Carmody 4

  Carmody decided Luke Greenwood and his boys were the meanest sons of bitches he’d ever tangled with … and that took in a lot of years and a wide space of territory. The Greenwoods made a bad mistake when they threw down on Carmody while he was walking away from a nice quiet bank robbery. They made a worse mistake when they put a rope on Carmody and dragged him. They should have finished the job. They should have killed him and then shot him some more, to make sure. Because Carmody wasn’t about to give them another chance. The Greenwoods were the toughest gang of killers in the Indian Territory, but when Carmody started after them they were as good as dead.

  TALL MAN RIDING

  CARMODY 4

  By Peter McCurtin

  First Published by Leisure Books

  Copyright © 1970, 2015 by Peter McCurtin

  First Kindle Edition: November 2015

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Cover Painting © Edward Martin

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges ~*~ Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  Chapter One

  Carmody hadn’t figured on robbing the Ringgold Bank & Trust Company until the sheriff rounded up a posse and rode out of town. It was a little before eight o’clock in the morning and Carmody was pouring water from the china pitcher into the washbasin. There was gritty dust on the surface of the water and he stooped to splash it away with the edge of his hand. There was good water in Ringgold, plenty of good water, not like some of the towns farther south, and the people who operated the Ringgold Hotel could have changed the water in the pitchers every day, if they thought it was important, if they thought about it at all.

  It wasn’t important to Carmody and he didn’t think about it. There was nothing in the room except an iron bed sagging in the middle, a chair and the washstand. The floor was made of white, unpainted planks, adzed and not planed, so a man without boots on could get his feet full of splinters. Out on the trail, Carmody kept his boots on while he slept. He took them off when he had to, but never while he slept. When he slept indoors, when he was lucky enough to sleep indoors, and this was one of those times, he took off his boots and put them always on the side of the bed away from the door. Indoors or out, he slept with a gun in his hand.

  Carmody felt all right. Twelve hours of solid sleep had relaxed the band of tension inside his head and loosened his fatigue-knotted muscles. It had taken him more than two weeks to reach Ringgold, near the Texas-Oklahoma line, and if his horse hadn’t gone lame the day before he would be clear to the Red River by now. It was a good bet that the Cleburne County sheriff had given up the chase, but Carmody wasn’t about to make any wagers with his life.

  Carmody had walked into Ringgold the night before, leading the horse. He had no particular attachment to the horse. It was a good horse, better than some and worse than others he’d ridden. With only the change from a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket, there wasn’t enough to buy a new mount. The old geezer who ran the livery stable told Carmody the animal would be all right. The old geezer smelled of whisky and horse liniment.

  Carmody backed away from the buzzard breath and told the stableman to fix his horse up good. “You get this animal ready to travel in a hurry you get something extra,” Carmody said. “But do it right. None of your horse trading tricks. You fool with this animal and I’ll cut off one of your ears.”

  The old man was full of whisky and he cackled like a crazy turkey. “Don’t know as that’d make much difference at my age,” he said.

  “It hurts considerable,” Carmody said easily.

  Washing his face now, Carmody figured the old man would do a good job. He splashed water on his chest and lathered up some soap and rubbed around under his arms, then he bent his head over the basin and poured out the rest of the water. The towel he used to dry himself off was stamped OLDHAUSEN HOTEL ST. LOUIS. The towel was a long way from home, and Carmody thought, without smiling, that somebody was always stealing something from somebody else.

  He thought about shaving and decided against it. If the lame horse forced him to stay in Ringgold more than two days, then he would shave. After more than two weeks in the saddle, riding the same horse into the ground while the lawmen chasing him had money to get fresh mounts, his face was burned and stiff and he didn’t cotton much to the idea of hacking off the growth of rasping whiskers.

  If he had to stay in Ringgold for two days, he would let the town barber tackle the job. Two days was about as much time he figured he could give himself without pressing it too close. If it ran longer than two days, he could forget about the shave and start looking for a good horse to steal. Once out of Ringgold, he planned to get to the Red River in one day, then follow the river, which made up some of the Texas-Indian Territory line, until it passed close to the town of Grandfield. There was a bank in Grandfield that he had been thinking about for a long time …

  Carmody was buckling on his gun belt, thinking about a steak with a fried egg on top of it for breakfast, when the yelling started outside in the street. Carmody didn’t think the ruckus had anything to do with him, but he checked the loads in his gun. Before he pushed up the window and looked out, he stomped on his boots.

  The sheriff’s office and jail was across the street, and out in front of it the sheriff, the man with the badge, was yelling at some men to get their horses and mount up. There was too much yelling to hear what was going on. Come to think of it, he didn’t much give a damn what it was. He got the chair and set it back from the window, and watched.

  There was more yelling when the posse mounted up and swept out of town, raising dust. Posses always made an awful lot of noise, Carmody thought. He put on his hat and went downstairs.

  The old geezer who owned the hotel and doubled as room clerk was behind the desk, shaking with excitement. The belly underneath the old man’s vest looked like twins and rivers of sweat were rolling down his thick neck, softening the starch in his stand-up collar. He jumped when Carmody came down the stairs. Carmody asked what was going on.

  “The Greenwood bunch is fixing to rob the bank,” the hotel man said.

  “That a fact,” Carmody said. He started to build himself a smoke, thinking while he tapped some Bull into the paper. He struck a wood match and fired up the cigarette. The tobacco tasted sort of dried-out and bitter.

  “Where does a man get breakfast in this town?” he asked the hotel man.

  “The sheriff got word they’re coming here,” the old man said, not listening. “Only they ain’t never going to make it. Sheriff plans to ambush them good at Cooley’s Crossing.”

  Carmody gave the desk bell a jingle. The old man looked at him, surprised.

  “Breakfast?” Carmody said.

  “The Chinaman down the street’ll cook you anything you want, mister,” the hotel man told him. He was offended by Carmody’s lack of interest.

  Carmody walked past the Sheriff’s Office & Jail. It looked like the sheriff had taken all his deputies with him. There was a new wanted poster for the Greenwood bunch tacked up on the board. No pictures, first names and descriptions. Greenwood, Buckland, Dalhart, Lyman, McCargo, Ridley, Hooper, Johnson, Linskey.

  Carmody didn’t know any of the Greenwood bunch. He knew about them. Luke Greenwood was the worst of the bunch. That was saying something, considering the repu
tations the others had. The wanted sheet said they operated mostly up in Indian Territory, raiding south into Texas, then skipping back into the Territory when things got too hot for them.

  Hacking at the tough fried steak the Chinaman served up, Carmody thought about robbing the Ringgold bank. With just about every man who could shoot a gun in his posse, the sheriff was riding hard toward the Red River. No matter how hard they pushed their horses, it would take most of the day to reach Cooley’s Crossing. Allowing time for their so-called ambush, it would take the best part of another day to get back.

  The Chinaman’s steak was tough enough to put new soles on a pair of boots. The fried egg sitting on top of it might have been fresh once. The biscuits were fair to middling. Only the coffee was completely to Carmody’s liking. Boiled as black as map ink, it just about bubbled in the mug. Coffee as lethal as that made a man know he was alive.

  The coffee cut through the taste of last night’s whisky. Carmody was never one to care a whole lot about food. You ate it and hoped it didn’t send you hunkering down behind every rock. The food was just food, but this Chinaman knew how to make a fair cup of coffee.

  From the stool nearest the flyspecked window, Carmody could see the bank. Ringgold wasn’t much of a town—no railroad, not much of anything—and the bank wasn’t much of a bank.

  It wasn’t Carmody’s way of working to go after a bank he didn’t know. When a man rode into a new town he had no way of knowing that the bank hadn’t been taken the week before. The whole place could be bristling with hidden guns. And just as bad—there might be nothing to take. In a city bank that was robbed they could get some fresh money in a few hours. Out here in north Texas money wasn’t that plentiful.

  The Chinaman asked Carmody if he wanted a wedge of pie.

  “Just coffee,” he was told.

  Carmody rolled a smoke. The bank he planned to take was still some distance north and west. He knew there would be money in that bank. That bank was where the Texas cattlemen who drove up herds to feed the Indians got paid off. At this time of year, according to Carmody’s information, it was bulging with money.

  Sipping his coffee, Carmody watched the Ringgold bank. It sure didn’t look like much of a bank.

  That was the trouble with banks you didn’t know, Carmody thought. You couldn’t be sure. There could be a fortune in the vault, waiting to be taken—or there might be nothing much. Small banks, privately owned, operated according to local conditions. There had to be times when even a bank in a dead town like Ringgold was heavy with money. It could be that this was one of those times. Fingering the thin roll of greenbacks in his pants pocket—less than twenty dollars—Carmody thought this way and that about taking the bank.

  The Chinaman brought him a third mug of coffee and went back to replenishing a bubbling stockpot with pieces of hacked-up chicken. Thinking with the coffee mug in his hand, Carmody stopped watching the bank and watched the Chinaman for a while.

  The Chink’s pigtail was black and his wispy mustache was bone white. Carmody wondered with a twisted grin if drinking his own coffee had turned the Chinaman’s mustache white. When the Chinaman started dumping chunks of shoulder beef into the pot with the chicken and whatever else was in there already, Carmody asked him what in the sweet name of Jesus he was cooking.

  “This special Chicago-style stew,” the Chinaman said in the usual singsong voice. “Most nourishing.”

  Losing interest, Carmody turned away to watch the bank.

  “Remind me not to eat any of it,” he said.

  The cowbell over the door jangled as a man who looked like a gambler came in. “Morning,” he said to Carmody and sat down two stools away.

  “Sure is,” Carmody said, trying as hard as he could to sound friendly and casual, one of the folks.

  “Just coffee, Sun Luck,” the gambler said. He wasn’t young and Carmody knew he couldn’t be making much money or had lost his nerve or else he wouldn’t be shuffling the pasteboards in a town like Ringgold. Carmody had nothing against professional gamblers as long as they dealt off the top of the deck. This one looked like he was afraid to do anything else.

  Like all gamblers away from the table, he was talkative. Ordinarily, Carmody would have told the shyster to lace up his mouth, but now he needed information, so he let him talk.

  The gambler held the coffee mug with shaking hands. “I looked upon the wine when it was red,” he told Carmody, displaying a nice set of store teeth, uppers and lowers. He paused, giving Carmody sufficient time to appreciate his lame humor. Then he said, “I supped well but not wisely.”

  “You what?” Carmody said.

  “I got drunk last night,” the gambler translated. “Oh, mother mine, did I get drunk last night.”

  “This feller get drunk alla time,” the Chinaman said, adding pounded turnips to his special Chicago-style stew.

  “Coffee is all we need from you,” Carmody told the cook.

  “I know what it feels like,” he said to the whisky-rattled gambler.

  Gathering his faded elegance about him, the shyster said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Bucked up by his own seedy conceit, the hung-over card mechanic asked Carmody, “If I may not be too bold, sir, what brings you to our fair city?”

  Carmody didn’t know if he could manage to sound like a drifting cowboy, but he gave it a try. There was nothing riding on it. It didn’t matter.

  “Thought I might find me a job in these parts. Don’t look like it, though. This town is sort of dead.”

  “You’re a cowboy, I take it,” the shyster remarked.

  “That and anything else comes along,” Carmody said. “I guess the ranching business is kind of slack these days. Least all round here.”

  The gambler set down his mug and produced a slightly battered cigar. Carmody burned a match and lit it for him. The shyster took so long to get it going that Carmody felt like slapping the store teeth out of his mouth and stepping on them.

  Finally, the gambler said, “It seems that you have come to the right place, my friend.”

  Carmody cringed at being called my friend.

  “A large Eastern concern has but recently decided to begin ranching operations in these parts. That’s right, my friend, scientific cattle raising has finally come to Texas, to Montague County in particular. It has been done in other parts of the country. Now it has come to Ringgold.”

  The gambler lowered his voice confidentially. “There is big money behind it. Say no more.”

  “What money?” Carmody complained. “This town don’t look like no money to me.”

  The gambler smiled as if he’d been talking to a half-wit. That’s because the money is where you can’t see it,” he said. “Namely, in the Ringgold Bank & Trust Company. They tell me twenty-five thousand is already on deposit and next week people from the East will arrive to commence operations. My friend, they have already bought forty thousand acres in Montague County.”

  Carmody wanted to ask more questions, but that wasn’t the way he worked. Asking questions was the quickest way to get noticed.

  The gambler was disappointed that his information hadn’t sparked more interest in Carmody. He became irritable.

  “I know what I’m talking about, friend,” he said. “Within a few weeks, a few months at most, this town will be booming.”

  Carmody paid the Chinaman and stood up. “Sounds a bit too cut and dried for me,” he said. “Pleasure talking to you, friend.”

  The bank was open for business now, and Carmody walked across the street in the bright morning sunshine. It sure was a nice day for robbing a bank, that is if he made up his mind to do that. Out front a tame Indian was dragging a wet rag across the big window, pausing to admire the damp streaks on the dusty glass.

  Inside, there were three teller’s cages. Only one was occupied, by a bone-thin lanky man with half-lensed Ben Franklin spectacles and very big hands. Over to one side of the teller’s cages, behind a wooden fence, there were two desks. The man Carmod
y took to be the manager was sitting at the bigger desk, drinking something from a coffee mug and reading the Police Gazette. It was the only paper Carmody had ever seen that was printed on pink paper.

  The manager opened a ledger, hiding the scandal sheet. He didn’t turn his head to look at Carmody. He swiveled the whole chair around. Carmody didn’t look like money, so he went back to the steel engravings of New York cuties, bulge-chested and hourglass-waisted.

  “No, sir,” the teller informed Carmody. “The only kind of Mexican money this bank exchanges is gold. No, sir, no paper money of any kind.”

  “That’s right, cowboy,” the bank manager called out, looking up from the pink pages of the Police Gazette. “You got some Mexican gold you bring it back here and I’ll exchange it for you myself. Give you the best price in the State of Texas.”

  “Be right back from the hotel,” Carmody said, deciding against the caution of years that he was going to take the Ringgold bank. “And much obliged to you, sir.”

  The bank manager nodded with heavy grace.

  It was such a nice morning, with the real bad summer heat a full month away, and the one street that made up all of Ringgold was quiet and lazy. The sun in the street was hot enough to make a man sweat some, but in the shade it was cool and the dust didn’t sting the eyes so it mattered.

  With a solid night’s sleep behind him, with the Chinaman’s breakfast filling out the wrinkles in his lean belly, Carmody felt all right, not relaxed exactly but rested and fed and not particularly anxious to start any kind of gunplay. After all, why kill the bank teller and the manager if he didn’t have to?

  The old drunk who ran the livery stable was snoring on a pile of hay in one of the empty stalls, an empty bottle and a half-empty bottle beside him. Carmody felt like kicking him in the ribs. The bottle-sucker should have been looking lively after the animals hours before.

  Carmody uncorked the bottle with whisky in it and held it under the old man’s hair-choked nose. Still not fully awake, the stableman started making sucking noises with his gum-caked lips. Carmody stuck the neck of the bottle into the old man’s mouth and poured in enough whisky to make another man drunk before he got up off the ground. Like a spavined horse with ginger up his ass, the old man came to life, wheezing and red-eyed.