CHAPTER THREE

Wichita

 

Sampson Quick added his signature beneath the round blustery likeness of Colonel Magnus McNulty. He signed the work James Reginald De Courcey. It wouldn’t do to sign his work Sampson Quick—not when there was a reward on his head for murder. While in the guise of De Courcey, he took great care to use the proper Received Pronunciation, like a well-educated Englishman, and not let his r’s betray his lower class Cornwall background. To frontier Americans all Limeys no doubt sounded alike—but Quick could not take the risk someone might make the connection.

Since his release from a Union Prisoner of War camp, Quick, on more than one occasion, had donned a black hood and taken up the life of a highwayman and road agent. His victims were the banks, rail lines, and companies owned by those he considered war profiteers and carpetbaggers.

There was a five hundred dollar reward for the Cornishman and former Confederate raider. He was wanted dead or alive.

Quick stepped back and took a moment to quietly appreciate the painting. Rendered in oils, the wealthy owner of the McNulty Cattle Company stared out at his home’s sun-drenched library from the canvas surface of Quick’s masterwork. Within the borders of a gold leaf frame, Colonel McNulty affected a regal pose, complete with the nattily tailored military uniform he had worn while serving as an adjutant to General Meade, the victorious Union general who turned back Lee at Gettysburg. McNulty posed against a panorama of open conflict, the sweep of battle, exploding shells, clashing sabers, and in the background, infantry from both sides locked in mortal combat. At first glance, a casual witness to the depicted scene might assume Colonel Magnus McNulty singlehandedly stopped Pickett’s charge, routed General Lee and sent the army of Northern Virginia limping home to Dixie.

In truth, McNulty’s war experience had been confined to the Quartermaster Corps, and the nearest he had come to danger was the time a crate of hardtack had toppled from the back of a supply wagon and landed on his foot.

“Why Mister De Courcey, I was under the impression the portrait was completed. Yet here you stand, brush in hand.” McNulty emerged from the sun parlor at the rear of his estate and entered his study. Sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows, washed the air with a warming glow, and turned the dust motes into dancing flecks of gold. The former officer wore the uniform of a successful businessman now—a frock coat, matching brushed brown woolen vest and trousers. A checkered cloth had been tucked inside his stiff collar and draped across his ample belly. The cloth was spotted with egg yolk, coffee, and biscuit crumbs. McNulty placed his hands on his hips and paused to bask in the illusion of glory the artist’s skill had brought to life. His jaw worked slowly as he chewed a morsel of sausage.

“I always sign my work in front of my patron, it is a tradition with me.”

McNulty had no way of knowing the man in his study was the notorious rascal the authorities were determined to bring to justice. Sampson Quick had been labeled a murderer. To his way of seeing things, Major Seth Allison—the Union officer he’d gunned down—was the criminal. The Major had a sadistic streak, and vented his twisted nature on his bedraggled prisoners. He was a war criminal. But the victorious Federal authorities saw things differently. After the war, Quick had hunted the man down and shot him dead.

“Well, I am a man who can appreciate tradition, yes sir,” McNulty exclaimed. “Show me a man who values tradition and I’ll show you a man who has breeding in his background, real breeding.” McNulty placed his hands on his thick waist and studied the likeness.

“Ever since I set eyes on the portrait you painted of Chester Longfellow, the one that hangs in the lobby of the Missouri Union Savings Bank, I positively coveted it, sir. Coveted it. I knew from the get-go that you were the man to immortalize my achievements.” McNulty sighed, ran a hand through his thinning hair, his mind no doubt filled with fabricated images, heroic fantasies conjured by one who had managed to stay as far from the fighting as possible. “We gave Johnny Reb a hiding back in ’sixty-three. Did you serve, sir? No, of course. You’re an Englishman, the war was none of your concern, eh.” He quickly appraised the artist. The man he knew as De Courcey looked to be in his thirties. He was slender, a bit hollow of chest, and plagued with a nasty cough at times. Curly brown hair hung to his shoulders. His eyes, dark as autumn leaves, seemed to draw everything in, as if the man was always watching, ever observant and poised to react.

“Longfellow,” Sampson nodded, “I remember him well. Now that was a lengthy sitting.” Sampson had labored on the portrait until he had learned everything there was to know about the bank, its shipment schedule, and the payrolls that were due to be deposited. Late one night he looted the bank, and took all the gold…but left the portrait. Robbery was one thing—art something else, indeed.

With his share of the haul, Quick had traveled back through the Shenandoah Valley and repaid those hard pressed Southern families who had shown him a kindness when he had ridden with Mosby’s raiders —before General Bragg had requested he lend his skills to John Hunt Morgan on his famous cavalry raid into Indiana and Ohio. Quick was captured on that Great Raid, and imprisoned at the Union camp in Rock Island, Illinois. Upon his release from captivity he made his way back to Virginia, and one of those impoverished Southern families nursed him back to health. It seemed only fitting that money from a Yankee war profiteer would help them and their kind get back on their feet.

A week ago, he had started back to Wolf Creek and his new studio. But on the train bound for Kansas City, Missouri, a chance meeting with Magnus McNulty had “derailed” his return home. McNulty was eager for a portrait of himself, and Sampson Quick could not resist the opportunity to make an honest dollar—after helping himself to so many dishonest ones at McNulty’s expense. It had been a risky business. Then again, the wanted posters depicting Sampson Quick didn’t do him justice. He could have done much better. Portraits were his specialty, after all.

“I am glad you approve of my humble efforts.”

“Approve, dear fellow? Yours is a work of genius! You have captured the essence of…me. This shall hang in a place of honor. We shall have an unveiling next month. I shall invite the town fathers, all my associates, maybe even get Longfellow to come for a visit. The poor man hasn’t been the same since the robbery some months ago. You may have read of it.”

“I believe so.”

“Rumor has it the Hounds were responsible. The hooded rogues have been a thorn in my side on more than one occasion. But they will get their comeuppance. Mark my words.”

“I hope so. I have no use for such thieves and ruffians.”

McNulty crossed around the easel and the painting with its gilded frame and removed a cash box from his desk. Sampson brightened, and then had to resist the urge to pull the Sharps four shot derringer tucked inside his waistcoat and claim the cash box as his own. McNulty counted out a hundred and seventy-five dollars, placed the stack of greenbacks in an envelope and handed the packet to the artist.

“I believe that settles the account. Elkins will show you to the door. Have a safe trip back to—Wolf Creek, was it?”

“Yes sir. Good day, Colonel McNulty.”

McNulty almost purred. He liked being addressed by his former rank.

“Wolf Creek,” McNulty repeated. “There was a nasty bank robbery there a few weeks ago, wasn’t there. Even nastier than the one in Kingman the day before yesterday.”

Quick chuckled. “I suppose it’s a good thing I have alibis placing me elsewhere for both of those.”

McNulty guffawed. “Oh that is rich, De Courcey! Imagine you as a bandit!” He winked conspiratorially. “Why, perhaps I’d best get my alibis lined up as well, eh! Good day to you, friend!”

A Negro manservant with salt and pepper hair appeared from a side room and motioned for Quick to follow him to the foyer. “This way sir.”

Quick left McNulty in the study, in a room of walnut furniture and shelves lined with books he would never read, entranced by his own portrait, a grand illusion framed and signed.

The manservant held the door for him. Quick crossed the threshold, and made his way from the estate. He needed some new oil paints and sticks of charcoal for sketching. He also needed to get back to Wolf Creek, where he had only recently established a base. But he had one very important stop to make first.

***

Quick approached the abandoned shack, which was located in a draw about twenty miles west of Wichita. It had been used, and probably built, by buffalo hunters. They had long since moved on, or been scalped. Funny how touchy Indians could be when folks started killing off their food source.

Whatever the reason, the shack’s former inhabitants were gone, and all evidence indicated that the little building had been forgotten. But it had been discovered, and put to good use, in recent months. The Hounds had made it one of their many temporary hideouts in the region. Sampson Quick knew they would be waiting for him there.

The shack was quiet, and there were no horses in sight. Quick knew they were well hidden, a short distance away. He called out no greeting as he dismounted and approached the door—they would have been aware of him long before he reached the building, even if they had not been expecting him. The Hounds were professionals, after all—and they had each managed to survive the war. None of them was the careless type.

Quick had known Tom LeBeau and Harlan Graves for a decade. The three of them had ridden together with John Mosby back in Virginia. He had known the Keene brothers, Chester and Bob, for almost as long—he had met them in ’sixty-three, during John Hunt Morgan’s Great Raid.

Clay Pettibone was the wild card. He had joined the Hounds after one of their original number—another Mosby Marauder named Gip Edmonds—had fallen to a posse-man’s bullet. Pettibone was a couple of decades older than the others, and was crafty as a fox. He had been one of the Missouri border ruffians during the Bleeding Kansas years of the ’fifties, and rode with Quantrill during the war.

The Keene brothers had vouched for Pettibone—he was a distant cousin—but Quick had always had reservations. Pettibone might have fit in fine with Quantrill, but Quantrill was no Mosby or Morgan. To Quick’s eyes, Clay Pettibone had always seemed like bad company.

Recent events had proven him right.

Sampson Quick sighed, more from sadness than from anxiety, before he pushed in the door. His Hounds awaited him. Tom LeBeau was already pouring his old friend a cup of coffee; the other four sat around the table, playing cards.

“I was beginning to think you wasn’t gonna show, Sam,” LeBeau said as he offered the cup to Quick. LeBeau smiled uneasily.

Quick took the coffee. “A golden opportunity dropped into my lap. Two opportunities, really—a chance to paint the portrait of a man we’ve been nibbling at, in his own library—all the while familiarizing myself with his home and all the pretty little treasures therein.”

Harlan Graves chuckled. “McNulty?”

“The very same.”

“I’m glad you had fun, sippin’ brandy and paintin’ your pictures and such,” Pettibone said in a clipped tone. “We was expectin’ you a week ago, and you left us here to twiddle our thumbs.”

Quick stared hard at his subordinate. “Except you weren’t twiddling your thumbs, were you? You kept yourselves very well-occupied.”

LeBeau cast his glance to the floor. He had been acting guilty as a whipped dog since Quick first arrived, and was no longer even half-heartedly trying to hide it.

“I reckon you heard, then,” Bob Keene said.

“Of course I heard,” Quick said. “Everyone in the territory has heard.”

“Then you must’ve heard what a haul we made from that Kingman bank,” Chester said.

“We held out your share,” Harlan said. “We figured you’d’a been with us, if you’d been back in time.”

“It was probably even more money than you get for paintin’ your lovely pitchers,” Pettibone added with a sneer.

“I suppose I wasn’t paying attention to that part,” Quick said. “I was too preoccupied, I suppose, mulling over the fact that the Kingman bank is a farmer’s bank, a small rancher’s bank. The railroads and large cattle companies keep their money in Wichita.”

Chester Keene shrugged. “There’s a lot of law in Wichita, Sam. This Kingman job, hell, they was just settin’ out on the prairie—it’s like they was just waiting to hand over their cash to the first people that wanted to take it.”

“And the deputy you killed? The teller you wounded? In fact, I heard that several citizens barely avoided being trampled to death when you made your exit.”

Pettibone chuckled. “It does them clodhoppers good to step lively ever’ once in awhile. Keeps ‘em in shape.”

Quick’s eyes narrowed. “I find no amusement in harming innocents, or in robbing poor people who are barely able to scratch out a living as it is.”

“Then you ain’t lookin’ at it from where I sit, I reckon,” Pettibone said.

“Look,” Bob Keene said, before Quick could respond to Pettibone. “We know that ain’t how you do things. Hell, your plan probably would’ve been to rob the McNulty Cattle Company in the middle of the night, and hand out half the money to the dirt-scrabblers in Kingman as we passed through.”

Bob sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to draw courage, then continued. “We’ve been doing things that way for years, Sam. But we ain’t exactly got rich at it. We figured—well, we figured maybe it was time to take something that was gonna be all for us, just once.”

Quick tossed off the last of his coffee in a gulp. “Kingman isn’t the only bank job the populace was buzzing about in Wichita,” he said. “While I’ve been away, Wolf Creek was hit by Jim Danby and his gang. Several citizens shot dead, including a pretty young school teacher. A little Chinese boy trampled to death. I bought candy for that little fellow when I went to Wolf Creek to set up my studio.”

Pettibone chuckled again. “I’ve heard stories about strangers with candy.”

Quick stepped forward, fast as a panther, and backhanded Clay Pettibone. The coarse outlaw fell out of his chair and instinctively reached for his gun.

“Oh, by all means,” Quick said. “Please do.”

Pettibone raised his hand, slowly and carefully, and wiped the blood from his mouth.

“No thanks,” Pettibone said. “I’m no match for you and you know it.”

“Then keep your mouth shut.”

Pettibone’s eyes blazed, but he did not move.

“Let’s all calm down,” Harlan Graves said. “It’s no good, us goin’ at each other like this. Sam, it’s a shame what happened to them friends of your’n over in Wolf Creek—but I don’t see what that has to do with us.”

“I’ll tell you what it has to do with us,” Quick said. “Jim Danby, and a good number of his men, rode with Quantrill’s Raiders. And that’s how Quantrill’s kind does things. The officers we served under were gentlemen, even during the worst part of the war.”

He gestured contemptuously at Pettibone. “I saw it in him when he first started riding with us. There is a feral nature in the eyes of such men—I’ve learned to spot it in an instant. Since he has been with us, I have watched it spread to all of you.”

Quick turned to Graves. “Even you and Tom,” he said. “You cracked that teller’s skull so hard in Market City last month you almost killed him. Annoyed, because an old man moved too slowly to suit you. The Harlan Graves I know would never have done that.”

After a few seconds, Chester Keene broke the uncomfortable silence. “Like my brother said, Sam—we’ve done things your way all this time. But you left us setting out here, with no word, and figured we’d just wait on the master to come home—like we really was nothin’ but hounds. But we showed that we can take action on our own.”

“You did, indeed,” Quick said bitterly.

“We’re wolves now,” Pettibone said. “Not dogs.” He climbed slowly to his feet.

Sampson Quick took a deep breath. “I’m through with you,” he said. “Do as you wish. I’ll not have my name associated with it.”

He looked around, his gaze lingering longest on LeBeau and Graves. “Despite the circumstances of our parting, I wish you well,” he said. “We have endured much together, and I have counted you brothers.”

Pettibone’s annoying chuckle returned. How Quick had come to loathe it.

“Well, hold on there, mister high-and-mighty,” Pettibone said. “Surely you ain’t stupid enough to think it’s as easy as that. With all you know about us? What makes you think we’d just let you walk out of here, free as a breeze?”

“What makes me think so?” Quick asked. “The knowledge that—yourself excepted—every man here still possesses some vestige of honor.”

Quick turned and walked toward the door.

Pettibone’s hand dropped to his weapon, but Harlan Graves restrained him firmly.

Quick went outside, mounted up, and rode away. He half-expected a bullet in his back, but none came.

At least, not yet.

***

Quick kept a close eye on his back trail. It did not surprise him to discover, after traveling only a few miles, that he was being followed. In fact, it would have amazed him if he had not been. He was pretty sure there were two of them. They were keeping a significant distance, of course, taking great pains to avoid detection; but Sampson Quick had an uncanny knack at reading everything in the land around him. One might say he had the eye of an artist.

Even Quick was not able to identify them at this distance, of course. He knew that Clay Pettibone would be one—probably accompanied by one of the Keene brothers. Quick was not sure which of the Keenes he would have laid money on to betray him. If forced to bet, he would have placed a marker on them both.

While scanning the horizon, Quick realized that the breaks around him had a somber beauty all their own. The gulleys and shallow ravines cut through the land, evoking the interruptions and challenges that had broken the landscape of his own life.

Sampson Quick dismounted and hobbled his horse. He took off his gunbelt and hung it from the saddle horn, retrieved the tools he needed from his saddlebags, and began to draw.

***

Chester Keene rode slowly toward his longtime boss. It almost seemed a shame to end things this way, but the die was cast. A change had to be made in how the Hounds did things, he saw that now, and sentimental ties to the past had no place on the outlaw trail.

Pettibone had not ridden up with him, but had rather taken a position with his rifle. “In case he makes a break and gets past you,” the old guerrilla had said, but Chester suspected it was fear of Quick’s fast gun.

He need not have worried. Quick was proving even now that they had been right—he had lost his touch, and was no longer fit to command. The celebrated highwayman stood with his back to them, oblivious to the world, lost in his artwork. He had a cleaning rag in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other—and the fool had left his gun on his saddle.

“Pettibone was right, Sam,” Chester called out as he rode close. “Them pretty pictures of yours are liable to be the death of you.”

Quick seemed startled, but regained his composure in a heartbeat.

“Chester,” he said. “I didn’t hear you ride up. What brings you out here?”

Chester reined in. “Well, Sam, it’s like this. First we remembered you most likely had some cash on you from that painting you made in Wichita, which you never offered to share with us. And then we remembered that five hundred dollar bounty on your head. Seemed like bad business to let you just ride off.”

“So they sent you to kill me?” Quick said. “I didn’t think Tom and Harlan would do that. In fact, I counted on them to stop the rest of you from shooting me in the back as I rode away.”

“Didn’t nobody send me,” Chester said, and then he shrugged. “But then on the other hand, didn’t nobody stand in my way, neither. It’s just business, you understand.”

Quick nodded. “I understand, all right. I suppose it is fortunate, then, that I was just finishing my drawing—considering it is fated to be my last.”

He nodded toward the easel. “Since you are to be my final audience, Chester—and since we have been comrades all these years—the least you could do is take a quick look at my opus ultimo and tell me if you like it.”

Chester leaned forward in the saddle, reluctantly, and squinted at the paper. He recognized the breaks around them. He also saw a man standing at an easel, a tiny gun in his hand, shooting another man off a horse. Chester’s heart fell.

His eyes darted back to Sampson Quick. With a flick of his wrist, the artist sent the cleaning rag that had covered his left hand flying away. The hand it revealed held a four-barreled Derringer, pointed straight at Chester’s face. Its flash was the last thing Chester Keene ever saw.

As Chester’s body fell to the ground, Quick ran underneath it and scooped his dead opponent’s revolver from its holster with one hand while the other grabbed at the reins of Chester’s horse. A bullet kicked up dust where Quick’s feet had been while he swung into the saddle.

The highwayman hung low on the neck of his confiscated mount as more bullets whizzed through the air around him. Quick galloped straight into the source of the gunfire.

As Quick had gambled, Pettibone was unnerved and beat a hasty retreat. The old guerrilla did, however, take time to send several more wild shots at his pursuer.

Quick was confident that he had a chance of catching his quarry—but one of Pettibone’s bullets plowed home into the shoulder of Chester Keene’s horse. The roan balked, almost collapsing. Pettibone disappeared over a small rise.

It seemed that the miscreant was going to escape after all, Quick thought. But there would be another time, he would make sure of it.

Then he heard gunfire over the rise. A lot of it. He urged the wounded roan cautiously forward until he could see what was going on.

Pettibone had barreled straight into an Indian war party—probably Kiowa. They had surrounded him, and were pulling him—kicking and screaming—from his horse.

They were too preoccupied to notice Quick, and he took full advantage of it. He had been fully prepared to blow Pettibone’s brains out—but he didn’t wish torture on him. Even so, Quick hoped desperately that if they did decide to work on Pettibone awhile before they killed him, they’d take their time at it and give him a nice head-start on them.

He spurred the poor roan into a gallop. He hated to do it—the beast was no doubt in awful pain—but his own safety was paramount.

The horse was wheezing horribly by the time they got back to Quick’s impromptu camp. He fairly leaped out of the saddle. He drew out his knife and cut the suffering animal’s throat—he could not risk a gunshot.

Sampson Quick gathered his art supplies and packed them rapidly away, unhobbled his own horse, and climbed into the saddle.

Then he rode like hell.

***

He had put several miles between himself and the war party—and hopefully they were still unaware of his existence—when he came upon the stragglers.

Four people on foot, in the middle of the prairie. Quick was tempted to leave them to their own devices, but then he saw that one of them was a woman. He was still tempted to leave them—but only for a moment. His chivalry quickly got the best of him. Which was part of the reason, he had to admit to himself, that he was now an outlaw leader without a gang. He trotted up to them.

“Hallo!” he called. “Gentlemen—and lady—if you have not reached the conclusion already, it is a damned poor day for a stroll!”

“We figured that part out,” the tallest of the men said. “But we didn’t have much choice. A band of Kiowa attacked the stage to Wolf Creek—killed the driver and the shotgun, and all the horses. We fought them off, and we’re lucky to be standing, let alone walking.”

“Yes, I ran across them myself, earlier,” Quick said. “Or some of their comrades. So you are all on your way to Wolf Creek?”

The tall man nodded.

“So am I,” Quick said. “It is where I presently hang my hat. But it is a bit of a walk.”

“We’re headed for the Manning ranch right now,” said another passenger, a wisp of a man. “It’s only a few miles away.”

“Then perhaps we should travel together,” Quick said, and dismounted. “James Reginald De Courcey, at your service.” He extended a hand, and the tall man shook it firmly.

“Dave Benteen,” he announced. “I’m opening a gunsmith shop in Wolf Creek.”

“Lester Weatherby,” the third male passenger said. “Salesman of fine whiskey.”

“An excellent addition to our hardy band,” Quick told him. “I am pleased to meet you, gentlemen.”

Then the wiry one caught his eye. Seeing the man at close range made the highwayman realize he was vaguely familiar.

“I’ve seen you before,” Quick said. “But I can’t recall where.”

“Probably around town. I’ve been in Wolf Creek a few months now—I’m John Hix. I’m a barber. But you ain’t been in my shop—we must have seen each other in the street, is all I can think of.”

Quick nodded, and shook the man’s hand, but was unconvinced. Quick had only been in Wolf Creek once, just long enough to pay rent for his studio and set it up. He had seen the barber somewhere else, and not recently. It would come to him.

For now, there was a lovely young lady present.

“And your name, dear lady?” Quick said.

“Cora Sloane. I’m the new schoolteacher.”

She extended her hand, and Quick kissed it gallantly. “Enchanté. Your obvious grace will be much welcome in our little town. I knew your predecessor, if only in passing—her loss was a tragedy.”

Quick waved his arm toward his horse.

“Miss Sloane, your ride awaits. I’m sure your feet must be throbbing.”

“Thank you so much, Mister—Courcey, was it?”

“De Courcey, madam.” He clasped his hands, inviting her to step into them, and assisted her into the saddle.

“Let us not waste time, dear friends,” Quick said, “for our red foes travel with alacrity. On to the Manning ranch.” He gestured at the barber. “Lay on, MacDuff. Cursed be the first to cry hold, and all that.”

“My name is Hix.”

“Indeed it is, sir.”

They started walking.