Contention and Other Frontier Stories

by Hazel Rumney

  “Tell me about it.”

  Bascom and the newlyweds were asleep in the pews.

  “Not here, exactly, but close enough,” he said, his voice dry with pain. “Across the next ridge, where the Springs are. It used to be some beautiful country. My father brought us out here from Iowa after the war. There were bluebells everywhere. And grass. Plenty of grass back then, before we plowed it all up. But my mother loved the bluebells most.”

  “Did you meet Astrid here?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “That was much later, after my time on the cattle trails north to the railheads in Kansas. My God, what a time that was. I was younger than you, back then, and I was tall in the saddle. We would hit Ellsworth or Dodge City or Abilene and it would be hell on a hot plate until our pay was gone. Women and cards and whiskey. I ran with the Texas boys, seeing as how I was just about a Texan, anyway, having grown up so close to the line. This was all in the seventies. I was plenty rough, and got in some fine scrapes, but I never killed anybody, and I’m glad of that. All I have left of that time is this.”

  His fingers brushed the revolver beside him.

  “Funny how we age but guns don’t,” he said. “Take care of them and they last forever. This is a Colt double-action Lightning. Looks about the same as I bought it, at Dodge City back in ’77. Back then, freedom meant a good horse and decent piece of iron. Hell, most of us didn’t even keep them on our hips, like you see in the moving pictures. Kept mine in my bedroll, behind the saddle. Plenty handy enough. But my God, I never felt as free as I did then.”

  “And Astrid?”

  “She was keeping the books at her father’s mercantile at Caldwell when I came in to buy a can of coffee. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. It took me two years to convince her to marry me, but she did, in 1884. Because I had stopped hell raising, I had enough money to buy a place, just across the line in Texas. I thought I was going to miss the freedom I found on the range and the cattle towns, but I didn’t. I wasn’t free, exactly, but I was—hell, I don’t know how to explain it. I was where I belonged. And Astrid loved it there, and she loved bluebells, just like my mother. We lived there for fifty years.”

  “Until the bank took it,” I said.

  “It wasn’t the bank’s fault,” he said. “It was mine. Like everyone else, I thought the good times would last forever. Twenty-six was a great year. Bought more land on credit. Plowed it all up to plant wheat. So, like just about everyone else, I went broke. It was a kindness the cancer took Astrid before the bank took the house.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “Among the sorrows of living to be eighty-five is burying your children,” he said. “Outlived both our boys. One was killed in the Great War, the other died of the sepsis after he cut his arm while mending a fence twenty years ago. All my family are gone now. Time has made an orphan of me.”

  Bascom was awake now. He sat up and leaned forward to stare at the cowboy.

  “So, you ended up with nothing and nobody,” Bascom said. “Is that why you robbed that bank? To take something back before you died? How much you got in that old valise between your legs?”

  The cowboy laughed weakly.

  “Deacon,” he said, “You’d be surprised at just how much.”

  Then the old man slumped back in the chair. The blood beneath him had pooled and then run, streaking the boards behind him as it sought the earth.

  “Let’s all be quiet now,” the old man said, and placed the revolver in his lap. “I’m talked out.”

  Then there came a tremendous whack on the back of the old man’s head, and he gave one of those pitiful rabbit cries and his body pitched forward to the floor. Behind him stood Florence, the handle of a broom held in her hands like a baseball bat. She must have unscrewed it from the head of the broom when she took her children to the corner. Her dark eyes were wide and shining, and her children clutched at the back of her thin dress. She smiled broadly, then threw the broom handle aside and snatched up the revolver where it had fallen.

  “Damn,” Florence said. “It feels good.”

  “Just hold on,” Bascom said, half out of the pew.

  Moving slowly, I knelt in the blood on the floor beside the cowboy. He was making no sound now.

  “Get back up there,” Florence said, motioning with the gun.

  “You killed him,” I said.

  “He was dying already,” said the groom, pushing the broken glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “I say good riddance.”

  “I said get back,” Florence told me.

  “You can’t shoot me,” I said.

  “I will,” she vowed.

  “I mean you can’t, not that you wouldn’t,” I said. “That’s a double-action. It’s not like the hardware the gangsters carry now, the automatics and the Tommy guns. It’s an old-fashioned gun, you have to squeeze the trigger hard every time you want to shoot.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Florence said, the barrel wavering.

  “You could also cock it each time,” I said. “Pull the hammer back.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Use your thumb.”

  “I can’t reach it,” she said. Just the tip of her right index finger was touching the trigger; her hand wasn’t broad enough to hook her thumb over the hammer.

  “Then you’ll have to squeeze, and hard. Those old guns have a trigger weight of fourteen or fifteen pounds.”

  “Now, why did you have to tell her that?” Bascom asked.

  “I dislike incompetence.”

  “And why the hell do you know so much about guns?” the deacon asked.

  “I’m a Unipresser, a wire service reporter,” I said. “Crime is my beat.”

  “Let’s think about this situation a minute,” the groom said. “The old man got what was coming to him. Justice was served, right? And now we have this valise that is stuffed full of God knows how much cash. I say we divvy it up.”

  “I have the gun,” Florence said.

  “But no way to escape without us.”

  “What about the body?” the girl asked.

  “There’s already a grave to dig,” the groom said. “The old man can go in the hole beneath the girl.”

  “Please,” Bascom said. “Let’s not do this. Justice is mine, says the Lord.”

  “Shut up,” the bride said. “We’d like to own a house. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Eating regular would satisfy us,” Florence said, lowering the gun. “I’m holding on to this, but let’s see what’s in the valise.”

  “We divide it even?” the bride asked.

  “Sure,” Florence said. “Let’s see inside.”

  “Count me out,” I said.

  “More for the rest of us,” the groom said. “How about you, deacon?”

  The black man shut his eyes.

  “I’ve been poor all my life,” he said. “Lord, why must You test me so?”

  The groom motioned for the bag, and I grabbed a corner of it and slid it from beneath the chair. It was heavy, and I had to use both hands to lift it up to the groom.

  He undid the buckle, took a deep breath, and opened the bag.

  “What the heck?”

  He withdrew a meager handful of green bills.

  “There’s not thirty dollars here,” he said. “The rest of it is . . . junk. Horseshoes, tins of tobacco, clothes. Some rotten apples.”

  “But the newspaper said he got five thousand,” the bride said. “There must be more.”

  I shook my head.

  “How would you know?” the girl asked.

  “Like I said, I’m a reporter. The banks lie all the time about how much was taken,” I said. “It’s part of the racket, because the federal insurance pays off, or they use it to cover embezzlement.”

  The groom cursed.

  I took my notes from my jacket pocket and unfolded the one on top.

  “The old cowboy left a note after robbing the bank,” I said. “One of the cops at Dalhart let me copy
it after I slipped him a five-dollar bill.”

  “Can I see that?” Bascom asked.

  I handed it over to the deacon.

  “Sorry to cause so much trouble,” he read, turning the paper toward the lamp. “Hope nobody got hurt. The county is auctioning my place off at the end of the week, as they have a right. That’s fine, as I am old and sick and have no more use for it. But there’s a horse in the barn named Bluebell. She’s a good horse, but old and sick like me, and her ribs are showing. I’m afraid whoever buys the place will put her down, rather than pay to feed her. So, I just need enough to buy a few bags of feed, just to see her through to the end. P.S.: She also likes apples.”

  The deacon handed the note back to me.

  “Well, that’s it,” the bride said. “No house.”

  “No nothin’,” the groom said.

  “Still poor,” said Bascom.

  But Florence brought the gun up again, and this time she used her left hand to brace the revolver while she pushed her right hand forward and hooked the first joint of her index finger around the trigger.

  “I want the money,” she said.

  “No,” the groom said.

  She pulled the trigger and there was a muzzle flash and the sound left our ears ringing. The bullet had gone past the groom and put a hole in another window.

  Florence giggled as if drunk.

  Her children began to cry.

  “No, hush,” she said. “That was fun. Want to do it again?”

  “Careful,” Bascom said. “Let’s not put any more holes in anything—or anyone.”

  “Give her the money,” the bride said.

  “This is better than a month’s pay,” the boy protested.

  Florence adjusted her two-handed grip to get more purchase on the trigger.

  “I missed you the last time,” she said. “But now I think I got the hang of it.”

  The groom looked down but held out the money.

  “Nuh-uh,” Florence said. “You’ll jump me if I take a hand off the gun.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?” the boy asked.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I said.

  I took the wad of money, tied it up in my bandana, and motioned for Florence to turn toward me so I could put it in the pocket of her smock. Her children were still clustered and crying behind her.

  Instead, she pointed the gun at me.

  “Your car,” she said.

  “You have to be kidding.”

  “Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?”

  “No,” I said, digging the keys out of my coat.

  Trying to avoid the barrel of the gun, I crouched and gingerly tucked the bandana and the keys into Florence’s pocket.

  “Tends to run hot,” I said. “Don’t forget to add water or she’ll burn up.”

  “We’re going now,” she said. “You all stay put.”

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  “Yeah, water,” she snapped. “Now shut up.”

  “But the storm,” the bride said.

  “It’s been hours,” Bascom said. “The wind’s died down. She might make it, if the car isn’t buried too deep in the sand.”

  Florence opened the door, and just a bit of dust swirled in. She pushed her children in front of her, and the last thing out was the hand holding the gun. In a few minutes, I heard the familiar sound of the engine clatter to life, and then the whine of the gearbox as it pulled away.

  We sat there in silence for a moment, looking at one another.

  “Now what?” asked the bride.

  “I have to pray for forgiveness,” Bascom said. “And come light, I have a couple of graves to dig.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the sheriff?” the groom asked.

  “The old man is home,” Bascom said. “Let him stay here.”

  I stood, wiping my bloody palms on my pants.

  “How far is town proper? I need to phone the bureau.”

  “A couple of miles down the road,” Bascom said. “You’ll find a public phone at the little post office there. It won’t be open for a couple of hours yet.”

  That was all right, I told myself. I needed time to think. It wasn’t just the new lede for the story I would phone in to Art, but the realization that I was trapped just the same as the other people in the church. How long would it take me to save up to buy another car? How would I ever get to California? For that matter, how was I going to get back to Kansas City? I’d have to hitch back to Dalhart, and then ask Art to wire me the money for a train ticket back. It wasn’t the end of the world, but, of course, it never comes with a bang, as Eliot said, it just whimpers. It’s everything together, the whole damn weight of it, that drives you down a little farther every time until your mouth is filled with dust and all the light goes out. How much more could I stand before I decided to be the club and not the rabbit?

  Max McCoy is a multiple Spur Award–winning novelist and native Kansan. He’s the author of the Hellfire Canyon trilogy and the novelization of Steven Spielberg’s epic TNT miniseries, Into theWest. He teaches at Emporia State, in east central Kansas.

  BURYIN’ RUBY

  BY GREG HUNT

  Jeb hardly slept all night, just thinking about Ruby out there in the woodshed. It felt so empty inside the cabin, almost haunted, without her over there in her narrow little bunk beside the stove, snoring louder than him sometimes, and tossing around trying to get comfortable on her pine needle tick. In the deep, dark dead of night, he actually considered that she might be silently floating around someplace close by right now, although he hadn’t seen any sign of it yet.

  He had been away hauling a load of lumber up from Bradshaw’s Post, and was glad he wasn’t there to watch her die without being able to do anything to help her. He found her body lying twisted on the ground where she’d writhed in her last death throes, and the bug-eyed, terrified expression on her face was testament to the pain she had suffered in those last moments. One of the first things he’d done was tie his neckerchief over her face, not wanting to carry that spooky image around in his mind for the rest of his life.

  But if there was even a little piece of luck in this, it was that the rattlesnake was big, one of the largest Jeb had ever seen, and his bite was deep into the meat high up on her left shoulder, close to her heart. She must have gone fast. The snake lay only a few feet away, headless and as dead as Ruby. She had always been quick with a blade, and it didn’t surprise him that she had managed to kill the critter that had killed her.

  Damn her for being so careless, Jeb thought as he cataloged all the chores and woman’s work Ruby had taken up when she came to stay with him. It wasn’t just her cooking he’d miss. She’d kept the cabin picked up and swept out, washed his clothes and bedding, brought in the wood, and a dozen other things. Plus, she put in a pretty good day at the sluices, working shoulder to shoulder dawn to dark with Jeb. Of course, it was no more than she owed him for taking her in during the dead of winter, and probably saving her life, but still . . . Now he’d have to do all that for himself again, just when he’d grown used to settling back with a pipe and a cup of coffee after a long day. Not to mention the quiet that had already settled in like a thick fog. He even missed her snoring and thought the absence of it might be one of the reasons why he couldn’t get to sleep. Damn that woman for dying.

  What was she doing wandering around up there in the rocks above their diggings anyway? And why was she down on the ground, which she must have been for the snake to strike her where it did? She should have been working. Just a couple of days before, they’d come across rich new colors in a patch of sand and gravel higher up on the hill, and she should have been hauling wheelbarrows of the stuff down to the sluice.

  He got up at the first hint of light, pulled on his clothes, and stoked up the stove to reheat last night’s coffee. Breakfast sat waiting in a tin plate on the table—last night’s leftovers of cornbread and fried salt pork, which he just hadn’t been in the mood to finish. He was as
tired this morning as he usually was after a hard day’s work, and his mood was surly.

  Of course, he’d have to bury her before she started stinking, but on this rocky hillside it would take a full day, maybe two, to dig a decent grave. Maybe he’d just lay her out and cover her up with a pile of stones, he thought, someplace a decent distance of the cabin. She was past having a say in the matter and wouldn’t know or care. It was a common way to treat the dead in this wild country, if they got even that.

  He went out to the woodshed and peeled back the canvas he’d wrapped her in, staring at her for a while with that sense of wonder people felt when they looked at the corpse of someone who had so recently been alive. Ruby had been more than average tall, but thin and lean like most people who lived the hard life out here in the mountains. She might have been pretty once when she was a young girl, but her face and arms were leathery and wrinkled now. Once, after she’d asked Jeb to remind her what year it was, she told him that made her thirty-seven, which was getting on up there. Jeb pulled the fabric of her dress down to cover her ankles because he knew how modest she could be, then combed her frizzy, sun-bleached hair back with his fingers. He started to raise the neckerchief off her face for a final look, but decided he’d rather remember her the way she looked before she was dead. She had a fine smile that made a man feel downright good, he recalled, although he hadn’t seen it all that often.

  He wrapped the canvas back over her and carried her a few dozen steps away from the cabin, thinking that would probably be far enough to keep the stink down until nature had done its work. Laying her down, he tried to cross her arms on her chest, but she’d gone stiff already. He arranged her worn old brown dress so it looked decent before he started piling the rocks on her. To cover her up, he chose the heaviest rocks he could lift and carry so that even a grizzly would have trouble clawing its way down to her. He didn’t know any words to say, except an awkward “So long, Ruby.” He thought he’d make a cross later, and maybe carve her name on it.

  He went back to the sluice, planning to put in a regular day’s work, but after a few hours, he knew his heart just wasn’t in it today. Besides being worn out from the sleepless night, the high country that surrounded him somehow seemed more empty and lonely than it ever had before. He couldn’t keep his eyes from roaming over to the pile of rocks, and his brain filled with a strange sort of mortal confusion at how a person could be walking, talking, and so alive one minute, then become just a pile of dead meat the next. It wasn’t like him to have thoughts like that, but today he couldn’t put them away.