Rawhide Flat

by Ralph Compton

  Stark was very close . . . and getting closer.

  “Crackerjack!” the marshal yelled over the “Dixie” din. “Now, remember, don’t stop playing until they’re turning into the street, boys.”

  He turned and walked quickly, yelling for everyone to take their positions.

  Masterson waved weakly as Crane hurried past. Sarah bent, kissed the sheriff on the forehead and ran after the marshal.

  “Go to the hotel, girl,” Crane said, not slowing his long-legged pace. “Wait there until I come for you.”

  “I’m staying with you, Gus,” Sarah said. Her chin was at an obstinate angle as she dug in her heels. “If I’m not there, you might do something crazy.”

  “Sarah, I don’t have time to argue.”

  “Then don’t,” the girl said.

  They’d reached the table, heavy with the fat money bags and lanterns. Reddy was sitting, facing the street, as were the other men. They were still far from relaxed but looked half drunk. It helped a little.

  “Soon, Mayor,” Crane said. He stopped. “Now, you men start practicing your smiles. Remember, you’re a welcoming committee, so look welcoming.”

  None of the men answered and Reddy looked surly.

  Crane shook his head and walked past. None of this boded well. At least the band was still playing, but Dixie was winding down to a grating dirge.

  Those boys must be watching Stark’s progress and were likely to bolt at any minute.

  His heart heavy, Crane reached the sheriff’s office. To Sarah he said, “You still here?”

  “Gus, I’m not leaving,” the girl said. Her eyes were stubborn and determined.

  Carefully the marshal opened the door. “Get inside,” he snapped.

  Sarah smiled. “Thank you for the gracious invitation.”

  Crane shook his head. What could you do with a female child who was almost a woman and gave you sass?

  He admitted to himself that he had no idea.

  Before he closed the door, the marshal looked down the quiet, lamp-lit street, the only humans in sight Reddy and his reception committee.

  The band had stopped playing and run away.

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  The rising moon added a steady, bone white light to the shifting orange palls cast by the lamps. At the table, lonely in the middle of the street, the wind tugged and teased at Reddy and his committee.

  Looking out the office window, Crane was pleased. So far the town notables had shown some sand. But what would happen when they were confronted by Stark and his men, he didn’t know.

  Minutes dragged past in chains. The office clock ticked slow seconds into the room like drips falling into a tin bucket. Beside him, Crane heard Sarah’s breathing, soft, but shallow and quick. The girl seemed to be every bit as scared as he was.

  The marshal wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. He had told his men not to shoot until the Gatling opened the ball, but it would only take one man to cut loose with a nervous shot and his entire plan would collapse like a house of cards. Crane smiled. Once the firing started, the same might be said of the sheriff’s office.

  “Gus, you need a shave and a bath, and your mustache needs to be trimmed,” Sarah said. “I can trim it for you later.”

  “Thanks, but I trim my own mustache.”

  “You don’t make a very good job of it. It always looks ragged.”

  Crane stared out the window until his eyes hurt.

  Where was Stark?

  If he was busy surrounding the town, all was lost.

  “And I can cut your hair. You look shaggy.”

  “Sarah,” the marshal said, trying to sound patient, “get away from me. Go back and lie down in one of the cells where you’ll be safe.”

  “What’s this thing?”

  “It’s a magazine for the Gatling. Put it down.”

  The girl did as she was told, then said, “Could be Reuben Stark has gone away.”

  “He’ll be here.”

  “Then what’s keeping him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s talking it over with his sons.”

  “I heard the band, Gus. They weren’t very good and I couldn’t make out . . .”

  Crane wasn’t listening. Three mounted men, their rifles propped upright on their thighs, had just entered the street.

  Ed Reddy played his part well.

  He rose to his feet, doffed his hat and yelled in a friendly, if slightly strained tone, “Welcome boys. Welcome to Rawhide Flat, the pride of the great state of Nevada.”

  One of the riders walked his horse closer.

  “You got the money, Reddy?” he asked.

  The mayor held up one of the money bags. “We’ve got it all here. One hundred thousand dollars for the Reverend Stark to pick up at his convenience.”

  Crane’s heart pounded in his ears and his mouth was dry. If the three men took the sand-filled bags and left, it would be all over—for him, for Sarah and for the town.

  The seemingly undecided rider sat his horse, a still figure silhouetted by moonlight, amber lamplight gleaming on his rifle and the Colt at his waist.

  Finally the man came to a decision. He turned and threw a few words at the rider closest to him and the man swung his horse and walked back the way he had come.

  Crane had never considered himself in good with God and was not a praying man, but he prayed fervently now.

  Please . . . let them all come . . . every last man jack of them . . . let them come. . . .

  Time passed. Crane had no idea how long. Reddy had taken his seat again and was whispering to the man beside him; their heads were bent.

  The wind kicked up veils of dust from the street and across at the Texas Belle, Paul Masterson was motionless in his chair.

  Crane looked at the sheriff intently, searching the gloom, trying to see if he was still alive. Masterson’s head was slumped on his chest. It seemed like his time had finally run out.

  The marshal’s focus changed. Horsemen were filling the street and Reddy and the others were all on their feet.

  Stark rode in the lead, flanked by his surviving sons. His riders were ten abreast, some of them holding flaring torches above their heads.

  Crane smiled grimly. Stark had been just a tad too confident, in his numbers and in himself. He had thought Rawhide Flat cowed and beaten, his point riders had told him so, and now, all unaware, he was riding into hell.

  Crane watched the men come. More and more had crowded into the street, forming a thick mass of riders and horses, torches guttering above them.

  Stark rode with an old man’s stiffness, but his head was held high with the proud, arrogant bearing of the conqueror.

  “Closer . . . ,” Crane whispered. “Just a little closer . . .”

  Stark threw up a hand and halted his men. He and his sons Abe and Ike rode forward until they were a few yards from the table.

  “Mayor Reddy,” Stark called out in a hollow, booming voice, the utterance of a prophet, “you have the people’s money?”

  “Yes, Reverend Stark, every penny, though I wish it were not so.”

  Crane nodded to himself. So far so good. The mayor was a better actor than he was a general.

  “All one hundred thousand dollars?”

  “All of it.”

  Stark laid his hands on the saddle horn and leaned forward. “There is one thing more. You will deliver to me, for my swift justice, the murderers Augustus Crane and Paul Masterson.”

  Reddy shrugged. “I don’t know where they are.”

  “Find them, because I warn you that our God will not be silent.” The old man’s face was an ashen blur in the gloom. “ ‘A fire will devour before him and around him a tempest will rage. The Archangel Michael will smite the unbeliever with his terrible, swift sword.’ ”

  The mayor nodded. “I’ll find them, Reverend. But I’ll need some time.”

  “My men will spread out and help you. The criminals who hide behind stars of justice will hang this very night.”

>   At least a hundred riders were jammed into the street. It was time.

  Crane stepped to the front wall of the office and pushed. The wall creaked but did not budge. Panicked, he tried again. This time the top of the wall separated a couple of inches from the roof joist.

  One more push . . .

  But it was Paul Masterson who opened the ball.

  Crane heard the gunfire, ran to the window and looked out.

  Firing from his chair, his Colt grasped at eye level in both hands, the sheriff cut loose with a barrage. A black hole appeared in Ike Stark’s head and he tumbled off his horse. Men were firing in Masterson’s direction, but he had taken no hits.

  All along the street Crane’s hidden riflemen were shooting. Abe Stark tried to charge Masterson; the sheriff dropped him. Now he fired at Reuben Stark; the old man jerked and swayed in the saddle. Then Stark swung his horse and disappeared into the crowded riders behind him.

  Alarmed, Crane shoved hard on the wall, Sarah beside him, adding her small strength to his.

  The wall crashed into the street and Crane saw a sea of faces turn in his direction.

  He ran to the Gatling and cranked the handle. Immediately the big gun roared into life, throwing a deadly hail of lead, spent brass cases tinkling to the floor around him.

  Quickly Crane changed magazines. And the distinct Gatling sound, like the rumble of an upstairs neighbor dragging a rusty iron bedstead across a rough pine floor, again shattered the scarlet-streaked night.

  Screaming riders and horses were being cut down and the street’s boardwalks framed a horrific tangle of plunging hooves, glossy hides torn by fire, and the bloody, shredded bodies of men.

  Through a gray, greasy cloud of smoke, Crane caught quick glimpses of the mayhem he was causing. He saw Reddy and the others run for their lives.

  And he saw Paul Masterson die.

  Three of Stark’s men who made it to the front of the Texas Belle clubbed their rifles and drove them again and again into Masterson’s skull. Finally the sheriff fell from his chair and lay unmoving on the boards.

  Raging, with shrieks keening through his clenched teeth, Crane swept the boardwalk; all three men fell. He swung the Gatling and again fired into the milling riders. He changed magazines, then shot that one dry and reached for another.

  It would take almost another four decades before horsemen finally learned the folly of charging rapid-fire guns, so perhaps Stark’s men could be excused for acting out of ignorance.

  After flanking the dead and dying men and horses, thirty riders spread out and charged the sheriff’s office, galloping headlong into a hail of lead from the chattering Gatling.

  Only a few managed to turn back.

  The rest lay in grotesque heaps of groaning men and bellowing animals, like barbaric trophies of vanquished enemies set up by conquerors.

  Enclosed by walls and a roof, the sheriff’s office was filled with smoke. Crane was firing blind but still cranked bullets into the street.

  He fed magazine after magazine to the ravenous Gatling, and the barrels grew hot, smelling of burning oil.

  “Merciful God, stop! They’re all dead!”

  Mayor Reddy was standing at the very edge of the fallen wall, his mouth still wide-open from the shout that had just fled his lips.

  Beyond words, being ripped apart by a killing rage, Crane kept firing.

  “Gus! Stop!”

  Sarah grabbed his hand on the firing crank in both of hers.

  “Please, Gus, no more,” she said, her eyes full of tears.

  Like a man waking from a terrible nightmare, Crane stilled his hand, blinked and looked at the girl as though she were a perfect stranger to him.

  “It’s over,” Sarah said softly. “It’s all over.”

  Reddy stepped into the misty room, his boots clinking through the thick carpet of spent shells. “I think you’d better come outside now, Marshal,” he said. Suddenly he looked old and tired and his eyes were haunted.

  Crane blinked again. “Outside?”

  Reddy nodded. “Yes, to see what we’ve wrought, and may God forgive us.”

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  Crane straightened and stepped over the fallen wall that rocked back and forth under his feet. The moon was full and fair in the sky, its genial, mother-of-pearl light illuminating a charnel house.

  At least a hundred men lay dead, dying or wounded on the street and twice that many horses. Nuns moved among them and all the women and girls from the wagons stepped noiselessly, like gray ghosts, as they sought husbands, sons and sweethearts.

  The riflemen of Rawhide Flat had disarmed the numbed survivors, and now shots sounded as they put injured horses out of their misery.

  Crane tried to swallow the hard knot in his throat. “Reddy, how many—”

  “Hard to say, Marshal. At least half of them, I reckon. A Gatling gun is a terrible weapon up close.”

  Forcing himself to speak, his eyes never leaving the carnage in the street, Crane asked, “How many did we lose?”

  “One dead, Sheriff Masterson. The gambler they call Silent Sam was winged in the shoulder and a couple of other men have cuts from broken glass and splinters.”

  The marshal’s laugh was bitter. “A great victory.”

  “You could call it that,” Reddy said.

  The mayor looked at Crane, at the way the tall marshal had closed down within himself.

  “Marshal, Reuben Stark sold these people a bill of goods. He said he’d take them to the Promised Land, but all he did was lead them into hell. If there’s blame to be laid at anyone’s feet, the sin was his, not yours, not mine.”

  “What will they do now?”

  “Go back to where they came from. Stark deserted them as soon as the shooting started and the Archangel Michael did not come to their defense in their hour of need.” Reddy shook his head. “They’ll go home now, bury their dead and wait for another messiah to lead them.”

  “Seems to me they’ve had a bellyful of messiahs.”

  “Could be, Marshal. Could be.”

  “Is Stark among the dead? I saw Paul Masterson hit him.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find out, but I think he skedaddled.” Reddy hesitated, frowning, a man with something on his mind. “Marshal, about the town’s money—”

  Crane’s eyes were cold. “It was always about the money, wasn’t it? When you come right down to it, all those men out there died for the dollar.”

  “The town needs its money, Marshal,” Reddy said defensively.

  “It’s at the mission. I’ll get it. And you can tell Ben Hollister he can go back to his ranch now.”

  “He’s not going anywhere. He’s dead.”

  Crane was surprised. “How did it happen?”

  Reddy shrugged. “After the battle of Sullivan Canyon, Ben wasn’t right in the head. He took to his bed at the hotel and sometime earlier tonight cut his throat with his shaving razor. A maid found him on the floor, weltering in his blood.”

  Crane realized Sarah was standing beside him. “Go back to your room and stay there, girl,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

  “Where will you go, Gus?” she asked fearfully.

  “I’m going to hunt for Reuben Stark, make sure that son of a bitch is dead.”

  “You’ve done enough, Gus. Let Mayor Reddy do it.”

  “Girl’s right, Marshal. You’ve gone through a hell that ain’t over yet an’ might never be.”

  Crane stood in silent agreement for a few moments, then said, “Take Sarah to the hotel, Mayor, will you?”

  “But Gus, I want to stay with you.”

  “For this once, Sarah, do as I say. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  The girl saw that arguing was hopeless. “Take care of yourself, Gus.”

  Crane nodded, then crossed the street toward the Texas Belle.

  The bonneted women who were searching for their dead did not even glance in the marshal’s direction. Their faces looked stunned, like wooden dolls with p
ainted, expressionless eyes as they glided through the pall of gray smoke that drifted like an evil mist.

  The women knew only that the Gatling gun, an infernal machine beyond their comprehension, had exacted a terrible price in blood. The modern dogs of war had been let slip and had savaged their men. For now they would think no deeper than that, content to grieve.

  A deadness in him, Crane almost wished that curses, accusations, hate, had been hurled his way. It would have been better than the cold, moonlit silence that pressed down on him.

  Paul Masterson lay facedown on the boardwalk, black blood and brains pooled under his head. But when Crane turned him over, his face was serene, somehow impossibly young, the slight smile on his lips one the marshal remembered.

  He used a thumb and forefinger to close the sheriff’s eyes, but the lids instantly opened again, as though Masterson wished to witness this, the final act that concluded his life.

  Crane smiled. “Paul, you’re still an irritating man.”

  He picked up the whiskey bottle that lay beside the body. There were still a couple of inches of bourbon left. He tipped the bottle toward the dead man.

  “To you, Paul Masterson. By God, you had sand.”

  He put the bottle to his lips and drained it.

  Crane rose to his feet, just as Dr. Preston stepped out of the saloon. The white apron he wore was drenched in blood and the physician gulped at the cool air like a drowning man. His face was ashen and he had dark shadows under his eyes.

  “Doc, have you seen Reuben Stark?” the marshal asked after waiting until the man had regained his composure.

  It took a few long moments for Preston’s eyes to focus. “Oh, it’s you, Marshal Crane.” He made an obvious effort to remember what Crane had asked him. Then he said, “I’ve seen fifty dead men tonight and twice that number of wounded, but I don’t recall seeing Stark.”

  The marshal nodded. “Thanks, Doc.”

  Preston grabbed Crane by the arm, a thin anger on his face. “Tell me one thing, Marshal. Tell me why.”

  Roughly, Crane pulled his arm away. “Ask Mayor Reddy. He knows why.”

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