Bullets in the Wind

A Novel of the West

––––––––

By

Russ Hall

Copyright © Russ Hall 2014

Chapter One

The coyotes had quit complaining about the moon hours ago, and soon it would be time to rise. The miners’ makeshift camp nestled in the rolling Texas hills a few hard days ride west of Austin, and the November night before dawn had grown cold and as dark as the inside of a cow. Jud Harper lay half awake, thinking of the smell of bacon sizzling in a wide skillet.  If there was anything in the world better than that he didn’t know what it might be, unless it could be biscuits baking in the Dutchman’s oven, which almost, but not quite, made up for the Dutchman himself.  Jud felt the urge to rise and take a few steps from camp to get shed of last night’s coffee. Instead, he pulled the blanket close against the dusty breeze and kept the side with the burned hole big as a fist turned down as much as possible. 

If it was up to him he wouldn’t get up at all.  Though only sixteen years old he could recall days in Boston, as a much younger boy, waking early to lay and wait for Marse to come rouse him.  Downstairs the cook, Sally, stirred up the batter for griddle cakes.  What was he then, ten or eleven years old?  Well, that sure seemed a long, long time ago now.  He drew the scratchy blanket closer to his face.  Maybe he would not get up at all this time when called.  The soft crunch of gravel came from behind him and a boot toe nudged at his back.

"Die Pferde."

What? he mumbled and tried to seem more asleep than he was.

Der horses get.

He could barely make out the gray-bearded wide face under the broad-brimmed hat against the dark sky.

Now?

Another kick, firmer this time.  Jud threw back the blanket and scrambled to his feet before Valter kicked him harder.  He would, and he could.  After all, he owned Jud.

Apprentice, indentured servant, call it what you like.  Slave really.  Didn’t do any good to beef about it, though.  It was just the way things were.

Jud tugged on his worn rain slicker that leaked, the only winter coat he had.  At least it fended off some of the relentless wind that swept through the camp in gusts.  The pulsing breeze tugged at his felt hat that had long ago lost its form. 

No one else in camp stirred, including the rounded bedroll that contained Valter’s son Maxie.  Just as well.  His whole purpose in life seemed to be to make Jud’s life miserable.  Maxie liked to sneak up on Jud and punch him, hard, for no reason, or have Jud do tasks like clean mud and horse droppings off his boots.

As he walked, stars appeared through wisps of clouds that let the slender rustler’s moon show one minute and hid it the next.  In an open patch of black sky, Jud saw a single star fall in a downward sweeping arc.

He shivered, cold and alone, stumbling across loose rocks and occasional holes that could cripple a galloping horse.  Jud didn’t have much meat on his bones, especially when compared with Maxie.  The morning wind cut through him.

The breeze had swept some of the dust smooth.  Jud bent to look for sign of the hobbled horses, and could barely make out the faint curved impressions of hoof prints. It was hard to believe that a few years back he wore clean student clothes in one of the best East Coast private schools, and that his future had looked like a bright upward spiral.

He’d had only city experiences with horses then, riding in a buggy, watching for horses, or their droppings, as he crossed a street.  Out here the men had to depend on them.  He knew far less about horses than he should.

Put a handful of oats in your pocket, a livery stable hand had told him.  A horse will always know where you are, its wide eyes find and track you, and it won’t kick you.  Well, he had sure enough become a friend to the horses, though once he came near to being bitten in a bad spot. The livery hand had been shucking him, the same way he would some young button of a ranch cowpoke. Jud’s inexperience led to a number of such oats-in-the-pocket episodes, where he’d had to learn by being the brut of a joke.  More than one person in the towns through which they had traveled had called him a greenhorn.

It was hard to take.  He had lived in a respectable house in Boston, a near mansion, with servants—a life that had little prepared him to get by out here.  Each skill or awareness he had now he’d acquired the hard way.  He followed the prints of the horses in the frail light past stands of cacti and low ledges of rock where there would be active rattlesnakes once the day had warmed.  A shudder rippled through him as another gust of cool morning breeze swept across the open ground, rustling loose dead leaves and the dry swaying clumps of buffalo grass.

Part of the great openness and roughness of this land made him feel hollow inside.  Yet there was something in this vast grittiness that made him want to rise up and assert himself.  Sleeping outside by open fires that died down in the knife-edge cold of the night, riding all day on a hard saddle until he felt raw, and feeling the never-stopping wind all somehow felt as good as it did bad.  This place tested him, and he had never before in his life felt such an urgency to measure up. He hungered to do just that, and it was not an altogether bad feeling.  He hated this land, and at the same time knew he somehow had fallen in love with it.

By now he should have heard the whinny of at least one of the horses.  The wind blew his scent in the direction the tracks led.  Yet the ground stayed empty ahead, and look as hard as he could he saw none of the hobbled remuda. Then he spotted a small pile of rope. A surge of adrenaline made him think snake for a second, until he looked closer and picked up the knotted rope that was cut through.  He stood slowly, his heart racing.  Some of the horseshoe marks were covered by the mark of unshod horses.  Indians.

*          *          *

Whooee! Yip.  Yip. Yip.

Hoyt Maxton swung a tired leg off his horse and lowered himself to the hard dirt of the main street of Llano, a town made up of a rough general store, a livery down the way, and a small jumble of other buildings of unpainted wood.  The door of the low wide building stood open.  A man leaned against the wall, as if sick or shot.  This place – though without the usual batwing doors—was what passed for a saloon, open for business although the sun still sat on the horizon.  Hoyt couldn’t tell if the ruckus inside was off to an early start or had carried over from the previous night.  He glanced up at Miles, who still sat on his dust-covered horse.

Better let me tend to the parlaying, Hoyt, Miles said.  We’ve been riding leather long enough for you to be a touch edgy.

This coming from someone looking relaxed enough to be a lizard on a rock in the sun.  Hoyt said, You needn’t feel the need to gad me so all the time.

Aw, dog lips.  If I don’t, who will, besides yourself.

Hoyt’s mouth pressed into a tight line.  He gave Miles a curt nod.

Anyone who looked close at Hoyt would have said a fire burned inside, a dangerous one that came close to flaming out of control.  He could back up anything he started, too.  He seemed stocky, until you noticed he stood half a head taller than most of the men around him. 

Neither of these dust-covered men looked like a big spender of words.  Unlike Hoyt’s determined quiet, as if he would take a ripping bite out of the world given the chance, Miles had the quiet of someone relaxed but coiled, and waiting— waiting and watching, missing nothing.

What’s that all about? Miles asked the man who leaned against the wall.  He nodded toward the open door with a hat as pale with dust as the flanks of his horse.

It’s been going on this way all the dang blast night into today, said the man who held a hand to his stomach.

Hoyt and Miles glanced through the open door into the saloon that looked almost full.  Tobacco smoke hung in thick white layers over the men.  Outside, the rasping wind swept through the bare dirt streets with enough force to send a tumbleweed sailing if any had been around this part of Texas.  Both men had been around enough to experience Chinooks, zephyrs, siroccos, but they’d never felt anything like the relentless sanding of this wind.  Hoyt bent his head against it, held his hat brim in place with thumb and two fingers.  Miles’ eyes narrowed as he faced into the wind while he looked up the street.

The usual row of horses had not been tied out along the rail.  They probably had been bedded down in the low flat barn of a building that passed for the livery stable.  Another burst of shouting came from inside.  It was too early for this kind of noise or to be outside listening to it.  But neither man craved going into that smoky hole.

Name’s Lou Jack.  That’s Seven Tooth Charley in there making the most of that racket, the sick man said.  He tried hard to be conversational, though he looked like he might have to step around the corner of the building at any second.  He’s destined to be No Tooth Charley by afternoon, once we get him to calm down.  He calls himself Seven Tooth, though he has only one, and it’s green and most gone in the middle, and the inside of his mouth is all swollen up like a rattlesnake bite.  He thinks there’re still ghosts of the other six teeth, is why he calls himself Seven Tooth Charley.  When old Jake Strand passed on, it left us a right fine set of store teeth we think will fit Charley once we yank the stub of his current last green and gray tooth.  To get him in the mood, One-Eyed Mike had to tell him that Doc Holiday himself was coming to town to do the dentist work.

That’s not likely.  Doc’s in jail up in Denver trying to talk himself out of a mess up there from what I last heard, Miles said from where he sat in his saddle.

Hoyt said nothing.  The inside of his mouth felt as dry as the dust, but he saw no watering trough near, and he didn’t fancy any of whatever they served inside that had given this man’s skin a pale greenish tinge.

Another local stepped outside, swayed for a second before putting one hand on the wall.  He was thick, with a dark beard.  When he turned, Hoyt figured him to be One-Eyed Mike.  One eye socket was empty, a reddish pucker of skin.  The remaining eye squinted at Hoyt, seemed to take in the dark clothes, that he was tall and a neat dresser, the look on his face, the Colt Peacemaker in the holster hung low enough to matter, even the spot on the shirt where the cloth sagged and the holes showed where a badge had hung once.  Hoyt didn’t care much for the calculating look in that one eye.

No one expected Doc to come all the way out here.  Mike had been listening in.  We was gonna slick someone up to look like him once we got Charley drunk enough.  Dern a skunk, that man can hold it.  He’s still going strong in there.  Just about killed the rest of us.  How come you know about Doc the way you do?

Look, we’d like to get a bite and maybe a wash if there’s such a place here.  Miles swept off his hat and pounded it across his shirt and the thighs of his pants, sending out small reddish clouds that the breeze swept away at once.

Say, fancy you coming along the way you did, Lou Jack had fixed on the imposing bulk of Hoyt, in a hopeful and expectant way.  You mind pretending you’re Doc Holiday long enough for us to get a hold of Charley?   

Sorry.  He don’t lie for anyone.  Miles spoke for him. You’ll have to get someone else to be Doc, or John Wesley Hardin, for all that.

Charley won’t know, Lou Jack still pitched his case. The boys started him out on a couple of shots of the good white-mule and shifted right after that to the forty rod whiskey we could better afford.  Charley don’t need to know the difference.  Sixteen rattlesnakes could sink their fangs into him, and he wouldn’t care.  We just want losing his tooth to be special for him.

These men don’t care about your puny problems, Lou Jack. Mike fixed his good eye on Hoyt. They’re on other business, ridin’ in like this, just the two of them, with the Injuns kickin’ up a bit.

Hoyt felt his own mouth tighten into an irritated line. 

Miles spoke for him again.  He just don’t lie, for any reason.  Like I said.  That’s all there is to that.

Even if it’s for a good cause? Lou Jack said.

Hoyt shook his head.

Never mind Lou Jack here.  He’s harmless.  He’ll talk to a stump, for all that. Mike said.  He wore the smile a man will show just before he sucker punches you.  He looked drunk enough to do something stupid.  You men come to work for the Major?

Don’t know who you’re talking about.  We were far to the west of here when that war was going on.  Miles kept a more careful eye on Hoyt than on either one of the locals.

Hoyt glanced toward the edge of town, into the wind.  Maybe they should just ride on to the next town.

You hunting bounty, or what? Mike said, with more edge to his voice.

Hoyt looked back at him. 

Can’t share so much as a civil word?  Mike shifted his stance so one hand hung near his belt, closer to the old chipped-butt pistol that hung at an angle below his slight paunch.

Steady on, Miles said, though he didn’t make it clear to which of them he spoke.  He turned directly to Mike and said, You’ll have to bear with Hoyt here.  This is just about as sociable as he ever gets.

Hoyt didn’t know what had Mike on the prod.  He stared back, harder.  It got quiet, with just the wind making a steady sanding sound against the wood of the building.

After a minute Mike looked away, blinked, as if some of the dust had gotten into his eye.  Whatever he had seen in Hoyt had not read bluff.

Didn’t mean no harm, mister.  We’re just trying to do Charley a turn is all.  Lou Jack’s face didn’t look any less green than before.

Hey, the voice was sudden and came from behind Hoyt.

Hoyt spun, the Colt out of its holster, hammer back and pointed at the man who had come around the corner of the building and now looked about ready to wet himself if he hadn’t just been back there relieving himself.

Miles looked at Hoyt and held up a calming hand.  Now, Hoyt, there’s no cause to alarm these gentle folks here.

Lou Jack put a steadying hand to the wall.  You okay, Whit? he said to the man who now stood perfectly still. 

Mike blinked his eye and said to Hoyt, Whooee.  Ain’t you just about twitchy as a wet bobcat?

Jeez, mister, Lou Jack, the sick man, managed, though Mike had taken on a touch of the greenish hue as well.  Just who the heck are you, anyway?

Hoyt slid his gun back into its holster, with the reluctance of unfinished business.  The cry of a distant hawk made the only sound in the strained air.  Miles let a breath out and forced himself not to shake his head or frown.  He looked up the windswept street again.  Hoyt glanced that way too when he saw the movement of Whit’s sudden yank of his long Navy pistol from a cross waist holster.  He held it up with a shaking hand with knuckles that turned white as he squeezed.

Hoyt, Miles yelled, and drew.

The blast of Whit’s old Navy gun ripped through the windy morning like a clap of thunder.

Chapter Two

Jud walked back toward the camp into the teeth of the wind and caught whiffs of coffee being brewed, a slight burned bean smell to it.  The flaps of his worn rain slicker whipped and fluttered behind him.  Both hands were filled with all the cut hobbles he could carry.  Not one of their horses had been left behind.  That was not going to make Valter happy.

As he neared the fire he saw Valter sitting with his back this way near the still perking pot.  On the other side, rubbing tallow onto his saddle, sat that stone bald Curly, who only wore a hat in the harshest weather.  As a result, his head shone like burnished mahogany, the same color of most of his face, though the one time he had taken off his shirt Jud had been surprised at a chest and torso as white as the underbelly of a lizard.  In the early light like this, and with the round gold ring of an earring in his right ear, put there to help with his aim, he said, like the pirates do, he did look about as much like a pirate as anything Jud could have imagined.

Valter met up with Curly somewhere out in California.  Jud had heard them talk about color, placers, and panning.  But he hadn’t figured out their exact status with each other. Where Valter was harsh, even cruel, Curly was slick, more dangerous in an unknown and unpredictable way.  He had been around, and knew things that caused Valter to turn to him for an opinion often out here in the wilds of what was still Indian country, with the various tribes stirred up at present from being pushed around too much.  Comanche, Kiowa, and some said Apache too had been seen moving through the area, stealing cattle, and horses, especially horses.

Curly saw the cut hobbles in Jud’s hands before he got all the way to the fire, and he knew at once what that meant.  He stood and dropped the rag he had been using on