Dig Your Own Grave Read online

  “I’ll head out in the mornin’,” Will said, and got up to leave.

  “Good man,” Stone said. “Remember what I said: find ’em, don’t take any chances on trying to arrest ’em.” He got up from his chair. “Wait a minute and I’ll walk out with you.” Will waited while Stone locked his desk and paused again while he locked his office door. Downstairs on the street, they said so long and parted, Stone to the hotel for a late breakfast, and Will to check back at the stable to make sure his horses were going to be taken care of. He was almost out of all supplies, but he figured he’d best count on taking care of that somewhere on his way. He could have told Dan he could start out that afternoon, but he figured he had put enough strain on Sophie’s wedding plans as it was.

  * * *

  He hesitated, reluctant to inform her, but knowing it couldn’t be helped. “I have to leave first thing in the mornin’,” he said.

  “What?” she demanded before he could say more. “Why?”

  “There’s a real bad situation up on the Kansas border,” he said, “and I’ve gotta get up there as quick as I can.” He went on to explain that it was a joint effort with marshals in Kansas and Missouri to run a gang of dangerous outlaws to ground.

  “You just got back from Indian Territory,” Sophie complained. “Why can’t Dan Stone send one of the other deputies for a change? It seems to me like he sends you out more than anybody else, and Kansas is a long way from here.”

  “He is gonna send some other deputies to help, but right now, I’m the only one in town, except Ed Pine. And Dan can’t send him up there, so he doesn’t have much choice.”

  “Why can’t he send Ed Pine?” When Will explained that Ed had never really recovered from some serious wounds he had received a while back, she was not sympathetic. “Damn it, Will, I need you here, especially right now.” She seemed as mad as Will had ever seen her.

  “I’m just as sorry as I can be,” he said, “but I can’t very well leave Dan high and dry.”

  “But you can leave me high and dry,” she replied.

  “Sophie,” he replied, “we ain’t plannin’ to get married till Christmas. We’ve got plenty of time to get ready for the weddin’. There’s gonna be folks up in the Cherokee and Osage Nations that could be in some real danger if that gang is allowed to ride free in that territory.” He saw readily enough that his argument was falling on deaf ears, but he didn’t know what else he could say. When he glanced at her mother, there appeared to be a contented expression of I told you so on her face, and he realized that he was helping prove Ruth’s opposition to their marriage. “Sophie, I’m real sorry about this. I’ll be gone for a spell, but when I get back, we’ll take a trip down to Texas, so I can show you the J-Bar-J.”

  “If you get back,” she spat, her anger growing by the moment. “I don’t believe you’ve even got a ranch in Texas.” She turned toward the hallway door. “I hope you have a good trip,” she slurred, and left him standing there bewildered.

  Will started to go after her, but hesitated, deciding he would only make matters worse. He looked at Ruth, standing there with a smile approaching benevolence that he was sure could be more rightly defined as satisfaction. “She’ll probably be a little more understanding after she calms down,” she said in a rather halfhearted effort to placate him. “Anyway, we’re glad to see you safely home. You’ll be here for breakfast in the morning?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied at once, then hesitated. “I reckon I will.” He was thinking that she would get over her little snit by the afternoon and he would surely be talking to her that night. He was to find that she busied herself in the kitchen with Margaret for most of the afternoon. When suppertime came, she continued to keep him at a distance and afterward complained of a headache, so she retired to her room. Ruth said good night then, even though it was early still, and left him to ponder the trouble he had caused simply by returning home. At that moment, he wished that he had set out immediately for the Cherokee Nation, when he left Dan Stone’s office, instead of coming back to Bennett House.

  He made himself available for a while in the parlor, then on the porch after Ron and Leonard had retired to their rooms. He felt certain Sophie would seek him out after she had a chance to cool down, but she never came to look for him. Finally, when he decided that she was not going to, he went upstairs and tapped lightly on her door. He was surprised when the door opened to find Ruth there to answer his knock. She informed him that she was sorry, but Sophie had gone to bed with a bad headache. “Oh,” he responded. “Well, tell her I was lookin’ for her, and I’m real sorry she’s got a headache.” It’ll most likely be gone before breakfast in the morning, since I reckon I’m the headache, he thought as he turned and went to his room at the end of the hall. He had seen a side of Sophie that night he had never seen before, and he wondered how much of it was caused by her mother.

  Sleep proved to be an off-and-on affair that night, due to an inability to turn his mind off. Sometime during the wee hours of the morning, he decided that he had no experience in playing a lovers’ game, and wanted none now. He had important things to concentrate on and he would deal with Sophie’s problems when he got back. So, when it was five-thirty, according to his watch, he got dressed and left the house, knowing that Vern would be arriving at the stable about this time. Margaret Thatcher, preparing breakfast, looked out the kitchen window in time to see him going out the back door. She shook her head slowly, unable to prevent a feeling of compassion for the earnest young man and knowing the competitor he was facing in Sophie’s mother.

  * * *

  As he had assumed, Vern Tuttle was at the stable when he arrived. “Mornin’, Will,” Vern greeted him. “You gettin’ ready to ride early, I see. I fed your horses like you said. I’ll help you saddle up and you’ll be ready to go.”

  “I ’preciate it, Vern. I need to get an early start if I’m gonna get up to the Kansas border in three and a half days, especially since I’m gonna have to stop to get some supplies on the way.”

  “You’re right about that,” Vern said as he helped tighten a strap on Will’s packsaddle. “You ain’t got much in these packs. How far you figure it is to the Kansas border?”

  “Where I plan to strike it, it’s about a hundred and seventy or eighty miles,” Will replied, “and I’m gonna have to push ol’ Buster here to go a little farther than he’s used to every day.”

  When he was packed up and ready to ride, he led the big buckskin out to the street to discover Dan Stone hurrying down to the stable. “When you said you were leaving first thing this morning, you meant it,” Stone said.

  Genuinely surprised to see his boss at the stable, or for that matter, anywhere this early, Will asked, “Something wrong?”

  “No,” Stone answered. “I just wanted to remind you to find that bunch and not try to arrest them until you get more help. Right now, this operation is in the hands of the Missouri and Kansas services, but it’ll be our responsibility if that gang decides to get lost in Indian Territory. So the sooner we can find them, the better off we’ll be.”

  “Right,” Will said, “I’ll see what I can do to help.”

  “And, damn it, Will,” Dan continued, “you be careful. This gang has left a trail of dead folks everywhere they’ve been. They’re as mean a bunch of rattlesnakes as have ever straddled a horse.”

  “I plan to be,” Will said, and stepped up into the saddle. He nodded to Vern before saluting Stone with his forefinger to his hat brim. “I’ll keep in touch when I can get to a telegraph,” he said, and nudged Buster with his heels. His boss had never shown this much concern for his safety before. This Ansel Beaudry must be the devil himself, he thought.

  “Check at the telegraph office when you get to Tahlequah,” Stone called after him. “I might have more information for you. I’ll be in touch with Kansas and Missouri.”

  “Right,” Will answered, and turned Buster toward the river.

  * * *

  “
How long you thinkin’ about stayin’ here, Ansel?” Luther Curry asked.

  “I was wonderin’ that, myself,” Whip Dawson said. They had been camped there in a horseshoe-shaped bend of the Verdigris River, a good ten miles south of the Kansas border, for two days, and Whip wasn’t the only one ready to move on. They had enjoyed a fairly good payday from the Joplin bank and the small bank in Coffeyville above the border, but there was no place to spend their loot in this wild country.

  “What’s the matter, boys?” Ansel Beaudry answered. “You gettin’ a little itchy with a little money in your pockets?” He was riding with a rough collection of gunmen, but there was no question who was the boss. “We’ll be ready to ride in the mornin’, after the good folks up in Kansas tell the lawmen we rode straight north. They ain’t smart enough to think we doubled back and headed down here. Even if they were smart enough, they ain’t likely gonna want to head down here after us.”

  “I reckon not,” Cecil Cox spoke up. “After seein’ what happened to them other two deputies that came after us, they’d just figure we was Oklahoma’s problem now.” He grinned at Ansel, much like a dog looks at his master for approval. He, along with Whip Dawson and Tom Daly, had joined up with the three escaped convicts at an oft-used hideout near Springfield, Missouri. With Ansel calling the shots, the newly formed gang’s first robbery was the bank in Joplin, and it had gone as smoothly as Ansel had said it would.

  A man of average height, Ansel Beaudry nevertheless stood out among other men. Heavyset, with wide shoulders, Beaudry was a solidly built man. His dark hair and full black beard reminded some of President Ulysses S. Grant. Recognizing him as a natural-born leader, Bo Hagen and Luther Curry were drawn to him while in prison and never hesitated to follow him when he told them he planned to escape. Ansel had realized early on that his tastes were much too rich to ever be accommodated by honest work. It was obvious to him that the quickest way for him to attain the wealth he desired was to take it from those who earned it. And he found that the easiest way to do that was with overpowering force in the form of himself and five ruthless gunmen.

  “Rider comin’,” Whip warned, and drew his rifle in case there was a need for it. He relaxed after a moment and announced, “Look who’s comin’ here.” They all relaxed their guard after they saw Tom Daly approaching the camp, leading a cow.

  “Hot damn!” Bo Hagen exclaimed. “Where’d you find that cow? When you said you was goin’ huntin’, I figured you thought you might find a deer or somethin’.”

  “There’s a ranch grazin’ cattle about two miles down the river,” Tom said. “Wasn’t much of a herd, but this one followed me home. I reckon he wants to join up with us.”

  “Well, he’s damn sure welcome,” Bo declared. “I’m gettin’ damn sick of nothin’ but bacon to eat.”

  Equally sick of bacon, but concerned with more important things, Ansel got up from his seat near the fire. “Damn it, Tom,” he stressed, “anybody see you take that cow?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to worry about, Boss,” Tom answered. “There weren’t nobody anywhere around those cows. This ’un was in a little bunch of strays, only a dozen or so, musta wandered off from the main herd. If somebody rides out lookin’ for those strays, they won’t even know they’re one short.”

  “If you’re wrong,” Ansel replied, “you’re gonna cause us some trouble we hadn’t counted on.”

  “I swear, Boss, there ain’t nothin’ to worry about. I was extra careful to make sure there weren’t nobody ridin’ herd on those cows, and I knew some fresh beef would taste pretty good right now.”

  “I reckon you’re right about that,” Ansel conceded. He was aware of the look of expectation in the eyes of the other men, so he decided not to come down too hard on Tom. It was not good news to hear there was a ranch downriver somewhere. In view of that, he decided it was lucky Tom hadn’t run up on a deer. His rifle might have alerted somebody of their presence there. “Well, don’t just stand there lookin’ dumb,” he said. “Get to work butcherin’ it. I ain’t plannin’ on stayin’ here more’n another day or two. Then we’ll head farther on down in Injun Territory where those Kansas marshals ain’t got any jurisdiction.” His announcement was met with a chorus of gleeful grunts, eager for the slaughter. “No gunshots,” Ansel warned, “since we found out we got neighbors.”

  “Ain’t no need to shoot the damn cow,” Whip Dawson snorted. He drew his skinning knife, walked up to take the cow’s head, and twisted it around. Then while the cow was trying to keep its neck from breaking, Whip slashed its throat. When the cow finally quit its feeble kicking, Whip released its neck, jumped out of the way, and let it drop. “Now you can skin it and butcher it,” he crowed as he scooped up a handful of sand to clean the blood from his hands.

  “I swear, Whip,” Bo remarked, “damned if you ain’t a regular savage. You sure your daddy weren’t an Injun?”

  “I reckon if he was, he’da been a Comanche,” Whip replied proudly.

  Ansel listened to the banter between the members of his gang, always interested in judging the usefulness of the men riding with him. He was sure of Bo Hagen and Luther Curry. They had proven themselves to be loyal and willing when they served with him in prison. He also had no doubts about Whip Dawson. Big and powerful, Whip had a lust for killing, but needed someone to tell him which way to go. Ansel was confident that Cecil Cox was in awe of him and would be useful if the need to sacrifice someone ever arose. Tom Daly had ridden with more than one band of cattle and horse thieves. More important, he knew the territory in Oklahoma and that’s where Ansel planned to hole up for a while. Unlike Whip, Tom had nothing to prove. Ansel felt sure he could be counted on to do his job. He was confident that he had assembled an outlaw gang that could operate like an army patrol, striking suddenly and viciously, then escaping before the law or the military could react. The thought of it brought a faint smile to his face when he thought about his next strike. It would be at a fledgling little settlement called Bartles Town, where he planned to restock his dwindling supplies.

  * * *

  It was close to sunset when Will reached the Illinois River and followed it into the town of Tahlequah. On the chance of finding Raymond Two Trees at the tiny room he used for his office, he turned Buster toward the back of the two-story brick building that served as the capitol of the Cherokee Nation. He didn’t bother to go inside to look for Raymond because the little corral behind the building was empty. Raymond had already gone home, if in fact he was even in town. No matter what, Will was going to have to camp for the night and his horses were tired, so he could stop by the Cherokee policeman’s house later. Right now, however, he would check the telegraph office to see if there were any wires from his boss, so he turned Buster toward the railroad depot.

  “Howdy, Will,” Billy Higgins greeted him when he walked into the telegraph office. “I figured you’d be showin’ up pretty soon.”

  “That so?” Will replied. “Why’d you figure that?” He hadn’t been in Tahlequah for some time. It would not have surprised him if Billy didn’t remember him at all.

  “’Cause I’ve got a couple of telegrams here for you, and I ain’t seen you in a coon’s age,” Billy said. He reached down, pulled the two messages from a cabinet under the counter, and handed them to Will. Then he recited the messages at the same time Will read them, “‘Confirmed, two Kansas deputies killed—STOP—Be extra careful—STOP.’ The second one came in right after I got the first one yesterday.” He went on to recite the second one. “‘Beaudry robbed bank in Coffeyville—STOP—Two men killed—STOP—Headed north toward Independence—STOP—No sign of them since—STOP—Do not follow into Kansas—STOP.’” He stood there waiting for Will to read what he had just recited. When Will looked up from the messages, Billy said, “Looks like you’d best get ready for a rough time, if you run into those boys.”

  “Does look that way, doesn’t it?” Will replied. His thoughts were on the town of Independence and the friends he had made there.
He had been there on another occasion when there was an attempted holdup at both banks. He was not happy to hear those decent folks might be getting hit again. The image of a young woman came to mind, Marcy Taylor was her name. She was the doctor’s daughter and she had been very nice to Will. He wondered if she was still working in the bank. Maybe she was married now. When he realized he had let his mind wander, he reprimanded himself and returned his thoughts to the present. “Have you seen Raymond Two Trees?” he asked then.

  “Not since yesterday,” Billy answered. “He said he was headin’ down to Muskogee—figured he’d be gone for a couple of days.” He paused, waiting for Will’s reaction. When Will said nothing, his mind still on Independence, Billy continued. “You caught me just as I was fixin’ to go to supper. I eat over at the boardin’-house. That woman over there fixes a right fine supper for twenty-five cents. You wanna go with me?”

  “I reckon not,” Will said. “I’ve gotta buy some supplies over at Todd’s and I’d best not wait too long, or he’ll be closin’ up.” He was tempted to go to the boardinghouse with Billy, but if he failed to catch Kirby Todd before he closed, he’d have to wait until morning. He planned to be long gone from Tahlequah by the time Kirby opened up in the morning. He said good-bye to Billy and led his horses across the street to the General Merchandise Store.

  He caught Todd just in the process of closing up for the day, as he was moving a display of kitchen brooms from the boardwalk to be locked up inside for the night. “Am I too late to buy a few things before you close?” Will called out.

  “Well, hello there, Deputy,” Todd responded. “Long time, no see. No, sir, it’s not too late to serve an officer of the law. What can I sell you?”