Webb's Posse (8 page)

“Damn it, Webb,” Summers said to himself, watching. “You had him. Now you've let him up.”

A solid punch caught Abner Webb in the face, snapping his head back. Before he regained his footing, another punch shot in and walked him backward to the boardwalk. He stopped when his back met a wooden support post. The post creaked with his weight against it. Webb slumped there and tried to clear his throbbing head.

“Stand up and fight!” Daniels shouted, not about to stop. He came forward, throwing a hard right. But Abner Webb rolled away from the post just in time. From his saddle, Will Summers heard the sickening thud as Daniels' powerful fist slammed into the wooden post so hard it dislodged the post from the boardwalk. Daniels shrieked in pain and grabbed his wounded hand. Webb saw what had happened and took advantage. As Daniels staggered in place, Webb lurched forward and caught him a hard clip on the jaw. Daniels stumbled onto the boardwalk and tried to steady himself on the loose post.

“Look out!” Summers shouted, seeing the pole come free, Daniels' big arm wrapped around it, ripping it from the wooden porch overhang.

Abner Webb barely jumped back in time. Then a thick pine beam fell free and landed with a hard thud on Edmund Daniels' head. Daniels fell from the boardwalk facedown into the dirt street, still hugging the post. Behind him, with no support to hold it in place, the rest of the boardwalk overhang crashed down in a cloud of dust and a spray of pine splinters.

“Good Lord,” Summers said in a hushed whisper, staring at the high puff of dust where Abner Webb stood weaving back and forth, his fists still balled at his sides. Townsmen hurried forward as Will Summers slid down from his saddle and hurried over to Abner Webb. “All of you stay back!” Summers demanded. “He don't need your help.”

“I…don't?” said Webb in a thick voice, falling to his knees. His face was bloody and battered, already swelling and turning the color of bruised fruit.

“That's right, you don't,” said Summers, coming to a halt and spreading his arms to keep the rest of the men from assisting Webb to his feet. “Listen to me, Deputy,” Summers whispered just between them. “You just won a lot of respect for yourself, knocking this big ape out.”

“I…knocked him…out?” Webb asked, barely keeping from falling on his face.

“Well, it took half the porch ceiling falling on him, but he's out cold any way you look at it.” Summers shot a quick glance at the townsmen closing in. “You'll make a wide gain for yourself if you get up off your knees on your own. The fact is, it's something we really could use if you're going to lead these men.”

“All…right then,” Webb groaned, pushing up from the ground. Summers stood back three feet, making no attempt to help him.

“That's the way, Deputy,” Summers whispered. “You're doing fine.” He watched Webb wobble back and forth, pressing a hand to a swollen cut on his jaw. “Now drag Daniels to his feet and throw him up on his saddle.”

“Do…what?” Webb's breath heaved in his chest. He gave Summers an incredulous look through swollen, bloodshot eyes. “I just…fought to make him stay here.”

“I know, but it's different now that you won. Now you've got to let him ride with us!”

Webb gave an exhausted shrug. “That makes…no sense at all.”

“It will once you've thought it through,” Summers whispered. “Do like I'm telling you.”

Webb looked down at Daniels' broad back. “I can't…lift that big son of a—”

“You've got to, Deputy,” Summers insisted, still in a whisper between them. “Think what it'll do for you in the town's eyes.”

“Lord have…mercy, Will,” Webb groaned. “I'm…beat all to hell!”

“You can do it, Deputy. I know you can,” Summers insisted. “Now lift him up…throw him on that saddle.” Summers stepped back out of the way. “These men will follow you anywhere.”

The townsfolk along the street and the men mounted and ready to ride posse watched in hushed silence as a struggling Deputy Abner Webb pulled Edmund Daniels up and looped an arm across his shoulder. “Give him room!” Will Summers shouted. The townsfolk pulled back and watched Webb drag the knocked-out man to the big gray gelding standing in the middle of the street. With all his strength, Webb pushed upward against
Daniels until finally the limp figure flopped across the saddle like a corpse.

Summers saw the deputy was about to fall, so he hurried over to him and grabbed the reins to the gray. “There now, you saw Deputy Webb make things right with Edmund Daniels,” Summers shouted to the mounted possemen. “Does anybody have any more to say on the matter?” He looked from man to man, making sure his eyes met theirs. When no one replied, he said, “All right then. Let's be off and gone!”

While the possemen filed by, Will Summers held the reins to Webb's horse. Webb struggled upward until he flopped over into his saddle. Summers handed him his reins, then handed him the reins to Daniels' big gray. “Here, Deputy, sit tall,” Summers said. “You've earned the right to hold your head high.”

“I…need to see…the doctor,” Webb rasped. “I believe he's broke…something inside me.”

“Don't whimper like a pup,” Summers snapped at him. “You've just done a big thing for yourself. Be proud of it.”

“At least…let me wash my face, Will,” Webb moaned.

“Don't worry, Deputy.” Summers pulled a wadded-up bandanna from inside his coat and shook it out. “Soon as the posse is farther down the street, you can clean your face up. Don't let these men see you're hurting though.” Summers reached down with the bandanna and gestured young Eddie Duvall toward them. “You, kid, take this over, dip it in the horse trough and wring it out for us.”

“The horse trough?” Webb moaned.

“Is he going to die?” Eddie Duvall asked, staring in awe at Abner Webb's battered face.

“Naw, kid, this man is tougher than a pine knot.” Summers chuckled, handing the boy the bandanna. “When he catches up to the Peltrys, they won't know what hit them.”

Abner Webb just stared at Will Summers through swollen eyes.

Seeing his son, Eddie, run to the water trough and back with the wet bandanna, Wild Joe Duvall cut away from the rest of the posse and circled back to Summers and Webb. “Son, you finish up what you're doing and get on back to the house,” Wild Joe told young Eddie. “You look after your ma and your sister like I told you to.”

“Yes sir, Pa,” Eddie said, wringing out the bandanna and passing it up to Will Summers' hand. “Mr. Summers asked me to fetch this back to him, so I did. Golly, Pa! Did you see the fight? I never saw nothing like it!” Eddie exclaimed.

“Yeah,” said Wild Joe grudgingly. “It was all right, as fights go. I've been in worse and not come out looking so bad.” He gave Abner Webb the once-over, then looked back down at his son. “You still here?”

“No sir, Pa. I'm gone,” said Eddie. Turning and bolting away, he called back over his shoulder. “Don't forget—you said you'd bring me back one of the Peltrys' shooting fingers!”

“Hope you brought yourself a sharp knife,” Summers said to Wild Joe Duvall.

Wild Joe's face reddened as he saw the amused look in Will Summers' eyes. “That son of mine thinks I'm some kind of hero. I don't know why,” Wild Joe said, looking away and adjusting his wide-brimmed hat. When Summers didn't answer, Wild Joe looked at Abner Webb again. “Come to think of it, that was one hell of a fight, Deputy. I couldn't have done much better myself to be honest about it.”

“The roof…fell on him,” Webb said across thick blue lips, wiping the wet bandanna carefully across the welt on his jaw.

“Call it how you want to,” said Wild Joe, passing a glance over Edmund Daniels lying draped across his saddle. “But I think you're just being modest. Daniels is a big piece of work, roof or no roof.”

Abner Webb looked at Will Summers. Summers only shrugged. “Wild Joe's right, Deputy. You're in a saddle. Daniels is across one. That's how simple it plays in my book.” He turned his horse and heeled it toward the rear of the posse as the horsemen made their way out of town.

“What do you think Goose and Moses Peltry is up to about now, Deputy?” asked Wild Joe Duvall, stepping his horse alongside Webb's. Abner Webb noted the nervousness in the man's voice as he continued. “Think there's a chance we might miss them altogether? Maybe they'll cut for the border and get away from us.”

Leading Edmund Daniels' gray by its reins, Abner Webb heeled his horse forward, one hand holding the wet bandanna to his throbbing jaw. “If they want to keep their shooting fingers, I reckon they ought to,” said Webb.

Lieutenant Freeman Goff stood up in his stirrups and gazed ahead at the lopsided wagon sitting sideways in the middle of the high pass trail. “Dagblast it!” the lieutenant said. “This just rips it for me. First the big gun jams. Now this!” He noted the wagon was heavily loaded and sitting up on an axle jack. A front wheel was off, leaning against the side of the wagon where the driver sat with an open tin of grease, slowly smearing the inside of the hub.

“Sergeant Teasdale!” Lieutenant Goff demanded.
“Take two men up there and see if you can help that fool get under way. He's blocking the whole confounded trail!”

“Indeed he is, sir,” said the big rawboned sergeant as his eyes went warily along the ridgeline above them. “And if you don't mind my saying so, sir, we best keep a close lookout for some sort of—”

“Yes, I do mind you saying so, Sergeant!” Lieutenant Goff snapped impatiently, cutting Teasdale off. “For God sakes! Can't anyone simply follow an order so we can get this detail finished? It's hotter than a boiling pot out here. Do as I say.”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Lawrence Teasdale said, his eyes still scanning the ridges, searching the black holes of shade among the jagged rocks. “Corporal Burnes…Trooper Frieze: up front on the double!”

“Speed this up, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Goff said. “I'll be waiting in the shade back here behind the gun wagon.” He turned his horse and moved it back a few feet along the trial as two sweaty bays fell out of the short single column and bolted forward.

“Yes, sir,” said Teasdale.

As the two horses slid to a halt beside Sergeant Teasdale, he nodded toward the broken-down wagon thirty yards ahead. “Flank me, men, and be alert,” Teasdale said. “The lieutenant wants us to assist this man.” He nudged his horse forward, drawing his rifle from his saddle boot. The corporal and the trooper watched him check the rifle then cock it, keeping his thumb across the hammer. “Draw yours as well, men,” Teasdale said quietly. “The lieutenant doesn't think this is anything to be concerned about.”

“Uh-oh,” said the corporal, tossing a quick glance along the ridgeline. Both he and Trooper Frieze immediately snatched up their rifles and cocked them.
“Any time the lieutenant ain't concerned,
I am
,” Burnes commented. “Does this smell like the makings of an ambush to you, Sergeant?”

“Not only smells like one…I think it's going to taste like one any minute,” Teasdale replied. “Stay sharp, Corporal. You too, Frieze.” He nudged his horse closer to the man on the ground beside the wagon.

At twenty feet back, Sergeant Lawrence Teasdale stopped his horse between Burnes and Frieze, then stepped his horse a few feet ahead of them and sat staring down at the wagon driver. “What's the matter, Sergeant?” said the wagon driver, his fingertips blackened by axle grease. “I don't smell that bad, do I? Come on over here. I can use some muscle to shoulder this wheel on.” He nodded past Teasdale toward the gun wagon and the eight mounted soldiers sitting alongside it. “Would that be a Gatling rifle I see under that tarpaulin? If it is, you have little cause to fear anything on foot or hoof out here.”

“Indeed, it is a Gatling gun,” said Teasdale, stepping his horse forward another slow step while looking all along the snaking trail before him. “And it would be a mistake to misinterpret my caution for fear of anything…on foot or hoof.”

“No offense intended, Sergeant,” said the wagoner. He raised his drooping hat, ran his shirtsleeve across his forehead, then lowered the hat back into place.

“None taken, sir,” said Sergeant Teasdale. Yet as his eyes darted quickly to the high ridgeline then fell back upon the wagoner, Teasdale raise his cocked rifle and leveled it. “I saw that, you bloody bastard!” The cocked rifle bucked in Teasdale's hand. The wagoner flew backward as his grease-stained hand raised a pistol from his lap.

“He signaled somebody!” Corporal Burnes shouted back at the short column of men. “Take cover!”

His words were partly drowned out by the pounding of rifle fire from the rocks above them. Looking back, Trooper Frieze saw the lieutenant spring up into his saddle then melt down the horse's side as a bullet punched its way through his forehead. “Holy saints above!” Frieze bellowed. “We're in for it now!”