Wyoming Shootout (Gun For Wells Fargo Book 2)

by G. Wayne Tilman

  “Not bad. It will give you, Horatio and me some time to plan our investigative strategy.”

  “John, I heard you and Horatio talking, but couldn’t hear everything. I take it Sarah will not participate in the questioning?”

  “I don’t think it would be appropriate. I will check with the district attorney who will prosecute, but as a victim, her job will be to testify what he did relative to her. I will ask her if there are any questions she might have after reviewing our list this week. She always has good ideas.”

  Pope and Bell went out and bought take-out lunch for everyone in the office. Sarah had employees eat in shifts to ensure customers would be served appropriately. The two-armed robberies with shootings and a hostage had not helped business.

  She and Pope sat across from each other at his desk in the detective office.

  “You know, after last night, I am leaning towards the manager job. I know I will intellectually continue helping with cases, but I suspect the money is better and more importantly, it will allow us to get married. If you are not ready for marriage, we can at least acknowledge our relationship without fear of it ruining our chances at Wells Fargo,” she said.

  “You really think I’m not ready to marry you, Sarah?”

  “No. Just trying not to be too assuming. You taught me on cases never to assume anything.”

  “It’s okay on this case,” he responded. “Are you sure you can give up the trails, the excitement, the death defying deeds?” he asked.

  “I liked the job at Prescott, actually. What I didn’t like is not having someone like you coming home to me.”

  “You are a talented organizer and people manager. I cannot imagine William Pridham not giving you the position here. My only fear is you will be so good, we will get transferred back East or something.”

  “I wonder what happens to your career if you turn down a promotion?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Either you stay here forever or get fired I guess.”

  “Well, it’s not like I can stay home with the children.”

  “You’d go crazy staying home anyway,” he said.

  “Either way, we will have to stay here until Randolph’s trial is over.”

  “Do you think he will hang or plead insanity?”

  “I think it depends on the lawyer he ends up getting. It’s going to be a big case. Horatio was telling me if there’s a hanging, it will draw in a big crowd and the restaurants, saloons, and hotels will be full. It will bring thousands of dollars into an already rich city. As a big case, it would not surprise me if some lawyer offers to represent Randolph for free. I think it’s called pro bono. The lawyer’s business and reputation would benefit from being on such a big case.”

  “John, do you think he is crazy?”

  “He is able to travel, have his horse travel in a stock car on the train, make basic living decisions. I don’t know if an insane person can take care of himself like he does. You refer to me as a stone-cold killer. He’s more a stone-cold murderer. I really want to question him and find out if he felt anything at all about mowing the poor woman down. It will be real telling, I think.

  When an escaping robber shoots a policeman it’s terrible, but it happens. It’s them against us. The game has always been played according to those rules. But a woman walking in the door? Does meanness and lack of conscience prove insanity? I really don’t know for sure. But I think the answer is ‘no’. He may be slow, but mainly, he just is mean and has no conscience.”

  “I don’t think it would be right for a victim to be one of the detectives questioning him. But I sure would like to be a fly on the wall,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe it can be arranged. It will give me the opportunity to get your ideas during the questioning by you passing notes, too. I will go over to the sheriff’s office after we finish lunch. If the room we will use has a window, maybe it can be opened but blocked with a curtain. At least you could hear,” he said.

  “Or, maybe put a chair outside and keep the door cracked,” she suggested.

  Pope went over to the sheriff’s office and met with Horatio after lunch.

  “Good idea! I bet the sheriff would like to listen in and maybe suggest a line of questioning, too. Let’s go look at the room and see what we can do,” the chief deputy said.

  They walked over to the room and it was a ten by ten-foot room with a single door and no window. The wall was not hardened and just frame with plaster. Akin sent for the man responsible for maintenance at the large courthouse building and he arrived shortly.

  “What do you think of a standard sized window about here? One which would slide open, so we could hear,” Horatio said, pointing to the location he and Pope discussed. “I could have the blacksmith make a rack of bars you could put on the hallway side. We could put curtains on the inside and outside to hide the window from the person being questioned. When we had an audience, we could open the outside curtains and listen.”

  “My men could do build what you are describing. Let us talk with the blacksmith. We deal with him all the time about things for the jail. Give me about three days, Chief,” the maintenance manager said.

  “I wish there was such a thing as thing as one-way glass,” Pope said, not knowing he was twenty years away from the invention of “transparent mirrors.”

  “Ha! Dream on detective,” Akin said.

  Pope went back to the office and worked with Bell on the case report. They had recovered seventy-three percent of the take from the fall robbery. Nothing else in Randolph’s possessions was of any interest. Pope threw away some horehound candy stick which had gotten broken and dirty. They gave him an idea, however.

  He went to the nearest mercantile and bought some more. His next trip was his first to visit Randolph at the hospital. Only a day had passed since the shooting.

  Randolph was sitting up in bed. A deputy sat in a wooden ladder-back chair in the hall outside his room.

  The outlaw’s right arm was heavily bandaged from just above to just below the elbow. It ended there.

  “You come to apologize to me?” Randolph asked as Pope entered. Insane or just mean, the man had an awful personality.

  “I asked you to put the gun down and you didn’t. I could have killed you, but I promised your ma I’d try not to,” Pope said, stretching the truth a bit.

  “I wish you had. Now, I gotta sit in a cell and watch and listen while they build a scaffold outside the window.”

  “Maybe not, Randolph. You have not even been tried yet. Changing the subject, your candy sticks were pretty broken up and dirty in your belongings, so I bought you some more,” Pope said as he handed a small brown paper sack to the man.

  Randolph took them without saying anything. His next words were conversational and surprised Pope.

  “How many men you killed?”

  Pope’s plan was to befriend him and try to determine as much about his mental and moral state as he could. This was a surprise, so he had to handle it carefully.

  “Well, my grandpa and I took on a war party when I was little. They killed my folks and baby sister. I guess about ten or twelve there. Grandpa killed at least half.”

  “How about as a policeman?” Randolph asked as if he was having a conversation with his best friend. Pope knew his demeanor could change in an instant. The detective wanted to keep it like this to learn more.

  “I never counted. Probably the same number, I guess.”

  “You notch your guns?” Randolph asked, leaning forward, but favoring the painful stump which used to be his arm.

  “No. I like nice stag grips on my revolvers. Notches would harm the value. They cost a fair penny,” Pope said. The truth was he thought notches were like bragging and were asking for trouble. He did not relish killing anyone. When Pope killed someone, it was because the person threatened his life or the life of someone he was protecting.

  “I carve notches.”

  “I saw them on your Schofield,” Pope said. “I did not see any on your
Winchester,” he added.

  “Naw. I think they look funny on a rifle. Besides, I never killed anybody with it. Where’s the sport if you can’t outdraw them?” Randolph asked.

  “Yep. Makes sense to me. What do you want me to call you? John? Henry?” Pope asked.

  “Kid is good enough,” the young man answered.

  “Kid it is. Did you hear the other famous Kid was gunned down by his former friend last year?” Pope asked, again playing into the man’s ego.

  “I did. Damn lawdog turned on his gambling pard. Not right. Not right at all. Must have been for the reward.”

  “I heard the government refused to pay. Some town folks raised some money to give to Garrett,” Pope said.

  “Yeah, I heard such. I also heard it was a put-up deal and he didn’t really kill Billy the Kid.”

  “Really? I have not heard it was faked,” Pope said truthfully.

  “Either way, you are now the only Kid who is a gunfighter, huh?” Pope added.

  “I shore am. I’m figuring one of the dime novel writers will show up here any day. Is my capture in the papers yet?”

  “It’s in the Cheyenne paper. I have not seen any others. But, given the number of wanted posters out on you, I would bet it’s spreading far and wide.”

  “Well, the papers clinch the deal. The writers will be here fighting over who’s going to write about me for sure.”

  Pope thought about bringing the local paper to him, but the article did not reflect well upon Randolph.

  “Do you read and do ciphers?” Pope asked.

  “I read and recognize my name. Not much more. I didn’t hang around school long enough to get into adding and subtracting. Not the multiplication table either.”

  “I’ll bring you any papers I can locate with articles about you,” Pope said.

  “It would be real good to see them, detective.”

  “Alright. I’ll see you soon. Either here or when we have to do the official interview with you,” Pope said.

  “What’s the official interview?”

  “It’s the one which is done after anybody is arrested. It verifies who you are, whether we have the right person, the proper way to spell your name.”

  “Before you go, detective—has anybody let my ma and pa know where I am?”

  “Yes, Kid. Chief Deputy Akin sent a telegram to the sheriff over in Bowie. He sent a deputy over to let them know.”

  Randolph looked pleased with the information, so Pope left while things were still positive.

  He stopped by the sheriff’s office and found his friend in.

  “Well, Pope. Is our boy crazy?”

  “I don’t know. I think I made some good progress getting him to feel comfortable talking with me. He now knows there will be an official police questioning. I think his ego is looking forward to it.

  Horatio, his ego seems to drive everything he says or does. We will have to play on it to learn whatever is floating around in his head. This is a case where good policeman and bad policeman may not be the best approach.

  I’d like to determine the way he acts when he’s telling the truth. Then, when he varies from it, we should start suspecting he is lying. I’m not real sure he is going to lie at all.”

  “You are kidding, John!”

  “No, I think he lives in a world surrounded by a misguided sense of how great he is. There may not be any reason in his mind to lie.”

  “Amazing! I actually look forward to this!” the chief deputy said.

  “I do, too. There are some red flags we can watch for. One is when he switches from ‘I or me’ to ‘it or them,’ those transitions often signal a lie beginning.”

  “Interesting. I might ask you to do some training for our deputies when this is all over.”

  “Glad to. Assuming I am still in Wyoming. With Wells Fargo, you don’t know where you will be from week to week if you are a detective.”

  “Do you think Sarah will stay as manager?” Akin asked.

  “I think there’s a good chance. Funny thing is we have not heard one way or the other. Both of us were kind of expecting word before now. It’s almost to the point of being a bit odd,” Pope said.

  “Let me know as soon as either of you hears.”

  “Sure will. I am going to head back to the office and see if anything has come in from the boss. When you work for the number one detective anywhere, the bar is set pretty high.”

  “Is Hume above Pinkerton?”

  “Now, for sure. Sarah corresponds with her old boss periodically. He is failing fast after a stroke. Sad. I learned a lot from reading his books. If he’s not still the greatest, he surely was once,” Pope said.

  Pope left and took his time walking back to the office. The spring weather was appealing after an exceptionally cold winter in the area. It was a winter during which he spent a lot of time on the trail.

  He could smell springtime. There was something else in the air. He could not define it. But it smelled like trouble.

  Five days later and Pope nor Sarah had any news from Wells Fargo headquarters. Neither Hume nor Pridham had contacted them about staying, returning, sending Bell back or anything.

  “They just moved Randolph back to the jail,” Bell said to Pope and Sarah. “I saw Akin and he said we should plan on beginning our interrogation tomorrow morning. Maybe around nine o’clock.”

  “We’ll be ready. We can spend some time today talking about the approach. With this individual, I want to take it slow and easy. Not like the old big city detective way.”

  “No punches or slams with a city directory?”

  “I don’t think so. Unless he goes crazy and attacks us,” Pope said.

  “He only has one fist.”

  “Yes, but he has two elbows, feet and teeth and a head for butting. So, we have to keep our guard up and our wits about us. This may be the most interesting interview any of us have done to date.”

  The two made notes the rest of the day. Bell had met a young lady at the grocers and invited her to dinner.

  Sarah and Pope had the chance for a quiet dinner together.

  “What do you think we should do if Hume just moves us back to headquarters and our old jobs?” Sarah asked.

  “I have given it a lot of thought.”

  “And?”

  “I have no idea. None whatsoever. Nothing.”

  “You’re a big help, cowboy.”

  “Well, cowboy is always our backup position,” Pope noted.

  “You mean run your grandfather’s ranch in Alameda County?” she asked.

  “It will be mine sooner than later. Grandpa and Millie seem to spend most of their time in Marin County at the cabin even now.”

  “Being a ranch wife is not something I have given much thought to.”

  “I keep having this feeling all of this will be answered for us by something we didn’t see coming,” Pope said.

  “Has your spirit animal, the eagle, visited you with some message?” she asked.

  “Not quite as obvious as a visit. Just a strong feeling.”

  “Anything about the feeling foreboding?”

  “No, not at all. Strong, but not bad.”

  “I am braced. This is where you usually punch me lovingly hard in a wounded shoulder,” he added.

  “Like this?” she punched him in the deltoid hard enough to rock him to the side.

  “You know, Sarah, you are really going to have to break your punching habit.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  He just looked at her with a poker face.

  “What are you, six foot two and a hundred eighty pounds? I am five foot six and a hundred twenty...” he looked at her and cracked a smile. “A hundred and thirty pounds, smartass. There is no way I can hurt you without a knife or gun or knee!”

  “You are playing with me like I’m a little doll, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s appropriate. You are my little doll. A dangerous one, but doll nonetheless.”


  “Now we’ve gotten the punching behind us, we are still faced with plans,” she said.

  “Sometimes, dear Sarah, things cannot be planned ahead of time. I think we have to wait a while and see what falls on our plate. When we get word, we can either do something, or do nothing.”

  “Alright. Let’s attack something we can plan. Apple or cherry pie?” she asked.

  “Hundred and what?” earned him a solid punch to the shoulder. He chose cherry anyway.

  The rest of their evening decided nothing but was far less violent. She hoped they would always tease and laugh as they did tonight. When he was eighty, she would not hit him as hard on the shoulder. She would be eighty-three and probably wouldn’t throw as hard a punch as she did at thirty anyway.

  The next day, the cashier was put in charge of the office and Pope, Sarah, and Bell walked over to the sheriff’s office.

  Randolph was sitting glumly in a chair at the table in the middle of the interview room. He faced a new window with its curtains drawn. On the side of the window facing the hall, another set of curtains were drawn. Before the interview started, a jail bailiff brought two chairs down the hall and placed them before the window. Sheriff Seth Sharples seated Sarah and took his place in the second chair. The bailiff quietly opened the curtains to a window whose top sash was elevated sufficiently to allow those outside to hear what was being said inside. Pope still thought his non-existent dream of one-way glass was better. However, this would work.

  “Hello, Kid,” Pope said as he walked in and sat down. He opened his notebook, as did Akin and Bell.

  “Kid Taos, this is Chief Deputy Horatio Akin and you met Wells Fargo Detective Jake Bell on the occasion of the incident at the Wells Fargo office a week or so ago.

  As I mentioned to you during the hospital visit, this is a standard procedure. Police always interview people after a crime. The purpose is to get your side of the story, fill in any blanks we have and make sure the charges are fair and just. Do you have any questions?” Pope asked.

  “Nope. You ask the questions and I’ll answer what I want,” Randolph said.

  “Let’s get going then. We will take notes so we can prepare your statement for the record. First, please state your full name and permanent address for me,” Pope requested.