Once, staggering, I fell to my knees and doubted whether I could get up—somehow I did. Vaguely then, my surroundings grew familiar. So on I went, although my strength seemed gone. Stumbling, falling, often entangled in brush, twice wading almost neck-deep in water, I kept going until struggling through the last forest of cattails I crawled up on a grassy shore near the camp. And there Bill Longley found me.
There were three days then of which I remember nothing. Then, slowly, the cuts and abrasions healed, and my head stopped its throbbing. The fierce anger faded, but left behind a sullen hatred. And there was deperation also, for it seemed a door was closing behind me, and that whatever I had come back for was slipping away, and would be lost.
Loafing about the island camp, I tried to think things out. This must not stop me. True it was that I had been set upon and beaten, yet if ever I was to be anything but what I was, I must make myself a man of substance, of property. And my only chance for that was to return to the land, to plant my crops, to buy my stallion and brood mares, and to win the fight on my own terms.
My immediate reaction was to get a gun and hunt them down, one by one, saving Chance for the last, and kill each man of them who had set upon me.
Yet there had been enough of killing, and, at the end, where would I be? An outlaw and a hunted man, without friends, without a place in the world. It would be too easy to be whipped, to sit back and admit that I’d been defeated. Down inside I knew they’d made me eat dirt, but it had been the dirt of my own field, and I could find it not unappetizing.
There were a dozen men on the island now. Bob Lee was there, so was Bill Longley and Bickerstaff, who was a good man and a hard one. All of these men were only a generation removed from those who fought at the Alamo and San Jacinto.
Listening to their desultory conversation I kept to my own thoughts with half my mind. There was that land Pa owned down on Big Cypress Bayou, the place called Fairlea. It was situated in an out-of-the-way place, surrounded on three sides by swamp and forest. On the west there was, as I recalled, a narrow grass-grown lane along the property line. It was fenced off, concealed, yet good land and a part of a place Pa had bought for a pittance. I strongly doubted whether anyone in either Boston or Jefferson dreamed it was owned by Pa. Fairlea was my best chance.
Bob Lee disagreed. “You’ve too many enemies. You’ll not get a chance to get your crop in, to say nothing of harvesting.”
“It’s my feeling,” I told them. “Nobody authorized my arrest. I’ve a thought it was Chance Thorne, acting on his own. There’s still a chance they’ll leave me alone.”
“Maybe,” Longley said dryly. “But there’s some who will remember you and be afraid, and men try to destroy anybody they are scared of.”
“There’s something else we’ve got to talk about,” Bicker-staff suggested, “and that’s Barlow. We’re getting blamed for every thieving, murdering thing he does while he hides out in the Thickets.”
“He has friends tipping him off,” Jack English declared. “He always knows where the Army isn’t goin’ to be.”
While they talked of that my mind wandered back to that lonely field at Fairlea. With luck a man could get a crop into the ground there and nobody the wiser. Then with some feed to stash away I might even go wild-cow hunting down in the Thickets and come out with a herd we could drive to Sedalia or Montgomery.
Of this much I was almighty sure: they’d not take me again and treat me as they had just now. I’d see them all in hell first, and go with them if need be. And that brought back the problem of defense. Nothing could be done until I had a gun, until I had a carbine and a Dragoon Colt.
So I got to my feet and started toward my mule which Bill Longley had brought to the island for me. Jack English had gone with him to get it, and for that I owed them a debt that I must pay.
Lee watched me saddle up the mule. “You fixin’ to go somewhere, Cull?”
“Figure I’ll need my guns. I’m goin’ after them.”
Longley had been lying on the ground chewing a blade of grass. Now he sat up and regarded me curiously, but he let the others do the talking.
“You figure to do it alone?” Lee asked mildly.
“A man forks his own broncs in this country,” I told him, “but I’ve nothing against you riding along if you’ve a might to.”
“Well, now,” Longley got to his feet, “I sort of figure this might be somethin’ to see.”
Four of them rode along: Bob Lee, Jack English, Bickerstaff and Longley. I’d have wanted no better men, anywhere.
Jefferson lay lazy in the afternoon sun. A child rolled a hoop along the boardwalk, and a dog lay sprawled in the dust in the center of the street, flopping his tail as they rode by to indicate his satisfaction with things as they were and a willingness to let things be. Two men dozed against the wall of a store enjoying the shade and their chronic idleness.
The street was silent. A few men riding into the street meant nothing to anybody, not those days. There were loose men from everywhere, just drifting, hunting they knew not what, men who had lost what they had in the war and were hoping, away back inside their skulls, to find it somewhere else.
It wasn’t likely any of them would know me on sight, although, come to think of it, Joel Reese had. But then I was on the place and where a body might expect me to be.
Stepping down from my mule, I glimpsed my reflection in the store window, a strapping big man in a cabin-spun shirt that was a size too small; my shoulders packed a lot of heavy muscle in them and it swelled that shirt considerable. First money I came by would have to go into clothes or I’d be seedplanting naked as a jaybird.
The black hair curled over the back of my shirt collar, and I guess I looked like an uncurried broomtail, one of those wild ponies folks find running in the swamps or the off-shore islands.
We had pulled up in front of the military headquarters, and I walked right in, asking nobody yes or no. There was a soldier dozing on a chair near the door with a rifle across his knees. He gaped at me, then started to pick up that rifle but something in my eyes made him change his mind. Maybe it was because I was a-figuring to stretch him out if he made a move to swing that gun on me. And I was positioned to do it.
This soldier was the Reconstruction vintage, if you know what I mean. He was no veteran. Likely he never killed nothing more than a squirrel, or something he could aim at two hundred yards off…It was a sight different to look up and see a full-grown man staring at him, just a-waiting for him. This boy had a uniform coat and cap, but only homespun pants—and he was asking for no trouble.
Colonel Amon Belser was there. He was tipped back in his chair looking at some papers and when he looked over them he saw me. I don’t think he liked what he saw.
“Colonel,” I said, “Chance Thorne came out to my place the other night and set on me. The men with him took my pistol and my Spencer, and gave me a sight of a whipping to boot. I came to get my guns back.”
This Belser was surprised, but he was no fool. He sat very still, trying to think it out before he spoke. I had an idea Chance had operated on his own, but Chance was not a good man to cross and, unless I missed my guess, Chance was a man who would have influence.
“If you received a beating,” Belser said stiffly, “no doubt you deserved it. I know nothing about your guns.”
“This here country,” I said, “a man needs a gun. Lots of mighty mean folks riding the roads these nights. I’d like my guns, Colonel.”
Belser was angry. He was top man here and not used to being talked to like that. “Baker,” he said to me, “you get out of here! And get out of town! I know nothing about your guns, but from what I’ve heard of you, you’re better off without them.”
Well, sir, right then I leaned over the desk and picked up the brand-new, spanking-new Dragoon Colt that lay there on the desk. Then I spun the cylinder and checked the action. It was in working shape and fully loaded.
“Then I’ll just have to take this one,” I told him, speaking mildl
y. “And it looks like a fine weapon.”
“Put that down!” Belser could get authority in his voice when he was a might to. “That’s my pistol!”
Well, now. Putting that pistol behind my waistband I shoved open the little gate in the fence that kept folks back from him, and walked over to the rifle rack. There were several guns there, but one of them was a Spencer carbine, a sight newer and much finer than the one I’d had taken off me. It was loaded too.
Belser got up suddenly and started for me and I just turned around. Holding the carbine belt-high thataway it was just almost naturally pointed at his belt buckle. Lead taken on a full stomach is mostly just indigestible, middle of the day, especially.
Belser stopped. He didn’t want to stop, I could see that, but maybe he was having trouble with his digestion and didn’t want anything to upset his stomach. Man like that, he has worries, and it doesn’t pay to take anything on your stomach you can’t rightly handle. He was mad with himself for stopping, but he stopped.
“Colonel,” I told him, and I spoke quiet-like. “I came back to the Sulphur River country to mind my own affairs. When I came back here I wanted no trouble with any man, but I’ve been set on and beaten. Now I know the men who did it, and when I figure the time is right, I’ll talk to each and every one of them. I’ll read them from the Scriptures, Colonel, but in my own good time.
“Seems to me you’d want it quiet here. Seems folks back Washington way and down about Austin, seems like they might figure you weren’t handling things right if a lot of trouble was stirred up down here. Now you leave me alone and you tell Chance Thorne to lay off me, and I’ll make no trouble for you. You start something against me, Colonel, and I’ll run you the hell out of the country.”
That soldier, he sat right still, keeping his eyes on the floor, and wanting no trouble. So I just kept the guns I’d taken, and I walked right out of there into the street.
That tall, lean, long-headed Longley was leaning against an awning post right across the street, smoking a black cigar. Bob Lee was standing by the hitch rail on my own side of the street, looking mighty accidental-like. At the end of the street Jack English was squatting on his heels playing mumblety-peg with his bowie knife.
“Long as we’re here,” Longley said, “I figure we should have us a drink.”
English, he stayed where he was, keeping an eye out for trouble, but the rest of us started for the saloon. Just about that time the saloon door opened and Joel Reese walked out.
He started to stretch and he caught himself right in the middle of it, and he stood there staring at me like his spine had come unsnapped, his face turning kind of sick gray.
“Bob,” I said, “this gent is one of those who entertained me the other night. Fact is, he was one of those calling the numbers for the dance. I figure this man should be instructed in the Word of the Lord.”
“Yes, sir,” Bob Lee was mighty serious, “you take your text from Job, fourth chapter, eighth verse: ‘They that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, they shall reap the same.’”
Joel Reese took a sort of half-step back, looking around for help. Longley had moved around to cut him off and he was standing there, lazy-like, his thumbs hooked in his belt, but boy though he was, there was nothing soft about Bill Longley.
Reese, he looked at me and he set up to say something but I wasn’t figuring on much talk. So I slapped him across the mouth. Well, sir, I’m a big man and I have done a sight of work in my time, and I was remembering how they had closed in on me the other night, so that slap shook him up, somewhat.
He struck out at me, and I just shifted my feet to make the blow miss and slapped him again. That time it started blood from his nose.
Colonel Belser came to the door and he had a rifle in his hands. “Here! Stop that!”
Now Bill Longley had him a Dragoon Colt in his hand and he was looking right at the colonel. “Mister Belser, sir,” he said that, only he dragged it out a might, “you see a sinner being shown that the way of the transgressor is hard, and Colonel, sir, should you transgress any further with that weepon, you will transgress yourself right into a belly full of lead.”
To bring his rifle to bear Colonel Belser must turn a quarter of the way around, and you could see with half an eye that he realized it. Bill Longley was standing there holding that pistol sort of casual-like, and down there at the end of the street, not too far off, was Jack English, just a-setting there. The good colonel must have had it brought home to him that there was no way he could turn without turning right into a chunk of lead. Right then I’d bet he was some unhappy with himself for not staying right inside and giving an imitation of a man gone deaf, dumb and blind.
While Belser stood there unwilling to chance a move, I remembered very clearly what had happened to me in my own yard, so I slapped Reese into a first-class beating. “Next time,” I told the colonel, “it will be a shooting matter.”
Now I didn’t know this at the time, but in his office overlooking the street Judge Tom Blaine was watching all that took place, but the judge was no carpetbagger. Judge Tom had fought in the Mexican War, and it had hurt him to see Jefferson folks afraid of these ragtag soldiers of the Reconstruction.
There were things we needed, so while the others mounted up and held my mule for me, I walked down the street to buy ammunition. It was just as I was finishing buying what I needed that Katy Thorne came into the store, and when she saw my face, I saw her own eyes go wide with surprise and hurt.
My face was still bruised and the cuts had only half-healed, and I suspect I was a sight to see. “Chance told me what they had done,” she said, “but I didn’t believe it was so bad.”
“I’ll have a talk with Chance.”
She caught my sleeve. “Cullen, why don’t you go away? They’ll not leave you alone, you must know that! Even if the others will leave you alone, Chance never will. He hates you, Cullen.”
“I’ll not run…and this land is mine. I would put seed in the ground here, and grow crops, and build the place as Pa would have built it. If I leave all this behind his work was for nothing.”
“His work was for you. It is you who are important, not the land.”
“Are you so anxious to be rid of me?”
“No, but I want you alive.”
Looking at her then I said something I had no right to say, no right even to think. “Where you are not—I would not feel alive.”
Then I turned sharp around and walked into the sun-bright street, afraid of what I’d said, and not knowing why I’d said it, except that now it was said I knew it was the truest thing I had ever said.
Time was, any man who said such a thing and not one of her own kind would have been horsewhipped or called out. Yet I had said it who had no right of any kind to say that to such a girl, least of all to her.
There was no girl of her kind likely to have an interest in Cullen Baker. What was I but a big, loose-footed wandering man with no money and nothing to his name? And who was nobody, nor likely to be anybody.
Remembering the reflection I’d seen of myself in the window, I knew there was nothing in that big, shock-headed and raw-boned young man in a faded red wool shirt that would be likely to interest a Thorne of Black-thorne, or anybody who married with them. I was a man carried a pistol. Folks had no good to say of me, and mostly they were right. I was not as bad as they painted in most ways, but worse in some others. No hand to lie, I never drank either, although often they said I did, but I’d killed men in pistol fights and rode a hard trail over a lot of rough country.
How could a man driven to the swamps like a wounded wolf mean anything to such a girl? A man who had nothing to his name but three shirts and one pair of pants, a man who had drifted and rode and fought with the ragtag and bobtail of the West?
My mother had been quality and my father of good yeoman stock, but there’d been nothing else to the family. Pa had worked hard all his life, but he’d been unlucky. Fire had wiped out one home, and grasshoppers had ta
ken the crop two years succeeding, and there were things happened no man can fight off, things that saddled us with debt.
Bob Lee was a knowing man, and Bob Lee looked me over and said, “I don’t blame you, Cullen.”
“What did he do?” Jack English wanted to know. “What aren’t you blamin’ him for? Because he whupped that Joel Reese? I’d have done it myself, if excuse had been offered. There never was a good thing about that man.”
“You would have reason, Cullen,” Bob Lee said. “I think she would go wherever you wanted to ride.”
“Don’t speak slighting of her, Bob.”
“No such thing. I never spoke slighting of any woman, Cullen. Only she’s in love with you, that one is.”
“Of itself that’s a slighting thing. What woman of sense could look at a man like me? How much time have I got, Bob? How much time have any of us? We’ve our enemies, you and me, and all of us, too. You have the Peacocks, and I have Chance Thorne, and then there’s the Reconstruction people who’ve no use for any of us.
“I tell you, Bob, even if she’d have me, and there’s no thinking of that, I’ll have no woman crying over my bloodstained shirt, as I’ve often seen them cry.”
We rode silent then, and after a bit Bob Lee said, “There’s little sense in loving, Cullen. Love has a sense of its own and I expect often as not it’s the best sense. Folks love with their blood and their flesh, Cullen, not with their brains. The sense of love is as deep as the water in Black Bayou, rich as the color of hyacinth. It makes no sense but to the people who love, and that’s enough.”
“Not for her and me, Bob Lee. And she has no such thought. It’s only that we both liked her Uncle Will, I guess, and she may have sympathy for me.”
“Have it your way,” Bob Lee told me. “You’ve much to learn of women, Cullen.”
Now no man likes to hear that. Each man believes he knows as much of women as the next, and in my time I’d known a few of them, and here and there women had been in love with me, or told it to me, but Katy Thorne was not likely to care for my kind of man, although she was a beautiful girl with a body that took a man’s breath and embarrassed me to think on, not that I’m a man strange to women.
The First Fast Draw Page 5