Way of the Gun (9781101597804) (4 page)

“It's in my saddlebag,” Collins said. “I'll take care of him after we eat.”

Summer snorted indifferently. “Don't make a whole lotta sense to be worryin' about that bandage. They'll be stretchin' his neck soon as we get him to Laramie.”

Moody shrugged but did not reply at once. What Jim said was true enough, but it was the decent thing to do to ease the man's discomfort if they could. After a moment, he said, “Bud can change his bandage after we eat.” He swung his rifle around to cover Summer when Jim untied Varner's good arm.

When the wounded prisoner's arm was free, Summer backed away, his .44 aimed at Varner's belly. “Get up if you need to take a piss,” he said. “Walk over yonder a ways.” He pointed away from the creek with his pistol. Unable to respond with any degree of quickness, Varner struggled to roll over on his knees before being able to push himself unsteadily to his feet. Watching his efforts, Carson wondered if the big man had lost more blood than he thought. “Well,” Summer prodded, “are you goin' or not? I ain't gonna wait all day for you.”

Finally Varner responded, “I'm goin', damn you.”

“Don't you go cussin' me,” Summer was quick to warn. “I'll let you set there and pee in your pants next time.”

Varner responded with a deep scowl, the only weapon left to him, and Carson could imagine the frustration he felt, having been the bully of the gang he previously rode with. He also observed that Varner walked noticeably slower and a bit unsteadily. The thought crossed his mind that he might not make it to the hanging. It caused him to wonder if the prison physician would bother to spend much effort in treating him. He turned his thoughts toward the man they called Jim, and his obvious disdain for his prisoners, and he wondered if the deputy's posse men were picked for their particular role. Luther Moody seemed a reasonable man, almost easygoing. Summer served as his aggressive strong arm, while Collins was brought along to do the cooking and take care of the camp. It might have been coincidence, but it sure looked to Carson as if it was intentional. Further thoughts along that line were interrupted by the return of Varner from answering nature's call. Summer directed him to a large tree close by the fire and sat him down with his back against the trunk. “Watch him, Luther, while I take his partner.”

“I got him,” Moody said. “Go ahead.”

“All right, young feller,” Summer told Carson. “Lean over so I can untie your hands.” Carson did as he was told. “All right, get on your feet.”

His shoulders and arms stiff from having been tied back for so long, Carson shrugged several times and swung his arms back and forth. His efforts to rid himself of some of the stiffness caused Summer to take a step back and cock the hammer on his pistol. With no further sign that his prisoner might be thinking of making a move, he stepped back to face Carson. He stood there a moment, eyeballing the young man as if just realizing that Carson was a few inches taller than he.

Ever since he was taken into custody, Carson had been watchful for opportunities to make a move toward freedom. Judging by Summer's quick reflexes, he decided this was no such opportunity, so he dutifully walked to the spot where Varner had relieved himself. When he had finished, he was led to the tree where Varner waited and told to sit down close to him. The idea, Carson supposed, was to have both prisoners with their backs against the tree and close enough together that one of the lawmen could easily watch them both.

“You gonna make it?” Carson asked Varner.

“I reckon,” the big man answered, “but there's been times when I felt a helluva lot better.”

“No more talkin',” Summer ordered immediately. “You keep talkin' and you won't get nothin' to eat.” So they sat in silence and waited for Collins to finish cooking his pot of beans and bacon. When the food was ready, the three lawmen helped themselves and ate while keeping an eye on the two prisoners. At last finished, Moody and Summer sat down a few yards away facing them, to stand guard while they were fed. Continuing with the kitchen duty, Collins filled two plates with food and two cups with coffee. He placed the coffee before them first, then placed a plate in Varner's waiting hand. He then reached across Varner to hand the other plate to Carson. It was only for a second while Collins crouched to pass the plate to Carson, but for that second Varner found himself staring at the handle of Collins's pistol barely a foot from his face. There was no decision to be made. He dropped the plate he was holding and snatched the revolver from Bud's holster. Collins jumped back, grasping at his empty holster, then dived for cover when the gun went off. The shot was not directed at him, however, for in Varner's mind, Jim Summer deserved it. In the split second of Varner's revenge, he must have known there would be little time for a second shot, and by the time he cocked the single-action revolver, he was ripped by two slugs in his gut—one from Moody's rifle, the other from the wounded posse man. In his last act of defiance, Varner squeezed the trigger one more time, sending the fatal bullet into Summer's chest. Two more slugs from Moody's rifle slammed into the already dead Varner.

A brief moment followed the gunshots when not a sound was made by anyone. Then Moody sprang forward to pull the pistol from Varner's hand before Carson had the opportunity to grab it. Collins recovered enough to come to his aid as Moody stood over him, daring him to make a move. Carson, fully as surprised as they, was still holding his plate, in no position to do anything but sit. “Watch him!” Moody ordered, and handed Collins's pistol back to him. Then he went to Summer's side, only to find his posse man dead. “Damn,” he murmured regretfully.

“I don't know how it happened,” Collins pleaded. “I didn't think I was anywhere that close enough for him to grab my gun. I mean, he was just settin' there, one hand, and it holdin' a plate of beans. Poor Jim, you know I'd do anythin' to make it right.”

“You just watch him,” Moody told him, angry that Collins could have been so careless, but knowing there was nothing to do to change things. Turning his attention back to Summer, he shook his head sadly. “Jim Summer has been ridin' with me, off and on, for over six years, and I never asked him if he had a family. And he never said one way or the other. He was a damn good man, and it's a damn shame to lose him.” He got up then and walked back to stand over Carson. “That was a damn good man your friend just killed.” His tone indicated to Carson that he held him somehow accountable.

“I didn't have any idea Varner was gonna try somethin' like that,” Carson said. “It wasn't a very smart move, 'cause there wasn't a chance he could get away with it. It wasn't as dumb as the move your partner made, though, stickin' that gun in his face. I reckon Varner decided he'd rather take a bullet than stretch a rope. Maybe you'd better not give me a chance like that.”

“Maybe we oughta save the hangman some trouble,” Collins said, “and string you up right here.”

“Maybe you'd better,” Carson came back at him, his dander up over this latest incident that had been laid at his feet. “I guarantee you that the first chance I get, I'm gone. I didn't steal those damn cows, and I didn't kill anybody. I tried to tell those army sons of bitches to find Mr. Bob Patterson and he would tell 'em I was with his herd when those cattle were rustled. But they didn't care enough to find out. And, damn it, I didn't tell Varner to shoot your man, so if you're of a mind to hang me, or shoot me, then get on with it, 'cause I'd just as soon not go to prison.”

Surprised by the young man's passionate outburst, Moody didn't respond for a moment. “Just simmer down a minute, Bud,” he told Collins. “He's probably right about havin' nothin' to do with Jim's murder. He didn't have time to. That don't mean he wouldn'ta done the same thing if you'da stuck your ass up in
his
face. But he didn't, so we'd best do what we can for Jim, dig him a nice grave, and get along to Laramie to turn this one over to the prison.” He didn't voice it, but he had to admit that Carson's statement of innocence had a ring of truth to it, and he would just as soon wash his hands of it. Directing his words to Carson now, he said, “Might as well eat your food before it gets colder.”

* * *

“What the hell was that?” Ed Tice blurted when he heard the gunshots. His automatic reaction was one of anxious concern, lest the shots signaled a posse or a cavalry patrol that might have followed their trail from the wagon they left burning near the stage road. He spilled half of his coffee in his haste to set it down.

“Shots!” Orville Swann exclaimed as he scrambled up the side of the creek bank a few steps ahead of Tice. “Half a dozen or more! Might be a posse!”

Jesse Red Shirt remained by the fire, leisurely sucking the last bits of meat from the leg bone of a rabbit. “Six shots,” he stated calmly, “four from a rifle, two from a pistol.”

“They came from back thataway,” Swann said, still concerned as he pointed upstream. “Reckon what the shootin' was about? Think somebody's already got on our trail?”

“You ain't got the brains of a tick, Swann,” Red Shirt snarled. “It's too soon for anybody to be on our trail. Even if they were, they wouldn't be comin' from that direction. They'd be comin' on behind us.”

“Yeah, you dumb shit,” Tice said, in spite of the fact that he'd jumped to the same conclusion Swann had, “if they was after us, they'd be comin' from downstream.” Still concerned, however, he asked, “Reckon what they was shootin' at, Red Shirt?”

“How the hell do I know?” Red Shirt answered. He threw the cleaned bone into the fire and wiped his hands on his shirt. “I aim to find out—maybe somethin' to gain.”

Both Swann and Tice knew what that usually meant. It was an expression the half-breed Lakota Sioux used often and, more times than not, meant trouble for somebody. Red Shirt was proud of the fact that he had lived for a while in Sitting Bull's village and often boasted about riding into battle with the Hunkpapa Lakota holy man. “Sitting Bull let the soldiers chase him to Canada, but I never surrendered to the soldiers. I live where I want to live,” he was fond of reminding Swann and Tice. Thus far, more than two years after Little Big Horn, he and his two partners had managed to avoid the army and the law while preying upon freighters, settlers, miners, stagecoaches, and any other small expeditions. He had run into Swann and Tice at a shabby little trading post run by Lem Sprool on the North Platte near the Rattlesnake Mountains. Swann, a deserter from the army, and Tice, a wanted murderer from Arkansas, were wandering aimlessly, looking for any opportunity to put food in their bellies. After a night of drinking Lem Sprool's rotgut whiskey, the three decided their odds of success were better if they rode together. From the beginning of the partnership, it was clear to see who would be the leader. Both Tice and Swann were content to follow, which was good, because Red Shirt would not have had it any other way.

“Come,” Red Shirt directed his partners. “We'll ride up the creek a ways. Them shots couldn'ta been more'n a couple of miles away.” They loped along, single file, close by the heavy brush that framed the creek. Red Shirt kept a sharp eye ahead, for there was very little to hide them in the flat, treeless plain on this side of the mountains. When he saw a small stand of cottonwood trees about half a mile ahead, he stopped and led them down to the creek bank. “You two stay with the horses. I'll work my way up the creek on foot so I can see who it is and what the shootin' was about—maybe somethin' to gain.”

Ed Tice strained his neck, trying to see farther up the creek. “How do you know that's where they are? I can't see nothin'.”

“'Cause that's the only spot for a mile where there's trees,” Swann said. “Right, Red Shirt?” Red Shirt's response was merely a look of impatience before moving quickly away.

Trotting in a crouch, in an effort not to present a profile along the top of the bank, Red Shirt quickly advanced to within sight of half a dozen horses at the edge of the water. He immediately sank down behind the cover of a thicket of berry bushes, and from that point, he advanced more carefully. After a couple of dozen more yards, he caught his first glimpse of the camp. He dropped to his hands and knees then and crawled closer until he could clearly see the men in the small clearing. He counted two men at first, and one of them was digging a hole with a short-handled shovel. Moving slightly to the side for a better vantage point, he then saw a third man sitting on the ground, his back to a tree.
He must be the boss,
he thought at first, then realized the man was tied to the tree.

He crawled forward a few more feet to the edge of the brush, pausing when a couple of the grazing horses whinnied, but the two men seemed not to notice. So Red Shirt inched a little closer to get a better look. Something crooked was going on, he thought, for now he saw the results of the shooting. There were two bodies on the ground. One of the men, the one watching the other one dig the hole, looked familiar. And then it struck him. It was the lawman from Cheyenne, U.S. Deputy Marshal Luther Moody. It was not difficult to form a picture of what must have occurred. The deputy evidently was taking a prisoner, maybe two prisoners, if one of the bodies was that of an outlaw, to Laramie. So the man tied to the tree was an outlaw, on his way to prison.

An evil smile spread slowly across Red Shirt's face as he realized the opportunity just handed him. Standing unaware, well within the range of his Spencer carbine, was the hated lawman Luther Moody and one of his posse men. Red Shirt pulled his carbine up and rested the barrel on a lump of dirt, piled there by a rodent digging among the berry bush's roots. The two men were standing close enough together to ensure that he could hit both of them before they could react without having to rush the second shot. He laid his front sight on Moody's broad back first, to make sure he got the deputy should something happen to block the second shot. Slowly he squeezed the trigger, enjoying the anticipation of the sudden discharge to come. And then the carbine spoke, and Moody dropped to his knees, remaining there for only a moment before falling forward to land on his side and roll over into the half-finished grave.