White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  MAN DOWN

  Slade pumped the shotgun’s lever action, spinning back toward Naylor and his gut-shot adversary, just in time to see a bullet strike the younger marshal’s chest. Naylor lurched sideways, spilling toward the earth, while Slade lined up the wounded private in his sights and blasted him from life into oblivion.

  Four down, and as he ran toward Naylor, Slade had no view left of the retreating officer in charge. Dismissing Gallagher from conscious thought, a job to handle later when he had the time, Slade knelt at Naylor’s side and found the younger marshal laboring to breathe. A punctured lung and sucking chest wound made it doubly difficult, painting the lower half of Naylor’s face with blood. A darker stain, spreading across Luke’s shirt, told Slade one of the slugs had pierced his liver.

  “Guess you’ll…have to…finish…this job…on your own,” said Naylor, forcing the words out of his throat.

  “Hang on,” Slade said. “I’ll get you back to town…”

  Titles by Lyle Brandt

  The Matt Price Gun Series

  THE GUN

  JUSTICE GUN

  VENGEANCE GUN

  REBEL GUN

  BOUNTY GUN

  The John Slade Lawman Series

  THE LAWMAN

  SLADE’S LAW

  HELLTOWN

  MASSACRE TRAIL

  HANGING JUDGE

  MANHUNT

  AVENGING ANGELS

  BLOOD TRAILS

  RECKONING

  WHITE LIGHTNING

  WHITE

  LIGHTNING

  THE LAWMAN

  LYLE BRANDT

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  WHITE LIGHTNING

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Newton.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61970-4

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley mass-market edition / April 2013

  Cover illustration by Bruce Emmett.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  For Ben Johnson

  Table of Contents

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  3

  4

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  8

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  11

  12

  13

  14

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  20

  1

  Bill Tanner lay in knee-high grass, atop a long ridge lined with sawtooth oaks, and scanned the lower ground before him through binoculars. He had a clear view of the ranch below, its large two-story house, the barn, and other outbuildings. He was particularly interested in the barn just now, and the four wagons lined up side by side in front of it.

  The glasses Tanner used were new—at least, to him—from the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company. Tanner had never owned a pair of binoculars before, and the model he pressed to his eyes now had been introduced this very year, from the factory in Rochester, New York. He liked them better than the one-eye spyglass he’d been using since he joined the U.S. Marshals Service five years earlier, for comfort and their magnifying power.

  At the moment, for example, Tanner saw nine men moving around the wagons, half a mile out from his shaded vantage point. Eight of the hands were working, while the ninth one supervised, giving directions now and then. It didn’t take much sense to load crates on a wagon, but the foreman wanted everything just so. Four crates across each wagon bed, seven in line between the driver’s seat and tailgate, making twenty-eight for one level. Stacked up three deep, that came to eighty-four per wagon, and Tanner reckoned there’d be eight or nine bottles per crate, packed in excelsior.

  Tanner did the simple arithmetic in his head, coming up with a minimum 672 bottles per wagon, and maybe as many as 756. Two dollars per bottle, wholesale, meant the four wagons in front of him would earn the shipper more than twenty thousand dollars.

  Good money, Tanner thought. Thirty-odd times his yearly salary, bare minimum.

  “I’m in the wrong damn business,” Tanner muttered to himself, half smiling. But at least he wasn’t on his way to prison, like the men working down range.

  He had been watching them load wagons for an hour, lying in the grass, shifting a little now and then to keep his legs from going numb, feeling the buckle of his gunbelt gouging him. His chestnut roan was tied well down the slope behind him, out of sight and earshot from the men he’d trailed from town, out to the ranch. Tanner was confident they hadn’t seen him, had no inkling they were under observation at that very moment by an officer intent on putting them away.

  Not all at once, of course. The wagons would be heading off in different directions when they left the spread, their cargo under canvas, each one with a driver and a shotgun rider. Tanner would lose three of them in transit, but it didn’t matter. He had names for everyone involved, picked up eavesdropping and in idle conversation over six nights of idling in saloons. He could match the names to faces, and he had no doubt that one or two of them, squeezed hard enough, would tattle on the men in charge.

  Case closed.

  And none too soon, all things considered. Tanner had no scruples about drinking—liked to pull a cork himself, in fact—and it was hard for him to work up much enthusiasm over violations of the law imposing tax on liquor, though it was his bounden duty to enforce it. But the rotgut being loaded on the wagons down below had caused no end of trouble in the territory, lately. Costing lives, in fact, and that would have to stop.

  He had the plan worked out. Wait for the wagons to be battened down and start on their way, and follow one that led him in the most convenient direction. Overtake it on the trail and get the drop on its two passengers—the tricky part—and take them into custody. The wagon and its cargo would suffice as evidence to justify search warrants, and he’d come back with reinforcements for the rest.

  Easy. Unless something went wrong.

  But Tanner wasn’t worried. He could handle two men, plug the guard if necessary—hell, plug both of them if they left him no other choice. Try not to kill them, since Judge Dennison was touchy on that score, sometimes, but the first rule of marshaling was always come back home alive, yourself. If some of these boys
felt like dying for a load of moonshine, Tanner thought he could accommodate them.

  How much longer for the loading, now? The two-man team on Tanner’s left had roughly half their cargo stowed and squared away. The others weren’t as fast, despite the foreman riding them to finish. It was almost noon, and all of them were slowing down. Not dogging it exactly, but he thought they’d likely break for lunch before they finished.

  Lunch. It made his stomach growl, and Tanner lowered the binoculars, opened the buckskin bag that lay beside him in the grass, and palmed a corn dodger. Stuffing the whole thing in his mouth, he chewed it slowly, raised the glasses to his eyes again, and focused on the job at hand.

  “You see it? On the ridge?” Jed Walker asked.

  “I see it,” Grady Sullivan replied. Sun glinting in the distance, maybe off a spyglass lens. “Keep working. Just act natural.”

  “What are you gonna do about it?”

  “Something,” Sullivan replied and eased off toward the barn, careful to keep from glancing backward as he went. Inside the barn, Lon Burke and Mickey Shaughnessy were lounging by the wall of crates still waiting to be loaded, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and snickering at something till they noticed Sullivan approaching.

  “I need you two saddled up,” he told them.

  “What’s the matter?” Shaughnessy inquired.

  “We might have someone spying on us from the ridge, off west,” said Sullivan.

  “Might have?” Burke frowned. “You isn’t sure?”

  “I’m pretty sure. Go check it out, the two of you. But careful-like. Ride south until you’re out of sight, then double back around and come in from behind,” said Sullivan.

  “What if it’s nothin’?” That from Shaughnessy.

  “Then you’ll have got some exercise for once. It wouldn’t kill you,” Sullivan replied. “Get to it.”

  Lon said, “Sure, Boss. Only, if there is somebody…”

  “Bring him back to me. Alive. I’ll wanna talk to him.”

  “He may not care to come with us,” said Shaughnessy.

  “Persuade him, then. But when I say alive, that’s what I mean. No accidents.”

  Sullivan left them to the chore of saddling up their mounts and moved back into the April sunshine where his teams were busy working, four men toting crates from barn to wagons, while the others got them lined up square and proper in the wagon beds. Five minutes later, Shaughnessy and Burke rode out behind him, turned their horses south and spurred them to a lively trot.

  Sullivan guessed that it would take twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, to complete the circuit at their present pace. They’d have to slow down, coming up behind the watcher—if there was a watcher—to avoid alerting him. Or them, whichever it turned out to be. Sullivan wondered for a moment if he should have sent more men, then put it out of mind.

  He made a show of taking off his hat, sleeving the perspiration from his forehead, which permitted him to glance off westward without seeming to. Another flash of sunlight, bright on glass or metal, and he tried to think of any explanation other than a spy watching his people load their crates. Came up with nothing innocent and hoped the men he’d sent remembered what he’d told them about bringing the intruder back alive.

  They had him cold on trespassing, for starters, grounds enough to question him and see what he was up to. Where it went from there depended on the watcher’s story and identity. Whatever he was up to, though, Sullivan couldn’t think of any answer that would save his life.

  You simply couldn’t know some things and live.

  He started thinking past the kill now, keeping an eye on Jed Walker to see that he didn’t go stirring things up. If the workers started acting nervous, sneaking looks up toward the ridge, they might scare off the spy before Sullivan’s men could drop in and surprise him.

  And that wouldn’t do at all.

  Disposing of a body wasn’t difficult. The spread he supervised sprawled over some twelve hundred acres, ample room for one more shallow grave. Sullivan wasn’t sure they’d want to plant the prowler, though, if leaving him displayed somewhere would send a message to potential future trespassers. Much would depend on who he was and why he’d come to spy on them.

  An idea came to Sullivan. He’d have to run it past the boss and get approval, but the more he thought about it, it seemed workable. Some of the burden fell on Burke and Shaughnessy, trusting the pair of them to follow orders, bring the prowler back alive and fit to answer questions. If they messed it up and shot him, Sullivan decided, they would have to dig the bullets out themselves, to make his scheme pay off.

  Pulling out his pocket watch, he checked the time and guessed the cook would surface soon, clanging his triangle to signal lunch was served. Sullivan had been smelling stew the past two hours, his mouth watering, but now he was distracted, thinking that he’d likely miss his midday meal. Or if his men came back while everyone was eating, they could leave their captive hogtied in the barn and let him sweat a little, wondering what lay in store for him.

  One hard last ride, screaming his life away.

  Because they couldn’t simply ask what he was doing on the spread and take the first answer he gave as gospel. Everybody lied, particularly when they found themselves in trouble. It would take some time and effort to extract the truth, squeezing until Sullivan satisfied himself that there was nothing left to learn. Nothing to stop the wagons rolling on their way, although he guessed departure ought to be delayed a bit, until they made sure that the spy was working by his lonesome.

  Otherwise…

  Sullivan didn’t want to think about that, at the moment.

  Look on the sunny side, he thought. And nip their problem in the bud.

  Tanner saw the work crew’s foreman leave his men and head into the barn, returning moments later with a sour expression on his face. Through the binoculars, it seemed that he was almost close enough to touch, and Tanner wished there was some way to pair the glasses with a camera to take long-distance photographs for evidence. Maybe one of the new kinetoscopes, invented by that fellow Edison he’d heard about, away up north.

  Tanner wondered how a jury would react to seeing criminals caught in the act, on film. There’d be no arguing by some defense attorney over whether they’d been present at the crime scene, what they’d done, no claims lawmen on the witness stand were spinning fancy tales to lock away the innocent. Like now, for instance. He could film the wagons being loaded with their contraband and have a photographic record of the men responsible, with no room for a claim he’d been mistaken.

  Maybe someday.

  At the moment, though, he lay and watched the work continue. Soon after the foreman left the barn, two riders followed him, turned left out of the wide front door, and moved off to the south. He tracked them with the glasses for a while, until they passed from sight beyond one of the spread’s cornfields.

  Some errand for the boss.

  Corn was the only crop the ranch produced, and precious little of it ever reached a dinner plate. The bulk of it went into mash, which went into a vat with rye meal, barley salt, water, and yeast, then was heated and distilled, producing whiskey that could knock your socks off—or, in cases where the purity was not controlled, leave drinkers blind or dead.

  Bill Tanner had consumed his share of whiskey, and some more besides, but he was not concerned about the purity of what was being loaded on the wagons in his view, per se. His job today involved collecting evidence that liquor had been made, bottled, and sold without the proper taxes being paid to Uncle Sam. To prove that charge, he’d need some of the booze.

  A wagonload ought to suffice, together with the men assigned to drive and guard it. After that, a raid to take the still and bag the men in charge, then he could move on to another case. Maybe pick up a commendation for his trouble if he made the job sound dangerous in his report. A little fudging did not harm, and truth be told, there was an element of danger when it came to hunting moonshiners. Tanner had heard of marshals get
ting killed on liquor raids—three in the past twelve months alone, but farther east, in Tennessee. It was the same as any other crime, he thought. Where there was easy money to be made, some folks would kill to keep it rolling in.

  And he’d be keeping that in mind when it was time to brace the teamsters with their load of who-hit-John. Be ready with his Schofield—better yet, his Winchester—when he confronted them, and take no chances that they’d come up shooting to avoid arrest. Killing was a part of law enforcement Tanner didn’t relish, but he meant to be the one who walked away from any showdown with a felon, if he had a say in how it all turned out.

  A raucous clanging noise reached Tanner’s ears and made him turn his glasses toward the farmhouse, where he found a slender figure in an apron banging on a metal triangle suspended from a wooden beam. A Chinaman, no less. The cook’s lips moved, presumably some variation on the theme of “Come and get it,” but his voice didn’t carry as far as the ridge.

  Turning back toward the barn, Tanner watched as the foreman and crew made their way toward the house, stopping off at a pump in the dooryard to rinse off their hands. When they’d all passed inside, he set down the binoculars, wriggled back six feet or so, and rose for a stretch with the nearest oak blocking his view of the house.

  If he couldn’t see them, Tanner figured they couldn’t see him.

  He’d left his canteen propped against the tree and raised it now, to wet his whistle. As it turned out, lying in the shade and watching other people sweat was thirsty work.

  Too bad I haven’t got a little taste of ’shine, he thought, but it would likely make him sleepy and the last thing that he needed was to doze off at his post and let the whiskey wagons roll away without him. Old Judge Dennison would have a fit, and then some, if he botched the job after a week of following the moonshine trail.

  The whicker of a horse reached Tanner’s ears, coming from somewhere down the slope in front of him. He couldn’t see his roan from where he stood, was stepping out to find a point where he could spot it when a second animal let go a whinny with an altogether different tone.