Shotgun Riders

by Orrin Russell

  The old man gave an order to the croupier, who responded by gathering up the chip pile for safekeeping, and Chester left the table to greet Balum and Joe with an ear to ear grin.

  “What’s the matter, Balum? You don’t recognize your old friend?”

  Balum pinched the fat lapel and flicked the pocketwatch tucked in Chester’s vest. “You’re dressed up like some Eastern dude. You look ten years younger also.”

  “That’s what money’ll do for you.”

  “I guess so. Is this all from gambling?”

  “Turns out I’m not so shabby at it. Beats working in a livery, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Makes me want to play a hand myself.”

  “No offense, Balum, but I’ve seen you play more hands than I can stomach. Gambling isn’t where you’ll make your money. You’ll make it doing things like this job for Cafferty.”

  “You talking about transporting Buford Bell?”

  “I am.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “The whole town’s talking about it. That, and how you’re after Sara Sanderson. It’s been the gossip for a week now.”

  “Cafferty only just offered me the job a few days ago.”

  “He knew you’d take it long before he rode up to tell you about it. After what that Sanderson girl did to you, how could you say no?”

  “He’s got a point,” said Joe.

  “You boys are leaving in the morning?” said Chester.

  “Soon as the sun’s up.”

  “Want to have a little fun before you go? Lord knows you’ve paid my way enough times. Let me return the favor.”

  Neither Balum nor Joe pretended to turn down the offer. They readily took the drinks Chester ordered at the bar and, after a clink of glasses and a quick toss down the throat, left the Sagebrush and all its fancy bells and whistles for the seedier side of town.

  The streets they found themselves in as nighttime descended over the city were narrow and filled with a raucous energy. Men of all classes roamed from saloon to saloon. From the balconies came the cat calls of women. They lifted their skirts and bent over the railings to shake their breasts at the passing drunks, all the while promising pleasures unimaginable in sweet and sultry voices.

  They entered the Baltimore Club, a long time favorite of Chester’s. Upon their entrance women flocked around them. They were ushered to a private table ringed in plush sofas where they were served top shelf whiskey in crystal highballs and seated between four women, each luxuriously proportioned, and none of them shy about displaying their goods.

  In the space of ten minutes Balum drank three whiskeys. He sat beside Chester and found himself legitimately torn between reconnecting with his old friend and devouring the beauty seated beside him that was licking his earlobe and pressing her breasts against his arm.

  As for Joe, the words he himself had uttered-- that he had been cooped up too long on the ranch-- proved true. He lost himself in the arms of women. His exotic appearance, the clear Apache structure of his face, the shimmering black hair hanging sleek along his back coupled with his impeccable English, transformed him into a client the girls fought to win over. When he allowed himself finally to be dragged away by two women in garters and balconette bras, Balum and Chester elbowed each other and laughed and drank another whiskey.

  “It’s the life of Riley,” said Chester.

  “I knew you were a solid gambler,” said Balum, “but I had no idea it was this level.”

  “It didn’t come all at once. Like any profession, it was built over time. I’ve studied the game, taken hits along the way. But it turns out I’ve a knack for poker. Just like you’ve got a knack for trouble.”

  Balum laughed. The girl beside him had taken his hand and was dragging his fingers up her thigh.

  “I’m serious, Balum,” Chester continued. “This job you’re taking on-- it won’t be as easy as it sounds.”

  “He’ll be locked in a cage. It won’t be all that hard.”

  “It’s nearly one thousand miles from here to San Antonio. Buford probably knows folks along the way. Other outlaws. He’ll be desperate-- don’t forget that. Don’t get lazy. My advice to you is, have yourself a good time tonight, because starting tomorrow you’ll be facing a six-week journey from hell.”

  The girl dragged Balum’s hand up to the edge of her panties. She pulled them aside and pressed his fingertips underneath them. The move was enough to finally take Balum’s attention off Chester. He twisted around on the sofa, grabbed the giggling girl by the waist, and heaved her over his lap so her plump bottom jiggled beneath his eyes. With the flat of his hand he spanked her-- a sharp loud crack that brought a squeal from the girl’s throat, and a wild, whiskey-fueled yipping from the newly-minted Chester.

  5

  Of the four cells in the Denver City Jail, not one of them possessed a window. Only at the far back of the cell block was there a small rectangular cutout six feet up on the wall with bars running through the stone. The light that passed through at the peak of day was little more than a hazy glow. At night, after his eyes adjusted, Connor Bell could just make out the faces of his brothers. They shared their deadbeat father’s features: sharp cheekbones under sunken eyes, thin lips that stretched wide and flat over angular jaws. Aspects of their mother showed through also: her copper-colored skin, the thick black hair that hung in curls against their heads. Connor had once overheard a man use the word rawboned to describe the Bell brother’s faces, and the word stuck with him as an unintended compliment.

  They sat in silence, cramped into their single cell. Buford and Delmar sat on one cot, Donny and Floyd shared another. Connor himself paced from one end of the cell to the other, while John Boy, the youngest of the Bell brothers, stood in the shadows of the wall.

  They’d held these positions for hours, no one speaking, the darkness turning their sunken faces to little more than shadows. Connor’s pacing took on the cadence of a metronome. His steps counted down the hours to Buford’s release, ticking away the minutes before the impending execution of the rest. When he finally stopped, all five faces turned to him.

  “I think he’s lying,” he said suddenly.

  “Who, Claddy?” Buford’s voice came low from the darkness.

  “I think he’s too scared to do it.”

  “We got no choice but to trust him,” said Buford. “He got us all into one cell, didn’t he?”

  “It don’t do no good without dynamite. It was supposed to be tonight.”

  “You can’t hurry up a train.”

  “You buy that story? How can the munitions shop be out of dynamite? It just don’t sound right.”

  “Pacing up and down ain’t gonna change it.”

  “I don’t know how you can sit there so calm.”

  “Ain’t no other way to sit.”

  Connor took a step toward Buford. He leaned in, but still his brother’s face was hidden under shadows. “Well I’m scared. I’ll say it. They’re taking you out of here tomorrow and it won’t be long until they hang the rest of us in the town square like a damn minstrel show. Probably charge for tickets.”

  “You won’t hang,” said Buford. “Claddy will get you out.”

  “Even if he does, what are we supposed to do then? You’ll be halfway to Texas. That is, if Balum or that half-breed don’t kill you first.”

  “Calm down, Connor. You need to think straight. You’ll be in charge once I’m gone, and you need to think without letting your emotions clog things up.”

  Connor breathed through his nose. The smell of mold and stone seeped into his nostrils. His brother was right. He was always right, always a step ahead of everyone else. That’s how they’d lived successfully on a life of crime. All up until a week ago, when Balum and Pete Cafferty had stormed into their compound with a makeshift battalion of fifty angry cattle ranchers. He felt his anger flare up at the memory. He shook it off and leaned in to where Buford sat. “All right,” he said. “Lay it out for us. What do we
do if Claddy gets us out?”

  The other four Bell brothers hovered closer.

  “As soon as he blasts through this wall,” said Buford, “you need to get through it. You’ll have a few minutes of commotion where no one knows what the hell is happening. People will be waking up. Use that time to get horses and guns. Claddy won’t have none of that for you, so you’ll have to bust into the munitions shop, grab up whatever you can, then make it to the livery where you’ll steal the best horses you lay eyes on.”

  “Then what?” said Connor.

  “Then you ride like hell. Find where them stage wheels have cut tracks through the ground. Follow them till you find me, then shoot them two sons-of-bitches dead.”

  “You want us to steal an extra horse for you?”

  “No. There’ll be four hitched to the stage. I’ll take one of those.”

  John Boy stepped away from the wall. “What about a posse?”

  “You’ll be riding hard, ain’t no posse gonna catch you. More’n likely they’ll send a wire over telegraph to every town from here to Texas saying you’ve escaped. We’ll deal with that after you bust me out of that stage. That all sound clear to everybody? Sound good to you, Connor?”

  Connor agreed that it did. He stretched out on his cot and closed his eyes. For a long time he imagined how their escape might unfold, until the snores of his brothers became like a soothing ocean surf that led him deep into sleep.

  Even before the morning glow had time to illuminate the cell interior, the jail office door banged open and Sheriff Ross Buckling walked down the stone corridor with his key ring jangling before him.

  Connor sat up. He watched as his brother approached the cell bars, turned his back so the sheriff could fasten iron manacles over his wrists. Leg irons followed. Chained tight, Buford stepped into the corridor.

  Through the open office door Connor could hear Balum’s voice along with that of the U.S. Marshal. The thought crossed Connor’s mind that he should jump through the cell door, club the sheriff over the head, and storm the office. But no more had the idea occurred to him than the cell door shut with a bang and Buford was led away. Connor lied back down on his cot and stared at the ceiling for a long time. His chest moved up and down, heavy with the reality that he was, at least for the immediate future, the leader of the Bell Brothers Gang.

  All that day he paced the stone floor. He snorted through his nose as if to dispel himself from the stink of mold hovering all around him. His four younger brothers sat on their cots and told each other stories that, if not completely made of lies, were at minimum wild exaggerations of the truth. At every rustle of sound from the jail office Connor would press his face between the bars and roll his eyes down the corridor hoping the rat-faced lawyer would appear to bring word that the train had arrived and, along with it, enough dynamite to blow them out of that moldy jail cell. But he didn’t come. Not that day, and not the next. It was not until the third day after Buford had been led away that Connor finally saw his lawyer.

  The Bell brother’s day of sentencing had arrived. Ross Buckling, with the help of Pete Cafferty, chained the five of them together foot and ankle and led them through the wide courthouse doors where William Claddy sat in his poor-fitting tweed suit and disgusting neckbeard, giving off the appearance of some type of giant rodent breathing halitosis into the splendid halls of justice.

  Connor took his seat beside him. He narrowed his eyes at the lawyer, but Claddy only stared ahead at Judge Vanderloop.

  “Hey,” Connor said under his breath. He shoved an elbow into Claddy’s ribs. “Where have you been? Has that dynamite come in yet?”

  “Shhh,” Claddy shushed him curtly. “The judge is about to read the sentence.”

  Connor turned his head and waited for Judge Vanderloop to clear his throat and unfold a piece of paper beside the gavel. The sentence was short and to the point; the five brothers were to be hanged in two day’s time. After the judge read it he folded the paper back into a square and gave the gavel a final crack over the block.

  Connor barely shrugged. It was better news than he’d expected. He’d been nearly certain they’d be hanged that very day. “Well?” he said. “When is it happening?”

  “Tonight. After midnight.”

  Connor leaned over until his nose nearly touched his lawyer’s. “You better come through.”

  “Or what?” Claddy’s neckbeard shook.

  “You think we ain’t got no more family? If we hang, you’ll never get another night’s peaceful sleep. We got family all over the country. Uncles, cousins. Hell, my grandpa would come up from Georgia to put a bullet through your head.”

  Claddy swallowed. “That won’t be necessary. Just make sure you’re as far from that wall as possible come midnight.” He shuffled some papers into a stack and stuck them into his attache case, then stood and marched out, leaving Connor and his brothers chained together in a row beside the defense bench.

  After they were returned to their cell, Connor pulled his brothers together and related the news. They turned serious. They ate their jail supper and didn’t say a word when Ross collected the trays. After sunset, when the sheriff had locked the doors behind him, Connor instructed his brothers to turn the cots on their sides and lay behind them as far from the wall as possible. They did as they were told, all five hunkered between the cots and the bars.

  Hours passed. John Boy wondered out loud if it had been two hours or three, or maybe only one. Delmar and Floyd argued on the answer until Connor told them to shut up and lie still. It felt like they’d been lying there all night. In his mind, Connor cursed William Claddy. He entertained fantasies of attacking the lawyer should he perchance pass by him on his way to the gallows. He’d wrap his manacled hands around the rat’s neck and choke him to death. A smile spread across Connor’s thin lips as he imagined the lawyer squirming, froth bubbling at his lips, when suddenly the back wall of the jail cell erupted in a blast that threw him against the cell bars and put a ringing in his ears that sounded like he was sitting directly over a train whistle.

  Dust choked him. He shoved the cot back and grabbed the brother closest to him. Shards of broken stone bit into his hands and knees as he crawled forward. The ringing in his ears changed pitch. High, low, piercing. When he reached the wall he felt for the hole and found it, not more than two feet wide and jagged all around. He shoved his brother forward. He didn’t know if he’d grabbed Floyd or Donny, or maybe it was John Boy. The body moved into the hole, wiggled, and Connor followed him through.

  The sharp edges of exploded mortar cut him as he pulled himself forward. He jerked like a fish out of water, clawing with his hands, aware that the greasy feeling on his palms was most likely his own blood.

  Tumbling into the street, he realized the ringing was fading from his ears. His brother’s excited chattering on the other side of the wall had replaced it. He took a frantic look around in search of William Claddy, but the rat had long since run off, so instead Connor took a knee beside the blown hole, swore at his brothers to shut up, and helped pull Delmar through. Donny followed, then John Boy. After a moment of confusion he realized Floyd was already free. He stood up, still coughing and, after a quick look around, ran across the street in direction of the munitions shop, waving for his brothers to follow.

  They reached it just as the first lanterns were being lit. Voices called out in the dark. Confusion reigned over Denver.

  Connor stepped up the boardwalk to the munitions door and rammed a shoulder into it. Pain shot up his shoulder, the door didn’t budge. He tried again, bracing the muscles in his arm tighter, but he only bounced off the heavy wood. He was about to make a third attempt when the glass shattered in the window and he looked up to see Floyd already crawling through.

  Connor leapt in behind him, yet another cut, this one on his leg from a sliver of window glass. Inside the shop he could make out the gleam of moonlight on a display case. He ran to it, saw the outlines of revolvers beneath, and rammed his elbow into
the glass. It shattered, excruciatingly loud in Connor’s ears, but he kept going anyway, jabbing his elbow into the glass all along the length of the case until the weapons were free for the taking. He grabbed two and shoved them into his waistband. What makes or models they were he’d find out later. He made his way to the counter and began to pull out boxes until he found cases of ammunition. By the feel of them he’d found cartridges of all sizes; .45’s, .44’s, .44-40’s, and even some .36’s. He grabbed them all.

  Outside, the sound of boots running over boardwalks echoed. He growled to his brothers an order to leave, and through the window they went.

  Another cut, again on the leg. He pressed his back against the munition shop wall and looked at the two guns he’d stolen. A Colt .45 and a Smith and Wesson Model 3. He grinned and thumbed cartridges into the cylinders. When they were full he slapped them closed and spun them and passed the cartridge boxes to his brothers.

  His brothers fully armed, Connor led them in a run down the boardwalk toward the livery. He held a gun in each hand. The hammers were pulled back. A shot would give away their location, he knew that, but neither did he care. All he wanted was a horse beneath him and the city of Denver far behind.

  In the livery over a dozen horses breathed vapor into the air. The only metric Connor used in that poor visibility was the height of the animals. He chose the tallest among them, ripped a saddle and accompanying tack from the stall hooks beside it. After he’d saddled it and led it from the stall, he waited for his brothers. He could hear them bickering. Their shapes moved like phantoms in the darkness. Past the livery doors the light of bouncing lanterns fluttered. As Connor watched, a man came into view. He stood a moment outlined in the frame of the open doors, and Connor shot him.

  The shot startled the horse. It reared up beside him and when it’s front hooves landed Connor swung into the saddle. He took a look behind him. His brothers had each finally mounted their own stolen horses. He kicked hard with his heels and sent the horse barreling over the fallen man and through the livery doors.