Town Tamers (24 page)

C
yrus Temple didn’t laugh a lot. He didn’t find much in life amusing. But he laughed like hell at the Clydesdales.

It was a little past eight when knocks on his hotel door roused him. Ordinarily he was up at the crack of day but it wasn’t often he got to stay in a luxurious hotel like the Studevant, let alone stay in it for free. Since he’d only arrived the day before and reckoned it would be a while before Studevant called on his services, he decided to sleep in.

He always slept fully clothed. That included his bearskin coat. All he had to do was pull his stocking hat on and grab his Sharps and answer the door.

Deputy Agar looked fit to burst. “Mr. Studevant sent me. He needs you right away. They’ve struck again.”

“So soon?” Temple said, both surprised and pleased. He could finish the job that much sooner and collect his small fortune. “What did they do this time?”

“You have to see. We’ve spent the past two hours running around collecting them.”

Temple followed him down the stairs and out the front of the hotel. And there, tied to the hitch rail, were the biggest horses Temple ever saw. Fine animals, four of them bays and two brown, all with white markings on their faces and feet. And all with bright yellow painted stripes down their sides. “Now there’s somethin’ you don’t see every day.”

Arthur Studevant was at the hitch rail arguing with a small man with a Scottish brogue. Nearby hovered the Gray Ghosts.

Out in the street, Marshal Pollard swept an arm at a crowd that had gathered. “I told you to disperse. Go on about your own business.”

“It’s a free country,” a man hollered.

“Will you look at them stripes?” another said, provoking laughs.

Temple laughed, too. He’d never been hired for a job like this one was shaping up to be.

For years he’d scouted for the army until one day he and two other scouts were ambushed by the Sioux. A war party of Minniconjou caught them in the open and chased them until they sought cover in a dry wash. They had to. Their horses were played out.

One of the other scouts had taken an arrow in the back but managed to stay on his horse. They got him off and made their stand.

Temple thought he was a goner. There were eleven warriors and two had rifles, old single-shots they weren’t much good with.

All that day he and the other scouts held the war party at bay. The wounded man grew so weak, he couldn’t raise his rifle.

Then night fell.

They knew the Sioux would close in. They got the wounded man on his animal and climbed on their own, preparing to light a shuck, when over the sides spilled the warriors. Uttering bloodcurdling whoops, they let fly with arrows and lances and bullets.

His companions went down in the first volley. Temple took a shaft in the shoulder, but battling fiercely he somehow made it out of the wash and fled across the prairie.

The Sioux only chased him a short way.

Temple spent a month at Fort Laramie recovering, and made a decision. No more Injun-fighting. He offered his services as a tracker to anyone who would hire him, not knowing if he’d get a lick of work, and damned if he didn’t end up making more money than he ever did scouting.

Now, Temple stopped laughing as Arthur Studevant approached.

“Do you see what they did?”

“I’m right here,” Temple said.

“They’ve made me a laughingstock, yet again.” Studevant swore luridly. “My stableman let them waltz in and do as they pleased with my team.”

“Is your stableman a gun hand?”

“You’re suggesting I shouldn’t hold it against him that he didn’t put up a fight? Hell, he didn’t even have the stable doors barred.”

“You sent the deputy to fetch me so I can listen to you bitch?”

Studevant practically had steam coming out his ears. “I expect to be treated with a little more respect.”

“Do you want these bandits found or not?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions. But a hundred people have gone by since they played their prank. Their tracks have been obliterated.”

“You let me worry about the tracks.” Temple turned. “Show me where your stable is. You’ll see me again when I have news.”

“Agar, here, will take you.”

Temple didn’t much care for the dim-witted deputy. Stupid people always raised his hackles. He reminded himself that this was just another job and soon enough he would be shed of him.

“Yellow stripes,” Agar said, hustling along. “I don’t savvy it, I tell you. I don’t savvy any of it.”

Despite himself, Temple said, “Someone doesn’t like your boss.”

“But the things they’ve done. It makes no kind of sense that I can see.”

“Maybe that’s the sense it makes.”

Agar glanced at Temple. “You’ll have to explain that. It’s over my head.”

Temple’s dislike of the man fell a notch. At least he was honest enough to admit he wasn’t the sharpest axe in the tool shed. “They want to make him mad so he’ll get careless, would be my guess.”

“And then what?”

“They get serious.”

Agar shook his head. “It still doesn’t make any damn sense.” He pointed at a building ahead. “That there is the stable.”

“You can go back.”

“You sure? You don’t want my help?”

“Can you track?”

“No.”

“Can you shoot the eye out of a buck at a hundred yards?”

“I wish.”

“Then you can go back.”

“Good luck,” Deputy Agar said, and wheeled.

Temple wasn’t superstitious. He didn’t believe that four-leaf clovers brought good fortune or that if a black cat crossed his path, he’d have a run of calamities. He believed a man made his own luck, and he made his now by going to the corner of the stable and sinking to a knee to examine the ground.

The outlaws wouldn’t have ridden to the stable. Men on horseback were too conspicuous. They’d have left their mounts elsewhere and walked, and stuck to the shadows on the off chance someone might have been out and about and seen them. They’d have come up on the side of the stable and listened and looked before going in. When they left, they’d have gone the same way they came.

All he needed to find was three sets of prints coming and going. The ground was hardpacked, but there was a lot of dust. And there, faint and only partial in some instances, were the three sets he was looking for.

Temple touched a finger to a heel print. “Got you,” he said.

N
oona hummed to herself as she carried the cooking pot to the stream. Things were going wonderfully. Of all the town taming she’d done, this was the most fun.

Noona didn’t delude herself, though. It would get ugly right quick as soon as her pa made up his mind to end it. That he hadn’t yet told her he wanted Arthur Studevant to suffer some more.

All the other tamings, her pa had got in, done what he was hired to do, and got out again. He’d never toyed with bad men as he was toying with Studevant. He shot them and got it over with.

Studevant was a special case. Based on what Noona had heard, he was snake-mean, through and through. He liked power and money like some gents like whiskey.

All those businesses he took over, silencing anyone who objected, that poor gal he forced himself on . . .

Noona felt sorry about Laura Baker. Or as sorry as she could about someone she’d only known a short while.

She didn’t mind making Arthur Studevant suffer. She didn’t mind at all.

The sight of a ribbon of blue brought Noona out of herself. The stream wasn’t more than a yard wide and not five inches deep but it sufficed for their needs. Squatting, she dipped the bucket and waited for it to fill.

She had left her Spencer back at camp. Her hat, too, so she could let her hair down. She went on humming, and when the bucket was full, she stood and raised it with both hands and turned.

“Holler and you die,” said a big man in a bearskin coat. He had come up behind her as silently as anything, and was pointing a Sharps at her.

“Oh, my,” Noona said.

“Cyrus Temple,” the man said. “You might have heard of me.”

“No.”

“My name has been in the newspapers.”

“So has my pa’s,” Noona said, and knew she shouldn’t have.

“You don’t say. What’s his handle?”

“I’ve plumb forgot.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll trouble you to set down that bucket and turn around.”

Noona bent to obey. As she lowered the bucket, she slid one hand under it. When she almost had it on the ground, she whipped up and flung the water at the big man’s face.

He did what any man would do. He blinked as the water struck him, and retreated a step.

Noona was on him in a bound. She swung the bucket by the rope handle and it caught him on the jaw. He staggered and waved his arms, his Sharps momentarily forgotten.

Noona hadn’t forgotten about it. She swatted at the barrel and knocked the rifle from his hands. Before he could set himself, she slammed the bucket against his knee. She was trying to break it but his legs were as thick as tree trunks. He opened his mouth to cry out but didn’t. A shout would bring her pa and her brother.

Noona swung again, at his other knee. Her hope to bring him crashing down was foiled when arms like iron bands wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides. She was lifted as if she were weightless.

Struggling mightily, Noona rammed her forehead into his chin. She thought it might force him to let go, but it was her own head that was swimming.

“Damn, girl,” he growled, and threw himself at the ground with her under him.

Noona went to shout to warn her kin, but the world exploded in pain even as a great weight threatened to stave in her chest. She blacked out.

The next Noona knew, she was on her belly with a knee like an anvil in the small of her back and her arms were being pulled behind her. “No,” she said, and heaved, or tried to. He weighed a ton.

Noona could still yell a warning. She raised her head and opened her mouth, and a huge hand clamped over her lips, smothering her yell to a gurgle.

A blow to the back of her head ended her struggles.

She revived the second time with a start. She had been gagged and her wrists had been tied, and he was in the act of doing the same with her ankles. She kicked and shifted and drove her foot at his face, but he swatted her leg and put all his weight on both and finished.

Rising, Cyrus Temple cupped her chin and turned her head from side to side, looking puzzled. He stepped back, favoring his hurt leg, and touched his chin and winced.

“Damn, girl,” he said. “You’re a hellion, and that’s no lie.”

He picked up his Sharps.

“Now for your menfolk.”

B
yron was cross-legged at the fire, reading. Today it was
Don Juan
. He’d read it when he was younger, back in Texas. It was the first of Lord Byron’s poems that he came across, and he’d loved it from the first stanza. It was as if his namesake called to him, a joining of their souls in a way his father could never, ever comprehend.

With so little to do in camp, he had plenty of time lately to read. The past two days he’d enjoyed miscellaneous poems, but now it was time for an epic.

He never ceased to marvel at Lord Byron’s insights. Some accused Byron of being too cynical. Not him. The poet had seen through the shams of his day to present the real and the true. And when people were stripped of their pretensions, there was a lot to be cynical about.

He also loved Lord Byron’s humor. No one could make him laugh like he did.

Byron was so engrossed in his book that he didn’t realize someone had come up until they coughed to get his attention.

An enormous man in a bearskin coat and holding a Sharps on him was studying him as if he were peculiar. “What in hell are you doin’, boy?”

“Reading,” Byron said, and showed him the cover. “Lord Byron. I do so love his poetry. Don’t you?”

“God in heaven,” the man said. “First a girl and now this.”

“A girl?” Byron said in alarm. He started to rise but the Sharps’ muzzle was trained on his chest, and the man said a single word.

“Don’t.”

Byron sat back down. “Did you hurt her?”

“We had a tussle,” the man said. “She’s a scrapper, that one. The gent who hired me wants all of you alive so he can kill you himself, so all I did was conk her and tie her.”

“Good,” Byron said. “But she’ll be awful mad. If she gets free, I wouldn’t want to be you.” He smiled. “Who are you, by the way?”

“Cyrus Temple.”

“The Tracker.”

“You’ve heard of me?”

“I read everything I can get my hands on. Books. Newspapers. Penny dreadfuls. You name it. Have you ever read
Sweeny Todd
? It’s one of my favorites. But of course I don’t love all those anywhere near as much as I love Lord Byron.”

Temple’s eyebrows tried to meet over his nose. “You wear that straw hat and those overalls and you look like a farmer. But you read poetry and books and talk like no dirt-tiller ever talks.”

“I do all of that,” Byron said.

“You’re play-actin’, boy. Who are you really and what in hell are you up to?”

“What we’re up to,” Byron said, “is hoping to draw Arthur Studevant out of his lair where we can do what should have been done a long time ago.”

“So I was right. This is personal.”

“Partly,” Byron said. “Partly it’s what we do for a living.”

“Which is?”

“Town taming.”

Cyrus Temple digested that. “There aren’t many town tamers.”

“It’s a dangerous profession. No one in their right mind would take it up. My sister and I help our pa.”

“A name, boy. I want your name.”

“Byron Carter.”

“Never heard of you.”

Byron set the book in his lap. “We use a different name for taming. Pa says it’s to protect sis and me. Personally, I think he does it to rub their noses in the fact he’s not what they think he is.”

“I’ve lost your trail.”

“He looks Indian but he’s not. Our grandmother’s doing, and he hates it.”

“So what handle does he go by?”

“Asa Delaware.”

Temple reacted as if Byron had poked him in the eyes. “The hell you say.”

“The hell I do,” Byron said, and laughed.

“Someone hired
him
to do in Studevant?”

“They did. He was going to decline, but then he learned what Studevant is like and Studevant’s law dogs beat me black-and-blue. And here we are.”

“Studevant never told me any of that. Asa Delaware, by God. And Studevant thinks it’s just some idiots out to make him look like a fool.”

“Oh, that, too.”

Temple looked across the meadow and then to the right and the left. “It occurs to me this is suddenly damn serious. Where’s that pa of yours, anyway?”

“Right behind you,” Byron said.

Temple started to turn, and Asa pressed the muzzle of the Winchester shotgun to the back of his head.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Hell,” Temple said.

“I heard you say you hurt my girl.”

“She started it.”

“No. You did by coming after us. Who else has Studevant brought in, or did he figure you were enough?”

“I am all I know about.”

“Well, then,” Asa said.

“I’d like to strike a deal,” Temple said quickly. “I lower my rifle and you lower yours and let me walk away. I leave Colorado, and you finish your vendetta or whatever this is.”

“No,” Asa said.

“I won’t tell Studevant about you. Hell, I won’t even talk to him. I’ll get on my horse and head straight for Wyoming. What do you say?”

“I’ve already said it.”

Temple’s voice hardened. “My Sharps is pointed at your boy. I squeeze this trigger, it’ll blow a hole in him the size of a pie plate.”

“Not quite that big.”

“You might get me, but I’ll kill him.”

“How many have you?” Asa asked.

“Have I what?”

“Killed.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“I like to know the tally.”

“I’ve never counted them.”

“Sure you have. Everybody counts them. Some brag on it, but even the ones who don’t brag have counted.”

Temple was quiet a bit and then said, “Twenty-two, damn you.”

“I heard about that sheepherder and his family. Ranchers hired you to get the sheep off their range.”

“Nothing was ever proved. I was set free.”

“But you did it.”

Temple was angry and went to turn but caught himself.

“Who are you to judge me? You’re not God Almighty.”

“True. I’m just a man.”

“You heard me about your boy. Lower your weapon or he’s a goner.”

“One last question. Where did you tie your horse?”

“My horse? What do you want him for?”

“I wouldn’t want him to starve if he can’t get loose.”

“Damn you, Delaware. I’ve tried to be reasonable.”

“Some do at the end. They think they can talk their way out of it. I usually let them have their say because they relax a little and that slows them a hair when we get to it.”

Asa took a quick step to one side and fired at Cyrus Temple’s hands. The buckshot blew the Sharps from Temple’s grasp, and blew off his left hand at the wrist.

Temple screamed and staggered and held up the stump. Blood spurted in large drops, splattering his face and his bearskin coat. “No!” he cried.

“Yes,” Asa said, and shot him in the face.

Byron came over holding his book and looked down at the convulsing hulk. “You can see his brains.”

“What’s left of them.” Asa worked the Winchester’s lever. “Let’s go find your sister and that horse.”

“What if he’d squeezed that trigger?”

“He didn’t.”

As they hurried, Asa glanced back and said, “He was right about one thing though.”

“Which is?”

“It’s time we got serious.”