Webb's Posse (6 page)

Deputy Abner Webb rubbed his temples as if suffering from a headache. Then he looked out from the boardwalk at the angry faces. “All right, we've only got five horses. Anybody got any idea how we're going to get by with
five
horses? Any of you want to join a
walking
posse?”

“That polecat has horses!” shouted Ned Trent with a nasal twang, his nose swollen to twice its normal size. “Make him give them up!”

“You don't learn easily, do you, Trent?” said Will Summers, stepping to the edge of the boardwalk as Abner Webb grabbed his arm and held him back.

Trent touched a wet rag to his broken nose as he shied back a step. “In an emergency situation, I say the town can confiscate a man's horses for its own use.”

“Watch me break your nose again,” Summers said. But Abner Webb held him back as he replied to the crowd.

“Men, we're not confiscating anybody's horses.” He turned to Summers. “Will, how much will you take for those six horses?”

“It doesn't matter how much I'll take,” said Summers. “None of you have any money. The Peltrys cleaned everybody out.”

“Damn it! I plumb forgot.” Abner Webb let out a breath of exasperation. “All right, Will. Can you hold the town's marker until we can round up enough money to pay you?”

“Nope.” Will Summers shook his head. “I'm strictly cash only, all sales final.”

Abner Webb stepped in close and said to Will Summers under his breath, “For God sakes, Will! These men are ready to tar and feather you. Can't you bend a little? I'm trying to save your hide!”

“By taking my horses and giving me a marker? No thanks,” said Summers, keeping his own voice low between the two of them. “But don't worry, Deputy. I've got an idea that'll work out for both of us.”

“What kind of idea?” Webb asked warily.

“Come on,” said Summers. “Let's go to the sheriff's office, where we can talk in private.” He turned to the townsmen and said, “Gentlemen, if you'll excuse us for just a few minutes, I believe we can work this out to everybody's benefit.” He looked back and forth from one face to the next. “Meanwhile, decide among yourselves which ten of you are going to ride posse with us.” The townsmen looked at one another, then began to nod and comment among themselves.

“There now, Deputy,” Summers said to Abner Webb. “That'll keep them busy for a while.” He offered a thin smile. “Long enough for us to work everything out.”

In the sheriff's office, under Will Summers' urging, Deputy Abner Webb went to a wooden file cabinet standing in a corner and took out a folder full of wanted posters. When he handed the folder to Summers, the two stood looking down as Summers took out the posters and spread them across the worn wooden desk. “There, first one out of the pile,” said Summers, his finger pinning a rough, bearded face to the desk. Gilbert Metts, five hundred dollar reward…participation in bank robbery in the State of Texas.”

Summers shuffled the posters back and forth, then fingered another face. “Here is another one: one thousand dollar reward, dead or alive. I'm telling you, Deputy, this gang is money on the hoof if we play our cards right.” He started shuffling through the posters again.

“All right, I get the idea,” said Abner Webb, feeling a little foolish that he hadn't already thought of this himself. “By the time you add it all up, the Peltry Gang could be worth, what, three or four thousand dollars?”

Will Summers just looked at him for a second, then said, “More like twelve or fourteen thousand, I'll bet. I haven't added it all up. But whatever it is, it'll be
more than enough to rebuild what the Peltrys burnt down here.”

“All right, Will. You don't have to sell me on the idea. We go after the Peltry Gang, and any of them we find, we turn in for the reward.” He shrugged. “Sounds simple enough to me. You furnish the horses; we pay you for them when it's over.”

Will Summers winced and raised a finger for emphasis. “See, right there is where I seem to lose you, Abner. I'm not providing horses unless there's cash on the barrelhead. But on the other hand, I will provide half the transportation for this posse if you agree to split any reward money fifty-fifty.”

“Fifty-fifty? You've gone completely loco!” Abner Webb looked stunned by the proposition. “There's no way the town will stand for that!”

“I don't know why they won't,” said Summers. “So far none of them have even thought about the rewards…. You neither, far as that goes.”

“But they would have, Will, or else I would have.” He shook his head. “It don't even matter. The fact is, fifty-fifty is too damn high!”

“Not if you think about what you're getting from me,” Summers responded quickly. “I'm not only providing the horses. I know some men near here who can come up with all the guns we need.”

“Gunrunners?” Abner Webb's eyes widened.

“Never mind what they are,” Summers said, undaunted. “It's what they can do for us right now that counts.” Without missing a beat, Summers continued. “I'll also be acting as guide across the desert—some of the most dangerous country in the world.” He paused and studied the contemplative look on Abner Webb's face for a second. Then he said in a lowered, more serious voice, “And since it's just you and me here, let's be honest, Deputy. Have you ever
killed a man? Ever shot one? Ever even shot
at
one, for that matter?”

He watched Abner Webb's expression as the deputy wrestled to come up with the answer. Webb started to lie but then thought better of it and let out a tense breath. “No, I haven't.” He looked Will Summers up an down skeptically. “Have
you
?”

Summers looked all around the small office as if checking it before answering. Then he said, “Let's put it this way, Deputy. It's a whole lot different than shooting game: an elk, say, or a mule deer.”

Webb gave him a stare. “That's no answer, Will.”

“Of course it is, if you listen close to what I'm saying,” Summers insisted. “It's not something I can come right out and admit to a lawman.”

“Like hell,” said Webb. “You asked me, and I gave you an honest answer. You're talking about leading a manhunt, so I'm asking you the same question. Yes or no. Have you ever killed a man?”

“We're getting off the subject here,” said Summers. “The main thing is, I can—”

“I don't think we're getting off the subject at all,” Webb said, cutting him off. “You brought it up. You must've thought it meant something. You're using it to bargain for half the reward money. So I've got a right to know. Have you ever killed anybody?” He folded his arms across his chest and waited for an answer.

“In Waco, three years ago,” said Summers, “I faced a man in the street. It was just him and me, and when he reached for his gun, all I could do—”

“Twenty percent of the reward,” Abner Webb said, cutting him off again.

“Twenty percent?
One-fifth!
Now
you're
talking loco,” said Summers.

“I see you're not going to give me a straight-out yes-or-no answer,” Webb said.

“I'm trying to answer you in a roundabout way,” said Summers, “only you're too hardheaded to hear what I'm telling you.”

“I don't listen to
roundabout
answers,” said Webb. “All they do is confuse things. I figure you never killed a man either, else you would have said so by now.”

“I don't know how this killing part got so all-fired important all of a sudden,” said Summers. “But whether I have or not, I ain't going into the desert and risking six of my horses for twenty percent of what might turn out to be nothing but a lot of cold nights sleeping on hard ground. No, sir.”

“Then let's forget it,” said Webb. “I can't sell this town on the idea of fifty percent. I won't even try. They're mad enough at me already.”

Summers cocked a shrewd eye. “Can you sell them on forty percent, providing ten percent goes to you? I'm talking about under the table from me, of course.”

Webb seemed to consider it. “I just might be able to…but strictly to get back what this town has lost. That's my only reason for going along with it.”

“I understand,” said Summers. “Now get out there and pitch it to them, Deputy. We need to start making some time.”

“Let me ask you something first, Will.” Now Abner Webb cocked an eye. “Out there today, Moses Peltry said that if those horses belonged to you, it was just as well they didn't take them. Said if they did, they'd have to fool with you for the next month or else blow your head off. What did he mean by that?”

“I would try to tell you, Deputy,” said Summers, “but I ain't about to offer another
roundabout
answer, knowing how picky you are.”

“Just how well do you and the Peltrys know one another, Will?” Webb asked.

“I best take these along to keep score.” Ignoring the question, Summers reached down, swept up the wanted posters, folded them and stuffed them inside his shirt. “While you convince the good townsfolk, I'll just slip out the back door, go on over to the livery barn and see if there's any grain to take with us for the horses.”

Abner Webb didn't reveal Will Summers' proposition to the townsmen all at once. Instead, he told them a little at a time and checked on their reaction as he went. First he told them the part about the reward money, which Summers had assured him would be well over ten thousand dollars for the entire Peltry Gang. When he'd finished telling them, the townsmen spoke in a hushed whisper among themselves as Webb stood on the boardwalk and looked back and forth across their faces. After a moment of staring toward the pile of charred rubble that used to be his mercantile store, Ned Trent took a wet rag from his broken nose and said, “Never thought I'd be saying this about Will Summers…but God bless him after all!”

A murmur of agreement came up from the crowd. But then Sherman Dahl asked, “Are you saying that Summers is going to let us use his horses and provide us with firearms, then we deduct the cost of everything from the reward money once we collect it?”

Abner Webb cleared his throat. “Well, not exactly, although that was what I figured at first. But it turns out Will Summers knows his way across the desert. Lucky for us, he's agreed to guide us the whole way until we run these rascals down. I say we owe him
our gratitude for that. What do you say?” Abner Webb began clapping, just enough to prime the rest of the townsmen into doing it. Then he raised his hands to quiet them. “Now, the thing is, we can't expect Summers to work for free,” said Webb. “So he and I came up with an agreement that gives him forty percent of what bounty we collect.”

“Hunh?” The townsmen fell silent again.

“That moneygrubbing sonsabitch!” said Ned Trent, his attitude changing quickly. “I should have known better.”

“Now hold on, everybody,” Webb said. “I know forty percent sounds steep, but let's take a look at what we're getting for that amount. Summers is taking a chance on us getting his fine horses lamed or killed. He's taking us through country we'd never manage to get through ourselves without getting ambushed or having our throats cut in our sleep….”

From inside the door of the livery barn, Will Summers smiled to himself, hearing Abner Webb pitch the idea to the townsmen, working hard for his ten percent. Twisting the top of a half-filled bag of grain that the Peltrys had overlooked, Summers hefted it over his shoulder then looked around at the few dusty saddles lined up along a wall. He turned and walked through the door and toward the sound of Abner Webb's voice.

In the throng of townsmen, Sherman Dahl turned to Virgil Wilkes and said in a quiet voice, “Are you sure you want to miss all the drinking business while you're off riding with the posse? Who will tend bar for you?”

“A time like this,” said Virgil, “I'll have to rely on every man keeping tabs on what he drinks and leaving the money for it in the cigar box under the bar.”

“I understand,” said Dahl. “But as honest as these
men are, with money in short supply right now…I'd say you're taking quite a chance. I'd be happy to ride in your place.”

“Oh?” said Virgil. “Why the change of mind? A while ago you turned it down, said you had a school to build here.”

“I know,” Dahl replied. “But the fact is, I won't be building anything here without the funds to build with. If I ride with this posse, I'll see to it we take the cost of our new school out of the Peltrys' hides.”

“That's powerful talk for a schoolmaster,” said Wilkes. He looked Sherman Dahl up and down. He started to laugh, yet something about the look in Dahl's eyes advised against it.

“They burnt down the children's school,” said Dahl. “In my book that makes them nothing but vermin…cowards and low trash. Let me ride in your place, Mr. Wilkes, sir. I implore you.”