by J. T. Edson
Captain Bertram Mosehan read the telegraph message through once more, whistling tunelessly as he did so. Then taking up a sheaf of wanted posters he riffled through them until he found the one he wanted. Jase Holmes, train robber, gunman and killer was headed this way from a triple killing in Salt Lake City. From the date of the killings he would soon be in Arizona territory, headed for the Mexican border.
Mosehan was making one of his rare visits to Ranger Headquarters in Tucson and was urgently needed down in Cochise County, so there was no chance of going to hunt for Holmes himself. Crossing to the big wall map of the Arizona territory he ran his finger over the paper, following the route Holmes would most likely use. The finger stopped on the town of Garret, up on the edge of the Painted Desert. From there it tracked down to the edge of the Grand Canyon, and the town of Backsight.
Crossing to the desk Mosehan took up a telegraph message form and wrote a short, terse message on it.
“Waco. Leroy. Jase Holmes coming into territory. Head him off at Garret. GET HIM.”
The wires sang. Up in Backsight Waco and Doc Leroy threw saddles on their horses, loaded their bedrolls on a packhorse and rode out, headed north.
Night was falling when the two Rangers rode into Garret City and headed into the livery barn. They’d been two days in the saddle and both were now trail dirty and unshaven, hard-looking as a couple of starving razor-back hogs.
“Best see Ben Shields first,” Waco suggested. “He might know something.”
Doc agreed with this. They knew the town of Garret and were known here from the days when they rode with the Hashknife Outfit.
“Might at that. He’ll likely know if Holmes has passed through this way. If he has got through we’ll have us a pious time finding him.”
Swinging down from their saddles they attended to their horses, neither paying any attention to the old owner of the livery barn as he came from the stable. For his part he saw nothing but the gun-hung backs of a pair of Texas cowhands.
“Huh!” the old-timer spat his disgust into the dirt floor. “Two more of you.”
Waco turned at the words and found the old-timer eyeing him belligerently. “Cap’n Bert send up more men?”
The old-timer came in closer, peering suspiciously at Waco. Then his face split in a welcoming grin.
“Sorry boy, didn’t recognize you. My eyes ain’t as good as they used to be.”
“Fact being they never were,” Waco replied. “Who-alls here that we’re two more of?”
The owner of the livery barn spat with even more vigor at the wheel of a buggy before answering. “Just about every damned fool, gun-wild kid in the territory.”
Waco and Doc stood silent for a moment then looked at each other. “Would it be out of line if I asked why?” Doc inquired.
“They’re after the man who killed Jase Holmes.”
“Jase Holmes, the owlhoot?” Waco asked.
“How many more Jase Holmes do you know?”
“How’d he die?” Doc ignored the sarcasm in the oldster’s voice.
“Took to stealing Whitey Basefield’s stud hoss and died of it.”
“Nice for Mr. Basefield,” Waco remarked dryly.
Neither Doc nor Waco needed any help to add up the prairie sum of that statement. They knew that every trigger-fast young fool in the territory would be flocking in towards Garret with one idea in mind. Find out how fast Jase Holmes’ killer was with a gun.
It often surprised and amazed an Eastern dude how news could travel across the range country by the prairie telegraph, bringing men swarming into a town where something was going to happen. It was neither amazing nor strange to Waco and Doc Leroy, for they’d seen it happen too many times. They also knew the end product in this case and what that would mean.
The old-timer watered and grained three stalls and after the horses were inside, helped tote the two young men’s gear into his office. He did not express any wonder that they were so far from the Hashknife spread or that they should have arrived in Garret at this moment. Strangely, it never even occurred to him that they might be here looking for Jase Holmes’ killer, like the other young men who’d been arriving every day since the shooting.
“Any fool kid who tries his games with them two’ll surely wish he hadn’t,” he said to the big paint stallion Waco rode, as he passed its stall. “Yes, sir, they sure will.”
Waco and Doc headed for the Marshal’s office, walking along the main street of the town and hearing plenty of noise from the three saloons. Entering the jail they found the town marshal, Ben Shields. He sat at his desk, watching the local doctor patch up a young man’s shoulder. Three more hard-faced young men were sitting glowering through the bars of the cells.
Shields came to his feet, a tall, powerful-looking man in his early thirties. He was dressed in range clothes and belted a low-tied gun. There was a frank and open friendliness about him which was offset by the grim set of his jaw and something in his eyes. Waco studied him, knowing Shields as a square lawman and a brave one. That look in his eyes wasn’t fear but it was something near to it.
“Howdy you pair,” Shields greeted. “What’re you doing in town?”
“Cap’n Mosehan sent us up here. Thought we might be able to pick up Jase Holmes,” Doc replied. “Only it looks like we came too late.”
“Four days too late.” There was a brittle harshness in Shields’ tones.
The doctor finished bandaging up the man’s wounded shoulder and growled, “I’ve got to go out to the Brant place to deliver a baby. If any more of them take lead let ’em bleed to death.”
Shields shoved the wounded man into the cell and locked the door as the doctor stamped off into the night. Then Shields came back to the desk and looked at Waco and Doc, an unspoken question in his eyes.
“How’d that happen?” Waco asked.
“Just one of the shootings, that’s all.” Shields’ voice was showing strain. “We’ve had three killed and two bad wounded besides these bunch.”
“Sounds worse than Dodge City when ole Clay Allison used to come in,” Doc said sympathetically. “All of them after Mr. Basefield?”
“Every last one.”
“How’d it happen?” Waco inquired.
“Holmes came in a’fork a half-dead hoss. He saw Whitey Basefield’s stud hoss at the rail of the Bell Saloon and thought to take it. Whitey came out just as Holmes was untying the reins. They drew and Holmes died.”
“Said Whitey being a fast gun?” Doc inquired.
“That’s the hell of it. Whitey ain’t but average with a gun at best. I’ve got Holmes’ gear here. Checked the holster, inside was roughed up.”
Neither Waco nor Doc needed to be told any more than that. They were skilled, practiced handlers of guns, and knew all too well what a roughened holster meant. In a draw and shoot affair where a draw which took up a second was called slow, split seconds counted. That vital speed the smooth inside of a holster gave was important. The loss of it due to the roughening of the leather, was enough to cost a man his life. One mistake was fatal. Jase Holmes had made that one mistake.
“Bad thing to happen,” Waco remarked, his voice soft and gentle. “Man doesn’t have it happen more than once.”
“Amen!” Doc agreed.
Shields shook his head as if to clear it, then he glanced at the two young Texans whom he’d known as cowhands for the Hashknife.
“You boys doing anything?”
“Not now. Like I said, Cap’n. Bert sent us along to try and take Holmes. He’s wanted bad in Salt Lake City,” Waco explained.
For a moment Shields was puzzled, then he remembered hearing about Bertram Mosehan starting the Arizona Rangers. He could guess that Mosehan would take this pair of hell-twisters along with him.
“How’d so many of these guns get here in this time?” Doc asked.
“Was some trouble up Fredonia way. Looked like a war starting up. But it was stopped by a couple of your boys. The guns came on down here with their
pay in their pockets and time on their hands.”
From outside they heard the thunder of shots and all looked at each other. Shields knew without asking that they would help him. Some of the tense tightness left him. He picked up his hat and walked towards the door, the other two following him out.
After they’d brought back the wounded survivor of the shooting scrape and Doc patched him up prior to shoving him in the cells, the three lawmen gathered at the desk. Neither Doc nor Waco realized how many men there were in town, all waiting for a crack at Jase Holmes’ killer. They were in the saloons, on the sidewalk, all young men, all wearing guns and all with the same idea in mind. Meet and beat the man who killed Jase Homes.
“How much longer is this going to last?” he asked bitterly. “I can’t handle them much longer and I can’t get a deputy now.”
Waco watched the marshal, knowing it wasn’t entirely, or even partly, fear that made him like this. It was the constant living with a gun, living on his nerves and waiting for his town to blow wide open. It was the constant alertness and the sense of futility. That was making Ben Shields like this. Other lawmen had gone the same way under similar circumstances. Wild Bill Hickok went that way the day he was in a gunfight and heard someone running behind him. He’d turned and shot, killing a friend who was coming to help him.
Ben Shields was going that same way and he needed help about as bad as a man could need it.
“Where-at’s this gent Basefield?” Waco asked.
“Out at his spread. I sent word for him to stay there until this blows over. His foreman wanted to bring the ranch crew in and clear the town. I stopped him. I didn’t want a full-out war on my hands. Tad Bowmain, him being Whitey’s foreman, ain’t the sort to play games.”
“We know ole Tad,” Doc put in. “Waco rode with him in CA and I met him when he came down to the Hashknife.”
“Waal, he’s holding the hands back, at a spread. They’re primed for war though. Couple of guns got real smart, they went out to the Basefield spread to hunt Whitey up. They came back to town on a rail.”
“Knowing ole Tad they were real lucky to come back at all,” Waco replied, looking out of the window. Three more gun-hung young men rode past, headed for one of the saloons.
It was then Waco knew he must carry out his plan. It was a plan based on his knowledge of gunmen. He knew how they reacted and what made them tick. He also knew the only way to handle the matter. They wanted, every one of them, to be the man who faced down Jase Holmes’ killer. They wanted the reputation of being the man who killed the man who was faster than Jase Holmes.
Under normal circumstances it would have been more difficult, for the men would not have congregated this fast. However, there had been a range war brewing near Fredonia and both sides hired an army of fighting men. Pete Glendon and Billy Speed, two Rangers, had arrived to end the trouble. The gun hands, paid off and with no hope of further employment, would have drifted off, scattering in search of other work. When word reached them of the killing of Jase Holmes they came to Garret to see if they could match shots with the man who killed him.
“You got something on your mind, boy?” Shields asked hopefully.
“Sure.” Waco dropped his voice so the men in the cells could not hear him. “Come sunup me’n ole Doc are headed for Basefield’s place.”
Doc Leroy had long since decided his wild, reckless young partner could not say or do anything which would surprise him again. He found he was wrong. Shields listened to Waco’s plan with fascinated disbelief. It gave him a feeling he’d only known once before. That was when he was laid up in some thick brush with three bronco Apaches looking to take his head home with them as a gift to their girlfriends.
Letting out his breath in a long slow gasp he asked, “Have you thought what it’ll mean to you?”
“Sure, reckon I have. Anyways, the way ole Cap’n. Bert keeps us on the move they won’t never have time to catch up on ole Doc and me. And if they do, time they get to where we are we’ll have left for some other place.”
~*~
The following morning at sunup Waco and Doc rode out of the town, following Shields’ directions for finding the Basefield Ranch. Doc watched his partner as they left the town behind them. For a time he was silent, then finally he said:
“You’re loco, boy.”
“Reckon I am.”
“Waal, the worst that can happen is that we’ll have to down a couple of them afore we leave here.”
“Sure,” Waco agreed. “That’s the worst that could happen.”
A man rode into Garret by the south trail about the same time the two Rangers left by the north. He left his powerful roan stallion in the livery barn and strode out on the street, a tall, powerful man, his handsome, cultured face at odds with his sober-colored range clothes and the low-tied brace of matched Colt Civilian Peacemakers. Striding along the street with a leisurely, contemptuous stride, looking neither right nor left, he headed for the first of the three saloons. Pushing open the batwing doors he stepped in, cold contempt in his eyes as he looked around at the gunmen. Silence fell over the room and all eyes were on him as he spoke, his voice a gentle, cultured Deep South drawl.
“Gentlemen, the name is Ringo, Johnny Ringo to my less cultured friends. Any man who aims to face Whitey Basefield will have to get me first.”
Unaware of this new development Waco and Doc rode along the wagon trail to the Basefield Ranch. Although neither were used to this section, their previous business near Garret having been on the other side of town, they expected no difficulty in finding their way to the ranch. Long experience of crossing the open range country gave them the ability to do so with only the briefest directions.
The ranch lay some five miles from town and when they could see it in the distance they allowed their horses to make better time. Neither gave any attention to a small bosque of cottonwood trees some thirty yards to the right of the rail trail they were following.
The rifle shot hit the ground ahead of them and sang into the air with the vicious sobbing whine of a ricochet. From the bosque a voice yelled:
“Sit fast. We could have downed you just as well as missing, had we wanted.”
Three young cowhands rode out of the cottonwood trees, each one with a rifle on his knees. Waco tensed, then relaxed again, for these were no gun hands, proddy killers looking to make a reputation. They were cowhands and he could see Tad Bowmain’s training in the way they handled themselves.
Fanning out, with their rifles held ready for use, the three young men closed in on Waco and Doc. The center rider was their leader apparently, a freckle-faced young hand who should have been smiling, but was grim and determined-looking. He scowled at the two Texans and asked:
“Didn’t them last two teach you nothing?”
“Sure, but we come just the same,” Doc replied. “Wouldn’t do no good to tell you that you’re making a mistake.”
“Nope, it wouldn’t. The only mistake round here is you two,” the stocky young hand at the right growled. “We should burn you right now and leave you for the other buzzards.”
“Hold it, Beck,” the other one who’d spoken first put in. “Ole Tad, he told us if we found any more of them to take them in so he could handle them.”
Waco sat still and allowed the young men to take his guns. The trio were well enough trained to make any attempt at objection dangerous, even for a pair of men as fast in action as Waco and Doc.
Shoving the matched staghorn-butted Artillery Peacemakers into his waistband, the leader of the trio snapped, “Head for the house. Try and light out if you want to. I’d surely admire to see you try and outrun a bullet.”
Waco and Doc rode in silence under the guns of their captors. Doc was wishing that the Rangers wore their badges in plain view, for he did not like seeing his ivory-butted Colt Civilian Peacemaker sticking in the waistband of the young man called Beck. Both noticed the cowhands were cautious and far from being gun-wild. But they were silent and the cowha
nd was not by nature silent, when one was it could be an ominous sign. Waco hoped that Bowmain was at the spread and not out on the range, otherwise there might be bad trouble.
They rode down towards the ranch and from the cook-shack came four more tough, handy-looking young men. For a moment Waco felt uneasy, for Tad Bowmain was not with them. Then from the ranch house, along with a tall, handsome young man and a very pretty blonde woman, came the stocky, craggy shape of Tad Bowmain, late puncher for Mr. Clayton Allison, of the Washita River, Texas.
“What’s all this, Danny?” Bowmain asked, although he was grinning as he looked the prisoners over.
“Couple more guns coming after Whitey,” the young hand with Waco’s guns replied. “Brung them in so’s you can tromp some sense into them.”
“Real good idea, though it’d take a mite of doing,” Bowmain agreed. Then, “Do you know who they are?”
“Don’t know, or care.”
“Best take a look at the backstrap of one of them Colt guns.”
Dan lifted the Colt from his waistband, turning it and looking down at the inscription on the blued backstrap. His face went through a series of changes as he read it aloud.
“For our pard, Waco. From Ole Devil’s Floating Outfit.” Then to Bowmain, who was studying them all with mocking eyes: “You mean this here’s—”
“Sure,” Bowmain agreed as the words trailed off. “Waco and Doc Leroy.”
Waco and Doc sat back, grinning at the consternation the discovery of their identity was causing. Bowmain chuckled and asked, “Bert Mosehan got round to firing you at last?”
“Could call it that,” Waco answered. “When he formed the Rangers he took me’n Doc along with him. Say now, Dan, how’s about giving me my guns back. You’ve played with them for long enough.”
Dan handed over the guns but first, replying, “Shucks, take the fool things, I’ve got a good’n. Anyways, it warn’t my idea to take them. I’m too young, too sweet, too—”
“Smelly ’n’ ornery,” Beck finished for his pard, offering Doc’s gun back to its owner. “Here Doc. Don’t you go letting no more big boys take it from you.”