The Abilene Trail

by Dusty Richards

  The slick dust billowed in the air, and they hear the ear-shattering crash of lead into the structure, up to the ceiling tiles and ricocheting like mad hornets across them. On their backs, side by side, Ben looked over at Milly and shook his head in disapproval over the shooting. Clenched-teeth anger made sharp bolts of chill run up his face.

  “Well, we’re back in bed again,” she said, and laughed as they lay on their backs waiting for the shooting to stop.

  “It’s a diversion,” Ben said, and jumped up. He grabbed the shotgun and at the side window saw Boyd Billings, pistol in hand, halfway up the staircase. He took aim on the wide-eyed twenty-year-old’s chest. The scattergun roared so loud it hurt Ben’s ears. The black powder smoke cleared in seconds. Ben watched Billings tumble down the steps and lie in death’s arms at the bottom. A scarlet wound the size of a bucket covered his chest.

  “Gawdamn you, McCollough,” John screamed.

  “Give me the rifle,” Ben said. His leg handicapping his gait, he tossed Milly the shotgun as he hobbled to the front window, hoping for a shot at the outraged Coulter. She brought him the Spencer.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Riders are coming,” he said, the gun’s ringing still in his ears.

  “Who could that be?”

  “Might be my crew. I don’t want them to ride into a trap.”

  “How we going to warn them?” she asked, frowning, her thin brows drawn.

  “Go to shooting like hell when they get close to put them on guard. Get me those tubes off the bed.”

  “Sure.”

  Ben crossed to the other side of the window. He could see the riders’ dust. They were about to enter the town perhaps a block away. He switched sides and started shooting into the street, raising a cloud of dirt that would upset anyone, he figured. Then he loaded another tube into the rifle’s butt and worked the lever rapid-fire.

  “You think you warned them?” she asked. Her hand was on his shoulder as they waited in the cloud of black powder smoke. They heard no sounds of horses.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Chip called out.

  “Coulter’s got me treed!” Ben shouted back.

  “They down here?”

  “They were.”

  “You all right, Ben?” Mark yelled at him from the street.

  “Fine, go up into Doc’s office. See how Tad is.”

  “Tad?”

  “Your brother,” Millescent yelled. “And you others get up here; this big galoot is about to pass out on me. He’s been shot.”

  Chapter 27

  Ben had the crutch under his right arm to keep weight off his leg. He was looking at Mark and Chip sitting their horses.

  “You boys remember, those rivers deserve respecting. Treat his cattle like they were your own. Don’t take the first offer either.”

  “We won’t,” Mark said. “We think we can get up there before the weather turns bad this fall,” Mark said. “Hap and the boys are going to be mad waiting on us up there.”

  “Knowing Hap, he might start out without you,” Ben said, and nodded at Milly, who came out to join him, drying her hands.

  “Tad’s coming here next week,” she said. “Doc says he’s recovering fine. Tad can help old crip here and they both can get well together.”

  “Thanks, ma’am,” Chip said, and touched his hat.

  “Ben, we’ll be thinking about you,” Mark said. “And make Tad mind.”

  “I will. You boys better ride. Daylight’s burning,” Ben said.

  He stood with Milly beside him and watched the two gallop away. It was risky business going north this late in the year, but the man who owned the cattle wanted the boys to try to get them up there and sold. They’d learn a lot. A hell of a lot.

  “Well, I’m glad they have Coulter and the other two in jail,” she said. “One less thing for you to worry about.”

  “Me worry?” Ben laughed, and started back into the house after her.

  When she reached the wood cook range, she turned and put her hands on her hips. Wearing a proper dress for a rancher’s wife, blue with ruffles down the front, she looked half civilized, Ben decided.

  “Ben McCollough, you still set on us getting married?”

  “Millescent, I’m dead serious.”

  She ran over and hugged him. “I am, too.”

  Epilogue

  Amid the tall untrimmed grass stems and dry weed stalks, Ben and Millescent McCollough’s graves are side by side at the Stallings Schoolhouse cemetery. His marble marker says, Capt. Benjamin McCollough, Army CFSA, “Best man ever went up the Abilene Trail.” Died June 10, 1898. Beside him is her marker, which reads, Millescent Jane McCollough, “The woman who tamed him.” She preceded him in death by five years.

  Tad Fulton, their stepson and the only heir to the eight-thousand-acre ranch, used the MC brand until his death in 1936. His son, Benjamin, passed it on to his boy, Benjamin the third, who still uses the MC hot iron on his cattle to this day in Kerr Mac County, Texas.