The Devil's Waltz

by Ethan J. Wolfe

  “And speaking on him, I best go have a look,” Melville said. “Feel free to have another shot of bourbon if you desire.”

  After Melville left the porch, Posey filled his shot glass and took a small sip.

  He looked at the stars in the Utah sky. They twinkled silently in the darkness.

  He took another small sip of bourbon.

  Tomorrow morning, once he made sure Dale was all right, he would get on that big horse and simply ride away. Make a quick stop at the farm and then head west to California or Oregon, change his name, and lose himself in a sea of pilgrims seeking new lives and forgetting old ones.

  Dale would recover and in a month or six weeks, he’d start out after Spooner again, only he wouldn’t catch him. Dale was a good, honest lawman, and to catch Tom Spooner required someone just as crafty, dangerous, and dishonest as Spooner himself.

  Posey took another sip of bourbon and then sighed. Dale was a good man, and he was not. That was a hard fact, but true nonetheless.

  Men have to be what they are and not what someone else wants them to be. Dale was a lawman, husband, father, and good man in his soul.

  Posey was everything his brother wasn’t.

  How he got that way was not important.

  Come morning, he’d be gone and that was important.

  Everything else was just a bunch of in-betweens.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  A knock on the bedroom door woke Posey and when he opened his eyes, it was still dark outside the open window beside the bed.

  “It’s Sally,” Melville’s wife said. “My husband needs your assistance. The marshal has a fever.”

  Wearing his shirt open, Posey looked at his brother.

  “I figured fever would set in, and it has,” Melville said.

  “What can you do?” Posey asked.

  “Help me carry him to that bathtub in the corner,” Melville said. “After that, Sally will take you to the icehouse. I’ll need you to chop enough ice to fill the tub.”

  “How much is enough?” Posey asked.

  “At least a wheelbarrow full,” Melville said. “Now hurry.”

  The icehouse was basically a small barn without windows. Hay lined the floor and bales of it lined the walls. Blocks of ice were stacked in the center, each wrapped in burlap.

  There was a chopping block, ice picks, and axes, and Posey had to chop three blocks of ice to fill a wheelbarrow for the bathtub.

  Once Dale was packed in ice, his unconscious body began to shiver and sweat at the same time.

  Melville and Sally had stripped Dale down to his bare skin and wrapped a towel around his waist; otherwise he was naked in the freezing cold tub.

  Posey had seen army doctors use ice to bring down the fever of wounded soldiers during the war. Sometimes the soldiers lived and sometimes they didn’t.

  Sally felt Dale’s face. “It’s working,” she said.

  “Give him five more minutes and then help me carry him to the bed,” Melville said.

  Once Dale was in bed and covered with sheets and blankets, Sally went to prepare breakfast.

  Melville checked Dale’s fever after he had stopped shivering.

  “It’s down, but not all the way,” he said. “Let him warm up a bit, and it’s back in the tub.”

  After another fifteen minutes in the tub of ice, Melville was satisfied that Dale’s fever had broken.

  They returned him to bed and covered him in sheets and blankets and then went to the kitchen where Sally had breakfast waiting.

  “You men eat, and I’ll sit with the marshal,” Sally said.

  The table was set with scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes, toast, and coffee.

  “After his fever doesn’t return, he’ll wake up and he’ll be hungry as a bear,” Melville said.

  “What happened?” Dale asked. “I don’t remember a thing after you put me on my horse.”

  “That’s because you passed out,” Posey said.

  “Eat,” Sally said. “Talk later.”

  Dale nodded and dug into the plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and potatoes.

  Posey had a cup of coffee and sat in the chair opposite the bed.

  “I’ll be back after you’ve had the chance to eat,” Melville said.

  “And if you want more, let me know,” Sally said.

  “I will, thank you,” Dale said.

  After Melville and Sally left the bedroom, Posey rolled a cigarette.

  “How long was I out?” Dale asked.

  “Close to two days.”

  “You been here the whole time?”

  “Somebody had to be around to stick you in ice.”

  “Ice? I had a fever?”

  Posey nodded as he struck a match. “Mr. Melville saved your life and your leg.”

  “I know and I’ll thank him properly,” Dale said. “But right now I need you to do something for me.”

  Posey sipped some coffee and looked at Dale.

  “Ask Mr. Melville where the nearest telegraph station is,” Dale said. “I’ll write out what I want you to send if you get me paper and pencil.”

  “It’s probably a two-day ride to the nearest town with a telegraph office,” Posey said. “Can’t it wait?”

  “There’s a murdered sheriff we left back there,” Dale said. “We owe him the respect of having someone claim the body. Sarah needs to know what happened and that I’m alive. I’ll probably be in bed for a while healing, so I’ll have my deputies come get me by wagon. You and two of my deputies can continue the search until I’m back on my feet again.”

  “Dale, you said it yourself, this is a job for a whole company or one or two men,” Posey said. “I’m not teaming up with some of your pip-squeak deputies. Not to hunt down Tom Spooner and his bunch. They’ll only get killed.”

  “Jack, ride to the telegraph office and send the wires for me,” Dale said. “We’ll talk about the rest when you get back.”

  Posey sighed. “All right, brother,” he said.

  “No need to ride all the way back to Grayson,” Melville said. “A day’s ride from here east is a railroad water stop. They have a telegraph set up for emergency use. Can you climb a pole?”

  Dale folded the sheets of paper and handed them to Posey.

  “One more thing,” Dale said. “Hand me my saddlebags.”

  Posey tucked the folded sheets of paper into his shirt pocket and then lifted Dale’s saddlebags off the floor and placed them behind the bed.

  “Now raise your right hand,” Dale said.

  “What?”

  “Your right hand, raise it,” Dale said.

  Slowly, Posey held up his right hand.

  “Do you swear to uphold the . . .”

  “No, no, no, don’t do this to me, Dale,” Posey said.

  “Do you swear to uphold the law as a duly appointed United States Deputy Marshal,” Dale said.

  “You son of a bitch,” Posey said.

  “Swear it,” Dale said. “For once in your miserable life, you’re going to do the right thing.”

  Posey sighed as he looked at Dale.

  “I swear,” Posey said.

  Dale dug into one of the saddlebags and then tossed Posey a US deputy marshal’s badge.

  “Put this on,” Dale said.

  Posey looked at the badge in his hand.

  “I think I’d rather be back in Yuma,” he said.

  “I can arrange that if you prefer,” Dale said. “Now get going.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  Posey rode east in the direction of the railroad water stop. Melville said he should reach the site by late afternoon. He figured that after sending the telegrams, he would just keep on going and reach Grand Junction by the following morning.

  It was a damned fool thing Dale did, pinning a badge on him. When he didn’t return, he would see just how foolish an idea it was.

  Being a lawman was a ridiculous notion for sure.

  The truth was, Po
sey deserved to be in Yuma and he knew it. He did commit many of the crimes with Spooner that he was accused of, except that he wasn’t the killer Spooner was.

  Tom Spooner had cold, almost lifeless gray eyes that never appeared real when he looked at you. When Posey was a kid, his father bought him a bag of marbles. It was a game popular in Europe at the time. The smooth, round balls of glass reminded Posey of Spooner’s eyes.

  Beautiful, but lifeless, like the eyes of a rattlesnake.

  He reached the railroad tracks. Millville said when he reached the tracks to follow them east for about an hour.

  Posey dismounted and rolled a cigarette and sat on a railroad tie to smoke it. The horse wandered a few feet away and grazed on some grass.

  He would have been better off letting Dale’s leg rot. Maybe he’d be a cripple, but at least he’d be alive. Once he recovered and set out after Spooner again, his chances of living were reduced greatly.

  “Damn you, Dale,” Posey said aloud.

  The horse looked at him.

  “What?” Posey said. “Eat your grass, you stupid beast.”

  The water stop was like hundreds of others across the country. A giant water tank adjacent to the tracks, a large pile of chopped wood and coal, and a cabin set back about fifty feet where workers slept.

  It was close to five in the afternoon and smoke gently billowed from the chimney in the cabin when Posey arrived.

  A railroad man was chopping wood at the pile. Another came out of the cabin and stood on the porch. He held a shotgun.

  “No need for that scattergun, mister,” Posey said. “I just need to send a few telegrams, is all.”

  “Our wire is for federal use only,” the man chopping wood said.

  Posey moved his vest out of the way to expose the deputy marshal’s badge.

  “Come on down,” the man on the porch said. “Have some supper with us, Marshal. We’ll send your wires after we eat.”

  Supper was beef stew with potatoes and carrots cooked in a large iron pot over a fire in the fireplace and bread.

  Furnishings were simple. Three beds, a table with chairs, a cabinet for dishes, an indoor pump for water, a small woodstove, and a cabinet for rifles.

  “I’m Wallace,” the man who had been chopping wood said. “This here is Tubbs, my partner.”

  Wiping sauce off his plate with bread, Tubbs nodded.

  “So what telegrams do you need to send?” Wallace asked.

  Posey removed the folded papers from his pocket and set them on the table. Wallace picked up the papers and read them carefully.

  “He’s a bad one, that Tom Spooner,” Wallace said. “Him and his bunch.”

  “Spooner, that son of a bitch,” Tubbs said.

  “You know him?” Posey asked.

  “He robbed three trains along the Northern Pacific in the last two years,” Tubbs said. “Killed two engineers and one conductor.”

  “He deserves to swing at the end of a rope, that one,” Wallace said. “Him and his entire bunch.”

  “Well, if you want to send them wires, let’s get to it,” Tubbs said.

  Posey looked up at the twenty-five-foot-high telegraph pole. He wore a lumberjack’s spikes on his boots and a harness around his waist that encircled the pole.

  “Why is the telegraph machine way up there on a hook?” Posey said.

  “So nobody can get to it when we ain’t around,” Wallace said.

  “Now scoot up there and bring it down,” Tubbs said.

  “I’ve never climbed a pole before,” Posey said.

  “Nothing to it,” Tubbs said. “Use them spurs and climb up like a monkey.”

  Posey dug the spur on his left boot into the wood pole, then the right. Using the harness, he shimmied up the pole several feet. He repeated the process a dozen times or more until he was able to lift the telegraph off its hook.

  “Untangle the wire and lower it down to us, but be careful not to get a shock,” Tubbs said. “When it’s all the way down, drape that metal hook over the lines.”

  Slowly, Posey lowered the telegraph to the ground where Tubbs caught it.

  “Now place that hook over the wires,” Wallace said. “And . . .”

  Posey placed the hook over the wires and sparks flew everywhere. He yanked his hand back and looked down.

  “Watch out for the sparks,” Wallace said.

  “Thanks,” Posey said.

  Tubbs set the telegraph on a small table they brought out from the cabin.

  “Okay, Marshal, come down and we’ll do this,” Tubbs said.

  Posey slowly lowered himself to the ground, and when he reached bottom, he said, “That’s a bit tiresome. How do you gents do it?”

  “We got a thirty-foot ladder around back,” Wallace said. “We use that.”

  “Where’s that chair?” Tubbs asked.

  Posey took a sip of coffee as he stood next to Wallace in the dark. An oil lantern on the table provided enough light for Tubbs to see and write the reply when it came.

  “How long you boys been working for the railroad?” Posey asked.

  “Since ’sixty-seven,” Tubbs said.

  “About the same,” Wallace said. “Want me to sweeten that?”

  Posey held his cup out and Wallace added an ounce of rye to it from a pint bottle.

  “We was telegraph operators for the Union Army during the war,” Tubbs said. “We went to work for the railroad right after.”

  “You don’t live here in this cabin?” Posey asked.

  “I got a small spread about five miles to the north,” Tubbs said. “A missus and five young’ens.”

  “My place is about three miles east,” Wallace said. “My missus and three boys watch the place while I’m here.”

  “We work a week on and a week off,” Tubbs said. “Another crew comes in when we go home.”

  “How often does a train come by?” Posey asked.

  “Well, let’s see now,” Wallace said. “We got the ten a.m. east, the noon west, the two p.m. east, and the four p.m. west, and then nothing until the midnight west.”

  The telegraph suddenly jumped to life with a few taps on the keypad.

  Tubbs tapped his response and took the pencil from his pocket. When the message came, he wrote each word on a piece of paper. Finished, he tapped a sign off and then handed the paper to Posey.

  “That one is from the marshal’s office in Santa Fe,” Tubbs said. “Still waiting on a reply from that county sheriff’s office.”

  “My missus brought out an apple pie this morning,” Wallace said. “Why don’t I get us each a slice and some fresh coffee?”

  The response from the county sheriff’s office came an hour later. Tubbs copied the message, signed off, and gave the paper to Posey.

  “Well, let’s grab some sleep before the midnight train arrives,” Wallace said.

  The entire cabin seemed to rattle as the midnight train rolled to a stop at the water tank.

  Posey opened his eyes as Tubbs and Wallace were putting their boots on. He sat up in the bed and grabbed his boots.

  Tubbs and Wallace were at the train by the time he stepped out onto the porch. He rolled a cigarette, lit it with a wood match, and smoked as he watched them service the train.

  Wallace worked the spout and lowered it to the water tank on the train. Tubbs loaded wood onto the locomotive. The entire procedure took but ten minutes, and the train was on its way.

  Walking on to the porch, Wallace said, “Well, that’s it until morning. Best get some sleep.”

  After washing up at the pump and eating breakfast with Wallace and Tubbs, Posey was on his way.

  He rode southwest until he was out of sight of the cabin, and then turned north. He rode for several miles before he brought the horse to a stop.

  “Serves you right, Dale,” Posey said aloud. “Nobody told you to go pin a badge on me. I ain’t trustworthy. That’s why I was in prison. You ought to know that.”

  He gave the reins a tug and the hors
e moved forward. After about a minute, Posey yanked the reins and the horse stopped. He slid out of the saddle and walked twenty feet or so away from the horse.

  “Damn you all to hell,” Posey shouted. “This is what you get when you trust an outlaw.”

  He picked up a rock at his feet and threw it against a tree.

  And screamed so loud, it startled the horse.

  Then he rushed back to the horse and mounted the saddle in one quick swoop.

  “Come on,” Posey said as he turned the horse south.

  Posey arrived in Cannonville in time to have supper with Melville and his wife, Sally.

  Pan-fried chicken with gravy, biscuits and potatoes, and peach pie for dessert, although, as Sally apologized for, the peaches came from a can.

  “I took him his supper right before you arrived,” Sally said. “He’s doing much better. I expect he’ll be able to travel within a week.”

  “I best go see him,” Posey said after supper.

  “Take him a piece of pie and a glass of buttermilk and another slice for yourself,” Sally said.

  “Let me see the responses,” Dale said as he sliced into the peach pie.

  Posey removed the folded papers from his shirt pocket and handed them to Dale.

  Dale read them both as he finished his pie.

  “When we get home to Santa Fe, I figure I should be fit to travel in a month,” Dale said. “By then, Spooner probably will have struck again, and we’ll have a fresh trail.”

  “A month?” Posey said.

  “I can’t do hard riding until this leg is properly healed.”

  “And I do what, sit around and watch your leg scab over for a month?”

  “What are you saying, Jack?”

  Posey sighed as he dug out his pouch and papers and rolled a cigarette. As he struck a match, he said, “You won’t find or catch Tom Spooner, Dale. And if you did, he’d kill you for sure. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “A lawman doesn’t pick and choose who to go after and when to enforce the law, Jack. As long as I wear this badge, I will carry out my duties.”

  “Even if it makes Sarah a widow and your kids orphans?” Posey asked.