White Lightning by Lyle Brandt

Sullivan they couldn’t find the marshals after all. Embarrassment was only part of it. When Sullivan got riled…well, it was best to be somewhere away from him, preferably out of pistol range.
    So Woodruff kept his fingers crossed—or would have, if it didn’t slow down his quick draw. He tried to place each step precisely as he climbed the slope, uncertain of the ground before him, painfully aware of its potential pitfalls. Loose rocks could betray him, or a patch of mud, a twig rolling beneath his boot. He wouldn’t have to fall exactly, to betray their presence near the camp. Just sliding down the ridge could do it, set the others scrambling after all his warnings to be silent, and the blame would fall on him.
    The trick was getting close enough to watch the campers without being seen. To hunker down beyond the reach offirelight and discover who or what they were. Badges would mean he’d found the troublemakers he was looking for. No badges…well, it
still
might be the lawmen, if they’d taken off their vests or put on jackets, but he couldn’t just rush in, guns blazing, if he wasn’t sure.
    Besides, he had a second job beyond disposing of the marshals. Grady wanted answers from them. How much did they know, if anything, about the Stateline deal? Was there a snitch inside the operation? Maybe more than one? The last cop hadn’t talked, but Woodruff knew some methods shared by an old Injun fighter, who in turn had learned his craft from Chiricahuas. Anyone who didn’t crack within the first ten, fifteen minutes must be made of stone.
    Another thirty yards, and Woodruff strained his ears to pick out any voices, but the camp was quiet. Catching them asleep might make things safer, but it complicated spotting badges, under blankets. He might have no choice but to confront them, risking gunplay, if he couldn’t learn what he required by spying from the dark.
    Get on with it,
he thought, biting his lower lip.
You’re wasting time.
    Luke Naylor normally dropped off to sleep without a bit of trouble, but tonight was different somehow. Maybe his talk with Slade, or just imagining what all Bill Tanner must have suffered in his final hours of life. Naylor would’ve denied it, if someone had asked him to his face, but he was feeling jumpy. Nerves on edge.
    And now, trying to sleep, there was that damned noise in the night.
    The horses,
he first thought, but knew that wasn’t right. There was no whickering, no sound of hooves on grass, andit was coming from the wrong direction anyway. They’d picketed the horses west of camp, beyond the spring, and Naylor would have sworn the scuffling sounds he heard were coming from the north, maybe a bit northeast.
    He cracked an eye and looked around for Slade, but saw no sign of him. Maybe the noises came from him, scouting around the camp’s perimeter to keep himself awake. That fit the
kind
of noise Naylor had heard, but didn’t make much sense to him. He couldn’t picture Slade off roaming through the darkness for no reason, when he might step on a snake or twist his ankle in a gopher’s hole.
    “Goddamn it!” Naylor muttered, throwing back his blanket, turning toward the gunbelt he had coiled and set aside when he turned in.
    “Just leave ’er where she sits,” a strange voice told him, as a man stepped into view, out of the dark.
    Correction:
four
men, with the others trailing back a step or two behind the one who’d spoken. All of them had six-guns drawn and cocked them now. The sound of hammers locking back grated on Naylor’s nerves, setting his teeth on edge.
    “You ain’t supposed to be alone,” the leader of the party said.
    “Oh, no?”
    “Two marshals, we was told. And here I see two saddles, two bedrolls. So where’s the other?”
    Naylor tried to feign confusion. “Did you maybe pass him, coming in?”
    “We didn’t pass nobody, mister. Are you gonna tell us where he is, or do we have to squeeze it out of you?”
    “Hold on there, partner,”