Hired Guns Read online

  Luke wondered about that statement but figured it was something to be explained when he and the stranger had their palaver. Now wasn’t the time to delve any deeper.

  As if sensing the same thing, the stranger said, “I’m gonna go ahead and climb up for my look-see now. Since I’ve seen you’re pretty handy at startin’ fires, maybe you could scratch together the makin’s for one while I’m gone. Then, after I’m back and we’ve tended the horses, we might could have our talk over a pot of coffee.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Luke told him.

  A handful of minutes later, when the stranger came slipping back down from the high rocks, Luke indeed had a crackling fire waiting. He’d found sufficient dry fuel in the form of some thick brush stalks and a few stubborn, twisted scrub trees poking up through cracks in the rocks. And he already had a pot of coffee starting to brew on the edge of the coals. By the time he and the stranger had snugged their horses a bit more securely into the natural shelter and fitted them with feed bags, the coffee was ready.

  With a steaming cup in hand, the stranger settled back on a hump of wind-smoothed rock and said, “Like I figured, no sign of pursuit. And like you was thinkin’, this harder rain also made it to town and is drownin’ that saloon fire to nothing but a smokin’, smolderin’ husk.”

  “So if those gunmen aren’t chasing us or fighting the fire, what are they doing?”

  “Can’t say for sure. Couldn’t see much of ’em. They usually hole up in a building across the street from the one you picked to set afire. I expect that’s where they’ve regrouped, after you had ’em chasin’ their tails and shot ’em up some.” The stranger squinted at Luke. “You did thin their ranks a mite, didn’t you?”

  “I took out a few,” Luke allowed. “A couple permanently, two or three more I nicked up pretty good.”

  The stranger gave a faint nod of approval before saying, “I’m guessin’ they’ve probably discovered by now you made it out of the saloon somehow. The fact there ain’t no activity around the livery barn tells me they got no idea yet that you made it clean out of town, though. What that leaves, as far as what they’re up to, is goin’ back to a search of the other empty buildings to try and pin you down again.”

  Luke frowned. “All those buildings . . . the whole town . . . empty and deserted the way it is. But it doesn’t appear to have been that way for very long. What’s the story there, anyway?”

  “The short answer?” A distinct tone of bitterness crept into the stranger’s voice. “Everybody got driven out. Driven out or, in the case of a few who resisted too hard—killed. And not just in the town, but all through the whole valley.”

  “All this by the same men who came after me?”

  “Them, and others cut from the same cloth.”

  Luke eyed him more closely. “You don’t mind my saying, you hardly strike me as the un-resisting type yourself. The fact you’re still hanging around and the way you threw in to help me pretty much backs that up. What’s your story?”

  The bitterness was still there in the short laugh the stranger grunted out. “Pretty simple, really. I used to be the sheriff hereabouts.”

  The craziness Luke had already encountered in Hard Rock suddenly turned even more loco.

  “You’re Tom Eagle?” he said.

  A stab of suspicion cut across Eagle’s expression. “How is it you know my name?” he demanded.

  “The answer to that is pretty simple, too,” Luke replied, holding his voice calm and steady, hoping to keep any further reaction from Eagle the same. “You’re the reason I’m here. You’re the man I was sent to find.”

  Eagle’s reaction was anything but calm. All of a sudden his Colt was drawn and Luke found himself staring into its muzzle.

  Chapter 12

  “Before I fetched your horses out of the livery barn,” Eagle grated, “I took a couple minutes to check through what they were carryin’. The weapons and handcuffs, the rest of your gear—and the clump of wanted posters you keep real close at hand in one of your saddlebags. It was plain enough you’re a bounty hunter!”

  “That’s right. I don’t deny it. My name’s Jensen, Luke Jensen. And it’s true that bounty hunting is my trade.”

  “Then how is it you’re here lookin’ for me?” Eagle’s eyes blazed. “There’s no bounty on my head! I figured you must have been after somebody in that pack of coyotes who took over the town.”

  “I suspect there’s a good chance some of them do have papers on them,” Luke said. “Can’t say as I recognized anybody, though. And once the bullets started flying, it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of time to match any faces to those dodgers I carry with me.”

  “That still leaves the part about you comin’ after me. You sayin’ you got a dodger that my face matches?”

  Luke shook his head. “Nope. As far as I know, none exist. Not yet. That’s why I was sent to bring you in. Since you represented the only law anywhere around here until you—the way it was told to me—went bad and turned outlaw, I was hired to bring you within the jurisdiction of proper authorities to the south where charges and papers could be issued against you.”

  “I turned outlaw?” Eagle’s face flushed almost purple with rage. “What kind of hogwash is that? It’s a filthy lie!”

  “It’s beginning to register with me,” Luke said measuredly, “that I’ve been fed a sizable helping of lies.”

  “By who? Who hired you and filled you so full of this garbage about me?” Eagle wanted to know.

  Luke watched his face closely as he said, “Man by the name of Parker Dixon.”

  The purple flush had never faded even the slightest from Eagle’s face and it certainly showed no signs of doing so now. When he spoke, it was like the color was infused so deep it was squeezing his voice box, causing his words to come out in a half-strangled growl.

  “That lowdown varmint! I should have known it’d be him. Who else? He can’t hurt me bad enough by ruinin’ everything and everybody around me, he’s got to make sure he ruins me the rest of the way.”

  Luke didn’t say anything right away. He drank some of his coffee, gave it a few moments. Eagle’s Colt remained trained on him, but the former lawman seemed barely aware he was even holding it. Then Luke said, “From what I saw, Dixon is a wealthy, successful, highly respected man in and around Helena. What makes a man like that interested in reaching all the way up here to, as you put it, ruin everything and everybody—including you?”

  Eagle’s eyes bored into him. “What makes most men go bad? Sometimes a woman, sometimes spite. More often than anything else, though, it comes down to greed. The lust for more power and more money.”

  “I wouldn’t argue against that, generally speaking,” Luke said. “Only, meaning no disrespect to your former town or this surrounding valley, I’m having a little trouble seeing what’s here that represents the kind of power and wealth that would turn somebody like Dixon so ruthless in order to gain control over it.”

  “If you were to dig a little deeper into his background,” Eagle responded, “I’m bettin’ you’d find that your prominent and respected Mr. Dixon didn’t all of a sudden discover a ruthless streak in himself after he laid eyes on Hard Rock. Havin’ a ruthless side is likely how he gained a chunk of his so-called prominence to begin with.”

  Luke thought about Dixon’s man Asa Patton. Even though he’d grown to feel comfortable around him, it was plain that his services for Dixon included being available for gun work from time to time. Which made it equally plain that Dixon’s business dealings weren’t always conducted without some degree of force—or at least the implied threat of force—being involved.

  “Going back to these new truths that are starting to register with me,” said Luke, “let’s include me having my eyes opened to the fact Parker Dixon may conduct part or all of his business in a manner that isn’t exactly polite or gentlemanly. With that established then, tell me what makes him want to employ such an extreme level of those tactics here in your
valley.”

  “Another simple answer. Gold.”

  “Dixon’s already got gold. In addition to his other business interests,” Luke said, “he has several mines around Helena. Plus one up around here somewhere . . . unless that was another lie.”

  “No, there’s a Dixon mine up in the Spearpoints. That much is true,” Eagle conceded. “The Gold Button—best producin’ one around, as a matter of fact.”

  “I was led to believe it was barely holding its own. Not yielding all that much.”

  A trace of a wry smile touched one corner of Eagle’s mouth. “Not much by some standards don’t mean it ain’t still a lot compared to others. And right there is the hinge of this whole thing. Not the amount of gold that’s showed up so far . . . but the gold still waitin’ in the belly of those mountains to be brung out!”

  “You’re going to have to chew that a little finer,” Luke growled irritably. “This whole thing is getting fuzzier instead of clearer. Where I fit, where you fit, what it is that Dixon’s after . . . What the blazes is it all about? And it might help me think a little straighter if you’d quit pointing that gun at me!”

  Eagle looked somewhat taken aback. A bit of the high color faded from his face. He glanced down at the gun in his fist, as if he’d forgotten it was there, then looked up at Luke and back to the gun again. After a moment’s hesitation, he pouched the iron.

  “I ain’t sure why, but my gut tells me you’re to be trusted,” he said in a subdued voice. “No matter the reasons that brung you here.”

  “What brought me here had to do with a crooked sheriff who’d turned to robbing and killing,” Luke told him. “Is that you?”

  “I already gave you the straight on that.”

  “Then you’ve got no call to worry about me. The one thing that does seem clear is that what each of us has to worry about is back there in that town—the pack of gunnies who’ve taken over, and whoever’s behind them and whatever the ultimate goal is.”

  “The answer to that is wrapped up in two words. Parker Dixon.”

  “Him and gold.”

  “Okay, three words.”

  Luke’s jaw muscles clenched. “Since I got no argument in favor of Dixon and a growing list of reasons to doubt him, let’s consider that part of it settled, at least for now. So tell me about the other—the gold you say is still in the belly of the mountain.”

  Chapter 13

  After replacing the pot on the coals, Tom Eagle settled back again and went on, “Right from the first, practically as soon as the Gold Button started operation, Dixon kept sendin’ more engineers to dig and sniff all around the area. Pokin’ holes, takin’ samples, buzzin’ amongst themselves but not sayin’ much to anybody on the outside. Finally, right about the time of this past winter’s first thaw, they found something. Something big, you could tell by how excited they got.”

  Eagle sipped his coffee. Luke restrained his impatience.

  “‘The mother of all mother lodes’ was the rumor that one of the engineers was supposed to’ve been overheard to say. Whatever it was, it was enough to bring Dixon himself up here for the first time since the start-up of his existin’ mine. He went out of his way to talk to me personally and say a lot of vague stuff about how this whole valley was sittin’ on some great changes that could benefit everybody if they were smart enough to go along and not try to stand in the way of progress.”

  “Sounds like a thinly veiled threat as much as anything,” Luke observed.

  “That’s sorta what I thought. Trouble was, I didn’t take it serious enough and didn’t realize how fast Dixon was gonna start makin’ good on it. Not that he came back around himself to do it,” Eagle said with a scowl. “No, he sent others. ‘Advocates’ they called themselves. Guess that’s a fancy term for lawyers. That’s the way they talked, like lawyers. Goin’ around tellin’ folks how they represented a major corporation—never sayin’ Dixon by name, mind you—that wanted to move into the valley and needed land for growth and development. They offered money at first. Decent enough amounts, I guess, but nothing overly generous. A few, mostly those who were strugglin’ hard anyway, took ’em up on it. But not everybody, certainly not enough to suit their big plans. And that’s when the advocates stepped out of the picture and Dixon’s next wave of hired help showed up.”

  Luke gave a disdainful grunt. “Not too hard to guess that now you’re talking about the same friendly gentlemen I had the pleasure of meeting.”

  “Them, and more just like ’em. That’s when the rough stuff started happenin’. Folks flat-out threatened if they didn’t pack up and move out. Property damaged and destroyed to help ’em make up their minds. Mysterious fires and explosions at some of the other mines. Cattle run off, some of’em even slaughtered and left to rot where they fell.” Eagle looked forlorn. “It got real bad real fast. It was just a matter of time before some shootin’ started to take place. A handful of good people got hurt, a few even killed. Unfortunately, none of’em were Dixon men.”

  “And you weren’t able to stop any of it?”

  Eagle shook his head in exasperation. “Never any proof. I knew exactly who it was, or at least who was behind it. And so did everybody else. But those who’d received direct threats were too afraid to identify who made ’em. And the rest of the stuff that happened—the fires and explosions and other kinds of damage—mostly took place at night so the ones who caused it couldn’t be identified, even if somebody had been willing. Besides . . .”

  Eagle stopped abruptly, letting his voice trail off.

  “Besides what?” Luke wanted to know.

  Another headshake from Eagle, this time firm, dismissive. “Never mind. It’d just sound like sour milk, like I was feelin’ sorry for myself.”

  Luke took a drink of his coffee, then said, “You didn’t have much in the way of backup, did you? No deputies, not enough men to ride behind you in a posse. That it?”

  “It was what it was and it is what it is,” Eagle replied sternly. “None of that likely would have made any difference, anyway, except maybe gotten some more innocents killed. The businessmen around town are—were—quiet sorts. Gentle. Clerks, family men, a lot of them gettin’ on in years. Hardly the kind you could rally and throw against Dixon’s gun wolves.”

  “What about the outlying ranchers and farmers? Or some of the independent miners? Those tend to be pretty hardy types.”

  “True enough. But when the trouble broke out, they were all bein’ kept busy tryin’ to protect their own interests. Expectin’ ’em to abandon their individual fights to form a posse or help protect the town or their neighbors . . . No surprise, that wasn’t very appealing. Can’t say as I blame ’em. And then they got broken, one by one, and the fight got wore out of ’em.”

  “So any fighting back ended up all on your shoulders,” Luke said, a touch of admiration in his tone. “I’m surprised Dixon allowed you to stay alive.”

  “Allowed, hell!” Eagle snapped back. “Next to tappin’ that big vein of mountain gold, I don’t think there’s anything in the world Dixon would like better than seein’ me dead. Trouble is, his hired guns haven’t been up to the job, no matter how hard they’ve tried. I’ve spent my whole life in this valley and these mountains. I don’t get cornered, and I don’t kill easy!”

  A corner of Luke’s mouth quirked upward. “You’ve got me convinced. I’m glad things have turned out so I don’t have to follow through on my original job of coming here to hunt you down.”

  “Comin’ here to try and hunt me down,” Eagle corrected him, a wry smile touching his own mouth.

  Luke let that ride and simply took another drink of his coffee.

  Eagle’s teasing smile quickly faded and his mouth pulled instead into a grimace. “That blasted Dixon. Just ’cause he couldn’t kill me one way, that didn’t mean he was willin’ to let up on me. Not by a long shot. What he did instead—no, make that at the same time, on account of he started right off, just as soon as his thugs showed up in place of th
ose fancy-talkin’ ‘advocates’—was to kill my reputation.”

  Luke frowned. “Not sure I’m following what you mean.”

  “What line did he feed you about me? How I’d turned from sheriff to outlaw, robbin’ gold shipments, bein’ a murderer. Right?” Eagle made an imploring gesture with his free hand. “Don’t you get it? You weren’t the first he dished that out to. Once he set out to take this whole valley and all the gold for himself, he started spreadin’ the false talk about me. Went so far as to stage a couple phony robberies of his own gold shipments and rigged it so witnesses were willin’ to say that one of the robbers, even in a mask, sounded and acted like me. Then, when folks started gettin’ threatened and roughed up and the rest, and I wasn’t able to do nothing to stop it, there were some who even wondered out loud if I wasn’t in on that, too. It was like a poison bein’ spread and what was gettin’ poisoned was my good name.”

  “Occurs to me,” Luke said, “that among the things Dixon told me was a claim that he’d put his own son in charge of the mining operation up here—until he got killed in one of those robberies you supposedly pulled.”

  Eagle’s jaw dropped. “He must have wanted to convince you real bad that I was an evil dog who deserved to be taken down. The accusation that I killed his son is one I never heard before. It’s a surprise to me and would be to Roland, too, I bet.”

  “His son, you mean?”

  “None other.”

  “So he really does have a son. I’m surprised even that much of what he told me is true.”

  “Oh, it’s true, all right,” Eagle said. “Sounds like the only lie he told you about Roland was that he was dead and I killed him. Other than the robbery part, I wouldn’t even mind takin’ credit for it. You see, Roland does run the Gold Button mining operation up here and not only is he still alive but he’s almost as rotten as his father.”

  “Must make the old man real proud,” Luke muttered. “But never mind the kid for now. My purpose in bringing him up wasn’t meant to divert you from the rest of what you were saying.”