Bad Men Die (16 page)

The street was already starting to clear as Luke stepped out of the livery barn. As people scurried inside, they cast frightened looks at the group of men who walked up the street toward the river. Harmon and Kent were in the lead, and behind them came half a dozen tough-looking cowboys, each man wearing a six-gun and carrying a rifle. The sight was enough to warn the townspeople that something was about to happen.

Luke waved at Harmon and Kent and strode quickly to the river. About a hundred yards along the bank, he started up the pine-dotted slope at a fairly steep angle. The trees got thicker the higher he climbed on the hill.

A few minutes later, he reached a good spot—thick with trees and brush—overlooking the river. He estimated it was forty feet below him. The outlaws on the riverboat wouldn't spot him as they approached. He set the box of dynamite on the ground where it would be handy, then hunkered on his heels and leaned his back against a tree trunk.

A couple cigars in his shirt pocket had come through all the commotion of the past few days unharmed. He took one of them out and clamped it between his teeth. From the little tin box he carried, he took a lucifer and snapped it to life with his thumbnail. Holding the flame to the cigar, he puffed until it was burning steadily.

He was ready. All he had to do was wait.

After worrying that he might not have time to get everything in place, the minutes seemed to drag as he smoked and watched the river. What if something had happened to the boat while it was still in the mountains, he wondered? Or maybe McCluskey had decided to change Burroughs' plan. Luke wouldn't put anything past him.

He smoked the first cigar down and used the butt to light the second one, and still there was no sign of the riverboat. He was about to decide he might have to head upriver and start searching for it, when he heard a faint rumble in the distance that steadily grew louder until he could discern it plainly over the noise of the river.

It was the boat's engine, Luke thought. He puffed harder on the cigar until its tip glowed cherry red.

The riverboat chugged into sight, coming around the shoulder of a hill. Spray flew up from the revolving paddlewheel. He drew back a little in the brush to make sure McCluskey and the others didn't spot him.

Luke saw a few men on deck, a couple more in the pilothouse. He couldn't make out who any of them were, nor did he spot Delia.

He felt a few qualms about killing a woman, even one as vicious and bloodthirsty as Delia Bradley, but she was with the outlaws of her own free will. Whatever happened in the next few minutes would just happen, he thought, and the chips would land wherever they fell.

He reached into the box and picked up one of the red-paper-wrapped, slightly greasy sticks of dynamite. He had cut the fuses pretty short. It wouldn't take long for the dynamite to go off after the fuse was lit.

The boat had almost reached his position. Luke held the fuse to the tip of the cigar. Sparks flew in the air as the fuse sputtered to life.

He tossed the dynamite into the air above the river. It spun downward, landed on the deck at the bow, bounced once, and rolled to the edge of the deck. The little lip caught it and kept it from falling into the river.

Yells of alarm came from a couple outlaws near where the dynamite landed. One man foolishly rushed toward the bow, evidently intending to grab the dynamite and fling it off the boat.

The explosive went off just as he reached for it. The blast blew him apart and chewed a big chunk out of the deck.

A second stick of dynamite was already spinning through the air toward the boat. The fuse was timed even better. It blew just as it struck the deck. The concussion picked up one of the suddenly panicked outlaws and flung him into the air. His arms and legs waved wildly for a second before he splashed into the river.

The next stick of dynamite landed on top of the cabins and blew a hole in them. Men were rushing around on the deck, looking for the source of the devastation that rained down from the sky.

Smoke began to boil up from the cabins. That blast had set the boat on fire.

Frank McCluskey appeared on deck, shouting over the tumult and waving an arm at the bank. Luke knew the outlaw had figured out where the dynamite was coming from.

A second later, shots began to ring out as the outlaws opened fire even though they couldn't actually see Luke. Bullets whipped through the brush and trees around him, but none came close enough to make him stop what he was doing.

He lit another fuse from the cigar and flung it at the paddlewheel. The dynamite arched down and exploded. The paddles lurched to a stop, bent and damaged by the blast. The riverboat's momentum kept it moving forward, but it began to slow dramatically.

It was tilting, too, as water gushed through the holes blown in the deck. Quickly, Luke lit the last two fuses and tossed those sticks of dynamite down onto the boat. Some of the outlaws screamed in terror as the deadly cylinders fell among them, but those cries were swallowed up by the unholy roar as the dynamite went off.

Luke snatched up the Winchester and sprayed the pilothouse with lead as fast as he could work the rifle's lever. The two men up there were firing at him, and they had the best angle. One of their shots clipped a branch not far from him.

One man went over backward as Luke's slugs ripped through him. He toppled through one of the big windows. The other man dived for cover.

The riverboat was nose down in the water. The front half of the deck was awash. Luke knew the boilers might explode when the cold river water hit them, and from the looks of it, some of the outlaws realized that, too. They began leaping off the boat into the stream.

With everything on the riverboat in a state of chaos, the members of Marshal Kent's posse began appearing. They had taken cover so they would be out of sight as the boat approached, but there was no longer any need for that. Harmon's ranch hands had split up between the two banks, and the cattle baron and Kent were on the bridge itself, holding rifles.

The explosions seemed to have knocked all the fight out of most of the outlaws. They were pathetic, bedraggled figures as they crawled out of the river and were swarmed by Harmon's gun-toting cowboys. A couple tried to claw out their guns and put up a fight, but shots hammered into them and knocked them back in the water, where they floated lifelessly.

Luke knelt in the brush holding his Winchester and watched for McCluskey. He had lost track of the man during the confusion, and he still hadn't seen Delia.

A moment later, the outlaw emerged from one of the cabins dragging Delia by the hand. He had a revolver in his other hand, and he emptied it toward the bank where Luke was hiding.

Luke drew a bead on the outlaw and could have drilled him then, but he still wanted to see McCluskey hang, so he held off on the rifle's trigger.

He could tell that Delia didn't want to jump into the river. After emptying the revolver, McCluskey dragged her toward the deck's edge. Frantically, she tried to pull away, but he held on tightly to her. Luke figured she couldn't swim and was deathly afraid of the water.

McCluskey leaped, taking Delia with him. They went under the water and popped back up again. Delia wrapped her arms around McCluskey's neck and clung to him fiercely as he began kicking toward the shore.

They had just reached it and clambered up onto the bank when the biggest explosion of all wracked the riverboat. It split in half as a giant gout of flame and steam erupted from its midsection. The boilers had exploded.

The strongboxes, sturdy enough to withstand the blast, would go down with the boat and wind up on the bottom of the river, where they would be recovered later.

A couple of Harmon's men were waiting for McCluskey and Delia. They herded the two prisoners toward the spot where the posse had gathered the surviving members of the gang—eight of them, counting McCluskey and Delia.

With the stub of the second cigar still clenched between his teeth, Luke took the empty dynamite box and headed down the slope to join the others.

Dave Harmon had a grin on his face as he greeted Luke. “That was quite a show!” the cattle baron exclaimed. “The most excitement we've had around here in a good long while.”

Marshal Kent said, “It was more than enough excitement for me, that's for sure. I suppose you want me to lock these men up in my jail, Jensen?”

“I'd be obliged to you if you did,” Luke said with a nod. “Can you handle this many prisoners?”

Kent shrugged. “They'll be a little crowded, since I already have the two men in there who delivered the gang's horses, but I doubt if you're very concerned about their comfort.”

“Not at all,” Luke said.

“As for the lady, I can lock her in the back room so she won't have to share the cell block with these men.”

Luke figured that was sparing more thought for Delia's sensibilities than was really necessary, but he didn't argue. As long as they were all locked up securely, it was all that really mattered.

Harmon looked at the shattered husk of the burning riverboat. “One of my men is a mighty good swimmer. I reckon as soon as that boat finishes sinkin', he can go down and locate those strongboxes. I'll get some chain from the store and a team of mules from Silas Grant's stable, and we'll get that gold up out of the river.”

“Sounds good to me,” Luke said. “I appreciate all your help, Mr. Harmon.”

“Oh, hell, that's all right. We'll be well paid for it, after all.”

Luke nodded. “Yes, I figured we'd all share the rewards—”

“Rewards, hell!” Harmon said. “That's just chicken feed. I'm talkin' about a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of gold!”

Alarm bells went off in Luke's brain as he realized he was being double-crossed. The faint scuff of boot leather on the ground behind him added to the warning. He tried to whirl around and bring up the Winchester.

He was too late. Something crashed against his head, and as he fell, he caught a glimpse of Marshal Kent holding a rifle. He knew the lawman had just slammed the butt of that rifle into his head.

That was the last thing Luke knew for a while. He didn't even feel himself hit the ground.

A familiar odor was the first thing Luke was aware of when he began to regain consciousness. He smelled a distinctive blend of straw, manure, and horseflesh.

He was inside a stable.

The logical conclusion was that he was inside Silas Grant's livery stable in Pine City. However, he couldn't be sure of that. He wasn't sure about much of anything except that he never should have trusted Marshal Gideon Kent or Dave Harmon.

Unfortunately, he hadn't had any reason to think the two men were anything other than what they appeared to be—a small-town star-packer and an honest rancher. He still wasn't sure exactly what had happened out there by the river, but his aching head confirmed the important thing.

They had double-crossed him, knocked him out, and were after that gold for themselves.

Luke opened his eyes and flinched at the brightness that struck painfully against them. It was actually pretty dim and shadowy inside the little room where he lay on a hard-packed dirt floor, but enough light came through cracks around the door to half blind him for a moment.

When his eyes had adjusted, he looked around. He was in a small, windowless room, eight feet by eight feet square. A number of bridles, harnesses, and other pieces of tack hung from nails driven into the walls.

He was convinced that he was in Silas's stable. Biting back a groan in case a guard stood right outside the door, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself into a sitting position.

The pounding inside his skull made him sick and dizzy for a moment. When that subsided, he lifted a hand to his head and gingerly explored his scalp, finding the tender lump behind his ear where he'd been hit. It was sticky with dried blood, and touching it sent fresh waves of pain through his brain.

That died down to a dull ache. Ignoring it, Luke climbed carefully to his feet, bracing a hand against the rough planks of the wall.

Another wave of nausea and vertigo hit him once he was upright, but that soon passed, too. When he felt steady on his feet, he moved over to the door and put an eye to one of the cracks.

His field of view was pretty limited, of course, but he could see enough to confirm that he was in Silas Grant's tack room. In fact, he could see Silas himself, forking some hay into a stall on the other side of the barn's broad middle aisle.

The liveryman was a little the worse for wear, with a scrape on his cheek and a left eye swollen partially closed. Luke wondered who had been knocking him around.

He didn't see or hear anybody else, didn't smell any tobacco smoke to indicate that someone was nearby puffing on a quirly. It seemed he could risk trying to get the liveryman's attention, so he put his mouth next to the crack and hissed, “Silas! Silas, can you hear me?”

Silas paused in what he was doing and leaned on the pitchfork for a moment as he looked around with a frown on his face. Then hurried over to the tack room door. “Mr. Jensen, you're awake in there!”

That seemed pretty obvious to Luke, but he didn't say anything about it. He could tell that Silas was upset and asked, “Is there a guard out there?”

“Not right now.” Silas kept his voice low as he replied. “One of Mr. Harmon's men was here until a few minutes ago, but he went over to Herndon's store to buy some tobacco.” Silas grunted. “And when I say buy, I mean take it without payin' for it. None of the Leanin' H men ever pay for anything around here. Not with Dave Harmon havin' this whole town right smack-dab under the heel o' his boot.”

“It was Harmon's men who beat you up?”

“Yeah,” Silas admitted. “Reckon I didn't cooperate quite well enough to suit 'em when they dragged you in here and said they was gonna lock you in my back room. They're used to folks jumpin' whenever they say so, same as Mr. Harmon is.”

“You didn't say anything about that earlier.”

“Didn't know you was gonna get mixed up with the man. Mr. Harmon, he generally don't hurt nobody unless they get in his way . . . or unless they got somethin' he wants.”

Like a small fortune in stolen gold bars, Luke thought with a sigh.

“What about the marshal? He's crooked, too, I take it?”

Silas grimaced. “Not crooked so much as he won't cross Mr. Harmon. That man owns the bank, so that means he pretty much owns the whole town. Ain't nobody here in Pine City who don't owe him money, me included. Like I said, he lets things go along peaceful-like most of the time.”

Luke had run into men like that before—men who considered themselves the monarchs of their own private little domain. Harmon's hearty, friendly, helpful demeanor had been just an act.

And he had fallen for it, leaving him in an even worse position than before.

“All right, let me out of here,” he said harshly.

Silas shook his head solemnly. “I can't do that.”

“Look, I know you're afraid of Harmon and his men—”

“Damn right I'm afraid of'em,” Silas broke in. “Bad things got a habit of happenin' to men who stand up to Mr. Harmon. That might put my wife Tillie in danger, too, and I ain't gonna do that. But I mean what I say, Mr. Jensen—I
can't
let you outta that tack room. There's a padlock on the door, and I ain't got the key.”

“Use that pitchfork,” Luke suggested. “You can pry the hasp loose—”

Silas's head jerked toward the barn door. He grimaced again. “Somebody's comin'!”

Before Luke could say anything else, Silas scurried away. He went back to pitching hay into the stalls, trying to make it look like he hadn't been anywhere near the tack room.

Luke heard footsteps and figured the guard was back.

Moments later, a man's voice drawled, “You hear anything from inside there, Silas?”

“No, sir,” Silas answered without hesitation. “Quiet as the grave in there, it is.”

Luke heard a match scrape and then smelled tobacco burning, along with the sulfur stink of the lucifer.

“Could be Jensen's dead,” the guard said. “Kent really walloped him. Might've stove in his skull.”

“If . . . if he's dead, you can't leave him there. This ain't no undertakin' parlor.”

“He'll stay in there until the boss says otherwise,” the man snapped. “Don't forget who's runnin' things around here.”

“No, sir,” Silas said, hanging his head. “I sure won't.”

A second later, he lifted his head and glared, which made Luke think the guard must have turned away. The hatred on the man's face made Luke realize just how much Silas resented the heavy-handed treatment he got at the hands of Harmon and his men. Many of the other citizens of Pine City probably felt the same way.

That resentment might come in handy, Luke thought—but only if he could get out of there.

 

 

McCluskey sat with his back against the wall and his arms around Delia, who was still trembling violently and whimpering now and then. They were in the back room of the marshal's office, which was used for storage and also had a cot in it that looked like it hadn't been slept in for quite some time.

Both of them were still damp from being dunked in the river, but Delia wasn't trembling because of that. She was still on the verge of hysteria.

From everything McCluskey had seen of her so far, Delia Bradley was the most coolheaded woman he had ever known. She had gunned down those guards in the caboose without batting an eyelash, and she had blasted Derek Burroughs.

Yet she had almost lost her mind at the prospect of jumping in the river. He knew that if he hadn't dragged her kicking and screaming off the riverboat, she would have stayed on it until the boilers exploded.

Of course, they had wound up in a pretty precarious position anyway. McCluskey had seen the lawman's badge pinned to the vest of the Pine City marshal and figured they were being arrested. It was worse than that.

They had landed in the hands of another ruthless bunch of outlaws—only those men worked for the cattle baron called Harmon.

The surviving members of Burroughs' gang were locked up in the cells. Marshal Kent would have put McCluskey in with them, but when the time came, Delia refused to let go of him. Still frantic with fear, she clutched him like a lifeline.

Rather than going to the trouble of trying to pry her loose from him, Kent had just told Harmon's men to put both of them in the back room. It didn't have any windows, so it was almost as secure as one of the cells.

They had been there ever since. McCluskey kept waiting for Delia to calm down, but he wasn't sure that was ever going to happen.

As he patted Delia's shoulder and made comforting noises, he thought about Luke Jensen and felt fires of rage burning inside him. The bounty hunter was responsible for their current predicament. McCluskey had expected him to come after them but hadn't figured that Jensen would get ahead of them somehow.

He certainly hadn't expected that Jensen would be waiting at Pine City with a dynamite ambush.

And yet, as soon as he'd heard the first blast go off, he had known in his gut that Jensen was responsible for it. It felt like he was going to plague him for the rest of his life.

Of course, how long that life would be was a good question. McCluskey had no idea what Harmon intended to do with them.

“You're all right now. You made it out of the river,” he said to Delia. He heard a key scrape in the lock and sat up straighter.

Delia clutched at him more desperately, but he got hold of her wrists and inexorably unwound her arms from his neck. “Stop it. You don't have to act like this.”

Under his breath, he muttered, “Crazy woman.”

The door swung open. Marshal Kent stood there, a double-barreled Greener in his hands.

McCluskey thought the man looked like a store clerk or a preacher, but there was no mistaking the evil glitter in Kent's eyes as he warned, “Don't try anything, you two, or I'll splatter both of you all over the walls in here.” He motioned with the shotgun. “Get over there in the corner, next to the cot.”

McCluskey scooted in that direction, taking Delia with him. Her reaction to being threatened with a shotgun was interesting. If anything, she seemed to calm down a little right away, he thought. It was like she could deal with that threat a lot easier than the thought of jumping in a river.

When the two of them were in the corner, Kent moved out of the doorway and let Harmon come into the room. The marshal stayed there to keep the prisoners covered as Harmon regarded them with what looked like a friendly smile on his face.

McCluskey knew better. He recognized the cold, snake-like eyes of a killer above that smile. He knew that look well. He had seen it enough times in his own shaving mirror.

“Well, now, is the little lady settlin' down yet?” the cattle baron asked.

Delia surprised McCluskey by answering Harmon's question herself. “Don't call me little lady,” she spat. “In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not any damn
lady
.”

Yeah, thought McCluskey, she was back to her old self again. And he was glad of it. She was a formidable ally. If they were going to get out of this, he might need her help . . . as he had several times previously.

“What are you going to do with us?” McCluskey asked.

“How do you know I won't just kill you?” Harmon asked in return. The smile never budged from his face.

“If you wanted us dead, you've had plenty of chances to do it before now. I think you've got something else in mind.”

“Well, you might be right about that,” Harmon drawled in his folksy ways. “I had a look through the marshal's wanted posters. He told me your name sounded familiar to him, and turns out there's a good reason for that. You're wanted in a lot of places, McCluskey, for a lot of different things—all of 'em bad.”

“You're not telling me anything I don't already know,” McCluskey snapped. “Get to the point.”

“You've got a lot of bark on you for a fella who's in such a bad spot. I sort of like that. Here's what I was thinkin', McCluskey—I might be able to use a man like you.”

The outlaw frowned in surprise. “You mean you want me to work for you? I'm no damn cow nurse.”

“You know better than that. You're good with a gun, and you don't much care who you use it on. Those are valuable skills to a man like me, who's got a heap of enemies in the world.”

“Don't you have enough hired killers working for you already?”

Harmon tut-tutted. “A man can never have enough good workers. But what I really need is a man to take charge of those workers. I'm gettin' up in years. Can't get out and do all the things I once could. And I got to admit”—he looked at Delia, and his smile became more of a leer—“it'd be nice to have a good-lookin' gal around the house again. You could bring your little friend with you.”

Delia simpered a little, going from angry to coy in a heartbeat. McCluskey figured that was a purely instinctive reaction with her. Some man—any man—flattered her, and she instantly started trying to work it to her advantage.

He didn't care. Let her play up to the old man as much as she wanted to. He didn't even care if she wound up sharing Harmon's bed. Only one thing mattered to him. “If you want me to boss that crew of gun-wolves for you, I can do that. But there's something I want in return.”

“A share of that gold,” Harmon said with a knowing nod. “I can go along with that. Probably won't be as big as you would've gotten if you hadn't run into me, but just think of it as a start on a lot more loot.”