Death Rides Alone Page 4

  Jefferson Beale stood to one side, all but wringing his hands as he looked upset that such a thing could have happened in his establishment.

  “I don’t know how this is possible,” he said. “I didn’t see this man come in, and I was at the desk the entire time.”

  “You have a rear door, don’t you?” Luke asked.

  “Well, yes. I suppose that’s the explanation. This man saw you in the saloon, recognized you, followed you over here, and sneaked in the back to see if he could find you. It was your bad luck that he did . . . and his bad luck that he probably considered you defenseless since you were in the bathtub. In the poor light he might not have noticed that you were armed.”

  “I’ll take every bit of luck on my side I can get,” Luke said.

  “You ain’t plannin’ on killin’ anybody else while you’re here, are you?” Marshal Donovan said.

  “I didn’t plan on killing any of those three,” Luke told him.

  Donovan nodded toward the dead man who was still lying on the floor. He had sent Hardy to fetch the undertaker, but the boy hadn’t returned yet.

  “What’s this one’s name?”

  Luke opened his mouth, then frowned before saying anything. When he spoke, he had to restrain the impulse to chuckle.

  “You know, I have no earthly idea. He said I was responsible for him spending five years in a Texas prison for rustling, but he never mentioned his name or how long ago that was.”

  “And you’ve put so many hombres behind bars you don’t remember most of ’em.”

  “Sad but true,” Luke admitted.

  With a clatter of rapid footsteps, Hardy came down the hall from the lobby, trailed by a short, plump man in a sober black suit. The boy’s companion bore a certain resemblance to the bartender in the Three of a Kind, and Luke wondered if they were related. Brothers, maybe.

  “I told Herbert to take my wagon around back,” the newcomer said as he looked down at the corpse. “That’ll be closer and handier, and I didn’t figure you’d want us carting him out through the lobby anyway, Jefferson. That would look a mite bad.”

  “I appreciate that,” Beale said. “Anyone in the hotel business knows you’re going to have guests die from time to time, but that’s no reason to call attention to it.”

  “This fella wasn’t a guest,” Donovan said. “Just another would-be killer who ran up against somebody better with a gun.” He looked at Luke. “You want me to go through my stack of wanted posters and see if he’s got any bounty on his head?”

  “That would be very kind of you, Marshal.”

  Donovan sighed and said, “Man oughta collect what he’s owed . . . even if he earned it with a bullet.”

  * * *

  Full night had fallen by the time Luke was fully dressed and ready to go out again. The rain had tapered off to an intermittent mist that created a soft halo around the lighted windows of the businesses that were still open.

  Luke was glad to see that the Keystone Café was one of them. He stepped through the café’s door into warmth and the appealing smells of stew, coffee, fresh-baked bread, and . . . was it pie? Yes, he decided, some sort of fruit pie.

  The place wasn’t busy on a damp night like this. A couple of men sat at the counter, but all the tables with their blue-checked tablecloths were empty.

  An attractive woman with dark brown hair stood behind the counter talking to one of the customers as she topped off his coffee cup from a tin pot. She looked at Luke and smiled.

  “Come on in,” she told him. “Still enough stew in the pot for a few more servings.”

  “Judging by the aroma, that’s good news,” Luke said as he took off his hat.

  “Judging from your use of the word ‘aroma,’ you’re not from Bent Creek.”

  “Hey, Mary, you shouldn’t oughta say things like that,” the customer objected. “We can talk good.”

  “Of course you can, Bert,” the woman said. “I was just being polite to the stranger, you know.”

  “Oh. That’s all right, then.”

  While Bert turned his attention back to the piece of pie on a saucer in front of him, Mary looked at Luke, smiled, and mouthed Not really.

  He managed not to laugh as he slid onto one of the stools in front of the counter and placed his hat on the empty one beside him.

  “What can I get for you, Mister . . . ?”

  “Jensen,” he said. “Luke Jensen. A bowl of that stew would be fine, along with a cup of coffee and . . . is that fresh-baked bread I smell?”

  “It certainly is.”

  “A nice, large hunk of bread, then, and we’ll follow it all with a slice of peach pie like our friend Bert is enjoying.”

  “I’m afraid they’re actually canned peaches, not fresh,” Mary said.

  “But she fixes ’em up mighty nice,” Bert added.

  “I never doubted it for a moment,” Luke said.

  She told him, “I’ll be right back.”

  The other customer, a dour-faced, older man sitting farther along the counter, waited until Mary had gone through a door into the kitchen before he looked at Luke and said, “You’re the bounty hunter, ain’t you?”

  “I am,” Luke said.

  “The one who killed Tate Winslow.” The words didn’t come out as a question.

  “That’s right,” Luke said. The old-timer didn’t look like the sort to start trouble, but you never knew.

  “That’s one killin’ that was long overdue, if you ask me.”

  “That seems to be the consensus.”

  Bert said, “You do talk a little funny, Mr. Jensen. Like a schoolteacher. You ever teach school, sort of on the side, I mean, to go with your bounty huntin’?”

  Luke had to laugh this time as he shook his head.

  “No, Bert, I’ve never been a schoolteacher. I was well acquainted with one once, though. A beautiful young woman named Lettie. That was long ago and far away, though, before the war. Practically a different lifetime. Since then, I’ve ridden a lot of lonely trails. It didn’t take me long to discover that a solitary man’s best friend is often a book. I make sure to carry several with me all the time.”

  “Oh. Reckon that makes sense. I like to read, too. I send off to New York for them yellow-backed novels from Beadle and Adams. Got one right here.” Bert reached to his hip pocket and pulled out a small book bound in yellow paper. “It’s about a gunfighter named Smoke Jen—Hey, you and him got the same last name! How about that?”

  “Yes,” Luke said, still smiling. “How about that?”

  Mary’s arrival from the kitchen with a bowl of stew and a saucer with a large piece of bread on it saved Luke from offering any explanations . . . not that he was likely to. He didn’t go around telling folks that he was Smoke Jensen’s brother. For many years, he had kept his relation to the Jensen family to himself, for reasons he’d considered good at the time.

  That had changed, but he still wasn’t very forthcoming by nature.

  He also didn’t say anything about how those lurid, fanciful novels were sometimes a minor thorn in Smoke’s side, bearing as they did little resemblance to anything remotely truthful about his life and career.

  “Mr. Beale at the hotel recommended your café, and I’m glad he did,” Luke said after he had sampled the thick, savory beef stew. “This is excellent.”

  Mary smiled and said, “Well, Jefferson Beale took a trip to San Francisco once, and it almost ruined him. He thinks everywhere should be like that, even Bent Creek. But he’s a good man, despite those lofty ambitions. He usually manages not to be too pretentious.”

  The old-timer finished his coffee and left. Bert polished off the last of his pie, put a silver dollar on the counter, and said, “I’m obliged to you, as always, Mary. Good night.”

  “Good night, Bert,” she told him.

  The little bell over the door jingled as he went out. Luke said, “I appear to be your last customer of the day.”

  “You don’t have to hurry. Just take your time, Mr. Jensen.” She took a cup down from one of the shelves behind the counter and poured coffee in it. “In fact, I’ll join you, if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means. It’s your café.”

  “I like having a few quiet moments at the end of the day like this.” She took a sip of the coffee. “Especially with pleasant company.”

  She was a very attractive woman. Luke couldn’t help but notice that. Old enough that there were a few lines on her face, a few strands of gray in the glossy brown hair, to give her character. Warm brown eyes with the gleam of intelligence. A womanly body under the gray dress and white apron she wore. No wedding ring, but Luke couldn’t imagine a woman such as this never marrying, which made him think she was probably a widow. Taken all together, it was enough to make a man contemplate the different ways he might enjoy her company.

  Before Luke could venture very far down that intriguing mental path, however, the bell over the door jingled again.

  “Drat,” Mary said under her breath. “I knew I should have gone ahead and locked up when I had the chance.” Then she put another of those bright smiles on her face and went on, “Good evening, Marshal.”

  “Evenin’, Mary,” Chet Donovan said as he clumped into the room on muddy boots.

  “Can I get you something? Coffee? Maybe a piece of pie?”

  “Wish I could, but I’m really lookin’ for your customer there.”

  “Me?” Luke said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I got an answer from up in Montana a lot quicker than I thought I would. Those wires must’a really been singin’ tonight. Anyway, I heard from the sheriff in White Fork. Fella by the name of Axtell.”

  “Did he authorize the payment of the bounty for Tyler?”

  “Nope,” Donovan said.

  “What?” Luke frowned. “Does he doubt that we have the right man? Did you describe the prisoner to him in your wire?”

  “Of course I did. Told him I was sure the fella we’ve got locked up is Judd Tyler, and that the prisoner didn’t even bother denyin’ it. Evidently that don’t matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Axtell claims there’s a special condition on that bounty. It’s payable only when Tyler is delivered personally to him in White Fork, and not before.” The marshal grunted, and after a second Luke realized the sound was a laugh. “Looks like you’re gonna have to be takin’ a trip up north, Jensen, if you want to collect your blood money.”

  CHAPTER 6

  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!”