by Ford Fargo
The image in the scope became vanishingly small. No matter. He’d worked the calculations and he knew his rifle. His finger curved to the trigger. There was an eternity of memory in that one motion. The rifle bucked against his shoulder slamming the telescopic sight into his eye. Old instincts took over ticking off the seconds.
One . . .
He brought the glass back down on the man again.
Two . . .
His brain sped though the calculations. Five hundred and thirty grains . . . fourteen hundred feet per second . . .
Three . . .
In the lens the rider’s arms flung wide and he lurched from the saddle.
Marcus let out a long breath and lowered the rifle. His eye stung from the impact of the sight, his leg burned, but that wasn’t what concerned him. He looked over at Frank, still standing over the body, that tiny pistol still in his hands, his face drained of color.
The place smelled of sulfur. Jimmy Spotted Owl came through the hellish smoke. He bent over Lanny and then stood, shaking his head.
Billy Below limped over, holding a bloodied hand to his butt.
“Never seen shooting like that, teacher.” His voice was tight with pain
Marcus barely heard him. “You okay, Frank?” he asked, turning the boy by his shoulders.
“I . . . I killed him.”
“You saved my life.”
Jimmy rolled the man over and whistled. “Right between the eyes.”
Marcus said, “That was fine shooting, Mr. Miller.”
Frank looked up, his eyes shining. “I was aiming at his horse.”
Jimmy walked over to the body of the fourth T-Bar-B rider, the one Marcus did not know.
“Poor Lige,” Jimmy said. “He just hired on a week ago. Poor Lanny, too, for that matter.”
“Mr. Sublette!” Ethan’s shrill tone spun Marcus around, heart banging against his chest. Ethan was on the ground under the wagon with Obie. Obie wasn’t moving.
“Obie’s hurt bad!” Ethan’s words choked at the back of his throat.
Before he reached him, he knew it wasn’t good. Obie’s shirt was red, his face white as flour. He stared up at Marcus, trying to speak, but only able to move his lips.
“Don’t talk.” Marcus found the wound three inches below Obie’s shoulder, angling down and out through the boy’s back.
“My God!” Billy groaned.
“Give me your shirt, Billy.”
Billy ripped it off. Marcus folded it over and pressed it over the wound, leaning hard onto it.
“More!”
Ethan shucked his shirt too. Marcus put it beneath Obie, putting pressure on the exit wound. “Ethan.”
“Sir?”
“Get the team and hitch them up.”
Ethan tried to stand and fell back. Up until then he hadn’t been aware of the splinter of wood as big around as a rake handle protruding from his thigh. “I’m hurt.”
The situation was getting worse by the second. Jimmy and Frank seemed to be the only two of them who’d managed to escape the battle unscathed. “Jimmy,” Marcus called.
Jimmy was at his side. “Catch up our team and hitch them to the wagon,” Marcus said. “We need to get these boys to shelter –I suppose the T-Bar-B ranch house would be the best bet.”
Jimmy’s brow furrowed. “It’s rough country between here and there for a wagon, and we have an old line-shack that’s closer.”
“We’ll get them there, then.”
“Right.” Jimmy sprinted off for the hobbled horses standing a little distance away.
“Billy, how bad are you hurt?” Marcus asked the other cowboy.
“Creased my butt. Lots of blood, but nothing like the hand poor Obie’s been dealt.” He grimaced. “Just the same, I reckon I ain’t going to be sporting the ladies any time soon.”
“Take over here, Billy. Keep pressure on. We’ve got to slow the bleeding.”
“You got it, teacher.”
Marcus hobbled off a few dozen feet and caught the reins to Lanny’s horse. “Frank, come here.”
The boy looked up from Obie, unable to move.
“Come here now, Mr. Miller.” He used his teacher voice and that snapped Frank out of it. Marcus swung Frank up on the saddle. “You must ride to Wolf Creek. Ride like the wind, boy. Tell Doctor Munro what happened, and to come out to Breedlove’s line shack, two miles east of here. That where I’m taking Obie. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then find Sheriff Satterlee. Tell him what happened. He’ll know what to do.”
“Yes, sir.” Frank repeated. He was in shock. Well, he’d been anxious to grow up, and now was the time. Marcus slapped the horse into motion.
“Billy, help me move Obie into the wagon.”
In spite of the injury to his rear end, Billy snapped to like a fresh-faced corporal at the captain’s command.
Jimmy backed the horses into their traces, and Marcus helped Ethan up into the wagon box. The boy gritted his teeth, holding back tears. His wound was painful, but there was little blood. That was a good sign. At least the splinted shard hadn’t cut an artery.
Marcus glanced up as Billy went for a nearby horse. “Where you going?”
“Wolf Creek. With the Miller boy.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll live.” Billy grabbed the reins and stepped stiffly up into the saddle, standing in the stirrups as he rode off.
“Billy’ll be okay, Mr. Sublette,” Jimmy said, climbing onto the wagon seat and taking the reins.
Ethan looked pale. He leaned back against the side boards, one hand gripping his thigh, the other clutching Obie’s arm.
Obie’s eyes were open, moving, but that was all.
The wagon lurched ahead. Ethan looked up at Marcus. “Is he going to die?”
He’d never lied to any of his students and he wasn’t going to start now. “It doesn’t look good.”
Ethan swallowed hard. Something akin to terror haunted his young eyes. “What hat you wearing now, Mr. Sublette?”
Marcus grimaced, his throat so tight the words didn’t get out. “One that I had hoped I’d put away forever.”
CHAPTER TWO
Chuck Tyrell
Frank Miller rode like the devil was after him. He hunched over the saddle horn and pounded the heels of his brogans into his horse’s ribs like he was trying to win the Fourth of July pony race.
Damn. Damn. Damn. Billy Below tried to keep up with Frank, but the horse he’d taken was more than a little slow, and Billy had to keep his knees locked as he rode to keep his raw behind off saddle leather. Blood ran down his leg and into his left boot. He’d said the wound was just a scratch, but scratches didn’t keep bleeding like the gouge in his butt did. Damn.
The Miller boy was nearly a quarter of a mile ahead of Billy when he pounded over the bridge across Wolf Creek at the northeast edge of town. By the time Billy made the bridge, Frank was already past the AT&SE freight office. He pounded on past the Whistlestop and turned south on Second Street, headed for Doc Munro’s place.
Billy walked the horse across the bridge, still standing in the stirrups. Damn. A little scratch on the butt. Why’s it gotta bleed so goldam much? He turned south on Fifth Street, and guided the rough-gaited horse to Miss Abby’s. He’s spent enough time and money there to rate a bandage, he figured. And maybe a shirt, to replace the one he’d donated to bandage the injured Obie. More’n that, if he was lucky. Women had a soft spot for wounded men, he’d heard. But he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to respond if such were the case. Billy decided to let things happen as they would. He reined the horse onto Useless Grant Street and pulled him to a stop in front of Miss Abby’s. He stood there in the stirrups for a minute, just looking at Miss Abby’s house. Its shiplap siding had a fresh coat of grass green paint, and all the gingerbread over the porch and the veranda gleamed in pure white . . . very pure white. Sheesh.
When he lifted his leg to dismount, something cracked on his
butt and he felt the blood start running again. He was shot, but nothing like Obie was shot. At least he could still walk, still ride a cayuse if riding was what a man would call standing in the stirrups all the way into town. Billy got down, but was unable to stifle a little groan as his foot touched the ground. Damn. With considerable effort, he mounted the three steps to Miss Abby’s and pulled on the rope that rang the bell that would bring someone to open the door.
“Yes? Oh. Hello, Billy.” Eva Mae was one of the older women who worked at Miss Abby’s. She had a motherly air, and Billy’d heard that her experience was not to be scoffed at. She did not react to the fact he was in his undershirt.
Billy pulled his hat off. “Miss Eva, I been shot.”
“My Lord. Shot?”
“Yup.”
“Then why have you not gone to Doctor Munro?”
“I came to see Brandy, that’s why.”
“Really. And what can Brandy do for you?”
“Maybe nothing, Miss Eva. But I been shot and me and Brandy’s fairly regular so I thought maybe she could patch up my bum for me and we could see what would happen.”
“Your bum?”
“Yes, ma’am. I been shot in the ass, er, bum. Had to stand in the stirrups all the way into town, and that made me terrible tired. Brandy in?”
Eva Mae huffed. “Don’t know if she’ll want to see a man who comes calling without even putting a shirt on, and wants to be bandaged and solaced.”
“Yes, ma’am. Could I come in, maybe? I’m not dangerous or nothing. And about the shirt, I had to take it off to bandage poor Obie Wilkins. He got lung shot. Bad.”
Eva Mae’s eyebrows shot up. “Obie? Shot? Who’d want to shoot a child?”
Billy Below’s eyebrows knitted. “Rollin’ R waddies done it. They come shooting without so much as a ‘fare thee well.’ We got some of ‘em, though. And Frank Miller’s gone to get the doc. Brandy in?”
“Wait.”
“I need to come in, ma’am. I been shot.”
“All right. Just the parlor, though.”
“Call Brandy. Please.”
Eva Mae said nothing. She disappeared through the door into the back part of the house where Miss Abby lived. Brandy would be upstairs. Why Miss Abby? Billy Below stood just inside the front door, the bullet gouge in his gluteus maximus aching.
Eva Mae re-entered. Billy opened his mouth, but she raised a hand and shook her head. She took the broad stairway to the second floor and went toward the back of the house. Billy could hear her footsteps on the hardwood floor. Brandy’s room was second to the last on the right. Billy knew that. He was up there every time he had the five bucks it took to see Brandy.
“Billy!” It sounded like a scream. “Billy?” Quick clicks on the floor made by feet much smaller and lighter than Eva Mae’s, and then Brandy Oliver, if that was her real name, stood at the top of the stair. “Billy? Billy? Miss Eva says you’ve been shot.”
Billy nodded. She looked good as an angel to him.
“Where’s your shirt?”
“Gave it to Obie Wilkins. He’s lung-shot.”
“Why are you just standing there? Come here. Come!”
“I’m broke.”
“Come here. Bullet wounds are not a matter of money. Come.”
“Yes’m.” Billy climbed the stairs and let Brandy pull him into her room. It smelled like roses, or maybe violets. Flowers, anyway.
“Take your pants off,” Brandy said.
“I’m broke,” Billy said again.
“Damn you, Billy Below. How in hell am I supposed to look at your wound if you won’t take your damn britches off?”
Billy held his hands up, palms out. Brandy only swore when she was mad. “Awright, awright.” He unbuckled his gunbelt and took off the rig, then slipped his arms through his suspender straps, unbuttoned his fly, and let his pants drop down around his boots.
Brandy let out a little squeak when she saw the blood. A hole just below the beltline, another at Billy’s side, a blood-soaked stripe down the backside of his union suit disappeared into the top of his left boot. Brandy’s room had little more than a double bed, a small table by its head, and a cedar chest against the back wall.
She left Billy standing there bleeding, with his pants down around his ankles. Brandy opened the cedar chest and pulled out a pair of scissors. “Hope you’ve got another union suit,” she said. “That one’s coming off.” And she proceeded to slice around his middle so the bottom half of his union suit would fall down.
“Stand still,” she said. “God, you’re bleeding.”
“Know that,” Billy said. “Can you stop it?”
Brandy nodded. “Yes. It’ll cost you a sheet, though.”
“I’m broke.”
“You owe me a dollar, then.”
“Just do it. Gotta go to see the sheriff. Spent enough time here already.”
Mumbling and spitting, Brandy pulled a sheet off her bed and attacked it with her scissors. She brought a pad, a length of flannel, and a bottle of Jameson’s.
“How come you got Mick whiskey?” Billy asked, jealousy showing in his voice.
Brandy ducked her head and grinned. “None of your business, Billy . . . Below. What kind of name is that? Below.”
“Got it on a trail drive. Man gets his name on the drive. Pards called me Billy Below. I like it.”
“I know how you like it,” she said. She pulled the cork from the Jameson’s and took a mouthful, then spewed it all over the bullet furrow on Billy’s butt.
Billy jumped. “Jaysus!”
“Hold still.” She slapped the pad on the furrow. “Hold it there. Tight.”
Billy complied. “Damn. Mick whiskey stings like hell.”
Brandy wrapped a length of sheeting around Billy’s hips three times. Four. Then tied it off. Blood showed through the wrapping but didn’t drip. She took another length and wrapped again. The sheeting stayed clean. “There,” she said. “You’re not bleeding anymore.” She stumbled over to the bed and sat down. Her hair hung down over her face. Her hands made fists in her lap.
“Brandy?”
She looked up at Billy, tears leaking from her eyes.
***
Union suit held together with safety pins and dried blood crackling as he gingerly came down the stairs at Miss Abby’s, Billy Below set his mind on the Sheriff’s office. Rolling R hands’d attacked kids on a school outing. Sheriff Satterlee needed to know real story from someone who was there. Namely, Billy Below.
He squeezed Brandy’s hand. “Thanks for putting me back together,” he said, quiet like. “I’d stay a mite, but I gotta go tell the sheriff what happened.”
Brandy’s tears were gone, but she still frowned with concern. “Billy Below, you listen to me. Don’t you go getting yourself shot up no more, you hear? I’d rather you came around without holes in your hide.”
He squeezed her hand again. “Soon as I get some cash,” he said, “I’ll be back to pay you for the sheet . . . and whatever.”
Brandy’s laugh tinkled. “Whatever, you say. I’ll show you what that means, Billy Below. Just you come back and we’ll ‘whatever’ all night.” She raised her voice. “Miss Abby, Billy Below’s leaving.”
Miss Abby’s petite frame appeared in the door to the back room. “You take care, Billy Boy,” she called. “Come back soon.”
“I will, Miss Abby, you know that.”
She laughed. “I reckon you will, boy. Knowing you and all.”
“Much obliged, Miss Abby. Much obliged.”
Billy left Brandy at the door. “I’ll be back soon as I can, Brandy,” he said.
“I’m here,” she said, and gave him a peck on the cheek.
Billy hung his gun rig over the saddle horn and climbed aboard the horse he’d left at the hitching rail. He walked it back toward Useless Grant Street. Just a half block past the Wolf’s Den at Fourth Street, Billy turned north toward the Sheriff’s Office. Sam Gardner, cigar in the corner of his mouth, stood
at the window of the Marshal’s Office as Billy rode by. He seemed to be watching something in the next county, judging from the faraway look in his eyes. Billy paid no mind. His business was with Sheriff Satterlee.
Two horses stood in front of the Sheriff’s Office, and Billy didn’t recognize either one. He stopped the nondescript brown he rode at the south end of the hitching rack, and climbed stiffly off. Damn. Getting shot in the butt was a pain in the ass. Billy grinned at his own joke. He looped the reins over the hitching rail, lifted his gunbelt off the saddle horn and considered strapping it on. The twinge in his butt told him not to do that yet, so he carried the rig over his left arm as he strode into Satterlee’s office.
“Rustlers, I tell you. Bent on stealing stock off our range.”
Billy’d seen that cockeyed hat before. The speaker had his back to the front door as he leaned over the sheriff’s desk and shoved his face into that of Deputy Zachary. The man in the cockeyed hat rode with the Rolling R bunch. He’d been with them when Obie Wilkins was shot -when Billy Below was wounded, too, for that matter.
“Sheriff’ll be back soon,” Zack said. “Just hold your horses. Him and Laban’s down to Crib Town. Been a little scrap down there. Be back purty quick, I reckon.”
“Rustling’s a hanging crime, deputy. If you all don’t get up and after them, we’ll get them on our own. Already had a bit of a shootout with some of them today. Couple of our boys took lead. Bad. I’m here to swear out a warrant for some a’ them rustlers.”
“You know who they were?”
“T-Bar-B men. No doubt about it.” The cowboy in the cockeyed hat fairly spit the words out.
Billy let the door close, and quietly retreated back to the horse. For the first time, his eyes went to the brand on its left hip. Rolling R. Shit. If he was caught riding that horse, he’d hang.
With his gunbelt dangling from the crook of his left arm, Billy did something cowboys rarely do. He started walking. He turned his back on the sheriff’s office and headed south on Fourth Street. He crossed the street so he’d be on the far side, away from the Marshal’s Office when he passed. He kept his head down, with his hat pulled low over his eyes, and he walked as fast as he could without looking like he was in an ungodly hurry.