by Ford Fargo
Sublette expressed a similar sentiment, saying, “If I just had my rifle . . . “
“We can still take the varmints by surprise,” Billy said as he pulled his Henry from its saddle sheath. “We’ll catch ’em in a crossfire.”
Satterlee nodded. “That’s our best bet.” He drew his revolver and held it out to the teacher. “I know you can handle a long gun, Sublette. How are you with a short one?”
“We’ll find out,” Sublette said as he took the weapon.
Satterlee pulled out his Winchester and worked the lever to throw a round into the chamber. Sam Gardner was already clutching his rifle, and Ward Sparkman had a Winchester in his callused hands. The five men looked at each other, and Satterlee nodded.
“Let’s hit ’em,” he said.
They put their horses into a run. It was Satterlee’s hope that with all the shooting going on, the attackers wouldn’t hear the hoofbeats until it was too late.
That didn’t quite pan out. A man crouched at the corner of the bunk house must have either heard them approaching or spotted them from the corner of his eye. He whirled, yelled a warning, flung his rifle to his shoulder, and fired.
Satterlee didn’t know where the bullet went, but none of his companions pitched out of the saddle and none of their horses stumbled. He hauled his mount to a stop again and smoothly brought his Winchester up. The rifle cracked, and the .44-40 slug punched the gunman back against the barn. The man bounced off and fell forward on his face, landing in the loose sprawl of death.
On either side of Satterlee, the other men brought their horses to a stop and opened fire as well. There were plenty of targets. Two more of Rogers’ gunmen tumbled off their feet.
But then the inevitable return fire began whipping around the heads of the men who had come out here from Wolf Creek. “Hunt some cover!” Satterlee yelled to them.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much cover to be found. The men flung themselves from their saddles and bellied down behind small hummocks of ground that didn’t provide much shelter. It was better than nothing, though. As slugs whined over their heads and kicked up dirt around them, they started shooting again, except for Marcus Sublette. The range was a little too long for a handgun, so Satterlee called to him, “Save your bullets, Sublette! You may need them later.”
It was a stand-off. The sheriff and his companions had inflicted some damage on Rogers’ men, but not enough to prod them into breaking off the attack and fleeing. But now with enemies both in front of and behind them, the hired killers were pinned down, unable to escape or rush the ranch house.
That stalemate couldn’t continue for long. The attackers made the first attempt to break it. Two of them lunged out into the open from the barn, each carrying a blazing torch they had fashioned from hay bound around short pieces of wood. They raced toward the house, obviously intending to throw those torches on the roof and burn the place down.
“Stop those fellas!” Satterlee called. He drew a bead on one of them and snapped off a shot, biting back a curse when he saw dust leap up behind the man, indicating a clean miss. Gardner and Sparkman aimed their shots at the other man, but missed as well.
The defenders in the house also recognized the threat. Shots stabbed from the windows. A figure that Satterlee recognized as old Tobias Breedlove leaned out for a better shot and drilled one of the torch-wielding men. At the same time as that man fell, though, and his torch guttered out in the ranch yard, Breedlove fell back sharply. Satterlee suspected that the old rancher had been hit.
Despite the shots coming at him from both directions, the second man got close enough to throw his torch. It spun end over end through the air and landed on the ranch house roof. Satterlee grimaced, hoping the torch would roll off and wind up harmlessly on the ground, but it stopped and continued burning, threatening to set the roof on fire.
The man who had thrown it whirled and tried to run back to cover, but as he turned a bullet from Billy’s Henry ripped into his side and spun him all the way off his feet. He lay there writhing in pain for a second before a shot from inside the house thudded into him and ended his movements.
“If the house catches on fire, they’ll have to come out,” Sublette said. “They’ll be easy targets then.”
“Yeah, I know,” Satterlee said. He settled his rifle’s sights on the blazing torch. It would take a hell of a shot to knock it clear of the roof, but he knew that was the only chance. He took a deep breath, held it, squeezed the trigger. The Winchester blasted.
The shot hit right below the burning end of the torch and made it jump. Satterlee levered the Winchester and raised himself slightly to draw a better bead. Before he could squeeze the repeater’s trigger, a bullet snatched the hat off his head and sent it sailing away. He roared a curse and ducked involuntarily.
“They get you, G.W.?” Gardner called over to him.
“No, but the scoundrels ruined a perfectly good hat!” Satterlee fumed. With an effort, he controlled his anger and aimed at the torch again.
This time his bullet struck the target and sent the stick and the burning hay spinning off the roof. The fancy shot might have come too late, though. He couldn’t tell if the roof was already smoldering and would soon start to burn.
Meanwhile they were still under fire from some of the hired killers. Satterlee got another vivid warning of that as a bullet went past his ear, close enough that it sounded like a giant bee humming through the air. He lowered his head and slid backward, getting completely behind the hummock where he had gone to ground. He took cartridges from his pocket and started thumbing them through the Winchester’s loading gate.
“Those men of yours had better get here soon,” he called to Sparkman. “Things are getting mighty hot around here!”
“They’ll be here,” Sparkman insisted. “They won’t let me down.”
Satterlee hoped he was right. He was a little surprised none of them had been picked off so far. That kind of luck couldn’t last.
Several more nerve-wracking minutes passed before Satterlee felt a faint vibration in the earth underneath him. If he hadn’t been stretched out full-length on the ground, he might have missed it. As it was, he recognized the source of the vibration: hoofs striking the earth. He had felt it often during his buffalo hunting days. This wasn’t caused by a herd of the great shaggy beasts, though.
Riders were coming . . . a lot of them.
The sheriff risked raising his head enough to twist his neck and look back toward town. He saw a cloud of dust boiling up. That wasn’t just Ward Sparkman’s crew coming toward them, Satterlee thought. The group of horsebackers was larger than that. But he would take all the reinforcements he could get, no matter who they were.
A disheartening thought crossed his mind. What if the riders charging toward the T-Bar-B were more of Andrew Rogers’ men?
If that turned out to be the case, there was going to be a massacre here . . .
Sparkman must have heard the men coming, too. He looked back and exclaimed, “That’s Jake! Looks like he brought us plenty of help!”
Now Satterlee could make out the figure of Sparkman’s foreman leading the charge. He called to his companions, “Let’s throw some lead and make those bastards duck! Sparkman, get your men’s attention and point ‘em in the right direction!”
Satterlee, Gardner, Billy, and even Marcus Sublette with the sheriff’s revolver began blazing away toward the attackers as fast as they could pull trigger. That burst of gunfire gave Sparkman the chance to heave up onto his knees and wave his hat over his head.
“Jake!” he bellowed. “Jake, over here!”
Jake Andrews veered his force slightly. Sparkman signaled with another wave of his hat for the newcomers to carry the fight to the hired gunmen around the T-Bar-B. Andrews galloped past with the other men right behind him. Even though it was hard to see in the dust that followed in their wake and washed over Satterlee and the others, the sheriff recognized several cowboys who rode for John Hartman’s Lazy H spre
ad.
Andrews and the Crown W riders must have run into Hartman’s men on the way here and recruited them to come along. That was another stroke of luck, Satterlee told himself. And now the odds had definitely changed.
The newcomers swept up to the ranch, flame spouting from their guns. Several of the hired killers were forced out of the places where they had taken cover, and as they emerged into the open the deadly fire shredded them. Others stayed where they were and fought stubbornly, but they were overrun by the riders.
Satterlee surged to his feet. His horse had run off earlier when he and his companions had dismounted, and he didn’t have time to round it up now. Instead he hurried toward the ranch on foot. The others came with him, reloading while they were on the move.
Dust and gun smoke clogged the air. Men yelled curses and screamed in pain. Guns roared again and again, the reports crowding in on each other so closely that it was like one continuous peal of thunder. This was the chaos of war, though writ on a smaller scale.
Satterlee skirted the battle and headed for the ranch house to see how many of the defenders were still alive. Sam Gardner and Marcus Sublette came with him, while Billy Below and Ward Sparkman, true to their combative natures, plunged into the thick of the melee.
As Satterlee neared the house, Tobias Breedlove stepped out onto the porch with a rifle in his hands. The old man’s shirt was blood-stained in several places, but he didn’t appear to be hurt badly. He snapped a shot and knocked a fleeing gunman off his feet.
As Breedlove stepped out into the yard, a man Satterlee hadn’t seen before emerged from the doorway behind him, gun in hand. For a second, Satterlee assumed the man was a T-Bar-B hand he didn’t know.
Then he realized that the stranger was drawing a bead on Tobias Breedlove’s back and intended to gun down the old rancher in cold blood.
Satterlee did the only thing he could. He brought the Winchester to his shoulder and fired, aiming mostly by instinct. The bullet sizzled past Breedlove’s head, close enough to make him jump, and thudded into the gunman’s chest. The man got off a shot anyway, but it went harmlessly into the air as Satterlee’s slug drove him backward.
Not knowing exactly what was going on and thinking he was being shot at, Breedlove jerked his rifle toward Satterlee. Sam Gardner shouted, “Tobias, no! Hold your fire!”
Breedlove hesitated, realized he was aiming his gun at the Taylor County sheriff, and lowered the weapon with a confused frown. Satterlee nodded toward the house. Breedlove looked over his shoulder and saw the body sprawled in the doorway. Understanding was on his rugged face as he turned back toward Satterlee.
“I’m reckon I’m obliged to you, Sheriff,” he called.
Satterlee strode up to the old rancher, nodded again toward the man he’d just shot, and said, “That wouldn’t happen to be Benton Kingsberry, would it?”
“Yeah, that’s who the skunk is, all right,” Breedlove said. “I thought he was tied up, but he must’ve got loose somehow and got his hands on a gun. He was about to cut down on me, wasn’t he?”
Satterlee nodded, then grimaced as he realized he had shot the man he’d hoped to use as a witness against Andrew Rogers. Maybe Kingsberry was still alive, he thought.
No such luck, he saw as he went over to the man. Another man with long hair and a goatee stood over Kingsberry’s body with a strangely conflicted expression on his face. Wesley Quaid, the gunman who sometimes worked for Ira Breedlove, Satterlee recalled.
“He’s done for,” Quaid said. “That was a good shot, Sheriff.”
“You sound a mite disappointed that he’s dead, Quaid,” Satterlee commented.
Quaid shrugged. “I thought Kingsberry and I might have a chance to test our speed against each other. Guess it wasn’t meant to be.” Quaid holstered the revolver he’d been holding.
Satterlee became aware that the firing was a lot more sporadic now. Some of the dust and powdersmoke had dispersed. When he looked around, he saw that the Crown W and Lazy H punchers were mopping up. As Satterlee watched, the last of Rogers’ men who had survived the battle threw down their guns and surrendered.
He didn’t see Andrew Rogers among them. He didn’t think there was much of a chance that Rogers had been killed in the fighting, either. Rogers wasn’t the sort of man to get into the thick of things himself, especially when it would be dangerous. He would send men to do his dirty work for him.
But that might be enough to break him and put him behind bars anyway.
“Let’s finish this, Sheriff,” Tobias Breedlove said savagely. “Let’s ride on over to the Rollin’ R and wipe it off the face of the earth. We’ve got enough men to do it!”
“And if we did, we wouldn’t be any better than Rogers,” Satterlee snapped. “I know how you feel, Tobias. I’m old enough to remember when I would have felt the same way. But like it or not, we have law in the county now.” He waved a hand at the dead gunmen littering the ranch yard. “This was self-defense. You ride in shooting over at Rogers’ place and it’d be murder.”
Breedlove glared fiercely at him. Satterlee knew the old-timer wanted to argue. But after a long moment Breedlove finally nodded.
“All right,” he said. “But this is just one fight that’s over. The war ain’t finished yet.”
Satterlee figured the old rancher was right about that.
***
“I don’t care what anybody says.” Andrew Rogers stood on the porch of his ranch house and stared coldly at the men on horseback in front of him. “I didn’t order an attack on the T-Bar-B. And you won’t find anyone who can say that I did.”
“So you gave your orders through somebody else!” Tobias Breedlove raged. “You’re still responsible, damn it!”
“Prove it,” Rogers said with a thin smile.
“I heard you tell Kingsberry you were going to have your hired guns raid the Breedlove place,” Wesley Quaid shot back.
“And where is Kingsberry now?”
“On his way to Gravely’s undertaking parlor,” Satterlee said. “As you damned well know.”
“And Quaid works for Breedlove’s son Ira, which means he’s hardly an unbiased witness. You can try to charge me based on that if you want to, Sheriff, but I hardly think the word of a professional gunman and outlaw who works for a notorious saloonkeeper and whoremonger will convince very many people in court.”
Quaid was seething. Satterlee gave him a hard look and muttered, “Don’t even think about going for your gun, Quaid. That’s just what he wants.”
Quaid drew in a deep breath through his nose. “You’re probably right,” he admitted.
“So,” Rogers said, “I believe we’re finished here. My men acted without my knowledge or consent when they attacked the T-Bar-B because they were fed up with all the rustling that Breedlove’s been doing. That’s my official statement on this matter. Oh, and you’re all lucky that I’m not pressing charges against you.” His icy gaze swept over Tobias Breedlove, Ward Sparkman, and John Hartman. “I’m putting you all on notice right now. I won’t allow anyone to run roughshod over me, and if you attempt to do so, you’ll regret it.”
Satterlee could see by the expressions on the faces of the ranchers that all hell was about to break loose again, and he had smelled the stench of brimstone enough for one day. “Come on,” he said harshly to them. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But Sheriff,” John Hartman said, “this man is responsible for –”
“We’ll deal with it another day,” Satterlee snapped. “Let’s go.”
Reluctantly, the ranchers turned their horses and started to ride away. Quaid and Billy Below rode with them.
Satterlee, Sam Gardner, and Marcus Sublette followed behind the others. The teacher said quietly, “Mr. Hartman is right. His son’s injury and several deaths can be laid directly at the feet of Rogers.”
“That’s true,” Satterlee said. “We all know that. But proving it is another thing.”
“Maybe following the law isn’t alw
ays such a good idea,” Gardner said. “I know a man who wears a badge shouldn’t say such a thing –”
“But we all feel that way sometimes,” Satterlee said. “We just have to stop and remind ourselves what we’ve sworn to do.”
After they had ridden for several minutes in silence, Sublette nodded toward the ranchers and said, “You know, those men up there remind me of the dinosaurs whose bones have been uncovered in this area.”
Satterlee looked over at him with a frown. “How in the world do you figure that?”
“They’ve ruled their kingdom for a long time, undisputed masters of the world they’ve made. But sooner or later something comes along that threatens to change all that.”
“And that would be . . . ?”
“A better predator,” Marcus Sublette said.
Satterlee thought about Andrew Rogers and sighed in the knowledge that the schoolteacher just might be right about that.
A better predator, indeed.
EPILOGUE
The Wolf Creek Cemetery was just outside town, west of the corral and the Mt. Pisgah Methodist Church. Sam Gardner was glad the Wilkins family was not Methodist; most preachers annoyed the marshal, but Mt. Pisgah’s Dill Hyder irritated him more than the average, as he was especially pretentious and self-righteous. The town’s other preacher, Obadiah Stone, was much more to Gardner’s liking. He was brash and overpowering, but at least he seemed honest. Sam knew that his friend G. W. Satterlee, who stood beside him, felt the same.
Reverend Stone had been speaking over Obie Wilkins’ grave. Leta Wilkins clung pitifully to the frame of her husband Abner, as if she might blow away any moment. Abner seemed to be sober at least temporarily, but the marshal doubted it would last long, nor did he blame the man this time. They had chosen not to bury the boy on their own place, because they were selling out and moving to town. They had not sold to Andrew Rogers, though, and Gardner doubted many other people would be from now on, either.
The schoolmaster, Marcus Sublette, had brought several of the older children to the service. Frank Miller and Ethan Hartman stood out to Gardner’s eye; they were no larger than they had been a few days before, but they looked much older somehow. Older, and quietly defiant. They stood close together, apart from the other children.
