The Devil's Posse

by Charles G. West

  Making his way down through the rocks and trees as fast as he could, he stumbled and fell, tumbling several yards before righting himself to continue. Unfortunately he reached the rock just in time to see his attacker fleeing at a gallop, lying low on his horse’s neck, apparently wounded. Lawman or outlaw? There was no way to tell, but he had wounded him, and that was enough to send him running. At least Logan’s horses were safe, but he decided to move his camp, just in case the shooter decided to try again.

  * * *

  Quincy Morgan drained the last swallow of coffee from his cup when he heard Curly Ford call out, “Yonder comes Lonnie.”

  Quincy looked up to see his cousin riding along the bluffs on his way back from scouting a small farm a short ride up the river. He got to his feet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and awaited Lonnie’s report.

  In a few minutes, Lonnie rode right up between the bedrolls spread close to the fire before reining his horse to a stop and stepping down from the saddle. “Damn, Lonnie,” Riley Stokes complained, “why don’t you just ride that horse right over us?”

  “I just might,” Lonnie answered him with a smirk. “You ought’n still be settin’ around the fire anyway.”

  “What did you see?” Quincy asked, indifferent to his cousin’s cocky attitude.

  “Looks like two sodbuster families,” Lonnie replied. “Least, there’s two cabins settin’ by the river. Don’t look like they been there very long. One of ’em don’t look like it’s finished. I didn’t see no sign of cattle—a milk cow, is all.”

  “What about the men?” Quincy asked. “Any trouble?”

  “Not enough to worry about,” Lonnie said as he picked up the coffeepot from the edge of the fire and tested the weight to determine if there was any left. “Two younger men and one old man—the rest is women and children.” He picked up a cup sitting on the ground near the fire and filled it with the strong liquid. “They’re a pretty sorry-lookin’ bunch. Don’t look like there’s more’n five dollars between ’em.”

  “What did the women look like?” Rafe Dawson asked, to no one’s surprise.

  “Whadda you care, Rafe?” Wormy Jacobs snorted. “Since when did it matter to you what they look like? Have you got particular all of a sudden?” His remarks drew some chuckles from the other men and a scowl from Rafe.

  Quincy remained aloof from the verbal horseplay while he considered Lonnie’s report. It didn’t sound as though the farmers were worth the bother, and he was flush with money right now. Just as he had promised his men, the stagecoaches carrying gold out of the Black Hills were easy pickings. They had hit one that yielded them a big score on the road out of Custer, so he was thinking it not worth their while to raid these farmers. Maybe he would ride around them and let them be.

  As leader of the five men riding with him, he had determined their prospects more promising in the Black Hills. That was where the gold was, he told them, and that was where they’d concentrate their activity. Lonnie had been able to round up the other men in anticipation of Quincy’s release from prison, and it was his intention to pick up right where they had left off before he was captured by U.S. Marshals. If things were going the way he hoped, his brother, Jake, should be going about learning all he could concerning the gold shipments that came from the big mines located in the gulch. Those shipments were the gold that Quincy intended to strike.

  Aware that Quincy was seriously mulling the prospect over, Lonnie asked, “Whaddaya think, Quincy? You wanna hit them sodbusters, or just go on around ’em?”

  Lonnie studied his cousin intensely. Five years in prison would most likely change any man. So far, he seemed the same cold-blooded killer he had been, but he seemed prone to falling into deep periods of moody depression.

  Overhearing Lonnie’s question, Rafe said, “Hell, Quincy, we might as well see if they’ve got anything worth takin’. If what Lonnie says is true, it don’t sound like there’s much risk.”

  “You wanna see the women that bad?” Quincy responded after a moment. “You ain’t changed much since I was in prison.” He looked at the questioning faces of the others. It wasn’t difficult to determine their preference. They weren’t prone to passing up easy pickings, slim though they might be. So he said, “We might as well see if there’s anything worth foolin’ with. They might have a little bit of money hidden away somewhere.”

  “Now you’re talkin’,” Rafe said, a wide grin forming on his unshaven face.

  “All right, then,” Quincy said. “Let’s get saddled up and go pay the sodbusters a visit.”

  * * *

  Henry Jessop reached the end of the small plot of ground he was plowing for a spring garden and turned his mule back up the next row only to stop suddenly when he saw six riders approaching from the riverbank. He was at once concerned, for at first glance he didn’t like the look of the men. Something inside him told him he and his family were in danger. He turned to call to his brother, who was on his way from the cabin.

  “Harvey, we got company. Maybe you better go back to the house till I find out what they want.”

  If he had seen them in time, he would have taken the precaution to get back to the other end of the garden patch where he had left his shotgun. As it was, however, the only way he might make it would be to drop the plow and run for the weapon, and he feared that would only trigger a violent reaction if they did have evil intentions. Maybe he was just being overcautious, he told himself.

  Harvey turned immediately to head back to the cabin. He had the same uneasy feeling that had come over Henry when he first spotted the six riders. Lucy, his two young sons, and his mother and father were all in his cabin, since his parents’ cabin was not yet completed. He scolded himself for not having brought his rifle with him, but if he was quick enough, maybe he could make it to the house while Henry talked to the strangers.

  To the six outlaws approaching, it was obvious why one of the farmers was hurrying back to the cabin. “Curly, head that one off,” Quincy ordered.

  There was no hesitation on Curly’s part. He kicked his horse sharply, and the big red sorrel sprang into a full gallop. It was not much of a race between sorrel and man. Curly cut Harvey off when he was still twenty yards from the house. The horse’s hooves slid to a stop in the soft dirt, freshly broken by the plow. “How do, neighbor?” Curly sang out, a smile of contempt on his face. “What’s your hurry?”

  At a loss for a believable reply, Harvey could only stammer over the first words that dropped out of his mouth. “I was gonna see if there was any food ready to eat.”

  Looking up at the huge man in the saddle, whose totally bald head was only partially covered by a weathered felt derby with a thin brim, he knew he was caught in a lie.

  “Is that a fact?” Curly replied, enjoying the man’s obvious fright. “Was you thinkin’ ’bout invitin’ us for dinner?” When Harvey could not reply, Curly said, “Ain’t no need to run in the house. We just came by to say howdy.”

  He had no sooner said it then they heard the first gunshot, and a shocked Harvey turned to see his brother drop to the ground behind his plow. An instant later, he was slammed in the back by a bullet from Curly’s pistol. Several more shots were fired to make sure the two men were finished.

  Curly was the only one close to the house, so he turned to meet any attack from that quarter, backing his horse away while he trained his .44 on the cabin door. The rest of the outlaws pulled up to him, every man with a weapon aimed at the cabin, but there was no immediate response from inside the dwelling.

  “Watch ’em,” Stokes warned, alert to the possibility of a sudden retaliation. “I’ll go round back. We might have to burn ’em out.”

  “Hell, if we do that, we’ll burn up whatever they got in there that’s worth anything,” Quincy said. “Just make sure they don’t try to slip out the back. We can’t leave any witnesses.”

  Inside the log
cabin, the two horrified women clung together while the father of the two murdered brothers hurried frantically from window to window to make sure the shutters were closed and bolted. Leonard Jessop was not a young man, but he was determined to protect the women and children suddenly left in his care. Moving as quickly as he could to try to calm the terrified women, he turned to his sobbing wife.

  “Mother, you and Lucy take the boys in the bedroom and close the door. You’d better take Harvey’s shotgun with you.” Somewhat calmer than her hysterical daughter-in-law, Myra did as she was directed, herding Lucy and the two boys ahead of her. Leonard turned his attention back to the danger outside. Peeking through a crack in the shutters, he felt his heart sink when he saw the five riders facing the cabin in a semicircle. He could see that his only hope was to convince them that it was not worth the risk to break into the cabin and expose themselves to his rifle.

  Outside, Quincy and his men considered the oyster they were left to crack open. Figuring it worth a try to talk them out, he called to them, “You folks come on outta there, and we won’t hurt nobody. We just wanna take a little food, and then we’ll be on our way. I’m sorry ’bout your two young men, but we didn’t have no choice when they ran for their guns. So open up and come on out.”

  “You go to hell!” Leonard shouted back. “You murderin’ scum, get off this land!”

  “Have it your way,” Quincy returned. “I was gonna take it easy on you.” He had not yet decided how he was going to attack the boarded-up cabin. Setting it on fire seemed the better option after all, but then Rafe took the initiative, anxious as he was to get to the women.

  Seeing an axe embedded in a stump beside a pile of firewood, Rafe slid off his horse and declared, “I’ll open ’em up.” He pulled the axe up from the stump and ran to the nearest window, where he set upon the wooden shutter with a vengeance. The shutter, made from green pine, was not easy to split, but it soon gave way to Rafe’s assault, and a piece a few inches wide splintered off, leaving a gap large enough to stick a rifle barrel through. The blast from the weapon that was suddenly thrust through it caught the surprised Rafe in the chest, dropping him immediately, mortally wounded. Leonard’s shot was answered at once by fire from the other four, ripping holes in the shutter and the window frame around it, but causing no harm to the old man.

  “Rafe, you damn fool,” was Quincy’s only response to the felling of one of his men. Determined to crack this nut now, he dismounted and ordered, “Find a hole to shoot through.” His men scrambled to follow his orders.

  Inside, Leonard heard the command and tried to reduce their number once more, hoping it might discourage their attack. Thrusting the rifle a little farther through the opening in the shutter, he sought to give himself a wider angle from which to pick a target, unaware that Curly had slipped up beside the window. With a vacant grin on his simple face, the oversized brute grabbed the rifle barrel and wrenched it from the old man’s hands, slamming him hard up against the window in the process. With no fear of being shot now, Curly dropped the rifle on the ground, took hold of the broken shutter, and ripped half of it from the window.

  Rallying behind Curly’s assault, Lonnie ran up beside him to peer through the window. He saw the old man struggling to get to his feet and promptly shot him.

  “Ain’t nobody left but women and young’uns now,” he sang out. “They’re hid somewhere.” He looked at Curly. “Tear the rest of that window out, Big’un, and I’ll go in and open the door.”

  Happy to oblige, Curly grinned and did his bidding. When he had done so, he boosted the smaller man up so he could climb in through the window. Before dropping to the floor, Lonnie looked around the main room carefully, making sure there was no one else in the room. Then he hurried to the door and lifted the bar to let the others in.

  “Come on in, boys, and we’ll meet the rest of the family,” he said cheerfully.

  Behind the cabin, Stokes could guess what had happened, so he came out of the saddle and ran up to try the back door. Finding it still barred, he ran around to the front door, pausing only a moment when he saw Rafe lying beneath the window, choking on the steady flow of blood filling his lungs.

  “Damn, Rafe,” Stokes muttered before going in the door, interested more by what he might find inside the cabin than he was concerned about his comrade’s condition. “What the hell happened to Rafe?” he asked when he found the others watching a closed bedroom door, their weapons cocked in anticipation of what might be waiting on the other side.

  “He got hisself shot,” Lonnie said.

  “He don’t look like he’s gonna make it,” Stokes said.

  “He probably ain’t,” Lonnie replied, “but there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.”

  Stokes paused to consider that, then shrugged and asked, “What are you waitin’ for? Ain’t you gonna open that door?”

  “We been waitin’ for you,” Wormy Jacobs said. “Figured you’d wanna be the first one to stick your nose in there to see if they’ve got a gun.”

  “Maybe we oughta just slide you under the door,” Stokes came back, in sarcastic reference to Wormy’s scrawny build, which was the inspiration behind his nickname. “Then you can tell us if they’re waitin’ to blow a hole in the first one comin’ through the door.”

  Impatient with the caution on the part of his men, Quincy nodded to Curly. “Kick the damn door open and be ready to shoot. We can’t hang around here all mornin’.” He knew the simpleminded brute would not hesitate to follow his orders. Curly grinned in reply and stepped up before the door, bracing himself to deliver a powerful kick. “Cover him!” Quincy directed the others. Not at all confident that the oversized halfwit would think to do so on his own, Quincy told him to jump out of the way as soon as he kicked the door open.

  Curly nodded solemnly, as if grateful for Quincy’s advice. He turned to the door to give it his full attention. When the powerful man planted his foot squarely below the latch, the results were as expected. The door flew open, triggering the blast of a shotgun in the hands of a diminutive gray-haired woman. Since the intruders had anticipated such a reaction, no one was hit by the load of buckshot. The only damage was the shattering of a picture of the family, hanging by the front door.

  Before she was able to fire the other barrel, she was felled by three slugs in her breast, and the shotgun dropped from her lifeless hands to clatter noisily on the floor. Confident that there was no further danger, the outlaws rushed into the bedroom, eager to see the younger woman, all save one. Quincy casually walked in behind his murderous bunch, having no interest in a gang rape. Although he was as much without conscience as any of the men who rode with him, and he had been five years away from the company of a woman, he held himself above the shameless depravity of the others. A handsome man, with coal black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, he was vain to the point of thinking he did not have to hold a gun on a woman to have his way with her.

  “You might as well come on out from behind that bed, honey,” Stokes said. Hysterical from the slaughter of her family, and terrified, knowing what was in store for her, Lucy Jessop could not move. She could only cower there on the floor between the bed and the wall, her two young sons held tightly in her arms. “Come on outta there,” Stokes repeated while Wormy and Lonnie stood by, grinning with anticipation. He reached for her, but she cowered farther, trying to get under the bed, pulling the two children with her. No longer amused by the game, Stokes grabbed the edge of the bed and flipped it off her. Out of her mind with terror, Lucy started screaming until Stokes slapped her hard.

  Disgusted with Stokes’s carnal lust, Quincy told Lonnie to take the two children outside. Grabbing them by their collars, Lonnie dragged them away and out the door. In a few moments, two gunshots were heard. Knowing what had happened, Lucy screamed for her two boys as Stokes pulled her to her feet.

  Thinking the woman too distressed to resist, he tried to embrace
her. In her struggle to fight him off, her hand found the handle of his pistol, and she immediately grasped it. Unaware of what was happening until he felt the weight leave his hip, he reached for the weapon, but it was already gone. She cocked it and held it on him. Reacting to the amusing struggle that had suddenly turned deadly, the other men drew their weapons again, but held their fire when the frightened woman backed away, her hand trembling uncontrollably.

  “Hand it over,” Stokes said, as calmly as he could. “You’ll just get yourself killed. Hand it over and I won’t let ’em bother you no more.”

  He started walking toward her, his hand out, but she backed away until she was stopped by the wall. She paused calmly for a moment before abruptly pressing the muzzle of the pistol up under her chin and pulling the trigger.

  “Damn!” Stokes exclaimed as he jumped back a step, startled by the sudden turn of events.

  “I swear,” Wormy muttered in disbelief. “What’d she go and do that for?”

  Coming back in time to witness the desperate woman’s suicide, Lonnie, always cynical, answered him, “Most likely took one look at you. Maybe you oughta go outside and tell Rafe she’s ready for him now. He won’t have no trouble with her a’tall.”

  His cousin’s comment caused Quincy to remember the wounded man still lying outside. “Look around the place,” he told the others. “See if there’s anything worth takin’. I’ll go see how bad Rafe’s hurt. There might be neighbors close enough to have heard the shootin’, so be quick about it.”

  With no further interest in the woman’s body, Wormy and Lonnie started ransacking the house in search of money, ammunition, or valuables while Stokes lingered a few moments longer, still astonished by her desperate act. Finally he muttered, “Damn, lady, anything’s better’n shootin’ yourself. We mighta took you with us.” He turned then and joined the others in the rummaging of the house.