“I saw you slip a card out of your sleeve. When you’re dead, I’ll pull that sleeve up and see what else is under there.”
“You asked for it, boy,” Brodie growled.
“That’s Willy Boy, to you,” Willy said.
For tense moments the two of them stood motionless. Then Brodie’s hand flashed. Unlike Zeke Evans, he cleared leather, but his six-shooter wasn’t quite level when Willy fanned a shot into Brodie’s forehead, putting an end to his cardplaying days. And sure enough, when Willy peeled that sleeve back, he found an arm rig with several more cards. Some of the other players patted him on the back and thanked him for exposing the cheat.
Willy was more interested in that ivory-handled Colt. No one objected when he helped himself to it. And to the gambler’s poke. And to a watch with a silver chain.
The body was hauled out and buried on Boot Hill.
After that, Willy was generally considered hell on wheels. He’d walk into a saloon and sometimes people would point and whisper. He ate it up with a spoon. The notorious Willy Boy Jenkins. That was him.
Then came the fateful day that Willy, Three-Fingered Jack, and Campton came upon a farm in eastern Nebraska.
“This one looks right prosperous,” Three-Fingered Jack remarked as they sat in their saddles surveying the well-ordered fields and the white farmhouse and red barn.
“Let’s go help ourselves to whatever they’ve got,” Campton said, and scratched an armpit as he liked to do.
Willy hadn’t cared one way or the other. It was just another robbery to him. He’d trailed after the other two as they approached the front porch.
Three-Fingered Jack had a trick he was fond of. He’d ride up to his intended victims, smiling and acting friendly, and when he had them off-guard, he’d throw down on them and do as he pleased.
A burly farmer came out and stood with a shotgun in the crook of an elbow. “Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded.
Drawing rein, Three-Fingered Jack went into his act. He smiled and held his hands out from his sides to show he meant no harm. “We were hopin’ we could water our horses.”
“There’s a pump yonder,” the farmer said, and nodded toward it. “Help yourselves.”
“We’re obliged, mister.” Three-Fingered Jack rested the hand with three fingers on his saddle horn. “Nice place you have here.”
“Thanks to hard work and the Lord’s blessing,” the farmer said.
Three-Fingered Jack rested his other hand on his hip above his holster. “Any chance we could get a meal as well as the water? We’d pay for some honest-to-goodness home cookin’.”
“Pay or steal?” the farmer said.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You oughten to have spread your hands like you just did,” the farmer said. “I could count your fingers.”
Three-Fingered Jack stiffened. “So?”
“So my boys and me belong to the Farmer’s Association, and the Association has sent out word about you to all its members. You’ve robbed a lot of farms and homesteads. They warned us to be on the lookout for anyone with three fingers. My boys and me figured the odds of you ever showing up at our place were slim, yet there you sit.”
“You keep mentionin’ your boys,” Three-Fingered Jack said.
The farmer smiled and pointed at the overhang.
Willy looked up and did some stiffening of his own. Both of the second-floor windows were open, and at each crouched a young man with a double-barreled shotgun to his shoulder.
Three-Fingered Jack jerked as if he’d been slapped. “Now, you just hold on, mister. You have me mistook for someone else.”
“I doubt that,” the farmer said. “There aren’t that many gents with only three fingers on their left hand. Heard you got the other two chopped off in a bar fight.” He leveled his own shotgun at Jack. “We can do this easy or we can do this bloody.”
“The hell with this,” Campton snarled.
“Behave yourself,” Three-Fingered Jack said. “They have us dead to rights.”
“They’re farmers,” Campton said in contempt.
“Those hand-cannons don’t care who squeezes their triggers,” Three-Fingered Jack remarked. “This close, we’d be splattered to Kingdom Come.”
“That you would,” the farmer said.
“I won’t be taken,” Campton said. “I won’t spend time behind bars.”
“You don’t have a choice, outlaw,” the farmer told him.
“Like hell I don’t.”
“Campton, no, damn you,” Three-Fingered Jack said.
Willy had never cottoned to Campton all that much. The man was slow between the ears. Campton proved exactly how slow by clawing for his six-shooter.
A shotgun in an upper window blasted, and half of Campton’s head exploded into fragments.
With an oath, Three-Fingered Jack went for his own revolver.
The farmer and his son in the other window cut loose simultaneously, each with both barrels. Their buckshot caught Three-Fingered Jack in the chest and blew him apart. The impact sent what was left of him catapulting to the ground.
Willy did the only thing he could; he wheeled his horse and fled. The thing that saved him was that the farmer and both sons had emptied their shotguns and needed to reload. Willy was at a full gallop, hunched low, when the next shot boomed, and missed. Lashing his reins, Willy Boy rode like a madman. Another shot was thrown his way and he heard the buzz of lead but was miraculously spared.
Willy didn’t shed any tears over Three-Fingered Jack. Before the month was out, he had moved up in the world.
He became a member of the Grissom gang.
THE PRESENT
Alonzo Pratt wasn’t much good at telling one set of eyes from another. The creature on the rim was big, that much was obvious from the size. That it was a meat-eater also became obvious when it uttered a great, rumbling growl that caused the horses to nicker in fright.
“What is that?” Jenna gasped.
Alonzo fumbled for his Colt. He was half-sitting on it and had to shift to draw. As he brought it up and thumbed back the hammer, a hand fell weakly on his forearm.
“No,” Jacob Stone said.
Alonzo didn’t take his gaze off those terrible eyes. He was relieved that the old lawman had come around at long last, but upset at his timing. “What are you doin’?” he said, shaking Stone’s hand off. “It might attack us!”
“Don’t shoot unless it does. And be sure when you squeeze. If you wound it, you’ll only make it mad.”
Alonzo could barely hear him, Stone spoke so quietly. “What if I fire into the air? Will it run off?”
“It might and it might not. You can’t predict with cats.”
“Cats?” Alonzo said.
“It’s a cougar.”
“Are you sure it’s not a bear? Those eyes are awful big.”
“You see how they slant?”
Now that the lawman mentioned it, Alonzo did. He’d never seen a mountain lion, or a bear, for that matter, this close before. He’d have to take Stone’s word for it. “We do nothin’, then?”
“The smell of our horses likely drew it in. Our fire will keep it away. Wait a minute and you’ll see.”
“I don’t know,” Alonzo said uncertainly. He still liked the idea of firing into the air.
“Listen to your partner,” Jenna said. “He should know.”
“Who in the world?” Stone said. Apparently he’d just noticed her.
Alonzo was only interested in the cougar. The thing crouched there, glaring and hissing. Was it making up its mind whether to attack? Cougars were supposed to be incredibly swift. If it rushed them, he doubted he could bring it down before it reached them. Better to wait, as Stone suggested.
Time crawled on claws of tension until the big cat uttered anoth
er growl. Then, with astounding speed, it spun and was gone, vanishing into the night as silently as it came.
Alonzo let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and let down the hammer on his Colt. “Thank you, God.”
“Don’t blaspheme, son,” Stone said.
“I was serious.” Alonzo slid the Colt into his holster. Only then did he turn to Stone.
The old lawman lay on his back with his hands on his chest. He wasn’t as pale as before, and had stopped sweating so profusely.
“Welcome back to the world of the livin’,” Alonzo said, pressing his palm to Stone’s brow. “Your fever’s broke. You’re on the mend.”
“Let’s hope,” Stone said. He was staring at Jenna. “How long was I out?”
“A day or so,” Alonzo said. “We’re on our way to North Platte to have the sawbones tend to you.”
“I’m still waitin’ to hear who this young beauty is,” Stone said, giving her a weak but friendly smile.
“Deputy Marshal Jacob Stone,” Alonzo said with mock gravity, “I’d like you to meet Miss Jenna Grissom.”
Stone blinked. “Grissom, you say? Are you any kin to an owlhoot by the name of Cal Grissom, young lady?”
“He’s my father,” Jenna said.
“The hell you say!” Stone exclaimed, then frowned. “Pardon my language, ma’am. I don’t ordinarily cuss in front of women.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” Jenna said. “I’m used to it after the months I’ve just spent in the company of those who ride with him. Their language at times was downright foul.”
“You don’t say.” Stone looked at Alonzo. “You sure are somethin’, do you know that?”
“What did I do?”
“I’m unconscious for a while and I wake up to find you in the company of a lovely gal who just happens to be the daughter of the very outlaw we’re after. You must be one of those born to luck.”
Alonzo thought of the loss of his parents, and the orphanage, and his years of impersonations. “If I am, it’s news to me.”
Stone turned back to Jenna. “I have a hundred questions for you, Miss Grissom. But they’ll have to wait. I’m as puny as a kitten, and could use somethin’ to drink and some food.”
“Leave that to me,” Jenna said, moving to the fire. “I helped my aunt nurse my uncle when he was sick and know just what to do.”
“Bein’ shot with an arrow isn’t the same as bein’ sick,” Alonzo said.
“Are you a doctor now?” Jenna said.
Jacob Stone chuckled.
Jenna commenced to fill her tin cup with water from Alonzo’s canteen. “I know what I’m doing.” Sliding on her knees over to Stone, she gently cradled his head in her hand and tilted the cup to his lips. “Here. Take it slow. Sip. Don’t gulp.”
“I’m in your debt, ma’am.”
“You’re not sipping.”
Alonzo sat back. It bothered him, her treating him as if he were useless. It bothered him more that he cared what she thought.
“Has there been sign of more Sioux?” Stone asked between swallows.
“Not a lick,” Alonzo was glad to report.
“It’s not the savages you need to worry about,” Jenna told the old lawman. “As I’ve been trying to impress on your partner, my father and his killers must be after me by now. And if they catch us, you two are as good as dead.”
19
BACK THEN
The way it happened was unexpected, and some folks would say, downright comical.
Willy was in Kansas. He’d decided to rob a stage out of Topeka, a run that usually carried a full load of passengers. He picked the crest of a steep hill the stage had to climb as the best spot. The stage had to slow for the grade, and when it reached the top it would be easy to stop. As added appeal, the stage rarely sent a shotgun messenger along. It would just be the driver.
So Willy pulled his bandanna up over the lower half of his face, drew his Colt, and waited behind a large boulder. He heard the stage from a ways off. As he expected, it slowed for the grade.
Willy was ready when the stagecoach reached the top. He tapped his spurs to his mount and swept around the boulder, shouting, “Throw up your hands!”
At that selfsame moment, from amid a jumble of boulders on the other side of the road, riders wearing bandannas over their faces swept out of hiding, and one of them roared, “Hands in the air or you die!”
Willy drew rein and the other outlaws drew rein, and they stared at one another in amazement.
The driver raised his arms, blurting, “What the hell?”
A skinny outlaw gestured angrily at Willy. “Why, that boy is robbin’ the same stage we are!”
Willy would later learn the skinny one was Weasel Ginty. His attention was on an uncommonly handsome tall fella who held a pair of pearl-handled Colts, the same model as Willy’s own, and who had trained them on Willy as quick as anything.
“Nice six-shooter you have,” the handsome one said, and grinned.
Burt Alacord, Willy would discover, was the man’s handle. He would also discover, to his considerable chagrin, that Alacord was living lightning on the shoot, quicker even than him.
The apparent leader of the gang, a broad-shouldered cuss, held up a callused hand and barked, “Hush.” Ignoring the stagecoach driver and the faces of the passengers peering out the windows, he nudged his chestnut over to Willy and regarded him with eyes as green as new spring grass. “What have we here?” He wore a suit, of all things, and polished boots. His style of dress reminded Willy more of a banker or some other businessman than an outlaw. His revolver was a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson.
“This is my stage,” Willy said. “You’ll have to find another.”
“Listen to you. Do you have any notion who I am? Or who they are?” The big man gestured at the rest of the outlaws.
Willy counted six, including the leader. “I appear to be outnumbered.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Mister, I don’t know you from Adam. These others, neither. Wouldn’t matter if I did. This is my stage.”
“So you keep saying. How are you called, when you’re not putting on airs?”
Angered at the slight, Willy pulled his bandanna down. “I’m Willy Boy Jenkins.”
The big man in the suit studied him. “Heard of you.”
“Have you, now?” Willy said with some pride.
“In a small way. Last I knew, you were riding with Three-Fingered Jack Barnes and another gent.”
Willy didn’t hide his surprise. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Folks call me Cal Grissom. The Cal is short for California. My real first name is no one’s business but my own.”
Willy was impressed. Everyone had heard of the Grissom gang. They were the talk of the territory. “Why, you’re half-famous, yourself.”
“Only half?” Cal Grissom chuckled and blew out a breath.
The whiff of alcohol tingled Willy nose. He realized Grissom must have drank a lot of bug juice not that long ago, and he wondered what sort of man downed so much right before robbing a stage.
“Half-famous or famous all over,” Grissom was saying, “a thousand years from now, no one will remember we were ever alive.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Willy asked. “We’re alive now.” His befuddlement grew when Grissom let out with a hearty laugh, a great peal of mirth that rumbled from a chest three times the size of his own.
“More’s the pity,” Grissom said.
“You’ve confused me,” Willy admitted.
Grissom sobered and said, “Forget that for now.” He wagged his Smith & Wesson at the stage. “We have to decide about the pickings. The way I see it, there are three ways this can go.”
“I’m all ears,” Willy said.
“You can ride off and leave the stage to us.”
“Not goin’ to happen,” Willy informed him.
“Or we can gun you and rob it.”
“I won’t gun easy.”
Grissom gestured at Burt Alacord. “You see that gentleman there? He can put two slugs into you before you squeeze your trigger.”
“He can try.”
Unruffled, Cal Grissom said, “Or we can do this the third way.”
“Which is?”
“You join up with us and we rob the stage together.”
“Me? Join the Grissom gang?”
“Why not? What’s more natural than an outlaw joining other outlaws? And keep in mind I don’t let just anybody ride with me. All my men are handpicked and have one trait in common. They’re all killers, like you.”
Willy was grappling with the suddenness of the invitation. “Why does that matter so much?”
“I want men at my back who won’t flinch in a shootout. Men who won’t break and run when the law or anyone else throws lead our way.”
“That makes sense.”
“So what will it be, Willy Boy Jenkins?” Cal Grissom asked. “Will you or won’t you ride with me? You have a minute to decide.”
“That long?” Willy said sarcastically.
“Someone could come along anytime,” Grissom pointed out, “and we’re not done with the stage.”
It dawned on Willy that he was about to make one of the most important decisions of his life. Until now, he’d been what most would say was small potatoes. If he joined Grissom, his outlawry would be on a whole new level. He’d be up there with the likes of the Jameses and the Youngers.
“Yes or no?”
Willy grinned. “Let’s rob us that stage.”
THE PRESENT
Alonzo Pratt was happy as could be that Deputy Jacob Stone had recovered enough to be able to ride under his own power. Indeed, the old lawman was making a remarkable recovery now that his fever had broken.
Alonzo wasn’t as happy that, as they made their way toward North Platte, Stone insisted on riding by Jenna Grissom’s side and monopolizing her conversation. Alonzo wanted her attention for himself.
Guns on the Prairie Page 14