The Devil's Posse

by Charles G. West

  Outside, Quincy stood watching Rafe for a few seconds as the wounded man struggled to breathe through the blood choking his throat. Several yards away lay the bodies of the two children. Quincy turned when Curly came up to join him. “I heard a shot,” Curly said. “Did you shoot the woman?”

  “She shot herself,” Quincy said.

  “I swear,” Curly exclaimed. “She was a right pretty woman.”

  “She ain’t now,” Quincy replied, tired of talking about the young wife. He leaned over Rafe and asked, “You able to ride?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah,” Rafe gasped, his words slow and labored.

  “You don’t look like it,” Quincy said, “and we’ve got a ways to go to Deadwood Gulch.”

  “I can ride,” Rafe insisted painfully. “Don’t leave me here.” Quincy didn’t reply right away, so Rafe rolled his eyes toward Curly. Trying to appeal to the simpleminded brute, he begged, “Don’t leave me, Curly.” His words became harder to spit out, choked as they were with blood from his lungs. “Get me on my horse and I’ll stay on him.”

  Indifferent to suffering, human or animal, the big man spoke frankly. “Whatever Quincy says.”

  “I won’t slow you down,” Rafe insisted, speaking with even greater effort than before. Quincy didn’t reply, his thoughts interrupted by a call from Lonnie inside.

  “Quincy, we found their hidin’ place! Little pocket of money hid under a floorboard—it ain’t much. Wormy’s countin’ it now.”

  Forgetting Rafe for the moment, Quincy and Curly went back inside to see for themselves.

  “Is that about it?” Quincy asked, standing in the middle of the front room, looking around him at the destructive evidence of their searching. Anything that might be useful was piled in the middle of the floor. Quincy walked over to quickly sort through it before giving the order to load it on the horses. “Wormy, split that money up five ways,” he said.

  “You mean six ways,” Wormy replied.

  “I mean five,” Quincy said. “Rafe ain’t gonna be able to go with us.”

  “We gonna burn it?” Lonnie asked, referring to the house.

  “No,” Quincy answered. “To hell with it. We won’t take the time. There might be other farms not too far from here, and somebody would see the smoke.”

  They shuffled out of the cabin, carrying the loot they had gathered to be loaded on their horses. “Might as well pull that saddle off and use Rafe’s horse for a packhorse,” Lonnie suggested, indifferent to the wounded man lying beside the front window. Like the other men, he felt no compassion for Rafe. He had just had a piece of bad luck.

  “That’s a better-lookin’ saddle than mine,” Wormy said. “I think I’ll trade with him.” He went at once to pull the saddle off Rafe’s sorrel, in case one of the others might have the same idea.

  “I’ll take the saddlebags,” Quincy said, “and we’ll split any money he’s got left on him.”

  Helpless to prevent the plunder of his possessions, Rafe pleaded weakly for compassion on the part of his partners. “Don’t leave me, fellers,” he choked out pitifully, gasping painfully when Lonnie unbuckled his gun belt and pulled it out from under him. “You can split my share of the money. Just take me with you.”

  Quincy walked over to stand close beside him. “You ain’t gonna make it much longer, Rafe, so there ain’t no use in you even tryin’. It’s just a downright pure piece of bad luck, but that’s the way the cards were dealt. We’ll make it easy on you if you want to end your sufferin’ right now. Or we’ll leave you like you are, if you druther—maybe leave you your pistol, too. Whatever you say.”

  “Oh God, Quincy,” Rafe begged, “don’t leave me. I’ll pull through.”

  “You’re foolin’ yourself,” Quincy said. “It don’t make no sense to carry you with us. You’d just die before we got gone good, so which way you want it, now or later?”

  When Rafe closed his eyes in despair, failing to answer, Quincy said, “Put his gun belt down beside him where he can reach it, Lonnie.” He bent closely over the wounded man and whispered, “We’ll be goin’ now. Here’s your .44 right beside you if you need it. No hard feelin’s.” He stood up. “Let’s go, boys.”

  While the other men moved to their horses, Quincy walked around behind the forsaken man. He drew his .44, held the muzzle close to the back of Rafe’s head, and pulled the trigger. “Makes no sense to leave a damn good .44 Colt to lay out here and rust,” he said, and picked up Rafe’s pistol again. “Let’s get goin’. We got about a three-day ride ahead of us. Jake’ll think we ain’t comin’.” He was looking forward to seeing his brother again.

  Big Jake, he thought, a bigger hell-raiser was never born.

  The solid core of the Morgan Gang would be intact again with Jake, cousin Lonnie, and himself back on the road again. Just like old times.

  * * *

  It was an unusually warm day for late summer when the Morgan Gang rode into Montana City. Five strong, they walked their horses down the middle of the street, as an invading army might. Quincy took only a moment to see which saloon seemed to be the biggest. This was where Jake would most likely be waiting for him. He looked at Lonnie and motioned. Lonnie understood and immediately turned his horse toward the Lucky Dollar, the others following. Quincy held back a moment to take in the busy scene, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

  All these people, he thought, all working to find the ore that I’ll be happy to take off their hands. He nudged his horse up to the hitching rail beside Lonnie’s and dismounted.

  “This time of day,” Lonnie said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t find ol’ Jake tossin’ back a drink or two.”

  “You might be right,” Quincy replied, already smiling when he formed the picture in his mind.

  The five dangerous-looking men did not walk into the saloon unnoticed. Their ominous appearance was enough to cause a momentary hush in the noisy barroom, a reaction that pleased Quincy. He nodded toward an empty table toward the back of the large room, and his men swaggered over to claim it. There were two miners seated at the table next to it, and Quincy stopped before it. Curly stepped up to stand beside him.

  “We’re gonna need this table, neighbor,” Quincy said.

  The two miners looked up at him, and the grinning brute of a man beside him. “We’re about finished up here, ain’t we, Jim?” one of them sputtered nervously.

  “You bet,” Jim replied. “We was just fixin’ to go.”

  “I thought you were,” Quincy said. “Pull it over here, Curly, and make one big table.” He then stood there and looked around the crowded room, looking for Jake, even though he knew the gang’s entrance could hardly have gone unnoticed if Jake was there.

  Thinking the same as Quincy, Lonnie wondered aloud, “Reckon Jake’s drinkin’ in some other saloon?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “This one’s the biggest in town, and Jake always picks the biggest.” He laughed. “Maybe he’s upstairs plowin’ some corn.”

  “Maybe,” Quincy said. There were several women working their trade downstairs. “I reckon we’ll find him before long.”

  Overhearing their conversation, Wormy Jacobs said, “Hell yeah, he’ll find us soon enough. While we’re waitin’, let’s get us somethin’ to drink.”

  Already wondering if he could expect some trouble from the five strangers, Lyle Weaver watched nervously as Wormy and Riley Stokes came over to the bar to order a bottle. Maybe, he thought, it might be a good idea to send somebody to tell the marshal that a dangerous-looking bunch had just hit town, since they sure as hell didn’t look like miners. On second thought, he didn’t think there was much Henry Thompson could do against a pack of wolves like these men. He almost breathed a sigh of relief when Riley put money on the bar and said to Wormy, “Somebody else can spring for the next one.”

  “We’re gonna need some glasses,” Wormy said to Lyle, and the ba
rtender said he would bring them over to the table.

  As he placed five glasses in the middle of the two tables, Lyle avoided direct eye contact with any of the fearsome-looking men, glancing up at Lonnie only when he spoke.

  “We’re lookin’ for somebody,” Lonnie said, “think maybe he mighta been in here a time or two.” He nodded toward Curly. “He’s a big feller, almost as big as Curly there. Name’s Jake. You seen him?”

  Lyle knew at once who they were referring to. There was no chance at all that he would not remember the execution of Jake Morgan right there in his saloon, and the grim avenger who had done the deed. Judging by the look of them, he had no doubt that these men were of the same ilk as Jake. He preferred not to be the bearer of bad news, however, figuring they might punish the messenger, so he evaded the question. “Sorry, fellers. We get an awful lot of folks in here. He mighta been in, but I can’t say as how I remember him apart from everybody else.”

  “Maybe he’s been hangin’ out at that other saloon at the end of the street,” Lonnie allowed when Lyle returned to the bar. “He’da remembered Jake.”

  “This place is more to Jake’s likin’,” Quincy said. “Mine, too. Riley, run on up the street and take a look in that other place. Ask ’em if they’ve seen Jake. Hell, he’s supposed to have been here awhile.”

  Stokes tossed his shot of whiskey down and got up from the table. “I don’t think Jake’s hit town yet,” he said. “Hell, place this size, he’da most likely have took over the whole town by now.”

  Stokes was gone for no more than about twenty minutes before he returned with a report similar to the one they had gotten in the Lucky Dollar. “Feller up there said he ain’t seen nobody, neither. You reckon somethin’ happened to Jake?”

  Quincy only gave his question a moment’s consideration before answering, “Jake? Nah, nothin’ ever happens to Jake. He’ll likely show up tonight or tomorrow. Ain’t that right, Lonnie?”

  “Most likely found him a whore or somethin’,” Lonnie said.

  “We’ll get a couple of rooms in that hotel and look for Jake tomorrow,” Quincy said. Thanks to a lucrative Cheyenne-to-Deadwood stage holdup, they could afford to stay in the hotel. After a few more drinks, Quincy sent Lonnie to the hotel to secure the rooms, but Lonnie soon returned with the news that there were no rooms available. Some were even rented to two different customers, one sleeping by day, the other by night.

  “By Ned, we’ll go in there and clear a couple of rooms out,” Wormy declared.

  “Hold on,” Quincy said. “That’s not a very good idea. I don’t want the whole damn town down on us. We might need a place to operate out of, and this one might do us just fine. We’ll camp outside town a ways and wait for Jake to show up. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  That effectively ended any talk of taking over the town.

  Chapter 5

  Quincy Morgan sat close to the fire, drinking a cup of coffee. A couple of his men were already asleep, having rolled up in their blankets in an effort to recover from too much whiskey at the Lucky Dollar. Lonnie came over to sit with him after making sure the horses were all right.

  “Any of that coffee left?” he asked.

  “There’s a little bit left in the pot,” Quincy said. “We poured a gracious plenty of it down Wormy’s throat. I swear, that man just can’t handle his whiskey.”

  Lonnie laughed and started to make a comment but was stopped by a call from the darkness of the creek. “Hello the camp! All right if I come in?”

  Both Quincy and Lonnie scrambled away from the firelight, drawing their pistols. “Who the hell . . . ,” Quincy started as he sought cover behind a tree. Nobody ever wanted to come into his camp except maybe a marshal’s posse. Recovered from the surprise, he called out, “Who the hell are you, and how many’s with you?”

  “I’m a friend of Jake’s,” Tom Lacey answered. “I’m alone. Are you his brother?”

  The exchange between the two had alerted everyone in the camp by then, except Wormy, who was dead to the world. “Maybe, maybe not,” Quincy replied. “What’s your business?”

  “I came lookin’ for you,” Lacey said. “I got somethin’ to tell you about Jake, if I can come in.”

  “All right,” Quincy said. “But, friend, you’d better not be up to any funny business, less you wanna get yourself shot.”

  “I’m comin’ in,” Lacey replied.

  With drawn weapons, the four conscious members of the gang watched the lone man, with a bandage wrapped around his arm, walk into the firelight, leading his horse. When it appeared that he was alone, as he had claimed, they drew in closer to the fire again. “You say you’re a friend of Jake’s?” Lonnie asked. “Where is Jake?”

  “Jake’s dead,” Lacey blurted. “Murdered while he was settin’ at the poker table, playin’ cards.”

  The shocking declaration effectively staggered Quincy and Lonnie. “What?” Quincy blurted. “Who?”

  While Quincy was fairly stunned for the moment, Lonnie demanded answers. “Who shot him, and who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Tom Lacey. Another feller, name of Everett Pierce, was at the table with Jake when this feller walked in and blasted away without so much as a howdy-do. He killed Everett, too. I wasn’t there. If I hadda been, things mighta been different. Me and Everett was supposed to join up with you fellers.”

  Quincy was livid, so filled with rage that he couldn’t speak for several minutes, so Lonnie continued to question Lacey. “Is the man who shot Jake dead?” When Lacey answered with a shake of his head, Lonnie charged, “Well, why the hell not?”

  “I went after him,” Lacey said. “That’s how I got this.” He raised his bandaged arm to show him. “But he was able to give me the slip. I was bleedin’ pretty bad, so I had to go up to Elizabeth Town to the doctor.”

  “His name!” Quincy suddenly demanded, finally able to speak again. “What is the bastard’s name?” His face still a fiery red, he glared directly into Lacey’s eyes, causing the frightened man to cower.

  “Logan Cross,” Lacey exclaimed, “his name’s Logan Cross.”

  “Where is he?” Quincy roared. “Where can I find him?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Lacey answered. “He’s a drifter, ain’t stayin’ nowhere in Montana City that I know of. He’s gone up in the mountains somewhere over toward Spearfish Canyon, I think.” It was obvious that his answer didn’t completely satisfy the infuriated man. “Leastways, I can take you to the spot where I lost him after he shot me. Might be you can track him from there.”

  Realizing the devastating effect Lacey’s news had cast upon Quincy, Lonnie sought to steady his cousin. “This is mighty sad news to hear, mighty sad. And we’re gonna go get this son of a bitch. There ain’t no doubt about that, but there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it tonight. Come mornin’, this feller . . .” He paused to look at Lacey. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Lacey,” he replied, “Tom Lacey. Me and Everett was ridin’ with Jake.”

  “Yeah,” Lonnie continued. “Lacey here is gonna show us where he lost the bastard, and we’ll track him down. He’s a dead man for sure, but we’ll have to wait till mornin’ to get started so we can see where we’re goin’.”

  He nodded solemnly as he locked his eyes on Quincy’s, searching for signs that his volatile cousin was thinking clearly. He was well aware of Quincy’s history of insane rage when something big happened to trigger it—something like his brother getting murdered—and he doubted that tendency had been lessened after five years in prison. In a few minutes’ time, Quincy’s eyes began to lose the glazed appearance, and Lonnie felt reassured that he had recovered enough to think rationally again.

  “Right,” Quincy said calmly. “We’ll start out early in the mornin’ and see if we can get on his trail.” Seeming to be in control again, he turned to Lacey. “You say Jake
picked you up to ride with us?”

  “That’s right,” Lacey said, still marveling at the apparent transformation from a raging demon to a reasonable man. He couldn’t help wondering how often he went into these fits of rage. He’d never seen anyone that angry before. Jake never said anything about his brother’s tendency to do so. One thing that was impressed upon his mind, however, was the inadvisability of riling the man. He glanced at the other two men standing near him, watching with blank expressions that gave him no indication of their having witnessed their boss’s violent temper before.

  “Well, if Jake thought you were okay, then I reckon I do, too,” Quincy said, his voice still calm. “This is my cousin, Lonnie. That’s Curly Ford, Riley Stokes, and the one passed out cold over there is Wormy Jacobs.” Curly and Stokes both nodded.

  “I ’preciate it,” Lacey said. “I’ve been waitin’ for you fellers to show up. Jake told me what I’d be expected to do, and I’m ready for it. I’m your man.”

  “Well, if you ain’t, we’ll find out quick enough,” Stokes said, causing the others to laugh. “Reckon you can unsaddle your horse and find you a place to bed down. It’s your turn to fetch some wood for the fire.”

  “I ain’t surprised,” Lacey said, and left to tend his horse.

  “He looks all right,” Lonnie said to Quincy when Lacey was out of earshot. “I’ll keep a close eye on him. I’m thinkin’ that little bullet wound in his arm don’t look like enough to stop a man from goin’ after Jake’s killer.”

  “We’ll see,” Quincy said. “I want him with us, anyway. He knows what Logan Cross looks like, and I don’t.”

  * * *

  The man Quincy Morgan was now obsessed with was following an old game trail that led along a low ridge, leading to a gulch between two of the mountains before him. He had no destination. He was simply tracing a trail that looked as if it might lead him to another deer.

  The incident of the day before, he figured, was just a chance encounter with a cowardly back-shooter, lying in wait for a convenient target to kill and rob. If he was a typical bushwhacker, he was most likely discouraged from making a second attempt. With that behind him, he made an effort to enjoy the feel of the country around him and the abundant signs of game near the many streams that ran down from tree-covered mountains into valleys lush with grass and wildflowers.