The Wild Gun Read online

  “They got to pay,” Earl said. “What they did to our pa and ma.”

  “Oh, they’ll pay, all right,” Cord said.

  “How you figure to get them, Cord?”

  “It’ll take some doing. Horace Weatherall is surrounded by a bunch of dry-gulchers and backshooters. It won’t be easy.”

  “They got to pay,” Earl said again.

  “And they will. It’s going to take some planning and maybe some tricky stalking.”

  “I’ll help you,” Earl said.

  Cord patted his brother on the shoulder.

  This news changed everything for him. He wanted to give up the life he had been leading, but circumstances now prevented that. He would have to rely on his wits and his gun. He knew he could not rely on the law to help him. The reach of the sheriff in Cheyenne was only within city limits, and it would take time and patience to hunt down a U.S. marshal.

  No, this was something Cord had to do himself. He wasn’t sure about his brother. Earl was still just a kid, still wet behind the ears and much younger than Cord. He was a good shot, but not wise in the ways of men. Especially men with guns. Maybe it was best to keep his brother out of it and just go it alone.

  It would not be easy to get at Horace Weatherall. But, from what Earl had told him, Abner was even more vicious and heartless than his older brother.

  Then, too, there were the stolen horses. Thirty head. Horace would alter the brands and probably try to sell them to the army or to a private rancher.

  And how many men did Horace have on his ranch? Cord did not know.

  He had taken two of them down, but he knew there were more. And these were men who shot to kill and didn’t ask any questions.

  A tentative plan formed in Cord’s mind.

  The only way he could get at Horace and his brother Abner was to hunt down their cohorts one by one until only those two were left.

  It would take much planning and perhaps more than a little subterfuge.

  And, he thought, he would have to be almost invisible.

  A tall order, he reasoned.

  There was a lot of prairie in Wyoming, and men with sharp eyes would be on the lookout for him.

  “You’d best stay out of this fight from now on, Earl. I can handle it.”

  Cord rose from the couch and looked down at his brother.

  “I want to kill them. Every damned one of them. With my bare hands.” Earl was not begging, but demanding.

  Cord shook his head.

  “I can’t bring you into this, Earl,” he said. “It’s just too dangerous. I’ll try and get our horses back and get you some wranglers to drive them back home. But you’re worth more to me than those men who killed our pa.”

  Earl started to cry again. He whimpered and squeezed the side of his head with both hands. Tears leaked from his tortured eyes and Cord could not look at him.

  He loved his brother, but he knew he was right to keep him out of harm’s way.

  Better to have a broken heart, he thought, than lose a brother to a more experienced gunman.

  He walked into the kitchen and looked for something to fix for Earl that would fill his stomach and take his mind off revenge.

  He thought of their pa and choked up as he pulled a basket of hens’ eggs from the cupboard and took down a skillet from the wall. There was bacon and potatoes he could fry up and they would eat together.

  From the other room, he heard the sound of Earl’s sobbing and it was all he could do not to cry himself.

  ELEVEN

  When Horace saw the dead bodies of the two men Cord had killed, he erupted in a blind rage that terrified his other men.

  And to see that they had been stripped of saddles, rifles, and gun belts drove him to the edge of normal rationality and sanity.

  He stood with several of his men in front of his house, a framed structure of whip-sawed boards and a sloping shingle roof. The two dead men were still tied to their horses and had begun to ripen in the sun.

  The ranch house was nestled in the foothills, tucked back into a natural horseshoe formed by low hills. Behind it, the mountains rose up in ascending phalanxes. The land itself was gently rolling prairie and jutted up against the Barnes ranch. Horace had a thousand acres but had always wanted more, and he’d had his eye on the JB spread for some time. Now he saw a way to get it, with all its assets, and he was determined to take the property by force.

  “We may not get the Wild Gun right away,” Horace said to his men, “but we can damned sure go after the man who hired him: Jesse Barnes. Besides that, I want all of Barnes’s horses. I’m plumb tired of messing around with a few head here and a few head there. I want Barnes wiped out.”

  “You mean kill him?” Jimmy asked.

  “Kill him plumb dead,” Horace said with a savage tone to his voice.

  “It ain’t goin’ to be no easy thing,” Rowan said. “He’s got a sharpshooter or two on his payroll.”

  “I got a plan,” Horace said. “I think it might work.”

  The men gathered around Horace as he told them how to lure Barnes out into the open and dry-gulch him.

  “We steal a couple or more of his horses in the dead of night,” Horace explained. “But we don’t run ’em to my ranch or into the mountains. Instead, we leave plain tracks and lead him into that gully what’s washed out twixt his ranch and mine. You know the place.”

  The men nodded. They all knew about that place. It was almost a ravine, a deep depression caused by centuries of flash flooding next to a small mesa that rose above the fissure. It was clogged with brush and rocks, and many a cowhand and wrangler had ventured there to recapture strayed cattle and horses. For some reason, a lot of animals used the gully as a hiding place, a refuge, and it was crawling with rattlesnakes and other critters that made the place almost inaccessible on horseback.

  “Danged good idea,” Jimmy said, which brought him a lot of scornful looks from the others.

  “Think he’ll fall for it?” Will Corwin said. “Barnes, I mean.”

  “If he wants his horses back, I’m betting he will,” Horace said.

  “When do we do this?” Corwin asked.

  “Tonight,” Horace said. “There’s no time to waste. Besides, I think if we drop Barnes, the Wild Gun will come out of his hidey-hole and try to mix in.”

  “Wild don’t foller no regular trail, boss,” Rowan said. “He’s real sneaky.”

  “We’ll make sure that news of Barnes’s death gets into Cheyenne and draws that rascal out.”

  “Wild don’t leave no tracks,” Jimmy said. “We’ve tried to find out where he bunks down, and so far, he can’t be found nowhere.”

  “You let me worry about Wild. He’s just one man and we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  The men stared at Horace, as puzzled as ever about his behavior and demeanor. Jimmy was gape-mouthed, but knew better than to question his boss any further about Wild or the plan Horace had laid out for them.

  “I just want two men for this night job,” Horace said. “Two men who won’t fail. Any volunteers?”

  Jimmy Rowan was the first to raise his hand.

  “I reckon that’s in my line of work,” he cracked.

  Will Corwin also raised his hand. A lanky wisp of a man who was all muscle and sinew, having worked on building a railroad when he was young. Rowan was beefy but hard-muscled with a face leathered by the sun, except for his forehead, which was covered by a crumpled felt hat that looked as if it had been mangled by cougars, then patched with thick thread in several places.

  All the men wore gun belts studded with .45 or .44 cartridges, and all owned at least one rifle; some had two or three.

  Horace looked up then and scanned the sky. To the north, he saw the large white clouds building. They were blowing down from the mountains, topping the snowy peaks, and billowing
over the valleys. It was a hot day and the sun was sucking up moisture from the creeks in the valleys.

  “The weather is on our side,” Horace said. “It’s going to rain this afternoon. That will make the ground soft when you ride over to the JB. You’ll leave clear tracks that Barnes can easily follow.”

  The other men looked at the mountain sky. They all saw the clouds blowing toward them and knew they would be over the prairie by early afternoon.

  “A good sign,” Jimmy said.

  “A damned good sign,” Horace agreed. “It would even help if the rain lasted into the night.”

  “And let up by the time we run them horses out to the gully,” Corwin said. He spat out a stream of tobacco juice from a wad he had in his mouth.

  “Don’t push it,” Horace said. “With them winds behind ’em, them clouds will pass over pretty quick once they dump their rain.”

  All of the men grunted in agreement. They had seen prairie storms before. They were sometimes fierce, but they moved fast. The clouds would turn black and fly lower in the sky and dump a lot of rain, gully washers, in a short time. And the men all had slickers to keep them dry.

  “Looks good,” Corwin said.

  “You boys bury these men,” Horace said. “And get ready for some delicate work tonight.”

  “Where do you want ’em buried?” Jimmy asked, a look of dumbness on his face.

  “Bury ’em right in front of that gully,” Horace said. “That way, Barnes will have to ride over ’em when he chases down his stolen horses.”

  The men all laughed at the irony and rightness of Horace’s order.

  “That’ll learn him,” Corwin said with a wry chuckle.

  “Damned right,” Rowan said.

  Jimmy and two other men began to lead the horses away toward the far gully while two others walked off toward one of the barns to get shovels. Horace watched them go and felt a sense of pride in his men.

  They didn’t need much instruction. They knew what to do. He paid them well and treated them fair.

  This was a trait he and Abner had learned from their father, who had taught them both all the tricks of his trade—which was horse stealing and dry-gulching.

  Lemuel Weatherall had started stealing horses as a boy, and when he married and had two sons, he was pretty well off, financially. He had taught the boys to shoot rifles and pistols, how to handle and build a lariat. All the tricks of his trade.

  They had lived in the Missouri Ozarks, and through the war, they had all been guerrilla fighters, picking off Union troops that ravaged the countryside.

  The hills of the Ozarks made for good hiding places, and the Weatheralls were experts at covering their tracks and leading Union scouts into dangerous ambushes.

  Unfortunately, Lemuel made a mistake. He stole several horses from a judge in Harrison, Arkansas, and was caught red-handed.

  The boys watched their father when he was hanged in the courthouse square.

  Their mother never recovered from Lemuel’s death and wasted away until she died of heartbreak, leaving the boys orphans who needed to ply their father’s trade with even more caution.

  “Why pay money for something when you can get it for free?” their pa always told them before they went on a raid to obtain horses.

  The boys had honored their father’s memory by becoming even more adept at stealing horses.

  Horace had set his sights on the West, where he knew there were even more horses to be had. He no longer had the hills, but he had the mountains, where he could hide horses and men from the law.

  And until Wild had come into the picture, he had done very well.

  Wild was like a shadow.

  He had seemingly come from nowhere, and the ranchers had hired him to do their killing. So he was no more than a hired gun, but he was no pilgrim. The man was a tracker, and he was relentless. More than one horse thief had fallen to his gun. Wild had gained a reputation, almost overnight. Other horse thieves had left the territory because of him, or had just stopped their nefarious activities.

  And the ranchers had put a sobriquet on the man. They called him the Wild Gun. And when someone’s horses were stolen, the ranchers called for the Wild Gun to aid them.

  Horace had only been the latest to encounter the shadowy man who had now killed two of his men.

  Such a man could not be allowed to continue in his pursuit of horse thieves.

  Even as he walked back into his house, Horace was thinking of a way to draw Wild into the open and kill him.

  Perhaps, he thought, taking Barnes down would do the trick.

  It was almost certain that someone on the JB Ranch, Barnes’s wife or daughter, would send for Wild to avenge the death and retrieve the stolen horses.

  In fact, Horace was counting on it.

  Even a shadow could not escape a strong light. And Horace meant to shine a blazing torch on Cordwainer Wild.

  TWELVE

  Earl and his brother ate together. By the time Cord had washed the dishes and put away all the plates and flatware, Earl was asleep on the couch, his gun belt hung on the arm of the divan. The boy did not hear the thunder that boomed in the late afternoon, nor awake to the patter of heavy rain on the roof.

  Cord went to bed, his thoughts swirling with memories of his dead father, a man he had admired and respected. He did not think about revenge or retribution, but about his dear mother, all alone now, deprived of any source of income since most of their horses had been stolen.

  He vowed to get the horses back to Missouri.

  He slept fitfully until the rain stopped, then drifted into dreams of towns and people, obstacles that arose in his path through a maze of clapboard buildings and tawdry saloons where strangers with strange weapons attacked and chased him up stairs and through rooms that led to still other rooms. And in the dream there were large black horses that flew over the prairie like huge birds without wings.

  He awoke in a sweat and lay in bed until his mind cleared and the dregs of the dreams faded from memory.

  It was still dark out when he arose and strapped on his gun belt to go outside and watch the sky break open at the first crack of dawn in the east. He chewed on a stalk of rhubarb and thought of his father.

  Lucas Wild had instigated the rhubarb chewing.

  “I call it ‘ruminatin’ rhubarb,’” his pa had told him. “Makes you think of other things ’sides your troubles. Try it. The stalk’s got enough sting in it to make you mindful of chewin’ while your mind ruminates on other things.”

  The habit had caught on and Cord had chewed stalks of rhubarb at times when he needed to think clearly and make difficult decisions.

  After the sun came up, Cord made preparations to hunt down the men who had murdered his father and stolen thirty head of horses from the family ranch.

  He figured that Abner had not yet arrived at Horace’s ranch, but he had a great deal of scouting to do. And he still believed that Horace was a menace and must be brought to justice, even if it was only frontier justice, without the law’s sanction.

  He gathered up cartridges for his Winchester rifle, and added two boxes of .45-caliber pistol cartridges to his kit. The ammunition would be carried in one of his saddlebags. He packed hardtack and beef jerky, wrapped in oilcloth, filled two canteens, and tied his slicker behind the cantle on his horse’s rump.

  Earl watched all this preparation in silence, but he was fuming inside that his brother was going it alone.

  Outside the cabin, the air was fresh and the ground wet. The creek was running full bore and there was a tang to the air from the still dripping trees, the pine needles, and the freshly washed spruces and firs.

  Earl watched his brother pack his saddlebags and hang canteens from his saddle horn. His face bore an expression of sadness and his eyes seemed to reflect the gloom that was inside him like a dark smoldering furnac
e.

  “I want to go with you, Cord. I need to go with you. I’ll die if you don’t take me with you.”

  Cord turned from his horse and looked at Earl.

  “You won’t die. You need rest. You did enough. You tracked and chased Bart Jessup all the way to where I can find him, at Weatherall’s. You’ve done enough.”

  “No, I haven’t. I should have killed Jessup, but I missed him every time.”

  “We all miss the target sometimes.”

  “But you didn’t see what he did, what Abner and the others did to Pa and Ma.”

  “No, but you can’t carry that with you all your life. You did what you could and now I’ve got to pick up where you left off.”

  Earl’s eyes flared with anger, and he rose up from the ground where he had been sitting. He clenched his fists and walked close to Cord.

  “I didn’t tell you all of it, Cord,” Earl growled from deep in his chest.

  Cord froze.

  “All of it? What do you mean?” he asked.

  “That ain’t all that happened. Them draggin’ Pa and killin’ him in cold blood.”

  “They left him dead, didn’t they?”

  “Just about. Pa died, all right, but that ain’t all there is to it.”

  “What in hell do you mean? They raped our ma, you said. Then they left. Right?”

  “They left, all right. But that ain’t all that happened. It—it’s hard for me to talk about it.”

  Cord stepped to his brother and gripped both of Earl’s shoulders in his hands.

  “What else?” he said, his eyes slitted, a hard cast to his jaw. “We’ll get our horses back and I’ll get a couple of wranglers to help you drive ’em back to the ranch in Missouri and you can go on from there.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ to go back to, Cord,” Earl said, his eyes welling up with tears.

  “You got Ma and the house, a barn, corrals, plenty of pasture.”

  “There ain’t no house no more.”