Ralph Compton the Law and the Lawless (A Ralph Compton Western) - Softcover

“Was it you who followed me?”

THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

—Ralph Compton

Chapter 1

Cestus Calloway sauntered into the Alpine Bank and Trust Company as if he owned it. Which was remarkable, the people in the bank would later tell a journalist for the True Fissure, since he was there to rob it.

Calloway wore his usual wide-brimmed, low-crowned hat, tilted up on the back of his head so that his brown curls spilled from under it. One lady would tell the newspaperman that it gave Calloway the look of the Greek Adonis. His handsome face was split in a wide smile and his blue eyes danced with amusement as he drew both of his Merwin Hulbert Army revolvers and held them out for all to see. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed in that grand way he had, “we’re here to make a withdrawal.”

By “we,” Cestus meant the seven members of his wild bunch. Five of them strode in after him, spreading out as they came so that they blocked the windows and the doors. It was plain they had rehearsed what to do. As one bank customer would say to the reporter, “They moved like clockwork.”

The True Fissure would able to identify the five by the descriptions witnesses gave. They were Mad Dog Hanks, Bert Varrow, Ira Toomis, a man who was only ever known as Cockeye, and the Attica Kid.

The bank’s patrons and the pair of tellers all froze. Mrs. Mabel Periwinkle blurted, “My word!” and then blushed as if embarrassed.

Behind the rail at his desk, the bank’s president, Arthur Hunnecut, was the first to get over his surprise. Rising, he moved to the rail. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

Calloway chuckled and ambled over, saying, “You’re a mite slow between the ears, Art.”

“I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance, sir,” Hunnecut said stuffily. “And I’ll thank you to stop waving pistols around in my bank.”

Gesturing at the customers, Calloway laughed and said, “Do you hear him, folks? I bet if we look in his earhole we’ll find a turtle in there.”

Mrs. Periwinkle snorted and turned red again.

“Let me gun him,” Mad Dog Hanks growled. He’d acquired his handle because he looked exactly like a mad mongrel about to take a bite out of someone. It didn’t help his appearance any that he had large tufts of hair growing out of his ears.

Calloway glanced at him sharply. “What’s the rule?”

Mad Dog scowled and said, “Well, damn.”

“No swearing in my establishment,” Arthur Hunnecut snapped. “Not with ladies present.”

Calloway hooked the gate with the barrel of a six-shooter and opened it. “You’re a marvel, Art, and that’s no lie. Step out here while me and my boys clean your bank out.”

“I’ll be damned if I will,” Hunnecut said.

The Attica Kid came over, his spurs jingling, and just like that, his Colt Lightning was in his hand. The youngest of the outlaws, he always wore black, including a black vest. His eyes, as one person would describe them, were “cold green gems.” Cocking the Lightning, he said, “You’ll be dead if you don’t.”

“I’d listen to him, were I you,” Calloway said.

Arthur Hunnecut blanched.

Over by the wall, Mad Dog Hanks grumbled, “Oh, sure. Me, I have to behave. But you let the Kid do whatever he wants.”

Calloway shot him another sharp glance.

“Step out here, moneyman,” the Attica Kid said, “or your missus will be wailin’ over your grave.”

Hunnecut stepped out.

“That’s better,” Calloway said, and clapped the banker on the back with a revolver. “Now let’s get to it.” He nodded at Bert Varrow and Ira Toomis, and the pair went to the tellers and held out burlap sacks.

“Tell your people, Art, to empty the drawers and the safe,” Calloway commanded, “and be quick about it.”

Arthur Hunnecut looked into the muzzle of the Attica Kid’s Lightning and became whiter still. “You heard him.”

Showing his teeth in a dazzling smile, Calloway moved to the middle of the room. “I’m truly sorry for inconveniencin’ you folks. This won’t take but a few minutes.”

“Are you fixing to rob us too?” a man in a suit and bowler asked.

“Rob you good folks?” Calloway said as if the notion horrified him. “May the Good Lord strike me dead if I ever took from the likes of you.”

“What do you know of the Lord?” Hunnecut said archly.

“I know he’s not fond of money changers,” Calloway said. To the man in the bowler he said, “You must be new in these parts or you’d know I only rob those who deserve it.”

“What did I do to deserve this?” Hunnecut said.

“Do you mean besides the high interest you charge those who borrow from you? And besides those you’ve driven from their homes when they couldn’t pay their mortgage?”

“Now, see here,” Hunnecut said. “That’s a normal part of doing business. A bank isn’t a charity, after all.”

Calloway winked and smiled. “I am.”

At the front window Cockeye stirred and called out, “There’s a tin star comin’ up the street toward McGivern and Larner.”

“Who?” Hunnecut said.

“Pards of ours,” Calloway replied, moving toward the window. “Watchin’ our horses while we conduct our business.”

“Is that what you call it?”

The Attica Kid pressed the muzzle of his Lightning against the banker’s bulbous nose. “I’m tired of your sass. Give me cause and I’ll splatter your brains.”

“If he don’t, I will,” Mad Dog Hanks said.

Cestus Calloway looked out the front window, careful to hold his revolvers behind his back. “It’s that new deputy they got. Mitchell, I think his name is. He’s supposed to be out of town with the marshal.”

“That’s what I was told by that barkeep when I scouted out the town last night,” Bert Varrow said. He was the only one of the outlaws who wore city clothes, and a derby, to boot. His Colt Pocket pistol had pearl grips, and he wore a diamond stickpin.

“Either Deputy Mitchell didn’t go or he came back early,” Calloway guessed. Quickly moving to the front door, he poked his head out and said, “Send him in here, boys.” He stepped to one side, his back to the wall, and waited. It wasn’t half a minute that a shadow filled the doorway and in walked Deputy Mitchell.

The deputy wasn’t any older than the Attica Kid, and had red hair and freckles. “Mr. Hunnecut,” he said, “a man outside said you wanted to see—” Belatedly he stopped and stiffened. “What in the world?”

Calloway stepped up from behind him and tapped a Merwin Hulbert on Deputy Mitchell’s arm. “Turtles all over the place.”

“What?” Mitchell said, gaping at the Attica Kid and then at Mad Dog Hanks as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Undo your gun belt,” Calloway said, “if you’d be so kind.”

“What?” Deputy Mitchell said again.

“You need to catch up,” Calloway said. “The bank is bein’ robbed.”

“Some lawman you are, Mitch” Arthur Hunnecut said. “I told the marshal you were too young for the job, but would he listen? No.”

Deputy Mitchell’s features hardened and he started to lower his right hand to his holster. “Now, see here—”

“Don’t be stupid, boy,” Calloway said, jamming his revolver into the deputy’s ribs. “We can blow you to hell and back without half tryin’.”

For a few moments it appeared that Mitchell would draw anyway, but then he frowned and deflated, remarking, “I’m not hankerin’ to die.”

“No one has to if I can help it,” Calloway said good-naturedly. “And I usually can.”

Deputy Mitchell’s eyes widened. “Why, you’re him, aren’t you?” he said as he pried at his buckle.

“President Hayes?”

“No. You’re Cestus Calloway. The one everyone talks about. The Robin Hood of the Rockies, they call you.” The deputy let his gun belt fall to the floor.

“I should thank that scribbler from the newspaper,” Calloway said. “What was that book he talked about? Ivanhoe?”

“You are him, though?” Deputy Mitchell said in awe.

Calloway gave a mock bow. “Yes, ’tis I.”

“Why, aren’t you somethin’?” Mitchell said.

Arthur Hunnecut muttered under his breath.

The tellers were hurriedly stuffing money from the drawers into the burlap sacks under the watchful eyes, and leveled six-shooters, of Bert Varrow and Ira Toomis. Toomis, the oldest of the gang, had a cropped salt-and-pepper beard and a wad of tobacco bulging out his cheek. Thrusting his revolver at them, he barked, “Hurry it up, you peckerwoods. We don’t have all week.”

“And get the money from the safe,” Bert Varrow said.

“It’s shut,” a skinny teller replied nervously, “and only Mr. Hunnecut has the combination.”

“Is that a fact?” Cestus Calloway said. He bobbed his chin at the banker. “You know what you have to do.”

“Never,” Hunnecut said.

“We’re takin’ it all, Art.”

“I refuse. Do you hear me?” Hunnecut said. “The people of this community have put their trust in me and I won’t disappoint them.”

“Kid,” Calloway said.

The Attica Kid’s smile was as icy as a mountain glacier. “How’s Martha? Should I go call on her now or wait until tonight when you’re off with your friends at that club?”

“What?”

“Or maybe I should have a talk with Cornelia. I hear she likes to wear her hair in pigtails.”

A tremor rippled through Arthur Hunnecut’s entire body, and he had to try twice to speak. “How is it you know my wife’s and daughter’s names?”

“We do our homework, as Cestus likes to say,” the Attica Kid said. Suddenly leaning in close, he said so only the banker heard, “Now open that damn safe, or so help me, I’ll pay your missus and your girl a visit sometime when you’re not around. And you don’t want that.”

“You wouldn’t,” Hunnecut gasped.

The Attica Kid stepped back. “When I was little, I used to drown kittens in a bucket for the fun of it. I broke the neck of a puppy just for somethin’ to do. And when I was twelve, there was this boy who used to pick on me and tease me because I was smaller than him and he reckoned he could get away with it. One day he was doin’ it and I took a rock and put out his eye and broke most of his teeth besides. Later there was this gent who—”

Hunnecut help up a hand. “Enough. You’ve made your point abundantly clear. You’re a hideous killer of women and children, and if I don’t do as your lord and master wants, my wife and daughter will be added to your string.”

“I couldn’t have put it better my own self,” the Attica Kid complimented him.

His brow dotted with beads of sweat, Arthur Hunnecut went through the gate and over to the Diebold safe. Bending, he quickly worked the combination and turned the handle. There was a loud click, and he pulled the door wide open. “Happy now, you scoundrels?”

The Attica Kid glanced at Cestus Calloway, and grinned and winked.

“The puppy was a nice touch,” Calloway said.

In short order the safe was emptied and the tellers handed the bulging burlap sacks to Bert Varrow and Ira Toomis. Varrow hefted his sack and whistled. “This will be some haul.”

“Bring it here,” Calloway said, shoving his revolvers into their double-loop holsters.

“Must you?” Varrow replied as he carried the sack over.

“You know the rule.”

“Cestus and his damn rules,” Mad Dog said.

Backing toward the door, Calloway beamed at the banker and his patrons. “We’re obliged for your cooperation. Remember to tell everybody how decent we treated you, and that no one was hurt.” He paused and flicked a finger at the deputy’s gun belt on the floor. “Mad Dog, bring that with you. We don’t want Deputy Mitchell gettin’ ideas.”

The outlaws filed out. Last to leave was the Attica Kid. Standing in the doorway, he twirled his Colt forward and backward and then into his holster, and patted it. “Do I need to tell you what happens if you poke your heads out?”

“When the marshal hears of this, we’ll be after you,” Deputy Mitchell said.

“You do that,” the Attica Kid said. “And be sure to tell the marshal that Ben Larner can drop a buffalo at a thousand yards with that Sharps of his.” Spurs jangling, he backed out.

By then Calloway was in the saddle and reining away from the hitch rail. Some of the people on Main Street had noticed the flurry of activity and stopped to stare. “Folks, this is your lucky day!” Calloway hollered. “The bank is givin’ away money for free.” Laughing, he reached into the sack, pulled out a fistful of bills, and cast them into the air.

The astonished onlookers gaped.

“Get it while you can!” Calloway yelled and, gigging his mount, he made off down the street. He threw another handful of money at several women who had come out of a millinery and more bills at a group of boys who were playing with a hoop. Then he let out a yip, and with a thunder of hooves, whopping and hollering, the outlaws galloped off.

No one tried to stop them. No one fired a shot. It was, as the True Fissure would later report, “as slick as could be.”

Chapter 2

Marshal Boyd Cooper loved to fish. He loved it more than just about anything. Which was why he had snuck away to the pond on Sam Wilson’s farm. It was a sunny day, the temperature in the eighties, perfect fishing weather. Not that Boyd cared so much about catching fish as he did about being able to relax and forget the cares of his office.

Boyd knew that his jaunts to the pond were the worst-kept secret in Alpine, but no one complained. He worked hard at his job, and Alpine was as orderly and peaceful as a town could be. No one begrudged him a few hours of indulging in his favorite pastime, especially not at his age. A man in his fifties was entitled to treat himself now and then.

Only a few people knew Boyd’s other secret, namely that the fish weren’t the only reason he came to the Wilson place. He could fish in any of the nearby creeks or the Rio Grande or Alpine Lake. The pond had another attraction.

A farmhouse st...