William W. Johnstone

by Savage Texas

  Greer glanced his way, turning a cold eye on the noncom. “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “I want to tell you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s officers,” Sergeant Sales said. He drew his gun and shot Greer in the side. Greer crumpled like he was imploding, shrinking into himself.

  Sales pumped a slug into the officer’s belly. Greer grabbed his middle and fell sideways off his horse into the water.

  Sales’s opening shots were a signal triggering an answering fusillade from both sides of the creek, where gunmen were hidden in the tall grass. The murderous volley took out a number of the wagon’s escort riders.

  “Ambush!”

  “Bushwhackers—!”

  All hell broke loose. Startled shouts from the guards were drowned out by racketing gunfire. Frightened birds burst out of the trees, taking flight in droves.

  On the far bank, Fenner swung his rifle up and shot the guard nearest him off his horse.

  Dawkins, cursing, clawed for his pistol, fumbling with the top flap of the holster. Before it could clear leather, Sales shot the top of his head off.

  The shotgun rider on the wagon swung his weapon up. Riding up from behind, Reese shot him in the back. The shotgunner’s dying spasm caused him to jerk both double triggers at once, discharging a shattering blast to the side that caught two more mounted guards, peppering them ragged with shot.

  Seven ambushers lurked on the west bank, four on the east. They popped up from behind rocks and trees, potting away at the guards fording the creek. Horses reared and circled, whinnying and nickering, eyes rolling in fright. The men of the convoy cursed, shouted, screamed and died. All was chaos, confusion.

  The wagon driver jerked and shuddered under the impact of slug after slug ripping into him from different directions.

  Sales emptied his revolver into nearby wagon guards, burning them down. He clutched the reins tightly in his other fist, holding the horse’s head down, wheeling it this way and that in search of new targets.

  Reese was on the opposite side of the column, gunning down guards.

  The hammer of Sales’s gun clicked on empty chambers. The gun dropped from his hand as he freed it to shuck his rifle out of its saddle-scabbard. He bit down, holding the reins between his teeth as he worked the long-levered gun with both hands.

  Something tugged at his tunic below his right arm—a slug passing through. It came not from a wagon guard but rather from one of the shooters on the far bank. Sales didn’t see who it was. He cursed under his breath.

  A guard rider wheeled, breaking for the east bank. Sales leveled the rifle and shot him off his horse. The rider’s foot snagged in the stirrup causing him to be dragged a short distance before the corpse tumbled free on shore. The horse kept running.

  It was all over in a minute or two. A passel of riderless horses milled about in the creek. Sales guided his horse a half-dozen paces upstream. He yelled, “Cease firing!”

  The shooting did not stop at once but raggedly died down. Bodies bobbed floating facedown in the water, the gentle tug of the current starting to move them downstream. A pall of gunsmoke hung over the ford. Random shots continued to erupt from both banks of the creek.

  “Stop shooting, you sons of bitches!” Sales bawled, red-faced. The firing stopped.

  Reese rode up alongside the wagon, transferring to it from his horse. The shotgunner had fallen out but the driver lay sprawled across the seat. Reese planted a booted foot against the driver’s side and push-kicked him into the water. Plunking down into the driver’s seat, he gathered up the traces and took control of the team.

  The man with the sergeant’s stripes spoke again:

  “Get the wagon across to the other side!”

  “Okay, Brock!” said Reese.

  “Sergeant Ben Sales” was an alias. There was a real Sergeant Sales on the rolls at Fort Pardee, but the man calling the shots wasn’t him. That man was Brock Harper, one of the most dangerous bandit chiefs west of the Mississippi, or east of it, for that matter. Hailing from California, he’d shot his way across the map to surface in Hangtree County, Texas.

  “Reese” was no alias; it was the phony corporal’s real name but it was his Christian name, not his surname. His full name was Reese Kimbro—better known as Killer Kimbro. Killer Kimbro was the name bannered on the many Wanted posters and circulars bearing his likeness that were papered throughout Texas and the Southwest. Luckily, the drawing accompanying them was generic enough to fit any one of a thousand men.

  Kimbro was Harper’s trusted aide, his right-hand man.

  The shooters on both sides of the creek began emerging from their places of concealment. They were a rough bunch: robbers and killers, armed with rifles, shotguns and six-guns.

  Fenner took off his hat and howled a Rebel yell, echoing the defiant cry that had sounded across every battlefield of the late war. Some of the men joined in, whooping it up. Some, not all.

  The bushwhackers were a mixed bag, some Southerners, some Northerners. There were a couple of Mexicans, several persons of mixed blood, a full-blooded Kiowa Indian, a Canadian, and even one transplanted Australian.

  What they had in common was a lust for gold and, at best, an indifference to taking human life to get it. “At best”—some of them liked to kill for the pure fun of it.

  Kimbro drove the wagon across the creek up on to the west bank, reining the team to a halt.

  “Some of you men get in the water and keep those bodies from drifting too far downstream!” commanded Brock Harper. He had a big braying voice and a pair of leather lungs for bawling out commands.

  He turned in the saddle, facing the east bank. Four men stood there, holding rifles and shotguns whose muzzles still trailed strings and wisps of gunsmoke. “You bastards have to get wet crossing back over anyhow, so make yourselves useful and corral those deaders,” Harper said. “Move!”

  The quartet splashed into the creek to obey. There was blood in the water. Swirling, spiraling clouds of the red stuff spread among the strata of green and brown water. The creek was murkier than ever due to the bottom having been churned up by hooves and wagon wheels during the action. The four outlaws took hold of floating corpses, herding them to shore.

  Brock Harper rode up on to the west bank. It was thickly wooded. The trail resumed at the water’s edge and continued west, making a tunnel through the brush. Farther down the trail, around a bend and out of sight of anyone crossing the ford from the east bank, was a clearing.

  The gang’s horses were hidden there, tethered and watched by two men designated as horseholders. Nothing was more embarrassing or potentially fatal than having horses run off when their riders were dismounted. A flatbed wagon hitched to a four-horse team was hidden around the bend, too.

  Fenner was gangly, thin-faced, with long, lank hair, sunken eyes and buck teeth. He went to Harper. He crowed, “Whoo-whee! What a turkey shoot! Did the feathers fly!”

  Harper held a flap of his blue tunic out and away from himself, showing where a bullet hole had pierced it. “One of you jackasses almost shot me. It came from over here. Who did it?” he demanded.

  Nobody stepped forward to own up. Fenner snickered, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Must be that blue uniform, Boss. Folks just naturally like to shoot at it. You can’t blame ’em for it.”

  “Think it’s so funny, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your mouth if I get a notion to straighten you out,” Harper said.

  “Weren’t me, Brock! If I was shooting at you I wouldn’t have missed,” Fenner said.

  “Not that I ever would,” he added quickly.

  “You’re damned right about that, you Ozark peckerwood.” Harper swung down out of the saddle. Relieved of his weight, his horse seemed to gain several inches in height.

  The empty holster at his hip nagged at him. “Somebody give me a gun,” he said.

  Most of the gang carried more than one six-gun. Somebody hand
ed Harper a pistol.

  “Here go, Brock.”

  “Thanks.” Harper checked to make sure it was loaded—he took nothing on faith. Loaded it was. He weighed it in his hand, checking the balance. He fired a test shot, knocking a pinecone off a tree.

  The gun passed muster. Harper stuffed it into his empty holster. He looked around, his eye falling on the nearest of his men. He called them out by name.

  “Wilse! Gordy! Digger! Mart! Mount up and round up those army horses! They’re loot. Any of them gets away, it’s like throwing away money,” he said. Those singled out by him went down the trail to the clearing around the bend to get their horses.

  Harper shucked off the blue tunic, throwing it to the ground. “Feels good to be rid of that. It was as tight as a sausage skin.”

  “You just about busted out of the seams,” Reese Kimbro said.

  “We were lucky to get those uniforms at all, thanks to our inside man at Fort Pardee. But they don’t hardly field troopers in my size.”

  “No they don’t, and that’s a fact.”

  “That reminds me,” Harper said, “where’s the lieutenant?”

  “The one you gut-shot? Somewhere in with the rest of ’em,” Reese said.

  Harper went down to the edge of the creek. A row of bodies lay sprawled along the muddy bank, twisted by the contortions of violent death. Harper went along the line from one victim to the next, searching. Sometimes he used the toe of his boot to turn a body faceup.

  He stopped when he found Lieutenant Greer. The body lay there dripping, pale, white-faced. There was a big dark blotch from the hole in its belly and another one in the side where Harper’s first bullet had tagged him.

  Harper squatted down, tearing open Greer’s right breast shirt pocket. He didn’t bother opening the pocket; he just tore it loose from the shirt. A square of sodden folded paper tumbled out. Harper picked it up.

  “What’s that, Brock?” somebody asked.

  “A fake document my friend at Fort Pardee gave me to establish my bona fides with the shavetail.” The paper tore as Harper unfolded it. The handwriting was blurred and smeary from the water, but the Army letterhead and Fort Pardee red stamp were still legible.

  He tore up the paper into little pieces and threw them away. “That’ll protect our inside man at the fort. I might need him again.” Some of the fragments stuck to his thick strangler’s fingers. He wiped them clean on his pants.

  Riders on horseback, the men Harper had singled out earlier, came down the trail out of the woods. They rode into the creek, fanning out to round up the wagon guards’ stray horses.

  “Long as I’m in this neck of the woods, might as well make a thorough job of it,” Harper said, turning out the rest of Greer’s pockets. He came up with a thin wad of greenbacks and a few—not many—gold coins.

  The search also yielded a pocket-watch. It was still ticking. Harper opened the watch. On the inside of the lid was an oval miniature painting of a young woman, an attractive brunette. A couple of outlaws crowded in to take a look.

  “What’s that, Brock?”

  Harper shrugged. “I dunno. His sweetheart, maybe. Pretty gal.”

  “Let’s see,” somebody said.

  Harper closed the watchcase lid with a snap. The money he pocketed.

  “What happened to sharing out the profits equally like we always do?” asked Kimbro, frowning fiercely.

  “That’s my bonus for nearly getting shot by my own compadres,” Harper said.

  “I ran the same risk,” Kimbro said, “so I’ll take the watch.”

  Harper shrugged massive shoulders. He tossed Kimbro the watch. Kimbro snatched it out of the air. “Thanks,” he said.

  A number of outlaws rushed toward the bodies. Harper barked at them, “Back off, you buzzards!”

  The others halted in mid-stride.

  “Me and Kimbro took ours off the top as a bonus for running the extra risk. The rest of the spoils will be handled in an orderly fashion. Dump it all in a hat and we’ll divvy up later at the hideout,” Harper said.

  He knew his men. They were like kids, greedy kids. A full-course meal was laid out on the table and all they could think of was getting their grubby hands on the penny candy. Whatever pittance lay in the pockets of the dead men was as nothing compared to the wagon’s cargo. But if the badmen didn’t have at it they’d be sore and bellyaching. Better to get it over with now, the quicker to get at the real job at hand.

  “Get to it and make it fast, we haven’t got all day,” Harper said. “And remember—anybody dragging down loot for himself is robbing the rest of you. Having you scavengers watching each other is the best way to keep you honest—you should pardon the expression,” he went on, chuckling to himself.

  The outlaws fell on the corpses like starving dogs on a juicy bone. They turned out the dead men’s pockets, divesting them of their valuables, such as they were. They weren’t much.

  Something tugged on Harper’s sleeve. “What do you want, Fenner?” he asked.

  “What about me, Brock?”

  “What about you?”

  “I deserve something, I took a risk, too.”

  Harper laughed, without humor. “Risk? You were safe here on the far side of the creek while Kimbro and me were in the thick of it.”

  “Aw, Brockie, don’t be like that . . .”

  “Shaddup.” Fenner wore a high-crowned hat. Harper snatched it off his head.

  “Hey! What’re you doing?!—”

  “Take it easy, Fenner. This hat of yours will fit the bill,” Harper said. He turned it upside-down. “Here, men, put the loot in Fenner’s hat. Anybody holds out, I’ll shoot him. And make it quick! There’s work to do and daylight’s burning.”

  Scavenging the dead men’s pockets yielded a meager take. “Them soldier boys don’t carry much in the way of hard currency,” somebody said.

  “Pay’s almost as little as cow punching,” another groused.

  The corpses’ yield of money, watches and such was not enough to fill the inside of Fenner’s hat to the brim.

  “Kaw, get up here,” Harper said. Kaw came forward. He was a full-blooded Kiowa, an outcast from his tribe who now rode the outlaw trail. Harper handed him the hat filled with loot.

  “Take care of this, Kaw. Put it in your saddlebag,” Harper said.

  “Why him, Brock?” somebody asked.

  “Because he’s the only honest man here. Everybody knows Kaw’s not in it for the loot, but for the pure hell of it. He’s the only one you can trust not to steal from you because he doesn’t give a damn about money.”

  Nods and murmurs from the men indicated their general agreement with the statement.

  “Stow it away now, Kaw. We’ve already wasted too much time on this chicken feed,” said Harper.

  “Every little bit helps, Brock,” Kimbro said.

  Kaw turned, starting down the trail toward where the horses were picketed. Fenner trotted after him.

  “Where you going, Fenner?” asked Harper.

  “I want my hat back. It’s my hat and I want it.”

  Kimbro said, “Watch him, Kaw, and make sure none of that loot sticks to his fingers.”

  A new voice made itself heard:

  “That’s penny-ante stuff. How about a looksee at what’s in the wagon?”

  The speaker was Hap Englehardt. Balding, with a beaky nose and vulture face, he was lean, spare and as tough as a strip of beef jerky. A lifetime in the saddle had left him so bowlegged that a hogshead barrel could have passed lengthwise between them without touching the insides of his thighs.

  He was in his late fifties, old for an outlaw. That meant he was good at what he did because he’d been at the business of robbing and killing since boyhood days, and few men in his peculiar trade lived long enough to grow ripe and full in years. “Hap” was short for “Happy,” a moniker that had been hung on him long ago by some sagebrush wag, in the same humor as calling a big man “Tiny.”

  He looked around at so
me of the others. “We’d like to see what we been working so hard for,” Englehardt said.

  “You speaking for this bunch now, Hap? What do you think is in the crates, eggs?”

  “I sure as hell hope not, Brock. If we come all this way for nothing—” Engelhardt broke off, swearing, swiping a fist in the air.

  Harper faced him, hands on hips. “Yeh? What’ll you do then, Hap?”

  “. . . I’ll be purely disappointed, Brock,” Englehardt said, backing off.

  Harper grinned. “What I thought. You were born sour, Hap, and whatever’s in that wagon, honey or horse turds, you’ll stay sour.”

  He eyed the rest of the gang. They were taut, keyed-up. Feral dogs straining at the leash. “I suppose none of you will rest easy until you’ve had a look so let’s get it over with,” Harper said, growling.

  He went to the wagon, the others swarming around it, crowding in. Their faces were eager, rapt, like players at a gambling table intent on a turn of the wheel. Some of them were breathing hard as if they were running a race.

  Down came the freight wagon’s tailgate. The ropes tying down the canvas tarpaulin over the cargo were cut loose and the tarp folded back, baring stacked wooden crates.

  “You like to brag on your strength, Neal. Get up there and haul one of those crates down.”

  “Right, Brock.” Neal was a strongback, big, beefy, athletic. He clambered up on the tailgate. Squaring his stance, he took hold of one of the topmost crates and wrestled it loose from the stack.

  “Easy does it. Lower it down, don’t drop it,” Harper said.

  Words in big black letters were stenciled on the top and sides of the crate. A rail-thin gunman in his late teens squinted at it, Adam’s apple bobbing in a turkey neck. “What’s that say?”

  “Whatsa’ matter, Dewey, can’t you read?” a badman demanded.

  “No, can you?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  “It says, ‘Property of U.S. Army,’” Harper said.

  “Not no more, it ain’t,” Kimbro said quickly.

  That got a laugh all around. Neal manhandled the crate, red-faced, veins bulging, breathing hard. He started lowering it down from the tailgate and lost his grip. The crate fell heavily to the ground, breaking open a corner of the nailed-down lid.