Winchester 1886

by William W. Johnstone

  Wallace County, Kansas

  She came to her knees, smelling the pungent odor of sulfur, thinking she was in hell, and raced through the open door. Once she stepped outside for the first time that day, the bitter cold snapped her thinking, and she slipped on that icy spot, falling to her knees, landing in the snow.

  “Miss Peggy!” a voice called, and she recognized it as that of her husband.

  She pushed herself up, staring at the whiteness, the purity of heaven, and the tears began to fall, burning her cheeks. “My God. My God . . . my God . . . my God . . .”

  Peggy shook her head, heard the snow crunching and the heaving of a man’s lungs, and smelled that sour odor of Matt Crabbe. He sank beside her in the snow.

  She looked up at the heavens, feeling the snow stinging her face, and then felt her husband grab her, pull her to her feet. “I must have lost my mind,” she said, bawling on his shoulder.

  Odd. She no longer minded his smell, or the cold, or that dark hole in the earth that they had called their home.

  “It’s all right, Miss Peggy.” He spoke in a quiet whisper. His hands, rough, callused, but certainly not cloven hoofs, felt gentle. She cried even harder.

  She had tried to murder her husband.

  She had tried to kill herself.

  Somehow, she had even thought that this gentle, kind man was Satan, that he had tried to lead her to the eternal pit.

  It wasn’t his fault that their homestead had failed. What had she done to help? Sit in bed? Read Jane Austen or Honoré de Balzac? Mope around the place? Pity herself?

  Yet her husband was telling her, “It’s my fault, Miss Peggy. I knowed how you was feelin’. Knowed you didn’t like it here. When I couldn’t find no game, nothin’ fit to eat, I shoulda packed us all up and left this awful place.”

  Peggy made herself move off her husband’s shoulder. She didn’t feel cold, though it had to be pushing single digits out there. A mule snorted, and she laughed. He was probably cursing her. She hadn’t fed them, and they had not had any water. Wiping her nose, she looked into her husband’s eyes. They were so gentle. Full of love.

  For her.

  “You probably want to have our marriage annulled,” she told him. “I wouldn’t blame you. Being married to a lunatic.”

  “You don’t say that, Miss Peggy . . .” he told her, speaking forcefully. “Don’t say that at all, Miss Peggy.”

  Her smile grew, and she put her hands on his broad shoulders. “Not Miss. Please . . . call me Peggy.”

  She kissed Matt Crabbe. She knew she had made the right choice in picking her husband. They would leave this place, this pit of despair, and they would try to start over. If that proved possible, if her mind recovered, if her husband did not abandon her as he should. But he wouldn’t. Matt Crabbe would start over, too. Most likely, he would leave that awful rifle behind.

  She had almost killed him with that Winchester. Had almost killed herself. Let it rot. Let it be buried in the soddy that had, for a while at least . . . along with that wind that didn’t seem to be blowing so bitterly hard anymore . . . driven her insane.

  Ogallala, Nebraska

  Winter 1894

  The doc, a portly man with a patch over his left eye and a wicked-looking scar that ran crookedly from the bottom of that brown leather oval all the way to his chin, managed to pluck the stitches from both of Jimmy Mann’s hands. Didn’t even hurt too much.

  By December, Jimmy was sick of Ogallala, sick of Nebraska, sick of the cold, sick of just about everything—except Shirley Sweet.

  Doc Gurney was one thing, but Shirley made a mighty fine nurse. She had sent the rest of her Wild West show northwest to Fort Meade, giving the boys and a decrepit old bear instructions to tell Colonel Curtis that she’d be there when she felt like it. And she had nursed Jimmy back to health.

  A few days after the solstice, the skies cleared and morning dawned cold but passable. She took him to the outskirts of town and set empty whiskey bottles on posts. “Reckon you can shoot?”

  Jimmy looked at the scars on his hands, flexed his fingers. The left hand remained numb, without any feeling. Doc Gurney had said he’d likely never have much feeling in that hand, but he wasn’t crippled. Jimmy didn’t mind the severed nerves. In fact, he kind of liked that lack of feeling. It matched the rest of his mood. “Let’s see.”

  She went to one of her long trunks in the back of the livery wagon they’d rented and opened it. Out came a Winchester in practically mint condition. “Here.”

  When Jimmy took the rifle she offered, he smelled the oil, the grease. Doubted if the weapon had ever been fired more than a handful of times. He studied the rifle, instantly feeling the pain, the sadness, and wished the rest of his body could be like his left hand, without any feeling.

  “It’s an ’86,” he told Shirley.

  “Uh-huh,” she said as she brought out her Rolling Block. “Short rifle. Twenty-four-inch barrel. Shoots .45-70 gov’ment.” She opened the grip she had also brought, tossing him a box of shells.

  He caught the cartridge box in his right hand, rested them on the gate of the wagon, and looked again at the rifle.

  The stock was walnut with a satin finish, deep grains, gorgeous, a work of art—like Shirley Sweet. The grip was straight, the crescent butt plate steel. He knew the front sight, its brass bead made by Marble Arms, and he pushed up the rear sight.

  “Lot of gun,” he said, his words ringing hollow. He saw his brother, lying dead in an express car in the Cherokee Nation. He saw his nephew at home in Texas, waiting for the present Jimmy had promised him.

  He dammed those feelings, opened the box, and withdrew a long cartridge, which he fed through the loading gate. In an easy motion, he jacked the round into the chamber, brought the weapon up, bracing the butt against his shoulder. Sighting on the farthest bottle, he pulled the trigger.

  “Jiminy!” Shirley blinked away her surprise. “You don’t waste no time now, do you?”

  Smelling the pungent odor of gun smoke, he cocked the rifle, lowered the hammer, sat on the wagon, and began feeding eight shells into the Winchester. When that was done, he levered the carbine, lowered the hammer again, and put in a ninth shell.

  “This is just target shootin’, honey,” Shirley said.

  He didn’t listen. Nine shots later, he reloaded the Winchester and walked to those posts, taking with him a sack of whiskey and beer bottles. He moved with a purpose, brushing off the busted glass, replacing the targets—Jimmy had not missed one—and returning to the wagon.

  The horse snorted, uneasy, unnerved by the gunfire, but the brake was set, and Jimmy had placed rocks in front of the wheels as added insurance to keep the rented livery Percheron from running back to town.

  “Do I get to shoot?” Shirley asked.

  He shrugged. “Go ahead.” He sat again on the wagon, staring at his hands.

  “They hurt any?” she asked him.

  Jimmy shook his head. His shoulder didn’t hurt, either, and it had been a long time since he had fired a rifle.

  “I got three Winchesters, this Rolling Block, a Savage, two shotguns, and a Creedmoor,” Shirley told him. “But I shoot targets.”

  She aimed, fired, and busted the top off one bottle. Reloaded. Shot again, hitting the glass again, but not dead center. Just nicking off another chunk of glass. Three shots later, there wasn’t enough to shoot at.

  “That’s what folks pay to see,” she told him, walking to the wagon. Sitting next to him, she brought out some cleaning supplies and began working on the target rifle. “Small caliber, I can do them kinds of things.”

  “Usually, I don’t shoot at bottles.”

  “Yeah.” She slammed an oily batch down the barrel with a ramrod. “Your targets shoot back. That’s how come you got laid up these past few weeks with them ripped up hands of yours.”

  “You’ve been a good friend,” he told her, adding, “Shirley.”

  “Got a soft spot for untamed souls and fools.”
/>   “Which am I?”

  She smiled and fished a fresh cartridge from her vest pocket. “I ain’t rightly sure.”

  “Danny Waco killed my brother.” He hadn’t told her that, merely that he was a lawman chasing a train robber. Jimmy wasn’t even sure he had meant to tell her, but the words had shot from his mouth, and he couldn’t take them back. “Murdered him.” He looked at his hands. “Blew his head off . . . for no good reason.”

  He stood up, shattering three more bottles into specks of blue and green glass. Now, his shoulder did hurt, and he sat back down.

  “Feel better?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Didn’t think so.” She sighed. “You’re goin’ after him, I take it.”

  His head nodded.

  “Any idea where to look?”

  He shrugged. “Deadwood. Miles City.” He let out a heavy sigh. “This is all new country to me.”

  “Yeah. It’s winter. Might be a long one. I don’t reckon you’d like to ride up to Fort Meade—that’s in South Dakota—with me?”

  “Oh.” He was reloading the .45-70 again. “I’d like to, Shirley, but . . . I’d best go it alone.”

  “Figured. Don’t make no never-mind to me.” She had sent the boys on up to Sturgis after they had arrived. She knew Colonel Tom C. Curtis would be mad at her for not going along with them, but she had hoped . . . well . . . that’s what a sharpshooting girl from Zanesville, Ohio, gets for hoping.

  “There’s a pack train headin’ that way in a week,” Shirley said. “I’ll hitch up with ’em.” She opened her valise and pulled out a purse. “But you’ll need money.”

  “I’ve got some. Don’t you—”

  “Hush.” She handed over a wad of bills. “You take this. I won it off Danny Waco. I don’t want it. I got plenty.”

  “You won it?”

  She grinned. “I cheated.”

  He almost laughed, but he took the money and slipped it inside his coat.

  “You’ll take the Winchester, too.”

  “That I can’t do.”

  “Yeah, you can. All that cannon does is sit in that crate. Only time I ever take it out is to clean it. Take it. And welcome. I shoot bottles, Jimmy Mann, and targets, and smokes out of mayors’ mouths. I ain’t no big woman. That’s too much rifle for me. In my line of work.”

  He looked at the rifle, then at her, and leaned over and kissed her. She kissed him back. Again, Jimmy Mann wished that all of him could be dead like his left hand. He pulled away, sighed. “We best get back to town.”

  He’d be gone by daylight. He knew that. Back after Danny Waco. Likely, he would never see this girl again. Yep. He knew that. So did Shirley Sweet. Jimmy could tell by the tears in her eyes.

  Wallace County, Kansas

  The way McNally figured things, that soddy out in the middle of nowhere saved their lives.

  Why, they had merely stumbled upon it, just about when McNally and Tyron figured they were done for. Blizzard in full force, them lost, nowhere near Nebraska as far as they could tell, and lo and behold, the sod house appeared.

  They kicked open the door. Wasn’t much of a door. Had two big old holes in it. They led their horses inside, along with the pack mule.

  “It’s a blessin’,” Tyron said. “Blessin’ from the Lord.”

  In answer, the mule began peeing on the dirt floor.

  “Ain’t nobody home,” McNally said.

  “Not in no long while.” Tyron sat on what passed for a bed. A bed that had been ripped apart by thick claws of skunks, coyotes, wolves and maybe a badger or weasel over the past week or two or month or year. Hard to tell with the snow coming down sideways, and the soddy dark as McNally’s soul.

  “Get a fire started, Tyron,” McNally said.

  “Start it yerself,” Tyron chimed back.

  “You wanna freeze t’ death?”

  “I ain’t cold.”

  “Start that fire, Tyron, else I’ll—” McNally saw it first, laying on the floor by the fire. He ran forward, bent over, and heard his pard say, “That’s mine!”

  But McNally snatched up that rifle and said, “Ya want it. Come a-take it from me.” He worked the lever, surprised to see a fresh cartridge ram into the chamber.

  “It’s a Winchester!” Tyron cried out.

  “An’ it’s got bullets!” At least, McNally knew, it had one.

  “Golly.”

  “Get that fire started, Tyron!”

  “Don’t ya point no gun at me.”

  McNally brought the rifle up, laughing. Even Tyron managed to cackle some.

  “Wolves is a-gonna regret that I found this here Winchester,” McNally said.

  “All of Nebrasky is.” Tyron busied himself trying to gather enough kindling and wood to put in the fireplace. “We’ll make a passel with pelts come spring.”

  “Once we get to Nebrasky.”

  Tyron laughed. “Can’t wait till this blizzard ends.”

  “When ya gets that fire a-goin’, let’s celebrate. Gots some liquor in my saddle bag.”

  “Ya been hoggin’, McNally.”

  “Savin’ it for a special occasion!”

  He studied the rifle, reading the numbers. “It’s a big one.” He couldn’t read his letters, couldn’t tell A from Z, but he did know his numbers and could even cipher things like 2 plus 2 and 5 minus 1.

  “Says here fifty, one hundred, four fifty.”

  Tyron looked up. “What’s that mean?”

  “Fifty caliber, I reckon.”

  “In a repeatin’ rifle?” Tyron clucked his tongue.

  “That’s what it say.”

  Tyron laughed. So did McNally. “’Em wolves up in Nebrasky is really gonna regret us happenin’ ’pon this here homestead.”

  Tyron’s head bobbed. “It’s a blessin’ from the Lord.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hay Springs, Nebraska

  Winter 1895

  Even to a couple of weasels like McNally and Tyron, there wasn’t much to Hay Springs, just a collection of shanties, tents, and soddies on both sides of a trail that seemingly led to nowhere. The only way to tell what each place sold came from reading the sloppily scribbled or badly carved signs stuck in front of the businesses, but neither man had ever learned how to read.

  Of course, there were other ways of telling.

  Like the banjo music, laughter, and cusses coming out of a big tent structure on the north side of the muddy street, and all the horses tethered out front, peeing and crapping in the frozen mud and snow.

  The town had sprung up some years back when folks were grading railroad track to Chadron. The depot was about the only thing permanent to Hay Springs, if anyone would call an old boxcar converted into a business, permanent. But the town had plenty of springs nearby, and those springs and the railroad had been bringing in farmers to grow hay—hence, the town’s name—and ranchers, and cowboys, and on that bitterly cold January morning, a couple wolfers up from Texas named McNally and Tyron.

  They tethered their horses and mule, stamped their feet in the hard-frozen ground to get their blood flowing again, and walked through the flap into the warmth of Hay Springs’s biggest tent saloon.

  “Caint I carry the big Winchester, McNally?” Tyron asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, ya been a-hoggin’ it since we was in Kansas.”

  “It be mine.”

  “Ain’t so.”

  “Well I gots it.”

  “Well I just mights take it from ya.”

  McNally laughed and pointed the barrel at an empty table. There they sat, enjoying the warmth of the pot-belly stove, listening to the banjo player claw out that song about Jesse James, and picking lice out of their hair until a barmaid came wandering by, stopping a few feet from them because of their smell.

  “What’ll you have?” she asked.

  “How much do a whiskey cost?” Tyron asked.

  “Twenty cents a shot.”

  He frowned. />
  “Two beers then. They’s only a nickel, right?”

  “Right.” She quickly left.

  When she returned, sliding two mugs of warm porter in front of the wolfers, McNally said, “We’s lookin’ fer someone.”

  She stepped back, waiting. Each man drank about half his beer. McNally wiped his beard with his filthy coat sleeve, and said, “Name Clements.”

  She waited and did not answer.

  “Big rancher in these parts.”

  Still, she said nothing.

  “Ya gots a hearin’ problem, lady?” Tyron asked. “We’s a-waitin’.”

  “I’m waiting,” she said, “for ten cents for those two beers.”

  Cursing, McNally unbuttoned his coat, reached inside his vest pocket, and withdrew a pouch, and counted out ten pennies, which he stacked on the side of the table.

  The waitress stared at the pouch. “What is that thing?”

  “Bull-wolf scrotum,” Tyron answered. “We’s wolfers.” He said it proudly.

  “Clements,” she said, her face showing disgust, “runs the Circle C-7 down by Box Butte southwest of here. He ain’t here.”

  “Didn’t expect luck t’ favor us,” Tyron said.

  “But his foreman is,” she said.

  “Well, ain’t that somethin’. Ya mind sendin’ ’em over here. Tell him we’s the wolfers Clements sent fer. Wants t’ discuss the particulars an’ such.”

  She left.

  “An’ have ’im brings a bottle if he’s a-mind,” McNally called out. “Talkin’ business works up a body’s thirst.”

  She did not answer.

  “Hey, lady!” Tyron shouted.

  She stopped and turned.

  Tyron pointed at the ten pennies. “Ya forget yer money for our beers.”

  “I’ll get it later.” She made a beeline for the bar, which was nothing more than a two-by-twelve plank stretched across two whiskey kegs.

  Laughing, McNally picked up his pennies, dropped them into the smelly pouch. “Works ever’ time, don’t it, Tyron?”

  “Shor does.” He sipped his beer and then dropped his hand on the table.