The Devil's Boneyard

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Booth and Flynn had it with them,” Charlie replied.

  “Good thing I came along, ain’t it?” Walt cracked. “You two mighta got pretty hungry by the time you got back.”

  * * *

  “What made you think they were gonna try to steal that money?” Mack Bragg asked Ben. “Hell, they went in the saloon lookin’ for you. You sure they weren’t two fellows you mighta sent to prison when you were a Ranger?”

  “My memory ain’t that bad,” Ben replied. “I never saw those two men before the other day when I saw ’em outside that church. And I’m willin’ to bet they may or may not have known those two you’re holdin’ in that cell in there had all that bank money. I know who did know they had it.”

  “Walt Murphy,” Mack said. “I know you said he was in with that bunch at that place they call the church, but he’s the town sheriff. Besides, why would he wanna have you killed?”

  “Because he knows I know, and he’s worried that I might call the Rangers down on him and his little business with Reuben Drum. I think the out-and-out attempt to shoot me was for another reason as well. One of those men I shot at Cletus Priest’s store was Lester Drum, Reuben’s son.”

  Mack slowly shook his head as he looked at Ben. “I swear, you do have a knack for makin’ enemies. Buzzard’s Bluff didn’t have any idea of the trouble you were gonna attract when you inherited that saloon. If we’d known, we mighta took up a collection to buy out your interest.”

  “I’m so good at managin’ that saloon that even if you had, Rachel mighta hired me back on salary,” Ben joked. Then he got serious again. “Mack, you’d best watch your back till they send somebody to pick up your prisoners. And I don’t know if those two that came after me at the Coyote just now are in this with somebody else, or not, but I think you oughta play it like they are. Might be a good idea if I come in and watch the jail when you wanna go to the dinin’ room to eat. Wouldn’t be any trouble for me. Just tell me what time you wanna go for supper and I’ll be here then. All right?”

  “Well, I hate to impose on you,” Mack answered, “but I have been kinda uneasy when I leave this place and those two prisoners unguarded.”

  “It’s a deal, then. What time do you want me here?” When Mack said five-thirty, Ben said, “I’ll be here. Right now, I expect I’d best go back to the Coyote. My folks will be wonderin’ what happened to me, and I imagine Tuck Tucker has about drove all of ’em crazy by now.”

  * * *

  By the time Ben returned to the Lost Coyote, Merle Baker’s handcart was parked in front of the saloon. “I was wonderin’ when you were gonna show up,” the undertaker greeted him. “Didn’t take you long to drum up some business for me. Who are these two? You think anybody will be coming to claim the bodies?”

  “I don’t know their names,” Ben answered, “and there won’t be anybody showin’ up to claim ’em, that’s for sure. They were just two of a gang of outlaws that are holed up about four miles across the river from Waco. Stick ’em in the ground where you buried the rest of the no-names. I expect it’ll be under the same arrangement as before.” Merle usually received two dollars from the town council to take care of the bodies of no-name drifters and outlaws. Merle was glad to do it at that price because he often received a bonus, depending on the dead man’s possessions and their value.

  Ben went inside then, where the discussion about the recent shootings was still very much underway. “Ben!” Tuck Tucker announced loudly when he saw him. “We was wonderin’ where you took off to. Tiny said you just stepped inside long enough to shoot them fellers, then turned around and left. I was in the outhouse when I heard the shots, but I got here as quick as I could. We ain’t been able to figure out what’s goin’ on.”

  “There ain’t much more I can tell you,” Ben replied. “I was just as surprised as you were, so I went to the jail right away to see if they mighta been creating a distraction while somebody else was makin’ an attempt to free Mack’s prisoners.” He remembered that he had wondered at the time why he hadn’t bumped into Tuck on his way to the jail. He walked over to the bar where Tiny was talking to Rachel. “Are you all right?” He asked Rachel.

  “Oh, yes, I’m all right,” she said facetiously, “just another day at the Lost Coyote. I’ve gotten quite used to it ever since you decided to retire from the violent world of the Texas Rangers and join the peaceful citizens of Buzzard’s Bluff.” Sensing he was about to ask if she would like him to leave, she quickly added, “But don’t you get any notions about leaving me with this business.”

  “You heard her say that, didn’t you?” Ben asked Tiny. Tiny said that he did and that he would remember it. “The only reason I’m still here right now,” Ben went on, “is because you’re so handy with that oak club of yours. So, I wanna thank you again.” Tiny grinned, reached under the counter, and pulled his club up for them to see.

  “Are you calm enough to eat your dinner now?” Rachel asked. “Because Annie isn’t going to leave until she sees that you get fed.” He said that he was ready to eat, so she told him to sit down at the table next to the kitchen where she generally ate. He obeyed, and Tiny moved back up the bar to talk to a customer. After Ben was seated, Rachel joined him, bringing cups and the coffeepot with her. “Annie’s fixin’ your plate. I told her to put a piece of ham and a biscuit on another plate for me. I wasn’t halfway through my dinner when you came in and those men started shooting. Is it any wonder I couldn’t think about eating until after Merle Baker and Tiny carried those dead men out of here?” She frowned as she stared at him in distress. I swear, for a minute there, I thought I’d lost my partner.”

  “Like I said, if it hadn’t been for Tiny’s quick thinkin’, I expect you mighta had.”

  In a couple of minutes, Annie brought the food to the table and took the coffeepot back to the kitchen with her. “I’m gonna get my kitchen cleaned up now,” she said to Rachel. “There’s still some biscuits left, if you get hungry later.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Annie, I’ll clean up what mess we make. You run along home before Johnny starts worrying about you.” After Annie returned to the kitchen, Rachel gave Ben a knowing gaze and said, “When those two men came in and started talking to Tiny, he said they seemed friendly as could be. But Tiny said he looked at Annie and she had one of those worried looks on her face.”

  Ben shook his head and chuckled. “I swear, Rachel, you and Clarice have got everybody thinkin’ Annie’s some kind of fortune-teller, or something.”

  “She knew!” Rachel insisted. “Maybe she didn’t know those two men were gonna try to shoot you. I’ll give you that. But she knew they were evil and something bad was gonna happen.”

  “If you say so,” Ben replied, “all I know for sure is she’s gettin’ to be a better cook than she was when I first got here. If we ever start servin’ supper here, I might have to say good-bye to the hotel dinin’ room.”

  “She knew!” Rachel insisted again, unwilling to concede. When he just chuckled, she said, “And you oughta tell her what you just told me about her cookin’. It would tickle her to think she was pleasing you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  At five-thirty, Ben walked up the steps to the front door of the sheriff’s office and knocked. He heard the bolt slide almost immediately, and Mack opened the door. “You must be hungry,” Ben said. “You opened the door so quick. It might notta been me.”

  “I was lookin’ out the window and saw you comin’,” Mack said. “I’ll bring my prisoners their supper when I come back. And like I said, I appreciate you helpin’ me out.”

  “I figure I oughta,” Ben said with a chuckle, “since I’m the one who dumped ’em on you. I’ll go up to eat later. I didn’t eat dinner till late, anyway. In the mornin’, I’ll ride over to Madisonville and wire my boss in Austin to send somebody to get ’em.” He walked outside with Mack and stood on the steps for a while after Mack left for the hotel. Looking up and down the street, he saw nothing that seemed suspicious. There p
robably was no one else with those two who came after me, he thought and went back inside the office, locking the door behind him. “But it doesn’t pay to be careless,” he said aloud, unaware he was being watched from the bank of the creek.

  “I was wonderin’ how long it was gonna be before he showed up at the sheriff’s office,” Walt Murphy commented to his two partners. “Him and the sheriff are takin’ turns watchin’ Pete and Ormond—looks like—and that chunk of money, too. Well, that’s just dandy. Makes our job that much easier, to catch both of ’em in the same place, the money and Savage.” He planned to take care of the sheriff as well, but the most important job was to get that money. Second to that was to kill Ben Savage to compensate Reuben Drum for the loss of his son and to prevent any question of his connection to the church.

  “I don’t know, Walt,” Charlie Taylor questioned. “It don’t look like an easy thing to break into that sheriff’s office. It looks to me like they’re ready for somethin’ to happen. How are you thinkin’ about doin’ it? Just charge in there and break the door down?”

  “And get shot when we run in the door,” John Temple finished for him. He and Charlie had already talked about Walt’s determination to get his hands on that money, and they viewed it as a simple suicide plan.

  Walt looked at his two companions in crime and smiled. “What’s the matter, boys, gettin’ cold feet? We’re gonna need a little help, and I plan to get it from inside.” When both Charlie and Temple looked puzzled by that, he explained. “I’ve been studyin’ that jail section and there’s two little windows on that back wall. I figure those windows are up close to the ceilin’ in two separate cells. If we can find out if Pete and Ormond are in one of those cells, we can drop a gun through the window. I’ve got an extra pistol. If one of you has an extra, we can drop a gun for both of ’em. They might be able to do the killin’ for us, and all we’d have to do is bust the door open and find the money.”

  “Damn,” Charlie swore, “that might work. Might even give Ormond the chance to square up his account with both the jaspers that killed his brothers.” Looking at it in that light, it seemed to him like the perfect vengeance against Ben Savage and Mack Bragg, poetic justice, even. “Let’s do it,” he said. “I’ll ride up behind the jail and drop the gun in the window, but I’ll have to drop your extra gun. I ain’t got one, myself.”

  “I swear, I ain’t got one, either,” Temple confessed.

  Walt looked from one of them to the other, plainly disappointed, for he couldn’t conceive of any man who made his living with a gun, on either side of the law, not carrying a spare. “Well,” he finally said, “it won’t make that much difference, I reckon. One gun might be all they need, since they’ll have the element of surprise.” When Charlie got up from his position seated on the bank as if to go get his horse, Walt stopped him. “You’d best wait till it starts to get a little darker, so you won’t be so noticeable from the street. It’ll pay us to wait till after supper before we go marchin’ up to that jail, anyway.”

  “What if Savage leaves when the sheriff comes back?” Temple asked. “We need to catch both of ’em together.”

  Walt didn’t answer right away, since he hadn’t considered that. After thinking the situation over, he said, “You’re right. We need to catch ’em both in there, so we best not wait till dark.” He was not comfortable operating in broad daylight, since he might be recognized as the sheriff of Waco. But the lure of twenty thousand dollars waiting just inside that jail was enough to persuade him to risk it. That’s the reason I brought the mask, he told himself. His mind made up, he handed his extra handgun to Charley. “All right, if you’re still wantin’ to do it, ride on up behind the jail and see if you can get the gun in the window. From here, it don’t look like there’s any glass in it. Mack Bragg oughta be back from supper before much longer. I expect that’s where he went, since he walked up toward the hotel. Tell Ormond to open fire as soon as Bragg comes in. If we’re lucky, Savage will walk back in the cell room with him and he can get both of ’em. If he doesn’t, we’ll get whichever one he misses, because we’ll be comin’ in the front door. As soon as they’re both down, we’ll tear that place apart and find that money. If we work quick enough, we’ll get what we came for and be on our way outta town before anybody knows what’s goin’ on.”

  Walt and Temple stood at the edge of the trees along the creek and watched as Charlie’s horse loped across the open strip between the creek and the back of the buildings. From where they stood, they could see him ride up to the back of the jail. “I reckon we might as well bring our horses up here, ready to ride,” Walt said. “We need to be ready to ride as soon as we hear any shootin’ inside the jail.”

  Standing up in the stirrups, Charlie was just high enough to see in the tiny window. “Ormond?” he whispered. “Pete?”

  Inside the jail cell, Ormond sat up on his bunk and looked at Pete, thinking it was he who had whispered. Then the whispered names came again, and he realized it had come from the window above his bunk. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Who’s that?”

  “It’s me, Charlie,” he answered. “I’m at the window. I can see in it, but I can’t raise high enough to look down into the room. Am I over your cell?”

  “Yeah, that window’s right over my bunk,” Ormond said. “Whaddaya doin’ up there?”

  “We’ve come to bust you and Pete outta there. I’ve got a pistol for ya. If I push it through this window, can you catch it?”

  “Hell, yeah, drop it,” Ormond eagerly replied. “Who’s with you? We heard two of the boys tried to gun down Ben Savage and got killed theirselves. Who was it?”

  “It was Booth Brayer and Dick Flynn,” Pete answered him. “Is there anybody else with you?”

  “Walt Murphy and John Temple,” Charlie said. “You oughta make it a whole lot easier to get you outta there. You’re bound to get a shot off before they know what’s happenin’. Maybe get both of ’em. But we’ll be comin’ in the front door, in case you don’t. Do you know where they put the money?”

  “Yeah,” Ormond replied. “They stuck it in a strongbox like they use on the stagecoaches, and it’s settin’ on the floor behind the sheriff’s desk. Did you say Walt Murphy?” He asked, thinking it unlikely the sheriff would stick his neck out.

  “That’s what I said, Walt Murphy. All right, look up. I’m fixin’ to drop this gun. It’s loaded with six rounds.” When Ormond said he was ready, Charlie dropped it. Then he went on to tell the two prisoners what the plan was and that they were to wait until Mack Bragg returned. “When he does, cut ’em both down, if you can. As soon as we hear you shootin’, we’ll bust in the door.” They assured him that they understood what to do. “Okay, then,” Charlie said, “I reckon we’ll see you pretty quick now. I’m gone.” He sat down in the saddle, wheeled his horse away from the rear of the jail, and loped back to the cover of the creek to wait and watch for Bragg’s return.

  In the original plan, they figured to recover Pete and Ormond’s horses once Ben Savage and Mack Bragg were out of the picture. Now, however, Walt figured a stray bullet or two in the jailbreak would result in the death of the prisoners and cancel the need for their horses. And once they were clear of Buzzard’s Bluff, he could consider the possibility of eliminating Charlie and Temple from sharing in the bank money.

  * * *

  “Here you go,” Cindy Moore announced when she came to the table with a large metal tray with two plates of food. “Two suppers for your prisoners. If you keep that dish towel over ’em, they should still be fairly warm by the time you get back to the jail.”

  “Those two birds oughta appreciate the meals they’re gettin’ while they’re guests at my little hotel,” Mack replied. “They ain’t gonna get this kind of chuck at their next stop.”

  “How many more days will we be feeding them?” Lacy James asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Mack answered after gulping the last swallow from his cup, “however long it takes ’em to send somebody
to transport ’em. We ain’t even notified the marshal yet. Ben’s gonna ride over to Madisonville in the mornin’ to wire Austin, so I can stay here and keep an eye on ’em.” He got up from his chair and picked up the tray.

  “Don’t drop it before you get back to the jail with it,” Lacy had to say when it looked like Mack didn’t have the tray level.

  “I won’t,” Mack said. “And even if I do, I’ll just pick it all up and put it back on the plates. They’ll never know the difference, and I guarantee you, they’ll eat every bit of it. Ben said he’s comin’ up here before you close.” Cindy held the door open for him as he walked out with his tray of food.

  When he got back to the jail, he started to knock on the office door, but almost dropped the big tray when he let go with one hand. “Ben,” he yelled. “It’s me, open the door.” In a few seconds, Ben slid the bolt and opened the door, his six-gun in hand just in case. He took a quick look outside before he holstered his weapon and held the door open for Mack. “I damn-near dropped it when I started to knock on the door,” Mack said.

  “I’ll watch ’em while you take the tray in,” Ben said as he closed the door and locked it again. “That grub smells pretty good,” he commented as he passed in front of Mack to open the cell room door. When he opened it, he drew his six-gun again and told Pete and Ormond to move to the back of the cell.

  Everything was happening just as Ormond had hoped it would. Both Savage and Bragg were in the cell room at the same time. He could feel the six-shooter jammed in his belt behind him, and he battled his emotions in an effort to remain patient, afraid that something would go wrong at any moment. Then, for some reason, Bragg hesitated before the cell door. Without thinking that he might be waiting for Ben to unlock the cell door, Ormond panicked. They know! The thought flashed through his mind, and he suddenly reached behind him and pulled the gun out of his belt and fired at Bragg. His shot went through the bars and ricocheted off the big metal tray Mack was holding, sending the two plates and the tray flying and causing Mack to fall back against the bars. Ormond dropped to his knees from the impact of Ben’s shot to his chest before he could get off a second shot.