Chapter 31

Cal took his bedroll and bedded down in the hayloft, just inside the front door that over looked the dim lit main street.

Tom bedded down in the stall with his horse, with hay piled up under his bedroll, almost in a sitting position against the back wall. Sometime during the night, two men slipped in the back door of the livery stable and stood in the dark as they tried to get their bearings. Tom jerked wide awake when his big horse nudged him. His Colt in his hand, he slipped from his bedroll and eased to the front of the stall.

A dim light from the main street shown in the open front door of the livery. Tom looked to the back just in time to see the crouched shadow of a man move across the open doorway at the back of the barn. The hair on his neck burred up and his senses became those of the hunter, instead of the hunted. He stood for a minute until his eyes adjusted to the darkened barn. Staying close to the main wall of the passageway, he eased along until he was in the next stall over, then waiting another few minutes, he slipped to the next stall.

Tom crouched low in the doorway of the empty stall, his knife in his right hand, his Colt now in his holster. He saw the shadow of one man start across the open doorway of the stall, he could make out the shape of a gun in his hand. Tom swung his left fist from down low, upward from his crouched position to hit the man in his stomach just under his ribs. He slumped forward into Tom’s arms, his only sound an ‘Ungh’ as the air was knocked from his lungs.

Tom worked quickly and pulled a rawhide lace from his pouch, tying the man’s hands behind him with his feet pulled up and tied to his hands. He pulled the bound up limp body deeper into the empty stall and slipped back to the doorway just in time to see another shadow move out the back door.

He slipped quietly over to the door and out along the back wall to the corner of the barn. Leaning over to get a look down that side the barn, he saw the form of a man leaned back against the barn. The man was rolling a smoke in the dim light and just as he struck the match on the barn wall, he felt the knife at his throat. The man coughed and spit the smoke fixin’s through his open lips as he felt the knife draw blood.

“Don’t move and you won’t die just yet, mister,” Tom said as he slipped the man’s gun from his holster and stuck it inside the waist of his buckskins.

The man pushed hard back against the barn wall in an effort to keep the knife from opening his throat and spilling his life down the front of his body.

“How many?” Tom leaned in and whispered close to the man’s face.

“Just me’n Cutt, and I don’t know where he is,” the man whispered, which was all he could muster.

Tom let the knife slide across the man’s throat, but held it back from killing him.

“Lie to me, you’ll die here in the dark.”

“Just me’n Cutt is all, you’re that Injun deputy ain’tcha? I didn’t want no part of this, I swear. Mac made me come with Cutt to cover his back while he got the drop on you ‘n the other deputy. He told Mac he was an Injun fighter and could take any Injun.”

Tom had eased the pressure off the knife some, but still held it to the man’s throat, the blood was now running down the long blade onto the handle.

“Turn and walk back into the barn real slow and just remember, I’ll have this knife at your back.”

Tom walked the man slowly back inside the barn, then to the stall where his partner was tied up. Tom kicked the man lying on the dirt floor with his foot and heard him grunt.

“Grab his shirt and drag him out the front door of the barn.”

The man reached down and felt around until he could tell how Cutt was laying in the dirt and straw, then he got a hand full of shirt at the scruff of his neck and dragged him out of the stall and out the front door. There wasn’t much light here in the darkened street, but there was more than it had been in the barn.

“Lay down behind him with your hands next to his,” Tom told him.

When he tied the man’s hands with rawhide, he tied the two mens’ hands together then pulled his feet up to tie in the tangle of hands and feet.

“I’m gonna be right over there just inside that doorway, if I see either of you so much as look like you are trying to get loose, I’m gonna walk over here and cut both your throats, you hear me plain?”

Without even waiting for an answer, Tom walked back to the stall where his horse was and went to sleep in his bedroll. When the first gray light of pre-dawn lit the eastern sky, Tom was in the loft, sitting off to one side of the door near where Cal slept, his Henry rifle lay across his legs. Tom looked down and could now make out the shape of the two men tied back to back, their hands and feet pulled tight behind them.

Mooney the blacksmith, walked out of the small lean-to on the side of the livery stable, stretched his arms over his head and yawned loudly. Then he reached his hands down and through his suspenders hanging at his waist and slipped them up on his shoulders. Using both hands while his arms were raised, he scratched his head and ran his rough fingers through his long oily hair in an effort to pull it back over his head and make it lay down. He stretched and yawned once more before he caught sight of the two men lying in the dirt by the front door, hog tied back to back.

He stood for a long time and looked at the men, he noticed the blood on the shirt of the man facing him, then saw that he had bled from his throat, but wasn’t dead. The blacksmith took a few steps out into the street, then looked back at his livery stable as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes scanned all across the front, stopping for a long time to look through the open front door. He looked up into the opening of loft door, but darkness filled the loft. He looked all over the dim lit street, back across the front of the barn. Then he glanced back up at the loft door to see the tall Injun deputy sitting there looking down at him.

He jumped as if he had seen a ghost, his breath stuck in his knotted up throat and his heart pounded like his big hammer on an anvil, as it struggled to get back in beating rhythm. Tom stood and walked over to kick Cal’s foot with his moccasin, then he turned to the wooden ladder and climbed down to the dirt floor of the barn. Cal came up out of his bedroll with both hands clutching the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. He pulled his boots on and threw his bedroll down to the dirt floor.

He climbed down the wooden ladder and walked out to where Tom and the blacksmith were standing over the two men all hogtied on the ground.

“Tom, I take it these two came calling last night?”

“Yep.”

“What you aim to do with’em?”

“Leave’em here while we get some warm breakfast I reckon. I figure it’ll be a while before anybody from the MDR comes lookin for’em.”

“Blacksmith, you want to join us for some breakfast, I figure we owe you something for all the times we’ve slept in your stable.”

“Injun, I reckon I’ll take you up on that offer if yer sure you don’t want me to stand watch over these two.”

“They won’t need watchin over,” Tom said as he turned to walk over where the two men lay and poked them with his rifle barrel.

“Both of you better be laying in the same tracks you’re in now when I get back, or I’ll come hunt you down and finish the job on your throat, you hear me plain? If somebody offers to cut you loose, you better not let’em if you want to live,” Tom said in a low easy voice.

“Let’s eat,” Tom said as he turned and walked toward the boarding house, his Henry resting in his arms Cal walked beside him with his scattergun in the crook of his arm. Mooney, the blacksmith walked on the other side of Tom, glancing up at the tall Injun and grinning, then back at the two men on the ground and shakin his head.

Sheriff Red Neely came in the dining hall soon after the three had sat down.

“Mornin Tom, Cal, Mooney. Y’all are up early did you sleep OK?”

“Mornin Sheriff, I rested well most of the night I reckon,” Tom answered.

Cal looked at his friend and grinned, then he looked over at Mooney the blacksmith and they both grinned.

Seeing this Sheriff Neely knew something was up with them.

“Most of the night, you say. Does that mean you didn’t sleep well all night?”

“Sheriff, Tom just ain’t one to go blurtin out a story for nothin. We had a couple of callers come to the stable sometime last night. I slept clean through it all, but they’re layin hogtied back to back in front of Mooney’s livery barn right now,” Cal told him.

“MDR riders I reckon then?”

“Yep, one was in the crew that come ridin up in a cloud of dust at your office that morning,” Tom said.

“So, they thought they could take you in the dark, did they?”

“I reckon they did Sheriff.”

“Who’s watchin over them while you three are eatin breakfast?”

“They won’t go anywhere Sheriff.”

Sheriff Red Neely looked at Tom, then at Cal and Mooney. Tom wasn’t smilin, but Cal and Mooney were, he could tell there was no call to worry none.

The four men ate their breakfast in silence, each reflecting on the thoughts that mattered to them the most.

Three men walked in with their hats in their hands as if to eat, then whirled around in mid stride and walked back out the front door.

The three lawmen and the blacksmith finished their breakfast and Tom paid the due bill for all four.

The four men walked out and then toward the livery stable, four abreast. Mooney was walking between Sheriff Neely and Cal and kept glancing from one to the other as they walked. He would look across the deserted dirt street at the store fronts then up in front of them as they walked, he would turn to look over his shoulder to the back of them.

No one was in sight.

When they came to the livery stable, the two men lay unmoving where they had been left. Tom walked over to them and loosened the rawhide strips that tied their feet to their hands, then he nudged the mens’ legs and told them to get to their knees and stand up slow like.

Tom was wrapping the rawhide strips around his fingers and slipped the roll back into his small leather pouch tied at his waist. He glanced across the street and saw the three MDR riders that had walked into the hotel dining room a while ago. They were watchin as Tom untied the men and told them to get up.

Mooney walked over to Tom.

“Injun thanks for the grub and the little excitement here at my place. I’ll be seein you and Cal when y’all come back this way.”

“Thanks for watchin over our horses Mooney, that means a bunch to me.”

Sheriff Neely and Cal each had a man by the arm as they steadied them for the walk down to the Sheriff’s office.

Tom walked across the street to the other three MDR riders.

“You fellers sure changed your mind about eating breakfast awhile ago, did you lose your hunger?”

“Injun, we ain’t got no fuss with you and the law, we just ride for the brand is all,” the older man of the three said.

“Mister, I don’t even know any of your names, or anything about you, but I’m gonna give you some real important things to ponder on and you best heed my words, you hear me plain?”

“We hear you deputy,” All three answered.

“There’s gonna be some folks get hurt and more’n likely there’s gonna be some folks get killed if you MDR riders keep coming up on the bad side of me. The way I see this mess with the MDR is, there’s some rustlin goin on and some of you’ve been runnin brands on the cattle in the counties around here. Right now, I don’t know who all is riding on the bad side and who’s not, you say you ride for the brand and to most men that means doing whatever you’re told, is that the way it is?”

“Deputy, as of right now, I’m no longer riding for any brand. I ain’t gonna get killed or go behind bars riding for no man. I’m outta here if you’ll let me go.”

“You all can go if you’re a mind to, but I’ll tell you this, if I see you riding for any brand in the state of Kansas again, I’ll figure you’ve changed your mind, do you hear me plain on that?”

All three of the men agreed that they would leave Kansas this day, all they owned was their horse and saddle anyway.

“Stop down at the Sheriff’s office and if those two agree with you, they can go too. If they don’t then I reckon they’ll have to face what comes next.”

When they all made it down to the Sheriff’s office, Sheriff Neely had took a bandana and tied it around the man’s throat to stop the bleeding after he cleaned it enough to see that is was just a skin cut.

“Sheriff, I told these men they could ride if they left Kansas right now and if these two want to leave now, they can too. If not then I reckon we’ll see them hang for cattle rustling,” Tom said as he walked in with the other three MDR riders.

The man Tom had used his knife on looked up at Tom.

“I’m gone then deputy, I’m not gonna die working for that bunch out there. How bout you Cutt, you gonna stay and face a rope, or you gonna ride with the rest of us on out of Kansas?”

“I’m outta here too, I’ve had enough of living like this. I want to ride out to Colorado and find me a decent job for a change.”

“I suggest you five men cut a trail west then as fast as you can. If you ride hard for the rest of the day, you’ll be clean out of Rooks County and even out of Graham County by dark if you’re a mind to. You steer clear of Hill City and stay away from people along the way.

“By dark day after tomorrow, you should be in Colorado. If any of you ever come back this way again, you better come by and tell me your intentions for bein here, if not I’ll figure you’re up to no good,” Sheriff Neely told the five men as they looked at him.

The five former MDR riders gathered up their horses and headed out of town kickin up dust as they left.

“Tom, you reckon they’ll keep headin west like they said, or you reckon they’ll turn back after a ways and head back to the MDR?” Sheriff Neely asked.

“Sheriff, I got a good feeling about that bunch, I’d be hard put to say they’d be in Kansas three days from now, how’s your feelin on it Cal?”

“Tom you know me, I always try to see the good in a man. I’m pulling for that bunch to set their lives straight after bein given a chance like this.”

“Sheriff, Cal and I’ve got some more talkin to do with you about what we saw yesterday after leaving the Tanner spread. There was another cut fence and more cattle that were moved over to a scope of woods where they were runnin the brands and branding the ones with a new brand. You ever seen or heard tell of the Double Box L?”

“That’s not a brand I’m familiar with Tom, where’d you come up with that one?”

“That’s the brand the rustlers are stickin on the cattle they’re takin out of the herds in the area. I watched myself as they branded some of the Triple T cattle with the brand, then ran the brand over the top of the Triple T brand on some more.”

“What else have you got Tom, I know you and that’s not the meat of the story yet.”

“Well, I was hunkered down in some underbrush not far from where the branding was takin place and Mac Willamacher rode in with a rider from the Triple T, named Frank. He was the line rider on patrol the night the cattle were taken from the west pasture on the Triple T. I overheard them talkin as they rode by not more’n a few feet from me, they were plannin on hittin’ the MDR herd last night and movin all the cattle out of Osborne and Rooks county over into Graham County late today and tonight. From what I saw, they have about five or six or men and a couple of young boys. If you throw in Willamacher and a rider or two from the big ranches around here, you got maybe ten, twelve men at the most. I figure less than ten myself, they don’t want a bunch of riders talkin big talk around here.

“You got any thoughts on where we may be able to get the odds in our favor when we ride in on them?” Sheriff Neely asked.

“Well, I been thinkin about that low water crossing near where Cal and I ran up on the MDR riders havin their way with them young girls.

“It’s not far from the county line and they’ll be wantin to make good time when it gets closer to dark. I figure they’ll be on the main road and will have to slow down some to get the cattle across. The cattle are gonna want to get a drink from the creek there too, so we could have a couple of men in the corn fields on the west side and a couple on the east side.”

“Sounds like you got a good plan Tom, my deputies will come on duty at five today, I’ll be waiting here and we’ll ride on out to meet you and Cal.”

Tom and Cal walked over to Mooney’s Livery and saddled up.

“You fellers figurin on ridin on out early today?” Mooney asked.

“Yep, we gotta be down in Hays before week’s end and we’re gonna head on out,” Tom told him.

They rode south out of town for nearly three miles, then cut back north and west for close to an hour before turning due north on an line that led them to the west trail between Stockton and Hill City. Neither of them spoke as they rode, each lost in their own thoughts. The two young men had ridden many miles and many days side by side now since meeting up back in Wichita. Most times there wasn’t any need for a lot of talk, they seemed to know what the other was thinking.

Cal was jittery inside, but then he was always jittery when he knew there was trouble brewing and boiling somewhere ahead. He had taken a piece of leather and laced it to make a scabbard for his scatter-gun. He had laced it up with one end larger than the other, then tied it in front of and below his saddle horn with the big end on his right. He had left a loop of leather lace long enough to slip over the long Jackrabbit ears of the hammers to keep it from jostling out of the scabbard. He felt comfortable knowing it was loaded and easy to pull out quickly.

Mooney, the blacksmith had sawed the wooden stock off just past the hand grip. He used his rasps to smooth the cut and round it into a fat pistol grip. The gun was now shortened to a mere thirty inches from muzzle to grip, with the barrels ending just at the end of the wooden forearm.

When the two deputies came to the main trail, the first thing Tom looked for was the tracks of the five MDR riders that had left Stockton earlier in the day. He pointed out to Cal the marks left by the five horses as they rode hard, kicking dirt back over the tracks as they raced west to the Graham County Line.

“Looks like they meant what they said about gettin’ clear out of Kansas,” Cal said as he glanced over at Tom.

“Yep.”

They rode on west until they could see the tree line where the creek crossed the trail at the low water crossing.

“Cal, before Sheriff Neely and his deputies get here, you go to the west side of the creek and get hid back in the tall corn on the north side of the trail. I’ll send one of the deputies over and tell him to get on the south side. We don’t know who all is gonna be here and we don’t know what all to expect, so keep your eyes open for anything that don’t look right.”

“Are you sayin don’t even let the deputy see me?”

“Yep, until we get a handle on what’s gonna come down the trail, we’ll just keep part of this ambush to ourselves.”

“Gotcha, Tom.”

Tom watched as Cal rode into the low water crossing, then off to the side of the trail on the north side and along the shallow waters of the creek a ways before riding out and into the corn field where he slipped from the saddle. Soon Cal and his horse were hidden in the tall corn stalks. Tom rode back east on the trail until he saw Sheriff Neely and his two deputies riding toward him.

“Tom, you got it planned out how you want to handle this little ambush?”

“Sheriff, if you’ll send one of your deputies to the other side of the low water crossing and get him hid out in the corn on the south side of the trail, then you and your other deputy get set on either side of the trail this side of the crossing, I think we’ll have it all set up.

“Cal went on west a ways to cover the trail in case one of them gets away from us.”

“I’m gonna ride back east a ways and set up in the corn to make sure no one gets around us that way.”

Without saying anything else, Tom rode back east about a quarter of a mile before he turned his horse into the cornfield on the south side of the trail. He looked back to see Sheriff Neely and his deputy split off on either side of the trail and into the tall corn. Tom slipped from his saddle and walked back west toward the creek with his big horse walking behind him. About halfway back he stopped and patted his horse on his neck and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.