Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats

by William W. Johnstone

  “No!” Reilly cried as he and the Texans saw the man fall. “He was so close!”

  “He’s not giving up,” Bo said as the horse bolted on past them. The man had scrambled to his feet and now ran desperately toward safety, his arms pumping and his legs flying back and forth.

  His valiant effort was doomed to fail, though. The edge of the rock slide caught him. A rock the size of a loaf of bread crunched into his side and knocked him off his feet, sending him sprawling in the trail. A larger boulder rolled over the lower half of his body. His head and shoulders jerked up involuntarily, and his mouth opened wide in an agonized scream that was swallowed up by the avalanche’s roar. More rocks crashed around him, and dust and dirt threatened to cover him up completely.

  No more than two minutes had passed since the first warning rumble. That was how little time it took for devastation to occur. That was how quick calamity could pass, too, because as the rock slide reached the more level terrain west of the trail, it ground to a halt. Dust hung thickly in the air, billowing and swirling, but the roar diminished to a rattle as smaller rocks clattered down the slope in the wake of the avalanche.

  Bo said, “Let’s see if there’s anything we can do for him!” and heeled his horse into a run toward the man who had been caught in the cataclysm. Scratch and Reilly were right behind him.

  A breeze began to disperse the dust clouds, carrying them away from the trail. Bo spotted the man lying half-buried in the rubble that now covered the trail. He swung down from the dun while the horse was still moving and ran toward the man. When he reached the spot where the man had fallen, he began tossing rocks aside, trying to uncover him. Scratch and Reilly dismounted and hurried to help.

  The man had a gash on his head where the rock that had knocked him out of the saddle struck him, and blood from the injury covered the right side of his face. Despite that, Bo could tell that the man was fairly young, and the hair that hadn’t been stained crimson was the color of straw. Somewhat surprisingly, the man was still alive. A groan came from him as the Texans and their companion shifted rocks away from him and uncovered him.

  Scratch stopped working suddenly and reached over to touch Bo’s arm. He nodded grimly toward the man’s lower body. Bo’s jaw tightened as he saw the damage that giant boulder had done when it rolled over the man. Everything from just above the waist on down was crushed almost flat. The luckless hombre’s legs appeared to be broken in dozens of places, and there was no telling what had happened to his insides. He was still alive, but he was doomed.

  “Get that bottle from your saddlebags, Scratch,” Bo said as he knelt beside the injured man’s head. “We’ll try to make him comfortable, maybe find out who he is. That’s all we can do.”

  “Bottle?” Reilly repeated as Scratch trotted off toward the horses. “You’ve got a bottle of whiskey, and you didn’t tell me?”

  “Strictly for medicinal purposes,” Bo said.

  Reilly snorted. “I’ll bet.”

  Actually, it was true, although Bo didn’t waste any breath trying to convince Reilly of that. Whiskey worked about as well as anything else for cleaning bullet wounds, and you never knew when you might have to patch up an injury like that.

  Bo got an arm under the man’s head and shoulders and lifted him slightly while Scratch fetched the bottle. When he came back with it, Scratch knelt on the other side of the man and pulled the cork with his teeth, then put the neck of the bottle to the man’s lips and tilted it up just enough to spill some of the liquor into his mouth.

  The man coughed and choked, but he swallowed most of the fiery whiskey. His eyelids fluttered for a few seconds, and then he opened his eyes as the liquor’s bracing effects took hold.

  “Wha…what h-happened?” he managed to gasp.

  “You got caught in a rock slide, mister,” Bo told him. “But you’re going to be all right. Just lay there and rest for a few minutes, before you try to get up and move around again.”

  It was a lie, of course, but Bo hoped it would be of some small comfort as the man slipped out of this life and into the next.

  “W-whiskey…”

  Scratch held the bottle to the man’s lips again, but the man somehow found the strength to raise a hand and push it away.

  “Whiskey…Flats,” he went on. “Got to get to…Whiskey Flats…supposed to…be there…”

  “What the hell’s Whiskey Flats?” Reilly asked as he leaned over the injured man, hands on his knees.

  “Sounds like the name of a town,” Scratch said. “Don’t reckon I’ve ever heard of it, though.”

  “Take another drink, fella,” Bo urged the man. “It’ll help you feel better.”

  “Got to…get there…” the man said again. “Whiskey Flats…”

  “He’s determined, isn’t he?” Reilly said.

  Scratch managed to get some more of the whiskey in the man’s mouth. His throat worked convulsively as he swallowed. He looked up at Bo and said, “Reckon I’ll…be all right now…nothing hurts any—”

  His eyes glazed over, and the breath came out of him in one long, last, despairing sigh. He was gone.

  Bo sighed, too, and shook his head as he reached up to close the sightlessly staring eyes. “I reckon we can start digging a grave now,” he said.

  “With what?” Reilly asked.

  “I’ve got a shovel that folds up wrapped in my bedroll,” Scratch said. “Come on, Reilly. You can lend a hand with the diggin’.”

  Reilly didn’t look too enthused about the idea, but he followed Scratch. The silver-haired Texan got the shovel from his gear and selected a nice, pine-shaded site on the far side of the trail for the grave. He and Reilly took turns digging while Bo went through the dead man’s clothing in search of something that might tell them who he was.

  The ground was hard and a little rocky, so it took time to scoop out a big enough hole. Reilly was down inside the grave when Bo walked over carrying a piece of paper in one hand. He appeared to be clutching something else in his other hand, something small enough that it couldn’t be seen as long as Bo’s hand was closed.

  “Well, I found out who he was, and found out about Whiskey Flats, too,” Bo announced.

  “Is this deep enough?” Reilly asked. He had taken off his hat and coat, and his shirt was dark with sweat from his unaccustomed efforts.

  Scratch told him, “Yeah, that’ll do fine,” and reached down to offer him a hand climbing out. Reilly took it and clambered from the hole in the earth. He brushed himself off and frowned at the palms of his hands.

  “I’m gonna have blisters,” he complained.

  Bo and Scratch ignored him. Scratch pointed at the paper in Bo’s hand and asked, “What’s that?”

  “It’s a letter from the mayor of a settlement called Whiskey Flats,” Bo said. “Must be somewhere south of here, since that’s the direction the fella was going. The letter is addressed to John Henry Braddock.”

  Scratch frowned. “Say, that name sounds familiar. Ain’t he…”

  Bo held his other hand out to reveal the gold-plated star that lay in his palm. “A lawman,” he said. “Making quite a name for himself as a town tamer, like Bill Hickok. I guess this is his badge.”

  “Lawman, eh?” Reilly grunted. “Maybe I don’t feel as sorry for him as I thought I did.”

  “I ain’t overfond o’ star packers myself,” Scratch snapped, “but nobody deserves to go out like that hombre just did. Just like a certain four-flushin’, swindlin’ con man didn’t deserve to be tarred and feathered and run outta town on a rail, I reckon.”

  Reilly grimaced and shrugged in acknowledgment of that point.

  Bo went on. “This letter from Mayor Jonas McHale makes it clear that the town council of Whiskey Flats hired Braddock to come in and clean up the settlement. It doesn’t say exactly what sort of trouble they’re having there, but it must be something bad enough to need a tough, gun-handy marshal like Braddock to take care of it.”

  “Reckon they’ll have to find
somebody else now,” Scratch said.

  “Yeah, I reckon,” Bo agreed, but a frown of thought creased his forehead for a moment before he went on. “Why don’t you see if you can go catch Braddock’s horse, Scratch, while I get one of our blankets and wrap up the body in it?”

  “Sure thing,” Scratch said. “That cayuse was still goin’ hell-for-leather when he went past us, but I’ll bet he didn’t run too far.”

  Scratch rode off on his bay in search of the lawman’s horse while Bo and Reilly walked back to the edge of the debris from the avalanche where Braddock’s body lay. Bo brought a blanket from his war bag with him, but he handed it to Reilly and said, “Hang on to this for a minute.” Then he knelt beside Braddock’s body.

  “What are you doing there?” Reilly asked with a frown.

  Bo straightened with the dead man’s gunbelt and holstered Colt in his hands. The gun had been lying under Braddock’s hip when the boulder rolled over him, and it had escaped damage.

  Bo held out the gunbelt and weapon toward Reilly. “This looks like it would fit you,” he said. “Might as well get some use out of it, since Braddock doesn’t need it anymore.”

  Reilly’s frown deepened. He didn’t reach for the gun. “I don’t know,” he said. “I told you I carried a pocket pistol. I’ve never used one of those big six-shooters.”

  “Just take it,” Bo said. “You never know when it might come in handy.”

  After a moment, Reilly shrugged and took the gunbelt. He strapped it around his waist, and looked somewhat surprised as he buckled it in place.

  “Yeah, it fits all right,” he said.

  Bo nodded. “I thought it would. Now, let’s spread that blanket on the ground and lift Braddock onto it.”

  “That’s gonna be an ugly job,” Reilly said with a grimace. “He’s pretty busted up.”

  “You’d want somebody to take care of you properly, if it was you lying there and not him.”

  “I suppose.”

  Reilly looked away as much as possible as they lifted the gruesome remains of John Henry Braddock out of the rocks and onto the blanket. He seemed relieved when Bo rolled the blanket around the corpse and it was no longer visible.

  Just then, Scratch came trotting back on the bay, leading Braddock’s horse by the reins. It was a good-looking buckskin, the sort of mount that a well-known lawman would ride. Reilly looked at the horse with keen interest and lightly slapped the holstered gun at his side.

  “I’m carrying Braddock’s Colt,” he said. “Do I get to claim his horse, too?”

  “Might as well,” Bo said. “That’s what I had in mind.”

  “Better’n you havin’ to ride double with one of us,” Scratch said. He dismounted and tied the reins of Braddock’s horse to a pine sapling. His bay and Bo’s dun didn’t have to be tied up; they knew not to stray very far from the Texans.

  Bo and Scratch took hold of Braddock’s blanket-wrapped body, lifting it and carrying it over to the grave. They lowered it into the hole in the earth as gently and carefully as they could, then stepped back and removed their hats. Reilly had ambled over after them. Scratch nudged him in the ribs with an elbow and nodded toward his hat. Reilly rolled his eyes and took it off, holding it in front of him as Bo and Scratch held theirs.

  Bo and Scratch bowed their heads. “Lord,” Bo said, “we ask that You show mercy on this man and welcome him into Your kingdom. Grant him peace and rest from all the ills and troubles of this world, and let him dwell in Your house forever and ever. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Scratch echoed.

  “You really think that does any good?” Reilly asked as they all put their hats on again.

  “There are some as don’t believe in El Señor Dios,” Scratch said as he picked up the shovel. “I don’t hold that against ’em because every man’s got to make up his mind about such things for his own self. But tell me this…what harm’s it gonna do?”

  Reilly didn’t say anything, and Scratch laughed as he thrust the shovel into the young man’s hands.

  “That’s what I thought. Get busy coverin’ him up. The dirt’ll go back in easier’n it came out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The rock slide completely blocked the trail and extended for a hundred yards or so beyond it on the other side. That presented no problem for horsemen, who could easily ride around the rubble, but the trail would have to be cleared before wagon traffic could get through again.

  That wasn’t the responsibility of Bo, Scratch, and Jake Reilly, so after they finished refilling the final resting place of John Henry Braddock, they mounted up and rode on, still heading south. Bo had slipped the letter from the mayor of Whiskey Flats into the inside pocket of his coat, along with Braddock’s badge.

  The badge itself didn’t have any markings, so Bo assumed it could function as the symbol of authority no matter whether its wearer was serving as marshal, sheriff, constable, or in some other law enforcement position.

  “How far do you think it is to this Whiskey Flats place?” Reilly asked. He was a decent rider, Bo noted, and handled Braddock’s buckskin without much trouble.

  “I don’t know,” Bo replied. “Scratch and I have been through this part of the territory before, but it was a long time ago.”

  “Thirty years or more, I reckon,” Scratch commented. “Back then it was still part of Mexico.” He chuckled. “Remember the big ruckus we got into in that cantina in Santa Fe?”

  “You could ask a similar question about nearly every place we’ve been,” Bo said dryly.

  “Hell does have a habit o’ poppin’ wherever we happen to be, don’t it?”

  Reilly said, “Well, I guess if we keep riding, we’ll come to it sooner or later.”

  “Hell,” Scratch asked, “or Whiskey Flats?”

  “With a name like that, and the way Mayor McHale talks about it in his letter, there may not be much difference,” Bo said.

  It was almost midday by the time they left the scene of the avalanche behind, but they rode on for a while before stopping to eat a little and rest the horses. The meal consisted of cold biscuits and a little jerky from Scratch’s saddlebags.

  Reilly said, “You know, you could break out that bottle again. A couple of swigs might make this food go down easier.”

  “That’s all right,” Bo said. “You need a clear head, Jake, for what’s coming next.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  Bo gestured toward the Colt .45 on Reilly’s hip. “Let’s see how good you are at handling that smokepole.”

  Reilly frowned and said, “I told you, I never used a gun like this very much.”

  “Well, give it a try anyway.” Bo pointed. “See that rock over there, about twenty feet away?”

  “The one sitting on top of the bigger rock?”

  “That’s right.”

  Reilly squinted at the target Bo had chosen, a fist-sized rock resting on top of a stone about the size of a carpetbag.

  “Seems like it’s sort of far away.”

  “Just see if you can hit somewhere in the general vicinity,” Bo told him.

  “All right,” Reilly said with a sigh. “If you’re sure.”

  He positioned himself with his right side toward the rocks and reached down to draw the gun. He pointed the Colt toward the sky and then extended his arm to its full length so that he could squint down the barrel toward the target.

  “Hold on,” Scratch said. “You ain’t fightin’ a duel with them rocks. Stand facin’ ’em.”

  Reilly lowered the gun and turned so that he was squared up toward the rocks. “Like this?”

  “Yeah. Holster that gun and draw it again.”

  Reilly slid the weapon back into its sheath. “Shouldn’t I have the holster tied down or something? Or be wearing it lower?”

  “Why? You want to impress some pretty girl with what a gunfighter you are? I don’t see no pretty girls out here.”

  Bo said, “Just wear the holster normally, Jake. You don’t want it too low or too
high. It needs to be where you can catch hold of the gun naturally as your hand comes up in your draw.”

  “All right.” Reilly faced the rocks, took a deep breath, and drew. The gun came out of leather smoothly enough. He didn’t fumble it. But he still stuck his arm straight out and aimed along the barrel for a second before he pressed the trigger. The bullet struck the bigger rock a few inches below the target stone and ricocheted off with a whine.

  “Not bad,” Bo said, impressed with Reilly’s accuracy. “You won’t always have time to aim like that, though. See how you can shoot from the hip.”

  “The key is keepin’ your eye on what you’re shootin’ at,” Scratch added. “Learn how to do that, and you’ll hit what you’re lookin’ at more often than not.”

  “Sort of like knowing what card is gonna come out of the deck next, even when you haven’t marked them,” Reilly said with a grin.

  “Yeah, something like that,” Scratch said with a shake of his head.

  Reilly holstered the Colt, took his stance again, drew, and fired, snapping off the shot from his hip.

  “A clean miss!” Scratch called.

  Reilly flushed. “Let me try again.”

  “Go ahead,” Bo told him.

  The next time, Reilly’s bullet kicked up dirt a good twenty feet beyond the rocks. “Blast it!” he said, and stubbornly holstered the revolver and set himself to try again.

  By the time he had emptied the Colt, only his first shot had hit anywhere near where it was supposed to. The others had all missed by considerable margins.

  “Son of a bitch!” Reilly exclaimed. “Nobody can hit anything shooting like that!”

  “Is that so?” Scratch drawled.

  Bo had a pretty good idea what was coming next, so he wasn’t surprised when Scratch’s ivory-handled Remingtons seemed to leap into his hands. Scratch held the guns waist-high and squeezed off round after round, the shots coming so closely together that the explosions formed one long, rolling roar. The fist-sized rock leaped into the air, then split in two as another bullet struck it, and then those pieces shattered as well as Scratch’s slugs continued to find their targets unerringly. By the time Scratch’s guns fell silent, the rock had turned into gravel pattering down to the ground.