by Ralph Cotton
“I couldn’t agree more,” Abner Webb said quickly. “Listen to the teacher, Will. He’s talking good sense.”
“Can’t you see how bad this whole town is suffering, Mr. Summers?” Sherman Dahl continued, his voice calm and level. “Of course it wasn’t your fault what happened here. Everybody will realize that once they’ve had time to think. Right, Mr. Collingsworth?” He turned his eyes evenly to Louis Collingsworth then back to Will Summers.
“All right,” said Collingsworth. “Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight.” He wiped a hand across his forehead. “This is a terrible damn thing to have happen to a good bunch of people. I admit it might have us all a little stunned, not thinking clearly.”
Seeing the townsmen ease back at the sound of Collingsworth’s words, Summers lowered the shotgun barrel an inch. He looked back at the face of the young schoolmaster, not quite sure what he saw in the man’s eyes. He started to ask Sherman Dahl what his intentions had been with the big army Colt. But before he got a chance to speak, a whip cracked from the far end of the dirt street. All eyes turned toward the sound of the southern stage from Greely as it rumbled forward in a rise of dust.
“He’s in a powerful big hurry,” said Abner Webb, relieved that Summers’ and the townsmen’s attention had been diverted away from one another.
“Yeah,” said Will Summers. “Reckon he ran into the Peltrys out there?” As he watched the stagecoach driver pull back on the brake lever with all his weight and slide the big coach to a halt, Summers slid a glance at the schoolmaster, still wondering how far the young man would have gone with the big Colt.
“Let’s see what Matthew’s so excited about,” said Abner Webb, starting forward as the old stagecoach driver dropped down from his seat and slung open the stagecoach doors.
“Oh Lord!” said Carl Margood, seeing the stage driver pull Sheriff Hastings from the coach and lower him to the ground.
“Somebody get the doctor!” Matthew Bowden shouted out to the townsmen. “Hastings is about done for!”
“Damn, what a day,” Will Summers said, moving forward yet staying a few steps behind the rest of the men. A few feet away from Will Summers, Sherman Dahl walked along at the same pace, staying parallel, not allowing Summers to drop back behind him. What was the story on this young schoolmaster? Summers asked himself.
The door to Dr. Silas Blayton’s office stood wide open, the crowd of townsmen having filled the waiting room and spread out along the boardwalk and into the street. Cigar smoke hung thick and low in a blue-gray cloud. The doctor fanned a hand back and forth as if parting a way for himself when he stepped out of the door to his treatment room and closed it behind him. Deputy Abner Webb moved forward, holding his hat in his hand and nervously fidgeting with the battered brim. “Well, is he going to make it, Doc?” he asked in a hushed voice. Will Summers stood three feet back, listening, still keeping a cautious eye on the crowd.
“It’s too soon to tell,” said Dr. Blayton, shaking his bald head. “He’s taken two bullets; one barely missed his heart. He’s lost a dangerous amount of blood.”
“Can I see him?” asked Webb, moving a step closer to the door as he asked.
Dr. Blayton raised a hand, stopping him. “Not now. He needs to rest some…get some blood back in his system.”
“But I got to find out what happened to him, Doc!” Webb protested. “I need to hear what he wants to do about raising a posse!”
“I can tell you the whole story, Deputy,” said Doc Blayton, maneuvering Webb back from the door. “Sheriff Hastings told me everything.” He looked around at all the anxious faces, then back to Abner Webb. “The sheriff ran into the Peltrys on his way back from Little Dog Creek. Goose Peltry shot him. They took his horse and everything else he had…left him for dead.” Doc Blayton looked back and forth at the eyes staring at him, then added, “Everybody go home now. If you want to do something for the sheriff, you might think about praying for him.” He started to turn and go back inside the treatment room.
“Wait a minute, Doc!” said Abner Webb. “Did he give you any instructions for me? I need to know what to do here! Should I get on the Peltrys’ trail or what?”
“Don’t ask me,” said the old doctor. “That’s a matter for a lawman to decide.”
“Yeah,” said a voice full of contempt, “but where are we going to find a real lawman around here?”
Abner Webb snapped a harsh glare at the crowd. “All right, who said that?”
Before anyone could answer, Dr. Blayton gave Abner Webb a slight shove, getting him headed toward the front door. “I want this room cleared. Any discussing you need to do can be done on the boardwalk. I’ll keep everybody posted on how the sheriff’s doing.”
As the men began filing out onto the boardwalk, Abner Webb looked back over his shoulder at the door to the treatment room, not knowing what to do next. As he hesitated, Will Summers coaxed him forward. “Come on, Deputy. The sheriff can’t help you now.”
Outside on the boardwalk, a skinny young cowboy slid down from his saddle holding a lead rope to a string of five dusty horses. Under one arm he carried three rifles wrapped in a wool blanket. A few townsmen stepped to one side as the cowboy tied the lead rope to the hitch rail and bounded up onto the boardwalk. Looking past him at the five-horse string, Abner Webb said, “Doggone it, Bobby, is that all? Just five horses?”
“That’s all,” Bobby Dewitt replied. “Five horses, three rifles, two boxes of cartridges.” He handed the rifles over to Will Summers, who unwrapped them and tossed them out one at a time to the reaching hands of the townsmen. Two boxes of ammunition fell from the blanket, but eager hands snatched them up as soon as they hit the boardwalk. Bobby Dewitt slapped dust from his jacket with his gloved hand.
“McAllister sent everything he had,” said Bobby Dewitt. “He’s got his whole herd and crew off in the high grasslands. Said we’re welcome to more horses, but it’d be three days getting to them. The Big R spread said pretty much the same: offered to send you every man he’s got once they get back from their drive two weeks from now.”
“Two weeks!” shouted a voice from the crowded street. “Hell, they’ll be no need even looking for them in two weeks!”
“All right, men,” said Abner Webb. “I know we need more horses and guns.” His eyes swept across the crowd and saw that many of the men were now wearing old pistols they had scraped up from their homes or barns. “But before you all go flying off the—”
“What we need is somebody who can take charge,” Miles Michaels, the blacksmith, interrupted. “All we’ve seen Abner Webb do is take advantage!”
Deputy Abner Webb rubbed his temples as if suffering from a headache. Then he looked out from the boardwalk at the angry faces. “All right, we’ve only got five horses. Anybody got any idea how we’re going to get by with five horses? Any of you want to join a walking posse?”
“That polecat has horses!” shouted Ned Trent with a nasal twang, his nose swollen to twice its normal size. “Make him give them up!”
“You don’t learn easily, do you, Trent?” said Will Summers, stepping to the edge of the boardwalk as Abner Webb grabbed his arm and held him back.
Trent touched a wet rag to his broken nose as he shied back a step. “In an emergency situation, I say the town can confiscate a man’s horses for its own use.”
“Watch me break your nose again,” Summers said. But Abner Webb held him back as he replied to the crowd.
“Men, we’re not confiscating anybody’s horses.” He turned to Summers. “Will, how much will you take for those six horses?”
“It doesn’t matter how much I’ll take,” said Summers. “None of you have any money. The Peltrys cleaned everybody out.”
“Damn it! I plumb forgot.” Abner Webb let out a breath of exasperation. “All right, Will. Can you hold the town’s marker until we can round up enough money to pay you?”
“Nope.” Will Summers shook his head. “I’m strictly cash only, all sales final.”
Abner Webb stepped in close and said to Will Summers under his breath, “For God sakes, Will! These men are ready to tar and feather you. Can’t you bend a little? I’m trying to save your hide!”
“By taking my horses and giving me a marker? No thanks,” said Summers, keeping his own voice low between the two of them. “But don’t worry, Deputy. I’ve got an idea that’ll work out for both of us.”
“What kind of idea?” Webb asked warily.
“Come on,” said Summers. “Let’s go to the sheriff’s office, where we can talk in private.” He turned to the townsmen and said, “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us for just a few minutes, I believe we can work this out to everybody’s benefit.” He looked back and forth from one face to the next. “Meanwhile, decide among yourselves which ten of you are going to ride posse with us.” The townsmen looked at one another, then began to nod and comment among themselves.
“There now, Deputy,” Summers said to Abner Webb. “That’ll keep them busy for a while.” He offered a thin smile. “Long enough for us to work everything out.”
Chapter 4
In the sheriff’s office, under Will Summers’ urging, Deputy Abner Webb went to a wooden file cabinet standing in a corner and took out a folder full of wanted posters. When he handed the folder to Summers, the two stood looking down as Summers took out the posters and spread them across the worn wooden desk. “There, first one out of the pile,” said Summers, his finger pinning a rough, bearded face to the desk. Gilbert Metts, five hundred dollar reward…participation in bank robbery in the State of Texas.”
Summers shuffled the posters back and forth, then fingered another face. “Here is another one: one thousand dollar reward, dead or alive. I’m telling you, Deputy, this gang is money on the hoof if we play our cards right.” He started shuffling through the posters again.
“All right, I get the idea,” said Abner Webb, feeling a little foolish that he hadn’t already thought of this himself. “By the time you add it all up, the Peltry Gang could be worth, what, three or four thousand dollars?”
Will Summers just looked at him for a second, then said, “More like twelve or fourteen thousand, I’ll bet. I haven’t added it all up. But whatever it is, it’ll be more than enough to rebuild what the Peltrys burnt down here.”
“All right, Will. You don’t have to sell me on the idea. We go after the Peltry Gang, and any of them we find, we turn in for the reward.” He shrugged. “Sounds simple enough to me. You furnish the horses; we pay you for them when it’s over.”
Will Summers winced and raised a finger for emphasis. “See, right there is where I seem to lose you, Abner. I’m not providing horses unless there’s cash on the barrelhead. But on the other hand, I will provide half the transportation for this posse if you agree to split any reward money fifty-fifty.”
“Fifty-fifty? You’ve gone completely loco!” Abner Webb looked stunned by the proposition. “There’s no way the town will stand for that!”
“I don’t know why they won’t,” said Summers. “So far none of them have even thought about the rewards…. You neither, far as that goes.”
“But they would have, Will, or else I would have.” He shook his head. “It don’t even matter. The fact is, fifty-fifty is too damn high!”
“Not if you think about what you’re getting from me,” Summers responded quickly. “I’m not only providing the horses. I know some men near here who can come up with all the guns we need.”
“Gunrunners?” Abner Webb’s eyes widened.
“Never mind what they are,” Summers said, undaunted. “It’s what they can do for us right now that counts.” Without missing a beat, Summers continued. “I’ll also be acting as guide across the desert—some of the most dangerous country in the world.” He paused and studied the contemplative look on Abner Webb’s face for a second. Then he said in a lowered, more serious voice, “And since it’s just you and me here, let’s be honest, Deputy. Have you ever killed a man? Ever shot one? Ever even shot at one, for that matter?”
He watched Abner Webb’s expression as the deputy wrestled to come up with the answer. Webb started to lie but then thought better of it and let out a tense breath. “No, I haven’t.” He looked Will Summers up an down skeptically. “Have you?”
Summers looked all around the small office as if checking it before answering. Then he said, “Let’s put it this way, Deputy. It’s a whole lot different than shooting game: an elk, say, or a mule deer.”
Webb gave him a stare. “That’s no answer, Will.”
“Of course it is, if you listen close to what I’m saying,” Summers insisted. “It’s not something I can come right out and admit to a lawman.”
“Like hell,” said Webb. “You asked me, and I gave you an honest answer. You’re talking about leading a manhunt, so I’m asking you the same question. Yes or no. Have you ever killed a man?”
“We’re getting off the subject here,” said Summers. “The main thing is, I can—”
“I don’t think we’re getting off the subject at all,” Webb said, cutting him off. “You brought it up. You must’ve thought it meant something. You’re using it to bargain for half the reward money. So I’ve got a right to know. Have you ever killed anybody?” He folded his arms across his chest and waited for an answer.
“In Waco, three years ago,” said Summers, “I faced a man in the street. It was just him and me, and when he reached for his gun, all I could do—”
“Twenty percent of the reward,” Abner Webb said, cutting him off again.
“Twenty percent? One-fifth! Now you’re talking loco,” said Summers.
“I see you’re not going to give me a straight-out yes-or-no answer,” Webb said.
“I’m trying to answer you in a roundabout way,” said Summers, “only you’re too hardheaded to hear what I’m telling you.”
“I don’t listen to roundabout answers,” said Webb. “All they do is confuse things. I figure you never killed a man either, else you would have said so by now.”
“I don’t know how this killing part got so all-fired important all of a sudden,” said Summers. “But whether I have or not, I ain’t going into the desert and risking six of my horses for twenty percent of what might turn out to be nothing but a lot of cold nights sleeping on hard ground. No, sir.”
“Then let’s forget it,” said Webb. “I can’t sell this town on the idea of fifty percent. I won’t even try. They’re mad enough at me already.”
Summers cocked a shrewd eye. “Can you sell them on forty percent, providing ten percent goes to you? I’m talking about under the table from me, of course.”
Webb seemed to consider it. “I just might be able to…but strictly to get back what this town has lost. That’s my only reason for going along with it.”
“I understand,” said Summers. “Now get out there and pitch it to them, Deputy. We need to start making some time.”
“Let me ask you something first, Will.” Now Abner Webb cocked an eye. “Out there today, Moses Peltry said that if those horses belonged to you, it was just as well they didn’t take them. Said if they did, they’d have to fool with you for the next month or else blow your head off. What did he mean by that?”
“I would try to tell you, Deputy,” said Summers, “but I ain’t about to offer another roundabout answer, knowing how picky you are.”
“Just how well do you and the Peltrys know one another, Will?” Webb asked.
“I best take these along to keep score.” Ignoring the question, Summers reached down, swept up the wanted posters, folded them and stuffed them inside his shirt. “While you convince the good townsfolk, I’ll just slip out the back door, go on over to the livery barn and see if there’s any grain to take with us for the horses.”
Abner Webb didn’t reveal Will Summers’ proposition to the townsmen all at once. Instead, he told them a little at a time and checked on their reaction as he went. First he told them the part about the reward money, which Summers had a
ssured him would be well over ten thousand dollars for the entire Peltry Gang. When he’d finished telling them, the townsmen spoke in a hushed whisper among themselves as Webb stood on the boardwalk and looked back and forth across their faces. After a moment of staring toward the pile of charred rubble that used to be his mercantile store, Ned Trent took a wet rag from his broken nose and said, “Never thought I’d be saying this about Will Summers…but God bless him after all!”
A murmur of agreement came up from the crowd. But then Sherman Dahl asked, “Are you saying that Summers is going to let us use his horses and provide us with firearms, then we deduct the cost of everything from the reward money once we collect it?”
Abner Webb cleared his throat. “Well, not exactly, although that was what I figured at first. But it turns out Will Summers knows his way across the desert. Lucky for us, he’s agreed to guide us the whole way until we run these rascals down. I say we owe him our gratitude for that. What do you say?” Abner Webb began clapping, just enough to prime the rest of the townsmen into doing it. Then he raised his hands to quiet them. “Now, the thing is, we can’t expect Summers to work for free,” said Webb. “So he and I came up with an agreement that gives him forty percent of what bounty we collect.”
“Hunh?” The townsmen fell silent again.
“That moneygrubbing sonsabitch!” said Ned Trent, his attitude changing quickly. “I should have known better.”
“Now hold on, everybody,” Webb said. “I know forty percent sounds steep, but let’s take a look at what we’re getting for that amount. Summers is taking a chance on us getting his fine horses lamed or killed. He’s taking us through country we’d never manage to get through ourselves without getting ambushed or having our throats cut in our sleep….”
From inside the door of the livery barn, Will Summers smiled to himself, hearing Abner Webb pitch the idea to the townsmen, working hard for his ten percent. Twisting the top of a half-filled bag of grain that the Peltrys had overlooked, Summers hefted it over his shoulder then looked around at the few dusty saddles lined up along a wall. He turned and walked through the door and toward the sound of Abner Webb’s voice.
