Authors: William W. Johnstone
Sidewinders (17 page)
A figure appeared in the doorway and paused, turning back slightly to say, “Good night, Miss Lauralee. You sure you don't need me anymore?”
Lauralee's voice came from somewhere inside the saloon.
“No, Barney, that's all right,” she said. “It's been a long day. You go on home and get some rest.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Barney Dunn closed the saloon's rear door behind him.
“That's him,” Scratch breathed as he leaned close to Bo's ear.
“I know. I saw him at the hearing. We'll follow him.”
Dunn ambled along the alley with his hands stuck in his pockets. He didn't seem disturbed by the fact that this was where he had witnessed a brutal murder and nearly been killed himself. He whistled a sprightly tune under his breath as if he didn't have a care in the world.
That was sort of odd, thought Bo. And it made him more eager than ever to ask the bartender some questions.
They allowed Dunn to get a short lead on them, then followed with the stealth that had saved their lives on many occasions in the past. In addition to the saloons, gambling dens, and bawdy houses on this side of the creek, there were also a number of small cabins where the people who worked in those establishments lived. Bo figured that Barney Dunn was headed for one of those dwellings.
He was about to tap Scratch on the shoulder and indicate with hand signals that they should go ahead and grab the bartender, when Dunn abruptly veered off his course and headed for a dilapidated old barn. Maybe that was where he had his bunk, Bo thought.
Some instinct made him hesitate before jumping Dunn, though. He whispered to Scratch, “Go back and get the horses. Be as quiet about it as you can.”
“You reckon Dunn lives in that barn?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he's got a horse of his own in there.”
Bo waited next to the thick trunk of a post oak while Scratch hurried back to the shed to fetch their horses. He watched as Barney Dunn went into the barn. A dim glow from inside told him that Dunn had lit a candle or a lamp.
The light burned only for a few minutes, though, before it went out again. Dunn might have turned in for the night.
Thudding hoofbeats told Bo that wasn't the case. Dunn rode out of the barn on horseback, swaying and bouncing in the saddle even though his mount wasn't going very fast. The Easterner clearly wasn't an experienced rider, but he was able to stay in the saddle as he turned the horse and headed east. He was out of sight, vanishing into the night, by the time Scratch returned with their horses.
“What happened?” he asked Bo.
“Dunn saddled up a horse and rode out.” Bo pointed. “That way.”
Scratch bit back a curse.
“You let him get away?”
Bo smiled and said, “Not so's you'd notice. We can catch up to him and trail him without any trouble.”
“Ah,” Scratch said in understanding. “You want to see where he's going.”
“That's right,” Bo said as he swung up into the saddle. “It may not have anything to do with those killings, but I figure it won't hurt to find out for sure.”
Scratch muttered agreement, and the two of them set out on the trail of the suddenly mysterious bartender.
CHAPTER 24
Bo figured that as much trouble as their quarry had been having just staying mounted and keeping the horse moving, Dunn wouldn't be paying much attention to anything going on behind him. Even so, he and Scratch were careful not to get too close to the man they were trailing. Once they were near enough to hear Dunn's horse, they hung back so he wouldn't notice them.
“Where do you reckon he's goin'?” Scratch quietly asked.
“I don't have any idea,” Bo replied honestly. “As far as I know, Dunn's just a bartender. He shouldn't have any reason to be wandering around the countryside like this, unless maybe he has a place out here where he's been living.”
“He don't strike me as the sort who'd live in the country.”
“Me, neither,” Bo agreed. “He can't be going very far, though. If he is, he'll be mighty sore by the time he gets there, the way he was bouncing in the saddle.”
After a mile or so, the trail entered a long, narrow valley between a couple of wooded hills. Bo spotted a light and pointed it out to Scratch.
“Looks like there's some sort of cabin up ahead,” he said. “Could be we were wrong about Dunn living out here.”
“Not even a dude like him would have gone off and left a lantern burnin',” Scratch said. “You reckon he's got somebody stayin' with him?”
“We're about to find out. We'd better get down and go the rest of the way on foot.”
They dismounted and left the horses behind, tied this time to a scrubby mesquite. Bo took along Scratch's Winchester since his Colt was back in Bear Creek, locked up in a drawer in Marshal Haltom's desk.
Silvery illumination from the moon and stars washed over the landscape and revealed a log cabin, the rear of which butted up against one of the hillsides. Smoke curled from the stone chimney at one end of the cabin. The door hung open, letting light from inside spill out.
Someone was definitely home.
Bo and Scratch knelt behind some brush and watched as Barney Dunn rode up to the cabin. The bartender hauled back on the horse's reins and said, “Whoa. Whoa, I tell you.”
The horse stopped. Dunn dismounted awkwardly. As he tied the reins to a post driven into the ground, he called, “Jake? Jake, are you in there? You know you're not supposed to have the door open like that!”
Bo and Scratch glanced at each other. Scratch whispered, “Who's Jake?”
Bo shook his head. He was certain that name hadn't come up in any connection since he and Scratch had been back here in their old stomping grounds.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure appeared in the doorway. With the light behind the man, Bo and Scratch couldn't make out any more details about him. The man said, “Hello, Barney. I'm sorry about the door. It got smoky . . . inside the cabin. I had to . . . open the door to let some of the smoke out.”
The man spoke in a slow, halting way, as if his brain didn't work very fast.
Dunn grunted and said, “That's all right, I guess, Jake. But don't let it happen again. You know you have to do what we tell you, because we're just lookin' out for you.”
“I know, Barney,” the man called Jake said. “I'm glad you look out for me. I'm too dumb to . . . look out for myself.”
“Yeah, yeah, just go on back inside. The others'll be here soon.”
“Good. I always get lonely . . . when I'm left here by myself.”
Scratch leaned closer to Bo and whispered, “That hombre sounds like he's got the brain of a kid, even though he's a grown man. Somethin' about him is familiar, too.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” Bo replied, equally quiet. An unaccountable chill went through him as he looked at the man in the doorway.
Jake started to turn and go back into the cabin the way Dunn had told him to. He stopped to look back at the bartender and announced, “I saw a deer today, Barney. It came up . . . almost right to the cabin.”
The way Jake was standing now, light from inside the cabin played over part of his face. Bo and Scratch still couldn't get a good look at him, but a shiver went through Bo anyway. He felt like he had seen Jake before, like he ought to know who the man was.
Then Dunn stepped through the door, shooing Jake ahead of him, and closed it behind him.
After a moment Scratch said, “Somethin' mighty strange is goin' on here, Bo. Who is that fella? And who are the others that Dunn said somethin' about?”
“I don't know. I want to get closer before they show up, though. I want a better look at that hombre Jake.”
“Are you thinkin'â”
“I just want a better look at him, that's all,” Bo said, his voice holding a grim edge.
They worked their way closer to the cabin, staying behind cover as much as possible. A glow falling on the hillside behind the cabin told Bo there was a window back there. With a gesture, he pointed that out to Scratch, who motioned that they ought to circle around. Bo nodded.
The shutters were closed over the window, they found when they got there, but there were big enough cracks around the ill-fitting panels to let out quite a bit of light. Those same gaps would allow Bo and Scratch to look inside the cabin.
Bo moved to one side of the window, Scratch to the other. Scratch took off his cream-colored Stetson so it would be easier for him to put his eye to one of the cracks. Bo's black hat was back at the Star C, he supposed. He had left it there the day Marshal Haltom had arrested him.
Bo leaned forward, resting one hand against the cabin's rough log wall to brace himself. He squinted through the gap next to the shutter. The angle and narrowness of the opening didn't allow him to see everything inside the cabin, but he could see a table where Barney Dunn sat. The bartender had his back to the window. Bo couldn't see Jake.
“You want some . . . coffee, Barney?” the man asked. He was off to Bo's left somewhere, near the fireplace.
“Yeah, that'd be good, thanks,” Dunn replied.
“What's going on . . . in town?”
Dunn chuckled.
“Oh, all kinds of fireworks, and I mean that literally. Although I suppose you don't understand what I mean by that, do you?”
“I know what fireworks are. I think . . . I saw some once . . . somewhere. Is it . . . the Fourth of July?”
“What? No, no, it's not the Fourth of July. But that didn't stop a rocket from going up anyway.”
Jake said, “I wish I could have . . . seen it.”
“It was better you were right here, where nobody could hurt you. But you'll be goin' back into town soon, I promise. Maybe tonight. The boss ain't told me all the details yet.”
The boss?
Bo had a strong hunch that Dunn wasn't talking about Lauralee Parker, his employer at the Southern Belle. With every moment that passed, Bo felt more certain that he'd been right to be a little suspicious about Barney Dunn. The bartender seemed to be involved in some sort of mysterious scheme. Bo wanted to find out more.
On the other side of the window, Scratch's breath suddenly hissed between his teeth in a surprised reaction that the silver-haired Texan wasn't able to suppress completely. Bo didn't think the sound was loud enough to be heard inside the cabin, but it alarmed him. Scratch must have seen something that shocked him.
A second later, Bo knew what it was, because he saw the same thing. The man called Jake came into view, carrying a cup of coffee that he placed on the table in front of Dunn. The light from the lantern that also sat on the table cast his features in sharp relief.
Jake was a dead ringer for Bo Creel.
It wasn't exactly like looking in a mirror, because in a mirror the details would be reversed. But even so, Bo knew he was looking at his exact double. His twin brother, if he had had one. His doppelganger. And one more thing . . .
The man who had to be the Bear Creek Butcher.
That was how Dunn had been able to describe Bo right down to a T, and how he had been able to draw that sketch and capture Bo's appearance so accurately, too. Dunn knew the killer, and as comfortable in each other's company as they appeared to be, that whole story about how the Bear Creek Butcher had almost cut off the bartender's head had to be a lie.
But why? Who was Jake, and why was someone using him to frame Bo for murder?
And why would someone with as simple a mind as Jake seemed to have killed those saloon girls in the first place?
Questions that had seemed to have no answer had now been resolved, but other, even more baffling questions had taken their place. Bo felt almost as stunned as if someone had walloped him in the head.
Inside the cabin, Jake sat down across from Dunn and said, “I hope we leave soon. I don't . . . like it here much.”
“Don't worry about that,” Dunn said. “You just do what you're told, and everything will be all right.”
“I always do what I'm told. Especially what my pa tells me to do.”
“And your pa told you to do whatever
I
tell you. You see how that works?”
I
tell you. You see how that works?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Dunn sipped his coffee and said, “Everything's goin' just like it's supposed to. Pretty soon we're gonna be rich. Although I guess money doesn't mean a whole lot to somebody like you, huh?”
“I like money,” Jake said. “Coins are shiny and pretty. I like to stack them up and build towers out of them.”
“So do I, kid,” Dunn replied with a laugh. “So do I. But it ain't because they're shiny and pretty. I like 'em because of everything you can buy with 'em.”
Jake shook his head and said, “My pa buys me everything I need.”
It was odd hearing Dunn refer to Jake as a kid, thought Bo, because Jake was definitely older than the bartender. His dark brown hair had gray strands in it, much like Bo's. The two of them appeared to be about the same age.
Because of Jake's childlike attitude, though, it made sense that anyone who was around him would start to think of him as a kid, in spite of his actual age.
Bo reached over, tapped Scratch on the shoulder, and motioned with his head that they should back away from the cabin. They withdrew a short distance, far enough away that they could talk in whispers without having to worry about being overheard by the two men inside the cabin.
“What in the Sam Hill is goin' on here, Bo?” Scratch demanded in amazement. “Is that one of them, what did you call 'em, doublegangers? Because that fella Jake is your double, that's for damn sure!”
“I don't have any explanation for it,” Bo said. He couldn't keep the amazement out of his own voice. “He really does look just like me.”
“And that means he's got to be the Bear Creek Butcher. Nothin' else makes sense.” Scratch took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair in obvious confusion. He went on, “But that don't make sense, either. Why would anybody as simple and harmless as that hombre seems to be ever want to hurt those saloon gals?”
The question was the same one Bo had asked himself a moment earlier, and a theory had suggested itself to him.
“I can think of one reason,” Bo said. As he spoke another chill ran through him, this time at the sheer evil of the idea he was contemplating. “Jake might have hurt those girls . . . if his father told him to.”
“Son of a . . .” Scratch fell silent, no doubt struck by the horror of what Bo was suggesting. After a moment he said, “A fella would have to be a damn monster to make somebody who was simpleminded do that.”
“Yeah, that's about how I feel, too.”
“So what do we do now? Grab Dunn and Jake and take 'em back to Bear Creek? We can show people that you ain't guilty because there's somebody who looks just like you.”
“If we do that, we're liable to tip off whoever is behind this. He'd probably light a shuck and leave Dunn and Jake to take the blame.” Bo's voice hardened as he went on, “I don't want him to get away with what he's done. I want to find out what this is all about, too.”
“So for now we wait?” Scratch asked.
“Yeah, I thinkâ” Bo stopped short and held up a hand. “Listen.”
Scratch tilted his head and listened intently, as did Bo. After a moment Scratch said quietly, “Horses. Sounds like several of 'em.”
“Dunn told Jake the boss was going to be here later,” Bo said. “I've got a hunch that boss is Jake's father.” His hands tightened on the rifle he carried. “I want to get a look at him.”
“And then we round up the whole bunch,” Scratch said.
“And then we round up the whole bunch,” Bo agreed grimly.
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