Bannerman the Enforcer 20 Read online

  Dukes stood and gestured to the others to leave. They hesitated and Yancey said, frowning, “One of us better stay. Governor ...”

  “No, he’ll be all right. Leave him alone with those files for awhile. By the time we get to Bowie, he ought to be convinced one way or another.”

  Kate looked worried as her father took her arm and ushered her towards the door. Cato stopped to pick up the derringer and the bullets.

  “Leave that, too,” Dukes snapped, turning his gaze from the astonished Cato to the equally surprised Harlan. “That’s how confident I am you’ll see what a mistake you’ve made, Harlan.”

  As they left, Harlan frowned and then slowly picked up the first file, and opened the cover. Inside, the dog-eared paper smelled of age and the ink was faded but it was plain enough for him to read if he took it slowly and spelled out some of the words and worked out their pronunciation. Pretty soon, he had forgotten the throbbing, burning pain in his side and was absorbed in the true story of the capture and trial of his brothers and their gang. It was after daylight by the time he had finished and the car was, by then, hitched to a train on its way north to Bowie and he started yelling for someone to come into his compartment.

  Yancey went in and the first thing he noticed was that the derringer had gone. Harlan likely had it under the blankets again, or back in his boot top holster where it had been hidden originally. He looked pale, his face drawn, eyes sunken and reddened from the strain of long hours of reading in the dull glow of the oil lantern.

  “I want to see Dukes,” he rasped.

  “He’s having breakfast. Like some?”

  Harlan nodded, only just realizing how hungry he was. “Sure ... Side’s kind of stiff but I reckon I could get some grub down.”

  Yancey gestured to the files. “How did they go down?”

  Harlan looked uncomfortable and shrugged, groping for words. “Hell, I dunno! Catlin sounded so convincing ... I see now how he knew so much. He was the skunk who turned us in, got the reward and the gold, too. But looks like I made a bad mistake about Dukes. He was serving up in the Indian Territory, tryin’ to get some treaty arranged, when that gold was shipped out to Chase River. He wouldn’t have even known anythin’ about it. But Catlin told me how he was the man in charge and figured the whole deal. He made it sound convincin’. I can see now he made it all up just so’s I’d do his dirty work for him and kill Dukes, which is what he wants ...”

  “So Catlin has been your man all along.”

  “Yeah. And I damn near killed the governor! I sure don’t love him any because he got my brothers shot and me all that time in prison, but I see now how he had several tries at gettin’ my case reviewed by the Yankee Provisionals, but they never did get looked at. Guess I owe him somethin’ for gettin’ me the pardon now.”

  “You want to tell him that to his face?”

  Harlan looked uncomfortable again and finally nodded, “I figure, too, I better tell him what Catlin aims to do. He aims to kill him.”

  Yancey nodded. “Fine, Buck. I’ll go get him.”

  He went out and Buck Harlan lay back, frowning, rubbing at his aching head, confused, thinking how much simpler life had been in prison when he had only had to worry about keeping out of Warden Harris’ way as much as possible. Now there were conflicting loyalties, lies to sort out from truths, people of a kind he had never known to face up to and claiming they wanted to help him ... He almost wished he was back in Houston Territorial Prison.

  Almost ...

  The train pulled into Bowie siding and the crowds gathered there began to boo and cheer in a mixed welcome as Dukes came out onto the platform of his car with Kate beside him and a group of soldiers crowding close around him for protection.

  Brazos Catlin sat a white horse out front of the crowd and lifted his hat in the air and the noise of the crowd died away. He looked at the governor with bleak eyes.

  “I won’t say welcome, Governor,” he said loudly, “because you aren’t welcome here, or anywhere else along the Red River.”

  Some of the crowd cheered, others booed. Catlin let the uproar die down before continuing.

  “But you’re here and the platform’s set up and these here good folk are waitin’ to hear what you’ve got to say ... Figured we’d get right down to business. If that suits you, of course.”

  Dukes looked him squarely in the eyes across the intervening space. “That suits me fine, Mr. Catlin ...”

  The rest of his words were drowned out in a sudden rattle of gunfire coming from an upper floor window of the Bowie Drovers’ House diagonally opposite the siding. People turned sharply as a man’s body came hurtling backwards out through a window, taking glass and frame with it. The man plunged onto the awning, rolled across and thudded into the street. A moment later Yancey Bannerman came out of the shattered window, clutching a smoking Colt in one hand and a rifle with a tubular telescopic sight on top in the other. John Cato ran out of the front of the hotel and covered the man in the street as he flopped about, clawing at his side, dazed from his fall, a leg broken. It was Hank Boll and he was moaning loud enough to be heard in the governor’s car.

  Catlin sat his saddle stiffly and Yancey dropped to the street, knelt beside Boll.

  “I’d dismount if I was you, Mr. Catlin,” Dukes said quietly and the rancher turned a savage face towards him. The soldiers beside the governor and Kate leveled their rifles at the cattleman.

  Catlin started to dismount slowly, then froze when Buck Harlan stepped out onto the platform beside the governor.

  “Hank didn’t finish me last night like he should have done, Catlin,” Buck told him. “That gave the governor time to prove to me how you’d lied all down the line. So I told him about the set-up for the assassination here. Only I knew you’d have to use Boll in place of me. I’d say you’re finished, mister. You’ve lost everything, including your life. Because the governor has papers here that prove you were lyin’ about him bein’ bribed to grant this land to the railroad and, in fact, the land the railroad’s using won’t come anywhere near the ranches you reckoned.” There was a murmur of anger from a section of the crowd. “You just wanted to get Dukes, up here to kill him, not to hold any debate at all …”

  “Damn you, Harlan!” Catlin yelled suddenly. “They should have shot you along with your lousy brothers!”

  Half out of the saddle, he suddenly threw himself backwards with his white horse between himself and the soldiers, and snatched at his engraved Colt Peacemaker.

  “Watch out!” Yancey yelled, running forward, bringing his own gun up.

  But he wasn’t needed. Fast as Catlin was and with surprise on his side, he still wasn’t fast enough. Buck Harlan’s Colt with the short barrel cleared leather a fraction of a second earlier than the long-barreled engraved model and he elbowed the governor aside with his left arm as his right snapped into line and the Colt bucked twice in his hand. People scattered, yelling, but there were no stray bullets flying about. Both slugs caught Catlin in the chest and he went down hard, coughing, the fancy gun flying from his hand. He coughed a ribbon of bright blood and Yancey knew the man was lung shot and dying. Catlin looked up through pain-glazed eyes at Buck Harlan and there was burning hatred there for an instant before all expression was snuffed out. Harlan sighed and holstered his gun.

  “Buck, we could use a man like you in the enforcers,” the governor said, steadied by Kate’s hand. “You interested?”

  Harlan shook his head slowly. “Reckon not, Governor ... Back in Promontory, Will Sawyer reckons he could use an extra hand on his freight line and—well, I figure Susan Sawyer kinda ... well—took a bit of a shine to me ...”

  He flushed, embarrassed, and Yancey grinned.

  “So she did,” he said, winking at the smiling Kate. “You want to watch out, Buck, or you’ll find yourself back in prison.”

  Harlan tensed, frowning. “Huh?”

  Yancey smiled, crinkling his eyes. “They do say marriage is a kind of jail sentence, don’t
they?”

  Buck Harlan grinned suddenly. His face lit up, making him seem younger.

  “I’ll take my chances with Susan,” he said, “clear through to the end of my term.”

  About the Author

  Keith Hetherington

  aka Kirk Hamilton, Brett Waring and Hank J. Kirby

  Australian writer Keith has worked as television scriptwriter on such Australian TV shows as Homicide, Matlock Police, Division 4, Solo One, The Box, The Spoiler and Chopper Squad.

  “I always liked writing little vignettes, trying to describe the action sequences I saw in a film or the Saturday Afternoon Serial at local cinemas,” remembers Keith Hetherington, better-known to Piccadilly Publishing readers as Hank J. Kirby, author of the Bronco Madigan series.

  Keith went on to pen hundreds of westerns (the figure varies between 600 and 1000) under the names Kirk Hamilton (including the legendary Bannerman the Enforcer series) and Clay Nash as Brett Waring. Keith also worked as a journalist for the Queensland Health Education Council, writing weekly articles for newspapers on health subjects and radio plays dramatizing same.

  More on Keith Hetherington

  The Bannerman Series by Kirk Hamilton

  The Enforcer

  Ride the Lawless Land

  Guns of Texas

  A Gun for the Governor

  Rogue Gun

  Trail Wolves

  Dead Shot

  A Man Called Sundance

  Mad Dog Hallam

  Shadow Mesa

  Day of the Wolf

  Tejano

  The Guilty Guns

  The Toughest Man in Texas

  Manstopper

  The Guns That Never Were

  Tall Man’s Mission

  Day of the Lawless

  Gauntlet

  Vengeance Rides Tall

  … And more to come every month!

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  More on Kirk Hamilton