Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Read online

  “The pleasure is mine, Mr. Cole,” Ransdell said, in the smooth voice of a banker. “May I introduce my daughter, Hannah.”

  “Ma’am,” Cole said respectfully, touching the brim of his hat.

  “Mr. Cole,” she replied with an almost smile.

  Ransdell invited the two men to sit down at a table in the lobby which Cole guessed was normally used for signing financial paperwork. He guessed that financial talk would be taking place there now.

  Hannah, who apparently worked at the bank, sat down at a desk apart from the men, though clearly within earshot of the “men’s business” that was about to be discussed.

  “Mr. Cole, I’m sure that you are aware of the shooting that took place here in Gallatin City two nights past?” Ransdell began.

  “I am.”

  “You may not be aware that the three men who were present at the shooting . . . including two who died in cold blood . . . were business associates of mine . . . partners in some important business ventures.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” Cole nodded politely.

  “I know that you are also aware that Sheriff John Hollin and another man were murdered by the same men who did this . . . and that Deputy Marcus Johnson was injured.”

  “I watched him taken from his horse yesterday,” Cole said, nodding toward the place where the sheriff’s last ride into town had come so dramatically to its end.

  “I know,” Olson interjected. “I saw you there. Thought I recognized you from the papers. We heard about what you did down in Green River.”

  “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Cole,” Ransdell said, smiling.

  “Well . . . that’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending,” Cole said thoughtfully. He knew that they were getting around to the place where the business talk was about to start. “What can I do for you?”

  “There are four men at large who must be brought to justice,” Ransdell said.

  “I know,” Cole agreed, “but from what I heard yesterday, the Gallatin County sheriff from down in Bozeman was being sent for. It would seem to be his job.”

  “Well, there’s a little bit of a problem in that,” Olson responded.

  “Is?”

  “Yeah. The Porter boys are headed up north. They’d be clear into Meagher County by now. That would put them out of Gallatin County jurisdiction.”

  “Why doncha send a wire to the Meagher County sheriff?” Cole said, asking a question that seemed to him an obvious one.

  “Well, that would be up in Diamond City,” Olson said, referring to the boomtown which had grown up in the heart of the Confederate Gulch diggings.

  “So?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Ransdell interjected. “The law hasn’t really taken root in Diamond City. Meagher County isn’t quite as lawless, literally, as Choteau County, but it’s not exactly as refined in its ways as places like Bozeman or Denver.”

  “I understand,” Cole nodded. Nineteenth-century civilization had reached the West, but it had done so in narrow swaths.

  “You sure it was the Porter boys?” Cole asked.

  “Three witnesses recognized them.”

  “There were four . . . Did the witnesses know the other two?”

  “Milton Waller and Jimmy Goode. They are known to ride with the Porters . . . do whatever Gideon Porter tells ’em to do. He has a way of mesmerizing others less long on mental acuity . . . of manipulating them.”

  “Hmmm,” Cole said thoughtfully, in his typical manner, intentionally evoking a sense of thoughtfulness.

  “Soon as the state judge down in Bozeman wires through a warrant, I’d like to employ you to go get the Porter boys and bring them in to face the music,” Ransdell said emphatically, getting down to business.

  “What sort of money are we talking?” Cole asked, also getting down to business.

  “We are prepared to offer you a sum of three thousand dollars,” the banker said.

  To Cole, this was a great deal of money. It was more than most laboring men could expect to earn in a year. However, the sum said a lot about Ransdell, and one of the things that it whispered in Cole’s ear was how important this affair was to the man. The other thing it whispered was that there was more money on the banker’s table.

  “Well,” Cole said reticently. “I had a number a little north of four in mind.”

  “I suppose we could split the difference at thirty-five hundred,” the banker said after a long pause to scratch some numbers on a piece of paper.

  Cole smiled to himself. The man was used to dickering and anxious to cut a deal.

  “Well . . .” Cole drawled thoughtfully. “I did say that I was thinking of a number north of four. There is four of them and one of me.”

  “Okay, I’ll make it four,” Ransdell said. “And I’ll pick up your tab at the hotel, and for your horse last night at the livery stable . . . and stake you to whatever provisions you’ll need for this manhunt.”

  This time, the voice in Cole’s head told him that they had reached the end of the dickering phase and it was time to extend his hand.

  As Ransdell was writing out an agreement for them to sign, the boy arrived from the telegraph office with the warrant from the judge in Bozeman.

  “Well, that makes it official,” Olson observed.

  Ransdell read the paper and handed it Cole.

  “Longest telegram I’ve seen,” he observed.

  “Written by lawyers,” Ransdell said wryly.

  “Hmmm . . .” Cole said, half reading the document out loud. “Hmmm . . . ‘armed and dangerous,’ it says. Would have thought that this goes without saying.”

  “That’s a way of saying they’re wanted ‘dead or alive.’ It’s a way of saying they’re to be brought back by any means necessary, and in any condition necessary for them to be brought back.”

  “Most folks here in Gallatin City would rather see them dead than alive,” Olson interjected.

  Ransdell just nodded his head to confirm the assertion.

  When they had finished signing an agreement and shaking hands a second time, Cole explained that he would be starting out first thing in the morning.

  “Don’t you want to get started right away?” Ransdell asked urgently. “You’ve got your warrant and they’ve already got almost a two-day head start.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Ransdell,” Cole agreed. “And at this point there’s no way that hard riding will ever catch up to them. The only way that they’re gonna get caught is if they can see that there’s nobody coming after them. If they think they got away, they’ll relax. They’ll slow down. They’ll get themselves caught. In the meantime, I’d like to spend what’s left of this day taking a look at where the shooting happened and talking to them who was there.”

  “That sounds reasonable, I suppose,” Ransdell admitted. “I guess you need to know who you’re dealing with . . . Hannah, could you take Mr. Cole over and see if Mrs. Blaine is up to receiving a caller?”

  “Yes, Father,” Hannah said with a nod of agreement.

  Bladen Cole smiled, but Hannah scowled slightly. She found the tall stranger easy on the eye and a bit captivating in a dangerous sort of way, but she didn’t want him to know that such was the case.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THESE PORTER BOYS, MISS Ransdell?” Cole asked as they walked.

  “They’re no good,” she said emphatically. “I knew them in school. A lot of the boys had a bit of the nick to them, but those two were just plain cruel . . . cruel to animals . . . cruel to people. Enoch was the worst. He had a taste for blood . . . torturing and killing cats and dogs . . . in ways I’d rather not describe . . . or recall.”

  “They ever kill any people before?”

  “Not that I know of . . . Of course, I have neve
r made it my place to know all of what the Porter boys were up to.”

  “Why do you suppose they did it this time?”

  “I dunno . . . some kind of grudge, I reckon.” Hannah shrugged. “Gideon used to work for Mr. Blaine but got himself fired.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Like my father said, they’ll do anything Gideon Porter says to do. Milton Waller is dumb as a post . . . quit school in the second grade . . . Jimmy Goode is known all over Gallatin County as ‘good for nothing.’”

  “What do they do for work, these boys?”

  “They cowboy around. There’s a lot of need for extra hands on the ranches at branding time . . . roundup time. Man who’s good with a horse and rope, you don’t care if he’s dumb as a post or that he used to kick puppy dogs around.”

  As they turned the corner onto Elm Street, the wind shifted and Cole caught a whiff of her perfume. It was just a trace, just barely there, not like the dolls in Denver who liked to really slather it on. She was naturally, and almost perfectly, beautiful, but the little threesome of freckles on her nose added a humanizing touch, softening the classical perfection of that beauty. This and the easy way that she smiled—now that she had relaxed and stopped forcing her jaw into a perfunctory scowl—made her quite attractive.

  The Blaine home was guarded by a man with a rifle whom Hannah knew. It was not so much that anyone expected the Porter gang to return to finish her off, rather he was there to give Mrs. Blaine the assurance of security. Hannah instructed Cole to wait outside while she went in to inquire as to whether Mrs. Blaine was up to a visit from the bounty hunter hired to avenge her husband’s death.

  While she went inside, Bladen made conversation with the man with the rifle. Asked about the four perpetrators, he echoed Hannah’s opinion, though his description of Gideon Porter’s evilness, and Enoch’s atrocious way with small domestic animals, was a good deal more graphic.

  Finally, Hannah called from the front door and Bladen climbed the steps. He made a point of removing his hat and wiping his feet, something that had become his second nature growing up in Virginia, where a man was measured by his politeness.

  “I want you to get that Gideon Porter once and for all!” Leticia Blaine exclaimed without the formality of an introduction.

  She was seated in a large, overstuffed chair in a small room opposite the parlor. He figured that she was avoiding the parlor, and understood that she had good reason. Another woman about her age, probably a friend, was hovering nearby. The side of Mrs. Blaine’s face was deeply black-and-blue, and she had a long cut in her lower lip that had been stitched.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cole said.

  “I want that Gideon Porter six feet under.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cole repeated. “He’s the one who done this to you?”

  “Darn tootin’ he is,” the spunky widow confirmed.

  “And shot your husband?”

  “Yes sir,” she affirmed angrily. “He is a madman. John rose to my defense and lost his life for it!”

  “Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, do y’all have any idea why they did this? Why they came to your home to shoot people?”

  “My husband fired that cur six months ago, and he had to have his revenge, of course.”

  “Why do you reckon that he waited so long?”

  “How should I know?”

  “He just came here asking after your husband?”

  “That’s right. I answered that door right there and . . . they barged through . . .”

  “Into the parlor here?” Cole asked, stepping into the other room. The bloodstains on the rich oriental-style carpets, now turned dark and all the more deathly, painted a vivid picture of the place where each victim had stood. In the room beyond, the dinner dishes from that night still had not been cleared.

  “That’s right,” she shouted, remaining in her chair as Cole left the room. “My husband was in the dining room with Virgil Stocker and Dawson Phillips. They all came into the parlor when they heard the commotion. Porter shot John, then his brother murdered Dawson and then Mary . . . it was terrible!”

  On this note, Leticia Blaine dissolved into tearful sobbing, and her friend moved in to comfort her. Bladen Cole thanked her for her time and expressed his sympathies, as he and Hannah Ransdell retreated out the front door.

  “Any chance I could go talk to this man, Virgil Stocker?” Cole asked as he put on his Stetson.

  “I suppose we could do that,” Hannah said. She was kind of interested in the bounty hunter’s “investigating,” and she certainly didn’t mind being seen around town with a handsome stranger. Nor did she mind taking an occasional glance at the whiskers that studded his face. His were a bit on the shorter side for her tastes, but she did have a fondness for a younger man with a beard.

  “You been long in the Territory, Mr. Cole?” she said as they walked.

  “No, ma’am. I passed through a couple years back and was headed back up north to do a little hunting when your father’s friend, Mr. Olson, approached me in the cafe.”

  “Hunting?” Hannah said with a knowing tone. “I’d speculate that in your line of work that has a little bit of a double meaning?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it does,” he nodded. “But in this case, it was mule deer I was after . . . some for trade . . . some to dry for winter.”

  “Heard the stories about you down on the Green River,” she said.

  “Justice required . . . justice done,” he said, phrasing his few words in such a way that he hoped to close out the topic.

  “How did you get into this . . . mmmmm . . . line of work, Mr. Cole?”

  “I sorta fell into it, Miss Ransdell.”

  “How does one . . . ?” Hannah began.

  “When one finds that he’s good with a gun, he can find himself on one side of the law or the other.”

  “And you picked . . .”

  “I don’t mind sleeping with one eye open sometimes,” he interrupted. “I just figured that I couldn’t live with having to sleep with both of them open.”

  * * *

  LETICIA BLAINE’S ANGER WAS A MERE TRIFLE BY COMPARISON to the rage expressed by Virgil Stocker, and the expletives he used were considerably stronger than “cur.”

  Likewise, Stocker’s facial injuries were of an order of magnitude greater than those endured by Mrs. Blaine. She had suffered under the fist of her attacker, while he had been struck by the butt of a gun. Even the jagged cuts that remained unbandaged would leave a permanent reminder of that night in the mirror of Virgil Stocker.

  As to the question of why this happened, Stocker’s opinion coincided with the conventional wisdom. Angry at being fired, Gideon Porter had come for retribution, and things got horribly out of control.

  “And the women . . . the poor women,” Stocker’s wife interjected. She had sat quietly through her husband’s tirade but felt the need to insert her own perspective on that terrible night. “Gideon Porter said that the women were not supposed to be hurt, but . . . poor Mary . . . For a man to strike a woman . . . much less shoot her . . . poor Mary Phillips. To watch her . . . writhing . . . writhing on the carpet . . . that terrible expression . . .”

  “What do you think he meant by saying the women were not supposed to be hurt?” Hannah asked.

  By this time, Mrs. Stocker was sobbing uncontrollably, reliving the horror of the deaths of friends with the survivor’s guilt of knowing that of the six, only she remained unscathed—physically.

  “She’s been through hell,” Virgil Stocker said, rising to his feet and moving toward his guests in a gesture signifying the end of their visit, with Hannah’s query unanswered. “She’s been through enough.”

  “Mr. Cole,” Stocker said from the doorway as Bladen and Hannah crossed the porch. “I understand that the warrant has
language in it that says . . . or at least insinuates . . . ‘dead or alive.’”

  “It does,” Cole nodded.

  “I hope you make sure that none of that bunch ever again breathes the air of Gallatin County.”

  * * *

  “THERE’S ANOTHER THING YOU SHOULD KNOW,” HANNAH said as they walked back in the direction of Main Street.

  “What’s that?”

  “You know how my father said those men were his associates?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, they were all having dinner at the Blaine home . . . the associates and their wives. My father was supposed to have been there, but he had a meeting.”

  “So he nearly . . .”

  “Yes, he nearly wound up in the line of fire. That’s why this is sort of personal. The reward money is coming from him . . . personally.”

  “Guess he and your mother are counting their blessings,” Cole said.

  “Um . . . actually my mother passed away three years back. If he had gone to that dinner party . . . he would have taken me.”

  Chapter 4

  “IT’S HIM. IT’S JOHN HOLLIN,” EDWARD J. OLSON SAID, THE color draining from his face as he was overcome by the stench. “I recognize his shirt.”

  The sun was just coming up as Bladen Cole and the three men from Gallatin City descended the trail toward the place where Sixteen Mile Creek emptied into the Missouri River. When he had told them that he planned to leave “first thing in the morning,” he had meant it. To the three men who had asked to accompany him as far as the ambush site to recover the bodies, it had been the middle of the night.

  Cole studied the bluffs above the place where the bodies lay as the men from the town began the grisly chore of wrapping the deceased in canvas. They would soon be loaded on mules for their last ride home.

  “Reckon this is where we part company, gentlemen,” Cole said, touching the brim of his hat.

  “Good luck, Mr. Cole,” Olson said, his tone of voice suggesting that he figured the bounty hunter would need it.