Dead Warrior (5 page)

It seemed a pity that we couldn’t afford to linger in such an oasis. “This would be a nice place to stay,” I remarked, “if it were only on the other side of the state line.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Blackfoot Terry wondered. After glancing all around the saloon, he turned to the landlord. “How about it? Is there anything to show that the Texas boundary runs past here?”

“There has to be, or I wouldn’t get no business from gents moving north.” Our host tested the quality of my silver dollar by bouncing it on the bar before he pocketed it and gave us a refill. “I can’t see as it would make any difference to you boys, but there’s a boundary blaze on that tree south of my ramada.”

Beginning to get McQuinn’s drift, I watched him as he
once more eyed the dirt floor, the plank walls spotted with knotholes and the base beams which formed the building’s only foundation. “We can move the table and the bar separately,” he mused. “Look here, Mr. — er — ?”

“I ain’t found out what my name is today myself,” the landlord replied to this prompting. Drawing a cigar box from under the bar, he took out one of the paper slips it contained and read the penciled scrawl upon it. “I’m Alexander Hamilton,” he said, holding out the box to me. “Here, take one, so we can get acquainted.”

I drew Patrick Henry, while McQuinn turned out to be Benjamin Franklin. “I used to use Civil War generals,” Hamilton informed us, “but one day a customer from Georgia found out he was William Tecumseh Sherman, and he shot himself; so to keep from losing trade I went back to the Revolution. It’s nice to have you distinguished patriots drinking my redeye.”

“We’ll drink a little more of it,” McQuinn said, “if you’ll let our horses drag this place into the Lone Star State for a little while.” He peeled two hundred-dollar bills from a roll which didn’t seem to miss them. “And we’ll move you back before we leave.”

“That ain’t bad pay,” Alexander Hamilton admitted, “but I may lose some ex-Texas trade, and it’ll be hard on the shebang. I think I ought to have another one of them things, Ben.”

The chief difficulty was seeing that the front didn’t get hauled away, leaving the remainder of the saloon behind. The solution was the industry of the squaw. Catering to the exclusive trade of Rustlers Roost, she had a couple of lariats aside from the one she had been working on when we arrived. Purchasing them, we ran them in back of the shanty and tied the ends to the reins of my six harnessed horses. When
we had scooped away the sand from the front of the building, it slid forward at the cost of no particular equine effort.

“Alex,” I said, as the landlord was filling our glasses at the new location, “there’s one thing you might do for us. Does — ” Unable to guess the legal status of the squaw, I was at a loss as to just how to describe her. Finally I nodded in the direction of the shelter where she plied her craft. “Would she cook us some fresh meat, if you happen to have any?”

“She’d cut it off her own rump, if you paid her enough,” Hamilton assured us, “but you might lose a tooth. If I was you, I’d rather have some chunks of that antelope I shot this morning.”

When Hamilton left to attend to the butchering, we pushed the table over to the saloon’s rear window, through which Terry could keep an eye on the wheel tracks winding south toward us. Very pleased with ourselves and each other, we were in the mood for talk.

“How did you happen to leave Three Deuces, taking the stage line with you?” McQuinn wanted to know.

I told him about the sudden demise of the camp, and then, because the moment was one which encouraged personal revelations, I tried to explain why I hadn’t wanted to go to Powder Keg with the rest. “It was foolish, I suppose, but the deliberate desertion of a live and going town rubbed me the wrong way. You probably can’t understand that, having lived in the West all your life.”

“Just parts of it,” the gambler said. “I lived in New York until my father decided that a historian had an obligation to investigate at first hand the phenomenon of modern civilization known as the far frontier. As it turned out, of course, he got killed, and I received an education which would astonish the average scholar.” McQuinn dismissed the years
spent among the Indians with a gesture. “Then, after I was bought back from the Blackfeet, relatives sent me to Andover.”

“How old were you then?”

“Fifteen, and I could barely remember the alphabet.” He shook his head, and his mustache once more gave its twitch of dry mirth. “I was boxed with boys who thought they were being wild if they smoked, and I had been twice on the warpath.”

I tried to imagine what that misfitting must have been like and gave up. “Did you run away?”

“I wanted to.” McQuinn moistened his throat with water and slid a gulp of whiskey down the skidway. “But I wouldn’t admit those lads could do anything I couldn’t, and in three years I’d caught up. Something of my father’s scholarly aptitude had been passed on to me, I guess, but it was too late to turn me into the ornament of any profession. While the family was talking of what college to send me to, I got in my first real poker game and came out of it with enough money to go West.” He lifted a long hand and let it fall on the table. “I had to come back, you see. There was no other place that had room for me.”

“I didn’t have any such positive reason for craving the frontier,” I said in my turn. “But I couldn’t find a career that would have me, so I finally tried pioneering.”

“You’re sure pioneering with that stagecoach in No Man’s Land,” he asserted. “Where do you figure on going with it?”

“Oh, I’ll try the cattle towns south of here. If that doesn’t work out well, I’ll swing over to New Mexico.”

“I should think you’d find that better,” Terry said. “A stage line that gets the concession for carrying bullion from a mining town can really pay the whiskey bill.”

Our antelope steaks came on then, to monopolize our attention.
It wasn’t until McQuinn was puffing on a cigar and I had my pipe going that we resumed conversation.

“Where are you heading for yourself?” I inquired.

“Fort Griffin, I think. It’s the main headquarters for the buffalo hunters, now that the northern herds have been killed off, and they say that there’s more money being fed to the tiger in its gambling joints than in any place south of Denver.” Terry removed his cigar and waved the smoke away. “But you’ll probably be going to New Mexico,” he went on. “Do you happen to know Dolly Tandy, Baltimore?”

“No, but the boys were still talking to themselves about her when I reached Three Deuces.” The idea of a girl banking faro in the saloons of a mining camp had never appealed to me, but I thought I should show polite interest. “Is she anything like the legend?”

“Anything
good
that you may have heard included in what you call the legend could be true of her.”

The look he gave me when he said that contained a challenge I didn’t think my conduct had merited. “Why don’t you tell
her
that?” I suggested. “I’ve explained to you that I never met her myself.”

It surprised me to see him look abashed. For one thing it made me realize how young he was, a couple of years younger than myself for all his Western notoriety. In place of being a hard-bitten killer, he looked to me like a youth who has been rightfully accused of being in love and doesn’t know how to deny it.

In an instant, though, his gambler’s stoicism masked him again. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded; but we’re friends, and I didn’t want you to have any mistaken notion about her. Camp talk isn’t always washed before it’s hung on the line.”

Not all the wishes I had heard expressed with regard to
Miss Tandy had been chaste, but they had been voiced as wishes only. “The general complaint seemed to be that she was more interested in collecting faro chips than hearts.” To ease the situation, I tipped the bottle twice. “What prompted your question anyhow?”

“Well, she’s somewhere in — ” Our talk had not made him forget to be watchful. When he paused, I saw that he was staring through the window, craning his neck and squinting. “Dust along the trace,” he announced a second later. “It looks like we’re going to have that company we’ve been expecting.”

WHILE BLACKFOOT TERRY and I were moving the table away from the window, Alexander Hamilton was filling a bottle from the keg. Above the keening of the flowing whiskey I could hear his voice raised, even more sadly, in song.

Leaning our rifles against the wall within easy reach, we stood at the window, watching the dust get thicker and nearer. Outside there was the hush of late afternoon in a warm country. Inside the landlord was still singing as he drew another quart from his supply of named-to-suit-the-customer spirits.

I counted the riders as they rounded into sight, one by one, around a patch of brush. There were five of them, so the Indians must have killed one. Looking at McQuinn, I saw he was picking up his rifle. As I followed his example and levered a cartridge into the chamber, I heard Hamilton’s plaintive voice again.

I never did learn how Lulu’s paw’s son-in-law escaped from his horrible predicament. The horsemen speeded up at sight of the building, but they moved even faster when Terry sent a shot over their heads. By the time the sound of the explosion had died away, they had wheeled and scattered.

“That’s better,” McQuinn shouted, when they were facing us from a safer distance. “What do you want, Ed?”

The only one who showed any signs of rough treatment from the Indians was a fellow with a bandanna tied around his left shoulder. It was he who undertook to answer.

“You’ll find out when we gun you out of there.”

“I asked the sheriff,” my companion called back. “For easier talking, I’ll give you a truce, Ed, but tell your deputies they’ll never see Centipede again if they crowd closer then I want them to.”

The tall rider wearing the star brought his men up to the point which Terry then indicated. Up to that moment he had said nothing to McQuinn, but at the latter’s further urging he spoke his piece.

“As sheriff of Borro County, New Mexico, I’ve rid to arrest the man charged with shootin’ Phil Cooke, which happens
to be you. It shouldn’t be breakin’ the law to kill a snipe like what he was, but it is; and I’m paid to uphold the law.”

“I see,” Terry said. “Has the sheriff of Borro County, New Mexico, got a writ of extradition that would authorize him to take a resident of Texas across the state boundary?”

“I can’t say he has.” The sheriff, who had been looking troubled, cheered up a little. “Are we in Texas?”

“No, but I am,” McQuinn retorted. “I can forgive a posse hot on the trail of a fugitive for ignoring the neutrality of No Man’s Land. But if you try to make an arrest in a sovereign state where you have no authority to operate, why that’s kidnapping — a crime with which we Texans have no patience. I’d never think of resisting arrest, mind you; but if a gang of marauders make a lawless assault upon me you can count on me — with the aid of my fellow Texan here — to make a good job of defending my constitutional rights.”

Manifestly the sheriff was pleased. Three of his deputies were dubious, however, and wrath flamed up in the florid face of the man with the wounded shoulder.

“A murderer ain’t got no rights,” he growled. “And where’s the proof that you’re in Texas anyhow?”

It occurred to me that there was one appeal to reason which had not yet been made. “You can tell it by our accent,” I suggested, “and that tree over there, and
the kind of whiskey they serve in this saloon
.”

That got home to them, particularly the sheriff. “We ain’t got any law business that takes us to Texas,” he asserted, “but we’d like to make a peaceful visit just to see how saloons on your side of the boundary compare with these here in No Man’s Land.”

While relieved at the general outcome, I wasn’t sure that it was wise to dispense with our rifles. McQuinn seemed
satisfied that all was well, however, and was relighting his cigar as the posse entered Rustlers Roost.

What immediately became plain was that decorum would be observed. Peace officers might keep truce with the man they wanted, under circumstances which made it improper for them to move against him, but fraternization was banned. The sheriff winked one eye in reply to Terry’s curt gesture of salute, but the rest of his long, bony face remained expressionless. The four deputies joined him at the bar, leaving us in possession of the table.

To emphasize our isolation, McQuinn and I agreed to place that article of furniture beneath the window once more. It was while we were actually engaged in lifting the table that the wounded deputy snatched his gun from its holster.

“You’re under arrest!” he roared at Terry. “Stick ’em up, or I’ll — ”

He didn’t finish, because the sheriff had rammed a revolver into his ribs. “Put it up, Sid, and don’t do that again,” he said.

Although complying with the order, Sid glared at his chief. “You’re a hell of a sheriff,” he stormed. “We follow an outlaw a hundred miles, and when we finally catch up with him you take his side and throw down on one of your own deputies.”

“Well, I won’t be aimin’ a gun at no such critter if I have trouble with you again,” the sheriff informed him. “I swore you in, and I reckon I can swear you out. God damn you, you ain’t no deputy!”

I was not the only one who blinked at this method of handling the situation. “You can’t do that, Ed,” one of the others declared. “A man’s always deputized for a whole manhunt, and you ain’t got the right to fire any of us till we get back home. What’s more, I don’t know as Sid didn’t do the right thing, and maybe we ought to back him up.”

Alexander Hamilton slipped outside. Terry removed his right arm from the table. I was wishing I had practiced drawing a revolver when Ed finally spoke.

“I’m resigning’,” he said. Unpinning the star from his shirt with his left hand, he shoved the badge of office into his pocket. Next he looked at his four associates, one after the other. “Do you get that, all of you? I’ve quit; I ain’t goin’ back. Now does any one of you boys want to tell me which sheriff you all are deputies of?”

It was a victory for logic, if not necessarily for law and order. “I guess we can’t be deputies if that’s the way you’re going to act,” one of the former peace officers muttered, “but I think we ought to get full mileage from the county.”

“Sure you ought, and I’ll say so in my letter of resignation.” The sheriff then waved cheerfully to us. “A new citizen’s buyin’, so you Texas old-timers ought to get in on it. That was a nice piece of ridin’, Terry.”

Pointing out that if they hadn’t been following McQuinn they would never have been surrounded by Indians in the first place, Sid continued to sulk. Unscathed themselves, the remaining ex-posse members could afford to be more philosophical. A second drink sufficed to establish an era of good feeling. Terry was just spilling money on the bar for another round when I heard the voice of the landlord.

“Say, Pat.”

It took a minute for me to remember that I was Patrick Henry. “What’s on your mind, Alex?”

“Well, now that it don’t matter to you where my saloon is, I was wonderin’ if you’d mind movin’ it back out of Texas again. Not all of my customers get along with the law as well as you and Ben Franklin, and I’ll lose their trade if I’m on the wrong side of the border.”

Ed Whittlesey, to give the quondam sheriff his full name,
rolled his eyes and rested them sadly on McQuinn. “I wish I’d been raised by the Blackfeet, but shucks, I never had no early advantages. How do you make saloons jump like checkers anyways?”

My horses had been grazing beyond the cottonwoods around Hamilton’s water hole. As Ed, Terry and myself went to get them, the former caught sight of the coach, which had been left in the shade of the trees in order to keep the driver’s seat cool.

“It looked from the tracks as if you must’ve hitched a ride on a stage, but I couldn’t believe it,” he remarked. “What’re you goin’ to do for a bronc, Terry?”

“I think Alex can supply me with one, or can scrape up a customer with a horse to spare.” McQuinn gave a peculiar whistle, and one of the wheel horses stood fast, instead of shying away, as it usually did when I tried to catch it. “At least I don’t think that fat squaw of his makes lariats just to skip rope with.”

The landlord did indeed prove equal to the occasion. It wasn’t quite dark when a man showed up leading a saddled mustang. By then I had a pleasant cargo of liquor aboard and was in the mood to go on indefinitely, but Terry insisted on pulling out.

“We’ve done fine here so far,” he replied to my remonstrance, “but the best way to end up with a slit throat is to try to make a night of it in a place like this.”

So it was a few miles down the trace that we had our nightcap. It was also our stirrup cup, as they planned to ride south and east to Fort Griffin at dawn, while I intended to push south toward Tascosa.

Whittlesey was readying his blanket roll for travel the next day when Terry took me aside. “We’ll be meeting again in some camp or other,” he told me.

“Sure,” I said, not believing it probable. Still I had a good, warm feeling for the man, and I grinned at him. “Good luck to you.”

“I think I’ll have it now.” His face showed his earnestness. “Things haven’t been going too well lately. It’s bad when you have a couple of killings as close together as those of Brown and Cooke, you know. But it was good luck meeting you, and things have been going fine ever since.”

Having said that much, he lowered his voice. “Do you remember what we were talking about back at Rustlers Roost, just before the posse showed up?”

My head somewhat abuzz from the potations of the day before, I had to think a moment. “Let’s see; Miss Tandy, wasn’t it?”

“Right. Well, I was expecting to see her when I got farther down in New Mexico; but I ran afoul of Cooke, and now the territory won’t be healthy for some time, as far as I’m concerned.”

Fishing in his shirt pocket, he brought out a folded, sweat-soaked envelope. It didn’t appear a likely repository for a thousand-dollar bill. Actually it contained ten of that denomination.

“This is money that Colonel Peters — you’ve probably heard him called Droop-eye mostly — asked me to give Dolly a couple of weeks ago, after he’d broken the bank of a house in Dodge City. I was leaving for New Mexico, and we both thought I’d see her.”

From casual talk I had gathered that there was some sort of bond between the Tandy girl and Peters, who was reputedly an older man. It was none of my business, but try as I would, I couldn’t keep the question out of my eyes.

“They are — in partnership,” McQuinn answered the look. “A reserve fund is always useful to a gambler, but if she
doesn’t happen to need it to bank with, the message is that she can spend it at her discretion.”

While I could see that a young woman, even one that wasn’t a gambler, might be pleased to receive that much money, I jibbed at the thought of being responsible for it.

“You’re going on the assumption that I’ll wind up in New Mexico, and I may do nothing of the sort,” I objected. “Why don’t you send it to her by mail?”

“She’s on the move, looking for high stakes in new camps, and I don’t know just where she is. Look, Baltimore,” he continued, when I still hesitated, “as things stand, she has a far better chance of getting this cash from you than from me. If you don’t happen to run across her in the next couple of months, send it to Colonel C. E. Peters, care of Wells Fargo Express, San Francisco.”

When he and Whittlesey had ridden off, I nervously tried my boot top and half a dozen pockets without finding a place where I felt the envelope would be safe. In the end I stowed it in one of my bags and hoped no stage robber would think of going through luggage in search of buried treasure.

I kept a careful watch for Indians that first day of rolling along the flatlands of the Panhandle. None appeared, nor did my eyes find anything else but space, a few buffalo and dust. The second day began as usual with the business of rounding up my horses. Five I caught easily, but one had managed to slip its hobble. Intent on grazing as long as possible, the animal led me a good half mile through the bosky bordering the stream by which I was camped. I had barely succeeded in putting a halter on him when I heard a hail.

“Hello, there!”

The speaker was leading an animal, just as I was, but I had no idea of waiting for him. Not realizing that I would have
to stray so far, I had made the mistake of going off without a weapon. Jerking on the halter, I set out for camp.

“Be you flesh, fiend or Flying Dutchman of the prairie,” the stranger then called, “wait up and be spoken to. You can’t just walk off with the only human ears I’ve found in days. Stand fast in the name of God and my curiosity.”

In the face of such an appeal, further flight seemed absurd. He came toward me as fast as the big mule which followed him would consent to be led. It was loaded with a prospector’s equipment, and the man himself had the appearance of a patient seeker after gold, except for one thing. Above the scrawny black beard which covered most of his face twinkled eyes lively with a look of intellectual awareness.

“Sorry to have seemed unfriendly,” I apologized, “but I ran into Indians not long ago.”

“Did you?” He seemed to marvel at my good luck. “I haven’t found anybody to talk to except this mule, which has already heard my views on every — ”