Massacre!

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘Hell!’ Dutchman spat in the dirt, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘You and Dingus and all your kin always was too damned soft, Frank. The colonel didn’t say nothin’ about what we done.’

  Frank stared him full in the eye until the older man looked down and away.

  The saloon’s run by Paddy Jansen. Half-Irish, half-Swede and all bastard. Keeps his eyes open does Paddy. Knows what’s happening and where. Colonel figures he may be in the pay of Jim Lane and his Jayhawkers, but we’ve never proved anything about him. Be careful, all of you. No fightin’. And if there is anything wrong there, then you come out here and I’ll do what I can to cover for you.’

  Wouldn’t it be better if n just me and Jed went in?’ asked Whitey. ‘If they spot Dutchman then it’s all up for us.’

  Frank James shook his head. ‘I know what you mean, Whitey. But Quantrill wants you and Jed in there with someone to watch over you. Would have been Jesse if it hadn’t been for your damned Tranter, Jed. So take it easy and I’m certain sure nothing’ll go wrong.’

  As they walked their horses away from Frank, Jed whispered to Whitey. ‘I surely get an uncomfortable feeling when so many folks tell me that nothing can go wrong.’

  How much money you boys got?’ asked Dutchman as the cluster of buildings appeared through the gathering murk. A bolt of lightning flared across the sky throwing knife-edged shadows from the trees.

  ‘Quantrill gave us each ten dollars. Same as you.’

  ‘I should have had more,’ complained Dutchman’ huddling his chin into the collar of his coat

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m older.’

  ‘We’re better,’ said Herne, suddenly tired of the other guerrilla’s endless moaning.

  ‘Maybe, boy. Maybe. I seen boys come and I’ve surely seen them go. I’ve ridden with the colonel for two years now and I’ve seen them come and—’

  ‘You’ve seen them go,’ finished Whitey, sharing his partner’s dislike of the little Gottlieb,

  ‘Lippy bastards,’ spat Dutchman.

  They didn’t attract a lot of attention at Paddy Jansen’s saloon. Half the men there were half drunk most of the time and the other half were mostly drunk all of the time.

  There had been a group of cowboys travelling through and the stable had been full, so the three Raiders had tethered their animals just inside the dump of oaks at the rear of the saloon, out of sight of the buildings.

  Dutchman immediately ignored the orders from Frank James for them all to stay together and pushed his way to the narrow bar, ordering his whiskey in a belligerent voice that earned him the interest of a group of men playing poker at a chipped table near the window.

  That son of a bitch’ll get us all killed,’ said Jed, walking with Whitey to a quieter aid of the bar, catching the shot-glasses as they were slung along by a tall man with hair the color of straw and bright blue eyes. The bottle followed it. And Paddy Jansen himself followed that along to join them.

  ‘You boys come far?’

  ‘Far enough.’

  Turning to Coburn, and seeing the silver hair and crimson eyes for the first time.

  ‘Holy Mother of God! Where you come from?’

  Whitey jerked a finger in a direction that was indeterminately north.

  ‘Oh, yeah. And where are you bound?’

  The same finger pointed vaguely south.

  ‘You boys don’t believe in wasting your words, do you?’

  Herne shook his head. ‘We want to talk we’ll come around later. We come to drink.’

  As he spoke there was the soft weight of an arm on his shoulder and he could smell the scent of cheap perfume that had been applied too well over a body that hadn’t been well enough washed.

  She was around twenty. Standing on his left with her face partly in shadow. Yellow hair piled up high with a length of blue satin ribbon holding it in place. Too much blackness around the eyes and too much red on the cheeks.

  ‘You boys come just to drink or is there something else we can get you?’

  It was the soft accents of Louisiana. Herne wondered what she was doing in a dying township like Strafford Springs. From the side view she didn’t look that bad. Nothing that a good bath and face-wash wouldn’t cure. And she was young. So, why?

  Outside the wind was rising and he heard the first heavy spots of thunder rain beginning to pound on the flat roof of the saloon. There was a flash of lightning and a mighty crack that made everyone turn to look out through the window.

  The whore turned with the rest, showing all of her face to Herne and Whitey. And he saw why she was working in such a broken-down bar in a one-horse settlement in the back end of nowhere.

  Sometime a man - or another woman - had made sure that she would never look in a mirror and smile. It had been a bottle Jed figured, having seen similar scars on men’s faces before, with the characteristic circular line of raised tissue. And whoever had done it to the girl had made a good job of it. Aiming for the left eye, ramming the broken end of a bottle into the socket, the jagged splinters of glass ripping out a great gouge that spread from the top of the cheek to the forehead.

  It never healed properly. Bottle scars never did. The flesh was so badly torn as the weapon was turned round and ground into the soft skin that it could never grow back again and look halfway decent. It had pulled at the corner of the girl’s eye, tugging it downwards at a sinister angle. And the dreadful injury had also puckered up the skin at the corner of the mouth, giving her the look of someone who perpetually sneered at the world.

  ‘Seen enough, mister?’ she asked, seeing the look on his face, and recognizing it like she’d recognized the same look on the faces of a thousand men from New Orleans to San Francisco. Her name was Jenny and she was actually seventeen. It had been another whore down in the French Quarter of New Orleans who had broken the bottle and shoved it in her face only a few months after she’d joined the cat-house. That had been nearly four years ago now.

  Herne didn’t answer her and Jenny turned her attention to Whitey who’d been leaning on the counter with his back to the room. He’d been the only one in Jansen’s who hadn’t looked around at the deafening clap of thunder.

  ‘How ’bout you, mister? You the same as your friend here about … Oh, sweet Jesus Christ! Your face!’

  It was gloomy in the saloon, with only a couple of recently lit oil-lamps smoking away with a golden glow in the corner by the poker players. And the storm was coming closer, sending sheets of lightning flickering silver over the grasslands around. The light from it was an uncanny brightness, and it reflected the face of Isaiah Coburn like a creature from the waking depths of a nightmare.

  Seen in the mirror the tumbled mane of white hair framed the high cheeks and the eyes like a hunting animal of the darkness. The girl shook her head and shuddered, running through the curtain into the back of the saloon, the clicking of her high heels loud in the stillness of the square room.

  ‘That slut insult you, mister?’ asked Jansen, looking towards the swinging drape.

  ‘No. Nothing at all,’ replied Whitey.

  ‘You’re sure? Ifn you want her then she’s bound to do what you fancy.’

  ‘No. Let it pass.’

  ‘Anything you want. Got some fine Frenchy tricks she could show you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t let your odd looks put you off, mister. Jenny ain’t no picture of beauty neither.’

  Whitey didn’t answer any more. Jed edged nearer to try and cool what he could see was a potentially dangerous situation for them both.

  ‘Fact is... with her eye and you with—’

  Herne caught the slight stiffening of the arms and saw the shoulders set, knowing immediately that his friend was about to slide into a berserk rage and attack the saloon owner.

  ‘Another whiskey,’ said Jed, loudly, patting Whitey on the forearm, hard enough to jerk him out of the tense rage. ‘And one for my friend.’

  Only then did Jansen seem to realize wha
t had been happening and he was breathing harder when he brought another bottle, the last dregs from the other one having been drained by the two young men.

  ‘You—’ he tried again. ‘You and your friend just passin’ through?’

  ‘There’s not a lot round here to stay for, is there? Seen plenty of Jennison cemeteries about.’

  ‘Those bastards! We wanted to be let alone round here. Mind our own business. I … well, are you boys for the Union or the Confederacy?’

  ‘We’re just for us,’ replied Whitey, relaxing once again. Looking over his shoulder to where Dutchman seemed to be trying to establish a new record for drinking himself into unconsciousness.

  ‘Like me,’ said Jansen, enthusiastically. ‘Them soldiers can go hang for all I care.’

  ‘What about Quantrill and those Jayhawkers? I hear there’s few regular troops around here. Just bands of good old boys payin’ off some old scores and gettin’ themselves some gold and silver. And if n that gold and silver gets itself a mite splashed with blood ... well, that’s just one of them things, ain’t it?’

  Jansen laughed, throwing bade his head and opening a cavernous mouth. ‘Ain’t that the truth, son? Ain’t that the damned truth.’ Stopping his laughter as fast as he’d begun it, he leaned forwards over the bar-top in a conspiratorial manner, beckoning the two boys closer.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Herne, glancing worriedly at Dutchman who was now standing with his back against the bar, (me boot hooked over the tarnished brass rail. Hat pushed back on his head and jacket open. Revealing a pair of Navy Colts stuck in his broad belt. Eyeing the rest of the men in the saloon in the classic manner of a person looking for trouble. In a place like Strafford Springs, the man who goes looking for trouble like that usually aids getting what he wants. Maybe more than he truly wants.

  But there was nothing that Herne could do. Except listen to Patrick Jansen.

  ‘I would wager fifty dollars that near half the men round here are Jayhawkers,’ whispered the bar-keep. The town of Lawrence is not far from here. Jim Lane lives there and his home is the centre for those riders of the night.’

  ‘Lawrence?’

  ‘Yeah. They say that Bill Quantrill was near killed once by Jim Lane and still harbors a grudge against him. But Lane is well guarded. There’s regularly forty or fifty of his men in call. Though I hear there is to be a long patrol for the Jay-hawkers next week. Beginning on the morning of the twentieth and going on for three days. I have heard some of his men here talk about it.’

  ‘That’s in two days,’ said Whitey, catching Jed’s eye. ‘Where will they ride?’

  The question aroused Jansen’s suspicion once again and he hesitated before replying. ‘You sure you ain’t one of Lane’s boys tryin’ to catch me out?’

  ‘Sure we ain’t. Here’s my hand on it,’ said the albino, vigorously shaking with the saloon owner.

  ‘Well, they say he aims to strike into Missouri again. You boys aren’t from anywhere around here?’

  ‘No.’ Jed shook his head.

  ‘Well, there’s men in this very room now lost kin to Quantrill and his Raiders. This is Jayhawker country, boys. And my oath on that. Now, I’ve told you more than’s good for you or for me. Drink up and I’ll go to your other friend there as I have this feelin’, do I not, that he might be sailin’ for trouble.’

  ‘He’s not our friend. Don’t know him.’ Herne had been watching Dutchman, seeing the way he was trying to pick a fight with a pale-faced boy in spectacles standing by the poker table. Teasing him about having four eyes. Trying to provoke him into action. Herne had also noticed that the joshing was angering some of the men in the saloon and a fight seemed inevitable. If that happened then he and Whitey would light out as fast as they could. There were too many there for anything else’

  ‘Came in with you.’

  ‘Surely. Seen him on the trail and rode in the last half mile with him. But we sure don’t know him. Do we, Whitey? Know that man?’

  ‘No, Jed. Don’t know him.’

  At that moment four other men came in. Wearing slickers that poured water on the sawdust-covered floor from the storm. Dashing rain from their hats and cursing loudly about the thunder and the mud washing out trails for miles around. The Dutchman stood and watched them as they breasted up to the bar, ordering whiskies.

  Jansen nodded to the newcomers, and mouthed a word to Whitey and Jed.

  ‘Jayhawkers.’

  With the arrival of the four men, Dutchman seemed to be trying to take a grip on himself, taking his glass and the quarter full bottle and retiring to a table in the darkest comer of the room. Jed noticed that one of the Jayhawkers was staring at Dutchman, wrinkling his brow as if he was trying to recall where he’d seen him before. Then he shook his head and settled down with the others to their drinking, exchanging a few words with Jansen in an undertone.

  ‘Looks like we might be movin’ on, brother Jed,’ said Whitey.

  ‘Could just be. We got what Quantrill wanted and that’s a fact.’

  The curtain to the back of the building moved as if the wind had tugged it. Herne half-turned his head and caught a glimpse of the scar-faced whore pulling back out of sight. He felt a pang of sadness for the girl. And maybe something else as well. It had been a long time since he’d laid with a woman. Better than a month.

  Too long.

  ‘Dutchman’s quieter. Reckon we ought to try and get him out now with us or wait with him?’

  ‘Or go and let him make his own trail out later on?’ Jed said.

  The conversation among the Jayhawkers at the bar had grown quickly louder and more general, bringing in several of the other men in the saloon. One of the new arrivals, squinting through the window at the raging storm, was telling the room about how they’d found a dead man out in Missouri a couple of days ago.

  ‘His wife was there. Poor old stick of a thing, near off her head with seein’ her man killed. They’d burned him and then poured boiling water on him.’

  Jed and Whitey exchanged glances. That was the story that Frank James had been telling them about.

  ‘She say who done it?’ asked Jansen, polishing a glass with more care than it needed.

  ‘You don’t need to ask,’ replied one of the Jayhawkers, addressing the saloon in general.

  ‘Quantrill?’ asked the pale boy in the glasses, blushing and staring down at his own feet as everyone looked at him.

  ‘Sure it was fuckin’ Quantrill and his band of damned killers!’ shouted the man.

  ‘The old woman said one had red hair. One that killed her husband.’

  ‘Red hair?’ said Jansen.

  ‘Yeah. And she said the other one had a name. The man with the red hair was calling him by it while they laughed at her husband’s dyin’.’

  ‘I don’t recall it,’ said another of the Jayhawkers at the bar.

  ‘Nor me,’ added a third.

  Jed casually let his right hand fall to the butt of the Tranter and slip the band of leather from over the hammer, clearing it for action. Seeing Whitey doing the same. The way things were moving they could be needing them at any second’:

  What the hell was the name?’

  The Dutchman was sitting at his table, oblivious to the conversation, head resting on his arms. Shoulders moving with the steady regularity of someone slipping easily into sleep.

  ‘Not a real name. Sort of name you call someone. God damn it! What was it?’

  ‘Lights first, Whitey,’ said Jed to his partner, as casually as if he’d been asking if he wanted another whiskey. With the storm seeming to have settled overhead, the saloon was dark as pitch but for the two orbs of light by the poker table.

  ‘Dutchman! That was it!’ shouted the Jayhawker. His name was Dutchman!’

  Hearing his name called the Dutchman woke drowsily, looking round the gloomy saloon. Standing up and peering belligerently around.

  ‘Who the Hell wants me?’ he asked loudly.

  Chapter Nine


  Chaos erupted.

  Jed drew the Tranter with a fluid, easy action, seeing Jansen staring at him from along the bar with the first light of realization dawning in his eyes. At his elbow, Whitey drew his Navy Colt, and they both snapped off three shots at the lights. They exploded in a shower of hot oil and smoky flames, plunging the saloon into total darkness for a few moments. Until the fire began to get a hold on the dry wood of the walls and the timbers of the floor.

  In that atmosphere of smoke and flames and boiling hatred, Dutchman was given the best chance he was likely to get at escaping. But he was too sodden with drink, barely awake, realization coming too slowly and too late to save him. Even as the lights went out, Herne saw their comrade disappear beneath a cascade of bodies. At the same moment he felt Whitey vanish from his side. There was the briefest glimpse of a veil of hair like snow and a lean body, heading for the side window. And above the yelling there was the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass.

  The wind from outside tore at the rising fire, blowing aside the screen of powder smoke from the six shots. Though the men there were all entirely preoccupied in making the Dutchman their prisoner. But once that was done they would be wondering who’d shot out the lamps. Who’d broken through the window. And what’d happened to the other young boy from the further end of the bar.

  Jed wasn’t about to hang around and let them find out the answers to any of the questions. Dutchman was as dead as if the birds already had his eyes and Herne had never been a believer in overloading graves.

  The Dutchman was putting up the best fight he could against overwhelming odds, and there was a rolling mass of cursing, kicking bodies between Jed and the door. The window would now be like a hoop edged with daggers of broken glass and he didn’t much relish diving through that in the semi-darkness.

  Which left the curtain and the way out back.