by J. T. Edson
Beth sighed, eyes on the man who meant everything in the world to her. She let out another sigh and replied, “Whatever it is, he got it from Waco.”
Fourteen – Waco Wins a Bet
The jail office presented an unusual sight as the county sheriff and his deputies prepared to go on the raid and capture the men who butchered the BM and Mormon cattle.
Waco looked at the other men, he could hardly ask for better backing in this dangerous business which lay ahead. There was Dusty Fog, Mark Counter, the Ysabel Kid, Bix Smith, Simon Girty and Frank Derringer. The latter came along to the jail to meet his old friends and found himself sworn in as a deputy. Doc Leroy was to stay on as town man, holding Two Forks down.
“Let’s go in the back and talk things over,” Dusty suggested.
The men went into the room at the rear of the jail and checked over their guns as Dusty went through his arrangements once more, Bix Smith grunted as he listened to Dusty’s casual given orders.
“Allow it’ll work, Cap’n?” he asked.
“I reckon it might, given luck. We’ll be inside the room and you’ll be ready to make a real fast come-in when we yell. I reckon we’d …”
The small Texan watched the Ysabel Kid rise and make a sign towards the door. Dusty carried on talking in a normal voice.
On silent feet the Kid reached the door and gripped the handle. He wrenched it open, grabbing and hauling inside a man who’d obviously been listening at the outside. The Kid grabbed the man and slammed him into the wall, his bowie knife out under the man’s chin, ready to rip home.
“Call your bunkie in,” hissed the Kid.
A second man stepped into the room, his hand dropping towards the side pocket of his coat at the Kid’s captive’s scared yell.
“Try it,” warned the Kid, “and your pard’ll be talking through a mouth under his chin.”
Slowly the man removed a wallet from his pocket, flipping it open. “We’re Pinkerton agents,” he said.
Waco accepted the wallet and glanced at it. He’d seen a Pinkerton man’s identification often enough to know it was the real thing. He handed the card back and looked the man over with a scowl:
“All right, so why the spying act?”
Reluctantly the Kid released the man he dragged in and stood back. It was this man who replied:
“We wanted to know who was in here before we came in. Didn’t know how we’d stand in with you. A lot of local law don’t like us homing in.”
“And I’m one of them,” growled Waco. “You remember this, and tell Sam Strogoff what I say. Any time one of you comes into my county I want him here to tell me about it.”
“And if he don’t?” asked the second man.
“I’ll ram his identification right down his throat.”
The two Pinkerton men exchanged looks. They could see that here was one small town lawman who was not impressed by the great Pinkerton Agency. They changed their attitude towards him.
“No need to get riled, sheriff,” the first agent said soothingly. “We need some help from you.”
“You might even get it. What can we do for you?”
The two Pinkerton men glanced at the watchful group of deputies and hesitated, then one growled, “It’s private.”
“There’s nobody here who don’t need to hear it.”
Dusty sat back on one of the beds, watching Waco with the pleased and tolerant smile of an older brother. He saw Mark nudge the Kid and exchange grins as they watched Waco work. Dusty did not speak, he let Waco handle it for the youngster was sheriff and Dusty was only one of the deputies.
Thinking back to what Waco was like and what he was like when they first met, Dusty was pleased in the change. Through Dusty’s efforts, Waco had turned from a sullen, proddy young gunhand, well on the way to becoming another Wes Hardin or Bill Longley, to a really smart and respected lawman.
“All right, sheriff,” said the man the Kid dragged in. He was a short, thick-set man wearing town clothes, a bulge under his shoulder pointed to a hidden revolver. “I’m Joe Brone. This’s Pete Hamel. We’ve been working on those big hold-ups that took place over the last couple of years. You know, the ten thousand dollars from the Army Paymaster, the bank in Houston, the mine payroll over to Virginia City. The big ones that we couldn’t prove on any gang.”
“I’ve heard of them,” agreed Waco. “They were a smart bunch. Were five big ones done by them, wasn’t there?”
“We make it twelve. Stretching clear across from New England to California. All big jobs, all showed the same sort of handling and done just like an Army battle every time. We had every man we could on it. Built up the descriptions of the gang who were doing the jobs. Only five men in it. We’re near on sure these are the descriptions.”
Brone took out a sheet of paper and passed it to Waco. The young Texan looked down the list, reading the five descriptions and whistling through his teeth. He passed the list to Bix Smith who squinted at it, reading.
“The five you brought in,” he said sorrowfully.
“You’ve got ’em?” Brone asked incredulously.
“Had ’em,” corrected Bix. “Somebody done snuck in and took ’em away one night.”
“That’ll look good in our report,” sneered Hamel, a big, burly man who wore a loud check suit and sported a short-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver in his waist band. “Allen’ll be right pleased to hear about this.”
“Mister!” Waco barked. “I never lose any sleep over what Allen Pinkerton or any of his lousy crew think about me. When you report, just tell Pinkerton that if he’d put these descriptions out instead of hanging on to them to hawg the glory, we might have held on to the five men.”
“Yeah, I reckon we could have played it better,” Brone agreed. “We haven’t had the descriptions for long. It took a lot of doing, checking folks who’d have been living in towns where the hold-ups took place, talking to hotel staff, saloon workers. It took us plenty of time to build up these five descriptions.”
“Why come here?”
“Hartley and Graham, the big hardware firm in the east, sold four Gatling guns to a man who had them shipped out west. They were paid for in money taken from the Paymaster robbery. We traced the guns to Two Forks.”
“And you know who got the guns?”
“Nope.”
“Or why?”
“No. Thought it might be for re-sale in Mexico.”
“I’ll bet you a hundred dollars even we can get the five men you want, maybe even find the Gatling guns,” Waco remarked.
“Take you,” Hamel promptly replied.
“Time we were going, boys,” Waco said, turning to his deputies.
“You after them five?” Brone put in eagerly. “We’ll come along if you are.”
“We’re after a bunch of slow-elkers, first off,” Waco replied. “You can come along if you like, but it’s a County Sheriff’s office chore. If you come along you take my orders, without question.”
“All right,” agreed Brone. “I’ll come along under the same rules.”
There were questions seething in Waco’s head, he was seeing things more clearly now, even though there were odd strings he could not tie.
The men left the jail, collecting horses and riding out of town. Doc Leroy, in accordance with Dusty’s orders, had spread the word that Waco and his men were going to the BM in the night, to take the ranch crew by surprise in the early dawn.
Bix Smith and Simon acted as guides, for they knew the country well. They were skilled performers in the dark and even the Ysabel Kid, who always boasted he never felt happy riding in daylight, could find no fault with the way they moved.
They halted their horses on the rim which overlooked the ranch and all slid down. Now Dusty took command, it was his plan and Waco was willing to allow him to handle it.
“Get to it, Lon,” Dusty said. “And don’t take all night. If they’ve got any guards out, Lon …”
“Yeah?”
“Use your g
un-butt.”
There was a chuckle from the Kid and he was gone, fading into the dark like a shadow. The other men stood in silence although the two Pinkerton agents were clearly annoyed at the delay.
Time dragged by and just as Brone opened his mouth to ask an angry question, the big white stallion snorted and started to move down the slope. The Texans moved after the horse, leading their mounts. Bix and Simon flashed uncomprehending looks at Frank Derringer. The gambler grinned back at them and whispered, “That ole Nigger hoss’s damned nigh human.”
Following the white horse down the slope the men found the Ysabel Kid waiting for them. He jerked his thumb towards the house.
“None of them out that I could find. The house’s all locked up and all the crew’s in the hawg-pen.”
That figured. A man like Von Schnabel would not give his hired help the run of his house.
“Bix, you, Simon and the two Pinkertons stop here and keep those hosses quiet,” Dusty ordered, holding his voice down.
Hamel growled. “Who the hell does that small cowhand think he is?”
Simon’s grin was full of sardonic amusement as he replied, “Mister, don’t you tell him he’s wrong—but he thinks he’s Dusty Fog.”
“What’re they aiming to do?” inquired Brone.
“Dusty, Mark and the Kid allow to get into the bunkhouse and take as many of the other side’s guns as they can,” Bix drawled back. “That way we get ’em back all alive and talkative.”
“If they pull it off,” sneered Hamel.
“Mister, they’d best pull it off,” growled Bix. “Most of Von Schnabel’s hired guns are in the hawg-pen. They might even have one of them Gatling guns along with them. So Cap’n Fox, Mark ’n the Kid aim to try and get them without killing. Going to sneak in and take their guns, which same’s why they’re wearing moccasins.”
“Powerful lot better than tossing a bomb through the winder,” Simon went on. “That being you Pinkertons’ way, I hear.”
Hamel started to growl out an angry curse but Derringer silenced him with a grim warning. The Pinkerton men tended to be touchy at any mention of bombs, had been ever since the night in Clay County, Missouri, when Jesse James’ mother was injured and his half-brother killed by an explosion. Whether the explosion was a bomb, or, as Pinkertons claimed, harmless illuminating “Greek Fire” was not certain.
The four Texans went silently down the slope. They were playing a dangerous game, with their lives in the pot and sudden death the price of failure. It was a chance they were more than willing to take. Like four shadows they halted by the bunkhouse door, flattening on either side of the wall. There was no need for further orders for all the four knew what they must do. Waco, reluctantly, was to wait outside, watching from the slit of the door and ready to call the others down when the disarming of the sleeping men was well in progress.
The Kid began to inch open the door, looking in. A lamp stood on the table in the center of the room, the wick turned down so that there was only a tiny flicker of light from it. This was to enable any man who wished to get up in the night to do so and not blunder around in the dark, waking the others. A man was rolling sleepily from one of the bunks and the Kid closed the door, for he was walking towards it. The other Texans caught the Kids’s sign and flattened out on either side of the door, against the wall. The door opened and a man stepped out scratching his stomach in the manner of someone only half awake. Mark moved fast, his right hand Colt coming out, lifting, then slamming down on the man’s head and dropping him without a sound to the ground.
“Hawgtie him, boy. Keep him quiet,” Dusty whispered to Waco.
With that, Dusty followed the Kid and Mark into the bunkhouse, halting just inside the room to allow their eyes to grow accustomed to the faint light. Each of them held a length of pigging thong in his hands as they moved forward in complete silence. The ranch crew were sleeping in double tier bunks, their clothing and boots laying on the floor. But their gunbelts were hanging at the bunk ends, ready for easy grabbing if needed.
Halting by the first bed, Dusty lifted the guns from the holsters and slid the pigging thong through the trigger-guards, making sure the guns did not bang together or make a noise.
It was as Dusty expected. Out on the range these same men would have woken at the slightest sound. Here in the bunkhouse they thought they were safe and were sleeping heavily. There was still danger, however, and Dusty would never have attempted such a thing with lesser men than his two good friends.
For one so large Mark was light on his feet. He moved along the beds facing Dusty, avoiding kicking anything on the floor. He took weapon after weapon, hanging them on the cord in his hand. A man gave a grunt and rolled over in his sleep. Mark froze, hand reaching for the gun holstered at the end of the bunk. He stood without a move until the man settled down again, breathing getting even.
Like a black shadow the Ysabel Kid went the length of the room. This was the sort of work at which he excelled. His long practice at the art of silent movement came from his youthful occupation, just after the Civil War, as a border smuggler. This was a profession which frequently called for silent movement in the darkness. He crouched under the light of the lamp as he went by the table and reached the end of the room. His was the most dangerous part of the business, for he was to disarm both sides of the room, moving forward to meet Dusty and Mark.
The Kid was on the fourth bunk when he felt the gunbelt sliding from the post. He managed to catch it, but there was a slight noise. He saw the sleeper’s eyes open and acted fast. The man opened his eyes and might have been excused if he wished he’d stayed asleep. A savage face loomed over him and before his eyes was the eleven-and-a-half-inch, razor-sharp blade of the Kid’s bowie knife, ready to slit his throat if he as much as batted an eyelid loudly.
Dusty and Mark saw what had happened and moved along. They doubted if the man dare make an outcry. They worked on, but there was no rush in their actions for they knew speed might lead to noise.
At last the guns were all on the cords and Dusty went to the table. He turned the knob and brought the lamp to full brightness, lighting the room. At the same moment the Ysabel Kid let out a wild Comanche war yell which was near loud enough to wake the dead.
The men in the bunks woke, grabbing wildly at empty holsters. At the same moment Waco came through the door, guns out. The windows smashed in, Bix Smith, Simon and the Pinkerton men throwing down on the dazed, newly awakened men. While this was happening, Dusty and Mark brought their own guns to bear on the men and the Kid kept his prisoner quiet under the persuasive blade of his bowie knife.
“Lay still, all of you!” Waco shouted. “The law’s here!”
The men in the bunks were awake enough to hear and obey, but not awake enough to make any spontaneous action against the raiding party. All in all it was a very neat piece of work; the men were covered, most of them were without weapons and there was nothing any of them could do.
“Just stay where you are,” Waco ordered. “I’ll get the ones I want first.”
It was certain death to disobey and the men stayed right where they were. The young Texan went along the line of bunks, picking out the small skin-hunter with the missing tooth and six more; there was a seventh, the man who lay outside, guarded by Frank Derringer. Then Waco selected the five hold-up men and as he pointed out each man Dusty came forward, having holstered his guns, to fasten the man’s wrists together.
“You got nothing on the rest of us,” remarked one of the men who remained in the bunks.
“Likely,” agreed Waco. “You got something on your mind?”
“Sure. Turn me and these other boys loose and I’ll show you where there’s a hell of a lot of guns.”
One of the five hold-up men let out an angry string of words in some harsh-sounding language and lunged forward, only to be caught and held back by Dusty. Hamel looked sharply at the man.
“What language was he speaking?” Waco asked.
“German,” H
amel replied. “He called this feller a traitor to his master’s cause.”
“You’d best show us them rifles, friend,” Dusty said softly.
“Did you get old Walpai Harry?” the man asked. “I never thought that ole goat’d be ketched in the dark.”
“Who?” Dusty snapped, casting an accusing look at the Ysabel Kid.
“Ole Walpai Harry. He was the skin-hunter, used to fetch the Injuns to see the guns. Never sleeps in the bunkhouse. Alius beds down well from the house.”
“I must’ve missed him,” grunted the Kid. “Hell, I knowed I should have rid Nigger in, he might have caught wind scent and let me know.”
“It’s no use you worrying over it, Lon,” Dusty answered. “Waco, take Bix, Simon and Frank, move your prisoners back to town. We’ll handle things here.”
“Why sure,” agreed Waco, bending to pick up two cigar stubs from the floor and slip them into his pocket. “Move ’em out, Bix.”
The prisoners were taken out, horses caught and saddled, then they were hazed off towards the town. Dusty watched them go, then turned to the gunman:
“Show us these guns.”
The man led Dusty and the Pinkertons to a large barn, opening the door. He felt inside the door, found a lamp and lit it. Dusty looked inside, a low whistle coming from his lips. He’d expected a few weapons, but this was more than a few, this was enough to equip a small army. There were cases of rifles, repeaters of various kinds; boxes of ammunition; kegs of gunpowder were stored at one side and in the center of the room, squat and evil-looking on their tripods were four of the latest model, lightweight Gatling guns.
“Von Schnabel looks like he’s a gun-runner,” Brone remarked. “Where the hell did he aim to get rid of all this?”
“He didn’t,” Dusty answered.
“But if he didn’t, why the hell did he buy all of it? I’ll bet this cost him nearly all the money he took in the hold-ups.”
“He aimed to arm the Indians, give them repeating rifles, Gatling guns. mister, he aimed to take over the whole United States.”