by Ralph Cotton
“That’s enough, Bootlip,” said Ronald Andrews. “Billy has to make his choice just like the rest of us did.”
“Yeah,” said Bootlip Thomas. “I wish to hell I’d had the people on my side back when I was a stupid kid starting out.” He gripped the bars and shook them. “Is this what you really want, boy? You want to end up like this? Or like Willie John and the rest . . . on the run, never knowing where the next day’s going to take you?”
“That doesn’t sound so bad to me,” said Billy Odle. “Going where I want to, when I want to . . . doing whatever I want to once I get there.” He looked Bootlip Thomas up and down. “As far as ending up like you . . . I’m not going to. You wouldn’t have, either, if you’d been smart.”
“Why you little . . .” Bootlip Thomas stopped himself from saying more than he wanted to by kicking the bars hard with his stockinged feet. Then he turned, grumbling to himself, stomped over to his bunk and flopped down on it.
Ronald Andrews shook his head and looked out through the window, seeing the four riders move their horses forward at a slow walk, riding abreast in the middle of the cleared street. Around them fresh snow began falling. Large flakes clung to their collars and hat brims. “Come on, Collins,” Ronald Andrews whispered again to the cold window pane, “For God sakes, make your move . . . make it now. Don’t let them get between your men and the men in the alley. They’ll have you cutting each other to pieces, you damn fool.”
But inside the saloon Collins waited, keeping the others behind him with an outstretched arm. Across the street in the alley Carl Yates did the same, waiting for Collins and his men to make the first move as Morgan Aglo and his outlaws moved slowly in between them. Seeing what was about to happen, Ronald Andrews said to Billy Odle, “Boy, I sure hope you’re worth all this trouble.”
“Me?” Billy looked astonished. “I never caused any of this!”
“Hell, of course you didn’t,” said Andrews, a sarcastic snap to his words. “Now stay right here.” He raised his pistol from his holster with his right hand and moved to the door, his rifle hanging in his left hand already cocked and ready. “Somebody’s going to have to keep this town from shooting itself to pieces.” He swung the door open and stepped out quickly, as if afraid that taking time to consider his action might cause him to change his mind.
At the sound of Andrews’s pistol fire, the four outlaws’ horses stopped at once, Morgan Aglo’s big dun rearing and trying to turn in mid-air. Without warning, Ronald Andrews charged forward from the boardwalk, hoping the sight of him would cause both Collins and Yates to bring their men out of hiding and rush the outlaws. But as one of his shots hit Joe Shine high in the shoulder, Ronald Andrews heard not a sound from the townsmen. “My God, what’s he doing?” said Collins, staring as if frozen in place.
Before flying backward from his saddle, Joe Shine had managed to draw his pistol and get a shot off. The bullet whistled past the side of Ronald Andrews’s head, yet Andrews never flinched. The pistol in his hand kept firing until it clicked on an empty chamber. Then Andrews let the smoking pistol drop to the ground and swung his rifle up into play. Two of his pistol shots had hit Tack Beechum and unseated him. Another shot had barely missed Texas Bob Mackay and caused him to spin his horse in the street as he drew his pistol. Beside him, Morgan Aglo had righted his animal and brought his pistol into the fray.
When Texas Bob Mackay’s horse had turned full circle, his shot hit Ronald Andrews low in the left side, the impact twisting Andrews sideways before catching himself and returning fire with the rifle. Morgan Aglo’s pistol shots hit Ronald Andrews like maddened hornets.
“My God, men!” cried Carl Yates, seeing the shots from Morgan Aglo and Texas Bob overpowering Ronald Andrews. “What are we waiting for? They’re killing poor Ronald!”
Carl Yates sprang forward, the men right behind him, firing on Morgan Aglo and Texas Bob Mackay as the outlaws’ shots sliced and punched Ronald Andrews. Morgan Aglo let out a tortured scream and kept firing as bullets ripped through his body: “ Aiiieeee! You sonsabitches, we ain’t even robbed nothing yet!” His voice sounded wild with rage at the unfairness of it.
Texas Bob managed to turn his horse even in the hail of fire. His last bullet had hit Ronald Andrews straight in the teeth, and ripped a gaping hole in his cheek. Andrews had staggered in place and caught himself, managing in his dazed state to remain on his feet, a cold gray numbness settling over his senses. Badly wounded, Morgan Aglo scrambled across the ground to ally himself with Joe Shine as Collins and his townsmen spilled out through the doors of the saloon. Through the heavy gunfire Morgan Aglo called out, “Don’t worry, Joe, I’m coming!”
Badly wounded himself, Joe Shine looked forward across the body of Tack Beechum at the street full of angry guns facing him and cried out with tears in his eyes, “Damn it to hell, Morgan! This ain’t fair!” Large snowflakes fell peacefully onto both the dead and the dying.
Thirty yards along the street, with bullets whizzing past him, Texas Bob Mackay threw his arm back and fired the remaining shot from his pistol, then let it fall from his hand. Fresh blood was pouring freely down into both of his boots, and most of his clothes were stuck to his body. He was not at all surprised when something like a hammer blow hit him in the small of his back and seemed to lift him up from his saddle just long enough for his horse to run out from under him.
Seeing the world slow down around him, Texas Bob felt himself float down to the ground among the gentle snowflakes. He began planning how he would explain to everybody that this was all a mistake—that he was riding with Fuller’s bounty posse. That this was just his way of getting in with the outlaws, gaining their trust. See, he wasn’t an outlaw. Hell no! He never had been . . .
When Texas Bob hit the ground, the firing behind him stopped, or at least he could no longer hear it. All he could hear was a low dull roar, like some distant wind across a dark bottomless chasm. Strangely though, he could hear the sound of boots walking toward him, their hard soles making a crunching sound on the cold earth. Texas Bob rolled over onto his side and made a pistol of his steaming bloody hand and raised it toward Ronald Andrews.
“I’ll shoot,” Texas Bob warned, seeing the terrible face loom above him. Even the veil of slow falling snow could not soften the harshness of the rent flesh, the shattered bone fragments, the steam billowing grotesquely from the fresh wounds.
“No you won’t . . .” Ronald Andrews’s voice sounded muffled and guttural, coming from the numbness of his mouth and the dazed state of his mind. He staggered back and forth in place, his pistol hanging aimlessly in his hand.
Texas Bob clicked his thumb back and forth as if this make-believe pistol might actually fire. Then he sighed deeply and let his hand fall to the ground. Somehow, even through Ronald Andrews’s bloodied face and torn flesh, Texas Bob saw something familiar—the face of someone out of his past. He tried to smile, wanting to make sense of this new twist on things, thinking perhaps this was someone who might awaken him now and tell him this was all a bad dream. “I—I know you . . . from somewhere,” Texas Bob managed to say.
“No,” said Ronald Andrews, “you don’t know me.” He found that speaking took little effort even with his teeth broken and his cheek turned inside out.
“Hell yes . . . I do,” said Texas Bob. “You’re just . . . an outlaw yourself . . . you always was.”
With much effort Ronald Andrews extended the cocked pistol, holding the tip of the barrel no more than six inches from Texas Bob’s forehead. “You don’t know me from nowhere.” The pistol bucked once in Andrews’s hand, slamming Texas Bob backward to the ground, a wreath of blood and bone matter splattering out beneath his head on the fresh white snow. “You never did.”
“Lord have mercy, Ronald,” Carl Yates said in hushed tone, having witnessed the shooting of the outlaw. Then he gasped in disbelief and horror as he slid to a halt, seeing Ronald Andrews’s face as Andrews turned toward him, raising the pistol in his direction.
&n
bsp; “Ronald it’s me, Carl! Put the pistol down, please!” He saw the strange look in Ronald’s eyes, the dazed look of a wild animal with a paw pinned in a steel trap. The look chilled Carl Yates to his bones. “I’m here to help you! For God sakes, drop the pistol!”
“I can’t,” Andrews said in his wounded muffled voice.
Yates noted that the pistol had been recocked. Dropping it was a dangerous proposition. “I mean just lay it down easy! Get rid of it!”
“I can’t,” Ronald Andrews sobbed, streaming blood from the gaping hole in his cheek. “I’ve tried . . . I can’t.”
“Listen to me, Ronald,” Yates said quickly, seeing that in his wounded state Ronald Andrews was far past any level of logic or reasoning. Ronald Andrews was functioning now on raw human instincts, nothing more. “Don’t try to talk. You’ve got to lay the gun down and let me help you. Get a hold of yourself, man! You’ve been hurt, real real bad!”
“I know it,” said Ronald in his guttural shapeless voice, all air and life seeming to have left him. He staggered closer to Carl Yates, raising the cocked pistol slowly with a shaking hand. “I ain’t going back . . .”
In the street between the saloon and the sheriff’s office, the shooting had ceased. The townsmen from both sides of the street had drawn in cautiously around Morgan Aglo who rocked back and forth on his knees, a long red string of saliva bobbing up and down from his bloody lips. The fresh snow surrounding him was a widening red slush. His failing eyes went to the bank building. “How much . . . money, was we . . . talking about?”
But the townsmen turned quickly away from the dying outlaw without offering an answer when the single pistol shot resounded up the street. “Oh my God!” said Collins, not believing his eyes. “Yates just shot Ronald Andrews! Shot him dead!”
“Never . . . mind that,” Morgan Aglo said, his dying voice going lower. “How much . . . money?”
“Shut the hell up and die, you lousy bandit!” said a voice. A boot swung around, kicked Aglo in the back of his head and sent him sprawling facedown on the cold, rutted street. He laid helpless, blood spouting from his gaping mouth, the dimming world above him growing smaller and farther away.
Chapter 21
Collins and the rest of the townsmen hurried to where Carl Yates was kneeling beside the body of Ronald Andrews on the cold ground. As the men drew close around Yates, they saw him reach out with his gloved hand and wipe the flakes of snow from Andrews’s face and close his dead blank eyes. “What happened, Carl?” Selectman Collins asked in a gentle tone of voice.
“I didn’t shoot him,” Yates whispered, having heard what Collins had said moments ago.
“I’m sorry, Yates,” Collins offered. “I heard the shot and looked down here—”
“He shot himself,” Yates said, not seeming to hear Collins’s apology.
“Lord have mercy,” whispered one of the townsmen, wincing at the sight of Ronald Andrews’s mangled cheek, the rugged bullet hole in the side of his head, the streak of blood on the white frosty ground. “The poor ole boy . . . He must’ve plumb lost his mind, running out there that way, then getting his face shot off like that. I reckon you can’t hold it agin’ him for taking his own life. No doctor could ever made him right after this.” He gestured a hand toward Ronald Andrews’s face, then looked away as it pained him to see it.
“He jumped right out there and called it on,” said Collins shaking his head in amazement. “What on earth do you suppose made him do that?”
“I reckon we’ll never know,” said Carl Yates, standing up and rubbing his gloved hands together. “Ronald was a good helper and a damn good fellow . . . but I have to say, there was a side to him that I never understood. Seemed like he would only let a person get so close, then he’d back off real quick. He had things he didn’t want folks to know, I reckon.” Yates shrugged and added with sad finality, “Well . . . they’ll never know it now.”
“Come on, Yates,” said Collins. “Let’s get you looked at.” He nodded at a spot of fresh blood on Yates’s coat sleeve.
“Oh, that’s not my blood, Collins.” As Carl Yates spoke he felt himself up and down, as if having to make sure he hadn’t been wounded.
“Look who’s coming,” said one of the townsmen, “now that the shooting’s over and we don’t need any help!”
At the far end of the street, Sam rode his horse forward through the falling snow, his rifle butt propped on his thigh, his thumb still across the hammer. When the gunfire had stopped, Sam’s first thought was to ride out in search of Willie John before fresh snow covered his tracks. Yet he couldn’t leave without first checking on the town. When he stopped his horse a few feet back from the body of Ronald Andrews on the ground, Carl Yates looked up at him, grief-stricken.
“That’s Ronald laying there, Ranger,” Yates said, gesturing with a hand. “We don’t know what happened . . . He just jumped out front ahead of everybody and commenced fighting them by himself.”
Sam shook his head slowly, showing his regret, then looked along the street at the bodies of the outlaws. “Are the rest of you all right, Sheriff?” he asked, his gaze going to Selectman Collins.
“I believe so,” said Collins, cutting a glance at the men around him as if asking their opinion. Their heads nodded in agreement.
“Where’s Billy Odle?” Sam asked, looking toward the sheriff’s office where the door stood wide open.
Seeing the door at the same time, Collins said, “Oh, the door? I expect Ronald Andrews left it open in his haste. He wasn’t himself I’m afraid . . . not after that Indian busting him in the head.”
Sam heeled his horse forward quickly, leaving Collins, Yates and the townsmen standing in the street. Outside the sheriff’s office he swung down from his saddle before his horse completely stopped. He ran inside, his rifle hanging in his gloved hand, and looked at Bootlip Thomas who stood with his face pressed between the bars, trying to see out through the open door. “Is—is it all over out there, Ranger?” Thomas asked.
“Yes,” said Sam. “Where’s the boy?”
“He’s gone,” said Bootlip. “I hollered, but they didn’t hear me for all the shooting.”
“Did he say anything first?” Sam asked hurriedly.
“Nope . . . but he didn’t have to. He’s been acting real squirrelly ever since he heard about Willie John coming back.”
Behind Sam, Carl Yates hurried inside the office and looked all around, understanding right away what had happened. “Blast that boy! Ranger, I’m awfully sorry! There was just so much going on. Poor Ronald was keeping an eye on him, but I reckon Billy lit out of here as soon as Ronald stepped out in the street! I take the blame for Billy running out.”
“Save your breath, Yates,” said Sam. “You’ve done the best you could. Nobody’s to blame for Billy’s actions anymore, except Billy himself.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, Ranger, but I reckon I better,” said Bootlip Thomas. “The boy took a pistol out of the desk drawer before he left.” Bootlip nodded toward a wooden peg on the back wall of the office. “He also grabbed a belt full of bullets down from over there.”
Sam gave Bootlip a hard gaze. “And you weren’t going to tell me about it?”
Bootlip looked ashamed. “I sort of promised him I wouldn’t. Then I got to thinking about it. I don’t want to see that crazy kid get himself killed.” Bootlip shook his head. “I don’t know what it is about him. I reckon he reminds me of myself back before things got out of hand.”
Sam let out a breath and with it the hardness in his eyes seemed to diminish. “I know what you mean, Bootlip.” He looked at Carl Yates, then at the men outside on the boardwalk who pressed close to the doorway, staring in at him. “Billy has that effect on all of us. Thanks for telling me about the pistol.”
“You’ll try not to shoot that worthless little peckerwood, won’t you, Ranger?” Bootlip pleaded between the bars.
“I’ll do the best I can,” said Sam. “If he gets with Willie John,
there’s no telling how this will turn out.”
“I’ll go with you, Ranger,” said Carl Yates.
“Much obliged,” said Sam, “but you’re needed here right now. Get this town settled down.”
“If I hear much shooting out there, I’m riding out to you, Ranger,” Carl Yates said.
“The snow’s bad, Yates,” said Sam. “If you come looking, make sure you let me know it’s you coming up behind me . . . and make sure it’s me you ride up on.”
“I will.” Carl Yates swallowed a dry knot in his throat, then stepped quietly to one side of the open door as Sam walked past him. Between the door and the hitch rail, townsmen cleared a way for him, watching closely as Sam swung up into his saddle and urged his horse forward to the livery barn. The men still did not move. They stood staring as Sam walked into the barn, then came out a moment later, remounted and rode away in the falling snow.
“Lord have mercy,” said Kirby Bell under his breath, “I’d hate to be in that boy’s shoes once the Ranger catches up to him.”
“Sam Burrack won’t hurt that boy, Kirby,” said Carl Yates. “You heard him, didn’t you?”
“Ha! Yeah, I heard him,” said Bell. “But he’s going to skin Billy Odle alive when he catches him. The way that kid’s been acting, it won’t bother me one bit.”
“Hush up, Bell,” said Carl Yates. “If that’s all you’ve seen out of the ranger, you’re blind as a bat. He’ll bend backwards to keep that boy from harm.”
“Yeah? Then you better hope that boy doesn’t raise a pistol toward him. If he does, my money says the Ranger will shoot him dead.” He looked around at the others for agreement. A few heads nodded; others looked away.
“Sometimes you get on my nerves something awful, Bell,” said Carl Yates. He spit and wiped a hand across his mouth. “Come on fellows,” he added, “let’s get Ronald Andrews out of the cold. It tears me up to see him like this.”
