The Man with the Iron Badge (14 page)

“They just happen to break in while you were all there?” Starkweather asked.

“They didn't just happen to,” Clint said. “Like the sheriff said, Starkweather sent them in as a diversion, while he, Santino, and his other man hit the bank.”

“How is it you know that Starkweather's not here?” the sheriff asked Dan Starkweather.

“That's easy,” Starkweather said. “He's my father.”

The three men left the undertaker's office and stopped out front.

“You fellas better tell me everything,” Franklin said.

“Why don't we do that while we ride, Sheriff?” Clint asked.

“You fellas are gonna ride with me?” the man asked. “Be my posse?”

“The way I see it,” Starkweather said, “you're gonna ride with us. We've been looking for him for weeks. This is the closest we've been.”

“Three hours,” Franklin said. “You missed by three hours.”

“If we're that close,” Clint said, “we'd better get started.”

“Are you with us, Sheriff?” Starkweather asked.

“As long as you tell me everythin' while we're ridin',” Franklin said.

“We'll do that,” Clint said.

Franklin pointed and said, “And you can start with that crazy badge.”

By the time they'd ridden two miles, they had filled Sheriff Franklin in. Also in that time Clint had picked up the trail of three horses. And he found the print of the boot with the worn-down heel.

“We're on the right track,” he said, mounting up again.

“These men killed both my deputies, and one of the guards in the bank,” Franklin said. “When we catch them, they're mine.”

“You can have Santino and the other one,” Starkweather said. “Nate Starkweather is mine, has been for a long time.”

Starkweather gigged his horse and moved ahead of them.

“He's gonna take down his own old man?” Franklin asked Clint.

“He says he is.”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know,” Clint said. “I don't think we'll know until we catch up to them.”

“Is the boy any good?”

Clint nodded, and said, “Good enough.”

 

“Hold up,” Nate Starkweather said.

They reined in and looked at him.

“This is where we split up.”

“Why?” Vail said.

“They'll have a posse out by now,” Starkweather said. “We need to give them three trails to travel.”

“Fine,” Vail said. “Who carries the money?”

Each man had two money bags across his saddle. They were quite full. It was almost as if they each had two small bodies.

“We take two each,” Starkweather said. “We'll meet and make the split.”

Vail asked, “Why don't we each go our separate way with two bags?”

Starkweather looked at Vail.

“Because each bag doesn't have an equal amount in it,” Starkweather said.

“Gotta be close,” Vail said.

“You willin' to take that chance, Leo?” Starkweather asked. “The chance that your bags don't have a lot less in them than our bags do? Remember, we got bills in all sizes. What if your bags are filled with small bills, and mine with bygones?”

“I'd rather take that chance, Nate, than the chance that you'll kill me rather than split.”

“Why would I do that?” Nate asked.

“You sacrificed Evans, Ryan, and Walker so we could get away,” Vail said. “Why not me?”

Starkweather looked at Santino.

“What about you, Mex?” he asked. “You think I'll kill you rather than split?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is not all the money in the world,” Santino said. “If it was all the money in the world, then yes, I think you would.”

Nate Starkweather laughed.

“You're good, Santino.” He looked at Vail. “He's good, ain't he?”

“Yeah,” Vail said, “he's great. What about it, Starkweather?”

“What? Oh, you mean we each keep our bags? No, I don't think so, Leo. In fact, I think you better drop yours to the ground . . . now.”

“I'm not gonna do that, Nate.”

“Then you're forcin' my hand.”

Vail laughed.

“Don't kid me, Nate,” Vail said. “You were gonna kill me from the start.”

“No, I wasn't.”

Vail was watching Starkweather, so he never saw Santino draw his gun and point it at him.

“But
he
was,” Nate said.

 

Clint, Starkweather, and Franklin came across the body two hours out of Apache Junction.

Clint dismounted and checked the body. “Shot once, in the back.”

“So there's two left.” Franklin.

“And they split up,” Clint said, pointing to the ground.

“Then we split up,” Franklin said.

Clint mounted up. “How many money bags did they get?”

“Six,” Franklin said, “packed.”

“That explains why one of them took this man's horse. To carry the extra bags.”

“That'd be Nate,” Starkweather said. “He wouldn't trust anyone else with that money.”

“So that trail is Nate Starkweather's,” Franklin said, pointing, “and this one is the other man's.”

“Santino,” Clint said. “The Mexican.”

“I'm going this way,” Starkweather said, pointing to his father's trail.

“I'll come with you—” Clint started, but Franklin interrupted.

“No, I'll go with the kid,” he said. “Nate Starkweather planned this whole thing, and he has most of the money. I want him.”

“I've already told you, Sheriff,” Starkweather said. “He's mine.”

“Okay,” Clint said, “I'll track Santino, and you two can fight over Nate Starkweather.”

Dan Starkweather looked at Clint.

“Sorry, kid, we can't just sit here and keep arguing. They're getting farther away as we speak.”

“You can run the Mexican down with your horse,” Starkweather said.

“And you can run down Nate, because he's got an extra horse. When a man's leading another horse, he can't go as fast.”

“Are we clear, then?” Franklin said. “Starkweather's mine?”

“You can ride with me,” Starkweather said, “but nothing's going to be clear until we find him.”

“Kid,” Franklin said, “don't get in my way.”

Starkweather and Clint looked at each other. They both knew that Franklin was no match for Starkweather—for either Starkweather.

“Good luck, boys,” Clint said, and started after Santino.

Sheriff Franklin and Sheriff Starkweather didn't talk much as they concentrated to follow the trail left by Nate Starkweather.

At one point they had to stop. They were on a road that was much traveled, and Nate's tracks were being swallowed up.

“What do we do now?” Starkweather asked.

Franklin dismounted and started to walk the area, staring down at the ground. When he started to walk, leading his horse with him, Dan Starkweather followed.

Suddenly, Sheriff Franklin turned and looked at Sheriff Starkweather.

“He got off the road here. Guess he don't wanna run into anybody.”

He mounted up.

As he followed, Dan Starkweather was thinking of how many lawmen he'd traveled with lately, not to mention Clint, and how he was learning something from each of them.

Picking up tracks on a dirt road was easy. Now he watched as Franklin picked up the trail on hard dirt, rocks, and grass.

 

Clint tracked Santino across the same type of terrain. He wondered how the two men intended ever to ride into a town carrying those bank bags. At some point they'd have to transfer the money to some normal-looking saddlebags.

It occurred to Clint that if he just followed Santino, and didn't ride him down, the Mexican would lead him to Nate Starkweather. But if Dan Starkweather and Franklin managed to run down Nate Starkweather, there would be no one for the Mexican to meet.

Well, too many cooks spoil the damn broth. If the decision of which way to go had been left to one man, they all might have followed the trail of one in order to be led to the other.

He'd have to make a final decision when he came within sight of the man—whenever that would be.

 

The bank bags were unwieldy on Nate Starkweather's horse. Castillo had taken Vail's saddlebags, so the Mexican had about six saddlebags stuffed with the bills that had been in two bags. Vail always carried an extra set of bags. He was a man who was usually prepared for anything—until the end. It was too bad they'd had to kill him, but they really had no choice. There was just too damn much money to split. Starkweather would not have even split with Santino, but to tell himself the truth, he wasn't sure he could take the man. He was sure Santino felt the same way. Neither of them wanted to test it out.

So what Starkweather needed was some more saddlebags, and then he'd be able to make the switch. As if in an answer to a prayer, he heard something up ahead. Whatever it was, it wasn't moving. It was somebody . . . singing.

 

When Franklin and Starkweather came across the camp and the body, they dismounted. An older man had obviously been there. The fire was still going, and there were some burnt beans in a pan. The dead man was a traveling drummer, and off to one side stood his wagon and his team.

“Why would he kill this man?” Starkweather wondered aloud. “He couldn't have been a threat to him.”

Franklin had started to walk the camp, and now he stopped and pointed.

“Saddlebags,” he said. “Starkweather stole this man's saddlebags. Look, he emptied out the contents.”

Franklin walked to the wagon and looked inside.

“There's a pile of clothes in here,” Franklin said. “I bet he got a carpetbag, or a trunk, out of here. He could tie that to the second horse.”

“If he's got the money in saddlebags, and some other kind of bag, he'll be able to ride into another town,” Starkweather said.

“Not close to here,” Franklin said. “Not when the word gets out about the bank, and the killings.”

“Then he'll keep going and he won't stop until he's crossed the border into . . . somewhere.”

“He can go to Utah, Nevada, or California.”

“And I'll go right after him.”

Franklin frowned. “I can't. At some point, I'll have to turn back. I don't have an iron badge, just this tin one that the people in town gave me. I can't leave them.”

“This badge is no different than that one, but when I accepted it they understood what I was going to do. I'm going to track him until I find him.”

“Well,” Franklin said, “some other lawman won't accept your badge as official, not as long as you're outside of Kansas.”

“That's okay,” Starkweather said. “This is a symbol that I'm nothing like my father.”

“Well,” Franklin said, “I'll go with you as far as I can.”

“Then let's ride. Maybe we can catch up to him before he crosses one of those borders.”

When Santino's horse went lame, he cursed everyone he could think of. He had four saddlebags full of money, which were too heavy for him to carry for any distance. He dismounted and checked the horse's left foreleg. It wasn't broken, but the animal was favoring it. Santino figured he could walk, and leave the saddlebags on the horse. First ranch or homestead he came to, he could pick up another horse. Since he had money, he could buy a horse rather than steal one. That would leave no trail.

He grabbed his horse's reins and started walking.

 

Clint rode Eclipse hard. Every so often he stopped to check the tracks, and knew he was getting closer. When the tracks showed that the horse had gone lame, and the man was now walking, he knew he'd catch up. Finally as the day neared dusk, he saw a man leading a horse up ahead of him. He urged Eclipse on even faster.

 

Santino heard the horse and turned. He saw the man on the big black coming at him at breakneck speed. He went for his gun, but he could see that he was too late. The man on the horse was fast . . . so fast . . .

 

Clint gunned Santino down with one shot. Clint leaped to the ground, kicked the man's gun away, and then checked the body. He wasn't dead. He went to the horse and looked in the saddlebags. They were packed with money.