Regulator, chapter 7
In which Charlie finds out he's on the trail of the Johnston Gang
On a train to Valle Verde, Charlie learns from Angus Thorn that his new assignment has him aimed at the Johnston Gang.
by Frank A. Spring
Possessed of a neat and orderly downtown surrounded by hastily-erected shantytowns, the whole of it sprawled out in a shallow valley between ranges of hills, Valle Verde looked to Charlie’s eye like an awkward adolescent who’d hit a sudden growth spurt, outgrown his good clothes, and gotten paralytically drunk and passed out in a ditch.
But what a ditch it was. The valley was so lush it glowed green in the sun, the air was sharp and clean and somehow sweet, and the crown of mountains to the west so acutely reminded Charlie of how much he’d missed this part of the world that he had to stop and catch his breath.
Angus Thorn reined in next to him. They had not spoken much since Charlie had found him, exactly as he had been, sitting absolutely still in the Pinkerton offices, reading the newspaper. By way of getting started immediately, Thorn had led Charlie back to the train station and gotten them on the next southbound, where, once settled, he gave Charlie a respectful nod, pulled his hat down over his face, and gave every appearance of being about to fall asleep.
Charlie felt this pretty rich, but McParland’s liberal, and eminently sound, therapeutic doses of whiskey had put him in a fairly pacific mood, so he contented himself with asking his near-somnolent companion “where shall I wake you?”
“You needn’t,” came the voice from under the hat.
In the end it was Thorn who had woken Charlie, who started from a deep sleep to find it was already dark and the train was slowing down.
“Where are we?” Charlie asked.
“Colorado Springs.”
Out on the platform, Thorn had looked Charlie up and down with those piercing dark eyes.
“We’re for Valle Verde.”
McParland’s liberal, and eminently sound, therapeutic doses of whiskey had put him in a fairly pacific mood.
Charlie looked blearily about and pulled his collar up against the cold. “There’s another train tonight?”
“We ride from here.”
The town of Colorado Springs had few lights, and beyond was darkness. Thorn followed Charlie’s eyes out into the inky night.
“I know the way. We can have a rest when we get there. Unless you’re too tired to go on.”
In Charlie’s experience a man who proposed to travel by night usually had a reason for doing so; if he asked him outright he might tell him, but that was not a conversation for a train platform.
“I guess we should get to it.”
“Bully. Horses are this way.”
The sun had properly warmed their bones by the time they reined up to look over Valle Verde. At the southern end of the valley, a puff of steam announced the progress of a train into town.
“Ain’t as much faster than a horse as you might think,” Thorn read Charlie’s thoughts, “and a lot more conspicuous getting off at the station.”
“You portend trouble?”
“Just practicing good habits.”
“You’re a self-improving man, Mr. Thorn,” said Charlie.
“Always.”
“May I ask what we’re here for?”
A ghost of a smile played across Thorn’s face. “To get a newspaper.”
**
“James Salt Lick Johnston,” said Thorn in answer to Charlie’s question a short while later as they made their way down the hill. “One of the men in the bank. I expect he’s the leader of this outfit.”
“Thought all the Johnston Gang got killed last year,” said Charlie. It had been the talk of outlaws and lawmen alike all over the country; the fearsome Johnston Gang got too big for their britches and tried to knock over a bank by main force in a town with a marshal and a sheriff and with a posse of Texas Rangers on their tail, evidently thinking they could shoot their way out. They could not.
“Salt Lick alone lived to tell the tale,” Thorn said. “Probably stared the bullets down.”
“You know him?”
“I rode with his brother Thomas a time or two when he was a marshal, before the whole family turned outlaw. James was around.”
“You were a lawman?”
“No.”
“You’re a self-improving man, Mr. Thorn,” said Charlie.
“Always.”
Charlie liked it when other people were forthcoming about their past to him, honesty between people being the foundation of good relations, but since he had no leg of his own to stand on at all in this respect he drowned his irritation with a deep breath of the mountain air.
“The other two in the bank were the O’Connell brothers, Randall and Davy,” Thorn went on. “They ran with Doolin-Dalton back when that outfit was around, and did some independent work, as you might call it, after it fell apart. There are folks who call Davy The Massacre Kid, which might or might not tell you something.”
“And River Tom?”
“Red River Tom Coleman,” said Thorn. “You know him?”
“Just from that train business,” said Charlie, meaning the business when River Tom and whatever gang he’d scraped up were robbing a train in Nevada, something had evidently gone wrong, and they’d shot up a passenger car and with it a truly unreasonable number of passengers.
River Tom disappeared for better than two years afterward. No one could say where he went, despite a fair number of his gang being asked, sometimes even nicely, before they were hanged.
“I’ve seen him once that I know of, and once that I think it was him,” said Thorn. “He was friendly with an associate of mine, alas no longer with us, and we all of us drank whiskey together in Durango. I liked Coleman well enough; struck me as a bit too slick for his own good but he was decent company. The other time was at a stock show near Cheyenne; saw a cowhand bringing in some steers and I could swear it was him, and I’m pretty sure he saw me. Tried to track him down but he vanished, which makes me think it really was him.”
“Had he reason to run from you?”
“Might well have thought so.”
“Any chance he’s the leader of this little posse?”
“Could be. Not surprised he fooled the good townspeople of Plainview, Oklahoma, with his bullshit; he struck me as a man whose talents might lie that way. Salt Lick Johnston is too mean to be told what to do. Suppose they could be running it together.” Thorn paused, then shook his head.
Charlie wasn’t letting this one go. “But?”
“But,” Thorn exhaled. “But Johnston, Coleman, both together, whoever’s running this outfit, this ain’t their style. Planning, patience, not a shot fired - not them at all. That’s what's got your agency’s big boy in Denver so worked up.”
So Charlie had not imagined McParland’s apparent dislike of Thorn, and evidently the feeling was mutual. This was fair enough by Charlie, who understood the value of a decent grudge as much as the next man, provided their antipathy didn’t somehow get his ass shot.
“They pulled it off well enough,” he said lamely, hoping to keep Thorn’s thoughts on the gang and off McParland.
“It should never have occurred to them at all,” said Thorn. “If they had shot their way into and out of the bank? Sure. That’d be them all over. This had subtlety.”
Charlie nodded, thinking of how another Pinkerton agent who’d been in Nevada during River Tom’s train business had told him over whiskey that the railway company was obliged to tear out and replace the interior of the infamous passenger car because the blood was soaked too deeply to get out and spread too widely to cover up. Subtlety wasn’t in it.
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