Cowboy

by Jerry D. Young

  “I just may take a look at that situation,” Craig muttered as he headed south again after having spent a few days talking to people from several retreats along the upper reaches of Bull Shoals Lake.

  It was no longer a ‘maybe’ idea after Craig ran across the remains of a family that, from all the remaining evidence, was in the process of relocating from somewhere north, to somewhere south of the point he found them. What was left of them.

  The three adults and three children had been butchered. Literally. Their remains had been ravaged by animals, Craig could tell. He’d seen it before. But there were signs that a knife had been used on the bodies. And there weren’t enough bones left. Only torsos and heads. The arms, legs, and pelvises were missing. From all six bodies. No animals would have taken the same body parts. Craig got sick and threw up at the side of the road at the realization that the family had been attacked by cannibals.

  Craig had discounted the whispered allusions to cannibalism he’d heard at a couple of the retreats he stopped at recently. He was a believer now. Craig took the time to bury what was left of the bodies, but headed straight for Harrison as soon as he was done with the grisly task.

  He made himself slow down. The cannibals had left ample evidence of their route south. He didn’t want to be too hard on the horses. It wasn’t right. He’d catch up to the raiders eventually. And he needed to be careful of an ambush. There was no way he wasn’t going to see justice done. That meant he had to stay alive to see it happen.

  As Craig got to Harrison and continued south he came to the realization that there were some people not necessarily in the gang that benefited from its activities in some way. Rather than outrage at their activities there were a few people that were more than a little evasive when the subject came up. He heard the phrase ‘people gotta live’ several times.

  If there were family members of some of the gang feeding information to them Craig was probably on their radar by now. He pushed on, avoiding further contact; glad he always cached his goods and hid all the horses but the one he was riding at the time when he went into a town, or up to a property away from the towns. He was pretty sure no one knew exactly what he had.

  Craig swung wide and circled the area south of Harrison, looking for where the raiders might be holed up. When he had no luck after circling the town twice, it suddenly dawned on him that this particular gang might actually be based in one of the small towns in the area. That was going to make it much harder.

  He decided to rest the horses for a few days, so they would be up to a long run if things went bad in town. When he was ready Craig saddled up Clyde, and after considering it several times, left the M14E2 cached and took only the Cowboy weapons, Glock, PPK, and Calico in with him when he visited the first town.

  He would stay in town for a few hours, do a trade or two if he could, asking a few questions, and then go back to move his camp. He entered several towns and actually made some good trades and contacts. He found out where he could get salt, some distance further south, but north of Little Rock.

  Every town was different now, these years after the war. But as soon as he entered the fifth small town in the area, he felt more than the usual cautiousness of life after the war. He’d run into a few evasive people in the area, but he was immediately made very unwelcome.

  One man sitting outside a small diner that was apparently open watched Craig as he rode down the street, talking to anyone that would talk to him. Craig saw the man watching him and rode up and stopped. He didn’t get off Clyde, but sat there a moment, looking at the man. The man had the chair leaned back on two legs, and had an AR-15 leaning up against the wall beside it. There was a pistol in his waistband.

  “What’cha looking at, Cowboy?” the man said. He was picking his teeth.

  He’d had a plan, of sorts, to try to get some idea of who might have knowledge of any of the members of the gang, but Craig suddenly decided on a different way to handle the situation.

  “Looking at you. I need someone to spread the word for me. I thought you might do it for… say… a half pint of whiskey.”

  “Do I look like a town crier, you dipstick?” The chair thunked down and the man stood up. “But let’s hear a little more about that whiskey. You got some to trade?”

  Moving slowly, Craig reached into the inside pocket of the Drover’s coat and pulled out the sample bottle of alcohol he’d taken to carrying to break the ice when he went into a town. “Sure do. Still need that someone to spread the word for me.”

  Just as slowly as Craig had moved, the man casually leaned over and picked up the AR-15, not pointing it at Craig, but positioning it where he could in a moment. “I told you that I’m not your town crier. Just hand over that bottle.”

  “You mentioned trading…” Craig replied, more calm than he thought possible.

  “Yeah. Your life for that bottle.”

  “Sure,” Craig said, and tossed the bottle directly toward the man’s face. The man dropped the rifle to catch the bottle with both hands before it could hit him in the face.

  The man started cursing but fell silent when Craig said, loudly, for those ears he knew were listening from out of sight, “Might want to spread the word anyway. I’m looking to take out all the cannibals in the area.” With that Craig gigged Clyde with the blunt spurs he used, and Clyde was off like a shot. It was a good thing, for several shots rang out after him. Craig heard the sound of one wiz past his ear, much too close for comfort, but none of the rounds hit him or Clyde.

  Craig left the road as soon as he cleared the edge of town and entered the woods. He pulled up short and dismounted, quickly tying up Clyde and running back to the edge of the road, swinging the Calico out from under the coat. Sure enough, two vehicles came roaring out of town. Not willing to take a chance on killing an innocent, Craig showed himself.

  The drivers of both vehicles slammed on their brakes, and the passenger in one of them fired a shot at Craig. Sure now he wasn’t firing on innocents, Craig cut loose with the Calico, riddling both vehicles with the .45 ACP rounds. The men in the vehicles didn’t get off another shot.

  Craig wasn’t sure if he’d killed them all, but he emptied the 85-round magazine. He turned and ran back into the woods, changing magazines as he went, careful to make sure the empty went well into the pocket of the Drover’s coat. He couldn’t afford to lose even one of them. There would be no replacements.

  Climbing back aboard Clyde, he took off in the opposite direction from his camp. He had to be careful of his time, since he wouldn’t let the other horses stay hobbled more than a few hours, but he was careful to take a roundabout route back to the camp.

  He roamed the area around the town the next several days, moving his camp at least every two days. He hoped to catch some of the gang of raiders he was now sure were using the small town as their home base out looking for him.

  Either he missed them, or the gang leader had decided to let Craig’s attack go as a onetime thing, despite what Craig had said. Since they wouldn’t come to him, at least at the moment, Craig decided to go after them again. There was just no good scouting spot he could use to watch the town from some distance using his binoculars. He would have to go into the town again.

  This time Craig went in under cover of darkness, leaving Clyde well back in the woods surrounding the town. He went looking for activity. Hard working people scratching out a living would not be up, wasting fuel, late at night. They’d be in their beds, trying to get enough sleep to carry on another day.

  It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. A house lit up like Christmas, with lots of noise coming from it. Taking one cautious step at a time, Craig scouted around the entire neighborhood, finally making a circle around the house. There were no signs of sentries.

  About ready to make his move anyway, the sound of breaking glass and a woman’s scream spurred Craig into action. The Calico held in his right hand, Craig used his left to try the front door knob. It wasn’t locked. Pausing to take a
deep breath and let it out slowly, as another scream cut through the loud cursing going on inside the room, Craig opened the door and stepped inside.

  He took the scene in quickly, noting the three women in various stages of dress and the eight men that were in for the shock of their lives. Craig fired first at the one holding one of the women, in the act of slapping her. He died without knowing what was happening.

  The other seven men either went for guns, or tried to get away. The eighty-five rounds in the first drum of the Calico were more than enough to take down five of the men, those standing and going for guns first, and two that tried to scramble for a window to leap through.

  The other two men had dropped to the floor, hands over their heads and were crying and begging for mercy. Before Craig could react one of the women grabbed the pistol that one of the gang members had managed to get out but not shoot, and fired it point blank into one of the man’s head and then into the head of the other.

  The three women then huddled together, staring at Craig in disbelief. Craig didn’t take time to do anything but say, “Spread the word. I’m after the cannibals,” and then he was back out the front door, fading into the darkness as several people came running toward the house.

  After swapping magazines in the Calico, Craig stopped in the even deeper shadows of darkness of a huge tree two houses down from the one he’d attacked. He raised the Calico to his shoulder and fired half a dozen three round bursts into men he saw carrying firearms. Even though the Calico was suppressed, Craig didn’t press his luck. He headed for the edge of town and Clyde while pandemonium still reigned.

  Several shots rang out suddenly and Craig hoped they were at shadows and not innocents coming out of their houses to see what was happening. He made it back to his camp in a blowing snowstorm that had been building all day

  The next day Craig decided to call it quits for the winter. It would be far too easy for someone to track him down by his tracks in the snow. Craig thought about staying and just going into the town for more attacks when it was threatening snow, so new snow would cover his tracks but decided the option was too risky.

  It was time for him to find winter quarters. And he knew just the place. Craig saddled up and packed the horses and left the area, headed north into the snow that continued to fall slowly. His destination was the Mark Reed farm right on the border with Missouri. The man had offered Craig a full time job when he’d stopped to do a little trading, having heard that Mark was one of the good ones in the area.

  Craig declined, other things on his mind, but the offer had been left open. Now he decided to take the man up on it, if Mark was still willing.

  A week later and Craig was riding into the farm, first having scouted it for possible changes in ownership. One never knew in this day and age who might be overrun by the raiders. Mark was more than happy to have Craig winter over with his family and two farm hands. As a matter of fact, he put Craig to work the very next day cutting wood for the winter. The job had taken second fiddle to the task of getting the crops harvested before the snow flew. As it was, Mark, his son Josh, and the hands were busy getting the last few acres of wheat combined in the snow while Craig cut wood.

  With the last of the wheat in the storage bins, the others began helping Craig with the wood cutting. When Mark decided they had enough for even a longer than the new usual length winter, he put everyone to work butchering and preserving that year’s crop of animals.

  Finally, with hundreds of pounds of meat canned, dried, smoked, or salted, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and settled in for the winter. Other than staying out of the clutches of Mark’s sister-in-law Ruth Ann, who was staying with the family, Craig spent most of his time in the bunkhouse with the hands, rotating the work of caring for the animals in the barns with them.

  He did spend some time with Josh, who had a bad leg from a fall from the barn while putting up hay. The young man had taken up leatherwork again while laid up, recovering from the fall.

  Josh told Craig, as Craig watched him in the barn working on a hide, “I did the leather kits when I was a kid. Always liked it. The doc said my leg is going to give me problems the rest of my life, so I decided to pick up the leatherworking as a second career, for when I can’t do the farm work. I just wish I could get some more hides. As things wear out, there is going to be a good market for quality leather goods.”

  “We just might be able to work a deal,” Craig said. “There is no one close to us that can do leatherwork. At least, not quality work. We haven’t had any problem preserving hides when we butchered, but don’t have a market for them. I’m sure the Retreat would be willing to trade you hides for finished goods. I know I personally will.”

  “Really?” Josh asked, intrigued with the idea.

  Craig nodded. “Any chance you know a saddle maker? Our herd of horses is outgrowing the supply of saddles from the old days. Oh. And boots. It’s getting hard to find good boots.”

  Josh smiled. “I’ll learn. We’ve got one old saddle we don’t use any more. It was a really good one, but it’s really old and worn out. Got left out in the weather for two years by accident.”

  “Ouch!” Craig replied.

  “Yeah. But I can take it and reverse engineer it and add saddle maker to my list of talents. Same with the boots.” Josh’s eyes suddenly brightened. “I just thought about Crazy Joe Gutterman. He has some experience with leather work and tack. I bet he could and would help me. He needs something to do that’s productive. He’s on the verge of starvation most of the time. I hope he makes it through the winter.”

  “If you are sure he would be a help, I’ll do my best to see that he does make it through the winter in shape to start working as soon as I can get some of our hides down here.”

  “Really? You’d do that?”

  Craig nodded. “I believe in long term investments. He sounds like an asset worth cultivating. How far away does he live?”

  “Not too far, actually. His little place is just over the ridge beyond the south forty. If you want, we can take a ride over there when it stops snowing.”

  “Absolutely. In the meantime, I have some work I’d like you to do, if you have the leather for the projects.”

  “I still have a small supply, plus this hide.”

  Craig described the items he wanted made and Josh said there would be no problems. They began working on them, Craig more just watching than helping. When the current snowstorm blew through, Craig saddled up Clyde and Mule Ears, and the two went to visit Crazy Joe, taking enough food for one person to make it through the winter, that Craig took as part of his minimal pay for helping on the farm.

  Craig wondered if the man would make it through the winter, even with the food. He’d never seen anyone so bone showing skinny, except in the pictures from World War II of the German Death Camps he’d learned about in home schooling.

  Even as bad off as he was, it took some long, persuasive talking on Craig’s and Josh’s parts to get Joe to accept the food before doing any work, which he was more than willing to do. But finally he accepted and Craig and Josh went back to the farm.

  That winter Josh made every one of the items Craig had wanted, plus a couple that Josh said he could make that hadn’t occurred to Craig to ask for.

  The first item was a leather holster for the tomahawk, so it could ride alongside the Natchez Bowie and Whippet. A much better holster for the Whippet was next. While Josh was working, and Craig watching, Josh asked Craig, “Why do you carry the old fashioned stuff?” Josh had seen Craig’s modern weaponry.

  Craig turned a bit red. “I don’t know, really. Gives me a certain goofy look that has given me that split second advantage of surprise when I pull the Calico or M14E2 instead of drawing the single action or the Marlin. People just aren’t expecting it.

  “And since I can make the black powder to reload the .45 Colt and .45-70 I use them to hunt with mostly, to save the cartridges that are smokeless powder only. I’ve got that fünfling that I love to u
se, that I told you about, back at the Retreat.

  “But I’m kind of hanging onto it and the ammunition for more peaceful days where I can hunt at leisure without needing to worry about getting ambushed. Same thing with the .32 flintlock squirrel gun and the 10-gauge flintlock fowling piece when I run out of primers.”

  “You really think we’ll ever have those days again? Peaceful where you don’t have to worry about your back all the time?”

  Josh saw the glint in Craig’s eye when Craig said, “If I have anything to do with the matter, we will.” Josh believed him.

  Another item Josh made for Craig was a shoulder holster assembly for the Calico. It allowed the gun to hang under Craig’s left arm, with the stock collapsed, for easier access than Craig’s hanging down his back on a string. The harness carried a spare helical magazine under his right arm.