The Vigilance Man Read online

  Of course, thought Cutler as he worked, it could be that this man is some old rogue using me as a cat’s paw for purposes of his own. He glanced sideways at the man next to him and was instantly reassured. Whatever else Archie was, he was no villain. Cutler had already heard about the forcing into prostitution of young women and girls before he’d met Archie. It was one of those things that the governor was keen to suppress before he officially applied for statehood for the territory; slave trading being one of those activities apt to make a district seem backwards and primitive. There had been rumours in the District Attorney’s office that the governor was considering the use of troops to put a stop to the tricks of the comancheros. If he, Cutler, could throw a wrench in the works of such men, he was happy enough to do so. It might not do his career any harm in the future either, acquiring a little firsthand experience of the white slavers.

  ‘You dreaming, boy?’ said the old man irritably, ‘I asked you twice for that hammer.’

  ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’ He handed the hammer to Archie, who banged a few tacks into the keg upon which he was working.

  The device they were constructing was simplicity itself. It consisted of a wooden barrel, about two feet long, with clay pots securely lashed with wire to both ends. The keg would be half filled with lamp oil before use. The clay pots were each stuffed with gunpowder and bits of scrap iron such as rusty nails. According to Archie, the men who were waiting for the next group of girls were camped out in the hills. They generally stayed in a little hollow, which sheltered them from the wind. The important thing of note about this location was that the walls of the hollow were like a saucer-shaped depression at the bottom before rising more steeply up to the surrounding hills.

  What the old man had in mind was to creep up to the top of the slopes and then light a fuse attached to the keg. This would then be sent rolling down to where the wagons, carts and supplies of the comancheros lay at the bottom. The lamp oil would set everything alight, with luck, and when the flames reached the improvised mines with their deadly charge, these would explode like artillery shells.

  ‘If that don’t spike their guns, I’m a Dutchman!’ the old man had declared.

  It was a while since Cutler had done any work of this sort with his hands and he did not find the experience at all displeasing. He spent so much of his time lately shuffling papers about in an office, that he had all but forgotten the pleasure of creating something in this way.

  At length, they were finished and the two of them sat there, looking at their deadly creation. ‘Well,’ said Archie, ‘if that don’t settle ’em, then I’m sure I don’t know what will. Come nightfall, if you’re still game, we’ll cart that up to their blamed camp and see if we can’t show them as they ain’t welcome in these here parts.’

  ‘I’m game,’ said Cutler quietly.

  CHAPTER 6

  Some of the comancheros, who were primarily based in New Mexico and Texas, were no more than traders who bartered cloth, tools, bread and guns with the Kiowa and Comanche, receiving in exchange hides, ponies and sometimes slaves. Others lived a nomadic life of banditry, preying upon lonely homesteads and robbing travellers. There were also those, like the bands who passed through the territory on the way to Mexico, who transported women from place to place. It was seldom that only one group was involved in such transactions. The various factions tended to keep to one area and would sell on commodities to each other, be those commodities ponies, beaver pelts or young girls. In the present instance, one group of men was escorting the party of girls south, from just across the line where the territory began, and they would then hand them over, for a consideration, to the bunch now waiting in the hills up towards Fort James. These boys would then take their cargo south, eventually crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico.

  There were eighteen men camped out, waiting for the girls to arrive. They understood that there would be eleven girls to escort south, ranging in age from fourteen upwards. The profits to be made in Chihuahua from a dozen young, Anglo virgins was likely to be stupendous. True, there was some initial outlay, but even so, they would none of them be short of cash money for the foreseeable future after delivering these girls to the brothel keepers who had already contracted to purchase them.

  Although they didn’t apprehend any danger from the local vigilance men, the comancheros were taking no chances, which is why Jack Carlton had received a warning shot across his bows as he approached the temporary base. His arrival, after the little bit of friction with the young man acting as lookout, was greeted with unbounded enthusiasm. Eighteen men need a good deal of food and drink and being sequestered up there, in the foothills of the High Peaks, meant that they were more or less reliant on what Carlton brought up in his buckboard. He hadn’t been able to come for four days and they were accordingly on short commons.

  ‘Ai, you bastard!’ cried one of the men, when Carlton’s rattling wagon hove into view. ‘What kept you?’

  ‘Would o’ been here sooner, but for some boy shooting at me just now.’

  ‘Well, praise God, you’re here now. What have you for us?’

  The buckboard was swiftly divested of its contents, for all of which, Jack Carlton had been shrewd enough to obtain payment in advance. Truth to tell, he would be sorry to see the back of these boys when they moved on the next day. Their custom always provided him with a welcome boost in his financial resources. The mark-up on the goods he sold them was a considerable one.

  ‘What word from your vigilantes?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘Nothing to concern you, although a posse might be riding out in this direction tonight. They ain’t lookin’ for you boys, though.’

  ‘They coming up in the hills?’

  ‘No reason why they would. We’re looking for a fellow as shot dead two of our men.’

  ‘You’ll be riding with them?’ asked another of the men.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ replied Carlton impatiently. ‘Don’t fret, it’ll be fine. Just keep your heads down and don’t show your faces after dark. And I wouldn’t let that young fool that shot at me go out on the rampage. Anybody shoots at that posse and there’ll be hell to pay.’

  This was another of the services that Carlton provided, and was paid for. He was in a good position to lead the vigilance men off on a snipe hunt when circumstances required.

  Having delivered the goods, there was little point in lingering further. Carlton had no particular liking for these rogues and knew that they would cheerfully cut his throat if they thought that there was any advantage to themselves in doing so. They had only refrained so far because he was so useful to them. ‘It’s been good to visit with you folks,’ said Carlton, ‘but I guess I’d best be getting along now.’ There were a few grunts, but none of them were really all that interested in his departure. He manoeuvred his horse carefully around the heaps of saddlery, boxes and other gear that was stowed around the three carts in which the women were to be travelling. As he left, it struck Carlton that the comanchero camp bore some little resemblance to a travelling circus.

  While his chief deputy was betraying him up by the High Peaks, Mark Seaton was putting together a posse to ride out later that evening in an effort to track down and hang Brent Cutler. Practically every adult man in Greenhaven contributed a dollar a month to the safety committee. This was then used to pay the expenses of those who abandoned their work while riding in pursuit of wrongdoers. It was a simple enough system, but had worked smoothly for the better part of twenty years. There was no bureaucracy involved, no paperwork and no tiresome waits for justice to be delivered. For all the irritation of not being able to get a drink after ten at night and having to ride off on a six mile round trip to have a whore, most all the townsfolk thought that they were getting good value for their money. It was truly said that a child of tender years or a lone young woman could have walked down the meanest alley in Greenhaven at any hour of the day or night, without the least fear of being troubled or interfered with in any way.

&nb
sp; The first person Seaton called on was James Booker, who owned some of the pastures which surrounded the town. Booker greeted him affably and had already guessed the reason for the visit. ‘This’ll be about that devil as shot Ezra Stannard? Count me in.’

  The others Seaton called upon that day were similarly ready to do their duty. The blacksmith had been a popular figure locally and his murder had excited great disgust and a burning desire for retribution upon the sort of person who could casually snuff out the life of such a good man. As he went on his rounds, Seaton made sure to emphasize the fact that the fellow they were hunting for was a silver-tongued liar, who made his crooked living by spinning plausible stories to the widow and orphan; cheating them of their money in this way. By the time he had finished, there wasn’t a one of the posse who would have given the slightest credence to anything that Cutler tried to tell them.

  Knowing that Cutler genuinely was coming to town as a representative of the District Attorney’s office in Pharaoh gave Seaton an edge in predicting the man’s movements. If he really had been some random confidence man, on the roam and looking for an easy mark, then the encounter with four men from Greenhaven would have spooked him and he would most likely have been halfway across the territory by now. Since this Cutler knew that he was in the right, he would, on the other hand, probably see no reason to alter his course. He was in all probability still heading towards Greenhaven. Fact was, Seaton had expected him to arrive before this and the delay gave him cause to hope that the fellow had met an unfortunate accident somewhere on the road; for preference, a lethal one.

  By two that afternoon, ten men had positively engaged to ride out at dusk to seek for this scoundrel. It would be a relief to Seaton when Carlton returned from his business. Now that Ezra Stannard was gone, the owner of the store was the most reliable and trustworthy of the safety committee and Seaton would be glad to have the man at his side when they rode out that night.

  After finishing off the strange device whose construction the man called Archie had directed, the two of them went back and sat outside the old man’s cave home and had a bite to eat. ‘How do you get by for food?’ inquired Cutler curiously.

  ‘I hunt and trap. Visit town when I want somethin’ in particular.’

  ‘What about money?’

  Archie shot the other a sharp look and said, ‘Ah, you’re the genuine article all right. Trust a lawyer to ask so much o’ questions. It’s no secret. I do some prospecting up in the streams near here. There’s enough placer for me to live on. I get by.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be inquisitive. It’s just that with such a comfortable life, I’m surprised you want to start a range war with those comancheros.’

  ‘Some things I can’t abide,’ said Archie shortly. ‘One of ’em’s pushing around the weak and helpless. I can put up with a thief, even tolerate a killer. I won’t have this vile trade going on right on my very doorstep, so to speak.’

  ‘I wonder you don’t just move to Greenhaven and join the vigilance men there.’

  The old man burst out laughing at that. ‘What, and start fretting ’cause a man wants a drink on the Sabbath or is buying and selling guns to those he oughtn’t? I got no time for that sort of foolishness. Forcing girls who’re no more than children into a whorehouse, that’s something else again.’

  It seemed to Cutler that it would do no harm at all to delay his arrival in Greenhaven by a day or two. If his suspicions were correct and the man he had shot dead had indeed been a member of their vigilance committee, then it made sense to give a little time for feelings to cool. At the moment, it was altogether possible that some of those in the town might be a little ticked off with him. The fact that he also lacked his letters of authority and so on was also something to weigh in the balance when considering how to turn up in Greenhaven. Obviously, Mark Seaton would know of his coming, but then again, it could well have been this very man who had sent out four emissaries to greet him in such a discouraging fashion. This would need a lot of thinking and in the meantime, there were certainly worse ways of biding his time than by helping this good man to tackle a gang of slavers.

  ‘What time should we set off?’ asked Cutler.

  ‘I reckon their friends’ll be coming just about sundown,’ said Archie. ‘They’ll hand over the girls to the scamps who’re camped near here and then the other group’ll head back north again. From what I know of ’em, they’ll make the exchange out on the plain, before the hills start. That will be our best time.’

  ‘You taken action of this sort before?’

  ‘Not precisely like this. I done stuff that slowed them down, muddled them up. Those boys don’t seem able to take a hint, though. I’m hopin’ as this’ll give them a message they’ll take heed of for a good long while.’

  As he drove his cart back to Greenhaven, Jack Carlton mulled over in his mind whether there was some way that he could make capital from his knowledge of Seaton’s duplicity. It was fairly plain that the leader of the safety committee wouldn’t be overly keen on some outsider breezing in and taking over law enforcement in the town. Simply knowing that Seaton had told a barefaced lie about this business to Carlton, told that individual all that he needed to know. The question was, could he turn this to his advantage? It was mighty dull being Seaton’s friend, no matter how much good stead this stood him in, in the eyes of the town. He was trusted far more as a close confederate of the Godly Mark Seaton than ever he would have been on his own merits.

  By the time he was back on the outskirts of Greenhaven, Carlton’s schemes had solidified into the blackmailing of the town’s leading citizen. It would take a little doing and once he tipped his hand, Seaton would know that his supposed friend was anything but; on the whole, though, the profits of such a move would vastly outweigh any such minor disadvantages. There would be no purpose in making a move until they had run down and destroyed this man from Pharaoh, of whose swift death Jack Carlton was every bit as desirous as Seaton was himself. It was in nobody’s interests to have strangers sniffing around Greenhaven and its environs; least of all strangers from the District Attorney’s office!

  It was a relief to Seaton to spot his friend ambling back along Main Street with that old buckboard of his. He hailed the storekeeper at once, crying good-naturedly, ‘You surely took your time, Jack. What kept you?’

  ‘Ah, you know what it’s like. People counting out the money they owe me in nickels and dimes. Who’d be in business, hey?’

  ‘You ready for tonight?’

  ‘Why, yes. You think this fellow is still likely to be in the vicinity?’

  ‘I see no harm in looking for him, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Happen you’re right. What time you want to ride, about six or seven?’

  ‘I thought seven, if that accords with your convenience?’

  ‘I reckon so. Gives me time to deal with one or two little matters. Where do we muster, edge of town?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told the others to meet at the livery stable.’

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  The sun crept slowly around the sky; falling until it touched the western horizon. All except two of the comancheros left the camp to collect the girls whom they were awaiting. These men, so ready to betray or double cross others, lived in constant fear of the same happening to them. They wanted to make sure that if there were to be any species of violence with the other band arriving in the area, that there would be enough of them to give good account of themselves. The two who remained in camp were the young man who Jack Carlton had beaten earlier that day and another boy, who was only sixteen. Their instructions were merely to set a watch upon the carts and so on and to see that no harm befell any of the belongings of the other men.

  Although he hadn’t known it at the time he acted, the boy who Carlton had beaten up was the near relative of one of the older men at the camp. Luckily for Carlton, this comanchero had been away and not returned until after Carlton had gone back to Greenhaven. When he saw the state of hi
s sister’s son, this man had sworn that if ever his path crossed with that of Jack Carlton again, then it would be Carlton’s face which was left bloody and bruised.

  The two youngsters, not expecting any sort of problem, fell to fooling around chatting about inconsequential matters. Had they be doing as they had been instructed and looking round and listening for trouble, then they might just possibly have heard the two men who had scrambled up the other side of one of the slopes leading down to the comanchero camp. They had made a not inconsiderable amount of noise in doing so, for they not only had to haul their own selves up the scree-strewn slope; they were also encumbered by a heavy and awkward burden, which had to be dragged up by ropes.

  When Cutler and Archie gained the top of the slope, they lay for a moment, pulling on the ropes and slowly dragging up the wooden keg. They were morbidly aware of the noise that this generated, as stones went skittering down the slope, but there were no sounds of alarm from the camp on the other side of the ridge. ‘Think they’ve heard anything?’ whispered Cutler.

  ‘Wouldn’t o’ thought so. Those hoof beats we heard earlier sounded to me like the whole boilin’ of ’em’s most likely left. I’ll have a peek over yonder and see what’s what.’ Archie crawled up to the top of the slope and cautiously peered over into the little valley below. He came back and said, ‘Couldn’t be better. There’s two boys been left in charge. They’re having a wrestlin’ match right now.’

  Now that it had come to the point, Cutler was gripped with a sudden uncertainty about the course of action that he and Archie were about to embark upon. He said, ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘I’ll do it all by my own self, if you’d rather.’

  ‘No, I guess I’m in it now.’