Webb's Posse (13 page)

“Hunh?” Gant looked confused. Ted Logsdon jumped away.

The bullet hit the outlaw in the center of his forehead and flipped him backward, a long ribbon of blood spouting from the back of his head and turning into a wide spray.

“God almighty!” Abner Webb shouted, startled. Davis Gant's warm blood splattered his face. In the chilled night air, steam swirled from the hole in Gant's head.

“Sorry, Deputy,” said Will Summers. “You was standing too close.”

In the tense silence, the possemen stood stunned, their eyes wide, their mouths agape. Will Summers lowered the pistol back into his holster. He looked from one to the other of the men. “What're you looking at? You were going to hang him, weren't you? He had to pay up for Ike Stevens, didn't he? Now it's done.”

“It's done, Will, but my God,” said Webb, wiping blood from his face.

“What?” Will Summers looked back and forth between Webb and the other possemen. “Now none of you can stand the sight of blood?” He stared at each man in turn. “You better take a good look at this man lying here…. Then you better look at yourself as well. This ain't no child's game we're playing out here. Men bleed and die here!” He gestured a hand toward Ike Stevens. “There's what death looks like up close. It's bloody and terrible, and it stinks to high hell. Turn Ike over, five to one says he's shit himself!”

The men looked at one another and milled uneasily in place.

“You don't like hearing about that, do you?” Will Summers continued. “But you'll all do the same thing out here if somebody puts a bullet in you. You better remember that before you go any further with this.”

“Damn it, Will, what are you doing?” Webb asked, trying to get him to shut up. “These men just fought one hell of a fight. Don't take that away from them.”

“I'm not taking nothing from them,” said Summers. “You men fought and won. But then winning wasn't enough for you. Then you needed to see somebody hang!” He pointed again to the body of the outlaw on the ground. “Well, there he is. He's not been hanged, but he's as dead as I can make him for you. Is everybody satisfied?”

“That was nothing but stone-cold murder, Summers,” said Ned Trent, his broken nose still affecting his voice.

“Oh, was it, Trent? But you saw something right in hanging him?” Summers stepped forward, grabbed Trent by his coat and jerked him forward, forcing him to stoop down over Davis Gant's body. “There now, tell us what you see!”

“Turn me loose, Summers!” Trent protested.

“I said tell us, Trent!” Summers insisted. Holding Trent firmly, Summers reached down with his boot toe and kicked Davis Gant's closed hand. A small derringer pistol fell into the dirt and glinted in the flickering firelight.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Ned Trent, his voice sounding shaky all of a sudden. “He was holding a hideout gun…. One of us was fixing to die before this was over.”

“Thank you, Trent!” said Will Summers, turning him loose with a shove. “That's right, men,” he added, looking back and forth among them again.
“One of us was going to die before this was over.” He let the hard cast of his eyes convey the gravity of his words to each of the townsmen. “These are dangerous men we're hunting. Do you think they give up, call it quits, just because you've managed to catch them?” He shook his head. “No…that's not the way it works. They die bloody, fighting and clawing like a wildcat. They're a danger to you as long as there's a single breath left in them. When you wound one, you better wound him bad, then keep both eyes on him.”

“We made a simple mistake, Summers,” said Edmund Daniels, both of his eyes still swollen and dark from his fistfight with Abner Webb. “Quit making it seem like—”

“A simple mistake?” Summers cut him off. “You were all so broken up over Ike Stevens and so full of yourselves over catching the man who shot him that you didn't even search him down good before you brought him back here. You stupid bunch of peckerwoods!”

“Take it easy, Will,” said Abner Webb. “We all get your point now. These men aren't experienced lawmen. They never pretended to be. They're just hardworking, everyday citizens. They done the best they could.”

Will Summers ignored him and spoke to the men. “While you good, hardworking, everyday
citizens
were busy deciding whether or not to hang Davis Gant, he'd already decided clear as day what he was going to do. He'd made up his mind that he was going to take one more of us with him.”

“All right, Summers,” said Edmund Daniels, still trying to finish what he'd started to say. “We all made a mistake here not searching this outlaw. But it's over now, and we all learned from it.”

“I sure as hell hope so, Daniels,” said Will Summers, sounding disgusted as he turned and walked away. At the edge of the campsite, he said over his shoulder to Sherman Dahl, “Schoolteacher, you and Bobby Dewitt come with me. Let's see if we can bring in their horses.”

As Sherman Dahl and Bobby Dewitt hurried to join him, Will Summers said to the rest of the men, “I smelled whiskey on at least four of you. Come morning, any whiskey left over is going into the fire. Drink it while you got it, right, Webb?”

“Who the hell does Summers think he is?” a muffled voice asked among the men. The men turned their attention to Abner Webb to hear his take on things.

“Summers is right about the whiskey, men,” said Deputy Webb. “This is neither the time nor the place to be drinking hard liquor. You all see what's at stake here.” He nodded at Ike Stevens' body. “We've already lost one good man. Let's do whatever we've got to do to keep from losing any more.”

Deputy Abner Webb awakened before dawn to the quiet sounds of men readying their horses for the trail. Standing up from his blanket, he looked across the campfire at Will Summers and Sherman Dahl, who sat drinking coffee with solemn expressions. Behind Summers and Dahl, on the other side of the campsite, the townsmen were raising Ike Stevens' blanket-wrapped body across a saddle. “What's going on here?” Webb asked Summers and Dahl, rubbing sleep from his eyes with both hands. “I said we'd break camp at first light.”

“Yep, that's what you said all right.” Will Summers tossed a disgusted glance over his shoulder at the townsmen, then looked back at Webb. “They're all leaving. I reckon they were hoping to get out of here without having to face you.”

“Damn it!” Webb jerked his hat up from the ground and jammed it down on his head. “And you was just going to sit there? Why didn't you wake me up?”

“Don't get yourself all worked up,” said Summers. “We wouldn't have let them leave without you knowing it.” He shrugged. “We just figured to let you sleep until they were ready to travel.”

“Well, that's damn considerate of you,” said Webb, raising his gunbelt from beneath his saddle and
quickly throwing it around his hips. As he fastened his belt buckle, he looked at Sherman Dahl and asked, “What about you, schoolteacher? Are you cutting out too?”

“No,” said Dahl. “Mr. Summers and I have discussed it. I'm continuing on with you.”

“So am I,” said Edmund Daniels, his voice coming from the outer circle of firelight. Webb turned to face him. Daniels sat cleaning a rifle, his swollen eyes looking strange and demonlike in the thin, flickering firelight. “I plan on being with you every step of the way,” Daniels said with resolve, the end of the sentence punctuated by his hand levering a cartridge into his rifle chamber. Abner Webb just stared at him for a tense second.

“The cowboy is staying with us too,” said Summers. “He's just helping the men get Stevens' body ready for the trail.”

Webb looked over at the townsmen and saw Bobby Dewitt tying the blanketed corpse down to the saddle. The townsmen avoided Webb's stare and busied themselves with their horses. “Forget them, Deputy,” said Summers. “All they would do is get themselves killed out here. We're better off without them.”

“The Peltrys have a dozen or more men,” said Webb. “What chance will the five of us have against them?”

While Summers and Webb talked, the townsmen finished preparing for their ride back to Rileyville. They spoke to one another in a huddle for a moment, then led their horses over closer to the campfire. Keeping his eyes lowered, Ted Logsdon spoke on the townsmen's behalf. “Deputy, we don't want you thinking this is any reflection on you. We just figured since we need to take Ike Stevens' body back to Rileyville anyway, this is a good place to call a halt to
hunting the Peltrys. We're all tired, and we need to get back to our homes and families.”

“Jesus, Logsdon,” said Webb. “We've only been gone two days! As far as hunting the Peltrys, we haven't even gotten started. One little run-in with some gunrunners, and you men give up? I can't believe what I'm hearing!”

“We're not making excuses, Deputy,” Logsdon continued. “I can't afford to be away any longer. I've got a business that needs to be run.”

Webb shook his head. “Ted, you're a barber.”

“That's true,” said Ted Logsdon. “And in the barbering business, two days can make a big difference in the whole appearance of a town.”

Webb just stared at him. “Logsdon, your barbershop burnt to the ground. Don't you want to track down the men who did that and make them pay?”

“Hell, no,” said Logsdon. “Not if it means more of this.” He nodded at the dead outlaws lying on the ground to one side of the campfire. “This is the worst thing I ever took part in. I can't stand no more of it. Besides,” he continued, “I do the undertaking too. My services will be required for poor Ike there.” He thumbed toward the blanket-wrapped corpse across the saddle.

Webb looked past Ted Logsdon at the others. “What about the rest of you? Is this how you want to be looked at by the town? Where's your self-respect?”

Logsdon started to speak, but Louis Collingsworth stepped forward first. “Let me answer that, Ted,” Collingsworth said. He stood with his hands on his hips. “Deputy, we thought this was a good idea at first. We'd catch the Peltrys ourselves and collect the rewards on them. Use the money to rebuild what they destroyed. But damn, this is a gruesome business.
We've got no business out here. Summers showed us that last night. We're lucky Davis Gant didn't kill one of us.”

“But what about learning from your mistake?” asked Webb.

“Well…last night we might have said some things that ain't really the way we feel. Shooting and getting shot at makes a man say and do strange things. But that's neither here nor there. We're going back to Rileyville, and nobody's going to talk us out of it.”

“What about the reward?” asked Webb.

“Well…if you five collect it, it's up to you five to decide how to share it. Fair's fair. We don't want something we didn't earn.”

“What about my guns and horses?” Will Summers cut in. “I put up the guns and horses for you men to use. Who's paying me the money I put out for this expedition?”

“There's no cause to be insulting, Summers,” said Collingsworth. “I have reserve capital in a bank in Denver. You have my word before all these gentlemen that I'll pay for everything. These men have agreed to pay me back over time, right, men?”

The men nodded in unison. “Whatever it takes to get out of this thing in one piece,” said Logsdon, “we're willing to do it.”

Louis Collingsworth saw the relenting look come to Abner Webb's face. “Look, Deputy,” he said. “We all realize this whole thing was a big mistake. We were angry, in shock and not thinking straight. Now we've tasted blood, and it's made us sick. There's nothing says you can't ride back with us and put this thing out of your mind. We need you to look after Rileyville until the sheriff is back on his feet. He'll thank you for it, and we'll none of us ever forget how you tried to go after these criminals.”