Gun Work: The Further Exploits of Hayden Tilden

by J. Lee Butts

  Still trying my level best just to cripple the lamebrain when my second slug caught him in the left hip just above his pants pocket. Heavy chunk of lead knocked the man around on his heels like a drunken ballet dancer. He ricocheted off the wall. Then, still half twirling, half stumbling, he managed to rip off another shot my direction. Behind me, at almost the exact same instant, I heard Nate yelp, and a sound like someone had hit a handful of the keys on the piano with a closed fist.

  Off balance, and about to go to one knee, Dolphus fired a third time. Sent a slug into the boards not two inches in front of my right foot. Geyser of stinging splinters flew up and caught me in the thigh. That’s when I had to completely give up on any chance of taking him alive.

  Brought the rifle to my shoulder. Snapped off a final shot. Bullet hit the crazed bastard above the right eye. It bored through his skull, knocked his hat off, and flung a glob of brain matter on the wall atop the gory mess already put there by Nate’s blasting of his brothers.

  Dolphus went limp. Dropped like a hundred-pound sack of seed thrown from a freight wagon. Made a final, odd, wheezing sound, rolled onto one side, and, I swear before Jesus, still managed to thumb off a final, closing, wild shot that blew the toe off his own foot.

  Then, an ear ringing silence fell around me as if someone had tossed a winter blanket over the entirety of Black’s scabrous roadhouse. Acrid-tasting, spent, black powder hung in the air along with the sickly sweet, coppery smell and taste of freely flowing blood. Squinted into the roiling cloud of gun smoke. With one hand, I kept the Winchester leveled on the pile of wasted humanity in the corner. With the other, reached down and pawed at the stinging leg wound.

  Still picking at my prickly, splintery injury when I heard Nate say, “Cain’t damned believe it, Tilden. That bug nutty son of a bitch put a hole in me.”

  Jerked my head around and saw my friend sitting in the middle of the floor, back propped against the piano. Legs outstretched, it appeared as though he’d gone down hard. A clawlike hand covered an oozing wound in his right side, just above his pistol belt.

  Hobbled over to him, knelt down, stiff-legged, and laid the Winchester on the floor. “Got to let me get a look at your new vent, Nate,” I said, then pulled his grasping, blood-dripping fingers aside.

  He grinned, then said, “Don’t think she’s all that bad, Hayden. But she’s damn sure leakin’ right smart and burns like the dickens.”

  Jerked the tail of his shirt out of his pants. Puckered, black-rimmed hole in the fleshy part of the boy’s side was as big around as my thumb. Pulled him toward me and yanked the shirt up in the back. Pleased to find that the bullet had gone all the way through. Knew he’d be fine soon as I saw what had transpired. Have to admit, though, he was lucky, real damned lucky.

  Patted his shoulder and said, “Well, you can talk with God tonight and thank him, Nate. Bullet doesn’t appear to have hit anything important. Couple inches lower, though, you would’ve spent the rest of your life on a cane. We’ll know for sure by tomorrow morning just how bad it really is. Gonna be sore as hell no matter what, but I think you’ll most likely survive. Still and all, probably ought to get your bony behind back to civilization and to a doctor quick as we can.”

  He grunted and nodded as though heavily drugged.

  “Need to plug this ugly sucker up first, Nate. Best flush it out with some whiskey ’fore we go and do that though.”

  Used the rifle as a crutch. Yanked myself erect. Hobbled back to the Staine boys’ bullet- and shot-riddled table. Single, half-filled bottle of hundred-fifty-proof scamper juice had managed to survive all the gunfire. Can’t imagine how half a dozen of Nate’s buckshot pellets hadn’t rendered it to smithereens, but as often happens during catastrophic gun work, something as delicate as a whiskey bottle had managed to survive the deadly onslaught.

  Leg had begun to hurt pretty good when I limped my way back over to where a wild-eyed, bloody-fisted Nate Swords still sat. Groaned when I knelt, then pushed him onto his back. Grabbed a dirty pillow off the piano bench and stuffed it beneath his head.

  “Have to trust me on this one, Nate. Seen it done a time or two. Even used it myself once, or twice. Works pretty good, if we manage to do it right. But be aware, this is gonna burn a bit no matter how we go about it.”

  Turned the bottle up and poured the amber-colored liquid directly into the hole in his side. ’Course, I’m certain it hurt him a lot worse than I had let on it might. He screeched like a trapped panther. Sat bolt upright. Then passed right out and flopped back down. Poured a second round in him. Shoved the bottle neck into the hole. Kept an eye on the opening in his back. Soon as the whiskey-tinted blood started flowing onto the floor, I jerked the bottle out of the wound and set to plugging him up as best I could.

  Know it only amounted to a bit less than a week, but the time we spent in Lone Pine felt like a month. Nate was on his back in what went for a hotel in the unpleasant burg for most of those long, dreary days.

  While he rested, I made all the necessary arrangements to bury the Staine brothers. Hired a couple of local boys to dig the holes. Gave the bartender at Black’s the Staine boys’ horses and gear in payment for building some coarse coffins and supervising their burial. Pretty rough stuff all the way around.

  We finally set out for Fort Smith on the eighth or ninth day, as I recall.

  Being as Nate was still pretty tender, took our time getting back to a spot where we could flag down a northbound M.K. & T. passenger train. Neither of us felt worth a damn, tell the pure truth. Got to admit, by the time we finally made it home, the pair of us were still in right sorry shape. At first Nate was worse off than me. But he cured up mighty fast. Couple of days and he got to hopping around like a cornered rabbit. Amazing what youth and a good dose of piss and vinegar can accomplish.

  Elizabeth insisted that we put him up at our place. She fixed him a room and fussed over him like he was a small child. Glad we kept him over. ’Cause, as time dragged by, he proved mighty fine company and provided way more of a helping hand than we had any right to have expected.

  5

  “. . . SKULLS STOVE IN WITH A DOUBLE-BIT AX.”

  OVER THE MANIFOLD and turbulent years I spent riding for Judge Parker, figure as how bad men, and a few bad women, too, managed to put half a dozen or so bullets in my leathery hide. Can’t recall a single one of those wounds that proved as problematic as the patch of splinters Dolphus Staine gouged out of the floor of Black’s roadhouse that ended up in my leg, as a consequence of a wild pistol shot.

  All the way back to Fort Smith, I conscientiously treated the lesion with a daily whiskey and carbolic bath. Picked all the timber out of the wound. Leastways, all I could see. Just didn’t matter one whit. Damned thing still managed to fester, get angry-looking as hell, and fill up with some god-awful-looking puss.

  When I finally got home, had to spend a week in bed. Ran a horse-killing fever and sweated like a tied pig. Elizabeth said as how I hallucinated like a certifiable eccentric. Gal claimed, and I have no reason to disbelieve her, that more than once I went and talked with folks not present. Worst of all, a time or two, she said I even expressed the desire for immediate death. Poor girl had to give up her days down at the bank and care for me the whole time.

  Was a godsent miracle Nate recovered enough to lend the woman a hand during her trials and tribulations. Grateful as hell he was there to help her with getting me up and around when she needed him. Amazing to me that a man with a hole in his side, and back, the size of a Yankee quarter, recovered as quick as he did. Still puzzles the hell out of me that I ended up sick as the proverbial dog because of a fistful of splinters from a pine board, and he got better.

  Truth be told, most folks now don’t remember, but it was easy to die back in them days. Man could dodge bullets every week of his life, catch a cold, and pass on from the pneumonia within a week. Simplest scratch might prove fatal. Spiders, scorpions, even something as simple as a bee sting could have ended a man’s
life as quickly as a body would blow out a lamp before lying down in his bed. Come down with a fever, like I done from a fistful of wood splinters, and your fate very definitely hung in the balance as surely as if you’d fallen headfirst into a well. Can’t imagine what might’ve transpired if it hadn’t been for my dear Elizabeth. But I am sure if it hadn’t been for her, I might not be here today.

  ’Course when my feverish spell finally passed, I got that beautiful gal’s standard lecture that always ended with her shaking an angry finger in my face and saying, “We’re one of the most prosperous families in the whole of northwest Arkansas, Hayden Tilden. Have more money in the bank than Croesus. You don’t have to go chasing murderous skunks all over the Indian Nations who will kill you for the cost of a plug of tobacco.”

  No point arguing with the woman. And besides, she already knew that no matter what she said, I wasn’t about to change anyway.

  Eventually, got to spend most of my forced leisure time relaxing out on the veranda of my house. Still think of those slow-moving days, spent with Nate and Carlton, with great affection. See, almost every morning, bit after ten o’clock, Judith Cecil drove ole sore-tailed Carl from their little house in town to my place on the bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.

  They’d roll up out front with Carl perched atop a fringed, silk pillow looking as if he could barely stand it. He crawled down out of that buggy like a man made of leaded cut glass. Crept up my steps. Flopped into an empty chair and barely moved all day long.

  Three of us often spent pretty much the whole afternoon just watching travelers pass on the road that ran by my house on its way to Van Buren. On the whole, most folks were right friendly. We’d wave and they’d wave back.

  Have to admit, though, us ole boys must’ve been a pretty sorry-looking bunch. Me hobbling around like a Barbary pirate on my sore leg. Nate all doubled over like a humpback, limping from here to there babying the hole in his side. Carlton shambling around, one hand attached to his lacerated behind as if he feared a piece might fall off or something. Spent the better part of three weeks sitting in our rocking chairs whittling, spitting, smoking, telling all kinds of lies about our past exploits, and griping over the state of our various hurts.

  Thanks be to a benevolent God, the insidious tortures of an idle life didn’t last very long. After nigh on four lazy weeks of profound loafing, beating Nate or Carl at checkers two or three times a day, or generally dawdling around and wasting daylight, admit that I felt right pert and more than ready for something to happen—anything. And sure enough, it did.

  Come a beautiful morning, as I recall it. Come on just the right combination of blue sky and puffy white clouds that day. Temperature proved bearable, long as a body didn’t move around too much. Still and all, one of our seeming endless days of less than productive indolence. And, as usual, the three of us broke-down lawmen were stationed in our rocking chairs. We’d camped out in a moving wedge of comfortable shade soon as Carl arrived and went to rocking like certifiable maniacs. Sipped at tall, cold glasses of Elizabeth’s fresh-squeezed lemonade and pretty much indulged in the joyful contemplation of another week as thumb twiddlers.

  Then, of a sudden, Carl stopped his rocking. Snatched an ash-laden, smoldering hand-rolled from between twitching lips. Rose and adjusted his royal-colored pillow a bit, then pointed out a cloud of dust coming up the road from Fort Smith.

  “Looks like you might have some more visitors on the way, Hayden,” Carl said.

  Nate climbed out of his chair, strolled over to the veranda’s waist-high railing. Took a seat with his back to one of the porch pillars. “Can’t be absolutely certain from this distance, but that looks like Judge Parker’s chief bailiff, Tilden,” he said.

  “You mean Mr. Wilton?” I asked.

  Nate nodded.

  “Think he’s right, Hayden,” Carl said, leaned with his elbows on his knees for a second, then stood and eased up to a spot near Nate.

  Arms crossed over his chest, Carl glanced back, shrugged, squinted hard, then held his arms out and turned his hands up at me as though asking a silent question. Knew from his wordless reaction, he felt Wilton might have a job for the Brotherhood of Blood, and Carl was wondering what we’d do about telling Nate. Still hadn’t brought Swords in our secret society, and that was my fault.

  Turned my attention away from Carl and watched as the rider neared. Made up my mind, right then and there, the time was about as right as it was going to get. Figured if Judge Parker had a new mission for us, might as well talk with Nate and determine if he wanted a place in the Brotherhood. Carl and I had discussed such an action when the three of us went down to Waco looking for John Henry Slate. But Billy Bird’s terrible death still weighed heavy on my mind at the time, and I just had no stomach for thoughts of replacing him.

  George Wilton got in no rush to get to us. Appeared to me as how he was genuinely enjoying the opportunity to get out of Parker’s courthouse for a spell. Man proved quite a sight in the saddle—tall, straight-backed, well-dressed, dignified. Animal he’d chosen for the short jaunt from downtown Fort Smith was a prancer. Black as coal from nose to tail. Fire breather of a stallion. Kind of mount that looked like it just might take off and fly. Sizzle through the air like a bolt of lightning, if given its head.

  Ever since my confidential agreement with Judge Parker to act as his personal manhunter and, as he put it, “the sword in my mighty right hand in the Nations,” George Wilton had acted the part of go-between. Man took care of all my assignments and let me know, in no uncertain terms, whether the judge wanted the men he sent me after to come back dead or alive. All too often past assignments had ended with the admonition to kill them, kill them all. Knew as soon as Nate spotted Wilton coming toward the house that something requiring my deadly services was very likely in the works.

  Wilton reined his midnight-colored steed to a halt, stepped down, then looped the reins over my hitch rack. For all his poise and flamboyance in the saddle, George Wilton proved exactly the opposite when afoot. A large man, his legs appeared too short for a heavy, stout upper body—small, spindly, and ill suited for his rather bulky girth. Looked to me like a man who, as he grew older, had gained considerable weight—from the waist up. Know it sounds like an odd circumstance, but it did happen to some men back in those bygone days. Wasn’t unusual for men of prominence to have a kind of walking, barrel-like appearance.

  With some obvious difficulty, Wilton climbed the steep set of steps to my expansive covered porch. He swept a spotless, gray, felt hat off and extended his hand when I stood.

  “Hayden, so good to see you looking well,” he said and smiled, then acknowledged Carl and Nate with a nod and equally gracious tilt of the head.

  Offered him the seat Carl had so recently vacated and a glass of the lemonade. In the manner of a fussy old maid, Wilton built himself something of an elaborate nest before finally becoming comfortable in the seat next to mine. Once settled in, he ceremoniously lit a cigar the color of his horse and the size of an ax handle. Daintily shook the still smoldering lucifer to death and dropped it into the glass ash tray atop the table between our chairs.

  He blew a smoke ring the size of wagon wheel, flashed a toothy grin, then said, “You gentlemen appear to have recovered nicely. Sincerely hope you’re all feeling as well as you look.”

  “Doing fine, thank you,” I said. Waved at my friends and added, “Figure we should be ready for something new by way of missions any day now.”

  “Good, very good. Glad to hear your collective recovery has gone well,” he said, then took another deep drag on the massive stogie. Unlike most who favored cigars, Wilton inhaled the potent smoke, held it in his lungs for a second or so, then expelled it in a long thin stream. And in the same manner I’d noticed about his ride, he appeared to genuinely enjoy himself.

  After a moment of self-imposed silence, he harrumphed a time or two before saying, “In point of fact, Marshal Tilden, you’ve hit upon the precise purpose of my visit toda
y. Wanted to check in on Judge Parker’s most stalwart trio of deputies, of course. Make sure you were all on the mend, as it were. But I’m also here to offer the three of you a mission that should prove just the type of undertaking you might want to consider, given you’re all nearing the end of a somewhat lengthy convalescence.”

  Though oblique in the extreme, I recognized the hidden message from Judge Parker that it was time for us to get back to work. Offered a slight nod of the head, so as to encourage Wilton to continue. Happened to notice, for the first time, that the man’s hair had begun to go gray. The color of onyx, when first we met, it now formed a halolike frame for his handsome, ebony face.

  As if in deep contemplation, he sat in silence for a few more seconds. Took the time to examine the ash at the end of his smoke. Inhaled another long, satisfying puff, then said, “Are you aware of the terrible triple murder that took place up in Dutch Crossing some months ago?”

  Had to shake my head, but said, “Seems I did hear something about some horrible killings up that way. But must admit I’ve no definitive knowledge of the crime.”

  Nate stood, leaned a shoulder against the porch pillar, shoved both hands into the waist of his pants, then said, “I’ve heard about the carnage you’re talkin’ ’bout, sir. Way I got the story, authorities found the butchered bodies of a man, woman, and their young son. If memory serves, was a farm family name of Cassidy.”

  Wilton nodded. “Indeed. Indeed. Cassidy.”

  Nate scratched his head and continued. “Seems as how local authorities found the bullet-riddled body of Mr. Matthew Cassidy out in one of his sorghum fields. Then they discovered the corpses of his wife and son inside their house. Heard tell as how the woman and child died from havin’ their skulls stove in with a double-bit ax.”