Way of the Gun (9781101597804)

by West, Charles G.

  It was clear to the spectators then that the fight was over, although Varner was doggedly lumbering after the quicker man, still absorbing blow after blow, each one more telling now as Carson could afford to be less concerned for retaliation. It was Rufus who finally spoke. “Hell, Varner, he’s done whipped you. Call it off before he beats you to death.”

  Carson stepped back to allow Varner’s response. The beaten man, bloodied and bruised, stood unresponsive for a long moment, his brain scrambled by the blows he had taken. Then without a word, he suddenly dropped to his knees and remained there for a few more seconds before falling face forward in the sand of the creek bank. Nobody said anything for a moment or two, stunned by the outcome of a fight in which they expected to see the young man destroyed by the overbearing bully. Marvin uttered the words that summed up the altercation. “I reckon he don’t wanna be called Pig.”

  * * *

  The cattle drive continued north for the next two days, causing Carson to question Duke’s line of travel, if indeed he was still planning to go to Montana. He was not that familiar with the country north of the Platte, but his reasoning told him that it would make more sense to head in a more northwest direction. If they continued on in the direction they were now heading, they would wind up in Dakota Territory. He didn’t express his opinion to anyone, satisfied to continue on to Dakota if they didn’t change course in the next few days. As far as Varner was concerned, there had been nothing more from the beaten man. Carson became wary of the sullen man, however. He didn’t seem the kind to consider the incident ended. There wasn’t much Carson could do to prevent a vengeful attack if that’s what Varner had in mind, so he slept with his rifle and handgun close to him. Varner never called him Pig again. In fact, he never spoke to him at all. But sometimes Carson would turn to find Varner looking at him, then quickly turning away rather than meeting Carson’s gaze. What Carson didn’t understand was, like a big dog that’s had his tail cut off, Varner was humiliated by the loss of his bluster. When it came to the rest of the crew, Carson was treated fairly enough, but he still felt like an outsider. It was almost as if they shared Varner’s humiliation. Maybe, he thought, it was because they had started out on the cattle drive together. So Varner was one of their own, and he was not. After all, he allowed, Duke said they all owned shares in the herd, so he wasn’t really one of them. The one exception was Marvin Snead. He seemed to have taken a liking to Carson. Carson appreciated that, but he had already made up his mind that he was saying good-bye to them when he got to Montana, so he didn’t spend much time worrying about his place with the crew.

  They pushed on for two more days before Duke ordered a change of course and headed them in a more northwestern direction. Carson commented to Marvin that it might have made more sense to have followed the North Platte to Fort Laramie and then head up through the Powder River Valley. Marvin replied that Duke had just as soon avoid the army and their restrictions on herds traveling up that way. “It might be handy to be close to the fort if we get hit with an early winter,” Carson said, “but it ain’t my say.”

  Marvin chuckled. “Duke’s got some funny ways of doin’ things, but we usually make out all right.”

  Another day found them at the Niobrara River. They arrived early enough to cross that afternoon, and while Rufus and Johnny led the leading steers into the water, Carson went back to help Lute bring up the strays. He found the old man over two miles behind, trying to drive twenty cows up the trail left by the main herd. He was obviously having a difficult time of it, so he gave Carson a wave of appreciation when the young man appeared. Carson circled around behind him and chased a couple of ornery strays back with the others. Then with Lute riding the other side, they got the cows headed in the right direction. Things were well in hand until they heard the sound of gunshots in the distance.

  “What the hell?” Lute yelled. “That don’t sound good.” He looked across at Carson, who was standing in his stirrups listening. “Injuns?” Lute wondered aloud when the shots continued as if the herd might be under attack.

  “Damned if I know,” Carson yelled back. “Don’t seem likely to be Injuns this close to Fort Laramie. Sounds like there’s a lot of ’em. I expect we’d better come back for these cows later and go see if our boys need help.”

  “Right,” Lute replied, but he didn’t seem too eager to ride. “I expect that’s what we oughta do.”

  Sensing the old man’s reluctance to hurry to what might be a full-scale Indian attack on the herd, Carson told him, “I’ll go on ahead. Why don’t you bring these strays along?”

  “Right,” Lute replied.

  Not wanting to push an already tired horse too hard, Carson pressed the sorrel he was riding to a steady lope. He didn’t want to ride blindly into something, but he knew he had to help if his gun was needed. He could see the herd now, split into two bunches. Half of them had crossed over to the other side of the river, and half were still milling around on the near side. Something was definitely wrong. There were men riding around on both sides of the river, but they were soldiers. He could see none of the drovers. The chuck wagon was on the other bank, but Bad Eye was nowhere to be seen. As he rode closer, he was startled to see several bodies on the ground. Right away he figured the herd must have been hit by a large party of Indians and the soldiers had arrived too late to help the drovers.

  He saw a group of soldiers standing by a man sitting on the ground, and they turned to watch him as he approached. When he pulled the sorrel up before them, he realized that the man on the ground was Varner, and it appeared he had been shot, because there was blood soaking the left shoulder of his shirt. He dismounted and asked one of the soldiers, a lieutenant, what had happened. Varner looked up at him, but said nothing.

  “You riding with this bunch?” Lieutenant Fred Vickers asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Carson answered. “I was roundin’ up some strays. What happened?” He looked a few yards beyond them to discover a body sprawled awkwardly across a clump of bushes where it had evidently landed when knocked out of the saddle. It was Marvin. “Damn,” he exhaled softly. Marvin Snead was the only one of the crew who had openly befriended him.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” the lieutenant said. “These men you see lying on the ground decided to fight instead of surrendering. They paid for their mistake. You made a wise decision.” He motioned toward a soldier who had moved to stand behind Carson. “Take his weapon, Sergeant.”

  “What the hell?” Carson exclaimed when he felt his .44 lifted from his holster. He immediately turned to resist, and received a rifle butt in the back of his head for his efforts. The force of the blow was enough to knock him to his knees and send his brain reeling. The soldier who had hit him drew back to hit him again, but was stopped by the officer.

  “That’ll do, Private. I don’t think he’s going to cause any more trouble. Tie his hands behind his back.” Addressing Carson then, Vickers said, “You and your friends made a helluva mistake driving those cattle up through here.”

  His head splitting with pain, Carson was thoroughly confused. None of this made sense. He had heard that the army sometimes refused to permit cattle drives to proceed up the Powder River Valley, but that was several years ago, before the Sioux were defeated. This was crazy. When his head cleared a little more, he insisted, “What right has the army got to stop a herd of cattle from goin’ to Montana?”

  Vickers looked at him as if amused by the question. “A little more right than a gang of cattle rustlers,” he answered, “especially a gang that killed the owner of the herd and most of the drovers.”

  The lieutenant’s words struck Carson with the force of a sledgehammer. Already dazed by the blow to his head, he attempted to get to his feet again, but was held where he knelt by two soldiers standing behind him. Thoughts and images flashed across his mind of incidents during the drive that had caused him to think that Duke Slayton’s men were a poor crew o
f drovers. And now this curly-haired lieutenant with the neatly cropped beard was telling him he had ridden with a gang of thieves—and murderers! The impact caused his brain to clear right away. “Whoa!” he blurted. “Wait a minute! I’m no damn thief, and sure as hell not a murderer. I don’t know anythin’ about any rustlin’. I just had a job drivin’ cattle.”

  His desperate claim brought a knowing smile to the officer’s face. “Is that a fact? Well, I’m sure when you tell that to the judge, he’ll let you go.”

  Varner, who was still sitting as if in a stupor a few feet away, spoke for the first time since Carson rode in. “He’s tellin’ you the truth, Lieutenant. He just joined up with us back at the Platte. We never told him where we got the cattle.”

  “Are you two trying to see who can tell the biggest lie?” Lieutenant Vickers replied, looking at Carson. “You expect me to believe you just hired on to help drive this herd, and nobody told you anything about where they came from, or how they got them?”

  “That’s the truth of it, Lieutenant,” Carson insisted. “I never stole anythin’, and I never killed anybody. I was just workin’ my way to Montana.” The expression on the officer’s face and the grins of amusement on the faces of the soldiers standing around told him that he was wasting his breath. “What are you aimin’ to do with me?” he asked, realizing the serious situation in which he found himself.

  “We oughta hang you and your friend right here, but we’ll let you tell your story to an army judge back at Fort Laramie,” Vickers replied. He felt certain the wounded man was trying to save the young man from serving a prison sentence, but it wasn’t going to do him any good. The lieutenant wasn’t about to fall for it.

  “Whaddaya wanna do with ’em, Lieutenant?” the sergeant asked.

  Vickers paused for a moment to decide. “It’s a little late in the day to start back. It’s a good forty miles to Laramie from here, a good day’s ride. But it’ll take three or four days to drive these cows back, so we’ll just make camp here and start back in the morning. Take these two and tie them to the wheels of that chuck wagon. I want two guards posted to watch them the whole time, day and night. Some of the bastards got away, but I want to make sure these two get tried for the murders of those Texas cowpunchers.”

  * * *

  Carson and Varner, now on his feet, stood under heavy guard while Bad Eye’s team was unhitched from the wagon. Then they were seated and tied, one to a front wheel and one to a back wheel. Still somewhat dazed, Carson sat there while Sergeant Wheeler made up a guard detail to watch them around the clock. There was nothing he could do but wait it out and hope he could convince a judge of his innocence. He watched in despair as a group of soldiers rounded up the remuda, which had evidently scattered when the shooting started, for he saw his buckskin among them, as well as his packhorse. It was as low as he had ever felt since his father’s death, and he feared his helplessness would drive him crazy. Gone also was the Henry rifle that had belonged to his father, his .44 Colt, and everything else he owned.

  As he sat there despairing, he remembered Lute, and realized that he had never shown up with the twenty strays. It made him wonder if Lute had feared something like this might be happening, and he had gone in the opposite direction as soon as Carson left. That old son of a bitch, he thought, he could have given me some kind of warning. Now that he had time to think about it, it occurred to him that Varner had spoken on his behalf, something that he would never have expected to happen. This prompted him to reach out to the man who would have crushed his skull with a tree limb. “Varner,” he called. “I ’preciate what you did back there. I wanna thank you for tryin’ to tell that lieutenant the right of it.”

  Varner didn’t turn to look at him, staring straight ahead as if still in a daze. After a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “I ain’t completely rotten. We shoulda told you right off, but we needed the help, and we was afraid that if you knew them cows was stole, you mighta took off and brought the law down on us. I didn’t have no business ridin’ you so hard. I’m sorry for that.”

  The big man’s astonishing apology left Carson at a loss for words for a long moment. He could only assume that the belligerent bully was suffering genuine regret, thinking that he might be nearing a meeting with his maker. “Well, that’s over and done with,” Carson said. “Looks like we’re both in a helluva fix now, though.” Then remembering, he asked, “How bad are you hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I caught a bullet in my left shoulder, and I think it mighta broke a bone or somethin’, ’cause I can’t move it without it hurtin’ like hell.”

  “I reckon they’ll let the doctor look at it when they take us back to Fort Laramie,” Carson said. “What about the rest of the boys? Did anybody get away?”

  “Yeah, Duke and Johnny hightailed it across the river—and Bad Eye, I reckon. Leastways, he’s not here, but I didn’t see him ride off. Skinny was settin’ right next to me in the middle of the river when they hit us. He got shot right through the neck. I made it out of the water before I got hit—knocked me outta the saddle. I don’t think anybody else made it. They’re all lyin’ around here somewhere. The soldiers caught us in the middle of tryin’ to push the herd across. We never knew they was anywhere about.” He paused to think for a few moments, and then continued. “It wasn’t all one-sided, though. Two of their soldiers was hit. I think one of ’em’s dead. I don’t know who done it. It wasn’t me. I never got my gun outta the holster, and by the time I made it out of the river, they got me.”

  “Damn,” Carson muttered. That was not good news. There was little hope for leniency with two troopers shot.

  “Just so you’ll know,” Varner went on, “I never shot nobody when we took the herd from them fellers. Rufus and Johnny was the ones doin’ all the killin’. I ain’t got no reason to lie about it.”

  “Maybe they’ll take that under consideration,” Carson said, while thinking it very unlikely. He was seeing a side of Jack Varner that he had never seen before—afraid and repentant—and he wanted to offer encouragement if he could. Although he had hope that Varner’s statement to the lieutenant might be enough to substantiate his innocence, his better sense told him that it, too, was unlikely. More likely, a judge would see him no differently than any other member of the gang. He resolved to let the military court have a chance to find him innocent and set him free. But if that didn’t happen, he was determined to escape somehow, or die trying. He had committed no crime, and he had no intention of spending his life in prison.

  Chapter 3

  Though it was still late in the summer, it was a chilly day when Lieutenant Fred Vickers rode into Fort Laramie at the head of a fifteen-man detachment escorting two prisoners. The rest of the lieutenant’s original thirty-man patrol were serving as drovers, bringing the stolen cattle along behind. Carson Ryan was astride a bay gelding that had belonged to Skinny Willis, his buckskin having been denied him. Varner was on one of the horses in his string. A red roan, it had been found standing not far from the wounded man where he had lain on the ground. He sat slumped in the saddle as the detachment led the prisoners across the parade ground to the guardhouse. Since their hands were tied behind them, they were helped to dismount, although Carson could have accomplished it without assistance. Varner, however, cried out in pain when he was roughly pulled from the saddle. Being a man of some compassion, Vickers instructed two of his detail to escort Varner to the hospital. Carson was led into a common cell room, where he was greeted with the curious stares of a handful of military prisoners, most of whom were incarcerated for less serious offenses—drunkenness, asleep on guard duty, insubordination, petty theft, things of that nature. One man was locked up for desertion. Carson and Varner would be the only serious offenders.

  “When can I talk to a judge or somebody to straighten this mess out?” Carson asked the sergeant as the cell door was locked behind him.

  Sergeant Michael Devers favored h
im with an indifferent grin. “What’s the hurry, young fellow? You got an appointment somewhere?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s the hurry,” Carson replied. “They arrested me by mistake. They got my horses and my weapons, and all my possibles, and I need to get outta here before somethin’ happens to ’em.”

  His plea caused a low murmur of snickers from the other prisoners. “Son,” Devers replied patiently, “you might as well sit down and make yourself comfortable. It’ll be a while before they schedule you for trial.”

  “But, damn it, Sergeant, I ain’t done nothin’ to get locked up here in the first place!”

  Still with no show of impatience with the prisoner’s complaint, Devers said, “Most likely the provost marshal will be by here to talk to you. Tell him that. Maybe he’ll let you go.” This brought an outright laugh from the other prisoners.

  * * *

  Confinement went against the very soul of Carson Ryan. Since he was a youngster, he had never known boundaries that were closer than the horizon in all directions. It was a full week before he was escorted to the provost marshal’s office, and during that time, he paced the width and length of the cell room constantly, like a leopard in a cage. The other inmates nicknamed him “Walkin’ Ryan.” The name did not bother him, but the confinement was more than he thought he could bear for very long.