Mississippi

by J. B. Richard

What trouble? Mississippi thoughtfully rubbed his chin. The sheriff could’ve run Jessa out of town last night but hadn’t. He had willingly let them pass.

  Stan peeked out the door, spying on the town, probably wondering where Sheriff Pike was watching from. “Which horse is yours?”

  Mississippi pointed to the chestnut gelding. Porter’s horse was still tied there too. “I got a friend in town. Can’t leave without him.”

  “I seen the two of ya and Topper in the saloon last night. I’ll get word to him.” He jerked his head toward the rear door. “Follow the fence row ‘til ya get into the trees. There’s a thicket of saltbrush. Wait there.”

  Mississippi grabbed the man’s arm. “How do you know Topper?” She had been a whore, but not in this area that he knew of.

  Stan looked puzzled, his brows squashed together. “I assumed ya knew. Why, she’s kin to Sheriff Pike, or was ‘til his wife died. They was sisters.”

  Mississippi had to think to breathe. Topper had said nothing of this to Clint or anyone in the gang, and he didn’t blame her. She had looked terrified last night when Clint suggested riding into town. He had assumed that was due to the man’s reputation for being a hard lawman and her riding with wanted men who had only days ago killed a large posse after robbing a bank. Maybe she had her own reason for not wanting to come into Piketown. Perhaps she knew the history between Jessa and Pike. Had he really run her out of town, and if so, why had she returned or perhaps never left? And Pike was allowing it.

  “You’re wastin’ time, son. Go on an’ git out of here.” Stan gave him a nudge toward the rear door.

  Mississippi waited in the brush. Thirty minutes later, Porter trotted his horse into sight, Peppy in tow. He said nothing of what he had found out about Topper. He noticed, though, that Port was chewing on his lip, stewing on something. Was it that they hadn’t found any sign of Butch? Or maybe he was sorry they were leaving Topper behind. For a man who’d just spent the night with the woman he’d been gushing love sonnets to for the past week in hopes of sparking her attention, he didn’t look happy.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, Missi boy, I ain’t sure how to say it. Topper made me promise I wouldn’t, but I owe ya for all them times you could’ve killed Rascal and didn’t.” Porter was silent for a long minute, thinking over the exact words. “Your lady friend, stay away from her. She ain’t who you think she is. She’ll get ya killed.”

  Mississippi was dumbfounded, abruptly halted his horse, and stared.

  Porter reined in. “You had your fun with her. Leave it at that. She’s trouble I tell ya. That’s all I can say.”

  “The hell it is! You can explain how she’ll get me kilt.” Mississippi didn’t understand any of this. Who was Jessa if not the sweet-smelling girl he thought her to be? Feisty she was, but a killer? He didn’t believe it. What exactly had Topper told Port?

  “Don’t get all riled up. I’m saying it for your own damn good.” Porter nudged his horse, and the gelding fell into pace.

  “Who is she?”

  Port shook his head. “I wish I could tell ya. Topper and me, we made some plans last night. I ain’t gonna ruin my chance. I gave her my word, an’ I’ve already told ya more than I should’ve.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Mississippi chuckled. “Today is the day you decide to change and stick to your word. You can’t wait ‘til tomorrow to become an honest man?”

  Porter snickered.

  They rode into camp. Clint looked like a rabid wolf about to spring upon them, his snarling pup, Rascal, right beside him. “It’s about damn time. Where the hell have you two been?”

  Porter pulled a bottle out of his saddlebag, shoving it at Clint. “Does it matter? As I recall, you weren’t gonna help us out of any trouble.” He stepped down off his horse, turning his back, and Mississippi’s hand slid toward his gun.

  Porter should have known better. Clint didn’t take to being put in his place, and he wasn’t ever afraid to face a man when he knew he could beat him. That wasn’t so with Port. He was better with a gun.

  But now that Porter’s back was turned, Clint hit him on the head with the butt of a pistol, knocking him to the ground. The big man spun the gun around so the iron end was aimed. Porter was on the ground, holding his head, blood on his hand. The gash was deep, and Mississippi recalled the cut on the back of the doctor’s head. The length and width looked just like Port’s.

  Two shots fired almost as one. Clint grabbed his hand where Mississippi’s bullet skinned the back of it, and instantly, he dropped his gun. Rascal’s hat had been blown off his head.

  “Drop that gun!” Mississippi had fired upon both, not killing either, but giving a stern warning that he could if he wanted to.

  Rascal dropped his revolver in the dirt as though it were afire.

  “Git him on his horse.” Mississippi glanced at Porter lying on the ground, barely conscious.

  “My brother ain’t goin’ nowhere. We expected y’all back in a couple hours, and instead, it seemed like ya disappeared. Seemed like maybe ya found something and thought you’d just split it two ways.” Rascal kept his hands where Mississippi could see them. It was a shame that young fool didn’t recognize how strong an ally his older brother was. He was picking the wrong side. Clint was just meaner, throwing his heft around without regard, even against his own men, which made him dangerous.

  Clint wrapped his bleeding hand, cursing through gritted teeth, and glared at Mississippi. He probably wanted to drill a hole through him. “Did ya find Butch or his horse?”

  Porter groggily came to, holding his skull as his head did circles.

  “He wasn’t in town. Checked the stables. His horse wasn’t there,” Mississippi said, then gave Port a tug onto his feet.

  Clint’s jaw tightened. One eye twitched. He pitched a cup across camp, then pulled the cork on the bottle Porter had brought.

  Port unsteadily lifted a foot into a stirrup. His saddle groaned as he swung a leg over.

  “Don’t do it, Port. You’re makin’ a big mistake.” Rascal’s voice sounded angry, more of a warning, not hinting at genuine concern that his brother was about to leave. There was a boldness in his eyes while he stood all puffed up next to Clint as though the two were invincible.

  Clint’s face was wrinkled rougher than tree bark. It didn’t matter that they’d ridden together for the past couple years. If Porter turned his back on the gang, he’d likely end up with a bullet right between his shoulder blades.

  “I’m goin’. You comin’?” Porter didn’t have to ask. He knew.

  Rascal had been waiting to jump on his chance to be more than Clint’s pet. If there was a second-in-command, it was Port, and his brother’s dark eyes lit up with greed, thinking he would take over that right-hand spot.

  Rascal smirked indignantly, slowly shaking his head. The brothers shrewdly eyeballed one another.

  Every now and then, a man needs to take a hard look at his so-called friends. It might have been safer for Mississippi to stand in a den of rattlers. The poison here came in the form of lead balls and was just as deadly as a snake bite.

  “The next we meet, ya best hope I don’t forget we’re kin.” Those were mighty strong words coming from Porter, who had many times willingly stepped between big trouble and his kid brother.

  Rascal chuckled in a mocking tone, then leaned a step closer to Clint, giving him a nudge to show he wasn’t worried, that he didn’t give a shit. Jay stood not far away and shifted his weight uneasily while rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. Their defensive line was about to weaken, and everyone but that idiot Rascal realized it.

  Porter turned his horse, trotting away from them but not the money. They all knew better than that. That robbery had been planned by Porter after he’d gotten word from an ally on the railroad. They had hit the bank where it had been housed instead of the train that had carried it into town a few days before so Port’s informant wasn’t given away. This was his score. No man would walk awa
y from a possible hundred thousand. If he found the cash first, none of the rest of them would get their share, Mississippi included.

  Clint cursed, kicking at the dirt. There was no love lost between Clint and Porter. Both recognized the other’s skill when it came to fighting—one more capable in some ways than the other and less the leader in other ways. Clint had brute strength and a mean temper that went with it, more devious than any of them. Porter was lean, not quite as tall as Mississippi, smaller than Clint, but no less a killer. He was sly and didn’t miss an opportunity to strike, which always irritated Clint.

  Clint eyeballed Mississippi while cradling his scratched hand. “Where do you stand in this?”

  “Right here for now.” Mississippi figured he’d best start sleeping with one eye open. He couldn’t trust anyone.

  He’d rather go with Port, but he expected him to run straight to Topper. Mississippi didn’t want to dangle himself under Sheriff Pike’s nose by making too many trips into town or get in the middle of whatever was shaping up between Porter and Topper. A woman could be a big distraction, and Mississippi was becoming more aware of that every time his mind strayed to Jessa. He and Porter together might wander around like two lovesick fools and never find the loot. Going at it alone wouldn’t be any good either. Hunting that money was too big a job for one man unless he knew where to look, and they didn’t. He didn’t believe Porter did either.

  Mississippi couldn’t stand Rascal, and if an opportunity showed itself, he would help Porter any way he could. But it made sense that four men could cover a lot more ground than just one. If they spread out and each took a different trail, their chances of finding Butch before any posse did, or even Porter, were pretty darn good. And if it somehow worked out that Mississippi could get his hands on Porter’s share to then hand over to him, he’d do it, but that was a worry for another day. First, they needed to find the money.

  “Ain’t you fickle?” Clint spat.

  He didn’t tell Mississippi to go, so he reckoned he was in.

  After a breakfast of coffee and hardtack, they split, one in each direction, searching for tracks or any sign of Butch. It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack. Maybe an outlying homesteader had found Butch and taken him in. His saddlebags would’ve been searched and, with all them bullet holes, the doctor called upon and maybe the sheriff. Someone had that money.

  Mississippi turned his horse. If the doctor wasn’t in his office, then he would wait. Trouble was now that Sheriff Pike had seen him with Jessa, he had an eye on him.

  CHAPTER 3

  At the edge of town, back among juniper and masked by shadows, Mississippi left his horse pulling sparse tufts of grass, and he crept between the barn and buggy, ten feet from the doc’s back door. He turned the knob. The door opened. Mississippi slipped inside.

  The room had a sterile smell. In the center stood a slab table covered with a white sheet. A tall cupboard held brown bottles of various sizes—chloroform, opium, Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, and other elixirs. Stacked in neat rows in the same cupboard were bandages. Above a desk and chair hung a shelf full of medical books. On the wall near the curtained doorway leading into another room was a framed portrait. Sheriff Pike, the doctor, and a few other official suit-wearing men stood around the sign establishing Piketown 1860. In the background, near the sheriff, was a girl, maybe thirteen, fourteen years old. She must have been moving when the tintype was taken because her face was blurry. There was something familiar about her, though.

  Footsteps echoed from the next room, and the curtain slid aside. Mississippi poked the cold iron end of his Colt in the doc’s ear. The doc stiffened, stock still, and the color drained from his face.

  “Where’s the money?”

  “Swear I don’t have a penny of it. Thought about taking it, had it in my hands. Could’ve lived like a king, but…”

  “What?” Mississippi barked.

  “Dropped it. Got scared. Someone shot at me. It’s in the saddlebags, honest. I ran out of there. Left your friend half fixed.” Sweat glistened all over the man’s face.

  “Butch is alive?”

  “Was when he left me. Can’t say for sure now.” His voice rose to an unnatural octave.

  “You see who done the shootin’?” If it had been Porter or Clint, Rascal or Jay, the doctor would have been dead. Who else was there? The trappers, could it have been those two? A posse wouldn’t have shot at the mousy doctor. He wasn’t even wearing a gun.

  “No, not really. Glanced once. Two men, big and burly, wearing furs. One of them clubbed me. That was after your friend got his wits about him, shot at them, then got away with the money.” The doc rubbed the cut on the back of his head that Mississippi had noticed while at the saloon. “If I knew more, I’d tell ya.” There was no doubt of that. The man fidgeted with his fingers while uneasily shifting his weight as if he might piss himself.

  “Where?”

  “Mile or two outside the Hellmen farm, base of the mountain, near the trail into the Devil’s Cauldron. I already explained all this to your friend, the man with ya at the saloon the other night.”

  Mississippi nodded. Port had gotten to the doc first and now had a head start. It was the same path they’d ridden into town on. Lots of miles of lonely country, those mountains. Wearing furs, those men were likely trappers, perhaps the two that had paid with a gold coin at Topper’s.

  Mississippi slipped out the way he’d come in. He figured Port had threatened the doctor to keep his trap shut or else. No need to scare the poor bastard even more.

  He swung into the saddle and spurred his horse. When he topped the rocky spine of Blacklog Mountain, he turned the gelding and rode just off the crest so as not to skyline himself. He spotted the shoe print—of Porter’s horse, he assumed—following the trail of the two woodsmen.

  After five or six miles, he switched direction, guiding the gelding along a steep cliffside, then among blossoming sagebrush and bigtooth maple. Mountain air, high up, was always cool. Come evening, as the sun was beginning to fade, Mississippi twisted in the saddle and untied his coat off the back. He stopped where the timber thinned. A fierce, unforgiving rockface stood across the valley, forming a bald spot on the mountainside. In the gully below, a half mile off, rose a line of black smoke. He nudged the gelding. Who would be dumb enough to make a fire that everyone could see? Survival oftentimes came from staying invisible, especially in Indian country.

  Nearing the edge of a small clearing, the putrid odor hit him. Burning flesh. He jerked up on the reins, remaining hidden underneath crisscrossed shadows of the trees. Wind brushed his face and parted the smoke. Stretched between two sturdy trees, one trapper was held upright and spread eagle by twisted rawhide thongs gouging into the flesh at his wrists and ankles. His hair was gone, face bloody and dotted with buzzing flies around his dull eyes and open mouth. Shreds of shirt lay on the ground. No skin, all butchered off, on his torso and arms. Grim way to die. Probably, he’d been alive for most of the skinning, maybe all of it. Mississippi’s gut knotted.

  Apache liked to cut up their victims. Unshod horse tracks were everywhere, an easily read sign.

  Burned nearly to ash, almost unrecognizable, was the other trapper, staked over a firepit, sort of like a pig on a spit. It was a sobering sight and made Mississippi question how much that money was really worth. He liked breathing a whole lot more. Those dead fellas might not have the money or had hidden it, and he didn’t cotton to the idea of hanging around to look.

  Indians wouldn’t have taken paper money. It was, for the most part, useless to them. The furs these trappers had held more value in the eyes of those Apache than a hundred thousand dollars. They might burn it in their fires to keep warm. Butch’s horse would be of interest to them. The mare was a fine, sturdy-built animal with lots of go. Indians liked good horses, and there were no horses there. They’d all been taken but one. And that grulla gelding of Porter’s wasn’t in sight, though the prints were on the ground and f
resh, maybe twenty minutes old. Where was Port’s body? He either got away during the attack or rode up not long afterward.

  Mississippi screeched, sounding no different than a hawk. The call was one the gang had used as a signal. If Port was nearby, he should answer with a crow caw. They would continue that until one found the other. A caw echoed through the trees.

  Mississippi turned his horse. In short time, he rode around a cluster of rocks, bigger than Peppy. On the far side, a piñon with a crooked spine leaned away against the wind, pointing the way across a bald slope, which led him to a grove of young piñon.

  Porter stepped out from behind a tree, lowering his aim. “Wasn’t sure if that hawk call come from one of ‘em Injuns.”

  Sweat soaked Port’s shirt, and Mississippi was in a coat. Port must have just slipped getting his hair cut out below the roots. He still had the jitters.

  “They take Butch’s horse?” More importantly, the money. Mississippi didn’t relish the thought of fighting doggone Apache. Bloodthirsty savages. The gory image of the butchered trapper and his charcoaled compadre might never leave his mind.

  “Not that I saw. If I’m reading things right, Butch, or at least his horse, passed through this area with those two back yonder not far off his tail.” Porter stepped into the saddle. “One was still alive when I found them. Lasted long enough to spill that they’d been recruited by Sheriff Curry to lay for us at Topper’s. Hence the gold eagles, their incentive. They then got a reward, more coins, when they reported our whereabouts. That’s why the posse caught up to us that day at Topper’s. Those trappers then lit out to hunt the money, the big money, but didn’t so much as lay a finger on it. They almost had it while the doc was stitching Butch, but Butch rallied, shot it out with one of ‘em, then took off, leaving everyone but himself empty-handed.”

  “Where to?” Mississippi grumbled while he glanced around for the hoofprints of Butch’s mare. He was a hypocrite, slighted by the very idea of those greedy bastards trying to swindle their way to grab hold of that money, the same fortune that Mississippi had been charlatan enough to steal in the first place. Once upon a time, he was an honest man, before the war, before life as he’d known it fell apart. Always changing, always leaving scars. Some could be covered, some not so much. He was too far in to become a good man now. It was too late. He knew it, accepted it because he had no other choice. And someday, he would probably hang for it, but not today. He had air in his lungs and aimed to find that money.