by Matt Cole
Out of the mouths of babes, thought Marlene Welch. She could not deny the truth of what the young girl said, and she decided quite suddenly that she could not refuse to do as she asked.
It was time to set pride aside and beg for what she wanted, Marlene told herself. And what she wanted most in God’s green world was the big man – Frank Daniels.
But most of all she wanted him alive.
CHAPTER 13
REGRETS AND UNFINISHED BUSINESS
With a cigar clamped between his teeth, Frank Daniels paused to look into the mercantile store through washed and gleaming plate-glass windows. The merchant was using this quiet day to take stock. He sighted Frank’s big figure, smiled and waved politely. Frank did not return the greeting; he was too busy thinking – lost in thought, as they say.
How could those storekeepers do it? How could they ignore the excitement, uncertainty, color, pleasure and danger of the huge world outside, just to stand behind a counter all day long, drumming fingers on a change mat and forever waiting?
Then he saw the boy. It was the storekeeper’s son. He recognized him because they were identical. A gangling kid with a prominent Adam’s apple and a pink nose. But a kid, nonetheless. The storekeeper’s kid at that. He had that to show for his time on earth. . . .
It was more than Frank had.
Frank turned his back and moved on. He frowned. Surely he wasn’t beginning to envy bloodless storekeepers and standing behind a counter all day? Was he?
It was one of the consequences of his illness, he decided, possibly caused by blood loss and medication. That made sense to him. And he was quite sure that he knew the cure for it: it was called action. And Frank Daniels was, after all, a man of action.
He deliberately stepped off the porch, to test his leg. It stood up reasonably well, all things considered – it gave him some pain, but there was no loss of function. Frank drew in a deep breath of cold air to fill his barrel chest. The Indian Nations, he was thinking. The rumors put the Murdock Gang and Henry Lowe somewhere in the Indian Nations. Plenty of sunshine and warmth down there. A man would heal fast in that kind of weather.
‘Howdy, Frank.’
The sheriff, Drew Hancock, had emerged from the tobacco store, peeling the wrapper off a chunk of plug. The man’s manner was respectful. The Daniels’ achievements in the north were already taking on the aura of legend, and everyone was proud of them, even if many were shocked by the deaths of Urban and Virgil.
Frank just nodded in response, still deep in his own thoughts. It was time, he was telling himself. He was ready.
‘Good to see you up and about, lookin’ chipper again, Frank,’ the sheriff declared.
Frank nodded once again, then said, ‘Thanks, Sheriff.’
The lawman drew nearer as he added, ‘Heard the latest?’
Frank’s face showed life. ‘Tell me.’
‘It is official. The old man, Birch Murdock, is indeed dead. Just him, though. The rest of the bunch disappeared down South somewhere.’
‘Much obliged for the news,’ Frank replied with a tip of his hat.
The sheriff did not seem too pleased with Frank’s response to the news. ‘You don’t sound too excited, Frank.’
‘The old man wasn’t on my list,’ Frank noted, moving on.
‘That list is a whole lot shorter now, huh?’ Sheriff Hancock called after him, steadying himself against a gust of wind. ‘Thanks to you and your brothers, Frank.’
Frank Daniels did not bother to look back. It wasn’t praise he wanted, but more graves. Three more: Henry Lowe, Gila Murdock and Newson Murdock. That was all he wanted. Leastwise, this was what Marlene Welch contended later as he sat with her in her window, sipping a hot toddy and watching the street.
‘So, what is wrong with that?’ Frank replied mildly.
‘It is fatal, that is what is wrong with it, Frank. Ask Urban and Virgil,’ Marlene shot back.
His scowl cut deep.
‘Somethin’ on your mind, Marlene?’ Frank asked.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact there is,’ she responded with a scowl of her own. ‘I don’t want you to go. There, I’ve said it.’
Smoke trickled from Frank’s lips as he drew his cigar from his mouth. In the warmth of the bar-room, with its drinkers and gamblers, its oil lights and the pleasant tinkle of a piano, his color was becoming good once more. To one woman at least, he was the most impressive man she had ever seen.
‘It seems to me we have had this conversation before, Marlene,’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It is different this time around. When we spoke last time, you had four brothers alive. Now there are only two.’
‘Are you blaming me for their deaths?’ he asked.
‘Urban and Virgil would not be dead if they had not followed you. They would have quit after a few days, like normal men.’
‘So, I’m not normal now. Is that it?’ he asked.
‘I am not goin’ to argue with you, Frank,’ Marlene argued. Her manner was intense as she leaned forwards. ‘But can’t you see what you are doin’? You are chasin’ something only you want, and the price is far too high. Can’t you grasp that before it is too late?’
‘No,’ he said solemnly. ‘I can’t.’
Marlene Welch reached out and took his hand, her heart in her eyes.
‘It is not a good time,’ was all he said.
‘There will never be a better time, Frank. Why do you think I have always loved you but never wanted to marry you?’
‘Was it because I never asked,’ he grinned, trying to lighten the mood.
‘I am being serious, Frank Daniels. If I had wanted to marry you, I would have asked, and I think you know it. I am hardly your dewy-eyed little clingin’ vine type, waitin’ for her big, brave man to make all the decisions, now am I?’
He conceded the point, but he still did not know what she was driving at.
Marlene Welch explained.
‘I am ready to marry you now, Frank,’ she said simply. ‘Maybe it took you going after those outlaws and riskin’ your life to make me see what it would be like if you were dead. I would still be in the same position I am now, you understand? There would still be no other man for me, even if you were in your grave. It is bad enough bein’ an old maid, carryin’ the torch for somebody that is hardly ever there. But at least you are alive. If you were dead, then I might as well be dead, too. Will you marry me and forget traipsin’ around the country tryin’ to get yourself killed? Say you will, Frank.’
Frank Daniels’ face was pale once more.
‘Marlene, I . . . I don’t know what to say.’
She hung her head. ‘Just say yes.’
He was silent for a long moment, holding both her hands and gazing into her eyes after she raised her head again.
At last he spoke.
‘You are right, Marlene. I have always wanted to marry you. And I guess I was waitin’ for you to show me that you would marry me. And we will.’ A pause. ‘Right after I get back.’
Marlene withdrew her hands quickly. She was close to tears as she got to her feet.
‘Because you would rather hate than love, Frank. That is it, isn’t it? You love me, but you love what you are doin’ more, don’t you? You want the whole world to know that nobody can hurt Frank Daniels and get away with it, and you don’t care what it costs to prove that point. . . .’
‘Marlene, please. . . .’
‘Well, now I will tell you why I never begged you to marry me, Frank. It is because I always knew your weakness.’
‘Weakness?’ Frank looked surprised as he fixed her with a steely stare, looking more than ever like a man without a weakness to his name. ‘And what might that be?’
Marlene Welch lifted her chin.
‘You don’t know when to quit, Frank. Oh, I know others might see that as a virtue. But with you, it goes too far. When you start somethin’, you can’t quit until you have won. You were always like that. You always thought more of winning a
nd playing the role of Frank Daniels than you did of anything or anyone else. That is what made you go wanderin’ when you should have been here with your family. When you should have been settlin’ down with me and raisin’ kids. Mister, you are just usin’ what happened to your mother and now your brothers as an excuse to duck what you are really scared of – bein’ ordinary.’
She paused. Frank glowered. Drinkers had fallen silent to listen.
‘That is your weakness, Frank Daniels, and I am beggin’ you one last time to tell your brothers they can go back home.’
He could not do it.
It was asking too much.
Behind the pile of dry brush near the mouth of the pass, a jackrabbit suddenly stopped grazing and held its foolish head high, long ears pricked, sensitive nose sniffing the hot Indian Nations air. Then it bounded away, thumping the dusty earth with long hind legs and quickly disappearing into the rocks where it was safe.
The sound which frightened the jackrabbit had the opposite effect on the outlaws watching Henry Lowe as his hand hovered above the plunger. They were hidden in a draw off the trail, and they had been waiting for that very sound. If Henry’s carefully conceived plan succeeded, and if their nerve did not fail them, they would all be rich men.
Henry Lowe himself had charge of the igniter, although two of his men had placed the dynamite along the trail.
Each month at the same time, the Buffalo Mine secretly shipped its takings across the Little Dog Plains. Henry had learned of the shipments by accident, during his last journey across the Indian Nations. He had been itching to make his play ever since that time.
This was the big one that he and the gang needed.
Rumbling through the pass came an iron dinosaur on wheels, an armor-plated wagon with four heavily armed outriders and a further four men inside behind the narrow gun ports. It required a team of eight horses to haul the rig, weighed down as it was by a strong box filled with yellow gold and carrying the added weight today of an overweight lawman.
Marshal John Blythe had followed the gang all the way from Wyoming. He was convinced now that the only possible attraction for Henry Lowe on the plains had to be the Buffalo Mine shipment. He had insisted on joining the guard this trip, he and his rifle.
The newspapers that splashed the story of the robbery across the front pages of the West in the days following did not miss the irony of the marshal’s death. It seemed to make Henry Lowe and the Murdock Gang’s triumph complete.
CHAPTER 14
THE TRAIL EXPLODES
Dust swirled around the three horseback riders as they came out of the draw and cut south. South lay the town of Rinconada Falls on the Sweetwater river – the suspected destination of the men who had plundered the Buffalo Mine gold.
Frank Daniels led the way as always, with Casey next and Hugh bringing up the rear. It was still warm in the Indian Nations, but winter was slowly working its way down the continent. The dust billowed free, but there was a chill in the air despite this, which moved Hugh and Casey to ride in their sheepskins. But not big Frank. He seemed unaware of the chill, or of hunger, or fatigue. To his brothers he was either the craziest man they knew, or the toughest. It had been that way for Frank ever since Mescalero.
Mescalero was the place where they had struck it lucky with a one-time rider of the owlhoot trail named Shoofly Smith. Crippled now and living on charity, Shoofly had a grudge against his former comrades in the Murdock Gang. They had left him to rot years ago after he had been shot up in a train robbery. He had been waiting to get even with them ever since. As a former associate of Henry Lowe’s, Shoofly had been questioned several times by the law. His hate for Lowe and the Murdock Gang had never been strong enough to betray him to the law but helping the Daniels brothers was altogether different. They were plain folks, like him. They had a personal grudge, and they plainly meant to see that they settled it.
Shoofly had told them about Rinconada Falls, ‘the kind of place even a self-respecting scorpion would dodge’. He had holed up with the gang several times at that remote, little known hell-hole. Rinconada Falls’ proximity to the site of the gold robbery was enough to convince Shoofly that this was where Lowe and his gang would be hiding out.
Another twenty miles, and the Daniels would know if the old bad man’s theory held water. At nightfall the three brothers had reached the edge of a butte overlooking the tiny settlement on the dusty banks of the Sweetwater river.
Frank slid from his saddle to flex his leg, listening to distant sounds of revelry. A gunshot echoed, followed by faint laughter. There was no guarantee that the gang was there, but to the brothers it sure felt as if they would be.
‘I’m goin’ down to take a gander,’ Frank said, ‘. . . to see for myself.’
‘We should all go, Frank,’ Casey said with little conviction. Neither Casey nor Hugh had displayed much enthusiasm for the hunt since leaving Missouri this time. Frank blamed their diminished spirit on one thing – women. Hugh’s wife and Lucy Keller had done their damnedest to persuade them not to resume the hunt, and Frank had had his work cut out to convince his brothers to follow him.
Even allowing for the fact that he had never known his brothers altogether that well, Frank was surprised by their lack of resolution. He could not understand how any man could allow Henry Lowe and the Murdock Gang to go unpunished for the crimes and murders they had committed.
‘It is easier if I just go alone,’ Frank said now. ‘Less chance of us bein’ spotted.’
Hugh sighed and pushed his hat to the back of his head.
‘You’ll come back for us if you strike anything, won’t you?’ he said. ‘I mean, you are not gonna take them on singlehanded, are you, Frank?’
‘You sound like somebody I know in Blue Springs Creek,’ Frank noted with a grunt, breaking open his shotgun to check the loads. He closed the weapon with a snap. ‘She thinks I’m doin’ this for the glory. Well, I am not. I want them dead, and I can’t do it alone.’ He nodded. He added another grunt. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he then said.
He walked through darkness, making no sound – which was remarkable for a man of his size. He chose the soft spots to step, and his eyes were never still. There were sentries, he realized, as he closed in from the north side. He read this as rock-solid confirmation that the outlaws were in residence.
Reaching the first decaying buildings, Frank squatted down between a corral and a hen run to study the narrow, rutted track that passed for a main street. He watched a ragged Mexican who appeared to be weeping over a dead burro. His gaze moved to the tumbledown church, squatting incongruously in the very center of the town, facing the saloon. There were broad wooden steps leading up to the front doors, and standing on these were two men. They were laughing. They had pistols in their hands.
Frank Daniels had seen one of them back in Cibola Hills. With Henry Lowe.
The outlaws roared with rude laughter as they fired into the air, and the bigger one began to sing:
‘Ah shot a burro.
Ah know not where,
All ah I know is,
He ain’t needin’ no more air.’
His partner laughed so hard that he staggered down the steps, lost his balance and fell. His gun went off, and there was a clatter of breaking glass from the saloon. A flood of angry outlaws poured into the street at once.
‘You brainless idjits!’ Frank heard someone yell. ‘You could have killed somebody.’
The drunk outlaw was on his knees, still laughing.
‘Hey, Newson!’ he called to the big man on the steps. ‘Sing ’em the song.’
Newson! Frank thought, staring hard at the big man. Newson Murdock. One of the five!
He fingered the black pebbles in his pocket as the wrangle continued. . . .
It had come quickly. He had not really expected to run down the entire gang so easily. Here he was, unseen and unsuspected. Remembering the funeral of his dear mother – remembering Urban, dead and cold on a bluff in the middle of no
where – remembering Virgil in the little cemetery outside Cibola Hills.
Trail’s end.
Frank had to shake his head to clear the bitter memories that clouded his eyes and his judgement. He stared down at his hands. His knuckles were showing white as he gripped the shotgun.
He twitched suddenly at the roar of a gun. Looking up, he saw that the outlaws were terrorizing the Mexican with the dead burro again, pumping slugs over his head and into the dust around him.
And then Henry Lowe appeared.
Any lingering intention Frank Daniels had of reporting back to his brothers vanished in that instance, then and there.
All he had to do was cut loose with the shotgun.
But he didn’t move. He had no taste for suicide, and he would be one man against what looked like about twenty outlaws. So his legs would not take him away from Henry Lowe, but his mind would not allow him to invite certain death.
Lowe laughed and rested his hands on his hips. He was amused by the grief and terror of the man with the dead burro, who was now laboriously unbuckling a heavy pack from the dead animal’s back.
‘What you got there, pard?’ he laughed. ‘The lost Apache gold, perhaps?’
‘Watch out there, Lowe,’ Newson Murdock joked. ‘He might be reaching for a shootin’ iron. . . .’
‘A weapon, a weapon!’ a bearded, drunken bandit screamed in mock horror, throwing up his hands and falling to his knees. ‘God spare us all! Don’t shoot, mister, I have got a kid and five wives!’
Outlaws almost fell over laughing at this sally, but the man with the dead burro was shaking with fear.
‘Por favor,’ he said, ‘it is not the weapon, just the dynamite.’
Suddenly everyone stopped laughing.
‘Dynamite?’ breathed Newson Murdock, the one who had gunned down the burro just for the hell of it. He looked a little pale. ‘Are you sayin’ your critter was totin’ explosives, old man?’