Winchester 1887 (16 page)

Texas had been a hard place for Millard, Jimmy, and Borden Mann to grow up as young teens, and even as young men. It could still be hard. Jimmy had learned that, and so had Millard, up in Tascosa earlier that year. Indian Territory could be just as lawless.

Millard remembered back in 1890 when the U.S. Census Bureau's superintendent had said that the Western frontier of America was history, that the West had been settled, that the frontier was closed, a thing of the past. Maybe two years back, he had read a newspaper account of some talk this historian named Turner had given up in Michigan or Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin, pretty much saying the same thing.

The West might be settled, a part of American history, and the frontier might be officially closed from a population standpoint, but Millard knew that the West could be just as hard, just as mean, just as bloody, and just as tough as it had been back when he and his brothers were growing up. Back when Jimmy and Border were still alive.

“Don't look,” Millard told his son. “Just lower the girl to the ground. Gently.”

When they had Robin Bodeen lying in the dirt near the destroyed whiskey barrels, he said, “Stay with her,” and walked back to the big freight wagon.

Wildcat Lamar Bodeen, or whatever his real name was, had indeed made his one shot count. He had pressed the barrel of the horseman's pistol and sent the ball through his temple. The old one-eyed man lay on his side, still holding the smoking single-shot weapon.

After climbing up into the wagon, Millard pried the warm gun from the dead man's cold grip. The weapon was slick and slender, a fine pistol in its day. Briefly, he studied the gun before tossing it near the wreckage of whiskey barrels.

The Christian thing, the decent thing, to do would be to bury the man, but being visibly dead might buy the living some time. Millard rolled the corpse out of the wagon, heard it crash on the dirt, and jumped down. He dragged the remains of Wildcat Lamar Bodeen to the whiskey barrels and left him with his poison.

He had no time for a prayer or eulogy and doubted if Bodeen would have wanted one anyway.

Millard walked away, back to his son and the still unconscious girl. “All right.” He nodded to James, and they picked the girl up and carried her back to the wagon. They did not toss her into the back like a sack of flour, but moved her up gently. Millard had to climb up and ease her into the shady side of the wagon. He found a blanket, covered her, and hurried out of the back, where he picked up the Winchester '73.

James stared at it. “Whose rifle is that?”

“We need to ride. Make for the Red.”

“It's a One of One Thousand,” James said.

“Can you drive this team?” Millard looked at the oxen. They appeared to be bone-tired and half-starved, but that's all they had.

“Yes, sir.” James wet his lips and started to say something else, but his pa interrupted.

“Climb up. I don't want you walking alongside the wagon. In case something happens. You got any bullets for your rifle?”

Your rifle. Not Jimmy's.
Millard realized he had said it and was pointing at the Model 1886 repeater.

James picked it up, swallowed, and shook his head.

A quick glance revealed the pitchfork, the empty Remington .44, and a few assorted old weapons, none of which Millard would put his trust—his life—in. The Remington would be the best, but there was one problem. The shells for his Army Colt would not fit the Remington .44 even though his Richards-Mason design used a conventional .44-caliber centerfire cartridge—not as powerful as .44-40s, but strong enough to get the job done—and even though the Remington .44 had been converted from cap-and-ball to centerfire, too.

Truth be told, although both models had been labeled. 44 caliber, neither the 1860 Colt Army or Remington's 1858 Army had been truly bored in .44. The balls they had used in the percussion cap days took a ball with a. 454-inch diameter, and the barrels were bored .451. Technically, both of those models were actually .45 caliber.

After the Civil War, conversions became the rage, if companies could find a way around Smith & Wesson's patent for bored-through revolver cylinders that chambered brass centerfire cartridges. Colt engineer F. Alexander Thuer had done just that with its Colt conversion by using a cone-shaped round that was loaded from the front of the cylinder.

To Millard, it would have made a lot more sense to have one shell fit any brand of weapon—Colt, Remington, Smith & Wesson—but those firearms companies could be greedy and proprietary. A lot of money was made by selling ammunition that fit only its models, and those companies were also looking longingly for government contracts.

The army had tested several variations of the Remington. 44 Army revolvers around 1870, but never bought into the Remington model for its soldiers.

Weapons were always changing. Folks called it progress. Flintlocks had made way for percussion caps, and after the Civil War anyone with a brain could tell that fixed metallic ammunition was the wave of the future.

When Smith & Wesson brought out the American. 44 revolver—which chambered Smith & Wesson .44 cartridges—Colt followed the trend by introducing its 1873 single-action Army in .44 caliber. The Army loved it, but asked for a .45 caliber, and Colt complied. That six-shooter became the rage, the most powerful revolver since the old Colt Dragoons of the 1840s. In the late 1870s, Colt and Winchester finally understood a bit about “reciprocation” and Colt began manufacturing revolvers that fired Winchester's .44-40 rounds.

Yet Millard Mann still owned a conversion model of his Army Colt. He was too old-fashioned, maybe, too set in his ways. And he had never dreamed he would be forced to use those guns again.

The Indian's Remington would have to do. He pointed at the pistol. “Get it.”

James picked up the weapon. “I've never fired a six-shooter before.”

“Runs in the blood. I'm not much of a hand with one myself,” Millard admitted. “But it'll have to do. And you won't be shooting it until I can figure out what to do.”

James pointed at the cartridges in Millard's shell belt.

“They won't fit.” Millard didn't explain the history of firearms and ammunition.

James again looked at his father, and tried to find the words, but there was no time for any conversation, any family reunion.

“We need to make tracks,” Millard said.

“What about . . . him?” James motioned toward the body of Wildcat Lamar Bodeen.

“I'm hoping he'll keep the Chickasaws occupied.” It was a hard thing to say, but it was the truth. The whiskey destroyed and the culprit dead might be enough to keep those Indians from chasing after the slow freight wagon to avenge the Chickasaw that Millard had been forced to kill.

He watched James climb into the box and handed him the empty Winchester rifle. Pulling his hat down low, Millard walked to the liver chestnut, pulled the reins from the spoke, and swung into the saddle.

They'd ride south and east, should cross Caddo Creek if the map he had studied was right, and then follow another creek that fed into the Red River. He wasn't sure how high the river would be, but that big storm from a ways back worried him. The Red could be full of quicksand and driftwood in the dry months. During wet years, it could rage like a mountain river during snowmelt. Nobody could estimate how many cowboys had drowned crossing that big muddy river during the trail-driving years or how many others had perished.

Straight southeast was closer than making for Colbert's Ferry, and Spanish Fort was just across the river in Texas. There might be a sawbones there who could tend to the girl.

If the Chickasaws didn't kill them first.

Everything had gone well, so far. Zane Maxwell had departed the train and watched John Smith ride out that morning. Those other two, Locksburgh and Red, should be disembarking in Indian Territory and meeting up with Tulip Bells, which meant all Maxwell had to do was buy a horse from the livery, ride out of town, and catch up with Smith. Then the two of them could find Link McCoy and that informant he was working with. They'd catch up with the whiskey runner and get ready for the Fort Washita job.

After Maxwell finished his coffee, he left enough money for his breakfast on the table, grabbed his hat off the hat rack, and stepped out of the café and onto the boardwalk.

“Hello, Zane.”

He had been fishing a cigar from his vest pocket, and stopped to reconsider, but before his right hand moved for the Cloverleaf .41, the voice said, “Nah, just leave that hideaway gun in your pocket. But you can smoke. Especially if you got a cigar for me, too.”

Maxwell nodded and brought out two cigars, biting the end off one and putting it in his mouth, before holding the other out as he turned to face the man leaning against the white wooden front wall of the café.

A body didn't see too many double-action Starr Army revolvers very often anymore. Starr Arms Company of New York had first patented those revolvers early in 1856. Most gunmen preferred more modern weapons, not the old cap-and-balls, but the two fitting snugly in a red sash seemed well cared for. Six-inch round barrels, a blued finish, smooth walnut grips, brass blade front sights. Of course, the man had no need of the two .44 revolvers, for he also carried a Winchester carbine, the barrel pointed, not exactly at Zane Maxwell, but definitely in his general direction.

The gunman's sidearms might be old-fashioned, but his long gun was modern. It was a Model 1892, one of the new lever-actions from Winchester with, like the two Army revolvers, a blued finish. The tapered round barrel appeared to be of a smaller caliber, maybe a .32 or .38, probably twenty inches long with a bead style sight mounted on the front and a Williams folding rear sight in a dovetail. The buttstock and fore end were walnut, smooth, showing almost no damage, and the crescent butt plate appeared smooth.

The man holding the rifle was tall, old, his face scarred from pockmarks, fistfights, knives, and at least one bullet. That's why he had a brown leather patch over his left eye. His mustache was more gray than brown these days, and his one good eye burned an intense blue. He had no left ear. That one had been sliced off with an Arkansas toothpick in a brawl in Eureka Springs.

A gloved left hand came up to take the cigar, which the gunman put in his mouth, bit off an end, and then refit between tobacco-stained teeth.

“Hello, Zane,” the man said again, waiting for Maxwell to light both cigars.

“Jared.” Maxwell struck a match against the wall, lighted the gunman's cigar first, then managed to get his going.

Jared Whitney sucked in the smoke and grinned in satisfaction. “Nice flavor.”

“El Pervenirs,” Maxwell said. “Imported from Havana.”

“I like it.”

Maxwell hooked a thumb down the boardwalk. “You can get them, two for a quarter, at the mercantile.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

“You after a reward?” Maxwell asked.

“You know me, Zane. I like money.”

“What brings you to Denison?”

“Money.”

Maxwell removed the cigar, flicked some ash, and returned the Havana to his mouth. Jared Whitney, who would kill a man for a cigar or a thousand dollars, would talk when he was ready. Obviously, he didn't want Zane Maxwell dead. That's the only reason Maxwell still breathed.

“I'm lookin' for a whiskey runner named Bodeen,” Whitney said.

Maxwell almost gave away his surprise, but he had played too many hands of poker to let that slip. He grinned. “Do you think Link and I want to get out of the bank and train business and start running rotgut?”

“There's been talk,” Whitney said.

Maxwell let it slide, but inwardly he cursed John Smith. He should have instructed the hired gunman not to hit one of Denison's myriad saloons when the train arrived, but go straight to his hotel, sleep, and get the horse in the morning without talking to anyone.

“You can get whiskey here,” Maxwell said. “A lot better quality that you'd find from a runner in Indian Territory.”

“Who said anything about Indian Territory?” Whitney grinned and blew blue smoke from his mouth. Then he talked. “There's a Texas Ranger named Clarke with a score to settle against Bodeen. Seems this gent sold some liquor to some Podunk town up in the Panhandle and left some citizens dead, including the Ranger's son. He's hired me and some tinhorn with a Greener who calls himself Charley Conner to help him bring in that whiskey runner.”

“You a lawman now, Jared?”

The killer grinned again. “Ranger Clarke wants Bodeen dead. That's something I can handle.”

The town was coming to life. Across the street, businesses were being opened where just minutes earlier the only places showing signs of life were the livery and café. A man wearing two Starr revolvers and holding a Winchester '92 would draw some attention, even in a lawless railroad burg like Denison. Might even attract a lawman.

“I'm heading to the livery,” Maxwell said.

“Thanks for the invite.” Whitney motioned with the carbine barrel, and Maxwell nodded and turned.

Jared Whitney was too savvy, had lived too long with a gun, to make some fool mistake. He did lower the barrel of the Winchester, but Maxwell knew the gunman wouldn't get too close to him, nor would he give Maxwell a chance if he tried anything. So Maxwell just walked, smoking the cigar, smiling at passersby along the boardwalk and issuing friendly greetings to strangers.

Twice, he even tipped his hat to some ladies.

Behind him, Jared Whitney did the same.

When they reached the livery, Whitney tossed a nickel to a Mexican in jeans and a homespun shirt and told him in Spanish to fetch his horse, saddled and ready to ride.

“You going somewhere?” Maxwell removed the cigar, dropped it in a dirt patch—he was careful to avoid the straw and hay—and ground it out with his boot heel.

“With you,” Whitney said.

“Where's that Texas Ranger?” Maxwell tried to remember the name. “Clarke?”

“In the Nations,” Whitney said. “Rode out with that assassin with the Greener. They left me in Denison, in case Bodeen loses the law dogs and injuns chasing him in the territory. If Bodeen shows up here, I'll kill him. If Conner or Clarke guns him down, I still get paid. Not as much, but enough.” The gunman kept puffing his cigar.

“How much?” Maxwell asked.

“Fifty dollars. In gold coin.”

Maxwell nodded as if that amount would impress him. Fifty dollars. Life could come cheap in that part of the world.

“Well,” Maxwell said as the Mexican boy brought out Whitney's horse, a thin, short but game cowpony, brown with two white stocking feet. “I think we might be able to do a little better than that.”

“Thought you said you wasn't in the whiskey running trade.” Whitney took the reins and thanked the boy.

Before the kid could disappear, Maxwell cleared his throat and turned his attention to the Mexican. “I'd like to buy a horse.”

The kid fired off something in rapid Spanish and pointed across the street.

“Says his boss is in the store yonder getting some shoeing nails. Back directly.”

The kid said something again.

Whitney interpreted. “But there's a good bay mare you can probably have.”

More Spanish.

Whitney grinned and nodded at the boy. “Says his boss will start at fifty bucks, but he'll settle for fifteen, which is about what the horse is worth and five more than what his boss paid for her.”

Maxwell looked at the waif. “
Gracias,
” he said, and the kid disappeared somewhere in the stables.

“Five hundred dollars suit you?” Maxwell asked.

Whitney removed the Havana and stared long at hard. “Didn't think whiskey running was that profitable.”

“It's not, but you might also be able to collect that other fifty from your Texas Ranger. After we pull our job first.”