Part 16 (1/2)

”Ride out! Save yourselves!”

The hammer struck an empty chamber, but Cole didn't notice. He thumbed it back, pulled the trigger. Another click. click.

”Ride out, d.a.m.n you. You ain't leaving n.o.body!”

Tears blinded me.

”For G.o.d's sake, boys, hurry up! They're shooting us all to pieces!”

I wiped my eyes, cleared my vision, tried to pull myself up as the bullet slammed into Cole's head, and he sank into the brush and lay still, silent.

Down I fell, crying softly, unable to do anything, hating myself, trying to shake the image of seeing my brave brothers, and a great pard like Charlie Pitts, cut down before my very eyes. A few more shots sang out, and I just tucked myself into a ball and rocked back and forth, back and forth.

My fault. All my fault.

”Hold ye fire!” a voice bellowed. ”Hold ye fire!”

Silence. The ringing left my ears, and sounds from the thicket drifted to me, of the bubbling water, of the wind rustling through the trees, but no birds singing. Not any more.

”Is anyone still alive? Speak up. Speak up and surrender!”

I made myself stop bawling. h.e.l.l, I was a man, a Younger, and no Yankee b.a.s.t.a.r.d was going to see me cry. I pulled a dirty handkerchief from my pocket, lifted myself to my feet, and walked toward the posse, waving the handkerchief over my head in my left arm.

”I surrender,” I said. ”They're all down but me.”

The man with the badge stepped forward, a taller man with a thick mustache and beard (but no side whiskers) beside him wearing boots tucked inside his striped britches, and a battered bowler hat. He didn't look much like a fighter with his triangular face and the biggest dad-blasted ears I'd ever seen, and he had no badge pinned on his vest, but I figured him to be the man in charge.

”Put both of your hands up,” he told me.

”I can't. The right one's broken.”

”Then come on toward us, but walk slowly, and keep your left hand raised.”

”It's over, Cap,” the Irishman with the badge told Mr. Big Ears.

I kept walking. That's what I was doing when somebody on the bluff behind them shot me in the chest.

At first I didn't know what to think, couldn't even believe they'd shoot me while I was giving up, holding a flag of truce. Yet when my left hand dropped the handkerchief and reached over to my side, it felt sticky with blood, my knees buckled, a wave of dizziness consumed me, and slowly I sank to the ground, thinking: You lying Yankee sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

WILLIAM W WALLACE.

MURPHY.

”If any of you jacka.s.ses fire again, I'll shoot you myself!” I yelled, and, ripping off my bowler and turning in disgust, I screamed at the men behind me, the cowardly b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who lacked courage to walk into this thicket with me and these six others. Yet one of them had shot down a young man while he was trying to surrender.

”Who fired that shot? d.a.m.n it, I said who fired?”

”I did, Captain Murphy.” I could just hear him from the bluff. He waved his straw hat like a fool. ”Me. Willis Bundy. I didn't know___”

”Put your rifle down, Bundy! I might have you hanged....”

”He's alive, Cap,” James Glispin said, and I swallowed down the bile, and approached the bandit Bundy had shot down. Shock masked his face, drained of all color, and he just sat there, holding the side of his chest where Bundy's round had hit him. Well, even outlaws have their angels, for the wound did not appear mortal.

”I was surrendering,” he said, his voice a stunned whisper. ”Somebody shot me while I was surrendering.”

I nodded, but had no remorse for this boy, no matter what threats I had hurled at Willis Bundy. He had been shot while surrendering. So be it. What of those two dead men, unarmed men, buried now in Northfield?

I have no tolerance for lawbreakers, whether they are d.a.m.ned secessionists in Virginia or claim-jumpers in California. I have fought them all.

In Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania I was born, of sound Scot and Dutch stock, but took off for the California gold fields after turning sixteen. Nigh seven years I spent there, and, while I never made it rich, well not as rich as some, I did learn some important lessons. Such as how do deal with vermin. You exterminate them.

By the spring of '61, I had returned to Pennsylvania, making my home now in Pittsburgh, and, when the call came for volunteers to save the Union, I raised a company for the 14th Pennsylvania and entered the war. Pennsylvania and entered the war.

I had the honor of serving under General Phil Sheridan, the honor of receiving wounds from Rebel sabers and muskets, at Lexington and Piedmont, and the dishonor of spending three and a half months in the miserable confines of Libby Prison after being captured at Mimms Flat. I despised being out of the fight, but that brief period in that horrible dungeon taught me another important lesson about vermin. Fellow officers wouldn't let me exterminate the traitors amongst us, but we could brand those callous fiends, and that we did, carving at on their turncoat foreheads.

Freed from prison after the surrender of General Lee-they should have hanged him, too, and Jefferson Davis and all those mutineers, seditionists-I had hoped to continue the fight in Texas, where Company D was ordered, but, alas, the Rebs there surrendered while we marched to Fort Leaven-worth in Kansas. Deprived of further glory, one good thing came out of the march. In Kansas I met my lovely bride, Inez, married her, and moved here to Madelia after being mustered out of the service of my country.

Since then, my fights had been confined to the state legislature, to which I had been elected in '71, but when I by chance found Sheriff Glispin in need of volunteers to track down and capture the Northfield plunderers, I was more than ready.

It is little wonder that I took command when we had our prey snared. The only thing that surprised me was the fact that only six, and not all, of my troops had the courage to march against brigands with me, and that one had the audacity to shoot a man while he showed the flag of truce.

So be it.

”I think you'll live,” I told the boy, then took in the scene of battle. Three bodies lay spread in the thick brush, their bodies riddled with bullets, and relief washed over my face at the sight of the six members of my volunteers standing before me.

”Is anyone injured?” I inquired.

Colonel Vought let out a nervous little laugh, reached into his vest pocket, and withdrew a chunk of his large rosewood pipe, now shattered by a ball. ”I found the piece of lead in my cartridge belt,” he said, shaking his head.

”G.o.d looks after you,” I told him.

Vought said nothing, looking away as if ashamed. 'Twas a good thing he had not been smoking the pipe, else the bullet might have killed him.

”You ought to have a watch fob made out of that,” Ben Rice said, ”for luck.”

The colonel's head bobbed fretfully. He shuffled his feet.

”You're bleeding,” I told George Bradford, who clutched his wrist.

”Scratch is all, Cap,” Bradford told me. ”Ruint my aim, though. I'll be fine.”

Yes, I thought, G.o.d has looked after us all.

”Come in!” I shouted to the rest of the posse. By now the slough was surrounded by scores upon scores of men who had taken up arms to rid this county of vermin, or men who'd come along as d.a.m.nable tourists, hoping to pick up souvenirs and touch the bodies of the dead. ”It's all over!” I cared not a whit to be in the company of cowards, but I needed pallbearers for the slain and Doc Overholt to tend to Bradford's scratch and the living border man's mangled arm and other wounds.