by Phil Truman
Henry rode slowly down the main street, looking over the storefronts. He saw two hotels on opposite sides of the street, and decided on the one which had a sign out front which read, “Hot Baths 25 cents.” He also spied a barber pole on the end of one building, the window of a haberdashery, millinery, two general stores, and three saloons. At the end of the street, heading out of town, he found a livery stable and dismounted. A Mexican kid of about twelve or thirteen came out to take the reins of his horse. “Got a smithy here, boy?” Henry asked as he untied his saddlebags and threw them over his shoulder.
The boy nodded, smiling. “Si, senor,” he said, and waited.
“You rub this horse down good, and feed him,” Henry said. “Then get him to that smithy and tell him he needs t’be re-shod.”
The kid nodded again and turned to lead the horse into the livery stable. “Hold on, son,” Henry said. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a silver dollar. “This here’s for you.” A broad white grin broke across the kid’s brown face, as he caught the coin tossed to him. Henry watched him go and smiled to himself. “Tell your boss I’ll be around later to settle up,” he yelled after the boy.
“What is your name, senor, so I can tell him?”
“Ned Christie. You tell him that horse belongs to Ned Christie.”
* * *
“Bill, it looks like our boy, Henry Starr, is at it again.”
Deputy U.S. Marshal William Tilghman, sitting at his desk in Guthrie, Oklahoma said, “Hell, Chris, when did he ever stop?” He took the telegram held out to him by his colleague and read it.
“Colorado?” he asked. “What’s he doing up there?”
“Robbing banks, it appears,” Deputy Madsen responded.
Tilghman laid the telegram down onto the desktop and put his finger under two words. “Need help,” he read aloud. Looking up at Madsen, he asked, “Ain’t they got any marshals in Colorado? Why they need our help?”
“Don’t know,” Madsen answered. “Guess him being from the Territory and all, they figured we’d know Starr, that we might could help in tracking him down. Don’t know how they know it was him, though.”
Tilghman looked at the telegram again, and reread it. “Knowing Henry, I expect he probably announced himself. I’m of the opinion that he thinks folks will be as much impressed with who’s robbing them as he is himself.”
The deputy sat for a few seconds more studying the telegram. “Amity,” he said flatly. “Hmmph. Never heard of it.”
“Believe it’s straight west of Garden City,” Madsen said. “Near the Kansas border.”
Tilghman got up from his desk, lifting his broad-brimmed hat off the rack behind him. “Well, there ain’t much going on around here. I believe a trip to Colorado would be a nice change. You want to come along?”
“Don’t believe I can right now, Bill. You know, I got all that stuff going on down in Oklahoma City.” Madsen looked down at the floor a little sheepish.
Tilghman nodded, agreeing with Madsen that he sure enough did know, and tried not to show disapproval in his expression. For the past several months his old partner had started to become more of a politician than a lawman. Still, he understood. Now that Oklahoma had gone from territory to state, things had tamed down. He and Madsen had been a big part of that taming in the wild and wooly days before and after the Land Run. Politics had already seduced the other part of the trio, their partner Heck Thomas, who’d been lured down to Lawton to be chief of police.
Towns didn’t have marshals or sheriffs anymore; they had policemen and police chiefs. No, the old days were dying out, that much was clear. It was a new day, a new century. But it was a good thing, Bill thought somewhat grudgingly. Hell, that’s why they’d signed on to do all the man-hunting and head-knocking and hip-shooting. They’d wanted to make the new land a better place to live; a place where a man could raise a family and make a living and go to church without the threat of any of them being robbed or molested or killed. And him and Heck and Chris had done a damn fine job at that. Still…
It was becoming harder to bring in desperados, but not because there weren’t any. That element would always be around. It was just that… well, with the new law and order, they just weren’t as plentiful as they once were. Like that great vanishing prairie beast, the bison, you had to range farther to find them than you once did. And like the old buffalo hunters he’d known—Cody, Comstock, Hickok—he’d done his share to thin them out, the outlaws and the buffalo. That’s what Henry Starr was, an old buffalo. And Bill Tilghman, Deputy U.S. Marshal, would make the wide hunt to collect his hide. It was still what he did best.
Chapter Fifteen
Henry looked at his five cards and tried not to frown. Mazie, the dark-skinned girl who’d befriended him the first night he’d showed up at the saloon, sat on the arm of his chair with her arm around his shoulders looking at the hand dealt him, too. He held the four, five, seven, and eight of clubs along with the Jack of hearts. Reason told him not to do it, but he’d lost so much in the past three days, desperation egged him on.
“Check,” the man to his right said.
“Bet two dollars,” Henry said, throwing the chips onto the pot.
“See your two and raise it a dollar,” the man on his left said.
“Call,” said the next man, matching the bets to him. The dealer—a man having curly hair and a well-trimmed Van Dyke beard, a string bowtie and fancy shirt—and Henry’s right hand man did the same.
“I’ll see your one and raise it two more,” Henry said. Everyone around the table called his raise.
“Three,” the man to Henry’s right said, throwing out his discards.
“Take one,” Henry said as he tossed his Jack onto the loose stack of discards.
The left-side man took one, the next guy took two, and the dealer took one.
He took his new card, adding it to the back of the other four. He then held them close to his chest and started spreading them. Mazie bent forward slightly to watch. Behind the four of clubs appeared the five, then the seven, then the eight. Henry rubbed the tips of his right fingers with the thumb before he revealed his new card. It was black, it was a six; but it was a spade. That’s okay, Henry told himself. He got the straight. Drew to an inside straight. Damn! Maybe his luck was changing. He tried not to look too excited.
“Check,” said the right man.
Henry had to take it slow, not scare anybody off. “Bet two dollars,” he said matter-of-factly.
“See that, and raise five,” lefty said.
The bets went around the table two more times, getting higher with each round. One player threw in. Henry was into the pot for forty dollars, and down about three hundred for the night. Adding that to the four hundred from the previous two nights, he couldn’t quit on his straight now.
When all bets were in, Henry had beaten two pair, three kings and one fold, but he couldn’t beat a flush the dealer had somehow materialized. Unfortunately, second place counts for nothing in poker. He slumped with dejection in his chair. “That does it for me, boys,” he said. “I’m tapped out.”
The dealer tried not to smile as he scooped in the pot. Mazie removed her arm from around Henry’s shoulders and stood. He watched her move to the bar where she took up conversation with a dusty cowboy.
* * *
Tilghman stepped off the train in Garden City, Kansas, and headed along the station platform toward the animal car. He didn’t have luggage. His only change of clothes he’d put in his saddlebags, which were still with his other tack in the horse car. He didn’t carry much money, either. Most things he could sign for, the bills then sent on to the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Washington, D.C.
He saddled up his horse, and led him down the ramp before mounting. The sun was high and hot in the chalky summer sky. Tilghman squinted up at it, pulling his watch from his pocket: One fifteen.
At the side of the station, an old black man with white hair loaded big mail sacks from a station cart onto
a wagon bed. “’Scuse me, mister,” Tilghman addressed him. The old man glanced up at him, but kept working. “Wonder if you can tell me how far it is to Amity, Colorado, and point me in that direction?”
The old man stopped his work and pulled a blue bandana from his hip pocket, mopping his face and neck with it. He paused to think.
“Yesuh. Well, it be ’bout haf a day rides,” he said. He looked up at the sun, too. “I ’spect you could make it afoe sundown, if you was to go now.” He pointed down the street running next to the station. “That street yonder where all them buildin’s is, that be Main Street. You turn west there, that be yo left, and take it on outta town. Just stay on that road. It take you all the way on into Amity.”
“Much obliged,” the lawman said, and reined his horse toward Main Street. Garden City was a bustling town, much bigger than the last time he’d been there. That’d been almost three decades past in his buffalo days. Then it was nothing but another dusty little cow and farm town on the prairie. Now trees, big trees, lined both sides of the street, and telephone poles and phone lines ran smack down the middle of it. It appeared numerous sorts of commerce took place there, with many citizens moving to and fro.
Tilghman had gotten off the train in Wichita to send a telegram to the deputy in Pueblo, the one who’d contacted him asking for help. The telegram read, In Wichita this morning 6/15/08. Will reach Garden City at noon by rail and proceed on horseback to Amity. Desire you meet me there. Bill Tilghman, Deputy U.S. Marshal. It would be nice to stop and rest in Garden City, explore its new horizons, but the Colorado deputy would be waiting for him in Amity. Best to press on before Starr’s trail got too cold.
* * *
Henry figured he’d stayed long enough in La Junta; too long, maybe. What was going to be a one or two night refresher from the trail, turned into almost a week of gambling and whoring. The hotel rules said you paid in advance for each night’s stay. After the first night, Henry had paid for three more nights. That had taken him through the previous night. After his poker losses, hotel bill, meals, livery bill, shopping spree… and other expenses, he found he had a little over twenty dollars left in his pocket.
“You going to stay another night with us, Mister Christie?” the desk clerk asked him as he came through the lobby on his way back from the all-night poker game. It was six in the morning.
“Don’t believe so, Mister Blythe. Going to get a little sleep, then I figure I’ll head on out.”
“Check out time is noon,” the clerk said.
Henry looked at him and nodded. “You send that boy of yours up to wake me at eleven-thirty, and I’ll clear out.”
When Henry dropped the key off, the clerk warmly thanked him. “Where you headed, Mister Christie,” he asked.
“I’m going to head down to New Mexico. Know some people down there. Never been there.”
“Well, if you’re ever back up this way, I hope you’ll come and stay with us again.”
“I surely will, Fred. I surely will,” Henry said.
* * *
Jubal Smoak, the Deputy U.S. Marshal in Pueblo, had received Bill Tilghman’s telegram at nine o’clock in the morning, and immediately struck out for Amity. A little past midday, he arrived at La Junta and decided he and his stiff left leg needed a short rest from the trail. He hobbled up to the bar in The Buffalo Head Saloon where he ordered a beer and a ham sandwich. A week ago he’d gotten the telegram from the sheriff in Amity telling him about the Henry Starr robbery. At the time he didn’t quite know where to start, but he figured something had to be done.
Twenty-three-year-old Deputy Smoak didn’t have much experience in any direction. He’d only been appointed to the position a couple months back. Before that he’d been a second lieutenant in the Army, but only for eight months, and only as a staffer at the Adjutant General’s office in Denver. After graduating last in his class from West Point, he had high expectations of becoming a cavalry officer out west; horsemanship being his one redeeming skill. The Army did send him west, but only as a personnel assistant. His boss, an avid polo enthusiast from New York and always on the lookout for skilled horsemen, immediately requested Smoak’s assignment before his rivals at Fort Collins got wind of the new officer’s ability. Ironically, in a match with Fort Collins, the young lieutenant destroyed his left knee and severely broke his lower leg bones when his pony fell and rolled up on him. The injury rendered him disabled in the military’s eyes, even after a year’s rehabilitation, and he was given a discharge. But his military boss, feeling a bit guilty about the boy’s lost commission, pulled some strings and got him the U.S. Deputy Marshal’s job.
So there he was, sent to Pueblo, Colorado with a pronounced limp to quell the lawless, and owning no real idea on how to go about the job of marshaling. He was smart enough to recognize that, and immediately contacted the legendary Bill Tilghman requesting help.
“What brings you around here, Deputy?” the barkeep asked. Smoak always wore his badge on his shirt, although partially concealed by his open leather vest.
“Been a bank robbery over in Amity. Headed over there to investigate,” he answered around a bite of the ham sandwich.
“Amity, huh?” the bartender responded as he wiped some beer mugs dry. “Hadn’t heard about that. When?”
“’Bout a week ago. Fella rode in and cleaned them out.
“Any idea who done it?
“He told the people in the bank he was Henry Starr.”
“Henry Starr,” the bartender said, looking up at the ceiling trying to recall the name. Then shaking his head, he said, “Never heard of him.”
“Said to be an Indian fella out of Oklahoma. Known outlaw back there.”
“You know, there has been an Indian-looking boy in here this past week spreading some money around. Lost a lot of it at the card table.”
Smoak perked up, set his beer glass down. “When did you last see him?”
“He left the card game yesterday morning about six. Ain’t seen him today, though, or last night. Doesn’t seem like the outlaw sort, though. Kind of a likable fella.”
“Where’s he staying?”
“One of the hotels, I reckon. There’s one next door and one across the street up near the north end.”
Smoak washed the bite of sandwich in his mouth down with the rest of his beer, and fished a half dollar out of his pants pocket, tossing it on the bar. “Much obliged,” he said and turned to leave.
“You might check with our girl Mazie, too,” the bartender said. “Believe they got well acquainted.”
Smoak figured the sheriff in Amity would know when Tilghman got to town and where to find him, so he sent a telegram to Tilghman in care of the sheriff:
In La Junta. Discovered suspect H. Starr left on horseback for N.M. yesterday a.m. Will await your arrival here at Buffalo Head Saloon.
* * *
It had taken Henry nearly three days to go eighty miles, as his horse, Jeff, had come up lame. He lead the horse the last two miles into the town of Trinidad some ten miles or so from the border with New Mexico. His money was short, so he didn’t think he’d be doing any horse trading; besides, he’d become too fond of the bay gelding to get rid of him. So, on the advice of the livery man in Trinidad, he laid up for a couple of days to give Jeff a rest and some liniment treatments to his foreleg. Henry didn’t want to spend what little money he did have on a boarding room, so he worked a deal with the stable man to stay in Jeff’s stall. The liniment smell hung strong in that small area, but the price was right.
Worse than the smell of manure, Henry found the liniment made his nose burn and eyes water, so in the middle of the night he moved up to the loft, settling into the hay by the open loft door. He awoke an hour into daylight, stood and stretched, and looked out onto the main business street of Trinidad. Scratching his side and pulling hay straws out of his hair, he watched a couple riders trot into town. Something looked familiar with one of them, a tall, straight-backed man, broad at the shoulders and sp
orting a big moustache. The morning sun glinted off a spot on the other man’s chest which froze Henry in sudden realization. Those were lawmen riding in, and that familiar one looked a lot like Bill Tilghman.
Reflexively, Henry ducked to the side of the open loft door, out of view from the street. He’d met the famous lawman once, but he knew and feared him more for his reputation. He peeked around the edge to get another look. It was Tilghman, alright; but he didn’t recognize the other man. He was shorter than Tilghman, but huskier; his left leg stuck out in the stirrup, away from the horse’s side. What the hell is Tilghman doing all the way out here in Colorado? Henry asked himself. Surely, he has no interest in that little bank I robbed… does he? He tried to reassure himself; but he didn’t think he’d wait around to find out.
“Epperly, I gotta ride,” Henry said to the livery man as he approached Jeff’s stall.
The man stood at the horse’s trough giving him oats. He glanced up at Henry, noticing his agitation. “Don’t believe this horse is ready to ride, Mister Christie. He’s gonna need a couple more days treatment.”
“I ain’t got a couple more days. Tell you what. I’ll trade Jeff here, plus ten dollars. What can you give me?”
Epperly rubbed his chin in thought. “Well, I got a ten-year-old mare I could let you have for that. She ain’t so young, but she’s stout.”
Henry pulled out the folded bills from the front pocket of his denims and started counting them. Epperly held out his hand to accept them. “And it’ll be another three dollars for the stall and feed… and the liniment,” he said.
Henry looked at him with annoyance, but counted out the extra three.
Epperly shoved the money into his shirt pocket. “Mare’s out in the corral,” he said. “I’ll go fetch her.”