by Paul Bagdon
I later learned that an Indian would starve to death before he’d eat horsemeat, but any other creatures are fair game—snake, prairie dog, whatever.
Firing from across the street became sporadic—it went from an almost constant barrage to a couple of shots every minute or so. It didn’t feel right—not right at all.
I checked my .30-30 to make sure it was fully loaded, jacked another round into the firing chamber, set the rifle aside, and checked the load in my Colt.
“Jake,” I said, “I know this goes against your grain, but I have to ask to borrow your Derringer.” I wasn’t at all sure what I’d need it for—if anything—but it turned out to be providential that I asked for it.
I expected some sort of grief—at least questioning as to why I needed his miniature canon. He surprised me. He flicked his wrist, the weapon appeared in his hand, and he held it out to me. “ ‘Member—there’s no safety. The pull is heavy, but watch yourself.”
“What’s up?” Lucas asked.
“Those sonsabitches have been too quiet over there. Our office is real vulnerable. If they light it on fire we lose our horses, a ton of ammunition, our clothes and gear—everything. Plus, it’d screw us up on a base of operations. I’m going to slide around the back of the buildings and check out the office—see if they’ve figured out that they can hurt us. If you hear a gunfight, haul ass to the office—but come in the back of the buildings. If I need you, I’ll fire three shots with a pause: one—pause—two—pause—three. If you hear that you come on down.”
“I want to go down the street in front,” Hairy Dog said. “I do not slink around like the coyote—I fight like the mountain cat.”
“Look, even if what I think is happening is happening, the ones left will have a clear shot at you if you do that. They’ll take you down, Dog, and we can’t spare you.”
“My medicine is…”
My nerves were as tight as guitar strings already. I didn’t need this craziness. “Forget your goddamn medicine!” I snarled. “I’m running the show here—and if you don’t like that, there’s the door.”
“El jefe,” Dog said sarcastically in Spanish—meaning the leader, the chief, the captain.
“In this operation, yes. When we finish it up, if you have a gripe with me, bring it up then.”
Dog smiled broadly and took a step toward me. He put his arm over my shoulder. “But I have no gripe…” He thunked me soundly on my back with the butt of a fine-looking, bone-handled knife.
“You see?” he said. He turned the knife so that its gleaming blade pointed at me. “Is not a good idea to screw around with Hairy Dog.”
I put the snub little barrel of Jake’s Derringer in Dog’s gut. I’d been holding it since the Indian began his step toward me. “You see?” I grinned. “Is not a good idea to screw around with Pound.”
Our eyes locked for a century. Then the edges of Hairy Dog’s mouth began to quiver and then rise. Mine did, too. In a moment we were laughing.
“I hope we never come to a death fight, Pound.”
“So do I, Dog.”
Most of the day was gone, but there was still good light. The wind was whipping about and it had a cruel bite to it, swirling tumbleweeds and bits of paper around in whirlwinds. Bad night for a fire, I thought.
I moved very tight to the backs of the stores until I was maybe twenty yards from our office. My guess had been correct: a dozen or so outlaws had their horses ground-tied fifty or so feet away from our enclosure and horses, but of course the horses were calling out challenges to one another—posturing, I’ve heard it called.
The outlaws had taken wood from the front of the office and placed it along the rear exterior wall. They were drunk and staggering, laughing crazily, having a fine ol’ time. I don’t know how they planned to start the fire, but with this wind, if it started at all it’d be a real heller.
Two more outlaws rode up, one with a blazing torch, the flames of which were scaring hell out of his horse. The other carried a five-gallon can of kerosene lamp oil. He dismounted first and stood there laughing at the antics of the torchman’s horse.
“Well, hell,” the torchbearer said, his horse rearing, shaking its head, trying to get out from under the fire that seemed to be attacking him. The man kicked his feet out of the stirrups, drew his pistol, put the barrel deeply into his horse’s ear, and fired, stepping away from the animal as it went down.
The other outlaws found that little show hilarious.
I set my rifle aside. I wanted something that would put a major rupture in the kerosene can. I had no idea what degree of accuracy Jake’s Derringer possessed, but it certainly wasn’t for long-range shooting.
There was not much cover between me and the outlaws. There was a privy that was fairly close, but I’d be in the open as I ran to it.
It wasn’t as if it was a long shot to that kerosene. Using my Colt or the .30-30 it’d be about as difficult as shooting at the sky. I simply didn’t know what would happen when one of those mammoth rounds from the Derringer was released. The gamblers carry the damned things ‘cause they rarely need to shoot more than a few feet to settle an argument.
I gathered up my rifle, the Derringer in my right hand, and made a run for the privy. The outlaws were drunk, and they were far more interested in their colleagues coming to them with the torch and fuel to pay much attention to anything else.
Maybe there is a God up there.
The man carrying the kerosene tripped and fell, and the torchman, drunk enough for any two people, fell on top of the fellow carrying the tin container. I fired my first shot at the kerosene, and as it turned out, it was all I needed—and it’s possible I didn’t even need that. The Derringer tore most of the bottom out of the container, and the torch was ready and waiting.
There was an orange-blue explosion that rose instantaneously into the sky. There wasn’t much sound involved—it was as if the kerosene didn’t have energy it cared to expend in a big blast of sound; instead it used its power to scatter bits and pieces of flaming tin all around itself, and straight up, as well.
Once I talked for some time with a gent who fought for the Union. He had but one arm; the other he left at Antioch. He told me what both sides feared most was that goddamned shrapnel. If a Reb took you down with a rifle, well, that’s what war is all about. The Reb aimed the rifle and fired. With canister shot from the canons, one of the goddamn things may hit way over there and tear off an arm or a leg—or just plain kill you—way over here.
That’s where his arm went, he said, but it wasn’t the canister that took his right arm from his body, it was the army surgeon who gave the soldier a pretty good slug of whiskey for an anesthetic and then sawed—with a wood saw like we’ve all used—the rest off and wrapped up the stump. The fellow told me that there was a pile of arms and legs behind the surgery tent that stood taller than two men atop each other.
The torchman and the fuel carrier flared up like candles, screaming as they died. Slices of tin took out three—maybe four—outlaws. A couple of them looked around for something to shoot at, but I ducked out of sight, next to the privy. The bunch who were left thought it was a real fine idea to get the hell out of there—which is what they did.
I fired three shots into the sky with the pauses we’d discussed, and in a matter of a few moments Hairy Dog, Big Nose, Lucas, and Jake appeared at the back door. I handed Jake’s Derringer back to him. “Thanks,” I said. “That huge slug purely tore the bottom off a can of kerosene oil.”
Apparently, the outlaws hadn’t yet invaded the office. Maybe they wanted to get the fire going first, or maybe Billy Powers told them to do it that way for no reason I could fathom. At any rate, everything was as we’d left it. We went back inside. It was as cold as a crypt, and Lucas edged out the front door to grab some wood. There was a single shot from across the street—the flat, powerful sound of a rifle as opposed to the crack a pistol makes.
Nothing happened for a moment.
“I guess they
didn’t get…” Jake began to say, when there was a second round from a rifle fired. Split wood clattered against itself as it fell, and then there was a heavier, dull thud. Jake and Dog covered me and Nose as we went out the door. Lucas was twisted over a large armload of wood. He wasn’t moving. Blood streamed down the side of his face and there was that horrible sound that a sucking chest wound makes.
“Let’s get him inside,” I said.
“Yes. We cannot leave this good man to die in the street.” A bullet slammed into the door a foot from Big Nose. He ignored it, grabbing Lucas under the arms. I got his legs as a couple more shots were fired at us.
“They will pay for this, Pound.”
“Damned right they will,” I said.
Dog and Jake brought wood in under fire. The outlaws were either too drunk or too poor marksmen to hit us—except for the one who put two slugs into Lucas, either of which would have killed him. The combination of the head wound and the punctured lung didn’t give him a chance.
Lucas was dead before we got him to the floor inside.
“We need to get him back to his people—I don’t want him planted on Boot Hill. He’s too good a man for that,” I said.
Dog thought that over. “Is right. Two of us get a wagon tomorrow, two stay here to cover the office.”
“Yeah. And I know just where to get the wagon,” I said.
There’s always a strangeness to death. Bodies certainly look different when their spirit—or life, or whatever you care to call it—leaves them. The same went for Lucas. That body stretched out on the floor wasn’t my friend Lucas—it was a husk, a shell that used to contain Lucas and now no longer did. I stood over him, staring down at his face and the small fire ignited in my gut and began to turn into a large blaze.
The next morning before sunrise, Hairy Dog and I walked down the back of the buildings almost to the end of the block, where the furniture maker, mortician, and funeral guy had his shop. His wagon was outside and the sleek black horse he used to pull the wagon was in a shelter similar to the one at our office. We didn’t bother to attempt to be quiet as we hitched up the horse; the funeral fellow must have been a sound sleeper.
When Hairy Dog kicked in the back door, that woke him in a hurry. Dog stood aside the door leading from the room inside where we were. The mortician thudded down the stairs with a pistol in his hand. Dog stepped behind him holding a knife to his throat. “Let’s tie the old bastard. He’s liable to go running to Powers,” I said.
“And gag him, too.” Dog plucked the pistol out of the man’s hand and in a manner of minutes we had him tied and gagged.
“We’ll bring your horse and wagon back,” I said. “The coffin will be your donation to a quiet, law-abiding Gila Bend.”
We were in an entire room of the goddamn things. Some were finished and polished; others were little more than elongated packing crates with rough wood and piss-poor carpentry work on them.
I walked over to a nice one—polished to a high gleam, with brass handles on the sides. “What do you think about this one, Dog?” I asked.
“Is good.” We went to opposite sides and carried the coffin as if we were pallbearers out to the wagon. We slid it into interior of the funeral wagon and drove it back to the office. The horse was very nicely trained, I noticed.
Lucas had gotten stiffer during the night and there was that ugly, raw-meat aura around him that seems to be part of death. Big Nose and Jake helped us load Lucas into the coffin, but we didn’t nail the top shut, figuring his ma or pa might want to see him before he was put into the ground.
I knew approximately where his home was, so I drove. A .30-30 stood next to me; Dog had his across his lap. The mud and slush had turned to ice as the temperature dropped over the past few days. That made for a bumpy, often jarring ride, but it beat getting stuck up to the hubs in slop.
After a couple of hours or so, we came upon a young boy with a fishing pole over his shoulder. “Where’s the place of the whiskey makers’ family, boy? The Murfins?” I asked.
“Ain’t no one makes whiskey ‘round here, sir.”
“Cut the shit, kid,” I said. “I don’t have the time or the patience for it just now. Where is it?”
The kid swallowed hard. “You see that hill yonder? You go up it an’ then down an’ right there is the big house. The still ain’t there, though.”
“Fine,” I said. “Thanks.” I gave him a dollar, which he was overjoyed to receive. “There’s a bamboo fishin’ pole in the Sears Catalog that I can buy now!” he said excitedly.
I jigged the horse and we left the kid standing there gaping at that dollar bill as if it had the secret of eternal life printed on it.
We topped the rise and started down, me holding the horse back so the wagon wouldn’t over-run him.
“You feel it, Pound?” Dog said.
“Yeah. Somebody’s watching us, probably through the sights of a rifle.”
As we drew closer to the house, two men, one on each side of the path, stepped out of the scrub with rifles at the ready across their chests. One was an old gent, probably sixty or so. The other was maybe twenty-five.
“What’s your business here?” the older man asked.
“My name is Pound. I’m the sheriff over in Gila Bend, at least for the time being. Lucas came to join on with me several months back.”
A smile cracked his face. “You’d be fellow who shot hell outta the two turds who gunned Evan’s dog, then.”
“That’d be me.”
“Well then, come on down and break bread with us—your Injun friend, too.”
“I’m afraid we’re here with bad news, sir,” I said. “Real bad news. We have Lucas in a casket in the wagon. He was shot down by Billy Powers’s men.”
The old man shook his head sadly. “Lucas was my son-in-law, but I loved him like a son. I told him not to go, but he was set an’ determined, an’ there was no stopping him.”
The young fellow came closer to stand next to his pa, tears streaming down his face. “This here’s Lucas’s brother,” the old guy said. “They was right close.”
There was nothing to say, so I kept my silence.
“C’mon down to the house—your Injun friend, too, if he was pals with our Lucas. Just give me a few minutes to go ahead and tell my missus. She…she’s the one who looks after the baby, just like she was her own.” He paused for a moment. “Uhh—is my boy boxed?”
“Yessir,” I said, “in the best coffin in Gila Bend.”
“I’ll ask you boys to put him in the barn, outta the sun. Is the coffin sealed up?”
“Nossir. We figured you might want to see him one more time. He isn’t torn up too bad.”
“Good. Thanks. You attend to that while I talk to my wife.” He turned away and walked toward the house, rifle over his shoulder, Lucas’s brother stepping with him.
We drove around the rear of the barn and unloaded the coffin. “The father did not cry,” Hairy Dog said. “He is a strong man.”
We hefted the box in the shady part of the area where the baled hay was neatly stacked. As we were doing that we heard a screech from the house, a long, pained, lament that seemed to go on for a very long time.
“My people sing over their dead. This is not so different.”
We gave the horse a bucket of water and walked to the house. Mr. Murfin stood on the porch with what appeared to be a long, wrapped parcel in his hands. As we drew closer we saw that whatever it was, was wrapped in nicely tanned and oiled leather. We stopped in front of the man.
“Is it known specifically which of Powers’s men killed my boy?” he asked.
“Nossir.”
He sighed. “Well, I guess it really don’t matter.” He carefully removed the leather from what he was holding. When that was accomplished, he held a Henry Repeating rifle in his hands. The rifle looked like it’d never been used.
I couldn’t help myself before I said, “Good God—a Henry lever-action!”
“That it is,�
� the old man said. “They say a man can squeeze off twenty-eight rounds per minute with this weapon. I think maybe you could do a little better, Mr. Pound. She’s a .44 caliber and jus’ right for the work you’re doing. There’s a case of ammo out in the barn. I want you to take that, too. It’s brass rim-fire—you won’t get a dud in a thousand rounds.”
He held the Henry out to me as reverently as if he were handing me a baby.
“I can’t take…” I began.
The old fellow’s voice became stern. “You’ll take it and you’ll use it and you’ll rip holes in a good number of those killers in Gila Bend.”
The Henry was a beautiful thing, with a cherry wood stock and perfectly blued barrel. It was a tube-loader, which meant that live cartridges were inserted into the tube and the tube into the rifle and locked in. One big advantage to that is a man could load up a couple of tubes and set them aside, and reload with a fresh thirty-six shots in a matter of a couple of seconds. The weapon smelled of gun oil and fine leather. I worked the lever and it clicked quietly, much like a fine clock.
“I thank you, sir,” I said.
“Use it well,” he said. “It was going to be Lucas’s gift when his first son was birthed. ‘Course, Rose of Sharon up an’ ran off leavin’ Lucas and the baby behind.”
Hairy Dog had picked up the tanned leather and we rewrapped the rifle.
“Lookit, fellas,” Lucas’s father-in-law said, “my women ain’t in no shape to make up some coffee. Maybe it’d be best if you got in that funeral wagon and rode on. Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry,” I said. “We need to get back to town.”
“The ammo is in the tack room,” he said. “Pick yourself a couple of jugs of the finest whiskey you’ll ever taste, while you’re in there.”
“Yessir. And thank you again.”