“Grapes?” Tulip Bells asked.
“Red grapes. I like grapes.”
They laughed.
Below, a banjo and some fool on a Louisiana accordion joined the piano player, along with another idiot playing the triangle. Loud. Real loud.
Just the way Link McCoy wanted it.
“Zane will take the train to Fort Worth, pretend to be a reporter from Kansas City, since Kansas City has an interest in what goes on with Texas cowboys because of all the packing plants. Nobody around here would likely know of some ink-slinger with a Missouri newspaper. As soon as the meeting breaks up, and the money is loaded on the train, he’ll send us a telegraph.”
“That says the gold’s comin’!” White was drunk and excited.
“Well, not quite in those words,” Maxwell said.
“Right.” McCoy picked up his shotgun. “We take the Katy north to Durant. That’s just over the Red in the Choctaw Nation. Tulip will already be there. With good horses. Then we ride over to Fort Washita.”
The rest of the plan was easily explained. Maxwell and Bells listened. White finished the rye.
“We’ll need a few more men,” Maxwell said.
“I figure six men, including us,” McCoy suggested, and Maxwell and Tulip Bells agreed. Not too many men, so the split would be higher for all of the robbers.
White just giggled, already counting his share of the loot.
“A good or bad whiskey runner,” McCoy concluded. “And some liquor.”
Bells stepped away from the dresser, picked up McCoy’s bedroll from the end of the bed, and rolled it onto the floor.
White turned around. “What are you doin’?”
“Getting ready to turn in,” Bells said, and stood.
“In here?”
“That ruckus downstairs don’t bother me.”
“Crazy fool.” White drank more from the bottle. He grinned at Maxwell. “So we need just two more fellers for our job.”
“Three,” the outlaw leader said.
“Three? We got four already.”
McCoy shook his head. “No, you won’t be with us, Jeff.” The barrel of the shotgun pressed against White’s belly button.
The bottle fell to the floor, and White reached for the butt of his pistol, but stopped suddenly, hearing the noise downstairs, and smiled. “You won’t kill me. Not here. Even that racket downstairs won’t drown out a blast from that—”
Suddenly, he gasped as if sucking for breath that could not, would not, come, and Tulip Bells withdrew the Arkansas toothpick he had plunged into the man’s back.
“You drink too much,” McCoy said as Bells dropped the knife onto the bedroll, and slid his arms underneath Jeff White’s armpits as the man fell back, his mouth moving, eyes darting every which way.
White tried to speak, but no words could come.
“And,” McCoy said, “I don’t cotton to be called a thief.”
Slowly, Tulip Bells laid the outlaw on McCoy’s bedroll. No need in getting blood all over the floor. The management would frown upon such things, might even fetch the law, and with a $25,000 payday coming, McCoy could splurge on a new bedroll. In a town like Denison on a loud Saturday night, they could sneak the body out and deposit it where no one would find it for years.
Zane Maxwell pulled a watch from his vest pocket, opened the case, looked at the dying Jeff White, and said, “I’ll say three minutes.”
“Two,” McCoy said.
Maxwell stared at the watch.
Tulip Bells said, “Since I know where I stuck him, I don’t reckon I can bet.”
All three men looked down at the floor, listening to the awful music and clamor below, waiting to see how long it would take Jeff White to die.
Downstairs, the piano player banged out “There Is a Tavern in the Town.”
Mulberry Station, Texas
Millard Mann returned to where he had found his son’s hat.
He had taken the Fort Worth–Denver City northbound back to McAdam and gone home—only to find, as his head had told him over his heart’s wishes, that James had not come home. Millard had then ridden over to Charles Goodnight’s spread, bought the best horse and pack mule the old rancher had, and ridden south back to Mulberry Station, where he had discovered James’s hat the morning after his oldest son had run away from home.
Millard cursed. He should have looked at the sign closer, realized that James—. Millard stopped that thought. The boy had hopped the freight right there. That much had been clear. There was no way to even guess that he would have jumped out of the car just a few miles down the tracks.
Millard rode carefully, dismounting often, trying to find some track, some bit of trail he could follow. Two miles he covered. Then two more. Then he rode back north a mile, two, three, four.
There was no sign. The massive storm that had hit earlier had wiped out anything he might have found. All he had was . . . nothing.
“Fort Smith.”
He was squatting on the east side of the rails, looking at something that might have been a footprint. How old? He had no idea. Many workers went up and down those rails. So did hobos. Anyone might have made that track.
The voice whispered into his ear.“Fort Smith.”
He looked north, then behind him, standing. The horse, a broad-chested blue roan, snorted. The mule grazed contentedly. Millard saw nothing. No one around to have whispered. The closest person was a few miles up the line at McAdam. The voice . . . Millard shivered. It had sounded . . . just like Jimmy’s.
Only then did Millard realize that no ghost had spoken those two words. He had whispered them himself. He said it again. “Fort Smith.”
He turned and looked east, across the Staked Plains. It made sense, good sense. James had taken the big rifle and his uncle’s badge. He planned to follow Jimmy’s footsteps, take a job as a deputy U.S. marshal—as if the federal lawman or Judge Isaac Parker would hire a fool-headed, strong-willed seventeen-year-old kid.
Millard shook his head. Jimmy wasn’t that crazy. He would have waited for the next southbound, not traipse off across the Llano Estacado. The rains could have washed away the tracks that would have shown James hopping another southbound.
No. Millard sighed. His son had decided to walk. East.
Four hundred miles. With summer heating up the temps. Across the Indian Territory. Through the reservations of the Comanches, other old warrior tribes, and then through the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes. A country full of men who would cut a person’s throat for a nickel to buy a bottle of contraband beer.
Swearing again, Millard Mann stood and swung into the saddle, patted the blue roan’s neck, and turned the horse around. He rode east, pulling the pack mule behind him.
Along the north fork of the Red River
In the distance, Millard saw turkey buzzards circling, and his heart fell like a stone. His throat turned dry, but he refused to waste water. Slowly, he kicked the blue roan into a trot, and headed across the Staked Plains.
He found debris scattered all over the plains, a few dead animals, and two uprooted trees. Strips of canvas from what appeared to have come off a covered wagon. Sprigs from a clump of sage that had been driven, like a nail, into an old headboard that marked a grave, the year carved into the marker too faded to read.
A tornado had come through recently, and he might have marveled at what he had just seen. The twister had had enough force to drive a needle from a sagebrush into a practically petrified piece of wood. Yet the wood, marking a grave, remained untouched.
The circling carrion, however, blocked out anything to marvel at.
He rode on, knowing he was on his son’s trail. He found a few bits of sign, some tracks made by a not-too-heavy lad afoot. Every now and then, he found spots not wiped out from the storm, tracks made by James’s boots and the stock of that big Winchester .50-100-450 rifle he was toting with him.
Closer to the turkey buzzards, he left the trail and rode toward the edge of an arroyo. He caug
ht his breath, steeled himself for what he might find, and then dismounted, ground-reined the blue roan, and walked the last forty feet to peer into the arroyo.
Wolves were at the carcass, keeping the buzzards at bay, but the big beasts did not care about Millard Mann.
His heart eased, and he let out a heavy sigh. An ox. How long it had been dead, he didn’t know, but he doubted if it had been more than a few days. It was a big animal, and there were only six wolves tearing at its flesh.
He moved back to the horse and mule, mounted, and rode away a few feet, then stopped. “An ox? Here?” That struck him as peculiar, but a few miles back on the trail, he found something even stranger.
The tracks led east. Toward Indian Territory. The best he could tell, he was following a big wagon, a Murphy maybe, or something like that. It was carrying quite the load, pulled by four oxen. Three men were walking with the wagon, which left tracks so deep a blind man could have followed them. The tracks disappeared into the horizon, but for once Millard felt a little bit of relief.
Maybe James was still alive. Luck had found him. The boy was in the company of a couple teamsters, and Millard should be able to catch up with them . . . if not today, then certainly tomorrow.
Luck, he decided, had also smiled upon him. He would soon be reunited with his son.
Two miles later, the blue roan came up lame.
CHAPTER TEN
Deep Fork, Creek Country
It figured.
Virgil Flatt was with the big black man, Moses Hunter, keeping an eye on the prisoners in the three tumbleweed wagons back by the creek bed along with two other deputies. Malcolm Mallory had volunteered to ride up onto the hill behind the log cabin and keep an eye on the back door. Boston Graves had found a comfortable position behind a stand of live oaks, and brought out his long Remington Rolling Block rifle with the brass telescopic sight to keep everyone covered. Other deputies found other places, well protected, and cocked their Winchester repeaters, their Sharps carbines, or their Colt revolvers—which left Jackson Sixpersons to walk up to the door and serve the arrest warrants for Chebona Bula and his brother.
It was raining, too.
Sixpersons borrowed Deputy Marshal Tom Truluck’s orange slicker and stuck the Winchester ’87 underneath it, the stock under his left armpit. He found a good walking stick, gripped it in his left hand, and walked out of the woods, past the well, corral, and barn, faking a limp, coughing every now and then, and making a beeline for the cabin’s front door. Smoke wafted from the chimney. Water dripped of the soggy brim of the Cherokee’s black hat.
He stopped just in front of the cabin, not even climbing the two steps to get under the porch’s awning and out of the rain. Most cabins in Creek country had no steps.
“Hërs’cë!” he called out, speaking in the Creek language.
“Hello yourself!” came a reply in English from inside, followed by a question in Creek, which, loosely translated, and without the expletives meant What do you want?
Jackson Sixpersons’ answer in Creek, loosely translated and without the profanity, came out as To get out of the rain.
The man inside laughed.
Fitting, Sixpersons figured. Chebona Bula meant “Laughing Boy.”
The door squeaked as it opened only a hair, just wide enough for the barrel of a single-shot rifle to stick out.
“Come ahead, old man,” Chebona Bula said. “But without your stick.”
The wooden branch dropped into the mud, and Sixpersons, crouching, stepped out of the rain. He moved like a cripple. Carrying a Winchester shotgun under his arm certainly helped with that act; it wasn’t comfortable at all. He coughed, waiting.
The rifle barrel withdrew from the opening. Footsteps backed away. “Come ahead,” Chebona Bula said.
Jackson Sixpersons walked through the door, water cascading from the slicker and his hat and running through the cracks in the cabin’s wooden floor. Most cabins in Creek country had dirt floors, maybe stone. Not wood. Still, the inside felt toasty and the aroma of coffee smelled pleasant.
Chebona Bula had backed all the way to the far wall, training the rifle on Sixpersons, who lifted his left hand, removed the soaking black hat, and hung it on an antler rack beside the door. The fire in the stone fireplace invited him, and he nodded at it. “Mind if I get warm?”
Chebona Bula laughed. “It’ll be mighty hot for you real soon.” The Creek smiled as he added, “Jackson Sixpersons.”
Something caught Sixpersons’ attention near his feet. Without lowering his head, he quickly studied the floor and looked back up into the Indian’s smiling face. “You and your brother killed two men at the Seminole Agency. One was a white man.”
Chebona Bula laughed again.
Sixpersons spoke in Creek. “They have asked me to deliver the arrest warrants to you. And request that you submit to the proper authorities to be delivered to Fort Smith where you will be tried.” Then he switched to English. “And convicted. And hanged. Where’s your brother? I have a warrant for him, too.”
Chebona Bula laughed.
Of course, Jackson Sixpersons knew where the Creek’s brother was. He had seen the figure through the cracks in the floor’s wooden planks. That’s why the cabin had steps. A cellar. Or, at least, a hiding place.
“May I remove my slicker?” Sixpersons asked, sliding over to his left just a hair.
“No.” Chebona Bula said in English, and he no longer laughed.
“Very well.” Letting the Winchester slide down his arm and chest, the Cherokee marshal slipped his finger into the trigger guard, and fired the shotgun into the floor.
The man hiding beneath the floor screamed in agony while Sixpersons moved to his right, feeling the blast from Chebona Bula’s single-shot rifle as the bullet slammed into the door.
Sixpersons worked the lever, brought the twelve-gauge up, and ducked as Chebona Bula threw the empty rifle at him like a boomerang. It slammed against a closed shutter, and dropped to the floor. The Creek jerked a Bowie knife from a sheath on his left hip, and charged.
Again, the shotgun spoke, and Chebona Bula was catapulted back against the log walls, sliding to the floor, both of his shins a bloody mess.
Almost immediately, Sixpersons fell to the floor, crawling toward the front door as bullets thudded into the cabin’s walls. Most of the bullets didn’t penetrate, but the deputy marshals with the .50-caliber Sharps managed to blow pretty big holes through the shutters, and those slugs slammed into the wall over Chebona Bula’s head.
When the firing ceased, Sixpersons cursed his comrades in Cherokee, and then yelled in English. “Stop shooting, you fools! I have Chebona Bula and his brother!”
Virgil Flatt managed to patch up Chebona Bula’s mangled legs, though Sixpersons figured the left leg would get cut off by some sawbones when the prisoners reached Fort Smith. Chebona Bula’s brother, Harjo, had fared a little better, the thick slabs of pine absorbing most of the buckshot before the other pellets tore off his left ear, and split his cheek.
The prisoners whimpered. No longer did either one of them laugh.
“Good job, Jack!” Boston Graves said.
Sixpersons reloaded the Winchester. He despised anyone who called him Jack, but he had despised Boston Graves long before that.
Graves continued. “The Seminoles have offered a big reward on those two Creeks. Looks like we’ll collect a bonus once we get them to Fort Smith.”
Sixpersons paused, then fed the last shell into the Winchester’s chamber. “You’re taking them to jail?”
“Might as well. One of the tumbleweed wagon’s already full, and those two Creeks you shot up need medical attention. We’ll stop at the doctor in Eufaula, let that Indian medicine man patch them up as best as he can, then go on to the jail. I’ll give you your share of the reward if you get back.”
If. Sometimes, Sixpersons thought being an outlaw would be better than being a deputy. An outlaw could kill a man like Boston Graves.
“You want
me to stay out here then?” Sixpersons knew the answer. After all, Marshal Crump had said that Graves would be the lead marshal. The Cherokee just wanted to hear Boston Graves say it.
Graves didn’t disappoint. “There are plenty of warrants left to be served.”
“Including those naming Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell.”
Graves sniggered. “I don’t think you’ll see them soon. Else, I’d stay. But you have two more tumbleweed wagons, and a handful of deputies if they do. Good luck, Jack.”
Southeast of McAdam, Texas
Dust rose from the Llano Estacado into the pale blue sky, getting closer to Millard Mann as he led the lame horse and the pack mule. He had seen the dust for some time—one rider. Heading toward him. Millard kept walking, but had pulled the One of One Thousand from the scabbard, and when the lone rider came into view, he eared back the hammer.
The blue roan whinnied a greeting at the approaching horse, which slowed down. Dust swallowed horse and rider, yet only briefly, as the rider reined up. When the dust passed, the rider’s hand rose, and he eased the horse into a slow walk, keeping right hand up in a friendly greeting and to keep his hand away from any weapon.
Millard Mann did not lower the hammer on the. 32-caliber rifle.
“Halloooooo!” the rider called when he was closer, still with his hand up. He wore a linen duster, had high black stovepipe boots, chaps, and a blue shirt. The rider’s hat was black; so was his horse, a good Texas pony. Something glimmered on his vest.
Millard relaxed just a hair. “Come ahead! I’m friendly.”
“You’re holding a rifle or carbine!”
“I’m also cautious.”
The rider chuckled. “I don’t blame you, stranger.” He kicked the horse into a fast walk, still keeping the right hand up.
Millard could see that he wore a holster, which carried a pistol with an ivory-handled butt. The badge on the man’s vest was a badge he had seen many times in Texas over the past twenty years.
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