“I ain’t gonna hole up here,” Perley said. “I’m plannin’ to keep out of sight out there in the dark and wait for them to come in to catch us all asleep. I’m gonna build that fire up a little, so I can get a good look at ’em when they do.”
“That’s an old trick, settin’ your camp up to make somebody think you’re in there sleepin’. You reckon they’re dumb enough to take the bait?”
“I don’t know,” Perley answered, “but I think since we ain’t gonna lay any dummy bedrolls around the fire, he might think we’re all sleepin’ in the wagons, or under them.”
Possum scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I still think you need help.”
“I could surely use some, but we can’t take the chance to leave those women and kids unprotected,” Perley responded, “and they’ll have a lot better chance with two of you to protect ’em. ’Course, that’s if Cantrell and his men get by me and come lookin’ for you. But I’ll guarantee you, all three ain’t gonna get by me.”
Possum paused to take a hard look at the young man who had volunteered to leave a cattle drive to help Emma and him get to Texas. And now, he was willingly risking his life for them once more. Maybe his name should be spelled like the Pearly Gates in the Good Book. “All right, partner, we’ll take care of ’em. You just be sure you don’t get yourself in a corner you can’t get out of.”
* * *
When everybody was ready to go, each person carried the blankets they were going to sleep in. Perley stood by the corner of Tom’s wagon and watched them follow Possum, who was holding a lantern. Possum confessed that, without the lantern, he would be unable to find his way through the bushes on the path Perley had taken in his underwear. To Perley, standing by the wagon, they resembled a giant reptile, snaking its way through the bushes and trees. When he could no longer follow the light, he announced. “Well, it’s time to see what we can do to get ready for Cantrell’s visit.”
The first thing he did was to make sure he carried enough ammunition for his Colt .44 and his Winchester 73. Then he dragged a piece of a large log over and left it up against the wheel of the wagon, hoping it would look like it was placed there for cover. After he put more wood on the fire to make sure it would burn for a long while, he went to look for the help he had told Possum he could surely use. It couldn’t hurt to have another lookout to watch one end of the camp while he watched the other. Even in the darkness of the trees, he went right to the spot, thanks to the trail Buck had blazed the day before. The moon was now high enough to afford little shafts of light through the branches of the trees, which also helped him see his way.
“Well, good evenin’ to ya,” he greeted him. “I’m mighty glad to see you’re still hangin’ around.” He paused for a moment to look closely at the body of Jack Pitt. “You don’t seem to be much worse off than yesterday. I was afraid the buzzards mighta found you before now.” Pitt had been dead long enough for full rigor mortis to set in, rendering him stiff as a board and not very cooperative. Perley hoped that the body might have begun to relax again after this much time had passed, but it was still in the same position he had left it. He took a deep breath and resigned himself to the task facing him.
The only way to find out if the stiffness had left the body was to grab the legs and arms and see if they were easily moved. He found that they were not, but he wasn’t inclined to give up, so he kept bending and pulling until, to his surprise, Pitt’s limbs gradually became more bendable, at least enough to satisfy his purposes. When he found that he could now pose him, he looked around for the best place to position him. He decided on a large stump from a tree that had evidently grown taller than his brothers and was consequently struck by lightning. By propping Pitt against the stump, he would have a patch of moonlight to highlight him. So he took hold of Pitt’s feet and started dragging him toward the stump. “Damn,” he grunted, “you’re a big man. You didn’t look that hard to move when Buck dragged you over here.” He wanted him in a sitting position, so when he got him to the stump, he turned him around and started working on bending him in the hips. That seemed to work, so he got behind the stump and pulled him until his back was against it. That accomplished, he sought to keep the corpse in that sitting position. He found that he could do this by spreading Pitt’s legs wide, stabilizing him like a tripod. Satisfied with his sentry, he said, “You got a chance to do something for the decent folks for a change, so do a good job.” He started back toward the other side of their camp where he would now find the best spot he could to await whatever came. As he left the stump behind him, he muttered, “I hope to hell I don’t ever have to do that again for the rest of my life.”
* * *
“Wake up, Harley!” Branch Cantrell kicked the bottom of Harley’s boot. “It’s time to take a little ride.” He turned to knock the hat off Pete Walker’s head. “Get up, Pete, we’re wastin’ time!”
“What time is it?” Harley asked. “I just got to sleepin’ good.”
“You been snorin’ like a rootin’ hog for over two hours,” Cantrell said. “After this night’s over, you can lay in bed a month if you want to. Come on, we gotta ride.”
Knowing the wagons they were going after could not have gotten very far from Butcher Bottom, their plan was simple. Ride until they struck their camp, and when they did, jump them before they knew what hit them. Cantrell figured they would come upon their camp sometime between now, midnight, and two o’clock in the morning. He based his estimate on the time that Jeremy Tuck had seen the two wagons and the gunman pass by his store. He and his men had spent much of the early evening getting their packhorses ready with all the meager possessions they kept in the small cabin they shared. Their intention was to never return to Raymond Butcher’s community, convinced as they were that there were two wagonloads of valuables within their reach, plus horses and tack to go with them. It was a chance to make a score that would set them up for a while.
With Cantrell’s constant badgering, the packhorses were loaded and their personal horses saddled, and as a final farewell gesture to Raymond Butcher, Cantrell kicked the small iron stove over. He paused to watch the burning coals scatter on the floor before going out the door and climbing on his horse. There was no one awake at Jeremy Tuck’s store to see the three dark riders pass by, leading three packhorses, on the road south along the Brazos.
* * *
As Cantrell had figured, it didn’t take them long to catch up to the wagons. Pete was the first to spot the camp. “There!” he exclaimed and pointed to a faint glow of firelight in the trees. “Yonder it is, right where the river starts to take that sharp bend!”
“You were right, Branch,” Harley said. “They didn’t get far. We coulda rode after ’em just as soon as we found out they was gone.”
“That’s right, dummy,” Cantrell mocked. “Then they coulda seen us comin’ and we’da got a chance to see if he’s as good with a rifle as he is with a handgun.”
“Oh . . .” Harley exhaled slowly. “I didn’t think about that.” He favored Cantrell with a wide smile. “I reckon that’s why you’re the boss and I ain’t.”
“One of the reasons,” Cantrell came back sarcastically. “Now I wanna take a good look at that camp before we pull a trigger. Come on.” He led them about seventy-five yards south of the glow in the trees before cutting back toward the riverbank. They had not gone far when they heard a horse whinny. Cantrell signaled them to halt and dismount. Standing in the darkness of the trees, it was hard to tell at first where the sound had come from, but it was apparent that it was between them and the fire glow they were cautiously approaching. Once again, Pete’s sharp eyes located the source of the whinny.
“I see ’em,” he whispered. “It’s their horses, all of ’em, it looks like, in a little openin’ ahead.”
“You sure?” Cantrell asked, and when Pete said he was, Cantrell told them to tie their horses there and continue on foot. Harley, decidedly the best at handling horses, crept ahead of Cantrell and Pete to calm
the horses. Upon reaching the horses, Cantrell felt impelled to remark. “Mighty nice of ’em, weren’t it, leavin’ all their horses tied up here, waitin’ for us?” He was already thinking about how much they could sell the horses for. His mind was brought back to the job at hand when he heard Harley’s forced whisper.
“Yonder they are!” He said and pointed to the two wagons parked side by side and the fire they had been homing on between them. He looked back and grinned when his partners joined him. “Peaceful as can be.”
Cantrell stared at the camp between the wagons for a long moment. “Yeah, it’s peaceful, all right, but I don’t see no bedrolls around that fire.”
They all stared hard at the wagons for a while then until Pete spoke. “Most likely they’re all sleepin’ under the wagons.” His eye was caught then by the short piece of log by one of the wagons. “Reckon what they got that log up against that one wheel for?”
“Most likely for protection for somebody to shoot from behind,” Cantrell said. “I bet you’re right, they’re sleepin’ under the wagons. Maybe the women and children are sleepin’ in the wagons.”
His comment triggered the return of a discussion they had before starting out that night. Harley, being the most uneasy about the matter, brought it up again. “You still ain’t plannin’ on killin ’em all, right? You’ll leave the women and the children?”
Impatient with the simpleton’s weak streak when it came to the two little girls, Cantrell growled, “Damn it, Harley, we’ve got to be smart about this. If we don’t leave nobody alive, we don’t leave nobody to tell. It ain’t no different shootin’ women and children than it is shootin’ men, and you don’t have no problem with that. But you better be damn sure you’re with us on this deal. Me and Pete are gonna make sure every livin’ soul in that camp is dead when we leave here. So you make up your mind before we start shootin’, else it’s just gonna be a two-way split between me and Pete.”
Pete spoke up then. “Harley, it ain’t no different from knockin’ newborn puppies in the head when you don’t wanna raise all of ’em. Come to think of it, it’ll just be mercy killin’s, ’cause after we kill all their menfolk, them young’uns would be better off dead.”
Harley hesitated a moment to think about it. “When you put it that way, I reckon you’re right.”
That settled, Cantrell gave them instructions for the assault upon the wagons. He decided it best if he worked in a little closer from this end of the camp, and the two of them should circle around to come up and take positions on the other end—Harley, since he could hoot like an owl, and Pete to make sure Harley didn’t go soft on the little girls. He told Harley to hoot when they got in position and were ready to shoot. “I want everybody to cut down on them at the same time, so when I hear your signal, I’ll know you’re ready to shoot. Then you wait for my shot, and when you hear it, we’ll open up on those two wagons and wipe out anybody under ’em. That’s plain enough, ain’t it?” When they both nodded, he said, “Let’s get goin’ then.”
It was a good twenty minutes before Pete and Harley completed a wide circle around the camp, planning to creep in a little closer to the wagons. Suddenly, Pete grabbed Harley’s arm and pulled him down on one knee beside him. “There’s a lookout! We damn near walked right out in front of him.”
“Did he see us?” Harley rasped.
“If he did, he ain’t actin’ like it. He ain’t moved a hair, just settin’ there against that stump.” They remained on a knee, watching the lookout for a few minutes, undecided what to do. Ideally, they needed to advance a little closer to the camp to be able to pour the storm of lead under the wagons that Cantrell wanted. “I don’t think he’s seen us,” Pete said. “If he had, he wouldn’t just set there like that. He’d be gettin’ his ass around on the other side of that stump.”
“You’re right,” Harley said. “He don’t even know we’re here.”
“Let’s circle around and come up from behind him,” Pete suggested. “We’ll keep an eye on him to make sure he don’t move before we get a little closer to those wagons. The dumb horse’s ass don’t even know we can see him settin’ right there in the moonlight.” Harley nodded his agreement. “When we hear Branch’s shot, we’ll put a bullet into the lookout first thing. Then we can pour it on the rest of ’em.”
“You reckon that’s that hired gun that shot Scofield?” Harley whispered as they moved cautiously from one tree to the next.
“I can’t tell,” Pete replied and squinted his eyes in an effort to sharpen his vision. “He almost looks bigger settin’ there in the moonlight, but I hope it’s him, ’cause he’s gonna get the first bullet when Branch starts the show.”
“He’s gonna get the first two bullets,” Harley whispered, his eyes locked on the man sitting next to the stump. His gaze captured, he didn’t notice that he was about to step on a small dead branch lying across a small gulley formed by rain runoff. Both men jumped when the branch snapped, sounding as loud as a gunshot in the still trees of the riverbank. It happened that Pitt’s body, still coming out of the full stage of rigor mortis, relaxed to the point where it keeled over sideways at almost the same moment. “He’s tryin’ to crawl behind the stump!” Harley exclaimed, giving no thought to the unhurried slide of the body as it yielded to gravity. Both men opened up with their rifles, both finding the target.
“He ain’t crawlin’ no more,” Pete announced confidently. “Let’s get to work on them wagons.” Wasting no more time, they hurried to move in closer. When they reached a gully no more than forty yards from the two wagons, they scrambled into it and began to fire in earnest at the deserted campsite.
Their barrage of rifle fire stunned two other men hiding out in the thick growth of trees along the riverbank. “What the hell?” Cantrell blurted. “They started before I signaled!” Left with no choice, he moved up to a point already decided upon, which was closer to the wagons. As soon as he reached the log he had already selected, he started to throw shot after shot into the camp.
Closer to the north end of the camp and barely forty yards from Harley and Pete, Perley spotted the muzzle blasts coming from a gully to his right. He quickly moved through the trees until he reached a spot where he could look straight down the gully and see both shooters, side by side. He hesitated only a moment to decide the right or wrong of it, then pulled the trigger. Harley yelled and jumped straight up when the bullet struck him, then collapsed. Startled, Pete turned to see what had happened, in time to be met with Perley’s second shot in the center of his chest. He collapsed on top of Harley. When he was certain both rifles were silenced, Perley began to make his way back through the trees toward the southern end of the camp.
As quickly as he emptied the magazine on his rifle, Cantrell reloaded and continued to crank shot after shot into the unresponsive camp until he realized that he was doing all the shooting. There were no more shots coming from the other end of the camp, and there were no sounds of any kind coming from the wagons, no return shots, no cries of pain or fear, nothing. Only then did it occur to him that he was firing into a deserted camp. Panic quickly replaced his heartless desire to kill. If there was no one in the camp, where were they? Behind him? It was plain to him that Harley and Pete were dead, and he was in mortal danger himself. There were no thoughts of standing to fight. He couldn’t even see where they might be coming from in the darkness of the riverbank. He could feel his throat tightening, as if he was choking on his fear. And he knew then he had to get to the horses before they found them. To run was the only thought on his mind, so he scrambled up from the log he had used for cover and ran, crashing recklessly through the bushes and brush, expecting to hear the snap of a bullet at any second.
When he reached the spot where the horses were left, he found them gone. Already panting for breath, he turned around and around, thinking to see his blue roan gelding standing somewhere close by, but there was no sign of a horse. Thinking he must have gotten lost in the darkness, he looked frantically from side
to side. “You lookin’ for horses?” The voice came from behind him. Terrified, he spun around, drawing his .44 as he turned, and put a bullet into the ground at his feet before he sank to his knees. When he tried to raise his arm again, Perley’s second shot slammed into his chest.
Perley stood over the body for a few moments to make sure Cantrell was dead, and when he was sure, he took the reins of the horses he had found. By nature, it never set well on his mind whenever he was faced with an occasion to kill a man, even one as evil as Branch Ca ntrell. But he had learned to live with it, since it seemed that no matter where he went, or what he was doing, his path seemed to somehow cross someone’s path that needed killing. “From now on, Lord, would you mind sending these fellows somewhere else?” He shook his head slowly and started walking back to the camp, leading the horses. When he got to the horses on the rope, he pulled the saddles and packs off before tying the new horses to the rope.
CHAPTER 8
Both Possum and Tom had stayed awake all evening and well into the morning, so they were already awake when they heard the shooting around the bend of the river. It was only a matter of minutes before everyone else was awake as well, with the exception of Emma’s baby and four-year-old Melva. Immediately frightened, both women were inclined to take their children and run down the river to hide. “I think we’d best stay right here,” Possum advised. “Perley’s right. This is a good place to take cover. You women take the children and stay down behind that bluff. Me and Tom will stay right here where we can see anybody coming outta the trees, and they’re gonna have to come across about sixty feet of open ground to get to this bank. That all right with you, Tom?” Tom said that it was, so Emma and Rachael took the girls and baby Daniel, and huddled them all up under the bluff Possum had indicated. They all went eagerly with the exception of Melva, who fussed and complained that she wanted to stay there in her blanket and sleep.
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