Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  “Dale—”

  “And I don’t care if anybody’s listening to me neither. No, I say, shooting people in the back, drygulchin’ ’em, that’s the lowest of all cowardly work.”

  “Dale—”

  “The blood of a snake runs in his veins. Why, he’s so mean he has to sneak up on the dipper to get hisself a drink a water.”

  Butcherknife finally gave up. His gray eyes fell, he made a swipe or two more at the bar with his rag, and then without another word slunk away.

  “The cowardly bustard. Rory was right. I should a killed him on sight that fust time. There at Fat Homer’s. That was a mistake all right.”

  Dale was working on yet another drink, and getting madder by the minute, at the whole rotten world, when, through the roaring in his head as well as the roaring in the saloon, he heard behind him, in the poker room, a light high voice. The voice bothered him; pulled at him. He cocked his ear. The next thing, he heard his name mentioned. Then he really became all ears. Slowly he set down his glass. Slowly his haunted eyes opened as he turned around. Standing just inside the door to the poker room was Hunt. He was talking to Jesse.

  Hunt stood with his back to Dale. “Jesse, if you think that lamb-licker needs killin’, killin’ he will get. I’ll hand that snoozer a deadhead ticket to hell. Direct.”

  Jesse stood sideways to Dale, favoring his game leg. “He needs it all right. Along with his brothers and all the rest of them thieves.” Jesse flexed his bad leg. “Hunt, I want you to make sure about one thing, though. Make him draw on you. Before witnesses in the right place. Our side wants to keep it legal.”

  Hunt said, “So he complains about some people getting shot in the back, does he? Why! That’s all he and his bunch deserves. You shoot a rattler in the back when it lays on the ground, don’t you? Well, he don’t deserve any better.”

  “Hunt, I’m sure glad you ain’t got it in for me.”

  “Well, Jesse, it is a long story and it goes back a long ways. Someday I’ll tell you about it.”

  Dale thought: “This time he ain’t going to get away. And then I kin go home to Rory and get her back from Cain, Joey or no Joey.”

  Dale dropped his hand on his gun inside his overcoat; softly cocked it; whipped around and drew.

  But Link alias Hunt was gone. So was high-headed Jesse.

  It was Butcherknife who recalled Dale to himself. Butcherknife had been watching. “Why, Dale, what made you skin your gun? Don’t you like my saloon?” Butcher gave him a grave wink with his offside eye, the one away from the crowd of bowlegs at the bar.

  Dale saw all eyes along the bar on him. Slowly he put his gun away. He swallowed. It seemed to him the click in his throat popped loud enough to be a pistol shot. He mumbled, “Guess I was just seein’ if my gun was still there.”

  A bit later, after a final drink, Dale asked, “Butcherknife, tell me, where did them two disappear to? Or did I dream them in the fust place?”

  “Oh, they were there all right. No, I tell you, Jesse heard you cock the gun and he grabbed Hunt by the arm and they beat it out the back way.”

  Dale shook his head. “And here I thought I done it softlike.”

  Butcherknife whispered under his handlebar mustache. “Maybe somebody has good guilty ears.”

  When Dale stepped outside, he found the sky all scudded over with rolling wool. He slipped on his heavy gloves and pulled up his fur collar. He untied the bays from the hitching rail, climbed onto the spring seat, backed the horses, then clucked them down the main drag. He shivered.

  He had just driven past the livery stable at the edge of town, rolling some with the load of provisions and Christmas gifts, when a woman darted out of a tar-paper shack and came running toward him, skirts lifted for easier going and shawl ends flying.

  “Oh, Dale Hammett! Yoohoo! Yoohoo!”

  He hauled up on the lines. “Whoa, boys, whoa.”

  “Dale?” The woman waved her hand at him. The rings on her left ring finger jiggled round and round. “Yoohoo!”

  He looked down at the woman. “Why, Clara Jager, it’s you, is it?”

  “Dale?” Clara’s eyes were so screwed up into tight little gimlets the pale-milk color in them became near-blue. “Dale?”

  He saw right away that poor Clara was worse addled than ever. Them devils killing Dencil had really knocked her off her rocker.

  “Yes, Clara, what is it?”

  “Will you be seeing your brother Harry on the way home?”

  “I might.”

  “Will you tell him for me that my children thank him kindly?”

  “Why, Clara, I sure will. But what for?”

  “Tell him we’re all beholden to him for the meat and the clothes and all that his boys brung me.”

  Dale stared down at her. So that crazy Harry had been around showering gifts on the poor again. You just never knew what he’d be up to next. That crazy bustard.

  Yes, and that was exactly why the poor folk and the little stockmen in the valley were beholden to him, why they found it hard to take sides against him and his Red Sash gang when doing jury duty. Harry was the Robin Hood of the West, robbing the rich and giving to the poor. It was hardly a wonder that the dummy candidate for sheriff the big augers put up in the last election lost to little stockman Ned Sine, helpless as Ned might be.

  Dale slowly wagged his head. He said, more to himself than to her, “What a sly devil he is. First he keeps Jesse’s boys from rim-rocking your sheep. Then, just as you feel properly thoughtful about it, he turns around and asks you to sell his beef for him to the railroad crews. He’s got all us honest duffers in a bind. Even Cain. So what happens? Jesse and all them big augers lump us all together and call us thieves. Including our sheriff.”

  “We’re beholden to him,” Clara repeated.

  He blinked. “Yes, Clara. Sure.” He looked down at her. She looked so pathetic, so beaten down, so broken-winged if not broken-willed, that tears began to sprinkle down his weathered hollow cheeks. He tried winking them away; couldn’t; finally had to wipe them off in his fur collar. “I’ll tell Harry,” he said. “I’ll be sure to.”

  “We can make the winter now,” Clara said. “I’m going to sew hard for some extra money and maybe by next spring we can go back to the States.”

  “I hope you can, Clara, I hope you can.”

  “Beholden.”

  “ ’Bye.”

  “ ’Bye.”

  Dale drove along. He nodded to himself under his broad-brim hat, mulling things over, burping fumes and so enjoying the rye once more, shaking his head at all the strange doublings in the trail of life.

  The afternoon faded. The north wind got colder. The sky became darker. Luckily he was driving south and had the wind at his back. By keeping the fur collar well up around his neck and his hat down, and taking turns driving with either hand, warming one inside his overcoat while the other held the lines, he managed to stay fairly warm. Occasionally a flake of snow wisped past, hitting the ground and sticking, until in some of the frozen draws the gray sage took on a strange hoary aspect, from one side a silvered white and from the other a whitened silver. Flakes fell on the rumps of the bays too. Sometimes the wind whipped them off; sometimes they slowly melted and vanished into dusty hair roots. Gradually the backs and rumps of the bays darkened over with damp.

  “All them settlers there at Butcherknife’s … dreaming of the great days to come … what they don’t know, if they want to stay alive in this valley, is that they better cut their windows high in the ranch house or someone is liable to shoot them down in the night. In bed or sitting on the pot.”

  The bays trotted along smartly. The trace chains jingled musically.

  “Poor devils. The government is betting them one hundred sixty acres they won’t live on it eight months.” He nodded inside his fur collar, his hat flopping in the wind. “Well, it looks like the valley will be full of deserted ranches in time to come. Dried coffee grounds on the stove and the bed empty.”
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br />   The trail fell away ahead. The bays picked up speed as they went through the dip. Just as they hit the bridge, a short wooden affair built of cedar logs and bolts, the bay on the right pricked up his ears and whinnied, once, as if to a friend horse somewhere up the draw out of sight around a corner. Dale hardly noticed it. The bay whinnied once more and then both horses plunged up the other side of the dip, the dragging weight of the heavy wagon once again taking up the slack in the rattling chain tugs. Both bays breasted into the sudden weight with spirit.

  Dale had just changed hands on the lines, had just got the cold hand well inside the warm overcoat, when a rifle whoofed behind him, and something, a thing like a small twig, caught at his overcoat on the left in back. It was more like a tick than a blow. He looked down at the new round rent in his black coat even as his chilled hand reached for his gun. Letting the lines go, he instinctively tried to roll forward and down into the front part of the wagon box. The horses, already going at a good clip, doubled into it. But his cold hand in its stiff glove was too slow, and he knew it. He knew too Link alias Hunt had cached himself under the small bridge, had raised and shot at him after he passed by, that it was Hunt’s horse his bay had whinnied at.

  “I knew it,” Dale said aloud.

  The second bullet caught him in the middle of the back, well up. It shoved him forward a second, and then, as the suddenly loose horses began to gallop wildly, the wagon caught up with him and he toppled over backward.

  “I knew it,” he gurgled aloud again. “But little good it does me now.”

  One of the lines caught under the broad iron rim of the right front wheel. There was a vicious jerk and the bays veered sharply to the right. They turned a half-circle and plunged into the draw with the wagon cracking after. The horses and the wagon came to a stop in a narrow part of the draw where the turn was choked with red willows.

  Two more shots whoofed under the low sky. Then the kicking hooves of the bays stilled too.

  Dale lay back, blood spilling slowly, trickling, over the Christmas packages, over the toys for Joey and the rattles for baby Cain and the potted pink begonia for Rosemary. Dale’s haunt eyes, wide open, stared up at the gray snow-sprinkling skies; gradually dulled over.

  Cain

  Cain said to himself:“I will not think of it.”

  Cain rode up to Rory’s door and got off Lonesome and went to the door and knocked.

  “Who’s there?” a quivering leathery voice called out.

  “Open up, Gram. It’s Cain.”

  “We don’t know any Openhammetts.”

  “It’s me. Cain. Open up.”

  “They killed my husband Mabry and my sons Gordon and Raymond and my grandson Dale,” Gram’s ancient voice keened, “and now I suppose it’s to be my baby greatsons next.”

  Cain tried the door; found it barricaded on the inside. “Rory? Joey? You there? Open up. You don’t need to be afraid. It’s just Cain. I’m alone.”

  Gram wailed on. “I suppose we might’s well get killed one time as another. You’ll get us anyway.” Gram began removing the cord-wood barricade, heavy piece by heavy piece. After a bit the door opened and bowed white Gram, tears twinkling on wrinkled kid-skin face, stood shivering in the blasting January wind. “Shot at. Killed off one at a time. And still no sheriff at the door to arrest the killers. Nothing is done to protect us.”

  Cain placed a gloved hand on her shoulder and turned her about and gently pushed her inside. He closed the door after them. Warmth from the blazing fire in the hearth breathed over him. It was good to get in out of the terrible cold. He kept his hand on Gram’s shoulder and shook her, gently, respectfully. “Now, Gram, now, Gram, it’sonly me. Cain.”

  “No one left to avenge our shame. No one. All my grown men killed.”

  “Gram.”

  “I’ve asked my Lord to take me, receive me, but now I suppose He’ll hardly let me live long enough to see my greatsons avenge our shame.” Gram stood shaking under his hand. Coarse wisps of horsetail hair brushed the back of his wrist. “They mean to wipe out the Hammett name.”

  Cain heard a noise in the lean-to. “Rory?” he called.

  There was more noise, a scrambling and a heavy thump as of someone removing yet another barricade. Then the door opened. The black barrel hole of Dale’s old Sharps rifle showed first. A pair of very grave blue eyes looking steadily from under a throw of gold hair followed.

  “Joey!”

  “We thought you was a Derby rider, Unk, come to wipe us out to the last man.” Joey came forward, still carrying the old heavy rifle at ready.

  Cain quick glanced at the mantel over the hearth; saw where the lad had dragged up a chair and got down the gun. Cain’s eye went back to the old gun. Lucky for the boy he hadn’t fired it. The Sharps would have kicked him out of the county. Cain said, calm as he could, “Where’s your mom?”

  “She went to get you. Gram heard yestiddy they was coming for us next. We hain’t slept all night.”

  “I see.” Cain pushed back his black hat. Shadows moved in the fore dents of his hat as well as in the hollows of his cheeks. “I just now come back from town, so Rory’ll have missed me. How long has she been gone?”

  “About an hour.”

  “She walk over?”

  “What else? They killed Paw’s horses too, you know. Them drygulchin’ devils.” Joey set the gun on the puncheon floor, stock down. His face was blue from anxious watching. “Boy, Unk, it’s a good thing you hollered out. I was all set to let the lead fly. Nobody was going to get me and Baby and drown us. We got work to do when we grow up.”

  Cain held the boy’s eye steady in his. He saw there was already more manhood in the lad than there’d ever been in Dale. It was Hammett blood by way of Rory plus some by Dale making the man in him.

  “Gram kept sayin’ that we was their next move. Like they done in Bible times.”

  Cain’s belly knotted up under his cartridge belt. He had trouble breathing. He loosened his leather jacket and took off his gloves and stuffed them in a pocket. Then he settled on his heels and put an arm around the thick-necked towhead and hugged him. “What a wild-eyed tough waddy you’re gonna be someday.”

  Joey drew back, gently, with fine childish delicacy. “I dunno about that now, Unk. I’m afraid I ain’t much tougher than baby Cain. I filled my pants too a little when I first heard you come riding up.”

  A laugh burst from Cain, ripped through the middle of his tears, shaking drops from his mustache like a dog wringing its hide after a dip. “Oh, come now, Joey. I don’t smell nothing.”

  “You’re just being perlite, Unk.” Joey gave him an adult shake of the head. “Oh, Ma’s told me all about you. Too good for your own good. Wouldn’t say son-of-a-bitch if you was to see one come out from under the Devil’s tail itself.”

  “What!”

  Gram hitched old knobs across a bear rug and touched him on the shoulder. “Are you Cain my grandson then?”

  Cain stood up. “Why, Gram, don’t you know me?” Cain saw something pass across her old gray eyes, a thing like a shade. Cain thought: “Ah, she’s gone blind. That last killin’ must have snapped something in her.”

  “Ijam? We don’t know any Ijams.”

  Cain thought: “And she’s gone deaf some too.”

  Cain leaned down, gently, respectfully, and yet with a ringing voice tried to reach her mind, far back as it might have retreated behind ruggled brow. “I’m Cain all right,” he said, pointing to himself. “Cain Hammett,”

  A laugh rasped up from her old lungs. “Why now, ’y Johnny-god, how time does fly. Ye’ve grown.”

  Joey still held the gun, stock down on the rough board floor. “Don’t mind her, Unk. Lately she’s had rats in the attic.”

  Gram tugged gently at Cain’s leather sleeve, catching it between gnarled thumb and forefinger. “Cain, you will take this shame away from us? My husband Mabry will never forgive us if we don’t remove this blot from our name. It’s four of our men now.”


  Cain caught her crooked hand in his. “Sure we will, Gram. Don’t you worry about it now.”

  “They’ve killed off all my menfolks and I have no one to help me protect my baby greatsons.”

  Cain looked around at the door of the lean-to. “By the way, Joey, how is my namesake getting along? The little weaner.”

  “Shhh.” Joey quick held up his hand. “He’s sleeping. The pore innercent thing.”

  “Ah. Good. He’s best off asleep.” Cain tiptoed over and softly closed the door.

  “I left him warm and covered up. Though he’s wet again,” Joey said.

  “Yes,” Cain said, “I know. I just now got a whiff of him.”

  Joey lowered his blue eyes. “Maybe it was just me.”

  “No, Joey, it was the baby.”

  “I’m glad you’re perlite to think so, Unk.”

  Cain’s walnut face blackened over. “This is a terrible thing they’ve done here,” he muttered to himself. “Terrible.”

  Steps sounded outside on the frozen ground; crunched on the log stoop.

  Quick as thought both Cain and Joey had their guns ready.

  “Who’s there?” Cain called, sharp, cocking his .45 and setting himself so that he’d be the first to get shot if there was to be a shooting bee.

  The door pushed open.

  “Rory!”

  “Mom!”

  Rory’s face threw open like a hand hit from behind. “Creation alive!” she gasped. She closed the log door and leaned against it. “You almost scared the wits out of me! All them guns.” Her dark eyes flared wide with deep flooding blue.

  Joey said, “Doggone it, Maw, next time answer when you’re spoke to, will you? Cain and me like to shot you down. These days a man never knows what kind of mean saddlestiff is at the door.”

  She looked at Cain. “You’re here,” she whispered. “Cain.”