Northfield (10 page)

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
C
OLE
Y
OUNGER

“For God’s sake, boys, hurry up! They’re shooting us all to pieces!”

I pounded the butt of my Russian on the door, whirled, snapped another shot over the head of one of them damned fool locals. They had killed Bob’s horse, peppered Jim’s leg with bird shot, turning things hotter than a summer with Quantrill. A second later, a shotgun roared close by, and I turned to see Clell Miller, that faithful servant, falling from his saddle.

“Cole!” he yelled. “Cole! I’m hit, Cole! I’m hit!”

Some town puke, wielding a huge shotgun, took off running and dived behind the crates stacked in front of this mercantile just as Dingus thundered past and popped a shot in the general area of his hindquarters.

I run over to Clell, figuring to find his head blowed off, but he was sitting up, stunned more than anything, bleeding from the forehead, nose, and cheeks.

“Bird shot,” he said, shaking out the cobwebs, and let out a little laugh.

“You’re lucky,” I told him.

I wasn’t. The bullet tore through the post and slammed into my hip, knocking me backward. Well, maybe I was lucky. If that big shell from some old buffalo gun hadn’t gone through that post first, I expect it would have blowed my leg clean off.

“Get back inside,” Bill Chadwell—Stiles— yelled as he rode past, raking his horse with them fancy spurs of his, “you damned bastard!”

I don’t know who he was yelling at. Could have been anybody. Seemed like half of Minnesota had poured onto the streets.

“I seem to have lost my pipe, Cole,” Clell said, trying to find some humor in our desperate fight, pulling himself to his feet, grabbing hold of the stirrup. I helped him back into the saddle, then run to my own horse.

Right about then, that white-livered son-of-a-bitch who had killed Bob’s horse for no good reason shot Chadwell out of the saddle.

“Stiles!” Jim hollered, reining up, but only briefly. “Stiles! Bill! Bill! Christ A’mighty!”

Bill Chadwell, Bill Stiles, whatever his true name was, he couldn’t hear nothing no more.

I stopped at the door again, pounding the frame so hard it shook, screaming at those boys to hurry up. Our plan had gone to hell. “For God’s sake, boys, come out! It’s getting too hot for us!”

Not long afterward, I hear one of the Yankees yell: “They’ve shot Alonzo Bunker!”

Well, I always knowed this had been a bum idea. Didn’t like it when Dingus laid things out down in Missouri, and sure didn’t like the looks of things when we rode in to Northfield that afternoon.

The deal was supposed to go like this: Brother Bob, Frank James (Buck, me and others called him), and Charlie Pitts would ride into town first. If things pleased them, they’d enter the bank about the time Clell and me rode in. If not, they’d just keep riding out of town.

“I’m a-gonna smoke my pipe through the whole shebang,” Clell had said back in the woods when we had talked things over one last time. “That’s how easy this’ll be.”

True to his word, Clell was pulling hard drags on his corncob pipe when we eased our horses down Division Street, and I seen Frank, my best friend, Charlie Pitts, and my kid brother lounging on them crates in front of the mercantile near the bank. I also seen a passel of people all over the square, all over the town. Two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon—streets shouldn’t be so crowded. What’s more, a couple of folks just sitting out front by the big hotel was eyeing Frank, Bob, and Charlie with some suspicion.

“Surely the boys won’t go into the bank with so many people about,” I told Clell. “Wonder why they didn’t just ride on through town.”

As one of the church bells rang out with the time, I muttered an oath when Bob shot up from his perch on a peach crate, muttered something, and Frank, with a shrug, followed suit, Charlie Pitts right behind them.

“Hell,” Clell said, still puffing his pipe, “they’re a-goin’ in.”

“If they do, the alarm’ll be given sure as there’s a hell,” I told Clell. “So you’d better take that pipe out of your mouth.”

It went to hell in a hurry. Damn, Charlie Pitts forgot to shut the damned door, so we swung out of the saddle, me pretending to tighten the cinch while Clell, still smoking, hurried to the door and shut it, then stood at the door, arms folded across his chest, pipe stem being chewed on something fierce.

Wasn’t more than a moment later that this fellow crossed the street from over by the Dampier Hotel, headed straight for the bank door.

Clell grabbed his collar, shoved him aside, and told him that he couldn’t go inside.

“Listen,” the man said, “I have business there, mister.”

That’s when Clell pulled out his revolver and jammed the barrel under the gent’s nose. I give up pretending to tighten my saddle cinch, and drew the .44.

“Don’t you holler, you son-of-a-bitch!” Clell was telling the fool. “Or I’ll blow your damned head off!”

The man pivoted, leaped off the boardwalk, and run, yelling at the top of his lungs: “Get your guns, boys, they’re robbing the bank!”

“Hell,” Clell said, snapped a shot at the fellow’s feet, and I started firing, too, shooting in the air, yelling for everyone to stay off the streets. Pigeons flew off from the roofs of the buildings on Division Street. For some reason, they caught my fancy, and I couldn’t forget just how pretty that sight was, them pretty birds lighting a shuck across a clear blue sky

I whirled, squeezed the trigger.

Somebody from across the street let out a scream. “Robbery! Robbery!” Just then, Dingus, Jim and Chadwell come riding across the bridge, cutting loose with curses, shots, and Rebel yells.

The fellow over by the hotel, who had just shouted out, turned, and, in the corner of my eye, I saw Clell aiming his pistol at him. “Let him go!” I hollered. Man running wasn’t no threat, though, if I’d knowed what that feller would wind up doing, I might have let Clell shoot the son-of-a-bitch in the back. He disappeared inside the Dampier House Hotel.

“Bank robbery! Bank robbery!”

Now gunfire from all directions echoed the shouts and screams, the yelping dogs, our own curses. That’s when I give my first warning at the bank door.

I’d wind up yelling at those inside the bank three times. Bob come out after the second time, when that horse-killing son-of-a-bitch fired again from the corner of the square and Division Street.

“Get that bastard, Bob!” I shouted. “Charge him.”

Previously I had said there wasn’t to be no killing, but by now I figured we’d have to kill or we’d be shot to pieces.

Bob took off running, firing his .45 Colt, and Charlie Pitts finally stuck his head out of the door. Still no sign of Frank James.

Jim rode past, and a bullet come too close to his liking, and mine. He let out a little gasp, trying to spy who had damned near killed him, and looked at me, crying: “Let’s light out!”

“What the hell kept you?” I yelled at Charlie, and I seldom, if ever, rose my voice to a loyal comrade like Charlie Pitts.

“We botched things up, Capt’n,” he said, and looked back inside, yelling at Frank.

Botched things up. He smelled like a walking whiskey vat. I started to curse him for being a fool, for drinking when I told him and all the boys there shouldn’t be no John Barleycorn, not when we was on a case, but a gunshot roared inside the bank. Another.

Then I saw Clell Miller, leaning over, adjusting his stirrup, and straightening in the saddle, yelling out in surprise as a bullet slammed through his shoulder.

He tumbled on the ground again, his horse— damned traitor—skedaddling over to Fourth Street where some citizens was shooting at us, and I run to that gallant Missouri boy who had rode with us for so long.

“Clell!”

He pulled himself on his knees, his shoulder already drenched with blood, and tried to tell me something. “Charlie!” I shouted. “Charlie.” Charlie Pitts, who had stepped into his saddle, started toward me, and I yelled one last holler at the bank: “For God’s sake, Buck, come out! They’re killing our men out here!”

Buck come out, cool as you please, and Charlie held up, to make sure my friend made it into the saddle. I saw him get hit—Frank James, I mean— in the leg, above the knee, but he didn’t fall, just pulled himself into the saddle about the time Clell collapsed in my arms, and I laid him gently on the boardwalk.

“Clell!” Dingus yelled as he galloped past.

“He’s dead,” I said.

Clell Miller, sporting a few days’ growth of beard stubble, no pipe around anywhere, looked at me with those pretty blue eyes of his, only he couldn’t see nothing no more. Poor Clell. I unbuckled his shell belt, strapped it loosely across my duster. Grabbed his other revolvers, too, shoving one in my waistband, holstering my own, using his little .32 Moore rimfire to shoot.

“Bob!” I shouted, looking up.

Bob and that bearded fellow who had most recently laid Bill Chadwell low was playing a game of chicken, using the stairs as a sort of barricade between them. Neither could get a real good shot at one another, but that fellow who had shot at Jim moments earlier, who was perched somewhere upstairs at the hotel, he drew a clean bead on my kid brother. Same fellow, it would turn out, that had run off the streets, shouting—“Robbery! Robbery!”—same fellow that Clell was about to back-shoot, same fellow whose life I had ordered be spared.

He put a .52-caliber ball into Brother Bob’s elbow.

Now, Bob, he might be the youngest, but he ain’t lacking game, not one whit. No, sirree, Bob. Soon as the bullet crippled his right arm, he tossed his Colt into the air, caught it in his left hand, spun, snapped a shot at the upstairs window.

Then Brother Jim wheeled in the saddle, dropping his long-barreled Colt, grabbing his shoulder, finally the saddle horn to keep himself from being pitched into the dust.

“Ride out!” I yelled. “Save yourselves!”

“I won’t leave you!”

“Ride out, damn you. You ain’t leaving nobody!”

I started for my horse.

Dingus come by, jerked the reins from Jim’s hands, screaming at Jim to hang on, and they thundered down Division Street. That wasn’t the way we planned on lighting out, but we felt certain sure nobody would come out of here alive if we tried to cross the big bridge by the mill.

I had to take my time, keep from getting my head blowed off. Charlie and Buck were down the street, offering some covering fire. I kept one eye on my horse, the other on Brother Bob, still in the corner, by the stairs.

“For God’s sake!” It’s Bob who was pleading now. “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me here!”

“I ain’t leaving you,” I told my brother.

Only now I spotted this other person, just standing in the street, looking at me. Drunk or a fool. I couldn’t tell. He said something, but my ears were ringing pretty bad, and it ain’t no language I could savvy no how.

Someone downstairs yelled at him. “Come down here, Nicolaus!”

But Nicolaus wasn’t listening. A bullet clipped my hat, and that’s when my patience was shot. Nicolaus jerked his finger at me; over the barking dogs, screaming horses, gunshots, and everything else, I heard him laughing at me. The son-of-a-bitch was laughing at me.

So I shot the bastard in the head with the .32.

He fell down the stairs, rolled down toward the basement.

Another fair-skinned face popped up from the stairs, eyes wide, and I pointed the Moore at him. “Get back down, you son-of-a-bitch, or I’ll kill you, too!”

Me? Thomas Coleman Younger, the fellow who had told everyone we wouldn’t shed no innocent blood. Me? I’d just shot an unarmed citizen in the head. ’Course, Clell Miller had practically died in my arms, and I’d just seen my two brothers get bad shot, seen my pard Frank Buck James take a hit in his leg. I was smarting some, too, from a big slug in my left hip. No excuse, though. I can’t put the blame on anyone but me, ’cause it was me that shot that fellow. Shot him for no reason, other than he—like the rest of them Minnesotans in Northfield—just wouldn’t listen to me.

Like Bob wouldn’t listen back in Missouri when I told him this was a damned fool plan.

Bob was screaming again. “Cole! Cole! Don’t you leave me, Cole, for God’s sake, don’t you leave me here alone!”

“Bud!” Frank’s shouting from down the street. “Get the hell out of there, Bud!”

Rest of it, I see like a dream that just keeps on coming to you, slowly, clearly, too damned real. Just too damned real.

I shoot the Moore dry as I run, pull myself into the saddle, and ride by, shoving the empty .32 in a pocket and drawing my Russian. A bullet takes my hat off. Another clips my left rein. Quickly I draw my knife, slice the other rein close to the bit, will have to guide this gelding with my knees, but he’s a good horse. Yet another shot slams into the saddle horn, shredding it loose. This is hell! Using only my legs and spurs to guide my horse, I ride hard, wheel up at the corner, fire a shot at the second-story window in the hotel and another past the bearded horse-killer’s head, reach down, and grab Bob’s gun belt, pull him up behind me. Hurts like hell, for both my brother and me, but I get her done. Ain’t got no choice.

Then I’m spurring my horse, emptying my .44, riding down the street toward Charlie Pitts and Frank James. Dogs bark. Bullets fly overhead. I see some kid, not even in his teens, step out of an alley, wooden pistol in his left hand, a chunk of brick in his right. He lets the brick fly. Damned near tears my nose off, missing it by inches. Then, he’s aiming his toy pistol, mouthing: Bang. Bang. Bang.…

A few rods up ahead, Charlie doubles over, hit in the shoulder, and finally I’ve reached them, and we’re riding—riding toward Dundas, leaving Clell Miller and Bill Stiles, alias Bill Chadwell, leaving them two boys and I don’t know how many dead citizens in the streets of Northfield.

Riding to…where?

Chadwell, he’s the one who knowed this land. Sure, we’ve studied it a mite, but this is a foreign country. Soon we’ll be hunted.

We catch up to Dingus and Jim. Keep riding hard, five horses abreast down the street. Five horses. Six men.