The Devils Gunslinger

by Chet Cunningham

  Sully and his two men burst into the main street shooting up everything they saw, shattered the windows in the marshal’s office and blasted every store they came to with Henry and revolver rounds. They were half way through town when the men in town began shooting back at them. Ten yards farther along Carter gave a scream, fell forward in his saddle, sagged to one side, and slipped off to the ground.

  Sully was behind him. He skidded his horse to a stop, vaulted off, and checked Carter. Two rifle rounds in his chest. Dead where he lay. Sully leaped back on his mount and the last two of the Sully gang raced down the street and out of town into the blackness of the night.

  Chapter Six

  Sully and Curley Johnson galloped hard for what Sully figured was a mile then they pulled up and listened. They could hear no hoof beats of anyone chasing them.

  “Damn we lost Carter?”

  “Down and dead. Two rounds to his heart. He was gone before he hit the ground.”

  “So what the hell can we do now?”

  Sully shook his head in the darkness. “Damned if I know. Our ability to make raids on even a small town is down to zero. Next time both of us would probably be shot right out of our saddles.”

  “So what the hell are we supposed to do?”

  “For right now we ride another ten miles, get some sleep, and think about it in the morning. Sometimes sleep will help.”

  “Not much sleep is going to help out on this one,” Curley said.

  They rode until the pointer stars on the Big Dipper aimed at the North Star told them that it was almost one o’clock. They found a spot to stretch out beside a small creek and unsaddled their horses.

  “Got me a bad feeling,” Curley said as he pulled his blanket up around his shoulders.

  “Hope it ain’t a lot like mine,” Sully said. Then they slept.

  The next morning Sully woke up and didn’t move a muscle. He opened his eyes and stared around for as much as he could see. No posse waiting for them. He turned his head and checked out the rest of the little creek bed and the surrounding area. No horses, nobody holding a shotguns on them. Nobody there. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  By the time Curley woke up Sully had the bank money counted out in three neat piles on his blanket. He had started a fire and got coffee boiling but he hadn’t done anything about food.

  Curley looked at the money, at the fire, and then at Sully.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Figuring. You going to get breakfast or should I?”

  “Had some of your cooking before. I better do it.” He stirred out of his blanket and checked the coffee. It was ready. He poured them each a cup and passed one to Sully.

  “You settling up accounts?”

  “Just figuring. I didn’t know Carter back in Memphis. Did you?”

  “Knew of his family,” Curley said.

  “Time we figure out some things. Like can we get his share back to Carter’s family?”

  “Heard him talk about his wife living with her family. Guess they had no kids. I could find her if I went back there.”

  “You going back?”

  “Haven’t decided. I got nothing to go back to except a burned patch of land. No wife, no family, no animals. Why should I go back?”

  “You’d have a start. With this cash you could get going again, meet some great woman, and…”

  “Not ready for that. Not yet.”

  “So what?”

  “Not sure. Let me get some food going then we can talk some more. Can’t think straight when I’m cooking.”

  A half hour later the Yankee bacon was gone along with the half a loaf of bread. They found out the pancake flour was on the food sack on Carter’s mount back in the town. They ate some dried apricots, each had an apple, and settled back to talk.

  “So as I remember you ain’t got much to go back to in Memphis either. Just a hunk of Tennessee sod.”

  “True. Been thinking on it. You heard about the wild cattle in West Texas?”

  “Mean when some ranchers joined the Rebel army they just turned their herds loose cause there was nobody left to tend them? Yeah I heard. Not sure I believe all of it.”

  “I talked with a captain who said he knew of three ranchers who did it. He figured there must be half a million cattle out there in Texas just roaming around, breeding, and chomping down the range grass.”

  “Sounds like a lot of beefsteaks.”

  “Sure as hell does. Been thinking on it.”

  “You mean the two of us go down there and round up some critters, brand them, and sell them to the best market?”

  “Going to happen. Why not us?”

  “Take some doing.”

  “Might be worth while looking into. I mean we don’t have one hell of a lot to lose if it turns out to be a bunch of malarkeys.”

  “Could be.” Curley cleaned up the cooking gear and packed it up with what food they had left. “Running short on grub.”

  “Let’s eat at cafes for a day or two,” Sully said. “Change of pace. So what do you think about Texas?”

  “So far not a lot. First got to convince myself not to go back to Memphis. Then I’ll decode about being a rancher in Texas.”

  Sully tied the three bundles of bills with string and tossed one to Curley.

  “You take care of this. Might help you decide. Way I figure it I’m heading for Texas in about twenty minutes. You come along if you want or change your mind at any time. We do it on a partnership basis. Everything cut right down the middle. Figure we can use Carter’s six hundred to help us get started. Hire two or three hands from some little town, get a place on some river and build ourselves a cabin. Hell, it should work.”

  Curley looked up. “Seems like you got your mind made up. Me, gonna take two days. I’ll ride south with you for that long, then tell you what I want to do. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough. Let’s ride.”

  Curley held up one hand. “First I get rid of everything I have that makes me a Rebel. The Great Coat goes and the spare rebel shirt. Then too, the rebel cap. Two Henry rifles. Bad show. I’ll sell one at a gun shop in the next town. Then I’ll be clean case we chance on a Yankee army patrol out here.”

  They turned south and west, rode across open country until they spotted smoke of a town ahead. It was after six o’clock before they rode into Merryville, Missouri. Curley sold his second Henry at the town gun shop.

  “A real Henry?” the gun man asked.

  “Right as rain. Don’t need no long gun. How much you give me for it?”

  “They haggled for a minute and settled on seventeen dollars.”

  “Fair price,” Curley said and left the shop whistling.

  They ate at the Farmer’s Café. Both had the steak supper for sixty cents along with coffee and applesauce for desert. Outside they looked at the hotel, shook their heads and rode out of town along a creek.

  “No damn soft beds,” Sully growled. “Too damn easy. We got to stay tough. We get a bed after a week on the trail south. You get some trail food while we were in town?”

  “Did. Blew four dollars on things, including a slab of bacon, two pork chops we have for breakfast, and some other things. Good for two days.”

  While in town Sully had asked the best route to get them to Texas. An old man sitting outside the post office grinned his toothless way and pointed.

  “South, son. Through a mite more of Missouri, then into a chunk of what they are calling Arkansas before you hit the top of Texas. Mighty big place down there.”

  Back at their little camp, Sully put out the fire, curled up on his blanket, and tried to sleep. He stared at the stars and wondered if he had made the right decision. Hell yes, the only thing to do. Get to Texas and find some of that free beef grazing around. Set up some kind of a ranch, apply for a brand, and then drive some of their captured steers north to one of the beef specialists who gathered animals for shipment to the markets in the east. Yes it had to work.

  Morning came late
. The sun was up, two crows were moving up on their camp, and Sully took a shot at one scaring them away in a flutter of feathers. The rifle shot brought Curley up with a six-gun in each hand. He relaxed when Sully told him about the birds.

  “Good. The only thing I want to get in a fight with from now on is a pair of crows.”

  They had fresh eggs and bacon for breakfast then cleaned up and packed. When they were ready to ride, Sully sat down and motioned for Curley to sit down too.

  “What’s going on?” Curley asked.

  Sully brought out his bundle of the Yankee paper money. “We both have a stack of cash and we have Carter’s share. Enough to keep us eating for a time. You have your share and can be all set when you decide what to do. Hope to hell you come with me. Got used to your ugly face over the past three years.”

  Curley nodded. “Oh yeah. Know what you mean. But it takes ugly to know ugly. Gonna stash this cash around different places. Some in my pocket, some in my shirt, some in my bedroll. Course some in my saddle bags. Then I can’t spend it all at once.”

  “You still thinking about Texas?” Sully asked.

  The big man nodded. “Sure as hell am. Like the idea, but got family back there in Tennessee. Pulls both ways.”

  “With that six hundred you could get your ranch going again. Buy a few head, put up a cabin, and hire a hand to help.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work,” Curley said. “Let’s ride and let me do some more thinking on it.”

  They rode again, southwest, passed two small towns, then stopped at the next one for dinner.

  “More towns and more people down this way,” Sully said. They ate well and rode again. Sully found out it was only about five miles on to the state line and into Arkansas. They were on a track of a road and they came to a fence with a sign: “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING ARKANSAS.”

  That was it.

  “Only one more border to go to get us into Texas,” Sully said.

  “Okay, okay, don’t push me,” Curley said with a grin. “Too damn far to get to Tennessee. So I’m with you to Texas. Hope I don’t regret it. Hell, let’s give it a try.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sully whooped. “Watch out, Texas, here come Sully and Curley and the old lone star state will never be the same.”

  “I even got our new brand,” Curley said. “We’re the S bar C Ranch. Sully and Curley.”

  “I like it,” Sully barked. “May the S bar C brand wave for many years to come.”

  Chapter Seven

  It took then eight days of long day riding to get through the area called Arkansas. Then they came to a small town that had a sign at the edge of the village that said: “Last chance at good food before you blunder into Texas, three miles on south.”’ It was almost the end of the day and Sully looked over at Curley.

  “Want to eat proper here and then see if this burg has a hotel?”

  “Partner, I am ready for both. Let’s see how good their food really is.”

  They settled for inch thick pound and a half beef steaks and were pleased. The tab was seventy cents each and they paid the high price without a whimper. They tarried over second cups of the best coffee they had tasted for some time and talked about Texas.

  “Just how far into this big state do we go to find all them critters?” Curley asked.

  Sully shook his head. “Don’t have the faintest idea. We stop and ask the good folks as we work south. Never have heard about any towns near them or any landmarks. So far we are riding blind. Try to get that figured out in a day or two.”

  It took them three days riding south to get it worked out. They stopped at every small town they found and asked about the wild roaming cattle. Most had never heard of them. Then some had and the last day one old store keeper said he wished he was twenty years younger and he would get a rope, a horse, go out there in the prairie, and rope himself a whole herd.

  “Lots of free ranging cattle out there?” Sully asked.

  “Oh, hell yes. I saw a herd of maybe fifty the other day. Came within a mile or so of town and then wandered south again. Friend of mine said he saw a big herd of over five hundred on south a day’s ride. They are out there. Had three or four years of free breeding. Then bulls went crazy.”

  The next morning they broke their camp early and headed south.

  “Let’s get into the cattle country,” Curley said. “Don’t know how we gonna round up them critters with just two of us but we can give it a shot.”

  “Might come down to one at a time,” Sully said. “First we have to find some place we can keep them corralled so we don’t have to round them up again. They are used to moving where they want to.”

  Later that morning they came over a small rise in a range of low hills and looked down on a wide valley that still had a lot of green grass from the spring rains.

  Curley shouted. “Look there, must be two hundred head just chomping away on that green grass.”

  Sully grinned and watched the cattle. They seemed to be working slowly to the west. Sully stared at the range of hills with some ridges heading toward the valley.

  “Let’s take a look over there,” he said pointing to the ridge lines. “Might be something we can use.”

  They rode that way and soon saw that the ridge lines were steep and only about a half mile long extending toward the broad valley. They rode up one of them and Sully grinned.

  “Let’s check out the next one. If one of these turns out to be a box canyon kind of place we might have us a home. What we need is a valley like that with a narrow entrance no more than a hundred yards across.”

  Sully was thinking out loud now. “Say we get some critters driven back into that small valley with only this one outlet. We get back to some small town, rent a wagon and buy some fence wire, a batch of fence posts, and some post hole diggers.”

  Curley nodded. “But can we drive some of these free rangers or will they scatter a hundred ways to breakfast?”

  “That we’ll have to find out. Let’s take a slow ride down there among them and see how they react. Three years out here might not have worked out all of the horse and riders that they used to answer to. Have to see.”

  They found a smaller herd of about twenty cattle, mostly cows and calves, less than half a mile from their selected box valley. They rode up to them and stopped. The cows looked at them and went on eating. Some of the younger calves frolicked around the horses. There was no bull in sight.

  Sully rode toward the herd swinging his lasso and talking to them. Slowly the animals began to move away from him. Good. What he wanted. “Get on the far side and aim them for the valley,” Sully shouted.

  Two of the cows turned away from the others but Curley rode up and they watched him for a minute, then went back with the small herd. The whole bunch was moving now toward the mouth of the valley. It was wider than Sully had wanted but no more than a hundred and fifty yards. He could fence that in one day. If he had the materials. He tried to think where the last little town was they had passed. He couldn’t remember it. They all got to look the same.

  They worked slowly, urging the animals toward the small valley. It took almost an hour to get them heading into the smaller area, then they were inside the twin ridges and moving along the green valley toward the far end. Sully saw now that the place was no more than a third of a mile long. But plenty of graze for a good sized herd.

  Curley rode over grinning. “Hey, pardner, looks like we have or first herd. What about twenty, twenty five?”

  “Looks like. Now all we have to do is keep them inside. You remember where that last little town was we passed?”

  “Yep. Wanted to stop for some food but we rode on through. I’d say about six or seven miles back.”

  “We need a fence across here. Soon as it gets dark these critters will settle down. Then you keep guard across here and I’ll ride back to that town and rent a wagon and buy some of that fence wire and some fence posts if I can find any. Otherwise we have to cut our own fence posts out of that grove of tre
es over there. You all right standing guard over our first catch?”

  “Damn right. You go now. I can watch the herd and keep them penned up. Maybe you can get back here before dark. Then I figure we make about three small camp fires across the mouth of this valley and the animals will shy away from them.”

  “Done. I’m remembering that little town. Looked like a good general store. You ride herd here and I’ll be back with a wagon, a team, and some fencing.” He waved and turned back north trying to remember for sure landmarks they had seen on the way south.

  Sully rode hard when he was sure he was on the right track, slower when he figured out where to go. He walked his mount for an hour, then picked up the pace for half an hour. Soon he could see the smokes rising from the little town ahead. It was just after five o’clock when he rode into town and reined in at the General Store. He slapped the dust off his shirt and hat, then went inside. A woman, maybe thirty behind the counter, smiled and waved at him.

  “Hi stranger. I’m Ann Marie but everyone in town calls me Annie. What can I get for you today?”

  “Well, good to meet you. I’m Sully and everyone calls me Sully.” They both laughed. Fence wire. You have any rolls of wire I can use to put up a fence?”

  “Sure, we have fence wire. Big rolls of about a hundred and fifty yards in each one. Weigh a ton. How many you need?”

  She came out from behind a small counter and he saw that she was slender with golden hair braided down her back and a pretty face with flashing brown eyes. She wore a no nonsense gingham dress that swept the floor.

  “Oh, how much. I need three strands about a hundred and twenty yards. So I guess I need three rolls. And I’ll need a small wagon to haul it to my place.”

  “Let me see out back if we still have three rolls. Think that we do.” She vanished through a curtained opening and came back a few minutes later.