Blood Lands

by Ralph Cotton

  Julie didn’t reply. Instead she reached back and shoved her hands down into her hip pockets. She recalled Baines Meredith’s dark eyes. There’s more ways to kill a man than with a gun, you know . . .

  “I thought not.” Reese grinned, taking her silence as some sort of admission. Stepping a foot closer, he stopped beside a center post where the lantern hung on a high peg. He sloshed the bottle of whiskey.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Julie repeated. Yet her words carried no sign of fear, or of uncertainty. Her hands were calm behind her, as if resting and ready.

  “Neither do I,” said Reese, “if it makes you feel any better. See, I wasn’t the one who started all that rough stuff on you. That was Plantz, Peerly and a couple of others. All’s I did was what any red-blooded normal man would do. I took what was laid before me.” He held the whiskey bottle out toward her, a peace offering. “I figure we ought to keep this as friendly as we can, don’t you?” He looked her up and down. “I know you don’t want to get hurt. So get those clothes off; don’t make me have to slap you around.”

  “Plantz, Peerly and a couple of others?” Julie asked coolly. “Who were the others? All of them,” she asked pointedly.

  “Hey, I’m the one in charge here,” said Reese, his right hand drawing his pistol from its holster and shaking it at her. “Now, start doing like I told you! Step out of your trousers!”

  “Their names,” Julie demanded. Seeing him start to take another step, she said, “Stop where you are. Tell me everybody’s name.”

  “Well, let me see,” said Reese, feigning serious thought on the matter and taking another step toward her in spite of her warning. “There was the parson, Plantz, myself, Peerly, Kiley, Macky . . . That’s enough for now. If you’re real sweet to me, I’ll tell you some more when I’m finished.” He started forward, this time as if he would not stop until he’d accomplished what he’d come there to do.

  “You’re finished now,” said Julie. Her hands came from behind her back. Her right hand immediately twirled a bolo quickly into motion, making the apparatus hard to see clearly.

  “What the—?” Reese squinted, trying to get a better look at the whirring balls spinning in a dull blur of lantern light. “Are you craz—” His words stopped as the sound of the rawhide bolo strips whistled through the air and wrapped like angry snakes, tightly around his throat.

  “I will have those names,” Julie said coldly, stepping to the side and watching Reese fall to his knees, his fingers dropping both the whiskey bottle and revolver to the straw-piled floor.

  “Arrhhhg!” Reese choked and gasped, his face turning red-purple in only seconds. His hands pulled and tugged at the rawhide strips, but they were too tight to be loosened from the front of his throat. His widened eyes looked up at Julie, pleading.

  “Ready to tell me those names?” Julie asked calmly, as if it mattered little to her if he lived or died.

  Reese could barely nod his head, but he tried hard to do so, his fingers still grasping in vain at the rawhide strips.

  “Are you sure?” Julie asked, taking her time, seeing his face lose its redness and turn more and more purple right before her eyes.

  Reese gagged, trying desperately to nod his head.

  Julie stepped behind him and hastily untwirled the bolo lines from where they had spun themselves around one another at the center of his neck. “There,” she said, staying behind him, “start talking.” She reached down, picked up his revolver, cocked it and stuck it against the side of his head.

  “I—I—Jesus, woman!” Reese rasped, his voice all but gone. He gagged and coughed and rubbed his red-striped throat. “Don’t go doing something you’ll be sorr—”

  Julie reached down and jerked on the bolo, tightening it around his throat. “The rest of the names,” she said in a controlled rage.

  “All right, please,” Reese said hoarsely. “The others were Carl Muller, Buell Evans and Clarence Conlon.”

  “Describe them to me,” she demanded.

  “All right. Conlon is a big hefty fellow, looks like a bull, wears a full beard . . .”

  Julie listened intently as he described each man. She carefully placed the faces and descriptions to the names, committing each man to memory. In her mind it was the same as reaching out and pulling off their masks one at a time until she saw each man clearly. There was relief in knowing the names of the men who’d assaulted her; yet hearing those names also caused her stomach to crawl.

  She jerked the bolo again when he’d finished talking. “And that’s all? You’re sure?” As she spoke she stepped away behind him and swung out a long rope she’d tied around a thick rafter beam on her way to the saloon.

  “I swear to God,” Reese pleaded. “If there was more, I’d say so! But that was all of us!”

  She stepped forward, dropped a noose over his neck, then stepped back, pulling on the rope, drawing it tighter over the beam. “Hey, what the hell!” Reese protested in his hoarse voice.

  Backing away two more steps, Julie said, “All right, on your feet. I’m through with you.”

  “Then let me go!” said Reese, his hands going to the noose around his neck. “What’s this, a noose? You’re going to hang me? I don’t believe I’ll allow it!”

  Julie said in an almost soothing tone, “I’m not going to hang you, for what you did to me.” She rolled out a two-foot nail keg and upended it beneath the rope. “Stand up on this barrel for safekeeping until I ride out of Umberton. I told you I wanted no trouble, and I meant it.”

  “Woman,” said Reese, “if you really don’t want trouble you best think long and hard about leaving me stranded here, in shame, in front of my pard when he comes looking for me.”

  “Do it now!” Julie demanded.

  “All right, damn it, take it easy!” he said, seeing and hearing Julie cock his revolver at his head. “I’m doing it, see?” He stepped up shakily onto the keg.

  Julie pulled the slack out of the rope and dogged the end tight around a center post.

  Stepping around in front of him, she said, “I told you I wasn’t going to hang you for what you did to me.” She reached out with her right foot and kicked the barrel from beneath his boots, leaving him thrashing, swinging and gagging in thin air.

  “This is for killing my pa.” She gave his struggling body a hard shove, making him swing as his hands clawed at the rope around his throat. “And for Shep Watson,” she said, shoving him again, seeing dark urine spread down his legs as he choked and gagged and struggled to breathe. “And for poor Jeb Shawler . . . for all the Shawlers. For everybody else you’ve killed, you murdering son of a bitch.”

  She stepped back and stared into his red bulging eyes until his last frantic kick turned to a short dying twitch. She let out a deep breath, watching his big hands dangle lifelessly at his sides. “This is a start, Pa,” she whispered. “Now I know who I’m looking for.” She stepped forward, shoved Reese’s revolver down into his holster, turned out the lantern and walked to the dark stall. In the cover of night she walked the horse out through the back door, stepped into her saddle and rode away.

  Chapter 23

  On her way across the flatlands, a mile out of Umberton, Julie eased her horse toward a campfire glowing high among the tall grass, just off the trail. When she got within range she saw Merlin Potts’ face in the firelight. He squatted close to the fire, piling more wood onto the licking flames. A few yards away from him stood a small one-horse wagon loaded heavily with firewood.

  Julie started to turn her horse away and ride on, but as she did so, her horse made the slightest nicker toward the crackling fire. As quick as a whip, Potts sprang to his feet with a long stick in his hand. “Who’s out there?” he shouted.

  “It’s Julie Wilder, Mr. Potts,” Julie called out, seeing him give the stick a threatening swing back and forth.

  “Julie Wilder?” Potts said, easing the stick down to his side at the sound of her voice. “When did you get back here?”

  “A
little while back,” Julie said, coming into view through the grass above her horse’s knees.

  “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? Get on in here, out of that night air.”

  Stepping her horse in closer to the glowing dome of firelight, Julie said, “I didn’t want to disturb you, Mr. Potts. I’m on my way home tonight.”

  “Tonight?” said Potts, tossing his stick to the ground and rubbing his palms on his trousers. “You can’t ride all the way through to the colonel’s place tonight. What if your horse founders, breaks a leg in a gopher hole?”

  “I’m being careful,” Julie said, turning her horse sidelong to him, looking down at his weathered face in the flicker of firelight. “Besides, I like riding on a night with a good moon overhead.” She gestured up at a bright half-moon embedded in a sky full of starlight.

  “Yeah, well, I’m here because I couldn’t stand all the shooting, hollering and carrying on. I had to get out because of them two lousy gawddamned militiamen—pardon my language. The sheriff ain’t around and they’re going plumb loco.”

  “The sheriff has been killed, Mr. Potts,” Julie said, deciding to tell him. She knew that soon enough everybody would know what happened to Colbert Daltry. “I found his body along the trail and brought him to town.”

  “Ole Colbert, killed?” Potts pondered it, peeling a worn-out flop hat from his head. “Well, I’ll be whipped. Killed how?” he asked.

  “Shot dead,” said Julie. “It looks like somebody caught him in an ambush.” She leaned her crossed wrists on her saddle horn and gave a slight nod toward town. “I left him with Constance Whirly; then I got out as quick as I could, seeing one of Plantz’s men at the saloon.”

  “Them sonsabitches are the ones who killed him!” said Potts, getting angry. “You can bet both boots and your belt on that!”

  “I believe you,” Julie said, humbly, “but I don’t like jumping to conclusions.”

  “Well, I’ve already jumped,” said Potts. “That explains all the shooting and whooping it up. They knew nobody would be there to stop them. The gawddamned rotten lousy sonsabitches!” As he spoke his voice grew louder, until he appeared to be shouting at the militiamen in town.

  “Take it easy, Mr. Potts,” Julie said. “They can’t hear you in town, but you never know who might be in listening distance. Your fire is awfully bright out here in the open.”

  “I’ve been tending fires all my natural life,” Potts said coolly. “And you are far too tolerant of those night-riding bastards—pardon my language.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything, Mr. Potts,” Julie replied.

  But the old man continued. “After what they did to you and your pa, nobody would blame you if you shot them dead in the street like wild dogs!”

  “I can’t say for sure they did it,” Julie offered.

  “Ha!” said Potts. “They did it.” He seemed to settle a bit and said, “Of course, nobody blames you for not retaliating. You being a woman and all, what could you really do against the likes of them?”

  Julie offered him a tired, patient smile. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself all along. ‘What can I do?’ ”

  Potts softened. “Well, let’s not even talk about the bastards—pardon my language. Step down here and I’ll fix us a hot pot of coffee. I ain’t sleepy, no way.”

  “Obliged, Mr. Potts,” said Julie, “but I best push on home. I’m avoiding Plantz’s men any way I can.”

  “They’ve about scared you to death, haven’t they?” Potts said in a soft, sympathetic tone.

  “I just don’t want any trouble,” she said, the words rolling effortlessly off her tongue. She backed her horse and turned it, touching her fingertips to her hat brim.

  In Umberton, two hours passed before Nez Peerly stood in the open rear door of the saloon, steadying himself against the doorjamb. “Jesus,” he murmured, finally pushing off the jamb and staggering a bit on his way to the bar. At the bar, he looked back and forth blurry-eyed for Reese. Shaking his head he turned to the bartender and said, “Pour me a beer, to wash the spiders off my brain.”

  “Is that all it takes, a glass of beer?” the bartender asked, wearing a smug little grin.

  Peerly gave him a wild harsh stare. “Get fresh with me, see how long it takes for me to kill you!”

  “Sorry,” said the bartender, snatching up a mug and sticking it under the tap. “Just offering friendly conversation.”

  Peerly grabbed the beer mug, sucked down a long swig of cool beer and let a deep belch in the bartender’s face. The bartender winced at the blast of hot breath. “Damn, that’s better,” Peerly said, sounding relieved. He took a shorter drink as the bartender stepped away fanning himself with a bar towel.

  “I’m selling this place,” the bartender murmured in disgust.

  Looking back and forth again, Peerly asked, “Where’s my pard?” as if he’d left Reese in the bartender’s safekeeping.

  “Your friend left here quite a while ago,” the bartender replied. “Said he needed to do some thinking.”

  “It’s about damn time he did some thinking,” Peerly said in wry voice. “Which way did he go?”

  The bartender stopped cold in his tracks, turned and said, “You know, somehow I missed that. I meant to follow him so I could report back—”

  “Wise son of a bitch,” Peerly growled, cutting him off. He snatched his beer mug from the bar and walked out into the empty street. “Reese!” he called out into the quiet night. He heard no response other than a dog who began an endless barking. “Reeeeeese!” he bellowed louder in order to be heard above the barking.

  “Shut up, gawddamn it!” a voice called out along a row of small cottages.

  “Go to hell!” shouted Peerly. In a violent response, he drew his pistol and fired it in the direction of the cottages. A cat screamed loudly and sailed up over a fence. The barking continued.

  “Where’s the sheriff when we need him?” a woman called out angrily.

  Addison, the barkeeper, stepped out and down onto the street a few feet behind Peerly, taking an interest.

  “Reeeeeese! Answer me!” Peerly fired two more shots, these straight up into the night. Lanterns came alive in the dark windows. “I find you, I ought to shoot your big stinking toes off!” Peerly said to Reese as if he were standing beside him. He staggered forward, looking all around in the darkness; the bartender followed a few feet behind.

  In moments, townsmen appeared in nightshirts and trousers, some holding lanterns, some holding lanterns and shotguns. A few followed Peerly along the street and alleyways. On their way toward the livery barn, Councilman Oscar Bales asked Councilman Bill Wilmens, “Who’s lost, anyway?”

  “One of our esteemed militiamen seems to have vanished tonight,” Wilmens answered in a sarcastic voice. “As if we should give a damn,” he added in a whisper.

  Bales stopped short and tossed a hand. “Hell, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have pulled up my suspenders! I’m going home.”

  “Weren’t you drinking with them earlier over at the saloon?” Wilmens asked.

  “Please, Bill,” said Bales. “I have too much to lose associating myself with these scoundrels. I just happened to be in the saloon when they arrived. I left shortly after.” Ahead of them Peerly walked into the livery barn, leaving the door open behind him.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything,” he said, coaxing Bales to continue walking with him. “Let’s stick around long enough to see what’s going on . . . Call it our duty as councilmen.”

  “Yes, well, there’s some things we are not called upon to do,” said Bales, walking along grudgingly.

  From the livery barn door, Peerly staggered out with his gun drawn and pointed at the following townsmen. He wore a frightened, surprised look on his face. “Everybody freeze right there!” he shouted. “Any of yas tries to make a move on me, you’re dead!”

  “Good heavens, Nez,” said Wilmens. “What’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen
a ghost!”

  “Real gawddamn funny, Wilmens!” said Peerly, fanning his gun back and forth from man to man. “I see what you sneaking bastards done to him! You ain’t about to get the jump on me!”

  “What’s going on in there?” Bales asked, venturing forward a half step. “Is Reese in there?”

  “Keep it up, Councilman!” shouted Peerly. “I’ll blow somebody’s head off! You know damn well he’s in there. He’s hanging deader than a skin full of sausage!”

  “He’s dead?” Bales asked.

  “What did I say, gawddamn it!” Peerly shouted, barely in control of himself.

  Bales, Wilmens and the bartender gave one another a puzzled look. Wilmens asked Peerly, “And you think we lynched him?”

  Peerly kept the gun aimed and pointed, sweat pouring down his sobering face. His hands trembled. “The thought is damn sure crossing my mind,” he said. “Somebody’s sure put the hemp to him. Who the hell else would do it? You’re the only ones around!”

  “Wait a minute,” said Wilmens. “Who’s to say he didn’t hang himself?” With his hands chest high, he ventured a step forward. “Has he been despondent of late?”

  “He did say he was going for a walk and to do some thinking,” said the bartender.

  “There we have it,” Bales offered. “He did some thinking . . . Decided to kill himself. I can see that happening.”

  “Thinking? Ha! Nothing ever bothered this stupid son of a bitch,” said Peerly. “I’m getting out of here. Don’t get near me; don’t try to stop me. When I come back it’ll be with Plantz and the rest of the militia!”

  “There was a woman who came in,” said the bartender, as if he’d been thinking too hard to have heard Peerly’s threat. “The Wilder woman, Julie! She came in, drank a beer and left. I don’t know if this means anything.”