The Outlaw Josey Wales (8 page)

“Have a whiskey, mister?” he heard himself squeaking.

Josey waited a long time. “Reckin not,” he said dryly.

“I got some cold beer … good brewed-up Choc. It’s… it’s on the house,” Zukie stammered.

Josey eased the hat back on his head. “Well now, that’s right neighborly of ye, friend.”

Zukie placed a huge tin cup before him and from a barrel dippered the dark liquid into it. He was encouraged by the action of Josey Wales drinking beer. It was, after all, a human act. Perhaps the man had some reasonable qualities about him. Surely he could think humanely … and sociably.

Josey wiped the beer from his mustache with the back of a hand. “Matter of fact,” he said, “I’m lookin’ to buy a hoss.”

“A hoss… ah… a horse?” Zukie repeated stupidly.

Al had staggered to the bar. “Gimme a bucket of that Choc,” he said thickly.

Zukie, still staring at Josey, dipped a tin bucket of the beer from the barrel and placed it on the bar. “The horses,” he said, “belong to these gentlemen. They’ll more than likely… that is …. I’m sure they’ll sell you one.”

Al turned slowly to face Josey, holding the bucket of beer waist-high, and under it he held a pistol … the hammer already thumbed back. A sly, triumphant smile wreathed his face.

“Josey Wales,” he breathed … and then chortled, “Josey Wales, by God! Five thousand gold simoleons walkin’ right in. Mr. Chain Blue Lightening hisself, that ever’body’s so scairt of. Well now, Mr. Lightening, you move a hair, twitch a finger… and I’ll splatter yore guts agin the wall. Come over here, Yoke,” he called aside to his partner.

Yoke shuffled forward, loosing the Indian woman. Zukie was terrified as he looked from Al to Josey. The outlaw was staring steadily into the eyes of Al … he hadn’t moved. Confidence began to return to Zukie.

“Now look, Al,” Zukie whined, “the man is in my place. I recognized him, and I’m due a even split. I…”

“Shet up,” Al said viciously, without taking his eyes from Josey, “shet up, you goddamned nanny goat. I’m the one that got ’em.”

Al was growing nervous from the strain. “Now,” he said testily, “when I tell you to move, Mr. Lightening, you move slow, like ’lasses in the wintertime, or I drop the hammer. You ease yore hands down, take them guns out, butt first, and hold ’em out so Yoke can git ’em. You understand? Nod, damn you.”

Josey nodded his head.

“Now,” Al instructed, “ease the pistols out.”

With painful slowness Josey pulled the Colts and extended them butt first toward Yoke. A finger of each hand was in the trigger guard. Yoke stepped forward and reached for the proffered handles. His hands were almost on the butts of the pistols when they spun on the fingers of Josey with the slightest flick of his wrists. As if by magic the pistols were reversed, barrels pointing at Al and Yoke… but Al never saw it.

The big right-hand .44 exploded with an ear splitting roar that lifted Al from the floor and arched his body backward. Yoke was dumbfounded. A full second ticked by before he clawed for the pistol at his hip. He knew he was making a futile effort, but he read death in the black eyes of Josey Wales. The left-hand Colt boomed, and the top of Yoke’s head … and most of his brains … were splattered against a post.

“My God!” Zukie screamed. “My God!” And he sank sobbing to the floor. He had witnessed the pistol spin. A few years later the Texas gunfighter John Wesley Hardin would execute the same trick to disarm Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene. It would become known in the West as the “Border Roll,” in honor of the Missouri Border pistol fighters who had invented it… but few would dare practice it, for it required a master pistoleer.

Acrid blue smoke filled the room. The Indian woman had not moved, nor did she now, but her eyes followed Josey Wales.

“Stand up, mister,” Josey leaned over the plank and looked down at Zukie, who pulled himself to his feet. His hands were trembling as he watched the outlaw carefully cut a chew of tobacco and return the twist to his jacket. He chewed for a moment, looking thoughtfully at Zukie.

“Now, let’s see,” he said with studied contemplation, “ye say them hosses belong to these here pilgrims?” He designated the “pilgrims” by accurately hitting Al’s upturned face with a stream of tobacco juice.

“Yes… yes,” Zukie was eagerly helpful, “…and Mr. Wales, I was only trying to throw them off … to help you … with that talk of the reward.”

“I ’preciate thet kindly,” Josey said dryly, “but gittin’ back to the hosses, ’pears like these here pore pilgrims won’t be in the need of them hosses no more … seein’ as how they have passed on… so I reckin the hosses is more or less public property… wouldn’t ye say?”

Zukie nodded vigorously, “Yes, I would say that … I would agree to that. It sounds fair and right to me.”

“Fair’n fair and right as rain,” Josey said with satisfaction. “Now me being a public citizen and sich as that,” Josey continued, “I reckin I’ll take along my part of the propitty, not havin’ time to wait around fer the court to divide it all up.”

“I think you should have all the horses,” Zukie said generously. “They … that is, they really belong to you.”

“I ain’t a hawg,” Josey said. “We got to think of the other public citizens. One hoss will do me fine. You git thet loop of rope hangin’ yonder, and ye come on out, and we’ll ketch up my propitty.”

Zukie scurried out the door ahead of Josey and trotted to the corral. They caught up the big black. Josey rigged a halter and mounted the roan. From his saddle he looked down at Zukie, who nervously shifted his feet.

“Reckin ye can live, mister,” and his voice was cold, “but a woman is a woman. I got friends in the Nations, and word gittin’ to me of thet woman bein’ mistreated would strike me unkindly.”

Zukie bobbed his head, “I pledge to you, Mr. Wales … I give my solemn word, she will not be … again. I will…”

“I’ll be seein’ ye,” and with that, Josey sank spurs to the roan and was off in a whirl of dust, leading the black behind him. The Indian woman watched him from where she crouched behind the lean-to.

As Josey topped the first rise he found Lone waiting with rifle trained on the trading post. Lone’s eyes glistened as he looked at the black.

“A feller would have to sleep with thet hoss to keep his grandma from stealing him,” he said admiringly.

“Yeah,” Josey grinned. “Got him cheap too. But if we ain’t movin’ on in a minute, the Army’s most like to git ’em. A patrol is due any minute from Fort Gibson.”

They worked fast, switching Lone’s gear from the gray gelding to the black. The gelding moved off immediately, cropping grass.

“He’ll be all right in a week… maybe he’ll run free the rest of his life,” Lone said wistfully.

“Let’s move out,” Josey said, and he swung the big roan down the hill, followed by Lone on the black. They were magnificently mounted now; the roan scarcely a hand higher than the strong black horse. Fording the Canadian, they moved toward the Seminole and the Choctaw Nations.

Less than an hour later, Zukie Limmer was pouring out his story to the Army patrol from Fort Gibson, and in three hours dispatches were alerting the state of Texas. Added to the dispatches were these words:

SHOOT ON SIGHT. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISARM, REPEAT: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISARM. FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD: DEAD.

The tale of the pistol spin fled southward, keeping pace with the dispatches. The story grew with each telling through the campfires of the drovers coming up the trail … and spread to the settlements. Violent Texas knew and talked of Josey Wales long before he was to reach her borders … the bloody ex-lieutenant of Bloody Bill; the pistol fighter with the lightning hands and stone nerves who mastered the macabre art of death from the barrels of Colt .44’s.

Chapter 10

They rode far into the night. Josey left the trail heading to Lone and followed his lead. The Cherokee was a crafty trailsman, and with the threat of pursuit he brought all his craft into practice.

Once, for a mile, they rode down the middle of a shallow creek and brought their horses to the bank when Lone found loose shale rock that carried no print. For a distance of ten miles they boldly traveled the well-marked Shawnee Trail, mixing their tracks with the tracks of the trail. Each time they paused to rest the horses Lone drove a stick in the ground… grasping it with his teeth, he “listened,” feeling for the vibrations of horses. Each time as he remounted he shook his head in puzzlement, “Very light sound … maybe one horse … but it’s stayin’ with us… we ain’t shakin’ it off.”

Josey frowned, “I don’t figger one hoss… maybe it’s a damn buffalo… ’er a wild hoss follerin’.”

It was after midnight when they rested. Rolled in blankets on the bank of a creek that meandered toward Pine Mountain, they slept with bridle reins wrapped about their wrists…They grained the horses but left the saddles on them, loosely cinched.

Up before dawn, they made a cold breakfast of jerky beef and biscuits and double-grained the horses for the hard riding. Lone suddenly placed his hand on the ground. He kneeled with ear pressed against the earth.

“It’s a horse,” he said quietly, “comin’ down the creek.” Now Josey could hear it crashing through the undergrowth. He tied the horses back behind a persimmon tree and stepped into the small clearing.

“I’ll be bait man,” he said calmly. Lone nodded and slipped the big knife from its scabbard. He placed it between his teeth and slid noiselessly into the brush toward the creek. Now Josey could see the horse. It was a spotted paint, and the rider was leaning from its back, studying the ground as he rode. Now he saw Josey but didn’t pause, but instead lifted the paint into a trot. The horse was within twenty yards of Josey and he could see that the rider wore a heavy blanket over his head, falling around his shoulders.

Suddenly a figure leaped from the brush astride the paint and toppled the rider from the horse. It was Lone. He was over the rider, lying on the ground, and raised his knife for the downward death stroke. “Wait!” Josey shouted.

The blanket had fallen away from the rider. It was the Indian woman. Lone sat down on her in amazement. A vicious-looking hound was attacking one of his moccasined feet, and he kicked at the dog as he rose. The Indian woman calmly brushed her skirt and stood up. As Josey approached she pointed back up the creek.

“Pony soldiers,” she said, “two hours.” Lone stared at her.

“How in hell…” he said.

“She was at the trading post,” Josey said, then to the woman, “How many pony soldiers?”

She shook her head, and Josey turned to Lone. “Ask her about the pony soldiers … try some kind of lingo.”

“Sign,” Lone said. “All Indians know sign talk, even tribes that cain’t understand each other’s spoke word.”

He moved his hands and fingers through the air. The woman nodded vigorously and answered with her own hands.

“She says,” Lone turned to Josey, “there are twenty pony soldiers, two … maybe three hours back … wait, she’s talkin’ agin.”

The Indian woman’s hands moved rapidly for a space of several minutes while Lone watched. He chuckled… laughed… then fell silent.

“What is it?” Josey asked. “Hell, man, cain’t ye shet her up?”

Lone held his palm forward toward the woman and looked admiringly at Josey.

“She told me of the fight in the tradin’ post … of your magic guns. She says ye are a great warrior and a great man. She is Cheyenne. Thet sign she give of cuttin’ the wrist… thet’s the sign of the Cheyenne… every Plains tribe has a sign that identifies them. The movin’ of her hand forward, wigglin’, is the sign of the snake … the Comanche sign. She said the two men ye killed were traders with the Comanch… called Co-mancheros… ‘them that deals with Comanch.’ She said she was violated by a buck of the Arapaho… their sign is the ‘dirty nose’ sign… when she held her nose with her fingers… and that the Cheyenne Chief, Moke-to-ve-to, or Black Kettle, believed she did not resist enough… she should have killed herself… so she was whupped, had her nose slit, and was cast out to die.” Lone paused. “Her name, by the way, is Take-toha… means ‘Little Moonlight’.”

“She can shore talk,” Josey said admiringly. He spat tobacco juice at the dog… and the hound snarled “Tell her,” Josey said, “to go back to the tradin’ post. She will be treated better now. Tell her that many men want to kill us… that we gotta ride fast… thet there’s too much danger fer a woman,” Josey paused, “and tell her we ’preciate what she’s done fer us.” Lone’s hands moved rapidly again. He watched her solemnly as she answered. Finally he looked at Josey, and there was the pride of the Indian when he spoke. “She says she cannot go back. That she stole a rifle, supplies, and the hoss. She says she would not go back if she could… that she will foller in our tracks. Ye saved her life. She says she can cook, track, and fight. Our ways are her ways. She says she ain’t got no-wheres else to go.” Lone’s face was expressionless, but his eyes looked askance at Josey. “She’s shore pretty,” he added with hopeful recommendation.

‘Josey spat, “Damn all conniption hell. Here we go, trailin’ into Texas like a waggin train. Well…” he sighed as he turned to the horses, “she’ll jest have to track if she falls back, and when she gits tired she can quit.”

As they swung into their saddles Lone said, “She thinks I’m a Cherokee Chief.”

“I wonder where she got thet idea,” Josey remarked dryly. Little Moonlight picked up her rifle and blanket and swung expertly astride the paint. She waited humbly, eyes cast to the ground, for the men to take the trail.

“I wonder,” Josey said as they walked the horses out of the brush.

“Wonder what?” Lone asked.

“I was jest wonderin’,” he said, “I reckin that mangy red-bone hound ain’t got nowheres to go neither.”

Lone laughed and led the way, followed closely by Josey. At a respectful distance the blanketed Little Moonlight rode the paint, and at her heels the bony hound sniffed the trail.

They traveled south, then southwest, skirting Pine Mountain on their left and keeping generally to open prairie. More grass showed now on the land. Lone kept the black at a ground-eating canter, and the big roan easily stayed with him, but Little Moonlight fell farther and farther behind. By midafternoon Josey could just make out her bobbing head as she pushed the rough-riding paint nearly a mile behind. The soldiers had not come into sight, but late in the afternoon a party of half-naked Indians armed with rifles rode over a rise to their left and brought their ponies at an angle to intercept them.