The Badger's Revenge

by Larry D. Sweazy

  As far as Josiah knew, and hoped for her sake, Mae was still in Fort Worth where they’d left her, at the boardinghouse Scrap’s aunt Callie managed. Mae had told Josiah she could have loved him, but he doubted that was true. At least not the kind of love that he understood and knew.

  An out-of-tune piano started to play, banging loudly from inside the Tall Gate Saloon, and it recaptured Josiah’s attention from the third floor.

  There wasn’t any singing, and the roar of the usual crowd did not exist. There were no horses or wagons to be seen in the alley behind the saloon—maybe they were all out front.

  The town was a quiet one, not like the cow towns that grew up next to the cattle trails, the populations exploding with the drives north and cowboys seeking ways to quickly rid themselves of hard-earned wages on women and whiskey. But it was entirely possible that the earlier incident with John Wesley Hardin had cast a dark and fearful pall over the place. Josiah had seen the effects of violence strangle the life out of a town, drain every man, woman, and child who had seen it of hope or promise.

  A cantilevered roof covered the back entrance to the saloon. The shadows were even denser here since there were several buildings built within a few feet of one another. All of the buildings were three to four stories tall. Night had not completely fallen, but it might as well have been midnight in the alley.

  Josiah slid off the back of the horse and planted his feet firmly on the dry ground.

  The rope loosened a bit at his ankles, and Little Shirt let the rope that bound Josiah’s wrists briefly go slack—but just briefly enough to give Josiah a bit of room to put all the force he could into a double pump of the elbow to Little Shirt’s face.

  If ever there was a time to make a move and try to escape, now was that time.

  Josiah’s elbow caught Little Shirt directly under the chin the first time, then square in the nose, sending the Indian tumbling backward.

  The blow allowed Josiah to yank free from the Indian’s grip on the rope that held his hands.

  The Comanche screamed, and a mass of blood spurted from his mouth and nose—the sudden blows having broken his nose and causing him to bite his tongue.

  Josiah jumped back with all of his might, pulling the rope that was holding his feet from Little Shirt’s hand, then dove under the chestnut mare, hoping to avoid a shot from Big Shirt’s trusty Spencer rifle.

  “You are a fool, Josiah Wolfe!” Big Shirt yelled.

  But he did not shoot. Josiah was too close to the horse, lost on the other side of a deep shadow that he had seen from atop the mare.

  He scrambled to his feet, all the while pulling at the rope, trying to free himself of his confinement so he could run full out into the dark alley next to the saloon.

  It only took Josiah a few seconds to free his feet from the rope—but he knew that he couldn’t completely unbind his hands. The rope was loose enough for him to work his fingers and wrists, but that was it.

  He hated to do what he was about to do, but he had no choice—and there was no time for hesitation.

  He cold-cocked the chestnut mare, punched her square in the mouth twice for good measure, making sure his goal was accomplished.

  The horse screamed, then reared up on her two hind legs. Big Shirt had to whirl his horse around, sending him halfway out of the alley, to avoid the screaming, bucking horse.

  Josiah dove away from the mad horse, then rolled across hard ground and came up to squat with his back against the saloon.

  Big Shirt fired the rifle, and the bullet pinged off the side of the building, a foot over Josiah’s head.

  Even though the air was cool, sweat poured down Josiah’s face.

  He could hear Little Shirt moaning. His hand hurt like hell, and his knuckle was bleeding from catching a few of the horse’s teeth with the hard punch.

  He felt around the edge of the building and hoped he could slide between the saloon and the neighboring building without getting stuck—or shot at and killed—and make a run for it.

  One more deep breath and Josiah was up on his feet, pushing sideways between the two buildings and down the wall as quick as he could, fleeing the Comanche brothers.

  Little Shirt was still on the ground, rolling around in agony, and Big Shirt was still on his horse, shooting into the darkness, shouting, swearing he would not sleep until he saw Josiah Wolfe dead and buried.

  CHAPTER 5

  The entire town of Comanche came alive at the shots from Big Shirt’s rifle. Bright light erupted from the Tall Gate Saloon like it was morning and a gold rush had been feverishly announced. The buildings across the street blazed alive with light and activity. There was a rise of noise, chairs scooting furiously on wood floors, spurs jangling, horses reacting to the shots, prancing at their posts, snorting, tugging, nervous to flee.

  Josiah moved slowly, hugging the side of the building, glad that he was wearing dark clothes, making him less of a target—for the moment. His mind was running like an unattended train as he pushed toward the light and commotion, toward the main street that cut through the middle of Comanche.

  To say he was in between a rock and a hard place was an understatement. His choices were extremely limited. His hands were still bound with rope, and he had no weapon, no horse, and no idea where the hell he was.

  Turning back to face Big Shirt was certain death. He had no choice but to make a run for it—somehow, to somewhere.

  He came to the end of the building, his back flush against the outside saloon wall, and stopped to consider what his next move would be.

  An empty keg nearly blocked his exit from the compact alleyway, if it could be called that, but Josiah was certain he could jump it.

  Another shot rang out behind him, and a bullet dug into the dirt a couple inches from the heel of his boot.

  Josiah jumped but did not run out into the light. Not yet.

  Another shot came. This time, an inch closer. The next one would be right on target if Josiah didn’t move quickly.

  Big Shirt was yelling at the top of his lungs in his native tongue, as he and his horse danced at the other end of the building—a raging silhouette born of wartime nightmares that ended in nothing but blood and death.

  Without warning, Big Shirt jumped off the horse and disappeared briefly into the darkness. The shooting stopped, and Josiah saw Big Shirt return and lift Little Shirt to his feet, forgoing a shot at Josiah, instead offering aid to his brother.

  There was only a matter of seconds to decide what to do next. Hurrying footsteps through the saloon grabbed his attention as precious seconds ticked away.

  Three men pushed through the batwings of the Tall Gate Saloon, turning their heads up and down the street, searching for the cause of the ruckus, each with a gun in his hand, his fingers ready on the trigger.

  It only took one short second for Josiah to determine that one of the men was Liam O’Reilly.

  Just as Josiah had thought, the outlaw was riding with the law, even though he wasn’t wearing a badge. Not like in Waco. The other two men were unfamiliar to Josiah, but both of them were wearing silver stars on their chests.

  If Josiah had been a praying man, he would have started a conversation with God right then and there—or earlier, when he’d been taken captive by the Comanche. But the fact was that Josiah Wolfe wasn’t much of a churchgoer or a praying man. As far as he was concerned his own fate rested squarely on his own shoulders.

  He’d never had the curiosity or the push toward church from his parents to decide one way or another whether the promise of eternal life was real or a tall tale. His folks had left that choice up to him. The war had almost made him a believer, his survival a testament to something other than luck . . . but even then, he couldn’t bring himself to ask an invisible force for help as so many of his brethren soldiers had done. But it was his wife Lily’s death that had put the final hard glaze on his heart and shut out any possibility of belief in an all-knowing, all-loving and -forgiving God who had time to come to his si
de when Josiah needed help.

  As his wife and three daughters lay dying from the fevers, the preacher man from Tyler wouldn’t come out to the cabin, though Lily had requested his presence—since she was a believer—to pray them into Heaven, for fear of contracting the sickness himself. Lily was heartbroken and lapsed into a forever sleep, then died, with the certain fear she was on her way to Hell because she had not been blessed by a man of God.

  There was no forgiving that man as far as Josiah was concerned.

  Big Shirt fired another shot blindly into the alley. This time the bullet grazed Josiah’s calf.

  His first instinct was to scream out, but Josiah put his wrist up to his mouth to shield any sound of breathing that might clue O’Reilly and his men in to the fact that he was only a few feet away from them.

  He restrained himself as much as he could, bit into the cloth of his shirt, trying his best not to scream out, not to make any noise at all.

  Big Shirt called out again, this time for help, clearly in English.

  “Damn it, they’ve let loose of Wolfe.” There was no mistaking the Irish brogue, no mistaking Liam O’Reilly’s angry voice. “Stay here, Clarmont, just in case he comes up this way.”

  The man nodded in agreement, then O’Reilly and the other man turned and disappeared back into the saloon.

  Josiah assumed the two were hustling to the back of the saloon to help Big Shirt. It looked like it would be a one-on-one fight, if it came to that, with the remaining man, Clarmont.

  Josiah wanted to avoid fighting the man at all costs. The pain in his leg was worsening, and his pant leg was wet with blood. The air smelled of gunpowder and death, an all too familiar odor that Josiah hoped never to become immune to. But it was his blood he smelled, and the pain was excruciating.

  Without any further hesitation, Josiah picked up a rock and chucked it as hard as he could down the boardwalk, opposite the entrance into the Tall Gate.

  He quickly scurried to the ground and found another rock that fit neatly into the palm of his hand, a crude weapon, but a weapon nonetheless, which might help even the stakes if he did have to take on Clarmont in a hand-to-hand fight.

  The rock clunked on the hard, dry wood, capturing the man’s attention.

  “Hey,” Clarmont yelled out. “Who is that?” He walked right by Josiah, who had ducked back behind the keg.

  Behind him, Josiah could hear yelling—Irish and Comanche, a mix of anger on two foreign tongues that needed no translator to understand.

  Clarmont had his back to Josiah, went about ten feet past him, then he stopped.

  It was now or never, so Josiah mustered all the energy he had, kept his mouth clamped so he wouldn’t cry out in pain, jumped over the boardwalk, and took off straight across the street—hoping like hell he could disappear into the shadows before O’Reilly’s man was able to get a shot off at him.

  The door to the Darcy Hotel was ajar, and Josiah pushed it open without slowing his run from across the street.

  Somewhere behind him, a shot was fired, and Clarmont yelled for him to stop, but Josiah didn’t stop running, he just kept on pushing, the burning pain in his leg not slowing him down, hanging on to the rock like it was a brandnew Peacemaker made out of solid gold.

  A tall woman dressed in the latest fashions gasped and pulled her daughter close to her, most assuredly assuming that Josiah was an outlaw on the run, as he ran into the hotel lobby.

  The woman had perfect blond hair, suddenly reminding Josiah of Pearl Fikes. Pearl was the daughter of the late Captain Fikes, and the first woman since Lily had died that had caught Josiah’s eye. This woman wore an elegant, tall, dark blue velvet hat with several white and gray bird feathers sprouting from the center. Her jacket covered a blouse of scalloped lace, with a standing pleated collar, and she was wearing a long skirt the color of which perfectly matched her blue hat. She was a fine-looking lady, well put together, probably waiting for a Butterfield to points unknown.

  The Darcy Hotel was a three-storey affair, an example of perfection and high manners rarely seen in such a small town as Comanche. Josiah wouldn’t have noticed the stateliness of the lobby and the hotel itself if it wasn’t for the woman and child, who was probably about twelve, near the age of his oldest daughter—if she had lived.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Josiah said, slowing to doff his sweatsoaked brown felt Stetson.

  The woman stepped back, fear frozen hard on her face as she gripped the little girl tighter.

  Josiah stopped for just a second to get his bearings, looking for a way out of the hotel. “I’m not here to cause anyone harm,” he said, making eye contact with the girl. The thought of causing a child any undo stress was unthinkable to Josiah.

  “You will have to leave this instant, sir!” A mousy clerk yelled from behind the marble counter just inside the door.

  The clerk’s collar was pressed into high wings, a black ribbon tie pulled tight at the neck, making his Adam’s apple bulge unnaturally. He looked proper, well scrubbed, like he’d been a fixture at the hotel for a long time. For all Josiah knew, the man was the owner.

  But it didn’t really matter.

  Josiah took a deep breath and ran directly toward the clerk, propelling himself over the counter with one hand, trying his best not to land on his injured leg, making sure at the same time he didn’t lose the rock.

  The clerk screamed and went tumbling backward, trying to avoid Josiah’s perceived attack.

  The noise from the clerk’s mouth sounded more like something that would have come from the woman’s daughter than a man. His rimless glasses went flying into the air, the shattering of the lenses mixing with the commotion as the glasses smashed to the floor in a thousand tiny pieces.

  Josiah stumbled over the man and yelled in pain as he landed on his ankle. He quickly righted himself and kept on going, rushing through a curtain that led to an office and, hopefully, to the outside of the hotel.

  Just as the curtain was about to fall and close off any sight of what was behind him, Josiah looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Clarmont, followed by two more men, pushing into the lobby, causing even more fright to the woman and child. They had rifles in their hands now, as well as their six-shooters, drawn and ready to fire.

  Sweat dripped from Josiah’s forehead. His heart was pounding a mile a minute, and worst of all, he was leaving a bright red trail of blood with every step he took.

  Once he ran out of the office, Josiah suddenly found himself in a long hallway. He ran toward the back of the hotel, disregarding the shouts and screams behind him to stop. He expected a bullet to pierce his back at any second.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Chinaman held no emotion on his face at all. He stood at the door of the kitchen, a collection of pots boiling on an iron wood stove filling the air with the aroma of simmering chicken broth, mingling with the pungent odor of bread set out to rise. The yeast was not so stinging to the nose, since it was offset by the sweetness of the broth, but the smell of food of any kind was an unwelcome encounter for Josiah. His last bit of food had been early in the morning when the world had been right, when Red Overmeyer still had the ability to smile and laugh aloud, and did so frequently.

  It looked like the Chinaman, who was dressed in traditional black garb, with shaved head, pigtail and all, was standing there just waiting for Josiah to arrive. He was less than well scrubbed though, and there was a hole in his boot, large enough for his big toe to be sticking out.

  Truth be told, the cook was probably alarmed by the commotion in the lobby, fidgety as a rabbit to loud noises, uncertain about what violent act was coming his way next, and wondering if the violence, as it probably had in the past, was going to be directed toward him.

  Just as Josiah ran by the Chinaman, not slowing down since he didn’t sense the man as an immediate threat, the short little man shook his head no, put his hand out, and said, “Not that way.”

  Josiah stopped dead in his tracks, trying to catch his breath
. “It’s the only way out.”

  “They probably have a man there waiting.”

  “Where then?”

  “Upstairs. Go to the end of the hall, jump across the roof.”

  Footsteps rushed closer, pushing through the office just as Josiah’s had. The rumble on the wood floor was like thunder, a coming storm, the ground shaking, but instead of lightning, there were rifles and anger, a score to settle from days long past that could not be solved in a gentlemanly way.

  “Then what?” Josiah asked.

  The Chinaman shrugged his shoulders, then walked back into the kitchen. One of the pots was boiling over.

  Josiah decided to take a chance with what was behind the door. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop sounded like certain death to him.

  The air was cold. Night had not hesitated but had fallen in a thick black curtain, covering everything in its path as if a load of coal dust had fallen unexpectedly from the sky. It was not cold enough to snow—that would have been all too rare, but the glow of light would have been welcome.

  Josiah did not rush headlong out the door.

  He pushed it open slowly, as slowly as he could, looking over his shoulder with sweat pouring from his forehead, the burning in his eyes matching the burning in his calf. He was certain his boot was full of blood.

  He did not have time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but he slipped out of the door, sliding along the outside hotel wall, gripping his weapon, the simple rock, as hard as he could, hoping upon hope that the Chinaman was wrong.

  Maybe there had not been time for the man, or men, to reach the back of the hotel.

  At the moment, Josiah’s gamble seemed to be paying off. But he had to decide quickly what to do next.

  He could make a blind run for it.

  There seemed to be houses in the distance, oil lamps just starting to burn in the windows. There were no other tall buildings behind the hotel. Nor was there an alley as there was behind the saloon. Since he had no idea where he was and had no knowledge of the lay of the land in and around Comanche, running into the darkness seemed to be a huge gamble.