The Bold Frontier

by John Jakes

  Hands pulled him down from the saddle, started to slip the rope around his neck. One of the men with the rope wore a deputy’s badge. He wondered what the sheriff was doing. …

  The thunder of the shotgun roared through the darkness. The leaves stirred with faint hissing as the lead passed through.

  The mob stopped.

  Like a single organism, its voice died. Frightened eyes peered toward the shadows. The rope fell to the ground. Rome gazed at the figures in the darkness vaguely outlined in the torchlight. He heard a familiar voice.

  “Get away from him, all of you.”

  Ben Hamilton. My God, it was Ben! Rome wanted to shout his name aloud.

  Hamilton was mounted, a shotgun leveled at the mob. Behind him were other riders, men from the camp, similarly armed. Their gun barrels shone dull blue in the starlight.

  “The next blast,” Hamilton said, “may get some of you.”

  The mob stirred, whispering. No one reached for his gun.

  “Open a way there,” Hamilton ordered. “Mark, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Rome called.

  “Can you ride out by yourself? Do you need help?”

  “I can ride,” Rome said quickly.

  The men didn’t move. Hamilton’s face, craggy and determined, was dimly visible in the orange glare of the torches. “Let him through!”

  The shotgun roared again, scattering shot skyward. A pinched-faced puncher squealed in fear. The crowd parted.

  Rome kicked his horse through the aisle. Hamilton and the railroad men wheeled their mounts and pounded down the dark alley behind the stable. The angry voices lifted again, but they soon faded under the drumming of the hoofs.

  The men rode from Warknife to the end-of-track without a word being said. Rome hung on tightly, letting the horse have its head to follow the others. He felt strength slowly returning; he began to think clearly again.

  At the camp, Hamilton posted guards all around, then he and Rome went into the office car. Hamilton lit the lamp and pulled the green blinds. His eyes bored into Rome. “This is pretty damned serious, Mark.”

  “Goddammit, you don’t have to tell me that! What I want to know is how you got there. I was almost stretched out. I had the feeling I was going to die. I’ve never felt like that, so damned sure. It isn’t pleasant.”

  “Two of the boys bought supplies in town this afternoon. They had a drink at the Emporia and heard about the meeting. I was afraid there might be trouble. We rode in just as the meeting was breaking up. We heard the shooting, and it was damned clear that a necktie party was being organized, with you as the guest. I’d like to hear about it.”

  “There’s quite a bit,” Rome said shortly.

  “Well, make it quick. They’ll be out here before long. I’ve got the men standing by to signal. They won’t touch us—they’ll be afraid to, because lynchings are illegal. But with you it may be a different story. They’re liable to take you anyway.”

  Rome laughed, sharp and hard. “A price on my head.” Rapidly he outlined what had happened since their discussion at noon. When he finished, Hamilton looked even more dismayed.

  “God, this looks bad. You didn’t try to buy off Gashlin, did you?”

  “Ben, don’t you know me better?”

  “All right, don’t get sore. We’ve got to figure out what to do next. And, on top of that, we still have a contract to meet.” He shoved a hand through his white hair, his eyes reflecting the yellow glow of the lamps.

  To Rome, the interior of the car with its green blinds and shadowed corners seemed secure and untroubled. The feeling was shattered by the blast of a rifle. Hamilton leaped to his feet, knocking over the chair.

  “They’re coming Mark. Get out of here, fast! Ride back when it looks safe, and we’ll see what’s happened by then.”

  Rome already had the door open. He jumped off the steps, swung up onto his horse, and booted it hard. From the opposite side of the camp came the noise of a large party of riders. The sound of his horse’s hoofs would be muffled by the arrival of the men from Warknife.

  He headed away from the camp, to the north, and circled back wide, riding across the dark prairie toward the town. The wind fanning his face was cool and invigorating. He began to organize his thoughts.

  He figured Gashlin would be with the Warknife men. Yancey would be undercover, probably holed up in a room at one of the town’s boardinghouses. That gave Rome an opportunity.

  He didn’t exactly know what he was looking for, but he held a hope that he might find something to untangle the web of treachery and death gathering around him. Hamilton and the other railroaders were helpless. He was the free agent—with a price on his head.

  The realization struck home with biting force. He rode on beneath the cloud-filled sky, suddenly feeling cut off and alone. The moon came out from under a black veil of cloud, shining down like a bloated pale face. The air had grown very cold.

  Warknife lay quiet now, its streets deserted. Rome kept to the back alleys. Most of the lamps in the houses were out, the people in bed. The hoofs of his horse made soft, thudding sounds in the dirt.

  He dismounted in back of the main yard of the Central Kansas Overland Company. Coaches loomed against the moon as Rome crept silently among them toward the office building. He saw no guard posted anywhere.

  He eased out his pistol, slipping into a patch of shadow. He tried the door. It was locked. Moving to the right, he began a systematic check of the windows. Finally he found one open in the rear.

  He crawled over the sill, finding a small storeroom piled with boxes of invoices, shipping forms, and company letterheads. The door to this room was locked. Conscious of the creak of the floorboards, he smashed twice at the lock with his gun butt. Then he listened. He heard nothing but a few faint shouts from the street. Drunks, probably. The lock hung broken. He stepped into the main office.

  Across it, behind a gold-lettered door, lay Bruce Gashlin’s office. In there, Rome reasoned, might be something to help him expose the man for what he was. Cautiously, he eased the door open and started a methodical rifling of the desk.

  One of the bottom drawers was locked. He tugged at the handle, then noticed something and felt a burst of satisfaction. There was no safe in the office. Gashlin was evidently too sure of himself for that; a locked drawer would suffice.

  Rome took a letter opener from the desk and thrust it into the slit at the top of the drawer. He worked the opener back and forth a few moments; cursed when it snapped in two. He found a second one with a heavy ivory handle and finally managed to break the latch and open the drawer.

  Three papers lay inside. Rome hesitated, listening again. The drunken shouts again, closer. He crouched under the desk and struck a match, reading the first paper.

  Received of Bruce Gashlin

  1500 dollars for services.

  Signed,

  Job Thompson

  The other two, for seven and nine hundred dollars respectively, were signed by Harry Drew and Giles McMaster. Rome blew out the match, working on the significance of what he’d read.

  Gashlin had plenty of money. Enough money to pay the ranchers not to sell the right-of-way. Pay them, in effect, to maintain his business. It was more money than the railroad could offer for the small parcels of land. The Kansas & Western was not yet that big a firm; it ran on a tight budget.

  Gashlin was the one with capital. Thompson, McMaster, and Drew certainly knew what kind of a man he was. Knew, for instance, that he would buy people off to get what he wanted; that it wasn’t strictly a matter of being opposed to progress. The three of them were in on the scheme, while the rest of the townspeople were unaware of it.

  “Damn,” Rome said under his breath. The church meeting had been a farce, a show staged to keep the townspeople quiet. They could have thrown a lot of weight, but now they were against the railroad. Thompson’s wrath at Gashlin’s lie concerning the attempt to bribe him must have been an act, and that same anger provided the s
etting for his murder. Thompson evidently was expendable from Gashlin’s point of view. But there was one man who might be able to blow things open, if Rome could get to him.

  Stuffing the papers into his pocket, he straightened suddenly. One of the drunken voices was coming from the front porch of the office building. A key rattled in the lock. The door swung open.

  Rome crouched in the shadows. The watchman’s lantern swayed in one hand; a bottle hung slackly from the other. The watchman stumbled against the outer office rail, swearing. Rome started to move toward the storeroom through the open door of Gashlin’s office.

  The watchman turned, setting down his lantern. “Who in hell … Who is it?” he shouted. He reached for his gun.

  Rome moved faster than he thought possible. He clubbed the man’s gun away and kicked him backward with his knee. He had learned the lessons of running outside the law very quickly.

  The watchman staggered, his eyes wild in the smoky light from the lantern. He jerked a knife from his pocket and lumbered at Rome, mumbling, “What the hell are you doing in here?” Rome tensed himself and swung out, striking the drunken man across the temple with his gun barrel.

  The knife clattered to the wooden floor, blade first. A faint whine filled the air as it stuck and quivered. Then the watchman dropped, a splotchy bruise widening on his skin.

  He wasn’t dead. Rome made sure of that, then blew out the lantern. As he stood in the darkness listening to the watchman’s irregular breathing, a new thought twisted the pit of his stomach.

  He was now bound to the railroad more closely than ever, though in another way he remained cut off. He was bound to it not merely because he worked for the Kansas & Western—it wasn’t that simple. If the railroad went through, Gashlin would be out of business and there was a good chance Rome would be cleared. If the railroad didn’t go through, he would eventually be a dead man, swinging in a noose.

  The thought was ironic. He laughed softly. He had to put the Kansas & Western through. Not with actual rails and ties, not by sweating in the sun, but as an outlaw, with his gun and his mind. It was surely a new way to drive the iron west. …

  He stopped laughing then. A noose wasn’t funny. He remembered how close he had come, how he’d felt death near.

  He went out through the storeroom window to the back of the yard, the papers in his coat. His horse waited in the shadow thrown by the coaches, whose angular shapes rose against the swollen white moon.

  Yancey. The answer lay with the grinning, death-crazed youngster. At least, Rome thought, the first step lay there. He had to clear himself and thereby clear the railroad. With the moon out and night lying on the town, he had the opportunity. He knew very little about Yancey and yet he knew a great deal. Enough, perhaps, to give him the edge he needed.

  He rode slowly through the shadowed streets. They wouldn’t be searching for him at this hour. His horse moved quietly between the rows of houses while he looked to the right and left till he found the object of his search.

  The first boardinghouse, run by an Irishman named Harrigan, revealed nothing. The irate and sleepy landlord told him nobody named Yancey lived there. The door slammed in Rome’s face. He moved back to the street, mounted, and rode on.

  The second boardinghouse stood on a large lot on a dusty street directly to the rear of the Emporia. Rome heard the rhythms of the player piano still dinning into the night along with occasional laughter. He tied his horse at the sagging gate and stepped as quietly as he could onto the squeaking boards of the run-down porch.

  He knocked three times before a landlady appeared, carrying a tall lamp. Her hair was put up in papers, her thick face mottled. Her breath reeked of alcohol. Rome felt safe. She was too full of rotgut to recognize him, even if she had been at the church. Judging from her appearance, chances were she hadn’t.

  “What the hell’s the idea of waking a lady at this time of night?” she growled, pulling her wrapper close. The liquor fumes clouded around Rome’s head as she spoke.

  “I’m looking for a man named Yancey. Does he live here?”

  “Sure he does. Cole Yancey. Second floor. First door to the left of the landing.”

  He moved by, into the hall. She slammed the door and continued to babble drunkenly about being awakened, standing in a pool of lamplight by the newel post. She was still complaining when he turned the corner at the head of the stairs.

  He halted at the first door, standing in the gloom, listening. Beyond the thin panel he heard loud snoring. He eased his gun from its holster and shoved the barrel near the lock. Then he rapped on the door.

  He kept knocking till the snoring stopped. Yancey mumbled incoherently; footsteps padded to the door. Rome heard the noise of a hammer going back. Even if Yancey was still groggy from sleep, he couldn’t get out of the habit. But his reaction would be slow … or so Rome hoped.

  “Yeah?” Yancey called. “Who is it?”

  “Gashlin sent me over,” Rome whispered.

  “What about?”

  “About you and Job Thompson. Now open up.” He tried to sound angry and harried at the same time.

  Rome’s heart slugged out a beat within his chest. The key rattled in the lock. A tiny bit of light appeared as Yancey pulled the door open.

  Rome shoved the barrel of his gun against the man’s stomach. “Let go of your gun. Now!”

  Yancey’s face lost its look of sleepy idiocy. His eyes flared with the sudden awareness that he was caught. He tried to step back, but Rome jammed the barrel deeper into his flesh, gouging. “Drop it on the floor!”

  Yancey choked and coughed, still not totally awake. He eased the hammer carefully into place. The gun thudded on the carpet, and Rome stepped quickly into the room, shutting the door. Yancey, barefoot, in his underwear, looked like a helpless and frightened boy. He didn’t have a gun anymore.

  That was what Rome counted on. Without his gun he was nothing; a harmless youngster. Rome scooped up the weapon and thrust it into his belt. Yancey waited submissively, terror in his eyes as he stared at the glinting blue metal in Rome’s hand.

  “What do you want from me, Rome?” he croaked. “Listen, I only work for Gashlin …”

  Rome moved to the bed and sat down. A smell of rotting garbage filtered into the bedroom through the open window. The Emporia piano clattered its mechanical melodies.

  “I know you work for him, Yancey. That’s why I want to know a few other things. You’d better answer my questions. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

  Yancey trembled. Rome felt a surge of triumph. He had been right. Yancey was like so many of them, master of a situation only when armed. The youngster was scared of the cold muzzle eye looking at him. He was seeing the fire of the explosion, seeing the smoke rising before the bullet slammed him. He said, “Ask your questions.”

  “Did you know you were going to shoot Thompson before the meeting tonight? Was it planned?”

  Yancey shook his head doggedly. “No, Mr. Rome.” He emphasized the mister. “Gashlin give me the nod, and I knew what he meant. I always understand when he gives me the nod. People were packed so tight, nobody could see much. It was easy. I had a few drinks afterward and came back here.”

  Suddenly a new thought wrote itself across his face. “Say, they were supposed to hang you. I saw ’em start …”

  Anger filled Rome. He rose, staring. His voice grew loud. “You cheap punk, I’m good and alive, and I’ve got half a mind to kill you right now. Remember in the Emporia? You said you’d accommodate me soon. Well, here I am.”

  “Yeah,” Yancey mumbled faintly.

  “No good without a gun, are you?” Rome couldn’t resist the remark.

  “No, sir, I ain’t.”

  “You’re damned quick with the answers, too.” Rome felt angrier by the moment. This crazy kid had put the murder brand on him as casually as he’d taken a drink afterward. Finally, Rome got control of himself.

  “All right, Yancey. I want you to do something.�
�

  “Sure, anything.”

  “You got some paper and a pen?”

  Yancey pointed to the dresser. “In there. Belongs to the landlady.”

  Rome moved to the bureau and pulled open the drawer. Beneath two soiled work shirts were a few yellowed sheets of writing paper. He also found a metal-tipped pen and a bottle a third full of ink. He set the items on top of the table in the center of the room. Then he caught the chair with his boot tip and jerked it forward. “Sit down.”

  Yancey sat, fidgeting with his underwear.

  “You’re going to write what I say. Pick up the pen. You can write, can’t you?”

  “Yeah, I went to school in Indiana when I was a kid.”

  “Don’t waste my time. Write this. I, Cole Yancey …”

  The pen scratched laboriously. Yancey hunched over the table, peering at each word.

  “… killed Job Thompson outside of church tonight on orders from my boss, Bruce …”

  “Not so fast, will you?” Yancey whined.

  “Shut up and keep writing. Bruce Gashlin. Got that?”

  Yancey nodded.

  “Date it and sign your name.”

  Yancey obeyed, then pushed the paper away from him. Rome picked it up, scanned it briefly, and put it down again. “Not just the initials. I want your whole name.”

  “I always use my—” Yancey stopped, looking again at the gun. He wrote out his full name.

  Rome was reaching for the paper, feeling satisfied, when the door opened abruptly. Bruce Gashlin stood there, his clothes dirty and sweat-stained from hard riding. His fingers curled around the doorknob. His husky face remained calm, but his blue eyes narrowed just a bit.

  “Well!” He laughed gently. “Mr. Rome, I didn’t expect you.” He noticed the gun immediately, closing the door and stepping into the room. Rome’s backbone tingled. A new factor had entered the situation. It was now no longer just Rome against Yancey.

  Rome indicated the paper on the table. “I’ve got a nice confession from Mr. Yancey about Job Thompson’s murder. It implicates you.”