by J. Lee Butts
Next morning, shortly after the sun came up, we got ourselves spread out around Drinkwater’s. The one-story rectangular building ran east and west with the front facing south. The backside butted up against a pile of rocks about sixty feet high that dribbled down from the foothills. Carlton took the east side, Barnes moved in from the west. I reluctantly agreed to meet the evil scoundrels head-on by coming up from the south.
Sycamore trees hovered over each end of the rough store like big umbrellas. The west end of the buck and battened structure supported a lean-to shed used as a makeshift barn for horses kept in the corral stretched around it. The lumber for the whole thing appeared to have been nailed up and ripped down several times in other constructions, and had the washed-out color of greasy gray mud. Out in Carlton’s direction, the sickly sweet odors from an outhouse wafted around on a swirling dust devil that kicked up at the exact same time we started moving in on the place from about two hundred yards out.
Guess Thunder couldn’t have taken more than twenty or thirty steps when the shooting started. At least three men busted through the door, and windows on either side of it, guns blazing. I recognized the sorry bastard described to me as Smilin’ Jack. He was the first one out, and levered shells into a Henry rifle as fast as he could pump it. First one burned a hole in the air so close to my ear I could feel the heat and smell the powder.
Thought the man on Paine’s right was One-Eyed Bucky Stillwell. Didn’t recognize the other fellow. Had my Winchester up at the ready, but didn’t react fast enough for their first volley. Then things got scary as hell when it seemed like all those sons of bitches lined up together and fired directly at me at the same time.
A single tongue of flame melded from the three barrels of their weapons and spat death my direction. There was this odd thump, thump, thump beneath me. Went to put the spur to Thunder, but she twisted awkwardly, stumbled, and dropped like a felled tree. Landed on her left side and flung gouts of black blood back and forth as her head swung from side to side. Poor beast tried to run lying there on the ground. She shook for a few seconds like she was cold, her legs stopped moving, and she sighed so loud I could hear it over all the gunfire aimed my direction. Then, she stiffened up like she was frozen for a bit, and almost all the air rushed out of her at the same time.
I had tried to pull out of the stirrup on the way down, but my left leg got wedged under her anyway. Knew it was gonna take everything I could do to kick myself free and drag away. Wasn’t making much headway with the thing when she kinda flopped like a fish out of water—just enough to break me loose. Then, she let go of one last, long, blood-saturated breath.
Only God knows for certain, but I’d swear to this day she knew I couldn’t get loose and used up everything she had left to get off me. All the while, bullets kicked up dust around us and punched more holes in her. Kept thinking Thunder had saved me by the way she died. Other than all the air kind of whooshing out of her at one time, she never made another sound.
By the time I got completely loose, turned around, and could defend myself, the gunfire was pretty general, and hard for me to tell where it all came from. At least three men made for the horse pen, but Barnes was moving in on them as fast as Big Red could carry him. He stood in his stirrups, had the reins in his teeth, and pumped bullets through a pistol in each hand as fast as he could thumb the hammers.
Turned back the other way and saw Carlton jump from his horse. He carried a cut-down shotgun and hid himself behind the outhouse. Both barrels from his big boomer opened up just about a second after he hit the ground running. Buckshot peppered the entire front of the store, and someone on the porch screamed. Big fellow I took to be Billy Standing Bull went to yelling and whooping. He hopped up from behind the water trough over on the end of the building closest to Carlton and started running toward the outhouse. He poured a steady wall of lead in and around the rugged outdoor reading room. Guess he used up all the powder available about a second before Carlton stepped from behind a boulder a bit right of his original hiding place.
Heard him yell something like, “Hi there, you worthless pile of weasel shit.” Then he blasted Billy Standing Bull completely out of his moccasins.
Well, I kept steady spraying lead at anybody running toward the horses or shooting in my direction. Barnes and Smilin’ Jack appeared to be in a two-man gunfight. Paine put one through Barnes’s hat brim, cut his reins with another—that one set the big marshal afoot. The murdering bandit kept up such a volley of fire from his iron-framed Henry, I feared he just might kill my newly made friend.
Swung my rifle around on Paine, but every time I squeezed one off, the man managed to move just enough to keep my shots from finding him. Barnes dropped to one knee to reload. Put himself in a hell of a bad spot. I got up on both my knees and really showered Smilin’ Jack with everything I had. Thought I hit him at least twice, but was so far away I couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t slow him down any. He made it to the corral, jumped into the saddle on a dun horse, and was gone faster than a Baptist deacon taking up a collection. He passed to within fifty feet of Barnes on his way out, and let off another round of fire. One slug sliced across Barnes’s back and burned a streak in his jacket from one shoulder to the other. My friend did manage to get the last shot off, and even though it seemed to hit home, Paine stayed upright in the saddle and made good his escape.
After he disposed of Standing Bull, Carlton waded into those ole boys who’d vacated the corral and bunched up on the porch. The man could shoot and reload a shotgun faster than anyone I’d seen, except Billy Bird. Inside of thirty seconds, he’d managed to rip off about ten shots and put so many holes in two of Paine’s three remaining gang members, you could of held them up and read the Fort Smith Elevator through their perforated hides.
The whole dance couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or so. Standing Bull kept twitching for quite a while after the smoke started to clear. Carlton hopped up on the porch and kicked the other wounded men.
“That ’un there’s Orvis Blocker.” He talked so fast his words came out like one long word as he pointed to a scrawny pile of dirt seated upright in Drinkwater’s doorway. The front of the wounded man’s shirt had at least twenty holes from the buckshot, and a Smith and Wesson pistol lay in his lap. Wispy smoke curled from the barrel and cylinder.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“I damn sure hope so. I shot the hell out of him. If he gets up and tries to walk away, I’ll knock him back down, stand on his chest, and you can shoot him a time or three.” He grinned and kicked Blocker onto his back. The blood-covered outlaw man moaned. “Just be damned, guess he’s still with us. Worthless bastard’s tougher’n I thought.”
A stocky man with gray hair had fallen off the porch and rolled up against one of the posts of the hitch rack. “Is this the one called Lawrence Westbrook?” I pulled his head back so Carlton could see the face just as Barnes walked up.
“That’s him, and the one over here”—he pointed to the end of the plank porch nearest the corral—“is none other than the infamous One-Eyed Bucky Stillwell. And slap me nekkid, but the son of a bitch is still alive.”
While Carlton and Barnes grabbed Stillwell by the feet and dragged him up on the porch, I stumbled back over to Thunder. Sometimes terrible things have a way of not really making any impact at the moment they first happen. When you’re real busy trying to stay alive, death has a way of sneaking up beside you and taking someone or something else so fast your mind just can’t get itself around the thing. Thunder had been a fine companion at times when I was out on the scout alone. More than once she’d saved my hide when things got a lot hotter than I cared for. Hadn’t been for that horse, I never would have caught Saginaw Bob and his bunch. Thunder was special, and Smilin’ Jack Paine killed her with no more feeling than if he’d squeezed the head off a tick.
Barnes eased up behind me while I stood looking down at her. “Sorry about all this, Hayden. We probably should have tried it all a little diffe
rent. Maybe we could have come up with a plan that would have kept something like this from happening.”
Took my hat off and wiped my forehead on the sleeve of my shirt. “Barnes, as God is my witness, if it takes me the rest of my time as a deputy marshal, I’m going to find that horse-killing son of a bitch and erase him from the world like yesterday’s lesson on a schoolmarm’s blackboard. He did this on purpose. His first shot went right by my ear. When he realized he’d missed, he plugged her dead center. She was gone when she hit the ground. If Thunder hadn’t dropped the way she did, Smilin’ Jack would’ve put so many holes in my hide, Old Man Drinkwater could’ve sold me for a flour sifter.”
Barnes patted me on the back.
Well, somehow Orvis Blocker had managed to live through the curtain of lead we’d dropped on that bunch. Carlton propped him up next to One-Eyed Bucky, and was standing on the wounded man’s leg when we walked up.
“Where’d he go, Orvis?” Carlton punctuated his question with more pressure from the heel of his boot.
Blocker squealed like a stuck pig. “Sweet Jesus, Marshal! Christ Almighty, that hurts! Please stop.”
“I’ll stop when you tell me where Smilin’ Jack was headed. Figure you boys must have had some idea of a place to run and hide before we showed up. So where’d he go?” Carlton backed off about half a step and kicked the wounded outlaw in the side where a purple stain slopped from his shirt and spilled into the waist of his pants. I swear, the sound that came out of Orvis Blocker was enough to jerk tears out of a glass eye.
“Oh-h-h, God Almighty! He went to Martin Luther Big Eagle’s place! I swear it. That’s all I know, Marshal. Goddammit, please don’t kick me again!” He hunkered over to protect the wound and wept like a baby.
Carlton bent down into the brigand’s face and sneered, “You’d better be damned sure of that, Orvis, or so help me God, you’ll wish you’d never seen my face. How’d you boys spot us?”
One-Eyed Bucky picked at the bloody left sleeve of his shirt and mumbled, “Hell, you lawdogs ain’t so damned smart. Larry Westbrook seen you in Fort Smith more than a time or two, Marshal Cecil. He remembered who you was after you left here t’other day. Been looking for you boys to show up ever since. Billy Standing Bull was on watch and seen you coming this morning. Recognized that feller with the big Winchester too. Said he seen him a-standin’ on the gallows the day Parker hung Bob Magruder. Billy and Magruder wuz old drinking compadres.”
Barnes and I loitered by the hitch rail and listened to it all. I’d never heard of the newest killer who’d just got dropped into the mix, and felt foolish when I asked, “Who’s Big Eagle and where can we find him, Barnes?”
He shoved shells in the last of three pistols he carried and said, “It don’t matter. We can just forget about catching’ Smilin’ Jack for the time being. Might have to get him on the ricochet.”
Well, that really walled my eyes and bowed my neck. “What the hell do you mean? I promised Sara Little Crow Conrad I’d try my best to kill the son of a bitch, and I aim to do exactly that. He doesn’t have so much of a head start on us we can’t catch up with him.”
“That’s true enough, Hayden. But he’ll make it to Martin Luther’s place long before we could nab him, and once he does, the man might as well be on the backside of the moon as far as we’re concerned. Besides, you kept your promise. You did about as much as any man could to kill ole Jack. Just not in today’s cards.”
“Would you mind explaining some of that to me? I’m totally lost here.” By that point I was madder than a bullfrog in a tack factory. “If you know where Smilin’ Jack’s going, we can ride him down and kill him, or bring him back. That is, if he’s of a mind to come back. As you well know, I’m all for doing for him the same as we just got through doing for some of these ole boys.” Waved in the general direction of the two men we were about to have to put to bed with a pick and shovel.
Barnes looked at me like a man who understood, but knew the dice hadn’t rolled our way. “He’s headed for Red Rock Canyon up on the Canadian. Big Eagle has a place there that’s about as close to a fortress as any in the Nations. Calls it Robber’s Roost. It’s supposed to be dug into the face of a bluff. I’ve heard claims that from his perch, he can see everything for miles in three directions. Least that’s one story. Another tale we keep hearing declares the thing is down inside the canyon and controls the entire canyon floor. Either way, it’d take a company of cavalry to get at ’em, and even then, we’d probably lose half our men or maybe more. None of our fellow deputies has ever managed to get in there—and several have tried—so you might as well just give it a rest till we can run across Smilin’ Jack Paine at some more opportune time in the future.”
Carlton snapped a thumb toward Thunder. “Till we get you another horse, Marshal Tilden, you ain’t gonna be riding much of anybody down.”
Well, didn’t like admitting it, but they were right, and after we buried Lawerence Westbrook and Billy Little Bull, it took a day and a half of riding double and dragging Orvis and Bucky on litters before we found a horse ranch north of Atoka where I bought a sorrel gelding that was almost a dead ringer for Big Red. Named him Gunpowder. When he got to picking his feet up and laying them down pretty good, the sound boiled up around you like you were in a tunnel and drowning in a wave of explosive noise.
We cleaned those sorry outlaws’ wounds with carbolic and made a suitable poultice for all the holes we could find. Some of the shot had barely punched through the piles of filth-encrusted, ragged clothing they wore, and easily popped out of the newly made dents in their worthless hides. Most of the holes in both of them came from Carlton’s shotgun pellets and didn’t appear life-threatening.
Our trailside doctoring kept those boys alive till we made it to McAlester’s Store. Finally found a real people doctor there who just barely managed to save One-Eyed Bucky. He almost bled to death from the rifle bullet in his arm in spite of everything we had already done for him.
He whined and cried to the point that I’d had all I could take from him when I bent over next to his ear and said, “I swore to Sarah Little Crow I’d kill you, Bucky. And if Barnes Reed had managed to turn his back on me for about one second at Drinkwater’s, you’d be deader than Judas and roasting in hell right now. But while I listened to you brag about Smilin’ Jack’s escape and reloaded my rifle, I got to figurin’ it’d be a lot more fun to see you mess your britches when you swing from the cross-beam of the Gates of Hell. So shut your blubbering mouth or I’ll put one in your skull and save Judge Parker the expense of having Maledon string your sorry ass up.” Don’t think he made a sound after that.
Blocker turned out to be one tough ole bird. He had a cupful of shot still in him and at least two rifle bullets, but none of it seemed to bring him down all that much. Man was so pleased to be walking and talking, his spirits just naturally kept him among the living and laughing in spite of the fact that we were taking him to Judge Parker for a certain hanging.
By the time we reached Fort Smith, I’d come up with a sketchy plan for Big Eagle’s outlaw roost. Barnes didn’t think much of it, but Carlton laughed for almost half an hour after I told him about it, and said he’d be glad to help me see it happened just the way I’d described it.
Funny thing happened on the ferry back to Arkansas. One-Eyed Bucky Stillwell all of a sudden up and died. I went out and watched them dig his grave a few days later. Smiled the whole time they shoveled dirt on him because in spite of poor aim, questionable decisions on my part, and just general bad luck, I’d managed to keep most of my promise to Sarah Little Crow. Smilin’ Jack was the only loose end left. Way I had it figured, he was already dead and just didn’t know it.
Lightfoot sat up in his chair and reached for the coffee Nurse Heddy McDonald had brought out for us. He held the cup and saucer up to his lips and blew across the steaming liquid before he took a careful sip.
After several nibbling runs at the lip of his cup, he said, “You want me to believe t
he gumdrop-crazed old coot you play checkers with was the man you just described to me? The Carlton J. Cecil who sat in the chair across this table from me the whole time we worked on Lawdog, and yesterday spent most of the afternoon with candy juice dribbling on his chest, shotgunned wanted fugitives like cotton-patch rabbits?”
“One and the same, Junior. Carlton is an object lesson in the old saw that you should never judge a ninety-two-year-old Cecil by the scratches on his wheelchair. For about fifty years, that dried-up little prune was about as dangerous a man as you’d ever want to run up against, and the kind of gunhand anyone would want on their side if things got too hairy. Man was tougher than the calluses on a barfly’s elbows; snake blood flowed in his veins; and when lead flew, he was as cool as a skunk in the moonlight. His life is a whole book all by itself. Maybe when you finish up with me, you can go to work on him. If he lives that long.”
The cup rattled back down onto the table and Lightfoot scrunched up his eyebrows. “I hope he’ll be well soon and can verify some of this stuff. We’ll worry about his life story later. You said you’d formulated a plan for the Big Eagle hideout. You gonna tell me what it was, or do I have to come over there and read the bumps on your head to see if I can figure it out?”
“Now, now, Junior. You’re getting all pissy again. No need for that. You know full well I’m gonna tell you all about it.”
“Guess you were just gonna round up all your friends—Billy Bird, Handsome Harry, Bix Conner, Old Bear, and the rest—and storm the place like Custer did at the Little Big Horn.”
“Damn, Junior. That’s really perceptive of you. There’s only one thing wrong with your prediction, though. Everyone knows Custer got snuffed because he wouldn’t wait for his Gatling guns to come up to the front. I just happened to have the acquaintance of a man in Mulberry, Arkansas, who owned a cannon. Nice Napoleon six-pounder. Great for wall-busting.”
“A cannon? You planned to use a cannon on them?”
