“The artillery transport crew was out of luck. They’d get to camp as soon as they could but nobody was going to wait for them. They grumbled. All the good shares of loot would be gathered up long before they finally reached camp. The crew whipped and cursed the horses, trying to get more speed out of them. The result was that the animals became overtired and needed ever more frequent rest breaks.
“The twelve-member crew halted at sundown and decided to have some food and drink before completing the rest of their trip. They built a fire and broke out some bottles of whiskey, the last few left undrunk during the long trip south.
“They didn’t bother to unhitch the horses but left them in place in harness and yoke. According to the bits and pieces of conversations we overheard, it was the horses’ fault—the dumb brutes—for not hauling the heavy load faster, so let them wait while the crew looked after their own needs.” Sam shook his head. Not a way to treat a horse.
“The transporters sat around the fire, eating and drinking, having as good a time as they could without being in camp. No loot and no women tended to put a damper on the festivities, but they carried on, carousing as best they could. But they were not entirely stupid. They set out sentries before starting to eat and drink. One swiftly fell asleep and the other was soon drunk.
“We attacked at nightfall.
“Tonk crept up to them one by one, quietly cutting their throats, then joined the rest of us as we got into position just outside the circle of light shed by the campfire. We opened fire without warning. It was not a game with rules. It was serious business—war. Any impulse of restraint was erased by thoughts of the mass poisoning at Fort Pardee. What followed was more of a firing squad than a fight.
“It was over very quickly. Two marauders remained alive when the shooting stopped. I wanted them taken alive for questioning.
“The first wouldn’t talk. Otto blew his brains out. The second talked plenty.
“According to him, the Free Company is camped at Sidepocket Canyon, a box canyon west of Wild Horse Canyon. The company was massed in advance of a planned attack on Hangtree town, which would be taken, looted, and burned. The plan is to then roam the countryside, picking off the ranches along the Liberty River in the county’s Long Valley.
“That’s what we needed to know. Maddox slit the prisoner’s throat so Otto didn’t have to waste a bullet.
“We gave the artillery transport horses enough water to refresh them but not so much that they would be sluggish and slowed. Tonk and Dirkes got the howitzer team back on the trail and moving. Otto climbed up into the driver’s seat of the munitions wagon, took up the reins, and followed.
“I set their course for Cross’s Cut, following an evasive path to throw off pursuit, first plunging west to clear the outer range of the Breaks, then going south where plains footed the western range. The hills screened us from being seen by Free Company lookouts. We continued south for some miles before turning left into a pass that wound through the Western Breaks and into Wild Horse Canyon, emerging well below and out of sight of Sidepocket Canyon. Eventually, we were on the Wild Horse Canyon trail.
“Two hours later, we arrived at the western opening of Cross’s Cut. We followed the pass to its eastern end, coming out on Cross ranch land, and took the dirt road between the ranch house and Hangtree Trail, following it until the ranch was in view, laid out under the moonlight.
“I rode alone the rest of the way to the ranch house, leaving the others in the hollow with the howitzer and powder wagon.
“That’s all of it,” Sam concluded.
Johnny went to the cupboard and took out a couple bottles of whiskey. “Take these to your men. They’ve earned it. Coot’ll fix up some grub so y’all can chow down.”
“How come I got to cook?” Coot complained.
“After that poisoned chili, even your cooking won’t taste so bad,” Luke said.
With many a groan and grumble, Coot rustled up some grub.
Sam delivered it to his men. While they ate, Steve Dirkes volunteered to ride to Hangtree to warn Marshal Barton and the others in town to spread the alarm. Sam approved the choice. Steve was a level-headed young fellow and a Texan whose word would carry weight with the townsfolk.
When he was finished eating, Dirkes rode off into the night, east toward Hangtree.
Sam and the others sat around drinking and making plans.
TWENTY-TWO
The hour was late. The second-floor corridor of the Cattleman Hotel was empty when Ashley Mallory slipped out of the suite of rooms she shared with her father.
The suite had two bedrooms, one for her, one for him. They were connected by a drawing room whose outer door opened into the hallway. Gordon Mallory had retired for the night an hour or two earlier, behind his closed bedroom door.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Ashley told herself, smiling a secret smile. She wore a robe over a nightdress and a pair of slippers. Her hair was unpinned, hanging loose and free over slim shoulders. Her face was a pale oval in the wan light shed by corridor wall lamps.
Her eyes shone; red dots of color burned in her cheeks. She looked left and right to make sure that the hallway was empty and no one was watching.
All clear.
She crossed the hall on silent feet to the door opposite her suite, the door to the room occupied by Kale Dancer. Pressing a shoulder against the door, she rapped a knuckle softly on the panel.
No response.
Ashley knocked again, a bit more forcefully. Still no response.
She frowned. Men fortunate enough to be graced by a midnight visit from her were always ready, eager, and waiting. Perhaps Kale hadn’t heard her. She knocked again.
Nothing. She put an ear to the door panel, hearing no sounds from within. Was it actually possible that he had fallen asleep while waiting for her?
That would really be too much, intolerable! But she doubted it. Kale was a most ardent suitor, bold to the point of rashness.
He might have been called away on some late errand. Kale Dancer was a very important man, subject to all kinds of unusual appointments and mysterious meetings night and day. It was something she got used to when acting as a traveling companion of her father.
Ashley almost giggled at the thought, but the reality of her position firmed up her self-control. She really couldn’t afford to be caught doing what she was doing. She played a dangerous game.
Still, a lady can only stand for so much. She knocked again, a bit more sharply, softly calling out, “Kale? Kale?”
He must have been called away on unexpected business. Of all the damn inconvenient times! Her opportunities for nighttime rambles were few and far between and could not, must not, be wasted.
Light shone through the narrow slit at the bottom of the door where it failed to meet the floor. On impulse, Ashley gripped the doorknob, turning it. The door was unlocked. She opened it, stepping inside.
Kale Dancer’s suite, smaller than hers and Mallory’s, had an outer drawing room, inner bedroom, and bath. A globe lamp sat on a drum table in the drawing room. The light was low, the room dim and shadowy.
Kale Dancer sat slumped in an overstuffed armchair beside the table. He wore dark pants and a maroon velvet smoking jacket with quilted golden lapels and collar over a white ruffled shirt. His bare feet were tucked into a pair of expensive backless Moroccan leather slippers. His head was bowed, chin resting on chest, face hidden by shadows.
So . . . he was sleeping after all!
“Well, he will have to exert himself to extra efforts before I allow him back into my good graces,” Ashley whispered. But she must not play too hard to get. Time was precious. Time was fleeting!
Standing over him, she gripped his shoulder, giving him a good shake to waken him. Kale failed to rouse. Not even a murmur came from him.
Was he drunk? He had certainly consumed enough whiskey after dinner.
But that was impossible. He was all man. A real man. She had never known him to be
unable to hold his liquor.
She shook him again.
Dancer’s upper body slumped to the side, sagging against a cushioned chair arm. His head tilted, rolling to the side, exposing his face and neck.
He was dead. His eyes were open in horror, staring, sightless. His face was a gray, corpselike pallor. A gaping wound showed below his chin where his throat had been cut from ear to ear.
Ashley would have screamed, but she lacked the breath. Her heart lurched in her chest, skipping a beat. Dizziness crashed over her. She feared she might faint—but of course she could not, must not!
Deep down she was a survivor, and her well-practiced instincts came rushing to the fore. Raising a hand to her open gaping mouth, she bit a knuckle to keep from shrieking.
She must not be found in Kale’s room alone with his dead body. Dead—murdered! How would she explain her presence?
She had to get out. She staggered to the door, throwing it open.
Standing on the other side of the doorway, blocking her way, was Gordon Mallory. She was surprised to see him, but not surprised that he could stand.
Their eyes met and she knew, knew! His was the face of death.
Mallory advanced, crossing the threshold. Ashley stepped back, retreating. He closed the door behind him, sealing them in together, off from the rest of the hotel, the world.
His eyes shone, no longer seeing her as a daughter. Little flecks of saliva clung to his lips. “I fear your lover is in no condition to receive you,” Mallory said, husky-voiced. He spoke slowly, relishing the sound of each word. “I paid him a visit first. So sorry, my dear.
“Well, not really,” he added, his hands coming up. They were large hands, thick-fingered and steady. Not a tremor disturbed them.
His hands fastened on her long swanlike neck, squeezing with great strength, strength born of mania and mad love thwarted. He lifted her into the air, holding her at arm’s length with her feet off the floor.
His hands were strangler’s hands. He did what had to be done....
When Mallory was finished, he set her down gently on the floor, quite dead. He looked down, studying her. “Faithless slut!” he whispered almost tenderly.
Quarles found them later. The perfect manservant, quick-witted, efficient, he stepped inside, locking the door from within.
Mallory stood in the same place he had been when he lowered her to the floor.
“Good Lord, Commander, what have you done?” Quarles asked.
The comedy was finished, the masquerade done. Gordon Mallory was really Jimbo Turlock, Supreme Commander of the Free Company.
Kale Dancer was Turlock’s second in command.
Ashley Mallory was Osage Sally Potts, only recently the prettiest kept woman in the Oklahoma Territory.
Turlock had been on a secret mission concerning the upcoming Hangtree venture. He’d taken the role of Mallory, pretending to be a wheelchair-bound war veteran so none would suspect his real identity.
Sally Potts, Turlock’s woman, impersonated his daughter, while Kale Dancer took the role of family advisor.
All would have gone well, but Sally and Dancer had a secret plot of their own. Just not so secret that Turlock hadn’t found out about it.
He looked up, eyes focusing on Quarles, noticing him for the first time. “I had to do it, Quarles. They were conspiring against me. They were conspiring against me and, what is worse, against the Company. That is unforgiveable.”
“Certainly, sir,” Quarles agreed. He set about arranging their getaway.
Within the hour, Turlock, Quarles, and Piney were mounted on fast horses, riding west out of town on the Hangtree Trail.
TWENTY-THREE
Marshal Mack Barton and Deputy Smalls were on late-night duty at the jailhouse, standing by for action. They got it.
At eleven-thirty, a runner burst in from the Cattleman Hotel to report a double murder.
The marshal went to investigate, leaving Smalls to hold down the office.
Barton found two corpses in the suite of rooms registered to Kale Dancer. The hotel manager and the night clerk identified them as Dancer and Ashley Mallory, daughter of Gordon Mallory, who held the suite across the hall. They were strangers in town.
Quick questioning revealed that Mallory was gone, along with his personal manservant Quarles and a second servant named Piney. Mallory’s wheelchair had been left behind in his hastily abandoned suite.
“Either he made a miraculous recovery or he didn’t need the chair in the first place,” Barton said.
“Why would a man pretend to need a wheelchair if he could walk?” the manager wondered.
“That’s a real head-scratcher, ain’t it? To fool somebody, maybe.”
“Who would he fool?”
“Us,” Barton said. “You, me, the whole town.”
The manager couldn’t figure the reasoning. “Why would he want to do that?”
“That’s the question.” Barton didn’t have the answer, but he was working on a few ideas.
Had the trio exited through the front entrance, they would have been spotted by the night clerk. Therefore they had not exited via the front entrance. They had made a sneak exit from the hotel, most likely down the back stairs and out the rear door.
Barton left instructions to call the undertaker and left the hotel. Only two liveries were open all night. Hangtree was the kind of place where any number of individuals might find it necessary to leave town in a hurry at any hour of the day or night, so the twenty-four-hour service was a well-appreciated convenience. Of the two, Hobson’s was bigger and better and was within easy walking distance of the hotel, so Barton tried it first.
Hobson had gone home for the night, but his kid assistant was on duty. He’d been napping and was sleepy-eyed and yawning when Barton roused him. The kid told the marshal that a man answering Piney’s description had come in sometime after ten o’clock and had bought three fast horses, complete with saddles. No questions asked.
“Paid top dollar with no dickering over the price,” the kid said. “In gold, too!”
“Better hold on to it. I’ll want a look at it later,” Barton said. Sometimes coins could furnish valuable clues to the bearer’s identity by their denomination, date, place of coinage, and even the condition they were in—new, used, or old.
Barton was not going to work up a posse for a manhunt in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t do it under ordinary circumstances, and certainly not with the extraordinarily strong undercurrents of murder and mystery roiling the town. He judged it best to stick to Hangtree where he could stay on top of breaking developments, if any.
Back at the office, Barton and Smalls kicked around the case.
“Seems open and shut to me,” the deputy opined. “It was a matter of honor. The father discovers his unmarried daughter laying up on the sly with this fellow Dancer and kills both of them in a fury. You know how some fathers are about the honor of the family, especially if they’re Southern gentlemen of the old school as you say this Mallory jasper was described as being.”
“Southern gentlemen of the old school don’t pretend to be wheelchair-bound when they’re not,” Barton pointed out, his tone sardonic.
“You got me there,” Smalls said. “How do you figure it?”
“I don’t . . . yet. I’m still working on it.”
A little after one in the morning, two riders halted in front of the jailhouse.
One was Steve Dirkes, the Army scout who’d volunteered to notify Barton of the coming of the Free Company. He dismounted and called out for help.
Barton and Smalls hurried out of the jail and helped carry the second rider into the office, laying him faceup on a long, wooden side table, which had been quickly cleared by the deputy. He then left to fetch a doctor.
After introducing himself, Dirkes explained how he came to have picked up the other rider. “An hour’s ride outside of town, I came across a number of bodies laying strewn about the Hangtree Trail. A couple saddled horses tha
t had belonged to the dead men roamed around anxiously nearby, upset by the violence and bloodshed but unsure what to do and not wanting to leave the nearness of the men.”
He pointed at the man on the table. “He was still alive, though badly wounded. His name is Cal Lane, and he’s been shot twice. I used my knife to cut some squares off my saddle blanket, forming them into bandages, and put them on his wounds, hoping they would keep him from bleeding out before I could get him to a doctor.
“He insisted he could stay on a horse and ride it, so I lassoed one of the horses and helped him into the saddle. I rigged the lariat as a lead rope to Cal’s mount and tied the other end to my saddle horn. I didn’t want to chase a runaway horse.”
Marshal Barton examined Cal Lane’s wounds, gingerly probing at the edges of them, but not fussing with the bandages for fear of starting the wounds bleeding again.
One shot had blown a chunk of flesh out of the top of Cal’s left shoulder, and the other had tagged him in the right side about a hand’s-width above his beltline. Barton couldn’t tell if the slug had gone into the innards. He was no doctor.
Cal wanted to talk. He wanted to tell his story while he could so that if he didn’t pull through, the marshal would still have the facts to act on.
“Me and Stan and Pete Burgess were barely an hour’s ride out of town when we were jumped by five bushwhackers. Stan and Pete were killed, but not before we gunned down all the attackers. I recognized some of the Hughes bunch but don’t know their names.”
Dirkes offered, “The moon was high overhead, moonlight shining down on their faces. I recognized two of them, Swampman Moss Roberts and Nails Doig.” They were known bad men and frequenters of the Hog Ranch.
“Swampman and Doig are two of Denton Dick’s henchmen,” Barton said, smacking a meaty fist into his palm. “That’s all I need to shut down that crowd!”
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