The Road to Ratchet Creek Read online

  Any man who rode with the Texas Rangers in the pre-Davis days learned caution and other valuable lessons which never left him. So, despite his thoughts, Cole remained alert for any hint of danger. The agent at Coon Hollow had described to him the shortest route to Ehart’s trading post and he travelled with the inborn sense of direction common among range country men. Nor had working for the U.S. Secret Service dulled a lifetime’s training in matters equine, which allowed him to get the most out of his horse.

  The stone jug taken from the dead Arapaho bumped against Cole’s leg as it dangled from his saddlehorn. Under his left leg rode a fully loaded Winchester rifle in the saddleboot. He carried his belongings in a bedroll, with the exception of a pair of powerful field glasses that rested in the saddle’s offside pouch. If trouble came, he felt satisfied that he could meet it in one way or another.

  All through the day he rode, with only such pauses as were needed to rest his horse. He hoped to time his arrival at Ehart’s trading post shortly after the sun went down, but caught his first sight of the place somewhat earlier than he expected. There would be at least half an hour more before the end of daylight, so he decided to use it in a detailed study of his objective.

  Halting the dun at the first sight of the trading post, he slipped from the saddle and sought cover for himself and the animal. Using the skill gained in many raids on hostile Indian encampments, he concealed the horse, took his field-glasses and stalked closer to the trading post. A quarter of a mile away from it he came to a stop and found a place where he might make unseen study of how the land lay. Settling down under a bush, in a position that prevented the rays of the setting sun reflecting on his glasses’ lens, he studied the long, one floor log cabin that housed the trading post. No horses stood before the building, but about a dozen and half that number of mules occupied the two big corrals. The horses interested Cole. With the exception of five, they appeared to be the kind of light-draft animals used to haul Wells Fargo coaches. He decided they would form the teams for the two light wagons under the lean-to by the cabin.

  Light wagons using fast teams, an ominous combination, used to ensure rapid transportation of illegal goods. A man who sold whiskey and guns to Indians did not need to take along a vast assortment of goods, the profits on even a small consignment being enormous. So the trader travelled light and fast, relying on his speed to keep him safe from prying eyes.

  Two men left the front door of the trading post, causing Cole to turn his glasses in their direction. Walking to the corral, they caught a riding horse each and collected a mule, taking the three animals to the front of the building. While the pair saddled their horses, three more men joined them. One fixed a pack saddle on to the mule and the other two brought out a number of stone whiskey jugs. Even a casual observer might have noticed the significant manner in which the men worked, with frequent careful searching of the surrounding area. To a man of Cole’s considerable experience the signs stood plain. The men before him were engaged on some activity they had no desire to be witnessed. Seeing the jugs told him why they wished to be unobserved. Cole doubted if he would be located. As a Ranger he had learned concealment, with his life the stake for failure, against the Comanche and Kiowa Indians, past-masters in finding hidden enemies.

  Only one of the men before the trading post looked to have Indian blood and even he failed to spot the hidden watcher. Tall, lean, wearing white man’s clothing, but with an eagle feather in the band of his Stetson, the half-breed had been one of the pair who first appeared. The rest of the party were white men and Cole studied them for future reference.

  The half-breed’s companion and two of the others dressed range fashion and might have been taken for cowboys by the uninitiated. Two were tall, one bearded, the other in need of a shave, the third medium sized, slender and young; naturally all wore holstered revolvers.

  Which brought Cole to the last man, most probably Eli Ehart, the marshal decided. Taller than the others, dressed in a high hat and black suit such as a prosperous undertaker might wear, he did not appear to be armed. He had a thin, cadaverous face that looked pale compared with the tanned features of the others. Everything about the last man pointed to his being the employer rather than one of the employed. After setting down the jugs he had brought out, he stood back and watched the others work.

  “Two less,” Cole grunted, watching the half-breed and his companion mount their horses at the completion of loading the mule. “Thing being how many more of ’em are around?”

  Possibly no more. A man engaged in Ehart’s kind of trading wanted as few people involved in it as could be arranged. In addition to increasing the overheads, more men raised the chances of capture by the authorities. Cole doubted if the departing pair would return that night, but he still faced odds of three to one. However he had surprise on his side.

  For all his hatred of whiskey-pedlars, Cole did not intend to charge in and strike blindly like a rattlesnake tipped out of a gunnysack. He intended to write finish to Ehart’s illegal and vicious business, but not at the cost of his own life.

  Showing all the patience of Ehart’s chief customers, Cole waited for night to fall. He watched the trading post as long as the daylight lasted, seeing the three remaining men at intervals, but no others appeared. At last the sun sank down and darkness crept over the land. Still Cole did not move. Two hours went by before he left his hiding place and returned to the waiting dun. He saddled up and rode openly toward the trading post. No worthwhile cover existed beyond the quarter-of-a-mile point from which he watched the departure of the traders, so he did not try to reach the building unseen. To do so and fail would alert Ehart, while riding in openly ought to make him less suspicious.

  Although Cole kept a careful watch, he saw no sign of anybody looking from the lamp-lit windows of the building and its door remained closed. Yet he felt certain that his arrival did not go unnoticed. Leaving the dun at the hitching rail, the rifle and jug still on the saddle, he crossed the porch to the front door. After a quick but fruitless look around, he opened the door and stepped inside.

  The big room before him appeared no different from any other trading post in the back country. A rack of rifles stood behind the counter, its contents secured by a strong chain running through the triggerguards, padlocked at one end and firmly stapled to the wall at the other. Goods of an almost limitless variety piled the shelves all around the room. Many of the items on display were clearly aimed at the Indian trade: packets of colored glass beads, cheap, gaudy blankets, knives, axes, cooking pots, boxes of large-headed brass tacks so prized for decorating the woodwork of rifles, shoddy white man’s clothing and bargain-rate jewellery. All of which could be sold legally to the red man at a fair profit.

  Behind the counter stood the man Cole took to be Ehart. His cadaverous face carried no expression, but he held an Army Colt lined straight at the marshal.

  “Howdy, brother,” Cole greeted in his most solemn manner. “Do you always greet callers from behind a gun?”

  “Only after sundown,” the man replied, without lowering the Colt. “Ride far?”

  “Out from Coon Hollow at sun-up this morning. I was just set to sage-hen for the night when I saw your lights and come in looking for shelter.”

  As he spoke, Cole darted a keen glance around the room in search of the other two men and failed to locate them. Nothing about the place seemed out of the ordinary. Even Ehart’s precaution with the Colt could be understood, or mistaken for the action of a honest man taking no chances. Outside the dun snorted and moved restlessly.

  “You a preacher?” asked the man behind the bar. “Talk up, I’m a mite hard of hearing.”

  “You might say I am,” Cole admitted, finding the plea of deafness hard to reconcile with the man’s previous behavior.

  “Don’t often see a man of the church toting a gun.”

  “This’s a hard land, brother. Even a man of peace needs something to make sure he’s left to keep it.”

  “Now that�
��s the living truth,” the man agreed heartily and speaking loudly. “The name’s Ehart, deacon. Eli Ehart. I run this place.”

  At that moment Cole received the answer, or part of it, to the problem of the missing men. A soft footstep in the doorway behind him pointed to at least one of them being outside. Still the Army Colt did not waver out of line, although Ehart looked past Cole in the direction of the open front door.

  “He’d got this on his saddle, Uncle Eli,” said a voice and the young man walked by carrying the whiskey jug. “It looks like one of our’n.”

  Even from a distance and through the field glasses Cole had not formed a favorable opinion of the speaker. Seen up close he looked less pre-possessing. His thin face had a blotching of pimples and an expression of vicious weakness. Not all the efforts of a good tailor could hide his weedy physique and the fancy-handled Navy Colt holstered at his side did nothing to make him look dangerous. His mode of addressing Ehart explained why the other hired him.

  “A deacon toting a gun and whiskey jug,” purred Ehart. “Now there’s something you don’t often see.”

  “I tell you this’s one that we sold to them Arap——,” the young man began.

  “Shut your yapper!” Ehart thundered. “Goddamn it. If you wasn’t the wife’s nephew I’d’ve slit your tongue out years back—and still may do it.”

  “You want for me to get Salty up here?” said the young man sullenly, nodding toward an open door that led to what appeared to be Ehart’s office.

  “Yeah,” Ehart answered, and looked at Cole. “Where’d you come by the jug?”

  “I took it off a dead Arapaho,” Cole replied. “And I’m a U.S. marshal, not a travelling preacher.”

  “Leave Salty down there for a spell, Shadrack!” Ehart ordered.

  While the hired man had few scruples, he might object to being a party to the murder of so important a man as a United States marshal. So Ehart acted just as Cole hoped he would. By rescinding the order, he reduced the odds against the marshal; although Cole knew he was still far from out of the woods.

  “Take his gun, Shadrack,” ordered Ehart and his voice raised a shade as his nephew moved to obey. “Do it from behind, damn you, not between me and him!”

  Moving around Cole so as to keep clear of the line of fire, Shadrack took hold of the Rogers & Spencer’s butt. Used to the normal type of holster, he tried to lift the gun upward and draw it toward him. Immediately he ran into one of the holster’s prime advantages and a vital difference from other gun-rigs. Due to the holster’s design, the revolver could only be raised out of the top with difficulty. All drawing back on the gun achieved was to press it more tightly against the grip of the retaining spring.

  Shadrack expected no difficulty in removing the revolver, but met it. Before his uncle could bellow abuse at the delay, he moved closer with the intention of using both hands to disarm Cole. That was what the marshal hoped would happen. Clearly Ehart did not want his hired man around until Cole could no longer announce his official position, for the trader darted a glance toward the office’s open door and the Colt wavered a shade out of line.

  Taking what might be his best, if not only, chance, Cole drove his left elbow with considerable force into Shadrack’s solar plexus. A strangled squawk broke from the young man at the impact. His hand left the butt of Cole’s gun and he shot backward toward the still open front door. At the same moment Cole flung himself to one side, right hand driving toward the revolver’s bell-shaped butt. Attracted by Shadrack’s squawk of pain, Ehart swung his attention to the two men. Pure instinct caused the trader to squeeze the Colt’s trigger while trying to realign it on Cole. The shot came an instant too soon. Cutting through the left sleeve of Cole’s jacket without touching his arm, the bullet buried itself into Shadrack’s chest, to send him sprawling out of the door.

  Cole twisted his gun free as he fell and fired on landing. A hole appeared in the center of Ehart’s forehead. Flung backward, he struck the rifle rack and collapsed out of sight behind the counter. Realizing he need waste no more time on the trader, Cole rolled around to face the front door. A pair of boots rose from the edge of the sidewalk, jerking spasmodically. Cole doubted whether Shadrack possessed sufficient intelligence to try such a ruse to lull his suspicions. With the uncle and nephew both out of the game, that left only Ehart’s hired man on the premises.

  Coming to his feet, Cole darted into the office and found it empty. Yet the trader expected his man to come from there. From the use of terms “to get Salty up here,” and leaving him “down there,” Cole concluded the man must be in the cellar. Yet he could see no sign of an entrance to the underground room. The office had luxurious fittings, considering the trading post’s location, even down to a couple of rugs on the floor. Even as Cole looked, one of the rugs stirred as if something moved underneath it. Swiftly and silently Cole glided until he stood at the rear of the part of the rug which rose upward.

  “What’s up, boss?” called a voice from underneath. “I thought I heard shooting.”

  When no answer came, the trapdoor beneath the rug continued to lift. Cautiously, gun in hand, Salty began to emerge. Waiting until the man’s head and shoulders came into sight Cole raised a foot and stamped down hard on the trapdoor. It slammed forward, catching Salty between the shoulders and pinning his upper torso to the floor. Stepping over, Cole landed on Salty’s gun hand. A howl broke from the hired man’s lips as he opened his fingers and released the weapon. Kicking it away, Cole moved into Salty’s view.

  “Come on out of it!” the marshal ordered. “Do it any way you want, I’d as soon kill you as not.”

  Slowly Salty obeyed. One glance at Cole’s grim face warned the man that he spoke the truth. For all that Salty no sooner rose than he lunged forward. Perhaps Cole’s appearance misled him as it had Ehart, but, like his employer, he soon learned the error of his ways.

  Very sensibly, Cole regarded criminals as enemies of society and not as poor misguided victims of circumstances who should be mollycoddled and pampered to show them the error of their ways. So he acted fast, hard and decisively. He might have shot the man, many a peace officer would have done so under the circumstances, but he wished to ask questions. So he jerked the gun clear of Salty’s reaching hands to lay its barrel with some force across the man’s jaw.

  In that respect the Rogers & Spencer revolver excelled its Colt rivals. The bar above the chamber formed a solid link with the barrel. So it stood up to being used as a club; whereas doing so with the contemporary Colts risked a fracture of the locking pin holding frame and barrel sections together.

  How effective the Rogers & Spencer proved to be showed in the way Salty crashed to the floor and lay still. Holstering his revolver, Cole took hold of the man by the collar and dragged him into the front of the trading post. At first Cole meant merely to couple Salty to the rifle rack chain, but a shotgun lay on a shelf under the counter and asked for a more secure method of holding the man. Taking a set of handcuffs from his pocket, Cole drew Salty’s right arm up through the chain and slipped one link to his wrist. Then he raised the man’s right leg and completed the fastening of the handcuffs to the left arm underneath it. Without a glance at Ehart’s body, Cole left his prisoner and went down into the cellar.

  All the proof he needed lay before Cole’s eyes in the lamp-lit basement. Stacks of cheap rifles and a few Winchesters stood by one wall along with powder kegs and an open box of bullets. Rows of whiskey jugs covered part of the floor and a couple of barrels, filled with rain water piped down from above, showed that the trader diluted his liquor to increase his profit margin.

  With cold, deadly fury Cole unfastened and up-ended several jugs. The raw stench of neat whiskey made him cough and he went to the powder kegs. Opening a couple, he coated the rest and the floor around them with powder. Taking the lamp from its hook, he left the cellar.

  Moaning and struggling weakly, Salty looked at the marshal. Apprehension crept across the man’s face as he watched Cole o
pen two cans of kerosene to pour their contents across the floor.

  “Who’re you?” Salty croaked.

  “U.S. Marshal Cole.”

  Something of Cole’s reputation and his hatred of whiskey pedlars had proceeded him to Utah. Fear twisted the pain from Salty’s face as he watched the marshal spread blankets into the inflammable fluid.

  “What’re you aiming to do?”

  “See that this place’s never used for selling whiskey to Injuns again.”

  “Y—You’re going to set me loose first?”

  “Am I?” asked Cole.

  “Y—You’re a lawman!” Salty wailed. “You have to——”

  “Who’ll know what I did?” Cole inquired.

  Terror tore into Salty. In the unlikely event that anybody should investigate the destruction of the trading post, they would find only charred remains and no sign that he had been burned alive.

  “If I tell you where we got the liquor, will you set me free?” Salty moaned.

  “I know where you got it,” Cole assured him.

  “Will you turn me loose if I tell you where two of our boys went?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And if I give you something else. Something about the Sedgewell gang?”

  “Now you’re starting to interest me,” Cole admitted. “Let’s hear it all.”

  “The boys’ve gone to meet some of Falling Eagle’s Arapahoes down Wind Creek way. The bucks allowed to rob a stage to get money for more firewater.”

  “Let’s have the rest of it.”

  “I don’t know much,” Salty groaned. “Eli told me to go down into the cellar when he saw the feller coming, so I never saw him. I heard plenty through a crack in the floor through!”