Death Rattle

by Sean Lynch

  “Nope,” Pritchard said, opening his saddlebags. “We ain’t ridin’ anywhere. I need to fetch something.”

  Ditch busied himself restocking his belt and pockets with .44 ammunition. Pritchard did the same. Both ensured their weapons were filled to capacity before taking a badly needed drink from their canteens.

  Pritchard dug once more into Rusty’s saddlebag and produced two sticks of dynamite, left over from the explosives used against the Stiles Gang. He cut two three-second, fuses, just like Sergeant Finley taught him, and inserted them into the cylinders. Then he handed them to Ditch.

  “Got any matches?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Ditch said. “How do you want to play this?”

  “You with a rifle, from a distance,” Pritchard said, “and me with my pistols, close up. The signal will be when I drop my hat. Not when I take my hat off, mind you; when it falls. Make your shots count, Ditch. And if it comes down to a choice between shootin’ to save me or Idelle, I want you to—”

  “Save Idelle,” Ditch interrupted. “Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna let ’em hurt her.”

  Pritchard extended his hand. “We’ve been down a lot of bloody trails together, Ditch. I want you to know, no matter what happens, a fella couldn’t ask for a better partner to ride the river with.”

  “Let’s go give ’em hell,” Ditch said, shaking Pritchard’s hand.

  Chapter 56

  Pritchard walked down the center of Atherton’s main street. He halted between the Atherton Arms Hotel and the Sidewinder Saloon. It was the same place, almost ten years before, where he’d stopped with the bodies of two of his father’s killers slung over their saddles. The sun had set. Streetlamps, and the interior lights of the saloon, provided the only illumination.

  “Hello, Sheriff Foster,” Pritchard called out.

  The saloon’s half doors swung open. Jackson County Sheriff Horace Foster, along with Chief Deputy Eli Gaines and five other men, stepped outside. Eli stood to the sheriff’s right, and the others spread out evenly on either side of them. There was perhaps twenty-five feet of distance between Pritchard, in the middle of the street, and the men on the sidewalk in front of the Sidewinder.

  Idelle Pritchard was also in view. She was being held by one of the men. The barrel of an Army Colt revolver, with the hammer back, was pressed against her side. She looked frightened and distraught, but unhurt. He wondered if she’d been told of their mother’s death.

  Pritchard was comforted to notice all the men, Foster and Gaines included, were armed with only pistols. No one carried a rifle or shotgun. Also encouraging, was that other than the gunman with his revolver on Idelle, none of the others had yet drawn their guns.

  “If it ain’t Smokin’ Joe Atherton,” Sheriff Foster said, “come to visit our little town.”

  Pritchard touched the brim of his hat in greeting.

  “You killed a lot of my men,” Foster said.

  “Hell,” Gaines said, “he killed all of ’em. Marshal Stacy and his men, too.”

  “You seem to have plenty of help,” Pritchard said, pointing his chin at the men behind the sheriff and his chief deputy.

  “These boys?” Foster said, gesturing with his thumb at the men surrounding him. “They ain’t my regular deputies. I hired ’em in Kansas City today after I got Burnell’s telegram.”

  “For your sakes,” Pritchard said, “I hope they’re reliable.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Foster said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you, Joe,” he went on. “You shot the hell out of this town. You’re gonna have to hang for that.”

  “One of your deputies tried to arrest me earlier today,” Pritchard said. “It didn’t turn out so well for him.”

  “This arrest,” Foster said, “is going to be different. Because if you don’t drop those guns and come along to jail peacefully, the young lady here, Miss Idelle Pritchard, is going to get herself shot.”

  “That’s a mighty cowardly way to make an arrest,” Pritchard said, “from behind a woman’s petticoats.”

  “Maybe so,” Foster said, “but that’s how it is. Give up those guns or she takes a bullet.”

  “I think I’ll keep my guns,” Pritchard said. “Go ahead and shoot her.”

  Idelle’s expression switched from fear to indignation. She glared at her brother. He ignored her.

  “You really want us to shoot her?” Foster said.

  “Help yourself,” Pritchard said. “But you’ll find your stranglehold on this town gone if you do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Burnell Shipley is dead. He died of a heart attack, shortly after shooting his wife.” Pritchard watched the expression on Idelle’s face. He could tell she already knew.

  “We heard,” Foster said. “Doc Mauldin told us. What’s it to you?”

  “Shipley died before his wife,” Pritchard said. “That means she automatically inherited his estate, which is all of Atherton. When she died, that estate transferred to her only living heir, Miss Idelle Pritchard. It’s all registered at the capital, in Jefferson City, nice and legal. If you idiots kill her, the state of Missouri inherits this town.”

  “The hell you say,” Foster said.

  Pritchard laughed. “I can hear the carpetbaggers now, climbing over themselves to catch the train to Atherton from Jefferson City. Your town, what was once Shipley’s empire, will be run by bureaucrats one hundred and fifty miles away. Think you’ll still be sheriff after that happens?”

  Pritchard could see his words were having an effect on Sheriff Foster. Doubt had overtaken his features.

  “Let the woman go,” Pritchard said, “or I’ll shoot her myself.”

  “Don’t worry, Horace,” Gaines said to Foster, also reading the reservation on the older man’s face. “I’m going to marry Idelle, remember? Then everything will belong to me. We’ll make out just fine.”

  This fact didn’t quell Foster’s misgivings. The idea of working for the upstart Gaines had little appeal for the aging lawman.

  “It ain’t legal to wed a corpse, Deputy Gaines,” Pritchard said. “Let her go, or I’ll plug her.”

  “How do you know my name?” Gaines demanded.

  “I got acquainted with your brother Reuben,” Pritchard said, “down in the New Mexico Territory, just before I killed him.”

  “You’re lyin’,” Gaines said.

  “Am I?” Pritchard said.

  “You seem awfully well informed,” Foster said. “How does a Ranger from Texas know so much about the goings-on up here in Missouri?”

  “I wasn’t born in Texas,” Pritchard said, slowly raising his left hand and removing his hat. “I was born and raised right here, in Atherton.”

  Sheriff Foster was confused. He didn’t recognize Pritchard.

  Gaines was not. He stepped forward and squinted at Pritchard. His jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “It can’t be,” Gaines said, astonishment and disbelief fighting for control of his composure. “I shot you myself! I watched you get put into the ground with my own two eyes!”

  “When you kill a man,” Pritchard said, “you’d best make sure he stays dead.”

  Pritchard dropped his hat.

  Chapter 57

  An instant later, an explosion went off in the street, fifty feet to the right of Pritchard. As everyone but Pritchard instinctively turned to see the blast, another detonation went off fifty feet to the left.

  Pritchard wasted no time. He drew both revolvers and began firing as dirt and debris descended. He hit Sheriff Foster and two of the hired guns immediately. All three went down.

  Pritchard was taking aim at the man holding his pistol on Idelle when a bullet from Ditch’s Henry rifle took off the top of the gunman’s head.

  Bullets whizzed past Pritchard. One after another struck all around where Eli Gaines and the remaining two hired guns stood shooting at him. Eventually, one of the gunmen figured out he was being shot at from the roof of
the Atherton Arms, across the street. He raised his gun to fire upward when another of the. 44 bullets from Ditch’s carbine took him through the throat.

  Pritchard put two in the chest of the remaining gunman, as he felt a slap against his thigh. The sting was enough to spoil his aim, and the next shot he fired, at Chief Deputy Eli Gaines, missed by inches. He saw Gaines grab Idelle by the hair and drag her back into the Sidewinder.

  Pritchard hobbled to the sidewalk in front of the hotel and took cover behind a post. He was reloading his guns when Ditch appeared, out of breath from running down the stairs.

  “Nice timing with that dynamite,” Pritchard told him, “and good shootin’.”

  “Not good enough,” Ditch said, examining Pritchard’s wounded leg. “Gaines is still breathin’, and he’s still got Idelle.”

  Pritchard covered the saloon’s entrance with a Henry rifle while Ditch used their neckerchiefs to bandage his friend’s leg. Pritchard sustained a deep grazing wound through the meat of his thigh, but the bullet didn’t hit any major blood vessels. It would eventually need to be cauterized, but wouldn’t take him out of the fight for now.

  “Better get around to the rear of the Sidewinder,” Pritchard said to Ditch, “before Gaines gets the notion to sneak out the back door with Idelle. Fire a shot to let me know you’re in place.” Ditch nodded and ran off with his rifle. Less than a minute later, a single shot was heard.

  “Eli Gaines,” Pritchard shouted at the saloon. “You’re all alone and cornered. You’ve got guns facing you, front and back. Give it up and come on out.”

  “You go to hell, Samuel Pritchard!” Gaines hollered back from inside the saloon. “You try anything, and I’ll plug your little sister. Your bluff about not giving a damn if she gets killed might have worked on old Horace, but it won’t work on me. I know you care about her. She’s the reason why you came back.”

  “You’re wrong, Eli,” Pritchard lied. “When she dies, I become the only living heir to Shipley’s estate. All of Atherton becomes mine. That’s the reason I came back. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Sheriff Foster: go ahead and shoot her. You’d be doing me a favor.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do you know how your brother died?” Pritchard asked.

  “Suppose you tell me.”

  “He burned alive,” Pritchard said, “howlin’ and twitchin’ like a frog on a skillet.”

  “Assuming you’re tellin’ the truth,” Gaines said, “what do I care how he died?”

  “Because you’re going out the same way,” Pritchard said. “You think I’m bluffin’ about not caring whether Idelle dies? You won’t when I set that saloon on fire.”

  This time, there was no response from Gaines.

  Pritchard limped over to a hay wagon parked nearby and easily lifted out a bale of hay with one hand. He crossed the street and tossed the bale onto the sidewalk, directly in front of the saloon’s half doors.

  “Hold on a minute,” Gaines said, an edge of fear in his voice. “Don’t light that hay.”

  “You called me a liar, Eli. All I have to do is strike a match, and you’ll find out who’s tellin’ the truth. If you still won’t believe me, once that building starts to burn, you could always try for the back door and catch a bullet.”

  Long seconds of silence ensued. “I’m comin’ out,” Gaines finally said, “to talk. Hold your fire.”

  “Come on,” Pritchard said.

  Eli Gaines, walking behind Idelle with one of his revolvers in her back, came out of the saloon. They stepped around the bale of hay and stood on the wooden sidewalk before Pritchard.

  Pritchard couldn’t tell if it was fear or rage emanating from Idelle’s features. Whatever it was, it was visible from across the street.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Gaines said. “Your gun against mine. Winner takes all. If you win, I die. If I win, you die, and I marry Idelle. Either way, whoever comes out on top runs Atherton. What do you say?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Pritchard said. “Holster up.”

  Eli Gaines holstered his gun, pushed Idelle roughly aside, and stepped past her onto the street from the sidewalk. It was the first time since she’d been kidnapped at the schoolhouse that she wasn’t surrounded by men with guns.

  Jackson County, Missouri’s chief deputy squared his narrow shoulders and faced Pritchard with both of his arms dangling over the butts of his twin revolvers.

  Pritchard stood opposite the deputy with his rifle in his left hand, using it as a cane to steady himself. His right hand hung loosely at his side.

  “You look right healthy for a dead man, Samuel Pritchard,” Gaines said through his toothless grin. “I’m about to change that. I’m going to finish what I started ten years ago.”

  “I ain’t bound, this time,” Pritchard said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Neither man got a chance to draw their guns.

  Idelle, standing behind Gaines, suddenly withdrew the Colt Cloverleaf revolver she had concealed inside her dress. She shot the deputy in the back of the head. He fell face-first into the dust.

  “Mama gave it to me,” she explained as she dropped the engraved pistol. She fell to her knees, sobbing. “Oh, Mama.” Pritchard dropped his rifle and rushed to embrace her.

  Ditch came running around the corner. “I heard a shot,” he said. Pritchard gestured to Gaines with his chin.

  Ditch rolled the deputy over with his boot. Gaines was still alive, though wouldn’t be for long. There was an exit wound in the center of his forehead.

  His open eyes were rolled back, he was convulsing, and his chest slowly rose and fell. He emitted a wet, rasping, gurgling noise from deep within his throat. Ditch recognized the all-too-familiar sound.

  He flashed back, to the first time he’d heard a death rattle. It was ten years prior, also in Samuel Pritchard’s company, and not far from where he now stood. Since then, Ditch had heard too many death rattles to count.

  Gaines sputtered, clucked for another minute, and died. Ditch looked over at Pritchard, holding his crying sister. Had Idelle not been present, he would have spit on the murderous deputy’s corpse. He was relieved to find no trace of the shadow that had haunted his friend since the day he’d pulled him, half-dead, from an unmarked grave, so many years before.

  Chapter 58

  Pritchard, Ditch, and Idelle stood together in the cemetery long after the pastor and the other mourners departed. Paul Clemson had been buried that morning, next to his parents’ adjacent plots.

  Dovie Pritchard had been laid to rest a week previously, alongside her husband Thomas, in a plot overlooking the pond on what was once again Pritchard land. There’d been quite a few funerals in Atherton during the past two weeks.

  Pritchard and Idelle wired the governor and had gone to Jefferson City to meet with him. Retired Texas Ranger Captain Tom Franchard contacted the governor of the Republic of Texas, who in turn reached out to Missouri’s governor and personally vouched for Pritchard’s character and service. Once details of Burnell Shipley’s reign in Atherton, based on affidavits from Ditch Clemson, the Nettleses, and many other residents, were revealed, no charges were levied against Pritchard, Ditch, or Idelle.

  Dovie’s dying words came true. She’d carefully ensured, over the years, that all necessary documentation to cement Idelle’s status as her legal heir had been properly filed.

  Idelle Pritchard, not yet twenty years old, was now the sole owner of two hotels, a saloon, a general store, a railroad depot, the stockyards, docks, a sawmill, and most of the buildings and the property they sat on, in not only the town of Atherton, but Jackson County. Samuel Pritchard, also Dovie’s son and heir, could have filed legal papers to become co-owner along with Idelle, but refused.

  Idelle’s first order of business, after renaming “Shipley’s Mercantile” to “Pritchard’s Mercantile” and removing Shipley’s name from anywhere else in town, was to fire storekeeper Oliver Manning and have him run out of town.

 
The trio strolled leisurely back into town, with Idelle and Ditch holding hands. Pritchard’s leg was healing nicely, and he walked with only a slight limp.

  “What now?” Pritchard asked them.

  “I sent a telegram to Alejandro,” Ditch said, “down in Texas. He’s now officially in charge of the SD&P Ranch. I authorized him to purchase another herd of cows, so we’ll see him again next spring when he and the boys bring up another load of beef to Abilene.” He looked at Idelle, who smiled up at him. “I’ve decided to stay here in Atherton.”

  “What’s a layabout like you going to do for a living?” Pritchard asked him.

  “By coincidence,” Ditch said, squeezing Idelle’s hand, “I’ve just been hired by a local businesswoman. I’m going to help run her stockyards.”

  “That woman must be an imbecile,” Pritchard said, “to trust a rustler like you with her livestock. Any other reason you’re staying on?”

  “Yep,” Ditch said, grinning from ear to ear. “I got engaged.”

  “Don’t tell me there are two female imbeciles in Atherton?” Pritchard said.

  “Same gal,” Ditch said.

  “Anybody I know?” Pritchard asked. Idelle punched him in the arm.

  “What about you?” Ditch asked. “What are you gonna do, now that you’ve resigned from the Texas Rangers?”

  “I believe I’ll be stayin’ on in Atherton, myself,” Pritchard said. “I’ve got family here. Not to mention, I just got myself hired by a local businesswoman, too.”

  “Doing what?” Ditch asked.

  Pritchard parted his vest and displayed the star on his chest. It read, ATHERTON MARSHAL.

  “It’s good to be home,” Ditch said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals for their invaluable support in the writing of this novel:

  Marc Cameron, a real cowboy (both flesh and steel), retired U.S. Marshal, martial artist, true gentleman, and old-school badass. He’s the kind of man I want my son to grow up to be.