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    Ralph Compton West of the Law
    Ralph Compton West of the Law
    Ralph Compton West of the Law
    Ebook316 pages4 hours

    Ralph Compton West of the Law

    By Ralph Compton and Joseph A. West

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    About this ebook

    This western in Ralph Compton's USA Today bestselling series goes from the mean streets of New York City to the lawless frontier...

    Ordered to head west when a notorious New York City gangster puts a price on his head, Detective Sergeant Joseph McBride ends up in the lawless boomtown of High Hopes, Colorado. But running goes against the lawman’s grain, and so does lying low. In a town where miners and innocents are easy prey, McBride quickly runs afoul of corrupt saloon owner Gamble Trask and his vicious hired guns.
     
    When a beautiful card dealer comes to McBride for protection, he vows to take down Trask and destroy his vile trade in opium and Chinese slave girls once and for all. Now, it’s high time for one of New York’s finest to dole out some frontier justice of his own.
     
    More Than Six Million Ralph Compton Books In Print!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 2, 2007
    ISBN9781440620232
    Author

    Ralph Compton

    Ralph Compton stood six-foot-eight without his boots. His first novel in the Trail Drive series, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was also the author of the Sundown Rider series and the Border Empire series. A native of St. Clair County, Alabama, Compton worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist before turning to writing westerns. He died in Nashville, Tennessee in 1998.

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      Ralph Compton West of the Law - Ralph Compton

      Chapter 1

      The sky was on fire and death stalked the darkness.

      John McBride, until that night a detective sergeant, one of New York City’s finest, pressed his back against the side of a freight car, the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber self-cocker in his right fist up and ready at shoulder level.

      Beside him he heard Inspector Thomas Byrnes curse the rain, the gloom and the lightning that scrawled across the sky like the signature of a demented god.

      ‘‘John, where is the damn . . . ?’’ Byrnes’ final word was lost in a crash of thunder.

      ‘‘Train?’’ McBride finished it for him, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

      ‘‘Yeah, the train, damn it. I paid the guard ten dollars just to wave a lamp from the back of the caboose as he pulled out of the yard. Well, I don’t see a caboose, I don’t see a lamp and I sure as hell don’t see a train.’’ The inspector’s anxious gaze searched the rain-lashed darkness around them. ‘‘You see anything?’’

      ‘‘Nothing.’’

      ‘‘At least there’s no sign of Sean Donovan’s hoodlums. That’s good.’’

      ‘‘Yeah,’’ McBride said, his bleak eyes lost in darkness, ‘‘that’s good. But the fact that we can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not out there.’’

      The big cop saw only a sea of wet, gleaming rails and the hunched, black silhouettes of motionless boxcars. Here and there rose the looming bulk of water towers, standing on four skinny legs like creatures from a child’s nightmare. Shadows pooled everywhere, mysterious and full of menace, the torrential rain talking among them in a voice that rattled like black phlegm in the chest of an ancient coal miner.

      Beyond the train yard, unseen in the darkness, sprawled a warren of warehouses, slaughterhouses and cattle pens, and behind those the teeming, pestilence-ridden tenements of Hell’s Kitchen. The rickety buildings, infested by rats and slyer, more dangerous two-legged vermin, were inhabited by poor Irish immigrants, starving paupers, orphaned children, whores, pickpockets and criminal gangs, the most vicious of them big, laughing Sean Donovan’s Forty-fifth Street Derry Boys.

      Donovan, six feet four and 250 pounds, all of it bone and muscle, had come up the hard way. He’d begun his criminal career as an enforcer for Dutch Heinrich’s ferocious Nineteenth Street Gang. On Dutch Henry’s orders he’d used brass knuckles, boots and skull to smash and destroy all those foolish or brave enough to defy the gangster. Donovan had killed eight men with his fists and several more with a gun or knife before he finally forced out the Dutchman and took over his protection, prostitution, gambling and opium rackets.

      For all his well-cut suits, his diamond pinkie ring and his cynical, self-serving generosity to the poor, Sean Donovan was a bad man to cross, a born killer with a long memory. It was Detective Sergeant McBride’s misfortune that he’d been forced to kill one of the big Irishman’s sons . . . and that was a thing Donovan would not forgive or ever forget.

      McBride stepped to the corner of the freight car and stared into the flame-streaked night. Sizzling like water on a hot plate, lightning flashes lit up the train yard, scorching the darkness with bolts of scarlet and gold. Nothing moved in the searing light that flickered like a gigantic magic lantern before dying into blackness. There was no sound but the crash of thunder and the dragon hiss of the rain.

      ‘‘See anything, Sergeant?’’ Byrnes asked again, a faint note of hope rising in his voice.

      ‘‘Nothing.’’ McBride let his gun drop to his side. With a toe he pushed his wet carpetbag farther under the freight car, then turned and stood by the inspector. ‘‘This doesn’t sit well with me,’’ he said. ‘‘I mean to cut and run like this. It’s sticking in my craw like a dry chicken bone.’’

      Rain ran in rivulets off the black oilskin capes both men wore, and drummed on their plug hats. Around them the raging night was on fire.

      Byrnes spoke slowly, as though he were talking to a child. His eyes tried and failed to meet McBride’s in the gloom. Thunder crashed, lightning flared and the air smelled of ozone and the rubbery tang of wet oilskin.

      ‘‘John,’’ he said, ‘‘Donovan vows he’ll pay the man who brings him your ears a thousand dollars in gold.’’

      ‘‘I know that, Inspector,’’ McBride said, a small, stiff anger rising in him. ‘‘Isn’t that the reason we’re here?’’

      ‘‘So I’m telling you something you already know, but it won’t do you any harm to hear it again.’’ He waved a hand. ‘‘Back there in the Kitchen, there’s no lack of toughs who will cut any man, woman or child in half with a shotgun for fifty dollars. The word is out, John. You’re a brave man and a good officer, but you’re in over your head. For a thousand dollars they’ll come at you in the hundreds. There will be no end to them. And finally they’ll get you, someday, somewhere, with a bullet or a knife in the back.’’

      ‘‘I could go after Donovan,’’ McBride said. He’d moved even closer to Byrnes and the hard planes of his face seemed cast in bronze. ‘‘If he’s out of the way, there’s no one to pay his blood money.’’

      Inspector Byrnes shook his head, a motion McBride heard rather than saw. ‘‘John, you know we can’t touch Donovan, at least for now. He covers his slimy tracks real well. Even if we did arrest him, his battery of high-priced lawyers would get him out within the hour, and later they’d make sure we never got a conviction.’’ Byrnes’ laugh was bitter. ‘‘Add to that the fact that he’s got half of city hall in his pocket, and right now Mr. Donovan is well-nigh untouchable.’’

      McBride stepped closer to Byrnes, a gusting wind slapping rain into his face. ‘‘He’s not untouchable, Inspector. I can get to him.’’

      It took a few moments for the implication of what McBride had just said to sink into Byrnes’ consciousness. He put his hand on the taller man’s wet shoulder. ‘‘Sergeant McBride, you are an intelligent, brave and resourceful officer, but if you killed Sean Donovan, it would be my unpleasant duty to charge you with murder. That means either the rope or forty years in Sing Sing. Either way, Donovan would have won because you’d be dead or buried alive in the penitentiary.’’ Byrnes made a fist and punched McBride lightly on the chest. ‘‘You think about that now, boyo.’’

      A sense of utter defeat weighing heavy on him, McBride turned his face to a black sky cobwebbed with lightning, thunder roaring like gigantic boulders being hurled along a marble hall. He said nothing. He could not find the words.

      ‘‘John, you will leave for the Western lands just as we planned,’’ Byrnes said, his tone cajoling. ‘‘A man can lose himself out there in the wilderness. After that, let me deal with Donovan. Let the law deal with him.’’

      ‘‘The law hasn’t dealt with him so far,’’ McBride said. ‘‘What makes you think things will change?’’

      ‘‘He’ll make a slip, John. His kind always do. We’ll get him in the end and lock him away for a long, long time.’’

      ‘‘And then I can come running back,’’ McBride said. His voice was flat, the words tasting bitter as acid on his tongue.

      ‘‘Yes, John. Then you come back.’’

      ‘‘The prodigal returns,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Welcome home, Detective Sergeant, the man who fled the city with his tail between his legs. The man big Sean Donovan ran out of town.’’

      ‘‘It won’t be like that, John.’’ Byrnes heard the uncertainty in his own voice and immediately said it again, more confidently this time as he attempted to repair the damage. ‘‘It won’t be like that.’’ He thought for a few moments, then added, ‘‘Besides, you’re not running. You’re obeying a direct order from your superior to get out of New York.’’

      Byrnes couldn’t see McBride’s face, but he felt the man’s accusing eyes burn into him. The inspector turned away, cursed under his breath, then said aloud, ‘‘Where is that damned train?’’

      The thunderstorm had encouraged the wind and now it blew stronger, slapping the oilskins around the legs of the two men, driving the hard, raking rain straight at them, stinging into their faces. The freight car provided little shelter and McBride felt it rock on the rails, its wooden walls creaking in protest.

      His hand wet on the handle of his gun, McBride used his wrist to wipe rain from his eyes. His years as a detective had given him an instinct for danger, and now he felt it strongly. The darkness drew around him, pressing on him, giving him no peace. Out there in the train yard, somewhere, death was drawing close. McBride did not need the candle of reason to read the signs, for there were none. It was enough that he felt the approaching threat, smelled it in the wind. It existed.

      Inspector Byrnes drew closer to McBride and reached inside his oilskin. He produced a thick envelope and shoved it into the younger man’s hand. ‘‘I almost forgot, John. This is for you.’’

      McBride studied the envelope for a moment, then opened it and looked at the contents.

      ‘‘Eleven hundred dollars,’’ Byrnes said, his voice rising against the keening wind and the relentless rattle of the rain. ‘‘A year’s salary in advance. Mayor Grace gave his full approval. As far as he is concerned, you are still on the police payroll.’’ The inspector hesitated, then added, ‘‘Don’t be stiff-necked about this, John. Take the money. You’ll need it to help you get settled when you reach the Western territories.’’

      Angry and sick at heart as he was, McBride had it in his mind to refuse. But, a practical man, he knew to arrive exiled and penniless in a strange land would add a new set of problems to the ones he already had.

      After some thought, he capitulated. ‘‘Thank you, sir,’’ he said, shoving the envelope into the inside pocket of his coat. ‘‘And please thank the mayor.’’

      ‘‘I will, John,’’ Byrnes said. ‘‘God knows, no one deserves that money more than you do. You—’’ The inspector glanced wildly around him. ‘‘Wait! I hear a train!’’

      McBride heard it too. He stepped away from the freight car and his eyes scanned the night. A few lights burned over at the warehouses and one by one he saw them blink out as they were obscured by a hulking black shape. The locomotive’s bell clanked and steam jetted from between its wheels, the huff-huff-huff of the venting smoke from the chimney drowning out the sound of the rain.

      Byrnes shoved McBride’s carpetbag at him. ‘‘It’s the train. Go now, John!’’

      McBride felt it then, an overwhelming sense of dread. The men who stalked him were close. They were here.

      A bullet smashed into the side of the boxcar, inches from McBride’s head. Another whined viciously off the iron rail close to his feet. Suddenly Byrnes was firing into the darkness, a .38 bucking in his right hand. He turned his head slightly. ‘‘Go, John!’’ he yelled. ‘‘I’ll hold them off!’’

      Lightning branded the sky, flashing bright. McBride caught a glimpse of four men running toward him, one of them with a shotgun slanted across his chest. McBride fired at that man, very fast. The light flickered and died as a wild scream split the night.

      ‘‘You got one of them!’’ Byrnes yelled. ‘‘Now run for the train. That’s an order, damn it!’’

      Desperately, McBride cast one final look at Byrnes, then turned and ran. The caboose was right ahead of him and he saw a red lantern waving from the rear platform.

      Behind him, he heard Byrnes’ gun. Then the man was pounding after him, running between the rain-slicked rails. Another shot and Byrnes stumbled and fell, clutching at his right leg. McBride stopped, looked back, but the inspector waved him on. ‘‘Get to the train!’’ he hollered. ‘‘I’ll be all right.’’

      ‘‘Inspector, I—,’’ McBride began, standing uncertainly, his gun in one hand, the carpetbag in the other. Now the caboose was off to his left and the train of boxcars was gathering speed, rattling into the darkness. McBride could see the guard now, frantically waving the lantern, yelling words he could not hear against the crash of thunder and roar of rain.

      ‘‘Go, John, before it’s too late!’’ Byrnes yelled.

      McBride ran for the caboose. He heard Byrnes call out, ‘‘John, write to me when you get to where you’re going.’’ A pause, then: ‘‘Confide in no one! Trust no one! Sean Donovan reaches far.’’

      A sickness in him, McBride ran. ‘‘Hurry!’’ the guard yelled.

      The big cop threw his bag onto the caboose platform, then leaped for the rail. He swung himself up beside the guard and saw that the man’s eyes were wide with fear. A bullet smashed into the glass of the door behind the guard and he yelped, dropped his lantern and ran inside.

      The train was moving faster, the boxcars and caboose hammering along the rails, plunging into the darkness.

      Fear coursing through him, McBride put his hands to his mouth and roared into the night: ‘‘Inspector!’’

      He heard a flurry of shots. Then an echoing silence mocked him.

      Chapter 2

      Days, nights, melting into a blur of landscape, changing weather and the pale, shifting faces of his fellow travelers, rushed past John McBride at the speed of a steam train. He had no final destination, no place of rest in mind. He kept to himself, spoke to no one and was content to ride the iron rails to wherever they might lead.

      But one thing he did know—his direction was west, always west, toward the Divide.

      Two weeks after he’d left New York, McBride stood on the platform of a train station . . . he knew not where.

      Over the past hour it had grown dark and the sky was ablaze with stars. Lanterns hung on each side of the door that led to the waiting room and ticket office, casting dancing pools of orange light, flecked with tiny white moths.

      His carpetbag at his feet, McBride looked around him. The station was small, but it had been built with care. Elaborate gingerbread carving adorned the edges of the slanted roof, and expensive, wrought iron benches were placed at strategic intervals along the platform for the convenience of travelers. A water tower stood by the tracks, leaking fat drops as they all did, and close by sprawled a rickety cattle pen.

      Beyond the station he saw the lights of a town, tiny by McBride’s standards. He was a man who had been born and bred in the big city. But where there was a town, there would be a hotel, and he was looking forward to stretching out on a real bed.

      After he’d left the freight he’d ridden the cushions, but had spent long, boring hours kicking his heels at stations in the middle of nowhere, often just an old boxcar on a siding, where he drank coffee made from alkaline water and ate fried salt pork the few times it was available.

      There were other stations, farther west, where he looked over the town and judged what it had to offer. But all of them seemed too small, smaller than this one, and in such towns a man as tall and muscular as McBride would be noticed and be a source of much speculation and talk.

      Inspector Byrnes had told him to confide in no one and trust no one, warning him that Sean Donovan’s reach was long. So far none of the towns along the Santa Fe track had offered him the kind of anonymity he sought, and he’d kept on rolling.

      At first the country McBride had passed through had been a patchwork of wheat fields, flat country formed by the retreat of ancient glaciers, and a few stretches of pastureland. As the days passed, the land had changed. The villages had disappeared, giving way to rolling prairies that went on forever under the vast blue dome of the sky. The only trees in sight were the cottonwoods and willows that lined the creeks. Once, the train had stopped to allow the passage of a herd of buffalo. Seeing McBride’s interest, and pegging him for a pilgrim, one of his fellow passengers, a wiry old man in a buckskin shirt who held a brass-framed rifle between his knees.

      ‘‘The buffs are all but gone now,’’ the old man had said, a faint touch of sadness in his smile. ‘‘Maybe we’re seeing the last of them. So remember this, boy, because you’ll never come upon their like again, not in your lifetime or in any other.’’

      Only when the old man told him that the Rocky Mountains were directly ahead of them, and beyond the peaks lay the dry, desert lands of the Arizona Territory, did John McBride decide to leave the lurching, smoking misery of the train and find a place where he could settle.

      But for how long? A month, a year, longer? He had no answer to this question and the realization of that made him sick at heart. He was a stranger in a strange land, far from the stone canyons and teeming streets of the great city he loved. Maybe there would be no going back as long as Sean Donovan lived. In that case he was doomed to be forever a wandering exile and no one, man, woman or child, would look forward to his coming or regret his leaving.

      Unbidden, a sigh escaped McBride’s lips. He shook his head slowly, picked up his carpetbag and stepped into the station. A ticket clerk sat behind an iron grille, a small man with a lined face, a visored cap set straight on his head. He looked up when McBride entered.

      ‘‘No other trains tonight,’’ the clerk said, waving a dismissive hand, ‘‘ ’cept the Denver cannonball, an’ she don’t stop.’’

      McBride nodded, a tall man in an ill-fitting brown suit, looking hot and uncomfortable in his high celluloid collar and dark green tie. His black derby hat showed signs of hard use and was frayed around the brim. The shabby suit coat, cut generously in the style of the time, concealed the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster under his arm.

      ‘‘What is this place?’’ he asked.

      The clerk looked surprised. ‘‘Hell, man, you mean you don’t know?’’

      ‘‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking,’’ McBride said.

      At first the clerk had tried to slap a brand on the tall man, taking him for a drummer headed for the gold diggings or maybe a cattle buyer. Now, looking into a pair of blue eyes that were the coldest and hardest he’d ever seen, he wasn’t so sure. His tone changed.

      ‘‘That there iron road outside belongs to the Santa Fe, but you already know that.’’ He waved a hand. ‘‘The town is called High Hopes an’ this is the great state of Colorado. To the west are the Spanish Peaks, to the south the Picketwire and to the north there’s miles of nothing until you reach the Platte.’’ The man smiled. ‘‘Enough for you, stranger?’’

      ‘‘What’s to the east?’’

      The clerk shrugged. ‘‘More nothing until you get back to the place you came from.’’

      McBride allowed himself a smile. ‘‘What manner of town is this?’’

      ‘‘It’s a town like any other west of the Mississippi, ’cept it’s booming on account of the railroad and the gold in the Spanish Peaks. High Hopes caters to miners, cattlemen, whores and gamblers. We got thirty stores, two hotels, three saloons, and I’m betting that nary a man jack of us has ever lived within the sound of church bells.’’

      ‘‘That apply to the women as well?’’ McBride asked, another smile tugging at his lips.

      ‘‘Especially the women.’’

      McBride thought through what the clerk had told him. Even back East he’d heard of the Western boomtowns with their constantly shifting populations of footloose miners and those who preyed on them, whores, gamblers and saloonkeepers.

      A man could lose himself here. He’d just be another face in a constantly changing crowd and no one would notice or care as he came or went.

      ‘‘What’s the best hotel?’’ McBride asked.

      ‘‘If you got the money, two dollars a day, the best is the Killeen. If you don’t got the money, you can bunk at Charlie Ault’s place for two bits a night. Of course, you’ll have to share your bunk with another feller and a passel o’ bedbugs.’’

      ‘‘Then the Killeen it is,’’ McBride said. ‘‘I suppose it doesn’t have bedbugs?’’

      ‘‘No, no bedbugs,’’ the clerk said. ‘‘It’s got clean rooms.’’ The man had answered the question absently, obviously thinking about something else. Now he said what was on his mind.

      ‘‘How long you plan on staying in High Hopes, mister?’’

      ‘‘I don’t rightly know,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Why do you ask?’’

      The clerk was suddenly uncomfortable. He rose to his feet, opened the door of the ticket office and stepped beside McBride. ‘‘I have some

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