The Independence Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  “Jesus!” he blurted out. “It’s them!”

  The speaker dropped his beer, spilling its amber dregs across the bar top as his three companions turned to face the street exit. Suddenly, as one, they reached for holstered six-shooters before Mossman could caution them against it.

  Maybe facing murder charges for the man and boy Mossman had lost made them a trifle hasty, but it didn’t matter now. Dropping to one knee with his rifle shouldered, Mossman sighted on the first man who had seen them enter, squeezing off a .44-40 Winchester round from thirty feet or so. His bullet closed the gap in an eighth of a second, struck his target near the midline of his chest, and slammed him back against the bar before the enemy’s pistol cleared leather.

  Nonetheless, his adversary, falling, still managed to fire a shot into the barroom’s floor, missing his own right foot by an inch as he collapsed.

  While Mossman pumped the lever action on his Winchester, Hooper and Limbaugh nailed two more of the gunmen, their bodies dropping through a crimson mist of blood to join their comrade on the barroom’s floor. That left one standing, pistol in his hand and firing back, but in his haste he only blasted out one of the windows facing onto Main Street, missing all three of the riflemen before him.

  It turned out to be a fatal error as a second round from Mossman’s Winchester ripped through the gunman’s throat and left him slumped against the bar, left arm outflung to hold him upright while his pistol wavered aimlessly. He lasted for about another second and a half, then folded, dropping to his knees before he toppled over on his face.

  Rising, Mossman told his men, “Fan out. We’re looking for the boss, maybe an office. Wherever he is, don’t let him get away.”

  The Sutter Ranch

  Sterling Tippit found the deputy from Longwood where he’d fallen by the barn. Inside that structure, pocked with bullet holes over the past few minutes, Danny Underwood and Zebulon Steinmeier had another gunman cornered in the hayloft, trading shots with him by lantern light.

  Peering inside the barn, Tippit discovered that its stalls were empty, no livestock of any kind in evidence besides the stolen longhorns lowing from the paddock out in back. Steinmeier caught sight of him and called out, “This one’s dug in like a tick, I’m not sure we can root him out, but if we do, it’s gonna take a while.”

  “So, treat him like you would a tick,” Tippit advised, nodding in the direction of an oil lamp standing on a shelf against the barn’s west wall.

  “Good thinking,” Zeb replied, and scurried to retrieve the lamp while Underwood pinned down their adversary with his Sharps rifle, each shot a thunderclap inside vacant barn.

  Returning with the lantern, Steinmeier ran as close as he could manage, trusting Underwood to cover him, then lobbed it overhand, an arcing toss into the hayloft. Tippit heard glass shatter on impact, and seconds later, flames were leaping as the oil set fire to musty bales of hay up there.

  The hayloft sniper stuck it out another thirty seconds, give or take, before he tossed his rifle down and called out to the cowboys he’d been dueling with, “Don’t shoot, all right? I give up! Just don’t let me cook up here!”

  Raising his voice, Tippit advised the shooter, “Throw down any other guns you’ve got and show us empty hands!”

  “That Henry’s all I had,” their enemy replied. “I’m coming out now!”

  And he did, hands raised to shoulder height, bareheaded, coughing from the smoke that swirled around him. Tippit looked the gunman over with his own Sharps carbine centered on the fellow’s barrel chest.

  “All right,” he said. “You can start down the ladder. Make it slow and careful.”

  “Coming down, yessir!”

  But as he reached the hayloft’s overlook above them, one hand darted to his back and came out clutching a revolver, smallish, probably a .32 or .36. Three rifles cracked and boomed as one and blew his ragdoll figure backward, sacrificed to the voracious flames.

  “Clear outta here,” Tippit ordered his men, and led the way outside.

  They reached the farmyard just as their companions—Guenther, Reyes, and McCormick—were returning from the ranch house, prodding an unarmed old man in front of them.

  “We left the other two around in back, jefe,” Reyes explained. “They won’t be going nowhere now.”

  “And who’s this?” Tippit asked.

  Their captive answered for himself. “Joe Sutter, mister. I’m no part of this fight.”

  “But you let ’em stash our cattle here,” Tippit reminded him.

  “You don’t know what they’re like,” Sutton replied. “Run roughshod over everyone in town and hereabouts. This place is all I have.”

  He glanced back toward the barn, smoke pouring from its loft, flames visible, a roaring sound emerging that reminded Tippit of a dragon’s snore. “I take that back. It’s all I had.”

  “Remember who’s to blame for that if anybody comes around here later, asking,” Tippit cautioned him. “The county sheriff may not charge you if you sell him on the notion you were forced to go along.”

  “And that’s God’s truth,” Sutter averred.

  “Best leave God out of it and make it known how weak you are, no backbone, all of that.”

  “So, you ain’t gonna kill me, then?” asked Sutter.

  “Did you want us to?” Sterling replied.

  “No, sir! Can’t rightly say what I’ll be living for from here on in, but if it’s my choice, I’ll play out my string.”

  “Suits me,” Tippit agreed. Then, to his drovers, “Best be clearing out those steers while we can handle ’em, before the fire gets them all riled and ready for another run.”

  Longwood

  “You came without your boss this time?” Bert Whitesell asked.

  “He’s busy elsewhere,” Catlin said.

  “Trying to wrap it up another way, I guess.”

  “You’re not as stupid as you look,” Art told the marshal.

  Whitesell shrugged, his right hand still concealed beneath his desk’s top. “Well, I won’t deny feeling a little foolish now,” he said.

  “Just so you know,” Catlin informed him, “we’ve got people taking back the steers you people stole.”

  “I didn’t take ’em,” said the lawman. “Hell, it wasn’t even my idea.”

  “You played along, though. Looking for your cut.”

  “Who wouldn’t have?”

  “The fact you have to ask tells me that you’re unfit to wear that star.”

  “It looks good on me, though, don’t it?” The marshal teasing him a little.

  “Not for much longer.”

  “You here to kill me, then? Don’t wanna call the boy you left outside to help you?”

  “That’s your call,” Catlin replied. “My preference would be to lock you up, along with all the rest involved with this, and send a rider for the county sheriff once we’re on the road.”

  “That’s one way it could go, I guess,” Whitesell agreed.

  “Play nice in court, give up the others, and you might even reduce your prison time.”

  “Makes sense, I guess,” said Whitesell. “But I gotta tell you, I ain’t big on the idea of living in a cage.”

  “At least it’s living,” Catlin said. “You can direct us to the others and we’ll bring ’em here to you. You-all can sit around commiserating till the circuit judge shows up.”

  Whitesell made no response to that, prompting Catlin to say, “We’ll get them, one way or another. Say your mayor to start, that lawyer—if he even is one—and your so-called justice of the peace.”

  “Nobody else?” the marshal asked him now.

  “Maybe a couple more. I’d like to see the one who called himself Jay Fielding when he joined the drive.”

  “His real name’s Findlay, if that helps you. Jed, not Jay, unless he lied
to us about that, too.”

  “Where might I find him?” Catlin asked. “I’d call you ‘Marshal,’ but I’m worried I might choke on it.”

  “I feel that way from time to time myself. Last time I seen him, he was headed for the Badger’s Tail, wanting Glatman to pay him off.”

  “Who’s Glatman?” Art inquired, although he had a hunch, remembering Bliss Mossman’s words from their last time in camp.

  Whitesell’s laughter surprised him. “Murray Glatman? Why, he’s nothing but the man behind this whole damned thing. He thought it up and talked us into it, though I admit it didn’t take a too much persuasion.”

  “Runs the bar and whorehouse, does he?” Catlin asked.

  “And more besides. Good luck with him. He’ll likely chew you up and spit you out again.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Catlin answered.

  “That’s about how I feel,” Whitesell said, and whipped his right hand out from under cover, fingers clasped around the butt of a Schofield revolver.

  Catlin’s Colt Navy revolver beat him to it, belching a .44 slug that ripped into Whitesell’s chest, pitching him over backward and his chair along with him. The only part of him still visible after he fell was from the knees down—or knees up, as he landed. From where Catlin was standing, he could see a hole in Whitesell’s left boot sole.

  Pathetic.

  Luis Chávez poked his head inside the marshal’s office, scanning left and right, while Catlin walked around the desk to verify that Whitesell wasn’t getting up again without a man or two to hoist him, turning back to Chávez as they heard gunfire across the street, coming from the direction of the Badger’s Tail.

  Catlin and his companion reached the Main Street sidewalk as that firing ceased. Off to their right, a sound of rattling and clopping hooves alerted them to other people on the move. As they stood watching, lawyer Tilman Crull broke from the livery, astride a palomino, racing toward the northern end of town without a backward glance. Close on his heels, the hunched form of Judge Butler occupied a buckboard drawn by what appeared to be a sable roan.

  Luis Chávez had his Colt Navy pistol raised, was lining up a shot, when Catlin pushed the weapon’s muzzle down. “Forget about them,” he instructed. “It’s high time we paid a call on the saloon and him that owns it.”

  The Badger’s Tail

  “Sounds like our company’s arrived,” Glatman advised Jed Findlay, rising from the padded swivel chair behind his desk, drawing a Colt Pocket Police revolver from its chamois leather harness under his left arm. “Shall we go down and meet them?”

  “Nope. I reckon not,” Findlay replied.

  “Say what?”

  “I changed my mind,” said Findlay. “You can deal with ’em yourself. I’m clearing out.”

  “You’ll go without your ten percent, then,” Glatman cautioned him.

  “It’s looking more like ten percent of dead,” said Findlay. “I can do without that, thank you all the same.”

  “You’re running out on me, you bastard?”

  “Fast as I can travel,” Jed affirmed. “And for the record, my parents were married.”

  Glatman raised his six-gun, tried to keep the motion smooth and fast, but Fielding drew his right-hand Peacemaker with deadly speed and fanned a shot almost before the gun cleared leather, echoing like thunder inside Glatman’s office.

  Glatman had no opportunity to fire his Colt. A .44-caliber bullet drilled him through the breadbasket and punched him back against the built-in bookshelves ranged along the wall behind his desk. Eyes glazing over in a rush, darkness descending like the curtain at a theater, he toppled forward and felt nothing as his face collided with the nearest corner of his desk.

  Glatman was stone-cold dead before he hit the floor, staining the office carpet with his blood.

  * * *

  * * *

  Art Catlin ran around the back side of the Badger’s Tail while Luis Chávez watched the front.

  Before they split up, Catlin saw Bliss Mossman in the barroom with Job Hooper and Mike Limbaugh, standing over dead men, with their rifles primed to deal with any more who might appear. He left them to it, dashing down a narrow alleyway beside the Badger’s Tail and winding up out back just as a figure shoved through the saloon’s back door.

  “Findlay!” he called. “That’s far enough.”

  “I’d have to disagree with you on that, Art,” Findlay answered back. He stopped, though, hands dangling loosely over his twin Colt Peacemakers. “Who tipped you off about my name?”

  “The fake lawman they used to have.”

  “No longer with us, is he?”

  “Gone to his reward.”

  “Can’t say I’m sorry, but I sense there’s something else you want to ask, before we tie this up.”

  “There is,” Catlin agreed. “I understand you helping steal the longhorns. Money talks, and all that. Even burning up Tim Berryman the way you did, I guess some might call that a kind of accident.”

  “And they’d be right. I didn’t plan on anything like that. The fire was just a signal to them other boys, you know?”

  “I’ll leave that for a judge and jury, but I’d like to know why you stuck Wolford with that boot knife.”

  “Turns out that he saw me do something way back, and it was eating at him. Hell, I couldn’t have him tattling to Mossman right before the raid, could I?”

  “That one will get you hanged, regardless of the rest,” said Catlin.

  “Only if they catch me,” Findlay answered.

  “You’re already caught.”

  The gunman smirked at that. “You’ve got a high opinion of yourself.”

  “Feel free to prove me wrong.”

  “Well, now, I might just—”

  Moving while he spoke, leaving his comment incomplete, Findlay went for both of his Colts at once, his right hand slightly quicker than the left. It hardly mattered, though, as Catlin cleared his holster, cocked his Colt Navy revolver on the rise, and drilled his opposition’s Adam’s apple from a range of fifteen feet or so.

  Blood spouted from the wound as Findlay fired both Peacemakers at once, shots wasted on the open ground between himself and Catlin. Art saw Findlay’s eyes roll back, only the whites showing before he toppled over backward, hit the ground with force enough to raise a small dust cloud, and lay still as the dust settled over him.

  When he reached the Badger’s Tail barroom, he found Mossman, Chávez, Hooper, and Limbaugh huddled there around Mayor Cyrus Harding. Harding had his hands raised, fingers interlaced atop his head, eyeing his captors as if one of them might gun him down at any second.

  “Who was that out back?” Mossman asked Art.

  “You’d know him as Jay Fielding,” Catlin said.

  “I take it that he won’t be joining us?”

  “Not in this life, boss. What about the man behind all this? The marshal claimed they call him Murray Glatman.”

  “Dead upstairs,” the Bar X boss replied. “Looks like he had a falling-out with Fielding, or whatever that trash called himself.”

  “We missed the judge and lawyer,” Chávez said. “Sorry, boss.”

  “No need to apologize,” said Mossman. “They were just the small fry, anyhow. I’ll put the word around when we hit Independence. And speaking of that . . .”

  “We’ve got a cattle drive to finish,” Catlin said.

  “We do indeed,” Mossman replied. And for the first time Catlin could remember, the boss smiled.

  EPILOGUE

  June 13

  Independence, Missouri

  Two months and less four days, plus thirteen,” Bliss Mossman said, while counting out greenbacks. “I make that ninety-two dollars I owe you, and I’m adding five for all the trouble we ran into on the way.”

  “Obliged, sir,” Art Catlin replied.
He took the cash, not counting it, and wedged it down into the left-hand pocket of his blue jeans.

  “No, Art,” Mossman answered. “I’m obliged to you and all the rest for getting here at all. We could have lost it all, three times I’m sure of, and I won’t forget it.”

  “Well . . .”

  They sat across from one another at a window table in the Blue Bird restaurant, removed sufficiently from the stockyards that diners wouldn’t be reminded constantly of where their steaks and chops came from, before they wound up butchered, aged, and grilled.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve given any thought to what comes next?” Mossman inquired.

  “Just thought I’d take a few days off and have a look around,” Art said.

  “Sure, sure. I understand,” the Bar X boss replied. “I’d feel that way myself, but I’ve been missing little Danny back at home. We’re late already, what with one thing and another. Gayle might think I’m up to something that I shouldn’t be, the longer that I’m gone from Santa Fe.”

  “I guess it was a rough one,” Catlin said. “Not that I have a lot to judge by.”

  “Worst I’ve seen for trouble,” Mossman granted. “If I’m lucky, there won’t be another like it.”

  “Then I wish you luck, sir.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears, son. And if you’re ever back in Santa Fe, looking for work . . .”

  “Yes, sir. And thanks. I’ll think on it.”

  They rose, shook hands, and parted, Mossman exiting the restaurant while Art moved toward the counter and a menu mounted on the wall. He realized that he was hungry, but the last thing that he wanted was a slab of beef.

  He’d told Mossman that he’d consider going back to the Bar X, but even as Art spoke those words, he knew they didn’t have the ring of truth. In fact, after the grueling trip he’d had, with all the blood spilled between Santa Fe and Longwood, he was reconsidering a trade he’d given up as lost.

  Or maybe he could make it new again, try it a slightly different way.