by Paul Lederer
‘We’ll get through this, though. We have bargaining chips now.’
‘I suppose,’ Kate said with a sigh, ‘but I can’t help feeling that I’ve abandoned Father when he needed me the most.’
‘What do you want to do?’ Dan asked with deep concern. He couldn’t risk losing Kate now. Now that he was sure he wanted her always to be at his side. Earlier in their relationship it might have just been mutual attraction or the impulse of the young that drew him to her, but now he knew that she was becoming the woman he always wanted – one who would stand by her man and fight for him. He couldn’t stand it if she ever left him.
‘I think I should see him. With the loss of the Wabash and of his darling daughter, he must be feeling desperate. I just want to assure him that I’m all right – and that you will take care of me,’ she said, gently kissing his cheek.
‘Outlaw that I am,’ Dan muttered.
‘Outlaw that you are.’ Kate rose, stretched her arms over her head and looked down at Dan. ‘So, what do you think?’
‘I understand your sense of obligation, Kate, but there are more than just two of us whose lives are at stake here. What if Marshal Standish, or worse, the Clinch Mountain boys, managed to trail you back into the Tanglewood?’
‘I would see anyone and lay a false trail,’ Kate told him.
Dan was silent, seeing the intent in Kate’s eyes. There were different sorts of responsibility. ‘I’d have to talk to Trace and Curt.’
‘This isn’t a prison,’ Kate said with a little heat.
‘In a way it is. I have at least to let them know what you have in mind. It’s risky for everyone.’
Cole Lockhart sat with his hands free, his ankles tied, near the tiny campfire as Trace and Curt Wagner sipped coffee. Cole drank from his own tin cup, seated on the ground near a brooding Prince Blakely. He watched as Ruby, who had changed back into range clothes, perched on a fallen log. His eyes were malevolent as he said, ‘You’re a deceitful little thing, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I guess I am. And proud of it,’ Ruby replied.
‘This will only mean more trouble for all of you,’ Blakely tried.
Trace laughed out loud. ‘How in hell could we be in more trouble!’
‘When I get you back to Lordsberg, Judge Weems will—’
He was cut off by Curt Wagner. ‘Do you mind telling me how you plan to do that?’ he asked.
‘You can’t stay forted up in this godforsaken place forever. You have to come out one day!’
‘I suppose we will,’ Curt agreed. ‘What makes you think that you’ll be around to go with us, Blakely?’
‘Why, because I—’ Blakely sputtered. But suddenly he realized that he had no idea what these men were capable of. He had taken away their property and destroyed their lives. Why would they not strike back with even more viciousness? He fell to silence and sipped at his coffee as a stream of fire ants passed over his bound ankles.
‘If they bite, you’ll feel it forever,’ Trace said. ‘Their jaws come out in your flesh and stay there.’
If there was a message there, Blakely didn’t get it, but no one made a move to help him shift his position or drive the ants away. That alone was symbolic.
Johnny Johnson was breathing easier although the sun across the open white desert was fierce even at this time of the year. It might be snowing in the high mountains, but the long flats were sweltering. He figured that he had angled out of Colorado some time ago, and his direction must have taken him into Arizona. There he meant to reach either Tucson or Phoenix in a few days and live a life of luxury not concerning himself with trivial matters like water. He sipped at his canteen. The water in it was tepid.
He saw no settlements ahead across the long desert, but far to the south a dark figure seemed to be approaching on horseback. Small and indistinct, whoever the traveler was, he might be able to point Johnny in the right direction, could even know of a pueblo nearby where he could rest and water his horse, spend some of the money in his saddle-bags on a plate of good Mexican food, cerveza, and waste some on the company of a dark-eyed woman. He let his paint pony drift that way, and within the hour he drew up to wait for the traveler.
‘Hello, Johnny,’ the lone rider said.
‘Do I know you?’
‘Unless you’ve got a short memory,’ Laredo answered, and now Johnson did recognize the lean hawk-eyed man.
‘Laredo, listen.…’
‘You are going to have to listen, Johnny. You’ve got a good sense of direction. You told me the other day that I was in Colorado and couldn’t arrest you. This is Arizona Territory. You’d be surprised at how much latitude I’ve been given to arrest bank robbers here.’
‘I’ve never even been in Arizona before, let alone robbed a bank!’ Johnny protested loudly, but weakly.
‘I’ve explained all this to you before. We have a reciprocal agreement with Colorado. Don’t test me. What they might do with you is up to the judges. The Bank Examiner’s office has given me the authority to investigate and arrest anyone suspected of bank robbery.’
Johnny’s paint pony shifted its feet uneasily. He kept his eyes fixed on Laredo, not liking what he saw in those eyes.
Laredo folded his hands on his saddle pommel and made a suggestion. ‘You can take the loot back, Johnny. Or hand it over to me and I’ll do it.’
‘I can’t go back to Lordsberg,’ Johnson said, realizing belatedly that he had just admitted to theft. He added in a more subdued voice, ‘And I can’t go back to the Tanglewood – Curt and Trace will be furious with me. Not only for taking what I did, but for what they’ll view as cowardice.’
‘You don’t have a lot of options, Johnny. I could take you back to Tucson with me, but they have a nasty habit of hanging bank robbers in that town.’
Johnny’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. The wind was dry; his throat was parched. Laredo did not look like he was fooling.
‘I guess,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I could just give it to you. If you wouldn’t.…’
‘I only want to see justice done. I don’t get any pleasure out of seeing young men swinging from the gallows,’ Laredo said. Although he had sent a few that way himself, he was serious. Johnson was only a very young man who had once thought he could make his way in the West, been thwarted and then had temptation put in his way. He was not a criminal in the true sense of the word, unlike a few that had crossed Laredo’s path.
‘If I hand over my saddle-bags, there won’t be any charges filed against me?’ Johnny asked, bargaining.
‘That’s just not up to me, Johnny. I don’t know, but from what my investigators have told me about the method of operation at Storm Ross’s bank, I’d say no one will have much time to be worrying about your part in this.’
‘All right, then,’ Johnson said, untying his saddle-bags. ‘Take the money and be damned!’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose I could keep at least twenty dollars for a meal and for my horse’s feed.’
Laredo’s mouth twitched. ‘I can’t let you do that but’ – Laredo fished in the pocket of his jeans – ‘I can loan you twenty.’ And he slipped a twenty-dollar gold piece, bright in the sun, to Johnny. ‘Just stay out of trouble. You may be getting back your ranch in the Wakapee after this is all over. That’s not a promise, but it’s the way our legal people see it working out.’
‘All right.’ Johnny’s tough expression had softened. ‘Thanks, Laredo. Do you happen to know of a pueblo nearby where I can get a decent meal?’
‘About five miles ahead, there’s a place called Los Coches. Ask for a restaurant named La Paloma – tell Maria that I sent you. She’ll treat you right.’
Laredo smiled, fitted the saddle-bags over his own and then turned his big buckskin horse northward. There was still much to do.
Johnny Johnson watched the man ride away. Laredo had given him hope for the future; perhaps he could get his little horse ranch back now. And, he reflected, it had to be a better life than becoming an outlaw on the run.
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CHAPTER NINE
‘I have to go back with her,’ Dan Sumner was saying. Curt and Trace Dawson both were eyeing him uneasily. They were not quite scowling, but their expressions were the next thing to it. To Dan just now, Trace knew, the woman’s needs were more important to him than caution. It had backfired the last time.
‘It will require extreme caution,’ Curt warned as they stood together apart from the prisoners who seemed to have their ambitions toward escape beaten down by the torpid weight of the day.
‘I know that,’ Dan answered, wiping his sleeve across his sweaty brow. ‘But we’ve all taken more than a few chances already.’
‘If you feel like you have to do it, then go along,’ Curt Wagner said, not angrily but with a sort of regretful understanding. They couldn’t have held him back anyway. Dan Sumner walked away toward the horses where Kate waited. His limp was not as noticeable as it had been.
‘Can’t blame a man for wanting to do something for the woman he loves,’ was Trace Dawson’s comment.
‘No – Trace, I think the time has come to move our camp,’ Curt responded.
‘Do you have a place in mind?’
‘I think so. Up along a ledge near the bat cave. I can’t see how anyone could approach us there without our seeing them.’
Trace nodded. He agreed with Curt, but it seemed that every move they made took them farther into the Tanglewood. Yet the Clinch Mountain boys would eventually come looking for them and Kaylin Standish might gather enough courage to do the same with enough prodding. Undoubtedly Storm Ross would have made his plea to the marshal to rescue Prince Blakely, the driving force behind the land takeover. And he would have offered incentives. The sensible thing for them to do was to go deeper into the Tanglewood. Deeper into the nightmare.
‘What are you thinking?’ Curt asked, studying his friend’s troubled face.
‘Just how smart we are,’ Trace grumbled. ‘Do we tell Dan now where we’re going?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Dan would never give us up – voluntarily. But let’s do it while he’s gone. We can keep an eye out for his return.’
‘I agree,’ Curt said with some relief. They had no more assaults on Lordsberg planned. From here on it would become a defensive battle.
‘Coming in!’ a strange, yet somehow familiar voice called out, and both men spun, reaching for their revolvers. Curt, squinting into the sunlight, was the first to recognize the man. He gestured to Trace to holster his gun as Laredo entered their camp.
‘How’d you find us from the south?’ Trace asked honestly surprised. ‘Were you brought up in this area or something?’
Laredo laughed. He sat his big buckskin horse, watching them closely. ‘My horse smelled your animals, and your voices carry a lot farther than you’d think in the silence of the place. I just started following the tracks that Johnson left going out of here, and there you were.’
‘Did you see Johnny?’ Curt asked with a hint of disgust.
‘He asked me to return these,’ Laredo said, untying Johnson’s saddle-bags from behind his saddle and simultaneously swinging down to stand before Curt and Trace. ‘He said he’d changed his mind about keeping what he took.’
Both outlaws looked dubiously at Laredo, but the money had been recovered – money they had never meant to keep, but only to hold as a threat over the heads of Blakely and Ross.
Curt Wagner watched as Laredo unsaddled his horse and asked, ‘Mind if I ask where you’ve been?’
‘Trying to clear up the legal side of things,’ Laredo said. ‘I see you’ve taken a different tack.’ He nodded toward the camp where Prince Blakely and Cole Lockhart sat with their feet tightly bound.
‘We had to make a move,’ Trace said tightly.
‘You boys make a lot of moves without thinking them through,’ Laredo said, throwing his saddle to the ground. ‘The courts might have straightened this all out, given time.’
‘Given time and an honest judge!’ Trace shouted in exasperation. ‘We didn’t feel like we had either.’
‘I understand that, believe it or not,’ Laredo replied. ‘I’ve set the wheels in motion for you. If you can avoid acting criminally any more you just might get out of this with minimal damage.’
Trace was still too angry to answer civilly. He turned his back and went to look for Ruby.
Curt, a little calmer, said, ‘Thank you, Laredo.’
From the camp, Blakely who had heard bits and pieces of the conversation said plaintively, ‘Are you a lawman? Get us out of here!’
Laredo took three steps that way, looking into the desperate eyes of Blakely and the cold, cold eyes of Cole Lockhart.
‘I’m not exactly a lawman. I work for the Bank Examiner’s enforcement arm in Arizona. Our investigators and accountants have a few questions for you and Mr. Ross. I don’t have the authority in Colorado to detain or free you. I suppose if you wanted to ride with me voluntarily to Tucson to talk to our legal people, that could be done.’
‘Go to hell,’ Prince Blakely said.
‘That’s about what I expected you’d say,’ Laredo said. ‘Let’s just all wait and see how this plays out.’
‘Who’s he?’ Kate Cousins asked Dan in a hiss as they trailed out of camp.
‘To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure,’ Dan answered. ‘Something to do with the banking business.’
‘Sure doesn’t look like any banker I’ve ever met,’ she commented.
‘No. He’s something like a lawman hired to track down people who rob banks – or misuse them. I’m just thankful that he seems to be on our side.’
Laredo settled in between the two groups remaining in the camp – Trace, Curt and Ruby on one side, the disgruntled Prince Blakely and Cole Lockhart on the other. He had a tin cup containing coffee in one hand. He was surrounded by mistrustful eyes which was not a new experience for him.
He thought briefly back to the beginning of his long, sometimes fruitful, always hazardous career.
Once, a long time ago, Laredo had found himself down and out. He had been eyeballing a bank in a small town called Cannel, Arizona Territory. Laredo was hungry, tired and broke. While he stood considering the bank as a solution to his troubles, a man who moved on cat feet slipped up beside him in the hot shade of the alleyway and introduced himself.
‘Jack Royle’s my name,’ he said, stuffing the bowl of a stubby pipe with tobacco.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Laredo replied shortly. He was not in the mood for a stranger’s idle conversation.
‘Working in town, are you?’ Royle persisted, lighting his pipe.
‘Not at the moment.’
Royle nodded, blew out a stream of tobacco smoke and studied the tall stranger. ‘I, myself, am employed here,’ he said. Laredo cast an annoyed glance at the stocky man. ‘For the present, that is. I travel all around,’ Royle continued, indicating all of the territory with a wave of his pipe.
‘What are you, some kind of drummer?’ Laredo asked.
‘No. I am employed, my young friend, as an operative in the enforcement arm of the Territorial Bank Examiner’s office.’
‘Oh.’ Laredo felt cornered suddenly. The inoffensive little man stood watching him quietly. Laredo wondered how Royle could have known what he had in mind that hot, dry, desperate day.
‘Yes,’ Royle went on, ‘you know men will try to stick up these little banks in isolated areas. Then they make their break toward Mexico, California, anywhere, free as birds. The local law doesn’t have the time or the resources to expend hunting them down. Me,’ Royle said with a gnome-like smile, ‘I’ve got all the time in the world. All the time in the world.’ With that the little man nodded and walked away. Laredo stood watching his back. If that had not been a warning, it was the next thing to one.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that Laredo traced Royle to his hotel room where he sat shirtless, bare feet propped up.
‘Mr Royle,’ Laredo had said, ‘how’s chances of g
etting hired on at a job like yours?’
That had been long ago, and many miles past, pursuing bank robbers and evildoers, some of them apparently solid citizens in town suits, lining their pockets with the money earned by the sweat of the brow of their hard-working, honest depositors. Laredo found that he disliked these criminals much more than the thugs that kicked in the door of a bank with guns flashing. If what Cassidy and Stolz – the two clever money-men at the home office – suspected, could be proven true, Blakely and Ross had stolen the property and the hopes of dozens of young families in the Wakapee Valley.
Blakely disgusted Laredo. In a way so did Cole Lockhart, but he at least did not present himself to be other than he was: a killer for hire.
Laredo had never before encountered the Clinch Mountain boys, although he knew them by reputation. Perhaps the reason he had never crossed their path was that they had never been implicated in anything like a bank robbery. They were quite simply a roving band of thugs, guns for hire. Just now, however, he did take the time to memorize Cole Lockhart’s face. The roads the two men followed seemed likely to cause them to collide sometime in the future.
Curt Wagner who remained cooler than the angry Trace Dawson asked, ‘You think there’s a hope we can get our property back, do you, Laredo?’
‘That’s what the Bank Examiner seems to think. There was lot of discussion about homesteading, prior claims and assumed ownership couched in legal terms I didn’t really understand, but the way it was explained to me, based on the documents I provided them, they are tending to believe that the Ross-Blakely power play was nothing less than a land-grab. They’re also looking into the background of Judge Weems.’
Blakely had been listening intently to all of this and sat sullenly in the heat of the Tanglewood, his face a mask.
