Waco's Badge Page 8

Chapter 7

  YOU KNOW BELLE STAR REAL WELL

  “BELLE STARR, YOU SAY?” DEPUTY SHERIFF JACKSON Martin ejaculated briskly, as Walter Tract concluded his description of the hold up. “We’d best get up a posse and go after her, Alf!”

  “The sooner the better, Jackson,” Deputy Alfred “Leftie Alf” Dubs agreed, showing an unusual eagerness to carry out his duties and also ignoring the fact that night would have fallen long before the scene of the incident could be reached. Darting a glance redolent of annoyance at the driver, he went on, “There’s been enough time wasted already.”

  While Doc Leroy had worked upon the injuries of the shotgun messenger, hoping his diagnosis and decision over the treatment was correct, Tract had helped to wrap the body of Maurice Blenheim in the tarpaulin and load it securely on the roof of the stagecoach. Then, acting under the crisp and decisive orders of the pallid faced Texan, the center seat was lowered and, having been swaddled in a blanket from Doc’s bedroll to prevent him moving when he recovered consciousness, Benjamin Eckland had been placed upon it. With this done to his satisfaction, Doc had stated his intention of riding at the side of his patient.

  Tying the horses he and his companion were using to the supports of the baggage boot at the rear of the vehicle, Waco had suggested he “ride shotgun” on the box and Tract had agreed. However, despite having loaded the Greener, he had supplemented his brace of staghorn handled Colt Artillery Model Peacemakers with the rifle from his saddleboot. This had proved to be one of the recently introduced .45–75 caliber Winchester Model of 1876, heavier and, taking a powder load of seventy-five grains as opposed to the forty used in the Model of 1873, more powerful than its predecessors from that manufacturer. On the driver commenting it was the first of its kind he had seen, the blond replied he had purchased it during a visit to Chicago, but did not go into further details.1

  With the surviving passengers inside the vehicle, Jedroe Franks having retrieved his Colt Storekeeper Model Peacemaker and Pierre Henri Jaqfaye the walking stick, the journey had been resumed. Bearing in mind what Doc had told him about Eckland’s physical condition and the bluntly spoken instructions he received, which had clearly not met with the approval of Senator Paul Michael Twelfinch II although no protest was registered vocally, Tract had concentrated all his skill upon making the ride into Marana as smooth as possible. Doing so precluded carrying out any lengthy conversation and, as had been the case while preparing the body for transportation, Waco had learned little about what had taken place during the hold up. Nor had he made any comment on the one occasion the subject had briefly arisen when the driver had mentioned the supposition of the woman’s identity.

  Although Tract had brought the stagecoach through the plaza on arriving at the town, it had not been so that he could go directly to the jailhouse which also served as an office for the municipal and county law enforcement agencies. Nor had he drawn rein on approaching the building used as a depot by the Arizona State Stage Line. Instead, he had kept moving until reaching the premises in which the local doctor maintained a surgery. Bringing the vehicle to a stop, he had helped to carry Eckland inside. Then, leaving Doc with the shotgun messenger, he had driven on once more until reaching the stables and corral behind the depot, as would have happened without the detour if the journey had been uneventful. Not until the hostlers were starting to attend to his horses, sharing the small regard of Peter Glendon for the abilities and habits of the two young deputies, had he sent word for them.

  By the time Martin and Dubs arrived, for once having a genuine reason for the delay in putting in their appearance, the body was unloaded and a small group of curious people had assembled. Although the foreman of the Cross Bar Cross ranch and William “Fast Billy” Cromaty were present, Major Bertram Mosehan was not with them. As he had been on the point of accompanying them, he had seen the Governor of Arizona Territory standing on the first floor balcony of the Pima County Hotel. Clearly wishing to find out what had caused the commotion on the sidewalk below his suite of rooms, an innovation of which the owners of the establishment were very proud as such a facility was by no means common in small towns, “Mr. Jervis” had signalled for Mosehan to join him. Telling the other two to follow the stagecoach and authorizing Glendon to inform the lanky cowhand of the proposal which had been made to him, the major had gone to obey the summons. On hearing of it, as Mosehan and Glendon had guessed would be the case, Cromaty had offered to enroll in the new and, as yet, unnamed law enforcement agency.

  Modelling his behavior upon that he attributed to his hero, Wyatt Earp, including a penchant for “grandstanding” before the public—although he had not yet gone to the extreme of obtaining a Peacemaker with a barrel sixteen inches in length and which had already acquired, if not officially as far as the manufacturers were concerned,2 the nickname, “Buntline Special”—Martin had set about demonstrating that he was taking charge by arrogantly demanding to be told what had happened.

  “I don’t think it was Belle Starr,” Franks put in.

  “You don’t, huh?” Martin sniffed, looking the bespectacled and apparently unarmed young passenger over from head to foot in obvious disdain. “And here am I thinking, from what the driver told us about her being blonde, beautiful, with a real good shape and a Southern accent you could cut with a knife, how well she fits the descriptions I’ve seen of Belle Starr.”

  “And, the way he told it,” Dubs went on, no less offensively. “The rest of the gang as good as named her more than once.”

  “That’s one of the things which makes me doubt if she really is Belle Starr,” Franks claimed, his cheeks reddening. Conscious that Waco, Tract and Jaqfaye in particular were paying greater attention and displaying less skepticism than either of the peace officers or others in his audience, he continued, “From what I’ve read about her, Belle Starr is too smart to pick men who would make such a slip even once, much less as often as it happened today. What was more, her accent wasn’t consistent and she said, ‘you-all’ far more than any Southron I’ve met.”

  “Is that all?” Dubs asked, clearly discounting everything he had heard as being of no importance.

  “No,” Franks replied, forcing himself to control his rising temper. “When I mentioned Calamity Jane beating Belle Starr when they had their fight at Butte, Montana, she said it was the other way around.”

  “Way she told it, though,” Tract injected, although he had a feeling that something was wrong. “It came out like she’d slipped up and nearly said, ‘me’ then changed it to ‘Belle Starr.’”

  “According to how I read it, the fight ended in a draw,” Franks commented, but was not allowed to finish.

  “You don’t reckon Belle Starr would want even you to go on thinking she was whipped by Calamity Jane, do you?” Dubs demanded derisively, glancing for appreciation of his ready grasp of the situation from the onlookers.

  “Probably she wouldn’t,” Franks conceded. “But she should have known the fight took place at Elkhorn and not Butte.”3

  “By cracky, yes!” the driver ejaculated, as the realization of what he had suspected to be wrong arrived. “It was Elkhorn where they locked horns.”

  “If I was pulling a hold up, I wouldn’t be paying all that much close attention to something like that,” Dubs asserted bombastically. “Hell, everybody knows Belle Starr has a couple of half-breeds riding in her gang.”

  “Blue Duck and Sammy Crane,” Waco supplied, laying noticeable emphasis on the surname of the first outlaw and the Christian name of the second.

  “That’s what she called th—!” Tract began, then slapped his right hand against his off thigh. “By grab, no it wasn’t though! They was called Blue Buck and Tommy Crane, as I recall it.”

  “So they were!” Franks agreed. “And, while I can’t claim to have met too many of the real thing, those two sounded like actors in a melodrama playing the part of half breeds. The one called ‘Tommy Crane’ lost his accent once and, hard as he talked most of the time, he acted ve
ry squeamish when it came to taking the money belt from the man they killed. What is more, while it probably doesn’t prove anything one way or another, neither of them toed inward when they were walking like I’ve read Indians always do.”

  “Sounds like you must do a whole slew of reading, dude,” Dubs mocked. “And, from the way you’ve been sprouting off, here I was thinking you know Belle Starr real well.”

  “Hombre,” Waco drawled and something in his apparently lazy speech prevented Franks from making the heated response which begged to be uttered. “Take it from me this gent’s making right good sense, from here to there and back the hard way, what he’s saying—Which I know Belle Starr real well.”

  “Well now,” Martin commented, not caring for the way in which the other deputy was dominating the conversation. “That’s not a thing many folks would care to come out and admit so openly, considering what she and her gang have done.”

  “You mean what a woman who made out to be her and her gang did,” the blond Texan corrected.

  “If just made out is all it was,” Martin answered.

  “That’s that,” Waco conceded, with the air of one conferring a favor. “Only I mind one time somebody mistook me for Bad Bill Longley. Way things stood,4 I didn’t say no different and I’d be willing to bet there’s folks in that town will reckon they met Bad Bill and not me.”

  “Is that so?” Martin growled, his temper rising as he saw he had not elicited the support from the crowd which he hoped would be forthcoming when he referred to what had happened during the hold up. “There’s not many who’d want to be mistaken for a back shooting killer like him.”

  “I said Bill Longley,” the blond countered, drawing conclusions from the way in which the man he was addressing was clothed and behaved. “Not Wyatt Earp!”

  “Don’t you mean-mouth Mr. Earp, you god-damned beef-head!” Martin spat out, employing the derogatory term for a Texan and making a start at bringing the sawed-off shotgun from across the crook of his right arm.

  Taking a rapid stride forward, Waco reached with both hands to grasp the weapon. As he did so, he kept moving until alongside the deputy at the right. Swiftly hooking his right leg behind Martin’s knees, he pushed forward with his arms. Caught totally unawares by the speed and strength with which the response was delivered, the peace officer could not prevent himself from being overbalanced. Feeling himself falling, a mixture of panic and instinct led him to release the shotgun. While this served to complete what Waco had begun, he contrived to go down in a sitting position instead of falling on to his back.

  Seeing what was happening, Dubs snarled a profanity and prepared to take a hand. Unlike his companion, he had left his shotgun at the office when being informed they were needed behind the stage line’s depot. However, despite the rapidity with which the Texan was moving, he considered he could cope without needing it. Having drawn this conclusion, he sent his right hand toward its holstered Colt.

  Showing satisfaction over being granted an excuse, Franks whipped off the spectacles with his left hand. Holding them, he lunged forward. Inclining his torso downward, he wrapped his arms around the legs of the deputy. An instant later, his shoulder rammed into the other’s midsection. Winded by the impact, Dubs was bent across his assailant and he was unable to complete his draw. Instead, he felt himself lifted and thrust to the rear, then released. Although he alighted on his feet, this proved of no advantage. The impetus he had been given by the man he had dismissed as a weak and harmless dude caused him to reel a few blundering steps in the direction of some of the onlookers. If a more popular peace officer had been involved, they would have helped him to come to a halt. Indicative of how he was regarded, those who could have been of assistance moved aside and allowed him to topple supine between them. In one respect, he was less fortunate than the other deputy as the landing knocked all the breath from his body.

  Spitting out almost incoherent expletives, Martin glared up at his intended victim for a moment!

  Then the furious deputy grabbed for the revolver in his right side holster!

  Allowing the shotgun to fall, Waco’s hands made a blurring motion!

  Practically at the same instant, just over half a second after the movement commenced and before the discarded weapon reached the ground, the staghorn handled Colt Artillery Model Peacemakers rose above the lips of their respective holsters. To the accompaniment of a clicking, as the hammers were thumbed back to the fully cocked position, the five and a half inch long barrels turned forward. Seeming far larger than their caliber of .45 of an inch, the muzzles were pointed directly at the suddenly shocked and paling face of the seated deputy.

  A concerted gasp arose from the crowd, in echo to that given by Martin!

  Like the deputy, every man present knew they had just witnessed a superlative exhibition of gun handling!

  There was, however, one very important difference from the point of view of the crowd and that of Martin!

  While the interest of the onlookers was merely academic, the deputy knew he had never been in greater peril!

  Martin was aware that many men who went through the long and gruelling hours of training needed to acquire such rapidity did not possess an excessive belief in the sanctity of human life when applied to others. There were some of their number—not excluding his hero, Wyatt Earp—who would have no hesitation over allowing the hammers of the revolvers to fall after having received such provocation. Nor would any of the onlookers offer to intercede on his behalf.

  At that moment, the deputy regretted having created so much hostility while in office and wished he was the kind of respected peace officer who would receive the support of the population.

  The shots anticipated—dreaded even—by Martin were not fired!

  “Hombre,” the blond said, his voice as apparently innocuous as the first whispering murmur of a Texas “blue norther” storm, after what seemed to the frightened deputy to have extended far longer than the five or so seconds which actually passed. “I could’ve called that bet just’s easy as your other.” Having made the comment, he allowed the hammers to descend under control and twirled his Colts back into leather almost as quickly as they had left. Then, glancing to where Franks was donning the spectacles, he grinned and said, “Gracias, amigo.”

  “Es nada,” the youngest victim of the hold up replied with a smile.

  “G—God damn it!” Twelfinch ejaculated, believing he saw a way in which he could repay the lack of respect he had suffered at the hands of the Texan. Waving a finger which encompassed Martin, who was starting to rise ensuring both hands stayed well away from the butts of the guns, and the still sprawled out—although stirring—Dubs, he went on, “You assaulted peace officers in the execution of their duty!”

  “There’s some might call it that,” Waco admitted, seeing hope come to the face of Martin at receiving such unexpected support.

  “And there’s some’s might call it exceeding their duty,” Glendon seconded. “Unless figuring on using a scatter on somebody for doing nothing more than saying Wyatt Harp’s name’s been made a crime.”

  “I don’t consider it in that light!” the senator stated, although usually he would not have thought of taking such a supportive stand on the behalf of a peace officer.

  “Every man’s entitled to his opinion, ’cording to the Constitution of the good old U.S. of A.,” the foreman admitted dryly. “Only I reckon Major Mosehan’d go along with me on mine.”

  “M—Major Mosehan?” Martin repeated, losing some of the satisfaction he had started to display.

  “Major Mosehan,” Glendon reiterated. “He’s sort of touchy when it comes to peace officers trying to abuse his hired help without real good cause.”

  “His hired help?” the deputy queried, looking from Waco to Franks and back.

  “His hired help,” the foreman lied, but with such conviction he might have been speaking the truth on oath. “Tex rides the rough string and Mr. Franks’s the Hashknife outfit’s book
-keeper.”

  “That doesn’t give them any right to attack officers of the law,” Twelfinch objected, puzzled by the deputy who was no longer showing pleasure over his intervention.

  “Seeing as they are ‘officers of the law’ is why I just took the scatter away from him, ’stead of throwing lead,” Waco explained, wondering why the stocky man had interceded and intrigued by hearing what he knew to be a Brooklyn accent coming from one whose attire was that of a cowhand. Nodding to where Dubs was rising and still looking dazed, he continued, “And that other ‘officer of the law,’ as you call them, can count himself lucky Jed Franks jumped him. If he’d’ve been let go on with drawing on me, I was too far off to have stopped him with my bare hands, so I wouldn’t’ve even tried.”

  “There’s no call for anybody to get all head down and horns hooking, Tex,” Glendon remarked, hoping the blond would justify a belief in his intelligence and take the hint. “I haven’t heard the deputy say’s how he’s wanting to toss you and Mr. Franks in the pokey over what’s happened.”

  “How do you feel about it?” Waco inquired, his tone less of a question than a challenge, as he turned his gaze to Martin.

  “I’m willing to let it drop,” the deputy replied, trying to sound magnanimous. Seeing a way by which he might bring the matter to an end, he continued with an assumed briskness, “Time’s wasting, though. We should be getting a posse together—!”

  “You certainly should!” Twelfinch supported, his normal antipathy toward peace officers returning with the reminder of his financial loss during the hold up.

  “It’s a mite late in the day to go after them,” Tract pointed out. “Night’ll be down way afore you can get to where they hit us.”

  “Fact being, you can’t go there at all,” Waco supplemented, glancing with satisfaction at Twelfinch who he knew to be a prominent adherent of the “Eastern law wrangler” in the affair of the sheriff of Coconino County.

  “Why not?” the politician demanded.