Gunpoint / Name on the Dodger, page 2
“D—Dallas?” he croaked.
“That’s me, kid.”
“B—Bart?”
“Dead.”
Larry was silent a moment, and then he groaned.
“No! Not Bart! I—I can’t live without him ...”
“You won’t have to,” Dallas told him quietly and raised the Colt, thumbing back the hammer as he sighted down the rocksteady barrel.
“Don’t shoot!” Larry bleated. “I—I’m too sick to fight! Don’t!”
He shielded his face with his hand, trembling with fever and fear.
“No use, kid. It’s just your bad luck you were born a Winters. I swore I’d wipe Bart’s kin from the face of the earth, and you’re the last one.”
“What’d Bart ever—do—to you?”
Dallas eased up the pressure on the trigger.
“You mean he never told you?”
Larry shook his head slowly, unable to speak. Dallas remained silent a spell.
“Well, it’s too long a story to tell you now, and it won’t do you any good to know ... So long, you little weasel.”
The kid began to vomit. Dallas grimaced, held his fire and then slowly lowered the gun barrel.
The bounty hunter reached down and lifted the kid’s six-gun from the holster, ramming it into his own belt. Then he walked to Larry’s weary horse and took down the man’s lariat and cut a couple of lengths of rope. Dallas tied the kid’s hands behind him and then his ankles. Larry stared at him with sunken, fever-bright eyes. His teeth were chattering.
“I’ll get a fire goin’ and take a look at that wound,” Dallas said simply. “Then in the morning, we head back to Contention ... I reckon you might even live long enough to hang, kid.” Larry drew down a breath so deep that it made him wince. He clamped his jaw and clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.
Something more than fever was burning now in the kid’s eyes. It was pure hatred. By not killing Larry Winters, Dallas had made the biggest mistake of his life.
Chapter Two – Boy Into Man
DALLAS REINED IN the sorrel at the entrance to the canyon and waved through the dust at the three cowboys working in the branding-pen. He watched and rolled a cigarette as they grappled with a maverick and finally succeeded in burning the Lazy D into its hide.
He lit the cigarette and kneed the sorrel forward as one of the cowpokes broke away and climbed to the top of the pen.
Dallas handed him the burning cigarette, and the man took a long, grateful drag. The cowpoke’s lean face was smeared with dust and there was a trace of dried blood on one cheek under a cut in the center of a swelling bruise. He grinned and touched the bruise as he saw the direction of Dallas’s gaze.
“Hoof caught me, Ward,” he said ruefully. “Well, we ought to be through by tomorrow.”
He dragged on the cigarette again and handed it back.
“You’re ahead of schedule,” Dallas said. “That’s mighty good work, Buck. It’s Friday tomorrow, you know—so you and the boys can head into town and stay over Saturday if you want.” Buck grinned and looked around where the other two hands were wrestling another maverick down by the branding fire.
“Reckon that’ll suit us fine,” he nodded happily. “You gonna come along? You ain’t been in town for quite a spell.”
Dallas shook his head.
“I bought this land four years ago because it was a long ways from town. I like it out here. You fellers are enough people for me.”
Buck squinted at him.
“If you don’t mind me sayin’, so, Ward,” he told the rancher, “I’ve often wondered about you not marryin’ ... I mean, Widder Perkins in town and the storekeeper’s daughter, and even that Eastern schoolmarm we had around for a couple of months ... they were all right interested in you, but you ...”
Dallas’s face was closed.
“You’re talking through your hat, Buck.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t help wonderin’, though. I mean, you bein’ a rancher now that’s settled down—well, I’d think you’d have a hankerin’ for a family, a son to carry on the name, you know ...” Dallas held his stare.
“I guess that’d be fine for most folks,” he answered. “I was married, Buck. Ten years ago. No other woman could ever hold a candle to Jenny ... and no other woman can ever replace her in my heart.”
The rancher seemed slightly embarrassed and Buck nodded, taking the cigarette again for another draw. “I—er—I’ve seen that old tintype in the house ... Sorry, Ward, I should’ve kept my big mouth shut.”
Dallas nodded.
“How you feel about bossin’ another couple of hands?” he asked unexpectedly.
Buck arched his eyebrows.
“Well, I guess we could use ’em, come roundup time. But we can manage till then.”
“Mebbe. But gatherin’ up these mavericks has freed up a few extra dollars I’ve had set aside. I won’t need to buy replacement stock now, so I figured I might make Pearson an offer for that bottom land. It’d make good pasture, and we could run an extra hundred head at least. If we round up more mavericks ...”
“We’ll need a couple extra hands,” Buck finished for him. “Well, it’d give you a prime spread if you could work it, Ward. One of the best in this neck of the woods ... You figurin’ on expandin’ any more than that?”
“Nope. If I can get that bottom land for Lazy D, I’ll be content. The spread’ll be as big as I’ll ever want it then.”
“Yeah, it’ll be a good size, all right.”
Buck paused uncertainly and then said, “Seems to be my day for sayin’ things that ain’t none of my business, but a few folks in town say you started this place with bounty money.” Dallas looked at him squarely.
“That’s true,” he said firmly.
“Damn! I’ve worked for you for two whole years, and you ain’t never told me hardly anythin’ about yourself...”
“Does the blood money trouble you, Buck?”
“Hell, no,” the cowpoke grinned. “Just goes to show how close-mouthed you are, is all.”
The rancher remained sober.
“There’s only one part of the past I care to remember, Buck, and that ain’t it.”
“Sure ... Well, better get back to the brandin’, I guess.” Dallas watched him climb down into the dust and noise of the pen. He turned his sorrel and rode slowly out of the canyon.
A mile further on, he stopped his horse under the one tree on a ridge and sat with his hat pushed back from his sweat-damp forehead.
In all directions, the land was his. His pastures were green, right back to the distant ranch house. It was good land and his greatest sadness was not being able to share it with Jenny. The place they had was much smaller.
Well, Bart Winters had helped to buy this place, even if he didn’t know it. So had his kid brother, Larry. One dead, one alive: the bounty had been paid on both. He had Lazy D the same day the circuit judge handed down his sentence on young Larry Winters. The kid had recovered from his bullet wound just in time to get ten years hard labor.
Everyone had expected the judge to hang Larry, but it didn’t really matter one way or the other to Dallas. He had enough money for the new ranch. He had all the manhunting he could stomach. From the day he became owner of the Lazy D, he was a rancher and nothing more. That was what Jenny had wanted for him, all those years ago.
Dallas looked out towards the ranch house again. He would be content if only she were back there now, waiting for him. He could never share his life with any other woman.
He shaded his eyes. There was a rider approaching the house from the town trail. Visitors were something unusual on Lazy D, and Dallas was curious. He galloped the sorrel across the flats, arriving in the ranch yard only minutes after the stranger.
Dallas slowed his horse when he saw that his visitor was Deputy Sheriff Race Maguire from town. The cocky, hard-eyed young man gave Dallas a measuring look as the rancher leaned on the saddle horn.
“Howdy, Race.”
Maguire nodded curtly and said. “Sheriff wants you.”
“Why?”
“Ride in and ask him,” Maguire answered.
“I’m askin’ you, Race.”
“I was just told to deliver the message. Which I done. You comin’?”
“In a while, I guess,” Dallas shrugged. “Got a few things to do.”
Maguire shook his head as he said, “No. He said bring you in. Now.”
“Race, if you ain’t got the common courtesy to tell me why the sheriff wants me in such a goddam hurry, I just ain’t gonna put myself out and drop everything. I’ve got some chores that need doin’ first.”
He dismounted, facing the deputy and added, “And I aim to do ’em.”
As he turned, Maguire grabbed him by the arm. Dallas brushed the man’s hand away and kept going. Maguire stepped back, and dropped his hand to his gun butt.
“Draw,” Dallas said, “and I’ll ram that peashooter down your throat.”
The rancher was not wearing a six-gun. Maguire stared. And then he eased his hand away from the gun butt and shrugged.
“The sheriff keeps tellin’ me how tough you used to be. One day mebbe well find out how tough you are—”
“How tall are you, Race?” Dallas asked. “About six feet?” Dallas asked mildly. When the deputy nodded, Dallas shook his head and said, “That sure does beat all—considerin’ how small you look.”
The deputy flushed and then looked away.
“Sheriff said I was to tell you that it’s got to do with Larry Winters.”
Dallas stiffened.
“What about Larry?”
“Well,” Maguire said with pleasure, “I guess you ain’t heard ... He busted outta Yuma Prison. Sheriff figures he might come after you, seein’ as he made all them threats at the trial... How tough you feel now, Dallas?”
Prison had changed Larry Winters. He had gone in a boy but before a year had passed, that boy had become a man.
He had a natural toughness that had only showed itself as orneriness when he was under his brother’s wing. Now he needed it to survive. That quality, and his simmering hatred for the men who put him in prison, had gradually earned him a place of respect among the convicts.
It wasn’t like that at the beginning. The after-effects of his bullet wound kept him from the rockpile for a short time. Some prisoners figured he was being shown favoritism. When he finally joined them on the pile, the convicts were as hard on him as the guards. Winters put up with it for a while, until the day he collected a swollen eye, a broken tooth and what felt like a stove-in rib.
He decided there and then that he had all he was going to take.
He waited his chance, and when the guard wasn’t looking, he threw his weight against a boulder and set it rolling downhill, straight at the convict who had beaten him so many times. The boulder crushed the man’s legs and pelvis. The incident was recorded as an accident. But the prisoners knew the truth, and their attitude to young Larry Winters changed at once.
Winters savored the new way men looked at him and stepped aside when he passed. It gave him a taste of something even more satisfying than revenge, and that was power. Some resented him, naturally. One of them was found whimpering over a mangled foot that looked like it had been pulped repeatedly with a sledge hammer. He claimed a heavy rock had rolled on it. There was no such rock nearby. Another man had both arms broken in an “accident,” involving a wheelbarrow full of rocks. A third lost an eye and suffered broken ribs when the bunk above him collapsed one night...
Then Winters was left to run his own bunch of hardcase followers. For a time, he took on all rivals and looked like making a rapid rise to top dog. Then the governor of the prison warned that if there were any more gang “wars,” inside the penitentiary walls, he would reduce the already meager food rations and re-introduce the lash.
When one man was whipped until his backbone showed through the wet, lacerated flesh, the lesson was driven home and the point was taken. There remained two rival gangs on the rockpile, one led by Larry Winters, the other by a half-mad killer named Doyle. Apart from a few minor clashes, they made an unspoken pact to live and let live. It stayed that way until Winters heard on the grapevine that Doyle was planning a break. The man who told Larry the news had broken out two years earlier and had only been recaptured because a jealous woman had betrayed him. He was regarded as something of an expert on the art of escape.
“It’s gonna work, Larry,” the man said. “Doyle’s got outside help for one thing, and someone’s paid off the guards.”
“Who’s goin’ with him?” Winters demanded, and when the old man hesitated, he stabbed out with the butt of the cigar he had been smoking as a prerogative of his place in the convict society.
The man started to scream, but a cold-eyed hombre named Lister clamped one hand over the gaping mouth. Lister held the man while Larry blew on the glowing end of the cigar and lifted it towards the man’s eyes. Larry studied the captive’s face for a moment and then nodded. Lister eased his hand away.
“The plan’ll only work for four—he’s got three of his best picked out. I dunno just which ones; that’s gospel.”
When the opportunity offered, Winters spoke to Doyle. They were down by the creek. The guard had been paid to look the other way while they rested in the shade.
“I know all about the break,” Larry said without preamble. Doyle’s rugged face, made more menacing by a twisted scar at the corner of his mouth, showed his surprise.
“You dunno nothin’,” he said finally.
Larry smiled without humor. “I know, all right, and the governor is gonna know, too. Unless you make room for me.”
“You’re loco!”
“I go, or no one goes,” Winters smiled. “It’s that simple.”
He got up and walked back to the work gang, leaving Doyle to scowl at the creek.
Doyle finally agreed, but Winters knew he was planning to kill him as soon as the break was made, maybe even before they got over the wall.
Winters told Lister and another trusted convict, Jarrett, to be ready when the break began—he was taking them along.
“By hell, we’ll be glad to come,” Jarrett said, “but—ain’t there only room in the plan for four all told?”
“That’s right.”
Lister frowned. “But there’ll be—” He paused and used his fingers to count. “There’ll be seven of us ...”
Larry grinned tightly. “Four,” he corrected. “Doyle, ’cause we need him seein’ as he’s made all the arrangements—and us three.”
“But what happens to the hombres Doyle’s takin’ along?”
“They don’t go ... They’ll just be there as a diversion.” Neither Lister nor Jarrett had enough brains to know quite what Larry meant, but they found out soon enough on the night of the break.
Doyle was fuming when Winters turned up with Lister and Jarrett in tow. His own men growled menacingly as they crouched outside the dormitory, waiting further instructions. Doyle knew he couldn’t risk a noisy argument, so he bunched his fist and held it in front of Winters’s face, shaking it threateningly. Winters only grinned.
The signal came, and they all ran for the gate just as it was opened a crack to admit a late-returning guard. The man had been bribed to come back late from town, reeking of whiskey and cheap perfume. As the prisoners started to run, Winters spun and the home-made knife blade flashed in his hand as it seared across the throat of Doyle’s lieutenant. The startled man didn’t even realize he was dying at first. Then he fell gurgling, and Larry plunged the wet blade into the side of the second man. Jarrett grabbed the third and snapped the man’s neck.
Doyle hesitated in his sprint for the gate, but then Winters and his men were surging past him. Swallowing his anger, he went after them.
The scuffle had brought guards running from everywhere. Although those on the wall had been bribed, they turned their attention to the sounds below. Winters was at the gate now, using his blade on a guard this time. The agreement had been to knock him out, and as he felt the knife slide between his ribs, he screamed.
The break that was to have been made in silence was now a noisy chaos. It scared the hell out of the men waiting outside the prison and galvanized them into action. They rode towards the running prisoners with the getaway mounts and threw the reins towards the four dark shapes.
“You’re on your own!” someone hissed and spurred away into the night.
Minutes later, Winters, Doyle, Lister and Jarrett were riding hard in the opposite direction. Rifles hammered from the prison walls. There was yelling and confusion. Whistles blew. A bell clanged. Sleepy guards came from everywhere until the prison yard looked like a disturbed ants’ nest. Someone was yelling for horses, but the prisoners were long gone.
Winters had expected that they would have to ditch the mounts and find others, but Doyle led them down the banks of the Gila River. They rode into the water and angled downstream a few yards from the bank, covering their tracks.
“They’ll find where we come out sooner or later!” Larry hissed to Doyle. “This ain’t good enough.”
“You go it alone if you want,” Doyle snapped, “but if you want to get away, you stick with me—and shut up.”
Larry remained silent, realizing that Doyle had something up his sleeve. They thought they could hear distant hounds now and they could see the faint glow of the lights of Yuma, a long way back. Then they rounded a bend, and there was a raft, complete with steering pole, lying in the shallows.
Doyle grinned in triumph.
“Now they ain’t gonna find where we come outta the river—’cause we ain’t gonna come out!”
The horses splashed and plunged, but they were finally on the raft. Jarrett cast off the rope, and a few prods with the long poles sent the craft out into midstream. The current grabbed the raft then and bore them swiftly away.
In the distance, the escapees could hear faint cries and even an occasional gunshot as some trigger-happy posse member fired at shadows. Winters turned to Doyle, and the big man jumped back when he saw the knife.
