by Tony Masero
‘What we got in the strongbox, this time?’ asked Col, to change the subject.
Ludy pouted, ‘Why you think we’re carrying five Negro soldiers inside and no passengers?’
‘I don’t know, I reckon them black fellers should be on top anyway. Don’t seem right them travelling inside the coach like white folks.’
‘It’s payroll money,’ advised Ludy, sticking one finger alongside his troublesome nostrils, half turning to the right and blowing a jet of snot out behind them. ‘Great incentive for them soldier boys to guard the box seeing as it’s holding all their wages.’
‘Well, that sure takes my mind off my ass problem. Damnation! We carrying this load of cash money all the way to Fort Belmore?’
‘That’s the plan. Say, it couldn’t be them Hemm…. Haime…. What they call them? You know, them things that makes your ass sore?’
‘I ain’t a doctor, Ludy. How the hell should I know, I just know I can’t sit for more than a minute without wanting to get up again.’
‘Wild garlic!’ cried Ludy, with sudden realization. ‘Sure, that’s the answer. I heard tell it by this old Indian fellow in a travelling medicine show one time.’
‘What? You eat it?’
‘No, dummy, you stuff it up your ass and it heals it.’
Col snorted a dismissive laugh, ‘Oh, sure, stuff it up my ass. Ludy this ain’t a joking matter, I’m serious here.’
‘I know and I ain’t joking, that’s the cure, buddy. I tell you true, you take a slice of the stuff and slip it up your asshole, it’ll work I guarantee.’
Col looked across the open and deserted plain, ‘Right, and where we going to get any garlic out here? Got as much chance as finding that as finding carrots and peas and a T-bone steak, I’d say.’
‘It’s there, partner. We’ll get you some when we get to the Flats.’
‘I ain’t sticking no damned vegetable up my rectum, Ludy. I think you lost your mind, I really do.’
Ludy shrugged an air of indifference, ‘So, suffer then.’
They both went into a disgruntled silence and Ludy took hold of the reins in both hands again and dragged on the right hand team whilst he levered the brake pedal with his boot. The corner ahead was sharp and canted awkwardly and he knew from earlier trips to take it slow and gentle.
‘Hold on there, hoss. Steady now,’ he called out to the team.
That’s when the four riders came out of nowhere.
‘Aw, hell!’ groaned Col. ‘Road agents.’
‘Pull up driver!’ called one of the riders, his words muffled by the bandana across his nose and mouth.
‘They got us cold,’ breathed Ludy, hauling on the reins and depressing the brake lever until the coach pulled to a halt.
Col snapped the two halves of the sawn off double barreled shotgun shut and eyed the four riders as they spread out across the roadway in front of them.
‘Sure hope them Negro blue bellies are up to it,’ whispered Ludy.
‘Hey, inside!’ Col said from the corner of his mouth. ‘We got robbers out here, best get your nappy heads up.’
‘You! The guard!’ called Jethro. ‘Drop that shotgun, right now!’
‘Sure thing,’ answered Col, laying the shotgun across his thighs and raising his hands shoulder high.
‘I said ‘drop it’, not lay it on your lap like your favorite floozy.’
‘Now, come on, mister,’ complained Col. ‘This here is a valued piece of Wells Fargo equipment, I throw it down and there’s bound to be damage. I do that and the company makes me pay for a replacement.’
‘I couldn’t give a good goddamn,’ snarled Jethro. ‘Do like I tell you or get a belly full of lead.’
Gently, Col laid the shotgun into the well of the driving seat, ‘There,’ he said. ‘That okay?’
‘You got passengers inside?’
‘We have,’ said Ludy.
‘Then get them out here.’
The four men had formed a rough semi-circle before the stagecoach and spread out with some eight-foot gaps between the horses.
‘What you got in the strong box?’ called out the Kid in an excited voice. ‘Man, I do love it. It’s just like Christmas.’
‘You heard him inside the coach, you’d better step down now,’ called Col. He tilted his head so they could not see his mouth under his hat brim and whispered to Ludy, ‘When I go for the box, that’s when we make our play.’
Ludy nodded his head once sharply, in agreement.
‘Come on then, toss that box down here,’ ordered the Kid.
Doors on both side of the stagecoach squeaked open at the same time as Col delved into the well of the seat, apparently intending to fetch out the strongbox. The four riders leaned forward in the saddle, eager to see what the box would hold.
Four Negro infantrymen tumbled out of both sides of the coach; rifles at the ready and a black corporal leaned out of one open door with a pistol in his hand. Instead of the box, Col brought up the shotgun and let rip with both barrels right away.
‘Fire at will!’ hollered the corporal and the four servicemen obediently knelt in position and fired off their rifles. The fusillade of fire and smoke was loud and simultaneous and brought a rearing panic from the bandit’s ponies that jumped and backed away as a hail of bullets swept past them. Jethro returned fire from his whirling saddle, whilst Barnaby’s buffalo coat flew out and he got tangled in it and his Sharps rifle. Les was fighting with his bucking horse and the wide-eyed Kid was cursing as his pony took off at the run.
Col was hurrying to reload his shotgun as Ludy struggled with the reins to control the coach team. Col had his eye on the racing Kid and fumbled with the shells wanting to get a shot off at the escaping bandit. But one of the Negro soldiers had the same idea and from his kneeling position, rotated along the sight line and fired off. The Timeless Kid twisted sideways in the saddle as the bullet struck, his body went instantly limp and he dropped with his boot trapped in the stirrup as the frightened pony dragged his bumping body over the ground.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ shouted a panicked Les, turning and making off.
Firing continued from the soldiers as they released off volley after volley in true military fashion.
‘That’s it,’ called their corporal, taking careful aim along his pistol. ‘Y’all take your time, you make them shots count, you hear?’
Barnaby’s flapping coat was a large and easy target and the robe was plucked as bullets flapped the garment around him. Miraculously he was not hit but the coat was torn full of ragged holes, it was enough to give good cause for Barnaby to flee. Jethro was the last to leave, firing repeatedly over his soldier as he sped out of sight around the cover of the curve. His final bullet was the one that hit Col, who had risen to take better aim with the shotgun.
The guard gave a loud cry of pain and fell backwards into his seat, then gave another one as he sat down heavily and his butt cheeks smacked onto the hardwood seat. ‘Oh, shit! Both ends at once,’ he bellowed in agony.
‘You alright, partner?’ asked Ludy, still struggling with the team reins. ‘How bad you hit?’
‘Clipped my wing, is all,’ answered Col, picking at the torn sleeve of his shirt where the passing bullet had ripped a hole in his upper arm. ‘It’s the goddamned other end that hurts most.’
‘Piles!’ cried Ludy in exultation. ‘That’s what it is. I knew I’d remember in the end. Piles! That’s what you got, Col. A sorry case of sore-assed piles, no more no less.’
‘Hellfire!’ grumbled Col cynically, rubbing the seat of his pants and his wounded shoulder both at the same time. ‘That sure makes me feel a whole lot better.’
Grim faced, Jethro looked down on the stagecoach from the safety of the heights above.
He watched as two of the troopers dragged the body of the Timeless Kid back to the coach by his heels and dumped it unceremoniously under the leather baggage flap at the back. Then they climbed inside and the coach set off again.
&nbs
p; Barnaby and Les rode up slowly to stand behind him.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ asked Les, his voice still drawn and tense after their narrow escape. ‘They set the whole damned army on us.’
‘Must have had some something good in that coach to need such a guard,’ observed Barnaby.
‘If only we’d known,’ said Les. ‘We might have handled it a sight better then.’
Jethro turned on his heel and without a word to either of them, mounted up.
‘What do you say, Jethro?’ asked Les.
But Jethro said nothing, only dug in his heels and rode off.
‘What’s with him?’ asked Les.
Barnaby watched the disappearing rider and shook his head sorrowfully, ‘I don’t know but I don’t like it.’
‘We don’t have much luck on the robbery front, do we?’ sighed Les. ‘You think it’s getting him down?’
Barnaby nodded solemn agreement and poked fingers through his holed buffalo robe, ‘Look what they did to my good coat.’
‘We still didn’t get a nickel from that stage and ain’t had a decent meal in a while now,’ pressed Les. ‘I think that’s what’s getting to Jethro.’
‘That and a dead brother,’ Barnaby answered, geeing his pony on.
Les raised agreeing eyebrows and straightened his Confederate kepi, ‘And maybe the girl too.’
‘Let’s get back to the cabin and see what he wants to do.’
They found Jethro inside the cabin standing over the prone figure of Freddie with a dented coffee pot lying beside him.
Both men froze at the doorway.
‘He dead?’ asked Barnaby.
Jethro puffed air through his nostrils in frustration, ‘No, he ain’t. But she’s gone and so is her pony. Get some water and wake this sorry sonofabitch up, goddamn fool can’t even take care of a single thing.’
Les and Barnaby looked at each other surreptitiously. Neither one of them liked what they were seeing; the change in Jethro was marked. There was no cheer in him anymore and his features had taken on a drawn stiff look with the skin graying under his tan and the eyes glittering with deep-seated pinpoints of harshness.
Softly, Barnaby asked him, ‘What you aim on doing now?’
Jethro turned sharply and fixed him with a stare, a look so intense and full of vengeful malice that Barnaby instinctively took a step back.
‘Why you keep asking me that? I ain’t your goddamned mother, can’t you do a single thing by yourselves?’ he barked.
‘You’re the one with smarts, Jethro. You know that, that’s why we pay heed to what you say,’ said Les in an appeasing tone of voice.
‘I think that damned girl had more smarts than the whole bunch of us put together,’ spat Jethro resentfully.
‘So, what do we do?’ ventured Barnaby.
‘Go get that girl and see she leads us to the bastard who killed my brother!’
‘How we do that? She’s long gone by now.’
‘But we know where she’s headed.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘You heard what the Kid said, didn’t you? A small town called Nazareth.’
‘Sounds kind of New Testament, don’t it?’ mused Les.
‘Well, there won’t be no carol singing on that score when I get there,’ promised Jethro.
Chapter Twelve
Frisco read the scrawled name on the torn sheet of card the girl held out to him.
‘Can’t speak, huh?’ he asked, studying her with his head tilted to one side. ‘Billy Lee LaBone? He’s gone into town with that Indian friend of his, they’ve taken one of our men to go see a doctor.’
Minnie looked over at the town across the creek. Night was fast approaching and dark rain clouds hung over the town amidst the gloomy fog of factory and chimney smoke and the sound of oil rigs pumping remorselessly.
She turned back to Frisco and spread questioning hands – where?
‘Beats me but they should have been back hours since. Wouldn’t be surprised to find they’ve snuck off boozing like the rest of my boys, though Lord knows how with an Indian in tow. Long as they’re back by morning, that’s when we’ve got to move this mule train down there. Dang it, if I didn’t have enough problems. No caporal and a whole heap of mules to care for.’
Minnie nodded thanks and looked again at the town and felt the first light sprinkle of raindrops fall on her face.
‘You a friend of Billy Lee, miss?’ asked Frisco.
A train was leaving the depot, its long whistle a sad howl in the coming darkness as it snaked along the track alongside the creek. She smiled brief thanks at Frisco and set off walking down the hill, leading her pony by the rein.
‘You find him and that Indian, tell them to get back here pronto,’ Frisco called after her. ‘I need every man on station and I need them sober.’
It had been a helter-skelter ride for Minnie after she had socked Freddie about the skull with the coffee pot. Knowing he was a thick-skinned bonehead she had hit him not once this time but twice and with real intent. She had intended to lay the man out until she was good and clear of the cabin. Then she had ridden hard, driving her pony across country to pick up with the mule train heading into Titusville. She was beat now, tired and dusty from the long ride and as she took the ferry across the creek she knew she would not be able to go on for much longer without a rest.
The rain came down in a cloudburst when they were in mid-creek, heavy and instant in a continuous sheet and she was soon soaked through, the dust on her clothes and face turning to streaks of dirt. The heavy rainfall turned the opposite shore into a quagmire and when they docked Minnie dragged her tired feet up through the bank of ankle deep mud pulling the pony behind her. Everywhere was a black mess of oil; it seeped through the mud and lay in putrid pools amidst rotting garbage dumped along the creek’s edge. Minnie despaired of the stench and the collection of simple tumbledown shacks coated with a film of soot and blackened by residue from the factory and fireboxes of the locomotives.
Ahead of her, amidst the buildings alongside the road she saw a rowdy group of men gathered, their presence lit by lanterns and handheld flaming torches. Other people were moving away fearfully, running to escape the rain and the noisy gang whose shouts sounded louder than the beating of the pouring rain. Minnie tied off her horse and climbed up off the road to stand under a sheltering porch alongside a group of other curious locals as they watched what was going on.
‘Lynch him!’ she heard shouted. ‘Lynch the sonofabitch!’
‘Wait!’ roared another. ‘We got to find out where the other one’s gone.’
Through the silhouetted figures she could see a lone man being held up, his hair was long and trailed about his face that was plainly bloody and beaten.
‘Poor sucker,’ she heard one of the men behind her say to another.
‘Don’t worry about him, he’s only a scummy Indian,’ his companion answered.
‘What other one they talking about?’
‘White man killed one their rigger gang, some muleskinner who just got into town. Heard he turned the doc’s surgery into a mess, brained one guy and stuck the other with a knife then blew his brains out.’
‘You don’t say?’ gasped his friend. ‘No wonder they want to hang them, where’s the white boy now?’
‘That’s what they aim to find out, the Indian was in it with him and a partner to the killing by all accounts.’
‘Goddamned savages.’
Minnie looked again at the sad figure of the Indian being roughly held and occasionally punched in the face as he was questioned.
‘He ain’t saying nothing,’ said the man behind her.
‘Nope, they’ll give in soon and string him up.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Their blood’s up and that’s one mean bunch of riggers, nothing short of a forest fire will stop them now.’
Amidst the roaring crowd Minnie could see sloshing whiskey bottles doing the rounds. The rain still
fell in a curtain and turned the torchlight scene into flashes of color and reflected sharp spikes of light from the glass bottles.
One of the oil riggers set down his lantern on the porch step and began to unravel a coil of rope, ‘Where we going to do it?’ he bawled.
Minnie took the opportunity to slip forward, making her way nearer through the shadows and falling rain. In a swoop she picked up the lantern and made her way quickly down a side alley between buildings. Moving fast and using the lamplight she followed the sound of an oil pump at work. She found it standing on four thick wooden legs in a back yard and towering over a darkly windowed hovel. Hogs grunted in the yard and a caged run where chickens fluttered stood nearby under the feet of the tower. Alongside, Minnie noted the great circular tank of pooled oil that had been bled from the pump, its liquid surface slopping gently under the patter of rain.
Swiftly, she reached inside the chicken run and grasped a large handful of straw. Twisting it into a bundle, she soaked it with kerosene from the lamp’s reservoir and set it alongside the oil tank, stepping back she threw the still burning lamp at the bundle. The glass smashed and the flame leapt across. With a bloom of sudden light the kerosene took and the flames swiftly leapt up the side of the tank.
Confident that the fire had taken hold, Minnie turned and ran back up the alley, passing the still arguing bunch of drunken men she stepped up back onto the porch and crossed over to her pony. Her fingers were slipping on the wet reins when the explosion came.
A bolt of bright light and a wave of energy that was channeled up the alleyway turned the down-falling rain into a sideways sheet that laced across the intersection. The sudden blast and wave of water caught the gang unawares and knocked some of the more drunken members down into the mud. There were shouts and confusion, men milled around anxiously until all eyes turned to the sudden upright pillar of flame that shot up into the night sky. Everywhere around was caught in the massive glare of the flaming oil rig, the column of flame spilling gobbets of blazing oil in a shower that echoed the rain. Soon rooftops were alight and screams of terror filled the streets. There was nothing like the fear of fire in an oil town, not many months before on a day they now called ‘Black Friday’, lightning had struck and started a three-day fire that had cost three hundred thousand barrels of oil to be lost and at such a cost it was well marked in the memory of the residents.