Rustlers

by Orrin Russell

  Balum and Will remained crouched by the wall. They watched their breath escape under the moonlight while they counted in their heads to thirty. The time gone by, they circled to the rear doors and swung them open.

  Joe held the night watchman by his hair. The cold steel of his knife rested across the man’s throat.

  ‘Lucky you just took a piss outside, eh?’ said Balum. ‘Otherwise you’d have wet your pants by now.’

  The night watchman said nothing.

  ‘Keep him right there,’ said Balum. ‘Will, let’s find our horses.’

  They walked the length of the stalls. Despite the darkness inside the stable, the men knew their horses. They found them quickly. Each had chosen which mount they would take. Their spares were too much to ride out with under gunfire.

  Balum walked back to where Joe held the watchman. ‘Show us where you’ve got the saddles hung for these horses.’

  The man did not speak, but he did comply. He picked their saddles out from the lot, along with saddle blankets. Joe’s knife did not leave his throat as he signaled out the gear.

  ‘Time’s getting short,’ said Will.

  Balum and Will threw the blankets over the horses and cinched the saddle girths under their bellies. They led them out of the stalls and to the rear door portal.

  ‘Grab us up some rope,’ Balum said to the watchman.

  Joe needed no instruction. The rope in hand, he had the man lay face down on the ground. He tied his hands and feet together, as if the man were a calf at a rodeo, and wound a cord of rope over his open mouth as a makeshift gag.

  Will had already taken a seat in his saddle and clutched the reins of Charles’s horse in his hands. Joe slid his boots on, then he and Balum swung into their own saddles and waited. The night was far from silent, instead filled so completely with chirps and croaks and whistles that they strained to hear the sound of the wagon rolling down the hill.

  The little that remained from the ten minutes dragged on at great length. Balum leaned forward and spoke softly into the roan’s ear. The horse turned his head and took a step as if to turn around. He rubbed a hand over the roan’s neck and patted him. The same feeling of reuniting with an old friend came over him, and he wondered if it was the same for the roan.

  Time continued to pass. Enough so that Balum began to wonder if Charles had run into trouble above them.

  And then they heard it. The faint creak of fast-moving wheels careening down the hillside. It had veered off course and rolled to a stop between the bunkhouse and the ranch house. It sat still; forthcoming destruction serenely waiting to arrive.

  The fuses burned. The spark of flame snaked along the black cables until one of them burned all the way down to the blasting cap. The flame entered, touched the nitroglycerin, and the wagon erupted in a blast that shook the earth under Ned Witney’s compound, and blew the walls from his edifices.

  31

  Will put the spurs to his horse and yanked the reins of the other to follow. Balum and Joe watched until he disappeared into the darkness of the hillside, then drew their guns and ran their horses into the chaos at the bunkhouse.

  They rode bent over their horses necks, their feet nearly touching each other’s in the stirrups. Reaching the edge of the bunkhouse they whipped their horses into a tight turn, bringing them into the middle of a confused and frantic spectacle.

  The wagon was lit bright with fire. The explosion had blown a hole in the bunkhouse wall and the flames had begun to catch onto the timber. The ranch house had received damage as well, with it’s nearest wall scarred black and charred and smoking in the light of the blazing wagon.

  Men ran between the two buildings, their arms stretched out as if ready to grab some imaginary device with which to combat the inferno, but there was none. Others stood still, staring in shock and caught between sleep and adrenaline-spiked fear.

  The nearest of these turned at the sound of charging hoofbeats, mere yards from Balum’s roan. He had no time to evade the shoulder of the horse, which Balum drove into the man’s chest, knocking him sprawling backwards into the flames on the bunkhouse wall.

  Ahead, two more forward-thinking individuals had exited the bunkhouse, guns in hand. The closest raised his weapon as Balum rode him down. The roan put it’s chest where Balum pointed it; straight into the man’s body. He fell under the roan’s hooves, screaming as the animal trampled over him. The muscles in his body convulsed into contraction, causing his finger to pull the trigger and send a bullet whistling into the air.

  The armed companion ahead let fly a shot at Balum. The bullet shrieked past Balum’s ear, as his own gun bucked in his hand. The man spun and Balum shot into the body again, and galloped past the fallen cadaver. He heard more shots fired behind him and turned to shout to Joe but Joe was not there.

  On reaching the far end of the bunkhouse, Balum pulled his horse around and bore down on the group of men he had just ridden through. The flames, and the bewilderment of waking to an exploding wagon of dynamite, hindered Witney’s men enough to slow their reaction times. Some had dashed from their bunks without grabbing a weapon. Those who were armed were slow to understand what was happening or where to aim their fire. It gave Balum the advantage he needed. He fired the remaining rounds of his Dragoon into the armed combatants silhouetted by fire and shadow, and then he was through them and racing past the ranch house and across the open plains.

  He ran until out of sight of the compound then slowed his horse. To his left was a wooded stretch and he turned into it and drew the roan down to a walk. He paused after some distance and listened behind him for pursuit. He loaded more rounds into his revolver. His breathing came in gasps, and his hands shook, which caused him to spill some of the powder and wads. Eventually he had all six cylinders reloaded. He holstered it, and waited until his breathing had returned to normal, then let the roan continue at its own pace.

  He paused periodically to listen. When he did he would scan the wooded darkness in vain with his eyes. There was nothing to see and no sound to hear, until at one of these interludes there was. A horse, given away by the nearly imperceptible creak of a saddle. The rider rode south as Balum did, but was angled such that their paths would soon cross.

  Balum drew his revolver and sat motionless in the saddle. He cocked the hammer back and the rider froze, fortunately under a break in the canopy where the moonlight shone down.

  ‘I won’t shoot you Will.’

  ‘Jesus! Balum,’ Will said and turned towards the voice.

  ‘Charles with you?’ asked Balum.

  ‘No. We rode down through the compound and got split up. You’d already left and most of them had grabbed their guns. We took a hell of a lot of fire but it was dark and didn’t look like anyone knew where they were shooting. I saw Charles ride out. I think he took the western ridge back. Where’s Joe?’

  ‘I lost him by the bunkhouse. Some shots were fired, but I circled back and didn’t see any sign of him or his horse.’

  They stopped talking and rode south through the trees. Every so often, as before, they would pull up to listen and look ahead. Dark as the woods were, the moon had come out. With their eyes well accustomed to the darkness, a fair amount could be seen.

  They rode in short sections, more vigilant than reason would dictate. They knew this, but their nerves would not let them relax, and their pauses grew more frequent.

  The tree cover thinned until it petered out completely. Before riding out from the cover of the woods they stopped again to listen and look. They sat for several minutes, and Balum was near ready to tap the roan’s ribs when he heard voices carrying over the thin air. He looked at Will and put a finger to his ear. The boy nodded in recognition.

  Two riders came out of the plains from the direction of town. They rode easy in their saddle, talking and laughing and uncaring of their surroundings. The details of their speech cleared into audible words as they approached the treeline.

  ‘...and I ain’t even worried neither. Don�
��t matter if he is a Deputy Marshal, what’s he gonna do?’

  ‘It’s not just him. He’s got those other three with him now.’

  ‘Shit, Lester, there’s nigh on to twenty of us. I’ll take that goddamn notice and shove it up his ass is what I’ll do.’

  Balum’s ears nearly twitched as the men spoke. It wasn’t what they were saying, but something else. Something that made his head throb and think briefly of Consuelo. A memory of lying in the wet grass on his back under a moonless night.

  The two riders rode carelessly towards the treeline, so unaware of their surroundings that when the shapes of Balum and Will atop their horses were clear to them, not more than thirty feet separated the two parties. They broke their conversation off and sat up rigidly in their saddles.

  ‘Is that what you’d do?’ spoke out Balum from the treeline. ‘Shove that notice up his ass?’

  ‘Who is that?’ said the rider.

  ‘A man you tried to dry-gulch in the midst of a cattle stampede.’

  Silence answered him.

  ‘You shoot at a man’s backside, you best stick around to make sure he’s dead.’

  ‘Hey, we ain’t asking for no trouble,’ said the rider. His voice broke mid sentence like a teenager in puberty.

  ‘You already did. Now it’s come to you.’

  ‘What are you gonna do, arrest us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I don’t have time for all that.’

  ‘Well what? You ain’t gonna shoot us; that ain’t what no lawman does.’

  ‘I’m not much of a lawman.’

  The conversation stopped there. The four men faced each other from the backs of their horses. Their breath billowed out from their mouths in soft plumes of vapor that reflected the evening starlight. One of the horses snorted and stamped a foot.

  The rider’s hand dropped and he palmed his pistol. Balum drew his gun and in the same moment caught the rider’s companion, Lester, from the periphery of his eye snaking his gun from its holster.

  The head of the roan was in the line of fire, requiring Balum to lift his Dragoon higher than otherwise necessary. The extra motion took a fraction more time. Not time enough for Balum’s target to beat, for he took Balum’s bullet square in the sternum, but enough for Lester to clear leather.

  The man had drawn, cocked and aimed, but never got the shot off. A crack sounded beside Balum, and the top of Lester’s head was spread over the prairie like broadcasted fertilizer. Balum turned his head. Will’s gun was still pointed ahead of him. Smoke drifted out of the barrel in a thin weaving line.

  They sat for a moment, two men alive, two men dead, and Will re-holstered his gun. Then they dismounted and tied the two dead men tight to their horses and led them back to town.

  32

  Cheyenne lay quiet. The Palace had closed and the drunks had long since gone home.

  ‘What do we do with these two?’ asked Will.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Balum. ‘Tie these horses up in front of the jail. If the sheriff feels like stretching his legs he can bury them. You see any sign of the boys?’

  ‘Everything looks quiet.’

  They tied the two dead men’s horses to the hitching rail outside the jail and left the bodies tied to the saddles. The horses might get a bit antsy with the smell of death on their backs and nowhere to go, but it would only be a few hours till daylight.

  ‘There’s a livery on the outside of town. Let’s get our horses over there where they’re out of sight.’

  They passed the Cheyenne Central Bank, and cut their way down the crooked muddy streets to the livery. Running through the door was a chain with a false lock on it. They slipped it off and led their horses into empty stalls. They stripped the gear off, found the oat bin, and filled their troughs with feed.

  ‘Balum, look.’

  Balum followed Will’s pointing finger. Charles and Joe’s horses were standing in two stalls, still lathered with sweat.

  ‘That’s a good sight to see right there,’ said Balum. ‘Let’s go find those boys.’

  It was easy, for the men were standing out front of the Rosemonte, and whistled when they spotted their friends down the street.

  ‘Almost too good to be true,’ grinned Charles, patting them each on their shoulders. ‘Everybody alright?’

  ‘We’re ok. You guys?’ said Will.

  ‘Joe got a little scratch. Show ‘em Joe.’

  Joe extended his arm. His coat sleeve was torn from where a bullet had laced through it. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just grazed me.’

  ‘We hit ‘em hard, Balum,’ said Charles. ‘You remember that sonofabitch Douglass McCarry? Idiot that tried to give us that worthless bill of sale?’

  ‘I remember him,’ said Balum.

  ‘Well I put a bullet in his head,’ Charles said, and spat. ‘Glad it was me that done it.’

  Balum nodded. ‘There’s no letting up now. He’ll want to get his money out of the bank first thing tomorrow. We need to be there first.’

  ‘Gives us about enough time for a nap and breakfast,’ said Joe.

  ‘And barely that. I’ll see you here at daybreak.’

  ‘Where are you staying anyway?’ asked Charles as they opened the front door of the hotel.

  Balum signaled with his eyes toward the other side of town.

  Charles shook his head. ‘Too good to be true,’ he muttered, and entered the Rosemonte.

  Balum opened the back door of Angelique’s with his key and took his boots off before walking up the stairs. He pulled the curtains wide so the sun would wake him in the morning, and was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

  As soon as he had closed them, it seemed, he opened them again. The first rays of daylight were spilling over the horizon. He dressed, picked up his boots, and walked downstairs and through the curtain in his socks.

  As he was shoving his boots on, he surprised Helene coming out of her room. She jumped and covered her hand with her mouth. She wore a nearly transparent nightgown that showed the full roundness of her breasts. Balum pinched her. She giggled, and he left through the back door.

  The boys were already seated in the dining hall at the Rosemonte. Balum joined them. When the waiter attended their table he wasted no time.

  ‘I’ll take a breakfast. Whatever that consists of, bring me two of them.’

  ‘I shoulda done that,’ said Will.

  ‘There’s still time,’ said Balum. ‘Bank won’t be open yet. Still, we need to get over there and get set.’

  ‘I was thinking Balum,’ said Charles. ‘The jail is right across from the bank. Why don’t we just hole up there and watch out the window. Soon as they open it up we’ll be there.’

  ‘That’s some fine thinking. Any other ideas?’ No one spoke. ‘Ok then. Let’s eat up.’

  The sun had brought its light to the town. Their bellies full, they walked the short distance to the jail. Townsfolk were up and about their business. They caught some sideways looks, but most people kept their eyes to the ground.

  When they turned the corner at the jail Charles lifted his hand up reflexively. The two dead men were still tied to their horses at the hitching rail.

  ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Bodies stacking up around here.’

  ‘Let’s get them inside. We don’t need them drawing attention.’

  They untied the corpses and dragged them through the jail door. Balum took the key ring from the wall and opened the door leading to the cells. They carried the bodies through the narrow passageway. The two prisoners in the cell stood up and put their faces to the cell bars.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said the toothless one. ‘It’s Curt and Lester.’

  ‘What’s going on out there anyway?’ asked Teddy.

  ‘Hey you’re not going to just leave them there, are you?’ said toothless, watching the men drop the bodies into the empty cell across from them.

  ‘You two keep your mouths shut,’ said Balum.

  ‘Are w
e going to get any food around here?’ shouted Teddy as the men walked through the door. Balum swung it closed behind him.

  Joe leaned against the window facing the bank. The rest took seats atop the warped desk. Balum pulled out his tobacco and offered it around. They set the spittoon in front of them and swung their feet against the desk and spit as they passed the time.

  ‘We got time to hear some stories if you got any to tell,’ Charles said to Balum.

  Balum spat and chuckled.

  ‘Hey,’ said Joe from the window. ‘They’re coming.’

  The four of them pressed themselves against the window and looked across the street. Six men walked in a tight group and stopped at the large bank doors. Five wore trenchcoats, the sixth a tailored suit and jacket.

  ‘More of them than I thought,’ said Charles.

  The well-dressed man unlocked the doors and the party of six entered.

  ‘Now?’ said Will.

  ‘Hold up,’ said Charles. ‘Give them a minute to get the money out of the vault. It’ll be easier that way.’

  They waited, some interminable time that lapsed much more quickly in reality than it appeared to them. They could hear each other breathe, it was that silent in the jailhouse office.

  ‘Ok,’ said Balum. ‘Let’s go.’

  They crossed the street, the four of them, a light wind kicking up dust at their feet. They reached the bank and swung the doors open and stepped through.

  Inside, the banker was closing the vault doors. Of the other five, one held two bulging burlap sacks, one in each hand. All six heads of Witney’s men turned in unison. Like a carefully rehearsed theatre play, the men in each party took a couple steps to spread themselves out, while at the same time the banker jumped back and out of the line of fire.