by Mike Kearby
Charlie slid his hand toward his holster.
“You can’t fight fair, because deep down you’re a coward,” Pure said in a rising voice.
Charlie dug his heels into the floor. “That’s enough of it, Reston,” he growled.
“What’d you say, Reston?” Ben screamed. “Did you call us cowards?”
“I said anybody goes by the name Gunn is a low-down, thieving, rustling coward.”
Charlie squirmed from foot-to-foot. His face turned into a distorted mask. “I’ve had enough of you, Mister high and mighty, Pure Reston!” he shouted and yanked his Colt free.
Pure smiled, bent his knees, and in a lowered crouch, yanked his Colt to a firing position.
Enraged at Pure’s crouch, Charlie aimed his gun at the -R boss and hollered, “Stand where I can take a good shot, you weasly coyote!”
Pure didn’t flinch. With calm and deliberate spirit, he leaned forward and extended the pistol toward his target. The Peacemaker was solid in his grip. “You smell like a dead man, Charlie,” he uttered with great composure.
A long exasperated silence followed, and then an enraged yell as Charlie squeezed his trigger and re-cocked the hammer in rapid succession.
The Exchange erupted in gunfire. The bartender dropped behind the bar cussing loudly.
Two shots rang out seconds apart from each other after Charlie’s initial volley.
Charlie Gunn frowned and slumped ahead on wobbly legs. He pressed his left hand against two bullet holes in his chest. His Colt fired twice into the Exchange floor.
Ben glanced at his brother, issued a blood-curdling scream, and then turned and began firing at Pure.
Pure rose out of his crouch and pivoted toward Ben just as a shot whistled by his waist.
The whole of the Exchange suddenly exploded in a panic of cursing and screaming.
Ben shouted out, “Damned you, Pure!” A flash of lightning lit-up the barrel of his Colt. “I’ll kill you for that!”
A stinging sensation whipped across Pure’s thigh. His leg went slack and then numb. He winced and hurriedly returned Ben’s fire. His first bullet sailed over the Gunn brother’s shoulder. The second hit the far wall of the Exchange.
Ben squatted. His left hand waved at the smoke-filled room while he fired once more in Pure’s direction.
Pure sent two more errant shots Ben’s way.
Stirred to enter the fray, Frank Coe stepped toward Pure and filled his hand with killing steel. “Reston,” he uttered calmly and raised the gun to shoulder level.
Seeing Coe’s play, July straightened and bellowed out, “Behind you, Coe!”
The gunman hesitated briefly, dipped his shoulders, and then wheeled toward the voice, his gun firing.
July raised his pistol, thumbing the hammer and squeezing the trigger on the way up. The gun bucked once, carrying July’s shoulder upward.
Coe dropped in a heap, dead.
The Exchange turned into a stampede of frightened humans, waving hands and shuffling feet.
July rushed over to the downed gunman. A single bullet hole dotted Coe’s forehead. His expression was locked forever in a mask of disbelief.
Pure fearlessly limped toward Ben. He held the Colt in his left hand with the gate open. Ejected shell casings fell at his feet as he reloaded with each step.
Ben flashed a crazy smile. “You’ve done yourself in now, Pure!” he hollered and thumbed back his gun’s hammer.
“Maybe.”
“You’ll pay for Charlie!” Ben cried and pulled the Colt’s trigger. The gun clicked blankly.
Pure glared straight through Ben’s soul. “You’re out of cartridges, Ben,” he whispered in a deliberate, unemotional utterance. “I counted them. You should have as well; ‘cause now you’re as dead a man as your brother.”
Ben swore loudly and fumbled to pull cartridges from his belt while watching Pure’s approach.
Pure moved within ten feet and snapped the loading gate on his Peacemaker shut.
The sound of the gate snapping into place brought Ben’s gaze up. Re-load cartridges fell from his right hand and bounced around his feet. His face trembled in fear.
July raced for Pure’s side.
Pure kept his advance, now muttering and repeating, “La muerte de vaca.”
Ben’s expression turned to frightened incredulity.
Pure’s gun moved to shooting height. “This here’s for the kid,” he mumbled as the Colt erupted in fire and smoke.
Ben grabbed his left shoulder and moaned. Blood seeped through his shirt.
Pure’s Colt bucked again. “And this is for Buckshot.”
Ben’s knees collapsed under him. A dark liquid seeped from his right thigh. “Damn you, Reston!” he cried out, pained.
Pure stood over the down man. His glare was dispassionate and icy. He aimed the gun at a spot directly between Ben’s eyes. “Hell’s riding for you at a full gallop, Ben.”
Ben’s leg muscles trembled wildly, causing his spurs to jingle unnaturally. “Don’t kill me like this,” he cried.
“Pure,” July called out in a whisper and shook his head no. Then softer, “Don’t do it this way.”
Pure glanced over to July and flashed a grimace.
July dragged his tongue across his lips. “He’s empty.”
Pure paused briefly, blinked twice, and then looked down at the writhing figure of Ben Gunn.
“Don’t, Reston,” Ben said and cowered behind raised hands.
Pure’s mouth curled back in a snarl at the man. Don’t? He mouthed, confused at the Gunn brother’s plea, then pushed the Peacemaker closer to the man’s head. “Don’t?”
“Please,” Ben sobbed.
Pure’s hand shook in rage. “Please?”
Ben glanced over his raised hands.
“Did Isa ask for mercy, Ben?”
Ben glanced back at the floor. “I don’t know, Pure. I don’t know.”
“Well, I know, Ben. He didn’t. Restons don’t beg cowardly-like.”
Ben sniffled. “Whataya want me to say? Tell me, and I’ll say it.”
Pure’s face turned cold. “I don’t want you to say anything, Ben. I’ll do the saying, and what I say is this, this is for my brother, Isa,” he hissed, and cocked the Colt’s hammer once more.
“Pure,” July pleaded. “Think about what you’re doing.”
Ignoring his friend, Pure groaned, loud, guttural, exasperated that this thing, this killing, could not be stopped now, and then slowly squeezed the Peacemaker’s trigger.
Ben fell back in an awkward and inglorious pose.
Unable to look away, Pure watched the rustler’s muscles tremble in death. He pushed the Colt back into his holster and curled his top lip in disgust.
July sidled next to Pure.
Pure didn’t acknowledge his friend and instead tapped Ben’s foot with the toe of his boot. “Hell’s come, Ben,” he said. “Hell’s come and won’t be denied.”
Fifteen
August 1878 - The Flat, Texas
July held Pure under both arms and slowly lowered the -R boss to the floor of the Exchange. “You okay?” he asked.
Pure nodded and glanced down at his thigh. Ben’s bullet had ripped opened a three-inch-wide gash in his upper thigh. “I was lucky,” he said. “The bullet gouged me a ’might, but it only creased the outside of my leg.”
The sound of excited Exchange customers milling back into the bar caught July’s attention. “Well, we need a doctor to look at that wound, and then we need to skedaddle out of here.”
Pure lifted his chin at the gawking on-lookers gathering around the dead men. “You reckon anyone of this bunch will vouch for us?”
July looked back and shrugged. “Hard to say,” he muttered. He pulled his bandanna from around his neck and circled Pure’s leg with the cloth, tying it tight just above the gunshot wound. “Right now, I’m more concerned with stopping this bleeding.”
Pure glanced down his leg. “Yeah, well I’m concerned w
ith Paint alone in Dodge City with Nate Gunn on his trail.”
July patted Pure’s shoulder. “He’s not alone. There are seven -R hands with him. He’ll be just fine,” he offered with an optimistic tone. “Besides, if we headed out right now, it would still take a full week of hard riding to get there.”
From out of the crowd, the bartender’s voice broke the morbid silence. “I told you! I warned you to take this outside!” he bawled and approached Pure and July brandishing the double-barrelled shotgun. “Now you’re both going to deal with me.”
July studied his bandaging job, then straightened, and with perfect timing jerked the shotgun from the man’s hands. July towered over the startled bartender. “You’re not going to do anything!” he snarled. “Except find a doctor and get him over here.”
The bartender gulped hard and froze in place, staring back at his gun in July’s hands.
“Now!” July barked.
The bartender nodded and hurried around July in a rush for the door.
“He sure won’t head for the doc’s office,” Pure said.
“Probably not,” July allowed. He leaned down bore a hard gaze straight into Pure’s eyes. “How many of these Gunns are you aiming to kill?”
Pure twisted his head sideways and looked up at his ranch foreman, grim-faced. “This isn’t your fight, July. It’s mine, and I don’t expect you understand the why of it or to stay with me.”
“That’s not what I asked?” July said softly and rested his palm on Pure’s shoulder. “And I don’t figure to back away now.”
Pure nodded. “I know you wouldn’t,” he said.
July frowned. “Then why’d you even ask?”
“I wanted to give you a way out seeing how this thing with the Gunn’s can only trail in one direction.”
“So how far are you willing to take this thing?”
Pure extended a hand and lifted his chin at July.
The ranch foreman extended a massive hand toward Pure, locked palms, and gently pulled his boss and brother to his feet. A distant twilight shone in Pure’s eyes.
Pure wobbled unsteady for several seconds and then regaining his equilibrium looked into July’s waiting face. “Before C.A. moved us to Texas, back when I was six or seven years-old, there was a she panther killing livestock on our land in Kentucky. One fall morning, C.A. scooped me out of bed and told me we were going to hunt that old girl and kill her, no matter how long it took. As we rode up into the hills, he said that once a cat started killing horses and cattle it would never stop.”
July listened intently; suddenly aware that Pure’s story was more than just a fanciful reminiscence.
“It took us a week to track her back to her den, and while we waited for her return from a night of hunting, we heard the distinct cries of two cubs inside. I told C.A. we couldn’t kill her on account of the cubs. But the old man told me firmly that those cubs would inherit her killing instinct for livestock.”
July twisted his mouth in anticipation.
“She showed up right at sunrise, and as she started to enter the den, C.A. shot her and broke her spine. To this day, I can still hear that mother’s cries. But C.A. seemed immune to her wailing. He just stood and told me to get the horses. That we were going home. And despite my begging, he refused to waste another bullet on her. Don’t ever have sympathy for a killer, son, he lectured me, it’s best to get them out of civil society in any manner possible.”
“What about the cubs?” I cried.
“They’ll die soon enough,” he answered, “especially, without her to support them.”
July wiped his forehead and blinked rapidly.
Pure’s face tightened. “We’re going to ride to Dodge City and make sure Paint has fared well. And then we’re riding back to McMullen County.”
July clamped his jaw firmly. His teeth ground against one another.
“I’m going to remove that panther, E.B. Gunn, from civil society just like C.A. taught me.”
July exhaled in a loud whoosh of breath.
“And then I aim to exterminate all of the cubs,” Pure said, knowing that the Gunn offspring had inherited their father’s killing ways.
Pure turned and gazed at the men crowding the Exchange doorway, then looked back at July. A stunned look of disbelief shone in his friend’s eyes. Pure studied July’s expression intently. Speechless, the ranch foreman’s face articulated a veiled hint of doubt and a fair amount of shock at Pure’s declaration.
“You think the law will allow us to just swoop down on every Gunn in McMullen County?”
Pure’s pulse pounded in his neck. He tossed a hard glance over at Ben Gunn’s still corpse. “Here’s the thing,” he rasped. “If there was any sort of workable law in McMullen County, then we wouldn’t have had to bury Buckshot, the kid, and my youngest brother. Damn it, July, E.B. Gunn has been pushing for this since C.A. died, and sitting still won’t stop that old man from hunting and killing us to a man!”
July glanced down at his feet, rocked from heel to toe, and in a half whisper said, “Then let’s do what we have to do.”
Pure clenched his jaw and nodded.
“But, Pure,” July said in a warning voice. “I won’t spend the rest of my life chasing this thing.”
Pure’s eyes frowned. He shook his head gravely. “Nor I.”
“You’re sure this is the road you want to ride? You won’t be able to change horse mid-stream, you know.”
Pure glanced about the floor of the Exchange. He nodded at the bodies of Charlie and Ben Gunn.
“I understand about these two,” he said. “But what about when the Gunns kill more of us?”
Pure frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean hell’s come alright, but it never makes a distinction as to who it comes for.”
Pure stared at the floor, thinking.
Pure continued to shuffle his boots, heel-to-toe.
“You’ve uncorked the bottle now for sure.”
Pure exhaled. “I know that.”
“So, is this what you want?”
“It’s not about what I want, July. It’s more about what I have to do.”
Grim, July stopped his fidgeting. “So, let’s get on the trail,” he uttered. “And get this job, this thing, this murderous killing, finished.”
An angry Deputy Sheriff Jim Draper walked past the laid out corpses of Charlie and Ben Gunn and Frank Coe on the street outside the Cattle Exchange. “This better be good,” he said. “I was sitting with a full house back there.”
The Exchange bartender continued to give his animated account of the gun fight as Draper barged into the saloon. Seeing Pure and July, Draper raised a hand to quiet the rapid-talking bartender. “Enough,” he said, agitated. He shook his head at the -R cowpunchers in disbelief that the pair could have inflicted such damage. “You boys do all of that?” he asked and nodded outside.
“Sheriff,” Pure started.
“Deputy,” Draper corrected.
Pure nodded and began again, “Deputy, two of those men outside are the Gunn brothers from South Texas.”
Draper rubbed his jaw. He glanced back through the open doorway and across the street to where he was playing cards only minutes earlier. “And you obviously had a beef with them.”
Pure filled his chest with a deep breath and inhaled through his nose. “They killed two of my ranch hands and stole thirty head of livestock from me.”
Draper tilted his hat back. “You got proof of any of that?”
Pure moved closer to the deputy. “They also shot and killed my youngest brother a week ago.”
Draper glanced over at July and then seemingly chafed at Pure’s accusations, said, “Yeah, well I still need some sort of proof, cowboy.”
Pure rolled his gum forward in his mouth and moved nose-to-nose with the deputy. He spoke in a low growl, “They tied him behind his horse and ran the horse through a herd of cattle we were driving to Dodge City.”
July nodded his head in agreement.
Draper inhaled and glanced back at the saloon across the street. “I’ll need to ask a few questions from witnesses to make sure this thing went how you said and that you boys didn’t draw on them first.”
The bartender stared at Draper in disbelief. “Jim, you ain’t letting this pair go?”
July narrowed his eyes and made a face at the bartender.
Dumfounded, the bartender stepped back slightly. He glanced at July’s Colt, then wheeled, and, muttering to himself, walked back to the bar.
“What about a doctor?” July asked the deputy.
“Down the street.”
Pure backed away from Draper and said, “Much obliged, Deputy. And don’t worry, we’ll be heading north as soon as you complete your investigation.”
“Yeah,” Draper exhaled and turned to leave. “Just make sure you two don’t head north until I say so.”
“Deputy?” July called out.
Draper looked back with raised eyebrows.
“Who was this Frank Coe fellow?”
Draper’s mouth twisted into a half smile. “Frank Coe?”
July glanced at Pure and shrugged.
Draper rubbed his chin. “He was a shootist extraordinaire in these parts.”
July mumbled, “Hmmmph.”
“Not anymore it appears,” Pure said.
Draper dragged his hand across his chin and tilted his head. “Yeah, well…that may be, but he had friends here.”
Pure pushed his eyebrows together. “Anyone we should know about?”
Draper’s voice got softer. “If you boys end up heading north, you’ll ride right through his employer’s ranch.”
Pure turned his head slightly and chewed his gum rapidly between his front teeth. “And who would that be?”
Draper lifted his brow and frowned. “That would be Cap Millett, and I don’t think he or his boys will be too happy with you cowpunchers.”
“Why’s that? The fight was fair,” Pure said.
Draper shrugged. “Fair or not, you boys killed Cap Millett’s number one gun hand.”
Journal Entry - After the gun fight at the Cattle Exchange, we got Pure’s leg doctored and later that afternoon Deputy Draper told us we were free to go. I believe we were mounted and riding out of The Flat before the deputy even finished speaking. The Flat, now she was a lawless burg filled with a vile population. I was glad to leave that August afternoon and to this very day have never rode close to her again. Pure and me spurred our ponies north as worry for Paint’s safety and Nate Gunn’s reputation pained us both. About an hour or so before sunset we crossed a wide-open prairie filled with grazing beeves carrying all kinds of brands on their hides. Sitting horseback in the middle of that prairie was Cap Millett and seven of his ranch “hands.” But right away, I noticed these weren’t your average cowpunchers. Each man in Cap’s crew wore two-gun holsters, something that in all my life, I never saw a real cowboy do. Now Cap was a pleasant enough fellow, but after the welcome and niceties, he asked straight out if we were the cowpokes who killed Frank Coe. And Pure, being Pure, well he rose up tall in the saddle, looked Cap square in the eye, and said that we were, but that we had only gone to settle a score with Charlie and Ben Gunn. Cap never blinked and asked Pure what killing offence the Gunn brothers had perpetrated upon him. Pure said they killed three of his hands, including his youngest brother. Cap nodded his head at that and said, “That sounds like the pair.” Pure nodded and added that we didn’t know Coe and wasn’t expecting him to join in the fray, but he did, and his play wasn’t as fast as he promised. Now, I’ll tell you what, that was a gutsy move by Pure, for all of Cap’s gun hands twisted in their saddles at his pronouncement of Coe’s draw speed. Then Pure clicked his pony up close to Cap just as pretty as you please and in a whisper of a voice said that he would understand if Cap wanted to avenge Coe’s perceived wrong. I remember Cap took a hard swallow at Pure’s frankness. Pure went on, adding that he followed the code and understood anyone else who did the same. But if Cap decided on gunplay to right the tally, it wouldn’t be just Pure and I who died on the Millett ranch land that day. Well, that paled Cap’s expression, and I watched the old ranchman lean in close to Pure and whisper a few words. Pure nodded, whispered back, and then glanced back at me. It was then that Cap gave me a going over with a frightful stare. It was a hard look that I won’t ever forget, and at that point I was plenty worried about leaving that prairie upright. But after a second or two, Pure kneed his piebald and said, “Let’s go, July. Cap has graciously allowed us safe passage across his land.” It wasn’t until we crossed the Red River that Pure told me what he had whispered to Cap. “I told him it was you who shot Frank Coe straight between the eyes with one shot even though Coe had the bulge on you. And that before we even left The Flat, you swore, if a fight started on Millett land, you’d to do the same to the man who hired Coe in the first place.” Later, Pure finished the story, telling me, “To let Cap save face in front of his men, I gave him the stolen beeves that Charlie and Ben brought to him.” And I remember thinking how smart a play that was by Pure. But Pure always studied his situation and was never ruffled in the heat of things. I had a good laugh thinking back to Cap’s glare at me. Pure wouldn’t have any of it though. And best I can recall it was the last time I laughed on the ride toward Dodge City and the ordeal that followed.