A bullet smacked into the doorjamb about six inches from the crown of John Henry Sixkiller’s pearl gray hat and sprayed wood splinters against it.
John Henry crouched and his Colt came up in his hand. He triggered two swift shots at the spot where flame had bloomed in the night like a crimson flower.
Then he threw himself out of the trading post doorway, hit the ground on his left shoulder, and rolled behind the long watering trough beside the hitch rail.
You asked for this, John Henry, he reminded himself as he came to a stop belly down. You’re the one who painted a big, fat target on yourself.
He didn’t have the patience to spend a week or more ferreting Valentine Starbird out of these rugged hills in eastern Indian Territory, though. It was easier and quicker to swagger around and boast about how he was a deputy United States marshal, by God, sent here by Judge Isaac Parker, the notorious Hanging Judge his own self, to bring in the infamous outlaw Starbird, dead or alive. Starbird was a prideful man, and John Henry figured such bragging would bring the fugitive to him, since Starbird would want to prove him wrong.
Evidently the plan had worked, John Henry thought as more bullets thudded into the thick boards of the trough.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t planned on Starbird bringing help with him, and that seemed to be the case. At least two more guns opened up on him from the woods that came up almost right to the trading post’s front door.
One of the extra men was off to the side, too, and had an angle on him. A slug plowed into the ground not far from John Henry’s head and showered his face with dirt and grit. This wasn’t working out at all.
At that moment a rifle started cracking nearby, but these shots weren’t directed at John Henry. He twisted his head around and saw Doris Rainbow in the log building’s doorway. The Winchester in her hands spat fire as she cranked off several rounds as fast as she could work the weapon’s lever.
Over in the trees, somebody screamed, and the gun that had been homing in on John Henry abruptly fell silent.
“Clovis! Clovis, are you shot?”
John Henry recognized that voice. It belonged to Valentine Starbird, who was wanted on numerous counts of murder, robbery, and whiskey smuggling. He was a plague on the Indian Territory and ran with several men who were almost as bad, including one Clovis Miller.
Nobody answered Starbird. After a moment he yelled, “You bitch! You killed Clovis!”
Doris had ducked back inside the building, John Henry saw when he glanced in her direction. That was good. He appreciated what she had done to help him, but he didn’t want her to get killed or even hurt on his account.
Her involvement meant there was no question about what had to happen now. Her father owned this trading post, and if Starbird got away, he would come back here sometime in the future and take his revenge on Doris. John Henry couldn’t allow that.
While lying there he had thumbed fresh rounds into his Colt until the chamber was full. He surged up now and dashed for the trees, triggering the revolver as fast as he could. His bullets slashed through the branches and made Starbird and whoever was with him duck for cover. John Henry left his feet in a dive that carried him into the thick shadows under the trees.
Now he and his enemies were on equal footing. He wasn’t silhouetted in a doorway or pinned down behind a water trough anymore.
He reloaded again, then stood absolutely still and listened. Hearing wasn’t the only sense he used. He drew in deep breaths as well, searching for the scents of whiskey, tobacco, and unwashed human flesh.
He was about to try tracking by smell, just like a droopy-faced old bloodhound, he thought as a faint smile touched his lips in the darkness.
It didn’t come to that point, however, because one of the outlaws got careless as his nerves stretched out taut. The man moved, causing a crackling in the brush about ten feet from John Henry. As soundless as a ghost, John Henry glided toward the sound.
When he judged that he was close enough to his quarry, he let his foot press down a little harder on a twig underneath it. The twig snapped, which in the tense silence sounded almost as loud as a shot.
The man he was stalking jerked around and gasped, “Val?”
“Nope,” John Henry said. He reached out with his left hand and grabbed a shirtfront. The gun in his right hand slashed down and crashed against the face of the other man. Swiftly, John Henry hit him again, knocking him out cold.
That left Starbird.
John Henry eased the unconscious man to the ground and hooted like an owl. It was a common signal among outlaws.
“Keller?”
Starbird’s voice was a harsh whisper as he called softly to the man John Henry had just knocked out.
John Henry remained silent now.
Starbird’s nerves couldn’t take it, either. He yelled, “Keller, hit the dirt!” and opened fire, shooting blindly through the trees. Shots roared and flames spurted from the muzzle of Starbird’s gun, tearing orange holes in the shadows.
John Henry had already dropped to one knee. He steadied his gun and fired twice, aiming carefully at the muzzle flashes. Starbird cried out, and a second later John Henry heard the heavy thud as the outlaw’s body hit the ground.
Of course, Starbird could be shamming, John Henry thought, trying to trick him and draw him into the open. So he shifted position quickly, just in case Starbird tried to draw a bead on his muzzle flashes, and waited.
He heard a ragged, bubbling, whistling sound and realized after a few seconds that it was Starbird breathing. The outlaw was shot through the lungs and drowning in his own blood. Starbird began to thrash around.
It was an ugly way to die. But John Henry knew that Valentine Starbird had gunned down at least four men in cold blood, had raped two women and cut their throats, and committed Lord knew what other heinous crimes. So John Henry figured he wasn’t going to lose one second of sleep over the suffering Starbird was going through now.
A few more rasping, strangling breaths and it was over. No tricks now. John Henry heard the death rattle in Starbird’s throat as life departed.
He moved back over to the man he had knocked out, grasped his collar, and hauled Keller into the clearing between the woods and the trading post.
“Billy Rainbow!” he called. “Fetch a lantern.”
Moments later the chunky, middle-aged owner of the trading post appeared, carrying a lantern. With a worried look on his face, he brought it out to John Henry.
“Are they all dead?” Billy asked.
“Starbird is.” John Henry looked down at the man at his feet, who had a big bloody gash on his forehead and a broken nose from being pistol-whipped. “Looks like this one will live to hang in Fort Smith.”
“I recognize him,” Billy said. “That’s Tupelo Keller. He held up the Tahlequah stage, stole a sawmill payroll, and killed the driver about a month ago.”
“I remember. Well, he’ll swing for it. Fetch some rope and tie him up while he’s still out cold.”
Billy nodded, handed the lantern to John Henry, and hurried back into the trading post, stepping past his daughter, who stood in the doorway watching.
Doris Rainbow was eighteen years old, with long, raven hair and expressive dark eyes. She was beautiful enough to take a man’s breath away, and she had been in love with John Henry Sixkiller since she was twelve, when he’d been a dashing Cherokee Lighthorseman.
John Henry knew the way she felt about him. It was impossible not to. Any man with a lick of sense would have married Doris and given her half a dozen babies and spent the rest of his life fat and happy, he thought.
But nobody had ever accused him of having a lick of sense, which might explain why he had spent several years working as a deputy U.S. marshal for Judge Parker, putting his life in danger time and time again for damned little pay. Doris deserved better than that.
She started toward him, but he waved her back to the relative safety of the building.
“We don’t know for sure that Clovis Miller is dead,” he told her.
“He better be,” she said. “I think I ventilated him good.”
“Sounded like it, but I want to be sure.”
With his Colt held ready in his right hand, he lifted the lantern in his left and advanced toward the trees where Miller had been taking those potshots at him a few minutes earlier. If he heard the slightest sound from in there, he planned to empty the revolver at it.
He had penetrated about ten feet into the trees when the lantern light revealed a man’s bloody shape sprawled on the ground. Clovis Miller had fallen on his side and died pawing at his midsection where a bullet had ripped it open, trying to push his guts back into the hole.
John Henry remembered what Miller had done to a ten-year-old girl the year before. As far as he was concerned, the outlaw had died too quick and easy, just like Valentine Starbird.
He pouched the iron, took hold of Miller’s left ankle, and dragged the body out into the open. Doris looked at the corpse and turned away in revulsion.
“I did that?” she said quietly.
“If you hadn’t, he probably would have killed me in another minute or two,” John Henry told her. “Don’t worry about this one, Doris. You did the right thing . . . even though you never should have risked your life and gotten mixed up in this ruckus to start with. It was my fight.”
“You just said that I saved your life.”
“More than likely you did.”
She sent a speculative glance his way and said, “Then I reckon you owe me something.”
John Henry didn’t like the turn this conversation was taking. Billy had finished tying Tupelo Keller’s hands and feet, so John Henry said, “I’ll need to borrow your wagon to take these men into Tahlequah with me, Billy. I’ll fetch Keller on to Fort Smith, but Starbird and Miller will need planting right away.”
Billy grunted and said, “Sure, but I’d be obliged if you’d wash the blood out of it when you’re done. Just leave it at Harriman’s Livery and I’ll ride into town on my old mule in a day or two and pick it up.”
“I’ll sure see that it’s taken care of,” John Henry promised.
“And next time you set a trap for animals like these, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use my place to do it.”
“My word on it. But this was really just the luck of the draw. They happened to catch up to me here.”
Billy shook his head and said, “I can’t imagine what it’s like havin’ people wantin’ to kill you all the time. I swear, John Henry, you must feel like a dead man walkin’.”
John Henry clucked his tongue, nodded sagely, and said, “It does get a mite wearisome.”
John Henry laid over at the trading post that night, and he was glad that Doris didn’t try to sneak into the room where he was sleeping.
If she had, he would have been forced to either give in to temptation—which would leave him feeling guilty and Doris expecting him to marry her—or else send her packing in no uncertain terms, which would insult her and hurt her feelings. He didn’t care for either of those options, so he was grateful he hadn’t been forced to choose.
He was up early the next morning, before Doris was awake, and by first light was rolling toward Tahlequah in the borrowed wagon, with the corpses of Valentine Starbird and Clovis Miller laid out in the back.
Tupelo Keller was in the back of the wagon, too, riding stretched out with his wrists and ankles tied securely. John Henry had passed another rope around Keller’s neck and tied it to a ring bolt set into the wagon bed.
Keller bitched and moaned the whole way. He complained about his broken nose and about the headache he had from being clouted with John Henry’s gun. He bellyached about having to ride with a couple of dead men jostling him.
“This just ain’t a proper way to treat a prisoner,” Keller insisted.
“If you’re going to complain no matter what I do, I might as well shove you off the back of the wagon and let you drag in the road for a while,” John Henry pointed out. “Anyway, you should be grateful that I just cold-cocked you instead of blowing a hole in you. This ride would be a lot more quiet and peaceful if I had.”
“You better take me to a sawbones when we get to town,” Keller demanded. “This busted nose of mine is makin’ it hard to breathe and it ain’t never gonna heal right if a doctor don’t set it pretty soon.”
John Henry flicked the reins against the backs of the four mules hitched to the wagon. His saddle horse, a big, powerful gray named Iron Heart, was tied to the back of the vehicle.
“I don’t believe you’re thinking this through, Tupelo,” John Henry said. “In a couple of weeks your looks aren’t going to matter that much. By then you’ll have paid a visit to the gallows in Fort Smith and left a mite abruptly.”
“You like tormentin’ me this way, don’t you, Marshal?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t mind it all that much. How many innocent men is it that you’ve killed? And in case you didn’t notice, those two hombres you were running with were just about the lowest trash you could find anywhere. You had to expect to come to a bad end when you threw in with the likes of Valentine Starbird and Clovis Miller.”
“It still ain’t proper to gloat over a man because he’s gonna hang,” Keller said sullenly.
John Henry nodded solemnly and said, “You’re probably right about that. I won’t say anything more about it. Maybe I’ll just sing a little, instead.”
He launched into an old Cherokee song. It wasn’t long before Keller was cussing about that, too.
By the time the wagon reached Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, the prisoner had given up and gone to sleep, snoring raucously through his broken nose. John Henry had worked out of this pleasant little town when he was a member of the Cherokee Lighthorse, the tribal police force, and also when he was the Nation’s chief sheriff.
He had given up those jobs to concentrate on being a deputy United States marshal, but he still had many friends here among the members of the Cherokee government, including Lighthorse Captain Charley LeFlores.
John Henry brought the wagon to a stop in front of Lighthorse headquarters, and while he was tying up the team he told a boy who was loitering on the porch to go inside and let Captain LeFlores know he was here.
When LeFlores stepped out onto the porch he craned his neck to look into the back of the wagon and said, “Are those dead men I see in there, John Henry?”
“Two of ’em are. The other one’s still alive, unless corpses have taken to snoring.”
“Just two out of three.” LeFlores clucked his tongue and shook his head. “You’re slipping. Must be slowing down a mite in your old age.” He took another look. “Good Lord. Is that Valentine Starbird?”
“Yep. And Clovis Miller.”
“Well, there’s good riddance doubled. I heard you were hellin’ around, making a lot of noise about bringing Starbird in. That was just bait, wasn’t it?”
John Henry shrugged.
“Where’d you catch up to them?” LeFlores asked.
“Actually, they tried to bushwhack me up at Billy Rainbow’s trading post. That’s his wagon I borrowed.”
LeFlores nodded and said, “Thought I recognized it. Rainbow’s, eh?” He sighed wistfully. “Doris is still just as pretty as ever, I suppose?”
“Yes, and she’s still young enough to be your daughter, too.”
“When you get to be my age, it’s perfectly acceptable to appreciate feminine beauty.” The captain grimaced. “Truth be told, appreciating it is about all I can do these days—”
John Henry held up a hand to stop him and said, “You’ll see to it that Starbird and Miller get planted, won’t you?”
LeFlores slipped his hands into the back pockets of his trousers and rocked forward and back on the balls of his feet.
“That depends. Will my office be reimbursed for any expenses incurred in the burial of said felons?”
“I’ll make a note to tell Judge Parker about it.”
“Well, then, I reckon we can take care of it.”
“The jasper making all that racket with his busted snout is Tupelo Keller, by the way. I guess I’ll have to rent a wagon to take him on over to Fort Smith, since Billy said to leave his wagon here in town at Harriman’s.”
“No, that won’t do,” LeFlores said.
John Henry frowned in surprise.
“Why not? I can charge the wagon rental to my expenses.”
“You can’t take the time to make a leisurely drive by wagon to Fort Smith,” LeFlores explained. “I got a telegram from Judge Parker yesterday. It said that if I was to see you, I should tell you to get back to Fort Smith posthaste. I reckon that means you should rattle your hocks.”
“You know good and well that’s what it means,” John Henry said. “You’re an educated man, Charley.”
“I’m smart enough to know that when the Hangin’ Judge says to hurry, a fella better not waste any time. If I was you, I’d climb on that big gray horse of yours and head for Arkansas as soon as I picked up a few supplies for the trip.”
John Henry jerked a thumb at the wagon bed and asked, “What about Keller?”
“I’ll keep him locked up here until Judge Parker can send somebody else after him. That sound all right to you?”
“Sure, I guess so. It’s a generous gesture on your part, Charley.”
“Here in the Territory we like to stay on good terms with the federal government, and that definitely includes federal district court judges.”
“I’ll tell Parker you passed along his message,” John Henry promised.
“Anything else I can do to assist you, Marshal?”
“No . . . unless you can tell me why the judge is in such an all-fired hurry to see me.”
“I don’t have a clue,” LeFlores said, “but given your history, I’d say there’s a good chance he’s eager to send you somewhere and have you shoot somebody.”
As usual, Iron Heart was eager to stretch his legs and run, especially after spending all morning plodding along behind a wagon. Every now and then during the trip from Billy Rainbow’s trading post, I. . .
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