Cherokee Trails/Chapter 24
Curiosity no doubt was as dominant in the minds of people who lived in Drumwell, and those who frequented its places of business and diversion, as elsewhere. Only discretion was somewhat farther to the front. Discretion cleared the street when the shooting began, as if a wind had picked all the two-legged creatures up and whisked them away like leaves.
Every door caught as many as could scramble inside before the proprietor slammed and locked it, after the custom of that town, and other places of its kind in the shooting zone of the cow country frontier. It was not the belief that a locked pine door would turn bullets; experience had proved the reverse often enough to Drumwell merchants. But a quickly shut door was outward proof of the owner's neutrality, and kept his standing unimpaired in the good graces of all belligerents.
Those who did not make it into open doors cut for spaces between the buildings which would lead to sufficient shelter behind them, from where they could leg it to back doors if they felt safer under a roof when bullets were humming around, as most people did. It was equal to a trick with cards the way that short street cleared of everything alive but horses. Some of these pranced and pulled back, frightened by that wave of warning which quickened even the senses of the dumb.
The city marshal had rolled almost to the corner of his lockup, behind which his friend had expeditiously hidden himself. Standing in the wagon, Simpson turned a look toward Kane's place to see if anybody was moving with hostile intention from that quarter. When he glanced over at the calaboose again, the city marshal was gone.
A moment later Tom saw legs flit across the space between the calaboose and the nearest building, and he was certain one pair of those legs belonged to nobody but the marshal. The crafty little cuss had been playing 'possum, waiting his moment to slide to cover. Just as well if he hadn't damaged the little devil, Tom thought. He was not a man that counted for very much, shake him out of the box as you might.
Other legs went flitting across the chinks between other buildings, few of which stood shoulder to shoulder, admirable arrangement for refuge in such a public exigency as now. The trend of those flying legs was toward Kane's place, which was about half the distance of a city square from Simpson's situation in front of the Railroad Restaurant.
Tom believed they were gathering at Kane's in a force that soon must make it pretty lively for him. He knew it was useless to attempt flight, although he considered mounting the led horse and making a dash for the open. Even while he thought of it he knew it wouldn't do. The first break to run would set every coward in town at his heels, regardless of any actuating interest in the case except that of the chase. It would be better to stand and face the partisans of the marshal than, retreat and bring out the rabble.
He must get out of the wagon, and away from it. He was responsible for the horses; sticking around there for the shelter of the wagon—which would be like a chip to a bug for a man in his fix—could only result in some of the animals being killed. It would not be generous of him to stand in front of that little restaurant, either, and get it shot up. It had caught several bullets at the first outbreak; one of its windows was broken. There was only one thing to do, for the safety and consideration of all concerned except himself: walk out to the middle of the street and wait for them to come.
He jumped down, tied the lead team to the hitchingpole, emptied an extra box of ammunition into his pockets, grabbed the rifle and stepped into the road.
At that moment several men emerged so hastily from Eddie Kane's barroom door that it seemed as if the place had given way under their pressure and spilled them, exposing them before they were ready. The lumberman was conspicuous among them by his collarless white shirt, but the city marshal was not there.
They spread out like a covey of rising quail and began to shoot, some of them edging away from the building, where Eddie Kane could be seen at the door. Even at his distance, and against all the popping guns, Simpson could hear Kane, vituperative and raging, consigning him to the place where all undesirable people were billeted by the foul-mouthed of every frontier. Kane was putting on some trimmings of his own, and he was a competent decorator in that lurid line.
The distance was somewhat long for accuracy with pistols, although bullets were cutting the dust around and beyond Simpson, edging up a little nearer as the shooters mastered their first wildness and took more calculative aim. Tom believed he could hold them beyond dangerous range with the rifle. He threw four quick shots with no other intention, and they bunched in a surge for the door as eagerly as they had emerged a few seconds before.
But Kane, false friend in their necessity, had followed the example of everybody else along the street. The door was locked. They cut around the corner, making for the main entrance, which they must have reached before Kane could slam it, for all but three of them dropped out of the open conflict, although somebody began firing with a rifle from an upstairs window a few seconds later.
The three who remained in the street were of the cowboy type, one of them a long-haired man who looked familiar to Tom, although he could not recall at the moment where he had seen him. Somebody yelled to them out of the window where the shooting had come from; Tom saw an arm between the curtains waving a rifle, which the long-haired man ran under and caught as it dropped. He was the Indian member of Wade Harrison's outfit, who had escaped that morning of the fight on the old cattle trail.
Tom jerked a shot at him as he stooped and ran swiftly for the corner of the building. It was a clean miss, although it was a shot thrown with deadly intention. The Indian began to shoot from cover around the corner, only his arm and shoulder and the side of his head visible as he fired. He was considerably better with that gun than he was with a revolver; he was handing them out pretty close to Tom's head as he stood there a fair mark in the middle of the broad street, the brim of his old sombrero flapping in the wind.
Several cowboys had climbed to the tops of the cars they had been loading, from where they watched the fight. One of them tried to signal something to Tom that he did not understand. He waved his hand to show the friendly fellow that he appreciated his interest, even though he could not profit by the signal.
They would keep out of it, Tom knew; it was not their way to mix in sectional fights or take hand in anything that did not involve them. But he couldn't help wishing he had three or four of them with him. He'd smoke that gang out of the hotel then, and clean up that town until a man could leave his pocketbook lying over there by the sidetrack
A shot from that same upstairs window cut off this ardent wish. Tom raised his gun to throw lead through the blowing curtains, but held it, remembering there were women in the place. The Indian, incautious at this deflection of attention, displayed a little too much of his anatomy at the corner, and Tom pitched the shot at him instead.
It was a hit. The fellow spun out into the open, whirling as if somebody unwound him from the coils of a rope. He dropped his gun, seemed to stumble over it, and fell. There was no pretense in the posture of that man, lying on his face with his arms thrown above his head in the dusty road.
Something hit Tom's arm with a spat; a gun cracked between the houses, and the meaning of the cowboy's signal was made plain. Tom wheeled, his right arm suddenly numb as if he had been hit a hard blow on the crazy-bone. No other sensation, but the arm would not respond when he tried to lift the gun. He dropped it, slung his revolver with his left hand, and made a charge at the man who had flanked him and was still shooting, but wildly. And all the time that coward in the hotel window was pegging meanly away, maybe a woman, for all he knew.
There was nobody between the houses, where the smoke of the shooting was packed close. The sneak had heeled it, sticking close to the corner of the building—it was a little dry goods and millinery store—with that intention if pushed. It must have been the marshal, Tom believed; that was a trick worthy the wall-eyed little beast.
Tom turned back to the street, feeling a little queer, a light-headed sickness coming over him like the beginning of mal de mer. Strange such a little thing as a crack in the arm would do that; it never had upset him that way before, getting a shot in an out-of-the-way place such as an arm or leg. A smothering, sick, oppressive feeling of obscuration it was growing to be. Strange; very-very strange.
There was a lot of wet inside his shirt, and rings of varicolored light before his eyes. They must have got him somewhere—he must get under cover and find out how seriously. The sidewalk rose in front of him as he went ahead to try the door of the little shop. Locked, the curtains pulled down, no movement within answering his knock and pettish: "Oh, I say now! Open this damn door, will you?"
That woman in the hotel—he could not think even in his extremity a man could be so base—was still shooting, and he had to go that way to get to the door of the hardware store next beyond, where a zinc washtub was standing on a barrel in front. He went on, annoyed by the shooting from the window, but not greatly concerned otherwise. The door was locked, and if anybody skulked inside he was too cowardly or vindictive to open it.
A crowd of men appeared at the corner of the hotel prancing fantastically, shooting straight in the air, it seemed to Tom. What silly asses the fellows were making of themselves, throwing their legs and arms in that outlandish dance!
Then the tipping world steadied a moment. They were not shooting in the air, but at him. A bullet hit the washtub, clanging loudly, jarring it a little from its unsteady place on the barrel. Tom sagged down behind the barrel, hoping it had salt in it, pushed the washtub off, trained his pistol over the top and began to shoot.
But that feeling of obscuration was pressing around him; there was a streak of fire running through his head. He was still pulling the trigger, his last shot going through the rusty tin dipper hanging at the end of the hardware sign, when he began falling, falling, dropping down from immeasurable heights; struck darkness, and lay still.
He did not hear the clatter of feet on the planks, nor the whoop of triumph as the crowd rushed him from the corner of the hotel; nor the break of galloping horses as a troop of riders swept down the road and roared into town; nor the bellow of Waco Johnson's shotgun as he pulled up short at sight of the hounds rushing their fallen victim, nor the cry of despair that rose, sharp as a woman's wail, when Jo Shelby's veteran and the others emptied their miscellaneous guns.
"He's dead!" Waco said, his voice catching with the sound of a sob. "He wouldn't be layin' there if he wasn't dead—all hell couldn't stop him if he wasn't dead! Some of you men carry him to the wagon, and the rest of you come with me."
One of the cowboys on top of the cattle car, unable to keep the code of neutrality at sight of this dramatic sweep of vengeance against the gang that did its fighting like a pack of coyotes, pointed to the upstairs window, and at Simpson, leaving the rest to Waco. It was as plain as words to Waco, who backed his horse off a little way and called an order to the unmentionable-pedigreed scoundrel within to show his head. As there was no head presented, nor even the breath of anybody at the curtains, Waco fired two charges of buckshot into the window and then rode up to the saloon door.
Waco called on them to come out and fight if they had the courage to turn a key. He was so engrossed in his defiance, so set in his vengeance, so determined to make that nest too hot to hold them, as he declared, that he did not see the streak of bay horse flash by, its rider leaning like a jockey in the last lap of a mighty race. Waco was so somberly set on avenging his fallen friend that he did not even turn his head when the cowboys on the car gave the girl a cheer as she flung herself from the saddle where two men were lifting Tom Simpson from the sidewalk in front of the hardware store.
But the men in the saloon would not come out, although somebody was so unwise as to take a blind shot at Waco through the door. It almost grazed him, and gave him clinching evidence, if any had been wanting in his mind, that Tom Simpson's murderers were hiding there. Waco flung his long leg over the saddle and led his horse to the hitching-rack across the street; he called three men to him and gave an order in quick, firm words. He did not look toward the Railroad Restaurant, into which they were carrying Tom Simpson; if he had any thought of Eudora Ellison it was that she was safe at home with her mother, and spared the heartbreak of that melancholy scene.
Two men ran across the tracks to a freight car on the siding, opened the journal boxes and pulled out handfuls of oil-dripping packing. They came back with this, another running over from the livery stable with wire that had been cut from baled hay.
Some of the men who had pursued such of the mob as had been able to run after that devastating volley, reported that the survivors had run into the back door of the hotel. Waco stormed around there, to find that entrance barred. He gave it a kick and jumped aside, getting the immediate response that he expected. They must have pegged a dozen shots through the thin pine door.
Whether through economy, or through a modest desire to shield the doings from people on the outside, the roadside wall of the hotel dining-room-dance-hall was a solid blank. From that quarter Waco Johnson's force was safe. But there were two windows in the bar on that side, set in the wall a little above the height of a man to insure the safety of patrons against such hilarious or malicious shots as their shining mark might provoke. A man on horseback might hit the middle of the floor by riding close to these windows, but those on the inside could not even see riders as they passed.
Now somebody, either overly secure in his retreat or rash beyond common sense, pulled a table or some high piece of furniture near one of these windows and began to fire on the men before the door. Fortunately the shooter's field of vision was not large, and nobody was directly in it, but this act of insolence instantly won over some of the homesteaders who had dissented to Waco Johnson's proposed scheme of action to empty that nest of villainy and retreat of vice. They said go ahead. But Waco would give them another chance. He went to the front door and summoned Kane by name.
Kane was in a rage. He was obscenely defiant, apparently drunk and past any sensible consideration of his situation. This thing never had happened before in Drumwell; he did not appear to be able to understand that it had happened now. But somebody was arguing with him; a woman, her voice terrified and pleading. His wife, Waco believed. He stepped aside to give her time.
Kane's passion arose with her appeal to open the door and turn the gun-slingers out. He replied to her pleading with a mocking laugh. There was further talk, and a scuffle, as if she clung to him; a rough answer, a curse, the sound of a blow. Waco Johnson turned back to his men.
"Go ahead, gentlemen," he said.
Some of the men rolled chunks of railroad ballast in the oily packing, to which they attached lengths of baling wire. Then they fired the waste, and Waco Johnson, saying he was assuming entire responsibility, took the torches one by one, swung them as a boy whirls a sling, and threw them to the hotel roof.
That was not a demonstrative crowd. Almost to a man they had been through the fire of battle, the perils of Indian warfare, the adventures of the Santa Fé Trail. Talk was such a cheap commodity they disdained it when there was serious work to be done. One had ridden the border with Quantrill—of which he said nothing to certain of his neighbors, to be sure—one had been with Custer in the Pawnee campaign; the veteran of Appomattox was there, and the man of Jo Shelby's brigade. He had seen the walls of Chapultepec and the golden beard of Maximilian, whose fate might have been less unhappy if he had accepted the unconquered Shelby's proffered help.
One and all thought of the impositions, humiliations, insults, they and theirs had suffered in that sneering, obscene, evil town, which they had shunned even to the point of hardship rather than face its ribaldry. This was the day of righteous vengeance. Within the law or beyond it, they were going to apply the remedy of purgation.
They stood by, as a man stands by a tree where a squirrel is hiding, guns ready for somebody to make a break. Within five minutes the roof of Eddie Kane's place was blazing high, and there was a sound of running in the upstairs rooms, and of women's screams as they snatched their possessions to flee.
Kane was raving and cursing, drunk with liquor and fury. He could be heard struggling, his defiance breaking down in a drunken blubber when somebody threw open the front door.
Mrs. Kane came out, carrying a baby and a little bundle of something done up in a white shawl. Her face was strained with fright and suffering, her big hollow eyes were full of terror. She paused a moment, in attitude of fearful questioning. Waco Johnson took her arm kindly, and led her to the road. There she threw one terrified look behind and ran, heading directly for the little restaurant before which Tom Simpson had hitched his team.
A dealer came out, carrying a little satchel. He walked sullenly defiant between the double file of men with guns in their hands who made a passage before the door, bending his unhurried steps toward the bank. Four women followed, their cheap finery stuffed hastily into handbags, ends of apparel showing through the gaping jaws, bundles under their arms. They were frowsy, dishevelled, crying. Nobody inside was gallant enough to give them a hand.
The rafters began to burn through, the roof to fall. Waco Johnson and his men drew back for safety. Frantic in the first realization that his place was burning, Kane rushed out yelling wildly for help.
"Put it out!" be implored, his avid wide mouth dribbling, tears streaming from his red eyes, head over on his shoulder in such a grotesque posture of villainy justly punished that nobody ever had been heard to express pity for his affliction.
"Git water! Put it out!" he yelped, sobered up considerably at sight of the destruction. "I've got a two-thousand-dollar stock in there! Put it out—put it out!"
Nobody spared him much attention, seeing he was unarmed, in his shirt sleeves, his vest unbuttoned, his big watch chain dangling. The collarless band of his stiffbosomed white shirt was fastened tight around his muscular, corded neck; there were dribblings of his late potations down its front. He went running circles around the cheap, flimsy building, and the public of Drumwell, guilty and not guilty, came out of its holes to witness the spectacle and laugh at a plea which was the last anybody ever expected to hear from the booze-lapping mouth of Eddie Kane.
"Git water, git water!" he yelled. "For God's sake, men, git water!"
A man came to the door waving a white handkerchief, and Waco Johnson said come out, cuss you, and say it. They had a wounded man in there, the man said; they asked permission to carry him out, and for everybody to follow, peacefully. Come on, said Waco, and come with your hands above your heads, all that were not carrying the wounded man.
Four came out carrying the lumber dealer on a table. He had a mess of buckshot in his back and looked as if he was not long for this world. Waco Johnson checked him off. The others followed, fourteen in all, some of them innocent cowboys who had not been permitted by the guilty ones to leave. Waco Johnson checked them off, also. He told them to run along. There were others that he marched to the railroad, beyond the heat of the burning building, and searched with portentous eye.
Waco called a council of war over their case, and considered what to do. It wouldn't be right to shoot all of them summarily, for there must be some who had borne no active hand in the cowardly business against Simpson. They could not expect the innocent to proclaim the guilty, in fear of future vengeance, so they debated the matter gravely, not knowing just what to do. At that point in the deliberations Wallace Ramsey returned from what all thought to be the last services Tom Simpson ever would require of his friends. To inquiries, Wallace replied:
"No, he ain't exac'ly dead, but they broke his arm, and they shot him through the side, and they creased him just over the ear. The doctor says they ain't any bullets in him. They went clean through."
The doctor wouldn't say what his chances were. If the bullet that creased him hadn't busted his skull bone, he might live. Anyhow, it had pressed the bone down agin his brains and he didn't know a thing. He was down there in the back room of that little eatin' house; Eudora, she was with him.
"The hell she is!" said Waco, brightening up so greatly he might have had assurance that Tom Simpson was through the rapids, and coming safely to land.
Well, considering it all, Waco said, he guessed they'd collected enough toll.
"If he's alive, he'll go on livin'," he declared. "That girl won't let him die. She wouldn't let nobody die, not even me."
Seeing there was a doubt who deserved to be shot and who should go free, Waco said, and considering that it was better to allow five guilty ones to escape what was coming to them than to go wrong on one innocent man, they'd call it a day and let it end there.
"Scatter to hell out o' here! Hunt your holes!" he said.
They went, and the guns they had left behind them in Kane's bar began to pop in the fire, and the corked bottles of liquor began to explode and, as the heat grew around them, even the beer kegs raised a head of steam and burst their thick staves with fire-muffled roar.
The building burned like a box, its construction being of the cheapest and poorest, the last thing to go being the row of thick posts which had braced the ceiling of the dining-room. These stood awhile in the swirl of fire like columns in a ruin. In the bar end of the building Kane's stock of ardent spirits tinged the fire with blue.
Waco Johnson and his companions were patrolling the fire to keep it from spreading, the nearest building being not more than a hundred feet away, the corral which Kane maintained for his customers between. They kept the planks and roof of the building, which was no other than the hardware store, from going like its neighbor, a labor in which the townsmen lent a hearty hand.
Waco was standing by when the fire had burned down to safety, thinking of going to see how Tom Simpson was pulling along, when Mrs. Kane returned. She was wearing the white shawl over her head, holding it under her chin like an old woman, although she was far from old, and not uncomely in her way. She stood looking intently at the ruins of her home, with what emotion her sad eyes did not betray to Waco Johnson. Presently, she turned to him, a deep, long-drawn sigh sounding from her parted lips.
"Thank God! it's gone!" she said.