Wheeler's Choice

by Jerry Buck

  “Things been mighty quiet for a spell,” he said. “You figger they playin’ possum?”

  “I don’t know. But let’s find out.”

  We circled behind the shack, then closed in on the north side. I had my gun in my right hand. I touched the stone wall with my left hand as we crept around to the front. At the corner I stopped and stuck my head out cautiously to look around. I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t hear anything.

  I slowly thumbed the hammer back on my Peacemaker until I heard it click. I had five shots in the cylinder. I never carry a round under the hammer. Only a fool would risk shooting himself in the foot.

  I turned back to Crayler and put a finger to my lips for silence. He nodded his head. I motioned to him to follow me. I ducked around the comer, keeping close to the wall at the front of the shack.

  I kept my pistol ready for anything. The wooden shutter on one of the windows was still open. In fact, it had been nearly blasted off its hinges. I pressed my face against the cold stones at the opening and peered in cautiously. It was a stygian darkness in the shack.

  I crouched down below the window so that I would not be silhouetted against the moonlight, and crept to the door. I waited for Crayler to join me.

  I pressed on the door. It held tight. The wooden bolt was probably in place inside. The door looked sturdy, but it was probably built only to stop the wind and snow and the occasional curious cow that might wander by. I prayed that Angus hadn’t built it to withstand two strong and determined men.

  I gestured to Crayler to put our shoulders to the door. He nodded that he understood and moved up beside me. We leaned back, and together we threw our weight against the door.

  I heard it crack, but it held.

  We both quickly drew back behind the safety of the rock, but no shots came splintering through the door.

  On our second try, the door gave way with a crunching noise, and we stumbled inside.

  CRACK!

  A flash exploded low in a comer of the one-room shack.

  I threw myself to the dirt floor. My eardrums rang from the gunshot in the confined space.

  Two more shots blasted through the tiny shack.

  At the same time I fired three more shots with lightning speed at the flashing gunbursts. The acrid smell of burned gunpowder filled the shack.

  “Goddamn!” Crayler cried in the dark. “He hit me! The son of a bitch hit me! I’m bleeding! I got blood all over my face!”

  “Shut up, you damned fool!” I said through clenched teeth.

  I kept my gun aimed low at the comer. I had kept two bullets in reserve.

  Slowly my eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Moonlight reflected dully in through the open window and door. I could make out an overturned chair. A table. I saw Crayler cowering in the corner.

  At least I could make out a dark form on the floor in the corner.

  I reached out and felt the toe of a boot pointed toward the ceiling. I curled my fingers around it and gave it a good yank. Nothing. I was pulling on dead weight.

  I inched along past the feet. My gun was aimed at where I knew his chest was. I found his gunbelt. Then an arm and a gun in the hand. The barrel was still warm. I took the gun out of the hand, and the hand flopped back lifelessly.

  I stood up and looked back at Crayler. I said, “You can get up now, gunslinger. The danger’s over.”

  Without a word, he scrambled to his feet and fled out the door. He clutched his face with one hand.

  At the door I called to Angus to bring up a lantern.

  Angus lighted the kerosene lantern in the arroyo. It cast a bright yellow halo over the top of the rise. It bathed the front of the shack in light and illuminated the tops of the cottonwoods swaying relentlessly in the wind.

  The wind had veered to the north and grew even stronger. Dark clouds scudded rapidly across the sky and hid the moon. I could smell rain in the air.

  As the lantern was carried up the slope, the men gathered nervously in clusters. They were silhouetted against the yellow corona. Angus reached the top, and the men’s faces were visible for the first time in hours. They looked haggard and anxious.

  Angus was equally anxious. “Those shots—you all right? Crayler came running down like a scared rabbit.”

  “I think he got himself bloodied.”

  “Just a scratch. The bullet grazed his cheek and nicked his earlobe. He’ll probably be bragging about it before the night’s over. Whadda you got inside?”

  “One dead man. Leastways, he’s dead now. The others must have hightailed it before we got here.”

  He followed me in, and the rough interior of the shack was suddenly revealed in the stark light. Several men crowded at the door and others hung in the windows.

  The dead man lay on his back, his head pushed up by the stone wall.

  Angus held the light up high, and I stared down at the body.

  His wild eyes stared lifelessly back at me. The same wild eyes I had seen that morning when I had leaped onto the back of his horse.

  “Montana Smith,” I said.

  The information passed swiftly outside and was repeated by every lip.

  Angus said, “His mortal soul has departed for the depths of hell.”

  A man pushed his way through the men for a closer look. “Montana Smith,” he said. “I hear’d a him. Don’t look so tough now.”

  Another said, “Jesse James hisself couldna stood up to th’ lead we throwed in here.”

  Angus handed the light to one of his cowboys and knelt over the body. He opened the bloodstained buffalo coat, ripped open the woolen shirt, and exposed three bullet wounds in the chest.

  “I heard six shots,” Angus said.

  “He fired three times, and so did I.”

  “I figured as much. You hit him with every shot.”

  Below the wounds was a cloth wrapped around his chest. Angus rolled the body over and peeled the coat and shirt up until he reached the cloth. It was soaked with blood.

  “I guess that settles which one you shot in town,” he said.

  A cowhand asked, “Boss, you figger them others left him here to stall us while they made dust?”

  Angus stood up. “Don’t seem likely. That’s a bad wound in the back. Likely his lungs filled with blood. Probably didn’t have th’ strength to ride anymore.”

  “I agree with Angus,” I said. “Montana and Bill Smoot rode together for a long time. I ran into ’em a few times up in Kansas. They were like brothers. If there was any chance Montana could pull through, I don’t think Smoot would have left him behind to be dog meat for a hungry posse. He figured he’d be dead before we got here.”

  I walked over to the soot-blackened fireplace and stared at the coals, now as dead as Montana Smith. “What’ll it be, Angus?” I asked without looking back. “They got a good lead on us. Do we ride now or do we wait for first light?”

  “Th’ men are tired,” Angus said. He spoke slowly, and in his weariness the burr in his voice was more pronounced. “Th’ horses need to be grazed and rested. But I’ll leave it to you, Ben. You got th’ most stake in this. It’s your decision.”

  My eyes were still on the fireplace. Suddenly it appeared like the black open mouth of a coal mine. Like the one beside the Clinch Mountains in Virginia that crippled Pa and turned him to drink.

  I wanted to ride now! I wanted to be after Smoot and Bayliss and the tinhorn gambler. They killed Abby! They stole the life from her body! They snuffed out that special light in her eyes and stilled the pleasing lilt of her voice. Her warmth and gentleness and goodness were now only a memory.

  Every fiber of my being ached with the desire to have them in my gun sight. I wanted to kill each one of them the way I had killed Montana Smith. Only quicker!

  Still, I knew the odds were against us. Darkness covered their tracks. Even with a fresh start in the morning, we might never catch up to them. They’d be drinking beer and pinching dance hall girls in Fort Worth and laughing at the posse stumbling b
linding through the wilderness.

  At first, deep in thought, I didn’t hear the gentle tapping on the roof. Then it became a roar, like a herd of longhorns stampeding over our heads.

  Thunder cracked in the distance. Water gushed off the roof in torrents. Still more rain found cracks in the roof and began to puddle on the dirt floor of the shack.

  “I guess that’s your answer, Angus,” I said, my voice heavy with emotion.

  “Aye,” he said sadly. “And for tomorrow, too. There won’t be a track left after this gullywasher. We’ll never find them.”

  Barely above a whisper, I said. “Maybe not tonight, Angus. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We buried Abby on a cool and sunless spring day beside her flower garden. The clouds were dark and threatening. A distant rumbling sounded from the north. It seemed that God was angry at the needless death of someone so young and beautiful and gentle and full of life.

  The mourners overflowed the tiny Presbyterian church. We had made many friends during the short time we had been in San Miguel, and Abby had won the heart of every person she had met.

  “God has seen fit to take Abby from our bosom,” said Angus in his eulogy.

  “But the years we have known her were like a gift from heaven. She was our sunshine. She was our inspiration. She radiated joy and happiness and peace. God has made her an angel in heaven, but she was an angel on earth, too. She was a bonny lass, and I loved her like a daughter.”

  Angus stopped, his voice overcome with emotion. Then he said, “May God rest her soul and give her peace. And may he give peace to those who loved her.”

  Angus meant that last for me.

  I had said little since we had ridden back with the body of Montana Smith lashed to a saddle. But my brooding silence told Angus that I was not about to give up my vow to seek out Abby’s killers.

  Most of the mourners from the church followed the wagon bearing the coffin out to our small ranch. They gathered around the grave, dug the day before, and sang “Rock of Ages” and “Nearer My God to Thee” to the accompaniment of a squeeze box.

  Over her grave, Angus recited, “Thou’ll break my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn! Thou minds me o’ departed joys, Departed never to return.”

  Afterward I listened to the condolences of our friends. I’m not very good at that sort of thing, but they accepted my stoicism as a sign of my grief. Which, in fact, it was.

  I was filled with grief beyond words. Abby had brought me a peace and contentment I had never known before. I had been headstrong, reckless, and frequently wild before I met her in that Yankee prison camp. She had gentled me, and now I feared that wildness was about to be unleashed again. I had every intention of bringing her killers to justice. My fear was that my passion for vengeance would consume me.

  The ladies had laid out a repast for the mourners. I had no taste for food.

  Chago Duran approached me. He was wearing tight black clothes, and his sombrero hung down over his back. He had a red sash across his waist. His bronzed, handsome face was somber.

  “Amigo,” he said softly, “La señora was una graciosa dama. Mi compasion. I know what is in your heart. Remember, my right hand is ready to serve you and my pistola is yours.”

  “You are a true friend, amigo,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate the offer, and, who knows, I may take you up on it. But it’s going to be a long, hard trail. I couldn’t ask you, or any man, to do that.”

  “Where you ride, I would ride. You remember that.”

  “I will,” I said gratefully.

  Only a few people were left. The ladies cleaned dishes and put away the food.

  “You haven’t touched a thing,” said Maude Stanley, the storekeeper’s wife. She was a pleasant-faced woman with a stout body that had given birth to seven children. She had a covered dish in her hands.

  “I couldn’t eat, Maude. Not now.”

  “Well, a body’s gotta have nourishment,” she said. “I’m gonna put a few things in the house for you. Plenty of chicken left. I got a nice potato casserole here. And there’s a good slab of vinegar pie left. Made it myself. Some fresh-baked bread. I’ll set them on the kitchen table. Now, you eat, hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I promised.

  Dusty had his hat in his hand and looked more awkward than I had ever seen him. His long blond hair was parted in the middle and darkened by a liberal dose of oil to keep his unruly locks in place. He wore a black suit, but it looked like an ill-fitting hand-me-down that emphasized his slight frame. His head barely reached to my shoulders. He looked scrawny, but I suspected he was as tough as rawhide.

  “Mr. Wheeler,” he stammered, his eyes on the ground, “I gotta tell you, but—it’s just tearin’ me up somethin’ fierce, Mr. Wheeler.”

  “Just let it come out, Dusty. Don’t hold it back.”

  “I—I don’t know how to say it. I’m afraid you’re gonna get mad.” He glanced up at me with reddened eyes, then stared at the ground again. He twisted his hat in his hands.

  “I—I loved her, Mr. Wheeler!” he blurted as he wiped at his eyes. “I mean, gosh, she’s your wife—but I—I just loved her and I miss her somethin’ fierce!”

  I put my arm around the youth’s shoulders. “I know you loved her, Dusty. And I know she loved you. She told me so herself.”

  He looked up at me, and his hazel eyes suddenly brightened. “She did? Gosh! I mean, you’re not mad at me?”

  “Of course not. Abby had a big heart, and it was filled with love. It would please Abby to hear you say that.”

  Dusty took a deep breath and his chest puffed up. “I feel better already. I had to get it off my chest. I was scared you— She really loved me?” He wiped the last tear from his cheek with the back of a hand. “I’m still gonna miss her somethin’ fierce, Mr. Wheeler. I always will.”

  I said softly, “So will I, Dusty. So will I.”

  Angus stood by the fireplace as I entered the house. I had seen the last mourner off. It was an experience that left me more exhausted than a day on roundup pulling steers out of mud holes. I dropped on the mohair couch and stretched my feet out.

  Reaching for a bottle and two glasses he had put on the side table, Angus said, “The good church ladies are gone, so let’s have a man’s drink.’’

  He poured two fingers into each glass, examined them, then poured another finger. He handed me one glass and stood looking down at me. The angle made Angus look taller than he was.

  I took a long swallow. I was still on the couch. Angus didn’t say a word. Finally I said, “Looks like you got the floor, Angus.’’

  “Ben, I know what you’re fixin’ to do. I can’t say that I blame you. I want them mad dogs brought to justice as much as you do.’’

  “There’s only one way to take care of a mad dog,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Ben. You’ve got to let th’ law take care of this.”

  “What law is that? The law that let them ride into town, kill Abby, and Swensen, too, and ride out again? That the law you talking about, Angus?”

  “That’s funny talk coming from a man who wore a badge.”

  “I upheld the law to the best of my ability,” I said, rising from the couch to pace the length of the room. “But I also knew the limitations of the law. Sure, I sometimes stretched my authority and operated in places where my badge was just a piece of tin. But I don’t think the sheriff here’s gonna chase Smoot all the way to Fort Worth. I don’t think the Texas Rangers’re gonna follow ’em into the Nations. The federal marshal ain’t gonna track ’em to Kansas. I can, and I will!”

  Angus took another swallow of whisky and said, “Ben, the good book says, ’Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ It doesn’t profit a man to take the law into his own hands.”

  I looked at my friend for a long time before speaking. “I remember it also says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth.’”

  I poured myself another drink from the bottle. “Angus, I can’t turn my back on it. I can’t put Abby in the ground and forget about it. I put Moses Thatcher in the ground and turned my back on it.”

  Angus sighed. “Ben, that was war. You shouldn’t let it gnaw on you.”

  “War or not, that was no way to treat a man. They let him die without lifting a finger. Abby preached forgiveness, and I tried to forgive. But not this time. There’s no way I can forgive ... or forget.”

  “Ben, you got a future here in San Miguel,” Angus pleaded. “Come next election I was thinking of proposing you for the legislature. Who knows where that could lead? Maybe the governor’s mansion. You gonna throw all that away?”

  “If I have to,” I said, shrugging.

  “What about Abby?” he said. “Remember when she said the time had come to stop living by the gun?”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up, Angus. I know I made a promise to Abby. And it grieves me that I have to break it. It hurts me, believe me it does. But I can’t rest until I’ve done what I have to do. The fire is in me, Angus. It’s burning my insides, and there’s only one way to quench the flames.”

  Angus sighed heavily. “You’re a determined man, Ben Wheeler.” He poured us another drink. “And a stubborn one. You remind me of myself. I know the fire that’s in you. I felt it once myself, and I took up the sword. I—”

  He stopped, as though he had revealed too much. He took a quick swallow and brushed an age-dappled hand against his long mustache.

  Angus said, “I see that you won’t be stopped.” He raised his glass to me. “The least I can do is wish you well. May God look after fools. ”

  I laughed and raised my glass to his.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I spent the next few days getting my affairs in order and closing out my law office.

  I had a pretty good idea where to find Smoot and his gang, and I hoped it would take only a few months. Nevertheless, I had to be prepared for a longer stay if necessary. Or for the unlikely event that I might never return.