“I can take care of the newspaperman for you,” Butrum said. “And this time, there won’t be no comin’ back the way he did after Slater and the others did their little job.”
“No, that’s all right. We’ll let him be for a while.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the boss,” Butrum said. His voice had the high-pitched quality that was common in very small people.
“Don’t leave just yet,” Denbigh said. Pulling a piece of paper from his desk, he began to write. “See to it that this telegram is sent, will you?”
“Yes, sir,” Butrum said.
After Butrum left, Denbigh returned to his map and began studying it again, though this time his mind was on something else. He was thinking about the man to whom he had just sent the telegram.
Lucas Meacham.
Denbigh had employed Meacham’s services once before, and if there was anyone he had ever met, or even heard about, who was more deadly than Ollie Butrum, it was this man.
Meacham had once killed an entire family for Denbigh—father, mother, four kids, and a grandmother thrown in for good measure. He had a reputation for being deadly accurate with his shooting, and absolutely merciless with his killing. And though Denbigh had never met Matt Jensen, he knew it was going to take someone like Lucas Meacham to make certain that Jensen did not become a problem for him.
Chapter Six
When Lucas Meacham struck the match, the flare of light made his piercing brown eyes, hawklike nose, and jutting chin even more prominent. Holding the match to his watch, he saw that it was almost ten o’clock. According to the information he had gotten, Bradley Keaton was supposed to appear on the corner under the lamplight at exactly ten o’clock.
Meacham was depending on that, because he had paid well to get it set up. And he knew that the person who was arranging this for him knew that if Keaton didn’t show up, Meacham would be most unhappy. And people who met Meacham realized, very quickly, that he was not the kind of man one wanted to make unhappy.
A few minutes later, a man came out of the saloon, then stopped on the corner, under the street lamp. He stood there for a moment, looking in both directions. Meacham raised the rifle to his shoulder, but he lowered it when he saw a woman come out of the saloon to join the man. The man gave the woman some money; then the two of them hurried off to her crib.
Meacham blew his nose onto the ground, and waited.
Behind him, his horse whickered and stamped its foot.
From the saloon, a woman’s high-pitched squeal of laughter was joined by a man’s deep guffaw.
A back door slammed shut in one of the houses and, in the moonlight, Meacham saw a man heading for the toilet, carrying a wad of paper with him.
Another man approached the street lamp, this time coming out of the dark. The man stopped under the light of the lamppost, reached into his pocket to pull out a watch, then raised his hand to study it pointedly, as if waiting to meet someone.
This was the man Meacham had been waiting for, and once again he raised his rifle, then aimed at the easy target the street lamp provided for him. Once he had the sight picture lined up, he squeezed the trigger slowly, and was rocked back by the recoil of the exploding cartridge. Even from here, he could see part of the man’s skull fly away as the heavy lead slug crashed through his head.
The heavy boom of the shot rolled back from the distant hills so that it sounded almost like a volley, rather than a single, exceptionally well-placed shot. Meacham mounted his horse and rode quickly toward the sprawled body of the man he had just shot. By the time he reached the corner, several others had gathered around the body.
“Who did this?” someone was saying. “Did anybody see anything?”
Meacham saw a star on the questioner’s vest.
“I did it, Sheriff,” Meacham said, swinging down from his horse.
“I’m the deputy, not the sheriff,” the man said. “You’re confessing to this, are you?”
“I’m not confessing, I’m claiming,” Meacham replied.
“What do you mean, you are claiming? Who are you?”
“The name is Meacham. Lucas Meacham.”
Meacham took a folded-up paper from his vest pocket and showed it to the deputy.
“This man is Bradley Keaton,” Meacham said. “There’s a thousand dollars reward out on him. Dead or alive,” he added pointedly. “And as you can see, he is dead.”
“Oh, yes,” the deputy said. “He is definitely dead.”
Meacham nodded toward the hotel. “I’m going to take a room in the hotel for tonight. I expect to have verification and payment by noon tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” the deputy said. “I’m sure you will have.”
“Thank you.”
The next morning, Lucas Meacham was awakened by someone pounding on the door of his hotel room. After shooting Keaton the night before, he had stayed up late drinking and playing cards, and now he felt as if every knock on the door had the effect of hitting him in the head.
“All right, all right!” he yelled, and even the sound of his own voice caused his head to hurt. Sitting up in bed, he saw the late-morning sun streaming in through the window, and he wondered what time it was. His throat was
