Rolling Thunder

by Paul Lederer

  I had my rifle in my hand. Now, as silently as possible, I levered a round into the receiver. I heard no movement in all of the dark forest rising around me. I understood their dilemma. Had that single shot killed me, or was I waiting there in the darkness to ambush my ambushers? Their next move would depend on how anxious they were to kill me.

  I lay on my belly, unmoving for long minutes. I was shivering now although the night was no colder than it had been. Through the ranks of pines I could still see the stars, beaming brightly. I did not move. My muscles began to cramp, my eyes to weary from my constant, searching stare. My brow perspired despite the chill of the evening.

  Nothing moved, no sound murmured in the night except for the wind ruffling the pines. A pine-cone fell near at hand and the sound was unnaturally loud. I could detect no movement, hear no footsteps, no whispered words.

  I waited.

  If they really wanted me they would have to come down the flank of the wooded hill to where the trail wound its way through the tall forest. I looked to my gray horse to assure myself that it had not wandered off, and at that moment I saw its ears twitch, one turning in the direction of the slope above me. I eased myself into a better shooting position; raising myself on my left elbow, I curled my hand loosely around the checked fore-end of my Winchester’s stock, remaining prone.

  Still nothing. No sound of shuffling boots, of whispered instructions. If they were moving toward me, they were as silent as Indians. I wristed the sweat from my eyes and waited. I would not be the first to move. They knew where I was, where they thought I was. I had no idea where they had gotten to.

  Then I did. Watching from the forest verge to the ridge of the slope, I saw a single brilliant star shining through the Douglas firs. I saw it. And then I didn’t. Something, someone had passed in front of the star, momentarily blocking its silver light. I shifted my rifle sights that way. There was a small but unmistakable sound to my left, lower on the hillslope. A boot had broken a fallen pine-twig. I smiled despite my perilous position. I had thought all along that there were two men out there. Now I had a reasonable idea where each of them was. Also I had learned that they were not just trying to frighten me.

  They were determined to finish the job.

  Why else would a man slip around in the darkness knowing that there was a good possibility that his prey was alive, was certainly armed and deadly. No, these two wanted me dead, there was no doubt about it. I wondered idly if Peebles had put a bounty on my head and considered it quite possible. I again ran the cuff of my coat over my forehead and waited. There are few tasks more unnerving and demanding than waiting for death. The patience of a man has its limits, and I had to fight the urge to leap up and run, to try to make it to my horse, to flee into the darkness of the forest, no matter that logic told me that remaining where I was was the best plan if I were to survive.

  He loomed up, not that far away from me. The man on my left, he who had broken the twig underfoot, emitted a muffled, surprised grunt as he emerged from the forest edge and recognized my dark form for what it was. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder and fired. My rifle had spoken a split second earlier, and I was the more ready. As his long gun spewed fire and his bullet dug a deep furrow in the dark earth, I shot him in the chest. I heard him gasp above the racketing echoes of our shots, stagger back and fall flat on his back. He said a few words through the blood in his mouth, but I could not make them out, nor did they matter any more to anyone in this world.

  I eased to the side inch by inch, just enough to change position in case the bushwhacker on the hillslope had located me by my muzzle flash. I waited for the second man to make his move as the minutes in the forest crept past with infinite slowness.

  I had no warning. The ambusher was a hell of a woodsman. He burst from the forest, rifle at his waist, levering shots through the barrel as fast as it could be fired. Lead sang past me, spattered cold earth into my face and eyes. He was a woodsman, but no marksman. Had the sight of his friend going down driven him to reckless fury? There was no telling, but he had emptied half of his magazine during his wild charge without penetrating flesh and bone.

  I centered my bead-sight on his chest and fired. I missed the heart, shooting up as I was from my prone position, but he screamed out, dropped his rifle and clutched at his throat. It was a neck shot I saw immediately, as I rose to my feet and rushed him. My legs moved awkwardly, stiff and slow from lying still for so long against the cold earth. I did not want this man to die; there were questions he could answer for me.

  He was still howling with pain and anger when I reached him, but his wound did not appear to be fatal. I had it in mind to tie him up, bandage his neck and then interrogate him. That’s what I believed was going to happen next. It’s always a good idea to plan; seldom a good idea to project what is bound to happen.

  As I stumbled to him on rubbery legs, unconsciously lowering my Winchester, his hand flicked down and came up with a massive Bowie knife, its polished blade gleaming in the starlight. He waved it in front of me and then tried a slashing move which barely missed my throat. Bleeding from the mouth, his feet unsteady under him, he was nevertheless determined to fight to the grave.

  He staggered out of position; his loss of blood was telling. I managed to get my left hand on his wrist. I dropped my rifle, took his hand with my right and bent it back on itself sharply. Nothing can be gripped once the hand is folded like that and the Bowie dropped from his fingers. In puzzlement, in pain, in fury he screamed into my face. It was a wordless howl, frustrated pain and mingled hatred. He slipped in my grip and sagged toward the ground. I tried to hold him up, but it was no use.

  My unknown attacker slumped away to the ground. In the near-darkness I tried to use my bandanna to bandage his neck, but I knew that it was already too late. In a matter of minutes he lay inert, silent against the earth, his open eyes reflecting the silver starlight.

  I rose shakily and whistled the gray up. That stolid animal walked toward me heavily, wondering if this was the end of our games for that night.

  Maybe. I just couldn’t be sure. It might have been only the beginning. I was still as determined as ever to ride to Stratton. I continued on my way, leaving behind me two dead men whom I had never met, paid killers, men who had gotten exactly what they had deserved. Nevertheless I rode with a vague sense of remorse. Whoever they had been, whatever, they had family, perhaps children and friends somewhere. The taking of life is a terrible thing. I had to remind myself that it was not I who had begun this, but the greedy robber baron, Shelley Peebles, to whom the loss of the lives of these men would mean nothing at all. I might lose sleep that night, but Peebles certainly would not.

  It was time to see if I could cause him to miss a little.

  It was a riotous night in Stratton when I trailed into town shortly after eight o’clock. The saloons were going full tilt. I rode lazily past the general uproar, the cursing and banjo-playing, the breaking of glass, twice a gunshot. I was fatigued beyond what I wished to admit. Physically, mentally drained.

  No matter, I had come to do a job, and I would do it.

  I had considered on the first leg of my journey that however despicable I considered Shelley Peebles, we might be able to work out some mutually agreeable truce. Being ambushed on the trail had erased any conciliatory thoughts I might have had. This was the town I had built. This was the land I had owned. I wanted nothing for profit; I wanted the vermin to be driven out and to restore Stratton to what it had been – a decent place for the young, the old, the decent people to live.

  It seemed, now, a futile wish, riding as I was – alone and without resources. Still, something, some impulse deep within me nudged me along the path of retribution.

  I knew where I was going even if I did not know why.

  Earlier Toby Trammel had pointed out where Shelley Peebles had built his new house, a two-story white-painted wooden structure set about a hundred yards behind the new brick courthouse. I had only glanced at it in passin
g. Now, approaching it, I studied it deliberately. Porticoed, a front upstairs balcony, set in a grove of cottonwood trees, it was the sort of manorial structure suitable for the robber baron, Stratton’s leading citizen and murderer.

  Lights blazed from every window. I could hear music. Some sort of celebration or ball was in progress. Frowning, I slowed the gray, noticing the half-dozen surreys and twice that many saddle-horses hitched before the house which was a true mansion in this part of the country.

  There was even a balding man in livery, wearing white gloves, waiting on the porch to provide service. I could tell he didn’t like my looks by his frowning assessment. He would soon like them even less.

  I swung down from my gray horse. The servant started to come forward – to help or complain – I couldn’t tell which. I swung out of leather and threw my buffalo coat over the gray’s back, behind the saddle. I rolled up both of my red shirt’s cuffs and resettled my Colt revolvers in their cross-belted holsters. Tugging my hat down I approached the porch. The servant had managed to fade away before I had reached it. The white-painted double doors were open and so I walked on in.

  There had been music and dancing, but now the men and women in the chandelier-lit great hall paused as one to stare at me. I couldn’t blame then. The men wore suits, the ladies were decked out in ball-gowns and jewelry. They couldn’t have been expected to welcome an unshaven, rough-looking man weighted down by two pistols.

  I knew now where the servant had slipped off to. From a side room Shelley Peebles, wearing a frozen frown entered, accompanied by a sober-looking Sheriff Langdon in a black suit, and a pigeon-chested man with thinning white hair whom I did not recognize, but took to be Judge Manx.

  Lounging against the doorframe behind them was the gunfighter, Kit Stacy, his longish yellow hair slicked down, his buckskins replaced by a dark suit, ruffled shirt and black string-tie.

  Peebles’s expression was not startled but more embarrassed, I thought, as he glanced at his guests.

  ‘This is a private affair, Quinn. No one invited you.’

  ‘We need to talk, Peebles.’

  He looked me up and down from my scuffed boots to my dusty hat. ‘You’ll have to put your guns up,’ he said.

  ‘No. I wouldn’t talk to you without them,’ I replied.

  The expression in the narrow man’s eyes hardened. He ran a finger over his thin mustache and nodded.

  ‘All right then, damnit!’ he said in a fierce whisper. ‘But not here. Come into my office.’

  I nodded amiably and we went in a group to an inner room, my hat still firmly in place, my spurs jingling. At some unseen signal the band began to play again and people resumed their dancing, though there was an uncomfortable murmur of voices behind me.

  Peebles seated himself in a black leather chair behind a broad ebony desk, not glaring at me, but trying to appraise my intentions, it seemed. The judge sat in a similar chair in the corner of the room, mopping his high forehead with a handkerchief. The sheriff stood grimly in the opposite corner, his beefy arms folded. Kit Stacy was, I knew, positioned behind me. Despite Shelley Peebles’s declaration that guns were not allowed in his house, I had noticed a tell-tale bulge beneath the skirt of Stacy’s jacket. Peebles, I knew, usually wore a high-riding small-caliber pistol and I doubted that Sheriff Langdon was accustomed to going anywhere without a revolver. What I had said to Peebles was true enough – I wasn’t about to enter a closed room with these four unarmed.

  ‘What is it that’s troubling you exactly?’ Peebles asked in a mild voice. He reached for a thin cigar and lit it while waiting for my answer. I noticed a folded copy of the Stratton Gazette on a corner of the desk, my bold-type notice obvious.

  ‘That’s simple enough,’ I told him, letting my eyes flicker from one man to the next in turn. ‘Murder always troubles me, Peebles. More troubling is the fact that we have a sheriff and a judge who look the other way so long as it’s you who does the murders.’

  ‘I’ve never …!’ Peebles said, half-rising from his chair with mock indignation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said coldly, ‘I should have said “when your hired killers commit murder”.’

  ‘This is slanderous,’ the judge said. He had a strangely high-pitched voice for such a portly man. ‘Do you have any idea what that is under the law, Quinn?’

  ‘My understanding of it is that it is the uttering of false statement,’ I answered. ‘Since what I’m saying is the truth it can hardly be considered slander.’

  ‘What murders are you referring to?’ Sheriff Langdon asked coldly. He was remaining loyal to his employer, but I thought I saw a shadow of doubt in his brown eyes. I kept my own eyes fixed on Peebles, not putting it past him to reach for a gun and shoot me. There were, after all, three substantial citizens to vouch for anything that might happen in this room.

  The thing was, he hadn’t the guts to try it while I was wearing my guns. He was not a killer, as he had said. He was willing to let others do that work for him. He would not risk his own life.

  I answered Langdon without shifting my eyes from Peebles. ‘I’m referring to the murders of Tyler Holt and the recent lynching of his son, Randall. I don’t know how many settlers you killed, threatened or drove off before I arrived. I imagine the list is a lot longer. I’m not including the death of Sadie Holt who died out of grief for her husband and young son. That can’t be called murder, although you are directly responsible for her death too.’

  ‘A lot of wild accusations,’ Peebles said, leaning back in his leather chair. His head was wreathed in blue cigar smoke. ‘Have you come to discuss matters or simply to fling unfounded aspersions around?’ he demanded.

  ‘Maybe both,’ I answered honestly. ‘A man likes to let other people know where they stand in his estimation.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Only a little lower than a rattlesnake.’

  While Peebles chewed on that and calculated his next move, I took the time to glance around the room. The sheriff had not moved. His arms still folded, he gazed balefully at me. Judge Manx was again wiping his forehead with a pocket-handkerchief. I knew where Kit Stacy was, and I looked his way. The known gunfighter was watching me with faint amusement in his hooded eyes.

  The room had a high, arched ceiling. Behind Peebles’s uncluttered desk was a double window with dozens of panes framed in white wood, the carpet underfoot was rust-colored, deeply piled. There was a row of books placed neatly in a carved-oak case along one wall, a scattering of papers on a separate, smaller desk, perhaps for the use of a secretary.

  In the corner behind this desk, propped up against the wall, was a frilly yellow parasol.

  ‘What do you propose we do about this?’ Peebles asked calmly, flicking ash from his cigar into an agate ashtray.

  ‘First you must promise to keep your cattle and your men off of my land in the future.’

  ‘I believe we have already heard your position on that,’ Peebles said, nodding at the Gazette.

  ‘I wanted to tell you personally,’ I said. ‘Any incursions on my land will be met with armed resistance.’

  Peebles smiled confidently. ‘By all three of you?’ he asked with amusement.

  How could he …? It was instantly clear how he knew there was only me, George Holt and Toby Trammel to hold the land. Will and Ben Ford must had to have told him! They had been acting as spies for Peebles. They had tried to give me a beating on my first day back in Stratton yet I had accepted their regretful apology and hired them to work for me. On reflection, I probably had done that for Mary’s sake.

  Pondering this, I felt a cold chill run down my spine. On the day that Randall Holt had been lynched, Ben Ford had been riding with him. And Ben had told me when I asked him that the only sign of tracks of horses along the creek had probably been days old. Meaning there had been only one man who could have murdered Randall.

  It sickened me; I should have seen through it. Big Will and Ben had been working for Peebles when I arrived. Their
only complaint had been that the robber baron had left them with a scant ten acres of land. Why had he left them any at all? Had they then made a deal to expand their ranch by agreeing to murder?

  At Mary’s instigation?

  I glanced once again at the yellow parasol tilted against the wall in the corner of the room, my heart feeling as though it had turned to stone.

  ‘Let’s see what we can do to resolve this problem,’ Peebles was saying, relighting his cold cigar. ‘I still believe we can come to agreement without further violence.’ He again touched his mustache, offering me a smile that was wolfish. ‘The river has dried up. The graze even in the lower valleys is turning sere and brown. The town has no water resources except the Pocono River. I know that this is your doing, Quinn …’

  He would know that through the Ford brothers.

  ‘… Towns are formed where there is a water supply, a river, a lake. It’s been that way since prehistory. Without water there is no civilization.’ Kit Stacy, speaking for the first time, interrupted Peebles’s rambling lecture with an irrelevant comment.

  ‘The boys are having to drink their whiskey straight,’ the gunman said. No hint of appreciative humor appeared in Peebles’s eyes.

  ‘I want that river opened up again, Quinn. I won’t accept your action. The judge here tells me that you likely do have the legal right to do what you’ve done, but I won’t see my cattle die or Stratton disappear from the map, becoming just another ghost town in the mountains. No!’ he shouted, showing raw emotion for the first time. He lifted a fist as if to bang it down on his desk top, but recovered his composure before he did.

  His eyes were narrowed now, and I could see the wolf in them again. ‘I’ll promise to leave your land, your people alone if you open the Pocono again.’

  ‘If I don’t?’ I asked and Peebles, placing both hands on his desk, leaned back. Around the cigar in his teeth he said:

  ‘If you do not agree, Mr Quinn … I very much doubt you will ride out of Stratton alive.’