Six-Guns Or Surrender (Lincoln's Lawman Book 1)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  "Yet, from that sign, you were trying to post, you haven't given up all hope."

  "That's my son's doing. As you noticed he's the reverend. He believes that God will find a way to deliver us from this evil little empire Dalton is setting up here, but he believes the Lord will operate through us. That the townspeople must band together against the mob rule and make some kind of nonviolent protest. Like it would matter to Dalton that it would be peaceful! I fear for my son's life. The only reason I think he's still alive is that collar around his neck, but after today, I don't think even that will protect him." Riker could almost see the older man's shoulder's tightening with worry.

  “How do you mean, Mister Beckett?”

  "When you were saying goodbye to your sister, my lad was all fired up. He was saying you were a sign that from the Almighty that now is the time to rise up and liberate Dalton's Creek. With his zeal, he's going to get a lot of us townsfolk fired up tonight at the meeting, and I fear that's something that Dalton won't allow."

  “Well, you better believe that I will be joining you at that meeting tonight. I have a few things to say all on my own!”

  Riker’s declaration brought such relief to the Becketts that he could see it on their faces. It reminded him of sunlight breaking through following a storm. Callie was so enthused that she said she wished to forgo the dishes and asked if perhaps Riker would care to be shown around the ranch before the meeting. Her father seemed to cotton to the idea, saying he would take care of the clean-up and for the two to go out on their constitutional. Riker’s gaze lingered as long as he dared on the shapely Miss Beckett, and Riker needed no further convincing, he had in fact been sold on the idea when she first suggested it.

  CHAPTER 11

  PINE BLUFF

  Emerging from the post office as she listened to the sound of the door being locked behind her, McKenna kicked at a rock lying just off the boardwalk that ran along the front of the businesses on this side of the main street of Pine Bluff. It bounced a couple of times before coming to rest next to a large pile of fresh horseshit which McKenna likened to the type of luck she was having today. She had truly wanted to stay with Nash and help him uncover what was going on with the shady Mayor and his henchman the judge. Then the whole business of being shot at and now it had been capped off with more bad news.

  Any thoughts of getting back to Dalton's Creek anytime soon had been foiled when she'd made an inquiry if there was any mail waiting for her from the United States Government. The clerk made no effort to disguise the fact he wasn't pleased about a new arrival in the last few minutes of the workday. The snooty, little bespectacled man whose eyes never left her voluminous breasts, had told her there was no mail from anyone being held for anybody. Irked at his attitude, she asked him what he meant, and he said mail from the east was going to be held up for a couple of days. Somewhere across the miles, a massive forest fire was raging and the wagon carrying the mail was going to have to divert a hundred miles out of the way to get around the fire.

  Turning her back on the clerk she’d left the post office wondering why he was so put out about her last-minute arrival. As she kicked the rock and began to head to the telegraph office, she thought it was not like he’d had an exhausting day with the sum total of mail to sort and distribute was zero. She had no choice but to wait for that mail to arrive. Their pay was in it and her brother had promised to reimburse the citizens back in Dalton’s Creek, so there would be no showing up empty-handed.

  McKenna caught sight of the telegraph office on the opposite street and made a diagonal jaunt towards it, dodging around a buckboard driven by a man who had to weigh north of three hundred pounds. Sweat was pouring down from his drenched hair and he smiled at her and she waved at him. As she entered the station, the door swung on a creaky set of hinges, accompanied by the ringing of a bell fashioned to the door top to alert anyone entering.

  As her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light at the counter, she saw no one hunched over the telegraph device that sat on a table wedge against one of the walls. That didn't mean the office was deserted. It was far from it, in fact. Behind the counter stood a man swinging a hammer as he appeared to be driving the final nails into what was clearly a brand-new shelving unit filled with little slots for incoming telegrams.

  He was shirtless, his back was broad and if the long mane of black hair didn't give him away as an Indian, his copper-hued skin clearly did. The man set his hammer down and appeared to be appraising his work. The time seemed right for McKenna to make her presence known as the noise from his construction work had drowned out the sound of the little bell.

  “Excuse me?”

  Her heart skipped a beat when he turned around. The man’s chest and abdomen rippled with the same hard muscles that made up his arms. His native face was a handsome one and the brown eyes he was taking her in with had an allure about them she couldn’t quite put into words.

  “Ma’am,” he said politely.

  "I don't see the operator. I know that it's late, but if he's still around, I would like to see if I could trouble him to send a message for me." Pine Bluff was one of their preselected checkpoints in the West where they were expected to report in on their activities and receive their salary by mail. With the failure at the post office, she hoped this wouldn't be a wash too.

  “Sorry, friend Jones leave early to give me a chance to put up new rack.”

  “I see. Does he perhaps live nearby? Maybe I could impose on his good nature to come back.”

  “Jones live with wife far from town. No catching him now.”

  Deflated, she sighed, "I see." Then she brightened for a moment, "I don't suppose you know how to work that infernal machine?"

  The corners of his eyes crinkled with good humor. “Give Red Horse hammer or saw and he make it sing. No use for white man’s machine for tapping nonsense.” McKenna couldn’t help but laugh as she sympathized. The telegraph did seem pretty arcane. How the operators made sense of the dots and dashes mystified her. At the end of the day, however, all she cared about was that however they worked, this evening she would be neither sending or receiving messages.

  "Looks like I'm plum out of luck, Red Horse. The name's McKenna Riker, by the way." She said, sticking out her hand. He looked at in puzzlement before slowly reaching over and shaking it.

  “Red Horse figure you a stranger. Never saw you before in Pine Bluff. Now I know you are. White women happy to hire me but never would touch Indian.”

  “Their loss,” she said, playfully swiping her thumb against the top of his hand before letting go. This Indian was one hell of a handsome man, but if the good women of Pine Bluff got their pantaloons in a twist just because he wasn’t white, then they could go wallow in their own ignorance.

  “Long you stay in town, McKenna?”

  "At least until the mail finally gets here. Can't go back where I need to go without it; it seems."

  The carpenter appeared to smile at this news as he picked the hammer back up, “Perhaps I see you again. Must finish now. Have another job waiting at the livery.”

  "You always go to work when others are calling it quitting time?" she asked, genuinely curious.

  “Some places too busy during the day for work to be done. Red Horse get in the way. At night when nobody around, best time to work,” he said reasonably. She gave him a warm smile as she said goodbye and made a note that she would definitely be seeing this man again … and soon.

  Departing the telegraph office, she mused to herself how she seemed to have doubled down on some bad luck, but she reasoned there was nothing she could do about it. Two giggling teenage girls passed by her, and she heard them whispering in surprise at passing a woman packing a six-shooter on her hip. McKenna called after them asking them to point her to the café Markham mentioned. The pair were more than glad to help, and soon her feet were carrying her in the direction of the eatery.

  Markham was sitting at a table in a far corner, and she took a moment to appraise him. Pine Bluff
it appeared was overflowing with handsome men of every stripe. If she had no choice in being stuck somewhere, she had to admit this was the place to be. As she neared the table, he saw her and gallantly rose and pulled out one of the four chairs that were at the table. She thanked him but asked if she could have the one with its back to the wall.

  McKenna and Nash hadn't stayed alive in their duties as long as they had by not playing it safe. They always made sure in a place like this, they had the vantage point to see what was going on in the room rather than have their backs to it and be caught by surprise. Many a man had been drygulched and shot in the back on the frontier and they had no wish to add their names to that number. In addition, though it was a different situation, she was still smarting from the Langston brothers sneaking up on her.

  An older woman with a friendly face who McKenna guessed was one of the owners appeared and told them what was on the menu that night. She hustled off after the two had placed their orders. McKenna was just draping her red and white checkered napkin on her lap when she spied something she had not seen before that left her feeling a tad deflated. Markham had a wedding band on his hand. It was a shame but not a huge surprise given how handsome he was. After some friendly small talk, she felt it was time to get down to business and find out just what was occurring with this man's freight line.

  After the old waitress arrived with the mugs of beer both had requested, she asked him, “You said you felt these so-called accidents were designed to disrupt your deliveries to a mine in Pepper Hill?” Across from her Markham nodded yes and she continued after taking a sip. “Tell me more about these mines.”

  Markham also took a swallow before he briefed her, "A company owns them from the Midwest, their name escapes me at the moment. I believe they operate out of St. Louis. They've just started pulling a healthy amount of silver out of Pepper Hill. The Cape Girardeau Company, that's what the name is! A stand-up gentleman manages the mine by the name of Carlton Corday. He's been as understanding as possible about the delays, but the fact of the matter is the road through Black Rock Pass is the only one leading to Pepper Hill. They need their supplies, and if we can't get them to him, they are going to have to shut down."

  McKenna leaned back in her chair, and her eyes did a sweep of the other Pine Bluff denizens patronizing the café. They were mostly couples and a single man here and there who she subconsciously thought probably didn't know how to cook and ate out. Her real focus wasn't on her surroundings; however, it was running the information Markham was giving her, through her mind, trying to see some purpose or pattern.

  “Tell me about your competitors.”

  “Excuse me?” Markham said blinking.

  “Your rival freight lines. I’m assuming that you’ve got a pretty lucrative contract with the Cape Girardeau Company. I can imagine were you to fail to keep the supply line running, a competitor would be in a position to swoop in like a vulture and take your place were the contract to be voided,” she said leaning back in the chair.

  “By godfrey, that’s a sound theory. Someone staging these accidents to get me to lose the contract. Unfortunately, there is just one flaw in that supposition, McKenna.”

  She waited, and he gave her an answer that surprised her, "We're the sole freight company in town. The nearest competitor to me would be way over in Heaven's Gate, but it wouldn't be practical for them even to attempt to make deliveries to Pepper Hill."

  If Nash were here, she knew he would be disappointed that her concept of a rival sabotaging Markham had been groundless. He preferred cases that were open and shut and where immediate action could be taken to stamp out "the bad guys" as he liked to call them. Had there been another rival in town, Nash would already be making a beeline to them to uncover whether they were behind it. McKenna, on the other hand, shook it off that her first guess was a non-starter. She would just have to think harder on it and consider different angles.

  Just then the waitress returned and began setting down their meal of roasted turkey, cornbread, and a side dish of beets in some type of sauce she couldn’t recognize but smelled good. They smiled politely and thanked her until she had glided away to a table where two Mexicans, a man and his wife, sat. The pair tabled their discussion and enjoyed the spread before them. McKenna had attacked the meal with relish as she made a vow never to skip breakfast again.

  As they dined, however, her mind was hard at work, turning over the possibilities. Without even realizing it, she was drumming her hand that didn't wield the fork on the table as she had done in Markham's office. It had been an old habit for when she was deep in thought. Now she was looking at the accidents from another angle. If someone didn’t want to steal Markham’s business, what was to be benefited from the phony accidents? Suddenly it hit her.

  “Wait a minute now.”

  "You've got another idea?" he asked, and she could see his eagerness to hear her new theory. As she stabbed one of the beets with the fork, she lifted her eyes to him.

  “If this isn’t about someone wanting to put a torch to your contract with Girardeau, then it’s about the Pepper Hill mines themselves. Someone is up to making a deliberate effort to shut them down and put the entire silver mine out of business!”

  A look of surprised blossomed on Markham’s face, and just as he began to absorb the news, shouting came from the door of the café. McKenna looked past Markham, her hand dropping to the butt of her pistol without even giving it thought. A young negro teenager was dashing straight across the café towards them.

  “Mr. Markham, sir! Come quick! Somethin’ bad done happen out in Black Rock Pass!”

  CHAPTER 12

  DALTON’S CREEK

  Through a leisurely hour, Riker had seen it all—the cattle pastures, the bullpens, barns, and bunkhouses before Callie's tour had led them out of sight beyond the ranch house to the banks of the swift-flowing Dalton's Creek itself. At some point along the way, he had taken one of her hands as they walked. A timid man would have considered that bold, but Riker had thought nothing of it. He had almost died at Gettysburg, and after he had recovered, he had found himself imbued with even more boldness than he had already possessed.

  The memory of all those messmates of his that lay dead or dying around him had spurred him on to seize every moment and live life to the fullest because one day it was simply going to be over. If there was an eternity, he didn't plan to spend it regretting the things he didn't do over the things he had done, and when it came to women, there was going to be no way that they would be one of those regrets. It was as the Romans said, seize the day and that was only going to be accomplished with grit and backbone. He had been attracted to Callie back in town, and he had a good read on her with the way they had chatted and flirted as they made their way about the LB Ranch.

  With a sweep of her free hand, she indicated they should sit down on the river bank. As they took their place, he noticed two things, first how high the water was from the recent rains and second, they had sat directly next to an overturned canoe that was tied to a tree with a long rope and he asked if that was hers. With a droop of her shoulders, Callie said quietly it belonged to Donovan Larch's son Davey who lived up the creek from their ranch. The boy used to shoot the rapids all the way down to the town of Dalton's Creek itself, which she had said could be reached lickety-split, snapping her fingers for emphasis. Sometimes Davey would stop by the ranch and visit and nurse his crush on the much older Callie, and that he had probably left it there the day his father had been killed. His canoeing days were over now that he had to become the man of the house with his father in the grave, thanks to the Peace Officers.

  Callie fell silent after this revelation and only the sounds of cicadas and the gentle mewing of the cattle drifted in the air. With her free hand, she began to draw idle circles on the ground as she held back from making any eye contact with Riker. Finally, she spoke lowering her voice, seemingly having summoned up the courage to do so.

  “If you’re traveling to Pine Bluff, I reck
on your freedom to travel must mean you don’t have a lady waiting for you somewhere back home?”

  “No, ma’am. The life I lead doesn’t allow for it.”

  "Seems like a shame to me—a handsome man like yourself. Around these parts, I reckon women would take to fighting over the likes of you."

  Riker eyed her with a smile. “I don’t think I’d be alone in that. I’ve seen plenty of places where you’d make a mash on any number of men ranging from buckaroos to bankers. Why am I’m seeing no wedding band on your finger, Callie? I’m sure you’ve got more admirers than young Mister Larch.”

  A flush crept across her face as she laughed, “I won’t lie to you, Mister Riker-”

  “Nash.”

  "Nash, then. I do have callers, but I'm too busy running the ranch. Haven't had much choice since back when my brother found the Lord calling to him. Someone had to help my father, so it was me. If you think I can't hold a candle to any cowpoke when it comes to roping and riding, then you'd be dead wrong!" she said with her chin held out and her shoulders back.

  Riker had already cottoned to her, but now he was more intrigued than ever. Earlier he'd figured she just tended to the womanly chores around the ranch, but her skills ran far deeper than that. The conviction in her voice told him that she wasn't just boasting, but there was a deeper truer reason he believed her.

  “Why that’s right grand, Callie. Right grand. I know your word is true. I’m the last one ever to doubt what a woman is capable of. My sister, if you want to talk about holding a candle to, she can handle herself in a fight like nobody’s business, comes up aces with a gun, and she’s book smart too, that last bit is something I can’t even say about myself.”