Authors: Lyle Brandt
“Sounds good,” Naylor replied. Not quite a whisper.
They dismounted, led their horses by the reins, and tied them loosely to a pair of corn stalks fifty feet or so inside the field, before they reached clear ground. From there, the lawmen walked on, hats removed and shoulders hunched to keep from letting anybody in the barnyard spot them. It was shady in among the rows, which also helped.
“Now what?” asked Naylor when they’d found a vantage point.
“Now,” Slade replied, “we wait and see what we can see.”
• • •
Percy Fawcett entered Stateline from the north, on foot, avoiding Border Boulevard. He’d stopped the buggy two miles out from town, released its horse to run at liberty, and walked the final distance with his portmanteau, leaving the trunk behind. It would, he thought, present a mystery for Sullivan and Rafferty to solve. And if his luck held, it might buy Fawcett himself some breathing room.
For what?
First thing, a hasty meal, something to drink, before a washup and a change of clothes. When all of that was done, he planned to wait for nightfall, then sneak out and find the U.S. marshals who’d been sent to follow up the last one’s murder. In the meantime, he would keep his door locked and his pistol handy, making no unnecessary noise to let the neighbors know he was at home.
If Grady Sullivan came looking for him…well, Fawcett would deal with that threat if and when it happened. He’d become a killer overnight, relieved and sickened in approximately equal measure by the double slaying, and he thought he’d have no trouble shooting Sullivan or anyone whom Rafferty dispatched to find him.
Not unless they saw him first.
But Fawcett hoped that wouldn’t happen. First, he thought, Rafferty’s men would go off northward, looking for the pair who hadn’t made it home last night. Whether they found the buggy first or missed it altogether, riding on until a flock of buzzards led them to the bodies, that would take some time. They’d likely search for Fawcett then, unwilling to believe he’d turn around and run back toward the lion’s den in Stateline. Every hour wasted brought him
closer to the night, when he could move about more safely, seeking help.
What could the marshals do for him?
They already suspected his involvement in the slaying of their friend. He’d be confessing to complicity once he admitted showing Sullivan the other lawman’s telegram, which might mean prison time, but that still beat the death sentence imposed on him by Rafferty. If he agreed to testify in court, they would be duty bound to keep him safe. And if that meant a cell in Enid while he waited for the trial, so be it.
Returning from his interrupted journey overnight, Fawcett had grappled with a nagging strain of doubt. Part of his mind suggested that the men he’d shot—Dooley and Jeb—had not intended to eliminate him after all. If they had simply been escorting him to hiding, at a cabin in the hills, that made Fawcett a murderer. And even if they’d planned to kill him, Sullivan and Rafferty could spin the tale another way at trial, to help themselves or simply get revenge.
To have him join them on the gallows.
“Never mind,” he muttered to the silent room. Fawcett believed his life had been in danger on the prairie, that he’d fired in self-defense, and he could sell that story to a jury any day, once they were privy to the other crimes of Rafferty and Sullivan. Who would believe the claims of two moonshiners who had killed a deputy—and God alone knew how many others?
No one.
Fawcett’s challenge now was to survive and find the marshals, tell his story, throw himself upon their mercy. Sell them on the idea that they needed him to make their case and net the bigger fish.
They wouldn’t let him keep his Colt, of course, but he’d
be safer in their custody than wandering around all by himself, armed to the teeth. Marshals were manhunters, by definition. He would trust his fate to them and pray that if that choice was a mistake, the men who came to kill him would be quick about it.
Quick and clean, to send him on his way.
Lying on their bellies at the edge of the cornfield, Slade and Naylor eyed the house and outbuildings a quarter mile due west. Slade used his spyglass, passing it to Naylor for a look around, then used it to sweep the grounds again.
“Not what I’d call a busy place,” Naylor observed, as two men strolled across the yard and went into the house.
“There must not be a lot to do with corn,” Slade said. “Plant it, wait for the rain, pick it.”
“No animals around except the chickens. Like to get a look inside that barn.”
“We’d have to wait for that till after dark. You want to hang around that long?” Slade asked.
“Can’t say I would. The other way’s to ride down there and tell ’em that we’ve come to see the boss. One of us does the talkin’, while the other drifts around a bit and tries to spot something. Or smell it, either one.”
“And when they say the boss is back in town, then what?” asked Slade.
“We leave, nice and polite-like,” Naylor answered. “Maybe with enough to tell the judge and get ourselves a warrant.”
“Maybe.”
Slade had counted seven men drifting around the property, performing minor chores, together with an eighth one going to the privy from the house, then back again. He didn’t
like the odds, if shooting started, and was not inclined to spark a skirmish if he could avoid it.
He rooted for his pocket watch, retrieved it, and opened it. “Five minutes to eleven,” he announced. “We have to sneak down there, I’d rather wait until they’re sitting down to lunch.”
“At least another hour, then,” said Naylor, slapping at some kind of insect on his neck.
“We’ll see.” Slade cautioned him, “You know, we creep around and spot something, we still can’t use it, since we haven’t got a warrant.”
“Or the evidence is lying in plain sight,” Naylor replied.
“It’s not,” Slade said. “We both know that.”
“It would be their word against ours.”
“Until Judge Dennison inquires why we were on the property to start with, nobody around.”
“Just lucky,” Naylor said. “We rode in toward the house and caught a whiff of something from the barn. Rode over there—the doors were standing open—and we saw the cooker.”
“If there
is
a cooker.”
“Where else would it be?”
He had a point. “So, if it
is
,” Slade said, “then what?”
“We up stakes, get a wiggle on, and tell the judge. Come back with reinforcements for a raid.”
“Might work,” Slade granted. “But we—”
“Wait a second! What are those guys doing?”
Through his telescope, Slade watched two of the ranch hands leading horses toward a nearby empty wagon. Teaming up, they got the animals in harness, led them to the barn, then got the wagon backed around so that its tailgate faced the open doors.
“Looks like they plan on loadin’ something,” Naylor said.
“I’d say.”
When the wagon was positioned to their liking, with the tailgate down, one man climbed up into its empty bed. The other went into the barn, and came back moments later with a third ranch hand, both of them lugging wooden crates. Each placed his in the wagon, then retreated to the barn, leaving their helper to arrange the boxes in the wagon’s bed.
“I’ve got a dollar says there’s whiskey bottles in those crates,” said Naylor.
“No bet,” Slade replied.
“So, what now?”
Slade considered it and said, “I always like the easy way, myself. They load it, we hang back and follow. Find out where they’re headed. We can always stop them on the road and have a word. Maybe convince them we should have a look inside one of the boxes.”
“Well off from the rest of them,” said Naylor.
“That’s my thought.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Rate they’re going, if they fill the wagon, they’ll be done in…what, an hour?”
“Pretty close.”
“Then maybe have some lunch before they leave,” said Naylor.
“We can wait them out.”
Naylor slapped at another bug and said, “I reckon so.”
Grady Sullivan was getting itchy, his frustration turning into anger as he walked the streets of Stateline, looking high and low for Jeb and Dooley. They were meant to meet him back in town after they’d taken care of Percy Fawcett, but they hadn’t shown up yet. Sullivan’s first thought was that they
had come in late, had a few drinks, and settled in with whores to spend the night, be he’d already checked the Sunflower and Swagger Inn without success. The barkeeps hadn’t seen his men, and there was no one sleeping over with the girls.
Now what?
He wondered if, between them, they were dumb enough to get his orders backward and return Rafferty’s buggy to the Rocking R. One thing that Sullivan had learned, bossing the other hands around for Rafferty, was that you never knew how stupid some of them could be. A couple of them, he supposed, wouldn’t know how to pour piss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
But Jeb and Dooley, now, they should be able to remember simple orders. Meeting Sullivan in town when they were finished meant exactly that, and nothing else. He hadn’t picked the crew’s worst dummies; quite the opposite, in fact.
So where in hell were they?
After the two saloons, he checked the Stateline Arms and came up empty.
Next, he made a pass by each of the three restaurants in town. More nothing for his trouble.
He was passing by the barber’s shop when Tim O’Malley cracked the door and made a sound like “Psssst!”
Sullivan doubled back, eyeing the street in both directions, passing on into the shop.
“I’ve been looking for you,” said the barber. “Did you hear about those marshals?”
“What about them?”
“They came by this morning.”
“Came by
here
?”
“The very place,” O’Malley said.
“So, did you shave ’em up, or what?”
“It wasn’t shaves they wanted. Asked some questions, though.”
“What kind of questions?”
“One that sticks in mind was how to find the Rocking R,” O’Malley said. “Well…I told ’em. Couldn’t very well pretend I never heard of it, could I? Being the biggest spread around, and all.”
“You get the feeling they were headed out there?” Sullivan inquired.
“Not just a feeling. Saw ’em head down to the livery and ride out, pretty soon after we talked.”
Goddamn it!
“And what time was that?” asked Sullivan.
“A couple hours ago.”
“The other questions they were askin’. You remember any of ’em?”
“There was something about Stateline Storage, up the street,” O’Malley said. “Who owns it, this and that. I didn’t help ’em, there.”
“Awright, then. If they come back in—”
“I don’t know nothin’ more,” O’Malley said.
“Let’s keep it that way.”
Back on Border Boulevard, Sullivan knew he had a choice to make. Stop by the Sunflower and tell the big man that the marshals had gone out to see the Rocking R, or just ride after them without consulting Rafferty. A two-hour head start placed Grady well behind the lawmen, and the time he’d waste with Rafferty would make it even worse. He knew the boss would send him out to see what they were doing, maybe get them off the spread without a fuss or deal with any problems they’d created. Whether he’d give
Sullivan the go-ahead to kill them was another question, but sometimes you had to make those calls without submitting them to anybody higher up.
Get moving, then,
he thought, and started down the street. Not running, which would draw undue attention to himself, but walking fast enough to shave a minute off the trip to fetch his horse—and warn other pedestrians to get the hell out of his way.
His mind was churning by the time he reached his buckskin gelding, tied outside the Sunflower Saloon. He thought once more of going in, advising Rafferty of what had happened, then dismissed the thought.
No time to waste.
Slade and Naylor watched the wagon leave with two men on its high seat, one handling the reins, the other with a shotgun in his lap. They gave the team a good head start, then crept back to their horses in the cornfield, mounted up, and followed on a course that paralleled the access road. Slade worried more than ever now about a ranch hand intercepting them, since it would likely mean a shootout
and
losing the wagon after they’d waited so long to see it loaded.
Luck was with them, though, and no one spotted them as they retreated from the house, back toward the county road where their intended quarry would be forced to choose a turning, north or south. Both marshals made a point of hunching in their saddles, as they had on their approach, to keep the teamster and his guard from catching sight of them if either chanced to gaze off through the corn. They passed along without a spoken word between them, hoping any sounds they made would be attributed to wind among the stalks.
The wagon had a lead of some five hundred yards when it passed through the tall gate with the Rocking R on top. Behind it, shaded by the corn, Slade tracked it with his spyglass, waiting for the man who held the reins to make his choice.
“South takes ’em back to Stateline,” Naylor said. “You figure that’s another warehouse load?”
“Crates mean they’ve bottled up the ’shine,” Slade said. “It could be stock for one of the saloons in town.”
“Or both,” Naylor replied. “I didn’t trust that Swagger fella any more than Rafferty.”
Another moment, and the wagon reached the county road, paused there a moment, then turned left.
“Stateline it is,” said Naylor.
“Or someplace beyond it,” Slade suggested. “This could be another shipment for the reservations, or it could be going farther south. For all we know, they might be heading for Eufala, maybe even Oklahoma City.”
“Maybe Enid,” Naylor said, half smiling. “That’d frost the judge.”
“I guess we’d better ask them,” Slade replied.
Emerging from the cornfield at a trot, then galloping, they overtook the slower-moving wagon in about four minutes, reining back when they were thirty yards or so behind it.
“Shotgun rider’s mine,” said Naylor, palm resting atop the curved grip of his right-hand Colt.