Born to the Badge

by Mark Warren

  Behrens pushed his coffee aside as if he were done socializing. He flopped a forearm on the table and waited for an answer.

  Wyatt looked toward the window, the only one in the house with glass, where the dark of night had transformed the panes into mirrors that reflected the spare décor of the room. Slowly he began to nod.

  “If we’re not carrying a badge, what kind of authority will we have?”

  Behrens tilted his head to deliver a tight smile. “The kind that speaks the loudest.” Leaning to one side, he pulled a revolver from under his coat and laid it down on the table. The loud tap of metal on wood filled the room like the bang of a judge’s gavel.

  James poured himself another glass and laughed. “That looks as convincing as a badge to me.”

  “I can’t go after ’em alone,” Behrens said to Wyatt. “Are you in?”

  Wyatt nodded. “I’m in. When did they pull out?”

  “Looks like early afternoon. They were camped below Delano. Moser went down there an hour before sunset, and the whole lot of ’em had pulled up stakes and headed south. We leave now and maybe we can catch ’em before they reach the Nations.”

  Wyatt stood and set his cup by the basin. “Give me an hour. I’ll meet you out front o’ here at the bridge.”

  Behrens took a last pull on his coffee and stood. Holstering his gun, he looked around the kitchen as though he were inventorying the accoutrements of the makeshift home.

  “Oh, Wyatt,” Behrens called. “Better pack along a shotgun. I ain’t real sure how many o’ these jaspers we’re after, but Moser says to expect a crowd.”

  They pulled out before dawn following the well-used drovers’ route that ran along the west bank of the Arkansas. Where the trail forked southwest toward Caldwell, fresh wagon ruts provided an easy sign. Riding through the day they entered the Indian Nations by late afternoon. An hour before dusk, after crossing a creek and topping the rise on the far side, Wyatt looked out over the ocean of yellowing prairie grass cut by a long, straight stretch of the well-used cattle path. At a distance he spotted a wagon and five men on horseback.

  “That’s them!” Behrens said. “Moser said to look for a flat canvas stretched over the wagon bed.”

  “Back up,” Wyatt advised, and the two detectives eased back down the gentle slope out of sight.

  “We can tail ’em,” Behrens suggested, “then we could take ’em tonight.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Not with six or more men. Too many things can go wrong in the dark.”

  “What’re you thinkin’, Wyatt?” Behrens said.

  “Those boys are bound to be watching their back-trail. We just ride up on ’em, they might open up on us.” Wyatt dismounted and pointed over the rise. “We got no cover down there. We need to go around, set up, wait, and let ’em come to us.”

  John Behrens pushed his lips forward and began nodding. “Yeah. That sounds good to me.”

  Wyatt led his horse into the scant shade of the willows growing by the creek. Behrens took his horse at a walk and followed.

  “We’ll rest up here, where the horses have got water,” Wyatt said. “Then we’ll ride through the night and get ahead of ’em. Tomorrow they’ll walk right into it.”

  Behrens grunted his approval and dismounted. Wyatt began unsaddling his mare.

  Behrens lighted a cigar and smiled back toward the rise. “Sleep tight, you jokers,” he said through clamped teeth. “There’ll be hell to pay tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 5

  October, 1874: Chikaskia River near the Salt Fork, Indian Territory

  At dusk the trackers geared up and took a bearing west of southwest into the dark. It was a trackless expanse of desiccated grass that slithered across the chests of their mounts like water parting around the prows of two small ships. Using the experience of his days hunting buffalo on the flats of the Salt Fork, Wyatt navigated the vastness of the plains using the stars and the sparse landmarks available. The two men never talked as their horses kept up a steady rhythm, Wyatt in front, John Behrens behind, cutting a single path across the prairie. The chill of the autumn night made the white points of light in the sky appear like tiny shards of ice clinging to the black pelt of a buffalo robe.

  A little before dawn they cut the Chikaskia River ten miles deep into the Nations. Moving downstream, they reached the shallow ford on the trail where the Higgenbottom crew would cross the stream on their way back to Texas. After setting up a dry camp a hundred yards upstream, Wyatt and Behrens spread their bedrolls and stretched out to let the aches of the long ride leach out of their bones.

  At first light they broke camp and went by foot to the ford. There they separated, taking up positions on either side of the trail, Wyatt kneeling beside an oak in the brush and Behrens lying inside a stand of dried switchgrass and bluestem. They had waited less than an hour when they heard the jangling of harnesses and the rattle of a wagon in the distance.

  Five horsemen came into view, the wagon trailing just behind. In addition to the saddle mounts and the team pulling the wagon, an eighth horse was tied to the tailgate. Every horseman wore a revolver in a leather holster at his hip. Rifle stocks jutted from each saddle scabbard. The driver of the wagon appeared unarmed, but any kind of weapon could be stowed in the driver’s box next to his boots.

  As the crew approached the river, the lead rider dismounted and let his horse drink as he wet a neckerchief and used it to scrub his face. He was a short, thick man with rough whiskers blackening the lower half of his face. When the others arrived, the driver tied the reins around the brake handle and climbed down from the wagon, where he began checking the tie ropes on the canvas covering the bed. Finally the other four men unlimbered from their mounts and ambled toward the water, each man twisting off the cap of a canteen. With the Texans’ hands so engaged, Wyatt knew there would be no better moment to throw down on them.

  “When we get back to Texas,” one man said, “I’m gonna spring for a room in a hotel and sleep in a real bed for a week. Might even convince a cheap whore to throw in with me.”

  When all had clustered at the edge of the river to watch their horses drink, Wyatt stepped onto the trail behind them. The constant shattering sound of the water threading through the rocks filled the air and covered his approach as he leveled his shotgun at the three men on the right. Behrens appeared from the other side and covered the other three.

  “Keep your hands empty, and you might live through this,” Wyatt said, his voice deep and full so as to be heard by all. “Drop those reins, and turn around slow.”

  Every Texan released his hold on his horse and turned, each face slack with surprise. One drover’s eyes were like bright coins reflecting light from a campfire as they cut back and forth from one shotgun to the other. One by one their hands floated upward above their heads, the movements automatic and syncopated, as though an unpracticed puppeteer were tugging at strings from somewhere above them.

  “What the hell is this?” said the stocky man, putting a rough growl into his words.

  “We’re after some men robbed the bank up in Salina,” Behrens said, his voice flat and his expression as dead as a seasoned poker player.

  The man eyed Behrens carefully. “We’re just drovers headin’ home.”

  “Who do you ride for?” Wyatt said.

  The man started to answer but then closed his mouth.

  “For Higgenbottom,” said the driver of the wagon. “You can ask anybody. Look at our brands,” he suggested, nodding toward the horses. “We ain’t been to Salina. We come from Wichita.”

  Behrens smiled at the shorter man. “Ain’t too smart, is he?” Then widening that smile he showed his teeth to the driver. “The Higgenbottom crew is who we’re after, jackass.”

  “You men are going back with us,” Wyatt informed them and cocked his head toward their back trail. “You left some unpaid debts in Wichita.”

  “We don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout, mister.” This came from the youngest of the gr
oup, a raw-boned kid with sparse, wiry, blond hairs curling over his lip. “And we don’t like being waylaid out here in the Nations.” He conjured up a sneer and began lowering his hands. “B’sides . . . there’s six of us here . . . and only two o’ you.”

  Behrens stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of his shotgun into the soft flesh beneath the boy’s chin. When he cocked the hammers, the quiet click-click of the gun cut through the sound of the shoals with an authority that seemed to stop time. The young drover stretched his head so high that the tendons in his neck stood out like the roots of a sapling.

  “Way I see it,” Behrens said, his voice humming with the pent-up violence that sometimes seemed to rise off his skin like heat, “two men with two loads o’ buckshot is plenty enough to put it over on a crowd o’ thievin’ assholes from Texas. You wanna test my judgment on that, young’n?”

  The boy tried to lick his lips, but his teeth were locked together by the extreme tilt of his head. “Well, what was took?” he managed to say, mumbling lockjawed from his awkward pose.

  Behrens pointed back to the wagon. “That rattle-box you been rollin’ ’cross the prairie, for one thing. Cost a hun’erd forty-six dollars. That ain’t even countin’ the team o’ draft horses you rented from the livery.” Behrens coughed up a short laugh. “I’d be willing to bet most everything stacked inside that wagon bed ain’t yet paid for neither.”

  “You ain’t the law!” the kid challenged.

  Behrens laughed. “Don’t matter who we are, boy. We’re the ones holdin’ shotguns, and you’re the ones with your elbows up around your ears.”

  The lanky boy tried to rekindle some anger. “You can’t just pull your damned guns on us and—”

  “Kid!” interrupted the oldest of the Texans. He was a tired-eyed, balding man wearing a tattered wool vest over his union suit top. This was the first word he had uttered since dismounting. Now he glared at the youngest of the crew, and his eyes went hard in his flaccid face. “I don’t wanna die for a hun’erd forty-six dollars, do you?”

  When the kid began to sulk, Behrens backed away. For several seconds no one spoke. The horses stood fetlock-deep in the river, their muzzles dipping into the water and then rising with droplets of water raining down from their chins without sound. There was only the sizzling whisper of the shoals as the reality of the arrest settled over the Texans. Each of the six men stared into the dark muzzles of the shotguns as though trying to catch a glimpse of a future that might still be possible.

  “We’re gonna do this one at a time,” Wyatt said and nodded to the man standing closest to him. “You first . . . lower your left hand, take out your pistol with two fingers on the grips, and throw it over here in the dirt next to me.”

  The Texan moved slowly, reached across his belly to his holster, and pinched the butt of his revolver with thumb and forefinger. With an easy toss, he dropped the gun next to Wyatt’s boots. When all six men had submitted, Wyatt collected the Texans’ guns and horses, and Behrens walked the prisoners to the back of the wagon, where he forced them belly down in the dirt to make a flank.

  As Wyatt stood guard, Behrens searched the prisoners one at a time. After checking their boots and turning every pocket inside out, he told them to flip onto their backs.

  “Count yourselves lucky I don’t cuff your hands behind your back,” Behrens barked. “But I don’t wanna hear you complainin’ about pissin’ yourselves.”

  Moving down the line of bodies, he locked on wrist-irons with each man’s arms crossed at his belly. When he finished, he stood back and hissed a laugh.

  “You Texas boys ain’t got the sense God give to a walleyed jackrabbit. If you’re gonna steal something, you ought’a at least be able to hide the damn thing in your pocket. But a wagon . . . ?”

  Wyatt finished dumping out the cartridges from the pistols he had collected. Then he poured the hardware into a burlap bag and stowed it in the wagon box.

  “Let’s get started,” Wyatt ordered quietly. “We got a long road back to Wichita.”

  Behrens squinted at the sun still low in the east. “I’ll fetch our horses, Wyatt.” After a last look at the prisoners, he started upstream, where the two mounts were tethered in the brush.

  “Hey, mister,” the young drover said, glaring at Wyatt from his place on the ground. “You think your friend really woulda blowed my head off over a stole wagon?”

  “Wasn’t about a wagon,” Wyatt said and turned to the boy’s impudent face. “It was about you knowin’ who had a hold of you.”

  The kid attempted a sarcastic laugh. “You mean . . . some crazy sonovabitch wantin’ to take my head off?”

  Wyatt held the boy’s angry eyes. “You ask me . . . you were the crazy sonovabitch, tryin’ to argue with a scattergun.”

  The kid’s face closed down with insult. “Only thing we did was come up a little late on our payment. Don’t mean we weren’t gonna send the money soon’s we got back to Texas.”

  Wyatt’s expression remained unchanged. “You boys know the rules. You broke ’em. Now you’re gonna pay.”

  Every man raised his head and looked at Wyatt, but no one had anything to say. One by one the Texans settled their heads back into the dirt. All but the kid, whose eyes could not convey enough disdain for the men who had captured him.

  “You didn’ never steal nothin’ before?” he challenged.

  Wyatt took in a deep breath and let it seep out slowly. This boy was about the age Wyatt had been when, as town constable, he had skimmed money from the school taxes back in Missouri. And that had been less than a year before he had been locked in a filthy jail for horse theft.

  “This ain’t about me,” he said plainly.

  “Well, if it ain’t anything about you, why’re you out here in the middle o’ the God-forsaken Indian Nations huntin’ us down?”

  Wyatt plucked a dried stem from the grasses and inserted it in his mouth. “Just business.”

  “So you’re a damned bounty hunter?”

  “Don’t matter what you call me. It don’t change what you boys done.”

  Behrens walked up the embankment leading the horses. Tying them off to the wagon, he surveyed the prisoners and saw the color in the boy’s hardened face.

  “What’s the little shit-kicker bellyaching about now?”

  The boy turned away, giving Behrens the back of his head.

  “Thinks you went a little hard on ’im,” Wyatt said.

  Behrens smiled broadly and then raised his voice like a stage actor. “You know, Wyatt, I think this Texas boy would cry if his mama showed up.”

  The boy’s head whipped back around. “Yeah, well you didn’t have to—”

  “Kid!” snapped the driver of the wagon. “Shut the fuck up!”

  Behrens took a coil of rope from his horse, walked to where the boy lay, and knelt. “You dealt these cards, son. Now you got to play the game out.” He played out the rope and ran it through each man’s cuffs with a double turn so that they were linked together like a chain gang.

  As the Texans lay prone, Wyatt unlashed the canvas over the wagon and inspected the contents in the bed. The majority of the freight matched the unpaid items on the list of goods that Moser had given to Behrens.

  “Aw-right . . . everybody git up!” Behrens ordered. He backed away and balanced the shotgun in the crook of his arm.

  “How the hell’re we gonna mount our horses if we’re all tied together like this?” the wagon driver said.

  “Won’t need to,” Wyatt replied. “You’re walkin’.”

  “Walkin’!” This from the kid. “Hell, it’s more’n seventy miles back to Wichita!”

  Wyatt climbed up into the box and unwrapped the reins from the brake handle. “You boys stole so much merchandise, there’s no room for you in the wagon.”

  “We got our damned horses!” the driver said. “Why can’t we ride?”

  “Too many of you,” Wyatt said. “Can’t trust you on a horse . . . hand-cuffed or not.”

/>   The scowl on the driver’s face cut deep furrows into the flesh around his eyes. “You sonovabitch . . . you can’t make us walk seventy miles!”

  Wyatt waited as Behrens stepped into the stirrup and mounted his horse. Once in the saddle, Behrens balanced the shotgun crosswise on the pommel, the muzzles of the gun pointing toward the prisoners.

  “You can walk or be dragged,” Behrens said. “Your choice.”

  The Texans frowned but said nothing.

  “I figure we can carry two at a time in the wagon,” Wyatt suggested. He pointed to the two men standing at the head of the line. “Get in.”

  The other four men watched their two friends squirm their way backward over the tailgate and into the wagon bed. Behrens positioned himself at the end with a view of all the prisoners.

  “We’ll switch off every five miles or so,” Wyatt said, looking back at the men still standing. “Dependin’ on how you behave.”

  The driver’s neck stiffened as he craned his head forward. “ ‘Behave’? What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  Wyatt raised the reins in his hands. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “Right now I want you boys to walk and be quiet.” He snapped the reins over the haunches of the draft horses. As the wagon turned a wide arc, the grumbling prisoners stumbled in the clumps of dead grass as they tried to keep up with the pace. When the train had moved past him, Behrens tapped his heels into his horse’s flanks and followed.

  “Well, what if we ain’t quiet!” the driver barked.

  “Like I said,” Wyatt remarked over his shoulder, “you’ll figure it out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Three days later, October, 1874: Wichita, Kansas

  When the entourage of ex-officers Earp and Behrens and six Texas prisoners marched into Wichita on a late afternoon, the retrieval of stolen goods was the talk of the town. Nobody told the story better than John Behrens. Unless it was M. R. Moser himself, who had claimed the lion’s share of the recovered goods.