The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (18 page)

A couple of the guys had relatively superficial
wounds, lacerations we could use horse liniment
on an’ then wrap. Arm’s horse had a gouge
across his rump from a bullet, but it wasn’t deep.
A couple of other of the animals had been hit as
well, but there was nothing too serious.

Dirty Eddie passed out whiskey, tobacco, and
papers as we worked on our horses. He’d grabbed
nine quarts and only two had broken, because
he stuffed sacks of Bull Durham between the
bottles.

When we’d turned our horses into stalls, we sat
on bales of hay and got to drinkin’. “That cannon,”
Eddie said, “coulda beat us easily ’nuff,
’cept for Jake blowin’ their keg.”

“They could have another one—or more,”
someone offered.

“It’s a right sure bet them men aren’t goin’ to sit
tight.
They’re gonna attack us here, just like we
did at their saloon.”

“They loss many men,” Arm said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but they got plenty more. I
don’t see no way we can get more troops in here
in time to save our asses.”

Dirty Eddie lowered his bottle. “I do,” he said.
“I know this ol’ battle scavenger who’s got a ton
of weapons he picked up after battles.”

“We use to shoot them sonsabitches,” one of
the men said. “They took wallets an’ pitchers an’
them Catholic beads…”

“Rosaries,” I said.

“Yeah. Them. An’ belts an’ boots an’ medals
an’ surgeon’s tools from medics who got shot
down.”

“That ain’t the point,” Eddie said. “He might
have a cannon or two or other stuff we could
use.”

“Where’s he live?” I asked.

“Not more’n a couple days from here, if I recollect
right. Some of it’s hard ridin’ but we’d make
it.”

“An’ carry the cannon on horseback? Makes no
sense. We need to take our women’s wagon.”

There was a silence that lasted for a long time
while men drank whiskey and thought about the
possible cache of weapons.

“How do we know this scavenger’s got anything
we want?”

Dirty Eddie grinned. “We don’t. Seems to me
it’s worth a try, though. He could even have dynamite.
If he don’t have nothin’, we can kill him
anyway. Jake? Wadda you thinkin’?”

“I dunno. We’d need to have men away from
the ranch for a couple days, an’ we lost four men
tonight. That’ll leave but five to stay here an’ fight
if Dansworth attacks. The odds ain’t good.”

“The odds in Hulberton, they were no good,
either. An’ we kill what? Maybe seven or eight to
each of their men for every one of ours—maybe
more. We can no theenk of odds, Jake.”

I thought that over. Arm was right. “Okay,” I
said, “me an’ Eddie will go out at first light tomorrow
with the wagon an’ well make the ride
without stopping. We should be back in a day an’
a half. Arm, you gotta run the show here.”

“Sí. No problema.”

The men looked around at one another. “Seems
like we ain’t got no choice,” one said. “Gimme
that bottle.”

The one thing we didn’t need at all was rain, an’
’course that’s what we got. It started pourin’
down like the sky busted open a bit after midnight.
By false dawn, it’d tapered off to a constant,
soaking drizzle that turned the ground to
mud.

“Roads are gonna be a damn mess,” I said to
Eddie as we harnessed the horse in front of the
cart.

“Don’t matter. We ain’t gonna be on roads anyhow.”

We pulled out long before full light, wrapped
in our dusters with our canvas ponchos over
them, with a bottle of whiskey an’ some food Teresa
an’ Blanca had put up for us.

We’d tightened the horses’ shoes and they
didn’t
seem to be having too much trouble hauling
the wagon, although the mud sucked at their
hooves and the wagon wheels, making the trip
tougher on them. Eddie began tapping at the
bottle ’fore we were outta sight of the barn. I saw
no reason not to join him.

It wasn’t that the temperature was real low;
that wasn’t the problem. What bothered us was
the constant spatter of the rain and the goddamn
wetness of everything.

“Tell me about this fella we’re goin’ to see,” I
said.

“Sumbith was a profiteer, sellin’ ammo an’
whatever else to both sides. ’Course when he sold
out his stock, he had a empty wagon or two an’
that’s what he an’ his men would fill with whatever
they could find at battle sites—rifles, clothes,
black powder, swords, small artillery pieces, all
that kinda thing. Also, they damned near
stripped the dead: boots, Bibles, letters, whatever-the-hell.
Then they’d haul ass back to his place an’
stash their loot in his barn. Sonsabitches cleaned
up at Second Bull Run an’ at Gettysburg, an’ lots
of smaller skirmishes, too. They done their stealin’
at night. Either the rebs or the Yanks managed
to kill a half dozen or so of them, but the
main man—name of Hargis—always managed
to get clear.” He was silent for a moment. “Dirty
business, robbin’ the dead like that. It ain’t right.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“I gotta tell you this,” Dirty Eddie said, “I’m
gonna kill him. I been meanin’ to for some time.
Should we find him, I’ll shoot him.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

The horses struggled some on slopes that
wouldn’t have slowed them, ’cept for the mud. We
rested an’ watered them often. There sure was no
shortage of water—their were foot-deep puddles
in every little depression.

The rain finally let up about dusk. The sky
cleared. “I know the stars fairly good,” Eddie
said. “I went to sea once when I was a kid runnin’
from a murder charge. No reason we can’t keep
right on goin’.”

I nodded. I planned on that anyway.

We’d gone through our whiskey by the time
the rain stopped. A little breeze came up, puttin’
a wet chill on everythin’.

“I wouldn’t say no to another taste of whiskey,”
I said.

Eddie grinned and pulled a fresh bottle out
from under the seat, where he’d packed it up in
straw. “I believe I’ll join you,” he said.

We rode along for a couple of hours, Eddie every
so often craning his neck and looking up at
the sky, a couple of times drawing an arc in the
air with his finger. I noticed he was clean
shaven—even under his chin an’ neck where it’s
hard to get the whiskers, and that his poncho was
cleaner than mine. His hat—a Stetson, of course—
was snugged down low over his eyebrows and
the hat, too, was in far finer condition than mine.

“Care to answer a question, Eddie?” I asked.

“I’m innocent. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t nowhere
near the place.” His teeth were white in the moonlight
as he smiled.

“No, no—it’s not that type of question.”

“Well, have at it, Jake,” he said.

“See, ever since I’ve knowed you, I’ve called
you Dirty Eddie, and so have all the other men
like us. Thing is, there’s nothing dirty about you.
You shave, you lop off your hair when it needs it,
you wear decent clothes an’ good boots—so what
the hell?”

Eddie laughed. “I thought everybody knew
that story.” He rolled a smoke and lit it. “I wasn’t
but a young sprout—maybe sixteen, seventeen
—an’ I’d taken a shine to the sister of three
brothers who were real tough boys. They warned
me off but, ’course, I didn’t pay no attention. One
night I climbed up a trellis to the gal’s room an’ I
was havin’ my way with her, when don’t one of
her brothers bust in, all ready to wring my neck
like a Sunday chicken. I went out the window
without my pants or boots or gun belt, busted the
trellis climbin’ down, an’ looked for a place to
hide. All these folks had was a few hundred acres
of wheat, an’ it wasn’t more’n a few inches high at
that time a year. By then, I could hear all three of
them brothers clamberin’ down the stairs. Well,
hell. They’da pounded me inta the ground—an’
probably killed me. Then I seen the privy. I ran
over to it an’ shoved my way under the back an’
into the pit an’ stood there in shit an’ piss all that
night an’ into the morning. When them boys
mounted up at first light, each carryin’ a twelve
gauge, I gave ’em a good amount of time an’ then
climbed out of the pit an’ ran my ass off to a
friend of mine’s place—a blacksmith. He gimme
some clothes an’ a pair of raggedy-ass boots an’ a
horse an’ I left that county in a hurry. But he
laughed so hard I thought he’d bust wide-open.
This smith, he liked to run his mouth, an’ he give
me the name Dirty Eddie, ever time he told the
story. An’ that’s who I been nigh unto twenty-five
years.”

“Don’t it bother you?”

“Nah.”

“Did you ever come across those brothers?”

“Yeah. I killed one in Tombstone. He tried to
draw on me. I dunno ’bout the other two, but I
don’t lose no sleep over ’em.”

I drifted off after Eddie’s story. We were on
fairly level ground an’ the wagon was moving
well. The horses were okay. We fed them oats
we’d brought along an’ gave them some rest.

When we started up again, the sun was doin’
its best to make a appearance, an’ finally it did.
Me an’ Dirty Eddie shed our ponchos in a hurry,
an’ after another hour, our dusters. The sun was
flexing its muscles. At first, ’course, it felt real
fine—an’ then it turned into heat. We had to
drink outta the shrinking puddles, ’cause neither
of us had been bright ’nuff to fill a couple canteens.
I always liked the taste of rainwater from a
clean puddle, so it didn’t bother me.

We’d long since finished the sliced venison an’
biscuits the ladies had sent along an’ both of us
were damned near starved.

“We might best park these horses an’ look
around for game. I’m so goddamn hungry I could
eat a boot,” Eddie said. “I don’t give a damn—
prairie dog, snake, whatever-the-hell.”

“Let’s do it, then.” I was driving an’ I reined in.
We tied the horses to the weight the ladies
carried—
they didn’t like hitchin’ posts—and Eddie
went one way an’ me another.

It was hot an’ walkin’ wasn’t much fun, bein’
hungover an’ hungry. I loosened my Colt in my
holster a bit—the dampness had tightened the
leather a hair—an’ walked on out. After about a
thousand miles, I figured it was a lost cause. I
hadn’t seen a prairie dog or anything else. I drew
on a sidewinder but he scooted into a bunch of
rocks. I kicked some stone around, but he musta
had a good den an’ I wasn’t about to go diggin’
for him. There was no size to him anyway—
maybe three feet.

I didn’t see no sense in trekkin’ out farther,
hoping Dirty Eddie had bagged something.
If not—well, hell—both of us had been hungry
before.

Then I got real lucky. I was scuffin’ along, not
real payin’ attention to the terrain like I should,
when I heard the beating and flurry of wings.
Five or six prairie hens went up in a cluster of
noise an’ dust. I dropped four of them and missed
the others. I walked to the little buncha weeds
they were in an’ found seven eggs. I grabbed
up the hens, pocketed the eggs in my vest an’
shirt, an’ went back to the wagon.

Eddie already had a fire going. He was skinning
out three rattlers, not one of them big enough
to make a meal. He flung the snakes over his
shoulder when he saw the feast I’d brought.

We didn’t have a pan to fry the eggs in, so after
we stripped down the birds, we broke the eggs
over the birds as they cooked.

The scent of them hens cooking was as sweet
as a young chicken on a spit at a picnic, an’ they
tasted at least as good. We pulled them offa the
sticks an’ gnawed away at that sweet meat. Dirty
Eddie an’ me ate all four of the hens an’ sucked
the marrow outta the big bones.

“We ain’t far now,” Eddie said. “Let’s move on.
If I’m right, over them next two rises is Hargis’s
place.”

We topped the first rise and saw nothing. The
second climb we stopped an’ looked down at
what Dirty Eddie said was a war-scavanger’s
cache.

It seemed like we’d been rolling forever. “You
sure you know where we’re going?” I asked
Eddie.

“Yep. The stars don’t lie.”

“Well, look. My ass is numb, I need a drink, an’
it’s too damn cold out here.”

“You’re gonna make me cry,” Dirty Eddie said.

After a bit, I asked, “Why do you want to kill
this Hargis fella? I don’t doubt that he needs
killin’—robbin’ our boys like that an’ then makin’
a profit—but why
you?
”

I expected a “Why not me?” sort of response,
but that isn’t what I got.

Eddie rolled himself a smoke and lit it. “See, I
had a what?—half cousin or so goddamn thing—
but I spent lots of time with the kid before I had
to start runnin’ from the law. His name was
Uriah. We fished an’ hunted. His pa was a mean
drunk—beat hell outta Uriah an’ Uriah’s ma
when he had a load on. I was but fifteen or sixteen
an’ not real big, an’ I knew I couldn’t take
him when he was sober. So, I waited out in their
barn ’til I heard Uriah’s ma scream an’ a bunch of
crashin’ around in the house. I had me a ax handle
an’ I went on into the house an’ beat hell outta
that
mean ol’ bastard. Thing is, I killed him—
busted his head open.”

He flicked the nub of his smoke into a puddle.

“Me an’ Uriah, we planted his pa way the hell
out in their wheat field, an’ figured that was the
end of it. It weren’t. Uriah’s ma went to the sheriff
an’ accused me of murder an’ said she seen me
kill her husband, which she did. So, I had to
scramble.”

“I see. But Hargis…”

“Uriah, he joined on with the Confederacy, like
any good Texan would. He caught a Union minié
ball ’twixt his eyes at Antioch. I heard about that
an’ went on out there, plannin’ to ship him home
an’ plant him on his own ground. I talked to
some of the wounded rebs an’ learned Hargis got
to Uriah real quick—took his boots an’ rifle an’
sidearm. Thing is, Uriah, he had a ring his gramma
give him when he was a kid an’ Hargis couldn’t
get the ring off, so he took the finger. That’s when
I decided to kill Hargis—an’ that’s what I’ll do.
But the goddamn law an’ the Pinkertons an’ the
bounty hunters been chasin’ me like a hound after
a bitch in heat, an’ I ain’t had a chance. Seems
like I got one now.”

“Well,” I said.

Dirty Eddie nodded. “I figured you’d understand
or I wouldna run my yap.”

“Don’t make my ass less numb or me less cold
if you kill or don’t kill this ghoul.”

“Wassa a ghoul?”

“Kinda ghost or spirit that come back to life an’
screws about with livin’ people.”

“Oh.”

We started up a gentle rise, the horses working
well, the wagon wheels making good purchase,
even through the slop. We reined in at the top of
the rise.

“There she is,” Dirty Eddie said. “Din’t I tell
you the stars don’ lie?”

We sat there an’ let the horses blow an’ looked
over the place. It wasn’t a farm—there was nothing
plowed an’ nothing growing we could see in
the murky light, but there was a small corral for
horses.

The barn was way the hell bigger than it needed
to be for a farm that didn’t grow nothing. And, I
never seen three men with rifles guarding a barn
that shoulda been empty.

We were maybe 400 to 450 yards from the
barn. “Maybe could be your buffalo gun could
take out that fella leanin’ ’gainst the front doors,”
Eddie said. He spoke as if my rifle—or me—
couldn’t make the shot.

I unwrapped my rifle from its deerskin.
“Sounds like you’re looking for a bet, Eddie. How
about a case of good whiskey?”

“How about two?” He grinned.

“You’re on.”

The damn fool at the front of the barn scratched
a match to light a smoke. It was like shooting a
elephant from six foot away. I loaded up, aimed,
and carved a hole in the man’s chest the size of a
dinner plate.

“Nice. I can’t reach out near that far with a
30.30. Care to keep shooting?”

“Sure.”

“No more bets, though.”

These scavengers were scum—no better’n men
who diddled li’l kids. I had no more feelin’ for
them that I did when I was target shootin’.

“Lookit there,” Dirty Eddie said.

One of the men was behind a water trough and
he had his hat either on a stick or the barrel of his
sidearm, and was moving it back an’ forth. I
laughed an’ so did Eddie.

“Clever trick, no?” I said.

“Fooled hell outta me,” Eddie said.

The thumb-size .44-caliber slug from my rifle
would blow through that trough like it were a
birthday cake—and through the barn, as well,
an’ still kill a man a couple hundred yards beyond
the barn.

“Question is,” Eddie said, grinning, “is that jasper
in front of the hat or behind it?”

“Another bet?”

“I need odds. Two to one.”

“Yer ass.”

“Okay, okay, even odds—a case. Take your
shot, Jake.”

My thought was that the scavenger was leading
with the hat an’ backing up an’ then goin’
forward an’ then back again, an’ so forth. I loaded
my rifle. When the hat reached about half trough,
I squeezed off a round. The impact flung the fella’s
body up an’ into the side of the barn; then he
dropped to the ground.

“Lucky shot,” Dirty Eddie growled.

“Lucky or not, I won’t have to buy booze for a
while.”

The third guard was at the hayloft of the barn,
gawkin’ out, tryin’ to figure out what to do. I took
him
through the thick lumber of the hayloft
opening.

“Let’s go on down,” Eddie said. “Hargis is
sneakin’ around somewheres, but he ain’t got the
balls to face either one of us.”

We kinda angled down the slope to keep the
wagon from skiddin’ an’ spookin’ the horses an’
pulled up in front of the barn. Eddie drove down;
I rewrapped my Sharps.

“What’re you boys after?” a voice called from
inside the barn. “You can take whatever you
want—no need to shoot me. Hell, I got a little
cash I can give you, too.”

“You Hargis?”

“Yessir—at your service. I got guns, sabers,
boots, all kinds of—”

“Slide the door open,” Eddie said.

Hargis did so. He was a fat man—as broad as a
beer barrel and without no more muscle than a
maggot. Hell, if someone were to hang him, he
wouldn’t know what chin to put the noose around.

“Go ’round an’ light some lanterns,” Eddie
said. “An’ ’member there’re two guns on you an’
neither one of us have missed in a long time. Ask
your three men, you don’t believe me.”

Hargis scurried the way really fat men do—
tryin’ to move fast but held back by his body, so
his motions were jerky, uncoordinated. He lit a
half dozen lanterns hangin’ from beams the
length of the barn. Eddie an’ me climbed down
an’ walked inside.

It kinda made me sick. Hargis had more muskets
than the Rhode Island militia, two long
tables of percussion pistols an’ some revolvers, a
big
pile of boots an’ gloves, an’ what looked to be
fifty or more swords an’ sabers hung on the wall.
There was another long table like you’d see in a
mercantile covered with books, Bibles, diaries,
pictures, an’ so forth—the personal stuff the boys
carried. There were lots of pocket watches an’
lockets.

Along on side of the barn were five small artillery
pieces, such as like Dansworth had tried on
us. There was a small stack of sacks of black powder.
There were a few military saddles, some bits
an’ bridles, and sets of reins. At the far end of the
barn, still in the half dark, was a small two-wheeled
wagon with somethin’ on it covered by a
big tarp.

“What’s that down there?” I asked.

“Jus’ miscellaneous crap we picked up,” Hargis
said.

“You got any rings?” Dirty Eddie asked.

Hargis grinned a fat-man grin. “Sure—whole
box of ’em right over here.” He led us to the other
side of the barn an’ pointed to a trunk. Eddie
hefted its sides an’ upended it, spilling what
seemed like all the rings in the world onto the
floor. Hargis’s mouth opened to say something,
but then he closed it. Eddie swept his hands
through the rings, spreading them out. Lots of
them had small stones, and lots had initials or
symbols of the Union or the Confederacy on
them.

It took a good while for Dirty Eddie to find
what he was after. When he did, he held it reverently,
like it were a holy object. “Where’d you git
this?” he asked.

“That there is a fine piece,” Hargis said. “Real
fine. I bought it from a Rebel officer who was
down on his luck an’ had lost all his money in a
poker—”

Eddie didn’t stand from his crouch over the
rings, but his draw was fast and smooth. He emptied
his .45 into the fat man. Eddie put the ring in
his pocket. “Let’s see what’s on the cart,” he said.

He walked down the length of the barn, feeling
as if we were walking through a cemetery of unburied
corpses.

We approached the cart, me on one side and
Eddie on the other, and dragged off the tarp.

“Holy God,” Eddie said.

“I didn’t think…Jesus, man…” was all I could
get out.

“Let’s cover it up an’ roll, Jake.”

“Sure,” I said. “Yeah. Let’s do that. We can use
Hargis’s horses; it isn’t that big and doesn’t weigh
that much.”

Eddie stood as if in a daze. “Ya know, I done a
bunch a battles in the war an I ain’t I never seen
one them things. Sure did hear ’bout’em, though.”

“Let’s get it back to the ranch. Dansworth ain’t
gonna waste much time screwin’ around—he
wants them horses real bad—an’ he wants to kill
us real bad.”

Eddie looked over the cart. “Let’s tie this baby
down an’ grab one of Hargis’s nags to pull it.
We’ll tie our horses on the back—they done good
work gettin’ us here.”

“Let’s take a look in the house—maybe find
some grub,” I said.

We didn’t find much food, but there was a good
supply
of corn liquor. We loaded a few bottles on
the cart and kept one with us as we set off back
to the Busted Thumb.

The ground had dried out some an’ the two
horses we took were decent animals, willing to
pull. We drank corn and talked. “This sumbitch
is gonna be a big surprise to Dansworth,” Eddie
said. “Jus’ like that artillery piece was to us.”

“You ever operate one?”

“No.”

“Can’t be too hard,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like
there’s a lot to it.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Eddie said, “’cause we
ain’t got time to screw around with it now. What
we gotta do is get back.” He jigged the horses a bit
and they picked up their pace. Eddie grinned.
“I’m gonna rub these boys down real good back
at the ranch, an’ purely feed hell out of ’em with
that molasses grain.”

We got back about dinnertime, which was
good, ’cause we were damn near starved. We
drove the cart right on into the barn. Arm had
been riding guard an’ he seen us an’ rode in
with us.

“Any action?” I asked.

“No. Nothing. Ain’t gonna be long, though.
They’ll come at night, no?”

“That’s the way I’d do it.”

We faced the cart out and left the tarp on it. A
few of the boys peeked and walked away grinning
and shaking their heads like they couldn’t
quite believe what they’d just seen.

At Teresa an’ Blanca’s great dinner, we discussed
what few plans we had.

“They’re sure as hell gonna torch the house,”
one of the boys said. “We’d best bring the ladies
into the barn with the rest of us, ’cept for a couple
outriders to give us a alarm.”

“
Sí.
They’ll no burn the barn ’cause that’s
where
the mare an’ foal are.”

“All we gotta do is shoot them down an’ the
game is over,” someone said. “This corn whiskey
tastes like sidewinder piss,” he added.

“Be plenty
dineros
for you men for good whiskey
when theese is over.”

Nothing much happened that night. A couple of
riders—staying way the hell outta range—come
by to look things over, but that was about it.

It was strange how calm our men were. They
played cards, slept, cleaned and lubricated their
weapons, and drank corn. Maybe when a fella
has been in so many battles, put his life on the
line so many times, it becomes no more than a
job—like a ribbon clerk goin’ to work in the
mornin’ in a mercantile. Even as the day dragged
on, the tension level stayed low an’ easy.

“Ain’t you boys afraid of nothin’?” I asked
Dirty Eddie.

He pondered for a few moments. “Well, I never
been partial to scorpions,” he said. “I always
shake out my boots real good ’fore I put ’em on.”

“About fightin’,” I mean.

“Fightin’? Naw. What’s to be scared of? We’ll
either get killed or not get killed. We all know
a bullet’s gonna catch us one day, but what day
that it is don’t matter. Today—next week—next
month—what difference does it make?”

“But…”

“See, we like fightin’. Hell, we love it. We’re real
good at it or we’d be long dead. It’s like, maybe,
somethin’ we gotta do. F’r instance, some fellas
gotta be ministers. Well, we gotta be gunfighters.”
I thought the analogy a strange one, but didn’t
question it. Eddie paused again, this time for a
full minute or so. “I guess that’s why you don’t see
no ol’ gunslingers. There’s always some hothead
kid who’s a hair faster or a skinch more accurate.”

“What about Dansworth’s army?”

Dirty Eddie smiled. “Most of ’em ain’t gunfighters,
Jake. They’re losers an’ deserters an’ cowards
an’ drunks. One-on-one, they ain’t no more
trouble’n swattin’ a fly off your horse’s ass. In a
big group, some might get lucky an’ take down a
real gunfighter. Now, this Dansworth: I heard-tell
about that pistol of his. Them grips ain’t bone—
they’re ivory. The gunsmith who built the pistol,
he’s the absolute bes’ in the entire West. An’ the
ol’ gunman who taught him had some balls. Dansworth’s
good. He’d prob’ly take me. You—I
dunno. I guess we’ll see.”