Rattler's Law, Volume One

by James Reasoner

  "Why don't you make it legal instead?" Brennan asked. He stood up and faced Cully, studying the young man's taut expression. "I can deputize you and the rest of those men I saw outside getting ready to ride. That way we can follow Wolfe all the way to Mexico if we have to."

  Cully glanced at Flint and saw the approval on his face. "That would make a difference, Cully," Flint said softly.

  Abruptly, Cully nodded. "All right," he said. "I accept the offer, and I know most of the other men will, too." He looked shrewdly at Brennan. "But just what makes you willing to take on a posse like this, mister?"

  "Maybe I like what I see of the man who was going to lead them."

  Cully turned to Flint. "There's still the problem of keeping an eye on the town while you're laid up, Marshal."

  "You said yourself I could swear in some special deputies, Cully." Flint laughed shortly. "And don't tell Rose, but I plan to be up and around on crutches in a few days. This isn't the first time I've caught some lead. I'll be all right." The marshal's voice became more serious. "And so will Abilene, until you can get back, Cully. Just bring Miss Stockbridge with you."

  Cully nodded again and smiled tightly. "You can count on it."

  Marshal Tom Brennan slapped him on the back and said, "Come on, son. Let's go meet the rest of that posse of yours."

  In the wee hours of the morning the posse of almost twenty men rode out of Abilene. All of them were armed with rifles, and many of them also wore handguns.

  Marshal Tom Brennan rode his big white horse at the head of the posse. Cully rode his pinto beside him. He had planned on leading the group himself, but he decided to defer to the senior lawman's authority—at least for the time being.

  "I've heard a lot about Brennan, Cully," Lucas Flint had told his deputy in the few moments they had alone. Brennan had stepped out of Dr. Keller's office to see to his horse before the posse pulled out. "He's been a marshal for a long time, and before that he was a rancher and a local sheriff up in Montana. They don't come much tougher."

  "He doesn't look like much," Cully had replied.

  "Maybe not, but I think when the chips are down, he'll surprise you."

  "We'll see," Cully had said doubtfully.

  Now, as he rode along next to Brennan, Cully saw that the federal marshal sat easy in the saddle and, despite the late hour, seemed to be extremely alert.

  The posse followed the tracks of the Kansas Pacific, heading west toward the scene of the train wreck. Cully had been puzzling over Wolfe's actions and wondering how to interpret them. He shared his thoughts with Brennan. "You suppose Wolfe and his gang intend to take that train all the way to where they derailed the other one?"

  "You never know with Wolfe," Brennan replied. "I've been after him for a long time, and I haven't been able to figure him out yet. Whatever you don't expect from him, that's probably what he'll do. I imagine he had the rest of his gang waiting somewhere with horses, but there's no way of knowing where."

  "I never expected he'd come right into Abilene like that." Cully reached up and touched the tender lump on the back of his head. The pain was still there, and every beat of his horse's hooves sent a fresh jolt of discomfort through him.

  Brennan barked a short, humorless laugh. "That's what I mean about Wolfe. But I'll catch up to him sooner or later, and when I do... Well, maybe it'll be a bullet or maybe it'll be the hangman's rope, but either way Roscoe Wolfe will be dead."

  Cully frowned and glanced over at Brennan. In the light of the setting moon, Cully could see that the white-haired marshal was staring straight ahead, his face set in a grim mask.

  It sounded to Cully as if Brennan bore a personal grudge against Wolfe, something that went beyond the simple pursuit of an outlaw by a lawman. Cully hoped that it wouldn’t thwart the posse's efforts to rescue Elizabeth Stockbridge.

  Pale streaks of rosy light spilled across the eastern horizon behind the riders as they topped a slight rise and Tom Brennan at last held up a hand to bring them to a halt. About a quarter of a mile ahead, the dark bulk of Nicholas Stockbridge's private train sat motionless on the tracks.

  Roland Stockbridge and Elliott Pannier walked their horses slowly to join Cully and Brennan. Both men wore range clothing they had borrowed from other members of the posse, instead of the suits they had worn when they arrived in Abilene. They looked uncomfortable and out of place in the ill-fitting work pants, wool shirts, and boots.

  Roland straightened his legs, using the stirrups to lift himself slightly from the saddle. He grimaced in pain, obviously unaccustomed to riding. Pannier simply looked miserable. Cully wasn’t surprised by the difficulty the two easterners were having. Their inexperience in the saddle was one reason he had not wanted them to come with the posse.

  "That's my father's train," Roland said quietly.

  Brennan nodded and took a small black cylinder from his saddlebags. He began to pull the sections of it out, and Cully quickly saw that it was a spyglass. Peering through it at the train, Brennan studied the scene for a long moment, then said, "Doesn't appear to be anybody around. It's hard to be sure in this light, but I think that train's been abandoned."

  "But where would they go?" Pannier asked, scanning the flat, dusty plains that surrounded the railroad tracks. A few scrubby trees dotted the horizon, but it was hard to imagine a more desolate area.

  "The tracks will tell us that," Brennan said.

  Roland began, "Railroad tracks? I don't understand—"

  "Hoofprints," Cully cut in. "The marshal and I figure that the rest of Wolfe's gang was waiting with horses. With a group that large, it shouldn't be hard to spot their trail."

  The sky had grown increasingly brighter as dawn began to break. Brennan leaned forward in his saddle and said, "I suppose we'd better get down there." He turned and ordered the posse, "Move out, but take it slow. We don't want to ride into any ambushes."

  As they started down the rise toward the train, Cully slid his Winchester from the saddle boot and levered a shell into the chamber. Beside him, Tom Brennan did the same thing. Cully glanced over his shoulder and saw that Angus was gripping his shotgun, ready to fire. It took a strong arm to handle a shotgun one-handed, but Cully knew Angus was the man to do it.

  Roland Stockbridge and Elliott Pannier both looked pale and nervous. They carried rifles, but they gripped the weapons awkwardly. Cully hoped there was no shooting, not with those two behind him.

  Quietly, Brennan asked, "How far is it to where Wolfe wrecked that other train?"

  "I figure we're about halfway there," Cully replied. "I guess he didn't see any need to go that far out of town to meet the rest of the gang."

  Brennan nodded. He signaled for the members of the posse to spread out as they closed in on the train, and then he heeled his big white horse into a trot and headed directly for the passenger car. Cully followed closely behind him.

  The prairie was silent except for the sound of hoofbeats. No shots rang out from the stopped train, and Cully's tensed muscles relaxed a little as he and Brennan rode up to the platform at the rear of the car.

  The door leading into the car was open. Cully peered through it, ready to snap the Winchester to his shoulder and fire if he saw any threatening movement.

  Brennan slid his rifle back into its sheath and swung lightly out of the saddle. Drawing his right-hand pistol, he said to Cully, "Cover me. I'm going to take a look in there."

  The marshal cautiously went up the steps onto the platform, then moved through the open door. His head swiveled from side to side as he stepped into the sitting room. Cully sat stiffly on his horse, leaning slightly to one side to watch as Brennan explored the car. Brennan went through the entire car, easing his way down the corridor and checking in all the compartments that opened from it. Then he strode back through the car to the rear platform.

  "It's empty," he announced to Cully and the other members of the posse. "No one's inside."

  "The locomotive's empty, too," Angus told them as he rode back from c
hecking it out. "’Tis plain Wolfe and his men are gone."

  "There's no sign of Elizabeth?" Pannier asked in a voice cracking with anxiety.

  Brennan shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Mr. Pannier. But that may be a good sign."

  Roland Stockbridge wiped a shaking hand across his mouth. "Yes," he said harshly. "At least they didn't kill her and leave her body for us to find."

  Cully shot a glance at him. None of them needed to hear that kind of talk, least of all Pannier. "Wolfe doesn't have any reason to kill her," the deputy said emphatically. "Miss Elizabeth's not worth a thing to him unless she's alive."

  "And Wolfe isn't the type to pass up a payoff," stated Brennan. "Let's see what kind of trail they left. Then I want to go back over that train and search it for anything they might have left behind."

  As Cully and Brennan had predicted, it wasn’t difficult to spot the tracks of the horses used by the gang. To Brennan's experienced eye, they told a plain story.

  "Wolfe had at least a dozen men waiting here with half a dozen or so extra horses. When the train reached this point, Wolfe and the men with him got off, mounted the horses, and rode off that way with the rest of the gang." The federal lawman waved an arm toward the south.

  "Where do you think they're going?" Roland asked.

  "No way of knowing that, son. But we should be able to follow those tracks without much trouble."

  Elliott Pannier said, "My God, Elizabeth must be terrified. I don't think she's ever been on a horse before." He laughed, and there was more than a trace of hysteria in the brittle sound. "She's certainly never been the prisoner of a band of ruthless outlaws before."

  Cully grimaced. Pannier's nerves are going to crack before this deadly chase is over, he thought.

  Brennan lifted his voice to address the rest of the posse. "Better dismount and give your horses a chance to rest. We'll stop here for a while."

  Roland Stockbridge stepped forward, a stubborn scowl on his handsome young face. "Shouldn't we start after them, if that trail is as easy to follow as you say it is? They're getting farther away from us all the time."

  Patiently, Brennan explained, "Running our animals into the ground won't gain us anything, Mr. Stockbridge. In the long run, we'll catch up to them sooner if we're not careless."

  "I guess that makes sense," Roland conceded.

  Brennan turned to Cully. "Come on, Deputy. Let's see what we can find in that passenger car."

  Cully followed the marshal back into the car. The other men dismounted, took short drinks from their canteens, and made breakfast from a bag of beef jerky and biscuits that one of the men had brought along. Angus poured water in his big floppy-brimmed hat and let the horses drink from it.

  Brennan and Cully started at the rear of the passenger car and began working their way forward. They scoured the car looking for any clue Wolfe might have left behind, either accidentally or on purpose. They didn’t have to look long.

  The sheet of paper had evidently been pinned to the back of one of the armchairs in the sitting room, but the knife holding it in place had fallen to the floor of the coach, taking the paper with it. Cully reached down and picked up both the knife and the paper. "Look at this, Marshal."

  Brennan took the message while Cully turned the knife over in his hands. Brennan read the crudely printed words aloud.

  You shouldn't have taken that strongbox off the train, Stockbridge. If you want to see your precious Elizabeth alive again, send one man alone into Indian Territory with fifty thousand dollars.

  Brennan looked up from the paper, his thoughtful gaze meeting Cully's. Cully tapped the message with the point of the knife and said, "Here's the proof that somebody told Wolfe that the strongbox would be on the train to Abilene."

  "Yeah, but who?" Brennan mused. "This note was left for Nicholas Stockbridge, but it's not likely that Stockbridge would have arranged for an outlaw to steal that money. Chances are somebody in his company tipped off Wolfe, somebody back in Kansas City who didn't know that Stockbridge would move the strongbox off that train."

  Cully nodded. "Makes sense to me. Then, when the money wasn't on the train he wrecked, Wolfe got mad and decided to grab Elizabeth to make up for it."

  "That's the way it looks," Brennan agreed. "We'd better get Pannier and the Stockbridge boy in here and see what they think."

  As Brennan stepped to the platform to summon Roland and Pannier, Cully said, "Figuring out who was working with Wolfe isn't going to help us get Elizabeth back now."

  "No, it won't," Brennan agreed. As he glanced over his shoulder at Cully, his eyes were cold. "But we'll be getting back to Abilene sooner or later, with or without the woman, and I intend to clean up all of these loose ends."

  Roland Stockbridge and Elliott Pannier came into the car after Brennan called them over. Brennan extended the ransom note toward them and said, "Take a look at this."

  Roland took it from him and scanned it, while Pannier read over the younger man's shoulder. When they finished, they had puzzled frowns on their faces.

  "I don't understand this," Roland said, tapping the paper. "Why does Wolfe make it sound like my father somehow double-crossed him?"

  Brennan shook his head. "That's not the way we've got it figured. Somebody tipped off Wolfe about that strongbox, but the information turned out to be wrong. That made Wolfe mad. He's striking back any way he can at your father, Mr. Stockbridge. That's why he asked for the same amount in ransom that he intended to get from the strongbox."

  Pannier took the note from Roland and studied it for a moment. He rubbed his temples and frowned, as though forcing himself to think.

  "Wolfe knew that Mr. Stockbridge's private train was going to be in Abilene," he said slowly. "That means that in addition to knowing about the strongbox, he also knew about our travel plans."

  Quietly, Brennan asked, "Can you think of anybody who could have sent word to him about all of this?"

  Pannier shrugged his bony shoulders. "There were several people in our main offices who might have known..."

  Roland Stockbridge smiled humorlessly and said, "Or it could have been you or I, Elliott. We both knew about the money, and we certainly knew what the travel schedule was."

  Pannier stared at him, his features aghast. "My God, Roland, you can't be serious!" he protested. "What possible motive could we have? Elizabeth's your sister, and she's the woman I'm going to marry! We'd hardly want to put her in danger."

  "I'm sure that's not what Mr. Stockbridge meant," Brennan said quickly. "But it's true that we can't eliminate anyone until we know more. With any luck, Wolfe himself will tell us all about the scheme once we've got him in custody."

  "That's a pretty optimistic way of looking at it, isn't it?" Roland asked.

  "Don’t see any point in being gloomy yet, son."

  Pannier was still studying the note. Abruptly, he looked up. "The strongbox!" he exclaimed. "We've been talking about it, but I completely forgot that Mr. Stockbridge had it transferred onto this train!"

  Cully swore. He should have remembered the same thing. Moving quickly, he went into the corridor. The door to the office compartment was open. And so was the door of the safe inside the office. Cully drew a sharp breath. The heavy metal box was empty.

  At his shoulder, Roland Stockbridge uttered a heartfelt curse. "Wolfe got the money, too!"

  Brennan moved Cully aside and stepped into the office. He went to the safe and crouched beside it. He swung the door to examine the lock. "It hasn't been forced," he said. He looked up at the three men watching from the doorway and went on, "How did Wolfe get it open?"

  Roland swallowed. "Elizabeth knew the combination. I always thought that was a mistake, trusting it to her, but Father insisted. He wanted any of us to be able to get into the safe."

  "Then Wolfe forced her to open it," Brennan concluded.

  Pannier spoke up. "He had the money. Why would he still want to hold Elizabeth for ransom?"

  Brennan straightened. "I told you, Wolfe
isn't going to miss any chance to grab some more loot. He must have decided to double the amount he was after originally."

  Cully was beginning to feel impatient. As Brennan had said, it was important to rest their mounts, but the delay was starting to chafe at him. "This is all very interesting," he said sharply, "but it's not getting us any closer to Wolfe and Elizabeth."

  "I agree, Marshal," Roland Stockbridge added. "I think we should be riding again."

  As he started to turn away, Pannier put a hand on Roland's arm. "Wait a minute. Wolfe's note says for one man to go alone into Indian Territory. The whole posse can't go on. It might be dangerous for Elizabeth."

  "It'll be more dangerous if we don't, Mr. Pannier," Brennan told him. "Besides, we don't have the fifty thousand dollars that Wolfe wants. You couldn't trust a mad dog like him to keep a bargain, anyway. The only way we're going to get the young lady back is to take her."

  Pannier ran a hand over his pasty face. Then he shook his head. "No," he said. "I won't allow it. We have to do as Wolfe demands, otherwise he might...might kill Elizabeth."

  Brennan turned to Roland. "What do you think, Mr. Stockbridge?"

  Before Roland could answer, Cully broke in, "Marshal! You know good and well we've got to go ahead!"

  "I didn't ask you, Deputy Markham," Brennan replied. "I'm still in charge of this posse, remember? Well, Mr. Stockbridge?"

  Roland licked his lips and hesitated. Finally, he said, "I don't want to do anything to put Elizabeth in more danger. But I think we've got to go on."

  Pannier clutched at his arm. "But, Roland—"

  "Why don't we send one man back to Abilene?" the young man suggested, ignoring Pannier. "He can take this note to my father. He can make the decision whether or not to give Wolfe what he wants. The rest of us will stay on the trail."

  Brennan nodded. "That sounds reasonable to me. What about you, Cully?"

  Cully grimaced. A couple of minutes earlier, Brennan had been putting him in his place, and now the marshal wanted his opinion. He wasn’t sure what to expect from Brennan next.