Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Read online

  Stunned by this unexpected turn of events, Cole could do nothing but comply. To attempt to draw his gun would be a fatal mistake. The man had the drop on him, and he apparently knew how to use a gun.

  “Now, kick it over to the cell containing the incompetent Edward J. Olson,” Stocker demanded.

  As Olson reached out and took Cole’s pistol from its holster, Stocker tossed him the cell keys from Johnson’s desk.

  “It is quite amusing, Mr. Cole,” Stocker smirked, “that the one piece of the puzzle that you got wrong was believing that the straitlaced Isham Ransdell was the kingpin behind this affair. On one hand, I’m insulted, and on another, I find it a compliment that you didn’t figure it out.”

  “If not Ransdell, then who?” Cole asked. “You?”

  “Guilty as charged,” Stocker confessed. As he laughed, the scars gave his face a macabre appearance.

  “But Gideon Porter clobbered you bad with the butt of his gun,” Cole said grimly.

  “That was to make it look convincing, though Mr. Porter made it a bit too convincing,” Stocker said, his leering grin fading. “While I also benefit from the right of inheritance, your eyes fell upon poor Isham because he was absent that night.”

  “That, and the fact that Olson is his man,” Cole interjected.

  “I also work for Mr. Stocker,” Olson said, stepping from his cell and strapping on Cole’s gunbelt. “Under the table of course.”

  “He really did hire the Porter boys to do the deed,” Stocker added. “You had that part right.”

  “And I’m still owed another five hundred dollars for doing it,” Gideon Porter asserted as Olson unlocked his cell.

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy Goode whined. “You only paid me thirty bucks and you’re gettin’ five hundred?”

  “That’s ’cause I’m worth it, and you’re good for nothing,” Porter growled, roughly cuffing Goode alongside his head as they were released from their cell.

  “Calm down, both of you,” Stocker demanded. “I believe that we all need to go over to the bank and see that everyone gets what’s coming to him. Mr. Cole’s diligence has presented us with an opportunity.”

  “What sort of opportunity?” Olson asked.

  “A terrible thing happened at the bank tonight,” Stocker said with exaggerated mock sadness. “You see, our Mr. Cole here decided that with the banker’s vault wide open to pay the bounty, the rest of the bank’s assets would be easy pickings for a robbery. He took you and me hostage and went to do his dirty work.”

  “I follow you,” Olson said smugly. “And the banker dies in the shootout?”

  “Exactly.” The attorney smiled broadly. “And sadly, his daughter is killed as well. Of course, we . . . I’ll let it be you . . . will save the day by killing the bounty hunter. You will become a hero by avenging your boss’s death.”

  “I like it,” Olson said, and smiled.

  Chapter 35

  “HOW COULD YOU, FATHER?” HANNAH RANSDELL SOBBED.

  “I told you, I didn’t,” her father insisted firmly. “If Mr. Olson did as you have said, he had to be acting alone.”

  “Why?” Hannah demanded. “Why did he act alone? Why did he act at all? What did he have to gain? It was you who benefitted from . . .”

  Hannah’s tirade was interrupted by the front door of the bank swinging wide.

  “You should remember to lock your door at night,” Virgil Stocker said as he entered the room with four other men.

  Hannah stared in astonishment. Bladen Cole had been disarmed, and Edward J. Olson was pointing the bounty hunter’s gun around the room.

  “What’s going on?” Hannah demanded, looking at Cole.

  “They will want you to believe that this is going to be a bank holdup,” Cole said. “But it’s really a continuation of what started at the Blaine house . . .”

  “Shut up!” Olson demanded angrily.

  “Actually, I’m sad to say that he’s right,” Stocker said, looking at Ransdell.

  “Virgil, can you please tell me what is going on here?” Isham Ransdell said. “This cannot be happening . . . This is madness.”

  “Mr. Cole here has developed a fantastic theory, which is very nearly spot-on,” Stocker said, pacing the floor dramatically. The tall attorney, with years of courtroom experience, was skilled at the art of dominating a room with his presence. “He has deduced that the four of us owned land with the right of inheritance flowing to surviving partners . . . and that the purpose of the unfortunate shootings was to get that inheritance flowing to you.”

  “You can’t be saying . . .” Ransdell sputtered.

  “I’m afraid so,” Stocker interrupted, feigning sadness. “The three of you . . . Blaine, Phillips, and yourself . . . were supposed to die that night. Because I was injured, and you were not there . . . and finally because your man Olson served as my intermediary with the Porter boys, Mr. Cole deduced that the guilt lay with you, not me, between the two of us who survived.”

  “I can’t believe this,” the banker said angrily. “Are you now intending to kill me?”

  “Unfortunately, I must admit that tonight, your time has come,” Stocker said, dramatically waving his hand. As a lawyer, he loved to pontificate with a theatrical flourish. “I had intended for your death to occur earlier this evening at the Gallatin House, in front of a room full of witnesses, but alas, poor Widow Blaine sucked down the oysters which were poisoned for you.”

  “You killed her too?” Ransdell said in disbelief.

  “If it is any consolation, neither she nor Mrs. Phillips were supposed to die as part of this plan,” Stocker said with a shrug. “Things just got a little out of hand.”

  “You weren’t supposed to die either, missy,” Olson said, smiling at Hannah.

  “What are you going to do with us?” she demanded.

  “As Mr. Cole has said, there is going to be a stickup tonight,” Olson explained. “He has decided to take the opportunity of the bank vault being opened to pay his bounty . . . to well, empty that vault of cash, and disappear into the darkness.”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Cole will murder the banker and his daughter in the process,” Stocker interjected. “But, fortunately, the quick-thinking Mr. Olson will save the day . . . or the night, if you will . . . by killing this bounty hunter–turned–bank robber.”

  “What happens to us?” Jimmy Goode asked.

  “Shot in the cross-fire, of course,” Stocker said with a dismissive wave of his thespian hand.

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll be a sitting duck,” Goode shouted, bolting for the door.

  “Stop!” Olson demanded, impulsively firing a shot into the darkness through the open door.

  Even as he was feeling the buck of the .45 in his hand, Olson felt the body slam of Bladen Cole, jumping him from behind. The bounty hunter picked the moment of his distraction to send him crashing to the floor.

  Virgil Stocker, meanwhile, took this same moment of distraction to do what he had come to do. Taking out his own gun, he aimed not at the bounty hunter, but at his former partner.

  The wiry man with a narrow string tie and white sideburns looked back at the man with the scarred face, with whom he had dined as a friend that very evening.

  Through Isham Ransdell’s mind had run the humiliation of having lost the trust and respect of his only child, and now he was about to lose his life to an erstwhile friend who now eyed him over the top of a Smith & Wesson Model 3 with a businesslike “no hard feelings” expression on his face.

  As Isham Ransdell stared into that scarred face, Virgil Stocker’s head suddenly jerked sideways with a violent twist.

  Isham looked then at his daughter and at the derringer in her hand.

  * * *

  BLADEN COLE’S GUN SLIPPED FROM OLSON’S GRIP AS HE fell to the floo
r. It bounced and cartwheeled across the polished surface, with both Cole and Gideon Porter scrambling after it.

  Its trajectory had sent it flying toward Porter, practically as though fate wished to hand it to him.

  He grabbed it, pulling it away from Cole’s grasp by a mere split second.

  Porter raised the gun and was working his forefinger into the trigger guard, when a sudden blast sent him toppling backward.

  Bladen Cole looked up at Hannah Ransdell and at the derringer in her hand.

  Epilogue

  NOBODY, NOT EVEN JIMMY GOODE HIMSELF, KNEW WHY he had chosen to run to find the acting sheriff at the undertaker’s office instead of hightailing it to parts unknown.

  Some said it was because he was the witless oaf who had always been called “good-for-nothing Jimmy Goode” and wouldn’t have known where to find parts unknown.

  Some said that it was because he was tired of living in the turbulent shadow of Gideon Porter and would do anything to get that terrible monster off his back.

  Still others theorized that he was so exhausted, so spent, and so wasted by the experience of the previous weeks that he just could not go on.

  Marcus Johnson, meanwhile, had heard the shots before Jimmy Goode found him, and had arrived at the Gallatin City Bank and Trust in time to hear the dying admissions of Virgil Stocker. The attorney had told the whole story as his onetime friend, Isham Ransdell, knelt over him, staring in disbelief. He told it in the form of an apology, and there were tears in his eyes when he took his last breath.

  Those who were there interpreted his words as expressing not an apology for his terrible scheme, but only his sorrow that it had failed.

  The only thing in Gideon Porter’s eyes when he took his last breath was the reflection of an angry woman with an over-and-under Remington in her gloved hand.

  Nobody shed a tear when the Porter boys were buried in a single unmarked grave. Their mother having long since died of a broken heart, there was not a soul in Gallatin City who would ever miss them.

  Edward J. Olson was tried and convicted in the space of two days and was taken to the county seat to await the hangman.

  Jimmy Goode got twenty years for his part in the whole affair. He might have gotten the noose, such was the mood of the jury pool in Gallatin City, but he did not.

  Some say that his neck was saved by folks feeling pity for his limp and useless hand. Some say that it was because of his having gone for the sheriff that night.

  Still others insist that it was because he was the witless oaf who had always been called “good-for-nothing” Jimmy Goode, and therefore, nobody ever took him seriously.

  * * *

  HANNAH RANSDELL WALKED DOWN MAIN STREET, BOUND for the post office.

  The snow had piled up considerably over the past few weeks, and she had to maneuver through the narrow paths that had been shoveled.

  During those weeks, she had also been maneuvering through the narrow path of her relationship with her father. Saving his life had gone a long way toward rebuilding the relationship they once had, but only time would heal all the wounds inflicted by the penetrating distrust she had expressed that terrible night, if indeed they ever healed.

  For Isham Ransdell, the memory of having a man considered to be a friend betray him so horrifically was a nightmare. Yet this nightmare was a mere trifle when compared to his having seen his own daughter, his little girl, say and—worse still—believe those things about him.

  It was enough to make him yearn to have been one of those cold bodies on the floor of the parlor at the Blaine home on that other terrible night.

  With the railroad coming, and him the sole surviving partner, he would sooner rather than later be a very, very rich man, but he would have gladly traded it all for a chance to sit down just once more with John Blaine and Dawson Phillips, or to have his relationship with his daughter back.

  Stepping through the snow, Hannah passed the Gallatin House and the Gallatin City General Mercantile, the place that was still referred to as Mr. Blaine’s store. She had been back to the Mercantile, long since stripped of the funereal black bunting, but she had not had an occasion to set foot in the Gallatin House since she had come back from her sojourn to Sixteen Mile Creek. She passed the building that once had held Virgil Stocker’s second-story law office. Workers were carrying furniture out to load it on a wagon. She wondered who would be moving in.

  She passed the intersection of Main Street and Cottonwood where she had parted company with Bladen Cole for the last time.

  He had lingered in Gallatin City for a few days after collecting his reward money. They had spent some time together, and these were hours in which her heart had soared. She had finally indulged her secret desire to touch his black whiskers, and her secret passion to taste his lips. Even now, her mind returned often and happily to the memories of that time.

  But they had parted. It was in his nature to be on the move, not staying long in any one place.

  For a brief and fiery moment, born out of feelings kindled on that night on the hilltop near the mouth of Sixteen Mile Creek, she had imagined that same wanderlust to be in her nature as well. She had made up her mind that when Bladen Cole moved on, when he rode out toward far horizons on the roan, she and Hestia would be at their side.

  She had decided that she would not ask, but that she would simply tell him: “Mr. Cole, you may ride anywhere you like, but you will not ride alone.” In her replaying of this in her daydreams, he had replied with many diverse comments, but he had never said no.

  If this fire for the vagabond life had been in her nature, as indeed it may have been, it was extinguished by her father’s tears, when she finally took back all that she had said to him that night, and when he had tearfully taken her in his arms.

  She had never, ever before, or ever since, seen him cry.

  No, her place was not beyond the far horizon.

  As she thought about it later, she realized that the bounty hunter also recognized this, and with more sadness than he would admit to. They were each bound by their nature. Just as he knew that he must go on, he knew that she was bound to stay. She was still part of the world she had known before all of this happened.

  When he said good-bye, she did not tell him that he would not ride alone. Nor did she ask where he was headed.

  That night, her pillow grew soggy from her tears, a wetness she longed to be transformed into the sweat of his passion mixed with her own, but she awoke knowing that she was where she needed to be.

  Hannah reached the post office, chatting briefly with a few of the regulars as she waited in the short line. As menial as it was, there was something comforting about the post office routine. It was so unlike the uncertainty and wild exhilaration of life on the trail.

  When she returned to the bank, her father was in a good mood, which was gradually becoming more and more common as time went on. Time was, indeed, beginning its healing process.

  As she was taking off her coat, he made an offhand comment about her being his “right-hand girl.”

  She froze for a moment with a lump in her throat. He had no idea of how she perceived the irony of this characterization, but that did not matter. It mattered only that he had articulated it, and this made her happier than almost anything he might have said at that moment.

  Wounds would heal. She now knew this.

  Hannah went to her desk and was sorting the mail when out dropped a letter hand-addressed to “Miss Hannah Ransdell, in care of the Gallatin City Bank and Trust Company.”

  It was postmarked Denver, and the return address was headed with the name, “Mr. Dawson Phillips, Jr.”

 

 

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