White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  Slade watched the officer rejoin his men, a couple of the others sliding glances toward him while their leader spoke. The huddle hadn’t broken up when Slade moved on, crossing the street and angling toward the dry goods store, with Naylor waiting for him on the sidewalk.

  “Reinforcements?” Luke inquired, as Slade approached.

  “They reckon Indians killed Tanner,” Slade replied.

  “Who sent ’em?”

  “Funny you should ask. The captain didn’t seem too sure of that, himself.”

  “Trouble?”

  “I wouldn’t like to think so,” Slade replied. “But keep your eyes peeled, anyway.”

  Their canvass of the town’s shopkeepers yielded nothing. Everyone in Stateline knew Flynn Rafferty, of course, though some only admitted knowing him by sight and seemed evasive while confessing that. Others were quick to sing his praises, but their comments struck Slade as repetitive, almost rehearsed, as if they’d been presented with a script to follow if and when a stranger raised Rafferty’s name in conversation. Wariness appeared to be the rule of thumb, with two of those they spoke to—O’Malley, the barber, and a lawyer named Coltrane—going overboard in listing the saloon proprietor’s outstanding qualities.

  “Salt of the earth,” said Naylor, as they left the lawyer’s office. “Did he really say that?”

  “Nothing wrong with your ears,” Slade confirmed.

  “You get the feeling certain folks in town are scared of Rafferty?”

  “I’d say they should be, after last night’s work.”

  “And we can’t touch him,” Naylor said.

  “Not legally. Not yet.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got something in mind, Jack.”

  “We know where he cooks his ’shine, right?” Slade pressed on, not waiting for an answer. “And we know he’ll have another shipment moving out, sooner or later.”

  “Sounds like we’ll be camping out.”

  “Unless you’ve got another thought on how to pin him down.”

  “Can’t say I do,” Naylor admitted. “But you have to figure they’ll be watching for us.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’ll see us,” Slade replied.

  “It’s chancy.”

  “Granted.”

  “Say we grab another wagon. What’s the plan to keep from losing it?”

  “First thing, we try to keep the crew alive. Then head straight back to Enid, without stopping off in Stateline.”

  “With the whole bunch after us.”

  “Could be. Or we give up for now, go back, and tell Judge Dennison what’s happened. See what he thinks should be done to put it right.”

  “I’d hate to stand before him empty-handed,” Naylor said.

  “Well, then.”

  “We’ll need food to tide us over. Something we don’t have to cook, so there’s no fire.”

  “Three restaurants in town,” Slade said. “They must have something we can carry out.”

  “And we could use a couple more canteens,” said Naylor.

  “Saw some at the hardware store,” Slade said.

  “You want to tip the soldiers where we’re going?”

  “Rather not,” said Slade.

  “So it’s like that?”

  “Let’s say I’d like to play it safe.”

  “One way to check on them would be to telegraph the fort,” Naylor suggested.

  “Right. Except the town’s telegrapher is laid out waiting for his funeral.”

  “Somebody else in town might have the knack.”

  “One of the people we’ve been talking to?”

  “Guess not. I thought about learning the Morse code once,” said Naylor. “Never got around to it.”

  “I’d say it’s too late now.”

  “You think the judge will reimburse us for the new canteens?”

  “Can’t hurt to ask. You want to get them?”

  “Might as well,” said Naylor.

  “Fine. I’ll get the food.”

  “No hardtack, though. It hurts my teeth.”

  They separated, moving off in opposite directions on their errands. Slade felt energized once more, after a night of pondering a new approach to Rafferty’s arrest. The course they’d mapped was hazardous, but nothing else had yet occurred to him.

  Nothing to do but play it out, he thought. And hope to still be breathing when tomorrow comes.

  15

  Captain Gallagher stood on the shaded sidewalk with his men, watching the marshals take their leave of Stateline. He already had a fair idea where they were going, back out to the Rocking R, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Nothing legal, anyhow.

  That hadn’t been the plan, of course, when Rafferty had called him from his post at Fort Supply. Legality had never been an issue. Gallagher was needed to resolve a problem quickly, for the big man’s benefit and for his own.

  It rankled, summoned and commanded by a mere civilian, but he’d cast his lot with Rafferty, for better or for worse. Retirement on a soldier’s pension didn’t suit him when there was a fortune to be made and shared among a few bold men of vision. Rafferty had hatched the plan with Berringer, the agent reaching out to Gallagher because, it seemed, he was a savvy judge of character. Together, with a friend or two in Washington, their dream would soon be realized.

  Some redskins would be pushed aside, of course. So what? They should be used to it by now. Four hundred years since they had first been rousted by the Spanish, nearly three since English colonists had staked their claim back East, and every day since then the native tribes had been propelled steadily westward. If they weren’t accustomed to it yet, to hell with them.

  “We gonna trail ’em, Captain?” Sergeant Bonner asked him.

  “That’s the plan. Give them a lead, so they don’t feel us breathing down their necks, then catch up with them on the way.”

  “You think they’s any good?” asked Private French, of no one in particular.

  “They’re U.S. marshals,” Private Sowder answered.

  “Don’t prove nothin’,” Private Wetzel offered, “till you’ve seen ’em shoot.”

  “Won’t need to see it, if we do this right,” said Bonner.

  “You have a plan, Sergeant?” asked Gallagher.

  “Two ways to do it, sir. Come up behind ’em, actin’ friendly-like, then all cut loose,” Bonner explained. “Or ride around and get in front of ’em. Set up an ambush.”

  “Flat country,” Gallagher reminded him. “To get ahead, we’d have to circle wide out of our way, and still we might not find a decent place to wait. Might even lose them if they try a shortcut.”

  “Only leaves one way to go, then,” Bonner said.

  “Agreed.”

  The two lawmen had passed from sight now, turning north once they were clear of Border Boulevard. They’d still be visible to someone watching from the eastern edge of town, though. The captain was in no great hurry as he led his soldiers toward the livery.

  From this day forward, Gallagher was bound to Bonner and the others by the crime they were about to carry out. He didn’t like it—hadn’t planned on taking anybody with him when he left the army to retire in luxury—but there were ways around that, too.

  No end of ways to cut the ties that bind.

  “You think they’ll ship another batch of ’shine right off?” asked Naylor when they were a mile or so from town.

  “Can’t guarantee it,” Slade replied, “but Rafferty most likely has a list of buyers waiting for the shipment that we intercepted. He’s a businessman, which means he won’t like disappointing customers.”

  “Makes sense. But if he knows we’re watching him, he might try sending it around some other way.”

  Slade had considered that. The land around the Rocking R was flat enough to let a wagon pass, once it had cleared the sea of corn, but travel overland would still present its share of difficulties and require more time than traveling along established roads. Unless a route was c
harted in advance, a shipment might be stopped by obstacles that forced the driver to retreat and start afresh, uncertain when or how he’d make it through at last.

  Bad business, all around.

  “Let’s give the road another chance,” Slade said. “I can’t help thinking time is on our side.”

  “See if you feel that way after a couple nights of sleepin’ on the ground.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” Slade replied.

  And suddenly, for no good reason he could name, his thoughts went back to Faith. Slade wondered how her plans for moving had progressed, if she would find a buyer for her ranch before she left. They hadn’t spoken since the afternoon she’d told him she was leaving Enid, but the town was small enough that Slade knew he’d have heard about a pending sale. With people being what they were, the gossip would’ve reached him soon enough.

  He didn’t think she’d wait, though. Having made her choice, he couldn’t picture Faith postponing her departure any longer than was absolutely necessary. Not unless…

  He’d seen her at the doctor’s office. Not a social call, Slade figured. Was she suffering some kind of relapse from the injuries inflicted on what should have been their wedding day? Faith hadn’t looked sick, standing with Doc Abernathy on the street, but who was Slade to say? He didn’t have a medical degree, couldn’t pretend to diagnose an illness passing on the street.

  If he could just—

  “Marshals!”

  A voice behind them, small with distance. Slade and Naylor turned as one, to see the bluecoats trailing them.

  “What’n hell do they want?” Naylor asked.

  “One way to find out,” Slade replied, reining his mare back to a halt.

  “Strike you as odd, them coming after us?”

  “It doesn’t fit with what their captain told me,” Slade replied. “About them hunting Indians.”

  “No reservation hereabouts,” said Naylor.

  “No.”

  Slade freed the hammer thong that kept his Peacemaker secure inside its holster, seeing Naylor do the same, times two. He thought about the shotgun in its saddle scabbard but decided drawing it right now would be a bit too much.

  The captain—Gallagher—was smiling as he led his little troop toward Slade and Naylor at a walk. The sergeant wore a poker face, the others looking vaguely sullen and disgruntled. As they closed the distance down to thirty feet or so, Gallagher said, “I’m glad we caught you.”

  “Didn’t know that you were chasing us,” the younger of the marshals said.

  He had a wary look, it seemed to Virgil Bonner, sitting with his right hand near a holstered Colt, his left hand filled with reins. Both men were on guard, but still outnumbered more than two to one.

  “Not chasing,” Captain Gallagher replied, “but when I saw you leaving town I had a thought.”

  “Which was?” the older marshal asked.

  “I wondered if you might be onto something after all,” said Gallagher. “About the renegades.”

  Bonner wished they could just be done with it. He felt the others getting twitchy, wasn’t sure that he could count on them to keep their pistols holstered if the captain dragged the conversation out too long. They’d ridden out of town to do a job, and stalling only raised the tension level. Sowder, French, and Wetzel weren’t the most reliable of men under the best conditions. Twiddling their thumbs when they expected action only made them more unstable.

  “Thing is,” the younger lawman said, “we’re workin’ on a lead here. It’s a two-man job.”

  “More hands make lighter work,” said Gallagher.

  “In this case,” said the older of the pair, “five extra men in uniform make it impossible.”

  That stalled the captain for a second, working on the next thing he should say, still not giving the signal to get on with business. Why in hell was he still talking, anyway?

  No guts, thought Bonner, as his right hand came to rest atop his thigh, edging a little closer to his holster. Army fashion dictated a holster on the right hip, with the pistol placed butt-forward for a kind of backward draw. The style had started with some fuddy-duddy who believed a mounted soldier’s foremost weapon was his saber, wielded in the right hand, while a pistol—being secondary—could be drawn if absolutely necessary with the left hand. As it happened, though, the holster’s placement proved ideal for right-handed drawing when a man was sitting down, if he had practiced and was smart enough to leave his holster flap unbuttoned.

  Sergeant Bonner was a practiced shooter with his Colt Single-Action Army, and his holster flap was open. All he needed was the signal from his captain, or a false move from the lawmen they had ridden out from town to murder.

  Any second now…

  But Gallagher kept droning on. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “We didn’t mean to inconvenience you, of course. But since we’re here—”

  Bonner glimpsed sudden movement on his left, French going for his pistol, sick of waiting, and there wasn’t any way to stop him. As the younger lawman shifted toward him, right hand dropping toward his own Colt, Bonner gave it up and made his move.

  The crack of gunfire stung Slade’s ears, then he was adding to it with his own Peacemaker, drawing as the first two shots ripped out, Naylor and one of the blue-coated privates firing almost simultaneously. Slade had seen it coming, Naylor just a hairbreadth faster in responding, and the soldier toppling over from his saddle with a kind of gasping, snarling sound that may have come from his constricted throat or from a bullet-punctured lung.

  A couple of the army horses reared, and Slade’s mare shied a little as he got a shot off toward the scruffy-looking sergeant who was next in line. It was a hasty shot. Slade winged him, saw a puff of scarlet mist above one shoulder, but it didn’t slow the sergeant’s aim enough to matter. He returned Slade’s fire, a slug from the long-barreled Colt Army fanning the air beside Slade’s cheek, and then all hell broke loose.

  There was no time to think, with six guns blasting back and forth from thirty feet or so, a couple of the horses making sounds like women screaming. A part of Slade’s mind was surprised, expecting army horses to be better trained for battle, but another part was grateful that it spoiled his adversaries’ aim.

  Slade’s mare was cutting didoes of her own, a kind of hopping, prancing circle to the left that saved the wounded sergeant from his second shot. Slade’s bullet flew somewhere between the sergeant and a red-faced private to his right, whose Colt was blazing off a round toward Naylor. Naylor cursed, returned fire, as the roan’s quick circling motion brought Slade back around to face the firing line.

  Enough!

  Slade knew he would be quicker, maybe safer, on his own two feet. With that in mind, he kicked free of his stirrups, vaulted from the saddle, snatching at his lever-action shotgun in its scabbard as he dropped. Got off another wild shot from his Colt as he touched down and rolled, guessing the round was wasted since none of the men intent on killing him went down.

  The shotgun’s eight-pound weight was reassuring in Slade’s hands. A second after he’d returned his six-gun to its holster, he squeezed off a blast in the direction of the sergeant he had winged, absorbed the recoil with his hip, and saw the storm of buckshot strike his target’s chest. No flesh wound this time, as the heavy buckshot pellets shattered ribs and breastbone, punching Slade’s target backward from his saddle, airborne and ass over teakettle.

  The shotgun blast provoked more squealing from a couple of the army horses, two already breaking formation, riderless. That left three mounted bluecoats firing, Naylor still astride his gelding too but saddle-slumped as if to make himself a smaller target for the enemy. Slade saw his partner fire a shot across the Appaloosa’s arching neck and heard one of the soldiers gasp a curse as he was hit, then Slade himself was dodging as the captain brought him under fire.

  Gallagher saw the grounded marshal—Slade, his name was—swing the lever-action shotgun back around in his direction, lining up a shot. The captain
fired instinctively, guessing the round was wasted, hoping it would make the lawman duck and miss, at least. Even while firing, Gallagher was hauling on his palomino’s reins, swinging the stallion hard around and out of line, prepared to run. A shotgun blast behind him gave the horse momentum and it bolted, rump-stung by a buckshot pellet, charging off to southward.

  Running for its life, and Gallagher along with it, praying that he could hang on for the ride.

  And what in hell was he supposed to do but run, for Christ’s sake? French and Bonner down already, dead or dying, and he’d never been a brave man, really. West Point had prepared him for command, but all the action Gallagher had ever seen was routing Indians from villages when they’d been ordered to move out, not even skirmishes in the accepted sense, although he’d killed a brave or two along the way, proving he had the stomach for it. And if they had been unarmed, what of it? Most of those the army killed were women, children, or the elderly. There hadn’t been a battle worthy of the name since Gallagher was sent to Fort Supply.

  But he was in one now—or running from it—and as he put space between himself and the ongoing gunfire, Gallagher began to think about how he’d explain it all to Colonel Pike. Much would depend upon the outcome, granted, and it suddenly occurred to Gallagher that bolting was a bad idea. By giving in to panic and escaping from the action, he’d created further problems for himself.

  For one, he wouldn’t know the outcome of the fight until survivors straggled back to Stateline. If the lawmen made it back, he’d have no recourse but to run and keep on running, looking for a hideout where the army and the U.S. Marshals Service couldn’t find him. If a remnant of his troop returned, Gallagher would be faced with trouble of another sort.

  They would be furious at him for running off, of course, but he could work that out. Bribe them to keep their mouths shut and concoct a story about hostiles who had jumped them on the trail, eliminating Bonner, French, and anybody else the marshals killed. He would go back with the survivors, make damned sure the lawmen’s corpses disappeared, use whatever remained of his authority and Rafferty’s cold cash to keep the men in line.