Tanglewood Desperadoes

by Paul Lederer

  Ruby knew it was time. What if the men were not in position? Perhaps Kaylin Standish had caught them as they tried to make their way into town. The last thing in the world she wanted was to be trapped alone in her bedroom with the wolfish Cole Lockhart. But she was the one who had suggested it, and the others were depending on her. She rose carefully from her stool at the bar and told Abel Hicks, ‘Let me have a tray with four whiskeys for the boys in the corner over there.’ She nodded toward the table where Cole Lockhart sat.

  Abel Hicks poured them out. He hadn’t seen Ruby taking an order from them, but then on this busy night he had little time for observation. Ruby was a longtime employee who knew what she was doing, and so the shot glasses were quickly poured, placed on a tray. Down the bar a bearded man in furs was bellowing for a fresh pitcher of beer. Ruby lofted the tray and started toward Cole Lockhart, her heart pounding.

  The easy part was done with.

  Ruby put on her most coquettish look, even managing to bat her eyelashes as she approached the table, putting a little additional sway into her walk. God, I feel like a whore, she thought. Cole Lockhart looked up at her with slate-gray eyes completely devoid of expression.

  ‘Did we order those?’ he asked in a deep voice.

  ‘I figured you were just about ready,’ Ruby said with a hint of innuendo.

  ‘I guess so,’ Cole said as Ruby unloaded the tray. He did not smile, he did not wink or flirt. Did the man have no emotions at all?

  ‘Mind if I sit with you for awhile?’ Ruby asked with concealed urgency. It was growing late; the others would be waiting. If they were to have any chance of succeeding on this night, Cole Lockhart must be susceptible to her feminine allure.

  But the man at the table seemed incapable of any sort of feelings.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ Cole asked.

  ‘It’s my regular night off,’ Ruby told him. ‘I just wanted the chance to meet you,’ she added, trying flattery.

  The corner of Cole’s mouth twitched. He glanced at his friends who held expressions as stony as Lockhart’s.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ Ruby said, smiling like a fool. ‘I’ve been trying to get away from Lordsberg for a long while. I thought—’

  ‘No woman travels with us,’ Lockhart said coldly.

  ‘Oh. Well, will you at least give me the chance to wish you a fond goodbye?’

  Kate Cousins watched the interplay from the back office. It was rough going for Ruby, she could tell, but although Kate knew little about men, she knew that there were few who could refuse a direct invitation. It was another long fifteen minutes before Cole Lockhart followed Ruby out the front door and Kate leaped from her chair, carelessly placing the ledgers back in the book case.

  ‘Got all you need?’ Zachary Upjohn asked as Kate hurried toward the back door.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said.

  ‘You know, Kate, I’ve always had a fondness for you. I was wondering if some time.…’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ Kate said. She had to crack the back door open to give the signal to the waiting Tanglewood men. She smiled and sidled past Zachary.

  ‘When?’ he persisted.

  ‘Soon, I promise,’ she said. ‘When this is all over.’

  Never had a more false promise been made, but it left Zachary with a smile and allowed her to slip away toward the door.

  Curt and Trace, and Dan Sumner who was waiting in the alley with their horses, saw the wedge of light from the opening door. Trace felt his stomach knot up. Cole Lockhart with Ruby. He would not let it happen. No matter their plan, he vowed silently that he would shoot down Cole before he would let that happen.

  Trace could not see Curt now. He had hunkered down behind the saloon’s loading dock, among the empty beer barrels. The moon had risen high enough so that he could see it over the buildings lining the alley. The stupid white dog had followed along after them and now sat wagging its tail, watching Trace. Great – to have the entire plan spoiled by a mutt! There was no way to shoo the scrawny beast away silently. Cole Lockhart was a cautious man, his vigilance honed by years of watching for the men with badges, noticing the behavior of wild beasts to alert him to lurking hunters.

  And now there was that stupid dog, sitting wagging its tail as it looked directly up at Trace concealed in the deep shadows beneath the outside staircase. Trace couldn’t even find a rock to toss at it, but even if he had one, hitting it would raise a pained yelp or at least send it scurrying away, and that alone would be enough to raise Cole’s suspicions.

  He saw them then, rounding the corner in the darkness. Ruby was clinging to Cole’s arm and laughing merrily. Trace despised the man at that moment, no matter that it was all a ruse. They had to walk directly past Curt concealed behind the loading dock, and Trace held his breath, but Cole was half-drunk and by now had made up his mind what his evening’s entertainment would be and seemed to be totally focused on that.

  To Trace’s relief, the white dog skulked away in the opposite direction.

  Trace braced himself.

  Ruby was saying, ‘But in Lordsberg, being the small town that it is.…’

  They were near enough now that by the moon-glow Trace could see a sort of desperate hope in her eyes that belied the cheerfulness of her voice.

  ‘Up there?’ he heard Cole Lockhart growl as they neared the steps. Ruby nodded and the outlaw moved ahead, not eagerly it seemed, but warily.

  Trace remained crouched in the shadows. He let Cole climb three steps before his hands shot out and took the Clinch Mountain boss by the ankles. Trace yanked – hard – and Cole toppled backward, his head thudding on the lowest step. Cole tried to wriggle free, kicked out violently, but before he could fight his way out of Trace’s grip, Curt Wagner was on top of Lockhart.

  ‘Lie still or I’ll kill you,’ Trace heard Curt threaten.

  ‘You wouldn’t – my God, it’s you, Wagner. Where—?’

  ‘Shut up and hold still,’ Curt growled. ‘I’d do it, and you know it.’

  Trace emerged from the staircase and tied Cole’s hands behind his back as Curt kept his Colt fixed on Lockhart. Ruby had backed away to stand against the wall of the building, her eyes wide.

  ‘I see you two do know each other,’ Trace said to Curt.

  ‘Well enough that Cole knows that shooting him wouldn’t leave a blot on my conscience. Better do something to shut him up, Trace. There might be someone around.’

  Trace nodded and improvised a gag out of his own and Cole’s bandannas.

  Yanking their captive to his feet, they walked him along the shadowed alleyways to where Dan Sumner waited with their horses.

  ‘We should have brought an extra pony,’ Trace said.

  ‘Couldn’t think of everything,’ Curt said. ‘This way might be better. I’ll ride behind Cole with my gun in his back. He can’t get up to any mischief that way – not with any hope of surviving.’

  Ruby had followed along, obviously anxious.

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’ she asked.

  Trace told her, ‘Wait a half an hour or so and go back into the saloon. If anyone asks about Cole, tell them he fell asleep. Wait a while and then change your clothes and ride back to the Tanglewood, if you can find the way.’

  ‘I think I can now,’ Ruby answered.

  ‘Where is Kate?’ Dan asked with concern as they swung aboard their horses.

  ‘Still in the office,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll go in through the back door and tell her what’s happened. ‘We’ll ride back together.’

  ‘Don’t wait too long,’ Trace advised her. ‘Some of the Clinch Mountain boys might decide to go looking for their chief.’

  Ruby only nodded her understanding, letting her hand rest on the mounted Trace’s leg for a moment before she turned, hoisted her skirts and started away.

  ‘That went pretty well,’ Curt Wagner said as they cleared the outskirts of town. In front of him rode a sullen Cole Lockhart. ‘Let’s
hope we have as much luck with the second half of the plan.’

  Dan Sumner rode on in silence. He was concerned about Kate Cousins’s safety. He still did not see exactly what it was they had accomplished. Perhaps it was like the earlier bank robbery, only a gesture of defiance without real result. Along the road to Prince Blakely’s house he began thinking again that it might be wisest to just scoop Kate up and ride away from here.

  As far from the Tanglewood as they could get.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There were no lights showing in the white frame house Prince Blakely had built at the edge of town, but then it was well after midnight before they reached it. Hidden behind a stand of old black oak trees, the house was far from imposing, but it remained one of the finest structures in the Wakapee Valley where sawn lumber was still a luxury which needed to be freighted in all the way from Tucson.

  Curt Wagner spoke in warning tones to Cole Lockhart as they approached the yard. ‘This is what’s going to happen, Cole. You and I are going to step up on to Blakely’s porch. I’ll have my hat tugged down; he won’t recognize me in this light. You are going to knock on the door and call out.

  ‘And if you don’t go along with us on this – well, you know what the alternative is,’ he said, jabbing Cole’s spine with the muzzle of his Colt.

  Cole Lockhart nodded his head although his eyes were blazing with fury. He would go along with these men for the time being; his time would come to answer this humiliation.

  Dan and Trace Dawson remained behind in the shadows of the big oaks while Curt marched Cole Lockhart toward the front porch of Prince Blakely’s house. The two men walked so near to each other that the gleam of the metal could not be seen as Curt kept his revolver’s muzzle tight against Cole’s back. Curt had tugged his hat low to avoid recognition in the moonlight. It was a tense few minutes. Trace and Dan were wary of any sentries that might appear, but none did for the moment.

  Trace knocked loudly on the door. Cole still had his hands tied behind him. But his gag had been removed so that he could call out to Prince Blakely. He did and repeated it several times until finally they heard footsteps approaching the door. Blakely opened the door in his night shirt. He had pulled on a pair of trousers beneath it.

  ‘What in hell?’ he stuttered. He recognized Cole immediately. ‘Listen, what is this about? If it’s more money you want, I don’t have it. So far as I can tell there haven’t been any results from what I have already handed over. You haven’t even found the nest of the Tanglewood gang yet.’

  Then his eyes widened as he peered out of the door at the second man standing there. He knew Curt Wagner on sight, of course, and he visibly flinched, backing away toward the interior of the house.

  ‘Cole didn’t find us,’ Curt said, ‘but we sort of found him.’

  ‘What is this?’ Blakely sputtered, ‘a hold up?’

  ‘Of a sort,’ Curt replied as Trace emerged from the shadows, gun leveled, to join them. ‘You’re going to take a little ride with us.’

  Blakely glared at Wagner. ‘You were supposed to be a lawman! It’s no wonder the town let you go.’

  ‘The town didn’t let me go,’ Curt replied quietly. ‘You did.’

  ‘I suppose that Dan Sumner’s in on this, too. What is it you people want with me?’

  ‘Just as I said,’ Curt answered, ‘to take a little ride with us – you’ll like it in the Tanglewood.’

  ‘By God, I’ll—!’

  ‘By God,’ Curt interrupted sharply, ‘you’ll tug some boots on and go along with us, or I’ll shoot you where you stand. Won’t I, Cole?’

  ‘You’ve been known to,’ Cole Lockhart muttered.

  ‘You can’t get away with this!’ Blakely exploded. ‘These criminal acts—’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Curt admitted. ‘But then, you’ve been getting away with criminal acts since you moved into the Wakapee Valley, so maybe we can. You never know.’

  The small group rode out of Lordsberg, again using a circuitous route. Ruby and Kate had been waiting in the cottonwood grove along the trail. To the relief of Trace and Dan Sumner, both seemed well and in good spirits.

  After a glance at the cold-eyed Cole Lockhart and the fuming Prince Blakely, Ruby told them, ‘I wasn’t so sure I could find my way in the dark, after all. We decided to wait for you.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ Trace said. ‘I would have worried about you all along the trail.’

  ‘Seriously?’ she asked.

  ‘Seriously.’

  They strung out along the road then, Trace leading the way with Lockhart behind him, watched closely by Curt Wagner. Then came Prince Blakely whose complaining had died to an occasional murmured threat. Dan Sumner, riding side by side with Kate Cousins, trailed.

  ‘Thanks for showing me the road in,’ Cole said to Curt. ‘I was wondering how I was going to find the way.’

  ‘No point in you learning the way,’ Curt said with a naked threat. ‘You’re never going to get out of the Tanglewood alive.’

  Cole Lockhart, astonishingly, laughed out loud, drawing all eyes to him. ‘You’re a lot of things, Curt, but I don’t believe you’d ever kill a man in cold blood.’

  ‘We’ll find out, I expect. Don’t forget Cole, I learned everything I know from you. And I wouldn’t expect any help from the Clinch Mountain boys. They’ll never find the way unless you’re leaving a trail of bread crumbs.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Prince Blakely asked angrily.

  ‘Curt is given to flights of fancy,’ Cole said. ‘Like thinking he’s on some crusade as he apparently does now.’

  ‘I place the blame on your lap,’ Prince Blakely said and Cole gave him a sneer in return.

  ‘Place it where you want, fat man. You can’t believe that I care one way or the other.’

  Trace led the way through the dense thickets, winding this way and that in a way that seemed patternless to Blakely. He, too, had been trying to memorize the way in through the Tanglewood to the outlaws’ camp, but in the darkness he became totally disoriented and finally gave it up, riding along in silent confusion.

  The Tanglewood had a way of impressing people that way.

  Dark, overgrown, tangled and desolate. Even by moonlight, Blakely could not see the trail their horses were following. The overhead, intertwined boughs of the trees cut off most of the glow of the golden light cast by the fading moon. Life became a shadow without the faintest glimmer of light. In the Tanglewood, Blakely could see his own hopes for a bright future fading to darkness as well. All of his money wouldn’t buy his way out of this primitive landscape, this evil place.

  ‘You must do something!’ Storm Ross was shouting at Marshal Standish.

  ‘Do you have a suggestion?’ the lantern-jawed man said from behind his desk. Dawn had only just arrived, spreading a faintly reddish sheen across the walls and floor of the marshal’s office. ‘Besides, you never trusted me to do anything before. Isn’t that why you brought in the Clinch Mountain boys?’

  ‘That’s just the thing!’ the narrow banker shrilled. ‘The Tanglewood gang somehow snatched Cole Lockhart from under their very noses. Bunch of drunken pigs!’ he flared.

  ‘That’s what you hired; what did you expect?’ Kaylin Standish asked, momentarily basking in the glow of his suddenly resurgent reputation.

  ‘And they got Prince Blakely! What sort of law officer are you, anyway?’

  ‘The kind who can’t be everywhere at once,’ Kaylin said, rising to stretch and momentarily go to his open office door to watch the sunrise over Lordsberg. ‘I told you that bringing in all of that extra help was useless. You could send an army into the Tanglewood and they would have little success finding those boys.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Storm Ross said, calming a little. ‘The question is – what do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. We could maybe offer a reward, though that hasn’t done much good in the past. Or,’ Kaylin Standish said tentatively, ‘we might offer an amnesty.’


  ‘What?’

  ‘Offer them – Trace and Curt Wagner, Johnny Johnson, Ben, all of them – an opportunity to surrender with the promise of no charges being filed against them. Of course,’ Standish said, ‘we’d throw them all in the lock-up the minute they appear.’

  ‘That’s devious.’

  ‘Is it not? Have you any better suggestions?’

  ‘How about this Gentry Cousins? His daughter is supposedly riding with the gang. I could agree to let him have control of the Wabash Saloon back if he tells us where the gang is. She’s his only child; surely she’ll be in contact with him sooner or later.’

  ‘That’ll mean giving up Dan Sumner. Kate would never do that,’ said Kaylin, who knew more about local affairs than Ross.

  ‘Who’s Sumner?’ asked Ross, who was little involved in Blakely’s machinations.

  ‘Young man who was trying to scratch out a living on a Pima Creek homestead, up near the Wakapee River. He wanted to get Kate out of her father’s saloon and the life there.’

  ‘I see,’ Ross said impatiently as if the lives of the two young people had no interest for him. ‘Well, why don’t we take that thought of yours and make it a little more restricted and productive? We could promise this Dan Sumner complete amnesty.’ Ross’s eyes brightened. ‘And tell him if he comes in, we’ll even offer a reward for the location of the others, and the recovery of the bank money.’

  ‘He won’t go for that,’ said Marshal Standish, who knew Dan well enough.

  ‘For the sake of his lover?’ Ross asked. ‘And she for the sake of her father? I think it might work, Marshal.’

  ‘You know what, Mister Ross,’ Kaylin Standish replied after giving it some thought, ‘so do I. Let’s go out and have a talk with Gentry Cousins.’

  ‘You know, Dan,’ Kate Cousins was saying as they sat in a thorny bower of mesquite and blackthorn, sheltering from the sun, trying to swat away a virtual cloud of gnats that had decided to join them there, ‘I can’t help but worry about my father.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Dan said as he waved his hand in front of his face where the swarm hovered. There was a breeze blowing, but it did nothing to keep the flying insects down, and little to cool them. Cold at nights, sweltering in the daytime, the Tanglewood offered no compromise. Curt Wagner had killed a five-foot rattler that morning when it slithered through their camp as he took his turn standing watch over Cole and Prince Blakely.