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  Leach hesitated for a moment before answering, “Call Johnny in here. Snake can hold the horses.”

  Roach shrugged and did as he was instructed. Johnny walked in the door, eyes wide with excitement as he witnessed the scene inside the bank. Gazing from the sacks of money to the bodies of the women—one stone still, the other showing signs of motion—to the frightened banker cowering against the teller’s cage, he felt a sense of surrealism. It was like a scene from a play, not real somehow. His momentary paralysis was interrupted by Leach’s simple command.

  “Shoot him,” he said, nodding his head toward Barnett. Johnny hesitated, not sure he had heard right. “Shoot him,” Leach repeated, this time more emphatically. “He’s seen faces and heard names. Dead men make poor witnesses. Shoot him.”

  Johnny suddenly felt numb throughout his entire body. Knowing that both Leach and Roach were watching his reactions closely, he tried to keep his emotions concealed. But he knew without doubt that he was being given no choice in the matter, and the consequences were certain to be fatal if he showed a reluctance to kill. He drew his pistol and pointed it at the terrified banker. The sudden discharge of the forty-five revolver surprised him. In his nervousness, he had not realized that he was slowly squeezing his trigger finger. Barnett jerked violently, then slumped forward, killed instantly by the bullet in his brain, his chin resting on his chest. Johnny stood motionless, staring at the small hole in Barnett’s temple. In the two years that he had worked for Winston Moffett as a deputy, he had never shot at anyone. In fact, the only man he had seen with a gunshot wound, before the scene at Thompson’s, was a drunken cowhand who had accidentally shot himself. The feeling of numbness was rapidly being replaced by one of slight nausea, and he quickly sought to control it by blustering, “What about her?”

  Leach and Roach turned to consider Polly Price, who now seemed to sink back into a dazed stupor, a result of the added trauma of seeing her employer wantonly shot in the head. Leach spent but a moment to decide. “Hell, she’s gone loco. Leave her.” There was an urgency about their situation now that a shot had been fired. “We’ve got to get the hell outta here. That shot’ll bring the whole damn town down here.” That thought replaced all others for the moment, and the three outlaws quickly grabbed the sacks of money and filed out the door.

  Though now late in the morning, there were only two people in the dusty street, and they were standing outside the saloon across the street. Casting curious glances at the stoic half-breed holding the horses, the two men prudently moved their conversation farther away toward the corner of the building when their glances were met with Snake’s menacing leer. At the sound of the gunshot, both men jerked their heads around in surprise, then realized what was happening when the outlaws emerged from the bank. With no further hesitation, they disappeared around the corner of the saloon.

  Chapter 3

  “Gawdammit, not in my town!” Jed Ramey roared, his eyes flashing angry sparks as he surveyed the scene at the bank. “Nobody walks into my town, robs the bank, and murders two of my citizens.” He whipped around to the traumatized girl now being administered to by the town doctor. “Who was it, Polly? Have you seen ’em before?”

  Still shaking violently, Polly was in no condition to testify. The only witness to the two brutal murders, she had trouble speaking coherently about what had taken place there. “Ethel,” she muttered, “he just killed her with his bare hands.”

  “Who, Polly?” Jed pressed. “Who killed Ethel?”

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “He just killed her with his bare hands.”

  Ramey continued to press in spite of Doc Peters’ insistence that the young woman needed rest before the marshal questioned her further. “How many were there?” He would not relent until he got some useful information from her. The daring robbery and murders were a direct assault upon his reputation as a lawman, a personal insult to his pride. He took the heinous crime as an attack upon him personally. At the moment, he cared less about Polly Price’s mental state than the fact that the outlaws were getting away. At this point, he didn’t know how many were in the band that had hit the bank, any description of the outlaws, or which way they would likely be heading. His anger was growing by the second. If he thought he could get away with it, he was tempted to force the shaken young woman to remember. It was all he could do to wait her out a few minutes longer until she finally began to take control of her emotions.

  Gradually, she was able to tell him there were at least four men involved. She could not be sure how many were outside the bank. Her description of the outlaws inside the bank was sketchy at best, with the exception of the man who strangled Ethel. His features would remain to haunt her dreams for days to come. She described him to the U.S. deputy marshal as accurately as she could, but the picture in her mind was impossible to convey. The vivid image of the snarling savage was seared into her brain. Ramey was about to question her further when his deputy, Lem Deacon, came in from the street.

  “Pete Crowder and Jake Spooner seen ’em when they come outta the bank,” he said. “There was four of ’em, all right—three inside the bank, like Polly said, and one holdin’ the horses outside.”

  Two of the town’s drunks, Ramey thought, waiting for the saloon to open. “Are they sober enough to know what they saw?”

  “They’re sober,” Lem answered.

  “All right,” Ramey declared. “We’re wastin’ time.” He took one last look at the shaken girl. Feeling he should say something, he mumbled, “Much obliged, Polly. Doc here will take care of you.” To Lem he said, “Four of ’em, huh? We’d best round up a half dozen men and go after ’em.” Ramey hoped for six quick volunteers to put the odds in his favor, but he knew two men whom he wanted for sure. As they walked out the door, he instructed Lem, “Hustle down to the livery stable and tell Bates I need him on this one. Then go by the blacksmith shop and fetch Alvarez. And anyone else that’s got a horse,” he called after his deputy, who was already on his way. When Ramey turned to go to his horse, he was confronted by Pete and Jake.

  “We seen ’em, Jed,” Jake blurted, glancing at his friend for confirmation. “They was toting sacks of money. Wasn’t they, Pete? Four of ’em—they jumped on their horses and hightailed it past the hotel.”

  Ramey studied the two town drunks for a moment before deciding he could rely on their testimony. “Toward the river?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Pete replied. “They was headed straight south, past the hotel.”

  Ramey was mildly surprised to hear this. He would have assumed the outlaws would head for the river in an attempt to lose anybody who was tracking them before making straight for the vast lawless frontier simply known as Indian Territory. “You sure about that?” Ramey asked. “You and Jake ain’t had a few snorts this mornin’, have you?” It was hard to tell. The pair reeked of stale whiskey all the time.

  Pete looked genuinely hurt. “Ah, Jed, you know Sweeney don’t open up till almost ten.”

  “All right, then,” Ramey said. “Much obliged. You tell Sweeney to give you one drink apiece and put it on my bill.”

  This lit up both faces. “Why, thanks, Jed,” Jake beamed. “That’s mighty sportin’ of you.” His face turned dead serious then. “You know I’d ride with you, but my back’s been kinda stove up lately.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Ramey replied as he stepped up in the saddle. Time was getting away from him, and it would take more time to get a posse under way. “You and Pete done a good job.” He backed his horse away from the rail and turned its head toward the other end of the street, thinking he wouldn’t want those two on a posse if they were the only volunteers.

  Within minutes after Ramey reached the marshal’s office, Alvarez showed up. Bates appeared shortly after. Ramey knew he could count on those two. Both men had ridden with him on every posse he had assembled since being appointed deputy marshal. Rough, no-nonsense men, they didn’t scare easily, even with prospects of facing desperate outlaws. There was no be
tter tracker around than Alvarez. The burly blacksmith knew horses and could tell you everything about a particular horse but the color, just by looking at its tracks.

  “How many days, you reckon?” Alvarez wanted to know as soon as he dismounted. “I brought grub for three days.”

  “That oughta be enough,” Ramey replied, then turned to greet Bates. “Figurin’ on about three days,” he advised Bates.

  Bates nodded. “Lem said they killed Barnett and Ethel Bowden. Is that a fact?”

  “Yeah,” Ramey replied. “And left Polly scared half outta her mind. I don’t know why they didn’t kill her, too. Figured she’d gone crazy, I reckon.”

  “That’s a sorry piece of work,” Bates said, shaking his head thoughtfully. “We need to hang them bastards proper. When are we gonna get started? I reckon they headed for Indian Territory.”

  “Accordin’ to what Jake and Pete said, they didn’t head for Injun country right off—rode out to the south of town. Lem’s rounding up a couple more men. Then we’ll get outta here as soon as everybody’s ready to ride.”

  It was close to noon before a posse of Ramey, his deputy, and four volunteers assembled before the marshal’s office to receive their instructions. In addition to Bates and Alvarez, Lem had found Eldridge Thornton, a carpenter, and Franklin Morris, Wilson Barnett’s cousin who ran the general store.

  When they rode out the south road, there were too many tracks to be able to distinguish between the everyday traffic and the trail left by the four outlaws. For that reason, Alvarez and Ramey scouted the western side of the road, searching for the place where the outlaws cut back toward the river. Lem and the others scouted the other side of the road, just in case Ramey’s guess was wrong. It was a foregone conclusion in everybody’s mind that the outlaws would head for Indian country, a territory that had become home to robbers, murderers, rapists, and every other fugitive from justice. The question was where they had cut off the wagon track.

  About four miles south of town, Alvarez signaled with a wave of his hand. “Here they are,” he stated when Ramey joined him. “Plain as day. They didn’t make no effort to hide ’em.”

  “I ain’t never run into no outlaw yet with the brains God give a grasshopper,” Ramey stated dryly. “I didn’t expect these four would be any brighter.”

  They waited for the others to catch up, then followed the tracks of the four horses, which led west and north again, toward a grove of trees, apparently heading back in a general direction that would strike the river. Riding into the trees, the posse discovered a small stream and, from the tracks around it, decided the outlaws had paused there to water their horses. Pushing on, they came to a barbed-wire fence bordering the edge of the trees with a large expanse of grassland beyond.

  “Everett Sloan’s place,” Bates observed, looking out across the rolling pasture. Small groups of cattle, scattered about the grassy hills, paused in their grazing to stare at the six riders.

  “Ain’t too hard to trail ’em, is it?” Alvarez commented dryly when Ramey rode up to where the blacksmith was gazing down at a section of wire lying flat on the ground. Obviously having no wire cutters, the outlaws had simply roped a couple of fence posts and pulled them out of the ground. Alvarez’s simple statement would prove to be wrong, for as soon as the posse crossed over the wire, the tracks they followed split off in four different directions, scattering across the grass.

  “Dammit to hell,” Ramey cursed, knowing he might have underestimated the four. The grass, already thick from the heavy spring rains, made tracking difficult, especially when hoofprints were mixed with those of the cattle. With no other choice that he could see, Ramey split the posse up to try to follow individual sets of tracks. After an hour of what amounted to nothing more than time spent riding around in circles, he called in his posse. “I reckon they bamboozled us all right. Might as well ride on down to the river. Maybe we can pick up their trail on the other side.” Frustrated, the marshal was becoming more and more irritable. He didn’t cotton to being outsmarted by outlaws. He kicked his horse hard and started toward the trees that bordered the river.

  They found that their luck was no better on the other side of the river. Scouring the riverbank up- and downstream, they found no tracks. “Now how the hell can four horses ford a river and not leave one set of tracks coming out on the bank?” Thornton expressed the disbelief everyone felt.

  Thoroughly irritated, Ramey replied, “They can’t. They either swum their horses downriver, or up-, or they doubled back and came out on the same side they went in. These boys are goin’ to a heap of trouble to hide their trail, instead of just hightailing it to Injun Territory.” He looked over toward the sun, now lying low on the hills. “We’ve wasted the afternoon riding up and down this riverbank. I expect we night as well make camp here and figure on searching both sides of the river again in the mornin’.”

  * * *

  Morning brought a steady drizzle that further dampened the spirits of the small posse. “This ain’t gonna make it any easier,” complained Thornton, the only member of the group who had neglected to bring a slicker. He pulled his hat down low on his forehead and draped his blanket over his shoulders as he fanned a fire into life.

  Ramey had no sympathy for him. Anybody ought to have enough sense to bring a slicker on a posse, he thought. Now the damn fool is going to have a wet blanket, too.

  After a quick breakfast of bacon and coffee, the posse began their search once more. As each hour passed, with no positive results, Ramey became more and more frustrated. It was becoming painfully clear that they had no earthly idea which way the outlaws headed, and the thought of being outsmarted riled Ramey to the point of almost becoming livid. It was Morris who first expressed what the entire posse was thinking.

  “Hell, we might as well admit it. They whipped us. We might as well head on back.”

  The others looked at him, somewhat surprised that he would be the first to admit defeat, since he was a cousin of the murdered banker.

  “I reckon Morris is right, Ramey,” Bates said. “There ain’t no use in ridin’ around in circles.”

  Ramey was not a man to take defeat gracefully, especially in the face of such an openly brazen crime. Four outlaws had ridden into his town, robbed and murdered, and were getting away free as a flock of vultures. Though maintaining a stone-cold exterior, Ramey was fuming inside. If they didn’t find the four, it would be the first violent crime to go unpunished since Judge Isaac C. Parker came to town. Already, Parker had earned the nickname of the Hanging Judge, doling out sentences that served notice on the lawless breed that had taken refuge in Indian Territory. Fort Smith was the last outpost of civilization before the vast plains of the Oklahoma Territory, and Jed Ramey prided himself on his part in filling Judge Parker’s jail—a jail rightfully called Hell on the Border by those lucky enough to escape the gallows. With this in mind, Ramey held the posse to its task, still searching for some sign that would reveal the direction taken by the outlaws. Finally, even he admitted that it was impossible to follow someone who left no trail. At half past four, he gave up the search.

  Wet and discouraged, the posse of six crossed back over the river, just as the sun broke through the clouds, making its first appearance of the day. The men peeled off their slickers, and Thornton draped his soggy blanket loosely across his horse’s rump to let the air help dry it. It was Morris who happened to spot movement in the trees some two hundred yards downstream. Thinking it a deer at first, he casually pointed it out to Alvarez. The blacksmith stared hard at the spot Morris indicated before suddenly declaring, “That ain’t no deer. That’s a horse.” He turned at once to signal the marshal. “Ramey!”

  Ramey turned his horse and rode back to where Alvarez now sat motionless, his eyes trained on a section of young willows near a bend in the river. “Morris thinks it’s a deer, but if it is, it’s the first one I’ve ever seen wearin’ a saddle.”

  Ramey stared at the spot for a long moment, trying to get a bett
er look. “Might be Everett Sloan, lookin’ for strays,” he finally said. “We’ll ride on down there to take a look.” With the rest of his posse gathered around, he cautioned, “Might not be Everett, too, so keep your eyes peeled and stay behind me.”

  * * *

  Jordan Gray stretched his legs and back, trying to ease the stiffness caused by spending so much time in the saddle. He was not accustomed to such long hours on a horse. The last few years had mostly been spent walking behind a mule. Reckon I’ll get used to it, he thought as he watched the chestnut drink from the river. An hour’s ride, at most, should put him in Fort Smith. It would have been no more than a long day’s ride from his cabin to the bustling town. But he had lost a day’s ride when he turned off the road to follow tracks that turned out to be nothing more than a farmer and his two sons returning from the settlement. The delay added to the urgency already driving him to catch up to the four outlaws. He had ridden the chestnut hard for the last four hours, so he had decided to rest the poor horse before he found himself on foot. Absorbed in these thoughts, he was unaware that he had company until the chestnut acknowledged the presence of other horses.

  Turning to discover a half dozen riders approaching, he unhurriedly walked over and pulled his rifle from the saddle sling. Then, moving away from his horse, he positioned himself next to a sizable tree trunk. Until he could determine the nature of his visitors, he wanted to have quick cover convenient. A man couldn’t be too cautious this close to Indian Territory. That was one reason he had moved away from his horse. If, for some reason, bullets started flying, he didn’t want his transportation hit by a stray.

  “Howdy,” Jed Ramey called out when within a couple dozen yards of the stranger.

  “Howdy,” Jordan returned, carefully watching the man leading the file of riders.