Brothers of the Buffalo

by Joseph Bruchac

SHOWDOWN

  Charley Smith had gone down into the Flat. Knowing that Wash would not approve, he went without telling him. He’d heard there would be a place for him in the poker game at the biggest of the saloons. Some men with money were saying they had heard there was a black soldier thought he could play cards. They wanted to prove him wrong. Having Lem Smith and Little George Williams, two other troopers from Company D with him, and seeing as how he was going down during the day and planned to be back before dark, Charley had figured he would be safe enough.

  But he figured wrong.

  In the dark, Wash heard someone outside the tent. Then a scared whisper.

  “Wash.”

  Wash sat up and lit a match. It showed him two faces. One was on the pocket watch by his bedside, telling him the time was only an hour after taps. The other was that of the man who had slipped into the tent and was looking down at him. Little George.

  “What?” Wash said, slipping his suspenders over his shoulders and pulling on his boots.

  “They done got Charley in town.”

  “You tell Sergeant Brown?”

  “No. Said they’d up and kill him they saw me coming back with more’n jes’ you.”

  “Why me?” Wash said. But even as he said it he thought he knew the reason.

  “Man say he know you. Want his watch back.”

  Wash took one deep breath, then another. He felt as if he should say something to Little George. But for once there were no words coming to him except those in his head saying Get ready.

  “You comin’?” Little George said, even more nervously.

  Wash just nodded and put on his blue coat, fastening each button one by one. He strapped on his belt with the holster high on his right side. He’d seen a few cowboys and men who considered themselves gunfighters wearing their holster low on their hip, right where the pistol would get in the way and maybe even jolt out of the holster if you were trying to ride a horse. Drawing a gun fast might look pretty, but taking careful aim was more likely to ensure the shot you fired was going to hit something other than air.

  He drew the hammer back to half cock, opened the loading gate to the side, and shook the metal cartridges from the cylinder of the .45 Cavalry Colt—a good solid gun with more stopping power than the M1860 Colt .44 the 10th had used before. He looked at each bullet to make sure it was clean, no grit or dust on it. Reloaded the first bullet, left the next chamber empty, then shucked in four more rounds. The Colt held six shots, but without a safety, leaving the hammer over a chamber with a shell in it was an invitation to an accident. He brought the hammer up to full cock and then let it down so that it was resting on an empty chamber.

  “Hurry up,” Little George said.

  “Unh-unh,” Wash shook his head. Methodical, careful, that was the ticket. Especially when a life was at stake.

  “He said not to keep him waiting.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  That was another reason why he wasn’t hurrying. A man made to wait gets more nervous. From what he knew of Tom Key, the more nervous he’d get, the more shaky he would be. He hefted the gun, then slid it into the holster with the butt forward. That made it a little awkward to pull out if you favored shooting with your right hand, but Wash was good with either hand. He’d learned how to pull out the gun with a cross draw, reaching across his belly with his left hand after he unfastened the buttons that held the gun in place with his right.

  He rubbed his fingers across the callouses on his thumb and palm. Callouses on his thumb from time after time thumbing back the single-action, first dry firing and then with rounds in the chamber. Callouses on his palm from the recoil of the gun butt against his hand as a .45 caliber slug burst from the barrel. He brushed imaginary dust from each shoulder, and settled his cap on his head.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “You and me.”

  “And me,” a voice said from the shadows outside. Josh ducked his head and came in, his carbine held across his chest. “Couldn’t help but overhear.”

  The ride to the edge of the Flat was a short one. But it was long enough to allow Wash to think about more things than he’d intended. What would happen if he failed. What would happen if he succeeded and ended up in trouble for shooting a white man. But those were only two of the thoughts in his mind. Others troubled him just as much. Like what would his mother and sister do if he got killed. And if he did get all shot up, what could he possibly say to apologize to Bethany for not showing up tomorrow as planned for them to read Shakespeare together? He ran over that last thought in his head three times before he realized just how ridiculous it was.

  Man who’s dead doesn’t do any apologizing, does he?

  Wash chuckled to himself.

  “Man,” Little Bob whispered from behind him, “you hear that, Josh? Wash, he so cool about this, so sure he is going to shoot that skinny old white man, that he’s jes’ laughing.”

  That made Wash chuckle a little louder until he had a brief coughing fit and Josh had to pat him on the back.

  Serious now, he thought. Don’t think of anything else, especially not Bethany’s face.

  Which of course was all he found himself thinking of as they tied their horses to a rail at the far edge of town and began the long walk to the saloon that Little George pointed out to them.

  They drew their rifles and carefully made their way past the noise of music and loud voices coming out of the drinking parlors that were as numerous in the Flat as fleas on a hound’s back. Lights shone out of the doors and windows, but the three men stayed in the shadows and passed by unnoticed. As they neared the final saloon, the one whose rough board sign read SILVUR DOLLER, they noticed that it was quieter than the others. No music, no shouting. Almost as if the place was holding its breath.

  A man with a drawn gun threatening to kill someone does tend to spoil the party, Wash thought.

  Their eyes were used enough to the dark by now that the three of them could clearly see each other, even though they knew they would still be invisible to those inside. Josh tapped Wash on the shoulder, put his hand on Wash’s chest, and made a circling motion.

  You go around, come in the back.

  Wash nodded, tapped Josh and then Little George on their chests, and pointed to the front door.

  You two go in the front.

  Holding his own rifle across his chest, Wash began to make his way along the side of the building as Josh and Little George stepped up onto the ramshackle porch nailed onto the front of the SILVUR DOLLER. The sounds of their heavy boots on the wood and then the creaking of the swinging doors as they pushed them open covered the noise he made as he passed through the alley. It was just as bad smelling as it was packed full of debris, including what might have been a dead cat and stuck to his right boot until he scraped it off with a broken piece of plank.

  It took him longer than he’d intended. But the wall of the saloon was so poorly made that he could now and then catch thin glimpses through the cracks in the siding of what was going on inside. And he could hear what was being said. Said by Tom Key, his voice as mean and pinched as if he’d just spit out a mouthful of alum.

  “Who the HELL is you! You ain’t the ONE I want. Where’s my little darkie?”

  “Now take it easy, sir.” That was Josh’s voice. Slow and calm as always, though without the joking tone that was so often there in whatever he said.

  “NO SIR, DO NOT SIR ME, BOY. Go back and get me the one I want or I shall blow a hole in this man big enough to drive a wagon through. YOU HEAR ME? And don’t you or your friend try nothing. I got two more men here just aching to kill them a Buffalo Soldier.”

  The next crack between the boards was wide enough for Wash to see inside, though he had to lift himself up on his toes to do it. What he saw made him want to cuss out loud. Charley Smith was sitting in front of a little table, but his hands were not in their usual place, dealing out cards or raking in his winnings. They were down at his side, tied to the chair legs. And behind him stood Tom Key. His beard
was gone now, and Wash could see that the man’s scrawny face was even more drawn than it had been the day when he ran off from the plantation and dry-gulched the Vances. There was a vivid red scar on his right cheek, and Wash could see that half the man’s front teeth were gone. The life of an outlaw had been taking its toll on the man. But his eyes were as snake black and devil mean as ever. And the cut-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun in his hands was leveled at Charley’s head.

  Charley didn’t move his head, but he did move his eyes. Moved them so he was looking right at that crack in the wall where Wash was watching him. And he saw Wash’s eyes. Wash knew that for sure because Charley raised one eyebrow and then looked down, just with his eyes, drawing Wash’s gaze to Charley’s left hand. It held the razor that Charley had confiscated from their former bugler, the razor that Charley had carried in the top of his left boot since then. And Wash could see that with those long dexterous fingers of his that could shuffle a deck of cards one-handed, Charley had pulled out that razor and cut through the ropes that had held him to the chair. All that was holding those cut ropes from falling down was the pressure of Charley’s big hand.

  Tom Key was still talking, talking the way men who like to hear their own voice talk.

  “You boys better LISTEN. You go back and bring me that little boy. You tell him I am going to WHIP him like I done his no-good lazy pappy.”

  Wash looked beyond Charley and Tom Key, trying to locate the other two men Key had mentioned. There were at least twenty other men in the room and two women that he could see. Then he made out what had to be one of the former overseer’s partners in crime. It was a lumpy-faced middle-aged man of medium height standing twenty feet to Key’s right. Thin red hair plastered over the top of his head, his right cheek was pressed against the stock of the Spencer repeating rifle he had raised to his shoulder. But where was the second one? Not there or there. Wash’s calves were feeling the strain from standing so long on tiptoe, but he caught sight of the second one when the man shifted and took a step forward from where he’d been leaning against the very wall Wash was peering through. Wash caught a quick glimpse of a green-shirted arm holding up a muzzle-loading Springfield before the man moved back again out of sight.

  And then, his legs trembling now, Wash caught sight of a dark face that looked familiar in the crowd. A man leaning lazily back in his chair, showing none of the strain Wash had seen in the others in the tense room where stray shots could be as likely to kill a bystander as a gunfighter. Intense eyes, mustache. Where had he seen him before?

  Wash knew it was time to move fast. He dropped down and reached back with his right hand to open the flap that held his Colt in place. Then he pushed as quietly as he could through the trash-filled alley toward the back of the building, where he prayed there was a door.

  Before turning the corner he dropped into a crouch that took him down about as low as that deceased cat would have crawled. It was a good thing that he did. Tom Key had mentioned having two other men with him. But there’d been three. As Wash looked around the corner and then looked up, he found himself staring first at a pair of trail-worn, dirty boots and then up at the man who’d been placed to guard the back entrance. But the man neither heard nor saw Wash, partly because Wash had come in so quiet and at such a low angle, but also because he was looking back over his shoulder to watch what was going on inside.

  Wash didn’t stop to think about what to do. He brought up the butt of his rifle so hard between the man’s legs that it lifted him off the ground with no more sound than the soft thud of the wooden stock and the deep “Aggghh” that came out of the man’s mouth as he folded over. Wash straightened up and swung the barrel so that it clipped the man across the back of his head, and he fell unconscious into the embrace of the low cactuses that grew next to the back of the building. Wash was pretty sure he hadn’t hit him hard enough to crack the man’s skull and kill him. But when he woke up he’d have a hell of a headache and a hide full of prickers.

  He moved into the narrow doorway and looked in around the half-closed door that opened in and to the right. He could see the back of Tom Key no more than thirty feet in front of him. Key was agitated, stomping his feet now like a child having a tantrum

  “What-all do I have to do to get you stupid brunettes to understand me? I wants that boy and I wants my watch what he stole. NOW! WHERE IS HE?”

  “Here I am,” Wash said.

  Tom Key turned his head to look. As he did so, Charley Smith’s big hand came up and grabbed the barrel of the twelve-gauge, pushing it away from his head and down as he rolled away to his left.

  BLAM!

  Both barrels of the gun discharged as one, blasting a hole on the table top but missing anything else.

  Things began to happen so fast that they seemed slow. Tom Key turned around, pulling a Colt .44 from the holster he wore slung low on his hip. He pointed it with his right hand. Holding down the trigger, he fanned the hammer with his left hand.

  BANG! The first shot hit the ceiling two feet above Wash’s head.

  Wash tried to raise up his rifle. The space was too narrow for him to bring it around. As he moved, the stock knocked against the door, making a hollow thump.

  The man who had been standing and leaning against the wall, a long-jawed, blond-haired man that Wash now recognized as another of the gang of whiskey traders they’d arrested last winter, raised his weapon. But he didn’t have a chance to fire it before being knocked flat by the chair that had still been tied to Charley’s right hand but now was splintered over the man’s head.

  Tom Key fanned the hammer a second time.

  BANG! The second shot splintered the half-open door to Wash’s right.

  The lumpy-faced man with the thin red hair was aiming his gun at Wash, more calmly and deliberately than the panicked Tom Key whose third shot—BANG!—went whining past Wash’s left ear. But before the red-haired man could thumb back the hammer, another gun appeared to his left and the heavy barrel of that weapon was slugged across the man’s head, dropping him like a pole-axed steer.

  That gun was in the hand of the black man with the mustache, a man Wash recognized now.

  One of Sheriff Bob Long’s deputies, Wash thought as he pulled out his own .45 Cavalry Colt. Gripping it firmly, thumb against the recoil shield, he raised it and took careful aim, his index finger pointing at his target. He thumbed back the hammer.

  POW!

  A dark hole appeared in the middle of Tom Key’s chest. His arms dropped like a puppet with cut strings and he collapsed to the floor.

  Wash moved forward, not feeling his own legs as he walked. He stood over the dead man and looked down. He wasn’t sure what he felt.

  The black deputy was standing next to him, his gun still in his hand.

  “Name is Anson Mount,” the black deputy said through tight lips. “Appreciate the help you gave us back when we took that gang of murderers. Man and his family they killed was kin of mine.”

  Wash kept looking down at Tom Key, amazed at how small the man looked, almost as little as a sleeping child.

  “I never killed a man before,” Wash said in an emotionless voice.

  Anson Mount pointed his gun at the floor near Tom Key’s body.

  BANG! The slug dug into the floor board.

  “Hell,” Anson Mount laughed. “You still ain’t killed no one.” He held up his Colt .45. “That’s my slug there in his chest. You missed him and put that hole in the floor. Ain’t that right, Luke?”

  A second black man with a mustache stood up from the corner and walked over. His build and face were nearly the same as Anson Mount’s, though he was a bit shorter.

  “Yessir, cousin Anse,” the man said. “You killed him dead. And Mister Sure-shot here,” he patted Wash on the shoulder in a friendly way, “he plum missed.”

  “So,” Anson Mount said, “since you never killed this man, there is no reason for you to tell any of your superiors back up there at the fort about this little dustup.”r />
  Mount put his hand on Wash’s shoulder. “And once again I have to thank you for your help, seeing as how we had been tracking this sorry crew for a while and just located them here this very night. We was waiting for the rest of our boys to catch up to me and Luke before we tried to take them. But now we don’t need to wait no more.”

  “Thank you,” Wash said. He looked around for his friends. Charley and Josh were standing together, Charley rubbing his wrists. Little George was next to them.

  “There was no time for us to shoot or anything,” Little George said. “We might have hit you or Charley. It all happened so fast.”

  “It’s all right,” Wash said, his voice calmer than he felt. “You did what you needed to do.” He pointed at Tom Key’s body. “But there’s one more thing I need to do.”

  “Go right ahead,” Anson Mount said, stepping back.

  “Would you loan me your razor?” Wash said to Charley.

  “Oh man,” Little George said. “You not gonna scalp him or nothing like that?”

  Wash said nothing. He pulled the whip from Tom Key’s belt. Then, with the razor, he cut it in half, cut the halves into quarters, and threw the pieces on the floor.

  As they walked back to where their horses were tied, Charley sighed. “Man,” he said, “I had one of the best hands before that scrawny white man pulled that shotgun on me.” Then he laughed out loud and flung one big arm around Josh’s shoulders, almost lifting him off the ground. “A friend in need,” he said, “a friend indeed.”

  Wash reached across to his pocket to put his hand against the watch that was now surely his. He wondered if the Vances would be smiling now in that picture of them inside the case. But he didn’t take it out to look.

  “I guess you have avenged your daddy,” Josh said in his slow, deep voice.

  “What do you mean?” Wash said, surprised at the sudden anger in his own voice. “Mr. Vance was not my daddy.”

  Josh held up his hands. “Whoa now, I was talking about the way that man whipped your father with that whip, which will never take a drop of blood from another black man’s back.”