EL PASO COULD have swallowed up Doña Ana and spat it out without even bothering. It sat north of the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border and got fatter and fatter until it looked fit to burst wide open. Which from time to time it did.
The morning the two gunmen rode down the town’s main street with their prisoner between them, the sidewalks and the street itself were pretty busy. A few cowboys recovering from a night spent blowing their wages; a couple of raucous muleskinners slapping at one another’s backs and knocking an old drifter off his feet; a lone woman wearing a black dress with a bustle and carrying a wicker basket in front of her; Mexes from across the river; big Irishmen who’d come in by wagon from their work on the Southern Pacific; kids with the seats out of their pants and no shoes who weaved in and out shouting and pretending to be firing pistols.
Hawk saw it all and carried on riding.
Turner the same.
Calhoun sat tied to his saddle, the scar on his face from the black’s knife a bright line. Desperately he searched with his eyes for someone who might free him, but there was no one. Deep inside he knew there wouldn’t be. One miracle had happened-the cutting of the rope as his life was about to be choked out of him—and that had turned sour.
Devils not angels.
He cast a quick glance at the two men.
Bastards! Calhoun thought but didn’t say it, knowing only too well what would happen to him if he did.
‘Here we are.’
Turner pointed across the street to a corner building with a sign hanging outside that read: “Marshal’s Office and Jail.”
They turned their mounts and rode over to the long hitching post that ran along the front.
‘Get down.’
Calhoun scowled at the black. ‘You tied me up here.’
Turner pulled his knife and cut the rope to the saddle pommel. Without cutting the bonds on Calhoun’s arms he caught hold of his leg and dragged him out of the saddle so that he fell heavily on the dusty street.
‘Ain’t no call to …’
Turner swung back his leg and kicked viciously into Calhoun’s midriff. The blow made him roll over, shout out. A couple of cowboys stopped on the sidewalk and looked on.
‘Damn black ba—’
Turner booted him in the kidneys, twice.
‘Son-of-a-bitch! You just ain’t never goin’ to learn.’
‘Hey, mister!’ One of the cowboys took a step across the sidewalk, looking like he was about to interfere. He was a bulky man, a few inches under six foot but broad and well-muscled. A pistol was strapped to his thigh and his hand wasn’t too many inches away from it.
Turner turned fast, his own hand moving for his Colt at his left side, but Hawk moved faster, stepping between them.
‘Move on, friend.’
The word friend never sounded less friendly.
‘Ain’t none of your business. This man’s wanted by the law. All we’re doin’ is bringing him in. Don’t make no trouble for yourself.’
‘I don’t like to see no man kicked when he’s tied up an’ can’t defend himself. Specially not by no—’
‘Art! Don’t!’
His companion caught hold of his arm—a younger man, taller and thinner, the trace of a moustache over his lip.
‘What the feller says is right. It ain’t none of our business.’
Art shook the hand away and glared at Hawk and at Turner behind him. But he turned grudgingly away and stalked off down the street, looking back every now and again as Turner bundled Calhoun towards the marshal’s door.
Hawk watched the pair of cowboys until they were a block along, then stepped into the office.
It was a square room, barred windows set into the wall that ran down the alley; a door at the back which would lead through to the cells. To the right was a roll-top bureau stacked high with papers and next to it a stand for rifles that was two-thirds full. A long wooden desk cut across the right-hand corner and the marshal sat behind it, chair pushed well back, feet resting on the desk edge.
Turner and Calhoun stood six feet away from the desk, waiting.
‘Four or five months since you was in, Aaron. Thought maybe someone’d snuck up behind you an’ put a bullet through that black skull of yorn.’
The marshal turned his head to one side and spat expertly into a tin spittoon by the wall.
Listening, Hawk couldn’t be sure how far the marshal was joking and if he would have been glad to hear that someone had done just as he said. Anyway, he and the negro seemed to know one another well enough.
‘You got to wait for that one, Seth.’ said Turner easily. ‘Meantime, here’s this boy, Calhoun. You got a paper on him says he’s worth five hundred dollars. Alive.’
The marshal peered up at Calhoun and chuckled. ‘Looks like he’s only just that. You bin havin’ yore fun with him on the way in, I reckon?’
‘That concern you, Seth?’
Hawk could sense the tightening of Turner’s voice under the cool tone and wondered what had passed between the two men before.
But the marshal swung his boots off the desk and pushed his chair further back, standing up and walking across to the bureau. He was taller than Hawk had figured, around the same height as himself and broader, beginning to get a belly from sitting too many hours behind his desk and letting others do his chasing for him.
He was close to thirty-five, Hawk guessed, and inside five years he’d be on the downward road. El Paso would be too big and too tough. There would be jobs in smaller towns and still smaller and then, if he was lucky, he’d get work riding shotgun on some two-bit stage line.
‘Ain’t seen yore friend afore.’
Turner glanced round. ‘Name’s Hawk. Jared Hawk.’ He flipped a hand towards the marshal. ‘This here’s Seth Cooke. Thinks as how he’s a hard man to cross.’
The marshal went forward and offered Hawk his hand. ‘You’d best believe I am.’
His handshake was firm and his grey eyes looked Hawk over carefully.
‘I seen you afore?’
‘Not as I recall, Marshal.’
‘Not been round El Paso way?’
Hawk nodded. ‘Been close. Few years back.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Marshal Cooke scratched the side of his head and went back to the stack of papers. After a few minutes he pulled out one with Calhoun’s name on it.
‘You picked a good ‘un again, Aaron Let’s get him through to the cells.’
He took a bunch of keys off a hook and opened the door in the back wall, coming back to get Calhoun and push him through.
‘I got a few forms to fill in on this. Why don’t you boys go an’ get somethin’ to eat? Drop by in a couple of hours. I’ll have bin over to the bank by then. Got yore money. Okay?’
‘Sure.’ Turner nodded agreement and stepped over to the door. Hawk following.
Outside on the street things were busier than ever. A pair of wagons laden high with sacks of flour had blocked it off and a man and woman in a buckboard were angrily waiting to get past.
Turner pointed up to the left. ‘Place up there does good steaks. If that’s what you fancy.’
Hawk nodded: ‘Suit me fine.’
They were soon proving the negro’s judgement to be good and putting a good couple of pounds of beef away with relish.
‘Got me a few things to do,’ said Turner, pushing his plate sideways along the table. ‘Why don’t you meet me at the marshal’s office in an hour?’
‘Sure.’ said Jared. ‘As long as you ain’t thinkin’ of gettin’ there before that an’ collectin’ the reward.’
A grin spread over the negro’s face. ‘Me? Why, I’m just the most honorable bastard you ever worked a deal with!’ He jabbed a finger at Hawk. ‘I’ll tell you somethin’, while we’re waitin’ to finish up on this Calhoun thing we got us a partnership—an’ I ain’t the man to back down on that.’
‘And once we’ve got the five hundred and split it?’ The grin became a smile; the smile a laugh. ‘Then the first man offers me a good price for takin’ you, I’ll be out in the street callin’ your name.’
‘I know it. That’s why the price on you is goin’ to be real high.’
The bounty hunter laughed again and walked to the door. His white shirt was stained with the sweat and dirt of the ride and there was dust on his dark leather boots and light brown pants—still he looked smart and dangerous. Smarter than a whip. Hawk wondered if he would take out a contract on the negro if one were offered. Immediately he knew that he would. There wouldn’t be any choice. If you hired out your, gun you did it for cash and not causes. Or only when the two could be combined.
No, Turner would hire out to kill Hawk and Hawk would return the compliment. It was the way of the gun.
The way of the gun…
Marshal Cooke had asked Hawk if he’d been riding round El Paso way. He sure enough had. Not more than three years and a bit earlier, though Seth Cooke hadn’t been marshal then.
The fall winds whipping in from the east and tearing the leaves from the trees…
Hawk riding the high country north of the border…
And not riding alone…
John Wesley Hardin had taken sides in the feud between the Suttons and the Taylors, a bloody battle that raged off and on throughout the Lone Star State from 1868 through the next six or so years. Hardin had taken sides with the Taylors on account of how they were aided by the Kelley and Clements families and the Clements were Hardin’s cousins. Also, another of Hardin’s kinfolk had got himself married to Creed Taylor’s daughter.
Hardin had seen that a good number of the Sutton clan didn’t take any further part in the feud and in between times he’d put together a little band of his own in order to supplement his own pockets.
One of the men he took on was Jared Hawk.
Hawk had been close to his nineteenth birthday and Hardin hadn’t been any more than twenty, but there was a wealth of living and killing between them. Rumor had it that Hardin had accounted for his first man when he was only fifteen and since then he’d never looked back.
So Hawk rode close and listened good and learned a whole damned lot.
El Paso…
They had been riding into the town one Sunday afternoon, the season turning and the sky heavy with rain. It had still been warm, hot even. Three of them: Wes Hardin, Hawk and a feller called Pop who was short and bristly and had a temper fit to match even Hardin’s own.
About two miles out of town they’d met Lip Fargo, who was some kind of kin to the Taylors. Lip earned his name telling Hardin how Jack Helm had ridden across from DeWitt County and was putting the law in El Paso up to dealing with Hardin and his men when they showed in town.
Helm was one of the main supporters the Suttons had. He was a sheriff in DeWitt County and headed up a band of Regulators that did Sutton’s bidding.
Just hearing about what was going on was enough to rile Wes Hardin and he knocked Lip out of his saddle simply for being the one to tell the story. Hawk saw Hardin’s hand move near his gun belt and thought for a moment that he was going to put a bullet through Lip as well. But the fingers did no more than graze the wood of the pistol butt and then move gradually clear.
Lying on the ground close by his horse, Lip Fargo had seen the movement of the gun hand, too, and nearly choked himself to death with fright.
Wesley Hardin had wanted to ride on into El Paso anyway and take on whoever was there, but Hawk had talked him out of it.
Not for long.
On the next day, Hardin rose early, washed in cold stream water, shaved, ate a good breakfast of bacon and beans and sourdough biscuits, put on his best clothes and announced that they were riding into El Paso and no one was going to stop them.
Hawk remembered how Wes Hardin looked. His dark hair cut short and neatly parted on the left hand side; dark, bright eyes, set a little too far apart in his face. A straight nose and a smallish mouth. He wore a clean white shirt with a thin black tie fixed in a bow and his best black suit that was shiny and stitched up in places where the seams had bust apart.
His gun belt was strapped on, the bottom of the holster poking down underneath his coat.
‘Any of you ridin’ with me?’ he’d asked in his Texas drawl.
There hadn’t been a lot of alternatives. Men who knew Hardin didn’t take to saying no to his face. So Hawk had saddled up, along with Pop and Miles and Burchill and they’d headed down slow out of the hills towards town.
The day was colder than the previous one, the clouds sitting higher in the sky, a lighter grey. Red and gold leaves moved between their horses’ hoofs as they rode.
Hawk recalled that Hardin had been whistling a tune all the way, a hymn, one he couldn’t himself put a name to. He knew that Wesley Hardin’s father had been a Methodist preacher, famous in Texas in the fifties. That was how John Wesley got his name, from another Methodist preacher back across the seas in England a long time before.
John Wesley Hardin preached hell-fire right enough but not with a Bible.
When they were within sight of El Paso they reined in—there were half a dozen men ahead on the trail. On horseback and armed with rifles.
Hardin unbuttoned the front of his suit jacket and let the side flap past the top of his holster.
Take it easy,’ he said quietly. ‘But let’s take it.’
They rode on down towards the waiting men. They didn’t look anything special, most of them—out-of-work cowboys and third-rate would-be gunslingers who’d have been better off slinging hash in a dining room somewhere. The only one who looked as if he might be trouble sat at the right of the group, resting back in the saddle of a dun stallion. He was tall with a sweeping moustache on his upper lip and a deputy marshal’s badge pinned to the front of his waistcoat.
‘Strange place for a prayer meetin’,’ drawled Hardin.
‘We ain’t sayin’ no prayers,’ called back one of them.
Hardin rocked a little in the saddle. ‘Then, mister, you ought to be.’
Hawk eased his right hand closer to his gun and shifted his mount wider to the left.
The deputy levered his rifle and lifted it towards Hardin.
‘You’re John Wesley Hardin, ain’t you?’
Hardin allowed that he was.
‘Well, you ain’t goin’ no further.’
‘That a fact?’
‘That is a fact.’
The rifle moved up and round; Hardin still hadn’t shifted his right arm, the fingers of that hand resting on the pommel of the saddle.
‘Ain’t no warrant for me in this county,’ Hardin said.
The deputy shook his head. ‘Never said nothin’ ’bout no warrant. Just said you weren’t ridin’ into town. Marshal says you’re barred.’
‘He does?’
‘He does.’
Hardin drew his pistol and shot the deputy in the head. The arm had sprung back, the fingers slid round the gun butt, the barrel come up from the holster, the hammer cocked back, trigger squeezed all in less time than Hawk could follow or the deputy could fire the rifle.
The deputy marshal’s head was smashed sideways in a blur of light. Shards of bone and torn fragments of fiber flew in all directions. Something grey and speckled with red slushed against the flanks of a horse over to the deputy’s right.
When the top of the man’s body came back into Hawk’s focus seconds later he could see a deep, dark hole before the back of the skull. The bridge of a nose, a section of brow, the hair line at the base of the neck. Everything between was dark and deep and blood pumped through and splashed across the marshal’s badge, down the waistcoat, the top of the pants, the saddle, the horse.
Yet the deputy stayed upright in the saddle: five, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds.
When at last he started to keel over sideways, the man behind him shouted: ‘He’s killed him! Hardin’s killed him!’
Hawk saw another of the men try to bring his rifle up into play and he went for his own pistol, the arc of his arm bringing it up and over his horse’s neck in fast time. Not as fast as Wes Hardin. Not yet. But fast.
The man behind the rifle gulped, whitened, and slowly swung the long barrel away.
‘What the hell we, gonna do, Wes?’ yelled Pop as his mount twisted and turned beneath him.
Hardin sneered: ‘Yeller, Pop?’
‘No, sir, but you shot a lawman.’
‘Won’t be the last. Ain’t the first.’
The men who’d ridden out with the deputy had lost whatever sense of courage they might once have had. None of them was making any attempt to do anything about the shooting. They glanced from time to time at the guns in their hands as if wishing they would disappear. As if the ground would open and swallow them up before the young gunman took it into his head to drop them, too.
Somehow, the body of the shot man still twitched on the ground, his brains blown clean out.
Hawk watched, waited, hand on his pistol. He was still marveling at the speed Hardin had shown with the gun—knowing that he would never be satisfied until he could clear leather and shoot straight with the same speed. Or faster.
As suddenly as he made most of his decisions, Wes Hardin put up his pistol and grabbed at the reins of his mount. ‘Let’s get the blasted hell out of here!’
After the shooting of the deputy, John Wesley Hardin saw fit to leave Texas for a while. Hawk rode with him up into New Mexico and then took to his own road for a while. Maybe he didn’t want to live in Hardin’s shadow.
After that first time around El Paso, Jared Hawk was coming into his own.
Hawk pushed away the empty coffee cup and looked at the clock at the far end of the wall. It was time to be stepping down to the marshal’s office, meet Turner and collect his share of the bounty.