War Rider

by Tony Masero

  “He’s locked up safe and sound,” Keb confirmed.

  “Okay then, let’s go see some cowboys.”

  The four men stood together. Keb taking his Springfield down from the rack as Loup loaded a shotgun. Jodie had the Winchester he had picked up in the woods and Ahlen his favored ‘Yellow Boy’ rifle. They made their way outside and leaving a regular space between, began a slow walk down Main Street towards The Rolling Dice saloon.

  Townspeople backed onto the sidewalks as they saw the four approaching. Riders drew to one side to let the men pass and young boys ran, passing word from house to house around the town. Soon a crowd congregated, all of them speaking in hushed whispers as they followed behind at a distance.

  As the four approached the colorful frontage of the saloon, a cowboy lounging with his chair leant back against the wall outside saw them coming and jumped to his feet, then he hurried inside.

  “They know we’re here now,” observed Keb as the four came to a halt, standing in a row before the swing doors.

  There was a noisy bustling from inside and cowboys began to push out through the swing doors and gather on the sidewalk. Soon there was a jeering bunch of rough looking men cluttering up the boards and watching Ahlen with open grins of derision on their faces.

  “Who’s in charge here?” bellowed Ahlen, stilling the crowd before the men could start to make trouble.

  “I am!” cried a burly man, in a battered stovepipe hat and a dirty blue panel shirt with a double row of pearl buttons down each side. “Name’s Benton Pike, and I run this outfit.”

  “What’s your intention, Mister Pike?” asked Ahlen. “I see your men are carrying guns and that’s against the town ordnance. Either you boys hand them over peaceably or we’ll have to come take them.”

  “Well, sir,” said Pike. “We have permission to carry firearms, given us by Mr. Fells and the Town Council.”

  “That a fact,” said Ahlen. “Trouble is, the Town Council ain’t the law and neither is Ty Fells. I am, and I say hand over those weapons.”

  “Don’t be foolish, sheriff,” said Pike, waving his men to spread out along each side of the covered sidewalk in front of the saloon. “I’ve more than enough men here to see you fellows laid out. Don’t push your luck.”

  “Ty Fells set you up for this?” asked Ahlen. “He inside there, letting you boys do his dirty work for him?”

  “Mister Fells has cattle waiting to come in. Those beeves are hungry and spread all around that damned forest thanks to you. We aim to see he gets his goods, whether you like it or not. My men need paying and they don’t get nothing until the cattle are delivered. So stand down, sheriff, before it gets bloody.”

  Ahlen hitched his Winchester up on his hip and stared back at Pike coolly. “Sorry about your problems. I’m afraid it’s none of my doing. Those cattle are illegal, we both know that and if you want to get rough then be sure of one thing, Mister Pike. You’ll be the first to go.” With that, Ahlen lowered his rifle so it pointed directly at Pike and trail boss looked down the dark threatening hole of the barrel. “This here is my town, Pike. And you’re just going to have to take those cows back to where you got them from. Ty Fells is finished here, there won’t be any more illicit beef trade going on.”

  “Only you are standing in the way of that happening,” snarled Pike.

  Ahlen could see the tension mounting in the man’s face as he readied himself to draw the pistol at his belt.

  “Don’t do it,” warned Ahlen.

  “Come on,” piped a voice from the gathered cowboys. “Let’s get this damned business over. I’m thirsty.”

  Loup’s shotgun roared and the cowboy, drawn pistol in hand, took the load in the stomach and folded forward off the boardwalk and tumbled over the hitching rail in front.

  It was the signal for guns to be drawn and a cacophony of noise and smoke as firing commenced. In the bizarre way that happens in such frantic moments, Ahlen noted the wild shooting by the cowboys who were obviously not practiced gunfighters, as they blazed in every direction. Onlookers on the far side of the street ran for cover in panic as display windows caved in and shop fronts were peppered with shot.

  Ahlen drew a bead on Pike and felled him with a single shot through the breastbone, dead in the center of his rows of pearl buttons. The trail driver dropped to his knees as his stovepipe slid forward over his eyes. Finally he flopped down to hang limp, face down over the edge of the boardwalk.

  Jodie and Keb kept up a selective and calm steady rate of fire, felling one after another of the cowboys. The wounded and dead that they shot fell in disarray, slamming back into their packed compatriots behind and disturbing their aim even more.

  The plank wall of The Rolling Dice behind the cowboys began to erupt with shell blasts. Hand painted signs advertising the pleasures within bounced and skittered off the wall as they split and shattered under the gunplay. Louvering on the swing doors developed large holes and the doors themselves swung back in complaint as a series of heavy shells struck.

  Loup was reloading his shotgun when a slug suddenly took him high in the right arm, spinning him around with a curved wheel of blood flying from his torn shirtsleeve. Standing next to him, Ahlen reached over and propped the sagging Loup up with one arm whilst he continued to pick his targets and fire.

  The air was thick with whining lead and heavy with white clouds of gun smoke, screams and roars of anger filled the space between the combatants. Keb emptied his single shot Springfield of ammunition and out of bullets threw it aside in favor of his revolver. With deadly intent he kept up a merciless barrage until that too emptied, then calmly, he commenced to reload as shot from the cowboys plucked at his garments but mercifully did damage to nothing but the cloth.

  Jodie dropped to the ground as a bullet took him in the thigh and swept left his left leg away from under him, wincing in pain he continued to crank his Winchester and maintain his fire from where he lay in the dust.

  Eight of the cowhands were lying either dead or wounded and the rest were beginning to weaken in their resolve as they saw the odds were stacked against them. With their leader Pike gone, they obviously had little stomach for the fight and Ahlen called for a cease-fire.

  “You boys ready to call it quits?” Ahlen hollered, dropping his empty Winchester. He drew his Colt and waved it at the gathered cowboys. “Because we can go on all day like this if you’ve a fancy.”

  “Alright, alright,” called one cowboy, tossing down his revolver. “I’m out of this.”

  It was the excuse the rest of them needed to surrender; in quick rotation the others dropped their weapons and raised their arms.

  “You’ve got us, sheriff,” they called. “Damn it! We’re done.”

  “Can you stand?” Ahlen asked Loup, without taking his eyes from the cowboys.

  “I can make it,” Loup answered grimly, hunched over and clutching his wounded arm.

  “Keb, “ asked Ahlen. “You okay?”

  “I am,” said Keb.

  “Will you see to Jodie?”

  Ahlen moved forward as Keb knelt awkwardly to check on Jodie.

  “My friend,” Keb said with a straight face, the picture of innocence as he studied Jodie’s holed leg. “Might be you and I are going look like a couple of gimpy twins for a while. And I have to tell you, I know a fellow who does a very stylish line in sculptured leg work, if you come to need it, that is.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Jodie growled painfully, and he commenced to curse the grinning Keb soundly and bitterly as he gripped the pumping wound in his thigh.

  Ahlen kept his Colt leveled as he came up on the cowboys. “Turn around, the pack of you. I don’t want to look in your ugly mugs no more.”

  Obediently, the cowered cowhands turned to face the bullet pitted saloon wall. Ahlen stepped up on the boardwalk and checked the fallen, toeing the dead and ordering of some of the cowhands to see to their wounded fellows.

  Doc Barnes made an appearance, panting up with
his medical holdall in hand.

  “Ahlen, Ahlen,” he said, shaking his aged head. “You intend in keeping me in work all the rest of my born days?”

  “Only so long as Ty Fells wants it so, Doc. Will you see to Loup and Jodie before any of this crew, they’re my priorities?”

  “As you say, Ahlen,” said the Doc, turning and going over to the two in the street.

  “The rest of you,” Ahlen barked at the remaining cowboys. “I don’t have nowhere to hold you, so I’m going to have to let you go. You’ll hand over your weapons, gun belts and all. Then you’ll go get your ponies and ride out and take that herd back the way you came. You hear me?”

  The men nodded in unison, only too pleased that they were getting off so lightly.

  “You come back here to Mistake and things won’t be so easy. I will not take kindly to seeing your faces around here again. Am I clear?”

  “We hear you, sheriff,” they mumbled.

  “Then get, and don’t come back – ever.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  As the cowboys shed their gun belts and trooped off, Ahlen brushed past them and pushed open the broken swing doors of the saloon. Colt held before him, he cautiously entered the large interior. The place was empty, except for the remains of the cowboy’s recent custom. Thin veins of cigarette smoke still hung in the air and empty whisky bottles and glasses littered the marble top of the bar. There was also evidence of the fierce gun battle that had taken place, the long mirror behind the bar was shattered and broken fragments reflected Ahlen’s image in a thousand pieces as he moved into the room.

  “Anybody here?” Ahlen called. “Ty you in here?”

  There was an echoing silence in reply. Ahlen studied the rows of card and gaming tables, looking past them into the darker recesses of the saloon but nothing moved. He looked at the stairway to the rooms above and stepped forward to explore up there.

  His boot was on the lower step when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Swinging the Colt around he saw the white face of a bartender bob up from behind the cover of the bar.

  “Don’t shoot, sheriff!” the man cried. “I ain’t armed.”

  “Get up where I can see you,” Ahlen ordered.

  The man stood up, nervously raising his arms high over his head. “I ain’t armed, see?”

  “What you doing behind there?” asked Ahlen.

  “Getting out of the way. Enough lead just passed through here to cover a church roof. I reckoned behind this bar was the safest place.”

  A half smile flickered over Ahlen’s lips. “Okay,” he said. “You can lower your arms. Do you know where Ty Fells is, he up those stairs?”

  “No sir, he went out of town some time back. After he set up a running tab for them cowboys. Said something about cutting up something more than meat. I didn’t quite get his meaning but he’s gone, he ain’t here.”

  Ahlen could see the nervy man was telling the truth. “Alright,” he said, turning on his heel and making for the door. “Sorry about the mess in here.”

  “That’s alright, sheriff. Quite alright,” the relief in the bartender’s voice was obvious as Ahlen pushed open the swing doors and stepped outside, holstering his Colt as he did so.

  Keb stood alone in the street, dusting off his Springfield rifle.

  “Our two alright?” Ahlen asked.

  Keb nodded. “I had them taken over to Doc’s place. He’s patching them up now.”

  Ahlen studied Keb’s torn and ripped clothes where bullets had passed through the cloth. “Does each of those bullet holes mark a miss?” he asked in disbelief.

  “That they do,” affirmed Keb. “Ruined my suit though. Look at this, I got more ventilation in here than a sodbuster’s sieve.”

  “You are one blessed fellow, Keb. I do believe I’ve never seen so many near misses.”

  Keb smiled, “Mama Hawkins didn’t raise no bad luck boys, my friend. The seventh child of seven sons. I was born under a lucky star right enough.

  “That a fact?”

  “Sure is, so what now? I take it Ty Fells ain’t at home?”

  Ahlen shook his head, “No, he ain’t here but I know where he’s headed.”

  “You going after him?”

  Ahlen nodded. “Will you do one thing for me?”

  “Sure,” Keb answered.

  “Will you head out to my place, see that the family and Annie are okay?”

  “I will, if that’s what you want. You don’t want no company where you’re going then?”

  “No, I’ll handle Ty on my own. It’s down to me and him now.”

  “As you say, Ahlen. As you say. I’ll go get my guitar and head on over to the homestead.”

  Ahlen picked up his ‘Yellow Boy’ and, reloading as he went, walked across to the livery stable. Once inside, he saddled his pony and slid the Winchester into the scabbard, then he checked the load in his Colt and when satisfied, he mounted up and rode out of town.

  He headed off the main trail and took parallel tracks through the woods, not wishing to pass his home and for the family to see him. From what the bartender said, he guessed that Ty would be holed up at the old sawmill, now turned slaughterhouse. Probably waiting for Tyrone to bring the captured members of the Best family, so he could hold them in preparation for forcing Ahlen’s hand in a confrontation he was assured to win. Little does he know, Ahlen thought, the odds had been evened out some now.

  As Ahlen broke cover from the wood, he came out onto a clearing edge, where the old sawmill stood before him on a slight rise. He looked up at the high bland planking of the walls looming over him and remembered the place as it had been and not as it was now. Much of the wood was weathered and split, with missing and fallen parts, some dangling by an odd nail or two. Old whipsaw blades still hung in evidence, their jagged teeth rusted and forgotten. The place looked in a sad state of repair, surrounded as it was by discarded machinery and baulks of timber lying scattered in decaying heaps. The stacked remains of the trees, left moldering away on the sloping approaches to the building where they been piled and untouched since earlier days, created a gloomy picture to the one Ahlen remembered.

  The building was a large rectangular structure, set apart on its own in the forest, with a pitched roof and only a few small windows set in the face to allow some lighting to reach inside. A shoulder high, recessed and wide service bay fronted the property with an opening set above, a fixed chain pulley still hanging in place over it. Outside, a large corral and narrow passageway build from posts and timber wended its way up to an entrance out of sight around the far side. It was the route the cattle followed on their last trip up into the slaughterhouse. Stale cow droppings lay in heaped piles on the corral floor and the stench of dried blood and offal quivered in the hot air. The hum of flies sounded in the silence that encompassed the structure as they massed in whirling clouds over the corral ordure.

  Ahlen drew his Winchester and laid it across his lap as he sat in the saddle and studied the place. It was quiet and oppressive, the heat of the sun trapped by the surrounding trees filling the clearing with dense air and the solid stink of death.

  Ahlen lifted the rifle and brought it up one-handed to rest the butt on his thigh, at the same time covering his nose and mouth for a moment, almost gagging at the foul smell from the slaughterhouse. He nudged the pony clear of the tree line and edged out into the sunlight.

  “You here, Ty?” he called, his voice sounding overly loud in the confined clearing.

  There was silence for a long moment, then Ty answered from somewhere in the shadows of the loading bay.

  “I take it Tyrone didn’t make it?”

  “He made it alright,” Ahlen said. “All the way to a pine box.”

  “That’s mighty inconvenient, Ahlen.”

  “You coming in or do we have to do this the hard way?”

  Ty stepped out onto the loading deck from the dark doorway at the rear, his face covered by shadow. He stood beside a heavy block of old machi
nery and held a rifle across his body; both hands letting it hang across mid-thigh.

  “For what?” he sneered. “I’ve committed no crime, far as I know.”

  Ahlen snorted a soft laugh. “I ain’t even going to bother answering that one.” With a gentle motion of his heels he urged the pony forward at a walk.

  “Best not come any closer, Ahlen,” warned Ty, raising the rifle.

  Ahlen ignored him and allowed the pony to climb the slope slowly.

  “I said no further.” Ty had an edge to his voice as he cocked the rifle, pointing it downhill at Ahlen.

  “It’s done, Ty. Give it up.”

  Ahlen spoke in a calm voice, angling his ‘Yellow Boy’ to cover his opponent whilst he freed his boots from the stirrups and guided the pony with his knees.

  “Can’t be. I’ll not give in to you nor nobody,” snarled Ty bitterly, and he pulled the trigger.

  Ahlen was already moving as the rifle cracked, the smack of sound echoing around the clearing. He launched himself to one side, his Winchester held high and firing one-handed as he fell through the air. The bullet raised a ringing ricochet from the old steam powered traction engine that stood next to Ty, whilst the saloonkeeper’s shot screamed past Ahlen’s head and out into the woods beyond.

  Ahlen hit the ground on his side, raising a dusty cloud as he did so, instantly he rolled away as his mount whirled away in panic and bolted, kicking up clouds of pale dust as it raced away. Quickly, Ahlen was up on one knee, already levering the Winchester without hesitation, he peppered the loading bay with a fast sequence of shot. Spumes of dust and splintered wood flew up from the heavy planks of the deck’s edge as the bullets struck. Ty had ducked behind the old machinery and appeared only momentarily to shoot at Ahlen’s vague figure, barely visible through the dust cloud raised by the pony.

  At the crouch, Ahlen continued to fire as he worked his way up the tamped wagon track that led towards the bay. His shots rang off the heavy metal of the old engine with a ringing noise that echoed around the clearing and mixed with the booming sounds of gunfire.