Bushwhacked

by C. Courtney Joyner

  The last of the storm was soaking the room.

  Bishop backed out, turned into the hallway, trigger-lines drawn tight from his elbow, when the white-hot flash blinded him.

  Minutes before, Chaney had mounted the Stockwell camera on a small tripod of his own making and positioned it at the end of the second-floor hallway. His ears were still ringing from the grenade, and he kept shaking his head to clear them. He poured the mix of magnesium powder onto the flash tray, then pressed himself against a wall, squatting on his haunches out of sight.

  He’d seen Bishop in the street below, and tried for a picture of him walking toward the emporium, shotgun raised, with Hunk lying a few feet away, screaming over his bleeding leg, but the rain was still falling. Focusing his spy camera through the old windows was difficult. The image could have been mushed into a gray fog so he’d switched to the Stockwell, sure it would give him what he wanted.

  His index finger was on the flash powder igniter, thumb on a cable to the camera’s shutter release as Bishop was a blur of motion, kicking open the door to Colby’s room, charging in.

  Chaney held his breath. “God, to damn that—” He never finished.

  The magnesium flash filled the hallway with hot light, and the barrel flame from the shotgun exploded at the same time, blowing apart the camera, lens, and bellows. Buckshot ripped the wall and sent the tripod spinning as Chaney ducked, still feeling the heat from the flash pan. Screaming out in pain, he clamped his hands over his blood-wet face.

  * * *

  Pat Garrett’s boots sunk ankle-deep as he moved around the litter of corpses on Myrtle’s main street, checking faces for his own men. Every step was a chore as the mud tried trapping him, holding him in place as he bent over each body for identification. He used his rifle as a crutch to pull his long legs free of the slop and get to the next.

  He kept his collar turned against the easy rain that was washing the blood from the dead men and animals before forming rivulets that snaked down the street, emptying into deep puddles of reddish brown.

  With a whistle, McCarty leaped over a puddle, then helped Garrett turn a body that had been pressed deep into the street by the weight of a fallen horse.

  Garrett wiped away inches-thick mess from the face. “This is one of the guns who came with you.”

  “Jim something. Good man, decent with a carbine, but slow.”

  “He took it between the shoulders.”

  McCarty said, “Mr. Tunstall thought highly of him, but I got more of those red hoods than he did.”

  Garrett straightened up. “I wonder if the sniper’s keeping count, too.”

  “Then he knows he lost, don’t he?”

  Garrett freed himself and found a solid patch next to another sprawled corpse clutching a Colt long barrel. It was a Fire Rider, his side opened by a shotgun blast. There were more, at least twenty, lying among the remains of the cattle-smashed storefronts and fences. Some were recognizable, others weren’t.

  Garrett took the Colt from the dead Rider, checking its action and saying to McCarty, “You shoot well under any circumstance.”

  McCarty was standing by a horse that was nudging the twisted body of its dead Fire Rider with its nose. “Hell, I wasn’t the one who got those down by the barn and all them coming from that railcar.” He stroked the horse neck to withers, its demonic disguise smearing off on his fingers. “The doc doesn’t like being a legend, but after this crazy fight? I don’t think he’s got any choice. This’ll be another fancy cover.”

  Garrett used the rifle butt to pry the body of a fat Fire Rider from the wet. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll write about you, too.”

  McCarty couldn’t help his grin. “Here’s to hoping.”

  Garrett turned the fat rider over and pulled off his hood—an outlaw. His nose was beaten flat, giving him a pig’s snout. “I know this one, even shot him once, raiding cattle. Did you get him this time or was it me?”

  “I shot that hog at least once!” The voice was one of Garrett’s men, riding in from behind the shorn tents and wreckage.

  Flanked by a few others, all were torn, tired, and bloody, but they’d made it through the skirmish. The battle relief played on their faces as one lit a cigarette then passed it along.

  The first rider said, “Thank ol’ Jesus there’s more of us standing then there is them. We earned our pay, but it was that shotgun made the difference.”

  * * *

  Chaney was sloppy deadweight, making no effort to walk, as Bishop hauled him down the back steps of the emporium, half carrying him on his shoulder like a bulging flour sack.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, with Chaney muttering, “You slaughtered me,” over and over, the dried blood on his face cracking as he spoke.

  Bishop hefted his one good arm, adjusting Chaney’s weight, and kept moving, not saying a word or looking at him.

  A heavy piece of the windowsill, blown apart by the grenade, crashed to the ground, just missing them, as Bishop carried Chaney around the side of the emporium to the front of the barn, then let him crumple into the mud.

  Chaney said, “I’m the one making you famous, and you slaughtered me . . .”

  Not yet was Bishop’s thought, but his mouth stayed clenched, taking in the litter of corpses that began at the barn and stretched the length of Main Street. Fire Riders, clutching guns and sabers, were nothing but sacks of flesh wrapped in red shrouds that had once been their robes and hoods. Useless.

  And John Bishop was the reason why.

  Any empathy he’d felt once was gone. He wasn’t allowing himself that reflective moment over fallen enemies anymore. It was pointless. They were dead. He wasn’t.

  Metal scuttled at Bishop’s feet.

  He turned, bringing his boot down hard, pinning Hunk’s hand to the barn floor, his fingers clenched around another Adams grenade. Hunk hadn’t pulled the primer pin strap, and Bishop pressed with his heel, cracking a bone.

  Hunk grabbed his blown-apart knee, spitting out, “O s te omor, fiu de ctea!”

  Deaf to Hunk’s and Chaney’s crying, Bishop picked up the Adams, judging its weight in his palm and how the iron globe helped balance the double barrels that were his right side. He held the grenade out before him. The weapon felt natural, the way a scalpel had felt the first time he held one as a medical student. Different times, and now, a different place in his mind.

  There was movement in the distance.

  Bishop looked past the end of Main Street at the horse galloping up-trail toward him. Perfect movement with head down, but no rider. Still shimmering red and running fast.

  Rose’s stallion broke past the junk heap, leaping over a bomb crater, and landing in the center of the street. The horse was slowing stride on its own as McCarty took a jump to grab hold of the bridle, then eased it to a stop by the corral’s shattered fence.

  The brown and white stood among the dead, Rose’s saddle tilted to one side, a stirrup broken, and blood smeared across the horn and seat.

  * * *

  The wet smell of the sheep’s wool broadened Colby’s nose as he lay in the tangle of barbed wire. A few ewes nuzzled him as he struggled to sit up, metal jags digging at him through his clothes.

  The impact of the grenade had propelled a piece of wood into his shoulder, but he’d managed to keep his rifle, and to stumble down the back stairs of the emporium, through the smoky fire of the explosion.

  He didn’t remember finding his horse or riding away from Myrtle along a back trail with the shotgun blasts and the screams of the Fire Riders echoing behind him. Finally losing consciousness, he’d fallen from his saddle.

  He’d never ridden away from an assigned target before. Those thoughts were cut in half by a hot jolt as his eyes rolled back, catching a flash of his own rifle pointed directly at his face, before he lost consciousness for the second time.

  * * *

  She came into his view, and the wash of blood that John Bishop saw through started breaking apart like
water beading against polished leather. He angled the bay from the cut in the trees to the slope of grass where Rose was lying.

  Gunshot and bleeding.

  She was on her side about twenty feet from Maynard’s body, and quite still. With every step closer, Bishop’s vision cleared, the pounding between his temples vanishing, allowing the sounds around him to enter.

  He pulled up his horse, closed his eyes tight, then opened them. The sky had lost the last tint of his blood to become the blue-gray after a storm. Streaks of sunlight showed Chisum’s cattle grazing along a high ridge.

  Bishop could feel each breath completely filling his lungs as he dropped from the bay and pulled his field medical kit from a saddlebag. Running to her, he jangled it open with his left hand, his voice with him again as he called out, “Rose.”

  He repeated her name louder and louder, but she didn’t stir.

  Other riders were coming in. McCarty was on the brown and white, with Garrett the last to clear the tree line on his tall hammerhead. Chaney and Hunk shared a Fire Rider horse tethered to Garrett’s saddle, both of them with hands tied and fresh wounds.

  Chaney mumbled to anyone and the ground, “Slaughter of the innocents . . .”

  Garrett said, “Write it down, Chaney.”

  Bishop was kneeling, the shotgun locked straight at his side. He had two fingers beneath Rose’s jaw, checking her pulse.

  McCarty said, “I think I know what you’re doing, but never seen it done that way before.” He got down from his horse.

  “Don’t tell me she’s dead, Doc.”

  “I can’t, because she isn’t. Get a bedroll.”

  McCarty took a blanket from behind his saddle and spread it on the wet grass while Bishop laid out bandages, antiseptic, and the wooden case for his surgical equipment. He flipped the latch, thumb-popped the lid, revealing the polished knives and instruments in their velvet-lined casket. He chose the proper scalpels with instant precision. Bishop’s moves with his med kit were as instinct-sure as breaching and firing the double barrel.

  His instructions were clear. “Rose first, then the Rider, then Chaney’s mouth. Garrett, get that slick off her. McCarty, take the bottle of carbolic, that one in the middle, and soak some linen.”

  Garrett pulled the rain slicker over her head, the rubber sticking to her bullet wound. He freed it carefully, then tossed it aside, as Bishop cleaned the wound with antiseptic.

  “Turn her.”

  McCarty and Garrett put Rose on her back as Bishop cut around her shirt, pulling away the bloody cloth to see if the bullet had torn deeper, done any worse damage. A medium-caliber slug had entered clean on her left side, just below the rib cage.

  Bishop angled her to examine the exit wound. There wasn’t any. A slash of flesh bubbled in the center of a black and purple bruise that spread along Rose’s hip, exactly where the bullet had lodged itself.

  McCarty said, “You’re really gonna operate on her now?”

  Bishop turned to the instrument case, taking a “bleeder” scalpel, opening the razor-styled blade from its wooden handle with quick motion. “I’m going to patch her, so you can get her to a proper doctor.”

  Garrett held her in position, halfway on her side. “Chisum’s doc is probably the best for two states, but Rose thinks it’s you.”

  “Right now, she doesn’t have much choice,” Bishop said as he swirled the bleeder in carbolic before slicing across the purple bruising. The blade glanced the edge of the embedded slug. “Just skidded under the surface.” With blood erupting around the scalpel, he peeled back the skin.

  McCarty sopped the blood with linen.

  Bishop dropped the bleeder and grabbed bullet-extracting forceps. “Ever think about medicine?”

  McCarty was wincing, looking away. “I’m smart enough to know I ain’t got the brains for it.”

  Garrett said, “You’ve seen a hell of a lot worse than this.”

  McCarty still wouldn’t look. “Yeah, but not with women.”

  Bishop used the small porcelain scoop on the end of the instrument, pressing it against a plane of raw muscle under the slug before gently rolling the lead out of the wound crater. “She’s lucky. It didn’t break apart.”

  Chaney called from his horse, “Is that what you do, Doctor? Shoot them, then sew them up? Create your own patients?”

  Bishop laid the extractor aside. “Maybe you should write it that way.”

  Garrett held a curved suturing needle that Bishop threaded with carbolic catgut. He took the needle, saying, “Except, I didn’t shoot her.”

  Hunk yelled, “No, me you shot! Bastard nebun!”

  Bishop said, “You’re next,” while lacing Rose’s wound, bringing the tissues together as Garrett cleaned around it, following the perfect stitching. One-handed, Bishop took the sutures through the sides of the wound, pulling it closed with just enough strength, before tying it off and cutting it. It wasn’t the work of a field butcher, but fine surgery.

  Garrett said, “And you say you can’t remember a damn thing.”

  Bishop rubbed his eyes, his vision still clear. “She’ll need something clean.”

  McCarty got some new denim from his saddlebag as Garrett and Bishop finished her bandaging. “So, what do you tell Chisum?” Bishop asked.

  “That we fought the battle, lost some good men and a quarter of the herd, but wiped out some Fire Riders.” Garrett slipped one of Rose’s arms through McCarty’s clean shirt. “And Rose is still alive.”

  Bishop said, “Get her to a doctor before sunset.”

  McCarty finished the buttoning. “Mr. Tunstall said something about Chisum paying out a victory bonus.” He turned, waving his sombrero toward the Chisum men who were rounding up the herd and gathering them along the far hillside. “Hell, if anybody ever earned any victory money, we’re it. Miss Rose, too.”

  Hunk let a word drop. “Wrong.”

  Garrett stood. “You said something, Hunkie?”

  Hunk met Garrett’s stare. “You’re wrong. About the victory. Wrong.”

  McCarty said, “Hey, I counted the dead, ya gut-eater! We both did. There’s a hell of a lot more of yours than ours lying back there.”

  “You don’t know what has happened today. It was afacere—a deal. Worked out.” Hunk bent forward, holding his knee with bloody fingers. “We’re all fools.”

  Garrett took a step, but Bishop moved beyond him instantly, pulling Hunk off the saddle and dumping him on the field—like tossing a rag doll. The huge man landed hard, before Bishop planted a foot on his chest, pinning him down.

  “Are you talking about the massacre? That?”

  “I won’t be killed by you—!”

  “What was worked out? What did you mean?”

  “Dumnezeu—!”

  Bishop smashed the edge of the double barrel against Hunk’s knee. He screamed. Bishop’s one hand went around the thick throat, squeezing Hunk’s voice to whispered curses. “Prostii!”

  “I can help that knee”—Bishop kept his left hand on Hunk and raised the rig again—“or crush it. Use the bone saw from my kit or put it back together. Understand?

  Hunk nodded.

  “Choose.”

  Hunk spoke after Bishop released his throat. “Don’t . . . don’t take my legs. Doctor.”

  “Tell me what you meant. What deal?”

  Hunk connected with Bishop’s eyes, saw something red-shadowed and dark filling them. “It was set for us. We knew when you would be there. That’s why we were waiting.”

  Garrett said, “To steal Chisum’s cattle, but we beat you down with them, instead.”

  Hunk bent his head back, sucking in moist air. “Not just the cattle! I was told to leave you hanging, like butchered. Let this Chaney take pictures to show everyone to fear us, so they’ll pay up.”

  McCarty spit. “Didn’t work out that way, did it?”

  Hunk said, “You were more clever as fighters than we thought. But, you were to lie down when we attacked. Not fight so ha
rd, and let us have the doctor.”

  Bishop took Hunk’s windpipe again. “Why? Why did you think that?”

  Straining to tears, Hunk swung one of his giant hands and gripped Bishop’s shoulder, trying to break him off. Bishop squeezed harder with his left. Muscles steeled, he raised the shotgun like a club.

  Hunk finally let go, and his words poured out as Bishop allowed him air again. “Farrow. He told us. He led us into the town, gave all the information.”

  Garrett said, “There’s an honest-to-God son of a bitch.”

  Bishop said, “Farrow always works for somebody. Who wanted me? Chisum?”

  “You are dead now, what do you care?”

  “You’re right. I am dead.” Bishop jammed a knee into Hunk’s chest, pressing his entire weight against him, pressure-choking. “Who wanted me!?”

  “Neica—brother. Your brother. He did all this.”

  * * *

  Colby felt the barbed wire biting as he was coming to, swimming back from a deep, painful sleep. The jags were in different places now, not that accidental tangle when he was caught in the fence, but at his wrists. Coils across his chest bound him to a sheep-shearing chair.

  The boy with patchy beard and worn overalls checked the ties holding Colby in place, daubing his fresh blood as if he was catching random drips from a freshly painted fence. Satisfied, he took a step back, watching Colby’s eyes struggle open.

  He drew a cup of water from a rain barrel and threw it into Colby’s face, then filled it again and held it to let him drink. The water cooled the acid in Colby’s throat. Lambs in a side pen bleated, poking their snouts through wooden slats as if trying for a better look.

  The boy said, “My father always splashed his face as he was coming back from a bout. From that barrel, in fact. You seemed to be in need.”

  “I’m definitely not drunk.”

  The boy stood in front of Colby as if he were on sentry duty, speaking as if afraid of mispronunciation. “I found you tangled in our fence, and you didn’t move. You hadn’t died, so, it must be drink. I know a thing about drink. I found all your guns, so I know you came for me, mean my family harm.”

  Colby pulled on his wrists bound by the barbed wire to the chair’s sloping back, designed to keep the sheep comfortable and in place while being shorn. With each pull, the wire cut deeper, bringing him sharper focus. He said, “No, I didn’t. What’s your thinking, son?”