Wildwood Boys (9 page)

They hupped their mounts forward and rode down to the herd
and began to cut out horses. They were laughing and loudly admiring the fine quality of the animals when Butch shouted, “Riders!”

They were ten or more, at a distance of about a half-mile and
coming at full stride in the moonlight over a bare western rise.

Respite

 

“Damn,” Bill Anderson said, suddenly much sobered. He heeled
Edgar Allan around to the east and yelled, “Go!” As they galloped
away they fired in the air to spook the herd into a clamoring stampede for the open range to the south. Most of the pursuing riders
swung off to chase down the horses, but some kept coming behind
the rustlers.

 

Far ahead, the low silhouette of a line of hills showed blackly
against the weaker darkness of the sky and Bill Anderson led them
toward it. Pistolshots cracked behind them. He heard Ike Berry yell
and turned to see him slowing up and looking rearward. Jim’s horse
had been hit and had slowed to an awkward stagger—and now he
slid off the saddle just as the Buck horse collapsed. Butch Berry had
already turned around and was headed back.

 

Bill and Ike reined up so short their horses almost sat. They
watched Butch and the pursuers closing on Jim from either side.

 

“They’re coming hard,” Ike said.

 

“Shoot the horses!”

 

They opened fire on the four chasers as Butch slowed his horse
and leaned from the saddle with his hand outstretched and Jim
caught it and swung up behind him. The lead chaser was almost on
them, his pistol sparking—and then his mount abruptly plunged
groundward and both horse and rider went flailing past them in a
shrieking raise of dust.

 

Then Butch was heeling his horse past the sprawled animal kicking crazily on its side and he just missed trampling the felled man
gaping up at him as they went by.

 

Bill and Ike kept shooting at the other chasers and another horse
went down and its flung rider somersaulted over the ground with
arms and legs slinging every which way. As Jim and Butch galloped
past their brothers the last two chasers chose the wiser course and
quit the contest, turning away and ducking low in their saddles while
Bill and Ike fired at them with their second pistols.

 

“Let’s go!” Bill hollered, and they set out after their brothers.

“You

sure
it was Bobby Raines?” Bill Anderson said.

 

“As sure as it’s you standing there,” Jim said.

 

“He know you?”

 

“He knew me. It was all over his face he knew me.”
“In moonlight? As fast as it went?”

 

“If I knew him, Bill, he knew me.”

 

They were camped by a narrow creek in a dense woods some

dozen miles eastward of Agnes City. After crossing the hills aflank of
Segur’s rangeland they had borne north for this good hiding place
and arrived as the red sun rose up hugely on their right. Now shafts
of dusty yellow light leaned through the looming elms and sycamores,
and the brothers had seen to their lathered horses and let them water
at the riverbank. They had carefully explored the animals for
wounds and discovered that Butch Berry’s horse had a ball in its
chest. The round wasn’t deeply embedded and Butch extricated it
with a pocketknife and then packed the lightly bleeding wound with
a bandage of river mud.

The Bobby Raines they spoke of had been a wrangler for some
years on a ranch west of the Anderson farm. Both Anderson brothers
were acquainted with him and they had all taken an occasional mug
of beer together. A year ago he received notice that his father had
died and left him the family farm and so he’d headed back home to
Texas. They had not thought of him since—not until last night, when
he had stared up wide-eyed at Jim and Butch even as he crabcrawled
out of the way of their horse.

“I guess he couldn’t tolerate Texas,” Bill said.

The Segur party

 

“Don’t rightly blame him,” Butch said. “Our daddy used to tell
this story where he woke up drunk one morning and didn’t know
where he was. It was so hot and dusty he couldn’t hardly draw a
breath. He thought he’d died and gone to hell but turned out he was
only in Texas.”

 

“Maybe he’d ruther wrangle for wages than bust his back on a
farm,” Jim said. “Even his own.”

 

“Can’t fault him for that either,” Bill said.

 

“Of all the shit luck,” Ike said. “The only fella of them who
knows you is the one to get a good look. Will he let on to Segur, you
think?”

 

“Why wouldn’t he?” Bill said. “We’re only somebody he drunk
beer with. Segur pays him.”

 

“What do we do, Bill?” Jim said.

 

“Stay put,” Bill said. “I’ll wager there’s a bunch of Segur’s boys
headed for the house this minute.”

 

“Daddy’ll tell them a tale,” Jim said, “but they won’t believe the
first word of it.”

 

“No, they won’t,” Bill said, “but they got no quarrel with
Daddy. They might stay close by the house for a day or two watching for a sign of us. If we wait them out they’ll get bored and go
home.”

 

“They’re bound to tell Sheriff Horner about this,” Ike said, referring to the sole lawman in Agnes City.

 

“So what if they do?” Bill said. “It’s only Bobby’s word against
all ours. We got no worries with the sheriff.”

 

“You really think they’ll head on back when they don’t find us at
home?” Jim said.

 

“They won’t hunt too long for fellas who didn’t get away with
even one damn horse,” Bill said. “From now on he’ll put more men
on night watch and we’ll keep our business north of Americus.
That’s all that’ll come of this.”

 

So they stayed put. Later in the day Ike shot a large doe just a few
yards into the trees and Jim helped him to drag the carcass into the
clearing. They butchered it and roasted it over a low fire and gorged
themselves to greasy satisfaction on the backribs and cut the rest into
strips for smoking. That night the moon was hidden in thick clouds
and Bill rode out alone and far into the open country. He bypassed
the first two farms he came upon, regarding them as too near their
camp. Ten miles farther on, he came to a ranch where he spied a corral containing several fine horses. Just before dawn he was back in
camp with a fine blood bay to replace Jim’s appaloosa. He’d even
prowled into the barn and found a saddle for the animal.
They passed that day and the next telling stories, napping, tending to guns and horses. They bathed in the creek, washed their
clothes and hung them to dry on the trees. At daybreak of their third
day in hiding, Bill sent Butch Berry to the Anderson farm to see how
things stood.

He had sobered but little when Mary came running from the springhouse to inform him of the riders. Sprawled in his porch rocker he
squinted in bemusement as she stood over him babbling excitedly.
Then he heard the hooffalls and looked to where she was pointing,
where the trace debouched from the woods, and saw them coming
out of the reddening trees of the late afternoon. More than a dozen
and most with a rifle in hand.

He stood up and felt a nudge at his side and there was Josephine
with his twinbarreled shotgun. “I checked it’s loaded,” she said lowvoiced. Behind her back she held Bill’s fully charged Walker, its massive heft familiar for her shooting lessons with it.

He held the shotgun crosswise at his thighs like an ax-wielder
paused in his labor and watched the riders coming at a trot, every
man of them looking sharply about for telltale of lurking ambush.
He did not recognize any of them and thought they might be jayhawkers who had found them out for Missourians. Two broke off
from the group and hupped their horses to the barn to have a look
within.

Josephine felt Jenny press up close and she cut her eyes to her little sister and whispered, “We ain’t scared even a little bit and don’t
you let them think we are.”

The riders reined up in a loose line in front of the house so each
man’s view of the door and windows was unhampered. Their horses
blew and stamped nervously. Most of the longarms were Sharps and
there were several Texas Colts in evidence among the belt weapons.
Every gaze was wary and hard, but Will Anderson saw no killer’s
eyes among them. He intuited they were not jayhawkers but a posse
of local lawmen and ranchers with a rustling grievance.

“You be Will Anderson?” The man to speak sat his horse directly
before the porch steps. He was lean and gray but not much weathered and wore a closely trimmed mustache.

“Who’s asking?” The man slipped the barest bit out of focus and
Will forced his face to convey alertness, the better to conceal the
whiskey haze in his head.

“John Segur. I own a place south of here, down near Americus.
Rustlers tried to cut out some of my horses last night and my men
chased after them. Two of my boys got their horses killed. One of
them is laying paralyzed in the legs from the fall he took. Bobby
here”—he pointed to a young man with an arm splinted and in a
sling—“got a look at two of the thieves. One he don’t know but one
he does. If you be Will Anderson, the one he knows is your son, the
one they call Jim.”

Segur paused as if he would hear Will Anderson’s protest but
Will held silent. He kept his eyes on Segur and his only thought of
the moment was that if this man told him either of his sons was dead
he would blast him to hell in two halves and damn what came next.
Now the men who had gone to the barn rejoined the party and one
shook his head at Segur.

“I guess your boys ain’t home,” Segur said. He fixed a narrow
look on the dark open doorway for a moment, then said, “Can you
say where they might be?”

Will Anderson slowly shook his head. He felt the porch sway
slightly with the gesture.

Whiskey and blood

 

“Texas!” Josephine said. “They been in Texas for weeks and
weeks so it wasn’t them.”

 

John Segur turned to her. She spat and fixed him with a cold
stare. His aspect stiffened.

 

“I don’t care a damn what reason a man might have for thinking
he can steal from me,” he said. He glanced at Mary and she felt herself flush with angry humiliation. His horse tossed its head to shake
off a deerfly and he reined it still and patted its neck. “Artie Baker
told me he suspicioned your boys were horse thieves and it appears
he was right. If they’re still around, you tell them I been to the law
and there’s warrants for them. If they got any sense at all they’ll clear
out and truly go to Texas or back to goddam Missouri where they
come from. That’s all the warning I’ll ever give them.”

 

He reined about and hupped his mount forward and his men followed after in a clattering lift of dust. Then they were into the woods
and gone.

 

Josephine stalked the porch and muttered curses and felt the
Walker’s weight in her hand like a mean dog straining at its leash.
Mary held Jenny to her. Will Anderson stared into the yellow dusthaze lingering at the edge of the woods. The hoofbeats of the parting
horses had faintly quivered the planking under his bootsoles, but
even after the riders were gone he felt the trembling yet.

His night was sleepless. He sat on the porch with the shotgun
propped close to hand and a jug on his knee and stared out at the
blackness sparking with fireflies. His thoughts caustic and fearful.
He told himself to refrain from rash act, that he’d had enough of
rashness in his life. To hell with Baker and with Segur too. Yankee
sons of bitches didn’t rate notice and never mind their goddam
mouths. . . . Unless they did harm to his sons ...If they put the law
on his boys . . . But they’d have to catch them first, and that would
be a job. . . . Nothing mattered but that his sons avoided harm and
capture. The family could resettle elsewhere. ...Texas...Texas
was the place.

Such were his ponderings in the passing night as he drained one
jug and began on another, waiting to be informed if his sons were
dead or alive, seized or at large.

At daybreak Mary came out with a cup of coffee and set it beside
his rocker, but when she returned a half-hour later with a tinplate of
ham and cornbread the coffee stood cold and untouched.

“Daddy, eat something.”

He gave her no notice. She took up the coffee and left the food in
its place by his chair and sometime later found the tinplate spotless
and knew one of the dogs had been at it. Sometime later, Josie came
out to look at him and then went back in the house and told her sisters there was nothing to do but to let him be. They heard the resentment in her tone. A father ought not to get drunk when he was the
only man around to protect his daughters.

Josie had looped a cord through the Walker’s trigger guard and
the weapon hung ponderously from her neck like an awful responsibility. Mary was three years her elder but was feeling like a child
beside her. The three of them took turns sitting by the front window
where they could keep an eye on their father even as they watched
the trail at the edge of the woods in hope that their brothers would
show up and in fear the Segur men would come back.

Will Anderson’s bewhiskeyed mind is a whirl of visions to which
attach no clarities of thought, although each image is starkly vivid
and each in its turn evokes a sovereign sentiment. Now he sees Segur
sitting his horse and flanked by his henchmen, again hears him make
threat on his boys, and again tastes a bilious resentment through the
mash on his tongue. Now he catches sight of Bill and Jim hanging by
their necks from a tree in some desolate landscape ruled by crows
and again feels his heart flail with fear. He envisions young Martha
in the moonlit window of her parents’ house saying yes she will go
with him and be married in Saint Louis, and his chest goes hollow as
a waiting grave. He once more perceives Arthur Baker courting
Mary under the Anderson roof and telling his smiling lies, again sees
the man’s letter and its oily mendacities, and again seethes in his
injured honor. One vision follows another before his inward eye,
round and round and then round again, all through the morning as
he takes drink on drink.