by Jack Sheriff
Contents
Title Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
By the Same Author
Copyright
ONE
October, 1876
The scorching Texas day began with a minor irritation that sent Thornton Wilde crawling around the office on his hands and knees, and managed to get his hackles up as frustration turned to disbelief. It also embarrassed the hell out of him when he realized the town drunk was watching him through the open door as if the performance, coming from the ageing town marshal of Cedar Creek, was nothing out of the ordinary.
By sundown that same day the morning’s minor irritation and the incidents that followed in swift succession were finally exposed as terrible portents Wilde had utterly failed to heed. But that morning, unaware that his familiar world was about to be blown apart like a house of cards in a twister, Wilde’s main concern was working out how a tin badge he’d dropped while trying to pin it to his vest could disappear off the face of the earth.
He heard the dull clink as it hit the boards. Stood still. Took off the wire-framed glasses he’d been using to read the latest edition of the Cedar Creek Sentinel, and let his eyes roam.
The office on the street side of the jail was furnished with iron stove, roll-top desk, one ripped swivel chair and three straight ones for guests – Wilde grinned absently at that – a table under the window, gun rack against the wall and a heck of a lot of dust.
But no badge.
Wilde sighed. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the desk, managed to bang his head wriggling out backwards when his broad shoulders got jammed, turned towards the sunlight flooding through the open door with some strange notion of crawling all the way round the office to save climbing to his feet – and saw Gord Bogan.
Wilde had always figured Gord to be either an old thirty or a young fifty. A tall, stringy man with Indian blood in his veins who dressed in rags that looked like clothes, he had appeared out of nowhere some six months ago, and become a familiar sight on the plank walks of the town. He talked mostly common sense, though not a lot of it, and didn’t so much walk as wallow: Gord Bogan was a schooner adrift in a current of alcohol that bore him on a sideways tack to places he frequently didn’t recognize.
At that moment, Marshal Thornton Wilde was hoping Bogan would drift to join his pesky lost badge – wherever the hell that might be.
‘Caught on your pants,’ Gord said from the doorway.
Wilde’s knee cracked as he stood up.
He twisted backwards, looked where Gord was pointing, and saw his pants had located what he couldn’t: the badge’s pin had caught on his left cuff and he’d been taking it with him as he crawled.
‘Thanks, Gord,’ he said gruffly.
‘Strangers in town.’
‘Ain’t there always?’ Wilde said, busy pinning the badge in its rightful position.
‘Yeah, but these’re trouble.’
Wilde looked up. Bogan was swaying, but his unusual blue eyes were as clear as cool draughts of water, and swirling deep in their depths Wilde saw what could have been concern.
‘I’ll handle it, Gord,’ he said. ‘But thanks anyway.’
Somehow, the morning had already been soured.
Wilde watched Bogan wander off down the plank walk in the direction of the Painted Woman saloon, then, finished with the badge, planted his hat on his thinning grey hair and stepped out into the sunshine.
The street was already bustling with life. Women were laughing and talking outside the general store or hurrying up and down the plank walks. Barney Reid was washing the big wooden rifle that hung on chains outside his gunsmith’s shop. Across from the Painted Woman, bales of hay were being hoisted from a wagon to the loft over the livery barn. The men doing the hard work were stripped to the waist, the skinny, toothless character directing operations was Denny Wakelin, the man who’d been Cedar Creek’s hostler for more than forty years.
Twenty years longer than I’ve been marshal, Thornton Wilde reflected, and the sobering thought turned his gaze in the opposite direction and he looked up the hill to Jim Lawn’s barber shop and, above it, the offices occupied by the Cedar Creek town council.
The direction of Thornton’s gaze took his eyes across the limp banner outside the jail reading KEEP AN OLD MAN IN WORK, VOTE THORN WILDE and, as if drawn by fate he found himself looking at the short, fat figure of Oliver Shank, the man desperate to do the opposite. Shank was the leader of the town council. He wanted Thornton Wilde to retire so he could replace him with his own man. Trouble was, Thornton kept getting voted back in by the citizens of Cedar Creek – and there was not a damn thing Shank could do about it.
Shank, dressed in a shiny black suit, was teetering on the edge of the far plank walk as he talked animatedly to a rawboned character mounted on a rangy grey gelding. The man was half turned in the saddle with most of his weight taken on the right stirrup like someone who’s bone weary and saddle sore after riding too far for too long. With his upper body twisted in that manner, Wilde could see the glint of a badge pinned to his vest. That drove his gaze with considerable interest to the two bored men behind the lawman. They were sitting astride wrung-out, trail-stained ponies. From their general demeanour Wilde instantly pegged them as gunslingers. But these were gunslingers who’d reached the end of the trail: their wrists were lashed to the saddle horns, and all three animals were linked by a slack rope.
There’s the trouble Gord Bogan was talking about, Wilde thought, unwelcome strife that’s come to my town on a day that’s begun with a minor irritation and looks like getting worse. And he took a couple of steps to the side, set his back against the warm timber of the jail’s wall and leaned back to await developments.
Shank had just about wrapped up the talking, and some kind of decision had been reached. The gaunt lawman seemed to ask a question, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. As he did so, both prisoners turned and looked directly towards the jail. Shank flapped a hand at the lawman, then turned and strode into the council offices. The lawman touched his horse, wheeled it away from the plank walk. The rope linking the horses snapped tight, and Thornton Wilde thought he heard one of the prisoners utter a gruff protest. Then all three men came down the hill, cut across the street and drew rein at the jail’s hitch rail.
The two prisoners glanced at Thornton Wilde. The older of the two spat into the dust. Both men turned away, their manner expressing contempt.
The lawman who’d brought them into town noticed the byplay. He grinned, the humour falling well short of his eyes. He swung out of the saddle, stepped wearily up onto the boards, stripped off a glove and stuck out his hand.
‘I’m Reb Tindale, Marshal of San Angelo. You’re Thornton Wilde?’
‘Right. And you’re a long way from home,’ Wilde said, moving away from the wall to grasp the other man’s hard hand.
‘Closer now than yesterday. By tomorrow night I’ll be almost there. I caught up with these two in El Paso, in time to prevent them from stepping over the border into Ciudad Juárez. Their saddle-bags were stuffed with cash. If they’d made it into Mexico, a lot of Texas cattlemen would have gone to the wall.’
‘They robbed
the bank.’
‘That’s right. Four of them. One of them a Mex. Gunned down the head cashier, left him bleeding to death on the floor of the bank while they forced a young woman to open the safe. They were joined by another man, probably a lookout, when they rode out.’
Wilde frowned. ‘Making five in all?’
‘Five rode out of San Angelo. Damn near rode my horse to death keepin’ up with these two, never saw hide nor hair of the others on the trail. My guess is they were hired guns who hightailed as soon as they got their measly share of the loot. Maybe rode south to cross the border at Del Rio.’
‘But you weren’t to know that when you set out. One man chasing five doesn’t make sense. Why no posse?’
‘Would have taken too long to muster the right men, swear them in.’ Tindale grinned. ‘I figured I could handle it, anyway, and that’s the way it worked out.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘What about you? I don’t see any sign of a deputy. You running a one-man operation?’
Wilde grunted. ‘Broke his leg. That’s put him out for a week or so, then he’ll be hobbling around in plaster and about as much use as a wooden Indian.’
A horse whickered softly and Wilde looked down at the marshal’s lean grey mount, the bulging saddle-bags; shifted his gaze and saw the two men watching, listening intently to every work spoken.
‘You carryin’ that cash with you, Tindale?’ Then he grimaced. ‘Stupid question; of course you are.’
Tindale nodded. The grin had faded again, and Wilde took note of the clothes stained by hard riding, the lines of strain around the man’s eyes, and the way he had turned his back on the prisoners as if they were no longer his responsibility. And he thought again of Gord Bogan’s suggestion that these men were trouble, and wondered for perhaps the first time if that prediction included the marshal, and what form that trouble would take.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, as Tindale tucked his gloves into his gunbelt and fumbled for the makings. ‘You want me to look after the cash and these banditos while you freshen up and get the horses fed and watered—’
‘No,’ Tindale cut in, shaking his head. ‘The cash stays with me, and I’m hitting the trail as soon as I’ve had a bite to eat – but this time I ride alone. You keep these two here, lock ’em up and hold them.’
‘I do? Now why should I do that?’
‘It’s all been arranged with that cocky fellow in the black suit – what’s his name, Shank, your town council supremo? He’s agreed you lock up these two hellions, get in touch with the circuit judge. The judge will look at his schedule, set a date for the trial. When that’s fixed, let me know.’
‘And you’ll ride all the way back here to give evidence?’ Wilde shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make sense. The bank robbery was a hundred and fifty miles away in San Angelo. This is a small town on the Pecos river, the nearest telegraph’s fifty miles north. You’ve brought your prisoners this far, without trouble—’
‘Yeah, thanks to some luck, but mostly my never ending vigilance. I’ve watched them through the hours of daylight, cat-napped through each and every night fully expectin’ to be jumped at any moment. I’m plumb worn out. The way I feel, I can’t guarantee getting them across that river, never mind all the way to San Angelo. Hell, I don’t like leaving them here, but the way I see it I’ve got no choice.’
Wilde hesitated, thought for a long moment then pulled a face.
‘Well, I confess I don’t like being roped in, but I can understand and sympathize.’ He sighed. ‘OK, let’s get them inside.’
He followed Tindale down off the plank walk and stood to one side with his hand close to his pistol as the marshal drew a pocket knife and set about freeing the two prisoners. Closer now, Wilde looked at them keenly. One was a man in his fifties, dark hair worn long and already turning grey. His frame was as wiry as that of a racing hound. That man grimaced and rubbed his wrists as Tindale slashed through the rawhide bonds, then glanced across at his companion, his colourless eyes blank.
The other man was younger; in his twenties, Wilde estimated – and there was something familiar about him. He was darker than his companion, with a powerful chest and broad shoulders, and in his intelligent blue eyes an unquenchable fire burned. Not fazed by what’s happening, Wilde judged. Accepting what comes his way, but always looking for opportunities to swing the situation in his favour. Like me, when I was much younger. Well, there’s just a few seconds remaining before he enters my jail, so if he’s planning a move he’d better make it fast.
When the younger man was free and out of the saddle, Wilde glanced at Tindale. No signal passed between them, but Wilde waited until the other lawman had drawn his pistol and positioned himself between the prisoners and the street, then led the way into the jail.
Aware of the scrape and thud of boots behind him, he went straight to the peg-board holding the keys to the cells and took down the heavy ring. Without glancing back he opened the door and strode through to the cell block. There were four cells, all empty. He turned keys in two locks, swung open the heavy doors.
Less than a minute later, the two prisoners were behind bars, the two lawmen back in the office.
‘I swear to God,’ Tindale said, standing with fists on hips, ‘getting that pair off my hands is one hell of a relief.’
‘Well, you can now be damn sure the bank’s money’s safe and those bandits aren’t going anywhere in a hurry,’ Wilde said.
He flipped his hat onto a peg, sat down behind his desk and reached for pen and paper.
‘The official paperwork can wait until later. For now, just give me their names.’
‘The older, skinnier man’s Gus Allman. The tough-looking youngster’s told me nothing except he goes by the moniker of the Waco Kid.’
‘And they’re wanted for bank robbery?’
‘Right.’
‘You’re a witness?’
‘You could say that.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
Tindale grinned. The strain had washed off him. There was even a difference in his posture, Wilde noted. The San Angelo marshal was standing tall, weariness had been replaced by energy and purpose, and his whole demeanour suggested that here was a man keen to get on with unfinished business.
The trouble he’s been toting for the past few days has been shifted to another man’s shoulders, Wilde thought. But that’s not all of it. There’s something else, something I’m not seeing. He knew that instinct honed by years of experience as a lawman, was telling him that something was badly wrong – but nothing he had seen or heard appeared to justify those suspicions.
Shaking his head, he pushed away the pen and paper with a grunt that expressed his frustration and uncertainty, but if he’d expected Tindale to take note of his dissatisfaction he’d been wasting his time. When Wilde looked up, the man had already turned on his heel and was making for the door.
‘I guess eating can wait,’ Tindale said over his shoulder, as he stepped out into the sunshine. ‘All that money’s making me nervous. The sooner it’s where it belongs, the better I’ll like it.’
And then Tindale was gone. Sitting back again, reaching for the makings, Thornton Wilde listened to the sound of the grey gelding’s hoofs hammering up the hill; listened to them fade; listened to the familiar, swelling murmur of the town, and with narrowed eyes replayed in his mind the marshal’s parting words.
‘The sooner it’s where it belongs, the better I’ll like it,’ was what Tindale had said. Not back where it belongs – but where it belongs. What was he, Wilde, to make of that? Was the other man’s choice of words of any consequence? After all, back where it belongs and where it belongs could both refer to the San Angelo bank. On the other hand, while the first words were unambiguous, the second were open to various interpretations. For instance, Wilde thought, a dishonest man might figure the money belonged anywhere except in the San Angelo bank. And if they’d been spoken by anyone other than a fine, upstanding town marshal, well….
Ponder
ing, Thornton Wilde struck a match, applied it to his cigarette, blew a jet of smoke towards the ceiling. As he did so, through the open door he heard the beat of hoofs and watched two men ride by. Travel worn. Slouching in the saddle, battered Stetsons pulled down, hard faces unshaven. Eyes constantly moving – and for one moment, as they passed, Wilde thought he saw them glance towards the jail. Then he grinned and shook his head. Hell, most men did that in a furtive way when passing any jail. No, damn it, all men did that, at the same time saying a silent prayer of thanks that they were on the outside looking in.
And with the realization that a day that had begun with a mislaid tin badge was making him uncommonly nervous, Thornton Wilde rose to his feet again and went through to get to know to his prisoners.
For some reason, before doing so, he unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it on its peg alongside the keys to the cells. It was a foolish, unthinking act, and one he would live to regret.
TWO
‘You don’t recognize me, do you?’
Both men were lying back on thin corn husk mattresses, fingers laced behind their heads. The younger man had spoken as Wilde came through from the office and approached his cell. An emotion the marshal couldn’t pin down was darkening the young man’s blue eyes. He was waiting for a reaction, but that was something Wilde wasn’t prepared to give – at least not until he’d searched through the rusting cells of his memory.
‘Should I?’
‘Don’t let the name fool you. I go by the name of the Waco Kid, and that’s all Tindale knows. Makes no difference anyway. All names can be changed. Appearances also change, with time, and we’re talking twenty years or more since you last saw me.’
‘Twenty years ago,’ Wilde said, ‘I was marshal of this town. If you passed through then you’d have been, what? Five years old? I reckon you would have looked a mite different.’
‘I didn’t pass through. And I was probably four, though about that I’m uncertain. I told you it could be twenty years or even more, so now I’m saying that four could be three, or even two. Two years old, that’s still a baby – right? Now, are you going to tell me the situation I’m presenting means nothing to you?’