Men of violence, p.9
Men of Violence, page 9
For a moment, it seemed like the business being conducted was legitimate, that the transactions were of a normal order, that money was simply being exchanged from one set of hands to another. Then suddenly there was a burst of gunfire from outside and a bullet shattered a neat hole through the front window, followed by shouts and curses. The cause of it was that Juno Fly had gotten up to get himself another cup of coffee from the stove by the front door, looked across the street, and seen three fellows, sitting their horses right outside the bank, and he noted that one of the fellows was holding the reins to three empty, saddled horses. Juno forgot all about that Penny Farthing bicycle he’d been looking at and went and got the shotgun he kept in the back room. It was an old Whitney double-barrel with rabbit-ear hammers. He kept it loaded with double-ought buckshot. He had exited the barbershop and run to the butcher shop and shouted to Emile Fritz, “They’re robbing the bank, get your gun!”
Emile kept a carbine he’d carried in the war as a cavalryman, a Spencer. Together, like fools, they had run out onto the walk and started firing at the riders in front of the bank. Emile’s bullet had gone through the bank’s front window, and he said, “Holy Chessus!”
Juno cut loose with both barrels of the scatter-gun and saw one of the saddle horses that fellow was holding rear up on its hind legs and topple over dead. The gunfire alerted others in the town, and they knew to grab their guns, that something was up. The priest down at the church started ringing the church bell. Another call to arms—either fire or some like disaster was occurring on the streets of Buffalo Jump.
Pat Gunnerson and Atticus Creed promptly wheeled their mounts about and charged across the way, and between them shot Emile and Juno a dozen times. The old friends danced and spun like marionettes in the hands of a palsied puppeteer, then fell dead as if the puppeteer had cut their strings—snip, snip.
“Dumb sum-bitches,” Pat Gunnerson said.
In their last fully conscious moments, Juno saw himself riding a Penny Farthing into the sea, and Emile saw his sweet wife, young and slender again. Then all became forever blackness.
Gunnerson and Atticus Creed wheeled their mounts back around, firing wildly at anything or anyone who moved along the street. One-Eye had let loose of the reins of Black Bill’s dead horse as his own mount wheeled around and around as if trying to escape, but he kept control of it and the other two horses he was still holding.
Townsmen took up positions from within buildings, behind windows, one behind a water barrel, another in the bed of a parked wagon—anywhere they could fire from and not be fired upon. The air crackled with gunfire and gun smoke formed tiny storm clouds.
Sam Starr and Shorty and Black Bill came running out of the bank, money in onion sacks gripped in their hands. Bill saw that his horse was shot down and jumped on behind Shorty, and the gang of them rode through a withering fire that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
One-Eye took a bullet in a leg and yelped, but his yelping was not heard above the racket of gunfire. Black Bill had his hat shot off and it left his ears ringing so that it sounded like he’d gone into a tunnel. Pat Gunnerson got shot clean out of the saddle, hit by a dozen slugs as if he was the main prize in a shooting gallery. It could have been the fancy sombrero he wore and the leather britches that attracted the gunfire. His left foot got hung up in the stirrup, and the town fighters continued to pour lead into him as he flopped along dead as a yanked carp. When it looked as if he might be dragged clean out of town, the citizen shooters shot his horse to make sure it did not escape with the corpse.
But the rest got away and disappeared into the surroundings like smoke in the night. They rode hard and got lost in some arroyos that were deep enough to hide them and kept going until darkness fell. They wondered aloud that night how it was they had survived at all—everyone except Pat Gunnerson. Gunnerson was currently displayed, bound with bobbed wire to a door taken off the barbershop, which seemed only appropriate seeing as how the barber had been killed, gunned down with the butcher, both them called brave men and mourned.
A posse had been quickly formed, but composed of men not used to tracking or finding killers, and by dusk they had returned to Buffalo Jump, just as glad not to have encountered the desperate outlaws. Another victim had been the Tolvard kid who’d run to look at what was happening. Someone had shot him through the neck and he’d bled to death, but no one could truly testify if the kid had been shot by outlaws or enraged citizens, so of course the kid’s murder was laid at the feet of Sam Starr’s bunch—recognized by the old-time constable, Lazlo Metz, who’d seen and knew by sight just about every bad man in the Cherokee Outlet. He quickly wired for Birdy Peach. The wire, when arrived in Beaver, was forwarded to Red Pony by the telegrapher. Lou Ford tracked down Birdy and Slade having breakfast, and handed it to them.
“Looks like our boys have hit a bank in Buffalo Jump,” Lou said.
Town of Buffalo Jump raided this day. stop. Three citizens murdered. stop. Come quick. stop. May have been the Sam Starr gang. stop. Lazlo Metz, Constable, Buffalo Jump, ok terr.
Chapter Fourteen
Whoever the rider was, he sat a good horse, riding at an easy lope, one arm loose along his side, the other holding reins, he and the horse in rhythm as if they were one creature instead of two.
“I got you covered from in here, John Henry,” Charley said through the crack of the window he’d pried open. “Say the word and I’ll put some lead in him.”
“Hold your fire until we see what’s what,” Cole said.
“You see any sign of Preacher Man anywhere?”
“Not yet.”
“He probably went and got himself lost in that daydreaming state of his.”
Cole watched as the rider came steadily on, closing the half-mile gap easily enough. The horse was an Appaloosa, big-muscled chest, head held high and proud, not like any Appaloosa Cole had ever seen before. It seemed to glide over the ground.
When the rider got close enough Cole could see that he was slightly built, dressed in a canvas coat over a corded sweater, dungarees, and rough brown boots with low heels. Hiding the rider’s face was the flop brim of a low-crowned black hat that had seen better days, stains of white sweat riming the crown. Cole could see, too, the butt of a Winchester poking from the boot under the rider’s right leg.
He reined up, and the horse stood still except for the ripples under its muscled hide. Cole waited for the fellow to speak.
“Looking for John Henry Cole,” the fellow said, then thumbed his hat back far enough so that Cole could see his face, see that he was a young man. There was something familiar about him even underneath the dark beard and mustache gracing his face.
“Who’s asking?” Cole said.
“I’m asking,” the rider said, real cocky.
“You never said a name,” Cole returned. “Don’t know you.”
“I see your man in the window yonder, and that one over near the shithouse.”
“Preacher Man!” Cole called.
Preacher Man stepped forth from behind the privy, a little nickel-plated revolver in his hand. He tucked it away in his waistband as Cole gave him the signal to put it away.
“Put your rifle down, Charley!” Cole called over his shoulder. “I don’t think this boy has come to assassinate us. Or, have you?”
The kid opened his coat, and when he spread it apart, Cole saw the butt-forward pistol worn in a cocked leather holster, the way a shootist might wear it. “No, I don’t reckon I rode all this way to kill you, John Henry Cole.”
“You figured it out then.”
“Yeah,” the rider said. “How’d I ever forget, though you’ve put on heft some and gotten old.”
“That a fact?”
“She wanted me to come find you and let you know she’s dead.”
“You make no sense.”
“Tom, is how you’d remember me. That’s what you named me, or she did. Never got the story quite straight.”
Then John Henry Cole knew—it was his son by Anna Rain, back in the Nations, a long time ago. He hadn’t seen the boy in ten years, and now here he was a full-grown man. The last time he’d seen Tom was when he took him from the outlaw gang he’d fallen in with and delivered him back to Anna. He’d aimed to come back to them, and in fact had, but they had fled. Some who knew them said north to Canada. Cole had gone in search of them both but had lost their trail. They had simply disappeared. And now here was Tom returned, much like the prodigal son.
“You said she wanted me to know she was dead?”
The rider nodded. “Up in Alberta she got real sick and begged me to bring her back to the Nations, which I did, but she died a day short of getting to her old home grounds. Buried her in Tahlequah. She had me promise to track you down and let you know. And so I have.”
“Step down from your horse and set a spell, if you would,” Cole said, still shaken by the news. Tom was his second son, his first having died in infancy along with his wife, years and years ago. Tom was the result of a brief liaison with the Cherokee woman when he was still an US marshal. It was brief in time only due to the fact that Anna hadn’t told him she was pregnant and then she later married. But brief didn’t tell anything about the depth and intensity of their love for each other. Cole had not learned of her pregnancy until years later when she contacted him about Tom having fallen in with a gang of outlaws, while he was still a boy, really. Cole had rescued him, but Tom had broken the law even though he’d been little more than an accessory to the gang’s activities, a horse holder. Despite those warrants for his arrest, Cole would not arrest him, and instead let him go to be with his mother in hopes that the law would overlook Tom’s connection with the gang. But the law had not and had chased him and Anna into Canada, and they had become lost to Cole until now.
“I got to get on,” Tom said. “I did what she asked, and now it’s finished.”
He started to turn his horse away, but Cole took hold of its bridle. “I’d like us to work out the kinks,” he insisted. Tom looked worn and hungry and his horse was lathered in spite of the cold. Cole appealed to his son’s better sense. “Your horse could stand a blow and there’s grain in that shed yonder and water in the tank.”
Tom looked back over his shoulder, as if someone had been following him, but no one had been. Then when he turned back around again, his gaze ran over the place, then settled on Cole again. “I reckon just a few minutes, but then I got to get on.”
Preacher Man had stopped several feet away, almost in a protective stance in case Cole had need of him. Charley had withdrawn his rifle altogether from the window and turned to stare up at Franzetta who’d come from the back bedroom, drawn by curiosity.
“Says he’s John Henry’s boy,” Charley whispered. She bent to look out the window at Tom sitting the saddle horse. “He sure as heck is, you can see it,” she commented.
Tom dismounted and walked his horse over to the water tank and busted the thin sheet of ice that had formed, then let his horse drink. Cole went and filled a feedbag with grain and handed it to Tom to put on the animal’s head.
“I didn’t come because I wanted anything from you,” Tom said. “Just want you to know that.”
Cole felt something ancient tear at his heart, something he could not explain to anyone but those who’d felt it, too—that thing called unsustainable grief. “Come, set a spell,” Cole said. “Please tell me about your mother, what she died of, did she ever remarry …?”
“That boy looks half starved,” Franzetta said. “I’ll fix him a plate.”
“Help me with these crutches first so I can go out and introduce myself.”
“Why do you want to introduce yourself?” she asked.
“Just because,” he said.
So she helped him get up and onto his crutches, and he went out to get a better look at this progeny of Cole’s. He said as he stood there, “My wife’s inside, fixing you a plate. My name’s Charley Hood, in case you’re wondering. I’m an associate of your pa.”
Tom didn’t offer to shake his hand but instead looked uncomfortable.
The three of them stood silently for a moment listening to the crunch of the horse eating grain.
Franzetta broke the spell when she came out with a plate of food—cured ham slices and pinto beans and biscuits, coffee, too.
“Here, you eat something,” she said, and held forth the victuals.
“Thank you kindly,” Tom said, and went and sat on the chopping block to eat, resting the plate on his knees as he drank some of the coffee.
“Looks starved as a wolf,” Charley said. “You never told me you had a boy.”
“It’s a long story,” Cole said.
Preacher Man stood silently, thinking that it was good that a man and his son were reunited, that seemed right.
Cole came and squatted beside Tom.
“How’d you find me?” he asked.
“She told me this is where you’d probably be.”
Cole didn’t remember talking to Anna about this place. He’d gotten it after he’d taken Tom back to live with her, following the death of her husband.
“I never would have thought it,” Cole admitted.
“There toward her end days she talked a lot about you. She heard about how you’d got this place. Don’t ask me how. She said if I found you alive anywhere, it would probably be here at this place.”
“There was every likelihood I might not have been here when you came. What if that had been the case, what would you have done?”
“I would have waited. She said wait out the winter, and if you hadn’t come by the following spring, you were most likely dead.”
Cole dropped his eyes to the ground between his boots. Anna had always had a certain gift about knowing things, even unspoken and unseen things. “What’d she die of?”
“Got a bloody cough. Doctor called it consumption. Gave no hope of her living through it. She didn’t act scared of dying. Just asked me to take her home and come find you, and so that’s what I did.”
“You’re welcome to stay here long as you want,” Cole said. “Rightfully this place will fall to you anyhow, once I’ve passed.”
Tom looked about, looked as far as he could see in every direction. Away off to the west and south he saw a faint jagged line of some mountains—must have been a hundred miles off. To the east and north lay mesas stretched out, black rock. The sun had broken through the gloomy sky and spread its light over everything, sparkling in the snow so that the snow looked like spilled sugar, as if you could scoop it up and put it in your coffee.
“It’s a fair place,” Tom said, then laid into a biscuit, the crumbs dribbling down his shirt front.
“I would have married her, just so you know,” Cole said.
“She told me as much.”
“I’m sorry for how things turned out.”
“Don’t be on my account.”
“But I am.”
Tom looked directly into his father’s eyes, and it was a mite like looking at himself, those eyes. “I don’t guess I’ll be staying,” he said. “It ain’t my land.”
“Law still hunting you?”
“I reckon they are. You ought to know the law don’t quit.”
“I maybe could help out with that.”
“I sure don’t see how.”
“I’m friends with Judge Parker over in Fort Smith. I could write him a letter on your behalf.”
“It won’t do no good.”
“How do you know it won’t?”
Tom looked away, concentrated on the last of the beans on his plate. “I need to get my horse new shoes,” he said. “Is there some place close around here?”
“There’s Lusk, about ten miles’ distance. Just a burg, but they got a blacksmith there I reckon could shoe your horse.”
“Which way is it?”
“Tell you what. Why don’t we take the wagon. You tie that spotted horse on back, and we’ll ride over there together. Give us time to talk.”
“I don’t see’s we got much to talk about.”
“Maybe not, but it would be a great waste for you to come all this way and not get said what you want said, not ask questions you might want to ask. Me as well.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
“Like to get started sooner rather than later.”
“What’s your great hurry?”
“I’m just restless is all … all these years of being on the dodge has made me restless.”
“We’ll leave now.”
And so they did—headed for Lusk.
Chapter Fifteen
Two days after receiving the telegram, Birdy Peach and Slade Yellowbone stepped off the mud wagon.
“Well, if this still don’t look like the devil’s toilet,” Slade said, looking around at the town of Buffalo Jump.
“Let’s go find Constable Metz,” the sheriff suggested.
Lazlo Metz wasn’t a professional lawman even though his current job as a constable might mislead one into thinking so. He’d taken the job of constable because the town council, such as it was—a contingent of Cur Headly, who owned the hardware store, Juno Fly, and Emile Fritz—had practically begged him to.
“All right,” he had said, completely unsure of what he was doing. “I’ll do it.”
There was a sigh of relief and the nickel badge was pinned on and an oath upon an old Bible was quickly sworn.
“Do you have a gun, Lazlo?” Juno Fry had asked.
“No, I’m a schoolteacher,” Lazlo had said.
There were nervous smiles.
“But you need a gun if you are to maintain the law,” Cur Headly had said.
Lazlo wasn’t so sure about this last. First of all he’d been raised a Quaker and was firmly against any sort of violence or mayhem. He believed deeply in the goodness of man and the sanctity of life. “We don’t have very much trouble that requires the use of a firearm,” he had protested. “Just a few drunks who sometimes get into fights and have to sleep it off.”
