Power in the Blood (31 page)

In March of 1880, when Clay was twenty-four but looked a decade older, the second-largest bank in Keyhoe was robbed of a sum in excess of seven thousand dollars in easily transportable folding money. While someone rode to fetch the sheriff from the county seat, a full hour’s gallop away, Clay decided to organize a posse of his own and set off in pursuit while the trail was still hot, hoping the sheriff and his own posse would join them before too long.

Seven armed volunteers presented themselves and were hastily deputized. Witnesses told Clay he couldn’t possibly mistake the robbers when he caught up with them, because one of the men rode a horse unlike any other. This animal seemed to have as many descriptions as there were witnesses to its gallop through town, but was generally acknowledged to be swirled in colors not commonly associated with horsehide. The two riders were rendered in nondescript terms. Look for the horse, he was advised.

The robbers had fled south, heading for the Indian Nations between Kansas and Texas, where lawlessness was the norm. This land, set aside for the use of native Americans, was within the far-flung jurisdiction of the Western District of Arkansas, and was known to be a haven for desperadoes, a land beyond the rule of law. The federal marshals of Judge Isaac Parker’s court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, were permitted entry to the thousand untamed bolt holes of outlawry inside the Nations, but Clay, as the members of his posse pointed out several times while they rode nearer to this ill-favored area, was no federal marshal. He held no official power outside the town of Keyhoe, and that had been left behind. Even the county sheriff, should he ever catch up with them, had no legal right to penetrate further south than the county line bordering the Nations. Word would have to be sent to Fort Smith, over two hundred miles away, for any further action against the robbers.

Confronted with the dwindling enthusiasm of his posse, Clay ordered them home. When they turned their horses, Clay dismounted and began examining the front left fetlock of his gelding.

“Trouble?” he was asked.

“Getting lame. I’ll follow on.”

There were offers to wait with him. Clay refused them all and soon was alone, a state he found preferable to the short-lived excitement of heading a posse. He filled his pipe and smoked awhile, considering his next step. Sooner or later, probably later, the sheriff would happen along with men of his own, and likely tell Clay to get back where he belonged, in the restricted bailiwick of Keyhoe. He would probably even escort Clay back there, eager to turn the whole affair over to Parker’s men from Arkansas, even if delaying pursuit meant losing the trail altogether.

Clay didn’t want to do that. He wanted to catch and kill the men who had robbed a bank in his town. It didn’t matter that they had harmed no one in the course of the robbery; that was sheer good luck, in Clay’s opinion. They were robbers, and deserved to die for doing what they did. It was a personal insult, their choice of Keyhoe to ply their trade. It meant they didn’t fear him, or else had never heard of him, or, if they had, didn’t believe what they’d heard. Clay wanted to stretch their ears and shout death into them. Two dead men and a sack of loot, that’s what he wanted to take home, and to hell with the county sheriff and Judge Parker’s federal marshals.

The tracks of his prey were clearly visible, even to a non-tracker like Clay; two swaths cut by galloping horses through the long prairie grass lying heavy from rains the day before. They wouldn’t be too difficult to follow if he kept hard on their trail and didn’t quit till he caught up. He mounted and rode on.

The landscape he passed across was featureless for the most part, an extension of Kansan anonymity expressed in an abundance of flat sky and equally flat prairie. It was the lack of geographic diversity, perhaps, that caused Clay to begin ruminating on his lot. He asked himself if he was, if not actually happy, then fulfilled in his deepest part, and had to admit that he was not. His duties as marshal of Keyhoe had become routine, were tedious in their changelessness. This hunt for robbers was the most exciting event to have overtaken him in a long time, and the illegality of his continued pursuit beyond the bounds of his jurisdiction did not bother Clay one bit; rather, they enhanced his pleasure, his relief in at last finding a worthwhile task for himself.

He decided, quite suddenly, that after apprehending and executing his quarry, he would contest the next election for county sheriff. Assuming he won, and used his enhanced powers to the fullest in ridding the locality of lawbreakers, he would then be in a position conducive to selection as a United States marshal, allowing him access to virtually every nook and cranny between the two oceans. These thoughts of a field large enough to prove himself upon lifted his spirits.

Clay continued south as the sun completed its arc and sank at last below the long line of the horizon. In the dusk he could not follow the trail with any certainty, but stopping to wait for the night to pass seemed pointless; he had brought along no food, could not have risked a fire to cook it in any case, and had not tied a bedroll to his saddle before riding out of town. He’d behaved like an amateur, in fact, not a leader. Since rest was not possible, he decided to keep going in the same undeviating direction the trail had indicated all afternoon. The robbers just might be foolish or confident enough to announce their presence with a campfire somewhere ahead.

It was so unlikely a scenario that Clay, less than an hour later, was startled to see ahead of him the unmistakable flickering of a small blaze. Filled with self-congratulation and a low opinion of his prey for their predictability, Clay rode slowly closer, and dismounted when he calculated he was a quarter mile from the fire; much closer and there was a chance the horses might smell one another and create a fuss. He took from his saddlebag a lead weight, attached it to the reins and set it on the ground, then took his shotgun and began making his way carefully forward, feeling for each step, wary of gopher holes and matted grass that might trip him.

The night was near moonless, few stars visible behind the clouds gathering for another storm. Clay could scent rain on the light wind, and wood smoke. Where had they found anything to burn in that treeless place? As he came closer, he saw by the firelight what at first appeared to be low brush. A few steps more and he realized they were treetops. The fire had been built along the rim of a sunken creek bed. The men he wanted had built a fire of willow wood, in plain sight of any posse that cared to follow them this far. Why hadn’t they taken the obvious precaution of locating the blaze down on the creek bed, where it would not have been so glaring a signal across miles of open plain?

It was an obvious trap. They were waiting for anyone stupid enough to rush the fire, probably had their rifles resting along the rim, just beyond the firelight’s reach. As he watched, Clay saw a chunk of wood come sailing from the darkness and land in the flames, followed by another. At least one man was on watch, feeding the fire from behind cover, waiting for any arrivals.

Clay felt a quiet rage. They, the perpetrators of a crime, were laying for him. Did they know for sure he was tailing them, or were they just being cautious, if setting up such an unmistakable ambush could be termed caution? He would assume they were expecting him, and make his approach accordingly.

It required a half hour to worm his way through the grass until he found the creek bed, several hundred yards east of the fire. Clay slid carefully down the eroding banks, wishing he had just a few minutes of moonlight to show him the way upstream. In the pitch darkness all around, he had to pause before every step. The stream bed was dry, but littered with branches and debris deposited when the water gave out during last summer’s heat; soon the spring thaw would fill it again. Before setting his boot down at every step, he had to be sure there was nothing underfoot to create the least noise. Progress along the creek, following its serpentine curves, was frustratingly slow.

Eventually he could make out the fire along the rim, some twenty yards further on. Of the men, or man, who fed it there was no sign. Clay cocked his shotgun’s hammers and waited for the men to make a move that would reveal their place of hiding. The fire was burning low, in need of replenishment. Even at this distance Clay felt uneasy. He needed to know where they were, couldn’t do a thing until they revealed themselves.

He heard a series of soft nickerings, brought to him on the wind from south of the dry wash. Their horses had been staked or hobbled away from the fire in case of gunplay. He bet the money was with them, ready for a fast getaway if something went wrong, the arrival of a sizable posse, for instance. But the setup before him had all the earmarks of having been arranged for just one man. It irritated him, this lack of knowledge about the situation he was stepping into. Each of his previous killings had involved a set of known parameters, the whole thing laid out before him, its various permutations evident in advance. Clay preferred it that way, not skulking in darkness. He was actually beginning to shake with the tension of waiting for developments, and had to make a conscious effort to stop. No more wood was flung onto the fire, and the extent of Clay’s field of vision was narrowed as the open flames degenerated to embers.

He couldn’t wait any longer. Ten more steps along the dry wash failed to reveal anything he wished to know, but his eleventh step resulted in the cocking of a hammer close by on his left. Clay whirled and fired, once, twice, the brightness that flared from both barrels blinding him, but before darkness swamped his eyes he saw someone rammed backward by the blast, a fool too dumb to get behind cover before taking aim.

Clay ran for the nearest tree, scrabbling for fresh shells from his belt, shoving them home, snapping the barrels into place and cocking the hammers again, expecting momentarily to hear or feel bullets from the gun of the dead man’s partner. He dropped behind a fallen trunk and opened his mouth to breathe, his pinched nostrils making too much noise. There was nothing to hear, nothing to see but the dark outline of willow trees against a lesser darkness. He wanted to call upon the remaining man to surrender, but didn’t dare risk revealing his own hiding place. It was to be another waiting game, and against all his instincts, Clay prepared himself for it.

“You out there!”

The voice came from above, on the northern bank, probably the fire feeder. Clay said nothing.

“Don’t you be shy,” called the voice. “I know where you’re at, can see you pretty good.”

Clay doubted it; if he was visible, he would already have been shot at.

“No sense in waiting till daylight. Why don’t we settle this with a deal right now?” suggested the voice.

Clay took a chance. The other man’s voice gave no clear indication of his location, and any sound Clay might make would be made useless for targeting by the slight echo down there on the stream bed.

“What deal?” he said.

“You stay where you are and I go lose myself. My partner, he’s got most of what you’re after tied around him under his shirt. He ain’t going nowhere, so you stay here with him and you’ll get back most of it. You come after me and I’ll have to shoot you down.”

“Don’t believe a word,” Clay said.

“That you, Dugan?”

“It is.”

“Knew it was, soon as I heard that boomer. You ain’t got any kind of range with that cane cutter, Dugan. I got a long-barrel repeater here, better you know right now.”

Clay was surprised that his identity was known to the other. “Who are you?”

“Lonnie Baines Marshal.”

Clay knew him; Baines worked at the livery stable in Keyhoe, a colorless young man with an obsequious manner, the last person Clay could have imagined robbing a bank.

“You must’ve known I’d come after you, Lonnie.”

“Well, no, we never did. A little ways out of your yard, ain’t you?”

“Only as far as you made me go. Why don’t you come out where I can see you and lay that weapon down? I’m duty-bound to take you back. You can ride your horse or get slung over the saddle; I don’t care. You make your choice, Lonnie.”

“Well, I already did, I have to say.”

A fusillade of shots whined past Clay, one striking the trunk a yard or so from his face. Lonnie Baines wasn’t bluffing. Clay realized he should have given a cry to simulate a hit. Lonnie would have come down sooner or later to make sure of it, and he could have blasted him then. He wasn’t thinking fast enough.

There was no point now in denying he was still alive. “How is it no one in town recognized you, Lonnie?” he called.

“New coat, Marshal, new hat too. Had on a handkerchief as well. They never told you that?”

“Who was your friend? I know him?”

“Don’t believe so. Henry Pulvermiller?”

“Never heard the name.”

“He’s from out to Colorado way. Well, he won’t get home again now, I reckon.”

“You want to get home, Lonnie? Throw that repeater out where I can see it, and come out after it.”

“No, no, I sure can’t do that. Let you have the money Henry’s got wrapped around him, though. You take that and let me go, how about it?”

“Not tonight. Get yourself out here and be sensible about this, Lonnie.”

“I won’t do it, no, I sure can’t. See me going back there without the money I took, and a prisoner and all? They’d laugh at me. Nossir, can’t do it.”

“It’s better than dying, Lonnie.”

“I ain’t dead yet. Might happen to you, not me.”

“No, Lonnie.”

A long silence followed, then Clay heard the scuffling of boots. He swung the shotgun up, fingers tightening around the stock, expecting to see Lonnie making a suicidal rush for him. But the sound was already receding along the rim. Lonnie had decided to make a dash for the horses. Clay knew he would go a little way along the creek, then cross it to the south side, then double back to where the horses were waiting. He’d be keeping a check behind him as he ran, in case Clay was following, but Clay wasn’t about to.

Lonnie spent almost fifteen minutes doing what Clay surmised he would, and found the horses at last only because one of them whinnied softly when he came near enough for it to recognize his scent. Lonnie looked over to the creek bed, a vague line of darkness fifty yards away. He hoped Clay was still there, or better yet a long ways upstream looking for him still. Now he saw the horses, the white shoulder of his own and the less distinct outline of Henry’s. It was a shame about Henry, and a bigger shame about the money that would get left behind with him, unless Lonnie found the nerve to go strip it from the body. It was a good idea, if Clay Dugan was indeed still on a cold trail further along the creek, searching in the dark, but a bad idea if Clay hadn’t fallen for it and was lying right there just a few yards from Henry and the cash. Lonnie hesitated.