The Shadow of Armageddon

by LeMay, Jim

  The younger men dithered about whether they wanted to go or stay. Then Leighton said they had nothing to stay here for. Why not head out to Colorado? The mountains sounded grand; they’d be fun to roam around in. They could pan for gold like Lou had described, and the old guys would have more than enough to replace their stash in a single season.

  Lou said he was glad they agreed with him, but gold panning wasn’t all that easy to learn. And what if there was no market for it in Colorado? They might have to bring it all the way back to Nellie’s Fair, or at least to the Blue Springs market in Kansas City.

  But once Leighton made his decision, the other young ones backed him. He had fired their desire for adventure. Only John said nothing. He still didn’t know his status as a gang member – there had still been no official vote to include him – and didn’t even know how he felt about going to Colorado. This was another subject he needed to discuss with Matt.

  Leighton turned on Mitch, who had not yet voiced his opinion, in a rather confrontational manner. “Looks like you old guys are outnumbered. Even if you an’ the Perfessor vote agin goin’, it don’t matter with Lou votin’ t’ go.”

  Lou looked rather uncomfortable and started to speak, but Mitch interrupted him.

  “I ain’t said how I’d vote yet, Red,” he said reasonably. “An’ neither has John here (did this ensure his inclusion in the gang once and for all!?) an’ we don’t know how Matt’ll vote. He spent some time in the Front Range cities an’ liked ’m better’n most places, as I recall him sayin’. I’m su’prised at your vote, though.”

  “Really?” Leighton looked totally nonplussed.

  “Yeah. I’m su’prised you can resist at least one more trip t’ Nellie’s Fair. Remember struttin’ ’round that girlfriend a yours last winter, tellin’ her all the adventures you was gonna have this summer an’ all the stuff you was gonna buy her this fall?”

  “Oh, yeah. Flats.” He looked rather thoughtful.

  “An’ this summer you finally had adventures worth the tellin’. Remember you an’ Miller an’ Matt an’ Lou holdin’ off Matheson an’ his killers while the rest of us slipped away? An’ all the truckin’ we did right under their nose? They looked for us all over the State, but we was too clever for ’m. They never did find us.” Mitch shook his head. “Yep, I’m mighty su’prised.” He stood up. “But we don’t have no business votin’ till Matt gits back. We do ever’thing as a gang. Right, boys?”

  They all agreed readily, as though relieved, John thought, at not having to bring the matter to a vote, even Leighton and the other young ones.

  “Anybody up for a beer?” Mitch asked, and they all agreed.

  * * * *

  A few days later when John caught Mitch alone, he asked him what would have happened if the vote had been cast and Leighton had prevailed. Would the gang have been forced to honor the majority opinion and leave for Colorado?

  Mitch snorted. “The first thing y’ gotta learn ’bout gangs, young John, is that they ain’t as democratic as they look. If Leighton’s boys won the vote, we older fucks could a just refused t’ go. What could they do without us? They wouldn’t even know how t’ find Colorado, let alone how t’ find truck or markets if by some miracle they did git there. Even if Lou had a voted with ’m, you think he’s gonna trek acrosst that barren country with a bunch a know-nothin’ shit-assed kids in favor a stayin’ with guys he’s trucked with for twelve years? Hell, the kids ‘d git themselves and him killt afore they got t’ Leavenworth.

  “’Course, it’s easier on the gang if ever’body comes to a consensus afore the vote. If Leighton’s boys win the vote t’ go but we stay here anyhow, they’d always be hard feelin’s. I’ve seen gangs break up over less. I’ve even seen people git shot over less. That’s why I mentioned Nellie’s Fair an’ his girlfriend t’ Red. Oncet he thinks what it’d be like t’ be away from Nellie’s Fair oncet an’ for all, he might change his mind. To him and his boys it’s more ’n just a place t’ sell truck an’ hole up for the winter. It’s a place t’ strut an’ brag. Afore Boss Johnson recruited them boys, they was scum, starvin’, dressed in rags, hidin’ from people that wanted ’m dead. Now they’re somebody. They got money an’ good clothes an’ all they want t’ eat. Them people that wanted ’m dead not all that long ago? Now they compete for their nellies. Naw. They ain’t gonna give all that up.

  “By the way. You didn’t say how you’d vote. I reckon you’ll always vote on the side a us older guys, woncha?”

  John thought for a moment. He looked at Mitch. The Boss regarded him with his usual glower but, strangely, his voice had sounded almost playful.

  “I don’t know, Mitch,” he said at last. “I guess I’ll have to vote the way I feel best about.”

  Mitch favored him with the faintest of smiles and clapped him on the shoulder. “Right answer, young John.” Then he walked away.

  * * * *

  The weather was decidedly cooler the next week but still pleasant. Matt didn’t return on Tuesday, but John didn’t worry. Like Bernie said, he had probably holed up somewhere on Saturday because of the rain. Though Wednesday was John’s day off he hung around Haas House all afternoon but Matt did not show up.

  * * * *

  On that Wednesday evening, Matt was, as a matter of fact, still almost three days from Coleridge Gardens, suffering from a cold that had grown steadily worse since he left Nellie’s Fair. By last Friday, he had still been too far away to reach Nellie’s Fair that day and the bank was closed on Saturday. He didn’t want to show up in town until the bank opened on Monday. The longer he spent there the more apt he was to be recognized making a large withdrawal from the bank and most likely by the wrong person. So he spent a miserable weekend in a dilapidated leaking farmhouse a couple of hours ride from town.

  The bank opened about mid-morning on Monday. It took awhile to make such a large withdrawal so the transaction wasn’t completed until almost noon. Matt was surprised that Mitch, Doc, and Stony had such large accounts. They were smaller than his and Lou’s, but that was to be expected. Unlike them he and Lou had part time jobs during the winter months.

  Matt was able to slip into the bank and away without being recognized. That wasn’t difficult since it was some distance from the part of town most people he knew frequented. He was a little nervous as he crossed to the mainland with saddlebags full of cash, but no one on the ferryboat or on the shore gave him a second look.

  He rode far to the north and west, cautiously avoiding Columbia by a wide margin. He hadn’t had quite long enough to recover from the rigors of travel by horseback, so that by Wednesday he was so saddle-sore he walked nearly half of each day thereafter, which slowed his progress even more. He had a lot of time to think about the conflict in Columbia, the events leading up to it, and, with increasing remorse, his role in all of it. The memories of his new homicides had plagued him ever since leaving Columbia. They especially aggravated his usual insomnia when camping at night. He had seldom missed human company; now he wished someone were along to talk to, to intrude on his morbid thoughts, especially Lou, with whom he could spend hours discussing a wide range of interesting subjects.

  His only plan for extricating the gang from danger from the two brutal gang leaders had been to pit them against each other and then ride away completely unscathed. Of course the important part of it had worked; Chadwick and Matheson and their men were gone. But he had not ridden away without paying a price. The terror of fleeing from their enemies after Summerfield Crossing had kept him from thinking about his role in the killing. It had turned even the gentle Lou Travis into a killer. Now he had been involved in more. He would not have been able to be so successful without Johnson’s training. He knew his actions had been necessary to protect his life and that of his friends. He felt trapped on a carousel of casual violence. It disturbed him deeply that he, once the detached intellectual who abhorred violence, could so easily change into a murderer.

  He did not feel guilt for his role in t
he slayings so much as anger, as he had thought before, that he had to live in a world where casual violence was the norm.

  “Now wouldn’t Lou lay into me for that one?” he said aloud to Lady. “‘The great intellectual,’ he would say, ‘proving by your actions that you’re no more immune to the world’s squalid savagery than the rest of us. You didn’t have to stay with the gang when we left Mitch’s farmhouse. You could’ve stepped off your gruesome carousel anytime you wanted. To join the teachers and students at the university in Columbia or even one of these little farm communities we’ve passed through over the years. Don’t bitch to me about the world turning you into a criminal. You just don’t have the balls to do anything about it.’

  “I guess Lou’s got me there, huh Lady?”

  In answer, Lady just waved her ears and snorted.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  By Saturday morning, John was deeply worried about Matt, sure something dire had happened to him. Had he been involved somehow in that Columbia business? The fact that Mitch and the others had also begun to worry about him increased his concern. A lesser but burgeoning worry was that with the market now over and nearly all of Bernie’s guests gone, there didn’t appear to be much for him to do. If he ran out of work, there was no reason for Bernie to keep paying him. He had accumulated what seemed to him a sizeable quantity of Nelson dollars, but he had no idea if he had enough to pay for all the scratch he needed.

  After Luke and Jake finished their last task for the season in a few days, a final after-market cleaning of the public rooms and stables, they would leave for their farms up north. This was not unexpected of course, being in accordance with the terms of their agreement with Bernie, but it seemed an ominous harbinger of his own fate.

  He was cleaning the main bar while Bernie and the women worked in the kitchen and the gang and the few other paying guests ate their breakfasts. Joey, Luke, and Jake worked in the stables and corrals. John took the throw rugs out onto the front porch in several loads and looped them over the railing, intending to beat them later. The sun had barely appeared, rising as it did later every morning to subtly warn of winter’s approach.

  After the last load, he started back into the bar. And drew up short.

  He looked across the clearing to see a gaunt man astride a roan horse, both looking extremely tired. Even though the shadow of the man’s broad hat brim covered his face, John knew who it was.

  “S’pose a man could get breakfast and a beer around here?” said Matt’s familiar voice.

  John suppressed the mad desire to run up to Matt shouting his name and said, “If he had the price of it,” trying to imitate Bernie’s voice.

  Matt laughed, dismounted by almost falling off the horse, and looped the reins carelessly around the porch railing. He brought only two bulging saddlebags with him and hobbled painfully up the stairs. “You fucking Missourians. Nothing ruffles you, does it? Didn’t anybody worry about me being so late? I coulda been at the bottom of some creek with the guys’ savings in some redneck’s hovel.”

  “That’s exactly what I was afraid of, Matt.” John felt his lower lip tremble.

  Matt hugged him, and he hugged back. “Well, they haven’t got me yet. Nor the men’s money. But I do need that breakfast bad. And the beer. It’s not like I’m having beer in the morning; I been riding all night. And this poor equine deserves a rubdown.” He sneezed.

  John noticed the yellow of healing bruises on Matt’s face and scabbing splits in the skin on his cheek and lower lip.

  “Matt, what happened to you? Are you all right?”

  Matt grinned on the least injured side of his mouth. “Nothing wrong with me now that a beer and something to eat won’t cure. I’ll explain everything later.”

  “Oh, Matt, I got so many questions. Did you have anything to do with that Columbia deal?”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s a long story so it’ll have to wait till I’ve slept for eight or ten hours.”

  John nodded. He could wait now that Matt was safely back.

  * * * *

  About mid-afternoon, Ruben arrived and called a confab of Bernie’s household and the remaining guests (except for Matt who was still asleep). Billy Kane and the others, he said, had returned to Kane’s Cove after sending him here with news from Columbia.

  The remains of neither Chadwick nor Matheson had been found among the dead or in the charred ruins of the houses, he told them, though they could have been among the many corpses too badly burned to identify. A young woman claimed that her fiancée, a young man named Phil Blankenship, had killed Chadwick, but her story was suspect. She had not actually seen him kill the gang leader, and Phil could no longer verify it since he was dead. She claimed that someone named Jerry Jordan had found her in a state of shock in a room shared by her dead lover and two other slain townsmen, told her he had seen Phil shoot Chadwick dead and had witnessed Matheson’s death. Then Jordan had left. No one else in Columbia knew this Jerry Jordan, and her statement that he was a farmer from Newcastle left the gang skeptical. That name had never been mentioned when they were there just a short time before. Her self-confessed unstable emotional state at the time did nothing to add credibility to her story.

  Chadwick’s gang had outnumbered Matheson’s but many of them had been out of town on patrol or at the toll posts. No one knew whether he had sent for them or not when Matheson attacked but none of them had returned as far as anyone knew. Maybe some had gotten close enough to hear the sounds of violence and decided not to become involved or to see that the fight was going against Chadwick and decided to pursue alternative ventures. In any case none of them were ever heard from again.

  As an aside, the Columbians told the Kanes, only the few hunters and ex-military people among the townspeople even knew how to fire a weapon let alone hit anything with it, so Chadwick’s gang knew they hadn’t been in much danger from the townsfolk. The diminished forces of the two gangs had no choice, however, but to surrendered to be locked in the town jail. After the Columbians finally extinguished the fires and sadly tallied their losses: fifteen dead with over twice that number injured, they debated the fate of the seventeen prisoners. Many argued for hanging them, but some argued for their release. They had no stomach for carrying out the sentence and the miscreants were leaderless. The preacher’s plea for clemency finally secured their freedom, minus weapons of course. There had been too much death since the Last Days, he said, and the survivors, most of whom bore wounds of their own, were unlikely to return. At last the majority agreed with the preacher. They released their captives with a final warning: If they were seen in the vicinity again, they would be killed on sight.

  When Ruben finished he told Mitch, “Billy said t’ tell y’ he’s got a few ol’ decrepit mules he can loan y’ till his young’ns git broke next summer, but they can’t carry big loads an’ he don’t wanta see ’m go t’ Colorado. They ain’t quite as many as you need, but they’d be a help. That is if y’ ain’t goin’ t’ Colorado.”

  “I got a few horses I could rent you,” said Bernie. “Luke might have a couple too. There again, only as long as you’re not planning to leave the state.”

  Mitch glowered thoughtfully, looked around at his men. “We’ll have t’ talk ’bout that tonight, soon as Matt wakes up, but I’d wager we’ll be stickin’ ’round here.”

  * * * *

  The only scrounger gangs remaining at Haas House were Mitch’s and Annie Austin’s. Though the out-of-town traders had all departed, the local trading partners, Ernie Flathers and Arlene Hull, had come over to Bernie’s for a farewell beer with the scroungers. Their business with both gangs had gone well during the market. A congenial parting might continue that relationship into next season.

  Though Ernie Flathers and Arlene Hull lived in Coleridge Gardens, they ignored the Reverend Gates’ strictures against their lifestyle. They went to Bernie’s for beer whenever they wanted or took a jug of it home whether it was broad daylight or not. Even worse, they lived together ou
tside the bonds of matrimony. They even had children.

  After Ruben’s confab, John started back to the brewery to continue a cleaning project, rather grudgingly because he would miss celebrating the exultation and relief surrounding the events in Columbia.

  Bernie caught him at the top of the basement stairs. “That’ll wait till tomorrow, John,” he said. “Today is kinda special. I don’t think we’ll work much after the ladies wash the supper dishes. Except for me catering to thirsts.”

  Overjoyed at the reprieve, John hung out in the bar, listening to the speculations about the causes of the strife between Chadwick and Matheson. At one time, several said, they had heard that Matheson was near the top of the hierarchy, along with Chadwick’s would-be “partner” Hauptmann and Chadwick’s two brothers-in-law, the Thompsons. What could have driven the wedge between them?

  As soon as Ruben finished the confab and had answered a few questions, he went to give his information to Mayor Coleridge. Though Ruben didn’t like her much, was indeed a little intimidated by her, Billy had insisted he deliver the news in person. She and her people deserved to have the story straight, he said, not some watered-down gossip. Ernie and Arlene and several local farmers remained for another drink. Lou nudged Mitch. “Whadda you bet the story’s all over Coleridge Gardens five minutes after Ruben hits town?”

  Though still worn out and saddle-sore, Matt came down a little later, yawning and stretching. He stood at the bar – sitting would still be unpleasant for awhile – and ordered a pint of porter. The men gathered around him. They weren’t about, of course, to let him know how worried they’d been about him.

  “I don’t know where you been all this time,” said Stony. “Partyin’ in Nellie’s Fair, most likely, while the rest of us lived through the biggest ruckus since the Last Days.”

  “Been partyin’ a little too hard, I’d say,” said Doc, “from the looks a his face.”