Deserter

by Paul Bagdon

  The scene was chaos: The sheriff’s office was afire and the jail area was gone—disappeared, transformed into a low pile of smashed bricks, broken boards, and twisted steel bars. The front of the office remained standing, but perilously so—the whole of it listing back toward where the jail had been. The saloon had emptied and men and women clogged the street. Two men dragged a man—or a body—out of the front door.

  Mare, a length of broken hitching rail flailing from the end of her reins, reared again, eyes wild, chest glistening with panic sweat. It was the same image Jake had seen seconds ago, the same one that had brought him back at a gallop. He dragged his mount to a sliding stop, cringing at how roughly he was forced to use the reins. He was off the horse and in front of Mare in a second. In another moment he’d freed her reins and hauled himself onto her back. Mare had every bit of the speed he remembered. Within a few minutes he’d caught up with the Night Riders.

  Sweat glistened on the arms of the blacksmith, even though the fire in his forge scattered red-orange coals and he’d not yet swung his hammer. Jake’s eyes went to the man’s forearms: they looked like they’d been carved from hardwood to represent the strength of some mythical god. “Look away—turn your head,” the smithy said.

  “I’m not afraid you’re going to miss and hit me instead.”

  “That ain’t the point. These hand shackles are made from good steel. When I lay my cold chisel to it, there might could be splinters. Lance your eye like an Injun tossed a spear.”

  Jake turned his head and the blacksmith positioned the sharp edge of his chisel on the thick chain that held the two handcuffs together. He struck twice and each time Jake felt air move against him and heard its quiet whoosh.

  “Now you gotta stand and rest the edge of the parts round your hands on the anvil.” This time Jake felt the cold steel ever so slightly touching the outside of his right hand as the smith positioned his chisel. A single stroke freed Jake’s hand, and a moment later, his left was free also.

  “Thank you,” Jake said. “You’re Burdett, right?”

  “Burgess. Most call me Bull. I didn’t think you got the name when Billy’s pa was introducin’ everyone.” He held out a ham-sized hand. Jake took it and they shook hands. Burgess’s grasp was light—he had no need to prove his strength in a handshake. “Let’s go on in, have a drink with the other boys. One thing, though—I seen you go back and grab up your horse. That took a fair set of nuts, Jake. Seems like you’ll be good for the Riders.”

  Jake nodded.

  Bull’s big face broke into a grin. “You ain’t said you’d join up yet. I know that. Here’s the thing, though: We sprung you outta jail an’ no doubt cheated the hangman. I’d think you kinda owe us some time. No?”

  “That’s the way I see it, Bull. Now—about that drink you mentioned . . .”

  Jake rarely felt short, but walking next to Bull from the barn to the house he was dwarfed by the sheer magnitude—the muscular immensity—of the blacksmith. Bull caught the curiosity in Jake’s eyes. “I’m six feet an’ seven inches tall, an’ the last time I weighed myself on a stock scale at the train yard, I went 331 pounds.” He grinned. “I like to get that outta the way. It’s only natural folks wonder, and it don’t bother me none. Hell, I’m right proud of being what I am.”

  “No reason not to be, Bull. I was you, I’d feel the same way.”

  That seemed to please the big man. His smile broadened. He cuffed Jake lightly on the shoulder, almost knocking him over.

  There were nine men in the living room of the house. Three lanterns provided more than enough light to see the small table in the middle of the room with the half dozen bottles and several glasses on it. The bottles were getting hard use. There was a celebratory giddiness to the conversations that struck Jake as odd. The Night Riders seemed more like a bunch of drunken college boys who’d just come back from their first sally to a whorehouse than a band of vigilantes who’d just destroyed a sheriff’s office, killed a deputy for sure and maybe the sheriff, too, and freed a prisoner, to boot.

  One of the men stood and walked to Jake, extending his hand. “I’m Billy’s father,” he said. “My friends call me Lou. We’re all glad you’re here.”

  Sinclair shook the man’s hand. “Sorry about your son, Mr. Galvin. I didn’t know him a long time, but I liked him.”

  “Everyone did. He was a good, honest man.” Lou motioned toward the table. “Pour yourself a drink and I’ll introduce you around to the Riders and we’ll talk.”

  The whiskey, Jake noticed from its color and its scent, wasn’t the ’shine or rotgut he’d been buying in the towns he crossed. He poured five fingers into a heavy glass and sipped at it. “My name’s Jake,” he said to the room.

  Lou Galvin introduced his colleagues one by one. Each stepped forward to shake Jake’s hand.

  Introductions completed, the men returned to their seats. Jake and Lou Galvin remained standing by the table. “It’s our understanding that Billy told you about what has been going on in Fairplay—about Mott and his crew. It’s also our understanding that you’re a fighting man, Jake.”

  Sinclair kept his face impassive and didn’t respond.

  “You’re wondering how we came to that information,” Galvin said, as a statement rather than a question.“The Night Riders are not without resources. One of our sympathizers is—well—the town drunk, actually. He spends a good deal of his time just outside the jail, in the shade, back by the cell window. He’s always around. He’s like a street dog. No one really notices him. He listens well, and he’s not quite as drunk as he’s perceived to be. He heard conversations between you and my son.”

  “I’m not sure . . .” Jake began.

  Galvin held up his hand. “Where you came from is none of our business. What is our business is that you possess certain skills that we lack. We’re farmers and drovers and store owners and clerks, Jake. Our town has been taken over, our church burned, our women abused, our men shamed. The war has taken up the army and the state law—those we’d logically have gone to for help. There is no help for us, frankly. So we formed the Riders. We’re not a fighting unit, but we’ve made our point to Mott a few times. And,” he added, “we managed to get you out of jail.”

  “There’s that,” Jake said. “Of course, if I’d been in the cell, I’d be dead now.”

  “An oversight in the quantity of dynamite. Nevertheless, you aren’t dead and you’re free. But that incident serves to make my point, Jake. We’re in need of a man who knows things we don’t know, who can direct our efforts.”

  “Mr. Galvin,” Jake said, “I’m not a leader, and if you think I am, you’re mistaken. And it seems to me that you men are doing pretty well just as you are. Even with blowing hell out of the jail you got me out without any casualties, and—”

  “One of our boys was wounded in the foot and we lost a horse,” a heavyset gent interrupted.

  Galvin nodded. “You see—that’s the problem. Our man was shot by another of our men, as was the horse. In the furor out front after the explosion . . . well . . . as I said, we’re not used to armed conflict. There was no real plan beyond getting you out of that cell.” He lifted a bottle from the table and refilled Jake’s glass.

  Galvin met Jake’s eyes. “There’s nothing stopping you from mounting up and riding on. We can’t demand anything from you. But you’ve seen what’s going on in Fairplay. You saw my son hanged. We need your help. It’s as simple as that. What do you say?”

  Jake took a long drink from his glass. I don’t need this. I just left a war. I’d be a fool to jump into the middle of another one. Mott’s men are gunmen, used to fighting, used to killing. These clerks and farmers can’t win this thing. What they’re trying to do is right and just, but good intentions never stopped a bullet. He took another sip of whiskey. His father floated before his eyes, face stern. Damn it, Pa—this is the kind of thing I’m trying to get away from.

  Jake sighed and looked around the room, his glance stopping fo
r a quick moment on each of the men. “I won’t have my men shooting each other or shooting our horses,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.”

  Sleeping in a regular bed—one with a shuck mattress and a blanket that hadn’t covered a horse’s back all day—took some getting used to. Jake was used to the forest sounds of the night, the tiny scufflings in the brush, the cries of owls and other night birds, the quiet whisper of the wind through the trees. Those were gone, replaced by the shifting of horses in their stalls, the yip of a dog, the creaking and settling of the old house in which Jake slept—or attempted to sleep. It was an easy enough transition, though. By his third night of Lou Galvin’s hospitality, Jake slept through the night.

  The Fairplay Night Riders was far from a tight operation. Jake had realized going in that the men knew nothing of combat or surveillance or military-type planning. They were brave and committed, but those two qualities didn’t make a man’s aim any better. And a trained coward was much more likely to survive a battle than a heroic amateur.

  The morning of his fourth day at Lou Galvin’s farm Jake was up and at his bedroom window before the sunrise had really gotten under way. He watched as the muted pastels of dawn grew into splashes—and then blazes—of vivid color. He heard the impatient scraping of the draft horses’ heavy steel shoes on the floors of their stalls as they awaited their morning rations of grain and hay, the lowing of a half dozen penned cattle near the barn, the subdued, cigarette-raspy voices of the hired hands as they walked to the kitchen of the house where they’d have their breakfasts before starting work. Jake heard the first laughter of the day from the hands as their coffee chased the final vestiges of sleep.

  Not too different from home, he thought. The accents and words of the workers are different—no Georgia Negro drawl, no women’s voices calling to children, none of Pa’s hounds clamoring for their table scraps. It feels the same, though. A sobering thought intruded on the pastoral scene and his memories. But it’s different. Pa’s plantation wasn’t under siege by a slew of gun hands and outlaws, and Pa’s son hadn’t been hanged like a common criminal in a lawless town controlled—owned—by a band of men to whom the lives and property of others mean nothing.

  The sharp crack that had ended Billy Galvin’s life sounded again in Jake’s mind, so real he was almost surprised that the hired hands passing under his window didn’t hear it. He saw the tautness of the rope, saw the rope twist slowly with the deadweight it carried. He saw Jason Mott pulling the wooden lever.

  Jake turned away from the window, unclenching tight and sweaty fists he didn’t recall forming. Tonight’s meeting, he thought, will be the beginning of the end of the siege of Fairplay.

  There were better than twenty Night Riders gathered in Lou Galvin’s barn for the meeting. It was a calm, late September night, and a full moon cast almost enough light to read a newspaper by. The scent of fall was redolent in the crisp, fragrant air. In the barn, in the hay storage area that’d been cleared for the gathering, cigarette and cigar smoke drifted in bluish clouds to the loft above. Lanterns hung about the room sputtered, their light harsh. Men drank coffee from thick mugs or whiskey from glasses, their eyes wandering from one another to Jake. Sinclair stood at a side window gazing out. When he felt the group had finished with their greetings and were ready to settle down, he turned from the window.

  “I’d like you boys to gather up here by me for a minute,” he said. “I want to show you one of the reasons why you need to listen to me and need to do what I say if you want to get out from under Mott. Come on up here.”

  They clustered around the window and Jake stepped away, giving them a clear view of the outside. “What do you see?” he asked.

  A few voices ventured opinions:“Lou’s west pasture, couple outbuildings . . .”“Ain’t nothin’ out there to see.” “A pretty night, is all.” “Hiram, one of our lookouts,” one said.

  “Right,” Jake said. “Hiram—one of our lookouts. And what’s the idiot doing? See that little red glow? The damned fool’s smoking a cigarette!” He shook his head in slightly exaggerated disgust. “He’s smoking a goddamn cigarette. Tell me this: Why not wave a lantern for Mott’s men to pick up on?” The Riders moved sheepishly away from the window as Jake strode to the front of the room.

  “Mott’s not stupid,” Jake said. “I’m sure he has men out checking on these meetings, checking on the places they’re held. If he was of a mind to pull a sneak attack, the only protection we’d have would be an early warning from our lookouts.” He paused for a moment. “If that happened right now, Hiram would be dead and we’d be sitting ducks.”

  Jake met the eyes of several of his audience. “You boys wanted me here. OK—I’m here, and I’ll be here until this whole mess is over. Or I’ll be here as long as my orders are followed.” He waited while the word“orders” sank in. “I said orders and that’s exactly what I meant. I’m not some military genius, but it’s damned clear that I know a whole lot more about this stuff than you men do. We can’t afford to act like a bunch of bumpkins and clerks, not if we want to get the town back.”

  Jake paused again. “I want each of you to take a long look at the fellow next to him. Go ahead—do it.” Each man, somewhat self-consciously, looked over the friend and neighbor standing closet to him. Jake gave them a long moment.

  “Some of us are going to die as this thing goes on. It could be the man you just looked at. It could be you. I got to make this very clear: Some of us are going to die. Anybody here is free to leave right now with nothing further said. But if you stay, you stay to the end. Clear?” Feet shuffled and throats were cleared, but no one moved toward the door.

  Jake walked to the stack of hay bales where the bottles and glasses rested. He poured and drank a couple of inches of whiskey, allowing some of the tension to dissipate. Then he took his place again at the front of the room.

  “Anyone heard how bad Mott was hurt in the explosion at the jail?” he asked.

  “Banged him up some an’ burned off a good bit of his hair,” a clerk from the mercantile said. “Didn’t do him no permanent harm, from what I heard.”

  “He was drinkin’ at the saloon a couple days after we sprung you, Jake,” another said.

  Sinclair nodded. “OK. I don’t think he’s gonna just let it pass. We moved into his territory, wrecked his property. He can’t allow that—not an’ keep the respect of the vermin he has working for him. So—he’s planning something, some sort of attack.”

  A buzz of hurried, semiwhispered discussion arose from the men. Jake cut through it.

  “We’re not going to let that happen. Late Saturday night the Night Riders are going to Fairplay.” There was an eternity of silence. This was the moment Sinclair had both anticipated and dreaded. The reaction of the men to what he’d just said would determine the entire course of the battle against Jason Mott. Jake’s face remained hard, without expression, his hands casually at his sides. He looked as if he were waiting to make a purchase at the mercantile—and an insignificant little purchase at that.

  His palms moistened and drops of sweat began under his arms and started down his sides. His stomach tightened as if he awaited a punch.

  The “’Bout time” that was the first reaction from the Riders brought a grin to Jake’s face. The “You betcha”s and “Damn right”s that followed rose in volume and enthusiasm. Jake let it roll—it was precisely what he wanted to hear. He moved to the bottles and glasses and poured himself another drink. When he had the attention of the men once again, he went on.

  “Today’s Wednesday. By the end of the day Friday I want each of you boys—in bunches of two or three—to come on by here with the weapons you’re gonna be carrying. We’ll need some things from the mercantile, too. Who can help me there?”

  A large gent, clean-shaven and well dressed, raised his hand. “I can, Jake,” he said.

  “You work there?” Jake asked.

  “I do. My name’s Moses Terpin—Moe—and
I own the sumbitch, as well.”

  Jake grinned. “Good. That helps. Let’s talk after the meeting. Now,” he said to the group, “we need a way to get in touch with one another, warn each other of problems, call ourselves together. We’re too far apart for men on horseback to spread an alarm or a call for help. I’ve got an idea about that. Now, let’s talk a bit about how we’re going to post lookouts and what those lookouts are going to do. . . .”

  Mare seemed to have suffered no ill effects from her time away from Jake. There were a few spur scrapes on her flanks that were healing well, and some abrasions on the sides of her neck, probably from Mott quirting her, but those, too, were healing. Jake ran the tips of his fingers over the slightly elevated flesh and then had to stop. The anger that flooded over him was too much to handle just then.

  He’d worked two coats of a bear fat and light oil solution into all the parts of his saddle and left it draped over a fence in the direct sun for a couple of days. The saddle showed no abuse from Mott’s use of it, but Jake cleaned and oiled it almost obsessively in order to claim it back from the outlaw.

  The fact that the saddle—and Mare—were never actually his own to begin with didn’t occur to Jake Sinclair.

  Lou Galvin had brought a gun belt, open holster, five hundred rounds of ammunition, and a new Colt from the mercantile on the third day Jake had been with him. The Colt felt unwieldy in Jake’s hand after the smaller Smith & Wesson at first and the wooden grips somehow too large and cold to his palm. A few hours of practice draws and dry-aiming and firing of the new weapon made the equipment begin to feel familiar. The holster was a bit stiff and Jake needed to file the front sight of the pistol so that it cleared leather smoothly, but those were very minor and easily remedied problems. Galvin replaced Jake’s Henry rifle with one of his own, and Jake was anxious to sight in the rifle. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lou’s eye, but that he trusted his own more.