by Phil Dunlap
Misfortune seemed to cut his trail often soon after making friends with Trumble. After working only about three weeks, they were both let go because of a grass fire that nearly wiped out the whole ranch. Turns out Trumble had tossed a sulfur on the ground after lighting a cigarillo. The match wasn’t quite done burning. The incident seemed to foretell of other misfortunes to befall the pair. Trumble and Huck decided theywere through with the ranching life. Certainly at that ranch. And they were broke. Again.
As Huck rode, his thoughts turned to the trouble upon trouble that had been visited on him ever since the two met. He liked the fellow, but damned if Trumble wasn’t the dumbest cowpoke he’d ever met. Maybe I ought to just shed myself of this saddle bum, he thought. Then maybe my luck would turn around. Maybe, always maybe. If he could be sure of his luck turning around, it might be worth a try. He wasn’t getting any younger, and if he was going to make any real money, he’d best be getting to it. And doing it by himself held some appeal. On the other hand, riding alone through a rugged and unforgiving frontier wasn’t the smartest move, either. Two guns were certainly better than one should he come across a threat. “Oh, to hell with leaving the fool to fend for himself. At least he hasn’t got me strung up, yet,” he mused.
He rode due west until the land began to descend into a wide valley. A fast-flowing creek meandered through the grassy slopes, gouging a rocky-banked slit that deepened as it went. Stopping on a low hill beyond a sparse stand of trees, he made out a squatter’s cabin downslope of him. Two horses stood in a crude coral behind the hut, and a milk cow grazed on the side of a hill. Out front an Indian pony switched flies with its tail, shifting its weight from one back leg to the other. Huck pulled up. He rubbed his chin as he tried to decide whether to ride on down to the crude cabin and ask for food. He didn’t see any firewood cut and stacked for keeping the cooking fire going. Maybe he could volunteer to cut some wood, that way it wouldn’t actually be begging. He’d earn whatever they could spare.
While the idea of working up a sweat chopping logs into splinters didn’t really appeal to him, he figured that he’d rather work for a spell than starve to death. Besides, Trumble was back at camp expecting him to return with food, not excuses for why he was empty-handed.
Just then, a man backed out of the door with a gun in his hand. He stepped back several feet then fired two shots into the house. Suddenly, another man stumbled through door and fell to the ground. A woman came screaming out of the house, waving her arms to prevent the man on the ground from being shot again. Without regard to the woman’s protestations, he fired again at the writhing figure, then turned and pointed his revolver at the woman.
Huck knew he had to do something. And he had to do it quickly. He yanked his Sharps buffalo rifle from the saddle boot, a reliable and accurate weapon he’d been given by the railroad during his short-lived employment as a guard helping ward off Indian raiding parties. It also came in handy for shooting deer and the occasional buffalo needed to feed ravenous crews. He slipped from his saddle to steady his shot, lifted the rifle to his shoulder, slid the rear sight up a little to account for the distance and the wind, took aim and squeezed the trigger. The big rifle bucked like a startled mule; smoke swirled around him for a moment until the breeze carried it away. He lowered the Sharps to see if he’d hit what he was aiming at. On the ground, near the other fallen man, lay his quarry, unmoving. Suddenly it occurred to him that the law might question his judgment in shooting a man without really knowing what had happened in that cabin prior to the first shots. What if the couple in the cabin had tried to rob him, threatened him with his life if he didn’t hand over his valuables? The distance from which he’d taken the shot prevented him from knowing any of those possibilities.
Damn, he thought. What have I done?
He climbed back into the saddle, slipped the Sharps back into its scabbard, and urged his mount down the hill toward the crude cabin. As he approached, he found the woman kneeling near her man, sobbing hysterically, and tugging at his bloody shirt to make him respond to her pleading not to die. When Huck reached her side, he could tell the man was finished. Two well-aimed bullets in his chest put a period to this poor squatter’s life. The woman looked up at Huck through tear-filled eyes.
“Why?” she screamed out in anguish. “Why did that devil have to kill my dear Henry? We told him he could have whatever he wanted if he would just go in peace.” Her face bore the terrible pain of loss, and years of hardship on the prairie.
Suddenly, as Huck Bannister turned his attention to the man he’d shot, a wave of near panic flooded over him. “Oh, my lord!”
“What? What’s wrong?
“This man, the man who shot your Henry, and darned near done you in, too, ma’am, is the outlaw, Dakota Joe! Why, this half-breed’s been a scourge to the settlers all up and down the territory. Killed hisself a passel of ‘em. Ain’t none gonna be sad at his passin’.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. But the lady must not have heard him, for she was deep in grief.
Huck reached out to help her to her feet. At first, she resisted, then after one last look at her fallen husband, she hung her head and allowed him to lead her back inside. The place was dark and the dirt floor was scattered with shards of dishware probably busted up by the man lying outside, dead, who’d just destroyed their lives. She stumbled through the clutter toward a short bench that lay along a crude table. Huck bent down and yanked it upright, motioning for her to sit. She dropped onto it, put her head in her hands, and just moaned. Feeling her grief, Huck looked around for any hint of what he could do to help. He decided he had better get her dead husband put in the ground as quickly as possible. He went outside to search for a shovel, and, finding one leaning against the outhouse, he came back to ask where she might want her husband and his killer buried.
“You can put Henry alongside the house, there on the east where the sun will find him every morning. He loved the mornin’ sun.” She got up and stood at the door, pointing to a grassy area between the house and a fenced-in patch with half a dozen chickens pecking at the dirt.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll put ‘em both over there,” Huck said, with a nod and a tip of his slouch hat, a habit his mother had pounded into him as a child. “Showin’ respect is good manners and a Godly thing to do. And don’t you forget it,” she’d told him, time and time again.
But the lady hadn’t paid any attention to his attempt at good manners, instead, she flew into hysterics at the very mention of the killer of her husband being laid to rest nearby.
“You take that heathen off our land and dispose of him somewhere else, far away from my sight. You understand?”
“But, ma’am, I can’t–”
“Git him off my land, now!” she screamed, balling her fists as if she might beat Huck into compliance with her wishes.
“But–”
Wringing her hands over his inability to grasp her meaning, she calmed down enough to explain, “I appreciate what you done and all, savin’ me from that awful, murderin’ Injun, but can’t you see the pain I’d have to endure, over and over, every time I laid eyes on my Henry’s restin’ place and knew that devil lay nearby?”
“I reckon so. I’ll just plant, er, bury your husband, and be gone, then. Reckon I’ll have to take him into Russell Springs.”
The lady stood by watching as he struggled to stab the shovel into the rock-hard ground. After he felt he had the hole as deep as any man could, solemnly dragging the body to the side of the excavation, he tried to place him in the hole with as gentle a touch as he could muster. Just then the lady whimpered something. He stopped shoveling dirt in over the corpse to cock his head to hear what she had said.
“I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me. I can never repay you, but I’d like to ask one more favor.”
Huck removed his hat and mopped at his forehead with his sleeve, wondering if this might be an appropriate time to ask for some food to take back. “Anything I can do, ma’am, before I go? A
nything at all. I, uh…”
“Could I trouble you to hitch up the horses to the wagon? I don’t think I can spend the night in this place, what with all that’s happened, and my dearly departed Henry lyin’ in the dirt, cold and stiff. I believe I’ll stay in town for a day or two.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do it as soon as I’m finished here.” He patted the mound to tamp it down so critters wouldn’t be able to dig the body up, at least not easily.
After he was done grappling with two uncooperative, sway-backed mares, getting them to back into the traces, Huck tipped his hat to the lady and returned to the task at hand, namely getting rid of a corpse that would soon start stiffening in the most expeditious manner. He rolled the man up in his own blanket, intent on securing him to his pony. As he was wrestling to get all that dead weight up and securely tied across the saddle, he was thinking about the best way to acquire at least enough food to get him and Trumble through the next couple days. Then, an ingenious plan came to him, one he figured Trumble would heartedly approve. He had a slight grin on his weather-beaten face as he rode out, leading the Indian pony that bore the corpse.
He looked back as the lady stood at the doorway for a moment, then ran to where Huck had dug the grave, throwing herself on the mound of dirt. He couldn’t bear to look at her any more. Her tears were too wrenching an experience, similar to what he’d seen his sister endure at their own mother’s funeral. While he had been sad at his mother’s passing, tears didn’t come easy to him. His sister had accused him of being hard-hearted, but that wasn’t it at all. He was a man, and men weren’t supposed to show emotion, at least that was his excuse.
Huck had been so preoccupied with digging a hole and sliding Henry into it, then obliging the widow with harnessing up her team, he plumb forgot to ask the lady if she could spare some victuals. Trumble’s goin’ to be madder’n a hornet when he finds out I came away without one tiny morsel to calm our aching bellies. Well, maybe the plan that come to me back there will set his mind on somethin’ other than food.
Two hours later, he got sight of Trumble, who was still piling sticks in preparation for one hellacious fire. When Trumble saw Huck approaching, he called out.
“What’s that you’re totin’ in here? And where’d you come by that paint? You got a deer wrapped up in there? A fat venison steak sounds real fine, yessir.” He commenced to rubbing his hands in anticipation.
Huck grinned as he reined in and dismounted. He stood staring at Trumble, trying figure the best way to tell his friend that there not only wasn’t any food, but that they would have to wait a spell before there was any.
“Well, what’cha got there? Come on, out with it. It ain’t no secret, is it?” Trumble walked over to the pony to get a better look. He put his hand on top of the blanket, then yanked it back like he’d been bit by a rattler. “What the–?”
Huck chewed on his lip for a minute, then said, “It’s a long story. This here fella shot a man down and then was fixin’ to plug the man’s woman, and I, uh, just naturally couldn’t let him do that.”
“So you did what, exactly?” Trumble asked, his eyes narrowing, knowing full well what the answer was going to be. He just had to hear it from Huck’s own lips.
“I plugged ʼim,” came Huck’s words, almost in a whisper, “and it’s the best thing I ever done.”
“And the food you was goin’ to bring back, where is that?”
“Don’t you go getting’ all righteous on me, Trumble. I was in a tight situation, and food wasn’t at the top of my list. That poor woman come first, in my mind, at least.”
“Well, I reckon I cain’t fault you none for that. Let’s have a look at this feller before we stick him in the ground.” Trumble walked up to the Indian pony, and lifted the blanket enough to get a peek at the man’s face.
“Sonofa–!” he jumped back, his face suddenly ashen. “You got any idea who you done plugged?”
“You bet I do. And we’re just about a day’s ride short of feedin’ our bellies for a year.”
“Why hell, yes, Huck, you just made us rich. This here fella is non other than Dakota Joe, the most ornery, lowdown, backshootin’ half-breed Arapahoe scoundrel what ever set foot on this godforsaken prairie. He’s been on the wrong side of the law for a year because of murderin’ a bunch of squatters, stealin’ their belongings, and burnin’ their homesteads.”
“Yep. And there’s a $500 reward on his head, dead or alive, Trumble.”
“There sure is. And do you know what that means?”
“Means we better skedaddle our butts up to Russell Springs and turn him over to the sheriff before he gets too ripe.”
“You’re sure as hell right about that, partner,” Trumble said, with the emphasis on partner. He swung the blanket and saddle back onto his horse, cinched up the latigo, and was mounted before a man could spit tobacco juice in a bug’s eye. “Let’s get a move on.”
On that warm, late summer day, Huck Bannister and Trumble Barlow struck out for Russell Springs, the closest town they knew that might have a sheriff where they could collect enough bounty to keep them in spending money and as much food as they could ever hope to consume for quite a spell. The grin on Trumble’s face was unmistakable by its recognition of a rosy future. Huck’s expression, on the other hand, was dark and troubled. Trumble couldn’t figure what could possibly be eating at his friend, but he wasn’t about to spoil his own joy by asking. And Huck wasn’t volunteering to explain.
Huck’s internal turmoil centered mainly on his inability to get that poor widow out of his mind. She wasn’t anything spectacular to gaze upon, rather skinny, with a figure that struggled to differentiate her from a young boy, but there was an undeniable plea for help in her defiant stance against any such proffered aid. Her toughness seemed masked by the thinnest of veils. What could he do? Trumble wouldn’t understand his wanting to return to the tiny squatter’s plot, and he wasn’t even certain that he should go back. His mental gymnastics concerning the issue only served to drive his mood from dark to morose. Huck kept his thoughts to himself to avoid any speechifying from a man who was prone to giving unwanted advice at a moment’s notice. He looked up at that moment, and seeing Trumble staring at him like a man watching a snake sneak up on a mouse, Huck got the sudden impression his quiet self-examination had given him away, and he was about to find himself on the receiving end of a flurry of inept prophesying.
“What’s got you all twisted up, Huck? Bothered by killin’ this justly deservin’ owl hoot?”
“Naw. Just in a reflective sort of mind. Never you bother.”
“Uh-huh.” The thought had occurred to Trumble that maybe his partner wasn’t thinking on Dakota Joe as much as he might be dwelling on that little widow woman. His imagination was suddenly full of ideas as to what she might have looked like. “Say, you ain’t goin’ sweet on that lady you saved from Dakota Joe, are you? Was she a beauty?”
Huck sighed, hoping that Trumble would interpret it as a sign that he was barking up the wrong tree. It didn’t work. Huck was a marked man, and destined to be the target of a heap of unsolicited advice, like it or not.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to say nothin’. I know when a man has a woman on his mind. Don’t you think I don’t. Why in my time, I’ve seen men driven to the most unspeakable horrors imaginable, even as downright disgusting as, well, as marriage.” Trumble made a play of shaking all over at the thought of such a thing. His theatrics, however, weren’t making the impression he’d hoped for on Huck. So he figured to continue, “Why I once knew a mountain of a man, a man of powerful strength, reduced to a snivelin’ weakling by being tied to a woman’s apron strings. Pitiful, just pitiful.”
“Trumble, just leave a feller to his own thoughts, will you? If I want your lame advice, I’ll up an ask for it.” Huck reached out with the lead rope and handed it to Trumble. “Here, time for you to take a turn at tugging this sorry carcass to Russell Springs for our reward.” He let go and spurred his mare to
take a more distant lead to give himself some relief from the odor, and to at least make Trumble shout if he was going to continue with his unwanted advice.
And shout Trumble did, for the next twenty miles.
After two days in the sun and heat, the anticipation of splitting $500 between the two down-on-their-luck cow punchers, was giving way to something more unpalatable: the distinct odiferous perfume given off by Dakota Joe’s bloating corpse. Huck tied three ropes together to allow leading the Indian pony at the greatest possible distance. It worked whenever they were upwind, but failed miserably whenever downwind. The good side of it all was that both Huck and Trumble had completely lost all desire for food of any kind. Any fear either might have had of dying from starvation was now but a distant memory.
Reaching Russell Springs turned out to be a most auspicious occasion, in that as soon as they hit the town limits sign, folks began scattering like chickens in the path of a runaway wagon. Folks were holding their noses and hollering at them like they were about to become the most unpopular drifters that ever set foot in the town. Huck spotted the sheriff’s office by the sign hanging on a pole over the door. They dismounted out front, but before Huck could dismount, a portly man in a dirty cotton undershirt and suspenders yanked open the door.
“What in tarnation give you two idiots the idea to park that foul-smellin’ thing in front of my office?” yelled the sheriff.
“We got ourselves a man wanted dead or alive,” Huck blurted out, “and we come to collect the reward.” Huck dismounted and strode up to the sheriff.
“Whooeee,” he said, “that’s got to be the godawfulest stench I ever did draw breath of. Get him down to the undertaker’s, pronto. Tell him I’ll be down directly.” The sheriff went inside and closed the door before any more of the odiferous corpse could affect his surroundings further.