“Yes sir,” Mac said.
Wes nodded and he and Mac turned and hurried out the door.
Connolly looked at the captain. “Weird. I just met them boys, but I got an easy feelin’ about ‘em already. I think they’re gonna be all right.”
Captain Flowers said, “Well, let’s hope so. Maybe they’ll work out if we can keep Crowley from attacking the whole Comanche nation single handed.” He grinned. “Let me know what you think after you try them out on the range.”
Connolly grinned. “We’ll do that. See you, Cap.” He and Stilson headed for the door.
Wes and Mac exited the Ranger headquarters and Mac turned toward the livery stable. Wes continued across the street.
Mac stopped and turned to look at Wes. He put his hands on his hips. “Crowley, where in the world are you goin’?”
Wes stopped and looked at him. “Gotta stop by the room. Ain’t you gonna get your bedroll and your possibles?”
Without waiting for a response, he turned away again.
Mac raised his arms to his sides, palms up. “What? Why? We’re just goin’ to the range.” He dropped his arms and started after Wes. “You know, like a shootin’ range. A place they’ve got set up to practice shootin’. Didn’t you hear the captain?”
Still walking, Wes said, “Yes, I heard the captain, but we’re Rangers now, Mac. You gotta start thinkin’ like a Ranger.” On the boardwalk, he stopped and turned around again.
As Mac stepped up from the street, Wes said, “What happens if we’re out there ridin’ an’ shootin’ an’ havin’ a fine ol’ time, an’ all of a sudden there’s a bunch of shootin’ back here in Amarillo?”
Mac frowned. “What? What shootin’?”
Wes ignored him. “We all ride back here hell bent for leather to see what’s wrong, an’ we find out a bunch of Comanches—maybe even that Four Crows an’ his bunch—just slammed into town from the north, shot up the place, killed a few folks, an’ then hightailed it to the west.”
Mac was still frowning. “What? Wes, what makes you think—”
“Tell you what’d happen. Corporal Connolly an’ Stilson’d ride out right after ‘em just like the captain an’ Philby an’ even Stanton. But you an’ me, we couldn’t go. We’d have to stop off here first, go up to our rooms, get our bedrolls an’ our possibles bags an’ a note from our mommy.”
He turned away. “No sir. I’m a Ranger now, and by damn I’m gonna be prepared like a Ranger.” When he stepped through the door to the Amarillo Inn, he left it open.
Mac looked at the boardwalk and shook his head. “Crazy as hell.” He followed Wes inside.
* * *
With Fort Perry a few hours behind him, Talbot replayed the events of the day. Very strange.
When he and his two cohorts first approached the fort, he could only barely believe his eyes. The gate was standing wide open, as if in welcome. It had to be a trap. Never had he seen a fort with its broad main gate standing open like that.
He sent one of his men down to check it out.
The man had ridden to the gate, then directly through it. He rode around inside the fort for a long moment. There was hardly anyone there and nobody seemed to pay him the slightest bit of attention. Finally, he had ridden back to the gate, framed himself there, and waved his hat high over his head.
Talbot and the other man soon joined him at the gate, and together the three of them rode to the headquarters building.
Just as they were dismounting, the door opened.
Talbot drew his Remington, cocked and leveled it only to see his half-brother, Sergeant Earl McGaffey, grinning at him from the doorway. “Earl, you idiot, I nearly shot you.”
“How you doin’, Jade? Guns came in two days ago. This place is ripe.”
Talbot looked around, then back at McGaffey. “Where the hell is everybody?”
McGaffey laughed. “Colonel sent ‘em on patrol yesterday. They didn’t even take any of the new carbines with ‘em. We don’t have ‘em recorded yet.”
“So it’s the full shipment?”
McGaffey nodded. “The full shipment. Three hundred brand spankin’ new carbines an’ several thousand rounds of self-contained ammunition cartridges, plus all the caps an’ balls an’ powder we can carry, plus the big guns. There’s three of those.”
Talbot looked around again. “Still, there ought’a be somebody around.”
“Oh, well, the colonel got nosey so I put him in the brig. There’s only a handful of greenhorns on post right now. Thirteen men, I think. They’re in the barracks. I told them to stay inside until I call for them.”
Talbot looked at him. “Well, I’d feel better if I knew they weren’t likely to come up behind me.”
“You an’ your men come on inside. I’ll get the boys in formation an’ march ‘em over to join the colonel. When it’s time to load the wagon, I’ll let ‘em out.”
Talbot looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Sounds like that might work.” He gestured toward the other two, indicating that they should follow him, then stepped up on the porch.
His men followed, then walked past him into the office.
Talbot stopped in front of McGaffey. “So when’s your friend supposed to be here with that special wagon you were talkin’ about?”
“Anytime between now and sundown, maybe a little after. That’s why the gate’s open. Anyway, it’ll take a couple hours to load up the wagon. Either way, by the time we’re ready to leave it’ll be dark. Perfect plan. Go on inside, Jade. I’ll be back in a minute.”
McGaffey had gone to the main door of the barracks. From there he yelled and told the men to form up in front of headquarters in five minutes.
They had done so.
From the porch of the headquarters building, he called them to attention and explained that what would follow was a training exercise. Then gave the command, “Right face.”
When the young soldiers snapped to, McGaffey gave the next order. “Forward, march,” and directed them to the stockade. He halted them just outside the door. “Okay, so that this looks realistic, you’re going to be locked up for a couple of hours. You’ll see the colonel inside too.
“Now the colonel’s taking part in the exercise too, but he might try to fool you into disobeying orders. He might say this isn’t just a training exercise, that it’s all real or some such nonsense. I told him you wouldn’t fall for it. So if he says anything like that, don’t worry about it. I’ll be here to make sure everything goes as planned.”
Then he walked past them and waited beside the broad door that led to the cells. “Come on,” he said. “Single file, right through here, down the row and into the large cell at the end.”
As they filed past the colonel’s cell, the colonel glanced at them but he remained silent, fearful that if he said anything the sergeant might kill any who tried to resist.
But one young soldier, the third from the end of the line and a full head shorter than the sergeant, turned his head and looked closely at the colonel on his way by. He stopped at the cell and looked again as the two men behind him turned sideways and filed past him into the cell.
When the men had passed, the soldier who had stopped turned to look at the sergeant. “Sergeant, what’s really going on here?”
“What do you mean? I told you, it’s a trainin’ exercise.”
The soldier glanced at the colonel again, then looked at the sergeant and said, “Well, beggin’ your pardon, sergeant, but I ain’t never seen no trainin’ where the army locks up its own men, ‘specially when there ain’t hardly nobody at the fort.”
The sergeant moved his hand nearer to his Remington, and the colonel saw the motion. He quickly stood and grabbed the bars of his cell. “Soldier, am I to understand that you’re questioning the orders of your sergeant?”
The soldier looked at him, his eyes wide. “Well, no sir. I mean, yes sir, but not if all of this is all right with the colonel, sir.”
The colonel swa
llowed his pride. He spoke quietly, framing his words carefully. “Son, if you were a real prisoner right this moment and you showed such insubordination, you would be shot and killed. Do you understand?” The colonel flicked his gaze quickly to the sergeant’s right hand and back.
The soldier caught the glance. He looked at the colonel for a moment, then up at Sergeant McGaffey, then back to the colonel. “Yes sir, I understand. Beggin’ the colonel’s pardon sir, and thank you for settin’ me straight.”
Then he turned his back on the sergeant as curtly as he could muster and walked into the cell.
The sergeant closed and locked the cell door, then turned and walked out. He was glad the colonel had set the young man right. If he’d had to kill the kid it might have thrown any number of kinks into their plan.
A minute later he was crossing the porch of the headquarters building and opening the door. “All locked up, nice and tidy.”
Talbot nodded. “Good. Better to know where they are. I didn’t hear any commotion.”
McGaffey grinned. “I told ‘em it was a trainin’ exercise.”
Talbot walked around behind the colonel’s desk and sat down. He eyed a humidor for a moment, then leaned forward and opened it. He took a cigar, bit the end off, then fished a match from his pocket and scratched it on the shale plate on the humidor.
As he looked at McGaffey, he held the flaming match head near the end of the cigar and puffed three times, rotating the cigar as he did. Around the puffs, he said, “We need to post a guard over there?”
“No. They’re locked in safe and sound. I told ‘em they’d be there for a few hours, that I’d come an’ get ‘em when it was time.”
Talbot shook out the match and tossed it over his shoulder. He took another, longer puff and the end of the cigar glowed red as a fine wisp of smoke curled up and away from the end.
Holding the cigar between his thumb and forefinger, he moved it away from his mouth, leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. “So the troops are gone, at least the ones who aren’t locked up, right?”
“That’s right.”
“So all we have to do is wait for your friend to show up with his special wagon. But he ain’t comin’ ‘til around sundown?”
“Well, sometime between now an’ then, but it’s worth waitin’ for. It’s a very special wagon. It’s armor plated, specially designed to carry weapons and ammunition. He picked it up down on the Rio Grande after the Mexicans abandoned a presidio down there. It can carry everything we take out of the armory in one load.”
Talbot nodded, his elbows on the arms of the colonel’s chair, his index fingers pressed together in a point beneath his chin. “I think I have a better idea.”
McGaffey shook his head. “Well, now I don’t think we ought’a change—”
Talbot held up one hand, palm out. “Hear me out.”
McGaffey stopped and nodded.
“When we rode in, I noticed there were three sturdy wagons over near the stable. Wouldn’t those three wagons hold what we want to take from the armory?”
“Yes, at least most of it, but—”
Again Talbot held up one hand. “If we use three smaller, lighter wagons, we could make thirty miles per day. With the larger, heavier wagon, we would be fortunate to make half that distance in a day. Isn’t that true?”
McGaffey frowned. “Maybe, but—”
“Plus we don’t have to wait for the lighter, smaller wagons. They’re parked outside right now. We could begin loading immediately, and we could be finished and gone before your larger, much heavier wagon even gets here.”
“That’s all true, but the larger wagon is armored. We already have one man to drive it, and the four of us could be on guard either inside the wagon or riding alongside.”
Talbot grinned. “You’re thinking as if this is an army shipment. We are not an army with men riding inside an armored wagon fending off attacks from a few banditos. We are the banditos.” He looked at his two men and they all laughed. “Never mind that the damn thing would probably sink the first time we crossed a river with it, with all that armor plating. Either that or tip over, as top heavy as it probably is.
“See, it’s all reversed from how you’re thinking. We would be guarding against an attack by the army. They would easily outnumber and outmaneuver us, and if we chose to lock ourselves inside, it would be a simple matter for them to wait us out.”
He shrugged. “They would have nothing to lose, and time would be on their side.” He paused, took his feet from the desk and leaned forward. “I say we take the smaller wagons now. We open the armory, load what we want to take—guns, ammunition, mounts, powder and balls—and leave. Hell, we could even take the horses that were still in the corral. With luck, we would be sixty or seventy miles away before the cavalry even gets back to the fort. It’s foolproof.”
Sergeant McGaffey looked at him. “Why didn’t you say any of this when we were talking about it a half-year ago? If you would have come up with this idea then, we might have had time to plan.”
Talbot said, “When we originally planned, we didn’t know the fort would be empty of most of the fighting troops. Your plan is a good one, my brother. But even the best plans must be adaptable. When the situation changes, the plan must change to match.
“Now the fact remains that your man is maybe a few hours away with his large wagon, but we have three wagons available right now. The fact also remains that the wagon you counted on is large and cumbersome. Making good our escape in such a wagon will be next to impossible, and—”
McGaffey grinned. “I guess I forgot to mention that part. There will be no ‘escape,’ as you put it. We’re going to drive the wagon east-southeast to a place over on Wolf Creek in Indian Territory. Red Hawk and a few other war chiefs will be waiting for us bright and early tomorrow morning.”
“What? But Messina is expecting that shipment, especially the repeaters. He’ll pay us a good price and then trade with the Comanches himself. That was the original deal, remember? We get the cash money and Messina gets the risk of dealing with the Comanches. You don’t want to change that part of the deal, my brother. Trust me, Messina’s not a man you want to mess with.”
McGaffey wagged one hand. “Paco Messina’s a small-time bandito. I have it on good authority that he won’t be a problem too much longer.” He shook his head. “No, Jade, this was my idea and we’re going to do it my way. We’ll wait for the wagon, and when it gets here we’re taking it directly to the Comanches.”
*
For a couple of hours after that meeting, Talbot almost let his anxiety over his half-brother’s foolishness get the best of him, but he controlled it. He tried a final time to talk sense to the man, privately. He asked his men to step outside, just in case the sergeant felt he would lose face if he changed his mind in their presence.
But it was all to no avail. His brother just didn’t know how to adjust his thinking when the situation changed. Once he had formed a plan, he would stick to it, period.
Finally, when his brother had shown the full measure of his blindered vision, Talbot had politely excused himself. He needed time to think.
He sent his men back inside out of the heat, then crossed the compound to the stockade. After checking on the prisoners to be certain they were actually locked up and that wasn’t yet another flaw in his brother’s plan, he took the chair from the stockade office. He walked outside, carrying the chair a short distance to the armory and then around the side of the building.
There he leaned it firmly back against the wall in the shade where there was a good breeze. Then he sat down and pulled his hat down over his eyes. The breeze kept the annoying flies down and carried to him the sweet smell of creosote and acacia flowers. It must have rained somewhere upwind.
He’d wait there, he decided, for his brother either to come to his senses or for the rest of their plan to show up. Or blow up.
A few times he considered taking his men and riding out. Th
en again, the money Messina had promised them was too enticing to pass up. He could only hope the Comanches would trade something worth at least as much money as Messina had planned to give them. But then they’d still have to offload whatever the Comanches gave them if they were ever going to see any real money out of this deal. What a mess.
He was still sitting there when he thought he heard someone riding through the gate. It sounded like more than one horse, so maybe the armored wagon his brother was dreaming of had arrived at last.
He listened more closely. There was no creaking and groaning, no heavy sounds that might come from horses expending the effort to pull a huge, heavy armored wagon. No matter. He’d wait where he was. Make that idiot come to him.
There was a quiet period. He figured his half-brother was making final arrangements with whoever was driving the wagon. Still, he’d never seen one of those armored wagons. He’d heard of them, but the closest he’d seen were the prison wagons they used sometimes to transport prisoners. But those were mainly a cage on a flatbed.
Maybe he could just peek around the corner, at least see what the thing looked like. It would be a curiosity for sure, and—
Then all at once the place exploded with gunshots.
He counted eight shots before he was able to get out of the chair. A seeming eternity later he was mounting his horse behind the armory. Then he was leaning low in the saddle, digging in his spurs and riding hell bent for leather for the front gate.
He kept anticipating the burn of a bullet in his back but it never came. Then he was through the gate and there was a stout wall between him and whatever hell he was escaping.
He rode hard for the first few miles. As he topped over the fifth low rise away from the fort, his horse’s breathing was ragged and froth was flying from his muzzle.
Talbot chanced a quick glance back over his shoulder.
Where he expected to see a blue-clad column of twos, there was nothing.
He looked again. Maybe a few Rangers were after him. He studied the terrain more closely, at least as much as he could from the back of his galloping horse.
Still nothing.
Nobody was following him, and that was a welcome surprise.