by Lyle Brandt
“How do we know it’s them?” Gillespie asked him, in a whisper.
“We go up and see. How else?” Woodruff replied.
“But if they ain’t the marshals—”
“I said go and see, not call ’em out, unless we see their badges. Use your head, will you?”
“So we’re just gonna sneak up there and have a look-see?” asked Gillespie.
“That’s the plan, unless you’ve got a better one,” said Woodruff.
“Nope. I’s just thinkin’ that they’ll hear us comin’ from a ways off.”
“Might, if we was riding,” Woodruff said. “I figure we’ll walk in, leave Harry with the horses farther back, to keep ’em quiet.”
“I can do that,” Stroud replied, sounding relieved to be left out of any shooting. Woodruff made a mental note of that, for next time when he needed someone he could count on, striking Harry from his first-choice list.
“You need to check your weapons, do it now,” Woodruff instructed. “I don’t want a bunch of noise when we close in there.”
Three of them drew their revolvers, spun the cylinders to verify full loads, then put the guns away. Woodruff had no need to examine his own Smith & Wesson Model 3, kept fully loaded as a matter of routine. He knew some shooters liked to keep an empty chamber underneath the hammer, but to Woodruff that was just a testament to carelessness. He’d never dropped a pistol in his life and didn’t plan on starting now.
He’d dropped some men, though. Right around a dozen.
And tonight he planned to add a couple more.
They flipped a silver dollar for first watch; Slade lost with tails and edged back from the fire a bit as Naylor bedded down. Edging around one of the bur oaks blocked the low flames from his line of sight, allowing his night vision to adjust. The quarter moon helped out a little, in its field of stars, but spotting any kind of danger from a distance clearly wasn’t happening. He’d trust his ears instead, staying alert for any sounds of an approaching predator, and hope he didn’t doze before the time came for his switch with Naylor.
As a rule, staying awake on watch wasn’t a problem, but his sleep had been disturbed of late by dreams of Faith, both loving her and losing her. A kind of weariness had settled over Slade the past two weeks, not the fatigue that came from strenuous activity but an annoying sense of lassitude he might associate with riding through a desert, no clear end in sight.
Slade’s mind kept circling back to Faith, wishing he knew a way to make things right with her, fearing it was beyond him. He’d been ready to consider turning in his badge after they married, finding out if he could be of any use around the ranch, but that idea had vanished in a cloud of gun smoke and he realized there wouldn’t be a second chance. When Faith made up her mind on something serious, there was no turning her around.
Which brought him back to thinking of himself again, wondering whether he should stick around or give his notice to Judge Dennison, start counting down the days until he was a free man once again. Funny, it didn’t feel like freedom when he thought about it, though.
It felt a bit like being lost.
But first things first. Whatever Slade decided, he still had a job to do, and it was likely going to be dangerous. Whether Bill Tanner had been killed by Indians or moonshiners, Slade planned to run them down and see them pay.
Naylor would do all right, he thought, as long as youthful overconfidence could be restrained. He didn’t seem to have a reckless attitude per se, but it was easy to let down your guard when you had worn the badge a while and won a fight or two. Slade wished Naylor had seen Bill Tanner’s corpse, to sober him a bit, but maybe his description of the body was enough to do the trick.
Or maybe he was underestimating Naylor, after all. Slade wondered whether he was jealous of the younger deputy—the years still stretching out before him, with a cornucopia of opportunities. Was Slade hearing the echoes of his own mortality from Tanner’s death and the proximity of youth?
If so, he had to keep a rein on that.
A fatalistic attitude, he realized, could be lethal to a lawman. When you started taking death for granted, it was easier to hesitate. Not giving up, exactly, but delaying a reaction in a crisis situation, even by a fraction of a second, could be all the break an enemy required to make the kill.
A call of nature interrupted Slade’s dark thoughts. He rose and moved away from camp as quietly as possible, out past the horses to a point beyond the burbling stream. No need for cover in the night, even if he was being watched by several thousand stars.
Hoke Woodruff huddled with the three men he had chosen to accompany him on his slow hike up the ridge through darkness. Heads together with their hat brims touching, he warned his companions in a graveyard whisper, “First one of you makes a noise from here on in, I’ll gut you like a hog.”
To punctuate the threat, he drew a bowie knife and passed its twelve-inch blade before their faces, glinting starlight. No one tested him by answering. Convinced that they had got the message, Woodruff sheathed his blade and started up the slope to higher ground.
Damn, but he still couldn’t be sure whose camp they were approaching, whether the expected marshals or some drifters heading anyplace but where they’d been. He had to take it slow and easy now, make sure who he was dealing with before he made a move. Not that he minded shooting strangers, but tonight it wouldn’t do. If they surprised and killed the wrong folks in this camp, it meant a load of wasted time, scut work disposing of them, and a likelihood that they would fail to do the job they’d been assigned.
The last part was what worried Woodruff most. He didn’t want to think about returning empty-handed, telling Grady Sullivan they couldn’t find the marshals after all. Embarrassment was only part of it. When Sullivan got riled…well, it was best to be somewhere away from him, preferably out of pistol range.
So Woodruff kept his fingers crossed—or would have, if it didn’t slow down his quick draw. He tried to place each step precisely as he climbed the slope, uncertain of the ground before him, painfully aware of its potential pitfalls. Loose rocks could betray him, or a patch of mud, a twig rolling beneath his boot. He wouldn’t have to fall exactly, to betray their presence near the camp. Just sliding down the ridge could do it, set the others scrambling after all his warnings to be silent, and the blame would fall on him.
The trick was getting close enough to watch the campers without being seen. To hunker down beyond the reach of firelight and discover who or what they were. Badges would mean he’d found the troublemakers he was looking for. No badges…well, it still might be the lawmen, if they’d taken off their vests or put on jackets, but he couldn’t just rush in, guns blazing, if he wasn’t sure.
Besides, he had a second job beyond disposing of the marshals. Grady wanted answers from them. How much did they know, if anything, about the Stateline deal? Was there a snitch inside the operation? Maybe more than one? The last cop hadn’t talked, but Woodruff knew some methods shared by an old Injun fighter, who in turn had learned his craft from Chiricahuas. Anyone who didn’t crack within the first ten, fifteen minutes must be made of stone.
Another thirty yards, and Woodruff strained his ears to pick out any voices, but the camp was quiet. Catching them asleep might make things safer, but it complicated spotting badges, under blankets. He might have no choice but to confront them, risking gunplay, if he couldn’t learn what he required by spying from the dark.
Get on with it, he thought, biting his lower lip. You’re wasting time.
Luke Naylor normally dropped off to sleep without a bit of trouble, but tonight was different somehow. Maybe his talk with Slade, or just imagining what all Bill Tanner must have suffered in his final hours of life. Naylor would’ve denied it, if someone had asked him to his face, but he was feeling jumpy. Nerves on edge.
And now, trying to sleep, there was that damned noise in the night.
The horses, he first thought, but knew that wasn’t right. There was no whickering, no soun
d of hooves on grass, and it was coming from the wrong direction anyway. They’d picketed the horses west of camp, beyond the spring, and Naylor would have sworn the scuffling sounds he heard were coming from the north, maybe a bit northeast.
He cracked an eye and looked around for Slade, but saw no sign of him. Maybe the noises came from him, scouting around the camp’s perimeter to keep himself awake. That fit the kind of noise Naylor had heard, but didn’t make much sense to him. He couldn’t picture Slade off roaming through the darkness for no reason, when he might step on a snake or twist his ankle in a gopher’s hole.
“Goddamn it!” Naylor muttered, throwing back his blanket, turning toward the gunbelt he had coiled and set aside when he turned in.
“Just leave ’er where she sits,” a strange voice told him, as a man stepped into view, out of the dark.
Correction: four men, with the others trailing back a step or two behind the one who’d spoken. All of them had six-guns drawn and cocked them now. The sound of hammers locking back grated on Naylor’s nerves, setting his teeth on edge.
“You ain’t supposed to be alone,” the leader of the party said.
“Oh, no?”
“Two marshals, we was told. And here I see two saddles, two bedrolls. So where’s the other?”
Naylor tried to feign confusion. “Did you maybe pass him, coming in?”
“We didn’t pass nobody, mister. Are you gonna tell us where he is, or do we have to squeeze it out of you?”
“Hold on there, partner,” Naylor answered. “I was fast asleep up here until I heard you all bumblin’ around out there. You woke me up. The hell am I supposed to know where anybody went or what they did while I’m in dreamland?”
“Marshal, if you’re prone to jokin’, I can promise you this ain’t the time,” the mouthpiece of the quartet said.
“Four guns to none,” said Naylor, “doesn’t put me in a joking mood.”
“Best tell us where your partner is, then, hadn’t you?”
Naylor figured his right hand was at least twelve inches from the nearest of his pistols, too far to be useful if the strangers cut loose from their present range. The only thing that he could think of was to stall for time and hope Slade reappeared from wherever in hell he’d gone.
“I’ll say it one more time,” he offered. “I was sleeping when you made the noise that roused me. If you want to find my partner, best thing for you all to do is call him.” And with that, he hollered out, “Hey, Jack! You wanna get your ass back here to camp?”
“No need to shout,” a voice said from the darkness.
Then all hell broke loose.
Slade had barely finished buttoning his fly when he heard voices from the camp. Luke Naylor’s first, and then a voice he didn’t recognize. The words eluded him at first, but Slade assumed they represented trouble in the making. With Bill Tanner’s grim example fresh in mind, he didn’t feel like giving strangers in the night the benefit of any doubt.
He doubled back to camp, Peacemaker drawn and cocked, his sense of urgency and caution vying for control as he advanced. Long strides, but careful not to make a misstep and announce himself to whoever had dropped in for a chat. Behind him, Slade’s roan and his partner’s snowflake Appaloosa both stood silently, watching him and waiting to see what would happen next.
Slade reached the last bur oak before the fire, staying in shadow as he counted four new faces in the camp. Naylor was sitting upright with his blanket thrown aside, his twin Colts visible but too far out of hand to do him any good right now. He’d need a suitable diversion if he planned on reaching them, and even then he would require a healthy dose of luck.
Slade got in on the tail end of the conversation, Naylor telling the four guns, “I’ll say it one more time. I was sleeping when you made the noise that roused me. If you want to find my partner, best thing for you all to do is call him.” Suiting words to action then, he yelled, “Hey, Jack! You wanna get your ass back here to camp?”
“No need to shout,” Slade answered, leveling his Peacemaker.
The shooters spun to face him, couldn’t help themselves under the circumstances, and it wasn’t a negotiating situation. Slade squeezed off a round that struck the nearest of his targets in the chest and dropped him thrashing on the grass, then ducked back out of sight behind the oak as other guns cut loose.
He didn’t bother counting, couldn’t tell if Naylor’d reached his Colts or been cut down while he was trying. Slade rolled to his right, around the bur oak’s trunk and out the other side from where he’d fired a moment earlier. Two of the four intruders still were on their feet and moving, one looking for him, the other fanning shots in Naylor’s general direction while the younger marshal ducked and rolled to save his skin, returning fire without a chance to aim.
Slade nailed the pistolero who was stalking him, a gut shot, but it wasn’t good enough. The wounded man dropped to his knees, cursing, but braced his six-gun in a firm two-handed grip and sent a bullet whistling past Slade’s head. Thumbs drawing back the hammer, and he might get luckier this time unless—
Slade’s next shot drilled the target’s forehead, blew out through the back somewhere, and sent his slouch hat sailing. Gunfire hammered from his right, and Slade twisted in that direction, ready with his Colt, but Naylor didn’t need him. Rapid-firing from a place low on the ground, he made the final gunman jerk and dance before he fell.
Slade’s ears were ringing, but he still made out a voice calling from somewhere in the darkness to the north. “Hoke? Harry? Anybody?”
Scrambling to his feet, Slade ran in that direction, but he wasn’t fast enough. Before he’d covered half the estimated distance, he heard rapid hoofbeats fading in the night, first there, then gone. He saw more horses milling in confusion, riderless.
Damn it!
“It’s me,” he called to Naylor, as he hiked back into camp. “Don’t shoot.”
“You took your time,” said Naylor. “Figured I was done there, for a second.”
“Sorry. Had my hands full,” Slade replied. “One got away.”
“I guess that’s bad,” Naylor surmised.
“It can’t be good,” Slade said.
“Don’t know how much you heard,” said Naylor, as they searched the bodies, coming up with nothing to identify the dead.
“Only the last bit,” Slade replied. “About my ass.”
“The one who did their talking for ’em said they were expecting two of us. Two marshals, we was told, the way he put it. So my question would be—”
“Told by who?” Slade finished for him.
“That’s exactly right.”
“Someone in Stateline, I imagine.”
“Yeah, but who told them?”
Slade thought about it. “Any warning had to come from Enid, way I see it. Hard to see a rider reaching Stateline, passing word in time for guns to turn around and meet us here, but they’re connected by the telegraph. Someone in town knew what we’ve been assigned to do and sold us out.”
“It wouldn’t be the judge,” said Naylor.
“No. But someone in the courthouse could’ve done it. Or somebody that a courthouse worker spoke to, talking out of turn.”
“Maybe the undertaker?”
“I don’t picture Holland Mattson having any truck with moonshiners,” Slade said, “but I can’t tell you it’s impossible.”
“Another marshal?”
That gave Slade a sour feeling in his stomach, worsening because he couldn’t absolutely rule it out. Instead of answering, he said, “We need to bring their horses into camp before they wander off.”
“What for?” Naylor inquired.
“To load these four at first light, for the trip to Stateline,” Slade replied.
“You want to take ’em in?”
“Sure thing. And see who’s waiting for them. Maybe who looks disappointed when we turn up with the bad boys draped across their saddles.”
“Right. Okay. Sounds like a lot of work
, though.”
“Could be worse,” Slade said. “They might be packing you.”
“You always this much fun to travel with?” asked Naylor.
“Hard to say,” Slade answered him. “I’m normally alone.”
The dead men’s horses hadn’t strayed when Slade and Naylor reached them, each man leading two back to the camp, where they were hobbled near the roan and Appaloosa. Slade refused to load the animals with their late riders yet and leave them standing under deadweight all night long, which left them only one alternative. They dragged the corpses out of camp and far enough away to spare themselves from any trouble with coyotes in the hours that remained till sunrise.
“We’ve got some answers due in Stateline,” Naylor said when it was done.
“We do,” Slade said, “but we should take it easy. Stick to what we planned, after we drop those four with whoever’s in charge. Find out what happens when we light a fire under the pot.”
“You’re pretty sly,” said Naylor.
“When I need to be. Like now.”
“Hey, thanks for helpin’ out before. I likely could’ve taken ’em, you know, but why hog all the glory?”
“Right,” Slade said. “Especially when there’s enough to go around.”
“My thought exactly,” Naylor said.
And Slade suspected there would be more opportunities in Stateline, too. Someone was anxious to prevent them getting there—which made him all the more determined to proceed.
7
Flynn Rafferty was in his office at the Sunflower Saloon, counting the money stacked atop his desk, when knuckles beat a tattoo on the door. He reached into a pocket of his suit coat, closed his hand around the small Apache pistol that he carried there, and called out, “Enter!”
Grady Sullivan came in, trailed by a harried-looking fellow with a day’s growth on his cheeks and jaw, traces of trail dust on his clothes. They stood before the big man’s desk, the nervous one with hat in hand. Flynn thought his name was Eddie Something. Gilligan? Gilhooley?
“Well, what is it?” Flynn demanded.
