Indian Territory 3

by Patrick E. Andrews

  “Sure. But how would Riley know about that idea?”

  Tom ignored the question. He was plainly upset. “I think there’s a fox in our henhouse, boy,” Tom said. “Zeb Black didn’t just accidental show up in town either. Somebody sent for him. I’ll bet my last Yankee dollar on that. And, like I said, this here hay fire has me wondering too.”

  “I don’t agree with that line of logic in the slightest,” Martin said. “Everyone around us is completely trustworthy. Why would any of our friends or acquaintances be on Riley’s side?”

  “Were we or were we not talking about using this hay for bullet-proofing the front o’ the newspaper?” Martin shook his head. “You’re an imaginative fellow, Tom.”

  “I sure as hell am,” Tom admitted. “And it’s kept me alive through a damn war and a few gunfights. But we can still fortify the building.”

  “How?” Martin asked.

  “Look at them burlap bags laying over there,” Tom said. “We can shovel some dirt in ’em and use ’em instead o’ hay bales. If we start working now, we can have enough by noon. And nobody will know about it until we drive up in the wagon and unload them things.”

  “Let’s get to work, then,” Martin said.

  The two went back to Gus and J. T. When they explained what they were going to do, Gus volunteered to help too. “I don’t feel like going home and I ain’t in no mood for nothing else. I might as well get completely wore out. That’s the onliest way I’ll sleep tonight.”

  The four men set to work. They labored at the task for two hours until Tom warranted they had enough filled to do the job. After loading the bags onto Gus’s wagon, they drove down Main Street to the Sentinel’s office. There, in broad daylight with a good portion of the population looking on in curiosity, the newspaper building was properly fortified for easier defense.

  Across the street, up in the Silk Garter, Culhane Riley and Jake Donner watched the task being performed. Jake wasn’t happy. “The try with Zeb Black didn’t work, and it looks like we just wasted time last night too, boss.”

  But Riley was strangely composed. “In that case, Jake,” he said calmly, “we shall simply make our efforts much more vigorous and deadly.”

  “Sure, boss,” Jake said with a crooked grin. “I keep forgetting about our ol’ ace in the hole.”

  Twenty-Four

  The three men groaned with the effort as they wrestled the big press back to an upright position. It tipped gradually, then slammed down on all four of its cast-iron legs as Martin Blazer, Tom Deacon, and J. T. Buchanan jumped back out of the way.

  “Whew!” Martin gasped. “I’m glad we started with the heaviest object.”

  “If that thing had landed on one of our feet, it’d have smashed it flatter’n a stomped-on horny toad,” J. T. said. “You keep some mighty hefty, stuff around this business o’ your’n.” He began gathering up the scraps of paper scattered around the floor. “At least the rest o’ this stuff won’t break nobody’s bones.”

  Tom pointed to the mess around the cabinets. “What’s all that?”

  “Type,” Martin answered. “Pied type, that is. I pied a case when I was a printer’s devil. That means I spilled it, in layman’s terms. At any rate, I was mortified by doing something so incredibly clumsy and stupid. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d be relaying a case because someone deliberately dumped it on the floor.”

  Tom knelt down and picked up one of the small pieces. “This is a letter, ain’t it?”

  “It sure is,” Martin said. “I have them for every letter in the alphabet, each number, and all the punctuation marks. And not in just one style or size either. There are gothics, roman, italic—”

  “Whoa!” Tom said. “That don’t mean nothing to me. Anyhow, this here is an R and it’s backward.”

  “But, my friend, when you ink it and apply it to paper, thus,” Martin said, taking the piece of type. He pushed it against an inked brayer. “J. T., hand me a piece of paper, please.”

  “Sure, boy.”

  Martin pressed the type to the paper and gave it to Tom. “See?”

  Tom looked at the letter now properly printed. “Oh, yeah. That makes sense, I reckon.”

  “That’s what I do with whole pages of type I put on the press,” Martin said. He sighed. “But before I can get back to honest printing, I must gather up all this and redistribute it to its proper cases. With luck, I’ll have enough done to put out another edition tomorrow.”

  “I’ve been thinking on that,” J. T. said. “The minute you leave here, that son of a bitch Riley is gonna come over here again and wreck ever’thing.”

  “That’s been heavy on my mind too,” Tom said. “I figger it best that me and you bunk out here, Martin. We’ll have to stand watches, which means interrupted sleep at night.”

  “You’re both right,” Martin said. “It looks like we’ll be camping right on the battlefield from now on.”

  “By the way,” Tom said. “You was serious about packing iron, weren’t you?”

  Martin nodded. “You bet! I’ve learned my lesson in that particular arena.”

  “That’s real good, Martin,” J. T. said. “I’ve picked out another doodad to go with that Colt I told you about. There’s also a Winchester carbine down at the store for you. Between that and your pistol, you ought to add quite a bit to Tom’s firepower.”

  “I agree,” Martin said. He rubbed his hands together. “Well, gentlemen! The sooner we straighten this all up, the sooner the Sentinel will be reborn!”

  ~*~

  Forty-eight hours after the fire, a special edition of the Lighthorse Creek Sentinel was printed and distributed around the town. Martin had wanted to openly accuse Culhane Riley of arson in the hay-yard fire, but Tom argued against it.

  “In the first place, think o’ Gus Brunswick,” he said. “He’s gonna turn hisself inside out if he figgers the fire wasn’t a accident. You ain’t got a lot o’ support from anybody else. You’ll have even less ifn it dawns on ’em that siding with you is a danger. Especially if they figger out we got somebody blabbing to Riley on us.”

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t believe that for an instant.”

  “Believe it or not, boy,” Tom said coldly, “you’d best pull back a little bit.”

  Martin followed Tom’s advice, writing up the story on the fire as a feature on how neighborly the good people of Lighthorse Creek could be when one of their own kind was in trouble. There was an editorial against Culhane Riley, but it was rather tame in comparison with the others.

  After the edition had hit the streets, Doctor Cranston made an appearance at the front entrance of the newspaper office. He knocked on the door, and Tom opened it to let him enter.

  The physician walked around the dirt-filled burlap bags that had been stacked up to chest level at the front of the building. “Looks like you fellows could stand off an army if you had to,” he remarked. He sniffed the air. “And, by God, I smell coffee!”

  Martin’s voice could be heard from the rear of the building. “You certainly do. Come on back, Lewis. We’ve got nearly all the comforts of home.” The doctor accepted the invitation. When he joined Martin he found some old furniture and a table holding some silverware and dishes. A pot of coffee boiled on the stove. He nodded his head in approval. “Now, where did you get all this stuff?”

  “From J. T.’s store,” Martin explained. “He had some unsold merchandise packed away there. Some of it was even traded to him for goods by folks that didn’t have any cash money.”

  Tom joined them. “I think I could use a cup of that coffee myself.”

  “How have things been?” Doctor Cranston asked while Martin served them steaming tin cups of the brew.

  “Pretty quiet,” Tom said. “There ain’t been a stir from across the street.”

  “Yes,” Martin agreed. “But I can feel Culhane Riley’s eyes boring down on us from his office in the Silk Garter.”

  “Speaking of Riley,” Cranston said, waving
a copy of the Sentinel at Martin. “You seem to have cooled your attacks on him.”

  Martin nodded. “Yes. I’ve changed my mind about several things in the past few days. And not just this ...” He patted the pistol he carried in the holster on his hip. “But I’ve completely changed my strategy in the fight against Riley.”

  Cranston was interested. He settled down on a nearby chair, and took a sip of coffee. “Now, that should prove engrossing, young Mr. Blazer. Please enlighten me.”

  “This is certainly no reflection on Tom,” Martin said. “In fact, a lot of it is his idea.”

  “I’ve picked up a few legal points during my years backing the law,” Tom said modestly. “I just spoke my mind.”

  Cranston smiled at him. “And, as usual, your counsel was invaluable, correct?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Tom said.

  “I do know,” Martin said. “And he was a great help.”

  “So?” Cranston remarked. “What are you going to do?”

  “The first thing I plan to do is to cancel the big project of holding elections and forming a city government,” Martin said. “It would be cumbersome and, as Tom pointed out, the legality might come under fire if Riley decided to fight it more elegantly later on.”

  “You mean in a courtroom?” Cranston inquired in a surprised tone.

  “That’s right,” Martin said. “Tom pointed out that more than one gun boss has turned sharper and hired a fancy lawyer when certain situations became more sophisticated. Riley could bring suit against a self-proclaimed city government in the Indian Territory that could drag through the courts for years. Even the judiciary aren’t certain on some points of law where the Five Civilized Tribes are concerned. Putting that aside, frontier towns that have sprung up without formalized charters are open for all sorts of legal shenanigans. Lighthorse Creek can be numbered among these.”

  “That’s right,” Tom said. “That actually happened down in Texas when a carpetbagger fought a citizens’ group formed against unfair taxation and repossession of property. I don’t think the case has been settled yet, and the son of a bitch is still having his own way in the meantime.”

  Cranston nodded his understanding. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Go to a government that is already pretty well established,” Martin said, grinning. “The United States federal government.”

  “Just what do you mean?” Cranston asked.

  “I am going to gather signatures and petition the federal court in Fort Smith to send U.S. marshals into Lighthouse Creek to regain control of the area from lawless elements,” Martin said. “In fact, those are nearly the exact words I shall use.”

  “It seems a good plan,” Cranston conceded. “But will you get the response you desire?”

  “Why not?” Martin said. “The people of Dixie, Indian Territory, took that exact action back in ’72. More than a dozen marshals arrived on the scene there with blank warrants and a federal directive to do more than drive the criminal element away. They were required to arrest them and bring them to trial at Fort Smith.”

  “Which they did,” Tom added, “with one hundred percent convictions. And there was a few of them assholes that got hung to boot.”

  “I was pigheaded enough to want to do it all on my own,” Martin admitted. “But the fire at Gus Brunswick’s hay-yard showed me that I would be instrumental in a lot of innocent suffering if I stuck to my original plan.”

  “The arrival of U.S. officers is going to cause quite a stir,” Cranston remarked, finishing his coffee.

  “Even then it won’t be easy,” Tom Deacon said. “There’s still blood waiting to be shed.”

  “God!” Cranston said. “Is there no peace in the world?”

  “Not in this one, Lewis,” Martin answered.

  Twenty-Five

  The fire acted to galvanize the citizenry of Lighthorse Creek. There had been no recent natural disasters such as tornados or floods in the area to provide a situation for the people to come to the aid of one of their own. Because of this, certain individuals and groups had grown apart from their neighbors as friendships, churches, and other dividing aspects came into their lives.

  However, the long, dirty hours spent battling the flames in Gus Brunswick’s hay yard renewed the people’s concern for each other. It made each person feel that he was not alone in the world. Each knew that if he suffered hardship or personal disaster, there were others ready and willing to lend a hand to ease the burden and share the toil.

  Gun Brunswick was sincerely and deeply grateful to everyone in the community. While his blacksmith business was still going strong, the financial loss of the other part of his commercial concern was lessened in a spiritual way by the knowledge that his friends and neighbors —along with some folks who were nearly strangers —had stepped forward to help him out in a terrible hour of need.

  A couple of days after the fire, Gus went from house to house in the town to personally thank those who had been there that night. His words were simple but direct, the kind that those sort of pioneer folks understood so well:

  “I’m obliged for your kindness to me t’other night.”

  Most of the people received the thanks with some awkwardness and modesty, but they knew what feelings were nestled deep in Gus’s heart. Their universal reply was sincere and heartfelt:

  “Glad to lend a hand.”

  Gus saved his closest friends to be the last he sought out. He called on Martin Blazer, Earl Tobey, Lars Halversen, Doctor Lewis Cranston, and lastly J. T. Buchanan.

  He stood outside the general store until there were no customers inside. It was like Gus not to

  want to interfere in another man’s business. He

  stepped through the door, his heavy boots clomping on the floorboards. “Howdy, J. T.

  J. T., working on a catalog order, looked up from the counter. “Howdy, Gus. How’re you today?”

  “Pretty good, I reckon,” Gus answered. He walked up to his friend. “Weather’s getting better, ain’t it?”

  “Yep,” J. T. answered. “It’s fairing off nice now.”

  “I just wanted to say I’m obliged for your help at the fire,” Gus said.

  “Glad to lend a hand,” J. T. said. “I wish we

  could’ve saved the baler and more of the hay, though.”

  Gus shrugged. “I suppose I ought to be glad nobody was hurt. But I admit the loss of that baler hurts. It cost me a pretty penny, and there was real profit to be made on it.”

  “Yep,” J. T. said. “You’d at least have made that sale to Martin.”

  “Martin? He wanted some bales of hay?” Gus asked.

  “Sure. To use to fortify the front of his office,’ J. T. said. “Didn’t Doc Cranston set it up? He was supposed to talk to you about it.”

  Gus shook his head. “He never said nothing to me.”

  “It don’t matter. We filled up some burlap bags with dirt,” J. T. said. “I reckon they’ll work just as well.”

  “Me and the missus are praying that Martin gets whatever it is he’s looking for in town here,” Gus said.

  “Me too. Him and Abbie is getting hitched on the same day the Tobey girl is,” J. T. said. “I just hope that when the preacher gets to town, he’s a real one.”

  Gus shook his head. “Wasn’t that a hell of a note? Imagine sending a gunman dressed like a reverend to shoot somebody. Martin’s right about one thing. Riley is one mean son of a bitch.”

  “It’s all a terrible thing,” J. T. said.

  “I got to get back to the smithy,” Gus said. “Again, let me say I’m obliged for your help the other night.”

  “Sure.”

  J. T. went back to his catalog list. Normally, Abbie tended to such things, but she’d gotten behind in her housework. The kitchen, badly dirtied in the gunfight between Tom Deacon and the bogus preacher, had never quite been put right. Abbie decided to take the morning off from the store to really clean up their residence, and give the ho
use the attention it badly needed.

  The Buchanan home had been getting a lot more use. Not only had the various meetings that Martin called caused an extra amount of tracking in and out, but with both him and Tom Deacon living there, the floors, furniture, and even doors were in constant service.

  Abbie attacked her chores that morning. The first thing was a general straightening out in the living room and dining room. Rugs would have to be beaten, but that was man’s work. The young woman fully intended to have her father, fiancé, or the town’s sheriff handle that muscle-cramping chore.

  She dusted all the furniture and exchanged soiled doilies for fresh ones to make a temporary start that would at least provide a nice place to receive callers. After that, she turned her attention to the room that really needed a going-over—the kitchen.

  A scrubbing brush and lye soap hit the counters. Grease and food spills, made doubly worse by the soot from the wrecked stove, were in abundance there. Abbie strained as her efforts swept through the stains, leaving a clean, strong-smelling surface after a heavy rinse with water that followed the scouring.

  From there she tackled the stove. J. T. had been nagged to cleaning out the interior wood-burning contraption’s oven, but the exterior still needed some determined attention.

  Abbie went over it once. There was barely any perceivable difference. She brushed at the wisp of auburn hair that escaped from the kerchief around her head, then prepared to renew the attack.

  But that was as far as she got.

  The chloroform-soaked rag was forced over her face. Her initial alarm and fear quickly subsided as the chemical took effect and she passed into unconsciousness.

  Jake Donner lowered her to the floor and threw the cloth over in the corner of the kitchen. “Whew! That stuff is powerful.”

  Tad Perkins, acting as lookout at the door, peered inside. “You got her, huh?”

  “Yeah. Bring in that blanket,” Jake said. “And tell them others to keep a sharp eye out.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tad said. He carried the cover awkwardly with his injured arm. “Ever’thing’s under control.”