White Lightning (10 page)

Correction:
four
men, with the others trailing back a step or two behind the one who’d spoken. All of them had six-guns drawn and cocked them now. The sound of hammers locking back grated on Naylor’s nerves, setting his teeth on edge.

“You ain’t supposed to be alone,” the leader of the party said.

“Oh, no?”

“Two marshals, we was told. And here I see two saddles, two bedrolls. So where’s the other?”

Naylor tried to feign confusion. “Did you maybe pass him, coming in?”

“We didn’t pass nobody, mister. Are you gonna tell us where he is, or do we have to squeeze it out of you?”

“Hold on there, partner,” Naylor answered. “I was fast asleep up here until I heard you all bumblin’ around out there. You woke me up. The hell am I supposed to know where anybody went or what they did while I’m in dreamland?”

“Marshal, if you’re prone to jokin’, I can promise you this ain’t the time,” the mouthpiece of the quartet said.

“Four guns to none,” said Naylor, “doesn’t put me in a joking mood.”

“Best tell us where your partner is, then, hadn’t you?”

Naylor figured his right hand was at least twelve inches from the nearest of his pistols, too far to be useful if the strangers cut loose from their present range. The only thing that he could think of was to stall for time and hope Slade reappeared from wherever in hell he’d gone.

“I’ll say it one more time,” he offered. “I was sleeping when you made the noise that roused me. If you want to find my partner, best thing for you all to do is call him.” And with that, he hollered out, “Hey, Jack! You wanna get your ass back here to camp?”

“No need to shout,” a voice said from the darkness.

Then all hell broke loose.

Slade had barely finished buttoning his fly when he heard voices from the camp. Luke Naylor’s first, and then a voice he didn’t recognize. The words eluded him at first, but Slade assumed they represented trouble in the making. With Bill Tanner’s grim example fresh in mind, he didn’t feel like giving strangers in the night the benefit of any doubt.

He doubled back to camp, Peacemaker drawn and cocked, his sense of urgency and caution vying for control as he advanced. Long strides, but careful not to make a misstep and announce himself to whoever had dropped in for a chat. Behind him, Slade’s roan and his partner’s snowflake Appaloosa both stood silently, watching him and waiting to see what would happen next.

Slade reached the last bur oak before the fire, staying in
shadow as he counted four new faces in the camp. Naylor was sitting upright with his blanket thrown aside, his twin Colts visible but too far out of hand to do him any good right now. He’d need a suitable diversion if he planned on reaching them, and even then he would require a healthy dose of luck.

Slade got in on the tail end of the conversation, Naylor telling the four guns, “I’ll say it one more time. I was sleeping when you made the noise that roused me. If you want to find my partner, best thing for you all to do is call him.” Suiting words to action then, he yelled, “Hey, Jack! You wanna get your ass back here to camp?”

“No need to shout,” Slade answered, leveling his Peacemaker.

The shooters spun to face him, couldn’t help themselves under the circumstances, and it wasn’t a negotiating situation. Slade squeezed off a round that struck the nearest of his targets in the chest and dropped him thrashing on the grass, then ducked back out of sight behind the oak as other guns cut loose.

He didn’t bother counting, couldn’t tell if Naylor’d reached his Colts or been cut down while he was trying. Slade rolled to his right, around the bur oak’s trunk and out the other side from where he’d fired a moment earlier. Two of the four intruders still were on their feet and moving, one looking for him, the other fanning shots in Naylor’s general direction while the younger marshal ducked and rolled to save his skin, returning fire without a chance to aim.

Slade nailed the pistolero who was stalking him, a gut shot, but it wasn’t good enough. The wounded man dropped to his knees, cursing, but braced his six-gun in a firm two-handed grip and sent a bullet whistling past Slade’s head. Thumbs drawing back the hammer, and he might get luckier this time unless—

Slade’s next shot drilled the target’s forehead, blew out through the back somewhere, and sent his slouch hat sailing. Gunfire hammered from his right, and Slade twisted in that direction, ready with his Colt, but Naylor didn’t need him. Rapid-firing from a place low on the ground, he made the final gunman jerk and dance before he fell.

Slade’s ears were ringing, but he still made out a voice calling from somewhere in the darkness to the north. “Hoke? Harry?
Anybody?
”

Scrambling to his feet, Slade ran in that direction, but he wasn’t fast enough. Before he’d covered half the estimated distance, he heard rapid hoofbeats fading in the night, first there, then gone. He saw more horses milling in confusion, riderless.

Damn it!

“It’s me,” he called to Naylor, as he hiked back into camp. “Don’t shoot.”

“You took your time,” said Naylor. “Figured I was done there, for a second.”

“Sorry. Had my hands full,” Slade replied. “One got away.”

“I guess that’s bad,” Naylor surmised.

“It can’t be good,” Slade said.

“Don’t know how much you heard,” said Naylor, as they searched the bodies, coming up with nothing to identify the dead.

“Only the last bit,” Slade replied. “About my ass.”

“The one who did their talking for ’em said they were expecting two of us.
Two marshals, we was told,
the way he put it. So my question would be—”

“Told by who?” Slade finished for him.

“That’s exactly right.”

“Someone in Stateline, I imagine.”

“Yeah, but
who
told
them
?”

Slade thought about it. “Any warning had to come from Enid, way I see it. Hard to see a rider reaching Stateline, passing word in time for guns to turn around and meet us here, but they’re connected by the telegraph. Someone in town knew what we’ve been assigned to do and sold us out.”

“It wouldn’t be the judge,” said Naylor.

“No. But someone in the courthouse could’ve done it. Or somebody that a courthouse worker spoke to, talking out of turn.”

“Maybe the undertaker?”

“I don’t picture Holland Mattson having any truck with moonshiners,” Slade said, “but I can’t tell you it’s impossible.”

“Another marshal?”

That gave Slade a sour feeling in his stomach, worsening because he couldn’t absolutely rule it out. Instead of answering, he said, “We need to bring their horses into camp before they wander off.”

“What for?” Naylor inquired.

“To load these four at first light, for the trip to Stateline,” Slade replied.

“You want to take ’em in?”

“Sure thing. And see who’s waiting for them. Maybe who looks disappointed when we turn up with the bad boys draped across their saddles.”

“Right. Okay. Sounds like a lot of work, though.”

“Could be worse,” Slade said. “They might be packing you.”

“You always this much fun to travel with?” asked Naylor.

“Hard to say,” Slade answered him. “I’m normally alone.”

The dead men’s horses hadn’t strayed when Slade and
Naylor reached them, each man leading two back to the camp, where they were hobbled near the roan and Appaloosa. Slade refused to load the animals with their late riders yet and leave them standing under deadweight all night long, which left them only one alternative. They dragged the corpses out of camp and far enough away to spare themselves from any trouble with coyotes in the hours that remained till sunrise.

“We’ve got some answers due in Stateline,” Naylor said when it was done.

“We do,” Slade said, “but we should take it easy. Stick to what we planned, after we drop those four with whoever’s in charge. Find out what happens when we light a fire under the pot.”

“You’re pretty sly,” said Naylor.

“When I need to be. Like now.”

“Hey, thanks for helpin’ out before. I likely could’ve taken ’em, you know, but why hog all the glory?”

“Right,” Slade said. “Especially when there’s enough to go around.”

“My thought exactly,” Naylor said.

And Slade suspected there would be more opportunities in Stateline, too. Someone was anxious to prevent them getting there—which made him all the more determined to proceed.

Flynn Rafferty was in his office at the Sunflower Saloon, counting the money stacked atop his desk, when knuckles beat a tattoo on the door. He reached into a pocket of his suit coat, closed his hand around the small Apache pistol that he carried there, and called out, “Enter!”

Grady Sullivan came in, trailed by a harried-looking fellow with a day’s growth on his cheeks and jaw, traces of trail dust on his clothes. They stood before the big man’s desk, the nervous one with hat in hand. Flynn thought his name was Eddie Something. Gilligan? Gilhooley?

“Well, what is it?” Flynn demanded.

“Go ahead,” said Sullivan. “Tell him what you told me.”

“Um…Mr. Flynn…thing is, we missed ’em, sir.”

“Missed who?” he asked, before it hit him and he felt the first small spark of anger flaring in his chest. “You mean…?”

“The marshals. Yes, sir. I was told to watch the horses, now, you understand. It weren’t
my
fault.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I couldn’t see much from the spot where Hoke told me to wait—”

“Hoke Woodruff,” Grady interrupted.

“Yes, I know him,” Flynn replied. Thinking,
The goddamned idjit.
And to Eddie Something: “You. Keep talking.”

“Yes, sir. Um…the other boys left me and walked up to this fire we seen, top of a ridge there, and I couldn’t hear ’em talkin’ to whoever was in camp, you know. I kinda seen ’em with the firelight there behind ’em, but it wasn’t clear. After a couple minutes, someone started shootin’, then they all did, but I couldn’t leave them horses after Hoke gimme the order, so I…um…”

“You left them to it,” Flynn suggested.

“Yes, sir. That’s about it. For a minute there, I thought they might be winnin’. Then this fella what I never seen before comes runnin’ down toward where I was, and I…well, I…”

“Took off,” Flynn said. “And what about your friends?”

“They’s dead,” Eddie replied. “I mean, they’d have to be, sir. All that shootin’ of a sudden, then it cut off quick. They couldn’t be alive no ways.”

“You’d better hope not,” Flynn informed him.

“Sir?”

“They won’t be very well disposed toward you, now, would they? After you abandoned them? If they’re alive and talking to the law?”

The dusty gunman blanched at that, wringing his hat with anxious hands. “They’s dead, all right,” he muttered, as if trying to convince himself. “I’m sure of that.”

“Well, then, your problem’s solved. But mine remains. Leave me to speak with Grady, will you?”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.”

“Wait at the bar,” Sullivan ordered, as his flunky reached the office door, prepared to exit.

“Right. Okay.”

Alone with Sullivan, Flynn said, “Goddamn it, Grady! What the hell?”

“I know, Boss.”

“Oh, you
know.
Well, that’s all right, then.”

“Sir, I didn’t say—”

“Shut up! Best case, we’ve lost four men and put the marshals on their guard. Worst case, some of the clumsy bastards are alive and talking to the law right now.”

“They wouldn’t give us up,” said Sullivan.

“Oh, no? You want to bet your life on that, one of them looking at a noose unless he gives them someone higher up the ladder?
I
don’t.”

“There’s another possibility,” said Sullivan. “With all that shooting Eddie heard, maybe they took the marshals with ’em.”

“Wouldn’t that be great?” Flynn sneered. “And then some moke can find them all together, our boys and the two dead lawmen. That’s fabulous!”

“I can ride out and see if—”

“No!
Hell
, no! Forget that. If there’s any chance to put this off on someone else, you’d only make it worse by mixing in the middle of it. Shit!”

“One other way it could’ve gone,” said Sullivan.

“Oh, yes? What’s that?”

“Well, Eddie didn’t see much. Nothing, really. We aren’t even sure Hoke and the boys
did
find the lawmen. Suppose they happened on somebody else’s camp and got shot up.”

“If Woodruff was that stupid, you’re a goddamned fool for putting him in charge,” Flynn said.

“Yes, sir.”

“First thing to do is tie up your loose ends. This Eddie What’s-his-name…”

“Gillespie.”

“If he spills this shit to anybody else, it could be
our
necks in a noose.”

Sullivan nodded, stony-faced. “I’ll take care of it.”

“See that you do. And let me know the minute those two deputies hit town.”

Ants had found the corpses overnight, but Slade and Naylor brushed them off as best they could before they hoisted the dead meat onto the abandoned saddle horses. There was no way to decide which man had ridden what horse when they were alive, but none of the four animals protested overmuch as they were loaded up. With camp already broken and the early light of day to guide them, Slade and Naylor led the captured animals—two each, trailing their reins—northeast, toward their intended destination.