Bury the Hatchet Read online

  Trammel looked out the window as he sipped his coffee. He ignored the black-clad widow’s vacant stare from her perch in the chair next to the stove. Her expression never changed, whether she was at church or sitting outside enjoying the sunshine at her daughter-in-law’s orders.

  But he always felt there was something extra in the way she looked at him. It was as though she could see through all of the fame and glory he had received for bringing Madam Pinochet and her allies to justice. It was like she could see into his very soul and all of the many sins he had committed in his thirty years. He didn’t know if that was the case, but if it was, he doubted she’d ever get bored, for there was plenty to see.

  “Good morning,” Emily Downs sang as she entered the kitchen. She gave her mother-in-law a kiss on the forehead, which garnered no response from her.

  “And good morning to you, Sheriff Trammel,” she said with false propriety. They were on a first-name basis when they were alone, but kept to formal titles when others were around.

  “And a good morning to you, Doctor Downs,” he answered.

  She had chestnut-brown hair and bright eyes that were even more captivating in the gentle light of the morning. Her simple dress did an adequate job of disguising the curves of her body of which Trammel had become so fond.

  “I trust you slept comfortably.”

  She turned her back to her mother-in-law to hide her blush, as she had spent a good portion of the night in Trammel’s bed. “Most comfortably, thank you.” She lifted the coffeepot from the stove. “More coffee?”

  He smiled. “Thanks.”

  “I understand you’ve already had a busy morning.”

  Even though he had been the sheriff of Blackstone for several months, the speed with which news spread around the small town at all hours of the day and night still fascinated him. “How the h—?” He remembered the widow was there and caught himself. “I mean, how did you know? You just got up.”

  “I heard the screams coming from Main Street and imagined it was something that required your attention. Am I right?”

  He chose his words carefully for the widow’s sake. “Someone got rough with one of the dance hall girls at the Pot of Gold. Hawkeye and I had to take care of it. You might need to check on the girl involved.”

  Emily filled her own cup and set the pot back on the stove. “And the man who attacked her? I trust he needs attention, too, thanks to you.”

  “When you get around to it.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Fell out a window,” Trammel said. “Busted up some. He’ll probably keep until you tend to the girl. She’s more important.”

  Emily strategically moved the kitchen chair so her back wasn’t to her mother-in-law and she wasn’t sitting too close to her boarder, either. “How bad is he?”

  Trammel shrugged. “He fell out a second-story window and rolled down the embankment. His right arm is broken, and I’d be surprised if his ribs weren’t cracked, if not broken. His lungs work fine, though, and he’s not bleeding much.”

  “Imagine that,” she chided. “Only a half-dead patient for once. You’re getting benevolent in your old age, Sheriff.”

  He couldn’t really argue with that. In his time in Blackstone, Trammel had developed a reputation for being rougher than he had to be with some characters, which had led to a drop in crime since the Madam Pinochet incident. His size had usually been enough to discourage most men from stepping out of line, but now that he had some notoriety behind him, men tended to do what he said.

  He also knew notoriety was a double-edged sword and it would only be a matter of time before someone decided to test it in an effort to gain some notoriety for themselves.

  He would worry about that if and when it happened. For now, he was content with the morning’s work while enjoying the widow’s coffee and Emily’s company.

  “The Pot of Gold is Adam’s new place, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Opened last week,” Trammel said. He knew what was coming next. It had been a bone of contention between them for months.

  “Did you have a chance to speak with him yet? About mending fences?”

  Trammel sipped his coffee. “The opportunity to do so didn’t present itself, Doctor. Besides, the fence between us is just fine as it is.”

  She lowered her cup. “I wish you boys would figure out a way past your differences. You were friends once, Buck. Good friends.”

  “That was then. This is now. He works his side of things and I work mine.” He saw no reason to explain himself, especially in front of the widow.

  Hagen had decided to hold on to Madam Pinochet’s ledger of illegal actions in the territory. He had also expanded her opium trade against Trammel’s wishes. While there may not be any laws against opium in Wyoming or in Blackstone, he hated the practice. In his time as a policeman in New York City and later, with the Pinkerton Agency, he had seen what smoking the sticky tar could do. He had seen good men brought low by the desire to hitch a ride on the dragon’s back one more time.

  Opium may not have been illegal, but that didn’t make it right. Hagen’s desire to peddle flesh was bad enough in Trammel’s eyes, but he knew if Hagen didn’t do it, someone else would. Robbing men of their souls was something Buck Trammel would never tolerate.

  “Friendships in this life are so hard to come by,” Emily went on. “Especially good friendships like the one you had with Adam. Maybe you could be a good influence on him if you were close to him again.”

  Trammel laughed as he got up to pour himself another cup of coffee from the stove. “The die for Adam Hagen was cast long before he left Blackstone and only hardened in the years since. There’s no amount of praying or cajoling that’ll make him change unless he wants to. Or has to, if it comes to that.” He poured his coffee. “And if it comes to that, it’ll probably be thanks to me.” He held out the pot to her. “More coffee before we head out to tend to your patients?”

  She drained her cup and gently placed it back in the saucer as she stood. It was a delicate motion, but sounded as loud as a judge’s gavel in the quiet of the kitchen. “I’ll get my shawl and bag. I’d appreciate it if you’d escort me to the jail to see the prisoner, Sheriff. After that, I’d like to look in on that poor girl he assaulted.”

  Trammel shut his eyes as she left the kitchen. He knew her tone well enough to know she was upset. He felt the widow’s constant glare upon him as he set the coffeepot back on the stove. Her eyes were as vacant as they were alive.

  He finished his coffee in two swallows and smiled at her as he set his cup aside. Her look never changed.

  * * *

  He held the back door open for Emily as she appeared with her shawl wrapped around her shoulders and her husband’s old medicine bag in her hand. “Can I carry that for you?”

  She walked past him into the chilly morning. Trammel sighed as he quietly shut the door behind him.

  Out on the boardwalk and still out of view of anyone who might see, she swung her bag and hit him in the side.

  Trammel stifled a yelp. “What the hell was that for?”

  “For being pigheaded,” she said without breaking her stride. “I swear, Buck Trammel, you’re a tough man to love sometimes.”

  Trammel smiled as he caught up with her. She had told him she loved him several times since they had become a couple, but he never tired of hearing it. He easily matched her pace with a little swagger to his step. “So you love me, huh?”

  He yelped again when she pinched his side. “Don’t get too cocky on me, Sheriff. I might not be a real doctor, but I know all the right places that hurt.”

  He rubbed the spot where she’d pinched him. “Yes, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ambrose Bowman ignored his guest for a time, preferring to quietly rock back and forth in his rocking chair as he watched the morning sunshine cast its gentle light on the family graveyard behind his house in Wichita, Kansas. It was his favorite time of the day, or at least, it had been
since he’d laid his oldest son and nephew in their graves six months before.

  Old Man Bowman could remember a time when he did not hold that title, when there were only two graves carved out of the harsh Kansas dirt, for his grandfather and grandmother, who had worked themselves to death making something of this godforsaken land. Now, it was filled with other Bowman dead who had gone to glory since: his father, who had lived to the ripe old age of sixty, surpassing his wife, who’d died while giving birth to Ambrose.

  His father had always resented Ambrose for causing the death of his beloved wife and never let the boy forget it. Even now, as he approached his eightieth winter, he carried the scars of that resentment with him. He had used the feelings to make him the man he had become: the man who controlled the most successful cattle ranch in Wichita.

  The man who watched the grass grow tall over his eldest son’s grave.

  Ambrose did not look at his guest as he told him, “I don’t like you, sir. I don’t like you or your kind.”

  “Then why did you send for me?” asked the man.

  “I may not like you, but I need you.” Old Man Bowman leaned forward and spat, proud of the fact he still had the lung power to clear the end of his porch without difficulty. “I can’t do what needs doing myself. I’m too damned old. Too old by a long shot. Maybe older than I should be, depending on which member of my family you ask.” He pointed out at the graveyard with a crooked finger. “Many out there, molding in their graves right now, would tell you I should be in there instead of them. They might even be right. But here I am and there they are.”

  The guest shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I’m here because you’re paying me to be here, Mr. Bowman. Best get to the point so we can go about our business, or cut me loose and I’ll be on my way back to Chicago.”

  “Chicago.” The old man said it as though the word itself was poison. “City folk are lazy folk. They’re stupid and easily led like the cattle I’ve got fenced in just over that rise there. People who do as they’re told and sit at desks and take money they’ve never earned because they’ve never worked a day in their miserable lives. Penned in together like hogs, scrapping for whatever bits their masters see fit to feed them. That’s no way for a man to live. Not if he wants to call himself a man, anyway.”

  “Never been much for sitting behind a desk myself, Mr. Bowman,” the guest said. “If I was, you and I wouldn’t be out here having this pleasant conversation on such a fine morning.”

  “Insolence,” Bowman added, continuing his thought. “That’s what that is. You have the false confidence of a city man through and through. There was a time I would’ve taken a bullwhip to you for talking to me that way. Would’ve whipped you from where you’re sitting all the way back to town without even breathing hard.”

  “Then I guess I’m lucky I didn’t know you back then.” The chair creaked as the guest leaned forward. “You’ve gone to great expense to bring me and my men out here, Mr. Bowman. If all you want to do is insult me, that’s fine. But the more we talk here, the less time I can dedicate to what you say you want to hire me to do. Now, do you want to keep spitting venom or do you want to discuss the matter at hand? I get paid either way.”

  Old Man Bowman cursed himself for rambling. His bones may have creaked and sleep may have eluded him, but until six months ago, his mind had been as sharp as a tack. He knew every head of cattle in the field and every penny he had in the bank without having to ask anyone.

  But something had died in him the moment he learned of his eldest son’s death. Matt had been his favorite among his children. He’d been his first and the best. He had been bred since birth to take over this ranch when Ambrose had been called home either to heaven or hell, depending on what the good Lord decided best for him.

  But with Matt in the graveyard with the rest of his kin, neither cattle nor money held much interest for Ambrose anymore. Now, he only lived for one purpose.

  Revenge.

  “I need you to kill a man.”

  “I already gathered that.” The guest sat back in his chair. “Killing’s a dirty business.”

  “But it’s your business, isn’t it, Mr. Alcott?”

  “It can be,” Jesse Alcott allowed, “when the time comes for it.”

  “And here I was thinking the Pinkerton men did the jobs that needed doing,” the old man sneered. “Guess I was wrong.”

  “I didn’t say no. I said it depends.”

  “On what? Money?”

  “That’s part of it,” Alcott allowed. “A big part of it. But so is who you need killed and why.”

  “I need two men killed. The men responsible for killing my boy Matt.” As an afterthought, “for killing my grandson Walt, too, I suppose, not that he ever counted for much. But don’t let my sister hear me say that. She idolized that boy, though I’ll never understand why.”

  Alcott shifted uneasily in his chair once more. “Mr. Bowman, I’ve read the newspaper accounts of what happened to your son and your nephew. They were killed by a bunch of cowpunchers who got themselves killed up in Wyoming a few months back.” He let the words hang for a moment before adding, “The men who killed them are already dead.”

  “And you think that ends it?” Old Man Bowman’s eyes narrowed. “The men who killed them may be dead, but the men responsible for their deaths are still very much among the living. I want you to see to it that they meet a similar end. And I want it done well before someone shovels that last spade of dirt upon my grave out there.”

  Alcott folded his hands across his flat stomach. “And who do you hold truly responsible for their deaths?”

  Bowman’s lips trembled with hatred as he struggled to bring himself to speak their names. “A no-good gambler by the name of Adam Hagen. And the bastard who saved him, Buck Trammel.”

  The old man waited for a response, but when none came he turned to face his guest. He found the Pinkerton man smiling. “What’s so damned funny?”

  Jesse Alcott’s smile held. “I happen to know Buck Trammel. Had a run-in with him on a train headed west back in the spring.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your quarrel with him, Alcott. I care about mine. Will you kill him? And Hagen?”

  Alcott flexed his gun hand. He imagined he would be needing it before all of this was done. “Oh, I’ll be more than happy to kill them for you, Mr. Bowman. But first, let’s discuss cost.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The prisoner grinned through the pain of his broken body when he saw Emily standing outside his cell door. “Well look at what we have here. Hell, if I knew you provided these kind of amenities, Trammel, I’d have gotten myself tossed in here a long time ago.” He winced as his broken bones throbbed, but still managed to say, “What’s your name, darlin’?”

  Trammel hit the cage, making the prisoner jump and wince again. “Her name is Doctor Emily Downs. She’s here to treat your wounds and set your arm. If you behave yourself, you’ll do just fine. But if you so much as twitch her way, I’ll break your other arm. Understand?”

  The prisoner’s grin disappeared.

  Trammel unlocked the cell door and let Emily inside. “I’ll be right here the whole time if you need me.”

  Emily set her bag on the cot and shook her head as she looked at her new patient’s injuries. “It’s almost impossible to figure out where to start. I have an idea. How about we start with your name?”

  “No way, sugar,” the prisoner said. “Just tend to my wounds if you’re of a mind to, but my name’s got nothing to do with what ails me.”

  She gently lifted his broken right arm, causing the prisoner to cry out.

  Trammel stepped into the cell and grabbed hold of the prisoner’s left arm. “Just in case the pain makes you decide to try something stupid.”

  Emily continued her examination. “The shoulder is definitely separated. Maybe even broken. I might be able be able to pop it back into place, but it’s going to hurt.”

  The prisoner spoke through clenched t
eeth. “Do what you’ve got to do, you bi—”

  Emily quickly twisted the arm and a sickening crunch echoed in the cell.

  Even Trammel winced.

  The prisoner passed out.

  “That’ll certainly make things easier.” She continued to examine the arm. “The rest of it seems fine, but I won’t know for certain until he wakes up.” She ran her hands over his ribs. “Two of them are definitely broken and the rest feel cracked.” She moved to his legs and feet. “His ankles are swollen and most likely sprained, though not broken.”

  She stood up and looked at Trammel. “You weren’t exactly gentle with him, were you?”

  “I threw him out a window for threatening a woman,” Trammel said. “He deserved it. Besides, I save my gentle side for you.”

  She held a finger to her lips. “Hawkeye’s outside. He might hear. Now, pull this one up while I wrap his ribs.”

  * * *

  While the sheriff guarded the prisoner as Doc Emily tended to his wounds, Hawkeye rubbed his hands across the sheriff’s big desk. It was a mighty fine piece of furniture, one befitting a man of Sheriff Trammel’s stature. Not just because of his size, but because of the man he was.

  He remembered watching the big stranger ride into town that first day of spring all those months ago. Mr. Bookman, the top hand at the Hagen ranch, had led him and Adam Hagen along Main Street, stopping off at the jail to see Sheriff Bonner before taking Adam to the Clifford Hotel, Hawkeye had just been a runner at the Moose Saloon back then. No one important, really. He’d fetched bottles when the bartender needed them. Swabbed down the floors when the drunks got sick and took care of the sheets in the rooms upstairs. The girls were usually nice to him and gave him tips while everyone else just spat at him. He never let it bother him. He saw no reason why it should.

  He had grown up on horseback on his father’s ranch and knew he was a good hand. His father had taught him how to handle a herd and a gun as soon as his legs were long enough to reach the stirrups. Not yet twenty, he knew he could still be a top hand one day if someone would give him a chance, but no one was eager to hire on the son of a drunk who had lost his ranch to King Charles Hagen. Now, the same house where generations of Hauks been born was a bunkhouse for cowhands.