Death Rattle

by Sean Lynch

  Ditch knew his father was right.

  Rand handed the bedroll to his son, along with a powder horn and a leather purse containing percussion caps and fifty rounds of .54 caliber ball. Ditch began to reload the Hawken.

  Rand went to the hearth and removed a stone from the mantel. From the cavity it concealed, he withdrew a small cloth bag.

  “Here’s nearly forty dollars in gold,” he said. “It’s all I got. Take it and go. Stay off the roads. If I were you, I’d get on the river and float west to Kansas City. Buy a horse and go south to Arkansas. Your brother Paul’s thereabouts, fighting along with Shelby’s boys. Maybe you can find him and together you two can head out west? I hear tell there’s money to be made out there, iffen you’ve got a sharp mind and a stout back.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll get along.”

  “But you’ve got no stock left,” Ditch protested, “and I’m taking all your money and your only gun?”

  Ditch suddenly remembered the Navy Colt in his belt, the one Pritchard took from Bob Toole’s dismembered hand. “Here.” He handed the pistol to this father. “It’s got four balls left in it.”

  “I won’t ask how you got it,” Rand Clemson said, accepting the weapon. “Now, get away and don’t come back. Missouri ain’t no place for a young man to stay healthy anymore.” He hugged his boy. “I love you, son. Good luck.”

  Ditch left his home, wiping tears as he went. He wondered, as he watched his father waving to him from the darkness, if he would ever see him again.

  Ditch didn’t head for the river, as he’d been advised. He took only part of his father’s advice, the part about staying off the roads. Ditch Clemson was damned if he was going to Kansas City and spend good money on a horse when he knew exactly where some of the best horses in the county were. Horses that until a few hours ago belonged his father.

  Ditch knew the riders who’d stolen his father’s horses would take them only one place: the livery stable in Atherton. Sure enough, when Ditch crept into the stable, he found his pa’s animals.

  By the time Ditch got inside, after dodging a dozen or more marshals and armed townies, he realized there was no way he’d be able to get a horse out of Atherton through the street patrols without being spotted. He planned to snooze during the day, hidden in the stable’s hayloft, and leave Atherton after dark the following night. Hopefully the patrols would be abated by then, and his departure would go undetected.

  He ate some corn biscuits and jerky, checked his rifle, and covered himself with hay. Within minutes he was fast asleep. He was awakened, an hour before dawn, by the opening of the stable’s gate and the sound of voices.

  Ditch looked down, and even in the poor light, easily recognized his friend. Pritchard stood more than a head taller than the three men beside him. To Ditch’s relief, he appeared unhurt. His hands were shackled, and he was wearing leg-irons. Marshal Stacy and two of his deputies hovered close to him.

  “It takes three of you,” Pritchard drawled, “to stand guard over me?”

  “We ain’t stupid,” the jittery Stacy said. “You might be only a boy, but you’re the size of a horse and damned near as stout. I was at the county fair last summer when I watched you take on every comer in the wrestlin’ contest. You never even came close to losing a match.”

  “You broke my brother’s arm,” one of the deputy marshals chimed in. “Picked him up and threw him out of the ring like a sack of grain.” He was busy lighting a kerosene lantern. The other deputy town marshal began saddling one of the stabled horses.

  “Can’t say I’m sorry for that,” Pritchard said.

  Ditch watched as three newcomers entered the stable. To his astonishment, he saw Samuel’s mother. She was accompanied by the stern-faced Sheriff Foster and the bloated Burnell Shipley. Shipley was wearing a Union military uniform.

  “Mama!” Pritchard said, clearly surprised to see her.

  “Does he have to be chained, like an animal?” she asked Marshal Stacy.

  “Afraid so,” the marshal said. “At least for now.”

  “Say what you have to,” Shipley commanded her. She nodded and moved in to hug her son. Dovie forced a smile and caressed his face.

  “What’s going on?” Pritchard asked, confused.

  “You have to go, Samuel,” Dovie said, tears streaking down her own face in stark contrast to her smile. “You must leave Atherton and never come back.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere without you and Idelle.”

  “Yes,” she contradicted him, “you are.”

  “If I don’t?” Pritchard challenged.

  “You’ll hang,” Shipley spoke up. “Today at dawn. Which, by my estimation, is less than an hour away.”

  “Okay,” Pritchard said to his mother. “I’ll go. But you and Idelle are coming with me.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Dovie said. “I have to stay here. Idelle and I have been taken in by the Nettleses.” She glanced sideways at Shipley. “At least for now.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” Pritchard argued. “There’s nothing left for us in Atherton. That murderin’ bastard Burnell Shipley,” he thrust his chin at Atherton’s mayor, “saw to that. Let’s go, Mama. We can leave together.”

  “I can’t,” she said softly.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s the reason you’re not swingin’ from a rope already, boy,” Shipley said.

  Pritchard looked from his mother, who suddenly wouldn’t look him in the eye, to Shipley’s arrogant, satisfied face. Comprehension hit him like a punch in the gut.

  “No, Mama,” Pritchard pleaded, unable to hide his revulsion. “You can’t do it. I just put Pa into the ground last night. What would he think about you takin’ up with Shipley? Pa’s—”

  “—dead!” Dovie snapped, finishing her son’s sentence for him. “He’s dead and gone. You’re my only son, and you’re still alive. I’m going to do whatever it takes to see you stay that way.”

  “I won’t let you become Burnell Shipley’s whore,” Pritchard said. “I don’t care what they do to me.”

  Dovie slapped him across the face. “You’re still my little boy,” she scolded, her tears falling freely, “and you’ll do what you’re told. I have Idelle to think of, or didn’t you consider her? Do you think Idelle’s life is worth any more than yours? Or mine?”

  Pritchard was stunned by his mother’s outburst, but not so shocked that he couldn’t understand her meaning. A man like Burnell Shipley, who thought nothing of murdering his father and forcing his mother to consort with him under penalty of her son’s death, wouldn’t hesitate to kill Idelle to accomplish his ends, or kill Dovie herself, if he couldn’t have her. Pritchard faced the fact that he had no more choice regarding his fate than his mother did.

  “These men are going to release you,” she said, regaining her composure. She brusquely wiped away her tears on a forearm. “You’re going to get on a horse and ride. Keep riding and never come back to Atherton.”

  “Or Jackson County,” Sheriff Foster added. “You ever set foot across the county line, you’ll be shot on sight. I’ll be glad to do it.”

  “You’re a bright young fellow,” Shipley said. “I shouldn’t have to tell you what’s going to happen to your mother and sister if you ever decide to grace Jackson County with your presence again. You can figure that out for yourself.”

  Shipley lit a cigar and turned to the marshal. “Cut him loose and send him on his way.”

  Veins bulged in Pritchard’s neck and forehead as his shackles and leg-irons were unlocked. Sheriff Foster, Marshal Stacy, and both town marshals drew their pistols. The deputy marshal who’d saddled the horse handed over the reins, doing so gingerly, with his gun leveled, as if Pritchard were a rattler about to strike.

  “My men will escort you out,” Marshal Stacy said. “Don’t come back.”

  “Good-bye, Mama,” Pritchard said. “Tell Idelle I’m sorry for not saying good-bye.”
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  “Go, Samuel,” she said. “If you love your sister and me, you’ll never come back.”

  “I won’t be back,” Pritchard said. “I hope God forgives you for what you’ve done, Mama, because I can’t.”

  Pritchard glared at Shipley as he rode out. The last thing he heard was the fading sound of his mother’s sobs.

  Chapter 8

  From the loft’s window, Ditch watched the two marshals mount and escort Pritchard off. He waited until Dovie Pritchard, Burnell Shipley, Sheriff Foster, and Marshal Stacy extinguished the lantern and departed, before grabbing his rifle and bedroll and scampering down.

  The livery stables were situated at the edge of town. Ditch made his way, again unseen, back into the woods. He began paralleling the road, following the horses on foot.

  The first glint of the coming dawn crept over the horizon. It wasn’t difficult to keep the riders in sight. He knew there was a sharp curve farther down the road. Ditch raced ahead through the woods, hoping to intercept Pritchard and the marshals.

  * * *

  “This is as far as we go,” one of the town marshals said to Pritchard when they’d rounded a curve a couple of miles from Atherton.

  “And as far as you go,” Eli Gaines said, emerging from the woods to block Pritchard’s path. He leveled both his revolvers, the hammers back, at Pritchard. Two more sheriff’s deputies appeared behind him, their guns also at the ready.

  The town marshals gave Gaines a nod, then wordlessly turned their horses and headed back toward town.

  “Get your hands behind you,” Gaines ordered. Pritchard had no choice but to comply. The gangly deputy put a pistol barrel against his belly as the other two deputies shackled his hands behind his back.

  “You didn’t really think Burnell Shipley was going to spend the rest of his life lookin’ over his shoulder, did you?” Gaines said in his high-pitched voice.

  “I reckon not,” Pritchard answered.

  “Even if Burnell didn’t want you dead,” Gaines said, “I damn sure wasn’t going to let you go off and join the Union army. My older brother, Reuben, is off fightin’ for the South.”

  Pritchard vaguely remembered Deputy Gaines had an older brother who was just as gangly, ugly, and mean as Eli. Everyone thought he’d grown up and moved on, but no one could have guessed a Gaines boy would join up to fight for the Confederacy.

  “Does Burnell know you’ve got a brother fighting for the South? Seems to me, as the head Union man in this county, he might take offense.”

  “Pa sure took offense,” Gaines said, “before he died. Having his oldest son run off to fight for the South is likely what killed him.”

  “Maybe Burnell will feel the same way?”

  “What he don’t know,” Gaines said, “won’t hurt him. Me, either.”

  Gaines and the county deputies had obviously been lying in wait to waylay Pritchard on Shipley’s orders. He realized, with bitterness, that his mother would never know his fate. She would honor the pact she’d made to preserve his life, never learning that Shipley had crawfished on his end of the deal. Dovie Pritchard would marry the repugnant mayor, taking comfort in the false knowledge her sacrifice had been her son’s salvation. His insides roiled.

  “Let’s get moving,” Gaines ordered. The two deputies brought out three horses, which had been tied out of sight in the woods. One of the them took the reins of Pritchard’s horse as the three lawmen mounted up.

  “Where’re we going?” Pritchard asked.

  “Down to the river,” Gaines said.

  “The river Jordan,” one of the other deputies said with a smirk.

  The quartet rode for another mile before Gaines led them off the road into the heavy woods. The Missouri River was only a hundred yards away.

  When they reached the riverbank, Gaines stopped. He dismounted and signaled for the deputies to follow suit.

  “Get him off his horse,” Gaines said. One of the deputies, Boudroy, a heavyset man in his thirties with a full beard, shoved Pritchard from the saddle. He fell, with his hands bound behind him, heavily to the soft earth.

  Gaines produced a short shovel from his saddle and tossed it to the other deputy, a thin, dirty-looking, man named Merle Crittenden. “Start digging.”

  “Why don’t we have him do it?” Crittenden complained, pointing the shovel at Pritchard. “He looks stout enough to dig a forty-foot well in a single afternoon.”

  “Deputy Gaines is too frightened to let me have my hands free,” Pritchard said, sitting up. “He’s afraid I’d kick his bony ass.”

  “I ain’t afraid of no such thing,” Gaines scoffed.

  “Sure, you are,” Pritchard argued. “I don’t blame you. If I was a weed-skinny varmint like you, I’d be afraid myself. Without those guns, I’ll bet you’re terrified of your own shadow.”

  Boudroy and Crittenden looked uneasily at each other. They knew Eli Gaines was prone to dark moods, mean as a snake, and nearly as fast with those two Navy Colts he was never without. They preferred not to witness any insult to the hair-trigger deputy. He was unpredictable as hell, and might hold it against them later that they’d heard the Pritchard boy chide him.

  Crittenden busied himself digging and pretended not to hear any more of the conversation. Boudroy, with his pistol in his hand but the hammer forward, stood over Pritchard.

  “Keep bumping your gums, Pritchard,” Gaines said. “It’ll make what’s coming to you that much easier for me.”

  “How hard can pulling a trigger be?” Pritchard said.

  “It’s a better end than you deserve,” Gaines said. “It beats dancing at the end of a rope, like your pa, which is how you was gonna go out iffen your ma hadn’t agreed to bend over and take it from Burn Shipley.”

  “Ha!” Boudroy guffawed. “I’ll bet ole Burnell is helping her over a fence right now!”

  Pritchard rolled onto his back and kicked the burly deputy standing over him in the groin. When the lawman sagged to his knees and reflexively began to vomit, Pritchard piston-kicked him again, squarely in the face. Deputy Boudroy flew backwards and landed ten feet away, unconscious. Blood and puke smeared his face around his shattered jaw and broken teeth. Pritchard wriggled to his knees.

  Gaines rolled his eyes, shook his head, and drew one of his revolvers, casually pointing it at Pritchard.

  “Still want him to do your digging for you?” he asked Crittenden.

  “No, thanks,” the deputy replied, looking over at the laid-out Boudroy. “I’ll dig this grave myself.”

  “I’d be glad to help,” Pritchard offered. “It’s no bother.”

  “I’ll bet you would,” Gaines said.

  Crittenden had dug a trench wide enough for a man, and two feet deep, when he clambered out of the hole and wiped his sweaty brow. “There’re too many roots,” he complained. “I can’t get any deeper without a pickax.”

  “That ought to be deep enough,” Gaines said. “We only want to cover him up, not sink him to China. Besides, we should be gettin’ back to town before we’re missed.”

  Boudroy began to stir, and sat up. He groaned, spat a mouthful of blood and teeth, vomited again, and held his jaw in place with both hands.

  “Good morning, Deputy,” Pritchard said.

  “Jesus, Boudroy,” Gaines said, “you’re a holy mess.”

  “Let me do it,” Boudroy mumbled through his split and busted mouth. He got shakily to his feet and picked up the revolver he’d dropped when Pritchard kicked him.

  “Not a chance,” Gaines said. “You couldn’t hit the side of a barn in your condition. Get on your horse before you fall again. This’ll only take a minute.”

  Gaines moved off five paces from the kneeling Pritchard and cocked his revolver. Crittenden dropped the shovel and dashed hastily out of the line of fire. Gaines made an elaborate production of raising his gun over his head, then lowered it directly at Pritchard.

  “You got any last words, Samuel Pritchard?”

  “I’ll see you in hell,
” Pritchard said, as he stared without expression into the cold, black eye of the revolver’s barrel. His last, tortured thoughts were of his mother and sister in Shipley’s filthy hands.

  “You surely will,” Gaines said as he shot Pritchard in the forehead.

  Chapter 9

  Ditch watched helplessly as his best friend was executed with a pistol shot to the head. He was out of breath from running through the woods, trying to keep up with the quartet of horses on the road. He’d snuck as close as he dared to the river’s edge, where the three deputies held Pritchard. He was near enough to observe the group, but not so near he could hear what was being said, or get a clear shot with the Hawken through the heavy brush.

  He saw the muzzle blast and smoke from Gaines’s revolver and heard the report a split second later. Pritchard fell forward on his face and didn’t move. Ditch hung his head.

  Ditch could barely bring himself to look up, through tear-filled eyes, as Gaines and Crittenden unshackled Pritchard’s limp hands and roughly dragged him into the shallow grave. He desperately wanted to rise from where he was concealed, cock the Hawken, and charge, but realized it was futile. He knew he could get only one of the murderous lawmen with the single-shot rifle, at best, before the other two cut him down.

  Gaines languidly rolled a cigarette. By the time he was finished smoking it, Crittenden had scraped dirt over Pritchard and covered him up. He brushed leaves and twigs over the mound, blending it in with the surrounding terrain as best he could.

  The emaciated deputy tossed his cigarette butt onto the mound. He and Crittenden mounted up, joined the bloodied Boudroy, and rode off.

  Once the trio had gone, Ditch walked with stooped shoulders over to the mound. He dropped his bedroll and rifle. Then he knelt at his friend’s grave and began to cry as he slowly scooped the dirt away. Gaines’s cigarette butt was still smoldering.

  He wasn’t even sure why he began uncovering Pritchard’s body. His grieving mind angrily contemplated stealing a couple of horses from the Atherton stable, returning to the grave, and freighting the body back into town, as Pritchard had done with the two dead deputies. He wanted Pritchard’s mother to know she’d been cheated by Shipley, and her devil’s bargain with the corrupt mayor hadn’t saved her son.