The Man from Pinkertons and the Gunrunners

Chapter 7

The aftermath of the killing of Jim Howard was less troublesome than Kyle could possibly have imagined. In the usual run of things, even in the most disorganised of communities, the death of a man was a significant matter and at least some cursory enquiry would be made into the circumstances. Nothing of the kind happened though in Pilgrim’s Crossing. Kyle found this slightly shocking, because when all was said and done, the man he had shot had been a fellow being and his passing deserved to be marked in some way. No human life was worthless, and a violent death was a fearful thing, whoever the victim might be. In this case though, nobody showed any inclination to delve into the background to, or consequences of, this death.

Kyle asked several of those standing around whom he should inform of what had happened, but his enquiries were met with shrugs and noncommittal responses. One man did go as far as to say that the vigilance committee would doubtless look into it in due course, but he was reluctant to give Kyle the name of any of the vigilance men, saying, ‘It’s no affair of mine, I’m sure.’

After a while, those who had come over to examine the body wandered off and Kyle was left alone with the corpse of the man he had killed. It offended his sensibilities to walk off and leave the body laying there in the dust and so he put his hands under the dead man’s armpits and with as much dignity as he could manage, dragged him to the boardwalk. He was at a loss to know what he should do next and stood there in perplexity. It was in this pensive mood that the minister of the town’s only church, a small Protestant establishment, chanced to walk past. Seeing the corpse, he stopped and addressed Kyle in a disgusted voice, saying, ‘I’m guessing that this is your piece of work, am I right?’

‘He wanted to kill me, but he weren’t fast enough.’

‘And that makes it right for you to kill him, hey? Is that how you read the case?’

Feeling that there was some justification for the man reproaching him in this way, Kyle replied, ‘No, it wasn’t right. Still, I’m glad that it was him who died and not me, so I won’t deceive you.’

The minister, clad in black and putting Kyle in mind of some prophet from the Old Testament, stared at him for a moment and then suddenly and unexpectedly laughed out loud. He said, ‘Well. Leastways you’re honest about it. What are you fixing to do about this poor devil?’

‘Nobody seems all that fussed. I’ve tried to report his death, but I don’t rightly know who might be interested.’

‘If it was a fair fight, then nobody’ll want to concern themselves. I suppose it was a proper contest?’

‘Yes, many people saw it.’

‘Well then, we can’t just leave a man laying here by the side of the road like a dog.’

The same thought had already occurred to Kyle, but he had not the least idea how he should proceed. At the back of his mind, he was still waiting for the town sheriff or perhaps a US Marshal to come up and take charge of the investigation. He said, ‘You’d know better than me what’s right. What do you suggest?’

The minister sighed. He was not a young man and Kyle estimated his age to be nearer sixty than fifty. He said, ‘Wait here and I’ll fetch the wheelbarrow.’

‘The wheelbarrow?’ exclaimed Kyle, deeply shocked at the idea of transporting a body in such an irreverent way.

The minister looked nettled and said tartly, ‘Unless you want to carry him over your shoulder to the church, then the wheelbarrow it will be.’

While he stood around, awaiting the return of the man of God with a wheelbarrow, Kyle noted with some amazement how little attention the shooting had caused. Sure, it had been a novelty while it was happening, but now people were passing to and fro, barely bothering to glance at the corpse over which he stood guard. He had seen nothing approaching such a callous lack of interest in a human death since the end of the war. There was no doubt at all that Pilgrim’s Crossing really was a singular town.

When the man returned with his wheelbarrow, Kyle remarked casually, ‘Wouldn’t have thought that folk round here were all that hot for Lord. You get many in that church of yours on a Sunday?’

The old minister gave him a somewhat sour look and replied, ‘Just after the end of the war, this town was thriving, you know. Had ten times as many people living here as there is now. There wasn’t only my place of worship, there was a Catholic chapel as well. For all the Irishers, you know. But now? If three or four people attend divine worship, I count that as a full house.’

There didn’t seem much to say to this and so Kyle helped lift the body and place it with as much respect as possible under the circumstances, into the wheelbarrow. He offered to push it, a proposal to which the other man readily assented. They walked to the little church in companionable silence. The building was spotlessly clean, but in great need of repairs. It was entirely made of wood, some of which had shrunk with the heat, so that one could see chinks of light when looking up at the ceiling. After they had laid out the dead man on a trestle table, the minister said, ‘I’d best introduce myself. My names Cathcart, Andrew Cathcart.’

‘I’m called Kyle. And I wouldn’t’ve killed this man had he not been so set on trying to kill me.’

‘What are you about here? Meaning what brings you to this neck of the woods?’

If he couldn’t trust a clergyman, then upon whom could he rely? This thought prompted Kyle to say, ‘I’m working for the Pinkertons Agency and I’m here on business.’

‘Are you, though? What are you looking into round here? Gold, guns or white slavers?’

‘Guns.’

‘Ah,’ said the Reverend Cathcart, and this man was trying to deter you, is that how the case stands?’

‘Pretty well sir, yes.’

‘Forgive my sharp words earlier. I thought you were just some mad assassin or shooting artist.’

Kyle felt that he had done about as much as he could for the man who had tried to kill him and he said, ‘If I can’t be of any more use, then I had best be going.’

‘Not so hasty. If it’s gunrunning that you’re looking into, then I’m guessing that you’re on the trail of that Confederate officer who turned up here a few days back?’

‘You know him?’

‘I know of him. Since he’s not got any women in tow and doesn’t appear to be buying or selling gold, then I reckoned he was up to something in the smuggling line.’

Kyle knew that he could not waste any further time on idle gossip of this kind. He said, ‘Is there really nobody in this town who I could report these matters to? Nobody as would be interested in the death of this man, for instance?’

‘Not a one. If you’d crept up behind him and killed him while he wasn’t looking, then you might find a bunch of citizens would show you how they disapproved of such sneaking actions, but in a case such as this in broad daylight, on the public highway, I doubt anybody will really care.’

‘So I really am on my own here?’

‘That you are, son. That you are.’

As he left the church, Kyle cast a quick glance up and down the street, in case anybody was planning to jump him. He could not believe that Stannard and the men with him would let pass the murder of their friend and so he would have to be exceedingly careful for the rest of his stay in town. It seemed to him that his best hope was to stay in public places as much as he could during the hours of daylight, so that any attempt to assassinate him would have to be done in front of a crowd of witnesses, who might just conceivably be minded to avenge his death, if they thought that he had not been killed in a fair fight. It was a faint hope and slight possibility, but it was all that he could see to pin his hopes upon.

Had there not been another development, and Jethro Kyle had been compelled to trust to the presence of impartial witnesses to deter those who might wish to kill him, then he would very likely have been murdered that very day. The reason being that Colonel Edward Stannard was incandescent with rage at having seen Kyle kill his lieutenant. It was not that Stannard had any kind of sentimental attachment to Jim Howard, but rather that the numbers of his band were now so depleted that it cast into hazard the chances of being able to undertake his planned journey to Diaz’ rebel army. A day or two back, there had been seven of them, but now they were only five. Getting two heavily laden wagons to the Rio Grande and then across the river would require some tricky manoeuvrers. On top of that, his chemist had now been got at and had to be guarded, in case he bolted. The blame for all this, Stannard laid at Kyle’s door and he was determined to settle accounts with the man and be damned to the consequences.

Stannard had engaged to buy two carts from a fellow who was scrubbing a living on a smallholding not far from Pilgrim’s Crossing. He was expected to bring these to the town that very evening. His mind was focused upon two questions now. These were, how soon would it be prudent to kill Kyle and how long should he and his boys leave it before they tried to retrieve the weaponry from San Angelo Pass. Unfortunately for the colonel, he was about to be overtaken by events.

When they attacked the column heading to Fort La Cruce, Stannard and the others guessed that it be a day or so at the least before the army found out what had happened and descended on the area in search of both vengeance and their lost Gatling Guns. As it happened, things moved far more swiftly than anybody could have imagined and for the most trifling of reasons. A rider had arrived at the arsenal bearing an important message which had to reach the fort as speedily as could be. It struck the officer commanding that if he simply sent a messenger galloping after the party heading for the fort, then this man could just pass the message to them and they could carry it on to the camp which was their destination. It would save depriving the arsenal of a man for the round trip to La Cruce.

Corporal Thomas McCann reached San Angelo barely twenty minutes after Kyle had left the scene of the massacre to head back to Pilgrim’s Crossing. McCann could not at first make any sense of what he found, although he had of course smelled the burning wagons from some distance. He dismounted and looked around at the frightful sight, before promptly vomiting up his breakfast. Then, after showing great foresight, he felt the skin of the corpses and concluded quite correctly that they were not long dead. He could see that the crates were not on the carts, which led him to believe that they had been carried off. There was little point in his riding after the men who had carried out this atrocity by himself, because he had no idea how many attackers had been involved here. He accordingly did the most sensible thing he could possibly have done, which was to ride straight back to the arsenal to sound the alarm.

The first that the citizens of Pilgrim’s Crossing knew about any of this was when six troopers of the US Cavalry rode along main street. The arsenal was used as a staging post for troops heading through the area and so the sight of a few soldiers was nothing unfamiliar or alarming to the town. The men who dismounted though and began visiting the saloon and stores, made it pretty clear that they expected people to worry. They knew very well that Pilgrim’s Crossing was a stopping-over point for various dubious types; men up to mischief as you might say. They did not scruple to warn all the store owners and bartenders that they wished to know the identity of every man currently staying the town who was not in the usual way of things a resident. They made it pretty plain too that they were not fooling around and that unless they received the information which they sought in the next hour, then there would be ill-defined, but most certainly unpleasant, consequences for the whole town.

When Stannard caught sight of the cavalry arriving, he knew at once that his scheme had miscarried. Everything was happening with far greater celerity than he had planned for and he’d an idea that the folk in the town would cheerfully throw him and his men to the wolves if it meant avoiding trouble with the army. Had there been the expected delay of a day or two before those men from the arsenal fetched up here, then he had planned to bluff it out and act as though he was as mystified as everybody else about whatever they were told had happened up at San Angelo Pass. As it was though, there had been men who saw the six of them riding out before first light and then returning a few hours later. It would take no great mental exertion on the part of the people in Pilgrim’s Crossing to figure out that Stannard and the others had been up to some villainy and brought down the wrath of the army upon the town. They would surely not hesitate to point out who they suspicioned was to blame for whatever it was that was being looked into. This was not at all good.

For his part, Kyle had no wish to get crosswise to the armed forces, but if they found out that he had watched a gang of bandits massacre ten of their men and just sat on his hands and done nothing, then he couldn’t help but suspect that they would not be best pleased. If only they could just catch hold of Stannard and the others, then he could leave town at once, having accomplished his purpose. He had worked out what was going on, just as soon as he had caught sight of the bluecoats riding into town. They had a distinctly cold air about them, as they could not wait to cause somebody trouble. Not that he could find it in his heart to blame them, but he did not wish to fall foul of their desire for vengeance and so thought it wiser to keep his head below the parapet. This seemed a good plan, but then he saw one of those men speaking to a cavalryman pointing in his direction and knew at once that his own inclinations were not about to direct the course of events.

There had always seemed to Kyle something faintly comical about dismounted horse-soldiers, like fish flopping upon dry land. There was nothing in the remotest degree amusing though about the grim-faced man striding purposely towards him now. He knew that he was in peril, because he had actually been present at the dreadful crime which these fellows were almost certainly now looking into. How they had managed to get on the trail of those involved in the business so rapidly, Kyle had no idea, but obviously this was what was now being investigated. He would have to play this hand very carefully if he was not to end up being lumped together as all of a piece with the men who had actually killed those soldiers.

There was no time for further thought, because the man was standing before Kyle with no very amiable expression upon his face. He was a heavily whiskered sergeant, maybe thirty years of age; about Kyle’s own age, in fact. The cavalryman said harshly, ‘I hear where you just fetched up here a day or two back, mister. You mind telling me what you been doing since then?’

In the normal way of things, Kyle might well have been minded to remind a soldier asking such questions that he had no authority over the civilian population and that he could go to the devil, but it would have been at best tactless and at worse dangerous to take such a line when feelings were likely to be running high. He said mildly, ‘I’ve been doing nothing much to speak of. Just looking around me, as you might say.’

‘That won’t answer,’ replied the man, eyeing him with a hard stare, ‘You best tell me who you are and what you’re about. There’s a dozen of my comrades been killed in a sneaking attack and I mean to find them as did it, you hear what I say?’

‘I hear you.’ Kyle saw that this was no time for evasion and thought that if he revealed a portion of the truth to this uncompromising fellow, then he might be better placed to conceal the awful truth; that he had watched a cold-blooded massacre and done nothing either to stop it or bring those responsible to justice. He said, ‘Fact is, I’m working for Pinkertons. I was sent here to look into gunrunning that was supposed to be taking place hereabouts.’

At the mention of gunrunning, the sergeant’s face hardened even more and his expression of suspicion showed no signs of easing. ‘Gunrunning, hey? Well ain’t that what I call a coincidence, for those men as was killed were transporting guns. Now those weapons vanished.’

‘Well, I had no part in it, if you’re suggesting so.’

‘If you’re a Pinkertons man, like you say, you might have some ideas of your own though who was behind this? Don’t you fool with me now, for my patience is all wore away when I think of those men killed up at the pass. Tell what you know or suspicion.’

Kyle knew that he would be best advised to comply with this suggestion or be branded an accomplice of the men who had slaughtered those soldiers. He was composing an answer, when there came the sharp crack of two pistol shots, some distance away, judging by the sound of them. Hearing the sound of gunfire, the sergeant at once lost all interest in Kyle and turned on his heel to go sprinting in the direction from which the shot had seemed to come. He was fumbling with the dragoon holster at his hip as he did so, trying to draw his pistol as he ran along; which was no mean feat.

Another shot echoed across the street, a rifle this time, and Kyle left his exposed position, seeking shelter in the nearby hardware store. There were a half dozen other people in there and they turned unfriendly faces to him as he entered. Most likely, thought Kyle, they thought that as an unknown drifter, he was one of those who had brought this trouble down upon their town. The people of Pilgrim’s Crossing were ready enough to make a good living from the various crooked types who frequented their town, but when trouble struck, they blamed those same characters for bringing down the lightning upon them. Kyle said sharply, ‘You folk need not look at me so. I’m a Pinkertons man and you people have been harbouring a bunch of killers and gunrunners.’ From outside came more shots, mingled with cries of anger or pain. He had nailed his colours to the mast now, but even so, Kyle did not feel called upon to join in whatever battle was now raging. Like as not, one side or the other would take him for an enemy and gun him down without a second thought. He would wait matters out here and then see how he stood with the victors.

Colonel Stannard had already realised that his enterprise as relating to the Gatling Guns hidden up at San Angelo Pass was now likely to be a non-starter. It was very much a matter of what could be salvaged from the ruin. He and the others were in a tight spot, there could be no denying it. But he had been in tight spots before and always managed to emerge unscathed. There was no reason to suppose that this would prove any different. It was while he was watching the bluecoats from the window of his room over the saloon, his mind working feverishly to formulate a plan, that the shooting began. As soon as he heard that first pistol shot, he guessed that it was one of his boys who had pulled the trigger and started the fighting. His mind flew at once to Mike Parker, who had the quickest temper of the four men who remained in his outfit. It was a shrewd but inaccurate guess. In the event, it was the coolest of his four companions who started the shooting that day.

When Clyde Barker saw two men wearing the uniform of the United States Cavalry walking towards him in a determined manner which indicated that they were not ones to brook any foolishness, Barker’s first thought was not of escape, but rather of whether or not he should try to bluff his way out of this or if it would make more sense from a strategic point of view simply to kill them on the spot. He didn’t of course think in terms of ‘strategy’ or any such long words. Rather, he could see that if the soldiers had got this far so swiftly, then it was all up with any plans which they might have entertained of retrieving those Gatlings. He calculated that if those men had their head, then it would be a toss-up whether he and the others were hanged before or after a properly constituted trial. His own money would be on ‘before’.

With the prospect of hanging to the forefront of his mind, Clyde Barker simply made a rational decision that if he was choosing between the certainty of hanging, set against the possibility of death by shooting, then he would go for the option which offered a chance of his survival. From there, it became a technical question, whether a man like himself with a forty-five carried loose in a holster which was adjusted to the exact right height for drawing quickly, could kill two men whose pistols were secured in unwieldy holsters by stiff leather straps. Barker reckoned that he would be able to undertake this task and that if his friends responded fast enough, they stood a fair chance of getting rid of all these men and escaping the town with their skins intact.

One of the cavalrymen said to Clyde Barker, ‘We’ve been asking some of them as live here and they tell that you and others lately turned up. You want to give some account of what you’re doing here?’

‘Surely,’ replied Barker affably, with a pleasant smile. Then, the smile still on his lips, he drew his piece and shot both the soldiers through the heart. His pistol was back in the holster before the two of them dropped dead. Without pausing, Barker walked off in the direction of the saloon where he and the others were staying. He hoped that the colonel and the rest of them would act quickly and deal with the rest of those who could only be looking into the slaying of their fellow bluecoats.

On hearing the shots, Colonel Stannard wasted no time in fretting over whether there might have been another way out of this. The fighting had begun and that was all that he concentrated upon. He darted over to the corner, where his Winchester was propped against the wall. He had worked the lever to bring a cartridge up and cock the rifle before he had even reached the window. Once there, he threw open the casement with one hand, not relinquishing his hold upon the rifle. Then he rested it upon the sill and scanned the street below.

The brief gunfight in which Jim Howard had met his end had not aroused all that much alarm to the townsfolk, but this present business was something else again. The soldiers were running and throwing themselves down behind wagons and water butts, looking for the enemy and there was an apprehension that this was likely to develop into some kind of skirmish, with balls flying around at random. For that reason, all those who had been on main street had dived into either the saloons or one of the stores, so that those aiming to kill each other could get on with it, without involving anybody else. This was not the first time that Pilgrim’s Crossing had seen shooting between two groups of adversaries like this.

One of the soldiers laying prone beneath a cart saw a window open and a moment later the barrel of a rifle protruding. He had his pistol in his hand and drew down on the window, firing twice in that direction. This drew fire from Clyde Barker, who was just across the street, standing in the shadow of a doorway. Mike Parker managed to get himself killed fairly swiftly. He had already seen the soldiers and like the others figured that things had begun to go wrong. He saw one of the soldiers running along in his direction and because the fellow was unarmed and struggling to pull his pistol while loping along, he seemed to Parker to be a perfect target. He shot the man, only to be instantly shot in turn by another of the soldiers, who was only a short distance behind him, concealed by a tall water butt.

Colonel Stannard exchanged shots with the man under the farm cart, until a lucky shot of his decided the matter, taking away half the cavalryman’s head. Upon which, Stannard leapt up and went in search of the others, with a view to leaving Pilgrim’s Crossing at the first available opportunity. He had mentally abandoned the Gatlings, but thought it still worthwhile to take Pete Johnson with them. They would be compelled to cross the border now, in any case, he had no illusions about how fierce the response would be on the part of the army when this present affair were added to the ambush at San Angelo. They would tear the country to pieces looking for him. That being so, he might as well try and use the chemist as some sort of way into Diaz’ favour.

When he had passed down the stairs and entered the saloon, Stannard found a huddle of people sheltering there. He caught some baleful glares, but since he had the Yellowboy in his hands, none of those present felt bold enough to make any remark. He formed the distinct impression that if he and the boys did not leave town of their own volition in the next half-hour or so, some of these folk might get up the gumption to lynch them. Things really had taken a wrong turn and always, at the back of his mind, Stannard felt that the man who had declined to join his band was ultimately to blame for this disaster. He went to the door and peered out. Across the street, Clyde Barker saw him and indicated with his hand the direction that they should move.

The man who had been given the job of keeping an eye on Pete Johnson had at first been unsure where his duty lay when he heard shooting erupt in the street. He was sitting in the chemist’s room and since the window did not look out onto main street, he was unaware of the arrival of the cavalry in town. As the shooting intensified, he said to his charge, ‘We best go down and see what’s what. Don’t try any tricks, now.’

‘I have no intention of trying any tricks,’ said Johnson with dignity, ‘I don’t wish to hazard my life though and it sounds pretty lively out there.’

Jack Williams thought that he might be needed if his friends were mixed up in a battle, but how he was to be any use if he was lumbered with this wretch was something of a mystery to him.

The two surviving soldiers realised that they were in a spot and were now fighting a rear-guard action to reach their horses and leave Pilgrim’s Crossing. They knew that those with whom they had come to the town were dead and had no idea what odds they were facing. Had they realised that only four men were involved, they might have made a stand, but for all that they knew to the contrary, the whole town was up in arms against them. They had gained the hitching post where their mounts were when Stannard fired on them from behind. At that same moment, Clyde Barker stepped into view on the other side of the street and took aim, whereupon one of the men snatched up the carbine from where it lay in the scabbard at front of his saddle. Barker fired, hitting one of the horse soldiers, but the man with the carbine fired at him, the ball catching him in the throat. Almost instantly, he too fell to the ground, mortally wounded by a shot from Colonel Stannard. At this point, Jack Williams showed up, holding the chemist he was guarding by the arm.

In the hardware store, Kyle listened as the shooting gradually subsided. He announced to the group of people who still regarded him as most likely an outlaw himself, ‘Happen I should tell you people, I’m an agent from Pinkertons and I come here to look into one or two matters. You folk’ve been harbouring some awful strange customers here and making money out of ‘em. Well, now you know how it ends.’ He made this statement with the aim of discouraging anybody thinking that he was part of Stannard’s outfit and perhaps shooting him in the back before he left town. Before leaving the store, Kyle drew the pistol tucked in his belt and looked cautiously out onto the seemingly deserted street. There was no sign of anybody at all, although he could see a couple of corpses; one of which was clad in blue uniform. He ventured out of the doorway and began moving along the street, wondering whether it would Stannard or one of the cavalrymen who first took a shot at him.

As Kyle made his way tentatively along main street, he could see people peering from windows and perhaps asking themselves, seeing the gun in his hand, if he had had any part in the recently fighting. There was dead silence, except that he could hear a slight noise from the barn at the far end of the street. It sounded to him like a small number of men tacking up some horses. No doubt Stannard was hoping to leave town and Kyle was not inclined to place any obstacles in the way of such a plan. But his mind was working hard, as he toyed with an idea which could not help but increase his standing with Pinkertons. He was in favour now, but if he could only pull off the coup which had suggested itself to him; why, he would be regarded as the best thing the agency had ever known.

He felt a little mean and worldly to be thinking in such a fashion with at least six corpses strewn about the place, but then he reflected that a man’s first duty was to himself and he could not return these men to life. This series of attacks on the army would without doubt be on the front page of every newspaper in the nation in a few days. That fifteen or sixteen soldiers should all be gunned down on the same day during a time of peace was a remarkable crime. How if he, Jethro Kyle, was able singlehandedly to brink the killers to book? That would indeed be a fine feather in his cap!

As Kyle stood there, revelling in the idea of the glory which might accrue to him if he could only bring off the triumph which he could see shining in the distance, he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs and from the barn ahead, three horses emerged. Two of them each had a single rider, but the third was carrying two men, which struck Kyle as odd. Was this a wounded member of the group? Then he looked harder and saw that the man who had explained to him the intricacies of manufacturing high explosives was hanging onto the back of one of Stannard’s men. The riders set off south, without so much as glancing back, whish was perhaps a good thing for Kyle. Had Colonel Stannard seen him standing there, it is entirely possible that he would, no matter the risk, have galloped back and tried to kill the man whom he blamed for all his misfortunes.

People were coming out onto the street now and gazing at the carnage wrought by Stannard’s men. In total, there were eight corpses now littering the streets of Pilgrim’s Crossing and it seemed to Kyle that however lax and anxious to turn a blind eye to trouble were the citizens of the town, they would now be forced to take some action. Judging from the unfriendly looks being cast in his direction, he could hazard a shrewd guess as to just what that action was likely to be. He was a stranger who had turned up from nowhere and since his arrival almost a dozen men had been shot dead in the town

. At best, he was a bird of ill omen; at worst a dangerous criminal who might easily be blamed for all the trouble lately seen in the town. It was not hard to see that when the army descended in force upon Pilgrim’s Crossing, as they surely must in the not too distant future, it might help to avert their anger if the townsfolk could point to a man they had hanged for his involvement in the events. This would demonstrate that the town itself was innocent and law abiding and not accustomed to harbouring criminals of any brand. All this passed through Kyle’s mind as he walked briskly towards the livery stable where his horse was being kept.