White Lightning (9 page)

“Just so long as we can hang on to our hair.”

“I’m planning on it,” Slade assured him. “Till it falls out on its own, at least?”

“You come from baldies?” Naylor asked him.

“Not that I’m aware of, but I left home young,” said Slade.

“Already anxious for the road.”

“Seemed like a good idea,” Slade said. “Then, once you’re on it, going home seems like more trouble than it’s worth. At least, it did to me.”

“You ever miss your folks?” asked Naylor.

Slade sipped his coffee, thought about it. “I was mad as hell when I lit out,” he said, at last. “It took a while for that to fade, and by that time I didn’t think they’d want me back.”

“How come?”

“Some of the things I’d done. Was doing. My old man took a hard line, sort of like your brother.”

“Not a preacher, though?”

“He could’ve been, but felt a calling from the soil instead. I didn’t see a future in it for myself.”

“Funny how people start and where they finish,” Naylor said. “Now here we are.”

“Not finished,” Slade reminded him. “Just getting started.”

“Right. I wouldn’t want to hex us.”

Darkness settled over them as they sat jawing, drinking coffee, killing time. After a while, a quarter moon raised a coyote chorus in the distance, somewhere to the north, the voices tangled up and wailing.

“Ever wonder what they’re saying?” Naylor asked.

“Not lately. Something about who they’ll have for supper, I suppose.”

“As long as it’s not us.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Speaking of which,” Slade said, reaching into his saddlebag, “I brought this, just in case we caught a chill along the way.”

Naylor’s smile broadened at sight of the bottle. “Whiskey for a ’shine hunt. Get us in the mood, eh? Sounds all right to me.”

“Two marshals,” Lou McCreery said. “So Grady sends the five of us?”

“You figure that’s too many, or too few?” Hoke Woodruff asked.

“Won’t know until I see ’em, will I?” Lou replied.

“You’re soundin’ shaky, Lou,” Bob Kerrigan suggested.

“Hell I am!”

“He’s right,” Eddie Gillespie said. “I’m purty sure I heard a shiver in your voice there.”

“Hell you did!”

“Knock off that shit,” said Woodruff. As the leader of the hunting party, it was his job to keep order in the ranks and see their job completed without any fumbling. “You want to measure pricks, wait till we’re done and you’re back at the bunkhouse.”

They rode on in brooding silence for a quarter mile or so, then Harry Stroud said, “Five on two feels right to me. Gives us an edge.”

“Plenty of edge,” McCreery said. “But killin’ marshals…”

“They’s the same as anybody else,” said Kerrigan. “I didn’t hear you tellin’ Grady no.”

“You sure as hell did not,” McCreery answered. “I’m just sayin’—”

“Sayin’
what
?” Woodruff demanded. “Spit it out, for Christ’s sake.”

“That the marshals won’t stop comin’,” Woodruff said. “One dead already, and tonight we make it three. You think Judge Dennison is gonna fold and cut his losses here? Or will he keep on sendin’ more and more, maybe call out the cavalry?”

Woodruff wanted to laugh at that but swallowed it. He couldn’t tell these yahoos everything he knew for fear they’d blab it far and wide. Instead, he told them, “Let the big man think about what happens after. You just follow orders, right? Do what you’re told, collect your pay, and shut your claptraps.”

“You got no call to be so tetchy,” said McCreery.

“Keep it up, I’ll show you tetchy,” Woodruff said, “and then some. I get sick and tired of—”

“Campfire,” Stroud announced, pointing ahead and slightly to their left, which made it southwest from the trail they had been following.

Woodruff squinted in that direction, didn’t see the light at first, then caught a flicker of it. Hard to say, when they were still a mile or more out from the spot, but it appeared to be on higher ground.

“That’s what I mean, goddamn it!” Woodruff said. “You get to yappin’ and we damn near miss it.”

“Jesus, Hoke, we didn’t—”

“Keep your voice down!” Fairly hissing at them now,
clutching his reins so tightly that the leather straps felt welded to his hands.

“How do we know it’s them?” Gillespie asked him, in a whisper.

“We go up and see. How else?” Woodruff replied.

“But if they ain’t the marshals—”

“I said go and
see
, not call ’em out, unless we see their badges. Use your head, will you?”

“So we’re just gonna sneak up there and have a look-see?” asked Gillespie.

“That’s the plan, unless you’ve got a better one,” said Woodruff.

“Nope. I’s just thinkin’ that they’ll hear us comin’ from a ways off.”

“Might, if we was riding,” Woodruff said. “I figure we’ll walk in, leave Harry with the horses farther back, to keep ’em quiet.”

“I can do that,” Stroud replied, sounding relieved to be left out of any shooting. Woodruff made a mental note of that, for next time when he needed someone he could count on, striking Harry from his first-choice list.

“You need to check your weapons, do it now,” Woodruff instructed. “I don’t want a bunch of noise when we close in there.”

Three of them drew their revolvers, spun the cylinders to verify full loads, then put the guns away. Woodruff had no need to examine his own Smith & Wesson Model 3, kept fully loaded as a matter of routine. He knew some shooters liked to keep an empty chamber underneath the hammer, but to Woodruff that was just a testament to carelessness. He’d never dropped a pistol in his life and didn’t plan on starting now.

He’d dropped some men, though. Right around a dozen.

And tonight he planned to add a couple more.

They flipped a silver dollar for first watch; Slade lost with tails and edged back from the fire a bit as Naylor bedded down. Edging around one of the bur oaks blocked the low flames from his line of sight, allowing his night vision to adjust. The quarter moon helped out a little, in its field of stars, but spotting any kind of danger from a distance clearly wasn’t happening. He’d trust his ears instead, staying alert for any sounds of an approaching predator, and hope he didn’t doze before the time came for his switch with Naylor.

As a rule, staying awake on watch wasn’t a problem, but his sleep had been disturbed of late by dreams of Faith, both loving her and losing her. A kind of weariness had settled over Slade the past two weeks, not the fatigue that came from strenuous activity but an annoying sense of lassitude he might associate with riding through a desert, no clear end in sight.

Slade’s mind kept circling back to Faith, wishing he knew a way to make things right with her, fearing it was beyond him. He’d been ready to consider turning in his badge after they married, finding out if he could be of any use around the ranch, but that idea had vanished in a cloud of gun smoke and he realized there wouldn’t be a second chance. When Faith made up her mind on something serious, there was no turning her around.

Which brought him back to thinking of himself again, wondering whether he should stick around or give his notice to Judge Dennison, start counting down the days until he was a free man once again. Funny, it didn’t feel like freedom when he thought about it, though.

It felt a bit like being lost.

But first things first. Whatever Slade decided, he still had a job to do, and it was likely going to be dangerous. Whether Bill Tanner had been killed by Indians or moonshiners, Slade planned to run them down and see them pay.

Naylor would do all right, he thought, as long as youthful overconfidence could be restrained. He didn’t seem to have a reckless attitude per se, but it was easy to let down your guard when you had worn the badge a while and won a fight or two. Slade wished Naylor had seen Bill Tanner’s corpse, to sober him a bit, but maybe his description of the body was enough to do the trick.

Or maybe he was underestimating Naylor, after all. Slade wondered whether he was jealous of the younger deputy—the years still stretching out before him, with a cornucopia of opportunities. Was Slade hearing the echoes of his own mortality from Tanner’s death and the proximity of youth?

If so, he had to keep a rein on that.

A fatalistic attitude, he realized, could be lethal to a lawman. When you started taking death for granted, it was easier to hesitate. Not giving up, exactly, but delaying a reaction in a crisis situation, even by a fraction of a second, could be all the break an enemy required to make the kill.

A call of nature interrupted Slade’s dark thoughts. He rose and moved away from camp as quietly as possible, out past the horses to a point beyond the burbling stream. No need for cover in the night, even if he was being watched by several thousand stars.

Hoke Woodruff huddled with the three men he had chosen to accompany him on his slow hike up the ridge through darkness. Heads together with their hat brims touching, he
warned his companions in a graveyard whisper, “First one of you makes a noise from here on in, I’ll gut you like a hog.”

To punctuate the threat, he drew a bowie knife and passed its twelve-inch blade before their faces, glinting starlight. No one tested him by answering. Convinced that they had got the message, Woodruff sheathed his blade and started up the slope to higher ground.

Damn, but he still couldn’t be sure whose camp they were approaching, whether the expected marshals or some drifters heading anyplace but where they’d been. He had to take it slow and easy now, make sure who he was dealing with before he made a move. Not that he minded shooting strangers, but tonight it wouldn’t do. If they surprised and killed the wrong folks in this camp, it meant a load of wasted time, scut work disposing of them, and a likelihood that they would fail to do the job they’d been assigned.

The last part was what worried Woodruff most. He didn’t want to think about returning empty-handed, telling Grady Sullivan they couldn’t find the marshals after all. Embarrassment was only part of it. When Sullivan got riled…well, it was best to be somewhere away from him, preferably out of pistol range.

So Woodruff kept his fingers crossed—or would have, if it didn’t slow down his quick draw. He tried to place each step precisely as he climbed the slope, uncertain of the ground before him, painfully aware of its potential pitfalls. Loose rocks could betray him, or a patch of mud, a twig rolling beneath his boot. He wouldn’t have to fall exactly, to betray their presence near the camp. Just sliding down the ridge could do it, set the others scrambling after all his warnings to be silent, and the blame would fall on him.

The trick was getting close enough to watch the campers without being seen. To hunker down beyond the reach of
firelight and discover who or what they were. Badges would mean he’d found the troublemakers he was looking for. No badges…well, it
still
might be the lawmen, if they’d taken off their vests or put on jackets, but he couldn’t just rush in, guns blazing, if he wasn’t sure.

Besides, he had a second job beyond disposing of the marshals. Grady wanted answers from them. How much did they know, if anything, about the Stateline deal? Was there a snitch inside the operation? Maybe more than one? The last cop hadn’t talked, but Woodruff knew some methods shared by an old Injun fighter, who in turn had learned his craft from Chiricahuas. Anyone who didn’t crack within the first ten, fifteen minutes must be made of stone.

Another thirty yards, and Woodruff strained his ears to pick out any voices, but the camp was quiet. Catching them asleep might make things safer, but it complicated spotting badges, under blankets. He might have no choice but to confront them, risking gunplay, if he couldn’t learn what he required by spying from the dark.

Get on with it,
he thought, biting his lower lip.
You’re wasting time.

Luke Naylor normally dropped off to sleep without a bit of trouble, but tonight was different somehow. Maybe his talk with Slade, or just imagining what all Bill Tanner must have suffered in his final hours of life. Naylor would’ve denied it, if someone had asked him to his face, but he was feeling jumpy. Nerves on edge.

And now, trying to sleep, there was that damned noise in the night.

The horses,
he first thought, but knew that wasn’t right. There was no whickering, no sound of hooves on grass, and
it was coming from the wrong direction anyway. They’d picketed the horses west of camp, beyond the spring, and Naylor would have sworn the scuffling sounds he heard were coming from the north, maybe a bit northeast.

He cracked an eye and looked around for Slade, but saw no sign of him. Maybe the noises came from him, scouting around the camp’s perimeter to keep himself awake. That fit the
kind
of noise Naylor had heard, but didn’t make much sense to him. He couldn’t picture Slade off roaming through the darkness for no reason, when he might step on a snake or twist his ankle in a gopher’s hole.

“Goddamn it!” Naylor muttered, throwing back his blanket, turning toward the gunbelt he had coiled and set aside when he turned in.

“Just leave ’er where she sits,” a strange voice told him, as a man stepped into view, out of the dark.