Hannahan's Lode Page 2

  Sean nodded. ‘Paddy,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve got plenty in that one sack.’

  ‘Goddammit, we’ve got no more than half—!’

  ‘Leave it!’

  Padraig swore softly. ‘Is it the window, then?’

  ‘We’ve no choice. Young Jimmy, shut that door, there’s a lad.’

  The door banged. Jimmy came down the room. He skipped past Sean, took a wide swing with his pistol and cracked it across Forrester’s cheek as the big man came to his feet and made a second lunge for the shovel. The mine owner went down like a log, a chair splintering under his weight. From his dark hair a worm of blood trickled into the dust.

  Padraig swung the heavy sack onto the table, leaned over to slip the catch and push against the window – and shook his head.

  ‘Damn things’re jammed tight.’

  Sean stepped over Forrester’s inert body and grabbed the shovel. He lifted it, drew it back to rest on his shoulder – and paused.

  The three Geoghegan Brothers held their breath. In the thick silence, the unconscious Forrester’s breathing was slow and laboured. And through the thin door they could already hear the murmur of voices as the three men steadily approached; a sudden hard laugh; the stamp and scrape of heavy boots.

  ‘If we can hear them . . .’ Jimmy Geoghegan said, grinning.

  ‘They’ll hear us,’ Sean finished, and with a broad wink he swung the shovel at the window. Glass shattered, tinkling outwards in a glittering shower onto the hard ground. A horse squealed shrilly.

  ‘Out with you, Young Jimmy.’

  But Jimmy Geoghegan had already pouched his pistol and was up on the table. He ducked low, kicked at some lingering shards of glass then put a hand on the frame and leaped through the shattered window in a fearless vault into the void. Padraig craned forward to peer out, then tossed the heavy sack after his young brother and sprang onto the table. He had a cautious boot on the sill and was precariously balanced when they heard the hammer of boots on the steps, a tremendous bang from the end of the room, and the door splintered.

  ‘Go, Padraig!’ Sean said.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw his brother hesitate, then drop from the window. From the shattered door there was a roar of anger. A tall, rawboned man was already inside. His blunt hands held a shotgun. As two men crowded in behind him, he cocked the scatter-gun. Angry black eyes were taking in the scene: the shattered window, glass littering the table, Forrester down and bleeding among the remaining packets of money, Sean Geoghegan caught flat-footed.

  The shotgun blasted.

  Sean Geoghegan dropped flat.

  He moved in the instant before Ed Dyson pulled the trigger. Hot lead hissed through the space where he had been standing, peppered the end wall. He heard Dyson roar, ‘Round the side, there’s others getting away,’ then Sean ducked under the table. Leg muscles creaking, he came up with it on his shoulders. He grunted, heaved it towards Dyson, heard the second barrel blast and the lead hit the table-top like a handful of gravel hurled by a giant fist. Then he had spun away, and was through the window in a flat dive.

  It was like swooping off the edge of a cliff. In dazzling sunlight dark shapes flashed before his eyes as he floated weightless. Then he hit the ground hard on a carpet of broken glass, felt the burn of sliced skin, the wetness of blood. Around him, razor-sharp hooves flashed as Jimmy and Padraig fought to untie reins stretched taut by the panicked horses. Amid the chaotic mass of struggling men and horseflesh, Sean rolled, came awkwardly to his feet and flashed a glance back towards the end of the building.

  Already the two miners were down the steps and coming around the corner. Cold steel glittered in the sunlight. Then flame spat. A slug whined.

  Deliberately falling sideways against the building as a second slug whistled close, Sean drew his six-gun and blasted three fast shots. He saw one of the men go down, roaring in pain. Then a horse wheeled close. Another shot cracked above him as Jimmy let loose from the saddle. The second man yelled, and ducked back.

  ‘Move yourself, Sean!’

  Padraig was in the saddle, the heavy gunny-sack dangling from his hand, looking anxiously towards his brother as his horse backed and wheeled. Jimmy had untied Sean’s horse, and hung on to it. Now, still close, he leaned down to hand the reins to his brother. Sean grabbed them, clutched at the horn with the same hand and poked a toe at a stirrup. As he did so, from the shattered window above him the shotgun roared.

  Hot blood splashed Sean’s face as buckshot tore into the horse’s neck. Its forelegs buckled. It went down, snorting, bubbling, and rolled heavily towards him. Desperately, Sean leaped backwards. The heavy body hit his thigh, came down on his foot. As his ankle twisted agonizingly, he pulled himself free, saw Jimmy wheel his mount, snatch at his pistol and blast a wild shot at the window.

  Then the youngster again rode close. He reached down, grasped Sean’s reaching hand and swung his brother up behind him. And, as enraged yells broke out across the yard, and men came bursting from the bunkhouse doors, the three Geoghegan Brothers hammered away from the Forrester Mining Company and sent their horses tearing towards the twisting trail that led to the high, sun-drenched bluff.

  Chapter Three

  Sitting like a fat black toad behind the big desk, Councillor Sidney Tweddle was livid. His serge suit was too tight and his stiff collar was cutting into his neck, the room above Hannahan’s Lode’s newspaper office was small and dusty and sweltering with too many men packed into the twelve-by-twelve space, the hot air pulsed with tension, anger and frustration, and it was time for his usual mid-morning glass of cold beer that Coggins would even now be placing carefully on the polished top of Clancy’s bar.

  Watching the angry leader of the town council, George Johnson decided miserably that what had happened that morning was a mess of good news and bad news. It was trouble for him. It was trouble for Marshal Frank Hills, whose lean frame was deceptively relaxed as his blue eyes drilled coldly into him from across the room. And, hellfire, it sure was a heap of trouble for the Forrester Mining Company. But for Yancey Flint, it was a gift from the Gods. The dark, moustachioed man who for years had aspired to the job of town marshal was perched smugly with one haunch on the corner of the desk and twin, ivory-handled six-guns jutting from his hips and, unless George was badly mistaken, he was about to get a badge pinned on his vest. The deputy’s badge would surely go to his bone-thin, ragged-haired crony, Buck Owen, who wore an inane, gap-toothed grin as he lounged against the wall by the window.

  And that, George concluded, planted him and Distant firmly on the town’s rubbish heap – and it was all his fault.

  ‘I allowed you to give me nothing but the bare bones, Dyson,’ Tweddle said now to the man standing before the desk, ‘but even those point a damning finger at the men appointed to keep the peace and protect our property.’ He turned a watery eye on Hills, ignored George Johnson and, to Dyson, said, ‘Brad Forrester is dead, you say, and the money transported from John Kennedy’s bank all gone – every cent. So, now that we’re all assembled, put some meat on those bones. Go into details.’

  Tall, rawboned Ed Dyson had brought the mining company’s buckboard rattling down Main Street five minutes after Frank Hills had called George down from the hotel room and the two men were talking outside the bank. Dyson had ignored both lawmen, pulled to a skidding halt that raised a cloud of dust in front of the premises of Hannahan’s Lode’s weekly newspaper, The Banner, and pounded up the stairs to the town council’s office. When a breathless Frank Hills arrived hard on his heels, he had been spilling his story to Tweddle. At sight of the steely-eyed lawman, Dyson had clammed up, and Tweddle would allow no further discussion until Yancey Flint and Buck Owen had been summoned.

  ‘It was the Geoghegan Brothers,’ Dyson said, stepping back from the desk and running fingers through his thick dark hair. ‘When Hills and Johnson were stuck here like a couple of fools waiting for a bank raid that never happened, Sean Geoghegan and his brothers rode down from the hills and bust into Forrester’s office at the mine. They murdered him in cold blood.’

  ‘That makes a first,’ Hills said. ‘The Geoghegans are proud of their record: in four robberies spread over a year they’ve not taken a single life.’

  ‘Today makes it five,’ Tweddle said. ‘And now a fine man’s dead.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Hills said.

  ‘He wasn’t fast enough with the money,’ Dyson said, ‘so they knocked him to the floor, shot him twice in the back of the head.’

  Hills shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’ He looked speculatively at Dyson. ‘And where were you? The way I heard, when Forrester was handling payroll cash, it was your job to stand guard.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dyson said, sneering, ‘and the way I heard, we had a marshal and a deputy got paid to keep this part of South Dakota clear of bank robbers and such like.’

  ‘I can assure you,’ Yancey Flint said smugly, ‘the Geoghegan Brothers will be brought to trial, and hanged.’

  ‘You can assure him?’ Hills glared at Flint, then switched his gaze to Councillor Tweddle, sitting back now and absently drumming his fingers on the desk. ‘Since when has Flint had a say in what I do?’

  It was Buck Owen who answered. ‘From the day you proved to every damn one of us that for five years the wrong man has been wearin’ the badge,’ he said, still grinning – and George Johnson exploded.

  ‘Doggone it, Owen, are you suggesting you and Yancey Flint can do better? Is that what this is about? Have you three been conspiring while me and Distant have been hunkered down out there for nigh on three hours—’

  ‘Wasting time,’ Owen said.

  ‘Acting on information!’ George yelled.

  ‘Sean Geoghegan used you.’


  ‘No!’ George roared. ‘I watched them, listened to them, for six days and nights. The bank was the target, they had it planned to the last detail—’

  ‘So why tell you?’ Yancey Flint was off the desk, standing with legs spread and chest puffed out. ‘Didn’t it strike you as odd that three bandits would spill those plans to a stranger?’

  ‘No, because I fed them a story,’ George said. ‘I told them I was an outlaw, heading west to Hole in the Wall. They were impressed, asked me to join them, they—’

  ‘Hah!’ Flint was triumphant. ‘The Geoghegans are a clan, they’d never bring in an outsider; you swallowed that bull, you’re a bigger fool—’

  ‘Enough!’ Sidney Tweddle’s plump hand slammed down on the desk. His face was red, the angry glare directed not at Yancey Flint, but at George Johnson. ‘Flint’s right. You were taken in. We knew something was afoot when the Geoghegans were sighted in the foothills, but I always believed that insinuating yourself into the confidence of three outlaws was at best a bad idea, at worst extremely risky.’

  ‘Less charitable folk,’ Frank Hills said, ‘would call that convenient hindsight,’ and Tweddle’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘I kept my views to myself because I had confidence in the officers elected by the council to keep the peace. The council trusted you. It seems their confidence was misplaced.’

  ‘Which leaves us where?’ said Yancey Flint.

  ‘With but one choice,’ Tweddle said. He looked at Hills and Johnson and said, ‘I’m removing you both from office, with immediate effect. I have no power to appoint new officers but, when my recommendation is heard by the council, the swearing in of Yancey Flint and Buck Owen as marshal and deputy will be a formality.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Hills breathed. ‘You sit here pontificating about recommendations and formalities and misplaced confidence when a payroll’s missing, a man’s dead, and three outlaws are out there laughing—’

  ‘Your badge, Hills.’

  ‘Yancey Flint’s a pompous ass, Buck Owen is—’

  ‘Put your badge on the desk, and get out.’

  As Hills’s jaw muscles bulged and his fists clenched, George Johnson stepped forward. One hand clamped on Hills’s arm. With the other he unpinned his badge and sent it clinking onto the desk. Still holding his partner’s arm, he waited.

  Hills took a breath. He shook off George’s restraining hand, unpinned his own badge, but instead of placing it on the desk he tossed it to Yancey Flint. The big man’s hand came up. Before the glittering badge had spun across the short space between them and slapped into his palm, Frank Hills had stabbed a hand to his holster and made a draw like greased lightning. When Flint caught the badge, he found himself looking into the muzzle of a cocked six-gun.

  George Johnson laughed softly.

  ‘And that,’ Hills said, ‘is what I call an example of misplaced confidence,’ and with a cynical glance at Sidney Tweddle he pouched his six-gun and led George Johnson past Ed Dyson and out of the office.

  It took Frank Hills ten minutes to clear out his desk at the jail. George Johnson didn’t have one, so he crossed the street to Clancy’s and ordered two beers. Sidney Tweddle arrived before Hills, collected the beer Coggins had poured for him, and took it over to a window table. When Hills came in, he joined George at the bar, deliberately turning his back on the fat councillor who had taken away his livelihood.

  ‘With us out, next move is for Yancey Flint to raise a posse,’ George said. ‘Think he’ll do it?’

  ‘I put that question to him when he was trying out his feet on my desk. He told me it was no longer my concern.’

  ‘Meaning he doesn’t know?’

  ‘Flint wants the shiny badge, not the job.’

  ‘In the meantime, Forrester’s dead, and the Geoghegans are on the loose.’

  For a while there was silence. George could imagine Hills’s feelings. The man had been marshal for five years, swiftly cut the level of violence from the tough miners and other rowdy elements in Hannahan’s Lode so that the town was a safe place to live, and by his mere imposing presence had kept the more notorious owlhoots out in the hills where they could do little harm.

  But his brusque manner did not go down well with those councillors like Sidney Tweddle. They quickly discovered that they’d hired a maverick who politely listened to orders, then ignored them and ran the town his way, and it soon became a bizarre contest between one or two officials waiting for him to step so badly out of line that his job was at risk, and a town marshal who was good at his job and admired and trusted by the Lode’s citizens.

  Now this. Acting on George’s information, they’d staked out the bank and spent hours watching the sun come up while, five miles away, the Geoghegan Brothers had brutally shot a man dead and stolen a payroll. It had been George’s idea to get close to the brothers when they’d been seen in the foothills, his gullibility that had ended with Yancey Flint and Buck Owen wearing badges.

  ‘They must have seen me, in town,’ he mused into his beer. ‘Those Geoghegans. Seen me wearing a badge – and I grew me four-days’ whiskers and rolled in the dust, then rode into their camp and like a fool played the rough, tough owlhoot.’

  ‘You finished?’

  ‘Face it, Distant, we’re both finished.’

  Hills shook his head. ‘Who’s the man who knows where the Geoghegans have been hanging out?’

  ‘Well, I do – but by now they’ll have moved on.’

  ‘It’s somewhere to start.’

  ‘So tell Yancey Flint, let him chase shadows.’

  ‘Flint wearing a badge doesn’t stop me doing my job.’

  George sipped his beer, and looked sideways at Hills. His tall, lean partner had turned around and was giving Sid Tweddle the full benefit of his steely gaze. The councillor was fidgeting, and sweating. He drained his glass, slammed it down, and hurriedly waddled out of the saloon.

  ‘He’s flustered,’ Hills said. ‘He spoke of formality, but I wonder if his cronies will go along with his decision to appoint Flint and Owen? And if they do, will they abide by their decision when they realize they’ve roped a couple of lame steers?’

  ‘You want your job back.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ George said. ‘And I can see where this is leading.’

  ‘And why?’

  ‘You never did listen to town councillors; I can’t see you commencing now.’

  ‘That’s one good reason.’ Hills shook his head. ‘We’ll get our badges back, but it’ll take hard work, hard riding. Someone’s making a fool of us, and it’s not just those damn Geoghegans pulling the wool over your innocent peepers. This robbery stinks, and I aim to find out why.’

  Chapter Four

  The thin smoke from the camp-fire they had built in a small circle of stones swirled in the warm breeze, carrying with it into the grey canopy of willows the aroma of frying bacon and beans and fresh-brewed coffee. A horse snorted down by the river, its hooves crunching in the wet gravel as it moved into the shallows. Another moved off into the deeper grass beyond the stand of trees, its coat glossy in the bright sunlight as it lowered its head to graze.

  ‘Three thousand,’ Sean said, looking up. He was sitting cross-legged by the fire, the gunny-sack in his lap.

  ‘About half of what we expected, but not bad for a morning’s work.’

  ‘Work, you call it?’ Sean grinned at Padraig, folded the mouth of the gunny-sack, tossed it onto the saddles, saddle-bags and rifles heaped further back under the trees. ‘Tell that to the farmer out there walking the whole long day behind his plough.’

  ‘Or those with picks and shovels in Forrester’s mine,’ said Jimmy, ‘and them getting no pay at the end of it.’

  ‘Ah, but now you’re making me feel guilty,’ Sean said and, as he put a hand to his heart and a doleful expression crossed his bearded countenance, both his brothers roared with laughter.

  ‘Does this mean we’re through, then,’ Padraig said, choking. ‘That fine plan you devised was all for nothing, and we resign ourselves to repentance, and the priesthood?’

  ‘When you put it in those sombre terms,’ Sean said, ‘it’s amazing how quickly guilt passes – or perhaps it was your reminder of my ingenuity that did the trick. For the first phase went remarkably well, considering and, if I say so myself, the second will surely be a masterstroke.’