it rattling across the square towards the dozing horse bearing the body of the man called Hackett.
Well, it looks like there’s one line of business that’s highly profitable in these parts, Lane thought, and as the hearse made a wide sweep to come in alongside the hitch rail outside Reilly’s Pleasure Palace he raked the almost empty square with one final glance then stepped down from the plankwalk, unhitched his dun and led it at an angle towards the livery stable.
From the gallery outside the store, the man in the apron watched him all the way. Then he went back into the store, to emerge a few moments later with a shotgun cradled in his left arm. He walked to the end of the plankwalk, jumped down into the dust, and with the twin barrels gleaming in the sun he headed towards the stable.
The gloom inside the stable left Lane momentarily blinded. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw a wide runway lined with stalls sloping gently down to a back entrance that opened onto the wide, empty corral flanked by outlying sheds for shoeing, storing meadow-hay, or lining up buggies and wagons.
Expecting a stale smell of caked horse ordure and sour straw, he was pleasantly surprised to detect only sweetness and the pleasing odours of leather, saddle soap and fresh oats. And when the ostler emerged, grumbling good-naturedly, from the rickety office nailed together just inside the wide front entrance, Lane saw untidy brown hair and eyes like hazy morning skies gazing keenly at him from a nest of fine wrinkles, in a face with the skin of a dried out apple. Short and wiry, wearing a faded denim shirt and brown cord pants, the ostler was twenty going on forty, and, although he looked like a man who would be at home atop a racehorse, he wore a six-gun in a tied-down holster more appropriate for a border gunslinger. Those eyes shifted from Lane to the dun gelding, and in them there was a subtle change and Lane grinned as he recognized the signs.
‘You must be the most contented man I’ve seen since I rode into Concho Flats,’ he said, and was rewarded by a terse answer that succinctly explained the philosophy that shone brightly in those eyes.
‘Deal with horses, not men,’ the ostler said, in a voice like loose gravel. ‘Got two back there with the blood of Arabs and the temperament of a saint, ain’t met one yet that was as ornery as most two-legged varmints.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Lane said, grinning as he handed the man the reins. ‘Climbed atop an old outlaw bronc one time, he swapped ends so fast he damn near screwed himself and me into the ground – but I must admit, he was an exception.’
‘Yeah, and that tale’s got more whiskers on it than my chin, and is just about as tall as the feller just walked in through the door,’ the ostler scoffed.
Lane turned to gaze up at the man in the frock-coat and battered top hat. This close up he was as thin and parched as a dried-out sapling. In his shiny stovepipe boots he stood some six and a half feet tall, the high crowned hat pushing that closer to seven.
‘Mister,’ he said, looking mournfully at Lane, ‘that feller you brung in belly down’s inside my hearse. We have a fine cemetery here in Concho Flats and at this time of the year it don’t take long for the hot sun to make dead folks a mite obnoxious to the nose – so if you’ve got any objections or special instructions I’d like to hear them before I make haste to plant him six feet under.’
