Sheriff Moultrie and the Sulfur Springs Bandits (part 1)

Sheriff C.R. Moultrie had seen more than a few bank robberies in his time, but never one quite like what he saw that afternoon at the First Bank of Bracton. The front door creaked in the breeze as it swung by a single hinge, the safe was barren, and the teller lay lifeless on the floor. From head to foot the deceased was the grayish-white shade of campfire coals after a long night under the stars.

“That ain’t normal, Sheriff,” said Deke Piebald, Moultrie’s sole deputy. “He can’t be dead but more than an hour or so.”

As he crouched next to the body, the Sheriff caught a glimpse of Connie Widell, hovering near the entryway. He wished she didn’t have to see the gruesome scene, but part of him was glad she would get to watch him in action. The rest of the small crowd that had gathered was made up of Mr. Pendleton, the bank’s owner, Cyrus Daniels, one of the wealthiest ranchers in three counties, and a few other men from town.

The Sheriff leaned closer over the body and caught the faint odor of sulfur. No doubt the gunpowder from the single shot that was fired must have accounted for the smell, but he saw no wound on the teller’s body.

“All right, Deke, let’s roll him over.”

Before the deputy could lend a hand, the two of them looked on in horror as the teller’s arm, followed by the rest of his body, turned to dust. Whatever it was spread outward from the spot where the Sheriff had touched him. He yanked his hands backwards and upwards, nearly striking Deke in the chest where the deputy stood frozen in place. At the same moment Connie shrieked and the Sheriff yelled “Shut that door!”

Having only a single hinge to work with made the task that much harder and slower, but the men standing around the entrance managed it. Moultrie found himself alone in the bank with only his deputy and a pile of ashes on the floor, all that was left of Timothy Hanson, the newest teller at the First Bank of Bracton.

“I told ya something wasn’t normal.”

“Yeah, Deke, you did.” The Sheriff pushed his hat back off his forehead and scratched his scalp. “I suppose we oughta . . . clean up. But I didn’t see a bullet wound. Did you?”

“Nope, sure didn’t. That was the first thing that didn’t make sense. Mr. Pendleton was in his office in the back with the door closed, but he swears he heard a shot.”

Moultrie removed his hat entirely and rubbed the back of his neck with his other hand, the way he always did when he needed the wheels of his mind to start turning a little faster. As he craned his neck to the right something caught his eye, just above the door. He rose from his crouch and walked over toward a spot that looked oddly splintered. Reaching for his hip pocket, he retrieved his trusty knife, pried it open, and began digging in the woodwork. Moments later a bit of mangled metal dropped into his outstretched palm.

“There’s your gunshot,” he said as he tossed the bullet to Deke.

The lanky deputy snatched the projectile out of the air and examined it with a puzzled look on his face.

“There still ain’t no gun here though.”

“Well, I’m still thinkin’ on that part, Deke. Let’s get a container or something. Timothy’s family will . . . well . . .”

Moultrie was outside talking to Mr. Pendleton a few minutes later when Deke tapped him on the shoulder.

“Found something. In the, umm, well . . . in there.”

The deputy handed over an odd-looking revolver.

“Do you recognize this, Mr. Pendleton?” the Sheriff asked.

“I most certainly do. That’s the grape shot revolver Timothy was so proud of. Got it from his daddy, if I remember rightly. I didn’t know he’d been carrying it to the bank, but I suppose with four robberies in three weeks I shouldn’t be surprised.”

The banker handed it back to the lawman. A look of discomfort flashed over his face as he noticed that some of the ashen patina on the gun had transferred to his fingers.

“A genuine Lemat revolver,” Moultrie remarked to himself. “Never seen one myself. But it makes sense of that ball we found. Too small to be a forty-four.”

“His mother’s the only family he had left. Will you see that it’s sent to her in Chicago—after all of this is over I mean?”

“Of course,” he said, pondering where would be the best place to put it for safekeeping.

Examining the cylinder more closely, the Sheriff discovered that the gun was loaded not with the cap and ball that he expected, but with newer cartridges. He turned one of them out into his hand and ran his thumb over a small t-shaped mark on the bottom. Something about the projectile caught his eye, but before he could take a better look he caught a glimpse of Connie as she crossed the street, headed back to her father’s general store. He tipped his hat to her before peeking in to see how the cleanup was going. Moultrie thought he caught Deke softly muttering “he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” as he carefully swept. He shut the door quietly and headed back to his office.

Since the bank was off the main street, the Sheriff cut through the alley between the church and the post office on his way. It was late afternoon by then and a good deal of the alley was draped with shadows. Before he had taken much more than a handful of strides into the narrow passageway, a large form slid into the light, blocking his way. As the Sheriff’s eyes adjusted, he realized that it was Cyrus Daniels.

“Shut up and listen,” Daniels said. Though quiet, his tone was menacing.

“Now, Daniels—” Moultrie said, taking a half-step to one side.

“I said shut up!” 

Daniels matched the Sheriff’s movement. It was too narrow for him to simply squeeze past and though he was sure he could best Daniels in a fair fight if it came to it, he didn’t relish the thought of a scuffle in the alley, especially when he knew for a fact that his opponent carried a derringer up his sleeve and a knife in his boot and knew how to use both of them.

“And listen to me,” Daniels continued.

Moultrie would have listened to him a lot better if he’d just come into the office, but he supposed that accosting a lawman in the alley was more in keeping with Daniels’ way of life from before he struck it rich.

“These robberies have to stop. You know I got an interest in all these banks. If you hadn’t been away all day, well, ain’t you supposed to be keeping the peace and protecting the citizens of this good county? Maybe we need to get someone else next election.”

That was unfair; he’d been away that morning to meet with the Marshal at Fort Stanhope. But Moultrie didn’t want to waste time on arguing when he had a case to investigate.

“Find these robbers or you won’t have to worry about standing for election again. I’ll see to that, don’t you doubt it.”

Daniels scowled at the sheriff, pointed at his own temple cryptically, and then left the alley.

The Sheriff didn’t take Daniels’ words lightly. Though no one knew all the details, it was well known in the county that Daniels had a rough past, dark even. If Daniels made a threat, one would do well to treat it like a promise. Still, the Sheriff thought, the man had a reckless streak; Daniels would get what was coming to him and Moultrie would be more than happy to be the one to clap him in irons when the time came.

He hadn’t been back to the office for more than a few minutes—not even enough time to put the percolator back on the stove—when Deke walked in, ushering a young boy along.

“Sheriff, you know the Clancy boy, don’t you? Amos? He said he had to talk to you right away.”

Moultrie knew the boy by sight, but had forgotten his name. He was somewhere in the middle of the lineup of the eight Clancy children and was most often to be found mucking out his father’s stables.

“Well, sonny?”

“I found these in some brush.”

Moultrie noticed that the boy was carrying two old sacks. He handed them over and the Sheriff peaked inside. Glancing at the contents, but unable to believe his eyes, he emptied the bags on his desk. A pile of banknotes, coins, and other valuables clattered onto the surface. He held up a deposit slip with the words “First Bank of Bracton” written as clear as day. Deke’s eyes got as big as saucers.

“Where did you find these?” Moultrie asked.

The boy looked down at the floor.

“I know it was probably a fool thing to do, but I followed those robbers.”

Looking up at the Sheriff and becoming more pleading in his tone he said, “But I stayed out of sight. I just followed the tracks like my Pa taught me. I didn’t want to cause trouble; I just wanted to help.”

“You did fine,” the Sheriff reassured him. “Let’s get Mr. Pendleton up here.”

The banker appeared in the office a few minutes later with a couple thick ledger books under his arm. He counted and checked and then double-checked. He rubbed his forehead, adjusted his spectacles, and then checked a third time.

“What is it?” Deke asked.

“Well, Deke, this is going to sound crazy, but it’s all here. Down to the last penny.”

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By the next morning, none of it seemed to make any better sense to the Sheriff than the day before. The only thing anyone seemed to agree about was that something was off. When Moultrie arrived at the building that doubled as his office and the county jail, Deke was already there. He sat hunched over the big, black family Bible, clearly his most prized possession.

“Morning, Deke.”

“Sheriff, I was just thinking about this robbery.”

Moultrie raised an eyebrow. “Looks to me as if you were neck deep in the Good Book, not working.”

Deke gave him a puzzled look, but continued, “I don’t see anything that’s quite the same. There’s Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt and there’s the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel, but—”

“Deke, what are you going on about?”

“Well,” he began slowly, “like I said, Sheriff, I was thinking about the robbery.”

He paused, as if to let Moultrie keep pace with the line of thought.

“And since there ain’t no natural explanation for what we saw yesterday, I reckon as the explanation has to be supernatural. And this”—he tapped the Bible with a single finger—“is the only place I trust to give me total truth about such things.”

The Sheriff hung up his hat and crossed the room to his desk, propping up his feet on the crate he kept close by for the purpose.

“Deke, you’re the best deputy I’ve ever had—”

“I’m the only deputy you’ve ever had!”

“Be that as it may . . . you’re the best deputy I’ve ever had and I always appreciate your valuable insights.”

It was a back and forth the two men repeated regularly, usually when the Sheriff thought his Deputy’s insight was pushing the limits of plausibility. Moultrie believed in God, he supposed, but he had to admit that saying so didn’t mean quite the same to him as it did to Deke.

They spent the rest of the morning trying to glean any information they could from the barebones descriptions of the robbers that witnesses had provided. As far as physical characteristics were concerned, the only common testimony was that there were two men and that one of them was much taller than the other. Other accounts made odd references to the hair and other features of the larger criminal—he had “strange eyes” and things to that effect—but they didn’t agree on the details. It was not a lot to go on, but the Sheriff and Deke flipped through the wanted posters and newspaper clippings that they’d collected nevertheless.

A large section of The Santa Fe New Mexican’s front page—several days old, by that point—was filled by a photograph from the Pinkerton Agency. The Sheriff lingered over the faces of the five well-dressed men in the picture longer than he meant to, but ended by counting his blessings that he didn’t have to deal with Butch Cassidy’s “Wild Bunch” in his county. The turn of the century, it seemed, had not quite brought every little corner of the New Mexico Territory into the modern age.

About the time Deke got up to replace the percolator with a pot for heating up his usual lunch of beans, they heard a horse come galloping up the street, stopping outside their office. The door flew open and a young man, who must have been as out of breath as his mount, stumbled in.

“They hit our bank too, Sheriff!”

The rider was covered in dust, but was still instantly recognizable as Tom Lilley, co-owner of the new mill one town over in Mesa Vieja. After the Sheriff gave him a cup of water and he had rested a spell the three of them saddled up and headed to the other town. The ride took the better part of half an hour and upon arriving they found a familiar scene.

“Nobody ain’t touched nothin’, Sheriff” Sam Pritchett assured them as they walked up to the bank’s demolished front door. The old man had more or less appointed himself the town constable. Moultrie didn’t mind, as long as he stayed out of the way. That day the would-be lawman seemed content to keep his distance. Deke and the Sheriff stepped inside and instantly understood why.

There on the floor lay a gray and lifeless body. Deke winced and covered his mouth as they got closer.

“Lord, have mercy, Sheriff, that’s . . .”

Deke didn’t dare finish the sentence. The flesh was an unsettling and unnatural ashen color, but the face was unmistakable: it was Olivia Samuelson, Mesa Vieja’s beloved schoolteacher, and the cousin of Connie Widell.

Behind the teller’s window another body was slumped against the wall. For reasons he could not grasp, the pool of blood on the floor relieved rather than shocked the Sheriff.

Stepping back outside the bank, Moultrie said, “Sam, I want this door closed up tight and don’t let anyone in until the undertaker gets here.”

“Can do, Sheriff. Anything else?”

“Did anyone get a look at these devils?”

“I was right across the street when they busted outta there. I couldn’t see their faces, but that big one—the skin on his neck and chest seemed . . . Well, anyway, they jumped on their horses and flew out of town like two bats outta hell.”

“Which way?” Deke asked.

Sam leaned over and pointed north.

“All right, Deke, let’s get after ‘em and see what we can find. If we’re lucky they’ll have left us an easy trail to follow.”

The trail, in fact, was not hard to follow.  “Luck ain’t had nothing do with it, Sheriff,” Deke said as he bent over a little path that curved sharply away to the west less than half a mile out of town.

“I know, I know,” the Sheriff shot back, though he was not so sure he did know. “But let’s just follow, huh? Once we find where these boys are hiding out we can come back with a posse, but we can’t let the trail go cold.”

The path grew rougher and steeper the farther away from town that they got, but they pushed on as fast as they could. The footprints left by one of their quarry seemed particularly deep, but it made the job of tracking so much easier that neither of them gave it much thought.

They were coming up the side of a shallow gully when Deke cried out, “Confound it!”

The Sheriff had been taking the lead and turned around to see his deputy already sliding down from his saddle to examine his horse’s left rear hoof.

“He threw a shoe,” Deke remarked. “I thought he’d stepped a little funny coming up the other side just now.”

Moultrie took a look at the animal’s foot. “You’d best head back. There’s no telling how much further we have to go and how much more of this rough stuff there might be.”

The Sheriff was finally able to persuade his trusty deputy to let him go on alone by promising to keep his distance and not let himself be seen under any circumstances. With only a few hours of daylight left, he wasn’t all that optimistic that he’d be able to follow the trail much longer in any event.

To his relief, the Sheriff soon came upon a ramshackle cabin nestled in the opening of a narrow canyon. A horse was hobbled nearby, busying itself with pulling the last few green bits of a scraggly bush. It could be the robbers in there, but the Sheriff knew he couldn’t be sure without getting a closer look. Tying up his own horse just out of sight, he circled around to the back of the cabin.

Moultrie eased his ear up against the wall, but heard nothing. He had noticed a single, low window at the front of the cabin; as risky as it might be, he decided that trying to get a look inside might be the best chance he would get to try to identify the bandits.

He crouched to round the corner of the cabin, but as he did so a hard blow struck him just above the temple. It was a glancing blow and so did not have the likely intended effect of taking him out altogether, but it did disorient him momentarily, driving him to his hands and knees. He looked up to see a man’s well-worn boots kicking up the hot sand as the wearer fled toward the canyon.

The Sheriff sprang to his feet and dashed after him. He was able to catch up and grab a fistful of the man’s shirt, but it was old and threadbare and simply tore off in his hand. The man glanced back for an instant, but wore an expression of terror, rather than the one of anger and determination that the Sheriff had expected.

“Stop!” Moultrie bellowed, but the man only seemed to gain speed, disappearing into the canyon a moment later.

The Sheriff followed, darting sharply to the right as the mouth of the canyon took a turn just past its entrance. He could hear the man panting somewhere ahead of him, but was forced to slow his pace when the narrow, high-walled passage forked. He stopped to listen for a moment and tried the fork on the left. It came to a dead end within a matter of a dozen, twisting yards, and was as empty as Jake Larsen’s saloon on Easter morning.

Retracing his steps, he went back to the fork and went the other direction, though by that time the heavy breathing and the sound of boots scraping across the rock had grown faint. A few minutes later the Sheriff found himself in an open space that must have been nearly as wide as Bracton’s Main Street. But to his dismay, opposite from where he stood, two paths continued deeper into the canyon. He examined them both closely, but saw no obvious clues to which way the scoundrel had fled. Once more starting with the path on the left, Moultrie continued his pursuit, though his hopes of catching the man were dwindling swiftly.

The shades of late afternoon and early evening fell on the canyon sooner than he was expecting. Before very long he had given up on the idea of catching the thief that day and focused his attention on getting out of the canyon himself. He worked his way in the direction that he thought would bring him back to the cabin, but before long was worried that he might be going in circles.

Darkness came on quickly. As the Sheriff sat down to rest for a moment, the indistinct sound of shouting somewhere in the distance lifted his hopes. He shuffled in what he thought was the direction of the noise and soon became convinced that it was Deke calling his name. When he heard “Clive!” he knew for sure that it was his deputy; he doubted anyone else knew that name, let alone would have the gumption to call him by it. He picked up his pace, rounded a corner, and nearly crashed into his slender assistant and friend.

Deke pushed a canteen into his hand and said, “Drink up. Looks like you need it.” A few minutes later they were on their horses and trotting steadily back to Bracton.

“What’s in those?” Moultrie asked Deke, pointing to the bags tied to the back of his saddle.

“Found ‘em in the cabin. I didn’t get a real good look, but I’ll be hanged if it ain’t the loot from the robbery in Mesa Vieja.”

The Sheriff shook his head and rode on in silence, irritated at the prospect of another confrontation with Cyrus Daniels and dreading the thought of having to tell Connie that her cousin was dead.