by J. Lee Butts
Took us a few more minutes to pull a shotgun and rifle apiece, make sure we had plenty of shells, and decide who would circle around to the backside of the shack and set the place on fire if necessary. Carlton got the short straw on that one, too. He flicked it away and looked disgusted.
“Damnation,” he grumped. “If it weren’t for the fact that you’re the feller who always holds the straws, Hayden, I’d swear this deal was fixed. Think this is the fifth, maybe sixth, time I’ve done went and drawed the short one.”
Billy clapped him on the back again and said, “Don’t forget the grass and twigs, short-straw man. You’ll wanna get their attention with that fire as quick as you can, oh, great and sneaky one.”
Pulled both of them close. “Be careful, boys,” I said. “Don’t want anything to happen that might get one or more of us killed today. There’s at least three desperate men down there just waiting for the law to come along and gather them up. Kill ’em if you have to, but remember, we need Coyle, or Crowder, alive, if possible.”
10
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO SET ME ON FIRE . . .”
CARLTON NODDED AND stumbled away from my spur-of-the-moment meeting, mumbling something about, “Just ain’t natural, that’s all. Cain’t get the short straw every damned time. Hell, it just don’t make any sense. Law of averages says I’ve gotta get a long one sometime or t’other.”
Me and Billy set to crawling our way through the windblown grass. Had a stroke of good fortune once we got to the edge of the heavy growth of big bluestem. Nice-sized horse trough and water pump we couldn’t see from the hill gave us a little something to hide behind, thank God. Wooden tank appeared to be new and constructed out of heavy two-by-twelve boards.
Got set up. Kept as quiet as we could while we waited for Carlton to get ready. Once he waved from the rocks behind the shack, the whole square dance, doo-dah show, and perambulating parade got to moving pretty fast.
Billy ripped the rag off the bush a bit quicker than I really wanted when he yelled, “Mo Coyle, Buck Crowder, and Selby Hillhouse, this is Marshal William Tecumseh Bird speakin’. You belly-slinkin’ bastards are surrounded by a heavily armed company of deputy U.S. marshals from Judge Isaac Parker’s court in Fort Smith.” Then he turned to me. “You yell out now, Hayden. They’ll know there’s more’n one of us.”
So, I hollered, “We have official court warrants for the arrest of everyone of you. Come on out with your hands raised, palms up, holsters empty.”
For about ten seconds, nothing happened. Got quieter than a deaf mute’s shadow. Thought I could hear my hair growing. Grass waved behind us and sounded like a pretty girl’s petticoats swishing down the boardwalk in Fort Smith. Muffled squeak of loose floorboards inside the house drifted our way.
After more silence than I’d expected, one of the brutes inside yelled, “You badge-totin’ sons of bitches can go straight to Hell, every damned one of you—however many that might actually be. And if’n yore really and truly who you say you be.”
Second man called out, “You law-bringin’ idgits must think we’re all so stupid we’d have to study up to be a half-wit or somethin’. Ain’t none of us comin’ out.”
Another, deeper, voice chimed in with: “At ’eres fer damned sure. You ’uns could be any ole body out to rob and murder hymn-singin’, churchgoin’ folk like we’ens. You ’uns can come on in and take us, if’n you’ve got bark enough on yore dumb asses to try it. Otherwise, you can take them warrants, fold ’em four ways, and stick ’em where the sun don’t never shine.”
Couldn’t have been more than ten seconds later when both the windows, on either side of the cabin’s front door, erupted in a withering wall of rifle and pistol fire directed right at our water trough hidey-hole. Initial blasting sounded like someone was beating on the thick tank boards with hammers.
Billy rolled onto his back, scrunched down as low as he could get, and went to laughing. “Damnation, Hayden. Don’t know ’bout you, but I thought for sure that, given the chance, them evil sons of bitches would just stroll on out here like little girls goin’ to Sunday school and let us snap the irons on ’em. Just goes to show, you cain’t trust nobody nowadays.”
“You must have misjudged these particular hard cases, my friend. Looks to me as though this bunch is determined to go down shooting.”
Waves of screaming lead slapped the wooden trough, bored through the rough slats, sprayed water on us, and kicked up dirt all around both ends. Grass, where we’d crawled up from the hill, fell like wheat under one of Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical harvesting machines.
Billy stared at his toes and yelled over the blasting, “Hope Carlton does something soon. Bunch of gun-crazed knot heads keeps pourin’ lead on us at this pace, and they’ll chew our wood-and-water hideout to pieces.”
By and by, we smelled whiffs of smoke that got real heavy in pretty short order. Didn’t take but a minute, or so, before we also detected random blasting from above and behind the shack. Carlton rained fire and lead on those killers’ poorly built, one-plank roof like a springtime thundercloud. No other way to look at it. He made life mighty damned hot for those ole boys inside.
Storm of blue whistlers whizzing around me and Billy let up soon as we smelled the smoke. Silly chuckleheads, who’d been making our lives miserable, went to yelping and hollering like someone was chasing them around with hot branding irons. Couldn’t have been more than five minutes later when the sun-bleached roof sprouted flames in several different places. Heavy clouds of greasy black smoke from pine pitch billowed out of the windows on either side of the rough-built cabin.
I glanced over at Billy. He grinned, sat up, and said, “Ain’t no point layin’ around here like we’re on government salary or somethin’. Let’s go get ’em, Hayden.”
Before I could stop him, he jumped from behind our splintered, hole-filled cover, and started running for the front door like I’d seen him do at least a dozen times before. Really didn’t matter that gunfire pointed our direction had pretty much stopped. He would have done the same thing even if those three killers were still pouring lead on us like rainwater from a boot.
Rail-thin deputy hit the first step on the wobbly porch and blew the door to smithereens in a shower of dust and splinters with blasts from both barrels of his ten-gauge boomer. Then he dropped the shotgun on the ground and hauled out those long-barreled Schofield .45s he favored. Sent five or six quick ones into the gravelike open space left by his assault. So much black powder smoke rolled toward the shuddering building’s fractured doorway, you could barely see the front of the place by the time he let up for a second.
I was right on his heels when he stepped aside, smiled, and yelled, “Blister ’em with another round of hot lead, Hayden. Hit ’em with both barrels of that big blaster.”
Jerked both triggers at the same time and sent buckshot into the walls on either side of the door. Each blast punched a window-sized hole. More heavy smoke almost blotted out any view of the doors and windows.
We could hear the men inside hooting, hollering, bouncing off the walls, and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I pitched the shotgun aside and pulled my pistols as well, but before we could get indoors, I heard wood and glass splinter on the side of the building closest to the corral.
“Keep an eye peeled here, Billy. But stay outside, you hear. Don’t want to confuse you with one of these killers. I’ll go around, see who’s trying to get away.”
Turned the corner just in time to watch Buck Crowder dive through the shattered opening and land in the dirt, head first. He landed with a resounding thump beside a chair he’d thrown out ahead of his leap. All the clothing along his back, from his neck to his ankles, smoked and suddenly burst into flame, about a second after he hit the ground.
Crowder went to yelping, jumped up, and ran past me like a fully stoked locomotive. Poor bastard was slapping at his sides. Unfortunately, he couldn’t reach his back, and made noises like a lunch whistle at a sawmil
l. By the time ole Buck got past me and headed around front for the creek, he looked like a pine-knot torch that had grown legs.
Since the burning outlaw had dropped all his weapons, and was considerably more concerned with putting the flames consuming his clothing out, figured I might as well direct my efforts elsewhere. Carlton ran up beside me, about then. He grinned from ear to ear and looked right pleased with himself.
“How’d you like my little campfire, Hayden?” he yelled.
“Mighty fine, Carl. You saved mine and Billy’s bacon, for sure.”
“Where is Billy?”
“Should be around front, near the door. You managed to set Buck Crowder on fire. He came foggin’ out that window yonder, threw his weapons aside, and headed for the creek.”
“Good. Got any idea where them other two are?”
“Unless they’ve managed to get out on the far side, guess they’re still in with all the smoke and flame.”
We hustled back to the front just in time to watch Billy disarm Coyle and Hillhouse. He grinned when we walked up and said, “They crawled out. Not much fight left in ’em, Hayden. Pitched most of their weapons on the porch and came to me on their hands and knees, like babies. Course they each had several hideout pistols on ’em that I had to take as well.”
I said, “Let’s get ’em up. Move ’em over there into the shade of that cottonwood. Away from this fire. Not gonna be anything left of the cabin in a few more minutes.”
Coyle moaned and complained like an old woman when we made him stand and walk without help. He hobbled on his bad leg, griped, whined, and grumbled until he had covered the approximately forty feet and could sit again.
Hillhouse followed the poor stupid goober he’d shot less than an hour earlier and didn’t say a word. But, my Lord Above, if the looks he threw our direction could have killed deputy U.S. marshals, all three of us would have been deader than hell in a Baptist preacher’s front parlor.
Carlton herded a burnt-blackened and soaking-wet Buck Crowder over to the prayer meeting. Amazing that ole Buck looked a lot worse off than he really was. Goodly amount of his clothing had suffered from the fire, and large splotches of hair had gone missing from his beard and head. Man had all the appearance of a stray dog that’d been put to flame, and then beat out with a broom.
Crowder flopped down beside his friends and said, “You didn’t have to set me on fire, goddammit. Hadn’t been for the creek bein’ so close, like it were, I’d of plumb burnt up. But, hell, typical behavior a man has to expect from Parker’s boys. Just out for a day of harassin’ law-abidin’ folk. Settin’ poor cowboys like me afire for the bald-faced fun of it.”
Carlton almost fell down laughing. “My God, Buck, but you always have had a talent for lyin’ like a yeller dog. You ain’t been a law-abidin’ cowboy since some years before you turned thirteen. Been in trouble, of one kind or another, with the law ever since you knifed your pa through the gizzard up in the Wolf River country. And you’re how old now? Thirty-five, forty? Makes you somethin’ more’n a twenty-year career criminal.”
Mo Coyle had evidently left any sense of humor he ever had in the dirt where Hillhouse shot him. He went to whining about his leg wound hurting at first. When that didn’t get him any sympathy, he took a different track.
“What the hell you do-right boys want with us anyway? We ain’t done nothing, lately.”
Billy dropped the last new shell in his pistol and snapped it shut. “You’re a lyin’ pig, Mo. You and Buck was with Maynard Dawson and Charlie Storms, not too long ago, when they went on a killing rip that took almost a dozen lives. Gonna drag you boys back to Judge Parker. Let him hang the hell out of you.”
For the first time, Selby Hillhouse spoke up. He had a low, quiet, sinister way of talking that made chill bumps run up and down a man’s spine. “Wait just a damned minute here. Whatever problem you lawdogs have with these boys don’t include me. I ain’t had nothin’ to do with any killings you’re wantin’ to lay on them. Wasn’t nowhere near Boiling Springs.”
Carlton winked at me and said, “Don’t recall as how anybody mentioned Boiling Springs, Selby.”
Hillhouse shot an angry, haggard look at Carlton. “I done heard all about it. Bunch of you law-bringin’ fellers went out on a manhunt and got shot to pieces in a well-laid trap. That warn’t good enough for you, so you went back again, and the same bunch done it to you twice.”
“At least you got that part right. I’m one of those what got shot in the first ambush,” Carlton said.
The beaten, fuming outlaw grinned and continued with: “Even hear tell as how somebody kilt Hamish Armstrong. Must’ve been one hell of a fight. Have to admit I liked Hamish. Only one of you badge-wearin’ bastards what was worth a tinker’s damn. But, still and all, you cain’t place me within a hundred miles of either of those dustups. Didn’t have nothin’ to do with Armstrong’s death, or shootin’ any of you other boys.”
Billy holstered his pistol, pulled a John Doe warrant and a stubby pencil from his vest pocket, and scratched a name on the blank line. He held the document up where Hillhouse could see it and said, “While that bilge you just rattled off might well be true, Selby, I know for a fact that you did murder a poor unarmed cowboy from south Texas named Del Cain down on the Muddy Boggy. Shot the man for his saddle, a pair of boots, and three hundred dollars he’d earned on a cattle drive to Dodge. There’s papers posted on you for that killin’, and this John Doe covers you like a wet blanket.”
When it comes to bad men, I’ve learned a number of hard, but simple, lessons during my years as a manhunter and assassin. One of the most important is that you should never, and I mean never, trust a bad man any farther than you can throw a fully loaded stagecoach.
Second thing I learned, through hard times on the track, is that once you’ve got evil scum under the gun, you should never get too close to one of them, until after they’re shackled and chained, or, preferably, dead. Proximity might allow your captive to reach out and grab you. Just can’t tell what in the way of awful results may occur after that.
A mistake in either instance could well mean the difference between life and death. But good men make mistakes—even men of Billy Bird’s vast and varied experience.
Lanky marshal stepped over to within arm’s length of Selby Hillhouse and waved the John Doe warrant under the killer’s nose. “This piece of paper is gonna put you on the gallows, Selby,” Billy said. “We’re gonna watch you swing on Maledon’s deadly play toy, down in the hollow from Judge Parker’s courthouse.”
True, his behavior bordered on the bold. Some might even say it was little more than an arrogant taunt. But the result of his mocking gibe never should have occurred.
The bad-tempered Hillhouse, who was responsible for at least a dozen killings, got a stricken look on his surly face. He leveled a quivering finger in Billy’s face. “Ain’t nobody gonna hang me, you bony-assed son of a bitch,” he growled, and then jumped to his feet in a crouch.
As if by magic, one of those bone-handled Arkansas toothpicks appeared in his right hand. The knife flashed up and sidewise in his fist. Six inches of cold steel disappeared into Billy Bird’s left side.
It’s a mite easier, and quicker, to kill a man with a knife, up close, than it is for him to get firearms out for the work of defending himself. Had my pistols up instantly, but it was too late. God had already been there and left.
11
“YOU’RE GONNA DIE RIGHT WHERE YOU’RE STANDING.”
BILLY LET OUT a low, moaning grunt. The folded warrant slipped from his fingers and he watched, unbelieving, as it fluttered to the ground like a dying dove. My friend turned slowly toward me. A stricken, bewildered look passed over his face. He glanced down at the hole in his shirt, stumbled two or three steps my direction, and went to his knees as a frothy stream of bright, red blood bubbled from the gash. A shaking hand shot to the wound, as he tried to stanch the crimson flow. Dripping fingers clutched at the side of his bib-front shirt, bu
t he couldn’t stop what appeared as a river of gore.
“Damn, Hayden. This son of a bitch done went and stabbed me,” he said weakly, then collapsed in a heap like a felled tree.
Carlton, pistol in hand to cover Hillhouse, darted over to our wounded friend’s side, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him away from any more harm.
Couldn’t have taken more than five seconds before Cecil said, “Sweet Jesus, Hayden. Billy’s hurt bad. The son of a bitch put that blade through a lung. Maybe even punched a hole his heart.” Then he turned on Hillhouse. “If he dies, I’ll kill you myself, you murderin’ son of a bitch.”
An overpowering, but controlled, rage, the likes of which I’d never felt in my entire life, swept over me. Not even witnessing the death of Handsome Harry Tate, or the kidnapping of Elizabeth, had resulted in such anger. Unparalleled fury, tinged with murderous venom, rushed up from the soles of my feet, wrapped itself around my own icy heart in a viselike grip, and forced hot blood to my neck and face. Of a sudden, it felt as though the fires of a sulfurous, imp-infested hell lapped at the collar of my shirt.
Selby Hillhouse instantly recognized murder in my eyes as soon as he glanced my direction. He looked like a caged animal, as I waved my pistols at him.
Should never have hesitated. Should have killed him the instant the knife first appeared in his hand. Cannot, to this very day, justify in my own mind why I didn’t. And trust me when I say, I’ve wept many times over the years for that deadly moment of indecision.
Only reason I’ve ever been able to come up with for such uncertainty involves the kind of behavior you can observe when big cats, like General Black Jack Pershing, catch a fat mouse. They love to play with their prey, before they kill and eat it.
Hillhouse took on the aspect of a man who’d just got religion. He pitched the knife on the ground and spit at the spot where Billy fell. His gaze darted from me to Carlton and back again.
