Running From Trouble
by William Brewer

Sitting on the steps of a mercantile store on the outskirts of Dodge City, with the worst hangover of my life, I decided to quit the free-wheelin’ cowboy life forever.

My head was braced in my hands in hopes nothing from the neck up would fall off. To make matters worse, the putrid odor emanating from the cattle-holding pens down the street wasn’t exactly a balm for my sick stomach. I was contemplating my ugly, worn out, old boots and thinking it was a good thing I’d left half my pay with Wilson Stringer, the owner of the herd we’d sold. At least I’d be able to buy new boots before I headed home. I needed ‘em, bad.

Head down, thinking about those ol’ boots, I didn’t see the woman until she stood over me asking a question. I tried to jump to my feet, but all I could manage was a slow get-up made possible only by using the porch railing.

“Sorry ma’am,” I muttered, as I tried to brush the dust off my clothes. “I didn’t see you coming, could you say that again?”

“I asked what you’d do if your mother suddenly appeared and could see what you’ve allowed demon rum to do to you.”

The questioner was an imposing looking woman peering at me through a pair of librarian’s glasses. Her hair-do was severe, pulled back from her face in a bun. She was wearing a long black dress that looked too hot for the day we were about to have. One of her shoes peeked out from under her skirt. It had little buttons on the side. I had never seen shoes with buttons before.

Startled by the directness of her question, I hesitated before answering. “Well Ma’am, I reckon I’d ask her to bring a pistol and put me out of my misery.”

A noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh came from behind the woman in black. Another woman stepped into view. There was a strong family resemblance, but she appeared to be a bit younger than my interrogator.

“Now Blaire,” the older woman said, “don’t encourage him by laughing. It’s not amusing, to see a man his age trying to act up with young cowboys at the end of a cattle-drive.”

I was just beginning to appreciate how good Blaire looked when a vital part of the older gal’s caution speech struck home. A man ‘my age’? What the hell did that mean? I’ll admit there were a few years on my back-trail. Quite a few actually, but like a good saddle, older leather looked better and was easier to sit. I figured old cowboys were the same.

“Ella, you mustn’t be too harsh with him,” Blaire said. “I’ve heard that liquor is harder on older men.”

If I hadn’t seen the twinkle in her blue eyes, I’d have taken offense.

Blair’s dress was white with little lace frills around the collar and down over her bodice. Her light-brown hair was tied back from her face with a rainbow of colored ribbons. She made a pretty picture with her hat and parasol.

On the other hand, I looked like something a cat would try to cover, and smelled worse. Even so, I hoped she was a ‘Miss’. Of course, I never for a minute thought I’d have a chance with a beauty like her. Besides she’d most likely want me to settle down.

Settle down? Hell, I must still be drunk.

This damned temperance crusader was making my hangover worse with her unrelenting questions. And a certain young miss, with eyes so blue they were almost violet, was having a good laugh at my expense.

Before I could gather what was left of my wits and defend myself, there was the sound of a gunshot from the saloon where I had spent most of the night and most all my money.

“Somebody get Jim Flood, Mr. Stringer’s been shot.” A puncher named Barrett came piling out through the front door of the bar shouting at the top of his voice.

There’s nothing like a gunshot to cure a hangover. Before I knew it I was on my feet headed for the saloon.

So much for running away from trouble.

“Barrett,” I called, “What happened?”

“Mr. Stringer caught that card shark in there cheating one of his hands and called him on it. The gambler shot the old man graveyard dead.”

“Flood left last night by rail going to Kansas City where he was planning to catch another train back to Texas,” I said.

When we looked up the gambler and a couple of his bootlickers were fogging it out of town on their horses.

Me and a few of the cowpunchers buried Mr. Stringer two days after the shooting. We talked to local law about the shooting. He told us the gambler would stay away from town until we’d left town, then come back. With all the witnesses back in Texas he’d be cheating cowboys and anyone else crazy enough to play his game.

We were a sad lot. None of the punchers were gun hands enough to go against the stacked deck in this town. There was some angry talk, but eventually the others departed for Texas. I knew I didn’t want to go back to Texas without old man Stringer. Maybe I’d head to Wyoming and punch a few winter-hardened cows up there. But thinking about Blaire and her blue eyes, I decided that this was my new home, took a job at the local stable, and laid low. I had my own history with the law to think about.

Fifteen years before, I had occasion to leave my Florida home where I had punched cattle from the age of ten. It was hard, dirty work and in those days, the only socializing was done evenings on the porch in front of the ranch kitchen.

That’s where I was celebrating my twentieth birthday. An old hand named Bristo, who never liked me much, marched up to the porch where I was standing. He looked straight at me and announced I wasn’t a teenager anymore and it was time to take my first ass-whipping from a grown man. From the day my uncle brought me to his Central Florida cattle ranch, Bristo had teased, taunted, and threatened me.

Being a person who didn’t waste words even then, I stepped through the door into the kitchen, Bristo following right behind. Probably thought I’d try to make a run for the back door. Might have too, but the old place didn’t have a back door. I admit it, I was scared. Bristo was built like a bull and outweighed me by thirty pounds or more. On top of that, he had at least one fight every payday. I’d never had trouble with anyone except him, so I wasn’t going to whip him with experience.

I got scared, then mad. A gallon bucket of cane syrup sat thinning by the cast-iron cook-stove. With Bristo closing in with that big ham of a fist drawn back, I picked the bucket up by the handle, swung it over-hand, and hit him just over the right eye-brow. That syrup must’ve weighed ten pounds because it surely caved his head in on that side.

One of the ranch-hands I worked with put me on his saddle-horse and told me to pay him when I got back.

Never went back and fifteen years later I still had that horse.

It was a non-eventful meander across the Florida panhandle for me, learning all the things critical to a young cowboy’s upbringing. Mainly how to drink, play cards, and fire a sidearm with some proficiency.

I got into serious scrape outside of Mobile. I didn't kill anyone that time. I did discover that a sheriff with a newly acquired limp held an unusually strong grudge. That was the end of the meandering for this child. I saddled up and proceeded to put some hasty miles behind me.

There had been a few more little dust-ups on the road to Texas but I was a reformed man. A month later I found myself a job brush-popping steers for an old time cattleman named Wilson T. Stringer. I decided to stay with the new job for a while and hope Florida, or Alabama law, didn’t reach as far as Texas. My only ambition was to be a real cowboy, what the locals called a ‘top-hand’. And to always run from trouble.

Summer heat turned to fall coolness and I was still in town. The stable owner had confidently turned the whole livery operation over to me to run. Shortly after that, he gave me the option to work for a salary, or we would split the profits from the livery. He would retire back east to his sister’s and in five years the business would be all mine.

Worked for me. In addition to the livery, I started selling special feed to the cattle lots and some new fangled crop-seed to the farmers outside of town. I was doing okay and was calling on the widow, Mrs. Blaire Pearson, twice a week. We were getting to know each other and I was kind of hoping it might go somewhere. Blaire shared this optimism. Ella had even warmed to me a trifle, despite the fact that she still didn’t think much of a man who would drink whiskey.

One night, after a couple of drinks, I decided to sleep in the livery stable. Must have been about midnight when someone rattled the stable doors. I opened them and there in the light from a full moon, was Wilson Stringer’s ranch foreman, Jim Flood. He looked taller sitting astride his horse. It was a little too dark to see his expression, but I knew at once why he had returned to Dodge.

“Cracker,” he said, “where might I get a bite to eat this late?”

The first time I laid eyes on Jim, I knew this cowboy was nobody to mess with. He was a rock-hard cowpuncher, and he looked hard. His eyes were as black as coal and squinty from years in the sun and wind. The muscles in his jaws were prominent and he wore a waxed black mustachio like the Mexican punchers on the ranch. The weathered features of his face made him look like he was carved from oak.

“What’re you doing here, Jim?” I asked, sliding on my boots and trying to come full awake.

“Don’t you know?”

“Well, I’d guess you’re figuring on killing a gambling man.”

The tall man dismounted and I walked his pinto mare to the back of the livery. After putting her in a stall by the back door, I gave her some fresh water and a bait of grain.

“What about some supper, partner?” he asked, ignoring my last statement.

“Unless you’re up for going to the saloon, about the best I can do for you is a cold beef sandwich and a cup of coffee.”

“Nothing wrong with cold beef sandwiches, Cracker,” he said, in his low whispery voice. He untied his bedroll and brought out a pistol wrapped in a well-oiled leather holster. “But I’m a lot hungrier than that. Come on down to the saloon with me and I’ll buy you a cold beer.”

I was staring at that pistol he was draggin’ out. I had known Jim Flood almost five years and I’d never seen that gun before. The handgun he carried while working cattle was a long-barreled .44 caliber Colt, with a cap and ball firing mechanism. This was a different kind of gun. It looked a little strange with its short barrel and blue-black finish. This wasn’t a tool, it was a precision piece of equipment. A thing made for a deadlier purpose than just shooting rattlesnakes.

“That’s a good lookin’ sidearm, Jim,” I said. “Where’s a man get a gun such as that?”

“Back East I’d think,” he said. “Not many of them in these parts.”

I could smell the gun oil, the deadly looking gun purring like a kitten as he rolled the cylinder on his sleeve.

“I’ve had this one about five years, bought it from a firearms drummer in Abilene.”

Turning to look out of the livery door I could see a world highlighted in white from the moonlight. I could smell the rich aroma of the fresh hay in the stalls. I looked out and thought about gunfights.

Since arriving in Texas, I’d watched one gunfight that involved a draw-down between two men in the street. It was nothing like the gunfights described in the Penny Dreadfuls about the “Wild West” that had become so popular back East. The two men in this gunfight were walking down the sidewalks on opposite sides of the street. One man drew his pistol and fired in the general direction of the other. He missed. His opponent pulled his own weapon and returned fire. He missed. They both emptied their guns and only killed two plate glass windows, one in the Chinese laundry and one in the barbershop.

If a man decided to settle a quarrel with a pistol in the real West, the other party was lucky if someone told him he was in a gunfight before it happened to him.

“I’ll go down to the saloon with you, Jim,” I finally said, answering his earlier question. “But you may as well know that I’m not as good with a pistol as I am with a long gun. I’ve got a cousin can shoot the eyes out of a squirrel with a pistol but that ain’t me.

For a long moment, he stood beside me smoking a thin cheroot. “I figured it was unlikely you’d ever been in a gunfight, so I’m just askin’ you to come along for the company. I’ll take care of anything else that comes up.”

I never said I hadn’t been in a gunfight, just that I preferred a rifle over a pistol. Oh well, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

“Jim, that gamblin’ man’s gonna know you haven’t come back just to visit an old friend.”

“Cracker, I don’t give a damn what he knows.”

I rooted around in my saddle bags for some bullets for my old rifle. I guess if you come across trouble you can’t avoid, go ‘all in’ as the poker players say. Hell, I felt pretty good now that I had made the decision. The only regret I had was that I knew it would bring my past to the attention of the law, and ultimately, the end of a fine romance.

A rooster crowed in a distant part of town and a few dogs answered his noisy challenge. It was well past midnight and nearly every window was dark except for the saloon. A rinky-dink piano tinkled out a tune I didn’t recognize. A woman’s laugh rang out, a hooting kind of bark that made me wonder what made her so happy.

I unwound the oil-cloth from around the Winchester, fed cartridges into the feeding tube, and threw the rest of the bullets back in the box. Figured if sixteen bullets weren’t enough, there was no use toting the rest. Then I picked up my pistol. It wasn’t in the class with Jim Flood’s fancy piece but it was still a serviceable firearm. It was a short barreled .44 caliber Colt with the sights filed off, bequeathed to me by a short-sighted rustler I had caught with some of Mr. Stringer’s stock last year. I stuck it in my belt, reconsidered and strapped on my well-used old gun belt.

“You ease in by the side door and keep an eye on the bartender and those other boys,” Jim said, as we walked towards the saloon. “If they draw down on me, you give a yell and then light out back to the stable.”

I still had doubts about this whole thing, recognizing the sort of situation that was the very reason I ended up so far from home. I had sworn never to find myself making these kinds of decisions again.

But, what the hell, I’d come this far.

I slipped along the side of the building and peered inside. I could see the gambler, sitting at his usual place at the Faro table. He looked surprised to see Jim push through the batwings. Surprised and pleased. Pleased, I suppose, thinking he would get to kill another cowpuncher.

Flood stood at the bar, cool as the other side of your pillow. His eyes were fixed on the gambler.

I was standing back from the door so the light inside wouldn’t expose me, watching as much of the room as I could, when shots rang out in front of the hotel down the street.

Bang …bang, bang. Another pause, then two more shots, close together…bang, bang.

Every man in the saloon, including Jim Flood, turned as one and started for the street. Everyone except the gambler.

My old trail-boss turned his attention and took a first step away from the bar. The gambler shook a hide-out derringer out of his sleeve and shot Flood in the back.

I fired a bullet that center-punched the huge mirror behind the bar bringing the whole thing down with a crash. The startled gambler threw another shot over his shoulder at me and ran for the back door.

The bar-keep pulled a sawed-off shotgun from under the bar and swung it in my direction. I let him have one at the belt line. The force of the .44 caliber bullet pushed him over backward and out of sight. I put two more shots into the back-bar to make sure he stayed there and made a beeline for Flood. He was breathing and conscious, but barely. I needed to get him over to Blaire’s. She’d had some nursing training before moving West and could at least keep Flood from bleeding to death while we sent for a doctor.

On the way to Blaire’s I ducked back into the saloon to pick up Flood’s pistol. Even hit as hard as he’d been, he’d drawn the deadly little gun and fired. Put two rounds into the piano player who was sneaking a shot from his own derringer. Flood was fast, but if he survived this time, it would be more luck than skill that got him through.

Never heard what the shooting out in the street was.

Sitting in Blaire’s parlor, I wondered if my life here was done. I was tired of running but it was highly possible the law would become interested in the shooting. Maybe find out about my back-trail. Not good. Blaire had shown flashes of being a lot more than a quiet widow lady. But I was pretty sure she wouldn’t approve of my past, or my part in the gunplay at the saloon.

I was still sitting there fiddling with Flood’s gun when Blaire came in from the back room where the doc was working on Flood.

“How’s he doing,” I said, “is he gonna make it?”

“Doc says it’s a good bet he’ll be okay if infection doesn’t set in. Looks like he’ll be working on him for a while yet.”

“How’re you doing with all this?”

“I don’t approve of using guns to settle disputes but at the same time I understand the need to defend one’s self,” Blaire said. She looked tired and a little unsettled.

Wasn’t much to say to that so I stood up. “Since there’s going to be some time before doc is through, I guess I’ll go over to the livery and make sure everything is locked up. Will you be okay here with doc and Ella?”

“Oh, I think so, it is Ella, remember.” A brief smile crossed her face.

“Yeah,” I said, “who’d want to tangle with Ella?"

As I stepped out of the door, I looked back at Blaire and wondered if things with her would ever be the same.

I turned to leave and there they stood; Jack Kincaid, the gambler; Bernie, one of Kincaid’s stooges from the bar, and two men I’d never seen before.

Bernie had his pistol out and pointed at my chest.

“Where’s Flood?” the gambler asked softly, “I know you pulled him out of the saloon and I want him.”

“He’s got him here in the house, Jack.” Bernie said.

Nothing slow about ol’ Bernie.

“Boys, don’t you think there’s been enough shooting for one night?” I said, turning slightly so that the hand holding Flood’s weapon was hidden behind my leg.

The gambler pulled his own pistol, and held it down by his side, “Might as well tell us where he is, Cracker. You shot my bartender back at the saloon. I know you’re still mad about me shooting your boss, but you shot and killed a man who worked for me. You don’t think I’m going to let you get away with that, do you?”

I thought about the way he’d callously gunned down Mr. Stringer and shot Jim Flood in the back. It all flashed through my mind but I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just raised that fancy pistol of Flood’s and set her to barkin’.

The gambler took the first one just below his right eye. I was already taking a step to my left as I fired twice more into Bernie, just below the breast bone. A bullet whipped past my face whispering its death song out into the night. Another gunshot rang out from behind me and one of the other two gunslingers dropped like a sack of grain. I pointed the gun at the last man but he already had his hands in the air.

“Whoa there, Cracker,” the man said with a stutter to his voice, “I’m not part of this, I just came to watch.”

Blaire stepped from behind me and pointed an old Colt Dragoon at him and said, “What do you think Cracker, shoot him or let him off this time?”

The hole in the end of that Colt must have looked the size of a water jug.

I stood there a long minute with my heart pounding in my throat before I let the hammer down softly and dropped my gun to my side. “Mister, you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. You go along and tell the sheriff what happened here. Listen to me now, it better be the right version of things, or I’ll be coming to read to you from Mr. Colt’s Bible.”

He turned and started walking real fast toward the center of town. After a few steps he broke into a full run and never looked back.

Blaire handed me the Dragoon and stood wiping her hands on her apron, “What happened?” she asked.

“You saw it all, Blaire. They came to get Flood and me too, apparently.”

She reached and took the Colt back and stuck it in her apron pocket, “Looks like they got more than they were looking for.”

“That they did, Blaire Pearson. Tell me where did you learn to use a gun?”

“Too long a story for tonight but I’m sure we’ll get to it,” she said, snuggling into my arms and looking up at me. “It looks as though we both have a few secrets to share.”

While I was trying to get my head around the new Blaire it occurred to me to ask, “Is Flood going to be alright?”

“The doctor said he was lucky but it’ll be some time before he can ride again. The question is, are you okay?”

“Yep, I’m fine and I don’t think we’ll have anything else to worry about tonight.”

The door opened and Ella walked out on the porch and damned if she wasn’t carrying a Dragoon the twin of Blaire’s. I knew from her expression she could see the bodies.

“Blaire, now what have you done?” she asked, shaking her head.

“These men came here to kill Mr. Flood and Cracker. What would you have me do?”

”There is that.” Ella answered. “Did you shoot these men, Blaire?”

“Just one. Cracker shot the other two.”

“Couple of lucky shots,” I quickly interjected.

“Not for them,” Ella said, giving me a long searching look.

Turning away from the bodies Ella took us both by the arms to lead us inside. “I understand the two of you trying to help a friend who’s in trouble,” her voice was soft but earnest, “but I want you to promise me that from now on you’ll leave the gunplay to the gunfighters. Cracker, you’re a good man but you’re just not like them. And you, Blaire, well . . .” She stopped and turned us to face her. “Will you just promise?”

I hesitated a long moment, afraid to look over at Blaire thinking that if I did I might bust out laughing. I glanced up into the star-lit Kansas sky and decided I was staying right here. No more running for me.

The law could take care of itself. “Ella, I promise I’ll try my best to live a peaceful life.”

“I’m not promising anything,” Blaire said softly, “If someone tries to shoot my Cracker, I’m going to do what I have to.” Then she kissed me on the cheek.

I glanced at the bodies as I turned and headed back to the livery. Maybe I should have felt some remorse for ending those lives but all I could think was, There’s nothing quite as peaceful as a dead trouble-maker.