Six Days to Sundown

by Paul Lederer

  ‘Me?’ the captain asked in surprise.

  ‘There are a few farms around Fort Benton, are there not?’

  ‘Half a dozen, nothing large or imposing. Why?’

  Casey told him, ‘I was thinking that if along with the cash money a little bonus could be thrown in to clinch the deal.… Sir, do you know anyone around who might have a milk cow they’d be willing to sell?’

  ELEVEN

  The weather held clear for the next few weeks. Sundown was beginning to resemble a community. The settlers’ homes, most of them only half-completed, were scattered at comfortable intervals across the broad landhold. Most were prepared to hold out over the rest of a harsh winter and begin their spring planting in a few months. The lumber that had been sold to the Reese-Fargo Company had been put to good use constructing a landing for the riverboats, and they had begun a barracks for weary upriver sailors.

  True to Bill Hampton’s promise, necessary goods were upriver in far less time than any freighter – were any willing to risk the winter snows – could possibly have brought them overland.

  ‘Funny the way things work out,’ the colonel said to Casey on one bright morning as he sat in the wicker chair on his partially completed front porch. ‘Back on the old homestead, I’m not sure we could have lasted another winter. Now we don’t have to worry about our stores getting low, needing timber or coal. The long trek was almost worth it.’

  ‘If not for the blood that was spilled,’ Casey commented.

  ‘If not for that.’

  The surgeon from Fort Renton had reset the colonel’s leg, and though it was still immobilized, resting now on a wooden crate as he talked with Casey, the pain was much diminished and there was even some hope that Landis would be able to walk again when the bones had knit.

  Marly emerged from the house bringing coffee and cookies to them. The sunlight highlighted her long dark hair. She wore a pale-blue dress with lace at the collar and cuffs. Peace seemed to have lent her a new, vivacious sort of beauty. Her wide eyes were no longer fearful, but content and confident. Casey accepted the coffee without speaking.

  They had spoken at length over the previous weeks, but it seemed now that there was nothing left to be said. Casey sat on the porch of the new house, watching the glint of the wide river as it made its slow way past the willow-clad shores. The sun held bright. Only here and there did a patch of snow remain.

  After only a few more minutes, Casey rose and stretched and reached for his hat. Without a word he placed his coffee cup aside and started walking slowly toward the river. He knew they were back there watching him go, Marly with her hand on her father’s shoulder. He had said nothing more because there was nothing to say.

  The simple truth was that he did not belong. He had not chosen a life among these people; only chance had thrown him here. He knew none of them, not really. He suspected that many of them would be happy to see him go. He was not a farmer, a town-builder, a carpenter, miller or storekeeper. Checkers was fit and ready to ride, to ride far away toward that nameless, featureless destination Casey could not define but which continued, nevertheless, to exist as a compelling goal in his mind.

  Awayness.

  That was what Casey Storm required. Already the daily routine of Sundown depressed him. People moved about energetically, antlike, laughing and shouting good-naturedly to their neighbors. Their high spirits were understandable. They had come far, fighting their way through much difficulty to find their goal: a place to settle, to plant their crops, to raise families.

  The problem was that these had never been Casey’s goals. He had fallen in with the settlers, helped them in some small way, but Sundown had always been their ambition and hope, not his. What he wanted was.…

  It was hell when you tried to name it, pin it down. It was such an elusive, restless need. Walking on, he began to feel guilty once again. Marly was taking every possible step to encourage him to stay. Not with spoken words, but with the way she kept herself, cared for him. There were times when he felt like a heel, seeing her eyes from across the room, wishing for him to give some small sign that he would at least consider staying with them. And then what? If he ever did cave in to her quiet pleading? He would only grow restless again. Months, years down the line he would slip out in the morning mist, saddle his pony and be gone before she had risen from her bed. And when she rose, her heart would be broken.

  Casey walked on, deep in troubled thought. The oak grove where he found himself shut out the sun, leaving him in cool shadow. He could hear the murmur of the river, but could not see it beyond the thicket of willow brush.

  The tall man stepped out of the shelter of the trees to block his way. Despite the chill of the day, he was not wearing a coat over his red shirt. What he was wearing was a walnut-gripped Colt .44 low on his hip.

  ‘Hello, Deveraux,’ Casey Storm said. The gunman grinned at him.

  ‘So you figured that out, too, did you?’ Tad Chaney asked. The Cheyenne gunman shifted his feet slightly, a preparation Casey did not care for. The breeze rustled through the trees overhead, and distantly a river-bird cried.

  ‘What took you so long to show up, Tad?’ Casey asked the man who had shot him down in the street not so long ago.

  ‘Little things. It’s always the little things, Storm. A man back in Cheyenne got me angry. I didn’t kill him, didn’t even try to, knowing I had this job to do. I shot him through both feet just to give him a message. Damned if they didn’t throw me in jail for sixty days. Can you beat that!’

  ‘Whatever job you were sent to do is meaningless now, Tad. McCoy’s dead. Mike Barrow is dead. Joe Duggun has fled for parts unknown.’

  ‘Oh, I know that, Storm.’ The lean gunman continued to smile. ‘But you understand my business, don’t you? When a man is paid to do a job, he does it. Or he doesn’t get hired again. I’m holding two hundred dollars of Duggan’s money given to me to kill the man who was wagonmaster for these sodbusters.’

  ‘That wasn’t me,’ Casey answered stiffly.

  ‘That’s not what they tell me,’ Tad Chaney responded. ‘Matter of fact while I was still in jail I got a note from Joe Duggan. You were the man he named.’

  ‘Leave it be, Tad. They’re all dead or gone. Pocket that two hundred and ride out. No one will ever know.

  ‘I’ll know,’ Tad Chaney said, his voice gathering menace. ‘And you would. Maybe some night you’ll have a drink too many and start telling it around how you backed Tad Chaney down. Then I would have to come back for you. Don’t you see how it is, Storm?’

  ‘No,’ Casey said honestly, ‘I don’t.’

  The day held silent; they were as isolated as if they had been on the moon. The loon cried again from the river. Chaney shifted his feet again, only slightly, but he was ready now, that was clear.

  ‘So long, Storm,’ the gunman muttered, ‘unless you’ve gotten a lot better since you left Cheyenne.’

  Astonishing Casey, Tad drew first. His movement was fluid, rapid and Casey saw the muzzle of Tad’s Colt issue red-gold flames as a .44 slug slammed into his body beneath the collarbone, spinning him half around. Perhaps the impact of that first bullet saved his life, because as Casey pawed for his own sidearm, Tad’s second bullet, intended for Casey’s heart, missed, ripping through the back of Casey’s buffalo coat to groove a searing wound across his back.

  Casey was already staggering, and now his knees folded up as he struggled to draw his own weapon, and his face slammed into the half-frozen earth beneath the trees. Bent in half, he brought his revolver up under his left arm and fired with desperate randomness. The bullet sang off into the trees, doing no damage.

  Casey could hear Tad, still muttering something, approaching him where he lay. Casey flopped over on to his back and fired directly upward. His bullet caught the Cheyenne gunman beneath the chin as he stood over Casey with his pistol ready to finish the job. Tad Chaney flung out his arms and staggered back, his eyes puzzled, the lower half of his face nearly gone. Tad raised
his revolver again, but he did not have the strength left to force muscle and sinews to obey his command to kill.

  Tad simply folded up, going to his knees and then flopping on to his side to lie still against the ground, his gun inches away from his deadly fingers. Casey studied the man in awe. Tad Chaney could not be killed. He was too tough to die. Everyone said that. Casey felt like dragging himself to Tad’s body and whispering into his ear – ‘You see, no one’s that tough,’ but then the shock began to set in and he found that he could not rise. Nor could he crawl or call out for help. He had been right, he thought as he lay curled against the cold ground, blood leaking from his wounds, his own world spinning slowly away into darkness. I was right, Tad.

  No one is that tough.

  There was a bustle and a fuss and the hushed voices of people around him. Casey opened one eye, winced as sunlight struck it and closed it again. ‘Draw the curtains,’ someone said. After a few minutes Casey opened his eyes again to find Doc hovering over him, his mouth grim with determination.

  Casey was lying on a bed; how he had gotten there he did not know. Peering into the now-shadowed room he recognized it as the half-finished bedroom of the Landis house. In the doorway he saw the colonel, leaning on a crutch, his face creased with concern. And Marly!

  Yes, Marly was there, doing something at a basin in the corner. She turned hopeful eyes toward him and resumed her work.

  ‘Who was it, son?’ the colonel asked, as Doc finished tying a knot in a bandage across Casey’s chest and shoulder.

  ‘Deveraux,’ Casey managed to say through parched lips.

  ‘I wondered what had happened to him.’

  ‘Scat, Colonel,’ Doc said sharply. ‘You’re not helping any.’

  ‘You’re right, Doc,’ Landis agreed. ‘And it looks to me as if you’ve done about all that you can do for now, too. Why don’t you join me on the porch and let the healing begin?’

  Doc nodded, rising from his task. The colonel hobbled from the room, Doc behind him. Marly remained behind. She smiled fleetingly, weakly, as she approached the bed and seated herself in the chair Doc had just vacated. She waved a hand around the room and said, speaking in a nervous, rushed voice, ‘Once we get it painted it’s going to be fine.’ Looking at the curtains which fluttered in the cool breeze, she told him, ‘Bill Hampton has promised to try to ship us some window glass on the next boat upriver. That will make a difference.’ She sat with her head half-bowed, her fingers interlaced. Casey managed to mutter:

  ‘Bill’s a good man.’

  ‘Yes he is, he really is. As a matter of fact, Casey,’ Marly said hesitantly, her eyes still turned down. ‘I spoke to him just this afternoon. He told me that when you’re well … if you were interested … he could offer you a job as guide for the freight wagons through to Fort Benton. I mean if you would be interested!’ she finished with a rush.

  ‘I’d have to think about it,’ Casey said, from behind closed eyelids. He was hurting, yet also drowsy. He wondered if Doc had administered morphine.

  ‘Not only that,’ Marly continued brightly. She was now on her knees beside his bed, holding his hand. Casey could see the dampness in those wide hopeful eyes of hers. ‘I talked to Captain Demarest. There might even be an opening for you as an army scout … I mean, I know you have to keep moving, Casey, that you need to be out in the open, roaming free. I am trying.…’ Her voice broke and now she began to sob softly, clinging to his hand with both of hers.

  ‘I am trying to find some work that you would like to do, Casey! Some place to be that would make you happy.’

  He tried to lift her hand to kiss it, but found he did not have the strength to do even that just then. Instead he smiled and told her, ‘I think I have already found that place, Marly. I suppose I was too blind to realize it, but I know now that I have finally found it.’

  Marly bowed her head and continued to hold his hand as Casey closed his eyes again to sleep away the pain and his foolish doubts.

  About the Author

  Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Owen G. Irons

  Cover design by Michel Vrana

  ISBN: 978-1-4804-8786-4

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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