A Man Called Sunday

by Charles G. West

  * * *

  Inside the cabin the besieged four awaited the next barrage of rifle fire. Vienna moved constantly from the front to the back, trying to determine where it might come from. Crouched by the front window, Mary Beth reported, “I don’t have any more bullets for this old gun, just what’s left in the cylinder. When I empty the cylinder, I’m out.”

  “Too bad it ain’t a forty-four like mine,” Vienna said, “’cause I’ve got plenty of ammunition.” She glanced in the bedroom at Doris, still kneeling before the window, the pistol she had given her held loosely in her hands. Looking back at Mary Beth, she said, “You might as well take my pistol when you give out. Doris ain’t fired a shot.” Mary Beth nodded, and Vienna asked, “Can you see the one out front?”

  “No,” Mary Beth answered, “but he hasn’t shot for the last few minutes.”

  “He’s most likely tryin’ to figure a way to get closer,” Vienna cautioned. “Keep your eyes sharp. That one in the backyard was behind the wagon, but I think I ran him outta there. I’ll keep my eye on him.” She called out then, “Jack, you still all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” came the reply from his post at the side window.

  “Good boy. Keep your eyes peeled, ’cause they’re gonna try to sneak in on us.” She did not express her concern for the lateness of the hour, but it was her biggest worry. They would be unable to see their assailants when darkness fell, and she wasn’t sure they could keep them out. There was nothing else she could think of to strengthen their defense. Concerned then that she had left her post at the back door too long, she went back into the kitchen. Unknown to her, she had already lingered too long checking on the others, for she got back to the door brief seconds after Wylie had made a dash for the corner of the house, and was even then crawling along the side wall toward the window, undetected by anyone inside.

  Once he had reached the window safely, Wylie crouched underneath it and turned to signal Bogart, who was set to charge through the kitchen door as soon as Wylie started shooting at those inside. He waited for a few minutes, listening for sounds through the open window, and he soon concluded that the voices he heard evidently came from other parts of the cabin. It was obvious to him that the window was in a bedroom, or a spare room, and nobody was sitting there, watching. The windowsill was about head high, so he figured he could grab it with one hand and shinny up over it. With his pistol in his other hand, he could be ready to shoot at anyone in the room even before he was inside.

  Still kneeling before the window, Doris had not moved from the trancelike position she had originally taken when Vienna led her into Mary Beth’s bedroom. She continued to stare down at the revolver she held in her hands, her face streaked with the path of tears now finally stopped. A soft bump against the side of the cabin brought her out of the daze that had captured her mind and she lifted her head to look at the window.

  With his pistol in one hand, the other clutching the windowsill, and the toes of his boots inching up the log wall, Wylie slowly raised his head until his eyes were level with the sill. Pulling himself a few inches higher, he was startled to discover the bereaved woman kneeling before the window. His initial impulse was to drop to the ground immediately, but she did not move, instead staring at him as if not seeing him at all. While he was deciding what to do, she slowly raised Vienna’s pistol and fired at the face in the window at the same time he raised his gun and pulled the trigger. Screaming out in agony from the bullet that slammed through his teeth and tore a hole through his cheek, Wylie dropped to the ground and began crawling to the corner of the house on all fours.

  Startled by the simultaneous gunshots from the bedroom, Vienna and Mary Beth, with Jack close behind, ran to investigate, only to find Doris lying on the floor with a bullet through her heart. Jack cried out in horror and ran to his mother. Vienna’s reaction was to check the window, where she had time to send one shot after the pair of boots just then disappearing around the corner of the cabin. Turning back to Doris then, she saw at once that there was nothing to be done to save her. Before she could say anything, they heard the sound of the kitchen door as it shattered under Bogart’s powerful body.

  “Shut the door!” Vienna screamed, and Mary Beth quickly slammed the bedroom door and bolted it. Trapped in the bedroom now, there was immediate panic, so the two women tried to think what to do other than standing there with their weapons aimed at the door. The boy knelt at his mother’s side crying. Finally Vienna acted. “If he broke through the kitchen door, this little ol’ door ain’t gonna slow him down. We’ve got to get outta here!” She stepped quickly back to the open window and looked out. Seeing no sign of Wylie, she told them, “Out the window. Run to the new field and into the woods at the lower end. You first, Mary Beth, then you, Jack. If he comes through that door, I’ll blow him to hell.” They could hear him now, stomping through the kitchen, throwing chairs and the table aside as he stormed into the front room, yelling obscenities and threats. “Go!” Vienna cried when Mary Beth hesitated.

  “You go,” young Jack suddenly ordered. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch. He killed my ma and pa.” He picked up the revolver by his mother’s side and got to his feet, facing the door.

  “You can’t face him, Jack,” Vienna pleaded. “Maybe we can all get out the window and get away.”

  “The hell I can’t stop him,” Jack shot back. It was obvious that he had become a man in those brief terrifying seconds. Then seeing Vienna balking, and knowing that time was running out, he told her, “I’ll be right behind you. Get goin’.”

  There was no time to argue. Vienna turned to Mary Beth. “Go!”

  Mary Beth went out the window, and Vienna followed right behind. Mary Beth stumbled upon landing on the ground, but Vienna grabbed her under her arm and pulled her to her feet, and they ran into the field. It was too early in the summer for the corn to have grown high enough to hide them, so they forced themselves to run as hard as they could to reach the lower end. Behind them, they heard a burst of gunshots. Looking back, they discovered then that Jack was not following. Vienna started to turn back, but Mary Beth stopped her. “It’s too late now,” she insisted, for all was quiet in the cabin then. “Whatever happened is over, and you might be running right into your own death.”

  Even in that chaotic moment, Vienna realized that Mary Beth was right; it served no purpose. “Poor Jack,” she moaned. “I hope he came out on top.” It was a sincere wish, but she had no faith in it.

  Inside the cabin, the lull in the sound of gunshots left uncertainty for both parties, for the volley had claimed no victim. Young Jack Freeman stood facing the bedroom door, now splintered on both sides from the rapid fire on either side. He hurriedly spun the cylinder of his pistol, reloading as fast as he could, uncertain if more than one or two bullets had penetrated the plank door. With his revolver reloaded, he was about to empty it again into the door, but he hesitated when there were no more shots from the other side. He waited. The long moments passed with still no sound from beyond the door. Then from the backyard, he heard his mother’s murderer moaning and cursing, complaining that he was wounded. When several more moments passed with still nothing on the other side of the door, he assumed that one of his bullets had found the mark. Either that or the murderer’s partner had gone to help the wounded man. Either way, Jack felt he had to act quickly to finish them both off. He threw the bolt on the door and jerked it open to find a smirking Bill Bogart waiting, his rifle aimed waist-high. The boy dropped to the floor with two slugs in his gut, his reflexive action causing him to fire a bullet into the floor as he fell.

  Bogart stepped up to kick the pistol away from the boy’s hand, then quickly scanned the small room to make sure there was no one else there. The open window told him what had happened to the others. After making sure Jack was dying, he stepped over his body to look at the woman’s body lying by the window. His initial reaction was anger over Wylie’s carel
ess shooting, but then he realized that the woman was not the one he lusted for. I reckon Wylie got this one before one of ’em got him, he thought. Too bad she got shot before we could have gotten some use out of her, though. He cautiously poked his head out the window to look around in the fading afternoon light. No one was in sight. Then he heard Wylie’s pitiful call for help. He looked back at Jack and said, “You’re the one that made them little boot prints, so whoever jumped out the window are women and I know that pretty little honey is one of ’em.” Knowing they were running, he felt assured he had nothing to fear from them for the time being, so he walked back into the front room, pausing only a moment to put a bullet in the boy’s head.

  “Quit your damn blubberin’,” Bogart said when he walked out the back door to find Wylie sitting with his back propped against the wall of the cabin. “Lemme take a look at you—couldn’t be too bad, or you wouldn’t be able to cry like a baby.”

  “I reckon that’s easy enough for you to say,” Wylie complained, his voice strained with the pain and his words slurred by the destruction Doris’s bullet had caused. His mouth and the left side of his face were covered with blood, and he was holding a blouse he had pulled from the clothesline pressed against his cheek in an effort to slow the bleeding. “I need a doctor,” he mumbled, unable to speak clearly. “I’m hurt bad.”

  “Well, now, that’d be a problem, wouldn’t it?” Bogart replied, with no show of sympathy. “Where in hell would we find a doctor around here? Even if we did, how we gonna explain how you got shot?”

  “All I know is I’m hurtin’ somethin’ fierce,” Wylie moaned while trying to talk without moving one side of his mouth. “We’ve got to do somethin’. I think I swallowed half of my teeth.”

  “Lemme see,” Bogart said, and pulled the blouse away from Wylie’s face, causing the wounded man to yelp with pain. He stared at the gaping rip in Wylie’s cheek and the stumps of teeth on that side of his mouth. “Damn,” he murmured, “sure made a mess of it. Who shot you, the boy?”

  “That damn woman,” Wylie said, his words almost unintelligible, “but I think I put one in her, too.”

  “Yeah, she’s dead,” Bogart said, “and I know there was two more women in there, but they went out the window and took off—most likely still runnin’.” He paused to take a look up at the sky. “We need to look for that damn money while there’s still light enough to see.”

  “I need some doctorin’,” Wylie protested.

  “We ain’t got no time for that, and I ain’t aimin’ to hang around here too long. I don’t know where the nearest house is, but somebody mighta heard all the shootin’ and come to take a look. Them women that got away are most likely on their way to get help, so we got to turn this place upside down and find whatever it is they’re hidin’, before we can get the hell outta here.”

  “I can’t help you,” Wylie insisted. “I’m hurt too bad. Dammit, I’ve got the side of my face blowed off.”

  Already disgusted with his partner for getting himself shot, Bogart fired back, “Well, you shoulda watched what the hell you were doin’. I’m gonna turn up anythin’ I can find.” Even though his mind had been set upon finding the woman he had seen on the wagon at Fort Fetterman, his common sense told him it was best not to linger. “You’d best get up off your ass if you’re thinkin’ ’bout goin’ with me, ’cause I ain’t waitin’ for ya.” He left him where he was and returned to the cabin. Starting in the kitchen, he opened every drawer and every cabinet he could fine, dumping pots, pans, and utensils on the floor. When he could find nothing there, he went through each of the other rooms, overturning furniture, ripping open mattresses, searching through the clothes drawers, all to no avail. Angry and disgusted, he slammed a chair up against the wall. Storming back into the kitchen, he started to kick the stove over, but a thought struck him at that moment. The smokehouse. He hadn’t searched there.

  Out the back door he charged, passing Wylie as the wounded man staggered toward their horses still tied up at the corral. Without a word to his partner, Bogart strode to the small log building next to the outhouse. There was no meat hanging inside the smokehouse, and he was about to reverse his steps when he noticed several feed sacks stacked against the wall. His eyes opened wide in anticipation when he remembered what Lem Sloat had said, but could she have still left the money in a sack of grain, as Lem claimed? He wasted no time finding out. Not bothering to untie the sacks, he plunged his knife in each one and ripped them open, spilling feed and grain on the earthen floor. Only one sack held feed corn and Bogart’s knife blade struck something hard when he thrust it in that sack. His head was pounding with the rapid beat of his heart as he raked the corn out, uncovering eight small cloth bags. “Hot damn! Hot damn!” he blurted over and over, his fingers fumbling with excitement as he tried to open the bags. “I found it, Wylie! I knew there was money here!” It was too dark to count the money in the smokehouse, so he hurried outside and sat down on the ground to count his treasure. Seven of the bags contained five double eagles each. The eighth one held an assortment of silver coins. The huge man dumped them in his lap and grinned like a child at Christmastime. He enjoyed his find for a few moments more before calling his mind back to reality. Now that he had found what he had come for, the next thing was to get away from there before a posse of angry farmers appeared. Cradling the money up in his hands, he stalked toward the corral. “Wylie,” he called out, “I got what we came for.”

  He found the wounded man sitting in the saddle, leaning forward on his horse’s neck. “You found the money?” Wylie asked painfully. Bogart’s announcement was enough to bring him back from the dead. “How much was it?”

  “A couple hundred apiece,” Bogart replied, thinking quickly.

  “Gimme mine,” Wylie rasped.

  “Gimme a minute to put ’em down before I drop ’em,” Bogart replied, and dropped all but two of the cloth bags in his saddlebag. “There you go,” he crowed as he stuffed the two bags in Wylie’s saddlebag. “Now I expect it’d be healthier for us to get as far away from this place as we can.” He climbed up and settled his heavy bulk in the saddle, but hesitated before turning his horse away from the corral rail. “I wonder about them other two women, though. If I had to run for it, I’d sure as hell take anythin’ valuable I had. It would be mighty interestin’ to find out what they grabbed before they jumped out that window.”

  Wylie didn’t really care at that point. “We found the damn money,” he mumbled painfully. “You just wanna get your hands on that damn woman. We need to get outta here.”

  “Maybe I will get my hands on that pretty little body before this is over,” Bogart said. Wylie was right, he wanted the woman. She had burrowed into his lustful mind like a weevil. The thought that Luke Sunday might have had his way with her brought a greater desire to kill the sandy-haired Indian.

  Chapter 13

  The night was long and sleepless for the two desperate women huddled together under the steep bank of the river. Afraid to start a fire, even had they the means to start one, they spent the slowly passing hours listening for any sound that might announce the approach of the two killers. The river was quiet, except for the occasional splashing of a fish or a muskrat, or the croaking of a frog, but they were never certain that it was a fish or a muskrat and not something else. It was with mixed emotions that they greeted the first rays of light. They had survived the night, but the breaking day would provide light for anyone searching for them. They both felt that it would be hard to find them, for they had run a long way, making their way through thick patches of bushes and cottonwoods, along the river bluffs, and down countless gullies until they fell exhausted in a washed-out hole in the bank.

  “Surely after all this time, they must have ridden on,” Mary Beth said.

  “Unless they’ve been waitin’ for daylight to come after us,” Vienna replied. “We shoulda found us a good place close to the ca
bin to ambush ’em last night, if they were of a mind to come after us.” She was a little disgusted with herself for being so frightened during the night just passed, but she had never been exposed to such conscienceless murder before. Even encounters with hostile Indian war parties did not seem to be so terrifying as these two murderers. Resigning herself to regain her usual bluster, she announced, “I’ve had enough of this rabbit streak runnin’ down my back. I’m goin’ back to my cabin.”

  “Do you think it’s safe to go back now?” Mary Beth replied, not so sure it would be a wise thing to do.

  “Safe or not,” Vienna stated, “it’s my damn house those murderers are tearin’ up, and they’ve killed an entire family of my friends. I’m goin’ back, and if they’re still there, well, then there’s gonna be hell to pay.” She cocked her rifle to emphasize her resolve. The cocking of the rifle was followed by another sound, this one from the bluff above them. Both women froze, for judging from the rustle of bushes, something or someone had found their hiding place. Vienna immediately backed up against the side of the hole and motioned for Mary Beth to get down. She trained her rifle on the edge of the overhanging bank, determined to shoot at whatever showed itself. They both jumped when they heard the voice.

  “Ma’am, be careful with that rifle.”