Tennessee Renegade

by Hank J. Kirby

  ‘I don’t like it and if you think you can—’

  Renny’s words trailed off as Enderby stepped into the cabin. The kid was seated on the edge of his bunk now and he looked startled, afraid, as Buck walked towards him. Buck knew the kid was pushing him, trying him out.

  He grabbed Renny’s hat from a wall peg, jammed it on his head, hauled him to his feet by his shirt front and started to drag him, flailing and wailing, towards the door.

  ‘My boots! My boots! I ain’t got my boots on!’

  Enderby shoved him back towards the bunk. ‘First thing after your hat you put on when you get up in the morning. Any cowhand knows that, you remember it.’

  Struggling into his hand-tooled halfboots, Renny scowled, sniffing a little. ‘I don’t want to be a goddamn cowboy! I’m not like them! I don’t care about ranching!’

  ‘Told your old man?’

  ‘He knows.’

  ‘Tell him. He’s too busy for a subtle approach.’

  Renny paused, spoke sullenly. ‘He’ll whip me!’

  ‘He might bully you some but if you’re not too stupid, you can wait him out and tell him your side. What do you want to be, anyway?’

  Renny shrugged. ‘Dunno, and I don’t care! I don’t have to be anything! Not with all the money he’s got.’

  Buck sighed, hauled the kid to his feet and sent him staggering to the door. As the kid straightened. Buck shoved him again and he stumbled over the stoop, fighting for balance in the yard.

  ‘Saddle our mounts, Renny.’ He spoke easily, not bullying, but his eyes drilled into the kid and after a meaningless glare, Renny did as he was told.

  Enderby asked the kid to show him round and after some bitching, Renny seemed pleased enough to do it. He took Buck to the holding canyons where they put the mavericks or mustangs after they rounded them up, kept them there till they settled down, then drove them down to the ranch for breaking or branding. He showed him a river from a ledge that they had to clamber down to, sweeping an arm around.

  ‘See how far you can see from up here … River seems to go on to the end of the world. I … I like to look at it from up high.’

  Something in the kid’s voice made Enderby turn to look at him. He asked quietly, ‘Come here often?’

  Renny looked sharply at Buck. ‘Whenever I can, I’d rather spend the whole day up here than doing ranch chores.’

  ‘Wouldn’t get the chores done, though. But, yeah, this is a good place, all right. Reminds me of a pocket of the Smokies, only we got more of a blue hazy look to things back home.’

  Renny frowned, was about to speak, but apparently changed his mind.

  ‘Be nice here at sundown,’ Buck allowed. ‘Looking to the west the way it does.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s really something. I’ve watched the sun set from here a couple times. Wished I had stuff to paint it – or try.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m not much good at painting.’

  ‘Is that what you want to do?’

  Renny flushed deeper, not looking at him, examining his fingernails. ‘I like sketching stuff but, as I said, I’m not much good.’

  ‘Take some lessons, there’s colleges you can go to.’

  ‘Huh! Tell that to the old man!’

  ‘You should tell him. I don’t suppose he knows about you liking art?’

  Renny shook his head. ‘He wants to retire to the ranch near San Antonio after he’s through with politics. Wants me to have my own place, this one. And manage the other spreads, like the one in Mexico.’

  ‘Well, he’s taking care of your future.’

  ‘Yeah, I know – but I don’t want to be a damn rancher!’

  ‘Put in a good manager then and go study art.’

  Renny jumped up and stood staring out over the river and woods, watching a hawk circling. ‘You think it’s easy! Just tell him and that’s it! But you don’t go against Senator Pardoe! He says you do something and you do it! He makes you do what he wants.’ He added with a vicious twist to his mouth. ‘You ought to know that!’

  Buck sighed. ‘Talk to him, Renny, no one else can do it for you. Keep trying till you get him to listen. You got to walk tall if you aim to get any place at all in this world. My old man taught me that. Maybe I ain’t got anywhere much but I can stand up for myself, so I guess that’s Lesson Number Three for you to learn. Meantime, I’d better see what else I can teach you.’

  ‘I told you I don’t want to know about roping and all that stuff.’

  ‘Uh-huh. How about shooting? You don’t have to be a cowboy to know about guns: more you know, the safer they are – you any good with ’em?’

  He saw the interest glow in the boy’s eyes immediately. Renny shook his head. ‘I can shoot a gun. Not too bad with a rifle, but … well, I guess I’m pretty hopeless with a six-gun.’

  ‘OK, let’s go find a draw somewhere and we’ll try you out.’

  For the first time, Enderby saw a true smile on the usually surly face.

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘Renny, I don’t much care for just listening to the sound of my own voice. So mostly, I say what I mean.’

  Renny grinned widely, cutting loose with a wild whoop as he rowelled with his spurs. ‘Follow me!’

  The kid was worse than Buck Enderby expected. He fumbled a six-gun, had no idea of balance, held it all wrong so that it jerked and twisted in his fist, once it kicked back so hard it almost hit him in the face.

  Using a rifle was a little better but not much. Enderby got him to aim at the dead branch on a tree. Renny hit it twice out of five shots which was OK, but he was rubbing his right shoulder and grimacing in pain now.

  ‘When you shoot, snug that buttplate tight against your shoulder,’ Buck told him, demonstrating. ‘Snug it in, use your left hand on the fore-end grip – here – and keep pulling back towards your body. Let it loose and you’ll throw lead all over the countryside, and have a damn sore shoulder to boot.’

  ‘I’ve got one already,’ Renny said as Buck held out the Winchester towards him, making no move to take it.

  Buck grabbed his hands and put the rifle into them, pointed at the broken branch. ‘Take it off at the base. Aim each shot, making sure the tip of the blade is dead centre in the V of the rear sight, level with the top of each arm.’

  ‘I told you, my shoulder’s sore.’

  ‘There’re four killers. Indians, maybe, but don’t matter who, coming at you, you gonna tell ’em to wait until your shoulder feels better? Shoot that branch off the damn tree!’

  Renny gave him a sour, sullen look, lifted the rifle and gingerly placed the butt against his tender right shoulder. Buck stepped behind him, reached around and yanked the gun back firmly. Renny yelled but Buck didn’t release the pressure, pushed the kid’s head down so his cheek was against the stock.

  ‘Aim and shoot,’ he said calmly and when he felt the kid’s head moving slightly to line up the sights, he stepped back.

  Renny fired and splinters flew from the dead branch. The tree shuddered. The kid lowered the rifle and turned, a broad smile on his face.

  ‘I got it! Right on the base!’

  ‘Three or four more shots ought to do it.’

  He didn’t seem to notice the sore shoulder now, but Buck had to remind him to use his left hand to help keep the buttplate pressed home firmly. The kid took his time, aiming carefully and cut the branch off the tree with his fourth bullet.

  He almost danced with joy.

  Buck reloaded the smoking Winchester swiftly.

  ‘Let’s see what you can do,’ Renny urged.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Enderby chose a bunch of pencil-thin twigs at the top of the dead tree. They spread in a fan of about eight.

  Buck cut each one in two – in less than five seconds.

  Renny merely stared, open-mouthed, then recovered as Buck finished reloading again.

  ‘How are you with a six-gun? I’ve seen you in action, down in Mexico, but I mean with a fast draw.’ He gestured to the Dragoon rammed
into Buck’s belt. ‘That thing must weigh a ton.’

  Enderby nodded. ‘One I stole after I broke out of jail. It’ll knock a bear on his ass but it’s way too heavy to carry, anyway, it’s cap-and-ball, too slow to reload.’

  ‘Don’t you have a Colt single action?’

  ‘Back at Headquarters I guess, never thought about it. They took it before I went to jail. Lend me yours.’

  Renny was wearing a shiny Colt .44 six-shooter in a fancy carved holster tied down low on his right hip. He hesitated, then tried to draw it fast and smoothly for Buck’s benefit. It was a disaster and the gun fell to the ground. Renny swore and stomped and picked up the gun as if he would hurl it away.

  Buck took it off him and rammed it into his belt, butt foremost. The kid glared, tight-lipped, still angry and embarrassed. ‘Lousy damn gun! Pa paid seventy bucks for that damn hunk of iron.’

  ‘Renny – that was you, not the gun.’ He let that sink in and slowly the kid calmed down. Buck pointed to a rock. ‘You want to put a row of stones on top there? About egg-sized or a little smaller.’

  ‘But that’s … twenty feet away if it’s an inch!’

  ‘Longer distance than any gunfight I ever saw, but a good test for accuracy.’

  ‘How … how close do you get in a gunfight?’

  ‘Depends, but usually around six to ten feet.’

  When the stones were placed, Renny came back and Enderby told him that he found a cross-draw was superior to the dip-and-lift type that the vast majority of men used.

  ‘We didn’t run to fancy holsters much in the Smokies. Mostly we just rammed our guns into our belts like this and whipped ’em out fast as we could – like this.’

  He drew and turned, twisting so that he was crouching as the gun appeared in his hand, finger depressing the trigger while the edge of his left hand fanned the hammer spur. Stones shattered and rock dust spurted as the draw filled with the whine of ricochets underlying the thunder of the gun. Buck handed the pistol to the wide-eyed Renny to reload.

  ‘You missed two,’ the kid gasped.

  Enderby nodded. ‘Fanning’s not accurate, but it’s fast, and if you’re close to your man you’ll usually hit him and the faster the better. Don’t you try it, not yet, leastways. We’ll shoot steady at arm’s length for a spell.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone draw as fast as you.’

  There was real admiration in Renny’s voice.

  And Lane Magill, watching from a ridge through field glasses, would have agreed with him. He had never seen such prowess with a six-gun. He knew that bracing this damn hillbilly was out of the question. If he wanted to nail the sonuver – and he did, like you wouldn’t believe – it would have to be from an ambush.

  Meantime, while he thought about it, he aimed to go draw his time from Pardoe, then go to town and get drunk.

  CHAPTER 7

  A BETTER MAN?

  Buck Enderby couldn’t help but compare Renny to himself when he was a sixteen year old.

  All his childhood he was skinny, under-fed, wore no shoes and had the seat hanging out of his pants. But he could shoot the eye out of a turkey at fifty yards in bad light and could skin and dress a possum or rabbit for cooking in three minutes flat. He could track a fly across a lava bed, howl like a coyote, cough like a cougar, whistle and chirp like a hundred different species of birds, read the weather and sniff the air and tell whether there was rain a’coming or maybe hail or sleet. He could read most of Nature’s signs, cook well enough so that his Pa and brothers hardly ever complained, knew how to build a log cabin and a shelter in the wilderness out of pine boughs or other branches that would protect him in any kind of weather.

  If he went hunting and by some ill luck only wounded his prey – it had happened only twice, the others being all clean kills – he would track down that prey no matter how long it took or what dangers he had to face until he could put it out of its misery. Not because he liked doing it and putting himself in danger but because Pa had taught him it was the right thing to do. ‘No critter should be left to suffer unnecessarily. You wound it, you go after it and kill it.’

  Young Bucky – as he was then – didn’t want for much. Maybe more grub on the table at times would have been nice and a wolfskin jacket come the bitter Smokie winters, but otherwise he got along quite well. Self-sufficient, that was how Pa put it. Learn to be self-sufficient, boy, and the world holds no terrors for you.…

  Now this kid, Renny Pardoe, not much older than Bucky Enderby when he blew up the still and killed those Revenue men, Renny grew up with plenty of money and plenty of people to take care of him, grant his wishes, or else, if he didn’t get what he wanted right away, he soon learned that throwing a tantrum loud enough and long enough would eventually see him win out.

  Maybe his father, the Senator, was tired of that now, but the kid had too many long years of being spoiled and being kingpin wherever he was, because of his father and the rich background. He was born into a lucky family and even now, hundreds of miles south of his home state, his luck stayed with him because his father was heading for the Governor’s chair and the Pardoes were Northerners with all the backing of the Reconstruction to help them on their way.

  Buck felt there was some hope for the kid, the Senator himself showed signs that he at least knew what was the right thing, even if he didn’t practice it much as a politician. Some good was bound to have rubbed off on Renny and it was Buck Enderby’s job to bring it to the fore.

  Make a better man out of him, was how Senator Pardoe had put it.

  Well, it was going to be quite a job. Renny seemed to be trying but he reverted to his old bullying, tantrums and over-bearing manner much of the time. He was keen to learn all about guns and shooting but even there Buck saw some trouble.

  Because, face up to it, the kid was only so-so despite his love of firearms. He couldn’t seem to get the knack of handling them smoothy, although Pa had always told Buck that it wasn’t a thing that just anyone could learn, there must be natural talent there to start with, even just a whisper of it would help.

  Well, Renny Pardoe had the desire but not much of the wherewithal to make things happen the way they should.

  He was more interested in that aspect of Buck’s job than any other, but Buck came down hard on him when he started to poke out his bottom lip, turned surly and sullen, building up to a tantrum.

  ‘Don’t try it, kid – yeah, I said kid – you act like one, I’m gonna call you one. You want me to call you by your name, then you earn that right. You throw a tantrum and I’ll make you sorry. Don’t like making threats but any I do make, I mean. You should’ve learned that much.’

  Renny glared, was silent a short time, then seemed to brighten, curling a lip. ‘I can get you fired any time I want! All I gotta do is tell the Senator you beat me for nothing or some trivial thing, act it up, and you’ll be fired. Oh, I can do it, don’t you think I can’t! I can wear him down to where he’ll do what I want just to get a little peace and quiet.’

  ‘Don’t doubt it, kid. You’ve had plenty of practice, I guess.’ Enderby started to move towards him and the sneer dropped from Renny’s face as he began to back up.

  ‘What … what’re you doing?’

  ‘Kid, I’ve told you not to lie, so, you want to tell the Senator I beat up on you, I might as well make sure at least you’re telling the truth.’

  He reached for Renny and the kid let out a yell, crouching, getting on the far side of the deal table, looking anxious and ready to dodge and make a run for the door. Enderby strode after him steadily with a blank expression but plenty of determination in his movements.

  ‘Wait! Wait! I was only saying what I could do. Not that I was going to do it!’

  Buck stopped, hands on hips, looking hard. ‘All right. Now, like I said, today we do some cowhand work. If there’s time, we’ll go out to the draw and try a little more shooting. But the range work first. Savvy?’

  Renny tightened his lips but he accepted i
t with a jerky nod. ‘I need to know how to shoot properly,’ he said sullenly, capitulating, making one last try.

  ‘I’ll show you what I know, then it’s up to you. But your old man wants you to learn how to run a ranch so you can take over that side of his business. And he wants you to learn a few ethics – codes, if you like – that’ll stand you in good stead throughout your life.’

  Renny laughed shortly. ‘Man, has he flim-flammed you! He don’t give a damn about my future, only his. You ever wonder why he picked someone like you? A hillbilly?’

  ‘Often, but he’s paying me, and another thing my Pa taught me was that you always give value for every dollar paid to you. That’s something else for you to learn.’

  ‘Why does he think you’re such a damn paragon?’ He sounded resentful and Enderby shrugged.

  ‘Ask him, I’m not worrying about it any more. Now let’s get some grub for a couple of days, saddle-up, and we’ll head for the hills.’

  ‘Did your old man put you through this stuff when you were sixteen?’

  ‘Started long before, beatings and all, if I didn’t get it right. By the time I was sixteen, kid, I’d killed three men.’

  Buck knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. It sounded like a boast for one thing, but when he saw the change in the kid’s face he knew this was the one thing that Renny would latch on to.

  This was what Renny Pardoe would base his respect for Buck on.

  He suddenly liked the idea of being taught things by a self-confessed killer.

  The mustang round-up was violent, dusty and not all that successful. Enderby built a brush-lined trail where he wanted the horses to run, leading down to the camouflaged corral he and Renny had thrown-up, with a crate that opened easily with little pressure, but snapped shut of its own accord with the aid of a long, bent green sapling.

  ‘The broncs charge through and by the time the first is milling around, the last one is in, the gate’s closed and we’ve got ’em,’ Enderby explained.