Shotgun Riders

by Orrin Russell

  “What about at night?”

  Balum ran his thumb over the cool metal of the rifle barrel. “We’ve got about four hours to figure that out.”

  The traces snapped tight at the horse’s forward step. The braces under the coach went taut, the wheels creaked into motion, and once again Balum and Joe were rolling over the plains of the Colorado Territory, this time with five men trailing like jackals after a wounded antelope.

  All day they followed. They kept just beyond the range of the Spencer. Once, when the brothers either forgot to keep distance, or let their confidence swell out of check, Balum told Joe to stop the wagon. He turned around and laid the rifle over the top railings. With the northwest breeze accounted for, along with the slight uphill sheer of the slope, Balum took a sight on one of the men’s torsos until he felt he was centered in on a shirt button, then gently squeezed the trigger. The butt of the gun slammed against his shoulder. Five hundred yards out, one of the men whipped his horse around and clasped a hand to his arm.

  “Sights are pretty far out of whack,” he said.

  Joe’s hair danced in the breeze. “Looks like someone got a sore arm out of it. That was a hard shot.”

  “It’ll keep them back.”

  “Until nightfall,” Joe turned back around and slapped the reins over the draft team. “I’ve been thinking on it. Haven’t quite landed on a solution. You?”

  Balum shifted to the end of the bench and let a foot swing in the air. He watched the grass go by. A blur of tan seedheads over rich green stalks. “One of us has got to stay up,” he said. “There’s no way around it.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same.”

  “We could sleep inside the coach, but that wouldn’t change anything. We could try sleeping up tight against Buford, but what good would that do? We’re looking at sleepless nights, the way I see it.”

  “Camp on open ground or in the woods?”

  “Woods.”

  “You think any of these Bell brothers are woodsmen?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Balum. He swung his boot back up to the footrest. “We’re going to find that out real soon.”

  9

  They tracked far enough westward to avoid passing within sight of the penitentiary. A place of bad memories, of wasted time and wasted lives. Its cells were filled with men much like the Bell brothers; hard, angry men. The kind that would kill another over the slightest transgression, sometimes for no clear reason at all. The thought of the place brought a foul taste to Balum’s mouth. He spit over the side of the stage and glanced behind him where, beyond the range of the Spencer, the Bell brothers walked their horses.

  The sun dropped. It flung shadows from solitary pines that stretched over the grasslands and grew longer by the minute. The spot of forest they’d seen an hour ago had barely grown closer. It was a good spot if they could reach it in time.

  As though reading Balum’s thoughts, Joe slapped the reins across the animals’ backs and gave a holler, and the team responded with a jerk of the stage, clumps of turf flinging up behind the horses’ hooves. They reached their destination while the sky still contained enough light to see by, though not enough to allow for a leisurely fire or to fry a slab of bacon. Instead, Balum took a position at the edge of the forest and set the barrel of the Spencer in the crook of a young pinyon pine. He could just make out the riders coming into rifle range. Without any hesitation he let off a shot. The sound of the weapon barking from the treeline would be enough to warn them not to come closer. Not while the sky held enough light to pick them out.

  While Balum held the riders off, Joe pulled Buford from the stage. He wrapped a rope around him and tied him to a tree. The prisoner’s voice had come back. From where Balum stood he could hear Buford cussing at Joe, promising violent revenge should he work free of his shackles. Joe didn’t respond. He went about laying down the tarp, staking the horses in a patch of grass, and gathering firewood for the following day.

  When night finally did take over, Balum left his position and walked deep into the woods where Buford sat cussing in his shackles.

  “Keeping silent a few days must have built up some pressure,” said Balum.

  Joe unsheathed his knife and knelt beside Buford’s head. “Did the governor of Texas say anything about delivering him with his tongue still attached?”

  “I don’t believe he did,” said Balum. “Just wants him alive is all.”

  Buford’s eyes widened. They glistened white in the darkening forest, the two orbs flashing from Balum to Joe. “You dumb sons-of-bitches. How the hell you think you’re gonna get me to Texas? I got five brothers looking to free me, and there ain’t but two of you. They’ll more’n likely kill you tonight. Smart thing would be to let me go. You do that and maybe we’ll give you a head start before we track you down and kill you.”

  “Out with the tongue?” said Joe.

  “Maybe in the morning when we’ve got more time,” said Balum. “Sun’s just about set. Let’s gag him and you and me post up in a good spot until it’s pitch dark. Then you get some sleep. I’ll stay up.”

  They wound an old rag over Buford’s mouth and left him tied to the tree. Then the two men disappeared into the trees like apparitions that had never been.

  Blackness hovered down. It crept through the canopy on down to the forest floor, and soon there was little more to see than shadows on shadows. Balum’s eyes adjusted. Even in the dimmest light a man can make out shapes and movement within them, and watching the darkness settle in over the ponderosas and douglas firs allowed Balum an advantage the Bell brothers would not have. He knew what their site looked like in the light, and standing there in the darkness, he felt reasonably sure he could navigate it even then.

  His position was a comfortable one. His arms rested over a low hanging poplar, his feet snug and silent in a pile of moss. He’d wrapped a blanket around his shoulders in preparation for a chilly night, and had put away the Spencer in favor of the Colt Dragoon, more than four pounds and fourteen inches sitting easy in his holster. He’d trusted that gun countless times over the years, and everything in his bones told him he’d need to trust it during that long night.

  In the pitch dark, Joe left his place of concealment and settled down to sleep on the tarp near Buford. The nocturnal sounds of the forest hummed steady; owls and bats and distant crickets. Fireflies lit their tails in short patterns of flight, disappearing as suddenly as they arrived.

  When the moon rose a couple hours later it shed a bluish hue through the canopy. In its false light, trees took on misleading shapes. Shadows appeared that belonged to nothing, and spears of light reflected off things innocuous, begging to draw attention but offering nothing of interest.

  In all that twisted topography, Balum trusted his ears more than his eyes. He placed each animal, the draft team’s heavy breath. He recognized the nightbirds and picked out the spots overhead where tree limbs rubbed against each other at a stiff breeze. Then he let them fade into the background. He listened through them, attuned to any foreign sound, anything unnatural to the forest.

  Along the far edge of camp he heard it first; the sound of feet stepping over leaves. The occasional twig snapped under their weight, clothing brushed against tree limbs. They came on a path directly from the open ground over which they’d ridden. To Balum’s ears it sounded as though all five walked together in a group.

  His question was answered; the Bell brothers were not woodsmen. A small relief for which Balum was immensely grateful. The fools could walk all night in the dark and never find them. There was just one problem; the Bell brothers were headed straight for Joe and Buford. Tucked to the ground like they were, there was no chance of being discovered unless they were literally walked over. And that was what was about to happen.

  Balum slunk the Dragoon out from its holster and held it out over the poplar branch. He would rather have let the fools hunt fruitlessly in the dark all evening, but he couldn’t risk them stumbling over Joe. A shot would se
nd them scattering. It would also wake Joe.

  He considered his options a moment, then reared back the hammer and took sight on an empty space through the firs. His finger curled over the cold metal trigger. It tightened.

  The blast cracked like a cannon in that still and peaceful woodland, and suddenly in the blue haze of moonlight there was commotion; feet running, voices shouting, profanity thrown about in reckless fright. A shot came hurtling back to the poplar branch, but Balum had left the spot as soon as he’d fired.

  Whatever sleep Joe had gotten had ended. Where he was hidden, Balum couldn’t tell, but surely he was awake now. He would have merged into the trees. Joe was a man at home in the woods-- he rarely made a sound. But a man’s foot could slip. A twig could snap. The fact that an error was possible erased Balum’s option of simply shooting at sound. He’d need to know exactly what his target was if he decided to risk another shot.

  Another half an hour passed. The night sounds returned in a chorus that surrounded Balum like an orchestra encircling a conductor. Wherever the Bells were, they were holding still for the moment. Balum let his ears again relay information. This time he hunted not for the arrival of noise, but the disappearance of it. In any section of forest that became suddenly quiet, he could expect a man to be hidden. After another long stretch of listening he picked out three likely spots. From one of these suddenly came a voice.

  “Buford?” the sound carried out as far as it could before dying against the trees.

  No answer would come from Buford’s gagged mouth, and no answer came from Balum’s gun. The likelihood of hitting whoever had spoken was next to nothing, and Balum would only risk giving up his position.

  He knelt against a trunk and pulled the blanket tightly around him. He thought he heard whispering, but the sounds in the woods were strange and misleading, and his own mind was growing tired. His eyelids drooped. He thought about how good a rolled up jacket would feel under his head, and the comfort of Angelique’s bed, his arms wrapped around her.

  A whisper of sound reached him suddenly, and he snapped out of his reverie and stared blindly ahead. The rustle of leaves and twigs being crushed under foot echoed softly against his ears. It was the sound of men in retreat. How many though, he couldn’t be sure. Whether they had left, or simply changed positions, these were questions to which he had no answer. Allowing himself to drift to sleep was no option.

  All night, as the moon soared overhead like a burned-out, wasted impression of a sun, he stared ahead and held the blanket against him. When the suggestion of daylight appeared in the east, he crouched low against the ground and forced his eyes to focus. The sun cut over the horizon. Its light trickled through the canopy. As objects became clearer, Balum began to make out landmarks he recognized. He found Buford’s shape tied to the tree, and noticed that Joe’s sleeping place on the tarp was vacant.

  When the sun had fully risen and the forest was again unveiled, Balum and Joe found themselves to be alone within it. They unstaked the draft team, hitched them up, led Buford into the stage, and drove it bleary-eyed into the open prairie where they pulled it up again and climbed down. In the grass, their visibility once again stretching a thousand yards in every direction, they built a fire from the wood Joe had collected, and fried morning bacon.

  “Let’s put a pot on to boil,” said Balum. “I’m going to need coffee.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” said Joe.

  “You sleep at all?”

  “Up until you fired that shot. Couple hours I figure?”

  “If that.” Balum set the kettle into the flames and looked up the plain to where the Bell brothers sat their horses just out of rifle range. “It’s like they measured it off,” he said.

  Joe pulled the bacon from the fire and cut the slab in three. They delivered a slice to Buford through the stage window, then waited for their coffee to boil. When it was ready they gulped it down, scarcely giving it time to cool, and clambered onto the driving bench. Balum twisted around for a look behind. Joe gave the reins a slap. In a grinding of axles they were set in motion.

  The bouncing of the stagecoach, once a soothing rhythm, morphed into a form of physical harassment that kept Balum awake and sore all that day. He felt each bump, each tilt of the wheels. He stuck a wad of tobacco in his cheek but it only gave him a headache, and he spit it out into the passing grass.

  When they stopped to camp in the early evening, the two reversed roles. Balum led Buford into the patch of trees they’d selected. He tied the cussing prisoner tight to a tree, unhitched the team, picketed them, spread out the tarp, then laid down upon it and closed his eyes.

  He woke in a flurry of gunfire. The woods sat thick in darkness, and through it all flared the small brilliant flames of blasting guns.

  As if he’d practiced it a hundred times before, Balum landed a hand on the Colt Dragoon and rolled to the end of the tarp. He took a knee in the grass, kept his head low. The barrage of gunfire came from one direction. Bullets sliced through leaves, slamming in dull thunks against tree trunks some forty paces to Balum’s left. He edged further into the woods and held still, watching.

  After a while a shiver ran through him. He’d left his blanket on the tarp. In the ensuing silence of the woods, he’d be a fool to go crawling back for it. All he needed was one misplaced foot in the darkness, a snap of a twig, and he’d find himself on the receiving end of five armed and desperate killers.

  He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and leaned against a trunk. Above him the stars glistened through treetop breaks.

  Morning was slow to come. When it did, and the fog of night began to lift in incremental waves, he forced himself to study the surrounding woods, for in that hazy gloom the most dangerous section of day threatened. He strained to hear a whispered word, but only the sounds of the horses munching grass and the bickering of finches reached him.

  Straightening his legs, he walked in a slow and painful crouch back to the tarp. Joe appeared suddenly, silent as a fish slipping into water. The look on his partner’s face was that of two sleepless nights, and Balum knew that if he were to look into a still pond, his own face would look no better.

  In dull movements they repeated the breakdown of camp, same as the day before. Once again on the plain, sitting high on the driving bench with the open vista all around them, they ran through their options.

  “They’ll figure out soon enough they don’t even need to creep in at night,” said Balum. “One of us needs to stay awake regardless.”

  “We’ll be sleepwalking in a week’s time,” said Joe.

  “We could take turns sleeping in the day.”

  “We could. We’d never get anywhere though.”

  Balum nodded. He felt there was a solution somewhere just beyond the reach of his drowsy mind.

  “Thing is,” said Joe, “the two of us aren’t enough. But Denver’s too far away to go back and pick someone up.”

  The words took a minute to work their way through Balum’s head. When they finally did, and the spark connected, he sat upright and punched Joe’s arm.

  “We don’t need to go to Denver,” he said. “There’s a man not two day’s ride from here.”

  Joe stared ahead. The reins hung limp in his hands. “Where’s that?” he said finally.

  “A place you and I passed through once. There’s a man big as a Texas steer that owes us a favor.”

  A smile crossed Joe’s face. “We going to Blacktown?”

  “Yep,” Balum reclined on the bench. “We’re going to Blacktown.”

  10

  A ball of dried thistle weed tumbled down the center lane of Blacktown, pushed along by a northern breeze. It skipped past silent houses, the doors and shutters closed up tight. When it bounced against the well at the far end of town and swerved down a mud lane, Joe said, “This place looks deserted.”

  The stage had just rolled over the path leading into town. The horses trampled through the beaten-down grass and into the mud where the la
ne began. Not a hammer or ax could be heard at work. No plows in the fields, no children in the lanes. It did indeed appear deserted, but such was the appearance each time Balum had visited before.

  “Just wait,” he said. “They’ll come out.”

  They did exactly that, suddenly as if on cue, men and women armed with shotguns, muzzle loaders, pistols, some holding scythes and one young man armed with an old rapier that caught the sunlight on its flat steel edge. Unsmiling faces looked out from shadowed doorways. They stepped into the lane from the alleyways and from the backs of shacks built in the earthy look of wattle and daub.

  Balum had stored the Spencer back on top of the stage. As the draft team pulled the wagon down the lane, he kept his hands on his knees where folks could see them. Those first thirty yards down the lane, Balum’s chest remained clenched up somewhat. He’d expected to be recognized sooner, but by the looks on the faces staring up and him and Joe, he wondered for a moment if Blacktown had been a bad idea.

  Then someone shouted his name. A woman’s voice, soft and welcoming, carrying in it the quality of genuine surprise. Summer’s voice. She held an old Colt Walker in her hand, rusted out over thirty years of use, and she raised it up and waved from down the lane.

  Another door swung open. From its frame stepped a giant. His face was broad, shaved clean over a chiseled jaw, and the skin that covered it was darker than roasted chestnuts. His chest measured as wide as a young buffalo. He snapped one of the suspender straps hugging it, and smiled as he walked through the gathering townsfolk toward the stage.

  “That’s a lot of weapons on show, Caleb,” said Balum once the hulk had come abreast of the driving bench. “You expecting trouble?”

  “We always ready for it,” he grinned and nodded at Joe. “Look at you two. Shotgun riders. You carrying gold bars in back or what?” He stepped around to the stage door and reeled back from the window a second later. “Damn, Balum, what you doing with that cracker in chains? Penitentiary’s that way,” he pointed the way they’d come.