The Pursued

by Tony Masero

  “Lee Cabot … Cabot … Stoffer,” slowly Powers got the connection. “Cabotsville!” he blurted.

  Lee nodded. “That’s right.” He watched Powers keenly, as if waiting to see what he would make of it all. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”

  “But how . . .?”

  “How’d I find you? Hell, biggest surprise of my life that was. I’d been looking for years without any luck and then it fell right in my lap. The whole damned pack of you. You see, when you murdering bluebellies came down that hill and killed off my relatives, what you didn’t know was that they had an elder daughter, Clarissa May. She was busy sparking and making out in the straw loft with her fiancé, young Jacob Stoffer. That’s him standing there with the carbine pointed at you.” Lee waved over to the older man, whose eyes narrowed as he looked at Powers. “They saw it all,” Lee went on. “My ma was Clarissa May and she watched her daddy die, her ma and younger sister raped and killed, and her two little brothers murdered in cold blood too. My daddy there had to hold her down forcibly to stop her crying out or running off to help them. Broke her, you know? Broke her heart, broke her will. It just bust her up inside.”

  Powers felt his heart sink in his chest as the crimes were listed. His back bowed and his chin sunk on his chest.

  “It was you, you who shot down Andy McArthur?” It was all he could manage.

  “My Pa did.” Lee’s voice was almost a growl, his anger plain. “I stifled your friend Dobbs with a pillow where he lay in that sanatorium. Pa cut the throat of the drunk, Bubba Jones. And I nailed Cole Loumis right in front of you.”

  “The two of you killed them all?” Powers was aghast. “But how … ?”

  “When you fellows took off with those supply wagons, my momma Clarissa May and her beau came down from the loft and ran off away from there. She married him then, my daddy Jacob, but she had nothing else to live for. Daddy tried to care for her, he truly did. But she was never right, not after seeing her family destroyed like that. She raised me with blood in my eyes. I was to be her avenging angel, so she said. I was to go forth and track you fellows down. Cold blood for hot blood, she reckoned. She was a mite crazy of course, but then, who could blame her, huh? I guess she made me a mite crazy too. But I saved you, Mister Brent. I saved you for my Daddy.”

  “I still don’t see how you found us all, though,” said Powers, playing for time now the surprise was wearing off.

  “Pure chance. Just a lucky day. It was that girl, Dobbs’s daughter. I met her over in Hopewell. I took a fancy to her and we spent time together. If she’d been any other man’s daughter, I would’ve been courting her regular, she was a sweet little thing. I would go sit with her when she visited with her father in his hospital bed. We’d listen to his ramblings. He’d go over it time and again. All about the killings at Cabotsville. How he wanted forgiveness and such. Well, I gave him good rest before his time, that’s for sure.” There was a cold hardness in the young man’s face now, a rigidity that spoke of his unforgiving nature. “I read the letter she gave me to bring to you. She never sealed the envelope. I saw all the details written there. I didn’t delay, no sir, not at all, I went to it right away. Her old man was easy, he was half dead anyway. When I told my pa, he couldn’t wait to bring some payback to you people. Now it’s your time, Mister Brent.”

  Jacob Stoffer moved around the room until he stood next to his son. A lean man, he hunched over the carbine, his haggard features taking on a predatory look.

  “I missed you once,” he said, in a soft voice. “I won’t do it again.”

  “It was you up on the rocks above the ranch that time?” Powers asked.

  Jacob nodded. “You destroyed my marriage, Brent,” he said. “I loved my Clarissa but she changed after Cabotsville. It was like she’d been emptied out. I had hoped the birth of our son Lee here would bring her out of it but it was not to be.”

  “Listen, the both of you. I ain’t about to beg from you or to justify what we did. It was a terrible thing, I declare it, I do. We had all gone through hell and high water for years by then. We’d seen our friends torn apart in the war and watched so much destruction that we had lost our way. Whatever we did that day, may God forgive us for it, we were ruined by that war, that’s the Lord’s truth. We just could no longer see the right from wrong any more. Only afterwards did we pay the price. All of us had no joy in our lives after that, everything tasted of ashes for years and none of us forgot that day.”

  Lee snorted. “You looking for charity here, old man? You want forgiveness for what you did?”

  “Of course I do, boy,” Powers said. “But why the dickens am I trying to tell you anything anyway? You were never there, you never saw the things we did. You can never understand.”

  “What’s to understand?” spat Lee. “You killed my kin and in my book it’s an eye for an eye, same as in the Good Book.”

  “There’s nothing I can give you to make up for it, Lee. Or the grief it caused you, Jacob. Nothing. All I can tell you is that killing isn’t the answer, I do know that from bitter experience.”

  Lee just stared at him, his eyes lifeless and empty and Powers could see that all his words meant nothing to the young man. “How d’you want it?” Lee asked, cocking his pistol. “Standing up or d’you want to meet your Maker on your knees, like your red-headed preacher friend?”

  Both men raised and pointed their weapons, coolly taking deliberate aim.

  Powers swallowed hard. He felt like he was standing before a firing squad. They had some rights in this, he knew it, but it did not make facing his end any easier. Thinking of Mary and the future they would lose made him want to plead and beg for his life but his pride forbade it and instead, he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth waiting for the impact of the bullets.

  A roar filled the interior of the eating-house, the roar and flash of expelled gases as both barrels of Minnie’s double-ought buckshot ripped across from behind the counter and hit the Stoffers full on.

  Jacob was swept off his feet by the blast, flying backwards into the full-sized street window, shattering it into daggers as he burst through and landed, cut to ribbons, on the boardwalk outside.

  Lee was twisted sideways, half the left part of his body torn open by the buckshot. He still held his pistol in his right hand and although terribly wounded, he brought up the revolver to bear on Powers and fired.

  Powers quickly drew his .44 and, fanning the hammer, loosed off three shots and brought Lee down.

  He didn’t notice the wound in his side until he moved. He felt a distant ache and looking down saw the blood oozing from just above his waistband and he pressed his hand hard against it. He took a few staggering steps over to Lee.

  The cowboy lay sprawled at the foot of a table, the legs of a chair encircling his head. Powers brushed the chair away and, still clutching his side, he knelt to see if the boy still lived.

  “Are you all right, Powers?” Minnie was behind him, the smoking shotgun still in her hands.

  “A scratch, no more,” he answered, holding up a hand to stay Minnie. He leaned forward and saw that Lee’s lips were moving.

  “What is it boy?” he asked.

  Lee’s hand came up suddenly and grasped Powers’s lapel tightly. He pulled the rancher’s head down and whispered a few hoarse words. Then his fingers slipped from Powers’s coat and his head dropped as he lost focus and his eyes slid away.

  “Is he gone?” asked Minnie, with a quiver in her voice. “I never shot anyone before.”

  Powers nodded sadly.

  “Did he say anything?”

  Powers shook his head. “Couldn’t make it out.”

  “Oh, Powers,” Minnie cried as she noticed the blood. “That’s no scratch, you’re hit bad.”

  “Not as bad as him,” he said, climbing awkwardly to his feet.

  “Let me see to it,” she insisted.

  “No, it’s all right. I have to get back. Will you arrange for those saddlebags of mine to get to the b
ank for me?”

  “Of course, but why not let me bind you up or at least send for the Doc.”

  “No, I’m obliged Minnie but I want to get home. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” He stepped outside and saw the figure of Jack Carver racing from his store. He knew then that Minnie would be all right.

  Powers slowly mounted his pony as Jack Carver ran past and, clutching his wounded side, he rode painfully out of town. He just wanted to be with Mary. The pair of them were battered and wounded and he needed to rest in Mary’s arms for a little while. To comfort and be comforted.

  But as he rode the dusty trail alone, he couldn’t get Lee’s last words out of his mind. The boy had laid a final curse on him, a curse that would give him restless nights for years to come. There would never be rest from the imprint of that wartime deed. Powers knew now that it would continue to live with him until he was in his grave.

  Lee’s final promise echoed in his brain.

  “I have a little brother and he will be coming … he will be coming.”

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