Hell in the Nations: The Further Adventures of Hayden Tilden (Hayden Tilden Westerns Book 2)

by J. Lee Butts

  Well, their time ran out. Yelled at ‘every fifteen seconds to give themselves up. When I signaled Billy to set her off, that bunch was laughing so hard I could barely stand it. All their levity came to a screeching halt when Irene belched four feet of flame and spit the first six-pound ball their direction. Whole valley rumbled and shook like God was driving a chariot through the place. Watched as that iron pellet flew past me like a fat black bird tied to a rocket. Big sucker hit the ground about thirty feet from the cabin, bounced three times, and went through the front door; knocked down several walls, and departed through the back as easy as punchin’ holes in a piece of dried buffalo hide with an ice pick.

  Great God Almighty, you ain’t never heard such screaming. Found out later Bully May, who’d spent most of his life preying on the meek and powerless, wilted like a pansy on a hot afternoon. He said Loftis Green Grass’s and Wilson Bowlegs’s eyes got bigger’n coffee saucers.

  Down below, Billy and Judith ran back and forth to the ammo box. Smoke and dust was so thick around them, for a minute or so, I could barely make them out. But I could tell Billy was having the time of his life. Didn’t take but two or three minutes for ‘to charge the gun again. He waved after they got her elevated a smidgen and had everything ready for another shot.

  “Wilson,” I yelled, “would you like to reconsider your previous answer? You have exactly one more minute to think it over. Then my friend, at the bottom of the hill, is gonna lay one right in your lap!”

  “Damn you!” he screamed back. “When did you Fort Smith lawmen start bringing cannons out here? Dammit all to hell, it’s hard enough makin’ a livin’ in this godforsaken piece of perdition ’thout you sons of bitches shooting at us with cannons! Shit, all we do is a little cow stealing and a killing every once in a while. Why cain’t you boys leave us alone?”

  Loftis added his two bits’ worth with: “I’m gonna kill you, Cecil. Then I’m gonna cut yore heart out, cook it in a pot of navy beans, and have it for supper!”

  “You’ve used your time up again, boys.” Pointed to Billy and motioned for him to deliver our next black-iron love note. Saw him shove the match onto the top of the barrel. Think he may have put a bit too much powder in her that time around. Sounded like the wrath of a vengeful Lord had descended on us and heaven was about to suck up everything for miles around. Shock wave spurted up that hill like the Mississippi River being pushed though a thimble.

  His first shot could best be described as a kind of lob that arched up, hit, and then ran at ’em. That second one looked like a score chip on the wire over a snooker table. Went by me in a straight line. Hit a spot below the window on the right of the empty doorway and punched a hole in the wall the size of a number-ten washtub.

  That’n was the one what killed Loftis Green Grass. Guess he thought he was hid. But Billy’s inspired marksmanship delivered that ball directly to ole Loftis’s noggin. There warn’t nothing left of his head but a greasy spot on the ground about fifty feet behind the house. Wilson and Bully musta got religion about a spit second after Loftis’s unheaded body went to flopping around the house and a-spurtin’ almost a gallon of blood all over the place.

  They both tried to get out the door at the same time, and for a second or so, got jammed up together in the frame. Threw all of their pistols, rifles, knives, and assorted other weapons so far from the doorway, they hit the dirt almost halfway down the hill. Bully May, whose real name was Albert, fell on his knees and cried like a baby.

  That no-account, evil gob of spit spent most of the waking moments of his adult life robbin’, rapin’, and murderin’ folks. But he groveled in the dirt and cried like a six-year-old about to get his butt switched for eating green apples.

  “Oh, please, Marshal. Please don’t shoot me in the head with no cannon. I’ll go back to Fort Smith. Won’t be no trouble along the way. Just don’t let anybody blow my head off with that damnable thing! God Almighty, that’s a horrible way to die!”

  Billy came up and helped me get them back down to the tumbleweed. Slapped some iron shackles on them villains, and locked ‘to the tail end of the wagon. Then, we found a hole in the ground not far from the cabin. Threw what was left of ole Loftis in it and rolled a sizable rock in on top of him.

  Guess I shoulda kept a better eye on Judith than I did, but felt like she’d finally begun to get over the thing when we slammed the steel gate on them boys. Judge Parker woulda hung ‘sure as the cow ate the cabbage. Guess she just couldn’t wait. And, in a way, I can’t blame her much. Don’t see how anyone could.

  Two or three days later, while Billy scouted out ahead of us, I let both of the murdering scum get down so they could visit the bushes and see to their private needs. Bully May took care of his business pretty quick, made it back, and scrambled into the tumbleweed. Bowlegs did his drag-ass routine, griped every step of the way, and complained constantly about how poorly he was being treated. I’d seen this same kind of behavior before. He was a dangerous man when loose, but a whining crybaby once you slapped the cuffs on him.

  “You lawdogs mighta caught me, but that don’t give you the right to treat me like some kinda goddamned Arkansas dog. Hell, I had better food the time I was locked up on a Louisiana prison farm out in the middle of a skeeter-infested swamp fer stealin’ pigs from a state senator over in Shreveport. This biscuit, fatback, and molasses three times a day’s done give me the south Texas trots. Feel like a man with one foot and an arm in a pine box, for God’s sake. Few more days of this kinda barbaric treatment and I’ll most likely go to my Maker on account of starvation.”

  Wanted to slap his face till his eyes rolled around like marbles in a barrel. “Why don’t you shut the hell up, Wilson? Every time you get caught, we have to listen to your bellyaching bilge. All of us eat the same things you do. It ain’t no easier for us, you know?”

  “Let me tell you something, Mr. Tall-Hog-At-The-Trough Marshal Cecil from Fort Smith. None of yore problems mean a pile of weevils’ dung to me. Be worried ’bout my personal eatin’ habits, and I’m gonna complain to Judge Parker when we get back to town. This here kind of treatment is gonna stop, by God.”

  “Yeah, Wilson, you’re probably right. When Male-don stretches your neck this time, it’s a pretty safe bet you won’t have to worry overmuch about that bottomless piece of gut you call a stomach ever again.” That kinda shut him down for a second or so. But he never was one to keep his mouth closed for long if you gave him the least opportunity to yammer at you.

  I held the steel-barred door open for him. He stepped up with his left foot, but stopped and shot a leering grin at Judith, who stood near the back wheel on the far side from me. “Wish I’d a-knowed you was around back there when we did our dance with yore stupid family, pretty girl. You are one fine-looking black-haired twitch. I’d a done for you just like I done for yore mama. Personally, cain’t think of nothing matches a hot-blooded woman. Hell, she loved every second of the humpin’ Wilson Bowlegs put on her. If’n I hadn’t of kilt her, yore mama woulda follered me all over the world wantin’ some more.” Then he laughed. One of those kind of laughs that don’t leave any doubt he was making fun of her and as far as he was concerned, there warn’t a thing she could do about it, ’cept stand there and listen to the trash spilling from that filthy mouth of his.

  Ain’t no two ways about it. Anyone who’d ever studied at university would’ve declared Bowlegs an idiot after about five minutes of the hastiest kind of inspection. Man owned a piece of stupid as big as a number-three grain scoop. But Judith didn’t have five more minutes to give the sorry wretch. She’d listened to the evil son of a bitch spout that kind of filth from the second we caught him. Guess his smutty mouth just finally pushed her over the edge. Looking back on it, suppose that wasn’t much of a trip for her at the time. Couldn’t have been more’n a baby step or two at the very most.

  Her upper lip quivered a bit, at first. I barely noticed it. But Bowlegs must have spotted what he determined a weakness, and was the kind
of no-thinking savage to take advantage, if he thought he could.

  “You gonna cry, pretty girl? Gonna do that female boo-hoo thang right here in front of all us big bad men? Like my bandanna to wipe yore snotty nose?” He jerked a blue and white piece of rag from his pocket, held it out, and jiggled the thing like some kind of bait.

  Don’t guess she was as bad off as he thought. Her eyes narrowed up on him like the sights on one of those old rolling-block rifles. Her lips curled back like a mother wolf protecting newborn cubs when she said, “Damn you to an eternal burning hell, you sorry piece of human trash. You murdered my entire family.” Her eyes blinked real fast a couple of times, and tears coursed down her cheeks right before she screamed, “You even killed my mother, you low-life scum-sucking dog!”

  Then, as God is my witness, a short-barreled Remington .44 appeared in that angry gal’s hand like a sideshow magician’s rabbit. Still don’t know to this day where she had it hid. Hell, I’d seen her nekkid as a day-old baby and didn’t notice that pistol. Course, just to stay on the side of truth here today, have to admit I wasn’t looking for guns or knives at the time.

  Big, bad Wilson Bowlegs turned toward me with this twisted, surprised look on his face just as her first slug caught him dead center. She was so close to that sorry weasel, the concussion damn near knocked both of us down. Massive chunk of slow-moving lead came out his back, and scorched a smoking rut four inches long in the right sleeve of my shirt. Second round dispelled any doubt anyone might have had that Judith Karr was a damned fine shot.

  The ever-lovely Mr. Bowlegs, former killer, rapist, and thief, clutched at his chest with both hands, started making watery coughing, wheezing sounds, and was on his way to the ground. She took a half step toward him, and put one in his head—just above the right eye—that splattered a considerable wad of his brains all over the ground near my feet.

  Well, as anyone with the most rudimentary smarts at all should gather, I went to thinking real fast there for a second or so. Guess I burned up brain cells aplenty tryin’ to figure out some way to keep her from doin’ me in too. Sure as hell didn’t want to move too fast, or do the wrong thing, and wondered if she might blast ole Albert “Bully” May for good measure. He’d scrunched himself up in the farthest corner of the tumbleweed he could find, covered up with Judith’s very own feather mattress, and went to screeching like a barn owl being tortured with a sharp stick.

  “Oh, God, Marshal,” he squealed. “Please don’t let her kill me. I didn’t hurt any of her family. Just watched.” Went on like that for some time while I kept an eye on Judith to see what she’d do next.

  But she only stood there, and shook all over ’bout like someone in the worst throes of malaria. Pistol out at arm’s length like she just wanted to make sure Bowlegs was good and dead, but ready in case he jumped up, started cussing again, or grinned at her or something.

  She hovered over her handiwork like he didn’t amount to much more’n a snippet of crochet she’d just finished, stared hard at the body for a bit, then pitched the pistol on the ground beside it. Said, “Good,” and walked off into the trees like nothing wayward had occurred. Soon’s she turned her back, I snatched that .44 up and shoved it under my shirt.

  Well, as you can surely imagine, ole Carlton J. Cecil felt like a man trying to put up a Chinese tent in a Texas thunderstorm. For about fifteen seconds, I didn’t know whether I was getting’ up or going to bed. Then all that yelping from Bully May brought me back to bloody reality.

  Climbed into the tumbleweed, snatched him up by the collar, and pushed the barrel of my pistol into his left ear. Trick I learned from Hayden. Said, “Bully, Marshal Bird will be coming back shortly. He probably heard those shots. No matter what happens, you are gonna agree with everything I say to him. Do you understand me, you low-life cur? If you so much as hint at anything other than what I describe as having taken place, I’ll tie you to Irene’s open muzzle and send parts of your sorry hide to rain down from heaven on folks in Kansas.”

  Thought for a second or so I was gonna have to pick his eyeballs up off the floor. He gulped real hard a couple of times like I’d strangled him, and finally managed to blurt out, “Tell him whatever the hell you want, Marshal Cecil. I’ll swear it happened just the way you say. You can claim that gal’s pa came to life, dug his way out of the grave, followed us here, and took ghostly revenge on ole Wilson for all I care. Far as I’m concerned, don’t make a damn how God came and got him. Just don’t let her shoot me.”

  “That’s real good, Bully. You keep your mouth shut, and I’ll see what I can do for you when we get back to Fort Smith. Maybe I can keep Judge Parker from hanging your miserable, worthless self. But whatever happens, from this minute till everything manages to sort itself out, just remember, I’ll be watching and listening. If I hear anything, even one wayward word, I’ll see to it you die in a way that’ll make you wish your mother had never brought you into this world. People in hell won’t suffer like you will before you go meet ’em. Do we understand each other?”

  “Oh, you betcha, Marshal Cecil. It all happened just the way you said. Whatever that turns out to be.”

  “Good.” After I’d said all that, it came to me I must’ve sounded a lot like Judith when she rubbed Bowlegs out. Hell, I didn’t care. Meant every word of it. Not real hard to get rid of someone like him back then, if you really wanted to.

  Locked him inside, and then pulled the wagon about twenty feet up the trail from the body. Took a raggedy piece of tree limb, and messed the ground up all around where we’d been walking back and forth. Judith strolled up from her meditations in the woods. Girl looked like she’d retreated back to the same place she went the first few days after we found her.

  Grabbed her by the right hand, pulled her to the seat on the wagon, and whispered in her ear, “Whatever you do, don’t say anything. Leave it all to me. Just pay attention, and repeat whatever I tell Billy if he has any questions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand, Carlton. I’ll do exactly what you say.” Her answer sounded like it came to me from the bottom of a half-empty rain barrel. Her hand was a block of ice with fingers. She never blinked when we spoke. Couldn’t tell if she really heard me or if she just reacted the way I wanted her to.

  Anyway, I barely had time to hop down and run back to what was left of Wilson Bowlegs when Billy charged up and jumped off his horse. Stood beside the useless scalawag’s oozing corpse, and made like I was reloading my pistol when he dashed up and stopped beside me.

  “What the hell happened, Carlton?” He strolled over to Bowlegs, and pushed at the body with the toe of his boot.

  “Well, I stopped to let these boys take care of their twa-lett. Got Bully back inside, but Wilson didn’t want to go. He whacked me on the side of the head, and started running. Chased him to about here, and we kinda wrestled around some ’fore I felt like he was about to get the best of me. Had to shoot the big son of a bitch.”

  Bully May hugged the bars and yelped, “Yessir, that was the way it happened, all right. Bowlegs and Marshal Cecil flopped around for almost five minutes afore the marshal had to pop ole Wilson. He’d of kilt yore friend fer sure if’n he’d a got a chance.” Then, he shot a quick look my direction and smiled.

  Billy stared at the outlaw’s body, kicked a cloud of dust that direction, and said, “You got him good. He ain’t coming back from them shots. Don’t blame you, though. Hell, I’d have dropped him soon’s he started running. Ain’t about to get in no fistfight with a man like Bowlegs if they’s any other way out of it.” He gandered around some after that, but if he had any suspicions the tussle hadn’t gone down the way I described, he didn’t say anything. In fact, he never even mentioned the thing again till we got back to Fort Smith, and then he told the story exactly the way he’d heard it from me. Good man, Billy Bird.

  ’Fore we put the evil wretch in the ground, I did what Hayden’d tole me to do with anyone we couldn’t bring back. Slapped a gob of ink on his palm and
pressed it to the back of a John Doe warrant. I’d already done as much for Loftis Green Grass. Normally, we wouldn’t have been able to collect anything on a dead outlaw, but Hayden had something going with the Judge I didn’t understand at the time. He could even get us paid for those we had to kill.

  Late that night, after we’d made camp and had a little bite to eat, I crawled into my bed and drifted off to sleep. Woke up, and found Judith all snuggled next to me. She smelled like fresh rainwater, and kissed me when I turned toward her. Thought for a second or so all the ammo in my pistol belt was gonna fire off at the same time.

  She whispered in my ear, “I want to thank you for not telling Marshal Bird what really happened this afternoon.” She hugged me closer and said, “Tonight I’ll do anything you want.”

  Well, as just about any man with a beating heart would probably understand, that night I wanted it all, but couldn’t get myself to take advantage of her. She’d seen horrible things happen to her family, and had killed the man most responsible for those atrocities. Girl had an awful lot of heavy-duty emotion bubbling around in her soul. Takin’ what she offered would have been so easy, but afterwards I’d of felt like the sorriest kind of low-down cad.

  So, I kissed her on the forehead and whispered back, “Sweet, beautiful Judith, perhaps another time. Think you should give your mind a rest. You’ve had way more’n most folks to think about for the past few days. We can talk about your offer later, if you still want to. But Judith, I’m thinking that now just ain’t the right time.”