* * *
With the Mississippi behind him, Matt felt a sense of freedom. In his mind, the mighty river served as a boundary for those who might pursue him, and there was a new sense of relief. His rational mind told him that he was still an outlaw, and was still wanted by the army. But the Shenandoah was so far behind him now that perhaps he was no longer important enough to warrant the army’s time and effort.
With no sense of urgency, for he had no real destination, he traveled leisurely across Arkansas, holding always to a generally westerly course, taking time to hunt when he wanted to. The country was pleasing to his eye, as long as he kept to the woods, with heavily forested hills and sparkling streams. Off to the north, he could see the distant mountains. He felt at peace with the world around him, his mind drifting less and less back to Virginia and the plight of those he had left behind.
There were things with which to concern himself, however. Summer was rapidly slipping away, and he would soon be in need of warm clothing. He had accumulated a sizable pack of deer hides, but had no thread to sew a coat. At this point, he was reluctant to stop in one place long enough to work the hides and soften them up. He was not especially handy with a needle and thread, and had never attempted to sew any kind of garment. But he was determined to give it his best effort, figuring that if other men could do it, then so could he. He had thought to dry some sinew for the purpose, but soon gave it up after a few unsuccessful attempts. Surely, he thought, there would be some place to buy some good stout thread before he left Arkansas. He would not only need a coat—his trousers were beginning to become threadbare in the knees. That job might be a bit more of a challenge. He had little confidence in his ability to sew a pair of trousers. Adding to the list, both horses needed shoes. It was with all these concerns in mind that he came upon the settlement of Boiling Springs.
Pulling Blue to a halt on the brow of a low ridge that bordered the eastern side of the town, he sat for a few minutes surveying the scene. It appeared to be a lively little town, with a cluster of buildings gathered around a crossroads. There were a couple of wagons with mules standing before what appeared to be a general store on the south side of the crossroads. A few yards below it, he saw a blacksmith’s forge. The road that lay in a north-south direction appeared to be a well-traveled route. Confident that he could find everything he needed here, Matt nudged Blue, and the big horse started down the slope.
As he had anticipated, Boiling Springs was able to meet most of his needs. A friendly storekeeper named Mathews supplied him with some stout thread, used to sew cottonseed bags, as well as a large needle used for the same purpose. Both horses were shod while he took his ease and made conversation with the smithy, an outspoken man named Bowers. If Matt had been of a nature to settle down, he would have given strong consideration to Boiling Springs. It was a peaceful place, and the two men he had met seemed friendly enough. According to Bowers, Boiling Springs was the exception to the state of things in Arkansas.
“I reckon you could say we were lucky. We had a couple of companies of Union infantry camped here, and their commanding officer was a kindly man. So they left things pretty much alone. Oh, they took everything that could be et or rode, but they didn’t burn us down. Most of the men from around here were paroled in June over at Jacksonport, and I expect everyone whose comin’ back is already home. God knows there’s plenty of work waitin’ for ’em. Without no men to work the land, most folks were damn-near starvin’ to death in this county. Hell, there was more trouble from the damn guerilla bands than both the Union and Confederate armies combined. Stealin’, burnin’, destroyin’ ever’thin’ they couldn’t use theirselves, they was the people caused Arkansas the most trouble.”
For the first time in days, Matt was prompted to think about the folks he had left back in Virginia. Settling down in a place like this little settlement was no more than wistful thinking for an outlaw, he reminded himself. The main north-south road was the Little Rock Pike, and sooner or later a Wanted paper with his name on it would come riding down that road. So he bade them good-bye, Mathews and the smithy, and continued his journey west. Following the Arkansas River, he set out toward Fort Smith. According to Mathews, Fort Smith was the last place to buy supplies before crossing into Indian Territory.
Chapter 6
“Brance, somebody’s comin’!”
Brance Burkett laid his cup aside and walked over to the ledge to see for himself. Thinking that it might possibly be the Tyler brothers coming back from their visit home, he stood gazing down at the river. Following the direction of Eli’s bony finger, he stared at the trail that wound around the oak trees beside the river one hundred feet below. He was about to tell Eli that he was seeing things when a rider appeared, leading a pack horse. “I see him.” He studied the approaching rider for a long moment before deciding he was not either of the Tyler brothers. “I ain’t ever seen him before.”
“Me neither,” Eli said. “He’s got a couple of good horses, though—bunch of hides and stuff on that pack horse, too.”
“Snell!” Brance called back to a circle of men lolling around a campfire. One of them obediently got to his feet and started to climb up to the ledge. “Bring your rifle,” Brance said, then stood impatiently waiting while Snell returned to the fire to get his weapon. “Hurry up, dammit.” When Snell joined Brance and Eli on the rocky ledge, Brance pointed to the rider making his way along the river trail below them. “Knock him outta that saddle.”
Snell responded with a foolish grin. He was a simple man. Although nearly forty years of age, his brain had apparently stopped growing when he was twelve. His one attribute lay in his talent with a rifle. He had a better eye than any of the men who followed Brance Burkett and his band of bushwhackers. “Reckon if he’s a Yank or a Reb, Brance?”
“It don’t matter one way or the other, does it? Shoot him, dammit. I fancy that big ol’ horse he’s ridin’.” Impatient to see the deed done, Brance added, “He ought’n to be ridin’ through this part of the country by hisself, anyway.”
Snell nodded his head in childlike glee. “I’ll get him, Brance.” He moved to the far corner of the ledge, and rested his rifle on a small boulder. As he did so, a handful of dirt and small pebbles was loosened and dropped to the bottom of the ledge. To a man with senses less keen, the small amount of gravel falling lightly among the rhododendron leaves might have gone unnoticed. But most of Matt’s young life had been spent in the forest, hunting and trapping, and as a deer senses danger, he did not wait to react. He immediately dropped forward on his horse’s neck and jerked the big blue roan’s head toward the shelter of the cliff. The sharp crack of the Spencer split the quiet air of the hollow below the ledge, and he felt a slight tug as the bullet meant for his back lifted his hat from his head.
“Damn you, Snell!” Brance growled. “You missed him.”
“He moved, Brance,” Snell whined, fearing Brance’s displeasure. “Somethin’ spooked him.”
“You missed him, you half-wit,” Brance snarled in disgust. “Now we’ve got to go flush him out or we’re gonna lose him.” He turned at once and headed for his horse. “Eli!” he yelled. “You and Nate!” It was unnecessary to say more. The two men were already running for their mounts. “We’ll cut him off below the ridge,” Brance instructed on the fly, already charging toward the foot of the hill. Eli and Nate were soon on his heels. Behind them, the rest of the gang was scrambling around to join in the fun. Some—those who had unsaddled their horses—were left fumbling with their saddles in a frantic attempt to catch up.
Some one hundred feet below them, under the projecting ledge of the cliff, Matt had surveyed the situation as best he could. With no idea of what or who had suddenly attacked him, he sought the shelter of the cliff while he tried to decide what to do. Above him, he could hear the muffled shouts and the pounding of horses’ hooves on the hard ground. From the sounds, it appeared that they were racing to cut him off. Without knowledge of who or how many assailants there were, he was uncertai
n as to whether he should make a run for it, or stand and fight. It could even be an army patrol, although his first inclination was that it was more likely a band of bushwhackers. His best course of action, he decided, was to go back the way he had come, and double back on them. Without hesitation then, he turned Blue, and staying close under the face of the cliff, rode back until he came to a ravine that led up the hill.
Churning through thick brush, the bay following behind, the big blue roan forged up the ravine to the brow of the ridge. Drawing his rifle from the sling, Matt dismounted and tied the horses in the trees. Not sure what he would find on the ledge, he moved the rest of the way on foot. After a distance of about fifty yards, he came upon a clearing and a campsite where two men were frantically cinching up their saddles in an effort to join their partners. “Hold it right there,” Matt called out.
Although startled, both men acted as one. Pulling their pistols, they blazed away at Matt as he emerged from the trees. In their haste, their aim was wild, and bullets whined around him, but found no purchase as he dived for cover. Rolling over rapidly, he came up on one knee, the Henry leveled at his targets. Both men were cut down as Matt cranked out four shots in quick succession.
Looking quickly around him to make sure the two were indeed the only stragglers left behind by the others, Matt then ran to the far side of the cliff where the riders had descended the hill. Satisfied that he held the high ground against his attackers now, he positioned himself behind a boulder to await their return.
As Matt surmised, Brance Burkett reined his horse to a hard stop when he heard the gunfire behind him. “That son of a bitch,” he cursed. “He doubled back on us. He’s in our camp.” Filled with rage, he turned his horse around and charged back up the hill past the stragglers of his gang still on their way down. “Turn around, dammit,” he cursed as he passed them.
Up on the ledge, Matt heard them coming long before they came into view. There was no doubt in his mind that he had encountered one of the marauding gangs of outlaws that had preyed upon the people of Arkansas during the war. He was determined to make the meeting costly for them. Replacing the four spent cartridges, he got set to greet them.
Angry, but not a foolish man, Brance pulled up to let his men catch up to him. “We’ll overrun him, boys! Rush him, and he’ll turn tail and run.” Not sure if the two men he had left behind were dead or alive, he started out again, firing his pistol blindly at the top of the hill. Brance’s men followed his lead. Firing their weapons wildly, they charged up the hill while Brance held back a little to let others go out in front. His caution was justified, for the quarry they sought on that day was one the likes of which they had never encountered.
Methodically cranking out one deadly round after another, Matt laid down a blistering blanket of fire that emptied the saddles of the two foremost raiders and effectively halted the charge. Brance and the others were driven back by the barrage to seek cover in the trees. Matt took the opportunity to reload, and move to a rock on the other side of the small path.
“Brance!” Nate Simmons called out. “He got Tom and Luther.”
“I know it,” Brance called back impatiently. “Where is he? Can you see him?” Furious over having likely lost four of his men, he was almost in a rage to think that his intended victim now held the high ground.
“I think he’s behind that big rock right at the top.”
“See if you can work around to your right, maybe get a shot at him,” Brance called out.
“I’ll be damned,” Nate shot back. “I ain’t got nothin’ between me and that rock but this skinny little tree. I ain’t movin’.”
Brance’s lip curled in a snarl of angry frustration. “Eli!” he yelled. “Can you see him?”
“I think Nate’s right,” Eli replied. “He’s behind that big rock.” For emphasis, he fired a couple of shots at the rock in question, the bullets glancing harmlessly off through the trees. “Sounds like he’s got one of them Henry rifles. He’s got us pinned down for sure.”
“He’s still just one man, dammit,” Brance growled. The anger in him continued to build, knowing he was being held at bay by one man with a rifle. “Snell! Where are you?”
“I’m behind you, Brance.” He parted the branches of a laurel bush to reveal himself.
“You ain’t doin’ no good back there,” Brance said. “I believe you could get a shot at the son of a bitch if you drop down the hill a ways, and work around to come up beside him.”
Snell’s ever-present brainless smile widened a bit when he thought of the possibility of another chance at the man he had missed with his first shot. Without reply, he immediately slid back from the laurel bush and withdrew. Brance and the others waited impatiently while Snell made his way around the ridge to come up from the rifleman’s flank. The simpleminded fool might be lucky enough to catch him by surprise, Brance thought. Even if unsuccessful, Snell might distract him long enough for the rest of them to advance on his position. He waited, his eyes locked on the big rock to the left of the path.
Moving carefully to avoid snapping a twig or displacing a pebble, Snell crept silently through thick stands of rhododendron bushes that rose higher than his head. When he estimated that he was even with, or a little past the boulder that guarded the path at the top of the ledge, he began a careful climb up the steep slope. With his Spencer fully loaded with seven cartridges, Snell dropped down and crawled the final ten yards to the top. All was quiet on the top of the ridge, save for the sound of a gentle breeze stirring the leaves of the hardwoods. He was confident that he had not been discovered.
Within a few feet of the boulder now, Snell made his move. Springing to his feet, he burst around the corner of the boulder, his rifle ready, only to find no one there. Baffled, he stood dumbly staring for a few seconds at the empty space where he had been certain his quarry waited. Then he glanced across the path to a smaller rock and into the steel blue eyes of the last man he was to see in this world. Snell was quick, but no match to win this contest with chain lightning. Matt pumped two slugs into the fumbling half-wit before Snell could bring his weapon to bear.
The rapid staccato of the Henry rifle as it rang out through the trees above them was sufficient to carry the grim results of Snell’s assault to those waiting on the hillside below. “Dammit!” Brance roared. “I want that son of a bitch.” There was no question of Snell’s death. His Spencer had not even fired. There were no thoughts of regret that the simpleminded outlaw had been killed. There was only anger. In the course of little more than an hour’s time, Brance’s band of raiders had been reduced by five, leaving him with a gang of six—almost half his men killed by one man with a repeating rifle. It was not only inconceivable to Brance, it was infuriating. In the two years they had ridden together, raiding through Arkansas and Missouri, he had not lost one man—and now, five in one hour. Unable to contain his wrath, he yelled out, “You’re a dead man, mister! You hear me? You’re a dead man.” His words echoing back through the trees and rocks were his only answer.
Brance was determined to kill Matt, no matter the cost. Even if he had to sacrifice one or two more men, he would not rest until the man was lying dead at his feet. “We’re goin’ up and get that bastard,” he informed his men. “Nate, take Corbin and go ’round that side of the hill.” He pointed toward the south. “Eli, you and Church go up the other side. Me and Spit’ll go right in the front door. We’ll give the son of a bitch more lead than he can handle. If we all come at him at the same time, he can’t shoot in every direction at once. Wait till ever’body has time to get set, and when I fire, rush that damn rock with ever’thin’ you’ve got.”
The men began without protest, fearing Brance’s wrath more than the deadly rifle at the top of the hill. They filed off up through the trees on foot, rifles ready. Brance, with blood in his eye and primed for a killing, started immediately up the narrow game trail that led to the clearing above. He was followed by a tall, doleful man called Spit. He was called Spit for
the simple fact that he had a habit of almost constantly spitting. Not one of the gang knew his real name, nor cared to know.
Approaching the top of the hill, Brance moved as close to the boulder as he dared before taking cover behind a tree. Spit, following close on his heels, found a sizable pine a few yards to Brance’s right. When he was in position, he spat and nodded to Brance. Brance waited a minute longer before raising his Spencer carbine and aiming at the suspected boulder. There was no more than a second’s delay after his shot rang out when the forest around the hilltop erupted in a thunderous assault from three sides. Their bullets slashed the tree trunks and sang as they ricocheted from the rocks. “Let’s get him, boys!” Brance yelled, and led the charge. There was no hesitation on the part of his men. With guns blazing they all converged on the boulder at the top of the trail.
“Hold your fire!” Brance ordered just as a yelp of pain was heard. When the smoke cleared, the six outlaws were left staring at a vacant patch of grass behind the rock. One of them, Church, was holding his shoulder as blood ran down his sleeve.
Spit stated the obvious—“Ain’t nobody here”—then spat.
“One of you bastards shot me,” Church whined, still clutching his shoulder.
“Let’s see,” Eli said, and pulled Church’s hand away from the wound. “Hell, it ain’t nothin’. You just got grazed.”
Unconcerned with Church’s wound, Brance scowled as he looked around the ledge that had served as their camp, and the five bodies that lay in awkward poses of death, the body of the foolish Snell close to where he stood. He started toward the far side of the ledge when he was stopped by the sound of pistol shots at the foot of the hill. “The horses!” Furious, he realized then that Matt had circled around them while they were climbing up the hill. “He’s got to the horses,” he yelled as he ran back down the path.
The object of Burkett’s wrath was busy herding the horses he had found tied in the trees at the foot of the hill. Shooting his pistol in the air, he startled them into a stampede down along the river bank. Keeping after them, Matt ran the horses for a mile or more before watching them scatter into the hills. “That oughta do it,” he remarked to Blue as he continued on his way to Fort Smith. Assassin, the word that had haunted his conscience when he was in the war, came to his mind again. Although he had taken the lives of five men, he felt no remorse. These were no doubt some of the bushwhackers that had preyed upon the innocent folk of Arkansas while their husbands, brothers, and fathers were off fighting for their country. And they had tried to murder him. He had no time for regrets over human trash.
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