Dakota Kill and the Romantics Read online

  “Pardon me, mates,” Talbot said jovially when they closed the gap between them, not letting him pass. “You must not have seen me coming. But now that you have, kindly move your asses.”

  “Smart one, are you?” said the man on Talbot’s left, lifting one bearded cheek with a grin. Talbot detected a faint Scottish accent.

  He turned his head to see the fat businessman come up from behind the uglies. “I told you you’d pay,” he said happily, puffing out his chest, a fat cigar clutched between the small, plump fingers of his right hand. “Apologize.”

  Talbot wrinkled his nose. “What makes you think you can treat people like freight rats, you little mackerel fart!”

  The fat man screwed up his tiny, deep-set eyes. “I will not be humiliated by the likes of you, you common … deckhand!”

  “Insulting deckhands now, are you? Some of my best friends are deckhands.”

  The fat man tipped his head to the brutes he must have recruited from a nearby tavern. They stared glassy-eyed at Talbot, swaying slightly from drink. The stench of alcohol was almost palpable. “Okay, teach him who’s boss around here.”

  “Come on, boys,” Talbot said affably. “You’re too drunk to fight.”

  The big Scot on Talbot’s left pulled back his coat to reveal a wide-bladed skinning knife in a bloodstained leather sheath. “Why don’t you tell this gent you’re sorry now, laddie, so we can get back to our crap game?”

  Talbot sighed and shook his head. “Sorry, I won’t do that.”

  They all stood there silently for several seconds, the fat man and his two brutes staring at Talbot, Talbot staring back. The fat man puffed his cigar and smiled.

  At length, from the corner of his eye, Talbot saw the man on the right pull a knife. He was too drunk to pull it quickly, and the tip caught on the sheath. As the man fumbled with it, Talbot took one step back, turning to his right, and kicked it out of the man’s hand. The man gave a yell. Talbot punched him in the gut so hard he could hear his ribs crack. The man doubled over with a groan, dropped to his knees, and aired his paunch on the cobblestones.

  The other man moved in quickly on Talbot’s left and slammed his fist against Talbot’s ear. Talbot staggered to the right, wincing from the hot pain. He came around just as the man poked a blade at his side. Sensing it coming, Talbot deflected it with his left arm and landed a crushing right to the man’s jaw, feeling the bone come unhinged beneath his knuckles.

  Maintaining his feet, the man straightened. His jaw hung freely in the skin sack of his lower face. Giving an animal wail, he put his head down and charged, bulling his powerful shoulders into Talbot’s ribs. Talbot smelled the fish and smoke odor of the man’s hair as he ground his chin into Talbot’s chest and heaved him over backwards.

  Talbot flew through a stack of crates and landed with a groan. His teeth snapped together and his head bounced on the cobblestones, sending shock waves through his skull and a ringing through his ears. Still howling, the man grabbed two handfuls of Talbot’s hair and smashed his head against the street.

  Before the second smash, Talbot jerked both legs straight up in the air, lifted his knees to the man’s head, and gripped it like a vise. Grinding the man’s ears against his skull, Talbot pulled. The man went slowly back and sideways, yelling curses all the while.

  Talbot staggered to his feet, trying to blink his vision clear. Feeling as though an ice pick had gone through both ears, he regarded the man on the ground, who was gaining his knees. Seeing that the man was going to keep coming, Talbot took a step forward. The man jerked to his feet, but before he gained his balance, Talbot delivered a lights-out uppercut dead center on his chin.

  The man fell back on the cobbles with a grunt and a sigh, out like a light.

  Talbot looked around for the other man. He was kneeling in the shadows, over a puddle of what had been his supper, gazing at Talbot with dark, fearful eyes. “Who the fuck are you, man?” he said breathlessly. Then he turned and disappeared in the dark fog.

  Suddenly Talbot heard feet shuffling on the cobbles behind him. A sharp pain skewered him. He gave a grunt and dropped to his knees, clutching at the wound about halfway up the right center of his back.

  The fat man appeared before him, running away, his right hand holding the bowler on his head. Talbot heard the clatter of the knife as the man threw it down. He could hear the man’s hoarse, frightened breath and the patter of thin-heeled shoes.

  “You little bastard!” Talbot yelled. Then he sank to his hands and knees, clutching his back. He didn’t think the blade had done any real damage—the fat man was obviously no hand with a dagger, thank Christ—but he was bleeding like a stuck pig.

  “You okay, mister?”

  Talbot looked behind him. A dark, slender figure stood in the shadows before one of the two taverns sitting side by side across the street. Faded lantern light fell onto the boardwalks. Muffled music penetrated the quiet night.

  Talbot waited for a carriage to pass, driven by a stiff-looking man in a silk top hat, then walked across the street bent forward at the waist and clamping his fist on the wound to slow the bleeding.

  “Do me a favor?” Talbot said. “I’ve got a ferry to catch in a few minutes, and I need you to stop up this wound in my back.”

  “That was some lickin’ you gave those men, mister!” said the boy, sliding his gaze back and forth between Talbot and the injured man across the street, who was rolling around and cursing with a hand on his back.

  A Negro swamper, the boy couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. He was smoking a cigarette. There was a white apron around his waist and a red knit cap on his head. His gray wool shirt was open above his breastbone. Talbot could smell the musty sweat on him.

  “Would you mind?” Talbot said, stopping before the lad, wincing and breathing heavily.

  The boy turned his head and looked askance at Talbot. “What you give me for it?”

  “How ’bout a half eagle?”

  “Half eagle!”

  “Sure.”

  “You ain’t got no half eagle.”

  Talbot dug inside his left coat pocket and pulled out a five-dollar gold piece. The boy reached for the coin, and Talbot jerked it back.

  “That’s for your apron tied around my back.”

  The boy smiled broadly and wagged his head. “Mister, for a half eagle I’d give ya my shirt and my pants and my long johns, to boot!”

  “The apron will do,” Talbot said. “And make it fast, will you, son?”

  They hurried to the end of the block and stepped into the alley. With the boy’s help, Talbot painfully removed his vest, sweater, and undershirt. All the garments were soaked with blood.

  “Mister, you loaded!” cried the boy, eyeing the money belt wrapped around Talbot’s trim waist.

  “Keep your voice down, will you, son?”

  Removing his apron, the boy said, “You like black girls, mister? My sister’d do you good for only five dollar!”

  “No, thanks. Fold it up tight now.”

  When the kid had folded the apron into a long, thick bandage and had tied it around Talbot’s back, Talbot struggled into the rest of his clothes.

  He appraised his condition and decided the apron had slowed the blood flow. The blood that had soaked his clothes was cold against his back, but he saw it as a small discomfort, considering.

  “You sure you won’t visit my sistah?” the boy said. Gesturing lasciviously, he added, “Biggest melons you ever seen. Sometimes she even lets me—”

  “Much obliged, kid,” Talbot said with a nod. He patted the kid’s bony shoulder. “Now I’ll let you get back to your smoke.”

  The kid followed him slowly out of the alley and up the street. The boy stopped before the tavern and watched the stranger dwindle in the darkness and fog. “Mistah, where you so all-fire headed, anyways?” he called.

  Talbot turned. Walking backward downhill, he said, “Dakota.”

  The boy frowned skeptically. “Dakota? What’s i
n Dakota?”

  Talbot grinned in spite of the pain in his back. “Peace and quiet, kid,” he said. “Peace and quiet.” Then he turned and hurried toward the ferry docks.

  CHAPTER 4

  SHERIFF JEDEDIAH GIBBON rode his gray gelding around a trail bend and past a skeletal cottonwood copse. He was nearing the scraggly little village of Canaan, Dakota Territory.

  It was a clear, cold day. Frost limned the trees, the sky was cobalt blue, and the bright sun felt like sharp sand in Gibbon’s eyes.

  The sheriff was chilled to the bone and saddle weary. His buffalo coat and the scarf his wife had knitted, which he’d wrapped over his Stetson and tied under his chin, offered as much warmth as a man could ask for.

  But nothing kept the ten-below cold from your bowels on a thirty-mile round-trip ride through snow that often rose to your horse’s pecker. The small bundles of hay Gibbon had tied to his stirrups had kept his feet warm for a few miles, but he hadn’t felt his toes in his boots for over two hours now.

  He’d never been so happy to round the last bend in the freight road and see the two dozen tar-paper shacks and clapboard store fronts of Canaan slide out before him. Noticing the black coal smoke gushing from the brick chimney over the Sundowner Saloon, Gibbon headed that way.

  Halting his horse before the raised boardwalk, he dismounted gently on his frozen feet, giving a tired groan. When he had two boots solidly beneath him, he turned to regard Miller’s Feed Barn across the street. Angus Miller was out in the paddock, forking hay to a string of shaggy Percherons. His black-and-white collie lay close by, showing the horses its teeth.

  Gibbon called to the man and indicated his horse. Miller nodded. Then Gibbon threw his reins over the tie rail, climbed the porch steps with painful deliberation, wincing and using the railing, and entered the saloon.

  “Close the damn door,” someone yelled. “You born in a barn?”

  Gibbon closed the door and peered into the cave-like dark as his eyes adjusted from the bright sun. He worked his nose, sniffing. It never ceased to amaze him how horrible the place always smelled.

  “Where you keepin’ the bear?” he growled. “I can smell him, but I can’t see him.”

  “How ya doin’, Jed?” the proprietor, Monty Fisk, asked.

  Fisk, who doubled as a barber, was shaving a local rancher in the barber chair near the big coal stove that sat, tall as a good-sized man, in the middle of the room. As was customary during cold snaps, everyone in the place had gravitated toward the stove. A fine soot hung in the air.

  Behind the stove, several rough-looking, winter-weary cowboys sat around a table playing high-five. Before it, several businessmen and ranchers had gathered to gas with the boys. A coffeepot, tin cups, and several whiskey glasses sat before them.

  “Been warmer,” Gibbon said. “Earl, if you give me your spot there by the stove, I won’t tell your wife about the fourteen-year-old soiled dove you’ve been diddling over in Wild Rose.”

  Earl jerked his gaze at Gibbon outraged. “Who told you that!”

  “Oh, hell, Earl—everyone knows but Stella, and she’s bound to find out sooner or later.”

  “And when she does…” remarked one of the cowboys beyond the stove, whistling.

  As laughter erupted around the saloon, Earl Watson angrily grabbed his glass and headed for a vacant chair away from the stove. Gibbon eased into his place, removed his gloves, and began pulling off his boots.

  When he was working on the second high-topped Wellington, Fisk said, “Trouble out to the Rinski place, eh, Jed?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “What kind of trouble?” the man in the barber’s chair wanted to know. His name was Verlyn Thornberg, and he owned the Circle T ranch south of town. It was the largest spread in the county.

  Gibbon’s second boot came off suddenly, nearly knocking him from his chair. He dropped the boot and went to work on his socks.

  “You don’t really want to know, Verlyn. It’ll just irritate your kidney infection.”

  “If it’s rustlers, I have a right to know, and so do the other ranchers in the basin.”

  “It ain’t rustlers.”

  “What, then?”

  Gibbon dropped his socks over his boots and stuck both feet out to the warmth pulsing from the red-hot stove. The feet were white as porcelain, the hard, shell-like nails a sickly yellow-blue, but Gibbon thought he was starting to get some feeling back. “Ay-yi-yi, that feels good.… Give me a whiskey sling, will you, Monty?”

  “Comin’ right up, Jed.”

  “What’s the problem out at Rinski’s?” Thornberg persisted.

  He was a thin man with a narrow, gloomy face. His hair was reddish brown, like his skin, and appeared equally faded by the wind and sun. The grim line of his mouth showed under his thin yellow mustache.

  Gibbon had never liked Thornberg. Back during the Old Trouble, as everyone called it, and against Gibbon’s direct orders, Thornberg had tried to organize the small ranchers against the big outfit trying to take over the Canaan Bench. The last thing Gibbon had wanted was an all-out land war. Wagging his nose at the sheriff, Thornberg went about his plans, and there hadn’t been anything Gibbon could do about it. The Double X outfit was attacking the small ranchers and stealing their beef, after all. If Gibbon had charged Thornberg with anything, he would have been run out of town on a long, greased pole.

  Thornberg looked at the sheriff now with dark expectancy. The left half of his face was still lathered with shave cream; Fisk had stopped to fix Gibbon’s drink.

  Everyone was looking at Gibbon. He waited until the toddy was in his hand. He sipped it, said over the steam rising from the surface of the deliciously warming brew, “Someone killed Rinski’s hired man.”

  “Oh, that’s all,” chuffed one of the cowboys behind the stove, going back to his high-five.

  “That sombitch was bound to get it from someone sooner or later,” said the cowboy sitting next to him.

  “No doubt,” Gibbon said, sipping the toddy. He grew thoughtful and stared at the stove.

  “That it?” Thornberg said. “Did Jack Thom just get caught hornswogglin’ the wrong rough, or do we have a problem?”

  Fisk pulled his razor back from Thornberg’s throat and said, “Hold still now, Verlyn, or I’m liable to carve out your Adam’s apple.”

  Gibbon looked at Thornberg and sighed. He knew there was no point in trying to keep it a secret. It would be all over the country in a few days. “Thom was screwin’ his boss’s daughter when he bought it from two masked men with scatterguns.”

  “Masked gunmen?” Thornberg said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Double X men.”

  “We don’t know that,” Gibbon warned.

  “No, we don’t,” Thornberg retorted. “But who else around here has sent out masked riders in the past five years?” To the barber, he said, “Finish me up now, Monty, I gotta go,” and to the men behind the stove: “Lou, Grady—get your horses.”

  “Where you goin’?” Gibbon said.

  “Home to count my cattle,” Thornberg said. “And I’m gonna send out some boys to see if I got any men left in my line shacks—alive, that is!”

  Gibbon shook his head and regarded the men with gravity. “I stopped at several places on my way back, and no one had lost any men or cattle. No fences had been cut, and nothin’s been burned. There’s no reason to believe it was Magnusson’s men who killed Jack Thom. So just simmer yourself down now, Verlyn!”

  “That’s what you said last summer when old Lincoln Fairchild was found dead in his cabin, and when that Pittsburgh schoolteacher and his family were found butchered on their farm over by Badger Lake!”

  “Those were highwaymen,” Gibbon said. “They were robbed.”

  “Ah, horseshit! That was King Magnusson sendin’ us a message: Get out or get greased!”

  “Now hold your horses, Thornberg!”

  Thornberg swept the barber’s smock away and bounded out of the ch
air and over to Gibbon’s table in two fluid swings of his long legs. He planted his fists on the table. His eyes were so wide that Gibbon could see nearly as much white as iris.

  “Listen, you old fossil. The message might have been too subtle for you, but it wasn’t too subtle for me. When they get goin’ again like they got goin’ five years ago, there’s going to be hell to pay. And you know who they’re gonna hit hardest as well as I do. They’re gonna hit me. And me and my boys are the only one’s with guts enough to do anything about it. So just sit there and enjoy your booze. You just sit there all winter long and warm your big feet and drink yourself into a good warm haze—just like you did last time we had trouble. But me, I’m gonna stop trouble in its tracks … settle this thing the way it should’ve been settled five years ago.”

  Gibbon coolly watched the man push himself up from the table, take his ten-gallon Stetson from one of his riders, don it, and struggle into his mackinaw. The three men walked out into the bright sunlight, letting in a frigid draft, and slammed the door behind them.

  Gibbon stared into his drink.

  Monty Fisk quietly broke the silence. “None of us believes any of that horseshit, Jed.”

  Gibbon looked at him, hating the patronizing air with which the barber regarded him. The two remaining cowboys behind the stove just stared at their cards. He didn’t want to look at the businessmen sitting around him. He knew they wore the same looks as Fisk.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, will ya, Monty!” Gibbon barked suddenly. “What does a man have to do to get a drink around here?”

  * * *

  Gibbon sat barefoot before the fire, in his bulky buffalo coat, and sipped two more toddies. The warmth of the stove conjured summer afternoons when he was a boy, fishing and napping along the creek behind the barn, the July sun beating down, branding his eyelids. Not a care in the world.

  Back then, only bluegills sucking the corn on his hook brought him back from his dreaming. Now it was Monty Fisk calling from across the room.