For the Brand

by Ralph Compton

  “Son of a bitch!” George Crowder blurted. “It’s him!”

  “Doesn’t he ever take that damn flour sack off?” Floyd Treach asked.

  The rider raised an arm and waved.

  “Did you see that?” Crowder sputtered. “Did you see what he did?”

  “The gall!” Bill Krebs said. “The unmitigated gall!”

  It looked to Willis as if the rider reached into a saddlebag. Something metal glinted in the sun.

  “He’s fixing to shoot us!” Harvey Stuckman cried. “Find cover boys!” He raised his reins to dash off.

  “Calm yourself,” Marshal Keever said. “That’s not a gun. Unless I miss my guess, it’s a spyglass. He’s watchin’ us through a telescope.”

  “He is?” Deputy Ivers said, and made a gesture.

  Someone laughed. Then young Timmy Easton rose in his stirrups and smiled and waved. The Flour Sack Kid waved back.

  “Son of a bitch!” George Crowder said. “Son of a bitch!”

  “The gall,” Bill Krebs said.

  Willis bowed his head and closed his eyes and thought of his mother. He had not thought about her in a long time. He pictured her in the rocking chair by the fire, whistling softly to herself as she knitted.

  “Well, he knows we’re after him,” Marshal Keever said, and sighed. “The circulars never said anything about a spyglass.”

  “He sure is a crafty devil,” Floyd Treach said. “Robbed my cousin once. I’d sure like to get my hands on him.” The town blacksmith, he had more muscles than all of them combined. At the annual Cottonwood Days, he would entertain by bending iron bars with his bare hands.

  Deputy Ivers rested a palm on his Smith & Wesson. “I’d like to put a slug into his head.”

  “That’s no way for a lawman to talk, Jared,” Marshal Keever scolded. “We’re not executioners. We apply the law to him the same as we would to anyone else.”

  “Sure, sure,” Deputy Ivers said. “But he’s worse than most. At least his luck can’t hold forever. Sooner or later he’ll make a mistake. Maybe kill someone and have the bounty doubled.” Ivers looked back at Willis. “If he hasn’t killed someone already.”

  “Enough jawin’,” Marshal Keever said. “Let’s try to catch the coyote while he’s bein’ so obligin’.”

  The others started off. Willis raised his head to follow. He saw the Kid, and for a few seconds he had the unmistakable impression the spyglass was fixed on him and solely on him. He froze, and the Kid raised an arm and waved again. Willis was willing to bet that under that flour sack the Kid wore a mocking smile. Damn him, he thought. Damn him to hell.

  The posse rode hard but when they reached the ridge the Flour Sack Kid was gone. The Appaloosa’s tracks led on into the tall timber.

  “We’ll never catch him,” Harvey Stuckman said.

  “You just want to get back to your butcher shop,” Deputy Ivers responded.

  “Of course I do,” Stuckman snapped. “I don’t make money traipsing all over creation after a will-o’-the-wisp. The Kid won’t ever be caught so long as he has that horse of his.”

  “I’d like to have me a fine animal like his,” Timmy Easton said enviously. “It sure would impress the ladies.”

  “So does takin’ a bath once a week,” Harvey Stuckman said, “but as I told my wife, I’ll be hanged if I’ll risk my health just to wash off a little blood.”

  The timber closed around them—firs so high, the sunlight could not reach the forest floor, and firs so close together, there was barely space for their horses to thread through. Silence prevailed, an unnatural silence, where there should be birds and squirrels and other wildlife.

  “I don’t like this,” George Crowder said. “He could be anywhere.”

  Harvey Stuckman was nervously glancing from side to side. “Grizzlies live up here. The last thing I want is to run into a grizzly.”

  “You worry too much,” Deputy Ivers said.

  “Hush, all of you!” Marshal Keever commanded. “This is a manhunt, not a church social.”

  Willis was grateful. Their jabber annoyed him. He had a lot on his mind and he could not work it out with all the distractions. Unlike the rest, he was not worried about the Flour Sack Kid shooting them, especially now that the Kid knew he was along.

  The timber went on and on. Most of the others were on edge but not Willis. He was actually beginning to enjoy being on horseback when they came to a clearing and Marshal Keever reined up and declared, “What in the world?”

  In the center of the clearing a length of fairly straight tree limb had been stuck into the ground. The top had been split, probably with a knife, and a piece of paper wedged into the split. Arranged around the base of the stick were ten pieces of jerky.

  Keever rode over and climbed down. He plucked the paper from the stick, read what had been written, and chuckled. “He has sand. I’ll give him that.”

  “What does it say?” Abe Tyler asked.

  “See for yourself.”

  The paper was passed from man to man. Some laughed. Some swore. Willis was the last to read it.

  Figured you boys might be hungry,

  The Flour Sack Kid

  “The gall,” Bill Krebs said.

  “Too bad he didn’t leave us some whiskey to wash it down,” Timmy Easton said, helping himself to a piece.

  “How do you know it’s not poisoned?” Harvey Stuckman asked.

  Bill grinned and took a bite. “Harve, you’re a caution.”

  Everyone else dismounted. Abe Tyler picked up two pieces and brought one over to Willis. “Here’s yours.”

  “No,” Willis said. “You eat it.” He would not touch anything the Kid left for them even if he were starving.

  “Are you sure?” Abe asked, and when Willis nodded, he shrugged and stuck one of the pieces in a pocket. “Quite the character, this Flour Sack Kid. Ever wonder why he decided to wear a flour sack instead of a bandanna like most badmen?”

  “Maybe his ma did a lot of bakin’ and sold pies and cakes to folks,” Willis said. “Maybe she used a lot of flour and made him tote it home when he was little and it got so he hated flour and flour sacks. Maybe he figures it’s his notion of a joke.” Willis stopped, fearing he had said too much.

  “Could be,” Abe said slowly, regarding him quizzically. “Takes an imagination to come up with that.”

  Ted Yost was making for the trees. “Don’t leave without me,” he said. “I need to answer the call of nature.”

  As soon as the bank clerk was out of earshot, Harvey Stuckman said, “I’m glad my bladder isn’t as weak as his. He can hardly ride five miles without having to moisten the landscape.”

  “You shouldn’t poke fun at a condition a man has no control over,” Abe Tyler chided. “That’s as bad as poking fun at a cripple.”

  Willis was aware of the glances he received but he pretended he did not notice and turned away. His bad knee was paining him but he refused to adjust the brace. He would wait until later when he was alone.

  “What if we don’t catch up to the Kid today?” Floyd Treach asked Keever. “I can’t afford to be away from my shop for much longer.”

  “My wife won’t take kindly to me being gone, either,” Harvey Stuckman complained. “She can’t handle a cleaver like I can.”

  “As a posse we’d have made a good sewin’ bee,” Timmy Easton said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Stuckman demanded.

  “It means some of you gents act like biddy hens,” Timmy Easton replied. “When you’re not gripin’, you fret about takin’ a bullet.”

  Stuckman bristled and shook his fist at the cowboy. “Bite your tongue! You’re barely old enough to shave, yet you insult your betters. I have half a mind to pound some respect into you.”

  Abe Tyler had been talking to Marshal Keever but now he advanced on the butcher. “That’s enough of that kind of talk, Harve. Tim rides for me and I won’t have him manhandled by you or anyone else.”

  “Thank you, Mr.
Tyler,” Timmy said, “but I can fight my own fights.” Spurs jangling, he hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and brazenly sauntered past Stuckman and over to Willis. “The nerve of some folks, huh?”

  “The nerve,” Willis agreed.

  “Ain’t seen you in ages, Lander,” the young cowboy said. “How is it Abe pried you out of your hidey hole?”

  “He came up to tell me about the sale.” Willis had only ever talked to the young puncher two or three times. Easton joined the Bar T a year ago after a stint with an outfit in Oklahoma.

  “How do you feel about workin’ for a female? I can’t make up my mind whether I should stick or find me a ranch where a petticoat’s not in charge.”

  “What do the others say?”

  Easton nonchalantly pushed his wide-brimmed hat back on his curly mop of hair. “The other night at the bunkhouse we took a vote. Half are for stayin’. Half are for ridin’ the grub line and maybe rustlin’ up work elsewhere.”

  Willis thought of something. “You like to spend a lot of time in town, as I recollect. Were you there when the Kid robbed the general store?”

  “Sure was. I had some time off, so I went in to bend my elbow and cogitate on the sale. I had more than I should, and somehow or other Mabel ended up invitin’ me to her place after she got off.”

  Willis suppressed a grin. Mabel Kline had been at the Cottonwood Saloon longer than any of the other girls. Sweet and friendly, she had a nice smile and weighed almost as much as his horse.

  “I woke up to her snorin’ so loud, she shook the walls,” Timmy Easton continued. “I picked up my boots and snuck on out, and wouldn’t you know it? I wasn’t hardly down the stairs when the marshal corralled me to join his posse. Five minutes more and he’d have missed me and I’d be enjoyin’ some coffin varnish along about now.”

  “Mabel will be mad you left without sayin’ goodbye,” Willis said. “She likes a little fun in the mornin’.”

  “How would you know that?” Timmy Easton asked with a smirk.

  “So I’ve heard tell.” Willis was going to say more but just then the undergrowth rustled and out stepped Yost, the bank clerk, with his hands in the air and a dumbfounded look on his face. Yost was as pale as the flour sack worn by the man behind him, who held a cocked revolver to Yost’s head.

  “Howdy, gents,” the Flour Sack Kid greeted them, his words muffled by the sack. “Let’s not do anythin’ hasty, hear, or your friend will have a new ear hole.”

  Everyone turned to marble. Then Deputy Ivers swore and stabbed for his pistol but Marshal Keever was next to him and gripped his wrist before Ivers could clear leather.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doin’? Do you want Yost dead?”

  “But it’s the Kid!” Ivers protested.

  “That’s the spirit,” the Flour Sack Kid said. He had cut large holes for his eyes, which were as green as the surrounding pines, and holes for his ears, as well, through which tufts of black hair poked. “Now I’d take it kindly if all of you would shed your hardware. Nice and slow, if you don’t mind.”

  “Like hell I will,” Deputy Ivers growled.

  “Do it,” Marshal Keevers said, already unbuckling his gun belt. To the Kid he said, “I’ve got to hand it to you. The jerky was a nice touch. Made us let down our guard.”

  “It was supposed to,” the Kid said glibly, then wagged his black-handled Colts at Harvey Stuckman and Floyd Treach. “What’s the delay? Are you hard of hearin’? Or is it you don’t mind if I blow windows in this greenhorn’s skull?”

  Glares and muttered oaths accompanied the relinquishing of revolvers. Willis was last to unbuckle his belt and lower it to the grass. He could tell the Kid was staring at him and he burned with resentment.

  “There? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” The Kid moved to the left so he had a clear shot at all of them. “Now I want you gents to turn around and take ten paces and stop with your arms over your heads.”

  “What the hell for?” Deputy Ivers demanded. “So you can shoot us in the back?”

  A chuckle fluttered from the flour sack. “When the Good Lord made peckerwoods, you must have been first in line. If I’d wanted to bed all of you down, I could have bushwhacked you. Picked off a few at a time until none were left.”

  “I don’t trust you,” Ivers said.

  The eyes in the flour sack shifted to Marshal Keever. “Can’t you talk some sense into your pup? I’m tryin’ to be reasonable but he’s makin’ it mighty hard.” His left hand dropped to his side and he drew his other black-handled Colt. “Need I add I’m not the most patient cuss alive?”

  “Sooner or later you’ll be caught or be bucked out in blood,” Marshal Keever told him. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “We all of us die,” the Kid said. “Now do as I say, or so help me I’ll shoot each of you in the knee and you’ll have to limp everywhere like Lander, there.”

  Willis was in motion before he could stop himself. He limped two steps, then halted when the twin muzzles of the Colts swung toward him. “You had no call to say that.”

  The shoulders under the flour sack rose and fell. “And you’re awful touchy. Comes from bein’ too proud, I reckon.”

  A nigh-overpowering urge came over Willis to wrap his fingers around the Kid’s throat and squeeze until the skin under the sack turned purple. “You’re a fine one to talk about pride, mister.”

  “Maybe so,” the Kid allowed, “but I’m the one holdin’ two pistols and you’re unarmed. So I wouldn’t prod, were I you.”

  “Killin’ innocents now?” Willis asked.

  “I haven’t killed anyone since the war, and you—” The Kid caught himself and an amused gleam came into his green eyes. “Nicely done. But I don’t have time for your high-and-mighty judgments. Do as I’ve told you and no one will be hurt.”

  “Your luck can’t hold forever,” Willis echoed the sentiments expressed by Deputy Ivers earlier.

  “That’s where we think different,” the Kid said.

  “The way I see it, a man makes his own luck. If he’s careful, he can go as long as he pleases.”

  “Name me an outlaw yet who hasn’t been hung or shot?” Willis countered, the old heat coursing through his veins. “Name me one who stole enough money to live carefree as a bluebird the rest of their days?”

  The Kid did no such thing. Instead he thumbed back the hammers to his Colts and announced, “I’ve got twelve pills in these wheels and there’s only ten of you. So what will it be?”

  Marshal Keever was the first to turn and raise his arm and take the required ten strides. As he did he said, “You’ve got the upper hand for now, Kid, but if you hang around long enough, it will be me who gets the drop on you and your robbin’ days will be over.”

  “Just remember,” the Kid said, “when you corner a wolf, it fights back.”

  “A wolf?” Deputy Ivers scoffed. “You’re too generous. You’re nothin’ but a mangy coyote who likes to hear himself flap his gums.”

  The Flour Sack Kid was still for all of ten seconds. Then he chuckled again, and said with an edge to his tone, “If I was half as vicious as some folks say I am, I’d bed you down where you stand. But you’re in luck today. Because I’m goin’ to let you live. That is, if you don’t insult me again.”

  Ivers opened his mouth to respond but Marshal Keever was quicker. “Jared isn’t goin’ to insult anyone, are you, Jared? You’re to do exactly as the Kid tells your or I’ll have your badge when we get back.”

  Ivers turned his spite from the Kid to the marshal. “I can’t believe you would side with the likes of him against your own deputy.”

  “There’s more to this world than you,” Marshal Keever informed him. “If the Kid were to throw lead, it could be Treach or Yost or Abe or Stuckman or somebody else takes a bullet.” He placed a hand on Ivers’ shoulder. “A good lawman always thinks of others before he thinks of himself.”

  Since most of the rest had turned and raised their arms, Willis began to do t
he same and was surprised when the Flour Sack Kid said, “Not you, limpy. Stay right where you are.”

  Like a line of condemned men walking to the gallows, the other nine posse members took the required ten paces. Several looked over their shoulders but most gazed straight ahead to avoid tempting fate.

  The Flour Sack Kid walked up to Willis and said so softly that no one else could possibly overhear, “It’s been a while.”

  “Not long enough.”

  “Aren’t you even a tiny bit happy to see me? I’m happy to see you. Happier than I’ve been since I took to the owlhoot trail.”

  “You made the choice,” Willis refused to show sympathy.

  “You’re still upset, by God,” the Kid whispered. “But you’ve always been a marvel at holdin’ a grudge. You can never forgive and forget, can you? Between the two of us, when it comes to flaws, you have me beat.”

  “Leave before they suspect,” Willis said, and was spiked by dread when Deputy Ivers called out.

  “What in God’s name are you two jawin’ about? If we didn’t know better, we’d think you were in cahoots.”

  “Thanks,” Willis whispered.

  The Flour Sack Kid sidled to the right and said to Ivers, “In cahoots with a cripple? I couldn’t spend more than five minutes with someone who goes around feelin’ sorry for himelf all the time without blowin’ his brains out.”

  Abe Tyler came to Willis’ defense. “I’ll thank you not to call Mr. Lander a cripple. He’s been in my employ for years, and he lost the use of his knee breaking a horse for me. He has my highest respect. I won’t see him humbled.”

  “Well now,” the Kid said, “it’s nice someone thinks so highly of him since he doesn’t think highly of himself. But you can sheath your horns, mister. I’d as soon stomp a puppy to death as pick on a cripple.”

  “Quit sayin’ that,” Willis warned.

  But the Kid wasn’t listening. He was backing toward their horses. “Any requests, gents? Anythin’ besides your canteens I can leave you so the walk back is easier?”

  “You are stranding us afoot?” Harvey Stuckman blurted.