White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  “That could be arranged, I think,” said Rafferty. He slipped a hand into a pocket of his coat, as if to palm a roll of bills right then and there. Instead, his fingers closed around the weight of his Apache pistol, folded small enough to fit inside his palm.

  “I’d likely need a couple thousand, anyway, to get me started,” Gallagher suggested.

  “Not unreasonable, when I think about the help you’ve given us,” Rafferty said. “Perhaps friend Berringer would add a little something on his own account.”

  “He should, you know,” said Gallagher. “He damn well should.”

  “I would suggest you stop and see him when you leave here, but I guess that won’t be feasible.”

  “Can’t show my face around the rez with soldiers looking for me,” Gallagher agreed.

  “I wonder if there’s still a way to salvage your career, though,” Rafferty replied.

  A sudden hopeful glint shone in the captain’s eye. “What do you mean?”

  Rafferty rose and moved around his desk, hand still inside his pocket, fingers tucked inside the steel rings of his pistol’s knuckle-duster grip. His thumb pressed flat against the little weapon’s folded bayonet-style blade.

  “Well, think about it,” he replied, moving to stand at Gallagher’s right side. “Slade hasn’t wired his news to Enid yet. He’ll have to root around for someone who can operate the telegraph. I’d say that gives you time and opportunity to shut him up before he ruins you.”

  “He could’ve told the undertaker—”

  “Let me worry about that. Fred Abberline knows when to play along.”

  “If we got rid of Slade—”

  “If you got rid of him.”

  “—I still might have a chance to sell the story my way!”

  “Now you’re talking,” Rafferty agreed.

  And as he spoke, he withdrew the pistol from his pocket, thumbed its blade erect, and drove the three-inch knife into Gallagher’s throat. A rip and twist severed the artery feeding the captain’s brain, blood spouting from the wound as Rafferty withdrew his blade. Gallagher gasped and raised a hand to close the wound, but Rafferty was faster, swinging a steel-knuckled haymaker into the captain’s right temple.

  Gallagher dropped like a poleaxed steer, twitching in his death throes as blood pumped from his ravaged neck, soaking through the woven rug beneath him. That would have to go, together with his corpse, and Rafferty would need a mop to clear away the rest.

  “Damned fool,” he told the dying man. “Why couldn’t you just do your job?”

  “What happened?” Grady Sullivan inquired, standing above the bloody corpse.

  “I cut my losses,” Rafferty replied. “We need to get him out of here, discreetly.”

  “Be a two-man job, at least,” said Sullivan. “Best if we wait for dark.”

  “See to it, then. I have some business to take care of at the Rocking R.”

  “You’re going now?”

  “If I can leave this in your hands,” the big man said.

  “Sure, I’ll take care of it,” said Sullivan. Thinking, Same way I always do.

  “You need an extra hand?”

  “I’ve got a couple of the boys in town already.”

  “Perfect, then.”

  Rafferty left him with the stiff, taking a satchel from beneath his desk and going out as if he didn’t have a trouble in the world. Which was an easy way to be, if someone else always took care of problems for you like a servant.

  Get on with it, he thought and knelt to wrap the captain’s corpse up in the bloody rug he’d sprawled across as he was dying. That would be the easy part, just rolling him like he was the tobacco in a giant cigarette, while making sure none of his blood marked Grady’s faded jeans. His hands were smeared with it, but that would wash right off.

  When Gallagher was wrapped, Sullivan checked and saw where blood had soaked right through the rug to smear the floorboards. They were varnished, though, and he was confident a wet mop would remove the stains. Once it was dark, he’d send one of his hands to fetch a buckboard and they’d take their package out the back way, off into the night, to plant it somewhere safe. Retrieve the other soldiers’ bodies, set the scene just right…

  And that left only Marshal Slade.

  If Sullivan could deal with him, where Gallagher had failed, they still might salvage something from the captain’s mess. And if they couldn’t…well, how much did Sullivan really owe the big man, after all? Not his life. Not his neck in a noose, when he’d only been following orders.

  There was a big country outside of Oklahoma Territory, easy to get lost in. If it worried him too much, the U.S. marshals tracking him, then there was always Mexico. One extra gringo wouldn’t draw attention if he watched his manners, did his best to fit in with the easy life.

  Why not?

  One final dirty job for Rafferty, and if it didn’t bring the payoff they were hoping for, then Sullivan would hit the trail. He’d been a drifter off and on, throughout his life, and didn’t mind the traveling. Never got homesick. Never pined away for someone he could talk to. Solitude had always suited him just fine.

  And if he heard someday, somewhere, that Rafferty was hanged for what they’d done, so what?

  The feeling Sullivan expected on that day would be relief he’d escaped the day of reckoning. Let lawmen hunt him till the end of time, as long as he could stay one jump ahead of them.

  And Mexico was sounding better all the time.

  Sullivan spoke some Spanish and could learn more in a hurry, if he had to. He could take siestas with the best of them, eat beans, and drink tequila. Make a new life for himself a thousand miles away from anyone who still remembered him or gave a damn what had become of him.

  It sounded like a slice of Heaven—or, at least, his personal reprieve from Hell.

  “I need to speak with Mr. Rafferty,” Slade said.

  The barkeep shook his head. Replied, “You missed him, Marshal. He’s already gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  A shrug. “Back home, I guess.”

  “Meaning the Rocking R.”

  “Best guess. He sleeps there two, three nights a week.”

  Slade considered going back to check Rafferty’s office, but the barkeep didn’t strike him as a liar—at the moment, anyway—and he’d gain nothing from a fracas with the Sunflower’s employees if their boss was off the premises. He had no present grounds for an arrest of anyone but Captain Gallagher, if he could find the man.

  Where would a fugitive from military and civilian justice go to hide? First thing, he’d have to trade his uniform for normal clothing that would let him pass without a second glance while traveling. He would need money to support himself, a means of transportation, and at least some vestige of a long-range plan. Dodging from town to town without a destination would defeat him in the end. Once posters were in circulation, he would have to go to ground.

  If their positions were reversed, Slade thought he would be making tracks for Mexico. Or, then again, since that was obvious, maybe the longer run to Canada would be his choice, instead. A country larger than the States, from what he’d heard, and while the winters could be killing cold, there was no extradition once you crossed the border.

  Perfect.

  In the meantime, Slade decided, Gallagher was likely to find sanctuary with Flynn Rafferty. The Rocking R would make a decent starting point for any getaway. Stock up on food and other necessaries for the trip, leave after dark, and by the time Slade started looking for him, he could be long miles away.

  Unless Slade made the Rocking R his next stop, without wasting any further time.

  So be it.

  Slade surprised the hotel clerk again, leaving within ten minutes of returning to his room. The young man didn’t ask where he was going, made believe Slade was invisible as he passed through the lobby, out to Border Boulevard. His roan was barely settled at the livery, but she’d had time to eat some oats and drink some water. Slade allowed himsel
f a brief conceit, imagining the mare shared the immediacy of his need to reach the Rocking R before his quarry slipped away.

  If he could just take Gallagher alive, Slade thought the officer would spill more than he needed to hang Rafferty. Already proved a coward by his own reaction to the afternoon’s gunplay, Gallagher struck him as the sort who’d crack when any kind of pressure was applied to him. And once he started talking, there would be no problem justifying Rafferty’s arrest, the seizure of his still and moonshine cache. The whole damned gang could swing, unless Judge Dennison took pity on the small fry.

  Either way, it would mean justice for Bill Tanner. For Luke Naylor. Percy Fawcett. For whoever else the whiskey ring had trampled on, whether or not Slade ever learned their names.

  Slade knew he’d have to watch his step. The cavalry was out, but Rafferty still had his private army standing by to guard the Rocking R. Nightfall would cover him to some extent, but one false move could get him killed.

  Or someone else, if they were standing in his way.

  17

  “Now listen up, the lot of you,” Flynn Rafferty commanded. His assembled men, an even dozen with a handful left in town, stood in the dooryard of his ranch house at the Rocking R. “We may have company tonight, and no one—I mean no one—has permission to be prowling on the property. You find a trespasser, bring him to me. Alive if possible, but if he gives you any trouble, kill him.”

  “S’pose it’s more’n one?” a voice asked from the semidarkness, somewhere near the back.

  “Same thing,” said Rafferty. “Tonight, tomorrow, and until I tell you otherwise, outsider visits to the Rocking R will be by invitation only. And that means a written invitation, signed by yours truly.”

  Or a warrant, he amended silently, keeping the notion to himself. Slade obviously couldn’t get a warrant for the Rocking R unless he first communicated with Judge Dennison, and even then the paperwork would have to reach Stateline before he served it. Two days minimum, if he found someone who could operate the telegraph in Percy Fawcett’s place. Meanwhile, if he showed up again it would be trespassing—a fatal error, most especially at night, when it was difficult to spot a badge.

  Rafferty thought his men could handle Slade all right, but he still wished that Grady and the rest were with him, rather than in Stateline. Then again, there was a chance that Sullivan would deal with Slade in town and save them all the bother. Earn a bonus for himself and solve Rafferty’s problem—for the moment, anyway.

  They’d still be forced to make some changes in their operation, though. He’d have to move the whiskey cache from Stateline Storage, maybe even think about relocating the still. It hadn’t taken Slade and his dead partner long to sniff out Rafferty’s supply and trace it to the source, which was a lesson for him in itself. Maybe he’d grown complacent, even arrogant. With so much more at stake than just the booze, he’d have to reevaluate his methods, guard against discovery until the plan he’d hatched with Berringer paid off.

  Nearly quadrupling the acreage he owned already, Rafferty would rank among the greatest landowners in Oklahoma Territory. That meant vastly greater profits from his crops—and better still, when friends in Washington confirmed approval for a railroad meant to carve its way across the land once promised to the Indians forever, now earmarked for Rafferty’s expanded Rocking R. All things considered, he was ready to become a millionaire.

  But first, he had to deal with Slade, and then clean house to ward off any problems with the marshals who were sure to follow him, investigating how and why so many lawmen died or disappeared around Stateline. Suspicion, Rafferty could live with. It was part of doing business on the shady side. But prison wasn’t part of any plan he’d laid out for himself. Being caged was unacceptable.

  In fact, he’d rather die first. And if it came down to that, he didn’t plan to go alone.

  Part of becoming rich was learning to defend what you’d accumulated from a world of people bent on taking it away. Flynn Rafferty had learned to fight around the same time that he’d learned to walk, and he’d been fighting ever since, for one thing or another. Only difference now was that he hired professionals to do his fighting for him.

  But he still knew how, as Brody Gallagher had learned.

  And Marshal Slade was next.

  Slade took his time finding a way onto the Rocking R. He left the access road well short of Rafferty’s freestanding gate and traveled overland, staying alert for lookouts until he was in the corn, dismounting then and walking his mare between tall rows of stalks that rustled with a night wind passing through. The field managed to smell both green and dusty, all at once.

  Slade knew approximately where the house and other buildings were, although he wasn’t following the same path that he’d taken with Luke Naylor—was it only yesterday? So much had happened since the first time they had spied on Rafferty’s employees, eight more deaths including Naylor, and no end to it in sight. There was a chance, Slade knew, that he would join the growing list tonight.

  That took his thoughts back once again to Faith, but Slade couldn’t afford distractions at the moment. Every step he took toward Rafferty, his men, and the distillery they had committed murder to conceal was one more step toward danger and away from what he’d come to think of as his home, the place where he’d built a new life for himself.

  Almost.

  With Faith, he feared, there was no going back. She’d made that plain enough by now.

  A sudden rustling sound in front of him made Slade freeze in his tracks. It had been louder than the breeze and moving toward him, though the wind was at his back. An animal should smell him coming and retreat, but this noise kept advancing at a steady pace.

  Maybe a lookout, then.

  Slade gripped his lever-action shotgun, chosen as a better close-range weapon in the dark, and hoped he wouldn’t have to fire when he was still at least a half mile from the house. Giving himself away that early in the game would ruin any chance of reaching Rafferty, much less mounting surveillance on the place. But if he kept his wits about him, found another way to handle it…

  Slade had a knife, but springing out and stabbing one of Rafferty’s employees would be murder, plain and simple. If he’d had a warrant, it would be a different story, but the legal paper would’ve granted him a front-door entry without asking anyone’s permission, much less jumping them in darkness, slitting throats.

  Another way, then.

  Slade stood waiting while the new arrival in the cornfield neared him, traveling along the next row to his right. His ears picked out the sound of horse’s hooves on soil now, and he craned his neck to spot the shadow of a mounted rider drawing nearer. As the gap between them closed, Slade braced himself, shotgun reversed and held to serve him as a quarterstaff.

  A final nervous moment, and he leaped from hiding, crashing through the stalks of corn and striking at his faceless adversary in the dark. Slade’s first blow struck the startled rider’s chest, unseating him. He landed hard, fighting to catch his breath and reach his six-gun all at once, but Slade was faster, swinging once more with the shotgun’s butt to render his opponent limp and senseless.

  Through it all, the rider’s horse stood by and waited without bolting. Slade removed a coil of rope from his unconscious adversary’s saddle, cut enough to hogtie him, and got it done in seconds flat. The lookout’s neckerchief served as a gag to silence him when he awoke. Slade planned on being finished with his business long before the shooter could undo the knots securing his arms and legs, but took his Colt and rifle, just in case.

  He moved on through the darkness toward his goal.

  Rafferty paced his study in the ranch house, whiskey glass in hand, restless, unable to sit still. He had removed a Winchester Model 1892 rifle from the study’s gun cabinet, confirmed that its magazine held fifteen .44-40 rounds plus one in the chamber, and left the weapon lying handy on his desk. Beside the rifle, ready to be tucked inside his belt as needed, lay a .38-caliber Colt M1892 revolver
, commonly called the new Army and Navy model. With the Apache pistol in his pocket, Rafferty believed he was prepared for anything.

  So, why was he afraid?

  He didn’t like admitting that, not even silently to himself. It set a precedent that might betray him, when a situation called for special strength. If anyone suspected that he had a yellow streak, however well concealed, it might turn out to be a fatal flaw.

  A dozen men and guns galore should be enough to rid him of a single lawman who had overstepped his bounds. If not, perhaps he ought to take the Colt and and use it on himself, bring all the anxious waiting to an end.

  Disgusted by the thought, Rafferty drained his whiskey, moved to pour another, then stopped short at the sound of shouting from the yard outside. A heartbeat later, gunfire echoed from the darkness and he dropped his glass, which rebounded from the woven rug beneath his feet. More shots exploded as he rushed back toward the desk, snatching his weapons, conscious of a tremor in his hands.

  One of his gunmen burst into the study without knocking, hesitated as if bracing for a tongue-lashing at the intrusion, then told Rafferty, “There’s somebody outside, Boss! Somebody who don’t belong, I mean.”

  “You’ve seen him?” Rafferty demanded.

  “Me? Uh, no sir. Couple of the others seen him though and started shootin’. That’s what all the racket is about.”

  “Show me!”

  All thought of hiding, giving up, was driven from his thoughts by the invasion of his property. Raw anger made Rafferty’s pulse throb in his ears, and if his fear still lingered, nagging at him from a corner of his mind, at least he had it mastered for the moment.

  Slade had come for him—who else would dare?—and now he could eliminate the lawman, just as he would dump a sharp stone from his boot. Get rid of him, and then be on about the business of preparing for the next lot, and the ones who’d follow after that.

  For just a moment, rushing off to battle, Rafferty imagined that he was invincible.

  He lost that feeling in a hurry, once he left the house and darkness lowered over him, reducing vision and reminding him how small he really was, how vulnerable to a stray shot in the night. Rafferty edged along the porch, staying away from lighted windows, flinching each time that a shot rang out, a muzzle-flash sparking in shadows.