Legion of Fire Read online

  Chapter 19

  The morning sun shining down on Arapaho Springs only seemed to amplify the ugliness and ruin left by the previous day’s ruthless attack.

  A small group of somber-faced men stood before the jail building. A slightly larger, more loosely assembled group, including a few women, stood some distance behind them. Farther up the street, a scattered handful of individuals milled about, gazing with half-stunned looks still on their faces as they surveyed the damage. The stink and haze of smoke remained heavy in the air.

  Marshal Burnett was planted in front of the jail, facing out at the five men assembled directly before him. To his left stood Luke. To his right was Doc Whitney and part-time deputy Fred Packer.

  “Men,” Burnett said, “the task we’re setting out on is going to be hard, dangerous, and long. We’ll be gone for days, maybe weeks. Other posses who’ve gone after the Legion of Fire have fared poorly. Capturing or killing a significant number of the gang or getting back the bank money—that’s probably too much to hope for. Our main goal is to rescue our women.”

  He paused, letting the words sink in, letting his gaze rest for a moment on each of the faces looking back at him. “Now, I want to make something totally clear. As all of you know, we’re actually dealing with two abductions. That of my daughter by the escaped prisoner Ben Craddock and that of the five townswomen taken by the Legion raiders. After chewing on it all night and talking it over with Doctor Whitney, who needs no introduction, and Luke Jensen, here on my left, a highly skilled bounty hunter who’ll be riding with us, I reached a decision on how best to proceed.

  “We’re going to start by first going after my daughter. The odds are reasonably good for us to catch up quickly with one horse carrying two riders who, from every indication, took off with next to nothing in the way of provisions. After that, we’ll immediately turn our attention to the raiders. Reports from posses who’ve gone after them in the past are that they’ll likely break up into smaller groups in order to make the chase more difficult. That also means that catching up with any one bunch would be only be a partial success and only a partial chance to regain anything that was stolen.”

  Burnett paused again, his eyes flinty, his mouth set in a grim line. “So you see what we’re up against. Make sure you understand. And one more thing—if any of you think that going after my daughter first is playing favorites and not decided on strictly for reasons of getting the quickest, surest results, speak up now. It won’t change anything, but I’m giving you the chance to get it off your chest. And if it means you decide not to ride out with us . . . well, then so be it.”

  The five men he was addressing stood silent and still, their expressions unchanging. Until Swede Norsky, the blacksmith, spoke up. “We trust you to make the right decision for the right reasons, Marshal. And even if you were to lean a bit in favor of Millie . . . how could any man fault you for it?”

  The others grumbled a general assent.

  In response, Burnett nodded silent appreciation. Then he raised his voice and addressed the rest of the gathering, saying, “As for the rest of you, you’re being left in the good hands of Doc Whitney and Fred Packer here, who’ll be representing the law in Arapaho Springs while I’m gone. There’s burying, grieving, and healing to be done. And then rebuilding to get started. I wish I could be here to participate in all of that with you. I trust you understand why me and these men who’ll be riding out with me can’t. Our best, maybe only chance to get my daughter and the other women back is to go after their abductors as soon as possible.

  “Frank Barley’s son Dan rode out at first light for Fort Baker. When they hear what happened, I’m confident they’ll respond with aid and supplies to help get our town back on its feet.” The marshal’s gaze drifted for a moment to the ashes and ruins farther up the street and then slowly came back to those before him. “We’ve all lost something in the past twenty-four hours. Some of us more than others. Some of it there’s no way of ever getting back. The way I see it, those of us who’ve survived owe it to the ones who didn’t make it to carry on and put Arapaho Springs back together again. I hope all of you feel the same.”

  Five minutes later, the posse was mounted and ready to ride.

  Luckily, with Barley’s Livery located at the south end of town, it had escaped the raid mostly untouched except for a few bullet holes from when two of the raiders were using the wagon parked in front of it for cover while trying to keep the marshal and Luke pinned inside the jail building. A good selection of horses remained. For those who didn’t have adequate horses of their own, Frank Barley, the livery proprietor, had given them complete freedom in making their picks as well as providing a good measure of grain to take along for each.

  A choice of provisions for the men, unfortunately, was not so readily available. With the general store, the café, and one of the saloons all burned to rubble and additional looting having been done to several homes, there simply wasn’t a lot to choose from. Some of the housewives had put together a few sacks containing biscuits, jerky, two or three slabs of bacon, and a smattering of canned goods—but they’d had to take care to hold back enough for rationing out to their families until supplies arrived from Fort Baker.

  The posse would have to do some hunting and foraging as they proceeded with their pursuit.

  The five men accompanying Luke and Burnett were Swede Norsky, the blacksmith who’d had a previous brush with Craddock; Harry Barlow, a bartender at the now destroyed Brass Rail Saloon; Pete Hennesy, a cook at the café run by Lucinda Davis, one of the kidnap victims as well as being Burnett’s lady friend; Whitey Mason and his oldest son Keith, ranchers from outside of town who’d been drawn by the smoke of the fires and who’d insisted on joining the posse as payback to the marshal for his recent help in running rustlers off their spread.

  At the last minute, an additional posse man made his appearance. Russell Quaid came striding out of the jail, where he’d spent the night on the couch like Doc Whitney had ordered him to do. But he was refusing any more of that. He’d stripped the bandage from his head and wore a wide-brimmed Boss of the Plains hat that he’d taken off the body of one of the raiders temporarily piled out back of the jail. Additionally, acquired from the same source, a gunbelt was strapped around his waist with a .44 caliber Colt Frontier pouched in its holster. In one hand he carried the Henry repeater he’d gotten from the gun rack yesterday.

  On the walkway outside the jail he paused momentarily beside Whitney, looking at the doc, clearly expecting strong objection. Whitney held his eyes for a second and then simply gave a bob of his head.

  Crossing the street, Russell paused again beside where Burnett sat his horse. Looking up at the marshal, he said in a firm voice, “I’m coming along.”

  Burnett regarded him. “You took a helluva blow to the head. You sure you can hold up?”

  “I’ll hold up,” Russell replied, his voice remaining firm and strong. “Nothing short of a bullet is going to stop me.”

  The marshal grunted. “What we’re setting out to do, there’s a good chance of running into plenty of those. But if you’re sure it’s what you want . . . hurry up and saddle a horse.”

  Chapter 20

  Ben Craddock hadn’t slept well that night. Hardly at all, as a matter of fact. He wanted to relax, to believe that everything was going to be okay, but that was pretty damned hard to do with all that was running through his mind as he lay surrounded by twenty hard-eyed members of the Legion of Fire in the camp they had pitched at dusk.

  Not that he wasn’t a hard-eyed outlaw in his own right. But he was vastly outnumbered and he wasn’t comfortable with being part of this group, not as far as his own feelings nor as far as sensing he was fully accepted by them. It had all happened so fast and such a relatively short time ago.

  As the Legion raiders rode down on him and Millie, Craddock figured he was good as dead. He fully expected them to waste no time filling him full of lead, taking the girl, and leaving his remains to be picke
d clean by the buzzards and coyotes in that empty draw.

  Only one thing prevented that from happening. One of the raiders who had ridden with Craddock a few years earlier down in Arizona recognized him. It turned out Elmer Pride held a position in the Legion as a sort of lieutenant to the leader Sam Kelson. In his slow Texas drawl, Pride told Kelson and the rest of the gang of his past association with Craddock; how he was certainly no friend of the law, that he was a good gun hand proven capable of being able to keep a cool head when the lead was flying thick. Further, Pride pointed out, the Legion had just lost nearly a dozen of their members during the raid on Arapaho Springs, and Craddock would be a good start toward filling that void.

  For his part, Craddock promptly and sincerely expressed an eager willingness to join the Legion. He went on to explain his current circumstance—how he was on the run from a noose down in Texas, had suffered a fluke capture, and had been jailed back in town. Then he used the distraction of the Legion’s strike to break out.

  Some of the raiders who’d initially shown skepticism toward Pride’s suggestion to bring him into the fold started to look more accepting of the notion.

  Of course, the only thing that really mattered was what Sam Kelson thought of the idea. After listening silently to what Pride had to say and then what Craddock added on his own behalf, the Legion chieftain scrutinized Craddock for another stretch of silence before finally saying, “I put a lot of stock in the opinion of Elmer Pride. That alone stacks high in your favor. On top of that, finding a way to use our attack on the town to your advantage was pretty slick thinking.”

  His gaze drifted from Craddock to Millie. The raw hunger that shone in his eyes as they lingered there was unmistakable. The corners of his mouth peeling back into a wolf’s grin, he added, “But taking the marshal’s own daughter as your hostage—that’s the cherry on the cake that definitely makes you Legion of Fire material!”

  A flood of relief surged through Craddock that, for a moment, almost left him feeling weak in the knees. Just like that he was in. Just like that he changed from being nothing but a lone fugitive. One fleeing desperately with no clear direction or plan and hardly anything in the way of provisions—oh yeah—and with a hostage who would only be of value for a few minutes of pleasure or if a situation arose where she could be used as a bargaining chip, but other wise loomed as a complication of growing concern. From there, suddenly, he became part of a feared, successful outlaw gang, the scourge of the state with a reputation for being untouchable.

  There was one final and important proviso that Kelson insisted be clearly understood. “When you ride with the Legion of Fire,” he intoned solemnly, “you saddle up for the duration. When the time comes for us to disband, we do it together. No one peels off on his own before then. You clear on that?”

  Within minutes of Craddock answering in the affirmative and Kelson declaring him to be acceptable, Craddock was back in the saddle with Millie in front of him and they were riding away in the thick of the Legion, continuing north at a steady, miles-eating pace.

  During periods when they slowed to dismount and walk for a ways, resting the horses, and again when they made a brief early afternoon camp to feed and water the mounts as well as themselves, Craddock had the chance for snatches of further talk with Elmer Pride. He learned their destination was the gang’s winter quarters up in the Pawnee Badlands near the Nebraska border, where they would mostly be lying low for the duration of the winter snows.

  By the time dusk descended and they stopped to make night camp, the terrain had turned more broken, with sharper, choppier hills covered by coarser, shorter grass. Frequent rock formations thrust up in ragged, sometimes grotesque shapes. It was where two of these moderately tall, spine-like formations angled close together, forming a wedgelike barrier to the cold wind increasing out of the northwest, that they made their camp.

  It was also where Craddock got his first real taste of having become a subordinate and no longer calling his own shots. It came as they were first setting up camp.

  Kelson ordered all of the captive women, including Millie, to be grouped together and kept under close watch slightly apart from the main body of men. “There’ll be no messing with them. Not tonight. Not by me and not by any of you,” the gang leader announced to all. “There’ll be plenty of time for that after we get to our hideout and turns can be settled and scheduled in an orderly fashion. We’ll have all winter, so everybody will get their share of romping. I don’t want no hard feelings or petty jealousies cropping up right off the bat. There’s no time for it. We’ve still got to keep an eye on our back trail and make sure we get where we’re headed, undetected and with no trouble.”

  Several of the men displayed obvious disappointment, but none voiced any kind of protest.

  “Naturally,” Kelson added, “that goes double for you men assigned to watch over them. Keep your eyes peeled sharp to make sure none of ’em try to run off. Otherwise, it’s strictly hands off. Any funny business—by anybody—you’ll answer to me damn quick.”

  As a result, Millie was taken from Craddock and herded with the other women to a spot over against one of the rock walls where three men with rifles were posted to stand guard over them. Also, at Kelson’s insistence, Millie’s handcuffs were removed. None of the women were bound. It seemed to be assumed that, even if one of them could somehow get past the guards, the locale was so remote and barren that it presented an added deterrent of its own.

  Craddock spent the night alone in his bedroll, denied the pleasant interval he’d been counting on so much. Yeah, by most other measures he was better off in the company of the Legion than when he’d been wandering alone and aimless and under provisioned . . . but, damn, he’d really been looking forward to a night’s worth of dallying with the curvaceous Millie.

  It shook out that he not only didn’t get that particular dalliance but, if the picture he took away from Kelson’s words was accurate, when they got to winter quarters it sounded like he would end up sharing her with the rest of the gang members. Not the least of whom, judging by the hungry way he’d looked at Millie back in the draw, would be Kelson himself.

  Thoughts like those, in addition to his uncertainty over being fully accepted into the Legion at the early stage, had kept him from getting any decent shut-eye throughout the night. With the beginning of a new day, he sat up in his bedroll and remained there for a few minutes, looking over the camp as the rest of the men were beginning to stir, and wondering just what the hell he’d gotten himself into. Was it for the better or worse?

  He had ridden with gangs a few times in the past, but much smaller ones and always with himself as either the single or coleader of the bunch. He’d never much cottoned to taking orders from somebody else, not even as a youngster, and the passage of years surely hadn’t done anything to mellow that outlook. On one hand, he liked the thought of the security and added safety gained from being part of a well-organized gang. Especially with winter coming on and finding himself in strange territory with no prospects on the horizon other than keeping on the run. Christ knew that the last few years of being mostly on his own hadn’t been very easy or very lucrative. At the same time there was no getting around the fact that being just part of this or any outfit, having little or no say in the way of things, was going to be hard to swallow.

  And then there was the girl. Millie. His possession. Right or wrong, complications and all, that was how Craddock had come to think of her. His to use and then discard on his own whim. Not on the say of Sam Kelson or anybody else. Right off the bat, he was already finding such an intrusion to be something that stuck in his craw. Under the circumstance, he knew it wasn’t smart to feel that way, and certainly not to contemplate any resistance to it, but it was there all the same. It was how he felt and he was having trouble getting past it.

  He was still sitting up in his bedroll and wrestling with his thoughts when Elmer Pride came walking over with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand.

  “You
made it that far up,” the gnarled old Texan drawled as a corner of his mouth lifted. “You might as well crawl the rest of the way to your feet. They’ve got coffee ready at the big middle fire over yonder and there’ll soon be some pan biscuits to pass around. You don’t want to miss out on gettin’ yourself some.”

  “No, that’s for sure. Especially not the coffee,” Craddock said, managing a brief smile of his own.

  Pride squatted down beside him. “How’d you sleep?”

  “So-so,” Craddock admitted. “Big change. Lot to take in, you know?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “Not that I’m complainin’, mind you,” Craddock was quick to add. “I’m sure a sight better off than I would’ve been if you fellas hadn’t come gallopin’ up when you did. I wanted out of that jail and that town so bad I’m afraid I didn’t take time to plan very good as far as food or gear to last me on the trail.”

  “It happens,” Pride said. “Fella in a situation like you was ain’t got much of a chance for any fancy plannin’. Just bustin’ free is the main thing.”

  “All the same, your bunch showin’ up was a real stroke of luck. And, if I ain’t already said it enough, I’m mighty grateful to you for speakin’ up for me the way you did.”

  “It only made good sense. We took a heavy toll as far as the loss of men back in that little town. Way more than usual.” Pride frowned. “Got to start buildin’ our force back up and so runnin’ across you, somebody I already know to be cut from the right cloth, was a stroke of luck for us, too.”

  Craddock’s gaze drifted across the camp and then came back to Pride’s weather-seamed face. “You sure the other fellas are convinced of that?”

  “If I vouch for you, they’d damn well better be,” Pride said. “And with Sam givin’ the go-ahead, too, what more convincin’ do they need?”

  Craddock nodded. “That’s good to hear. Again, I appreciate your vote of confidence.” He paused, considering his words, while Pride took a drink of his coffee. “This Kelson. I take it he runs things with a pretty strong hand?”