The Independence Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  “As an alternative to costly and protracted litigation,” said the man identified as Crull, “a civil judgment could be entered on the town’s behalf, settled by you, to see the case resolved and put to bed.”

  “Ransom, you mean,” the Bar X boss replied.

  “No, sir!” Marshal Whitesell objected. “That term indicates a criminal extortion. Under law, as ordered by Judge Butler, you would pay a fine for trespassing and injuring the deputy, at which time any confiscated property would be yours to take away as you see fit.”

  “A fine,” Mossman repeated, with a wry expression on his face as if the word itself was steeped in vinegar.

  “Precisely,” Crull agreed.

  “And how much might that come to?”

  The mayor turned to his judge. “Your Honor?”

  “Um, yes. By my careful calculation, the longhorns would be three dollars each, and another fifty for the deputy. He’s gutshot, by the way.”

  “Three thousand fifty, then,” said Mossman.

  “That would be correct, sir,” Butler said. He sounded vaguely breathless as if nearly choking on the words.

  “You understand that I don’t carry that amount of money with me on the trail,” Mossman replied. “It draws thieves in like crap lures flies.”

  “That is a problem,” lawyer Crull put in. “But I can solve it for you, Mr. Mossman.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “Your herd is bound for Independence, is it?”

  “Should we ever get there,” Mossman said.

  “If you agree to pay the fine—in writing, duly notarized—perhaps Marshal Whitesell would ride along with you, collect the payment after sale, and bring it back.”

  “You’d trust him?” Mossman challenged. “I mean, with a roll of cash like that?”

  Whitesell bristled at that. “I ain’t the one who broke the law here,” he protested.

  “If a law was broken,” Mossman countered, rising from the straight-backed wooden chair he occupied in front of Butler’s desk. “As it stands, I’ll need to think on this a bit, and maybe even sleep on it. Meanwhile, I need to see my cattle and make sure they’re being taken care of properly.”

  “They’ve been secured on a ranch outside of town,” said Marshall Whitesell. “As to any drop-in visits, I’d consider that unwise.”

  Mossman pinned the marshal with a gimlet gaze. “You want me to redeem them sight unseen, without even a head count? That ain’t happening. Once I confirm what state they’re in, I’ll give your offer due consideration.”

  “If it solves the problem,” Mayor Harding said, “why not?”

  “Suppose he tries to pull a fast one?” Whitesell groused.

  “I ain’t the one who’s got your stock penned up and maybe starving,” Mossman said.

  “Well . . .”

  “Bert,” the mayor responded. “Give an inch, will you?”

  “All right, then,” Whitesell granted. “I can have Alonzo take ’em by the Sutton spread before they sign off on the settlement.”

  “That’s all I’m asking for,” Mossman averred. “Just put my mind at ease.”

  “Okay,” the marshal said, then shouted through the office door, “Alonzo! Get in here!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Their ride out to the Sutton ranch took up the best part of an hour, with Alonzo Markland rambling on for most of that time, drawing no response from any member of the Bar X posse. As the spread came into view at last, Markland rode on ahead to “warn the owners,” as he put it, of some unexpected company arriving.

  Art Catlin was busy eyeballing the run-down house and barn as Mossman’s party followed up, searching for any indications of an ambush, finding none. From fifty yards, they glimpsed the first few longhorns wandering around a fenced-in field behind the ranch house, Mossman urging his flea-bitten gray gelding to greater speed, his drovers keeping pace.

  “I want you watching out for any signs of injury,” he told them as they neared the fence. “After the run they had last night, some of ’em could be lame.”

  Which, Catlin realized, would mean a loss for the Bar X. If steers could not proceed to market in a timely fashion, they would have to be put down without reaching the point of sale, putting a crimp in Mossman’s pocketbook. Without a chuck wagon, they couldn’t even save the beef for vittles on the portion of their journey that remained.

  As they surveyed the stock, Alonzo Markland came back with an older man in overalls. Art couldn’t guess his age beyond a range somewhere between forty and sixty years. The younger age would mean he’d led a hard life on the prairie, while the latter might have chalked him up as well preserved.

  “Joe Sutter,” the landowner introduced himself. “You come to bail your cattle out for trespassing?”

  “Thinking about it,” Mr. Mossman said. “I need to look them over first.”

  “You’ll find ’em in the same condition they came in here,” Sutter said. “I ain’t been feeding ’em because I can’t afford it.”

  “But you volunteered to take them in,” Catlin observed.

  “Well . . . sure. It were my civic duty, weren’t it?”

  “Or a paying job,” Art said.

  “Can’t say I follow you,” the rancher answered in a grumpy voice.

  “Never mind that,” Mossman interrupted. “Deputy, go back and tell your boss I’ve seen enough for now.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I’ll speak to him in person if there’s any more to say.”

  They left him standing there, against the paddock fence, and started back to camp. When they had ridden for a hundred yards or so, Job Hooper asked the boss, “What are we gonna do, sir?”

  “Get those cattle back and settle up in Longwood,” Mossman answered back.

  “How do you see us doing that?” Catlin inquired.

  Without a backward glance, the boss said, “I ain’t worked it out yet, but I guess something will come to me.”

  They rode on for another while before Mossman asked Catlin, “Art? Did you see any guards around the Sutter place?”

  “Nobody showing in the house’s windows or around the barn, boss. Doesn’t mean they haven’t got some people hiding out. I couldn’t see inside the hayloft or the privy, nor around behind the house.”

  “Right, then,” Mossman said. “I figure that they’d have to leave at least a couple men to keep the old man company while this plays out.

  “And there were eight or nine of ’em, at least, that hit the camp last night,” Guenther recalled.

  “Plus Fielding,” Mossman said. “Don’t leave that tricky bastard out.”

  “He’s likely miles away by now,” said Mike Limbaugh.

  “If he got paid,” their boss amended. “If he’s not, tonight I’m gonna make him wish he was.”

  “They claim one man was wounded,” Catlin said. “If true, that makes at least fourteen we’re up against, plus maybe old man Sutter.”

  “And another one in town,” Mossman amended.

  “Who is that, boss?” Francisco Gallardo asked.

  “Whoever thought up the whole thing,” their boss replied.

  “How do you figure that, boss?” Guenther, bringing up the rear, inquired.

  Mossman glanced back, half-smiling. “Because those four didn’t have the brains between ’em,” he said. “Nor the nerve to pull it off.”

  Longwood, Kansas

  “So, how’d they take it?” Murray Glatman asked the men arrayed before him in his office at the Beaver’s Tail.

  There were four of them in attendance: Mayor Harding, Marshal Whitesell and his slouching deputy, plus Odell Butler. Tilman Crull was at his own place, finalizing paperwork, or so he’d claimed.

  Deputy Markland knew the question had been meant for him, since he’d accompanied the dr
overs to Joe Sutter’s spread and seen them off from there. He told Glatman, “Guy said he’d seen enough, sir.”

  “He’d seen enough?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How did he say it?”

  That one seemed to puzzle Markland. “I don’t follow you,” he answered back.

  “Tell me exactly what he said. Pretend you’re him, Alonzo.”

  “Well, Mr. G, the best I recollect, it was ‘Go back and tell your boss I seen enough for now.’ Something like that. I even asked ’im what be meant by that.”

  “And?” Glatman prodded him.

  “Guy says, ‘I’ll speak to him in person if there’s any more to say.’”

  Glatman was frowning now, not quite a scowl but working up to one. “Who do you think he meant by ‘him,’ Alonzo?”

  “Tell my boss, he said. I figured that must be the marshal, here.”

  “No,” Glatman said emphatically.

  Alonzo tried again. “Maybe the mayor, then?”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  “What are you getting at, Murray?” Harding inquired.

  “He’s onto me.”

  Four blank stares greeted his announcement. After half a minute, give or take, Bert Whitesell asked, “How could that be?”

  “He’s thinking past you-all,” Glatman replied. “He’s looking for the man behind the plan.”

  From their expressions, Murray Glatman could imagine wheels turning inside their heads. Harding and Whitesell looked vaguely insulted. Butler sat back, seeming almost relieved. Alonzo Markland, as he often did, just seemed confused.

  Harding recovered first, saying, “That isn’t possible.”

  “I don’t mean he’s onto me, exactly. But he reckons someone put all this together and the rest of you are . . . helping out.”

  It was the kindest way of putting these four in their proper place that Glatman could come up with on short notice. Watching Butler, Whitesell, and the mayor exchange glances, he saw the pieces falling into place.

  “You see it now,” said Glatman, maybe giving them more credit than was due.

  “Well, now,” said Whitesell, “I don’t see—”

  “Just take my word for it,” Glatman commanded. “When this Mossman character comes back to get his steers, he won’t be signing any papers promising you half of what he gets from Independence. No. He’s in a taking mood, not promising you anything.”

  “You seem to know a lot about some guy you’ve never seen,” Whitesell retorted.

  “Not the man, per se. I know his type,” Glatman corrected the town marshal. “Yes, indeed. I’ve known them all my life.”

  “I must say,” Butler offered, “that sounds . . . ominous.”

  Glatman reached out for the whiskey bottle on his desk and poured himself a shot, not offering to share. Only when it had scorched his throat and lit a fire around his heart did he see fit to speak again.

  “Your Honor, I believe you’re right,” he said. “In fact, I’ll see your ‘ominous’ and raise you an ‘alarming.’ Bert, those deputies of yours?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Make sure they’re ready for another shivaree come sundown.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Bliss Mossman finished sketching out a rough map in the dirt a few yards from their erstwhile chuck wagon’s ashes. With his drovers standing in a ring around him, studying what he had drawn, he thought the layout was complete.

  A small X marked their camp and the remainder of his herd. A blocked-out square stood in for Longwood, while a circle represented Sutter’s ranch, where Mossman’s rustled stock was penned and waiting for release.

  On balance, Mossman thought it looked more like a game of tic-tac-toe drawn by an idiot than anything his men could use to navigate a strike on two points simultaneously.

  “As you see,” he told the hands, “I ain’t no artist, but I hope you get the point. Here, at the Sutter spread”—he poked the circle with his drawing stick—“is where they’ve got the steers. They won’t risk moving ’em to town, since there’s no place to hold ’em there. Tonight, I mean to go and fetch ’em back.”

  “How many men watching the herd, jefe?” asked Jaime Reyes.

  “None we saw,” Mossman replied. “But it’s a safe bet they won’t leave the stock unguarded overnight.”

  “How many of us go to bring ’em back?” asked Danny Underwood.

  Frowning at that, Mossman replied, “We’ve got the same problem they do. I need some of you here to watch the longhorns we’ve got left. That splits the rest between the Sutter place and Longwood.”

  “Why go back to town at all?” Bryce Zimmerman inquired.

  “Two reasons,” Mossman answered. “First, smart money says they’ll keep some of their guns there, covering the men behind this thing, and I don’t want them chasing after us when we collect the stolen stock.”

  “And second?” Jerome Guenther asked.

  “I want to send a message to the seven sons of bitches putting us through this.”

  “¿Siete? How you figure that, jefe?” asked Luis Chávez.

  “Five we saw and spoke to,” Mossman said. “On top of them, Jay Fielding or whatever his real name is, and the man who set it up.”

  “The one none of us knows,” Mike Limbaugh said. “Makes him a little hard to pin down, boss.”

  “Not necessarily,” Mossman replied. “We know he lives in town and has the brains, together with the cash, to set this up. He’s someone who the others look up to, or else they’re scared to go against him.”

  Art Catlin spoke up then, saying, “Someone who fits that bill, figure he runs a business of his own, and probably the biggest one in town. Everybody knows him or knows of him, even if they don’t trade with him regularly.”

  “That’ll work,” Mossman agreed. “I’m thinking the saloon and bawdy house, across the street from what they’re pleased to call their ‘Justice Center.’ And he shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

  “So, what’s the play, then, boss?” their wrangler, Jared Olney, asked.

  “First thing, I need to know who’s in or out,” Mossman replied. “You’ve seen and done enough on this trip for a dozen cattle drives. There’d be no shame in backing out while you still can. I’ll take a show of hands.”

  When none were raised, he pressed ahead. “All right, then. Doing this the right way means we have to split three ways. Some stay to watch the stock, the rest divide between the Sutter place and Longwood. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions. Anyone?”

  * * *

  * * *

  Alonzo Markland wasn’t sure if he should be angry over his relegation to the Sutter spread, or if he ought to feel relieved.

  On the one hand, Mr. Glatman and Bert Whitesell had assigned four men to help him guard the place, and they were bound to follow Markland’s orders since he had the only badge among them that meant anything. He knew them all by reputation—Clyde Byers, Doc Quigley, Hebron Walsh, and Myron Jarvis—trusting Whitesell’s word that they were handy in a fight.

  But on the other hand, Alonzo reckoned that if Mossman and his drovers made a move tonight, some trick instead of simply signing off on Mr. Glatman’s deal to get their longhorns back, they’d have to raid the Sutter place—and that meant Markland would be front and center on the firing line.

  He could forget about Joe Sutter, blind in one eye and the other going hazy on him? So it would be five men counting Markland, ranged against however many hands Bliss Mossman reckoned he could spare while still guarding the livestock he had left.

  Shading his eyes, Alonzo peered into the sky and estimated that some three hours remained until sundown. If he were back in Longwood, he’d be stopping by the Badger’s Tail before too long, to wet his whistle with a beer or something stronger. Drinking while on d
uty was against the rules, of course, but in a small town where it seemed that nothing ever happened, Markland didn’t see the harm in it.

  As for tonight, though, he supposed the safest thing was staying on his toes.

  Coffee might help, but he’d already tried a cup of Sutter’s brew and found it tasted like dishwater passed through a rusty sieve. Before he tried that swill again, Alonzo thought he’d have a drink out of the farm’s horse trough.

  Joe Sutter lived alone, being a widower who’d never fathered any children Markland knew about. If some existed, Sutter never spoke of them and it was certain none were part of Longwood’s mismatched population.

  There was no denying that the town was . . . peculiar. It seemed to have an odd magnetic quality, attracting losers from all over Kansas and a few out of Missouri, too. Markland himself had traveled all the way from Texas before winding up in Longwood, passing by the marshal’s office where a window sign announced need deputy. Next thing Alonzo knew, he was the second lawman in a burg that barely needed one, but who was he to spurn four dollars weekly and a roof over his head year-round?

  The change from what Longwood had been to what it was now set in when Murray Glatman turned up with a wagon full of whores and whiskey, plus another full of lumber, and hired shiftless local men to start construction on the Badger’s Tail. When it was done and making money, Glatman found himself the town’s top man, able to rig elections since the yokels didn’t care who called the shots, as long as things ran smoothly and seemed relatively fair.

  So why am I guarding a herd of stolen longhorns, waiting for the rightful owners to show up and take them back? Alonzo asked himself.

  “For money, that’s what,” Markland answered, troubled at discovering he’d said the words aloud. At least nobody was around to overhear him talking to himself, but he would have to watch that all the same.

  And that, in turn, meant he would have to make it through the coming night alive.

  * * *

  * * *

  Sterling Tippit had his choice of men to leave behind, guarding the half herd that was verging on its second night camped in the same place, watching dusk descend.