Lawless Land

by Dusty Richards

  “We either do what Bowen here recommends or we can kiss this territory good-bye.” Tripp rubbed his small mustache and gave a shudder of his shoulders under the suit coat. “These rampant lawbreakers will ruin us. It is anarchy and the Border Gang is only a part of it. Outlaws are coming into this territory like flies to a cow-butchering. They know the law isn’t being enforced. When things get too hot, all they do is skip over into another county and get away.”

  Bowen sat back, agreed with Tripp’s interpretation, then he began. “You realize most of these outlaws won’t stand for being arrested. This won’t be like arresting some jubilent drunk in the street.” Bowen paused. More than anything, he wanted Tripp to understand they shouldn’t ask a man to risk his life over a worthless outlaw. “There’s going to be many of these criminals not live to see a courtroom.”

  Tripp nodded his head as if in deep thought. “I stand for the law, but I know what you say. It’s down to us or them, who is going to rule this territory. We will never be approved for statehood under this reign of lawlessness.”

  “Gerald thinks a few men could handle this.” Sterling squeezed his chin and flattened his beard.

  “The right ones—maybe.”

  “They could,” Bowen said. “I had all night to think on this matter. A few experienced men with packhorses could cover lots of ground. They would need money to pay snitches, and with a free hand, they could make a big difference.”

  “Make them officers of the court.” Tripp said. “I can talk to my colleagues and they’ll back a plan like this. Both Bob Wallace and Martin Burl are as upset as I am. Sterling, don’t you have funds from the federal government for the operation and needs of the territorial courts?”

  “Right, I do—but—” Sterling stammered.

  “Then use it to finance the marshals,” Tripp insisted with a sharp frown at the governor.

  Bowen agreed with the judge’s plan; good idea.

  “Gentlemen, there is no way to reason with the legislative committee or Senator Green.” Sterling shook his head and looked glum.

  “Sterling, I wouldn’t tell them a damn thing,” Tripp insisted. “You have the authority and access to that federal money for court business. Use it for financing the marshals.”

  “The judge has a point,” Bowen said. If they didn’t get Sterling off that business about what the “Machine” liked and disliked, they would never get anything accomplished.

  “The minute I send a marshal—”

  “Wait,” Tripp interrupted him and pointed at Bowen. “Let’s let the major handle the marshals. Obviously it will all have to be secret. So you two will have to keep it that way so their spies can’t hear about them. I know they have them all over. We’ll let Bowen handle it.”

  “What do you think?” Sterling asked, looking hard at Bowen.

  “If you want an arm of the law, I’ll do my best to make it work. Who hires them?”

  “You,” both men said and then smiled at each other.

  “Bowen, you’ve worked with plenty of good men in your career. Can you get some of them to be marshals?” Sterling asked.

  “Yes, but they won’t be cheap.”

  “What’s ‘not cheap’?” Sterling asked.

  “At least a hundred fifty a month and expenses.”

  “That’s not a bad price for a good man,” Tripp replied. “Go ahead.”

  “Who will you hire first?” Sterling asked.

  “The man I want to go after the Border Gang is Sam T. Mayes, gentlemen. He’s a former captain in the U.S. Cavalry. He was my next in command at the end of the war. He understands guerrilla fighting.”

  “But one man?” Sterling shook his head. “Does he even know anything about Arizona?”

  “No, but I also plan to hire some deputies to help him, two ex-Army scouts, trackers who can show him where the outlaws went and how to get there.”

  Tripp rose, clapped Sterling on the shoulders. “Sounds great to me. I have to use the facilities.” He opened the outer door and turned back. “Listen to the man, Sterling. He has it all figured out.”

  Sterling went and closed the door. He turned back and raised his eyebrows. “One man and two scouts. Aren’t you taking a big risk?”

  “You don’t know Sam T. Mayes. He can handle them.”

  “But Papago trackers couldn’t—”

  “Couldn’t find their own ass in a dust storm. Excuse my language, but Crook tried them all, Papagos, Navajos. He found if you want a crack tracker get an Apache. The rest were worthless.”

  “And this Mayes?”

  “Stop worrying. You don’t know Sam T. Mayes, but you have my personal guarantee he’s a man of many attributes, and being steel-tough is one of them.”

  Sterling nodded, satisfied with Bowen’s guarantee, then excused himself and went into the outer office. Bowen sat back, blew out a long breath and considered what he must do next. He heard the governor tell the girl Daisy to get his whiskey and three glasses. The deal must be settled; Bowen drew out the aromatic-smelling cigar from his vest. He licked the body of it with the tip of his tongue, used a small jackknife to cut off the butt. Then he struck a parlor torpedo match on the underside of the polished table and lit it up. Wedged back in the captain’s chair, he drew deep, thinking about the things he must do. Then, in a pencil-thin stream, he sent the smoke out. This marshal business might prove interesting before it was over.

  The black girl delivered the cut-glass decanter and three crystal glasses on a tray and set them down on the table.

  “He need something else?” she asked, looking around for the governor, who no doubt had gone to join Tripp in the facilities.

  “No, that’s all he needs, Daisy.”

  “Hows you know my name?” she asked, drawing back her head wrapped in the red cloth and standing straighter.

  “Why, the governor told me. He said that Daisy is the best worker in the mansion.”

  “Oh, mercy.” She held her hands up to her small bustline and wrung her long fingers fretfully. “He never done told me a thing like that.”

  “Well, I did. You may go, my dear.”

  “Oh, thank yeah, thank yeah, Mister Major. Thank yeah.” She left skipping and about collided with the governor and Tripp, who were returning.

  “Sorry, sah,” she said and was gone.

  “What’s she so excited about?” Sterling frowned after her.

  “I told her she was so good you were giving her a big raise.”

  Sterling shook his head and closed the door. He turned in time to see the hilarity that Bowen could no longer contain. All three men laughed; Sterling still looked uncertain and poured their drinks.

  “Here’s to starting the Arizona Territorial Marshals!” Tripp shouted and they raised their glasses.

  “To the Territorial Marshals!”

  Clink.

  Ella Devereaux again spread the newspapers out on the bed. She looked wryly at Strawberry, who stood before the lacecurtained window in her underwear.

  “Get over here,” she demanded. No reason for that little slut to stand there in the half nude. Besides, someone might see her and there would be an uproar about her advertising in broad daylight, though the girl wasn’t ugly to look at. Had a cute butt on her, no breasts, but the men liked her anyhow.

  “Yes, Missy.” Strawberry made a displeased face at her. “Oh, not those damn dumb newspapers again. I told you I read them twenty times and didn’t learn a thing about the governor.”

  “What did you read in them?”

  “A man hit his wife over the head and he got ten days in the Pima County Jail. Hogs are cheaper in Chicago and are expected to keep falling in price. Banks’re failing all over the country.”

  “What else?”

  “They sell an elixir that you can drink and makes you ten years younger and folks can go to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and take baths and get cured of cancer.”

  “What else?”

  “That Border Gang killed some big-deal rancher n
orth of Tucson. They killed and ravished his wife. That means the whole bunch screwed her, huh?”

  “Watch your language. This ain’t some damn cheap whorehouse. Do you want to work in one of those places?”

  “No, Missy.”

  “Then quit talking like some back-alley slut. What does it say about the military?”

  “Some company at Fort Apache is being transferred to Fort Grant.”

  “No, that ain’t it.” Ella inhaled deeply. Nothing to help her figure out what they were up to. “Go back to your room and get some rest. It may be be a busy night. Harris sent word there’s some bankers in town.”

  Strawberry wrinkled her freckled pug nose in disgust. “Hope they tip better than the last ones. They were cheap.”

  “Get out of here and send Sassy up before you lay down.”

  “Yes, Missy.”

  From the window, Ella watched the judge leaving the mansion. At last. Justice Tripp, Major Bowen and Sterling had been in a meeting all morning. They were up to something no good and she needed to know what. Bowen climbed in the landau with Tripp, and his driver went out the driveway. She could see the men’s cigar smoke leave a wispy trail.

  What were they up to?

  “You needed me, Missy?” Sassy asked, rushing in the doorway.

  “I wouldn’t have sent for you if I hadn’t needed you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She made a curtsy.

  “As soon as your cousin, Daisy B. Boudean, gets through with her lunch duties, you take her for an ice cream at the drugstore’s back door. Then you bring her over here by the back alley. You tell her I want to reward her good.”

  “She smuggled them newspapers like I asked her to do.”

  “That’s why I wanted to reward her. What did you think I was going to do?”

  “Aw, nothing, Missy”

  “But if you mess up and don’t bring her to me …” Ella stopped and looked hard at the girl. Sassy’s hands slid protectively behind her backside and she straightened. That’s right, girl, Abraham will bust your ass a good one for me, Ella thought.

  “She be here,” Sassy promised. “But it be near two o’clock.”

  “Fine, just so she comes.” She gave Sassy the coins for the ice cream.

  Ella had plenty of time to reread the newspapers. The reason she made Strawberry read them, was that she knew the girl had a good education from attending a high-class boarding school in St. Louis for several years. One night, she climbed over the fence and ran off out West with a stick-talking tinhorn. He made her do prostitution for his gambling money, which he lost every night. She left him and showed up in Prescott on the back-door steps of the Harrington House looking for work. She lied about her age when she came, said she was eighteen, but Ella was convinced she was closer to fifteen then.

  But with all her fancy education, even Strawberry found nothing more than she did about what the governor and Bowen were talking about in those newspapers. If she could believe what Sassy relayed from Daisy B., very little had taken place. Somehow that wasn’t right.

  That girl had to know something more after this latest meeting. Those three men must have talked for hours. In disgust, Ella threw down the newspaper on the brocade spread. It was useless to keep going over them. Border Gang did this, Border Gang did that. It looked like she needed that Border Gang to come spend some of their robbery money with her at the Harrington House.

  At two o’clock on the grandfather clock in the hall, Ella intercepted the two girls in the kitchen and took them quickly in the parlor. She shut all the doors and turned to the lanky Daisy B., who was busy licking the spoon with her long tongue, her hatchet butt rested against the billiard table. She better not get one drop of that sticky cream on the new green velvet—but Ella cut off those words before she spoke them.

  “What did they talk about today?”

  “They said real loud, ‘Marshals.’”

  “What marshals?” Ella could not fathom what the men must be going over. The Prescott Police Department called themselves marshals. Did they plan to hire new marshals? Every week, she paid her fair share of the cost of the city police force. Maybe they planned to hire new ones and run her out of town?

  “They started talking and done shut them doors.” Daisy lowered her face and looked up at Ella.

  “That Judge Tip—”

  “Tripp.”

  “Yeah, that’s him. He was talking to the major about ‘crook’?”

  “General Crook?” Ella frowned at the girl.

  Daisy B. turned up her empty hand and showed the white palm. “He say, ‘crook.’”

  “What else?”

  “Once I hear that major say real loud, ‘Marshals.’”

  “What else did you hear?”

  “Big voice shouted once, ‘Call them marshals.’”

  “Daisy B., you did real good. You go back and listen very close for what those men are up to and you tell Sassy here what you hear every time.”

  “I don’t know, Missy. That major he say that the governor, he really likes me.” The girl in the red bandanna ran her tongue over her teeth under her lips and then grinned.

  “What do you think that governor’s going to do about it?”

  Daisy B. wrung her hands and ducked her head like she couldn’t say it, then blurted out, “He likes me enough he may jump my bones.”

  “You want that, Daisy B.?”

  “Being in his bed be a lot better than sleeping on them corn cobs.”

  “You’d tell me if he ever does that, won’t you, Daisy B.? Because Missy is all the time buying you ice cream,” said Ella.

  Daisy B. rubbed her sticky palms on the front of her print dress. “Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t.”

  Ella bit off her anger at the girl’s sass. A smile pasted on her face, she put her arm around Daisy’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry about that. You listen for this marshal talk and let Sassy know all about it.”

  “Oh, I’ll do that, Missy. It’s fun.”

  Thank God. The girl would tell Sassy if she knew anything. She liked the ice cream too well not to. If Sterling was going to hire new marshals and then close the Harrington House down, she better get busy and talk to some of her influential friends. One thing she knew was how to fight fire with fire.

  But what could she tell Senator Green when he came by? The potbellied little man was due by the capital any day and always had a million questions to ask her about the governor and what he was up to. Ella felt herself being watched and realized that Sassy was still standing behind her. Daisy had left minutes before.

  “Yes, Sassy?”

  “She told you all she knew.” Then Sassy shot her fist up to her mouth to suppress her giggling. “But … if that governor jumps her bones, he’s pretty hard up, ain’t he, Missy?”

  “You never can tell about men and what they like, dear.”

  Sassy laughed and then tried to contain herself. “Why, she’s so skinny, be like him getting on a fence post with a woodpecker hole in it.”

  “Enough of that talk. You keep checking on her.”

  “I will.” And she went off laughing about her joke.

  Ella frowned. It wouldn’t be so funny for any of them if Sterling closed down the Harrington House. No, sir, she better get to talking to her friends.

  CHAPTER 3

  SAM T. Mayes sat with his butt planted upon the small board platform between the heavy ceiling trusses over the Keaton Brothers’ warehouse. Darkness long before had closed in on the building. At six o’clock, everyone in the building left work. With his passkey, Sam slipped inside, climbed the ladder to the loft, then made his way through the huge wooden trusses until he stationed himself where he could look down and easily see the row of dock doors.

  He listened to the cooing pigeons that had stolen in earlier and roosted close by. Sit and wait … a detective did lots of that in his line of work. Someone was stealing large amounts of merchandise from the company’s warehouse and while he felt the job was being do
ne by insiders, he had no proof. This stakeout might require weeks of sitting up there at night. His back pressed against the rough-cut four-by-four that went slantwise to the roof, he tried to think about something more interesting.

  About this time of day Shirley McKenzie, the love interest in his life, would be sitting down to her supper. He could be there with her sipping on good wine and preparing to feast on some delicious dish. The dark-haired widow would be much better company than those moaning pigeons.

  Suddenly something dropped.

  He turned his ear to listen. It was only a rat scurrying around down below. The rats he sought were larger ones than that.

  False alarm; he settled back again. By this time of night, he could also be having a friendly drink in the Elephant Bar with some of his detective friends and marshals from the Denver police force. Why hadn’t he brought something to drink? It would only have made him need to get down and piss that much sooner. No, he would give them a few more hours to show up.

  The old wound in his hip made him squirm around. He still carried a minié ball from a bushwhacker’s rifle. One of his many treasures of war. The sharp discomfort of it was his reminder of the days he spent in uniform, when he and his company patrolled the Old Wire Road in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, a part of the original Butterfield Stage route from St. Louis to San Francisco. By the end of the war, most of the guerrilla leaders who kept him so busy were dead. Ingrahmn, Buck Brown, Smith, Mc-Cardy and even Sharon.

  He closed his eyes and began thinking about the beautiful hill girl. She still haunted him, even after all these years. The glaring hatred in her defiant gaze the first day he and his command surrounded her home searching for her father. Those looks of hers would have killed him had they been loaded with ammunition. All those secret places where they later met. He could recall kissing her under a towering grove of walnut trees that filtered the moonlight. Her lithe body in his arms—

  Damn, what was that scraping sound? He looked off the edge of the platform. Someone whispered down below and came inside the warehouse. Too dark to see them. Maybe they would light a lamp. He hoped so, at once feeling better about the whole thing. His suspicions were correct. The intruders had a key to the place. Insiders, who no doubt worked here.