Marshal Keever nodded. “He’s got his hands on the lookout, and mark my words, they’re a salty bunch—as loyal to the brand as can be.” He leaned on the bar. “I wouldn’t want to be in the rustlers’ boots if the Bar T boys get hold of them. Trees are handier than gallows up in Bar T country.”
“My cousins and me have too much sense to rustle.”
“That reminds me,” Marshal Keever said, giving the burly pair a close appraisal, “You haven’t introduced them yet.”
“This here is Thatch,” Varner pointed at one, “and this here is Tote.” He pointed at the other.
The pair just stood there, staring straight ahead into the mirror, showing no more emotion or interest than a pair of tree stumps.
“I haven’t heard any last names,” Marshal Keever said.
“Smith. All three of us are named Smith.”
“Is that a fact?” Marshal Keever mimicked Varner, only he made it sound as if it were not a fact at all. “It couldn’t be you’re lyin’ to me, could it?”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because it could be your last names aren’t Smith at all. It could be your last name is Wilkes and the last name of your two cousins there is Nargent. And it could be all three of you are wanted.” Marshal Keever suddenly moved away from the bar with his hand on his revolver. “I’ll thank you not to do anything hasty, boys, but to come along peaceful. I’d rather not kill you unless you force me.”
Varner slowly lowered his drink. “Damned decent of you. Our wanted posters came across your desk—is that it?”
“A couple weeks ago,” Marshal Keever said, “along with one on the Flour Sack Kid. The rate we’re goin’, Wyomin’ Territory will soon have more outlaws than the Badlands.”
It was a joke but no one laughed or cracked a grin. Willis wanted to yell at Keever to draw his revolver and cover them but he figured the lawman knew what he was doing. Then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
Mason had drawn his ivory-handled pistols. He pointed one at Johnny Vance, who froze with cards in his hands, and pointed the other at Marshal Keever’s broad back. Keever had either forgotten there was a fourth rider or else he had not realized it was Mason because Mason was over by the poker table. Now Keever’s back was to the man in gray, and it was Keever’s turn to stiffen when Mason cocked the two pistols. Everyone in the saloon heard the twin clicks.
Timmy Easton started to rise out of his chair but Jim Palmer grabbed his arm and shook his head.
“Here’s how this will be,” Mason announced in a loud, clear drawl. “My pards and I are leavin’. If no one tries to stop us, everyone goes on livin’.” He sidled toward the batwings, careful to move so he could cover Johnny Vance, Palmer, Easton, and the lawman all at the same time.
“I can’t let you ride out,” Marshal Keever said.
“You can’t stop us, neither,” Mason responded. “Don’t be rash. You can round up a posse and come after us.”
“Like hell,” Varner Wilkes said. Drawing his revolver, he shot Marshal Keever in the stomach. Keever staggered, a look of astonishment on his face, and clutched at a crimson stain low on his shirt.
“No!” Mason cried.
Varner shot the lawman again, high in the chest. Keever staggered to the bar, clung to it a few seconds, then crumpled to the floor, quaking like he had the ague.
By then Thatch and Tote Nargent had unlimbered their hardware and were backing toward the door, their beady eyes glittering with bloodlust.
“Try and stop us and there will be hell to pay!” Thatch warned.
“We’re curly wolves and proud of it!” Tote howled.
The only way Willis could tell them apart was that Thatch had a red bandanna and Tote wore a blue one. Tote swung toward him and he hiked his hands. He was no gun hand. In the time it would take him to draw and aim, the cousins would shoot him dead.
Mason glared at Varner Wilkes. “Damn yuh! Now we’ll have the whole town down on our heads.”
“Then what are you waitin’ for?” Varner snapped, retreating with his revolver leveled. “Let’s light a shuck while we can.”
Timmy Easton was trembling worse than the marshal. “We can’t let them get away!” he bawled. “We just can’t!” With a wrench he tore loose of Jim Palmer and stabbed for his pistol.
Quick as thought, Mason shot him. Both of Mason’s pistols blasted smoke and lead, and Timmy Easton was flung against his chair. He crashed down with the chair half on top of him and two holes spaced close together above his heart.
Jim Palmer bellowed and started to stand but the smoking pistols in Mason’s hands swiveled toward him and he stayed put.
Slim was in shock. Johnny Vance was staring at Mason and only at Mason, and there was something about his eyes that was terrible to behold. Mason returned the look with a sad sort of sigh.
Willis was aghast. His brainstorm had gone all wrong. Two men shot and probably dead and he was to blame.
The Nargent brothers were at the batwings. Tote poked his head out, then yelled to Varner, “Folks are comin’ on the run!”
“Change their minds for them. Thatch, you hold the horses ready. We’ll be right out.” Varner swung his pistol at Willis. “How about you? Got bright notions of bein’ a hero?”
“Not at the moment,” Willis said.
The brothers had rushed outside. Now shots boomed, women and children screamed, somewhere a man cursed, and more shots came from up and down the long street.
“Hurry it up, Mason,” Varner goaded.
The man in gray was looking at Johnny Vance. Unexpectedly, Mason twirled his pistols into their holsters and turned his back on the gambler. “Another time,” he said, and strolled casually to the batwings.
“Another time,” Johnny Vance said after him.
Varner had his back to the wall. “We should kill every last one of these bastards. It’s not smart to leave witnesses.”
“No,” Mason said.
“You don’t tell me what to do,” Varner said, but he went out without shooting anyone else.
Mason paused and glanced back at Johnny Vance and touched the brim of his gray hat. To Jim Palmer he said, “I’m sorry about the boy.” Then he, too, was gone, and the batwings swung back and forth on empty air.
Out in the street a battle had broke out. Pistols and rifles were cracking and thundering from all quarters. Horses whinnied and stamped. Shouts and screams added to the bedlam.
Jim Palmer was out of his chair in a rush, drawing his revolver as he rose. “We’ve got to stop them!”
Willis drew his own revolver. Slim snatched a shotgun from under the bar. Only Johnny Vance did not resort to a weapon; he began playing solitaire.
About to peer out, Willis jerked back when a stray slug struck the right batwing with a loud chuk. Slivers flew every which way. One stung his cheek, another his ear. He hunkered as the firing rose to a feverish frenzy.
Heedless of the flying lead, Jim Palmer was about to barrel past him when two swift shots shattered part of the left batwing, narrowly missing him. Palmer followed Willis’ example. “We can’t let them get away! They have to pay for Tim!”
Willis was gazing at Walt Keever. The lawman had stopped trembling and lay still, his eyes wide and vacant.
“Stop them!” someone out in the street bawled. “Shoot their horses out from under them!”
It sounded to Willis like Deputy Ivers. More shots banged, nearly drowning out rapidly fading hoofbeats.
The next moment the batwings burst inward and Deputy Ivers stormed into the saloon, a revolver in his hand. “What happened in here? Has anyone seen the mar—” Ivers spied the big body by the bar. He lurched to a halt and all the blood drained from his face. “Walt?”
“It was the little one who done it,” Slim said. “Varner Wilkes, Marshal Keever called him.”
“Walt?” Deputy Ivers said again. He took a few halting steps, riveted to the spreading scarlet pool.
Jim Palmer grabbed Ive
rs by the shoulder. “The marshal’s not the only one,” he said and pointed at the upended chair and Timmy Easton.
Willis limped outside. Men and women were peeking from windows and doorways, unsure if the gunplay was over. A number of glass panes had bullet holes in them. So did more than a few buildings. Down the street lay a body. Willis heard someone say it was Granger, the man who owned the feed and grain. He moved past the hitch rail and spotted another body near the buckboard. People were gathering around it and he could not see who it was but he could tell that whoever had been shot wore a dress.
“God, no,” Willis breathed, and limped as fast as he could limp. Without slowing he pushed several onlookers aside, demanding, “Let me through! Let me through, damn it!”
“Mr. Lander, contain yourself.”
Elfie was by the body, unhurt. Willis glanced down and discovered the dead woman was Martha Baxter, the wife of Fred Baxter, who ran the general store. The top of her head had been blown clean off by a heavy-caliber slug.
“The poor woman,” someone said.
“Where’s her husband?” another asked.
As if in answer, out of the store rushed Fred Baxter. A stocky man who wore spectacles and always had an apron on, he took one look and shrieked in horror. “Martha!” he wailed. Breaking into great racking sobs, he threw himself on her and clasped her gore-spattered head to his white apron.
Willis turned away. He realized he was still holding his revolver and slid it into his holster.
“Whoever did this can’t swing soon enough,” a man remarked. “Where’s the marshal, anyhow?”
“Dead,” Willis said. “He was the first one they killed.”
Five or six citizens ran toward the saloon. Before they reached it, the batwings were slammed open yet again and out strode Deputy Jared Ivers. Wrath roiled on his brow like a thunderhead as he hollered, “I need a posse and I need it now! Every man with a gun and horse, meet me in front of the jail in ten minutes!”
Elfie was at Willis’ elbow. “I imagine you want to go but your horse is at the Bar T. It’s just as well. There’s no one else to take me back and I don’t want to stay with all these dead people lying around.”
“I wouldn’t be of much use to the posse,” Willis said. He thought of Keever and Timmy Easton, and what little self-respect he had left shriveled and died.
Chapter 8
The way Willis later heard the story, the posse brought the disaster down on their own heads.
Fully three-fourths of the able-bodied men in Cottonwood were set to ride out when someone asked Deputy Ivers if it was smart to leave the town with so few defenders. What if the killers circled around and came back? It set off a ten-minute argument that ended with Ivers deciding to take only twenty men. Those who remained were to go about armed at all times. Guards were to be posted at both ends of the street and on various rooftops.
Then off the posse rode, shouting and whooping and filled with zeal to avenge those who had been slain. The tracks were so fresh, a ten-year-old could have followed them, and soon the posse was pounding hard to the northwest with Deputy Ivers at the forefront, urging them on.
Some of the posse members were confident it would all be over in an hour or two, and end with the four killers decorating cottonwood limbs. But the outlaws had good horses and the posse did not overtake them before the outlaws reached the mountains. Here the outlaws had done their best to shake the posse off. The avengers were forced to go much slower, and by late afternoon a few grumbled that the avenging might take longer than they figured.
Since Ivers had rushed them out of Cottonwood without packhorses and without thinking to ask the men to bring food and water, by nightfall the mood had turned sour. They camped next to a creek, which solved their thirst, but the only game they could find to shoot were two rabbits and a grouse a townsman accidentally flushed when he walked past a thicket and sneezed.
What was worse, only one man had coffee, and nearly every man wanted some. They sat around the campfire without saying much but the looks they cast in Deputy Ivers’ direction said a lot.
Sunrise found them in the saddle and on the go. Renewed confidence coursed through them. The outlaws could not be that far ahead. By noon it would be over. But noon came and went and the posse had yet to catch sight of their quarry.
By three the mood had soured again. By four it was one of general discontent. What if the posse never caught up? Everyone was wasting their time. Deputy Ivers insisted the Wilkes gang were as good as dead, and he had the persuasive support of Jim Palmer to back him up.
Palmer had not said much until then. The previous night, he had sat glumly staring into the flames, overcome with remorse for Timmy Easton. So when some of the posse talked about turning back, Palmer put his hand on his revolver and informed them that he would “shoot the first son of a bitch who tried it.”
That settled matters, for a while. But some of the townsmen, resentful of the treatment, dragged their mounts’ hooves, with the result that Deputy Ivers had to tell them several times to quit slowing up the proceedings.
By evening the discontent had spread. They camped in a clearing barely large enough for the men and the horses to fit. There was no creek, so they went without water. The hunters among them failed to find game, so they went without food. The coffee had all been used up the night before. So they sat and glared at Ivers and Palmer, and Ivers glared right back.
Jim Palmer did not seem to notice he was one of the two least-liked people on the posse, or if he did, he did not care. All he did was stare into the flames, never moving, hardly ever blinking. He had not shaved or combed his hair, and the handsomest rider on the Bar T did not look quite as handsome.
The next morning another dispute broke out. Half the men were for heading back to Cottonwood. Their spokesman was Floyd Treach. They picked well. As the biggest man present, with more muscles than most of them ever dreamed of having, he presented an imposing figure when he walked up to Deputy Ivers and announced some of the men were leaving whether Ivers liked it or not.
No one noticed Jim Palmer. No one saw him draw his Colt. Suddenly he was beside Floyd Treach, and to everyone’s incredulous disbelief, even Deputy Ivers’, Palmer slammed the barrel across Floyd Treach’s jaw and the mountain of muscle fell to his knees, dazed.
“Get him on his horse,” Palmer said. Climbing on his own, he waved his Colt and hollered, “Let’s ride!”
No one objected. They were too stunned. Palmer had always been well thought of. He wasn’t as rowdy or as rude as some of the cowhands could be when under the influence of bug juice, and he was always extraordinarily nice to the ladies. To have this easygoing man who had never lifted his voice in anger suddenly become a blacksmith beater was a considerable shock.
A lot of muttering took place, and many whispers were exchanged. By noon, when Deputy Ivers called a brief halt to rest the horses, several of the older posse members quietly took him aside and flatly told him enough was enough. They were not properly prepared for an extended stay in the high country. They should turn back before more than Floyd Treach’s jaw was hurt.
Jared Ivers listened. He was pigheaded but he wasn’t entirely stupid, and he announced that while he was pressing on, anyone who wanted could turn back. He gave Jim Palmer a pointed look but the cowboy did not make an issue of it.
An hour was spent debating how many should go back and how many should go on. Some of the men wanted to go back but they were afraid of being called quitters, and of looking bad in the eyes of their wives.
In the end, nine continued the chase while eleven tired, sore, hungry townsmen plodded gratefully homeward, Floyd Treach and his sore jaw among them.
The outlaws had been traveling steadily to the northwest, into a rugged, remote region. Ivers and the rest kept hoping for a glimpse of them but night fell and the posse still had not caught up, and of the nine who had stayed, two left the next morning.
Now the odds were seven to four, and Deputy Ivers had never b
een much of a gambling man. By midday he called another stop and said that they had done all they could but it was not enough, that they could not keep going without food and only occasional water, and that in his opinion it was best if they all returned to Cottonwood, rested a few days, and struck out again with packhorses and enough supplies to do the job right.
Jim Palmer did not say a word. When Ivers finished, he simply raised his reins and rode on. Deputy Ivers called after him but was ignored.
“Damn that cowboy, anyhow!” a townsman fumed.
“He’s not the only one who’s ever lost a friend,” said another.
“Martha Baxter and my wife were like two peas in a pod,” Harvey Stuckman declared.
Deputy Ivers sighed and informed them he was going on. “For a day or so yet, enough to talk sense into Palmer.”
Guilt cropped up. Three of the men did not let it sway them into what they deemed a foolish effort, and turned around. That left Stuckman and two others to catch up to Jim Palmer.
The deputy tried. He truly tried. He talked to Palmer for nearly two hours, seeking to persuade him to head back. He pointed out that the outlaws had the advantage. That Wilkes and company were natural-born killers who would love to bushwhack them. That Palmer could always have his revenge another day.
Once again Jim Palmer did not say a word. He rode on, his face set in rigid lines, his eyes always fixed on the next ridge, the next stand of timber, the next slope.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Ted Yost said. “He’s going to get us ambushed. I’ve stuck as long as I’m going to out of respect for Marshal Keever.”
“We’ll miss his funeral,” remarked the last townsman.
That caused Deputy Ivers to draw rein, and Yost and the other man stopped, too. “I didn’t think of that,” Ivers said. “I should be there to say somethin’ over the grave. He was my best friend.”
“If we ride really hard maybe we can make it,” Yost said.
“Maybe,” said the last man.
All three of them glanced at the top of the slope they were climbing. Jim Palmer had gone over the crest.
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