by Lyle Brandt
Returning from his interrupted journey overnight, Fawcett had grappled with a nagging strain of doubt. Part of his mind suggested that the men he’d shot—Dooley and Jeb—had not intended to eliminate him after all. If they had simply been escorting him to hiding, at a cabin in the hills, that made Fawcett a murderer. And even if they’d planned to kill him, Sullivan and Rafferty could spin the tale another way at trial, to help themselves or simply get revenge.
To have him join them on the gallows.
“Never mind,” he muttered to the silent room. Fawcett believed his life had been in danger on the prairie, that he’d fired in self-defense, and he could sell that story to a jury any day, once they were privy to the other crimes of Rafferty and Sullivan. Who would believe the claims of two moonshiners who had killed a deputy—and God alone knew how many others?
No one.
Fawcett’s challenge now was to survive and find the marshals, tell his story, throw himself upon their mercy. Sell them on the idea that they needed him to make their case and net the bigger fish.
They wouldn’t let him keep his Colt, of course, but he’d be safer in their custody than wandering around all by himself, armed to the teeth. Marshals were manhunters, by definition. He would trust his fate to them and pray that if that choice was a mistake, the men who came to kill him would be quick about it.
Quick and clean, to send him on his way.
Lying on their bellies at the edge of the cornfield, Slade and Naylor eyed the house and outbuildings a quarter mile due west. Slade used his spyglass, passing it to Naylor for a look around, then used it to sweep the grounds again.
“Not what I’d call a busy place,” Naylor observed, as two men strolled across the yard and went into the house.
“There must not be a lot to do with corn,” Slade said. “Plant it, wait for the rain, pick it.”
“No animals around except the chickens. Like to get a look inside that barn.”
“We’d have to wait for that till after dark. You want to hang around that long?” Slade asked.
“Can’t say I would. The other way’s to ride down there and tell ’em that we’ve come to see the boss. One of us does the talkin’, while the other drifts around a bit and tries to spot something. Or smell it, either one.”
“And when they say the boss is back in town, then what?” asked Slade.
“We leave, nice and polite-like,” Naylor answered. “Maybe with enough to tell the judge and get ourselves a warrant.”
“Maybe.”
Slade had counted seven men drifting around the property, performing minor chores, together with an eighth one going to the privy from the house, then back again. He didn’t like the odds, if shooting started, and was not inclined to spark a skirmish if he could avoid it.
He rooted for his pocket watch, retrieved it, and opened it. “Five minutes to eleven,” he announced. “We have to sneak down there, I’d rather wait until they’re sitting down to lunch.”
“At least another hour, then,” said Naylor, slapping at some kind of insect on his neck.
“We’ll see.” Slade cautioned him, “You know, we creep around and spot something, we still can’t use it, since we haven’t got a warrant.”
“Or the evidence is lying in plain sight,” Naylor replied.
“It’s not,” Slade said. “We both know that.”
“It would be their word against ours.”
“Until Judge Dennison inquires why we were on the property to start with, nobody around.”
“Just lucky,” Naylor said. “We rode in toward the house and caught a whiff of something from the barn. Rode over there—the doors were standing open—and we saw the cooker.”
“If there is a cooker.”
“Where else would it be?”
He had a point. “So, if it is,” Slade said, “then what?”
“We up stakes, get a wiggle on, and tell the judge. Come back with reinforcements for a raid.”
“Might work,” Slade granted. “But we—”
“Wait a second! What are those guys doing?”
Through his telescope, Slade watched two of the ranch hands leading horses toward a nearby empty wagon. Teaming up, they got the animals in harness, led them to the barn, then got the wagon backed around so that its tailgate faced the open doors.
“Looks like they plan on loadin’ something,” Naylor said.
“I’d say.”
When the wagon was positioned to their liking, with the tailgate down, one man climbed up into its empty bed. The other went into the barn, and came back moments later with a third ranch hand, both of them lugging wooden crates. Each placed his in the wagon, then retreated to the barn, leaving their helper to arrange the boxes in the wagon’s bed.
“I’ve got a dollar says there’s whiskey bottles in those crates,” said Naylor.
“No bet,” Slade replied.
“So, what now?”
Slade considered it and said, “I always like the easy way, myself. They load it, we hang back and follow. Find out where they’re headed. We can always stop them on the road and have a word. Maybe convince them we should have a look inside one of the boxes.”
“Well off from the rest of them,” said Naylor.
“That’s my thought.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Rate they’re going, if they fill the wagon, they’ll be done in…what, an hour?”
“Pretty close.”
“Then maybe have some lunch before they leave,” said Naylor.
“We can wait them out.”
Naylor slapped at another bug and said, “I reckon so.”
Grady Sullivan was getting itchy, his frustration turning into anger as he walked the streets of Stateline, looking high and low for Jeb and Dooley. They were meant to meet him back in town after they’d taken care of Percy Fawcett, but they hadn’t shown up yet. Sullivan’s first thought was that they had come in late, had a few drinks, and settled in with whores to spend the night, be he’d already checked the Sunflower and Swagger Inn without success. The barkeeps hadn’t seen his men, and there was no one sleeping over with the girls.
Now what?
He wondered if, between them, they were dumb enough to get his orders backward and return Rafferty’s buggy to the Rocking R. One thing that Sullivan had learned, bossing the other hands around for Rafferty, was that you never knew how stupid some of them could be. A couple of them, he supposed, wouldn’t know how to pour piss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
But Jeb and Dooley, now, they should be able to remember simple orders. Meeting Sullivan in town when they were finished meant exactly that, and nothing else. He hadn’t picked the crew’s worst dummies; quite the opposite, in fact.
So where in hell were they?
After the two saloons, he checked the Stateline Arms and came up empty.
Next, he made a pass by each of the three restaurants in town. More nothing for his trouble.
He was passing by the barber’s shop when Tim O’Malley cracked the door and made a sound like “Psssst!”
Sullivan doubled back, eyeing the street in both directions, passing on into the shop.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said the barber. “Did you hear about those marshals?”
“What about them?”
“They came by this morning.”
“Came by here?”
“The very place,” O’Malley said.
“So, did you shave ’em up, or what?”
“It wasn’t shaves they wanted. Asked some questions, though.”
“What kind of questions?”
“One that sticks in mind was how to find the Rocking R,” O’Malley said. “Well…I told ’em. Couldn’t very well pretend I never heard of it, could I? Being the biggest spread around, and all.”
“You get the feeling they were headed out there?” Sullivan inquired.
“Not just a feeling. Saw ’em head down to the livery and ride out, pretty soon
after we talked.”
Goddamn it!
“And what time was that?” asked Sullivan.
“A couple hours ago.”
“The other questions they were askin’. You remember any of ’em?”
“There was something about Stateline Storage, up the street,” O’Malley said. “Who owns it, this and that. I didn’t help ’em, there.”
“Awright, then. If they come back in—”
“I don’t know nothin’ more,” O’Malley said.
“Let’s keep it that way.”
Back on Border Boulevard, Sullivan knew he had a choice to make. Stop by the Sunflower and tell the big man that the marshals had gone out to see the Rocking R, or just ride after them without consulting Rafferty. A two-hour head start placed Grady well behind the lawmen, and the time he’d waste with Rafferty would make it even worse. He knew the boss would send him out to see what they were doing, maybe get them off the spread without a fuss or deal with any problems they’d created. Whether he’d give Sullivan the go-ahead to kill them was another question, but sometimes you had to make those calls without submitting them to anybody higher up.
Get moving, then, he thought, and started down the street. Not running, which would draw undue attention to himself, but walking fast enough to shave a minute off the trip to fetch his horse—and warn other pedestrians to get the hell out of his way.
His mind was churning by the time he reached his buckskin gelding, tied outside the Sunflower Saloon. He thought once more of going in, advising Rafferty of what had happened, then dismissed the thought.
No time to waste.
Slade and Naylor watched the wagon leave with two men on its high seat, one handling the reins, the other with a shotgun in his lap. They gave the team a good head start, then crept back to their horses in the cornfield, mounted up, and followed on a course that paralleled the access road. Slade worried more than ever now about a ranch hand intercepting them, since it would likely mean a shootout and losing the wagon after they’d waited so long to see it loaded.
Luck was with them, though, and no one spotted them as they retreated from the house, back toward the county road where their intended quarry would be forced to choose a turning, north or south. Both marshals made a point of hunching in their saddles, as they had on their approach, to keep the teamster and his guard from catching sight of them if either chanced to gaze off through the corn. They passed along without a spoken word between them, hoping any sounds they made would be attributed to wind among the stalks.
The wagon had a lead of some five hundred yards when it passed through the tall gate with the Rocking R on top. Behind it, shaded by the corn, Slade tracked it with his spyglass, waiting for the man who held the reins to make his choice.
“South takes ’em back to Stateline,” Naylor said. “You figure that’s another warehouse load?”
“Crates mean they’ve bottled up the ’shine,” Slade said. “It could be stock for one of the saloons in town.”
“Or both,” Naylor replied. “I didn’t trust that Swagger fella any more than Rafferty.”
Another moment, and the wagon reached the county road, paused there a moment, then turned left.
“Stateline it is,” said Naylor.
“Or someplace beyond it,” Slade suggested. “This could be another shipment for the reservations, or it could be going farther south. For all we know, they might be heading for Eufala, maybe even Oklahoma City.”
“Maybe Enid,” Naylor said, half smiling. “That’d frost the judge.”
“I guess we’d better ask them,” Slade replied.
Emerging from the cornfield at a trot, then galloping, they overtook the slower-moving wagon in about four minutes, reining back when they were thirty yards or so behind it.
“Shotgun rider’s mine,” said Naylor, palm resting atop the curved grip of his right-hand Colt.
Slade swung out to the driver’s side, his roan mare cantering, and called out to the wagon, “U.S. marshals! Hold up there!”
Two startled, scowling faces turned to face the lawmen. Slade suspected that the driver might try running for it, but he hauled back on the reins instead and slowed his team, then brought it to a halt. Up close, the sound of bottles rattling in wooden crates was clearly audible.
Slade rode up on the left, the driver’s side, while Naylor eased around the right, his Colt half drawn. “Be smart and lay that shotgun by your feet,” Naylor advised the guard. Reluctantly, the shooter did as he was told.
“How come you’re stoppin’ us?” the wagon’s driver asked.
“It just so happens that we’re on a moonshine hunt,” Slade said. “You wouldn’t know of any in the neighborhood, by chance?”
“Why should we?”
“Call me the suspicious sort,” Slade said. “I hear those bottles clanking in your wagon and I get an itch to know what’s in them.”
“Sarsaparilla,” said the guard. “What of it?”
“Last I heard,” said Naylor, “sarsaparilla comes from berries off a vine, not corn.”
“Listen,” the driver said, “you don’t know who you’re mussing with.”
“Enlighten us,” Slade said.
The driver spat tobacco juice into the road, seemed on the verge of answering, when suddenly the right side of his face imploded, spraying blood. Slade heard the echo of a distant gunshot half a second later, when the shotgun guard was cursing, diving for his weapon.
“Hold it!” Naylor shouted, but the guard was long past listening. He turned, raising the double barrel, angling it toward Naylor, thumbing back twin hammers as he turned.
Naylor and Slade fired simultaneously, drilled the gunman front and back, pitching him sidelong from his seat and down between the horses harnessed to the wagon. Whether they were used to shooting, or the driver’s dead weight on their reins restrained them, neither of the horses bolted.
“Where’d that first shot come from?” Naylor asked, sweeping his Colt in search of other targets.
Slade’s gaze swept the skyline, picking out the small form of a rider fleeing southward.
“There!” he said, pointing, and nudged his roan to forward motion.
“What about the wagon?” Naylor asked him.
“They aren’t going anywhere,” Slade said and charged off in pursuit.
12
Slade heard Naylor’s snowflake Appaloosa gaining on him as he trailed the distant gunman, trying hard to close the gap between them. They had been a quarter mile or so apart when the sniper’s shot killed the wagon driver, firing from the saddle and retreating hell-for-leather after squeezing off a single round. The shooter had a good horse under him, and he was obviously skilled in handling it, hunched low over his saddle horn and riding like a jockey in a race. Slade did his best to match that pace, reached back to slap his roan’s flank with an open hand and shout encouragement, but even as he ate the sniper’s dust his mind was racing faster than his animal.
Drilling a man-sized target at a quarter mile was certainly possible, say with the .45-70 Government cartridge used in the Winchester Model 1886 rifle. A skilled hand with assistance from a telescopic sight could kill with that gun at a thousand yards, and consistent hits at six hundred yards were required to earn an army marksman’s medal. Nothing special in itself about the shot, then—but who was the actual target?
Suppose that the sniper had missed from that range. Was he shooting at Slade or at Naylor? Had he plugged the driver accidentally, then panicked? If he’d meant to drop the driver and could kill reliably at that range, why stop with a single shot?
Too many questions, none that Slade could answer if the shooter got away from him or died resisting capture.
Clinging to the mare’s reins, Slade called back over his shoulder, “Luke! We need this one alive!”
And Naylor’s wind-whipped voice came back to him: “Let’s catch the bastard first!”
Ahead of them, three-quarters of a mile away but drawing closer by the second
, Slade made out a line of trees atop a rise. They hadn’t passed that way, riding from Stateline to the Rocking R, but they were off the main road now and moving farther from it all the time. A sniper in those trees could pick them off or pin them down till nightfall, make his getaway in darkness if he hadn’t killed them outright to begin with.
It was no good warning Naylor. Slade assumed that he could see the wooded ridge and grasp its import as they galloped toward it, horses fighting for the next breath to propel them onward. Slade prayed that the grassy land in front of them concealed no tunnels dug by prairie dogs to snap a fetlock, no gullies to send him tumbling with a broken neck or back.
They still weren’t close enough to risk a pistol shot that likely would have missed their prey entirely but could just as easily have killed the fugitive before they had a chance to question him. At least their breakneck speed prevented any aimed fire from the fleeing rifleman, but he had nearly reached the trees now, still four hundred yards or so ahead of Slade and Naylor.
“Faster, damn it!” Slade exhorted, but the roan was giving everything she had. A moment later, Slade cursed bitterly, watching his adversary vanish in among the shady trees.
What now?
A rifle spoke in answer to his silent question, its location indicated by a puff of gun smoke. Slade braced for the killing impact, but the bullet missed him, whistling past what felt like mere inches from his face. Instinctively, he veered off course, looking for cover of his own and hoped Naylor was smart enough to do the same.
And once Slade swung away, there was a gully, running roughly parallel to the direction he’d been traveling. Once into it, he found that it was deep enough to hide him once he’d leaped down from his saddle. Naylor tumbled into the ravine a moment later, as another shot cracked overhead.
“I think he clipped my sleeve with that one,” said the younger marshal, grinning with excitement.
Slade, rifle in hand, replied, “I plan to creep in toward him, if this gully doesn’t peter out. See if there’s any chance to get the drop on him.”