Nathan Gould- Gunfighter from Green Mountain

by Bruce Graham

  “What about the Army?”

  “Those days are over. They’re not in the Indian killing business any more, especially out in the wilds where we are. These Indian raiders came in early this year and first wanted only some fire water and a few dollars. Now they’re threatening to raise the whole Ute Nation if they don’t get what they want, that is a lot more than management feels they can afford. And if word gets out that a few young bucks can hold us up, we figure soon we’ll be bankrupt trying to buy them all off. We need your help.”

  “You’ll need a whole army.”

  “No, the gang is about a dozen, but the leader is a Bold Eagle, and we figure if we get rid of him we’ll be okay.”

  “You may be talking to the wrong guy. I won’t simply murder somebody, even somebody like you mention.”

  “Yes, and the owners aren’t looking to hire a killer, but simply somebody who can scare the guy off, or do something short of killing. We don’t want to stir up the Utes that way. We’ve heard that you avoid violence if possible. And the tribes will be glad to be rid of this gang of renegades, it reflects negatively on them.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. I’ll try, but my price is high.”

  “We know your rate, and we’ll go ten days worth.”

  I wasn’t quite out of business yet. I hadn’t had a client ready to pay my high rate in a while. Visions of a retirement cabin somewhere in the Phoenix area danced in my head. “You have a deal. I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”

  I arrived as promised and found Whitcomb at a ramshackle building on the outskirts of Mack. After the pleasantries, he spread out a map of the railway line and the adjacent area.

  He summarized the construction difficulties. “I’ve been involved in a few rail and highway projects and this is the twistiest and elevated routes I’ve ever seen. There’s no realistic way that these redskins can be stopped along the right of way. They need to be hit up where they hide, which is in this area.” He pointed out the proposed line and a trail leading into a cliff covered area.

  I noted that the terrain around the place he pointed to was very steep. “I suppose you’ve tried talking to the mucky mucks.”

  “Old man Gilson was on good terms with the Chief, but they’re both gone and we don’t have time to spend years getting on good terms with the new mucky mucks. And they probably wouldn’t have much influence on these young bucks, who are more outlaws than Indian patriots.”

  “How about the sheriff, or how are you crew people with guns?”

  “Our crew is mostly Micks and Polacks and they don’t know one end of a gun from the other. If they had guns they’d probably start shooting at each other. The Sheriff is an old pioneer with a Henry rifle and there aren’t any people to draw a posse from. You’re it.”

  I spent two days on a mule maneuvering around the area, but could not figure out how to make an impact on the renegades. Their bastion was on the side of a granite precipice, half way to the top, which was an evergreen covered plateau. Approach from directly below was impossible, the cliff being straight up and down. The ledge upon which they could view the valley below was a dozen feet deep and twenty or thirty feet long. I observed the Indians gather on the ledge, and noted that they entered from one end. When they were absent I examined both ends of the ledge. One end was a smooth path slightly up the slope, then away. The other end was mostly sharp rocks, that I surmised would not be favored by the Indians’ unshod ponies. I walked the proposed rail line and understood the dead end that seemed to face the builders. Finally, I sensed a way out. I sought out Whitcomb. “I want some of your crew to cut trees up on the top of the rise, there. Say 10 men who can run a buck saw.” I pointed above the crags that overhung the niche he had pointed out as the renegades’ place of refuge. “I’ll show them. And I’ll need about 200 feet of strong rope.”

  The next morning I led the 10 men from the crew by a circuitous route through the conifers to the plateau over the Indians’ ledge. I appointed the smartest seeming workmen chief and directed him: “Loop the rope around the evergreens closest to the edge and start cutting when the Indians are not in residence. Don’t cut the trees all the way through, but far enough that a few drags will cause them to drop over the cliff.”

  They began the job and were patiently quiet while the Indians were in residence. After four days, a dozen of the large fir trees were sitting precariously, almost cut through. “All right,” I said, “when the Indians make camp, I’ll be below, and will fire a shot. You men cut the rope and allow the trees to topple over the edge, finish cutting any that don’t drop, and high tail it back into the brush and find your way back to camp.”

  A full day elapsed, until the Indians gathered on the ledge. I took up station as close as I could to their favored entry point of the ledge. When the Indians were gathered around two camp fires preparing a meal, I took careful aim with my Winchester through the branches and fired at the one who from his regalia I took to be Bold Eagle.

  My target leaped up and staggered out of my sight. A hubbub erupted, the braves milling about, unsure about whether to take cover, help their chief or seek out their attacker. Within seconds, trees from above plummeted down among the Indians, followed by more. Cries told me that the braves were being thrown down the cliff, others were in agony and others were shouting almost incoherently, and their horses were in similar distress. I edged around and found two Indians and several horses writhing in agony on the ground at the foot of the cliff. I kept going until I had a clear view of the group’s preferred access to the cliff.

  The last of the trees had fallen. A brave floundered through the trees’ branches toward the way off the ledge. I aimed carefully and fired and made out the impact of the bullet in his chest. Another Indian appeared, bloody and seeming to be nursing a twisted leg. I let him pass.

  Relative quiet came, broken by what I took to be Indians thrashing through the trees, trying to reach safety from their unseen enemy and the whinnying and wrestling about of their surviving horses. I worked my way back to camp, and was joined by nightfall by the workmen from the cliff. I congratulated them and found Whitcomb. “First, give these men a bonus for their good work. Second, send a delegation to the main Indian camp, telling them that the renegades have been attacked and mostly killed and that we expect them to do nothing to cause the problem to continue and we want peace. Finally, you can pay me and I’ll be on my way.”

  Whitcomb paid me and I went on my way. Three weeks later I received a letter saying that there had been no more trouble with the Indians, and that as far as Whitcomb knew, most of the renegades were entombed in the trees or died of wounds.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The end of my freelance career as a fast gun hand came about as a strange result of an otherwise routine project in my sixty-second year.

  I was retained to challenge the locally infamous “Judge” Cecil Prague, of the wilds of Idaho, who had established a virtual dictatorship over several counties by means that I was never either interested in or able to discern. My hiring was by a shadowy group that contacted me by telephone and refused to put anything in writing. The terms of my work were to purport to represent an investment group from the east and provoke the “Judge” and his accomplices to fight and die. I was assured that none of the pretended jurist’s henchmen were skilled with guns.

  With retainer in the bank I departed for Idaho and spent several days poking around getting a feeling for the area. When confident that the Judge and his gang were up to no good, I was ready I projected an air of naivete in making inquiries about land purchase, possible access roads and bank financing. In this my garb and manner were distinctly not of the region, and my still discernible New England dialect helped. Before long I was visited by two rough cut types who wasted no time in wanting to know what was going on. I was reticent and evasive. The two finally advised me, on behalf of vaguely defined local people, to get out of the area because no Eastern interests were welcome.

  After the two
were gone, I resumed my open attempts to find landowners who might be willing to sell property and rights of way. Two evenings later the “Judge” arrived with several different and well armed men. He was blunt, warning me that bad things were going to happen to me if I didn’t leave.

  I first argued that I had the right to explore for my employers and expected that the law would protect me and not threaten me. He reiterated his simple warning for me to get out. I was less subdued in my response. I rose, went to a closet and swiftly produced my Colt .45. I jammed the barrel into the so-called jurist’s gut and told him that it was he who would get out of my way or that his sorrow would be eternal.

  The man blanched, while his companions went for their weapons.

  “Clear it with your boss,” I said, “because he’ll be dead before I am.” I emphasized the point by grasping the “Judge” by the throat and forcing him to stand. “Now, all of you get out and leave me alone while I do my business.”

  The bunch of them went from my room, the “Judge” pushed so that he almost fell over the landing railing to the floor below. I slammed the door and waited. I heard them milling about, then leaving the premises.

  In the morning I appeared to resume my efforts to find people willing to sell their land, but my attire was more in keeping with my regular profession, Colt at the ready, obscured under a light jacket.

  Before long two nasty looking characters appeared on horses in the direction in which I was riding. They stopped a dozen yards from me, a few yards apart. “You were warned,” called one. “We don’t like strangers poking around. Turn around, get to the depot and leave.”

  I brushed my jacket away from my Colt. “I’m headed in your direction. Get out of my way.”

  Both men went for their guns.

  My .45 blasted one of them from his horse before his pistol was out of his holster. I got the other at the same time that he fired, and I felt a sting on the right side of my head. Both men were on the ground, one inert, the other writhing about and crying out, when three other mounted men appeared.

  “Do you want some, too?” I called.

  The three men drew their horses away. One of the men called out: “The Judge’ll be not happy about this.”

  “Tell him I’m coming after him next.” I spun my horse around and cantered toward the gang’s headquarters. On arrival, I strode into the apparently deserted building, through a makeshift office and kicked in the door to what looked like the boss’ inner sanctum.

  The “Judge” faced me, seated at a desk.

  My voice was even, hand on my Colt. “Two of your boys are lying on the road. If you don’t want the same, you leave.”

  He snorted and went to his gun belt. “I have twenty men who’ll---“

  I lunged at him and hauled him around the desk, while he waved his pistol in the air. I could hear a hubbub outside, mounted men gathering. I dragged him through the outer room and to the front door, his gun still in hand. I wrestled out of my coat, and wrapped him in it. I pushed my hat on his head. I pulled open the door and thrust his gun into his hand. I squeezed off a shot and shouted “Here I come.” I pushed him through the door.

  A volley of gunfire erupted. The “Judge” collapsed in a heap on the ground.

  “It’s the Judge,” called one of the mounted men. The horses and men milled about. Then one shouted, “We better skedaddle before the law arrives.” The gang took off.

  I emerged from the building and fired off two shots in the air. Within a few moments I was alone with the former tyrant of the area, now a pile of motionless clay.

  I rode the twelve miles to the nearest Sheriff’s Office and recounted my exploits. The law man approved of my efforts. By late afternoon I had provided enough statements to justify the local prosecuting attorney to shake my hand and wish me a nice return to Trinidad.

  As he was doing so he frowned and stared at the right side of my head. “Somebody’s bullet almost finished you off.” He placed his finger on my forehead.

  I reached up and was shocked to feel a wet furrow from my temple to the rear of my head. “What’s that?”

  “Check it in the mirror. It looks like it was fixing to go through your skull, but decided to churn its way along your head for a while. Anybody tell you that you have a hard head?”

  I went to a corner of the office and studied the wound. Indeed, the bullet had dug its way into the flesh behind the temple, and traveled backwards for about three inches. “As close as I’ve ever come to meeting my Maker. Where’s your nearest doc?”

  “Our only doctor,” said the Sheriff. “Ziegler, a couple of blocks toward the depot. Are you sure you can make it?”

  “Right.” I bid the Sheriff ado and went to the doctor’s office. I waited while the physician dealt with a recalcitrant, whining little boy and his mother and a young man with some sort of injury to his hand.

  The doctor was younger than I would have expected. He immediately sensed the reason for my visit. “Somebody you didn’t like was a good shot at a favorable angle for you,” he murmured with a smile.

  I sat on the examining table. “I never heard of such a thing.”

  “You must be a Swede. They have the toughest skulls known to medicine. Let me look at it.” He spent several minutes gently examining the wound, pushing on my head near it and running his fingers over the roof of my mouth. He swabbed the wound with soap and water and some sort of painful liquid. He had me stand, first on one foot, then on the other, and walk back and forth. He examined my eyes with a bright light and twisted my head from side to side. He had me hold my arms out straight for a minute and pointed to an eye chart. “Read the sixth line.”

  “It’s fuzzy. I can’t make it out, except probably a C, a J and a Z.”

  “Fifth line.”

  “P, V, T, and a couple of others.”

  “Do you wear glasses?”

  “No.”

  The doctor went to a table and drew a heavy book down from among other volumes on a shelf. He leafed through the front of the book and went to a place midway through. He was silent for a minute or two.

  “I’ll be okay, right? I feel fine.”

  He nodded. “The exhilaration of a very close call. It will pass. Do you engage in gun fighting?”

  “Yes. It’s my occupation.”

  The doctor continued to read, then closed the book and dropped it on the desk. “I’ve heard of cases like this, but not involving a bullet wound. The most famous episode is the man in Vermont whose head was penetrated by an iron rod, but lived for some years afterward.”

  “I was there!” I cried. “He worked for a railroad near where I lived. I’m a native of Vermont.”

  “I come from Illinois. My parents were Mormons and came west with Brigham Young. I gave up such foolishness years ago. Look, as near as I can figure, the slug cracked your skull before heading away. It created some sort of internal relocation of the bone and internal nerves, something like that, it didn’t shatter much, left some splinters. I’ll be blunt. It won’t be long before it may affect the vision in your eye near the wound, you may wind up blind. It could have some effect on your balance, your coordination, on the one side. More than that I can’t say. You’ll need to see a specialist, maybe a few, Kansas City, Chicago.”

  “Is it curable?”

  “Probably not, but I’m far away from it and the science of medicine is making advances so quickly that anything might be happening. I recommend no horse riding, a cane, three legs are better than two if your balance is bad.” He reached into a drawer and handed me several chunks of white cloths. “Change the dressing every day until it heals.” He took another book down from the shelf and leafed through it. He wrote on a pad for several minutes and handed me a paper with several bunches of notes. “These are names and addresses of specialists in Chicago, Saint Louis, the Twin Cities. You might try them.” His silence told me that my visit was over.

  But I waited, wanting to ask more questions.

  The doctor milled a
bout and opened the door to the examination room. “I’m sorry, that’s all I can do. You may pay the receptionist.”

  I followed his lead, paid the woman at the desk and shambled from the office. I almost imagined that I was unsteady on my feet. By the time I arrived back in Trinidad I was nervous. I kept my hat at a slant, partially obscuring my wound. The day after returning, however, the doctor’s prognosis came true. My right hand began to twitch intermittently, I became slightly unsteady on my feet and the vision in my right eye became fuzzy. By the end of a week I sat by my parlor window with the doctor’s notes in my hand, thinking. But for the moment I knew that my career as a gun hand was, temporarily, at least, at an end.

  A pleasant footnote to my Idaho job was receiving a letter from the man who had hired me, telling me that the Federal Government designated large areas, including most of what I had cleared of the Judge and his accomplices, as a National Forest or Wilderness Area or the like. The man stated that, but for me cleaning out the renegades, this would not have happened as soon as it did, and perhaps for many years, if ever. A favorable outcome for which I could take some satisfaction.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  During the first weeks after my close call with death in Idaho, while on the one hand, realizing that I wasn’t capable of quick coping with other gun fighters, and denying that things could be so bad permanently, I resolved on a sentimental journey to Vermont. I planned to combine the trip with following through on the Idaho doctor’s recommendation that I seek out a specialist. I wrote to all of the people on the doctor’s list, outlining what had happened and inquiring when they would be able to see me. Only two indicated both a level of contemporary expertise and a belief that they might be able to help. One was in Kansas City and the other in Chicago.

  I also wrote to my Sister Judith stating that I intended to visit and that I would look forward to seeing her and her family.