“Idiot,” Sam muttered, and leaned against the wall, waiting, trying to forget the ache in his ribs.
“Give this up, boys!” Tom Riley yelled.
“Hell with you,” Johnny Carlin returned the yell. “You're all gonna die right here. You hear me, Big John. I'm tired of livin' in your shadow. I'm gonna be known as the man who killed Big John Carlin. Me, you son of a bitch.”
“Well, you got part of it right, boy,” Big John Carlin said. He leveled his .45 and shot his oldest son through the belly. The father fought back tears.
11
“Johnny!” Clement screamed. “That was Pa who shot you. Pa did. Goddamn you, Big John.”
“Oh, my God,” Bull muttered. “Dear God, help us all for the mistakes we've made with our kids.”
“Bull!” Big Dan Parker bellered.
Bull said nothing. He waited.
“How much is your life worth, Bull?” Parker yelled. “Sign your ranch over to us, Bull, and you can ride out.”
“You have to be kidding,” Bull muttered. He thought he knew where the voice was coming from. He holstered his pistol and picked up his Winchester, earing back the hammer.
“You hear me, John!” Parker yelled. “Take your wife and your yeller boy and ride out.”
Bull put four rounds as fast as he could lever into the side of the old building. Seconds passed in silence. Big Dan Parker came staggering out, the front of his shirt, from neck to waist, was bloody. He swayed for a moment, then fell on his face in the dirt and weeds.
“Damn you all to the fires of Hell!” Paul Brown yelled. “Me and Dan was buddies.” He jumped out into the street and tried to race across it.
He didn't make it. The hail of bullets turned him around and around and dropped him dead, not more than three feet from his buddy.
Two of those would-be toughs who came in with the Sutton-Carlin kids made it back to their horses and lit a shuck out, heading for safer places.
“Cowards!” Hugh Sutton hollered, half-rising from behind a water barrel. Nate sighted him in and knocked him sprawling. He got up, and Bull drilled him clean. Hugh fell to the ground and did not move.
“Damn you!” Randy screamed. “Damn you, Bull.” He emptied both pistols at the old saloon building, hitting nothing but warped and rotting boards. He pulled two more pistols out from behind his belt, and Doc Blaine sighted him in and blew one of his knees into pebbles. The young man screamed in pain and passed out on the boardwalk.
“Insanity,” Bull muttered.
From the loft of the livery, Matt had been watching Yok Zapata inch his way behind the buildings on the east side of the old town. Not being a man who was terribly interested in fair play with someone who was trying very hard to kill him in any way possible, Matt lifted the .44-.40 he'd taken from Ralph Masters and plugged the half-Apache from four hundred yards away. Yok stumbled around for a moment, and then, purely unintentionally, sat down in an old wooden chair and looked at the hole in his chest.
“Well, I'll just be damned!” Yok said, and died, his chin on his chest.
“Yok!” Bacque shouted. “Where are you, Yok?”
“Dead,” Ned Kerry called in a hoarse whisper. “He got drilled from someone in the livery over yonder. In the loft.”
“Then that man is dead,” the French-Canadian vowed, and began slipping around to the edge of the last building on that side of the street. “Whoever he might be.”
“Bodine, I think,” Ned said.
“All the better,” Bacque replied.
Matt watched his progress carefully, but he could get no clear shot. Bacque was being very cautious. Matt heard a noise on the floor below him and with a silent curse, left the opening and moved silently to the ladder. He looked down just as Simon Green looked up.
Matt shot him with the .44-.40 at a distance of about twenty feet, the slug striking the gunhand in the center of the forehead. Simon had hired his gun out for the last time.
Matt heard boots on the floor before him and figured it was Bacque. He moved silently to stand on several bales of old hay and was just in time, for Bacque started filling the old barn loft floor with bullet holes. Several hit the tightly bound bales but did not penetrate.
“Come on down and fight me, Bodine,” Bacque called.
Matt said nothing.
“You want me to come up, hey? Well, my mother raised no fools, Bodine.”
Matt waited, listening to him reload both pistols. He closed the loading gate with a faint snap.
“I will let you safely down the ladder, Bodine.”
Sure you will, Matt thought. Of course, you're such a gentleman.
Bacque started filling the loft floor with holes. Matt kicked a bale of hay over, and it landed with a thump. He removed a spur and groaned loudly, then tossed the spur to the floor. It rattled once, and the big barn was still and warm in the sun.
“If it is a trick, it is a very convincing one, Bodine,” Bacque called.
Matt saw the ladder tremble under the gunfighter's weight. He raised the already cocked rifle.
Bacque's hat appeared, then the man chuckled. “I am glad you are dead, Bodine. I just bought that hat. Had you fallen for the hat-on-a-stick trick I would be very angry.”
His head appeared, and Matt shot him in the center of the face. Bacque tumbled to the lower floor. Matt did not have to look to see if he was dead. A .44-.40 slug in the face at about ten feet doesn't leave much room for doubt. He was walking back to his post when he heard the rumble of many horses at a full gallop.
“Riders comin'!” a gunfighter shouted.
“Jesus Christ!” another shouted. “Must be a hundred of them.”
“Ring the town,” Matt heard Lars call. “No one gets out alive unless they want to surrender.”
Pistols and rifles started hitting the ground, and men began leaving their positions and walking out into the street, their hands held high.
“All right, all right!” Ramblin' Ed called. “We yield. It's over.”
“I'll be goddamned if we do,” came another shout, and Ross Sutton and Clement and Pete Carlin ran out into the street, screaming curses and guns blazing at the posse members. John and Bull lifted their rifles. The men had tears in their eyes as they opened fire.
Matt averted his eyes as the fathers cut down their outlaw sons.
It was over.
12
Johnny Carlin and Randy Sutton lived through the fight. Randy's leg was amputated at the knee, and Johnny would spend months recovering from his stomach wound. Randy eventually went to college and after that became a traveling tent preacher. Johnny drank himself to death. Marcel, Clement, and Pete Carlin, and Hugh and Ross Sutton were buried in the old cemetery of the ghost town, along with the bodies of the slain gunmen.
Doc Blaine hung up his guns.
Daniel Carlin and Connie Sutton were married shortly after the fight at Big Ugly.
Nyeburn recovered from his head wound and was sentenced to a prison term, along with the other hired guns. All of the hired guns vowed someday to kill Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves.
The daughters of Bull Sutton and John Carlin were never heard from again. If Petunia made it as an actress, she did it under a different name.
Tom Riley was elected sheriff of the county, and Nate Perry was elected marshal of Crossville.
Parley Davis became a full-time deputy sheriff.
Van Dixon married Miss Charlotte.
Miles Singer left town and dropped out of sight.
John and Ginny and Bull and Roz adopted a whole orphanage of kids and proceeded to start life anew.
Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves . . .
“You look healthy enough to me,” Matt said to Sam.
“I am healthy enough to throw you in the creek.”
“Don't try it,” Matt warned with a grin. “I'd hate to put you back in the hospital.”
The brothers were tying their bedrolls behind the cantles of their saddles.
“Where to this time?” Sam asked.
“Well, I believe we discussed going home.”
“I didn't think you took that very seriously.”
Matt's grin widened.
“That's what I thought.”
Lawyer Sprague walked up. “Well, boys. What trail do you take now?”
“We were just talking about that,” Matt said.
“And . . . ?”
“I guess we'll know when we get to the crossroads,” Sam said.
“You've got to settle down someday,” the lawyer said.
The blood brothers nodded in agreement, swung into the saddle, and both of them lifted a hand in farewell. They pointed the noses of their horses west and slowly rode out of town.
Little Billy, his dog by his side, waved at the brothers.
Matt and Sam returned the wave, Matt saying, “That makes it all worth it.”
“You are a hopeless romantic,” Sam said. “But I suppose I shall have to tag along, watching you endlessly tilt at windmills.”
“You're a pretty good filter yourself,” Matt said.
The brothers grinned at each other and rode on to write another page of Western history.
AFTERWORD
Notes from the Old West
In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie show palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplinâthe silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.
On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10
A.M.
until my father came looking for me around suppertime. (Sometimes Newton's dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of
Abilene Trail,
which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn't get home until after dark, and my mother's meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn't play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.
Steal a man's horse and you were the guest of honor at a necktie party.
Molest a good woman and you got a bullet in the heart or a rope around the gullet. Or at the very least, got the crap beat out of you. Rob a bank and face a hail of bullets or the hangman's noose.
Saved a lot of time and money, did frontier justice.
That's all gone now, I'm sad to say. Now you hear, “Oh, but he had a bad childhood” or “His mother didn't give him enough love” or “The homecoming queen wouldn't give him a second look and he has an inferiority complex.” Or “cultural rage,” as the politically correct bright boys refer to it. How many times have you heard some self-important defense attorney moan, “The poor kids were only venting their hostilities toward an uncaring society?”
Mule fritters, I say. Nowadays, you can't even call a punk a punk anymore. But don't get me started.
It was, “Howdy, ma'am” time too. The good guys, antihero or not, were always respectful to the ladies. They might shoot a bad guy five seconds after tipping their hat to a woman, but the code of the West demanded you be respectful to a lady.
Lots of things have changed since the heyday of the Wild West, haven't they? Some for the good, some for the bad.
I didn't have any idea at the time that I would someday write about the West. I just knew that I was captivated by the Old West.
When I first got the itch to write, back in the early 1970s, I didn't write Westerns. I started by writing horror and action adventure novels. After more than two dozen novels, I began thinking about developing a Western character. From those initial musings came the novel
The Last Mountain Man: Smoke Jensen.
That was followed by
Preacher: The First Mountain Man.
A few years later, I began developing the Last Gunfighter series. Frank Morgan is a legend in his own time, the fastest gun west of the Mississippi . . . a title and a reputation he never wanted, but can't get rid of.
For me, and for thousandsâprobably millionsâof other people (although many will never publicly admit it), the old Wild West will always be a magic, mysterious place: a place we love to visit through the pages of books; characters we would like to know . . . from a safe distance; events we would love to take part in, again, from a safe distance. For the old Wild West was not a place for the faint of heart. It was a hard, tough, physically demanding time. There were no police to call if one faced adversity. One faced trouble alone, and handled it alone. It was rugged individualism: something that appeals to many of us.
I am certain that is something that appeals to most readers of Westerns.
I still do on-site research (whenever possible) before starting a Western novel. I have wandered over much of the West, prowling what is left of ghost towns. Stand in the midst of the ruins of these old towns, use a little bit of imagination, and one can conjure up life as it used to be in the Wild West. The rowdy Saturday nights, the tinkling of a piano in a saloon, the laughter of cowboys and miners letting off steam after a week of hard work. Use a little more imagination and one can envision two men standing in the street, facing one another, seconds before the hook and draw of a gunfight. A moment later, one is dead and the other rides away.
The old wild untamed West.
There are still some ghost towns to visit, but they are rapidly vanishing as time and the elements take their toll. If you want to see them, make plans to do so as soon as possible, for in a few years, they will all be gone.
And so will we.
Stand in what is left of the Big Thicket country of east Texas and try to imagine how in the world the pioneers managed to get through that wild tangle. I have wondered about that many times and marveled at the courage of the men and women who slowly pushed westward, facing dangers that we can only imagine.
Let me touch briefly on a subject that is very close to me: firearms. There are some so-called historians who are now claiming that firearms played only a very insignificant part in the settlers' lives. They claim that only a few were armed. What utter, stupid nonsense! What do these so-called historians think the pioneers did for food? Do they think the early settlers rode down to the nearest supermarket and bought their meat? Or maybe they think the settlers chased down deer or buffalo on foot and beat the animals to death with a club. I have a news flash for you so-called historians: The settlers used guns to shoot their game. They used guns to defend hearth and home against Indians on the warpath. They used guns to protect themselves from outlaws. Guns are a part of Americana. And always will be.
The mountains of the West and the remains of the ghost towns that dot those areas are some of my favorite subjects to write about. I have done extensive research on the various mountain ranges of the West and go back whenever time permits. I sometimes stand surrounded by the towering mountains and wonder how in the world the pioneers ever made it through. As hard as I try and as often as I try, I simply cannot imagine the hardships those men and women endured over the hard months of their incredible journey. None of us can. It is said that on the Oregon Trail alone, there are at least two bodies in lonely, unmarked graves for every mile of that journey. Some students of the West say the number of dead is at least twice that. And nobody knows the exact number of wagons that impatiently started out alone and simply vanished on the way, along with their occupants, never to be seen or heard from again.
Just vanished.
The one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old ruts of the wagon wheels can still be seen in various places along the Oregon Trail. But if you plan to visit those places, do so quickly, for they are slowly disappearing. And when they are gone, they will be lost forever, except in the words of Western writers.
The West will live on as long as there are writers willing to write about it, and publishers willing to publish it. Writing about the West is wide open, just like the old Wild West. Characters abound, as plentiful as the wide-open spaces, as colorful as a sunset on the Painted Desert, as restless as the ever-sighing winds. All one has to do is use a bit of imagination. Take a stroll through the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona; read the inscriptions. Then walk the main street of that once-infamous town around midnight and you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts that still wander the town. They really do. Just ask anyone who lives there. But don't be afraid of the apparitions, they won't hurt you. They're just out for a quiet stroll.
The West lives on. And as long as I am alive, it always will.