Journey into Violence (15 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-EIGHT

“So that's it?” Kate said, her anger on the simmer.

“Yes, Mrs. Kerrigan, that's it,” Sheriff George Hinkle said.

Kate said, “Suppose I shoot him myself ?”

“Then I'd arrest you for murder.”

“For killing a sewer rat?”

“The current penalty for killing a sewer rat is fifteen to twenty in a male penitentiary, Mrs. Kerrigan. The federal government makes no provision for the fairer sex,” Hinkle said. “You got your puncher back alive, so let it be. Odell is leaving Dodge tomorrow on the noon train and he'll be out of your life forever.”

“Isn't it about time you released Mr. Lowery?” Kate said, trembling as she tried to control her redheaded Irish temper.

Hinkle jangled his keys. “Of course.”

Kate looked out the window. “When they planned to lynch Hank there was a big crowd. Now there's nobody.”

Hinkle shrugged. “What do you want, Mrs. Kerrigan? A brass band? It ain't going to happen. Dodge doesn't want to be reminded that it tried to hang an innocent man.” The sheriff stepped away and returned with Hank Lowery.

The man looked pale and he'd lost weight, but his blue eyes shone when he saw Kate and he smiled for the first time in days. “Thank you. Thank you for having faith in me, Mrs. Kerrigan.”

He extended his hand, but Kate ignored that and hugged him. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Now we can all head home.”

“Home. It has a fine ring to it,” Lowery said.

Frank stuck out his hand and said a little stiffly, “Good to have you back.”

Trace did the same, then said, “Hank, you look hungry. Did you have breakfast?”

Lowery looked at Hinkle. “No. Not even coffee.”

Kate finally let her anger boil over. “Sheriff, you didn't even bring him coffee?”

“Mrs. Kerrigan, Lowery is a free man. I don't need to feed him at city expense any longer.”

“He was still locked up in your darkest dungeon,” Kate said.

“Yeah, but he was free to go and buy his own coffee.”

“He was locked up, Sheriff,” Kate said, her green eyes snapping.

“Please don't bandy words with me, Mrs. Kerrigan.” Then, dropping his gaze to the floor, he added, “Truth is, I forgot all about him this morning. I had other things on my mind.”

Kate opened her mouth to speak again, but Frank grinned and said, “Trace, we'd better get your mother out of here before she gets fifteen to twenty for assaulting an officer of the law.”

“Forgot him indeed! Sheriff Hinkle, how could you?” She grabbed Lowery by the hand and stormed out the door, her high-heeled ankle boots thudding.

Hinkle looked at Frank. “Real purty gal, but I'll be glad to see the last of her.”

Frank nodded. “A lot of men have said that very thing, Sheriff.” He smiled. “I can't say as I blame you.”

* * *

Fate will always find a way to intrude, for better or worse, on human existence. It did that morning in the steamy warmth of the Chop House restaurant in Dodge City, Kansas.

After leaving the sheriff's office, Frank and Trace had gone to the livery to check on the horses before the long trip to Texas. Kate, eager to make sure that Hank Lowery was fed, had accompanied him to the restaurant. She waited until he finished his steak and eggs and was drinking his third cup of coffee before she said, “So the man is getting away with murder.”

“Seems like,” Lowery said. “He would have stood by and let me hang. That's hard to take.”

“Sheriff Hinkle told me that Odell said the life of a drover doesn't matter. It's what a killer would say, isn't it?” She sighed. “Odell is leaving Dodge on the noon train tomorrow, and we'll be well rid of him.”

As Lowery smoked his morning cigar, the door opened . . . and Drugo Odell stepped inside.

The man hesitated and slowly looked around the restaurant, as is the way of the gunman. His gaze stopped at Kate Kerrigan, took in at a glance what she had to offer, and then slid briefly to Hank Lowery before dismissing him. Odell sat at an empty table where he could keep an eye on Kate and ordered coffee.

Kate leaned across the table and whispered, “That's—”

“I know who he is.” Lowery answered the question on Kate's face. “In a saloon up on the Red River I saw him take on two named pistoleros and kill them both. Draws from a shoulder holster and he's fast, mighty fast.”

Kate looked for fear in Lowery's face but saw none. “Do you think he recognized you?”

“I'm sitting with you, Mrs. Kerrigan, so I'm sure he's got a pretty good notion of who I am. But he won't remember me from back then. I was working as a waiter in that Fleetwood Saloon, and men like Drugo Odell don't remember waiters.”

Kate said, “I'll pay our score and get out of here.”

“You don't have to leave on my account, Mrs. Kerrigan.”

“I know that, Hank, but I still think we should leave.”

On the way out of the saloon, Odell smirked and said something under his breath. Lowery heard it clearly, but Kate didn't.

When they were outside in the street, she laid her hand on Lowery's arm. “What did that man say to me?”

“Nothing you need to hear, Mrs. Kerrigan.” Lowery stared straight ahead. “Not now. Not ever.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-NINE

“Do you know what you're doing?” Sheriff George Hinkle said.

“I've got my mind set on it,” Hank Lowery said.

“He'll kill you, and there's nothing I'll be able to do about it. You kill an armed man and it's self-defense. Understand me? There's no argument, no shades of gray. Drugo Odell blows the smoke off his gun and rides the train.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“You can't shade him. He's too fast. He killed Morgan Braddock.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“Go get Frank Cobb. He's good with a gun.”

“I'll do this on my own. I don't want Cobb to know . . . or Mrs. Kerrigan, either. This is between us, Hinkle.”

“Where's your own revolver?”

“In the chuck wagon. Halfway to Texas by now.”

Hinkle drew his Colt. “At noon today I won't be in town. Gonna find me a bucket of water out in the flat country somewhere and go fishing. I won't be here to help you, Lowery.”

“I don't need your help. I can handle Drugo Odell. I saw him shoot one time.”

After a few moments of silence, Hinkle said, “And?”

“And I'm faster.” Lowery took the sheriff's Colt and looked it over. “You ever clean and oil this thing?”

“No.”

“You got cleaning stuff and gun oil?”

“Sure. In my desk, right-hand drawer. Got an unopened box of shells in there as well. Coffee's on the bile.”

Lowery smiled. “Coffee? Feeling guilty about yesterday, huh?”

“You could say that.” Hinkle crossed to the stove and poured coffee into a couple tin cups. He laid one on the desk in front of Lowery. “Clean that pistol real good and after your business is done, return it here. I'll be gone, but just lay it on the gun rack. And then—”

“And then what?”

“And then you and Mrs. Kerrigan get the hell out of my town.”

Lowery smiled as he removed the rusty cylinder from the Colt. “Count on it.”

“You want to tell me about the Longdale Massacre, Lowery? I never did hear the right of it.”

“Some other time, Sheriff.”

“There won't be another time,” Hinkle said.

“Then when you tell your grandchildren about the time you had the man who pulled off the Longdale massacre in your jail, make up whatever pleases you.”

“Maybe you won't like it.”

Lowery smiled. “I never do.”

* * *

“That's all Mr. Lowery said? That he was going to the bath house and then for a haircut and shave?” Kate said.

Trace nodded. “That was all, Ma. It was really early and we didn't speak much.”

“Why were you up so early, Trace? You know I forbid you to not get enough sleep.”

“I was headed for the outhouse, Ma. All that coffee I drank last—”

Kate said, “We will forgo the details, but I do think Mr. Lowery could have joined us for breakfast on this our last day in Dodge City.”

“Man needs to get rid of the jailhouse stink, Kate,” Frank said.

“Again, that is too much detail.” She glanced around the crowded hotel dining room. “Not a cattleman in sight. It really is high time we were back in Texas.”

“I'm all for that,” Frank said. “I wonder how your pirate and his scurvy crew are doing with your new house?”

“Frank, I agree that Barrie Delaney is a pirate and a rogue, but I doubt his men have scurvy. As for my house, we'll soon see for ourselves, won't we? Please pass the butter. And the jam.” Kate said, “No, Frank, the strawberry. I don't much care for blueberry.”

Although she appeared calm, Kate's instinct for danger was sending out alarms and she said a silent prayer that Hank Lowery would not run into Drugo Odell. The gunman might shoot him out of spite.

* * *

The clock on the sheriff's office wall said eleven-thirty as Hank Lowery shoved George Hinkle's Colt into his waistband and stepped into Front Street. The boardwalks were busy as matrons in cotton afternoon dresses with demure collars and cuffs did their grocery shopping. Of the sporting crowd there was no sign and the fashionable Dodge City belles in their bustled gowns were not yet taking the air. The day was already stifling hot and the recent rains had left puddles of mud everywhere.

Lowery walked past the cattle pens, empty now that the season was over, his eyes fixed on the train depot ahead of him. The place seemed deserted, but he knew Drugo Odell was there. He could sense his presence. The man's malevolent evil reached out for Lowery's throat like a grasping hand and all at once the gambler found it hard to breathe. He stopped, wiped the palm of his sweaty gun hand on his pants, and continued walking.

A single set of stairs led to the platform, ticket office, and the waiting rooms, one with a sign hanging above the door. L
ADIES
O
NLY.
A tall, thin black man wearing a shabby black coat to his ankles and a collarless white shirt sat outside on a bench that looked like a church pew and stared listlessly at the rails. He seemed to be in his early fifties, but he could have been younger. Either way, he ignored whatever was happening around him and posed no threat.

Hank Lowery couldn't see Drugo Odell, but figured he was inside the waiting room out of the sun and the growing heat of the day. There was no future in opening the waiting room door, stepping from bright sunlight into shade, and expecting Odell to wait politely before drawing down on him while his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

Lowery stayed where he was. He'd wait until Odell came out onto the platform and then call him out. The black man was minding his own business, still moodily staring at the rails, and wouldn't interfere. Besides, around these parts a black man didn't count for much.

Dressed in a broad-brimmed hat, boots, canvas pants, worn gray shirt, and red bandana, to the casual observer Lowery looked like any other puncher up from Texas with the herds, even if he was older than most. The Colt stuck into his waistband might give pause, but armed men were not rare in Dodge.

Long minutes passed. Fat blue flies from the stockyards buzzed in the corners of every windowpane and the black man, staring straight ahead, constantly brushed them away from his face. From the distance came the three-note whistle of an approaching train. The hands of the railroad clock in the ticket office were joined at noon.

The door of the waiting room opened and Drugo Odell, carrying a carpetbag in his left hand, stepped onto the platform. His eyes went to the black man who'd stood up, dismissed him, and settled on Lowery. Odell grinned and dropped the carpetbag, knowing why Hank Lowery was there. “Payback time, huh?” His hand blurred as it went for his gun.

Lowery drew. Even as his fingers closed on the Colt's handle he realized he was a full second too slow. Odell's gun came up, the man still grinning, but then the morning exploded. Odell's back arched like a drawn bow as two barrels of buckshot slammed into him. Hit hard, he turned, his face shocked.

The black man held a smoking Greener in his hands. “That's for my sister. It's for Alva.”

The Colt dropped from Odell's hand. He staggered a few steps, stunned and horrified at the time and manner of his death, and then crashed onto his back. His bowler hat fell from his head and rolled away on its rim before it stopped, spun a few times on its crown, and then lay still.

The locomotive, hissing steam, its bell ringing, drew to a clanking halt and the guard stepped onto the platform. The man peered at Drugo Odell, at the black blood pooling around his body, and then to Lowery.

“Wasn't me. I didn't shoot the bastard.”

The guard had seen enough and he yelled, “All aboard!”

The black man, his shotgun again covered by his coat, stared at Lowery.

Lowery shoved the Colt back into his pants. “You'll miss your train.”

The black man nodded. “Name's Eustace. Eustace Cranley.”

“Good luck, Eustace.”

“You, too, cowboy. Good luck.” Cranley stepped into the train's only passenger car. The guard, in a hurry after one last glance at Odell's body, waved his flag and the locomotive lurched into motion.

Lowery watched the train until it was out of sight, only its column of dirty gray smoke still visible. Only then did he answer the horrified station agent's question. “I don't know who shot him.”

“Somebody cut loose with a scattergun,” the agent said.

Lowery nodded. “Seems like.”

“I'd better go get the sheriff.”

“As far as I know, he's gone fishing.”