Crow Bait Page 15

  “Do it,” Lancaster said. “Go ahead. With your hands? Your gun? Or do you plan to kick me to death?”

  Sweet stared at Lancaster.

  “That’s what I thought,” Lancaster said. “You don’t have two more men to back your play this time.”

  “Look, I told you already,” Sweet said. “It weren’t nothin’ personal. We was hired to do what we did.”

  “And you’re gonna tell me by who and why.”

  “Well,” Sweet said, “you got somebody mad at you, that’s for sure. Had somethin’ to do with somebody you killed.”

  “So, what? Somebody’s wife? Somebody’s father? Brother?” Lancaster asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sweet said. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t care. It was a lot of money.”

  “And how specific was this person when they hired you?” Lancaster asked.

  “Whataya mean?”

  “Why the Mojave?”

  “That’s what…they wanted,” Sweet said. “For us to strand you in the of the Mojave. They said take your horse, your gun, your water, and leave you.”

  “And you didn’t ask why?”

  Sweet shrugged. “Like I said, it was a lot of money.”

  “But you didn’t leave me right in the middle of the desert,” Lancaster said. “If you had I might be dead now.”

  “Well, I didn’t see any reason to wait,” Sweet said.

  “You got impatient,” Lancaster said. “You hadn’t been paid yet, right?”

  “Not all of it.”

  “So after you left me you had to go and meet your employer to get paid. That means he or she was in Nevada, right?”

  “So?”

  “But do they live in Nevada?”

  Sweet didn’t answer.

  “Sweet,” Lancaster said, “the harder you make this on me, the harder it’s gonna be on you.”

  “Naw,” Sweet said, “naw, you ain’t gonna kill me. Not while you don’t know who hired me.”

  “And if you’re so bound and determined not to tell me,” Lancaster asked, “what’s the point of me keepin’ you alive?”

  Sweet stared at Lancaster, then picked up his drink—whiskey, by the look of it—and swigged it.

  “I ain’t just gonna lie down for you, Lancaster,” he said.

  “I never thought you would,” Lancaster said. “But why cover for your employer? You’ll be dead and they’ll go on living.”

  “And when they find out you’re still alive, they’ll hire somebody else,” Sweet said. “You’ll be lookin’ over your shoulder for the rest of your life. You don’t want me, Lancaster. You want who hired me.”

  Lancaster gave that some thought. Sweet began to look hopeful. He didn’t think he had much chance going up against Lancaster in a fair gunfight. There had to be another way out. He looked at the batwing doors, hoping to see Fielding and Williams come through.

  “Don’t be lookin’ for them,” Lancaster said.

  “For who?”

  “Fielding and Williams,” he said. “They’re in a cell in Amarillo.”

  “Goddamnit!” Sweet said.

  “Okay,” Lancaster said. “Okay, Sweet.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “You’re right,” Lancaster said. “I want the person who hired you.”

  “And?”

  “Tell me who hired you,” Lancaster said, “and I’ll let you walk out that door.”

  Sweet looked hopeful, then suspicious.

  “Oh no,” he said, “you gotta be more plain than that. You let me walk out, then you come out and shoot me. Huh-uh. I want you to say it. If I tell you the name, you’ll let me go.”

  “If you give me the name of the person who hired you, I’ll let you go.”

  “And you won’t come huntin’ for me again.”

  “And I won’t come huntin’ for you again.”

  “And you won’t ever kill me.”

  Lancaster hesitated; then he said, “And I won’t ever kill you.”

  Sweet still looked suspicious.

  “This is too easy,” he said.

  “Hey,” Lancaster said, “what can I say? You convinced me.”

  Lancaster left the saloon with the name of the person who had hired Sweet to strand him in the desert. He also had the location.

  He hated letting Sweet go, but he actually believed that the man would take his employer’s name to the grave just to be ornery.

  He still had to find Gerry Beck. But even Gerry was going to have to wait until Lancaster settled with the person who paid to have him left in the desert.

  The problem was, he thought that once he heard the name he’d know who it was. But even armed with the name, he had no idea who the hell this person was.

  Sixty-two

  Just outside Reno, Nevada

  Lancaster had checked the ranch out in the daylight. It had a lot of hands, but at this time of night they were all in the bunkhouse. He had left Crow Bait in a stand of trees a few hundred yards away and come the rest of the way on foot.

  He would like to have observed the place longer, but he didn’t have the time. He didn’t want to hang around Reno too long. Word might get back to the ranch. No, he had to go in tonight.

  He worked his way to the back of the house without being seen and found a door that led to the kitchen. In daylight he’d been able to see that the house was a two-story Colonial with white columns in front, based on the mansions of the Deep South. A man with a house like this had to have servants—a cook, a maid, probably a manservant of some kind. He also might have had a wife and some children. But at the moment the kitchen looked dark and deserted.

  He tried the door and found it locked, but with a little pressure from his shoulder it gave and he was in.

  Once inside, he drew his gun and moved to the doorway. It led to a dining room, also dark and empty. He had chosen to hit the house at two A.M., feeling that any family would be asleep.

  He moved across the dining room to the entry hall, and noticed that there was a light burning on the first floor of the house, at the end of a hall.

  He looked upstairs, at the darkness there. Upstairs, family members might have been asleep in their beds, including the man he was looking for. But he decided to check the light out first.

  As quietly as he could he moved across the hardwood floor to the hallway, toward the room with the light. It was probably the rancher’s office. If that was the case, then his search was over.

  He stepped into the doorway, pointing his gun into the room. The figure behind the desk looked up at him in surprise.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “But I live here,” she said. “You don’t.”

  “Good point.”

  He looked back up the hallway, then stepped into the room, holding his gun down at his side.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Angie,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  “Lancaster. How old are you, Angie?”

  “I’m fourteen, so don’t go thinkin’ I’m just a kid.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Lancaster said.

  “Are you here to steal?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doin’ in my house?”

  “I’m looking for a man named Roger Simon. Do you know him?”

  “Of course,” she said. “He’s my father. He’s upstairs asleep.”

  “With your mother?”

  “No,” she said. “My mother’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. How did it happen?”

  “A man killed her,” she said.

  “When did that happen?”

  “Last year. Are you here to hurt my dad?”

  “No, Angie,” he said. “I’m here to talk to him. Why don’t you go up and tell him I’m here?”

  “He’ll be mad that I was in his office.”

  “Honey,” Lancaster said, “I guarantee you he won’t be mad.”
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br />   Sixty-three

  Lancaster was sitting behind the desk in the room when Roger Simon appeared in the doorway. He was a tall, handsome man with steel gray hair and a strong jaw. The position of his hands revealed something to Lancaster.

  “If you got a gun stuck in your belt behind you, Simon, I wouldn’t go for it.” Lancaster touched his own gun, which was on the desk.

  Simon’s hands twitched, as if he was surprised at Lancaster’s words.

  “Where’s your daughter?” Lancaster asked.

  “She’s upstairs,” Simon said. “You leave her alone.”

  Lancaster had no intention of hurting the girl, but he said, “That’ll be up to you. Take the gun out and drop it in the hall.”

  Simon hesitated, then reached behind him, produced the gun, and dropped it on the floor outside the room.

  “Now come on in and sit down,” Lancaster said. “We need to talk.”

  “You’re not here to kill me?” There was no fear in the man’s voice, just curiosity.

  “Again,” Lancaster said, “that’ll be up to you.”

  Simon came forward and sat down.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “I want to know why you hired three men to attack me and leave me to die in the desert?”

  “You don’t know?” Simon asked.

  “I have no idea,” Lancaster said. “I don’t even know you. Never heard your name until Sweet told me.”

  “Sweet? Did you kill him?”

  “I traded him his life for your name.”

  Simon firmed his jaw.

  “The other two men who were with him are dead.” Lancaster didn’t bother to point out he hadn’t killed them himself.

  “Well?” Lancaster asked.

  “Well what?”

  “If you want to save your life, start talking,” Lancaster said. “Why did you pay three men to kill me?”

  “You’re saying you really don’t know?”

  “I’m saying I have no idea!”

  “My wife was killed last year, in the Mojave Desert,” Simon said. “She was on a stagecoach with several other people when the coach was robbed. The horses were driven off, and the passengers were left on foot. My wife was not a well woman, and she did not survive the trek through the desert.” His eyes filled with tears. “She died out there.”

  “What the hell has that got to do with me?”

  “I paid a lot of money to find out who the leader of that gang was,” Simon said.

  “And you came up with my name?”

  “Like I said,” Simon offered, “I paid a lot of money for the information.”

  “So because you paid a lot you believed it?” Lancaster asked. “Did you bother to check it out?”

  “I investigated your background,” Simon said. “You were a gun for hire for a long time.”

  “So that makes me a stage robber?” Lancaster asked. “Simon, I think maybe you wanted information so bad you were an easy target for some dangerous lies.”

  Simon stared at Lancaster, but the expression on his face said he wasn’t so confident anymore that he’d paid for the correct information.

  “Y-you can’t prove that you didn’t do it,” the man stammered.

  “Sure I can,” Lancaster said. “You tell me when it happened and I bet I can prove I was elsewhere. But the proof may simply be in the name of the person who sold you the information.”

  Simon swallowed with difficulty.

  “Who was it?” Lancaster asked. “What was his name?”

  Simon started to speak; then he realized Lancaster was probably right. He licked his lips.

  “Let me guess,” Lancaster said. “The man who sold you the information was Sweet.”

  Simon nodded jerkily.

  “Then after you paid him for that, he negotiated a price to take care of me for you.”

  Simon nodded again.

  At that point Angie appeared in the doorway, holding her dad’s gun with both hands and pointing it at Lancaster.

  “Let my dad go!” she said.

  Simon turned and his face paled as he saw his daughter.

  “D-don’t—” he stammered, holding his hand out to Lancaster. “Don’t kill her—”

  “I don’t intend to kill your daughter, Simon,” Lancaster said, “but you better talk to her before she pulls that trigger and ruins her life—and mine.”

  Sixty-four

  Ardmore, Oklahoma, one month later

  As Lancaster rode Crow Bait into Ardmore, he thought that he and the horse were finally together, in body and in mind. His memory had returned completely, his injuries were healed, he had returned everything he’d borrowed to Mal in Laughlin, but in the end he had not been able to give up the horse. He had his own rig—saddle, saddlebags, horse, and holster—and even Crow Bait’s bones weren’t sticking out quite as much as they had been.

  Ardmore was small, hardly more than a stopover between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth. But that was okay, because Lancaster only meant to stop over.

  Since the night Roger Simon had successfully disarmed his teenage daughter, Lancaster had devoted his time to tracking Gerry Beck for Wells Fargo. He’d managed to convince Simon he had nothing to do with his wife’s death. Simon had then tried to hire Lancaster to kill Sweet, but with no success. And Lancaster had tried to convince him not to hire anyone else, either.

  “Men like Sweet usually get what’s coming to them, Mr. Simon,” he’d said.

  He didn’t know if Simon believed him, but it didn’t matter. He was done with the whole deal. His concern became collecting that other four thousand dollars from Wells Fargo.

  He reined in Crow Bait in front of the saloon, dismounted, and tied him off there.

  “Jesus,” an old man said from the boardwalk, “looks like he’s on his last legs.”

  “His legs are just fine,” Lancaster said. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  He had long ago overcome the urge to shoot anybody who criticized the horse. None of them knew what they were talking about, anyway.

  He mounted the boardwalk and entered the saloon. He looked around, noticed a few of the other tables were taken. He collected a beer from the bar and walked to a table near the back of the room.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked.

  Gerry Beck looked up at him, frowning. “Lancaster? What the hell are you doin’ here?”

  “Right now I’m just looking for someplace to sit and drink my beer.”

  “Well, find someplace else to do it.”

  “Naw,” Lancaster said, sitting down, “I’ll do it here.”

  Beck sat back and stared at him.

  “What the hell—” he said.

  “It’s been a while, Gerry.”

  “Yeah,” Beck said, “and if I remember right, you and me were never friends, so get lost.”

  “I can’t,” Lancaster said. “I promised Wells Fargo I’d bring you in.”

  “Bounty hunting now?” Beck asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, what, exactly?”

  “I just sort of found myself in a situation where I had to take the job.”

  “The job of bringin’ me in?”

  Lancaster nodded.

  “Well, it ain’t gonna be easy,” Beck told him. “I hope they paid you enough.”

  “Don’t get paid until the job is done,” Lancaster said.

  “Well, then,” Beck said with a steely grin, “I guess you ain’t gettin’ paid, are you.”

  “Oh, I’ll get paid,” he said, pushing half his beer away. “So, how many men you got in here backing you up, Gerry?”

  “What?”

  “I know your style, Gerry,” Lancaster said. “You don’t go anywhere or do anything without someone to back you up. Let’s see.”

  Lancaster looked around the room. There were five other men there, four sitting at tables, two of them looking back at him.

  “My guess is these two, one to my left, one to my right. But I also
know you don’t pay well, so they won’t be very good.”

  “Good enough to get you before you get me,” Beck said, “or to keep you busy while I get you.”

  “No,” Lancaster said. “I think I’ll have to get you first, and then them. Only once you’re dead, they may not be so anxious to skin their irons, will they?”

  Beck stared at Lancaster, trying to make up his mind. But Lancaster had already made up his.

  “Sorry,” he said, drawing his gun and standing up.

  Beck tried to react, but he was too slow. Lancaster shot him in the chest, then overturned the table and dropped down behind it.

  The other two men stood, drawing their guns, while everyone else in the saloon hit the floor.

  They fired, the bullets taking chunks out of the overturned table.

  Lancaster rolled the table one way; then he rolled the other. Not being the smartest men Beck could have hired, they kept firing at the table. Lancaster fired two well-placed shots and suddenly it was quiet.

  He walked over to where Beck lay dead and said, “Should have hired better help, Gerry.”

  Sixty-five

  Laughlin, Nevada, two months later

  Crow Bait was dying.

  Lancaster could feel it beneath him.

  Whatever energy had been driving the gallant animal since they’d met was waning away.

  Mal came out of the stable and watched as they rode toward him.

  “Now he really is on his last legs, isn’t he?” Mal asked as horse and rider reached him.

  Lancaster dismounted and walked the horse over to Mal. “You can see it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Lancaster rubbed the animal’s neck.

  “Did you get done everything you had to get done?” Mal asked.

  “Almost.”

  He handed the reins to Mal.

  “I wish I was smart enough to study him,” Mal said, patting the animal on his flank, “find out what made him go.”

  “Do what you can for him,” Lancaster said.

  “I’ll keep him alive and comfortable as long as I can,” Mal said. “Well, at least he got you back here, where it started.”

  “What good does that do me?”