by Ralph Cotton
Bantree gave a shrug. “Well, that too,” he said. “But then Lew said he wanted a fair standoff, just you and him. I saw no reason not to.”
“And while him and I shot each other all to hell, you’d be making yourself a run for it up the slope with both horses?” Baines asked, although it was really not a question.
“Somebody was going to kill him sooner or later, Baines,” said Bantree. “Tell the truth, did you ever see a more stupid sonsabitch in your life?”
Baines gestured him toward the horses standing a few yards away. “I have to admit he was awfully damned stupid,” Baines said. He kept six feet between himself and Bantree, following him to the grazing horses. “The fact is, he wasn’t even wanted for anything that I know of.”
“You’re kidding,” said Bantree, giving a half glance back in surprise.
“No,” said Baines. “It looks like he was just standing up for you . . . his pard,” he added in a critical tone.
“Damn,” said Bantree. “I reckon I ought to feel bad then, jackpotting him that way.”
“That’s for you to decide,” said Baines. “My job is just to take you in. Least move you make to get away, I’ll put a bullet in you and tie you facedown over your saddle. Do you understand me real clear?”
“I’m done, Baines,” said Bantree. “You win, I lose. To hell with it.” He paused, then asked, “Where are we headed though, just for curiosity’s sake?”
“First we’re stopping by my place, then on down to Donaldson,” Baines said.
“Are we going to bury ole Lew first?” Bantree asked.
“I’ve got a shovel,” said Baines. “You feel like digging in this hard ground?”
“Naw,” said Bantree, walking on, “it was just a thought.”
Two more weeks passed before Julie turned her horse onto the trail leading to Baines Meredith’s house on the eastern outskirts of Denver. Having left Umberton at the war’s end, Julie had passed through town after town of celebration until at length the festivities had worn thin and stopped by the time she had crossed over into Colorado Territory. At a stage stop and supply settlement along the trail, she stepped down from her horse while an old man and a young boy stood folding a large flag they had taken down from over the door of a sod and log trading post.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” the oldtimer asked, stepping toward her, slipping the folded flag into a canvas bag and handing it to the young boy.
“The war is over!” the boy called out to Julie before she had time to answer the old man.
“Hush up, Imus,” the old man said, waving the gangly boy away.
“I’m looking for Baines Meredith,” Julie said. “His place is north along this trail, isn’t it?”
“Baines Meredith?” The old man took on a serious look. He leaned slightly and gazed along the trail behind her as if making sure she was alone. “I haven’t seen Baines Meredith for the longest time, ma’am.” He looked her up and down, seeing the faded traces of bruises still lingering on her face. “No offence, but you don’t look like most of the women who come looking for Mr. Meredith.”
“Oh,” said Julie, a bit taken aback by his words. “You make it sound like many women come looking for him.”
Remaining elusive, the old man said hesitantly, “I’ve seen one or two maybe.”
“Then I am headed in the right direction?” Julie said.
The old man only stared at her.
Realizing he wasn’t going to say much more on the matter, Julie shook her head, and swung back up into the saddle. “I’ll tell Baines how helpful you were,” she said, giving the horse a turn back onto the trail.
“All right, ma’am,” the old man said. “You’re headed in the right direction. Stay on this trail another fifteen miles are so, turn onto a smaller trail where a big rock’s lying beside a hulled-out freight wagon. You better not be up to no good,” he warned.
“Don’t worry,” Julie said, offering a short smile. “I’ve come as a friend.”
“Yeah,” the old man called out as she nudged her horse forward, “I once had a fellow tell me that, then ride out and try to shoot Mr. Meredith! Don’t you disappoint me, young lady!”
Julie rode on.
By midafternoon, she came to the spot where the skeletal remains of a freight wagon sat lopsided and half-sunken into the ground. A large rock lay against one of the broken wheels. Without stopping she turned the horse onto the smaller trail and rode for another half hour until a dull tin roof rose up in the distance.
When she reached the small half-clapboard, half-log house, she stopped a few yards away and called out to the closed door. After a moment of silence, she gazed all around at the yard, at a small barn, at an empty corral, its gate wide open. Then she stepped down, led the horse to a hitch rail, spun his reins and walked up onto the short porch.
The horse stood and watched her step inside through the unlocked door, and less than a minute later step back out, leaving the door open. Walking back down beside the animal, she untied her canvas supply bag and her blanket and took them down from behind her saddle. She stood for a moment looking out in each direction across rough rocky ground. Fifty yards to the west stood a woodlands along the edge of a shimmering creek. In the other three directions lay open land as far as the eye could see.
“It looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves,” she said. She carried her bag and blanket inside and dropped them both onto a battered wooden table in the center of the room.
Chapter 17
Four days passed before Baines Meredith and his prisoner rode into sight across the open land. When Julie spotted them through the kitchen window, she dropped her dishcloth into the water pan and dried her hands quickly on a clean towel. She shoved her shirttails down into her trousers on the way to the door.
Outside, on the trail, Baines Meredith smiled slightly to himself after seeing the strange horse in his corral. He stopped where the trail ended at his front yard and brought Bobby Bantree’s horse and the spare mount to a halt beside him. At the sight of the three horses approaching, Julie’s black barb began cutting back and forth along the rail, eying them suspiciously. Baines noted the saddle, tack and blanket lying atop the fence, and said to his prisoner, “Looks like you’ll be sleeping in the barn tonight, Bantree.”
The prisoner shrugged, his cuffed hands resting on the saddle horn. “I’ve slept in barns before. It makes no never mind to me.”
Baines looked him up and down. “Some men would look at sleeping in the barn as an opportunity to see if they can break loose and get their knees in the wind.”
“I can’t say the thought wouldn’t cross my mind,” Bantree replied.
Baines nodded. “Here’s something else to let cross your mind. . . . You’re worth about the same to me dead as you are alive. The difference is, I save a little by not having to feed you.” He tugged on the lead rope to Bantree’s horse and nudged his stallion toward the house.
“I’m not going to try to run, Meredith,” said Bantree. “Far as I’m concerned, I’ll go in and face what’s coming to me.”
“That’s a refreshing attitude,” said Baines, watching Julie step out onto the front porch, her hands in the rear pockets of her canvas trousers. “Oh my, Julie Wilder!” he whispered to himself, seeing her raise a hand and wave at him. “What a fine strapping young woman you are.”
Bantree sat quietly, looking all around the countryside idly, judging the distance to the rise of mountains on the far northwest horizon.
Stepping the horses’ pace up a little, Baines turned wide in front of the house, putting himself between Bantree and Julie as she stepped down off the porch. “My my,” Baines said, sweeping his wide flat-crowned hat from his head. “To what do I owe this honor, young lady?”
“Don’t act too surprised,” said Julie. “I know the man at the stage stop told you I’m here.”
Without commenting on the matter, Baines asked, “Did you have a good trip up from the plains?” He gestured Bantree
down from his saddle, then stepped down himself.
“Cool nights, but warmer days,” Julie said. She stuck out her hand. Baines looked down at it, smiled as if he would have preferred something more, but then shook hands and half turned to the prisoner.
“This is Bobby Bantree,” he said to Julie. “I’ll be taking him to the fort to turn him in.”
Bantree reached his cuffed hands up and touched the brim of his hat. “Ma’am.”
Julie only nodded a short courteous response, not liking the way Bantree gazed into her eyes.
Baines noted Julie’s clouded brow. “Bantree here has never been over in Kansas that I know of, have you, Bobby?”
Bantree shrugged. “No, why?”
“Never you mind why,” said Baines, looking at Julie as he spoke to the prisoner.
Julie got the message. “I’m all right with things now, Baines.”
“Oh, are you?” Baines smiled wisely, as if to imply that he didn’t believe her. “Then what brings you to my home?”
Julie started to speak, but before she could, Baines cut in, saying, “We’ll discuss it later.” He reached out with a gloved hand and patted her forearm. “Right now, just let me look at you.” He smiled admiringly. “You certainly wore a much different face the last time I laid eyes upon you.”
“I’m doing much better,” Julie said.
“And I can see that plainly,” said Baines. He gestured Bantree in front of him and led all three horses toward the barn. Julie walked along beside him.
“How is dear Constance Whirly?” Baines asked.
“Constance is fine,” said Julie. “She sends you her best.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Baines chuckled, “but much obliged for your thoughtfulness.” At the barn he stepped around in front of Bantree and opened the door. Gesturing the prisoner inside, he ushered Julie and closed the door behind them. In the shadowy gloom, he picked up a lantern, lit it and trimmed the wick to a bright glow.
“Jesus,” said Bantree, looking disappointed at the iron-barred cell standing before them, next to one of the stalls. Inside the cell a set of shackles lay attached to a long, heavy chain that ran out through the bars and connected to a barn post ten feet away with a thick anchor bolt.
Baines gave him a flat stare. “Like you said, you’re not going to try running anyway, eh?”
“Yeah, but damn.” Bantree stared down at the floor as Baines unlocked the cell door and motioned him inside.
Once he’d relocked the cell door, Baines walked over and hung the lantern on a post in the center of the barn. “There’s a Bible and some reading material in there,” he said, pointing at a small table beside a cot in the corner of he cell. Looking back at Julie, Baines smiled and said to Bantree, “Ordinarily, I help a prisoner pass the time with a stirring game of chess or checkers. But this isn’t ordinarily.”
Baines held his crooked arm up for Julie. “Now if you’ll join me, dear lady, we’ll have ourselves a cup of coffee and I’ll hear what brings you to visit this lonesome old gunman.”
They walked to the house and within minutes Julie had set out two china cups and saucers from a small cupboard and poured each with coffee from a pot she had prepared earlier. Seating themselves at the kitchen table, Baines took out a briar pipe, filled it and lit it while Julie talked.
Over coffee, Julie told him everything that had happened to her since he’d left her in Umberton. She told him about the visit from the major and how Ruddell Plantz’s men had accompanied him. She told him how the men appeared to treat the matter as a private joke among themselves. She finished by telling him about the two men in the livery barn, and how she couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger to protect herself.
Baines sat in a silent smolder for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m the one who saw firsthand what they did to you, Julie.” His gaze turned grim in reflection. “If killing them for you would help, I’d be riding out today to get it done.” He paused, then said quietly, “But that’s not what you came here to ask of me is it, darling?”
“That’s what Constance told me to ask of you,” Julie said. “But no, that’s not what I want. What I want is justice, for these men killing my father. What I want is to be able to tell the innocent faces I see every day from the men who did this to me.”
“You want to rip those hoods from their faces,” said Baines. “I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen for you.”
She turned her face away and gazed out through the window. Tears glistened in her dark eyes. “What I want,” she continued, “is to live in peace, in Umberton, on the ground my father wanted me to have.”
Seeing she did not want to weep, Baines gave her a moment as he sipped his coffee and blotted a white linen kerchief to his thick graying mustache. “You’ll have to kill them to do that,” he said with gentle resolve.
“I’ve tried not to tell myself that,” Julie said, collecting herself. “There are too many of them for me to go up against.”
“And yet you don’t want me to go up against them with you?” Baines offered a tired thin smile. “What a puzzling woman you are, Julie Wilder.”
“Puzzling?” said Julie. “I can’t bring myself to kill the men who I know killed my father. I call that lost.”
Baines shook his head, and said, “You don’t know they’re the ones. And not knowing is your problem.”
“I’m certain of it,” Julie offered. “There is no doubt in my mind.”
“Yes there is,” said Baines. “You might be certain of it, you might know in your heart that they’re the ones. You might even go to court and swear on a Bible that they’re the ones. But there is a thing inside you that still gives humankind the benefit of a doubt.” He gave the same tired smile. “The thing is a conscience, Julie. Some call it a piece of God in each of us. No matter how strong you feel that Ruddell and his men did these terrible things, all you see are the hoods on their faces. You don’t see the faces themselves.”
“I saw Plantz’s boots,” Julie murmured. “He was there; I saw his silver Mexican spurs.”
“Yes,” said Baines, “and today that is all you need to make you go for his throat. But take a gun in your hand, cock it and aim it at his heart, and your conscience starts whispering, ‘What if someone else owned those spurs, or a pair just like them?’ You sure don’t want to kill a man, then find out you were wrong, do you?”
“No,” said Julie, in dark contemplation.
“And that’s exactly why men like Plantz and his riders wear their hoods. It keeps the decent folks, like yourself, from even knowing how to fight back.”
“What about you, Baines,” Julie asked. “What about your conscience? How do you deal with it?”
Baines shrugged and puffed on his pipe. “I told my conscience to shut up and stand in the corner long ago. It’s still standing there as far as I can tell.” He gave her a curious gaze. “But who said I’m one of the decent folks, anyway? I stepped away from the rules and confines of decency a long time ago.”
“That’s not true,” said Julie. “Look what you did for me. I see a goodness in you. Constance Whirly must have seen it too. I saw how the two of you took to one another.”
“What Constance saw in me was need . . . a need in me and a need in herself—nothing nearly as important as the matter of killing. It was not goodness she sought. It may have even been my lack of goodness that attracted her.”
“I don’t think that’s so,” said Julie, “and even if it were, I see goodness in you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have come here asking your help.”
“Any goodness you see in me is the goodness of pretense,” Baines said with resolve. “You came to ask help from the devil, in order to do the work the devil does best.”
“But I—” Julie started to speak; Baines cut her off with an upraised hand.
“No, please, darling,” he said. “You came to the right place.” He drew on the pipe and blew a thin stream of gray smoke toward the ceiling in contemplation. “I will te
ach you how to tell your conscience to shut up and go stand in the corner. But you’ll have to be careful not to leave it standing there too long.” He eyed her closely. “Is that what you want me to do?”
After a silence, Julie whispered, “Yes, teach me to kill.”
Baines laid his pipe in a tin ash tray beside his coffee cup and stood up from the table. Walking to the cupboard, he reached up atop it and took down a locked wooden box that lay out of sight. He blew a fine sheen of dust from the box, then walked back over, laid it on the table, unlocked it and opened the lid.
“A gun maker all the way over in Connecticut made this for me. Along the barrel he engraved, ‘A job well done.’ ”
As he stepped back and put the key in his trouser pocket, he gestured Julie toward a large bone-handled revolver that lay shining on a bed of black velvet. “Pick it up,” he said. “Look it over . . . Handle it. Get used to it.” He watched her reach out toward the box, then saw her stop and hesitate for just a moment as he said, “Let’s call it the devil’s gun.”
Baines stared at her. She looked as if she needed him to say something, some sort of coaxing to get her to pick up the gun after hearing what he’d called it. But Baines offered no such coaxing. Instead he took a step back, as if to say that she either picked up the devil’s gun, or the whole matter stopped right there.
Julie’s eyes took on a determination. She grasped the revolver and raised it from the box, turning it back and forth in her hand. She read the engraving to herself. “I am a pretty good shot, you know. This isn’t the first gun I’ve ever held.”
“I realize that,” said Baines, “but this will be the first gun you ever held for the sole purpose of killing a man.”
Julie looked at him as he stepped in closer. She held the Colt out to him when he raised his hand for it. Taking the gun, Baines took six bullets from his belt behind his back and loaded it. Clicking the chamber shut, he handed it back to her. “We’ll find you a holster this evening and get started drawing and shooting tomorrow morning.”