The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  Abner took several more strides before dropping belly-down at the edge of the woods, about twenty feet from the trail beyond. The gang’s thunder was nearly deafening now. The young man could smell the musk of horse sweat, hear the squawk and clank of tack, and the bellows-like blowing of the tired mounts galloping hell-bent for leather in the direction of Shallow Ford.

  The riders came into view ahead of him. Because of his low angle on the hill, he could see only the men’s torsos as they galloped past from his right to his left. Hoisting himself off his elbows, he lifted his head several inches higher.

  He sucked a sharp breath through gritted teeth.

  These men galloping past him were no drovers. In his nineteen years, Abner had lived what most men would call a full life. He had driven cattle for a time, and neither he nor any other drovers he knew wore as many guns and cartridge belts as these riders were wearing.

  They all had rifles shucked down into saddle scabbards, as well. A few wore knives either on their belts or hanging from leather cords around their necks.

  One had a knife jutting from a sheath strapped behind his neck.

  These men were armed like market hunters...or manhunters.

  Not drovers. Cut loose from their tedious, dangerous chores, drovers headed for town whooping and hollering in joyous anticipation of blowing their hard-earned money in a couple of nights of drinking, whoring, and card playing. But these men rode with grim sets to their hard, cold-eyed faces, most of which were thickly bearded and sun-seared to the texture of old leather.

  They didn’t look happy. They looked grimly purposeful. They looked like wolves on the blood trail.

  And there had to be well over thirty of them...

  Abner jerked his head down into the foot-high bromegrass, heart pounding as the ground continued to shiver beneath him.

  No, these were no drovers. These men were the Ramon Lazaro Gang.

  Ramon Lazaro’s bunch was the cruelest, roughest gang of outlaws to run roughshod across Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma since the first great cattle herds had been driven up to the railroads from Texas. In these parts, only two large gangs rode roughshod, and the sheriff, Bill Mitchell, had informed Abner that Lazaro’s bunch had been seen south of Shallow Ford. Ramon Lazaro, a half-breed Mexican bandido and crazed killer from northern Chihuahua, commanded the largest band of misfits in this neck of the western prairie.

  And they were headed straight for Abner Fieldhouse’s town, Shallow Ford...

  The hammering of the hooves began to die as the last riders passed along the trail before Abner, who was about to lift his head and risk another look when Wichita loosed another shrill whinny.

  Abner winced and pressed his cheek down hard against the ground again. “Wichita, dammit!”

  The gang’s thunder continued to drift into the distance. Abner waited a few seconds and then, his anxious curiosity getting the better of him, he slowly raised his head to gaze along the trail.

  He cursed and pulled his head down once more.

  One of the rearmost gang members was stopping and curveting his mount while the others continued to gallop on beyond him. As the gang’s thunder continued to dwindle, Abner ground his molars and kept his head low. His pulse throbbed in his ears.

  Finally, too curious for his own good, he risked another peek through the tips of the breeze-brushed grass.

  The rider was still sitting his horse sideways on the trail, staring back toward Abner’s position. The hard case was too far away for the young deputy sheriff to see him clearly, but the man appeared to have an incredulous cast to his bearded, sunburned features beneath the brim of his dusty, black hat.

  Tan dust sifted around the broad-shouldered hombre clad in a plaid shirt, knotted red neckerchief, and brown duster.

  As Abner stared back at the Lazaro gang member, praying that the killer wouldn’t ride over to investigate the noise he’d obviously heard, the outlaw did just that. He touched spurs to his horse’s flanks and came slowly toward where the young man cowered in the grass at the edge of the trees, only a few yards down the hill from the trail.

  “Who’s there?” the man called above the slow clomping of his horse’s hooves. He reached to his right and pulled a rifle out of a saddle scabbard.

  Abner jerked his head back down, pressed his cheek hard to the ground, feeling the compressed grass cutting into his face.

  There was the tooth-gnashing rasp of a rifle being cocked.

  “I said who’s there?” the man called again, louder this time.

  Abner could hear the horse’s ragged breathing. He could hear the faint jingle of the bit chains.

  From behind the young man, Ellen called, “Abner, is everything all right?”

  Abner tensed, heart leaping in his chest.

  The crunch of footsteps sounded on his left flank. He turned his head to see Ellen moving up the slope. She held one arm high across her chest. She probably wasn’t wearing her corset, as she was accustomed.

  “Abner?” Ellen called again, moving straight on up the slope, her mussed, curly, dark-brown hair dancing across her slender shoulders.

  “Go back down the hill, Ellen!” Abner was able to shout only inside his head.

  He lay frozen against the ground, as tense as a board, his heart hammering wildly.

  Then she was past him and moving toward the trail.

  The Lazaro rider must have stopped his horse because Abner could no longer hear the slow hoof thuds.

  Now the man said in a cheery, lusty voice, “Well, hello there, sweetheart!” He laughed. “Now, look at you. What’re you doing out here? You all by yourself?”

  Ellen gasped.

  Abner lifted his head slightly as the girl wheeled and went running back down the hill. The rider gave a whoop, rammed spurs to his horse’s loins, and galloped after her. He shot past Abner like a bull through a chute, the horse lunging through the timber, snapping branches beneath its hammering hooves. The rider ducked under low-hanging branches, but one tore his hat from his head and sent it flying.

  The man whooped again in victory.

  Ellen glanced over her left shoulder and screamed.

  Abner gained his feet and stared in shock as the rider dashed on down the hill after his girl. The young man worked his way free from his shock, finally getting his brain to clear and his body to move. Fury edging out the trepidation inside him, he ran down the hill after the pair, leaping fallen branches and weaving around stout cottonwoods and skinnier aspens.

  He was only halfway down the hill when the rider gained the bottom of the hill, by the stream. Ellen had splashed across the stream and was running up the far slope. She tripped over a deadfall and fell in a heap. She looked behind her and screamed again as the man gave another whoop and swung down from his saddle.

  He started walking toward the girl writhing on the slope before him. She’d torn her dress, and her camisole shone as did nearly half of her tender right breast. Abner ran harder, leaped a deadfall, got his right boot toe caught on the stub of a broken branch, and fell.

  He grunted and cursed as he rolled.

  The outlaw swung toward Abner, raising his carbine, his face a grim mask.

  Damn, damn! Abner thought. Now I’m done!

  The man opened up on him with his rifle. The roars hammered across the slope, echoing wickedly. Chunks of lead blasted the ground around Abner, thumping into deadfalls and tree trunks. Dirt, leaves, and wood slivers flew.

  Abner stopped rolling. He’d piled up against a large cottonwood that had been ripped out of the ground by its roots. He glanced at his right hand, and his eyes widened in shock.

  Somehow, he’d managed to hold onto his Spencer.

  The outlaw’s rifle stopped blasting.

  Abner lifted his head. The man had apparently emptied the rifle. He was sliding it into his right hand and unsnapping the keeper thong from over the big Remington holstered on his right thigh.

  He scowled incredulously across the narrow valley and up the sl
ope at Abner, who was suddenly vaguely aware of himself, as though in a dream, raising his Spencer to his shoulder and ratcheting back the heavy hammer.

  Still as though in a half-waking dream or as if he were watching himself from a distance away, Abner calmly took aim at the hard case. He settled the Spencer’s sights on the man’s broad chest, at the end of the neckerchief snaking down across his breastbone, and gently held his breath.

  As the man’s Remington cleared its holster with a faint snicking sound, Abner squeezed the Spencer’s trigger.

  The blast was like an open palm slamming across the young man’s right ear, plugging it, setting it to ringing.

  Crows took flight from a near tree, cawing raucously.

  Chapter 2

  Abner stared down at the fast-dying outlaw.

  The outlaw stared up at him. The man’s cobalt-blue eyes were shiny and dazed. He blinked several times, as though he were trying to clarify his vision.

  Blood oozed from the hole in the dead center of his chest, sopping his shirt and the twin ends of his neckerchief. He’d landed in the stream that wasn’t more than a couple of feet across, and the man’s blood was mixing with the stream, like oil.

  Ellen choked back a sob when she walked up and stood beside Abner, staring down at the dying outlaw. She clamped a hand across her mouth. Abner sidled up to her, wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  The outlaw blinked as he continued to gaze up at the young man standing over him, Abner holding the Spencer in his right hand, half-heartedly aiming the barrel at the outlaw, whose pistol lay several feet away in the mud and water.

  “Why...” the outlaw said just loudly enough for Abner to hear above the breeze rattling the leaves and the tinny murmur of the creek. “Why...you’re just a kid...”

  His eyes grew flat. His jaw became slack. He tilted his head slightly to one side, and his chest stopped moving.

  Ellen sobbed into her hand.

  “It’s all right, honey.” Abner kissed the girl’s forehead. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  But then he remembered the rest of the gang.

  “You wait here and stay quiet!” he hissed, then swung around and ran up the slope toward the trail.

  Gaining the edge of the woods, breathing hard, he looked around carefully. None of the other riders appeared to have turned back. Abner thought one or two might have seen the man he’d killed split off from the pack, or that they might have heard the shots, but maybe they hadn’t heard them above the drumming of their horses’ hooves. Besides, when the outlaw had opened up on Abner, the rest of the gang had probably been a good quarter-mile away.

  And, judging by their purposeful expressions and the speed with which they’d been riding, they likely had more important matters on their mind.

  Matters...

  Like what?

  The Shallow Ford Federated Bank & Trust?

  Sheriff Bill Mitchell had left the town in the hands of his deputy, Abner. It was Abner’s duty to do...what?

  What could a scrawny, nineteen-year-old possibly do against a gang of nearly forty hard-bitten outlaws, most of them killers?

  Something. Anything. Maybe warn the bank—if he could get to town before the gang did, that was. It was doubtful, but he knew a shortcut from the creek.

  Whatever he did, he had to do something!

  Abner ran back down the hill. Ellen was sitting on a log about ten feet from the dead man. Her cheeks were blanched. She stared at the man in shock.

  “You stay here, honey,” Abner told the girl, kneeling before her and placing his hands on her arms. “You stay here and don’t leave here until I come for you, all right?”

  Ellen slid her terror-stricken gaze from the dead man to the young man before her. She frowned. “What’re you going to do? Where are you going, Abner?”

  “I gotta get to town.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  She started to rise, but Abner gently pushed her back down. “No, no, no! You stay here. That gang was headed for town. I don’t know what they got planned for town, but I know it ain’t good. I gotta get to town as quick as I can and see what I can do!”

  Abner rose and began throwing tack on his horse. As he did, Ellen rose from the log and walked over to him, hugging herself as if deeply chilled. “Abner, if they’re outlaws, what can you do? There must have been dozens and dozens of those men!”

  “I know, honey, but I’m wearin’ this here badge, see? And that means I can’t just sit out here and worry about what they’re doin’. I gotta get to town and see about doin’ something!”

  Breathlessly, Abner finished saddling his chestnut. He dragged his six-gun and cartridge belt out of his saddlebags and wrapped the rig around his lean waist. He doffed his battered brown Stetson and turned to Ellen who stood regarding him worriedly, wringing her hands.

  “Remember, stay here until I come for you.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry, now. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  As he mounted the chestnut and rode up the steep hill opposite the direction of the trail, he hoped those last words hadn’t sounded as phony to Ellen as they had to him.

  * * *

  Abner pushed the chestnut hard cross-country, avoiding the trail altogether. The trail was an old stage and mail road, built for wagon traffic. It swung wide around the Arapaho Buttes, which was a much longer route than the route Abner was following, which was really no route at all but merely traveling as the crow flies.

  He had to dip down into another creek bottom and ride back out and then negotiate a crease between Crow Rock and Dinosaur Tooth, two of the seven buttes that comprised the Arapahos.

  When he’d ridden down the other side of the low pass, he could see Shallow Ford ahead of him, a motley collection of mostly log and wood frame shacks in a hollow in the featureless grassy plain that rose ever so gently west, clear to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, which of course couldn’t be seen from this distance.

  He could also see the powdery-pale trail looping wide around the buttes off his right shoulder and then curving back toward the town, where it became the main street splitting the settlement into nearly two equal halves. As Abner scanned the trail a good three-quarters of a mile away, his heart leaped into his throat.

  A ragged ball of dust rose along the trail. Beneath the ball was the brown, thumbnail-sized clump of galloping riders dragging the ball along behind it. From Abner’s distance, they were maybe the tip of his finger to the first joint away from Shallow Ford.

  “Come on, Wichita!” the young man yelled at the tops of his lungs, crouching low in the saddle and whipping his rein ends against the chestnut’s hips. “Come on, boy faster!”

  But a good half a mile stretched between him and the northeast edge of the town.

  When he glanced to his right again, the brown shape of the galloping riders was just entering the town and disappearing behind the false-fronted buildings of the main street—Dodge City Street. Then he could see only the tan dust sifting along the trail behind them.

  Abner gritted his teeth when he heard the pops of revolvers and the louder belching reports of rifles. A woman screamed. And then there was the din of shouting and more shooting and horses whinnying.

  “Come on, Wichita!” Abner encouraged the mount, lunging forward as though to the push the beast along. “Come on, boy!”

  He wasn’t thinking about what he’d do once he got to town. He was only thinking that Bill Williams would want him there because he was supposed to be there instead of out by the creek diddling with Ellen.

  Oh, Christ. What was Abner going to tell Bill?

  Cold sweat dribbled down the young man’s cheeks as he entered the outskirts of Shallow Ford, weaving the chestnut around old shacks, stock pens, dead gardens fenced off from foraging animals, and privies.

  Ahead, the shooting, the shouting, the whinnying, and the women’s screams grew louder and louder.

  It was a living nightmare. For s
everal years, Abner had read newspaper accounts of how the Lazaro Gang would storm into a town shooting and shouting and terrorizing. They were like an invading army of bloodthirsty barbarians.

  While most of the gang shot up the town, killing as many people as they could and especially targeting lawmen, several members robbed the bank. When the looting was finished, the gang would set fires here and there, to keep the citizens so busy putting out the flames, trying to keep the entire town from being engulfed, that they didn’t have time to form a posse.

  For years, Abner had read such accounts and had worried about the Lazaro gang targeting Shallow Ford. It was every citizen’s—especially every lawman’s—worst nightmare. Until today, it hadn’t come to pass. Abner had thought that such a fate simply wasn’t in Shallow Ford’s cards.

  Now, the nightmare was real. And what had Abner Fieldhouse, deputy town marshal of Shallow Ford, been doing when it occurred?

  He’d been diddling Ellen down by the creek.

  Shame competed with the terror rushing through him like waves at high tide. He stopped Wichita at the back of Jim Hansen’s Barbershop and swung down from the saddle. How odd that he’d so calmly dispatched the man who’d been going after Ellen not an hour ago, but now his hands shook as he slid his old Spencer from the saddle scabbard.

  His stomach ached. His knees felt like mud.

  He dropped the chestnut’s reins, pushed the horse away from the gap between the barbershop and Mrs. Sully’s Ladies’ Fine Accessories, and moved into the gap itself. Walking at a crouch, holding the Spencer high across his chest, he levered a round into the action and stared through the break toward the main street beyond.

  A man ran from right to left past the break, holding a black bowler hat on his head, his wool jacket flapping out to both sides. He’d run past the break so fast that Abner hadn’t gotten a good look at him. One of the townsmen running for his life, most likely.