A red spot blossomed on his back and spread slowly. The sniper in the woods had shown himself to be one hell of a marksman, and a second target — me — provided as easy a shot.
I followed the marshal to the ground and rooted around in the mud, waiting for the bullet that would end my life.
Chapter Four
It took a while before I began to feel stupid wallowing in the mud like a blind hog hunting for truffles. No further shots rang out. Wiggling like the earthworm I had thought so poorly on earlier, I slithered to the marshal's side. His back rose and fell heavily, the tortured wheezing telling me he was still alive. Rolling him over without getting up to make a target of myself took a lot of strength, but he finally flopped so he could gaze up at the cloudy sky.
Eyelids flickered and then bloodshot eyes opened. He stared right at me. When he tried to speak only a dull croak came out. I leaned closer and put my ear to his lips.
"Get me the hell out of here!"
This surprised me as much as the shot and watching him collapse.
"Dang, hadn't thought of that." Try as I might, I couldn't remember a time in my life when I'd had to help a man shot like this.
Tales told around the dinner table came rushing back to me. My great uncle had been one of the founders of Bent's Fort and had always spun wild tales of the Indians attacking, but he had married one so it was safe to assume he made up most of those stories. The wagon trains being attacked as they crossed from Independence and Joplin to the fort before meandering through Raton Pass on into Taos and Santa Fe made more sense.
One tale of a man holding himself together by pressing hard against a wound made by a Pawnee arrow returned to guide my hand. I cut away part of the marshal's coat, made it into a pad and pressed down hard until he groaned.
"You dang fool," he gasped out. "The bullet went clean through me. You're stoppin' bleedin' on the front, but I feel it squirtin' out under me, too."
I showed no kindness as I pulled him onto his side. Danged if he wasn't telling the truth. When he fell, that wound had been as obvious as the nose on my face, but panic had made me forget. This time I strapped a crude bandage around his entire body to stop leaking from both holes. Toms sighed and relaxed when I got the bleeding under control.
"He shot you from a hundred yards off," I said. "That makes him one crack shot."
"I'll come back for Mr. Josiah Hanks after I get patched up. Help me onto my horse, will you?"
"You sure it was the fellow on the wanted poster what shot you?"
"Who else?"
I worried that the sniper had been aiming at me and got the marshal by mistake. The cowboy in the saloon spying on my artwork had lit out mighty fast, as if he recognized the face. He might be one of the rustlers and warned his partners. Gunning the both of us down wasn't out of the question, either. As carefully as I could, I mustered my strength, got arms around the marshal and heaved him upright. He grunted but didn't call out in pain. That had to be a good sign. Not bleeding from either of the holes, front or back, was another. Putting my shoulder into his gut, I lifted him up like I would a calf, carrying him on my shoulders was easy as could be. With a deft twist, I dumped him belly down across his saddle.
This brought a stream of cussing the like of which I'd never heard, and riding herd with wranglers had afforded me the opportunity to learn words even my pa never uttered. Moving to keep the horse with its lawful burden between me and the woods, I tugged and got beast and burden to where Monte pawed at the ground. Whites ringed his eyes, and his nostrils flared at the smell of the marshal's blood. Or it could have been the way I was covered with a mix of blood and mud that upset him. I was quite a mess after all my mud baths.
Swinging up, I ducked low and saved my life. Another shot rang out from the direction of the woods. The slug went high, but this might have been nothing more than a practice shot to get the range. Hanging onto Monte's neck and the reins to the marshal's horse kept me occupied so the next round sailed past barely noticed. A quarter mile back toward town afforded enough distance between me and my would-be killer so I could sit upright.
The marshal slid slowly off his horse. It took me a couple minutes to drag him back and do a bit of lashing. He wasn't a sack of flour, but I wished on that. A sack of flour wasn't likely to die on me, already being dead. The trip back to town stretched to an eternity but before sundown the first houses came into view. Returning presented me with a new problem.
Doc Marconi hadn't seen a sober day in the time I'd been wrangling along the Judith River. There wasn't any good reason to think he had dried out since the last time I saw him stumbling down the middle of Main Street singing "Root, Hog, or Die" at the top of his lungs. If he wasn't any better a sawbones than he was a singer, Marshal Toms was as good as dead when he stretched out on his operating table.
I veered away toward the livery stables. Not ten yards beyond stood a quiet little frame house. Smoke curled up from the chimney, and a solitary light showed through a window. Dropping to the ground, I led the marshal's horse closer to the door. Reins in one hand, I knocked with the other on a rickety door. For a second it looked as if the hinges might give way. It proved sturdier than any assault I made.
"What's the matter? Who's bangin' on my door while I'm tryin' to get some food down my throat?"
"Doctor Delacroix, I got a patient for you."
The half-breed Canuck veterinarian stepped back and glowered.
"I don't tend two-legged animals, not 'less you're bringin' me a kangaroo."
"I'm not real sure what that is, but Marshal Toms needs help and you're the best there is in town."
"Of course I am. I haven't lost a horse or cow in danged near a year, not unless you want to bring up that longhorn with Texas fever. Nothing to do 'bout that."
"You quarantined Mr. Phillips' herd. He didn't take kindly to that, but you saved most all his cattle from the splenic fever." I don't know why I took the Texans' stand on what to call the disease. Most folks outside the Lone Star state called it Texas fever but nary a drover from Texas ever called it anything but splenic.
Delacroix stepped out, got caught in a gust of wind and wrapped his arms around his thin shoulders. Rather than retreat, he grabbed the marshal's collar and lifted his head. He snorted, dropped the grip and motioned for me to get the man inside.
"I don't bear any malice toward the marshal, but I wish he'd died on the way here. Now I have to worry what I do to him's gonna kill him. Never like a patient to die on me, whether it's a rabid dog or a foaling mare."
"Reckon I ought to get on back to the ranch." The marshal received the best care I could get him. Doctor Delacroix's fingers probed, then he used a knife to gently cut away the bloody bandages.
The lawman grumbled and stirred, but Delacroix didn't need to worry about getting bit or clawed with this patient.
"Don't you go leavin' town, Russell," Toms gasped out. "You still got that picture you drawed?"
Patting down my pockets failed to turn it up. A quick shrug answered the marshal, but he wasn't having any of my trying to weasel out and go back to the OH.
"You set yerself down and do up another picture. No varmint potshots me from ambush and gets away with it."
"What do you want me to do with the picture?"
"Get a good sized one done and take it to George over at the Gazette. Tell him to put it on the front page. There was a hunnerd dollar reward out for Josiah Hanks. I'm uppin' it to a hunnerd fifty."
"Where are you going to get that much money, Marshal?" Delacroix sloshed alcohol onto the wound in Toms' chest, causing him to gasp. With practiced ease, the vet stitched up the hole, then rolled the marshal onto his side to tend to the wound on his back. "Good thing the bullet tore on through. No notion what got tore up inside, but not being poisoned by the slug inside you's got to help recovery."
"Don't hurt as much as it aches," Toms said. "You're doin' a good job, Doc."
Delacroix muttered to himself, then looked up at me.
I settled down into the chair gingerly, worrying about the filth rubbing off. Delacroix said nothing and turned back to his work on the marshal's bullet wounds. Drawing my pencil, I set to work. By now I'd done this enough times so that the image permanently resided in my head and flowed out my hand onto the paper. Before Delacroix pronounced the marshal all patched up, I held up the sketch.
"That's him," Toms said. "You surely got an eye for detail, Russell."
"You gonna be all right, Marshal?" Truth to tell, I had no desire to look after him. Getting shot at had stolen away some of my courage and all my desire to bring Mr. Josiah Hanks to justice. He had shown himself to be a desperate character.
If he was the one who had bushwhacked us.
That got me to worrying over a detail lost in the sound of gunshots. How could Hanks — or anyone, for that matter — know me and the marshal were riding out to the Triangle K? The ambush had been planned because who waited around all day in a small stand of trees to plink away at lawmen happening by? The weather was too cold and the wicked wind cut through to the bone for someone to while away the hours just waiting. The sniper knew we were on the way or maybe he'd mistook us for somebody else?
That made no sense. None of it made a lick of sense. Every time I've found a poser like that, leaving it behind and taking care of what I could provided the best use of my precious time. My pa never understood what a waste of time going to school had been for me. Any school. When he found I'd played hooky for close to two months, he shipped me off to a military school in Burlington, New Jersey.
The idea of discipline there was making misbehaving students like me walk guard duty. I swear, I wore out a pair of boots the first week pacing back and forth with an unloaded rifle resting on my shoulder. It took me a couple weeks of pacing and asking around to find that bullets were the most carefully guarded things on campus. The officers wanted nothing to do with a boy like me playing with live rounds. Folks in New Jersey weren't as comfortable with firearms as I was, even being a Midwesterner. So I escaped drudgery the way I always had.
When a teacher found my drawing of the headmaster, I spent another week marching back and forth all night long. Might be this is where I learned that the nighttime wasn't such a bad thing. Teachers bothered me all day long but at night, by myself guarding nothing much, I was all by myself. When the instructors making sure the sentries kept pacing around like toy soldiers finally corked off and began snoring in their quarters, I got down to serious drawing. These sold to the other boys, and soon I was making more money than some of the teachers.
That's what I told myself, at any rate. It took quite a lot to get booted out of a military school, but I finally did because the teachers started swapping my pictures back and forth among themselves. The series I did of the headmaster and the goat finally determined my unfitness for the military life. I was sent home where Pa decided to surrender. He sent me to art school in St. Louis, but drawing nothing but pictures of cubes and bowls of half eaten fruit, when I didn't even get to be the one chomping out the pieces, bored me after a week or two. Pa never found out I played hooky here, too, going down to the docks to draw pictures of river boats and the dock workers heaving cargo onto the decks.
Every time a problem worried at me, I turned to drawing. Doing another picture of the rustler I'd seen worked against me, though. He had tried to kill me and the marshal. Or somebody had for no reason. That seemed less likely than the rustler coming after me.
"I'll get on over to the newspaper, Marshal," I said.
"You better. You're responsible for me gettin' all shot up like this."
Marshal Toms grumbled more but drifted off to sleep, still blaming me as if I had pulled the trigger rather than some unseen sniper.
Doctor Delacroix shooed me out. The cold night gripped the town and added speed to my gait. The Gazette wasn't much of a newspaper, but it was local and waiting for news from back East proved tiresome to most folks in town. I stopped in front of the window and noted the paper's name had been scraped off, maybe because the editor had done it in gold colored paint and some drunken yahoo thought it was real gilt he could swap for another shot of whiskey. With the wind as bitter and biting as it was, it could be that one too many winters had cracked it off in places. Inside a man hardly five feet tall stood on tiptoe to look into his letter press.
I went in, glad to feel the warmth of the room surround me.
"Mr. Wyatt?"
"That's me, George Wyatt. What do you want, boy?"
"The marshal sent me over with this here sketch of an outlaw wanted for rustling and trying to kill him."
This brought the small man around faster than anyone I'd ever seen in all my born days. His short legs carried him over until his belly bumped against my sash and he looked up at me, his sharp eyes not missing a crease or mole on my face.
"Who got shot? You mean Marshal Toms got shot at?"
"Got shot," I said. The drawing changed hands, mine anything but clean from rooting around in the mud and being covered in the marshal's blood and his blacker than night from printer's ink.
"You're the wrangler from out on the OH. I've seen some of your bawdy pictures."
"Don't know what you're talking about." Trying to appear innocent failed.
"Don't worry, boy. I bought me a couple of them off the girls. You paid the ladies with drawings and doodads."
"Little necklaces and carved bracelet ornaments," I said. Working in clay or soft rock or wood kept my hands busy, and the ladies of the night appreciated them more than money — sometimes — because I always lied and said I'd done the jewelry just for them. In Maggie's case that had been the Gospel truth, but she was popular and some of the others weren't so bad.
"I can run this?" Mr. Wyatt peered up at me.
"The marshal would like that. He has a wanted poster for this owlhoot, too. Man's name is Josiah Hanks."
"I already set the front page, but I can do an extra. Always wanted to do an extra but never had a reason." He turned his back to me and went to a tall table with tiny bins holding lead type. Smoothing out my picture he traced around the edges and pressed it flat. "I can use this. It's good, son, real good." Without looking at me, he asked in a conspiratorial tone, "You got more?"
"With all the Cyprians gone south, I ain't been doin' so much."
"No, not, not that kind of drawing. I mean of other things. You do scenes from around town?"
"Like men in the saloon? Gamblers?"
"Anything that would grab a reader's attention. This kind of story doesn't come along all that often, but if you can give me recognizable pictures of people, that'd get them to buy the paper to show around. Everyone loves to be famous, even for a few minutes."
"They might not take kindly if they're wanted outlaws," I said.
"If there's anything happening, you do up a picture and I'll pay you . . . fifty cents apiece." From his sneaky look I knew he would pay more, but so much money for what I'd do anyway sounded like he was offering me a fortune. Mr. Phillips pays top dollar, and I get a cot and three hots, along with fifteen dollars spending money every month. That's in exchange for a powerful lot of hard, tedious work riding herd. If Mr. Wyatt bought a dozen drawings a month, my get-to-drinkin' money expanded to enough for a real bender.
"That's a mighty generous offer. A couple ideas come to mind right away."
"Good, good. You said the marshal was shot? Is he able to talk? Be interviewed? Give a story to go along with the extra?"
"He's at Doc Delacroix's over by the stable," I said. Seeing his perplexed expression, I said, "That's where I took him. A vet could do a better job than Doc Marconi."
"I saw Marconi passed out at the Crazy Eights Emporium a couple hours ago. You're clever, son, and you saved the marshal's life, I don't doubt."
Going back into the wintry wind made my teeth chatter. Somehow I found myself putting my head down, hanging onto my hat and walking
into the teeth of the storm. Only once did I look up when I heard voices. A woman in a buggy leaned out and spoke softly to a man who yelled at her.
She faced me for a moment, and my heart skipped a beat. She might not have been the most beautiful woman I ever did see, but coming in second in that horse race made everyone a winner. Her bonnet had blown back to show windswept blonde hair. A finely boned face made me want to draw it, as well as the rest of her. Even hidden by a bulky coat and flouncy skirts buoyed up with crinoline petticoats, she had a figure any man would find irresistible and another woman hate. I had no idea how I had not seen her before.
She turned back, but the man had disappeared into the night. A very impolite curse escaped her bow-shaped lips, then she yee-hawed, snapped the reins and got her horse trotting out of town. Her beauty froze me to the spot as much as the cold did. Then I shook it off and went into Gus' saloon to see if he had any food left over from lunch and a spare beer or two he might serve up.
He did, but the beef sandwich, even laced with enough horseradish to choke a goat, and his patented bitter beer slid across my tongue without notice. I was too lost in remembering the lines of the girl's face and trying to get it all down on a scrap of waterlogged paper from my coat pocket. This might not be what George Wyatt wanted for the Gazette, but it just might be the very drawing Marshal Toms had asked for.
More than beer money was coming my way. I knew it.
Chapter Five
Most of my life's been eventful, or so it seemed at the time. Getting shot at and the marshal wounded the way he was, gave a different slant to what I thought of as exciting. Being trapped in a coal mine never scared me. Sitting in saloons gives a man a chance to see 'bout everything possible. More than one tinhorn gambler took exception to a cowpoke winning and whipped out a knife or hideout gun. Over in Shelton's Bar I saw a double killing. The gambler cheated a drifter who was mighty quick on the draw. But being fast meant nothing unless that first shot hits its target. The bullet ricocheted off the gambler's headlight diamond stickpin. Dangest thing ever. It drove him back in the chair, wounded but not mortally.
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 23