“Where’s your mama?” Margaret asked, since Ruth was usually ready to help her set the food on the table.
“She’s upstairs,” Sophie said. “She was feeling a little tired and decided to lie down for a while before supper.”
“She’s been getting tired a lot lately,” Margaret commented. “I wonder if she’s feeling all right.”
“I still think the wedding is giving her a case of nerves,” Sophie said. “She’ll be all right when that’s finally over.”
* * *
Will was up and ready to leave at five o’clock the next morning. Margaret was in the kitchen, just getting ready to start breakfast when she saw him coming down the back stairs. “You leaving before breakfast?” she asked, and when he said that he was, she insisted on fixing something quick for him. “I’ve already got the coffeepot on and I’ll throw a couple of eggs on the stove for you. Biscuits will be a while yet, but there’s some cold corn bread from last night.”
“That would suit me just fine,” he said right away, and dumped his saddlebags and rifle by the kitchen door. Glancing toward the dining room door, he half expected to see Sophie. They hadn’t visited very long after supper the night before because she complained about a headache, so they said good night at half past eight and retired to their separate rooms.
“How long you gonna be gone?” Margaret asked, breaking into his thoughts as she filled a cup for him.
“Couple of weeks, I expect,” he answered. “Gotta take a wagon to Atoka and back.”
“Well, you be sure and take care of yourself. You won’t have much time left before that wedding when you get back.”
“I will,” he replied, thinking the whole world seemed to revolve around that wedding. It would have been so much easier to simply go to the preacher and let him tie the knot without all the ceremony that was driving Ruth and Sophie crazy. He was willing to bet that Sophie wouldn’t have so many headaches if they did. It was with a definite sense of relief that he ate his quick breakfast and was on his way to meet Ed and Horace. “Tell Sophie I’m sorry I missed her this mornin’,” he told Margaret as he walked out the back door.
Horace Watson was already at the stable when Will arrived. A few minutes later, Ed appeared, eager to get started. As Will expected, Horace objected to driving the jail wagon instead of taking his chuck wagon, which he had modified to accommodate his every need. He finally surrendered and agreed to do it, but warned them both that this would be the only time. When the jail wagon was loaded up with supplies and Horace’s cooking utensils, they started toward the ferry slips down by the river, with Horace and the wagon setting the pace. His regular chuck wagon was left parked where the jail wagon usually sat. A brisk breeze blew in their faces as they set out on a trail that followed the Poteau River to the south-west. Will and Ed rode side by side a little ahead of Horace in the wagon, Will aboard his buckskin gelding named Buster. Ed was riding a horse he had just bought, a big gray he called Smut. The day was bright and sunny. It was chilly, but it was supposed to be this time of year, so none of the three thought much about it.
Since the Sans Bois Mountains were just about the halfway point in the roughly 120-mile trip, they decided to make a brief stop there. Will knew the location of a hideout well known to outlaws holing up in Indian Territory, and Ed was interested in checking to see if it was currently occupied. The hideout had come to be known locally as Robbers Cave. Will had actually made an arrest there on one occasion, but Ed had never been there, and he thought it might be of future use to him if he knew how to find it.
“I used to know an old fellow who had a cabin not far from that hideout,” Will said. “His name was Perley Gates, and he was the one who showed me where that cave is. But Perley was gone the last time I went to his cabin. He left a sign on the door to tell anybody who was interested that he was leavin’ it for good, and welcome to it.” He paused to think about the elflike little man, and it brought a smile to his face. “I ain’t run into Perley since. There’s no tellin’ where he ended up.”
“Maybe he changed his mind and came back,” Ed said.
“Knowing Perley, he just might have,” Will said. The thought served to spark his interest, so he replied, “I wouldn’t mind goin’ by his place, just in case he did. It ain’t far from Robbers Cave. Matter of fact, it’s on the way, so it wouldn’t delay us much. We could rest the horses there.” So that’s what they decided to do.
CHAPTER 2
It took two and a half days at the wagon’s pace to reach the Sans Bois Mountains and the trail that snaked its way through the narrow valleys that eventually led to a green meadow. On the other side of the meadow Will pointed to a log cabin built back up against a steep slope, and hard to see at first. They pulled up at the edge of the meadow when they spotted a sorrel horse in the small corral next to an open shed on the other side of the cabin. Will recalled that there was no corral there when he had last visited Perley, and his horse was a dark Morgan. “There’s somebody in the cabin,” he said to Ed, “but I don’t think it’s Perley. We’d better make sure.” He rode ahead a few yards and called out, “Hello, the cabin!”
“Hello, yourself!” a voice came back. “What’s your business here? And just so you know, I’ve got the front sight of a Henry rifle lookin’ right at you.”
“No need to shoot anybody,” Will said. “We were lookin’ for a friend of mine, name of Perley Gates. He built that cabin, but it’s plain to see Perley’s gone. We’re U.S. Deputy Marshals on our way to Atoka. Just thought we’d cut through here to see if Perley mighta come back. We won’t trouble you any further.” He wheeled Buster around and started back out of the meadow but stopped when he heard the man yell behind him.
“Hold on!” the voice called after him. He turned to see a short-legged little old man come up from behind a large boulder at the corner of the porch and proceed to run after them. They pulled up and waited for him. Still holding his rifle as if ready to shoot, he asked, “How do I know you’re deputy marshals? I don’t see no badges.” Both Will and Ed pulled their coats aside to reveal the badges they wore. He looked from one of them to the other, then back to Will, obviously trying to decide what to do. Finally deciding to take the risk and believe the badges were real, he lowered his weapon. “You come lookin’ for them two jaspers up there in Robbers Cave?” When he looked again at Ed and Will to see puzzled expressions on both faces, he said, “I hope to hell that’s what you came up here for.”
“Like he said,” Ed replied, “we’re on our way to Atoka. We don’t know anything about anybody holed up in that hideout. Are they causing some trouble?”
“Well, I’ll say they are,” the little man responded, as if it was a stupid question.
“What kinda trouble?” Will asked. He couldn’t help thinking the new occupant of the cabin reminded him of the original one, even down to the curly white whiskers.
“They’ve raided my cabin three different times. They’ll wait till I go off huntin’ and come in here and turn my cabin upside down, lookin’ for anythin’ they can steal. Last week they stole a four-point buck I was fixin’ to butcher, came right up to the house and took it. When you boys showed up, I thought it was them comin’ back, and I had my rifle ready for ’em this time.”
“What’s your name, friend?” Ed asked.
“Merle Teague,” he replied.
“All right, Merle,” Will said, “we’ll take a look up at that cave and see if they’re still there. We had planned to stop by there, anyway.”
“Horace needs to rest his horses,” Ed said, “so while he’s doin’ that, me and you can go up to that hideout.”
They left Horace to unhitch his horses and let them graze while Merle Teague looked over the jail wagon. “You got any coffee on that wagon?” they heard Merle asking as they rode up the ravine next to his cabin. Horace must have said he did, because they heard Merle say he would build up the fire. Will had to laugh when he heard him, for he remembered that every time he had stopped
to visit Perley, he was always out of coffee. It got to the point where he brought extra coffee every time he rode this trail.
Will led Ed up to the base of one of the higher hills where nature had formed a corral made of boulders. The opening that served as an entrance to it had three timbers across it that functioned as a gate. Inside were three horses. The two deputies looked the place over from the cover of a thick stand of pine trees. Will pointed to a solid-rock opening up near the top of the slope. “That’s the front entrance. The cave is about forty feet long and has a back door. That stream you see runs right through the cave. It’s hard to beat for a hideout. One of us can stand near the front and yell for ’em to come out and surrender, while the other one can cover the back door and arrest ’em when they run out the back. You’re the lead deputy on this job. Which do you wanna do?”
“What if they don’t come out?” Ed asked.
“Then I reckon we’ll go in after ’em,” Will answered. “Either that or we could steal their horses and make ’em come after them. So, what you want, front or back?”
Ed thought for a few seconds. “I’ll stay in front and call ’em out. I don’t know exactly where that back door is, so you might be better at that. Is that all right with you?”
“Fine by me,” Will said. “You just give me about fifteen minutes to get in position behind that cave.” He turned Buster to leave, then paused to warn Ed. “Be sure you’ve got some cover before you go hollerin’ up at that cave. Be careful you don’t get shot.”
“You don’t have to warn me about that,” Ed assured him.
Will circled around the hill to come up from behind the stone tunnel. He left Buster in a clump of small trees and climbed up through the rocks until he came to the opening to the small passage that led back into the cave. If I had forgotten where it was, I coulda found it anyway, he thought when he approached it and saw smoke drifting up out of the opening in the rocks.
He hadn’t been in position longer than a couple of minutes when he heard Ed yell out his warning. “You, in the cave! This is U.S. Deputy Marshal Ed Pine. Come out of there with your hands up!”
There was no response from the cave, so Ed repeated his orders. Inside, Zeke Bowers whispered, “What the hell . . . ?” He gaped, wide-eyed, at his brother, Ike.
“How’d he find this place?” Ike whispered back. “The law ain’t supposed to know about this place.”
“That bowlegged little rat got the law up here,” Zeke said. “What are we gonna do?”
“We need to see if he’s by hisself,” Ike said. He dropped the piece of venison he had been chewing on and crawled up near the front of the cave to try to see if he could spot Ed. Zeke crawled up behind him.
“Can you see him?”
“Nah, I can’t see him,” Ike replied. “I can’t see the bottom of the cliff unless I crawl out in the open, and I ain’t gonna do that.”
“Can you see anythin’?” Zeke insisted.
“I told you, I can’t see him, but I can see that there ain’t no posse settin’ down there waitin’ for us to come outta here. He might be all by his lonesome.”
“There’s no use in stallin’,” Ed called out again. “You’re surrounded. I’m givin’ you a chance to come on outta there and make it easy on yourself.”
“You got no business botherin’ us,” Ike shouted back. “We ain’t the ones that robbed that store in McAlester.”
“Damn, Ike,” Zeke whispered. “You shouldn’ta said that. He might notta even knowed about it.”
“Come on out with your hands up and we’ll talk about it,” Ed yelled.
“He’s by hisself,” Ike said to Zeke. Then he turned his head toward the opening again and yelled, “We ain’t comin’ out! Looks like you’re gonna have to come in and get us!” Back to his brother again, he said, “Let him come on in. We’ll fill him so full of holes you can use him for a strainer.”
“Hot damn!” Zeke exclaimed. “We ain’t never shot a lawman before. Tell him to come on up here and get us.”
“That ain’t a good idea today or any other day,” Will said, standing twenty-five feet behind them. Both brothers froze for a moment before they were sure, then they spun around, reaching for their guns. Ike was the quickest, so he caught Will’s first shot in the shoulder, the result of which knocked him back flat on the stone floor of the cave. His pistol bounced off the solid rock as it dropped from his hand. With a new round already cranked in the chamber of Will’s Winchester 73, Zeke found himself looking at sudden death. He wisely dropped his weapon.
“You all right in there, Will?” Ed Pine shouted from in front of the cave, already running toward the entrance after he heard the shots.
“Everything’s all right, Ed,” Will answered him. “You can come on in.” He pointed his rifle at Zeke and motioned with it toward Ike, who was sitting on the floor of the cave holding his arm, a .44 slug in his right shoulder. “You can give your partner a hand with that wound,” Will said to Zeke.
“He needs a doctor,” Zeke said after a quick look at his brother’s wound. “He’s bleedin’ awful bad.”
“Take his bandanna off and stuff it over that wound,” Will said. Ed walked in at that moment. “These are the two outlaws that held up that store in McAlester,” he said to Ed, hoping Ed would realize he was bluffing. They had received no notice of a store robbery in McAlester before they left Fort Smith.
“Right,” Ed came back right away, picking up on Will’s bluff. “We figured they’d be here.” He holstered his .44 and picked up the two dropped pistols. “Good thing we brought the jail wagon. These two are gonna have plenty of company, but Horace is gonna have to pick up some more supplies in Atoka,” he said, thinking about the three men they had actually come for.
“I expect so,” Will said, then directed a question to Zeke. “How much of that money have you got left?”
“Ain’t got none of it left,” Zeke replied.
Still bluffing, Will said, “What? That fellow said you two took over two hundred dollars outta his store.”
Both Ike and Zeke reacted immediately. “He’s a lyin’ horn toad!” Ike exclaimed. “There warn’t but thirty-seven dollars in that drawer and we spent all of it that night.”
Ed looked at Will and shook his head. Both men were thinking of the cost of transporting the two petty criminals back to jail in Fort Smith. It would amount to more than the two of them had stolen. The temptation to just run them out of the hideout and tell them to get out of the Nations was great. But they had foolishly confessed to the robbery of a store, so they had to arrest them and give them a day in court. “All right,” Will finally ordered, “pick up your belongings and we’ll walk on outta here, nice and peaceful. If you’ve got any sense at all, you won’t risk your life tryin’ to make a run for it.”
They marched them down to their horses and waited while Zeke helped Ike up on his horse. Then with each deputy holding the reins of one of the two brothers’ horses, they led them back to Merle’s cabin, where they were transferred to the jail wagon. Horace Watson’s reaction upon seeing the two petty thieves was the same as Ed and Will’s. “It’s gonna be nice and cozy on the way back to Fort Smith,” he observed. “I’m gonna have to have some more food if we’re gonna eat on the way back.”
Standing by while the transfer to the jail wagon was taking place, Merle could finally hold his comments no longer. “You’re lucky these two lawmen came to getcha ’cause I was fixin’ to shoot your sorry asses next time you came stealin’ around my place.”
“You ain’t got nothin’ worth stealin’,” Zeke responded.
Ike, confident now that he wasn’t going to bleed to death, saw fit to join in. “I don’t know, Zeke, that deer was pretty good eatin’. We was waitin’ for you to go huntin’ again.”
“Get them two skunks offa my property,” Merle demanded.
“That we will,” Ed said, and closed the lock on the jail wagon. Will climbed up into the saddle, led them out of the maze of hills that
hid Merle’s cabin, and picked up the trail to Atoka again. The extra horses were on a rope tied to the back of the jail wagon. Their owners were already complaining after finding they were going to Atoka before making the trip back to Fort Smith.
As they had anticipated, it took them two and a half days to reach Atoka. At the end of each day, they found a stream to camp by. Horace took care of the cooking and the prisoners were released from the wagon and shackled to a long chain for the night, with one end locked around the axle of the wagon. It was the typical fashion in which prisoners were handled, but not the way Will Tanner preferred. He had always felt hampered by a slow-moving wagon and had a running argument with Dan Stone about using one. On this occasion, however, he didn’t complain, especially since it was possible they would end up transporting five prisoners back to Fort Smith.
They rolled into Atoka in the early evening and Horace picked a spot near the creek to park the jail wagon and set up his camp. While Ed stayed with him to guard the prisoners, Will rode up Muddy Boggy Creek to Jim Little Eagle’s cabin outside of town. The Choctaw policeman walked out of his barn as Will rode into the yard. “Will Tanner!” Jim greeted him. “I thought maybe they send you.” He was always glad to see Will. They had worked together many times in the past. “Mary!” Jim called toward the cabin.
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