Shot to Hell

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  When they were gone, Mason said to Jimmy McGee, “I’ll go tell Floyd Jenkins to come get the body.”

  “No,” Rooster spoke up, although still in a state of shock over Mason’s failure to lock Curly up for the shooting. Totally disgusted by the lack of backbone in all the men who had witnessed the cold-blooded murder, he paused to glare at them. They all saw the same thing he had just witnessed, but this was the state of things in Bison Gap since Ned Stark and his gang had moved in. “I’ll take care of Tom. I’ll bury him, myself,” he declared.

  “Somebody needs to go tell Rachael up at the dinin’ room,” Jimmy said.

  “I’ll do that, too,” Rooster said.

  “I don’t know, Rooster,” Jimmy said, looking at the body. “It might be too much for Rachael to see him like that, with that hole in his forehead. Might be Floyd could fix him up a little bit, so it wouldn’t look as bad as it does now.”

  Rooster reconsidered after Jimmy said that. It wouldn’t be a very pleasant remembrance for her to carry with her for the rest of her life. And it would be worse for Tom’s two daughters to see him this way. “I expect you’re right,” he decided. “I think it best if I take Tom back to the farm and bury him after Floyd nails him up in a coffin. I’ll take him to Floyd’s shop, if somebody will help me put him in the wagon.” He had half-a-dozen volunteers to carry Tom out to the wagon. “Much obliged,” he told them after Tom’s body was laid in the back of his wagon. He climbed up into the wagon seat and drove the team of horses up the street to Floyd Jenkins’s barbershop. Behind the barbershop, the building was located where Floyd practiced his undertaker chores as well as a little doctoring. Rooster got down from the wagon and walked around to the back of it. “I reckon I need to apologize, partner. I wasn’t able to help you, but I was as surprised as you was when that dry-gulcher shot you. I reckon I’ll be fixin’ that roof by myself.”

  After agreeing with Floyd on a price to close Tom up in a pine box, Rooster left to take care of the part he dreaded the most, telling Rachael about her husband’s death. When he walked into the hotel dining room, there were only a couple of people still eating. Kitty Lowery was near the back of the room, but he didn’t see Rachael. When Kitty turned around and saw him, she didn’t say anything, but pointed toward the kitchen door as if she knew why he was there. He nodded in return and walked inside the kitchen, where he saw Rachael sitting at the end of the kitchen table. She was weeping and Bess was standing by her, her hand on Rachael’s shoulder. Hearing him come in, they both turned to see him. Seeing the dwarflike little man there with his hat in his hand respectfully, his solid white bearded face bowed in sorrow, Rachael broke into a series of sobs. “Somebody’s done told you,” Rooster guessed.

  “Richard Hoover,” Bess said. She said the postmaster sent his young son up to tell Rachael right after the shooting.

  Rooster walked into the kitchen and stood before the table. “I’m sorry, Rachael. I woulda been here to tell you, but I took Tom to Floyd’s first.” She looked up to ask why, reacting just as he had at first. “I had to, Rachael, I didn’t want you and the girls to see Tom like that. I left him with Floyd, and he’s gonna put him in a coffin and close it up. He’s already got a couple built, so he said I could pick Tom up in about an hour.” When she started to protest, he said, “It’s better for you to remember Tom like he was the last time you saw him. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave the lid off that coffin. I figured I’d take him back to the farm to bury him, but I’ll take him to the cemetery here in town, if you druther.”

  Rachael didn’t have to think about it. “No, I know Tom would rather be laid to rest out there where he loved to work with you. Thank you, Rooster, for taking care of him.”

  To hear her thanks was painful to Rooster. “Not a-tall, ma’am,” he insisted. “I’m just sorry as I can be that I weren’t no help to him. It happened before either one of us could do anythin’ about it.”

  “Don’t you worry yourself about it,” she said. “There wasn’t anything you could have done to prevent it. Those two outlaws were determined to get even with Tom for standing up to them in here. If they hadn’t gotten him in the saloon, it would have been somewhere else.” She shook her head as she recalled the confrontation there in the dining room. “Where are those two now? Are they in jail?”

  “No, ma’am, and that’s the sorry part of it. John Mason said it was self-defense, and he ran ’em outta town.”

  Rachael was fairly startled, unable to believe what he told her. “Self-defense? Surely, there must be some mistake. Mason didn’t arrest them at all?”

  “No, ma’am,” Rooster answered. He hesitated before saying more, but decided she probably suspected the same as other folks had. “There’s been some talk around town that the sheriff always goes easy on Ned Stark’s men.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” Rachael said, getting too angry to cry, “but this is murder! How can he go easy on murder?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is,” Rooster agreed, “it’s murder, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

  * * *

  The days that followed that fateful afternoon were hard indeed for Rachael and her daughters, as well as for Rooster. Emma agreed with her sister to close the dining room down for half a day in order for Rachael to hold a funeral service for Tom at the recently built Baptist church. It was the first funeral service held in the new church, led by the Reverend Harvey Poole. Tom was buried near Rooster’s cabin in a meadow where he, Rachael, and Emma had lived in a couple of tents when they first came to Bison Gap.

  It was no less sorrowful for the bowlegged little elf, Rooster Crabb. He could not count any friends beyond those he had acquired during the last eight months of his life. And now, one of them was dead, and at such a young age. He had two more whom he considered to be his closest friends, Perley Gates and Possum Smith. It was mainly these two who had transformed his existence as an often-bullied little man to one of some respect—although he acknowledged that it was a minor portion of respect—but far more than it was before Perley Gates came into his life. He wished Perley and Possum were there now, but they were a long way away in northeast Texas. He thought they would want to know what happened to Tom, so he decided to send them a letter.

  CHAPTER 2

  Dear Perley,

  I thought you’d want to know that Tom Parker was shot down yesterday in the Buffalo Hump Saloon. A man named Curly Williams killed him. The sheriff said it was self-defense, but it wasn’t. I was there and I saw it. It was murder. Emma and Rachael are working hard at the hotel, but they are afraid there are too many bad people in town since you were sheriff. Everybody wishes you were here now. Say howdy to Possum. Emma wrote this letter for me.

  I can’t write.

  Your friend,

  Rooster Crabb

  Perley looked at the date and said to Possum, “He wrote this letter almost two weeks ago. Look at that date.” He held it out for Possum to see.

  Possum just shook his head. “I can’t read neither. I know my numbers, though, and I see the number twelve.”

  “That’s right,” Perley said, “and today’s the twenty-fifth. So Tom got killed two weeks ago.” He shook his head. “I declare, that’s a downright shame. I know Rachael must be really sufferin’ over it. And the girls,” he said, “Alice and Melva, that’s a terrible thing for them to deal with.” He paused when he thought of six-year-old Alice, who was determined to marry him when she grew up to be sixteen.

  “Can I see the letter?” Possum asked and Perley handed it to him. Possum unfolded the single page and studied it intently.

  “I thought you said you can’t read and write,” Perley couldn’t resist reminding him.

  “I can’t,” Possum replied while he continued to study the letter. “Somethin’ I always said I was gonna get around to, but I never did.” He folded it back again and handed it to Perley. “Emma writes with a fine hand.” He considered that for a few moments before continuing. “That letter makes me
think ol’ Rooster’s feelin’ down and out. I reckon he’s on his own again, like he was when we found him.”

  “You mean when he found us, don’t you?” Perley japed, since Possum was about to miss Bison Gap before Rooster came along and put them on the right path to the little town.

  “You ain’t never gonna forget that, are you?” Possum responded. “I told you I’d never been there before.” Perley laughed and Possum paused to think about it for a few moments. “You know, maybe I shoulda stayed down there with Rooster, at least till Emma and Rachael got that hotel up and runnin’.” He gave Perley a businesslike glance. “After all, I own half interest in that hotel. All the money I’ve ever had went into it. And it ain’t the easiest thing to do to make a hotel pay off in that territory, even for a man. Two women tryin’ it, I musta been crazy to leave it with ’em.”

  “They’re two pretty smart women,” Perley said. “If any two women could do it, I’d put my money on them.” He was thinking that Possum might be right in thinking he should have stayed to help run the hotel. But he didn’t want to remind Possum that he wanted to tag along with him back to the Triple-G. He had to admit that he was more than a little concerned for Emma and Rachael, too. They had become close friends to him in the time he had spent with them, and he hated to think any of his friends were in trouble. He had a feeling that he should do something to help his friends in Bison Gap, but he didn’t know what in the world that might be. He had held the temporary job of sheriff there for a short time until they found a man for the job. Ralph Wheeler, the mayor, had lined up a man who was a foreman for some big cattle ranch and also had some law-enforcement experience. His rambling thoughts were interrupted when Possum asked a question.

  “We gonna eat, or just stand out here lookin’ at the wagon?”

  “We’re gonna eat,” Perley said at once. “That’s the only reason I came into town with you in the first place. I wanted to eat at the Paris Diner.” He jumped down from the wagon and waited for Possum to tie the horses.

  “Why do they call this place the Paris Diner?” Possum wondered. “Is that supposed to be short for dinner? They serve breakfast and supper, too, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Perley replied. “Maybe Beulah ain’t too good at spellin’.” Then he had to explain that dinner had two n’s while diner had only one. “The important thing is she knows how to cook.”

  * * *

  “Howdy, Perley,” Becky Morris sang out cheerfully when they walked in. “I shoulda known you’d be in town, because we’re serving pork chops today. And I know how you love pork chops.”

  “Well, we did pick a good day to come in, didn’t we?” Perley responded. He enjoyed a good pork chop occasionally, since they didn’t raise hogs on the Triple-G. His late father had made that an iron rule, no hogs on his ranch.

  “I’ll get you some coffee,” Becky said and went to the kitchen to get the pot.

  “Did I hear you say Perley was out there?” Lucy Tate asked when Becky walked in. “Do you want me to wait on him? You waited on him last time he was here.” Grinning mischievously, she winked at Beulah.

  “Kiss my foot, Lucy,” Becky responded. “So what if I like Perley? He and I are good friends.” She picked up the coffeepot and looked at Beulah.

  “I’m already filling two plates, honey,” Beulah said. “Don’t pay Lucy no mind. Perley’s a good friend to have.”

  Lucy waited until Becky left the kitchen to comment. “But he ain’t got the sense to know Becky’s ready to be more than his pal.”

  “Give him time,” Beulah said as she set the two plates on the sideboard. “They’re both still young. And when the time’s right, he’ll pick the right girl, and my money’s on Becky.”

  “You’re awful quiet, Possum,” Perley commented. “That sure ain’t like you. What’s got your mind turnin’, Bison Gap?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact,” Possum answered, then paused while Becky placed the hot coffee on the table.

  She smiled sweetly and said, “I’ll be right back with your pork chops.”

  Possum continued. “I’m thinkin’ I need to go back down to Bison Gap, Perley. It ain’t just because I put all my money into that hotel with Emma. I reckon I just thought everything would be all right with Tom there to take care of things. And now, I don’t know. I just can’t help thinkin’ they need somebody right now. I know I ain’t much, but at least I wouldn’t let anybody take advantage of ’em, if I knew they was tryin’ to.”

  Perley could see that Possum really was serious about it. “That’s about three hundred miles from here. It’d take you a week to ride down there.”

  “Hell, I know how far it is,” Possum said and paused again when Becky brought their food and asked if they needed anything else. Perley told her they didn’t, and Possum went on. “I figure I won’t be missed here on the Triple-G. Hell, it’s summer and the crew ain’t doin’ nothin’ but ridin’ herd, anyway. I just don’t want you to feel like I’m lettin’ you down, since you let me tag along with you and got me hired on with the crew. I know you didn’t need another man.”

  “You got no reason to feel bad about quittin’,” Perley said. “You’ve done a fine job while you were here, and I’m sure you’ll get your job back if you want it. I’ll tell Rubin you’ve gotta go back to help some folks. Won’t be any problem at all. Now, let’s enjoy these pork chops before they get cold.”

  They ate their dinner almost in silence, since it was obvious Possum was doing a lot of deep thinking. Had it not been for the frequent visits to their table by Becky, there would have been no dinner conversation at all. Most of that was between Becky and Perley. When they got up to leave, Perley left the money on the table and Becky hurried over to say good-bye. “Don’t be a stranger, Perley,” she said. “We’re always glad to see you.” Then remembering her manners, she said, “And you, too, Possum.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Possum replied. His mind distracted from Bison Gap for that moment, he shook his head while looking at the two young people. She’s a fine-looking little filly, he thought, and Perley hasn’t the slightest notion that she’s taken a shine to him. That boy needs my help when it comes to women. I gotta talk to him about it. By the time they were outside, and on the wagon, however, his mind had moved back to Bison Gap and the troubles down there. He was especially concerned for Emma. He had taken it upon himself to escort her down from Kansas after her husband, Dan, had been killed. And now, she was the sole manager of the hotel in Bison Gap, and she with a baby to care for. He had to make sure she could stand up to the task, now that Tom Parker was dead.

  When they got back to the Triple-G, Possum drove the wagon up to the back of the house to unload some supplies they had picked up for the kitchen. When they had brought in the last of the kitchen supplies, Perley said, “Come on, we’ll see if Rubin’s still here.” He walked into the dining room and found both his brothers, Rubin and John, still sitting at the dinner table, drinking coffee. Their wives were just beginning the chore of clearing the dishes from the table. “Well, don’t tell me you’ve decided to eat with the family today,” John greeted him. It was still a tradition for both Rubin’s and John’s families to eat together in the main house. Perley, more times than not, ate with the ranch hands in the bunkhouse.

  “Nope,” Perley answered. “Possum and I ate in town. I just wanted to tell you that Possum has to go back to Bison Gap to take care of some problems that came up down there.”

  “Is that so?” Rubin asked. “I hope it ain’t something serious, Possum. If you’re worried about leavin’ us, don’t. We ain’t pushed this time of year, anyway. And if you’re concerned about a job when you come back, you’ve got one.” Possum said he appreciated it, and Rubin asked, “You leavin’ right away?”

  “We might as well leave in the mornin’,” Perley answered for him.

  Both Rubin and John reacted in surprise. So did Possum. “You’re goin’ with him?” John asked.

  “Yeah, I figured I
might as well, since Bison Gap’s about three hundred miles from here, and Possum’s liable to wind up in Oklahoma or somewhere, if I ain’t there to keep him on track.”

  Long accustomed to Perley’s unpredictable ways, both his brothers couldn’t be totally surprised to hear he was going to head out on another adventure. “Knowin’ you,” Rubin said, “I’m pretty sure you’re not goin’ just to make sure Possum doesn’t take the wrong trail. Somethin’ down there that concerns you, too?”

  “I reckon you could say that,” Perley replied. “There are some folks down there that Possum and I got pretty close to, and we wanna help them, if that’s what they need.” He went on to explain in a little more detail what had recently happened, including the death of Tom Parker.

  “So what are you figurin’ to do, go back to being the sheriff again?” John asked, not at all sure Perley was doing a smart thing.

  “No, nothin’ like that at all,” Perley stated, emphatically. “We’re just gonna see what help Emma and Rachael might need to stay in business.” Trying to lighten the conversation a little then, he said, “Mostly I wanted to help ’em because Rachael has the same name as my mother.” Hearing that, his mother, the widow, Rachael Gates, threw her head back and laughed. Proud as she was of his serious-minded elder brothers, she held a special place in her heart for her youngest son and the way he seemed to float through life as if following every breeze that stirred him.

  “Well, we’ll try to run the ranch without you again,” Rubin stated facetiously. “Damn it, Perley, you be careful. Possum, watch his back.”

  “You can count on that,” Possum responded, still surprised that Perley was going with him.

  Perley walked around to the end of the table, opposite Rubin’s place at the head, and gave his mother a peck on the cheek. “I will,” he said when she whispered for him to be careful. Then he and Possum went outside to deliver the rest of the supplies to the barn and the bunkhouse.