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  DANCING WITH DEAD MEN

  James Reasoner

  Dancing With Dead Men by James Reasoner

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © August 2013 by James Reasoner

  Cover Design: L. J. Washburn

  Cover Image: shutterstock_22965

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address The Book Place. [email protected]

  1.

  Christmas Eve, 1873

  The killing had stopped for the holidays. For months the two rival mining syndicates, the Rimfire on one side and the Aldena on the other, had been battling, each side blaming the other – correctly, as it happened – for the rash of robberies, sabotage, and outright murder that had plagued the area around Aspen Creek, Montana Territory.

  But tonight, the night before the holiest day of the year, hostilities had ceased. For one night, the war over the gold fields had been put aside, and everyone from the area, townspeople, miners, and ranchers alike, had come together in the Aspen Creek town hall for the annual Christmas dance. The weather had even cooperated. It was cold, but not too cold for late December in Montana Territory, and only a light dusting of snow lay on the ground.

  Inside the town hall, the air was hot and stifling. The heat came from the pot-bellied stoves in the corners and also from the several hundred people who had crowded into the building for the festivities.

  Logan Handley didn't care much for the heat. A few beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead. He had been sick with a fever recently, and even though he seemed to be over it, he didn't feel like he had recovered completely.

  A tall, lean man with close-cropped sandy hair, Logan was better dressed than most of the men in the hall. His frock coat, vest, and string tie would have been fashionable even back east. His lone concessions to Western fashion were the high-topped black boots he wore and the flat-crowned black hat with a silver band that hung on one of the hat trees near the hall's entrance.

  He paused at the table on one side of the crowded room to pick up a cup of punch. Before the night was over, somebody would spike that punch, more than likely, but for now it was innocent enough, and Logan enjoyed the cool sweetness as he took a sip.

  "Well, lookee there. Standin' around and drinkin' punch like he ain't a cold-blooded killer."

  Logan had a pretty good idea who had spoken, but he looked around to be sure. He nodded to the stocky, walrus-mustached man and said, "Merry Christmas, Marshal."

  "Maybe it will be, if you hired guns'll behave yourselves," Marshal Floyd Mahaffey said. The badge he wore as city marshal of Aspen Creek gleamed on the lapel of his brown tweed suit coat.

  Logan had the cup of punch in his right hand, a cautious habit since he was left-handed. He moved his left hand in a graceful gesture and said, "Do you see me wearing a gun?"

  "Not right now," Mahaffey admitted. "I'll bet it's out there in one of the baskets, though."

  Well, that much was true, thought Logan. He had unbuckled the black leather shell belt and attached holster with its new .45 caliber Colt Single Action Army revolver and left them in one of the baskets that had been set out on chairs in the foyer. A couple of the marshal's deputies, each armed with a shotgun, stood beside those baskets and made sure that every man who came into the town hall deposited his weapons in one of them before entering. Those guns could only be reclaimed when a fellow left the dance.

  The deputies weren't exactly diligent in their duty, though. Logan had a .41 caliber over-and-under derringer in his vest pocket, and he would have bet good money it wasn't the only hide-out gun in the hall tonight.

  But as long as nobody used any of those hidden weapons, things would remain peaceful. The musicians sawed on their fiddles, people danced and sang Christmas carols and drank punch, young men and women flirted with each other, kids ran around and got underfoot. Everything was as normal as it could be, and that was a refreshing change for Logan.

  For men such as him, normal was lonely trails, smoky saloons, squalid cribs . . . and unmarked, unmourned graves.

  "John Purcell appears to be havin' a good time tonight," Mahaffey went on. His dislike for gunmen meant it cost him an obvious effort to be civil to the likes of Logan Handley, but he made that effort.

  Logan nodded as his eyes sought out Purcell. The local superintendent of the Rimfire Mining Syndicate – and as such, Logan's employer – was dancing with his wife Bedelia. Over on the other side of the room, Clete Barrows, who ran the Aldena, danced with his wife. The two bitter enemies determinedly ignored each other while at the same time making sure as much space as possible separated them. That was wise, Logan thought. An accidental bump on the dance floor might shatter the fragile holiday truce.

  "John deserves to have a good time," Logan said. "All that mischief by the Aldena has put a lot of pressure on him. Rimfire's owners don't care what obstacles he has to overcome. All that matters to them is production."

  Mahaffey let out a disgusted snort.

  "Don't talk to me about what Barrows' men have been doin'. You Rimfire men have been makin' life hell for his operation, too. If there was room in the town cemetery, I'd say all of you oughta just go ahead and kill each other and be done with it."

  Logan smiled faintly and took another sip of the punch.

  "It's Christmas Eve, Marshal. No killing tonight."

  Mahaffey made another disgusted noise, shook his head, and started to turn away. He paused to look back at Logan and said, "I don't see your pard Meadows here."

  Logan stiffened. He said, "Jim Meadows is no pard of mine. You know that."

  Mahaffey shrugged.

  "He may work for Barrows while you work for Purcell, but you and him are the same stripe, I'm thinkin'."

  The lawman's stumpy legs carried him into the crowd. Logan looked down into the red liquid remaining in his cup and frowned. He didn't like being told that he was the same sort as Jim Meadows, but he supposed it was true, at least in a basic sense. Both of them hired out their guns to whoever offered the biggest payoff.

  And they had never been too careful about picking sides, either. There was no moral high ground to claim in this dispute between the Rimfire and the Aldena. It had been the same in other places, other times, when disputes boiled over into gunplay and bloodshed. There had even been a few instances when Logan and Jim Meadows had found themselves riding for the same side.

  Logan wanted to call Mahaffey back and insist to the marshal that he and Meadows were different, that Meadows was a snake-blooded killer while he, Logan, at least had a few scruples.

  But he couldn't, not really.

  His stomach clenched. He set the unfinished punch aside. He couldn't choke down the rest of it. If he did, it might come right back up, and he didn't want to ruin the dance by getting sick in front of everybody.

  What the marshal had said about Jim Meadows not being here nagged at Logan's brain. To get his mind off how bad he felt, he looked around the room. Sure enough, he didn't see Meadows anywhere, and that was a little surprising. Meadows was a darkly handsome man. He would have been quite popular with Aspen Creek's single ladies tonight and wouldn't have had any problem finding partners for every dance. Logan rubbed his chin and thought.

  Whatever Meadows was doing, it had to be something pretty important to keep him away from the dance. And there was a good-sized shipment of bu
llion in the vault in the Rimfire office down the street, waiting to be shipped out in a couple of days. John Purcell had assigned a couple of men to guard the gold, but that wouldn't mean much to Jim Meadows. He wouldn't let two men keep him from what he wanted.

  Two normal men, Logan amended. He should have been one of the guards, but Purcell hadn't given him the job because he'd been sick and also because Purcell wanted him on hand here at the town hall just in case any trouble broke out at the dance. The more Logan pondered Meadows' absence, though, the more it bothered him.

  He headed for the foyer and along the way plucked his hat from the hat tree where it hung.

  "Leavin', Handley?" one of Mahaffey's deputies asked him as he paused beside the baskets.

  "For now," Logan replied as he reached into the basket and picked up his coiled gunbelt and holstered revolver.

  "You come back in, you'll have to give up your gun again."

  "I know that." Logan buckled on the belt. The Colt's weight felt good on his hip. He had packed an iron for so long that not wearing one threw him off-balance.

  He took a long black overcoat lined with sheepskin from a hook and shrugged into it, then stepped outside and went down the half-dozen steps from the building's porch to the ground. The cold air washed over his face. He enjoyed its bracing bite. Stars sparkled in the sky. The storm that had dusted the area with snow had moved on during the day.

  Aspen Creek was a good-sized settlement with a business district six blocks long and a number of residences around it. As the supply center not only for the gold fields but also for several large cattle ranches, normally it was a bustling place. Tonight, however, it was quiet and peaceful as Logan moved along the boardwalk toward the headquarters of the Rimfire Mining Syndicate, located in a one-story brick building between the bank and the assay office.

  By the time Logan reached the building, the sweat had dried on his forehead and his stomach had settled down. He told himself that he was borrowing trouble even by coming down here. Nothing had happened, or there would have been a commotion. The guards John Purcell had left here were good, tough, competent men.

  But would they be a match for Jim Meadows? That question nagged at Logan's mind.

  As he came up to the mining syndicate office, he saw a light through the front window, a lamp turned down low by the looks of it. Nothing unusual about that. The guards would want to have some light. Logan tried to look through the window but couldn't really make anything out. He thumbed his hat back and cupped his hands around his eyes to improve his vision.

  His breath caught in his throat as he spotted part of a man's booted foot sticking out from behind a desk. He could tell from the way the boot was turned that the man was lying on the floor, and he knew that couldn't be right.

  With his left hand on the butt of his Colt, Logan hurried into the dark, narrow passage between the office building and the bank. He didn't have a key to the front door, but he had one that would open the back door. Not many people did: him, John Purcell, Purcell's private secretary, and the syndicate's chief clerk.

  Logan didn't need the key, though. When he reached the rear door, he found the lock busted. That confirmed his hunch about something being wrong. He slid the revolver from its holster and moved soundlessly into the building.

  Almost immediately, he tripped, and when he put his right hand down to steady himself he touched something wet and sticky. He moved his hand and the back of it brushed against the thing he had stumbled against. A body, of course. Had to be one of the guards. Logan rested his hand on the man's chest, found more drying blood but no heartbeat, no rise and fall of breath. The man was dead.

  He felt certain the other guard was, too. Whatever Meadows was up to, he wouldn't leave witnesses behind.

  Logan straightened and moved along the hallway. In his mind he could see what had happened. Meadows had made a little noise breaking into the building, and one of the guards had come back here to see what it was about. Meadows had killed him, then jumped the other guard and disposed of him, too. Meadows might already be gone.

  But he might still be in here, too, and if he was, Logan intended to make sure he answered for murdering those two men.

  The bullion was locked up in the vault. Meadows wouldn't have the combination. Logan himself didn't have it. So how did Meadows think he could get to the gold, if that was what he was after?

  Light spilled through the open doorway of Purcell's private office. The vault lay behind that room. Logan moved forward until he could see into the front office where the clerks worked. The second guard, the man whose boot he had spotted through the window, lay behind one of the desks with a pool of blood around his head. Logan could see his sightlessly staring eyes and the gaping wound in his throat. Meadows had cut the guards' throats. That was why there hadn't been any gunshots to alert the town that something was wrong.

  Logan eased up to the corner of the lighted doorway. As he held the Colt ready for action, he risked a look. He could see through Purcell's office to the door of the vault room. Meadows crouched in front of the vault door. He had fastened a bundle of dynamite to it and attached a long fuse to the cylinders. As Logan watched, Meadows took a turnip watch from his pocket, flipped it open, and checked the time.

  Logan pointed the Colt at Meadows' back, eared back the hammer, and said, "Got an appointment you're late for, Jim?"

  2.

  He had to give Meadows credit for having cool nerves. The gunman hunkered back on his heels in front of the vault door and looked over his shoulder.

  "Thought you'd be down at the dance, Handley," he said. "It's Christmas Eve."

  "Yeah, I know. It looks like you're about to celebrate, too." Logan shook his head. "How in the world did you think you'd get away with it? A blast big enough to wreck that door will shake the whole town. You can't carry off enough bullion to make it worth your while before fifty men are here to stop you."

  "Well, that might be true," Meadows drawled as he smiled faintly, "if not for the fact that everybody in town is gonna be pretty busy in a few minutes." He was still holding the watch, and as he snapped it closed, he went on, "You see, one of my men is lighting the fuse on a box of dynamite underneath the town hall right about now."

  The chill that went through Logan at those words was much colder than the air outside. The town hall was set up several feet on pilings, and he knew it was possible somebody could crawl under there with a box of dynamite, especially from the back of the building where nobody was likely to be around.

  Of course, Meadows could be bluffing. But he had checked his watch when he didn't know Logan was watching him, which meant the time was important to him. If Meadows was telling the truth and was able to time this blast with the one that destroyed the town hall, nobody would hear it. Anyway, even if they did, the other explosion would be so devastating that nobody would care what might be happening inside the Rimfire offices.

  "You'll kill hundreds of people," Logan said. His voice sounded hollow and faraway in his ears. Blood pounded inside his skull with every beat of his heart. "Your own boss is in there!"

  "After tonight I won't be working for Barrows and Aldena any more," Meadows said.

  It was true. There was enough gold in the vault so that Meadows would never have to sell his gun again. He could head for some place like Mexico and live out his days in luxury.

  Every instinct in Logan's body shouted out to him that Meadows was telling the truth. Involuntarily, he turned away, thinking that he had to get back to the town hall and warn everyone at the dance. He had done plenty of things in his life he wasn't proud of, but he couldn't stand by and allow Meadows to murder all those people.

  It was almost the worst thing he could have done, and he realized that a second later when Meadows surged up from his crouch, leaped across the room with the speed of a striking snake, and tackled him.

  The collision knocked Logan off his feet. Pain shot through him as he hit the floor, but he hung on to his gun and swung it at Meado
ws' head. He should have just blown a hole through the gunman and then raced back to the town hall, but it was too late for that.

  Meadows ducked the blow and hammered punches into Logan's body and head. Logan heaved himself off the floor and threw Meadows to the side. He tried to bring his gun to bear again, but Meadows lashed out with his right leg and the heel of his boot caught Logan on the wrist. This time he couldn't maintain his grip on the Colt. It slipped from his fingers and flew across the room.

  Meadows came up on one knee and clawed his gun from its holster. Logan knew the man wouldn't hesitate to kill him. His hand dipped into his vest pocket and came up with the derringer. It cracked a split-second before Meadows fired. Blood flew as Meadows went down. The shot he squeezed off went well over Logan's head and slammed into the wall.

  Logan knew he had hit Meadows in the head. He hoped the gunman was dead. Either way, he was running out of time. Meadows' accomplice, whoever he was, had to have lit the fuse on the dynamite under the town hall by now.

  Logan scrambled to his feet and dashed out of Purcell's office. He headed for the front door, lowered his shoulder, and crashed into it. The jamb splintered and the door flew open. Logan stumbled onto the boardwalk and turned toward the town hall. Somebody up there must have heard the shots from the Rimfire office, because several men stood on the porch and stared down the street toward Logan. He started running toward them and waved his arms to get their attention.

  He had gone only a few steps when pain worse than any he had ever felt in his life exploded through him.

  The agony was so bad it knocked him off his feet. His momentum carried him forward and he slammed down onto the boardwalk with such force that he somersaulted off into the street. He landed in the snow and mud.

  At first he thought he'd been shot. He had experienced such smashing impacts before. He knew how the sudden pain gave way to numbness like he was beginning to experience now.