White Lightning (18 page)

Slade swung out to the driver’s side, his roan mare cantering, and called out to the wagon, “U.S. marshals! Hold up there!”

Two startled, scowling faces turned to face the lawmen. Slade suspected that the driver might try running for it, but he hauled back on the reins instead and slowed his team,
then brought it to a halt. Up close, the sound of bottles rattling in wooden crates was clearly audible.

Slade rode up on the left, the driver’s side, while Naylor eased around the right, his Colt half drawn. “Be smart and lay that shotgun by your feet,” Naylor advised the guard. Reluctantly, the shooter did as he was told.

“How come you’re stoppin’ us?” the wagon’s driver asked.

“It just so happens that we’re on a moonshine hunt,” Slade said. “You wouldn’t know of any in the neighborhood, by chance?”

“Why should we?”

“Call me the suspicious sort,” Slade said. “I hear those bottles clanking in your wagon and I get an itch to know what’s in them.”

“Sarsaparilla,” said the guard. “What of it?”

“Last I heard,” said Naylor, “sarsaparilla comes from berries off a vine, not corn.”

“Listen,” the driver said, “you don’t know who you’re mussing with.”

“Enlighten us,” Slade said.

The driver spat tobacco juice into the road, seemed on the verge of answering, when suddenly the right side of his face imploded, spraying blood. Slade heard the echo of a distant gunshot half a second later, when the shotgun guard was cursing, diving for his weapon.

“Hold it!” Naylor shouted, but the guard was long past listening. He turned, raising the double barrel, angling it toward Naylor, thumbing back twin hammers as he turned.

Naylor and Slade fired simultaneously, drilled the gunman front and back, pitching him sidelong from his seat and down between the horses harnessed to the wagon. Whether they were used to shooting, or the driver’s dead weight on their reins restrained them, neither of the horses bolted.

“Where’d that first shot come from?” Naylor asked, sweeping his Colt in search of other targets.

Slade’s gaze swept the skyline, picking out the small form of a rider fleeing southward.

“There!” he said, pointing, and nudged his roan to forward motion.

“What about the wagon?” Naylor asked him.

“They aren’t going anywhere,” Slade said and charged off in pursuit.

Slade heard Naylor’s snowflake Appaloosa gaining on him as he trailed the distant gunman, trying hard to close the gap between them. They had been a quarter mile or so apart when the sniper’s shot killed the wagon driver, firing from the saddle and retreating hell-for-leather after squeezing off a single round. The shooter had a good horse under him, and he was obviously skilled in handling it, hunched low over his saddle horn and riding like a jockey in a race. Slade did his best to match that pace, reached back to slap his roan’s flank with an open hand and shout encouragement, but even as he ate the sniper’s dust his mind was racing faster than his animal.

Drilling a man-sized target at a quarter mile was certainly possible, say with the .45-70 Government cartridge used in the Winchester Model 1886 rifle. A skilled hand with assistance from a telescopic sight could kill with that gun at a thousand yards, and consistent hits at six hundred
yards were required to earn an army marksman’s medal. Nothing special in itself about the shot, then—but who was the actual target?

Suppose that the sniper had
missed
from that range. Was he shooting at Slade or at Naylor? Had he plugged the driver accidentally, then panicked? If he’d meant to drop the driver and could kill reliably at that range, why stop with a single shot?

Too many questions, none that Slade could answer if the shooter got away from him or died resisting capture.

Clinging to the mare’s reins, Slade called back over his shoulder, “Luke! We need this one alive!”

And Naylor’s wind-whipped voice came back to him: “Let’s catch the bastard first!”

Ahead of them, three-quarters of a mile away but drawing closer by the second, Slade made out a line of trees atop a rise. They hadn’t passed that way, riding from Stateline to the Rocking R, but they were off the main road now and moving farther from it all the time. A sniper in those trees could pick them off or pin them down till nightfall, make his getaway in darkness if he hadn’t killed them outright to begin with.

It was no good warning Naylor. Slade assumed that he could see the wooded ridge and grasp its import as they galloped toward it, horses fighting for the next breath to propel them onward. Slade prayed that the grassy land in front of them concealed no tunnels dug by prairie dogs to snap a fetlock, no gullies to send him tumbling with a broken neck or back.

They still weren’t close enough to risk a pistol shot that likely would have missed their prey entirely but could just as easily have killed the fugitive before they had a chance
to question him. At least their breakneck speed prevented any aimed fire from the fleeing rifleman, but he had nearly reached the trees now, still four hundred yards or so ahead of Slade and Naylor.

“Faster, damn it!” Slade exhorted, but the roan was giving everything she had. A moment later, Slade cursed bitterly, watching his adversary vanish in among the shady trees.

What now?

A rifle spoke in answer to his silent question, its location indicated by a puff of gun smoke. Slade braced for the killing impact, but the bullet missed him, whistling past what felt like mere inches from his face. Instinctively, he veered off course, looking for cover of his own and hoped Naylor was smart enough to do the same.

And once Slade swung away, there
was
a gully, running roughly parallel to the direction he’d been traveling. Once into it, he found that it was deep enough to hide him once he’d leaped down from his saddle. Naylor tumbled into the ravine a moment later, as another shot cracked overhead.

“I think he clipped my sleeve with that one,” said the younger marshal, grinning with excitement.

Slade, rifle in hand, replied, “I plan to creep in toward him, if this gully doesn’t peter out. See if there’s any chance to get the drop on him.”

“Sounds good.” Naylor drew both Colts, looking eager.

“I’d prefer it if you covered me from here,” Slade said. “Keep him distracted while I try to work around behind him.”

“Okay. Sure,” said Naylor, clearly disappointed.

Slade took off without debating it, hearing Naylor open up behind him, firing well-spaced shots. The gully led him more or less directly where he hoped to go, but only time
would tell if that was good or bad. Whether he rushed toward the solution of a mystery or to his death.

Grady Sullivan fired one last shot to keep the lawmen under cover, then hauled on his horse’s reins and steered the buckskin gelding southward, back toward Stateline. He was galloping away and out of range when someone fired a pistol shot behind him, wasted. Glancing back, he saw one of the marshals there between the trees, his six-gun dangling, and imagined the frustration he must feel.

Goddamn, but that was close!

Sullivan hadn’t been exactly sure how he should deal with the two officers when he left town, riding to intercept them at the Rocking R. He’d hoped to get there and discover that the other hands on duty had prevented any search that would reveal their giant whiskey still. Sullivan understood the basic rule of warrants, but he thought that if the cops got close enough to smell ’shine cooking, that might grant them leave to snoop around. In which case, he supposed he’d have to deal with them, whether the big man finally approved or not.

The last thing Sullivan expected was to find the marshals holding up a whiskey wagon on the county road. He’d felt a spark of panic then, knowing that they were bound to open up one of the crates and find the bottled liquor, whereupon the driver and his guard would likely squeal to save themselves from doing time. A heartbeat later, Sullivan had found the rifle in his hands and fired almost without conscious volition, taking down the driver—and all hell broke loose.

What was he thinking? Should his shot have been directed at a marshal, followed by a second round to drop
the other one? Whatever hindsight told him would have been the wisest course, he couldn’t turn back time and do it over. Anyhow, the main thing was that he’d escaped, while keeping space enough between himself and the two lawmen to prevent them from identifying him by sight.

So far, so good.

But now he had to break the news to Mr. Rafferty, admit that he’d gone off half-cocked and kicked a hornets’ nest. The marshals were alive, they had a wagonload of whiskey from the Rocking R, and if that wasn’t evidence enough to hurt the big man…well, what was?

It wasn’t over yet, though. Even in his frazzled state, Sullivan thought there might be hope. With Percy Fawcett missing, any message that the lawmen tried to send from Stateline to their boss would have to wait. They might decide to pass on through and take the wagon back to Enid on their own, but that meant camping overnight, somewhere along the way. And Sullivan had learned his lesson about sending others out to do a job he should’ve done himself.

With or without the ’shine, they’d never make it back to tell Judge Dennison what they had found. Sullivan was prepared to bet his life on that.

In fact, he’d placed the bet already.

He would beat them back to town, brief Mr. Rafferty on what had happened, and explain his plan for cleaning up the mess. Whether the marshals stayed in Stateline overnight or pushed on through, he had them covered.

Now he only had to sweat the big man’s anger, hoping he wouldn’t fly off the handle and do something lethal. Like killing the messenger, say. If Sullivan could make it through their meeting with his skin intact, he thought the other pieces should fall neatly into place all right.

And if they didn’t…well, he’d think about that when he had no other choice.

Disgruntled at losing the sniper, Slade hiked back to Naylor and the horses, tersely reporting his failure. Naylor seemed to take the news in stride, asking, “But he was heading back to Stateline, though?”

“The last I saw of him,” Slade said. “Might be a false lead, though. He could be anywhere by now.”

“Back at the Rocking R?”

Slade shrugged. “I wouldn’t know him if he met us on the porch. Besides, I wouldn’t want to take the whiskey wagon back there with their two dead pals.”

“I’m thinking,” Naylor said, once he was settled on his Appaloosa’s saddle, “we should make sure that it
is
a whiskey wagon.”

“Right,” Slade said and mounted up.

That would be the last straw, he decided, if they killed one man and nearly got shot themselves for something other than the moonshine they were after. Feeling sour all the way back to the wagon with its load of crates and dead men, Slade sat back and watched while Naylor dropped the wagon’s tailgate, used his knife to open up the nearest crate, and lifted out a bottle filled with amber-colored liquid. Prying out the cork, he sniffed, then took a healthy swig.

“I’d say that’s pretty close to eighty proof,” he said. “You want a shot?”

“No, thanks,” Slade answered, satisfied with the relief he felt just then.

They hoisted the two corpses back into the wagon’s bed, no tarpaulin to cover them, and Naylor used a rag he found
beneath the driver’s seat to wipe most of the blood away. Unsatisfied with the result, he stripped the lifeless driver’s jacket off and draped it on the seat to hide the stains.

“Who drives?” he asked.

“I may as well,” said Slade.

He led his mare around behind the wagon and secured her reins to the tailgate, then mounted to the driver’s seat and settled on the dead man’s denim jacket. It had been a while since Slade had driven any kind of team, but it came back to him, the docile horses helping out. Naylor rode point, his rifle out and ready, just in case the long-range killer doubled back to try his luck a second time.

He didn’t, though, and they reached Stateline without further incident. Townspeople on the street made no pretense of looking through them this time, as they brought the wagon and its corpses creaking down the length of Border Boulevard, to stop outside the marshal’s office. Arlo Hickey was already on the sidewalk, thick arms folded, watching them approach.

“More dead men,” he observed.

“And a wagon full of moonshine that you’ll need to keep an eye on, overnight,” Slade said.

“Want me to test it for you, while I’m at it?”

“Won’t be necessary.”

“Pity.” Hickey stepped into the street and walked around to get a better look at the two corpses. Blinking at their faces, he said, “Hey, these boys are from the Rockin’ R.”

“Is that right?” Naylor asked.

“Sure is. I know ’em both. Mike Embry and Tom Logan. They’re in town a lot. What happened?”

“We were asking them about their cargo,” Slade replied, “when someone shot the driver from a distance. After that, the guard thought maybe he should take a shot at us.”

“We didn’t feel like sittin’ still for it,” said Naylor.

“Jesus. What about the other shooter?”

“He was faster off the mark than I was,” Slade allowed. “I lost him.”