White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  Tanner was reaching for his Schofield when he heard the click-clack of a lever-action rifle to his right, and someone said, “That wouldn’t be the smartest move you ever made.”

  The marshal was a tough one. Grady Sullivan admired that in a man, though at the moment, it was also irritating. They’d been working on him for the best part of an hour—knuckles mostly, working up from there—and hadn’t even got his name yet, for their effort. Not that naming him was worth much, in the long run. More important was the reason he’d been spying on them in the first place, and it wasn’t any secret.

  Whiskey.

  Knowing that, they could have killed him outright, but it wouldn’t do. Sullivan had to know whether the lawman had discovered them by accident, or if someone had put him on their trail. It was ridiculous to think he’d just been riding past—on private property, no less—and thought he’d stick around to watch some fellows loading wagons up with crates labeled CORN SYRUP, so he must have had a tip from someone, somewhere.

  That was what they needed. Trace it back to the informer, then find out if he—or she—had spread the word around to anybody else. Their operation wasn’t secret, in the strictest sense, and couldn’t be when there were paying customers involved, but squealing to the law must be discouraged. An example was required to put busybodies on notice.

  Sullivan heard screaming from the barn and went back in to see how they were making out. Lon Burke stepped back from where they had the marshal tied up to a wagon wheel, against an upright beam. The knife Burke held was dripping blood from where it had incised the captive’s naked chest.

  “Still nothing?” Sullivan inquired.

  “We’ll break him,” Burke said. “Don’t you worry.”

  “I’m not worried.” Moving closer to the prisoner, Sullivan knelt and asked him, “Are you worried, Marshal?”

  “Should I be?” the lawman asked him, through clenched teeth.

  “I’d say so,” Sullivan replied. “You’ve horned in on a deal too big for you to handle. Now you’re done. The only question left is whether you go quick and clean, or slow and messy.”

  “My choice, is it?”

  “Absolutely,” Sullivan assured him. “Someone pointed you at us. Give me the name, and this all stops. I guarantee you won’t feel anything.”

  “That simple?”

  “Just like falling off a log.”

  “Thing is,” the marshal said, forcing a smile of sorts, “there isn’t any name to give. I worked it out myself.”

  “That’s crap. You didn’t find this place by chance,” said Sullivan.

  “You’re right. Lucky for me, the idjits you’ve got working for you left a trail a one-eyed man could follow through a dust storm. Anybody ever tell ’em that they shouldn’t brag about their crimes in public?”

  “Bullshit!” Mickey Shaughnessy stepped forward, looking twitchy nervous. “Grady, we don’t talk the business up to anybody!”

  That was bullshit, obviously, since they had to advertise the product where it mattered, to saloon keepers and such. Who else was in position to alert the lawman? Any customer who stocked their whiskey, any lush who drank it and inquired about its source, maybe some preacher with an ax to grind against John Barleycorn. The whole damned territory and a couple of adjacent states, the way their business was expanding.

  Still, he couldn’t let it go. The boss would want to know that Sullivan had left no stone unturned—no bone unbroken—in his bid to make the lawman sing. Sullivan rose, knees creaking. Told the captive, “Have it your way.” To the others, “Get back to it.”

  “I was thinking we could try a branding iron,” said Burke.

  “And have it traced back to the Rocking R?” asked Sullivan. “Jesus, the closest you come to a brainstorm is a drizzle.”

  The others cackled over that, until the foreman raised his voice. “Shut up! When you get done with him, I want him looking like a bunch of Injuns had their way with him. Keep that in mind.”

  “I know just how to do it,” Burke replied, anxious to please.

  “The rest of you,” said Sullivan, “get back to work. I’ve never seen a goddamned wagon load itself.”

  He left them all to their appointed tasks and walked back to the house. The boss was waiting for him on the front porch, coffee mug in hand. “Well, Grady?”

  “Nothing yet. They’re keeping at it.”

  From the barn, another scream rang out to punctuate his words.

  “I don’t like seeing badges on my property,” the boss informed him.

  “No, sir.”

  “I pay you to keep this kind of thing from happening.”

  Sullivan nodded. Knew there was no point stating the obvious, that he could not predict when someone would alert a lawman to their operation. What the big man needed was a chance to vent his spleen, and Sullivan was handy. When he calmed down, saw the threat had been contained, he would rest easier. They all would.

  “It’s a good idea you had, about the Indians.”

  Sullivan nodded, kept his mouth shut, knew it wouldn’t do for him to crow about it.

  “But we have to know who sent him,” said the boss.

  “I’m working on it, but he may not break.”

  “Hell, everybody breaks. You know that well as I do.”

  Sullivan kept quiet, heard the noises coming from the barn, and wondered whether that was true.

  2

  Since he’d given up the full-time gambling life, some years ago, Jack Slade had been surprised to find himself an early riser. It was nothing he’d expected, much less planned, but there it was. Instead of sleeping in after a long night at the poker table, he was up and at it with the chickens, more or less, and hungry as a bear just coming out of hibernation.

  Part of that was knowing he’d have work to do before the day got too much older. There was always something since he’d been persuaded to accept a U.S. marshal’s badge. He’d thought it would be temporary when he took the job at first, but Slade had finally accepted that it wasn’t working out that way. The question in his mind at six o’clock this Wednesday morning was how long he could continue on his present path.

  Manhunting. Risking life and limb for fifty bucks a month. So far it had cost him…what? Assorted wounds that ranged from superficial to a shooting that had nearly killed him. And his wife.

  Thinking of Faith pushed Slade into a sour mood but didn’t stop his stomach’s grumbling. When he’d dressed and finished shaving, buckled on his gunbelt, and squared away his hat, he locked the small room’s door behind him and walked downstairs and out of the hotel that passed for home. The morning clerk wasn’t behind his counter—no one there to wish Slade a good morning, which he thought was just as well.

  Outside, the air was warm already, Main Street merchants busy setting out their wares. A couple of them greeted Slade in passing and he answered back, giving the friendly ones a kind of smile with no feeling behind it. Enid was a decent town and growing with the rest of Oklahoma Territory, but of late Slade had begun to question how and why he’d thought that he could plant roots here.

  Or anywhere.

  It was his fault that it had started to unravel; he accepted that and knew he’d have to live with it. A lawman’s life was no good for a woman left at home while he was gone for days or weeks with no certainty that he would ever make it back at all. Worse yet, when bloody work spilled over onto the domestic side of things and put the lady’s life in danger.

  Last time, supposed to be his wedding day, the shooters hadn’t actually come for Slade. In fact, he doubted whether they’d known who he was or gave a damn. If that had been the only time, it might have made a difference, but Slade and his intended had been down that road before, and more than once.

  Too often.

  There was nothing Slade could do about it now, no turning back the calendar, erasing scars and ugly memories. He had to live with who and what he had become.

  Or did he?

  Other men had taken off
a badge before it got them killed or maimed. Slade knew that for a fact. He’d met some of them in his travels, guarded men who watched the world through wary eyes and generally kept a weapon handy, just in case. That part would be no different than when he made his living with a deck of cards, something that still amused him when he had the time to spare. Who said he couldn’t change his life again?

  But that meant leaving Oklahoma Territory. Leaving Faith.

  She’d closed the door on their relationship, was selling off her ranch and moving east, which should have made it easier for Slade to go. As long as she was still in Enid, though, he found it difficult to sever that last tie. To grind hope underneath his boot heel, even when he knew that it was dead.

  Slade crossed the street to Galleon’s restaurant, maybe one-third of the tables occupied as he walked in. The waitress, Clara, met him with a smile and showed him to a table by the window, knowing from experience that Slade enjoyed a free show with his breakfast. People normally intrigued him, even as they went about their routine daily tasks. He often practiced judging moods by the expressions on their faces, picking up on attitudes and gestures, but the street scene didn’t hold his interest today.

  Slade ordered two fried eggs with bacon, flapjacks on the side, and coffee, black. The food was on his table, piping hot, when he saw Luke Naylor across the street, walking from the direction of the courthouse. Naylor saw Slade through the window, raised a hand, and waited for a wagonload of lumber to pass by before he crossed.

  Naylor was five foot ten, rangy, with curly dark hair showing underneath his flat-brimmed hat. He wore matched Colts and kept his round badge polished to a satin shine. Ten months and counting as a deputy and Naylor still seemed to enjoy the work.

  He entered and sat across from Slade without waiting to be invited. “Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Judge wants to see us when you’re finished.”

  It was early for a summons, early for the judge to be found in his office. Slade swallowed the mouthful he was chewing and asked Naylor, “What’s the trouble?”

  “Not sure, but he’s worked up over something.”

  Slade surveyed the food remaining on his plate and said, “Ten minutes ought to do me, if you want to go and tell him.”

  “Might as well have coffee while I’m here,” Naylor replied and raised a hand to Clara as he eased back in his chair.

  Go on and make yourself at home, Slade thought and dug into his meal.

  Judge Isaac Dennison was in his early sixties, strong and stocky, though he limped a little from a gunshot wound he’d suffered when assassins tried to kill him at the courthouse some time back. He kept a walking stick around, whether he needed it on any given day or not, and since the shooting he had carried a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson Lemon Squeezer, the “safety hammerless” model, in a shoulder holster under his left arm. There’d been no call to use it, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  Dennison was standing at his window, in the wall behind his desk, when Slade and Naylor reached his chambers. From that window, Slade knew that he had a clear view of the six-man gallows standing in a walled-off courtyard, where the prisoners condemned by Dennison were hanged the second Saturday of every month. Slade also knew that while the judge derived no pleasure from a hanging, he was always at his post to watch the show.

  Seeing it through for justice to the bitter end.

  Slade rapped his knuckles on the open door and waited for the judge to turn, acknowledge them, and ask them in. It took a moment, and the old man’s face was solemn when he swiveled, raised a hand to indicate the chairs standing before his desk. Slade doffed his hat and crossed the room, taking the chair to Naylor’s left.

  “Bill Tanner’s dead,” the judge informed them, as he eased himself into his high-backed chair.

  The news pained Slade. He’d liked the older marshal, though they hadn’t socialized to speak of. Tanner was—had been—a married man with two kids and a small house on the eastern edge of town. Slade thought about the people left behind and asked, “What happened?”

  “That’s a question that I need you two to answer,” Dennison replied. “A farmer on his way to market found him, what was left of him, out by the reservation. Didn’t recognize him, since whoever killed him left him naked, but the farmer brought him in to Mattson.”

  Enid’s undertaker.

  Craning forward in his chair, Naylor asked, “He was nekkid?”

  “No sign of his clothes or other gear,” said Dennison. “It would appear that he was stabbed to death and…mutilated.”

  “Redskins?” Naylor asked.

  “That still remains to be determined,” Dennison replied. “Did either of you speak with Tanner recently? The past week, say?”

  Slade shook his head. Naylor said, “No, sir.”

  “They’ve had some trouble on the rez,” said Dennison. “There’s whiskey getting in from somewhere. Untaxed whiskey, so whoever’s peddling it has broken two laws, just for starters.”

  “Moonshining and selling it to Indians,” said Naylor, showing off his knowledge of the statute book.

  “And now, just maybe, murdering a U.S. marshal,” Dennison continued. “Or, if Tanner was killed by a Cherokee, maybe inciting them to bloodshed with the liquor.”

  “You say there’s been other trouble on the rez?” asked Slade.

  “Some drunken fighting,” Dennison replied. “I’m told they’ve had one killing and some minor injuries. You know the agent out there, don’t you, Jack?”

  “Yes, sir. Frank Berringer.”

  They’d met when Slade went looking for the men who’d turned his wedding day into a massacre. The same gang had been stealing horses from the reservation, killed a tribesman in the process, and Slade’s vengeance trail had started there.

  “What do you think of him?” asked Dennison.

  “Can’t say I liked him much,” Slade said. “He’s competent enough, I guess, but lets you know he looks down on the Cherokee like problem children. Treats them that way, too, from what I saw. It wouldn’t take much alcohol to stir them up against him.”

  “He’s been talking to the army,” Dennison informed them. “I sent Tanner to investigate because it feels like an explosive situation in the making. Now he’s dead, and I intend to see the man or men responsible out there.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the window and the courtyard gallows.

  “Is there anything to go on?” Slade inquired. “Was Bill filing reports?”

  “I got one cable from him,” Dennison replied. “From Stateline, on the Kansas border. He was cagey, said he thought that he was getting close but didn’t mention any names. I got a sense that he was worried about sharing too much in a wire that anyone might see.”

  Slade hadn’t been to Stateline, but he knew it was an agricultural community straddling the Kansas-Oklahoma border, hence its name. The split, he guessed, might cause some law enforcement problems, but he wouldn’t have to fret about it with a U.S. marshal’s badge.

  “We ought to pay a call on Berringer,” Slade said, “before we head for Stateline. See what’s on his mind and what he plans to do about it.”

  “Try to reassure him that he has our full support,” said Dennison. “If that won’t calm him down, to hell with him. We’ll find whoever killed Bill Tanner by ourselves.”

  Back on Main Street, Slade asked Naylor, “Have you ever been to Stateline?”

  “Once. Wasn’t much to it, but it’s likely grown since then.”

  “How far away is it?”

  Naylor considered it, then said, “We leave right now and sleep out overnight, we could be there tomorrow afternoon.”

  “About the same, then, from the rez,” Slade calculated.

  “Give or take a few miles. Will they put us up there?”

  “Probably. They found a room for me the last time.”

  Naylor seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but he caught himself, maybe remembering the reason for Slade’s last trip to the r
eservation and the bloody trek that followed it. Long seconds passed before he cleared his throat and managed, “Meet you at the livery in, say, an hour?”

  “Suits me,” Slade replied. “You have a coffeepot?

  “Sure thing.”

  There wasn’t much for Slade to pack: some vittles for the trail, a canteen full of water, ammunition for the guns he would be carrying, a change of clothes. No one for him to say good-bye to, either, as he rode with Naylor out of town. That part reminded him of all the years when he’d been drifting, gambling, dodging one scrape or another, rarely making plans beyond tomorrow. He’d have likely kept on living that way, rootless, if he hadn’t got the telegram about his twin brother’s death. Murdered for his land in Oklahoma Territory, as he’d learned, by men who thought they were above the law.

  The rest, as someone said, was history. He’d come to Enid, met Judge Dennison, and grudgingly accepted the jurist’s ultimatum: either wear a U.S. marshal’s badge while tracking down his brother’s murderers—and do it in accordance with the law—or risk a visit to the gallows if he bagged them any other way. Slade had agreed, reluctantly, and met his brother’s fiancée while searching for the killers.

  Faith Connover had surprised him. Not so much for her beauty and resilient spirit in the face of tragedy, but for the feelings she had stirred in Slade. Guilt followed close behind desire, the image of his brother and betrayal constantly before Slade’s eyes, a struggle that took time to reconcile.

  But first, Faith had been kidnapped by the same men Slade was hunting, and his quest for justice had become a race to save her life. Maybe she would have been endangered if he’d never got the telegram or come to Enid, but he couldn’t say that. Not for certain.

  Slade had rescued Faith that time, and she had warmed to him over the months that followed. He’d surprised himself by sticking with the marshal’s job, wondering why each morning when he pinned the badge on, slowly realizing that he stayed for Faith. If it turned out she wouldn’t have him, that the idea made her skin crawl, it all would have been wasted time. Slade was having trouble with it, too, but edging closer to the notion that there might be something more between them than a void left by his twin.