Die by the Gun Read online

  “That’s Desmond?” Mac almost burst out laughing.

  The rust-haired boy was only a year or two younger than Mac but had the look of being unfinished, soft . . . and drunker than a lord. He sprawled on his back across a big bed. His long johns had been put on backward so the drop flap was in the front and open.

  “You boys want to join us? That’ll be extra.” A nude, blond strumpet perched on the edge of the bed, one foot up on the mattress and the other on the carpeted floor. She lounged back to expose herself.

  “Come on, Desmond. Time to go.” Flowers swung Mercedes Sullivan’s son up and over his shoulder. He staggered a bit under the weight, then got his balance. “Get his clothes, Mackenzie.”

  Mac did as he was told, letting Flowers slip past into the hallway. He faced the harlot, who showed every sign of putting up a protest.

  “What’s he owe you?”

  “A hundred dollars!”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  With a sullen pout on her face, she said, “I’m worth it.”

  Mac pondered a moment, then said, “One of your friends down on the first floor’s got the money.”

  “Angie? Bethany?”

  “Yeah,” Mac said, edging to the stairs. “She’s the one.”

  Before the woman complained, he followed Flowers down the steps and out back.

  “That’s his horse. Bring it here,” Flowers ordered Mac.

  Running now, Mac grabbed the reins of the horse and tugged, getting it moving. Flowers met him halfway back to the whorehouse, heaved, and dumped Desmond belly down over the saddle.

  “Let’s get the blazes out of here,” Flowers said. “I’ve had all of Fort Worth that I can stomach.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Quick Willy Means sat in the corner of the dance hall, watching the ebb and flow of customers. Most came in to get drunk. Some came in to pay a dime and dance with the girl of their choice. Only a few did both.

  This was one of the more expensive watering holes in Fort Worth, being right at the edge of Hell’s Half Acre. It catered to a richer clientele but also saw some of the cowboys on their way to the dives and brothels south along Throckmorton Street. He liked the different types of men who came in. It gave him a chance to cover more territory in his hunt.

  He slipped his revolver from his holster, snapped open the gate, and clicked the cylinder. Every chamber carried a fresh round. Another move closed the gate. He laid the pistol on the table next to the bottle of decent Kentucky whiskey.

  Farther south, he couldn’t get whiskey that didn’t make him puke. In other parts of Fort Worth, he had to pay too much. This was just right. Plus he could reach any part of town in a flash, being centrally located. That suited him just fine after Jimmy Huffman was cut down. He had never liked Jimmy, or his brothers, but they were the best trackers he had ever hired and had no qualms about using their revolvers if the need arose.

  And it did often. Means was the most efficient bounty hunter in the West. In eight years of hunting criminals, he had failed to find only two, and he thought one of them had died in a spring flood, his body washed all the way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

  The other one he considered still to be found. Being hired by the shipping magnate in New Orleans added to the work, but the price Pierre Leclerc paid in advance made up for the detour from Kansas City and a man with a thousand-dollar reward on his head to this piss pot Texas town. Being derailed irritated him, but having Mackenzie cut down Jimmy Huffman caused a hatred to build. Quick Willy Means did not lose men working for him.

  Ever.

  He moved his gun a few inches on the table, poured himself another shot of the acceptable whiskey, and knocked it back before the rangy blond man crossed the dance floor to stand in front of him. Arizona Johnston might do to replace Jimmy Huffman. He had a quick hand, sharp eye, and didn’t give much lip. Mostly Means appreciated that he was a thinker without being a jackass. But he really didn’t know the man yet.

  “I’ve got a line on him,” Johnston said without preamble. “He and two others rode into town from the south. One went off on his own, but Mackenzie and his partner made a beeline to a whorehouse.” He smiled crookedly. “A fine one by the look, too, not just a crib like most of them in that part of town.”

  Means used the muzzle of his revolver to push a shot glass in Johnston’s direction and said, “Have a drink.”

  “Later, when we’ve corralled him.”

  “You won’t drink with me?” Means sat a little straighter.

  “I will when we catch Mackenzie and have the bounty riding high in our pockets. Keeping my head clear now lets me enjoy a celebration later.”

  Means gave the gunman another once-over. The trail clothes he wore varied considerably from those worn by the Huffman brothers. Arizona Johnston wore a sand-colored duster, with canvas pants poking out from under the frayed hem. A plain brown cloth coat, paisley vest, and a boiled white shirt showed some taste, but nothing out of the ordinary. His Stetson with a snake-skin hatband was pushed back on his head.

  The only thing that interested Means about the man’s attire were the two revolvers. One hung low on his right hip just about the proper place for a quick draw. The other rode high in a cross-draw holster on his left side. Two guns but he wasn’t rigged to fire one in each hand.

  “Let’s go after our fugitive from justice,” Means said, pushing back from the table. He made a big show of picking up the gun with his left hand, doing a border shift to his right, spinning it around, and slipping it expertly into his right holster.

  He watched for Johnston’s reaction. There wasn’t one. He either was unimpressed or he hid his admiration for a man so adroit with a shooting iron. Means needed to find out which it was before they hit the trail together.

  As they walked out side by side, Johnston asked, “Is it true you have a pack mule so loaded down with wanted posters that it walks bowlegged?”

  “I’ve got a couple hundred posters in a banker’s folder. Any of those varmints might show up at any time, at any place. It’s my duty to study them and to be sure new posters are added.”

  Means kept his voice level as he answered, but the flippant question peeved him. Hunting men was a business and one he took seriously. There was never room for joking.

  “Where’d the Huffman boys get off to?” Johnston swung up into the saddle and waited for him to step up.

  Means settled himself in the saddle, pushed back his coattails to expose the butts of both revolvers, then said, “They’re mourning their brother. Lead the way. We can take Mackenzie ourselves.”

  “Do we split the reward with the Huffmans?”

  “They’re part of the crew.”

  “Not that good a part,” Johnston said, eyes ahead as he rode. “One got himself cut down and the other two are drowning their sorrows.”

  “They’re partners. My partners. Are you looking to take the entire reward for yourself ?”

  “Of course not. You’ve got the contact back in New Orleans. I just wanted to make sure where I stood. Equal share, right?”

  “We’re in this together,” Means said. “You found him, so you’ve earned your share.”

  “And the Huffmans? How’d they earn theirs?”

  “Being my partners,” Means said, his ire rising now. “We’ve ridden together for quite a spell. Most bounty hunters concentrate on a lone outlaw at a time. We go after entire gangs.”

  “Loyal,” Johnston said softly, almost to himself. “I can appreciate that.”

  Means tilted his head to one side when he heard the shouts ahead. A couple of shots made him reach for his left-hand gun, but he checked the move. All around him and Johnston flowed men like a bucking, churning ocean, running in the direction of the whorehouse.

  “What’s going on?” Means asked.

  “I’ll find out,” Johnston said. He bent low and grabbed the collar of a man stumbling along. With an impressive show of strength he pulled the man off his feet. H
is boots kicked feebly in the air scant inches above the dirt. “Where are you going, partner?”

  “Big fight. Riot. Men gonna get themselves kilt. I want to see.”

  “Where’s this fight?”

  “Somebody said it was at the Frisky Filly. Harry Judd’s place.” The man belched and turned slowly in Johnston’s grip. “He don’t like bein’ called Harry. He’s all stuck up and snotty. Harrison Judd, he says, ’cuz he runs the fanciest fancy house in the whole damn town.”

  Johnston dropped the man, who fell to his knees, then scrambled up and joined the flow of the crowd.

  “Do you reckon it’s Mackenzie causing the uproar?”

  “There’s one way to find out,” Means said. He kept his horse walking through the crowd until the men were packed too close for any further progress.

  Ahead rose the house of ill repute with a second-story balcony filled with whores all egging on the fighting down below. Means stood in his stirrups and tried to see who was responsible for the loud hoots and hollers, both from the women and from the crowd.

  “See him?” Johnston asked.

  Means didn’t bother answering. He settled down and thought hard. Getting closer to the house wasn’t possible. Hundreds of men barred his way. Worse, identifying Mackenzie in such a crowd would be like finding a particular straw stick in a haystack.

  “There’s nothing we can do with a crowd this big. If we tried to grab Mackenzie, the crowd would turn on us just for the hell of it.”

  “What are we going to do? Lose him?”

  “Johnston, you haven’t thought this through. He’ll ride out of town. We follow. We’ll grab him out on the prairie.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Arizona Johnston craned his neck. “There’s three men riding off. That might be them.”

  “I saw. One’s Mackenzie, sure as rain. The old pelican riding with him is Hiram Flowers, about as tough a man as you’ll ever run across.”

  “Does he have a reward on his head?”

  Means shook his head slowly.

  “Not that I ever saw, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done plenty that’s against the law. With Mackenzie beside him, the two must be up to something.”

  With that, Means skirted the crowd and began riding slowly in the direction Mackenzie and Flowers had taken. They had come to rescue the third man. Was Flowers getting a gang together? It had been five years since he’d run afoul of the man over in Abilene. There hadn’t been any hint that Flowers broke the law, but Means always wondered. Seeing him with Dewey Mackenzie firmed up his opinion. They were up to no good.

  “Willy, over there. A man with two pack mules.”

  He started to correct Johnston and order him to call him Mister Means, then saw what the man already had. One man didn’t need so much in the way of supplies. This might be the target for Mackenzie and his gang.

  “Go back and get the Huffman brothers. If Mackenzie is planning a robbery, I might need a passel of guns backing me up.”

  “You’re not going to take them on by yourself? If Mackenzie is half as dangerous as you said that Leclerc made out, you’d have your hands full. With two others backing him in a robbery, there’d be no way any one man stood a beggar’s chance of capturing them.”

  “I don’t intend to ambush them since I’d have to know where the man with the pack mules is headed. Get Charles and Frank. If they try to rob him, they’ll do it around dawn. I would.”

  Johnston started to make another comment about such craziness, then wheeled around and trotted away, finding a side street to avoid the crowd outside the Frisky Filly. It had grown even larger.

  Quick Willy Means made sure his revolvers rode easy in their holsters, then gave his horse its head to walk along parallel to the drover with the pack mules. When the man disappeared over a rise, Means cut across the terrain and found the road leading to the southwest.

  He kept his distance, wondering what the drover had in his packs that Mac and Flowers might want. Men like that would steal pennies off a dead man’s eyes. It took all his willpower not to ride up to the man with the mules and offer to guard his shipment, hoping Mackenzie attacked anyway. Let the murderous outlaw come to him.

  But he held back. Dawn began poking into the sky by the time Johnston and the Huffman brothers joined him.

  “I let the drover get a mile ahead. Even if Mackenzie robs him, we can overtake him, especially if he tries to keep what all he’s stolen.”

  “We want him dead, boss. He killed Jimmy.”

  Means ignored whichever of the Huffman brothers spoke. It made no difference to him if Mackenzie was taken back alive or dead, although Leclerc had promised a bonus if he was returned to New Orleans alive to stand trial. Leclerc had an ax to grind. For Means, it was a matter of expediency. Mackenzie might surrender right away. Cowards did that. If so, he’d be obligated to take him to Leclerc for justice. More likely, especially with Hiram Flowers at his side, Mackenzie would try to shoot it out.

  That never came out good for the outlaws. Means had been returning escaped prisoners and road agents for eight years. Not one had survived a shoot-out with him. From all he could tell about Mackenzie, he was just starting his criminal career. That made him a greenhorn, a greenhorn outlaw and easy prey. His instincts would be wrong, and his skill with a gun would be lacking.

  Means glanced over at Arizona Johnston. Even if Mackenzie went against Johnston, he had no chance. The Huffman boys were a different matter, but it wouldn’t come to that. He wouldn’t let it.

  They topped a low rise and had a panoramic view of the dawn-lit Texas prairie. He caught his breath.

  “They’re riding together, the three from Fort Worth and the man with the supplies.” Frank Huffman sounded confused. Means shared some of that puzzlement.

  “It might be they’re all in cahoots,” he said, finally coming up with a new plan. “We won’t try to grab Mackenzie now. We’ll trail them for a while and see what they’re up to.”

  “That might be dangerous, Willy,” said Johnston. “With the supplies on those two mules, they can feed a small army. We could be up against a couple dozen outlaws.”

  Frank Huffman drew his pistol and aimed it in Mackenzie’s direction. “You turning chicken, Arizona? We don’t care. That son of a bitch murdered our brother. Even if he’s backed up by a thousand men, we’re gonna take him down.”

  Johnston said something under his breath about being stupid. But Means knew Frank wasn’t going to fire. At this range the bullet would dig up prairie a hundred yards off. Alerting Mackenzie served no purpose. Frank only imagined what he would do when they got close enough.

  Means didn’t much care who plugged Dewey Mackenzie. If he had to track him down across half of Texas, he didn’t want to take him back alive to New Orleans. That’d be too much trouble for too little reward.

  “Let’s see what supplies we’ve got between us, boys,” he said to the other bounty hunters. “We’re in for a longer hunt than I intended. We don’t want to get too hungry before we bring in Mackenzie.” Under his breath he added, “And Hiram Flowers.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “It gets harder,” Hiram Flowers told Mac. “A damned sight harder. You won’t be enjoying the trip near as much when we get to the Pecos River.”

  “Is the river swollen this time of year?” As he asked the question, Mac went about his work fixing lunch for the Circle Arrow hands. They’d been on the trail four days and he still had plenty of the things they liked best. When he started running out of eggs and other perishables, the real grumbling would start.

  He worked the dough for his biscuits until it oozed between his fingers with just the right texture. Of everything he fixed, biscuits were what kept the men happiest. That had been true when he had worked for the Rolling J, and it had been true with the Circle Arrow. So far.

  “It’s all swole up like a son of a bitch. Swole up worse ’n a rattlesnake-bit hound dog. Flowing over its banks, waiting to drown the lot of us.” Flowers spat i
nto the fire and caused a fragrant sizzling. He locked eyes with Mac, daring him to say anything.

  Ever since leaving the ranch, Flowers had been in a foul mood. Mac thought much of that choler came from Desmond Sullivan being along. The trail boss had ignored the young rancher, but as he’d said, the going had been easy. Mac hoped the rest of the Goodnight-Loving Trail proved as smooth.

  At this rate they’d be in Santa Fe before they knew it, though Flowers had been muttering about stopping at Fort Sumner to sell some beeves to the Army. If Mac was any judge, that would make the trip from the fort to Santa Fe all the easier. Fewer cattle meant fewer problems, and they had started with north of a thousand head.

  Mac divided the dough and placed the lumps into the Dutch oven to get the first batch ready. The rest of the meal would go fast enough. The cowboys would eat their steaks raw. One had even complained that the steak he got for breakfast hadn’t mooed loud enough to suit him when he cut a slice off. Mac had jabbed him with a fork, getting a cry of surprise from him that had kept the rest of the crew amused until they saddled up and went to get the ornery longhorns moving for the day.

  “How much farther do you intend to get today?” Mac cleaned his utensils and sampled some of the peach cobbler left over from breakfast. The supply of fresh fruit was coming to an end, too.

  “Another five miles,” Flowers said. He took off his hat and ran a hand over his thinning hair. “I got a bad feeling about tonight.”

  Mac studied the sky. Clouds moved fast from the west like giant puffs of cotton. Not one of them showed an ugly gray underbelly that promised rain. He had never been trapped out on such flat land during one of the infamous Texas frog stranglers, but he had heard about them. The rain came down in buckets and had almost nowhere to go. Everything turned to mud, and deep ravines cut through the ground made travel by wagon hard. Getting a herd across those arroyos would be quite a job, too.

  “It’s not the weather that’s worrying me,” Flowers said. He looked back along their trail. A dust cloud rose where the herd moved toward them.