Rattler's Law, Volume One

by James Reasoner

  "What could possibly be wrong with talking?" Elizabeth asked. She moved away from the door, walked over to the desk, and stopped beside it. "Are you sure you wouldn't reconsider and show me what kind of nightlife Abilene has?"

  "It's pretty darned rough, the nightlife we have around here, Elizabeth. Nothing for a lady like you to be seeing."

  She gazed down at him and said, "Do you have any idea how boring it is for other people always to be deciding what a lady should and shouldn't do?"

  Cully had to grin. "No, ma'am, I don't suppose I do."

  "Then take my word for it. I want to do things that are new and different and exciting!" She whirled away from him, stepping toward the open door that led into the cellblock. "Do you have any prisoners back here? Some murdering desperadoes?"

  Cully stood up and closed the cellblock door before she could go through it. "I'm afraid we're a little short on prisoners right now," he said dryly. "In fact, I'm the only one here." The moment the words were out of his mouth, he saw her eyes light up and knew he had made a mistake.

  "I saw the marshal walking down the street, and I thought you might be here by yourself," Elizabeth said, leaning closer to him. "I was afraid you might get lonely."

  A strange mixture of emotions roiled through Cully. As he had told Flint, he didn’t make a practice of breaking up engagements. At the same time, propriety had never been his strong suit. Too many folks were afraid to do what they really wanted just because they worried about what other people might think.

  "That's mighty nice of you," he said slowly, "but I'm used to being on duty here in the office by myself."

  "I just know I would go absolutely out of my mind if I had to stay here for hours. The marshal will be gone for quite a while, won't he?"

  Cully wasn’t sure how to answer that. If he encouraged Elizabeth very much, there was no telling what would happen. Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. "Just what is it you really want here, Elizabeth?"

  She smiled again. "You westerners can be so forthright. Very well, Cully, since you've asked me, I'll tell you what I want. Better yet, I'll show you."

  With that, she moved into Cully's arms so smoothly that he almost didn’t know how it had happened. Her head tilted back, her arms went around his waist, and her lips lifted to his. Her mouth was sweet and wet and warm. Cully's arms tightened around her.

  The kiss was long and passionate, and the heat of her body seemed to sear right through their clothes. When she finally took her mouth away from his, there was a look of satisfaction on her face. Cully didn’t know if the kiss had made her happy, or if she was just glad finally to be getting her own way.

  "Well?" she asked softly. "Do you think I'm the most brazen hussy you've ever seen, Deputy?"

  The kiss had had more effect on Cully than he realized. He had to take a deep breath before he could answer, "You're about the prettiest armful of woman I've ever seen, Elizabeth. If things were different—"

  "Things don't have to be different," she said quickly. "You and I are attracted to each other, and we're together right now. That's all that matters."

  Cully was trying to find some way to argue with that and not having much luck when the sound of a step on the boardwalk outside made him turn around suddenly. He and Elizabeth were standing where they could be seen through the window from outside. The doorknob turned and the door began to open. Cully wondered fleetingly what, if anything, the visitor had seen. If the newcomer were Lucas Flint—who was as observant a man as Cully had ever known—he was confident he would soon be hearing a few choice words from the marshal.

  The man who came through the door wasn’t Flint, however. The visitor to the office was a tall, slender man in a sober dark suit and string tie. He had sun-faded brown hair and wore wire-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a bit of a studious look. In his hand was a Bible.

  "Joshua!" Cully exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

  The Reverend Joshua Markham frowned. "What's the matter, Cully? Can't I come by to say hello to my favorite brother?"

  "Only brother," Cully muttered.

  "That's beside the point." As he waved aside Cully's comment, Joshua turned his gaze to Elizabeth. He nodded politely and said, "Hello."

  The young woman smiled at Joshua, not as radiantly as she had smiled at Cully but disarmingly nevertheless. "Good evening," she said.

  Cully wondered if he looked as embarrassed as he felt. He said quickly, "Joshua, this is Miss Elizabeth Stockbridge. Miss Elizabeth, my brother, Reverend Joshua Markham."

  Elizabeth extended a hand and murmured, "Reverend."

  As he shook hands with her, Joshua said, "I heard about the misfortune that struck the train on your father's rail line, Miss Stockbridge. In fact, I've just visited some of the injured passengers."

  "How are they?" Elizabeth asked.

  "In good spirits, considering." Joshua shook his head. "There are some bad injuries, I'm afraid. Whatever happens to Roscoe Wolfe when he's finally brought to justice, he'll richly deserve the punishment."

  "From the way he's eluded the law thus far, he may never be caught," Cully pointed out.

  Joshua glanced at his brother. "Then the Lord will have to take care of justice for Roscoe Wolfe, won't he?"

  Cully shrugged. He wasn’t going to engage in a religious argument with Joshua.

  The Methodist pastor went on, "Actually, Cully, I didn't come by just to see you. Is Marshal Flint around?"

  "He went up to the Drover's Cottage for supper. I imagine you can find him there."

  "Thanks. I want to see him about possibly letting some of those stranded train passengers stay at the church."

  "Don’t you have your hands full with those orphans of Sister Lorraine's?" Cully asked.

  Joshua just smiled. "There's always room for more. A righteous man never runs out of good works to do, Cully."

  Joshua tipped his hat in farewell to Elizabeth Stockbridge and left the marshal's office. Outside, he turned east and started toward the Drover's Cottage. The door had hardly closed behind him when Elizabeth said to Cully, "Your brother seems awfully nice."

  "I guess he's not too bad," Cully said. His eyes followed Joshua as he walked past the window. "Wonder if he saw anything through the window before he came in?"

  "You mean like us doing this?" Elizabeth asked. As Cully turned toward her, she slid into his embrace again, raising her face to his.

  This time Cully abruptly broke the kiss. He shook his head. "This isn't right," he declared. "I've never worried too much about what folks think, but you're engaged to be married to somebody else!"

  "And I will marry Elliott...someday," Elizabeth said. "Until then, I don't see what's wrong with doing things that I enjoy."

  Cully sensed that he was going to have about as much luck arguing with her as he usually did with Joshua. Besides, he wasn’t too sure that he wanted to win this argument.

  The quick tapping of feet made him jerk his head toward the door again. It opened, and Dr. Rose Keller stepped into the office. Cully was immediately struck by the weariness on her face. "Hello, Cully. Is Marshal Flint here?" she said.

  Frustration was building inside the young deputy. He wanted to settle this business with Elizabeth Stockbridge, and he wasn’t going to be able to as long as they were interrupted every few minutes. He muttered, "Why doesn't he just put up a sign down in front of the restaurant, announcing where he is?"

  "What was that?" Rose asked.

  Cully shook his head. "Never mind. The marshal went to the Drover's Cottage for supper, Doctor. If he's not there, he'll be somewhere between there and here."

  "Thanks, Cully," Rose said. She found the energy to smile at Elizabeth. "You must be one of the Stockbridge sisters. Angus told me that you and your family will be waiting here for the tracks to be repaired."

  "Yes, that's right. I'm Elizabeth Stockbridge," the young woman said.

  "Dr. Rose Keller," the doctor replied. "I'm glad to meet you. I just wish it had b
een under better circumstances."

  "How are those injured passengers doing?" Cully asked.

  "We have all of the injuries stable at the moment. Dr. Gilmore is keeping an eye on the patients for me. I want to talk to Lucas for a minute, then I'm going to try to get some sleep."

  "That's a good idea," Cully said.

  "Thanks again." Rose left the office, following Joshua Markham's example.

  As Cully turned toward Elizabeth, she spoke before he had a chance to. "This is no place for the things we need to discuss," she said. "Why don't we arrange a meeting somewhere else?"

  "I'm not sure we have anything to talk about," Cully said, knowing nevertheless that they did.

  "Of course, we do. You can't kiss me the way you did a few minutes ago and then say we have nothing to talk about. I know! I saw some stables down by the train station earlier. Let's meet there at midnight."

  Cully started shaking his head. "I don't think that's a good idea—"

  "That's exactly what we'll do. Now, I'll be there at midnight, Cully, and I expect you to be, too!" She came up on her tiptoes and brushed his lips with hers.

  Then, before he could stop her, she was gone, and the door was swinging shut behind her.

  Cully stood there, his mind in turmoil. He couldn’t run after her. And he didn’t doubt for a minute that Elizabeth would keep her part of the bargain she had proposed. Even though it was no place for a young woman, come midnight she would be at those stables.

  Come midnight, he would be, too.

  4

  In the long shadows cast by a three-quarter moon, a half hour before midnight, six men on horseback stealthily approached Abilene. They drew up on a slight rise west of town and looked down toward the scattering of lights that were still burning. Below them, Mud Creek curved along the edge of the town, while off to the north the whitewashed walls of the Calvary Methodist Church gleamed in the moonlight. To the south, the tracks of the Kansas Pacific stretched across the prairie.

  "I don't much like this, Roscoe," one of the men said in a quiet voice. "It's too risky."

  "And I don't give a damn what you like," Roscoe Wolfe growled in reply. The burly, red-bearded outlaw leaned forward in the saddle, his gaze intent. "I been double-crossed, and nobody's goin' to get away with that! Nobody!"

  Wolfe swung out of the saddle. All his men, except one, followed suit. Wolfe and the others handed their reins to him.

  "Take these nags back to where the rest of the boys are waiting," Wolfe rumbled. "We'll meet you there before sunrise."

  "What if you don't get there, Roscoe?" the man asked cautiously.

  Wolfe's laugh was short and harsh. "Then you poor hopeless bastards'll have to figure out some way to get along without me. Reckon if that happens, you'll all be hanged or in jail in six months."

  A couple of the other outlaws forced an echo of Wolfe's laughter. They all knew that without their leader's cunning and ruthlessness, the gang wouldn’t last long.

  The man with the horses shook his head and turned. He quietly led the animals away from the gang, back the way they had come. Wolfe and the other men started down the hill toward Abilene. When they reached the railroad tracks, they stole along the double line of steel across the small trestle spanning Mud Creek and on into town. At this hour, most of the buildings were quiet and dark; only the saloons were brightly lit and noisy.

  Wolfe halted the band with an upraised hand. The outlaws were within a hundred yards of the train station now, and they could see the dark bulk of Nicholas Stockbridge's private train, which had been moved to a siding earlier in the day.

  "Quiet now," Wolfe hissed to his men. "I don't reckon those folks will be expecting any trouble, but it don't pay to take chances when you don't have to."

  Wolfe gestured to three of his men and directed them to move along one side of the tracks, while the remaining outlaw, a man named Kyler, followed him down the other side. All five men had removed their spurs before reaching Abilene, and now they slithered almost silently toward Stockbridge's train. An occasional crunch of gravel under a booted foot was all that could be heard.

  As Wolfe and his companion reached the locomotive and began to move along the side of it, Wolfe slid his pistol from its holster. He had figured there was a good chance Stockbridge had guards on this train, for Stockbridge either carried men with him or hired citizens in the towns where he stopped.

  As the bandit leader passed the coal tender and started toward the single passenger car, he saw a dark figure lean over the railing of the platform at the back of the car. The guard had something in his hand that had to be a rifle. A cigarette butt glowed redly between his lips.

  Has to be a damned townie, Wolfe decided. A man who made his living guarding trains wouldn’t be so careless.

  That just makes the job that much easier, Wolfe thought with a grin. He had seen no one in the cab of the locomotive, and he figured that there would be only a couple of guards in the passenger car.

  Wolfe paused and glanced across the platform at the front of the car. One of his men on that side of the train waved a hand in a high sign. They were ready. Wolfe returned the sign with a wave of his gun and hurried down the side of the car, Kyler at his heels.

  The guard reacted much too slowly to the sound of the quick footsteps. He was just starting to turn toward the steps at the side of the platform when Wolfe stormed up them, viciously swinging his gun.

  The barrel smashed into the guard's head with a bone-crunching thud. The man sagged, the rifle slipping from his hands and clattering to the platform. Wolfe roughly thrust the guard's falling body aside, then stepped to the door and shoved it open.

  Inside the car, two more men were playing cards in the light cast by one of the fancy lanterns on the wall of the sitting room. They jerked around in surprise as Wolfe strode through the door, backed up by Kyler. After a split-second hesitation, the seated men lunged for Winchesters that were leaning against the long divan.

  They were too late. The other three outlaws, who had slipped into the car from the front, came boiling out of the forward corridor. Wolfe had ordered his men not to shoot unless it was absolutely necessary. A blow to the head with a gun butt felled one of the guards, and the other was dispatched by a knife stuck deep in his back. The outlaw wielding the blade clamped his other hand over the victim's mouth, stifling the guard's scream.

  "There's another one on the back platform," Wolfe said quietly. "Get rid of all three of them. Dump 'em in one of those alleys over there."

  The three men who had attacked from the front went out to the rear platform to carry out Wolfe's orders. Hefting the bodies of the guards, they left the train on the side away from the depot and disappeared into the shadowy darkness of Second Street.

  Wolfe turned to Kyler. "Get that firebox stoked up and the engine going. You sure you can handle it?"

  "No problem, Roscoe," Kyler replied, grinning. "I was an engineer back in Ohio for three years 'fore I came west. I've driven plenty of locomotives just like this one."

  Wolfe nodded and snapped, "Get to it, then. I'll meet up with the boys outside, and we'll be back as soon as we can."

  He dropped from the platform at the rear of the train and waited, gun in hand, until his three confederates rejoined him. "You get rid of those bodies?" he asked in a whisper.

  One of the men nodded. "We dumped them in some barrels out back of an old warehouse. Won't nobody find them for a while."

  Wolfe grinned savagely. "Let's go after that filly!"

  As the outlaws moved off into the shadows, the firebox of the locomotive began to heat up as Kyler shoveled coal into it. The steam was starting to build.

  A little before midnight, Deputy Cully Markham left the marshal's office. He walked down Texas Street. At the corner of Spruce Street, he turned left. By going that way, he figured he would avoid passing the saloons along Railroad Street, where it was likely that someone would stop him and want to talk. Cully wanted to avoid that, for he didn’t want t
o be late.

  Something had gnawed at him all evening. It hadn’t helped when Marshal Flint had asked as Cully got up to leave, "Going anywhere special?"

  "Just thought I'd take a walk around town while I had the chance," Cully had replied. "No place special."

  The lie had come easily enough, but as he walked through the darkened streets, whatever was troubling him renewed its attack. By the time he had reached Spruce Street, Cully had admitted to himself what it was: his conscience.

  But at the same time, he told himself, he couldn’t let Elizabeth Stockbridge stand around some stable by herself in the middle of the night. That would be too dangerous for a beautiful young woman like her. He had to keep the rendezvous, if only to escort her firmly back to the hotel and order her to stay there.

  As the stables loomed ahead on his right, a grin stretched across his face. Maybe he would take Elizabeth back to the hotel, and maybe he wouldn’t. After all, she was old enough to make up her own mind about things.

  And, Lord, she was pretty.

  A tune sprang into Cully's mind as he approached the entrance of the stables. One of the big double doors was open a couple of inches, and a faint yellow light from a lantern burning came through the gap. Elizabeth was probably already waiting for him.

  He began to whistle softly. His step was light as he pushed the stable door open a little wider and strolled in.

  There was a sound behind him, and the instincts that had kept him alive this long screamed a warning to him. Cully started to spin around, his hand streaking toward his gun. Something slammed into the back of his head.

  Cully staggered, pinwheels of light bursting behind his eyes. His fingers brushed the butt of his Colt, but somehow, they refused to work well enough to pull the gun.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shape lunging toward him. Cully dropped to one knee. The man viciously swinging the gun missed. Had it connected, the blow probably would have been fatal. But Cully's move had thrown off the man's aim just enough to make the gun barrel glance off Cully's skull.