Authors: Donis Casey
All Men Fear Me (24 page)
“Treachery and sedition must be combatted. Unworthy and sordid motives must be ferreted out and their authors deprived of all power for wrong doing.”
âTulsa County Council of Defense Report
As he neared the brick plant, Charlie could see an armed man standing at the front entrance. He halted Pork Chop well back from the gate and studied the situation for a moment. Even from his vantage point on the main road, he could see two or three ghostly lights floating around the yard. The lanterns of the night watchmen.
He had known that Mr. Ober had hired extra security, but it had not occurred to him until this moment that the guards wandering around the grounds were likely to interfere with his plans to catch Dutch Leonard in the commission of his crime. Yet Charlie knew about the gap in the fence. All Dutch had to do was get onto the grounds without being seen, and then if he were careful, he would be able to move around while avoiding detection.
His mother's voice in his head interrupted his rationalization.
Why don't you just tell Mr. Ober what you know? He's better equipped to confront a traitor than you are.
Charlie firmly ignored the voice of reason and turned his horse onto the field that led to the clay hills at the rear of the plant.
He found Henry waiting for him in the copse of trees that backed up to the hills, as they had arranged. Charlie dismounted and led his horse into the trees. “Seen anything?” Charlie kept his voice low.
“Not a thing. Where you been, young'un? I was about to decide you weren't coming.”
“It's a long story. My ma saw me leave, though. I'm going to catch hell tomorrow. If Dutch don't come tonight, I don't reckon I'm going to be able to do this again. Not unless I leave home for good, that is.”
Henry sighed. He had only gone along with Charlie's wild idea because he liked the boy and he had told Alafair he'd look after him. Looking after Charlie was turning out to be a harder job than Henry had anticipated. “Well, maybe that's just as well. I don't know how long I could keep up this twenty-four-hour-a-day schedule.”
“I'll bet you money that tonight is all we'll need.”
“Keep your money. I'll tell you what. If Dutch don't show up tonight, I'll go with you to Mr. Ober tomorrow and we'll tell him everything you saw⦔ He swallowed his sentence and squinted into the dark. “I'll be damned,” he whispered. “There's somebody out there.”
***
The guard stationed at the entrance to the brick plant held up his lantern in order to get a good look at whoever was approaching in the dead of night. A middle-sized woman on horseback, brandishing a rifle, was the last person on earth he expected to see. He walked forward to meet her as she reined at the gate.
Alafair didn't recognize the man, but he had the bean-pole, beaky-nosed look of the Tyler family who raised cotton out south of town. “Howdy,” she said. “Have you seen a couple of young fellows come by tonight? One of them would be on a pinto.”
“Nobody's been down this road since the last shift finished, ma'am, except for you.”
“Are you acquainted with Charlie Tucker or Henry Blackwood?”
“Can't say I am.”
“Well, keep an eye out for them, anyway. Both tall boys with fair hair. I fear they aim to sneak onto the grounds. My son and his friend have got it into their heads that somebody is going to slip in here tonight and do some damage, and they think it's up to them to stop it.”
Her warning amused the guard no end. “Ma'am, Mr. Ober has so many men guarding this plant that a rat couldn't slip onto the premises without us knowing. I guarantee that nobody is going to tamper with any machinery tonight or any other night.”
“Well, that's good to hear. But I hope you'll pass the word that they're around. If they try to sneak into the plant, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't shoot them. My boy is sixteen and I'm hoping he'll live to see seventeen.”
“I'll let my boss know, ma'am. We'll keep a watch for them. I've got a fifteen-year-old son myself, and he's always looking for ways to get his head busted.”
Alafair guided the roan back out to the main road at a walk and started back the way she had come. She didn't know what to do, now. She wasn't as panicky as she had been when Charlie rode off into the dark, determined to accost a killer. There were plenty of guards around to arrest anyone who wasn't supposed to be there. She was disappointed in Henry for going along with this scheme, though. Or perhaps Henry thought he was keeping Charlie from doing anything stupider than lying in wait all night. She hoped so. Henry had seemed like a level-headed young man.
Should she go back and wait for Charlie to come home with his tail between his legs in the morning? The girls were probably worried, and she didn't like the thought of Mary out there alone with a bunch of little children. Maybe she'd just take one turn around the perimeter of the plant, and see if she could catch a glimpse of the boys or old Pork Chop.
“The necessities arising from a great emergency furnished sufficient authority for the herculean efforts ofâ¦determined, virile, loyal and fearless men⦔
âTulsa County Council of Defense Report
“I'll be danged all to hell, Charlie, look yonder.” Henry spoke in an exited undertone. “I do believe that you may get your chance to be a hero yet.”
Henry and Charlie both hit the dirt and crawled to the edge of the copse in order to get a better view of the dark figure skulking toward them along the fence. It was impossible to see the man's face, but the figure of the skinny man in a tan Stetson with a high, uncreased crown was unmistakable.
Henry reached over and slapped Charlie's shoulder. “Dutch Leonard,” he whispered.
“I reckon,” Charlie whispered back. He could hardly believe his eyes. Could it be that he was actually right? He bit his lip to keep from cheering.
They watched in silence as Dutch approached the gap in the fence. He had come too close for the boys to take a chance on speaking to each other, so Charlie wasn't quite sure what action they were going to take now. He expected the best thing to do was wait until Dutch slipped into the yard and then sneak after him. He was going to try signing his intentions to Henry when something else caught his eye. “Who's that?” he said, too surprised to keep quiet.
Someone else had appeared at the gap and was signaling for Dutch to come on.
“I can't tell,” Henry whispered. “I don't recognize him.”
Dutch and the mystery man disappeared together through the fence.
“It's an inside job!” Charlie started forward on his hands and knees. “Come on, Henry.”
Henry reached for him, but Charlie was already halfway across the open space to the fence, running in a crouch. “Dang,” he murmured, and started after him.
***
Alafair was about to give up when she spotted a glint of moonlight off of something just inside the copse by the back corner of the fence. The roan huffed, and a whinny answered him from the trees. Pork Chop.
Alafair sighed with relief and urged the roan forward. Pork Chop was tethered to a pin oak a few feet within the copse, along with a mule that she assumed belonged to Henry. But the boys were gone. “Charlie, where are you?” she called. Her voice echoed in the silence. She scanned the fence, but didn't see the gap until she had practically ridden into it. She let out a breath, relieved, irritated, and worried all at once. She guided the roan through the gap.
“No Mercy for Slackers.”
â
Tulsa Daily World
, August 5, 1917
Dutch and the shadowy stranger were nowhere to be seen when Henry and Charlie made it through the fence.
“Let's alert the guards,” Henry suggested. “There's two of them, and I fear you and I are not equipped to take on a couple of subversives bent on mayhem.”
Charlie was not about to capitulate now. “No, not yet. Let's find them first. I think they must be headed for the rail siding.”
“All right, but whether they're there or not, I'm calling in reinforcements once we reach the siding.”
Charlie gritted his teeth, sorry now that he had asked Henry to come along, but he said nothing. He could see a globe of light in the distance, a guard walking the perimeter. He was coming in their direction.
“Come on,” he whispered, and slunk off toward one of the tall brick piles without checking to see if Henry was behind him. They hunkered down behind the stacks until the guard had ambled by. The boys sat in silence for ten minutes to make sure he was gone before dashing across an open space to skirt along the long covered kiln and head toward the rail siding.
They were approaching the tracks when Charlie noticed something hanging from the steel scaffolding at the end of the kiln. A man. No, a body, hanging by its heels.
Charlie gasped and turned toward Henry, but Henry was no longer standing behind him. He was splayed out in the dirt at Charlie's feet, out cold. A dark figure in a bowler hat was standing over him with a wooden baton in one bloody hand and a knife in the other.
The voice that spoke out of the dark sounded downright cheerful. “Why, what have we here?”
Charlie intended to scream for help, but the shadow man swung the baton at his head before he could make a sound.
***
Alafair saw the roving guard's lantern and halted the roan behind a stack of bricks, waiting for him to pass. She sat on the horse's back for a couple of minutes, unable to see much of anything in the dark, listening for movement. The brick stack she was hiding behind was situated close to the entrance of one of the two thirty-foot-long continuous kilns, where carloads of green bricks rolled slowly through the heated tunnels and emerged dry and ready to stack at the other end. She was not familiar with the layout of the brick plant, but she could see the hulking shapes of boxcars in the distance, at the end of the kilns, and a raised shape nearby that she assumed was a loading dock.
She could see something else, too, hanging from the iron scaffolding near the rail spur. Her first thought was that someone had hoisted up a side of beef. But then a side of beef didn't have arms dangling toward the ground.
Had her heart not leaped into her throat at the thought that the dangling body might be Charlie, she would have ridden off to find the guard. As it was, she unholstered her rifle and dug her heels into the roan's sides.
Alafair saw the movement on the ground under the hanging man before she quite got close enough to make out what was happening. She reined hard when she realized that the figure on his knees, trying to get to his feet, was her son. She recognized the man in the bowler standing over him, as well. The devil.
“You!” she cried.
Nick barely had time to turn toward her before she raised the rifle and fired. She winged him and he staggered, but he recovered quickly and drew his sidearm. The roan was dancing around, raising dust, making it hard for Alafair to aim again. Before she could draw a bead, Nick pulled Charlie to his feet and pressed the pistol against the boy's temple.
“Ma?” Charlie mumbled.
Lights were coming toward them now, and men shouting in the dark. Three or four guards, alerted by the gunfire.
“Don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Alafair's voice halted the men in their tracks. All were armed, and the rifle barrels waved back and forth as the guards tried to decide who to aim at.
“Is that Miz Tucker?” One of the guards had recognized her, though she didn't have time to call his name to mind.
“Yes, don't shoot! He's got my boy. Look yonder, he's killed someone.”
The gun barrels swiveled as one in Nick's direction. “Everybody stand back, now,” Nick said. He sounded calm. “Lady, drop that rifle and get down off that horse. I'm going to ride out of here easy as you please and take this boy with me. If nobody follows me, I'll drop him off down the road. Otherwise I'll blast a hole in his skull.”
For an instant, nobody moved. Charlie was woozy, unsteady on his feet. In the yellow light of the guards' lanterns, Nick's hostage looked even younger than he was, for which Alafair was grateful. None of the watchmen was willing to take a chance on shooting a child.
Alafair dropped her rifle. “Don't hurt him,” she said, as she dismounted. Keeping the boy in front of him, Nick sidled around so that the roan was between them and the guards. The graze on his shoulder hurt, but he could move his arm without difficulty. His plan was to hoist the boy up front of the saddle horn and mount behind him, keeping the pistol pressed against Charlie's head.
But that was easier said than done.
As Alafair backed off, Nick grabbed at the reins, but the white-maned roan tossed his head and shied. Charlie was reeling. If he passed out before Nick could get him tossed over the horse's withers, he figured he'd be shot full of holes before the boy hit the ground. He growled and reached again. He managed to get hold of a handful of leather and gave the reins a vicious jerk.
The horse went crazy. He shrieked and leaped straight up in the air, all four hooves off the ground, and began to buck like the ground was on fire. Nick let go of Charlie and fired at the roan. The shot went wild and Nick didn't get a chance to fire another. The roan came down right on top of him, rearing and kicking.
Alafair dashed in and hauled Charlie out of the way, dragging him through the dirt by both arms. The guards were hollering and trying to get a clear shot, but the light was too dim to see who was whom and what was happening. A demon was loose, it looked like, or the jaws of hell had opened.
It was all over in a couple of minutes. The roan hopped several times and ran off a few yards. He calmed down on his own, then trotted back as though nothing unusual had occurred. Charlie was lying on the ground half-conscious, his head cradled in his mother's lap, when the horse walked up and nosed him.
One of the guards was bending over Henry, who was still alive but out cold.
Nick did not move. There wasn't much left of him.