Death Rattle

by Sean Lynch

  Seated on the dirt floor next to him, tied with a rope around one ankle, was a young girl. She was clad in only a crudely sewn burlap dress, wore no shoes, and appeared cold and malnourished. She looked to Pritchard to be perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, though she was too thin for him to tell, and he unconsciously thought of Idelle. The girl stared at the wall with vacant eyes, and it was only after his own eyes adjusted to the darker interior of the cabin that he realized what he could see of the girl’s unwashed body was covered in welts and bruises. The other end of the rope was tied to the man in the top hat’s chair.

  “What can I do for you two gentlemen?” the man behind the counter asked without looking up. Pritchard noticed a shotgun leaning against a chair behind him.

  “Need some powder, salt, and whiskey,” Ditch said. “A knife if you got one, a razor, and we’d also like to see what you have in the way of garments suitable for two traveling men.”

  “You fellers seem a mite young,” the proprietor said. “Before I start setting out goods, I’ll need to see the color of your money.”

  Without thinking, Ditch foolishly produced the bag of gold coins and displayed them all for the proprietor to see. He instantly stopped cutting meat and looked up. Across the room, the man in the top hat’s eyebrows lifted. He swiveled in his chair to face Pritchard and Ditch.

  “I have everything you want,” the proprietor said. “Give me a minute to set you up. While you’re waiting, you boys care for a drink? Best whiskey in three counties.”

  “No thank you,” Pritchard said, before Ditch could answer.

  “How about some food? Got pork stew, made yesterday.”

  “How much?”

  “Five cents a bowl. I’ll throw in the corn bread for free.”

  “We’ll take two bowls,” Ditch said.

  “Coming right up.” The proprietor vanished through a raggedy curtain to a room behind the counter, presumably the kitchen.

  “Hello, pilgrims,” the man in the top hat said. “Couldn’t help overhearing you’re traveling men, like myself. Where did you say you were heading?”

  “Didn’t say,” Ditch said.

  “My name’s Calverson,” the man said, standing and extending his hand. “I’m a prospector by trade. What is you boys’ occupation?” When he stood his coat parted, and the double-action Starr revolver holstered at his waist became visible.

  “Didn’t say,” Ditch repeated. Neither he nor Pritchard shook Calverson’s offered hand.

  “Tell me, Mr. Calverson,” Pritchard said. “Why is that young lady on a tether?”

  “Her?” he said. “That there’s Missy. That’s what I call her, anyway. Don’t know her given name. She belongs to me.”

  “How’d that come to be?”

  “Won her in a card game in Hot Springs, a couple of weeks back. Real accommodating young girl, if you know what I mean. Which reminds me, if either of you fellows are in a sporting mood, I could be persuaded to allow you a poke for say, two dollars each. She looks a bit rough, but trust me, she’s a young, spirited gal. She’ll let you have her front, back, and sideways, if that’s your inclination. Worth every penny of two dollars, I can assure you.”

  “Seems to me,” Pritchard said, “the need to keep her tethered would suggest she’s not as accommodating as you advertise.”

  “She’ll be as accommodating as you want,” Calverson said. “You’ll get your two dollars’ worth, I can promise you that.”

  “Sounds like you know from personal experience?”

  “Can’t very well recommend something I haven’t tried myself, can I?”

  “I thought you said you were a prospector,” Pritchard said. “Sounds to me like you’re a pimp.”

  “A man does what he has to,” Calverson said, his expression hardening. “How old are you boys, anyway?”

  “Old enough,” Pritchard said. Ditch watched apprehensively as the familiar shadow began to fall over his friend’s eyes.

  “Here’s your stew,” the shopkeeper announced, entering with a wooden tray and two bowls.

  “Fetch another bowl,” Pritchard told him, “for the lady.”

  “Now, hold on a minute,” Calverson said. “I don’t recall Missy saying she was hungry.”

  “She’s hungry, all right,” Pritchard said. “She looks like she hasn’t eaten in a week.”

  “I suppose I could let you feed her,” Calverson said, scratching his chin, “if that would entertain you. But it’ll cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “Two dollars.”

  “You’re going to charge me two dollars to feed a starving child a nickel’s worth of hog soup?”

  “You have to pay for the pleasure of her company,” Calverson said. “Whether you dance with her, poke her, or feed her. It’s all the same to me. Two dollars is the going rate.”

  “I’ll make you a better offer,” Pritchard said. “How about you untie her, allow her to sit at the table like a human being, and eat a bowl of hot stew? In exchange, I’ll let you keep on breathing.”

  “That’s your idea of a better offer?” Calverson said, taking a step back and grimacing.

  “It is,” Pritchard said. “A real bargain, too.”

  “You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you, boy?” Calverson said. His hand slowly began to stray from his chin, down his vest, to his belt.

  “No,” Pritchard said. “Not funny. Just fast.”

  Calverson went for his gun.

  Before he cleared leather, Pritchard had one of the Remington .44s out and the hammer back. He drilled Calverson neatly through the sternum. The pimp staggered, shakily withdrew the Starr, and tried to raise it. Pritchard fired again, and a hole appeared in the center of Calverson’s forehead. He dropped his gun and collapsed.

  Pritchard spun to face the proprietor, who was reaching for the shotgun behind the counter. He needn’t have worried. The shopkeeper’s hand stopped when the barrel of Ditch’s Hawken rifle pressed against his neck.

  “The lady’s waitin’ for her stew,” Ditch said.

  Chapter 19

  Pritchard and Ditch rode up to the church at dawn. They would have preferred to be under cover in deep woods by daybreak, but were forced to deviate from their customary nocturnal travel routine on account of the girl.

  After Pritchard shot Calverson, he untied her. Ditch noted the death-shadow, which had befallen his friend once again, faded almost as fast as it appeared.

  With a blank expression on her face and no resistance, as if accustomed to being led places by strange men, the girl let Pritchard lead her to a seat at the table. He placed a bowl of stew and corn bread before her. She wordlessly began devouring the food.

  “I didn’t see nuthin’,” the proprietor said. His hands were over his head and shaking. Ditch’s Hawken rifle was still against his neck.

  “I don’t care if you did,” Pritchard said. “He drew first.”

  Pritchard walked behind the counter and took the shotgun, broke it open, and removed the shells. “Put your hands down,” he said, “and fetch the merchandise we asked for.”

  The proprietor scurried to the back room.

  “Best accompany him, Ditch,” Pritchard said, “in case he’s got another gun stashed back there.” Ditch nodded and followed.

  The girl wolfed down her bowl of stew, and Pritchard handed her another. If she seemed bothered by the death of Calverson, she didn’t show it. In fact, she showed no emotion at all. By the time she inhaled the second bowl of stew, the proprietor, with Ditch on his tail, returned.

  Pritchard and Ditch each selected a pair of durable britches made of coarse cloth, wool shirts, socks, a pair of blankets, a bone-handled knife, a razor, a hatchet, a pan, a quantity of salt, grain, gunpowder, and a bottle of whiskey. Ditch even found a box of .54 caliber balls for his Hawken rifle, and some .44s for Pritchard.

  “Will that be all?” the proprietor asked, anxious to get Pritchard and Ditch out of his trading post.

  “You g
ot clothes suitable for the girl?” Pritchard asked.

  “I do.”

  “Fetch ’em. Shoes and a coat, too.”

  While the shopkeeper again went into the back room, Pritchard searched Calverson’s body. He found six dollars and a tobacco tin. He removed the wool coat and gun belt from the big corpse and picked up the Starr revolver. It was rare for Pritchard to find a man who wore a large enough size to fit him. He donned the coat and offered the pistol to Ditch.

  “Don’t like pistols much,” Ditch said, shaking his head. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick with my rifle.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The shopkeeper brought out woolen underclothes, shoes, a coat, and a plain frock dress.

  “Put these on,” Pritchard said to the girl. She nodded and walked into the back room to change.

  “How much do we owe you?”

  “Eighteen dollars,” the shopkeeper said.

  “Give him ten,” Pritchard told Ditch. “Here’s six more,” he said, handing over the money he’d taken from Calverson’s body.

  “You’re two dollars short,” the proprietor complained.

  “I’ll make you an offer,” Pritchard said. “I’ll let you keep the mule and one of the horses that belonged to Mr. Calverson. Providing, of course, you bury him and keep your mouth shut. That should make you a handsome profit.”

  “I don’t want his mule or his lame horse,” the proprietor said, greed overtaking his fear. “And I sure as hell don’t want to bury nobody I didn’t kill. I’ll take the full eighteen dollars, if you please?”

  “Let me make you an even better offer,” Pritchard said, drawing his .44 again. “How about I plug you? You can join Mr. Calverson in the sawdust, and we’ll ride out with your merchandise and our sixteen dollars still in our pockets.”

  “Sixteen dollars and the two animals sounds more than fair,” the proprietor quickly agreed.

  “Figured you’d recognize a bargain,” Pritchard said, “when you saw one.” He returned his gun to his belt.

  The girl came out, dressed in her new clothes.

  “You look real nice,” Ditch complimented her. She stared silently back at him.

  “Does she talk?” Pritchard asked.

  “They’ve been here almost a week, sleeping down by the river. Calverson’s been renting her out to trappers, traders, saddle tramps and such, who pass through. I ain’t never heard her speak a word. She hollers when whipped, and cries out, so I know she can.”

  “And you just stood by and let him do it?” Pritchard asked.

  “Ain’t none of my business,” the proprietor said.

  “You got a better bargain from me today than you know,” Pritchard said. “I ought to shoot you on general principle.”

  “Take it easy,” Ditch admonished.

  The proprietor gulped and tried not to sweat so profusely. He failed.

  “Is there a religious congregation around here?” Pritchard finally asked.

  “Nearest church is ten miles south, in Mount Ida.”

  “C’mon.” Pritchard motioned to the girl. “You’re coming with us.” She dutifully obeyed, as if she had no will of her own. Ditch collected their sundries, and the trio went outside to pack the saddlebags.

  Ditch selected the better of the two horses Calverson owned, which wasn’t a particularly good animal, and put the girl up in the saddle.

  “I know your face,” Pritchard called out to the trading-post proprietor as he swung into his own saddle, “and I know where you sleep. Bury that dead fool, forget us, and I’ll forget you. If you send a posse after us, once I gun them, I’ll be back to kill you graveyard dead.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” the proprietor said.

  “Wish I could say the same.”

  Pritchard, Ditch, and the girl crossed the Ouachita River at dusk, over a rickety wooden bridge, and spent the remainder of the night as they did most nights, riding cautiously south. Ditch held the reins of the girl’s horse. She slumped in the saddle, dozing. A little after midnight, they saw the silhouettes of rooftops ahead and knew they’d reached Mount Ida.

  They tied the horses to a tree in a thicket, on a hill overlooking the town, and settled in to a fireless camp.

  Pritchard carried the girl from her saddle while Ditch laid out the blankets. He gently placed her in the makeshift bed. She was fast asleep.

  “I reckon a person can experience something so hard on ’em,” Ditch remarked, “it takes all their words clean away.”

  “I reckon so,” Pritchard said, covering her up.

  “Something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Ditch said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you think it’s changing us?”

  “Is what changing us?”

  “The killing,” Ditch said. “You’ve put down seven men to my one, and truth be told, you finished off the only one I shot. Don’t take offense, but it seems to me killing’s getting easier for you.”

  “That’s because it is,” Pritchard said. He sat down and put his back against a tree. Ditch retrieved the bottle of whiskey from the saddlebags and sat cross-legged opposite him.

  “Does it feel wrong to you?” Ditch asked. He uncorked the bottle. “Don’t get me wrong; I don’t regret what we’ve done. Everybody we did in had it comin’. But when I think about it, sometimes, it sorta feels wrong.”

  “Killing ain’t about right or wrong,” Pritchard said. “It’s about them or us.”

  “I ain’t so sure,” Ditch said. “It wasn’t them or us back at that trading post. We could have bought our sundries and left. We didn’t have to involve ourselves in Calverson’s business with that girl, but we did.”

  “You mean, I did,” Pritchard said.

  “It’s the same thing. I back your play, no matter what.”

  “When you put it that way,” Pritchard said, “I guess it is about right or wrong. Just seemed wrong to me, a man keeping a little girl on a tether, like a dog.”

  “Are we still good men, Samuel?”

  “What’s a good man these days, Ditch? My pa was a good man. He was the best man I ever knew. He was honest, and fair, and he never tried to take undue advantage of anyone.”

  “He was a damned honorable man,” Ditch agreed, “and then some.”

  “You know what his noble intentions got him?” Pritchard said. “Beaten, shot, and strung up like gutted venison. His wife was made to take up with the man who killed him, his daughter has to grow up watching it, and his only son was skull-shot and buried like a fevered hog.”

  “I know,” Ditch said. “I’m sorry for what befell your family.” He took a slug, winced, and handed the bottle to Pritchard.

  “The difference between me and Pa,” Pritchard went on, “is he saw folks as he wanted them to be. He always looked for the good in them. I used to be like that, too. Now I see folks as they are. I don’t try to look into their hearts. I watch their hands, instead. It’s a man’s hands, not his heart, that’ll kill you.”

  “Speaking of hands,” Ditch said, “you sure are gettin’ fast with those pistols.”

  “I aim to get a lot faster,” Pritchard said.

  “Just don’t let your guns get ahead of you,” Ditch said. “Don’t let ’em change who you are.”

  “I ain’t sure I know anymore,” Pritchard said. He took a drink of whiskey. “I was dead, buried, and resurrected, remember? Hell, you’re the fella who dug me up.”

  “I remember,” Ditch said, thinking of the shadow Pritchard brought out of the grave with him. He took another swig.

  * * *

  At sunrise, Pritchard and Ditch fed the girl breakfast and gave her a ten-dollar gold coin. They mounted up and rode into Mount Ida. They stopped at the church, which was the tallest building in town.

  When they reached the church, Ditch helped the girl off her horse while Pritchard knocked at the pastor’s cottage. A middle-aged woman in an apron answered the door with flour on her hands.

  �
��Good morning, ma’am,” Pritchard said. “My name’s Joe Atherton. Me and my friend found this young lady on the road, in a terrible state. I believe, on account of she doesn’t speak, that she’s suffered greatly. We were afraid worse men than us might find her alone and take advantage, so we brought her here. We didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did the right thing,” the woman said. She put her arms around the girl. “Let me get my husband. He’s the minister here. He’ll want to speak with you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Pritchard said, tipping his hat. “We have to be ridin’ on.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “We don’t,” Pritchard said. He and Ditch swung back into their saddles.

  The girl suddenly left the woman’s embrace and ran over to Pritchard, stepping in front of his horse.

  “Caroline,” she said, in a voice almost too soft to hear. “My name is Caroline.”

  Chapter 20

  When Pritchard and Ditch rode into Washington, Arkansas, they were relieved to discover a Confederate hospital had been set up there. They walked Snake and Rusty up to a sentry, keeping their hands in view, and inquired if any cavalrymen attached to Shelby’s Missouri Iron Brigade might be located within one of the tents.

  The sentry called for his sergeant. A noncommissioned officer arrived, and Ditch again explained he was seeking his brother.

  “There’s plenty of fellows here assigned to Shelby,” the sergeant said. “I can have one of my men escort you into where they’re convalescing, but you’ll have to leave your arms outside.”

  Pritchard put his revolvers in his saddlebags, and Ditch hung the Hawken over the pommel of his saddle, before tying their horses to a tree. They were led into a vast tent by an orderly wearing a blood-soaked apron. They beheld rows and rows of men lying on cots.

  There was an overwhelming scent of blood and infection permeating the place. The sounds of men in grievous pain could be heard everywhere. Pritchard and Ditch followed the orderly past many horribly wounded soldiers. The vast majority were missing at least one limb.