Legends of the Lost Causes

by Brad McLelland

  Back up the street, the door to the sheriff’s office burst open. A pair of lawmen rushed out, their Colt revolvers drawn. At the same time, Mr. Potter appeared in his doorway, the color of his face almost matching his snow-white hair. He made no attempt to flee, only called out something indiscernible to the approaching lawmen.

  One of the officers, a broad, mustached fella Keech recognized as Sheriff Bose Turner, settled his large tan hat squarely on his head, whispered something to the other man, and continued marching down the dirt road toward Mr. Potter.

  The other man, a skinny deputy with legs too long for his body, broke into a swift jog toward the dreary overhang of Leonard’s Mortuary. He positioned himself behind an empty casket propped against the porch rail, giving himself a vantage point in case he had to back up Sheriff Turner with gunfire.

  The sheriff paused a few steps from where Keech and Sam huddled behind the wagon. He considered the boys with almost casual interest. “Howdy, fellas. Keep your heads low,” he said. Then he turned his full attention to Mr. Potter.

  “Frosty, don’t move; I’ll get you out of this,” Turner said. He took a step toward the telegraph office.

  Mr. Potter’s words were loud and clear: “Don’t come any closer, Bose! He’ll shoot!”

  Something flickered in Mr. Potter’s doorway. A ghostly face hovered in the dark interior. In the figure’s right hand, the man held a small, black-barreled pocket revolver less than two inches from Mr. Potter’s skull.

  Sheriff Turner dropped to one knee and steadied his Colt. Behind the casket, Turner’s deputy leveled his own pistol at the telegraph office. Turner yelled, “Drop your weapon, you mangy sodsucker!”

  The ghostly man made no move to surrender. His voice sounded behind Mr. Potter’s frozen form. “Back away, Sher’ff! Else I kill ’im dead.”

  Keech’s mind reeled with scenarios, various situations that could help Mr. Potter out of his scrape. He could make a mad dash down the street, drawing attention and allowing the sheriff to flank the gunman. But Pa’s voice spoke bluntly in his head: You can’t help anyone if you’re lying dead in the dirt.

  He decided they should hold their ground at the wagon. For now.

  Turner shouted again at the pale outlaw. “Come on out and we’ll work this through. But leave the clerk unharmed.”

  “Master says I can kill any man I want!” The outlaw sounded sickly, as though on the verge of a coughing fit, yet there was a confidence in his simple words that chilled Keech.

  The assailant shoved Mr. Potter out the door and the clerk stumbled onto Main Street. The bandit reached out and coiled his arm around Mr. Potter’s throat.

  The first thing Keech noticed about the brute, other than his pale features, was the odd shuffle of his body. The man had a peculiar right leg. It tapered to the ground like a fat pencil and was built entirely of wood. The point of the leg, the place where the foot should be, stabbed deep into the gravel.

  “That fella’s got a peg leg!” Sam whispered.

  The gunman wore no hat or kerchief, and the long, greasy strings of his brown hair fell into tangled piles on his shoulders. His clothes were filthy and torn, as though he’d been rolling in a pig stall. When Keech glanced at Turner, he noticed the sheriff’s face had drawn up in a curious expression.

  Turner called out, “Tommy Claymore? Is that you?”

  The peg-leg bandit grinned, exposing toothless black gums. “Not no more, Sher’ff! The Master decides my name now.”

  A shifting pile of clouds cast a shadow over the street. Keech’s eyes slid from the pale man to the object sticking out of the stock wagon: the shovel that had knocked him on the head after his tumble off Felix.

  Keech grabbed the handle and pulled the shovel off the wagon. He clutched the tool against his chest.

  From his cover behind the casket, the deputy yelled, “You got no way out! Let Potter walk safe or this coffin I’m standing behind will be your own!”

  Steady as a rock, Sheriff Turner said, “Deputy Ballard’s right, Claymore. Surrender!”

  The outlaw answered, “I ain’t afeared of yer threats, Sher’ff.”

  Keech turned to his brother. “Sam, I need you to make a distraction. If you ran for Greely’s, do you think you could scuttle inside without getting shot?”

  “No way! He’d cut me down in two steps.”

  “But Sam, think about it. Sheriff Turner’s got the man’s full attention. You could make Greely’s front door before he even turned to look. And he’s holding his iron in the right hand, so you’ve got the advantage of his blind side when he turns.”

  “What about you?” asked Sam. “If I stick my neck out, what are you gonna do?”

  Keech held up the square-head shovel and smiled. “I’ll need a wagonload of good luck, but I think I can get close enough to use this.”

  Sam looked skeptical. “But what if the sheriff and his deputy spook up and ruin your plan?”

  “It’ll work,” Keech said, and then put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Ready?”

  The boy nodded, though Keech could feel him shaking.

  “Steady, Sam. On the count of three, run like a devil.”

  Sam took a deep breath, his eyes focused on Greely’s General Goods.

  Keech started counting.

  “One.”

  Sam chocked his foot against the wagon wheel, pivoting his body to run.

  “Remember, Sam, you’re the Rabbit. Two.”

  In the street, the bandit muttered, “I do as my Master commands,” and moved the revolver to Mr. Potter’s temple.

  “THREE!”

  Sam charged for the storefront, his boots carving chunks in the Main Street dust.

  The next few seconds took on the hazy features of a dark dream, each second lightning fast, but also impossibly slow. The bandit, preparing to fire at Mr. Potter, spotted Sam dashing across the street. Surprise engulfed his ghoulish face. He moved his iron away from Mr. Potter’s temple and centered the revolver on Sam’s retreating figure.

  At the same time, the sheriff bellowed, “What’re you doing, kid?”

  Thrown off by Turner’s booming voice, the bandit hesitated. This offered Sam enough time to wrench open the door at Greely’s General Goods and dive inside. The bandit shifted his iron to fire at Sheriff Turner. As he moved, he dropped the arm around Mr. Potter’s neck. The clerk seized the opportunity to drop into a crouch.

  Sheriff Turner saw the opening his aim had demanded, and he squeezed the trigger. A deafening gunshot filled the street, and with perfect precision a lead ball slammed into the bandit’s right shoulder. The man reeled sideways. The startled telegraph clerk bounced back up, shoved his attacker, and ran.

  While all this happened, Keech had been on the move. He raced around the side of the wagon, holding the shovel like an ax, and charged toward the bandit.

  Even as he staggered back from the shoulder wound, the pale man spotted Keech approaching and snarled. The hand holding the revolver began to swing toward its new target.

  Realizing there was no time to bean the outlaw in the head, Keech made the split-second decision to alter his plan. Never slowing, he twisted his body, hauled the shovel back, and threw it as hard as he could. The tool twisted through the air.

  The shovel’s head connected with the bandit’s skull with a loud thonk. The outlaw flew backward, the tip of his wooden leg pointing straight up. He landed hard on his back, and the revolver skittered free.

  Sheriff Turner rushed over, holding his revolver on the bandit, and scooped up the outlaw’s weapon. Then he turned to look at Keech.

  Keech expected to be scolded, but Turner said, “That was one bully of a throw, Mr. Blackwood.”

  Keech grinned. “Thanks.”

  Sam emerged from Greely’s General Goods. “I can’t believe that plan worked!” he said, rejoining them on Main Street.

  Sheriff Turner stood over the half-conscious outlaw, his features fixed in unsettled thought. All around Big Timber, the town
sfolk emerged, peeking out windows and tiptoeing onto porches.

  Keech and Sam waited by Mr. Potter as Sheriff Turner and Deputy Ballard placed iron handcuffs around the gunman’s wrists. As they worked, a shaken Mr. Potter explained his story, recounting the moments when the peg-leg bandit walked into the office and started shooting the telegraph machine.

  “Did he say anything before he started shooting?” Turner asked.

  Mr. Potter looked too frazzled to think straight. “Nothing that made sense. He just kept hollering that his master wanted no messages sent.”

  Turner scratched at his chin. “I’ve been hearing reports like these of late. Travelers telling strange tales about a gang of outlaws, a band of vicious killers taking down communications all across the Territories. For what purpose, I ain’t certain. All I know is these travelers talk of unnatural things these men can do.”

  Sam gestured to the cuffed outlaw at their feet. “Sheriff, you called this man by a name before, when he had Mr. Potter choked.”

  “I didn’t recognize him till he stepped out, but when I saw the wooden leg, I knew him to be Tommy Claymore,” Turner said.

  Deputy Ballard rubbed his cheek. “Why do I know that name?”

  “Because I reckon you read the report, Jake,” Turner said. “Four months ago, I traveled upstate to Athens, in Gentry County. While I was there, a young fella caused a ruckus in the town saloon, turned over tables, and cussed up a storm. Had a peg leg, he did, and limped about the whole room. The owner knew him and said, ‘Tommy Claymore, I’ve done had enough!’ The one-legged fella pulled a sidearm and started shooting. I had no choice but to put him down. Two shots straight to the heart.”

  Sure enough, Keech saw a pair of black, ragged holes in the moaning outlaw’s chest, peeking like small eyes through his torn shirt. “What are you saying, Sheriff?”

  “I’m saying, this fella here, he’s the same rapscallion I killed deader than a doornail up in Gentry County this past summer.”

  Keech and Sam exchanged a look of surprised dread.

  * * *

  As the lawmen hauled Tommy Claymore off to jail, the boys attempted to help Mr. Potter put his shattered telegraph back into some kind of working condition. The effort took the better part of the day, till a distressed Mr. Potter declared the machine beyond repair.

  “What about Pa’s letter?” Sam asked.

  “You can leave it, if you like,” Mr. Potter offered. “As soon as a new machine arrives, I’ll send it on through. Free of charge, of course. If it weren’t for you two, I’d be a limp rooster.”

  “That’s mighty nice,” Keech said, “but Pa Abner would want us to wait.”

  After parting ways with Mr. Potter, Keech and Sam sat on their ponies at the edge of town, munching on Granny’s sandwiches and watching autumn’s early darkness descend.

  “Keech, I can’t shake a terrible feeling,” Sam said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like that fella didn’t have a soul.”

  Keech thought about it. Though he hated to address the idea, Sam was onto something. “But how can that be?”

  “I ain’t sure. The book of Genesis says God huffed his life into man’s nose, and the man got his soul that way. It don’t say anything about a wicked dead man keeping a soul to live.”

  Keech directed his attention to the ground. Talk of souls and such made him feel uncomfortable.

  “Maybe the sheriff aimed wrong,” Sam mused. “Maybe he never killed him in the first place.”

  “You heard him. Two bullets to the heart. No man could survive that.”

  A furious wind charged up the road and spooked the ponies. Keech brushed away his sandwich crumbs and stuffed Granny’s cloth into his pocket.

  “Let’s ride on home,” he said. “We have to explain why the telegram wasn’t sent.”

  “But not why it’s been opened, right? You don’t mean to tell that part.”

  “We can’t lie, Sam.”

  “But we won’t sit for a week!”

  “Then we won’t sit. We can’t lie.” Keech glanced back at Greely’s General Goods, sad that the business had closed a couple hours ago. “Too bad for the others. No licorice wheels tonight.”

  “Yeah, too bad. I wanted one.”

  “Me too,” Keech said, and whipped Felix’s reins.

  As they traveled home, Sam couldn’t take his eyes off the gloomy woods. The whip-poor-wills chanted in the long thicket, making the darkness and quiet all around them deeper.

  “I think I’d rather hear Little Eugena’s bugle than them whip-poor-wills,” Sam said. “Sing me a trail song, Keech.”

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “‘Ol’ Lonesome Joe.’ I love that one.”

  So Keech sang “Ol’ Lonesome Joe,” a song Pa Abner had taught him one day while fishing. When he got to the chorus, he sang it loud and true, to make Sam feel better:

  Ol’ Lonesome Joe, come ride next to me.

  Let’s roll, ol’ Joe, to the Alamo Tree.

  Lonesome in the heart, lonesome as can be.

  You won’t be so lonesome at the Alamo Tree,

  When you sit next to me, when you sit next to me.

  Before they knew it, the miles had disappeared. Copperhead Rock loomed ahead, which meant the ponies would soon be cresting White Elm Peak. You could always catch the grandest view of the Home from atop the peak.

  But when the ponies reached the top, something else captured Keech’s sight.

  A dozen men sat on horses, holding torches and surrounding the front yard. One of the horses was a chestnut stallion. And the rider of the horse wore black.

  Bad Whiskey Nelson had returned.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE WHISPERING CROW

  Spiny fear clawed at Keech’s skin. It filled his mouth with a sour tang, like a bite from an unripe persimmon.

  A memory of Pa Abner’s training in the wild flashed through his mind. A warm night in the early spring. Pa had shaken Keech gently awake. During the night, a small pygmy rattlesnake had curled up under Keech’s blanket. Pa had carefully removed the blanket and placed it beside them. The sight of the rattler coiled in the crook of his legs had sent Keech’s heart racing beyond any fear he’d ever felt. His first instinct had been to spring up from the ground and run before the rattler sank its fangs into his thigh. But Pa had held him in place with a firm hand on his shoulder and whispered over and over again: Stay in the moment, Keech. Accept the danger. Doubt sparks panic, and panic sparks death. After a time, Keech relaxed. Now, son, remove the danger, Pa had said. After a seemingly eternal process of maneuvering his hand down his thigh, Keech had scooped up the comfortable, unsuspecting snake, as gently as a feather grazing a pebble, and tossed the critter aside.

  Remembering the lesson, Keech took a deep breath to calm himself.

  Sam gripped his shoulder in a panic. “What do we do?”

  “We need to get off this hill,” Keech said.

  “And go where?”

  “Back to Copperhead Rock to hide the horses.”

  After moving down to the far side of Copperhead Rock, the boys led the ponies a few paces into the forest so they would be invisible from the road. They tethered the mounts to a large pignut hickory, the same tree where Keech had once carved the head and face of his favorite animal, a wolf, into the bark. The horses fretted against the tree, unhappy to be so close to home and yet not properly stalled. Keech patted their muzzles and whispered for them to be patient.

  “What now?” Sam asked.

  “Let’s sneak back over the peak, follow one of our trails. Pa will need our help.”

  Sam nodded.

  As they hurried over White Elm Peak and plunged into the trees, a fragment of moon cut through the clouds. Sam muttered, “They’re surrounding the house!”

  “We better punch the breeze, then.”

  Over the years they had explored every inch of the orphanage territory. They had spent countless hours in the woods with Pa. They kne
w how to move without snapping a twig or disturbing a nesting bird. They knew which paths offered the best cover and which paths would get them to the bottom of White Elm Peak the fastest.

  They ran the switchback in silence, letting the moon guide them.

  As soon as they were closer, the boys crouched behind one of the sagging weigela bushes that flanked the front yard. They paused on their haunches not fifteen feet from one of the torch-wielding outlaws. The brute was one of eight men surrounding the front door. They formed a semicircle in the front yard, while the rest of the invaders had disappeared around the back.

  There was no light inside, and Keech wondered if Pa had cleared everyone out. Then he noticed the faintest blush of light flickering in the second-floor window and realized Pa hadn’t had a chance to hide the family in the woods. He’d probably sent the kids and Granny Nell upstairs to take cover.

  Sam pointed through the bush at the nearest bandit. The man wore a thick leather coat buttoned tight against the wind, and a heavy Pocket Revolver on his right hip. His hat brim was wide, casting smoky darkness across his face. His torch reeked of pungent tar, and shadows danced across the uneven dirt.

  “That man is just like Tommy!” Sam whispered.

  “Quiet,” Keech mouthed, but Sam was right. The brute was as pale as a corpse, another moving dead man like Tommy Claymore. I can’t shake a terrible feeling, Sam had said back in Big Timber. Like that fella didn’t have a soul.

  Near the man in the leather coat stood a towering fat man with a craggy beard and a mouth that dripped black tobacco juice. A flash of metal glinted on the plump man’s face. A gold loop. It hung from the center of his nostrils, reminding Keech of a newspaper cartoon drawing he’d once seen of a big Jersey bull wearing a thick ring in its nose.

  Most of the desperadoes possessed the same pasty flesh as Claymore. Even the bull-man with the nose hoop had the look of the recent dead upon him.

  Keech tapped Sam on his boot and the boys crawled on their hands and knees behind the clusters of weigela and firethorn, careful not to upset a single leaf or branch. They stopped when their line of sight fell even with Bad Whiskey, who stood bathed in the dancing light of his goons’ torches.