Bannerman the Enforcer 47 by Kirk Hamilton

Author:Kirk Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: western ebooks, piccadilly publishing, pulp westerns, short westerns, lawmen and outlaws, bannerman the enforcer western series, cowboy ebooks, westerns 1880s
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter Six – The Man from Texas

The buildings of Socorro were in plain view as Yancey Bannerman rode in across the flats in the early morning heat.

He had pushed the pace since burying Raoul Mendez, bypassing Las Cruces by flagging down the northbound stage to Hot Springs out in the shadow of Zaca Mesa. He tied his mount on behind the luggage boot and rode up top alongside the guard and driver, into Hot Springs itself, questioning carefully. Neither man had seen anyone who resembled Harlan Bodie and he sure wasn’t amongst the present passengers.

In Hot Springs, at the stage depot, Yancey asked around some more and learned that Bodie had ridden a stage in three days back and went on to Socorro on the night run, without taking the usual break most travelers preferred.

Yancey stayed over at the stage line rest house and rode out on the Socorro-bound coach next morning, his horse again tied on behind.

Ten miles out of Socorro, Yancey asked to be let off. He figured maybe Harlan Bodie would keep an eye on new arrivals in Socorro for a spell.

There was a hot wind blowing that stirred the dust and Yancey had been riding with his bandanna tied about the lower half of his face for the last few miles. It seemed every time he came to Socorro, the dust-laden wind was blowing. One of these days he figured he might make it in winter, just to see what it was like.

Along the way, he had heard that the sheriff of Socorro was the legendary Roy Proudlock, a man who had tamed more frontier towns than anyone else still walking the West.

He had first seen Sheriff Proudlock in a cowtown whose name he had long forgotten, during one of the first trail drives he had ever undertaken. Not much more than a button, the horse wrangler had taken him into town to ‘improve his education’, which, in trail parlance, meant getting him drunk and taking him to a whorehouse where they would lock him in a room with an experienced soiled dove, and during the course of the evening, Yancey had seen Proudlock in action.

Much of that wild night was a blur, but he could clearly recall a small, slim figure in a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed hat standing in the middle of the rutted, muddy main street, facing down a bunch of twenty gun hung, wild-eyed riders who had been shooting up the town. They wanted to argue and Proudlock had been pleased to oblige. He shot three, one later dying, gun whipped two, and had the remainder cowed and shucking their guns in less than twenty seconds. Yancey clearly remembered standing in the mud, gawking, as that small man marched the long line of beefy, muttering cowhands across to the jailhouse where he crammed them into the cells.

He hadn’t seen Proudlock for another two years and by that time, Yancey was a seasoned trailhand, already contracting his first small herd. At that time, Yancey had hit the town of Ellsworth just at the time a bunch of desperados had tried to rob the bank.

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