Winchester 1887 Read online

  He swore, tossing the empty revolver to the ground, and ran for the pitchfork. Lifting it about waist-high, he waited.

  Those Chickasaws would kill him, but, by thunder, he would die game.

  “They’re gone.”

  He spun at the sound of the voice to see a man reining in a liver chestnut, a gelding. He saw the beautiful Winchester rifle in the man’s hands as fingers deftly found fresh brass cartridges from a vest pocket and fed those .32-caliber shells into the Model ’73.

  Then he saw the face of the rider. “Pa?”

  “They’ll be back, though.”

  Millard Mann racked a fresh round into the chamber and slid from the gelding, staring as the wind carried the thick dust away.

  “Horses are gone.” Millard turned and looked at the heavy wagon. “All right. No choice. Have to take that wagon.” He led the chestnut to the rear wheel, wrapped the reins around one of the spokes, and moved toward the writhing body of Wildcat Lamar.

  James wet his lips, wondering if he were dreaming. Then he saw the body of the Indian, the one whose pitchfork he held. The tool fell to his feet. The Chickasaw lay facedown, a bloody hole in his back where his father’s shot had exited. The man was dead.

  Behind him came a groan, which snapped James into action. Forgetting the dead Indian, he spun on his heels and hurried over to Robin Lamar and rolled the lad over. Wildcat’s son squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lip, fighting against the pain.

  James saw two bloody holes in the boy’s fringed buckskin shirt, one low on the left, the other higher up on the right.

  The kid wailed, coughed, and sucked in a deep breath.

  James found the sheathed knife in Robin’s belt, quickly drew it out, and sliced through the loose-fitting buckskin.

  “No . . .” Robin managed to protest through a mouth tight against the pain. He even tried to reach out and grab James’s wrist, but just didn’t have the strength.

  The knife was honed like a razor, and easily sliced through the thin hide. James pulled back the sides of the torn shirt . . . and gasped.

  The skin was white, except for the purple holes seeping blood, one in the meaty part of the kid’s side, the other around the lowest rib. Neither wound looked fatal. The kid wasn’t spitting up blood, and no sucking sound—the sure sign of a lung-shot—came when he breathed. What shocked James was the dirty strips of cloth tied high on Robin’s chest . . . trying to keep the boy’s bosoms from showing.

  Boy’s bosoms? “You’re . . .” James blinked. “You’re a girl!”

  A shadow fell across Robin Lamar, and James turned to look into the dirty face covered with beard stubble and sweat of his father.

  Millard jerked his head behind him. “I’ll take care of her. You get all that poisoned liquor rolled out of the wagon. We’ll load the kid and the old man into the back, make for the Red River. Getting into Texas is the only chance we have.”

  James rose, started to say something to let his father know that he was no whiskey runner, that he was too stupid to have realized Wildcat Lamar was peddling whiskey in the Indian Nations, but he knew better. His father was right. The Chickasaws would come back, and with one dead Indian and a few wounded ones added to the score they’d dearly like to settle with the Lamars, and now, James and his father.

  His head bobbed, and he walked past his father, around the chestnut gelding, and shot a glance at Wildcat Lamar, who still lay groaning, moaning, and coughing against one of the barrels of rotgut liquor.

  Making himself ignore the one-eyed old man who had almost gotten them all killed, James climbed into the back of the freight wagon. To his surprise, he found an uncommon strength—maybe from adrenaline or the fear of the gunfight—but he rolled over one barrel with hardly any effort, then kicked it, knelt, and gave it a mighty shove. He followed it, guiding it until it rolled off the tailgate and crashed onto the ground and kept rolling a few feet before settling.

  He tossed a few canvas and leather sacks and saddlebags into the corner, out of the way, and pushed another barrel onto its side. That one was harder, but where it had once taken Robin and him to get the barrels out of the wagon, James managed to do the task alone. It crashed hard, and the barrel broke open, sending amber liquid pouring from the busted sides. He stared momentarily at three snakeheads that came out with the whiskey, frowned, and went back to work.

  The final four barrels also fell from the wagon, the last one making a path directly toward Wildcat Lamar before stopping a few feet from the sobbing old man.

  “James,” his father called.

  James turned.

  His father leaned over Robin. Somewhere, Millard had found strips of cloth, which he had used to bandage Robin’s bullet wounds. His father pointed to the side of the wagon. “Grab that ax, son, and bust open those kegs.”

  “Yes, sir.” James moved toward the wagon.

  “Don’t . . . don’t . . . do . . . it . . . boy. . . .” Old Wildcat Lamar groaned out the words between gasps.

  James didn’t listen. The ax blade bit into an oaken keg, and soon the ugly booze poured onto the ground. By the time James had busted all of the barrels, his clothes dripped with sweat, he was out of breath, the muscles in his arms ached, and the ground stank of rotgut liquor.

  The only barrel with any liquor in it was the one Wildcat Lamar leaned against, and James walked to the one-eyed man, ready to rectify that situation.

  “Don’t . . . it’s . . .” The old man rolled onto his side and coughed up a bloody froth.

  That shocked James as Wildcat Lamar coughed, gagged, cursed. But he knew he had to hurry, so he stepped over the man’s buckskinned legs, and slammed the ax into the keg near the iron rim around the bottom. The second swing did the job, and the whiskey belched out of the keg and onto the ground. When enough had poured out, James tilted the keg over, and watched the rest erupt from the busted opening. Once again, a few snakeheads came out with the whiskey.

  Wildcat Lamar had righted himself and wiped the blood from his lips.

  “Snakeheads,” James said. “You put snakeheads in that whiskey.”

  The man’s one eye gleamed. “Give . . . kick . . .” He coughed.

  “What else?”

  James looked up to see his father standing over the whiskey runner, who stared at the tall man, and then shrugged.

  “Tobaccy juice . . .” A cough. “Grain alcohol.” Another gag. “Brown sugar.” A grimace. “Strychnine.”

  James sucked in a deep breath, but his father did not appear surprised.

  “I ought to leave you to the Chickasaws,” Millard said.

  Lamar’s pale face flushed red with anger, and he cursed savagely, finding new strength. His fist came up, and he pointed a busted finger at Millard Mann. “Injuns kilt my wife, my kids. Scalped ’em. I owed ’em sons—”

  “Not the Chickasaws,” Millard said.

  The old fool snorted, and spat, then smiled. “They’s all gots red skin, ain’t they?”

  “What about those folks you killed in the Texas Panhandle?” Millard asked.

  James didn’t understand that question at all.

  Lamar laughed again, spit out another bloody phlegm, and shook his head. “Accident. Give ’em the wrong barrel.”

  “Accident!” Millard spit bitterly and nodded at James. “Grab his feet.”

  The man yelped like a coyote, and tears flowed from his one eye when James lifted the man’s smelly legs while his father, leaving the Winchester leaning against one of the busted kegs, grabbed under the whiskey runner’s arms, and the two managed to carry the big man to the back of the wagon.

  “Doooonnn’t,” Wildcat Lamar begged, but unceremoniously, they swung him up and down, back and forth, until they had enough momentum to send him sailing up onto the big wagon’s tailgate. He landed with a thud, rolled over, and vomited.

  “We should leave you for the Chickasaws,” Millard said again, and walked back to fetch his rifle. “It would buy us some time.”

  James backe
d up, saw Wildcat Lamar crawling, vomit and blood dripping from his beard, toward one of the canvas pouches.

  “Come on,” his father called out, and James followed him toward Robin Lamar. Blood had already soaked through the two bandages, but the boy . . . no . . . girl seemed to be breathing at a more normal rate.

  They treated her gently and walked toward the rear of the wagon. When they rounded the corner and looked up, James found himself staring down the barrel of a cannon held in the trembling hands of Wildcat Lamar.

  Fort Worth

  Grip in his right hand, and a .41-caliber Colt Cloverleaf in his coat pocket, Zane Maxwell met the three men waiting for him at the depot. He let a porter carrying the baggage of some ugly spinster pass before he set his satchel on the plank floor and hooked his thumbs in his waistband. “You understand the job.” It was not a question.

  “Yeah,” said the red-mustached man in a thick Texas drawl. “And we savvy the pay.”

  “Good.”

  The man with the red mustache looked like a cowboy, probably was some old saddle tramp who had been bucked off too many times by chuckleheaded horses. He called himself Red, so Maxwell figured he could remember that one’s name. Red carried an old Yellow Boy Winchester, the 1866 model with the bronze-brass alloy receiver, a carbine in .44 rimfire with a nineteen-inch barrel and brass butt plate. Resting in a well-worn russet holster on his right hip was a .44-caliber Merwin Hulbert revolver, nickel-plated with two-piece ivory grips. The barrel was a long, sleek, and deadly seven inches. The only things about Red that remained clean were the carbine and open-top framed revolver. He’d do. Do just fine.

  Beside Red stood a younger man in a plaid sack suit and bowler hat. His weapons were hidden inside his coat, but Maxwell had seen them before, a matched pair of .38-caliber Colt Lightnings, those self-cocking pistols with three-and-a-half-inch tapered round barrels. Nickel plated, pearl handled, and the dapper-dressed dandy with the hazel eyes and clean-shaven, almost babyish, face could use them. He called himself Steve Locksburgh and probably had yet to clear his teens. Maxwell had seen a wanted dodger on Steve Locksburgh tacked up on the wall outside the post office. Murder and robbery. The description, however, seemed too vague to attract any of Fort Worth’s policemen or bounty hunters. Locksburgh had this cocksure attitude about him that made Maxwell think the kid didn’t care if he lived or died. He’d do, too.

  The third man stood tall, chewing on a match, thumbs tucked inside the gun belt he wore around his black-and-red striped britches tucked inside fancy black boots with white stars inlaid in the uppers. His weapons were Remingtons, butt forward on his left hip and butt facing the rear on his right. Old weapons that had been converted from cap-and-ball percussion to .44-caliber centerfire, also nickel plated but with walnut stocks, and eight-inch octagonal barrels and brass trigger guards. His black mustache was waxed, the ends turned upward, and he never smiled. The handle he used was John Smith.

  Original. Maxwell didn’t believe that any of those three had been given those names after their births, but he didn’t care. Link McCoy and he needed three men good with guns and unparticular about how they earned their pay. Men like that were easy to find in Fort Worth. Now that he was no longer playing the part of Butch Curry, reporter for the Kansas City Enterprise, he had rounded up the three men they needed.

  He reached inside his coat and pulled out the train tickets, passing them to the three hired gunmen. “You don’t sit together.” He stopped speaking until two other passengers had headed past them toward the waiting locomotive. “You don’t speak to one another. In short, you don’t know one another.”

  The men said nothing.

  “Smith, you get off at Denison with me. You check into the Red River Hotel. The next morning, you’ll buy a horse at Greene’s Livery. Ride north toward Colbert’s Ferry, and I’ll follow you, catch up before you cross the Red.”

  Smith did not acknowledge a thing, but he knew what to do.

  “You two”—Maxwell tilted his head at Locksburgh and Red—“will catch the Katy and ride north, getting off at Caddo. Tulip Bells will meet you there. He’ll have horses waiting for you.”

  Red grunted. “How’s we ta knows what this Tulip gent looks like?”

  You could look at the wanted posters ran through Zane Maxwell’s mind. What he said was “You don’t.”

  Red frowned and started to grumble, but Steve Locksburgh chuckled and turned to face Red. “Those lavender bandanas. The ones he give us yesterday evenin’. The one you said you’d never wear alive.”

  Red didn’t get it. “Huh?”

  Locksburgh chuckled, shook his head, and brought out the makings.

  As he began to roll a cigarette one-handed, Zane Maxwell explained. “Caddo’s in the Choctaw Nation. When you get off at that depot, you’ll both be wearing those two lavender kerchiefs.”

  “The one you said you’d have to be dead wearin’,” Locksburgh said.

  Red grunted.

  Locksburgh grinned again and stared at Maxwell. “I don’t know what this job is, “but I do believe if we pull it off, we’ll be as famous as the Daltons.”

  “When we pull it off,” John Smith corrected.

  “Just remember, you don’t know me. I don’t know you. You don’t know each other.” That was it. Maxwell picked up his grip and walked away, finding his own ticket. He’d find his berth later after the train had pulled out of Fort Worth.

  If everything went well, he and John Smith would be in Denison and lighting out for Indian Territory, where they would meet up with Link McCoy and track down that man-killing whiskey runner.

  That should be easy enough, Maxwell thought.

  Then Tulip Bells would find Locksburgh and Red and steer them over toward Fort Washita.

  Some soot-faced urchin stood pacing in front of the train waiting to pull out from the station, waving one of the Fort Worth newspapers in his hand, hawking out the headlines. Maxwell stopped to fish out his ticket and a coin for the tyke, which he flipped over. That kid was fast, snatched the coin, dropped it in a pouch hanging from his neck, and whipped out a folded newspaper.

  “Thanks.” Maxwell climbed up the steps of the smoking car.

  The only thing Red, John Smith, and Steve Locksburgh knew about the job was that they’d be paid $500 each, if they lived, and that they’d be riding with Zane Maxwell and Link McCoy. The McCoy-Maxwell Gang, or as Maxwell liked to call it, the Maxwell-McCoy Gang. That’s all they needed to know for the time being. The details would be worked out later. Actually, soon.

  Maxwell slid into a chair, tossed his satchel onto the cushioned seat across from him, and opened the Fort Worth Standard.

  He didn’t care about the news items, the murder in Hell’s Half Acre the other night, the weather, the comments from the cattlemen’s association meeting, or how Fort Worth was such a better town than nearby Dallas could ever hope to be. He just looked at the date underneath the newspaper’s banner.

  GOOD AFTERNOON ! TODAY IS THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1895.

  Seven days. One week until the Maxwell-McCoy Gang pulled off their last robbery. He was about to roll up the newspaper and toss it aside, when another headline in the lower left-hand corner caught his eye. Apparently the editors of the Standard had picked up an article that had first been published that spring in the Kansas City Star.

  Zane Maxwell read about young Emmett Dalton, how he walked out of the cellblock at the Kansas pen in Lansing every day. Lock step, single file, right hand on the shoulder of the inmate in front of him, left arm rigid at his side. Walking in unison, right foot high, left foot shuffle, march, march, march. But young Emmett was looking fit and proper, and no longer slumping from the wounds he had received in Coffeyville a few years back. How Emmett Dalton was the model prisoner, reading newspapers, and magazines, and books. Being rehabilitated. Hoping some kind folks might think better of him and issue him a parole or pardon and send him home to live out his days in peace.

  Emmett Dalton. The one survivor of
the Dalton Gang.

  What was that cocky Steve Locksburgh had said? “I don’t know what this job is, but I do believe if we pull it off, we’ll be as famous as the Daltons.”

  Maxwell felt sweat rolling down his forehead, and he leaned over to open his satchel and fetch that flask of rye whiskey.

  As famous as the Daltons.

  Certainly, the Dalton boys had earned enough fame to last a hundred years or thereabouts when they had tried to rob two banks at the same time in their hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas. Folks still talked about it almost three years after that bloody event of October 1892. Grat, Emmett, and Bob Dalton had ridden into town with Bill Power and Dick Broadwell. None had ridden out in one piece. Emmett’s brothers were dead, along with Power and Broadwell, and Emmett had been shot to pieces but somehow had managed to live, get patched up, and sent to the Kansas state pen.

  Yeah, the Dalton Gang was famous, sure enough. But most of them were dead.

  Maxwell let the whiskey pour down his throat, took a deep breath, and slid over toward the window as the conductor called outside, “All aboard.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Wild Horse Creek

  The cannon Wildcat Lamar Bodeen held was a single-shot horseman’s pistol, probably one made by I.N. Johnson. Millard Mann’s father had carried two of those during the Mexican War. A copper percussion cap would ignite the black powder rammed down the barrel and send a .54-caliber slug straight through James Mann’s brain. Of course, Bodeen would have only one shot, but that’s all it would take, and at close range, probably blow off James’s head.

  James held the girl’s feet. Millard held the kid’s shoulders, his rifle was leaning against the wagon wheel, and he could not reach the Richards-Mason conversion holstered on his hip.

  “I’ll kill this boy, mistah.” The barrel weaved. The dying old whiskey runner had trouble keeping the big pistol steady.

  “Then I kill you?” Millard asked.