by Yes Jack
‘Of course I will, sir. I’m right grateful for the help you’ve given me so far.’
‘Good girl. Now I just want that you should wait here for five minutes, without talking to anybody or getting yourself into mischief. Reckon you can manage that?’
‘Surely I can. I ain’t a kid, you know!’
Talbot Rogers tucked his pistol in the back of his pants and then checked that his jacket concealed it from view. As good fortune would have it, the sentries at the gate of Fort Williams were being changed at that very moment, which was a relief to Talbot. It would have been a little awkward to try this trick on the same fellow who had already seen him go into the fort already, not fifteen minutes since.
One of the troopers standing sentry-go at the gate asked, as Talbot made to enter, ‘Wait up, fellow. You carrying?’
Talbot flipped open his jacket to show that he wasn’t wearing a gun-belt and enquired ironically, ‘You want that I should empty my pockets, case I got a Derringer or something?’
The soldier laughed and said cheerfully, ‘No, you don’t look much like a killer. Go on, you can pass through.’
Talbot Rogers was not in general given to bad language, but once he had passed the sentry and entered the fort, he muttered under his breath the strongest expression he had used since leaving the army years ago. As he had suspected, it had been simplicity itself to carry two pistols into Fort Williams. In addition to the pistol he had tucked into the back of his pants, he also had the little muff pistol in his jacket pocket. For all their supposed precautions, the place was wide open to attack.
The plan that Hilton had devised would need split-second timing to come off, not to mention where it relied upon the good will and co-operation of a bunch of bloodthirsty savages. Such were the potential rewards, sufficient perhaps to enable every one of the gang to retire comfortably for the rest of their natural lives, that it seemed to them all an entirely reasonable gamble. They would infiltrate the fort in ones and twos, smuggling in powder and carrying openly kegs of lamp oil. With these materials, they would create such mayhem and bloodshed, that the whole fort would be in an uproar, with the troopers running round like headless chickens. At which point, they would deal with the sentries and open the way for the Kiowa to ride in and massacre the men stationed at Fort Williams. As long as the ’breed was playing straight and had actually struck a firm agreement with the warriors up in the hills and everybody knew how matters stood, then it might just work out all right.
As is so often the case with affairs of that sort though, the slightest little hitch would be quite sufficient to screw up the whole show. In this case, the factor that Hilton and his men, as well as the Kiowa, were overlooking was an insignificant-looking and colourless fellow who you wouldn’t notice in a crowd. Just one man who knew the difference between right and wrong and was not about to back away from evildoing when he saw it.
Just as Talbot Rogers had an instinct which enabled him to spot men like Carson from the Indian Bureau, those on the side of law and order, so too was he able to identify those on the other side of the street: bad men and those who kept company with them. It was as he was walking towards the wide open gate of the fort, in order to leave the place, that Talbot caught sight of three men walking slowly across the dusty parade ground which formed the heart of Fort Williams. Without a shadow of a doubt, Talbot Rogers knew that these men were up to no good. He speeded up a little and headed after them. Then when he was barely six feet behind them, and they altogether unaware of the fact that he was approaching, Talbot stumbled and made as though to fall to the ground. He put out a hand to save himself, almost knocking over one of the men as he steadied himself by touching the fellow’s back.
Tom Hilton whirled round and exclaimed angrily, ‘Mind what you’re about, you clumsy old bastard! What d’you mean by it, touching me in such a way?’
‘I beg pardon, I’m sure,’ replied Talbot meekly, ‘I lost my footing. I ain’t as young as once I was and that’s the fact of the matter.’
The two men stared into each other’s eyes and for a moment, Hilton was oddly disconcerted. He shivered, as though a goose had walked over his grave. He looked harder at the apologetic little man standing before him and decided that he wasn’t worth the bother of picking a fight with. Besides which, he had other fish to fry that day. Hilton limited himself to observing, ‘Well, I say again, you’re a clumsy bastard.’
‘It may be so,’ conceded Talbot mildly. ‘In which case, I must once again apologize for being barging into you so.’
Hilton looked into the other’s eyes, a slightly puzzled look upon his sharp features. The man whom he was insulting could scarcely have been more humble and self-effacing, yet there was something about the situation which did not somehow ring true. Then he realized that the sun was slowly sinking towards the western horizon and that there were plans to be made. He turned away abruptly and stalked off with his two companions.
As for Talbot Rogers, he was now completely satisfied in his own mind that the man he had allowed to abuse him was mixed up in some funny business. It wasn’t just the sight of that red silk bandana around the fellow’s throat which had confirmed him in this view. That had told him that here was one of those who had fired on them at Greenhaven, nothing more. More than that though, he was pretty sure that somehow these three men were mixed up with the Kiowa affair. It would be the hell of a coincidence if there were two plots involving the fort, both running parallel to each other, which meant that the three men who were walking away from him were almost certainly associated in some way with the projected Indian rising. Talbot wasn’t a great believer in coincidence and so until further evidence turned up, he was compelled to assume that the Kiowa and those three men had some common purpose linking them together.
Faking that false step and clutching at one of the men’s back had been the perfect way of discovering if, like him, they were carrying concealed weapons into the fort. Putting all the pieces of the puzzle together told Talbot that something dangerous was afoot. He wouldn’t have been able to take oath and swear to it in a court of law, but to his own satisfaction, he had established that something was about to happen in or around Fort Williams and since the army unit here didn’t seem up to the job, he supposed that it would fall to him to deal with it.
Hilton said, ‘If what Ben says is on the money, then if we set the match to the powder train at dusk, that should do the trick. He tells me as there are already some o’ them braves waitin’ in that village. Soon as we swing into action, they’ll be in on the game. Others up in the hills’ll ride down when they see the flames.’
‘Then what? We just spring our mine and take out the sentries?’ asked the man on Hilton’s right. ‘We goin’ to look damned foolish if the Indians don’t start in at once, once we get goin’. We’re like to hang.’
‘Ben knows that well enough. It’s his neck at hazard, too. If he says those savages are going to war, well, I take him at his word.’
The other man, who had not yet spoken said, ‘How much paper money you think there’ll be here in the fort?’
Hilton rubbed his chin and said thoughtfully, ‘There’s the paymaster’s office over yonder. I couldn’t say how much, but a fair to middlin’ sum, I’ll be bound. We’ll have the pick of what’s in the town too, remember. Sundown’s in maybe three hours. We best start bringin’ in and stowing our supplies here.’
Melanie was standing almost in the very same spot that Talbot had left her, but she was no longer alone. Three young men were surrounding her; not in a menacing way, but simply intrigued to find such a young girl standing around by herself, without a male protector to be seen. When Talbot arrived, they did not at first seem inclined to move on, but continued to banter with Melanie in a way that the older man found a little much. He said, ‘Any o’ you fellows have sisters? Is this how you’d like to think of men speaking to them? I’d think you’d be ashamed to carry on so.’
Two of the boys went off, looking a little sh
eepish, but the remaining one said pugnaciously, ‘What’re you, man, her pa?’
Talbot regarded the youth without saying anything for a second or two, before observing mildly, ‘Before you get into a scrape with a man, always be sure it’s worthwhile. That how you feel about this present case?’
The young man stared back at him for a moment, before turning and muttering, ‘No, I reckon not.’ There was something about Talbot Rogers’s bearing and general demeanour which, young as he was, caused him to realize that crossing him would not be a wise move.
After the boys left, Talbot said, ‘I want you somewhere safe, young Melanie. Not hanging around a street corner in this wise, so that you’re in the open when the lightning strikes.’
The girl glanced up to the sky.
‘Lightning? You expecting a storm or something?’ she said.
‘In a manner of speaking. Leastways, I want you tucked out the way, that’s all you need know of the matter.’
Chapter 10
Melanie was less than enchanted with the poky, smelly little room, scarcely bigger than a broom closet, which Talbot Rogers succeeded in securing for her in a log-built house on the far edge of the settlement. She said, after the owner had left, ‘Why, it’s no better than a pig pen!’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said Talbot shortly, ‘but I want your oath that you’ll not set foot from here ’til I fetch you.’
She bridled a little, but in the end agreed, as he had known she would. After all, her options were strictly limited and the girl knew that he had her best interests at heart.
Having, as he hoped, secured the safety of the child with whom he had unburdened himself, Talbot left the little house and stood watching the gate of the fort. It was coming on towards evening and the little village was evidently gearing up for some fun. Somewhere, an accordion was playing and there was the cheerful sound of men’s voices raised in banter and debate as they got drunk in the nearby saloon.
While he stood there, a glimpse of movement caught Talbot’s eye from the huddle of tepees on the other side of the fort. It looked like men moving from one tent to another, but not strolling or sauntering, like they might if they had nothing much on their minds, but swiftly and stealthily. Then he saw another man scuttle from one tepee to another and as he watched, Talbot Rogers was put mightily in mind of soldiers darting from cover to cover as they approached an enemy position. All his lawman’s hackles rose as he observed these actions and he knew at once that he was watching something suspicious and probably illegal. It was then that out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of one of the men he had bumped into at the fort. This man was sauntering along as though he didn’t have a care in the world and he was heading towards the gate of Fort Williams.
Something had been nagging away at the back of Talbot’s mind ever since he had stumbled into the man and ascertained that he was carrying a concealed weapon. The red bandana had indicated to him that he was probably the self-same man who had galloped past them earlier that day; the one he half-suspected of having shot and killed Melanie’s father. Now he suddenly knew what it was he had missed and he cursed himself, thinking that it showed how slow he was getting as he grew older. The fellow was the spit-image of one of those that he and the man from the Indian Bureau had killed during the failed robbery of the stage. It was his brother or some other close kin, for a bet.
Standing there, trying to figure out the best course of action to take, Talbot Rogers felt the bristly hairs on the back of his neck rise. It was that same feeling that one sometimes has during a thunderstorm, when lightning is about to strike and the air is filled with a sudden electrical tension. All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together in his mind and Talbot knew that the plot, about which the dying man had charged him to carry word to Fort Williams, was about to ripen. The danger in the air was palpable and as he stood there, he saw two more men, Indians he supposed, dart from cover among the tepees and race to a tent on the edge of their village, the nearest to the gate of the fort.
The earth shook and there was a roar like thunder. For the merest fraction of a second, Talbot wondered if lightning had literally struck, but then he saw a column of smoke begin to rise from inside Fort Williams and it was plain to him that some mischief was afoot.
Smuggling three quarts of lamp oil and a five pound keg of powder into the fort had been easier than Hilton and his companions could possibly have imagined. The trader who dealt in powder and shot at the ramshackle little settlement in the lee of the fort had been only too cheerful to supply Tom Hilton with five pounds of powder. Acquiring the lamp oil had been similarly straightforward and neither of the men selling these commodities had evinced the least uneasiness in the transactions.
Although the guards at the gates of Fort Williams were very alert to the danger of Indians trying to infiltrate their base, it never for a moment struck them that they would have anything at all to fear from other white folk. The lamp oil was simply shown openly and a wink told the sentry that here was some kind of racket being pulled; maybe somebody selling stolen goods on the cheap to one of the officers or something of that kind. He laughed and waved the man through, seeing nothing that should concern him. Tom Hilton himself took through the powder, as he didn’t trust any of his men with this, the most ticklish aspect of the whole business.
Tearing up an old shirt had enabled Hilton to make two long bags from the sleeves. He had tied the end of the sleeves up tightly and then filled them with the gunpowder. In this way, it had been possible to hang them down the inside of his pants, suspended from his belt. It gave Tom Hilton a bit of a spraddle when he walked, but it probably didn’t strike anybody that he was carrying enough powder on his person to kill a dozen or more men. At any rate, the sentry just waved him through in a bored and lackadaisical fashion.
From chatting to a couple of the troopers, one of Hilton’s men had found that the soldiers ate in the mess hall in three sittings. The first was at six. It now lacked just fifteen minutes to the hour. One of the kegs that the men had brought into the fort was empty and dry; for which reason that the soldier on guard duty had taken no interest in it. Once they were safely inside Fort Williams, Hilton and another man ducked behind a shed and as quickly as they could, hoisted the bags of powder from Hilton’s pants and poured the contents into the little wooden barrel. A length of fuse stuffed into the bung-hole completed the preparations and provided them with a compact, but serviceable mine.
There was only one entrance into the mess hall, which was through a narrow porch. This porch was piled with wooden boxes and coils of rope. It was absolutely perfect for what Tom Hilton had in mind. He and the others waited until the first group of men had left the mess hall and the others had gone in to eat. Acting as though they had a perfect right there and were just delivering some goods, Hilton placed his mine on top of the pile of boxes. Around it, the others carefully positioned the kegs of lamp oil. Then, with no more ado, Hilton took out a box of Lucifers and struck one. He held it to the fuse, until it began sputtering and fizzing, whereupon he and the other three men walked briskly away in the direction of the main gate.
The other members of the band were walking from the white settlement towards the Indian village and could be glimpsed through the gate as Hilton and the two others approached the two soldiers who were standing sentry-go there. The ’breed was with the other men, which was important, for without his presence when the uprising began, there was every likelihood of Hilton and other whites simply being massacred along with everybody else.
As soon as they heard the roar of the explosion, Tom Hilton and his companions reached into the back of their pants, pulled out the pistols which were concealed there and shot the two sentries in the back before they had even had a chance to react to the sound of the mine being sprung. Then the three assassins simply walked out of the fort and joined the rest of the gang, walking quickly, but with no sign of undue haste such as might excite attention, to the nearest tent of the Indian village.
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br /> The ’breed ushered the other men to a large tent which stood on the very edge of the Indian encampment. It was important that the white men were safely out of the way when the fighting began, because at that point it would be open season on anybody who wasn’t obviously Indian. Ben wanted to be sure that anybody could tell at a glance his own origins. Touchy though he sometimes was about not being accepted as a white man, he was at times happy to slip into a different role. The other men noticed that the ’breed was now wearing a headband and hanging prominently around his neck was some necklace of feathers and shells.
When all the members of Hilton’s gang were hidden in the tepee, Ben said, ‘You boys best not show your faces outside at all, leastways not ’til I give you word. Don’t even look out the door, you hear what I tell you?’
‘You running this outfit now?’ growled Hilton. ‘Sounds to me like you’re givin’ orders.’
The ’breed shrugged and said coolly, ‘You want to leave before I get back, then go right ahead. I tell you now, you’ll be shot down like dogs. Once the killing’s over and folk’ve calmed down somewhat, we’ll take what’s due to us and dig up. It’s nothing to me if any of you want to go out ’fore then. Your blood’ll be upon your own heads.’
Tom Hilton suddenly chuckled and said, ‘Ah, don’t mind me. Getting scratchy, I guess. We’ll sit tight. Be sure and fetch us soon as it’s safe.’
As soon as he realized that there had been an explosion inside the fort, Talbot knew immediately that this was the beginning of the rising of which the man from the Indian Bureau had sent warning. For a fraction of a second, he stood undecided, his impulse to run and make sure that Melanie was safe, fighting with his fixed conviction that he should try and save Fort Williams from destruction. The sharp crack of pistol fire made up his mind for him and reminded Talbot Rogers where his duty lay. If Fort Williams fell, then there would be no safety for any white person between here and the Rio Grande.