The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  “I doubt the waitress lied to us,” Dixon replied.

  “Don’t mean they didn’t lie regarding their intentions, sir.”

  “I hear you,” Dixon granted, “but it’s all we have to go on. I can’t see them hiding out in one of these few shops.”

  “Fair point,” Isaac conceded.

  “So, that’s it, then,” Dixon said. “They either know we’re coming, or they don’t, in which case we might still be able to surprise ’em. Getting drunk or laid up with the whores, I’ll take whatever edge they give us.”

  Sullivan replied, “But if they do know . . .”

  “Then we’re walking into shit without a shovel,” Dixon said. “Whoever doesn’t care to take that chance, step off right now.”

  None of them budged.

  “Right, then. I hope to see you on the other side, men. Failing that, you have my thanks.”

  Bishop trailed Isaac down the narrow alley, gravel crunching underfoot. No one had bothered locking up the Gem’s back door, maybe because its customers might come around at any time, some of the married men in town not fond of entering from Main Street, where the world could see them come and go.

  “Get ready,” Isaac said, but Toby had his Yellow Boy already shouldered, cocked and aimed to fire over his shoulder as he turned the knob and entered in a fighting crouch.

  No shots to greet them, and no hollering to rouse the house. Bishop entered behind his point man, leaving the door open for retreat if it became essential.

  They were standing in a short hallway with doors off either side. To Bishop’s left he smelled a kitchen where most of the food was fried in grease. Across the way, Thorne tried the other door and bared the clutter of a broom closet. Ahead of them, beyond a curtain made of dangling beads on string, what they could see of the saloon’s barroom was empty, lit from overhead by lamps.

  Beyond that, Bishop saw nothing and no one, heard nothing except a muted scuffling sound of footsteps overhead, somebody moving on the second floor. He’d never been inside the Gem, but standard layout for a bar and brothel meant bedrooms upstairs for business, maybe an office set behind the bar, an unknown number of employees, male and female, on the premises.

  And five armed outlaws who’d be glad to use the hallway innocents as human shields.

  Bishop and Thorne eased down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder, stopping just before they reached the beaded curtain. They waited, listening and barely breathing, for a danger signal that would start the shindig.

  Half a minute later, Mr. Dixon shoved in through the batwing doors, with Sullivan and Melville coming in behind him. Turning to his right, or Bishop’s left, their boss called out, “Is anybody home?”

  * * *

  * * *

  FINCH USED THE stubby muzzles of his borrowed scattergun, giving the bar’s proprietor a shove between the shoulder blades and hissing at him, “Get out there!”

  “Coming right up!” called Grover Botkin as he cleared the office doorway, stepping out behind the bar. “What can I do for you fine gentlemen today?”

  Only three gunmen visible in the saloon from where Finch stood, off to the side of Botkin’s door and peering through the space between the panel and the jamb. That meant the other two were either waiting on the street outside, or else . . .

  Circling around in back. Of course, goddammit!

  “We hope to find some customers of yours,” one of the new arrivals said. “Just missed ’em at the restaurant, I’m told, so—”

  Amos fired one barrel of the twelve-gauge into Grover Botkin’s lower back, bouncing him off the bar’s backside to sprawl out supine on the polished floor. Finch aimed his second buckshot round in the direction of his enemies but doubted he’d hit any one of them, the way they ducked and dove for cover.

  Gunfire suddenly erupted from the second story’s catwalk set above the bar and gaming room, one bullet shattering a window facing on the street, another plunking into the upright piano, followed by a snapping, twanging noise of strings and hammers being torn apart. A heartbeat later, three rifles began returning fire from the barroom, one of their bullets buzzing like a wasp by Finch’s ear.

  He ducked and hunkered down behind dead Grover Botkin’s desk, a solid piece of lumber, making ready to defend himself. First thing, he tossed away the useless scattergun and raised his Henry rifle, looking over iron sights toward the larger room beyond, already filling up with gun smoke.

  He was cornered, dammit—or was he?

  A hasty backward glance revealed a doorway he’d neglected to notice while he was giving Botkin orders in the crowded office, moments earlier. Where did it lead? Finch hardly cared, so long as he could flee in that direction, looking for a better vantage point from which to blast his enemies.

  Or just to get the hell out of the Gem and double back to reach the livery. His grulla waited for him there; he could take whatever cash was handy for the road. It meant no profit from the stolen animals he’d risked so much to gain, but that was life.

  You won some and you lost some. Ultimately, all was lost.

  Cursing underneath his breath, Finch edged back toward the door and cleared it, stepping into the Gem’s kitchen area.

  * * *

  * * *

  GAVIN DIXON SQUEEZED off a round from his Winchester, caught one of the rustlers breaking from one upstairs bedroom to the next in line, and brought him down. No way of telling whether he had scored a killing shot, but when the outlaw didn’t rise or start to crawl away, Dixon assumed he must be wounded bad enough to take him out of play.

  One down and four to go, if he believed young Billy Campbell from the livery. He couldn’t think of any reason for the kid to lie, but had he bothered counting accurately when the gang rode in that morning?

  Probably. Six saddled horses, one without a rider on arrival, brought the total down to five. It didn’t take a genius to cope with that arithmetic.

  So, call it four now, even if the man he’d drilled was still clinging to life.

  Melville and Sullivan were keeping up a steady fire, Whit crouched behind the barroom’s vertical piano, Deke behind an upturned poker table made of pine that offered less resistance to high-powered slugs than Melville’s choice of cover. Neither one of them was wounded yet, but if they couldn’t reach the stairs and close in on their elevated adversaries, that could change in nothing flat.

  Unbidden, Dixon thought about the herd he’d left behind to run this killing errand, wondering if he would ever make it back again. Presumably, if he was killed, it wouldn’t matter to him anymore, but would that mean his life came down to bitter nothing in the end?

  To hell with that. Staying alive meant taking each new moment as it came.

  If Sullivan and Melville couldn’t budge, with Thorne and Bishop nowhere to be seen so far, Dixon decided he would have to rush the stairs himself. Why not?

  A few short yards across open floor with three or four men taking potshots at him. What could possibly go wrong?

  More to the point, how could he not risk it, when failure meant the loss of damn near everything he owned.

  No point in calling out to Whit or Deke, alerting their opponents to his plan. Dixon launched from a crouch into a full-tilt sprint, watching the catwalk overhead as he drew closer to the staircase.

  A shadow stirred beyond one of the doorways serving cribs upstairs and Dixon winged a shot in that direction, his .38-40 slug peeling back floral wallpaper. Nothing to show for that, but then he reached the stairs and started climbing in a rush, energized by the fight and wondering if that alone would keep him on his feet and moving, should he catch a bullet.

  Better not to test that proposition, if he could avoid it.

  On the second-story landing, Dixon started moving toward the cribs, no longer running now, taking his time and watching out for ambushers.

  A few
more steps now, and the enemy would be within his reach.

  * * *

  * * *

  A NOISE FROM THE kitchen behind him startled Toby Bishop as it was empty when he’d checked it only a moment earlier.

  Thorne heard the sound as well, was doubling back when Bishop raised an open hand to stop him, pointing back toward the barroom and mouthing, “Go ahead.”

  Isaac cocked one eyebrow at him, doubtful, then shrugged and kept on going to the large room that had turned into a shooting gallery. Bishop retreated toward the kitchen door and paused there, listening as best he could without pressing his ear against the door itself.

  Why give a lurking enemy the chance to drill him through his head?

  The sound of scuffling feet repeated, drawing closer. Bishop took a breath and held it, gave the kitchen door a flying kick, and followed through behind his Yellow Boy, reentering the reek of frying fat and beans.

  A man he’d never seen before stood facing him, a Henry rifle in his hands. He didn’t say a word, just snapped the gun’s butt to his shoulder, index finger slipping through the Henry’s trigger guard.

  Unlike the Winchesters it had spawned, the Henry had no wooden forestock to protect a shooter’s hand from barrel heat in a protracted fight. Beneath the barrel lay its magazine, front-loaded—yet another deviation from the Winchester design—containing fifteen rimfire cartridges, allowing one more in the chamber for a start.

  He didn’t give the startled outlaw time to fire. As soon as Bishop glimpsed the man and saw he wasn’t one of Mr. Dixon’s hands, he drilled a bullet through his adversary’s throat and slammed him back against the kitchen wall beside the entryway he’d used. The dying man spat blood and triggered off a shot as he slid down the wall, striking a copper pot atop the kitchen’s stove.

  Bishop considered shooting him again but didn’t need to, once he’d seen the light of life wink out behind dull staring eyes. Out in the barroom, half a dozen shots followed his own, then tapered off to nothing.

  Who’d come out on top?

  He figured there was no time like the present to find out.

  Pumping his rifle’s lever action, Bishop eased into the corridor and moved down to the beaded curtain that made visions of the barroom shimmer like a fading dream. This time around, though, what he saw as he emerged was closer to a nightmare.

  Everyone that he’d arrived with was alive and circling. Bishop saw some blood soaking through Sullivan’s left shirtsleeve, but it didn’t seem to bother him, and Toby took it for a grazing wound. Raising his eyes, he counted three corpses and saw a spot where someone had crashed through the catwalk’s wooden railing. Shifting to his left, he found the last gang member lying in a heap behind the bar, next to an older unarmed man, his back blood-soaked.

  “Looks like we’re all done here,” said Whit Melville.

  “Not quite,” the boss corrected him. “Let’s fetch those horses and get back to work.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BREAKFAST ON THE fifth day of their second week out from Atoka was the same as usual, with the addition of some wild mushrooms Mel Varney had discovered when he went off to relieve himself last night.

  After ribald joking as to whether he had watered them himself, he’d certified that they were edible and fetched a little book out of the chuck wagon to prove it. Chopped and fried, they’d made a nice addition to obligatory beans and bacon, with enough left over for supper or breakfast in the morning.

  Since the fight in Willow Grove, the herd had traveled thirty-odd miles farther to the northeast. They were still roughly a hundred miles from the Missouri border, but to Bishop’s mind, their wasted day had paid an unexpected dividend. Six horses formerly belonging to the rustlers they had finished off in town were part of the trail driver’s remuda now, with no one to complain about them changing hands.

  They’d left the mess for Willow Grove’s inhabitants to clean up, which mostly meant adding the outlaws and one of their own citizens to a small cemetery situated west of town. There was no preacher in the settlement, but they had managed to attract an undertaker and a carpenter who built such caskets as the town required.

  One thing that never came in short supply was stiffs in need of burial.

  And when that wasn’t feasible, as Bishop knew too well, nature supplied disposal workers of its own.

  He’d given up on counting days that they’d been on the trail. There was no profit to that exercise, but he still had a sense of progress, even when each morning’s light displayed more countryside resembling what they’d traveled over yesterday and all the days before. Ranges of hills rose and subsided as they passed, such streams as they’d encountered after crossing the Canadian were relatively shallow and slow-moving.

  Overall, if anyone had asked him—which they hadn’t—Bishop would have said they were proceeding at a decent pace, putting the miles behind them steadily, advancing toward trail’s end and closing in on life’s end for the longhorns.

  Bishop didn’t ponder that eventuality. He understood that steers were raised for slaughter, cows for milking, chickens to provide eggs or appear on Sunday’s dinner table. When he thought of death at all, it would be lives that he had personally ended or the friends he’d lost to sudden violence.

  And what did he achieve from time wasted remembering the dead?

  Nothing at all.

  He caught a glimpse of Graham Lott, remembering the prayer that Lott had offered over supper on the day of blood in Willow Grove. Such rituals, Bishop had long ago decided, served the living rather than the dear departed, whether they’d been “dear” to anyone or not. Didn’t the Bible tell survivors—in Ecclesiastes, he believed it was—that while the living know they’re bound to die someday, the dead know nothing and have no reward?

  The day Bishop first heard that message from a pulpit, he’d surrendered any dreams of heaven, guessing that the end of life was simply that and nothing more: The End.

  And since he’d ended a few lives himself, he found that somehow comforting.

  If true, that meant he wouldn’t spend eternity lounging around on clouds above or roasting in a firepit down below, troubled by people traipsing by and asking why he’d killed them years before, thereby preventing them from marrying and watching kids grow up to spawn grandchildren, using their threescore and ten years or whatever it was, had they survived that long, to see more of the world or make improvements in the little corners they’d inhabited.

  As far as Bishop knew, none of the men he’d killed were likely to contribute much of anything to friends or neighbors back on earth.

  In fact, he’d likely done the world a favor, putting them to sleep.

  * * *

  * * *

  BILL PICKERING GLANCED at the sun and checked his estimate of time against his pocket watch. It logged the hour as 12:15, which meant his educated guess was close enough.

  The chuck wagon was serving sandwiches, salt pork on buttered bread, as drovers circled past to claim theirs and moved on to keep the herd in line. The sky above was clear, no threat of any further storms as the day wore on.

  They’d lost a full day’s travel to the mess at Willow Grove and left the townsfolk there stuck somewhere between dazed and grieving. Pickering felt bad about the owner of the Gem saloon, but there’d been no way to prevent his murder by the thieves who occupied adjoining slots in Willow Grove’s bone orchard.

  Pickering was focused on today and on the days ahead—still close to six weeks if their luck held out—until they reached St. Louis. It had seemed a distant vision when they’d left the Circle K, and truth be told, their destination seemed no closer now than when they’d started out.

  Trail drives were like that, weeks of tiresome chores and heavy labor, interspersed with frantic action when some unexpected danger put the herd at risk. Most of the work would classify as boring, and it left a man bone-wear
y overnight, but Pickering would take the dull times gladly over crises where the stakes were life and death.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” said Gavin Dixon, riding up behind him on his brindle mare.

  “You wouldn’t get your money’s worth on that deal,” Pickering replied.

  “Mind blank, is it?” the boss inquired.

  “Drifting, more like.”

  “Still wishing that I’d let you go along to Willow Grove?”

  “No, sir. I understand your reasoning, and you were right about me sticking with the herd.”

  “Worked out all right,” said Dixon. “All you missed was shooting, and you’ve seen enough of that.”

  “I guess.”

  In fact, he’d seen enough to last a lifetime, but that didn’t mean he’d be exempt from any killing yet to come.

  “Maybe we dealt with all our bad luck early on,” said Dixon. “Could be free and clear from here on in.”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I don’t take anything for granted, Mr. D. For me, a day’s done when I wake up in the morning without staring trouble in the face.”

  “Guess I can’t fault you there,” Dixon replied. “It works out well for me, at least.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re just the man I need in charge, Bill. Looking on the dark side like you do, the world won’t disappoint you often. And when it does, hell, it’s always a pleasant surprise.”

  “I never thought about it that way,” Pickering allowed, smiling despite himself.

  He didn’t like to come off as a croaker, seeing doom and gloom in everything, but if it helped him do his job, nip trouble in the bud, there was a list of worse things he could be.

  “That sandwich any good?” asked Dixon.

  “Tolerable. And no kickback from the mushrooms yet.”

  “That’s good. Mel sacked enough of ’em for dinner and another round at breakfast ’fore we see the last of ’em.”