“I’ve had me a bellyful now!” Leo cried as he lunged for Barton, hands coming up, reaching for the lawman’s throat.
There was only one way to deal with hardcases, Barton knew. Stop them before they get started—and stop them hard. In one smooth continuous movement he sidestepped Leo’s lunge, drew his gun, and clubbed the back of Leo’s skull with the long heavy barrel. A sound like a woodchopper’s axe taking the first bite out of a tree trunk was heard by all.
Leo dropped to his knees, stunned. He clawed reflexively at his holstered gun.
Barton pistol-whipped him again, harder.
Leo fell forward, facedown.
Barton leveled his gun on the Hughes bunch.
It all happened in a couple heartbeats.
The crowd of spectators arrowed away from the scene like a flock of spooked starlings, vanishing within seconds.
Deputy Smalls was ready and waiting for the fracas. When Leo charged, he shouldered the big double-barreled shotgun, pointing it at Denton Dick and the center of the knot of bad men.
Some of the Hughes bunch started reaching—mostly those on the flanks of the shotgun’s line of fire. But they were late to the party, uncertain.
“Stand down, you fools!” Denton Dick’s shout rang out loud and clear, spurred no doubt by the prospect of being the prime target of Smalls’s ready shotgun.
“I’ll kill the first man whose gun clears the holster,” Barton said.
“You know what I’ll do,” Smalls said.
“Stand down!” Denton Dick repeated, louder and with more urgency. “What kind of dumb clucks have I got working for me? Anybody pulls a gun and if I get out of this, I promise I’ll kill him myself!”
“I’m with you, Marshal,” said the voice of Scout Hurley standing with his hand on his gun butt somewhere behind Barton
“Me, too,” Wagon master Brooks said gruffly, also at the ready.
“That’s fine,” Barton said, not looking away from the Hughes bunch. “I’d be obliged if you’d keep your folks from cutting in; we’re hanging by a mighty fine wire now and I’d hate for it to break.”
“Will do, Marshal,” Brooks said, moving between Cal Lane, the Burgesses, and the Hughes bunch. “Don’t shuck those guns from the holsters, men, lest you start a free-for-all that nobody can win.”
Stan and Pete Burgess eased off a bit, but not Cal Lane, who all but trembled with the urge to slap leather.
“Don’t do it, son,” the wagon master said. “You don’t want Miz Alberta to maybe get hurt.”
Cal shuddered, dropping his hand away from his gun.
“Get those hands away from your guns,” Denton Dick urged his men.
After a timeless few minutes, the moment of truth passed. The Hughes bunch lacked the stomach for a blazing gunfight. By slow degrees, the bad men straightened up, exhaling held breaths with a sigh, carefully moving hands away from six-guns.
All but Leo Plattner. The irrepressible strength of the man kept him going, forcing him to hands and knees. Glazed eyes peering out of the tops of his eyes, he moved a hand toward his holstered gun.
Barton stepped forward, kicking Plattner in the chin. “Leo, you dumb son of a—!”
Plattner flopped facedown, out like a light. A couple bad men standing nearby involuntarily winced from the force of the kick. Plattner lay with his hands at the sides of his head.
Barton had to fight to repress a powerful urge to stomp and break Leo’s gun hand with his boot heel. “Well . . . maybe next time.”
“We’ll be done here in a minute. In the meantime, be good and you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“I’ll hold on the mark as long as you want, Mack!” Smalls said, still covering the Hughes bunch in general and Denton Dick in particular.
“We understand each other better now,” Barton said to the bunch. “Y’all are guests in Hangtree, mind. Any more trouble from you and I’ll be down here fast with a posse to clean up on you. If I do, won’t be many of you going home to Parker County, I promise you that. Savvy?” he demanded harshly.
“We savvy, Marshal,” Denton Dick said, not much liking it but liking the alternative a whole lot less.
“Good. See that you do.” Barton turned to Brooks. “Get your people out of here, wagon master, and we’ll be moving along to your camp.”
“Right, Marshal,” Brooks said, gallantly offering his steady arm as a support to Miz Alberta, who fastened a claw-like hand on it. He began escorting her away from the scene.
Over his shoulder, he called to Cal Lane and the Burgesses. “Come on, you three. Get out of here while the getting’s good. It’ll never be better,” he said under his breath.
“Eh? What’s that you say, wagon master?” Miz Alberta asked.
“Nothing, ma’am. Nothing.”
“Go on, Brooks. Get them out of here,” Scout Hurley said. “I’ll lay behind for a bit.”
“Okay.” Brooks hurried his charges off, hampered by having to move at the pace of the slowest, Miz Alberta. But she was spry and stepped along quite lightly.
Scout Hurley moved closer to Barton and Smalls, neither of whom had lowered their weapons leveled on the Hughes bunch. The scout’s hand was empty but rested on his holstered gun. He didn’t pull it to avoid ratcheting up the tension. “They’re clear, Marshal,” he said when Brooks and the others were out of the line of fire.
“Good. We’re going now.” Barton started to back away.
“Good riddance,” Denton Dick said sourly.
“And a good night to you, Dick,” the marshal said. “And to Leo, too, when he wakes up.”
“I expect he’ll have something he wants to say to you personally.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Barton, Smalls, and Hurley edged sideways away from the bunch in crabwise style caused by the need to watch the gunmen and retreat from their camp.
“Careful with that twelve-gauge, Deputy. It’s got a hair trigger,” Barton said, joshing, but meaning it, too. He wanted the bunch to hear it as a reminder not to cut up capers.
“G’wan, git!” a voice ragged from the enemy camp.
Barton laughed. It’s what the Hughes bunch heard once he and the others had moved out of the circle of firelight and out of sight into the darkness.
They made no move to pursue.
The withdrawal had been accomplished.
“Much obliged, Hurley.”
“Nothing to it, Marshal.”
“All the same, thanks.”
Hurley nodded. “You’re welcome.”
“You, too, Deputy.”
“All in a day’s work, Marshal.”
“Yeah,” Barton said, chuckling. “That’s the trouble. And the day’s far from over, even though it’s night.”
They were inside the campfire-lit circle of Brooks wagons. The wagon master had posted plenty of sentries and guards and most of the male emigrants went about armed. Barton noted the precautions with approval.
“That’s sure a heap of no-goods,” Hurley pointed out needlessly. “Wonder what they’re doin’ here.”
“I wonder,” Barton said. “Nobody would buy that cock-and-bull story about them going down to Midvale to salvage scrap lumber.”
“The very idea!” Smalls said, indignant at the affront to common sense. “They’s robbers and killers in the first place because they’s too shiftless and mean to do a lick of work.”
Cal Lane and Pete and Stan Burgess came crowding in.
“What’s next, Marshal?” Cal demanded grimly.
“Not much,” Barton said. “I want to talk to the girl. Best leave your brother’s body where it is until daybreak when I can arrange a way to pick it up.”
“Leave Bob uncovered all night where the animals can get at him? That’s awful raw,” Pete protested.
“The real animals are inside the Hughes camp, not outside,” Barton said. “Four-legged scavengers won’t go near that camp tonight. They’ll leave the body alone.”
“Still, that
’s awful raw,” Pete repeated.
“It’s worth your life and anybody else’s who goes to that camp tonight. Stay away until I say different,” Barton said harshly. “That’s an order. Break it and you won’t get arrested, you’ll be lying there beside Bob Lane.”
“Hard words,” Stan said.
“That’s how it’s got to be,” the marshal concluded.
“What about Randy?” Cal Lane demanded.
“What about him?” Barton asked.
“Ain’t you going after him?”
“I wish I could, but I can’t leave the town without a lawman—especially now.”
“What about your deputy? Can’t he lead a posse?”
“I need him,” Barton said. “Sorry, Lane. I know it’s cold comfort, but that’s the best I can do for you tonight. Come daybreak it’ll be a different story. For now, I’ve got to stay put and I recommend you do the same. In case you and your kinfolk ain’t noticed, we’re all in a pretty tight spot here. You, me, your outfit, all the decent folks on the campgrounds, and the town itself.”
“So you ain’t gonna do nothing to catch the killer,” Cal Lane said, mouth full of bitterness.
“See me at dawn. I’ll be at the jailhouse. Things’ll move then,” Barton said.
“It’ll be too late by then, the killer’ll be clear out of the territory,” Cal said, vexed, worked up.
“Could be,” Barton admitted.
“If you won’t go after him, I will!”
“I had a feeling that’s what you’d do. I ain’t saying I wouldn’t do the same if I was in your shoes,” the marshal said. “If you want to wait till the deputy and me go back to town, I’ll make the rounds with you, see if we can scare up a posse. A lot of the boys don’t rightly care for those who go messing with the womenfolk, with decent young gals.”
“I’ve had all the stall I can take,” Cal said. “I’m done waiting. I’ll do what needs to be done myself.”
“I’m with you, Cal,” Pete said emotionally.
“Me, too!” Stan offered.
They started off.
“Hold it!” the marshal barked, stopping them in their tracks. He had the voice for it when he wanted to use it. “A word of advice before you go, Lane.”
“I ain’t asked for none,” Cal said.
“It might save your life and your cousins’, too.”
“Might not hurt to listen, Cal,” Stan said, frowning, upset.
Pete shrugged.
“Make it short, then,” Cal said. “I’m in an almighty hurry!”
“Any trail-wise owlhoot’s gonna be looking for someone to come dogging his trail,” Barton began. “If it’s Randy Breeze, he’ll sure ’nuff be looking. Look out for spots where he might be laying up to bushwhack you, is what I’m saying.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Marshal,” Cal said shortly.
“See that you do. Might keep you alive.”
“Thanks! Thanks for nothing,” Cal spat, stalking off, Pete following. Stan acknowledged Barton with a tight nod, then hurried off to catch up with the other two.
“Kid’s got sand,” Hurley said after a moment.
“But not much sense,” Barton shot back.
“Would you do any different?”
“Hell, no!”
Within a short time Cal Lane and the Burgesses were mounted up on three fast horses.
Wagon master Brooks organized a group of men at one of the wagons on the west side of the wagon train circle. Gathering around the extended wooden wagon tongue to which the team was hitched while traveling, they lifted it, using it as a handle to swing the wagon outward like a hinged door, breaking the circle to make an exit for the trio.
Cal Lane, Pete Burgess, and Stan Burgess rode outside the ring to the accompaniment of much waving and cries of “Good luck!” and “Good hunting!”
The trio angled northwest to the Hangtree Trail, following it west out of town, the direction taken by the fugitive “Randy.”
When they were out of sight, the work gang hefted the ox-tongue handle, levering the wagon back into place, closing the circle.
In the Hughes camp, a spy came running to Denton Dick to tell him of the three men riding in pursuit of Randy. Denton Dick scared up a couple capable henchmen, since Leo Plattner continued to be of no use to him, still unconscious from Barton’s titanic front kick.
Denton Dick started barking orders. “Slim! Brown! Get a couple of the boys and go after those three. See that they don’t come back! No, wait!” he said, immediately countermanding his first orders. “It won’t do to be seen chasing them. Let them get out of sight, then leave. Go north till you’re out of sight, then cut west after them. Get them. You know what to do.”
“We sure do,” someone said, chuckling evilly.
“Don’t bring back their horses. They might be recognized!”
“Okay, Dick!” a enthusiastic henchman cried as he and a few others moved to obey.
“Make sure you dump the bodies where they won’t be found,” Denton Dick called after them.
“Right!”
Denton Dick rounded up another stooge. “Go to the Cattleman Hotel and tell Kale Dancer what happened here, about the killing and Barton and all. No,” he reversed instantly. “No, wait. Never mind. This is important. I’ll do it myself.”
SEVENTEEN
The Hog Ranch was merely a prelude to the horror of Fort Pardee.
“Not so many buzzards this time,” Sam Heller said to himself as he reached the fort at sunset. That helped, somehow.
It sat on a flat, a stone rectangle with walls ten feet high and three feet wide. Cube-shaped turrets rose at the four corners of the oblong. The hollow rectangle enclosed lines of buildings bordering an open parade ground and barracks square.
Set in the middle of nowhere, the man-made geometric structure lay a quarter mile west of the northbound Comancheria Trail, beyond the shadow of the Breaks. The walls were made of stones quarried and gathered from the west face of the Breaks. It was grueling, backbreaking work, but that’s what peacetime garrison troops were for. Not that peace was so peaceful in Hangtree County, or Greater Texas, either, for that matter.
A dirt road ran west from the trail to the front gates of the fort. A stream ran a hundred yards north of the structure, behind the back of the north wall. A working artesian well lay inside the walls, supplying an independent water source.
Fort Pardee had been built a few years after the successful (for the United States, that is) conclusion of the Mexican War. It was part of a string of such forts the federal government had built along the frontier line of the hundredth meridian to check and suppress the Comanche and lesser hostile tribes. Its high thick stone walls had been proof against the tribes, who had never been able to overcome it. Many a blistering Comanche charge had broken under withering rifle fire from those ramparts. When the War Between the States broke out, the government in Washington, D.C., closed the forts, pulling the troops out in preparation to fight the big battles east of the Mississippi.
Fort Pardee had been reopened after the war’s end in the summer of 1865. It was undermanned and had never been at full strength since commencing operations.
As Sam approached, it was obvious the fort had fallen, the manner of its undoing as yet a mystery to him. But that it had fallen, of that there could be no doubt.
A handful of buzzards circled high overhead. A few stray horses roamed aimlessly in the middle ground outside the walls. They looked up with curiosity from their grazing to take note of his arrival. A few thin gray lines of smoke rose from within the walls.
New tracks crisscrossed the land, the ground churned up by many hoofprints. A hundred and fifty horses or more, like a cavalry column. Nothing unusual there. It was a cavalry fort. But the direction of the line of march was surprising.
It came out of the Breaks via the nearest path north of the fort, cutting diagonally southwest, then circling around to the southern front gate. The assembly massed, some entering and then
leaving the fort, the entire column moving south beyond the horizon.
Damnedest sequence of troop maneuvers at Fort Pardee Sam Heller had ever seen! The question was, Whose troops?
The front gate was open, its massive portals flung wide. The walls were stone but the gate door was wrought of fire-hardened timber reinforced with iron bands. Fire-resistant and unbroken it remained.
A couple of bodies lay on the ground in front of the open gate. Unlike at the Hog Ranch, the dead men were decently clothed, for all the comfort they could take from that. They were soldiers, cavalry troopers.
Dusty sidled uneasily just outside the gate. The warhorse was used to battlefields, blood, smoke, and mass death, but something about the scene got to him, working on his nerves.
Sam knew the feeling. He felt it, too.
From where he sat on Dusty, he could see the central area. The courtyard was littered with corpses of men and animals, even corpses of buzzards. There had been massive violence.
Sam unknotted the bandanna around his neck, retying it so it covered the lower half of his face. That helped against the smell, a little.
He rode through the gate into the fort. The foot of the walls was flooded with purple-blue pools of dusky shadow gloom. The rifle was in his hand before he knew it, unaware of having drawn it from the saddle scabbard. Its heft and solidity was a comforting thing. Even more so was its death-dealing potential. He slowly rode the perimeter.
Fort Pardee had been built according to the usual army plan.
A quadrangular courtyard, a large open center space, served as a parade-drilling ground and assembly area. Buildings stood with their backs to the stone walls, their fronts edging the four sides of the quad.
Opposite the front gate on the far side of the quad, against the inside of the north wall, stood the administrative building, a two-story structure. Staff offices lay on the ground floor and the officers’ quarters on the second floor.
Along the inner east stone wall were the stables, storehouses, and the guardhouse. The stables had been looted, the horses were gone. The quad bore the tracks of their hoofprints, where they had been cleared out of the stables and herded off the barracks square, out the gate and on the road in a mass exodus.
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