“Could you see anything of Abbie at all?” Martin asked.
Tom shook his head. “Nope. She’s inside, though. That’s prob’ly why the others ain’t enjoying the fresh air.”
“How many doors to the cabin?” Martin asked. “I could only see one on this side, but you can bet there’s another,” Tom answered. “They’d be damn fools if they only had one way in and out.”
“I always expected Riley to have more men than that,” Martin mused.
“I wouldn’t think so,” Tom told him. “Most of his gang is prob’ly just hired as he needs ’em to run whiskey and guns. But I reckon them in the cabin are some of his permanent men.”
“Any strategy?” Martin asked.
“It’s gonna have to be quick and simple,” Tom said. “I’ll hit one door, you two the other. C’mere.” He led them back to the edge of the tree line. “See that gully on the north? You two go on down it to them boulders and hold up. I’ll come in from over there.” He pointed to the south. “That buffalo grass will give me cover ’til I reach their backyard there.”
“Then what?” J. T. asked.
“I’ll fire a shot. Then we all got to yell out ‘Get down, Abbie,’ and go in shooting,” Tom replied. “Though I’d reckon that’s one gal with enough sense to get down low and stay there when bullets start flying.”
“Certainly she will,” Martin said.
“She’d better!” J. T. said.
“At any rate, there ain’t nothing else that can be did. If we really surprise ’em, we should catch ’em cold. And I don’t think they’re expecting us.”
“The plan is simple, yet direct enough to succeed if we’re bold,” Martin said. “Let’s go!”
“Wait for me to yell and shoot,” Tom said. “Then come a-running.”
The small group split up. Tom went out of the stand of trees on the opposite side to make sure he couldn’t be seen from the cabin. He made a wide circle before he took a well-concealed route down the knoll to the tall prairie grass below.
When he finally reached a good observation point some twenty yards from the hideout, he stopped to take another look. There was a small corral there. All the horses in it were saddled and bridled for instant getaway. The back of the place was more densely overgrown than the front. That was good in one way. It gave him more cover on his approach. But it also would slow him down and keep his field of vision severely limited until he was almost directly at the door. Tom licked his lips, taking a tight grip on the scattergun.
“Here I go,” he whispered to himself.
He continued forward for fifteen yards. The remaining five were done in the blind. He could see absolutely nothing of his destination or who might be there. He finally saw the wall of logs through an opening in the bushes. He continued to move cautiously forward.
“That’s as far as you go, asshole.”
Tom froze.
“Stand up, you sumbitch, and turn this a-way. Don’t bother to bring that scattergun up off the ground with you.”
Tom did as he was told. He saw Tad Perkins looking straight at him with a gaze as unwavering as the big Colt in his hand. “Looks like you kinda crawled into trouble,” Tad said, grinning. “A lot like a ol’ rattlesnake that gets caught in a skittish buffalo herd.”
Tom saw the hammer was pulled back.
“I owe you,” Tad said coldly. “And now you’ll pay dearly for all the trouble you brung down on me.” The gunshot detonated loudly in the afternoon air.
Tad’s face exploded outward and he stumbled forward a couple of steps before pitching face down on the ground.
Yule Quint stepped out of the cabin door. “You get yourself in the damndest situations, boy.” Tom was so surprised that he simply stared at his old friend for a couple of long seconds. Then his mind got to work. “Is there a girl — ”
More shooting erupted from the other side of the cabin. Yule turned that way. “Pals o’ yours?” Tom grabbed the scattergun. “Yeah.”
Yule leaped out of the door and pushed himself against the cabin wall. “Just in case you’re inter’sted, I’m on your side!”
“Good to hear,’ Tom said, taking the other side of the door “I’d hate like hell to shoot an ex-Confederate soljer. They’re too dumb to know enough to die.”
Yule laughed at the humor. “Looks like both us Johnny Rebs was smart enough to get away from that posse outta Simpson,” Yule said.
“Yeah,” Tom said. “And I got me a lawman’s job to boot.”
“I noticed the star,” Yule said. “So you come for the girl, huh?” Before Tom could answer, another man bolted out of the door, obviously heading for the horses. His eyes opened wide at the sight of Tad’s body. He glanced back in time to see Tom and Yule. He tried to snap off a hasty running shot, but a blast from the scattergun sent him sprawling in the same direction he was fleeing.
Yule grinned. “Your pards must be doing good on the other side.”
“They’re a coupla good shots,” Tom explained.
Yule stepped away from the wall and joined Tom, turning to face the door.
Jake Donner charged outside with the corral as his destination. When he spotted Yule, he instantaneously sized up the situation. He snarled and fired a shot at Yule. The slug hit dead center in his chest, the shock knocking him back into Tom. Both men went down in a tangled heap. By the time Tom freed himself and got back to his feet, Jake was mounted and pounding up the knoll to freedom in a wild gallop.
“Tom!” Martin called from inside.
“C’mon out,” Tom said. He turned his attention to Yule.
Martin and J. T., with Abbie between them, joined their friend. “How’re you doing, Miss Abbie?” Tom asked.
“Quite well, considering the circumstances,” Abbie answered.
“My little girl is a plucky one,” J. T. said. He glanced at Yule. “Who’s this son of a bitch?”
“An old pard of mine,” Tom explained. “He jumped in on our side.”
“Sorry about the name-calling,” J. T. said as he finally noticed Tom’s conspicuous concern for the shot man on the ground.
“Hey, Yule. Looky here to me,” Tom said as he knelt down beside his friend.
“Damn,” Yule said with a weak grin. “I had a feeling that joining this bunch would bring me bad luck.”
“How long you been with ’em?” Tom asked, trying to get his friend into a more comfortable position.
“A coupla weeks,” Yule answered. “For whiskey runs to the west. How’m I doing?”
“You’ll be fine,” Tom said. “Remember what I said. Johnny Rebs is too dumb to know enough to die when they’re shot. We’ll get you to a sawbones.” Then he remembered that Doctor Cranston had committed suicide.
“I’m feeling poorly fast,” Yule said. His face had paled considerably in the previous moments.
“Let’s have a look.” Tom gently opened the shirt. The wound wasn’t remarkable. With luck, he might even be able to treat it himself. “This is gonna hurt a little.” He slipped his arms under Yule and rolled him over on his side as gently as possible.
Abbie gasped and turned away. Martin and J. T. led her around the cabin, up toward the horses.
Tom pulled Yule back face-up. The exit wound was so big he could have stuck both fists into it. Yule’s life’s blood was draining away into the dirt. The hemorrhaging was so intense that a scarlet pool an inch deep had formed around Yule’s shoulders.
“We’ll rig up a travois and take you back to town.”
Yule’s eyes were clouded over. “I’m dying.”
“Don’t be so goddamned dumb!’
“It don’t pain much, though,” Yule said. He gasped a little. The shock was settling in. “I thought that when I went, it would be quick. I always figgered checking out slow would be real hurtful. It really ain’t too bad, Tom.”
Tom felt an overwhelming surge of sadness over the loss of a man who had shared everything from the dangers of battle to a half-full canteen of lukewarm wate
r with him.
“I always made my own trouble, didn’t I, Tom?”
“Yeah.”
Yule stopped speaking then. He swallowed weakly, then spent the next few minutes breathing in short gasps. When he went, he simply ceased to be. One moment he was alive. The next he was dead. Tom picked up the bloody, messy corpse and carried it inside the cabin. He laid Yule down on one of the crude bunks along the wall.
“I’ll be back directly to bury you, of pard,” Tom said. “But first I gotta deal with Culhane Riley.” He quickly left to join the others waiting up on the hill.
Twenty-Eight
Jake Donner pulled his horse to a dust-scattering halt. He leaped from the saddle and carelessly looped the reins around the hitching rail before running up to the boardwalk and rushing through the batwing doors of the Silk Garter Saloon.
The place was empty except for Happy Jack. The alcoholic handyman, lethargically tending to his sweeping chores, snapped out of his semi drunken haze. “Whets wrong, Mr. Donner?”
“Is the boss upstairs?”
“Yes, sir,” Happy Jack answered slowly. “He’s up • in his office. One o’ the gals is with him.”
Jake didn’t wait for the slow-speaking janitor to carry on his explanation. The gunman ascended the stairs two at a time. He forgot the protocol that Culhane Riley demanded, bursting into the office without knocking.
Riley and one of the girls were rearranging their clothes. Both snapped their heads around at the intrusion. “Damn you, Jake Donner! What the hell is the idea of breaking in here like that?”
Jake ignored both the gang leader’s anger and the awkwardness of the situation. “We got to get outta here, boss. The boys out to the whiskey camp is all shot up.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jake demanded furiously while he buttoned his trousers. He stopped the activity long enough to shove the girl across the room and out the door.
“I’m telling you,” Jake said breathlessly. “That sheriff and newspaper kid along with the girl’s pa showed up at the cabin and took her back. They killed the boys too. Ever’ damn one of ’em!” He didn’t bother to mention the new man’s disloyalty.
“How did they know she was out there?” Jake demanded. He answered his own question. “That opium-eating son of a bitch must have told them. He’ll suffer for that!”
“Never mind all that shit,” Jake said in uncharacteristic candor. “Me and you are the onliest ones to face up to them three. Ever’body else is on runs out to the Injun country, We got to get outta here and join up with ’em. Then we can come back and settle things.”
Culhane Riley had a quick, comprehending mind.
“I’ll need money.” He turned to the safe and began working the combination. “I’ve got a getaway bag all set up in the closet there. Fetch it, then we’ll get me a horse.”
“Sure, boss! But, goddamn it! Hurry!” In a short five minutes both were clambering down the stairs.
But it was too late.
“Hold it, Riley.” Tom Deacon, standing near the door, spoke in a voice that was cold and steady.
Riley and Donner glanced wildly around the room. They could see Martin Blazer and J. T. Buchanan, both heavily armed, spread out around the saloon.
Happy Jack dropped his broom and fled.
“Our philosophical differences have reached a new high, Mr. Riley,” Martin said, “although it seems I’ve had to stoop to your level by arming myself.”
“I’m holding you for U.S. marshals from Fort Smith,” Tom Deacon said. He tapped the star on his vest. “If it turns out my office as sheriff is illegal, then consider this a citizen’s arrest.”
Jake Donner was having none of it. He sprang over the rail and landed out of sight on the other side of the stairs. He reappeared shooting.
Tom’s scattergun blasted for the second time that day. It blew buckshot and splinters from the stairs into Jake’s body. The mangled man was thrown into the wall by the force of the buckshot. He left a bloody smear as he slid down to the floor.
Culhane Riley, able to see Jake’s saddled horse out the front window, made a desperate bid for escape. He leaped off the steps and pulled his own pistol.
Martin brought the brand-new Colt from its holster and worked the trigger three times.
Riley danced crazily with each of the three bullet strikes. He reached over and grabbed the bar to hold himself up. He looked through glazed eyes at the young man who had shot him. Riley grimaced, displaying bloody teeth. “God damn your eyes, you little bastard! You killed me!”
Martin fired again.
Riley’s arms flew up and he tipped over flat on his back. Martin, who had now killed a third man that day, stood motionless at this late rash, conscious disobedience of his own deepest beliefs.
Their attention, directed at Riley’s corpse, was interrupted when Happy Jack staggered out from the backroom. He had armed himself. “Oh, M Riley!” he cried out in anguish for the man who had given him so much free whiskey in the past. H raised the old dragoon pistol and fired straight a Martin.
The ball hit him between the eyes, and Marti: Blazer twisted around, falling heavily to the floor Tom Deacon, who had reholstered the Colt, yelled out in rage as he dragged his pistol free from leather. He fired at Happy Jack, the bullets’ impact lifting the drunkard and rolling him crazily across a table.
The drunkard died in a position in which he’d spent much of his life: face down on a barroom floor.
J. T. ran to where Martin lay sprawled out. The young newspaperman’s leg drew up as his nerve spasmed, then he was still.
Twenty-Nine
Earl Tobey pulled the keys from his pocket and opened the door of his barbershop. He looked across the street at the west side that had been so boisterous in the past. Now the buildings stood gaunt, silent, and deserted. The only occupied store had been turned into an office for the delegation of U.S. marshals now using Lighthorse Creek as a headquarters to launch their attacks against criminals in the Indian Territory.
“Morning, Earl.”
Earl turned at the sound of his name. “Morning to you, Gus. How’re you this fine day?”
“Tolerable,” Gus Brunswick said. He stopped and also glanced at the tranquil west side of Main Street. “Been a lot of changes in the past month, huh? Look like ever’thing that Martin Blazer fought for came around the way he wanted it.”
Earl took another glance over where there had once been drunken revelry every night. “I’d say that was the truth, all right.” He looked back at Gus. “That was quite a ceremony a coupla weeks back, wasn’t it?” Earl remarked. “Ol’ Charles Marley sure did his part. His undertaking skills come in handy, all right.”
“Yep,” Gus agreed. “He made Martin Blazer look right natural.”
Earl shook his head in wonder. “It was something, wasn’t it. Young Martin’s eyes both blacked like that.”
“And on his wedding day!” Gus said with a chuckle.
“I’ll bet the boy never figgered that make up for dead folks would be put on him to make his swollen eyes the same color as the rest of his face.”
“He’s lucky to be alive,” Gus said more seriously. “If that drunken Happy Jack had fully loaded the chambers on the old cap-and-ball pistol, that slug would’ve gone straight through his skull instead o’ just knocking him cold and blacking his eyes.”
“Poor Abbie didn’t want him getting married looking like that, so Charles stepped forward and put on some o’ that pasty powder he uses on corpses,” Earl said.
Now Gus laughed hard. “Hell! Martin looked like one o’ the dearly departed.
“Yeah!” Earl agreed, guffawing along with him. “But maybe that’s appropriate for a wedding, huh?”
Gus regained his composure. “Well, I can’t stand here all day. I got work down to the smithy. See you later, Earl.”
The burly blacksmith walked down the boardwalk and stepped down to the open dirt that marked the front of his business. He went inside. He greet
ed some early visitors. “Howdy, folks.”
Tom Deacon led his horse out of the stall. It was saddled up and ready to go. “How much do I owe you for stabling my best pard here?”
“Aw, hell, nothing,” Gus said. “I appreciate you helping out the night o’ the fire.”
“Obliged,” Tom said. He turned to Martin Blazer and offered his hand. “I’m mighty proud to have known you, boy.” He politely tipped his hat to Abbie. “My best wishes to you, Mrs. Blazer.”
“Don’t be so formal, Tom!” Abbie said in good humor.
“I’m always respectful to married ladies, ma’am,” Tom said, smiling.
Abbie stood close to Martin. She looked at Tom. “We all wish you would stay.”
“Sure,” Martin said. “That job for sheriff isn’t filled yet.”
“You won’t need a lawman for a while,” Tom said. “Leastways not with all them U.S. marshals hanging around.” He slipped his foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. “Besides, I kinda got my heart set on Wichita.”
“Come back and see us, Tom Deacon,” Abbie said. “You’ll always be welcomed at the Blazers’.” Tom nodded. “You know, I sincerely feel so too. And I will come back someday.” He gave a kick to the gelding’s flanks. “So long, y’all.”
Martin and Abbie watched him ride up the street and turn toward the edge of town. Martin looked at his new bride. “Are you going to help out J. T. at the store today?”
“Yes. He’s received some new bolts of cloth from Kansas City,” Abbie said. “Poor Papa just doesn’t know how to display them in a pleasing manner for the ladies.”
“I’m sure you’ll take care of that job quite properly,” Martin said as they walked up the street.
When they reached J. T. Buchanan’s store, Martin leaned over and kissed Abbie lightly on the cheek. “Let’s go home for something to eat at noon,” he suggested.
She displayed a coquettish glance at him. “Are you sure that’s all you’ll want?”
“If your pa’s there, that’s all I’ll get,” he said with a wink. He waved and continued down to the Sentinels office. A youngster who appeared to be in his late teens stood by the door. Martin looked at him. “Good morning.”
Indian Territory 3 Page 17