by J. T. Edson
He attended to Wallapai’s leg; the other shot man was dead before he could do a thing for him. Then as they were waiting for the stage he took up the second deck of cards and fanned them out, holding them face down.
‘Here, John, take one,’ he said.
Mullen was about to snarl a refusal, then he shrugged. He had been caught out fairly and held little or no grudge against the young Ranger. He could even admire the skill which palmed out the ace while giving that misleading and casually amateurish overhand stack of the cards.
Reaching out he took a card, at least, he thought he chose a card but the nine of Spades he showed to the others was forced on him by Doc.
‘Put her back and riffle them well,’ Doc said.
With the cards well-mixed Doc took them and started to turn them over, counting as he did. The nine of spades fell on the fifteenth card but Doc carried on and at the twenty-third, pushing it forward but not turning it he said, ‘The next paid I turn over will be the one you picked out.’
‘Will it?’ Mullen asked, glancing down at where he could see the corner of the chosen nine.
‘I’d surely bet on it,’ Doc replied.
At the word bet Mullen looked eager. He was thinking along the same lines as Doc: a good lawyer would be worth money if he could get them off this charge, for it could go hard on them. They all had records with the Pinkerton Agency for this sort of swindle. Pinkertons would be only too pleased to serve the interests of justice, and get some good publicity for themselves, by producing this record in court.
‘I got me two thousand dollars more in the safe,’ he said. ‘I’ll get that and bet it.’
‘Done,’ Doc agreed.
‘You know what you’re doing, boy?’ Mosehan asked, temporarily forgetting that Doc was not gambling with his own money.
‘Why sure, I know.’
Hume escorted the handcuffed Mullen to the safe as a precaution against tricks. However it was money and money only Mullen brought out and took back to count down against Doc’s two thousand.
‘I’ll take fifty of that,’ Mosehan remarked, not quite sure what Doc was up to. ‘If you like.’
‘I’ll have fifty myself,’ Jim Hume agreed.
All eyes were on the top card of the deck, waiting for Doc’s discomfiture when he turned it. His other hand reached out, extracted the nine of spades from where it lay and turned it over.
‘But you told us—’ Mullen began, then his mouth dropped open and he gave a strangled croak of, ‘You tricked us.’
‘Why sure, now you know how it feels,’ Doc replied. He scooped up the money, pushing the large heap towards Jim Hume. ‘You might be able to find some of the folks they swindled and pay them back.’
Hardie nodded, then watched Doc scoop up the ten dollar bills which Hume and Mosehan had put down in the bet. Doc took out his notecase and slipped them in.
‘Hey, that’s my money, mine and Jim’s,’ Mosehan objected.
‘And you just lost it,’ Doc replied. ‘I always told you gambling’d be your ruin, Cap’n Bert.’
~*~
It was the day after Doc’s return from a hurried ride to Allenvale to help Waco out. The two young men were being sent out on another assignment and Doc was just going to tell Mosehan and Waco, who were in the office, that the horses were ready.
He opened the door and heard something which made him stay quiet. Mosehan and Waco were at the desk, the Captain holding part of a deck of cards, the other part on the table before him.
‘All right then, boy, you’re betting your pay check against my seventy dollars that the next card I turn over isn’t the one you picked?’
‘Why sure,’ Waco agreed, laying his paycheck on the table alongside the money Mosehan had placed there. With the same move he scooped up the cards from the desk and put them in his pocket. ‘Turn ahead, Cap’n.’
Mosehan heard Doc’s laugh and turned, scowling. Waco put the money and his paycheck into his pocket, took his hat up and headed for the door.
‘Did you teach him that damned trick, Doc?’ Mosehan asked.
‘Why no, I’ll confess I didn’t,’ Doc answered. ‘See, Waco was the one who taught it to me.’
Before the speechless Captain of Rangers could say another word the door shut. Before he had time to get to his feet and go after the two jovial tricksters he heard hooves and knew they were already on their way. He went back to his desk, sat down and shook his head.
‘My mammy told me there’d be days like this,’ he said.
Case Five – Buffalo Soldier
‘What’re you doing in here, feller?’
The War between the States was long over and the freed slaves were leaving their homes, spreading out across the land in search of work. Many of them, full of pipedreams, headed north, out of the cottonlands of the deep south, into the land of promise. There they expected to be treated as equals and to find a land flowing with milk and honey. North to the land of the people who fought the War to give them freedom. This migration caused many people to wonder as to the wisdom of their actions. It was fine and patriotic to talk about all men being free and the rights of man, but it was only the people who did not need to worry about the Negroes taking their work who talked that way. The others, the poor class who did the fighting held no brief for or against slavery. Few of them would have considered the conditions the average slave worked under as being worse than their own. It was this poorer class who saw the influx and felt the true effect of this cheap labor which moved in on them.
The problem that the freed slaves caused was already being felt in New York and the repercussions were echoing in the tiny frontier hamlet of Orejano, Arizona.
Sam Bone halted on his way to the bar of the only saloon in Orejano. His black face showed no expression as he turned to see who was speaking, for he was accepted here amongst the free and easy white men of the frontier as their social equal. The accents of the speaker were not, as a chance stranger might have expected, the deep southern drawl. Rather they were the harsh tones of New York and not the better part of New York at that.
Turning, Sam Bone saw what he feared and felt sickness in the pit of his stomach. The speaker was a tall, darkly handsome young man wearing the uniform of a trooper in the United States Cavalry, and would be part of that detachment which was even now setting up a temporary camp outside town. By his side stood a second, not so tall, or so handsome soldier, mirroring the first’s truculence.
Bone turned back towards the bar as the two came from the side table where they’d been seated. He saw his friend, the old bardog, polishing a glass with a rag that might have been new about the time of the first battle of Bull Run, and taking everything in.
‘Vin here asked you a question, mister,’ the second young man said.
‘Just came in for a drink, friend,’ Sam answered.
‘Did you now?’ The one called Vin teetered forward, a half empty whiskey bottle in his hand. ‘Then you can just drag on out again. We don’t let no black feller drink in the same place as us. Do we, Jocko?”
‘Thought you Yankees made all men free?’ the old bardog asked as he dropped a hand under the bar counter towards the butt of his sawed-off ten gauge.
Vin Bartelmo, product of the Bowery, even then one of the toughest suburbs of New York, slouched forward and thrust his face over the bar, looking down at the old-timer.
‘You shut your face, old man, or I’ll shut it with a boot. Sure we set them lousy blacks free, but now they’re coming north and taking all the work. Folks won’t take on white men when they can get blacks and they’ll let white men off to take on blacks. That’s all they’re good for, taking white men’s work.’
‘Not me, friend,’ Sam Bone spoke gently, trying to steer off the anger of the young soldier before there was serious trouble. ‘I don’t need no more work, got more than enough of my own.’
‘Yeah?’ Bartelmo sneered back, looking at his friend and fellow New Yorker, Jocko Davies. ‘I bet it’s work some whit
e man would have been doing if you hadn’t took it away from him.’
Sam Bone couldn’t really argue about that at all, for he was doing a white man’s work. It was a leatherwork shop left to him by the man who had brought him west as a servant, attendant and friend, the man who had been reared with him on a plantation in Georgia: the man who’d been both master and good friend.
However, Sam wanted no trouble with these two soldiers, for he knew the Army would always side with their own kind against any civilian. In the deep south the Army might once have enforced a strictly ‘if he’s black he’s right’ policy, but not out in Arizona and at this time. He knew that the bardog would back up his play to the hilt but that would only get the old-timer into bad trouble.
‘If you feels that strong about it, white boy, I’ll go,’ he said.
Even as Sam turned from the bar and walked away, Bartelmo put a foot in his back and shoved hard. Sam Bone staggered forward, hitting a table and hanging on to it to stop himself crashing to the floor. His face showed some anger as he turned.
‘Don’t you go abusing this coon no more, soldier boy,’ he warned, his voice brittle with anger. ‘I was a soldier long ’fore you was borned.’
Bartelmo smashed the bottle against the bar, his face twisted into a savage sneer as he moved forward. Outside he heard horses stop and the thump of heels as two men came to the batwing doors. He thought they would be other members of his troop coming for a drink. This would serve to show the others how the tough men of New York handled things. He moved in with the bottle held, its cruel, jagged ends aiming to rip into the black face.
The batwings swung open and two tall, Texas men entered. Texas mien, or their range clothes and their star decorated Justin boots lied. They were a handy-looking pair, one slightly taller, wide of shoulder, lean of waist and handsome, wearing a buscadero gunbelt and a matched pair of staghorn-butted Colt guns in the carefully placed holsters. The second was slim, pallid and studious-looking, though there was a whipcord hardiness about him that did not go with the pallor. He, like his friend, wore range clothes except that he wore a brown coat, the right side stitched back to leave clear the ivory butt of his low holstered Colt Civilian Peacemaker.
For an instant they halted, taking in the scene. Then the taller moved forward with hands just brushing the butts of his matched guns. Halting between Bone and the drunken soldier he snapped:
‘I’m a Ranger. Put down that bottle. Right now.’
Bartelmo teetered on his heels, looking at the tall young Texan, then he swung the bottle up like it was a meat axe meaning to smash the jagged ends down at this rash stranger who’d come between him and his fun.
The Texan’s right hand dipped faster than the eye could follow, the bar light glinted dully on the five-and-a-half inch barrel of the Artillery Peacemaker in his palm and flame tore from the muzzle. The bottle exploded and Bartelmo yelled as chips of glass showered on him, stinging his face. The yell of pain ended abruptly as the Texan’s gun whirled back to leather in a smooth move which ended with the same hand, now a fist, sinking into Bartelmo’s Old Scalplifter filled belly. With a grunt of pure agony the soldier doubled forward, then a hand gripped his collar and heaved. Bartelmo shot by the Texan and landed on hands and knees at the feet of the second of that reckless breed.
Filled full of whiskey and misguided loyalty to his friend, Davies swung a blow at the tall Texan who’d dealt so roughly with Bartelmo. It was a good punch but just seemed to melt in thin air as the Texan struck back. Hitting with the same speed as he’d drawn his gun, the Texan got a lot of weight behind his punch; Davies went backwards across the room, smashed into the bar and hung there for a moment, then slid down with a blissful expression on his face.
Bartelmo got to his knees, holding his stomach and snarling in pained anger as he fumbled to get the gun out of his holster. The second Texan looked down with mild benevolence. Studious looking or not he could move with a speed that was at least equal to his fast-moving friend’s. His boneless-looking hand dipped and the Colt came out, lifting then coming down with force and precision right behind the soldier’s ear, dropping him back to the ground again.
‘Nice moving gents,’ the bartender said delightedly. ‘Belly up and have something on the house.’
The taller of the pair grinned, the grin making him look even more boyish than ever, but the blue eyes were not young; they were eyes that met a man’s yet showed little of what the Texas boy was thinking.
‘Root beer then, cold as you’ve got it, a meal and some information.’
The bardog’s eyes grew frosty and wolf cautious. He’d heard the young man describe himself as an Arizona Ranger and it did not pay a man to answer too many questions.
‘Beer’s as cold as I can git it,’ he answered. ‘I can fix you up with a meal if you’ve got time to wait for me to cook it. But information is something I’m long done out of.’
‘We’ll take the first two then, friend.’ The other man joined his partner at the bar. ‘I can’t take any more of Waco’s cooking and mine’s even worse.’
For a moment the bardog studied the men, taking in the spread of the man called Waco’s shoulders and the lean lithe form of the other. That one name meant something to him.
‘Waco, huh?’ he asked, relaxing slightly. ‘You’ll be Doc Leroy then?’
‘Right as the off side of a hoss, Colonel,’ Waco replied. ‘We’re here looking to meet a gent called Sam Bone.’ Before another word could be said the batwings opened and a tall, handsome young Lieutenant followed by a short, tough-looking corporal entered. They stopped at the door, looking down at the two recumbent figures on the floor. The officer frowned as his eyes went to the group at the bar. ‘What’s all this?’ he asked grimly.
‘They you’m?’ Waco answered, meeting the officer’s eyes without flinching. ‘You should keep them muzzled mister. Took on too much bravemaker, got rough, got all tuckered out and laid them down to sleep.’
‘Though I can’t see anyone wanting their souls to keep,’ Doc Leroy went on. ‘I reckon you’ll be Mr. Beaulieu of the Seventh?’
‘I am.’
‘Cap’n Mosehan of the Arizona Rangers sent us down here to team up with you.’
‘Then it would have been more correct to report to your officer instead of making for the first saloon,’ Beaulieu snapped. He was young and not long out of West Point, but he did not intend to allow these two civilians, even if they were members of the Arizona Rangers, to make a fool of him. He meant to show them from the very start that this was an Army patrol and would be run as such.
‘Mister,’ Waco’s voice was cold and unfriendly. ‘The only officer we’ve got was at Tucson last herd count, he isn’t here.’
‘And we came in here to ask about the scout who’ll be coming with us,’ Doc put in, attempting to stop conflict.
To hide his confusion, Beaulieu turned and ordered the , corporal to take the two unconscious men out and souse them in the water trough, then get them back to the camp lines. The corporal took hold of Bartelmo’s collar, dragged him to where Davies lay, then with one collar in each hand hauled them out through the door. Beaulieu watched them go, then turned and gave his full attention to the two Rangers.
‘And did you find that scout?’
‘Never had a chance, you came in afore the gent behind the bar could answer our question,’ Waco replied. ‘Do you know anybody called Sam Bone?’
The bartender and the Negro started laughing, then Bone pointed a black finger at his chest. ‘I’m Sam Bone, suh. At least I is one Sam Bone, there might be more of us. I dunno, ain’t only met but me.’
‘You?’ Beaulieu’s face showed his surprise; he came from Boston and the only Negroes he’d ever seen were house servants. ‘Are you the scout?’
‘Why wouldn’t he be, mister?’ Waco asked.
Beaulieu flushed red, realizing that he was getting off on the wrong foot with the men he would have to rely on so much in the next few days. ‘Cap’n Dan
iels said you took him out after the Apache Kid last year. He speaks highly of you, Mr. Bone.’
‘We never caught the Kid, though it weren’t for looking.’
‘Don’t let that fret you none, Sam,’ Doc answered. ‘The pick of the Arizona Rangers couldn’t catch him either, could we, Waco?’
‘Some pick!’ Beaulieu snorted, then grinned at the other two. He was one of the new officers of the 7th Cavalry. The hard drinking, hard fighting, hard headed men who rode under Custer were for the most part no longer with the regiment. The ones who survived Custer’s folly at the Little Bighorn were for the most part posted to other regiments. They would never have taken the word or acted human with a pair of civilians. He was sensible enough to know that he was not trained for the sort of work they were going to undertake. These two men knew the country, knew the people who lived in it. If he treated them as human beings they would do the same for him and help him all they could. He would get nowhere by flouting his West Point superiority with these two reckless sons of the saddle; they respected a man for what he was, not who he was.
‘Do you know the border well, Sam?’ he asked.
‘He knows it better’n most, soldier boy,’ the bardog growled. ‘Ole Sam here’s the best scout the Army’s got and I don’t bar Tom Horn nor Seiber from your count.’
This news relieved Beaulieu, for the task he was going out on was not easy. The adjutant of the Seventh made that quite clear when briefing Beaulieu for the assignment. He made one point clear beyond all others. On no account must the patrol cross the International Line into Mexico. They were to go out and patrol in the hope of catching the notorious bandido, Augustine Chacon, but they must not go into Mexico under any circumstances.
Two other young Lieutenants of the Seventh had already come to grief on such an assignment, for the Mexican Government raised a mighty howl at what they termed an armed invasion of their territory.
