Siege of Morton's Cross Read online

  The Siege of Morton’s Cross

  The town leaders of Morton’s Cross are awaiting with trepidation the imminent release of the evil, cunning Dan McCleery from prison. It is common knowledge that McCleery and his gang of outlaws will want to exact revenge on the townsfolk for incarcerating him five years earlier. In planning to defend their town and survive what could become an ugly siege, the town’s leaders, however, start falling out with each other. In desperation, they hire Todd McFarlane, a bounty hunter, with a reputation for hunting down bad men. But, for McFarlane to outwit the slippery McCleery, the town’s leaders must first step up and face their demons!

  The Siege of Morton’s Cross

  K. S. Stanley

  ROBERT HALE

  © K. S. Stanley 2016

  First published in Great Britain 2016

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2185-1

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.crowood.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of K. S. Stanley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Chapter 1

  Dan McCleery spat the piece of gristle out of his mouth, straight through the bars of his cell window and watched it land on the sill outside.

  ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed. He dipped his spoon into his bowl of stew and dragged it around, searching for a decent piece of meat. ‘I hate this watered down piss,’ he muttered to himself.

  For nearly five whole years he had suffered prison food. Five years less three weeks in fact. Those were the three weeks of his stretch he still had left to do. And then, as far as the law was concerned, he had repaid his debt to society – for shooting an unarmed man in the leg and robbing him of his bag of gold.

  But as far as Dan was concerned, he had overpaid that debt. The man Dan had shot he swore was up to no good. One of Newt Royston’s workers. It was Royston and some of his henchmen who came running at the sound of Dan’s gunfire and took down McCleery’s horse, breaking Dan’s leg in the process. The rest of the McCleery gang returned fire and managed to get away unscathed.

  Dan walked over to his cell window. The cell was unbearably hot, as it often was at this time of year, and the light breeze through the iron bars cooled the two beads of sweat rolling down Dan’s cheek. Dan looked at the fly sunbathing on the window ledge. He took a mouthful of stew and spat it through the bars at the fly. It was a favourite game of his except, invariably, the fly won and avoided a drowning. But not today. The fly struggled to move its stew coated wings and was temporarily stuck to the window sill. It twitched as a bead of sweat poured off the end of McCleery’s nose and landed on its back.

  ‘Got yer, yer bastard!’ Dan said to himself. ‘An’ that’s exactly what I’m gonna do to you, Royston, when I get outta here in a few weeks’ time. Me an’ the boys are gonna piss all over you an’ yer two-bit town. Yer gonna wind up dead meat.’

  Dan had it all figured out. In fact, he’d had it all figured out, four years and forty-nine weeks ago. In three weeks’ time, the boys were gonna meet him on his release from this stinking, rotten jail, and they were gonna ride to Morton’s Cross where first he would take his pleasure with his sweet Marie before having a proper meal and a bottle of whiskey. The day after, they’d start shootin’ up the town and its officials before hunting down Newt Royston. Then, with Royston and his cronies dead, they could take their time emptying the bank of its cash and valuables. Finally, while Dan helped Marie pack her things and make ready to leave, the boys would torch the town and they’d all ride out together, leaving Morton’s Cross to burn to the ground – not only far richer men than when they arrived but also with the sweet taste of vengeance in their mouths.

  When he was not physically working on his ranch, Newt Royston enjoyed those occasions where he could dress smart and wear one of his stylish suits and leather cowboy boots. It was typical of Newt’s extrovert personality; a bold, fearless man, he appreciated life and fully engaged with all aspects of it, which was one of the reasons he was the richest man in Morton’s Cross and his opinions were respected by almost all its citizens. The town’s mayor, Dwight Farney, frequently sought Newt’s private counsel over a glass of whiskey or two on various town matters and this evening was such an occasion.

  While Newt looked at the delicate fingers of his beautiful wife as they secured the bootlace tie under the collar of the shirt she had freshly laundered and ironed for him he realized this particular meeting with Farney could be an awkward one.

  The subject was going to be the return of Dan McCleery. Although the citizens of Morton’s Cross didn’t openly talk about it, everyone was aware of his pending release from prison and privately scared that this hateful man would be seeking his revenge. Not that Newt was one of those. He realized that he was going to be McCleery’s main target and was not personally afraid of a fight with McCleery’s gang. It would have been fine if the situation had been that simple – a showdown between the two of them – but it was more complicated than that. Potentially a lot more complicated.

  First of all, there was the matter of Marie. The last time McCleery was with her she was running the local bordello. So, when he was short of money, which was often, McCleery would act as security at Marie’s establishment, for which she gave him a share of the profits. But Newt himself had taken a shine to Marie and married her nearly three years ago. To complete her transition to a respectable woman, she sold the business. So, if on his return to Morton’s Cross, McCleery was expecting to have his woman and his old source of income back, he was going to be disappointed.

  Secondly, there was the strong possibility that McCleery saw what Newt’s employee was actually doing before he tried to run away and ended up being shot and robbed for his trouble. McCleery never raised it at his trial, presumably because either he didn’t see it as relevant or thought such an admission would not have helped his case. But five years of doing nothing gives a man plenty of time to pick over the small details of his life and it was clear from the evidence that Dan had been watching his victim at work for quite a while before asking him to hand over the gold. That being the case, he couldn’t have failed to notice that Newt’s employee was actually taking small nuggets out of his bag and placing them strategically on the ground rather than gathering them up because he had just found them!

  It had been a cunning ploy of Newt’s to help him find an investment partner for the land he had bought. He had stopped at Morton’s Cross a few years ago. His initial intention was to stay for just one night, in the same way that many stagecoach travellers did, either to break their journey west or to switch routes. There was not a lot there then other than the staging post but Newt was somehow drawn to the place and decided to stay on. He took a job as a ranch hand for a while but made his first fortune as a sporting man in the saloons and gambling halls of the farther flung towns. And with this money he purchased some land, on the Dunston Escarpment, about five miles west of the Dry Gulch river valley, and nearly two miles from the western edge of Morton’s Cross.

  Newt’s father had been a farmer and had taught his son a lot about how to find water and irrigate crops in the arid lands of the west, and it was probably that fond boyhood memory that had attracted Newt to put down some roots in the arid district of Morton’s Cross. Newt Royston knew that the staging post’s geographic location, at a natural crossroads heading north-south and east-west, was the key contribution to giving this small settlement not only an air of permanence but also that its place in history would be secured if
it had its own sustainable water supply. So, armed with a few nuggets and handfuls of gold dust that he had won from a miner who was returning east and the knowledge he had learned from his father, he decided to stake a small claim on the Dunston Escarpment.

  His logic was simple; although there were a few trees and plants on his land and one or two small springs, Newt recognized from the general lack of vegetation that Morton’s Cross was an area of low rainfall. Yet, five miles to the east, at the bottom of the escarpment, the dry gulch river flowed freely. He reasoned therefore that lying under that five miles of escarpment and probably beyond, there must be an aquifer. People laughed at the idea and as a consequence, Newt was unable to find an investment partner to help shoulder the cost of test drilling a few artesian wells, to prove his theory. People didn’t have a vision of how there might be money in water, not least in the same way they had about gold. And that was where Newt’s nuggets and dust came in.

  He had read in Roughing It by Mark Twain about the technique of pocket mining. With this technique, if you are lucky enough to find a very small amount of gold in the dirt at the bottom of an escarpment, you next ask yourself how it came to be there. The likelihood is that it was washed down by the elements, from a richer vein protruding at the edge of the rock face, higher up the escarpment. To find that source you would start at the bottom and move to the left and right of the initial find in a straight line forming the base of a fan shape that would have its handle pointing up the gradient to the richer source. After all, if gold is washed downhill, it spreads out the further down the hill it goes and will naturally settle in a fan shape. The trick therefore is to work out where the perimeters of the fan lie as you work your way across and up the gradient, looking for other small finds. Newt had paid his most loyal men very well to secretly lay the gold, which was what they were doing when the McCleery gang arrived on the scene.

  Post McCleery’s trial, where incidentally the local jury unanimously found him guilty, Newt continued with his gold pocket mining scheme. With the fan in place, he approached the local mayor, Dwight Farney, and told him he had found a small amount of gold on his land but its positioning suggested there was potentially a large fortune to be had, although that would involve a significant investment in drilling equipment. On visiting the site and seeing the gold for himself, Farney was only too ready to take out his chequebook and pay for exclusive investment rights. Of course, no gold was ever found but after a month, the drills broke through the permeable rock to find the aquifer below, with its filtered water under sufficient pressure to flow back up through the well pipe and pool on the surface.

  While McCleery was serving his time in jail, that discovery changed a number of fortunes; first of all, needless to say, there were those of Royston and Farney but more significant was the change in fortune of Morton’s Cross itself. The ensuing supply of water enabled local farmland to be developed, which in turn prompted the arrival of the railroad, leading to the expansion of what was once a small settlement into a prosperous town. Last but not least was the change in fortune for Marie, of course. Now, thanks to her husband’s unmitigated success, she had become not only a respectable lady but a wealthy one as well.

  That left only potentially two flies in the ointment. One was that Newt had effectively conned Dwight. Not that that worried Newt; as far as he was concerned, Dwight was lucky that Newt had chosen him for a ‘mark’, and as a result made Dwight richer than he could have ever dreamed. But, if he knew what had really happened, the lack of integrity would have seriously concerned Dwight Farney. For Dwight wasn’t made like Newt. He was neither a gambler, nor an impulsive decision maker. He certainly wasn’t one of those larger than life characters prepared to take on all comers, regardless. Dwight was a man of principle. He had standards for how things should be done and how people should behave. People described his manner as bordering on the evangelistic because Dwight was not shy of ‘teaching’ people what he regarded as the correct way to behave. The big issue here would be if McCleery had seen the placing of the gold and had worked out during his time in jail, that not only had there been a scam going on but also what it might be. If this was all brought to Dwight’s notice, it could drive a large wedge between the two most powerful and influential men in Morton’s Cross.

  The other potential issue and the biggest human target of any McCleery vendetta was the townsfolk themselves. Angered by their dismissal of him as a ‘no good evil chancer’ at his trial, it wouldn’t be too difficult for the likes of McCleery to work out how to damage the town’s water supply, and as a consequence the prosperity upon which the townsfolk of Morton’s Cross depended. With these thoughts in his mind, Newt Royston kissed his wife goodbye, mounted the buckboard and made the short journey into town for his meeting with Dwight Farney.

  Newt was surprised when he walked into Dwight’s parlour to find Abe Staunton sitting there. Abe was an old-timer, the only one of the town’s original founders still living. When he was a younger man, Abe had been a pony express rider, which was how he discovered the crossroads, and seeing the site’s potential, built the settlement’s first store. He had long since sold that part of the building but had kept the residential quarters which had been his home for years. Nowadays, Abe spent most of his time sat on his veranda watching the comings and goings at the crossroads. He was regarded as a wise old bird. Not a man to say much but when he did, it was well considered and often insightful. Abe was regarded as one of life’s observers and analyzers.

  ‘Ah,’ said Dwight, seeing the slight look of surprise on Newt’s face. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the possible impending arrival of Dan McCleery. I’ve invited Abe because he has some news about the situation, and besides he always offers wise counsel.’

  ‘Good,’ said Newt. ‘Well, we might as well start with Abe’s news. Go on, Abe, tell us what yer know.’

  ‘Over the last few days, various members of the McCleery gang have been in town. Yer know me, I never forget a face. Mind you, they don’t appear to be stayin’ over. They arrive an’ a little later they leave again. An’ sometimes they come back. My guess is they’re casin’ the joint. Remember, the town’s changed a lot over the last five years. I reckon they’re making plans, which is why they sometimes come back, presumably to check points of detail.’

  ‘Mm, that doesn’t sound good,’ Newt responded. ‘Me an’ my boys will take ’em on, when they finally arrive. We’ll deal with ’em, it’s probably going to be a bit of bloodbath, but we’ll deal with ’em.’

  ‘That don’t sound right to me,’ Dwight chipped in quickly. ‘We need to be better planned than that. We can’t afford a shootout in the middle of town – it’s far too crowded, scores of people could get killed.’

  ‘We’ll take ’em before they get into town,’ Newt said. ‘That way no innocent people will get harmed. We’ll stage lookouts on each of the four roads. It’ll be fine. We don’t need to over complicate it.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Dwight thoughtfully. ‘What d’yer think, Abe?’

  ‘Depends, it’s one scenario. But there could be others, we need to think through the possibilities.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Dwight. ‘I like that kind of thinking.’

  ‘How d’yer mean, Abe?’ Newt asked.

  ‘Well, the out of town fight, assume that they’ll all ride in together, as a posse of a dozen men or however big the gang is. They might not choose to do that. They might come in ones and twos over a period of days, for example, and start their attack from inside the town.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Dwight, keen to approach the problem in a more scientific way than one, which to his way of thinking was based on sudden impulse.

  ‘If they did that, we would need to pick ’em off in small groups aroun’ the town before they could all meet up together,’ Newt pointed out. ‘We could let Zac Riley have some extra deputies to hunt ’em down an’ rough ’em up.’

  ‘I guess a series of small shootouts is better than one big one,’ Dwight c
onceded. ‘If any of ’em step out of line for the slightest reason, Riley could sling ’em in jail straight away, which would reduce the amount of shootin’. OK, so that’s two possible scenarios; all ride in together an’ we deal with ’em before they get into town, or they arrive in town in ones an’ twos, so we have small posses to deal with ’em. Are there any other scenarios?’

  ‘Well, we’ve spoken about us attacking them outside of town but they could by the same token choose to attack us outside of town.’

  ‘How d’yer mean, Abe?’ Newt asked, looking slightly puzzled.

  ‘They could attack your water system,’ Abe replied. ‘Some of your wells use pumps, don’t they? They’re not all free flow.’

  ‘No, that’s right,’ said Dwight.

  ‘Well, it’s easy,’ said Abe. ‘Stop the pump, throw poison down the well shaft, followed by dynamite to try and block the shaft an’ cut off the water supply. Any water that stills flow through will be contaminated. That would all take a lot longer to repair than a damaged overground supply pipe. The supply pipe might appear attractive initially ’cos you would have to try an’ secure five miles or so of it, which would take a lot of men, but poison and dynamite would have a bigger impact in the long run.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Newt, feeling the anger rise in him. ‘We jest don’t know what’s in that bastard’s mind, do we?’ he exclaimed, banging his fist down hard on the table.

  ‘Could hire a top gunslinger to try an’ infiltrate the gang, so attack ’em from the inside out,’ Abe suggested.

  ‘I reckon they’d work that one out pretty quickly if we tried it,’ said Dwight.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Abe commented. ‘Depends on who it is an’ the circumstances surrounding why they might wanna let someone join. Someone with a lot o’ confidential information about the vulnerabilities of the town, for example.’