by Ralph Cotton
“Uh-oh,” said Will Summers. “Looks like a change of plans for the German captain.” He took a step back out of sight around the corner of the shack, Webb and Teasdale right beside him.
As Moses Peltry stepped into the middle of the street, facing Oberiske and the six riders, he did so with his right hand holding one of his big Walker Colts that he’d managed to find. The big Colt was cocked and aimed at Captain Oberiske from less than twenty feet away. Along with his Walker Colt, Moses had also found his own trousers and galluses and put them on. He walked forward slowly, still barefoot, still shirtless, the straps of his galluses looping down his thighs and his long beard thrown back over one shoulder. “Stand down from that saddle, Oberiske! It’s me and you!”
He cut a glance to the Mexican soldiers behind
Oberiske and spoke to them in Spanish, explaining that this was none of their concern. This was a matter of honor that had to be settled between him and the German. And when he asked the soldiers if they could ever respect and follow the orders of a man who refused a duel of honor, the young soldiers looked at one another, already knowing the answer.
“Damn,” said Will Summers in a lowered voice, “it looks like Moses Peltry’s got them stumped.”
“That took some guts on Moses Peltry’s part. You have to admire that,” Teasdale whispered. The three watched intently.
“Shoot this filthy outlaw pig!” Captain Oberiske demanded, his hand clasping the pistol butt at his waist. But he dared not raise the pistol until the soldiers covered his move. “Shoot him now! That is an order!” He cut a harsh glare at the soldier nearest him. “Damn you, Corporal! What is the matter with you? Are you going to listen to him or to your superior?”
“To you, Capitán, of course,” said the corporal. He shrugged and added, “But still, you have to admit…the man has challenged you. A challenge is a most sacred thing among fighting men such as us, eh?”
“Man to man?” said Oberiske, keeping a nervous eye on Moses Peltry as he spoke to the corporal. “You are out of your mind. This is the military, not some Mexican cantina brawl! Shoot this man!”
But the soldiers sat still as stone. One of them spoke in Spanish.
Oberiske cut a sharp glance toward the man who’d spoken.
The corporal said, “He told you that this is all about respect. Either a man deserves it or he doesn’t.”
“I know what he said, damn it!” Oberiske shouted.
“Step down, Oberiske,” Moses said, the rage in his voice held in check. “It’s a reckoning between us.”
“Any man who refuses to obey my order is going to be shot when I report this to Mexico City!” Oberiske threatened.
A few of the men looked concerned and tightened their grip on their weapons.
From ten feet away on their blind side, Will Summers said in a low, even tone, “Anybody who interferes won’t have to worry about getting shot in Mexico City. They’ll be shot right here.”
“Step down, Oberiske,” Moses commanded.
Oberiske looked at Will Summers. Then he looked to Summers’ right, where Abner Webb was holding a cocked rifle. Then to Summers’ left, at Teasdale, holding a pistol in either hand. “You said the three of you would back away, call it quits here,” Oberiske said to Summers.
“I know,” Summers responded. “But it looks like I lied. We can’t stand by and watch you kill a man who’s offered an honest challenge, even if it is Moses Peltry. What kind of men would we be?”
“Step down, Oberiske,” said Moses. As Oberiske’s eyes turned to him, Moses uncocked the big Walker, shoved it down into his trousers and raised his hands away from it. “A fair fight is all I’m asking for,” Moses said.
“Sí, and it will be fair,” said the corporal, looking straight at Will Summers. “The least bit of trickery, and blood will spill. Make sure you remember that,” he warned.
Will Summers lowered the gun in his hand. “That sounds right to us.” Webb and Teasdale followed suit.
All eyes went to Captain Oberiske. He fidgeted in his saddle for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Very well then!” Oberiske hastily unbuttoned his tunic, stripped it off and slung it down across his saddle horn. “I think it only fair to tell you that I was the crack shot in my village.” He adjusted the pistol in his waist and swung his leg over his saddle to step down. “I will kill this fool quickly so we can get on with finding the Gatling—”
Before Oberiske’s right boot fully touched the ground, three shots exploded in rapid succession from Moses’ big Walker Colt. The impact staggered Oberiske backward a step with each shot. For a moment, he stood transfixed, blood pouring freely from his chest and his back. He shook his head like a wounded bull and tried to reach for his pistol. Moses shot him again, this time between the eyes.
Everyone in the street stared in disbelief. Then, as the realization began to sink in, Will Summers saw the corporal and the others reach for their weapons at the same time. “Damn you, Moses,” Summers shouted, reaching for the pistol he’d just shoved down in his trousers, “you’ve really gone and done it now!”
On the far side of the corral, Sherman Dahl had led his horse down the steep footpath toward the streets of Punta Del Sol. From a distance, he’d seen what was about to happen between the three possemen and the Federales. He jumped up into his saddle just as the three shots from Moses Peltry’s pistol exploded. Racing forward with his pistol drawn, Dahl watched the gunfight begin.
The Mexican corporal was the first to fall, a shot from Summers hitting him at the same time as Abner Webb put a rifle shot in his shoulder. Teasdale moved sidelong, firing as he went, taking out two of the soldiers but catching a bullet in his upper arm. He jerked back with the impact of the shot and nearly went down. But then he caught himself and moved on, still firing as bullets sliced past his head.
From the direction of the cantina, Roscoe Moore came running with a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands, screaming aloud. One barrel exploded, lifting a Federale from his saddle and sending him sailing through the air. But as Roscoe came racing past an alley, Juan Richards came rolling out in his wheelchair, a shotgun of his own cradled in his lap. The two men collided in a tangle of wood, metal and flesh, punctuated by a blast of buckshot that sent both men and chair two feet into the air then dropped them sliding to a halt in a spray of dust.
Sherman Dahl veered his horse around the upside-down wheelchair and raced on, firing into the remaining Mexican soldiers, who’d begun to scatter along the street. Junior the hound raced alongside Dahl. At the last second, as Dahl circled his horse wide and fired into the melee, Junior leaped forward, downing a soldier who had dropped to the ground and was firing at Abner Webb. The soldier rolled back and forth, screaming as Junior, atop him, locked the man’s face in his wide, powerful jaws.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the fight ended. Horses raced back and forth with empty saddles, their reins dangling in the dust. The only sound above the pounding hooves was that of Junior’s growls and the soldier screaming for someone to get the dog off him.
“Down, boy!” Will Summers shouted. But when the dog ignored him, Summers raised his gun and fired. The bullet struck the ground dangerously near the soldier’s face, sending dirt up into Junior’s muzzle. Junior let out a yelp and ducked away with his tail rolled back under his belly.
The soldier moaned and tried to sit up, one hand raised to his bloody face. His other hand rose toward Will Summers. Moses Peltry stepped in quickly and put a bullet in the man’s head. The man flopped to the ground like a limp bundle of rags.
“Damn it, Moses! That’s enough!” Summers shouted, swinging his pistol at him.
Moses Peltry only stared for a second. “Let me show you something, Summers,” he growled. He reached out with his bare foot and kicked a small Uhlinger pistol from the dead man’s hand.
“All right,” said Summers, “but that’s enough. It’s over!” He scanned both directions and saw Juan Richards dragging himself along the street. Behi
nd him lay Roscoe Moore with his face blown away. “Can somebody go help that poor bastard?” said Summers.
“Hang on, I’m coming,” Lawrence Teasdale called out to Juan Richards. He walked away toward Richards as Summers turned back to Moses Peltry.
“Damn you anyway, Moses!” Will Summers continued. “You said that was going to be a straight-up, fair fight! That’s the only reason we stepped out to back your play, you lying, double-crossing—”
“Whoa now, Summers.” Moses cautioned him with a raised finger for emphasis. “That was vengeance for my brother! I didn’t owe that German a damn thing. Besides, you heard him warn us all that he was some kind of crack shot back in his homeland. I’d have been a fool to let him get both feet planted on the ground, wouldn’t I?”
Will Summers and Abner Webb looked at one another. Summers shrugged, accepting Moses Peltry’s logic. “You could have let us know beforehand.”
“Yeah? Now, just how the hell could I have done that?” Moses Peltry asked. “You’ve been around long enough to know how things go in a gunfight. Once I heard that crack shot story, I knew I had to make some quick changes if I was going to live through this.” He stepped over to Oberiske’s body and looked down. “Why would he tell me something like that anyway? That was plain stupid.”
“Maybe he was lying, Moses,” said Summers. “Maybe he figured he’d tell you that, and you wouldn’t want to go through with it.”
“If he was lying about it, that was even more stupid,” said Moses.
Summers and Webb just looked at each other and nodded in agreement. “You realize what happens now, don’t you, Moses?” Summers said, a grim tone coming to his voice.
“What? You’re going to kill me? Going to take my head back to Rileyville or wherever and claim a reward for it? Go ahead then. Let’s get it done.” As he spoke, Moses didn’t even look up at Summers and Webb. Instead, he stared down at Oberiske’s snappy red and gray tunic lying in the dirt where it had fallen when Oberiske’s horse bolted away.
Summers and Webb watched Moses pick up the tunic, shake it off and put it on. He adjusted the lapels and raised his arms up and down to see if it fit comfortably. “Not bad,” he said. Then, looking up at Summers and Webb as Sherman Dahl came leading his horse up into their midst and Teasdale pushed Juan Richards along in his wheelchair, Moses said, “There’s something about a military uniform I never could resist.”
“You rotten, stinking pig!” Juan Richards shouted at Moses Peltry. “Somebody give me a gun. You won’t have to worry about who kills him! I’ll kill this snake myself!”
“Settle down, crip, before you hurt my feelings,” said Moses Peltry. “What did I do to you that was so bad? I slept in your house, but I told you first. Look at it this way: I could have hung you up by your thumbs if I’d wanted to, and nobody could have stopped me.”
“Are you going to kill him or not?” Juan Richards shouted.
“That’s enough out of you, Moses,” said Will Summers, stepping in between the two men. “Mister, if you’re able to roll that chair, get on out of here. We’ll take care of this man. But we’re not killing him here. We’re taking him back across the border with us to make sure he gets hanged proper for what he’s done. Does that sound fair to you?”
“If that’s the best I can get, it will have to do,” said Richards.
“Good,” said Will Summers. “When the next patrol comes through here, be sure and tell them what happened.”
“Don’t worry,” said Juan Richards in a bitter tone. “They’ll be passing through any day now. I’ll be sure and tell them everything I saw. You can bet on it.”
“I thought I could,” said Summers, turning the wheelchair and giving it a push to get it started. “Now get out of here.”
As soon as Juan Richards was out of hearing distance, Summers looked at the others and said, “We’ll face a firing squad for sure if the Mexican government gets their hands on us before we reach the border. We’ll never make it with that big, slow supply wagon and a bunch of outlaws’ heads.”
“What are you getting at, Will?” Abner Webb asked.
“I’m thinking we’d be better off if we holed up somewhere for a while…let the dust of this thing settle some.” He looked from Teasdale to Webb to Dahl. “What do you three think?”
“By now I’m a deserter,” said Teasdale, “so a few more days or weeks or months won’t make any difference. I’m all for staying out of sight if we can find a place.”
“Moses has a place. Don’t you, Moses?” said Will Summers.
“I might have,” said Moses, “if you ask real polite.” He grinned, then said, “But it’ll be hard for me to show you the way if my head’s chopped off and riding on the end of a rifle barrel.”
“What about you, Webb?” Summers asked.
“Well, I started out a lawman, then a posseman. I don’t know what I am now back in our country, but here I’m no more than an outlaw. We might have a price on our own heads once the word’s out about killing all these Federales.” He looked away for a second in the direction of the border. “Hell,” he whispered. “I just as soon hide out down here for a while…just for a while though. I’m not staying forever.”
“Neither are we,” said Summers. “No longer than it takes.” He turned to Sherman Dahl. “What about it, schoolmaster? You want to go or stay?”
“I’m heading to Rileyville just like we planned,” said Dahl.
“What about the Federales?” Summers asked. “You’re bound to run into them going back that direction.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Dahl. “There’s nothing says I’m any more likely to run into them than you are. I think it’s all over here, but you three just aren’t ready to turn it loose. I went down that road once before, right after the war. Believe me, I don’t want to do it again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, schoolmaster?” Will Summers asked flatly.
“It means we’ve done what we came down here to do. It’s time to make our way home. Whatever we run into, we’ll have to deal with, same as we would no matter which direction we take.”
“Well said, young man.” Moses Peltry chuckled under his breath and turned toward the stray horses milling in the street. “If you army deserters, ex-lawmen and horse traders will excuse me, I’m getting a horse twixt my knees and hightailing it out of here. Anybody wants to ride with me, feel free. But hurry it up.”
Moses stopped and turned, raising a pointed finger at Sherman Dahl. “And I’m warning you here and now: I better find my brother in one piece when I get to him!”
“Then you better get to him before I do,” Dahl replied over his shoulder, walking away. “I don’t owe you a thing, Moses Peltry. I’ll cleave his head off the same way I would a poison snake!”
“Jesus, Dahl!” Will Summers whispered. “What kind of thing is that to say?”
Upon hearing Dahl’s words, Moses Peltry stopped cold in his tracks and turned slowly. “What did you say to me?” Moses’ voice rumbled like thunder from a dark, distant sky.
Sherman Dahl kept walking. “You heard me, Moses.”
“Stop right there!” Moses demanded. “Turn and face me!”
“Why, Moses? So you can tell me what a crack shot you were back in your village somewhere?” Dahl kept walking.
“Why you—” Enraged, Moses Peltry snatched the Walker Colt from his waist, cocking it on the upswing.
But before he raised it level to Dahl’s back, Will Summers shouted, “Dahl, look out!”
Sherman Dahl spun on his heel, his Colt appearing in his hand as if it had always been there. One shot split the silence on the dirt street, and Moses Peltry clasped his gun hand to his heart with his Walker still in it, then fell forward on his face, dead before he hit the ground.
“Well,” said Abner Webb, “there went our hideout idea.”
“Yeah,” said Will Summers in a lowered voice. “I think the schoolmaster did that on purpose just to make us go home.”
The possemen left Punta Del Sol in the dark of night, Sherman Dahl atop the supply wagon, his horse reined to the rear of the wagon in case he needed it for a quick getaway. With Oberiske and his Federales out of the picture, Sherman Dahl and Lawrence Teasdale rode up above the town and brought back the Gatling gun and the last crate of ammunition Dahl had hidden between two rocks. They loaded the gun and ammunition in among the supplies, but in such a way that it could be gotten out easily should they have cause to use it.
While the others had prepared horses and gear for the trip back across the border, Will Summers, with the help of old Hector Roderio, set about the grisly task of collecting the outlaws’ heads. Owing to his religious beliefs, Hector Roderio did none of the actual cutting. Instead, he watched Will Summers and, when the cutting was done, simply held out the bag. Summers offered to pay old Hector for his help, but Hector would have none of it. “I do this for free, just to get you men out of Punta Del Sol and on your way.”
“That’s most kind of you, Hector.” Will Summers smiled. When the four-man posse rode away in the moonlight, Hector Roderio and Juan Richards were the only two to see them off. In the dusty square riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood, Hector leaned on his cane and waved adiós. But Juan Richards spit at them from his wheelchair and cursed them under his breath.
For the next few days, the posse traveled unseen, following the river valley until at length they had to venture up onto the flatlands leading toward the border. The four men exchanged little conversation until they had crossed the border and were headed toward Diablo Espinazo. To their surprise, standing there outside the dusty little town to greet them was Trooper Frieze. “My God,” said Abner Webb as he and Will Summers stopped beside the supply wagon and watched Sergeant Teasdale leap down from his horse and go running to his recovered trooper. “We left that boy on his deathbed at Little Sand River. He’s made it all the way here—looking better than any one of us.” Webb grinned with satisfaction. “And you said he was going to die.”