Will Tanner

by William W. Johnstone

  Will ejected the spent cartridge as he dived to the ground and rolled over in an attempt to use Billy’s frightened horse as cover. When Max couldn’t get a clear shot at the scrambling deputy at once, he didn’t wait to risk the same as his brother got. With one foot in the stirrup, he flailed the excited gray gelding and fled through the back door, swinging his leg over to land in the saddle on the run. Billy’s horse, still frantic, turned and followed the gray out of the barn before Will could stop it. “Damn!” Will cursed upon seeing the horse in full gallop behind the fleeing outlaw. With his horse tied a hundred yards back up the creek, Will would have jumped on Billy’s horse to give chase. Since that option was lost, he turned his attention back to the man lying on the dirt floor of the barn, thinking there was still a possibility of getting shot in the back by a dying man. A quick glance told him that there was no threat of harm ever again from Billy Tarbow. He turned his attention then to Mendoza and the two women standing at the kitchen door. Seeing no threat from that quarter, either, he unbuckled Billy’s gun belt and pulled it out from under his body. Walking out of the barn, he paused briefly to speak to Mendoza. “Looks like your daddy decided not to stay for the birthday party.” He nodded back toward the body lying in the barn. “I reckon you can bury your uncle, back there. There’s a half a dozen horses in the corral that don’t belong to you. They’d better be here when I come back for ’em. If you take good care of ’em, I might leave you a couple of ’em for your trouble.” Even as he said it, he had no idea when, or if, he would ever be back for them. With his business finished at Turtle Creek, he walked back along the creek to get his horses, resigned to another job of tracking ahead of him.

  Behind him, two terrified women stood speechless until he disappeared into the trees beside the creek. “Who was that man?” Maria finally felt safe enough to ask.

  “I never see him before,” Mendoza said. “I think maybe he’s the devil’s debt collector.”

  * * *

  Holding his horse to a full gallop, Max Tarbow sped west across an open plain of brown grassy swales and hummocks, treeless for the most part. He looked back over his shoulder frequently, expecting to see the relentless deputy on his trail. So far, there was no sign of anyone tailing him, but he knew he would be coming. He was convinced that the demon would always be coming, and there was no way to hide his tracks across this open plain. The devil had chased them out of Indian Territory and refused to stop at the Texas border. He knew it was the same man. He had to be crazy, with no regard for the boundaries of the territories, killing his men off one by one, until there was no one left of his gang of five men, but him. When he had the time to think about it, he might mourn the loss of his brother, but right now his only concern was to lose the relentless devil on his tail. And there seemed to be no real cover to hide in, so he held the gray to a killing pace in hopes of reaching a line of hills before him that were partially clad with scrub oak forests. The weary horse was already heaving for breath and starting to falter. He knew he was going to have to let up on it; he couldn’t afford to let the horse founder.

  Finally, he reined the laboring gray back to a walk, then dismounted, looking nervously over his back trail as he led the horse up the first in the line of low hills, into a patch of trees. He kept moving, hoping to find a way to lose his pursuer in the hills, but every time he looked behind him, he could see the clear tracks he was leaving. In near panic, he ran, leading the tired gray down the slope of one hill and up the slope of its neighbor, until at last he found what he hoped would be his salvation. In the floor of a narrow valley, he came to a busy stream just when he was about to decide that he had no choice but to stand and fight. Gratefully, he led the gray into the stream and started walking north, toward the Red River. A few miles short of the river, he came to a wagon road that crossed the stream. Eager to see where the road led, and hoping to lose his tracks among those on the road, he led his horse out of the water.

  Soon, he came to some cultivated fields on either side of the road, and a mile or so farther on, he saw a house and a barn. There was a corral with half a dozen horses in it. Right away, he saw his means of escape, so he started to trot toward the corral, still leading the exhausted gray. Before he reached the corral, a man came out of the barn to greet him. “Howdy,” Lester Coble called out, puzzled to see the grizzled stranger suddenly show up on the road to town. Tarbow ignored him and continued on to the corral, where he stood looking over the horses inside. “Howdy, neighbor,” Lester repeated, thinking the man must not have heard him. “Somethin’ I can do for you?”

  “Yeah,” Tarbow said, his eyes never straying from the corral. “Me and you are fixin’ to trade horses. I like the look of that chestnut yonder. He don’t look like he’s too old. He might do me just fine.” Without waiting for Lester to speak, Tarbow started pulling his saddle off the gray.

  “Whoa! Wait a minute, mister,” Lester objected. “You can’t come on my place and just take your pick of my stock. That chestnut’s my ridin’ horse. He ain’t for sale. Who are you, anyway?”

  Tarbow turned to face him then, his one good eye glaring like a hot coal as he locked his gaze on the shaken farmer. Lester knew there was to be no choice on his part, for he had no doubt that he was looking into the eyes of pure evil. “I ain’t got time to fool with you,” Tarbow said, his voice cruel and threatening. “Get in there and put this bridle on that chestnut, and be quick about it. I’m in a hurry.” He pulled his bridle off the gray and handed it to Lester. Realizing the depth of the danger he was facing, Lester took the bridle and went immediately to the chestnut. While Lester put the bridle on the horse, Tarbow watched the road anxiously.

  When the frightened farmer led the chestnut out of the corral, Tarbow wasted no time throwing his saddle on it and tightening the girth until the horse flinched. It caused Lester to plead, “Go easy on him, mister. He’s a gentle horse. He ain’t never been treated bad.”

  The comment seemed to disgust Tarbow. “I don’t give a damn if you made a pet outta him. If he don’t do the job for me, I’ll shoot him and be done with him. You ain’t got no cause to be bellyachin’—you got a good horse for him.”

  Tarbow started to put his foot in the stirrup when Lester’s fourteen-year-old son came out of the barn, holding a shotgun. “You heard my pa!” he commanded. “Sonny Boy ain’t for sale!”

  “Sammy! No!” Lester yelled, but it was too late. Reacting to the threat, Tarbow drew the Colt he wore on his hip and pumped a .44 slug into the boy before he could think about raising the shotgun. The boy dropped his shotgun and crumpled to the ground.

  Tarbow started to put another round into the fallen boy when Lester ran to his son. Seeing no further threat from either of them, however, Tarbow holstered the weapon and stepped up into the saddle. “Sonny Boy,” he huffed in disgust. “What kinda sissy name is that for a man’s horse?” Feeling more like he was in control again, now that he had a fresh horse, he kicked the chestnut hard with his heels and galloped out of the barnyard. Back on the road again, he held the horse to a gallop for about a mile, solely for the feeling that he was putting more space between him and his pursuer. He reined back to a fast walk then, to avoid repeating the mistake he had made with the gray.

  As he rode, he tried to decide what he should do about the relentless stalker behind him. His natural tendency would have been to find a good spot to lie in wait for the deputy and bushwhack him. But that was before he became convinced that he was dealing with a man who was not quite human. He had still never even seen the man, which made him even more forbidding, since the images he formed in his imagination were of the darkest nature. His instincts told him to run and hide, and the question that followed was where.

  When the road led between two low ridges, Tarbow left it and rode up on top of one of the ridges to look over his back trail. From the summit, he could see for at least two miles, and he was encouraged by the fact that he couldn’t see anyone. Looking at the road ahead of him then, he saw a small
cluster of buildings on the horizon, possibly two or three miles distant. With one more look behind him, he reassured himself that there was no one in sight, so he descended the hill and continued to follow the road. It was getting late in the day now and it occurred to him then that he was hungry, having been forced to flee Mendoza’s just as Maria started putting food on the table. Maybe I can get something to eat there, he thought, if that’s a town, and it looks like it is. He was starting to feel confident again, thinking that he might find a place to hide and wait to surprise this persistent lawman. Maybe hang him with a sign around his neck, like I did with his partner, he told himself.

  The buildings he had spotted from the ridge turned out to be a small settlement in the middle of a wide stretch of fertile farmland. As Tarbow walked the chestnut along the short street, he discovered a post office, a general merchandise store, a blacksmith shop, and a stable, but no saloon or dining room. Considering the prospects not too promising, he decided to try the general store, thinking that maybe he could buy something to cook. Then he remembered that he had no utensils to cook anything with. He still had plenty of money in his saddlebags, though, so he could damn sure buy him some. Pulling up at the hitching rail, he dismounted and tied the chestnut. Taking another look back toward the way he had come, he was satisfied to see no one behind him still. It caused him to wonder if he might have lost the deputy when he had ridden up that creek. He paused for a moment then, questioning the advisability of leaving his horse tied out front of the store. Then he smiled to himself when it occurred to him that the deputy had seen him ride off on the gray. He wouldn’t be looking for a chestnut.

  * * *

  Wiley Monroe looked out the window when Tarbow pulled up before his store. “You ever see that fellow before, Winona?”

  His wife walked to the front of the store to see for herself. “No, I can’t say as I have, and I believe I’d surely remember if I ever had.” They stood at the window to watch the burly, ominous-looking brute as he looped his reins over the rail. “He looks like a pirate out of the storybooks, with that eye patch and his big, black beard,” she said, then turned to walk toward the counter so she wouldn’t be caught staring at him.

  “Good day to you, sir,” Wiley sang out cheerfully when Tarbow walked in the door. “What can I help you with?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Tarbow replied gruffly as he stood in the middle of the store, looking around him. Seeing that the store was divided into two separate sections—a counter at one end, a bar at the other—he asked, “Is that a saloon on that side of the buildin’?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wiley said. “We tend a small bar for some of our customers in the community.”

  “Well, good,” Tarbow said. “We’ll start on that side of the room, then. I could sure use a drink. Whaddaya got?”

  “I’ve got some rye whiskey, shipped in from Dallas, and some bootleg corn whiskey that was made locally,” Wiley said.

  “Anyplace here to get somethin’ to eat?” Tarbow asked next.

  “Right here,” Wiley replied. “My wife will rustle you up something, if you don’t mind having what we’re having for supper.” He ignored the painful look his wife gave him for telling him. She was clearly not comfortable with the rough-looking stranger. “Winona cooks for a couple of fellows in town who don’t have wives of their own—the blacksmith and John Carver down at the stable. We don’t charge but fifty cents for supper,” Wiley said.

  “Is that right?” Tarbow responded. “I’ll take a taste of it and see if it’s worth fifty cents. How ’bout that?” He didn’t plan on paying for it, anyway, or anything else he needed as well. He had the money, but he saw no need to waste it. Who was going to stop him from taking what he wanted? “Now, go pour me that drink of whiskey,” he said. Grinning then at a shocked Winona Monroe, he said, “You ain’t gonna get no supper cooked if you don’t get started.”

  “Well, I never . . .” she muttered, and retreated to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Will approached Lester Coble’s farm, four miles east of there. It was not yet dark as he guided the tired buckskin off the farm road and rode up to the house. He was greeted at the front porch by a man holding a shotgun. “You can just keep on ridin’, mister. We ain’t got nothin’ here you’d be interested in, so just get on back on that road and ride.”

  Will was hardly in a mood to have a problem with a belligerent farmer. He had already lost too much ground to the outlaw he was chasing. He had not been able to get on Tarbow’s trail immediately after he shot Billy Tarbow because he had not been quick enough to stop Billy’s horse from bolting. Guessing that Billy had been carrying his share of stolen bank money, Will had no choice but to go after the horse before it wandered too far. He finally caught the sorrel when it stopped at a stream to drink. As Will had assumed, there was a large roll of money in Billy’s saddlebags. He had then set out to get on Max Tarbow’s trail, leading the sorrel behind him. He made a wrong guess when he came to a creek a few miles short of the farm where Tarbow had decided to hide his tracks. The trail had been easy to follow until he reached the creek, but Will had made the assumption that the fugitive would turn south, going deeper into Texas. Turning the other way would have taken him back into Oklahoma, and that didn’t make sense. So now he found himself facing a hostile farmer holding a shotgun. “You folks in West Texas ain’t particularly hospitable to strangers, are you?” Will asked.

  “Some strangers are welcome, some ain’t,” Lester said, still suspicious of a second stranger within a time span of several hours.

  “Well, I won’t bother you any longer than it takes to . . .” He paused then, having just noticed the gray horse standing tied to the outside of the corral, its head and tail still hanging down. “Where’s the man ridin’ that horse?” Will demanded.

  “Gone to hell, I hope,” Lester replied curtly. “He left it here and stole my horse, a good four-year-old chestnut sorrel. And that gray’s done foundered.”

  “What’s at the other end of this road?” Will asked.

  It was beginning to dawn on Lester that this somber-looking man was anxious to catch up with the crude brute who had struck his home earlier, and maybe not because they were friends. “A little town called Bulcher,” he answered, then asked, “Are you a ranger?”

  “No,” Will said. “I’m a deputy marshal out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and I need to catch the man who stole your horse.”

  “He shot my son!” Lester blurted.

  “Oh?” Will responded. “How bad? Did he kill him?”

  “No,” Lester said. “He hit him in the shoulder, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t tryin’ to kill him.”

  “How far is that town?” Will asked. “What was the name of it?”

  “Bulcher,” Lester repeated. “It’s four miles.”

  “Is there a doctor there?”

  “No,” Lester said. “It ain’t hardly big enough to support a doctor. It there was one, that’s where I’d be right now, but my wife’s lookin’ after my boy. I think he’ll be all right.” He looked a little sheepish then, as he tried to apologize. “I’m sorry I wasn’t very friendly when you first rode up, but I weren’t sure you wasn’t one of that other fellow’s friends. Who is he, anyway?”

  “His name’s Max Tarbow,” Will said.

  “Good Lord in heaven . . . !” Lester exclaimed. “I’ve heard of him! He’s the fellow that robbed all those banks down near Fort Worth and Dallas.” He was speechless for a few moments then when he thought about the danger his family might have faced. “I reckon we were lucky he didn’t cause us worse trouble than woundin’ Sammy.”

  “I’d say so,” Will replied stoically, and turned Buster’s head back toward the road. “I hope your boy gets along all right.” He paused then when a thought struck him. “You say Tarbow took your horse and left you with that gray?” Lester nodded and frowned. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll leave you this extra horse, and maybe that’ll help make it right.”

 
; Surprised, Lester replied, “Why, sure. I mean, that’s mighty fair of you. Do you want that gray?”

  “Nope,” Will said. “You keep it.”

  “How ’bout the saddle?” Lester asked.

  “That, too,” Will said. “Soon as I empty the saddlebags.”

  “’Preciate it,” Lester said. This day was turning out to be a profitable one after all. He stood watching while Will emptied Billy’s saddlebags of money and weapons, eager to tell his wounded son that he was going to be the lucky recipient of a horse and saddle. “Good luck,” he called after Will as he rode away. “I hope you catch up with that killer.”

  The gift of the horse had taken a little extra time, and the rapidly approaching darkness caused Will to rethink his original intention to continue on to the town. What if Tarbow had not gone to Bulcher? In any case, he decided it might be wiser to rest his horses and take up the trail again in the morning.

  CHAPTER 9

  Max Tarbow felt like he was back in control again. It had been hours since he had galloped away from Mendoza’s place, and there was still no sign of the persistent lawman. He was convinced he had lost him, and even if the lawman did happen to stumble on this little settlement, Tarbow was confident that he would be hard put to corner him here. In fact, he almost hoped the deputy would come riding down the middle of the short street. He’d take great pleasure in knocking him out of his saddle.

  Looking around him now at the people seated around Winona Monroe’s table, he enjoyed the fear he saw in their faces. There was very little conversation except for the boisterous comments he made while the other three men at the table ate hurriedly, their faces almost in their plates. He was purposely a little rowdy, just because he enjoyed watching the men squirm, afraid to tell him he was being disrespectful of their hostess.