by Ralph Cotton
“Yep, that’s me. Do we know one another?” Summers asked.
“No,” said Teasdale. “I’ve heard of you though. You sold some horses to us up at Fort Bent a couple of years back.”
“Were they good horses?” Summers asked.
“As I recall, yes, they were,” said Teasdale.
Summers nodded, looking relieved. “That was me, sir. Now, who are you?”
“I’m Sergeant Lawrence Teasdale, United States Army,” said Teasdale.
“You could have fooled me,” said Will Summers, looking Teasdale up and down. As he spoke, Deputy Webb and the others inched their horses forward until Webb stopped close beside Will Summers.
“We’re out of uniform at present,” said Teasdale. “We’re also tracking the Peltrys.” He nodded along the pillaged plank shacks. “This is some of their handiwork. They left two men hanging from poles.”
“Yes, sir,” Campbell Hayes cut in, taking a step forward from the horses, his big buffalo rifle in hand. “And one of them was my best friend, Rance Stofield.” His eyes narrowed coldly on Cherokee Rhodes. “Is that man your prisoner?”
“No, he’s not,” said Will Summers. “But we ain’t exactly friends either.”
“He’s agreed to show us where the Peltrys’ hideout is down in Mexico,” Abner Webb cut in.
“Call him our scout,” Summers offered.
“I see,” said Teasdale. “We heard gunfire late last night. Was that coming from you people?”
“Yes, it was,” said Summers. “If you’ll invite us down from our saddles, we’ll tell you all about it.”
“Step down then,” said Sergeant Teasdale. “It may be that we can do one another some good.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Summers, easing down from his saddle, the men behind him doing the same.
“You can’t trust anybody riding beside Cherokee Rhodes,” Hayes said to Teasdale in a lowered voice.
Teasdale looked down at Junior the hound standing near Hayes’ feet as the riders stepped down from their horses. “Why didn’t that mutt warn us that somebody was coming?”
“I don’t know,” said Hayes. “Maybe he didn’t think they was the enemy.”
“And neither do I,” said Teasdale. He looked around at Hargrove and Benson. “Finish up with the horses and supplies. Let’s see what these men have to offer.”
Summers, Webb and the other possemen formed a half circle in front of the hitch rail. With their reins in their hands, the men squatted down on their haunches or rested with one knee to the dirt and listened as Summers, Webb and Teasdale exchanged stories. A gallon jug of whiskey made its way into the circle and moved from man to man. When it had come into Wild Joe Duvall’s hands and he’d lowered it from his lips and wiped a hand across his wet mustache, he passed it to Sherman Dahl beside him and said between the two of them, “Is my boy Eddie doing like he’s supposed to in school?”
“He’s headstrong,” said Dahl without diverting his attention from Sergeant Teasdale as he told Summers and Webb about the stolen Gatling gun, “but he learns quick. He can be a bit of a bully sometimes, but I try not to let that happen.” Dahl raised the jug, drank from it, then passed it on to Bobby Dewitt. “He could use some help at home on his arithmetic.”
“Headstrong, eh?” Wild Joe beamed with secret pride, passing over the arithmetic part. “I expect I know where he gets that headstrong from.” Then his expression turned more serious as he caught himself and said, “But I’ll get on him about the bullying part. I always hated bullies when I was a kid. If I saw somebody bullying others, I usually whopped the living hell out of them. Made them beg for mercy.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Dahl, trying to listen to Teasdale.
“What does that mean?” asked Wild Joe.
“Nothing, sir,” said Dahl. “Nothing at all.”
“Oh…” Wild Joe fell silent for a moment, then said, “Well, I’m glad we got this chance to talk some. I think it pays to know the man you’re fighting next to, don’t you?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Dahl.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Wild Joe. “You’re not a very big feller. If we get into a hard scrape with the Peltrys, you just holler out…. I won’t let them hurt you. That’s my personal promise.”
“Thank you,” said Dahl. “I feel much better.”
On the other side of Sherman Dahl, Bobby Dewitt leaned forward and looked around at Wild Joe Duvall. “Hey, Wild Joe, didn’t you see what the schoolmaster did to that outlaw, Vertrees? He cut him from asshole to appetite.”
“I know it,” said Wild Joe. “I’m just offering is all.”
“Both of you shut up and listen,” Edmund Daniels hissed.
“Sure thing, Edmund,” said Bobby Dewitt, stifling a whiskey belch. Having taken a long swig, he passed the jug into Edmund Daniels’ eager hands. “By the way, how’s the head?”
Edmund Daniels just stared at him, not sure whether or not the young cowboy was making fun of him. Finally he said as he raised the jug to his lips, “Don’t worry about my head; worry about your own.”
Hearing the stir of conversation among Daniels and Dewitt, Deputy Webb cast a firm gaze in their direction. But before he could say anything, Edmund Daniels said, “Don’t worry, Deputy. We’re not missing a thing. Our eyes and ears are wide open.”
Bobby Dewitt snickered under his breath at Daniels’ words, but then he shut up quickly when Daniels turned his eyes to him. Sherman Dahl and Wild Joe Duvall stared ahead and listened as Sergeant Teasdale explained how the Gatling rifle had kept jamming on them. “But God help us if they ever get it working properly,” he said, looking from one face to the next, one hand reaching out for the jug as it came into sight.
Inside the whitewashed shack, Trooper Frieze heard the sound of voices out front through a fevered haze. In a thick voice, he asked the woman standing over him, “What are they doing out there?”
“Shhh. Lie still now, young man,” she whispered, pressing him back down as he tried to rise up onto his elbows. “The fighting’s all over for you. It’s best you lie still here what time you’ve got left. Make peace with your creator.”
Her words sent a new shiver up his spine. “I’m not dying, damn it to hell!” Frieze shouted in his hoarse, trembling voice. “Do you hear me, God?” He raged at the plank ceiling. “It’s me, Chester Frieze! Tell this old bag that I’m not going to die! God! Somebody! Anybody! Please!”
Outside, the men gathered around the hitch rail looked toward the sound coming from the side window of the shack. As the woman stepped over and closed the window, cutting Frieze’s voice in half, Teasdale said to the men, “He’s one of my troopers. His wound infected overnight. He’s starting to talk out of his head. I regret to say he’s not going to make it.” The sergeant stopped for a second as if to let his words sink in.
From the room beyond the window, Frieze screamed, “Take your hands off me!”
Teasdale raised his voice and said, “He’s just one more reason I want to see the Peltry Gang dead! The longer these killers go free, the more decent people are going to suffer!”
The soldiers and possemen nodded in agreement. “I can see where it’s to all of our advantage to ride together, Sergeant,” said Will Summers. “But I better tell you right now that I have a deal with the town of Rileyville and these men here. We’re sharing the bounty money on the Peltry Gang.”
“That’s strictly between you gentlemen,” said Teasdale. “I’m military through and through. I’m going after them for the murdering animals they are. Whatever you people make, you’re welcome to it.”
Crouched in the dirt beside Hargrove, Doyle Benson said to him in a whisper, “How much money do you think they’re talking about?”
“Makes no difference,” said Hargrove. “You heard the sergeant. We’ll not see a dollar of it.” He grinned mockingly. “We’re military through and through.”
At the hitch rail, Sergeant Teasdale asked Will Sum
mers and Abner Webb, “Which one of you is in charge?”
“I suppose you might say we both are equally, Sergeant,” said Will Summers. “The deputy here is officially in charge on behalf of Rileyville, but I’m more familiar with the country twixt here and the border.”
“I don’t want to sound like my being a soldier gives me any longer spurs than either of you,” said Teasdale, “but I also know the desert, and I have Campbell Hayes here to show us around in Mexico.”
“So you think you should be in charge?” Webb asked bluntly.
Teasdale looked a bit embarrassed. “Not if the three of us can work together. But I’d like to think my word carries at least as much authority as either of yours,” he said.
“And so it will,” said Summers. “Only fools turn down good advice. Speak your piece at any time, Sergeant Teasdale. We’re all after the same thing: bringing down the Peltrys.”
In the desert settlement of Diablo Espinazo, only a day’s ride from the Mexican border, a small band of Mexican and American goatherders kept their distance from the Peltrys and offered no resistance as the gang helped itself to their meager food and precious wellwater. In the scorching heat of the day, one of the outlaws stood shirtless and glistening with sweat as he turned a slaughtered goat above a licking mesquite fire. The goatherders stared at the gun wagon through caged eyes as Goose Peltry cursed and raged at his men.
“Then what good is this rotten, no-shooting sonsabitch?” Goose shrieked, out of control, standing in the gun wagon with Thurman Anderson and Roscoe Moore. He kicked the Gatling gun stand. Then he kicked the ammunition crates stacked beside it. Then he kicked the wagon’s sideboard. He spun around toward Thurman and Roscoe. They jumped back with fear in their eyes. “Make the damn thing work! I’m sick of owning a machine rifle, hauling it all over hell and not being able to get it to fire a shot?!” He kicked wildly at the big cylinder of rifle barrels, missed it and fell backward onto the wagon bed in a puff of dust.
Standing on the ground watching, both hands clutched around his long beard, Moses Peltry shook his head in disgust at his brother’s insane antics. “Get down here, Goose!” he shouted. “Before you break your idiot neck.”
Goose stumbled to his feet, slapping at Thurman and Roscoe, who had reached out to help him stand. “I want this gun fixed and firing! I don’t want no more excuses!” He narrowed a hard stare at Thurman Anderson. “You had it working earlier…. How did you do it?”
“It only fired a few shots. Then the blasted thing jammed again,” said Thurman in a nervous voice. “I held this switch here up while Roscoe turned the crank. Soon as I turned the switch loose, it got stuck again. I’ve worked on every kind of weapon there is. But this piece of junk has got me and Roscoe both stumped.” He looked at Roscoe Moore for support.
“It’s the truth, Goose,” said Roscoe. “Seems like this gun’s got a mind all its own. We’ve tried.” He shrugged.
“Then try again, damn it to hell!” Goose lunged forward, shouting in his face. Roscoe and Thurman stepped backward out of the blast of Goose’s rage.
“Goose, get down here,” Moses demanded again, his poise the same but his hands clutching tighter around his long beard. “If we can’t get it to work right, we’ll have to abandon it. A gun that won’t shoot is no better than a woman who won’t cook. Let Thurman and Roscoe work on that blasted thing. You’ve never been worth a tinker’s damn with machinery.”
But Goose ignored his brother and shoved Thurman and Roscoe out of his way. “Let me get my hands on this damn thing!” He reached down, wrapped his arms around the big gun and jerked it into the air, tripod and all. Staggering in place under the heavy weight, Goose yelled, “Roscoe, hold the switch up. Thurman, start turning the crank! We’ll get her barking!”
“Goose! Put it down!” shouted Moses Peltry. “This is getting out of hand.” He turned loose of his beard and hurried forward toward the gun wagon.
“Oh shit,” said Monk Dupre, who’d been standing beside Moses along with three other men. All four of them ducked away, each seeking cover for himself. Dupre raced for shelter behind the stone wall of the well in the center of the clearing. A small herd of bleating goats scurried in every direction as he charged through them.
“Thurman, for God sakes, don’t turn that crank!” Moses pleaded. But he was too late; Thurman had already started. The sound of rapid gunfire drowned out Moses’ words. The hard, steady recoil of the big gun caused Goose, Thurman and Roscoe to bounce around in a circle, the sweep of bullets kicking up dirt across the clearing. Goose clung to the gun with all his might. The line of fire crawled up the side of an ancient adobe building, leaving fist-sized bullet holes in the hard earthen wall, shattering clay pots and water gourds that stood along a shelf beneath an overhanging canopy.
“Turn it loose, Thurman!” Moses Peltry bellowed, ready to duck beneath the gun wagon as the three men and their deadly gunfire came circling toward him. On the far side of the clearing, skinny chickens rose up, batting their wings and screaming shrilly. A cat had jumped atop a crumbling adobe ledge only to disappear in an explosion of fur. “You’re killing every damn thing in sight!”
Thurman would not or could not stop turning the crank; but in all the jerking and bouncing back and forth, Roscoe’s hand came off the switch he’d been holding up, and the gun stopped firing with a loud metallic clunk. Goose and Thurman fell in the wagon; Roscoe flipped over the side and landed in the dirt at Moses Peltry’s feet. “God almighty!” Moses shouted.
“Get it off me!” Goose screamed from inside the wagon bed, the hot rifle barrels burning his chest.
“I ought to let you lie there and bake under it,” said Moses. He dragged Roscoe to his feet and shoved him away. Climbing up into the wagon, he looked down at Goose and Thurman as the two wallowed beneath the gun and its tripod. “Nobody touches this gun again unless I say so!” Moses shouted, pulling the gun from atop them. Moses yanked his brother to his feet. Goose tore open his shirt and rubbed the long red burns across his chest.
Moses Peltry and the rest of the men were so consumed with watching Goose fire the Gatling gun that none of them had noticed the seven scalp hunters who’d slipped up alongside the clearing and now sat atop their horses twenty yards away, watching with stonelike expressions on their weathered faces. Their saddles were adorned with long black strands of hair, bits of human bones and other unsavory mementos of their profession. “What do you make of that, Doc?” asked a skinny little killer named Pip Magger.
The leader, Elvin “Doc” Murdock, wore a long riding duster, a wide-brimmed hat and high Spanish boots that came up to his knees. A long, sharply waxed mustache mantled his upper lip. He stared at Goose Peltry as he said quietly to Pip and the rest of the riders gathered around him, “I’ve always said the Peltrys’ folks were too close kin to sleep in the same room.”
A slight chuckle rippled across the serious faces of the scalp hunters. Doc Murdock continued. “Moses can make you think he’s not a complete lunatic if you’re not paying attention. But that poor Goose…” He shook his head. “There’s a mercy killing in the making. Somebody shoulda felled him the first time they found a possum under his pillow.”
More dry, muffled laughter rose and fell among Murdock’s men. From the gun wagon, Moses Peltry caught a glimpse of the scalp hunters and growled under his breath at Goose, “Damn it, here’s Murdock. See if you can act like you’ve got some sense—bad enough he had to ride in and witness something like this.”
“If he don’t like it, he knows where he can go,” Goose grumbled in reply.
“That’s real smart of you, Goose,” said Moses. “Bad as we need men to put this outfit ahead, you better show Doc Murdock some respect.” Stepping down from the gun wagon, Moses raised an acknowledging hand toward Murdock and his men. “Howdy, Doc. Howdy, boys. Come on in. Step down and make yourselves to home.”
“Howdy, Devil. Sure we’re not interrupting anything?” Doc Murdock asked coolly, nudging his horse forwar
d, his men gathered close behind him. He looked all around at the shot-up adobe and the broken pottery as he stepped his horse over to the gun wagon. His eyes settled on the Gatling gun lying on its side. “I never like to interfere in a family discussion.”
“Never mind about us,” said Moses. “We’ve just been having a hard time with this blasted Gatling rifle.”
“No kidding?” Murdock sounded bored. He said over his shoulder to one of his men, “Spears, see what’s wrong with this gun.”
“Sure thing, Doc,” said Mort Spears, jumping his horse forward and stepping down beside the gun wagon. He climbed up onto the wagon and stood to one side as Goose Peltry stepped past him and down, grumbling under his breath.
“Hope you haven’t been waiting long for us, Devil,” said Doc Murdock to Moses Peltry.
“Nobody calls him Devil anymore,” Goose said grudgingly, “unless it’s me or some close, longtime friend of ours.”
Ignoring Goose, Moses said to Murdock, “We ain’t been here long, Doc. Have you given any more thought to throwing in with us? We’ve just had ourselves a hell of a run…all the way down from the Milk River. The only ones big enough to stop us is the Yankee army. They’ve pretty much got their hands full with the Lakota up along the Bozeman Trail. “We’ve got ourselves an open door from Mexico plumb up to the high Montana line, providing we keep striking while the iron’s hot. From now on, everything’s going our way.”
“Then why do you need me and my boys?” Murdock grinned slyly. “Just need somebody to keep your Gatling gun repaired?”
Goose cut in. “Don’t get cocky, Murdock. My brother just made you the best offer you ever had in your life. If you’re too good to ride with us, we understand. The fact is, I never thought you was anything but—”
“Goose!” Moses barked, cutting him off. “Why don’t you see if you can help Spears fix that damn Gatling gun?”
“He’s wasting his time,” said Goose. “The only way to fix that gun is with some gunsmithing tools.”
“There—all done,” said Mort Spears, standing up from beside the Gatling gun and wiping his hands on a wadded-up bandanna.