Will smiled. “Sheriff, you’re welcome to any of these parties I have.” He took a close look at Mica then, thinking he was looking evil right in the face. “So you’d be Mica Beaudry,” he said to him, then nodded toward the body lying chained to the tree. “You sure as hell killed your son dead enough. I reckon you’re proud of that.”
“I was aimin’ to kill him, anyway,” Mica claimed, with no show of remorse. “And I was damn sure gonna kill you.” With the guns of two lawmen trained on him, he finally accepted the fact that he was finished.
Rusty Dale entered the clearing at that moment, leading all of the horses that the Hornet’s Nest gang had left by the creek. McCauley introduced him to Will and the three of them decided what to do with the prisoners. Much to Will’s relief, the sheriff was willing to put the lot of them in his jail and send word to the Texas Rangers. “They can decide how to charge them and what happens after that,” McCauley said. “I’ll get Doc Slaughter to patch up their wounds, but he’ll wanna be paid to do it. It’ll be like any arrest we have. The town will have to pay to treat ’em and feed ’em till the Rangers take possession.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Will said, “that’ll save your town a little money. I’ve got Ansel Beaudry’s share of some money from bank robberies in Kansas and Missouri. I’ve never counted it, but it’s a helluva lot of money. I think it should be turned over to the Rangers and the Texas courts, less your expenses for taking care of the prisoners. Course, all these gentlemen didn’t take part in those robberies, but the dead one chained to that tree was the leader of the gang that stole it.”
It took a while, but they finally took charge of the prisoners and got them on their horses for the short ride back to town. Will helped with the jailing of them and left Ansel’s share of the bank money with McCauley. After Mica and his men were locked up, Will accepted the sheriff’s invitation to have a drink at the saloon across from the jail. After the evening just past, he felt like he needed one. It wasn’t until the drinks were poured that Will thought to ask a question. “Like I already told you, I was sure happy to see you when you showed up back there by the creek. But how’d you happen to come, anyway?”
“I’ve got special mental powers that tell me when a lawman is in trouble,” McCauley said, paused to watch Will’s reaction, then laughed. “Nah, Rusty was here in the saloon when that fellow and his men rode into town. The old man came in here askin’ if anybody saw a man ridin’ a buckskin horse and leadin’ another man in handcuffs ride through town. Rusty told me and we decided to see if you might be needin’ some help.” He chuckled again. “We were almost too late for the party, weren’t we?”
“I ain’t complainin’,” Will answered. With Ansel off his hands, and his father no longer chasing him, he couldn’t help having a great feeling of relief.
When he thought about it later, he would feel a certain regret for not transporting Ansel back to the gallows. He didn’t even take the body back, since he and McCauley decided it best to leave it there to verify Ansel’s death for the Texas Rangers. He had planned to watch Ansel hang to fulfill the promise he had made to Oscar Moon’s memory. All things considered, however, Ansel suffered a fitting execution at the hands of his father.
Chapter 20
After a couple of drinks with McCauley, Will decided it was time to try once again to bed down for the night. When the sheriff suggested he should stay at the hotel that night and breakfast there in the morning, Will had to remind himself that his job was finished and there was no longer a threat upon his life. “I’ll join you there for breakfast,” McCauley said.
Will thought about it for a couple of moments before deciding. “Hell, why not? But I think I’ll put my horses in the stable and sleep in there with ’em, if the owner will let me. Then I’ll be glad to take you up on that breakfast. I’ve eaten so much sowbelly and hardtack lately till I feel like I’m part hog.”
When they left the saloon, McCauley walked down to the stable with him and introduced him to Lamar Morgan, who owned it. Morgan was happy to accommodate Will’s horses and charged nothing extra for Will to sleep with them. McCauley left then with the promise to meet him for breakfast in the hotel dining room at six the next morning. Will agreed, even though it would mean a late start for him, but he reminded himself once again that it didn’t matter now. After giving his horses a portion of oats, he made his bed in the fresh hay Morgan had tossed down for that purpose.
With no reason to sleep with one eye open, he took advantage of his soft bed and awakened only when Lamar Morgan opened the stable at five-thirty. After Will saddled Buster and rearranged his packs on the packhorse, since there was no longer a rider on the sorrel, he paid Morgan and climbed up into the saddle. There was a dun gelding tied up at the hitching rail in front of the hotel, so he figured McCauley was already there. He grabbed his rifle as a matter of habit, and his saddlebags because they still held Luther Curry’s share of the bank money, and went inside. McCauley, seated at a table near the kitchen door, signaled him with a wave of his arm.
The breakfast was as good as McCauley had promised it would be, and Mary Bea, the lady who ran the dining room, was quick to keep the coffee cups filled. When Will decided it was time for him to get started home, he thanked McCauley again for his help with the Hornet’s Nest crew. As he got up to leave, the sheriff asked, “You mean to tell me you rode all that time with that big mess of money, and you never counted it?”
“That’s a fact,” Will answered. “Never had a reason to. It didn’t belong to me.” He thought he could almost hear the wheels turning in Joe McCauley’s brain, so he couldn’t resist adding something else. “That money was from at least two different banks, and there ain’t no tellin’ how much of it Ansel Beaudry has already spent.” McCauley did not reply, but nodded as if seriously considering that fact. “Well,
I’d best be on my way,” Will said, extended his hand, and got to his feet. He guessed that McCauley, unlike himself, had already counted the money in the sack he had given him and couldn’t keep his mind from speculating. Will had to admit that he didn’t care what he did with the money. He said good-bye and left McCauley seated at the table, drinking coffee.
In the saddle again, he set Buster on the road to Sherman at a pace comfortable for his horses, with only a glance at the spot where he had turned off the road to follow the creek up to make camp. That could have turned out a hell of a lot different, he thought, if Joe McCauley hadn’t shown up when he did. He shook his head when he considered what might have been. Sophie might have been a widow before she even got married. That, in turn, opened the floodgates in his mind to thoughts of his upcoming wedding. These were the thoughts that he had constantly struggled to suppress while he was in the midst of trying to bring Ansel Beaudry’s gang to justice. As he rode along, following the road to Sherman, Texas, he thought about that last morning at Bennett House, when he had left before breakfast without smoothing things over with Sophie. She had refused to see him the night before when she found out he was planning to leave again. He had discovered that she was possessed of a hot temper when sufficiently aroused, and he seemed to arouse it every time he left town on an assignment. Sophie’s mother was not very talented at hiding her opposition to the marriage, although she never openly said as much to him. Maybe Ruth was right in trying to save her daughter the same heartbreak she had suffered with the death of Fletcher Pride. Maybe it would be the honorable thing for him to break off the relationship for Sophie’s sake. It would be a hard thing for him to do, because he knew he genuinely loved her. He had made a promise to her to leave the Marshals Service and take her back to the J-Bar-J in Texas, and he was sincere in that promise. The thing that was difficult to explain to her was the loyalty he owed to Dan Stone to at least stay until there was not such a shortage of deputy marshals. “Hell,” he muttered to Buster, “I told her we’d ride down here to see the ranch, so, damn it, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell Dan he’s just gonna have to do without me for a wh
ile.” The decision made, he tried to put it out of his mind, else he was afraid he was going to drive himself crazy.
* * *
Anxious to get back home now, he did not stop in Sherman and rode into the little town of Durant, Oklahoma Territory, in a day and a half from Denton. It was late afternoon when he reined Buster to a halt at the railroad depot, where he dismounted and walked into the telegraph office. “Will Tanner!” Wilford Leach exclaimed when he opened the door. “It’s been a while since you’ve been to Durant.”
“I reckon it has, at that,” Will returned.
“What brings you down our way?”
“I’ve been down in Texas,” Will replied. “I’m on my way back to Fort Smith and I need to send a telegram to my boss and let him know I’m still alive.” Although it was a casual remark, Dan Stone was not at all sure if his best deputy was alive or not. He had not heard from Will in quite some time. Will wrote the message for Wilford to send, telling Dan where he was and that he expected to be back in Fort Smith in three and a half days.
When the message was sent, Will paid for it, and Wilford commented, “So you ain’t gonna be stayin’ in town.”
“That’s right,” Will said. “I’m gonna stop at the store and get a few things. I’m about out of supplies. Then I’ll be on my way.” He said so long to Wilford then and headed for Dixon Durant’s general merchandise store.
“Howdy, Will,” Leon Shipley greeted him when he walked into the store. “You just get into town?”
“Yep,” Will answered, “about twenty minutes ago, and I’ll be ridin’ out in about that long, if I can get a few things I’m short on.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll see if I can fix you up,” Leon said. “First thing is some coffee. You ain’t ever come in here without buyin’ some more coffee.”
“That’s a fact,” Will said with a chuckle, “so gimme two pounds of it. That oughta see me to Fort Smith. I need some flour, some sugar, and some dried apples, if you’ve got any. Wouldn’t hurt to throw in a box of. 44 cartridges, too, and about five pounds of bacon. I think I’m gonna have to throw out the last of mine, it’s gone rancid on me.” At least, that’s what Ansel Beaudry said, he thought.
Once he had packed up his supplies, he left town, heading for the Jack Fork Mountains and the Sans Bois Mountains beyond. It was a familiar trail and one which in years past sometimes found him stopping overnight in the Sans Bois for a visit with an old friend. But Perley Gates was long gone from his crude shack built in the side of a mountain, headed west, so he heard. He wouldn’t be riding that far today, anyway. His horses were already tired, so he’d stop as soon as he found a place that suited him.
* * *
True to his word in the telegram to Dan Stone, he rode into Fort Smith at three o’clock in the afternoon, according to his railroad pocket watch, on the fourth day after leaving Durant. His first stop, as usual, was at the stable, where Vern Tuttle welcomed him back. “I was startin’ to wonder when I was gonna see you again,” Vern said. “You musta been on a long trip.”
“You could say that,” Will responded as he pulled Buster’s saddle off and placed it in his customary spot on the rail of one of the back stalls while Vern pulled the saddle off the sorrel. “Near ’bout every time you come home, you’re leadin’ a different packhorse,” Vern couldn’t resist commenting. “And half the time they’re totin’ a saddle instead of a pack saddle.”
“Reckon so,” Will said. “Buster and the sorrel have been workin’ hard, so they need a portion of grain. After I report in, I expect I’ll be back today or tomorrow and take both of ’em over to see Fred Waits to have him put new shoes on ’em.” He said so long to Vern then, threw his saddlebags over his shoulder, pulled his rifle from the saddle sling, and walked up the street in the direction of the courthouse.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” U.S. Marshal Daniel Stone proclaimed, “if it ain’t my missin’ deputy.”
“Howdy, Dan,” Will returned. When his boss appeared to be genuinely surprised to see him, he asked, “Did you get my telegram from Durant?”
“Yes, I got it,” Dan replied. “I got that telegram and the one you sent from Camp Supply. What I’m wonderin’ is what the hell were you doin’ between those two wires? It was a mighty long time between.”
“Well, like I said in the telegram, I arrested the last one of that gang, and I started back here with him, but we were jumped by his daddy and four of his men. Ansel Beaudry didn’t make it through the attack, and I reckon I might not have made it, either, if it hadn’t been for Sheriff Joe McCauley and his deputy.”
“So you had to shoot Beaudry?” Stone asked.
“Well, I didn’t shoot him, his daddy did,” Will replied.
Stone hesitated, confused, then asked, “Where is this Sheriff McCauley?”
“Denton,” Will answered.
“Denton?” Stone recoiled. “I don’t know as I recall a town in Oklahoma Territory named Denton.”
Stone was playing a game of cat and mouse with him, and Will knew it, but he persevered. “Denton, Texas,” he stated simply.
Stone paused, pursed his lips, and frowned as if admonishing a child. “There, you see, you’re operatin’ all over the map, anywhere you take a notion to go. I gave you a direct order not to follow those outlaws out of Oklahoma Territory, didn’t I?”
Will shrugged and hesitated before answering. “Well, sir, what you said was not to follow ’em into Kansas. You never said anything about Texas.” In an effort to cut Stone’s intention to reprimand him for crossing borders, Will took the money out of his saddlebags and placed it on Dan’s desk. “Here’s what I brought back. It was in the possession of a fellow named Luther Curry. I had to shoot him when he and Beaudry tried to ambush me. Beaudry’s share of the bank’s money was left with Sheriff McCauley, along with his body. McCauley’s turnin’ the body and the money over to the Texas Rangers. The rest of what’s left of the money is in a safe at Camp Supply.”
Finding it difficult to reprimand Will for disregarding his orders, especially when he considered Will Tanner the best deputy he had, Stone gave up. He sighed and shook his head, then said he was glad to see Will safely back home. To bring him up to date, he told Will that the prisoners, along with the stolen money, had been taken into custody and they would go to trial shortly. Will felt obligated to offer his opinion that, of the three, only Bo Hagen should be tried for murder. “You know Tom Daly,” he said. “He ain’t really done much more than steal cattle and act as a guide for Beaudry. And Cecil Cox wasn’t a gunman, either. He just ended up with the wrong folks at the wrong time.”
“I’d like you to write it all down, everything you can remember,” Stone said. “Then I guess you’d like to get on home to see that little lady of yours. When you see her, tell her you did a job single-handedly that two companies of deputy marshals in Missouri and Kansas couldn’t get done. Then you’d best take a couple of days off to take care of that business with her.” Pointing to Will’s left sleeve, he asked, “Is that something Doc Peters needs to look at?”
“No,” Will said. “It’s already been doctored.” He declined to say by whom, and he wasn’t planning to say anything about Elmira Tate and her cabin on Grassy Creek in his written report. He started to leave, but thought of one more thing. “Was there any mention in the report from that posse about some horses the army was holding for me at Camp Supply?”
“Yes, there was, as I recall, there was a number of horses the army had been holding that went back with the posse. I forget the number, but I can find it for you.” He made a motion to leaf through a stack of papers on his desk.
“No need to bother,” Will said. “It ain’t important.” Damn, he thought, I was planning to sell those horses.
* * *
He was torn between two emotions as he walked down the street toward Bennett House, eager to see Sophie, yet not sure what his reception might be. She was pretty hot under the collar when he left, even to the point of refusing to see him when
he knocked on her door. Consequently, he wasn’t sure if he would be welcomed back. He made it a point to quicken his pace when he passed by the Morning Glory Saloon, lest someone might hail him. The last time he stopped in there for supper on his way home didn’t turn out too well for him.
Once he was past the saloon, he slowed his pace again in order to give himself more time to think about what he was going to do. It was past time to decide if he wanted to marry Sophie or not. That was already a commitment, and one he wanted to honor. He had already popped the question, and she had accepted his proposal. He had also told her he would turn in his badge and return to the J-Bar-J. He decided he could honor that commitment as well. Sophie was worth it. With those thoughts settled in his mind, he opened the gate in the picket fence before Bennett House and followed the path to the porch.
Neither Ron Sample nor Leonard Dickens was on the front porch, so he figured supper must be ready. When he walked in the front door, he found the parlor empty as well, but he could hear the sounds of suppertime coming from the dining room. He took a glance at the clock on the parlor wall and decided he had time to do a quick cleanup before he surprised everyone, at least a quick shave and wash his face and hands, maybe a clean shirt from his room. He was sure he must look pretty woolly, but he didn’t want to miss supper, so he went down the hall and took the back stairs up to his room.
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