Lisa's Way

  His eyes widened. “You mean that?”

  “Oh, yeah. Give up being an outlaw and become a trader. You might have competition, but you’d be the first. Follow my lead, and you might become the best. You’d be a great man, Ned. A great man would have to beat the women off with a stick. You’d be liked and loved.

  “A man who’s liked lives lots longer than a man who’s feared. You ought to know that. So which would you rather be, liked or feared?”

  Ned began nodding to himself. A grin crept onto his face. “You make it sound awful nice.” He looked at her, and nodded firmly. “You got a deal. I’ll get my guys together, and we can talk about our reward.”

  “After you tell us what we’ll have to get through to make it to Pine Needle City,” she added, pointing to him. He nodded, then began to assemble his men for a conference.

  Lisa turned back to her wagon. She was grinning from ear to ear when she arrived. Little Wolf looked at her. “Are you going to pay their toll?”

  “Nope. They’re going to pay mine.”

  ***

  Clouds darkened in the distance as Lisa’s enlarged group pulled into Custer. A spring thunderstorm boiled up that evening. Wind-driven rain pelted everything and everyone foolish enough to stay outside. The storm wasn’t too severe, but it did leave large puddles of water. Lisa had hoped to move on the next morning. The Mayor of Custer, Harry Lauderbaugh, advised against it.

  “The road to Pine’s gonna be muddy,” the youthful-looking Mayor said. “Your wagons will almost certainly get stuck. You’d be better off staying here today. It’s cool, but the sun will dry that mud.”

  Lisa took the advice. She didn’t want to have to deal with stuck wagons if she didn’t have to. She knew her friends needed some rest from the road. She wanted to add information to her notebook. All these reasons allowed her to announce to her group that they had, “as they said before the Rain, a ’day off.’”

  Her friends found ways to pass the time. Wayne, Dave, and their wives played with their children. Others held impromptu dances. Lisa chatted with the locals about their history. Donna organized an archery contest. Ned and his seven comrades took part, but two left early. Later in the day Lisa saw them come out of Lauderbaugh’s house.

  Shortly after that Wayne took her aside to a private spot to talk. “Are you sure you want that Ned and his gang with us?” he asked, getting straight to the point.

  “Yes. As long as they follow our rules, they can stay with us.”

  “They’re bandits, Lisa.”

  “Bandits who aren’t doing well as bandits.”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “You’re not in charge here, Wayne. I am.” She glared at him. “Think about it. We’re going to need help if we’re going to stop that feud on Big Springs.”

  “So we take anyone we happen to find?”

  “Why not? Besides, as you said, they’re bandits. They know this area.”

  “So?”

  “So, the town manager back in Great Junction suggested to me that not all the bandits around here hide in the woods and attack travelers. Merchants hire them to raid their competitors. He can’t stop those attacks without proof. Who better to help us get that proof, and stop that stupid practice, than Ned and his pals?

  “Yesterday I hinted that to him. He knows there are other bandits. I think he knows that what Mister Coe told me is true. Those robbers haven’t included his group in their scheme. I bet Ned didn’t like being left out. We give him the chance to get even by doing good.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to do good?”

  “Then we’ll punish him, Wayne.” Lisa paused to calm herself down. She reached out and clenched his shoulder. “I know you’re not happy. But we can’t fight every band of outlaws we come across. If we can convince even a few that not robbing people is better for them than robbing, we’ll make things better for everyone.”

  He glanced at the ground. “If you say so.”

  “Open up to them, Wayne. Be nice to them. Give them a chance. Or do you really want to fight every outlaw we run into?”

  “I guess not.” He turned to leave, then stopped. “Here he comes now.”

  Lisa looked. Ned was approaching them. Two of his group tagged along behind him. She glanced at Wayne. He started off, making sure to nod to them as they walked past.

  Lisa recognized the pair following Ned. One was Tim, a rangy young man with sandy hair and a missing front tooth. The other was Steve, a stocky dark-haired kid who looked like he ought to be six inches taller. She remembered seeing both go into Lauderbaugh’s house earlier.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Tim and Steve got something to tell you.” Ned nudged Tim in the ribs. “Go on, tell her.”

  “We both came from here. We got into trouble and ran off. Lauderbaugh saw us. He said he knew who we were.”

  “Are you in trouble now?” Lisa asked.

  “No. Well, he said that if we promised to stay here and work for him, he wouldn’t try to punish us.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Stuff. Work. Help him fix things, build things.”

  “He told us a couple of his men are getting too old to watch over the town,” Steve said. “He said that if we worked for him, settled down and all, he’d let us take over for them when they retired.”

  “But he didn’t want to take us on,” Tim added, “not without you vouching for us. He said if you’d speak up for us, we could stay.”

  “I see.” Lisa crossed her arms over her chest. She put on her most solemn expression and looked at the two. “You haven’t caused us any trouble so far, but you haven’t had much chance to. I don’t know you very well. If I speak to Mister Lauderbaugh, and you get into trouble later, you’ll make me look bad. I’m usually a nice person, but if you make me look bad, you won’t think I’m nice. I’ll come after both of you. You understand me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now, you promise me that you won’t get into trouble once we’re gone.”

  “I promise.”

  “Promise.”

  “If you think Mister Lauderbaugh is making you do something bad, you send word to me. Don’t go running off. But if he treats you fair, and just makes you work hard, you stay and you work.”

  “We will.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to Mister Lauderbaugh tonight.”

  They thanked her, turned, and headed away. Ned shuffled his feet, then looked at Lisa. “Tim and Steve won’t make you look bad,” he said. “I don’t think they really wanted to leave here. I think they’ll make you proud.”

  “Good. I hope they do.”

  He glanced at the ground. “Y’know, you’re the first person who ever gave me a break. All my life, folks told me I wouldn’t amount to much, that I was a bad kid.”

  Lisa smiled to him. I hadn’t taken her long to figure out that he was maybe a year or two older than she. She wondered if he had had an easy life. She suspected that becoming an outlaw had been one of his few options. Now she knew that both were true.

  “Ned, you could have started shooting when you saw us. You didn’t. I suppose you’ve had problems, but you’re no killer. I took a chance that if you’d listen to me, you’d make the right choice.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try not to let you down.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Remember yesterday, when I mentioned other outlaws?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  She smiled. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Now?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Okay.” He pressed his lips together and glanced around. “Well, last summer we were hiding out near Two Forks. We saw these two wagons come into town. Looked like they was both full. Folks there didn’t take anything. We thought about maybe trying to get our hands on it, but they had ten or eleven armed men with them.

  “I said we ought to follow them back to whe
re they came from. It was clear they came from someplace that was doing good. Maybe there’d be something for us. We followed them to Great Junction. We were gonna look around when we saw this other wagon full of something heading south. We thought the guy driving’s got plenty, so maybe he wouldn’t miss a little.

  “We get out ahead of that wagon, and when it was partway to Red Cloud we stopped it. Like we stopped you. Well, that fellow driving that wagon, he was really pissed.”

  “You were trying to rob him, Ned. People don’t like being robbed.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. Well, yeah, something like that. See, he was mad about being robbed all right. But he said something odd. He said he’d given someone lots of those token things to make that trip, and he was still getting robbed.”

  “Really?” Lisa was now engrossed in Ned’s tale.

  “Yeah. Like I said, that sounded odd. We looked in his wagon, and there was nothing but tools in there. Y’know, hammers, nails, axes, stuff like that. We didn’t need any of that, so I said we were sorry, we thought he was someone else, and let him go.”

  “Did you go up to Great Junction?”

  “Yeah. I went by myself. I mean, it sounded a whole lot better to get paid not to rob people than to rob them. When that guy headed back, I followed him around. I saw him go into this place where they serve liquor.”

  “A bar. Do you know which one?”

  “Naw. But I think I could find it.”

  “Did you go inside?”

  “I waited till after he left. Didn’t want him seeing me there, y’know. So I went it later. To one side there was the fat man with a bald head, talking to one of the guys who’d went to Two Forks. I sat down close by and listened in. I heard the one guy tell the fat man about Two Forks. I almost left, but then he told him about some guy heading up to Pueblo. Said he didn’t want that man getting there with all his seeds. The fat man asked for some tokens and said not to worry.”

  “Did that other man, the one with the seeds, was he attacked?”

  “Don’t know. I got up, went over to the fat man, and told I heard what he said. I asked if he needed help, that me and my pals were good shots and that we didn’t kill anyone.

  “He laughed at me. Said I was just some dumb kid from some hick eastern town. Told me to leave and not come back. Well, I got a little ticked, and said maybe we’d do something on our own. Before I knew it, these two big guys had my arms. The fat man said if he caught me trying to compete with him, he’d chop me to pieces. I didn’t need to be told twice. We ain’t been that way since.”

  “I see.” Lisa took in what Ned had said. The scheme had a logic to it, albeit a mean and twisted sort of logic. It was also clear why Coe wasn’t having any luck: too many people were benefiting from it.

  Lisa clasped Ned’s arm. “Tonight, after dinner, you and I will talk to Wayne and Little Wolf. You tell them what you just told me. Maybe if we put our heads together, we can stop this foolishness.”

  ***

  Wayne shook his head in obvious disgust. “It’s an outrage. Why don’t they put a stop to it?”

  “All the right people benefit from it,” Lisa answered. “The merchants can either assure their goods get through, or can prevent their rivals’ goods from getting through. And if they prevent it, there’s no real proof that they had anything to do with it.”

  “We are going to stop it, I hope.”

  “Of course. If it goes on, sooner or later it’s going to corrupt everything. The only question is, how do we put a stop to it?”

  “Attack them. Capture the outlaws and make them talk.”

  “How you gonna do that?” Ned asked Wayne.

  “When we come through, and they attack, we...”

  “They ain’t gonna take on a group this big.”

  Lisa nodded. “He’s right, Wayne. I mean, that fellow who thought Ned was working for the fat man, he saw what, three of your guys?”

  “Two,” Ned said. “Jack and Stan got in front. I stayed in back. He never saw my face.”

  “But he knew you had more under cover, right?”

  “Yep. Old Bill Travis, when he was stopping that Dashner’s wagons, he always made sure his mark knew he had friends in hiding. He told me if they didn’t know how many you had, they wouldn’t risk a fight.”

  “You worked for him?” Wayne snapped.

  “Hey, he had a real beef with Dashner. He showed me the scars on his back from when Dashner whipped him for taking a chicken. He ain’t the hero everyone thinks he was.”

  “Enough,” Lisa said, raising her voice. “That’s neither here nor there.” She lowered her voice again. “Let’s get back to the problem we were discussing.”

  Little Wolf broke the instant of silence that followed Lisa’s request. “A small group is easy to lead,” he said, “and easy to control.”

  “What does that mean?” Wayne asked.

  “The fat man probably doesn’t use more than five or six men to rob wagons,” Lisa said. “You don’t have to share what you steal with so many. You also don’t have as many chances of someone talking.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my question,” Wayne said. “Why can’t we attack them in some way?”

  “Like Ned said, they won’t try to attack us. We’re too big a target.”

  “So we go to the fat man.”

  “With what? Ned’s story?” Lisa shook her head. “That won’t be proof. We make an accusation like that without proof, we won’t get anywhere. In fact, we’d probably make more enemies than friends.”

  Little Wolf looked at Ned and asked him, “When you spoke to the fat man, did you see any outlaws?”

  “You mean, aside from the two giants that almost broke my arms?”

  “I do mean that, yes.”

  Ned paused to think. “Naw, I don’t think so.”

  “What are you thinking?” Lisa asked Little Wolf.

  “That there is another reason why we cannot attack. We are too big to be attacked. We could search for the outlaws, and make them speak the truth. But if we do not know who they are, how can we find them?”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Let me see if I get this straight,” Wayne said. He pointed in Little Wolf’s direction. “We’re too big to be attacked, so we can’t catch the fat man’s outlaws in the act.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “But we won’t know who the outlaws are, unless they attack.” He shook his head. “Then how are we going to deal with this?”

  CHAPTER 12

  The afternoon was a good time to work, he thought. Most people lost their energy after lunch, and would struggle to regain it as the day wound down. He believed that this was exactly why he should work in the afternoon. He would appear industrious compared with most. They would admire his ability to carry on when they could not. Admiration was important considering what he did. Admirers weren’t likely to be opponents.

  True, unless they entered his establishment they wouldn’t see him at work. That wasn’t a great disadvantage. He worked at a corner table of the first bar he’d bought. It would be quiet; few came to eat or drink in the afternoon. It wasn’t too formal a workplace, and that wasn’t threatening.

  When the evening came he was ideally placed. He could eat with his associates and others, playing the perfect host. He could watch who went to the counter to drink, and who sat at a table and ate. Not only did that give him an insight into what he needed to stock, but he could eavesdrop on conversations. He could know the past, the present, and a bit of the future with a minimum of effort. That was extremely important, since he hated to sweat.

  That afternoon he was busy as always. Summer was on the way, and his business would increase. He needed to make plans. He had to survey the previous summer’s work to prepare for the one coming. He had to be ready.

  It was then that she walked into his bar. She was a red-haired young woman, pretty in a modest sort of way. He thought he knew her at once. He waited until she approached him and introduced hersel
f to be certain.

  “I’m Lisa Herbert,” she said.

  He smiled to her. “Yes, I know. I’ve heard a great deal about you.” He waved to the chair on the opposite side of his table. “Won’t you sit down?”

  She sat down. “I’ve heard about you, too.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at the men sitting close to him. “I know the... arrangements you have with the merchants of this town. I know you offer both protection and...” She clearly had trouble finding the right words.

  “Acquisition services,” he supplied.

  She glared at him. “Something like that.”

  “Perhaps, Miss Herbert, you’re wondering why I haven’t bothered to contact you first?”

  “A small sense of fair play?”

  He laughed. He had wondered if she had the wit to match her ideals. “Oh, Miss Herbert, you are a sweet girl. No, my dear, I have not bothered you up to now because I did not know whether you would return from your long journey with anything of value. My associates tell that you have indeed. I am glad that you decided to come to me. It saved me the trouble of an introduction. Now, down to business, eh?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He had also wondered if she would oppose his operations. It seemed clear that she was. “Miss Herbert, I admire your idealism.” He allowed his tone to harden ever so slightly. “I must insist that you come to grips with reality. If you intend to do business around here, you must do so with me. If you choose not to, that is your decision.

  “You claim to be from another world. Perhaps you should leave this one to me. It would be a shame if you didn’t. You seem adept at business. If you choose not to negotiate with me, I must insist that you take your business elsewhere.”

  She leaned back in her chair, apparently unconcerned by what he had told her. “I said I know what you’ve been doing around here.”

  “You have proof of these rumors?”

  “Not yet.”

  He smiled to her. “Oh, Miss Herbert, you are quite a woman. Do you really think you can prove these rumors true without having my cooperation?”

  “I’ll get proof, don’t you worry about that.”

  He let out a laugh. He turned to the man at his right. “Robert, she has pluck, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Miss Herbert, I fear you idealism outpaces your abilities.”