by J. T. Edson
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
His only name was Waco ...
A Texan who rode as an Arizona Ranger, being peace officer, detective and ready to handle any emergency.
His duties led him to lock horns with a campaigning lady politician, to tangle with Curly Bill Brocious and his girlfriend, Tioga, and to stand by Captain Bertram H. Mosehan when unscrupulous men sought to bring about the disbanding of the Rangers.
In the end it led Waco to side with Mosehan when the Ranger captain handled his most difficult and dangerous task the only way he could—by breaking the law himself.
No matter what he was called to do, Waco did it and backed his play with cold courage and a fast draw that was more like chain lightning!
WACO 4: WACO RIDES IN
By J. T. Edson
First published by Transworld Publishers in 1969
Copyright © 1969, 2016 by J. T. Edson
First Smashwords Edition: May 2017
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.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part One – The Campaigner
Part Two - The Juggler and the Lady
Part Three - The Petition
Part Four - The End
Part One – The Campaigner
Mrs. Bertha Ford stood by the window of the small hotel and looked down at Grant Street, Albion City, in Arizona Territory. The clock on the wall of her room showed eight o’clock on the final day of her visit. Down below, on the street, little stirred other than the dog that ambled along the rough, wheel-rutted surface until it came to a hitching-rail post. Here the dog behaved as would any dog under the circumstances before ambling on out of sight. The street stayed still and deserted. Seated on the sidewalk facing the hotel, heads bowed as if sleeping, were two Apache bucks dressed in gaudy trade, shirts, discarded army riding breeches and calf-high moccasins. The woman remembered seeing the same two braves seated in the same position just before she went to bed the previous night.
In her early forties, Bertha Ford was a medium-sized woman with a good figure, red hair that even now only needed a little touching up to retain its color, and a plain face. The eyes spoiled the face; they were cold and blue and seemed to be looking for the worst in everything or everybody they rested on. She wore a severe black dress, costly yet plain.
Her appearance gave no clue as to who she might be. She could have been a rancher’s wife, or a mine owner’s; she might have been the lady of some field-rank army officer, even the madame of some better-class cathouse, for such often dressed well yet severely and bore the same cold-eyed watchfulness.
In actual fact Bertha Ford was none of these. She was a political campaigner, hot and eager to see justice done to the downtrodden and the underdog.
To Bertha Ford anyone, Mexican, Apache, or outlaw was downtrodden and the underdog if, by being so, they provided fuel to roast the Democrats who were in office.
Her stories about atrocities committed by the United States Army against the Apaches had been gathered with some care. The fact that she spoke neither Apache nor Spanish did not deter her. With a half-breed interpreter she scoured the reservations in Arizona Territory eagerly recording tales of brutality and outrage. The stories, telegraphed east as fast as they came to her, were pounced on and published by Republican or so-called independent newspapers of the less responsible kind and widely read. The same stories caused the Republican Party some embarrassment and lost them much support from their own voters or fence sitters who might have gone their way in an election. The memory of Apache war, massacre, and outrage still remained fresh in the public mind, for preceding Bertha’s stories by a couple of weeks had been news that the Apache Kid and a band of bad-hat bucks ambushed and wiped out a cavalry patrol.
Bertha’s stories raised a storm of protest, and although the Republican Party stoutly affirmed that she acted without their knowledge, they knew the damage had been done. One prominent Republican congressman, with a lifetime of politics behind him and a finger on the pulse of public support, said bitterly: “After reading her stories I wish she’d start work for the Democrats.”
However, Bertha did not know how the Republicans regarded her and it is doubtful if she would have cared had she known. She did know that there appeared to be a distinct chill among such influential Republicans as she met in Arizona Territory. She went on her way without troubling herself over this, for her hatred rose beyond mere political differences.
The past three months in Arizona did not strike Bertha as being much of a success beyond her Apache stories. Her carefully gathered information about the exploitation and oppression of the Mexicans, told by an elegant Mexican lawyer who acted as her interpreter, attracted little attention, for the stories were never published. Only a month before Augustino Chacon and his bandido band struck a small hamlet on the border, leaving behind ten dead gringo men and three American women who wished death had struck them down before Chacon’s gang laid hands on them. So little sympathy could be expected over the poor living conditions of the Mexicans, and any newspaper foolish enough to try and raise sympathy would have speedily regretted it.
With much the same results Bertha, in desperation, tried to have published stories of brutalities committed by lawmen and prison guards against their prisoners. The belief that a criminal got what he deserved was widespread, and the few intellectuals who tried to establish a lawbreaker as some privileged person to be pampered, given luxury and comfort while serving a sentence, as a warning not to do it again, found little support among the more sensible general public.
So on the last morning of her visit Bertha Ford felt she had achieved little. At half-past ten the stage would carry her on the first leg of the journey east. Her two previous trips, in the Kiowa country of Texas and among the Sioux, had been vastly more successful. Then, being unknown and unsuspected, she received cooperation and hospitality from the army. This time she received neither, except when sheer necessity demanded it. Her stories came back over the telegraph wires as soon as they were published this trip, costing her the necessary cover of anonymity that had shielded her on earlier tours. Without army aid she could do little and the army showed an understandable reluctance to help a woman whose aim was to smear them.
So Bertha stood by the window and allowed her niece to get on with the packing undisturbed. They had returned from an abortive visit to the San Ramos Apache reservation the previous evening and soon would be attending a farewell breakfast engagement with several prominent Republicans who had gathered to see her leave-perhaps even to make sure she did leave.
The bored air left the woman. She tensed like a bird dog hitting quail scent and leaned forward, pressing her nose against the window in her eagerness to take in every detail of the scene on the street below.
“Caroline,” she hissed. “Come here, quickly!”
Caroline Banders left the bag she had just locked and joined her aunt by the window. She was a tall, slender, and attractive blond girl in her early twenties. Her face now bore a healthy tan, a rather fine-drawn face, showing breeding and intelligence, with a mouth that might smile easily in the right circumstances. Her dove-gray traveling dress was neat without being fancy, ideal for r
iding in a stagecoach.
“What is it, Aunt Bertha?” she asked.
“Look!” Bertha replied, gripping Caroline’s arm and pointing.
They traveled slowly, the three men in the lead staggering, their clothes shedding dust at every step. They walked with dragging feet, heads hanging in exhaustion, like men driven beyond human endurance. The two at the front stumbled awkwardly side by side, close together, but not for mutual support. From one’s right wrist to the other’s left hung something that glinted in the rays of the morning sun. They were handcuffed together. The third man stumbled blindly along behind the two. His wrists had no handcuffs and needed none, for his right arm hung in a rough sling. Yet his lack of a gunbelt and the dejected way he walked showed he was as much a prisoner as the other two.
The fourth of the party might be tired but he walked as a free man. In height he stood over six feet, a wide-shouldered, lean-waisted young man. His expensive black J. B. Stetson hat’s true color lay almost hidden under a coat of dust, but like any true Stetson held its shape. It was a Texan’s hat, the broad brim, the low crown’s shape, and the way of wearing telling that to western eyes. The hat, like all his clothes, spelled cowhand from Texas. The shirt, Levi’s, fancy stitched boots with the ever-attached Kelly spurs bore a coating of dust, the shirt and Levi’s grimy and dirt-streaked under the dust. The face, whisker-bristled and dirty, still looked young, could have been handsome, strong, and virile when clean. The eyes were the blue of a June sky after a storm, firm, strong eyes that might have been happy and friendly, although they were not at that moment.
The cleanest thing about the young man was the brown leather buscadero gunbelt with the matched, staghorn-butted Colt Artillery Peacemakers in the holsters. The holsters were of a kind not one man in a hundred wore-or could make best use of. They fitted the contours of the guns, leaving half of the chamber and all the trigger guard exposed for speedy removal. The gunbelt, like the clothes, told a story, for such a rig meant that its owner could draw, shoot, and hit his mark in less than a second. That kind of man always kept his guns and rig clean.
Following the men came a huge paint stallion, moving without needing to be led by the reins and looking as footsore as the men. Its low-horned, double-girthed Texas saddle carried nothing more than five gunbelts looped around the horn, a coiled Comanche hair rope, a bulky set of saddlebags behind the cantle. A new-model Winchester Centennial Model of 1876 rifle showed its butt from the saddle boot under the left stirrup.
The men walked slowly along the street, heading for the sheriff’s office farther down. The tall Texan must be taking his prisoners to the cells behind the office.
“I must look into this,” hissed Bertha Ford, twisting her head to watch the procession as far as she could.
“Must you?” replied the niece.
Never a woman sensitive to nuance, Bertha did not notice the bitter note that came into her niece’s voice.
Looking at the wall clock, Bertha clucked her tongue in annoyance. “The stage leaves at half-past ten and I’ve that breakfast engagement to keep. There might be a chance of my going down after it’s over. There’s a story in it, I’m sure. I wonder who that brute worked for; I could see no sign of a badge.”
“He might be a bounty hunter,” Caroline remarked.
“That’s possible, I suppose, but I doubt it.”
Bertha Ford did not want to believe the man was a bounty hunter. Such men only rarely worked for official law enforcement bodies and so offered little that might be turned into anti-Democrat material. She tried to see if any further development might justify her canceling the breakfast engagement, but the men were out of sight and she turned from the window.
“Let’s go downstairs, dear,” she said. “I might find time to investigate this business later.”
Two men stepped from the door of the Albion City sheriff’s office to stand side by side on the sidewalk, thumbs hooked into their belts.
Both were lawmen, the smaller wearing the badge of county sheriff. The other showed no badge but was no less a lawman because of the omission. A tall, wide-shouldered, powerful man approaching his fortieth year without an ounce of fat to mar his frame and without more than a hint of gray in his brown hair. His mustache was neatly trimmed, framing a mouth that was firm yet had the saving grace of humor. His clothes were of the style a prosperous rancher wore, his gunbelt, with its low-tied, ivory-butted Colt Cavalry Peacemaker, a fast man’s rig. In appearance he could have been a tough, practical rancher, a man who spent much time in the saddle and never gave an order he could not obey himself. In a sense the appearance did not lie. He’d been superintendent of the great Hashknife outfit but no longer held that post. His name was Bertram H. Mosehan and his official title Captain of Arizona Rangers.
Mosehan and Sheriff Caudell stood on the sidewalk for a moment without speaking. Opposite the office, before the Wells Fargo depot, sat a pair of Apaches, apparently asleep. Caudell indicated them with a jerk of the thumb.
“Still here,” he said. “It looks as if your report was right after all.”
“My reports mostly are,” replied Mosehan. He was a man like that. If a thing needed to be said he said it without flinching or avoiding the blunt issues. “None of my boys have made it here yet.”
“You couldn’t expect any of them to, not in the time they’ve had.”
Mosehan grunted, a grunt that might have meant anything. He might, and often did, excuse any action his men made in the execution of their duty. He would not allow anyone, even a friend of long standing like Caudell, to make excuses for the men in their absence.
“I’ll have to telegraph the governor and tell him I can’t make the conference,” he said, more to himself than to Caudell. “If none of the boys make it, I’ll have to cover the coach myself. It’s got to be done.”
Caudell agreed with Mosehan. His eyes flickered to the front of the Wells Fargo office, deserted at this hour, although from behind came the sounds that told of a team being prepared to take the ten-thirty eastbound stage on its run. The situation was dangerous; the report Mosehan received needed attention.
With that thought in his head Caudell glanced up the street. He gave a low startled curse, caught Mosehan’s arm, and tugged at it.
“Hellfire, Bert. Look along there.”
Mosehan turned. His eyesight was every bit as good as the sheriff’s and he studied the approaching men. Something like relief came to Mosehan’s expressionless face as he recognized the tall young Texan who walked behind the others.
The sheriff felt no relief, only the cold sweat of anxiety. The county elections were close and he knew just how tenuous was his position. He knew who stayed at the hotel the previous evening. If she saw the procession, she would be at the jail, demanding answers, preparing a report that might even end in Washington for investigation.
The three staggering prisoners turned blindly toward the jail, moving like men in a trance. One of the handcuffed pair stumbled but the other made no attempt to help him, only tugged at the connecting links and weakly mounted to the sidewalk. The other man caught his balance with an effort and followed. The last and youngest of the trio followed them, a sob of relief and exhaustion breaking from his lips as he reeled past the sheriff and through the door.
Caudell followed the prisoners into the office. His two deputies and Mosehan’s young clerk came to their feet as the men staggered in. Caudell snapped an order for his deputies to see the prisoners into a cell, then fetch a doctor. Jed Franks, the clerk, walked through the door and toward his boss.
The young Texan leaned on the hitching rail and looked with tired, dull eyes at Mosehan.
“Howdy, Cap’n Bert,” he greeted. “I never thought to see you here.”
“The Dansfield bank bunch, boy?” Mosehan said gently.
“Yep.”
“Were five of them, way I heard it.”
The Texan waved a grimy hand toward his horse. “There’s five gunbelts and the money on my kak.�
�
Mosehan stepped from the sidewalk and walked toward the big paint, keeping a wary eye on it. He lifted the bulky saddlebags from the cantle, then removed the gunbelts from the horn, noticing the rusty-colored smear across the leather and buckle of one belt. He did not need to ask what had caused the smear.
“Go into the office and rest, boy,” Mosehan ordered. “You look like you’ve been missing some sleep.”
“Some. I’ll tend to this ole Dusty hoss of mine first.”
“I’ll do it for you,” Jed Franks offered. “Go and rest, Waco.”
The young Texan whose only name was Waco shook his head, the grin on his face more like the grimace of a sun-bleached skull. His paint stallion might be leg weary but would still not allow just anyone to handle it, even a man who’d been around as much as the young clerk. The paint tolerated few people. Jed Franks, for all his working for the chief of the Rangers, did not have the horse savvy to tend the paint without winding up on the ground, wearing its shoes for a teeth brace.
“Come on,” said Waco, his Texan drawl holding a friendly note. “I’ll let you tote the saddle back from the civic pound.”
Mosehan opened his mouth and closed it again. His business in Albion City was important, the kind of chore only one of his Rangers might handle. He had scattered telegraph messages to towns where some of his Rangers might find them and know he needed help in Albion, but without results. Now Waco had arrived but did not look in any condition to handle the chore.
In this Mosehan cast no reflection on Waco’s abilities at other times. He stood fully capable of handling any duty, no matter how dangerous or important, that an Arizona Ranger might be called on to do.
An orphan almost from birth, Waco had been raised on a Texas ranch and at thirteen never rode without a Navy Colt by his side. Two years later he worked for Clay Allison, and neither man nor boy rode for the Washita curly wolf’s brand unless he could handle a gun. Waco could handle one. In fact he’d been well on the way to becoming another Bad Bill Longley or John Wesley Hardin, a hunted killer with a price on his head. Then he fell in with the Rio Hondo gun wizard, Dusty Fog, and his life was changed. Dusty Fog had saved Waco’s life at some risk to his own. i Then he took the surly youngster under his wing, changed him from a potential killer to a useful member of rangeland society. First as a cowhand working on the OD Connected as a member of Ole Devil Hardin’s floating outfit, later as a deputy town marshal in Mulrooney, Kansas, ii Waco learned his trade, learned it well. Each member of the floating outfit taught the youngster something and he proved an apt pupil in every subject. He learned to use his fists and handle himself in a roughhouse brawl, to read sign where a buck Apache might falter. He knew the tricks and ways of crooked gamblers, and most of all he knew when as well as how to handle his guns. From Dusty Fog he learned the most. To use his eyes, his brains and knowledge to probe into the motives and actions of men. The knowledge served him well as an Arizona Ranger.