Deserter

by Paul Bagdon

  Mare took to the fall mornings. She snorted as soon as Jake swung into the saddle and pitched a few feelin’ good crow-hops to show her feistiness and tugged at the reins after Jake brought her under control. She wanted to run, and on the long wagon road that led from Galvin’s hay barn to his main pasture, Jake let her do just that. She wasn’t the fastest horse Sinclair had ever ridden, but she wasn’t far off that mark. The rush that always accompanied a ride on a galloping horse took over all of Jake’s senses as Mare rocketed down the long, gently curved road. The rhythm of the shod hooves that seemed paradoxically slow given the speed with which the ground was being covered, the taste and cool touch of the autumn air, the scent of the last cutting of hay for the year, and the visual panorama of the unsullied countryside combined, and the individual parts became larger than the whole—it was an experience rather than a fast ride on a good horse.

  Jake left the wagon road and pointed Mare into the pine forest that surrounded Lou Galvin’s home and ranch. Galvin’s acreage was small by Southern plantation standards—a few over four hundred—but encompassed fertile, loamy soil, many acres of never-harvested tall timber, several year-round streams, a small lake, and some of the most scenic vistas Jake had ever encountered. Billy’s place and the two hundred acres his father had given him when he married were beyond the forest. The new house and barn were blackened piles of scrap lumber now, and the land went untended. Lou rarely spoke of his only son, but his eyes conveyed the terrible scope of his loss. A widower for over twenty years, Lou had never remarried. Instead, he’d devoted his life to his and his wife’s only child. Billy, friends told Jake, had been a quick learner, a good and intelligent farmer, and a man who was looking forward to raising a herd of children. The entire Galvin holdings would have, of course, gone to Billy upon Lou’s death.

  Not too different a situation. One place here, one in the South. Different crops, different ways of working the land, but two strong men who’d built lives for their families and themselves. Now neither has a son to carry on the tradition—Billy killed by outlaws. And me . . . in a sense, killed at Gettysburg, at least as far as my pa and my people will ever know. He shook his head to dismiss the thought.

  Rocks were always good targets: They shattered satisfyingly when hit directly head-on, offered up stingy chips and shards when the bullet was off-center. They skipped about when hit, giving the shooter a moving target. And they were plentiful. Jake hobbled Mare, placed a melon-sized rock thirty paces out, and fit six cartridges into the cylinder of the Colt. The weapon was still brand-new, still smelled of the light oil that’d been applied to it for shipping in Hartford, Connecticut. Jake had immediately converted it to take cartridges. He dropped the pistol into his holster, allowing it to settle itself. His draw was automatic and unhurried but clean; his palm found the grips and his right index finger slid into the trigger guard as if the weapon were custom made for him. He fired the six rounds rapidly, his body slightly hunched, boots parted, left foot several inches behind his right, Colt held about two feet out from his body, slightly over waist height. Only two of the slugs hit the rock and neither impact accomplished much. He reloaded, realizing that the slight weight difference between the Smith & Wesson .22 and the Colt he now held had thrown off his aim. The adjustment he made in how he directed his fire was minute—but it worked. His target zipped away as the first round struck it and split in half when the second hit. Of the four remaining bullets, three further reduced the size of the half rock Jake was concentrating on. He swung the barrel of the Colt to the second piece of rock and grinned as it disintegrated when his final bullet smashed into it.

  He sighted the rifle for distance at about seventy-five yards, firing at a rock in which specks of mica glittered under the bright sun. He adjusted the front sight, fired several more shots, and nodded. He ran through the same process at fifty yards and then at twenty-five. Anything closer, he told himself, and I can hit them by swinging the rifle instead of shooting it.

  Jake rode slowly back to the ranch, enjoying the feel of the afternoon. The talks he planned to have with the Night Rider members ostensibly to check over their weapons were more planned to familiarize himself with the personalities of each man. It was an even bet that at least a couple of them would be useless in a battle; he wanted to know which men he could count on and which he couldn’t. The Night Riders were to begin coming that afternoon, depending on how readily they could leave their jobs or farms without drawing attention to themselves.

  Moe Terpin, owner of the Fairplay Mercantile, brought a clerk in a delivery wagon with some tarp-covered supplies. Terpin presented a fine-looking engraved twelve-gauge shotgun for inspection. “This isn’t going to be of much use at any distance,” Jake told him. “I’ll tell you what: Let’s you and me trade my rifle for your scattergun.” The clerk, Hy Strong, carried a Colt under his white apron, stuck in the waist of his pants behind his belt. “Gonna shoot your eggs off, Hy,” Sinclair observed. “Make sure there isn’t a round under the hammer.” It was clear from the look on the clerk’s face that he’d not thought of that precaution.

  Men wandered in on no particular schedule. Jake met them, discussed their weapons with them, felt them out about any experience they may have had. He was disturbed to find that most of the men had wives and young children—the reason they weren’t serving in the army. Jake carefully avoided asking the sympathies of any of the Riders in the ongoing war. He didn’t care—and it didn’t matter.

  By Friday evening Jake had met each one of the vigilantes. After dinner he sat with Lou Galvin on the front porch. “They’re good men,” Jake said. “But it bothers me a whole lot that not a single one of them has ever fired a shot in anger, Lou.”

  “They were all friends of my son.”

  “I don’t doubt that, and I don’t doubt that they’re hot to avenge Billy’s death. The thing is, a man acts differently in the heat of battle when he’s being shot at—when there’s another human being in his own sights and he needs to pull the trigger.”

  “These boys’ll be fighting for their homes, their families, too. That should make a difference. This isn’t a political conflict like the goddamn war our country is in now—this is as personal as a man’s son or daughter. Or his wife and his home.”

  Jake nodded. “I’m counting on that, Lou. But I’ve got Saturday night pretty much planned out as a hit-and-run—a quick skirmish that’ll do some damage and let Mott know we mean business.”

  “Care to go over the plan with me?”

  Jake shook his head. “Like I told the boys, I’ll tell them everything they need to know on Saturday night when they get here. I’m not being evasive with you, Lou. The fact is, I’m not completely straight on all the details at this point.”

  Galvin chuckled in the darkness. “You’re a diplomat, Jake. I don’t doubt that you’ve got ever’ second of this little soiree mapped out in your mind. No?”

  “Maybe,” Jake admitted. “But what remains up for grabs is if any of it’ll work.”

  “If it’s not too complicated, it’ll work.” Galvin struck a match to light his pipe, and for a moment his face was illuminated by the orangish flare, brightly enough so that Jake could see the man’s eyes were hot and intense. “I thought over what you said the other night,” Galvin said, shaking out the match, “and I posted some lookouts—three of them, full-time, day and night.”

  “Good. I was going to suggest something like that. I’m certain Mott has already figured out that your farm is the Night Riders’s headquarters. Why he hasn’t attacked yet I can’t explain. But he will, Lou, and we need to be ready for him.”

  “He hasn’t attacked because he’s a damned coward!” Galvin snapped vehemently. “If it wasn’t for that gang of cutthroats he keeps around himself, he’d be nothing—less than nothing.”

  Jake let a moment pass, listening to Galvin suck angrily on the stem of his pipe.“Maybe so,” he said.“But we can’t underestimate him. That’d be a real big mistake.”


  Galvin was silent for a long moment. “I suppose so,” he finally agreed. “I hope we can do some damage Saturday, Jake. We need to show Mott that we have some teeth. And we need our boys to come to believe that, too.”

  Saturday dawned cool and rainy and the rain continued throughout the day. Thick gray clouds made the daylight hours seem like evening, and when night finally fell, the darkness was almost impenetrable. The moon, barely at a quarter phase, was obscured by slow-moving dark clouds that blocked what little illumination it offered.

  Jake paced in front of the eighteen men assembled once again in Lou Galvin’s barn. The Night Riders did their best to cover their apprehension, to hide it from one another. Laughter was often too loud, and the outbursts were frequently followed by periods of an empty silence that seemed louder than the forced hilarity. Sinclair had seen it before, the tightness of the faces, the quick movements of eyes that seemed a bit too bright, the white knuckles on the hand that clutched a rifle, the jaws working as fast as pistons as a chaw of cut plug or a bit of straw was reduced to pulp between gnashing teeth.

  “This’ll be a skirmish, men, not a pitched battle,” Jake said, his voice level. “We’ll get in, hit, and get the hell out. There’ll be resistance, but it won’t be concentrated. What we have going for us is surprise. After this, Mott will be looking for us, be more ready for us. But for tonight the advantage is ours.” He looked into the eyes of his troops and then went on. “This is war, gentlemen. Wars are won by killing the enemy. It’s as simple as that. If you get a shot at an outlaw, take it and make it count.” He paused. “Keep this in mind: You’re fighting for your family, your friends, your town and home. All those are worth the risks you’re taking.

  “OK. We’re going to split into two groups. Lou will lead one, I’ll head up the other. Here’s how it’s going to go. . . .”

  Fairplay that night seemed like a stretch of desolate and abandoned buildings anchored by the light and noise from the saloons at either end of the street. A locomotive, hauling a single passenger car and three empty flatbeds, wheezed away from the depot. Rain, swept by a wind that had freshened and become sharp, kept pedestrian traffic to a minimum. The horses tied in the front of the saloons hung their heads, stoically enduring the rain and the chill.

  Inside the batwings of both places the bars and beer- and tobacco-juice-sodden poker tables were jammed with drunk and semidrunk men cursing, laughing, slugging down shots of rotgut and schooners of beer, slapping at the asses of the whores parading by them. The piano players, sweating with exertion, pounded out attempts at music that could barely be heard over the alcohol-fueled revelry. A cloud of tobacco and lantern smoke hung just below the ceilings, as thick as the rainclouds that moved sluggishly about the night sky. Fistfights started and ended quickly, with one or more of the combatants dazed and bleeding on the sawdust that was spread on the rough plank floors, sodden with booze, tobacco juice, and blood.

  Jake, well outside the splash of light from the saloon, sat on Mare with the butt of Galvin’s shotgun protruding from the scabbard at his right knee. He focused the small scope on the sheriff’s office and jail in the middle of the block of buildings. It was as dark as its neighbors. Even in the murky light and the misting of rain, he could see that a good deal of work had gone into the building since the Riders had blown it up. The rear—the jail—was studded with framing but not yet enclosed. The office itself had been essentially rebuilt and the raw lumber looked naked in the rain. Mare, at Sinclair’s cue, started ahead, walking, her hooves sucking at the mud with each stride. Jake looked back over his shoulder twenty or so yards behind him, where his men were waiting in their robes and hoods. He saw nothing. Good. He peered beyond the sheriff’s office toward the other end of the street and again saw nothing but rain. Good. He took a fat stogie from inside his slicker, clenched it between his teeth, and after using three matches, got the tip glowing a cheery red, in spite of the rain. The acrid smoke, as bitter as the smell of burning skunkweed, constricted his chest and made him cough wrackingly. He spat a flake of tobacco to his side, grimacing. “Nothing like a good smoke,” he grumbled. He drew on the stogie again, being extremely careful not to inhale any of the smoke.

  Jake reined in across from the sheriff’s office and sat for a moment, sucking on the vile cigar. Then he reached back into his saddlebag, took out a pair of sticks of dynamite, and wrapped the fuses together tightly. He touched the joined fuses to the end of the stogie and jerked back as bits of powder sputtered from the point of ignition, reminding him of the sensation of blowback after firing his Sharps. Mare jerked her head around at the hissing sound, watched for a second, and turned back, uninterested. Jake stood in the stirrups and hefted the two foot-long sticks. He leaned back a bit and then swung his arm in a fast, looping arc. The sparking whiteness of the fuse material marked the travel of the explosives to the building. Jake’s throw was right on; the dynamite punched a jagged hole through the front window of the office and thumped to the floor. He brought Mare’s reins up tighter, keeping control of her head.

  Jake had expected the blast to sound like that of a cannon—deep, rolling, powerful, the throaty roar of a mighty weapon. Instead, the dynamite exploded with a sharp, ringing, almost high-pitched craaaaack that was stunning in its attack on the relative quiet of Fairplay. The burst of hot white light that preceded the report by the briefest part of a second was lightninglike, searing, etching itself on the eyes of anyone seeing it. Sinclair shook his head and blinked rapidly to clear his vision. Spots still floated in front of him as he watched the new roof of the sheriff’s office rise up as a single piece, almost in a sort of slow motion, twisting slightly in the air, and then, suddenly, shattering as if it were made of glass rather than lumber. Torn boards and fractured beams whirled out of the structure like lava spewing from a volcano. Flames were there almost immediately, licking at what was left of the structure before most of its components had struck the ground. Jake’s eyes had been on the front door after he tossed the dynamite, and he’d have sworn that the door seemed to be sucked far inward and then catapulted away, part of the heavy frame dangling from it, to where it skidded through the mire of the street and came to a stop ten feet or so from him.

  “Hot damn,” he breathed appreciatively.

  Both saloons emptied and men, guns in hand, gaped at the smoldering scraps of lumber that had moments before been Mott’s headquarters. A slug whistled past Jake’s head, and then another. The crowds from both of the saloons rushed on foot, slogging through the mud, firing without aiming, rushing toward the only enemy they could see at the moment: Jake Sinclair.

  Two waves of Night Riders, one from each direction, in ragged lines that stretched the width of the street, swept toward the outlaws, rifles and pistols blazing. Jake wheeled Mare, his hand already in his saddlebag, and pointed her at the glut of men to his right, sucking on his cigar. The outlaws, most of them drunk, stumbled into one another, unsure whether the lone man charging toward them or the Night Riders presented the greatest danger. Jake hunched low in his saddle, single stick of dynamite clenched in his hand with its fuse touching the ember of the cigar, saw the clerk from the mercantile fire at an outlaw who was swinging his pistol toward the clerk. The outlaw snapped forward at the waist as if he’d taken an unexpected punch, and then pitched forward into the mud, hands clutching at his belly, his pistol dropping from his fingers.

  Jake powered through the mass of men, Mare’s broad chest and striking forelegs taking down any stupid enough or slow enough to fail to get out of her way. The two bands of Night Riders swept past the crowd and one another and continued down the street and out of town.

  Sinclair felt Mare slipping but touched her with his spurs to ask that she give him all the speed she possibly could, regardless of the footing. There was barely an inch of fuse left when Jake raced past the saloon and hurled the dynamite. Mare had gone two strides before it blew and both horse and man felt the force and the heat of the explosion.

  CHAPTER
SEVEN

  The original plan had been for Jake to loop back behind the buildings along Main Street, dynamite the second saloon, and then follow his men as they galloped toward the Galvin Ranch. Mare was struggling, though, working two or three times as hard as she would on normal ground, her hooves sinking deep into the glutinous mud, making each stride a battle. She’d broken a frothy sweat and her breathing was becoming labored.

  Jake swung his horse out of the quagmire of Main Street, Fairplay, and rode into the rainy darkness, the sounds of his men ahead barely reaching him. The footing was a bit better outside town; the prairie grass and scrub roots held the soil together more effectively than the churned slop in and around the town. The Night Riders, Jake knew, would be peeling off from the group toward their individual farms, ranches, and homes, those who lived in and near Fairplay swinging back when it was safe to do so.

  A good raid, Jake thought. A damned good raid.

  He hadn’t seen a single Rider go down and at least a couple of Mott’s men were wounded or killed. The roof lifting off the sheriff’s office played again in his mind like the pictures from a stereopticon presentation and the crump! of the explosion in the saloon sounded again in his ears. The barrels of whiskey went up like kerosene, the flames pawing at the sky, the lanterns inside smashed and spewing their fuel to the hungry fire.