The Western Justice Trilogy

by Gilbert, Morris

  She broke the silence, saying, “Well, Waco, do you ever think of when we were together?”

  Waco was startled and could not come up with an answer. He was shocked when Callie laughed, and when he turned he saw that her dark eyes were alive with an emotion he couldn’t name.

  “It’s an easy question,” Callie said and waited for an answer.

  “Sure I do,” Waco said slowly and faced her as he added, “but it’s ancient history, Callie.”

  “Is it?”

  “I don’t think people can go back where they once were.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  Her blatant reply startled Waco, and he demanded, “Would you want to go back to that time?”

  “It was a good time, wasn’t it?”

  For a moment he was silent and confused, then he said slowly, “I remember the good times.”

  “We could go there again.”

  “You’re Trey’s woman.”

  “I’m not his woman. I’ll never belong to any man as I did to you.”

  The cry of a far-off bird came to Waco, and he could not remember a time when he’d been so shaken. He had never once thought that he might find what he’d once had with Callie, and now she was offering him herself.

  “I don’t think it would be smart to go back to that time—not with this job in front of us. It’s going to be tough, and no matter what you say, Trey won’t let anything of his go.”

  “Maybe he is, but you’re a strong man, Waco. I’m a strong woman.” She kneed her mare, and when they were close, she put her hand out and gipped his arm. Her touch startled Waco, and she whispered huskily, “We had something once—and we can have it again….”

  At that moment, Waco Smith realized he was not as strong as he had thought himself to be. She can stir me up—and I don’t know if I can say no to her!

  CHAPTER 21

  Waco Smith had always considered himself to be basically a simple man able to make up his mind quickly and then follow through. But something had happened to change all that when Callie had urged him to pick up their love affair where it had left off years ago. It had caught Waco off guard so that he spent long hours simply walking alone out on the territory surrounding the hideout house, and he did so now this Tuesday afternoon. He glanced up and saw the horizon fading as the late afternoon sun seemed to be melting into the earth. He had always had an appreciation for the world of nature and had taken an unspoken delight in the sky, the woods, the animals and birds, but now they seemed to give him no pleasure.

  “Waco, just a minute.”

  Quickly Waco turned to see Sabrina, who came walking toward him. She had some wet clothes in her arms, and she was headed for the wire stretched between two posts to dry them out. Waco glanced toward the house and saw that Breed Marcos, the Apache halfbreed, was watching carefully. Turning quickly, he walked toward her and said, “Be careful, Sabrina, you’re being watched.”

  “I know. I’m always being watched. I feel like I’m an animal in the zoo.”

  “You better start putting those clothes on the line or they’ll send somebody out here to see what we’re talking about.”

  “All right. I will.”

  Waco stood back, ignoring the hideout and Breed watching from the porch. He knew what she was talking about, for he himself had been under surveillance ever since he had arrived with her at LeBeau’s house. He turned so that he seemed to be facing away from Sabrina and said softly, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m just afraid.”

  “I guess we all get afraid of some things.”

  She was pinning a dress on the line and she didn’t turn, but after a moment she said, “I wouldn’t think you’d be afraid of anything.”

  “You’d be wrong there.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  The question caught Waco off guard, and for a moment he had to stop and think. “Lots of things. Afraid of growing old and nobody with me, nobody to take care of me. Afraid of getting crippled so that I can’t take care of myself.”

  “Are you afraid of death?”

  “Well, not so much death. I face that pretty often. It’s what comes after death that scares me.”

  She continued to hang up the clothes, and finally she picked up a petticoat and, hanging it on the line, said, “You’re worried about your soul, then?”

  “I never put it like that, but I guess that’s right.”

  “I know what you mean, Waco. I’ve been so selfish all my life, and now that I’ve hit something really hard, I just don’t know how to handle it.”

  “We have to take it as it comes, Sabrina.”

  Suddenly her voice changed, and he turned to face her fully. He had always considered her a weak woman, softened by the life that she had led, but now he saw that there was something different. In her eyes and lips lay flexible capacities carefully controlled as though she was determined to do something, and Waco felt he had a view of the undertow of her spirit. For that moment she forgot her reserve and was watching him with the fully open eyes of a woman momentarily and completely engrossed. The lines of physical fatigue showed in her face, and the hard usage that she had taken had made her shoulders sag, but he saw in her, despite this, a fire burning that had not been there when he had first met her. Her skin was lightly browned by the sun, and her lips were broad and on the edge of being full, the lips of a giving woman but not a pliant woman. He asked her, “Sabrina, have you ever been truly in love with someone?”

  “No,” she said, and bitterness tinged her voice. “I’ve been in love with myself. I didn’t know it until I lost Marianne. What about you?”

  “I thought I was once.”

  “With Callie?”

  “Her and the other woman who betrayed me. I guess I don’t learn very quickly.”

  “You have a distrust for women. Two women were dishonest, and you’re afraid to trust any other woman.”

  “I guess you’re right. I don’t like to admit it.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever find a woman you can trust?”

  “I don’t know, Sabrina. Sometimes when I’m riding along and dark is falling, I pass a cabin, and I can see the yellow glow from the fire inside. Sometimes I can see people laughing, can hear them, and it never fails to make me sad.”

  “Why should that make you sad?”

  He shifted his shoulders, and his lips tightened. “Because they have everything, those people, and I don’t really have anything.”

  She continued to hang clothes, and finally she asked, “But you thought you loved Callie.”

  “It wasn’t the kind of love you could build a marriage on.”

  “What kind of woman would that take?”

  Waco suddenly had a moment’s insight. “I thought it might be you, Sabrina.”

  His words startled her, and she exclaimed, “Me? Why, we’re as different as night and day!”

  “I guess so, but still, who can explain what a man sees when he looks at a woman? I guess,” he said slowly, “every man carries a picture in his head or in his heart or wherever things like that take place, and they carry a picture of a woman, the one they want. But I thought that sometimes it was a picture built up of many women, not just one.”

  “Well, that’s not very fair for the woman a man finally gets. How can a woman be everything a man wants?”

  Suddenly Waco smiled. It made him look much younger. “I guess when a man finally gets the right woman, he sees all the things in her that he wants to see.”

  “That’s a whole lot like saying that love is blind.”

  “No. I’d say it’s like a very strong light. It makes a man see things he otherwise wouldn’t. There’s some sweetness, some honesty in the woman and things that he always admired, and he suddenly realizes that this is the woman he’s been looking for, although he didn’t know it.”

  “Until she hurts him.”

  “That goes with love, I guess.”

  “Even people in love hurt each other,
don’t they?” She hung up the last garment and now picked up the basket and said, “I’d better get inside.”

  He said suddenly, “I never would have imagined that you had thoughts like this, Sabrina, and I guess I embarrassed you by telling you that I have feelings for you that I never thought I’d have for any other woman.”

  Sabrina was shocked. She had felt the masculinity of Waco Smith. It was the kind of strength that a woman loved to see, but she had not featured herself being in love with this man so different from herself. “I guess we’re both surprised then.”

  Suddenly he caught a glimpse of movement on the porch and saw that Trey and Callie had come outside. “They’re watching us,” he said. “I’m going to have to treat you rough. I’m going to have to push you around. Act like you’re hurt. I’m going to tell ’em you won’t write the letter.”

  “Go ahead. Do what you have to.”

  Without looking toward the two who were approaching suddenly, Waco reached out and seized Sabrina by the arm. He saw her eyes open wide, and he swung his open hand and slapped her on the face. She cried out slightly, and then he slapped her again. “This has to look good,” he muttered.

  “What’s going on here?” Trey asked.

  “This woman’s getting some kind of religion. She said she wasn’t gonna write that letter, but she knows now she will or she’ll be sorry.”

  “I’d hate to have you mad at me.” Callie laughed. “Of course, if you slapped me around, I’d shoot you.”

  Waco suddenly grinned. “I expect you would. Well, let’s get that note written, and I’ll take it.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Waco shrugged. “That’s fine.” He went inside and found a piece of paper, had Sabrina write a note simply saying to her imaginary father that she was well but that she was frightened and needed him.

  Waco took the note and shoved it in his shirt pocket and stepped outside. “I’ve got it.”

  “I’m going with you this time,” Trey said.

  “You stay out of it,” Callie said. “We’ll do what we’ve been doing.”

  Temper flared in Trey LeBeau’s features, and he glared at her, but she merely laughed at him. “We don’t need you along. I’m not your woman anyway.”

  “You will be when we get out of this,” Trey said.

  “Come on. Let’s go get this note in the bottle, Waco.”

  The two left at once, and as they were riding out, Waco said, “You’re going to go too far with LeBeau. He’s capable of hurting any woman bad.”

  “He’ll never touch me. He knows I’d kill him if he did.”

  They rode slowly, and she asked finally as they approached the site of the bottle, “Did you think about what I said?”

  He was silent for a while, and then he said, “You know, a friend of mine was kind of a scholar. He liked to read the old Greek writing. He read about one Greek philosopher that said you can’t step in the same river twice.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “Well, it means the rivers are moving all the time. You step in them and ten minutes later that river’s gone and another’s come. I always took it to mean you couldn’t start all over again with anything that’s dead.”

  She pulled her mount up close, reached out, and grabbed him, and he leaned toward her. She kissed him and laughed. “I’ll show you what’s dead! What we had wouldn’t die. It may have been asleep for a while, but it’ll come back.”

  The two found the bottle, and she watched as he put the note in it. He concealed it and said, “Now we just have to wait until we get the information we need on that train.”

  “Let’s take our time going back. That place depresses me.”

  During the ride back, more than once, Waco was aware that she was trying him out. She made several allusions to the love they had had, and despite himself he had memories, sharp and keen, of how she had come to him in a way that a woman comes to a man that he never forgets. He tried to shake it out of his mind, but he found himself instead thinking of Sabrina and their brief conversation. I don’t see any good in that, he thought. No matter what I try to do she’s above me.

  Judge Parker looked up, for the door to his office had opened with no knock and Charles Warren and Frank Morgan entered. “We need to talk to you, Judge.”

  “Sit down,” Parker said at once.

  “This is Frank Morgan.”

  The judge saw that the young man looked soft but had a determined look in his eye. “Sit down and we’ll talk about this thing.”

  For the next half hour, Parker managed to get both men calmed down as he told them of the plan he was working out with Waco and Sabrina. “We’ve been exchanging notes. Waco and Miss Sabrina have convinced LeBeau that she’s the daughter of one of the officials of the railroad in charge of shipments of gold and silver. They’ve told him that they can find out which train the shipment will be on and that there’ll be no guard.”

  “You think they’ll believe that?” Frank Morgan demanded.

  “Depends on how good a front Sabrina and Waco put up.”

  “So what we’re doing now is waiting on a signal,” Warren pressed.

  “Well, it’s farther along than that. There’s an Indian that’s been helping them out. He brought this in yesterday.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a piece of paper much folded.

  Warren took it and stared at it. It said:

  Daddy,

  These men are going to kill me if you don’t help me. I’m all right now and they say they’ll let me go, but you have to tell them the time for the next gold shipment. Please help me.

  Helen

  “There won’t be any gold on that train. Instead of that, we’ll have every marshal, and I’ll hire some new posse members. We’ll load that train up with men who are good with guns. We’ll stop Trey LeBeau’s clock.”

  “I’m going along,” Warren said.

  Instantly Frank Morgan nodded. “Get me a gun. I’ll go, too.”

  “Could be dangerous. You could get shot.”

  “I don’t care. I’ve got my wife here, and I’m staying until we get both our girls back. If I get shot in trying it, it won’t bother me. I’ve got to do what I can for my family.”

  Parker studied the two and finally said, “Well, we can always use more guns. I’ve already written the answer and sent it by way of the Indian.” Parker studied the two men and said gently, “I’m sorry for your trouble, but I’m hopeful that it will come out all right.”

  LeBeau looked up and saw Callie and Waco coming back. It had been three days, and they had sent the letter from Helen, and now he got up and said, “Well, at last here they come. They better have somethin’.

  “Sometimes I think this whole thing is gonna blow up in our face,” Al Munro said. “There’s something I don’t like about it.”

  “The one thing I don’t like about it is Waco Smith.” The anger and rage had been building up in LeBeau, and when the two got off and entered, he said, “What did you find?”

  “Answer to the letter.” Waco handed him the bottle with the paper inside. “Won’t need to be any more letters passed.”

  Taking the bottle at once, LeBeau fished the paper out. He read it out loud. “‘Two ten out of Lake City will be carrying a huge shipment of gold. There will be no guards on the train. There will be one man on board wearing a blue suit. You give my daughter to him. He will get you into the gold car. They’ll open the door for him. Please let my daughter go.’”

  “I know that train,” Waco said. “And I know a good place to hold it up. There’s some sharp bends in the road there, so they can’t make much speed.”

  “What are we going to do with these women while we’re doing the job?” Al Munro demanded.

  “I know what we can do with them,” Waco said. “I don’t want any murders in this thing. None of you need it either. There’s a deserted cabin not far from where this hook in the railroad is that makes the train slow down. It’s less than a mile away. I
t’s empty now. We can lock ’em in there while we’re doing the job and then we can turn ’em loose.”

  Trey was staring hard at Waco, but finally he nodded his head slowly. “All right. That’s the way we’ll play it, but I’m telling you, Waco, I’ll kill you if you even blink.”

  “I won’t be blinkin’. I want this gold as much as you do—more, I think.”

  “Well,” Trey LeBeau said, “the note says it’ll be in two days. We’d better get everything ready and be on the spot.”

  The gang spent most of the time getting their guns oiled and polished and packing ammunition. There was a sense of expectation about it, and Rufo Aznar moved close to Waco saying, “Don’t think you can pull anything on us, Smith. You’re tough, but you’re not tougher than the whole band here. Everybody will be watching you.”

  “They better be watching that train.”

  “We can do both at the same time.”

  The hours crept by. Marianne and Sabrina found a few moments alone to talk in whispers about what was going to happen.

  “I’m afraid it won’t work,” Marianne said. “Even if it did, they may just kill us. These men are all murderers.”

  “Waco won’t let them do that.”

  “He’s only one man.”

  “I know, but he can do things. I have confidence in him.”

  Marianne stared at Sabrina. “Why do you feel like that about him? You’ve known him only a short time, and you know he’s a criminal.”

  Sabrina could not answer. She dropped her head and said, “I don’t know, but there’s something in him that I trust.”

  The next day as they were pulling out, Waco was saddling Sabrina’s horse. When she came to mount up, he whispered, “There’s a way to get out of that house. If you can get out, fine. There’s some woods over to the north of it. I’ll come for you if I make it.”

  “Don’t take any chances.”

  He suddenly grinned. “Life is a chance, but if I don’t make it, I want to tell you, Sabrina, I’ve never felt about any woman like I have about you. I know it’s useless. We have no future together, but if things were different, I could see it would be great for me.”