by J. T. Edson
“There’s only you and me knows, as well as Lakeman.” Curly Bill chuckled. “Now, what jury’d believe Curly Bill Brocious brought all that money here to Lakeman, even if he tells them?”
The meeting in the large private dining room at the Dale Hotel had been angry and stormy. Gulpe had called it and the governor could not refuse.
“I think this matter must be dealt with immediately,” he said. “A complete town gave their signature to a petition, that warrants investigation. I—”
The rest of the words died as the door burst open and men entered. Gulpe stared, Hultz threw back his chair with an oath, while Mosehan and the governor came to their feet and stared as the battered Lakeman was thrust into a chair. All eyes went to Waco, seeing the marks of the fight on his face. Pete Glendon pushed to the front with Marshal Draper at his side.
“We’ve brought you another petition to disband the Rangers,” Glendon said quietly. “Taken at Lakeman’s saloon when one of the Rangers went to investigate a rumor that Lakeman was in possession of a quantity of forged money and to look into the attack on a man who refused to sign this same petition.”
“Those are serious charges,” Hultz snapped. “I represent Mr. Lakeman and should have time to speak with him alone.”
Doc put the crumpled paper on the table beside the petition from Haggertville. Then to his surprise Curly Bill, having tagged along, reached out and pointed down to the Lakeman petition.
“You should see the sort of men who’ve been signing it. Drunks, bag-line tramps, mister, you never saw such a bunch.”
“And how about you?” Hultz sneered. “You see the kind of company the Rangers keep, Governor. This’s Curly Bill Brocious, the rust—”
“Now, hold hard, law wrangler,” Curly Bill put in. “You know a man’s innocent until he’s proved guilty, and mister, I never been proved nothing at all.”
Which was true enough. Curly Bill and his partner Johnny Ringo might be known as rustlers, but nobody had ever collected enough evidence to take them into court on a charge, much less have them convicted.
“Let’s have another look at this here petition,” Curly Bill went on, and picked up the Haggertville roll of names. “Yes, sir, a tolerable bunch of real fine upstanding citizens. Make a man proud to know his name was on there with them.” His fingers stabbed down on to the list. “Take this one, Francis B. Castle, now there’s a real pious name, regular church-going gent from the sound of him. Tell you something about him. He might not kill his own grandmother for five hundred dollars, but that comes as his bottom price for any other kill he makes. Then there’s Barbara Martha Cousins, spinster. A kinder, more gentle old lady you couldn’t ask for. Always taking in some stray to help, only it has to be a gal stray, fairly good looking and over fifteen. That good-hearted kind lady’ll take in any stray like that and never ask no more than the gal beds down with any man as comes along with the money. Well, here’s good ole Marshal Sam Brown signed. A pillar of honest law enforcement if ever there was one. You can’t commit no crime in his town and get away with it, not until you’ve slipped him his right and due price for looking the other way. Yeah, that’s the sort of folks on this list. I could go right through it and likely not find an honest man among them.”
“You’re such a great authority on honest men.” Hultz sneered.
“Reckon I am, not being one myself. I’ll tell every one of you something. If a man breaks the law and a Ranger comes after him, he knows he can fight or give up. If he fights, he’ll likely get killed, but if he gives himself up, he’ll be took in fair and not mishandled any and there’ll be nothing done either before or during his trial to make it worse for him.”
A knock came at the door; it opened and the old owner of the post office came in with a sheaf of telegraph forms. He crossed to lay them on the desk and stood back with a grin.
“Thought you’d like to see these,” he said.
The governor took up the top form and read it. “Starting petition for the continued service of the Arizona Rangers, will send it by rider, Raines, County Commissioner, Backsight County.”
Slowly the governor laid the form down and took up the next. He smiled and passed the forms out; every one contained much the same message. Throughout the whole of the territory that could be reached by telegraph, messages had come to say petitions to keep the Rangers operating had been organized and would be sent.
“As Mr. Gulpe said,” the governor remarked, leaning back expansively. “We must go along with the majority.”
“How about Lakeman here?” Mosehan asked.
He could hardly have picked a better time. Hultz, Gulpe, and the other Syndicate men were shaken by this turn of events and knew that time was running out for them. With one accord they came to their feet, intending to leave.
Lakeman saw the move and read its meaning correctly. He forced himself to his feet, pointing at them.
“Hold it, you’re not getting out of this and leaving me to face it alone,” he yelled. “They’re part of the Syndicate, all three of them.”
“Shut your mouth!” Hultz bellowed, but the damage was done. He found himself surrounded by hostile men.
The four prisoners were being led to the door when Waco spoke, playing a card he hoped would take the game.
“That was a good tip the preacher gave us about the forged money,” he said loudly.
“Yeah.” Doc caught on and carried the game further. “Pity he was leaving town when he told us; I’d like to thank him!”
That same thought hit the four men. Postaite had sold them down the river to get time to escape. With one accord and almost in the same breath all started to talk. Gulpe told the most and Mosehan looked at the governor, ignoring the other men who had been part of the committee. For a moment the governor nodded and Mosehan told his men to take the prisoners outside.
“And now, gentlemen,” Mosehan said quietly, turning to the men around the table. “I’m going to tell you what I think about you and you’re going to sit back and listen.”
The Reverend Postaite looked up from his desk as Mosehan entered, followed by Waco. He saw Doc gently draw the housekeeper back from the room, then step in and close the door. For all that he gave no sign of guessing what the action meant.
“Well, gentlemen?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“We’d like to take a look in that Bible, the big one on the shelf,” Mosehan replied. “We’ve a search warrant.”
“Go ahead.”
Postaite came to his feet, hands gripping the edge of the table as he spoke. He gave a sudden heave, throwing the table over, at the same moment his left hand whipping under his arm, bringing out a Merwin & Hulbert pocket revolver from a shoulder clip. The move was fast and showed long hours of practice. Waco thrust Mosehan to one side, not an instant too soon. Postaite’s first shot cut the air just where the Ranger captain’s body had been an instant before. Hurriedly the man tried to correct his aim, but Doc Leroy’s Colt rocked back against his palm. Postaite spun around, staggered, and went down, the gun falling from his hand. He clawed at it but Waco sprang forward and kicked it from under his hand. Doc holstered his Colt to move forward while Mosehan turned and kept the screaming housekeeper outside as his men, with the town marshal, rushed the building.
“Not much chance, is there, Ranger?” Postaite croaked.
“Not much,” Doc replied.
“I suppose somebody talked, Gulpe most likely. I’ve been riding them a bit hard these last few weeks. You’ll find everything in the Bible. They’ll be some folks buying trunks real soon.”
“Why’d you do it?” Waco asked. “Heard you preaching one time as I passed the church and you sounded tolerable against everything your bunch ran.”
Postaite looked at Waco, a grin twisting his lips. He allowed Doc to make him more comfortable but refused offers to tend to his wound.
“It’ll only make it linger awhile,” he said. “Why’d I do it, Ranger? I used to preach against gambling, drink
ing, and all the rest. Folks came along, they would listen and drop a dime or so in the collection box, then spend a pile of dollars on the things I preached against. There didn’t seem any point in my carrying on. So I picked men and started the Syndicate. We grew fast and big, but more and more I found I and I alone ran the organization. More and more it fell on me to plan. I think I pushed the others too hard these last few months. I had the power to do it; they knew and hated me for it. Then you came along. In a few weeks you broke down the organization it took nearly ten years to build. There’s a moral in it somewhere, I suppose. Perhaps you could find a better preacher than me to make it.”
Mosehan stood at the table looking through the book. In it was all he needed to smash the Syndicate forever. He closed the book and looked to where Doc drew Postaite’s eyelids over dead eyes.
“Gone, huh?” he asked.
“Sure,” Doc replied.
“It’s maybe as well. Word’ll be out now and some of them’ll run, get clear,” said Mosehan. “We can’t help that. Anyway the tricks you bunch pulled to make Lakeman talk’d likely take some explaining away in court. Might some of them even get off, but with this book I don’t reckon they can. It won’t matter if they do.” He waved his hand to the dead man on the floor. “When you stomp on a snake’s head and crush it, you’ve got a tolerable dead snake and a dead snake’s not dangerous anymore.”
Part Four – The End
“Let me go instead of you!”
Captain Bertram H. Mosehan looked at Waco and a half smile played on his lips as he replied, “You’ve asked that fifty times at least, boy, but the answer’s still the same. No.”
“It’s not fitting you should go,” growled Waco, looking at his partner, Doc Leroy, for support. “Is it, Doc?”
“It’s surely not,” Doc agreed, rolling a smoke with some distaste as if the smell of tobacco held no pleasure for him anymore.
Mosehan looked them over with pride in his eyes. They were a pair to draw and a man could be proud merely to know them. Mosehan did more than know them, he had their unswerving loyalty and knew they were worried about the mission he set himself to do. Their present concern for his well-being touched him more than he cared to admit.
“Look, you pair of wet hens,” he said quietly. “I’ve told you both, and all the other boys, that I’m handling this chore, and why I’m doing it. For one thing it’s breaking the law, not just our law, but international law as well. If the man doing it gets caught below the border, he’ll be lucky if they do no more than shoot him. That’s why I’ve got to be the one to do it. I don’t even know how far I can trust Stiles or Alvord.”
Crossing the room, Waco looked to where a sullen-looking young man sat by the corral and moodily whittled at a stick.
“That’s why I reckon you need at least one of us along. To hell with any kind of law, I say.”
“Hell of a thing for a duly sworn-in lawman to say,” Mosehan grunted, not losing his patience at the insistence of the two men. “No go, either of you. I’ve made my deal with Burt Alvord and I’ll see it through. He said he’d set Chacon up for me but that I’d have to go in alone and take him.”
“Which same’s why I don’t like it,” Waco answered. “We all know Stiles and Alvord’ve rode with Chacon and it was Alvord who got Chacon out of Tombstone jail when they had him.”
“Sure. And now Alvord’s wanting to come in without having some sheriff or other working him over with a belt to make him tell where the stage line’s money’s hid out. Alvord knows I want Chacon, not the money.”
Waco and Doc knew all this, knew it and did not like it. Since breaking the Syndicate, Mosehan found stronger political opposition than ever to himself and his men. A number of people lost good friends in the cleanup following the killing of the Syndicate’s head and the exposure of his books. So Mosehan handed in his resignation, allowing another man to take over command of the Rangers and keep them going. Then Mosehan accepted the governor’s request that he make a final try at either catching or killing Augustino Chacon, the famous Peludo, the Hairy One. Chacon, the most ruthless, deadly, and cold-blooded of all the Mexican bandidos, a man with at least twenty-nine murders to his credit, stood alone at the peak of his kind. He struck like a stick-teased rattler, killed without second thoughts, and when chased, fought off pursuit until he was below the Mexican line and safe, for no man could be extradited from his own country.
That Mosehan agreed to stay on was much to his credit, for he had offers of more lucrative and far safer work in his pocket, managing cattle ranches, which had been his life’s work until forming the Rangers. Now he planned to play a desperate game in order to bring the arch-murderer to justice.
Yet there was a fly in the ointment. Chacon was safe from extradition and not even the gentlemen’s agreement between Mosehan and Emilio Kosterliski, head of the Guardia Rurale of Mexico, by which wanted men from either nation could be passed over the border to their own country for arrest, counted. Chacon, a Mexican, never committed any crime below the border, so he could not be touched by the Rurales. This meant ordinary methods of arrest would not work and what Mosehan planned would give the politicians a field day against him.
The chances of catching Chacon on American soil were not great, less since he heard Mosehan was after him and announced that he aimed to stay below the border for a time. So Mosehan aimed to go and bring Chacon out by force. This amounted not only to kidnapping but also to breaking international law, although once Chacon found himself in an American court, he would never escape alive.
To help bring in Chacon, the aid of two wanted men, Billy Stiles and Burt Alvord, became necessary. Both were friends with the Mexican and trusted by him. Yet Alvord wished to hand himself over to the law. He and Stiles, aided by two more men, robbed a stage in Arizona, getting a large amount of money being shipped to pay mine workers. By a trick Alvord later hid the money, then a slip made him run for the line. His only chance of ever seeing the loot again would be to come back, face trial, do his time, and then collect. However, with a large reward for the recovery of the money at stake, the various lawmen in the hunt would be inclined to take painful measures to make Alvord reveal its hiding place. Alvord did not like the idea of being subjected to whippings and other measures of persuasion likely to be used by some law enforcement bodies. So he made a deal with Mosehan; Chacon for safe conduct to some big-town jail in which he could stay safe from harsh treatment until placed on trial.
Mosehan tried to arrange all this in secret, but Jed Franks, over his beating, was back at work and learned enough to make him warn the other members of the Rangers. Mosehan found himself with a mutiny brewing and to prevent himself having every Ranger on hand agreed to take two to the rendezvous by the border. Mosehan had more than a strong suspicion that Waco and Doc made use of their knowledge of crooked gambling in the card drawing to select the two men who accompanied him.
So they were now in a small cabin by the border, one of the string of such places built and maintained by the outlaws who rode the trails that began north in the Hole-in-the-Wall and Robbers’ Roost country of Wyoming. Here the Rangers stayed until Alvord brought them word of where Chacon would be.
“Hoss coming, Cap’n Bert.” Waco spoke from the window, looking toward the Mexican line. “That damned Billy Stiles never said a word about it.”
The three men stepped from the cabin and halted in the shade of the porch while Billy Stiles, dressed in his cheap copy of a range-country dandy’s dress, rose, tossed aside the stick, closed his knife, and looked toward the approaching rider.
Burt Alvord rode slouched in his saddle, looking round-shouldered and mean as a buzzard. He wore the dress of a Mexican vaquero, but the low-tied guns at his sides hung in a western-style belt and holsters. He halted his horse, shifty eyes going to Waco and Doc, then around him as if he contemplated flight.
“Shouldn’t be but you’n Billy here, Cap’n,” he said sullenly.
“You can trust these boys like
you can trust me,” Mosehan replied. “I reckon you’ve fixed something up for me by now?”
Alvord scowled, never relaxing for a minute. “Chacon’ll be at that spring I showed you, alone. I fixed that. He allows we aim to buy a bunch of horses you stole only don’t want his bunch to share in the profits. You’n Billy can go down there and take him. I’ll stay on here.”
“That wasn’t the arrangement,” Waco growled.
“Neither was having you pair here,” put in Stiles, getting up courage now his pard had arrived.
“It’s that way or not at all,” Alvord went on, ignoring Stiles.
Thinking how typical of the way Alvord worked this was, Mosehan agreed. The dark outlaw never took a chance if he could help it. Even the robbery was performed by Stiles and another man, Alvord reserving himself for the risky business of taking the loot and hiding it after the robbery had been safely accomplished. Now not even the other three members of the gang knew where to find the loot.
“Let’s ride,” Mosehan said.
After saddling Mosehan’s horse, Waco and Doc stood back, watching their leader and waiting for him to ride out with Stiles and Alvord. Mosehan came to the two Texans and looked hard at Waco.
“Now listen to me, boy,” he said. “You’re an accessory before and after the act in this thing, you and Doc both. When I come back, we’ll all have to get out of sight for a spell or we’ll wind up in jail. We only need to have Chacon delivered safe to get him tried and hung, so we can go when we’ve done it. But I’m not having you any deeper in this thing. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll stay here for four days. Happen I’m not back by then, I won’t be coming and you can go to tell the governor so.”
“Me’n Doc could maybe trail along well back—”
“No. That’s an order, boy. Doc, if he tries to follow me, shoot him in the leg. I’m asking your word not to follow me, boy.”
