Deuces Wild

by Dusty Richards

  “See, you have some leeway there—”

  Burt nodded and sat back in the chair to listen.

  “These officers shall be paid a salary of two hundred dollars a month. Plus their expenses, which they must seriously account for and submit such costs to the U.S. attorney general’s office for reimbursement.” Amos looked over the paper and continued reading it after Burt’s nod.

  “They shall file activity reports on their successes and progress directly to the AG’s attention at regualr intervals.

  “Oh, yes, and they may hire posse men at the rate of pay consistent with hiring competent men. Not to exceed five dollars a day. That clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “It all has to do with this posse comitatus business. Since we can’t use the army any longer to help enforce the law out here, you’ll need the posse men.”

  Both men agreed he’d need help on many occasions. Burt crossed his left leg over his right one.

  “You should carry this letter with you, since it explains your authority,” Amos said. “But I think the rest is clear. Your future assignments will come from Washington, and you have no restrictions from nor obligations to any other federal officers in the field. Though it says somewhere—oh, here—special officers will, when local and federal law officials are on hand, be cooperative and show them the courtesy they deserve.”

  “Thanks,” Burt said.

  “Stand up, then, Special U.S. Marshal Burt Green, and I will administer the oath.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “By the power vested in me …”

  * * *

  The Apache scout One-Eye Dick wore an unblocked gray felt hat to top off his new wardrobe of civilized-looking pants and shirt. He stood stiff as a ramrod on the railroad platform. Burt could see the man’s obvious discomfort in the new, starched clothing and sympathized with him, though he never mentioned it. Instead, he spoke with the shorter man, Pedro, who was seeing them off at the depot, along with Angela.

  “I don’t know when we’ll be back. Don’t you try to round up this Torres by yourself,” he cautioned Pedro. “But learn all you can about his whereabouts.When I get back, we’ll go and find him.”

  “Sí, Obregón and I will guard the ranch until you return. You must be careful, too. This Apache Deuces was an army scout, but I’ve heard he has gone loco. Jumped off that train, they say.”

  Burt nodded acknowledgment. During the escape, according to the report he’d seen in print, Deuces had taken the deputy marshal’s handgun, but, strangely enough, not killed him. Perhaps with his wrists in handcuffs, cocking and firing the pistol had been too hard on the rocking train. Downy showed the paper to him after Judge Amos had sworn him in as a U.S. marshal.While there, Burt also deputized his own man, One-Eye Dick.

  “What happened to this Deputy Egan after Deuces escaped?” Burt asked Downy, his curiosity keyed by the absence of any word about the deputy originally involved in the case.

  “Venereal disease,” Downy said with a wary shake of his head. “Must have gotten himself a real bad dose of it somewhere. He’s in the hospital in San Antonio. Guess that’s why you got this appointment.”

  To save any hard feelings, Burt never mentioned the “special” part of his new job description—for all Downy knew, he was simply another equal. Best, he felt, to leave it like that for the time being.

  “Ha. If you ask me, Green, it’s all just a big waste of government money paying your way back there and all that,” the balding man said, shaking his head. “After jumping off that fast-moving train, that damn Injun crawled off somewhere and died from his injuries. They just ain’t found his carcass.”

  “Maybe I can find it.” Determined not to get pulled into an argument with his ex-boss, Burt nodded to him as he prepared to leave.

  “Waste of time and money. That buck’s dead, or they’d have found him by this time. He don’t know that country, and I say if he’d survived, them Texans would have already nailed his ass.Why, they’ve had their bloodhounds out and posses looking all over for him.”

  At the doorway, Burt stopped to ask Downy one more question. “This Egan ever say in his report why Deuces never shot him when he had the chance?”

  “Panic, I figure.” Downy shook his head to dismiss the matter. “Damn buck was shook. He had the drop on the man and probably was pissing in his pants the whole time. That’s why, just plain too scared.”

  Burt acknowledged he heard the man’s answer before he and One-Eye left the marshal’s office. Standing on the platform, holding hands with Angela while her rich perfume spiraled up his nose, he still wondered why the fugitive let Egan live. There was no fear in that ex-scout. Deuces was an Apache.

  “Oh, you must be careful, Burton,” She dropped her gaze to the wooden flooring of the depot platform.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said quietly. “I only pray that you can stand to put up with being married to a lawman. I’ll be on the move like this a lot. This is how I make my living.”

  She drew a deep breath up her slender nose and nodded. “I will be there for you when you return—so you come back to me when it’s all over.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Yes.” She nodded thoughtfully, chewing on her lower lip hesitantly before she finally added, “I’m impressed with your honesty about things that are important.”

  “Man don’t have much if he ain’t at least honest.”

  “I agree. I’ve known enough liars in my life.” She looked to the sky for help.

  He wanted to hold her in his arms, kiss her, tell her those days were over for her—for them. Why did he wonder at times like this about her dead husband’s faithfulness to her? He wanted to hug her and reassure her of his firm commitment to her. Something held him back, perhaps the publicness of the place or the onlookers ready to board. Some sort of restraint kept him from being so impulsive, until—

  The train arrived in a scream of steel to steel, steam, and air brakes. He took the opportunity in all the confusion to kiss her on the mouth, and then, after holding her against him for a long moment, he smiled into her face.

  “I’ll be back. Then we can live our lives.”

  “I’ll be here, Burton. You need anything, wire me.”

  “Good enough. Be careful and on guard. I’ll feel better when I’m back.”

  “Me, too.” She gave him a small shove toward the train. “Leave now before I cry.”

  From the steps, he turned back with a big smile. “Don’t forget to get a party dress. We’ll have that real fandango when I get back.”

  “I won’t forget it.” She beamed at him through wet lashes. “How could I?”

  On the car’s platform, he waved to her again, and then he followed One-Eye inside the Pullman car. From behind the dirty glass, he could see her still waving her kerchief. Pedro stood beside her, barely reaching her shoulder.

  Burt recalled the first time he saw her, her dress all covered in dust and torn after her harrowing experience with the Mexican outlaws. Rifle in her hands, she cocked it and challenged him when he rode up to the ranch ahead of the posse. Even as desperate as she looked that day, he recalled the beauty he’d seen in the woman of his life.

  With a jerk of the cars in a chainlike reaction, they began their two-day journey to Texas. Seated across from him, a wooden-bodied One-Eye nodded with his arms folded over his chest—prepared for departure or his death. The grim-faced Apache looked ready for his own execution. Burt knew that one peep out of anyone, and One-Eye might collapse with a deadly heart attack.

  “It’s okay now,” he said to reassure him as the train got under way. One-Eye nodded and gave out a loud sigh of relief. They were headed full steam for Texas.

  The Southern Pacific reached El Paso, then, belching ashes and smoke over its shoulder, churned its way up the Rio Grande Valley. Burt read a copy of the El Paso Sun newspaper and scanned the headlines. “Apache Killer Still On the Loose:”

  Despite local law enforcement and the T
exas Rangers, the escaped federal prisoner, a murderous Apache nicknamed Deuces, continues to evade the efforts to apprehend him. The killer, who overpowered a U.S. deputy marshal transporting him to prison and made a daring leap from the Southern Pacific passenger train last Sunday night in Uvalde County, has not been officially sighted since then. The search has been expanded to nearby Texas counties and even the international border eighty miles south. The Texas governor’s office has posted a five-thousand-dollar reward for the Apache’s capture dead or alive.

  Rumors abound in the southern Texas hill country. Reports of raids on ranches, stolen horses and mules, and sightings of the Apache have poured into officials. Meanwhile, mounted posses continue to comb the area both north and south of the spot where the renegade escaped from the train. According to Uvalde County Sheriff Hop Grimwell, the fugitive may have been so injured in his fall from the train that he may have crawled off and died. However, Grimwell says nothing is being taken for granted. Until the corpse or the murderer is found and taken in custody, the search will continue.

  Hop Grimwell—Burt rolled the name over.No doubt, Grimwell was the man he should contact at Uvalde. He and One-Eye would have a cold trail—more than a week would have passed before they would even get to examine the place where Deuces escaped. He glanced across the blood-red-bathed farmland in the last light of day—no easy thing to pick up such a cold trail. Perhaps the local authorities would get some new leads by the time they arrived at Uvalde. By his own estimations, it would be hard to kill an Apache in a fall from a train.Watching the bloody-tinted view of the towering mountains over in Mexico through the smudged window, he hoped that Angela was back at the ranch and safe.

  Burt slept little through the night. He felt tired and stiff the next morning, eating some bread and butter he bought from a vendor at the last train station. Not concerned about the name of the place, after the stopover, he quizzed the conductor, who assured him they would be in Uvalde on schedule by noon.

  One-Eye napped most of the time. After the first hours passed uneventfully, his first train ride had turned commonplace for his deputy, Burt decided.

  “Beats riding a horse back here,” One-Eye finally said, and stretched.

  “Yes,” Burton agreed. “It sure beats that.”

  “This train go to Florida?”

  “I think you have to change trains somewhere and take another to get there.”

  The scout nodded his head.

  “You weren’t planning to go there?”

  “No.” One-Eye chuckled, then shook his head. “Must have been some ride for all those people.”

  “The Chiricahuas they sent there?”

  “Yeah, they all rode the train.”

  “You miss some of those people?”

  “Sometimes—not bad enough to ride the train that far.” One-Eye smiled.

  “I’ll be glad when we get to Uvalde.” Burt stretched his stiff legs under the chair ahead. All this inactivity was making him stiffer by the hour. Perhaps the train’s continual swaying and clacking had him on edge.

  “Me, too,” One-Eye agreed.

  The depot at Uvalde recently had been freshly whitewashed, and a new lettered sign gave the name. A black porter came and took their bags for deportation. One Eye gave him a suspicious look, but Burt caught the scout’s arm and reassured him that was the way such things went.

  “The sheriff ’s office?” Burt asked the porter when they disembarked from the stairs and stood in the bright sunlight.

  “Be uptown, sah, a mile that way. At the courthouse on the square.”

  “Very good. Get us a taxi.”

  “Yes, sah.”

  A short time later, they arrived at the courthouse. Burt paid the driver and left One-Eye with the bags in the shade while he went inside the new-looking stone building.

  A man directed him down the hall, where several armed men were standing around. A shorter man with a full mustache was giving the orders. “Jesse, you take ten men and comb that creek area above the Yancy place. It’s brushy enough to hide anything.Tom, you and your men scout that country west of the jumpoff place. Look hard again under every bridge and culvert. If he crawled off to die, he damn sure ain’t in plain sight.”

  Burt waited until the man finished. Then the lawman, seeing he was obviously there for some sort of business, strode over to him.

  “Sheriff Grimwell. May I help you?”

  “U.S. Marshal Burt Green from Arizona.”

  “Good to meet you. You’re—ah, yes—the one who brought the Apache scout?” Grimwell searched around the hallway as if looking for him.

  “He’s outside with our bags. I’m anxious to get some horses and ride out to the spot—”

  Grimwell turned to an assistant. “Go catch Tom Vender before he leaves. One of his men can take the marshal out there to the place where the Apache got away.”

  The deputy hurried off.

  “Now, I’m pleased that you came all this way; however, I doubt that there is much we haven’t gone over.”

  “We’ll not get in your way. My experience with this tracker is he has an Apache’s uncanny ability to sort out tracks.”

  Grimwell chuckled, then shook his head wearily. “First you need to have tracks. This buck left none.”

  Rather than argue with him, Burt agreed and thanked the man. He’d not come a thousand miles to be talked out of looking. Obviously, Grimwell resented his presence—worried that he and One-Eye might upstage the local law by finding the escapee. For his part, Burt didn’t give a big rip about the man’s feelings. He had a job to do, and that was to find Deuces if the locals couldn’t.

  Outside, Grimwell’s deputy introduced Burt to Harry Faucet. The small-framed man with gray streaks in his beard was assigned to show them the spot where Deuces left the train. Short as Pedro, the overall-clad Faucet looked to be in his late thirties. The rest of the posse rode on. They were half a block away already when Burt looked up and checked on them.

  “I’m sure we could find it, if you want to ride on with them.” Burton offered him a way out of guiding them.

  “Naw.” Faucet spit some tobacco aside. “I kinda like to see how you and him operate.” He gave a head toss at One-Eye.

  “Fine.We’ll go see about some horses and be ready.”

  The man made a pained face, then he spoke. “I ain’t telling you where to get your horses, but—”

  “You know a better source?” Burt asked, catching the man’s hesitation as a warning.

  “Sure do. A block down and on the left is Pearson’s. Guy’s got a better rep than them folks across the street.”

  “Good.” Burt read the sign of the livery opposite the courthouse. “Adolph Borghast’s Stables.” If Pearson’s was a better place, then the man just proved his worth.

  In thirty minutes of dickering and checking them out, Burt managed to buy two decent saddle horses and a cotton mule from Pearson to haul their gear. They rode out of Uvalde with their guide, Burton aboard a dun and One-Eye on a blue roan; the brown mule under a pack saddle came along on a loose lead. Faucet rode a longheaded bay with work collar scars on its shoulders.

  By late afternoon, they reached the place that Faucet pointed out to them as the spot beside the iron rails and pine-tarred ties. “He jumped off somewhere along in here.”

  Burt swiveled around in the saddle. To the north of them lay hundreds of acres of farmland and crops. South of the tracks, the same—corn and cotton fields, rail fences. One-Eye gave him the reins to his horse and with a head toss went off to examine for tracks in the short weeds and grass beside the road bed. The Apache leaned over and searched the ground as he went.

  Faucet pointed across the iron rails. “That side.” Then he twisted around to look at Burt and tossed his head up the dirt road.

  “We picked up his trail a ways north of here with dogs. Least, we thought we had. That Marshal Egan had some of that Injun’s things from his suitcase. Hounds smelled them and went off bawling up the road.”


  “What happened?”

  “They quit the trail up there, oh, about two miles, and they couldn’t find a thing.”

  “Any reason why?”

  “Guy owns them hounds was certain that he’d done peppered his back trail. But I don’t figure an Injun woulda knowed how to do that.” The man shook his head at the impossibility of such a thing.

  Burt dismounted with all of Faucet’s information going over in his mind. He decided this Deuces just might be a lot smarter than they had given him credit for being. From where Burt stood, he could see One-Eye was still busy checking the ground along the rails. His work might take forever unless they got lucky. He looked up the road.

  “How many farm houses are between here and where the dogs lost him?”

  “Several, why?”

  “Well, Mr. Faucet, I don’t figure that Apache carried that pepper or anything else to turn those hounds off in his pocket when he bailed off that train.”

  “So?” The farmer checked his horse and frowned at him.

  “So, if he had anything at all, he stole it somewhere between here and where he fouled up those blood-hounds.” Burt looked north up the dirt road, trying to decide how to learn more about the source of the substance.

  Faucet’s blue eyes widened in disbelief. “Nobody saw him steal any.”

  Burt wanted to laugh. How could he tell this dirt farmer you didn’t have to see Apaches for them to have been there—most times they were like smoke. Good, after One-Eye finished, they’d ride up the road and start asking the folks along the way about missing any pepper or dried chilis.

  In a few minutes, filled with impatience, Burt decided to hasten their plans. He removed his felt hat, dried the sweaty band with a kerchief, and turned to Faucet.

  “If you won’t mind, start up the road asking if anyone’s missing a can of pepper or string of dried chili peppers.”

  “Missing a can of pepper?”

  “Yes, or chilis. It might speed the process.”

  “But we were all out here with them dogs—folks was talking—no one seen hide nor hair of that buck.” Faucet looked exasperated that he would even ask him to do such a thing.