by Gene Shelton
One by one the men turned away from O’Folliard. Jim remained, kneeling at the wounded man’s side. A rifle slug had ripped into O’Folliard’s chest, narrowly missed the heart, and shredded a lung. God, what a way to die, Jim thought; lungshot, drowning in his own blood surrounded by enemies. But he picked the trail he rode, and now it ’ s ended. Jim shucked his coat, folded it, and placed it beneath O’Folliard’s head as a pillow.
Jim tossed a quick, disgusted glance at the other members of the posse. The whole bunch, except for Tom Emory, had gone back to their card game. To the gamblers it was as if the dying man on Jim’s blanket was nothing more than a coyote. Tom stood and stared into the fire, unwilling to look the dying man in the eye. Tom’s face was pale. Jim suspected his own might be a bit white as well. It wasn’t an easy thing to watch a man die.
“Jacks bet a dime,” Barney Mason said. “Damn shame we missed the Kid.”
“Call,” Garrett answered. “We’ll get him.”
O’Folliard stirred and moaned. He muttered something, his voice weak. Jim leaned closer. “Water, for God’s sake,” O’Folliard groaned. “Water.”
Jim brought a dipper of water from the pail on a shelf near the stove. He lifted the wounded man’s head and let him drink, but pulled the dipper away after a moment. “Easy, Tom,” he said. “Not too much.”
O’Folliard’s eyes wavered in and out of focus. “Damn that—sonofabitch Garrett—to hell,” he muttered. “Shoot a man down cold from out of the dark.” Jim lowered Tom O’Folliard’s head back onto the blanket. There was nothing else he could do.
Jim kept his vigil at O’Folliard’s side for almost a half hour. The outlaw’s breath bubbled. Pink froth formed at the corners of his mouth.
“Goddamn you, Garrett,” O’Folliard said, his voice suddenly gaining strength, “I’ll see you in hell.”
Garrett didn’t even look up from his cards. “I wouldn’t talk that way, Tom,” Garrett said. “You’re going to die in a few minutes.”
“Ah, go to hell, you long-legged sonofabitch,” O’Folliard muttered. Then his eyes glazed over. The young outlaw shuddered once and died.
Jim pulled his coat from beneath the dead man’s head, covered the body with a ragged blanket, and stood. “He’s dead, Garrett,” Jim said. “What do we do now?”
“Call the bet,” Garrett said before glancing at Jim. “We’ll bury him tomorrow. Plenty of room for one more in the Fort Sumner graveyard.” Garrett watched as the four of clubs fell and wrecked his possible flush. He grimaced and folded the hand. “If I know the Kid, he’ll be headed back for Wilcox’s ranch a few miles out of town by now. We’ll sit tight, wait for word that he’s left Wilcox’s, and then track him down. Shouldn’t be any problem in this snow.”
Jim East stared in silence at Garrett for several heartbeats. That is one of the coldest men I’ve ever met , he thought.
THREE
Fort Sumner
December 1880
Jim East stood with hat in hand, his head bared to the crackling cold, as the first shovel of mixed ice and dirt fell on Tom O’Folliard’s crude pine coffin.
There were few mourners at the scene. Garrett and Mason were there, along with most of the members of the Tascosa posse. Luis Bausman and George Williams of the LIT were not among the group; they were searching for the trail of the Kid and his band. Jim doubted they would have much luck. During the night the wind had kicked up again and drifted the snow. The Kid’s tracks would be covered.
Jim glanced at Mason and frowned in disgust. A smirk twisted the swarthy face as he watched the burial. The man hadn’t even removed his hat in a show of respect for the dead. Any man, even a smooth-faced kid who rode the outlaw trail, deserved that much. Jim checked the urge to walk over to Mason, yank the man’s hat off and jam it into his gut. I’m going to have trouble with that one , Jim thought, and I can’t say I’ll regret it.
Jim dismissed Garrett’s brother-in-law with a mental shrug and studied the faces of the handful of strangers in the burial party. Most were Mexican laborers hired to hack O’Folliard’s grave from the frozen ground. Apparently many of those who had called Tom a friend had decided to stay away, afraid of Garrett and his posse of Tascosa gunmen.
The graveside funeral had been brief to the point of abruptness. Bitter cold tended to rush certain formalities. Jim wondered idly what the weather would be like when his time came.
The posse began to drift away from the grave, headed for the warmth of the old hospital. Jim fell into step beside Tom Emory. The LIT rider’s shoulders were hunched against the cold, his chin jammed down into the collar of the heavy coat he wore. Neither man spoke. There was something about a funeral that made a man ponder his own life—and his certain departure from it, sooner or later. The end could come from a bullet, Jim mused, but there were a lot of ways a cowboy could die besides getting shot. A horse could fall on him, an unseen rattlesnake could strike, he could hang up in a stirrup or rope and get dragged to death. Or he could be set afoot, lost in a howling blizzard or a screaming sandstorm in the middle of nowhere miles from shelter or water. He could be gored by a mad mama cow, or get his neck or back broken when a bronc bucked him off. Nearly anything could happen and you never knew when it might come. Anybody who said it was an easy life either had never tried it, was a damned liar, or both.
The two friends reached the hospital porch before Tom finally broke the silence. “He deserves a marker,” Tom said. “Maybe he was a thief, maybe even a killer. But from the stories I’ve heard and what I saw for myself, Tom O’Folliard had sand.”
Jim stamped the snow from his boots and reached for the door. “Just a kid,” he said. “It’s a shame he picked the wrong bunch to ride with.”
Minutes later Garrett, Mason and a couple of others had resumed their poker game. Jim stood by the fireplace, rubbing warmth back into his hands, and noticed that Garrett was a better lawman than gambler. Garrett’s stack of coins grew smaller with each deal.
At Jim’s side, Tom Emory scratched chipped fingernails against the heavy stubble of his reddish-blond beard. “Damn, I could use a bath and a shave,” Tom said.
“We’re all beginning to smell a bit ripe,” Jim answered, “but I wouldn’t be in too big a hurry to part with the face hair if I were you. In this kind of cold every little bit helps.”
Jim had almost gotten warm again when Bausman and Williams reined up at the hospital, their scout completed. Bausman clomped into the room. Flakes of wind-whipped ground snow sparkled on his coat and ice frosted his beard.
“Lost the trail a couple miles out, Garrett,” Bausman grumbled. “Looks like they were headed east.”
Garrett nodded without looking up from his cards. “Probably headed back to Wilcox’s place,” he said. “Jack bets a quarter.”
“Found a dead horse about a mile from here,” Bausman said as he shrugged out of his coat and headed for the fire. “One of us got a slug in the critter last night, I guess.”
Jim winced at the news. He remembered hearing the whack of lead on flesh after his second shot. He hated the thought that his bullet had killed a horse. Nothing the Kid’s bunch had done was the horse’s fault.
“What did the horse look like?” Garrett asked.
“Big bay, stockin’ feet in back. Roman nose.”
“Sounds like Rudabaugh’s mount,” Garrett said.
Jim almost groaned aloud at that news. From what he had learned of the Kid’s bunch, Rudabaugh was the meanest. He had killed a lawman in Las Vegas while breaking a buddy out of jail—shot him six times just because the deputy was a little slow getting out the cell keys. And Jim’s slug had missed Rudabaugh so far it killed the horse. He wouldn’t allow himself the excuse that he was firing by moonlight at a moving target. Mighty poor bit of shooting on my part, he scolded himself.
“So what do we do now, Pat?” Mason asked. “We can’t kill ‘em if we can’t find ‘em.”
Garrett glanced at Mason. “I want this bunch alive if possibl
e, Barney, but if they want to make a fight of it we’ll oblige them.” Garrett glared at his next card, winced in disgust and folded his hand. “For now we set and wait. When the Kid makes a move, I’ll know it soon enough.”
Jim sat down on his blanket, already beginning to feel the effects of boredom. Waiting wasn’t his strong suit. He watched through a broken windowpane as the gray sky slowly cleared and gave way to a bright sun. The glare of sunlight on snow hurt his eyes.
The sun was almost overhead when a horseman rode in at a slow walk, reined in and called for Garrett.
The lawman tossed down his cards, walked outside and spoke for several minutes with the rider. Jim strode to a window overlooking the porch. The horseman, a grizzled man with a full beard and a paunch that stretched the limits of his heavy coat, talked rapidly, gloved hands snapping in excited gestures. He kept looking over his shoulder as if he feared someone might be watching.
The conference ended and the man reined his horse away. Garrett came back into the room, his jaw set. “That was Wilcox,” he said. “The Kid was at his place, all right. Wilcox says Billy and his bunch are headed for an abandoned shack on the Taiban up by Stinking Springs.”
Barney Mason rose to his feet and reached for his rifle. “Let’s go get the bastards,” he said.
Garrett waved a hand. “Don’t be in such a rush, Barney. If we ride up on them in daylight they’ll empty a couple of saddles for us. Say what you want about the Kid and his men, but they can shoot fair enough.” Garrett settled back into his place at the poker game. “We move out at moonrise, ride all night, and be waiting for them when the sun comes up.
Taiban Arroyo
Jim East hunched deeper into his buffalo coat in the bone-breaking cold as the first pale light of dawn crept across the eastern New Mexico plains. The long ride had taken its toll on men and horses, but Jim felt the weariness fade with the coming of day and the likelihood of a fight.
He lay face down in the snow at the lip of a shallow draw along the Taiban and studied the one-room house less than twenty yards away. It was made of rock, with only one door and one window. Both openings faced the arroyo where the posse waited.
Garrett lay in the center of the group, his rifle already cocked. Jim was next to Garrett, with Lee Hall at Jim’s left. Tom Emory and Lon Chambers held down Garrett’s right flank; Frank Stewart, Luis Bausman and George Williams held the horses a few yards away in the bottom of the arroyo.
Three horses stood hipshot, tied to exposed rafters that projected from the front of the house. There was no sign of life inside the building, no smoke from the crumbling chimney of the abandoned sheep camp.
“Wilcox said Billy was riding that race mare of his,” Garrett half whispered at Jim’s side.
“She isn’t tied out front. The Kid must have taken her inside with him.”
Garrett stared toward the cabin. “Odds are they won’t give up as long as the Kid’s alive. If Billy shows himself it’s my intention to kill him. Then the rest will come out peaceful enough.”
Jim snapped his head to glare at the lawman. “Garrett, you said we were going to take them alive. Now you say you’re going to just bushwhack a man?”
Garrett returned Jim’s cold stare. “East, you’re starting to sound like an old maid schoolmarm.” Disgust tinged Garrett’s words. “I’m getting a little tired of arguing with you, and I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on. I brought you up here because next to me, you’re the best rifle shot in the bunch. If you’ve got no stomach for shooting, go back and hold the horses.”
Jim felt the flare of anger and humiliation in his cheeks. “Don’t push me, Garrett, or the war’ll start out here.” His voice was low and cold. “I told you I don’t like being used. I’ll stay. I’ll shoot any man I have to, but I don’t like killing when it isn’t necessary.” Jim thought Garrett was going to push the issue. Instead, the lawman merely shrugged.
“Just back me up on this one, East, and we’ll let our differences slide.” He turned to the other members of the posse. “When the dance starts, you boys open on them when I shoot.”
Jim hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The men in the house were trapped. It would be easy enough to wait them out. If the outlaws had any common sense at all they’d give up without a fight. But then, he reminded himself, nobody had ever credited William Bonney, alias Kid Antrim, alias Billy the Kid, with being long on horse sense. Maybe Garrett’s way is quickest , he thought, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The sky slowly brightened as the posse waited in silence. Then the door of the rock house swung open and a slightly built man wearing a broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero stepped outside, a sack of grain in hand.
Jim eased the hammer of his Winchester to full cock and glanced at Garrett. The lawman had drawn a bead on the man with the grain sack.
“Throw up your hands!” Garrett yelled. “You’re under arrest!”
The man with the feed bag looked up, startled, then dropped the sack and reached for a pistol at his belt. Garrett’s Winchester cracked. The man staggered; a slug from Lee Hall’s rifle knocked him back another half step. Jim’s finger squeezed the trigger.
Through the cloud of powder smoke at the rifle muzzle Jim saw the puff of dust from the outlaw’s coat as his slug tore into the man’s chest. The impact of the bullet drove the man back into the wall beside the door. He started to slide down the wall, then lurched to his feet and staggered through the doorway, slugs kicking rock fragments from the wall beside his head.
The firing stopped. Jim jacked a fresh round into the chamber of his rifle. The action was stiff from the bitter cold. Jim’s ears rang from the concussion of muzzle blasts.
The voice from inside carried well in the thin air. “Charlie, you’re done for,” the voice said. “Go out and see if you can’t get one of the sonsofbitches before you die!”
At his side, Jim heard Garrett mutter a soft curse. “Dammit, that wasn’t the Kid we shot. It was Charlie Bowdre. That was the Kid doing the talking just then.”
The door of the rock house swung open. Charlie Bowdre stood in the doorway, a pistol in his hand. Jim could see the splash of blood over the young gunman’s coat. Bowdre staggered toward the waiting men. Jim eased the pressure of his finger from the rifle trigger. There was no need to shoot again; Bowdre was obviously all but dead on his feet, too weak to even lift his handgun.
No one in the posse fired or even spoke as Bowdre stumbled forward. The outlaw staggered to the lip of the arroyo, almost within arm’s length of Jim and Lee Hall. The youthful face was twisted in agony, the eyes staring at Jim as if pleading for help.
Bowdre stood weaving, trying to keep his balance. “I wish—I wish —” The voice sounded distant, weak. Bowdre took another step, then tumbled forward. His body fell across Lee Hall’s shoulder. The LX rider heaved Bowdre aside and lifted the pistol from his fingers.
“He’s dead, Garrett,” Hall said.
Garrett gave no sign that he had heard. Jim studied Bowdre’s lifeless face, within easy arm’s reach of his own. The eyes were open, staring toward the brightening sky. I guess we’ll never know what it was he wished , Jim thought.
“Come on out, Billy,” Garrett called. “You’re surrounded. You might as well give up.
“Not likely, Pat.” The reply came from inside the rock house. “It’s warm in here. Why don’t you boys come on in for coffee?”
“Don’t want any, Billy. Makes me nervous and I don’t shoot as well. We’re comfortable enough out here.”
Garrett glanced at Jim. The three horses tethered to the projecting rafters of the old rock house, spooked by the gunfire, snorted and danced as they fought the ropes. The animals’ rumps swung from side to side as they tried to break loose. “If the Kid gets a chance, he’ll make a run for it on that race mare. Maybe I better shut the door on him.”
Before Jim could ask what the lawman had in mind, Garrett leveled his rifle. One of the tethered horses swung about so that its body
was in front of the door. Garrett pulled the trigger. The horse dropped in its tracks. Its feet crabbed at the snow as it died. The body of the horse blocked the Kid’s escape. There was no way he could mount his mare and get her through the doorway in a sprint to freedom.
“Hey, Garrett! What the hell did you do that for?” the Kid yelled.
“Just putting you boys afoot, Billy,” Garrett said as he levered another round into the chamber. He took careful aim and fired. The former buffalo hunter hadn’t lost his shooting eye. The slug clipped the rope holding one of the remaining horses. Jim drew a fine bead and shot through the second rope. The two terrified animals spun and raced away, hooves throwing up chunks of frozen soil and clods of snow.
The echoes of the rifle fire bounced along Taiban arroyo. A red stain spread from beneath the dead horse’s ear onto the snow.
“Garrett, you’re one mean sonofabitch, shooting a horse like that,” the Kid yelled. “Reckon you can hit anything smaller? Like a man shooting back at you?”
“One way to find out, Billy. Come on out.”
There was no answer from inside.
Another hour dragged past. Charlie Bowdre’s body stiffened in the snow. Blood from the bullet wounds formed a blackish, frozen crust on the dead man’s chest.
“Hey, Pat,” the Kid called, “how’s Tom O’Folliard?”
“We buried him at Sumner, Billy,” Garrett yelled back. “How come he was up front instead of you?”
“Needed a chew. Rode back to borrow some from Billy Wilson. Lucky for me but bad luck for old Tom.”
“You’re running out of luck now, Billy. Why don’t you give it up and come on out?”
There was no reply.
The siege dragged on in silence for another half hour. There was no more firing from either side. The sun lay hard and cold in the southern sky. It brought no warmth to the men huddled in the snow on the Taiban. It would be just as cold to the men in the house, Jim thought. The wind had shifted and now blew across the flat, barren plains from behind the posse toward the open door and window of the abandoned shack.