by J. Lee Butts
Just as we walked away Harry turned to him and said, “Don’t even think about runnin’, Jack. You move from this spot before we get inside and I’ll find you, even if I have to follow you to sunset and half a day further.”
We walked right up to that door bold as whores in church. Stood back and together ran against it. I covered the room, and Harry watched my back. A greasy man, wrapped in a blanket, sat so close to the fireplace it’s a wonder he didn’t flare out like a lucifer. He threw up his hands and tried to stand, but couldn’t. For a minute, I thought I’d walked into the inside of a buffalo. Felt like he had a whole tree burning. Harry ran from corner to corner, but couldn’t find anyone else.
“I ain’t goth nothin’ worth havin’. They’s some paper money in thath boot yonder.” He blew his nose on a piece of nasty cloth. Sounded like a winded mule slobbering. “Mebee five dollars. ’S all I’ve goth. Yew can take that if’n yo’re the kinda low lithe scum’d rob a poor thick man.”
“We’re U.S. marshals, you stupid bag of puss. Where’s your pistol?” Harry jerked the man up by the front of his long johns, shook the blanket out, snatched up a belly gun and pushed him back into his chair.
“U.S. marshals? I ain’t done nothin’. Whath yew breakin’ in on me like thith fer? Ain’t done nothin’, I’m tellin’ yuh.” The grippe had his head so plugged up I could barely understand him.
“Where’s Saginaw Bob Magruder?” He’d been looking at Harry, but the edge on my voice jerked his head in my direction, like he’d been whipsawed.
“Well, he ain’th here.”
“I can see that. Where is he?”
Champagne Jack stumbled in and went straight to the fire. He unbuttoned the coat I’d loaned him and fanned it back and forth, to get more of the heat next to his body.
“You know this little weasel, Jack?” Harry turned him away from the fire with the barrel of his shotgun.
“Yeah, I know him. Name’s Hollis Doyle. He takes care of the cattle and horses Bob and the boys steal.”
Doyle went into a coughing, sneezing fit that sprayed liquid for three feet before he finally said, “Damn yew, Jack. Yew leadth these lawdogs hereth? Bob findsth out yew brung ’em, he’ll render yew out fer squzz.”
I stepped over to the hacking ferret and put the muzzle of my shotgun in his right ear. “I want to know where Saginaw Bob went, and I want to know now.”
He got real still. “Yew ain’th gonna shooth me.”
Harry snickered. “Don’t bet your life on that, Hollis. If Bob Magruder had done to me what he did to Hayden there, you’d already be dead.”
All of a sudden he got religion. “Waith now. Waith justh a minute. Don’t be getthin’ trigger happy, Marshal. I’ll tell yew whath yew want to know. Jes’ take thath thing outta my ear.”
I stepped back, but left the barrel resting on his shoulder.
“They’th went over to Spearville with some horses yetherday. Bob wanthed to get rid of ’em ’fore the weather goth so bad we couldn’th move ’em. ’Speck they’ll be bacth . . . day ather tomorrow.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. So close, and he had slipped away again. “Harry, sometimes I do believe the man has a guardian angel. Yesterday. If we had just known yesterday.”
Harry had moved over to the table in the center of the room. He scratched at a spot on the surface of the rough wood, then bent down and dug up a clump of dark mud from the floor. “What’s this, Hollis?”
The weasel refused to look up. “Whath? I doan seeh nothin’.”
Harry stood and held his soiled fingers out. “Blood, Hollis. I think this spot under the table’s blood. What happened here?”
Doyle got all jumpy and started squirming around in his chair. “I didn’th have nothin’th to do with that. Nothin’, absolutely nothing.”
“Nothin’?” Harry moved closer to Doyle. “What was the nothin’ you didn’t have anything to do with, Hollis?”
Jack danced from foot to foot. He stripped my leather coat off and opened his vest and shirt. The sweltering heat caused water to drip from his nose. “Bob did it,” he blurted out.
Hollis jumped out of his chair. “Shut yer stupid mouth, Jack. I’ll tell Bob ’bout this, and he’ll use the skin off’n yer cods fer a coin purse.” Then he fell back into the chair like he might not ever get up again.
“You wanna go to jail for what Bob did, Hollis? Tell the marshals what happened here the other night. Nate let it slip that two men got killed here. You wanna hang in Bob’s place?”
Hollis glanced from face to face like a trapped animal. “I wasn’th here when ith happened. I’d gone out to feed the stock. They was thirty horses here. My sweet Lord, marshals, it wasth all I could do to keep up with ’em.”
Harry pulled a chair across the room and sat down. “So, neither one of you saw what happened, but you both know about it. Get on with it, Hollis. I can’t wait to hear this story.”
Hollis sagged like a sack of feed with a slit in the side. “Three or four nightsth ago Nate and Josh came stumblin’ in after a day of drinkin’. Two fellers who no one knew came back with ’em.” He sneezed and noisily blew his nose again. “They sat around drinkin’ and carryin’ on so late, I took my sthuff outside and put up under the lean-to where I could be close to the stock. Early next mornin’, them two strangers pulled gunsth on Nate, Josh, and Val. Said they’s gonna rob everybody. Can yew believe it? Dumb bastards thunk they could go an’ rob three fellers ath bad ath them boys. Anyhow, I guess they’da done it, but jest ’bout then Bob opened the door and blasted hell out of both of ’em. Shootin’ woke me up. Time I got to the door them fellers had started to bleed out right there under the table. I think Bob hit one of ’em four times. He’s the one what leaked on the table.”
Harry lit a cigar not much bigger than a handmade with a twig from the roaring fire. “And I guess none of you other churchgoing, upright citizens fired a single shot.”
“Well, Val mighta got in five or six. They was tho much gunsmoke in the air, I couldn’t tell. When I came in, Bob and Val were in a screamin’ match. Bob called all of ’em dumber than Arkansas jackassesth for bringin’ them others out here. Val said if Bob didn’t watch his mouth, he’d end up deader’n Custer. Things kinda went downhill from there. Started to run off, but figured if Valentine Gibson killed Saginaw Bob Magruder I wanthed to be around to see it. Coulda tole my story to the newspapers and got famous. But it didn’th work out. I think they’s both so bad, they’s ’fraid of each other.”
I felt like a man who’d just been told that he’d lost everything in the world that meant anything to him—for the second or third time. Harry saw how Doyle’s story affected me and immediately tried to get my mind moving in another direction.
He stood and thumped the piece of cigarillo into the flaming fireplace. “We’ll take these two back to Dodge and let Deputy Marshal Farmin lock ’em up. Then, we can come back tomorrow and lay a trap for the others.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Champagne Jack’s vocal lack of pleasure with Harry’s plans bordered on belligerence. “You ain’t lockin’ me up. I helped you find this place and gave you enough information to get me killed. You lock me up and them ole boys’ll know exactly where to find me.”
“Sorry, Jack.” Harry started for the door. “But you’re gonna have to spend some time in the pokey.”
“Yew boysth can do whatever yew want, but yew ain’t lockin’ me up.” Hollis rubbed his raw nose on the sleeve of his long johns.
Harry’s fuse ran completely out. He twirled and cocked both barrels of his shotgun. “Get out of that chair, Hollis, and get dressed.”
Ole Hollis turned whiter than the stuff on the ground outside. “Thsure, Marshal. Thsure. Just calm down.”
He stumbled out of the chair. It took almost five minutes for him to pull on his ragged clothes and worn-out boots.
We started for the door, and Harry stopped so abruptly I ran into him. He turned and pulled Champagne Jack up beside h
im. “Give me your hat, Jack.”
“What? What you want with my hat?”
“Just give it to me.” Fletcher handed the well-worn stovepipe over, and Harry took off his own Beaver and stuck it on the gambler’s head. “Hayden, put yours on Hollis.”
The little man started backing away from the door. “What yew doin’? This ain’t right. Why yew wanth histh hat on me? Yew cain’t do this to us. We ain’t gonna let yew do thish.”
Harry poked at Hollis with his shotgun. “We? When did you two become a couple, Hollis? Put it on him, Hayden. I think there’s something strange goin’ on here.”
I figured Harry had his reasons, so I grabbed the greasy varmint and pushed the hat down on his head. “Now, you two go out first. Hayden and I’ll follow.”
Doyle took to shaking so I thought he was going to collapse. Champagne Jack looked like he might have a stroke. The words came slobbering out of his mouth. “What you gettin’ at here, Harry? Why’re you doin’ this?”
“Well, just step outside and walk over to that clump of brush where we tied the horses, and we’ll all see.” He jerked the door open, grabbed Jack by the neck, and pushed him outside. Doyle started squealing like a stuck pig. I latched onto his collar and shouldered him out behind his partner.
Harry dropped to the floor and yelled, “Get down, Hayden!”
I’d barely managed to hit the dirt, when a hail of bullets riddled the doorway, windows, and everything around us. During the second or two between volleys, Harry rolled over to the table, pulled the lamp down, and snuffed the flame. “Get to a corner. It’s gonna get a lot worse.”
For the next few minutes, that shack got so many new holes punched in it I got to thinking it was going to look like a flour sifter when the shooting stopped. We curled in the corners and stayed as low as we could. Eventually, things quieted down.
“Don’t move till I do,” Harry whispered. “Cock your weapon and follow my lead.”
Several minutes passed before I heard the crunching of snow as the bushwhackers moved toward the cabin. Harry waited so long I’d begun to think they would be inside before we did anything. Then someone outside yelped like a branding iron had been stuck to the bottoms of his feet.
Harry tapped the butt of his shotgun against his belt buckle and said, “Now.” We rolled to the doorway and fired. Four barrels of twelve-gauge buckshot peppered everything in front of that door. I heard at least two people scream, then the running and yelling started. We reloaded and waited for the noise to die down.
“Let’s stay put till—” Harry didn’t get a chance to finish. We heard horses crashing through the brush not far from where we’d hidden our mounts. “I think we can go out now, Hayden.”
Champagne Jack and Hollis Doyle had barely made it out the door, when they got cut to ribbons. Harry retrieved his hat and pitched mine to me. Twenty feet from their bodies another fellow squirmed around on the ground holding his guts. He kept blubbering, “Oh, God, oh, God!”
Harry grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back to the cabin. We picked him up and put him in the only bed. He screamed and cried the whole time. I relit the lamp and Harry sat on the edge of the bed, poked around at the wounds, and shook his head. Good-looking kid, long blond hair, gray eyes. Couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Dressed in a handsome leather jacket decorated with silver conchos. Gun belt and boots matched the jacket. He carried a pair of those Richards’ conversion Colts with stag grips. Beautiful pistols. Right one was still holstered. Later we found the other on the ground near the bloody spot in the snow where he first fell.
Once the boy bled down enough, he stopped yelping. He held his gory hand up and stared at it like it wasn’t attached to his arm.
“It don’t look good, son,” Harry said. “Think you caught a whole barrel of shot all by yourself. Why don’t you tell us your name, and where your pards are headed?”
Kid kept staring at his hand. I pushed his arm back down onto his belly. “What’s your name?”
Frothy red liquid and spittle formed around his lips. I pulled the jacket back and found several more holes higher up on his left side. “Whitey.” He wheezed and air gurgled from the wounds in his chest. “Whitey Hawkins.”
“Where’d your friends go, Whitey?” Harry sounded tired.
Watery eyes wandered around in his head before he finally gurgled, “Bob said this’d be so easy. We’d just kill you boys . . . and head for the Canadian. No one’d ever find us.” He coughed, and more blood came up. I wiped his mouth with my bandanna. “Sounded good tuh me. Ain’t never kilt no marshal afore. Couple of them tinhorn town laws . . . but never a marshal.” He smiled. “Figured I’d have a right smart reputation . . . if’n I could brag ’bout killin’ two U.S. marshals.” His eyes rolled up in his head for a second. I thought he had left, but then he came back. “Bob seen that feller with the big rifle at Digger’s place—askin’ questions. Paid Jack a hundred dollars to cook up a lie—about us bein’ out here. He’n Hollis can put on quite an act—cain’t they? We followed you dumb Arkansas clod-kickers all the way out here.” He coughed again, and almost sat upright, then fell back into the rough bed. “That sorry Magruder’ll tell any kinda lie you can imagine to get a body to do what he wants. Hard to believe he’s really a preacher. Sure would like to see that church down in Texas where he preaches.” He held his hand against the tip of his nose and struggled to speak. “Just like . . . to see my hand again. Mighty cold in here, don’t you think? Ain’t gonna make it—am I, Marshal?”
“No, son. You ain’t gonna make it.” Harry pulled a threadbare blanket up to Whitey’s waist and tenderly tucked it around his legs like a mother putting her child to sleep. The boy’s arm dropped like a felled tree, and he stopped moving. A single jagged breath oozed out, and his eyes popped open in surprise.
Harry sat and stared at that kid for the longest time. “Hate seein’ a man this young die so awful. I know he’d have killed us both, given the chance, but that don’t make the way he passed any easier to take.”
I pointed to the door with my shotgun. “We’ve got to go get the rest of them.”
Harry glanced along the line I’d indicated. His shoulders slumped, and he ran his hand over his face. “They’ll be real easy to track till the snow starts to melt.” Just as he said that, Caesar peeked in. He ambled over, sat down at my feet, and dropped a chunk of bloody rag on the floor.
“What is it, Hayden?”
I rolled the material around with the toe of my boot. “It looks like the seat of somebody’s pants. That must have been the yelping we heard just before we blasted them. He’s gone and done another trick like the one he did on those two cowboys we met south of the Arkansas.”
We stood there staring at the creature as his tail swept a smooth spot on the dirt floor. Harry bent down and carefully patted him on the head. “You think he could trail Magruder’s bunch?”
“Don’t know. Never tried to get him to run track before.”
Harry rummaged around in the pile of discarded clothing and other goods littering the floor and held pieces of it under the animal’s nose. The dog got more and more agitated with every shirt or pair of pants. Then, Harry came up with a shirt like a preacher or gambler might wear. Caesar went crazy. Dog grabbed the garment, ripped it to pieces, then pissed on it.
Harry kept scratching around and found another one that looked almost the same. He rolled it into a ball. “Let’s get these fellers to Dodge. We can get some rest, then tomorrow we’ll see if the dog will run the track. If he does, it’ll make things a lot easier.”
We made it back to the cabin early the next morning. I rubbed Caesar’s muzzle with the garment Harry had saved. Didn’t even have to urge him into the chase. He started running and it took everything we could do to keep up. The hairy devil turned out to be a lot more than a simple trail mate, and the longer we ran behind him, the more I believed he’d lead us right to Magruder.
Eight days into the chase we’d made it
out of the snow cover and topped a hill near the North Canadian, back in the Nations. We were all about give out. Caesar had run himself footsore, but when we stopped, he got agitated.
Harry handed me his long glass. “There’s smoke coming from that clump of trees. Only a sliver, but if you look hard you can see it. We can leave the horses under the overhang cut into the bluff yonder and catch them by surprise.”
While we checked our weapons he whispered, “These boys won’t go down easy, Hayden. I’d bet my horse, they fight like cornered wildcats. Best we adopt the Billy Bird method. Shoot first—and sort it all out later. Give me about ten minutes while I circle around on the other side, then we’ll catch the sons of bitches in the middle.” He started toward the stand of trees. I looked for Caesar, but couldn’t find him.
As I snapped the cover of my watch closed and started in the direction of the camp, saw motion out of the corner of my left eye. Caesar was creeping through the trees toward our quarry like a panther stalking game. Acted like he knew exactly how we wanted to take those boys. Snaked my way into the trees.
Before I’d managed to move in very far, heard Handsome Harry call out, “Come on in, Hayden. Come on in.”
I stepped into a grassy clearing. A shallow stream made its way silently through the camp and eventually into the Canadian. Staked horses stamped and snorted a short distance from a fire that’d burned itself down to a barely smoking pile of ash. Harry stood beside a log on the other side of the creek. A strange and elderly figure sat on the fallen tree. On the ground a gagged man, wrapped in rope, struggled to be free. Caesar made a grunting sound of recognition deep in his chest, bounded past me, and jumped the creek into the open arms of the old man.
The scene I walked up on shocked me right down to my boot soles. Two of the bandits had died in the most horrible fashion. A skillfully applied knife had sliced through their throats. They had jumped from their bedrolls and stumbled about the camp slinging huge gouts of blood in every direction. Dark shiny pools of the sticky liquid decorated the ground. Drops, specks, and flakes of the stuff could be seen on bushes, trees, and rocks. Figured the largest of the corpses had to be Nate Stover, and the other one his friend Josh Strieb. My imagination couldn’t fathom how such a thing had been accomplished. I waded the stream and stopped in front of the old man, who grinned from ear to ear and rubbed Caesar’s head roughly.
