The Devil's Posse

by Charles G. West

  Turning his attention to the lady then, he asked, “Are you all right, miss? Would you like somethin’ to eat, or some coffee?” She declined both, saying she was fine. “How soon are they comin’?” he asked.

  She could not say, having been at the stable when Quincy said they would leave in the morning. “I don’t know. I just heard them say that they were going to find Logan. I was afraid they would catch me before I got here.”

  Jace’s first thought was to prepare his men to defend the ranch, expecting an outright attack by the four gunmen. “Bob, you’d better go up to the house and let Mr. Towson know we got trouble headin’ this way. Then tell whoever else is in the bunkhouse to get down here so we can decide what we’re gonna do.”

  Turning to Hannah again, he said, “I expect it would be best for you to go to the house until the trouble is over.” Seeing Logan and Lou approaching then, he turned to face them.

  “I heard,” Logan said when he walked up. Wearing his sidearm and carrying his Winchester rifle, he looked ready for action. He looked to Hannah first. “Are you all right? Why did you have to ride out here to tell us? Couldn’t somebody else have done it?” She hurriedly explained the circumstances that had led to her ride, and the fact that it was necessary for her to escape as well. Like Jace, Logan wanted to know how far behind her the gunmen were, and Hannah apologized again for having no idea.

  “We’ll get everybody here in a minute,” Jace interrupted. “Some of us can pick a spot around the barn, and I’ll put a couple of men to guard the house.”

  “You ain’t got enough men to cover every spot on the ranch,” Logan said. “Hannah says there’s four of ’em. I would expect they’ll work in from four different directions and wait for a chance to pick us off, and that ain’t no good. This is my fight. The only reason they’re comin’ is to get me, but they don’t care how many of your men they have to kill in the process. So I’m aimin’ to ride out to meet ’em before they get this far.”

  “You don’t have to take a chance like that,” Jace protested. “You’re a Triple-T man, and we take care of our own.”

  “I ain’t gonna take the time to argue with you, Jace,” Logan informed him. “There’s a right and a wrong about this thing, and I don’t intend to bring my trouble down on you and your men. I’ve got more on my conscience already than I care to have. I ain’t willin’ to add more. You just set your men up to defend this ranch, take care of Hannah, and I’ll do what I can to stop Quincy Morgan and his bunch before they get this far. Your first responsibility is the men and the ranch.”

  “What if he sees you before you see him?” Ox wanted to know, troubled by the solution Logan suggested.

  “Then I reckon that’ll be one way of settlin’ it,” Logan responded. “If he gets me, then he’s got what he wants, and he won’t have any reason to bother the Triple-T.” He turned and went to the barn to get his saddle, having wasted enough time talking.

  “This ain’t right,” Bob said to Jace while Logan saddled the big gray gelding. “Him goin’ up against four hired gunmen.”

  “I know,” Jace replied, his mind still churning with the issue of what was best for the owner and the men who rode for the Triple-T. Logan was right in telling him his primary concern should be for his men and the ranch. Added to that, there was now the responsibility of keeping Hannah safe. He wasn’t comfortable with Logan’s solution for the problem, but he had to agree that it was the best for the Triple-T. “But he knows what he’s doin’,” he finally said.

  Logan slipped his Winchester into the saddle scabbard and stepped up on Pepper as Thomas Towson came running from the house. With a nod, perhaps of farewell for good, to Towson, he turned the horse toward the wagon road to Spearfish, pulling up when Hannah ran to stop him.

  “Logan, are you sure this is the right thing to do? These are dangerous-looking men he has with him. You should get away while you still have time!”

  “And let them come down on the Triple-T? You know I can’t do that.”

  “I know it, damn it,” she said. “Please be careful.”

  “I will,” he said, and started out again, leaving Jace to scatter his men to take up defensive positions behind him.

  * * *

  A large yellow moon rose over the crest of a distant mountain, illuminating the wagon track that led to Spearfish. With his concentration focused entirely on the farthermost point of the road that he could see, he rode on, intent upon being as far away from the Triple-T as possible when he encountered the gunmen. There was still no sign of Morgan and his killers by the time he saw the faint lights of the town. Could he have missed them? He immediately discarded the thought. If they were going to the Triple-T, the road was the way they would have come. Maybe Hannah had been wrong, and they planned to wait until daylight.

  Well, I’m here, he thought. We might as well get this thing settled once and for all. He was weary of the hunt.

  Sam Taylor’s stable was closed, with no horses left out in the corral, when Logan walked Pepper slowly past. He paused briefly before the Three Widows Inn, but decided to ride on after a moment’s thought. The whole town appeared to be buttoned up, no doubt because of the sudden return of Quincy Morgan. The one exception was the Gateway Saloon. Logan doubted that Cecil had much choice in the matter. He figured this was the most likely place to find Quincy and his gang this time of evening, so he continued along the street to the saloon.

  He chambered a round in his rifle before stepping up on the boardwalk before the saloon, then slowly pushed the door open. Looking the room over before stepping inside, he saw only one customer, a large man, dressed in animal skins. Instead of a hat, he wore a red bandanna around his head and was seated at a table against the wall. He was a stranger to Logan, but was he one of the two men who had come to kill him? There was only one way to find out, so he pushed on through the door and walked in. He glanced quickly at Cecil behind the bar when the startled bartender dropped a glass he had been drying, stunned by the sudden appearance of Logan.

  Mike Swann noticed Cecil’s shocked reaction, too, but he made no indication that he had. Instead he smiled at Logan and said, “Come on in, stranger, and have a drink.” The man holding the rifle seemed a bit too cautious. Swann had a feeling.

  “Uh,” Cecil stammered, “Lila’s upstairs right now. I expect you’d best come back later.”

  “What?” Logan asked, confused. “Lila?”

  Then in the silence of the almost empty barroom, he heard the soft metallic clicking he instantly identified as the sound made by the cocking of a hammer. With no time to think, he spun around, raising his rifle, and fired at the man standing at the top of the stairs. Skinny Tarpley doubled over and fell forward down the stairs, firing harmlessly into the steps beneath him.

  Already too late, Logan turned back to find Swann’s .44 aimed at him. He ejected his spent cartridge, bracing himself for the impact of the bullet he knew was coming. He heard the shot, but felt nothing.

  To his astonishment, Swann fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor, a black hole through the red bandanna, in the middle of his forehead. Logan spun around toward Cecil, but the frightened bartender had both hands on the bar, with no gun in either. Logan looked quickly toward the door then. Seeming to fill the doorway, the imposing hulk that was Ox Russell stepped inside, cocking a Spencer carbine that looked like a toy in his huge hands.

  Every nerve in his body tense from just having looked death in the eye, Logan stood for a moment staring in disbelief. “What are you doin’ here?” he finally asked.

  The big man shrugged. “It was crazy, you ridin’ in here to take on four men, so I followed you. Thought you might need some help.” He grinned. “I snuck off again without tellin’ Jace. You’re glad I did now, ain’t you?”

  “Partner, I damn sure am,” Logan said.

  “How’d you know that one was at the top of the steps?”
Ox asked, pointing his carbine at Skinny.

  Logan nodded toward Cecil. “When he told me Lila was upstairs, I guess I just naturally looked up there when I heard him cock that pistol. Tell you the truth, I didn’t have time to think about it.”

  Cecil shook his head, still shaking from the incident. “I didn’t know any other way of tellin’ you,” he said, “without gettin’ shot myself.”

  “I expect we’ll have company pretty soon. They were bound to have heard those shots,” Logan said. “Have you seen Quincy and Lonnie?”

  “They were in here—left about thirty minutes before you came in,” Cecil said. “They’re stayin’ at the Three Widows again.”

  * * *

  Logan was right—Quincy and Lonnie had heard the shots fired in the saloon as they sat in the dining room now empty of all customers.

  “Not but two shots,” Lonnie speculated. “Whaddaya s’pose those two jaspers are up to—just scarin’ hell outta Cecil Grant?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Quincy said. He glanced at the door again, looking for Hannah to come in. “Where in hell is that bitch?” With their table right beside the kitchen door, he was ready to grab her if she tried to sneak in through the back door.

  “I hope to hell we ain’t wasted our gold on those two,” Lonnie said, ignoring Quincy’s question, having heard it repeated more than once. “They’re liable to sit up in that saloon and drink likker all night—won’t be much good to us in the mornin’.”

  “They’ll be ready,” Quincy assured him. “That damn Swann lives offa whiskey.” He gave Lonnie a smug grin. “Besides, I ain’t plannin’ on wastin’ an ounce of that gold on Swann and Skinny. I’m just lettin’ ’em hold it for a little while till we get the job done. Then I expect they’ll meet with some bad luck.” Then he turned his attention to the two women seated across the room. “Get up from there and make me some coffee,” he ordered.

  “We’ve already cleaned up the kitchen,” Mae told him. “And the fire’s about gone out in the stove anyway.”

  Her answer did not please Quincy. “Maybe you need to get your ears cleaned out. I didn’t ask you if you would do it. Now get up off your lazy ass and fix me some coffee.”

  “I’ll do it,” Daisy volunteered. “There ain’t no good in arguing with him.” She got up and went to the kitchen. After a moment, Mae got up and followed.

  “Now you’re startin’ to get a little smarter,” Quincy said. “It ain’t no good arguin’ with me. Just do what I tell you.” He turned to Lonnie and laughed, only to wonder at the expression of shock on his cousin’s face. “What the hell ails you?” Then he turned to follow Lonnie’s stare toward the dining room door.

  He was there, standing in the doorway, his rifle leveled at them, waiting for Mae to clear out of the way.

  Lonnie’s reaction was automatic; he plunged through the kitchen door to save himself. Almost falling in his haste to escape, he flung the back door open and collided with the massive hulk of Ox Russell. The collision drove the frightened man to the floor. His attempt to draw his pistol was a wasted motion since Ox already had his out.

  Inside the dining room door, Quincy heard the shot that killed Lonnie, as did Mae. Unfortunately for her, she recoiled by jumping back a step, presenting Quincy with a desperate chance to save himself. He grabbed her and pulled her up before him as a shield. “Now, by God, I’ll kill her,” he threatened, reached for the .44 on his side, and jammed it up against her head. He pulled her back away from the door.

  “Lonnie!” he called out. “You all right?”

  “He can’t answer,” Ox called back from the kitchen.

  Frantic then, Quincy exclaimed, “You come through that door, and I’ll kill her!”

  “Let her go,” Logan said. “It’s down to just you and me. Let her go and we’ll settle it between the two of us.”

  “The hell I will,” Quincy quickly replied. “There’s two of you.”

  “There’s just you and me,” Logan repeated. “Ox will stay out of it. You hear that, Ox?”

  “I heard,” the big man replied.

  “You’ve been doggin’ me all over these hills,” Logan said. “Now you’ve caught up with me, so let’s get this thing done. We’ll take it outside and finish it.”

  “All right,” Quincy said. “Lower that rifle and ease the hammer down.”

  “Just as soon as you holster that .44,” Logan countered.

  They stood there, glaring at each other in what amounted to a standoff with neither man trusting the other. While they were locked in the tense situation, Daisy came out of the kitchen. Without hesitating, but with an unhurried air of casualness, she walked up beside Quincy, whose gaze was riveted on the rifleman facing him.

  From the folds of her skirt, she brought a pistol up to rest against Quincy’s temple and pulled the trigger. It was done in one continuous move, too quickly for Quincy to realize what she was doing. He slumped to the floor immediately, without even the reflex action of pulling the trigger of his weapon. She looked at Logan, who was stunned, scarcely believing what had just happened.

  “He mighta killed you,” she said, as casually as if she had swatted a hornet. She turned to Mae then. “You all right?”

  “Well, that ain’t something that happens to you every day,” Mae said, still shaking a little. “I think I mighta peed myself.”

  “Sorry about the floor,” Daisy said. “I didn’t think about his brains flyin’ all over the place.” She turned when Ox walked over to look at Quincy’s body. “Here,” she said, and handed him his .44. Looking to Logan next, she asked, “Do you know where Hannah is?”

  When he told her that Hannah was safe at the Triple-T, Daisy nodded. “Well, I reckon we can get this place cleaned up and back to where it was before you and those phony marshals hit town.”

  “I reckon,” Mae said while Logan remained standing there, astounded by the young woman’s callousness. “I think maybe I could use a cup of coffee myself,” Mae said.

  “I’ll build up the fire in the stove,” Daisy said. “You and Ox drag those two buzzards outside,” she said to Logan, who was still standing dumbfounded, not sure he could believe what he had just witnessed. The realization that it was all over finally struck him, although it would be a while yet before it really sank in that there was no longer anyone seeking to kill him.

  Bringing his thoughts back to the moment, he discovered that Daisy was studying him intensively.

  “Help Ox drag them outside,” she repeated softly. “Then we’ll sit down and have a cup of coffee.” He nodded and turned to do her bidding.

  Daisy paused a moment, watching him walk away. She had not hesitated to assassinate Quincy Morgan. The world would not judge her harshly for her actions. Quincy needed killing, as much as any ruthless murderer, and she had not been willing to risk losing Logan Cross. He was a good man. She had formed that opinion on the first day he had come into town.

  And unlike everyone else, she had not changed her mind when the whole town thought he was an outlaw. She figured, like Jace Evans, it would not be good for Logan to have killed Quincy Morgan in a gunfight, consequently earning a reputation to be challenged by every two-bit gunman in the territory.

  I’ve got plans for you, Logan Cross, she thought. Hannah had her chance, but she hasn’t done anything about it. And I intend to go after what I want.

  Read on for a look at the next thrilling adventure from Charles G. West,

  SLATER’S WAY

  Available from Signet in July 2015.

  It was altogether fitting on this spring day in 1864 that the muddy streets of Virginia City were awash with a flood of water from a violent thunderstorm.

  Nothing good can come of a day as dreary as this, Leona Engels thought.

  The heavy dark clouds hovering over Alder Gulch erupted again late in the afternoon and threatened to c
ontinue their assault of thunder and lightning into the evening. The disagreeable weather had not been sufficient to keep John Slater Engels and his longtime friend and partner, Henry Weed, from their usual visit to the Miners Saloon. It was a ritual that John’s wife loathed, since the little bit of pay dirt her husband and Henry were able to pull from their claim in Daylight Gulch went straight into Gil Mobley’s pockets at his saloon, but she was too fearful to complain about it.

  As darkness began to gather in the gulch, Leona became more concerned, for it was well past the time when the two men usually came home for supper. She walked to the door of the rough cabin once again to peer out into the rain. There was still no sign of her husband and his partner. Finally, she turned and called to her fifteen-year-old son, “Jace, come here, boy.”

  John Slater Engels Jr. was originally called J.S. by his parents, but in a short time the initials evolved into the nickname of “Jace” since the sounds were not that far apart. The boy carefully put the shotgun he had been cleaning aside and came from the kitchen.

  “Ma’am?” he replied.

  “I’m startin’ to worry about your pa,” Leona said. “Him and Henry are usually through with their drinkin’ and card playin’ by now. I want you to go down to Virginia City and tell them I’m gonna throw their supper out the door if they don’t get theirselves home.”

  “Yes’um,” the stoic young boy replied.

  With no sign of emotion, he turned and went to the front corner of the cabin, where he slept on a bedroll, and picked up his hat. It was not the first time he had been sent to find his father and his hard-drinking friend, and it was a chore that he didn’t much care for. It would be a year this month since they had come to the gulch in search of gold. So far, it seemed the main thing his father had accomplished was to garner a reputation for himself as a drunk and a brawler.

  There wasn’t much law enforcement in most parts of Alder Gulch. Outlaws and hell-raisers were ultimately dealt with by the vigilance committee, and Jace felt sure they were keeping an eye on Weed and his father. He was disappointed that his father lacked the backbone to resist the temptations of the lawless crowd. The family had fled Kansas after his father and Weed were identified by witnesses as the men involved in a bank holdup. That holdup was Weed’s idea, and he talked Jace’s father into it. It seemed like every scrape his father found himself in could be traced back to some illegal scheme that Henry Weed had come up with. Mostly, Jace was ashamed for his mother and the abuse she sometimes suffered when his drunken father came home after a night of gambling and dallying with the fancy ladies at the saloon.