Thunder Valley Page 8

  “Listen to the Johnny Reb,” the sergeant growled.

  “Who does he think he is?” another trooper demanded. “Telling us what we can do?”

  “Why are you wearing that uniform, Reb?” said the big bulk. “Didn’t you hear the war is long over?”

  Rondo had set down his cards and placed his hands flat on the table. “This will end badly,” he’d warned them.

  “Take it off,” the sergeant said.

  Rondo had looked at him.

  “You heard me. Take off that Reb uniform. Right here and now.”

  Rondo hadn’t moved.

  “We mean it, Reb,” the sergeant had said. “I lost a brother to you stinking Confederates. Get shed of it, or else.”

  “No.”

  The trooper across the table had laughed. “He thinks he has a choice.”

  “Dumb as stumps, these Rebs,” said the fourth trooper.

  All of them put their hands on the flaps to their holsters and the sergeant placed his other hand on Rondo’s shoulder.

  “You have one minute to start peeling those buttons.”

  Nearby tables had been vacated. Patrons were moving as far back as they could. The bartender yelled that he didn’t want trouble in his place but the soldiers ignored him.

  “Didn’t you hear me, Reb?”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Rondo had replied.

  “Enough of him,” said the trooper across the table, and he jerked at his revolver.

  So did the others.

  They all nearly had their hardware out when Rondo moved. He drew as he rose, flicking his pearl-handled Colt Navies up and out, and he shot the sergeant in the face with his left Colt even as he shot the trooper across the table in the face with his right Colt. The soldier on his left was raising his weapon and Rondo shot him in the face and shifted, and then he shot the last trooper in the face just as the man squeezed the trigger. The slug plowed into the table and the trooper crashed on top of it, and the table and the four soldiers crashed to the floor and were still.

  Rondo had backed out of the saloon with a smoking Colt in each hand. No one tried to stop him. He left Dodge on the fly. He was surprised that no one came after him. He was even more surprised that the army didn’t hunt him down. Later he learned that since the four soldiers were off duty and drunk and witnesses told the marshal that the soldiers started it, no charges were brought against him.

  Still, from then on, Rondo made it a point to stay shy of troopers. “It could be these here have heard about Savage,” he concluded his account after Roy Sether had Tom Kline wheel the buckboard into a side street and park.

  “They’re not the law,” Moses Beard said. “They don’t go around arresting people.”

  “I doubt you have anything to worry about,” Roy agreed.

  Rondo thought it safer that he stay in the buckboard, and said so.

  “And not have a drink with us?” Roy hopped down. “Come on. I have an idea.”

  Rondo indulged him. With Roy in front and Tom and Moses to either side, they headed down Main Street. He pulled his hat low and shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled his slicker close around him so no one could see his Navies. He tensed when a pair of bluecoats came ambling the other way, but neither so much as glanced at him.

  “See?” Roy said, and grinned.

  They entered the first saloon they came to. It was called The Ax and Stump. A dozen or so timbermen and others were getting an early start on their drinking.

  Roy offered to buy the first round. They carried their glasses to a corner table and Moses was about to sit in the chair against the wall when Rondo James said, “That one’s mine.”

  “A chair is a chair, isn’t it?” Tom said.

  “Not for me.” Rondo walked around and Moses moved and the Southerner sank down. “I never sit with my back to a room.” He leaned back. “Any room.”

  “It must be rough being you,” Roy said.

  Rondo grunted.

  The three farmers drank and talked about their families and the crops they hoped to harvest and joked and laughed and had a good time.

  Rondo mostly listened. He had forgotten what it was like to be ordinary. He had forgotten how it felt to spend a carefree hour with friends. Hell, he told himself, he hadn’t had a friend in so long, he’d forgotten what that was like, too. He marveled that these three treated him no differently than they treated one another. He was used to being feared and shunned and despised. Suddenly he realized Tom Kline was talking to him.

  “… a last round on me? What do you say?”

  “I’m obliged,” Rondo said.

  Tom got up and went to the bar.

  “Remember,” Moses said to Roy. “No mention of this to Tilda or she’ll make me wish I was never born.”

  “She’s not that bad,” Roy said.

  “Do you live with her? Or do I?” Moses actually shuddered. “She’s fearsome when her dander is up.”

  “Martha thinks highly of her,” Roy said. “When we have you over, Tilda is always nice.”

  “With others she doesn’t show her fangs,” Moses said.

  Roy chuckled and turned to Rondo. “How about you? Have you ever been married?”

  Just when Rondo was starting to relax and enjoy himself, a cloud settled over him. “No,” he said simply.

  “Never found a gal you could love?” Moses asked.

  “I don’t like people pryin’ into my personal life,” Rondo said gruffly, and regretted it when Moses Beard recoiled as if he’d been struck. To ease the sting he said quietly, “I don’t have the right to inflict myself on a woman.”

  Tom came back carrying a tray with their beers. He set a brimming glass in front of each of them and settled into his chair. “What did I miss?”

  “Rondo was just saying he can’t inflict himself on a female,” Moses said.

  Tom smiled at Rondo. “Inflict yourself how?”

  “Marry,” Rondo said.

  “It can be an affliction when the wife is in a mood,” Tom said, and laughed, “but how can it be an infliction?”

  “Listen to you, big words,” Moses said.

  All three looked at Rondo. He raised his glass to his lips and swallowed and smothered a frown. They were only being friendly, he reminded himself. “How could I marry a gal, never knowin’ when someone might show up on our doorstep wantin’ to buck me out in gore?”

  “There are men who have done that?” Tom said. “They come hunting you, I mean?”

  Rondo told them about Warm Springs, Texas.

  It was three years after Dodge City. He’d been wandering where whim took him, winning enough at cards to keep food in his belly and to take rooms in seedy hotels. That night he’d won a sizeable pot and returned to the Lone Star to get some sleep before he headed out in the morning.

  Rondo had taken off his boots and spurs and set his hat on the table. He’d unbuckled his gun belt and hung it over the back of a chair. Sliding the Navies from their holsters, he lay on his back, propped by his pillows. As he always did, he placed a pearl-handled Colt on either side of him, within easy reach, and let himself drift off.

  Well past midnight, Rondo was awakened by a noise. It took him a few seconds to realize it was the scrape of his window being slowly raised. His room was on the second floor at the front, above the porch overhang. Someone had climbed up and was trying to slip in undetected.

  Rondo had reached for his pistols. He heard whispers and realized there was more than one. Sliding off the bed, he’d crouched beside the table.

  The room was dark but the moonlight spilling in revealed the two figures who slipped over the sill and straightened. They turned toward the bed and gun hammers clicked.

  Rondo shot them. He couldn’t see their faces but their heads were good targets and he triggered shots at each black circle. When he lit the lamp, he found them slumped in a pile, their brains splattered over the wall and window.

  The marshal was summoned by the hotel owner. It was a clear c
ase of self-defense so the lawman didn’t try to take him in.

  The next morning, as Rondo was about to ride out, the marshal showed up. Apparently he had asked around and learned that one of the two men was the brother of one of the soldiers Rondo had killed in Dodge.

  “Now you know why I’ve never had a wife,” Rondo finished. “Or any friends, for that matter.”

  “Well, you have some now,” Roy said, and Tom and Moses nodded.

  “I’ll be damned,” Rondo said.

  14

  The McWhirtle farm was next to the Jackson farm. Aaron McWhirtle was fifty-seven and from Illinois. He’d come west later in life than most. His family said he was crazy to start over at his age. But not Maude. She’d hankered after a new life and new challenges as much as he did. That was why they’d been married for thirty-one years. They always thought alike.

  Now, busily stringing a fence at the rear of the chicken coop, Aaron thought about how much he loved that woman, and how blessed he was that she chose him for her husband. He whistled as he worked. He was content and at peace with the world.

  When Aaron heard the thud of hooves and saw four riders cutting across his recently planted field, he lost some of that sense of peace. Strangers should know better, he told himself.

  The hammer in his hand, he moved to meet them. Although he was angry he did the neighborly thing and smiled. “Hello, gents,” he greeted them when they drew rein. “To what do I owe this visit?”

  “Two in one day,” said a short man with an eye patch.

  “Two what?”

  “Lunkeads,” a rider as wide as a buckboard answered. “You live so close to Frank Jackson that we figured we might as well.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you’re a miserable dirt farmer,” declared a tall rider in black. “And your kind are as dumb as stumps.”

  “Have a care,” Aaron bristled. “You have no cause to insult me.”

  “Sure we do,” said the man in black, and with a jab of his spurs he caused his horse to bound forward.

  Aaron was caught unprepared. The animal slammed into his chest and knocked him down. He braced for the stomp of heavy hooves but the man in black had drawn rein. His chest a welter of pain, Aaron gaped in disbelief and blurted, “What in hell did you do that for?”

  “They’re always slow as molasses, these sodbusters,” said the man with the eye patch.

  “I reckon we’d better explain it to him,” said the last of the riders, whose cowboy garb lent the illusion he had drifted in off the open range.

  Aaron was slow getting to his feet. It wasn’t bad enough he’d been ridden into; he had a sense that he was in great danger. “There must some mistake,” he said. “I don’t know you gentlemen.”

  “No mistake at all,” said the wide one. “We’re givin’ you twenty-four hours to clear out.”

  “To do what?”

  “To pack your things and light a shuck,” said the man with the patch. “We don’t care where you go just as long as you are gone.”

  “That’s insane,” Aaron declared.

  The tall man in black swung down. “Is your wife as old as you are?”

  “Maude?” Aaron said. “We’re the same age. Why?”

  “Too bad,” the man in black said. “I don’t like them old. So you will have to do.”

  “I’m terribly confused.”

  “Let me set you straight,” the man in black said, and in the blink of an eye his ivory-handled Colt was in his hand and he smashed the barrel against Aaron’s temple.

  Aaron had no time to duck or yell in protest. His head exploded in agony and he was felled where he stood. Dimly, he was aware of being on his hands and knees and the world churning like butter in a churn.

  “Twenty-four hours,” the man in black said, “or we’ll come back.”

  “And the next time we won’t be as nice,” the man with the patch said.

  “You call this nice?” Aaron fumed. He was afraid but he was mad and his fury trumped his common sense. “I’ll have you arrested for this.”

  “You reckon?” said the man in black, and his leg swept up and in.

  To Aaron it felt as if the man’s boot drove his stomach into his spine. Overcome by torment, he collapsed. Bile gouted from his mouth and he thought he might vomit. All his strength left him. “No,” he said. “Don’t.”

  “We can’t hear you,” said the man with the patch.

  “Please,” Aaron begged.

  The man with the patch cackled. “I love it when they grovel.”

  The man in black hiked his boot over Aaron’s head. “I should stomp your brains out.”

  “No,” said the wide one. “We’re not to kill yet.”

  Aaron was relieved beyond measure when the man in black lowered his leg. Inadvertently, he swallowed his own bile, and grimaced.

  “I hate havin’ a leash on me,” the man in black said. Bending, he seized Aaron by the shirt and hauled him to his feet. “Twenty-four hours, mister. If you’re still here, my pard won’t stop me from puttin’ you under.”

  “What is this about?” Aaron said. “What did I do that you’re treating me like this?”

  “Jackass,” the man in black said, and punched him in the gut.

  Aaron would have fallen if the man wasn’t holding him. As it was, he sagged and nearly passed out. The man shook him, hard, until it felt as if his bones were about to burst from his skin. The shaking stopped and he thought his ordeal was over. Then a knee caught him in the groin.

  A veil descended. The next Aaron knew, he was lying facedown and tasted dirt and blood in his mouth. He groaned and struggled to roll over.

  Iron fingers clamped on to his shoulders and he was slammed onto his back. “Have a good nap?” the man in black said.

  “No more,” Aaron said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “You might be fakin’,” the man said, and kicked him in the side.

  Aaron couldn’t stop himself—he cried out from the pain, and clutched his side.

  “Careful,” the wide man said to the man in black.

  “Quit naggin’,” the man in black said. Reaching down, he gripped Aaron’s chin. “How many teeth you got?”

  “What?” Aaron was so awash in agony he couldn’t concentrate.

  The man in black punched him in the mouth.

  Aaron’s head rocked to the blow. More pain flooded through him. Blood filled his mouth and bits of teeth fell on his tongue.

  “How many now? Twenty-four hours,” the man in black said yet again, and straightened. “I reckon that’s enough.” He turned toward his horse.

  From near the rear of the chicken coop came a voice tinged with fury and choked with emotion. “Hold it right there, you scalawags.”

  Aaron was spiked by terror. He raised his head and had to squint to see Maude, holding the shotgun. “No!” he gurgled through the blood.

  The man in black and the three on their mounts had frozen.

  “What have you done to my husband?” Maude demanded, coming around the partially completed fence. She glanced at Aaron and stifled an outcry. “You animals. You awful animals.”

  The wide man looked amused. The man with the eye patch was grinning. The cowboy showed no emotion.

  As tense as taut wire, the man in black said, “Look what we have here.”

  “Why did you do this?” Maude shrilled, gesturing with her elbow at Aaron. “Explain yourselves.”

  “Lady,” the wide man said, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll put that howitzer down.”

  “I hope she doesn’t,” the man in black said.

  “Darned right I won’t,” Maude said savagely. Tears were in her eyes. “I should shoot you where you are. I’ve got buckshot in these barrels, and it will blow you to pieces.”

  “Killed a lot of men, have you?” taunted the man with the eye patch.

  “No,” Maude said, then said fiercely, “but don’t think I can’t to pro
tect the man I love.”

  “Ahhhh, how sweet,” said the man with the patch.

  Aaron was collecting his wits. He spat out blood and pushed to his knees. “Maude, you have to get out of here. Give me that shotgun and go.”

  “No,” Maude said, not taking her eyes off the four men. “I’m not leaving you, Aaron.”

  “They’ll hurt you, or worse.”

  “Like the dickens they will.” Maude put her cheek to the shotgun. “Take off your gun belts and drop them.”

  “Like hell, lady,” said the man with the patch.

  “I mean it.” Maude pointed the shotgun right at him. “I will by God blow you in half.”

  “We’ve got us a regular she-cat,” the wide one said, and laughed.

  “This isn’t funny,” Maude said. “Not even a little bit.” Her face was steel and resolve. “Now do as I say or I squeeze these triggers.”

  “Maude, no,” Aaron said. Fighting the torture, he made it to his feet, and swayed. He hurt all over, his head most of all, and blood seeped over his lower lip. He spat again and said, “Give me that shotgun.”

  “No,” Maude said.

  Aaron wished she would listen. This wasn’t like her. They hardly ever argued or had a cross word for one another. She was mad, he realized. More mad than he’d ever seen her. Watching the four hard cases, he went to her, careful not to step in front of those twin barrels. “Maude, I don’t want you hurt. Give me the shotgun, please.”

  “No.”

  The man in black did a strange thing. He smiled. “Must be my lucky day.”

  “Don’t,” said the wide one.

  “You see her, Brule.”

  “Damn it, Ritlin. We have been told not to until it’s necessary.”

  “It’s necessary now,” Ritlin said.

  “I’m with you,” said the man with the eye patch.

  The one who looked like a cowboy and who hardly ever spoke said, “One Eye and Ritlin are right. We can’t let her run us off.”

  “Damn it to hell,” Brule said.

  Maude raised her head. “How can you talk like that with me pointing this at you? Take off your guns, I say. And do it before I lose my patience.”

  “You’ve lost more than that,” Ritlin said. His hand was a blur and his ivory-handled Colt filled it and there was the boom of the shot.