That sounded like a workable plan to Ben, so he did as Cletus suggested. Neither Ormond nor Pete gave him any complaints about being locked in the smokehouse. They were glad to have their hands free for a while.
Ben figured the big breakfast Jenny was fixing would cost him time he hadn’t figured on, but it might help if Pete and Ormond had full bellies when he left there. Maybe they might be less inspired to escape during the last leg of the journey to Buzzard’s Bluff. As he recalled, it was a distance of about thirty-five miles and it was still early in the day, so there was plenty of time left to get home before dark, even if he stopped once more to give the horses a rest. So, while Jenny was cooking, he took the opportunity to spend a little more time checking his horse’s condition. He was especially concerned about the condition of the big dun’s hooves, and after his inspection, he decided to take Cousin to Jim Bowden for new shoes when he got back to Buzzard’s Bluff.
In a short time, Jenny announced that breakfast was ready, so Ben unlocked the smokehouse and told Pete and Ormond to come outside. Jenny was going to serve them at the table in the kitchen, but Ben told her there were too many things in the kitchen to tempt his prisoners to try something desperate. “Better to have them sit down outside on the ground,” he told her. “That way, I can watch them while they eat and won’t have to worry about them grabbin’ a pot or a pan for a weapon. It ain’t any hardship on them. It’s a lot better than havin’ to eat with their legs tied around a tree.” So Ben told them to sit down just outside the smokehouse and Jenny placed two plates heaped with food before them while Ben guarded them with his rifle. When they were finished, he let them take a cup of coffee back inside the smokehouse, locked the padlock on the door, and went into the kitchen to eat his breakfast at the table. When he finished, he said, “That was a mighty fine breakfast. Those two in the smokehouse oughta think that breakfast was worth the trip to jail.”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” Jenny responded with a shallow curtsy. “You certainly paid a fancy price for it.”
“Worth every penny,” Ben replied and was about to compliment her further when he was interrupted when Cletus stuck his head in the kitchen door.
“We got more company,” Cletus announced, “three riders just turned off the road.”
“I’d better take a look,” Ben said and immediately got to his feet. His initial concern became reality when he looked out the front door. He recognized the riders as three of the men he had seen coming in and out of the church when he was watching it. “This could be trouble,” he said to Cletus, “and some I hadn’t counted on to land at your door.” This had to be Walt Murphy’s doing. They must have gone to him. Otherwise why would they immediately head for Buzzard’s Bluff? His major priority now was to try to keep Cletus and Jenny out of harm’s way.
“You know who they are?” Cletus asked, concerned now as well.
“Yes, I’m afraid I do,” Ben answered. “They’re friends of those two in your smokehouse and I expect they’ve come to get ’em. I don’t want you and your wife to get involved in this, so I’ll meet ’em outside and see if I can keep ’em goin’. The only advantage I have is they’ve never seen me, even though I know who they are. You and Jenny stay inside, and I’ll try to keep them outside.” He hurried back to the kitchen to get his unfinished cup of coffee. By the time he got back to the door, the three outlaws were reining their horses to a stop in front of the porch.
Ben walked out on the porch, coffee cup in hand, his left one. “Howdy,” he greeted them, as friendly as he could make it sound. “You fellows come down from Waco? I’m headed up that way. How far is it from here?”
Lester Drum looked him up and down before he answered. Looking around him, he saw no horses anywhere. “Is that a fact?” he responded. “It’s about thirty-five miles, I reckon. I don’t see no horses. You plannin’ on walkin’?”
Ben forced a little chuckle and took a little sip of coffee. “Nope. I got a saddle horse and a packhorse down at the creek—givin’ ’em a little rest. Where you fellows headin’?” He tried not to look too concerned when Riley and Slim walked their horses a few yards to each side of the store, just to take a look.
“He’s right, Lester,” Slim said, “there’s horses waterin’ down the creek a-ways.”
“We’re tryin’ to catch up with some friends of ours,” Lester said, answering Ben’s question. “We thought we might catch ’em here.”
“Three of ’em?” Ben asked. Lester didn’t answer him, but both Slim and Riley nodded in response. “I passed those fellows a couple of miles south of here. I expect you’ll have to hurry to catch up to ’em.” He thought if he could persuade them to keep going, he could take his prisoners, leave the road, and go around them. From the looks of their horses, he could easily imagine they had been ridden hard. They would be forced to rest them pretty soon, or they’d be walking. And he should have no trouble reaching Buzzard’s Bluff before they could catch up.
Lester wasn’t sure. He had a suspicious feeling about the big stranger. He wore a six-gun on his right hip, but he held his coffee cup in his left hand. That just struck Lester as odd. He glanced at Cletus, standing in the doorway, saying nothing, but paying close attention to what was being said. “Is this your store?” He directed the question at Cletus.
“Yes, sir, it is,” Cletus answered. “Can I help you fellers with somethin’?”
“We’re gonna need to get some supplies, ain’t we, Lester?” Slim asked before Lester answered Cletus.
“If what this fellow says is true,” Lester answered him, “we ain’t got time to buy supplies.” Back to Ben again, he asked, “You say you met ’em a couple of miles south of here?”
Ben smiled. “I ain’t ever lied to you before, have I?”
Lester couldn’t help but smile back at him, but he said nothing more to Ben. To Cletus, he said, “I’m in a hurry. You got anything to eat in there that’s ready to go right now?”
“Beef jerky and there might be some biscuits left over from breakfast,” Cletus answered. “We’ve got some dried apples. Come on in the store and we’ll fix you up.” They climbed down from their saddles and Slim led the way into the store. Ben followed along behind Lester.
Jenny left the front window, where she had been listening to the conversation, and went into the kitchen at once. She met them back at the front counter of the store with the half-filled tray of biscuits. She placed it on the counter, then moved down to the end of the counter while Cletus broke out the beef jerky. “You wanna wait around for Jenny to make a pot of coffee?” Cletus asked, hoping they’d say no.
Lester said they didn’t have the time to wait for coffee to boil. He paid Cletus, picked up the dried apples, and told Riley and Slim to pick up the rest. Already a step ahead of him, Slim took a bite out of a biscuit and picked up the sack of jerky Cletus had filled. “Maybe we’ll have time for that coffee on our way back to Waco,” Lester said. He turned to leave but stopped after taking only two steps, stopped by something he heard. He held up his hand and stood there listening. Then they all became aware of what had caught his attention. It was a steady bumping sound from outside the store that became louder by the second. “What the hell is that?” Lester asked as Ben set his coffee cup down very carefully on the counter. In answer to his question, they heard the distinct sound of a man’s voice, even though it was muffled.
“Ben Savage! Let us out! Ben Savage!” the voice repeated frantically and was joined by another voice.
“Ben Savage,” Lester repeated, suddenly realizing. He dropped the dried apples and reached for his revolver the same time Ben drew his Colt. Already guessing what was coming next, when he first heard the muffled cry from the smokehouse, Ben was a second ahead of Lester on the draw. The result was a .44 slug in Lester’s chest before he had a chance to level his weapon. Lester pulled the trigger, but the bullet went into the floor. The sudden exchange of shots caught Slim and Riley by surprise, but both dropped their packages and reached for their w
eapons. Ben knew he wasn’t fast enough to get both of them, so he threw his next shot at Riley, who appeared to be ahead of Slim. Riley went down with Ben’s second shot, but Slim already had his .44 leveled and ready to fire before Ben could pull the hammer back for a third shot. He dropped to his knee while he cocked his pistol, hoping to present a smaller target to throw Slim’s aim off. The sudden explosion of a double-barrel shotgun knocked Slim backward to land on the floor, his chest torn apart by the buckshot at that range. The shot had come from behind the counter, but when Ben looked up, there was no one there. He scrambled up on his feet and looked over the counter to see Jenny Priest lying flat on her back, the shotgun pointed straight up at the ceiling. Cletus was at her side, trying to help her up.
Throughout the whole incident, the frantic clamor from the smokehouse continued, pausing only when the explosion of gunfire occurred. “Is Jenny all right?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, she’s all right,” Cletus answered. “She just got knocked on her backside when she pulled both of them triggers at the same time.”
“I’m all right,” Jenny confirmed. “I’m just gonna have a beauty of a bruise on my shoulder.”
“Well, you just saved my bacon when you shot that fellow,” Ben said. “He was just gettin’ ready to cut loose on me. If you’re all right, I’m gonna go see what’s goin’ on in the smokehouse.”
We almost pulled it off, was what he was thinking as he walked around the back of the store on his way to the smokehouse. Reuben Drum’s men were in the act of leaving when the two in the smokehouse gave it all away. Now, he was wary of some kind of surprise Pete and Ormond had cooked up for him when he reached the door. “Shut up, damn it!” he ordered, “if you want this door unlocked.”
“Hurry up!” Ormond came back. “You locked us up in a damn nest of snakes!”
“He ain’t lyin’, Savage,” Pete blurted. “There’s snakes in here.”
“All right, I’m unlockin’ this padlock, but before I pull this lock out of the latch, you think about something. I’ll be standin’ here with my six-gun aimed at that door and I’ll start shootin’ at the first move that doesn’t look right from either one of you. Is that clear?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ormond replied, impatiently, “we ain’t gonna try nothin’. Just let us the hell outta here!”
Ben removed the padlock and stepped back, his pistol in hand. “Come on out. It’s open.” The door swung open so hard it banged against the front wall of the smokehouse and both men squeezed through the doorway at the same time. “Down on your knees, hands behind your back.” They both responded at once, almost eagerly, he thought. He handcuffed both of them, then looked around for someplace to park them while he went back to help clear the bodies from the store. He settled on the two posts that supported the roof over Cletus’s back steps. After cuffing each one of them to the posts, he tested the posts to make sure they were solid.
Satisfied his prisoners were secure, he went back to the smokehouse to take a look inside, thinking Cletus would like to know about any rattlesnakes in there. With the door open, he spotted movement near a back corner of the smokehouse. He stood still until the snake slithered across the back of the floor, then he went inside. Watching from their posts by the steps Ormond and Pete waited to hear the gunshot they knew would come. But there was none. “He went in there!” Pete said. “The crazy fool, he oughtn’ta not gone in there.”
“I hope it bit him,” Ormond said.
In a minute, Ben came back outside, holding the snake at arm’s length. Approximately four and a half to five feet, the reptile wiggled and curled as he held it just behind its head. “It ain’t nothin’ but a rat snake,” he said. “It ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“What was all the shootin’ in the store?” Pete asked. “It sounded like a war broke out in there.”
“That was the end of three fellows I reckon Reuben Drum sent to rescue you boys, but you managed to get ’em all killed when you started cryin’ like a couple of schoolgirls. They were fixin’ to leave when you two started hollerin’. I reckon they found out about all that bank money you were carryin.”
He left them to wonder who the three men were who came after them while he went back in the store to help Cletus and Jenny. When he went inside, he found them kneeling beside Riley Best. Jenny looked up at him and said, “He ain’t dead. He’s bad hurt, though, shot through the shoulder, right through the base of his neck.”
“The other two are dead,” Cletus said. “I reckon we’ve got some holes to dig. Whaddaya think we oughta do about this one?”
Ben knelt down beside the wounded man to see the extent of his wound himself. Riley made not a sound, but his eyes were wide with fear as he looked up at the powerful man seeming to hover over him. “Reckon it’s my fault,” Ben said as he examined the wound, “but I didn’t have time to take good aim at you. If we bandage you up, you think you can make it back to the church?”
Confused by the question, not sure if he was being given the option of living or not, Riley nevertheless blurted, “I sure as hell can!”
Ben looked up at Cletus, who was now standing over him. “Let’s see if we can bandage him up, so he’ll stop bleedin’, give him something to eat, put him on his horse, and let him go.” He looked back down at Riley again. “Is that all right with you? Or do you want me to put you outta your misery?”
“Yes, sir, that’s all right with me, and I’ll thank you for sparin’ my life. You’re a good man, Ben Savage, ’cause I woulda shot you, if I was faster. I ain’t never gonna forget this.”
“Better let me do the bandagin’,” Jenny said. “He’s liable to end up with something that looks like a horse collar, if one of you do it.” She went to the pantry where she kept the old sheets she used to make bandages, then poured some water in a basin to heat on the stove. When it had warmed to her satisfaction, she cleaned the area around his wound as best she could. When she had finished, she said, “If you’re careful, maybe that’ll keep the dirt out of it. You need to see a doctor soon as you can.” Then she felt inspired to comment. “He’s a hard man to figure out,” she said, referring to Ben, who was waiting to put Riley on his horse. “Cut your partner down and coulda finished you off, too.”
CHAPTER 9
Still harboring the fear that he might suddenly feel the impact of a fatal bullet in his back, Riley Best walked cautiously down the front steps. Ben walked behind him, and when he got to his horse, Ben helped him up in the saddle. Then he drew the Winchester rifle out of Riley’s saddle sling. “I expect I can trust you at your word,” Ben said, “but I’m tradin’ you your life for this rifle. That way, you won’t get to thinkin’ about changin’ your mind when you get outta pistol range.”
“Oh, I swear, I ain’t gonna go back on my word,” Riley insisted at once. “I’m gonna get back to Waco just as fast as I can. Like I said, I owe you for this.”
“All right,” Ben replied, “but don’t go too far before you rest that horse. You and your friends dang-near killed ’em on the way down here.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll give him a good rest, soon as I find a good spot.” He turned the horse back toward the wagon road and headed back north toward Waco.
“You don’t reckon he’ll double back after he gets outta sight, do you?” Cletus wondered.
“I don’t think so,” Ben gave his honest opinion, “but I ain’t always right. Let’s get to work diggin’ a hole to dump those bodies in.”
“He went off and left his pals’ horses,” Cletus said.
“He wasn’t in any position to make any demands about who got the horses,” Ben told him. “So, I thought it would help repay you for the trouble they caused, if you kept the horses and tack.”
“That’s mighty generous of you, Ben,” Cletus responded. “Yessir, that’s mighty generous.”
Cletus supplied a pick and shovel, selected the spot, and did a little of the labor, but as he had a tendency to do, Ben did most of the digging for the two bodies. Cletus had su
ggested that Pete and Ormond should do the work of digging the grave, but Ben preferred to jump on the task and get it done. He was already delayed in getting back to Buzzard’s Bluff, and he didn’t want to stand around guarding two reluctant prisoners. The two of them had the nerve to complain about having to sit handcuffed to the posts, causing Ben to remind them that it was their fault, since they had been so frightened by a rat snake. “We woulda been halfway to Buzzard’s Bluff and a comfortable cot in Mack Bragg’s jailhouse by now, if you hadn’t got squirrelly over a common rat snake.”
“A snake’s a snake,” Ormond said, “and I ain’t got no use for none of ’em. I don’t care what brand he is.”
It was the middle of the afternoon by the time Ben led his prisoners up the path to the wagon road to Buzzard’s Bluff, on horses watered, fed, and well rested. “I declare,” Cletus said, “I don’t know what we’ll do for excitement around here with you leaving. Come back to see us when you ain’t got nothin’ on your mind but visiting.”
“That’s right,” Jenny spoke up, “sometime when you don’t need my hospital. And I guarantee you, I’ll remember you for as long as it takes that blue spot on my shoulder to go away.”
“You’re lucky you’ve got a woman that’s handy with a shotgun to take care of you, Cletus,” Ben japed. “If you ever have occasion to come to Buzzard’s Bluff, drop in the Lost Coyote. We ain’t as rough as other saloons. We got a right respectable lady managing the place.” He extended the invitation, knowing no respectable woman would enter a saloon, even with her husband.
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