The Wild Gun Page 15

  “That’s the last one, I think,” Pete said as a board fell from the sawhorse.

  “I got one more to cut,” Nestor said, and the smell of wood tickled his nostrils as the saw gnawed at the board with the sound of a large insect. The board clacked to the ground and he laid his saw down to pick it up.

  “We’ll have to make several trips,” Pete said. “On the last one, we’ll take Horace a bucket of nails.”

  They loaded up their arms with sawed boards and lugged them to the house.

  Abner let them in.

  “Just set the boards in the center of the front room,” he said. “I know you got more to bring.”

  “Yep,” Nestor said.

  There was no sign of Horace, but they heard footsteps on the upstairs floor.

  When they finished carrying wood slats to the house and brought in a large coffee can full of nails, Horace came downstairs.

  “Pete, you come with me,” Horace said. “Got your hammer?”

  “Right here,” Pete said. He reached behind him and pulled a hammer from under his belt.

  “We’ll start upstairs,” Horace told Pete. “Abner, you and Nestor can start with the back door and kitchen.”

  “Got it,” Abner said.

  By dusk, the windows in the ranch house were all boarded up, and the back door as well. Horace surveyed all the windows and dismissed the two helpers.

  Then he and Abner lifted the couch and set it against the front door. They put an overstuffed chair on top of the couch. Anyone trying to break in through that door would have to move two heavy objects. That would give him and Abner time to aim their rifles and pistols at the intruder and kill him.

  “Well, now let the Wild Gun try and get to me,” Horace said to his brother.

  “He can’t get in, and he can’t see us. At least not tonight.”

  “My men will shoot him before he even gets near the house,” Horace said.

  “Let’s hope,” Abner said.

  “Let’s count on it, Ab.”

  Horace smiled in satisfaction.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Cord and Abigail stayed up late. They talked in the small parlor after Earl and Lelia went to bed.

  Abigail had kept her eyes on Cord all evening. She had been thinking about how they had met, and how much he had done for her husband, Jesse. She realized that she had been wrong about him and wanted to make it right.

  “Cord, when this is over, all this horrible business with Horace Weatherall and his brother, I’m going to need a good foreman to run the JB Ranch. Ray Dobbs moved on to another ranch.”

  “You’ll find one,” he said.

  He sat in an easy chair, the dregs of a coffee on a small table next to him, along with a snifter of brandy. Abigail was in a cushioned straight-backed chair that had belonged to her mother. She, too, had been sipping Jesse’s good brandy. It seemed the time to enjoy some spirits after the sumptuous meal that she and Lelia had prepared: roast chicken, dumplings, potatoes, and sugar beets.

  “I’d want you to run the ranch,” she said. “You’ve done so much for us, but I don’t think you like your life much. You live alone and you live the life of a hired gun. Nothing but trouble.”

  “A man in trouble rides a lonesome trail,” he admitted. “I don’t like my life now much.”

  “But you like horses. Your family raised horses. I got that much tonight after listening to your brother, Earl.”

  “It was a good life, growing up in Missouri. Raising horses. But we dealt with horse thieves back then, too. I developed an aversion to them.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You have more than an aversion to horse thieves. They’ve changed your life. I’m offering you a chance to give up that life and go back to one that was more like the one you lived in childhood.”

  Cord raised his head and stared at the ceiling. It was shadowy with lamplight, beamed and plain like the parlor his mother had furnished back home. The wooden beams had been stained a brown color and gave him a feeling of solid stability. There were Currier & Ives prints in frames on the wall, a Chinese vase with flowers, and bookshelves with leather-bound classics that he knew Jesse read, because he’d often talked about them.

  He had not thought about his childhood or the home in Missouri much lately. Had been deliberately not thinking of it while he focused on bringing justice to his parents’ killers. But Abigail had stirred memories of the life he once had. He remembered being with his pa in the stables when one of the mares delivered a foal. How he had laughed to see the little creature stand on wobbly legs and flick its little tail, glad to be alive. He had laughed, too, when the foal staggered to its mother’s teats and found nourishment in the milk it sucked from her full bag.

  Then, during the war, rebels had raided their place. Confederates had stolen their grain and hay, and their horses, and ridden down to Arkansas. He had been a callow boy then, but he’d hunted the raiders down, shot them with a .38-caliber Colt cap and ball pistol and an old flintlock his pa had bought from a Kentucky gunsmith.

  He had been too young to join the Union Army, but from then on, he’d kept his eyes open for men in Confederate uniforms and had driven them off, with his pa’s able help, whenever they came near the farm.

  The horses they raised were an integral part of their lives. His ma hand-fed the foals when their mothers were foundering or had died during the birth process. Earl had always put fresh straw in the stalls when a foal was born, had curried and combed the little ones as if they were full-grown.

  “You would be paid, Cord,” Abigail went on. “Forty a month and found. As our fortunes increased, under your capable hands, I’d raise that to fifty a month.”

  “That’s mighty generous of you, Abigail,” he said as he lowered his gaze from the ceiling to her.

  “Will you accept my offer?” she asked.

  He made a church steeple with his fingers as he considered Abigail’s offer.

  It would mean giving up some of his freedom, of course. Working on the JB Ranch would also mean that he would work with horses again. More than that, it would mean he would no longer have to hunt down and kill armed thieves on a regular basis. The latter appealed to him. He was sick of killing. Sick of men who stole from others. Sick of murderers.

  “I’ll consider your kind offer, Abigail. I admit that it appeals to me.”

  “Down deep, you’re a decent man, Cord. I realize that now. You have helped me and Jesse more than you know. We are not used to being trespassed on and robbed, and you made everything right. I just wish we could be left alone to earn our living and do what we love to do in this life.”

  “You deserve to live a life free of predatory men such as that banker who sold you out.”

  “Yes, that was not very nice of him,” she said.

  “It was criminal, Abigail. The bank gave you a loan and that loan obligated it to help protect your interests. Instead, the banker succumbed to greed and sold what was in his keeping to a man who meant to take everything away from you.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Cord. I never thought of it that way. I assumed that the bank would protect my interests and let me repay the loan. It seemed a benefactor at the time. When we needed money to buy stock and work the ranch, they seemed kindly disposed to us.”

  “That’s the way of the world, Abigail. Greed is what built civilization, including towns, laws, authority, and all that assured profits for certain people. And politics reared its ugly head to ensure that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.”

  “But without civilization and laws, we’d just be savages,” she said.

  “We are savages. Civilization has attempted to make us into good citizens. But only with words on a piece of paper. Civilization has nurtured man’s greed. It wears a nice-looking suit of clothes, but the person wearing that suit is hiding a knife behind his back.”

>   “You have a very low opinion of both civilization and man’s progress from the Stone Age.”

  “We humans have progressed very little since the Stone Age,” he said. “All we did was learn to make clothes and wear them. The greed—for another man’s possessions, another man’s wife, his tools, his money—remains.”

  She shuddered in mock fright.

  “You’re a pessimist,” she said. “You look at people as if they were no better than animals. Most people are kind and do not covet other men’s wives or possessions.”

  “Some people have morals, that’s true,” he said. “Most, deep down, want what others have, and they will go to any lengths to possess what they can.”

  She let out a breathy sigh.

  “I grant you, there is greed in the world, and most people, especially townspeople, are out to get rich, sometimes at other people’s expense.”

  “Take the War Between the States, for instance,” he said. “Where families and neighbors fought against each other. There were a lot of people killed in that war, and the politicians in Washington never explained why there was a war in the first place.”

  “Why, the war was over the abolition of slavery. The South didn’t like it.”

  “The war wasn’t over slavery, Abigail.”

  She lifted her snifter and took a sip of brandy.

  “I thought it was,” she said.

  “The war was about money. It was about cotton crops and profits. Slaveholders didn’t have to pay their pickers, their plantation workers. They saw all that money going away and seceded from the Union. That’s what the war was about: profit.”

  “I see your point,” she said. “It was about slaves, but it was also about the huge loss of money the South would experience without all that free or cheap help.”

  Cord drank from his glass and stretched out his legs.

  “Our so-called Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history.”

  Abigail’s jaw dropped and her mouth opened in surprise.

  “Why, Cord, I think you’re right. Our war was not over religion but over . . .”

  “Slavery and greed. Look what happened after the war when the carpetbaggers invaded the South. They kicked you when you were down. Made money over other people’s misfortune and grief.”

  Abigail nodded in agreement.

  “You’re right, of course. I just never thought about the war that way. Or people. Greedy people.”

  “Just look at Horace, your neighbor, if you want to see greed in action. He’s a prime example of what’s wrong and immoral in the world.”

  She sighed and smacked her lips. Then she drained her glass of brandy and stood up.

  “Cord, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I’m tired and going to bed. What do you plan to do tomorrow?”

  “I want to get some things together,” he said. “I’ll be here tomorrow, but Earl and I will ride out tomorrow night.”

  “You’re going after Horace, then?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He did not finish his brandy, but arose from his chair.

  “Thanks for the bed and board,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Cord.”

  “Good night, Abigail.”

  He watched her leave the parlor, then walked to the front door and opened it. He stepped outside and breathed deeply of the cool air.

  There was a lot he had to do. He thought that he and Earl could do some damage to Horace and his minions. It would not be easy and his plan might fail.

  But for the moment, he was confident. It was all a matter of timing and luck. Good luck.

  And then, too, there was the element of surprise.

  Horace might never know what hit him.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Just past midnight, Cord got out of bed. He strapped on his gun belt and tiptoed out of the house. He did not awaken Earl. He wanted his brother sharp and bushy-tailed when they left for the 2Bar2 Ranch. And they would leave soon, when it was full dark and they could not be easily seen.

  He was in a downstairs bedroom, next to where Earl slept. The women were asleep upstairs. He opened the door of his room slowly and stepped lightly into the hallway.

  He listened to see if he had disturbed anyone, either upstairs or downstairs. The house was quiet. It creaked as the temperature outside dropped.

  He tiptoed down the hall toward the kitchen and back porch. He knew he would find what he was looking for in both places.

  He entered the kitchen, with its polished wooden flooring, and walked to the counter. There were cabinets above and below. He opened one of the lower cabinets. It was so dark he could not see inside.

  Moonlight glazed the windows and filtered through the glass, drenching parts of the room with light that did not illuminate any of the cabinet interiors.

  He stuck a hand inside the cabinet and felt around. He struck a small pot and it made a metallic sound as it slid off another pot. Cord winced at making even that small noise.

  He closed the cabinet and opened the one next to it. Again, he felt around inside and touched a box and a round tin. His fingers crawled around the bottom, but he kept touching wood or metal. Then he felt a light touch on his shoulder. From where he squatted, he turned and looked up. He saw a face there, blanched by moonlight streaming through the window.

  It was Lelia.

  She smiled wanly at him and he stood up.

  “What are you looking for?” she whispered. She wore a dark chemise and smelled of some kind of flowery perfume.

  “Rags,” he told her.

  He heard a soft titter escape her lips. Saw her white teeth flash as she smiled.

  “Wrong cabinets,” she said and tugged on his arm. She led him across the kitchen to an oblong box standing on its end. It had a wooden lid on it.

  Cord could not read the lettering stamped on the side of the box, but figured it had once held curtain rods or perhaps fireplace pokers.

  Lelia reached inside and pulled out a bundle of cloth. She held the mass in front of Cord. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  “What are they?” he whispered.

  “Flour and bean sacks. We keep them in here for when we have to scrub something awful and ugly.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m looking for,” he said and grabbed the sacks from her hands.

  “More?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She leaned over and pulled still more sacks from the box. “That enough?” she asked. “There’s plenty more in the box.”

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  She watched as he laid the empty sacks on the counter. He flattened them and stacked them into small piles.

  When he was finished, he began to fold one of the stacks. Then he stuffed the folded sacks into one of his pants pockets as Lelia looked on. Moonlight dusted one side of her face as she stood at the counter, next to a window. She looked, he thought, like a painted harlequin.

  “What do you need all these sacks for?” she whispered.

  “Something real important,” he said. And that was all he said to her as he continued to pack folded sacks into both back pockets and the front pockets. The last stack sat there for a minute or two.

  He unbuttoned his shirt and slid the folded cloth inside and under his belt. He buttoned the shirt and stepped away from the counter.

  He looked at Lelia. She was beautiful in the soft glow of moonlight. A beam glanced off her eyes and they looked like shining agates.

  “Is that all?” she asked, her voice pitched low and barely above a whisper.

  “No. Now I need some old bottles or small jars. Do you have any of those?”

  “We keep a barrel next to the back door, outside,” she said.

  “I need some with lids or corks.”

  Th
ere was the light titter again.

  “You probably need another sack to carry them in if you want more than one.”

  “I do,” he said, with a nod of his head.

  Lelia went back to the oblong box and rummaged inside. She brought up a large feed sack and held it up so Cord could see its size.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “Just one?”

  “One’s enough.”

  “Whatever are you up to, Cord?” she said as she handed him the sack. “Some deviltry?”

  “Deviltry is the word,” he said. He followed her to the back door and they both stepped outside.

  She stopped and he saw that she had begun to shiver.

  The air was chill and the moonlight shining on her chemise gave her the look of an orphaned waif.

  “You’re cold,” he said. “You’d better go back inside. I can get what I need.”

  There were two barrels on either side of the steps.

  She shook her head. “No, I want to help you. Besides, you’ll make too much noise and wake up the whole house.”

  “I’ll be careful and quiet,” he said.

  “I’m not that cold,” she said and walked to the barrel on the left of the steps to the back porch.

  She lifted the lid and Cord began to sort through the bottles. He chose only those with corks that were thin and held about a quart each. He removed eight bottles from the barrel and then closed the lid.

  “What are those for?” Lelia asked.

  “Now I need to steal some of your coal oil,” he replied.

  “Oh. We keep that in the storm cellar. Right over there.” She pointed to a slanted board door.

  The door creaked slightly when he opened it.

  “You’ll have to grope your way in the dark,” she whispered to him. “You can’t light a match in there.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “Bottles?”

  “Yes. And in cans. Just to your right when you go down the steps. I’ll wait up here and you can hand me a can or a bottle.”