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Authors: Ford Fargo

Tags: #action western, #western adventure, #western american history, #classic western, #kiowa indians, #western adventure 1880, #wolf creek, #traditional western

Kiowa Vengeance (7 page)

BOOK: Kiowa Vengeance
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“Well, I am a man who can appreciate
tradition, yes sir,” McNulty exclaimed. “Show me a man who values
tradition and I’ll show you a man who has breeding in his
background, real breeding.” McNulty placed his hands on his thick
waist and studied the likeness.

“Ever since I set eyes on the portrait you
painted of Chester Longfellow, the one that hangs in the lobby of
the Missouri Union Savings Bank, I positively coveted it, sir.
Coveted it. I knew from the get-go that you were the man to
immortalize my achievements.” McNulty sighed, ran a hand through
his thinning hair, his mind no doubt filled with fabricated images,
heroic fantasies conjured by one who had managed to stay as far
from the fighting as possible. “We gave Johnny Reb a hiding back in
’sixty-three. Did you serve, sir? No, of course. You’re an
Englishman, the war was none of your concern, eh.” He quickly
appraised the artist. The man he knew as De Courcey looked to be in
his thirties. He was slender, a bit hollow of chest, and plagued
with a nasty cough at times. Curly brown hair hung to his
shoulders. His eyes, dark as autumn leaves, seemed to draw
everything in, as if the man was always watching, ever observant
and poised to react.

“Longfellow,” Sampson nodded, “I remember
him well. Now that was a lengthy sitting.” Sampson had labored on
the portrait until he had learned everything there was to know
about the bank, its shipment schedule, and the payrolls that were
due to be deposited. Late one night he looted the bank, and took
all the gold…but left the portrait. Robbery was one thing—art
something else, indeed.

With his share of the haul, Quick had
traveled back through the Shenandoah Valley and repaid those hard
pressed Southern families who had shown him a kindness when he had
ridden with Mosby’s raiders —before General Bragg had requested he
lend his skills to John Hunt Morgan on his famous cavalry raid into
Indiana and Ohio. Quick was captured on that Great Raid, and
imprisoned at the Union camp in Rock Island, Illinois. Upon his
release from captivity he made his way back to Virginia, and one of
those impoverished Southern families nursed him back to health. It
seemed only fitting that money from a Yankee war profiteer would
help them and their kind get back on their feet.

A week ago, he had started back to Wolf
Creek and his new studio. But on the train bound for Kansas City,
Missouri, a chance meeting with Magnus McNulty had “derailed” his
return home. McNulty was eager for a portrait of himself, and
Sampson Quick could not resist the opportunity to make an honest
dollar—after helping himself to so many dishonest ones at McNulty’s
expense. It had been a risky business. Then again, the wanted
posters depicting Sampson Quick didn’t do him justice. He could
have done much better. Portraits were his specialty, after all.

“I am glad you approve of my humble
efforts.”


Approve
, dear fellow? Yours is a
work of genius! You have captured the essence of…
me
. This
shall hang in a place of honor. We shall have an unveiling next
month. I shall invite the town fathers, all my associates, maybe
even get Longfellow to come for a visit. The poor man hasn’t been
the same since the robbery some months ago. You may have read of
it.”

“I believe so.”

“Rumor has it the Hounds were responsible.
The hooded rogues have been a thorn in my side on more than one
occasion. But they will get their comeuppance. Mark my words.”

“I hope so. I have no use for such thieves
and ruffians.”

McNulty crossed around the easel and the
painting with its gilded frame and removed a cash box from his
desk. Sampson brightened, and then had to resist the urge to pull
the Sharps four shot derringer tucked inside his waistcoat and
claim the cash box as his own. McNulty counted out a hundred and
seventy-five dollars, placed the stack of greenbacks in an envelope
and handed the packet to the artist.

“I believe that settles the account. Elkins
will show you to the door. Have a safe trip back to—Wolf Creek, was
it?”

“Yes sir. Good day, Colonel McNulty.”

McNulty almost purred. He liked being
addressed by his former rank.

“Wolf Creek,” McNulty repeated. “There was a
nasty bank robbery there a few weeks ago, wasn’t there. Even
nastier than the one in Kingman the day before yesterday.”

Quick chuckled. “I suppose it’s a good thing
I have alibis placing me elsewhere for both of those.”

McNulty guffawed. “Oh that is rich, De
Courcey! Imagine you as a bandit!” He winked conspiratorially.
“Why, perhaps I’d best get my alibis lined up as well, eh! Good day
to you, friend!”

A Negro manservant with salt and pepper hair
appeared from a side room and motioned for Quick to follow him to
the foyer. “This way sir.”

Quick left McNulty in the study, in a room
of walnut furniture and shelves lined with books he would never
read, entranced by his own portrait, a grand illusion framed and
signed.

The manservant held the door for him. Quick
crossed the threshold, and made his way from the estate. He needed
some new oil paints and sticks of charcoal for sketching. He also
needed to get back to Wolf Creek, where he had only recently
established a base. But he had one very important stop to make
first.

***

Quick approached the abandoned shack, which
was located in a draw about twenty miles west of Wichita. It had
been used, and probably built, by buffalo hunters. They had long
since moved on, or been scalped.
Funny how touchy Indians could
be when folks started killing off their food source.

Whatever the reason, the shack’s former
inhabitants were gone, and all evidence indicated that the little
building had been forgotten. But it had been discovered, and put to
good use, in recent months. The Hounds had made it one of their
many temporary hideouts in the region. Sampson Quick knew they
would be waiting for him there.

The shack was quiet, and there were no
horses in sight. Quick knew they were well hidden, a short distance
away. He called out no greeting as he dismounted and approached the
door—they would have been aware of him long before he reached the
building, even if they had not been expecting him. The Hounds were
professionals, after all—and they had each managed to survive the
war. None of them was the careless type.

Quick had known Tom LeBeau and Harlan Graves
for a decade. The three of them had ridden together with John Mosby
back in Virginia. He had known the Keene brothers, Chester and Bob,
for almost as long—he had met them in ’sixty-three, during John
Hunt Morgan’s Great Raid.

Clay Pettibone was the wild card. He had
joined the Hounds after one of their original number—another Mosby
Marauder named Gip Edmonds—had fallen to a posse-man’s bullet.
Pettibone was a couple of decades older than the others, and was
crafty as a fox. He had been one of the Missouri border ruffians
during the Bleeding Kansas years of the ’fifties, and rode with
Quantrill during the war.

The Keene brothers had vouched for
Pettibone—he was a distant cousin—but Quick had always had
reservations. Pettibone might have fit in fine with Quantrill, but
Quantrill was no Mosby or Morgan. To Quick’s eyes, Clay Pettibone
had always seemed like bad company.

Recent events had proven him right.

Sampson Quick sighed, more from sadness than
from anxiety, before he pushed in the door. His Hounds awaited him.
Tom LeBeau was already pouring his old friend a cup of coffee; the
other four sat around the table, playing cards.

“I was beginning to think you wasn’t gonna
show, Sam,” LeBeau said as he offered the cup to Quick. LeBeau
smiled uneasily.

Quick took the coffee. “A golden opportunity
dropped into my lap. Two opportunities, really—a chance to paint
the portrait of a man we’ve been nibbling at, in his own
library—all the while familiarizing myself with his home and all
the pretty little treasures therein.”

Harlan Graves chuckled. “McNulty?”

“The very same.”

“I’m glad you had fun, sippin’ brandy and
paintin’ your pictures and such,” Pettibone said in a clipped tone.
“We was expectin’ you a week ago, and you left us here to twiddle
our thumbs.”

Quick stared hard at his subordinate.
“Except you weren’t twiddling your thumbs, were you? You kept
yourselves very well-occupied.”

LeBeau cast his glance to the floor. He had
been acting guilty as a whipped dog since Quick first arrived, and
was no longer even half-heartedly trying to hide it.

“I reckon you heard, then,” Bob Keene
said.

“Of course I heard,” Quick said. “Everyone
in the territory has heard.”

“Then you must’ve heard what a haul we made
from that Kingman bank,” Chester said.

“We held out your share,” Harlan said. “We
figured you’d’a been with us, if you’d been back in time.”

“It was probably even more money than you
get for paintin’ your lovely pitchers,” Pettibone added with a
sneer.

“I suppose I wasn’t paying attention to that
part,” Quick said. “I was too preoccupied, I suppose, mulling over
the fact that the Kingman bank is a farmer’s bank, a small
rancher’s bank. The railroads and large cattle companies keep their
money in Wichita.”

Chester Keene shrugged. “There’s a lot of
law in Wichita, Sam. This Kingman job, hell, they was just settin’
out on the prairie—it’s like they was just waiting to hand over
their cash to the first people that wanted to take it.”

“And the deputy you killed? The teller you
wounded? In fact, I heard that several citizens barely avoided
being trampled to death when you made your exit.”

Pettibone chuckled. “It does them
clodhoppers good to step lively ever’ once in awhile. Keeps ‘em in
shape.”

Quick’s eyes narrowed. “I find no amusement
in harming innocents, or in robbing poor people who are barely able
to scratch out a living as it is.”

“Then you ain’t lookin’ at it from where I
sit, I reckon,” Pettibone said.

“Look,” Bob Keene said, before Quick could
respond to Pettibone. “We know that ain’t how you do things. Hell,
your plan probably would’ve been to rob the McNulty Cattle Company
in the middle of the night, and hand out half the money to the
dirt-scrabblers in Kingman as we passed through.”

Bob sighed and closed his eyes for a moment,
as if trying to draw courage, then continued. “We’ve been doing
things that way for years, Sam. But we ain’t exactly got rich at
it. We figured—well, we figured maybe it was time to take something
that was gonna be all for us, just once.”

Quick tossed off the last of his coffee in a
gulp. “Kingman isn’t the only bank job the populace was buzzing
about in Wichita,” he said. “While I’ve been away, Wolf Creek was
hit by Jim Danby and his gang. Several citizens shot dead,
including a pretty young school teacher. A little Chinese boy
trampled to death. I bought candy for that little fellow when I
went to Wolf Creek to set up my studio.”

Pettibone chuckled again. “I’ve heard
stories about strangers with candy.”

Quick stepped forward, fast as a panther,
and backhanded Clay Pettibone. The coarse outlaw fell out of his
chair and instinctively reached for his gun.

“Oh, by all means,” Quick said. “Please
do.”

Pettibone raised his hand, slowly and
carefully, and wiped the blood from his mouth.

“No thanks,” Pettibone said. “I’m no match
for you and you know it.”

“Then keep your mouth shut.”

Pettibone’s eyes blazed, but he did not
move.

“Let’s all calm down,” Harlan Graves said.
“It’s no good, us goin’ at each other like this. Sam, it’s a shame
what happened to them friends of your’n over in Wolf Creek—but I
don’t see what that has to do with us.”

“I’ll tell you what it has to do with us,”
Quick said. “Jim Danby, and a good number of his men, rode with
Quantrill’s Raiders. And that’s how Quantrill’s kind does things.
The officers we served under were gentlemen, even during the worst
part of the war.”

He gestured contemptuously at Pettibone. “I
saw it in him when he first started riding with us. There is a
feral nature in the eyes of such men—I’ve learned to spot it in an
instant. Since he has been with us, I have watched it spread to all
of you.”

Quick turned to Graves. “Even you and Tom,”
he said. “You cracked that teller’s skull so hard in Market City
last month you almost killed him. Annoyed, because an old man moved
too slowly to suit you. The Harlan Graves I know would never have
done that.”

After a few seconds, Chester Keene broke the
uncomfortable silence. “Like my brother said, Sam—we’ve done things
your way all this time. But you left us setting out here, with no
word, and figured we’d just wait on the master to come home—like we
really was nothin’ but hounds. But we showed that we can take
action on our own.”

“You did, indeed,” Quick said bitterly.

“We’re wolves now,” Pettibone said. “Not
dogs.” He climbed slowly to his feet.

Sampson Quick took a deep breath. “I’m
through with you,” he said. “Do as you wish. I’ll not have my name
associated with it.”

He looked around, his gaze lingering longest
on LeBeau and Graves. “Despite the circumstances of our parting, I
wish you well,” he said. “We have endured much together, and I have
counted you brothers.”

Pettibone’s annoying chuckle returned. How
Quick had come to loathe it.

“Well, hold on there, mister
high-and-mighty,” Pettibone said. “Surely you ain’t stupid enough
to think it’s as easy as that. With all you know about us? What
makes you think we’d just let you walk out of here, free as a
breeze?”

“What makes me think so?” Quick asked. “The
knowledge that—yourself excepted—every man here still possesses
some vestige of honor.”

Quick turned and walked toward the door.

BOOK: Kiowa Vengeance
12.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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