by J. T. Edson
Quitting his job, Ottaway had gone to Widow’s Creek. There he had made the acquaintance of the lady mayor and persuaded Wil Jeffreys to hire a special police force. That was when things had started to go wrong. Ottaway had suggested men he knew would not be available, in the hope that he could bring in the gang he and Capey had gathered to act as deputies. With them running the law, the rest of the plan would have been easy. Wil had sent for two men, efficient peace officers and smart enough to smell a rat. So the conspirators had decided to stop Smith and Frith reaching the town.
Using the information Ottaway had gathered from Wil, two parties had left to intercept Smith and Frith. Neither had met with any success. Capey had been at the stagecoach way station when the try at Smith had failed. Wanting to make sure that Hardy’s party carried nothing to hint at what was planned, he had pretended to be an undertaker and helped search the bodies. Left alone in the barn, he had cut the girths on Smith’s saddle to prevent the Texan arriving unexpectedly in Widow’s Creek. Knowing that Smith would be curious about the attempt on his life, Capey had written a message on a page from his notebook and, by placing it under another sheet, imprinted a name on it. He had selected Poona Woodstole as the only person, other than Ottaway, he knew in the town.
One of Ottaway’s tasks had been to learn when the jewelry was to arrive. Although he had cultivated Stanley Jeffreys, he had gained nothing from that source. Jeffreys either could not, or would not, discuss his sister’s affairs.
Capey had acted on his own initiative when sending the Sheppey brothers after Smith. Then, deciding that the Texan would be suspicious if he discovered that nobody had tried to kill Ottaway, had told Dilkes to fire a shot at the deputy. Thinking that Ottaway knew of this, Dilkes had obeyed and been killed. When Ottaway had gone to see Capey, bristling with suspicion, the small man had pointed out that they could no longer hope to rob the bank at the end of the fair, so the man was better out of the way. Ottaway had been inclined to believe the explanation. If Capey had hoped to achieve anything, he needed Ottaway’s help. The deputy’s actions when the soft-shells had tried to break up the meeting gained Smith’s grudging confidence. So Ottaway could be present at meetings, picking up information and—as he had done when Hardy’s visit to Wil’s office had been mentioned—ready to change the subject if the possibility of a bank hold-up should be approached.
On hearing that the Big Indian and Jed Trotter were coming on Monday, Ottaway had known that the attempt must be made before then. He had deliberately allowed Evan Jones to escape in the hope of stirring up trouble between the ranchers and farmers. This had not materialized, but the kidnappings had been the break he needed. Instead of reporting to Smith as soon as he had seen Yorck riding out of town, he had visited Capey and arranged that they should make their move. Taking his false information to the marshal’s office, he had fixed it for himself to be left behind when Smith had set off on the rescue bid. That had not been difficult, for he had guessed that the marshal would take Frith rather than him when headed into danger.
After that, everything had been simple. Collecting the horses Ottaway had selected for their escape, the two conspirators had gone to the bank. A look through the front window had told them that Ryall was making one of his visits to a girl in a whore-house across the river and the junior teller was working at his desk. So they had gone to the side door, where Ottaway gained admittance under the pretence of having brought Capey to be hired as a special deputy.
There had only been one Pink-Eye present and a fast-drawn Colt crashing on to his head put him out of the deal. Acting no less quickly, Capey had laid an open razor against Wil’s throat and ordered her to be silent. A smart young woman, she had seen the futility of resistance and obeyed. Then, under the threat of having the guard and her teller murdered with the razor, she had been forced to open the safe. With Wil and the guard securely bound and gagged—to prevent any warning reaching the unsuspecting teller in the front room—Capey had fetched in the saddle-bags left outside the side door to avoid arousing suspicion. A blow from the barrel of Ottaway’s Colt had tumbled the small man unconscious.
For a few seconds, Ottaway had debated whether to kill all three of his victims. Moral scruples did not come into his decision of sparing their lives. Public opinion would be more severe against a man who murdered a ‘good’ woman in cold blood than at a mere bank robber. Nor would the Pinkerton Agency ever cease in their efforts to hunt down the murderer of one of their men. That left Capey. He knew the escape plan, which was why he did not die. When he told Smith that Ottaway intended to make for the Canadian border, the hunt would be concentrated in that direction. So Ottaway would head south, riding relay and travelling faster than any posse, each man of which had only one horse. He knew enough about the crooked trails to be safe and the money from the bank’s safe, while much less than would have been in it by the end of the fair, would set him up comfortably somewhere safe.
Riding high on a cloud of happy thoughts, with his horses’ hooves drumming on the planks of the centre bridge, Ottaway was suddenly brought down to earth with a bump.
Waxahachie Smith rode his lathered bayo-lobo from an alley on the street ahead of Ottaway. There was no hope of turning back and avoiding the Texan, so Ottaway raised his left hand in a greeting.
‘What’s up, Wax?’
‘They weren’t at the Page place,’ Smith replied, riding forward as Ottaway halted his mounts on the bridge.
‘Yeah. I know,’ the man agreed. ‘I thought they might be lying, so I sneaked downstairs on tippy-toe and listened at the basement door. Morgan let on that you’d never think of looking at the Renner farm.’
‘So you got a spare horse and come looking for me?’
‘Sure. These were the only two decent mounts at the barn. Where’s Ric?’
‘That blasted critter they gave him threw a shoe,’ Smith drawled. ‘Afore we go, maybe we’d best let Miss Jeffreys know what’s happened.’
‘Is there time?’ Ottaway inquired.
‘We’ll just have to make time,’ Smith declared. ‘Turn around and let’s go.’
‘You’re the marshal,’ Ottaway replied. ‘Hey! Your hoss looks hard-rid. Why don’t you take this one now?’
‘I might as well,’ Smith admitted, gripping the saddlehorn with his gloved left hand as he swung over his right leg to dismount.
Instantly Ottaway commenced his draw. With his fingers closing about the butt of his revolver, he started to form an uneasy impression that something was badly wrong. Instead of merely getting down, Smith had thrown himself clear of the bayo-lobo. While he was still in the air, the Texan’s right hand made a white flash as it snapped towards the staghorn grips of the Colt slip gun.
A white flash!
Yet Smith’s left hand was covered by the brown leather of its glove.
That meant the right hand must be bare!
Smith only removed his gloves, exposing his mutilated hands, when expecting trouble and that he might need to use his gun. So he either suspected or knew that Ottaway had been playing a treacherous game.
Out flashed Ottaway’s revolver; but the shock of his discovery caused him to hesitate before he turned loose a shot. As soon as he depressed the trigger and released the hammer, he sensed that he had missed. So he began to draw back the hammer and turn the barrel into line on the Texan.
Hearing the scream of Ottaway’s bullet passing close above his head, Smith landed on his feet and holding his weapon. No other kind of single action revolver could equal a slip gun for speed of fire. Three times in one and a half seconds, his thumb operated the stubby hammer-spur. Coming on the heels of Ottaway’s attempt, the trio of detonations merged into what appeared to be a continuous sound. All nine balls raked into the man’s chest, almost ripping him in half. Startled by the noise and muzzle-blasts, the two horses belonging to Ottaway reared on their hind legs. Thrown from the saddle, he fell on to the bridge’s guard-rail and from it into the water.
Allowing his o
wn horse to lope away, Smith barred the progress of Ottaway’s relay. He sprang forward and his left hand caught the reins of the animal the man had been riding. Ignoring the shouts which rose and the sight of people running towards him, Smith concentrated on bringing the frightened horses under control. Jeffreys and Frith galloped their horses along the bank of the river, converging on the marshal. By the time they arrived, he was standing alongside the calmed animals and was looking into one of the saddlebags.
‘Did you call it right, Wax?’ Jeffreys asked.
On hearing of Ottaway’s connection with Capey, Smith had guessed that there was a plot to steal the Houghton-Rand jewels. So he had asked Woodstole and Bilak to escort Lily and the prisoners into town while he and his deputies pushed on as fast as they could. On reaching the outskirts, Smith had sent Frith up-stream and Jeffreys down to cover all three bridges between them. Seeing Ottaway approaching, without the other being aware of his own presence, Smith had hidden in the alley and made his appearance when the man was on the bridge.
‘I called it right,’ Smith confirmed, closing the bag. ‘Ric. Head for the bank fast. Stan, fetch Ottaway out of the water.’
That’s the best of being the youngest deputy, Stan,’ Frith commented. ‘You get all the easy chores.’
Although Jeffreys was worried about his sister’s welfare, he obeyed Smith’s order. Not until the body had been delivered to the undertaker’s shop did the young man have the opportunity to go and find out what had happened to her.
Any doubts about the identity of the men behind the attempts to kill Smith and Frith were ended when Capey recovered consciousness at the jail. Led by Smith to believe that Ottaway was still alive, the small man told the full story so that his treacherous accomplice would also be implicated.
‘Well,’ said Jeffreys, as he, Smith and Frith sat in the marshal’s office after attending to the incarceration of Capey and the two soft-shells, ‘we’ve got everything settled and quietened down now.’
‘Sure,’ Smith agreed. ‘And it’s up to us to see that it stays that way.’
‘There’s only one thing I’d like to know,’ Frith remarked. ‘How come that every time you make up one of your fancy laws you use the same set of numbers?’
‘You mean eleven, twenty-three and sixty-one?’ Smith asked.
‘Them’s the ones,’ agreed Frith. ‘What are they?’
‘The date of the day I was born,’ Smith explained. x
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i For a description of posting at a trot, read Under the Stars and Bars
ii Not the modern, waterproofed rubber variety, but the style made popular by the Duke of Wellington
iii Rosaderos: vertical wide leather shields stitched behind the stirrup leathers
iv For the story of the Cochise County fair, read Gun Wizard
v The Tragg family still have ‘John-Law’ in their blood, as is told in the author’s Rockabye County stories of the modern West
vi How this came about is told in: Goodnight’s Dream and From Hide and Horn
vii A knife is described with the cutting edge downwards, the hilt to the viewer’s left and point to his right
viii Soft-shell: derogatory name for a liberal-intellectual or radical
ix Slow-elking: butchering and selling anormahe ’st ntaeclt
x Americans put the months then the day and the year
