by Ralph Cotton
By the time the buckboard rolled into Hubbler Wells, Willie John and his three-man party had drifted in unnoticed and taken position; two across the street, two at the hitch rail out front of the bank. Huey Sweeney had stepped out of a saddle shop where he had spent the last few minutes. Willie John turned toward the sound of the hound baying from the seat of the buckboard. Behind the driver he saw the big bearskin coat and the battered Stetson wobbling to the sway of the wagon bed as Joe Perkins struggled to keep himself standing erect, leaning on his hickory cane.
“I don’t like this at all,” Willie whispered to Nian Rasdorph beside him. As he spoke he gave a slight hand signal to Mitchell and Kerns across the street, telling them to be ready for anything. Sweeney shouted something at Willie John before backing quickly into an alley where he disappeared like a puff of smoke. Then Willie’s hand closed around his pistol handle, drew the weapon and held it cocked down the side of his leg, watching the buckboard swing a wide turn in the empty street and stop out front of the saloon.
“What the hell’s going on up there?” Earl Ganston whispered to his brother. Earl, Hopper and the six remaining men had already begun riding in slowly from the other end of town. At the sight of the old man standing in the back of the buckboard raising a cane toward the roof, Hopper reined his horse down almost to a halt. The men behind him did the same.
On the roof, Colonel Daniel Fuller cursed in a harsh constrained voice, then said to Red Booker, “What the blazes is that old fool doing down there?”
“Hello the roof,” Joe Perkins called out, waving his cane back and forth. Joe held the dog’s long chain in his other hand while the animal barked and bounded back and forth, its attention directed upward at the saloon’s roofline. Along the rutted street, Willie John and the other gunmen’s eyes followed.
“Lord God!” said Daniel Fuller to Red Booker and the men alongside him on the roof. “Here comes the Ganstons . . . and this old fool has given us up.”
There was a tense second when every man on the street and atop the roof seemed to freeze in place, watching Perkins and his baying hound. Kirby Bell half rose from the buckboard seat, caught off guard by Joe Perkins’s calling out to the armed men above them. He thought surely Perkins would have waited until the few armed townsmen inside the saloon had joined them. But not so. Even as four townsmen bunched up in the bat-wing doors, rifles and shotguns in hand, Joe Perkins raised one of the big Walker Colts and cocked it upward, shakily, at the roofline. “I’ll have an answer,” Perkins shouted.
“Damn you to living hell, sir!” Daniel Fuller bellowed. “There is a robbery about to take place!”
“A what?” Joe Perkins called out above the baying of the hound.
But still, the street and saloon roof stood tense, motionless, until Willie John made the first move. His eyes shot from the Ganstons, to the townsmen, to the roofline where Fuller and his men had raised up with their rifles now that their cover was blown. Thinking quick, Willie John jumped forward into the street and shouted as he waved his pistol at Perkins and the saloon doors, “They’re bank robbers! Shoot them down!”
“Damn that Indian!” Seeing what Willie John was doing, Daniel Fuller shouted to his men, “Somebody shut him up! Fire, men!”
The rifles along the saloon roof opened fire, but hearing Fuller’s command had left some of the men confused. Thinking Fuller meant for them to shut up the old man in the buckboard, three rifles swung in Perkins’s direction, the shots raising puffs of dust from the bearskin coat as Perkins spun like a top from the impact of whining lead.
Kirby Bell dove from the buckboard seat to the cold, hard ground, the big hound pulling free from Perkins and leaping right behind him with a loud yelp as bullets from the roof kicked up a spray of splinters from the wagon bed. “Don’t shoot!” Kirby screamed, unsure of who he was even pleading to. The townsmen, seeing Joe Perkins shot and seeing the Indian and the two men with him fire at the roofline, misread the situation entirely. They sprang from the door of the saloon and fired up at Fuller and his men. But Fuller’s men knew who their targets were. Under fire from the armed townsmen, Red Booker and the others still managed to throw down a barrage of deadly fire on Willie John, Nian Rasdorph, Mitchell and Kerns.
“Get us out of here!” Willie John shouted at Hopper Ganston and the men on horseback who had fallen back as the firing started. Nian Rasdorph took a bullet through his chest that drove him backward against the two horses hitched at the rail. The horses struggled against their tied reins and whinnied loud and long in their fright. Willie returned fire as he snatched at the reins of both horses. Getting their reins free from the rail and tight in his gloved hand, he reached down with his gunhand and tried yanking Nian Rasdorph to his feet. “Nian! Let’s go!”
A bullet ripped through Willie John’s shoulder, forcing him to stagger back a step. He caught a glimpse of Earl, Hopper and the others turning in the street and heading out of town, bullets from the roofline spitting up dirt at their horses’ hoofs. “Damn it, Hopper!” Willie shouted, falling back quickly into an alleyway. He pulled the horses along, Nian Rasdorph stumbling along against him. They were both wounded and bloody now. Willie flattened himself against the side of a clapboard building and fired up at the rifles on the saloon roof.
Mitchell and Kerns lay in the street, Mitchell facedown in a dark pool of blood. Kerns was crying out, a hand clasped to his spilling innards, the big hound three feet from him diving in and out at him, barking, snapping. “Help me, Willie!” Kerns screamed above the raging gunfire.
But aside from taking a shot at the hound, there was nothing Willie could do. The dog let out a long yelp as dirt from the shot kicked up against its lowered muzzle and caused it to turn and run away, not stopping until it disappeared into the horizon. In the street, Joe Perkins had fallen from the wagon, three wounds spitting blood through holes in his bearskin coat. But he was still alive, and still had fight in him. He thrashed and wallowed back and forth under the weight of the coat until he rolled back up onto his knees and raised both Walker Colts and fired.
Joe Perkins’s shots ripped chunks of wood from the cornice and facade of the saloon. Rifle smoke drifted in thick clouds, spent brass cartridges littered the dusty street. “Nian, you alive?” asked Willie John, firing at the roof without looking down at Rasdorph, who lay at his feet.
“Yeah, Willie . . . I’m alive,” Nian Rasdorph replied in a strained voice. “Looks like Mitchell and Kerns are done for, though.”
“We’ve got to make a run for it,” said Willie. “Hopper and the boys are gone.” On the street, Perkins fell backward as two more rifle shots hit him, the men on the roof firing mindlessly now, showing no mercy.
“I’m . . . with you, Willie,” Nian gasped, raising a weak hand to take his horse’s reins from Willie John. “You might . . . have to give me some help up.”
On the street, Joe Perkins rolled onto his belly. Lying prone with more blood seeping through new holes in his coat, he raised the big Walker Colts again. Two shots exploded; two riflemen fell screaming from the roof. “That old man’s a shooter,” Willie John said absently to himself. Then he looked back down at Nian Rasdorph. “All right, I’ll help you up on your horse. But that’s all I can do for you. There’s no use in lying about it, Nian . . . you’re not gonna make it. I can’t waste time on you.”
“I . . . understand,” said the wounded outlaw, looking up with a hand clasped to his bleeding chest. “Ready when you are.”
Chapter 3
Seeing that the Ganstons had turned and fled out of town, Daniel Fuller waved his arms and shouted down to the firing townsmen bunched up in the doorway of the saloon. “Hold your fire, for God sakes! We’re lawmen up here!”
“Then you best show us some tin real quick,” called a voice from the saloon. “You’ve killed old Joe!”
“The old fool in the bearskin coat?” Fuller asked.
“He might have been an old fool, but he was one of us. Somebody’s gonna pay for killing
him.”
“We’re sorry we shot him, but that was a terrible mistake on his part. He fired on us first,” Fuller replied. “What the hell did you expect us to do?” His eyes went to the crumpled pile of bearskin in the middle of the street as the firing waned below. Alongside Daniel Fuller, Red Booker and the rest of the possemen had stopped shooting on Fuller’s command. They stared toward the alleyway and saloon as they quickly reloaded their rifles.
“Let’s blame the outlaws that caused all this in the first place,” called Fuller. “We’ve got two of them wounded, pinned in the alley. Before we do anything, let’s flush them out of there. Are you with us?”
A silence passed as the men in the saloon murmured back and forth among themselves. Then, just as Selectman Collins started to call out to the roofline, two pistolshots exploded above the sound of hoofbeats, and Nian Rasdorph came rounding the corner of the alley, heading up the middle of the dirt street.
“Get that sonofabitch, boys!” Daniel Fuller shouted.
In his wounded condition, Nian Rasdorph rode low on his horse, wobbling from side to side. Even so, he managed to keep his pistol firing shot after shot, alternating his aim between the riflemen along the roof and the townsmen bunched up in the doorway. “Stay with me, Willie!” Rasdorph shouted back over his shoulder through a hail of return gunfire. But Willie John was nowhere near him. Willie John had never left the alley when Nian made his desperate break for freedom.
“Somebody shoot him, damn it to hell!” Daniel Fuller raged, hurrying, reloading his rifle and violently yanking the lever back and forth. The roofline exploded in one long volley of fire, the doorway of the saloon joining in the fusillade as holes exploded in Nian Rasdorph’s coat from all directions at once. Blood spewed. The terrified horse spun in a circle and reared high, sending the wounded outlaw screaming to the ground. Rasdorph struggled to his feet, but the hail of bullets pounded him to his knees. He slung his gun hand toward the roofline, let out a long scream, then collapsed beneath the hammering gunfire.
“Hold your fire, men!” said Fuller, waving a gloved hand in the air. “Jesus,” he added, spreading a cruel smile at Red Booker standing beside him, “I thought that sucker was never going to die.”
Along the roof, a voice called out from amid the excited possemen, “What say, Colonel Fuller? Can we go down and look him over?”
“Not so fast, you idiots!” Fuller shouted. “We’ve still got that Injun cornered down there.” Fuller shot a glance down at the saloon, and seeing the townsmen venture forward into the street, he bellowed at them, “Stay put, you fools! That Injun will shoot your eyes out.”
“What are we going to do?” shouted Selectman Collins. “We can’t sit here all day waiting on one wounded gunman.”
“Hear that?” Fuller said to Red Booker. “Now that the fighting’s about over, they’ll start talking tough. For two cents I’d let them go on in and let the Injun have them.”
“What are we going to do, Colonel?” asked Booker. “We need to get on the Ganstons’ trail while it’s still hot.”
“In good time, Red,” said Fuller. “Right now, bring the men and come with me.” He moved back from the edge of the roof. “We’ll surround the Injun from all sides and move in real slow. He’s been the eyes and ears for the Ganstons. I want to keep him alive if we can. There’s a lot he can tell us.”
Hurrying along behind Fuller and waving for the men to follow him, Red Booker said, “That’s all well and good, Colonel, but I ain’t seen an Injun yet that will tell you anything he don’t want you to know.”
Fuller offered a dark chuckle. “You haven’t seen the way I ask them.”
When they had descended the ladder at the rear of the building, Fuller, Booker and the rest of the posse walked quickly across the street to the saloon. Keeping a close eye on the alley where they knew the Indian lay in wait, Colonel Fuller said to Selectman Collins, “I hope you’re good at following orders, sir. If not, we’ll likely get some men killed here.”
Collins looked at the faces of the other townsmen, then back at Fuller. “We’ll do whatever we need to. Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m Colonel Daniel J. Fuller, representing the Midwest Bankers’ Association.” He gestured a hand toward Red Booker and the rest of the posse. “This is my private militia.”
“Oh . . .” Collins looked the men over quickly. “You’re bounty hunters, huh?”
Colonel Fuller ignored him, turning toward the alley. “Have you seen any sign of him?”
“No, but he’s still in there, waiting to make a break,” said Collins. “We caught a glimpse of his horse a minute ago.”
“Good,” said Fuller. “I want your men to spread out along the boardwalk on this side of the street. My men will take this side. We’ll close in slow and easy when I give a signal. I want this man alive.”
“We’ll do the best we can,” said Collins. “But if he starts shooting I can’t promise anything.”
Fuller gave him a hard stare. “I checked that alley when we came to town. I know it’s a dead end. He’s in there and there’s no place for him to go. You keep your men’s fingers off their triggers whilst I talk sense to that Injun. He’ll give himself up to me, so long as you boys don’t do something stupid.”
“Something stupid?” said a voice from amid the armed townsmen. “You mean like setting up an ambush atop the roofs and not letting the town know about it?”
“Who said that?” Fuller demanded, his eyes searching the gathered townsmen.
“I said it.” A red-faced man with a long white mustache stepped forward and pushed his bowler hat up off of his forehead. Beneath his coat he wore a long leather smithing apron. “I’m Carl Yates. Joe Perkins is laying dead in the street because of this hare-brained ambush of yours.”
Fuller pointed a finger at the man. “I’ll deal with you, sir, as soon as this is over.”
“You can deal with me then, or now, or any damn time you feel the urge to,” said Carl Yates. “Hadn’t been for you damn bunch of buzzards—”
“Easy, Carl,” said Selectman Collins, stepping in between the two men. “We’re all sorry about old Joe. But let’s get this situation settled before someone else gets hurt.” He turned back to Fuller, saying, “All right, lead the way. We’ll spread along the boardwalk and close in.”
As Daniel Fuller stepped away from the saloon doorway and down into the street facing the alley, he called out, “You in there, Injun? I know you’re wounded. You saw what happened to your buddy. Now, you don’t want to end up like that, do you?” Fuller looked over at Nian Rasdorph’s bullet-riddled body lying facedown in the street, then moved his men closer with a slow wave of his hand. “Toss out your pistol and we’ll come get you, take you to a doctor and let him patch you up. How’s that sound?”
No answer came from the alley, only the low nickering of the dapple-gray. Fuller caught a quick glimpse of the horse’s muzzle, then saw it duck itself back out of sight at the sound of his voice. “Hey, listen to me, Injun. I don’t usually make this kind of offer. If you’re smart you’ll give yourself up.” He motioned the men closer, bringing them in a tighter and tighter circle around the entrance of the alley.
“If he’s dead I’m cleaving off his ears for a keepsake,” Talbert French whispered to Erskine Brock, the two of them in a crouch, easing forward.
“You ignorant peckerwood, you heard Fuller say he wanted the man alive.”
“I know,” said French, “but alls I’m saying is if he’s dead. So far you haven’t heard a peep out of him, have you?”
“No, but that might just be his way of drawing us in,” whispered Brock. “I figure he’s right around the corner of the building just waiting to spring out and make a run for it.”
“You two shut up and pay attention,” Red Booker hissed at them.
Ten yards from the alley entrance, the circle of men stopped on Fuller’s hand signal and stood crouched and ready. “All right, Injun, this is your last chance,” said Fuller.
“I know what you’re thinking . . . but it won’t work. You’ll make a few feet, maybe even kill one or two of us. But at the end you’ll be dead like a dog in the street. Now what’s it going to be?”
The only response from the alley was the low sound of the dapple-gray blowing air through its nostrils and scraping a hoof on the cold dirt. The big horse stood close to the clapboard wall, tense and expectant, as if awaiting a command of reins and boot heels. But no command came, and the horse grew more and more nervous.
“You heard me, Injun,” said Fuller, getting put out at being ignored. “Come out this very minute or we’re coming in!”
Inside the alley the dapple-gray pricked its ears toward Fuller’s voice, let out a long low nicker and took a short step forward, its head coming into view past the corner of the building. “Steady, boys, here he comes,” Fuller said, raising his cocked pistol, taking aim. “Okay, Injun, that’s the way, nice and slow.”
The dapple-gray took another short step, then another, until it came into full view, its empty saddle causing Fuller to curse as he let go of a tense breath. A wide smear of blood shone down the right saddle stirrup. “Damn it, boys, easy. He’s in there somewhere wounded bad. We might have to drag him out. Everybody move forward real careful-like.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Red Booker said almost to himself. He hurried forward in a crouch and grabbed the dangling reins to the big dapple-gray. “Hey in there, Injun,” he yelled, keeping the horse between himself and the alley, “I’m coming in. If you ever cared anything at all for this horse, you better hold your fire. He’s my shield, do you hear me?”
