‘Well, I’m aiming to marry you, ain’t I?’
She sighed again. ‘So you say, but …’
He leaned forward, wincing, holding a hand over the wound, but his gaze not sliding away from her face. ‘Why in hell you think I keep taking on these chores? Why do you think I’m chasing the fast money? Because I’m too blamed lazy to work for it? I’m greedy? Stupid?’
‘Of course I don’t think any of those things!’ She snapped angrily.
‘No, I guess I know that,’ he said quietly. ‘But if I’m gonna marry you, I ain’t gonna do it while I’m poor. I grew up dirt-poor and hungry for sixteen years before that trouble with Asa Hunsecker and the Revenue men, and I was belly-growling hungry for another five years in the War after I lied about my age and joined the Army. But I didn’t mind, because it saved my neck. I’m still a Tennessee renegade, daren’t go back there, but then I ain’t got anything to go back to anyway. First time I had a really full belly in my whole life, and could look forward to it each day, was after you took me in when the Reconstruction Vigilance Patrol chased me into them hills and I found my way down here. I’ve been here ever since except for this last year when I joined the Texas Rangers….’
‘The Rangers! And I thought you were dead all that time! Not a word from you! Until you turn up now with yet another bullet in you, your horse almost dying under you and—’ She started to cry despite herself: it was something that rarely happened and it startled him. She released his hand, shook off his attempt to take hers back and dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief. She looked at him through tears, face twisted in anguish. ‘You’re a bastard, Buck Enderby! Putting me through that! And you’ve never even said you’re sorry….’
He squirmed. ‘Hell, Kim, I was working down in Mexico most of the time. I speak Spanish pretty good so the Rangers used me for that reason, I didn’t want to worry you….’
‘Worry!’ She laughed shortly, coldly, without a trace of humour. ‘It’s a wonder my hair hasn’t turned grey!’ She paused and drew down a deep breath. ‘But no more, Buck, no more! I mean it. You settle down on the ranch here, and prove to me you can do it, then we’ll get married and – I pray to God! – live happily ever after. Now that’s the deal I’m offering. If you’re not interested, well, you can stay until you’ve recovered from this wound and then I’ll help you pack your things and see you on your way.’
She was staring at him with defiance, a tremor in her voice, body rigid now, her kerchief in shreds, waiting for his answer.
‘Let me sleep on it, huh?’ he said wryly.
She threw the bowl of blood-stained antiseptic water into his face.
She served him breakfast in bed, obviously contrite. There was bacon, eggs from her chicken run, fresh-baked hot biscuits, corn fritters and freshly made coffee.
‘Smells good,’ he opined, sitting up, wincing at the pain the movement caused him.
She set the tray across his thighs, reached out and touched his tousled fair hair. ‘I know you were just joking, I’m sorry I threw that filthy stuff all over you.’
He smiled crookedly. ‘Guess I deserved it. Mmmm, this is good. Listen, I’m gonna work my butt off when this wound heals. I haven’t done much around this place, used it mainly as somewhere to run to after I got myself into and out of trouble. You’ve a right to ask what you did and I’ll do my best. If I don’t measure up….’
He shrugged and she leaned forward and kissed him, one hand stroking his stubbled face. Her eyes were moist and bright. ‘I know I can be a bit of a harridan sometimes. But I would like you for a husband, Buck Enderby, we can be happy here. There’s plenty of wilderness on our doorstep if you feel the urge to go primitive or something.’ She paused, frowning a little. ‘I know very little about you. I know there was some trouble back in Tennessee but you never went into details. You skim over everything to do with yourself. Why, it’s not been long since you let slip that you used to be called “Bucky”.’
He sipped some coffee. ‘Well, I grew up called that. It was OK for a kid, but didn’t seem to suit after a while in the army and I survived Gettysburg and so on.’
‘There! I never even knew you fought at Gettysburg.’ She was hard put to keep censure out of her voice.
‘Nothing much to tell.’
‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’ She knew there was an edge to her words but she really was interested in his life. ‘It’s long past the time since we should’ve had such a talk, Buck, you know it is.’
Finally, he set down knife and fork on the cleaned platter, drained the coffee and reached for his tobacco sack and papers on the bedside table. She took them from him and rolled him a cigarette, lighting it and passing it across.
He drew in deeply and exhaled, composing his thoughts.
Tennessee seemed far away, and long ago….
CHAPTER 2
LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY
Life was tough in the Big Smokies but it was a hell of a mighty fine place for a kid to grow up in.
The huge forests teemed with game and the occasional Indian, mostly Caddo, but sometimes wild renegade bucks from afar who would shoot anything that moved, including white men and women. There were skirmishes between them and the settlers but mostly life was just that, getting on with living and keeping enough food in your belly.
The Enderbys had been in Tennessee since way back when and no one knew when the first of them came to the Smokies. Family tradition had it that it was in the very early days of firearms development. Eventually one of them took to gunsmithing and made a name for himself as the finest maker of Kentucky hunting rifles anywhere on the continent, including even the Europeans at Lancaster.
Strangely, his talents weren’t passed on to his descendants and although all the male Enderbys showed great interest in firearms, not one of them turned to the gunsmithing trade.
Mostly they used the knowledge in hunting, fighting Indians and the occasional outlaw gang that figured they could ride roughshod over the Tennesseeans.
And, later, for feuding with the Hunseckers.
Land and Cheatham Creek were the main points of contention. By this time moonshine had become the most lucrative and popular means of supporting a family, and Cheatham Creek had mighty fine run-off water with its source at a sweet spring high in the Smokies. Plenty of folk used it for moonshine but a section known as the Crystal Pools held the sweetest water of all, something to do with mineral content in the soil thereabouts.
It was partly on Hunsecker land, partly on Enderby holdings.
The Hunseckers were given to testing their moonshine output in large quantities, whereas the Enderbys were satisfied with a jug or two to keep out the cold and bodily ‘knipshuns’ (as Old Ma Enderby called any kind of illness way back, according to Pa). Drunk, and with their innate wildness and coarseness released, the Hunseckers were unpopular and feared in Nathan County, centre of the moonshine industry. They tried to take all of Crystal Pools for themselves and folk started to die on both sides. The feud went on for more than thirty years and then some kind of good sense seemed to prevail and the two families finally conceded there was more than enough Crystal Pool water for all of their needs.
They teamed-up when a bunch of Kentucky outlaws tried to move in and after that they lived side by side with only the occasional bust-out of hostilities that ended in quite serious injuries and, a couple of times, fatalities.
By this time, both the Hunsecker and Enderby patriarchs were growing old and their families had dwindled for different reasons, mostly illness and accidents. They tried to sort out any differences with fists rather than guns – except at the Turkey Shoots held regularly outside the town on Philmore Flats. Time after time the Enderbys won the prize – a twenty-dollar gold piece and however many turkeys they managed to shoot the eyes out of during the contest using Grandpa’s old Kentucky rifle. Out of the blue one year, Cole Enderby faulted and missed his bird – Pa later accused him of thinking too much of that young Hunsecker girl they call
ed Lucille – ‘Lucky’ Lucy, she was known as: lucky because she wasn’t pregnant more times than she was the way she encouraged the young men of Nathan County.
No matter, that year the trophy was lost – to Asa Hunsecker, who vowed he would win every time from here on in.
Not the next time though. Jared beat him flat and Asa, deputy sheriff by this time, ambushed Jared afterwards and beat him badly. Just as he was crowing in his triumph, Pa Enderby came upon them and gave Asa the beating of his life. In fact, his life hung in the balance for some weeks afterwards and the Hunseckers began murmuring darkly about the renewal of the old feud.
But it didn’t happen, at least not openly. There were a few fist fights between the Hunsecker boys and the Enderbys, including Bucky, but nothing too serious. Asa became sheriff eventually and he saw his chance to square things with Pa Enderby and get rid of some moonshine rivals at the same time. He called in the Revenue Men and led them to the Enderby still set-up in Hooty Owl Hollow.
Whether he knew he had picked two murderous sons of bitches or not was never made clear, but the Revenue Men figured here was a ready-made windfall, a set-up for the best moonshine this side of the Rockies, all for the taking. When Pa, Cole and Jared protested, the guns came out, Sheriff Hunsecker waiting in the trees and adding his shots to the battle started by the treacherous Revenuers.
Pa Enderby took Hunsecker’s bullet in the head, Cole and Jared went down under the guns of the Revenue Men, and young Bucky Enderby, returning from a hunting trip, heard the shooting and arrived too late to save his family.
But he took his revenge with the Kentucky rifle and then lit out for places West. It was the only way to go. He was the last of the Enderbys and Nathan County was thick with Hunseckers. They came after him and he shot four of their horses and two of the men, fatally or not, he didn’t know nor care.
By the time he had made his way out of the mountains and into Arkansas he heard there was war a’brewing. He tangled with two Hunseckers, laid an ambush and killed one, wounded the other, and made his way down into Mississippi. He arrived in Clarksdale in the midst of a brass-band-blaring, drum-thumping, firecracker spectacular that was a Recruiting Drive in disguise. Fearing there were still too many more Hunseckers on his trail yet, he changed his name to Bucky Nathan, put his age up by a couple of years and joined the newly-formed Mississippi Regiment.
He had always believed in Hell and after Gettysburg, Bull Run and The Wilderness, he knew exactly where Hell was, he’d been there and back. The others had called him loco and ‘Crazy Buck’ because of the way he ran to meet the enemy, into the face of their guns, his own weapons empty, only his bayonet to protect him.
‘How come you act so crazy in a fight, Buck?’ asked his troop sergeant one time while they sat, blood-soaked, wiping their bayonets, reloading, after a hellish charge. ‘Way I see it, the idea is to shoot if you can, then duck or run so’s you’ll get home for Christmas!’
His blood-spattered face dead sober, Buck Enderby said, ‘I don’t have no home to go back to.’
And that was his only explanation and after a while they began to call him ‘Lucky Buck’.
And, in fact, he had been unusually lucky, he came through the entire war with no more than a few superficial wounds. But it seemed that Fate had been saving him for something to correct the balance back in civilian life. He had always been a fine rifle shot and had demonstrated this skill a thousand times or more during the war, but afterwards, riding with a bunch of wild Texans set on returning to the Lone Star State as rich men, he had become more than proficient with a six-gun. He carried his gun in a soft leather holster riding high on his left hip, butt foremost – only later did he discover the more efficient stiff-leather holster. But he was mighty fast on a cross-draw and had his first gunfight in a wildnerness camp one night with a bunch of bearded, broken-toothed killers who had made it clear they aimed to take everything Buck and his pards owned. No one called him ‘Bucky’ any longer, not after the big battles and seeing how he charged in amongst the Yankees with bayonet dripping blood, wild-eyed and unstoppable.
Two of the Texans he rode with were wounded from a fracas over a stagecoach hold-up north of Socorro and the third was ailing with fever. Buck Enderby seemed to be the only real stumbling block to the four killers and they wasted no time in bracing him.
He knew he was the only one who could stop them killing him and his companions. Maybe. So he figured why wait? Why waste time on talk when it was only going to end in gunsmoke anyway…?
The biggest of the killer group spat into the fire, hoping to distract Buck while he reached for his gun, worn clumsily in a corner torn from a floursack on his right hip.
Buck Enderby’s six-gun, a Remington Army in .44 calibre, simply appeared in his hand, flame stabbing out of the hexagonal muzzle, the hammer jumping as Enderby slapped at it again and again with the edge of his hand, the big gun bucking and roaring as it arced across the quartet of murderers and sent them to meet Old Nick.
The whole camp was shrouded in powdersmoke, the echoes of the shots rolling and slapping away through the woods. The fever-ridden Texan stared with bulging eyes. The other two wounded men struggled to sit up on their blankets.
‘Judas priest, Buck!’ breathed one, a man named Cord Brewster. ‘That’s the slickest damn thing I ever saw! Who showed you that trick with the hammer?’
Buck shrugged, already with his powder-flask and cast lead balls and percussion caps spread out on his worn blanket on the ground, preparing for the laborious business of reloading a cap-and-ball revolver.
‘I just … did it. Figured, shooting normally, I might get two but by that time the others would have their guns out and a’smokin’. Didn’t know if it would work but I’ve took enough guns apart and put ’em back together to figure it ought to be OK,’ he shrugged casually. ‘If it didn’t, I was dead anyway, so what the hell?’
‘Man, that was really something! You and me ought to make a good partnership one day.’ Brewster grinned through the dirt and beard. It was a friendly grin, crinkled his eyes, the one that made the ladies feel all warm and quivery, usually knocked the edge off a man’s anger – sometimes fatally for the one who thought he was getting out of trouble so easily. ‘With my brains and your gun speed … hell, we can clean up, be rich men in no time.’
The others of their group looked at each other, a mite worried, but feeling a surge of anger deep down: what would happen to them if the two gunfighters teamed up? That was Cord Brewster’s big failing, he was tactless, didn’t care a damn about other folks’ feelings—
Of course, it was inevitable that such a group, still smarting at what many saw as Lee’s betrayal at Appomattox as forsaking the South, would run afoul of the Yankee Reconstruction.
They refused to knuckle under to the rigid, brutal laws enforced by the victors, made their own laws, and virtually took what they wanted. To hell with Yankee Law in all its forms. They held up payroll details, blew safes in Reconstruction headquarters, derailed trains, telling themselves they were still carrying on the Good Fight, South against the North. They became notorious, and there were several bounties on their heads. It was a wild life, not carefree, for they had to sleep with loaded guns under their pillows or in their hands. They had to steal most of their food and ammunition and certainly whatever money they needed. They rustled cattle, stole horses – from settlers and folk little better off than themselves, battlers against the wilderness and the Reconstruction that never showed any signs of going away, and now a new enemy, the scattered outlaw groups still loose and being hunted constantly by the Yankees.
It galled Buck Enderby and he said so in a mountain camp high in the sierras back of a place called Rafter Creek. What was really bothering him was the increasing abductions of young women from lonely settlers’ cabins or occasionally from a stage they held up. Brewster and his friends used and then discarded them. Buck Enderby had known women while in the army, and afterwards, nearly all whores, but he had an innat
e respect for the opposite sex and finally, in that high camp at Rafter Creek when Brewster savagely slapped the current woman they were passing around, he snapped.
She had been taken from a cabin, home alone, claimed to be the young wife of a man who was somewhere in the hills looking for mavericks for their small holding. Tag Mitchell, one of the wild bunch, had shot a man he thought was trailing them in those hills above the cabin. It had occurred to Buck that it could well have been the young woman’s husband.
That first stirred his compassion and then the way the gang had treated her – and he remembered all the others before her and knew there would be plenty yet to come – unless he did something about it. He had had enough and it was time to say so.
‘Keep your hands to yourself, Cord!’ he snapped and Brewster swung his head around, blinking, not believing he had heard right.
‘What did you say?’ He was genuinely puzzled.
Buck walked across and pulled the sobbing woman away from Brewster and then slapped him open-handed across the face, sending the big man staggering sideways. The others jumped to their feet but when Enderby looked at them, right hand hovering over his gun butt – the weapon now worn in a stiff-leather holster, greased on the inside – they backed off and made it clear they wanted no part of this. Whatever it might be.
The woman crouched, still sobbing, pathetically tugging the torn bodice of her dress in an attempt to cover her breasts, reddened and no doubt mighty sore from where Brewster and the others had been at her.
Brewster’s eyes blazed and his handsome face, clean-shaven these days, was quickly turning decidedly ugly. He rubbed at his cheek and then the friendly smile crinkled his eyes once more. ‘You son of a gun! You got religion, ain’t you? Oh, I been watching, seen it coming, just wasn’t quite ready for it. Hell! All them tales you told us about your Ma reading from the Bible, the only book you grew up with, I knew then you were gonna go soft sometime! Now it’s happened.’
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