The Sudden Guns (A Hawk Western #1), page 9
part #1 of Hawk Series
‘It sure gets hard to keep,’ murmured the smaller youth. ‘If it weren’t for Ma I’d up an’ leave like you.’
Jared nodded again, rubbing at his gloved hand.
They went back inside the house where their mother was putting the finishing touches on the apple pie. There was a ham in the oven giving off a rich, mouth-watering odor of roasting meat and cloves, and a pot of greens was standing ready. Jamey fetched a jug of home-brew and poured a drink for Jared and himself, urging his brother to re-tell the story of his travels.
It was a warm, comfortable scene. It ended abruptly when they heard the sound of hooves in the yard outside. Jared stood up, turning to his mother.
‘I’ll not start anything,’ he said. ‘But it’s best I talk to him in the yard. If he’s still mad at me we can settle it out there.’
He swung the door open and stepped through. Jamey followed him out. Mary Hawk stood in the doorway, lines of worry creasing her forehead.
Caleb Hawk looked a lot older than his wife. His hair was streaked with gray; liquor had swelled his belly and hung wattles of flesh under his chin. His nose was red, purplish veins showing the excesses of his drinking. His eyes seemed smaller to Jared, reddened and piggish with dark folds of skin creasing beneath them. He climbed unsteadily from the wagon and shouted at Jamey.
‘Get this goddam thing unloaded, boy. You don’t eat ’til it’s done.’
He turned towards the house and saw Jared for the first time.
For an instant he stared, squinting his eyes into focus. Then recognition dawned on his face and his lip curled back in a sneer.
‘What the hell you want?’ he snarled. ‘Goddam horse thief. Get the hell off of my land.’
‘Caleb!’ Mary’s voice was a tearful wail. ‘Please, Caleb.’
‘Shut yore goddam mouth, woman,’ grunted Caleb. ‘I got the right to say who comes visitin’ here.’
Jared felt a surge of raw, red anger. Fought to control it.
‘I’ll be ridin’ on come morning,’ he said as evenly as he could. ‘I came by to see Ma.’
‘You seen her. Now get the fuck off,’ Caleb smiled. An evil, leering smile. ‘Otherwise I’ll throw you off. Don’t reckon it’ll be too difficult to take a one-handed man.’
He laughed, and Jared said: ‘Try it, you damn’ bastard.’
It happened fast. So fast that Jared was scarcely aware of his movements, sheer instinct prompting him to react.
Caleb grunted and turned his back on his son. He reached under the seat of the wagon. Turned back with a Sharps .54 buffalo gun in his hands.
Jamey shouted, ‘Look out, Jared!’
Mary Hawk screamed.
Caleb thumbed the hammer to full cock and turned the massive gun towards Jared.
There was a familiar weight in his hand.
The slight tension of the hair-spring trigger.
Muzzle flash. One single blast of sound. A drift of powder smoke.
Caleb Hawk grunted again. Slammed back against the wagon, staring down at the hole in his belly. The Sharps went off into the ground.
‘Jesus Christ! You killed me.’
Caleb stared at his son. He tried to say something else, but the words wouldn’t form. A patch of dark red spread outwards from the hole in his shirt. His knees gave way and he slumped down. Toppled on to his face. There was a larger hole in his back, a smear of red on the side of the wagon. A thread of blood dribbled from Caleb’s mouth. His legs kicked once. Then he was still.
Jared holstered the Colt. Turned to face his mother.
Mary Hawk was staring wide-eyed at her eldest son. Her mouth was open, frozen on a scream. Tears coursed down her cheeks and her hands were knitted together as though in prayer.
‘I’m sorry, Ma.’ Jared’s voice was hoarse, almost pleading. ‘He didn’t give me no choice.’
She shook her head, rocking backwards and forwards. Slowly, as if it pained her, she folded her arms across her chest, her knuckles whitening as she dug her fingers into the flesh of her shoulders. She seemed to be holding the shock and the grief inside her body, fighting for control of her voice, her movements. Her eyes moved to the body of her husband, then to Jared. She looked at his face, at his gloved hand, at his gun, then at his face again.
When he moved to touch her she drew back.
“I’m sorry,’ he repeated. Tm sorry.’
She said nothing. Just stood there, swaying gently, staring at him.
‘I’ll go,’ he said, the words choking in his throat. ‘Now,’
Mary Hawk nodded and Jared walked over to the barn. Saddled the horse. Jamey watched him.
‘It was self-defense,’ Jamey said. ‘You didn’t have any choice. He’d have killed you sure.’
‘It don’t make no difference.’ Jared’s voice was low. ‘It’s all finished now.’
He got up in the saddle and walked the horse out of the barn. ‘Look after her, Jamey. You’re all she’s got now.’
His brother nodded and shook his hand. Jared looked at his mother. She was weeping silently, the tears streaming down her face to drip on to her dress, dampening the material. She looked in his direction.
‘God forgive you, son.’
Jared nodded and rode away.
Chapter Seven
THE TRACKS WERE easy to follow.
The mules were driven hard so that their hooves dug deep into the sandy ground, and the unusual pattern of the team occasioned by the Apache attack set the prints apart from the others marking the trail out of Tucson. There were four horses along, and it looked like the hired guns were in a hurry to get dear of the town. Just outside the city limits they cut away to the north, heading in the direction of the Gila river. A few miles farther on they swung off to the northwest, moving towards Picacho.
The kidnappers had several hours’ start on Hawk and dusk was coming down before he reached the settlement. He decided to wait up until morning before going on: he was reasonably sure they were headed into Picacho, but there was still a chance they might skirt round the place. They hadn’t realized yet that they had the wrong people, or they were holding the Glazers in hope of drawing Garrett out. It was pretty certain they knew the storekeeper had hired a gunman to escort him west, so they would most likely be cautious.
Hawk’s guess was that they planned to fort up somewhere in Picacho and wait to see if anyone was coming after them.
Whether they decided to kill the Glazers or leave them alive would depend on their temperaments. There would be no profit for them in murdering Willy and Martha, and such wanton killing could stir feeling against them. But Hawk had known gunmen who killed for the sheer pleasure of the slaughter, and if this bunch felt that way, they could shoot the couple in anger, or to cover their tracks.
Hawk didn’t care much either way, only his promise to Garrett and Sarah prompting him to go on at all.
He spread his bedroll on the sand and filled his hat with water, letting the gray horse drink its fill before he took some himself. Then he unsaddled the animal and put a hobble on its forelegs, leaving it free to forage for whatever grazing it could find. There was a small pouch of jerky in his saddlebags and he stretched on the blanket chewing the dried meat.
The moon was on the wane now, its fullness reduced to a silver of yellowish-white. It glittered in the vastness of the blue-black sky, what light there was coming from the stars that pricked like silver pinheads over the great, dark bowl above. Hawk wrapped the blanket about him and lay back, looking up at the emptiness and wondering idly what the stars looked like from Los Angeles. Off to the north a coyote howled, the drawn-out wail sounding lonely in the night. Hawk closed his eyes and fell immediately asleep.
He woke cold and hungry, wishing he could have risked a fire. He splashed water on his face and saddled the gray, chomping on another piece of the tough meat as he moved towards Picacho.
The tracks of the Glazer mules headed straight into the town, so Hawk lifted the horse to a canter, aiming to get there before it was full morning. That way, he figured, he might win a small advantage.
The settlement came in sight while the sun was still fighting the dying night. It was a spraddle of single-story buildings running either side of the trail, no more than three hundred yards in any direction. A quarter mile out there was a signpost sticking lopsidedly out of the ground, a section of wind-scoured planking nailed to an upright. Someone had used a heated iron to brand the name into the wood, then added the population: one hundred and sixty-seven. Someone else had scraped that figure out with a knife and carved seventy-two beneath it. Then that figure, also, was scratched through, seventy carved in its place.
Hawk rode on wondering who bothered to take a census of the population.
As he got closer individual buildings took shape.
A windmill marked the eastern edge of the town, with a ramshackle corral built out to the north. There was a tail barn looking like it would fall in on itself if the wind blew too strong, and the abandoned beginnings of a church, only the floor and skeleton of the tower indicating its original purpose. A scatter of grubby shacks spread back from the one street, pigs and chickens rooting around in the dirt outside. There was a general store with dirty, fly-speckled windows, and a hardware store. A grain store, a bootmaker’s, a livery stable and a saloon completed the street, all of them closed.
The place looked still and sad; tired. It was one of those little towns that got built on hope and lived for a spell on dreams. Once, maybe, it had been on a cattle route, or there had been a stage line running through. Now the dreams were mostly forgotten, blown away in the hot, dry Arizona wind. And the town was fading, dying away as its citizens drifted off to larger places to start afresh.
Hawk reined in east of the windmill, staring down the street.
Tumbleweed blew over the packed sand, and a mangy brown and white dog ambled lazily over to investigate the newcomer. It squatted down, cocking its head as it scratched vigorously at its belly. Then it yapped twice and ran off.
There was no sign of the Glazer wagon.
Hawk walked the gray horse past the corral, then swung north through the scattered shacks. There was a yard behind the stable, fenced in with rickety poles. The mules were inside, cropping placidly on a pile of hay. The wagon was parked alongside the stable building, out of sight of the street.
Hawk dismounted and drew the Colt. He tethered the gray to the fence, close by the hay. The animal snickered a greeting, scenting the familiar mules, and began to eat. The man moved cautiously forwards, drifting to the rear of the stable.
There was a narrow door cut into the wall at the back, fastened by a simple latch. Hawk swung the peg loose and kicked the door open, hurling through to fetch up against the inside wall. His gun swung back and forth across the dim aisle, seeking a target.
The stable was empty of people, but four horses were penned in the stalls along one side. Hawk reached back to close the door, then checked over the animals. Four saddles hung on the panels dividing the stalls, each one with an empty rifle scabbard. Hawk grinned to himself and walked towards the main door.
He was halfway down the aisle when the door began to open.
He sidestepped, ducking into an empty stall and crouching in the shadow. A man came in, whistling a tune Hawk didn’t recognize. He was short, built heavy, with long red hair straggling over the collar of a buckskin shirt. He wore patched pants and a gunbelt tied down on his right hip, with a Bowie knife sheathed on the left.
Hawk watched as he ambled down the aisle, halting in front of a stall. The horse inside whinnied, stretching its head towards the man. He fumbled in his pants’ pocket, coming out with a lump of sugar that he fed to the horse.
Hawk waited.
No one else came in.
The red-headed stranger stroked the pony’s neck for a while, then went over to a barrel set against the rear wall. He filled a pail of water and topped the troughs in each pen. After that, he checked the feed in the stalls, doling oats to all four animals.
He was still whistling as he went back down the stable.
Then he stopped as Hawk came out from the shadows and stuck the Colt hard into his belly.
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Hawk rasped, ‘and hold your hands where I can see them.’
The red-head’s eyes opened wide, but he stayed silent. Hawk backed into the stall, beckoning the man to follow. He pressed against the railings, gesturing for the man to go past him.
‘Face the wall an’ put both hands up high.’
When the man was turned round with his palms flat on the wall Hawk shoved the Colt against the small of his back and hooked a foot around each ankle in turn, splaying the man’s legs so that he was leaning forwards, supporting his weight on his outthrust arms. Using his left hand, Hawk pulled the gun clear of the red-head’s holster and tossed it into the adjoining stall. He noticed that it was a Smith and Wesson Schofield, the hinged-cylinder model favored by the James brothers. The knife followed the pistol and Hawk stepped back.
‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.
‘Nelson Williams.’ The red-head’s voice was calm. ‘What’s yours?’
Hawk ignored the question.
‘Where you got the Glazers?’ he said.
‘In the saloon. There’s a room out back they used to keep a whore in. Got a lock on the door.’ Williams’s tone was almost conversational. ‘You’ll be the shootist Garrett hired. How come you’re trailin’ them two?’
‘Got paid,’ grunted Hawk. ‘Who’s with them?’
‘Waylon an’ the boys.’ Williams shifted his feet, beginning to feel the strain of his position. Tom-Paul an’ Clark. You’d be a damn fool to try anythin’. They’re good.’
‘Good as you?’ Hawk murmured. ‘They should be easy.’
‘Hell!’ Williams chuckled, apparently unconcerned. ‘I wasn’t expectin’ you this early. Anyway, where’s the point in killin’ me? You fire that Colt an’ the others’ll come runnin’. You wind up shot fer nuthin’.’
‘Garrett’s made you worth fifty a head,’ said Hawk. ‘Dead. I get another hundred on the Glazers if I bring them back.’ Williams craned his head round, trying to see Hawk.
‘Three hundred,’ he said. ‘What you gettin’ for takin’ them through to California?’
‘Five.’ Hawk began to wonder how much Williams would tell him while bargaining for his life. That’ll make it up to eight hundred.’
‘If you bring it off.’ There was a heavy emphasis on the if. ‘Man who hired us put up a straight thousand a head.’
‘That’d be Nathan Bellows,’ Hawk suggested.
‘Yeah. Real rich man. Makes the rest of us poor thieves look like beggars.’ He got more confident, his tone friendly: one professional killer to another. ‘Now a man like that, he’s not gonna argue over forkin’ up a mite more fer a fifth hand. Not if that extra man was the one really fixed Garrett. No sir. He’d hand over another thousand to that man.’
‘You reckon?’ Hawk said slowly. ‘What about your friends?’
‘They ain’t gonna argue,’ said Williams. ‘Why should they? We ain’t gettin’ paid to kill you. You throw in with us an’ the whole deal gets real easy. All you gotta do is bring Garrett an’ the girl to us, then we kill them. We can take the wagons, too. They should be worth a few hundred.’
‘Yeah,’ Hawk murmured. ‘You could be right.’
Williams chuckled, sure of himself now. ‘You better believe it, friend.’
Hawk glanced round. There was an empty grain sack draped over the wall of the pen. He reached out, dragging the thick material clear of the partition.
‘Trouble is,’ he folded the sack around his hand, wrapping it over the Colt, covering the cylinder and the hammer and the barrel, ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Hey, come on.’ Williams eased away from the wall, starting to turn. ‘You know it makes sense.’
‘Sure.’ Hawk jammed the Colt up against the red-head’s back and squeezed the trigger. To you.’
The sack fluttered as the shot tore through the material. A hole appeared in the folded cloth, the hessian smoldering around the edges. Muffled by the wrapping, the detonation sounded dull, no louder than a hoof thudding against the packed dirt of the stable’s floor.
Nelson Williams was slammed forwards, his face hitting hard against the boards. Breath whistled from his lungs and his eyes stretched wide with shock. His arms dropped to his sides and his knees bent so that the upper part of his body was flattened against the wall. Blood oozed from the hole in his back and his boots slipped on the straw-covered floor. Slowly, his face rasping over the planks, he slid down the wall. In the woodwork, level with the wound in his back, there was a bullet hole. All around it there was a spill of dripping red. His knees hit the floor and the downwards movement ceased. Williams stayed there, kneeling with his own blood trickling sluggishly over his face.
Hawk unwound the sack and ejected the spent cartridge. He reloaded, filling all six chambers of the Colt, then ran back to the end of the stable.
He went through the rear door and across the corral. He ducked under the fence and began to work his way past the buildings, moving parallel to the street. Next to the stable was the bootmaker’s, then the hardware store. A narrow alleyway separated the hardware store from the saloon. There was a shack blocking his path. He climbed over the worm-eaten fence and kicked a pig out of the way. Someone shouted at him, but he ignored the cry, crossing the dried-out garden to go over the fence on the west side.
The rear of the saloon was directly in front of him.
He paused, studying the building. There was a litter of barrels and empty bottles outside a featureless door, beside that a slant-roofed outbuilding with a single window. The window was boarded over and the door of the outbuilding had a solid-looking lock set into the wood. When he listened at the window he could hear Martha Glazer sniffling inside and Willy’s deep voice mumbling reassurances.
He went over to the door of the saloon and pushed it gently. It moved inwards. He stepped back, dropping the Colt into the holster and replacing it with the shotgun. Then he lifted his foot and kicked the door in, powering through the opening into the saloon.
