Before the sun had gone fully down, Bardwell had built a cook fire and boiled a can of coffee for the night. After supper, he took a walk to stretch his stiff legs and gather up more firewood.
Four rods now separated the lawman from the pass leading into the city. If his partner were coming, he should be making his presence known soon. If not, the lawman would continue on alone. It was his duty to apprehend the lawless and bring them to justice. This wouldn’t be the first time that he had acted alone and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last if the good Lord was willing.
With the sun down now, Bardwell laid back on his saddle thinking back on the time that he and the boy were out along the coastline of the New Mexico territory trailing a bad bunch of fellows the state had targeted for extinction.
The mission at Los Angeles was as far as a man could travel to the south these days after the great quakes had shifted the earth off its axis. After that, it was a hard left along the rugged shoreline and another hundred rods or better to Albuquerque, the next city of any size.
It was Billy Bratton that had the mark on his head, but his brothers would be taken out along with him on this one. These young men had raised so much hell up in Sacramento that the state had made the call and Bardwell was sent for.
“How far are we goin to ride?” The boy had asked. Franklin Curtis—the boy—wasn’t a boy at all at close to twenty-two years of age. Bardwell had known Curtis for more than four years now and still thought of his partner as a boy. Maybe in the hierarchy of the law, Curtis was still a boy?
“A hundred rods,” Bardwell said stuffing supplies in the pack boxes that would be carried by a second horse.
“A hundred rods,” Curtis said, striking a parlor match and putting the flame to the stub of a cigar clenched between his teeth, “Are you fucking crazy? Wait,” he continued. “You are fucking crazy, aren’t you?”
Bardwell smiled but didn’t reply.
“I finish at the academy just in time to ride off with a crazy old lawman like you,” the boy continued on a tear now. “If you think they’re going that far, I say we just let them go. Good riddance, fuck ‘em?”
“It ain’t going to happen that way,” Bardwell said. “And you know it Son.”
“I know it,” Curtis said. “I’m just messing with you, Sir. I’m with you. I got your back no matter how far your crazy old ass tracks them, fellas.”
“How long you think it will take us to ride that far?” Curtis asked, from under his black hat. The boy wore the tin star of a real Sacramento lawman now.
“Five weeks,” Bardwell said. “It might be six, depending on the weather? We should get there before the winter rains come and we’ll stay on for a time after we settle up with them Bratton’s.”
Two weeks into the trip and Bardwell was ready to send the boy home. It was their first manhunt together and although the boy was quick with a gun and a damned good shot, Bardwell had answered himself nearly hoarse.
Three and half weeks later they were just a few rods from Albuquerque and the end of the journey if, in fact, Billy Bratton had run to his uncle Clem in the New Mexico territory.
Passing through a remote village late one afternoon, Bardwell had a feeling deep in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that he could neither explain nor get along with. If that feeling could have gathered up the words, it would have told him to ride on and not look back. Let these folks be.
The boy started to say something. Bardwell held up a gloved hand. The boy quieted looking in the direction that his elder’s attention was drawn.
Two men stood behind long guns in the front window of the mercantile. It didn’t look good for the merchant just then. Bardwell waved the boy—leading both the packhorse and an unsaddled spare—onward to an alley down the street. The road was macadam here in this little one horse town. Maybe things hadn’t been so bad here when war broke out all of those years ago?
“What you want to do, Sir?” Curtis asked as they dismounted the animals.
“Well,” Bardwell said. “We’re going to take us a walk and see if we might be able to lend a hand.
Bardwell removed one of his saddle guns and stuck in down in the back of his trousers. Curtis did the same unsheathing a short barreled shotgun from behind the saddle.
Stopping in a walkway next to the rough unpainted boards of the mercantile, Bardwell waved the boy around front holding up three fingers.
The boy nodded his agreement. Bardwell started for the back of the building. Curtis would wait to hear his boss coming through the back of the store before taking the door.
“What the fuck business do you have in here?” one of the armed gentlemen asked, showing his poor excuse for manners.
“Just need some tobacco,” Bardwell said. “You fellers got any in here?”
By the time the gunmen looked up, the tall frame of the young Negro stood blocking their only exit.
“Who in the fuck are you?” the other asked, as Curtis pulled back both hammers for a go of it.
“The law, Mister,” Bardwell said. “Now why don’t you boys just drop those peashooters that you’ve got there and we can talk this out?”
“Ain’t nothing to talk about, Sheriff,” one of the gunmen said, coming around with the barrel of his six-shooter.
Bardwell dropped the hammer along with the boy. The shootout was over before it started really. Both men crumpled to the floor dead before they hit the ground. A woman screamed from somewhere down the street. The boy started out the door. Bardwell ran for the back door to seal off that avenue of escape.
Standing in the face of the enemy, Curtis dropped the scattergun and reached out both of his Peacemakers raising them for the onrushing riders.
Bardwell rounded the corner in time to see the boy open up on three bandits making for the outskirts of town. The boy fired unhorsing the first. His foot caught in the stirrup, dragging the man to a certain death. Slow and methodically Curtis raised his other piece and eased back the hammer. Another crumpled to the street in a ball with his horse running at full gallop.
The third sighted on the boy blocking his escape and came with guns blazing. Lead ricocheted off the black macadam harmlessly into the sky. Curtis emptied both cylinders into the gentlemen before he fell to the asphalt in a bloody lump.
Bardwell hadn’t even drawn a pistol. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, but the boy was fast and true with his aim. There was no need to fire. Franklin Curtis was a capable officer of the law now. Bardwell was proud of the boy, no matter how much he talked on the trail.
A yell went up from some of those gathered in the streets to witness the gun battle. “El Diablo, Negro,” they said.
The boy smiled holstering his weapons. Bardwell walked closer to help with the gathering crowd.
“You hear that?” Curtis asked. “They call me the black devil and I like it, Sir.”
Bardwell laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “It fits, doesn’t it?”
That night the pair from Sacramento, in what had been known before as California, ate the best the town had to offer. The city had offered its best booze and its best women had chosen to offer themselves. Oil lamps burned long into the night as the residents toasted the lawmen.
***
Three days later, the lawmen got what they’d come for. After all the miles they’d traveled, Billy Bratton and his brothers had been dealt the justice they deserved on a quiet dusty little street in the New Mexico territory.
Chapter Four
The horses nickered. Bardwell tossed a stick on the fire as a rattle came to his ears, soft at first. The lawman rolled away from the Diamondback coiled next to him. From above, the sound of a hammer locking into place was heard. The lawman didn’t care about the second intruder just now. There were bigger fish to fry at the moment. The weapon fired from the rocks above splitting the rattler in two.
Bardwell looked up. “What took you so long, Son?” he said, smiling at the thought of riding with the boy again. There would be no more worry a
bout his partner getting jumped coming up the pass now or running into a band of the mutant Indians that frequented the borderlands.
“Sorry, Sir,” he said. “I might have overslept?”
The lawmen laughed. Curtis stepped down from the rocks.
“I tied my horse up over yonder,” Curtis said. “You feel like walking, old man?”
“You got whiskey?” Bardwell asked.
“I do,” Curtis said. “I’ve got two bottles in my saddlebags. I got the good kind that you like from the city.”
“Good.”
“You been here for the longest time?” Curtis asked, leading the way to his saddled horse tied to a tree nearby.
“Got in before dark,” Bardwell said. “Figured that it might be the only water for a day or two and the grass is good for the horses.”
“You think that we might stay on for a day?” Curtis asked. “My mount is spent after three days of hard traveling and it might do him some good to rest up before we continue into the city?”
“Yeah,” Bardwell said. “We can if you need to?”
“What about those fellows that you’ve been trailing, sir?” Curtis asked, “You think they’ll keep?”
“They’ll keep for another day or two.”
“Good then,” Curtis said untying his mount. “I’m damned tired and look forward to getting some shut-eye.”
“Tired?”
“Yeah,” Curtis said. “I’m tired. I had further to ride than you did and you probably didn’t see anyone along the old mission road?”
Bardwell laughed.
“So you’re in agreement,” Curtis said. “You can stand first watch.”
“First watch,” Bardwell asked. “You show up hours late for our rendezvous and you think that you’re going to bark out orders like a cavalry Sergeant?”
Curtis laughed, unsaddling his mount. “Yeah,” he said. “I figured that you’d see it that way. You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
Bardwell grabbed a few more sticks for the fire as they had a bit of late-night conversation.
“You got anything to eat?” Curtis asked dumping his tack next to the little fire.
“Roasted rabbit three hours ago,” Bardwell said, reaching in one of his saddlebags. “It’s down to hard bread, dried beef and coffee now.”
“Then bring it on,” Curtis said, dropping down to the ground across the fire from his superior.
“Your momma, forget to pack you a lunch?” Bardwell asked, reaching out a cotton sack of hardtack and dried beef.
“Funny, Sir,” Curtis said. “You know that I’ve traveled over some hard ground just to make it here. I rode one night by the light of the moon with those wild fucking Indians hot in my tracks.”
“Bullshit,” Bardwell said, “You were scared. Admit it.”
“What do you mean bullshit?” Curtis asked. “I’m here aren’t I?”
“There hasn’t been a full moon in more than thirty years, Son,” Bardwell said. “And those Indians have all been exterminated along that side of the valley.”
“Okay,” Curtis said. “So what about you, did you have any trouble in reaching this place?”
“Nope,” Bardwell said, leaning back onto his saddle.
“You mean to tell me that you ain’t been raising no hell on your way down here?” Curtis asked. “I for one find that hard to believe, Sir, knowing you the way that I do.”
“Nope,” Bardwell said. “It was just as easy as that. Didn’t see hardly a soul all along the wagon road?”
The young lawman crunched hardtack next to the small fire. Bardwell leaned back and closed his eyes.
“We can talk more on the morrow,” Bardwell said.
“So that’s it, huh?” Curtis said to no one in particular. “I ride all this way and you go to sleep?”
“I thought you said that you were tired?”
“I did?”
“Yes,” Bardwell said. “You did.”
“Okay,” Curtis said, lying back on his saddle. “Sir,” he asked. “What if another snake comes along?”
“Shoot him like you did the last one.”
“But what if I don’t see him?”
“Good night, Franklin.”
“Good night, Sir.”
***
Another sunrise and another nuclear morning sky, found the senior lawman stoking a small fire and boiling the first can of coffee. The boy slept peacefully, wrapped in a tattered old blanket.
Bardwell bit off some tobacco leaning against his saddle, watching as the daystar started its way into the icy gray sky.
One of the flying machines of the ancients streaked across to the east, one of its motors trailing a heavy black smoke. The machine could be seen long after its red and green lights could be no longer.
It had been said that the government of this country had built up a fortified installation in the highlands to counter any threats to the country. Every now and then, one of these flying machines could be heard making its way home across the night sky.
The books of the elders had told of the sun rising in the east and setting due west. A man could find his bearings by the daystar and set his timepiece by it. After the earth had shifted—more than a hundred years ago—it rose to the north of east and settled south of west on most days. The daystar rose quickly then slowed across the afternoon, only to set ever so quickly once again. Morning and evening—the coolest part of the day—lasted but a brief moment, the long hot afternoon drug out for an impossible fifteen hours.
Spinning wild now, the earth rotated on its axis like a misshapen ball, gaining speed during the night and slowing by day.
“You going to wake up this morning, Son?” Bardwell asked, spitting tobacco juice on the fire.
“Oh, Mom,” the still sleeping boy said. “I don’t want to go to school.”
“The coffee’s getting cold.”
“I don’t drink that shit you call coffee,” the boy said. “I want to sleep. Wake me when you have our dinner ready.”
“Dinner,” Bardwell laughed. “The sun’s not even up yet?”
“You know,” the boy said. “That’s what I don’t like about you old folks, always waking before the sun rises?”
“It’s just part of life, Son,” Bardwell said, pouring coffee into a second dented tin cup and handing it to the boy.
The day was spent resting in the little shade offered by the rock outcropping while the animals drank cool clean water and took on needed calories for the coming ride.
Los Angeles was still more than a dozen rods over the horizon. White clouds of smoke could be seen from time to time boiling over the mountains where the lawmen planned their next move.
“The city is a fortress,” Curtis said. “You know that, don’t you? As soon as we cross the divide and start for the coastline, that old Craft will know about it.”
Zedian Craft was once a big man in the States of a United America, government contracts and such. Craft had pull.
“Yeah,” Bardwell said, taking a long pull from his coffee.
“That motherfucker’s crazy if you ask me,” Curtis said. “Gone off the rails a long time ago?”
“You’re right.”
“I mean,” Curtis added. “It’s not like I ever met the man or nothing, but I’ve heard things, you know?”
Bardwell nodded, looking off into the distance, remembering, maybe?
“You ever meet that man?” the younger lawman asked.
“Yeah,” Bardwell said. “I did a couple of times.”
“Is he as bad as they say?”
“Yeah,” Bardwell said, taking another pull. “The elders once used great locomotives to carry the products they made all across the land.”
“They had one that ran up through here, somewhere,” the boy said. “I’ve read about it, called it a bullet train.”
Bardwell nodded. “Los Angeles to a place that used to exist along the coast, the elders called San Francisco.”
“Underwater n
ow,” Curtis added.
“Craft,” Bardwell said, “He studied up on the old technology and resurrected an old engine that burned wood. After that, the good doctor kind of fell off, away from society for a time. When he resurfaced, he was fortifying the place that we’re bound for and building a militant colony from the mutants and zombies the war had left in its wake.”
“How long has that been?”
“Oh,” Bardwell said. “Fifty, sixty years now, I reckon?”
The way the tin star lawman remembered the doctor, he was a little man about as big around as he was tall. Craft wore a pair of dark green goggles like one of the artisans who fused metal over a forge. Always with his leather apron and those damned goggles. Bardwell figured the doctor had planned it that way. If you couldn’t see a man’s eyes, you’d never know how shifty he could be.
“Crazy white hair going in every direction,” Bardwell added.
“That man’s evil, Sir,” Curtis said, looking over two of the four pistols in his possession as the pair of lawmen waited out the evening.
“Yep,” Bardwell said, doing the same.
“How you reckon we going to get the drop on ‘em?”
The senior lawman looked to the white smoke boiling over the mountains and smiled a wicked smile. “We stay as close to the fires as we can. Those rat fucks in the city won’t venture too close.”
“Are they afraid of fire?”
“They are,” Bardwell said, matter-of-fact. “That’s why the good doctor keeps them burning, to keep his minions in check.”
“That’s some scary shit, Sir,” Curtis said.
“Oh,” Bardwell said, still with evil across his face. He spit into the fire. “You ain’t seen nothing yet Son.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Bardwell laughed. “You’re a lawman now, Son,” he said. “Ain’t no room for us to be afraid.”
“Well, I am,” Curtis said. “I’m afraid that when we meet up with these fellas, I’m going to open up a great big ‘ol can of whoop-ass. There won’t be no stopping me, Sir, so don’t get in the way trying, you hear?”
Bardwell laughed again sliding a great blade from its worn leather sheath. “I’ll try and remember that when the time comes.”
Ain't No Law in California Page 3