Just Shy of Mexico Read online

  Tom squelched a gulp.

  In silence, Matt DeKalb eyed him up and down.

  When the renowned marshal at last reached to shake hands, Tom determined to meet his gaze like a man. And he did. But as the lawman released his grasp, Tom couldn’t keep himself from snatching a glance at the ivory-gripped Schofield revolver on the marshal’s hip and wondering how many badmen he had brought down with that very weapon.

  “Yessir, Tom here’ll serve you just fine,” Sheriff Gilmer said.

  DeKalb gave him another once-over and then nodded. “I’m sure your boy’ll come in handy. We’ll set out at sundown.” He then shifted his gaze to the sheriff. “My accommodations now?”

  “Of course. Right this way.” Sheriff Gilmer gestured toward the Rio Grande Hotel. Then he said to Tom, “You’d best go ask Ed Randall for the day off and go get yourself rested up. You’ll be in the saddle all night again.”

  Tom nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  The sheriff gave Tom a wink and then turned to usher Marshal DeKalb down the railway platform. A score of excited onlookers, as well as a handful of wide-eyed, whispering children, followed the celebrity and the sheriff.

  Tom remained where he was. Excited on the one hand, vaguely bothered on the other. Had there been something peculiar in Matt DeKalb’s assessing gaze and in the tone of his response?

  “Aw, grow up, Tom,” he muttered to himself, as the crowd began to disappear around the corner. “Matt DeKalb’s a famous man, an important man. What’d you expect? You’d be best amigos the moment you shook his hand?” He shook his head and set out for the mercantile to let his boss know he’d not be available for work the next day or two.

  Along the way it occurred to him that Mr. Randall didn’t have to pay him for days he missed. Coming up short two or three dollars might put him in a pinch. And then there were supplies he’d better buy in case they were out on Uncle Tobias’s trail more than just overnight.

  Just him and Matt DeKalb. Who’d’ve thought?

  ***

  Tom spent the afternoon in the stables out behind Mrs. Slade’s boarding house. He got his gear packed for the trail, checked it, and double-checked it. Then he cleaned and loaded his guns. He wanted to make sure he proved himself from the moment they rode out tonight.

  After grooming and feeding his horse, he stretched out on the hay in an empty stall and tried to catch some sleep. The stable was no hotter than his room inside the house would be at this time of day.

  He woke with a start, sat up, and looked around. His first thought was that he’d overslept. Judging from the angle of the sunlight spilling in through the doorway, however, he figured it must be close to suppertime and not any later. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  There was a wash stand on Mrs. Slades’s back porch, and he was wet up to the elbows when the landlady’s twelve-year-old daughter, Phyllis, came out.

  “Well, Tom Hedgepeth, the whole’s town’s talkin’ about you,” she said.

  He wanted to tell her that gossip was unbecoming, but being that she was his landlady’s daughter . . . He pulled the dishtowel off the rack above the wash stand, began to dry his hands, and said, “What’ve I done that’s worth anybody talkin’ about it?”

  “It’s not what you’ve done . It’s what Marshal DeKalb said about you.”

  Tom felt his ears and cheeks reddening.

  A mischievous grin spread across Phyllis’s freckled face. “Seems Mr. DeKalb don’t look forward to playin’ nursemaid to some shopkeeper that don’t know an outlaw from a schoolmarm while he’s busy runnin’ down dangerous desperados. At least that’s what I heard.”

  Tom turned away and took his time hanging the dishtowel on its rack. Folks always seemed to write him off as soon as they saw he wore spectacles or heard he worked at the mercantile. But his boss, Ed Randall, knew what he could do. That’s why he set up that shooting competition. It had been fun watching the expression on each challenger’s face—and the told-you-so smile Mr. Randall’s wore too—as competitor after competitor handed over his dollar when he beat them, fast draw or slow aim.

  Of course bottles and cans perched atop fence posts weren’t the same as outlaws shooting back at a man. He’d never faced anybody pointing the business end of a six-gun directly at him.

  He drew a deep breath and opened the door for Phyllis. “What kind of pie did your ma make this evenin’?” he asked.

  ***

  In the saddle by sundown, Tom was determined to keep his mind on the job at hand and not worry about what Marshal Matt DeKalb had supposedly said that afternoon. Easier said than done, though. For one thing, he wanted the marshal and everybody else to know that he could do a whole lot more than simply mind the mercantile store for Ed Randall. For another, it was hard to focus on the task ahead of them when he had no idea what kind of plans the marshal had in mind. He wondered whether asking the lawman would make him come off like a greenhorn.

  DeKalb had dressed for the trail and not so fancy as he’d been that morning. Shirtsleeves and vest. Same boots, black Stetson, and Schofield revolver as before, though.

  The two of them rode north in silence for some distance before the marshal—gaze still fixed straight ahead—finally spoke. “Is there some girl back in town you’d like to call your sweetheart?”

  The question caught Tom completely off guard. “Hadn’t been thinkin’ about girls too much the last day or so. Especially since findin’ out I was the only one that was gonna . . . ”

  “Gonna what?”

  “Ride with you to catch Tobias Knox.” The words sounded foolish to him.

  DeKalb gave Tom a sideward glance. “Just tryin’ to assess who’s ‘ridin’ with me’—man or boy.”

  Tom pondered how to reply to a statement like that. You don’t tell somebody you’re man enough, he thought. You’ve gotta show ’em. “There’s a girl or two I think’s real pretty.”

  “This business turns out all right, one of those girls is gonna be hangin’ on your arm. Maybe both of ’em—one on each arm.”

  “I figure it’s best to leave thoughts like that for later and set my mind on what’s in front of us.” Tom gestured toward the purple-hued Franklin Mountains looming directly before them and recalled the lookout man he’d initially missed when he rode into his uncle’s camp the other night—a fierce-looking hombre. And a dang-fool lapse he couldn’t afford to repeat.

  “Always good to have a woman in the back of your mind,” DeKalb said. “Somebody to wanna stay alive for when the goin’ gets rough.”

  Tom glanced at the marshal, who seemed completely at ease astride the big, gray gelding he’d borrowed back in town. Is that how he kept himself calm—pretty women in the back of his mind?

  “So your uncle’s bunch is camped up on the east side?” DeKalb said.

  “He’s not much of an uncle,” Tom was quick to say.

  “But he trusts you, I’m told.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What d’you have against him?”

  “Aside from the fact that he’s turned to shootin’ folks and robbin’ ’em?”

  “Mm-hmm, aside from that.”

  “Nothin’.”

  “He didn’t whoop you when you were younger? Work you day and night? Make a fool of you in front of others?”

  “No, sir. He left me lots of chores to do when he set out to find those that killed my ma and pa, but I had plenty of time to do ’em.”

  DeKalb peered at him for a moment then returned his gaze to the landscape ahead of them. “Who killed your mother and father?”

  “Road agents.”

  “Humph. Ironic.”

  “Yes, sir. It is.”

  For a while, neither said anything more as they rode abreast beneath the bright moon—not that there weren’t a hundred questions running here and yonder through Tom’s mind.

  Finally, DeKalb said, “You suppose you can lead us up and over the west side of these mountains so we can drop down on your uncle and his gang from above? Withou
t them seein’ us?”

  “I can get us up and over real close to the right spot,” Tom said. “Last night they were camped pretty much right between Comanche Peak and Ranger Peak, but . . . ”

  “Holed up pretty good, are they?”

  “Not from above, and that’s the problem. They’re in a draw with plenty of rock to hide ’em from below. It’s pretty open up top, though.”

  “How steep?”

  “We should be able to stay in the saddle, unless they start shootin’.”

  DeKalb gave a nod. “Let’s give that a try, then.”

  ***

  Just before cresting the ridge that connected Comanche Peak and Ranger Peak, Tom and Marshal DeKalb swung down to give their horses a rest.

  The marshal tossed a nod toward the top of the ridge. “If they start slingin’ lead, this’ll be your first fandango, won’t it, boy?”

  Tom wished he wouldn’t call him ‘boy.’ “I’ve got no misguided notions about guts and glory, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at, Marshal.”

  “What I’m gettin’ at is this: can you shoot your own uncle if it comes down to it?”

  For a moment Tom pictured his uncle’s camp as he’d seen it last night. Then he let his imagination run—everybody in the camp yanking on their smoke wagons, unleashing hell, Uncle Tobias right there in the middle of them, standing his ground. Could he drop his ma’s twin brother? “I’ll do what the situation calls for,” he said, hoping that would satisfy the marshal. “But seven of them against the two of us? If I was them, I’d make a fightin’ withdrawal.”

  “You mean military-like.”

  Tom nodded.

  DeKalb heaved a sigh. “When you got there last night, were their horses all saddled and ready to run?”

  He had a point. Last night three of Uncle Tobias’s men were already sprawled out in their bedrolls—hardly ready to make a dash for the high lines. “So if we wait till well after midnight—”

  “They’ll likely all be asleep, except for maybe one lookout.”

  “My uncle did have a man posted in the rocks. If the lookout is in the same place tonight, it won’t be easy to get to him unseen.”

  Peering up the slope again, the marshal said, “Lookouts have a tendency to nod off in the lonesome hours before daylight.”

  “So, do you wanna just wait here till then?”

  “Nope.” DeKalb reached into his saddle bag and withdrew a small pair of field glasses. He then pulled his Winchester from its saddle scabbard. “Let’s see what kind of view we’ve got from up top.” He started up the slope on foot.

  Tom grabbed the rifle from his own scabbard and followed after the marshal. Steps before the summit, they both crouched and proceeded with caution.

  Uncle Tobias’s campfire was visible a couple hundred yards below and off to the right.

  Marshal DeKalb stretched out on his stomach, placed his Winchester within easy reach, and put the field glasses to his eyes. Tom eased down beside him.

  He’d only just settled in when one of the horses behind him gave a nervous snort. While considering that maybe it was simply he who was nervous and not the horse, Tom took a look back over his shoulder. His guts immediately knotted up on him.

  There in the bright moonlight was the lookout from Uncle Tobias’s camp last night, peering down the barrel of his long iron right back at him.

  “Stay still,” the grizzled hombre ordered, “or—so help me—I’ll peg both of you to the ground right where you lay.”

  Tom froze with his gaze fixed on the lookout, expecting Matt DeKalb to flip himself over in a heartbeat and drop the desperado with a single shot.

  But the shot didn’t come.

  “Now, you do exactly what I tell you—just how I tell you—and you might live to see daybreak,” the lookout said. “First, I want you to grab them rifles by the barrels and throw ’em a good piece off to the side of you, you hear?”

  Tom hesitated. When he heard the marshal moving and then his rifle clattering to the ground several yards away, his heart sank. He picked up his own carbine and reluctantly tossed it aside.

  “Good,” the lookout said. “Now, easy with them six-guns. Two fingers only—pluck ’em and chuck ’em.”

  Again, Tom hoped for a fast draw from the marshal that would topple the outlaw.

  “Do what the man says,” DeKalb muttered.

  If pitching his own Colt to the side would create a momentary distraction and provide Matt DeKalb with the opportunity to make a legendary move and drop the lookout, then Tom would’ve eagerly thrown his gun away. But having just witnessed the marshal giving up his rifle with nary a complaint, he wasn’t so sure that such a heroic move was coming.

  The outlaw spat. “Both of you better do what I say, now.”

  Tom had no hideout gun. He wondered whether the marshal did.

  For a long, silent moment nobody moved.

  While his heart pounded, something else flitted through Tom’s mind: if either of them shot the lookout, the hornet’s nest would be stirred. Uncle Tobias and the other five outlaws would swarm—away into the darkness or uphill to investigate the gunfire. Neither seemed ideal.

  He had just decided to ease his hand down to his holster and toss his gun aside when he heard DeKalb’s Schofield clearing leather. Not a quick draw, but slow and easy. A distraction.

  Tom went for his Colt and whipped his body around in one motion.

  The lookout’s rifle barked and spit fire.

  Tom snapped off a shot of his own, and the outlaw doubled over.

  Before the outlaw’s knees buckled good, Tom and the marshal were both on their feet.

  As the marshal brushed past him, Tom spied the glint of metal in the lawman’s hand.

  DeKalb clutched the back of the lookout’s head and exposed the man’s throat. A swish, a gurgle, and the outlaw slumped to the ground.

  The marshal wiped his knife blade on the dead man’s shirt and then turned and marched to where his rifle had landed. “You stupid kid,” he said through clenched teeth. “You went and let ’em all know we’re up here.”

  “But I—”

  “Shut up, grab your Winchester, and let’s get outta here,” he snapped.

  Tom hurriedly did as ordered, but mustered the nerve to press home his complaint. “You threw your rifle away. How was I supposed to know you planned on doing knife work once you tossed away that Schofield?”

  DeKalb swung up into the saddle and stole a glance at the crest of the ridge. “I’ve been doin’ this kind of work a long time, boy. I wouldn’t still be alive if I didn’t know how to go about it. Now, let’s get out of here before you become my undoin’.”

  Two steps and Tom hopped up onto his horse. He gave the animal the spurs, his thoughts flipping and flopping, one instant accusing him, the next second vindicating. I shot fast and true, he thought. Who knows if we’d still be alive to have this argument if I hadn’t gone for my gun. Then again, the marshal’s a proven professional. A living legend. And I blew his plan .

  While neither the accusing nor the vindicating gained an edge, one fact emerged as clear—there’d be no sneaking up on an unsuspecting Uncle Tobias now.

  ***

  “Dang fool kid!” Matt DeKalb said to Sheriff Gilmer. “Don’t know how to follow the lead of his betters.”

  Tom heard the marshal’s words. At the same time, he was busy thinking about having killed a man, albeit in self-defense. And about how to nab Uncle Tobias and redeem himself.

  “We can always get up a posse,” the sheriff said. “That’s what we assumed you’d want, at the start anyway.” He shifted in his desk chair.

  DeKalb thrust his palm forward. “I don’t ride with a posse. That’s not how I do my work.”

  “They don’t know it was us,” Tom interrupted.

  Both lawmen stopped and stared at him.

  “As far as my uncle knows, it could’ve been some random drifter—or maybe another outlaw gang—that shot his lookout.”

&n
bsp; “So what difference does that make?” DeKalb said. “They’ll have picked up and moved elsewhere, maybe even crossed on over to Mexico by now.”

  Tom considered what he knew about his uncle. “If I simply go about my business at the mercantile, I’ve got a feelin’ I’ll be seein’ Billy Jessup again.”

  The sheriff tilted his chair back and rubbed his whiskered chin. “If we take Jessup captive, you reckon your uncle values him enough to risk his own neck to get him back?”

  “Can’t really say. But I can tell Jessup I’m ready to throw in with Uncle Tobias, and you can tail us.” Tom nodded at Marshal DeKalb.

  DeKalb stared back coolly.

  “Let the outlaws come to us,” the sheriff mused aloud.

  “When’s Jessup supposed to return?” DeKalb said.

  Tom thought he detected a skeptical edge to the famous lawman’s tone. “Tomorrow evenin’,” he answered.

  DeKalb rubbed his forehead. After a moment, he said, “You go on and wait for your uncle’s messenger, then.”

  “What can I do to help?” the sheriff asked.

  “Don’t do anything that would make it look as if your deputies are expecting company.”

  “So—”

  “So just do what you always do and nothin’ more. Both of you.”

  Tom dared not ask DeKalb what he’d be doing. He assumed the lawman would quietly set about finding out what he could from the locals. Maybe somebody had seen Uncle Tobias’s wild bunch heading for the Rio Grande.

  It was only just now time for Mr. Randall to open up the store, and while Tom had been up all night, he knew he was too flustered to go back to the boarding house with the expectation of getting some sleep. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m goin’ down to the mercantile, then. I’m sure Mr. Randall can use my help.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” DeKalb said.

  Sheriff Gilmer looked at Tom sheepishly.

  Tom pursed his lips and headed out the door.

  ***

  He worked through the day, stopping only for a sandwich at lunchtime. All the while he envisioned half a dozen scenarios in which he was finally able to favorably impress Marshal Matt DeKalb . . . and return Uncle Tobias to Huntsville to finish out his sentence.