"This job's just about right for you, Deputy." The federal marshal hiked his feet to his scarred desktop and leaned back. He picked his broken teeth with a splinter cut from the corner of the desk.
Good tried not to stare at the hole in the lawman's right boot sole. A large blister showed through, or was that a callus showing the hole was something Marshal Legrande had lived with for a spell? Good moved around so he didn't have to stare at the boots or the ragged pant legs protecting the upper parts of the boots. His face a mask, he stared and said nothing.
"You hear what I said, boy?" Legrande dropped his feet to the floor with a loud thump and leaned forward, braced on his left elbow while he continued to dig for whatever was caught between his teeth.
"Why is the job right for me?" Good's ebony gaze darted around and came back to fix on the lawman's rheumy blue eyes. Legrande needed glasses. He would be worthless if he tried tracking. What little use he was came from moving papers about and sending reports to his superiors. Good had no idea who the boss of a Federal Marshal might be, nor did he care.
"You got the skills of a natural born tracker. I seen how you followed Juicy Bennett through the mountains. That varmint didn't leave so much as a smear of shit behind him and you ran him down all the way to St. George."
Good had heard that Bennett had a brother in the Colorado mining town. Finding him there had been less a matter of tracking skill as keeping his ears open. He had been thrown out of several bars that didn't cater to half breeds, but sitting just outside the backdoor of one in Cherry Creek had given him all he needed to bring the horse thief to justice. Bennett had stolen more than five hundred head from ranches as far south as Pueblo and north into Wyoming.
"Good work, that, finding him. How come you didn't stay for the trial?"
Good hadn't been asked to testify. Who would take a black-Creek's word for anything in the court, in spite of him having a deputy marshal's badge pinned on his chest?
"No need."
"Reckon not. Bennett sang like a canary after we got done interrogating him." Legrande pushed a wanted poster across the desk. Good glanced at it. "Go on, take it. This here's the outlaw just begging for your attention. He's another breed. You and him, you just think alike."
"I don't rob stages."
Legrande snorted and shook his head.
"Ain't saying that, no sir, not a bit of it. You're a law-abiding breed. But none of the other deputies has come within a country mile of catching him. So far, all he's done is rob stagecoaches, but he's doing it more often. You know what that means?"
"He's getting bolder."
"Every robbery gives him more experience. He's learning the ropes. So far, he ain't killed anybody, but that'll change."
Good wondered how Thomas T. Thurlow, half black and half Cherokee from the written part of the wanted poster, had singlehandedly robbed five stages without gunning down someone. The likeness on the poster was hardly a smear of black ink across poor pulp paper. Identifying him from that was impossible. The photograph was so bad it might have been a picture of him rather than Thurlow. Or any of the dozen freed men he knew working as freighters and drovers between Denver City and Colorado Springs.
"We don't much care if you bring him in dead or alive. Just stop him 'fore he creates a real ruckus."
Good stared at his boss and held his tongue. He had never brought back an outlaw dead. Some had been shot up and tied belly down across their saddles, but they had all been alive. What happened to them after he put them in their cell wasn't any of his concern. And it didn't bother Legrande's superiors much what the marshal did to his prisoners since he still wore the marshal's badge and Good remained a deputy.
He let a tiny, rueful smile curl his lips at that. A half dozen others would be given Legrande's job ahead of him. And if lightning struck them all down, leaving their smoking corpses piled up in the middle of Colfax Avenue, the marshal's replacement would come from some other region. Good had no chance to become the federal marshal in charge of Colorado from the border of New Mexico Territory all the way north into Wyoming, no matter how effective a lawman he was. He held out his hand. Coffee colored. No amount of scrubbing would get the color off so it would suit the director of the US Marshals Office. Not since it was formed in 1789. Not now. Never.
That was fine with him. He saw how Legrande had to kiss ass when the politicians came calling. The position was a federal job, but Colorado politics confused the boundaries between the state and federal too often. Good was content to fetch back outlaws, if content was even the right word. He did the job. It satisfied him matching wits with criminals and running them to ground.
"Not even content," he muttered.
"How's that?"
Good shrugged. Legrande stared at him hard, but the impact was lost in those watery eyes.
"Get yourself some supplies and onto the trail. Rumor has it Thurlow is holed up somewhere east of the Springs. All the stages he's been robbing were ones running from the Springs north to Denver. Make of that what you will. Anything you want to ask?"
Good said nothing and watched the marshal for any sign this was a chore beyond what it seemed. His very first assignment had sounded easy enough until he discovered he had to sneak out onto Ute land and arrest the son of a war chief. But now Legrande showed none of the shifty-eyed look of that time.
"Then get your carcass outta here and after the owlhoot." Legrande leaned back in his chair, got his feet back onto the desk and finally rooted out the offending bit of meat caught between his teeth. He spat in the general direction of a cuspidor, flipped his toothpick after the gob and laced his fingers behind his head. His eyelids drooped, and before Good reached the door, the marshal snored loud enough to drown out the sounds coming from the street outside.
Good sat on a large rock beside the road running between Denver and Colorado Springs, sucking on his teeth and thinking about nothing in particular. Letting his mind wander allowed strange ideas to float up where he could examine them carefully. The last week had been spent fruitlessly hunting Thurlow, trying to find where he might hang out, who his friends were, anything that might provide a dangling thread that could be tugged, gently at first, then with greater insistence until the stagecoach robber popped into sight at the far end, all wrapped up and ready to cart away to jail. But there hadn't been the smallest lead.
Good thought more on the matter. Legrande, in his oafish way, had picked the right deputy to hunt down Thurlow. The outlaw was a loner. So was Good. Mingling with the white folks wasn't in the cards, nor was drinking. Good took a sip now and again, more for medicinal reasons than enjoyment of the way whiskey chewed at his guts and made his hands shake. No one fessed up to selling Thurlow whiskey, and Good had asked the lowest of the low who wouldn't care if it was illegal selling firewater to an Indian. If anything, a couple of the men would boast on it. They had tried to sell him a bottle, and they knew he was a deputy. He had made no secret of the badge pinned to his coat lapel.
He faced a man as lonesome in the world as he was. Thurlow plotted his robberies by himself, carried them out alone and spent the money by himself. Only, Good had been unable to find where the outlaw had paid out a single dollar of his ill-gotten gains.
He pulled down the broad brim of his floppy black hat to shield his eyes. All the stagecoaches robbed so far had travelled from the Springs north. Something in his gut told him Thurlow would rob a stage heading in the other direction. The northbound stages sported a shotgun messenger on most trips now, and some passenger compartments were packed with men and their rifles. The stagecoaches going south were a different matter. The guards had been shifted to the northbound routes.
Good pressed his hand onto the hot rock and felt tiny tremors. A single horseman on the road wouldn't cause such a fuss. This had to be a heavy wagon or a stage. A cavalry detachment would give a different rhythm, one showing horses not quite in step. Heaving to his feet, he pulled down his hat brim and squinted until he saw a small dust cloud in the distance. It took him a few seconds to mount and bring his horse to a canter, cutting across the rocky landscape to reach the road.
As he hurried along, he saw a second cloud behind the first. It closed quickly and merged. Then came gunfire. Good put heels to his horse's flanks and galloped. If he caught Thurlow in the middle of the robbery, he wouldn't have to chase him down. It wouldn't matter if his horse had expended all its strength getting there. But he had to reach the stagecoach during the robbery. Otherwise, Thurlow might escape if his horse was in better shape.
Good topped a ridge and studied the road. He used his sleeve to wipe away dust from his lips, then sweat from his face. Heat didn't bother him much since he came from Indian Territory. For him, the lack of heavy, waterlogged air was invigorating.
His hand reached for the S&W Schofield he wore on his right hip, butt forward in cavalry trooper style. Good took his hand away. It was too soon to start shooting. He waited as the distant rider overtook the stage, forced the driver to slow and then stop. Only then did Good start down the steep slope and across a ravine so he could ride parallel to the road without being seen.
". . . throw down the strongbox."
"Mister, we ain't carryin' nothin' this run."
Good's horse shied when the report echoed down. He remembered what Legrande had said about Thurlow working himself up into killing someone. He rode faster, found a break in the arroyo wall and urged his horse up the crumbling slope until he reached the road. Thurlow waved his six-shooter around and silenced the driver's protests.
"You got somethin' in the coach! I want it!"
"A mail bag. We got a canvas bag of letters in the boot."
"Get down. Get it!"
Good eased his horse across the road to keep the stage between him and the men. By the time Thurlow and the driver began tearing at the canvas sheet protecting the baggage in the boot, he had walked his horse up to the team. He made certain the driver had fastened the reins tightly around the brake before heading back. A quick glance into the passenger compartment showed the two men inside were intent on watching Thurlow on the other side.
He eased his pistol from his holster, then calmly rode to the back of the stage. His six-gun aimed smack between Thurlow's eyes as the robber finally realized someone else had joined the robbery.
"Drop the gun," Good said. When Thurlow hesitated, he repeated in Creek. This confused the robber. "I didn't think you'd know my tongue, and I don't speak Cheyenne. Doesn't matter. What I said in Creek's the same as in English. Drop your gun."
Thurlow's eyes had gone round and wide. He started to swing around to cover Good, saw he would never finish that action and live, then tried to reverse.
"No."
Good's single order froze the robber. Thurlow dropped his pistol and put up his hands.
"He take anything from you or the passengers?" Good asked the driver.
"You one of his gang?"
"Deputy federal marshal," Good said, moving to show his badge.
"Dang me. You and him look like brothers."
"Get back on the stage and drive."
"Got me a schedule to keep and I was a half hour late leavin' Denver."
Good heard the driver stomp back to the front and climb to the box, grumbling to himself the entire way. He turned away when the wheels kicked up dust, then swung back to keep Thurlow from using the choking cloud to make an escape.
"What are you gonna do with me?"
"Back to Denver. You're under arrest."
"You a lawman? Never seen any but the round eyes with a badge."
Good rode closer and plucked the rifle from Thurlow's saddle sheath. He left the six-shooter in the dust and motioned north. With any luck he could have Thurlow in a cell by noon tomorrow.
"I can't go with you," Thurlow said.
"Don't see you have much choice. I arrested you."
"Look," the outlaw said, twisting about nervously in the saddle. "I . . . I got a family that needs me."
"You shouldn't rob stages."
"It's all I could think to do to support my family. The crops have been bad, and I'm not very good as farmer."
"You should have learned better," Good said. He tilted his head in the direction of Denver. Thurlow didn't budge. Shooting him wasn't a consideration, but buffaloing him with his own rifle barrel would go a ways toward convincing him his thieving days were over.
"I just want to see them again. Please. Then I'll go off with you. No fuss."
"Where's your people?"
Thurlow pointed east. Good let the outlaw mount and ride a few yards ahead so he could keep him in his sights if he tried to bolt.
"That's my place."
"Doesn't look as down in the mouth as you said." Good saw how irrigation ditches had been dug to provide ample water to the field of beans.
"My wife and kids work like slaves. You know how that is. My Mellie was a slave in Alabama 'fore the war, 'fore Mr. Lincoln freed her. I fought for the Federals. I was at Fort Pillow. Got myself all shot up. It was Mellie what pieced me back together."
"Can't give you long. You go down on foot and don't try going into the house. You talk to your wife and children where I can see you. You try to duck inside or get a gun, I'll cut you down."
"Thank you."
Good fastened the outlaw's horse to a scrub oak working its way up through the rocky soil. He held the man's rifle on him, keeping him in his sights all the way down to the door. Thurlow stopped and knocked, waited and nothing more. No one came to answer. Good suspected the man's family was in the fields, though he saw no one out weeding or tending the plants.
Shoulders slumped, Thurlow trudged back up the slope. He stopped a few yards from Good and looked at him with desolation in his brown eyes.
"They wasn't there. Gone, maybe to Miz Flora's. Mellie's in a family way, and it must be her time."
"How old are your children?"
"Two boys, six and five. And little Abigail's the spittin' image of her ma. She's eight. She's a game one, but with her leg all twisted up, she ain't much help sometimes." Thurlow wiped his nose and said in a voice almost too low for Good to hear, "Truth is, she ain't good most of the time, laid up in bed in pain the way she is. It's a shame seein' a young girl so spindly in so much misery."
Good said nothing, studying the man with the slumped shoulders and head bowed. Thurlow straightened, wiped at his nose again and said, "Suppose it's time to go. To Denver."
"You ever shoot anyone?"
"What's that? No, all I ever shot was a rabbit for the stew pot. Mellie's a real good cook when she puts her mind to it."
Good touched the badge on his chest, gripped Thurlow's rifle a bit harder and then said, "If I forget I ever saw you, you give up on robbing stagecoaches?"
"I swear, I'll never do it again. Time's hard, but with Mellie and the new baby, I need to stay close to the farm." Thurlow half turned toward the farmhouse, then sagged. "I would, if I could."
Good came to a decision, and he knew Legrande wouldn't care for it. If anything, the marshal would rant and shout and carry on. It didn't matter, not if he did the right thing now.
"You get on back to your family."
"I swear, I won't rob another person as long as I live!"
Good snagged the reins of the man's horse and handed them to him. Thurlow's hand shook with emotion. He started to thank Good, but the deputy stepped up, turned his pony's face and trotted away. Head high, eyes fixed on the horizon, Good rode away from the homestead.
He was a mile toward the road when he stopped thinking about what Legrande would say about him letting an outlaw go free and started thinking about his situation. He still held Thurlow's rifle. Twisting about, he headed back to the farm. Thurlow needed the rifle to fill his family's cook pot. Reaching the rise looking down on the house, Good hunted for any sign of Thurlow. Not seeing the man, he gave his horse its head to edge down the steep incline and finally come out in the yard. Chickens squawked and darted about.
"Thurlow!" Good heard movement inside the house. "I brought back your rifle. Thurlow, come out here and take it."
He sucked in his breath when the door opened and a white woman clutching a rifle stepped out.
"What do you want?"
"Mrs. Thurlow?"
"I asked what you wanted." She levered a round into the rifle and brought it to her shoulder. The rifle was too big for her small frame, but all Good could see was the bright blue eye peering down the length of the barrel to center the muzzle on his chest.
"I'm a deputy Federal marshal," he said.
"Get off our land. You ride on now or I'll get my husband out here to chase you off."
"That'd be a fine idea, ma'am," Good said. He fought to hold his horse when the woman fired a round into the air, spooking his mount.
As he brought the frightened horse under control, he saw a man running from the barn waving an ax about.
"What's goin' on, Faith?"
"This colored fellow won't leave."
Good stared at the burly man, naked to the waist and sunburned from the sun. He might have mistaken the man for a bear he was so hairy if it hadn't been for the patches of peeling skin. White burnt easy in the Colorado sun.
"I'm a deputy, and I'm looking for Thomas Thurlow." He clutched the outlaw's rifle so hard his hand shook with strain. "You know anyone by that name?"
The farmer leaned the ax against the house and took the rifle from the woman. His aim was as dangerous as hers when it fixed dead center on Good's chest.
"Never heard of him. You're wearin' a badge, but that don't make you a lawman. You mighta stole it off a real deputy."
"You know a woman named Mellie in these parts? About ready to give birth?"
"Ain't nobody of that name I know of." The man glanced at the woman, who shook her head.
"She'd have three children, two young boys and a girl all crippled up in the leg."
"Them the ones you want to arrest?" The man snugged the rifle into his shoulder.
"You been on this patch of land long?"
"Two years," the woman said before the man shushed her. She pushed him and said in a voice almost too low for Good to hear, "Ralph Wood, you don't tell me to be quiet."
"You see a black man riding past in the last half hour?"
"Only you. Now you clear out. There's nothin' for you here."
"Sorry to have bothered you." Good forced himself to relax his grip on Thurlow's rifle to keep the strain from popping out veins along his forearm.
He rode, aware that Ralph Wood kept him in his sights until he topped the rise to the west of their house and vanished. Once he was out of the line of sight, Good kicked free of the stirrups, threw his leg over the horn and dropped to the ground. He walked back, fell to his belly and watched the farmhouse below.
The man and woman argued, then made up. She kissed him and disappeared back into the house with the rifle. The man stretched, hefted his ax and returned to the barn. Good watched for the better part of two hours, alert for any sign that Thurlow hid out nearby. All he saw was a farm couple without children going about their daily chores.
As he watched, Good's anger turned into an icy determination to drag the lying Thomas Thurlow in shackles back to Denver. Robbing stagecoaches was bad but hoodwinking was worse. Thurlow had to be brought to heel for that.
Four days of tracking brought him to the eastern part of the state. The trail had to be Thurlow's. Good refused to believe his skills had been blunted enough by his hurt pride to ignore the subtle signs. Thurlow was an actor, but he was also a smart character who realized how much trouble he would be in if Good caught him again. His lies wouldn't work a second time.
The prairie stretched ahead of him and collided with a dusty horizon. A storm built far to the east. This time of year meant possible tornadoes, but Good didn't feel the tension in the air that came with those fierce windstorms. What he did feel was the end of the trail. Thurlow had been run to ground and hid somewhere nearby.
Good sat astride his horse and studied the prairie for close to a half hour, hardly moving a muscle, waiting patiently, hunting for the smallest movement to show he was right. Another man might have given up. Good maintained his vigilance with his mind clear and ready to respond when he caught sight of his quarry.
And it happened. Low bushes shook when no wind blew. He concentrated on the big sagebrush. Or it might have been cliffrose. The dense, dark vegetation mattered less to him than who hid behind it. Good pulled down the brim of his floppy hat and shook his head, sending his ponytail bobbing about. As it settled down, Good stood in the stirrups. Triumph!
The rider tried to run directly north, but his horse hobbled along, pulling up lame. Good started after his quarry, marshaling his horse's strength when he saw this wasn't a race. Even at a walk, he would overtake Thurlow before sundown.
When the outlaw's horse upped and died, Thurlow lit out on foot. The robber's stock fell even more in Good's opinion when he saw that the horse had broken a leg and struggled futilely to stand. He used Thurlow's rifle to put down the horse.
"You're next," Good shouted. "Unless you surrender, I'll put a bullet through your head." He held the other man's rifle high and waved it about like he was leading a war party.
His answer was a whining hunk of lead that missed him by a foot. Good held his horse in place using his knees. Turning in the direction of a new bullet aimed at him, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder, sighted and fired in a smooth action. No more bullets came his way.
He slipped to the ground and found a patch of bunch grass, took the time to hobble his horse and only then went after the fugitive. Good moved like a whisper of wind, not causing any leaves to move or tree limbs to shake as he approached where Thurlow had taken cover.
The bank of the pond sloped gently down to muddy water that barely reflected the image of the outlaw. He lay belly down and clutched his pistol in both hands. Good skirted the bank and came out of the surrounding bushes twenty feet to Thurlow's left. He stood stock-still and waited. The outlaw would sense him eventually. And he did.
Thurlow twisted, caught sight of the deputy and tried to roll over to bring his six-shooter around. He froze when he saw that Good had him squarely in his sights. The rifle barrel never wavered.
"You got me. Don't shoot."
Good said nothing. He waited for Thurlow to drop his pistol. When he did finally, Good approached.
"Stand," he ordered. "Reach for the sky."
"I got money, Deputy. I can give you—"
Good closed the distance between them and swung the rifle in a low arc that ended on the man's kneecap. Thurlow yelped in pain and dropped to his knees. He tried to grab the rifle, but Good moved it away, throwing the man off balance to fall face-down in the mud.
With his knee in the middle of Thurlow's back, Good pulled a rawhide thong free from his belt and whipped it about each of his prisoner's wrists, then tightened until he got a cry of pain.
"That's too tight, damn you!"
Good made sure the bonds were painfully tight before pulling Thurlow to his feet. The outlaw almost fell again, his injured knee giving way under him.
"You'd better keep your feet under you," Good said. "We're going back to Denver and you're walking."
"I can't!"
"Then I'll drag you."
"You can't mistreat a prisoner. The marshal will have your black hide over it."
Good looked at Thurlow and grinned without humor.
"You think he cares about your black hide?"
"You're gonna kill me and then lie, aren't you?"
"You lied."
"But it was to save my life!"
"No matter how bad a condition you're in, I'm not going to lie about how you got that way."
"You'll get your ass fired!"
He shoved his prisoner ahead of him. Good had his duty to perform.
"Damned near dead's the way I see it," Marshal Legrande said. "You shoulda kilt him instead of dragging him all the way back. Would have saved everyone trouble."
Good said nothing. He would have had to speak up over Thurlow's moans from the rear cell in the marshal's office.
"Why'd it take you so long to catch him? Wasn't 'cuz you let him run? Or you had qualms 'cuz he's like you?"
"I caught him."
"Not up to your usual standards," Legrande said.
"No." Good slid the badge from his coat lapel and dropped it on the desk. It clattered.
Legrande reached for it, then checked himself.
"You quitting?"
Good nodded. He couldn't miss the marshal's expression of relief. He turned to go.
"Hold on," the marshal called out. "I got a question 'fore you leave."
Good turned and waited.
"What's your last name? I never heard."
"I'm good enough." Then he left the jailhouse, feeling as if a weight had been lifted. Being out of a job didn't bother him, not when he no longer worked for a son of a bitch like Legrande. He had heard of a bunch of foreigners up north wanting a scout. He could do that because he was more than good enough.