Kill Crazy (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“The bank takes our money, then uses it to make loans and such, and that's how they make money. So I say if a bank is robbed, they ought to pay us whatever it is we lost,” a baldheaded man with a white shirt and red suspenders said. This was Nippy Jones, owner of the saloon, and he was talking to his bartender.

“But where are they goin' to get the money, Mr. Jones?” the bartender asked. “I mean, if they got all the money took away from 'em, then they don't have no money to pay none of the rest of us back.”

“That's their problem, where they get the money,” Jones said. Looking around, he saw Marshal Ferrell and Charley Blanton coming into his establishment.

“Well, well, the press and the law,” he said, smiling. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

“Did you read the letter to editor in my paper this morning?” Blanton asked.

“You mean the one from the brother of the bank robber?” Jones asked. “Yeah, I seen it.”

“It was written on a piece of your stationery,” Marshal Ferrell said.

“What? Wait a minute, you aren't tryin' to say I wrote it, are you?” Jones asked.

“No, but someone you gave the stationery to, did.”

“I ain't give no stationery to nobody,” Nippy Jones said.

“You agree with me that this piece of stationery came from here, don't you?” Ferrell asked, showing Jones the letter.

“Not so's I can tell” Jones replied. “What makes you think it came from here?”

“Nippy,” Ferrell said, speaking less forcefully than he had been before. “I'm not accusing you of anything, and you aren't in any kind of trouble. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this is all. I want you to look at the paper again and tell me if you recognize it.”

“I told you, that I don't think it came from here. All my stationery has a Wild Hog on top. Hell, you know that, Charley. You're the one who printed 'em up for me.”

“May I see that?” the bartender asked.

Ferrell showed the piece of paper to the bartender, and he looked at for a moment. “It's from here, all right,” he said. “I cut the tops off of the stationery when I give some of 'em to her, so's she wouldn't be writin' nothin' that might embarrass the saloon.”

“Who are you talkin' about? Who did you give the stationery to?” Ferrell asked.

“I give some to Kathy. I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, I never said nothin' to you about it, but I didn't think it would matter none. I mean you got a whole lot more 'n you'll prob'ly ever use.”

“That's all right, Jack. You shoulda told me about it, but it's all right.”

“Have you had any strangers come in here, lately?” Marshal Ferrell asked.

“No, not that I can recall. 'Cept maybe them fellas with the new hats and shirts.”

“New hats and shirts? What are you talking about?”

“It's the damndest thing. Four of 'em there was, and they was all four of 'em wearin' brand-new hats and brand-new shirts. They was here yesterday. Good customers, too. They bought drinks all day, played cards, then all four of 'em took a girl upstairs for the night.”

“All four of them with one girl?” Ferrell asked, surprised by the comment.

Jones laughed. “Now, that truly would be somethin', wouldn't it? I mean one girl with four men, all at the same time? No, sir, I didn't mean it the way it sounds. They each one had 'em a girl.”

“Was Kathy one of them?”

“Yes, why?”

“I was just wondering. I mean, Jack said he gave some of the stationery to Kathy.”

“Yes, sir, that's what I done, all right,” Jack said.

“Is Kathy here today? I'd like to speak to her,” Ferrell said.

“Yeah, sure, that's her back there,” Jones said. “Kathy?”

The young woman was bending over a table talking to a couple of customers, and she looked up when Jones called.

“Would you come here, please?”

“What ya need?”

“The marshal wants to talk to you.”

Kathy looked at the marshal quizzically.

“Kathy, Nippy tells me you took a man to your room last night.”

“I ain't done nothin' wrong,” Kathy said, defensively. “The city says we can whore long as we do our whorin' in the same place of business.”

“That's not what I want to talk about,” Marshal Ferrell said. “Nippy tells me that the man you took upstairs with you was a stranger in town.”

“Yeah, he was one of the men with a new hat and shirt,” Kathy said.

“Tell me about him.”

“Nothin' to tell,” Kathy said. “We just—uh—did it, then we went to sleep.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about him?” Ferrell asked.

Kathy smiled. “No, he was pretty much like ever' other man I've slept with,” she said. “Him an' his friends left this mornin'. After he peed all over my floor.”

“Peed on your floor?” Ferrell asked, confused by the remark.

“Yeah, he was aimin' for the chamber pot. Which I guess
is
strange when you think about it, 'cause last night in the middle of the night he went out in the alley to pee 'cause he said he didn't want to pee in front me. But last night it was dark and I couldn't even have seen him. This mornin' it was broad daylight, and it didn't seem to bother him none.”

“How long was he gone when he left in the middle of the night?” Ferrell asked.

“I don't know, 'cause I was asleep when he left. He woke me up when he come back in.”

“Did he say anything?”

“A few things now and then, yeah,” Kathy said. “But we didn't talk a whole lot. I mean he wasn't payin' me to talk, if you know what I mean.”

Ferrell noticed that Kathy's lip was swollen and bore the scar of a recent cut. He put his finger on her lip and she winced as he touched it.

“That hurt?” Ferrell asked.

“Yes.”

“When did it happen?”

“I—I don't know,” Kathy said.

“How can you have a cut lip all swollen like that, still hurting, and you don't know when it happened?”

Kathy didn't answer.

“He hit you, didn't he?”

“Yeah,” Kathy said. “But he didn't mean nothin' by it, and he apologized. Besides which, he give me twenty dollars to make up for it.”

“Hold it!” Ferrell said. “He gave you twenty dollars?”

“He sure did.”

“Gold, or paper money?”

“It was paper money, but that spends just as good.”

“Why did he hit you?”

“Because of somethin' I said. Like I told you, it was my fault.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Well, it ain't so much what I said, as to what I called him.”

Ferrell smiled. “You called him a son of a bitch, did you?”

“No, I called him Johnny.”

The smile left Ferrell's face. “He hit you because you called him Johnny?”

“Yeah. I thought sure one of the others called him Johnny, so that's what I called him, and it made him mad, so he hit me. He said his name was Donnie.”

“Donnie?”

“That's what he said. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I'm sure the other man called him Johnny. I just don't know why he got so upset about it.”

“Kathy, do you have any of Wild Hog stationery in your room?” Ferrell asked.

“Yeah, I do.” She looked at Jones. “I didn't steal it, Nippy. Jack, he give it to me. Anyhow, it wasn't some of the good stationery. The picture of the Wild Hog couldn't be seen.”

“That's all right, Kathy. I know about it, and I don't mind.”

“I didn't think you would mind, or I wouldn't 'a took it.”

“Where do you keep it?” Ferrell asked.

“I've got ten sheets of it left up on my dresser.”

“Ten sheets? You mean you know exactly the number of sheets you have?”

“Yes. I've been keepin' a count of it.”

“Would you mind if I went up with you and counted it?”

Kathy laughed. “Now, Marshal, what's Mrs. Ferrell goin' to say when folks tell her they seen you 'n' me goin' up the stairs together?”

Marshal Ferrell chuckled as well. “You've got a point,” he said. “All right, would you do me a favor? Go up and count the number of pieces of the stationery you have left, then come back down and tell me.”

“All right,” Kathy said.

“Marshal, what's this all about?” Jones asked after Kathy left to respond to Marshal Ferrell's request.

“There were six men took part in the bank robbery yesterday,” Marshal Ferrell said. “Four of them got away. I'm sure one of them was Emile Taylor's brother, Johnny. And I think he, and they, came back to town to have a look around.”

“That's kind of bold of 'em, ain't it? I mean to come back into town right after they held up the bank?”

“Not when you stop to think about it. They were all wearing masks so nobody could see their faces, and they were all wearing long dusters, so nobody could see what kind of clothes they actually had on. They could have come back to town and nobody would have been the wiser.”

At that moment Kathy came back down with an expression of surprise on her face.

“You only had nine sheets of stationery left, didn't you?” Marshal Ferrell asked.

“Yeah,” Kathy said. “But I don't understand. I was sure I had ten. How did you know there would only be nine?”

“Because I've got one of them,” Ferrell said, showing the letter to Kathy.

“Yes,” Kathy said. “That's one of them all right. All ten were torn at the top so that only the bottom part of the pig's foot shows.”

“Damn,” Jones said. “You think Johnny Taylor is still in town?”

“I doubt it,” Marshal Ferrell said. “I think he came back to check on his brother, and to see if there was any way he could break him out of jail.”

“There ain't, is there?”

“Have you ever heard the saying, forewarned is forearmed?” Blanton asked.

“No, I don't think I have,” Jones said. “What does that mean?”

“It means there's not a chance Johnny Taylor is going to break his brother out of jail,” Marshal Ferrell said.

Chapter Sixteen

He was called Harper, and though his first name was Vernon, nobody ever used it. He was tall, rawhide thin, with a handlebar moustache and hair that hung to his shoulders. He was sitting in a saloon in Cheyenne, drinking coffee and playing a game of solitaire, when someone at the bar yelled at him.

“Harper!”

The man who yelled was young, with blond hair and blue eyes.

Harper didn't respond to the summons.

“Harper! I'm callin' you out, you son of a bitch!” the young man said.

Harper made one more play, then put the cards facedown on the table and looked back at the man.

“Are you speaking to me?” he asked. His voice was soft and sibilant, barely loud enough to be heard, but as frightening as the hiss of a rattlesnake.

“Yes, I'm speaking to you,” the young man said. “My name is Blake Toomey. Does that mean anything to you?”

“I can't say that it does.”

“I don't expect you to remember me,” Toomey said. “I was only twelve years old the last time we met. That is, if you could call it meeting. I watched you kill my pa and I swore then that some fine day I would find you, and I would kill you.” He patted the handle of his gun. “I've been practicing for six years, and this is that day.”

“Boy, you need to learn not to get involved in other people's fights unless you're getting paid for it,” Harper said.

“Like you were paid to kill my pa?”

“I'm sure I must have been paid for it,” Harper said. “I don't kill for free.”

“You son of a bitch! You don't even remember him, do you?” Toomey said, shouting so loud that spittle was flying from his mouth.

“I'm not sure that I do.”

“Have you killed so many men that you can't even keep track of it?”

“Something like that,” Harper said.

“Well, it ends today,” Toomey said.

Until this moment, Harper had been sitting down, but now he stood up and stepped away from the table. Because he was so thin, the gun hanging low from his right side seemed almost big enough to tip him off balance.

“So now you are planning to kill me?”

“I'm not just planning on doin' it, I'm goin' to do it,” Toomey said.

“Go away, Toomey. I don't kill boys, not even for money. And I especially don't want to kill one for free.”

“You think I'm not good enough for you, don't you? You think I don't know how to handle a gun? Well, watch this, you son of a bitch!”

Toomey stepped up to the bar, empty now because the patrons who had been standing at the bar, like the others who had been sitting at the tables, had all moved to the sides of the saloon to be out of the line of fire, should the gun battle actually break out.

Toomey picked up a shot glass.

“I'm going to throw this glass into the air, and shoot it before it falls,” he said.

The expression on Harper's face was unchanged.

“I know what you are thinking,” Toomey said. “Lots of people can toss a glass into the air and shoot it. But how about this?”

Toomey picked up a second glass. “It's more than one glass,” he said.

He picked up a third glass, and smiled, broadly. “It's three glasses.”

“Nobody can shoot three glasses before they come down,” said one of the saloon patrons who had moved up against the wall.

Toomey tossed all three glasses into the air, then drew his pistol and fired three times, fanning the pistol so rapidly that they sounded as if they were one, sustained shot.

All three glasses were shattered before they came down, and the feat was greeted by several gasps of surprise, and exclamations of admiration.

Toomey put his pistol back in the holster, then looked at Harper with a triumphant smile. “What do you think about that?” he asked.

“I noticed none of the glasses were shooting back,” Harper said.

“Still think I'm no more than a boy, Harper? Still think I'm not good enough for you?”

“Well now, you see, son, that's the problem,” Harper said. “Goodness has nothing to do with it. In fact, it is that very goodness that is going to get you killed today.”

“What are you talking about?” Toomey asked.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Not yet, but I'm about to.”

“Now me, I've killed so many men that, like you said, I can't even remember all of them. I can kill a man like stepping on a bug. It means absolutely nothing to me,” Harper said. “But now, take someone like you, a good man who has never killed anyone, when the time comes you are going to have just a slight hesitation. You see, it's an awesome thing to take another man's life. And it isn't always the fastest on the draw that wins. People like me, boy, we aren't good because we are fast. We are good because it doesn't bother us to kill, and we don't really care if we get killed. Now, do you still want to do this?”

“Yeah, I want to do it. I told you, I've waited six years to . . .”

That was as far as Toomey got before Harper drew his pistol and fired. His bullet hit Toomey in the chest and knocked him back against the bar. He got a surprised look on his face.

“You—you didn't even—that wasn't . . .” Toomey slid down to the floor, then sat there for a moment with his arms hanging limp and useless by his side.

“What were you going to say?” Harper asked. “That I didn't play fair? Killin's not a game, boy. Killin' is killin'. And it don't matter how fast you are if you never get around to pulling your gun.”

Toomey fell to one side, then gave a last, life-surrendering sigh.

“Is there anyone here who didn't hear this boy threaten me?”

“We heard it, Mr. Harper,” someone said. “We all heard it.”

“We sure did,” another patron said. “What you done was self-defense, pure and simple.”

Harper leaned down and pulled the pistol out of Toomey's holster. Turning the cylinder, he ejected one bullet, then put it in his pocket. He stood there for a moment, then walked back over to his table to resume his card game. He started to take a sip of his coffee, then made a face and held the cup up.

“I need a fresh cup,” he said.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Harper. Comin' right up,” the bartender said.

Two city policemen came into the saloon then, both with guns drawn.

“What happened here?” one of them asked.

“This boy here challenged Harper,” one of the patrons asked.

“That right, Harper?”

Harper studied his board, then put a red jack on a black queen before he answered.

“That's right,” he said.

“This is the second killing you've been in this month,” the other policeman pointed out.

“A man has a right to defend himself,” Harper said.

“You seem to have an unusual number of people that you have to defend yourself against.”

“I've made a few enemies in my day,” Harper said.

“A few enemies? Mister, I've never known anyone with as many enemies as you have. If I were you, I'd go somewhere and change my name. One of these days the other man is going to win.”

“That's the chance you take in our line of work,” Harper replied.

“Our line of work?” the policeman challenged. “What do you mean, our line of work?”

“We're alike, you and I,” Harper said. “You put people away that society has found undesirable. I do the same thing, but when I put someone away, it's permanent.”

“All right,” one of the two policemen said. “We're goin' to need some statements. We'll be sitting over there at that table, and would appreciate it if anyone who actually saw what happened would come talk to us.”

As the rest of the patrons of the saloon rushed over to the table to be certain that their stories got told, one man came over to speak with Harper.

“I saw you take a bullet from the boy's pistol,” he said. “Why did you do that?”

“Because that bullet was meant for me,” Harper said. “I collect bullets that were meant for me.”

The man who asked the question was Johnny Taylor. His arrival at the saloon, no more than three minutes before it had all begun, had been most fortuitous, because it answered both questions Johnny had about Harper. Was he good? Well, he had proven that. And could he be hired? In his own words, he had stated that he would kill for money.

Johnny dropped a stack of money on the table in front of Harper.

Harper looked at the pile of money, but he didn't look up at Johnny.

“What is this?”

“It is two hundred and fifty dollars,” Johnny said.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars for what?”

“Two hundred fifty dollars for a job I want you to do for me. And there will be another two hundred and fifty dollars when the job is done.”

“What is the job?”

“It's the kind of job you specialize in,” Johnny said.

 

 

Out at Sky Meadow, Duff was standing on the porch of his house, talking with Elmer Gleason.

“I'm sending some of the boys out tomorrow to bring in the unbranded calves,” Elmer said. “We pulled two of them out of a bog today.” He laughed. “They had mud from tailbone to nose hole. Took a while to clean 'em up.”

“And 'tis betting, I am, that when they were finished, the calves were clean and the cowboys had mud from tailbone to nose hole,” Duff said.

Elmer laughed again. “You got that right,” he said. “Tell me, Duff, is it true that the bank robbers got more 'n forty thousand dollars?”

“Aye, including the three thousand I had just transferred.”

“I had more'n a thousand dollars in there my ownself.” He chuckled. “But I got me near ten thousand hid out in a sock. I'm glad I ain't never trusted banks all that much. I always figured out they was too easy to rob. 'Course, ever' now 'n' then it don't work out quite like you planned. I mind the time that Jesse James decided to hold up the bank up in Northfield, Minnesota.

“It was Bill Chadwell who suggested the idea, seein' as he was from Minnesota. He convinced Jesse that we could get in and out of the state real easy. Me 'n' Cole Younger and Frank James tried to talk Jesse out of it, but he was convinced we could pull it off.

“On the day of the robbery, we met outside of town to make our plans. We was supposed to break up into three groups, one to go inside the bank, one to stand guard outside of the bank, and one to cover the bridge, which was the way we was goin' to get out of town. Frank, Jesse, and Bob Younger went inside. Cole Younger and Clell Miller stayed just outside the bank, while me, Jim Younger, Charlie Pitts, and Bill Chadwell was to guard the bridge. We also decided that no citizen was to be killed, no matter what. If we was shot at by anyone, we was supposed to just shoot back to keep their heads down. We wasn't supposed to kill nobody.”

Elmer was quiet for a moment.

“I've read about the Northfield bank robbery,” Duff said. “It dinnae work out that way, did it?”

“No. The whole damn town got guns and started shootin' at us. We was butchered like hogs, Charlie Pitts, Clell Miller, and Bill Chadwell was all killed. Frank and the Younger brothers was bad shot up. Only ones not hit a'tall was me 'n' Jesse.”

“And if what I read is correct, 'twas nae successful, for they dinnae get away with any money at all.”

“Twenty-seven dollars,” Elmer said. “The bank teller and one of the townspeople was kilt, and we lost three kilt, and all for twenty-seven dollars.”

Elmer saw a grasshopper clinging to a weed and he spit, the wad of tobacco taking the grasshopper off. “That was the last time I ever done anythin' against the law,” he said. “I never was much of a God-fearin' man until then, but I figured that was a message, and I'd better listen to it.”

Duff smiled, and put his hand on his foreman's shoulder. “ 'Tis glad I am that you've reformed,” he said.