Abilene Gun Down

by Jory Sherman

  Simpson walked over to the body of Sheriff Robinson, knelt down beside it and put a hand on his neck.

  “He’s turnin’ cold. You sure enough—” Simpson stopped speaking when he lifted his head and saw the look on Brand’s face. “Nothin’. Sheriff Robinson’s dead, too.”

  “Wilbur, just shut up, will you?”

  “I was only—”

  Jed fixed him with a skewering look.

  “Yeah,” Simpson said, as he stood up.

  Jed opened the canvas satchel, reached in and pulled out a wad of paper money. Simpson’s eyes widened.

  “Whooee,” Simpson said. “That there’s a heap of greenbacks.”

  “Stolen money.”

  They both stood stock-still as they heard galloping hoofbeats pounding outside, from both ends of the livery barn. Before either man knew what was happening, riders streamed in through the front doors, and through the back. Jed looked out at the backyard where Simpson kept a buggy, a wagon, a sulky, and an old harness. That’s when he noticed a horse wandering around, its reins dragging. He had seen it before. It belonged to Jellico.

  “Hold it right there,” a man said to Brand. He was wearing a tin star on his chest and he had his pistol drawn and aimed straight at Jed. “Put your damned hands up.”

  Jed lifted both hands. One of them was filled with the wad of money, the other held the bulging bank bag.

  “Looks like we got one of ’em,” a man yelled from the front end of the barn.

  Jed recognized some of the horses as belonging to the posse they had seen ride out of town not long before.

  “Wilbur,” the first man said, “stand clear of Sheriff Robinson. Is he dead?”

  Simpson nodded, a dumbstruck expression on his face.

  The man dismounted as half a dozen men leveled rifles at Jed from both ends of the barn.

  “I’m Deputy Sheriff Earl Callan,” he said to Brand, “and I’m arresting you for bank robbery and murder.”

  “Looks like you caught him with some of the goods, Earl,” a man on horseback said.

  Jed looked at Callan, who walked up to him and jerked the pistol from Jed’s holster. He stepped back and looked over his shoulder.

  “Lonny Lee, put the irons on this man. Don’t he look like his picture on that wanted flyer? Yes sir, I’d say we got us a Jed Brand here. You Jed Brand, Mister?”

  Jed nodded, then started to speak.

  “But I’m not—” “Shut up,” Callan said. “I’ll do the talking here.”

  A man came up behind Jed and pulled his arms down. Another snatched the bills and the satchel from Brand’s hands. Jed felt handcuffs slide over his wrists as someone pulled his arms back until his shoulders hurt from the strain.

  “He’s Brand, all right,” a man close to Jed said.

  “Some of you men keep lookin’ for them other three,” Callan said. He walked up close to Brand and breathed bad breath on him from six inches away. “Your friends doubled back to get you, I reckon, or we wouldn’t be so lucky to catch you, Mister Brand.”

  “They’re not my friends,” Jed said.

  Laughter from the men surrounding the prisoner.

  “We know you robbed that bank and now you’ve gone and killed the sheriff hisself. Barney, who’s that other man over there?”

  “His name’s Jellico,” Brand said, before the man could reach the body. “Sorel Jellico.”

  “He in with you on this? Why’d you kill him, too? I got you red-handed, you murderin’ sonofabitch, and I’m goin’ to claim that reward and see you hang before the week’s out.”

  “Earl,” Simpson said, finally, “Jed Brand didn’t rob that bank. He was right here with me when it happened.”

  “Wilbur,” Callan said, “you ain’t got the brains God gave a piss ant. You just shut your flap until I can sort this all out. Barney, you and Lonny Lee and a couple of others take this man here to the city jail and lock his sorry ass up. Take his knife and check him for any other weapons he might have on him.”

  Brand felt himself being jerked away by men whose faces he could not see. He tried to fight back. One of the men brained him with the butt of his pistol. Jed staggered, his legs turning to rubber. The ceiling of the barn spun around as stars exploded in his brain.

  Men pushed, shoved, and manhandled Jed down the main street of town, straight to the jail. They took off the wrist cuffs and threw him into a cell that had two pallets on the floor. The iron door slammed shut on him, and the men who had brought him there left, closing the door to the office. Jed stood there, still dazed from the blow to his head, wondering how he was going to get out of still another date with the hangman.

  Perhaps, he thought, Simpson will be able to tell Deputy Callan what happened at the livery and they would not charge him with killing either Sheriff Robinson or Sorel Jellico.

  Those hopes were dashed several moments later when the office door opened and two men, one of them Callan, ushered Simpson into the jailhouse proper. The liveryman was not in irons. The other man unlocked the cell door and pushed Simpson in with Brand. Callan looked at Brand and scowled.

  “You got a lot to answer for, Brand. I suggest you do some hard prayin’ before you meet your maker.”

  Callan was whip-slender, with salt-and-pepper hair, wide-set hazel eyes, and thin lips that looked like a knife slash. His clothes were dusty and his shirt was soaked with sweat.

  “Are you charging me with bank robbery, too?” Jed asked.

  “Son, I’m chargin’ you with damned near everything in the book. Including the murder of my boss, Robbie Robinson.”

  “You mean the man who rode with Quantrill’s Raiders and burned down Lawrence, Kansas?”

  Callan winced and his right hand shot to the butt of his pistol. For a moment, Jed thought the man was going to pull it out of its holster and shoot him right then. Callan’s thin lips curled in a cruel smile.

  “I’m goin’ to enjoy watchin’ you swing, Brand,” Callan said. “I’m goin’ to bring my whole family to watch.”

  Callan and the other men walked away and closed the door to the office. Jed heard voices rise and fall as the men conversed in the next room. He turned to Simpson, who was standing there, looking lost, a sad expression on his face.

  “Why are you here, Wilbur? You didn’t do anything.”

  “They think I was a acc—a—accomp—” “An accomplice?”

  “Yeah, they said I helped Colter and you rob the bank and—”

  Simpson broke down in tears, and Jed felt sorry for him. He helped Wilbur sit down, his back to the wall.

  He squatted beside him.

  “Don’t worry, Wilbur, I’ll convince them you had no part in any of this.”

  Simpson put his head down on his knees and continued sobbing, his body shaking. It was a horrible thing to hear.

  Jed wondered if he really could help Simpson. From where he sat, he didn’t think he could help anyone, including himself.

  He was a stranger in a strange town and there was nobody there who could help him.

  He looked at Wilbur and wished he could cry himself. It might have made his situation easier to bear.

  The talking died down in the next room and it was quiet in the cell. He heard people talking outside on the street, though. They were shouting his name.

  And he heard something else that chilled his blood.

  “Let’s string the bastard up now,” a man shouted.

  And Jed knew he was talking about him.

  CHAPTER

  26

  EACH DAY SEEMED LONGER TO JED THAN THE ONE BEfore, with Wilbur whimpering on his pallet every night, two meals a day, cornbread, beans, beef, sometimes a turnip boiled white. Jailers came and went, taking each of them out separately for questioning by Deputy Earl Callan. Sometimes, Jed would see the wagons roll through town on the way to the railroad loading docks, their beds piled high with freshly picked corn, the ears unshucked and tasseled, looking like green insects held by tall wooden stakes and the smell
s of the corn and harvested wheat wafting into their cell were like the smells of freedom, a freedom denied them.

  “They’re going to take you to Abilene,” Wilbur said one day.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Hoyt come down with a court order. Seems Bear River Smith wants you to stand trial there before they bring you back here to hang.”

  “What about you?” Jed asked.

  “I dunno. Deputy Callan says the circuit judge ain’t due in from Topeka for another two or three weeks. There’s all kinds of hell in Abilene.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cowboys comin’ up from Texas along the Chisholm, raisin’ hell, tearin’ up the town. Smith is mad as a wet hornet. A year ago, he took all the guns away from the cowboys and made all the whores move south of the railroad tracks. Did you know about that?”

  “No. It was pretty quiet when I was there,” Jed said.

  “Abilene wanted the uncivilized element contained in that place. They called it the ‘Devil’s Addition.’ That made the cowboys mad and they tore down all the No Gun signs and went on a tear. Now they’re sayin’ so many herds are comin’ in, Abilene’s gettin’ wild again. I don’t think you’re going to find the judge or any of the lawmen in a good mood when you get back there.”

  Jed swore.

  Where was Amory? He should have come back from Abilene by now. He didn’t expect to get a fair trial there, and he knew he wouldn’t get one in Junction City, either.

  On another day, Simpson brought up Colter, as if he had been worrying the matter over in his mind for quite a while.

  “You know that Colter was pretty slick, Jed,” Wilbur said.

  “About what?”

  “Well, he knew he had a posse on his tail. He also knew you and Jellico were at my livery. And that you had already dusted Sheriff Robinson.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So, he led the posse back to the livery. He also threw that money pouch at Jellico, and Colter knew it was there, too.”

  “Looks like he framed us both, Wilbur.”

  “Yeah, I been wonderin’ how this all happened. You were right about Colter. He’s a snake. I wonder where he went.”

  “Wherever he’s gone, Wilbur, I’m going to get him. One day. Some day.”

  “If you live that long, Jed.”

  The cement floor of the jail cell had a drain. Jed and Wilbur pissed down it and the guard brought a pail of water once a day to wash away the excess urine. The cell still reeked of it all day and through the night. The jailer provided slop jars that were taken away and emptied every other day, so Jed had to endure that reek, as well.

  At night, their cell was lit by a lamp in the hall outside, or sometimes, by a candle, again, on the wall beyond the bars. Jed would lie on his pallet and listen to Wilbur whimpering until he fell asleep, and then he would think of his mother, and home, and sometimes of Felicia, although her face was dimming with time, fading from his memory like a sun-washed tintype on a saloon wall next to a window.

  On the third night of Jed’s incarceration, a jailer entered the hallway and came to the cell door.

  “Just wanted to see if you two were decent,” he said. “You got a visitor, Brand.”

  “Who?”

  “A lady.”

  A few moments later, the same guard escorted a woman to Jed’s cell.

  “Five minutes, Mrs. Wilkins,” he said.

  “Thank you, Gordon,” the woman said.

  The jailer left and the woman beckoned for Jed to come close to the bars. She was leaning on them from the outside.

  “Hello, Mr. Brand,” she said. “I’m Norma Wilkins. I run a boardinghouse in town.”

  She was a dark-haired petite woman with a pretty face, sharply angled, rich full lips, dazzling brown eyes, tiny feet. She wore a black dress with brocade around the bodice. A blue scarf was draped gracefully around her neck and dripped from one shoulder like a blue waterfall.

  “I’ve heard your name, Mrs. Wilkins,” he said.

  “I was hoping to meet you under better circumstances, Mr. Brand.”

  “Call me Jed, please.”

  “Only if you call me Norma.”

  “All right, Norma. What brings you here to this dungeon?”

  “Today, I received a post from Lester Amory, a former boarder. It was sent from Abilene. He asked me to get a message to you through a mutual friend I cannot name right now.”

  “I understand.” He figured she was talking about Galoot. Or his uncle.

  “Mr. Amory wants you to know that he has been delayed in Abilene and that he’s expecting the arrival of a U.S. marshal named Lucas Garner any day now.”

  “Does he know I’m in jail?”

  “I don’t think so. You’ve only been here for three days. But I will inform him.”

  “Did he say why he was delayed?”

  “He said he was trying to get the murder charges against you dropped.”

  “Did he say how?”

  “No, I’m sorry, Jed. He did not. But he said he was optimistic, if that helps.”

  She made a moue with her mouth and stepped back from the bars.

  “It helps. A little. I’m facing murder charges here, too, you know.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Jed. I wish you good luck.”

  “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

  “There’s one other thing,” she said. “Our mutual friend. He has to leave his roost, but he wishes you well.”

  “Trouble?”

  “I don’t know, Jed. He did not seem agitated. But I fear he has run into some trouble. He said something else, too, which I don’t quite understand.”

  “What was that?” Jed asked.

  “He said if you managed to get out of this, he hoped to meet you somewhere along the owlhoot trail.”

  “Thank you, Norma, but I hope I don’t meet him along that trail. Right now, it doesn’t look like I’ll be anywhere but here in this jail.”

  “I believe Mr. Amory is trying to get you sent back to Abilene.”

  “Out of the fry pan and into the fire,” Jed said, with a bitterness edging his tone.

  The door to the office opened and the guard beckoned to Norma Wilkins.

  “Time’s up, Mrs. Wilkins,” he said.

  “Thank you, Gordon. Good-bye, Jed. I’ll pray for you. I hope we meet again. Under better circumstances. My door is always open.”

  Before he could reply, she was gone.

  Jed felt a sense of loss after she had left. He had smelled her faint perfume and the scent gave him a heady feeling. She also had brought memories of the outside world inside the jail with her, and now that she was no longer there, he felt empty inside. Empty, and all alone. He turned to see if Wilbur had anything to say, but even that companionship was denied him.

  Wilbur Simpson was fast asleep on his pallet.

  “Brand,” the guard said, after Jed had been there for over a week. “You’re goin’ to Abilene after we wash you down.”

  “What about me?” Simpson asked.

  “You’re stayin’ here until Deputy Callan says different.”

  “I’m innocent,” Simpson said. “So is Jed Brand.”

  “Yeah, yeah, the jailbirds all sing the same old song, Wilbur.”

  Two guards took Jed to the river and made him strip. They tied ropes around his ankles and threw him into the Solomon River, dragged him underwater for a few feet, then hauled him out. He dressed and they took him to a waiting jail wagon, an enclosed buckboard with barred windows. He was put in shackles, the chains run through U-bolts attached to the iron floor and then padlocked. He noticed that they brought Jubal up, hitched him to the rear of the wagon. There were no other prisoners making the three-day trip.

  The wagon was like an oven, but the days had turned cooler now that September was upon them. Jed looked out the window at the corn and wheat fields, and sometimes he’d see a farmer stop and wave to the two men driving the wagon. They stopped at noon for a meal of hardtack and
beef jerky, peaches dredged from an airtight, and then did not stop again until the sun went down.

  The guards, whose names he never knew, spoke little to him. They served hot food at night, which was beans and bannock, thin beefsteaks, and nearly rotten potatoes. He washed the food down with water. The guards took him out to relieve himself, but he slept in the wagon at night. In the morning, his bones hurt as if they had been pummeled with a constable’s nightstick. He had shaved his beard, at Callan’s orders, in the Junction City jail, but now it was growing back. And itching like ant stings. Dust spooled into the wagon through the rear window and Jed took comfort in looking at Jubal, who trotted behind the wagon on a manila tether.

  The wagon pulled into Abilene in the dead of night. Jed didn’t know what time it was, but from the glimpses he could get of the stars through one of the barred windows, he knew it must be after midnight.

  The guards unshackled him and ushered him toward the jail. The jail he knew so well. Before he went in, under the softly hissing gaslight, he saw the gallows that had been erected in the middle of the street. He shuddered and a guard prodded him in the back, shoving him into the lamplit jail office.

  “This here’s Jed Brand,” one of his guards said.

  The jailer grinned with unconcealed glee.

  “I knowed we’d get this rascal back,” the jailer said.

  “He’s all yours. Just sign this paper. We’ll put his horse and tack in the livery. Bob here has his weapons we took offen him.”

  The jailer took the large gunny sack that bulged with Jed’s rifle, pistol, knife, and gun belt. The two guards left after taking off the iron cuffs.

  The jailer drew his pistol.

  “I hope you try to escape, Brand. Feel like runnin’ right now?”

  Jed said nothing.

  The jailer was none other than Lloyd Hoyt. He raised his pistol, aimed it at Jed’s forehead, and thumbed the hammer back.

  The hammer made a harsh metallic click.

  Jed did not close his eyes to wait for the explosion. He stared straight into Hoyt’s black eyes, a look of defiance on his face.

  It was the longest moment in his life.

  CHAPTER

  27