The Independence Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  “I check it at the start of every shift,” Poe said.

  “Check it again, Spence. Just don’t let nobody see you doing it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t go waving it around unless I need you to. These boys ain’t just some cowpokes off the trail.”

  “I know that.”

  “But if you have to use the scattergun, be goddamned sure you make it count.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Sterling Tippit tied up his blood bay mare outside the Red Dog, leaving slack enough for her to reach the water trough sitting below the hitching rail. He looked around once more at what there was of Devil’s Crossing—precious little, even in the near dark—then unhooked the hammer thong that kept his Colt Dragoon revolver holstered and mounted the wooden sidewalk, stepping to the barroom’s batwing doors.

  Before he shouldered through them, Tippit had a look around inside. Four shifty-looking fellows playing cards out near the middle of the room, each wearing knives and pistols on their belts. They looked like he imagined Comancheros should, although Tippit had never seen one in the flesh before. Two of them Mexicans, the others scruffy whites who could have used a long hot bath.

  Two other patrons stood together at the bar, neither with any weapons showing, and they didn’t strike Tippit as outlaw types. Too old, for one thing, and their clothes, while threadbare, didn’t have the ingrained dirt of someone living on the dodge. Behind the bar, a tall, broad, younger man was wiping whiskey glasses with a cloth that didn’t offer much prospect of cleaning them.

  Tippit went in and caught the four cardplayers eyeing him while he tried not to let them catch him noticing. He passed their table without glancing down at anybody’s cards or pile of coins, knowing how easy it could be to give offense in a strange town without intending to.

  He stepped up to the bar, still feeling hostile eyes upon him, leaving two or three arm’s lengths between himself and the two older fellows who were nursing beers. The bartender approached him, putting on a practiced smile, and asked Tippit, “Whiskey or beer?”

  Scanning the backbar’s row of bottles on display, he said, “Bourbon. The Old Grand-Dad.”

  “One Grand-dad coming up.”

  The barkeep poured his shot. Said, “I don’t recollect you coming in before, mister.”

  “First time in town,” Tippit replied. “I was supposed to meet somebody here, but I don’t see him.”

  “Your friend got a name?”

  Tippit tossed out the first that came to him. “Bliss Mossman. Claims to be a cattle buyer.”

  “Can’t say I’m familiar with him, but we get all kinds.”

  “Slow night?” asked Tippit.

  “Not too bad. We’ve got more guys up in the cribs, but they come in together. I can tell you none of ’em are livestock dealers.”

  “Guess I’ll wait a spell and hope I didn’t waste the trip,” Tippit replied. He quaffed his bourbon down and tapped his empty shot glass on the bar. “Maybe I’d better have another one to keep that company.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Lubie, you ever seen that guy before?” Ardil McManus asked his fellow Comanchero, facing him across a table strewn with coins.

  Grant stared a hole into the new arrival’s back, then answered, “Not that I can recollect.”

  “How come you no ask either one of us?” asked José Calderón.

  “Because he ain’t a Mex,” Ardil replied dismissively.

  José sneered at him. “You think we couldn’t know a gringo?”

  “We know you, cabrón,” Juanito said, making his brother laugh. “You gonna bet or check, pendejo?”

  Peering at his cards through a whiskey haze, McManus said, “I’ll see your dime and raise a nickel. How’d that be, maricón?”

  “Is fine with me,” Juanito said, and pushed five pennies out into the pot.

  “That’s fifteen cents to you, José,” McManus said.

  “I see you,” José answered as he tossed a nickel out.

  “Lubie?” McManus prodded. “Are you staying in or folding?”

  “I’ll stay for a nickel.” Once he’d pushed that over, Grant pulled one card from his hand and dropped it facedown on the table. “And I’ll take one card.”

  “Trying to fill a straight or flush?” McManus goaded him.

  “Never you mind.”

  “One card it is,” said Ardis, skimming one across the table.

  Lubie Grant retrieved it, blinked at what it showed him. “Raise another dime,” he said.

  “I think you bluffing,” said Juanito, on Grant’s left, but then he folded anyway.

  “Too rich for my blood,” Ardil told the table. “Dealer folds.”

  “Chick-chick-chick,” José taunted him.

  “Keep chirping birdman,” Ardis said. “I’d rather spend what I got left to get another poke upstairs.”

  “Do the girls charge you extra?” asked Juanito.

  “Maybe puts a sack over his head,” José chimed in.

  “I’ll have you know that little Margarita calls me ‘raging bull.’”

  Juanito blinked at him, feigning surprise, McManus thought. “She call you toro furioso?” he inquired.

  “Naw,” Ardil replied. “It sounded more like culo gordo.”

  Both brothers convulsed with laughter over that, and even Lubie Grant was smiling at him from across the poker table. “What?” Ardil demanded.

  “Culo gordo means ‘fat ass,’” Juanito told him. “You should learn more Spanish, eh?”

  McManus bolted to his feet with fists clenched. “Goddamn sons of bitches!” he exploded.

  “Whoa, now!” Lubie Grant protested. “Let’s leave mothers outta this, Fat Ass.”

  Ardil was going for his pistol when he saw Grant’s Colt Peacemaker—stolen off a dead man in Nogales eight months previously—pointed at his navel.

  “Simmer down now, Ardil,” Lubie urged him. “If you need a beer to cool you off, I’ll stand you to it. Otherwise, I’ll want to see how fast you are.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Art Catlin was in place behind the Red Dog by the time Ardil ordered his beer. There were no lamps out back to pierce the night’s shadows on that side of Devil’s Crossing, but he welcomed darkness as an aide to keeping him alive.

  The moment anybody spotted him, Catlin and their entire mission would be at risk.

  First thing upon arriving at his post, he’d tried the joint’s back door and found it wasn’t locked. Various sounds were audible inside, male voices for the most part, but a woman’s conversation came from an open window on the Red Dog’s second floor. Art couldn’t make out any details, but took it for the reassuring patter that a working girl learned early on in her career, to keep her patrons satisfied and coming back for more.

  From where he stood, holding his Henry rifle at the ready, Catlin couldn’t say who was inside the Red Dog or how many of them there might be. The place was large enough to host a dozen men and more downstairs, but he had no idea about the second-story cribs, how many hookers were in residence, or whether they had customers lined up, waiting to take a turn.

  One problem Art saw: there was an outhouse about twenty paces from the Red Dog’s back door, meaning that anyone inside might have a hurry call at any time, skedaddling to get their business done without being caught short. Nothing that Art could do about it but stand pat and be prepared for trouble if a runner spotted him.

  And in that case . . . what?

  Another complication was the dry-goods shop next door to the saloon. It was a single-story building with the store in front and living quarters in the rear, where pale lamplight beamed through a windowpane of rippled glass. Catlin had tried to peer inside but couldn’t manage it, though he had smelled food cooking, its
aroma wafting from a kitchen stovepipe.

  Listening outside the shop’s back door, he’d tried to learn if the proprietor had family or not, but all was silent from within, except faint scraping sounds that might have been a spatula stirring the contents of a skillet.

  Add that unknown person to potential users of the Red Dog’s outhouse, and it doubled Catlin’s risk. There was a narrow walkway between the store and the saloon, which would require pedestrians to move in single file, and that was yet another problem. Anyone could cross the street out front and wind up facing open prairie land behind the Red Dog and its neighbor.

  Every passing minute made Art like the setup less.

  And there was nothing he could do about it now but stand and wait for trouble, or a signal from his foreman to abort the hunt.

  * * *

  * * *

  Melvin Halstead was drunk. Not falling-down drunk, but his mind was hazy from the booze he’d put away downstairs.

  That was a state Halstead preferred to facing life cold sober, when his temper often got the better of him and he wound up doing stupid things that got him into trouble—sometimes even into jail.

  That was one good thing about riding with Oren Dempsey’s Comancheros, as he’d done for going on two years now. There was usually liquor within easy reach, either from dives like the Red Dog, or lifted from the stock they sold to redskins on the sly, along with guns and ammunition, mirrors, bolts of brightly colored cloth, and any kind of worthless gewgaws they could lay hands on and peddle to the natives on their reservations.

  Halstead didn’t think about what happened once the braves got liquored up and started looting homesteads, killing as they went. That wasn’t his fault, any more than bartenders in his world took responsibility for patrons stumbling around and suffering an injury because they couldn’t walk or see straight.

  That was life, and if their outfit wasn’t selling to the Indians, somebody else would move in, taking up the slack. Mel Halstead thought it might as well be him.

  Tonight—their last night for a while in Devil’s Crossing, till they managed to accumulate more loot—Halstead sat watching dreamily while redheaded Lurleen finished undressing by lamplight. Downstairs in the bar, she’d worn a narrow skirt and ruffled bodice, lace around its low-cut neckline, but it didn’t take her long to shed those garments once their talk of business was concluded. Halstead was relieved that Lurleen didn’t wear a bustle, common among fancy ladies in the larger Kansas towns, but something Melvin personally couldn’t understand.

  Why would a woman strap on a device under her clothes that made her look deformed?

  Beneath her outer garments, Lurleen wore a corset meant to emphasize her narrow waist, with knee-length pantaloons below. Now, posing for him, she stopped halfway through a pirouette and said, “Untie me, Mallard?”

  Jesus, Melvin thought, but tipsy as he was, he didn’t bother to correct her.

  Hell, it wasn’t like they’d ever meet again.

  And there were times when having others garble up your name might even come in handy, if the law dogs started snuffling on their trail—which just might happen, after how they’d left that Nordski family when they were finished with them.

  Rising on unsteady legs, Halstead put those stark images out of his mind and smiled.

  “My pleasure, honeybunch,” he said.

  * * *

  * * *

  Zeb Steinmeier paced up and down behind the livery, burning off restless energy, holding his Volcanic rifle cocked and ready for whatever challenge might confront him on the dark outskirts of Devil’s Crossing.

  It was no coincidence that Steinmeier’s rifle bore a close resemblance to Winchester’s Model 1866, the famous “Yellow Boy.” Designed in 1855 by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, when they’d started their Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, it was a lever-action model with the same alloy receiver as the later Winchester. In fact, Oliver Winchester had bought into Volcanic, forcing its insolvency in 1856 and moving its facility some sixty miles from Norwich to New Haven, in Connecticut, where he had changed the name to Winchester Repeating Arms and started cashing in big-time.

  Zeb’s vintage rifle had a sixteen-inch barrel and held ten rounds of .44-caliber ammunition. His sidearm—also a Volcanic—sported a six-inch barrel and held six rounds of the same in a tubular magazine under its barrel, with a lever-action trigger guard that would have made it awkward in a stand-up fight, although it was all right for snakes and other pests encountered on a cattle drive.

  Tonight, Steinmeier hoped it wouldn’t slow him down so much it got him killed.

  He’d had a look inside the livery upon arrival, after first confirming that the hostler had gone home. Confirming twelve horses in stalls dozing or munching oats increased the odds that Sterling Tippit had it right about the Comancheros stopping off in town.

  And where else would they be tonight, besides the Red Dog, with its red-eye and its soiled doves ripe for plucking?

  Steinmeier’s job, aside from counting horses with their mismatched brands, involved waiting within earshot of the saloon until a ruckus started, at which time he was expected to pitch in. Exactly how that was supposed to work eluded him, but Tippit couldn’t pin the details down until he’d verified that they had found the Comancheros they were tracking.

  Now all Zeb had to do was make his way across the street and pray he wasn’t spotted in the process, touching off a fight before the other members of his makeshift posse were in place and ready to respond.

  It was shaping up to be the worst night of his life.

  And maybe the last.

  * * *

  * * *

  Sterling Tippit half turned from the Red Dog’s bar to face the poker table where an argument was swiftly heating up.

  One of the players, on his feet now, got it started, shouting at the others, “Goddamn sons of bitches!”

  “Whoa, now!” said the Comanchero facing him. “Let’s leave mothers outta this, Fat Ass.”

  The first man who had shouted reached for his six-gun, then froze, finding the other had him covered, pistol barely visible over the poker table’s edge.

  The faster of them warned his comrade, “Simmer down now, Ardil. If you need a beer to cool you off, I’ll stand you to it. Otherwise, I’ll want to see how fast you are.”

  Tippit eased a hand down toward his Colt Dragoon, then heard the barkeep cursing as he hauled a sawed-off shotgun out and held it braced against his hip, twin muzzles angled toward the ceiling overhead.

  “Enough of that!” the bartender called out. “This ain’t that kind of place!”

  That sounded like an outright lie to Tippit’s ears—what frontier bar and whorehouse hadn’t seen its share of brawls and shooting scrapes—but he was busy sliding to his left, giving the bartender an open field of fire.

  Across the room from where he stood, the other drinkers at the bar were backing away as well, Tippit saw a couple of the cardplayers—the Mexicans—swivel in his direction, eyeballing the barkeep and his scattergun.

  “You got no call to act like that, amigo,” one of them advised.

  “Best not to interfere,” the other said, smiling as if the incident was just business as usual.

  And maybe, Tippit thought, it was exactly that.

  The one who’d sounded off first—called Ardil by the Comanchero holding him at gunpoint—faced the bar now, glaring at the man behind it with the shotgun in his hands. “Be careful what you wish for,” he advised.

  “The only thing I want is for your friend to put his gun away,” the bartender replied. “You wanna fight, take it outside.”

  “You sprout a badge that I can’t see under that apron?” Ardil challenged him.

  “I speak for Mr. Kilgore,” the barkeep responded. “And this twelve-gauge speaks for me.”

  Behind Tippit, the dr
inkers that he took for locals were retreating, keeping to the barroom’s north wall as they hightailed for the exit. Tippit tried to make himself a little smaller, knowing that it was a waste of time.

  Instead, he took a chance and asked all four of them together, “Any chance you fellas might be Comancheros?”

  All four pairs of eyes were locked on Tippit now. The one called Ardil answered back, “The hell is that to you?”

  Glancing beyond them, where he’d noted movement at one of the Red Dog’s windows facing toward the street, Tippit saw someone standing on the sidewalk.

  Was that Zeb Steinmeier?”

  “Mister!” barked the standing poker player. “I asked you—”

  “I heard you,” Tippit interrupted him. “We spotted something on the trail a while back. Thought it might be Comancheros’ handiwork.”

  “And who in hell is ‘we’?” Ardil inquired.

  “Me and a couple friends,” Tippit replied, in the split second left before chaos erupted in the Red Dog’s gaming room.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The sound of rapid-fire gunshots drew Catlin through the Red Dog’s back door. He noted kitchen smells first thing, immediately followed by the reek of burned black powder.

  He was standing in a narrow hallway, facing toward the barroom twenty-five or thirty feet ahead, beyond a dangling screen of beaded strings. A shotgun blast nearly eclipsed the pop-pop sound of pistols, two or three at least.

  Somewhere upstairs, a woman squealed, cut off by a man’s voice telling her to shut her pie hole. Other men were cursing, and a bottle shattered, likely toppling from a nightstand, while the sound of running footsteps—bare and shod alike—evoked the mental image of a small stampede.

  Catlin had his Henry cocked and shouldered as he eased along the hallway, anxious to see what was happening in the saloon, but not in any hurry to catch lead himself.

  As if in answer to his thought, a stray slug clipped one of the beaded strings suspended at the far end of the corridor, and Catlin ducked instinctively before it tore into the right-hand wall and burrowed deep.