CHAPTER 14
There was no way the outlaws could know if there might be a posse on its way to their ranch or not. They didn’t know if the so-called vigilance committee had been organized to the point where they were ready to ride as a posse. Consequently, Stark thought it was necessary to keep watch, in case they were. He believed that, if they were coming after them, they would have come yesterday, but they didn’t. Still, he thought there was no sense in taking a chance on being surprised, so he set up a schedule to watch for two hours at a time. No one was exempt, not even the wounded men. Stark said all they had to do was sit in a chair on the porch and watch the trail that led down to the house. It would not likely do their wounds any harm.
Junior saw fit to remind them that they were out of coffee and flour. Tired of hearing about the need for coffee and flour, Stark told him to kill one of their cows and get some fresh meat cooking while he took the first watch. “Bring me a slab of that meat when you get it done,” he told Junior and went out to the porch and sat down. He had not been there long when he suddenly sat up straight in the chair, his gaze caught by a flash of white through the bushes that lined the trail into the yard. He hurriedly grabbed the rifle lying on the porch floor beside him, his eyes focused on the first stretch of the path that was in the open. He raised his rifle and sighted on the spot. In a few seconds, a rider appeared. He was alone and riding a white horse. Stark waited to see if anyone followed, but there was no one else as the rider continued following the path straight toward the front porch. A few yards closer and Stark murmured softly, “Drew.” Then he blurted it out. “Drew!” His cousin had finally arrived.
“That you, Ned?” Drew called back and nudged his horse into a lope the rest of the way to the porch. He pulled up in front of the steps and dismounted to exchange handshakes and back slaps.
“Damned if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes,” Stark said, then yelled back toward the house, “Drew’s here!” Back to Drew then, he asked, “Where in the hell have you been? You was supposed to get outta prison two weeks ago.”
“I couldn’t come straight here,” Drew explained. “I had some things to tend to before I could—had to have some money and things. They don’t give you much when they let you out of prison.” He paused to greet the rest of the gang when they filed out to see him.
After more handshaking and slaps on the back, Sledge asked, “Where’d you get that white horse?”
“Ain’t he somethin’?” Drew replied. “He ain’t got a handful of black hairs on him. Fellow this side of Fort Worth gave me this horse, right after he died. How you like that saddle? That saddle musta cost two hundred dollars, maybe more.” He chuckled then. “I ain’t ever priced ’em in that range, so I’m just guessin’. Fellow left me enough spendin’ money to get me an outfit, too. I spent a lot of it on this Colt and the fancy holster. I figure that’s my business, so I wasn’t gonna skimp.”
Junior, fascinated with the stark white horse, asked, “What’s his name?”
“The fellow or the horse?” Drew japed. “I don’t know if he’s got a name or not. I didn’t think to ask that fellow before he expired. Fellow at the stable in town yesterday asked me the same thing. I told him the horse’s name was Snowball. It was the first thing I could think of.” He paused to chuckle again, then looked at Deal and Duncan. “You boys look like you’ve had a little bad luck. Where are the rest of the boys?”
“There ain’t no rest of us,” Stark answered. “You’re lookin’ at the whole gang, except for Slim Garrett and Eli Priest, and they’re in the jailhouse in Bison Gap.”
“That was you they were talkin’ about,” Drew exclaimed, recalling his conversation with Jimmy McGee in the Buffalo Hump Saloon, “and the jailhouse shot to hell.” He shook his head slowly. “Well, I’ll be . . . What happened?”
“We ran into an ambush and a double cross is what happened,” Stark answered. “The sheriff I had in my pocket double-crossed me. Him and that mayor brought in a gunslinger. I know it had to be the mayor, ’cause the sheriff ain’t got any money to hire a gunman. And the sheriff and the gunslinger was settin’ there waitin’ for us when we tried to break Slim and Eli outta that jail.”
“What happened to the rest of the gang?” Drew wondered aloud. “Curly Williams, Quirt Taylor, Carl Leach, they were all good men. Did they cut out on you?”
“No,” Sledge answered him. “They were all cut down by that gunslinger I was just tellin’ you about.”
“How the hell did that happen?” Drew asked, knowing those three men as well as he did. “Who is this gunslinger? Has he got a name?”
“Says his name is Perley Gates,” Stark said, “nobody I ever heard of.”
Totally surprised, Drew didn’t respond at once, having to stop and consider what he had just heard. “Perley Gates,” he said the name. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure about it. Why? Have you heard of him?”
Drew smiled. “I had supper with him last night,” he said. “Well, I oughta say I talked to him in the dinin’ room of the hotel. I didn’t set down at the table with him.” He looked sharply at Ned Stark again. “Are you sure?” He asked again, “Because the Perley Gates I talked to in the dinin’ room last night didn’t look like a gunslinger to me, and I don’t reckon there’s two fellows runnin’ around here with that name. He said he worked on a cattle ranch.” When no one answered, he asked, “How’d he kill ’em? Pick ’em off with a rifle? Shoot ’em in the back? He didn’t call ’em out to face him, right?”
“No,” Jim Duncan answered, “they called him out.”
“Is that a fact?” Drew considered the possibility, bringing the picture of the pleasant-looking young man back in focus in his mind and trying to see him in that role. Curly and Quirt were both fast, not as fast as he, but they were fast. He had to ask Stark a question then. “Is he faster than I am?”
“I don’t know,” Stark answered. “I’ve seen you work, and I ain’t ever seen anybody as fast as you. But I didn’t see any of the draws this fellow had with Curly and the others, so I don’t know.”
There was a void in the conversation for a couple of minutes when no one spoke. Everyone knew what Drew was working over in his mind. They could not realize the fascination he now had for this unlikely-looking fast gun and the rapidly building desire to prove himself faster. After he thought about it a minute or two longer, he decided he was faster. He could tell by just looking at Perley. He would prove it before he was done with this town. With that settled in his mind, he asked, “What are we all standin’ around on the porch for? I need somethin’ to eat, and I need to take care of ol’ Snowball, here.”
“We ain’t got no coffee or flour,” Junior piped up.
“You ain’t?” Drew responded. “Well, why not? Who’s supposed to go get supplies?”
“With that business yesterday at the jailhouse, they’ve got the whole town stirred up, and we’re liable to be shot on sight if we go into town. There’ll be a gun stickin’ outta every window and door,” Stark answered him. “But we’ve got plenty of beef to eat, if you’re hungry.”
“I swear, cousin,” Drew said, “this is a bad situation. You ain’t got anybody who can ride into town and go to the store?” Stark simply answered with an apologetic shrug. “Beef’s good,” Drew continued, “but I need some coffee to go with it.”
“And flour,” Junior said.
Drew turned to look at him. “Right, and flour, too.” Turning back toward Stark, he asked again, “Are you tellin’ me that there’s not one of you who can go into town without gettin’ shot at or arrested?”
“That’s what I’m tellin’ you,” Stark said. “Problem is, there ain’t another store or tradin’ post within fifty miles of here.”
“That ain’t no problem,” Drew insisted. “There’s a store just three miles from here in Bison Gap, and nobody knows me in that town. So I reckon I’m gonna be the one to go to the store before we all starve to death. I reckon you’re all broke, too, but thanks to good ol’ T.C., I’ll pay for it.” His announcement brought a small measure of cheerfulness to the gang of outlaws.
“Who’s T.C.?” Deal asked.
“Those are the initials on the side skirt of my new saddle,” Drew said. “Our business transaction happened so fast we didn’t really have the time to exchange names. I’ll buy us some supplies, if somebody will fetch me a couple of packhorses.” He was interrupted right away when Junior volunteered. “Good, Junior,” Drew went on. “If we’re thinkin’ about movin’ anybody’s cows to market, we need supplies, so bring me two packhorses.” Junior ran straight to the corral. Drew talked to Stark then. “Whaddaya plannin’ to do, cousin? In your letter, you said you were fixin’ to start a big drive as soon as I got here. You wanna go ahead and go after those cattle, or you wanna get your men outta jail first?”
“We could sure use the two extra hands,” Stark said. “Jim and Frank ain’t in too gooda shape to do the job.”
“If I see that fellow, Perley Gates in town today, I’ll ask him if he wants to help us steal some cattle,” Drew japed. “He said he was a cattleman.” Joking aside then, he said, “You know, we can’t stay here if we ain’t got anybody who can go into town anytime we need something. I’ll do it now, but we’re gonna have to pick up some new faces somewhere. Right now, we can’t even go into the saloon to get a drink of whiskey. I can, but none of the rest of you can. How did all this start, anyway?”
“Well, the boys got to raisin’ hell a little too much, but it wasn’t any worse than Dodge or Wichita. What really started things boilin’ over, was when Curly Williams gunned a fellow named Tom Parker down in the saloon. Did you see that woman who runs the dinin’ room at the hotel?” Drew said he did, so Stark went on. “Well that Parker fellow was her husband, and he never went for his gun. I owned the sheriff at that time, so he took Quirt’s word that he did.” Stark went on to bring Drew up to date on everything that happened up to the present.
Drew listened to Stark’s account of the situation they were now sitting in, and it seemed ridiculous to him that they could have gotten so bad that their men were banned from coming to town, even in the daytime to visit the stores or shops. “I think there’s only one problem and that’s the gunslinger, Perley Gates,” Drew said. “We get him, and in a week, the town will go back like it was before he showed up.”
“Don’t think I ain’t tried that,” Stark was quick to protest. “Quirt called him out and Perley Gates cut him down. Curly went after him and got the same thing. I even offered a reward for anybody that killed him. And he’s still there.”
“He’s gotta be cut down the right way,” Drew maintained. “Out on the street, where the people can see it’s all fair and square, then it’ll be business as usual. We’ll buy supplies at the general store and stop in the saloon for a drink. As long as the boys don’t get too rowdy, everybody will be happy. Let me go into town now and get to know some of these citizens and we’ll see how best to work ’em, Hell, at the hotel and the stable, they already think I’m rich. I’ll play ’em like a piano.”
* * *
“Well, howdy, Mr. Dawson,” Horace Brooks called out when he saw Drew ride past the stable, leading two pack horses. “I didn’t know you were comin’ right back to town.”
Drew pulled up and waited to speak to him, seeing that Horace was walking out to meet him. “I didn’t know, myself,” Drew said, rapidly making up a story to explain his reappearance. “I just had a change of mind, always one of my bad habits, I suppose.”
“Where’d you get the packhorses?” Horace asked.
“I ran into a group of hunters headin’ north after havin’ no luck at all tryin’ to hunt buffalo down this way,” Drew answered, being unable to think of a reasonable explanation.
“Buffalo?” Horace responded. “There ain’t no buffalo down this way no more.”
“That’s what they said,” Drew declared. “They asked me if I wanted to buy a couple of packhorses. The price was right, so I decided, why not? I’ll just use them to carry all the supplies I’ll need while I’m exploring the country around here. And it helped the hunters, too, since they were down on their luck.” He left Horace scratching his head and thinking what a strange man he was.
Having used up most of the morning out at the ranch, Drew decided he would spend some of his money on a good dinner at the hotel. While he rode up the street on his white horse, leading the packhorses, he was well aware of the attention he was attracting. He always enjoyed seeing people stop on the street to stare at him, and he made it a point never to show that he noticed. As he neared the hotel, his reunion with the gang came to mind. As strong as Ned was, he had certain weaknesses when it came to controlling the men. Being ruthless, himself, Ned inspired that in the men as well. And Drew decided that was the reason men like Curly and Quirt provoked unlikely gunfights just for the satisfaction they enjoyed from killing. The results of that lack of control would always be the same. What he and Ned had planned was to establish the appearance of legitimate ranchers instead of what the town now saw as a gang of outlaw cattle rustlers. Don’t know if I can turn this around or not, he thought. He wasn’t inclined to chastise Ned in front of the men, and maybe not in private either. Ned was his cousin. Otherwise, he would just shoot him in the head and tell the men things were going to change. He would just have to see what he could do. This setup with a small town in the middle of miles of prairie was ideal for what he wanted. He didn’t want to give up on it and move on just because his men caused too much trouble in town. Too bad I got caught with that bank money bag on my horse, he thought. Then he grinned when he thought, If I hadn’t persuaded that deputy marshal that the bag fell off one of the bank robbers’ horses when he was making his getaway, I would have been in prison a lot longer than the two years they gave me.
“Mr. Drew Dawson,” Rachael Parker greeted him warmly when he walked in the dining room and paused to rid himself of his gun belt. “I thought you had left our little town this morning.”
“I had left your little town,” Drew replied. “But I found myself thinkin’ more and more about the cookin’ here in this dinin’ room and decided I had to sample some more of it.”
Rachael smiled, delighted by the compliment. “Well, I’ll certainly tell Bess that you enjoyed her cooking. “Kitty will be serving you today.” She signaled her young waitress. “Kitty,” she said. “This is Mr. Dawson. Take good care of him, we wanna keep him as a customer.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kitty replied. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dawson.”
“Do I look that old?” Drew responded with a grin. “Pretty young ladies like you can call me Drew.” He cocked a roguish eye at Rachael. “And that applies to you as well.” He was satisfied to see the slight blush in Rachael’s face as she smiled back at him. He figured that it had been a while since she had been thrown a compliment of that nature.
“Are you back in the hotel with us for a while?” Rachael asked.
“No, ma’am, but I’ll be poppin’ in on you from time to time.” When she looked puzzled, he explained, creating it as he talked. “I maybe didn’t mention it when I was in last night. The reason I’m here is to buy some land not far from Bison Gap to start up a little cattle ranch.”
“Good,” Rachael said and stepped aside to let Kitty set a cup of coffee down for him. “Will you be bringing a family with you?”
“No, no family,” Drew answered, “but I never give up hope that a family might be in my future one day.”
“Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Dawson,” she said and turned to greet a man and his wife at the door.
“Drew,” he reminded her, “and thank you.”
“Drew,” she responded with a cheerful laugh. “Enjoy your dinner.”
That I will, he thought, turning his mind back onto his reason for coming to town. He had made a big score when he opened the safe in T.C.’s office. Evidently, the man had that much cash in the safe for purchasing cattle. It was considerably easier to make money by stealing it than it was to have to rustle a herd and drive them to market for men like T.C. to buy them. But he couldn’t always find safes to rob, and unless he got the gang back into the rustling business again, his money would soon run out.
* * *
While Drew Dawson was dining at the hotel, John Payne was busy repairing the damaged wall in the jail cell room and replacing the window. Interested spectators, Eli Priest and Slim Garrett, watched from the cell next to the one under repair while finishing up the dinner plates sent down from the hotel dining room. “If you ain’t gonna eat that biscuit, I’ll take it,” Slim said.
“Go ahead and eat it,” Eli said, rubbing his stomach and grimacing. “I swear, my belly still hurts from hangin’ in that window. Junior damn-near pulled me in two. There’s red marks all around my middle.”
“You was bigger than that window,” Slim said.
“You think?” Eli asked sarcastically.
“I knowed you were too big to fit through that window,” Slim insisted. “Perley Gates told me, while you was still hangin’ in it, that I shoulda gone first. He said I woulda made it.”
“Is that so? I reckon you’re bellyachin’ because you didn’t get away. But I can’t help it if you didn’t step up and try it first.”
“I’m just sayin’ you shoulda told me to go first, so at least one of us woulda got out,” Slim said.
“It wouldn’ta been right for just one of us to get out, if the other’n couldn’t,” Eli declared. “If you had any decency about you, you’d know that. Gimme back my biscuit.”
He reached for the half-eaten biscuit, but Slim stuffed all of it in his mouth. When he was able to talk again, he said, “I’ll give it back to ya in the mornin’.”
“You two sound like a couple of little young’uns fightin’ in here,” Sheriff Mason said when he walked into the cell room. “Gimme your plates. I’ll take ’em back to the dinin’ room.” He had been waiting for them to finish, so he could take all three plates back. They handed the plates through the bars and he walked over to the other cell and called to John Payne, who was outside. “Hey, John, you need to get in here for anything? I’m goin’ across the creek for about half an hour.” Payne yelled back that he wouldn’t need to get inside for a while yet, so Mason said, “I’m gonna lock it up, then.”
“You can leave the key with us, Sheriff, in case he has to get in before you get back,” Eli remarked.
“What do you need a key for, Eli?” Mason replied. “I thought windows was your specialty.”
“You go to hell,” Eli spat.
“You’d best watch what you say,” Mason responded. “You’re talkin’ like a man that don’t want supper.” As a precaution, he took the key to the cells with him, then closed the cell room door and locked the office when he went out. Outside, he checked with Payne to tell him he would take a little look around town after returning the dishes to the dining room before he came back.
As a manner of habit, Sheriff Mason glanced at the weapons table as he walked into the dining room. The fancy gun belt with a Colt revolver in the holster caught his attention enough so that he paused to look around the room looking for a fit. The only likely candidate was a lone diner seated at a side table, who was attired in an outfit that seemed to go with the gun belt.
“Sheriff Mason,” he heard Rachael call his name. “You didn’t have to bring those back. I would have sent for them.”
“No trouble,” Mason replied and walked into the kitchen with her. “It was mighty good, just like always,” he said to Bess, who took the dishes from him. “I even caught my prisoners fightin’ over a biscuit,” he joked. Rachael and Bess both laughed. It was another sign, as far as Rachael was concerned. She and Bess had discussed the topic of Sheriff John Mason and concluded that there was a definite difference in his demeanor since Perley had come back to Bison Gap. “Who’s the slick-lookin’ jasper sittin’ over at the side table?”
The two women looked at each other and shook their heads. It was the same description Possum had used the night before. “That neatly dressed gentleman is Mr. Drew Dawson,” Rachael informed him.
“Is he stayin’ in the hotel?”
“He did last night, but not tonight,” Rachael said. “He just likes to come in to get Bess’ fine cooking.”
“He wears a slick-lookin’ gun belt, too,” Mason said and smiled. “Think I’ll go over and welcome him to Bison Gap. He walked across the room to Drew’s table. “Afternoon,” he said. “The ladies treatin’ you all right?”
Wary when the sheriff walked in and paused by his gun belt, Drew had no option other than to remain in character. “Good afternoon, Sheriff,” he replied. “Yes, sir, they’re treatin’ me like a king. Have a seat and join me.”
“Thanks just the same,” Mason said, “but I’ve already had mine.”
“Well, sit down and have a cup of coffee,” Drew invited. “It’s mighty good coffee.”
“Maybe just a cup,” Mason said, and Drew signaled for Kitty as the sheriff drew a chair back. Watching from the kitchen door, Bess and Rachael exchanged wide-eyed glances. They had never witnessed that by Mason before. They were further amazed when they heard him say, “I’m Sheriff John Mason.”
“Drew Dawson,” he returned. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Those your horses out front?” Mason asked, and when Drew said that indeed they were, Mason commented on the white horse. “That’s an outstandin’ gelding, don’t believe I’ve ever seen one whiter than that one. Before I took this job, I was a ranch foreman for a cattle ranch south of here, so I’ve seen a lot of horses.”
“I get a lot of comments on that horse,” Drew said, “the saddle, too. That horse cost a lot of money. So did the saddle, but I thought at the time I had to buy a saddle that looked just as rich as the horse.” He chuckled and said, “Wish I had that money back, I’d put it on some of this land I’m lookin’ at now.”
“You lookin’ to find some land close to town?”
“Absolutely,” Drew said. “I like the look of this town and as soon as I finish eating, I’m going to go to that store down the street and load those packhorses with enough supplies to last me till I’m done lookin’.”
Mason took another couple of gulps of coffee and got up. “Well, I won’t hold you up. Thanks for the coffee, and I hope you find the land you’re lookin’ for.”
“It was my pleasure, Sheriff,” Drew replied, as Mason headed for the door. Like a piano, he said to himself, pleased with his introduction to the sheriff of the town. It was not a hopeless case, he decided, in spite of Ned’s bungling of it. For now, and maybe for some time to come, he could not let anyone know there was a connection between him and Ned Stark.
Finished with his meal, he left the money for it on the table and sauntered over to the weapons table to retrieve his gun belt. Rachael came out of the kitchen then. Seeing him about to leave, she came over to thank him. “I left the money on the table, if that’s what you’re after,” he joked. “I knew better than to try to get outta here without payin’.”
Rachael laughed. “We weren’t worried. One of us would have tackled you before you got out the door. Was everything satisfactory?”
“I’ll remember that about the tacklin’,” he joked. “Maybe I’ll try it next time. And the meal, I wouldn’t say it was satisfactory.” He waited for her to raise her eyebrows in surprise, then said, “I would say it was excellent.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said with a sweet smile. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“I can promise you that,” he said and took his leave.
“What was all that?” Bess asked Rachael when she returned to the kitchen door.
“What was all what?” Rachael replied.
“All that little chitty-chat at the gun table,” Bess said. “I declare, I thought I saw you make a little curtsy there. You ain’t gettin’ no ideas about that slick talker, are you? And you with two young daughters.”
“Bess Curry! Bite your tongue! I just think it’s a nice change to see pleasant, polite customers come into the dining room.” She pretended to be offended. “Chitty-chat, I don’t even know what that means.”
Outside, Drew Dawson climbed aboard the big white horse and led his packhorses a short distance down the street to Wheeler’s General Merchandise, curious to see the mayor of Bison Gap in his natural habitat, behind the counter of a general store. Ralph was in the store and so was his wife, Cora, so Drew cranked up his charm once again. By the time he was finished, he felt he had impressed them both to his satisfaction. As he started down the street toward the creek, he found himself thinking how disappointed he was to find that Ned had not controlled his men to maintain better relations with the town. Drew believed one could milk a town while still on friendly terms. Near the middle of town, he admired the new bank building. First Bank of Texas, he read to himself as he slow-walked his horses by. “That’s where they keep the goin’-away present, Snowball,” he murmured to the gelding. “If we ever find we need to leave Bison Gap in a hurry, we can always stop there for a little spendin’ money.” Yep, he thought, this town has a lot to offer. I only wish I had gotten here sooner, before Ned established himself with the sheriff. It could have been handled much better. There was still time to salvage most of it, he decided. But for the time being, he reminded himself that he was the only member of the gang who could go back and forth to town.