Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats

by William W. Johnstone

  “How do we do that?” Reilly asked.

  Bo leaned back so he could look up at the shack’s roof, where a tin pipe stuck up from the stove below. “Smoke screen,” he said with a grin.

  The shack had a window in the back wall. Bo slipped over to it and risked a look inside. He didn’t see anybody. Chances were that the cook was inside the main house. He had probably fled there when the shooting started. Bo shoved the window up and said, “Come on.”

  He climbed inside the shack first, followed by Reilly. The cook probably slept out here, which meant there would be some bedding in the cubbyhole where he spent his nights. Bo intended to use some of that bedding to kindle a fire in the stove that would produce a lot of smoke. While he was doing that, Reilly would have to climb onto the roof and use another blanket to direct the smoke toward the house, like an Indian sending up smoke signals. The stovepipe was on the back side of the roof, so it might not be too visible to those sentries on the second floor of the ranch house.

  On second thought, Bo decided, maybe he ought to be the one to climb up onto the roof. Reilly was younger and sprier, but he might not be able to handle a blanket well enough to make the smoke do what it needed to do.

  Bo was taking a second to ponder that question when a Chinaman jumped out from behind a stack of crates and swung a hatchet at his head.

  Instinct was all that saved Bo from having that keen blade buried in his skull. His Colt was in his hand, so when he jerked it up in self-defense, the hatchet hit the revolver’s barrel with a clang. That was enough to deflect it so that the hatchet swept harmlessly past Bo’s shoulder.

  Reilly swung his gun toward the furious Chinese man, but Bo didn’t want a shot to give them away. He moved quickly, jabbing a hard left-hand punch into the cook’s face. The man’s head rocked back under the impact of the blow. The next second, Bo rapped him on the head with the Colt’s barrel, stunning him. The hatchet fell from nerveless fingers as the man crumpled.

  “Good Lord!” Reilly said. “Where’d that Chinaman come from?”

  “He’d be Bascomb’s cook,” Bo explained. “This is his shack. I figured that he’d holed up in the house with the rest of them, but I reckon I was wrong.” He holstered his gun and pulled loose the sashlike belt that went around the cook’s waist. “Give me a hand and we’ll get him tied up so he can’t bother us while we’re working.”

  “Better gag him, too,” Reilly suggested. “I remember running into a Chinaman out in San Francisco who could scream like the very devil.”

  That was a good idea, Bo decided. It took them only a couple of minutes to truss up the cook where he couldn’t move and tie a gag in his mouth to keep him quiet. Then they were ready to put Bo’s plan into action.

  He explained to Reilly what they were going to do, and pulled the sheets and a couple of wadded up blankets from the cook’s bed in a tiny alcove. There was kindling in a box beside the stove, which was cold at the moment, as well as a small stack of firewood in the corner. Bo got a fire going without much trouble, opened the flue all the way, and crammed one of the blankets into the stove.

  As he closed the door, he said, “Be ready to make a run for the house as soon as the smoke is thick enough.”

  “Won’t the guards realize that something’s wrong and start shooting into the smoke?” Reilly asked.

  “Maybe, but we’re going to be moving fast. It’d just be blind luck if they hit us.”

  “Blind luck can get you just as dead as good aim,” Reilly muttered.

  Bo chuckled as he draped the other blanket over his shoulder. “That’s true. You’re learning, Jake.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that, but I haven’t learned how to keep you and Scratch from getting me into these messes, have I? I swear, you get shot at by Apaches in the morning and land smack-dab in the middle of a range war in the afternoon!”

  There was nothing Bo could say to that. Reilly was right.

  “Give me a hand,” Bo told the young man as he began clambering out through the window. He got his feet on the sill and stood up in the window, reaching up for the roof. When he got hold of it, Reilly laced his hands together and gave him a boost onto the tar-papered slope. Staying low so that his head didn’t stick up over the roofline, Bo climbed up to the stovepipe, where thick gray smoke was beginning to well out.

  Bo whipped the blanket off his shoulder and opened it enough to spread it around the pipe. The blanket trapped the smoke, and when Bo judged that there was enough built up, he snapped the blanket open and waved it, sending the smoke toward the house. He did that again, although he couldn’t hold the smoke as long the second time. The wind helped, spreading the gray cloud across the open space between the cookshack and the house. Bo pulled the stunt for a third time, then judged that his and Reilly’s approach would be about as obscured as it was going to get.

  “Go, Jake!” he called as he dropped the blanket and swung down from the roof. “Head for the house!”

  The sentries had noticed the smoke, of course. Bo heard their yells of alarm; then seconds later rifles began to bark. None of the bullets came close enough for him to hear them whining past his head. Most of the smoke was higher than his head, so it didn’t sting his nose and eyes too much, and he could see Reilly running toward the house just ahead of him.

  They made the back porch almost at the same time, bounding up the stairs with guns drawn. Reilly seemed to be getting caught up in the heat of battle again. Barely slowing down, he lifted a booted foot and kicked the door open. It slammed back against the wall inside the house.

  And shots slammed out, coming from the defenders who had run to the back of the house in response to the sentries’ outcry. Reilly might have been riddled by the flying lead if Bo hadn’t grabbed his coat and jerked him off his feet. Both men sprawled on the floor just inside the door.

  “Hold your fire!” Bo shouted. “We’re friends! Hold your fire!”

  “Don’t shoot!” a high-pitched voice cried. “That’s Bo Creel!”

  “Rawhide?” Bo called back to her as the guns fell silent. “Rawhide, is that you?”

  “Everybody hold your fire, damn it! That’s an order!”

  That was Rawhide, all right, Bo thought…although in this case he was mighty glad she was quick to give orders. He climbed to his feet along with Reilly as the redheaded deputy came up to them.

  “What the Sam Hill are you two doing here?” Rawhide demanded. “I’ve got this situation under control!”

  “Yeah, it looked like it when we rode up and saw all these fellas trying to kill each other,” Reilly said with a disgusted snort. “You had no business riding out here and trying to stop a range war all by yourself, Deputy.”

  “Well, somebody had to do it,” she shot back at him. “Nobody else was in the marshal’s office, and when Steve North came in and said he was gonna ride out to the Rocking B and settle the score with Bascomb, what was I supposed to do?”

  “Wait for orders maybe?” Reilly suggested. “Instead of rushing off like some damn reckless hot-head.”

  Rawhide looked like she wanted to torch him with some equally fiery reply, but she stopped herself. “You’re the marshal,” she said grudgingly.

  “And don’t you forget it,” Reilly said. He looked around. “Where’s Bascomb?”

  A stocky man with thinning hair and a white goatee stepped forward holding a Winchester. “I’m Chet Bascomb,” he rasped in an unfriendly voice. “You’d be the new marshal.”

  Reilly nodded. “That’s right. And I’m ordering you to have your men cease fire.”

  The shooting still continued from elsewhere in the house and from outside as well as the battle raged on, although at a less intense level now. Bascomb cursed in response to Reilly’s order and said, “If you really want to do your job, Marshal, you’ll arrest Steve North for bein’ the wideloopin’ coyote that he is.”

  “North has lost stock, too,” Rawhide said. “I told you that over and over while I was trying to get you to list
en to reason, Mr. Bascomb. If you and Mr. North would just talk to each other without getting mad, you’d see that somebody’s trying to stir up trouble between you, as well as line their pockets with the profits from those stolen cows.”

  Bascomb waved off her argument. “North’s just tryin’ to throw everybody off his trail. He’s guilty, I tell you. Guilty as sin.”

  “Why not let the law decide that?” Reilly asked.

  “When the law keeps me from bein’ robbed blind, then maybe I’ll pay more attention to it,” the rancher snapped.

  “You’d better pay attention now,” Bo advised him. “Call off your men, Bascomb, and let us get to the bottom of this.”

  Bascomb frowned and rubbed his jaw in thought. “You swear you won’t let Steve North take you in with his lies?”

  “We’ll listen to both sides,” Bo promised. “All we want is to get at the truth…which I suspect is a lot different than either of you think.”

  “Well…” Bascomb was clearly wavering now. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to let you fellas have a try at stopping this damned rustlin’.”

  Rawhide let out a wounded cry and threw her hands in the air. “That’s all I asked you to do, Mr. Bascomb, and you wouldn’t even hear of it! You and North both just bulled ahead, called each other names, and started shootin’. Why is lettin’ the law handle things such a good idea now?”

  “Well, shoot, Rawhide…you’re a girl. And I’ve known you ever since you were a little bitty thing, runnin’ around Whiskey Flats with your drawers droopin’.”

  Rawhide made a strangled, incoherent noise of rage and reached for her gun. Bo took hold of her wrist before she could draw the weapon, and said to the rancher, “We appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Bascomb. Now, if we could put a stop to all the powder burning for a while…”

  Bascomb nodded and headed for the front of the house.

  “I swear,” Rawhide said, “sometimes I think I’d like to shoot every stubborn, addlepated man on the face of the earth…and that includes practically the whole damned species!”

  “Settle down, Rawhide,” Reilly told her. “You couldn’t expect Bascomb and North to listen to you. You weren’t even a deputy until today.”

  “And those two old mossyhorns have been building up to this for a long time,” Bo added. “Chances are, they were some of the first settlers in this part of the country. They’re used to having things their own way and bulling right over anybody who tries to stop them. Fact of the matter is, they’re not quite civilized yet…but give them time. They will be.”

  And in a way, it would be a shame when they were, Bo added silently to himself, because civilization never would have come to the West at all without the old curly wolves like Steve North and Chet Bascomb who came first.

  Bascomb’s shouts blended with the roar of gunfire, which gradually diminished as Bascomb’s yelling got louder. As the guns fell silent, Bo realized that no more shots were coming from outside either. He grinned at Reilly and said, “Sounds like Scratch and Pike did their part, too.”

  “Pike!” Rawhide exclaimed. “You brought that loco galoot along with you?”

  “Worse than that,” Bo said. “The marshal made him a deputy, too.”

  Rawhide looked like she didn’t know whether to sputter in disbelief or cuss in outrage, so she settled for rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

  Bo said, “Come on. Let’s see if we can get Bascomb and North to talking again, instead of trying to kill each other.”

  The tension in the air was so thick you could have whittled on it with a bowie knife, Bo thought as the two veteran cattlemen confronted each other on the front porch of the ranch house. Bascomb’s men stood along the wall behind him, bristling with guns. Likewise, North’s heavily armed crew was arrayed behind their boss, equally deadly. Between those two bunches wasn’t a very safe place to be.

  So of course, that was exactly where Bo, Scratch, Jake Reilly, Rawhide Abbott, and Chesterfield Pike found themselves. Pike was the only one of the five who didn’t appear to be overly concerned. Maybe he thought that he was immune to bullets, Bo mused. He hoped that Pike wouldn’t get the chance to find out that that assumption was wrong.

  Bo saw nervousness lurking in Reilly’s eyes, but the young man hid it well. Confidently, he said to Bascomb and North, “All right, you’ll both get a chance to speak your pieces. North, you first. Why did you come into my office this morning and tell Deputy Abbott you were going to attack the Rocking B?”

  “Because I’m tired o’my stock bein’ stolen,” North snapped. “Not only that, but one o’ my punchers was shot last night by Bascomb’s varmints when they widelooped another jag o’ cows.”

  “My men never shot anybody who didn’t have it comin’,” Bascomb put in. “And they sure didn’t shoot anybody on your ranch, North, because they got standin’ orders to steer clear of that hellhole.” A frown creased Bascomb’s forehead. “The puncher who got shot…is he gonna be all right?”

  The question didn’t surprise Bo. If he was right—if neither Bascomb nor North were behind the rustling—then Bascomb had a cattleman’s natural regard for the men who worked at the demanding profession of cowboy. He might hate Steve North, but he would respect the men who rode for North’s brand.

  “Well…I think he’ll pull through,” North said. “You mean to say that none of your crew was on my range last night?”

  Bascomb turned to look at stocky, bearded Bill Cavalier. “What about it, Bill? Any of the boys unaccounted for last night?”

  The foreman shook his head. “Nope. Ever’body was right here ’cept for Burke and Holmes up at the line shack, and those two wouldn’t rustle anybody’s stock, not even North’s. Hell, I’ve known ’em both for nigh on to twenty years.”

  Bascomb swung back toward North and glared at him defiantly as he asked, “Is that good enough for you? You’ve got my word and Bill’s.”

  North rubbed at his bristly jaw. “I never heard anybody say that Bill Cavalier wasn’t an honest man. Anyway, there were half a dozen hombres in the bunch that stole the cows and plugged that waddie.”

  Bascomb crossed his arms over his chest and glared even more darkly. “That don’t explain how come I’ve been losin’ stock, too,” he said. “I figure you’re behind it.”

  “That’s a damned lie!”

  The tension grew even thicker as hands tightened on pistol butts and rifle stocks. Most men wouldn’t stand for being called a liar. It was a matter of honor…a killing matter, most of the time. Chet Bascomb’s face turned white around the mouth, and fires blazed in his eyes.

  Knowing that he was taking a chance, Bo stepped between the two men and said, “Hold on a minute. North, you believe Bascomb when he says he didn’t have anything to do with your cattle being stolen and your man being shot?”

  “Well…” North said grudgingly, “I don’t want to. I purely don’t. But I’ve known the old bastard for so many years I don’t think he’d lie to me. Steal from me, yeah, if he thought he could get away with it, but not lie to my face.”

  Bo turned to look at Bascomb. “Then you ought to be able to accept North’s word for it if he says that he and his men haven’t been rustling your stock either, Bascomb.”

  “I never said he wouldn’t lie to me,” Bascomb replied with a snort.

  “Has he ever?” Bo asked bluntly. “Has Steve North ever lied to you?”

  Bascomb frowned and didn’t reply for a long moment, then admitted, “No, not that I recollect.”

  Bo didn’t bother trying to keep the anger and frustration out of his voice as he said, “Then for God’s sake, are you both just too stubborn to admit that somebody’s been playing you both for fools and rustling your cattle while you waste time blaming each other?”

  Bascomb and North looked at each other for a long moment as if considering what Bo had just said, and once again Rawhide couldn’t suppress her irritation. “I told them the same blasted thing!” she exploded. “They wouldn’t even l
isten to me! They were too eager to start shooting at each other!”

  North said, “Well, that ain’t all of it, Rawhide. This fella here looks like he’s been around some and seen some things. And you’re just—”

  “Deputy…” Reilly said warningly as Rawhide started to take a step forward. “Don’t make me take your badge away when you’ve been a deputy for less than a day.”

  “I don’t have a badge!” Rawhide said. Fuming, she turned away. “Do what you want. I don’t care anymore.”

  Bo doubted that, but there were more pressing matters to attend to. “How about it, gents?” he prodded Bascomb and North. “Are you willing to call a truce and let the law get to the bottom of this rustling?”

  Bascomb shrugged. “I reckon I can hold off a few days.”

  “So can I,” North said with a nod.

  “But if I lose any more cows…” Bascomb began warningly.

  “That goes double for me, damn it!” North shot back.

  “All right then, it’s settled,” Bo said quickly before the two old ranchers could start arguing again. “Mr. North, why don’t we start by you showing us where you lost those cattle last night? Maybe we can pick up the rustlers’ trail.”

  North looked doubtful. “We tried to follow the tracks, but we lost ’em in the hills. What makes you think you can follow the trail when me and my boys couldn’t?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Scratch said, “we’re from Texas, and everybody knows Texans are natural-born trackers.”

  Under his breath, Bascomb said, “They’re natural-born something, all right.”

  “You can say that again,” North added, maybe the first time the cattlemen had agreed in quite a spell.

  “Say…” Scratch began, his expression clouding up.

  Bo headed off that argument. “Let’s get our horses and ride.” He looked at Reilly. “If that’s all right with you, Marshal.”

  Reilly nodded. “Sure, sure. Let’s go hunt down some rustlers. And when we get finished with that—”

  He caught himself, and Bo was glad for the unaccustomed show of discretion. He knew what Reilly had been about to say.