Chapter SIX
Sheriff Jim Dunwoody was sure he had ridden straight into the horrendous jaws of hell when the rifle fire began in that brushy woods near the creek. When the shotgun blasts came he knew he was in the lowest Hades of them all. He ordered the volunteer posse out of there and they rode like demons for a mile.
Six men had been left dead or dying on the small battlefield. The posse stopped and bound up the wounds of the five men who were hurt. Two had minor wounds from the double-ought buck, another had a rifle bullet in his shoulder and two more with serious wounds to the body from the rifles, but they could still ride.
They came to some cover two miles away from the battle scene and stopped again. Sheriff Dunwoody and five men who were not wounded moved slowly back toward the site of the battle.
"Give them killer outlaws time enough to move out," Dunwoody said. "I ain’t about to leave six dead men out here alone and without a proper burial. "
When they got to the woods again, the outlaws had moved on, and the sheriff and his men picked up the dead. When they couldn’t find the men’s horses, they draped them over their own mounts behind the saddles and took them back to the rest of the wounded and grieving posse.
The horses were skitterish carrying another man on their backs that way, but they settled down. It was after dark before the posse got back to town.
Now, three hours later, Jim Dunwoody sat in his office staring at the names of the dead men. What the hell was he going to do now? He wasn’t going to let the bastards get away with this. Something had to be done. What? Just what the hell could he do now. Go after them. Sure, how?
He’d been in the war, became a Sergeant of Cavalry before he was discharged. Maybe, just maybe he could take a clue from his military service. He thought about it most of the night, then about four o’clock had an idea and fell to sleep in his chair leaning on his arms on the top of this desk.
At nine the next morning he was organizing it. He went from friend to friend around town. By noon he had signed up five good men. That was all he wanted. Six against six, sounded like good odds. He called them together and explained exactly what they would do.
"All of you men are experienced. You all were in the war. You’ve been blooded. You’ve all had a friend or relative killed in the past two days by these damn outlaws. What we’re going to do is go out hard and fast. We’ll cover sixty to seventy miles a day. We’ll eat off the land or at farms or towns. We take very little with us besides one blanket, our rifles and revolvers and ammunition.
We’ll ride down these killers, and we’ll cut them down to a man. We won’t be bringing back any prisoners. " He looked around. "That’s our job. Anybody want to back out?"
He stared at each man, giving everyone a chance. "No problem if you want out. Some of us might get hurt out there. I hope not. We’ll be careful and the only rule is there are no rules. We’ll slaughter the sombitches sleeping in their blankets if we can. "
None of the men decided to quit.
They left an hour later after eating a large meal and filling their canteens. They rode out of town quietly. Each man carried a begged, borrowed or just bought Henry repeating rifle. They each had 300 rounds of the .44 rifle ammunition for the long gun and 100 for their six-gun. They were ready, grim and determined.
Deputy Seth Matthews begged to come along, but he was still weak and could hardly stand alone. He had sworn that if they didn’t bring the outlaws to heel, he would take up the chase just as soon as he was able.
Dunwoody and his posse left town on a lope, retracing their trail that had brought them home with their deadly burdens. They made an average of six miles to the hour, and left just before ten that morning.
They rode at a lope for twelve hours and stopped once at a farm house where the couple gladly fed them. A half hour later they thanked the couple and left. Not a man complained about the pace or the long hours. They knew exactly the kind of men they were going to be facing. They rode on slowing down only a little at dusk.
They had passed the creek of death and picked up the outlaw’s tracks. They headed west, out of state.
"We go where they go," Sheriff Dunwoody said. "We have warrants if we need them, and we cross territorial or state lines as we need to. We get die bastards, period!" The posse kept going. The trail headed toward the town of Clayton in New Mexico Territory. Dunwoody pushed them along the established trail until ten that night, slowing a little at the darkness.
"Closest town of any size," he said. "I figure they’ll need some clothes and weapons, maybe even some camping gear and food if they keep on the trail. " The next morning they rode into Clayton, checked with the sheriff and heard about the bank robbery. They stayed only long enough for a good meal, then they made a mile circle around the town and soon picked up clear prints of six horses heading north at a fast pace.
"My guess is they’re heading for the Dodge City to Alburquerque, New Mexico trail," Sheriff Dunwoody said. "Heard this Willy Boy was from up that way. " They rode hard at six miles to the hour and hit the main trail, but lost the tracks.
The first town they came to moving northeast along the trail was Jesse, Kansas, and Sheriff Dunwoody talked with the lawman there. The town Marshal told them that on the day before a stranger had asked about a certain bounty hunter, which was unusual.
"Asked about Deeds Conover?" Dunwoody asked. The sheriff said that was the gent, and he described the man who had made the inquiry.
Sheriff Dunwoody drove the men out of Jesse fast and up the line. He knew that Willy Boy was trying to find Conover. Evidently the man had wronged Willy Boy somehow. The outlaws were only a day ahead of them. The man described by the lawman as making the inquiries about Conover had been the Professor.
In Halton, the county seat of Morton county, Sheriff Dunwoody quickly established that the outlaws had stopped there, talked with the sheriff and had eaten at a local cafe. Sheriff Dunwoody pulled his men out of town quickly and charged along the trail that led toward Dodge City.
"I expect them to relax once they get to Dodge," Dunwoody said. "It’s big enough they can get lost a little. They have money now from that bank robbery back in Jesse. That’s the same method of bank robbing that the Professor has used four or five times, so we’re certain they came this way. They’re too skitterish to stop at a hotel, though. I checked the one hotel back there in Halton, and nobody who even looked like that bunch had checked in. "
The best tracker with the sheriff figured they were about six hours behind the outlaws now. It would be too dark to track them in another two hours.
"We push on toward Dodge and hope we can catch them in a camp. Keep your noses peeled for smokes where there shouldn’t be any. "
They rode.
A bright moon came out with the darkness, three- quarters full, and it made working down the trail across the grasslands easy. They came to two small creeks and slowly paced along them for a half mile but found no camp.
No smokes showed.
Just after nine o’clock that night their best tracker called softly and they all stopped.
"Smoke," he said quietly and began to move ahead toward a pair of cottonwood trees showing against the skyline. As they came closer a horse in the brush nickered a greeting. The man grabbed their horses’ muzzles to prevent any answering call to the other horse.
"Damn," Dunwoody said softly. "A horse is almost as good a watchdog as a dog. "
He thought about it for a moment. They hadn’t moved since the horse called. "Back," he said and they turned and walked the other way. Two-hundred yards off they tied their horses to one picket driven into the ground with silent kicks of a boot.
The men gathered around Sheriff Dunwoody.
"We move up on them quietly in a line. Must be some water over there. Somehow we have to decide if that’s the outlaws we want. We can’t go around killing just anybody. "
"What about if they shoot first?" one of the men asked.
"We still got to be sure. I’ll
yell at Willy Boy. He’s crazy enough to call back. "
They moved up then, walking slowly, their rifles ready with a round in the chamber. When they got to where they had been with the horses, they paused. All they could see were the two tall cottonwood trees.
They went forward again, Dunwoody leading the way.
At 50 yards, they could see the brush and hear the gentle murmur of a creek. They knelt down now, watching, waiting. Nothing happened. At 30 yards, Dunwoody motioned them to lay down. He did the same.
"Hello there in the camp. Better give it up, Willy Boy. "
There was no response.
"I’ve got 30 guns out here surrounding your camp," Sheriff Dunwoody called. "Better sound off or I’m gonna open fire, Willy Boy. You, too, Professor. No sense
killing all of you right here. "
"Try it, bastards!" Willy Boy screeched from the brush.
Someone fired from the trees, then five more guns fired two or three shots each.
"Now!" Sheriff Dunwoody screeched.
His men fired from their prone positions, each man sending four shots into the brush at the winking lights of the gunfire.
Someone in the brush screamed and Sheriff Dunwoody brayed his pleasure.
"Kill the bastards!" he screamed.
After eight shots each, some of the outlaws had to stop and reload.
The Sheriffs men kept firing, but at a slower rate. Two stopped and reloaded the Henry’s long tube magazine under the rifle barrel. A few fired a shot or two from revolvers.
"Anybody hit?" Dunwoody called softly.
Word came back that one man had a wound, not serious, he said. In the short break the sheriffs men changed positions, spreading out more, one man running almost to the edge of the brush downstream from the position they figured the outlaws held.
Then six pistol shots came from the brush and the sheriffs men fired again. This time it seemed that several of the outlaws fired at the same winking rifleman. Thirty seconds later that sheriffs man stopped firing. Dunwoody watched that development and quit shooting himself. He rolled toward the man who had been ten yards to one side of him. In the soft moonlight, he saw that the whole top of his man’s head had been blown away. Sheriff Dunwoody rolled away, grabbed the dead
man’s Henry rifle and took it with him.
He blasted all of the rounds from both the weapons into the brush camp, then lay there breathing hard. He reloaded one of the Henry’s, then lifted it, jumped to his feet and ran forward into the woods this side of the pinpoints of fire.
Dunwoody made it untouched and began walking slowly through the brush toward the camp. He found what he wanted, their horses. He shot one in the head and saw it go down screaming before gunfire erupted a dozen feet from him.
He felt the impact of the round in his shoulder and bellowed in pain, then dropped and rolled and clawed his way to his feet and charged away through the brush.
Too late, he realized he didn’t have the Henry. Better losing it than his life. He plowed back to the spot where he had left the deputies and found only one man still firing.
"Pull back!" he bellowed. "Back to the horses. "
As he said it six shots snarled toward him, missing by inches. He crawled away for 20 yards before he got up and ran.
He missed the horses and had to circle back. When he found them there were only three men mounted and waiting for him.
"We lost Ed," one of the men said. "He said it was just a scratch, then he died. "
"That’s two they killed then," Sheriff Dunwoody growled. "Let’s pull back. " He thought a moment then changed his mind. "No, we’ll ride ahead of them toward Dodge. We’ll try to be ready for them tomorrow when they come up the trail. "
"Christ, Jim, two more dead? I thought we were going
to do this right this time. "
The speaker was one of his deputies from town. He had a right to bitch.
"Anybody else hit? I caught one in the shoulder, but I killed one of their horses. We take all six of our horses or kill two of them. We got to slow them down somehow. One horse short for them will mean one of their mounts has to carry double. That will force them to move slower. "
They picked up the spare horses and rode. The track was wider now, easier to follow, showing a lot of wagon traffic. They rode for what Dunwoody figured was two hours, then found a small dry stream bed that had some trees and brush and stopped there for the rest of the night.
One of the men tied up the Sheriffs shoulder with some strips off his shirt, then they went to sleep. Morning would come too early as it was without wasting a man standing guard duty for half the night.
Dunwoody couldn’t sleep. He was exhausted, tired physically, mentally empty, and all of his nervous energy had been spent during the fire fight. He lay huddled in his blanket, his six-gun in his hand.
Why? Why did they have to kill two good men? Those outlaws, those killers, bank robbers, murderers all. They had killed 15, 16 men by now. When would it end? How would it end? For a minute he wanted to turn around and ride back to Oak Grove. He could serve out the rest of his term as sheriff, then move on to some new town. These six outlaws weren’t worth getting killed for.
He thought that way just for a minute. Then he firmed his resolve. It was his job to bring them in or kill them. He was going to blow them into pieces before he was done with the outlaws.
That’s when he remembered the scream from the camp in the trees. They must have hit one of them, maybe wounded him bad so the outlaws couldn’t travel fast. Yeah, maybe. Just maybe. It was the best news he had thought of.
At last, with those more favorable thoughts, Sheriff Jim Dunwoody drifted off to sleep.
Ride Tall, Hang High Page 6