Winchester 1886 Page 6

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Vinita

  “You don’t want to see him, Marshal.” The conductor’s head looked abnormal, wrapped with thick white strips of linen, heavily padded on the top where someone had buffaloed him with a six-shooter. He was a fat man to begin with, out of breath, probably still in pain, but he held up his hand, and somehow managed to stop Jimmy Mann from charging into the freight room at the Vinita depot. “You want to remember Borden as he was alive.”

  Mann stepped back. His legs and butt felt sore from riding so hard from Lightning Creek. He needed sleep, a bath, and a shave. He wanted a whiskey. No, what he wanted was to see his brother . . . alive.

  He could feel all the stares boring into him, felt as if he could hear their whispers. Indians, blacks, and whites had crowded onto the town’s main street, next to the depot that served the Katy and the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway. News traveled fast in Indian Territory. He figured people had come to town all the way from Honey Creek and Coody’s Bluff to see the show.

  He stood, Winchester in his right hand, trying to dam the tears that wanted to break free. He wanted to push past the fat conductor, and find his brother, cradle his head in his lap. Instead, he steeled himself, sucked in a deep breath, and asked, “What happened?”

  “It was Danny Waco.” The conductor brought up a fat hand and gently fingered the bandage on his head.

  Waco. Jimmy had a warrant in his saddlebags for him. Danny Waco was the reason he had ridden to Lightning Creek to meet up with three Creek officers of the United States Indian Police out of Muskogee. He had left the Indians at Lightning Creek once a deputy marshal had brought word of what had happened at Spavina Creek Crossing, but all the lawman had told him was that the Katy No. 4 had been robbed, that his brother had been killed.

  “Waco,” Jimmy said.

  “He coldcocked the bridge watcher,” the engineer said. “Had one of his men wavin’ the red lantern. I didn’t suspect nothin’. Figgered the bridge was out, so I stopped the train. Sorry, Marshal.”

  Jimmy’s head shook. It wasn’t the engineer’s fault. What else could he have done? Ignored the warning signal and stormed on ahead, risking the lives of his crew and his passengers if the bridge indeed had been damaged?

  “He knew of the payroll,” the conductor said.

  “What payroll?”

  “The Adams Express Company was hauling forty thousand dollars to Denison, Texas,” the conductor answered. “He knew we were carrying it.”

  “How?”

  “Informant.” This came from the bespectacled deputy marshal who had ridden all morning the twenty miles to Lightning Creek. He had ridden four horses to get there, then used up three more on the return trip. Even Jimmy, who had borrowed two of the Indian policemen’s mounts, had had trouble keeping up with the old man’s pace.

  A tall, lean Cherokee with long gray hair and a scarred face, Jackson Sixpersons also served on the U.S. Indian Police, but the judge and district marshal liked deputizing some Indians as federal marshals, too. Good politics for one reason. Nobody knew the Indian Nations as well as those Indians for another. A good man, maybe sixty years old, who rode like a Cherokee forty years younger, Sixpersons reached into his jacket and pulled out a notepad, which he flipped open. “Clerk named Percy Frick. Down in Texas. Denison maybe.” Sixpersons looked up above his eyeglasses, but said no more.

  The conductor filled in. “I telegraphed the marshals in Texas. They’ll find that man, arrest him.”

  “How did you know his name?” Jimmy asked.

  “When he didn’t find the money, Waco started cussing him,” the conductor said. “He thought he’d been double-crossed by—”

  “Waco didn’t find the money?” Jimmy interrupted.

  “No.” The conductor swallowed. “Thanks to your brother. After the train stopped, Borden kept the door to the express car locked until Waco threatened to murder a passenger, an old woman, in cold blood. While Waco and the other six bandits were kept out of the express car, Borden had opened the safe, hidden the money in a flour sack on the floor, put the key in one of his socks, and pulled his boot back on over it.

  “We found the money after they rode off,” the conductor said. “Ol’ Borden . . . he bluffed Danny Waco good.”

  Yeah. Only it had cost Borden his life. “What did they get?” Jimmy looked at Deputy Marshal Sixpersons.

  He flipped open his notebook, and began reading his notes. “Don’t know what they got from the express car. Not till we hear from the express company.”

  “But,” the conductor chimed in, “the Adams Express Company and the Katy have already posted a thousand dollar reward for the capture of Danny Waco.”

  That brought the price on Waco’s head to $4,250.

  “For the murder of your brother.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  Sixpersons went on. “Maybe four hundred and fifty in cash, coin, jewelry, and watches. They got some stuff out of the mail, but we don’t know what.”

  “Not the haul they were after, though,” the conductor said.

  “They got that big rifle, too,” Sixpersons said. “The one you were sending to your brother’s boy.”

  That did it. Jimmy felt his stomach overturning, felt as if he might faint. He moved to the bench in front of the ticket agent’s window and collapsed onto the hard seat, bringing his Winchester to his lap, swearing softly.

  Sixpersons followed Jimmy to the bench. “I found the box Borden had put it in. Sorry, Jimmy.”

  He sniffed, nodded. Maybe even said, “Yeah.” He wasn’t sure.

  “Jimmy . . .” The Indian marshal waited until Jimmy looked up.

  “He used the rifle on Borden.”

  Late in the day, it had turned warm, almost hot for the time of year, but Jimmy Mann suddenly felt cold down to his bones. He started to second-guess everything he had done. If I had listened to Borden . . . He said that .50-caliber cannon was too much gun for James. If I had said yes to Borden, had ridden down with him . . .

  He saw himself as Borden, lying on the floor of the express car, looking up into the barrel of that .50-100-450. Or maybe he was lying on his stomach, feeling the barrel of that cannon on the back of his head. Either way, nobody had to explain to him any further why the conductor didn’t want Jimmy to see Borden’s body.

  “The train was running late,” the conductor said. “Got delayed at Russet Peak. We changed crews here, and after they stopped the train, robbed it, killed . . . well, they ordered the engineer to back up the train all the way back here. We telegraphed Muskogee, Parsons, Fort Smith, Denison . . .”

  He kept on talking, but Jimmy wasn’t listening. He was hearing his brother, yelling at him through the closed door of the express car, You don’t owe me a thing, Jimmy.

  “Yes, I do, Borden,” Jimmy whispered.

  “What’s that?” the conductor asked.

  Jimmy shook his head. “Get my brother out of that freight room,” he said, the anger rising in his voice. He could feel his neck burning, his ears reddening. “He’s not a shipment of farm implements.”

  “We didn’t know—”

  He cut off the conductor with a glare. “Get him to an undertaker. Put him in the best coffin. His wife and family live in Olathe, Kansas. That’s where you send his body.”

  “Well . . .” the conductor began. “We figured you’d want to go with him.”

  “I’m going somewhere else,” Jimmy snapped, and made himself stand. “Which way did they go?”

  The conductor lost his voice. The engineer stared at his big boots. But the brakeman said, “We wouldn’t know, sir. They had us backin’ down the tracks before they’d taken off.”

  “But we know some names.” Sixpersons looked back at his notepad. “Ted Dunegan.” He looked up. “Young whippersnapper who married Adsila Conley, ol’ Gawonii’s youngest daughter. Thinks the world owes him something. Bound to get into a scrape like this. Lives up at Bluejacket.”

  Jimmy’s thumb rubbed agai
nst the hammer of the carbine he still held. “They used names?”

  The brakeman answered. “Yes, sir. I think that man Waco got riled by Dunegan.”

  “Murt,” the conductor said, “the bridge watchman said the same thing. Dunegan used Waco’s name, and that set off Waco. You know how he is, Marshal. Anything might set him off. He repeatedly used Dunegan’s name. Even described him, said where he lived.”

  “And the others?” Jimmy asked.

  Sixpersons returned to his notebook. “They didn’t wear masks. Young, full of spunk. Not smart. Just like Ted Dunegan. One was called Vern. Another Joey. And the other, Mal, maybe Hal.”

  “Probably friends of Dunegan?” Jimmy asked.

  Sixpersons shrugged, and slid the notebook back into his jacket pocket. “The other two, we both know.”

  Jimmy’s head bobbed. “Tonkawa Tom. And Gil Millican.”

  The Indian lawman confirmed that with a nod.

  “What about Cutter Carl?”

  “Reckon you didn’t hear. Cutter Carl walked into three rounds of buckshot at Double Spring nine days back.”

  “Who got him?”

  Another shrug. Sixpersons glanced at his piebald gelding, and Jimmy Mann understood. He could see the stock of Sixperson’s Winchester ’87, a lever-action twelve-gauge shotgun, protruding from the scabbard. The Cherokee peace officer removed his spectacles and began cleaning the lenses with the ends of his red polka-dot bandanna.

  Sixpersons’ eyesight might be failing, but that shotgun had proved to be an equalizer.

  “Any idea where we might find those boys?” Jimmy asked.

  The conductor said, “Posse rode off around noon to Spavina Creek, hoping to pick up the trail.”

  Noon. Jimmy held back the oath forming on his lips. They had burned all morning trying to round up enough men to go after the robbers, the murderers.

  “Haven’t heard back from any of our boys,” the conductor said. “But I don’t think Danny Waco would let that punk Dunegan or any of those others keep him company, not after what happened last night. My guess is they’ve all scattered.”

  The engineer added, “If they’re smart.”

  “They aren’t smart.” Sixpersons put his eyeglasses back on and folded his arms.

  “No,” Jimmy agreed. “They aren’t.” He borrowed the Cherokee’s notebook, wrote down some names, Borden’s address in Olathe, instructions to telegraph the marshal’s office at Fort Smith, to send word to Millard Mann in McAdam, Texas, and a few other details. He ripped out the pages, and handed them to the conductor.

  “If you want a hotel, Marshal,” the conductor said, “I’m sure we can help. I mean, you’ve ridden long and hard just to get here.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Where’s the livery?” As good as Old Buck was, he knew his horse wouldn’t be fit for riding for another three or four days. Nor would the other mounts he’d almost run to death just to get to Vinita. He hoped he could find a good horse at the livery.

  “Well, Marshal,” the conductor said, “if you’re bound for Bluejacket to see if you can capture Ted Dunegan, we can get you a train. The Number Four’s still here.”

  Ride the train that had carried Borden to his death? “No thank-you. I prefer a horse.” Jimmy moved quickly. He had found his purpose. He’d track down Danny Waco and avenge Borden. He’d get his nephew’s rifle back. No matter the cost.

  Only when he reached the edge of the platform did he stop, turn, and look across the station toward Jackson Sixpersons. “You coming?”

  The Cherokee lawman grinned.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bluejacket

  North of Vinita, deputy marshals Jimmy Mann and Jackson Sixpersons arrived in Bluejacket, a speck of dust on the Katy line that some people called a town. Named after a Shawnee Indian sky pilot who did his preaching nearby, Bluejacket catered to farmers and merchants. Those that dealt with farmers went to bed early. The town slept. Not even a dog barked as the two lawmen watered their horses in front of what some people might have consider a hotel.

  They rode on, out of the limits of the recently incorporated town, turning at the fork in the road and following the trail east toward Shawnee, Wyandot, and Quapaw land. Two miles east, they moved down a trail that cut through the woods. When they reached the clearing two hundred yards from the pike, Sixpersons reined in his paint horse and slid from the saddle.

  The Winchester shotgun slid easily from the scabbard without a sound. He tilted his head forward and knelt down. “Someone’s smoking,” he whispered.

  Jimmy took a knee beside the old Cherokee, holding the Winchester carbine by the barrel. “Those eyeglasses are good,” he said after he spotted the on-and-off orange glow from the open door of a barn.

  “My age, they got to be.”

  Jimmy smiled and surveyed the Dunegan spread. No, not Ted Dunegan’s. It was Adsila Conley’s place, or rather old man Gawonii’s. A cad like Ted Dunegan had only married a girl like Adsila for her land . . . and to get on the tribal rolls.

  Adsila made brooms. Jimmy doubted if Ted Dunegan even swept the floor.

  Not much cover, not that Jimmy could remember or see in the darkness, anyway. The skies were turning gray in the east, and the sun would be rising before long. A hundred yards from where he and Sixpersons knelt to the cabin. The barn lay maybe twenty yards to the east and north of the cabin. If Jimmy remembered correctly, a lean-to and a corral lay in front of the cabin, a well was off to the side, a two-seat privy and some sort of shed stood in the back near a garden. He heard chickens clucking and added a coop next to the barn to his mental list. In less than an hour, the roosters would start crowing. No horses that he could see. They would be in the barn, guarded by the man with the cigarette.

  If someone was guarding the horses . . .

  “How many do you think?” Jimmy asked.

  “Too dark to read sign.”

  “I know. I’m asking you to guess.”

  “Not Waco, The Tonk, or Millican.”

  Jimmy’s head bobbed. He wet his lips. Flaring yellow light came from the cabin’s lone window and through the cracks in the door, and he could smell smoke from the chimney. Suddenly, the cabin door opened, bathing the porch and grassy ground with light.

  Instinctively, Jimmy and Sixpersons ducked, although at that distance and the lack of light, not to mention the pecan trees and blackjack oaks, no one from the cabin or barn could see them.

  “Hey, Mal!” yelled the voice from the cabin. “You want eggs?”

  The orange glow disappeared, then sparks flew on the ground a few feet in front of the barn door. The guard flicked away his cigarette. “All I want,” he called out, “is to get out of Indian Territory!”

  The man at the cabin door chuckled. “Give us fifteen minutes. We’ll eat. Then ride.”

  The door closed, leaving only the faint rays of light shining through the cracks. It wasn’t much of a cabin.

  Jimmy glanced to the east.

  “Well, that settles that.” Sixpersons reached for his notebook.

  “Settles what?”

  The Cherokee pulled a pencil he kept in the band around his battered black Stetson. With just enough light, he could see he had found a blank page. He wrote three letters, then closed the pad, and returned it to his jacket and the pencil back to his hat. “His name is Mal. Not Hal.”

  Jimmy let out a long breath. “The sun won’t be up in fifteen minutes.”

  Sixpersons merely grunted.

  “And your shotgun won’t do us any good from up here.”

  Joints popping, Sixpersons rose to his feet and pulled his hat down with his free hand. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll kill Mal. You wait. Till they come out. Then start the ball.”

  Ten minutes. Then five. Maybe. Jimmy hobbled the horses, and found a stump to sit on. He set the Winchester on his lap, turned the carbine, and pushed down on the piece of brass in the stock, opening the compartment for his cleaning rod. Or where some men kept extra cartridges. Jimmy had fetch
ed the greasy rag from his saddlebag, which he drew into the rod, then swabbed the barrel three times. The rod returned to the compartment, which he closed. The rag he tossed at his feet. Carefully, he eased back the hammer, hearing the two clicks, hoping the sound wouldn’t carry all the way down to the barn past the chickens.

  He straightened, staring into the predawn grayness, leaving the Winchester cocked and on his lap. He could make out the house and the door. The rooster crowed, although the sun had yet to appear.

  His hat came off. He dropped it to his left.

  It was time, he guessed and brought the Winchester up, leaning the barrel against a sturdy pecan, sighting down at the door. Mal should be dead.

  The door opened, the cabin’s light silhouetting a tall figure in the doorway. Idiot, Jimmy thought. He could call down a warning, announce himself as a deputy marshal. Yeah, he could. Instead, he squeezed the trigger.

  His ears rang from the explosion, which drowned out the bedlam a hundred yards below of chickens, groans, and screams. He stood, jacking another round into the carbine, moving away from where he had just fired. He saw shadows in the doorway. Fired again. Once more.

  Curses and shouts came from the cabin. Someone screamed, “Mal! Mal! Bring the horses!”

  Mal, of course, could not answer.

  Jimmy had moved away, ducking to his knees, levering the Winchester. The door closed, stopping the light. Jimmy put two more .44-40 slugs through the door.

  He heard footsteps, knew he had missed someone. He could blame it on the darkness, the muzzle flashes from his own rifle blinding him, or the fact that he was bone-tired and needed sleep. He understood that one man hadn’t gone inside the cabin and was running toward the barn. Jimmy swung his carbine in the general direction, but his eyes wouldn’t cooperate. And he didn’t want to risk the shot.

  A second later, he heard the roar of a shotgun, saw the belching flame, and heard a gasp, a groan.