“Yeah,” George answered as his eyes narrowed in anger. “What about him?”
“He was one o’ the lawmen who raided us,” Lilly said.
“That sonofabitch!”
“I think he wants to help you, George,” Lilly said.
“Sure,” George said. “He wants to help me straight into jail, don’t he?”
“I don’t think so,” Lilly said. “But I reckon you know him better’n I do.”
“Damn right I do,” George said. “He’s got his eye on Harriet, and the bastard figgers he can have her with me planted six-foot underground after a necktie party.”
Lilly found the thought of Dace Halston taking up with Harriet McClary quite pleasant and satisfying. The fact that George had a wife had always caused her anxiety. “Do what you think best, George.”
“I will,” he said. “What’d Dace say to you anyhow?”
“He said that I should tell you to get hold o’ him. That you can trust him, and it’s real important that you two have a talk.”
George laughed. “Well, I ain’t ready to talk.”
Lilly frowned. “You think he’d draw you out and gun you down just so’s he could have your wife?”
“Sure,” George replied.
“What do you care if he gets her anyhow?” Lilly asked in an angry voice.
“You just take it easy,” George said. “And I don’t think Dace Halston is gonna help me.”
“Things is closing in on folks like us, ain’t they, George?” Lilly asked. “We cain’t live like we did when this was the Indian Territory, can we?”
“Hell, yes, we can,” George said. “Just as soon as we run them Goddamned settlers outta here.”
“There’s more and more of ’em all the time, George,” Lilly said. “Oklahoma is growing plumb crowded little by little.”
“It’ll take some more time to convince these damn dirt farmers to get the hell outta here, but the day’s coming when cowboys is gonna ride open range land again,” George said.
“Oh, George!” she exclaimed. “You don’t even care about that anymore. You’re just a hell-raiser having a good time, ain’t you?”
“Maybe,” George said. “But one thing’s for sure. Ingraham ain’t a healthy place for the likes o’ me now. Them starpackers know where it is, and they’ll come back any time they feel like it.”
“Are you leaving, George?” Lilly asked.
“Sure am,” he answered. “Me and the boys is gonna find another place to call home for a while.”
“I’m going too,” she said defiantly.
“Sure, darling,” George said gently. “We’ll pull outta here at first light tomorrow.”
Lilly smiled with relief. “I wouldn’t want us to stay apart too long.”
“We never will,” George said kissing her. “Let’s get on over and tell the others what’s going on.”
As they walked back to where George’s small gang waited with the remaining inhabitants of Ingraham, Lilly looked up at her lover. “If we run into Dace Halston, what’ll you do, honey?”
“Well, Lilly, darling,” he said, “I reckon I’ll kill him and then—”
“—then what?” she asked.
“I’ll ask him how he’s been doing.” George laughed loudly as he led her back to the stable.
Chapter Fourteen
Dace Halston grinned as he watched the frantic treasure hunters attacking the ground around the late Kiowa Evans’ cabin. Using picks, shovels and even broken tin plates, they searched frantically for the dead trader’s rumored buried gold and money. The man standing beside Dace, a bewhiskered old frontiersman still burly and virile looking despite his weathered and leathery face, spat a gob of tobacco to the ground. “Damn fools!”
“Don’t think they’ll find anything?” Dace asked.
“Hell, no! Kiowa never was a thrifty man,” the oldster named Catgut said. “He’d git a good grubstake and take off north fer Kansas City or south fer Dallas and spend it on gamblin’, likker and whores. Mostly on card-playin’ and drinkin’ the last few years. A man slows down in yearnin’ fer women after a while. Gits more sensible, if you know what I mean.”
Kiowa Evans’ murder had revealed several interesting things about him. His ferociousness was mostly for show in order to intimidate the outlaws he dealt with. The dozens of dead bodies supposedly disposed of around the stockade had turned out to be as false a story as the one about the hidden treasure. His dealings with white men had been cold and impersonal, while the Indians of the territory had found in him a true friend—generous and trusting—who opened his heart, and even pocketbook and larder when necessary, in unabashed good will.
“I was surprised when the Injuns showed up and took Kiowa Evans away for burial,” Dace remarked.
“Why?” Catgut asked. “A man that couldn’t make friends with the redskins wouldn’t’ve lasted long in the Injun Territory, or Oklahomy, or whatever you wanta call it. There wasn’t a lodge or teepee in this whole damn country that Kiowa couldn’t go into and be treated as a honored guest.”
“He must’ve been quite a feller,” Dace remarked.
“He sure as hell was,” Catgut emphasized. “An’ that sonofabitch George McClary had better steer clear of certain Injuns if he wants to live to a ripe ol’ age.”
“You’re sure it was him who shot Kiowa?” Dace asked.
“Either him or Shorty Eastman or Leon Spalding—the bastards!” Catgut said bitterly. “They was a kid with ’em but I figgered he din’t do too much. I wasn’t in the cabin. But I watched the four of ’em go on in with one o’ Kiowa’s boys. I don’t really know what the ruckus was about, but McClary was really riled over somethin’.”
“Maybe Kiowa cheated him in a deal,” Dace suggested.
Catgut shrugged. “Could be—or vicey-versey—who knows? Anyhow, after they shot up the place, they throwed Kiowa’s carcass out the door. Natur’lly ever’body knowed that was the end o’ that. Even Kiowa’s own men wasn’t about to git shot over a boss who couldn’t pay ’em no more. Ever’body stood around and watched until McClary and his boys left. Then they rushed inside to take a look around. The place was all tore up. I reckon them backshooters figgered there was money in there too. Nobody got nothin’—’cept me. Later I found a brand new pair o’ shoes. I stuck ’em in my gear. I’m gonna save ’em to be buried in. They look mighty nice.”
“Any idea where McClary and his gang was heading for?” Dace asked.
“Sure. They went to Ingraham,” Catgut answered. “I heerd that damn Spalding sayin’ somethin’ about gittin’ to Maude Pierson’s gals. I know she’s got a whorehouse there.”
“Well, thanks for the information. I’ll head over that way and see what I can find,” Dace said. He stuck his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle.
“You and McClary had a ranch together, din’t you?” Catgut asked.
“Yeah. That was before they opened up the Territory,” Dace answered.
“An’ now you’re on differ’nt sides o’ the law, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Dace remarked.
“Lotsa strange things happenin’ around here since civilization started to move in,” Catgut said unhappily. “Seems you gotta be crazy to live in Oklahomy anymore.”
Dace smiled. “It helps anyhow. So long.”
“So long, Marshal, and you watch out for George McClary. He’s a cold-eyed killer, that’s what he is.”
Dace didn’t make any further remarks. Instead he kicked his horse’s flanks and rode west toward Ingraham.
~*~
“I cain’t believe we’ve sunk this low,” Leon Spalding said as the gang slowly approached the small three-building settlement at the crossroads.
“Well, you just better believe it!” George McClary hissed angrily. He eyed the area carefully. Two of the structures were small houses, and the largest was a general store. The set-up obviously belonged to one or more Cherokee families who had chosen the mercantile trade over far
ming when their people had decided to emulate the white man years before.
George had already sent Lilly Waring on a roundabout circuit to the opposite side of the place and told her to wait for them there.
Even Shorty Eastman was out of sorts. “I always took pride in robbing trains and banks,” he said sullenly. “That had class.”
“We need money, don’t we?” George asked. “And if we gotta rob a little ol’ country store to get some, we’ll do it.”
“Let’s go get the job done,” Spalding said. “I just hope none of our friends hear about this.”
“I robbed a store like this once,” young Tom Batkins broke in cheerfully. “Easy as pie.”
“’Course it’s easy as pie, you snot-nosed brat!” Spalding shot back. “That’s why fellers like us don’t like to do it.”
Tom, crestfallen, lowered his eyes and frowned as they dismounted at the hitching post outside the market. He loosened his pistol in its holster and gave the area a careful glance.
“Yeah, kid, that’s the way,” Spalding said sarcastically. “Make sure there ain’t two or three hunnerd armed guards pertecting this here place.”
“Just shut up!” George snapped under his breath. “And follow me.”
The four sauntered in and found the place poorly stocked. The small amount of merchandise was displayed along one wall while the rest of the goods was situated behind the counter where a man of obvious mixed Indian-white blood greeted them. “What’ll it be today, gents?”
George took notice of a short, husky black man dozing on an upturned barrel at the end of the counter. George drew his pistol and leveled it at the proprietor. “Fork over your cash, mister, and make her quick.”
“You sonofabitch!” the store owner cursed.
Leon Spalding caught sight of the black man coming off the cracker barrel wielding a double-barreled Remington ten-gauge shotgun that had been hidden from view.
“Oh, hell, George!”
The first shot missed everybody but blew the front door off its hinges, sending the damaged portal flying out onto the road.
“What the hell,” Shorty bellowed.
The black man was just as quick but more careful with the second barrel-load as he threw down on the robbers. The report rattled the jars on the shelves behind the counter.
And blew young Tom Batkins’ head off.
By then the proprietor had produced a Smith and Wesson .44 revolver, and fired wildly as the gang retreated through the door.
“We’re sick and tard o’ you range rats coming in here to rob us all the time!” the store owner screamed in rage as he and his friend, now reloaded, ran out the store.
The black man howled in glee. “C’mon back! I got plenty more buckshot for ever’body. I’ll blow all your damn heads off!”
George and the other two hit their saddles and galloped away from the place toward the spot where Lilly Waring waited for them.
“Hell of a way to run a railroad,” Shorty Eastman complained in a loud voice as they pounded hell-for-leather away from the two angry citizens.
~*~
Catgut, standing in what had once been Kiowa Evans’ stockade, pulled hard on the cinch holding the bundle to his burro. Then, satisfied with its tightness, he released the hold and stood panting from his efforts. “Shake that off, you little bastard, and I’ll lay a two-inch limb between yore ears.”
“Howdy.”
The old man looked up at the stranger who had approached him through the earthen debris left by the frustrated treasure hunters. Catgut nodded. “Howdy.”
“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Detective Ward Stormwell said. “Maybe you’ve seen him.”
“Mebbe,” Catgut acknowledged.
“Name of Dace Halston.”
“A U.S. marshal?”
“Right.”
“Kinda tall feller with a easy way about him?”
“That’s him” Stormwell acknowledged with a smile.
“You a lawman?”
Stormwell displayed his Pinkerton Detective Agency badge. “We’re working on a case together.”
“If yo’re together, how come yo’re apart?”
Stormwell controlled his temper, hiding his displeasure behind his smile. “I had to check something out somewhere else. Now I need to find Marshal Halston.”
“Are you lookin’ fer that no-good sumbitch McClary too?” Catgut asked.
Stormwell sensed the oldster’s hostility toward the outlaw. “I sure am—and I plan on bringing him in dead or alive.”
“Looks like Halston is about to close down on him hisself,” Catgut said.
“I sure hope so,” Stormwell said. “The reason I had to leave Halston was to check out another case.” He noted that the old man seemed to be a prospector of sorts. “Some hardcases have been jumping claims and killing prospectors. I put an end to that, believe me.”
Catgut displayed a wide, toothless grin. “God bless yore heart, stranger. We need more fellers like you out here. I know there’s gold and silver here in the Territory. It’ll just take some time to find it.”
“Had any luck?” Stormwell inquired politely.
“’Fraid not. I keep runnin’ into the black sticky gumbo alla time. Folks with book larnin’ call it petrolee-somethin’ or other. Useless Goddamn dirty stuff!”
“Yeah,” Stormwell agreed. “Say, you couldn’t tell me which way my old friend Halston went, could you? I’d sure like to catch up with him and lend a hand during the showdown with that McClary.”
“Hell, stranger, I can not only tell you which direction he went, I can tell you where he’s headin’ fer exactly.”
“I’d be much obliged,” Stormwell said with a smile.
“Ingraham,” Catgut said. “U.S. Marshal Dace Halston is on his way to Ingraham. You’ll find him there.”
Stormwell smiled again. “Thank you very much, sir. I’ll ride over there immediately. So long.” The detective picked his way through the mounds of dirt back to where his horse was hobbled beneath a cottonwood tree.
“Good luck to you, mister,” Catgut called out. “I hope you and Halston git McClary real quick.”
“Oh, we will,” Stormwell yelled back. Then he said softly to himself, “Even if it has to be over Halston’s dead body.”
~*~
Dace rode into Ingraham with an air of confidence. He had camped three miles from the place and sneaked up to the same gully he had hidden in before the raid on the town. A few hours’ observation showed him that not only had most of the residents abandoned the former outlaw hangout, but those remaining were preparing to do the same.
A couple of the locals, mostly bartenders or gamblers, gave him disinterested looks as he passed them and reined up in front of the stable by Maude Pierson’s old place. The large front doors of the structure were open, so he dismounted and went in.
Maude, stuffing clothes into a leather trunk, looked up at him and scowled. “Come back to laugh at us, starpacker?”
Dace shook his head. “Nope.” He started to say more, but he spotted another woman sitting in the shadows nearby. Her face was badly bruised, with both eyes blackened, and her lips were split and swollen.
Maude noticed where he was looking. “That’s one o’ my girls Wanda. Leon Spalding done that, Marshal. And he done it for no good reason a’tall.”
“Yeah,” Dace remarked. “I throwed him in the calaboose in Guthrie for doing just the same thing. He beat up a whore there too.”
“I swear I seen just about ever’thing a man wants with a woman,” Maude said. “But I’ll never be able to figger out why some of ’em like to beat on us so.”
“I din’t do nothing,” Wanda said through her punished lips.
“I got a score to settle with George McClary and that bunch o’ his,” Maude said angrily. “First he takes away one o’ my best gals. Then it’s partly his fault from hanging around here that got my whorehouse blowed up. Then that sonofabitch Spalding whupped on my other best gal so
much she won’t be worth a damn fer about a month.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind letting me know where he is, would you? It looks like he ain’t around here,” Dace said.
“They rode outta here a coupla days ago,” Maude said. “Said they was heading for Tulsa.” She looked over at the other woman. “That right, Wanda?”
“Yeah,” Wanda said in a muffled voice. “They said they was going over there. That damn Leon Spalding beat me up—for nothing! I done ever’thing he wanted me to.”
Dace turned and walked out of the stable as both Maude and Wanda lamented over the injustices the world heaped on its oldest profession.
~*~
The town of Tulsa, though out of sight, was only a couple of rolling hills away as George McClary and Lilly Waring sat dejectedly in the crude, cold camp they had established.
“Well, here we are,” Lilly said in a voice tinged with genuine disgust.
“Close your yap,” George said.
“Sitting here with no money and nothing to eat,” Lilly continued.
“Christ, woman!” George exclaimed.
“Leon and Shorty went off on their own,” Lilly said. “You ain’t got no more gang, George. Unless you want to count me.”
“I’m counting on you to shut up.”
“Gonna rob another store, George?” The taunting was undeniable.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said.
“We got to get a grubstake, that’s for sure,” the girl said. “And I reckon that’ll be up to me.”
George looked at her. “Just what the hell are you talking about?”
“What do you think? I’ll go into Tulsa and get me a job in one o’ the houses. At least that way we can get something to eat in the morning and we’ll have enough to move on in a few months.”
“The hell if you are!” he shouted in rage as he leaped to his feet. “No woman o’ mine is selling her ass in no damn whorehouse.”
“George! that’s what I was doing when you met me,” Lilly said. “So what’s the differ’nce if I go back to it again for a little while?”
Oklahoma Showdown (An Indian Territory Western Book 1) Page 13
