by Jory Sherman
Boggs’s legs buckled and a look of surprise spread across his face. He squeezed the trigger of his pistol, a double-action Smith & Wesson .38. The pistol bucked and belched flame, spewing a lead bullet into the floor some ten feet in front of him. Then his gun hand went limp and his pistol clattered to the floor, uncocked, a useless chunk of blued metal with buckhorn grips.
Jed dropped his hands and he jerked his .44 from its holster and stepped to one side, went into a fighting crouch. Behind Boggs, the desk clerk brought his hand up to his mouth. His face went bone-white and his eyes rolled in their sockets, like marbles pointing to the ceiling. The clerk fell like a sack of spuds in a dead faint, his head striking the lobby carpet with a dull thud.
“Better get your belongings, Jed,” Talbot said, “and light a shuck.”
Jed walked up to Boggs, cocking his pistol. He looked down at the wounded man. Boggs’s head was cockeyed on his shoulders, jammed to the floor where it had struck. Blood gushed from a walnut-size hole in his back where Talbot’s lead bullet had torn through the flesh as it exited and sped on, spent to a wall in the lobby, where it chinked off plaster and paint and lodged there, its lethal force expended.
“He’s dead,” Talbot said. “Now get the hell out of here before this place is swarming with lawmen and gawkers. I’ll cover you as best I can.”
“What will you do?” Brand asked.
“Never mind about me, Jed. Go.”
Jed strode out into the lobby, his pistol at the ready, looking left and right and out the front window. He waded through wisps of barrel smoke that hung in the fetid air of the hotel lobby like a gray pall. He walked over to the wall where Talbot’s spent bullet was embedded. He took his knife from its sheath and dug out the mashed chunk of lead, stuck it in his pocket.
“What’d you do that, for?” Talbot asked from across the room where he stood next to Boggs’s body.
“Just in case someone wants to check calibers, Ethan.”
“You learned a lot, ain’t you?”
“I learned that you can pin a murder on a man that way, by switching guns. Now they can’t compare calibers from either your pistol or mine.”
“You tryin’ to protect me?”
“Maybe,” Jed said, turning away from Talbot.
He took the steps up to his room three at a time. He eased the hammer down on his Colt and holstered it as he put the key into the lock and entered his room.
Quickly, Jed rammed his Henry rifle in its sheath, grabbed up his bedroll and saddlebags, and left the room, leaving the door ajar, the key still in it. He approached the stairs, listening for the sound of voices. He heard nothing, only the sound of his own labored breathing. He descended the stairs, his saddlebags slung over one shoulder, his bedroll and rifle in his left hand. He drew his pistol halfway down and cocked it.
Talbot was standing beside the front door, looking through the window out at the street. People were starting to gather on the opposite side, gawking and staring at the hotel.
“Hurry, Jed,” Talbot said. “If you go to Lawrence, I’ll meet you there in a week or so. Go to the Red Dog Saloon.”
“Thanks, Ethan. I’m mighty—”
Talbot shoved Jed through the door, which he had opened with his foot. Jed ejected onto the street. The people across the way scattered when they saw the pistol in his hand, and one man ran fast down the middle of the street, heading for the sheriff’s office, Jed surmised.
Wilbur Simpson was standing outside the livery when Jed ran up lugging his belongings. The stableman was staring past Jed, up the street, shading his eyes with both hands.
“Nobody’s chasin’ you yet, Brand,” Simpson said, dropping his hands.
“You know my name?”
“There was a flyer on you when I got back. Not a good likeness, but I recognized you.”
Jed was puffing from exertion, each breath burning holes in his lungs.
“Are you going to hold me up?”
“No sir,” Simpson cackled. “I done saddled your horse. Here, gimme them saddlebags.”
Jed handed him the saddlebags and both men entered the barn. Jubal was saddled, as Simpson had said, and was tied to a post near the back door. Simpson slung the saddlebags over the horse’s rump, then grabbed the rifle and boot from Jed. Jed tied his bedroll on behind the cantle.
“I appreciate this, Wilbur,” Jed panted. “What do I owe you?”
“You’re paid up, I figure. If you get shot when you ride out of here, I’ll put in a claim when they bury you.”
Simpson was smiling.
“How much time do I have?”
“I didn’t see nobody a-follerin’ you, Brand, but when the dust settles maybe twenty minutes head start.”
Simpson opened the back door of the livery. It swung wide on creaking leather hinges.
“How do you figure that, Wilbur?”
“I don’t know what you done up there, but I heard a shot and then saw people walkin’ toward the hotel. After I seen that flyer, I figured you was mixed up in it so I saddled your gelding. You run into them two hard-cases?”
“Nope. A deputy marshal from Abilene.”
“Uh-oh. You kill him?”
“Yeah,” Jed lied. “Shot him plumb dead. A case of self-defense. He was aimin’ to shoot me.”
“You’re in a heap of trouble, I’d say. I saw the flyer on you. Your name’s Jed Brand. That’s the name that other feller’s usin’.”
“I know. His name is Silas Colter, and he’s the man who should be on that flyer, not me.”
“Whoooeee, it don’t look good, do it?”
“No.” Jed untied Jubal and climbed into the saddle. “I appreciate any slowness you can talk that posse into.”
“You figger a posse’ll be comin’ after you?”
“That’s been my experience and my luck.”
“Maybe not here. The sheriff’s old and slow, and he don’t like to ride beyond the town limits. He either goes to the army or he waits for a U.S. marshal to do his chasin’ work.”
“Well, somebody’s going to be coming after me, old-timer. There’s two more men from Abilene rootin’ around town for me, and one of ’em’s a gunslick name of Jellico.”
“And you might have that Colter jasper after you, too, and those two waddies who rode in to meet him.”
“Yeah, it might get pretty crowded wherever I ride.”
Jed kept looking up the street. He saw people walking back and forth across the street but saw no horses coming after him. Maybe Ethan was spinning a yarn to the sheriff or the deputy marshals, trying to delay them from coming after him. Still, he knew he could not linger long.
“I’ll be seein’ you, maybe,” Jed told Simpson.
“Hold on. I been thinkin’.”
Jed turned Jubal, then reined him in. The gelding pawed the ground with his front hoof, and bobbed his head up and down.
“What?” Jed asked.
“You only faced one man back there at the hotel, right?”
“That’s right.”
“What if you run up against a passel? More’n one? All you got’s that six-shooter and your rifle, that heavy old Henry.”
“That’s all I have.”
“You need a Greener,” Simpson said.
“What’s a Greener?”
“A scattergun. Double-barreled. You stuff it with buckshot cartridges and you can cut down a passel of gunnies with just two ticks of your trigger finger.”
“Well, I don’t have a shotgun. Left mine at home, back down in Waco.”
“I got one.”
“Do you want to sell it?”
“I’d hate to see you come back here facedown, laid over your saddle, Mr. Brand. I kinda like you and I believe you got yourself into somethin’ that wasn’t your doin’. I’ve seen a lot of men ride through here and I got to where I could judge them pretty close. So, yeah, I’ll sell it you, for ten bucks, and I’ll throw in a couple dozen buckshot cartridges.”
Jed was tempted. S
impson had a point. If he was up against more than one or two men, he’d be hard-pressed to defend himself. On the other hand, if he bought that Greener from Wilbur, he would be admitting something to himself that would forever be a part of his character.
He would be nothing more than a cold-blooded killer.
Jed felt time running out on him. But he knew he had to make a decision fast. And maybe he had to make more than one decision.
Both of them were a matter of life and death.
CHAPTER
17
JED HESITATED, HIS MIND RUNNING AT A FAST GALLOP. Then he remembered something his father had told him, something he thought he had forgotten in his bitterness over his father’s abandonment of his family.
When you come to one of those crossroads in life, and you will, many times, be careful of the path you choose. For each path you take will be a journey of your choosing, Jed. Choose wisely.
He sensed he was at one of those crossroads now. And his father had been right. A man came upon many such crossroads in life. He and Dan had taken one in Waco, when Colter made the offer to drive cattle up to Abilene. The wrong path? His father had told them it was not always easy to tell. But each decision carried consequences.
“Wilbur,” Jed said, “thank you for the offer to sell me a scattergun, but I’m going to pass right now.”
“It’s sawed off and has a sling. You can carry it underneath your duster or a slicker and nobody would know it was there.”
“I know. I’m just not ready to go that far.”
“You got to figger the odds, Brand. You always got to figger the odds. And you’re badly outnumbered from the looks of it.”
“I know. I might could use a Greener, as you say, but….”
“Whenever you’re ready. The offer stands.”
“Thanks. And, I’m not going to run, either.”
“What?” Simpson cocked his head and looked up at Brand as if Jed had lost his senses.
Another path, Jed thought. Another crossroads in his journey through life. If he ran from the law again, he would never resolve the question of his innocence. But if he left Junction City, he would also miss confronting Silas Colter, and Colter was the only thing he needed to prove that he was innocent of those murders in Abilene. There were too many strings dangling in Junction City. If he were to leave now, he might never be able to pull a single one of them, or tie any of them into a neat, final knot.
“Is there someplace I can lay low, either here in Junction City or nearby? I don’t want to be on the run all my life. That flyer has got it wrong. I never killed those men in Abilene. I never killed anybody. But the man who stole my name when he came here and traded horses with you is the guilty one. Silas Colter. He’s coming back and I want to be here to meet him. He’s the only one who can prove my innocence.”
“Son, you got a hard row to hoe. You got the law after you and them two hardcases a-waitin’ for Colter to put your gun against three. You add in the lawmen wantin’ to take you back to Abilene and stretch your neck, and your odds of getting out of Junction City alive are like drawin’ to an inside straight.”
“Sometimes you can’t figure odds, Wilbur. You have to play your hunch, and bet a bunch.”
Simpson cackled, slapped his leg.
“Now, what about a place where I can hole up while this hand plays out?” Jed asked.
“You see that crick that runs through town?”
“Yes.”
“That there’s Solomon Crick, and if you go south of town a little ways, and head west, they’s a little place used to be called Robber’s Roost. In the old days, before the army come here, outlaws used to hole up there. Nothin’ much left of it, a couple of sod houses and some walls. It’s all growed up, last time I seen it, but you can see riders comin’ from any direction for a long ways off. If I was to need a hidey-hole, that’d be it.”
“Thanks, Wilbur. You keep that to yourself, will you? If a man named Talbot, Ethan Talbot, comes lookin’ for me, you can tell him that’s where I’ll be.”
“I can keep a secret.”
Jed touched his pointing finger to the brim of his new hat and turned Jubal, then rode out of the stables. He looked up at the sky and got his directions from the sun. He kept the livery between him and anyone who might be looking for him and headed south. The creek wound through town like a twisting serpent, and once he was out of sight of Junction City, he headed west, across the prairie, into the unknown.
A herd of pronghorn antelope stood some distance away, watching Jed’s progress across the prairie, their white necks flashing in the sun as they turned their heads or dropped them to graze, while a single sentinel stood guard. He saw no suspicious tracks on the course he was following, and when he spotted the ribbon of creek glistening in the sunlight, he was glad to see that his view was unobstructed for several hundred yards.
Jed followed the creek at some distance, always eyeing the ground for horse tracks or man tracks. But he saw none. The creek meandered, and so did he as he followed it north, west, and south. Jubal whickered and his ears stiffened, began to twist in a half arc. That’s when Jed spotted what looked like part of a wall, barely visible behind tall grasses and brambles. His heart quickened as he rode closer.
A covey of quail flushed just in front of him and Jubal stopped and rocked backward on his haunches. The quail scattered and glided to landings in the grasses, leaving the lingering sound of their whirring wings floating on the air and in Jed’s memory. He could have dropped two of the birds, he thought, if he had his shotgun with him. Or, as he mused ironically, if he had bought that scattergun from Simpson and had it loaded with birdshot.
Beyond the remnants of the earthen wall, Jed saw a sod shanty, looking deserted, with grass growing up to its windowsill. There was no glass in the window and the dark square of the opening looked slightly ominous. He glanced down at the ground, saw that he was on a kind of path, a path worn smooth by footfalls, a path that wound through the tall grass like a game trail.
But there were human shoe prints on the path. He thought, at first glance, that they might be sandals because they were flat and had no heel marks. Curious, his heart beginning to beat fast, he drew his rifle and laid it across the pommel. Then he saw another sod house off to his left, one that was crumbling, with part of its roof gone, the grasses that were left all brown and sere from the sun and wind, long dead from when they were first put atop the structure.
He halted Jubal and dismounted, thinking that he might present a target for anyone lurking behind any of the soddies. He held the rifle and walked Jubal along the beaten path. On his right, he saw still another small sod shanty that was returning to the earth from whence it came. The roof was gone, and the walls were worn down by rain and time so that there were no longer any windows, or any shelter from the elements.
Soon, Jed came upon another sod shelter, one much different from the others he had seen. While the grasses still grew up around it, there was new sod on the roof and he saw patches of darker earth on the sides, as if someone had taken mud and filled in some holes. He halted and stared at it for several seconds, listening.
“Hello,” he called. “Anybody there?”
There was no answer. A slight breeze riffled through the tall grasses around him. He looked at a dark vacant window in the soddy and wondered if there was anyone inside.
“Hello?”
Again, no answer.
Jubal nickered, his rubbery nostrils distending as he sniffed the air. Then Jubal’s ears flattened alongside his head, and his eyes widened as he stared at the empty building.
“What is it, boy?” Jed whispered to the horse.
In the silence, in the soft susurration of the breeze, Jed listened intently for any vagrant sound, any sign that someone inhabited the house or was hiding somewhere nearby. He waited and listened, but he heard nothing.
He drew a deep breath and started walking toward the sod house. Someone had been there recently, he knew that. The path bran
ched off and one segment led straight to the front door, which was new and in a wooden frame. It was closed tightly and even had a latch, which looked new and freshly whittled from wood.
“Hello the house,” Jed called.
Nothing. No reply. Nothing but the soft wind in his ears.
He dropped to one knee and cocked the Henry, sliding a cartridge into the firing chamber.
“You just hold right where you are,” a voice called. “You cain’t see me, Pilgrim, but I got my bead right on your scraggly face.”
Jed let out a breath and ducked down. He heard a click from somewhere in front of him, but he could see nothing. Nothing moved. Whoever was there had him in his sights and that man was invisible.
Then Jed heard a metallic click. He knew what it was.
It was the sound of a hammer cocking.
He felt as if he were just a heartbeat away from eternity in that terrible instant when the silence rose up around him like a shroud woven of the softest gauze.
A meadowlark piped in the distance and he saw a pair of prairie swifts dart overhead, twisting as they knifed through the still air.
The sun beat down on him and Jed felt the sweat trickle down his forehead from under his hat brim.
His throat constricted in fear as he slid his finger inside the guard and caressed the trigger, ready to shoot at anyone who approached him in a menacing manner.
The silence stretched on until it became almost unbearable, a silence so loud it boomed in Jed’s ears like the roar of a terrible thunder.
CHAPTER
18
THE VOICE SEEMED TO COME OUT OF NOWHERE. JED couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from even though it sounded very close.
