“I wouldn’t be far off if I said I’m betting you’re following a group of six men that rode through here day before yesterday, would I?”
“No, sir, you wouldn’t. Did they cause you any trouble?”
“No, they didn’t even stop,” Tatum replied, “and from the looks of them, I’m happy they didn’t. They just rode straight on through and took the trail toward Stillwater Creek. You sure you don’t want to eat something?” When Will declined again, Tatum insisted, “How about a cup of coffee? I know you’re probably in a hurry to catch that bunch, but you can spare time for a cup of coffee, can’t you?”
“Ain’t many times I can remember turnin’ down a cup of coffee,” Will relented. “I hate to drop in on your wife like this, though.” He was thinking that, if Beaudry passed through here day before yesterday, he might be gaining on him, maybe half a day.
“Nonsense. No trouble.” Tatum turned to yell back inside. “Lucille, it’s Deputy Will Tanner. Set a cup out for him, will you?” He held the door wide for Will to enter. “I won’t keep you long. Tell me about those men you’re following.” It was obvious that Tatum seldom had any opportunities to pass the time of day with a white man.
After Will told him who the men were that he was chasing and what they had recently done, Tatum was even more relieved the gang had found no reason to stop there. “I guess that’s one good thing about being an Indian agent,” he joked. “You don’t have anything worth stealing.” When Will finished the cup of coffee Lucille Tatum had poured for him, he thanked them both and took his leave. Since the common road ended at the agency, Will scouted the clearing to make sure the outlaws had left the agency on the trail to Stillwater Creek, as Tatum had said. When he was sure of the tracks, he headed in the same general direction Beaudry and his men had held to since leaving their camp on the Verdigris. He figured he was a half-day’s ride from Stillwater Creek, so that was where he planned to camp for the night.
As he continued on throughout the afternoon, following a trail easily determined, he unintentionally let his mind wander back to Fort Smith, and more specifically, to Sophie Bennett. He had not left there on a particularly good note. There were issues that Sophie wanted to discuss and she wasn’t too happy when he left so soon after he had just returned from the field. The situation troubled him and he told himself to put it out of his mind as he guided Buster through the cottonwoods guarding Stillwater Creek. The big buckskin gelding whinnied as they neared the creek and Will leaned forward to stroke his neck, just as he heard the sudden snap of a bullet as it passed directly over his head. When he heard the report of the rifle that fired it, he was already galloping down the creek bank, seeking cover and cursing himself for his carelessness. It was the second time he had barely missed being shot out of the saddle in the last couple of weeks. The last time, the shooter had been Lyla Birdsong. A couple more shots rang out to rustle the tree leaves above his head before he found a washed-out section of the creek that offered protection for him and his horses. He came off Buster in a hurry, grabbing his Winchester in the process. Not knowing for sure who, or how many, he scanned the creek bank frantically, trying to pinpoint the source of the shooting.
Still angry at himself for being so carelessly surprised, he had to assume it was the gang he had been trailing, but he couldn’t believe that he had caught up to them this quickly. At any rate, he had had no intention of letting them know he was tracking them. So much for that now, he told himself, and realized that Buster had tried to tell him he was approaching strange horses and not that he sensed water. If he hadn’t leaned over to pet him, he would most likely have taken that bullet that passed over his head. Now that he had blindly ridden into an ambush, he had to figure out where his assailants were hiding, and that might not be so easy.
After those first three shots, all was quiet along the creek, as he strained to see some indication of movement upstream from his position. If he had, indeed, caught up with Ansel Beaudry, he was going up against six hardened outlaws, and he didn’t particularly like those odds. He couldn’t help looking over his shoulder when the possibility occurred that they might be circling around behind him. Those thoughts prompted him to find out where they were, and since the shooting had stopped, he could only guess. As he scanned the banks upstream, he tried to pick a spot where there was plenty of cover. His gaze settled on a group of hackberry trees with thick bushes around their feet. As good a place as any, he thought. Next, he picked out a gully on the other side of the creek from where he now knelt. Ready then, he rose up and fired two quick shots into the hackberry trees, then ran, splashing across the creek to dive into the gully, just as a couple of shots plowed into the bank he had just left. They were followed by a couple more impacting in the dirt of the gully he now occupied.
His move had been successful in drawing their fire, although it had not come from the hackberry trees. In his frantic dash through the creek, he happened to have caught sight of a muzzle flash about a dozen yards upstream from the spot he had picked to fire upon. He was thinking now that there were no more than one or two in ambush. Had there been six, he would have been running through a hail of bullets. Was it just bad luck that he had run into a couple of dry-gulchers and not Ansel Beaudry’s gang after all? That made more sense than thinking he had caught up with the six. No matter, he couldn’t stay there and try to exchange shots. He had to smoke them out and he couldn’t do it hunkered down in that gully, so he popped up and fired a shot at the spot where he had seen the muzzle flash. Then he quickly crawled up the gully to the top where it started in the cottonwoods, hearing the pounding of their bullets in the dirt of the gully behind him. He was counting on his assailants thinking he was pinned down in the gully, and he wanted to get around behind them before they came up with the same idea and circled around behind him.
With enough cover from almost-head-high bushes to shield him, he got to his feet and ran upstream until well past the spot from which their shots had come before he crossed back over the creek. Confident that he was behind his attackers, he started working his way back downstream, moving as carefully as he could. A few dozen yards farther and he stopped, for he could hear them talking, even though he still could not see them. Very cautiously, he parted the branches of a thick laurel bush before him—slowly, lest he might encounter a rifle muzzle looking at him. What he saw, however, told him he had guessed right. There were only two men, both intently watching the gully he had crawled out of. He had to decide what to do about them. He was not sure what their motive was for bushwhacking him. It would be easy enough to shoot them both from his position behind them. But if he did, he would still not know why they tried to kill him. He was honor-bound as a deputy marshal to attempt to arrest them, but being frank with himself, he had to admit that he was a little busy at present to take two prisoners back to Fort Smith. Maybe, he thought, I can arrest them and take them back to the Indian agency I just left. Franklin Tatum surely must have a room in his warehouse where he could hold them until he returned for them, or got word to Fort Smith to send someone to get them. It would delay him again in his pursuit of Ansel Beaudry, but he decided he had little choice.
In an effort to get a little closer before announcing his presence, he pushed through the bushes, his rifle ready to fire. He was close enough then to see both men straining to look for any movement in the gully they had fired at, both oblivious to his presence behind them. About to surprise them, he paused a moment when he recognized one of them, Tom Daly. He had arrested him some time back for horse and cattle rustling. Evidently, he had served his time, because there had been no notice from Little Rock of his escape. He was not surprised that Tom hated him, but he would not have suspected him to be the kind of man to seek vengeance by bushwhacking him. Daly seemed more the type to just run away. As for the man with him, Will had never seen him before. He was a big man, half again as big as Tom.
“Tom Daly!” Will suddenly shouted. “Drop those rifles! You’re under arrest!” He did not expec
t their reaction. Befitting his nature, Tom immediately bolted like a rabbit into the bushes behind him, while the big man beside him whirled around, his rifle blazing away as fast as he could fire and cock it. Will dived to the ground for cover, saved from being hit because the man had not had time to take aim. Before he could, Will placed a well-aimed round in the center of his chest that caused him to stagger backward. Still, he brought his rifle up to shoot again, forcing Will to place another round in his gut. The huge man’s knees buckled and he dropped like a gunnysack full of horseshoes. One last shot from his rifle whistled harmlessly through the branches of the trees over Will’s head. Only then was he aware of the sound of a horse galloping away through the trees. He thought to give chase, but discarded the notion when he realized how far away he had left his horses. Better check on this one first, anyway, he thought, and went to see if he was still alive. He wasn’t. Looking at the placement of the shot in the man’s chest, Will figured he was already dead before his second shot hit him.
Will pushed through the bushes where Tom Daly had fled and discovered the dead man’s horse tied to the branch of a tree. He found it highly unlikely that Tom was riding with the gang from Missouri. A small-time cattle rustler, Tom spent most of his time popping back and forth across the Red River, trying to avoid getting caught by the Texas Rangers. The man he had just shot was no one Will recognized, but maybe he was a relative of someone he had arrested, or killed. He would have assumed he was a member of the gang he had been following, had it not been that he was riding with Tom Daly. On the other hand, any lawman was a target for assassination west of the MKT Railroad in Indian Territory. It was a constant risk of the job.
In his haste to run, Tom had not wasted the time to take the other horse with him. A big black horse, befitting the big man’s size, stood calmly watching Will as he approached. Will took hold of the horse’s bridle and gave him a few reassuring pats on his neck, then took a look at the double-rigged saddle with the fancy design on the skirt. He started to search the saddlebags when he realized that the etching was so fancy that he hadn’t at first noticed the word spelled out in the center of it. He took a closer look. The word was Whip. It immediately struck a chord in his mind. Wilbur Paul had told him he thought one of the men with Beaudry was called Whip—and Wilbur said he was a big man. Then he recalled that Wilbur had said that one of the men with the gang was a familiar face, even though he didn’t know his name. So Tom has moved up to the business of robbing banks, he thought, and that thought caused Will to stop and speculate on the situation as it now stood. Had Ansel Beaudry somehow discovered that he was being followed, so he sent these two back to ambush him? Or was he just taking precautions to make sure he wasn’t followed, and they were sent back to find out? It doesn’t matter, he thought, they damn sure know it now. “I’m gonna have to be a helluva lot more careful from now on,” he said aloud.
He led the horse back to Whip’s body and tied it to a bush while he relieved the body of everything useful, including a hefty roll of paper money. A good rifle and handgun were packed on his horse, along with an even more substantial amount of money in his saddlebags, no doubt his share of that stolen from the banks in Coffeyville and Joplin. It was wrapped securely in a canvas bag, so he didn’t take the time to count it, but stuffed it under a sack of flour in one of his packs. As an official U.S. Deputy Marshal, it was his responsibility to dispose of the body, usually by burial. For Whip, however, he chose to leave the body where it lay to feed the wildlife. Now it appeared that he was tracking five men, instead of six, or would they be tracking him? He was going to have to be doubly careful from this point forward. With that in mind, he climbed up on Whip’s horse and rode it back down the creek to the place where he had left Buster and his packhorse. After rigging a lead rope from his packhorse, he climbed on Buster and went back to pick up Tom Daly’s trail, trailing the packhorse and Whip’s horse behind him.
* * *
“Somebody’s comin’!” Cecil Cox called out from the bluff above the camp.
“How many?” Ansel Beaudry responded from the campfire close to the edge of the Cimarron River.
It was rapidly getting dark, so Cecil waited a moment to be sure before calling back. “Looks like one rider.”
That served to prick Ansel’s curiosity, since he had sent two men to backtrack their trail just to be sure there had been no posse assembled after he had raided the store in Bartles Town. “Let him come,” he called. “Might be Tom or Whip.”
After a couple of minutes, Cecil sang out again. “It’s Tom Daly.”
Fearing something had gone wrong, Ansel walked up the bank to meet him. He didn’t get a chance to ask before Tom pulled his lathered horse up before him and slid out of the saddle. “He got Whip!” Tom yelled. “Shot him down!”
“Who shot him?” Ansel demanded as the rest of the men gathered around Tom.
“Will Tanner!” Tom responded, still in a state of panic.
“Who the hell’s Will Tanner?” Ansel demanded.
“U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner,” Tom replied, as if the name alone should mean something to them all. When it was obvious that it did not, he went on, “He’s the son of a bitch that hauled me off to prison for cattle rustlin’, and one man you don’t want on your trail.”
“How many men’s he got with him?” Ansel asked. He and the rest of the gang were already straining to see into the darkness Tom had just emerged from. “How far back is he?” Ansel pulled his handgun from his holster, getting ready to welcome a posse. The others did the same, immediately on the alert to defend themselves. When Tom said the deputy was alone and he wasn’t sure how far behind him he was, Ansel holstered his weapon in disgust. “One deputy? And you come ridin’ in here like the whole army was chasin’ you?”
“He shot Whip,” Tom reminded him.
“And you ran off and left him,” Ansel accused him.
“There weren’t nothin’ I could do for Whip. He was dead with the first shot, and there weren’t no chance for me to get a shot at Tanner,” Tom lied. “Whip tried to draw down on him, but Tanner cut him down before he could get off a shot. Like I said, I didn’t have a good chance for a shot, and I knew I had to get back here to warn you, if I didn’t do nothin’ else.”
“Damn it!” Ansel cursed. If he didn’t need Tom as a guide, he would have been tempted to shoot him down right then, but Tom was the only one who knew where Grassy Creek was. Whip Dawson was a good man, one he didn’t think he could afford to lose. In addition to losing one of his men, now he had a deputy marshal on his tail, and that had to be taken care of. In spite of what Tom said about this Will Tanner, he was only one man, and one man was not a problem. Kill him and get on with the ride to Grassy Creek.
Grassy Creek was the name of the place where he planned to make his permanent hideout. It was a place so remote that he would be free to ride out on strikes against towns in Kansas, Texas, and Colorado, then disappear before a posse could be raised to come after him. He had heard about this wild part of Oklahoma from a man he met in prison, and he knew it was the place to build his hideout. It was in the western part of Indian Territory, close to the Texas border and he couldn’t afford to lead a U.S. Deputy Marshal there. He had been fortunate to meet one of the few men who knew the place he wanted to find. It was disappointing to discover that Tom Daly was more rabbit than cougar, however.
Impatient for Ansel’s decision, Bo Hagen declared, “Well, we can’t stand around here talkin’ about it. Whaddaya say, Ansel? Whaddaya wanna do?” It was already dark and this deputy marshal in all likelihood had followed Tom to their camp. Like Luther Curry, Bo had accepted Ansel as their leader, even before their escape from prison, but he was now questioning some of Ansel’s decisions. They shouldn’t have stopped to camp on this river for an extra day, just so they could check on anybody trailing them. If they hadn’t, they’d be a whole day ahead of this lawman and Whip Dawson wouldn’t be dead.
“What are we gonna do?” Ansel echo
ed. “We’re gonna wait for Tanner to show up. That’s what we’re gonna do.”
“You think maybe we oughta saddle up and get outta here?” Tom Daly asked.
Ansel favored him with a look of disgust. “Hell no,” he said. “You think the five of us are gonna let one single lawman chase us all across Indian Territory? Let him come. I plan to kill him.” He looked back at Bo. “Since we don’t know how far behind Tom this deputy is, we’d best get our camp ready for him right now. I wanna see just how crazy this fellow is.” Moving quickly then, he had his men arrange their blankets like sleeping bodies around their campfire. Then he positioned each one of them around the camp so that it was surrounded, cautioning them to be sure of their target. “So we won’t end up shootin’ each other,” he cautioned.
“If he’s chasin’ Tom all the way from that creek,” Bo questioned, “ain’t he gonna think it’s mighty funny that we all rolled up in our blankets and went to sleep?”
“Maybe,” Ansel allowed. “If he’s got a lick of sense, he ain’t gonna come ridin’ right into the middle of our camp and get himself shot outta the saddle. Most likely, he’ll wait till he thinks we’re all asleep. That’s when he’ll make his move.” He looked back at Tom then, not without doubts himself. “Are you sure there ain’t but one man trailin’ us?”
“He’s the only one showed up at that creek,” Tom assured him.
“Then he’s a damn fool to think he can ride in here and arrest all five of us,” Ansel said. Then he hesitated while he thought back on Tom’s accounting of the confrontation at Stillwater Creek. “You say he tried to arrest you and Whip. How’d he get the jump on you? You were supposed to be watchin’ the trail from that Indian agency.”
“We were,” Tom said. “We saw him followin’ our trail and Whip took a shot at him, but he missed. Then he got around behind us somehow.”
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