Frank Reardon spent his afternoon settling in to the marshal's office. He and Doc had opened the safe, found a few personal things of Matt's that they'd boxed and left on a bottom shelf, and counted out and signed a receipt for the money. The blacksmith was busy with a piece of tin, making a badge that proclaimed Frank City Marshal, but he didn't expect that to be done until tomorrow. He was going through Matt's saddle bags and the duffle under his cot when Festus came through the door.
"Mostly just bits an' pieces in there," he commented, "His clothes an' things is mostly over in his room at Ma's place, or up ta Miss Kitty's. You plannin' ta clear out his room?"
"I suppose I need to." Frank replied, "Or just take over livin' there. Doc showed me his will, and I'm his executor, but there isn't much to deal with. A few things of his mother's that go to Kitty. Guns and horses. Some books."
"I done asked Miss Kitty today ifn I could take Buck. You got a problem with that, Frank?" Festus asked.
"Nope."
The men were quiet for a bit, Frank sorting through pieces of harness and extra girths, a rolled up saddle blanket and a worn rain slicker. Finally Festus asked, a little tentatively, "You read and write, Frank?"
This caused the new marshal to look up and meet the other man's eyes soberly. "Yes, I can, Festus. You need somethin'?"
"I got all them men from the gang what did this tied up in my head. I'm not goin' to forget a one of 'em, but I thought, maybe, before I left, I should get somebody ta write it all down – so's sommun else'd know. So's you could be lookin' iffen they come in ta Dodge."
Frank stood up and moved to Matt's desk. He pulled out paper, found a pencil, and looked over at Festus. "Tell me what you know, Ace," he said, and the two of them began.
OoOoO
Festus headed first for Larned, and spent some days talking to the various men who'd ridden with the posse. They'd split up that morning and followed the different trails in pairs, finding that most of them had, after a time, ended up heading south. Two separate trails, one heading due south and one heading southwest, had been marked by blood. He spent extra time talking to two men one night at the Trail's End, buying drinks while he nursed his own beer. "So's you think maybe a coupla them fellers didn't join in with the others?" Festus asked, for about the fifth time.
"Couldn't have," one cowpoke told him. "I been trackin' across this prairie nigh onto twenty years, and that trail led straight towards Great Bend. Now I had to stop after two days and turn around and come back, 'cause that's what the sheriff told us to do, but he was headin' for Great Bend, mark my words. He was a good day ahead of me, had two horses and was switchin' off – I'd never have caught him, but he sure wasn't headin' south."
"Same with my fella, Ace," his other informant told him. "He was headed west, like he was makin' straight for Dodge or Cimmaron. Sure wasn't headin' south towards the Nations."
"But all the rest of them tracks, they headed straight south after a day or so?" Festus asked, yet again.
"We told'ya they did, Ace," the first man said, again. "Down on into the Nations. Those men would've hit the border in at least ten places. My guess would be they had a meetup planned somewhere down in Indian Territory or on through to Texas."
"Seems like that's where I'll have to go, then." Festus said.
As things turned out, luck was with him, and as he rode back through Peters on his way south, Festus noticed a mottled brown pinto at the hitching rail in front of the town's one saloon. Most of the horses he'd seen from the train's lookout were common enough to be hard to identify, but this one and a bright sorrel with a light mane and tail had stood out. Leaving his mounts at the livery, Festus strolled along to the saloon and went in. It wasn't hard to pick out the pinto's rider among the locals drinking at the bar, and Festus recognized the man as one of the three who had held torches. He settled in to wait.
Trailing the man out of town a few hours later, Festus stayed far enough behind not to be seen, and as darkness fell, he made his own small camp beside the road, tethering both Buck and Ruth. Along about midnight he moved off on foot, leaving his spurs behind, and, as he'd expected, found his man camped and sleeping less than a mile further down the road.
The man woke when Festus kicked him, reached for a gun that wasn't there, and then for a rifle that was also missing. "M'name's Ace Haggen, mister, an' you and me gonna have some talk," a voice told him out of the darkness, "And then I'm gonna give you a choice about how you want to die."
He'd expected a harder man, but soon saw in this deserter a lack of guts and a lack of loyalty. By promising to turn him in for trial in Dodge City, he learned a great deal, including that the man didn't think he had much to worry about from the courts. "I never did anything. Just held the torch. I wouldn't have used it. I didn't shoot anybody, and I sure as hell wasn't going to meet up with that bunch again. I lit out west and I been on the road ever since."
Festus didn't disabuse him of the notion that just holding the torch wouldn't get him hung. He just sat, gun leveled at the outlaw's belly, and listened to him talk. The man's name was Anderson, and there was a fair amount of nonsense and griping in his tale, but several pieces of information came through. The man who had shot Dillon was named Shiloh, and it was he who rode the sorrel. The man who'd ordered the killing was Malachai, Tonneman's second in command, and Tonneman had shot him through the left arm when he'd heard what he'd done. Their meeting place was Vernon, Texas, just south of the Oklahoma border on the Great Western Trail. There were more names, Mike, Fedderman, Tiny, Austin, and Big Bill, but no way to tie them to a particular man. And most important of all, Anderson had assumed Dillon was dead, had looked at Ace in astonishment when asked the question, and had only been able to say that Dillon's body had been carried off by Tonneman himself and the big man called Tiny.
Festus pulled out handcuffs he'd appropriated from the Marshal's office and cuffed the man's hands behind his back, running a rope around his ankles and attaching it to the cuffs. Then he settled back against a rock and slept soundly until morning.
No one in Dodge had expected him back so soon and it caused a bit of a ruckus when Festus rode into town the next day trailing both Ruth and a mottled pinto with a handcuffed rider. Newly came into the office as Frank was locking the man up, and both men listened intently to Festus' story.
"So you're headed down to Vernon?" Frank asked when he was done.
"I am. Thought I'd sleep here tonight, have a word with Miss Kitty, and head on out in the morning."
"I'll need to take a deposition for the judge," Frank said. "Newly, you recognize the man, too?"
"Yes, sir. He was one of the ones holding torches. The one nearest the tracks," Newly replied. "But he wasn't part of the gang when Festus and I got Matt away that first time,"
Festus nodded in agreement. "Tha's right as rain, Frank. I don' think this fella had been with 'em long, and he sure didn' like what he saw. You think that will make a difference to the judge?"
"I doubt it, Ace," the new marshal told him, "I doubt it very much."
Festus nodded in satisfaction and took himself off to find a bath before heading for the Long Branch and Kitty Noonan.