Town Tamers (21 page)

T
he marshal formed a posse, and they thundered down to the grade and searched for tracks. They promptly found some and almost as promptly lost them when the tracks led to a stream. They split and followed the stream in both directions but couldn’t find where the outlaws left it.

In Ordville, word spread like a prairie fire.

When Marshal Pollard and the posse returned, they were pointed at and grinned at.

“Had any biscuits lately?” a man shouted from a saloon doorway.

Not a block later another man called out, “Give our love to the farmer.”

“I don’t much like being laughed at,” Deputy Agar grumbled.

“It’s me they’re laughing at, you jackass,” Marshal Pollard said, “and I like it even less.”

“Someone was playing a prank,” Agar said. “It has to be.”

“They picked the wrong hombre to play it on,” Pollard said.

Pollard visited every saloon in town. He let it be known that he would pay a hundred dollars out of his own pocket for information that led him to the identities of the three stage robbers.

No one came forward. In a few days the townsfolk stopped joking about it. They had something new to gossip about.

Cornice Baker’s daughter, Laura, had hung herself.

The next Friday, Cockeyed Jack was on his usual Denver-to-Ordville run. He was climbing the last steep grade and came to the top and was astounded to see the same three highwaymen. He brought the stage to a stop without being told to and declared, “Not you three again!”

The passengers peered out. None of the men resorted to a firearm, not with what they took to be three rifles trained on them.

The farmer gigged his horse close to the stage and said to Cockeyed Jack as politely as anything, “How do you do?”

“I am plumb surprised that you’re back,” Jack confessed. “We didn’t have any biscuits last time, and we don’t have any now.”

“Do you happen to have any sugar?”

“Sugar?”

“We would be happy as anything if you did. I didn’t buy enough, and we have run out for our coffee.”

“You put on those masks and hold us up for sugar?”

“I would do it for beans if we were out of beans.”

“Don’t this beat all.” Cockeyed Jack shook his head. “You are as loco as anything. The three of you. No, I ain’t got no sugar, and I doubt my passengers do, either.”

The farmer bandit, as Jack liked to think of him, looked at the heads poking out of the stage. “Sugar, anyone?”

“No, sir.”

“Why in hell would anyone bring sugar on a stage?”

“Maybe you ought to visit a general store. They have sugar galore.”

“I’m terribly disappointed,” the farmer bandit said. “The vagaries of life are truly fickle.”

“The what?” Jack said.

“Would you do me another favor?” the farmer bandit asked.

“Not again. What is it this time? Send your love to the marshal like before?”

“No,” the farmer bandit said. And he told them what it was.

One of the male passengers cackled, and a female passenger said, “I never!”

“First it was love and now this,” Cockeyed Jack said. “What is the matter with you?”

“I’d be ever so grateful.” The farmer bandit wagged his rifle. “Off you go. I trust all of you will have the nicest of days.”

“Mister,” Cockeyed Jack said as he raised the reins, “when they passed out brains, you were off in the outhouse.”

“Now, now,” the farmer bandit said. “If it’s stink we’re talking about, let’s stick to the marshal.”

Cockeyed Jack muttered, flicked the reins, and the team broke into motion. The stage gained speed on the flat, and he held them to their top speed for the rest of the distance to town.

Jack didn’t whoop and holler like he did the last time. He brought the stage to a halt in front of the stage office and said to Harvey Spence, who was waiting as usual, “You won’t believe it. Those three did it again.”

“You were held up?”

A couple of kids were rolling a hoop with a stick and overheard. Lickety-split, they ran up the street hollering, “The stage was robbed! The stage was robbed!”

In no time a crowd collected and hurled questions at Cockeyed Jack, but he refused to say a word. He climbed down and was holding the door for the passengers when Marshal Pollard and Deputy Agar arrived.

“Did I hear right?” the marshal asked.

“You did,” Jack said.

“What did they want this time?” Deputy Agar asked with a smirk. “More biscuits?”

“Sugar,” Cockeyed Jack said, and looked at the marshal. “And for me to ask you to do something.”

“Do I want to hear it?” Marshal Pollard.

“No.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Do you give your word that you won’t hit me?”

“You have my word. What the hell is it this time?”

Cockeyed Jack raised his voice so everyone in the crowd would hear him. “The farmer bandit wants you to give Arthur Studevant a kiss.”

Thanks to the guffaws and peals of mirth from the good citizens of Ordville, only Cockeyed Jack and Deputy Agar heard Marshal Pollard reply.

“I will by-God kill them.”

T
he whites called it Shoshone Mountain. A family of sheep-eater Shoshones once lived on it. The sheep weren’t the kind whites raised. They were mountain sheep. It took considerable skill to stalk the high crags and bring a mountain sheep down with an arrow.

Then the whites came along and hunters picked the sheep off from a distance with rifles, and the Shoshones found it increasingly harder to fill their hungry stomachs.

So they left.

In a meadow high on a south slope, nestled at the base of a bluff where they were out of the wind, the three town tamers had made camp.

A fire crackled, and coffee was on to brew.

Byron touched the top of the pot and jerked his finger back. “It will be ready soon,” he announced.

Across the fire, seated cross-legged, Noona grinned and said, “I thought that business about the sugar was a nice touch.”

“Thank you.”

Asa finished picketing the horses and came over with his Winchester shotgun cradled in the crook of an elbow. “Tell me again how this is smart.”

“It’s smart in so many ways, I’m amazed at my own brilliance,” Byron said.

“The love and the kiss parts don’t sit well with me,” Asa said. “It’s not dignified.”

“You wanted them to be laughingstocks,” Byron reminded him.

“From what Cornice told me,” Noona said, “everyone is laughing at that no-good law dog and at Studevant behind their backs. And some laugh to their faces.”

Byron chuckled. “You hear that, Pa?” he asked without the hillbilly twang. “You wanted to get everyone’s attention. Well, we have. You saw the newspaper that Mrs. Baker gave sis. We were the talk of the town the first time. This time we’re the talk of the territory.”

Asa grunted.

“We have drawn attention to the cancers, as you call them. Exactly as you asked me to.”

Asa grunted.

“You didn’t want to stir up the townsfolk by actually robbing the stages and having posses out combing the countryside, and here we sit, with no posses to worry about.”

Noona laughed. “They don’t take us serious, is why. If we’d stolen their money and valuables, they’d be fit to lynch us.”

“What I’d like to know,” Byron said, “is how much more of this we have to do before we bed those cancers down, permanent?”

“Listen to you,” Asa said. “Since when did you become bloodthirsty?”

“Since I was beaten within an inch of my life,” Byron said.

“Paitence, son,” Asa said. “As I keep having to remind you, we have to do this so that when we get to the bedding down, no one puts the blame on us.”

“And no one
knows
it was us,” Noona amended.

“How many more stages do we pretend to rob, then?” Byron asked.

“We’re done with stages,” Asa said. “They were to get jaws wagging.”

“It’s too bad we can’t tame all our towns this way,” Noona said. “This is fun.”

“I’m happy you’re amused, daughter. But never forget that the opposition is taking this serious.”

“Don’t worry, Pa,” Noona said. “I’m fond of breathing.”

E
veryone knew the carriage on sight. The grandest in Ordville, Arthur Studevant had imported it from Paris, France. Gossip had it that it was a popular model with the European rich.

The driver wore a purple uniform complete with a high hat. He sat straight and proud and handled the six horses in their fine livery with expert ease.

Marshal Pollard happened to be at his desk thumbing through circulars when the carriage came to a halt outside his office. He looked out the window and said, “Oh, hell.”

The driver scrambled down to lower the step and opened the door and even bowed slightly in the manner of a court retainer.

Arthur Studevant had a stately air about him. His slicked black hair with gray at the temples, his immaculate clothes tailored in the European style, his polished shoes and his cane with its gold knob set him apart from common humanity. He alighted and took a couple of steps and stopped so that the two men who emerged after him could flank him on either side.

Deputy Agar had gone to the window when the marshal swore, and he remarked, “His bodyguards are with him.”

“When aren’t they?” Pollard said.

“They’re spooky, those two.”

Rumor had it the bodyguards were cousins. They certainly looked enough alike. Both were tall and broad-shouldered and had a pantherish aspect when they moved. Both had mustaches and gray eyes, which was fitting since they both always dressed in gray. Gray short-brimmed hats. Gray suits. Gray slickers on occasion. Even gray gun belts and gray holsters. Two holsters apiece, for the cousins were a rarity. Both were two-gun men. They were equally proficient with either hand.

People liked to bestow nicknames, so it wasn’t unusual that the bodyguards had acquired a nickname of their own.

They were called the Gray Ghosts.

Arthur Studevant entered the jail and gave Deputy Agar a look that made Agar swallow.

The Gray Ghosts followed, each moving as silently as their namesakes. Their boots were made of soft leather with soft soles, and they never wore spurs. They made no more sound than Apaches.

Studevant had a folded newspaper under his arm. Opening it, he placed it on the marshal’s desk and said, “Where’s my kiss?” He wasn’t smiling. His blue eyes were ice and his jaw was granite.

Pollard stared at the
Ordville Gazette
in disgust. “I asked Fiske not to print that, but he said it was too newsworthy to pass up.”

“I’ll have a talk with our so-called journalist,” Arthur Studevant declared, and his tone implied Fiske wouldn’t like what he said. Leaning on his cane, Studevant regarded Pollard with his piercing blue eyes. “I was out of town when the first incident occurred. I heard about it, naturally, since it was all anyone was talking about when I returned.”

“Those damned outlaws,” the marshal said.

“I’m beginning to worry about you, Abel,” Studevant said.

Pollard sat up. “What for? I’ve always been ready and willing to do anything you want me to.”

“That’s not the issue here,” Studevant said. “The issue is outlaws who aren’t outlaws.”

“How’s that again?”

Studevant sat on the edge of the desk and rested the cane with the gold knob across his shoulder. “Yes, I definitely have need to be concerned. I took you for sharper.”

“I’m as sharp as the next hombre,” Pollard angrily replied.

“Then explain why you didn’t come see me after the first incident.”

Flushing, Pollard spat, “Because it was damned embarrassing, that’s why. Folks were laughing at me behind my back. That farmer outlaw sending his love. He made a fool of me.”

“There is no farmer outlaw. There are no outlaws, period.”

“How can you say that? The driver and the passengers saw the highwaymen with their own eyes.”

Studevant bent down so they were almost face-to-face. “
Outlaws
don’t send their love to marshals.
Outlaws
don’t ask marshals to give a town’s leading citizen a kiss.” He paused, and his voice vibrated with suppressed fury. “
Outlaws
don’t stop a stage to hold it up and then not take anything.”

Deputy Agar chimed in with, “They were fixing to rob it. The first time they wanted biscuits and the second time it was sugar.”

Arthur Studevant said without looking at him, “If you open your mouth again, Deputy, I’ll have Dray and Cray take you into a cell and pistol-whip you until you spit out teeth.”

Agar glanced at the Gray Ghosts, and shivered.

“Now, then,” Studevant said to Pollard, “I admit that when I heard about the first incident, I, too, assumed it was someone out to humiliate you. But this latest”—he tapped the newspaper—“is intended to humiliate both of us.”

“Why these jackasses are going to so much trouble to annoy us has me stumped.”

“Are you puzzled?” Studevant asked.

“I am.”

“Are you confused?”

“I reckon I’m that, too.”

“Are you mystified?”

“I’m not rightly sure what that means, but if it has anything to do with puzzled and confused, I am.”

Arthur Studevant stood and moved to the window and stared out. “In Wyoming you showed great promise, Abel. It’s why I sent for you when I needed someone to carry out my wishes here in Ordville.”

“I’m obliged,” Pollard said.

“You should be. But if you desire to go on serving me, you mustn’t be as stupid as everyone else.”

“Sorry?”

“There is more going on here than meets our eyes. Whoever these men are, they’re up to something. Their purpose isn’t clear yet. But what to do about it is.”

“I’m listening,” Pollard said.

“Twice now they’ve stopped the stage from Denver at the last grade. It’s likely, if not certain, that they’ll stop it a third time. You must have men lying in wait for them.”

“But the stage comes four times a week, and we don’t know which day they’ll pick.”

Studevant turned. “So send out deputies each and every time until these outlaws who aren’t outlaws show up.”

“I suppose I could,” Pollard said.

“No, you
will
. And once you have them behind bars, you’re to send for me and I’ll question them personally. And Abel?”

“Mr. Studevant?”

“I don’t like having to solve your problems for you. Especially a problem as simple as this. Use your head as well as your revolver and your fists. Prove to me that my trust in you is justified, or I’ll find someone else to wear that badge.”

“Don’t you worry,” Pollard said. “I’ll catch those three if it’s the last thing I do.”