Winchester 1886 (16 page)

“Ya oughten not to talk t' me like that, McNally.” Tyron practically pouted. “We's pards. Been pards for quite a spell now.”

“I'm gettin' a mind to dissolve this 'ere partnership.”

Tyron swung down from the saddle, his boots crunching the snow. “That there rifle's changed ya, McNally.”

“Jus' fetch that wolf. Ain't as cold as it's been. Might be able to skin 'im.”

Drawing the curve-bladed knife from his sheath, Tyron smiled a broken-teeth grin. “Might not be jus' a wolf I skin this day.”

McNally laughed, keeping the rifle trained on his partner. “Skinnin' knife ag'in' this 'ere Winchester. Who ya reckon'd win that fight?”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX

 

He had a Winchester '86 in .45-70 caliber, a Colt revolver that fired .44-40s, $128.32 left, and a job.

Not much of a job, especially for a deputy U.S. marshal, but working in the mines got him three squares to eat, a bunk to sleep in, and the room he rented at the hotel was warm. Winter had been cold, hard, and miserable.

Jimmy Mann had found the trail of Danny Waco in Chadron, Nebraska. Seems that sometime in November, four men had robbed the bank there of $1,320 in script.

“Four men?” Jimmy had asked the county sheriff. “Not two?”

“I think the cashier knows how to count,” the sheriff had said, and Jimmy had to laugh at that one.

“Two wore masks. Grain sacks over their head. Figured them to be local boys. The other two didn't care who saw them. Slim fellow with crazy eyes, and a tall hombre with a Smith & Wesson.”

“That would be Danny Waco and Gil Millican.”

The lawman had shrugged. “Possible. They didn't introduce themselves. We lit out after them, but they crossed into the Pine Ridge Reservation, and that was as far as my badge carries me.” He had leaned over to spit tobacco juice into a spittoon. “Maybe the Sioux scalped them.”

No such luck. Jimmy had crossed the White River and moved into South Dakota, into the Black Hills, warming himself and his bones in Hot Springs, then up to Hill City. He had seriously considered riding to Sturgis to see if he might run into Shirley Sweet, but he thought that he was too close to catching up with Danny Waco. Knowing Waco, Jimmy figured the outlaw would have gone to Deadwood.

If he had, he wasn't there anymore. No one remembered seeing him, but people in Deadwood had short memories. Waco might have been here, probably had, but Deadwood wasn't as wild as it had been back in the '70s when Jack McCall had sent Wild Bill Hickok to his Maker or even the'80s. Men and women in mining towns had never been overtly friendly to lawmen, especially deputy marshals practically a thousand miles out of their jurisdiction.

Besides, nobody wanted to get on Danny Waco's bad side, if in case he did show up in Deadwood.

So where would Waco be? Belle Fourche? Even farther north into one of the ranching towns in North Dakota? Or Canada? Montana, maybe? Miles City or points east? And were those two local boys he had pulled in to rob the Chadron bank still with him? Those were all questions Jimmy had asked himself.

He had considered heading out for the cattle town of Belle Fourche, but then the first blizzard hit. Deadwood, nestled in the Black Hills, was pretty much protected from the rough winters that could turn the Northern Plains of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana into a white, freezing hell. Maybe Danny Waco would get caught in a snowstorm in Montana and freeze to death.

Jimmy hoped not. He wanted to be the one that ended Waco's life.

So Jimmy decided to wait out the winter in Deadwood. Earn some money. He had hated accepting that handout from Shirley. But not the rifle. He loved the Winchester '86, once he managed to push those lousy memories out of his mind, and it shot true. His nephew would love handling the weapon. Yet taking money from a woman galled him. But he needed cash.

So he earned it. Twelve hours a day in a pit. He didn't drink. Didn't gamble. Hardly ate. The work was grueling, but Jimmy liked it. He added muscle. Stamina. Even resolve. And his wounded hands got tougher, stronger. Yeah, he would be ready for Danny Waco come spring.

Few of the miners talked to him, and he never sought out conversation. He retired to his room with newspapers, scanning the print for any mention of the outlaw or any murder, bank robbery, train robbery, anything.

Nothing showed up . . . but it was winter. Likely Waco had been forced to hole up somewhere, too.

Spring would come. Jimmy Mann knew that. Spring would come, and he'd pick up Waco's trail. That had always been easy.

He just followed the dead men.

 

 

 

They ate wolf steaks, fried up in wolf grease. Wolf stew, seasoned with wolf grease. McNally always called it “an acquired taste,” but it didn't cost much. Of course, they knew to eat only the wolves they had caught in traps, or those McNally shot with the .50-caliber Winchester, not the ones they managed to get with strychnine.

They were careful about the poison. Didn't want anyone with that big ranch to learn they were using the stuff, and when they found a dead coyote or dog or anything by one of the carcasses they'd stuffed with strychnine, they always carted it back to camp and burned it in the fire. The ground remained frozen too hard to bury anything, and, well, neither McNally nor Tyron really cared much for digging.

“I gots an idea-er, McNally,” Tyron said one bitterly frigid night in February.

“Yeah?” McNally alternated between cleaning the Winchester and sipping the jug of whiskey they'd traded a wolf tail for from some passing colored boy that had just mustered out of the Army.

“Well, we cut offen that wolf tail for that jug ya's a-hoggin' . . .”

McNally cursed and tossed the jug to his pard.

After downing a couple swallows, Tyron smacked his lips—though the hooch was awful—and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat “Well, I was thinkin' that maybe we could cut offen the tails of a few more. Tell that segundo at that big ol' ranch that that wolf, well, she musta jus' gnawed it off or somethin' like that. He gots the skin an' all, an' I'd 'spect he'd think, that iffen that wasn't the case, iffen we was a-lyin' t' him, well, all we'd get was a half a penny. Ain't no skin offen his nose.”

Again, McNally cursed. He set his rifle on the folding desk they'd erected in the tent.

“Fer a half-penny?” He shook his head. “Toss me that jug.”

Before he obeyed, Tyron took another long pull on the forty-rod.

As McNally drank, Tyron said, “No, it ain't fer jus' half a penny. See, what we does is we takes that tail down south.” He shivered. “An' sooner the better iffen ya was to asks me. Didn't think it'd get this blasted cold up here. But say we take that wolf tail down to Ogallala or Dodge City or someplace likes that. Where they still gots magistrates payin' bounties on wolves. We show 'em that tail, and they ain't that particular. So we get whatever they's payin' bounties.”

The jug came to rest on the table near the rifle. McNally wiped the snot from his nose, mustache, and beard. “An' what happens if they don't pay us no bounty?”

With a shrug, Tyron said, “Then they'd pay us the half-a-cent fer the tail. Don't ya reckon?”

McNally replied with a grunt and reached for the jug once more.

“Half a cent more'n we'd make if we taken the whole skin to that Ferdig gent at the Circle-somethin' outfit we's a-workin' fer.”

“Half a cent,” McNally said in disgust.

“Adds up,” Tyron told him.

“You think that Ferdig's a fool? How many wolves do ya think 'd gnaw off their own tails?”

“It ain't like we'd tear offen all 'em tails. Just a few. Got us, what, thirty-forty wolves already. And ten-twelve coyot's we'll pass offen as wolves. Plus 'em three big dogs ya p'isoned.”

“I ain't p'isoned 'em dogs. Ya done it!”

“'Cause ya tol' me t' do it.”

“Didn't say p'ison no dog.”

“Well, I didn't tell that dog to eat that bad meat. None of 'em dogs.”

“Well, they's deader 'n dirt, sure-nuff.”

“Yeah, an' 'twas yer idea-er to pass 'em off as wolves.”

“Bes' hope the owners don't come a-lookin' fer 'em.”

“Mangy as 'em curs was, they was strays is all.”

“Well . . .” McNally had another drink.

“'Spect we'll have us a hunnert or more by spring. Ya taken two-dozen tails. That's . . . what?”

It took some studying. Might buy them two draught beers . . . if all they got down south was half a penny. But if they sold those tails for a full bounty, well, that would add up a mite. Of course, McNally would never let Tyron know that idea he'd come up with wasn't such a bad one after all. Might work.

“Can ya pass that jug ag'in, McNally?”

With another curse, McNally sent the jug sailing. He knew he had thrown it too hard, and too high, and when it sailed through Tyron's fingers, and fell on the hard ground, spilling out at least a tumbler's full of rotgut, McNally leaped from his chair.

The fight was on.

“Ya fool!” McNally yelled. “Ya wasted good whiskey.” He kicked his pard in the ribs, grabbed his hair, and slammed his head down onto the hard earth. “Idiot.”

He rolled Tyron over, slapped his face, then punched him hard. Once. Twice. Three times.

Tyron groaned.

“Ya ain't good fer nothin'.” McNally grabbed the beaten fool by the neck and bottom of his coat. He heaved Tyron through the entrance to the tent, hearing him crash into the snowdrift, moan, and sob. He found the hat that had been knocked off his pard's head and threw it out into the cold, too.

“Ya ain't good fer nothin'. That's how God cusses me. Gives me a fool for a pard. All ya knows how to do is p'ison dogs.”

When he stormed back to the desk, picking up the jug, and taking a sip, he knew he had overreacted, knew he should apologize. He told himself that it wasn't Tyron's fault that he was a moron, an incompetent fool. He blamed that outburst on his lousy luck. Should apologize. He knew that. He also knew he couldn't do it. Even an hour later, after Tyron had recovered enough to step back inside the tent, sniffling, his face covered with frozen blood, McNally couldn't do it.

They didn't speak that night, but McNally did toss him the jug. To him, that was as good as an apology. Of course, there wasn't but two or three swallows left, and most of that was McNally's backwash.

For two more days, they didn't speak. But then they came across five poisoned wolves, killed three others they had found in their traps, and McNally even shot one dead at three hundred yards.

He said that was cause for celebrating, and Tyron agreed to cook a supper of wolf steaks while McNally took a coyote pelt they figured they could pass off as a wolf's to the guy who operated a hog ranch three miles south of town. He returned with a bottle of awful, but cheap, liquor.

So they ate wolf steak fried up in wolf grease, bitter as gall, tasting like dead rats and rotting ravens, and washed it down with liquor that tasted even worse. They laughed anyway, thinking about all that money those pelts and tails would bring, how they would have enough cash to get them back to Texas and maybe even do some real drinking.

They felt good . . . until McNally gripped his belly, slipped out of his chair onto the cold ground, and groaned.

“I am . . . sick . . . as a . . . dog.” His face paled. He had to use his right hand and arm to keep himself sitting up. “Bad . . . likker.”

Tyron started to come to him, started to say something, then laughed, and grabbed the bottle of forty-rod. He drank, wiped his mouth, and shook his head. “Ain't nothin' wrong with this stuff. I reckons I fed ya a steak from one of 'em wolves that got holt of yer strychnine.” Another pull from the bottle. “Accidental, o' course.” He slapped his thigh and howled in delight.

“Ya p'isoned me.” McNally shook his head. He couldn't believe a simpleton like Tyron could have gotten the better of him. He thought about how those wolves had suffered before they died. Thought about how long it would take the poison to kill him.

“I reckons I'll be a-shootin' that big ol' rifle of yourn. Wonder how much yer pelt'll bring me come spring.” Tyron kept laughing and drinking until McNally pushed himself up and reached for the Winchester '86 that was leaning against the table.

Seeing that, plus the rage in McNally's eyes, Tyron dropped the bottle and stepped forward. “Wait a minute, pard, I's just a-teasin' ya . . .” He realized then that he was too late.

The table overturned, and McNally was levering the rifle, bracing it against his roiling stomach. Tyron screamed, and reached for his skinning knife. Gripped it, charged.

The rifle roared at point-blank range, spinning Tyron around. He landed on his knees, right beside McNally, who had to brace the gun against the hard ground, trying to work the lever again.

Tyron stared at the bloody mess that was his shirt and had been his stomach. “Ya kilt me. I was jus' fun—” Rage filled his eyes, and he realized he still held that curved Green River skinning knife . . . and McNally was vomiting . . . and the Winchester was falling to the ground.

McNally looked up. “Ya son of a—” He never finished the curse.

Tyron had just enough strength, just enough hatred, just enough life in him to bring up his arm, and slash his partner's throat with the knife.

McNally fell first. Then Tyron dropped on top of his partner.

The Winchester rifle lay beside them.

Outside, somewhere in the extreme cold, wolves, coyotes, and perhaps a few feral dogs howled.