Behind the Iron

by William W. Johnstone

  Fallon kept quiet. His face revealed nothing. Certainly, Fallon did not trust Sean MacGregor. He wasn’t sure he could trust the conniving Scot’s son, either.

  “Father promised you things, things he can deliver, but things he won’t deliver. He realized he had made a mistake. So he’s sending you to prison to get killed. And then, as a joke, he thought it might be better if he got rid of you in Chicago and let me take a beating to put me in my place.”

  “There are easier ways to kill a man,” Fallon said.

  “And a million ways to die in prison. Especially in a place like Jeff City. That place makes the Bastille look like the best hotel in New Orleans.”

  Fallon leaned closer to MacGregor. “But I believe you just said that it was your idea to send me to Missouri.”

  “It was. It is. Because you can get some valuable information, something that might help you find out who got you put in Joliet for ten years, who got your wife and daughter butchered.”

  Fallon felt his face flushing. He saw his fists clenched. He tried to control his breathing.

  “Do the names Kemp Carver and Ford Wagner mean anything to you?” MacGregor asked.

  Fallon pushed away from the detective.

  They most certainly did.

  Leaning back in his chair, he remembered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Fifteen years earlier

  The wagon was white, except for the iron bars that had been painted black, the board along one side that was painted red with gold trim, and the gold letters on the red-and-white side that proclaimed:

  U. S.

  COURT

  You could also find a few spots of brown staining the white paint. That came from blood of some of the prisoners the wagon had hauled out of the Indian Nations and into Arkansas over the past few years.

  Folks called it a “tumbleweed wagon,” and it—and others like it—transported prisoners to the dungeon known as a jail in Fort Smith. This one had twelve men inside, sweating, cursing, and their shackles rattling. The air and sun felt murderously hot, drenching the prisoners in sweat. Harry Fallon was sweating, too, but at least he had the comfort of the roof over his head and the coolness of the air as it blew across the driver’s seat. He also had a canteen of water at his side, and the six-point star of a deputy U.S. marshal pinned to the front pocket of his shirt.

  He had everything a lawman needed—except a gun.

  Judge Isaac Parker and the supervising marshal over the Western District of Arkansas and the Indian Nations had made it clear that drivers of tumbleweed wagons were not to carry weapons. No pistols, no rifles, no shotguns, no knives, nothing that a prisoner might be able to get his hands on and turn against the lawmen accompanying the wagon.

  Two deputy marshals, Jim Beckett and Caleb Holloway, were accompanying this one, and had made the arrest of the dozen sweating men caged behind Fallon. Fallon was wondering where those marshals were, but he knew to follow orders. He kept the wagon moving slowly down the road that ran to the Arkansas River. He could take the ferry across the muddy, deep river, and keep right on down the road until he came to the old fort, which now held Judge Parker’s office, the district court, and the hellish jail where federal prisoners waited and rotted and, sometimes, died.

  Fallon had been wearing this star for three months. When the federal marshal and Judge Parker had first given him the badge, Fallon, youngster and former wild-roving cowboy, had expected nothing but adventures like something out of a dime novel. He had dreamed of wild gunfights and becoming some kind of hero like Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, or Buffalo Bill Cody. Instead, here he sat, on the hard, uncomfortable seat of the tumbleweed wagon, sweating, bored out of his mind. The closest thing to gunfire he had heard had been when one or both of the mules farted.

  Being a deputy United States marshal had turned out to be about as exciting as riding drag on a herd of two thousand cattle from Texas to Kansas for three or four months.

  The prison wagon rounded a bend in the road, and Fallon looked up, felt his heart leap in his chest, and he quickly pulled back on the leather and brought the mules to a stop. The cursing and griping from the prisoners stopped.

  Fallon’s throat turned dry. Two men stood in the center of the road. The one in the black hat had a sawed-off scattergun pointed at Fallon’s chest. The one in the linen duster held a Winchester rifle. Behind that dangerous pair, a third man sat in a saddle on a paint horse. He held no guns, but the reins to four horses with empty saddles. Fallon’s eyes shot toward the woods, trying to find two other men with guns pointed in his direction. Seeing none, he focused on the man with the shotgun.

  “Shuck yer iron, boy,” the man said.

  His face was pockmarked, he had not shaved in a few days, and his left ear looked as though it had been bitten in half by a bear or coyote or some other kind of wild animal.

  After swallowing down the bile, Fallon said, “I’m unarmed.” He stumbled with that twice before he could get the words out freely.

  “The hell you say,” the shotgun-loaded man said. He was short, probably just a few inches over five feet, and his right boot—of an old cavalry style—was split down the side and sported a big hole in the foot so that Fallon could see the man’s big toe. He wore no socks.

  “That’s true, Shorty,” said the one on the horse. “The lawdogs don’t let the driver carry no weapons.”

  The shotgun lowered, and the ugly runt in the black hat laughed. “Well, hell, that makes this a whole lot easier.”

  The man with the rifle waved the barrel, but did not lower it, and said, “Open the back, boy. And then get the chains off your passengers.”

  One thought raced through Fallon’s mind: Marshals Beckett and Holloway will kill me for letting all these prisoners loose.

  The man on horseback gave Fallon something else to think about. “If you don’t hurry, boy, we’ll shoot you dead and leave you for the crows. Get moving.”

  After setting the brake and wrapping the heavy leather lines around the handle, Fallon climbed out of the driver’s box. The men in the jail-on-wheels began talking excitedly, softly at first, and then began cheering and hissing when they realized they were being freed.

  The runt in the black hat followed Fallon, and, upon seeing the prisoners, he turned toward the other two and said, “Maybe we should just let Kemp and Carver go.”

  The one on horseback shook his head. Fallon began to realize that this one was the leader.

  “No,” the man said. “This’ll give the lawdogs more trails they’ll have to follow. Give us a better chance to clear the territory, maybe get back down to Texas.”

  He was looking at Fallon when he was talking. Fallon figured the man was lying, hoping that Fallon would send the posse south. That thought gave Fallon some hope, though, for if that was the plan of the outlaws, it meant that they did not plan to shoot Fallon dead.

  “Open it up.” The man rammed the shotgun against Fallon’s spine.

  He flinched, bit his lip, and rammed the key into the hole. Once the padlock released, Fallon swung open the door, and stepped back. The dozen prisoners immediately bolted for the opening, at least as fast as their shackled feet could take them, and Fallon’s instincts took over.

  He grabbed the door and swung it hard, the iron bars slamming against the first felon’s head, and sending him down. “One at a time!” Fallon yelled, and realized what he had done. A bullet would likely split his spine at any moment. Instead, above the jangling of chains and curses and shouts from inside, the man on the horse chuckled.

  “I ought to cut him down!” said the one with the shotgun.

  “Let him be,” the one on the horse said. “He’s just stalling, hoping his pards come along to stop us.”

  The man on the ground with the Winchester chuckled. “Your fellow star-packers are on another trail, boy. Next time you meet up with them will be on the road to hell.”

  “Shut up,” snapped the one holding the reins, and he said, softer, but firmly to Fallon
. “Open the door again, kid.” His voice rose to a commanding shout: “But you heard the marshal. One at a time. You first, Kemp.”

  The blond-headed kid with the rosy cheeks stepped to the door, eased it open, and jumped to the ground.

  “Get the irons off him,” the one on horseback ordered, and Fallon found the keys to the ankle and wrist manacles. The kid, Kemp Carver, was no older than Fallon, but several inches shorter and many pounds heavier.

  “Ford,” the leader of the outlaws said, “you’re next.”

  The others in the tumbleweed wagon began grumbling. The man holding the Winchester sent a bullet over the roof of the wagon. “Easy. Easy. You’ll get your turn. But you don’t do like we say, and you’ll either stay in that wagon or stay here on the ground, till you get buried.”

  Fallon unshackled the second prisoner out of the wagon, a redheaded kid named Ford Wagner. Both had been caught with a wagonload of rotgut whiskey they had been selling in the Cherokee Nation.

  Wagner and Carver hurried to the one holding the reins. “What’s takin’ you so long?” Carver asked.

  Wagner climbed into the saddle of a dun horse and took off down the road at a gallop.

  Carver called after his whiskey-running partner: “Where you off to, Ford?”

  “Maudie’s!” the redhead shouted.

  The man who had been holding the reins chuckled while Kemp Carver shook his head.

  A burly man who had stomped a man half to death on Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith climbed out of the wagon but didn’t wait for Fallon to unlock his manacles. He hurried toward the man on horseback. Fallon noticed that the one with the Winchester had mounted his horse, and the shotgun-toting runt in the black hat was walking away from the wagon and toward the horses.

  Apparently, they only wanted Kemp Carver and Ford Wagner.

  “Danny!” the burly man said. “Wait, Danny. Let me come with . . .”

  He stopped and brought up his shackled hands. “Don’t, Danny, for—”

  Fallon never saw the leader draw the Colt, and the gunshot startled him. It sent the next man coming out of the wagon back inside, while the old drunk with the silver braids began singing a spiritual in a mixture of English and Creek.

  “They’re gonna kill us!” yelled another whiskey runner. “They’re gonna shoot us dead.”

  Fallon just watched as the man kicked his horse and walked the animal over to the man wanted for assault and illegal flight.

  “Why don’t you call me by my full name?” the leader said as he reined his horse to a stop by the burly man, who lay on his back, groaning, coughing, trying to keep the blood from rushing out of his belly, and spitting up more blood. The leader thumbed back the hammer, aimed the Colt, and squeezed the trigger.

  By then, the whiskey runner named Carver and the man holding the Winchester were galloping after the youngster named Wagner. The man with the shotgun had to chase down his startled horse and dropped the scattergun as he caught a rein and the horn and somehow managed to bring himself off the ground into the saddle—like an old Pony Express rider.

  The leader did not look at either Fallon or the man he had just shot down in cold blood. He holstered his Colt, spun the horse around, and put the gelding into a gallop after the trailing dust.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Fallon blinked, and suddenly realized that two more prisoners had leaped out of the wagon and were stumbling toward the woods, still wearing their leg and arm bracelets. Another leaped out, and the next one was hurrying for the door.

  Fallon grabbed the bars and swung the door shut. He heard the crunch of bone and felt the spray of blood as the escaped murderer clutched his nose and fell onto his knees inside the wagon.

  “Don’t any of you jackals even blink!” Fallon shouted and was surprised when the remaining prisoners stopped. They stared in disbelief or shock as Fallon found the padlock.

  “Wait,” said a half-breed Choctaw who had broken a federal deputy’s arms and ankle. “He got no gun.”

  By then, however, as a white-haired man bound for the gallows gripped the iron bars, the door was locked again, and Fallon was stepping away from the tumbleweed wagon.

  * * *

  He caught up with those who had left, still in chains, fairly quickly. One had resisted, noting that Fallon had no pistol, but Fallon knocked him out with the branch of a cedar. He made another one of the locked-up prisoners carry the unconscious man back to the wagon, making the others wait as they walked up the road to where the bloody body lay.

  Fallon leaned over the body and checked for a pulse that he knew he would not find. Next, he walked up the road and picked up the shotgun the man in the black hat had been carrying. Opening the breech, he saw two shells, and he pulled one out. Buckshot. The second shell was the same.

  “That’ll do,” he said aloud, and went back to the tumbleweed wagon. That’ll do? he thought. It’ll have to do.

  The shotgun silenced the prisoners.

  He made the same prisoner as before follow Fallon to the body of the murdered prisoner. Fallon wrapped the corpse in a rain slicker, but made the prisoner carry the dead man back to the wagon.

  Fallon opened the door and let the others return to the jail, one at a time. The man Fallon had knocked out and the prisoner the butcher named Danny had murdered were loaded inside, too. The door closed and was locked behind them, and when one of the men complained about his broken nose, Fallon ignored him.

  When another grumbled, “It ain’t right, making us ride with a stinkin’ dead man.”

  Fallon brought the scattergun halfway up. “I can make this tumbleweed wagon a hearse. Is that what you want?”

  The men fell silent.

  So Fallon climbed back into the driver’s box, released the brake, and rode toward Fort Smith—trying to figure out how he could explain everything to Judge Parker, the U.S. attorney, and the U.S. marshal. He hoped Jim Beckett and Caleb Holloway, his fellow lawmen, would catch up with him before he made it to the ferry. He prayed that the outlaws who had sprung Kemp Carver and Ford Wagner had been running a bluff, making Fallon think that his two colleagues had been murdered.

  Two miles up the road, Fallon felt sick.

  The bodies of deputy marshals Beckett and Holloway lay in the ditch on the side of the road, Beckett’s dapple gelding grazing about two hundred yards down the road, Holloway’s black nowhere to be found.

  Fallon jumped off the wagon as soon as he jerked back the brake and slid into the ditch. Water and leaves and muck seeped into his boots as he started to turn over the body of Beckett, the closest. He stopped and looked at the pattern of holes that riddled the deputy’s leather vest.

  “Shot in the back,” Fallon seethed. He glanced up at the wagon, and he cursed bitterly. “With that twelve-gauge.”

  Once he had pulled the corpse out of the ditch, Fallon moved down the road about twenty-five yards. Only Holloway’s left leg was in the ditch, and he had not been shot in the back. From the size of the hole in the lawman’s back, Fallon figured the man with the Winchester had shot him—from a good distance. That was the exit wound, though, and when Fallon turned the dead man over, he saw where the bullet had first struck the deputy just underneath the six-point badge.

  Closing his eyes, Fallon cursed again. He remembered just the other night, when they had been sitting around the campfire—after Fallon had fed and watered all the prisoners. Fallon had been sitting by the fire, polishing that nickel-plated badge he wore. Finally, Deputy Holloway had chuckled and said, “Hank, don’t you know no better than to make that star shiny?” Fallon had stopped and looked up. “Why?” he asked innocently. Holloway had laughed harder this time and said, “Kid, that’ll just make it easier for some fella ridin’ the owlhoot train to draw a bead on your chest.”

  So, if Harry Fallon were a detective—and he most certainly did not consider himself anywhere near that—he would have said that Holloway was shot first, with a long gun at a good distance—and likely died instantly. Beckett had th
en turned around and was reaching for his Remington .44 when he caught two barrels of buckshot in the back.

  Satisfied, the man named Danny then led his men and two horses to catch up with the tumbleweed wagon.

  Well, Fallon thought, they had not killed him. For a moment, he vaguely wished they had. He had met Beckett’s wife. She was supposed to have a baby around Christmas.

  As he dragged the bodies to the wagon one at a time, he kept thinking about the one called Danny. That outlaw had let Fallon live. Why? So a green kid fit for nothing but feeding and hauling prisoners and emptying the wagon’s slop bucket would tell the marshals that the killers were riding toward Texas.

  Fallon stopped. He stared at the gun rig buckled around Holloway’s waist. The killers had not even bothered taking the dead men’s guns. Fallon started thinking. Suddenly, he had unbuckled the belt and put it around his own waist. He drew the pistol, pulled the hammer to half cock, opened the loading gate, and checked the cylinder. Five bullets, unfired. You always kept the chamber underneath the hammer empty—“lessen you want to cripple yourself by blowing a hole in your leg or your damned foot off,” Holloway had advised Fallon a few months back.

  Fallon thumbed a .45 cartridge from a loop in the belt and filled the empty chamber with the brass casing. He lowered the hammer and shoved the pistol back in the holster.

  When he had Beckett’s body by the wagon, Fallon found the Remington and shoved it into his waistband. He cautiously approached Beckett’s dapple, took the reins, rubbed the gelding’s neck, and walked the horse back to the hoodlum wagon. Fallon drew the Winchester from the scabbard and walked to the back of the jail-on-wheels. He looked at the men and finally chose one of the whiskey runners. A man running illegal spirits in the Indian Nations knew practically every gambling parlor, brothel, trading post, and whiskey outfit in all of the territory.