McMasters followed Andersen through the doors, let his eyes adjust to the dim light, and made his way to the bar. Two mugs already waited on the polished bar top when he set his right boot on the brass rail. To his surprise, he found Andersen’s mug only half full. Maybe, he thought, Daniel Kilpatrick had ordered the deputy to cut down on the liquor. Then he watched as the bartender topped off the beer with rye.
“Six of the worst scum you ever laid eyes on.”
Their mugs clinked. “That what brought the sheriff to town?”
“Nah.” Andersen drank about half of his beer-rye mix, and wiped the foam off his beard. “He ain’t got nothin’ to do with no owlhoot. Likely a-feared they might cut his heart out. And these six . . . they’d do it. One’s Bloody Zeke The Younger.”
McMasters set down his beer, untouched.
“I thought he was in Yuma already.”
“Was.” Andersen finished his drink and motioned to the bartender for another. “Not so much beer this time, Joe.” He turned around, leaning against the bar, staring at the empty saloon, which would not be empty during the whole run of the August Doin’s.
“Flew the coop. Probably come huntin’ Moses Butcher.”
“Yeah.” McMasters sipped the beer.
Bloody Zeke The Younger had left dead men across the country, but none in Arizona Territory. That’s why, when he had ridden with Moses Butcher to rob a bank in Tucson, he had not been put on the gallows. Oh, from what McMasters had read in the newspapers and heard in the barbershop and horse corrals, three states, one territory, and even the government of Mexico had asked for extradition so they could have the honor and privilege of hanging the cold-blooded blackheart. But the governor of Arizona and the Yuma warden decided that it would be a much bigger feather to claim Bloody Zeke for their own, and keep him behind the walls of Yuma.
“Bet the governor wishes he had sent Bloody Zeke to Texas or Kansas now,” McMasters said.
“Mebe so. His pa was worser, though.”
“Before my time.”
“Stirred up trouble with the Apaches when Cochise was makin’ things hard down south. I was with the soldier-boys who caught up with the original Bloody Zeke back in ’71.” Andersen drank his new beer-rye blend, still looking through the door, his mind lost in thought. “Tubac. South of Tucson. Caught him. Found a good saguaro cactus. Crucified him.”
“Damn.” The beer no longer tasted so good.
“Just like he done a ten-year-old girl after he . . . well . . . never you mind ’bout that. No trial. No judge. No extradition. Justice. That’s all.”
Suddenly, Royal Andersen laughed. Reaching behind him, he found the mug, drained it, set it back on the bar and said, “Takes an Apache to track an Apache. Took a vermin to find a vermin. Wouldn’t have found the Original Bloody Zeke—he didn’t earn that Original handle till his boy started raising hell ten-fifteen years later, long after he was nothin’ but whitewashed bones and bad memories. Anyway, we busted one of his compadres out of the Tubac calaboose. Made him track down his pard. Killed him, too. Didn’t nail him to no cactus. Just put a bullet between his eyes. But I reckon he thought that was better ’n what we done to Bloody Zeke, the sick bastard.”
“And you’re taking him to Yuma.” McMasters shook his head and turned back to the bar, sliding the beer mug away. “And five other men.”
“No.” Andersen smiled and stepped back to lean against the bar, facing the tequila bottles, rye bottles, and even a few jugs of wine. “Four men. Bloody Zeke The Younger. And a damned petticoat.”
“A woman?” The bartender joined the conversation.
“Well, she ain’t one you’d bring home to meet your mother, Joe. But, yeah, she’s female. And there’s a colored boy. Big cuss. Done some scoutin’ for the Army till we run off all the Apaches. Damned good scout, they tell me, but he up and turned killer.”
Andersen pointed at the empty glass, but Joe shook his head.
“Marshal Kilpatrick would load me into that wagon if I gave you another, Royal,” the bartender said, waving his hands in surrender.
With a snort, Andersen grabbed McMaster’s mug and drained his beer. “Yeah. Handsome gal, or so I’m told, but don’t turn your back on her. She and her pard robbed a stage outside of Flagstaff.”
“A woman robbed a stage?” The bartender sounded curious.
“But that ain’t why she’s bound for Yuma.”
The bartender waited. And waited. John McMasters had to laugh.
In defeat, Joe drew Andersen another beer, but he refused to add any rye, or tequila, or even wine to the drink.
It was enough to placate Andersen.
He sipped, or what he would consider a sip, and nodded at Joe. “Well, it’s one reason I reckon. The robbery, I mean. But then she up and kilt her pard, the feller she’d robbed the coach with. Shot ’im down like the dirty dog he was.”
“I’ll be damned,” Joe said.
“So would she . . . had she been a man. Instead, the law just sent her to Yuma.”
“That’s damnation in its own way,” McMasters said.
The batwing doors banged, and two cowboys came in, motioned for the bartender, and found a table by the window.
As Joe drew two more beers and headed to serve the newcomers, Royal Andersen sighed.
“How come you don’t do that rodeo no more, John?” He finished the beer in two gulps. “You pret’ much bought that place of yourn racin’ horses back in the day. And you did bring in a crowd.”
McMasters wished he had another beer or even some rye . . . if Royal Andersen had left any at the Sawmill. With a sigh, he shook his head.
“Didn’t like all that brag. All that stuff they said about me. Trying to make me out like some hero.”
“They don’t give that there medal you won to cowards, son.”
“Sometimes . . .” He never liked talking about the war. Or what he had done, what he had seen, or even why they had pinned that Medal of Honor on him—and not those others. “I don’t know. I was a snake in the grass.”
“Horse apples.”
“Didn’t like thinking that they gave me the medal for killing.”
The bartender was back, but staying on the other end of the bar, perhaps understanding that this conversation was not meant for even bartenders to hear.
“That’s what we was there for . . . killin’ Rebs.”
“Well. I did my share. But you”—McMasters tried to smile, but his heart weighed down those corners of his lips—“charging that railway cut north of Chambersburg Pike at Gettysburg? Capturing the flag of the . . . what was it? The Third Mississippi?”
“Second,” Andersen corrected.
“Then holding on at Culp’s Hill. You boys deserved all the medals there were to give.”
Andersen grinned. “Our corporal, Mr. Walker, he got one. Just like you.” He set down his beer.
“You should have gotten it,” McMasters said.
“Horse apples. Corporal Walker . . . he was the one who got that Reb flag. So he got the medal.”
“I captured no flag,” McMasters said.
“And I ain’t sure I killed nobody. Not at Gettysburg anyhow. Fired a lot of lead, though.”
The opening above the batwing doors darkened, and McMasters saw the tall man standing outside. Instinctively, protectively, McMasters reached over and lifted Royal Andersen’s beer mug, bringing it to his lips and drinking what little remained, most of that being suds.
Deputy Marshal Daniel Kilpatrick pushed through the doors, stood blocking the entrance, and placed both hands on his hips.
CHAPTER 6
“The Payson place?” The hayseed in overalls and a straw hat stepped around the mule he was leading and pointed up the road. “Two miles on the Rim Road. Pass the crick, and jus’ head . . .” The words seemed to stick in his throat, and he looked again at the smiling Ben Butcher. “Ya boys ain’t from ’round here, is you?”
“If we were,” Ben Butcher said, “we’d know whe
re that old horse trader lived, now, wouldn’t we?” He showed the hayseed his pearly whites, which, actually, were more yellow than white.
“I reckon.” The hayseed tried to grin, but something warned him. He looked at the men, the horses, and all the guns they carried. Guns that, for the time being, remained holstered, sheathed, or hidden. “But ya do look familiar.” He was staring straight at Moses Butcher. “Ya ain’t been to Payson before?”
“First time,” Ben Butcher said.
“Listen,” Bitter Page tried, “we ride for the Hashknife.”
That troubled the hayseed even more, and Moses Butcher wished Page, who meant well, would have kept his trap shut. They did not look anything like cowboys.
Butcher decided he had better speak up.
“Been deputized by the law.”
That made the hayseed look even more sickly.
“Case you ain’t heard it, Moses Butcher’s gang robbed a bank up in Winslow.”
“Moses . . . Butcher?” The hayseed couldn’t take his eyes off Butcher, and his hands kept pulling at the lead rope on his mule.
“Yeah. Shot the town to pieces. Rode south. The sheriff figured they was comin’ this way, rode to the outfit, asked us to help. Only, Smith here, his horse went lame. Some hayseed told us about this Mac—” Butcher’s tongue tripped. He couldn’t remember that horseman’s name.
“McMasters,” his brother said.
“Yeah. McMasters. We need a fresh horse for Smith.”
The hayseed swallowed. “’Pears like ya need more ’n one horse.”
For a hayseed pulling a mule packed down with sticks, the hick did not miss much.
“Right. And everybody at the Hashknife knows that McMasters has the best horses in Arizona.”
A long silence separated the hayseed from Butcher and his men. The man with the mule wet his lips, swallowed, and wiped his forehead with a filthy shirtsleeve.
“Well”—the curious but taciturn hayseed found his tongue . . . and would not keep quiet—“I’d love to join up with ya boys. Ride with ya. Bring ’em bad men to justice. But”—he nodded at the mule, swallowed, and pointed up the pike—“like I told ya. Four miles up the road. Oncet ya starts the real hard climb, ya will finds a loggin’ road off to the left. Foller that one for two-three miles and there you’ll find John’s place.”
“A logging road,” Ben Butcher repeated.
“Yeah. Good luck, boys. Tell ol’ John and his missus that I said howdy.” He tugged on the rope, leading the mule and his sticks through Butcher’s boys, not stopping, picking up his pace quickly, and definitely not looking back.
“Four miles and then a logging road,” Bitter Page said.
“Sí,” Greaser Gomez noted. “But before that, he say two miles and a creek.”
“You shouldn’t have mentioned your name or Winslow, Moses,” Ben said. “He recognized us. Will fetch the law.”
Just like Ben Butcher, finding something down.
“I can handle that,” Moses said, and began pulling his .45.
“No!” Ben spoke with authority.
Butcher glared at his brother.
“Ben ees right,” Greaser Gomez said. “Too close to town. The pistola will be heard.”
The .45 slammed back into the holster. “Two miles,” Butcher said. “A creek. Shouldn’t be hard to find after that.”
“But what if that old fool wasn’t right the first time?” Cherry sounded like Butcher’s brother. “What if that place is down that loggin’ road?”
“What the hell would he be feeding his horses, you damned fool?” Butcher snapped. “Sawdust? The creek. That’s where we’ll find this horseman.”
“And”—Dirk Mannagan grinned—“that sodbuster said somethin’ ’bout a missus.”
“Let’s pay our respects,” Milt Hanks said.
* * *
“You know Marshal Meade’s rules about wagon drivers,” Daniel Kilpatrick said. “And drinking on duty.”
Sometimes, John McMasters did not understand what Rosalee saw in her intended. Oh, Dan was a good man, would make a fine provider, but he stood so ramrod straight and followed the law by the letter . . . which wasn’t how Arizona or any place west of the Mississippi had been tamed.
“He just had one beer, Dan,” McMasters lied, pointing at one of the empty mugs. “Bought a few for my birthday.”
Kilpatrick gave McMasters a hard stare. “Paid with what?”
McMasters grinned. “We’re Wisconsin boys. His credit’s good.”
“And there ain’t no prisoners in that cast-iron Conestoga,” Andersen said, somehow not slurring his words.
“It’s not a Conestoga.”
That was another thing about Dan Kilpatrick that McMasters did not understand. The boy wouldn’t know a joke if it bit him in the nose.
“What would you know?” Andersen snorted. “You never saw one in your life . . . except maybe in one of ’em illustrated newspapers or storybooks.”
McMasters set down the glass he had borrowed from the old scout turned jailer, found some coins, and dropped them on the bar, nodding at Joe. Royal Andersen, in his cups, would start a fight with anyone from preacher to schoolmarm . . . and despite Kilpatrick’s low opinion of his wagon driver, anyone hauling Bloody Zeke The Younger and five other hard rocks would have need of a man with Andersen’s experience. At best, it would take them fifteen days to reach Yuma from Payson.
“Here, Dan,” McMasters said. “I’ll help you load the prisoners in the tumbleweed wagon.”
“No need, sir.” The young lawman spit with disgust into a nearby spittoon. “I already got them in.”
That stopped McMasters. “Did—” No, he let that stupid question go unfinished. Tom Billings, twice elected sheriff of Gila County, would not dare come within an arm’s length of a bunch of cutthroats.
“I did it by myself.” Kilpatrick almost laughed at the look on McMasters’s face. “It wasn’t that hard, sir. Legs shackled. Wrists in manacles. And you’re not the only one in these parts with one of these.” He held up the shotgun McMasters had scarcely noticed.
It was a double-barrel like McMasters’s birthday present, a twelve-gauge too from the looks of the barrels, only those Damascus barrels had been sawed off to just above the forestock. Unlike the 1894 in McMasters’s scabbard, Kilpatrick’s had hammers.
“A Greener?” McMasters asked.
“Yep. It talks big.”
“Bigger ’n yer law books.” Andersen snorted. “Well, let’s take those boys—I mean, the boys and that man-killin’ petticoat—and get ’em to the prison.” He stepped away from the bar.
Dan Kilpatrick placed both barrels of the sawed-off twelve-gauge on the old-timer’s stomach just above the buckle on the gun belt.
“You don’t go near that wagon, Royal,” Dan said in a hushed tone. “Wearin’ that rig.”
“Boy”—Andersen’s right hand rested on the flap over his holster—“you point a gun at me, you damn sure better be willin’ to pull ’em two triggers.”
“Take off the pistol.” Kilpatrick did not waver. “And the knife.”
Andersen stepped back, almost falling against the bar. He jerked the ancient kepi off his head, slammed it against the bar, and shook his head. “Boy. Nurse-maidin’ whiskey runners and forgers and even robbers is one thing. But you expect me to go nigh three hunnert miles with Bloody Zeke—hell, son, I helped kill that cur’s daddy!—and five other scum-suckin’ swine?”
“It’s the way Marshal Meade says things must be done.” The Greener had not lowered.
“Royal.” McMasters spoke softly, watched the old-timer slowly take his glare off Kilpatrick, then smiled.
Andersen, eventually, shook his head, laughed, and pulled the battered Army cap back over his unruly white mane.
“All right, John. You’ve become a regular peacekeeper, forgettin’ all . . .” The words died, and regret filled Andersen’s face, but he unbuckled the rig, and held it out for Kilpatrick to take.
&n
bsp; Far from green, he kept the Greener on his driver.
“Sir,” Kilpatrick said softly to McMasters. “Would you mind?”
After taking the gun belt, McMasters led the way outside and draped Andersen’s rig over the deputy U.S. marshal’s saddle horn. Kilpatrick would ride the black horse alongside Andersen’s jail-on-wheels for two weeks. The kid had guts. And a lot of patience, putting up with old Andersen. Maybe that’s what Rosalee saw in him.
McMasters looked into the wagon. Five men and one woman, all shackled, all staring with malevolent eyes through the iron bars.
He recognized Bloody Zeke The Younger from the wanted posters he had seen tacked up outside the town marshal’s office and the woodcut engraving from Frank Leslie’s and Harper’s Weekly illustrated periodicals. The dark-eyed man stared right through McMasters.
The others he barely considered. One man, perhaps even older than Royal Andersen, still wore old Confederate trousers, though more patches of various colors than gray wool, with a brown leather patch over his right eye. Next to him sat a younger man with a green Prince Albert coat and a yellow brocade vest. Beside him, a Mexican snored, his battered sombrero serving as a pillow against the iron bars. Those, McMasters could see. The others sat opposite of Bloody Zeke The Younger and the three others. One man was black with a shaved massive head and shoulders that reminded McMasters of an ox. That would be the ex-Army scout Andersen had mentioned. The other, far away from the Negro and the closest to the door in the back, had to be the woman stagecoach robber and murderess. She wore a dress of the same fabric and design as the one Bea had donned yesterday. Green calico. The prisoner’s was filthy. And, unlike Bea, she had hair the color of ginger.
Grumbling, Royal Andersen climbed into the driver’s box.
McMasters faced Kilpatrick.
“You want some company?”
Kilpatrick looked stunned. “You?”
“That’s a long way to go.” McMasters tilted his head toward the prisoners. “And a rough lot of customers.”
“And it won’t be like shooting fish in a barrel . . .”
He watched his future son-in-law’s face turn ashen.
The young man wet his lips, stuttered, backed up, and finally managed, “I didn’t mean . . . that didn’t sound . . . I’m—”
Remington 1894 Page 5