Bannerman the Enforcer 14 Read online

  “And what has Captain Allard to say for himself?” Mattie asked.

  The marshals exchanged glances. The shorter one spoke for the first time.

  “He didn’t have much to say at all for a spell. Then he suddenly started, and really ran off at the mouth.”

  Mattie waited and the tall lawman took up the story.

  “We already suspected the gang was led by Brad Stewart ... he was the dark hombre with the scar on his cheek, and Catlin, feller they call the ‘toughest man in Texas’ was runnin’ with him ... he was the redhead.”

  “The killer who shot his own wounded comrade!” Mattie said, her repugnance obvious.

  The tall marshal nodded. “Didn’t want him to talk, I guess. Anyways, Captain Allard confirmed it for us. It was the Stewart gang, all right. Smart man, Stewart. He’d gotten a whisper about the special gold pieces and the method of transfer. Knew he couldn’t pull off a train robbery the way it’s armored and knew he’d have one hell of a job bustin’ into your father’s bank once the gold was in the vaults. If he wanted to get his hands on that gold, he had to do it before it got into the bank. So he approached Allard. Seems he had somethin’ on him and he offered him a good share as well. Allard played along, split the guards, and so cut down the resistance for Stewart and his men. They’re a ruthless bunch, and with the prospect of a quarter-million in gold, they really cut loose this time. Nine dead, all told. One of the soldiers didn’t make it. Heard only an hour ago.”

  “And Captain Allard? What’ll happen to him now?”

  Again the marshals exchanged a brief glance.

  “He was shot dead whilst tryin’ to escape, ma’am,” the shorter one told her, deadpan.

  “I—see,” Mattie replied slowly after an interval. “And do you know where you can catch up with this man Stewart?”

  “Pretty good idea, ma’am,” the tall man replied. “Like I said, Catlin’s called the toughest man in Texas because that’s where he hangs out. It’s his territory, especially along the border. Allard was only able to tell us that they were all goin’ back to Texas, takin’ various routes, but he died before he gave us the rendezvous. Seems they shipped that gold on an ordinary passenger train in a couple of leather suitcases. Someone picked ’em up in El Paso before we got the information, so we missed it there. But we’re hopin’ to nail ’em in Texas. The Rangers are on the job as well as other federal marshals. The Governor of Texas has been asked to swing every available man into it and I figure those hombres don’t stand a chance. Thought you’d like to know, ma’am, and you might be able to pass it along to your father and brother, when they’re feelin’ a mite more chipper. Should help cheer ’em up some.”

  Mattie smiled. “Thank you, marshal. It was very thoughtful. And I’m glad to know you’re making progress. My other brother, Yancey, works for Governor Dukes, so I’m sure he’ll be working on the case in Texas, too.”

  “It’s our biggest lead, ma’am, and I’m right sorry Allard was shot before he could give us any more information. Trigger-happy guard, I guess. You see, we ‘arranged’ his escape, aimed to let him loose and follow him, figurin’ he’d get in touch with Stewart and his bunch, but someone forgot to tell the guard on the wall, and ...” He shrugged. “Anyways, we’re hopin’ to corner ’em right soon and I’ll let you know soon’s we get anythin’ definite.”

  Mattie thanked them again and showed them out. It was encouraging news and would certainly help both Chuck and C.B. Meantime, it would be best to send Yancey a wire and let him know the situation.

  But, at that moment, there was something happening in El Paso that was going to change things considerably.

  Three – El Paso

  His name was Kennedy, Lew Kennedy, and he was a blocky man with a massive chest, a bullet head and square, angular jawline shagged with four days’ stubble.

  Kennedy hoped the stubble would serve as some slight disguise, for he was not now supposed to be in El Paso. He should have been a long way from here, lying low in an isolated adobe shack in a remote canyon, south of the Rio, waiting for the time when he was to move north to the rendezvous with Brad Stewart and Catlin and the others.

  But Kennedy was not a man who would—or could—go without his pleasures and he figured there was little pleasure to be had in the adobe hut in the remote canyon. Sure, he might have been able to find some blowsy señorita who would come and stay with him for a few days, drinking tequila or pulque with so many flies floating in it that a man had to strain it through his teeth while drinking, but that wasn’t enough for Lew Kennedy. He liked company, male and female, an audience he could buy drinks for and then revel in their thanks and appreciation; company to gamble with, for cards were a greater passion with him than drinking and women ... and there was little doubt about how he would spend his share of the stolen gold when he was finally paid off in cold, hard, clean cash by Brad Stewart.

  Thinking of Stewart, Kennedy broke out in a sheen of sweat. He had seen the outlaw boss angry before when someone had disobeyed his orders and that tiny, jagged scar on his cheek had gone a bright red, standing out like a warning beacon against the hard, bone-white skin of the man’s face. Then the dark eyes had glittered as they narrowed and turned icy. A moment later, the man who had transgressed had been writhing on the floor with a bullet in his belly and Stewart had stood over him with smoking gun until the last breath had rattled out of the man ...

  Stewart insisted on being obeyed.

  Then there was Catlin: he was even deadlier than Stewart and had been known to shoot a man to death a little at a time over a period of days.

  Kennedy felt a gut-wrenching knot of fear in his belly. Hell, he must have been loco to pocket those coins and come here! If he was spotted by any of Stewart’s spies he would die a worse death than if the Apaches had caught him and staked him out on an anthill ...

  He paused on the narrow boardwalk, wiping his face and thick neck with a grimy kerchief, breathing a little faster than normal. Maybe he should ride out now and go back to the adobe hut and wait. He could always deny taking the gold pieces if the subject was brought up. And it was just possible he might get away with it: there had been a storm water drain near where the sack had burst outside the Bannerman First National. Maybe he could claim some of the pieces had rolled down there. It was just possible he might get away with that ...

  But if he were spotted here in El Paso’s red-light district, playing cards with some of the gold, he wouldn’t live any longer than it took them to torture him to death!

  He scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw and paused: the beard was longer than he had figured. He moved along the boardwalk to where he could see his face reflected in a store window, washed by the lantern light under the porch. Hell, that beard was dark and changed the outline of his face considerably. If no one knew him, the description could fit a hundred border drifters: blocky, dark, bearded ... there could be nothing more than a general description, and with a change of name ...!

  He jingled some of the stolen gold pieces in his pocket. It was still risky, but he was here now, wasn’t he? No point in riding back to the adobe shack tonight: he wouldn’t get there before sunup, anyway. He sucked down a deep breath and glanced around at the bustling crowds along the walks, out in the streets, entering the bordellos and gambling houses and saloons. Judas, who would remember him in this crowd?

  Caught up in the spirit of the noise and laughter and the bright lights, the encouragements of the barkers outside the places of ‘entertainment’, Lew Kennedy tilted his hat forward over his face a little, pushed his gunbelt lower so that his stomach protruded over the top and changed his body shape somewhat, and then shoved his way through the crowd outside one of the gaming houses.

  There was a lot of shouting and yelling inside and he saw that there was a fight. Two men were hammering at each other with fists and broken chairs. Near them, miraculously still upright, was a green baize table with hands of cards and stacks of money on it. He would have bet that the fi
ght was over cards. Suddenly there was a roar from the crowd and, abruptly, silence. Kennedy looked up swiftly and saw that one of the fighters had whipped out a knife from his boot top. The second man leapt back as the blade slashed at him and he ran into the crowd which scattered around the bar. The knife-wielder went after him with a roar but the other man grabbed a bottle from the counter, smashed it against the zinc edge and turned to face him. The man with the knife tried to stop his forward rush but wasn’t fast enough. The other ducked under his knife arm and drove upwards with the jagged bottle. The man screamed and dropped his knife, clawing at his belly as the other screwed the bottle savagely. Then he released the bottle and left it protruding from his opponent’s belly while he snatched up the knife and plunged the blade to the hilt in the other’s chest.

  The crowd stared in silence as the man kicked out his life on the floor, and the one still standing wiped a bloody hand across his bleeding nostrils and called for a whisky. He downed the drink without taking his eyes of his dying opponent and, when the man’s movements had ceased, he looked around at the crowd.

  “Fair fight. He started it by callin’ me a cheat. Now, this leaves us a player short. Anyone feel like sittin’ in for a hand of poker?”

  There was silence for a short time and then Lew Kennedy stepped forward, jingling two of the gold pieces together in his hand.

  “I’ll take his place,” he said, indicating the dead man who was being dragged out by his heels.

  The bloody-handed killer looked Kennedy up and down and nodded. “Fine ... well, come on. Let’s get the game goin’ again.”

  The crowd began to disperse, muttering, and three other men joined Kennedy and the killer at the tables with the green baize and the hands of cards laid out on it. They moved to the table and the killer glanced at Kennedy as the blocky man pulled out a chair.

  “Stakes are pretty high,” he said soberly.

  Kennedy, eyes alight with rising excitement at the prospect of a game of poker, smiled slowly and drew his hand out of his pocket. He placed ten of the gold pieces on the table and the light blazed back from their newness. He looked around at the others. “Good enough to get me in?” he asked, easing down into the chair confidently.

  ~*~

  “As you know, Yancey,” the governor said quietly, leaning across his desk towards the big Enforcer and holding a vesta flame for his cigarillo. He shook out the flame as he eased back in his chair. “The President himself asked for the Rangers and all other law-enforcement agencies to give this gold robbery top priority. Well, with petty departmental jealousies put aside, we seem to be getting somewhere at last.”

  Yancey paused with his cigarillo halfway to his mouth, then continued the interrupted motion, dragging down a lungful of smoke and exhaling slowly as he spoke.

  “That’s good, Governor. I’m sick of hangin’ about doing nothing but send wires to ’Frisco and wait for Mattie’s to come down to me ...”

  Dukes waved a hand. He knew how impatient Yancey must be to get on the trail of these outlaws. Especially when the news about his father and brother was so bad: the last wire from Mattie had said that one of Chuck’s leg wounds seemed to be infected and there was a possibility of amputation. Old C.B. was making very slow progress and still coughing up bloody tissue. The doctors were afraid his pleural cavity was going to fill with fluid and they knew that would take him off as surely as a bullet through the heart. He already had a cough that seemed to be getting worse ...

  But Yancey, itching though he was to get started, was a professional manhunter. He knew there was little to be gained by going off half-cocked; a man only used up time and energy to no purpose when he had nothing definite to go on. Yancey had examined every piece of information that had come into the big government mansion on Capitol Hill, sifted through it and kept only what was relevant and could be added to information already on hand. This way he was able to build up a useful file. As yet, it was slender and there wasn’t sufficient to work on, but the governor himself had not been entirely idle, either.

  Realizing that Yancey more than likely would have to go undercover to get at these outlaws, he had made certain ‘arrangements’.

  Dukes shuffled papers on his desk. “Yancey, you know about Captain Allard, of course, and his story that the Stewart bunch were going to rendezvous somewhere in Texas, that the gold had been sent on ahead as ordinary baggage on the El Paso train.”

  Yancey nodded, a trifle impatiently.

  “Well, seems he was likely speaking gospel, because last night, some of those gold pieces turned up in an El Paso saloon!”

  Yancey stiffened. “The new-minted double eagles, Governor?”

  “That’s them. Complete with the special mint-mark of the S twined about the F. No mistake, Yance. They’re pieces from the robbery, no doubt about it.”

  “Then El Paso could be the rendezvous,” Yancey said slowly, though there was an edge of doubt in his voice. “Mite obvious, though, Governor. Shipping the gold there and then meeting to share up. Seems to me they’d get that gold across into Juarez and divvy-up south of the border. Be safer to spend it there than on the American side.”

  The governor had been nodding as Yancey spoke. “With you all the way, Yancey. That’s why I don’t figure El Paso for their rendezvous, either.”

  “Yet that’s where the gold pieces showed ... Several you say?”

  “Five, the report states ... lost in a poker game.”

  Yancey sat forward swiftly. “Then it’s possible they saw who passed ’em!”

  “More than that: they know who it was. Rangers have got undercover men all along the border. They figure the gold, even if it reaches Mexico, will likely surface again in some of the border towns. They weren’t expecting to see it show so soon, of course ... But one of our men got into a brawl with a fellow who accused him of card-sharping and he had to kill him with a knife. He invited anyone else to join the poker game and a bearded ranny sat in and dropped ten of the gold pieces onto the table for his stake.”

  Yancey whistled softly. ‘Ten ... Sounds like it might’ve come from his share of the spoils.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, the Ranger managed to win some of the pieces and as soon as he saw the mint-mark he was certain sure he had his man and he was able to identify him: jasper named Lew Kennedy, no-good owlhoot who’s been on the wanted books for quite a spell. Killing, robbing, raping, all come easy to Kennedy. But his weakness is gambling ...”

  “Which suits us. What did the Ranger do?”

  “Nothing. He let him go, passed the word to other undercover men and they kept him under surveillance. He was allowed to win at poker, too, and he’s been whooping-it-up in El Paso ever since.”

  “Well, they showed some sense in not jumping him right there and then. He could lead us to the rendezvous and the others if we play it close to our chests.”

  “That’s the idea, Yancey.” The governor opened a drawer in his desk and took out a plain cardboard folder. He offered it to Yancey. “Take a look inside.”

  Yancey did and started a little as his own likeness stared up at him from a freshly-printed ‘Wanted’ dodger. But the name on the dodger wasn’t his. It was ‘Wes Shannon’, and there was a bounty of $3000 on his head. He was wanted for robbery, murder, escape from the territorial prison, and some minor crimes like assault, and others including cattle rustling and horse stealing.

  “Nice clean-living type, this Shannon,” Yancey quipped dryly.

  The governor smiled faintly. “With those credentials, you could rival Catlin himself for the title of toughest man in Texas, Yance ... and that’s the sort of background you’ll need to get anywhere near Brad Stewart.”

  Yancey nodded and flipped through the other papers. There were two more, older-looking ‘Wanted’ dodgers where the reward money was considerably less than the $3000, but, despite their aged look, Yancey figured they would have been printed at the same time as the newest-looking one. There were a couple of old, crumpled, greasy letters
written in different, but equally near-illiterate hands with different addresses. One was Socorro, New Mexico, the other was Denver, Colorado. Both places were listed on the Wanted dodgers as places where robberies or killings attributed to Shannon had taken place. In a detailed description of ‘Shannon’, the governor had even included those bullet scars that Yancey actually possessed, having picked up the wounds in the line of duty as an Enforcer for Dukes.

  Lastly, in a tattered envelope, were a couple of scratched and battered tintypes. One showed a middle-aged woman with severe face and tight-lipped smile; the other showed Yancey and Johnny Cato, his fellow Enforcer now in distant Canada on another assignment, in a typical ‘cowpuncher’ pose with a studio background.

  “Hey, I don’t recollect Johnny and me posing for anything like this,” Yancey said. “I don’t even recollect ever having been inside a photographer’s studio ...”

  Dukes smiled. “Some photographers who work for me don’t need to even see their subjects to make up a tintype of them ... it’s a fake, Yancey. The woman is supposed to be your mother. The other one, with Cato, is meant to be you and him on a spree in Yuma, Arizona. That’s the name on the back of the tintype where the photographic studio is supposed to be. And there is one with that name there, too. But Cato is supposed to be a notorious gunman, a killer from Dakota, and known as ‘Shorty’ Giles. There’ll be an article appearing in the El Paso papers tomorrow about how Giles was gunned down by Rangers in a spectacular gun battle outside of Wichita, Kansas. You’ll have the clipping amongst your things. It might help authenticate your background if you can show that you were pards with a killer who’s recently been in the news. Johnny being away in Canada, there’s no chance he’ll turn up at the wrong time and blow your cover.”

  Yancey looked impressed as he closed the folder. “I guess I’m off to El Paso, then, huh? As Wes Shannon, gunfighter and outlaw.”

  “That’s it, Yancey. You go in there and you get next to this Kennedy. Main thing is to keep Kennedy free and circulating and try to tag along with him when he heads for the rendezvous with Stewart and the others. We’ve got to get that gold back, Yancey, intact if possible. And we want to move in so none of the raiders escape. It’s a tall order, I know, but I reckon with the help of those dodgers and other papers you should be able to pull it off.”