Deception Creek

by Ned Oaks

  Thompson was looking over his left shoulder up toward the trees on the mountainside whence he had heard Dodge’s voice.

  Thompson’s gaze shifted and met Burton’s. He squinted and jerked his head in the direction where he had been looking a moment before.

  Burton twisted and glanced up through the branches at the mountain that loomed over his side of the trail. Then he looked back toward Thompson, who nodded confidently and raised his rifle, holding it in front of him for a few seconds before pivoting and rolling through the undergrowth to the cover of another nearby tree. Suddenly he raised the rifle and pressed it firmly against his right shoulder. He squeezed his left eye closed, took a quick aim, and fired. He quickly levered another shot and fired, then twice more in quick succession.

  Immediately after the last shot the men heard an anguished shriek from up in the trees, right where Thompson had directed his fire.

  Burton waited a few moments, then yelled: ‘Dodge! You have no chance of escape. Give up now before we have to kill you.’

  ‘I’ll kill at least half of you before you lay hands on me!’ Dodge shouted back.

  ‘You’ve already been shot!’ Burton called.

  Dodge’s retort was contemptuous. ‘You think I’m scared of dying?’

  ‘We know you ain’t scared of killing. That’s why you got a posse after you.’ Burton paused, thinking. ‘You’re going back whether you like it or not. Dead or alive – which is it going to be?’

  ‘I guess we’re going to find out, ain’t we?’

  Clouds gathered above the posse and, within minutes, a steady rain began to pour. Burton decided to wait until nightfall before making a move. He couldn’t take the chance of a daylight attack that could very well end with Dodge killing two or three of the posse, if not more.

  He would have the men approach Dodge’s position from the north and the south simultaneously. He surmised that Dodge had been seriously injured by Otis Thompson’s bullet. Once darkness robbed him of his tactical advantage, Dodge would be fairly easy to capture. If he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory rather than stand trial for his crimes, then that was his decision.

  Hank Kirby had been able to shift his position slightly and now had an unobstructed view of Burton. Through a combination of hand signals and mouthing words without speaking, Burton was able to communicate his plan to the rancher. He turned to Otis Thompson and explained the plan to him in the same manner. Both Kirby and Thompson indicated their understanding.

  Finally, the only thing left to do was wait until sundown.

  For the first time since the posse had left Oakridge, Burton was happy to see a heavy fog move down from the mountains. The fog oozed through the trees in which the men were hiding and spread across the trail itself.

  Four hours passed before darkness fell. Dodge shouted occasional threats, but apart from that the woods were quiet. The men tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible while biding their time.

  Although he couldn’t be entirely sure, Burton thought that Dodge had moved a little further up in the timber after being shot by Otis Thompson. He wondered where the fugitive had been hit and how badly he was bleeding.

  Night had fallen when Burton gave the signal – one piercingly loud whistle. He gripped his rifle and moved in a crouching position toward where he had last seen Kirby. He reached him quickly, concealed from above by the fog. Tim Beach emerged from the trees on their right a few seconds later. Kirby and Beach moved close to Burton, whose whisper was barely audible.

  ‘We’re going to go up in the trees there and move in on Dodge from the north. The other three are going to go south a ways and cross the trail. They’ll approach him from there.’ He directed his next words to Hank Kirby. ‘You stay here. His only chance to escape is to try to come down through the trees here. If he does, you be waiting.’

  Burton tapped Beach on the shoulder and they moved away from the trailside toward the base of the mountain. The fog seemed to get thicker as the sky grew darker. Their rifles in hand, the two men moved quietly up the incline.

  The trees were close together, hindering their movement. Within fifteen minutes they were in a position that Burton thought was roughly parallel to where he had last heard Dodge’s voice. With Beach at his side, Burton paused and knelt between two trees. They were waiting to allow the posse members further south to get into position.

  Presently, Burton rose. Beach followed him as he picked his way south on the mountainside, taking his time and scanning the trees ahead of him. The fog was thinner here, which made their job easier.

  Moving around an especially bulky tree, Burton abruptly stopped. He raised a hand, halting Beach, who craned his neck and looked over Burton’s shoulder. He saw it, too, then – a dark human shape stretched out on a bedroll in a patch of bare ground beneath the trees. The form was unmoving and gave no indication that it had heard their approach.

  The two men waited, Burton’s eyes searching the trees across the clearing. Only a minute passed before he saw the shadowy forms of the Thompson brothers and Frank O’Rourke looming there. They observed Emerson Dodge on his bedroll. Burton made a few hand gestures to them, and then all five left the cover of the trees and moved toward the man on the ground.

  They were ten feet away from him on either side when Dodge opened his eyes and sat upright, simultaneously pulling a pistol from his holster. He turned to his left, raised the gun, and fired. Tim Beach yelled in shock and pain, then tumbled face-first on to the ground. Dodge swung his pistol around to his right to fire at O’Rourke and the Thompsons, but Burton leapt forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into Dodge’s head, which snapped backward. The fugitive fell back on his bedroll and lay there unconscious.

  ‘His neck might be broken,’ Martin Thompson said.

  Burton and O’Rourke walked quickly to the prone figure of Tim Beach. Burton rolled him over and saw the bullet wound in the left side of his chest.

  ‘Went straight through his heart,’ O’Rourke observed mournfully. ‘Damn it.’

  Burton felt sick for a moment. Emerson Dodge had killed his last victim. It would be one more crime for which he would hang.

  The Thompsons tied Dodge’s wrists behind his back. They pointed out the bullet wound to the groin that Otis Thompson had given him. O’Rourke knelt beside Dodge and smacked the man’s face a few times.

  ‘Dodge!’ he said. ‘Dodge – wake up!’

  He opened his canteen and poured water on Dodge’s face, then smacked him again. Dodge’s eyes slowly opened, and the Thompsons dragged him roughly to his feet. O’Rourke, a large, strong man, put Beach’s body over his shoulder. They followed Burton and descended slowly down the mountainside. The Thompson brothers had to hold Dodge by the arms to keep him vertical. He mumbled incoherent threats that were ignored by the posse. Burton’s blow to the head seemed to have left him without the full use of his faculties, at least temporarily.

  They met Hank Kirby in the trees between the base of the mountain and the trail.

  ‘By God,’ Kirby said softly. ‘The son of a bitch got Tim.’

  He shook his head sadly. It was the first time Burton had heard Kirby use language like that.

  It was nearly dusk on the second day of travelling back to Oakridge when they reached the cave where they had found Dalton Dodge. Burton and Kirby left their horses on the trail with the men and climbed up through the firs to the mouth of the cave.

  Burton saw it first, and a wave of nausea came over him as he turned away. Kirby stepped beside him and took in the scene with a penetrating glance. He drew a deep breath. He and Burton exchanged a look and began moving back down toward the waiting posse.

  ‘He in there?’ asked O’Rourke with concern in his voice.

  Burton put a foot in a stirrup and pivoted up into his saddle.

  ‘Some of him’s in there,’ he said grimly. ‘Black bear must have got him.’ He picked up his reins, his face somber. ‘He might have already been dead when the bear found him. He w
as bleeding pretty good when we left him.’

  His hands tied securely to his saddlehorn, Emerson Dodge said nothing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was just after nine o’clock in the morning when the posse rode into Oakridge.

  They drew leather at the hitching post in front of Maynard Blayloch’s office. Kirby volunteered to take the body out to the Beach place and inform the man’s wife and children that he had been killed. Burton thanked Kirby for taking on such an unpleasant task, and for his help during the hunt for the Dodge brothers. Kirby nodded, obviously uncomfortable with Burton’s praise.

  ‘If you need me again, Mr Burton, you know where to find me,’ he said. He turned his horse toward the west end of the street and slowly rode off, leading Beach’s horse by the reins.

  Burton dismounted and realized he didn’t have a key to Blayloch’s office door. The jail was located at the back of the building, behind the deputy’s office.

  As if he were reading Burton’s mind, O’Rourke said, ‘Mr Burton, I’ll ride over to the doctor’s and get the key from Maynard.’ His eyes regarded Dodge with distaste. ‘Then we can get this trash locked up.’

  Dodge turned his head and glared at O’Rourke. As he had done for virtually the entire trip back from the mountains, he chose to say nothing. His face expressed both hatred and exhaustion.

  ‘That’ll be fine, Frank,’ Burton said. ‘Thank you.’

  O’Rourke rode away, returning a few minutes later with the key. Burton and the Thompson brothers were standing under the awning in front of the office; they had left Dodge sitting on his horse. Burton took the key and opened the door as the brothers removed Dodge from his mount and pushed him into the office.

  ‘Welcome home, Dodge,’ said Burton as he unlocked the door to the cells. ‘This will be where you spend the last days of your miserable life.’

  Dodge’s lips curled contemptuously. ‘I still get a trial, Burton.’

  ‘True,’ Burton responded. ‘But four people watched you kill Tim Beach. You won’t get around that in a court of law. Let alone everything else you’re going to hang for.’

  ‘That ain’t got nothing to do with you!’

  Burton frowned, wondering briefly if Dodge had lost his marbles. ‘The hell it doesn’t! We found the mask in your cabin, Dodge.’

  He strode outside and uncinched a saddle bag. When he returned, he was clutching the Phantom’s mask.

  ‘This was in your cabin,’ he said coldly. ‘You’re a rapist and a killer. And you’re going to hang for it.’

  ‘So you and Blayloch are going to try to pin that on me, huh?’ Dodge demanded.

  ‘The evidence doesn’t lie.’

  ‘You and that stupid deputy lie, though!’ Dodge almost spat his words at Burton.

  ‘You’re wasting your breath, Dodge. You’re a killer and everyone in this room knows that first hand. But you’re going to pay for all of your crimes, not just the murder of Tim Beach.’

  ‘I have the right to defend myself. You were all coming upon me with guns drawn. You were going to shoot me in my sleep!’

  ‘Shut the hell up,’ Martin Thompson muttered angrily.

  ‘Put him in a cell,’ Burton said, handing the keys to Otis Thompson.

  The brothers shoved the prisoner into the hallway and opened the cell on the right side of the passage. Martin Thompson held Dodge while his brother cut the ropes from the man’s wrists, then gave Dodge a forceful push into the cell and slammed the barred door closed behind him. They went back into the office and closed the heavy door to the cell block.

  ‘How’s Maynard doing?’ Burton asked O’Rourke.

  ‘Well, he looks better than he did last time we saw him,’ O’Rourke said. ‘But I wouldn’t necessarily say that he looks good.’

  ‘He’s lucky to be alive,’ Burton remarked.

  ‘Doc said he should be back on his feet in four or five days, but he’s going to have to take it easy for a while after that.’ O’Rourke removed his hat and sat down on the corner of Blayloch’s desk. ‘Sheriff might have to send another deputy out here to Oakridge until Maynard recovers.’

  ‘Probably so,’ said Burton. He turned to the Thompson brothers. ‘Gentlemen, I thank you for your assistance in this matter.’ He included O’Rourke in his glance. ‘Y’all are probably aware that you’ll be called upon to testify at Dodge’s trial.’ The men nodded. ‘Anyway, I’m going to stay here today and spend the night. Frank, could I ask one more favor of you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Could you ride out to my place and let Annie know we’re back? I’d like her to bring some fresh clothes and food over when she gets the chance.’

  ‘I’ll ride out there before I head home,’ O’Rourke said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Burton shook hands with all the men before they left, then watched them mount their horses and ride away.

  Annie Burton arrived about an hour later in the couple’s buggy. As her husband had requested, she brought food and clothing. Burton was eating some pie at Blayloch’s desk and telling Annie about the hunt for the Dodge brothers when someone tapped at the office door.

  ‘Come on in,’ Burton called.

  The door opened and the clerk from the telegraph office entered. He held out several telegrams for Burton, who began to examine them.

  ‘There should be a temporary deputy arriving this afternoon from Eugene,’ the telegrapher said. ‘Maynard sent them a message the morning he was brought in from Deception Creek.’

  ‘Good,’ Burton said. ‘I won’t have to spend the night here after all.’

  ‘You’ll also notice something else,’ the telegrapher said, pointing at the stack of telegrams in Burton’s hand. ‘The Dodge brothers are wanted for killing three men in a bank robbery up in Salem last week.’

  Burton’s eyebrows darted up with surprise and he searched for the telegram about the bank robbery. He found it and read it, as well as two more that had been sent to Oakridge with further information about the crime. It seemed the brothers were also suspected in a bank robbery up near Portland in which two people had been killed, including one woman.

  ‘Tarnation,’ Burton said under his breath. He looked up at Annie. ‘They think the Dodges killed five people in their bank heists. And that’s not including the Phantom murders and the killing of Tim Beach.’

  ‘Killers,’ Annie said, shaking her head. ‘Stone cold killers.’

  ‘You folks have a good day,’ the telegrapher said as he exited out on to the boardwalk.

  Burton was pensive. ‘I’m going over to see Maynard after this new deputy arrives,’ he said. He took another bite of his pie and re-examined the telegrams. ‘It’s too bad Dalton Dodge isn’t here to be held accountable.’

  ‘Sounds like he got his in the end,’ Annie replied.

  ‘I’m just glad Maynard’s alive,’ said Burton. ‘He’s going to have to get well soon. I’m sure they’ll be sending a judge out here from Eugene for the trial within a day or two. They don’t like to twiddle their thumbs when it comes to murder trials, especially when you throw in bank robbery, too. Maynard’s going to be doing a lot of testifying.’

  Annie gazed toward the cell block door. She remembered the terror of the Phantom’s thwarted attack and felt a cold shiver at how close she and her husband had come to being victims. Her mind troubled, she forced herself to focus on more practical issues.

  ‘How’re your feet doing?’ she asked solicitously.

  Burton pulled his chair out from behind the desk and removed his boots. Tattered, bloodstained rags were wrapped around his feet. He peeled them off.

  ‘I put these on yesterday,’ he explained as he dropped the rags on the floor.

  The bottoms of his feet were still cut badly but were in better shape than Annie had expected them to be.

  ‘I brought you that extra set of boots you bought last year,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, good.’ He patted her hand. ‘You always think of everything.’
r />   She smiled. ‘Somebody has to!’ She rose and opened the door. ‘I’ll get those boots.’

  As she turned to step on to the boardwalk, a man appeared in the doorway. He was tall, with lined brown skin and a bushy mustache. He removed his hat and smiled at Annie. Burton noticed the sunlight reflecting off the badge on his chest.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the man said as he moved out of Annie’s way. He looked at Burton. ‘Name’s Matt Winstan. Sheriff sent me out here as deputy until Maynard’s up and around.’

  Burton rose and the men shook hands. ‘I’m Ed Burton,’ he said. ‘I’ve been helping Maynard off and on for the last year or so, whenever he needs me. I used to be the marshal over in Fillmore. I led the posse and we captured Dodge in the mountains south of Deception Creek the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Boy, y’all been busy!’ Winstan said with a grin. ‘Sheriff’ll be real happy to hear that.’ He hesitated. ‘What about Dalton Dodge?’

  ‘Dead. Died of blood loss after a shootout with me and Maynard. Well, either that or he got eaten by a black bear. We found some parts of him in a cave where he’d been hiding out. I don’t think he was in any shape to get away if a bear found him while he was still alive. He’d lost a whole lot of blood by then and might have been dead already.’

  ‘Don’t really matter much,’ said Winstan with a shrug.

  ‘Emerson’s been shot, too,’ Burton added. ‘Now that you’re here I’ll go fetch the doctor to take a look at him. I think the bullet passed through. He ain’t said much about it.’

  Winstan removed his hat and dropped it on Blayloch’s desk. Then he took off his sheepskin coat and threw it across the back of a chair.

  ‘He ate yet this morning?’ he asked, pointing toward the cell block door.

  ‘Not yet,’ Burton said. ‘I’ll stop in at the café and have them send some food over.’

  ‘Thank you. Could you ask them to send some food for me, too? I’m half starved.’