Pray for Death

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Stand back away from the door,” Ed ordered. “We brought you some company.” Ike and Zeke Bowers stepped back to the back wall of the one-cell jail, gawking at the two new arrivals. They, in turn, stared back at them, wondering what manner of outlaw was occupying the makeshift jail. Noticing the silent scrutiny from both sides, Ed commented, “Now, you fellers can introduce yourselves. Give you a chance to make some new friends. If you behave yourselves, we might feed you some breakfast in the mornin’.”

  With the back of his coat and trousers tangled and dirty from his trip to the jail, Bob Atkins turned to look Will in the eye. “You dirty skunk,” he threatened, “you’ve got the upper hand right now. But you shoulda shot me when you shot my brother. This ain’t over between you and me. Don’t matter how long they send me to jail, I’ll come lookin’ for you when I get out. And I’m thinkin’ it ain’t gonna be for long for doin’ nothin’ but disturbin’ the peace.”

  “’Preciate the warnin’, Bob,” Will responded. “I’ll remember to keep an eye out for you.” He looked at Ed and said, “Now, I reckon we can tell the judge that Bob, here, threatened the life of an officer of the law.”

  With the four of them locked up, Will and Ed led the three extra horses down to the stables to see if Stanley Coons had locked up for the night. Jim Little Eagle rode along beside them. Coons was in the process of locking the back door to his barn when they got there. He knew both of the deputies and was happy to take care of the horses, knowing he would be paid for them. After that was done, the question of dealing with Mama’s Kitchen and Tiny McGee was next on their agenda. “Now’s as good a time as any,” Will suggested. “Everybody oughta be through with supper and we can see what kind of business McGee is doin’ now. If he’s runnin’ a saloon, now’s about the time the drinkin’ really gets started.” Ed agreed, so they went back to the wagon to get their horses. Jim was of a mind to accompany them, but Will was not sure that was a good idea. “I don’t know what we might run into in that place, but if it’s trouble, I don’t wanna risk havin’ them out after you, tryin’ to get even. Ed and I will be goin’ back to Fort Smith after this, but you’ll still be here with a wife and your home to worry about. And I wouldn’t want you to suffer from any acts of revenge, just because they couldn’t get to me or Ed.” Ed agreed and Jim appreciated their concern. Although he was ready to make the visit with them, he saw their logic and decided to wait to see them in the morning. He told them how to find Mama’s Kitchen and wished them good hunting.

  After Jim left to go home, Ed looked at Will and asked, “How many do you think that jail wagon will hold?” It was said as a joke, but both deputies were thinking of a possible situation where they might arrest Tiny McGee for selling whiskey in Indian Territory.

  * * *

  They pulled their horses to a stop about forty yards short of the path that led down to the little cluster of log buildings sitting on the bank of Muddy Boggy Creek. From there, they could see the front of the main building and what appeared to be a long addition behind it. “What the hell is that on the back?” Ed asked. “It almost looks like a bunkhouse,” he said, answering his own question. It raised a suspicion with both lawmen of the possibility that McGee was expecting to provide accommodations for anyone on the run from the law outside the boundaries of Indian Territory. If so, it was a pretty brazen move on McGee’s part to locate it so close to Atoka. The typical outlaw hideout was located in a remote area, like the Arbuckle Mountains west of the MKT Railroad, or the Sans Bois to the east. “There are two horses tied at the hitching rail in front of the building, so it looks like he’s got a little business.”

  “Let’s ride on down there and maybe Mr. McGee will be glad to tell us what his plans are,” Will said, and gave Buster a nudge.

  The rough sign that said MAMA’S KITCHEN was just barely able to be read in the light coming from the window. “Has a nice homey feel to it, don’t it?” Ed quipped as they dismounted and stepped up on the porch. They paused by the door to listen for a minute or two before entering. Other than the occasional raising of someone’s laughter, it sounded pretty quiet. He pushed the door open and Will followed him inside, where they paused again to look over the smoky room. The thought struck both deputies that it might be claiming to be a dining room, but the most prominent fixture that greeted the customer’s eye was the twenty-five-foot bar on one side. And the bald little man wearing an apron behind it looked very much like a bartender. “I expect we could buy a drink of likker here if we was inclined to,” Ed commented.

  “I expect so,” Will replied, and they walked over to the bar, as Bud Tilton looked them over very closely.

  “Evenin’, boys,” Bud greeted them. “Always glad to see new customers. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Well, we’d probably enjoy a drink of whiskey,” Will answered him. “But you ain’t allowed to sell whiskey in the Nations. Ain’t that right?”

  Bud’s sallow face lit up with an impish smile. “Well, that’s a fact, all right, but I think I can fix you boys up with a little firewater.”

  “How can you do that?” Ed asked. “It’s against the law, ain’t it?”

  His response served to make Bud suddenly nervous. He called out toward a table where two men who looked like cowhands were sitting, talking to a woman and a huge man. “Tiny, you might better wait on these two gentlemen.” Tiny looked up to give Will and Ed a quick look, then got up and came over to the bar.

  “What’s the trouble, boys?” Tiny asked.

  Will brushed his coat aside to reveal his badge. “We’re U.S. Deputy Marshals and it looks like somebody forgot to tell you that it’s against the law to sell alcoholic beverages in the Nations.”

  McGee drew himself up to emphasize his unusual size, obviously accustomed to intimidating people. “Well, now, Deputies, I’m damn sure aware of that, but Mama’s Kitchen is a dinin’ room. And the kitchen is closed right now ’cause supper’s over. We ain’t sellin’ no whiskey.”

  “Your bartender said he could fix us up with a drink, and that’s sure as hell a whiskey bottle settin’ on that table,” Ed said, and nodded toward the two men sitting there with Ida Simpson.

  Tiny gave his bartender a quick frown, but quickly turned back to the lawmen, smiling as he replied, “Those two fellers brought that with ’em. I didn’t sell it to ’em. They eat here all the time, and they like to take a little drink after supper. So they bring a bottle in with ’em and I let ’em set at one of my tables if they want to. I figure it’s against the law to sell it in Injun Territory, but it ain’t against the law to drink it in Injun Territory. Besides, we’re a good way from town where we ain’t botherin’ nobody. Just sorta mindin’ our own business, you know.” He paused to judge the reaction of the two lawmen, then continued. “Bud probably just meant he’d ask ’em if they’d give a couple of strangers a drink. So, like I said, supper’s already over and the kitchen’s closed, so I reckon there ain’t nothin’ more I can do for you boys.”

  “What’s the bar for?” Will asked.

  Tiny’s smile gradually took the shape of a smirk, with no attempt to hide his irritation. “This ain’t a bar,” he said. “It’s a sideboard to hold dishes and napkins and tablecloths and such.”

  “So, if I looked behind that sideboard, I wouldn’t see any whiskey bottles and shot glasses?” Will asked. When Tiny didn’t answer right away, Will motioned toward the table. “And I reckon that lady sittin’ with those two fellows wouldn’t jump in the bed with me for a couple of dollars.”

  Clearly struggling to hold on to his composure, Tiny replied, “That lady is a waitress, and I ain’t got no idea if she’d jump in the bed with you or not. That ain’t none of my business.” It was becoming painfully clear to him that he was not fooling the two deputies, and he was uncertain if an offer of a payoff was what they had really come for. He decided to drop the bait, just in case. “If I was runnin’ a saloon here, which I ain’t, I expect you’d figure I’d offer a little money for you to loo
k the other way.”

  “If you were to do that,” Will said, “then we’d have to haul you off to court for tryin’ to bribe two law officers. Wouldn’t you say, Ed?”

  “I expect so,” Ed replied at once.

  “Good thing I ain’t offerin’ no money, then, ain’t it? Like I said, I’m tryin’ to run a dinin’ room here. I ain’t runnin’ a saloon.”

  “You wanna tell him?” Will asked Ed.

  “You go ahead,” Ed replied at once, content to let Will do the talking.

  Will nodded and continued. “Here’s the situation, Mr. McGee. We’ve had reports in Fort Smith that you were sellin’ whiskey down here.” That was not true, but he figured it carried more weight if it appeared that Tiny’s activities were well known. “Deputy Pine and myself were sent down here to verify it, and I think we have. Now, you are guilty of breaking the law, but I think the Federal Court for the Western District of Arkansas is willin’ to cut you some slack if you close your liquor business down today. Deputy Pine and I will be watching your place pretty close from now on to see who’s comin’ and goin’. We’ll be arrestin’ your customers who have been drinkin’. There’s two of your customers in jail right now for drunken, disorderly conduct and disturbin’ the peace. It’s unfortunate that one other man with ’em decided to resist arrest and now he’s dead. We mean to stop the sale of alcohol, so if you don’t think you can make it as a dinin’ room, I think the best thing for you to do would be to move on outta the Nations. We’re givin’ you this chance to clear out, even though you’ve already broken the law. Save us the trouble of transportin’ you all the way back to Fort Smith. So, you close this place down and you won’t have to go to prison, and we won’t have to haul you back to Fort Smith. Everybody wins. Now, that’s a fair deal, and one that the Marshals Service don’t offer very often.”

  Tiny didn’t respond for a long minute. When he did, it was with a high degree of skepticism. “Just the two of you, huh? You’re gonna do all that arrestin’ and jailin’ all the customers I’m expectin’ to show up here? You can make a helluva lot of enemies when you stand between a man and his whiskey.”

  “No,” Will replied. “We wired Fort Smith a couple of days ago, after so many of the folks in Atoka complained about what was goin’ on down here. There’s a posse of deputies already on their way, and a company of Texas Rangers have offered to come up to give us a hand if there’s any trouble.” He took care not to make eye contact with Ed for fear he might give the lie away.

  Tiny was not sure he believed it, but he was a little fearful not to. He had spent a lot of money to get his buildings up in a hurry and he built them in an agreement with Ward Hawkins, who was going to sell cattle in Texas for whiskey to sell in Indian Territory. The cattle would be stolen cattle, of course. That was Ward’s specialty, and he would get the word out that the place to hide out was Boggy Town. And then these two lowdown-snake deputy marshals came along. He was expecting Ward to show up here in Indian Territory any day now. It might not be a good thing if all those lawmen arrived when Ward did.

  It occurred to him that, if they were bluffing about the posse and the Rangers, the best thing to do was to put the two of those deputies in the ground. Fort Smith would never know what happened to them. That was bad news about Stump Grissom and the Atkins brothers. He now knew why they had not returned from town yet. He was familiar with their work, and he might have had them take care of these two lawmen, although, if what this deputy said was true, they didn’t come out too well with their earlier encounter this evening. He glanced over at the two men still sitting at the table. They rode in from Texas this evening with warrants on their heads for armed robbery and shooting a bank teller. Hell, he thought, this oughta be right up their alley. If he could interest them in taking care of the two lawmen, that might be the end of the threat. And if the deputies weren’t bluffing, there wouldn’t be any way the murders could be tied to him. He decided that was the gamble he would take, and with that in mind, he said to Will, “You win. You can tell your bosses in Fort Smith that I’ll close my business down. You can give me two or three days to load up all my stuff and get outta here, can’tcha?”

  “You’re doin’ a smart thing,” Will said. “Course, we’ll be keepin’ a watch on you to see that you keep your word.”

  “Like I said,” Tiny replied, “it’ll take me a little time to get all packed up and shut the place down.”

  Will took a good look at the two men sitting at the table before he and Ed walked out the door. He wanted to make sure he would recognize them if he ran into them after this. “Man, what a tale you made up in there,” Ed commented when they rode back up to the creek trail. “You think he believed a word of it?”

  “I doubt it,” Will answered.

  “He said he’d pull up stakes and move out in two days,” Ed said. “Maybe he did believe it.”

  “He just wanted us to get out of his hair tonight,” Will replied. “He’s thinkin’, if there really is a posse already on their way, they’ll be here in two days. If they don’t show up, then he’ll know he’s just got you and me to deal with. And I’ve got a pretty good idea how he intends to handle the problem of you and me. We’ll see what he does tomorrow, see if he shows any signs of movin’ outta that saloon.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “What’s the matter, Tiny?” Dave Harley asked when the big man came back to the table and sat down. “Who were those two jaspers? You didn’t look like you was enjoyin’ the conversation, did he, Tom?”

  “I reckon not,” Tom Freeman answered, and pulled his hand out of his lap to reveal the .44 he had put there when they saw Will open his coat to show his badge. “Me and Harley figured they looked like lawmen that mighta been askin’ about us.”

  “Well, you’re halfway right,” Tiny said. “They was lawmen, all right, two deputy marshals outta Fort Smith. But they didn’t know nothin’ about you boys. They came in here to order me outta business for sellin’ whiskey.” He poured himself a drink out of the bottle on the table. “They expect me to pack up and move away from town just like that.”

  “Damn . . . U.S. Marshals,” Harley drew out. “You gonna do it? Move out?”

  “Hell, no, I ain’t gonna move out,” Tiny spat, getting madder by the moment. “After I built this place and spent every dime I had to fix it up for customers like you and Tom, I ain’t shuttin’ it down. No, sir.”

  “Well, ain’t that some luck?” Tom remarked. “We hit town and the first thing we see is two deputy marshals where there ain’t supposed to be no law a-tall. Ward Hawkins said Boggy Town was the place to go. Said there weren’t no law but a Choctaw Injun, and he didn’t have no jurisdiction over white men a-tall.” He cocked his head and gave Tiny a sideways look. “You sure those two jaspers weren’t lookin’ for two fellers that shot a bank teller in Fort Worth?”

  “I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that,” Tiny answered. “They were after me for sellin’ whiskey and havin’ a whore.” That prompted him to ask, “Where’d Baby go? She was settin’ here when they came in.”

  Harley laughed. “She got up and hightailed it to the kitchen when me and Tom pulled our .44s out and stuck ’em under the table.”

  Etta Grice came out of the kitchen at that moment. “You want anything else from the kitchen?” When no one said they did, she asked, “You want me to save anything for them other three? That little short feller, the one they call Stump, he had me save him a biscuit after supper last night.”

  “Nope,” Tiny said. “He won’t be eatin’ no biscuit tonight. Those boys ended up in jail”—he paused—“at least two of ’em did. One of ’em got shot. It was one of the Atkins brothers, but I don’t know which one.”

  “Well, now, that surely is a sorry piece of news,” Etta said. “I reckon I’ll throw them cold biscuits out. That is, if there’s any of ’em left. Ida was workin’ on ’em when I came out here.”

  “You’d best tell her to leave them biscuits alone,” Harley commented. “She
’s hefty enough already. She gets any bigger and she’ll get too big to throw a saddle on her.”

  They chuckled over Harley’s remark, but Tom was still more concerned about the two lawmen that just happened to show up right after they hit town. “That one feller was lookin’ real hard at us before they walked out the door. I don’t know, Harley, maybe it ain’t such a good idea to hole up here. Might be we oughta ride on outta here, head a little farther west, maybe over to the Arbuckle Mountains.”

  When Harley looked as if considering that possibility, Tiny was quick to respond. “You wouldn’t have no place to get a drink or a good meal, if you were holed up in that little patch of mountains,” he reminded them. “And you sure wouldn’t have a friendly gal like Baby to take care of your needs.” He paused to let that sink in, then continued. “It ain’t nothin’ but a stroke of bad luck that brought them lawmen in here to hassle me. I’m thinkin’ it would be a simple problem to fix, though. Now that I’ve thought about it a little, I know those two jaspers were bluffin’. There ain’t no posse on their way over here from Fort Smith, and I doubt the Texas Rangers know where the hell you two went. I’ll tell you what else I’m thinkin’. I’m thinkin’ it would be worth a hundred dollars a head to me to have them two lawmen rubbed out. That would take care of any problems I might have with ’em, and I reckon it would take care of anything you boys were worried about, too, wouldn’t it?” He could tell by their expressions that he had caused a spark. “The only trouble is, Stump Grissom and one of the Atkins brothers are in jail. If they weren’t, I’d have ’em take care of them deputies. And as much as they enjoy killin’ lawmen, they’da done it for nothin’, especially since they killed one of the brothers.” He scratched his chin whiskers thoughtfully and said, “What I need to figure out is how to spring ’em from jail.”