Waco 4

by J. T. Edson

  Mosehan and the others watched Waco, knowing full well he had planned every move. The marshal glanced toward Mosehan and received an encouraging nod in return. More than the head of the Rangers, a town marshal, especially the town marshal of Prescott, needed to be something of a politician. If the young Texan called his play wrong, the resulting political storm would cause heads to roll, and Marshal Draper’s would be among the first.

  For all that, Draper’s faith in the ability of the Rangers made him decide to play along with them. He hated the Syndicate and all it stood for, hated it as only an honest lawman could hate a corrupting and evil force. If the Syndicate could be smashed Draper wanted to help smash it, and from the looks of things there might be a chance to break it here. Never had anyone got so close to the top of the Syndicate as right now. Jaqfaye, the man who hired their guns and sent them on their deadly errands, must be high among the rulers of the Syndicate. In the past lesser members of the organization fell to the law but they either did not know the men above them or, by fear of what might happen to them or their kin, dared not talk.

  “We’d best talk this out,” Mosehan said. “It’d look tolerable suspicious if we stayed here to do it.”

  “Could go down to the office,” Draper suggested.

  Waco saw the snag in this. “How about this key?” he asked. “I’ve got something out of the safe and I’d like to put it back if you reckon that’d be the best way to play it.”

  “Easy enough. Down to the undertaker’s they’ll prepare the corpses for burial, and when they do I always get all the effects to be held until their kin or somebody with authority takes it. I make inventory of what’s brought, so we can always get the keys in then.”

  This arrangement proved satisfactory to Waco and so they returned to the front of the shop. Draper called in two of his deputies and told them to see to getting the bodies to the undertaker’s. Then he left with the Rangers and they mounted their horses to ride alongside him on his way to the office.

  Standing near the capitol building, the marshal’s office looked little different from a thousand others in a thousand towns. The size changed, the building material varied from adobe bricks to mud or stone, the faces might differ, but the general layout never really altered. There was always the same desk, mostly scarred by spurred heels and burning cigarette tips; the same sort of weapons, the Winchesters and double-barrel ten-gauge scatterguns on the wall; the inevitable wanted posters on the walls, the doors leading to the cells, the marshal’s office, and the deputies’ room. Prescott’s office differed little except that, as fitting the office of the territory capital, the desk remained unscarred.

  Escorting the three Rangers into his private office, Draper paused at the door to tell the deskman he did not wish to be disturbed. Then he closed the door and crossed to take a chair at the desk, waving the others into seats and reaching for the office box of cigars.

  “Not for me, thank you ‘most to death,” Waco drawled, taking out his makings and hand-rolling a smoke. “Man, you sure live well. Only time there’s any smoking in Cap’n Bert’s office’s when we get the makings out.”

  Draper grinned, then became serious. “Just what’s this all about?”

  “Like we said, we hit one of the top men of the Syndicate,” Waco drawled.

  “Jaqfaye?” Draper grunted, still not able to believe what he’d been told and looking for stronger confirmation. “A dressmaker. He acted more like a woman than a man most of the time.”

  “Knowed a woman ’bout three years back,” drawled Waco. “Name of Considine. xi She was as tough and a damn sight meaner than any man I ever met.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That Jaqfaye now, Marshal. Tell you, he near shoved that sword of his cane clear through me. Handled it as slick as I’ve ever seen one used. He moved real fast and mean. So he sold women’s clothes, so maybe he didn’t go around drinking and busting up bars. You reckon he ought to have hung out a sign telling folks he hired guns for the Syndicate?”

  “You made your point, boy,” said Draper. “I just wanted reassuring.”

  “I knowed that from the start.” Waco grinned. “Anyway he was perfect for the part. I tell you I near on thought we’d picked the wrong man when I first saw him and only went through with it on chance. When he didn’t start hollering for the law, I knew we’d struck pay dirt.”

  “How’d he get to know where and how many guns to send?” Mosehan asked. “If we can get the contact men, we might find the Syndicate’s bosses. Could even bust them down like quail in the north forty.”

  “Never saw you hit a quail, Cap’n Bert,” Waco drawled. “And likewise I know how he got to know. The man who delivers the messages’d be right easy to find. He handles the telegraph key at the post office.”

  Draper came to his feet angrily. “I’ve known Rufe Checker down at the post office for years. He’s not in the Syndicate.”

  Waco looked up, meeting the angry eyes without flinching. “Pull in your horns, Marshal. I only said he delivered them. He doesn’t know but they’re any different from a dozen others of the same kind he takes to Jaqfaye’s shop.”

  With that, Waco pulled the map from his shirt and spread it out for the other men to see. Then he opened the little notebook and tapped it with his forefinger.

  “There’s some numbers in this book, same as on the map, and by each number some writing most likely in French. I figure this tells who the contact man in each town is.”

  “Why?” Mosehan asked.

  “Easy enough. Prescott doesn’t have a number, nor does any small place that likely hasn’t a telegraph office.”

  The other men examined the map, seeing what Waco said to be true. Draper took out the telegraph forms from the notebook and looked at them then shook his head.

  “Look like an ordinary couple of orders,” he said.

  “Way I read it somebody in Tombstone needed some help,” Waco replied, indicating the top form. “Going by the numbers on the map and the dress size. Look, send two size-nine dresses. I read it that the man wants two gunmen, and number nine on the map’s Tombstone.”

  “Could be the other way around,” Doc remarked.

  “Nine guns, that’d be a tolerable amount of trouble. So much that we’d have heard about it by now,” Waco answered. “But the nine in the book’s something I don’t understand.”

  Draper stretched out a hand, taking his seat once more. He turned the book around, studying the list for a moment, then sat back with an air of concentration.

  “It’s Ckeval d’or and Boucher,” he finally said. “I was born in New Orleans and learned to speak French almost better than English, only it’s been some years since last I used it.”

  The others sat back smoking and waiting while Draper fought back through the layers of his memory to regain the knowledge of French he had once commanded. He rose and paced the room, lips moving to unspoken words. At last he sat at the desk and took the notebook up again.

  “Cheval d’or means horse of gold and Boucher is butcher,” Draper said. “If it helps any.”

  “Horse of gold!” Mosehan mused aloud. “There’s a Golden Horse saloon in Tombstone, but I don’t get the butcher part.”

  “Frank Ogden runs it,” Waco put in, and for once his excitement showed. “He’s got a barkeep they call Butch. I often wondered about Butch. He never does his fair share of the work and Ogden didn’t strike me as being the sort of man who’d let a hired hand get away with it unless he had to.”

  “Frank Ogden’s a honest man,” Mosehan put in.

  “Which same never worried the Syndicate yet,” Doc drawled. “They’ve took over more than one honest saloon in their time.”

  “There’s something a mite stronger than just guessing here,” Waco went on. “This Butch wants help and goes to send a wire. Now he’s not likely to be the sort of man who can afford to buy his wife clothes from Jaqfaye, even if he’s married. So he sends the messages as if Ogden told him to. That way the man on
the telegraph key in Tombstone doesn’t get suspicious as Ogden can afford to buy clothes from Jaqfaye.”

  Draper was scanning the list eagerly, taking a sheet of paper and pencil to copy the numbers then translate the names. “This way we’ve got the main contact man in each town.”

  “Likely the only contact man,” Waco remarked. “The Syndicate wouldn’t want too many folks knowing who their boss gun was.”

  “We know them in every town but one,” Doc put in.

  “Which one?”

  Doc grinned at Mosehan, who had asked the question. “Prescott.”

  “Likely never needed one, with having Jaqfaye here,” Waco drawled. “Who’ll get Jaqfaye’s belongings? Is he married?”

  “Got nobody that I knows of,” Draper replied. “It’ll be in the hands of his attorney, if he has one.”

  “I’d guess he will have,” said Waco, looking at the book.

  “The Syndicate knows something might happen to him. They know about this book he keeps. So they’ll have it fixed that if anything happens to Jaqfaye, one of their other top men can get the books.”

  “Which means the man who claims the belongings will most likely be the one we want,” Draper put in.

  “Likely,” Waco agreed.

  Mosehan looked at the book and grunted. “Jaqfaye keeps books, that means all the others keep them. Make sure they don’t dip their hands into the Syndicate pot. That means the head man keeps a set of master books that’d blow them wide open. If they fell into the wrong hands.”

  Waco grinned. “All we’ve got to do is find the right set of books and the man who owns them then.”

  While this went on, Draper wrote the names, translating them from the French and making a list of the contact men for the Syndicate in each town. Some of the names brought a whistle of surprise from Mosehan. There were pillars of society and ordinary workmen among the names, none of them apparently connected in any way with the others. The Syndicate’s net took in all kinds and these men on the list were the local heads, the top men in each town. They must be the leaders, for they all knew the secret of Jaqfaye’s dress shop and none but the heads of the towns and the most trusted of the guns contacted him.

  “What’re we going to do now?” Waco asked when the list lay before them.

  “Could put the notebook and map back, but it’ll likely disappear and never show again,” Mosehan answered. “I’d like to keep it in evidence, just in case we ever get the other books.”

  “Why not?” Draper asked. “The safe’s locked. We put the safe keys in Jaqfaye’s pocket and the Syndicate doesn’t know what to think. They won’t know for sure if we opened the safe and are playing smart, or if their own man’s trying to double-cross them. I’ve never known crooks who trusted each other, not that kind of crook anyway. One way and another, there’s going to be some stirring up done.”

  “That’s it,” Mosehan agreed. “I reckon with what I know now I can get Frank Ogden and some of the other honest saloon owners to dig their heels in. Then the contact men’ll try to get hold of Jaqfaye for help. It’ll take the Syndicate some time to organize another safe way of getting their guns out and by that time more folk’ll’ve started to fight back.”

  “It’ll be risky for the men who start digging,” Draper warned.

  “Sure, but I’ll have them covered by my boys. We’ll just have enough start so that I can cover them, say four or five of them. That’ll be all we need. Once a thing like this starts moving and one gets away with it, two more make their play. We can split the Syndicate apart at the seams if we play right, fast, and lucky.”

  “How about us, Cap’n Bert?” Doc asked. “Who do we cover?”

  “You? Why didn’t you know? There’s been a threat to shoot the governor and you’re staying on in Prescott to help guard him. You also have to keep watch on whoever takes possession of Jaqfaye’s effects. Then watch him until he contacts the rest of the Syndicate. This’s our chance. We’ll play this out, and when we get set we’ll hit them as hard as a Texas twister.”

  Mosehan rode from Prescott at dawn the following morning, making fast time across country and calling on various friends. In each case, without telling more than necessary to ensure cooperation, he organized a passive resistance to the Syndicate. The first result showed when Frank Ogden took his bartender Butch by the scruff of the neck and booted him into the street with a curt warning not to come back. Butch headed straight for the telegraph office, not seeing the two men who followed him. His message went over the wire, and he left not knowing these same two men read the copy he wrote within five minutes of his leaving. Then one turned and took up a form himself. He wrote on it and passed it to the operator, who read and asked no questions. The message might appear pointless to him but he knew the Arizona Rangers always had a point to anything they did.

  Mosehan, Tucson, it read. The boy was right, Pete Glendon.

  No more, no less, yet it told Captain Bertram H. Mosehan that once more Waco had called the play correctly.

  Butch waited for three days for some reply and finally went along to the post office once more.

  “Could save your boss some money,” the old man in the post office remarked. “That Jaqfaye hombre done got himself killed in a holdup.”

  Butch left the room in something of a daze. The Syndicate’s leaders never allowed the underlings to get close to them. Jaqfaye had been the furthest up the ladder Butch ever managed to get. Now Jaqfaye could no longer be contacted and Butch did not know how to get help to deal with Ogden. With this thought in mind, he paid a visit to a rough saloon on the edge of town and selected half a dozen hardcases to help out. The saloon, like several others in Tombstone, came under the heel of the Syndicate and Butch’s standing in the organization was known. So he found little difficulty in getting the men. The difficulty started soon after.

  Before Butch and his hardcase bunch could make a move they found themselves surrounded by Sheriff Behan, his deputies, and two Arizona Rangers. Hauled off to jail and questioned, one of the hardcases, wanted on charges in New Mexico, talked freely to save himself. Salvation is infectious and the other men told enough to brand Butch as being a high-up man in the Syndicate. A raid and search on Butch’s room produced enough evidence to hold him for trial.

  Much the same event happened in another town. Lemming, a barber, found some of his customers no longer paid their regular visits. He felt less worried about the possibility of their snubbing him than the fact that they no longer brought the money rightfully due to him as a senior member of the Syndicate. He tried to make contact with Jaqfaye and failed, then heard of the Frenchman’s untimely end at the hands of a holdup man. (Waco and Doc’s story at the inquest was so convincing that Mosehan afterward remarked Ned Buntline and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham had nothing in the story-spinning line compared with the two young Texans.)

  Like Butch, the barber decided on direct and independent action, hoping of rising higher in Syndicate admiration by his prompt action. He failed to achieve any more than did Butch. His hired toughs fell into the hands of the local law and once more one talked to save himself.

  In these two incidents the policy of the Syndicate leaders in never hiring wanted men as their guns was justified. The two contact men, left to their own devices, took on wanted men who stood to wind up with jail terms if handed over to interested lawmen. They talked to save their own necks, or to stop themselves being shipped to the areas where their crimes brought them into conflict with the law.

  A third town’s contact man took warning when he heard of the death of Jaqfaye, read between the lines, and tried to run out of a suddenly hostile location. He got as far as the city limits, where a bullet in the back ended his flight. The killer, shot down by the following Rangers, proved to be a checker, a member of the Syndicate who watched the contact man without knowing who he contacted. This opened a new line for the Rangers to probe. They knew the checker reported but not who he reported to, only that he did not know Jaqfaye.


  In three weeks the Syndicate felt the pinch. At Prescott, Waco and Doc, with Draper’s help, tried to check on any man who received an unusual amount of telegraph messages, no matter how innocent they seemed. The trail seemed to point to the owner of a prosperous store that did a considerable mail-order business. The store always received telegraph messages, but for three weeks certain customers appeared to have been sending more than usual. That the messages were in code Waco did not doubt, but without arousing suspicion, they could not check too deeply. However, Doc started to watch the owner of the business while Waco gave his attention to Counselor Raymond Edward Hultz, the attorney who handled Jaqfay’s affairs and took charge of the dead man’s effects.

  On the Monday of the fourth week Hultz left his large and prosperous home after dinner and strolled along the badly lit streets. He did not see the tall young Texan who came from the shadows and walked behind him at a distance. The lawyer strode along, not leaving the better part of town, and Waco followed. He expected no more than that Hultz would spend the night gambling at one of the numerous bars he attended. So it came as a surprise to Waco when the man turned and entered the gates of a church hall.

  Waco crossed the street and leaned against the wall of a house, staying in the dark shadow and remaining quietly attentive. Two more men entered the same building from the window, where a light glowed behind curtains. Then a familiar shape approached and waddled up the path. Senator Thaddeus Gulpe, the portly politician first met in Jaqfaye’s shop who had become familiar to Waco since his arrival in Prescott. He paused at the door of the building, more with the attitude of one entering a cathouse than a church hall. Seeing someone walking along the street, Gulpe ducked in hurriedly.

  Just as Waco decided he could move away and have a meal, he recognized the man whose approach startled Gulpe into a rapid entry. It was the owner of the mail-order house. The man turned in through the gate, strode up the path, and entered the church hall. A few seconds after, Doc Leroy drifted into view, walking along in an aimless idle way that would deceive an unsuspecting onlooker.