Rebel Yell

by William W. Johnstone

  It was standing room only around the bodies. Latecomers and less assertive members of the flock walked around on ungainly taloned feet, circling the corpse-mounds, angling for an opening.

  Sam climbed down, hitching Dusty to the top rail of a fence post. He advanced, stepping carefully through ankle-deep mud, Winchester leveled hip-high.

  He wanted a closer look at the bodies, a feat not so easily accomplished. No way the buzzards were relinquishing their place at the feast. They weren’t giving an inch for him to satisfy his curiosity. The feeders couldn’t have been less intimidated by Sam.

  He charged, shouting and waving his arms around, halting a few paces away. They ignored him.

  If that didn’t beat all! A bunch of scavenger birds making him feel like a damn fool!

  Firing a few shots might get their attention, but he didn’t want to risk the sound of gunfire to call attention to his presence to any who might be lurking unseen on the far side of the ridge.

  He picked up some rocks and threw them at the buzzards. That got some reaction, some positive results from the ones who were hit. He didn’t throw too hard, not wanting to do any real damage. He held no brief for buzzards but had nothing against them. They had their place in the web of wildlife as a kind of cleaning crew.

  Sam drove some of them away from one body, enough for him to get a quick look at the corpse. It was the cadaver of an adult white male on which the birds had really gone to town, making serious inroads.

  The man had been clad in red flannel long underwear. The rest of his clothes were gone. So were his boots. He was barefoot. Not much meat or offal left and what there was going fast. A curved white rib cage gleamed through the bloody carcass.

  Impossible to tell the cause of death—had he been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned? Only the buzzards knew and they weren’t talking. They rushed back in to reclaim their places or chisel a new one, setting off a round of short savage infighting until the pecking order—literally—was restored.

  Throwing well-aimed rocks temporarily cleared a space around the second corpse. Feathers flew and beady vulture eyes glared at Sam, hating but not enough to attack.

  The second body told him as little as the first except that they both had been left in the same condition, stripped down to their underwear and robbed of their boots.

  Stealing the boots, Sam could understand. That was a fairly common practice on the frontier and in the savage slums of the big cities, too. The clothes theft gave him pause. One would have to be mighty hard up to steal the garments off a dead man to sell or wear.

  Some of the Hog Ranch crowd were pretty low. Sam wouldn’t put it past them to eke out a little gain from dead men’s clothes. Hell, some of those characters would steal the shroud off their mother’s corpse if they could turn a few copper pennies on it.

  Another reason came to mind—to conceal the dead men’s identities. A dead cavalry trooper in his drawers looks the same as a civilian. But it would take more than the death of two troopers to stampede the Hog Ranch crowd into abandoning their home base. Better than most, they knew how to make a couple dead bodies disappear. Yet they hadn’t even bothered.

  Could be the Boneyard massacre had panicked them into clearing out . . . maybe. But desert their headquarters for where?

  A mystery here, Sam thought, scratching his head.

  Hungry, greedy vultures thronged back around the body even before he began to move away.

  The ranch house door gaped open, hanging heavily on strained leather hinges. Through the doorway Sam could see a dim cave-like interior.

  Carefully stepping over loose planks of the veranda, he went inside. The ranch house was set up along the lines of a trading post. One that dealt in rotgut whiskey, women, gambling, and stolen goods. The place stank of tobacco smoke, raw whiskey fumes, human sweat and stink, and other less pleasant smells.

  A big, open, rectangular center space took up most of the floor space. Opposite the open doorway, a long slab table stood against the long rear wall—the bar where whiskey was served.

  The floor was covered with sawdust and littered with wooden cups and shards of broken brown jugs and glass bottles. Wooden kegs and barrels of six-snake whiskey stood drained and empty of all but the six rattlesnake heads placed in each container to put a further kick into the mix.

  In the back of the space lay a row of partitioned wooden stalls where the women did their business. Each was narrow and closet-like, featuring a coffin-like wooden bed topped by a thin stained pallet serving as a mattress and covered by a filthy, tangled, threadbare blanket.

  One bed was occupied by a corpse, that of a woman. Hard-used, from the look of her—skin yellow and wrinkled like old newspaper. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear, with a massive amount of blood drenching body, pallet, and bed.

  What had her offense been to earn her a death sentence? Perhaps no more than being inconvenient and in the way.

  Sam went back outside. By comparison, even the fetid air smelled good . . . or at least, better.

  He prowled around the rest of the site. A fourth body lay facedown in the muck behind the back of the building. A woman—the birds had left that much of her. Mouse-brown hair streamed out from her head in all directions like a sunburst. She wore a thin, colorless, shift-like dress. Her small bare feet were white as tree roots, the soles heavily callused.

  Had she been shot down trying to run away? No way to tell for sure, though the place where she was found might suggest it. The Hog Ranch crowd had surely held a kind of housecleaning before quitting the site, one which included four casual murders.

  The other outbuildings—shacks, really—were similarly abandoned.

  Sam thought it over but could reach no final conclusion. Between a dozen and fifteen people had ridden out, judging from the tracks, which all angled off to the northwest on a course which would eventually put them abreast of Fort Pardee and several miles west of it.

  What lay out there? Nothing but empty prairie, as far as Sam knew. Strange destination!

  When did they leave? The condition of the tracks said that it was a matter not of days but of hours.

  Sam mounted up, riding toward the valley’s north ridge. On the other side hidden behind it lay Fort Pardee.

  SIXTEEN

  Sundown in Hangtree.

  Getting on toward the dinner hour, Marshal Mack Barton had been fixing to get himself some chow when an excited youngster burst into his office at the jailhouse to tell him he was needed.

  “There’s been a shooting over to the campgrounds, Marshal,” the freckle-faced kid piped. “A man is dead!”

  Barton grumbled heavily. He hated missing or delaying his meals. But it was best to move fast to nip trouble in the bud before it got out of hand. He was in a hurry but not so much that he neglected to take a shotgun down off the wall rack. He loaded the twelve-gauge double-barrel and slipped a handful of buckshot shells into a vest pocket. “Let’s go, Deputy.”

  Smalls was a medium-sized man with a long mournful basset-hound face. He followed Barton out the jailhouse door onto Trail Street. They turned right, going south on a cross street.

  The campground was southwest of town, a vast rolling meadow cut by a stream that ran southeast to eventually join Swift Creek. It was far enough away that Barton would have liked to ride, but he didn’t have a horse saddled and ready. He moved at a steady deliberate pace, Smalls falling into step beside him. Now that he was out and about Barton showed no great haste. No sense in getting all sweaty and out of breath prior to horning in to a situation.

  Hangtree was a jumping-off point for westbound wagon trains. The town picked up a lot of traffic especially during the warm weather months before early snows closed the mountain passes in the California Sierras. It was good business, too, with pilgrims and wayfarers stocking up on supplies of all kinds, from horses, oxen, and cattle to foodstuff, seed, tools, firearms, and whatnot.

  Wagon trains stayed at the campground, with its open unused space, grass for grazi
ng, and fresh water. At any time, one or more wagon trains would make camp on the grounds—which could lead to trouble, people being people.

  That’s how lawman Barton saw it. Hell, he knew!

  “Lots of Southrons pulling out and moving farther west nowadays,” Barton remarked to Smalls as they walked toward the campground. “Specially the diehards and bitter-enders.”

  “Seems like more every day,” Smalls agreed.

  “They ain’t too keen on living under the Yankee yoke.”

  “Can’t say as I blame them.”

  “Who knows? If the blue-belly yoke gets too heavy, anybody might be minded to do the same,” Barton said. “Me, you, anybody!”

  “Leave Texas?!” The deputy stiffened, halting.

  “You should see your face,” Barton chuckled. “You look like I insulted your momma or something.”

  “B-but leave Texas?” Smalls all but wailed. “Leave Hangtree, home, the Big Sky country?”

  “Quit waving the Lone Star flag at me, Deputy. I’m as loyal as the next Texan. Just thinking out loud, that’s all.”

  They walked some more.

  “Reckon we’ll stick for a while longer at that,” Barton said.

  “Amen!” sounded Smalls.

  Reaching the campground, the lawmen nosed out the situation. Three separate wagon trains were encamped on the site. They were camped on both sides of the creek, fresh water being a priority. Space was a priority, too, so they were well apart from each other. It cut down on personal friction.

  In time-honored fashion the wagons were formed up in circles. Campfires burned, thrusting long thin lines of smoke into the air. In the west, the sun was setting in a splash of orange, yellow, and red.

  Barton and Smalls quietly prowled the edges of the camps, walking soft, keeping a low profile while they got the lay of things.

  The conflict was centered around the Hughes and Brooks outfits. The latter group was led by wagon master Preston Brooks. Twelve wagons were full with families from the Deep South, mostly Georgia, moving to California.

  They’d clashed with the Hughes outfit, which numbered six wagons—freight wagons and a couple Conestogas, shoddy vehicles showing signs of ill-use and low maintenance, topped by dirty off-white canvas coverings—and about two dozen men. No families, no women and children. They were camped on the south side of the creek.

  A big crowd had collected outside the semicircle arc of the Hughes wagons.

  A smaller group, angry and vocal, were from the Brooks outfit. They stood apart from the mass, clustered at the forefront where they were confronting the Hughes bunch almost nose to nose. The Hughes wagoneers were giving no ground, standing resolute and foursquare in opposition.

  The bulk of the crowd was made up of spectators from the Baca party, the third and largest convoy—twenty wagons, Santa Fe–bound. They didn’t have a dog in the fight. They just wanted to see what it was all about.

  More people arrowed into the scene by the minute, hastening the onset of a crisis.

  Barton noted the presence of wagon master Preston Brooks and his ramrod Tim Hurley. He knew Brooks to be a well-respected leader and organizer who’d conducted a number of successful trips west, stopping in Hangtree several times.

  Brooks was a big solemn bearlike man in a dark suit. Silver-haired with a bushy iron-gray mustache, he wore a flat-brimmed black hat with a round-topped crown popularly called a “parson’s hat” though he was no preacher. The big Colt in his well-worn hip holster tended to counter any ecclesiastical impressions.

  More dangerous by far was the skinny galoot at Brooks’s side, a tall gaunt man with a wizened face and scruffy ginger-colored beard. He was Tim Hurley, the wagon master’s top scout, ramrod, and enforcer. Not a trouble-hunter, but he was fast on the draw and had killed several men in gunfights.

  They hovered over a knot of three young men, angry, outraged, and showing it. A distinct family resemblance was visible among the trio.

  Standing opposite them were the Hughes men, rowdy, belligerent, and well-armed.

  “Pretty tough-looking bunch, Marshal,” Smalls said of the Hughes group.

  Barton grunted in assent. “Teamsters can be a wild and woolly bunch, but they’re packing a lot of heavy artillery for wagoneers. Looks more like hardcases and troublemakers.”

  At their head were two big hulking figures several inches over six feet tall and built like lumberjacks.

  Barton’s eyes narrowed at the sight of them. He bared yellow teeth in a mirthless grin that was more of a grimace. “What do you know! The Hughes in the Hughes bunch is Denton Dick Hughes from Denton, Texas,” he marveled. “What’s more, he’s sided by none other than Leo Plattner—Leo Plattner!”

  “Which one’s Denton Dick?” Smalls asked.

  “The one on the left with the big hat.”

  Denton Dick Hughes had wide sloping shoulders and a pear-shaped torso. He wore an oversized hat with a brim three feet wide and a baggy gray suit. He looked like a heavyweight gone to seed. Big oversized hands with swollen knuckles hung at his sides. His gun was worn high on the hip, holstered cavalry style, butt-out.

  “That’s Denton Dick? He’s supposed to be a real fire-eater,” Smalls said. “Huh! Looks like he’s been eating everything but. He’s been exercising them dinner table muscles.”

  “Dinner table, hell! He got that way from the whizz—whiskey—the old redeye,” Barton said.

  “That Plattner’s sure got a mean face on him.”

  “He’s a killer.”

  Leo Plattner was a heavyset brute, thick in the shoulders and torso. He had small round glaring eyes, a lot of stubbornly set blue-stubbled jaw and a belligerently outthrust chin. The sleeves of his plaid shirt were rolled up past the elbows, baring brawny hairy forearms folded across a massive chest. His gun was worn way down low, gunfighter style.

  “Something’s wrong here,” Barton said knowingly. “Denton Dick honchoing a freight-hauling outfit? It don’t add up! He never did an honest day’s work in his life.”

  “He’s got a bad name, all right,” Smalls agreed. “He wanted for anything?”

  “Not right now. He’s been wanted for plenty in the past—banditry, rustling, horse stealing—but they never pinned nothing on him in court. He’s pretty slick at staying one step ahead of the law, I’ll grant him that.

  “Plattner’s been taking lessons from him. Leo was charged in a couple killings, but they couldn’t get anybody to testify against him. The witnesses were either dead or so scared that they ‘forgot’ the facts,” Barton said. “Come on. Let’s ease in closer.”

  They circled the edges of the crowd, Barton holding the shotgun pointed down along his side to render it more unobtrusive.

  “You know, Leo and Terry Moran were great pals,” Barton said to Smalls.

  “You don’t tell me! That’s quite a coincidence, the two of them being in town at the same time.”

  “Is it? I wonder . . .”

  The lawmen hugged the darkness for cover, swinging right until they neared the disputants, then edging in sideways to get closer. They eased their way to the spearhead of the conflict where wagon master Brooks, Hurley, and the three young men faced Hughes and Plattner, quickly noticing a dead man sprawled on the ground between them.

  Barton sidled up alongside a white-mustached man with a weathered high-crowned hat who stood with the Brooks group. “Say, old-timer, who’re those three young fellows with Brooks?” he asked in an easy conversational tone.

  “Cal Lane and Pete and Stan Burgess,” the oldster said. He was watching the argument and didn’t bother to glance at the man who was addressing him. If he had he might have seen the tin star pinned on Barton’s vest over his left breast.

  “It was Cal’s brother Bob who got kilt. Pete and Stan are Cal’s cousins,” the oldster said.

  “Much obliged,” said Barton.

  Young Cal Lane was lean and rawboned, jutting cheekbones and sunken cheeks giving him a half-starved look. Unkempt inky-black h
air stuck out under a hat worn with sides pinned to the crown.

  Prematurely balding, Pete Burgess had a wicked squint that was fixed on Hughes and Plattner. Stan Burgess was thin-haired, square-jawed, brown-bearded.

  Cal Lane was making most of the noise, shouting. He was red in the face, neck muscles corded, hands balled into fists. The two Burgesses seemed equally upset but were less vocal.

  Young Lane said something to which Plattner took offense. Barton couldn’t make out what it was. Plattner bridled, neck swelling, starting forward.

  Denton Dick Hughes stopped him, laying a big hand flat across Plattner’s chest. He put his head close to Plattner, saying something to him. Plattner shook his head angrily but backed off.

  Barton took note of that. Not many men could stop a stampeder like Plattner when he was minded to raise a ruckus.

  Barton edged closer to hear what was being said.

  Denton Dick moved a step closer to Cal Lane, saying, “Slow down, sonny, before you bust a blood vessel.”

  “Best watch out I don’t bust more than that!” Cal fired back.

  Again Plattner stuck his oar in, demanding, “What’s that supposed to mean, little man?”

  “Big enough, mister, big enough,” Cal said.

  Barton decided it was time to take a hand. He passed the shotgun over to Smalls, saying, “You know what to do. Wait till I get into position and make sure you’ve got Denton Dick and Leo covered.”

  Smalls made a small tight nod, his face grim.

  Barton pushed himself to the fore, shouldering aside all who stood in his way. It was a well-practiced move and he had the confidence to pull it off, confidence so vital in crowd control when it comes to taking charge of a situation.

  He was a big man, yes, but Texas was a land of big men, many of whom would be ordinarily inclined to dispute his passage.

  Barton moved with the ready tread of authority. Who knows? The tin star pinned to his vest might have had some effect, too.