Ralph Compton the Law and the Lawless Read online

  “Hell,” Larner said.

  Dale twisted and beheld Marshal Boyd Cooper with his Colt at arm’s length. The lawman should shoot again, but he didn’t. He just stared.

  With a snarl, Larner raised his Sharps.

  That was when Sherm Bonner burst out of nowhere with his Colt at his hip and fanned three swift shots.

  Each was like a punch that knocked Larner back a step. He dropped the Sharps and, with a look of astonishment at the turn of events, oozed into a heap.

  Awash in relief, Dale slowly rose. “I’ll be switched,” he said, and grinned. “We’ve killed us an outlaw.”

  Chapter 6

  Mad Dog Hanks paced the cave entrance for the fiftieth or sixtieth time and grumbled moodily, “Ben should have been back by now. Somethin’ has happened to him.”

  Cestus Calloway was seated by the fire, counting the last of the money they’d stolen from the Alpine Bank and Trust Company. Without looking up, he paused in his count to say, “Ben can take care of himself. Quit frettin’.”

  “I’ll fret if I feel like it,” Mad Dog said sullenly. “Him and me are friends. It would rile me somethin’ fierce if he came to harm.”

  Cestus sighed and went on flicking bills with his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe the posse was slow reachin’ the lake. Maybe Larner’s horse came up lame. All sorts of things could have delayed him.”

  “Bein’ dead could too,” Mad Dog said.

  “Ben wouldn’t let them get close enough to plug him,” Cestus said irritably. “He’s been killin’ a lot longer than you or me.”

  Across the fire, Butch McGivern was picking at his teeth with a twig. “It is sort of peculiar, though, him takin’ so long. Must be on near to midnight.”

  Cestus stopped counting a second time. “I doubt it’s even ten yet. Anyone have a watch?” He never carried one himself. Keeping track of time had always seemed as pointless to him as working for a pittance to make someone else rich.

  Bert Varrow, seated on a small boulder, pulled his pocket watch from his vest and opened it. He put his ear to the glass, smiled, then said, “You were almost right. Twenty minutes past ten.”

  “There. You see?” Cestus said to Mad Dog.

  “Maybe one of us should go have a look-see,” Ira Toomis suggested while taking out his plug of tobacco.

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Cockeye said.

  Cestus shook his head in mild exasperation. “I am ridin’ with a flock of biddy hens.”

  The shadows dancing on the cave wall acquired form and substance as out of them came the Attica Kid, his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. “For once I’m with the rest of them.”

  “You too?” Cestus said in surprise.

  With his customary catlike motion, the Kid came around the fire and sank down. “The old man has had enough time, twice over, to get here.”

  “See?” Mad Dog said to Cestus. “Even the Kid agrees with me.”

  Cestus trusted the Kid’s judgment the most of all of them. The Kid was young, but he was savvy beyond his years, especially when it came to killing and robbing. Cestus had never met anyone so naturally gifted at being bad. “If he does,” he said to spite Mad Dog, “it’s a first.”

  The Attica Kid chuckled.

  “Look down your nose at me all you want,” Mad Dog said. “But I always do as you say, don’t I? I’ve never once let you down.”

  “Except for your gripin’,” Cestus said.

  “I can’t help that,” Mad Dog said. “I was born with a salty disposition, as my ma used to say.”

  “Salty, hell,” Cestus said. “You were born with a cactus up your ass.”

  Most of them laughed.

  Mad Dog colored but had the sense not to get mad. “This ain’t about me. It’s about Ben Larner. He can lick a posse of townsfolk without half tryin’. So why ain’t he here unless somethin’ went wrong?”

  “No one’s luck holds forever,” Bert Varrow said as he slid his watch back into his vest pocket. “Ask any gambler.”

  “I know that,” Cestus said with more heat than he intended.

  “Then why ain’t we doin’ somethin’?” Mad Dog demanded. “Say the word and I’ll go look for him. You won’t have to put up with any more of my gripin’.”

  “You gripe like you breathe,” Cestus said. “As soon as you get back, you’d find somethin’ else to gripe about.”

  “So can I or can’t I?” Mad Dog persisted.

  All eyes settled on Cestus. He resented that they were siding against him, and then realized how foolish that was. They weren’t set to ride off whether he liked it or not. They had left the decision up to him. He was their leader and they’d do as he said. Which was as it should be, given that he was the one who always went on about how he’d do his best to ensure that those who rode with him never came to harm. A backtrack was called for, in more ways than one. “I was goin’ to wait a little longer. Ben wouldn’t push hard in the dark. But you’re right, Mad Dog.”

  “I am?” Mad Dog sounded astounded.

  “Ben should have been back by now and we should send someone to look for him, but it won’t be you.”

  “Why not? I’m as good in the dark as anyone.”

  “Because you’re headstrong, for one thing,” Cestus said. “If something has happened, you’re pigheaded enough to ride into Alpine and do somethin’ that will cause trouble for the rest of us.”

  “I wouldn’t go into town without your say-so,” Mad Dog said.

  “I can’t take the chance. Someone else has to go. Someone with less of a temper.”

  “I’ll go,” Cockeye volunteered.

  “No. You’d be recognized, what with that eye of yours. So would the Kid, thanks to the newspapers printin’ his description so many times.”

  “Can I help it if they like to write about gun hands?” the Attica Kid said.

  “That leaves me, Ira, and Butch,” Varrow said. “I don’t mind going. Maybe sit in on a card game or two.”

  “I knew you would say that,” Cestus replied, “which is why it won’t be you. Those fancy duds might give you away. You were seen at the bank, close up, remember?”

  “So now it’s me or the cowboy,” Ira Toomis said.

  “Used to be I was,” Butch McGivern said. “Not anymore.”

  Cestus gnawed his lip, debating. Toomis was almost as reliable as the Attica Kid. Another born criminal, but not as quick on the shoot or as quick between the ears. “It should be somebody who will fit in.”

  “Are you sayin’ I wouldn’t?” Toomis said.

  “I’m sayin’ a former cowpoke would be better, what with all the punchers who come from the ranches to have a good time at the saloons.”

  “What do you know? It’s my lucky night,” McGivern said. “I’ll get to have some whiskey and maybe a dove if she’s willin’.”

  “Hold on,” Cestus said as McGivern went to rise. “There are rules you must abide by.”

  “More rules?” McGivern said. “We’ve already got how many? Twenty?” He began reciting them. “There’s to be no killin’ when we rob unless we can’t help it. There’s to be no drinkin’ at the hideout. We’re not to squabble or fight among ourselves. We’re not to take anything that don’t belong to us.”

  “You didn’t mention my favorite,” the Attica Kid said.

  “Which would that be?” McGivern asked.

  “We’re not to wipe our asses with poison oak.”

  Everyone enjoyed that one, even Mad Dog.

  “I’d forgotten I told you that,” Cestus said when the mirth subsided. “Damn, I am thorough.”

  It provoked more laughter.

  Butch McGivern stood. “What are the new rules? It better not be I have to keep my pecker in my pants. I’d like a tumble with a female.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Cestus rejoined. “Now
listen. If you have to go all the way into Alpine, take precautions. Change your shirt so it’s not the same one you had on when we robbed the bank. Don’t use the main street. Use the side streets. In the saloons, be careful who you talk to. And don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself.”

  “That’s just common sense,” McGivern said. “Don’t worry. I know what to do. I’ll find Larner or find out what happened to him, and be back here by noon tomorrow.”

  “If you’re not,” Mad Dog said, “we’ll all go ridin’ into that town and bring it down around its ears.”

  • • •

  The night was moonless, the forest pitch-black. Riding faster than a walk was out of the question.

  Even so, Butch McGivern was pleased as could be. It was rare that any of them were allowed to go into town alone. Usually Calloway had them go in pairs. To be on his own with money in his poke and not have to be back until the next day—Larner or no, he aimed to have a grand time.

  Grand times were also rare these days, much to McGivern’s regret. Back in his days of riding herd and branding and roping, he’d lived for his days off, for when he and his pards would barrel into town and let off steam by shooting into the air and whooping and hollering and drinking until they couldn’t see straight. He’d liked those wild times so much he took to sneaking off now and then to treat himself. One of those times, he got so drunk it took two days to recover enough to ride back to the ranch. The foreman promptly fired him.

  McGivern hadn’t minded. There were plenty of ranches looking for good men. He worked at another and then another and it was always the same. He’d take to celebrating too hard and his work would suffer and he’d be told to find work somewhere else. He acquired a reputation as being more trouble than he was worth, and eventually there wasn’t a rancher in the territory who’d have anything to do with him.

  He’d tried his hand at gambling, but he didn’t have the knack that Bert Varrow did. He’d clerked for a day at a general store, or rather, half a day. That was all he could stand of having some tub in an apron telling him what to do. It was demeaning.

  Desperate for money, McGivern jumped a man in an alley one night. The man’s poke yielded twenty dollars. From mugging he graduated to robbing people and then to robbing stages. It was risky, robbing them alone, but stagecoaches yielded more money than anything except a bank, and banks were even riskier unless you had others to back your play.

  One day he’d charged out of the woods to stop the Denver-to-Leadville stage, and who should come out of the woods on the other side of the road but Cestus Calloway and his gang? They had a good laugh over it that night when they were dividing their spoils, and Calloway invited McGivern to join them.

  Only a jackass would have refused.

  That was a year and a half ago. McGivern had no regrets other than he didn’t get into a town often enough to indulge his passion for liquor and women. Now here he was, soon to enjoy both.

  There was no sign of Ben Larner at Alpine Lake. There was no sign of anyone. Not even the horses they’d left.

  McGivern hollered Larner’s name a few times, to be sure. Receiving no answer, he rode on to Alpine.

  It was pushing two a.m. when McGivern got there. That late, most towns were shut down for the night. Not Alpine. About half of her saloons stayed open twenty-four hours, mainly so crews from the mines, who got done on the middle shift at midnight, would be tempted to spend their hard-earned dollars on whiskey and women.

  McGivern used side streets, as Calloway had advised. He picked a saloon that wasn’t well lit out front, and tied his mount to the hitch rail. Pulling his hat brim low, he sauntered in.

  Some miners were at the bar and some townsmen and other miners at tables, playing cards.

  In the far corner sat a pair of cowhands with a half-empty bottle between them.

  McGivern smiled. Luck was with him. He paid for a bottle of his own and carried it and a glass over to the corner. “Howdy, gents,” he greeted the punchers. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all,” said the shorter of the two. He had a slight lisp on account of his buckteeth.

  “Lefty and me haven’t seen you in here before,” said the other one. He was as tall as McGivern, with a shock of black hair.

  “Just passin’ through,” McGivern said. Filling his glass, he took a sip and sighed. He’d like to savor every drop, but first he had business to conduct. “I heard tell one of your banks was robbed today.”

  “The Alpine Bank and Trust,” the once called Lefty said. “We were part of the posse that went after those who did it.”

  “You don’t say,” McGivern said, scarcely able to conceal his delight. This was luck on top of luck. “Did you catch the owl-hoots?”

  “It was Cestus Calloway and his wild bunch,” Lefty said. “And no, they all got away except one. My pard here, Sherm, killed him.”

  “I helped,” Sherm said. “The marshal put a slug into him too.”

  “You don’t say,” McGivern said again, surprised he wasn’t more rattled by the news. “This outlaw have a handle?”

  “The marshal says it was Ben Larner,” Lefty said. “Some old buffalo hunter who went bad.”

  “They’re sure it was him?” McGivern asked to make small talk, since he knew very well it had to be. Mad Dog would be fit to be tied, and some of the others might want to take revenge too.

  “You can ask the marshal or the deputy yourself,” Lefty said.

  McGivern grinned and shrugged. “What do I care who it was? I’m not about to bother them.”

  “It won’t be any bother,” Sherm said, and nodded toward the batwings. “Here comes the deputy now.”

  Chapter 7

  For Deputy Hugo Mitchell, it had been a day he’d never forget.

  First there had been the bank robbery. He wouldn’t have reckoned that ever happening, not in a million years. Sure, the Cloverleaf Bank and the Red Cliff Bank had been struck, but Cloverleaf and Red Cliff were smaller towns. He never imagined the outlaws would try a town as big as Alpine.

  Then there was the gun battle at the lake. Mitch had never expected to ever be in a gun battle either. Sure, he was a deputy, but a lot of lawmen—in fact, most of them—went their entire lives without having to shoot anyone, or even having to draw their six-shooter. The way Mitch saw it, he was lucky he’d survived.

  Then there was the dead guy.

  Mitch had only ever seen one dead person, his grandmother, after she’d passed to her reward quietly in her sleep. He’d been ten or eleven at the time and his mother took him to the funeral and made him stand by the open casket and bow his head. It made his skin crawl.

  The truth be known, Mitch was never all that fond of her. His grandma was a crotchety biddy who’d liked to poke him with her cane whenever he did anything she didn’t like, and she didn’t like a lot of things: him tracking dirt into her house, him touching things she didn’t want him to touch, him eating with his mouth full. The list had been as long as his arm.

  Now he’d seen a second body, only this one had been shot to ribbons. The blood had made him a bit queasy, but he didn’t let that show. The others might laugh at him. It wasn’t manly to be a weak sister.

  Mitch felt no remorse that the man was dead and he’d been a party to the killing. Not when the son of a bitch had shot Mitch’s horse. By all accounts, Ben Larner had been a vicious killer. Larner got what he deserved.

  No, what Mitch felt was worry.

  It had dawned on him that wearing a tin star was more dangerous than he’d appreciated. Most folks respected the law. The worst he had to deal with were drunks now and then. Genuine man-killers were few and far between, thank goodness.

  But all it took was one, Mitch realized, to put holes in him as Larner had put that big hole in his horse. Or, for that matter, a violent drunk who refused to calm down.

  Wearing a ba
dge could make Mitch dead, and he didn’t like that. He was rethinking his decision to be a law officer when he strolled into the Daisy Mae Saloon on his usual rounds. The owner had named it after a gal he knew back in his younger days and carried a torch for ever since.

  Mitch was tired. He looked forward to the end of his shift so he could crawl into his bed over at the boardinghouse and sleep for eight or nine hours. He idly nodded at the bartender, scanned the room, and was about to back out when he saw Sherm Bonner and Lefty in the corner with another cowboy.

  Figuring he should say howdy, Mitch went over. The other cowpoke’s back was to him and Mitch didn’t pay much attention to him. When you had seen one puncher, you had pretty much seen them all.

  “Boys,” Mitch said by way of greeting. “You’re up awful late.”

  “We have to be back at the ranch by tomorrow night,” Sherm said. “Gettin’ our last drinkin’ in.”

  “Couldn’t sleep much anyhow,” Lefty remarked. “Not after today.”

  “That was somethin’, wasn’t it?” Mitch said.

  “It will be all over the territory,” Sherm predicted.

  “Thanks to the newspapers,” Lefty said.

  Mitch was tempted to join them for a bit. He moved to an empty chair to the left of the other cowboy and said without looking at him, “Howdy, mister.”

  The other cowboy grunted.

  “Did you hear what the undertaker is fixin’ to do?” Mitch asked, thinking the news might amuse them.

  “We have not,” Lefty said.

  “He told the marshal he’s goin’ to prop Larner up in an open casket in front of his business and charge folks two bits to look at the famous dead outlaw.”

  “Larner ain’t all that famous,” Sherm said. “It’s not as if he was Jesse James or somebody.”

  Mitch shrugged, pulled out the chair, and sat. “He’s famous enough in these parts. The undertaker figures he can make twenty dollars or better.”

  “Well, hell,” Lefty said. “He should give half of that to Sherm, since it was Sherm who sent the no-account to hell.”