Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  Doc’s leaving took the fight out of Jesse and Irv. They let out great breaths; leaned back in their chairs. Every man there knew what Doc’s going meant. There was sure to be bloodshed in another forty-eight hours and a doctor’s skill would be downright necessary. Furthermore, there was also the chance that Doc might spill the beans when he got back to Cheyenne. If he did, there was little they could do, since Doc’s Philadelphia family had invested heavily in a big ranch near Cheyenne. To touch Doc was to touch the powerful back East.

  Hunt sneered from his side of the room. “Just like an Easterner. Comes to a tight and he gets a case of the gunorrhea.”

  All the while, grim Daggett had been staring at Champagne’s open bottle of cognac. Daggett got to his feet and reached for it. “Mind if I sample some of your froggy stuff?” Without waiting for an answer, Daggett tilted the cognac into his mouth and took a long drink of it.

  Champagne came sputtering to his feet, his dark Frenchy face in a rage. “You pig! How about usin’ a cup or a glass like the rest of us?”

  Daggett set the bottle on the table. He drew a face. “What you frogs won’t drink. Bah!”

  Walrus got out his six-gun and, using the butt of it as a gavel, tapped for attention. “Men, I still say we ought to take a vote.”

  Hunt gave up. “T’hell with it. Jesse is right. A vote’ll split us. No, I agree now. Let’s do what the major here says, even if what he wants is a dead-fool stunt.”

  Done. It was agreed to pull out for Cain’s cabin after dark. In the meantime Mitch and a scouting party of two were ordered on ahead to make sure no one left the Shaken Grass before the main party arrived. The supply wagons were to follow as best they could.

  Hunt raged inside. For two cents he could have plugged Mitch. He hated Mitch’s sly slanted face, hated the way Mitch sat in the corner, smirking to himself because his idea had been accepted after all.

  Hunt cursed. There was now a chance that the warrant for his arrest might stay on the books forever.

  Clayborne

  That afternoon, after checking guns and horses and supplies, the major ordered all hands to their bedrolls for a nap. A night march lay ahead. Some unrolled their beds in the ranch house, some in the bunkhouse, some in the barn. Quite a few of those in the barn slept in triangles, head on each other’s ankles, to keep warm and off the prickly hay. Clabe happened to unroll his tarp and suggans in the haymow of the barn, and beside him lay Hunt Lawton.

  Clabe lay on his left side, half-curled up. It was the same position he took when sleeping with Liza. He’d been asleep an hour or so, when a rustling in the hay next to him awakened him. Opening an eye, he saw a man’s big back shuddering not two feet away. It took him a moment to realize it was Hunt’s back, that Hunt was having a nightmare.

  Half-awake, Clabe watched Hunt. He himself often had nightmares so deep and gripping, so overpoweringly real, that his shudders rattled the bedstead in its coasters. Generally a touch on the shoulder by Liza brought him out of it.

  Half-wondering if he should touch Hunt, yet half-reluctant to do so because he didn’t care for the man, Clabe lay caught between the doing and the not-doing, one eye open and the other eye closed, cozy and warm between his blankets on the sweet and giving slough hay.

  Hunt’s shudders reminded Clabe that his dog Sparky often had nightmares too as he lay sleeping beside the hard-coal burner back home. From Sparky’s convulsive jerks, from the way he sniffed and smelled as if in the grip of fierce dog passion, it was easy to see Sparky was on the chase again, or was after the bitch in heat next door.

  Clabe wondered what could be bothering Hunt. Maybe Hunt wasn’t such a dead-tough man after all. Maybe Hunt’s deadly velvet surface hid a bad conscience. A law man who was said to have a man for breakfast every morning was bound to make a few mistakes somewhere along the line. God knew that he, Clayborne Rodney, had tried to be a law man with a heart, and yet, the Lord forgive us all, he had made his share of mistakes.

  Presently Hunt’s shudders became more pronounced. After another while he began to moan; then to mutter.

  At first Clabe couldn’t make out the muttering. But after a bit, lifting his ear off his blanket pillow, he began to make out the words.

  “Get a crossfire on the door.” A really big shudder shook Hunt then. “Sorry, but I always play a lone hand. I don’t need any help to get him.” Hunt breathed loud for a moment or two. “S’all right, Maw. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll get them all for you before I die.” His back stiffened. “He needs killin’.” His arm set for the draw. “Don’t think you can stompede this officer with lightning bugs and corncobs.” His trigger finger crooked. “If you ever drop another one that hits the ground as close as that last one, I’ll crack your crust wide open.” His trigger finger trembled. “Wait. Take your time. Patience and you’ll have them in your trap just the way you want them.” His trigger finger steadied. “What? Are they coming? Hammett?” His whole body tightened. “Ah. Here they come!” His back crimped over like a stepped-on grub convulsed in agony. “Got the dead drop. Now! Now!” Then his tensed hand jumped and the crooked trigger finger worked, worked fast, almost blurring in its swift triggering.

  Clabe shuddered. The blurring trigger finger was exactly like the buzzing tail of a rattler.

  Clabe reached out a hand and shook Hunt. “Hunt.”

  Hunt muttered. “If you want to know the truth, and you want yourself a good obedient wife, you should really drown that first-born boy.”

  “Hey, you. Hey.”

  “I dreamt I went to kiss her, call her Abigail, and woke up broken-hearted with a yearling by the tail.”

  “Hunt! Hey.”

  “Wha… ?”

  “Wake up. You’re dreamin’.”

  “What?”

  “You’re dreamin’, man. Wake up.”

  “Oh.” Silence. “Ohhh.”

  Cain

  That same Friday evening, Old Bon Hamilton the cook dropped in on Cain. Old Hambone had been out wolfing and was on the way back to the Derby outfit to get ready for the spring roundup in June. He came with his sourdough keg and his fiddle.

  Cain was glad to see Hambone. A Hambone visit always meant a couple of days of first-class cooking plus a lot of fun jawing about the old days. A lot of old things would be made to happen again.

  Outside it was snowing and the four of them, Cain, Hambone, Harry, and Timberline, were ringed cozy around the fire in the hearth. Their boots were off and they sat roasting their toes. Their guns hung handy from pegs on the wall behind the door. A brown jug of whisky stood at their feet, half empty. All four took turns guggling from it.

  Harry sat on the far end, hat cocked at just the right jack-deuce angle over his left eye. Timberline sat next in line, eyes brooding strangely on the jumping fire. Hambone slouched in a hide-bottom chair next in line, his completely bald dome gleaming like a bloody dinosaur egg. Cain brought up the end near the door.

  Cain toyed with his new black-hair quirt, working it some, stroking it some. “Hambone, from your side of the fence, does Sheriff Sine look honest to you?”

  “Him? Honest?” Hambone’s head swung around from its neck anchor. “As up and down as a cow’s tail I’d say.”

  Harry smiled, easy. “He better be. Come May first, when we start our own roundup, there’s going to be a showdown for fair.”

  Hambone’s old eyes mused in thought. “Could be you fellers are a mite hasty callin’ your roundup that early.”

  Timberline touched his bearded jaw. “By the Lord, but I sure got me a full-sized toothache. Man oh man oh man.”

  Hambone got out his papers, dug up a small handful of tobacco from his pants pocket, and rolled himself a cigarette. A few crystals of strychnine were mixed in with the tobacco. Licking the cigarette into shape, Hambone asked, “Say, Cain, how’s the widder Rory makin’ it these days?”

  Cain fell silent. So did Harry.

  Hambone craned his old bald head around and looked Cain in the eye
. “Don’t you see her much any more?”

  “Sometimes,” Cain said, slowly. “I guess she’s doin’ all right.”

  “Well, Cain, I don’t know as to you, but me, if I was just ten years younger I’d build me a stack to her that’d be the marvel of the ages.”

  Harry said, “Sagebrush Mason is working for her now, you know.”

  “You don’t say. Well.” Hambone nodded. “Now there’s one mean man.”

  Harry smiled. “I hear Jesse swore a blue streak when he heard Rory hired Sagebrush. Except for Cain here, Sagebrush is probably the best shot in the whole state.”

  Cain said, “I guess she got him mostly for watchdog. He ain’t much around sheep. Like Dale was.”

  Timberline groaned, still holding his jaw. “Man oh man oh man.” His eyes closed over in misery.

  “Tim, you old moose you,” Harry laughed, “you ain’t dyin’ off on us, are you?”

  Timberline groaned. “I swear. I’ve got me a toothache built for a grizzly.”

  The others laughed. Firelight flashed across their gleaming teeth and the whites of their eyeballs.

  Cain reached down for the brown jug. “Here, take another long suck of this. Help deaden the pain some.”

  Timberline slugged down a long one. When he finally let loose of the jug his eyes looked a little glazed.

  A coyote suddenly yowled lonely and eerie outside. Cain listened to it, his ear idly noting how the call began as a series of short yipping barks, the yips then gradually coming faster and faster until they ran together and became a long rising wail.

  Hambone helped himself to the brown jug next. He guggled down a long one too. Wiping his old thin lips, Hambone happened to catch the flash of silver on Harry’s hat. Slowly a sly smile worked across Hambone’s ancient leathery face. He examined in detail Harry’s new pink shirt and new blue trousers, and finally Harry’s clean smooth-shaven face. He tolled his old head. “How a purty boy like you never got married… I don’t understand it. Cain here now with a face that looks like a used-up old chopping block… that the she-stuff here’bouts never tied onto that ain’t such a mystery to me. But you.”

  Harry seemed to like what he heard. He slid his hands in his pockets and leaned back on two legs of his chair.

  Smile still growing, Hambone said, “Harry, and I hate to say this, but Harry, after a couple of long snorts, by golly, you look so darn purty I feel like I should take my hat off to you.”

  Harry came down on all four legs. His face darkened over some.

  “Well, it’s all right, Harry.” Hambone nodded at the fire. “I know just how you feel. We punchers is jest too busy follerin’ a cow’s tail around to bother about marrying nesters’ daughters.” Hambone ran a gnarled hand over his gnome head. “Yeh, a puncher usually makes a poor married man. A sheepman like Dale, that’s one thing. Or a clerk in town like pinchpenny Alberding. But a puncher, when he gets married, he either makes a spoon or spoils a horn.”

  Cain laid his quirt aside. He got to his feet; rose to his toes and stretched long; then put another log on the fire. He stood watching the fire. For a moment the fire choked over with yellowish-gray smoke, seemed smothered, then a quick bright rim of fire moved across the rough ocher bark of the fresh log. Cain sat down and took to stroking his black quirt again.

  The coyote outside set up another howl. Again Cain listened idly, picking out the first quick yips and then the rising wail.

  Somehow, perhaps because of the lonesome coyote call, the talk got around to the question of life after death. Old Hambone advanced the opinion that there was no afterlife. When you died, that was it, he said, and there was no returning. That was why all critters, including man, fought so hard to hang onto life. If heaven was such a fine place to go to, and man believed in heaven, why wasn’t he in a rush to get this life over with?

  Cain said, quiet, “Funny thing is, he is.”

  “Is what?”

  “In a rush to get killed.”

  “Name one.”

  “Well, this Alias Hunt fellow is. He craves it. That’s why he’s in the killin’ business.”

  Hambone nodded, reluctantly. “Well, him, yeh.”

  Timberline grunted, eyes glaring at the fire. He rose in his chair. “Tell you what I think. When we die, all of us will go back to what we was before we got this life. Now take me. I know you rannies always laugh when I tell about how I was once a moose in the other life. And that’s all right. Because you wasn’t there. While I was. So I kin say. Because I was a moose. And a good moose too. In fact, so good a moose, the good Lord rewarded me with a chanct at human life in this here life. Well, you can see what a bad mistake that was. I made a botch of it. Not because being a human being is harder, and better, but because my heart wam’t in it. So I know the Big Boy up there is going to give me a chanct at bein’ a moose again.”

  It was one of the longest speeches Cain had ever heard Timberline make and he sat back and laughed.

  Hambone, however, seemed to consider it gravely. “Well, now, Cain, Tim here may be right. You never know about them things.”

  “Hey,” Cain said, “I thought you just got through saying you didn’t believe in another life.”

  “I don’t. But one look at Tim and you know some kind of mistake was made. He actually does belong with the mooses.”

  They all laughed.

  Timberline took it all good-naturedly. “You can snort all you want to, boys, but what I say is truth.”

  Harry said, “You better not die close around here, Tim. Because one of us is just as liable as not to gutshoot you to make a meal of you. Why, I can almost taste you already.”

  Timberline’s great red brows rose. “Now looky here, Harry. If it should happen I die afore you, and you’ve liked me atall in this here life, you better pay close attention to what moose you shoot, or you will be eating your old sidey.” Timberline fixed his eyes on Harry. “Here’s how you’ll be able to tell if it’s me you’ve got in your sights or just some other ordinary bull moose. See this here red hair all over on me? Well, I was a red moose in the life before this and I’m liable to be a red moose again in the next life. So watch for a red moose. And looky here.” Timberline pulled his shirt out of his pants and turned his hairy right side to the fire. “See this patch of white here? Like it was snow? Like I once had the lousy scab? Well, I had that in the life afore this and will probably have it again. It’s where some son-of-a-gun actually did take a snap shot at me and nearly got me.” Timberline’s little eyes narrowed. “I’m layin’ for him in the next life and I’m going to get him, believe you me, the blinkered bustard. Couldn’t he see I was a human moose? So, Harry, you be careful when you eat moose, or I’ll give you the darnedest bellyache you ever had.”

  Cain crimped back a smile. “Well, now, Tim, we’ll probably never run across you. So I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Timberline snapped around on Cain. “But you just might. Because I tell you I’ve taken a fancy to this fine meadow of yours along the Shaken Grass here. And I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to make it my next pasture. I made a big mistake when I sold it to you not knowing what I was sellin’.”

  Then, before anyone could make further comment, or laugh, Timberline had another thought. “Dog eat it, Hambone, there is too an afterlife. How about all them times Joel Adams came back from the dead after Irv Hornsby hung him? Seven times Irv hung him and seven times he revived him to get him to tell where he hid them horses he stole. If Joel was dead, where was he so he could come back when he was revived?”

  Hambone studied the jumping fire.

  “Or take Harry. Last fall, before Cain cut him down from his cottonwood tree out here on the yard, where was he then?”

  Cain said, “Wal, as to that, I’ll have to say he wasn’t dead. His heart was still beating. I felt it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Harry said. “Why don’t you ask me? It was me that was hung, wasn’t it? Maybe I got an opinion on what happened. Cain, I never talked much
about it, but I was gone somewhere. My ears was dead, my eyes was dead, my skin was dead, my mouth was dead, my nose was dead. They was all dead because I wasn’t here for a couple of minutes.”

  Old Hambone looked at Harry steadily. “Where do you think you was then?’’

  “God only knows. I know I don’t. Because I wasn’t here.”

  Silence fell among them. All hands repaired to the brown jug.

  Talk then got around to what the world was like before God made Adam and Eve.

  Hambone’s leathery face screwed up into thoughtful wrinkles. “I say this. If there warn’t no humans about, there warn’t no sin around either. Nor no happiness. No. Caze there wasn’t no souls around to spoil life or enjoy life.”

  Cain considered this gravely. Firelight played over his dark face.

  Old Hambone said, “And there wasn’t no talking nor singing neither. Because they wasn’t no mouth to make the singing and no ear to hear it.”

  Timberline said, “What about the birds? They was singing, wasn’t they? And they was hearing the singing, wasn’t they?”

  Hambone said, “Well, they heard something all right. But they didn’t know it was singing. Because singing is a human bein’ idee. So the birds didn’t know they was singing.”

  Timberline asked aghast, “You mean to say, as long as there was no human being ears around there really wasn’t no singing?”

  “No, they wasn’t. In fact, they wasn’t even no noise.”

  “No!” Timberline reared back on two legs of his chair and stared at Hambone in shock.

  “No,” Hambone continued, “as long as they wasn’t no human bein’ around to hear, they wasn’t no noise.” Hambone pointed at the ceiling. “If the roof of this cabin was to fall in, and they was no human ear around to hear it, they wouldn’t be no noise of it.”