Hell in the Nations: The Further Adventures of Hayden Tilden (Hayden Tilden Westerns Book 2)

by J. Lee Butts

  She stopped for a minute and licked on that peppermint like she might not quit till it was all gone. Sugary red juice dribbled down her chin when she went back to her tale. “My uncle gave up and came down here ’bout a year ago. Papa held on in Kansas for as long as he could. First year, our crops floated away. Next year, they blew away. Then, we had a dry spell. Everything parched up to a crisp. Big storm came through couple of months ago. Lightning started a fire that burned every food crop and blade of grass in our part of Kansas. Watched my father fall down on his knees in the fields and cry like a baby. Thunder boomer broke him, and seein’ him snap like a rotten cottonwood limb almost tore the heart right out of my chest. Don’t think my mother recovered from it.”

  Then she stopped again, leaned against the tumble-weed’s wheel, and stared out into the dark like she’d lost her thoughts, or didn’t want to go any further with remembering all that pain. She wouldn’t have got any back-mouth from Billy or me if her story of broken dreams, failure, and death had ended right then. It didn’t. But not much more came out. Hell, it musta hurt too much.

  “Papa had us on the way to a stay with Uncle Eli till we could get back on our feet again. He and his wife have a farm near Tishomingo. It was the only place he could figure to take us.”

  Well, that really capped it. Being as Tishomingo was way south of where we’d found her, there was damned little if any chance we could somehow drop her off with her own family anytime soon. ’Specially since Billy had already committed us to running them sorry killers to ground.

  Guess she played her string completely out with that last bit of business. Girl dropped into her pallet like a felled oak, and snored so loud I eventually had to move my stuff about fifty feet from the main camp to get away from the noise. Hell, up till that night, I didn’t know a tiny woman like her could get to honkin’ like that whilst she was asleep. But good God Almighty, that gal snorted like a bull buffalo almost all night long.

  Early next morning, I climbed to the top of a hill near where we’d camped to watch the sun bring everything back to life again. Never got tired of seeing nature’s most spectacular show. Stood there looking down into the valley, and watched as a blanket of light crept toward me and pushed all the wet reluctant shadows aside. Individual trees popped out of the darkness for a few seconds, and then blended into the overall wash of colors that forced them back into obscurity. I loved to watch God at work.

  On the way down the hill, passed a spot of sparkling clear backwater from the creek near where we’d made our camp. Heard splashing, and figured maybe Billy had decided to take himself a bath. We’d been on the trail for more’n a week by then and, between the two of us, we smelled about as ripe as a pair of dead armadillos. So, I even entertained thoughts of getting in for a soaking and rinse myself. But I pulled up short in the bushes when I realized our newly acquired female ward was the one making all them watery noises.

  A narrow shaft of light cut through a spot in the trees, and dropped on her like God’s own fingertip. Up until that moment, don’t think I’d ever seen anything so beautiful. She stood ’bout knee-deep in ice-cold creek water and had a piece of rag in her hands. Every once in a while she’d dip her cloth in the water, hold it over her head, and wring it out. Kind of like a self-made waterfall.

  I’d been with my share of women of the evening. We used to call them soiled doves, or if we really wanted to get insulting, alley bats. Don’t think I could remember actually ever seeing one of them totally, completely, and absolutely buck-assed nekkid like Judith was that morning. Girl was a study in contrasts. Her hair sparkled the color of wet coal, and the slick sheen of her skin glistened like the color of the inside of a Granny Smith apple covered in dewdrops.

  She ran the rough cloth over her body several times, and pretty soon glowed up all pink and glittery. Knew my hide-in-the-bushes act was probably wrong, but hell, I couldn’t take my eyes off’n that gal. Time or two, she seemed to hold her breasts up to the light like she was so proud of ‘she couldn’t hardly stand it. Hell, I was proud of ’em, and they weren’t even mine.

  Every few seconds or so, I tried to pull away from her back-to-nature show, but must have watched for almost ten minutes before she finally finished and started for the bank. She’d left her clothes spread out on a rock, and took her time getting dried off, before pulling on a pair of man’s pants and a shirt Billy rescued from the ruins of her family’s destruction.

  Came to the conclusion right there in them Chickasaw Nation woods that when it comes to God’s more delightful pastimes, nothing much beats watching a nekkid woman bathe, and then work real hard to wiggle herself into a pair of canvas britches. I’m not gonna get all self-serving here, and come out with a bucket of blather about how I held my hand over my eyes and didn’t watch because it was the right, proper, and modest thing to do. Felt like she was a gift sent to me by the Good Lord on a stream of light directly from heaven’s front door. Just too beautiful to be ignored by weak-natured sinners like me.

  Don’t have a single idea how many other ways lust, or passion, or love, or whatever you want to call it, can break down the walls in a man’s heart. But do know that after I watched Judith Karr at her twa-let that morning, I had to have her, and no other woman in the world would do. Guess that’s something like love at first sight, ’cause up till then I hadn’t really seen her. But from then on, any time she happened to be nearby, I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and my mind reeled around like a bootleg-addicted drunk on a two-week binge when she spoke to me.

  Let her get back to camp ahead of me by about five minutes—just to make it look right when I strolled in for breakfast. Billy had fatback and soda biscuits going. Judith sat on her blanket and sopped blackstrap molasses from a tin plate. Amazing how you can go for days, or months, or years, and not so much as notice someone. Then, out of the clear blue, they catch your eye or ear, for one reason or another. Maybe it’s the way their mouths look when they eat a biscuit. Could be something about how their tongue can smooth out sounds most people buzz through like a crosscut saw. Could be that you just didn’t pay attention to what they said and, all of a sudden, you realized this might be one of the more intelligent of God’s creatures. Whatever it happens to be, from then on, you can’t see or hear anything or anyone else. Some people would call it love. I’m still not certain about the thing myself even now. But good God, I sure thought it was love. Had trouble with my concentration the rest of the day.

  Billy hit the trail, and left me on the wagon with Judith, and for most of the morning, I felt like a man who’d been on a brain-burnin’ drunk and couldn’t wait for the next round of shot glasses to hit the table. Got stupid too. Before I saw that gal nekkid didn’t have any trouble talking to her. Afterwards, got the worst case of the tongue-tied heebie-jeebies on record since the beginning of time.

  Hell, she even noticed it, ’cause as we bumped along the trail behind Billy she turned to me and said, “You’re mighty quiet this morning, Mr. Cecil. Did you sleep well last night?”

  All that snortin’ and blubberin’ she did the night before had kept me awake most of the night. But I wasn’t gonna complain or say anything ’bout that good-looking gal’s sleeping habits, now was I? Way I had it figured, constant memories of her sparkling breasts and lush, female shape would probably keep me from my slumber for some time to come.

  So, stumbled into: “Ahhh, yes, miss. Very well. Thank you. Couldn’t have been better. Wonnerful. Just wonnerful. Slept like a hibernating bear.” God Almighty, a hibernating bear. Felt like the stupidest human in the Nations.

  She gave me this cockeyed look like I’d lost what little of my mind might have survived after that morning by the creek. But hell, every time I glanced her direction, all I could see was silky black hair and nek-kid flesh. Drove me right straight to muddy-minded distraction.

  ’Bout the time I thought every cell in my brain, and some important parts of my body, would surely explode and turn me into a pile of quivering goo, Billy
thundered up. Dust and dirt clods flew in every direction as he jumped from his heavily lathered animal and tied it to the back of the wagon.

  He hopped up on a spoke in the tumbleweed’s front wheel on my side just below the jockey box. “How’d you like to try out that big ole popgun of yours, Carl? Maybe some much-needed practice before we get to Big Eagle’s place. You know, kinda zero it in, make sure it’s shooting straight.”

  “Jesus, Billy, what in the blue-eyed hell are you rambling on about?”

  He pointed off into the woods ahead of us. “Think I’ve found our desperadoes. They’re holed up in a cabin five miles from here about a hundred yards off the Canadian, right where it turns almost due north. Won’t be easy to get at ’em, so I figured we could blast ‘out with your heavy artillery.”

  Even Judith recognized the real plan he had buried underneath all those bull feathers. “Sounds to me as though you’d like to be the one who tries that big shooter out, Marshal Bird.” A conspiratorial grin spread across her face as she added, “And I’m just the one to help you with it.”

  He loved her plan. Grabbed his hat off his head and slapped it against his leg. “By Godfrey, that sounds like a capital idea, Miss Karr. Just capital. I’ve wanted to put a match to that fire-breathin’ beast ever since Carlton and Hayden dragged it to Fort Smith and left it sitting in the street. What do you think, Carl? Reckon you might let me shoot her? You know, just a time or two, or three, or four. Bet I can put one in Bowlegs’s coat pocket within three tries. Whatcha’ say?”

  Didn’t have to think about it long. We had time on our hands, plenty of powder, and bad men who needed a lesson the likes of which they could never have expected. “You bet, Billy. We’ve got fifty cartridges back there in the ammo box. Don’t guess it’ll hurt any to throw four or five rounds at those egg-sucking snakes.”

  Well, we did our best to creep up on that bunch of killers. They’d taken up residence in an abandoned shack on top of a barren knoll not far from the river. It wasn’t what anyone would have called a fortress, like the one we expected in Red Rock Canyon, by any stretch of your most vivid imagination. From a couple of hundred yards away, I used my long glass, and decided we could probably smoke them out by pumping enough rifle and pistol lead their direction.

  The muddy gray buck and battened walls of the ramshackle house had dried up, and shrunk to the point where you could see cracks in every flat stretch more’n a few feet across. All the windows, especially those on either side of the front door, looked to have once been covered by dried skins of some kind. But harsh weather had blasted them to shreds that fluttered and snapped against their frames, and they were now open to whatever happened along in the way of weather, insects, wandering animals—and desperate men.

  Billy lay on his back beside me, picked at his fingernails with the seven-inch bowie he carried in his boot, and gazed at black-bottomed clouds floating over our heads. “You know, Carlton, this is gonna be more fun than Fort Smith’s annual Fourth of July Carnival where they put on that Wild West show. ’Member last year when they had Judge Parker ride in the stage, and Belle Starr and them other ole boys flagged it down and robbed the Judge? Hot damn, now that was a good ’un. But it ain’t gonna hold a candle to the fun we’re about to have at the expense of Mr. Wilson Bowlegs today.”

  I’d been studyin’ on our situation for about twenty minutes at the time. Tried to reckon where we could set up the cannon, and get a good shot or two at ’em. Way I finally had it sorted out, it wouldn’t take but a few good blasts from that big ole gun to put them bad boys to giving some serious thought ’bout cashing in their chips.

  Spotted a fairly flat piece of ground about two hundred yards from the shack, and behind a clump of trees. “See that place over yonder, Billy. Let’s drag her over there, set up back of that big rock.” He eyeballed the whole situation for a second or two, grinned, and scampered back to where we’d left Judith and the cannon.

  When I caught up with him, thought at first he’d got paralyzed or something. He stood to one side and kinda behind Cletis Broadbent’s plaything like a statue carved out of marble. Stared down at a point out of my view, so I ambled over to see what he’d spotted. Pulled one my pistols, ’cause I got to figgerin’ maybe he’d stepped on a copperhead or something. Kinda tiptoed around the ammo box and saw Judith bent over next to the barrel. Billy turned his palms up, and kinda shrugged. Had an odd, quizzical look on his face as though what he watched went way beyond his poor ability to understand. That could have just been his typical reaction, though. The man absolutely knew less of women, and feared them more, than anyone I’ve ever come across.

  “Sweet jumpin’ Jesus, girl, what in the rambunctious hell are you doin’?” It just kinda spurted out of me like a mouthful of bad chewin’ tobacco. She’d opened a small place on her left arm with a knife, and in her very own blood used a finger to scrawl the name IRENE in ragged sloppy letters across a foot-long spot right below the gun’s touchhole.

  Tears ran down her cheeks when she turned to me and said, “Those motherless sons of Satan are gonna get a message from the bottom of that grave you dug. Take dead aim, Marshal Cecil. Show these boys what it means to kill folks better’n they’ll ever be.”

  Then she got herself upright again, marched over, pulled me down to her size, and kissed me on the cheek. In a voice that sounded like it came from someplace I’d never visited, she whispered, “Do the right thing, Carl.”

  God Almighty, felt like I’d just got a calling from the great beyond. That black-haired gal infused me with some kind of unearthly power, you know. Well, I guess you couldn’t know, but she did it. Think I’d of wrestled Satan himself, best two out of three falls, if she’d asked me to right then. As it was, all she wanted was Wilson Bowlegs and his bunch. Hell, I figured that one was a snap.

  Anyway, I didn’t have the heart to tell her Cletis Broadbent had already named the gun Beulah. Besides, he hadn’t bothered to put that moniker anywhere on the weapon that I’d noticed, so I let it go. Figured I could wash Judith’s blood off pretty easy before I had to take the thing back to Cletis. And to tell the truth, I kinda liked the name Irene. Seemed completely fitting given the circumstances Bowlegs, Bully May, and Loftis Green Grass had created by murdering the girl’s family.

  Billy and me took our time moving everything into place. I gave him some intense instruction in the entire and complete Cletis Broadbent loading method several times before we got the whole contraption set up and ready to fire. Demonstrated the thing by charging the first round myself, and explained—in excruciating detail—why you had to be extremely careful ’bout swabbing the barrel out with a wet sponge lest you shoot your ownself. Didn’t tell him I’d almost shot myself with the damned thing. No point setting him off on a laughing fit.

  We got it eyeballed in and, when everything looked like our first shot should fall right on the front door of the shack, I lit a piece of fuse with a match, and told Billy to wait for my signal before he put fire to powder. Tried to make Judith sit under the wagon, but she wasn’t having any of it. Said she’d help Billy reload if the first shot missed. Girl stood there all bowed up at me with her hands on her hips. Knew there warn’t no need in arguing the point, so I left the two of ‘to their business, and climbed up the knoll to a spot within shoutin’ distance of those three sorry pieces of human debris.

  Got behind a nice thick piece of oak tree and yelled, “Wilson Bowlegs, this is Deputy Marshal Carlton J. Cecil speaking. A posse of marshals from Fort Smith has you and your accomplices surrounded. Throw your weapons out the door one at a time and come out of there with your hands in the air! You are under arrest for the murder of Burton Karr, his wife, and young son!”

  I’d learned my lesson. My mama might not have raised a pretty boy, but she didn’t raise a dummy neither. ’Bout a year before that, my friend Willard Ayers hit the Nations with an arrest warrant for Manuel Peterson on a charge of larceny. Willard, being a damned fine deputy, located the miscreant pretty q
uick, marched up to his hidey-hole, and started beatin’ on the door. “Open up, you son of a bitch,” he bellowed. Kept that hammering and screaming up for a minute or so. Then he yelled, “Open up, God damn you!” Hell, it was just a routine arrest. Manuel probably wouldn’t have served more’n six months up in Detroit for his thievery. But he must have been pretty nerved up that day. He fired three shots from a Winchester rifle through the door. One of ‘hit Willard in the heart. Killed him deader’n a rotten stump. Manuel was still running loose the afternoon I called Bowlegs out.

  It was mighty quiet inside that crumbling shack for about a minute after I sent my challenge up to them. Then, someone yelled back, “You can go to hell, you badge-totin’ piece of cow dung. We ain’t going nowhere but right here. Just you come on up and see if’n you can take us!”

  Couldn’t help but laugh. Between guffaws that almost choked me down to a whisper, I shot back, “Wilson, you and Bully and Loftis have exactly one minute, according to the second hand on my genuine two-dollar railroader’s pocket watch, to throw your weapons out, and give yourselves over to me for arrest on a charge of murder. If you are not in my custody in one minute and one second, members of my posse will blast you to kingdom come.”

  A different, and gruffer, voice I took to be that of Loftis Green Grass snorted down the hill, “You can stuff that warrant up your dumb Arkansas ass. You lawdogs ain’t so tough as to think you can take us. You boys try and get close enough to blast anything, and we’ll send you straight to hell on a outhouse door.”

  Turned and looked down the hill at Billy. Boy danced around our big popper like a three-year-old kid. My oak tree might have been over a hundred and fifty yards away from him, but he smiled so as I could see almost every tooth in his head. Tried three times to get those boys to come out, but they just laughed and cussed me some more. Language from that place got so hot, I felt embarrassed Judith had to listen to it. Then, I remembered she had a pretty feisty mouth of her very own when things didn’t go her way.