Abilene Gun Down

by Jory Sherman

  Simpson entered the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Them two men you asked me to keep an eye out fer,” he said. “Well, sir, they just come in not a hour ago. You know, Ralph Norton and Fred Burns. Leastways, that’s who they said they were.”

  “Take a chair, Wilbur,” Brand said. “I want to hear all about it.”

  Simpson sat down at the small table. There were two chairs, but Jed remained standing.

  “Ain’t got much time. Livery’s ’bout full up. Don’t know why. Junction City’s gettin’ right crowded.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “What’s ’at?”

  “Never mind. Tell me about Burns and Norton. What are they riding? What did they say? Where are they staying?”

  “Hold on now, Bud. I can only answer one question at a time.”

  Jed reached into his pocket and fished out a one-dollar bill. He sat down and shoved it across the table. Simpson picked it up, stuck it in his shirt pocket.

  “Take your time,” Brand said. “Just start at the beginning.”

  “They did not say much. They paid for two days’ boarding of their horses. They said they would stay at the Junction Hotel. They rode good strong horses, shod no more than a few days ago, I’d say.”

  “They say anything about Colter?”

  “Who is Colter?”

  “The man who calls himself Dan Brand.”

  “They said they were expecting a man, but they did not tell me his name. They said he would ask for them. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “They said ‘tomorrow’?”

  “Yes, they said they were expecting him tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Wilbur.”

  “What will you do, Mr. Whitby?”

  “Nothing, right now. Let’s just keep this between ourselves, all right?”

  Simpson got up from the table. Jed let him out and locked the door. He put away his saddlebags and stopped packing. He could not leave now. If Colter was coming in tomorrow, he had to be in town. When he sat down on the edge of his bed and thought about all of these events, he felt a quivering in his stomach. Was it fear or just nerves? Maybe both, he decided. He didn’t know if he could kill a man, even in self-defense.

  His thoughts roamed back to a time when his father was teaching him and Dan about shooting pistols. He was about twelve years old at the time and he remembered how thrilled he was that he was finally going to get to shoot his father’s cap and ball. His father had two of them, both were Colts, but one was a .32 caliber, the other a .44. He and Dan started out on the .32. His father taught them how to clean the gun and load the cylinders with powder, ball, and bear grease. Then he showed them how to put the percussion caps on the nipples. He only loaded five of the cylinders, telling them that it was the safest way to carry a pistol. That way, they were less likely to shoot their feet off.

  After he and Dan had shot at targets that their father had set up, and both had done pretty well, their father sat them down and spoke to them about the responsibilities that came with owning and carrying a pistol or rifle.

  “I want you boys to listen real careful,” their father had said that day. “What I got to tell you is real important. When you pack a gun, you got to put your temper away. Put it in another pocket.”

  “Why, Pa?” Danny had asked.

  “Well, because you might get in an argument or a fight, and if you have a pistol on you, and the other man has one, too, the temptation to settle the fight with a gun is mighty powerful.”

  “What if a man draws his gun on me?” Jed had asked.

  “If it comes to that, the argument has gone too far. I hope you will walk away and not try and settle it with a bullet.”

  “What if you can’t walk away?” Danny had asked.

  “Look, boys, sometimes you can’t just walk away. But I want you to know that if you draw your pistol on a man, you have to use it, and use it quick. A gun is nothing but a tool, in the right hands, but there are bad men who use it as a weapon. And that is one of its purposes. But, to kill a man, that’s something you have to live with the rest of your life. You have to think long and hard before you use that tool as a weapon.”

  “Pa,” Jed had asked, “did you ever have to shoot a man?”

  “Did you ever kill anybody?” Danny asked.

  “You boys can’t use me as an excuse. What I did or didn’t do makes no difference. If it comes to the point where you might have to shoot a man, kill him, then you’ve got to go deep down inside yourself where your conscience lies and ask yourself if it’s necessary. Or, in some cases, you might have to ask yourself if you want to live or die.”

  “Self-defense,” Jed said.

  “Yes, Jed. Don’t never kill anything needlessly. Don’t never shoot no man less’n he deserves it, and when you draw down on someone who’s trying to kill you, you watch his eyes, not his hands. You see if you can read his intentions and then you take up the gun. And you’d better be prepared to take a man’s life, and suffer the con-sequences.”

  “What are consequences?” Danny asked.

  “What comes after, Danny. You got to live with what you done. If you take a man away from his family like that, his brothers or other kin might come after you. Or the law. There’s a whole bunch of things can happen. Them are consequences.”

  Jed wondered what the consequences would be if he had to defend himself against those marshals, or Jellico? Would he then be guilty of murder, after all? Would killing any one of them mean that their kin would come after him, hunt him down for the rest of his days?

  And, what about Colter? What if he faced Colter and came out the better man, killed him? Would that be murder, or self-defense?

  What if he had to kill Colter, Burns, and Norton? All three?

  Jed felt a tightening in his chest. The room seemed to grow smaller, closing him in, taking away his breath. What his father had told them, so long ago, was sound advice. He wondered if his father had killed anyone, and if, as he had said, there were consequences. What if that man’s kin had come after his pa and that was why he disappeared? Was that why his father had run away from home, left his family?

  Jed didn’t know, but he thought that might be what had happened. His mother didn’t know either, but he had heard whispers and he had listened to them talking in low voices late at night, and he thought maybe his father had said something about killing a man. But if his mother knew anything, she had never told him or Dan. If his father had a secret, his mother had kept it.

  And now, he wondered if he would ever see his mother again.

  Maybe he should just leave Junction City and go back home and leave Colter and his henchmen be. Maybe he should just run from the law and hope they would forget about him, let him live the rest of his life in peace.

  But even as he thought these things, he knew that he could not run. He could not let Colter get away with murder.

  The room closed in on him, suffocating him, and he knew he had to get outside of it, talk to someone, put these dark thoughts out of his mind. For a while, at least.

  One thing he knew, though, as he arose from the bed and started for the door.

  He was going to kill at least one man. And maybe he would be killed as well.

  He could almost hear his father’s voice, loud and clear in his mind.

  If you kill a man, you will have to suffer the consequences.

  CHAPTER

  15

  JED WALKED DOWN TO THE LOBBY, AND THE DESK CLERK looked up, saw him, then quickly glanced down, as if avoiding any further eye contact. Jed walked over.

  “Something on your mind?” he asked.

  “Uh, no sir, ah, nothing. I, uh, I just thought you looked familiar.”

  “I’ve been here three days. I should look familiar.”

  “Uh, I mean. Nothing, sir. You look like somebody else, I guess.”

  Jed knew the man was squirming. Something was very wrong. The clerk was suspicious about something. He was about to question the man fu
rther when he heard someone hiss at him from the entrance to the saloon.

  “Psst, come here, Trent.”

  Jed couldn’t see who it was standing in the shadows, and he was not used to being called by that assumed name, so it took him several seconds before he realized who had hailed him.

  Ethan Talbot stepped into the lobby, gesturing for Brand to come to him.

  “Mister,” Jed said to the desk clerk, “you’d better get out of the habit of staring at your guests. Some of ’em might take offense.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  The clerk was obviously flustered and Jed hoped he had quieted some of his suspicions. He didn’t know what was behind it, but he knew he could not linger much longer in Junction City. Or, for that matter, stay at the Cherokee much longer.

  He strode into the bar, blinking his eyes to adjust them to the darkness. Talbot was sitting at the bar, a drink and a piece of paper in front of him.

  “Sit down, Pilgrim,” Talbot said. “I’ve ordered you a whiskey. You’re going to need it, I think.”

  Jed sat down, noticing that Talbot had put a hand over the piece of paper in front of him so that Jed couldn’t see what was written on it.

  “Why do I need whiskey?” Jed asked, as the bartender set a glass on the bartop and poured it nearly full.

  Talbot waited until the bartender set the bottle down behind the bar and walked away. He went back to talking to two men at the other end of the bar.

  “Take a look at this, Mr. Jed Brand.” Talbot pushed the piece of paper toward Jed.

  Jed’s face registered surprise. His eyebrows arched and his eyes widened. Talbot had called him by his real name.

  Jed picked up the piece of paper and stared at it. There was his name in bold black letters.

  “Doesn’t much resemble you, Jed,” Talbot said. “Now that you’re growin’ a beard. But if someone was to take a piece of charcoal or a lead pencil, and …”

  Jed stared at the drawing of his face. It did not look like him at all, he thought. But it did resemble a young man his age and the nose and eyes seemed to be set in the right places. The mouth was close, maybe a little thicker than his own.

  “I’m a wanted man, Ethan.”

  Ethan grinned.

  “Not too wanted just yet, young Jed. They’re only offering two hunnert dollars for your hide.”

  Jed saw the large figures: $200.00. And, beneath it, the words, Dead or Alive.

  “This is not good,” Jed said. He turned the paper over and laid it back on the bartop upside down.

  “These are all over town, Jed. Pretty soon, they’ll be all over the territory and men will carry them to post offices and stage stops and mercantile stores far and wide. You’ll be famous.”

  “I don’t like the ‘dead or alive’ part.”

  “No. Did you see what your crimes were, the ones you’re accused of? And that line about being armed and dangerous?”

  Jed turned the flyer over and looked at it again. His face drained of color. He was wanted for the murder of two U.S. marshals and his own brother. And he was considered armed and dangerous. The bounty on his head was to be paid either at the marshal’s office in Abilene or at any U.S. marshal’s office upon proof of death or surrender of the fugitive.

  “I didn’t do these things, Ethan. I didn’t kill any of these men. Certainly not my own brother.”

  “Better take some of that whiskey now, Jed. You’re shakin’ like a dog shittin’ peach pits.”

  Jed looked at the glass of whiskey. It would not help the storm in his mind, he knew, but it might calm his jangling nerves. He reached for the glass as he put the flyer back down, again, turning it over so that the blank side was facing up. He drank half of the shot glass straight down, barely tasting it. The whiskey hit his stomach like a ball of liquid fire and he gulped in a breath until the flames went out and left only a warm spot in his belly. His hands steadied some.

  Talbot held up his own glass, stared into its amber depths.

  “Whiskey calms the raging waters,” he said. “As long as you don’t overdo it. You’re going to need your wits, Jed, so I’m not buyin’ you no more drinks.”

  “No. I’ve had enough when I finish this. Thanks. The whiskey helped. I’ve got a whole lot going on in my mind and this flyer really puts a great big old bug in the ointment.”

  “Maybe you better talk it out, while we have a chance,” Talbot said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened back in Abilene and what you plan to do?”

  Jed told him the whole story about Colter and the murders of the two U.S. marshals and Dan. Then he told him about the posse and the men who were now in Junction City looking for him.

  “Besides Boggs and Hoyt,” Jed said, “they’ve got a hired gun on my track, a man named Jellico.”

  Talbot blew a low whistle through pursed lips.

  “Jellico,” he said.

  “You know him?” Jed asked.

  “I don’t know the man, but I know his reputation. They must want you pretty bad to send a killer like Jellico after you.”

  Jed felt his face flush with a rush of blood and then his hands began to sweat. They felt clammy and cold.

  “They’re making a big mistake, Ethan. I’m innocent.”

  “But you can’t prove it.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Let me tell you something, Brand. Jellico is only going to read one part of that flyer there. The part that says ‘dead.’ He’s never brought in a man alive yet. He’s a cold-blooded sonofabitch. I think he enjoys putting a man’s lamp out. You stay clear of him.”

  “I haven’t told you the rest of it, Ethan. Colter’s coming back to Junction City and two men are here now, waiting for him. Maybe you know them, too.”

  “What are their names?”

  “One of them’s named Norton, the other is Fred Burns. I don’t know what they’re up to with Colter, but they might get in the way when I brace Colter about the murder of my brother.”

  “How did you find out that Norton and Burns were in town?”

  Jed told him about Wilbur Simpson’s visit to his room that morning.

  Talbot said nothing for several seconds. He seemed to be mulling something over in his mind. Jed waited, watching Talbot’s face for any sign of what he might be thinking at that moment.

  Finally, Talbot licked his lips and squinched his face up with a look of distaste.

  “Jed, my lad, you’re in a heap of trouble. No question about it. But I’ve got some advice for you, if you’ll take it.”

  “Sure. I’m damned near desperate.”

  “Oh, you’re plumb desperate, Jed Brand. If not, you soon will be. I declare, I’ve never seen nobody who’s in so much trouble all at once.”

  “What’s your advice?” Jed asked.

  “Not much, I’m afraid. But, number one, if you ever plan to clear yourself of these murder charges against you, is that you’ve got to stay clear of the marshal’s deputies from Abilene. You cannot afford to kill either one of them. You got that?”

  “Yes. But how?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll go back to Abilene or go on to Topeka or Lawrence. Hard tellin’. They might go back and leave Jellico on your trail to do the dirty work. Him, you can shoot, if you get the chance. Ever kill a man?”

  Jed shook his head.

  “Well, you may have to, Jed. Now, about Colter. If you’re going to take him down, you’ll have to do it when he’s by himself, not with those two gunslingers waiting here for him.”

  “I ought to just go back home to Waco,” Jed said.

  “If you do, that’s where they’ll corner you,” Talbot said. “You’re in a box now, but you’ll be in a cage back home. No, if you’re going to get out of this, you’re going to have to take the bit in your teeth. Colter seems to be the man you have to either capture or kill. If you capture him, maybe Smith can beat a confession out of him. If you kill him, you’ve solved only one of your problems, vengeance.”

  �
��I want Colter to pay for what he done.”

  “Well now, you’re not just facing Colter. You’ve got his two friends, those hardcases, Burns and Norton.

  Three against one.”

  “And with Boggs, Norton, and Jellico, it’s six against one.”

  Talbot shook his head. He lifted his glass to polish off his drink. Before he could bring it to his lips, a man’s frame filled the doorway. Even in silhouette, Talbot could see his face, the clothes he was wearing, the pistol, low-slung, on his gun belt.

  “Uh oh,” Talbot whispered. “Don’t turn around, but here comes trouble.”

  Jed froze.

  “Brand, you step away from that bar with your hands up, or I’ll blow you clear to kingdom come.”

  The man’s voice boomed into the saloon.

  Then there was a silence.

  In the stillness, Jed could hear his heart beat, could feel his pulse hammering in his ear with all the insistence of a ticking clock. In that instant, his mind cleared of all doubt, all confusion. He knew he was standing on the edge of an abyss, a deep chasm, and at any moment, he knew he might plunge into the darkness that was death.

  CHAPTER

  16

  JED SLOWLY TURNED HIS HEAD TO GLANCE AT THE doorway. Behind the silhouetted man standing there, blocking some of the light from the lobby, he saw the smirking desk clerk, holding a flyer in his hand.

  There was Boggs, his arm dangling at his side, his hand a soft claw ready to snatch his pistol from its low-slung holster tied to his leg.

  “Just raise your hands high, Brand,” Boggs said, “and step down from that stool.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Talbot said, an almost amiable tone to his voice.

  “Not you, bucko,” Boggs said.

  Jed raised his hands and stepped off the stool. He stood in front of Talbot, blocking Boggs’s view of him.

  “Me? You mean me?”

  “You’re Brand, ain’t ye?”

  “No, sir. My name’s Whitby.”

  “In a pig’s eye,” Boggs said, then snaked his hand down to his pistol butt. His fingers slid around the grip. Jed’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the speed of Boggs’s hand.

  Behind him, Jed heard a faint whisper, a slight scraping sound like metal sliding across leather. Then he heard a faint snick as if from the slow cocking of a pistol hammer. He felt something touch his left side and then he heard a deafening roar. Smoke and flame, sparks that stung him, flashed past him and he saw Boggs’s pistol clear leather at the same time as a dark hole appeared in his chest. Dust flared from his shirt as the bullet spanked the cloth as it entered his body at over 3,000 feet per second.