White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  Sullivan hammered down the stairs, some of the lushes from the barroom drifting back to meet him, asking stupid questions, getting in his way. He shouldered past them, hit one in the belly with his rifle butt for grabbing at his sleeve, and left the idjit puking on the floor as Sullivan moved on.

  He’d locked the back door personally, double-checking it before he went upstairs to watch the street from Rosy’s crib. They had a spare room in the upstairs brothel at the moment, so his presence wouldn’t hamper business if she caught herself a paying customer. Meanwhile, her window had the best view of the eastern end of Border Boulevard, and Grady’s other men were concentrated to the west.

  The way Slade should have come to town, but hadn’t. Getting tricky, thinking he could slip in unobserved to do his dirty work. The lawman’s first mistake might also prove to be his last.

  Wishing he could call the others in from where he’d posted them, Sullivan hoped his wasted shots would serve to summon them. If the remaining hands showed up to find their enemy already dead, so much the better. The could cart him off, along with his dead partner and the soldiers Sullivan had kept on hand as props for the persuasive scene he planned to stage on Rafferty’s behalf.

  One marshal scalped and butchered hadn’t been enough to sell Judge Dennison on hostile redskins. How about an army squad and two more deputies slaughtered together, maybe with some arrows added for effect to set the stage. Dump all of them together, near the rez where Agent Berringer could do his part in building up the story, and they’d be a long way toward their goal of booting useless Indians off land they’d never managed to develop anyway.

  A winning situation all the way around.

  Sullivan raced along the hallway toward the back door, voices calling after him, demanding that he tell them what in hell was going on. He reached the door, found it secure, and reached out to unlock it, balancing his Winchester one-handed. He threw the door wide open and plunged through it in a rush, turning to an enemy approaching from the east.

  A voice behind him asked, “Looking for me?”

  The shooter hesitated for a second, maybe calculating odds, then spun around toward Slade, his rifle rising to his shoulder. Slade was ready with the shotgun, squeezing off from ten feet with no possibility of missing. Barely spreading at that range, his buckshot tore a gaping hole in the unlucky gunman’s chest and hurled him backward through a sloppy somersault that left him facedown in the dust.

  Slade pumped the shotgun’s lever action, rifle in his left hand as he charged the Sunflower’s back door. Some eight or ten spectators watched him from the far end of a hallway leading to the barroom, none holding a weapon, though a couple of the men were obviously heeled. They didn’t try to draw on Slade, instead retreating hastily as he approached.

  The hallway was clear by the time Slade reached Rafferty’s office. He didn’t bother knocking, just gave the door a kick and followed through to find the chamber empty. There was no way to determine when the Sunflower’s proprietor had left—or if, in fact, he’d even stopped there after fleeing from the Rocking R. A side trip to the barroom found the customers evacuating, while the girls in residence were crouched with the piano player, down behind his instrument. The bartender showed Slade a blank face and his empty hands.

  “Where’s Rafferty?” asked Slade.

  “Beats me,” the barkeep said. “He came in looking spooked, maybe an hour back. I didn’t see him leave.”

  Slade backed into the corridor, considered scouring the place from top to bottom. It could be a waste of time, but if he didn’t check…

  Before he could decide, two gunmen barged in through the back door he’d left standing open, pistols drawn. Their faces told him they’d already seen their friend lying outside and didn’t feel like joining him if they could help it. Six-guns barked at Slade, as he lunged headlong to the floor, dropping his rifle for the moment, freeing both hands for the shotgun.

  There was no time to aim precisely, so he picked a spot between his two assailants, waist-high on the taller of the pair, and let a charge of buckshot do the rest. They spun in opposite directions, both men crying out in shock and pain as leaden pellets ripped through flesh and shattered bone on impact. Scrambling to his feet, Slade swapped out guns and caught the shooter on his left trying to rise, his pistol still in hand, slamming a .44-40 Winchester round through his chest.

  The other guy had drawn himself into a fetal curl, clutching his punctured abdomen and sobbing from the pain that wracked him. Slade passed by and left him to it, after kicking both men’s pistols down the hall and out of reach. Whether the wounded gunman lived or died was someone else’s problem now.

  Slade guessed that there were others still outside, prepared to take him down if they could manage it. He’d deal with them the best he could, as they appeared, but his priority was still Flynn Rafferty. Where would the fleeing fugitive have gone, if he was flushed out of the Sunflower, still looking for a way to cut his losses?

  Maybe Stateline Storage and the bootleg whiskey cache?

  Slade reckoned it was worth a try, as he ducked back into the night.

  In fact, Flynn Rafferty had given up on saving anything except himself. The sounds of gunfire from the Sunflower Saloon told him that Marshal Slade was both alive and stalking him in Stateline. Grady Sullivan might slow the lawman down—might even kill him with a lucky shot—but Rafferty had already decided it was too damn late to salvage anything from the chaotic shambles of his enterprise.

  Escape was now his only option, leaving no hard evidence behind him.

  Grady and his other men would go down fighting, if they didn’t cut and run. Whichever way it went, they wouldn’t be around to testify if Rafferty was ultimately found, arrested, and returned for trial. Not one of them would put his own head in a noose by telling tales. Likewise, the court would wring no damning testimony out of Brody Gallagher or his pathetic troop of soldiers, silenced now for good. Investigators might make something of the burned-out still, but how much of it would survive in recognizable condition from the hellish blaze he’d witnessed at the Rocking R?

  Only his warehouse stock remained to link him positively with the racket that had wound up spilling so much blood. And he could solve that problem with a kitchen match.

  Fearful as he was of being spotted on the street, Rafferty did not run directly down to Stateline Storage. First, he found the darkest spot he could for crossing Border Boulevard, well clear of the saloon lights and the fools who milled around outside them. By the time the shooting started, drawing customers out of the Swagger Inn, he’d covered half the length of town in fits and starts, reaching his destination in a final rush along a pitch-black alleyway. He stumbled once, flaying his palms on grit and gravel, but the pain seemed insignificant beside his fear.

  Rafferty used his key to open the back door, closed it behind him, struck one of his matches to locate a lamp and light it. Working with the wick turned low, he found a hammer in the box of tools that stood against one wall and used its claw-end to open one of the whiskey crates, casting the wooden lid aside. Eight bottles nestled in the crate, surrounded by excelsior for padding.

  Perfect.

  Rafferty removed two of the bottles, smashing off their tall necks with the hammer, using one to drench the contents of the open crate. He splashed the other’s pungent liquor over other boxes in the pile, drenching the raw unpainted wood with alcohol. Fumes filled his nostrils, threatening to make him sneeze, but Rafferty controlled it, stepping back a pace to strike another match and toss it down into the open whiskey crate.

  The burst of flame surprised him, drove him back with eyebrows singed. He stepped on the discarded hammer, lost his footing, and went down, woofing in startled pain before the open crate of booze exploded, spewing fiery streamers all around like something from a celebration staged on Independence Day. The next thing that the big man knew, his pants cuffs were on fire and he was screaming.

  Rafferty scrambled to his feet, bending to sla
p at burning ankles with his bloodied palms, to no effect. The flames were at his knees before he bolted toward the back door. He had almost cleared it when the pile of whiskey crates exploded with a sound like thunder, hurling him into the night, a screaming comet with a fiery tail.

  Slade was two blocks from the warehouse when a gunshot from behind him made him stop and dive for cover in the recessed doorway of a dry goods store. The slug had missed him, and it brought to mind a saying that he must have heard two dozen times, over the years. You never hear the shot that kills you.

  Wrong.

  He’d seen enough men gut-shot, bleeding out in agony, to know that wasn’t true. But this time he’d been lucky—so far, anyway.

  Slade risked a look around the corner and saw three men moving toward him, fanning out, all clutching pistols and the nearest of them holding two. It looked like shotgun work, if he could let them come a little closer. Maybe manage to surprise them, even though they’d seen where he had gone to ground.

  Slade did a quick count of the rounds remaining in the shotgun. He had started out with one shell in the chamber, five more in the weapon’s magazine. Two shots fired at the Sunflower left him with four—enough to do the job if none were wasted spraying empty air. It all came down to timing, decent aim, and holding steady once his targets had begun returning fire.

  Do it! he thought and leaned around the corner, lining up his shot. Slade squeezed the shotgun’s trigger, rode its recoil as the shooter with the pair of Colts went down, and then the night exploded at his back. A wave of heat rushed down the length of Border Boulevard, while sudden firelight made the street as bright as day. Slade hesitated, almost turning, and his two surviving adversaries bolted, running for their lives as if he’d opened up on them with field artillery.

  When they were safely out of range, Slade rose and faced the blazing wreck of Stateline Storage. He was moving out in that direction when a fiery scarecrow burst out of the alley on the near side of the warehouse, lurching toward the middle of the street and shrieking in a high-pitched, barely human voice. Arms flailing, smoke and sparks trailing behind, the doomed man staggered on a dead-end run to nowhere.

  Slade was on him in another second, sweeping the runner off his feet and crouching near him, scooping up handfuls of dirt from the street and pitching them onto the scorched figure writing in front of him, dousing the fire by degrees. Other townsmen soon joined him, one detouring from a charge toward the warehouse and dumping his bucket of water on top of the badly burned man.

  At last, Slade rolled the smoking figure over on its back, not quite surprised to recognize Flynn Rafferty, blistered and blackened where the flames had licked his face. Most of his hair was gone, leaving a grotesque caricature of the man Slade had been hunting all night long. Rafferty’s lips were moving, voice too faint for Slade to understand amidst the chaos that enveloped Border Boulevard.

  He leaned in close. Told Rafferty, “You’re dying. Is there anything you want to say?”

  The burned man tried to raise his head, wearing a grimace like a ghoulish smile. “Get Berringer,” he gasped. “All his idea…run drunken redskins off the rez…railroad…big money…bastard sitting pretty…”

  “Not for long,” Slade promised him, but Rafferty was long past hearing now. His last breath was a wisp of smoke from seared lungs, snaking from his blistered lips and gone wherever damned souls go.

  19

  “I’m sorry about Naylor,” said Judge Dennison.

  “Me, too. He did a good job while he lasted,” Slade replied.

  “I won’t say that I’m shocked about the soldiers, but it’s definitely…disappointing.”

  “Way it seems to me,” Slade answered, “Rafferty and Berringer required some muscle for their plan to shift the trip, and that was Captain Brody. I don’t know about the others. Maybe they were rotten apples that he picked out of the barrel.”

  “Pity none of them survived to help us understand the whole arrangement,” Dennison observed.

  “My guess would be they didn’t want to face a firing squad.”

  Slade and the judge faced one another with the judge’s desk between them, bathed in midmorning light from tall windows facing the courtyard and gallows below. So far, on this job, Slade had brought the judge no one to hang.

  “And you think Rafferty disposed of Brody?”

  “Must have,” Slade agreed. “I found him with the others at the undertaker’s parlor, stacked up in the back like cord wood. Someone cut the captain’s throat.”

  “He could have filled us in, I’d wager.”

  “Likely why he got the chop,” Slade said. “Rafferty wasn’t leaving any witnesses.”

  “There’ll be some from his ranch, I guess,” said Dennison. “But scattered to the winds.”

  “I got some names before I left, but putting them with faces…well, we weren’t exactly introduced.”

  “I’m more concerned about the town’s officials,” Dennison replied. “The mayor, the marshal.”

  “And the undertaker,” Slade amended. “I’ve got all three waiting for a pickup. Or, I should say, the new marshal has. A kid named Wilkes. He’s done all right so far. Might even fit if you’re replacing Luke.”

  “Somebody has to,” Dennison agreed. “And Tanner, too.”

  Bill Tanner, who had died and started all of it. Slade was embarrassed that the first murder had slipped his mind.

  “Just one job left,” he said.

  Dennison pushed a folded paper toward him, settled back into his high-backed chair, and said, “You have your warrant, Jack. But put the kid gloves on for this one. Berringer has friends in Washington.”

  “In spite of all he’s done?”

  “The word won’t reach them until he’s in custody, but when you’re talking Congress…well, you never know how some of those folk may react.”

  “Or whether they’re involved,” Slade added.

  “That, we’ll likely never know,” said Dennison. “Unless friend Berringer decides to bargain for his life. In which case, can we even trust him?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  “But only ask,” the jurist emphasized. “No undue zeal.”

  “Define undue,” Slade said.

  “I’m serious,” Judge Dennison replied. “If he resists arrest and suffers injury as a result, I’ll need statements from witnesses.”

  Slade had a thought. “Tribal police?” he asked.

  “That could be interesting,” Dennison allowed. “But watch your back.”

  “I will.”

  “You still don’t want assistance?”

  “It’s one man,” Slade said. “He’s not Wes Hardin.”

  “Just a cornered rat. They’re known to fight.”

  “Don’t get my hopes up,” Slade replied. He took the warrant with him as he left.

  It seemed to be a slow day at the courthouse. Leaving, squinting into sudden sunlight, Slade almost collided with a woman on the sidewalk. Stepping back, he saw that it was Faith and instantly forgot whatever he had been about to say, in terms of an apology. She looked surprised, a little flustered, and he was afraid she wouldn’t speak.

  “Jack.”

  “Faith.”

  “I heard about your friends. I’m sorry.”

  Luke and Tanner, she must mean. He shrugged. “I hardly knew them, really.”

  “Still.”

  “You’re looking well,” he said and hated how it sounded in the open air.

  “I’ve meant to visit you.”

  “We’ve both been busy.”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, I’m off to serve a warrant. Wrap this up, I hope.”

  “Be careful, will you?”

  “Sure. Good seeing you,” he said and moved off toward the livery, half strangled by the hard lump in his throat.

  Slade didn’t rush his ride out to the reservation. He’d be satisfied to lose a little sleep and bring his prisoner back into Enid after nightfall, if it came to
that.

  Dead or alive, he thought, but he didn’t want to disappoint Judge Dennison if he could help it.

  Some of that might still depend on the reservation’s tribal police. As stoic as they were, in his experience, Slade couldn’t say how any of them felt about Frank Berringer. On one hand, he was just another white man sent from Washington or somewhere else back East, to keep the so-called savages in line. Conversely, he’d promoted them to jobs that must have had some privileges attached. And if they chose to stand with him against a solitary U.S. marshal, then what?

  Slade smiled at the irony of being forced to call the troops at Fort Supply for help, if Cherokee police defended Berringer. That ought to go down well, after he’d killed four of the outpost’s troopers personally and disgraced a captain who was later slain by one of his accomplices in crime.

  But, then again, it might be someone else calling for troops, if Slade came up against it on the rez and found himself outgunned. Somebody else’s problem, evening the score and carting Slade to Holland Mattson’s funeral parlor, back in Enid.

  It was a trip that everybody took, sooner or later, but Slade wasn’t in a hurry for his turn. One thing he had decided, beyond any doubt: if it came down to do or die, he didn’t plan to croak before he got a shot at Berringer. The two of them could go together, and the army or whoever could sort out the rest of it.

  “Or maybe no one has to die at all,” Slade told his mare.

  She snorted in reply, not overly concerned.

  Another mile or so, before he crossed onto the rez. Slade had prepared himself in every way he could, face freshly shaved, guns oiled and fully loaded, breakfast settled in his belly—though the last part might turn out to be a handicap, if he was gut-shot later on. The warrant in his pocket seemed to weigh more than it should, a trick of the imagination, keeping Slade in mind of his responsibility and promise to Judge Dennison.

  He thought of Faith no more than half a dozen times during his ride, wondering if her attitude that morning indicated any kind of thaw in their relationship. There was no reason to believe so, but he guessed that hope would linger till she finally sold up and left the territory, headed back wherever she was bound. Slade had no reason to expect that she would take him back, no prospect that she would forget—much less forgive. He hadn’t prayed in years and reckoned it would be the ultimate hypocrisy to start up now, begging a favor for himself.