Death Rides Alone (4 page)

This was an unexpected annoyance. Due to the fact that men on the run from the law often ran far and fast, Luke seldom delivered a prisoner to the jurisdiction in which the reward had been posted. Usually it was enough just to lock a captured fugitive in the nearest jail—or deliver his corpse to the handiest undertaker—and have the local authorities contact the law where the fugitive was wanted.

That was what he had done here, and in the normal course of affairs, the sheriff in White Fork would have contacted the bank here in Bent Creek and authorized payment of the bounty.

Clearly, that wasn't going to happen.

“Did the telegram say why that's a condition of the reward?” Luke asked.

Donovan shook his head and said, “Nope. Just that that's the way it is.” The marshal rubbed his chin. “It's hard to tell much from words printed on a telegraph blank, but I got the feelin' Sheriff Axtell's anxious to see Tyler locked up in his jail. The boy killed a young woman, right?”

“The daughter of one of the local ministers.”

“That's a mighty raw thing to do,” Donovan said. “Fella like that sure deserves to hang. Bent Creek's a peaceful town, but if word gets around about what Tyler's done, folks are liable to start askin' themselves why we don't just go ahead and string him up here, since he's got it comin'.”

“I'm not going to lose my prisoner to a lynch mob,” Luke snapped.

“Damn right you're not. I never had a prisoner yet taken out and escorted to a necktie party, and we ain't startin' with Tyler. But I'd just as soon not tempt fate. I want you to get him out of there bright and early in the morning. You can be on the trail north at first light.”

Mary had listened quietly to the conversation between Luke and Marshal Donovan, but now she said, “Isn't that rushing things, Marshal?”

“Maybe. But I don't want any trouble in my town, so the easiest way to prevent it is to send it packin'.”

“That's a shame,” Mary said as she looked at Luke.

He read quite a bit in her warm gaze, so his voice held genuine regret as he agreed, “It certainly is.”

“I reckon you'd best spend the night on the cot in my office,” Donovan went on. “That way you can keep an eye on Tyler, just in case anybody gets any ideas.”

“I assumed that you—”

Donovan held up a hand to stop Luke.

“I told you, you could lock him up in my jail but I ain't takin' any responsibility for him. He's Montana's murderer, not mine. I plan to go home and get a good night's sleep, and when I get to the office in the mornin', I'd just as soon find that the two of you are gone.”

Luke could see that like the bulldog he resembled, Donovan wasn't going to let go of something once he had his jaws set in it. With a sigh, Luke said, “All right, Marshal. I'll head over to the jail just as soon as I finish this excellent meal.”

“Mary
does
dish up some good grub,” Donovan said. “I reckon I can watch the prisoner for a little while so you can eat. Just don't linger too long.”

Donovan left the café. Luke shook his head gloomily and told Mary, “And here I was, looking forward to sharing some more stimulating conversation with you.”

“So was I,” she said with a sigh of her own. “You don't know how much I was looking forward to it, Mr. Jensen.”

* * *

The rain had stopped completely by the time Luke walked up the street to the marshal's office a short time later. He had said a bittersweet good-bye to Mary, who told him her last name was Baxter and confirmed that she was, indeed, a widow, her husband having passed on five years earlier.

“You have to promise me, Mr. Jensen, that if you ever ride through Bent Creek again, you'll stop and have another meal with me,” she had said to him before he left the café.

“You have my solemn word on that, Mrs. Baxter,” he had told her. “But you may not be here by then. Surely some man will have come along by then who's smart enough to marry a woman like you.”

“Some may want to,” she had said with a faint smile, “but none of the eligible bachelors around here interest me in the least, and I'm not going to marry just any saddle tramp who comes drifting through.”

“That's their loss,” Luke had said, lifting his coffee cup to her and then drinking the last of the strong, black brew.

He wasn't the sort of man who wallowed in regrets, but he was sorry to leave the Keystone Café.

He forgot about that when he heard an ugly murmur of voices up ahead and looked toward the marshal's office. He walked faster as he spotted a group of men gathered in front of the stone building. That was hardly ever a good thing.

The office door was closed. One man stepped up, hammered a fist on it, and called, “You might as well open up, Chet. We heard you've got a woman-killer in there, and we intend to see that justice is done!”

No response came from inside. Luke hoped that Marshal Donovan was still in there and hadn't slipped out the back. His instincts told him the lawman wouldn't abandon a prisoner to a mob, even a prisoner that he didn't particularly want, but Luke didn't know the man well enough to be certain.

The man who had knocked on the door pounded on it again, and the other men began to shout for Donovan to open up. They were so caught up in what they were doing that they didn't notice Luke approaching them from behind.

Enough light spilled through the windows of the marshal's office for him to see that several members of the mob were armed with rifles and shotguns. He didn't spot any handguns, but some of the men might be wearing them under their coats. There were ten men in the group, which meant the odds against him would be pretty high if it came down to a fight to protect Judd Tyler.

Just thinking about that put a bitter, sour taste on his tongue. Luke didn't want to risk his life on behalf of such a vile human being . . . but he might not have any choice.

He had his right hand on the butt of one of the Remingtons when someone inside the office jerked the door open. Chet Donovan's bulky figure appeared in the doorway, the twin barrels of his Greener jutting out in front of him. The townsmen flinched back from the shotgun, as anybody in his right mind would do when threatened by a weapon like that.

“You men back off!” Donovan ordered. “Have you all gone loco? How long have I been the marshal here in Bent Creek? Well, how long?”

“Nigh on to seven years, Chet,” one of the men answered in a surly voice.

“That's right, and in those seven years, have you ever known me to allow a lynchin'?”

“You never had a varmint like that fella Tyler in your jail before!” another man said. “The talk's all over town about him. He killed a girl up in Montana!”

“A preacher's daughter!” a third man added.

Donovan said, “That's what he's accused of, and that's what he'll answer for . . . up in Montana where he done the crime! He hasn't done anything in Bent Creek but stable his horse and sleep in the hotel.”

“They're liable to let him go up there.”

“What in the hell makes you think that?” Donovan asked with a frown.

“It's a long way to . . . whatever the name is of the place he ran away from.”

“White Fork,” Donovan said. “So?”

“You send him back up there, he's liable to get away before they can hang him.”

“You mean put him on trial, don't you?”

The man Donovan was talking to waved a hand in dismissal and said, “Put him on trial, hang him, what's the difference? It all ends up the same way, with a killer dancin' at the end of a rope where he belongs!”

“First you say they're gonna let him go, then you say they're gonna hang him. Make up your damn mind.” Donovan scowled at the men in front of him. “I'll tell you what's really goin' on here. You fellas are bored! You don't want those folks up in White Fork to have all the fun of stringin' up a killer. You don't care if Tyler's guilty or innocent, you just want to see him hang!”

A stunned hush fell over the crowd at that bitter accusation. After a moment, one of the men said, “Hell, Chet, if that was true, it'd make us terrible people.”

“Damn right it would. And I know better, because I've knowed most of you for the whole seven years I've been here. You're not terrible. You just let yourselves get stirred up. And now you're gonna settle down, go home, and forget about all this.”

A broad-shouldered man with a surly expression on his rugged face said, “Any man who'd kill a defenseless girl deserves to die!”

“You'll get no argument from me about that, Hobson, but it ain't up to us to see it done. Now, are you gonna back off, or are we gonna have trouble here that we'll all wind up regrettin'?”

Luke sensed that the issue hung in the balance. These men were starting to see the error of their ways, but with the stubbornness of typical Westerners they didn't want to admit that they'd been wrong.

Maybe he could tip the scales, he decided. He stepped into the edge of the light that came from the open doorway and raised his voice to say, “Besides, gentlemen, the marshal and I have you in a crossfire, if it comes to that. Between his shotgun and my Remingtons, things can get very ugly, very fast.”

“It's that bounty hunter!” a man said.

The burly man called Hobson turned and sneered at Luke.

“What's the matter, bounty hunter?” he asked. “Afraid if we take care of Tyler, you won't get your reward?”

“That's not even a consideration right now,” Luke said, mostly honestly. “Lynching is murder! If you string up Tyler, whether he deserves it or not, you'll be killers. Only it won't be just an accusation. It'll be a fact.”

“I'm done with this,” one of the men suddenly muttered. “I'm going home.”

“Me too,” another one said, and as Luke had seen many times before, once the mob mentality began to crack, it fell apart in a hurry. One after another, the men strode off in different directions into the night, until only Hobson and a couple of others were left.

“You fellas might as well go on home, too,” Donovan told them. “You can see for yourselves that there ain't gonna be any lynchin' tonight.”

“Never thought I'd see you sidin' with a damn bounty hunter, Donovan,” Hobson blustered. “Or protectin' a killer, either.”

“I'm protectin' the law, that's all.” Donovan glared at Luke. “And I don't much like what I'm doin' right now, either. I just got crowded into it.”

“Well, it's a sad day for Bent Creek, that's what it is.”

“Go back to your blacksmith shop,” Donovan snapped. “And I'll try to forget about you runnin' your mouth that way.”

The three men finally turned away from the open door of the marshal's office. Donovan lowered the shotgun a little. Luke hadn't had to draw either of his guns. He stepped aside to let Hobson and the other two pass.

Hobson, who was evidently the town blacksmith, stopped and glared at Luke.

“I don't like killers,” he said, “and I don't have a damn bit of use for bounty hunters, either. I'd have more respect for a buzzard feedin' on the carcass of a dead dog!”

“Then I suppose it's a good thing I don't give a damn about whether you respect me,” Luke said.

He knew even as the words came out of his mouth that he shouldn't have said them. He was perfectly capable of ignoring arrogant loudmouths like Hobson and carrying on with his business.

But it had been a long day, he'd been shot at and hit in the head, he'd had to kill three men, he was facing a long ride up into Montana Territory before he could claim the reward he had coming, and he'd had to say good night much too prematurely to a sweet, nice-looking widow woman. He was in a piss-poor mood, no doubt about it.

So, truly, deep down, he didn't mind all that much when Hobson's face flushed with rage and the big blacksmith shouted a curse and charged him, mallet-like fists swinging wildly.

Marshal Donovan yelled, “Hobson! Damn it!” but the man ignored him and continued his bull-like charge.

Luke stepped nimbly aside, avoiding one of Hobson's punches and blocking another with his left forearm. That left his right fist free to snap forward in a sharp jab that landed squarely on Hobson's nose.

Luke felt a satisfying crunch as the blow flattened Hobson's nose and caused blood to spurt over his knuckles. Hobson's head jerked back, but his momentum carried him forward. Luke twisted out of the way, thrust out his leg, and tripped the blacksmith. Hobson went down face-first in the mud.

“If you have any sense, mister, you'll just stay there,” Luke told him.

He didn't actually expect Hobson to follow that advice, however, and not surprisingly, his hunch was right.

Hobson got his hands underneath him and pushed himself up. He shook his head as he got to his feet, slinging mud and blood off his face. His heavy breathing rasped and whistled through his broken nose.

Hobson staggered forward in lumbering fashion, pawed mud from his eyes, and swung his head from side to side as he searched for Luke.

“Isn't one of your duties as marshal to break up fights?” Luke asked Donovan.

“Maybe, but right now I'm concentratin' on guardin' that prisoner in there, the way you wanted me to,” the lawman said with an ugly smirk on his face.

“In other words, if Hobson gives me a thrashing, there's nothing you can do about it.”

Donovan shrugged beefy shoulders and said, “I already told him to go home, didn't I? Not my fault if he don't listen to reason. And since I don't have a deputy . . .”

Luke let out a disgusted snort. Donovan was enjoying this too much.

But there was nothing Luke could do about it now. He had goaded Hobson into a fight, and he was going to have to see it through.

At least Donovan apparently wanted it to be a fair fight. He told the other remaining members of the mob, “You boys just stay outta this. It's between Hobson and Jensen.”

The men nodded and backed off. Neither of them looked like he had the least bit of desire to get in the middle of this fracas.

Hobson's furious but befuddled gaze finally fell on Luke again. He clenched his fists and started toward the bounty hunter. His muddy face twisted in a snarl as he launched a roundhouse punch with his right hand.

Luke started to duck under the sweeping blow, only to realize too late that Hobson was trickier than he looked. The blacksmith's left came up and crashed against Luke's jaw. The punch drove him off his feet.

He landed on his back in the muddy street. His head was spinning from the impact of Hobson's fist, but Luke's senses settled down in time for him to see the big man rushing at him, evidently intending to stomp him into the muck. Luke got his hands up and grabbed the work boot coming toward his face. He twisted and heaved, and Hobson splashed into the mud again with a startled yell.

Luke wasn't going to let it go now. He was good and mad for a lot of reasons, and he let his anger boil up.

He rolled over and dived at Hobson, landing on top of him. Mud covered both men, making them resemble hogs in a wallow. Luke hooked a left into Hobson's midsection, then battered his face with a series of rights.

Hobson reached up in desperation, caught hold of the front of Luke's shirt, and heaved him to the side.

Luke rolled over a couple of times and came to a stop on his belly. Hobson scrambled after him and practically crawled up Luke's back. He looped his forearm around Luke's neck and jammed it up under the bounty hunter's chin. Luke's head began to pound almost immediately as Hobson cut off his air.

Knowing that he would pass out in a couple of minutes if Hobson continued choking him like that, Luke drove an elbow back into the blacksmith's belly, once and then again. It was like hitting a slab of beef. Hobson didn't even seem to notice.

Losing consciousness was the least of his worries, Luke realized. If Hobson kept up that pressure on his throat for very long, it could be fatal. Luke grasped and tore at the man's arm, but it didn't budge.

Why the hell wasn't Donovan breaking it up? Hadn't the battle gone on long enough?

Luke didn't know the answers to those questions, but he figured that his life was in his own hands, as usual. He struggled to draw his knees up underneath him, then pushed with them and his hands. The ground was too muddy for him to find good purchase at first, but then he braced himself and was able to lift his weight and Hobson's as well.

It was a feat of herculean strength and took every bit of power Luke could muster, but he got to his feet. With Hobson still choking him, Luke began pushing both of them backward, driving his boot heels into the mud. He couldn't afford to slip now. If he went down again, it would be the end.

He hoped he was oriented correctly and remembered where things were that he had noticed earlier. If he had figured wrong, it might mean his doom.

Hobson tried to stiffen his legs, but he couldn't channel all his strength into choking Luke and still prevent being pushed backward. The back of his legs suddenly hit the end of the water trough Luke had been aiming for, and when Luke surged against him, Hobson couldn't maintain his balance.

Both men toppled into the water.

The sudden dunking was finally enough to loosen the blacksmith's grip. Luke tore free, twisted around, and clamped his right hand around Hobson's neck as the man came up gasping for air. Luke forced him back down, and now it was Luke's turn for his arm to be like a bar of iron as he held the blacksmith's upper body submerged in the dirty water.

Hobson began to thrash wildly, but Luke didn't let go. His chest heaved as he continued gasping for the life-giving air that he now denied to Hobson. Fury filled him. He had come close to death many times, but it still always made him mad.

Two pairs of hands grabbed him, locking on to his arms and hauling back with grunts of effort. The men dragged him off of Hobson, who came up out of the water sputtering and gasping.

Luke was angry enough he probably could have fought his way loose from the men holding him and gone after Hobson again, but the more rational part of his brain had started to reassert itself.

“That's enough, damn it!” Marshal Donovan bellowed. “You almost killed him, Jensen!”

Luke turned a baleful glare toward the lawman and rasped through his aching throat, “You didn't stop him when he was about to strangle me.”

“You're a bounty hunter passin' through town. He's our blacksmith, for God's sake! Our friend and neighbor! We need him around.”

The dip in the water trough seemed to have taken all the fight out of Hobson. He had managed to climb out of the trough but had slipped down and now sat beside it, hanging on to it to keep himself upright.

The two men who had hold of Luke let go of his arms and stepped back as Donovan motioned to them with the Greener's twin barrels.

“You still want Tyler and me out of here at first light, Marshal?” Luke asked.

“You damn well bet I do,” Donovan said.

“That's fine . . . because Bent Creek is the sorriest settlement I've seen in a long time, and I'll be glad to put it behind me!”

* * *

For the second time today, Luke was filthy. He was sure the clothes Hardy had taken to be cleaned earlier weren't ready yet, so he supposed he would just have to remain uncomfortable in the wet, muddy garb he had on.

“There's a canvas tarp in the back,” Donovan said as they entered the marshal's office. “I'll get it and put it on the cot. It might be a little musty, but I don't want you gettin' mud all over everything.”

“I suppose I should be grateful you're not making me sleep on the floor.”

“Don't think I didn't consider it,” the marshal said.

He returned the shotgun to a rack on the wall, then fetched the tarp from a small storage area behind the office and tossed it on the cot that sat on one side of the room.

“You're on your own now, Jensen.”

“From what I can see, I have been ever since I rode into Bent Creek,” Luke said.

“Well, nobody invited you here, did they?”

Without waiting for an answer, Donovan left the office, closing the door behind him.

Luke barred the door. He had put his hat back on after the fight; now he took it off and shook his head in disgust as he looked at the mud daubed on it. He didn't know when he'd get a chance to clean up.

He went to the door of the cell block and looked through the small, barred window. A lantern with its wick turned low sat on a stool in the aisle between the cells. Its dim glow revealed Judd Tyler stretched out on the bunk in his cell, face turned to the wall.

If all Luke had been able to see was a bundle of blankets, he would have been suspicious, despite Marshal Donovan's claim that no one could escape from this jail.

Tyler's head was visible, though, above the blankets, and as Luke watched, the prisoner shifted a little in his sleep, snorted, and then settled down again in deep, rhythmic breathing.

Whatever Tyler had done, it wasn't keeping him from getting a good night's sleep, Luke thought. But that wasn't unusual in hardened criminals, who seemed to feel little or no guilt over their violent behavior.

Luke turned away from the cell block and grimaced at the sticky feel of his clothes.

Help came from an unexpected source. A light tapping sounded at the door. Luke frowned, went to the wall rack, and took down the scattergun Donovan had put up there a few minutes earlier.

Lynch mobs usually didn't knock so softly, but Luke didn't want to take a chance. Some of the men from earlier might have returned to try a trickier approach.

The door was thick enough that Luke wasn't worried about anybody shooting through it. He stood there with the shotgun in his hands and called, “Who is it?”

“Mary Baxter.”

The soft reply made Luke's eyebrows arch in surprise. The café owner's voice was about the last one he had expected to hear again tonight.

“Mrs. Baxter, what in the world are you doing here?”

“I brought you some clean clothes. They're some of my husband's things. They might be a little small for you, but at least they're clean and dry.”

“You're alone?” Luke asked.

“Of course. Who else would be with me at this time of night?”

Luke leaned the shotgun against the wall, then lifted the bar across the door. He picked up the Greener again and held it in his right hand while he used his left to twist the key in the lock.

“It's open,” he said.

Mary Baxter came into the office carrying a bundle wrapped in canvas. She had taken off the apron and replaced it with a light jacket.

“How did you know I needed clean clothes?” Luke asked her as he put the shotgun back in the rack.

“I heard the commotion as I was locking up the café and saw you rolling around in the street with Clete Hobson. Honestly, at first I didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified. Then I realized it was a serious fight. I thought he was going to hurt you.”

Luke put his left hand to his throat and said, “It wasn't for lack of trying that he didn't.”

“Anyway, I saw how you'd gotten mud all over and I knew you were going to be spending the night here in the marshal's office, so I thought you might be more comfortable in clean clothes. I went home and got these.”

She set the bundle on the desk.

“I suppose I should be going now ...”

“Why don't you wait around for a few minutes while I get cleaned up?” Luke suggested. “There might be some coffee left in the pot over there on the stove.”

Mary smiled and said, “I'm not sure I want to drink any coffee that's sitting in a pot in a lawman's office.”

“I can tell you from experience that's probably a wise way to feel,” Luke told her. He picked up the bundle of clothes. “I think I saw a little washbasin in the back. Just let me lock and bar the door ...”

“I can do that.”

“You're a woman of many talents, Mrs. Baxter.”

“You don't know how many, Mr. Jensen.”

“I wouldn't mind learning. Perhaps we could start by calling each other Mary and Luke?”

“I think that would be a very good start,” Mary said. “But only a beginning ...”