Shotgun Riders

by Orrin Russell

  From the general store the trio walked to the jailhouse. Sitting in their cells were Buford Bell and the gnarled old sheriff. No sooner did Balum step through the front door than the two burst out in complaints. Balum didn’t mind. He had a meal in his belly, a full night’s sleep behind him, and the idea that just maybe this trip wasn’t going to be as hard as he’d thought.

  13

  A mile outside Muckville, Connor Bell and his brothers watched the stage roll out. The black fellow was still with them, and Connor wasn’t sure what to think about that. He didn’t know who the hell the man was, how long he’d be traveling with the stage, or if he had any skill with a gun. All he knew is that Buford was closer to Texas than he was a week ago.

  The food they’d stolen from Shane Carly had run out two days ago. He was tired of sleeping on the ground, tired of trying to figure out how to free Buford, and tired of listening to his brother’s complaining. Just as his mind ruminated on those points, Donny walked his horse up beside him.

  “I’m hungry,” was all he said.

  “Yeah, well I’m hungry too,” said Connor.

  “Let’s ride into that town down there and steal us some food.”

  The other Bell brothers bunched their horses into the circle to offer their opinions.

  “I’m with Donny,” Floyd said. “We ain’t gonna be in no condition to shoot it out with them three in the state we’re in.”

  “We don’t know what kind of law is down there,” said Connor. “We know there’s a jail though; we just saw Buford come out of it.”

  “Can’t be much,” said Delmar.

  “I’m hungry too,” said John Boy.

  Connor scratched his neck. “Maybe three more days is all. Then the trees will thin out and they won’t be able to hide in the woods at night. We’ll crawl up on the open prairie and shoot ‘em easy.”

  “I can’t wait three days to eat,” said John Boy. “Let’s just go down like Donny says and steal us some food.”

  Connor snorted at his brothers and stared them down one by one. “You dummies ever consider that the whole dang town is going to be on high alert? You think Balum didn’t tell the lawman that we was following? It might have been easy a few days ago, but now they’ll be expecting us.”

  “What then?” said Delmar.

  “Three days,” said Connor. “We’ll get them at night when they’re camped on open ground. It’ll be easy, trust me.” He gave his horse a tap with his heels and trotted out ahead of them.

  All day his belly growled. His crotch itched, his lips cracked from lack of water. He kept a good distance from his brothers and pretended he didn’t hear their complaints. That night they built a fire and sat around it with nothing to cook and not even a canteen of water to pass around. No one suggested they try sneaking up on the stage at night. Connor had had enough of that; he’d nearly caught a bullet twice. He wasn’t a woodsman, and neither were his brothers. Balum and that damn indian were like ghosts in the forest. The open plains, he told himself. It’d be as easy as shooting a treed coon.

  The following day the trees thinned out noticeably. They grew only in pairs or small collections. Stretches of open ground rolled on to the horizon. Still, the stage found a spot tucked up against a hill where maple seeds had taken root and grown up in a wooded patch that Connor would have been a fool to enter in the dark of night.

  It wasn’t until the third day, just like he’d predicted, that the stage finally made camp on open ground. From a distance of a thousand yards Connor watched. He saw them build a fire, roast food for which his mouth watered in envy, and take Buford off the stage and tie him up to the back wheel like he was a misbehaved hog.

  Night fell, but still he waited. Let them worry, he told himself. He tied his horse to a lone juniper along with the other four, and pulled his brothers into a huddle.

  “Ain’t no moon tonight,” he said. “That’s our advantage, not theirs. We won’t see ‘em till we’re right up on ‘em, but they won’t see us neither. So sneak in with your guns drawn and the hammers pulled back. And don’t shoot Buford.”

  They fanned out in the grass and began their slow walk forward like a search party covering an overgrown field. The starlight wasn’t much, but it was enough to see the outline of the stage against the sky. The hunger had gone from Connor’s stomach. Something else had replaced it, something unsettling that he swore to himself was not fear, but something else. Hell, it was five on three. And the Bells had all the advantage.

  At a hundred yards out he slowed his walk. He bent at the waist and lifted his legs high through the grass. The insect life on open ground couldn’t hold a candle to the woods. A few crickets were chirping, not much else. Too silent for his liking.

  His eyes searched for shapes. He crouched even lower, trying to create an angle that would outline the position of whoever sat guard against the stars. He held the gun out, his eyes stretched wide in blindness. Suddenly his foot caught on something. A ruckus came off the ground, small pebbles rattling inside tin cans, and Connor’s other foot hit the same snag. His body pitched forward just as a gun cracked out in front of him. The bullet streaked overhead, and no sooner did the blast fade than more cans rattled to his left. Two more gunblasts answered. A yelp followed that Connor knew came from Delmar’s throat. Another gunshot boomed from the clearing, and suddenly that feeling that had sat like a bad meal in Connor’s belly rose up with an angry force. There was no denying it was fear like he’d rarely felt before. He spun around and jumped up and ran with one hand pinning his hat to his head.

  On the uneven ground his feet lost their footing. His boot toe caught a hole and he pitched forward onto his face, which brought a grunt from him that was quickly answered by a smack of gunfire. Connor didn’t jump back up. He crawled on hands and knees with a furious speed and a near certainty that he’d feel the whack of a bullet strike his ass any moment. After he’d covered what he imagined was fifty yards he scampered up and ran in a crouched hobble, still clutching his hat tight to his skull.

  John Boy and Donny were already at the juniper when he came running up.

  “When the hell did they string up tripwire?” said Donny.

  Connor was still swallowing, trying to catch his breath. He felt like puking. “They must’ve waited till it was dark. Where’s Floyd and Delmar?”

  “It’s us coming up right now,” Floyd’s voice answered from a distance.

  “Hey, they get you, Delmar?” John Boy asked.

  “Shot my damn hat off,” Delmar answered.

  The five brothers closed into a circle. For a while they each bragged about how close they’d come to getting shot. They claimed one by one that they’d have stayed and fought it out if only the others hadn’t turned and ran.

  “That’s enough,” said Connor after awhile. “I’m damn hungry. We need food and we need a new plan.”

  “I got an idea,” said Floyd. “Next town they come to they’ll put Buford in jail again. If we get us some dynamite we can blow him out, just like we done.”

  “Won’t work,” said Connor.

  “Will too.”

  “Nope. If Buford don’t know we’re fixing to blast him out then we risk blowing him up.”

  “So we tell him first.”

  “You ain’t thinking, Floyd. There’s gonna be someone inside standing guard. Maybe more than one. They’ll be expecting us.” Connor hoped one of his brothers would offer an alternative, but none did. Instead they listened to the crickets chirp. “I can’t think with my belly growling like it is. We need some food, and somebody’s gonna give it to us.”

  “We going back to Muckville?” said John Boy. “They got a nice hog wallow in the center of town, we could steal us a swine.”

  “That’d be backwards. We need to be going forwards. Somewhere ahead there’s a town, and I don’t give a damn if we got money or not, we gonna eat.”

  Delmar let up a whoop. Floyd and Donny followed with celebratory hollers of their own, and Connor whipped
the hat off his head and swatted his fool brothers across their faces. “Shut your damn mouths! You dummies are gonna get us all shot whooping like that. Now saddle up. We’re riding until we find us a meal.”

  They found it two days later at a cabin situated several miles outside the town of Crenshaw. The homesteaders living there didn’t have much; a couple acres of poor soil planted with corn, a donkey not fit for work. A few chickens pecked at the dirt. Across from the corn were sweet potatoes and carrots, but Connor didn’t stop to pull them up. Instead he yanked the Smith and Wesson from his waist and rode up to the cabin with the idea in his head that there might be cash money inside.

  He’d almost convinced himself that no one was home when suddenly the door opened and a barrel-chested man stepped through with a shotgun in hand. Connor didn’t say a word. He raised the revolver a hair and shot from hip-level. The bullet took the homesteader in the abdomen, spinning him sideways. Connor fired again and watched the man continue his spin, another red blotch appearing in his midsection. He waited until the man come around again in a full circle, and shot him through the chest. The shotgun never went off. It fell along with the homesteader and clattered in the dirt like a child’s toy.

  From the cabin window a rifle barrel emerged. Just as Connor saw it poke through, he heard his brothers’ guns erupt. The bullets smacked into the clapboard framing the window. The rifle barrel sank back inside.

  Connor dropped down from his horse. He stepped over the fallen homesteader on the porch and ducked through the cabin door with both guns out. It took not half a minute to inspect the place. When he came to the boy who’d stuck the rifle out the window, he bent over and watched for any sign of life, but the boy had taken several shots and lay dead in a smear of his own blood.

  With all five brothers searching the house they turned it upside down in short order. Delmar found money hidden in a can in the pantry. When they counted out the coins they came up with just under four dollars, which Connor pocketed. He told them to keep looking-- surely there was more-- but there wasn’t. As it turned out, the homesteaders were as poor as their surroundings suggested. Aside from a few cans of beans, the Bell brothers found a sack of worm-ridden flour, three chicken eggs, and something strange-looking pickling away in a jar.

  In the end they returned to the garden and pulled up half-grown sweet potatoes which they fried in a pan along with the eggs. The homesteaders owned no plates, but they did have two forks, and the Bell brothers sat in a circle in the dirt outside and passed them around along with the pan, each shoveling the egg and tuber mixture into their faces and lamenting their meager booty.

  “I been thinking,” said Donny. His mouth was full but he talked through it anyway. “Creepin’ up on ‘em at night is only gonna get us shot.”

  “You want to tell us something we don't know?” said Connor.

  “Listen here. Buford ain’t getting free until them three are dead. And we ain’t gonna be able to kill them on the plains. So the way I figure it, we’ll catch ‘em in town.”

  “What do you mean catch them ?” said Connor.

  “I mean shoot ‘em!”

  “How?”

  “Right in the street. You see Balum, you call him out. Call him a liar, whatever, then draw down on him and shoot him.”

  “Real simple,” said Connor.

  “Damn right,” Donny wiggled his fingers in request for the pan to be passed back over.

  “You want more food?” said Connor.

  “Pass it here.”

  “You better come up with a better idea if you expect me to give you the last bite. You’re saying I’m the one supposed to be shooting it out with him? Damn crazy talk. I ain’t no fast draw.”

  “Well, one of us. Whoever’s fastest. How about you, Floyd?”

  Floyd shook his head. “No, no, no. John Boy’s been going on about how he’s the fastest. Ain’t that true, John Boy?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Yes you did. Fifty times if you said it once”

  “Why don’t Donny do it? It’s his idea.”

  Donny was staring at the three chickens clawing in the dirt. He shook his head at the sound of his name “Don’t matter if it’s my idea. Floyd’s right-- you been saying you’re faster than any of us on the draw.”

  The brothers agreed; everyone had heard him say it.

  “Well I ain’t doing it. Hell, everybody knows Balum shot Lance Cain. I ain’t getting killed like that.”

  Floyd pointed a finger at John Boy. “I don’t want to hear no more of your bullshit about you being a fast draw.”

  “Faster’n you are.”

  “All right, shut up,” said Connor. “Both of you. Fact is, Donny’s right; we ain’t gonna catch them three on the plains. We can’t get them by day, and at night it’s too dangerous. I like the idea of gunning them down in town.”

  “I said I ain’t doing it,” said John Boy.

  “Me neither,” said Floyd.

  “Ain’t none of us gonna do it,” said Connor. “What we need is a man who don’t mind killing for money.”

  “What man?” asked Delmar.

  “We’ll find one. There’s a whole lot of towns on the way to Texas, and a whole lot of would-be gunslingers waiting for the chance to make an easy dollar.”

  “But we ain’t got no money,” said Delmar.

  Connor patted his pocket where the stolen four dollars rested. “You seen how easy we come by this here. A few more homesteaders and we’ll have ourselves a grubstake. Now let’s kill them chickens and have us a proper meal.”

  14

  To the east of Crenshaw roamed cattle by the hundreds, various symbols branded onto their hindquarters and all of them mixed together and grazing with their heads facing one direction. A few fat ones lazed in the shade. Riding through them, Connor didn’t see living breathing animals, but money walking on grass. Somewhere close were the owners of those cattle, and by God if there wasn’t a jar of cash sitting in some ranch house kitchen he could suck a rotten turnip.

  He kept his eyes peeled for a road or a line of smoke drifting from a chimney. Some clue as to where they lived. He led his brothers in a crooked line over hills and gullies, and by evening they’d seen more cattle than they cared to, though not a single building other than the collection of dots that constituted Crenshaw.

  The cattle were docile, well accustomed to cowboys. They didn’t pay much mind to Delmar when he rode his horse up next to a young calf and leveled his gun beside its temple. The blast sent them scattering. After they’d run a ways they turned around to stare at the fallen calf. They blinked and swished their tails and went back to feeding.

  The Bell brothers built a fire and roasted cuts of meat speared through whittled branches. By dark they had their bellies full and their humor was much improved. They passed a fair amount of time reminiscing about Buford, how time and again he’d gotten them out of tight spots. They lounged in the grass, laughing and scratching at their unwashed bodies, when from the night there came a pounding of hooves.

  At the sound, Connor’s brothers rolled out of reach of firelight. They took their whittled roasting branches with them and grabbed their horses by their reins and quickly led them away. Connor stayed put in the shimmer of flames. The dead calf lay not far off. For as irresponsible as his brothers were, there came certain situations in which they turned professional. This was one. Connor had no need to give direction, no need to create a plan or engage in conversation. He simply rested there on an elbow in the grass and waited for the riders to appear, all the while comfortable in the knowledge that his brothers were crouching in the darkness with their revolvers drawn and a readiness to kill inside each one of them.

  He made no move for his gun when the party reached the firelight. Three of them; two older men and a youngster. Connor saw them glance around, saw how their eyes hesitated on the butchered calf. He noticed how they looked around into the darkness, wondering if he was truly alone. They wore guns, each of them, a
nd one of the older men carried a shotgun across the saddle.

  “Evening,” said the man with the shotgun. He looked at the calf and back to Connor. “You get yourself a good cut of meat off that calf?”

  “I surely did,” said Connor.

  “Well that’s good. One problem though-- that calf’s wearing a Circle J Bar. Stands for Otis Johnson.”

  “You Otis?”

  “That’s right. This is my brother, and this here’s my son,” he pointed to his right and left.

  “Well Otis, you raise a good steak. I’ll give you that,” Connor smiled. He kept his hands away from his gun and watched each man’s reaction. Connor had no skill at ranching or farming. He could hardly read, and he wasn’t much use with numbers. Manual labor bothered him, mental labor equalled nothing more than a headache. The one thing he considered himself skilled at was this right here: outlawing. In the short minute that had just passed, Connor had sized them up, and now he went to work. “How much do I owe you?” he said.

  Otis fidgeted. “This isn’t the way cattle are sold, mister.”

  “I reckon it ain’t. I been hard up, half-starved to be truthful. I’d have paid you first but I rode all day without seeing a ranch house. Where you boys located anyway?”

  Otis pointed the way they’d come. “Couple miles thataway.”

  Connor nodded. “Well,” he said. “How much you want for it?”

  “Cattle are going for thirty a head. That being just a calf, we’ll take fifteen.”

  “That’s fair. There a bank in town?”

  “No, sir. Not a bank around until you get clear to Cumberland.”

  “Where do folks keep their money if there ain’t no bank around?”

  Otis looked at his son, then back into the darkness where not even a cricket sounded. “Say, you got that money or don’t you?”

  “I surely do,” Connor raised himself from the ground in smooth, slow motions. The boy on the horse beside Otis looked nervous as all get out, and Connor still hadn’t settled on which of the three would need to get shot first. He was leaning toward the boy. “Got it right here in my pocket,” he said, and reached his hands into his trousers.