Winchester 1887 (12 page)

The moment he heard the batwing doors pounding and the singing of the spurs, Link McCoy looked at the three men who just walked into the saloon and wished he had his Winchester '87 with him. But he was in a respectable joint on the right side of the railroad tracks, and the owners and the law did not care for weapons. Of course, no one had noticed the brass .31-caliber pocket derringer with the pearl grips in his vest pocket.

“By grab!” shouted Denison's mayor, who had bellied up to the bar a couple hours ago and was still nursing his beer while talking shop with the bartender and saloon owner. “Ranger Clarke! What brings you to Denison?” The mayor hurried across the floor and extended his soft hand at the leathery looking Texas Ranger.

The Ranger shook, but did not seemed interested in anything the mayor had to say. Covered in dust, he must have ridden halfway across Texas to get there—which made McCoy, who was typically anything but paranoid, think that maybe the Rangers were after him.

Yet the two men who had entered the saloon with the Ranger did not wear the cinco pesos star of the Texas Rangers. They did carry guns—against the city ordinance in town proper. On the other side of the tracks, no one cared who carried what or who killed who. Two guns each, on their hips, while one toted a double-barrel Greener and the other a Winchester carbine.

Link McCoy pulled down his hat, lowered his head, and spied on the three newcomers.

Ranger Clarke would be Alan Clarke. He had earned a bit of a reputation in the Panhandle. McCoy didn't know the one with the shotgun, but the one with the walrus mustache, the brown patch over his left eye, the missing left ear, and the Winchester carbine . . . that one he did know.

Jared Whitney. Hired killer. He was even wanted in Texas. For murder. If McCoy Link remembered right, Whitney had even killed a Texas Ranger.

That thought made Link relax. He didn't think the men were after him. He left the brass derringer in his pocket, finished his whiskey, and when the mayor had escorted the three men to the bar, he casually rose, and walked out of the saloon. He would leave Clarke, Whitney, and the third man to their drinking. Besides, he needed to get to Indian Territory. To find that man who drank Old Overholt and smoked like the stack of a Baldwin locomotive. And then find the whiskey runner wanted for poisoning some folks up in the Panhandle.

Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell did not have a monopoly on crime in Indian country. Proving that, a tumbleweed wagon full of prisoners and its deputies and driver had lit out for Fort Smith weeks ago.

Jackson Sixpersons was alone, unless he counted Mallory and Flatt, who was driving another tumbleweed wagon carrying prisoners.

Two young Creeks, arrested on John Doe warrants for running whiskey, leaned against the iron bars. The one with his left ear bitten off waved a bell crown hat to cool himself in the sun. The one wearing a yellow brocade vest was snoring logs and curled up in a fetal position.

On the other side of the wagon sat a white man with black teeth and a gray mustache, who denied that he was Larry Dundee, accused of murdering a peddler named Jameson outside of Muskogee. He sure fit the description on the wanted poster and had been captured with the gold Saint Christopher medallion known to have been in Jameson's possession. He had busted Malcolm Mallory's nose during the arrest, which satisfied Jackson Sixpersons. Mallory kept spouting in his nasal voice that Judge Parker should add a year to Dundee's sentence for resisting arrest and assaulting a federal peace officer.

“You think Judge Parker will leave him swinging for a year after he's hanged for murder?” Jackson Sixpersons asked.

Virgil Flatt laughed at that one. So did the Creek Indian who wasn't snoring. Malcolm Mallory did not laugh, just sulked.

They had made camp in a clearing about a quarter mile from the old stagecoach station at Elm Spring. The old mud wagons and Concords had not traveled through there for a number of years. In fact, the only people hanging around the abandoned cabin were Salvationists, mostly Presbyterians who were trying to set up some sort of mission at the old spring.

“Goin' to a camp meetin', Jackson?” Flatt asked with a laugh. “Yer shore gettin' dressed fer it.”

Ignoring the driver, Sixpersons fed another buckshot shell into the shotgun. He worked the lever, and loaded one more round into the twelve-gauge, then stood. “You coming?”

Mallory looked up and slowly lowered the wadded-up soaked bandana. He muttered a curse and whined, “My nose is busted, Jackson.”

“What I figured.” The old Cherokee pulled down the brim of his beat-up hat and walked to his piebald gelding. He swung into the saddle, not sheathing the Winchester in the scabbard, and rode to the station, hearing the minister or wannabe minister leading the congregation in “Shall We Gather at the River.”

Most of them were old people—gray beards and silver heads. Even the person waving the hymnal had to be older than Jackson Sixpersons. Slowly, the leader lowered the book, and stared, his mouth agape, at the lawman as he dismounted and walked to the people sitting on rocks and camp chairs, or on blankets, or just on the grass. The congregation stopped singing and turned to stare, too.

That was good. Those people could not carry a tune in a burlap bag.

One man did not turn. He probably had not been singing anyway. He just sat there in his linen duster and wringing the black slouch hat in his hands, head bowed.

“This is a prayer meeting, sir!” The preacher man had found his voice and pointed a long finger at Sixpersons.

The Cherokee stopped and looked at the young man. “Ben Fellows, come with me.”

The man just kept wringing his hat.

Sixpersons brought the shotgun to his shoulder and drew a bead on the young man.

The congregation parted like the Red Sea. A few of the old women screamed. Two of the graybeards protested.

“Let's go,” Sixpersons said. “Or I blow your head off.”

“Now hear me, you savage Indian, murder is a sin,” the preacher said.

“So is rape.” Sixpersons' words caused one of the women to faint into a graybeard's arm. “Ben Fellows,” he repeated.

The hat fell onto the grass, and the man turned. His eyes were vacant. He stood, pushed back the linen duster to reveal a Navy Colt tucked inside his waistband.

“You don't want to do that,” Sixpersons said.

“Please!” one of the women begged.

Fellows sighed. “No, I don't.”

Slowly, he tugged the Colt free with fingers and thumb, touching only the walnut butt of the old pistol, which he dropped by his feet. He extended his arms, offering his hands for the manacles.

Only then did Jackson Sixpersons lower the shotgun.

He walked Ben Fellows out of the prayer meeting. The tumbleweed wagon was filling up.

The next stop was Fort Sill. If only he could drop off the prisoners and his two associates there—but that's not the way the law or the army worked in Indian Territory.

What a shame.

The post had been abandoned by the army years ago and didn't look formidable. Maybe it never had.

When first established in 1842, it had been the army's most southwestern base, set up to protect the Choctaws and Chickasaws who had been kicked out of their homelands in the southeastern states and forced to make a new home in Indian Territory. The Yankees had pulled out early during the Civil War, and Rebels from Texas had turned the fort into a Confederate base. After Appomattox, the U.S. government had given the fort to the Chickasaws.

Link McCoy rode through the entrance beneath the watchtower and saw only Indians. Not the one he was looking for, but that was to be expected.

He swung down from the bay, wrapped the reins around the hitching post, and looked around the grounds. Finally, he saw the glow of a cigarette from the middle window in the watchtower he had passed under. Looked like a log cabin built on top of a rock wall. He found the ladder, climbed it, and stepped inside the dark room, smelling cigarette smoke.

“You took your time,” the gravelly voice said.

McCoy frowned. “I'm here. And we don't have much time.”

“So you said. Fourth of July?”

“Yes.”

“Be some party.”

“I hope it's a good one. For you and me. And everyone.”

“It should be.”

McCoy looked down at the grounds. No one seemed to care that he was up there talking to that Indian who smoked constantly. Typically, Indians minded their own business.

“You've found Bodeen?” he asked.

“I've sent for him. He should be heading this way.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just sent him a message through a Choctaw I know. That we'd meet him.”

“Then let's go meet him.”

The man who smoked laughed. “You might want some help.”

“To find a whiskey runner?” McCoy laughed back and shook his head. “I think we can handle him and his kid.”

“Yeah. I'd hope so.” The cigarette went flying out the window. “But can you handle the entire Chickasaw Nation?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that those Indians . . . and a whole lot of others . . . aim to kill Lamar Bodeen. You might have asked for a whiskey peddler who don't poison Indians.”

The army post closest to the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation had quite the history. It had been serving the army since 1869, back when the buffalo soldiers of the 10th Cavalry had lowered their beat-up carbines and turned into brick masons and carpenters to build the post. They'd done a good job. Many of those buildings still stood almost thirty years later, and while most frontier forts had been abandoned since the last of the Indians had surrendered—even the wily Apache Geronimo was living on the reservation nearby—Fort Sill remained vibrant, alive, and needed.

Indians still called the fort “the Soldier House at Medicine Bluffs.”

Leaving Malcolm Mallory and Virgil Flatt outside with the tumbleweed wagon, listening to Geronimo talk to some reporters, Deputy U.S. Marshal Jackson Sixpersons walked into the post hospital.

An orderly rose, saw the badge, turned toward a man in a white robe, and called out a name that Sixpersons did not catch. The white man turned, removed his spectacles, and walked to the old Cherokee.

He was heavyset and balding although his Dundreary whiskers, heavy with white, flowed. The tie was loosened around his neck. The face was flushed pink. The man's chest heaved. Jackson Sixpersons figured he might drop dead of a heart attack before he even introduced himself. He started to extend a hand, stopped, and studied the Winchester shotgun Sixpersons held in his left hand.

Sixpersons said nothing.

The doctor cleared his throat, looked away from the shotgun and into Jackson Sixpersons' eyes. “You're from Fort Smith?”

Sixpersons nodded.

The doctor cursed and swung a fat arm across the room lined with beds. Most of the patients were white men, probably half not even sick—except of the mundane chores given to a peacetime army—but a few of the patients, way off in the far back corner, were Indians.

“None of them have died, but one is touch and go, and I fear if she cannot hold any food or water in her stomach, she will be called to Glory before two more days. The others are still with us only by the grace of the Lord. Nothing I've done.” He sounded like he hailed from Boston. Jackson Sixpersons had heard a lot of Boston accents, mainly from lawyers in Judge Parker's court. Lawyers for the defense. He had grown mighty sick of men from Boston, but the sawbones, well, he seemed all right.

“How long ago?” Sixpersons asked.

“Two days.” The doctor began walking across the big room, and Sixpersons followed.

One white soldier stopped him and asked if he was going to shoot the Indians. “You know”—he cackled and gestured toward the men who had gathered at his cot to play cards—“put 'em out of their memory. With that.” He pointed a bandaged finger at the twelve-gauge lever-action shotgun. “Like you'd shoot a horse with a broke leg.” He giggled.

His companions, with better sense, did not.

Sixpersons looked at the joking man and lifted his shotgun, pointing the barrel at the man's ruddy face. “I don't shoot horses.”

The man dropped his cards, and his eyes widened. His lips trembled, and he stuttered out an apology before Sixpersons lowered the shotgun and hurried to catch up with the doctor, who had not even stopped walking or talking.

“We get bad whiskey all the time. That comes with the territory. I know you lawmen have been trying to stop those runners. Most of them run whiskey, maybe not the best you'll find, maybe not much better than Taos Lightning, but it doesn't kill. Or come close to killing. Not like this. This”—he stopped, drew a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his face—“is murder. Plain and simple.”

Jackson Sixpersons had never cared for hospitals. He didn't even like visiting the holy people in Cherokee Country. White man's hospitals smelled of medicine and alcohol and white men, but mostly, of death. He wanted to get out quickly, but he needed to hear what the doctor had to say first.

“Strychnine. A nasty way to die.” The doctor said, pointing a fat finger at an Indian. A girl. Most Comanches were on the stout side, but this one had lost so much weight, she looked like copper skin melting onto bones. Her breathing was ragged. Her eyes closed.

“Bodeen?” Sixpersons asked.

“I don't know the runner's name. The Comanches don't know him either. Just call him Wildcat.” The doc saw recognition in the Cherokee's eyes. “I figure him to be the one you marshals are after.”

“Not just the marshals. Rangers, too.”

“And likely Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches and every Indian on every reservation in this territory. Good. I hope you catch him and kill him.” The doctor sighed. “He had a boy with him, maybe two. And a big wagon pulled by oxen. That's all I could get out of the Indians and the Indian agent who brought him here.”

That was all Jackson Sixpersons needed to hear. It was Lamar Bodeen. Wildcat Bodeen.

“The Comanche chief—he's on the wagon, just leads his people to the devil. Not Quanah. Not the big man of the Comanches. Just the big boss of his village. Anyway, he said they wanted to go after the man—the ones who had come to buy the whiskey and get drunk. Once those people started getting sick, coughing blood, sick and dying, they had another notion. Figured they could ride down a man in a wagon that size. But the whiskey made them all sick real quick. There was nothing to do but get them to help.”

Sixpersons considered that and asked. “They come here first?”

The doctor shook his head. “No. To their medicine man. He couldn't do anything. Didn't have the
puha
or whatever the Comanches call it. Three of them died there. So they brought the others here.”

“Two days ago,” Sixpersons said.

“That's right.”

“How long was Bodeen in their camp?”

“Just a day. Maybe two.”

That gave Lamar Bodeen and his son a four-day head start. But in a wagon that size and that slow, Sixpersons figured he could catch up with that crazy killer with booze fairly quickly. A whiskey runner like Bodeen would want to clear out of the federal reservation as fast as he could. He'd go southeast into the Chickasaw Nation. Sell his poison there. Then move out again into the Choctaw Nation.

“What became of the liquor?” Sixpersons asked.

“The major sent a few troopers down to West Cache Creek. That's where the fiend sold his poison. They found the tracks. Destroyed the barrel—it was in a barrel marked
molasses
or something like that. Listen.” He moved close to Sixpersons, too close, but the Cherokee did not move.

“I know Judge Parker probably can't hang a man for killing a bunch of Comanches, but he can for killing a white man, can't he?”

Sixpersons said nothing.

“Well, one of the troopers decided that destroying the liquor—which was the major's orders—meant drinking it.” The doctor shook his head. “He was dead before they even got back here. You can hang the runner for that, can't you?”

Sixpersons shook his head. “I don't hang anyone. That's up to Judge Parker and the court.” But he was staring at the girl and thinking
this time I might just make an exception.

Millard Mann had ridden far since killing those two—no, three—outlaws back along Camp Creek. Lost James's trail in a dust storm. Found it again. Lost it in a river and it had taken two days before he crossed the trail again since the old man kept off the main trails. Millard couldn't figure out how a man could hide a trail so well when he was traveling in a giant wagon heavy with whiskey.

He had found one small camp southwest of Fort Sill and a busted barrel of whiskey marked
MALASES
—meaning molasses, he figured—the word obviously misspelled. Drops of blood, vomit, a mixture of tracks from unshod horses, the wheels of the big wagon, and the oxen indicated something had happened there. He surmised a trade for whiskey, and something had gone wrong. The whiskey barrel wasn't even half empty.

Whatever had gone wrong had left its mark in the air and had spooked him. And his horse. They had left early, seeing dust rising from the north. Maybe Indians. Maybe soldiers. Millard hadn't stuck around to find out.

That had been days ago.

He stopped to give the horse a breather and hooked a leg over the horn, resting, too. He was slaking his thirst from the canteen when the chestnut gelding's head came up, and he looked into the wind blowing in from the southeast.

Following the horse's gaze, Millard studied the countryside. It wasn't the same as the reservations to the west and north. What he saw was hilly, wooded, and even hotter than the furnace he had been riding through. He couldn't see much through the growths of timber and scrub, but he could hear. So he listened.

 

 

Grunting, heaving, sweating, practically busting their backs and straining every muscle in their bodies, Robin Lamar and James Mann rolled three big barrels out of the wagon.

Wildcat Lamar stopped them with his spade and waited for them to climb out. “Hurry up, children.” He fanned himself as though he had done all the hard work. “'Em bucks'll be here directly.” He hurried inside the wagon to fetch something else.

“Come on,” James urged Robin, but the kid was weak as a girl. He'd had to do most of the work to get the barrels out of the wagon, and suddenly he gained a higher measure of respect for the railroaders his father had to supervise and boss around. Those men swung sixteen-pound sledgehammers ten to fourteen hours a day.

With Robin using the spade's handle as a shovel, they managed to get the first barrel righted, and began working on the second one when Wildcat Lamar came rushing back toward them.

James whirled to see the old man swinging a hatchet, tearing at the barrel like a crazy man.

Splinters, then chunks of oak sailed into the air as the man worked furiously.

“Come on, James,” Robin said.

To the sound of the ax blade splitting the upright oak keg, they went back to work.

As soon as the second barrel was upright, the old man started attacking it.

He probably would have gone straight for the final barrel, if his son hadn't been leaning over its top, exhausted.

“Get up, kid,” he said angrily. “They'll be here—”

A horse's snort stopped him and he spun around, the hatchet slipping from his hand and sailing right for the second barrel. James had just stepped around it to see who the new guests were when the hatchet splashed into the open barrel, sending a fountain of amber liquid sailing.

Generally, that would have made him laugh, but it made him cry and fall to his knees. “My eyes!” he screamed, trying to put out what felt like burning kerosene. “Argghhhhh! That . . . b-b-burns.”

“Shut up.” Wildcat cursed. “Shuts up. They's here.”

Robin went to James's side, helped him up, and handed him a rag to dab his watering eyes.

 

 

Listening in the quiet, Millard Mann realized that what he felt wasn't of ghosts and death and an assault on his gut. It was more instinct. He unhooked his leg from the saddle horn and slid both feet into the stirrups, holding the reins to the gelding in his left hand and lowering his right to the stock of the '73 Winchester. He kept his hand there for a moment, still studying the timber and hills, looking for any sign, any movement.

Nothing.

Yet he couldn't shake that feeling.

Deliberately, he drew the .32 from the scabbard, brought it up, and rested the walnut stock on his thigh. His thumb came to the hammer, but he did not ear the hammer back.

Jimmy's voice came with the wind, whispering in Millard's left ear. He shook it off as imagination. He had been in the saddle far too long. Had been in a gunfight, survived, and left three dead men to feed buzzards, coyotes, and ravens. Besides, he already knew his son was in trouble. Didn't need his spooked mind or dead kid brother to remind him of that. James was with a wanted whiskey runner who was peddling poison to white men and red men alike. If Millard didn't find his son soon, the boy would be bound for the dungeon at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then sent up to Michigan to serve a sentence in the federal pen. Or dead from the poison liquor. Or strung up by vigilantes or angry, but justified, Indians.

Millard studied the horse's ears, listened to how the horse breathed, realizing he had been around trains and rolling stock far too long. He seldom had need for what his father had told him all those years ago, back when he and Borden and Jimmy were barely taller than a fence post.
“Watch the horse. Watch the dog. The heifer. The bull. The rooster. Animals know. They hear. They sense. Long before you will.”

Millard gave a short nod as he remembered. Yeah, whatever it was, it was down to the southeast. Not in the nearby woods, but over the next hill. Maybe two. He didn't know that country, though Jimmy would. As a lawman, he had ridden the Nations for far too many years. Always bragged that he knew every hideout, cave, and creek in the territory.

But Jimmy was dead and buried up on Tascosa's Boot Hill.