West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Read online

  A big yellow cur came bounding to meet him, barking loudly along the way. That announced his arrival just as effectively as if he'd been ringing a cowbell. So much for riding up without anybody knowing he was coming. But that didn't really matter, he told himself. He wasn't one to sneak around, anyway.

  As Tilghman reined in about twenty yards from the soddy's open door, a man slouched into view. He wore lace-up work boots, canvas trousers, and had suspenders hung over bony shoulders clad in the uppers of a pair of long underwear. Dark stubble on lean cheeks testified that his face hadn't known a razor for at least a week. His dark hair was in disarray. He jerked his head in a nod and called to Tilghman, "Howdy."

  "Afternoon," Tilghman replied. "I see you've got a well over there. Mind if I avail myself of some water for my horse?"

  "Go ahead," the man said. His voice was curt and unfriendly, but nobody turned away travelers out here.

  Tilghman heeled his mount into a walk, angling toward the well. The farmer came out of the house and picked up an ax that was leaning against the sod wall. He ambled in Tilghman's direction. Tilghman had his right hand on his thigh, not far from his gun. If the man made a move to attack with that ax, Tilghman planned to shoot him. You couldn't take chances with something like that.

  As the man came closer, though, Tilghman noticed something about him. He wasn't as hostile as Tilghman had thought at first. That wasn't anger lurking in the man's eyes.

  It was fear.

  Tilghman dismounted beside the low stone wall around the well. The farmer was only about ten feet away now. Quietly enough that he wouldn't be heard inside the soddy, Tilghman asked, "Something wrong, friend?"

  The man's prominent adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed.

  "You gotta just water your horse and ride on, mister," he said, keeping his voice equally as quiet. "And if I talk rough to you, please don't pay it no never-mind. It's just that I got to."

  Tilghman started pulling the bucket up from the well.

  "You've got two men inside the house you don't want to be there," he said. "I can see that. I'd be glad to help you – "

  "I don't need no help," the farmer cut in. "Best thing you can do for me is to ride on, like I said. They'll leave, too, in a little while, once they've got what they came for."

  "What's that? Coffee? Some hot food? Whiskey?"

  "I don't have no whiskey. They just asked my woman to fix 'em a meal. That's all. They won't bother us."

  Tilghman held the bucket so his horse could drink out of it. He said, "They're part of the bunch that's been rustling cattle and causing so much trouble hereabouts, aren't they?"

  The farmer let out a low moan.

  "Oh, Lord," he whispered. "You're a lawman, aren't you? Please just ride on. They'll kill her if you don't."

  "What are their names?" Tilghman asked. "Who's in charge of the gang? Tell me something that'll help me, and I won't cause trouble for you and your missus."

  The man licked his lips and said, "I can't tell you. It'd get back to – "

  Before he could go on, another man stepped out of the soddy. He yelled, "I know you, by God! You're Tilghman!"

  His hand clawed at the revolver on his hip.

  Chapter 3

  In a gunfight, there was a big difference between hurrying and not wasting any time. The man who hurried usually died.

  Tilghman didn't waste any time. He tossed the bucket aside, used his left hand to shove the farmer to the ground as he pivoted, and drew the Colt .45.

  The man in the doorway already had his gun out, but he fired without taking the time to aim. The bullet whined past Tilghman on the left, missing him by several yards.

  Tilghman thrust his arm out and aimed the Colt. Firing from the hip was just too inaccurate. The gun roared as he squeezed the trigger.

  The man in the doorway went over backward as the slug smashed into his chest. Tilghman knew that when a man was hit like that, he didn't get up again.

  But there were two horses tied up out here, and the farmer had said there was more than one man inside. As Tilghman stepped to the side, putting his horse between him and the soddy, he told the farmer, "Crawl behind the well. You ought to be safe there."

  "My wife – " the man gasped.

  "He won't hurt her," Tilghman said. "Now get behind the well!"

  The farmer scrambled for cover. Tilghman took hold of his mount's reins with his left hand and tightened his grip on them to make the horse stand still. He laid the .45's barrel across the saddle, aimed at the house.

  "Throw out your guns and then come out with your hands up!" he called. "No need for anybody else to get hurt."

  For a long moment no response came from inside the soddy. Then a man shouted, "You can go straight to hell, mister! You throw your guns down and ride away, or else I'll kill this sodbuster's wife!"

  From behind the low wall of the well, the farmer begged, "Please do what he wants, Marshal Tilghman. He'll kill her, I know he will! Nobody crosses this bunch."

  "You know who I am?"

  "I heard the one you shot call you by name, and well, everybody in this part of the country has heard of Bill Tilghman."

  Tilghman's mouth tightened under his mustache. A reputation was a two-edged sword for a lawman. Sometimes it helped in talking an outlaw into giving up, but sometimes it just fueled their determination not to surrender.

  "You know I can't do that," he told the farmer. "That man in there is a criminal and he's probably threatening your woman with a gun right now. I can't let him get away with that."

  "You already killed one of 'em. Ain't that enough?"

  No, thought Tilghman. No, it wasn't.

  But he didn't expect a man whose wife was in danger to understand that.

  "Come out here where I can see you," he called into the shadowy interior of the soddy. "For all I know you're all trying to trick me and there's no woman in there."

  "There is!" the farmer yelped. "I swear it, Marshal, he's got my wife."

  "Shut up," Tilghman said under his breath without looking away from the doorway.

  The farmer still had hold of the ax. He got up on his hands and knees, finding the courage somewhere to say, "You get on out of here like he told you, Marshal, or I'll come after you with this ax."

  "Try something foolish like that and I'll have to shoot you, too."

  "But if you turn to shoot me, he'll shoot you. And if you don't, I'll chop your head open."

  "You'll be on the run from the law for the rest of your life if you do that."

  "Yeah, but she'll still be alive."

  Tilghman couldn't argue with that logic.

  The farmer went on in a miserable voice, "I'm sorry, Marshal. I don't want it to be like this, I truly don't. But you can't cross that Rainey bunch. They're all cold-blooded killers."

  As if to prove the man's point, two figures appeared in the doorway. The one in front was a woman, as worn-down and haggard from prairie life as her husband. The man behind her had his left arm around her neck. His right hand held a gun with the barrel digging into her side. He forced her to step over the body of the man Tilghman had shot as they moved into the open.

  The farmer gasped in horror at the sight.

  "Take a good look!" the outlaw told Tilghman. "You see how scared she is, Marshal? She knows I'll kill her if you don't drop your gun."

  "I drop my gun and you'll kill me," Tilghman said. "But if you shoot that poor woman, you won't have a shield anymore and I'll put a bullet in you. The only way nobody dies is for you to let her go, throw your gun down, and surrender."

  "How do I know you wouldn't just shoot me the way you did Jack?"

  "Because I'm a lawfully appointed and sworn federal officer. I don't gun down prisoners."

  "Don't reckon I feel like takin' that chance." The outlaw prodded the gun even harder into the woman's side, making her gasp in pain. She arched her back, but his grip was too tight for her to pull away.

  That was more than her husband c
ould stand. He surged up from behind the well, lifting the ax as he lunged at Tilghman. Tilghman swung the horse around to block the farmer's attack, but that opened him up to the outlaw, who let go of the woman, jerked the gun up, and fired at Tilghman.

  Once more haste was a man's undoing. The bullet burned a path across the top of the horse's rump, behind the saddle, but that was as close as it came to Tilghman. He snapped his gun back into line and fired. The bullet punched into the outlaw's midsection and doubled him over. He stayed on his feet for a moment and even tried to lift the gun for a second shot, but his strength deserted him and he pitched forward on his face.

  The pain of being creased had spooked Tilghman's horse. The animal danced around and forced the farmer to scurry backward to keep from being trampled. The man tripped and sprawled on his backside, dropping the ax. Tilghman took a quick step and picked it up, then swung back toward the man he had just wounded. Gut-shot men usually didn't die right away, and in his book an outlaw who wasn't either unconscious or dead was still a threat.

  With the Colt leveled in one hand and the ax in the other, Tilghman strode toward the fallen man. The outlaw had dropped his gun when he fell. Tilghman kicked it away, well out of reach. The wounded outlaw was curled in a ball around the awful pain in his middle. A dark red pool spread slowly on the thirsty ground where he lay.

  Tilghman hooked a boot toe under the man's shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The man shuddered, and his open, staring eyes turned glassy. He was gone.

  The man in the doorway was dead, too. Tilghman had been confident of that, but he checked anyway. He took his first good look at the man's face, which was familiar. After a moment Tilghman came up with the name: Jack Culbertson. He'd arrested Culbertson for armed robbery while serving as the marshal of Dodge City.

  Obviously Culbertson hadn't forgotten him, either, and the grudge he carried had prompted him into the foolish decision to come out of the soddy and try to settle the old score face to face.

  He'd have been better off just shooting through the open door and killing Tilghman without warning.

  Hurried footsteps made the lawman tighten his grip on the Colt and glance around. Nobody was attacking him now, though. The farmer ran to his wife, who had fallen to the ground and lay there sobbing. He dropped to his knees beside her and grabbed her, lifting her and hauling her into his lap.

  "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

  She said something incoherent and kept crying. Tilghman didn't see any blood on her dress and figured she wasn't wounded, just scared out of her wits. He bent down, took hold of Jack Culbertson's ankle, and dragged the outlaw's body out of the doorway.

  "You ought to take her inside, settle her down, maybe get her something to drink," he told the farmer.

  The man looked up at him. He was crying, too. The tears had cut trenches in the permanent grime on his face.

  "I'm sorry, Marshal," he said, sounding as wretched as he looked. "I . . . I just lost my head. I was so scared . . . Are you gonna arrest me?"

  "For what?" Tilghman asked gruffly. "Being foolish enough to run with an ax in your hand? That's not very smart, but it's not exactly against the law."

  Relief flooded the farmer's face. He bobbed his head and said, "Thank you, Marshal, thank you."

  "Take care of your wife now, and when she feels a little better maybe you can give me a hand throwing these fellows over their saddles."

  "Wh-what're you gonna do with 'em?"

  "Take them to Burnt Creek, I suppose. That's the closest place I'll find an undertaker, isn't it?"

  "Yeah, but it . . . it's Burnt Creek, Marshal. That's the last place you want to go right now. These fellas rode with Cal Rainey."

  Tilghman's eyes narrowed. He knew something had been nagging at the back of his brain, and now he realized what it was. Earlier, the farmer had mentioned the name Rainey. Tilghman remembered where he had heard it before.

  He asked, "Who's Cal Rainey?"

  "He's the leader of the bunch that's been runnin' wild around here. Don't tell anybody I said that, though. They . . . they don't like folks talkin' about them."

  "I thought the marshal in Burnt Creek was named Rainey."

  "He is. Dave Rainey. And the mayor is Martin Rainey. They're Cal's brothers."

  Well, thought Tilghman. The job that had brought him here had just gotten a mite more interesting . . . and challenging.

  Chapter 4

  It was late in the afternoon by the time Tilghman reached Burnt Creek, leading two horses with grisly burdens draped over their saddles and lashed down. The smell of blood made the animals skittish, but Tilghman kept a firm hand on the reins.

  He wasn't surprised that his arrival drew a crowd. A stranger riding into town was enough to stir some interest in most frontier settlements. A stranger with a couple of dead men definitely made folks pay attention.

  Several children started trotting alongside the horses, trying to get a closer look at the corpses. Tilghman glanced over his shoulder and said, "You kids get away from there."

  "Did you kill 'em, mister?" a little boy called.

  "They didn't give me any choice," Tilghman replied.

  That was the way he handled himself as a lawman. He didn't draw his gun unless he had to, didn't shoot unless he had to, didn't shoot to kill unless there was no other way. When he was gone, he didn't want anybody ever saying that Bill Tilghman had been trigger-happy and kill-crazy.

  But they wouldn't say that he had ever backed down from trouble, either.

  Since the curious kids weren't leaving, Tilghman asked them, "Where can I find the marshal's office?"

  A couple of the youngsters pointed to a squat stone building on the left side of the street, half a block ahead. Tilghman nodded, said, "Much obliged," and angled his mount in that direction.

  The business section of Burnt Creek was laid out in a square, but instead of a courthouse in the middle there was a three-story frame building with the words DROVERS HOTEL painted in big letters on the side of it. Across the front was emblazoned the legend DROVERS SALOON. The place didn't make any secret who its clientele was.

  The other businesses were the usual mix of saloons, restaurants, general mercantiles, hardware and farm implement stores, saddle shops, bootmakers, a dress shop and milliner's, a bank, a newspaper office, a couple of doctor's offices, three or four lawyers, a Chinese laundry, and an apothecary. The streets that formed the square extended outward to other cross-streets lined with residences. The stream that gave the settlement its name lay a quarter of a mile west of town.

  Tilghman had seen dozens of town much like this one. They had sprung up all over Oklahoma Territory during the past few years, as more and more of the former Indian Territory was opened for settlement.

  As he neared the marshal's office, he passed the big hotel and saloon in the center of the square and noticed a smaller sign on the wall next to the front door. MARTIN RAINEY, PROP., it read. Another of Cal Rainey's brothers and the mayor of Burnt Creek, Tilghman recalled the farmer saying. And Cal Rainey was the leader of the outlaws everyone feared.

  Of course, that didn't mean that Dave and Martin Rainey were anything other than decent, law-abiding citizens. There had been plenty of cases where one member of a family had crossed the line and become an outlaw. Tilghman told himself to keep an open mind and give the other Rainey brothers the benefit of the doubt, unless and until they proved otherwise.

  The marshal must have heard the commotion that Tilghman's arrival with the dead men had generated. He emerged from his office as Tilghman reined to a halt in front of the building. Dave Rainey was a stocky man with sandy hair receding from a high forehead. The black butt of a revolver stuck up from a cross-draw rig on his left hip. He cradled a shotgun in both hands, pointed down at the boardwalk but ready to tilt up and fire if necessary.

  "That's far enough, mister," the marshal said.

  "It's about as far as I intended to go," Tilghman said. "Got a couple of bodies here for the local u
ndertaker, if you can point me to him or send somebody to fetch him."

  Dave Rainey ignored that request and said, "Did you kill them?"

  "I did. They shot first. They also threatened the lives of a farmer and his wife a good number of miles east of here."

  "Who would that be?"

  Tilghman said, "Huh. You know, I never did get their names."

  "So all I've got to go by about what happened is your word."

  Tilghman stiffened in the saddle. He didn't care much for the challenging tone in the local badge-toter's voice. He said, "My word is good. And even if it's not, the sign on the building says you're the town marshal of Burnt Creek, so whatever happened it was a long way outside your jurisdiction."

  "You brought the bodies into town. That makes it my business. And who are you to go talking about jurisdiction?"

  Tilghman pushed his coat back to reveal his badge.

  "Somebody whose bailiwick covers the whole territory. Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman."

  He could tell by the look in Dave Rainey's eyes that the man had heard of him. Rainey said gruffly, "Why the hell didn't you say so? The undertaking parlor is on the other side of the square. I'll send my deputy for him." He looked into the crowd that had gathered behind Tilghman. "Coley, go fetch Doc Graves."

  A tall, skinny young man wearing a huge hat that threatened to swallow up his head said, "Sure, Marshal," and loped off.

  "Your undertaker is named Graves?" Tilghman said.

  "Yeah. Fitting, ain't it?"

  "And he's a doctor, too?"

  "Them he can't save, he plants. It's efficient, he says."

  "You'd think folks would accuse him of trying to drum up business for his undertaking parlor," Tilghman said dryly.

  "If he did that, then people wouldn't hire him as a doctor."

  Tilghman shrugged and said, "I suppose that makes sense."

  "Why don't you get down and tie those horses, Marshal? Nobody will bother them until Doc Graves gets here with his wagon. I've got a pot of coffee on the stove."