Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  “Best thing you can do is just send word for Billy to come turn himself in. Give him time to get over the urge to fight, and he’ll show up soon enough to call us all liars.”

  Cap shook his head in disagreement. “No, I’ve got an idea where he and Andy are, and I’m going to have them in Clarendon for the coming session of court in Donley County.”

  “I don’t blame you if you fire me, but I won’t have any part of this.”

  Cap seemed to have the answer he expected, and mounted his horse to go.

  “I figured you wouldn’t go, and I can’t say as I don’t respect you for it. I just hope he’s worth your trouble.”

  “I know him better than most.”

  He started to ride off with his men, but stopped his horse broadside to me, and paused to ponder what he was about to say. “I know more than enough to judge that I might have to shoot him to bring him in.”

  “He won’t fight you if you give him time to think it over.”

  “Like I said, I know him better than you think.”

  Something about his tone of voice made me believe him, and a cold shiver of premonition ran down my spine.

  “I trust I know you well enough that you won’t try and warn him,” he said as he rode off into the night.

  I walked back to the house with a bad feeling in my bones. Billy was hell on wheels with a pistol in his hand and his color up, but Cap didn’t take any chances. If he wanted you he would wait in ambush with leveled rifles, and if you decided to make a fight of it you would end up riding home tied belly down on your saddle.

  The word was Billy was drinking more than usual, and folks said once he got word of Colonel Andrew’s presence in Tascosa, he hunted him down like a mangy coyote. I knew that the whiskey had nothing to do with it. When Billy found the colonel in the street, he put a bullet in him because he aimed to set things right. I saw nothing but justice in his action, and liked to think I would do the same to a man who’d stolen from me if I had the chance. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself of the fact that Billy was no different from me, I knew better.

  Billy was a bad man to tangle with, but not a bad man in the usual sense of the word. Maybe we of that time just gave that distinction to some men in the way of taking up for our friends. I thought Billy was a good man for the most part, but I knew that he had a streak of something that separated him from most of his fellow men. Those like me might talk tough, but it was easy for us to hesitate when it came time to pull the trigger. Billy’s kind never hesitated, and were marked as deep as branded Cain with a willingness to do violence. They have a well-defined limit to the amount of insult they will bear, and are weighed down by no more conscience for their antagonists than a rattler when it strikes.

  Cap Arrington and his posse beat the sagebrush for a week in search of Billy and Andy, but didn’t get so much as a whiff of their scent. One fine, bright Sunday morning at the end of that same week I was walking with Barby and the children upon the sandy path to church. I should have been shocked when I spotted no other than Billy himself enter the Lady Gay saloon, but on the other hand, I should have expected no less audacity from the man. Barby had seen him too, and I felt her hold on my arm tighten. I knew she wanted me to pretend I had seen no such thing as passed before our eyes.

  Before I’d taken two more steps, I saw another thing that concerned me even more. Cap Arrington’s gray horse was tethered in front of the courthouse, standing alongside several others that I was sure belonged to the rest of the posse. In my mind there was but one thing to do before Cap got wind that Billy was in town. I made Barby promise me she would take the kids on to church while I went to talk to Billy.

  “Be careful, Nathan. He’s a proud man.” She clung to me, not wanting to let go.

  “I know something about foolish pride.” I kissed her and gently sent her on her way.

  I just made it to the front door of the saloon when Cap and three men toting rifles started down the steps of the courthouse. I stopped just long enough to make sure they were headed my way, and then ducked inside. Billy was standing at the far end of the bar, and he smiled thinly at the badge pinned to my shirt.

  The length of the room was between us, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Andy sitting at a corner table with a Winchester hidden in his lap. Nothing much usually bothered Andy, but it was obvious he was fretting. I would have been nervous too had I been in his shoes with Billy calling the play.

  “Never thought I’d see you wearing a badge,” Billy bantered as easily as if he were swapping lies on a spit-and-whittle bench.

  “Cap’s coming, and he’s got three guns to back him.” I had no time for small talk, and felt fate gave me little time to maneuver.

  “I see him coming.” He gazed out over my shoulder and through the saloon’s front window.

  “Turn yourself in, and we’ll prove it all a lie.” I tried to sound as level and calm as I wanted to appear.

  “I’m more of a mind to show them that I’m tired of being picked at.”

  “Arrington’s got you outnumbered.”

  “How do you figure in the count?” Billy stepped by me to the door.

  “I won’t let them shoot you down, if I can help it.” I followed him across the room.

  Andy rose and slipped along the wall to take a stand at the window just out of sight from the street. He was wiping sweaty hands on his shirt front, and his bottom lip was clenched in his teeth. I knew Andy, and no matter how scared he was, he would follow Billy straight to hell, and do his part in the clutch. He was nothing if not reckless, and that is always a thing to be reckoned with.

  Billy was standing just to the side of the open door watching Arrington make his way down the street. Billy noticed just like I did that two of the posse had disappeared, and he cast a quick look over his shoulder at the back entrance to the room.

  “Where do you stand, Nate? It’s time to pay the fiddler.” Billy’s eyes gave me no room to waiver. “Throw down that badge, and we’ll give old Cap a dose of humility.”

  He knew without me answering that I wasn’t going to stand with him, and he turned his back on me to watch the street once more.

  “You’d better get home to your wife. It’s fixing to get touchy here,” Billy said as he slipped his pistol from his holster.

  In Billy’s mind he’d dismissed my presence, and his thoughts turned solely to the task at hand. I could see Cap and the deputy only twenty yards away and coming nearer. Watching Billy with his pistol hanging at the end of his arm, I knew that it was only seconds before he stepped into the doorway and opened up on the lawmen who thought they had him treed.

  My gun came to my hand and I took two quick steps toward the door just as Billy turned halfway around to face me. The impact of my pistol barrel against his head shocked me to my elbow, and Billy folded up on the floor, slobbering and squirming in semi-conscious pain. I whirled to face Andy, who stood with rifle leveled on my guts and a wild, shocked look on his face.

  “They would have killed him,” I said loudly to him.

  For a moment I wasn’t sure if Andy was going to shoot me or not, and tried everything I could to talk him down.

  “Drop your rifle, and we can beat this thing in court.”

  “He was your friend, Tennessee.” There was as much confusion as there was anger in his voice.

  “That’s why I did it.”

  My pistol felt slick in my sweaty palm, and I wondered if Andy was the joker in the deck I hadn’t taken account of. I sighed with a gush of relief when he laid his Winchester upon a table and slumped limply into a nearby chair.

  “You better not have killed him,” he threatened.

  Looking down at Billy groaning on the floor, I had no doubts his wound was too far from his heart to kill him. I kicked his pistol across the room and stepped to meet Cap just outside the door.

  “They’ve both surrendered, Cap.” I stood over Billy with my gun.

  Cap’s pale blue eyes studied Billy lying i
n the doorway. “He ain’t going to forgive you for that.”

  He didn’t have to tell me the ramifications of what I’d done. I knew that from watching Billy’s face as he managed, despite his throbbing head, to stand and prop himself against the doorjamb. The look he gave me was as simple as it was murderous, and had he a gun then he would have tried to kill me. His eyes left me and locked on to something across the street. There stood Barby holding Samuel in her arms, with Owen staring big-eyed from behind her skirt. Billy cussed under his breath, and I knew that even if I’d had a chance of his accepting the buffaloing I’d given him, he’d never forgive me for Barby and the kids seeing him that way.

  I studied Barby where she stood and tried to interpret the look she was giving me for what it actually was. Maybe her perspective of the matter was closer to the truth, because I had no faith in my ability to find my way through the tangled mess that fate had woven for all of us.

  “That’s all right, Cap. I don’t sleep easy anyway.” And that was the bitter truth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Neither Billy nor Andy ever threatened me while in jail or on the long ride to Clarendon, but neither acknowledged my presence with so much as a single word. I rode silent sentinel on the edges of their escort, shunned by the men who had once been my good friends. Once or twice I caught Billy looking at me, and his stare was a cold, hard thing. I cursed him for a pigheaded fool who couldn’t tell friend from foe.

  We arrived in Clarendon to find that a mob of the rough element from Tascosa and Mobeetie had beaten us to town. They were burning effigies of the county officials, and threatening to tear the town down around our ears. There was a bit of high tension until Goodnight showed up with a crew of his cowboys just in the nick of time. They parked a wagon full of rifles along the main street, and stood around the entire day within handy reach of them while the rustlers, pimps, and murderers decided how far they were willing to take things toward a fight.

  That bunch wasn’t there so much to rescue fellow criminals as they were to have one last go at stopping the law from coming into the Panhandle. If law and order were allowed to take a hold, their merry refuge far from legal constraints would be no more. I was proud that Billy showed no pleasure in the presence of that crowd, although he knew many of them just as well as I did.

  We had just enough firepower that the toughs kept their peace, and a jury was convened to hear what was scheduled on the docket. My belief that Billy’s case would be quickly dismissed was ill-founded, and the jury ruled him and Andy guilty of a list of charges a country mile long. The evidence against them was strong on hearsay and weak on evidence, but the jury and prosecutor didn’t seem to care. In fact, that was why they stamped them guilty for so many things. The common belief of those gathered to watch the trial was that any decent lawyer could beat the charges, but Billy and Andy would be in and out of court for five years in the process.

  I thought Billy would tell the entire court what he thought about them, but he never even said anything other than to quietly answer the questions asked of him as he took his turn on the stand. He denied everything they accused him of, but he might as well have been yelling into a well for all the good it did him. It looked as if Billy and Andy were bound for a long stay in jail, or high bond, and years of lawyer fees. There was no denying that I had brought them to that point.

  Through legal shenanigans that only lawyers can understand, a deal was negotiated whereby Billy and Andy agreed to leave Texas if the state would drop all charges. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but they had no other options with so much set against them. Sometime during the night they rode off bound for parts elsewhere, and the court said hallelujahs that justice held sway in the Panhandle.

  The next morning I handed Cap my badge, and told him I was done with enforcing the law. He knew that I wasn’t cut out for it anyhow, and he gave me no argument as I went upon my way. I stopped in Mobeetie long enough to hitch my team of mules to the wagon, and load up the wife and kids. We made our way to the home place and settled back into life away from town, and badges, and crooked courts.

  Despite drought, blizzard, and uncertain market, I talked Long into partnering with me. We bought out a rancher I knew who wanted to recoup a little of the fortune he had lost. We made the deal at a bargain price with a market panic going on, and though the few brands on his books didn’t amount to much in numbers, I felt once again on my way to building the ranch I’d hoped for.

  We had another addition to the family when Fawn gave Long a pretty baby daughter, and at about the same time Barby informed me that she was pregnant again. With the population of our little settlement booming I couldn’t help but wonder what the country would be like by the time all of our children were grown.

  I helped Long put in a quarter section of wheat along the creek, although I couldn’t see myself farming no matter how Long preached about the future in it. I was content to work our cattle, or build improvements on the ranch. Between the toil and labor I found time to spend with my family in those little moments that don’t seem to matter much while they’re happening. On hot summer days at dinnertime we would often take a picnic on the banks of the creek, where I swam under the hot sun with Owen riding on my back while Barby watched with happy eyes.

  Sometimes in the evenings, after Barby had read or sung the kids to sleep, we would walk out across the prairie under the night sky, hand in hand like two young sweethearts. I came to know beyond all doubts that she loved me, and if possible I loved her more.

  Those were good times, and to all intent and purpose, I looked as if I’d found peace away from the worries of the world. But in the back of my mind was the constant certainty that Billy would come calling one day when I least expected it. More than one person had heard him threaten to kill me in the year since the trial. When a strange sound startled me in the dark, I couldn’t help it that my heart jumped beat and my hand reached for the pistol that I made sure never to be without.

  I never told my concerns to Barby, and if she came to the same conclusion on her own, she never let it show. If maybe she hugged me a little tighter, or kissed me a little longer when I left for a trip, I accepted it as a sign of how much she loved me, and let it go at that.

  And when on that day I saw Cap Arrington loping his horse to me across the plains, I knew just about what he had come to tell me when he was still a mile away. He took his sweet time crossing the creek, cutting for sign along the sandy banks and scanning the area carefully. He made his way up to the corner of the corral, where I was forking hay to my horses. From the sweat and dust caked on his tired mount, I took it that he had come a long ways to see me, and fast.

  “Are you craving some of Barby’s biscuits, or did you just miss me?” I jabbed my pitchfork into the hay pile and leaned against the top rail of the fence.

  “No, I’ve come on another matter altogether.” It was plain to see he was in no mood for small talk. In fact, he looked plumb wary.

  “Get down and visit awhile.”

  “No thanks.” He continued surveying my homestead, starting close to the house and working his gaze all the way to the horizon.

  “Did you come all the way from Mobeetie just to sit your horse in my yard?”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Billy, have you?”

  “No.” I suspected he already knew the answer to that before he asked.

  “Well, he ain’t in New Mexico like everybody says.”

  “You can’t believe half of what you hear.”

  “I rode into Mobeetie yesterday evening and he had just left there.”

  “You think he’s headed here?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “I don’t need you playing nursemaid to me.”

  Cap grunted once in disagreement and chewed at his mustache. “There’s some that say it was Billy that shot up that track-laying crew’s locomotive east of Oneida last week.”

  “Where the hell is Oneida?”

  “Little spot down on W
ild Horse Lake that the land promoters have staked out. The LX cowboys got talked into voting it the Potter County seat, and those promoters say it’s going to be a boom town.” Cap scowled as if he didn’t believe such talk was anything more than snake oil salesmen pitching foolishness. “A man told me that there’s already half a hundred people there. He said the tracks are still a week away and they’re already thinking about changing the name to Amarillo before it’s even a town proper.”

  “Well, Billy never did like the thought of railroads coming here, nor farmers either, but I doubt he’d shoot up a train, even if he was on a little Saturday night spree,” I said.

  Cap paused just long enough to give the country around him another careful look. “There are also those that say it was him that ran off with some of the Bar CC’s horses last winter.”

  “The Stock Association outlawed him, and that gives every gossip that wants to an excuse to lay every head of stolen Association stock off on him.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “He ain’t the rustling kind.”

  “But he’s got it out for the Association, doesn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him, pestering them a bit.”

  “I’ve got some other bad news.” Cap’s face didn’t change expression, but he was the kind that could tell somebody he was going to hang them in the same voice he asked about the weather.

  “Oh?”

  “Andy was killed a little over a week ago. Some promoter hauled in an outlaw horse to Dodge, and offered a fifty-dollar bounty to anybody who could ride him.” Cap shifted his weight in his saddle and rubbed at his achy hipbones with both palms. “They say the damned thing reared up and fell over on him.”

  I watched the wind roll the dust across the yard while I thought of Andy trying to ride a bad horse on a whim. He always claimed he could ride anything with hair, and I knew without being told he’d been laughing when he’d climbed into the saddle one last time. The world had become a little tamer when all the mad, vibrant life of him rushed out from his lungs, crushed between horse and ground. I missed him already.