The Devil's Waltz Read online

  “This ain’t New York, and you’re not good enough to take Tom Spooner,” Posey said.

  “But you are,” Dale said. “And you’re going to help me or rot in Yuma another eight years. The choice is yours, Jack.”

  “Jesus, Dale,” Posey said. “Tom Spooner.”

  “I know how you feel, Jack. I liked old Tom myself that time I met him, and I know you rode a lot of miles together, but he’s not fit to ride free anymore,” Dale said. “Now make your choice. If I leave here without your signature, the deal is off the table and I’ll see you in another eight years.”

  “It won’t be easy smoking old Tom out,” Posey said. “And if we do find him, he won’t go quietly.”

  “The warrant says dead or alive,” Dale said.

  Posey sighed.

  “I said, make your choice,” Dale said.

  “Total pardon?” Posey said.

  “The minute we reach Santa Fe.”

  “Why Santa Fe?”

  “I’m federal, but I’m assigned to New Mexico Territory,” Dale said. “That will be our starting point once I send the signed document to Washington. Once I send it off, my authority covers all United States and territories.”

  “I think I read about that in the newspapers.”

  “So what’s it going to be, Jack?”

  “Eight years is a long time,” Posey said.

  “It is that,” Dale said.

  “What about the farm?” Posey asked.

  “It’s still there. Hasn’t been worked since ’sixty-five, but the land is good,” Dale said. “I pay the taxes on it every year.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t sell it,” Posey said.

  “Yes or no, Jack. The offer is good until midnight tonight, like the paper says.”

  Posey sighed. “Got a pen and ink?” he said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  Dale left Posey the pouch of tobacco, papers and matches, and coffee pot and cup, but the deputy removed the oil lanterns before locking the cell.

  Light filtered in through the barred window from the nearly full moon and the lit lanterns in the hallway leading to the office.

  Posey rolled a cigarette and sipped coffee from the tin cup as he stretched out on a lower bunk.

  He felt his mind start to wander and he let the thoughts flow at will.

  His parents, John and Mary Kate Posey, migrated from Ireland to America in eighteen forty, the first of the Posey family to leave the homeland. They arrived by boat in New York City with the clothes on their back and their life savings of one thousand dollars.

  The Irish relocation organization helped them find a small farm in southern Missouri near the Arkansas border. Three hundred acres of good farmland. With little left of their savings after purchasing the property, John and Mary Kate went to work building a new life.

  In eighteen forty-two, they brought in their first crop along with the hogs John raised on the side.

  That was the year Dale was born.

  By eighteen forty-eight, the year John, Jr., entered the world, the Posey farm was prosperous and growing and had done so without the need for slaves like in the neighboring states of Arkansas and Tennessee.

  Dale was highly book smart and was sent to the agricultural college in Vermont to study the latest developments in farming. That was in eighteen sixty, when Dale was just eighteen years old.

  Less than a year later, the War Between the States broke out.

  In early ’sixty-three, when Dale was but twenty-one years old, he was commissioned a First Lieutenant in the 1st Cavalry Regiment. He first saw action in the Battle of Big Bethel. In July, Dale’s unit fought at Gettysburg and helped stop the charge of General Pickett.

  Soon after Gettysburg, Posey left home to join the fight. Although he wasn’t yet sixteen, he was nearly six feet tall and had the girth of a man. He had little trouble lying about his age and enlisted into the Union Army in Illinois. Taught by his father, young Posey was an expert marksman and was sent to a special unit assigned to guard General Sherman.

  While serving in the special unit, Posey met a young soldier from central Missouri named Tom Spooner. A few years older than Posey, Spooner had an easy way about him and a winning smile that set you at ease. But when the fighting started, Spooner was as deadly as any man anywhere.

  In November of ’sixty-four, along with sixty thousand Union soldiers, Posey and Spooner followed General Sherman as he marched to the sea.

  Complete destruction of everything in their path.

  Sherman said his goal was to break the back of the south, and that is exactly what they did, burning and destroying farms, entire towns, the city of Atlanta, and every Confederate soldier encountered along the way.

  When the devastation was complete, Posey and Spooner continued to serve with Sherman until Lee’s surrender in April of ’sixty-five.

  Not even a week after the surrender, Lincoln was assassinated.

  In June of ’sixty-five, Posey and Spooner, both sergeants upon discharge, rode horses provided by the cavalry west and home to Missouri.

  Dale, now a major, stayed in the army to help the south with reconstruction.

  In early August, when they reached the Missouri line, Posey and Spooner decided to ride to Posey’s farm first and then travel north to Spooner’s.

  What they didn’t know was that, while they were away, a civil war in Missouri broke out between those who wanted to stay loyal to the Union and those opposed. Raiders loyal to the south from Arkansas came across the border and murdered and destroyed hundreds of farms and their occupants.

  Posey and Spooner found the Posey farmhouse burned to the ground as well as the barn and corral. Posey’s parents were buried in a field behind where the house once stood. They rode to town and spoke with the law, an old, useless sheriff. He told them it was Rebel raiders who did it in late ’sixty-four, riding across the border at night. He wouldn’t know who to arrest for the crimes or he surely would have.

  They rode north a hundred miles to the Spooner farm and found the same: a house burned to the ground, his entire family butchered, including Spooner’s eleven-year-old baby sister.

  They rode to Springfield to see the federal law, but got the same story about raiders and there was nothing they could do about it without knowing who the men responsible were.

  Posey set out to find his brother, Dale. He heard he was in Georgia with the reconstruction of the South project. Having nowhere to go at that time, Spooner went with him, and they arrived in Atlanta in late September.

  They found Dale camped outside of Atlanta with the regiment assigned to oversee the reconstruction of the city.

  Carpetbaggers were everywhere, promising forty acres and a mule to freed slaves who didn’t know how to read, much less farm using modern-day methods.

  Posey was shocked to learn that Dale knew what happened back home in ’sixty-four, having been notified by mail from surviving neighbors. The army wasn’t about to release men, much less an officer, to return home to see to family matters, so Dale saw no reason to inform his brother.

  “It would only lead you to worry and get yourself killed in combat, or worse, make a deserter out of you,” Dale had said. “I figured you’d find out soon enough when you got home.”

  “I don’t know about you, Jack,” Spooner said later on. “But I know what I’m going to do.”

  Not yet nineteen, a veteran of the war, and a decorated sergeant under General Sherman, Posey found himself riding with a group of men put together by Spooner. Each man, a Missouri volunteer who fought for the Union, had come home to similar circumstances.

  Revenge was Spooner’s objective.

  It became theirs.

  Since there was no one man or group to take their revenge upon, they targeted the southern railroads, stagecoaches, and banks, robbing any and all. They never crossed into the northern line and rarely had to use violence.

  At first.

  By ’sixty-eight, the group had amasse
d a tidy sum of money and valuables and was now wanted by not only the law, but the army as well.

  Men like Custer and Bat Masterson were on their trail.

  Then came the bounty hunters. Hard men, most of them ex-soldiers on both sides, left without a profession other than killing for cash reward.

  In late ’sixty-nine, after the group had successfully robbed three southern banks, several stagecoaches, and one train, they were forced into hiding by a large band of bounty hunters.

  Spooner suggested they ride south into Florida and hide out in the panhandle. Pensacola proved to be a right nice place. No one knew them and Posey, Spooner, and the boys spent many pleasant afternoons lounging at the beach and swimming in the warm oceanfront.

  It was late spring when the band of bounty hunters caught up with them. The group had rented a small cabin outside of town and the bounty hunters struck at dawn.

  A bloody battle ensued between Posey, Spooner, and their four men, and the dozen bounty hunters that attacked.

  The bounty hunters figured they would have an easy time of it, but Posey posted two lookouts on the roof and they were prepared.

  Much blood was spilled.

  By noon, just Spooner and Posey were alive inside the cabin, and seven bounty hunters lay dead.

  Posey offered the bounty hunters a truce, but they refused. The bounty money was too good to walk away from.

  While Spooner provided cover with a Henry rifle, Posey went out a back window and climbed up to the roof with a .50 caliber Sharps rifle, the weapon he carried in the army.

  With the Sharps, Posey killed the remaining five bounty hunters, two of them when running away.

  Posey and Spooner had no choice but to take what supplies they could carry and leave the dead men where they lay.

  Posey wanted to go south to Miami.

  Spooner felt going south would leave them with no escape route if more bounty hunters got on their trail.

  They rode north into Georgia, avoiding towns, cities, and farms. They grew out their hair and beards to disguise their faces. Near Albany, Georgia, they found a general store by the Chattahoochee River and loaded up on supplies. They rode a ferry across the river and continued riding west into Alabama.

  There was little love of Yankees in Alabama, and they were able to hide out for close to a year in relative comfort. They moved around a lot, often switching between the northern part of the state and the southern tip.

  Money wasn’t a problem. They had stolen a fortune and lived like common folk.

  Then, in late ’seventy-one, Spooner got the itch. He wanted to go back to work robbing the south for what they did to his family.

  Posey told him things had changed in six years. The south had been rebuilt with northern money. There was no one left to enact their revenge upon, if there ever had been.

  Posey secretly believed Spooner just wanted to rob and steal for the sake of doing it, but he wasn’t about to leave his partner and friend to go it alone.

  The Southern Pacific Railroad was too big and powerful for the two of them to take on, and recruiting new men sympathetic to their cause was nearly impossible anymore. They went small, holding up stagecoaches and ferryboats and the occasional bank if it was small enough.

  By early ’seventy-two, they were on the run again when the Overland and other stage lines offered rewards for their capture.

  They fled west to southern Oklahoma and hid in the mountains of the Indian Territory. There they met Big Nose Kate, a notorious prostitute who years later became famous when she took up with Doc Holliday. They liked Kate, and she took them in for a while as they regrouped.

  Then, in late ’seventy-two, Posey read several stories in the Arkansas Ledger Newspaper that changed his course. The first story concerned his brother, Dale. After four years as a US deputy marshal in Missouri, he was appointed to the rank of US marshal in New Mexico Territory.

  Posey had no idea his older brother was the law, never mind now a full US marshal. He had assumed incorrectly that Dale had returned to the farm.

  The other story concerned the Pinkerton detectives. The firm of experienced lawmen and trackers had been hired by various stagecoach lines, railroad lines, and even some banks to track down and bring in as many outlaws as possible.

  Posey suggested it was time to leave Oklahoma and ride north, possibly to Montana or the Dakotas where they weren’t known, and start living as honest men.

  Spooner wasn’t having any of that. He wanted to stay with Big Nose Kate until things quieted down, although he bore no ill will toward Posey for his decision. Posey stayed on one more winter before his decision came to a head.

  In spring of ’seventy-four, when the mountain snow melted and the days grew warm, Spooner and Posey parted ways.

  Posey rode west and north into Kansas, where he took work on several cattle drives for various ranches herding beef.

  Come winter, he’d ride down to Texas and wait out the cold weather near the Gulf or in Austin. He rode to the farm in Missouri and was shocked to see it deserted.

  Time seemed to slip away, especially when working cattle drives or the occasional fence-mending assignment. Two winters he spent in a linemen’s shack in Colorado, a bleak and lonely job.

  In the summer of ’seventy-nine, his crimes finally caught up with him.

  Years earlier, when Posey and Spooner were hiding in Alabama, Posey saw the most unique handgun he’d ever come across. A striking black Colt Peacemaker with black ivory grips. Carved into the ivory was the image of a hooded cobra snake about to strike.

  The weapon was custom-made for a rich rancher who’d died before he could pick it up. Posey purchased the gun for the very stiff price of one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

  When he was working horses for the Big Whiskey Ranch in Arizona Territory, six Pinkerton detectives rode in and surrounded Posey as he was gathering strays. A local ranch foreman recognized Posey’s unique Peacemaker from a stagecoach he had been on when it was robbed and sent a wire to the detective agency. He later collected the five-thousand-dollar reward, but six months later was shot in the back and killed.

  Dale attended Posey’s trial held in the capital city of Phoenix.

  That was the first time Posey had seen his brother in more than a decade, and he didn’t see him again until yesterday.

  It was nine years since Posey parted ways with Spooner. Every now and then, he would catch a snippet of news about Spooner when working a drive somewhere. The latest bank he robbed or stagecoach he held up with his new band of men. On several occasions, Spooner killed members of a posse in pursuit.

  Killing lawmen was a sure way to a hanging.

  Posey rolled and smoked another cigarette as he thought.

  Smoking old Tom out was going to be a daunting task. He was as skilled as any man with a gun or at tracking, was totally fearless, and, most of all, and what Dale didn’t realize, was that Tom Spooner was completely insane.

  Posey could see the madness slowly come on and take over Spooner’s mind piece by piece. Little things at first, like planning more dangerous jobs than were necessary so his men would be in more danger than need be.

  After a while, Posey realized what Spooner was actually looking for was a reason to kill.

  A man who looks for reasons to kill when none existed is just plumb crazy.

  And the odds of taking Spooner alive were less than zero.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  Sheriff Riker woke Posey at seven in the morning with a cup of coffee and a basin of water for him to wash up in.

  Around seven thirty, Riker and his deputy, James, returned with a table and two chairs and brought them into the cell. A few minutes later, Dale and a full breakfast prepared by the hotel arrived.

  “Eat hardy, Jack,” Dale said. “We got a long train ahead of us this morning.”

  Fried eggs, bacon and potatoes, toast, juice, and coffee with some kind of pastry Posey had never seen before but tasted delicious.
<
br />   Dale called it a Danish.

  “Train leaves at ten,” Dale said. “We’ll be in Santa Fe around midnight.”

  “I gave this some serious consideration last night,” Posey said as he sopped up the runny part of an egg with toast. “Old Tom won’t go easy. You’re going to have to kill him. He won’t go alive, for sure.”

  “Maybe with you along you could talk some sense into him,” Dale said.

  “Remember that story Ma used to tell us as kids about the mouse that fell into the bucket of cream?” Posey said.

  Dale shook his head. “I don’t recall.”

  “This little mouse smells the fresh cream and climbs into the bucket,” Posey said. “Once he’s inside he realizes he’s going to drown. He’s left with two choices. Accept his fate and drown or fight like hell to survive. So the little mouse fights like hell to live. He fought and fought and fought so hard he churned the cream into butter and then climbed out of the bucket alive and well. That’s Tom Spooner.”

  “Maybe so, but we won’t be going after him with a bucket of cream,” Dale said. “Finish your breakfast. We have a train to catch.”

  Dale and Posey stood on the platform at nine forty-five and waited for the ten o’clock train to arrive.

  A dozen or more passengers waiting for the train stared at the shackles around Posey’s legs and wrists.

  “Is this necessary?” Posey asked as he shook his wrists and the shackles clanked.

  “It is until we reach Santa Fe and the pardon takes effect,” Dale said.

  “Well, roll me a cigarette then,” Posey said.

  Dale rolled two, lit them both with a wood match, and gave one to Posey.

  “Thank you kindly, brother,” Posey said.

  Dale looked at his pocket watch. “Damn train better be on time.”

  “Is that Pa’s old watch?” Posey asked.

  “It is,” Dale said. “Came all the way from Ireland with him. He gave it to me when I went into the army.”