The War Wagon

by Clair Huffaker

  She drank some coffee, her smooth forehead moving into tiny wrinkles of thought. "Jess didn't get hurt."

  "I was holding him back for reinforcements."

  Her eyes were suddenly warm as they had been once before. "You're an overgrown child."

  "Well, Jess and me always was prone to winding up in silly arguments."

  "I didn't say Jess was a child. He isn't. You are."

  "Well, ma'am, that's not right. I'm older than him and all."

  "It's Christine, remember?" She changed the subject abruptly. "Are you going riding again today?"

  "No particular plans. Just loafing away my life."

  "Why don't we go out together? I love to ride and don't have the opportunity very often."

  "Aren't you tired?"

  "No. I dozed off from time to time during the night."

  After breakfast Taw walked out to the pasture and saddled and bridled his pinto and Christine's big, spirited mare. He tied the horses behind the house, and presently she came out wearing regular man's pants, shirt and wide-brimmed white stetson that looked at odds with her delicate riding boots and the daintily scrolled leather purse slung over her shoulder.

  Half an hour later, after they topped a painted dune, Pawnee Fork was left out of sight behind them.

  Taw pulled his hat tighter as a warm, playful wind came upon them from the southeast. "I'm glad you don't seem to be sore about the fight last night, Christine."

  "It sounded like the kind of a battle that would be fun, from the way Charley talked. No knives or guns or broken bottles."

  "There was a broken bottle or two, but nobody was jabbing them in anybody else's face."

  The wind pushed at the dark waves of hair falling gracefully beneath her hat, and Christine brushed her hand through them. "I can't understand why anyone would simply want to hurt someone. But on the other hand, I can understand why a man would love a good fight."

  "Thing is, I was kind of afraid you'd be mad because I've been keeping Jess in trouble. Guess he was pretty calm before I showed up."

  "The only trouble Jess gets into is trouble he's thought out in advance, has help with, and wants to get into."

  Taw grinned and shook his head. "Wish he was that farsighted. He's still a fun-loving, reckless kid who never thinks on anything past what he's saying and doing at the minute."

  They rode through a golden, sandy plain spotted with patches of purple-gray sagebrush. In the distance there was a ragged, grotesque outline of badland mountains scratched against the sky. Half a mile away, marked by a straggly growth of sunflowers, was the entrance to a narrow ravine.

  "If we follow that opening," Christine said, "we'll come out into a boxed canyon with a lovely grove of trees. There's a spring that runs there with the only clear water in this country. Drinks are on me."

  They moved toward the sunflowers and rode single-file through the narrow slit in the earth until they reached the small box canyon.

  "This is a beautiful place," Christine said, her gaze wandering softly from the leafy trees to the banks of the spring edged in green grass, and the long, open field to their right. "I used to come out here alone sometimes when Jess and I first came to Pawnee Fork. It's private and hidden in here. I think I'm almost the only one who knows about it."

  "You say you used to ride here. You don't any more?" Taw backed his boots out of the stirrups and slipped down from his pinto.

  "No."

  He helped her down from the buckskin and they led their horses into the grove. "Why not?"

  "The man who hit you, Iron Eyes, started following me here. I saw him at a distance two or three times and stopped coming."

  "That's reason enough."

  They sat down at the edge of the spring, leaving their mounts to graze contentedly in the tail grass a few yards away. Christine leaned forward, crossing her arms over her knees and staring into the clear water. She said suddenly. "Have they got you in on whatever they're planning?"

  "Who?"

  "You know. Jess and the others."

  "Jess must have been talking through his hat again."

  "He said he's going to be rich."

  "He gets crazier every day."

  "I wish you'd be honest with me. I know you want to be."

  Taw flipped a pebble into the water and clucked to himself with good-natured disapproval. "Here I thought you wanted to be friendly. And all you want is to pry out some information about that dark and mysterious kid brother of mine."

  Christine in turn tossed a pebble, and the widening rings fanned out to join each other. "I can see why you'd agree to go along with them. You're like me. First you decide that since you're already branded as bad, you've got nothing to lose by going wrong again. Then the wildness grabs hold of you and you decide you might as well do it up right."

  "I don't follow you."

  "Yes you do. You know what I mean. Like last night. You could have settled that little argument without even trying." She turned to face him directly. "I know you could have. But no, you played it up into a full-scale riot. Charley Hill told me the Silver Dollar won't be back to normal for a month. He said you even ripped a whole bar out."

  "It wasn't nailed down too good."

  "And the reason you did it was resentment. Rebellion. And once you got going you had one wonderful time."

  "Not resentment. I did it just for the general hell of it." Taw shifted onto his heels and pushed his hat back on his head. "What's all this talk getting at, anyway?"

  "I don't know." Christine settled back against the trunk of a tree and was quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, "There's just something wrong about—everything. I think you're being played against yourself. I think you were pushed into shooting that Boicourt man. I think you were pushed into the fight last night—at first anyway. I think Jess was looking for any excuse he could find to set you off on a rampage. I don't know why, but I can't help feeling it's all part of a deliberate plan of some kind."

  Taw felt the muscles in his jaw tighten. "I'd say you were awfully anxious to set Jess and me against each other. Those are pretty unkind words."

  Christine stood up and walked a step away from Taw. "As long as I'm saying what I feel," she said over her shoulder, "there's one more thing I have to add. Yesterday two men came to see Jess at the house. I learned in Dodge City to tell a gunman when I saw one. These two men were gunmen."

  "Or undertakers. The two professions are easy to mix up at first look."

  "It's nothing to joke about!" Christine whirled angrily, her purse swinging wide on the shoulder strap. "Whether I'm right or wrong, you should take what I say seriously!"

  "What I should do is give you a good spanking for trying to make trouble between me and Jess." Taw stood up and broke a twig from the branch over him. "Besides that, no matter how you feel about anything, you ought to stand by the man you married, not a stranger like me."

  "I happen to like you!" she snapped. "I think somewhere under your thick hide there's a good man. And I happen to know that Jess is a tinhorn and a cheat who'd sell you out for the price of a haircut!"

  "I won't hear any more talk against Jess!" Taw's voice was flat with anger. "He's a hellion, but he'll always stick by me, a lot better than you're sticking by him! I want to think highly of both of you, but you're making it damned hard for me!"

  Christine glared at him, her blue eyes dark with sorrow and anger. Then her eyes filled with quick, desperately unhappy tears and she put her hands up to cover them. "I'm sorry," she cried. "I don't want to hurt anyone or cause any trouble."

  Taw went to her and held her in his arms like a little girl, patting her gently on the back. "As I told you a ways back," he said uncomfortably, "whatever happens I hope you'll come out of all this right side up."

  "I thought getting married would fix things," she sobbed quietly, "and I'm so much worse off now than before. I tried to make it go. I know it sounds terrible for me to stand here and talk that way about Jess. But I think you're important and h
e's not. I don't care what most people would think was right and wrong. I've got to say and do what I think is right."

  At last her crying eased up and she began to wipe her eyes, trying to control the sobs left in her. Taw realized his arms were still around her, the soft texture of her body pressing against his. He dropped his hands to his sides. "Feel better now?"

  She managed a thin smile. "We never will get that drink with me carrying on so." She walked to the edge of the spring and knelt, cupping the water to her lips with her hands. When she'd finished, she said, "I'll get the horses while you drink." She walked toward where they were now grazing two hundred feet away.

  Taw took off his hat and stretched down on his stomach, supporting his weight with his hands. Drinking, he could hear Christine moving closer with the horses. Then there was a tiny, foreign sound, leather on leather, one boot touching another, from his right. In one swift move he whirled from his stomach to his back, his right hand flashing up with his .45 and instantly squeezing off a shot.

  In the trees twenty feet away, Iron Eyes ducked instinctively as his hat was jerked off his head, the slug tearing a three-inch rip in its brim. "It's me!" he bellowed. "Don't shoot!"

  Taw glanced at Christine. Her open purse was in her left hand. Held steadily in her right hand was a gun. Not a typical, ladylike derringer, but a big-muzzled, short-barreled .44 Volcanic capable of doing considerable damage.

  "Walk over here," Taw said. "I can't seem to get rid of you."

  Iron Eyes picked up his hat and walked toward them, frowning at the ruined brim.

  "You sure are having trouble with hats these days," Taw said, his gun still held on a line with the breed's belt. "What were you sneaking up on us for?"

  "Snyder wants to see you." The big man put his hat back on. "He sent me out to find you."

  "You're lucky I recognized you while the hammer was still falling."

  The breed turned to look at Christine. His hard eyes began moving slowly down her body, probing and intense.

  "Ride out," Taw said. "You've told me what you had to tell."

  "I will ride back with—"

  "Vamoose!" Taw's revolver moved in a short, commanding gesture.

  Iron Eyes grunted sullenly. He took one last, ugly look at Christine and walked back to where his sorrel was standing near the entrance to the box canyon.

  When he was gone, they gave their horses a chance at the water and rode out slowly. Christine said, "That Indian and I have never said a word to each other, but I hate him and he hates me."

  "He's an easy fellow to hate."

  "It was fascinating to watch you. You were so—so graceful and deadly, spinning and shooting that way. I can see why people are afraid of you."

  Taw looked at her with an amused slant to his eyebrows. "You were no slouch with that cannon you carry in your purse."

  "I decided long ago that I'd have to carry a gun some of the time. And as long as I was going to have one, I wasn't going to settle for anything but a powerful one."

  "Well, you're the most unlikely looking gunman I ever saw."

  Christine laughed, a gay, tinkling sound that carried lightly to Taw's ears. "I'm going to tell you something," she said. "It's the wrong thing to say again, but it's a thing you won't say. And I want it said between us. I wish we'd known each other a year ago. We are each so much what the other needs. I know you feel that way, too."

  Taw steered his pinto around a gopher hole. He said nothing.

  Snyder was in his apartment over the general store with Charley Hill when Taw knocked at the door. Snyder let him in and Charley waved. "Howdy, Taw. How's the head?"

  "Good as new. Thanks for helping Jess lug me home."

  "Any time, any time."

  "Sit down, Taw." Snyder's voice was sharp with excitement. "The final details are in our hands now. Jess got them an hour ago. The coach leaves Deadwood at five in the morning on Thursday, the day after tomorrow. She will carry, almost to the ounce, two tons of gold."

  Taw whistled and Charley chuckled. "Ain't that somethin', boy? Two whole damned tons of the yellow!"

  "How much does that add up to?"

  "Six hundred thousand dollars, give or take a few dollars." Snyder took a cigar from his vest and his hand shook slightly as he put a match to it. "The shipment will be dust, not bars."

  "That cheap bunch up there to Deadwood," Charley snorted. "Won't even melt it down if they can get away with it."

  "There will be forty hundred-pound sacks. As I've told you, part of Charley's job will be to have ten mules at the foot of Rabbit Ear Pass to load the gold onto after the stage is wrecked."

  "That works out to four hundred pounds per mule. That's a stiff load if you're expecting any speed and distance," Taw said.

  "They won't have to carry it far. Since it will be dust, this is the plan. Jess and Charley and I will load the dust onto the mules and drive six miles due west to Arrow Rock Road, where Charley's flour wagon will be hidden."

  "Flour wagon?"

  "Yep," Charley nodded. "I bought one of Snyder's two old army wagons off him a year ago. Been haulin' a load of flour up to Pawnee from the mill down south for Snyder's store every month or two for the whole year, usually sixteen big barrels on a eight-hitch mule team. Wheels on those army freight wagons are wide enough so's the extry weight of the gold won't make her sink down no more'n normal."

  "Charley's wagon will have its customary load of sixteen barrels of flour, each barrel underfilled. We'll empty the sacks of dust into the barrels, then pour more flour over the layer of dust."

  Charley took a fresh chew on an almost new plug of Star tobacco. "That way, if anyone is so no-account that he don't trust ol' Charley Hill and probes around in the flour with a ramrod or whatever, he won't hit no sacks or nothin'."

  "This done, we'll hitch eight mules to Charley's wagon," Snyder said. "I will drive the two extra mules out toward the badlands, burn the sacks that contained the gold, and circle back to the Fork. Jess will ride directly into Pawnee once the exchange is completed. And Charley will follow in his wagon. He'll take the load, as he always does, to my warehouse on the outskirts of town. Later on, when the countryside has calmed down, we can shake the gold to the bottom of the flour and divide it six ways."

  Taw said, "After you're gone, then, I'm to ride back to Pawnee also?"

  "That's correct. Iron Eyes and Wes Catlin, as their jobs are done, will do the same."

  "Be sure as hell to circle wide west, outa range of them Sioux and guards," Charley warned him.

  "Anything else to worry about?"

  "Normally," Snyder said, "the cavalry out of Fort Meade would be detached to help find the stolen gold. However, under these unusual conditions, they'll be too busy trying to quiet the Indians down to worry about the robbery at the same time. In any case, Charley's flour barrels will be stacked in my warehouse long before the cavalry has even learned what happened."

  "When do we leave to set up our little surprises?"

  "We'll meet at Painted Rock, about two miles south of the Fork, at Wednesday midnight."

  Taw stood up. "Anything else?"

  "One thing, Charley has to leave town tonight with his wagon. He has to drive to the flour mill down south and buy his sixteen barrels. This won't leave him much time. I'd like you to take out to Rabbit Ear Pass the things he'll need to make the imitation log. Hide the rods in the grass and weeds just around the bend where the log will be placed. Put the paper under the ledge in the rock where the grass begins. Push it way back so that no one riding by will see it." Snyder rubbed his head as though to clear it. "There will be no point in our seeing each other again, barring unforeseen occurrences, until Wednesday midnight, south of town."

  Snyder tapped the ashes off the end of his cigar, and Taw noticed absently that he missed the ashtray.

  Chapter Six

  ON THE STREET, Charley Hill said, "You sure don't look none too happy, Taw, considerin' all the joy that's comin' into your life."

 
; "I guess living in a house doesn't agree with me."

  "Well, come on over to my place. That shack sure ain't no house. Be supper time 'fore long. I'll cook you up a pot of beans."

  In Charley's shack the old man tossed his hat on the table and uncorked a bottle. "Friend a mine come through this mornin' and give me this here homemade corn liquor. It ain't bad at all."

  "Thanks." Taw took the brimming glass Charley poured for him. "You know Jess's wife, Charley?"

  "Sure do. Knew her before she tied up with 'im."

  "What do you think of her? As a woman?"

  Charley said, "Tha's the way I do think of 'er. As a woman. Which is somethin' she sure ain't nothin' else than. I never hope to see a purtier one than Christine. She ain't too short on brains, neither, for a female. More'n that, though, she's a real nice person. I mean damned nice. Kind you meet all too seldom these days." The older man looked at Taw shrewdly. "You oughtta know all that yourself by now."

  "Reckon so."

  "Course, if I was in your boots I guess I'd be some puzzled along 'bout now, too. You see they ain't too friendly and you're wonderin' if maybe it's your fault, if maybe your comin' here set it off. Well, it ain't your fault. They plain don't like each other worth a damn."

  "Jess always got along fine with girls, I thought."

  "Girls, sure. One girl, no."

  "You think it's his fault they ain't making a go of it?"

  Charley gazed broodingly at his glass of corn liquor. "Yep. Y'know, Taw, I can't figure Jess too well. I almost came near feelin' toward him like a father when I was teachin' him to drive. I'd 'a' loved to kind of felt that way toward some youngster, havin' no kin to call my own. But Jess missed it, somehow. He's good company. A damned bright kid. But I can't see all of 'im. A good part of him is hid back outa sight. We're friends an' all, but not good friends. Hell, I've only knowed you a handful of days, an' I can talk easier with you already."

  They were silent, while Charley refilled their glasses.

  Downing a large gulp, the old man said, "Know what I think is one of the best parts of the comin' deal?"

  Taw grinned. "The money."