by John Legg
“This is San Juan County Sheriff Jonas Culpepper,” he shouted. “I’m orderin’ all of you to surrender and submit peaceably.”
All five outlaws went for their guns. Culpepper ducked behind his rock and began firing in return. In the midst of the gunfire, he spotted Ellsworth trying to maneuver around the great twisted tree so he could come up behind Culpepper. “Go get him, Bear,” Culpepper said, pointing to Ellsworth. “Now!” he said, as he opened fire with his rifle, snapping off shots as fast as he could work the lever to give the mastiff some covering fire.
Culpepper heard screams as Bear attacked Ellsworth. Soon the screams ended and there was silence from that area. Culpepper risked a glance that way and saw that the huge, floppy eared mastiff was moving toward Corcoran.
Culpepper hurriedly reloaded his rifle, watching the dog charge Corcoran, latching onto the man’s gun arm. Corcoran screeched and kicked out, but he was no match for the almost two-hundred-pound dog.
Ellsworth’s outlaw friend suddenly popped up from behind a rock, firing like mad in Culpepper’s direction. Culpepper ducked as lead flew around his haven, whining off the rock or chunking heavily into the small cedar. Then he heard a single shot from a different direction, followed by a high-pitched yelp from Bear.
He stuck his head over the rock and saw Bear lying there near Corcoran. The dog was not moving.
“How’re them apples, you son of a bitch?” Coakley bellowed with a hoarse, angry laugh. “I shot that precious goddamn mutt of yours.”
Culpepper set his rifle down and pulled his two pistols. In a rage at all the grief Coakley had caused him, he stood up in one flowing motion. “Son of a bitch bastards!” he roared, as he began walking forward, firing as he went. Bullets took down the outlaw from Ellsworth’s gang, as well as the other man of Coakley’s, the one he did not know. He even put a couple of bullets into Corcoran, who was still moving, even though Bear had done some damage to the man before being shot down by Coakley.
Coakley had dropped behind cover again, but now he came out into the open. He grinned as he brought his rifle up. “Now it’s your turn, you son of a bitch,” he crowed. He fired, and his face fell when the hammer simply clicked.
“Dumb, pukin’ maggot,” Culpepper sneered, as he dropped his pistols into the holsters. He pulled off the big bear coat and dropped it as he stalked toward Coakley. He wanted to get at Coakley with his bare hands.
Coakley spun and began to flee, trying to reload his rifle unsuccessfully as he did, so.
“Go on and run, you putrefyin’ skunk,” Culpepper called. “There ain’t no place you can run that I can’t find you.”
Coakley stopped, dropped the rifle, and turned. “I am pure sick of your shit, you two-bit lawman. Come on at me, you overstuffed piece of shit, and I’ll finish the job that Lou couldn’t back at that cabin.”
Culpepper had not slowed his approach, and he was closing in on Coakley fast. The lawman-gone-bad suddenly charged. The two met hard, and stood each other straight up. Culpepper found he didn’t have nearly as much strength as he used to, but his rage gave him a power Coakley could not match.
Culpepper flung Coakley down finally, and then dropped down on him with one knee landing on Coakley’s chest. Coakley groaned as he heard bones crack. Culpepper stood and hauled Coakley up with him by the shirt. He threw Coakley into the twisted tree and kicked the lawman as he fell.
Once more Culpepper dragged Coakley up, and then began pounding his head against the tree trunk, until it was a bloody, broken mess. Culpepper finally let the body fall. He stood there with chest heaving as the wind whipped and whistled around him.
With sunken heart, Culpepper turned and walked to Bear. The great mastiff was dead. He went to where the outlaws had dug up the loot, grabbed the shovel, and enlarged the hole considerably before walking back to Bear. He bent and managed to lift the huge dog and carry him the few feet to the hole and placed him in it. Then he covered the animal with dirt. As he patted the dirt down, he muttered, “Goodbye, old friend.”
Culpepper barged into Pennrose’s boardroom and dropped the heavy box on the table, ignoring the look of anger on Pennrose’s face.
“Where’ve you been?” Pennrose demanded. “Why’d you slip out on your own?”
Culpepper ignored the questions. Instead, he said tightly, “Your money. Coakley’s dead. So’s Ellsworth.” He turned and left, heading for home, and his wife.
THE END
Blood in the Snow
by
John Legg
Copyright © 2015 John Patrick Legg
Wolfpack Publishing
48 Rock Creek Road
Clinton, Montana 59825
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-62918-328-2
With love for my cousin Susan Taylor Corona. Thanks for being there.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter One
Travis Rhodes stepped out of Claver’s Mercantile and right smack into the middle of trouble. He stopped just outside the two wood doors and closed them carefully. There was glass in the top half of each door, and he wanted to make sure he did not break them.
As he eased the doors closed behind him, he watched the tableau before him. Then he shook his head in annoyance. He knew he shouldn’t step in, but he also knew he would.
“These boys botherin’ you, miss?” he asked softly, touching the brim of his trim, wide-brimmed hat.
The woman turned toward Rhodes, worried eyes flashing. She took stock of Rhodes quickly. He looked much more presentable than the others, but she expected that he, too, was a ruffian, like the others. Still, there was something about him that made her think he just might be different.
Travis Rhodes was perhaps five-foot-eight, not very tall, really, but what he lacked in height he made up for in broadness. His shoulders, back, and chest stretched the striped, collarless shirt he wore almost to splitting. His waist, while not slim, could not compare in breadth to his shoulders. Stocky, powerful legs were encased in blue denim pants.
Light gray eyes peered out over a partly flattened nose. His face was almost square, with a large, solid-looking jaw. He’s almost handsome, Mercy Crawford thought, shocking herself more than a little. She was flustered for the moment as a touch of heat dashed across her insides. Then she sighed, a fatalism spreading over her. She was certain Rhodes would be just like the others. Still, he did look neat, and he had spoken politely to her. She decided to take a chance.
“Yes,” she breathed, her voice caught up in anxiety.
Rhodes nodded. “Excuse me, then, miss,” he said quietly as he stepped around her, facing the three men who had been rudely crowding her, making lecherous and crude comments. When Rhodes had stepped o
ut of the store, one of the three was even trying to paw at the woman.
“Ain’t you boys got something better to be doin’ than takin’ indecent liberties with this here woman?” he asked quietly, voice drawling lightly.
As he waited for a response, he sized up the three men. All had the look of recent army service about them, and Rhodes figured they were like so many others these days—they knew no trade but violence and death. Having just come through the War Between the States, they did not know what to do with themselves, so they turned to violence, often bullying the less fortunate, as if they thought that a birthright. They had haunted, troubled eyes, and the stench of trouble and decay about them.
Travis Rhodes was much the same—rootless, troubled by all that he had seen and done and been subjected to. Unlike these others, though, he kept his torment to himself. He did not take it out on others, especially the defenseless, like the woman standing behind him now. He wished that all men who had served—on either side—could try to put all that hatred and trouble behind them, as he had mostly done. Only once in a while, usually when the darkness of his past swept too strongly over him, did he let any of that part of him out. That usually consisted of a solitary drunk for a day or a week, and the spilling of his hatred to some tart who was happy to sit there and let him rave on—as long as he was paying her for her time.
“Well, what’ve we got us here?” one of the three men said, as if making an aside to his two companions.
“Looks like one of them Johnny Rebs like those we just bested,” a second said.
“That true there, boy?” the first one asked.
Rhodes turned cold gray eyes on the man. He was taller than Rhodes by several inches, but nowhere near as filled out. His face was covered with rough stubble, and his nose and eyes were laced with a latticework of red. He reeked of bad whiskey, sweat, and dirt. Tobacco and food stained his faded butternut shirt.
“What if it is?” Rhodes asked, still in that quiet, reasonable tone.
“Damn, boy, ain’t it enough that we kicked your asses in the war?” the man asked, seeming incredulous at such a thought. “Lord, if he ain’t a dumb ox, wouldn’t you say, Phil?”
“You know, Carl, I think he’s dumber’n any ox I ever saw,” the second man said. Phil Thorndyke was a ratty, feral-looking man, seeming to be furtive even when he was standing stock-still and staring at someone. During the war, a rifle ball had torn away a fair-sized chunk of his left cheekbone, and it had not healed well. It was a hideous mark that had turned an ugly man into a repulsive one.
“I’d advise you boys to move on before someone gets hurt.”
Phil Thorndyke laughed, a high, quavering trill that reminded Rhodes of a barnyard of cackling hens.
His brother Carl smiled. “We’re the Thorndyke brothers”—he pointed to each, in turn—“I’m Carl, that’s Phil and back there’s Frank.” He smiled, but there was no warmth of humanity in it. “And ain’t a one of us don’t mind you get hurt, Reb,” he said evenly. “Especially when it’s us doin’ the hurtin’.” He, too, broke into laughter.
The third brother, Frank—a morose, brooding cretin of large and lumpy proportions— had neither said anything nor moved, other than turning his dull, flat-featured head to look from either of his two brothers to Rhodes. His eyes—the windows of the soul, Rhodes remembered someone had told him once—were as empty as an unused attic.
Carl Thorndyke’s face suddenly tightened and the laughter stopped. “You know what’s good for you, Reb, you best get your ass out of the way.” He sought a reasonable tone in his voice. “Why don’t you just go on about your business, and no one’ll get hurt. How’s about that?”
Rhodes fixed an icy stare on the rumpled, leathery man. Rhodes noticed that Carl was missing the middle and ring fingers of his left hand. Over his shoulder, he asked, “You want the attentions of these men, miss?”
“Lordy, no,” Mercy breathed. The very thought of the three men’s crude attentions made her shudder with disgust.
“Looks like you boys got no more business here,” Rhodes said, still quietly.
“Goddammit, Reb, I’m tired of you interfering in our business,” Carl snapped. As the eldest of the Thorndyke boys, he usually set the rules and did the talking for his brothers, who were less well versed in the social graces.
Rhodes shrugged.
Carl cursed quietly, then took a step forward and swung a big-knuckled fist at Rhodes’s jaw.
Rhodes jerked his head to the side. As Carl’s fist whistled past, Rhodes jerked up his right arm, crooked at the elbow, and then brought the back of the elbow down hard on the nape of Carl’s neck. The blow added to Carl’s momentum, and he crashed into several barrels and sacks piled up just to the side of the door.
A sound escaped Phil’s lips when he saw his brother hit the mercantile goods. To Rhodes, the sound was suspiciously like that of a turkey’s gobble. He had no more time for that, though, as Phil sprang toward him.
Rhodes managed to fend off most of Phil’s wild punches and kicks. The few that got through had lost much of their intensity by the time they landed. Rhodes gave the scrawny man little time to continue the assault before he grabbed Phil’s shirt and threw him aside. Phil ended up in a pile of arms, legs, and farm implements a few feet from his brother.
Rhodes looked at the third Thorndyke brother. “You want to pick these idiots up and take them home?” he asked, voice still calm and reasoned. Relaxed, Rhodes watched Frank Thorndyke. The man was feebleminded, Rhodes figured, but despite that, Thorndyke appeared the neatest of the three brothers.
Frank looked like he wanted to say something but then decided he was incapable of it. He simply lowered his great, round head, grunted like a rutting buffalo, and then chugged forward.
Rhodes waited as long as he could. With Frank only a foot or so away, Rhodes threw up his left arm. His forearm caught Frank’s outstretched right arm, straightening him a bit. Rhodes slammed a fist into Frank’s gut. The thought flitted through Rhodes’s head that it was like hitting a side of beef.
Thorndyke coughed out a bellyful of air, and a strange look grew in his already eerie eyes.
Rhodes didn’t wait around for Thorndyke to regain his wind, he simply hammered the big man twice more, fairly certain that he had broken at least one of Thorndyke’s ribs. Rhodes was about to deliver the coup de grace, when he heard a maniacal screech. He spun just in time to catch Phil Thorndyke, who had flung himself wildly at Rhodes. The collision knocked Rhodes backward two steps, where his heel tottered off the edge of the boardwalk in front of the store.
They crashed to the ground, but the impact separated the two. Rhodes jumped up and kicked Thorndyke, who was struggling to rise, under the chin. The cracking of bones was audible even over the sounds of the bustling town of Clearwater, Iowa, to those nearby. Thorndyke slumped to the ground, groaning and mewling.
Rhodes calmly stepped up onto the boardwalk again, next to Frank Thorndyke. Frank was standing, bent over with his hands on his knees. He was trying to breathe, which was difficult with his damaged diaphragm and broken rib.
Rhodes grabbed Frank’s hair in his left hand and jerked Thorndyke’s head up. “You got yourself one hell of a family there, boy,” Rhodes said quietly, just before he smashed the heel of his right hand against Thorndyke’s forehead.
Thorndyke’s eyes rolled up and he sank to his knees, but to Rhodes’s surprise, he didn’t go out. Granted, he was not going to be able to do anything for a while, but Rhodes had felt sure that the blow would knock Thorndyke unconscious. He shrugged. It didn’t mean much right at the moment.
Suddenly Mercy screamed, “Look out!”
Rhodes spun, crouched, his arms curled in front of him some to block an attack. Carl Thorndyke barreled into Rhodes, who more or less allowed Thorndyke to shove him against the store wall, almost hitting Mercy in the process. The two men grappled for some moments, but Rhodes’s far greater strength quickly began to tell.
Finally Rhodes sh
oved Thorndyke down and to the side. Thorndyke fell.
“You get up, boy, and I’m going to pound you somethin’ fierce,” Rhodes warned. He showed few signs of exertion, other than a sheen of sweat across his brow.
Thorndyke stayed where he was. Rhodes turned and walked the few steps to where his hat lay. He bent and picked it up. He dusted it off, and restored the crease to it with a few deft hand movements on the supple felt. He set it on his head and looked over his shoulder.
Thorndyke was just getting to his feet.
“You apologize to the lady now, boy,” Rhodes said. He still had shown no anger; he remained calm and reasonable.
“Like hell I will,” Thorndyke growled.
“Where’d you learn your manners, boy?” Rhodes mused. “Your mother a sow or something?”
“Don’t you talk about Ma like that, you bastard,” Thorndyke snapped.
“You should’ve thought of that before you started acting like a barnyard animal,” Rhodes said with a shrug. “Now, you apologize to the lady or I’m going to pound you into the ground like a tent stake.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Thorndyke said. He straightened, sliding up along the wall for support.
“That’s a pity,” Rhodes said. He moved slowly toward Thorndyke. “But if that’s the way you want to be…”
Thorndyke shoved his hand into his pocket and jerked out a pistol. “I’ll get you, you son of a bitch,” he screeched. He shakily moved to cock the small pocket pistol.
As his hat flew off again, Rhodes grabbed the nearest thing he could—a pitchfork. He swung it and managed to hit Thorndyke’s pepperbox pistol, but not enough to knock it loose.
Thorndyke began again to bring the weapon to bear on his foe. Rhodes acted without thinking, seeing himself in war again. The butt of the pitchfork flashed out, blocking Thorndyke’s arm some. Then Rhodes swung the pitchfork back, in both hands and lunged forward, as if he were in a bayonet charge.