The Carroll Farm Fight

by Greg Hunt

  THE CARROLL FARM FIGHT

  THE CARROLL FARM FIGHT

  GREG HUNT

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2017 by Greg Hunt

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Hunt, Greg, 1947– author.

  Title: The Carroll Farm fight / Greg Hunt.

  Description: First edition. | Waterville : Five Star Publishing, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037335 (print) | LCCN 2016049124 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432833077 (hardcover) | ISBN 1432833073 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781432837013 (ebook) | ISBN 143283701X (ebook) | ISBN 9781432833053 (ebook) | ISBN 1432833057 (ebook)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3305-3 eISBN-10: 1-43283305-7

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Action & Adventure. | FICTION / Westerns. | GSAFD: Western stories. | Adventure fiction. | Romantic suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3558.U46768 C37 2017 (print) | LCC PS3558.U46768 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037335

  First Edition. First Printing: February 2017

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3305-3 ISBN-10: 1-43283305-7

  Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at FiveStar@cengage.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 21 20 19 18 17

  THE CARROLL FARM FIGHT

  PART ONE

  THE CARROLL FARM FIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mel Carroll was in the back stall of the barn helping Belle calve when he first heard the horses come into the yard. Old Rattler would have warned him about the approach of visitors a lot sooner, but Rattler wasn’t around anymore. The new arrivals reminded him that he needed to find himself another dog the first chance he got.

  Belle was having a hard birth and they’d been at it for hours. Over and over he’d shoved his arm up inside the cow, trying to turn the calf, and now he thought it was almost ready to pull out.

  He was covered with blood and slime and shit, but he was used to that and it would wash off. Belle had kicked him once in the head, hard enough to set off bells inside his skull and make his eyes go starry. He had a welt on his jaw that ached like the devil and oozed bright red blood.

  Losing the calf would be bad enough, but if Belle died he’d have to get by without milk and butter until he could replace her. That might not be until late fall when he had something to sell or something to trade for another milk cow. But the calf was almost turned.

  He didn’t take a look when he heard them ride into the yard, or even when they hallooed the house. He couldn’t leave Belle.

  “Halloo! Anybody about?” a man called out even louder. He didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Out here in the barn,” he answered. He heard three, maybe four, men approaching, talking among themselves. The barn door hinges squeaked as one of them wrestled it open. From the back stall where he was down on his knees working with Belle he still couldn’t see them, nor they him.

  “Back here.”

  “Step out and let us take a look at you,” one of the men said.

  “Can’t do it. I’ve got about half my right arm up in a cow.” Belle shifted to deal with the discomfort and pain, and he moved with her so she wouldn’t break his arm.

  The men came toward him, and he could tell they were being cautious. One of them thumbed a revolver hammer back. He slowly withdrew his slimy, bloody arm from Belle, and she turned and looked at him with what seemed to be an accusing glance. He rose to his feet on stiff, aching legs and tried to wipe some of the mess off himself with a piece of burlap.

  He took a quick, wishful glance at his shotgun, which leaned against a stall door across the middle aisle of the barn. A man with one of those new-style Navy revolvers came into view, pointing it straight as his middle.

  “Morning to you,” the man said. “What’s your name?”

  “Mel Carroll.”

  The man took stock of Mel, then looked down at the miserable cow. The brim of a big felt hat threw a shadow over his eyes, making them unreadable. A thick oily panhandle mustache and heavy beard covered the lower half of his face.

  “Looks like you got one stuck there,” the man said. By his way of speaking, Mel could tell he wasn’t from around these parts.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think I’m going to lose her,” Mel said.

  Standing beside the man with the revolver was a younger fellow, not much more than a grown boy really, carrying an old musket and bayonet longer than he was tall. He looked excited and a little scared, as if he expected trouble to start at any minute and wasn’t sure how he’d acquit himself.

  The third man, standing slightly back from the other two, was older, in his late forties maybe. He wore a uniform, or at least pieces of one, and a sword in a leather scabbard nearly drug the ground at his side. His gray felt hat had a rakish feather in the woven gold band, and his gray wool tunic had fancy gold buttons and gold insignias on the collar.

  “The calf was turned and couldn’t slide out like it should,” Mel explained, in case they were town men and didn’t know about such things. “I’ve been out here since daybreak, trying to help it out. ’Bout got it now.”

  “Well you don’t have to worry about your cow no more,” the man with the handgun said. He seemed to smile a crooked smile, although it was hard to be sure under all those whiskers.

  “I expect I do,” Mel said. There was something about this man that set Mel’s nerves on edge, like meeting up face-to-face with a wild animal and not being able to read its intentions. “Who are you men, anyway? A posse?” The one with the revolver could easily be on either side of the law, but probably not the boy or the older man. “You think I’ve done something?”

  “I’m Major Calvin Hess of the Fourth Arkansas Volunteers,” the man in the gray coat announced in a high-toned way. “We’re doing advanced reconnaissance for our regiment, and we will need your assistance while we’re in this area.”

  “This ain’t Arkansas, mister. It’s Missouri,” Mel advised. “Are you fellows lost? I can point the way back home if that’s what you need.”

  “We know where we are, sir,” the major assured him with a huff in his voice. “And we also know that there are two regiments of Missouri regulars and at least one regiment of volunteers moving south to confront us. Since you live here and know this country, we’ll need your services over the next few days as guide and scout.”

  “All those regiments are none of my affair, mister.”

  The man with the revolver eased up toward Mel, still pointing his handgun at him. “I’ll make it simple for you, goober,” he said. “There’s a big fight shaping up hereabouts, and it’s b
ound to become your affair right quick, whether you want it to or not.”

  “Maybe so, but I’ll have no part of it. Take your fight someplace else.”

  “Did you hear the major asking, or telling?”

  Mel felt the anger rise in him, but tried not to let it show. He figured it wouldn’t bother this man a bit to leave him gut-shot and bleeding out right here on the floor of his own barn. And there would be no one to avenge his murder.

  “Calm down, Mr. Doolin,” the major instructed, quiet but firm. “Our mission here is not to ride roughshod over the civilian population . . . unless provoked.”

  “Wal Major, he’s provoking me already,” the bearded man said, wagging the muzzle of his handgun carelessly at Mel.

  “Nonetheless, Mr. Doolin,” the major said. Then, addressing Mel, he asked, “What was your name again, sir?”

  “Melvin Carroll. This is my farm, and you men are no longer welcome here. Regiment or no regiment.”

  “I’m not interested in whether we’re welcome here or not,” the major said. “My orders are to enlist the aid of local residents as needed to serve as scouts, which I am now doing with you. And I am also under orders to requisition the horses and livestock in this area for use by the Fourth Arkansas Volunteers . . .”

  “The hell you say!” Mel growled.

  “We will issue certificates of payment, of course. Our disbursement office in Little Rock will reimburse you at fair market value for the animals taken.”

  “Little Rock my ass!” Mel said. “No one’s taking a single animal from this farm, not a horse or a cow or even a pullet.” He glanced again at his shotgun, then back at the bearded man. Both knew what he was thinking, and both knew he didn’t have a whisper of a chance of reaching it. “Now, I’ve got a heifer here trying to push a calf out into the world, and she can’t do it without my help. I haven’t got the time . . .”

  Before he could finish, the bearded man named Doolin stepped forward, pointed his revolver down at Belle and fired. Belle’s body bucked and she let out one plaintive bleat, a sound unlike any Mel could ever remember hearing from a cow. Then she lay still as blood began to ooze from the small hole in back of her still-open eye.

  “Now you got lots of time,” Doolin chuckled, “and the boys will have fresh meat tonight.”

  After that, everything happened fast.

  By the time Doolin began to swing the gun back toward Mel, the nine-inch blade of Mel’s sheath knife was already sliding up under his breastbone, seeking his heart. Mel accepted the revolver from the hand of the falling man, almost as a gift.

  The youth, to his credit, tried to react appropriately, but the long musket was clumsy and unfamiliar in his hands. He pulled the trigger on impulse and his single shot whanged off a rafter high up in the barn. He tried to swing the weapon around and bring the bayonet into play, but Mel was too close for that. Gazing at Mel, the kid’s eyes were large and teary with fear, and he drew his breath in shallow huffs.

  Mel popped the young man in the forehead with the butt of the heavy revolver, and he fell backward like a post onto the hay.

  That left only Major Calvin Hess of the Fourth Arkansas Volunteers, who had lost much of his starch and bluster as he watched Mel deal with his two underlings. He was backing toward the barn door, fumbling at the flap of his holster with hands that had unexpectedly become clumsy, uncooperative things.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Hess said. “You’ll be shot for this crime.”

  “Maybe so,” Mel told him. “But your man shot my cow out of pure meanness. He deserved what I gave him.”

  “You’re under arrest for murder,” Hess said. “I’ll see that you hang for this.”

  “So is it shooting or hanging, mister?” Mel said. “Which is it that your Fourth Arkansas Volunteers do to men who stand up for themselves and what’s theirs?”

  Hess seemed to be trying to regain command of himself and the situation, but all hope of that disappeared when he stumbled backward and sat down hard on the ground. The fall popped the holster flap open, and his revolver tumbled onto the hay beside him. Hess reached for it.

  Mel didn’t own a handgun himself, but he had grown up shooting his father’s. Once he had killed a charging razorback with it, which he thought was the best, and probably the most important, shot he had ever made. On impulse he had put that gun in Daddy’s right hand before nailing on his coffin lid. It wasn’t that he thought a man could take a gun from the grave to heaven with him, or would even need it there. It just seemed like a fitting tribute.

  He aimed to shoot Hess in the middle of his head. A body shot was safer but not always as cleanly fatal, and at this distance he thought he could hardly miss the man’s head. But Doolin’s revolver kicked more than he expected so the round spattered away the right side of the major’s skull. Hess ended up dead anyway, but it took him a little longer to cross over.

  Mel knelt at the young man’s side and checked him for breathing and heartbeat, but found neither. A rattling hiss of air escaped the still body when Mel pressed on his chest, but that was all. Of the three, this was the only one of them that Mel hadn’t intended to kill outright, but it wasn’t likely that anyone could stay alive with a dent like that in his forehead.

  “Well, hell!” Mel muttered, looking at the carnage around him.

  Five minutes ago he’d been helping his best heifer push a bawling calf into the world. Now the cow was dead, and the calf might as well be without its mother to succor it.

  Plus, he had three dead strangers sprawled out on the floor of his barn.

  Mel put his foot on the chest of the one named Doolin and tugged his knife free, wiping it clean on the dead man’s shirt before sliding it back into the sheath at his belt. Then he fired a shot into Belle’s belly at about the spot where the calf would be. It might be the least of his worries, but it was the easiest to deal with.

  Clearly something big was in the wind, and it worried and confused him. All Mel Carroll ever knew much about was the hard simple life he led on these rolling Ozark mountain acres. Even after Mother and Daddy died, he stayed on without any thought of change, rising at daylight, following a mule’s hind end down the familiar furrows, eating his simple meals alone, bedding down on the same cot, in the same tight little log home he was born in twenty-two years before.

  These mountains in south Missouri weren’t such a bad place to live, especially if you’d never known anyplace else. The soil was fertile once somebody put in the hard work to clear the trees, dig out the stumps, and haul the stones away. Daddy had done a lot of that when he and Mother first homesteaded here thirty years ago, and now Mel still added a little to the tillable acreage each year after the spring planting. The wild forested hills surrounding him were downright pretty in the fall. The winter freezes were hard enough to kill the hibernating insects in the ground, but not so harsh that a man spent all winter splitting firewood and feeling miserable.

  This war hadn’t been much on his mind, and once when a recruiter had come by, he’d hidden in the woods behind the house until the man gave up and left. He didn’t feel like heading off to fight himself, not yet, and he wasn’t real clear on what the whole thing was about anyway. Besides, the idea of going away, maybe forever, and leaving the farm to lie fallow, unworked and unattended, was a notion he could scarcely bear to consider.

  Not much news filtered back this deep into the Ozarks, especially if you weren’t looking around for it. Daddy used to buy a newspaper when they went into town, and he and Mother would read it from front to back, sometimes more than once. But now, with them passed on, whatever was in the newspapers was of little interest to him.

  There was a town called Palestine several miles down the long winding dirt road that followed the contours of the long valley. It had some stores, churches, a bank, saloons, a livery, white frame houses, and other things that he never had paid much attention to. It was three hours one way down there on the mule, and even longer in the wagon. He seldom made t
he trip, only when he needed something like an ax or plow, flour and salt, or some similar necessities. He had to take down garden produce or corn, or maybe a couple of kegs of corn whiskey, before he had money to buy anything.

  These men meant trouble of one kind or another. There was no doubt about that. But what worried him nearly as much as what to do with them was what the major had said before Mel shot him. There were armies headed this way, one up from Arkansas, and the other down from the north, probably from Independence or maybe even Saint Louis.

  Maybe, he hoped, they’d simply pass on by. But he had a bad feeling in his gut that things might turn out more complicated than that. Until now he had managed to avoid heading off to fight, but now it looked like the fight might be coming to him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mel had carefully considered the location of his new outhouse before digging the twenty-foot pit deep into the ground. It was inside the edge of the woods north and east of the cabin, downwind and far enough away to keep the smell away from his home, but still close enough that those winter morning trips in his panhandles weren’t too uncomfortable. The privy was only a few months old, so the pit beneath it was still nearly empty.

  He tipped the new wooden one-holer over on its side, then harnessed up Doc, his mule, and drug the bodies up from the barn one at a time. He felt tempted to rifle their pockets for money or anything he could use before dumping them in the hole. But his mother had taught him to respect the dead, and he felt like there might be something in the Bible about stealing from corpses.

  So he tumbled their bodies into the hole without searching them first, and threw their hats and guns in after them. Lying in a tangled heap down in the dim recesses of the pit, the bodies of the three men looked small, undignified, and no longer quite human.

  Their eulogy was simple. “I’m sorry about this, fellows, but you didn’t give me much choice, did you?”