Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) - Mickey Spillane (classic novels .TXT) 📗

The story had both convinced and entertained Jackson enough to hire the old boy.

In a vest, collared shirt with loose bow tie, canvas pants with a Colt Lightning .38 worn cross-draw fashion, “Buck” O’Fallon was of medium size but carried himself with a lithe confidence, removing his wide-brimmed hat and planting himself before the seated Jackson.

“Before we start,” he began, in a medium-range, flat voice, “you should know I’m not one of Silva’s ruffians.”

“But you’re aware that Silva is not what he pretends to be, to the good citizens of Las Vegas?”

“I am. It’s his business. If the ‘good citizens’ were to hire me to enforce the law, I would make it my business. But otherwise . . . no. He’s aware of who I am.”

“Can’t say the same. Who are you?”

A single-shoulder shrug. “Many things. Lawyer for one. Newspaper editor at times. Judge, sheriff, soldier. I’ve run for office. I have gambled in the various meanings of that word, including the literal, which is what puts me in my current impoverished condition.”

“You understand the nature of this work.”

“I do.”

“You’ll kill if need be.”

His nod was curt. “If need be. Fired upon I will fire back. Just don’t ask ambush of me. That’s a line I won’t cross.”

“Are you the O’Fallon who tracked those train robbers?”

“Tom Horn and I did, yes.”

Jackson, like most in the West, knew of legendary tracker Horn.

O’Fallon was saying, “We rode through country few white men had visited. Much gunfire over several weeks was exchanged. I killed one, Tom the other. The brothers split up, so we did, too. Finally I walked into their campsite in Wah Weep Canon, with them sitting round the fire, and just told ’em to stick ’em up. A pair of ’em, that is. They did as told. The other two had gone off another way, and Tom brought them in.”

“Four brought back alive.”

“And two buried on the trail. That’s how it goes in this country. Or anyway, it did. Times do seem to be changing.”

Jackson grunted. “Not right now they aren’t. You have a job, Mr. O’Fallon.”

The man’s smile was slight but there. “Call me ‘Buck.’ ”

The two men shook hands.

The final candidate was on the small side, his uncreased black hat riding at an angle, his shirt of the many-buttoned cavalry-style, his trousers duck. On his hip, neither high nor low, rested a Colt .45 Single Action Army revolver—a good choice, Jackson thought.

The slightly cross-eyed young cowboy—and he had the modest stature and bowed legs that made him one—wore a mustache so thick and black it overpowered the rounded-off square of his face. He had a rough, sinewy look, despite his cockeyed look.

“Manning Clements,” he said, in a thin, reedy voice that was almost a whine, somewhat at odds with a tough-looking exterior. “Maybe you heard of me.”

“Don’t believe I have.”

“I’m Wes Hardin’s cousin.”

John Wesley Hardin was, of course, the notorious gunfighter who many considered not just cold-blooded but crazy. Not a relative to be proud of, really.

Jackson filled the prospect in on the job.

Then Jackson asked, “Do you run with the Forty Bandits?”

“I do. I’m one of the White Caps, yessir. And you need me for this work.”

“Is that right?”

“It is. You see, these others you been talking to, they can handle a gun. But they got no experience with cows. I bossed a trail herd once.”

“Mite young for that.”

Clements shrugged. “I made mistakes, I grant you.”

“Such as?”

He shook his head, laughed at himself. “I hired these boys, Rance and Lou Raine, as drovers. They was miserable and mouthy louts. Caused trouble all the way. Wouldn’t work! Just stayed in camp and played cards and ate the grub and slept and such like. I was put out, and finally I said, ‘If you’ll just go, I’ll pay both of you off for the whole shebang, just like you made it to the end of trail. But then git!’ They just laughed at me. Then I heard from the other boys that the Raines was talkin’ about killin’ me. I slept away from camp that night. Hopin’ they’d light out.”

“Did they?”

He smirked in disgust. “No. And even now I can hear ’em talkin’ and laughin’. I lay there and keep thinkin’ and thinkin’, and I know it’s come to a showdown. I went back into camp and shot them sons of bitches.”

“In their sleep?”

“No! I woke ’em. It was a . . . a duel, a fair fight. Two against one, but I got them both. I’m fast, Mr. Jackson. And I can shoot. Wes taught me how.”

Well, Wes would know.

“And,” the infamous gunfighter’s cousin said, “it was Wes that got me out of the jam.”

Jackson frowned. “With the Raines dead, what jam were you in?”

“Some said it was murder. Among the drovers, you know? So I get word to Wes and he has his friend Bill Hickok arrest me and stick me in the Abilene hoosegow. Then Wes slips me a key. I was off for Texas before you could spit.”

Jackson had his doubts about this one, but the day was dying, so he hired Wes Hardin’s cousin on.

At least this hombre was something of a cattleman.

CHAPTER SEVEN

On an unseasonably cold spring afternoon, a small group gathered half a mile north of town on that even stretch of desert known somewhat improbably as Boot Hill. Like a row of massive gravestones, distant buttes provided a somberly beautiful backdrop for the elite group of citizens from Trinidad and the surrounding area who had made their way here by horseback, buggies, and buckboards.

Wearing the same silk mourning dress she’d assumed for her own father’s graveside service late last year, Willa Cullen—accompanied by the black foreman who had so recently hired gunfighters to protect her from the woman whose son was being buried—was among those paying respect, though she stood off to one side. In a dark suit, wearing no sidearm but with a rifle handy, Bill Jackson leaned against the buggy and waited.

A disrespectful wind stirred tumbleweed and