by John Benteen
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Nothing in Sheriff Frank Gaylord’s background had ever prepared him for this. Pushing forty years of age, but still strong and fast with a gun, Gaylord truly believed he’d done a good job in Colter County.
But there was talk behind his back. Talk about how he was secretly on the payroll of the Chain Ranch. Talk about how he favored the large cattle barons over the small ranchers. And now, as his re-election approached, more than Gaylord’s job was on the line. His honor and the lives of his best friends were in jeopardy as well.
Sheriff Gaylord had always been an honest lawman, but when wealth, power and a beautiful woman are dangled in front of him, it looks like Gaylord’s badge is about to be bought. And suddenly, Frank Gaylord must meet his most dangerous enemy yet – himself.
GAYLORD’S BADGE
By Richard Meade
First published by Doubleday & Co in 1975
Copyright © 1975, 2014 by Benjamin L. Haas
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: September 2014
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.
Cover image © 2014 by Tony Masero. Visit Tony here
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Author’s Note
Since much of this book hinges on an election in Wyoming Territory in the early 1880s, it might be well to state that election procedures as described herein are based on contemporary accounts. Stuffed ballot boxes, indiscriminate voting by all and sundry, private ballots got up by individuals for personal gain, and all the manipulations and finaglings detailed in fictional Colter County were very much the order of the day.
Moreover, at that time Wyoming was the only state or territory granting women the right to vote; and they were active in political campaigns.
The maverick law, the abolition of the grubline, and the activities of the Knights of Labor, as well as the domination of the territory by the Stock Growers Association, eventually led to the famous Johnson County War, several years after the era in which this book is set.
Chapter One
Even in the summer, the night wind swirling down into the basin from the peaks of the Big Horns had a touch of chill, and Frank Gaylord, pulling on the heavy sweater, was glad he’d brought it. A fire, of course, was out of the question. Although it was unlikely, there was a bare chance that the two men in the cabin down there by the creek might spot it; and Gaylord had been a lawman for too long to take the slightest unnecessary chance. Leaning back against the bole of a lodgepole pine, with a big, careful hand he even shielded the match with which he lit perhaps the tenth cigarette of the night.
Beside him, his chief deputy, Clint Wallace, stirred restlessly. “Frank, ain’t it about time?”
Gaylord squinted at the silver slice of waning moon riding low over the horizon. “In a little bit,” he said. “Just have patience.”
“But they’re bound to be sound asleep. Have been for hours.”
“That ain’t the point,” Gaylord said, his deep voice patient. “Clint, I have told you this before. Always wait till after midnight to take a sleeping man, if you can do it. Well after midnight. Two o’clock is the best time of all. A man’s sleep is deepest then, and his mind and body both are at their lowest point. Even when he wakes up, it takes him longer to get himself together.” He smiled faintly. “It don’t cost nothing extra to wait a little longer, and it might save a lot of trouble. Anytime you can get an edge, you take it.”
Wallace made a sound in his throat. He was good, very good, Gaylord thought, but still a shade too young. Still in his late twenties, and lacking the patience that came with age, more rings on the horns. Gaylord himself would be forty on his next birthday, and patience was a lesson learned the hard way and long since absorbed into the very marrow of his bones. That was all right, though, he thought. He was slowing down a shade, and Clint was at the very peak of swiftness and alertness. Together, they made a good team.
“An edge,” Clint said. “You really think Billy and Phil would resist the law?”
“Clint, we ain’t paid to guess whether they will or not. We’re paid to see that they don’t.” He paused. “Far as I know, they’re both reasonable. But these warrants we’re carrying could put them behind the walls for a long, long time.” He drew on the cigarette, and briefly it illumined a long, craggy face: gray eyes, strong nose, a mustache with a few silver hairs among the black ones above a wide mouth with deep lines at the corners. Even hunkered down against the pine, he was a big man; erect, he was better than six feet and weighed nearly two hundred, and although he knew he had begun to drink a little more heavily lately than was his custom, so far it had put no fat on him. “Anyhow,” he went on, “when a man suddenly realizes that, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
Clint was silent for a moment. He was as tall as Gaylord, probably would match him in bulk and muscle in due time. His face was more cleanly chiseled, a face that made the heads of all the girls in Colter County turn—what few of them there were. He had been acting sheriff when Gaylord had been invited to the county, willingly accepting demotion to chief deputy, and they had worked together now for over a year. In that time, something had sprung up between them that was deeper than the relationship between employer and employee, deeper even than friendship; almost father and son, but not quite. Call it older brother and younger one, Gaylord thought. He felt a certain apprehension stirring in him. It was good to have Clint backing him, but there were disadvantages, too. He had begun to worry about Clint’s safety. Fact was that, on his own, he’d have moved in on Billy Dann and Phil Hoff by now; this edge he was so patiently taking was mostly for Clint’s sake, extra insurance that Clint would not get hurt. That was a bad frame of mind for a lawman to be in about a deputy, but he had no idea what to do about it. Clint was natural-born for wearing a badge: strong, his judgment good, and, when it was necessary, fast, decisive, and accurate with a gun. And he admired Frank Gaylord extravagantly. So, for better or worse, he was probably doomed to be a law officer for a long time yet. All Gaylord could do was teach him what he needed to know to survive. And, without coddling him, expose him to no unnecessary risks while he learned.
Then Clint spat. “I still think the whole thing stinks. I’ve known Phil and Billy since I was a kid. Me and Billy Dann used to double up on the same horse to the schoolhouse together, down in Nebraska. They ain’t no more rustlers than you or me.”
“That’s for the courts to decide,” Gaylord said mildly. “All we know is we got warrants and we got to make arrests.”
“And you know good and well who signed those warrants. Ross Gruber.” His voice was bitter. “The Chain Ranch.”
“They’re signed and certified by the district judge. That’s all that matters.”
“Oh, sure. And Judge Merkel would sign a warrant against Jesus Christ if Gruber and the Chain Ranch asked him to.” He turned to Gaylord. “Frank, tell me the truth. Don’t you agree with me? This is a damn stinkin’ frame-up. Gruber knows that Billy and Phil have been talkin’ to the Knights of Labor about organizin a cowboy strike this fall roundup season, and Gruber ain’t about to stand for that. So he rigged these warrants.”
“Keep your voice down,” Gaylord said quietly.
“
All right.” It dropped to a rasping whisper. “Only … damn it, this sticks in my craw.” He paused. “I don’t know. A lot sticks in my craw lately. Just about everything that’s happening in Wyoming now, it seems like.”
“The law—” Gaylord began.
“The law … sure. The law we’re sworn to uphold. But who makes that law, you want to know? I’ll tell you. Englishmen and Irishmen ten thousand miles away, that have never even rode a horse across this range. Moving in with their big cattle companies, taking up all the range, hiring men like Gruber to manage their ranches … and buying the Territorial Legislature lock, stock, and barrel. Goddamnit, Frank, they ain’t even Americans; they don’t know how Americans think. Least of all, they don’t know how a rannihan or a little rancher thinks. All they know is, the riders that work their stock are the lower classes”—his voice was thick with mockery—“and they figure they can treat ’em like they do their ‘subjects’ at home. Work ’em when they need ’em, pay ’em what they choose, and let ’em starve the rest of the time. And they got this range locked up, along with half a dozen so-called Americans that think just like they do. And they just can’t even understand that a man might have his own rights here, even if he don’t own a foot of range or a single goddamn cow. They want it all, not just a little bit, but every ounce of it … ”
“Hush, Clint,” Frank Gaylord said. “That ain’t our problem.”
“The hell it ain’t. I’m sittin’ out here right now, freezin’ my ass off, waitin’ to go down there and arrest an American friend of mine on the say-so of a manager of one of those big English spreads. And I know damned well he ain’t no rustler. If he’s done anything at all, it’s brand his own stock. But even that’s illegal now, since they’ve passed their damned maverick law.”
Gaylord’s patience was coming to an end. “Clint, that’s enough.”
“Is it?” Clint Wallace said, and there was something strange in his voice that made Gaylord look at him; but his face was in a shadow.
Gaylord sighed. “All right, friend. Maybe it was a mistake to bring you. Maybe I should have brought Tom Callaway. But you asked to come, or did I mishear you?”
“You didn’t mishear me,” Clint said thinly. “I asked to come, all right. When I heard who you had to pick up, I figured I’d better. At least if I’m along they’ll reach Warshield alive.”
Gaylord’s big hands tightened over the Winchester lying across his knees. He fought back anger. “That’s a rotten thing to say.”
For a moment there was only the sound of Clint’s heavy breathing. Then Wallace said, in a different voice, “Yeah, it was. I apologize, Frank. You ain’t reached that point yet, I don’t think.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind from the Big Horns touched Frank Gaylord. “Clint, you’d better explain what you mean by that.”
“No, I better not. I’m sorry I said it. I was out of line. Forget it, please.”
Gaylord said, “It ain’t the kind of thing that I’m ready to forget. I want to hear what you meant.”
Clint looked at the moon. “Sure to God it’s two o’clock. Let’s go on down.”
“Wait a minute,” Gaylord answered. “We’ve got time for you to explain.” He stood up, towering in Stetson, thick sweater, wool pants, and high-heeled boots from which spurs had been discarded lest they jingle. Clint also rose, in buckskin jacket, and shotgun chaps over blue denim. He shifted position so that his lean, intense, and handsome young face came into the moonlight.
“All right,” he said. “You want me to say it, I guess I’ll have to. There’s talk going around, Frank. I tried to shut it out at first, but there’s an awful lot of it. They say you’re on the take, that Gruber and the Chain Ranch have bought you.”
His voice trembled. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, but everybody seems to know about it. Gruber registered a brand in your name, FTG, for Frank Tompkins Gaylord. And right now there are two hundred head of prime she-stuff wearing that brand, grazing free of charge on the Chain range.” He tucked his own Winchester beneath his arm. “In today’s market, that’s damn near ten thousand dollars worth of beef, and the increase is worth at least a thousand a year and likely more. They say that. And that you’re taking other money, too, not a lot, but some, a little at a time, from people in Warshield. And that altogether it adds up, and in the long run it’s Gruber that makes it good. Oh, damn—” He struck a tree beside him with a fist. “I didn’t want to bring it up. But I’ve been sittin’ here so long, thinkin’ about Billy and Phil and— Maybe it ain’t so. I hope to God it ain’t.”
Gaylord sucked in a long breath. The barrel of the Winchester was cold beneath his hand as he ordered his thoughts. Well, it might as well be gotten over with. It, too, was part of Clint’s education.
“Well, it’s true,” he said.
“Oh, Jesus, Frank—”
“No.” Gaylord looked at the moon again; there was still time. “Suppose you hear me out; all right?”
“I’m listening,” Clint said quietly.
“Good.” Gaylord found it not quite comfortable to look at Clint as he spoke. Instead, he stared down the slope at the cabin in the valley, by the creek, with the big flat behind it. His mind raced back over years, many of them painful to remember. ‘‘When I come back from the Union Army, not twenty years old then, my daddy was a county sheriff in Missouri. Me, I had been through a lot, and maybe I was older than my years; anyhow, he knew I was good with guns and he swore me in as deputy … ”
“I’ve heard some of that,” Clint murmured.
“And maybe you’ve heard what happened later. The Texas men started to bring herds up through Missouri. Those herds brought Texas fever with ’em, and they killed off every native cow anywhere they passed. Missouri laid down a deadline against Texas cattle; my daddy was enforcing it when some Texas drovers killed him. I stepped into his boots when I couldn’t come close to fillin’ ’em, but I made the deadline stick, and I been in law enforcement ever since. In Missouri, in the Kansas trail towns, and now up here … ”
“Listen, there’s damned few don’t know about all that.” There was anguish in Clint’s voice. “Everybody knows about Frank Gaylord. That’s why I was so glad to step aside for you, so damned proud to serve under you … ”
“There’s a lot they don’t know about Frank Gaylord. A lot nobody knows about wearin’ a badge until he’s worn one as long as I have, and in as many different places.” Gaylord rolled a cigarette one-handed, hardly even realizing that he did it. “What you got to understand, Clint, is that if you stay with it they’ll eat you up, if you let ’em. Every town and every county’s different—and yet they’re all the same. They all want law and order—but not too much of it, and only for other people. And the main thing they want is that they want it cheap.” He shielded the match and lit the smoke.
“They figure a lawman’s like a preacher or a doctor: he’s so dedicated to what he’s doing, he don’t need money to eat on or marry on or raise a family on. He’s supposed to be glad to go out and risk his life half a dozen times a week, on call seven days out of seven, for money a storekeeper would close his place if he didn’t make any more than that. But that same storekeeper will squall loudest if the commissioners vote you a ten-dollar raise; or if somebody holds him up and you don’t catch him.”
“Don’t I know it,” Clint said, with a touch of iron humor.
“You’re damned well sure you know it. You’ve learned that much, anyhow, in the past few years.” He drew in smoke, then let it out; the cabin below was dark and silent. “But what you don’t understand is the reason they want to keep you broke. They want to keep you broke so they can buy you personally. If you made a decent wage, you wouldn’t be for sale … ”
“And so the talk’s right,” Clint said sickly. “You’re for sale now?”
“No. Only smarter. I went along for years on my salary, turning down everything they offered. And when I came here I was dead broke and pushin’ forty
and starting to wise up. I don’t catch on very fast. But finally it dawned on me: all right, take their goddamn money. It’s only what they should be paying you in salary anyhow for the work you do and the risks you take. They’ve made a sucker out of you for years, now you make a sucker out of them. Take anything they offer you—but don’t let it make any difference. If you got to make a promise, turn the money down. But otherwise, if they don’t ask and you don’t promise, sock it away. It’s the only way of getting paid what you’re worth.”
He paused. “It depends on how you run the office. If you run it so you’re worth that much more than your salary, you’re in the clear. If you don’t, then they got their hooks in you. Me, I always run the office so they’re in my debt and I can take their money with a clear conscience. It’s just pay, normal salary that I would have received in the ordinary course of duty if they hadn’t rigged things otherwise. It buys my best services as a lawman; it don’t buy my soul, nor any special favors.”
“Then—” Clint rubbed his mouth. “It’s true. You have got two hundred head running on Chain range?”
“Yeah, I got those cattle there. But they’re no bribe. They’re a damned small payoff for a damned big service. Remember when the Sawneys hit the bank in Warshield?”
“How could I forget? We killed Jack and Harry and two of their men.”
“That’s right. And if we’d been ordinary civilians we’d have collected a lot more than ten thousand in rewards. But we were lawmen in the execution of their duties. So we got nothing, even though Warshield’s the only town the Sawneys never cracked. I proved right then and there that I was worth my hire; I saved the bank more than a hundred thousand dollars. Okay, the Chain Ranch’s one of the biggest stockholders in the bank. If Gruber wanted to give me two hundred head of she-stock out of gratitude, that’s his business. But if he thinks it buys me, he’s crazy.” Gaylord paused. “You see what I’m driving at, Clint?”