AHMM, November 2006 Read online

  "What did the varmint do?” asked the drummer. He was a short, bandy-legged fellow with a diffident manner, clothes ill-fitting and threadbare, hardly the picture of a successful salesman.

  "Do?” That bear of a man wheeled on him. “Why, he was born!” he thundered. “And God or the Devil himself made him an Injun, and a murderin', thievin’ skunk, at that!” The drummer cringed and backed away.

  "I wouldn't worry about the murderin’ devil in here, if'n I were you, hoss,” Wash said without looking over his shoulder. “I'd worry about the murderin’ devils out there."

  "What's so all-fired important about one hostile anyhow?” Deacon asked.

  "Who'd he kill?” Chance asked.

  "What's it matter?” the big man growled. “He's my prisoner. All Cheyennes are murderin', thievin', scalpin', rapin’ savages."

  The conversation ended there. Chance wanted to pursue the matter further, but a particular look from Wash cut him off as he was drawing breath for his next response. Deacon had already drifted off to take stock of their supplies, in anticipation of a potentially lengthy stay within the walls of the depot.

  A check of the telegraph lines revealed that they weren't working. A look through one of the murder holes confirmed that the horses were no longer in the corral. The snow began to fall harder. Inside, things were still. Outside, an owl that was no owl hooted. There was no sign of the train from Virginia City.

  Wash insisted that they needed someone positioned in four vantage points, one each to watch for hostile activity to the north, east, and south. With Deacon manning his scattergun behind the baggage claim counter, he also commanded a view of the bolted and barred back door on the west side of the building.

  Wash, Chance, and the drummer split the other three directions between them, with Chance watching to the north, Wash covering the front door with his Sharps, and the drummer peering out to the south, in the direction of the now-empty corral. It didn't occur to them that the big man would have the slightest interest in pitching in. Later, when the need for sleep prevailed upon them, Wash said he would take the first watch, then wake Chance, and so on.

  By this point the sun had set and it was dark. The Southern gentleman had regained the composure he'd lost upon the advent of the bounty hunter with his Indian captive and began to talk. Chance listened as the fellow engaged Wash in conversation, revealing that he was a Mississippi plantation owner and a Confederate officer who served with Quantrill's Raiders in the late unpleasantness between the States. The war had ruined him, as it had so many others, and he was currently occupied working as a Pinkerton detective, with the assignment of escorting the young lady and her maiden aunt back East for some such reason or other. Wash gave every impression of listening, grunting in all the right spots, as the fellow talked and talked.

  "Gone to pieces,” Chance said to himself. “Shows himself capable of staring down a roomful of men one minute, and the next, he's fast-talking to someone he doesn't even know, and all over his first sight of an Injun."

  "Dude,” Chance muttered aloud, eyes focused on the darkness outside.

  "Hardly,” came a low, pleasant voice at his shoulder.

  Chance turned and looked. It was the girl. She stood a few feet behind him and off to his right. He had been so absorbed in the conversation her erstwhile protector was attempting to have with Wash that he had missed her approach entirely.

  "Oh, I wasn't speaking about you, ma'am,” Chance said self-consciously.

  She seemed amused by that. “I know.” She met his gaze evenly. Chance looked away. Then she said, “Do you know what will happen to the Indian once he's taken to Virginia City?"

  "It's not certain that he'll be taken there,” Chance said diffidently, conscious of how shabby and disheveled he looked in the presence of this Eastern girl. “There's a war party out there bent on loosing him, and they may just have something to say about it, ma'am."

  "Oh,” she said, and began to gnaw at her lower lip, eyes on the floor. “I just think it wrong to hang a man for no reason."

  "Hopefully the Cheyennes outside feel the same way about killing us to get to him.” The girl paled at that suggestion, and Chance immediately regretted saying it. “I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm sure there's nothing to fear. We're well armed and well provisioned...” Then he trailed off, not knowing what to say next.

  If she noticed how awkward he was around her, she gave no indication. She stayed there with him for over half an hour, asking him myriad questions about himself, about Wash, about the country, the Cheyennes, everything. He willingly answered her questions, each in turn.

  * * * *

  The scream brought Chance awake and to his feet, carbine at the ready. The big room was dimly lit by a single candle. One of the women was standing over the spot where the Indian had been tied up earlier that evening. Deacon, the drummer, and the other woman (Chance couldn't make out which was which in the low light of the candle) were hurrying over to join her.

  Heart hammering, Chance looked to both exits. Neither was open, although the bar was missing from the front door. Then catching Wash's eye, he lifted his shoulders quizzically. Wash reached over and thumbed the lock on the front door, replaced the bar, and then motioned silently for Chance to join him by the door.

  "Back my play,” Wash said. “This is liable to get ugly."

  "What's—"

  "Not now."

  Deacon lit another candle, and then a hurricane lamp for good measure. The fire had burned down, so the room was cold. Deacon started stoking the fire, shivering as he did so.

  Now that it was lighter in the room, Chance could see what had given the older woman (for it was she) cause to scream. Next to the beam to which the bounty hunter had tied his captive earlier in the evening lay the body of the Pinkerton detective.

  His vest was askew, his shirt covered with blood. His eyes were glassy and open, and his countenance was set with the finality of death, lips drawn back from his teeth. The holster on his belt was empty. In his hand he clutched a crimson scrap of fabric. Wash knelt close to him. “He's still warm,” he said.

  "If he weren't dead, I'd kill him myself.” Chance took note of the bearded ruffian with the Missouri twang for the first time since waking. He was hunkered on the other side of the beam from where Wash crouched. “He let the redskin loose and cost me my bounty."

  Wash straightened, turned, and faced the fellow. “I've got a might of difficulty with that statement,” he said deliberately. “Well, actually, I've got two differences with that statement."

  The man mountain before him drew himself up to his full height, beard bristling, a pistol appearing as if by magic in his fist. Chance covered him with the carbine as Wash continued to speak, slowly, not moving. “First off, put that hogleg away. I don't know how fast you are, but whether you get me or not, the boy over there—” He cocked his head in Chance's direction. “—will more than likely get you. There's no way you get the both of us."

  They stood like that for a number of heartbeats. Out of the corner of his eye, Chance saw both women and the drummer join Deacon behind the baggage counter. He was comforted by the sound of both hammers on the sawed-off that Deacon kept behind the bar being cocked.

  "And if you're fast enough to get the both of them,” the station attendant drawled, “Betsy here'll hole you up somethin’ awful. Wash, it's your play. Time you made it."

  The big fellow looked sidewise at Deacon. Chance's palms began to sweat. He licked his lips while he kept the carbine trained on the man's beard. After a few more breaths, the bounty hunter uncocked his pistol and dropped the hand holding it to his side.

  "My first problem,” Wash began, “is with the notion that this here Pinkerton man let your prisoner go."

  "What of it?"

  "I know he didn't."

  "How?"

  "Because I was the one who did."

  Chance thought the big man was going to shoot Wash just for spite when he heard that. It surprised him when the fellow didn'
t do more than glare. Apparently, between his own carbine and Deacon's scattergun, they had managed to convince that bearded giant to think before acting.

  "When?"

  "Midway through my watch, once everyone was bedded down. You were snoring loudest."

  "Why?"

  "Because it made no sense to hold on to a Cheyenne war chief with a dozen of his young bucks out there intent on picking us off till they freed him."

  "War chief?!” the girl exclaimed. The big man didn't move.

  "Did you notice that discolored scar on his throat?” Wash said. “How sallow it was in comparison to the rest of his skin?"

  "Yellowneck,” Deacon said low and soft.

  "Yellowneck,” Wash said. “But this wasn't about Yellowneck. Oh, it might have been until he got him here and saw our Mississippi Pinkerton friend. After that, everything changed.

  "Chance, do remember what you said about the dead man when our bounty-hunting friend here shoved Yellowneck through the doorway?"

  "Something about him seeming pretty spooked, all of a sudden, like he'd never seen an Injun before."

  "That's right. Now, I didn't see his face because I was watching this gent—” Wash indicated the giant before him with a nod of his head. “—as he came through the door. And his face showed one thing before he was able to mask it. Surprise."

  "So Mr. Hackett was frightened by the sight of this man,” the girl said, “and not of the Indian?"

  "Judging from the way everyone was standing when those two came through the front door, that's the way it plays out."

  "But why?"

  "The better question would be to ask him why he killed your Mr. Hackett after Hackett relieved me earlier this evening,” Wash said. “If I had to guess, I'd say it had something to do with Quantrill's Raiders and the war. See the piece of red silk clutched here in the dead man's hand?” Wash pointed. “Quantrill's boys wore red silk sashes because they were irregular cavalry with no set uniform. Hackett mentioned riding with Quantrill.

  "Not that he needed to. I knew by the butt of the pistol he had. That silver-chased grip? I saw its like before, when Union troops I scouted for took a couple of them off of captured Quantrill officers. Now I ask you, Mr. Bounty Hunter, just where did you get yours?” Wash motioned toward the pistol the big man held stiffly at his side. “Didja take it off of Hackett after you knifed him, or did you already have one of your own?"

  The big man raised that pistol and pointed it at Wash for an answer.

  "Hackett had his when he came to me earlier this evening and offered to take the second watch. Said he was ashamed over how he'd gone all soft earlier in the day. Looking back, I'm betting he didn't plan on getting a wink of sleep with you in the depot. Guess I should have known better. As it was, I was preoccupied with the hope that no one would notice that our captive was nothing more than a carefully arranged pile of blankets, at least until daylight, so I didn't think overly much on it. Maybe if I had, the poor fellow would still be alive."

  Hackett's killer finally found his voice. “He deserved everything he got, by God! Back in ‘64, that coward ran from a fight and left eighteen men, including me, to rot in a Union prison camp! I couldn't believe I'd found him, and I knew from the look in his eyes that he recognized me, even after all these years, and even with the beard. So I waited for my chance, pretended sleep, saw you free Yellowneck and thought about stopping you, then realized it could be made to work for me.” The man's diction had changed completely. Although he still spoke with the flat vowels of the southern Missouri hills, he had dropped the banter of the uneducated border ruffian he had successfully played for the better part of the day.

  "Then that lily-livered snake asked you if he could have the next watch, and I knew it was him or me. So when the light went down, I slipped over behind the bar, and when he walked up to the window next to it, I stuck him. And I'd do it again too. He needed killing!"

  "That wasn't for you to say,” Wash said quietly.

  "If you try to take me, I'll kill at least one of you."

  "I know,” Wash said.

  "There's another way,” the big man said. “Let me walk out of here and take my chances with Yellowneck and his Dog Soldiers."

  Chance heard the girl gasp. He was uneasy about those two choices himself.

  "What's it going to be?” Wash said. “Chance? Deacon?"

  "Let him go,” they both said together.

  Wash stood aside for the big fellow as he pulled his hat on and picked up his rifle. “Why take his pistol?” Wash asked as that mountain of a man moved past him to the door. “And why leave that scrap of red silk?"

  The fellow unbarred the door. “Counting coup,” he said, then pulled the door open, hefted his rifle in his left hand, thumbed back the hammer on the pistol he had taken from the man he'd killed earlier in the evening, and stepped out into the storm.

  Chance moved quickly to bar the door behind him. Outside, an owl that was no owl hooted, answered by the call of a coyote that was no coyote. Then the shots began to ring out. Chance counted no less than ten of them before the return of a deafening silence.

  The girl, her voice tight, said, “What did he mean by ‘counting coup'?"

  "It's like taking scalps,” Deacon, the scalped man, said, “but less permanent. It shows you bested an enemy."

  "How did you know it was Yellowneck he had when he came in here, Wash?” Chance asked.

  Wash smiled for the first time in a long time. “Well, youngster, just who do you suppose it was gave him that scar in the first place?"

  Copyright © 2006 Brian Thornton

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  EVEN THE LEAST by Janet Nodar

  Chief Bowman's perfect solution would have been to line the morons up against the trailer and shoot them. No doubt he felt constrained by the presence of six sheriff's deputies and a couple of space-suited loaners from the Mobile P.D. hazmat team, not to mention his own officers. Processing the suspects and breaking down the meth lab would eat up the rest of the afternoon, and Bowman loathed having his time wasted this way. He pivoted on his walking stick. “Jaramillo!” he shouted. “Where the hell is the social worker?"

  "On her way, Chief.” Kristal was bored. And hot. Sweat trickled down her back, pooled at her belt. Like her chief, she was sick to death of crankheads. Busting up meth labs no longer held her interest. This particular trailer sat in an airless space cut out of the piney woods west of Cat Bait Bayou, at the end of a rutted red dirt road now filled with official vehicles.

  The girl they'd found in the trailer along with the older perps was sitting in the back of Kristal's patrol car, the door open, one flip-flopped foot resting on the doorjamb, the other curled underneath her body. She picked restlessly at the glittering purple nail polish on her fingernails. Bitter Tree P.D. was waiting for a county social worker to take her away. She had said she was eighteen, but none of them believed her. The ID she handed them was not hers; it belonged to the other woman being arrested at the trailer, twenty-three-year-old Brianna Hawkins. No marks for brilliance, then. The next name the girl gave them, Tiffani Shephard, did not pop anything in the system. She wore tiny black, low-slung shorts and a tight T-shirt that bared a pudgy stomach. The words “Sexy and Sweet” were written across her chest in glittering script. Her soft little breasts rose and fell beneath this message. She had a narrow, acne-spotted face that was probably improved when she wore makeup. Her brown hair was pulled back in a clip. A pillow in a filthy SpongeBob case and a battered backpack, stuffed with necessities and stenciled with the word “Tiffani,” sat on the seat next to her. The throat-scalding, tomcat-piss smell of a meth lab coated the sticky air.

  Bowman limped toward Kristal. “Take her on into town. The worker can meet you at the station. The hazmat team says we need to evacuate.” His words did not contain anger, necessarily, but his manner suggested that he found Kristal irritating because she had to be told what to do. She didn't say anything and began moving in a way that show
ed she intended to obey him, but Kristal's manner suggested that she thought Bowman was an asshole.

  "Want to ride up front with me, Tiffani?” Kristal asked.

  The girl shrugged but walked around the car and slid into the front passenger seat, and they bumped down the rutted drive to the graded dirt road that led out of the bayou to the two-lane. Kristal turned the AC up, and in a few moments the car's interior had gone from suffocating to freezing.

  "I guess I can't smoke?” Tiffani said.

  "Nope."

  "Where are we going?"

  "The police station in Bitter Tree to meet the social worker. She'll take you—"

  "I ain't going with her. I can take care of myself. Let me out at the ZipiMart on 43."

  "Oh right,” said Kristal, laughing. “I'm so sure."

  Tiffani looked offended. “You don't know me,” she said. “You don't know nothing about me."

  "You'd be surprised,” said Kristal. Did she need to go back out to the bust, she wondered. They had plenty of warm bodies at the scene. Maybe she could stay at the station, catch up on some paperwork. “I see girls like you all the time."

  "They're not me!"

  "They're just like you."

  "No, they ain't."

  "Do you go to school?"

  "No. I hate school. It sucks."

  "Why?"

  "It sucks."

  "And it's all the teachers’ fault, right? They're mean. They aren't fair,” Kristal said, speaking lightly, keeping the sarcasm she felt out of her voice. “Nothing's ever your fault. Right?"

  "It isn't,” Tiffani said. “They don't like me. They think I'm stupid."

  "Are you?"

  Tiffani's eyes cut over to Kristal and away. “No.” She did not say this loudly.

  "Why do you dress the way you do?” asked Kristal.

  "I do what I want."

  "What you want."

  "That's right."

  "You look exactly the same as a million other little sexpots out there,” Kristal said. Except you aren't pretty, she added to herself, and some girls are.