Rattler's Law, Volume One

by James Reasoner

  Augusta sighed. "Oh, all right." She glanced across Cedar Street, nodding at the ornate wrought-iron benches that stood near the corner. "Let's go sit down on those benches, and you can tell me whatever it is you're being so mysterious about."

  "Fine with me." Cully reached for the package.

  Augusta pulled back. "But I'll still carry this, thank you. I'm perfectly capable of bearing my own burdens."

  Cully didn’t doubt that. He walked across the intersection beside her and climbed the steps to the boardwalk. If Cully remembered correctly, the wrought-iron benches had been a project Mrs. Grantham and her friends had undertaken back before the formation of the temperance society. In their opinion Abilene needed to be prettied up to get rid of its cow-town image. The benches had been placed at various spots on the boardwalks around town, and at each end of the seats were matching wrought-iron stands that held flowerpots. The flowers were dead now, killed by the first autumn frost, and the flowerpots would soon be put away until spring. But until the ladies got to them, they were still sitting there.

  Augusta settled herself at one end of the bench, placing the package at her feet. Cully took the other end of the seat, knowing without asking that she would want to keep as much distance as possible between them.

  "Now," Augusta said, "what was it you wanted to tell me?"

  Cully took a deep breath. "I reckon I might have been wrong about you, Miss Hall," he declared. "I want to get that right out in the open."

  "Wrong?"

  "I haven't been able to find one blasted thing to prove that you might've poisoned those two cowboys. If you want to leave town, you can go without making anybody suspect you."

  "Any more than you already do, you mean." Augusta's voice was tart, but Cully thought he saw her features relax a bit. If she was innocent, it had to have been uncomfortable for her to know that at least one of Abilene's lawmen considered her a prime suspect in two murders.

  Cully shook his head. "I can't prove it either way, but I figure I was wrong about you, Miss Hall. I don't think you had anything to do with it." Even as he spoke the words, he realized that he believed them. All along, he had been trying to convince himself otherwise just because the facts had seemed to point that way. But circumstances could be deceiving, he decided.

  Augusta smiled slightly, the expression warm and genuine. "I'm glad you feel that way, Deputy. I suppose I was wrong to come into town and lie about who sent me, but everything else I've said has been true. I never wanted to do anything except show people the evils of drinking and try to put a stop to it."

  Cully leaned back against the bench. The metal was cold, and even in better weather the seat wasn’t very comfortable, but at the moment he didn’t care. He felt a great sense of relief; this conversation had gone better than he had feared it would. Augusta didn’t seem to be holding a grudge, and he was grateful for that.

  "I never doubted your motives, ma'am," he said. "I just wasn't sure how far you'd go to accomplish them. Sorry I didn't believe you right off."

  "You had your job to do. And according to Dr. Keller, someone really did poison those men, whether it was deliberate or not."

  "The stuff had to be in the whiskey they were drinking when they started that fight," Cully said, casting his mind back to that night. So much had happened—the play, Joshua's drinking, the trouble during Augusta's lecture, the ruckus with Leander Bullfinch, the brawl at Buster's place, the painful deaths of Stockton and Downing . . .

  Flint had tracked the whiskey to the Barrows, but he had been as unsuccessful at finding evidence against them as Cully had been in his investigation of Augusta. Cully didn’t like it, but there was a very real possibility that the poisonings would go unsolved. Maybe they had been accidental. Nothing else had happened since then; Flint had asked every saloon in town to let him know if anybody got unusually sick from drinking, and so far, no one had.

  Cully shook his head. "We'll probably never know," he said.

  "I'm sorry." Augusta sounded as if she meant it.

  Cully forced a grin. "Reckon you'll be leaving pretty soon. There's nothing to keep you here now."

  "Nothing except my mission."

  He looked dubious. "You'll never get people to stop drinking, Miss Hall. It's just not possible."

  "Perhaps not. I will be leaving Abilene shortly." Augusta smiled. "It's possible that a new start somewhere else might prove more successful. But I still have one more thing I want to do here." She stood up. "I really must go now, Deputy. I'm glad we had this talk, though. It's nice to know that you don't hate me."

  "I've never hated you, Augusta," Cully said, deliberately using her first name. She blushed slightly but didn’t object. He was grinning as she started to bend for her package. Moving quickly, he reached it first and scooped it up. "Let me get that for you," he insisted.

  "No!" Augusta cried, but she was too late. Cully was hefting the package in his arms.

  He could feel the object's shape through the brown wrapping paper and could hear a faint sloshing noise as he shifted it in his hands. A familiar, acrid odor emanated from the package. He pulled back a comer of the paper and had his guess confirmed. Augusta's face was set in anxious lines when he looked at her and asked, "What the devil are you doing with a can of coal oil? Planning to burn down every saloon in Abilene?"

  He was joking, but Augusta's voice was serious as she answered, "No, not the saloons—but fire is a purifying agent."

  Those words sent a chill up Cully's spine. "What are you talking about, Augusta?" he asked, almost afraid of her reply.

  "There's a warehouse a couple of blocks from here on the other side of the railroad tracks where most of Abilene's saloons and taverns store their extra stocks of liquor. Mrs. Grantham told me about it before she and her friends decided they didn't support our common cause as strongly as I do. It should make quite a conflagration, don't you think? Just imagine, thousands of gallons of whiskey that will never get the chance to corrupt and destroy innocent people."

  Augusta's voice had trailed off to a whisper that had gotten softer but somehow more intense as she spoke. Cully stared at her, thunderstruck. She had just come right out and admitted that she was planning to burn down a warehouse with this coal oil he was holding.

  "Dammit, you can't do that!" he exclaimed. "It's against the law—"

  "I told you once before, there are higher laws than those of the State of Kansas," Augusta replied calmly. "Please give me my package." She reached for it.

  Cully half turned. He was still stunned by her admission. Here he had thought that he was wrong about her, that she wasn’t crazy after all, and then to come up with this idea—

  "No, ma'am," he said firmly. "You just come along with me. We're going to go have a talk with the marshal."

  "I can't, Cully. I...I'm sorry."

  She moved faster than he expected, scooping up the flowerpot from the stand at the end of the bench and lunging at him. The bulky, paper-wrapped can of coal oil slowed him as he tried to dodge. The flowerpot slammed into the side of his head, shattering into a hundred pieces and knocking his hat off. Clumps of dirt showered on his shoulder and down the front of his shirt.

  Cully felt himself falling, felt the package slipping from his grasp. Bright lights began to flash behind his eyes. He had been knocked out before and knew what was happening to him. Nevertheless, he tried desperately to hang onto consciousness. But it was futile.

  He landed heavily on the planks of the boardwalk. Somewhere far away, he heard Augusta's voice echoing hollowly as she said again, "I'm sorry."

  One last thought flashed through his stunned brain before he fell all the way into darkness—she had called him Cully.

  The Barrows had started from their farm early that morning, not long after sunrise. Each man drove a wagon pulled by a team of mules. Harley was in the lead wagon, with Dennis, Chuck, and Eddie following behind. The heavily loaded wagons couldn’t move very fast. Dennis's estimate that it would take them at least a week
to get to Dodge City was probably correct...if they were going all the way to Dodge City. Harley knew better.

  His cohort in the scheme to hijack the whiskey hadn’t told him exactly where the raid would take place, but Harley suspected it would be soon. He kept his team moving, his eyes constantly scanning the horizon for some sign of the phony ambushers.

  His brother and his cousins were in high spirits. They had recovered from the despair they had felt after the boiler explosion, and now they were looking forward to seeing Dodge and collecting a pretty price for the barrels of whiskey that were loaded in the wagon beds. It would have been an exciting trip, Harley mused. He was almost sorry things were working out this way.

  But they would be better off in the long run. The others would just have to understand that when the time came.

  Barrows had been making whiskey for as long as they had lived in the hills of Tennessee, maybe longer, for all Harley knew. A man could make a living at it, but that was all. He was never going to get rich brewing and running 'shine.

  Harley wanted something better for himself and his family. When they had come to Kansas, starting up in the whiskey business had been the natural thing to do, and it was about the only thing Dennis, Chuck, and Eddie knew how to do. But Harley had been looking around, and he had a feeling that with enough money to buy some stock, they could become rich in the cattle business. He had seen successful ranchers in Abilene and knew that was what he wanted—fancy boots and a big Stetson and a spread with cowhands to look after his herds. That was a dream a man could hold onto, not something slippery like whiskey and pigs.

  The money he had earned in the last few weeks would go a long way toward bringing that dream within his grasp. That would make all the deception worthwhile.

  The wagons swung wide of Abilene, keeping it to the south and east. They moved through rolling prairie, dotted with clumps of trees and brush, cut by an occasional creek or gully. Harley could see quite a distance from the high seat of his wagon, but the men who were being paid to take the whiskey were probably more familiar with this country. They would know the best hiding places, the most likely spots for an ambush.

  Still, Harley was surprised when more than a dozen men on horseback suddenly appeared a couple of hundred yards ahead of them. There had been no sign of them until that moment. They popped into sight, probably from the bed of a dry gully, and starting riding toward the wagon at a fast trot.

  Harley hauled back on the lines of his team, calling, "Whoooaaa!" to the rangy mules. Behind him, he heard an anxious shout from Dennis.

  "Look, Harley!" the younger brother cried out. "You see those fellers?"

  Harley twisted on the seat. "I see 'em," he replied. His brother and cousins had also halted their wagons. "Don't get all het up. Maybe they ain't lookin' for us."

  He looked toward the approaching riders again just as one of the men in the lead slid a rifle from his saddle boot, lifted it to his shoulder, and fired. Harley saw the flash and the puff of smoke from the weapon's muzzle, heard the bullet whizzing by his head. A split second later, the crack of the rifle came to his ears.

  "Damn it!" he yelled involuntarily.

  They were shooting! There wasn’t supposed to be any shooting. That had been agreed. But now more of the riders were pulling their guns and starting to blast at them.

  "Damn double-cross!" Harley muttered, diving for the rifle lying on the floorboards at his feet. He snatched it up and hesitated only long enough to swivel his head and shout to the others, "Get the hell out of here!"

  He had no idea why the man in the buggy had changed the plan, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. Harley flung the Winchester to his shoulder and began to fire, throwing lead at the oncoming riders as fast as he could squeeze the trigger and work the lever. The ambushers were less than a hundred yards away now, and the air around Harley's head was singing with slugs.

  The bang of another gun came from behind him, and he glanced back to see that Dennis was returning the fire. Chuck and Eddie were busy turning their wagons around. They were probably every bit as scared as he was, Harley thought, but they were working coolly and efficiently. Again, Harley felt a surge of pride. They might not be much for thinking, but they were good men to have on your side in a fight.

  And that was just what they were in for. The withering rifle fire from Harley and Dennis made the attackers break ranks and swerve away. A couple of the saddles had been emptied, but the ambushers still heavily outnumbered the Barrows.

  Harley looked around again. Chuck and Eddie had turned their wagons; the teams were pointing toward Abilene now. Harley made up his mind in a flash, selecting the only course of action that might give them a chance to live through this attack.

  "Come on!" he yelled to Dennis. "Leave your wagon!" He was leaping down from his seat even as he called out.

  "But the whiskey—" Dennis started to protest, lowering his rifle.

  "I'd rather lose it than eat lead!" Harley replied. He started to run toward Chuck's wagon. "You ride with Eddie! You and me'll lay down coverin' fire while we try to make it to Abilene!"

  Dennis nodded, triggered one more shot at the riders, who had pulled back slightly to regroup, then dropped off his wagon and ran toward Eddie's.

  If they had saddle horses, Harley thought, he would order the others to abandon the wagons and light out on horseback. But the whiskey wagons were the only transportation they had, the only hope of escape from the men who were trying to kill them. As Harley and Dennis swung into the beds of the wagons driven by their cousins, the riders charged again, whooping and shooting.

  Harley braced himself between two of the whiskey barrels, and the wagons lurched into motion. He glanced at the other wagon and saw that Dennis was hunkering down, too. The kegs not only offered some cover but could be used to steady their aim while they fought off the attackers. Chuck and Eddie were cracking their whips, shouting, and doing everything to urge the greatest possible speed out of the mule teams.

  The animals were not built for speed, but Harley and Dennis were able to shoot accurately enough to keep the riders from getting too close. Bullets thudded into the barrels as Harley crouched among them. He could smell the whiskey leaking from the riddled kegs as the wagon bounced over the rugged ground.

  Fury blazed inside him. He hated nothing more than being double-crossed. If they got out of this alive, he was going to hunt down the man who had set it up. He had a score to settle, and Barrows never left a score unsettled.

  But first, he thought as he squeezed off another shot and saw one of the trailing riders sag in the saddle, they had to make it to Abilene.

  13

  Cully Markham blinked and looked up at the whiskered face peering anxiously down at him. "Are you all right, Cully?" the man was asking. "Why in blazes did that gal bust a flowerpot over your head?"

  So that was what had happened, Cully thought as the words penetrated the fog around him. From the pain that was pounding in his skull, he figured he had been caught in a buffalo stampede.

  He tried to sit up. The world tilted strangely and almost threw him on his face, but the man kneeling next to him caught his shoulder and steadied him.

  "Thanks," Cully gasped, recognizing him as one of the clerks from the Great Western Store across the street. He looked around and saw that several people were standing around on the boardwalk, staring at him curiously.

  "I was looking out the store window," the man was saying, "and I saw Miss Hall just up and clobber you with that pot, Cully. Why would she want to do a thing like that?"

  "Maybe the deputy got a mite fresh with the gal," one of the bystanders suggested with a grin.

  Cully glared at the man, then turned to the clerk. "Help me up, will you?"

  The clerk slid a hand under Cully's arm and helped him to his feet. Another man picked up his battered black hat, brushed the dirt off, and offered it to him. Cully took it and saw the huge dent in its crown. The hat had absorbed some of the force of the blow
, maybe saved him from worse injury.

  Cully pushed out the dent, settled the hat on his head, and winced as fresh pain hammered inside his brain. Trying to ignore the pain, he struggled to remember why in the world Augusta had hit him.

  The coal oil—the liquor warehouse—the purifying agent of fire.

  It all flooded back to Cully in an instant, and he reached out to grasp the clerk's arm. "Which way did she go?" he demanded. "How long ago?"

  "I-I think she headed north, across the railroad tracks," he gasped. "And it couldn't have been more than five minutes ago. You came to almost before she was out of sight!"

  Then I still have time, Cully thought, time to stop her from getting into worse trouble.

  Abruptly he realized how hard he was squeezing the clerk's arm and released the man. "Sorry," he muttered. But he had no time to say anything else. He turned and started running along the boardwalk, ignoring the puzzled cries that followed him.

  Cully knew the liquor warehouse Augusta had been talking about. It was on Fifth Street, three blocks

  north of the Kansas Pacific depot and a good distance from downtown. By the time he had covered a couple of blocks, he wished he had been less impulsive and gone back for his horse. Then he could have easily beaten Augusta to the warehouse. But his mind hadn’t been working too clearly; all he had been able to think of was hurrying after her and stopping her. Now it was too late to do anything but continue on foot.

  The boardwalk ended before he reached Fifth Street. Running in the street, Cully swung around the corner and looked for Augusta. He saw the huge warehouse, a massive stone structure with wooden shingles on its roof, looming up on his left. The walls themselves wouldn’t burn, but the roof and everything inside would—unless he got there in time.

  As he drew closer, he saw no sign of Augusta in front of the building and grew frantic. Would she have gone to the back to set her fire? If Cully remembered correctly, both the lot behind the warehouse and the one across the street were vacant. No one would spot her back here.