Silver Moon

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Marshal?”

  I opened my vest and showed him the badge that I had pinned inside.

  “You’re the snake-shooter,” he said. “I heard about it.”

  “Couple of lucky shots.”

  He nodded. We’d both said enough on that subject. “Marshal, you’ll find Barnes working a draw maybe three miles northeast. It’s a tangle of scrub brush, and there’s a least a dozen of the wildest cattle of the bunch holed out there.”

  “Obliged,” I said.

  “He’s a redhead,” the foreman said. “Can’t miss him. Just a kid with peachfuzz.”

  I turned my horse, then looked back over my shoulder at the foreman. “I ain’t generally a prying man,” I said. “But it is part of wearing this badge. This Clayton Barnes, would he deal from the bottom of the deck?”

  “Don’t think so,” the foreman said. “Truth is, he ain’t sharp enough. Good man, hard working. Honest. But not the sharpest.”

  “Again,” I said, “Obliged. Any of your boys ever whoop it up good in Laramie, I’ll see they get a fair shake.”

  The foreman tipped his hat, and returned to surveying his herd.

  That three mile ride took longer than I’d expected, as the country got a little wilder, the gulleys a little deeper, and the brush a little thicker. I could see how it’d take considerable work to move cattle from this area of the range.

  A couple of times my horse snorted, and turned its ears in different directions, but it didn’t alarm me. The horse tethered behind wasn’t showingdistress. We were far from Sioux country, and any animals large enough to be danger would have long since cleared the noise of this part of the plains.

  A half hour later, I regretted my lack of caution.

  I’d hallyhooed Clayton Barnes to get his attention where he was picking his horse along the wide bottom of a dry creek bed. And just as I rode up, someone shot me out of my saddle.

  Chapter 22

  I’d been shot before, but then I’d seen the revolver and knew it was coming. The bullet had spun me, merely punched through the light flesh of my arm, then come and gone to leave a burning sensation through the severed nerves and also a hole that eventually leaked enough blood to put me in major trouble.

  But when that bullet had hit, I’d known what was happening.

  This time, it was an overwhelming shock, much of that shock a result of total bewilderment at the suddenness of events that my mind could not grasp.

  I had ridden to within maybe ten feet of Clayton Barnes where he sat on his motionless horse waiting for me. I drew a breath to say hello to Clayton Barnes but got no farther with my greeting.

  Someone unseen slammed a fence post across the side of my thigh, rocking me with the impact. Before I’d managed to sort through this surprise, I felt the pain of shredded muscle, as if a spike in that fence post were ripping deep into the front of my thigh. Before I could look down to puzzle this, my horse began to rear in panic. Even as I fought to stay in the saddle on a horse pawing air high with its front hooves, a short burst of rolling thunder echoed through the draw.

  I finally realized I’d been shot in my left leg.

  My horse dropped to all fours, and I clutched at my thigh with a glance over at Clayton Barnes to see if he shared my disbelief. That glance showed me the face of a boy, eyes wide, mouth gaping as he too tried to fit together the sights and sounds of a man shot without warning from hidden ambush.

  Before either of us could react, dust kicked from Clayton’s shirt. Chest high, centered near his buttons. A gush of red filled the hole in the fabric. Another peal of rolling thunder.

  He began to tumble from the saddle.

  A zinging whine past my ear. Delayed thunder again.

  I realized I was a target still high and visible atop my horse. I pushed off and dove into the soft sand, letting myself tumble away from the dancing of both my horses’ hooves.

  A geyser of sand inches from my head. Then that echoing thunder.

  I was exposed in this dry creek bed. No boulders. No trees. Just sand and tufts of grass.

  I rolled twice more, until my horse was nearly above me, screaming its panic. The horse tethered behind was pulling against its rope in equal panic. For that moment, as each horse pulled against the other, I had a screen between me and the unseen sniper.

  I tried to stand to jump for my horse, maybe clutch its neck and hold on long enough for it to gallop to the gulley walls just past some cottonwoods. But I crumpled at half stride. My leg had collapsed.

  Another zinging whine. That dreaded thunder.

  Barnes was dangling from his horse, his left boot caught in a stirrup, his head and shoulders dragging on the ground. If that horse bolted, he’d be pounded to mash. If he was dead already, what happened next to his body wouldn’t matter anyway. But it did matter to me that his horse stay with us.

  From where I had fallen, I reached down to my right hip, drew the Colt and fired upward.

  It did not need to be a lucky shot, nor skillful. Clayton and his horse were so close they were blocking me from the sun, and my bullet hit exactly where I’d aimed; just beneath the horse’s jaw, driving the led upward into its skull. Almost gently, the horse went to its knees, and in a slow sway, fell to its side.

  I scrabbled past Barnes, and took cover behind the fallen horse.

  In that time lapse, both my horses finally turned in the same direction. The extra noise and smell of blood only served to upset them more, and both dropped their heads and began to gallop.

  It left me alone with a dead horse, and probably a dead man, and I was unable to move to other shelter, even if my leg would have permitted such action.

  A thud. Then that crack of thunder. A bullet had pounded into the horse’s ribs. On my stomach now, and without rising, I reached back and tried to pull Barnes to me in the shadow of the horse’s body.

  Wasted effort. I could not get enough leverage without exposing myself to the rifle fire. Clayton’s body was dead weight.

  Another shot. The shooter had raised his sights to miss the horse, and as my toes were turned downward into the sand, the bullet tore the heel off my boot.

  Bad as the situation was, it could have been worse. The horse could have fallen onto the other side and buried the scabbard and stock of Clayton’s rifle. Instead, the scabbard was on the upper side of the dead horse’s ribs, and I could pull it loose with little risk to myself.

  I levered a shell into position and propped the rifle over top of the horse’s ribs.

  Without lifting myself to aim, I fired.

  It was a blind shot, pointed vaguely in the direction where I’d guessed the sniper might be, and I expected no results. I did, however, know it would notify to our attacker that I was armed, ready and not entirely helpess. With luck, it would keep him from riding in.

  It discouraged him so much that he waited at least five seconds before firing again. And again. The two shots hit the dead horse with enough force that I could feel the impact from where my shoulder was pressed against its hide.

  I’d been waiting for these shots. And I’d counted. The delay between impact and sound reaching my ears had been a one-count.

  I levered another shell into the rifle.

  One second?

  The shooter was definitly not within pistol range. If I dared peek, I’d have to search the edges of the bank where I’d descended earlier to greet Barnes.

  I squeezed off a hurried shot, aimed more to the top of the ridge, then ducked again.

  Two shots in return. One hit the horse; the other passed over my head with that unmistakable careening whine that belongs only to a bullet.

  I took comfort in the shooter’s ability to rapid fire. It meant that whoever was firing was using a repeating rifle, a lighter one without the knockdown power of the single-shot buffalo guns that could kill a two-thousand pound beast over a half mile away. The comfort was that I might still have a leg when all this finished, for a buffalo gun would have torn a hole big enough to fill
with my fist.

  I levered again. Fired again. Ducked again.

  Silence in return.

  Was the shooter moving in? If so, I was at a disadvantage. No place to go. And with this dead horse in plain sight of the sniper. He could work around, shoot from a different angle. And I probably wouldn’t even have the warning of sound to tell me that another bullet had punched its way into my body. Yet if I lifted my head to scan for movement, I was a dead man too. The sniper had shown chilling accuracy for someone with a light rifle at least a couple of hundred yards away. I did what I could. Nothing.

  My heartbeat seemed to fill my ears, so I thought I misheard the drumming of horse’s hooves. But when I risked another quick glance, I saw a line of dust rising from where the sniper had probably been firing.

  A bluff to get me to think he’d left?

  Only, I told myself, if he had two horses and could afford to lose one to finish this.

  And if he had left, why? My last shot had told him I was still alive, and it didn’t take much savvy to realize he did want me dead.

  Probably not a bluff, I decided to comfort myself with the thought. But how long could I wait to decide?

  I waited anyway. That was my only choice.

  My leg began to throb. I allowed myself to look down. Blood welled from two holes in my jeans. The bullet had entered and exited the muscle near the top of my thigh.

  I curled into a ball, and lay on my side, so that I remained protected by the dead horse. I pulled at my belt, and finally slid it loose. I cinched the belt above the bullet holes. Tied it as tight as I could. Anything to stop as much bleeding as possible.

  No shots. No sounds.

  Maybe he had left.

  Now that time had slowed again and the fight heat was gone, my leg began to make itself felt. The throbs rocked me.

  No shots. No sounds.

  Dizziness began to replace the throbbing, began to blur my vision.

  I fought the waves of darkness, but they whispered to me, promised me peace, and a final swell took me away.

  Chapter 23

  I woke cussing and screaming at the panther that clawed at my leg. Trouble was, I couldn’t even swing at it or grab its neck to pull it away.

  It took a half second of focus to realize that the shadowy figure crouched over my lower body was not a panther, but Doc Harper, lit from behind by the oil lamps on the shelves of his office wall.

  He straightened. “Don’t fight it, Sam. I’ve got you tied down.”

  Hands, arms, legs and feet. Even my head was strapped onto the low table that only days before I’d so gently placed Betty in her gingham dress.

  Doc pressed something into my leg. I found myself arched in agony, a direct response to the liquid fire that tore into my muscle. The smell of freshly branded hide filled my nostrils.

  He stepped back. From what I could see without moving my head, he held a long, thin bar. Glowing red at one end. The end he’d pulled from my leg.

  It took effort, but I managed to fill my lungs with air. “You lop-eared, lantern-jawed, half-bred pox-eaten dog, if you do that again, I’ll —”

  He shook his head at me. Stepped forward. The fire ripped through my leg again, a pain so fierce I couldn’t even scream.

  He stepped back again. It took me even longer to find air. “Mangy, skunk-loving, scabby flea-infested —”

  Doc grabbed a rag, and shoved it in my mouth.

  “Civil war,” he said as walked from the office into his waiting room. Seconds later, he walked back into the office. His hand was behind his back, but it didn’t fool me. I’d heard the banging of his potbelly stove lid. He’d grabbed another iron.

  “That’s right. The War between the States,” he said as if he hadn’t interrupted himself and as if my muffled protests into the rag were polite requests for him to continue. “Back then, a leg like this would only take me forty-five seconds. The time it took for two orderlies to put you on the table, for me to saw through, for the leg to hit the ground, and for the orderlies to move you to a bed where they’d bandage the stump. With no guarantees that you’d live for the price you just paid. We didn’t have time for these niceties back then. No sir. Bullet in the leg almost always meant get rid of the leg. Count yourself fortunate.”

  He bent over my leg to approach it from the other side with a iron glowing red hot and he used it to ram more fire into me. I screamed anger into the rag. I’d never felt pain so bad and I didn’t care how well intentioned Doc might be or how fortunate it was that he didn’t have a bloodied hacksaw in his hand.

  “If it’s a consolation,” Doc said, “this might be all it takes to keep the gangrene away. Any luck, you’ll be walking with a cane tomorrow.”

  He brought an oil lamp close to my leg, and examined my exposed thigh in its yellow light. Doc clucked a few times, and nodded to himself, then bandaged me with his ususal efficiency.

  “I’ll cut you loose, now,” he said.

  He pulled the rag from my mouth, but I was soaked with my sweat, too spent to continue my diatribe. The best I could do was flex my wrists and hands in their new freedom as he wrapped my leg in bandages.

  That finished, he helped me into a sitting position. My right pant leg had not been touched, but my left pant leg was cut off almost at crotch level, and the bandages were startlingly white against the flesh of my thigh.

  “I’ve got crutches for you,” Doc said. “But don’t stand until you’re ready.”

  I waited until the spots stopped swimming in my eyes. By then, Doc had returned with the crutches and a flask of water. I gulped with greed.

  When I nodded, Doc took the flask and placed the crutches in front of me. As I leaned onto them, Doc kept a careful guiding hand on my elbow.

  He noticed I was shivering.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  I did, at a turtle’s pace. It had been my left boot with the heel shot away, leaving me to hobble on a whole boot on my right foot. Small mercy.

  I followed Doc out of the office, through the waiting room, and down the hallway to another door, this one locked.

  I leaned forward on my crutches and panted as Doc fumbled with the key.

  I followed him inside and waited in the darkness.

  Doc scratched a match into flame and lit an oil lamp. As its light grew, I saw that this was his living quarters. Throw rug in the middle. A couple of paintings that showed no detail in the dim light. Book shelves along two of the walls. A small writing desk. And a large, stuffed armchair.

  Doc pointed me to the chair.

  I eased forward, and sank in it. My shivers didn’t stop.

  Doc returned from another room with a straight-back chair in one hand, a blanket in the other.

  He tossed the blanket at me. “You can go ahead and wrap yourself,” he said. “I’d hate you to get the idea I care.”

  He set the chair nearby, and slowly lowered himself into it.

  “Long day,” I said. My voice croaked. I still shivered beneath the blanket.

  “Long day,” he agreed.

  “Whiskey’d be nice.” I said.

  “Yup,” he said. But he made no move to get some, so I let that idea slide.

  “Who found me?”

  “Bar X Bar boys.” Doc replied. “They’d heard the shots. Knew it was trouble. Said it sounded like a range war.”

  “It was.”

  “Gathered that. The kid was dead by the time they got there.” Doc’s voice was sad.

  We both stayed with our thoughts on that. A couple minutes passed before Doc spoke again. His voice was sad, but not empty sad, as if he were trying to shake us both from our mood.

  “You’re a fickle man,” he told me.

  “Fickle?”

  “When you outgunned Harrison a few months back, and tried to outrun the posse, I was the one that patched your arm.”

  That escape attempt had failed, because I’d passed out. I’d woken in a jail cell, arm in a sling, weak, and facing the noose. Back then,
of course, I wouldn’t have known who’d done the doctoring, and till now I’d not given it much thought. Not with all what had happened after. It made sense, of course, that it had been Doc who’d fixed me.

  “I’ll thank you for it now,” I said. “But what’s my arm have to do with fickle?”

  Doc chuckled softly. “Twice I’ve had occasion to observe that you mumble a lot when you’re unconscious.”

  “Doc…”

  “Few months back, only one word came out that made sense. Clara, Clara, Clara. This time round, you kept calling out Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca. That strikes me as fickle enough.”

  “If you’re asking, Doc, I’ll explain. But not tonight. How’s that?”

  “That’s probably the same answer I’d have given had you asked me about Sarah. And from that book you went through, I’ve wondered if you’d ever get around to it.”

  He waved away my reply. “So few people in this town care for books, that’s why I was able to spot how the dust had been disturbed. Fact is, I took your curiousity in book learning as a good sign. And your discretion as a better one.”

  We lapsed into another friendly silence. My shivering lessened and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. I could tell that Doc keep his living quarters as neat as his office.

  “Pondering on the shooter?” Doc eventually asked.

  “Yup. I can’t believe its unrelated to the bank vault murders. If that’s so, I’m just thinking it means somewhere, somehow, I pulled on a bear’s tail without knowing it.”

  Doc nodded. “Like someone thinks you’re close to finding the truth.”

  “Something like that. What’s frustrating is I don’t even know enough to know when I pulled on the bear’s tail.”

  “Run through the list of where you asked questions.”

  “Been doing it. Eleanor Ford. Helen Nichols. You. Jake Wilson. Crawford. That’s it.” I shook my head. “No, that’s not it. Emma Springer.”

  “She’s a tough one,” Doc said. “Outlived a husband and two sons. And will probably outlive her next husband if she ever marries again.”

  “I told her you were sweet on her, Doc. Her eyes lit right up.”