by Ralph Hayes
Sumner shook his head and stepped away to get another piece of kindling for the fire, while Funk reached into a saddle bag. When Sumner turned back with the wood, Funk had a Joslyn .44 revolver aimed at his chest.
‘What the hell!’ Sumner muttered. He had been relaxed about Funk because he didn’t wear a gun-belt.
Funk looked different now. The pleasant smile was gone. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Sumner. But I just can’t seem to find a Good Book in there.’
Sumner dropped the firewood. ‘What happened to the word of God, and doing good for your neighbour?’
Funk grinned. ‘Nice little show, huh? I been thinking of going on the stage with it.’
‘I take it there’s no Bibles in that case.’
‘Never found no need for them. It never goes that far. A couple of memorized quotes. A pleasant smile. That usually does it.’
‘Well. A Godless man in a Godless country. You fit right in, Funk. If that’s your name.’
Funk shrugged. ‘I have no apologies to make. I’m a common thief, Mr Sumner. I have to make myself a living. And this works for me.’
‘And what happens after you’ve robbed me?’ Sumner said caustically.
Funk sighed. ‘That’s the hard part. I’m not a stone killer. I’d like to let you walk away from this. The law goes after killers. So as you can understand, I’ll expect your close cooperation. For your sake.’
‘I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,’ Sumner said acidly.
‘Now, down to business. I’ve been coveting that Colt of yours ever since arrival at your camp. I won’t ask you to throw it into the sand. I’d like for you to take it slowly from your holster. Very slowly. Then hand it to me muzzle toward you. The slightest misstep on your part will cause this Joslyn to blow a hole clear through you. Otherwise, I’ll have you clear out your saddle bags and pockets. If you behave the way I expect, what I’ll do is tie you up and just ride out. Wouldn’t that be a nice conclusion to our little adventure together?’
Sumner didn’t know if that summary was an additional ploy. It seemed not, since Funk could have fired as soon as Sumner turned back toward him. But he might want Sumner alive just to do the work of turning over his valuables. Sumner made his decision and reached slowly for the Colt, with the Joslyn aimed directly at his heart. He followed directions, bringing the long revolver up very slowly, and turning it over so the muzzle faced him.
‘OK?’ he said.
‘Nicely done,’ Funk congratulated him. ‘Now. Step over here and hand it to me just as it is.’
‘I won’t give you any trouble,’ Sumner said, moving over to confront him. ‘You can have the Colt and anything I have in the bags. I’m not rich, but there’s some cash in the close one.’
‘Excellent!’ Funk grinned. He reached for the Colt. The Joslyn carefully trained on Sumner’s chest.
Sumner reached the Colt out for the transfer, but as Funk started to take it, and just before it was in his grasp, Sumner turned the gun backwards just once until the muzzle was suddenly staring at Funk, and he squeezed off one quick shot.
Both guns banged out loudly in their ears, Funk’s Joslyn firing a full second after the Colt. The Colt’s lead blasted a blue hole in the centre of Funk’s forehead and then his interrupted shot tore at Sumner’s side under his vest.
Funk’s eyes were staring past Sumner then, his brain trying to understand what had happened. He took three steps backward and fell against his appaloosa, making the horse whinny softly, and then slid to the ground. His jaw worked for a moment there as if trying to forestall what had already happened. Then he was quite lifeless.
Sumner still held the Peacemaker in his right hand. He felt under his vest, and there was blood, but not much. The wound was very shallow.
He turned the Colt over again, and into its holster. Without giving Funk’s corpse another look, he returned to the fire, sat back down, and poured himself a second cup of coffee.
‘I should have asked how far it is to Dodge,’ he said pensively.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning Sumner crossed over into Kansas.
The countryside was changing. There was the beginning of grasslands, and he rode through long sections of wooded landscape, with aspens, cottonwoods and even birches dominating the terrain. In the afternoon he rode into a town called Sulphur Creek. He was still almost a two days’ ride from Dodge City, he figured.
It was a peaceful-looking town, with wide streets lined by stores, a small hotel, and a couple of saloons. At the near end of town was a hostelry and a building that housed the town marshal’s office and the jail. Not far from that was a house with a shingle outside on a post that advertised the place belonged to a veterinarian doctor.
Sumner stopped there and knocked, met at the door by a small man in spectacles. ‘I’m the vet here.’ He looked past him to the stallion. ‘Is your horse lame?’
Sumner shook his head. ‘I got a flesh wound I want bandaged, and I reckon there’s no real doctor in town.’
The other man frowned. ‘I’m a real doctor, mister. Name of Scott.’ He looked Sumner over, and saw the dark spot on his vest. ‘Come on in, mister. I’ll have a look at that.’
Sumner followed him into an examination room where there was the odor of ammonia and animals. He sat on the edge of a metal table and removed his vest and shirt and Scott came over with some alcohol and swabs. There was a three inch long, pencil-thick cut just along Sumner’s lower ribs that was starting to scab over, but still bleeding onto his side.
‘It’s not bad. You won’t even feel it in a couple days.’
‘Just put something over it, Doc, and I’m out of here.’
The vet cleaned and bandaged the wound, taking his time. ‘What about the other fellow?’ he asked with a small grin.
‘Oh, the other one won’t need a doctor,’ Sumner said noncommittally.
Scott read his eyes and understood. ‘You know, I’m supposed to report things like this.’
‘Do what you have to. But this didn’t happen in this jurisdiction.’
‘The Territory?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t mean to throw mud on nobody’s home ground, but I hear that only outlaws and loonies end up in the Territory.’
‘You got it about right,’ Sumner told him. ‘But I’m not from there. I hail from Texas.’
The vet’s face brightened. ‘Well, I’ll be a black-eyed rattler! What part of that sovereign state, boy?’
Sumner was buttoning his shirt back up. ‘Down south. West of Austin. I lived with an aunt for a while there.’
Scott frowned slightly, ‘Say, what’s your name, son?’
Sumner gave him a look. Folks kept asking him to identify himself, and that might be dangerous as he closed in on his quarry. ‘It’s Sumner,’ he said reluctantly.
The other man was standing in front of him, putting some gauze back into a small box. He stopped what he was doing. ‘Wesley Sumner?’ he asked in a low, hesitant voice.
Sumner frowned. ‘What’s that to you?’ Belligerently.
Scott stepped away and sat down heavily onto a stool behind him. ‘Good God!’
Sumner slipped his vest on, irritated now. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’
‘You’re the nephew of Rachel Sumner.’
Sumner was fully dressed again. He rose off the table, curiosity replacing the frustration in his square face, ‘You knew my aunt?’
Scott looked up at him. ‘Not long after your uncle passed away, I went by one day and she gave me coffee. We were both lonely people. This was maybe a year before you came to her. We had some good times. But then I was called away on a long trail drive, tending critters. Never saw Rachel again. It was over a year after – well, after she was gone that l heard what had happened.’
Dark memories and emotions swept through Sumner’s head and body like a blue norther. He leaned against the table.
‘It hit me hard for a while. I didn’t know abou
t you till later, and what you done. Sorry.’
‘You’re one of just a few who have ever expressed sympathy,’ Sumner told him. ‘So you knew Aunt Rachel well?’
Scott looked away. ‘For a short time we were very close. I miss her still.’
Sumner suddenly felt a closeness to this animal doctor in this remote corner of Kansas that he hadn’t felt since Corey Madison’s death. ‘I’m real glad I happened on you, Dr Scott,’ he said solemnly.
‘We share a deep and abiding pain,’ Scott said quietly. He glanced at the revolver on Sumner’s hip. ‘You wear a pretty impressive piece of iron, boy. Like something you got big plans for.’
‘I’m running down a couple of demons from hell,’ Sumner said deliberately. ‘When that’s over, I won’t need the gun anymore.’
‘I wish I could help you.’
‘They might have come through here. I was going to stop at the marshal’s office. Do you think he would be there if I rode past?’
‘He’s usually there. Or his deputy.’
‘I’ll go past on my way out of town.’ He pushed off the table, and Scott stood up and came over to him.
Before Sumner knew what he was about the vet leaned in and hugged him, surprising Sumner.
‘I just had to do that. I never thought I’d meet up with anyone that knew Rachel.’ His voice broke at the end.
Sumner touched his shoulder. ‘This meeting will always be important to me.’
‘Try not to get yourself killed out there.’
‘That will be my second-most important goal,’ Sumner assured him.
At the jail, Sumner sat his mount for a long moment, still thinking of Scott with his aunt. Before all that trouble violently aborted her life. In Sumner’s head, those killers were all mixed up with Pritchard and Guthrie, and their faces often swam around and switched identities before sliding into a dark place reserved for dark thoughts.
When he entered the white-washed building, he found himself in a room with a battered old desk to his right and a middle-aged man sitting behind it, studying some wanted dodgers. On the left was a pot-belly stove and a poster board on the wall where a few posters were tacked up. The marshal, a man named Uriah Tate, looked up distractedly when Sumner came in.
‘What can I do for you, mister?’ he asked, taking in Sumner’s gunslinger look.
‘I’m looking for a couple of men,’ Sumner said. ‘I was hoping you could help me.’
Tate scowled slightly at him. ‘Looking for men? What for?’
Sumner sighed. ‘I have business with them.’
Tate rose from his chair and came around the desk. He was soft-looking, with a bulging middle and a lined face. ‘Who are these men, mister?’
‘They’re wanted by the U.S. Marshal in Fort Sill. For various crimes.’
Tate sat on the edge of his desk. ‘I see. And you’ve been deputized?’
‘Something like that.’
Tate looked at Sumner’s Colt. ‘So you intend to arrest them?’
‘Something like that.’
Tate grinned. ‘You’re a man of a few words. Are these two men a couple of weasels named Guthrie and Pritchard?’
‘That’s them.’
‘You missed them by a few days. They stayed at the local hotel just one night. Drank heavy at the Prairie Schooner down the street. Asked Luke Mallory for a job there. Said he needed protection from the reformers, like what’s going on in Dodge. Mallory said we haven’t had any reformers here yet, and sent them on their way. He didn’t like their looks. That night somebody threw a brick through the Schooner’s front window and then shot up the interior. My deputy was sound asleep here and didn’t hear a thing. Then next morning the two men were gone.’
‘Sounds like them,’ Sumner muttered.
Tate met Sumner’s eye. ‘Is there something personal going on between you and them two?’
Sumner held his look. ‘Yes.’
Tate nodded. ‘All right. I won’t inquire further. But it looks like you got your work cut out for you.’
‘I know that.’
‘Frankly, I think we was lucky with them. If they had stayed around to raise hell, I might not have been able to do much of anything about it. I ain’t no gunslinger. When I first pinned this badge on a few years back, a couple like them rode in. It was one of them hard-winter February days when it was so cold your spit would freeze before it hit the ground. I remember they wore thick sheepskin coats and ear-flap hats. They robbed two saloons and a store, then murdered the storekeeper and raped his wife. When I went to arrest them, they had ridden out. I was never so secretly relieved in my life.’
‘And your point is?’
‘There’s enough trouble that will come at you eventually, without you going looking for it.’
‘I didn’t go looking,’ Sumner said. ‘This trouble found me. I’m just still in the middle of it.’
Tate nodded. ‘Listen.’
‘Yes?’
‘If you’re still around when it’s over, I need a real deputy here. And I think you would fill the bill.’
Sumner smiled at him. ‘I’ll remember that.’
‘A good man is as hard to find nowadays as a banker in heaven. And I can tell when I see one.’
‘You don’t know my past,’ Sumner reminded him.
‘It don’t matter. The man I see in front of me now is the one that counts.’
‘Well, I doubt I’d ever pin a badge on. Anyway, if things go right, there’s a girl in Texas.’
Tate grinned again. ‘Ah. Well, I couldn’t compete with that.’
Sumner stuck his hand out and Tate took it and felt the strength in it. ‘Keep the peace, Marshal.’
‘Vaya con Dios,’ Tate responded.
Sumner figured the stallion needed rest and some decent food, so he billeted it at a nearby hostelry and stayed a night at the local hotel. The room was small and smelled of tobacco smoke and perfume, but Sumner was too tired to care. He slept well, but dreamt of Corey. He and Corey were looking for work together at a ranch near Blaneyville, and Corey was telling him that Jane would have a nice stew ready for them when they returned. When he woke from that, at three a.m., he thought for a moment he was at the Madison farm. When he realized where he was and what lay ahead for him, a heavy mood overcame him until he fell asleep again.
He rode out of Sulphur Creek just after dawn, knowing he was not likely to ever see the place again. It was almost summer now, and even though each day took him farther north, the days were getting warmer. He stopped more regularly, and drank from the canteen often. At midday he found a tiny stream, a mere rivulet of running water, and let his mount drink its fill.
The terrain was changing with almost every hour. The arid-country flora was gone, replaced with flowering shrubs and tall trees. He rode through vast grasslands and ranches, seeing small bunches of grazing cattle in a grass-grown gullet, chewing their cuds into a soft breeze.
In late afternoon he started to look for a place to camp for the night, since Dodge City was still a half day’s ride away. But then he spotted a hunter’s cabin crouching in a solitary stand of young cottonwoods.
He reined the black horse in and studied the scene. A light smoke came from a chimney of the cabin, but there were no horses tethered or corraled outside. He touched his spurs to the stallion’s flanks and rode up to the cabin. He was low on food, and hoped he might buy some coffee and maybe a couple of corn dodgers from the cabin’s owner if he returned.
He dismounted and tethered the horse, then walked over to the door. It was open. ‘Anyone here?’ he called out.
No response. He cautiously entered the cabin and looked around. It was a one room affair. Double bunk, table, chairs. A lit fireplace with a coffee pot hanging above it. He found a tin cup beside the fireplace and poured himself a cup of warm coffee, knowing that visitors were entitled to that courtesy, out on the trail. He stood there looking around. Sipping the coffee.
‘Maybe I can pick up a tin of something her
e, too,’ he said to himself. But he didn’t want to wait long for the owner. He wanted to make some more miles before the day was over.
He finally threw the remains of his coffee into the fire, and it sizzled there. He was about to leave when he heard the sound of hoof beats, and there were two horses.
He walked to the door just as two rough-looking men dismounted. One of them, a middle-aged fellow with a stoop, had pulled an American eight-gauge shotgun from its saddle scabbard and it was already aimed at Sumner. The other man, younger and wiry, had drawn a Winchester rifle.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, mister?’ the older man growled at Sumner. The two looked like brothers.
Sumner sighed. ‘I saw your cabin and helped myself to a cup of your coffee,’ he said easily. ‘I was waiting for you to get back, hoping you could sell me some for the trail.’
‘You stole our coffee?’ the younger one said fiercely. He had rheumy, blank-looking eyes and spoke in a high, reedy voice.
‘Shut up, Lenny,’ his older brother barked out.
Lenny gave him a blistering look. ‘I saw him first! You can’t take what’s mine, Eben!’
The elder brother stepped forward and looked Sumner over. ‘Throw it down, mister.’
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ Sumner said to himself.
‘What?’
‘I’m not a thief. I drank a small cup of your coffee. I’ll pay you for it if you want it that way. There’s no need for this.’
‘Maybe you ain’t listening,’ Eben said in a low voice.
The dangerous shotgun was aimed at Sumner’s midsection. And, unlike the fake Bible drummer, he had kept his distance, and wanted the revolver thrown to the ground.
Sumner hesitated. He could draw and get a shot in. But if that American went off, it would tear him in half. And then there was the obviously backward brother, hoping for a chance to use the Winchester.
Sumner reluctantly drew the Peacemaker and threw it to the ground. He was wearing his tong coat jacket, and it felt very hot on him now.
‘All right, I’m disarmed. Now will you hear me out?’
