The Abilene Trail

by Dusty Richards

  “I’ll be at your wedding. Give you a bill then.”

  “Just so you got one when you get there.” Ben nodded to the others. “Thanks, see you all at home.”

  He felt anxious as he headed for the livery on the far side of the square. The old Alamo church belfry stood out against the starry sky as he took large strides. Jenny, I’m coming.

  Chapter 25

  Ben felt the heat of the morning rising from the ground as he short-loped Roan. It was less than two miles to Jenny’s. Anticipation coursed through his veins. So close, so near to her. The drum of Roan’s hooves on the ground made a song. He could hardly wait to hold and squeeze her, tell her all the news of the drive, and just be in her company.

  He rode into the yard and blinked. Something was wrong. The place looked deserted. He bolted off of Roan and ran for the porch. When his hand touched the door, it swung open and he stared inside.

  There was no smell of her cooking or perfume when he stepped inside. He even saw traces of cobwebs on things; no one had been here in some time. Were she and the boys at his place? He rushed outside, consumed with fear, swung aboard Roan, and rushed for the MC.

  He crossed the creek, pushing the hard-breathing Roan, and saw no activity around the home place, no horses in the corrals. Where was she? He dropped from the saddle; the hard ride over the past forty-eight hours had sapped him. Not finding her only added to his confusion.

  He ducked the lintel and pushed the door in. No one had been there either recently. What in the devil was going on? Perhaps if he caught another ranch horse . . . Roan was tired, done in. Maybe Deputy Kilmer could tell him where she was at, though dread knotted his stomach over his suspicion of the truth.

  He rode the roan down in the meadow and roped a fresh pony—the dun mare that Billy Jim had used to break the mules. He saddled her and left Roan to rest. In a long lope he headed for Teeville. Jenny, I’m coming. Lord, make her be all right.

  It was past sunset when he rode up to Kilmer’s small frame house on the edge of town. He dismounted after checking around and headed up the path to the front door.

  “That you, Ben?” the deputy asked, wiping his face on a napkin and getting up from his supper table.

  “What’s happened?” Ben asked, nodding to the man’s wife.

  “Ben, you better sit down. I’ve got some hard news for you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Jenny Fulton’s dead. Her youngest, Ivory, is dead, and the middle boy, Tad, is over at Doc’s. He may not live.”

  “What happened?”

  “According to Tad, Coulter came by with several of his kin. Jenny threatened them with a shotgun. Someone shot her. Tad said it was Harold did the shooting. Coulter said if he couldn’t have her, no one would. Then the bunch shot the boys so they couldn’t talk. Tad’s alive, but . . . well, he might not make it. Been touch-and-go for months.”

  “Did you arrest them?”

  “Only evidence I got is that boy’s say-so against six or seven of them.” Kilmer shook his head. “Don’t go get it in your head to revenge this. Let the law work.”

  “Work? When did they bury her?”

  “About the fifteenth of May.”

  “Why didn’t you wire me?”

  “How in the devil was I supposed to know where you were?”

  “Coulter and his bunch still out on the loose?”

  “Yeah, sorry as that sounds, they are.”

  “What’s the sheriff say?”

  “We ain’t got much of a case. Where you gong?”

  “To make a case.” Ben hurried outside and ignored Kilmer’s warning. He bounded into the saddle and headed for Doc’s. He wanted a list of their names from Tad.

  Doc’s office was above the saddle shop. He left the dun in the alley so no one recognized her and made the stairs two at a time. Through the glass pane in the door he saw no one was inside and twisted the knob. Once in the office he headed for the room where Doc kept patients.

  Slowly he opened the knob and pushed in the door. Light from the office flooded in onto the bed, and Ben looked shocked at the snowy, drawn face of the boy.

  “Ben?” he asked in a cracked voice. “Ben, that you?”

  “Yes,” he said, and knelt beside the bed.

  “Ben, I tried to stop them. Tell Mark I really tried. I got one with a pitchfork—but they shot Ivory in the head, Ben.”

  “Who was there that day, Tad?” Ben took out his tally book.

  “John Coulter, Sam, his brother. Martin and Boyd—” Tad’s coughing cut off his speech. “Them’s the Billings brothers.”

  Ben nodded. He hoped this effort would not set the boy back. The way the coughing racked him, he wondered if his lungs had been riddled.

  “Dude . . . Pickett, Curly Morgan.” Tad shook his head on the pillow as if to try to and clear it. “Rusty was there.”

  “Stevens?”

  “Yeah, him. Ben, I’ve had lots of fever. But I seen them all there. Coulter shot Mom like she was a dog.”

  “Rest easy. Mark will soon be back to take care of you. He’s on his way now.”

  “Oh, good. But will he blame me for what happened?”

  “No, Tad, he won’t blame you. Nothing you could have done about it. Rest now. I’ll be back and we’ll talk some more.”

  “Ben? I’m sure glad you’re here. I worried you’d never come back.” Tears began to roll down the boy’s pale cheeks.

  “I’m back, and we’ll settle this.”

  “I know you will. They buried her and Ivory up by the Stallings Schoolhouse.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said, and left the room, closing the door behind him. Doc must be off making rounds. He’d need to locate the killers next. Heading out of the office, he jammed the tally book in his vest pocket.

  He rode the dun out to the schoolhouse and found the two mounds in the starlight, settled down by the rain and the months since their interment. He struck a match and read her name on the faded board cross. Jenny Fulton.

  A knot crawled up his throat and threatened to choke him. His vision grew blurry and all he could manage to shout was, “Why, Jenny?”

  Sunup came peeking through the cedars and struck on the low-roofed cabin of squared logs. A man in his underwear with a smoker’s cough came out barefooted and started to relieve his bladder ten feet from the front door.

  “Curly Morgan?” Ben asked, sitting on the bench with his back to the wall.

  “Who—”

  “You were there the day they shot her and the boys, weren’t you?”

  “Huh?” The man whirled and his eyes flew wide open. “I never—”

  “Never what? Shot her? Harold did that. You shot that little boy in the back of the head, didn’t you?”

  “No!” His voice quavered. “That was Rusty. I swear to Gawd, I never wanted to be there. I told them to stop. I said we’d all be in trouble; they never listened.”

  “You been keeping bad company, Morgan. Them Coulters your cousins?”

  “Yeah, but I never knowed what they aimed to do when they rode by that place. Harold said she was sweet on him. McCollough, I swear to Gawd I never knew nothing he planned to do that day.”

  “Just sort of happened when she got out the shotgun, huh?”

  “No! I couldn’t believe he shot her. Harold went crazy—I mean lost his mind. Then his brother Sam said, ‘We got to get them boys; they’s witnesses.’ ”

  “Who got the pitchforking?”

  “Martin Billings. Course, they couldn’t take him to the doc here. Took him clear to Mason. Some old German doctor worked on him up there—he ain’t done no good either.”

  “I’ll tell the boy he did do some good, huh?”

  Curly batted his eyes at Ben. “He still alive?”

  A black cloud flew over Ben’s mind. “Why, was Harold going to kill him too?”

  “Thought he—”

  “Gawdamn you!” Ben cursed and gritted his teeth, and the navy Colt spoke in his hands. He knew what the m
an intended to say—Coulter was supposed to have eliminated Tad already. Curly threw his arms up and flopped over on the ground with three .44 slugs in his chest. Through a haze of gunsmoke, Ben could see the red blood spill out onto the man’s gray underwear.

  They intended to silence the boy. They might have already done that. He’d better get back to Teeville. He could hope he wasn’t too late. He gathered up his reins and rode hard for town.

  Chapter 26

  At midday, out of breath, Ben hurried up the stairs to the doc’s office. Nothing looked out of place in the street. He took the stairs two at a time and burst in to see the shocked face of the physician and a lady sitting in a seat in front of him.

  “The boy?” Ben gasped. “He all right?”

  “Certainly, why?” Doc asked, standing up.

  “ ’Cause the Coulters are planning on killing him.”

  “He’s no threat to them.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry you’re a party to this, but a gang member, Curly Morgan, told me so.”

  The lady gasped and held her kerchief to her mouth.

  “I’ll go get Kilmer and have him guard the place. Mrs. Bowman, take these pills and maybe it will go away.” Doc handed her a small bottle. “One in the morning, one at night. I better go get that deputy. Excuse me.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” she said, and rose. She nodded to Ben and started for the door. The physician was putting on his coat. At the sounds of shouting, Ben reached over caught her by the arm and pulled her back. The middle-aged woman gave a yelp.

  “Stay here!” Ben said, and stuck his head out the door to look down the stairs, but he could not see what the ruckus in the street was about. Gun in hand, he started down the stairs. There were shots and then someone familiar reined his horse up at the bottom of the stairs.

  Sam Coulter, seeing him, shouted, “Damn! McCollough’s back.”

  Ben took aim and shot the man off his horse. Sam’s last bullet struck the wood close by Ben’s hand and splintered the siding. He lost no time bailing down the stairs. He had one shot left in his cap-and-ball; he regretted not reloading after he left Morgan’s. Someone over by the store across the street drew his fire. Missed—damn.

  Ben felt a hot knife crease his leg. He was hit. His own gun empty, Ben ran for the rear and the Spencer on the saddle. Two more wild shots whizzed over his head. He jerked the Spencer out and managed to grab two tubes of ammo from his saddlebags.

  “Ben, this way,” a voice hissed. Millescent, with an impatient look on her face, waved at him from the back door of the saloon, the one husbands exited after a trip to see some dove. The blood was warm oozing down his leg into his boot. It felt on fire, but he could stand the pain up to a point. A quick check and he ducked inside.

  “How many are there?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Five or six. They’ve shot you. Got Kilmer and Doc out front. Oh, no, you’re bleeding.”

  “I need to get upstairs, where I can watch Doc’s stairs and make sure they can’t get up there to the boy next door.”

  “The corner room?” she asked, gathering up the volumes of material in the duster she wore and running down the hallway.

  “You have any guns in here, and ammo?”

  “There’s two shotguns down in the bar. I’ll get them.”

  He nodded, and she used a key to open the door for him.

  “I’m worried about your leg.”

  “Get the guns,” he said. “We can worry about that later.”

  A young woman awakened by their entrance screamed, but Millescent waved her from the bed and told her to shut up. “I’ll get those guns, Ben.”

  He rushed to the side window and saw Dude Pickett, gun in hand, halfway up the stairs.

  “Pickett!” Ben shouted as he took sight, squeezed the trigger, and the rifle stock slammed into his shoulder. Struck hard by the .50-caliber bullet, Pickett did a cartwheel downward, and someone took a potshot at Ben that splintered the side of the window casing. He drew back and levered another shell into the rifle chamber. At the front window, he took a shot and knocked down the mousy-colored horse Boyd Billings rode. Billing dove for the ground and scrambled like a wildcat for the porch of the millinery.

  Aside from scattered cussing, there were no sounds. The street was empty. Millescent was tearing up a sheet for bandages. A pistol-shaped sawed-off double-barrel was on the bed; so was a long-stocked one, several brass shells laid beside them. They’d do for a standoff at close range.

  “Let me check your leg,” she said.

  He stood back aside from the window, where he could view part of the street and be out of a bullet’s pathway.

  “When did you go to worrying about me?” he demanded.

  “Well, I had to choose sides, and I figured you needed help worse than they did.” She shook her head so her hair bounced. “I ain’t so damn sure now. How many are left?”

  “Three of ’em, I figure. Unless they got more help.”

  She brought a chair over and forced him to sit down. “You’re a bloody mess, you know that?”

  “Too far from my heart to kill me.”

  “Damn it, sit still. I’m going to cut your pants away from it.” He glanced down and frowned at the pig-sticker she was using to slice away the material.

  “Be careful where you put that thing.”

  She was kneeling on the floor and looked up to give him a scowl. “Sit down and get your finger off the trigger. I’m going to use whiskey to clean it.”

  “Here,” he said, taking the bottle from her. “I need some of that.” A quick swallow ran like fire down his throat and all the way to his empty stomach. The leg hurt worse than he wanted to think about—he sucked in his breath when she put the whiskey to it.

  “You always have been hardheaded—” Her words were broken off by bullets shattering the top glass out of the street-side window that was open for ventilation.

  “Got to be certain they can’t get up those stairs to Doc’s. They’re wanting to kill Tad Fulton so he can’t testify.”

  She nodded and wrapped the bandages tight around his exposed leg. Then she tied them off with a hard pull.

  “That should stop some of the bleeding. I think everyone has fled this building. I’ll try to make sure no one comes up the stairs.”

  “Good.” He looked at the blood all over her once-fresh duster.

  “I know, I’m bloody, but that will wash away. So don’t you bleed to death before this is over.” She stood up, holding her hands out, and headed for the pitcher and bowl on the stand.

  He turned his attention to the street out front. Where was Kilmer? She’d said they had shot the deputy. No telling. He caught sight of a hat at the edge of the millinery porch roof and took aim. Three shots answered him, but by then he was back enough that they either plowed into the wood siding or the tin tile ceiling above him.

  When he looked again she was on the bed dressed only in a corset. Obviously she’d shed the cumbersome duster. With care she was loading the double-barrel.

  “There’s only three left out there by my count,” he said, crossing to look out the side window at Doc’s staircase.

  “Who’s that again?” she asked, tugging up the corset with both hands to hold herself in it.

  “John Coulter, Rusty Stevens, and Boyd Billings. Morgan said that Martin Billings might die from the pitchfork wounds Tad gave him.”

  “I hadn’t seen him in days. That’s why, I guess,” she said, standing to the side of the front window and watching the street.

  “They’re under the millinery porch.”

  She nodded and used her hands to push her hair back. He took a good look at her before he turned back to watch the stairs. Less than five feet tall, wearing a snow-white corset that only defined her figure, she still took his breath—even at times like this. Damn. Nothing was down there but the lengthening shadows of afternoon.

  “Where is everyone?” she demanded with her bare shoulders pressed to the plaster wall. “Someon
e surely knows by now what those bastards are doing. Isn’t there anyone in this town with guts enough to help you?”

  “You,” he said, and turned back to check on the stairs.

  “All right, I’m a fool.”

  Ben turned and frowned at her words—she looked crestfallen, with her chin down.

  “I’m the damn fool,” she said.

  “For being here now? You can still get out.” Where were they? Why didn’t they stick their head out?

  “That’s not what I’m talking about!”

  “Good, spill it. This leg is biting me. Three guys down there on the street want me and a boy dead.”

  “Aw, hell, you wouldn’t care anyway even if you didn’t have all this to bother you.”

  He strode across, acting as though the fire in his leg weren’t anything, but his blood was already saturating the bandage. Either way he looked outside there was nothing in sight.

  Were they waiting for dark? No telling, but until they had him and the boy silenced, they wouldn’t give up.

  “McCollough!” It was John Coulter’s voice.

  “Go ahead!”

  “You might just as well give up. Throw down your gun and come out or we’re gonna kill you.”

  “They will anyway,” Milly said in a stage whisper that carried enough fire, Ben decided, that her words must have scorched the window facing’s paint.

  “They’ll pry my dead fingers off this gun’s trigger first,” he said to her.

  She nodded sharply. “Damn right.”

  “Won’t do no good to keep shooting; you ain’t getting us,” Coulter shouted back.

  “I haven’t done so bad so far,” he said to her.

  She nodded with a smug set to her full lips. “It’s his bravado talking. Probably drinking. He’ll get drunk enough to think he’s invincible in a little while.”

  Ben nodded. That would be what he needed. Boyd Billings was a kid. Not very tough, by Ben’s standards. Rusty was the real danger, besides John himself. So he had two tough adversaries out there.

  A barrage of shots rang out. Ben jerked Milly away from the window and wall, his boot soles crunching the broken glass as he spun her behind him. For a brief second he turned to look over his shoulder and met her pale blue gaze. The reality of the bullets crashing into the building made him back up farther in the cloud of plaster dust until they both fell on the bed.