Telegraph Days (9 page)

Suddenly Mrs. Karoo began to ring her dinner bell—she rang it for dear life.

We could all see her—she was pointing to the southwest, where a fast-moving dust cloud seemed to be moving our way.

“Uh-oh,” Ed Palmer repeated, to the irritation of his brother-in-law Ted Bunsen.

“If you don't stop saying ‘Uh-oh,' by God I'll shoot you,” Teddy said.

“I'm your brother-in-law,” Ed Palmer reminded him, but Ted did not rescind the threat.

Aurel Imlah wore a little spyglass on a leather cord around his neck. He used it to spot distant buffalo, I suppose. He trained his spyglass and watched the dust cloud closely, while the rest of us stood around on one foot and then the other, wondering what he was seeing, and how it might feel to be massacred.

“Bert Yazee's still riding that big roan horse,” Aurel announced casually, “but on the whole those scoundrels are poorly mounted.”

“Think they'll charge us, Aurel?” Beau Wheless asked.

“Eventually, I expect … but not today,” Aural concluded. “They want to scare us first—get us jittery.”

“Hell, I'm jittery already,” the blacksmith said—and he was the largest man in town.

Aurel walked off back to his hide yard. Mrs. Karoo stood by her bell, but she was no longer ringing it. Several of the drunks had begun to drift back in the direction of the saloons. Jackson Courtright had cocked his new pistol, a point of technique that drew comment from the sheriff.

“Don't be lolling around with that pistol cocked, Deputy,” Ted told Jackson. “It might go off and kill a chicken, or something.”

Then Ted turned to me.

“I guess tomorrow might not be the best day for our buggy ride,” he told me, with a disappointed look.

“Nope,” I agreed.

I felt a little sorry for Ted—he sure did look disappointed.

T
HE REGULARS AT
Mrs. Karoo's supper table lingered a little longer than usual on this particular Saturday night. Perhaps it was because she had made a cinnamon custard for dessert—and fortunately she had made lots of it, for everyone took a second helping.

There was not much talk. We all had the Yazee gang on our minds. Doc Siblee remarked that the preacher had picked a bad time to choke on the corn bread.

“He could have prayed for us,” he pointed out.

“There's only six of them,” Aurel reminded us. “A whole town ought to be able to fight off six killers.”

“A doubtful thing is the quality of our marksmanship,” Teddy admitted.

“If the Yazees make a run at the town it'll be mostly close-range shooting, I would hope,” Aurel pointed out.

Then he lit his pipe and Mrs. Karoo lit hers. She got out the rum and everyone except my brother, Jackson, indulged in a snort. A snort happened to be enough to make Hungry Billy drunk—he soon wobbled off into the night. Doc Siblee went with him and the rest of us moved out onto the porch. The evening star was especially bright that night, as bright as I've ever seen it. Far in the western distance we heard a deep lowing, a sound that seemed to interest Aurel Imlah a lot more than the Yazee scare.

“Buffalo,” he said. “It could just be two, but I'd like to hope it's a whole bunch.”

“Be handy to have you here if the Yazees attack,” Teddy said.

Aurel enjoyed a puff or two before he answered. I think he liked the notion that he was supposed to stay and protect the town, which is more or less what Teddy was suggesting.

“That sorry Bert Yazee is no early riser,” Aurel remarked—it was his only remark. Pretty soon he left and, I suspect, went to alert his skinners that there might be buffalo to be skinned on the morrow.

When Jackson and Teddy paid Mrs. Karoo the usual compliments, I walked partway back to the jail with them.

“Are you scared, Nellie?” Jackson asked.

“I don't know what I am,” I told him honestly, for I was neither terrified nor exactly calm. The dangers of violent death just seemed to be part of life, in the West. Even in Virginia plenty of people got murdered right in their homes. A few years back there had been a madman around Waynesboro who went around cutting people's heads off with a scythe. Naturally we were all terrified and cut down on our picnics until a farm woman who knew how to use a shotgun shot the madman dead.

Since it was such a pretty night I thought Ted Bunsen might want to indulge in a little courting—after all I didn't walk down to the jail every night—but he had his mind on the Yazee gang and failed to notice that a small opportunity had been lost.

“We best clean all the guns,” he said to my brother, which I guess they did, leaving me standing in the street flat-footed. I didn't want much from Teddy, but I did want something—if not from him, then from somebody, or maybe just from life itself.

Mrs. Karoo looked relieved when I stepped back into the boardinghouse, which surprised me. I hadn't been gone that long or that far.

“In Indian times you might have been snatched between here and the jail,” she explained. “I guess I still get nervous.”

“If anybody had tried to snatch me, you bet I would have raised a ruckus.”

“Not if you had been whacked on the head with a tomahawk first,” she said. “You would have been unconscious—and then you would have just been gone.”

It was a chilly thought, I had to admit.

“I was east of here, with the Choctaws then,” she said. “They were settled Indians. But Aurel was here when the Comanches ruled No Man's Land. He's the one to tell you about the Indian times.”

“And he thought the Comanches were worse than this Yazee gang?”

“Oh yes,” she said with certainty. “The Comanches were worse.”

T
HE SUN CAME UP
and no Yazees came with it—we all had a normal breakfast.

Watching Aurel Imlah and Mrs. Karoo with their pipes convinced me I wanted to learn to smoke one—the tobacco had such a pleasing smell. When I mentioned as much to Mrs. Karoo she offered to come with me to Beau Wheless's store to help me pick out my first pipe.

“Something ladylike, of course,” she said. “Mr. Wheless has a good selection. I'm about ready for a new pipe myself—we can take a look.”

Several of my Virginia aunts smoked pipes, though my mother didn't. She would not have approved of my pipe smoking but I was a grown woman now and I could choose my own vices, I guess.

Beau Wheless, ever the merchant, soon had fifteen or sixteen pipes out of his big pipe case, all of them spread on a counter while he explained the virtues of each one. I had not expected there to be such variety and was trying this one and that one, trying to see which one looked best with my complexion, when Beau Wheless suddenly looked up and got quiet.

At first I didn't know why—nor did Mrs. Karoo, who had already picked out her new pipe and was trying on a bonnet. But she looked up too. The blacksmith was in the store, buying himself a new sledgehammer. He looked up, puzzled. Then the old lady who was counting change suddenly stopped counting.

For no reason that I could immediately pinpoint, everyone in the store suddenly got quiet.

Hungry Billy Wheless, who had been lounging on the porch, doing as little as possible, suddenly rushed in, white as a sheet.

“It's them, Pa!” he said—then we all began to hear the distant rumble of hooves and some faint yelling.

I've come to think that in times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.

The Yazee gang was riding down upon us, six abreast. We all ran outside and confirmed that fact. The sensible thing, then, would have been to run and hide—but did we? Not at all. Instead we ran out into the street, in order to get an early look at our own doom. I suppose if it had been a tornado bearing down on us, or a prairie fire or a tidal wave, we'd have behaved just as foolishly—like chickens with their heads cut off, or something.

There it is: out we all ran, offering our foolish selves to the killers, quite unaware, of course, that we were about to witness one of the most talked about gunfights ever to occur in the American West, or anywhere.

The Yazee gang came trotting toward us, coming steadily on but not at a dead run or anything. They all had rifles except Bert Yazee, who had his big club. Being six abreast, they pretty much filled the street.Then, as we all watched, Bert Yazee pulled up, and so did his brothers. Bert lifted that big skull-smashing club over his head and let out a high yell, after which the Yazees came racing straight toward us, this time at a dead run. They were coming to massacre us all.

My first thought as a sister was to race over to the jail and protect my little brother—how I expected to accomplish that I had no idea. But I started running and got nearly to the middle of the street, which had come to look as wide as an ocean, when I realized I wasn't going to make it: the Yazees were coming at me too fast.

Ted Bunsen came running out of the jail with his rifle raised, but before he could shoot, one of the Yazees shot him and sent him sprawling, whether dead or alive I didn't know.

“Nellie! Come back!” Beau Wheless yelled, but by then it was too late to turn back. There I was, facing six wild killers, with no weapon of any kind.

I'm dead, I thought—I'm dead!

And at that moment I didn't really seem to mind all that much. I felt rather distant from it all, as if I were already gone.

Then Jackson, my brother, came stumbling out of the jail, looking as if he had just awakened. His hair stood up, his shirttail was out, and
he was barefoot. His aim, I believe, was to rescue me, but for that it was too late. But Jackson was a swift runner and managed to get to my side when the Yazees were still maybe forty yards away. He had his holster and his new pistol was in it but so far it had not occurred to him to draw the weapon.

“Jackson, draw your gun!” I yelled. “Draw your gun or we're dead!”

The only reason we weren't already dead, I'm convinced now, was because Bert Yazee wanted to club one or both of us with his big club and slowed the advance just a little. I could see Ted Bunsen struggling to sit up but he was not going to be able to be any help—now the Yazee gang was closing with us fast!

When Jackson realized he had his pistol, he did draw it, but my Lord! He was slow as molasses. Getting his pistol out of his holster seemed to take a week, and then he nearly dropped the pistol, which, so far as I knew, he had never fired.

“Jackson! Shoot!” I yelled. Jackson frowned for a second, as if annoyed by my bossiness, and then he finally cocked the pistol. By this time the Yazees were on us—I saw Bert Yazee with his killer's grin raise that big Ponca war club, meaning to club Jackson first.

But before the club fell Jackson raised the pistol and shot Bert Yazee dead as dead.

Then Jackson swung his pistol in a short arc and fired five more times. Each shot rendered a Yazee fully as dead as Bert. The last killer fell under his horse's feet and got thoroughly trampled as well.

On the faces of the dead men were looks of profound surprise.

Jackson looked at his pistol as if he had never seen such a thing as a revolver before.

“It's a good thing there wasn't seven of those killers,” he said mildly. “I used up every one of my bullets.”

Ted Bunsen got to his feet and managed to hobble over—he had only been hit in the shoulder. He stared down at the six dead men, looking puzzled, as his eyes were showing him something he couldn't quite believe.

Ted didn't say a word, nor did most of the townspeople, at first. Rita Blanca was quiet, except for one of the Yazees' horses, which had wandered off to a water trough and was sucking in water, loudly.

We weren't dead—none of us—and yet death had come so close
that it took a while for us to accept that we were still alive. A stillness settled over us. Even Beau Wheless was silenced for a time. How could it be that we were really spared? How could it be that in no more than a few seconds my little brother had wiped out the deadliest gang in the West? Nobody knew about shock in those days—we were all in it, but we didn't have the word.

The person least affected was Jackson Courtright himself.

“Jackson, you're a hero,” I told him. My voice sounded like the voice of someone else, not me. It was the voice of someone who had been as good as dead, and yet was still alive.

“You're not just a hero, you're a big hero!” I told him. “You wiped out the whole Yazee gang! That makes you the biggest hero in the whole West!”

Jackson was just a youth, seventeen years old, and he had done the only thing there was to do, other than die. He hadn't died, and he still looked sleepy. In fact he yawned while I was telling him what a big hero he was.

“I guess shooting a pistol is a lot easier than I thought it would be,” Jackson said. “When I finally got it out of my holster it was like it just became part of my arm.”

He was standing now three feet from the corpse of Bert Yazee, the most feared killer in that part of the world, but Jackson didn't look at Bert or any of the other dead Yazees. Dealing sudden death to six humans—even if they had been merciless killers—might give most of us qualms, or queasy stomachs, or twinges of conscience, or something, but it had no affect on my brother that I could tell. If he'd had a plate of flapjacks in front of him I expect he would have eaten them without sparing a thought for the Yazees.

There may just be something in the Courtright character—something a little cold-blooded. We're not ones to weep for a man—at least not long.

There's just a distance in us—Virginia gentlefolk that we may be.

“I need to get my boots on,” Jackson said. “I'm apt to get bit by a stinging lizard, or else step on a grass burr. I hate those mean little stinging lizards!”

Then, with the whole town watching, Jackson strolled back into the jail and finished his nap.