Waco 6

by J. T. Edson

  Hearing the story, Leroy appreciated two significant points. Firstly, despite the death of the Wensbury faction’s leader, it seemed as though the fighting on the range would continue. Secondly—and more important to the well-being of Lampasas town—there was now a grave danger that, in spite of all the precautions which had been taken, it might spread to the streets and endanger the population. That was emphasized by the hostility suddenly evident between the supporters of the two factions who were present in the saloon.

  ‘I’m going out there with the Rocker to fetch Ted in!’ Leroy stated, accepting that he had no other choice, no matter what the circumstances might be.

  ‘That’s what I figured,’ Dirk Damon answered. ‘But going there could be dangerous. I’m coming with you.’

  Grateful as Leroy might be for the offer, he knew he could not accept it. Doing so would leave Lampasas with only Harrigan as a legally appointed law enforcement officer. All the others had only been appointed temporarily and, if it came to a technical point, unofficially. No matter which side of the feud the affected citizens of the town might favor, they were all motivated by family ties, or politics rather than the mercenary reasons of the hired guns. Such men would be more likely to remain passive in the presence of a peace officer they had helped to elect and who had displayed complete impartiality up to that point.

  ‘It isn’t that easy, Dirk,’ the doctor pointed out quietly, but conscious that everybody else was listening to his words. ‘If you, or any of your deputies come, the thing we’ve all been working to prevent could erupt. Anyways, neither side will make any fuss for me. They all know that I’m completely neutral and they’ve gone out of their way to show that they’re willing to respect anybody who is.’

  ‘Yes, but—!’ the marshal began, letting his words trail off as he saw that the other’s statement was having its effect on the rest of the audience.

  ‘I’m going out there to attend to a wounded man,’ Leroy went on. ‘Not just one though. There’s likely to be more than him on both sides needing my attention.’

  ‘Don’t forget that the Wensburys have been taking a licking,’ warned a supporter of the Maudlins. ‘They might not be so all fired pleased to act obliging—’

  ‘They will!’ Leroy declared, with a complete confidence which brought to an end a protest about to be launched by a Wensbury adherent ‘I’ll be going out to do what I can for their boss’s son. Not that I give a damn about their feelings, or anybody else’s. All I know is that a wounded man needs my help and I’m going to give it to him.’

  ‘And we’ll be along to see that you can do it!’ Harrigan barked.

  ‘No, Joe!’ Leroy contradicted. ‘Your place—and that of every man in this room—is here in town, making sure that the fighting isn’t brought in.’

  ‘Then let me send for Lil Doc,’ Damon suggested, knowing and agreeing with the motives behind the other’s statement.

  ‘Even if we knew where Josey and the others had taken him on that picnic, there’s no time to spare while we send word and he gets back here,’ Leroy pointed out, having been told that the surprise treat for his son was to take place. ‘Anyway, this’s the last chance he’ll have for a fair spell to have some fun with his friends. Let him have it. I’ll go alone.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Eldridge,’ Aline Leroy offered. ‘You’ll need help and nobody will try to make trouble for you if I’m along.’

  None of the audience could dispute the point. All realized that the larger the party and the more men in it, the greater would be the suspicions and disinclination of the warring factions to wait for an explanation before opening fire. That would also be a strong argument against Leroy sending for his son to accompany him. In addition to his well-deserved reputation for being capable at assisting on medical matters, he had also acquired a name for being unusually fast and effective with a Colt. Seeing him and remembering his qualities as a gunman it could provoke the response which it was so vitally important to avoid.

  ‘Shall I come with you, Aline?’ Mrs. Damon offered and many of the other neutral wives echoed the sentiment.

  ‘There’s nothing you could do if you came,’ Doc’s mother replied, being aware that the women would be a pacifying influence where they were. ‘Eldridge and I can take care of everything that needs doing.’ Her gaze flickered to the owner of the property which would be their destination. ‘You might be advised to stay here, Emily.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Aline,’ Widow Simcock answered.

  ‘Where’re you going?’ Leroy demanded, as Lonny Wensbury started to rise.

  ‘With you,’ the youngster replied.

  ‘You’re not!’ the doctor stated, knowing that nothing would be more likely to bring trouble upon him than the other’s presence. ‘I can find the widow’s place without needing a guide and I don’t need anybody under foot while I’m working.’

  ‘But—!’ Lonny began.

  ‘So you stay here and nurse your broken head,’ Leroy finished.

  ‘I don’t have no busted head!’ Lonny protested, sounding puzzled.

  ‘You will have if you give me any more argument,’ Leroy warned, glancing around the onlookers. ‘Make sure that he stays here where he’ll be safe, Tom Grunwell.’

  ‘If you say so, Eldridge,’ replied the town’s lawyer, who was also the youngster’s uncle.

  ‘I do,’ Leroy confirmed. ‘Let’s get going, Aline honey.’

  About ninety minutes later, Leroy and his wife were riding on the box of the Rocker ambulance towards the unlit clump of buildings on the Widow Simcock’s property. There was something of a chill in the air and, to combat it, Aline had donned one of her son’s hats and his cloak-coat to cover her dress.

  The choice of such masculine attire caused a tragic result!

  Fired from the open doors of the barn, as Leroy—having brought the two horse team to a halt—was starting to rise, a bullet ripped into his head. An instant later, in a ragged volley, three more rifles bellowed from close to the position of the first. Only two pieces of the flying lead found their billets in Aline’s slender body, but either would have been fatal. Even as her husband crumpled lifeless from the driver’s seat, she made an involuntary movement as if trying to stand up. Twisting around, she toppled dying to the ground. Although startled so that they reared and plunged, the two horses were restrained by the vehicle’s brakes having been applied and they did not bolt far.

  Four shapes emerged from the barn and walked forward. Despite the accuracy with which they had used their weapons, they had the somewhat lurching gait of men who had been drinking.

  ‘Nice shooting, boys,’ Japhet Maudlin praised, cradling his smoking rifle on the crook of his left arm. ‘We got both the sons-of-bitches—They’re both dead aren’t they?’

  ‘They’re dead all right,’ Lazio Czonka confirmed. ‘When they go down like that, they’re wolf-bait for sure, Japhet-boy.’

  ‘You called the play right when you said we shouldn’t stop that Wensbury bastard riding to town after we saw him bring his brother in here, Laz,’ Hank Waltham remarked. ‘He did go for the Leroys ’n’ they come out here alone.’

  ‘It was sure slick figuring, Laz,’ Len Shabber agreed. ‘And now everybody’ll know better’n take sides against your daddy, Japhet.’

  Fourteen – There’s Only One Way Out

  Taylor Maudlin was no coward, but he quailed before the cold anger being displayed by Hayden Paul Lindrick as they faced each other across the table in the sitting-room of the Lazy M’s ranch house. The time was four o’clock in the morning and they had just returned from several hours of strenuous, dangerous activity. Although they had achieved a victory which would end the feud in their favor, there was no sign of jubilation. Nor, tired as they both were, had either the slightest thought of going to sleep.

  Already grief-stricken over the death of one son the previous day, Arnold having suffered a relapse and died before Doctor Eldridge Jason Leroy could be summoned, the rancher was now di
sturbed and guilt-ridden by the information he had received from his boss gun. He was also wondering how he might extricate his youngest son from the consequences of the terrible deed that had been perpetrated on the Widow Simcock’s property.

  Furiously, Maudlin swung his gaze to where Japhet, Lazio Czonka, Len Shabber and Hank Waltham were standing by the door. Frightened by the realization of what they had done, the sensation had been increased by the anger and scorn Lindrick had directed upon them when he had found them looking at their murdered victims. Not one of them attempted to meet the rancher’s gaze. Much less did any of the quartet want to look at the cold-eyed, stony-featured boss gun.

  Having learned that Japhet and the three hired guns had set out in pursuit of Lonny Wensbury, who was helping his wounded brother to escape at the end of the fighting, Lindrick had gone to find them. He had no faith in any of the four’s intelligence or good sense, and wanted to prevent them from doing something stupid. On reaching the Widow’s place, he found that he was too late. What was more, their stupidity had far exceeded anything he could have anticipated.

  The quartet had been staring with horror—even in Czonka’s case—over the discovery that they had killed Mrs. Aline Leroy instead of her son. Already the shock had sobered them and they realized just how terrible a deed they had done. If they had hoped to receive comfort, or an attitude of “it can’t be helped” from Lindrick, they had rapidly been disillusioned.

  One of the reasons Lindrick had been hired as boss by Maudlin was for his experience in conducting the kind of range war in which they were involved. Apart from his personal feelings, which he had had difficulty in controlling, he had been able to foresee the full ramifications and problems that could arise out of the murders. So he had not wasted time in recriminations, although he had left the quartet in no doubts of his feelings for them and their behavior, but had set about trying to produce a solution to the situation.

  Ordering Japhet—who, for once in his life, had shown an almost pathetic eagerness to obey—to go and find his father, but not to mention what had happened in anybody else’s hearing, Lindrick had turned his attention to the three hired guns. Learning that Ted Wensbury was dead in the barn, he had made certain arrangements and taken the trio with him to the Lazy M. Arriving shortly before Maudlin, the boss gun had insisted upon an immediate discussion of the matter.

  ‘After all we’ve done so far, those four stupid sons-of-bitches have just about ruined everything!’ Lindrick declared, bringing the rancher’s attention back to him. None of the others dare even show, much less express, any resentment they might feel over the way he had described them.

  ‘Boone Wensbury’s dead and his men scattered to hell and gone,’ Maudlin objected, but in a mild fashion. ‘We’ve licked them and it’s over.’

  ‘Like hell it is!’ Lindrick contradicted. ‘You may have licked them with guns, but it’s far from over yet—and even more so because of what those four bastards have done. Why do you think I’ve had you acting the way you have been?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ the rancher asked dully, his churning emotions preventing him from thinking clearly.

  ‘Why do you think I had you go into Lampasas to fetch Arnold the way you did and offer to keep your crew out of town when the Wensburys were there?’ Lindrick elaborated. ‘Or why I had you make sure that your men behaved and fixed it so that useless son of yours stopped Waltham from threatening the Leroys? It was to persuade the folks who weren’t committed to either side that you aren’t such a bad hombre and that maybe you’d been pushed into the trouble against your will. And that your family didn’t hold it against the Leroys for refusing to take sides. According to your cousin, the lawyer, folks were starting to think that way — and now this has happened!’

  ‘I swear to God I didn’t know it was Mrs. Le—!’ Japhet began, wailed in fact.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ the rancher snarled, his face ashen and rage-distorted as he glared at his son. ‘If you open it once more, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’

  ‘It’s a pity any of them were born!’ Lindrick stated. ‘But there’s nothing we can do to correct that now. What we’re faced with is how to save the situation. And, as far as I can see, there’s only one way out.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Maudlin asked hopefully.

  ‘It’ll cost you a fair sum of money,’ Lindrick warned.

  ‘How much?’ the rancher wanted to know, a hint of suspicion in his voice.

  ‘We’ll talk about that when you’ve heard what I intend to do,’ Lindrick answered.

  As he had returned bare-headed to the ranch, the scar like a flattened ‘W’ showed livid and red against the white of his forehead. ‘Firstly, we can’t change the fact that the Leroys are dead. All we can hope to do is turn the blame for it away from your son.’

  ‘How?’ Maudlin growled, showing his puzzlement and conscious that the other four occupants of the room were listening with bated breath.

  ‘Only the five of us in here know he was involved,’ Lindrick explained, changing his position so he was facing the quartet by the door. ‘It was you who told me he’d gone after the Wensbury boys with those three, none of the others had missed him. That’s why I sent him straight back to you and told him to keep quiet about what had happened, so if anybody else had arrived before we left, they’d find me there and not him. Nobody came, which makes it even easier for you to claim that I was the fourth man, not him.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Me. We’ve fixed things back there so it looks as if young Wensbury started shooting as we went into the bam, I left my hat with a bullet hole through it, for one thing. For the rest, our story is that, while we was fighting it out with him, the Leroys came dashing up on their ambulance. What we told you is that Leroy cut loose at us with his Colt, it’s lying by his body with two bullets from it in the door of the barn. So we claimed we began to throw lead back without realizing he had his wife with him;’

  ‘Nobody who knows him will believe that Leroy would endanger his wife by acting that way,’ Maudlin protested.

  ‘You didn’t think it was likely,’ Lindrick explained. ‘Which is why you fired the three of us and told us to get the hell away from your ranch as soon as you heard what we’d done.’

  ‘What if Damon wants to know why I didn’t hold you for him?’ the rancher inquired.

  ‘Who’d be able to do it?’ Lindrick countered. ‘We’re the four fastest guns you’d been forced to hire after the Wensburys had started bringing them in first. Nope. You did all you could by running us out and warning us that if we came back, you’d make a damned good stab at taking us in so our story could be investigated.’

  ‘Go on!’ Maudlin requested, slumping into a chair.

  ‘That Wensbury boy who was killed on Owl Creek this afternoon started the shooting,’ Lindrick obliged. ‘On top of that, you were grieving over Arnold’s death, which was caused by him having been bushwhacked by them. You’d even been willing to let that go without bringing in the law. But this was the last straw. When you heard the rest of them were coming, you went to defend your land and turn them back. Nobody can blame you for doing that, or for the fact that somebody got killed in the fighting. It was self-defense. Now you’ve come out the winner, there’s not many’ll want to argue about it. Most people around here, even those in town who tended to favor the Wensburys, will be too grateful that the feud’s over to want to do anything that might keep feelings stirred up. Especially as you’ll be saying how bad you feel that it came to shooting and that you don’t hold any grudge against the surviving Wensburys and haven’t any wish to take any of their land. In fact, you don’t even intend to close the “Fork Range”.’

  ‘That’s what we intended to do all along,’ Maudlin pointed out, remembering the plans formulated by his boss gun.

  ‘It was,’ Lindrick conceded. ‘But there’s the killing of the Leroys for you to take into consideration now. And the only way you’ll get by with that is by doing as I�
�ve suggested.’

  Thinking fast, Maudlin considered the boss gun’s comments and proposals. The latter had much to recommend them. As Lindrick had said, with his side in the ascendancy, there would have been no danger of repercussions from the local authorities. Wanting an early resumption of normal business and social activities, the weight of public opinion would have been against anything that might tend to prolong the feud. The killing of the doctor and his wife, both well-liked and respected members of the community, could arouse such a storm of protest that its ripples would pass beyond the bounds of Lampasas County and might even cause the Governor to instigate an investigation.

  However, handled as Lindrick had suggested, it was just possible that—disenchanted by the prospect of further upheavals and a lengthy continuation of the undesirable state of affairs caused by the feud—the population could be willing to let things settle into oblivion.

  ‘We’ll do it!’ Maudlin decided.

  ‘Bueno,’ Lindrick replied. ‘You’ll give each of those three five hundred dollars.’

  ‘Five hun—’ the rancher began.

  ‘For which they’ll each sign a confession stating that they and I were the only members of your faction present when the Leroys were killed and it happened in the way I described to you,’ the boss gun continued, as if the interruption had never happened. ‘You’ll hold the documents and, as soon as they’re paid, they’ll get the hell as far away from here as they can travel.’

  ‘Five hundred dollars each you say?’ Maudlin asked.

  ‘They’ll need it,’ Lindrick replied, looking at the rancher again and conscious of having the three hired guns’ undivided attention. ‘No matter whose idea it was to kill the Leroys, it was murder and everybody concerned is equally guilty in the eyes of the law. So they’ll hang if they’re caught, no matter whether it was your son, or me, who was with them. The money will give them a stake and let them get right out of Texas. It’s their only hope of avoiding stretching a rope. Ask them what they think.’