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About Me
- Howard K Terrell
- I retired in 1995. I spend my time fishing, golfing,when possible.I write a fishing column for our local newspaper, and in the winter I write fiction. I am now writing my fifth novel and have 2 published. In winter I write.
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ReplyDeleteIt was almost sundown when Clint rode into Beaver Creek. He had only been there once before, when he had gone there with Hoddy.
Clint chuckled to himself when he recalled how Hoddy had regaled the boys in the Red Dog Saloon with his story of how Clint had shot him, then nursed him back to health. Since that was the only bar that Clint was familiar with, he figured that was as good a place to start as any. As he rode up the dusty main street of the little town, his eyes were constantly moving, from doorway to doorway, window to window.
Clint had been on his own in this wild, Texas territory since leaving home at age fifteen, and you don’t survive out here by being careless.
Approaching the Red Dog, he spotted Kinton’s horse tied up at the hitching post. Jist like a saddle bum. Ride ‘o horse near to death, and not even feed him, much less give a rubdown. Clint could feel himself starting to seethe.
Kain’t lose my temper. Worst thing I can do now is not use my head. Gotta stay cool. Kain’t let him git the jump. Clint eased Blackie up to the hitching post and climbed down. He snapped the reins over the hitching pole, causing them to whip around it in a tight knot, and walked gingerly up to the door. Peering in, he spotted Kinton bellied up to the bar, one foot resting on the brass rail. His greasy black hat was pushed back, and his coat tail was tucked behind the sixgun, tied down to his leg, just above the knee. Clint decided that Kinton wasn’t going to be going anywhere soon, so he remounted, and rode back down the street to the livery stable he had passed on the way in.
Leaving Blackie to be fed and rubbed down, Clint walked across the street to the Cattlemen’s Diner, a small eating place that catered to the dusty cowpokes who wandered in off the range.
Clint ordered a rare steak and fried potatoes, then went to the pump out back and washed up. Using his hat, he tried to beat some of the trail dust out of his clothes, but with little success.
Returning to his table, he rolled a cigarette and smoked it while waiting for his food.
After finishing off the steak, which was a little tough but otherwise quite tasty, he ordered another cup of coffee. He drank slowly, savoring the rich flavor while smoking another cigarette.
Clint finished his coffee and smoke, then paid his bill, leaving the waitress a small tip, which she accepted with a look of disdain. Clint grinned at her, then plopped down another dollar bill, which brought a warm smile of thanks.
Leaving the diner, Clint returned to the livery stable and helped the stable boy resaddle Blackie. After giving the boy a hefty tip for a job well done, he rode slowly back up the street to the Red Dog, where Kinton would be waiting.
Kinton was no fool. He would surely know that Clint would come looking for him, to settle the score. A man like Kinton would be neither scared, nor eager to fight.
It would be up to Clint to determine what was to happen. Clint tied Blackie to the rail right beside Kinton’s sorrell, and walked through the bat wing doors.
None of the men at the bar even looked up as he approached Kinton and tapped him on the shoulder.
Kinton slowly turned to face Clint, knowing full well who it would be.
When Clint saw the half sneer on Kinton’s face, he couldn’t stop the anger that boiled up inside of him. Without a word, his right fist caught Kinton square on the bridge of the nose. Clint could feel the bone collapse as it splintered under the blow.
Kinton staggered and almost went down, but caught himself just as Clint’s left fist buried itself deep into his belly.
Kinton let out a loud “oof”, as another right caught him under the chin, straightening him up, just enough for a left to smash into his adam’s apple!
Kinton fell to the floor in a heap, without a chance to get in a blow.
Clint stood over the beaten Kinton, his fists clinching and relaxing, stretching the swollen fingers, trying to get some feeling back in them. As he stood there, Clint could feel his anger subside.
Annie was safe and unhurt, other than her dignity being violated.
The pile of scum lying at his feet was now more to be pitied than hated.
Clint turned on his heal and headed for the door. The distinct click of a hammer being pulled back caused him to drop to the floor, his right hand drawing his own gun as he fell.
The forty-five slug caught him in the left shoulder, spinning him half around, but his own gun barked in his hand. The slug, whether by design, or just pure luck, slammed into Kinton’s forehead right between the eyes.
A look of disbelief crossed his face as he slumped over, dead before his face hit the floor.
Everything happened so quickly the men at the bar hadn’t even had time to duck for cover, and there immediately arose a controversy over how the gun fight had played out.
But there was one thing that everyone agreed on. That was the damnedest shot anyone had ever seen, and would give the witnesses something to talk about for years!
The locals all backed away, as Clint slowly crawled to his feet, his right arm cradling the useless left, and sat down at a table.
The bartender threw a handful of clean bar towels over his shoulder and came over to where Clint sat, holding his useless left hand in his right, and helped him get his shirt off.
Using the bar towel, he carefully wiped the blood off and took a close look at the wound. The slug entered just below the shoulder blade and came out the top. But other than threads from the shirt, it appeared to be clean.
“Don’t suppose you want to tell me what tha fight wus all about?” the bartender spoke in his friendliest voice, not wanting to rile this stranger whom he had already had the privilege to see in action.
“Man’s business is his own an’ nobody else’s. But damn, thet wus some shot! Never seen hit’s likes afore and I’ve shore seen a lot in my day. Tended bar here to Dodge City, and hain’t seen tha beat.” The bartender rattled on, all the time swabbing at the wound with the towel, but still the wound bled profusely.
“Ouch!” Clint yowled in pain, “Damn hit man, that hurts worsen tha damn slug! Feels like yore pokin’ ‘round in there with a red hot poker. How bad is it hit enyway?”
“Clean as a hound’s tooth. Slug went clean through tha shoulder and came out tha top. Made a nice clean hole too. Jist about stick my finger right through hit. Bleedin’s bout stopped now. Jist let me use a clean rag and I think I kin bind hit up til you kin see a doctor.”
“Hain’t got time to see no doctor. Got nigh on to forty thousand head ‘o onery steers to git to Abilene, ‘for snow flies.” Clint winced again as the bartender wrapped the wound with a clean towel and pulled it tight.
“Don’t know that hombre what you jist delivered into the jaws o’ hell, but could see when he first walked in, thet he had a killing coming. No good, jist plum no good! Seen his kind too often fer my on taste. ‘Course, in my line a’ work, you gits all kinds. He got a name thet you know of? Sheriff be here drectly. I guess he’ll have to question you. But don’t worry. Ever body knows he drew first. Hells, bells, the dirty rotten coward shot you in the back! My God, man, I never see tha beat. Got him right between tha eyes, and you shot an’ falling face first! Where did you learn to shoot like thet?”
Clint sat back in the chair and tried to slip his shirt back on, but the pain was too much, and he had to let the bartender take it all the way off and put it on the wounded arm first, then the other.
The bartender then took two bar towels and tied them together to make a sling.
With the arm now supported, the pain eased considerably, and Clint gratefully accepted the cigarette that another cowpoke rolled and offered him.
“He came by tha ranch a while back. Said his name was Kinton, Willie Kinton. Knew he wus trouble but wus having hard time gittin’ ‘nough help fer round up.Took ‘im on enyway. Hadn’t been thar more’n a week when he tried to rape my wife. Didn’t hurt her none, but she wus sceered half to death. He wus a bad’n fer shore. Sceered o’ ‘im myself, but had ter uphold my wife’s honor. Don’t know jist how I managed to take ‘im. Jist plain lucky, I guess.”
The bartender went to the back bar and poured two stiff drinks of pure corn and returned, handing one to Clint.
“Lucky, my old lady’s corset! Best damn shot I ever see. Nothin’ lucky ‘bout hit. By tha way, name’s Bart. Don’t think I caught yore’s?”
“Glad to know you Bart, and thanks fer everthing. My name’s Brady, Clint Brady. Ramrod fer the B-bar-B Over to the Valley Grande. Work fer man by tha name ‘o Dillard Billings.”
“Heerd of ‘im. Hear tell Tha B-bar-B now ‘bout tha biggest spread in these parts. So you ramrod that operation, you say? Well, shore glad to make yore ‘quaintice. Shore sorry hit had to be this way tho”. Bart was more than eager to cement his relationship with the wounded man.
“Yeah, sorry I made sich ‘o mess ‘o yore floor, but didn’t mean to. Wasn’t gonna call him out, jist mess up his ugly face a little more’n hit was already. Was walking away when I heerd him pull tha hammer back on his forty five. Tried to duck, but I guess I wus a little slow. Getting’ too dam old fer barroom brawls, I reckin.”
Bart’s makeshift bandage and another shot of corn was working wonders, and the pain had pretty much subsided by the time the Sheriff strode in all business like.
“Who hell got tha gall to come in to my town an’ start shootin’ up tha place? Any damn shootin’ gonna be done ‘round chere, I’ll do it!”
Bart walked over to Sheriff Bannister and put his hand on his shoulder.
He pointed down to the body of Kinton, lying where he fell, blood and brains still oozing out of the top of his head and slowly soaking up the saw dust on the floor.
“Well Ban, it like this. This year hombre tried to shoot my friend Brady, here,” he pointed to Clint, “in tha back. Got ‘im in the shoulder, but by damn, Brady got one shot off while falling and nailed the buzzard rat between tha eyes. See fer yoreself. Smack in tha middle ‘o tha forehead.”
“Whoopee, dam! That’s some shootin’. Never seed enything like it afore.” Bannister walked to where Clint was sitting, nursing the last of the glass of corn.
“Well, now young feller.You some kinda hired gun? Bounty hunter? That piece ‘o cow dung over there look’s like he might have a price on his head, but I don’t cotton to bounty hunters or hired guns. So maybe you shot in self defense or maybe you jist chained lightnin’ with that there hog leg on yore hip.Either way, yore not comin’ inter my town and start shootin’. Now maybe you er sombody better tell me jist what happened.”
A half dozen witnesses all started yabbering at the same time, each one putting his own spin on how the shooting took place.
“Now jist a dam minute! With all you jackasses braying at tha same time, a man can’t hear a thunder. Now, jist shet up, the lot of ya! Bart, this yore place an’ I know you don’t miss much ‘o what goes on in here. Now you say this peckerwood is a friend of yore’n. mayhaps you can tell me what happened.”
Having been properly impressed with Clint’s prowess with his six gun, and also the fact that he was ramrod for the biggest ranch in the territory, Bart was more than pleased to call Clint his friend. He quickly explained how Clint had tracked down Kinton after he had tried to rape Clint’s wife, and how Clint had given him a good thrashing, and was walking out the door when Kinton shot him in the back. Bart took particular pride in telling how his good friend had nailed the culprit right between the eyes, while falling wounded, to the floor.
Bannister listened intently, his arms folded across his chest, his right hand stroking his coarse chin whiskers. “Well, there’s no doubt hit was self defense, seeings how that peckerwood’s been shot from behind, but I still don’t like tha fact that he got this pole cat rat between tha eyes. Man kin shoot like that, musta done a lot ‘o shootin’ in his time.
How ‘bout hit, Brady? You got more notches in that there hawgleg ‘o yore’n”?
Brady grinned, then, winced in pain. “Naw. Hain’t got no notches atall. Only ever shot one man afore, and he lived. He now one ‘o my best friends and has worked tha ‘B’ with me ever since.”
“Wait a minute! Jist hold on there!” a cowpoke who had been standing to one side but saying nothing finally spoke up, “Knowed I’d seed you afore, jist couldn’t place you. Warn’t you the hombre who came in here a few years ago with ‘nother young feller who claimed you had shot him, then spent all winter holed up in a line shack nurse maiding him back to health?” The man came over to Clint for a closer look,
“By dam, I’m right, shore as shootin’. What happened to ‘tother feller, He still ‘live er did ye finish tha job? Har, har.”
“Yeah, we came through a few years back. Stopped in here fer a drink on our way back to tha ranch. His name’s Hoddy Yates. He’s straw bossing fer tha ‘B’. He saved me from a lynching over to a town called Flintrock. Long story, but everthing turned out fine. Jist a big misunderstanding.”
The creaking of the bat wing doors drew everyone’s attention and they turned to see old Doc Watkins ambling in, as if he was in no particular hurry.
Most barroom shootings ended up giving the undertaker more business than him, and nine times out of ten, when he did patch up some cowpoke’s bullet holes, he never got paid for his services anyway.
Doc took one look at Kinton, lying there with half his skull blown away. “What to hell you call me for? Nothing I can do for him! Whoever put that bullet in him, done sent him to hell, whether hell was ready for him or not. Been sawboning for forty years, and I’ve never seen anything like that.” he knelt down and examined the hole in Kinton’s head more closely. “Take a lot of shooting to be able to do that. Anybody know who did it?”
Bannister stepped over and gave the doctor a hand and pulled him to his feet. “Yeah, Doc, man who did hit is over here, with a bullet hole in his back. He the one they called you fer. He keeps sayin’ hit was jist a lucky shot, but I don’t know. Shore sounds like he alright though. ‘Pears to be a telling tha truth. Thet one on tha floor looks more like tha killer type than this’n.”
Doc Watkins came to where Clint was sitting, puffing on a cigarette that one of the onlookers had rolled and handed him. “Better git that thing outa yore mouth, young feller,” Doc took the cigarette and threw it on the floor and stepped on it. “You been shot and lost a lot of blood. Probably in shock. Not good fer you to be smoking.”
“Naw, I’m fine. Bart here don trussed me up like a baby’s bottom. Swear, I’m feeling pert as a ruttin’ buck.” Clint stood up to shake the doc’s hand, and keeled over in a dead faint.
Doc Watkins chuckled as he helped Bart pick up the woozy Clint and sit him back on the chair. “Happens every time. Bigger they are the worse they fall. It’s the loss of blood that does it to them. Man can’t live without blood, and even the loss of one or two pints can put the biggest and toughest, flat on their face.” Doc carefully unwrapped the wound. “um, um, uh huh. Okay, yes, the wound is nice and clean, except for a few fibers from his shirt where the slug went through it, pulling the fibers in to the open wound. Get that cleaned out and a few stitches and he be fit as a fiddle. Here son,” the doc poured a goodly amount of a dark amber colored fluid from a large bottle he extracted from his satchel, “This won’t kill all the pain but it will make you so happy you won’t feel it much.”
“Uh, what is hit doc, won’t put me to sleep will hit? Can’t go to sleep. Gotta git home. Wife done figured out by now that I came after Kinton. Be worried sick iffen I don’t git home quick as I can.” Clint was worried about Annie, since he was afraid that she might slip off and come looking for him and get herself lost.
Annie’s one fault was that she was headstrong, and would run off and do things without thinking. That was what had caused the trouble in the first place, when she had run off by herself to look for Clint.
“Well son, this here’s laudanum. It won’t put you to sleep, but probably gonna wish it would, when I start to sew up that hole. Tastes just awful, and stinks worse, but its all I got.You cowpokes all think your pretty tough, ‘til I start sticking a needle into you. Wouldn’t surprise me any if you pass out again. Sure wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.”
But Clint gritted his teeth and held on while Doc Watkins put a half dozen stitches in each wound. When he was finally done sewing, Doc wrapped the shoulder with fresh bandages and put the arm in a real sling. Satisfied he had done all he could, he packed up to leave.
“Wouldn’t plan on doing much riding until at least morning. Give your body a chance to mend. Need to build your blood back up.”
“Well, I ‘preciate thet Doc. But I got ter git home. Reckin I jist have to tough it out. Only ‘bout hunert miles.”
“Well, I don’t think you will have trouble with the wounds opening up again, providing you don’t try to use that arm, or you pass out and fall out of the saddle. Been known to happen. Suit yourself. Done all I can.” Doc turned to the door.
“Jist a minute Doc. How much I owe you? Purt near forgot to pay you.” Clint fumbled in his pocket for the leather wallet in his hip pocket.
“Well now, that’s another first. Cowhands always got enough money to get likered up and shoot each other, but never have enough to pay me for patching them up. Well, I guess two dollars will cover it, if you got that much.”
Clint opened the wallet and took out a five dollar gold piece and handed it to the doctor. “Can’t thank ye ‘nough fer patching me up. Done right nice job. Don’t even hurt no more. Be able to ride jist fine.”
The surprised doctor took the gold and rolled it around in his fingers. “Well now, young feller, that’s right generous. Rest of these Jaybirds could take a lesson from you. You just feel free to get shot here any time you want. Be more than glad to patch you up.” Doc chuckled at his little joke as he shook Clint’s good hand and made his departure.
Clint also said his good-bys, thanking everyone for their help, Especially Bart, who seemed genuinely sorry to see Clint go.
“Now don’t be no stranger, you hear? You come back any time. Drinks are on the house.” Bart saw Clint to his horse and helped into the saddle. “You take care now. You sure you want to travel tonight? Put you up right here in my back room. You can leave at first light tomorrow. Shore don’t want you getting hurt again.”
“Thanks so much, Bart. Thanks for everything, but I’ve got to get back to the ranch. My wife will be a wreck now. No telling what she might do. No, best I git home quick as I can. But shore do hope to git back this way soon. You take kere ‘o yoreself” Clint shook hands with Bart, and turned Blackie north toward home and the waiting arms of Annie
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Annie sat on the front porch, her eyes glued to the road. These last two days had been pure torture for her, knowing now, that Clint had gone after that awful Kinton.
Why did I believe Clint when he said he wouldn’t go after him? Why didn’t I make him come home with me? Shouldn’t have even told him what happened. Should have known what Clint would do! Now he’s probably dead out in the field somewhere and I’ll never see him again. How could I have been so stupid? If I only knew which way to go, I could go after him, but who knows where he might have gone?
a passage from Cattle Baron