“The two women in room five?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“I’m looking for them.”
“You’re too late mister. They took the morning train. Didn’t you hear the whistle?”
“Mmm,” Balum mumbled. He put a hand on his hip and stood there while the woman sipped her coffee. At least he’d had one night of fun.
Outside the sun still hadn’t risen. The rain had let up, but the clouds had decided to stick around. Balum stepped onto the two stairs leading to the muddy river that served as a street, and took a long look in both directions. A few dogs waded through the mud. Wherever the citizens of Inglewood were, they were slow to show their faces that morning.
He plopped a boot into the muck swirling at the bottom step and started across the street. He wasn’t going to stay dry forever. By the time he reached the other side he had mud in his boots and his pant legs were soaked through. He’d nearly reached the jailhouse door when a voice called out behind him.
“Don’t you move, mister.”
Balum froze.
“Turn around real slow.”
Balum turned. He kept his hands out from his sides. The man calling the orders wore a thick silver beard, beside which was leveled a shotgun. It stuck out from his shoulder and his eye was laid down the barrel. He stared Balum in the chest.
“Whatever question you’ve got,” said Balum, “I’d rather you ask it before you shoot. It’d be a sorry thing to die in a muddy street before the sun rises.”
“I’m looking for a horse thief,” said the man. The barrel didn’t move when he spoke. “If it’s you, say your prayers now, cause I don’t give a damn how muddy the street is, I’ll shoot you full of lead.”
“If I stole your horse, don’t you think I’d be on it?”
The man considered this. “I don't know what goes on in the mind of a horse thief.”
“I sure as hell wouldn’t be knocking on the jailhouse door, now would I?”
The man lowered the barrel to the end of his beard. Balum was put out, and it showed.
“What do you want with the sheriff?” said the beard.
“I’m picking up a prisoner I left off last night.”
“The sheriff ain’t gonna be up this early. Old Man Pickens ain’t seen a sunrise since he turned sixty.”
“Sixty?”
“That’s what I said.”
Balum’s stomach dropped. Visions of the previous evening flashed over his eyes. The young sheriff, his bizarre silence. The way Buford behaved himself for the first time in a month. “Goddamnit,” Balum shouted at the mud. He looked at the bearded man still holding the stock against his shoulder. “Lower that damn shotgun. I didn’t steal your horse, but I’ve got an idea who did.”
The jailhouse door swung open at Balum’s push. The lantern was out, but even in the poor light Balum could see the cell door was halfway open and the cot was empty. He stormed back out into the street where the bearded man squinted at him suspiciously.
“What’s the horse look like?” he said.
“Black quarter horse. Two white stockings, ‘bout fifteen hands. New shoes too, farrier just slapped ‘em on yesterday. Cost me eight dollars, it did.”
“Regular shoes?”
“Rim shoes.”
Balum looked down the street at the train tracks. If Buford had made the early train there would be no way to catch him. But what would he want with a horse when the train was right there?
“Where’s your place at?” Balum asked.
“End of the street.”
“You scout for tracks yet?”
“It was too dark a half hour ago. Might be able to make something out now.”
“Meet me there,” said Balum. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
His feet sent mud splashing up his trousers, speckling his shirtfront. He reached the hotel in a run. When he stomped through the reception area the woman in the horn rimmed glasses stood from her rocker and shouted for him to wipe his feet, but he was already down the hall and banging his fist on doors one and two.
Door one opened and Caleb’s head popped out.
“Get dressed and get out here,” said Balum. “Fast.”
The door closed. Door two swung open. Instead of Joe’s face peeking through, a young woman with her hair tied in a bun answered. She was half asleep and, shocked from the loud knocking, had swung the door far enough open to reveal a thin neglige clinging to her slim body.
“Is Joe in there?” said Balum.
“Joe?”
Just then door four opened and Joe stepped out.
“Sorry,” said Balum. “Wrong room.” He spun the girl around by the shoulder and gave her a swat on the rump. She yelped and hopped inside, and he pulled the door shut by its handle.
“What’s wrong?” Joe said, buckling his gunbelt.
“Buford’s gone.”
“Say what?” Caleb stepped out of his room. He squeezed his big hat over his big head. “You say our prize cracker gone missing?”
“Follow me. I’ll explain on the way.”
The bearded man had traded in his shotgun for a long wooden pole. He stood at the end of the street and pointed it at the ground when Balum and Joe and Caleb came running. “Them’s the shoes right there,” he said. “Eight dollars.”
Joe followed the tracks out a ways then circled back and studied the footprints where Buford had slogged through the mud with his brother. Balum squatted on his heels beside him. The rain had washed out most of what there was to see, but enough was left to realize that Buford hadn’t freed himself of his chains.
Joe traced a finger through the mud where the convict had dragged them along behind. “How’s he gonna ride a horse with his feet fettered?”
“He’ll have to ride side saddle,” said Balum.
“They ain’t gonna get far with him sitting sideways on his horse like one of them high falutin southern ladies,” said Caleb. “We’ll catch his ass before the day’s out.”
“Let’s saddle up the horses then,” said Balum.
Fifteen minutes later they galloped past the bearded fellow leaning on his stick, Joe and Caleb with revolvers out, the Spencer rifle balanced in Balum’s hand.
The roan was happy to be out of the traces. It was no draft animal. Yoked up with the others, a restlessness had built within it, pent up too many weeks and let loose now as it tore across the mud-filled plains with Balum clutching fiercely to its back.
The way forward was marked clearly enough a child could have followed it. Two horses, one wearing rim shoes, had cut a clear path over the plain. Buford and his brother had ridden into a stand of cottonwoods where they’d met the others and, after considerable time, had finally ridden southwest. There was no concealing the tracks. Not five riders over wet earth. They had traveled as quickly as possible, but the way Buford was seated on his saddle, they couldn’t ride as fast as they’d wished.
In a half hour’s time Balum estimated they had cut the Bell brothers’s lead down by only a few hours. He half expected the Bells to pop out of one of the many patches of cottonwoods in a desperate final stand. Instead there appeared an old man covered head to toe in mud, his hands and feet bound, hopping through the mud like a man borne by a jackrabbit. Balum slowed the roan to a walk.
The old man shouted from a distance. “Don’t shoot me, I ain’t the one you’re looking for.” On his forehead was a cut that had bled down the side of his face and dried in a thin crust.
“You must be Old Man Pickens,” said Balum.
“Sheriff Pickens suits me better. Damn townies taken to calling me Old Man ever since I turned sixty.”
“What happened?”
The sheriff summed it up quickly enough. After Buford had met up with his brothers they’d taken to arguing. In the dark the sheriff had crawled away and wiggled himself into a ditch. He laid in the mud until they gave up their search, and here he was, walking back to town, or at least attempting to. While Joe cut the ropes
off him he told them where he figured they were headed.
“The Culver ranch, that’s where,” he said. “They need to get them chains off him, and Culver’s is the only place around. They don’t know it, but they’re riding straight to it. They’ll find a saw there.”
“How far?” said Balum.
“You’ll be there in a few hours. Don’t you fellas get shot now. Them boys are mean and ornery, and each one of ‘em is armed up like a mercenary soldier.”
Balum slung the Spencer into the saddle scabbard and set the roan to a gallop. He looked back once. Sheriff Pickens raised a hand, then turned and put one foot in front of the other on his way back to Inglewood. A brown muddy sheriff back to a brown muddy town.
22
In the pitch black of the cottonwoods, Connor was glad his brother couldn’t see his face. It was a portrait of humiliation, of that he was sure. Connor had expected the first words out of Buford’s mouth to resemble a poem of praise and gratitude, but when Buford had ridden in on a stolen horse a half hour ago, the first thing he’d asked for was a hacksaw.
“A hacksaw?” said Connor.
“For the damn chains. You don’t expect me to ride sidesaddle with those three fools chasing us, do you?”
The rain was letting up. Crickets began to sing in the dark.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that,” said Buford.
“We was spending all our time thinking on how to get you free,” said Connor. “And look-- you’re free!”
“I’m shackled tighter than a damn slave! What’s your plan now?”
“We ain’t thought that far,” said Connor. “We’ll get you out though.”
“How do you plan on doing that?”
“One of us can ride back into town. Back to Inglewood. Steal us a saw.”
“Nobody’s going back to where we just fled from, you idiot,” shouted Buford.
“Well I don’t know,” said Connor. He nearly said more, but he held his tongue. A thank you would have been nice to hear.
“Have any of you idiots spent a minute thinking about where we go from here?” Buford asked his brothers. Only the crickets answered. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll do the thinking. I need these damn chains off. What time does the train leave?”
“The train?” said John Boy.
“One of you checked the schedule, didn’t you?”
Again crickets.
Buford shook his arms in a rage, rattling the chains at his wrists. “Goddamnit! If there’s a train leaving in the morning that’s our surest way out. We could wait outside of town and hop a ride. But you dummies didn’t think to check, did you?”
“We can wait and see,” said Delmar.
“That train might only show up once a week. We’re not going to hang around waiting on a prayer that it arrives tonight. No,” he said. “This is what we’ll do. We’ll ride until we find a ranch. We’ll get a saw, cut free the chains, and get some distance. Go back to Georgia maybe.”
“You want to leave now?” said Connor.
“Ain’t no better time.”
“What about the sheriff?”
“What sheriff?”
“From Inglewood. We got him tied up over there,” Connor pointed, but he couldn’t see his own hand, let alone where they’d set the old sheriff.
“You mean you took him with you?” By Buford’s tone of voice, Connor guessed his brother was ready to strangle him.
“Well what else was we supposed to do with him?”
“Shoot him! That’s what!”
Connor swallowed. Buford was right. What the hell had he been thinking? “We can still do that,” he said. “Floyd, go bring that sheriff over here. Donny, go with him.”
The sound of footsteps on wet leaves blended with the cricket’s symphony. After a while Donny shouted. “Hey he ain’t here no more.”
“What?”
“He done run off.”
“He can’t,” said Connor. “He’s tied up.”
“Well he ain’t here.”
Connor heard the chains crinkle. He edged back from them.
“Find that damn sheriff,” said Buford, “and put a bullet in him.”
For two hours Connor traipsed through the cottonwoods and down a muddy ditch, slopping through mud and running into trees and briars. His brothers fanned out and did the same. When it was obvious their search was futile and that they’d only succeeded in wasting time, Buford shouted for them to regroup. They mounted their horses, Buford sitting like an eastern princess on his saddle, and rode southwest over a vast mudscape that gurgled and slopped beneath the horses’ hooves.
Just before sunrise they heard the far-off whistle of a train. They stilled their horses and turned at the sound of it.
“Was it too hard to check the damn schedule?” said Buford.
Connor hung his head again. In his head flashed a fantasy in which he’d stolen a hacksaw and checked the train schedule. He cut Buford’s chains off, rode a few miles outside town, and leapt onto a chugging train car that took him and his brothers to a distant town filled with whores and booze and poker. Then the vision left him. He opened his eyes and, in the faint light of pre-dawn, saw Buford fuming atop his saddle.
“Well it’s too late now,” said Connor. “Throwing daggers ain’t gonna do nothing. Come on, let’s find a saw.”
Their going was slow due to the fact that Buford couldn't ride at a gallop. He could barely let the quarter horse enter into a trot without risking a spill into the mud. He bounced along sideways, facing east, and Connor smartly rode his horse on Buford’s backside where his brother’s snarled grimace couldn’t reach him.
In a low-set valley strung with crooked streams they found the ranch. The barn was built off by itself. By the looks of it, it had seen better days. Its roof sagged inward and the paint had long since peeled away. Long and narrow, it had once sported wide double doors at each end. But that was a different time. The doors were there no more. In their place were nothing but giant gaping holes through which daylight attempted to reach. Yet even with such open spaces, the interior of the barn was dark.
The Bells rode straight to it. They hopped off their horses, Buford with assistance, and left the animals to graze outside.
In the musty interior of the old barn they split up. Neither Connor nor Buford gave instructions; they all knew what they were looking for. They perused the farm equipment hanging on the walls; hammers and crowbars and lengths of string. There were axes and splitters leaned on their handles, a rusted drag with broken tines, several broken stools, chains, wheelbarrows, shovels, hoes and scythes. Most of it was covered with hay, and all of it coated under a layer of dust.
“What about the house?” came Floyd’s voice in the dark.
“What about it?” said Buford.
“There might be folks in there.”
“Go stand outside then,” said Buford. “Anybody comes from the house, shoot ‘em.”
Floyd trudged out of the dark and leaned against the barn frame with his face in the sun. Connor wished he’d thought to volunteer first. The smell inside the barn was stale and reminiscent of cat piss. Even as he thought it, his hands ran over something furry sitting on the workbench. A cat snarled and took a swipe at him.
“Jesus,” he jerked his hand back.
“Is someone going to find a goddamn saw or not?” said Buford.
“Hey, I got something here,” John Boy answered. He stepped into the light near the open end of the barn and wiggled a hacksaw.
“That’ll do it,” said Buford. “Drag one of them stools over here and get to sawing.”
John Boy tried his hand first. He set the blade over one of the metal links in Buford’s manacles. Buford took the slack out by stretching his wrists over the stool. John Boy eased the blade forward and back, waiting for the teeth to bite. It took fifteen minutes to get any sort of groove to appear, at which point John Boy was sweating through his shirt and wiping perspiration from his eyes. “Blade’s dull,�
�� he said.
“Give it here,” said Connor. He took the wet hacksaw handle from John Boy and ran the blade back and forth over the groove. His brothers watched. A weak whine of metal on metal tweaked in measured beats in rhythm with the saw. After a good while at this he pulled the blade away and rubbed his shoulder. “It’s gonna take all day,” he said. “And we still got the leg irons.”
“Don’t stand there bellyaching,” said Buford. “Delmar, take that saw. Put some goddamn muscle into it.”
They took turns, one after the other, Buford impatient on the other side of the stool. The sun arched over the barn. It turned the shadows over. In the shade the horses grazed.
Two hours later, just as the hand manacles were nearly cut through, Floyd jumped through the open doorway. “Hey, they’s coming!”
“Who?” said Connor.
“Balum and them.”
“Shit,” said Buford.
“What do we do?” said Floyd.
“Well don’t stand out there and get shot. Get in here and keep sawing. No one’s leaving until these goddamn leg irons are off.”
Connor scurried to the empty door frame and stuck his head outside. Walking their horses into the valley were three men, one white, one black, one indian. All armed. Connor felt his legs go hollow. He fought the feeling-- there was no reason to be scared. It was five on three, and they had the protection of the barn. He repeated this to himself, but it didn’t help the feeling in his legs. The truth was, they were pinned down, and he knew it as well as anyone else.
23
Balum stood in the grass with the roan between himself and the barn. They’d crossed the last of the few shallow streams in the valley, and between themselves and where the Bell brothers hid was nothing but green grass and mud.
“I can’t figure out if they’re smart,” said Joe beside him, “or dumb as rocks.”
“How’s that?” said Balum.
“Pretending to be sheriff, now that was shrewd. It took brains. Guts too. But then they missed the train. They didn’t think about Buford’s chains, and just look at their horses-- why would they leave them outside?”
Shotgun Riders Page 15