Winchester 1887 (24 page)

He had planned the heist perfectly, and everything had come together. Satisfied, Link McCoy drew the flask of rye from his trousers pocket and tossed the liquor to Tulip Bells, who sat across the dying campfire alongside Zane Maxwell. The rest of the gang, the cigarette-smoking Choctaw breed, and the man they all thought was the whiskey runner Bodeen stood by the wagon. The outlaws were loading or cleaning their weapons. “Bodeen” and Newton Ah-ha-lo-man-tubbee were hitching the team to the covered wagon they would drive into Fort Washita in an hour.

After unscrewing the flask and taking a snort, Tulip Bells wiped his mouth and said, “But I still don't see why we need him.” He tilted his bell crown hat toward the wagon.

“The poisoned liquor,” Link explained as he fed the last two and seven-eighths-inch shell into his cut-down ten-gauge. “The Chickasaws won't care about the stolen gold. They'll be chasing him halfway to Texas, and he'll be running for his life. That's how come he's alive. That's the only reason.”

Bells considered that, took another drink, and tossed the flask to Maxwell. “But it's their money we'll have stole.”

“Indians are different from white men, Tulip,” Link said with a grin. “They value the lives of their loved ones higher than gold. Remember how we had to scare them off from taking Bodeen's scalp?”

Bells nodded. “And the law? The law that ain't injuns. You know, them deputies from Fort Smith?”

Link let his partner answer.

“Deputy marshals won't be there,” Zane said after swallowing a healthy portion of the rye. “They'll be way up in the Cherokee Nation. Seems that the Maxwell-McCoy Gang plans to rob a train near Gibson this afternoon.”

“McCoy-Maxwell Gang,” Link corrected.

With a sly grin, Maxwell pitched the flask to Link.

Tulip Bells laughed. “What about the Indian coppers?”

“Won't be any,” Maxwell said and wiped his nose. “That's something else I learned from hanging out with all those ink-slinging reporters in Fort Worth. The U.S. Indian Police lets money do the talking. Those Texas cattle barons paid a fair amount to the commissioner in Muskogee to make sure no police would be around Fort Washita today. Texans like their liquor.”

“Until they get a snootful of Bodeen's,” Link added.

The flask was back in Bells' right hand. “So . . . all we got to worry about is the Texans guarding the gold payment.”

Maxwell and Link nodded, and Link pointed a finger at the men they had brought into the gang. “That's what they're for. And while they're fighting off the Texans, killing each other, we'll be riding south. With enough gold to send the McCoy-Maxwell Gang into retirement.”

Maxwell cleared his throat. “The Maxwell-McCoy Gang.”

Everyone, even Link, laughed heartily, until Tulip asked one last question. “Where's Whitney? Shouldn't he be here by now?”

“He should be,” Link answered as he stood. “But if he doesn't make it in time, that's just one less man we'll have to kill—if the Texans don't kill him first.”

Everything finally clicked for Jackson Sixpersons, a slow, methodical man who waited until he knew everything before making a decision. It had kept him alive in Indian Territory.

He recalled his conversation with the Chickasaw up at Fort Arbuckle. Folsom had told him that he had to be at Fort Washita where the Texans would be bringing “money for grass to feed their beef.” Knowing Texans, knowing how hard and dry things had been in the Lone Star State, those cattlemen would be paying a tidy sum for all that grass to feed their cows.
The lease price.
That was what Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell planned on stealing.

Sixpersons kept thinking. He had sent Flatt and Mallory to bring back more lawmen, and by a stroke of luck, had asked for the deputy marshals to rendezvous with him at Fort Washita.

The Cherokee marshal almost felt satisfied until he saw the dust up the trail. He reined in and motioned for the two kids, James Mann and Robin Gillett, to stay behind him. Sixpersons pressed the shotgun's butt on his thigh and waited.

A rider came into view, stopped, stared, and then slowed his horse to a walk, approaching slowly, carefully.

“O-si-yo,” Sixpersons called out in Cherokee, for the man rode like an Indian.

The man answered. “Don't hello me in your heathen tongue.”

Sixpersons frowned. He knew the voice, and by then he knew the gray hat the rider wore. It was the half-breed Chickasaw lawman, Folsom. The same one who had told him about the meeting between the Texans and the Indians at Fort Washita.

“Thought you were supposed to be in Fort Washita,” Sixpersons said when the man reined up beside him.

“Was. Got told not to.” Folsom shrugged, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a note. “So I get to play Pony Express rider and deliver you some important message.” He held out the yellow telegram.

The two kids, sensing the lack of danger from Folsom, eased their horses alongside the old Cherokee.

Sixpersons studied the telegram after adjusting his spectacles.

Sixpersons crumpled the note in his hand. “How does Crump know the gang's robbing the train?”

Folsom shrugged. “The telegrapher didn't tell me.”

One of those confidential informants, Sixpersons figured. It had to be. But probably not as reliable as the half-breed Choctaw Newton Ah-ha-lo-man-tubbee could be. “July Fourth.” The Cherokee shrugged.

Folsom laughed. “Yeah. You got some hard riding to do, to get to Cherokee country in . . . six hours.”

Sixpersons couldn't have covered that distance even on a train. “What took you so long to deliver this?”

The half-breed pushed back the brim of his big gray hat. “You ain't exactly the easiest lawman to find, Sixpersons.”

Turning to his right, the Cherokee lawman considered James Mann for a brief moment then looked to his left to see the slight girl dressed as a boy.
Not much of a posse.
He stared hard at Folsom. “That gang's nowhere near Gibson. They're robbing the Texans delivering that money to you Chickasaws today at Fort Washita.”

“Explains why the mighty-mucks at Muskogee told me not to be there today.”

“I'm going,” Sixpersons said, but he would not ask, not beg Folsom to come with him, although he did add, “There's a mighty big reward on McCoy and Maxwell.”

“Yep.” Folsom nudged his horse to the side of the road, riding past the girl, walking at first. “Problem is, you can't spend that money if you're dead.” He kicked his mount into a trot.

The lope turned into a gallop as the half-breed Chickasaw left the three sitting their horses in the middle of the trail.

Honestly, in his gut, even Sixpersons considered giving up his foolish notion and riding after Folsom. He thought about breaking his vow and getting drunk. Yet it was the girl who brought his mind back to some sort of reason, if one could call it reason and not insanity.

“I'm going,” she said.

The boy concurred. “So am I.” James had already pulled the big Winchester '86 from its scabbard.

Sixpersons studied him and shook his head in wonderment. That boy was the spitting image of Jimmy. Had his sass. Style too. And sure didn't lack courage. The old Cherokee only hoped the kid had a bit more discipline than his namesake uncle.

He turned to the girl. She had picked up the dead Ranger's Winchester repeater, and the dead outlaw's Starr revolver. “Can you shoot that rifle?” he asked.

“She shoots better that I do,” James answered.

Sixpersons cursed. “That ain't exactly the highest praise I was looking for.”

From the high point of the road, McCoy watched. Trees grew along the creek banks and on the hills behind the fort, and every once in a while he could see another tree sprouting, trying to take root in what once had been a treeless prairie of gentling rolling plains.
Progress,
Link figured.
In a few more years, actual forests might be growing in this part of Indian country.

He saw a few tents flapping in the wind outside the fort's walls, and inside the fort, a Texas Lone Star flag flew high and proud. Likely, a Texas flag had not flown over the post since the Civil War. The Chickasaws must be welcoming those Texas cattlemen. That would also explain why the wind carried the notes of “The Bonny Blue Flag” from the fort. A brass band was warming up down there.

“Locksburgh.” McCoy waited for the gunman to ease his horse forward. “The guard tower's yours. Get up there. Should be two sentries. Texans. Kill them. Quietly.”

“No problem,” the killer said.

“When you've done it, lean out the front window, wave that pretty bandana I gave you. That's our signal.”

With a solemn nod, the gunman kicked his horse into a trot and headed down the hill toward the old fort.

“Red, you ride with the whiskey runner, but keep your horse tied up behind the wagon.”

McCoy waited as the gunman dismounted to lead his old nag to the covered wagon. “Smith, you have—”

“I know.” The killer shook his head. “You've told us often enough. Upstairs corner window of the West Barracks. Good cover.”

“That's right.”

The Army boys had put up those barracks back in '56, finding the limestone at a nearby quarry. Since it had been abandoned, some family had turned the big building into a home, but they were out of town, renting the place to the Texans for their celebration and party.

McCoy grinned. It would not be much of a celebration for those cattlemen, but certainly a party they would never forget. No one would ever forget that Independence Day in the Indian Nations.

“Then get to it.” He watched John Smith lope toward the fort then turned to Tulip Bells. “The South Barracks are yours.” That's all he needed to say.

That building, finished around 1849, had been made of wood and stone, the lumber coming from seventy-five miles away. It stretched a hundred and twenty feet long and thirty or so feet wide, fourteen-foot high ceilings, with the upper story completely surrounded by a verandah.

During the Army years, the upper story had been used for two companies and the orderlies, while the company, mess, and storage rooms sat on the dark, bottom floor. Bells would find a good vantage point from the upper story. Most of the visitors and dignitaries would be on the parade ground, what they called the cannon pavilion back in the day, but the cannons had left with the Army.

Bells finished his cigarette and grinned before kicking his horse into a trot.

McCoy watched him ride away before turning his horse and moving closer to the covered wagon. “You know where you're going?” he asked the whiskey runner.

“To Hell,” Millard said and cackled. “But not today.”

McCoy frowned. If he hadn't planned things exactly, he would have sent Bodeen to Hell already. But he still had the idea that the Indians would chase the whiskey runner, and not himself and all that beautiful gold coin. “Don't get smart, Bodeen.”

The crazed killer laughed and shook his head, but tilted his hat in the general direction of the fort. “I follow the cobblestone road right down to the spot between the old adjutant's office and the bachelor quarters for the officers. North corner. And start serving up whiskey”—he winked—“and death.”

McCoy nodded. With Red covering from those quarters, the gang would have everyone in the fort covered. They'd start shooting, killing the guards when the stagecoach arrived with the gold. During the murderous fire, McCoy and Maxwell would gallop from their spot by the old two-room log cabin, leap into the stagecoach, and drive away with the gold. The others, even poor old Tulip Bells, would have to fend for themselves.

“Then get moving. You ought to be serving whiskey in fifteen minutes.”

McCoy did not tell Bodeen or Red what they would learn soon enough. Naturally, the adjutant's office was no longer a place for paperwork or headquarters. It had been built of logs, and when a chaplain was blessed with the fort, it had been his building, too, and he used it to teach school. Back in the late 1840s, privates from some infantry regiment would be assigned “teacher” duty. Not anymore, of course. The Army had gone, but the schoolhouse remained, only now it taught children, not soldiers. Taught Indian kids. He wondered how the folks in the community would like having whiskey being served in front of a schoolhouse . . . and poisoned whiskey at that.

Zane Maxwell pulled out his watch and nodded in satisfaction at the time. He glanced back at the road.

“What about Whitney?” Red asked. “He ain't showed up yet.”

The gunman had been assigned the officers' quarters along the northwestern edge of the main part of the old fort, but they could handle things without him. Most of the buildings had been abandoned since the Army had left.

“More money for us,” McCoy said, causing Red and Maxwell to smile.

Maxwell knew that the
us
referred to himself and McCoy, and
only
himself and McCoy.

“There.” Millard pointed toward the watchtower, and McCoy grinned at the sight of the lavender bandana flapping out of the center window.

“He works fast, don't he?” Millard said.

McCoy agreed, but did not answer.

“And me?” The smoking Indian breed eased his horse next to the wagon.

“Ride in with the wagon. You know the rest.”

The man showed his tobacco-darkened teeth with a mean smile. “When the ruckus starts, I'm at the corral, helping scatter the horses.”

“Right.”

Maxwell snapped his watch shut. “Time to start the ball, boys.” He and McCoy watched the wagon ease down the road with Newton Ah-ha-lo-man-tubbee riding alongside.

They gave the wagon a head start, and then Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell kicked their horses into a slow walk, confident that in an hour they would be riding out of the Chickasaw Nation at a high lope—and filthy, filthy rich.