Backwoods Bloodbath (2 page)

Even so, the sentry by the barn heard something. Jerking his Sharps up, he spun and called out, “Jeb? What was that?”

Colter was in motion before the question was out of the sentry’s mouth. He swept his right arm in an arc, smashing the Colt against the man’s temple and felling him like a poled ox. Colter struck the prone figure again, as a precaution, then picked up the Sharps, carried it to a patch of high weeds, and hid it.

Sergeant Pearson and Private Fiske were standing over the second sentry, their revolvers glinting dully. Judging by the disjointed heap, the sentry would not awaken for many hours.

“Those were the only two, sir,” Pearson whispered. He had blond hair, cut short, and the predatory air of a hawk.

Shadows moved on either side of the farmhouse. The rest of Colter’s men were taking their positions.

Motioning to Pearson, Captain Colter crept to the porch. One of the steps creaked loudly when he put his weight on it. He imitated a post, but there were no shouts of alarm. No one came to the door or peered out. Encouraged, he stalked to a window and crouched. The curtains were drawn, but an inch-wide gap enabled Colter to see into a parlor. At a circular table sat six men. Well-to-do men, by the looks of them. Leaders of the Secessionist League, according to his informant.

A tingle of excitement rippled through Colter. This was the closest he had come to nabbing those at the top. With them in custody, he stood to learn a great deal, not the least of which would be the details of their plot.

A white-haired gentleman in a white suit was addressing the others. Colter placed an ear to the pane, but he could not quite hear what the man was saying. He saw the white-haired man take a sheet of paper from a pocket and unfold it.

Time to move in, Colter decided, then abruptly stiffened. Six men were at the table, but there were seven chairs. The seventh, on the other side, was empty.
Was one of the conspirators missing?
Colter wondered. He received his answer when the front door unexpectedly opened and out stepped the seventh man, a nattily dressed broomstick with a pencil-thin mustache who was saying over his shoulder, “. . . fetch them from my saddlebags. I won’t be but a minute.”

The broomstick closed the door and turned to go down the steps. His eyes fell on Colter. For a few moments the man was transfixed with shock. Then he glanced toward where the sentry should be and saw Sergeant Pearson and Private Fiske awaiting the command to close in.

The broomstick threw back his head to shout a warning.

Captain Colter was on him in a twinkling, driving his fist into the man’s gut. Breath whooshed from the broomstick’s lungs as he doubled over in agony. Colter slugged him again, on the jaw. Normally that was enough to drop a foe, but the man was tougher than he seemed. On his elbows and knees, dribbling spittle and wheezing for breath, he let out with a high-pitched keen: “Federals!”

How he knew, Captain Colter couldn’t say. The next moment the man’s right hand rose. In it he clutched a derringer.

The boom of Sergeant Pearson’s revolver heralded a shriek and a fervid curse as the broomstick, severely wounded, scrabbled toward the front door to get back inside. He pointed the derringer at Colter and hissed, “Damn you Yankees all to hell!”

Colter shot him through the head. As the body crumpled, shouts broke out inside. The League members were in an uproar. The curtains parted, and the white-haired man in the white suit took one look at Colter, whirled, and ran.

“Is the back door covered?” Captain Colter shouted. Pearson replied that it was.

Colter sprang to the door as the window he had been standing next to dissolved under a hail of lead. He flung the door open and beheld a League member, aiming a revolver, midway down a narrow hall. Colter darted aside as the muzzle spat lead and smoke. He heard Private Fiske cry out sharply.

More shots erupted from the rear of the farmhouse, laced with yells and oaths. After that, silence fell.

Captain Colter risked a peek inside. The hallway was empty now, but a commotion farther back suggested the conspirators were up to something.

A boot scuffed the porch, and Sergeant Pearson bounded to the other side of the doorway. His back to the wall, he whispered, “Fiske was wounded in the arm, but it’s not serious, sir.”

“We have them boxed in,” Colter declared with a confidence he did not feel. His men had the doors covered, but there were not enough of them to cover all the ground-floor windows as well.

“Should I call on them to surrender, sir?” Sergeant Pearson asked.

“I will,” Captain Colter said. Raising his voice, he identified himself, adding, “My men have the house surrounded. You would be well advised to throw down your arms and come out with your hands over your heads!”

“Go to hell!” came a taunt in a distinct Southern drawl.

“Northern trash!” another cried defiantly.

Sergeant Pearson glanced at Colter. “Just give the order, sir, and we will rush them.”

But Colter did no such thing. There was no telling how many League members were inside. There might be more that he had not seen.

Glass tinkled, and an upstairs window burst outward. A rifle spat, but its target, Private Fiske, had gone to ground behind a rosebush.

“Maybe we should burn them out, sir,” Sergeant Pearson proposed.

“We want them alive if possible—remember?” Captain Colter said. The key phrase was “if possible.” Clearing his throat, he yelled, “You, in the house! Can you hear me in there?”

After a bit, someone—Colter suspected it was the white-haired gentleman—responded, “We can hear you just fine. What do you want?”

“To avoid bloodshed,” Captain Colter said. “Give yourselves up and I promise no harm will come to you.”

A cold chuckle greeted the offer. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? But mark my words. You will not get your hands on a single one of us. We will gladly die rather than let you take us.”

Colter had been afraid of that. Fanatics and politics made for a rabid mix. Somehow he must convince them that they should deny their loyalty to a cause they valued more than life itself.

“Did you hear me?” the man demanded when Colter did not answer soon enough to suit him.

“I believe you,” Colter shouted. “But don’t do anything rash! We can talk this out!”

“Like hell!”

A minute passed. Then every window on the ground floor abruptly crashed into shards. Chairs had been hurled against them. Through the windows scrambled the occupants. Shots were exchanged. Shouts added to the bedlam.

Colter had been right. There were more than six, and they were making a frantic break for the woods. He ran to the end of the porch in time to see several fleeing shadows. One man turned and fired. Colter returned lead for lead. The man missed. Colter did not.

The white suit gave Colter a clue who it was. Vaulting over the rail, Colter ran and covered him. “Don’t try anything.”

The white-haired man coughed and spat blood. His eyes opened and could not seem to focus, but finally they did. His face twisted in a hateful grimace. “You have murdered me, you son of a bitch.”

“What are you planning?” Captain Colter asked. “What is the Secessionist League up to?”

A contemptuous laugh gurgled from the man’s throat and with it, a copious amount of blood. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? For me to turn traitor against the cause I believe in?” He had more to say, but a violent coughing fit interfered.

Colter squatted and took hold of the man’s shoulders. “Don’t die on me, damn it! I need to know.”

A smirk curled the man’s mouth. “It’s too late for me. I feel my life ebbing. But maybe I will give you a clue.”

Suspecting the clue would be worthless, Captain Colter said, “I’m listening.”

“We don’t have far to go,” the man said, and cackled as if it were the funniest utterance ever made. More blood flowed from both his mouth and his nose. He choked. He sputtered. Then he was still.

“Is he gone?” Sergeant Pearson asked.

“Yes.”

“What was that he said about not having far to go?”

“I wish to heaven I knew,” Captain Colter said in frustration. The raid had not worked out as planned. He was no closer to the truth, and countless lives were at stake. He summed up his sentiments with a simple “Damn.”

Skye Fargo was having one of those nights when Lady Luck sat on his shoulder. He had won two hundred dollars at poker, bucked the tiger at faro and won sixty-seven dollars more, and was now back at the poker table facing a stack of chips in the pot that promised to add five hundred to his poke if he won.

The only thing better than a winning streak was a willing woman, and Fargo’s luck had held in that regard, too. A dove by the name of Saucy had taken a shine to him earlier that night when he strolled in through the batwings. She was like a she-bear drawn to honey—and he was the honey.

Miss Saucy McBride was quite an eyeful. Red hair cascaded in curls to bare white shoulders as smooth as alabaster. She had an oval face distinguished by full, upturned lips that appeared as succulent as ripe cherries. A scarlet dress clung to her full figure as if painted on. But it was her eyes that most interested Fargo—hazel pools of desire mixed with a healthy sense of humor.

At the moment, Saucy was perched on Fargo’s lap with one arm around his neck and the other resting on his thigh. She was making small circles on his leg with the tips of her fingers. Fargo wanted to throw her to the sawdust-covered floor and have her right there, but there was the matter of winning the five hundred dollars.

Four other players were at the same table. One had already folded. Another was a mousey store clerk who bet only when he had a sure hand, which always turned out to be an especially good one.

The third player, a chunky bank teller partial to cheap, foul-smelling cigars, played like a bull in a china shop. He bet practically every hand and bluffed as often as he held good cards. There was no predicting him, although Fargo had noticed that the last two times the teller had bluffed, he removed his cigar from his mouth and tapped it in the ashtray before betting.

The fourth player was cut from a whole different cloth. Hale Tilton was a gambler by profession. He favored a black jacket and pants, with a frilled white shirt. A wide-brimmed black hat was tillted low over his eyes so no one could read his expression. He, too, was unpredictable, although slightly less so in that he did not bluff as often as the teller. When he did, it was because he sensed weakness in the others’ hands.

The teller was about to bet. He took his cigar from his mouth, tapped it on the ashtray, and pushed in fifty dollars.

“Interesting,” Hale Tilton said, and added fifty of his own.

It was Fargo’s turn. He had two queens, a king, an eight, and a three. Only a queen and the three were the same suit. It was not a great hand, but it had potential. He debated discarding the king, eight, and three and asking for two cards, then decided to discard only the eight and the three. But first he had to bet.

Fargo was fairly certain the teller was bluffing. The store clerk had at least a pair of jacks or he would not have opened. Hale Tilton might have a good hand or he might be counting on the draw. Either and all ways, Fargo was not about to bow out with a pair of queens. He added fifty dollars and asked for two cards.

The player who had folded was dealing. Another townsman, he wore a brown jacket and a bowler, and he could never seem to sit still. He was forever fidgeting. Fargo took it to be because the man had a nervous temperament, but now, as the man flicked cards to the store clerk, Fargo saw something that set his blood to boiling. If there was one thing he could not stand, it was a cheat.

Hale Tilton, in the act of stacking his chips, froze for an instant with his fingers poised over the table. Then slowly, almost sadly, he lowered his hand and said softly, “Well, well, well.”

“What’s the matter, Tilton?” the dealer asked with a smirk. “Not getting the cards you need?”

“Oh, I have no complaints,” the gambler responded. “Not about the cards, anyway. It’s simpletons who get my dander up. They mistakenly think I’m as simple-minded as they are.”

“Surely you’re not referring to any of us?” the teller demanded, his cigar clenched in a corner of his mouth.

“Not you, no,” Hale Tilton said. He focused on Fargo. “Do you want to do this or would you rather I did the honors?”

Fargo had played the gambler a few times before. He did not know Tilton well, but as rumor had it, he was fairly honest, for a cardsharp, and had a reputation as a gent who should not be crossed. “Be my guest,” Fargo said, and leaned back.

Hale Tilton glanced from the dealer to the store clerk and back again. “It always amazes me when peckerwoods try.”

“Try what?” the clerk nervously asked.

“In case you have forgotten, I gamble for a living. From Mississippi riverboats to prairie hovels to log saloons along the Columbia River, I have seen it all, done it all, where cards are involved.”

The dealer snickered. “Are you bragging or complaining?”

“I am making a point, Niles,” Hale Tilton said. He pushed his chair back and placed his forearms on the table, and if anyone besides Fargo noticed the slight metallic scrape Tilton’s right wrist made, they did not show it. “I’ve seen trimmed cards, cards with sliced corners, cards with bumps. I’ve seen holdouts of all kinds. Up the sleeve, in vest pockets, in belts. I’ve seen card cheats use special spectacles to read phosphorescent ink on the backs of cards. I’ve seen men use bugs.”

Fargo had been in a saloon in Kansas when a man was caught using a bug. Made of steel and shaped like a money clip with two sharp ends, the bug was jammed under a table and held cards the bug’s owner palmed until they were needed. The man in Kansas had been fortunate. Instead of stretching his neck, as was customary, the other players tarred and feathered him.