Cowboy

by Jerry D. Young

  It started to snow while Craig was still a few miles from the ranch, but he pushed on. The horses knew the barn and some grain was waiting. They’d been through plenty of snowstorms with Craig and were more than willing to keep going.

  Craig stopped the horses at the back of the ranch house and Alfred and Gwen both helped him unload the food and take it down into the basement under the house. Craig saw that, yes, they did have quite a bit of food put up, but the way they ate, it would have been barely enough to get just them through the winter, if it would, indeed, last that long. Craig’s contribution would more than make up the difference. He’d had a feeling their estimation of their reserves might have been overly optimistic.

  “Thank you,” Gwen told him when he gave her the items on her list. “Do I owe you anymore?” she asked.

  Appreciating the gesture, Craig just shook his head. Gwen didn’t press the matter. “Come in as soon as you take care of the horses. Supper is ready.” Craig nodded and led Clyde and the pack horses to the barn while Alfred closed up the outside entrance to the basement.

  In pre-war days, the Jennings would have been yuppie conspicuous consumers. They were the equivalent in the post war world. Craig just shook his head at their wastefulness. Apparently they could afford it. They obviously thought they could. Alfred often explained, in great detail, the plans he had for the future. Craig wished him well and went about his work.

  Craig was talking about leaving the next spring, but stayed on the ranch for three weeks alone when Alfred took Gwen and Stevie to Gwen’s mothers for Gwen to have the baby.

  Despite the renewed offer, made rather passionately by Alfred, with Gwen’s eager input, for Craig to stay and become part of the permanent ranch staff, for a percentage, Craig was packed up and ready to leave late the next spring. He was eager to be off. The short summers that were the norm now put a lot of pressure on anyone doing much traveling to get it done as quickly as possible.

  Craig went into Amarillo again to restock his traveling supplies before he left the area, but was soon heading northwest again, bound for Wyoming, as the weather finally began to warm up.

  He was in Colorado, traveling parallel to US 287 and then US 40, when he began hearing tales of a group of bandits working I-70, which was once again a major route of travel between the Rockies and the Mississippi River.

  “It just never ends, does it?” he asked no one in particular when he’d stopped in Limon to take a break and do a little investigating. He was at a truck stop with mini-market that had been turned into a trading post for travelers on I-70 and was getting an earful from some of the locals.

  He traded a few things off, replenishing his coin supply, and decided to drift east, along I-70 and see what he could turn up. When he intentionally made his intentions known he was warned repeatedly that the bandits would have his head. Not to mention his horses and all his goods. Craig, again intentionally, shrugged it off, saying he didn’t much believe in rumors.

  All weapons cleaned and loaded, Craig headed east, despite the fact that it was away from his current goal of going to Wyoming. “First things first,” he told Clyde.

  He let himself be seen from time to time, but did most of his traveling well away from the Interstate, picking locations to hobble the rest of the horses and taking one over to the Interstate to do some surveillance.

  Craig was surprised at the number of semi-trucks he was seeing. Denver was toast, and anything coming this way out of California had to bypass it and several other cities on the route. But trade was picking up.

  He noticed that the trucks tended to run in convoys, with, at the very least, a ten-wheel tanker truck of fuel accompanying them, since fuel was so hard to come by. There was almost always a couple of smaller vehicles ahead and behind the convoy, with well-armed guards riding in them. Some of the convoys had full tank trailers accompanying them.

  From what he’d heard, those convoys didn’t get hit too often. But they did get hit. The main targets were the occasional lone truck or two truck convoy, with one of the trucks pulling a two axle pup of fuel.

  There was some private travel, too, and they were often the targets. A few of those, like Craig, were on horseback. Craig talked to a few people on the road, mostly at the Interstate rest areas, which were getting as much, if not more use, than they had before the war.

  Craig, taking more time to survey than to travel, took three weeks to reach the Kansas border. He stopped at the nearest rest area for a few days, gathering information. Still with little to go on, Craig headed back west, traveling the same way he had before, watching more than traveling.

  He found what he was looking for, when he was almost back to Limon. There were signs of travel off the Interstate to the south. He’d been traveling north of the Interstate going east. There were signs of horses, but also off road vehicles. The stories he’d heard had mentioned both, but as separate entities. Seeing what he saw, Craig thought it might be two elements of the same group. That would make his task easier.

  Craig went looking for a nearby farm or ranch where he could leave the horses for a few days and finally found one. It took some gold, but he was able to make the arrangements. He took Clyde out and scouted the faint trail to the south. When he didn’t find anything after two days of riding, he decided he would just set up an ambush site and wait. If he went much further south he would be too far from his supplies to make staying out possible.

  So Craig went back to the little truck farm where his horses were and re-supplied. Then he set up a long term observation point south of the Interstate. He had to fork up a little more gold to extend his stay in the area, but since it had been quite a while since the bandits had struck, Craig decided that an attack would be forthcoming soon.

  He wasn’t wrong. Two groups passed his observation point above the trail. Both were traveling slowly, to minimize their dust trail. And sure enough, there were two groups; one in vehicles and one on horseback. Like Craig traveled, the horsemen had several pack horses with them. From the way the horses were traveling, most of the pack horses were carrying only their empty panniers.

  Craig climbed up into the saddle on Clyde and began to follow them. The two groups split at the Interstate, the horse mounted group turning west toward Limon, and the vehicles going east. The vehicles, no longer needing to travel slowly enough for horses to keep up, put on some speed when they got on I-70.

  Turning west, still south of the interstate, Craig shadowed the group, sure they were bandits, but not willing to either just open fire on them, or go up to them and simply ask. But he didn’t have long to wait to find out for sure.

  The group had let a few groups pass them by, but when one of the medium size convoys appeared in the distance, the group’s lead scout came galloping back and the group took to cover on the side of the road, just below the crest of a ridge that the road went over.

  Craig ground tied Clyde down in the bottom of a swale and made his way back, carrying a heavy load in the leather haversack Josh had made for him. Taking up an overlooking position of the ambushers, Clyde went prone and set up the M14E2. He was almost two hundred yards from the ambushers.

  He saw the scout at the top of the rise signal his companions that the convoy was almost there, and then take up an ambush position himself.

  Craig waited for the first shot from the ambushers and then raked the fully exposed ambushers on his side of the interstate with auto fire from the M14E2. He saw the scout break for the top of the ridge and shifted aim. He fired a long burst and saw the man go down.

  The convoy had accelerated when the first shot had been fired and made a good account themselves with return fire. But the attackers had some heavy firepower of their own and despite Craig having decimated the group on his side of the Interstate, the attackers on the north side of the road were able to bring the convoy to a halt. But not before it had mostly cleared the center of the ambush site.

  Craig began to lay down fire, dropping the rounds just over the edge of t
he pavement in hopes of catching the attackers staying down. He gave passing thought to the MM-1, which would have been invaluable for this attack, but it was at the retreat and that was that.

  Changing drums, Craig switched to semi-auto fire and started picking his shots as one ambusher or another showed themselves while trying to either get away, or press on the attack on the convoy.

  Members of the convoy were shooting back and the attackers gave up and tried to get away. But there just weren’t many places to go. The attackers had to highline themselves on the ridges as they retreated and Craig and the convoy guards cut them down without mercy.

  Craig had lost sight of the ambushers for just a few minutes when they were approaching the road and hadn’t seen where they had held their horses. But he knew the approximate location where they had to be. Leaving the mop up to the members of the convoy, Craig whistled for Clyde.

  The horse came running up and Craig mounted him, leaving the M14E2 behind, pulling the Calico. He gigged Clyde into a hard run toward the area he knew the ambusher’s horses had to be, expecting only one man to be there holding them ready to come forward and load up the spoils of war the bandits were expecting to collect.

  But there were three men instead of one. Clyde ran right over one of them that had edged up the slope to try to see what was going on. The other two were mounted and took off as soon as they saw Craig.

  Much as had happened with the rustlers, Craig directed Clyde to pursue the one closest and let loose with a burst from the suppressed Calico when he was in range. The man went down, and to Craig’s great dismay, so did the horse.

  Unable to do anything about it, Craig took after the other man, but he had too much of a head start and Craig was unwilling to try a Hail Mary burst to try and get him, fearful of hitting the horse the way he had the other one.

  Craig turned back. The bandits’ horses had scattered due to the gunfire from the bandits guarding them and Craig let them go. He’d do something about that later. He went back toward where the convoy was stopped. Craig rode down to join the men of the convoy, moving slowly so none of the jumpy men would shoot him.

  “Was that you up on the ridge, Cowboy?” asked one of the men.

  Craig nodded. “You got a handle on things?”

  “Yeah. Got a couple injured, but no one dead, thanks to you. How did you get all those guys? And what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Got some business elsewhere, so I’ll be on my way.” Craig rode off before anyone else could ask him anything. He checked the dead and wounded on the south side of the road and picked up a few items useful to him, and then climbed back up on Clyde. He stopped to pick up the M14E2, the spent drum, and all the brass he could find, just as he always did, and then headed back toward the east at an easy lope.

  He left the Interstate where the bandit’s trail met it and he set up his ambush at the point where he’d been watching the trail. Craig was debating whether to get up and go to Clyde to get something out of the saddlebags to eat when he saw headlights approaching as darkness began to fall.

  Craig saw the two semi rigs, one pulling two box trailers and the other a box trailer and full size tank trailer. They were in between two sets of the original vehicles of the bandits. Not knowing if the semi-truck drivers were bandits, or the original drivers being held hostage, Craig dumped all of his fire into the cabs of the two leading vehicles. One was a pickup, the other a large SUV.

  Switching his fire to the trailing vehicles, both of which had cut off the trail and were bumping their way away from the ambush, Craig again kept his fire through the upper portions of the vehicles. One stopped immediately, the other kept going for some little distance.

  A man jumped out of the passenger seat of the front semi and began shooting at Craig with a pistol. It was almost humorous. Craig took a bead and shot him down. The two drivers of the semis climbed out of the trucks. They were on the far side from Craig, but both men walked around the front of the trucks, their hands up.

  Leaving the M14E2 behind again, Craig hurried cautiously down to the convoy. It was getting dark and he could easily be shot from cover of darkness in the open the way he was. But no shots rang out and the two men held their positions, their hands up, until Craig got to them.

  “We’re not bandits!” one was yelling as Craig ran up.

  The other one, a bit more calmly, said, “There is people in the back of my truck. We need to let them out. They’re captives, too.”

  “Put your hands down. Where’s the other guard?” Craig asked.

  The first man replied, “He crawled over me and took off.”

  Craig nodded and then motioned toward the back of the truck. Craig watched carefully as the man went over to the dead bandit that had been shooting at Craig and took a key out of his jeans pocket.

  “Key,” he said, holding it up so Craig could see it. He went around and opened the lock securing the trailer’s double doors.

  Craig stayed ready, his right hand on the pistol grip of the Calico, which was still in its holster under the cotton duster. When the man opened the doors, Craig saw several people crowded back against the load in the trailer. They were obviously terrified.

  “Okay,” Craig said. “Get them out.”

  Going to the head of the convoy, Craig checked inside the vehicles. Both were bloody messes inside. The one gun Craig would have taken was damaged beyond repair by one of the jacketed slugs from the M14E2. He took what little ammunition there was, and headed for the vehicles that had been the rear of the convoy.

  The closest vehicle looked much like the first two. They were gory inside. But one of the dead was still holding a blood covered M1A similar to the one Craig had carried at one time. More importantly, there was a whole shoulder bag full of loaded magazines for it that would work in the other M1A and the M14E2.

  Craig picked up a few more things from inside the rig and walked over to the one that had almost escaped. Of the four men in it, the two in the back seat of the SUV were dead. So was one behind the wheel. The front seat passenger, however, was still alive. Barely.

  “What are you going to do with me?” the man asked, his head lolling to one side.

  “Nothing,” Craig said coldly. “You’re on your own, at the mercy of the people you ambushed.

  Craig reached in and took the Para Ordnance P-14 semi-auto pistol that lay in the man’s lap, and fished out the spare magazines the man had in his jacket pockets. The man moaned in pain, but Craig ignored it.

  He found two more weapons worth taking, along with some ammunition and three pillow cases of dried foods, mostly jerky and dried fruit. Craig walked back to join the others, clustered between the two semis.

  “What are you going to do, Cowboy?” someone asked him.

  “Nothing,” Craig said. “I’ve got somewhere I want to be.” He started to turn around and head up the rise to get the M14E2 and Clyde, his arms full of the spoils of war. “I’ll let you take care of the others.” He’d barely taken two steps when the question he was expecting came.

  “What’s your name, anyway? Who should we thank for saving us?”

  “My name doesn’t matter. And I’d suggest you thank God for being saved.” As the darkness became complete, except for the headlights on the lead semi, which caused as many shadows as it created areas of light, Craig trudged up the hill with his heavy load. Clyde wasn’t going to be happy. But he’d carry the load long enough to get back to the farm where the other horses were.

  Just to be fair, Craig walked part of the way, with Clyde trailing behind. Clyde grunted heavily when Craig finally swung aboard, the M14E2 and M1A slung one over each shoulder, the rest of the items he’d recovered in and on the saddle bags.

  Craig took a couple of days to round up most of the horses the bandits had used. He was able to get all his coin back from the farmer, and then some, in return for the horses. He took a couple more days to rest up and clean up the bloody spoils of war he’d taken before he once more headed
out. Instead of heading for Wyoming, the way he’d planned, he found himself turning south, following the trail of the bandits to their home base.

  It took him several days and he was glad he hadn’t kept on the trail the first time he was on the track. When he finally reached the bandit’s base, Craig scoped it out from a distance. It was a ranch out in the middle of nowhere. He saw no activity at all the first day. The second he saw a Mexican looking woman hanging out laundry. There was no other activity, at the house, barn, or bunkhouse.

  The third day, again seeing only the woman tending to a small garden, Craig decided to approach the ranch. As standard procedure, Craig hobbled the rest of the horses and then rode slowly up on the ranch, on the road that led in to it on the south side, away from the faint trail north.

  He helloed the house and the woman he’d seen before came out the front door. “Go away, if you’re smart. We ain’t buying any.”

  “I was looking for work. Is the boss in?”