The Hell Bent Kid

by Charles O Locke

  He said: “How old were you when your father sent you on this joyful mission?”

  I said 13. I then told him how my mother had died after the Comanches hit. How they had killed my baby sister Julia with an arrow. I explained that I felt since my father and I were all that was left we should be together.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at me. “Yes, I would be inclined to agree.”

  He leaned forward and said: “Would the name be originally Tate?”

  I said yes, Tot for Tate. Then told him how I had hokused the Boyds and spooked their herd. He said “Well, well.” Then he got up, handed me my gun and said, “Let me see how you work her.”

  Well, I did it to please him, not wanting to shoot for show. I shot some chips off trees and such, laying them in close and calling the shots. Then nudging stones near the falls little by little till they fell in the water. I hip shot the rifle for him.

  He kept saying “Well, well.” Finally he put out his hand, took mine, and said, “Lohman, I am Amos Bradley. I have seen some shooting in my time—and I would call this fair, fair, jest fair.” Then he laughed fit to kill. “You brag too much, Bub.” Then again he laughed hard. “At last I have met up with a man who can hunt cockroaches with a rifle—ever try fleas?”

  Well, that is an old high plains joke, and I laughed at it to please Mr. Bradley who had been so kind to me.

  “How about you and me hunting some day?” he said.

  I said I would as a favor, as I did not hunt much. I told him my father had been the finest standing shot with a rifle I had ever seen, and had trained all of us and that Nevin had been pretty good with a pistol.

  “Hunt with me as a favor?” He looked at me careful. “You Quaker stock?”

  I said my mother had been a Quaker. He seemed interested. So I told him how she had come to the west with my father, with a hank of cotton thread, one of linen and one of silk, a carven cradle, a silk dress and two poetry books, one by the writer Milton.

  “Diluted some, I see,” he said.

  I said my father had been raised for a minister-like and sung hymns a lot. He looked at me very sharp and said, “Mother sing them?”

  I said no, but she liked to listen to them.

  Mr. Bradley said as we began to move back that he had once taught school back east. He hummed to himself. Then he said: “I know a bit more about your father than you think, but was holding back to see how you would talk. I think he is working for an outfit that is not too-good managed and owned by an Englishman. It is called the T Cross T. It is a registered brand but this man who owns her is sort of a too-nice fellow and I am told has some pretty shady galoots on his string. They say they are former cow-lifters. I would not know. Your father ought to get out of there and from what I hear I would advise moving him further south for his health as he has this wasting sickness. Why he wants to cook for a crowd of no-good cowpokers who have badmen among them is more than I can understand.”

  I said then I understood my father had done some favors for the owner and the owner was giving him plenty of light work and even leaving him off the cooking when necessary. I said to Mr. Bradley that this was what I had been told by the man at the Silver Spur.

  We started back, becoming a little worried then about the girl, and I said I would climb a rise and scan around for her. While I was doing this, Mr. Bradley poked up the fire a little and folded up some blankets and started to nose-bag the mule, and here came Hunter Boyd up among the trees.

  I recognized Old Man Boyd because I had seen him once before. He was on a big roan, leading another horse up from the canyon and had come on us sudden-like. Scared, I begun to edge down from the trees toward my gun.

  I heard him tell Amos that two of his hands would meet them the next day to lead them up through the poor country. Amos kept motioning me down. I came down finally, edging over near my rifle.

  Old Man Boyd backed his horse a little and looked at me through slitted eyes. He might have been heavy when young, but now was thinning out with age. Hair was pure white. He had the deepest creases I ever saw from nose to mouth-corner. His right arm was helpless from an elbow gunshot wound that had been froze in a blizzard and proud-fleshed after. He held the reins in the crook of that elbow, with the hand tarnally straight up like a steel claw.

  He looked me over from head to foot, then turned away. Everything was quiet. His Colt was straight up beside the horn in a wide-flap holster. First I had ever seen a gun on a saddle peak. I watched his left hand.

  Then I looked at Amos, and it was surprising how he had changed. He had walked over, leaned down and put his gun in his shirt. When he rose up, his eyes had changed. They were like needle points, and his frame looked like a cocked gun. He said: “This is my guest.”

  Old Man Boyd licked his chops. I kept watch of him. I saw how thin his thigh was under the shiny-wore leather pants. The white fleece under the saddle skirt matched his hair. The horn was low, with silver on top big as a tin dish.

  He said: “Ease yourself, Amos.”

  There was a long quiet. Then he said: “Seems like a cap of rain due.”

  “Sure does,” said Amos. “We could use her.”

  There was another quiet spell. Long.

  “Saw a girl on a horse when I came up here. Might that be your child you spoke of?”

  “True,” said Amos, “and whiles we’re on that, just to keep everybody bellied up to the bar for treats, this here is Tot Lohman. He had a hard time over by the dry. But now I believe is fit to travel on. He seems a gentle boy, not one to brag-shoot nor flounce about killing people.”

  “Good for him. I knew he was here. My men told me, which is why I came over. He is the Tot Lohman that killed my son Shorty, and stampeded my hill strays when Otis and Tom were foolishing around with them over near the state line. His father was known somewhat to me. So was his brother, Nevin, who was a good boy.”

  Then I said the only words I used in the whole talk.

  “Nevin was shot dead.”

  For a long time Old Man Boyd said nothing, just keeping his eyes off me and far away. You could have heard a cricket rustle with the wind down in the jacks. All of a sudden Old Man Boyd threw the rope of the led-horse to Amos.

  “That is Tot Lohman’s horse, so give it to him. Let him get a fair start. My sons should of shot him, and I could now—maybe. But it is not going to be said of my family that they got knocked around by a squirt who is gifted with a rifle, then shot his horse fifty, seventy-five miles from water. The Boyds are not horse-killers.”

  “Well, thank you kindly,” said Amos, “this’ll get him to Socorro.”

  “Yes,” said Old Man Boyd. “I understand he is headed there, as his father is in some difficulty, so Henry DeChute tells me. Well, since he can’t burrow down there like a mole or snake, he’d better sleep on his stomach and ride on the far side of his horse, because my sons will trail him from here to hell and back. He’ll never cross the river. I doubt if he fetches Las Vegas.”

  He turned his horse then and we saw him go down under the trees out of sight.

  8

  Camp Has Some More Visitors

  After Old Man Boyd left we began to think about the girl. Pretty soon here she came riding down the dry, like as she had found a steep switch-off from the hill road further back.

  First thing she said was: “Where’d you get the horse?” Amos explained to her. “It’s a good thing,” she said. “I’d have never given him mine to go on. He’d have had to take the mule. He’d look right on a mule.”

  Amos said: “It’s about time you dropped that smart talk. Rustle around now and heave some grits together. And no back talk. We get an early start in the morning. Boyd’s men will take us further up the road. If I recall rightly it begins to look like a road on up from here.”

  I was feeling the horse, whose rope I now held. He had a wild black eye and showed a good deal of red around the rim. But I gentled him down and would work some more on that. He was a fine horse, the finest I had
ever seen, a little small and light but well-boned but too light for general cattle work.

  I gave him a drink at the falls. I got a rag and wiped him down. He stood well. Then I gave him a mite of sugar I begged from Amos, who gave it to me as if he was sore without looking at me. He was deep-thinking about something. Amos also gave me some of his writing stuff, when I told him I sorely missed the cut-off saddlebag. He gave me a pencil also as mine was lost. He had rode back the first day to see if he could pick up some of my lost stuff and had found a little.

  All our thoughts now were on moving the next day.

  The girl, whose name I now knew, was frying bacon in the spider, and I said to her: “Nita, if you will let that off the fire a little, I’ll rake in the coals and make it easier for you.” She was cooking on a too-high fire and getting singed and didn’t know it.

  She jumped like a shot when I used her name, and said something under her breath. Amos had had me worried, thinking he might be angry at me about something, but he looked up suddenly at this and gave the girl a look and said: “Now that is a nice friendly way to get along, first-naming each other, and see that you kids keep it up. His name is Tot, so begin acting as if you wouldn’t bite each other.”

  Right then I began to realize that I had been standoffish also, never dreaming that I had. But the girl needed a lot more gentling, because she slammed the spider around, slammed the coffee-pot lid, and sort of threw herself in the middle with her hips, but she did back off from the fire.

  I cleaned it up then, as she was a straggle-fire maker, and I brushed the edges and raked up the coals and sorted out stuff. Then I got a fork-stick that was good and green and laid it on stones. She put the coffee pot then on the little end of the fork, and laid the spider on the big end. She then began really to cook.

  I thought next Amos had gone crazy because he hopped down from the rise where he’d been scanning, got the axe and began to chop dirt as fast as he could, talking to himself, swearing, and yelling to me to get something to dig with.

  The girl slicked the food off the blaze and we both began to help Amos throw dirt onto the fire, fast as we could, because now I knew and so did the girl what Amos was driving at.

  We got the smoke killed off quick, but the fire took more time. But we deadened her, except for ash, and Amos was already moving up the slope.

  I looked at Nita. She was ransacking the saddle gear for shellboxes. I got all the shell I thought I’d need from the pile Amos had left after the shooting.

  Then I started up after Amos. The girl hung back, but she had found an extra Colt for Amos. We were situated on a slope that tended to the north, in the opposite direction from where Old Man Boyd had gone. But beyond the rubble and talus stuff down toward the dry, the foot of the hill opened out and around to a low place with a lot of rock in it. This level ran away from us for nearly a mile, or maybe nearer a mile and a half, and beyond that was steep slopes and steeper bluffs running straight up to the rimrock.

  We snaked around among the biggest rocks. Then I saw the most remarkable sight you can believe. They were on the high bluffs. The sun to the west was under a cloud, heavy-like, so their shapes were shadowy and they seemed part of the mountain. There must have been at least two hundred of them on ponies and for a while the only way you could tell them from stone statues was the way the wind sometimes lifted the longer tails of the pintos. They saw us. It was easy to see us but they never moved.

  Then the wind began to blow from up there, and the sun came out a little and you could see the shine on their carbines, and the shine on some of the shell and bead work of the chiefs and even the shine of skin on their faces and thighs, and of the silver stuff they wore. The wind began to bring their smell to us, like a fox or a bear smell, specially a bear when he has just swum a creek.

  I came out with the word, “Comanches,” as they were the Indians I had chiefly known.

  Amos said: “No, they’re not. Utes.”

  The girl behind us with the extra Colt and the shell began to cry, and Amos snapped: “Stop that.” She dried up then. I began to feel sorry for her.

  She must have felt I was softer than Amos because she started wiggling toward me between rocks, and then she curled up about a foot from me, and I reached back my hand and waved it to her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Your father and I will take care of this. So don’t fret.”

  It was the way I recall my brother Nevin talking to my mother the day the Comanches hit our place.

  Amos said after a little, as the seconds dragged out, “Pshaw, I don’t think they’re going to do anything but look at us. But they’re looking for somebody. We’re small meat compared to what they’re after. I wonder what son of a bitch supplied the firewater for this sortie.”

  After a while of waiting, Amos said: “I thought so. All right, we’ll handle them. You better forget you’re a Quaker, Bub, because we’ve got to stop a few.”

  Now I saw what his eyes had been quicker to see than mine. There was a long shale slope down to the left of us and down that what looked like four came on pintos, the horses jiggling their hind ends up and down as they half-scrambled, half-fell down the slope.

  Amos grumbled. “Maybe the damn fools’ll kill their-selves on that deal.”

  But they didn’t. All got down all right. Then they powwowed. “Oh must talk it over now,” said Amos, “must talk it over—make big talk—ketchum white man—scalpum plenty—come on, let’s get it over.”

  Amos had a pair of glasses. He had bit off a little chew, that I’d never seen him use before and he was chewing fast, and we passed the glasses back and forth.

  He said: “Well, one thing we can be thankful for. Glad they’ve taken up new ways. Those aren’t young braves. In the old days the braves would make the rush which I calculate is jest for the hell of it. But those I see are plain bums.” Then he spit: “Those of the noble redskins who can be spared.”

  The Indians were still talking.

  “Let’s see what we have here,” said Amos. “They’ll not circle, not enough of them. We have two Colts and one rifle. Nita can’t shoot. They’ll come in a straight rush, head on, just to show the boys on the hills how brave they are. They’ve done something shameful in the tribe and this is how they will try to live it down. I’ll bet the old chief up there has a grin on his face …” Mr. Bradley was talking and joking because he was nervous.

  So then on they came. Amos yelled to me to take the two on the right and he’d watch the two left. But a surprising thing happened. They could shoot. They began to fire at us straight off, and they were a lot better with those bead-traded carbines than I’d of expected. Stones began to fly around among us, and the top of the rock Nita and I lay behind began to act as if it was alive.

  “Come on,” Amos yelled, and began to fire his Colt in all directions, it seemed to me. The girl handed him the other, and reloaded the first fast.

  I waited and got my sights down at about 45 yards and aimed low and leftwards and the one in front when I shot went sailing right over the pony’s head, because the pony made a quick stop. Sighting down on the other I first hit his horse by mistake and then with a very lucky angling shot I knocked the front of his face in. It was terrible to see. That Indian’s features seemed to fly forty ways.

  But the other dehorsed one I was going to put another shot in. But he rolled on the ground and I put down my gun because I saw he had a very bad shoulder wound. Amos was yelling and still firing off the second load of the first gun.

  But the other two didn’t require it. Their little paint horses put down their stiff front legs and began sliding. The air that had been loud for a while turned quiet.

  One of the braves not hit came up. Then the other. Then they dismounted, put the dead one across his pony that they had to catch first, helped the wounded one up on his saddle, waited for him to fall off. He fell off. So then they picked him up and started going back. They were so near we could see their face paint.

  Amos scratched the hair
s on his chin, “Hell,” he said, “I guess it’s all over. Kinda disappointed.”

  I said I was not disappointed at all, and he smiled at me.

  “Should think not. The help I gave you. All I did was yell and bang off.”

  I said mine were easy shots. Amos said he knew that. But he said: “I was shooting like a beer-drunk cowhand, supported by the genuine confidence you inspire.”

  It took me a little time to separate this. Every once in a time he would talk like a book. I said it would have been an easy shot for him, too, if he’d had a rifle.

  “Yes,” Amos said, “I expect it would. But don’t try telling me any normal man can shoot a rifle-gun like you. Don’t go polite on me.”

  We were still nervous and the girl had lagged behind. She was back of us near the big stone. Or that seemed the way it happened. She was picking up spent shell to be sure none of them were good ones. This Amos probably had taught her.

  A fifth Ute, one we had not seen, was on a horse like the rest, only he must have paced him up slow on the shade side of the big rock, for all of a sudden he was above her on his pinto, trying to grab her up, and she was screaming and hitting at him. He had a rifle but he wasn’t intending to use it evidently. Because he kept hacking at her with a hand-axe, the crude kind they carry, and missing her. He was not yelling nor speaking but just silently wanting to get her.

  I dove for the horse’s hind legs in fear. I was trying to throw both pinto and rider, and I remember how, as I grabbed the hocks low, I saw the hoofs were muffle-shod. It was bark or something that looked like crude cloth.

  It was not such a bad move. I’d done the same before, horsing around with kids back home. You sort of hamstring a pony in fun, making him near sit and throw the rider off.

  But Amos dove high for the rider and was around his waist. That old man could fight and be mean. I saw him working from below while I hung on to the pony’s back legs. He was trying to reach the brave’s knife. Even from under I could smell the Indian smell strong.