Winchester 1887 (5 page)

He knew better than to follow orders. If the bank had been robbed in Greenville, why should he go to Eufaula—maybe a hundred miles southeast. Oh, Jackson Sixpersons followed orders, but within degrees. He sent Malcolm Mallory and Virgil Flatt to Eufaula and told them not to hold their breath until Boston Graves showed up. Then he rode to Greenville.

The bodies of the dead outlaws had been planted in the town's potters field, but an itinerant photographer had snapped a few good photographs of the corpses and charged the county ten cents a pop. Sixpersons looked over those photos at the sheriff's office. He nodded.

“You recognize someone, Deputy?” Sheriff Marion asked.

Sixpersons nodded. “Stoney Post.” Another nod. “I guess you were right. It was the McCoy-Maxwell Gang.”

“Not me. The teller. Feller named Mike Crawford. That skinflint of a banker, Grover Cleveland, fired him. Said he should have give his life like the assistant cashier done.”

Sixpersons tossed the photo back on the sheriff's cluttered desk. “Grover Cleveland?”

The sheriff snorted and spit tobacco juice into the cuspidor.

“The teller recognized them? But the report I read said all the men wore masks.”

“He recognized the shotgun one of them boys held. Lever-action Winchester. Like yourn. Only cut down more. Even had the stock sawed off like a—”

“Pistol.”

“Yep. I reckon. Tell you the truth, lead was flyin' so thick, I didn't get a good look at nobody.”

“Somebody did. You left three of them dead.”

“Thought it was only two at first.” The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “One of 'em we found on the road in a ditch. His horse come a-trottin' back. Cleveland, the bank ramrod, sent Crawford after it, see if there was any money on it. That's how tight that miser is. Poor Mike comes back, says it was just a bloody horse and a lathered-up zebra dun, and that's when Cleveland fired the boy. Just told him he was finished, to get out.” He spit again. “Don't seem right by me. Ain't worth dyin' over, money, I mean. 'Specially if it ain't your money.”

“What is?” Sixpersons asked.

“What's what?” The Cherokee had stumped the sheriff. Not that that was hard.

“Worth dying for,” Sixpersons answered.

The sheriff nodded.

“The robbers get anything else?” Sixpersons asked.

Marion's head shook, but then stopped. “Yeah. Crawford, the teller who Cleveland fired, said one of the robbers—the one with the fancy shotgun . . . that would be . . . ?”

“Link McCoy,” Sixpersons said.

“Uh-huh. Well, Crawford said they taken his watch.”

“A watch.” Sixpersons perked up. “Anything special about it?”

The sheriff laughed. “I reckon so. If Mike Crawford could have described them bad men as well as he talked about that watch of his . . .” He pulled open a drawer and began sorting through papers, pulled a few out and tossed most of those aside or into the wastebasket until he found what he was looking for. He laid the paper on the desk, put his head in his hands, elbows on the desk, and read. “A sixteen-jeweled Waltham five-minute repeater, hunting case, MRC engraved in a shield on the checkered-design case. Sunken porcelain dial, Arabic numerals, and solid gold.”

That, Sixpersons figured, might be the best bit of information he had gotten from his visit. Watches like that were scarce.

The sheriff laughed. “He wanted that watch back something fierce.”

Sixpersons said nothing, although he was thinking
A solid gold repeater? I don't blame him.

Of course, he had never owned any watch.

The door opened, and in ran a telegrapher, from the looks of him. Jackson Sixpersons had learned to read white men, especially town folk.

The little runt handed the fat sheriff a yellow paper.

The sheriff read it. and grinned. “Reckon maybe we kilt four of them bad men.” He held the telegraph out for Sixpersons.

Sixpersons took the telegraph and read.

A dead body had been found in a tent at Mackey's Salt Works. He had a bullet in his back and had bled himself out. Plus, some of the men working the old salt diggings had seen a bunch of men—well-mounted, well-armed men—hanging around that tent.

Sixpersons rose.

“You'll send the body back, won't you, Deputy?” the sheriff asked.

Jackson Sixpersons picked up his shotgun. “For the reward? Or the photographer?”

The old sheriff laughed and wiped the tobacco juice off his lips.

“Grover Cleveland won't put up a dime for no reward, Deputy. And the photographer done left. Headed up to Fayetteville where the pickin's might be better.”

“I see.” Sixpersons pushed through the door. Sheriff Whit Marion was no fool. Grover Cleveland, president of the local bank but not the United States, might not offer a reward, but plenty of others would. Trains, banks, express companies, and stage lines had offered plenty of rewards on the capture, death, or conviction of known criminals to have ridden with the McCoy-Maxwell Gang.

Jackson Sixpersons didn't care about a reward. He just had a job to do.

No hat for protection from the sun. No bullets for the Winchester '86. No food. No water. He had not thought to bring a canteen with him. No brains, either.

James Mann knew what he should have done. Once he had leaped from the boxcar the previous night, and the train had passed—carrying the stinking thief and would-be killer south along the rails—he should have followed the tracks. Eventually, he would have come to a water tank, and there he could have slaked his thirst, found a good hiding place, and hopped the next freight train that rumbled along south. Yet he hadn't. He'd figured his father would come looking for him, and the idea of being caught by his pa sickened him.

Smart enough, he'd found the North Star and walked east, away from the tracks. Fort Smith lay east. All he had to do was keep going in that general direction and cross through Indian Territory.

In the heat of the day, he sat, and knew he was a fool. Cross the reservations of the Kiowas, Comanches and Apaches? Long before he even reached the land of the Five Civilized Tribes, those Indians, even the peaceful ones, would probably kill him for the Winchester.

He reached into the sack and found the badge, which he stuck into his pants pocket. He pulled on the extra pair of socks, but had to fight to get his boots on over the two pairs. At least, that would minimize the blisters he was getting. The extra shirt, he put on after tossing away the one he had worn, the one ripped to shreds from his tumble on the gravel and brush alongside the rails. That emptied the sack. The hobo from the boxcar had most of his food, and James had eaten the last bit of jerky hours earlier.

He wrapped the sack around his head, made himself stand, and, still refusing to concede defeat, to give up and return to the railroad, he walked eastward. Walked. And walked. Moving blindly, but smart enough to use the sun to find his way east.

No clouds shown in the sky.

The temperature, he guessed, had to be approaching eighty.

Onward, he walked.

Eventually, he came to a river, or a creek, but it had water, red, muddy, and brackish, but it tasted better than the sarsaparilla Pa and Ma had bought for him that time at the store in McAdam. Yet he wasn't completely stupid. Uncle Jimmy had warned him about drinking too much Texas water, and James did not want to get sick. Not out in the middle of nowhere.

He followed the riverbed, since, for the time being, it seemed to be flowing eastward. Only an occasional lizard came into his view; James saw no game, not even a scrawny jackrabbit or soaring raven. No fish jumped in the river, but as sorry as that water had tasted, that came as no surprise. On the other hand, he rarely heard the warning of a rattlesnake.

How far had he traveled? He couldn't fathom a guess, but not far from home—not considering that he'd expected to be well beyond his father's grasp and iron hand. Was he too old to get a whipping from his parents? James didn't want to find out.

Texas turned bleaker, more rugged. The treeless plains seemed endless, and every mile or so, he had to squash that urge to return home. After a while, even that would have been hopeless, he realized. Oh, he could follow the river back a ways, but after that? Finding the railroad tracks would be a poor gamble.

So . . . James kept walking.

His feet ached. He knew that the sun had already burned his neck, and, even with the sack for a bonnet, his head felt like a scorched hotcake. Around dusk, he found a grove of trees. The only place a person could find trees in that part of the country came along riverbeds, so it would have to be his first camp. Without food, his stomach rumbled and his belly tightened.

How long could a man go without food? He recalled Uncle Jimmy talking about that. A week? James wasn't sure. Water was more precious—just a few days, he remembered his uncle saying, before you died a miserable death—but he had water, as bad as it was.

It didn't matter. Not yet. It was as far as he was going. He crawled to the river, cupped his hands, and slaked his thirst, wondering if the sand and grit he swallowed along with the water might be considered food then moved back to the small cottonwoods.

Uncle Jimmy had also told him a habit many cowhands got into before they bedded down. It was probably nothing more than superstition, but cowhands and many wayfarers, would throw a lariat around their bedrolls. They believed that snakes and other night crawlers would respect the rope and never cross it.

“Why even think about that?” he said aloud. The rawness of his voice surprised him, especially after he had just reduced the swelling of his tongue and the dryness in his mouth with that awful water.

Refusing to speak again, he thought
I don't have a lariat.
Besides, he didn't want to get into the habit of talking to himself.

If a snake came along at night, he could always bash its head in with the butt of the Winchester rifle. Or maybe stab it to death with the pin on the back of the deputy's badge.

He sat there, legs outstretched, crossing his weary feet every now and then, leaning against the tree, watching evening become night.

Off in that not-too-far distance, a wolf howled. Not a coyote, but a wolf. It sang out again. Definitely a wolf.

He thought about home.
Ma would be scrubbing the dishes clean, and Jacob and Kris would be already in bed, their bellies full of salt pork, beans, maybe fried potatoes. After that chore, Ma would go over their lessons they should have studied in their McGuffey's Readers. Pa would be checking on the livestock, gathering the dried manure for the breakfast fire in the morning. When full dark came, they would turn in. Kris would lead the prayers, with Jacob following.

James shook off the thoughts, knowing he would be mouthing the words . . . if he'd been there.

What was I thinking? Running away.
He closed his eyes and immediately fell into a deep, hard sleep.

 

 

All the next day, James saw the clouds forming, darkening the skies way off in the horizon, which did not bother him. At least, not at first. After all, those thunderheads loomed low, but well behind him, off to the northwest, and he kept walking, more or less, in an easterly direction, still following the river.

By noon, he felt a cooling wind on his back, and he could hear the distant rumbling of thunder. Every now and then, he would stop to look behind him. Lightning flashed, and he could see where torrents of rain were flooding the Panhandle somewhere well behind him.
Good,
he kept thinking,
empty those clouds now.

Those clouds were a lot closer than they had been the last time he had looked.

A few hours later, the wind whipped him along as if urging him to hurry up. He needed no motivation. The thunder, the lightning, was all he needed to know he would soon be in trouble if he did not find shelter.

Soon.

Once, he stopped underneath a creaking cottonwood, and found shelter under a canopy of leaves. He stayed there only a few minutes before he remembered all of those trees he had seen, splintered, scorched, split, or killed by lightning. He moved again, quickly.

He could see blue all around him, but right on his back was an ominous black. By three o'clock, his hair began to feel frizzy, and the electricity in the air became palpable.

Soon, the clouds had overtaken him, and he thought he might just luck out. Maybe the storm would pass over him, dump its contents, and send its lightning well ahead of him. He hoped that would happen. Prayed for it.

Thunder boomed, and he ducked, scanning the Llano Estacado—the Staked Plains of the Texas Panhandle—for some sod house or makeshift shelter left by a buffalo hunter who had traveled that country decades earlier. Or a cave, some hole in the ground, an overhang in some arroyo. Anything.

Nothing. No coyote den. No overhang. Not even an anthill.

James swore, and God must have heard that curse, because it had scarcely passed his lips when cold, hard, icy rain drenched him.

It happened almost instantly. The wind took off his sack, but he no longer felt the need to protect his head from the sun, for there was no sun. Just low, black clouds. Or so he assumed. He couldn't see anything but white sheets of rain, and those giant drops stung him like buckshot. He brought the rifle close to him, and felt chilled.

The barrel was casehardened steel. It could attract lightning, and he remembered hearing stories of men caught out in some brutal Texas thunderstorm. Cowboys had been struck dead with their horses, their spurs melted onto their burned boots. Or that farmer who had been carrying a shovel. Or that man down on the Pease River who had been sitting in the edge of his covered wagon, eating beans with a spoon.

“Throw the rifle away,” he heard himself say. “It's not worth dying over.”

But he just couldn't do it.

He even tried to wrap it underneath his waterlogged shirt, protect it from the rain, and potential rust.

The river had carved a bit of a canyon across the ground, and that might have protected him from some of the risk and rain, but as he walked, he soon realized he had cleared the canyon and kept moving across open prairie. Sagebrush scratched his legs, but he kept walking. Perhaps a hundred yards later, he realized another greenhorn mistake. Back in the canyon, there had been protection, if only moderate, from the rain, wind and lightning. He could have leaned against the canyon walls for shelter.

Go back.

He tried to change his course, but the assault of rain and wind, turned him back, kept pushing him onward. James relented, let the storm drive him—like storms often herded cattle and wild mustangs. Let the storm guide him . . . to his death.

I couldn't find that canyon anyway,
he thought. He wasn't even sure he was following the river. He could see maybe a few feet in front of him, and that was it.

Late afternoon had turned pitch black, except for that brilliant sheet of white rain—which abruptly changed.

At first, the hailstones were maybe the size of his pinky fingertip. They stung, but his body had been so numbed by the freezing rain and brutal wind that he found the hail less painful than the rain. Moments later, however, those hailstones had become larger, growing into the size of dollar coins, mothballs, and a few even larger. One slammed into his shoulder and knocked him into the mud. He wanted to lay down, stay there, but if he did, in minutes he would be covered by thousands of hailstones, so he used the Winchester to push himself up, noticing the stock of the rifle sank three or four inches into the muck. It took all his strength to pull the rifle free.

He grimaced as stone after stone smashed into his head, his back, his thighs and calves. Finally, he was moving, slowing down, his teeth chattering.

So this is how it ends,
he figured.
Either freeze to death or catch my death from pneumonia.

Just when he thought he might as well just sit down and die, a new sound came to him. The roaring of a locomotive.

His eyes widened with hope. He figured he had somehow made a crazy loop and come back to the Fort Worth–Denver City tracks. He could hop the train, if he could just find it. Searching for the locomotive's headlamp revealed nothing, but the hail had stopped as abruptly as it came. The wind hit the side of his face. Then the other side. The wind blew him down . . .

And he understood that he had not circled back to the railroad line. It was not the roaring of a locomotive that he heard. “Tornado!” he yelled.

The wind drove him back into the rain.

He rolled over and crawled across cactus and sagebrush, ripping his shirt, hauling the .50-caliber rifle with him. Crawled desperately for his life. He couldn't see anything. His ears seemed to pop with pressure. But he sensed that he was moving.

Keep moving.

Keep moving.

Stop and you're dead.

The wind intensified, and the rain—thankfully no longer huge chunks of awful ice—washed all over him. He had no sense of time, not anymore. Could not recall how long he had been in the storm. James Mann just knew that he had to keep crawling.

His shirt was ripped open. He wasn't sure if that was blood running down his chest or just icy rainwater. The roaring of the twister seemed to die away, but the rain came down and down and down and down.

He moaned, prayed, begged, but, mostly, he crawled. Kept crawling and pulling the Winchester with him. He thought he had lost one of his boots, but did not stop.

Suddenly, his head bumped into something solid. He reached out, fingered wood, then air, something cold, then another piece of wood. Slats of some kind. No. Not slats. The wood felt round.

Wagon wheel spokes.

He gripped them with his right hand and pulled his body along. Sensing shelter, he dragged his battered, soaked, freezing body underneath the wagon. What kind of vehicle, he couldn't tell, but decided that it had to be some old buffalo hunter's wagon, left behind so many years ago or maybe some abandoned wagon along one of the military roads.

It didn't matter, for the wagon's floor, old as it must have been, did not leak much. It wasn't exactly like he was sleeping in his own bed or under a roof, and the ground was soaking wet. He could hear running water cutting a trench underneath the wagon. Yet it was as close to shelter as he would come, and he thanked the Lord for it. He moved to what he believed must be the center of the wagon, drew up into a ball, still clutching the rifle, and squeezed his eyes shut.

The rain did not lessen.

The storm did not leave.

Yet somehow, James Mann fell asleep.