Montana Revenge Read online

“When was that?”

  “Oh, in the last few days. I think they all were jealous about how he could dance and spin them gals around. It was a sight.”

  Herschel nodded. “I’ll go talk to Sam in the morning. Anything else?”

  “No. I wanted you to know what I found out.”

  “Cove, keep your ears open. Someone is going to slip up.”

  “That’s why I came by.”

  He rose and shook the man’s hand, realizing that what looked like blood on the wall was the sun’s sinking glare on the plaster.

  An out-of-breath youth stuck his freckled face around the door facing. “Sheriff, come quick. They’ve got a big fight going on at the Yellowstone.”

  “I better go see about it,” he said to Cove, then told the fresh-faced kid in the doorway, “Tell them I’m on my way.”

  “Need any help?” Cove asked.

  “No, Phil and I can handle it.”

  “I’m breaking out the Greeners,” Phil said. “I was checking on the jail.”

  “Everything all right over there?” Herschel put on his suit coat.

  “Yeah, Wally’s here now.”

  Herschel took the shotgun his deputy handed him and inserted the two brass shells in the chambers.

  Cove nodded in approval. “Hope there ain’t no bad trouble.”

  “I hope there isn’t, either. Go ahead, Phil,” Herschel said, and nodded to the rancher as he left. “We have to run. Thanks for everything.”

  “Dave Allen working?” Herschel asked Phil about the town marshal as they were going down the stairs.

  “Supposed to be.”

  The Yellowstone sat a block west on the next corner. When they were halfway there, two shots rang out. Herschel winced at the sound, and then grimly nodded in pained disgust at his deputy, running beside him.

  “Now they’re shooting each other,” Phil said, sounding upset.

  “You get behind me,” Herschel ordered as they hurried. “Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was the first time under fire for his man. If he had any time to think about it, the twenty-two-year-old would have lots of misgivings about this whole thing. As curious folks came running from all directions, Herschel became concerned about public safety.

  “Tell them all to clear the streets,” he told his man. He stopped and held the shotgun barrel-up. Acrid gun smoke boiled over the swinging doors of the saloon and two coughing cowboys came staggering out, bent over.

  He caught the close one by the collar and jerked him upright. “What’s going on in there?”

  “Helluva fight and then Kirk drew his gun.”

  “Berry Kirk?”

  When the man nodded, Herschel let go of him and took the double-barrel in both hands. His eyes narrowed against the smarting of the spent gun smoke as he faced the green batwing doors. “This is the sheriff. Hands high and don’t try anything unless you want to die.”

  He pushed open the doors and knew he’d be silhouetted against the last light of sundown and make a perfect target. The decision would be with those inside. The percussion of a shot always doused the lights in a room, so the saloon’s interior was in darkness save for the light coming over the half curtains in the windows.

  “Everyone file by the bar and outside,” he ordered, stepping aside from the doorway and using the shotgun for a pointer.

  “Is anyone who’s shot still alive?” he asked, trying to see in the hazy room.

  “Yes, one fella,” someone said.

  He pointed the gun barrel at the man who’d said it. “You go get Doc.” Then he spoke to Phil. “Line them up outside.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who shot him?” Herschel asked.

  No answer.

  “Who shot him?”

  “I did and it was self-defense.” Berry Kirk stepped out of the line of men. “The sumbitch had a knife.”

  “Plenty of time for that. Give me your gun.”

  Kirk stepped over, his hands raised, and Herschel took his pistol.

  “Go on with the others, but stay around.”

  “I told you—”

  “Get out of here with the rest and do what I say.” Herschel frowned after the surly youth.

  “Do I got to go, too, Mr. Sheriff?” one of the doves asked, swiveling her hips and ample midsection as she filed past the bar.

  “I said everyone.”

  “Well, darling, if you want me—I’m coming.” Her words drew some laughs from the drunker men.

  He caught the glare of Berry Kirk as he went through the doors hands held high.

  “Mike,” he said to the bartender, who was relighting lamps. “Doc’s coming. He’ll need more light.”

  “I’ll let down the chandelier and light it first.”

  “Good.” Herschel went over and knelt beside the unconscious young man. His wounds looked serious, both in the chest. At last, he recognized the ashen-faced victim. Tucker Ralston, Bert’s oldest son.

  “Bad?” Doc asked, setting down his black bag and putting on his stethoscope as he joined him.

  “Looks bad to me. I’ll be outside if you need something.”

  On the boardwalk, Herschel looked over the downcast men lined up in a row on the main street outside the Yellowstone.

  “Phil, collect all their guns and knives.” He glanced at Berry Kirk standing in line with the rest. For a brief moment, the two locked gazes, then Kirk looked away. That boy was trouble with a capital T.

  “He had it coming,” Kirk said. “He had a damn bear-sticker out.”

  “A judge will decide that.” Herschel raised his voice. “Now you’re all going to march down to the justice’s office and pay a fine for disturbing the peace.”

  “But I never—” someone protested.

  “Mike told me everyone in the place was fighting. You can tell Judge Watson your story.”

  “I have their weapons,” Phil said, standing over the stack of revolvers and knives on the boardwalk.

  “Get a couple gunnysacks. Weapons can be reclaimed at my office for one dollar apiece. Did you all hear me?”

  “What about mine?” Kirk asked.

  “Right now it’s evidence.” He indicated he should move on with the others. Dave Allen had shown up, and was taking over the march of the dozen or so prisoners to the judge’s office.

  “Darling, what about me?” the dove asked, walking up with her hands on her hips.

  “What’s your name?” He cradled the shotgun in his arms and considered her.

  “Sweet Rose.”

  “You see the shooting?”

  “No, I had my back turned.”

  “I’d say you were watching it all to keep from getting hit.”

  A grin on her painted lips, she nodded. “Naw, I was pulling a fella up off the floor.”

  “Handy. When you get any memory back, send me word.” He dismissed her.

  “Well, darling, I sure will.” She sashayed back inside the Yellowstone.

  He looked at the dimming sky for help before he spoke to Phil about the stacks of guns and knives. “Get someone with a cart to haul them up to the office. Then go help Dave. I’m going to see what Doc knows about the victim’s condition.”

  “I’ll get it done.”

  “We also need a statement from everyone about the shooting—”

  The somber face of Doc Hunter in the doorway cut him off. “Tucker’s dead, Herschel.”

  “What’s next? Thanks, Doc,” Herschel closed his eyes to shut out reality, and then swiveled on his heel. “Phil, send someone to get the coroner. I’ll need to look over the death scene.”

  “What else?”

  “Tell all those rannies to stay at the judge’s. I’ve got questions to ask them.”

  “I can get a wheelbarrow, Sheriff.”

  “There’s my man,” Herschel said, seeing his errand boy, Donnie, arrive on the scene. “Borrow a wheelbarrow, Donnie. Then take these guns to my office. They’re probably loaded,
so be careful.”

  “Yes, sir.” And he was off running for the wheelbarrow.

  Herschel went back inside the Yellowstone. “Mike, what happened in here?”

  TWELVE

  ALL I know is they had some kind of argument going on when I spotted the trouble.” Mike, the Irish bartender, put down the glass he’d finished polishing.

  “Who was arguing?” Herschel asked, looking at the stein of draft beer that Mike had set up for him. Foam from the head spilled down the side of the glass as he waited for the Irishman’s answer.

  “Kirk and that Ralston boy.”

  “What about?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I was drawing a beer when I first heard them and had my back to ’em. It was mostly cuss words. Then the whole place boiled into a fight. A couple of Bar 9 boys were in here. I guess the others were backing Ralston.”

  “Billy Hanks mentioned?”

  Mike nodded with a sad look in his blue eyes. “That’s all them cowboys talk about in here.”

  Herschel took a deep draught of the beer and set it down. He’d already looked under the blanket at the corpse—no need to look at him again. With the back of his hand, he wiped his mouth. The hunting knife had been near Ralston’s hand on the floor. Herschel wrapped it in a kerchief and put it in the side pocket of his suit coat. With Kirk’s revolver in his waistband, he had both weapons from the scene. Nothing else he could do there. “I better get to Judge Watson’s place and help Phil.”

  “Sorry I ain’t any more help, Herschel,” Mike said.

  Deep in his own thoughts, Herschel absently nodded and thanked him. Was this all over Hanks’s death? He pushed out the Yellowstone’s swinging doors into the night, and his boot soles treaded the boardwalk for the block-long walk to Judge Watson’s office. Four storefronts away, he could see in the light coming from inside that several cowboys and the other saloon customers were seated on the porch floor, with their backs to the wall, hugging their knees, waiting for their turns before Judge Watson.

  He nodded to them and went to the open door.

  “Wait your turn,” a sharp voice commanded. The clerk named Dewey never looked up at him until the crowd’s laughter forced him to raise his head. “Oh, Sheriff Baker, sorry.”

  “Where’s Berry Kirk?” Herschel could not see him anywhere.

  “Fined two bucks for disturbing the peace and released,” Dewey said, and looked hard at Herschel for an answer.

  “Should’ve held him.” He said his thoughts out loud as Phil came back from the proceedings in the room.

  “What’s wrong?” the fresh-faced deputy asked.

  “I guess we need to get a warrant and go after Kirk,” Herschel said in a soft voice.

  Phil shook his head. “Oh, I should have known he’d light a shuck.”

  “And I didn’t expect him to get through here that fast. No problem.” With a wave of his hand, Herschel dismissed it.

  As the judge finished sentencing the next cowboy, Herschel spoke up. “Everyone here is a witness and will be called when the hearing is held on Tucker Ralston’s death.”

  “You all hear the sheriff?” Phil asked from beside the front door.

  A grumble from those waiting outside indicated they had heard him.

  Dave Allen came in. “Sorry, I was eating supper.”

  “We all have to eat. Besides, no way anyone could have stopped this deal. They were in it right at the start, I think.”

  “What’s happening here, Sheriff?”

  Herschel turned, and a familiar-looking green-checkered suit was trying to get by him. The Herald’s star reporter, Ennis Stokes, had arrived on the scene.

  “I heard the shots. What happened?” Stokes asked.

  “Someone was shot.”

  Stokes grasped the pencil from behind his ear and began to scribble down notes. “Who was killed?”

  “A body to be identified by the coroner.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “Parties yet unknown.” He wasn’t giving Stokes one ounce of help or information. Besides, he’d twist it to suit himself when he wrote the story—good thing Art wasn’t there.

  “You aren’t much help. Any of you fellas see anything?” No reply. Stokes stuck his head out the door for those still seated on the porch. “Any of you see anything?”

  “Yeah,” one smart aleck said. “We all seen the white elephant come through.” His words drew more laughter from those waiting.

  Dewey called for the next plaintiff. With Kirk already gone, Herschel wondered what he should do next. There would probably be a coroner’s hearing held over the matter and then a decision it was self-defense on Berry Kirk’s part. Still, he had to treat it like a crime. Bert Ralston might not think it was self-defense, either. The whole thing was liable to stir up a hornet’s nest. That was the part he dreaded the most and he saw no way to avoid the eventual collision.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Stokes finally demanded.

  Herschel caught him by the arm and guided him toward the front door, talking through his teeth. “A party was shot in an altercation in the Yellowstone Saloon amidst a large brawl.”

  “Why are all these men here?” Stokes asked the clerk in passing.

  “Disturbing the peace,” Dewey said, his voice ringing with impatience. “Now we’re holding court, so shut up.”

  “I’ll be at the office when you get through here,” Herschel said to his deputy in a subdued tone, and turned the reporter loose.

  Phil nodded.

  A block away, Herschel turned off Main Street and rounded the corner. A shot rang out and tiny splinters flew off the clapboard siding on the apothecary where the bullet struck close to his face. He ducked for cover in the darker shadows. In a crouch, his fist closed on his gun butt, he searched the inky night. Close—where was the shooter? Must have been a rifle. He tried to see back across Main. The shot had to come from the side of Younkin’s Harness and Saddle Repair Shop—he’d never seen the muzzle blast behind his back.

  His measured breath came as fast and loud as his heart’s palpitations. That bullet had been intended to kill him. The shooter no doubt was long gone. Was it over the lynching or something else? No way to know.

  “Herschel? Herschel? Who’s shooting?” Phil was coming on the run, his heels clacking on the wooden boardwalk.

  “I’m fine.” He stepped out to hail Phil down. “He must have been over there.” He motioned across the street.

  “What happened? I heard the shot.”

  “Someone tried to drygulch me a minute ago.”

  “Who?”

  “Damned if I know, but they’d been a better shot, you’d’ve had a new boss.”

  “Oh, hell. Where did he go?”

  “I figure back into the alley and rode out.”

  “What else is going to happen tonight?”

  “Damned if I know.” Herschel struck a match and squatted to look at the ground between the two buildings.

  “See anything?” Phil asked.

  Not finding a thing, except scuff marks, Herschel blew the match out, dropped it, rose, and stepped on it. “No. You can go back to the judge’s. He’s gone.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  With a laugh, he clapped his deputy on the shoulder to reassure him. “I’m fine. And in the morning we’ll try to figure out who shot at me.”

  “Strange night.” Phil shook his head and headed back for Watson’s law office.

  “Yes,” Herschel agreed. A real strange night.

  When he started for the jail, he recognized the familiar hat coming down the shadowy street.

  “What’s happening?” Art asked, catching him and looking around. “Gunshots all over town. Wally said you were putting down a brawl at the Yellowstone.”

  “Judge Watson is fining about a dozen cowboys and hands for disturbing the peace. Tucker Ralston is dead and someone took a shot at me right here.”

  “Glad they missed. Why didn’t you send word?”

 
“I figured Phil and I could handle it.”

  “Where did this shooter go?”

  “Best I can guess, he ran out to his horse behind Younkin’s and left town.”

  “Holy cow, you’re lucky.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same damn thing. Let’s go to the office. Need to sort out a few things. During the big brawl at the Yellowstone, Berry Kirk shot Ralston in self-defense, he says.”

  “What were they fighting over?”

  “Mike thinks it was over Billy Hanks’s hanging.”

  Art shook his head and opened the front door to the courthouse for him. “Guess that’s a burr under his friends’ saddles.”

  “A big sand burr.” Somehow, he had to solve that case, too.

  THIRTEEN

  BILLINGS’S mayor, George McKay, was a big man and stood over six feet tall. He had a full brown mustache, and was an imposing man in his forties. His complexion was rosy red, and his breath roared in and out of his large nose like a circus lion’s.

  “We have much more trouble in this town and the Northern Pacific is going to bypass us. Look at the headlines!” He tossed the latest edition of the Billings Herald on Herschel’s desk.

  “Mr. Mayor, you may have come to the wrong office this morning to complain. Some hands got into a big brawl last night in the Yellowstone. Phil and I stopped it, but unfortunately, not before someone was shot. Now as to the hysterics of Mr. Stokes’s headlines that point to Billings as the next Tombstone, they’re ridiculous.”

  “The railroad could still change its mind. Bad publicity has made them go around lots of places.” McKay was shaking his head in firm disapproval.

  “Tombstone Style Law Enforcement. . . .” Herschel looked at the headline, drew in a deep breath, then pushed himself out of the chair. He went to the window and looked down at the traffic. “Stokes is the man you need to talk to. The Herald management needs to know what they are doing to upset our chances of getting a railroad. Blowing up a barroom brawl into what happened with the Earps, Clantons, and Lawrys down there is like saying that outhouse fire the other night rivaled the Chicago one.”

  McKay frowned and looked hard at him. “We can’t afford to upset the railroad officials.”

  Herschel nodded and turned back. “You need to hire a chief of police and several policemen. Dave Allen can’t be everywhere. He tries hard.”