It had all begun two days earlier and forty miles north in a border town called Senora. Senora was by its very nature a dangerous place. So far away from the rest of civilized Texas, which was trying to rebuild itself after the war, Senora had become just another of those places where the law barely hung on to its tin stars long enough to find out the name of the men wearing them. The reality was that it was a town where outlaws and bandits found safe refuge knowing that the local sheriff would not do anything except keep his head down.
For the three months since the elections Tate Talbot had been sheriff of Senora. Unlike most of his predecessors Talbot had never been on the honest side of the law. It was also a fact that, until standing for office, Talbot had been known by many other names and was wanted dead or alive for each of them.
Tate Talbot sounded honest enough though.
Even if most of the townsfolk knew the truth they were not loco enough to mention it. For all of his thirty-nine years he had ridden along both sides of the long unmarked border between Texas and Mexico, using his skill at killing and rustling to make him wealthy beyond the dreams of most men. Becoming a sheriff had been his latest ploy to cash in on all the saloons, whorehouses and gambling halls within the sprawling, sun-bleached town’s boundaries.
It had worked well and paid him handsomely.
In twelve weeks Talbot had managed to cream off ten per cent of every business in Senora. His personal wealth now accounted for more than half the money in the town’s only bank.
Even the rest of the outlaws who used Senora as a place to rest their bones between rustling cattle knew that Tate Talbot was a man they could trust not to interfere with them as long as they gave him a cut of their profits.
Yet even Talbot could not resist the mouth-watering wanted posters that were sent to him once a month by stage. Most were for such paltry sums that it was not worth his while even considering trying to collect the bounties, but there were a few that just could not be ignored.
It was as tempting as honey to a hungry bear but the wily Talbot knew that he could not turn on the outlaws who filled the saloons and brothels and spent their ill-gotten gains in Senora without risking their retribution. If he were to collect reward money safely he had to figure a way of doing it while also keeping the free-spending drifters sweet.
But he kept looking at the wanted posters. He kept trying to think of a way in which he might be able to make that one big play that would enable him to be so rich that he could buy himself respectability far to the west, in a city like San Francisco. It was OK being rich in Senora but it meant nothing to a man who had always wanted more. To be rich in a city on the Californian coastline was a different matter. There his money could buy things which simply did not exist in this dust-weary town.
All Talbot had needed was that one wanted poster with a reward so large it would be worth the risk of incurring the wrath of the outlaws and bandits.
He knew that it would arrive one day. One day he would hold in his hands the key that could unlock him from the life he found himself living.
It had been close to sundown when the noon stage had eventually drawn into town. Talbot, a well-built man, had walked the fifty or so yards from his office to the stage depot and watched as the mail bag was thrown down by the shotgun guard to the depot clerk.
‘Anythin’ for me, Luke?’ Talbot had asked the guard who was climbing over the various bags on the top of the coach.
The bearded man paused and looked down at the boardwalk where Talbot was standing with thumbs tucked into his gunbelt.
‘Yep. I seen them put a whole heap of wanted posters in the mail bag for ya, Sheriff,’ the guard said through a mouthful of broken teeth. ‘Git Clem to give ’em to ya.’
Talbot nodded, turned and slowly trailed the clerk into the depot office. He rested his hands on the top of the desk and watched the clerk with eyes that had seen more than most in their time. Sunlight was low and its dying rays danced across the office wall.
‘I’ll have them posters, Clem,’ Talbot said in a deep drawl.
The clerk opened up the bag and searched through the mail until he found the posters, tied together by blue string. He handed them to the lawman and tilted his head so he could see from under his black visor.
‘Ya sure likes them posters, Tate,’ he commented.
Talbot grinned. ‘Yep. One day I’m gonna find me one with big money printed on it. Wanted dead or alive!’
‘Ya itchin’ to kill some critter, Sheriff?’
‘Damn right!’ Talbot smiled. ‘I ain’t killed nobody in a month of Sundays. A man can get rusty.’
The clerk gestured at the window, then struck a match and touched the wick of the candle on his desk. As the flame lit up the office the small man blew the match and tossed it out into the street.
‘The town’s full of outlaws, Tate. Ya could go kill some of them and make a few bucks. I reckon if ya just closed ya eyes and fired down the street you’d hit at least one varmint wanted for something.’
Talbot nodded. ‘But most of them varmints are my pals, Clem. Besides, they ain’t worth a new saddle between ’em. Ain’t worth my while wasting lead on them.’
The clerk busied himself as the lawman walked out into the fading light and strolled back to his own office with the posters tucked under his left arm. The words had been true. Most of the outlaws and bandits who roamed freely in town were dangerous killers without an ounce of morality between them, yet for Talbot to go up against any of them would be suicidal for a man so close to the other side of the law. Talbot knew that if he were to try to claim the reward on anyone, it would have to be someone neither he nor any of the other trail trash in Senora had ever encountered. The bounty would also have to be in the thousands of dollars for him even to bother.
Upon arriving back in his office, Talbot had lit the lantern on his desk, turned up its brass wheel and sat down. He broke the string and placed the pile of posters before him. It was like looking at a potential meal. His mouth started to water in anticipation.
One after another he studied them, turning each one face down as he got to the next.
As always there were vague descriptions of the outlaws who seemed to have more names than any honest soul. Some had even more names than Talbot himself. Heights varied, as well as hair colouring. Few of the posters had any truly accurate information and none could even agree on the outlaws’ ages. Thought to be between twenty and forty was printed on at least half of them. Only a few had crude photographic images which could have fitted nearly anyone in town. One poster after another turned into one disappointment after another.
Then as Talbot had almost reached the last poster his hand stopped turning and he drew the stiff paper closer to him. He turned the wheel of the lantern up once again. The office became brighter. This was the one poster he had never even imagined was in circulation.
It was the amount that had attracted his full attention first.
‘Twenty thousand dollars, dead or alive!’ Talbot muttered aloud.
A crooked smile etched itself on his face as he looked at the poster in his left hand. ‘Diamond Bob Casey.’
He shook his head and laughed out loud. It was a joke only he understood. It was perfect. Diamond Bob Casey was wanted dead or alive for $20,000.
Tate Talbot rose from his chair with the poster clutched in his hand. He looked out of the window of the office as the street lights were being lit by a small man with a long pole and a flaming rag at its end.
He kept laughing.
Not one of the other wanted men in Senora knew why their sheriff was so amused. If they had they might have started shooting in his direction.
For, ten years earlier, Tate Talbot himself had used the name of Diamond Bob Casey. The lawman pulled a cigar from his vest pocket and placed it between his teeth. He leaned over the glass funnel of the lamp on his desk, lit the tip of the cigar in the flame, and sucked in the smoke. It filled his lungs as his mind raced. Of all the wanted outlaws in Texas and beyond, it was he himself who was the most valuable.
He inhaled the cigar smoke deeply. But how could he get his hands on the money someone had placed upon his own head? The question burned into his mind.
Then, as if by divine providence, Tate Talbot was given the answer he had searched for.
As smoke drifted from between his teeth the man with the tin star pinned to his shirt saw the lone rider pass the window of his office. It was a man whom he did not recognize but that made it even better.
A stranger.
A drifter.
A drifter who was doomed to become the dead body of Diamond Bob Casey. All Sheriff Talbot needed to claim the bounty on his own head was a body. Any body would do. He still had the savvy that had served him well when he had been Diamond Bob, and he knew that he could salt the corpse with personal items that would allow him to kill, prove his case, and make his claim for the $20,000.
Hal Harper aimed his mount at the nearest cantina. He had no idea that, in the mind of the lawman who watched him from the sheriff’s office, his fate was already sealed.
Sealed by a ruthless man who was going to do the impossible.
A man who was going to claim the reward money on his own head.
Talbot carefully folded the wanted poster up and pushed it into his shirt.
‘Like taking candy from a baby,’ he muttered. ‘A lotta candy.’