The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (17 page)

“Look,” I yelled over the clamor, “we’ll each
write our names on a little piece of paper. The one
drawn stays. I’ll pay him extra. The rest of us
ride.”

“Who holds the papers?”

“I’ll ask one of our ladies,” I said. “Fair
enough?”

“We gotta see the names go in the hat.”

“Jesus. Yeah. You’ll see that. I got a piece of
foolscap from the desk in the living room and
tore it into a dozen fairly even pieces. I gave
one to each man. They passed a nub of a pencil
around.

“I dunno how to write,” someone pointed out.

“Then give the paper to somebody else to write
your name on. Or draw a goddamn picture or
make a mark.”

Then I went up to get Blanca, while our troops
sucked away at our liquor supply.

“There’s no danger—all they’ll do is choose a
slip
of paper from a hat, Blanca. There’s nothin’ to
be afraid of.”

“Is always good to fear Satan.”

“They’re not Satan—they’re jus’ men, like me
an’ like Arm.”

“No es verdad.”

“It
is
true, Blanca—they’re a little scruffy, and
they live different than most people, but they
ain’t devils.”

“They are loco keelers.”

“But…but…see, Blanca…they live differently.
They don’t…”

“Ees boolsheet.” I’d never heard her use any
language the pope wouldn’t use. She put her
hand on my arm. “I weel do it. Is good? No? But, I
weel play a game with the devil.”

“I don’t…”

“Hush now,” Blanca demanded. “We go now
an’ do the sleeps of paper. You an’ Armando have
been good to us. I can do this—but I no owe you
my holy an’ ’ternal soul, ya know? This is one
time, is all. I can go to ’fession soon. But when I
draw the sleep I pray in my head.”

“Fine. Okay. Thanks, Blanca.”

The men were sitting and standing around as
I’d left them. “Wait a minnit,” a guy named Lefty
snarled. “Who’s goin’ to be holdin’ the papers?”

This was getting tiresome. “Look,” I said,
“we’ll put ’em in a hat an’ blindfold Blanca.
Now—let’s cut the horseshit an’ get to it.”

I pushed the slips off the table into my hat and
shook hell outta them. Arm tied his bandana
around Blanca’s head, completely covering her
eyes.
I took Blanca’s hand an’ held it over my inverted
hat. “All you gotta do is pick one,” I said.

Blanca put her hand into the hat as if she were
sticking it in a box of scorpions. She plucked out
one slip. I took the paper and showed it around.
“Looks like Lou is stayin’,” I said. “The rest of us
will ride out after dark.”

“I din’t ride here to set in a goddamn barn,”
Lou said. “Suppose you or the Mex got drawed?
Would you hang back?”

I suppose I answered louder and more hostile
than I needed to. “I’m tired of this shit. Arm an’
me are runnin’ this show—the ones who pay the
money an’ give the orders. If that bothers any of
you, saddle up an’ get the hell off our land.”

“Feisty today, ain’t he?” Dirty Eddie said.

“I’ll show you how feisty I am tonight, when
we get to Hulberton,” I said.

“You got some kinda plan, Jake?” Mad Dog
asked. “Or are we jist gonna charge in an’ shoot
hell outta everybody an’ everything?”

Mad Dog gave me a quick shiver, and for a moment
I thought that Blanca’s satanic theory just
might be right. Dog didn’t care which way it
went. He’d just as soon kill women an’ kids as
gunfighters an’ lawmen. It was all the same to
him.

“I see anybody take down a civilian,” I said,
sweeping my eyes over the crew, “I’ll shoot him
off his horse right there—no questions asked, no
explanations accepted. Arm will do the same
thing. Clear?” Some of the men nodded. No one
said anything. It seemed like I might have said
nothing
more important than, “The punkin crop
looks good this year.”

“I ain’t Quantrill,” I said, “an’ Hulberton
ain’t
Lawrence, out in Kansas. We go right for the
saloon—me an’ Arm will lead—an’ engage the
sonsabitches inside an’ outside the place.”

Mad Dog smirked at the word “engage.”

“One other thing,” I said. “Anybody hit bad
enough to be shot off his horse—well—it’s up to
him what happens to him. Most likely, he’ll get
his ass shot off. Point is, we’re not bringing any
wounded back here to croak. Minor wounds
where a man can still ride an’ shoot, they ride
back with us. We don’t want hostages or prisoners.
We’re not carryin’ any of Dansworth’s men
anywhere but to hell.”

I figured the best way to come in would be in a
mass—there was no sense botherin’ with half the
boys from one side an’ half from the other. This
was gonna be like Pickett’s charge in that town
in Pennsylvania—Gettysburg—an’ battle plans
would be useless. It’d be a matter of killing or being
killed.

I tried to re-befriend my stallion for a good
part of the rest of the day, but he wasn’t having
any part of it. I couldn’t approach him without
him rearing and baring his teeth, no matter what
kinda treat I brought or how I sweet-talked him. I
shouldn’t have tried to ride him. He was as wild
as a hawk an’ everything had been going good.
It’d take some time to gain back the ground I’d
lost, and it was a sure thing I’d never again drop a
saddle over the ornery sumbitch.

Some of the crew slept. Others played poker
and
finished off Arm’s and my booze supply.
There was some gunfire, but not a real lot of it.
These men knew their weapons better’n they
knew their horses or anything or anyone else in
their lives. A few checked out their rifles. A long
ride in a saddle scabbard could tick a sight off a
hair. All of us knew, though, that we wouldn’t be
shooting from any distance, so a tiny vacillation
didn’t mean anything.

Teresa an’ Blanca fed us their usual wondrous
meal and an extra big pot of their coffee.
Lots of coffee—particularly range and cattle-drive
coffee—is weak an’ hardly worth drinking.
’Hands dump it down, because that’s all there is.
But the coffee at the Busted Thumb Horse Ranch
brought smiles to the faces of all the men. It was
strong enough to melt a horseshoe, had none of
that goddamn chicory in it, and always had a
taste of the Mex coffee that had the power of a
cannon, but was never bitter.

We saddled up as the sun was on the verge of
the horizon. The moon was about half and threw
some light because there were few clouds. The
horses hadn’t been ridden in a group and there
was some squealing and biting, but nothing serious.

We rode out, Arm an’ me side by side, in
front, headed for Hulberton.
We rode at a lope, not pushing our animals,
and not afraid of the noise the herd of us were
making. Dansworth knew we’d be coming sometime.
He had a few lookouts posted outside of
town. Somebody shot one off his horse, and the
other two or three hauled ass to town. Mad Dog
picked off one of them.

There were a pair of big freighter wagons
loaded with barrels of beer maybe a hundred feet
apart in front of the saloon. As soon as the surviving
outlooks pulled in, the freighters moved
ahead, face-to-face, making decent cover. Rifle
fire at us started as soon as the freighters were
moved, men shooting from between the barrels.

It became immediately obvious I’d wired the
right lunatics. They answered the rifle fire muzzle
flashes with their own 30.30s—from horseback,
mind you—and picked off maybe six or seven of
the men who thought they had cover.

A flood of men and gunfire poured out of the
saloon—and most of them dropped as soon as
they appeared. Mad Dog swung in close on that
thoroughbred of his, picking his shots with his
.45. He was doing a lot of damage when he ran
his horse into shotgun range and went down. It
was messy—he and his animal must have gotten
both barrels of a twelve gauge. Mad Dog got a
good part of his face blown off and was dead immediately.
His horse was trying to suck air
through a throat that was gushing blood and he,
too, died in a few moments.

I swung my horseback hard—almost running
into one of my own men—because I saw the shotgun
man reloading. I put two rounds in his midbody
and one in his head.

I heard glass shattering over the gunfire and
saw Dirty Eddie’s horse ground-tied in front of
the general store. I wasn’t sure what he was doing,
but I had to swing back or make an easy target.

Arm was riding in too close, but he was low on
his horse, and he was dropping Dansworth’s men
very
handily. I saw him plug a rifleman and figured
Arm knew what he was doing.

More and more men started shooting from behind
the freighters and from the saloon. One of
our men went down—and then another.

“Head home!” I bellowed. “Head home now!”

Heavy gunfire followed us as we galloped out
of Hulberton, but it was little more than noise.
None of the remaining crew was hit. Dirty Eddie
had a pair of large canvas sacks riding in front of
him, and he was sucking on a bottle of booze. I
slowed a tad.

“What the hell, Eddie?”

“Whiskey an’ tobacco.” He grinned.

Arm an’ me led the crew back toward our
ranch. I turned in my saddle a couple of times to
check our losses, but clouds had moved in and it
was hard to see—particularly since the guys were
strung out in a ragged line with some yards between
them, rather than riding in a cluster. We
didn’t ride hard, but we kept moving at a fast lope.

None of Dansworth’s army was chasing us,
which told me they were as disorganized and
stupid as I thought they were. We were way the
hell outnumbered, and even losers like Dansworth’s
men could have done us some damage.

I was starting to feel pretty good about our
sneak attack—our raid—and I looked back over
my shoulder to see where Dirty Eddie was with
his supply of booze. A sip or so woulda gone down
nice. The clouds shifted a hair and I caught a glint
of moonlight on a bottle Eddie was sucking on. I
raised my arm to bring him up to me an’ Arm.

That’s when things went straight to hell.

For a tiny bit of a second it looked to me like
one of our men dove from his horse. Then I heard
the deep thud of a Sharps. Immediately following
that there was a searing burst of pure white
light—like lightning on a dark night. The blast
was a totally, impossibly loud roar. Those of us
who’d been in the war had learned to hate and
fear that weapon—a goddamn small artillery
cannon firing canister shot.

I’d heard somewheres that the Union developed
canister, but I know the rebs used it, too.
The load looked like a large tin can—like a two-quart
peach can. It was filled with minié balls
and pieces of metal—U-shaped with each edge
surface razor sharp—and black powder. When
minié balls and metal were short, the cans were
loaded with horseshoe nails, pebbles, and whatever
bits of steel or other metal could be found. A
well-placed canister round could take down—
tear apart—twenty men or more, depending on
how they were positioned.

Canister was what made it possible to walk
across the several acres of Seminary Ridge—
Pickett’s charge—stepping only on dead rebs.
The little stream to the east of the stone wall held
by the Union ran with blood—it didn’t appear to
be water at all, just blood.

There weren’t any options except to take out the
artillery and hope they didn’t have another. Our
boys were shooting at muzzle flashes of rifles and
were taking down men, but that cannon…

I figured this was my show—mine and Arm’s—
and it was up to me to do something. I slid my
Sharps out of its scabbard and swung to the left
of
the cannon. Then, I buried my heels in my
horse’s sides and raced at the artillery piece, reins
in my teeth, Sharps to my shoulder, ready to fire.
Since I was off to the side of the main battle I
wasn’t noticed right away.

In the meager light of the torch man at the cannon
I saw what I was looking for—a small
wooden barrel. Firing from a galloping horse in
full darkness isn’t what one might call easy—or
even sane. But, like I said, I had no options.

Dansworth’s men didn’t notice me coming on
until I was seventy-five or so yards out. Hell, that’s
spittin’ distance for my rifle, but distance wasn’t
the problem, accuracy was. I aimed as well as I
could and squeezed off my shot. It seemed like I’d
barely touched the trigger when there was a detonation
that would make the July sun look like a
firefly. Everything lit up for maybe twenty yards
around where the little barrel had stood. I could
clearly see dead men—and pieces of dead men—
and the sky was raining all kinds of crap. An arm
dropped directly in front of us, scaring my horse
(an’ me) as I swung hard back the way I’d come. A
small wheel slammed into the ground to my side
and a spatter of tortured chunks and lengths of
steel were striking the ground all over the place.

So much for the cannon. I just hoped that they
didn’t have another.

I got back to my boys and we headed home
without resistance. That explosion was something,
all right—I couldn’t hear and I don’t think
the others could, either. Arm touched my shoulder
and said something, but all I saw was his
mouth moving.

My men had no particular allegiance to one
another. They were here for the money primarily,
and secondarily because Arm an’ me had helped
them in some major fashion. Nobody said much,
either, because they couldn’t hear yet, or because
they knew four of their comrades, friends or not,
had been killed.

I got out bottles of liniment and we all rubbed
down our horses’ legs—we’d given them some
hard run. Then we used sacks to sweep the sweat
off their chests and rear quarters. We gave water
slowly—the animals were hot an’ tired and sucking
too much cold water would go right to their
hooves and initiate founder—a swelling inside
the hoof that disabled a horse, permanently, very
frequently.