The Loner Read online

  “Strittmayer!” a harsh voice bellowed as the horses came to a stop. “I told you you’d be sorry, you damned Dutchman!”

  Bo dropped his cards and started to his feet, but Scratch grabbed his shoulder and forced him back down. “Everybody hit the dirt!” Scratch shouted, his deep voice filling the room.

  Even as Scratch called out the warning, the glass in the two big front windows exploded inward as a volley of shots shattered them. The saloon girls screamed and men yelled curses as more shots blasted from the street. Muzzle flashes lit up the night like a lightning storm.

  As Bo dived out of his chair he rammed a shoulder into Davidson, knocking the man to the floor out of the line of fire. Bo palmed out his Colt as Scratch overturned the poker table to give them some cover. Scratch crouched behind the table with Bo and drew his long-barreled Remingtons. Everybody in the saloon had either hit the floor or leaped over the bar to hide behind the thick hardwood, so the two of them had a clear field to return the fire of Little Ed Churchill and his men.

  Churchill must have gathered up a dozen or more of his ranch hands in some of El Paso’s other saloons and gambling dens and brothels and led them back here to Strittmayer’s place. Bo didn’t know if the cattlemen had spun some wild yarn for his men about how he’d been cheated at cards and then run out of the Birdcage, or if Churchill had simply ordered his men to attack. A lot of cowboys rode for the brand above all, and if the boss man said sic ’em, they skinned their irons and got to work, no questions asked.

  Either way, lead now filled the air inside the Birdcage. The mirrors behind the bar shattered, and bottles of liquor arranged along the backbar exploded in sprays of booze and glass as bullets struck them.

  Davidson crawled along the floor and got behind the same table where Bo and Scratch had taken cover. He pulled his gun from the shoulder holster Bo had seen earlier and started firing toward the street. He glanced over at Bo and Scratch and said, “I knew Churchill was a little loco, but I didn’t think he was crazy enough to come back and lay siege to the place.”

  From behind the bar, Strittmayer called, “Everyone stay down, ja?” The next moment, several shotguns poked over the bar. Each of the weapons let go with a double load of buckshot. That barrage blew out what little glass remained in the windows and ripped into the cowboys in the street. Men and horses went down, screaming in pain.

  Anger flooded through Bo. Not only was Churchill trying to kill everybody in the saloon, but now he had led some of his own men to their deaths, all because Churchill was a stubborn, prideful bastard who couldn’t admit that he wasn’t a very good poker player. What a damned waste, Bo thought.

  He could only hope that some of that buckshot had found Churchill as well, so that maybe this fight could come to an end.

  That didn’t prove to be the case. With an incoherent, furious shout, the rancher leaped his horse onto the boardwalk and then viciously spurred the animal on into the saloon. The horse was terrified, anybody could see that, but Churchill forced the wild-eyed beast on. Men rolled and jumped desperately to avoid the slashing, steel-shod hooves.

  Three-Toed Johnny leaped up from somewhere and shouted, “Stop it! For God’s sake, stop it!” He had a derringer in his hand that Bo knew had come from a concealed sheath up the gambler’s sleeve. Johnny swung it up toward Churchill, but the cattleman was faster. He had a six-gun in his right hand, and as he brought it down with a chopping motion, powder smoke geysered from the muzzle. The slug punched into Johnny’s body and threw him backward.

  Bo and Scratch fired at the same time, but Churchill was already jerking his horse around. Their bullets whistled harmlessly past his head. Churchill sent his horse crashing into the overturned table. Bo and Scratch threw themselves to the side to get out of the way, but the table rammed into Davidson and knocked him down. His gun flew out of his hand.

  “Now I’ll get you, you damned four-flusher!” Churchill yelled as he brought his revolver to bear on the helpless Davidson, who lay sprawled on the floor under the rearing horse.

  Bo and Scratch fired again, and this time they didn’t miss. Their bullets tore through Churchill’s body on an upward-angling path, causing him to lean so far back that he toppled out of the saddle. Suddenly riderless, the panic-stricken horse whirled around a couple of times and then leaped out through the one of the already broken front windows.

  The shooting from outside had stopped. Churchill’s men were all either dead or had lit a shuck out of El Paso. The survivors probably wouldn’t stop at Churchill’s ranch either. After this brutal attack on the saloon, the men who had lived through it would take off for the tall and uncut and keep going, so that the law would be less likely to catch up to them. With Churchill dead, his wealth and influence couldn’t protect them anymore.

  A pale and visibly shaken August Strittmayer emerged from behind the bar clutching a reloaded shotgun. “They are all gone, ja?” he asked.

  “Looks like it,” Bo replied. He heard a lot of shouting from outside. The city marshal and some of his deputies were coming toward the Birdcage on the run, he assumed. The sounds of a small-scale war breaking out had been enough to attract the law.

  Bo didn’t pay any attention to that at the moment, but hurried to the side of Three-Toed Johnny instead. As Bo dropped to a knee, the gambler’s eyelids fluttered open. His vest was soaked with blood over the place where Churchill’s bullet had ventilated him.

  “I think I’m . . . shot, Bo,” Johnny gasped out as his eyes tried futilely to focus.

  “I’m afraid so, Johnny,” Bo agreed.

  “Pretty . . . bad . . . huh?”

  “Bad enough.”

  “Well . . . hell . . . we all draw . . . a bad hand . . . sooner or later.” Johnny’s head rolled from side to side. His eyes still wouldn’t lock in on anything. “Ch-Churchill?”

  Scratch had knelt on the gambler’s other side. “Dead as he can be, pard,” Scratch said.

  “Good . . . At least I’m . . . not the only one . . . to fold—”

  His eyes widened and grew still at last, and the air came out of him in a rattling sigh. Bo waited a moment, then shook his head and reached out to close those staring eyes as they began to grow glassy.

  Strittmayer said in a hollow voice, “I never thought . . . I never dreamed that . . . that Churchill would . . . would do such a verdammt thing! To come back with his men and open fire on innocent people! The man was insane!”

  Bo and Scratch got to their feet and started reloading their guns. “I don’t reckon he was loco,” Scratch said. “Just poison-mean and too used to gettin’ his own way.”

  That was when several men with shotguns slapped the batwings aside and rushed into the saloon, leveling the Greeners at the two drifters as a gent with a soup-strainer mustache yelled, “Drop them guns, you ring-tailed hellions!”

  Chapter 3

  The man with the mustache turned out to be Jake Hamlin, the local marshal. The other shotgunners were his deputies, of course. They had seen half a dozen cowboys and a couple of horses shot to pieces in the street, and had no idea what had prompted this bloody massacre, but the busted windows of the Birdcage told them that the fatal shots must have come from inside the saloon. So they had charged in and thrown down on the first two gun-toting gents they had spotted, in this case Bo and Scratch.

  It took a good half hour for Strittmayer, Davidson, and the other witnesses in the saloon to convince the lawman that Little Ed Churchill had been responsible for the hell that had broken loose. Churchill had been an important man in West Texas, and now he lay dead on the sawdust-littered floor of the saloon. To Jake Hamlin’s mind, that meant somebody was guilty of murder, and who better for that role than a couple of no-account drifters?

  “Creel and Morton, eh?” the marshal mused when he found out their names. “I think I got paper on you two back in my office.”

  “We’re not wanted in Texas,” Bo said.

  “And any reward dodgers you got on us from other places, well,
those charges are bogus,” Scratch added. “We’re law-abidin’ hombres.”

  “If you put those two fellows in jail, you will be the laughingstock of El Paso, Marshal!” Strittmayer bellowed. “I will see to this myself. Why, for Gott’s sake, they saved the life of Herr Davidson here!”

  Hamlin frowned. “What the hell’d you say? Here, here?”

  “No, Herr here!” Strittmayer said, pointing at Davidson.

  Hamlin snarled and sputtered and finally said, “Oh, shut up and lemme think!” After a few moments of visibly painful concentration, he turned to Bo and Scratch and went on. “All right, I reckon you two acted in self-defense. But there’ll have to be an inquest to make it official, so don’t even think about slopin’ outta town until then.”

  “We were planning to be here for a day or two anyway,” Bo said.

  “Yeah, well, just remember what I told you!” Hamlin turned back to Strittmayer. “Anybody else killed?”

  “Just poor Johnny there,” Strittmayer replied as he waved a hand at the fallen gambler. “Several people were wounded, and my beautiful saloon, ach! It is shot to pieces!”

  “Well, you can talk to Little Ed’s lawyer about the estate payin’ for the damages, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waitin’ for it if I was you,” Hamlin advised. He looked around the room and raised his voice. “This saloon’s closed for the night! Everybody out! Go home!”

  Davidson said to Bo and Scratch, “Do you fellas have a place to stay here in town?”

  Bo shook his head, and Scratch said, “Not yet. We’d just rode in and stabled our horses. This was the first place we stopped.”

  “Come on over to the Camino Real with me, then,” Davidson suggested. “That’s where I’m staying. We’ll see about getting you some rooms and a good hot meal.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Bo said.

  “I think I do. Churchill would have killed me, sure as hell, if not for you two.”

  Bo and Scratch couldn’t argue with that, so after saying good night to Strittmayer, who promised to see to it that Johnny Fontana got a proper burial, they headed for the Camino Real Hotel with Davidson.

  The Camino Real was El Paso’s best hotel, and its rooms didn’t come cheap. The fact that Davidson was staying there confirmed that he had plenty of money. As the three men walked along the street, he said, “We were never actually introduced. I’m Porter Davidson.”

  “Bo Creel,” Bo said as he gripped the hand that Davidson put out. “This fancy-dressed drink of water with me is Scratch Morton. But I reckon you already know that since we told our names to the marshal.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Davidson,” Scratch said as he shook hands with the man. “Too bad there had to be so much gunplay first.”

  “Yes, it ruined what had been a fairly pleasant evening. But maybe we can make something out of it yet.”

  Davidson spoke to the clerk at the desk in the hotel lobby and maybe slipped him a greenback, too. Bo wasn’t sure about that. But either way, within minutes the clerk was sliding a pair of keys across the desk to them. Even though the clerk had said originally that the hotel was full up, at Davidson’s urging he had somehow found a couple of vacant rooms on the third floor.

  “Is the dining room still open?” Davidson asked.

  “I believe it’s just about to close,” the clerk said.

  “Would you go out to the kitchen and let the cook know that we’ll need two dinners? Whatever’s left will be fine, as long as it’s hot.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As they went into the empty dining room and sat down at one of the tables, Scratch commented, “You seem to be the big skookum he-wolf around these parts, Mr. Davidson.”

  “Not really,” Davidson said with a laugh. “I guess it doesn’t take long for word to get around, though, when you own a gold mine.”

  Scratch lifted his eyebrows.

  Bo wasn’t particularly surprised, though. Davidson hadn’t struck him as a cattleman, and on the frontier a rich man who didn’t run cows was usually mixed up with either the railroad or mining.

  “I didn’t know there were any gold mines around here,” he commented. “There are a few down in the Big Bend, but they’re not what I’d call bonanzas.”

  “The mine’s not in Texas,” Davidson said.

  “New Mexico Territory?”

  “No. It’s across the border in Mexico, in the mountains. A place called Barranca del Asesino.”

  Bo and Scratch looked at each other, then back at Davidson. “Cutthroat Canyon,” Bo translated.

  “That’s right.”

  “Does it live up to its name?” Scratch asked.

  Davidson chuckled. “No, most of the time it’s a pretty peaceful place.” His face grew more serious. “The trouble happens between there and here.”

  Bo said, “You have trouble, do you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. That’s one reason I wanted to talk more to you two fellows. That and my gratitude for what you did for me, of course. I’m hoping I can persuade you to do even more. I’d like to hire you both.”

  Before the discussion could continue, the white-aproned cook came out of the kitchen carrying a couple of plates of food. “The waiters have all gone home already,” he explained as he set the plates in front of Bo and Scratch. They contained thick steaks, baked potatoes, and biscuits and gravy. “That’s all we got left.”

  “Looks mighty fine to me,” Scratch said with a smile. “We’re much obliged, mister.”

  “Got half a pot of coffee back in the kitchen, too, if you’d like some.”

  “Bring it on,” Bo said.

  For the next few minutes they were too busy eating to ask Davidson what he had meant about hiring them. The mine owner sat there with an amused smile on his face as he watched them putting away the food.

  “You fellows look like you’ve been on short rations for a while,” he commented.

  “We had to stretch our provisions the last few days on the trail,” Bo admitted. “I figured we could shoot a jackrabbit or something while we were on our way across the southern part of New Mexico Territory, but game was pretty scarce.”

  “It’s been mighty dry over that way,” Scratch put in. “Reckon most of the critters ’cept for the rattlesnakes have gone off lookin’ for someplace that’s more hospitable. And I’ve never cared much for eatin’ snake, although I’ve known some hombres who think it’s good.”

  “Well, you won’t go hungry if you work for me,” Davidson said. “There’s a nice little valley right outside the canyon where the Mexicans from a nearby village have their farms. We buy our food from them. And there’s a cantina in the village with some pretty girls who work there, too, if you’re interested in such things.”

  “Interested in tequila and señoritas?” Scratch said. “I hope to smile we are!”

  Davidson leaned forward and clasped his hands together on the table. “I think we should discuss wages, then.”

  “Let’s talk about the job first,” Bo said. “Just what is it that you’d be hiring us to do?”

  “That’s a fair enough question. Like I said, there’s been trouble between El Paso and the mine. I bring the ore here by wagon. There’s no way to refine it in the canyon, and this is the closest railroad stop so that I can ship it out. There’s been talk of building a spur line down there into the mountains, but the railroad and the Mexican government have to work out all the details first. It’s liable to be a long, drawn-out process. In the meantime, I’ve got ore sitting there that I can’t get out because of bandits.”

  Bo nodded. “I reckoned that was what we were getting to. Your ore shipments have been held up?”

  “Several times. I’ve lost shipments, and men who worked for me have been killed.”

  Scratch’s voice was dry as he drawled, “You ain’t makin’ the job sound all that appealin’, Mr. Davidson.”

  “We’ve ridden shotgun on gold wagons before,” Bo said. “It’s a good way to get killed.”
/>   Davidson shook his head. “I’m not asking you to ride shotgun. I thought that if the two of you trailed the wagons at a short distance, when the bandits attack, you’d be able to jump them and take them by surprise.”

  Bo took a sip of coffee and slowly nodded. “That might work. Once anyway. After that, the hombres who are after your gold would be watching for us.”

  “Once might be enough to scare them off,” Davidson said. “They’ve had their own way so far, like Churchill, and nobody’s been able to stop them. I want to put the fear of God into them. Maybe even wipe them out.”

  “Bo and me, we’re pretty tough,” Scratch said, “but even so, I don’t reckon the two of us would be any match for a whole gang of bandidos.”

  “I don’t expect the two of you to take care of them by yourselves. I have several other men who’ll be riding back across the border with me. That’s why I came to El Paso, to recruit some good men who can take care of this problem. From what I saw of your abilities in the Birdcage, the two of you will fit right in with the other men I’ve hired.” Davidson looked back and forth between them. “Well, what do you think? Will you take the job? Remember, we haven’t even talked about wages yet, but I’m sure we’d be able to reach an agreement on that matter. I believe in paying for the best.”

  “Give us a minute to ponder on it,” Bo said.

  “Of course,” Davidson replied with a nod. “I need to speak to the hotel clerk anyway. I’ll wait for you out in the lobby.”

  He stood up and walked out of the dining room. Bo and Scratch looked at each other over the remains of their supper, and Scratch said, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t much cotton to being lumped in with a bunch of hired guns,” Bo said. “You know that’s what Davidson’s talking about.”

  “Yeah, but he seems like a pretty good fella, and he’s got a right to get his gold up here without havin’ it stolen. Not to mention the hombres who work for him bein’ killed like that. Such things don’t sit well with me.”