Crossing the Cimarron, Nathan found where the party had made camp the night before. There was a scattering of corn where they had grained the teams. While oxen ate grass, grain had to be hauled to feed the mules. From the tracks, Nathan decided the wagons weren’t more than two hours ahead of him. While common sense told him to avoid the mysterious caravan, his curiosity was prodding him to follow, to discover who these people were and what they were hauling. He rode on, but cautiously. While he had come upon this trail by chance, the men ahead—likely heavily armed—wouldn’t know that. His very presence could be taken as a threat. At best, he was subject to being greeted by drawn guns; at worst, by a hail of lead. When he sighted the wagons, two of them were on the farthest side of a dry arroyo, while the third was stalled midway. The left rear wheel was missing and four men were using a pole to hoist the rear of the wagon. Large flat stones had been gathered, and two men were stacking them beneath the axle to support the disabled wagon. Six of the men were unoccupied, and when one of them saw Nathan, he alerted the others. Two of them reached in through the canvas pucker of the wagon and came out with Winchesters, while the others waited, their hands near the butts of their Colts.
“I’m friendly,” Nathan shouted.
“Come on, then,” one of the strangers replied, “but keep your hands up an’ empty.”
Nathan reined up a few yards from the crippled wagon. He had made no hostile moves and he kept his silence. If this bunch took offense and challenged his right to be here, then it would confirm his suspicions of them. They all wore range clothes and not one of them had the look of a bullwhacker. His eyes on them, Nathan found himself comparing them to EI Gato’s renegades. Finally one of the men with a Winchester under his arm spoke.
“You been followin’ us. Why?”
“You talk like a man with a guilty conscience,” Nathan said. “I rode out of Dodge City this morning, and I crossed the Cimarron where you did. Until I saw your tracks, I didn’t know you existed.”
“You got a smart mouth, mister,” said another of the strangers. “I’ll give any fool the benefit of the doubt once. Now you ride on and keep ridin’. Show your face again, and you’ll be left for coyote and buzzard bait.”
The bunch looked rattlesnake-mean, and while Nathan had no doubt that whatever activity they were engaged in was illegal enough to hang them to the last man, his becoming involved would only succeed in getting him shot dead. Nathan rode carefully around the wagon, and might have escaped them, had they not left the six mules in harness. Cotton Blossom followed Nathan, but growling deep in his throat. One of the harnessed mules drew a wrong impression, and cow-kicking, narrowly missed Cotton Blossom. The hound reacted with a full-blown snarl that sounded like a half-starved wolf on the hunt, and the mules spooked. The wagon shot out of the arroyo, and when the wheel-less axle struck an upthrust of rock, the load shifted. The entire side of the wagon split, ripping canvas and snapping bows, as heavy wooden crates were flung to the ground. Each had been branded with the famous Winchester name, and while that was damning enough, some of the crates had split, each revealing a dozen brand new model seventy-threes, identical to the one that rode in Nathan’s saddle boot. The implication of what he had seen struck Nathan with the impact of a club, and he kicked the grulla into a fast gallop. But nine of his adversaries had saddled horses, and he could hear them thundering after him, and it was just a matter of time until they rode him down. He quickly learned, however, that they had no intention of wasting time on him, for they were shooting, and lead sang dangerously close, like angry bees. He reined up, taking his chances. They still might gun him down, but at least he had a chance. To run would be to die. Turning his horse, he faced them, giving up any thought of resisting. There was six of them, and they all had him covered.
“Unfasten that gun belt,” one of them said, “and do it slow. Then let it fall.”
Nathan did so.
“Wilson,” said the man giving the orders, “gather up that gun rig.” When Wilson had done so, the next command was directed at Nathan. “Dismount and start walking toward the wagons.”
Nathan dismounted and started walking, noting that two of the men were leading his horses. He had no doubt as to what they planned to do with him, the only question being when and how. A man rode on Nathan’s right and another on his left, and when he was near the wagons, the rider to his right buffaloed him with the muzzle of a Colt. His hat saved him, and while his head hurt like blazes, he was conscious. Facedown, he lay still. Moving would invite another blow, and they might crack his skull. He listened.
“Hell,” one voice complained, “why didn’t you just shoot him?”
“Because out here on the open plain, a shot can be heard for twenty miles,” another disgusted voice answered. “We’re likely to be stuck here for a while, and the last damn thing we need is to invite any more attention.”
“This peckerwood said he just come from Dodge,” a third voice cut in. “One of us could ride there and buy another wagon.”
“God, McCluskie,” a companion groaned, “was you born that stupid, or did you go to school and study for it? You’d have to take the teams with you, and you’d have the town follerin’ you back, hopin’ to learn how a man can lose a wagon—wheels, box, bows, and canvas—on flat Kansas plain.”
“Hell,” McCluskie replied, offended, “it was just an idea. You got a better one?”
“Shut up, both of you,” a third voice commanded. “We should have brought a fourth wagon, reducing each load instead of overloading three. The terrain south to the Canadian River is likely to become even rougher, and even if these remaining wagons can make it, can we afford to leave a third of our cargo behind?”
“Hell, no,” they shouted in a single voice.
“Then listen to me,” the commanding voice said. “We promised Quanah Parker and his Comanches four hundred and thirty-two repeating rifles and two hundred rounds for each, and we promised delivery on the north bank of the Canadian. Now there’s no way in hell we can live up to our end of the deal, because we got no way to get the Winchesters there. There ain’t but one damn thing we can do, and that’s to persuade the war whoops to come here for their guns.”
“That’s near a hundred miles,” somebody said. “Suppose they won’t come?”
“We’ll sweeten the pot,” said the commanding voice. “Instead of a hundred dollars per rifle, we’ll take seventy-five. And then there’s four cases of dynamite. Why get your ears shot off trying to breach the walls of a soldier fort, when you can just wait for darkness and blow it up?”
There was laughter. “By God, Burke,” McCluskie said admiringly, “you can’t be beat when it comes to figgerin’ things out.”
“Just keep that in mind, all of you,” said Burke. “We’re still a week away from our rendezvous with Quanah, and if they agree to come here for the rifles, that’s another two days. At best, you’ll be stuck here nine days. Gather all the rifles and ammunition from that ruined wagon and divide it between the other two. It’s maybe two miles back to the Cimarron, and you can make it that far, even with overloaded wagons. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“What are we s’posed to do with this pelado here on the ground?” McCluskie asked.
“Rope him to a wagon wheel,” said Burke. “He might be useful as a hostage if others come nosing around. If we haven’t found a use for him by the time I return, we’ll burn the wagons, and he’ll be in one of them. Quanah and his boys can take the blame for that. Now get busy gathering those cases of rifles and ammunition. I want to see all of it in the two remaining wagons before I ride out.”
“Git up, you.” McCluskie grunting, hoisting Nathan by his belt.
On hands and knees, Nathan pretended he was barely conscious. Despite his throbbing head, he was elated, for he might yet escape. With Burke away for nine days, those who waited would become bored, and bored men became careless. Nathan allowed McCluskie to hoist him to his feet and shove him toward one of the wagons.
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br /> “Now git down there with that wheel to yer back,” McCluskie demanded.
Nathan sat down, his back to the wagon wheel, and McCluskie bound his hands behind him, to the rim. Nathan could have shouted for joy, for instead of rope, the gunrunner was using heavy cord. After McCluskie had knotted the cord tight and left him alone, Nathan ran his fingers along the wagon wheel’s iron rim. As he had hoped, the continual pounding of the iron against rock had left jagged burrs sharp enough to cut the skin. Or the bonds that imprisoned a man.
“Now,” Burke said, when the crates from the disabled wagon had been forced into the remaining two, “take your time getting these wagons back to the Cimarron. Hide them in the brush along the river as best you can, and post a guard at each wagon from dusk to first light. If I ride back here and find that anything has happened to the teams, to either of the wagons, or to the rifles and ammunition, the hombre responsible will be almighty sorry.”
After he had ridden away, the others began readying the wagons for the drive back to the Cimarron. McCluskie loosed Nathan from the wagon wheel, but left his hands tied behind his back, forcing him to follow the wagons afoot. With Burke’s order in mind, both wagons were driven into heavy brush along the river. McCluskie forced Nathan down, his back to a wagon wheel, and tied him as before. McCluskie was a man of habit, for it was the first wheel to which Nathan had been bound, with the burrs along the edge of the iron tire.
Nathan’s bonds were loosed long enough for him to eat his supper of bacon, beans, and coffee, and then he was bound again. He could see the horses and mules—his animals among them—grazing on the opposite side of the river, apparently unguarded. His saddle and packsaddle lay beneath the wagon to which he was tied, and he had seen Burke throw his gun rig into the back of the wagon. When the camp settled down for the night, Nathan Stone would be ready....
CHAPTER 6
After supper, Nathan listened to the men talk, and decided they were more than just a band of renegades. Burke—the man who had ridden to meet Quanah Parker—obviously had connections and power. How else could he have negotiated a deal with a Comanche chief and raised the money for three wagonloads of weapons and ammunition? While Quanah Parker and his loyal band had wrought havoc with frontier forts, newspapers were reporting heavy losses. The Union army was slowly but surely crushing the Indian rebellion and as the threat diminished, more and more forces were being brought to bear against the youthful Comanche chief. This, Nathan decided, was do or die for Quanah Parker. With more than four hundred repeating rifles in the hands of the Comanches, they might hold their own indefinitely, even against the Union army. Somehow these weapons must be kept out of Comanche hands.
With every intention of freeing himself during the night, Nathan considered the possibility of riding back to Fort Dodge and laying the situation at the feet of the Union army, where it belonged. But the new post commander at Fort Dodge didn’t know Nathan Stone, and being a spit-and-polish type, would be unlikely to send soldiers anywhere upon the word of a civilian. Byron Silver, associated with the attorney general’s office in Washington, would take Nathan’s word, but Silver might not be in Washington. Even with Silver’s help, Nathan reflected, government’s wheels turned slowly. Discovering Nathan had escaped, the gunrunners could ill afford to remain on the Cimarron, waiting for Burke’s return.
Only one grim conclusion remained, and that was if the Winchesters and ammunition were to be kept out of Comanche hands, the responsibility was Nathan Stone’s. He began sawing the cords that bound his wrists against the ragged edge of the wheel’s iron tire, feeling the sharp burrs bite into his hands and wrists. A guard sat on the tongue of each wagon, and Nathan had to be careful lest his movement vibrate the wagon enough to disturb the guard. While the cord binding Nathan wasn’t so thick, McCluskie had used a triple thickness.
By the time Nathan had sawed his way through a third of his bonds, the blood from his many cuts had slicked his hands. The moon came up and set. Nathan heard someone coming and ceased his activity until a new guard had settled down and lighted his cigarette. There was no sound except the horses and mules cropping grass and the far-off cry of a coyote.
Free of his bonds, Nathan rubbed his arms and wrists, restoring the circulation. Needing time for what he must do, he decided against overpowering his guards, for he would risk waking the rest of the camp. Better to draw them all away, and nothing would accomplish that more swiftly than stampeding the horses and mules.
Nathan crept away from the wagons and toward the grazing horses and mules, moving slowly so as not to interrupt the grazing. Catching up his own horses, with an arm around the neck of each of the animals, he led them upriver far enough so that any disturbance wouldn’t spook them. Returning to camp, he found a dead, thorny branch that had dried to perfection, and this he took with him to where the horses and mules grazed. Mules being the easiest to spook, he swatted two of the animals with the thorny branch, and they brayed as though being slaughtered. Another swipe or two with the branch had every horse and mule on the run, hell-bent for election, down the Cimarron. Reaction within the camp was predictable.
“By God, somethin’ spooked the horses an’ mules.”
“Your fault, McCluskie. That drifter you tied to the wagon wheel got loose. Now he’s took his horses and run off the rest. After them, damn it. Burke will gut-shoot us all.”
Quickly Nathan retrieved his guns from the wagon and lit out on the run for his horses. He saddled and bridled the grulla, secured the packsaddle just enough to hold it in place, and looped the grulla’s reins and the lead rope of the packhorse around a wagon bow. The spooked horses and mules hadn’t run very far, and he could hear the shouts of the men. One of the boxes flung from the wrecked wagon had contained dynamite, and the box had split. He hoped the outlaws had gathered the loose dynamite and placed it in the rear of one of the wagons, where he could get to it, for he had little time and dared not strike a light. Nathan found no loose dynamite in the wagon to which he had been tied, and hurried on to the second. If he found no dynamite there, he would be forced to ride away, saving himself.
Reaching the first wagon, the first thing he touched was a tangle of fuse. Some of the dynamite had spilled out of the broken box, and Nathan gathered four sticks. While he had no experience with the explosive, he had seen it capped and fused during his months with the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. With his knife, he slashed off what he hoped was a five-minute length of fuse. He capped and fused one stick, binding it to a second stick with the fuse itself. Quickly he cut a second length of fuse, and using two more sticks of dynamite, prepared his charge for the second wagon. Lighting the first fuse and waiting to see that it caught, he ran to the second wagon and repeated the procedure.
With both fuses burning, knowing not how much time he had, Nathan set out upriver, leading his horses. A fleeting shadow ahead of him proved to be Cotton Blossom. Believing he was now far enough from the wagons, Nathan mounted the grulla, kicking the animal into a fast gallop. His mind had become a ticking clock and he gritted his teeth in anticipation of the explosions. But there were only the shouts of the men downriver. Thanks to darkness and his inexperience, he had improperly capped and fused the charges. Or perhaps the fuses had sputtered out. But no! He felt the concussion, the trembling of the earth before he heard the first explosion. The charges blew within seconds of one another, and as the cases of ammunition detonated on the heels of the dynamite, there was a conflagration such as Nathan Stone had never witnessed in his life. It dwarfed the hell that had been Gettysburg, as one after another, balls of flame shot into the heavens. It seemed the earth had been painted an eerie orange, and Nathan had to fight to hold his skittish horses. There were screams from the men who had gone after their stampeded horses, and Nathan wondered if they had been close enough to have been caught up in the explosions or perhaps felled by lead from detonated shells.
Slowly the pillars of fire in the night sky diminished and there was only silence. There was no doubt
in Nathan’s mind that the fiery aftermath of the blasts had been seen in Dodge, Wichita, parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Looking back, Nathan could see a fiery halo. Likely a prairie fire, which he regretted, but there had been no other way. He rode on, wondering what would be the fate of the men who gambled their lives on the illegal sale of guns and ammunition to Quanah Parker and his Comanches. For certain, the men who had survived the blasts wouldn’t be around when Burke returned. Nathan laughed.
“Well, Cotton Blossom, I reckon it’ll be a real test of old Burke’s negotiatin’ skills, when he brings them four hundred Comanches on a two-day ride for guns and shells that ain’t to be had. From what I hear, Comanches have scalped a man and shot his belly full of arrows for a whole lot less.”
Dodge City, Kansas. August 18, 1873
On the train from Kansas City, Byron Silver had arrived just before dark. In his coat pocket were orders from Washington to the post commander at Fort Dodge, who was to dispatch a company of soldiers to a destination to be named by Silver. While changing trains in Kansas City, Silver had heard about the Limbaugh trial. Knowing Joel Netherton, the division boss for the Kansas-Pacific, Silver had gotten the story from him. Netherton had been able to tell him only that Nathan Stone had ridden west. With that in mind, Silver went to the sheriffs office, inquiring about Nathan.
“He left here early this morning,” said Sheriff Harrington, “riding south.”
“He’s a longtime friend,” Silver said. “I’d have liked to see him again.”
“Buy my supper,” said Harrington slyly, “and I’ll tell you how that Limbaugh gal tried to shoot him, right here in Dodge.”
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