Shotgun Riders

by Orrin Russell

  Buford circled. His footwork was good; he kept Caleb turning to his weak side. Again Buford struck, this time a jab to the face. He had to pounce forward to land it, but the movement was quick. It stung Caleb. The big man staggered back and Buford lunged into him, grabbing Caleb at the waist and tackling him to the ground.

  Balum guessed Caleb weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. When the weight came down on the barn floor it sent a thump over the ground that Balum felt some twenty paces away. He watched as Buford sent his big knuckles slamming into Caleb’s head, and when Buford jumped up suddenly and smashed his boot toe’s into Caleb’s ribs, Balum winced for him. He had the Dragoon out, but no reason to use it. The option was there for him and Joe to jump in. They could easily overpower Buford, but this was a fight that had been long in the making. For weeks now, Buford had taunted Caleb. He’d called him every slur in the English language, and he’d made a few more up as well.

  Caleb took two hard kicks to the ribs, then whipped a hand out and grabbed Buford by the ankle. Buford hopped back on one foot, but Caleb’s grip was firm. Holding the boot, the big black man rose slowly to his knees. He swung his own leg under him and stood up.

  Balanced on one foot, Buford kept his fists up. The length of his leg was just slightly longer than Caleb’s arm, and when Caleb swung, Buford leaned his head back and watched the fist swoop by. But Caleb was no fool. With a violent jerk of Buford’s leg, he pulled the convict closer, while at the same time throwing his free fist forward. It caught Buford square in the nose, flattening it into the shape of a spade squished into the center of his face.

  Buford’s good leg gave out. He dropped, and Caleb let the man’s boot go.

  “You want more, boy?” said Caleb. “You been talking about giving this nigger a whipping. You got the chance now.”

  Buford crawled over the hay and stood up several feet away. Blood streamed from his nose. His lips curled back and the blood ran into his teeth, turning them a strange red and white. The punch had dazed him, but there was fight left in him yet. He still had his footwork. He closed in, his head bobbing and weaving, and Caleb threw a wide haymaker that Buford easily ducked. The convict stepped underneath it and slammed a right jab into Caleb’s chest, then danced back out of reach. Caleb came around again with the same swing, but again Buford ducked it and landed a fist into Caleb’s ribs.

  Caleb stepped back. Balum could see the big man was winded. Those shots to the body, along with the kicks he’d taken in the ribs, had sapped his strength.

  Once more Buford leapt in, the movement shockingly fast. He landed a left jab to Caleb’s face, then came around with a right overhand that clubbed Caleb’s temple and sent him staggering backwards.

  As he had before, Buford tackled Caleb. He brought him down in another crash that shuddered over the floor of the barn, and from where Balum sat, he thought maybe this time his friend had lost consciousness. He fell limply into the dirt. He bounced. Buford straddled the fallen man’s waist, his knees on either side of Caleb’s hips. He drew his fist back to crush Caleb’s face, but suddenly Caleb’s arms came up and wrapped around Buford’s back.

  Caleb hugged him tight to his body. It looked like a grown man hugging a child. Caleb’s arms were thick and flexed so tightly around Buford’s body that the man couldn’t even so much as wiggle. His feet flailed some, but from the waist up he was like prey caught in a snake’s coil. Caleb took a breath and squeezed his arms together, tighter, the hug compressing further until a wheeze came from Buford’s throat.

  Balum jumped off the hay bale. There was something more to that wheeze. The convict was trying to say something. Balum crossed the dirt and bent over the two men on the ground, and when he heard Buford wheeze again, he heard also a single word come with it.

  Uncle.

  Balum dropped his hand to Caleb’s arms. Joe was there suddenly, and together they pried the men apart.

  When the two were finally separated, Buford curled up in a ball and held his ribs. Caleb, not moving from where he lay on his back, laughed.

  “Of all the things I ever heard in my life, I never thought I’d hear a white southern boy calling Uncle. Oooee,” he laughed so hard a tear formed in his eye and ran down his temple and into the dirt. “Uncle. Now that’s better than knocking his ass out.” Slowly, he gathered himself up and came to a sitting position. Buford hadn’t moved. “Now pick your cracker ass up, Buford. You going back on the stage.”

  26

  Not until mid afternoon did Connor make it back to the lopsided barn. He had no wish to come within sight of Balum, knowing that the Spencer would be there to greet him. Delmar had certainly gotten a taste of it. He had a slug lodged in the meat of his backside, and the way he hobbled through the grass, Connor wondered if his brother would ever walk straight again.

  From half a mile out he saw the two piles of fresh earth mounded up. He looked back and waved Delmar forward. Floyd came with him, bent beneath Delmar’s arm like a human crutch.

  The graves were unmarked. Not even a cross for a headstone. The ground they’d been buried in was still muddy from the rains, and Connor looked around until he found footprints leading from the graves back up to the ranch house. A misplaced anger fumed inside him. He put a hand to his gun, but quickly let it go. From the window of the ranch house poked a shotgun barrel.

  “Come on boys,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” said Floyd. “Delmar’s got his ass shot off. We need horses.”

  It was clear where to get them. On the opposite side of the ranch house was a corral and a stable.

  “You see that shotgun sticking out the window?” said Connor. He nodded his chin at the house.

  “I see it.”

  “It’ll be your ass that gets shot next if we don’t get moving.”

  “We need them horses.”

  “Goddamnit!” Connor spat. “I know we need the horses. We’ll get ‘em tonight when it’s dark.”

  “Then what?” say Floyd.

  The question hung in the air, but Connor didn’t answer. He had no answer. They’d have to do something, and neither Delmar or Floyd would be the ones to come up with a plan. Once again, it was all on him.

  He trudged through the mud clear to a creek at the end of the valley and waited for his brothers to catch up. While he waited he stuck a blade of grass in his teeth and moped over his predicament. John Boy was dead. Donny was dead. Buford would soon be hanged by the neck. If Delmar didn’t get to a doctor, he just might die as well.

  He twirled the grass through his lips. First things first. Horses. Then he needed a doctor for Delmar. Get that slug out of his ass. Then what? There was no use following the stage-- he’d accepted that. Once Balum got to San Antonio the opportunity to rescue Buford was nil.

  He wished he didn’t have to think. It wasn’t in him. He’d rather have a bottle of whiskey and a carefree mind.

  He spat the grass out suddenly and straightened up. The thought of whiskey had jogged his memory. What had the whiskey peddler said? Balum was after a woman. Sara Sanderson. If he got to her first, he could swap her out.

  All of the sudden Shane Carly’s idea didn’t sound so bad. In fact, it sounded downright genius. All he needed to do was get to San Antonio before Balum, find the woman, and offer up the swap. Connor slapped himself on the leg. San Antonio was ten days away on horseback, maybe closer. The stage traveled far slower than that. With a little luck, they would reach the city with several days cushion in which to find the woman.

  He put a hand beside his mouth and shouted at his brothers to hurry up. When they reached the stream he laid out his plan with a flourish of hand gestures and convincing looks.

  “I need a doctor,” was all Delmar said when Connor finished.

  “We’ll get you a damn doctor.”

  “How we gonna find that woman once we get there?” said Floyd. “San Antonio ain’t like one of these podunk cow towns. It’s a city. People on top of people.”

  “Y
ou have a better idea?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s the plan. Now shut up and wait until dark. We’re gonna steal us some horses.”

  For as poorly as the Bell brothers moved in the dark, their horse thievery that night went off smoothly. The family in the ranch house wasn’t so foolish as to chase after them at night, which gave Connor and Floyd easy access to the stable. They only encountered one obstacle in the plan; not enough horses. Inside the stable were two stalls, a horse in each, no more. Connor and Floyd threw blankets and saddles over the two animals’ backs, tucked bits into their mouths, and led them through the corral and out the gates to where Delmar waited.

  “Hey why’d you only bring two?” said the wounded brother when they reached him. “Ya’ll ain’t gonna leave me here, are you?”

  “No, we ain’t gonna leave you,” said Connor. “Now get up in that saddle. Me and Floyd’ll ride together.”

  “Shit, we ain’t never gonna reach San Antonio in time,” said Delmar. “Not like this.”

  “Yes we will,” said Connor. “Trust me.” He meant to say it with conviction, but when he heard the words come out of his mouth he heard the weakness in them. The uncertainty. He’d only have a few days lead on Balum. How the hell would he find that woman amongst all those people? He climbed into the saddle and waited for Floyd to take a seat behind him. The hell with it, he thought. It was the only plan they had.

  The doctor they found in a small town on the Texas grasslands listened to the story Connor told about a hunting accident without saying a word. When Connor finished he doubted the doctor had believed a word he’d said, but he didn’t much care.

  “You want we should get him good and drunk first?” he asked the doc.

  “I don’t operate on drunk men.”

  “That’s gonna be painful getting that slug out his ass.”

  “I’ve got ether.”

  “That gonna numb him up?”

  “It will. Now leave him with me and come back in a couple hours.”

  Connor and Floyd shuffled down the length of town and wandered into a saloon where they ordered glasses of rum. A wiser sense within Connor told him he should save what money he had, that it would come in handy somehow in San Antonio, but he ignored it. The reality of finding the woman in the few day’s lead they had seemed increasingly unlikely. He had no idea what she looked like, if she even went by the same name or, if he did find her, how he would ever kidnap her. It hurt his head to think about it. He slammed back the rum and ordered another.

  Two hours later he wandered back to the doctor’s office and paid the man his fee. He nodded at the doctor’s orders to allow Delmar a week to rest up, and when the three brothers left they walked straight to the hitch rail where they’d left the two horses and told Delmar to mount up.

  “Doc said I should rest up.”

  “You can rest up on the trail,” said Connor. “We got no time to lose. I figure it ain’t but four, maybe five days to San Antonio.”

  “Why don’t you buy me a bottle then?” said Delmar. “Ease my pain.”

  Connor made a show of impatience, but in the end he acquiesced. He bought three bottles of whiskey, a sack of jerked meat, and some corn dodgers sold by a woman at a street cart.

  Four days later he rode into San Antonio, mildly drunk, Floyd sweating behind him, and Delmar complaining about his sore rear end. He pulled the stolen horse to a stop and blinked a few times to clear his vision. He thought he’d never see San Antonio again. Not after the trouble Buford had bought himself there. But here he was. About to enter a circus of over ten thousand people, parks and plazas, military outposts, neighborhoods of every color, streets and avenues bursting in commotion, and somewhere within it all, in the form of an unknown woman, was Buford’s ticket to freedom.

  27

  “You sure this is a good idea?” said Caleb. “Losing a week so Joe can fill his eyes up on some girlie show hussy?”

  Balum didn’t answer immediately. He stood at the rear of the stage with a hand resting beside a splintered board where a .44 bullet had struck weeks ago. In the blacksmith shop the smithy was clanking away at Buford’s manacles. From where Balum stood he could see the orange sparks fly at each hammer strike. In the mercantile, beside the sheriffs office with the broken sign, Joe was buying food.

  “You’re happy with your woman,” said Balum. It was more a statement than a question.

  “Damn happy.”

  “I’m happy with Angelique.”

  “Huh,” said Caleb. “I bet.”

  “Not just because she gives me free rein when it comes to other women. It’s for the quiet moments. At night on the porch when it’s just me and her. When I wake up and see her lying beside me. It’s knowing she’ll be at home when I ride in, that she’ll listen to me speak my mind. You know that feeling.”

  “I know it.”

  “Well Joe doesn’t have it. He sleeps alone at night and wakes up the same way.”

  The smithy hammer clanged on the anvil. Caleb grunted.

  “He’s had his mind on that Mexican girl for a long time,” Balum continued.

  “After meeting her once?”

  “Maybe once was enough.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I knew it with Angelique the first time I laid eyes on her.”

  “Maybe that’s how white folks fall in love. I had to bust my ass three years to win my woman. Her daddy had his eye on me the whole time-- rode my ass like a damn slavedriver.”

  “Probably good for you.”

  “Shit,” Caleb leaned against the stage. He looked at the sky then closed his eyes. “Can’t he wait a couple more weeks? San Antonio ain’t far.”

  “I promised we’d stop on the way down.”

  “You messed up, Balum. Should have told him you’d stop afterwards.”

  “Either way,” said Balum. “You want to be the one to tell him no?”

  The door to the mercantile squeaked on its hinges. Joe stepped onto the boardwalk with an armload of rations clutched to his chest.

  “Alright,” said Caleb. “I won’t say nothing. I just hope that girl ain’t gone and married some other fellow. I don’t need to listen to no broken-hearted Apache songs clear to San Antonio.”

  The smithy handed over the manacles and leg irons before sundown. He’d forged an iron link into each one, leaving them even stronger than before. Buford fought some when Balum clapped them on, but only a little; the fight was mostly out of him. The next morning they set out in the shot-up stagecoach on a line to the southwest. It took them past the Culver Ranch where the two graves bulged up from the ground, still unmarked. Balum let his eyes settle on them. He thought of the futility of it, of how quickly life can be smothered from the world. Then he turned his eyes to the western horizon and spat a wad of tobacco into the passing mud.

  The silver boom town looked no different than when Balum had seen it last. It was drab and without order, buildings strewn every which way and everything covered in dust. Nearly every man present was there for silver, and every woman, down to the last, aimed to seduce them out of it. They called down from balconies, dressed so scantily that they might as well have worn no clothing at all. Even the women however, as much as they tried, could not keep the dust off them.

  The stage matched perfectly. The land had quickly run out of grass. Dirt and sand replaced it, and the days driving over the trail had resulted in a fine layer of tan film coating the stagecoach like paint. Down the main drag Joe drove the team, Balum sitting easy with the rifle over his knees. Caleb kept close on his massive horse.

  Balum called out to a passerby asking where the sheriff’s office was, and the man only laughed at the idea of law in such a place. Balum shrugged. “Might as well get to where we’re going.”

  The spot was not one easily forgotten. A plain-looking saloon on the edge of town. Joe pulled the team to a stop and waited for the dust to settle.

  “What are we going to do with Buford?”

&nbs
p; Caleb had just dismounted. He looked at the saloon and he looked at Joe. “I’m thinking it’s a sign.”

  “What sort of sign?” said Joe.

  “That I ain’t supposed to go in there,” Caleb shook his head. “No suh. I’ll keep my black ass out of trouble. Last thing I need is word getting back to my woman that I been in a place like this. I’ll stay right here with Buford. Keep us both out of trouble.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” said Joe.

  “Probably better that way. Go on now. Go find that woman you been dreaming on.”

  Before they entered, Balum and Joe took their hats off and swatted the dust from their pants. It created two clouds that hovered in the air, and when the two disappeared through the saloon doors, the clouds remained like ghosts floating behind.

  Inside nothing had changed. A dim interior, few customers. But the curtain was still strung over a doorway in back, and the music coming from the room behind it offered an idea of what delight might be found on the other side. Beside the curtain stood a man in formal attire. He held his hand out when the two approached, and asked for fifty cents. Balum dug it out of his pocket and was about to hand it over when the man drew his hand back.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I recognize you two. You’re the guys who shot this place to hell a while back.”

  “That’s us,” said Balum.

  “Big Tom gives strict orders-- no troublemakers.”

  “We don’t plan on making trouble.”

  “Sorry. I do what Big Tom tells me.”

  “Did Big Tom tell you to take a .44 ball in the belly?”

  The man’s face went sallow. His eyes ran down Balum and stopped at the Dragoon hanging at his waist.

  Balum didn’t wait for an answer. He shoved the coins into the man’s hand and stepped through the curtain, Joe close behind.

  The first thing Balum saw were breasts, large and small. Pink nipples, brown nipples, all jiggling and bouncing on three stages set under candled-chandeliers and surrounded in velvet-upholstered chairs. He’d not entered with much forethought on what he might do once inside, but the sight of bare flesh so brazenly displayed sent his heart racing. He looked around in the dark for a space to sit and tugged Joe along by the arm.