A Reason to Die Read online

  “The son of a bitch!” Brice blurted. “He runs around under that platform like a damn lizard.”

  “What about Shorty and Junior?” Clementine exclaimed. She went to the ticket window to peek out and saw them lying on the platform.

  “They got hit,” Brice answered, still gasping for breath. “I don’t know, but I think Shorty’s a goner. It looked to me like Junior got hit in the leg.”

  “Ain’t neither one of ’em movin’,” Clementine said.

  “Junior’s most likely playin’ dead to keep from gettin’ shot again,” Brice said. “There ain’t nothin’ we can do for either one of ’em without gettin’ shot.”

  “I’ve gotta get a doctor to take care of Daddy,” Clementine fretted. “We can’t stay bottled up in this damn train station.”

  Afraid she was going to become so frustrated that she might endanger him as well as herself, Brice tried to calm her. “There ain’t nothin’ we can do right now, Aunt Clem. If we set foot outside that door, we’re done for. He’s just hopin’ that’s what we’ll do. Grandpa looks like he ain’t no worse off than he was, so we’ve got time yet.”

  No doubt they were in a serious situation with no apparent way out. Their horses were tied at the rail in front of the general store, and that was too long a run, even if they didn’t have his grandpa to carry. With the old man, it was impossible. They were at a standoff with the lone gunman.

  The lone gunman was of the same opinion. Perley knew he had them treed, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He couldn’t go in after them . . . or could he? He remembered the open trapdoor that Elvis Farrier had used for his escape. Even in the darkness, he could still see the door hanging open. Maybe it was in a closet or someplace where it was not obvious. Otherwise, the outlaws would surely have closed and latched it. He thought about the possibility of surprising them and it seemed a good risk. The downside was the possibility that they might decide to charge out the door while he was in the process of crawling under them. He decided he’d best do something rather than just sitting there, and he’d better do it quick before they took a notion to come out and maybe spray gunfire under the platform.

  * * *

  Soon after Garland Wilson and Stanley Coons had showed up at the door of Brant’s store, they’d been joined by Elvis Farrier. Brant had gladly unlocked his door and let them in, anxious to have extra guns to help defend his store.

  “Whaddaya reckon we oughta do?” Coons asked, standing at the edge of the window, peering out at the railroad depot across the street.

  “I don’t know,” Wilson answered. “We sure as hell didn’t do much when we were over there.”

  “We didn’t have any choice,” Coons was quick to reply. “They were shootin’ that place to pieces. If we’da stayed in that shack, we’d be dead now.”

  “You shouldn’ta shot at ’em when they went to meet that old man on the train,” Wilson said. “We was supposed to wait till they made some kinda move on the train.”

  “I didn’t shoot at ’em,” Coons insisted. “There’s somethin’ wrong with my rifle. It went off accidentally.” He couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had caused the rifle to fire because of his nervousness.

  “Well, if they come back here looking for trouble,” Tom Brant stated, “we’ll give them more than they can handle.” His courage had ramped up considerably with the three extra men now set to help defend any attack on his store.

  “What happened to the other fellow?” Elvis Farrier asked. “What was his name? Purely?”

  “Perley,” Brant corrected him. “Perley Gates, like the ‘Pearly Gates’ up in heaven.”

  “Well, who is he?” Farrier pressed. “What has he got to do with any of this? I don’t believe there was any trouble, except what he started. I think those men just came to meet somebody on the train, and he came in and got us all up in the air about a train robbery.”

  “He’s been in town before”—Brant felt he should defend Perley—“looking for his grandpa.”

  “I remember him now,” Coons said. “He came by the stable that day Tom’s talkin’ about. Perley Gates he said his name was and he was lookin’ for his grandpa by the same name. Peggy said he knew who those five were. Outlaws, she said. They murdered a fellow and his wife at a trading post and left their son an orphan. The little boy is with Perley and identified the woman and four men as the ones that killed his folks. Lottie’s keepin’ the boy at the diner.”

  Farrier considered what they said about the man, but he still had some doubts. “Well, I’ll admit I turned tail and ran when they started shooting up my office, but I never saw Mr. Perley Gates after the shooting started, either.”

  “What about the shooting that happened after all of us ran?” Wilson asked. “They mighta shot him. Maybe we oughta try to go back. We sure as hell didn’t do much of a job of backin’ him up.”

  “You’d be crazy to go back over there,” Brant insisted. “They’re probably waiting for you to try again. The best thing to do is to sit right here and wait for them to come get their horses. Then we can blast them out of their saddles. We pussyfoot around trying to arrest them, we’re gonna end up with some of us dead.”

  “That makes sense to me,” Coons said at once. “They ain’t goin’ nowhere without their horses, and we ain’t got no jail. They’d hang for killin’ that little boy’s folks, anyway.”

  They talked it over briefly before everyone decided that was the thing they should do. It was true there wasn’t any jail as such, but Jim Little Eagle often used an empty smokehouse to hold prisoners. Still the final decision was execution by gunfire when the outlaws came to get their horses.

  * * *

  While the would-be vigilantes were deciding to set up an ambush, Perley was staring up into the opening created by the open trapdoor. Since it was dark above him, he figured he’d guessed right. He was peering up into a closet or some small room. And since no one was above him peering back at him, he rose up enough to stick his head through the opening. Discovering that his head was the only occupant in the small enclosure, he turned all the way around to see all four walls and decided that he was in a records closet of some kind. Shelves filled with various-sized boxes occupied three of the walls and a closed door hung on the other.

  Before going any farther, he paused to ask himself if it was a good idea to climb up into the closet. If he made any noise at all, it might cause a volley of gunshots right through the door, and as small as the room was, he was bound to get hit. In view of that, he deemed it too big a risk, but decided to do it, anyway. Very carefully, he laid his pistol on the floor then pushed up through the opening until he could sit on the floor with his feet dangling in the opening of the trapdoor. He was not as quiet as he’d hoped, however. He heard the old man’s voice on the other side of the door.

  “Clementine, I hear noises behind my head.”

  “Somebody is hidin’ in that closet!” she exclaimed and got up from her father’s side.

  Brice turned at once. “Well, we’ll fix that!” He emptied his gun, firing six shots through the door in a neat circular pattern, waist high.

  Inside the small room, Perley had no chance to duck into the hole again as he heard the slugs pass over his head and embed themselves in the closet shelves behind him. With no time to think, he reached out beside him to a stack of boxes full of records and pushed them over, hoping the paper-filled cartons would give him some protection if the next shots were lower.

  Hearing what sounded like a body hitting the floor, Brice bellowed, “I got him, Aunt Clem! By God, I got him!” He hurried to yank the riddled door open, only to confront Perley sitting on the floor, his Colt .44 aimed squarely at him. In the next instant, he was knocked backward by the bullet in his chest. As he fell to the floor, he pulled the trigger and heard the sound of the hammer striking an empty cylinder.

  Perley quickly took advantage of the confusion caused by the unexpected incident. He scrambled the rest of the way out of the trapdoor
opening and got to his feet, his six-gun ready to fire if Clementine made any move to draw the pistol on her hip. “There’s already too many people killed, Clementine,” he warned, having heard her father call her name. “If you go for that gun, there ain’t gonna be anybody to take care of the old man there.”

  She thought about it for no more than a couple of seconds before raising her hands. “That’s my papa. You shot my papa. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Just somebody who came along after you and your gang murdered that man and his wife at the fork of the Beaver River and Kiowa Creek, then burned his store down.”

  “We ain’t never been there,” she said. “We just rode over this way from Colorado Territory to meet my papa on the train, and you just up and shot him. Now you’ve killed my nephew.” She glanced at Brice, slumped over against the front wall.

  “You made a mistake when you didn’t find their son,” Perley said. “He saw you murder his folks, so I reckon you can save your breath on that story. Now, the best thing for you to do is unbuckle that gun belt and let it drop—with your left hand, if you please.”

  Not willing to see how fast he really was, she did as he commanded and dropped her gun belt.

  “That’s good. I don’t like to shoot women. It makes me melancholy. Now, sit down in that chair.” He pointed to Elvis Farrier’s desk chair.

  She sat down.

  Still holding his gun on her, he looked through Farrier’s desk drawers for something to tie her with. A ball of twine served the purpose. “Put your hands behind the chair.” When she did, he tied them together, winding the twine numerous times to make sure it would hold her.

  With the surly woman secured, he checked on Brice’s condition, since he had shown no sign of life and no sound of suffering. He found that Brice was not playing possum. Perley’s chest shot had hit him in the heart.

  “Sorry about your nephew here,” he said. “I didn’t have time to take dead aim.”

  “You knew he emptied his gun through that door,” she protested.

  “That’s a fact, but I didn’t know if he had another one and was tryin’ to shoot it.” Next, Perley went to stand over the old man lying on the floor with a seat cushion under his head for a pillow. “How bad are you hurt, old-timer?”

  He was gazing up, unblinking. “Kiss my ass.”

  “Not that bad then, I reckon. I’ll just let you lay there for a little bit longer.” Perley had not forgotten about the two men outside on the platform. One of them was seriously wounded, if not dead, but he had only shot the other one in the leg. It had not critically hampered him, evidently, for when Perley looked out the ticket window, the man was gone. Damn. if my posse hadn’t fled the scene, they might have stopped him. Nothing I can do about that now.

  Back to the woman then, he said, “When I see the telegraph operator again, I’ll have him wire Fort Smith to send somebody to pick you up. Since I’m just passin’ through here, I’ll have to let some of the townspeople put you somewhere to wait for a deputy to come get you. And we’ll see if there’s somebody to take a look at your papa.” Thinking about the gunman who had disappeared, he went back to the closet, closed the trapdoor, and latched it.

  When he walked back into the room, Clementine said, “You ain’t got no right to hold my father. He didn’t do nothin’ but get off the train. He ain’t wanted for nothin’. He did his time in prison up in Kansas. He was just comin’ home, and you shot him”

  “Like I said, I didn’t shoot your father and I don’t know who did. I expect it was a stray shot that hit him. We didn’t have any reason to shoot him. But maybe you’re right. We don’t have any right to hold him, so I reckon he’s free to go, if he can make it without help. We’ll see if anybody in town can do some doctorin’, and after he’s fixed up, why, hell, he’s free as a bird.”

  “I’ll need to take care of him,” Clementine implored. “Why are you arrestin’ me, anyway? The only reason I’m in this fix is because I came to meet Papa. I ain’t got anything to do with whatever my nephew and his friends have been up to.”

  The sudden change in her attitude might have had a better chance of fooling him, had not Link witnessed her role in the slaying of his parents. Perley didn’t bother to remind her of that. He told her that he was not arresting her, but was simply turning her over to the town of Atoka to charge her as they saw fit. “I’m a stranger here, myself. I’m just tryin’ to see some justice for what your gang did to a nine-year-old boy’s parents. We’re gonna walk outta here now and go across the street where you left your horses. I’m guessin’ that’s where some of the posse is waitin’. You can tell them your story. Maybe they’ll set you free to take your papa home.”

  After he picked up all the weapons, he rolled her chair over to the door before drawing his skinning knife and cutting her bonds. “Thought I’d best tell you, if you take a notion to run, I won’t kill you, but I’ll shoot you in the leg to slow you down.” He glanced back at the old man on the floor. “You just rest easy. I’ll get somebody to come help you.”

  “You go to hell,” the old man called after him.

  “He’s got a kinda gentle nature, don’t he?” Perley said to Clementine. “Must run in the family.” He wasn’t worried about leaving the old man alone, figuring that he was hurt too bad to run as well as the fact that he wasn’t guilty of anything beyond fathering some rotten offspring.

  * * *

  “Well, I’ll be. Look comin’ yonder,” Garland Wilson exclaimed.

  The others went to the window to see.

  “There’s your Perley Gates. He ain’t dead after all.”

  They watched for a few moments longer to see if anyone else was behind him, not sure at first if he was being marched out by one of the outlaws.

  Realizing no one was behind Perley, Stanley Coons stated the obvious. “That’s just the woman. What happened to the rest of ’em?”

  Emboldened to leave the protection of the store, the four vigilantes hurried out to meet Perley before he crossed the street.

  “We were gettin’ ready to come look for you,” Coons lied.

  “What happened to the rest of ’em?” Garland Wilson asked. “It got too hot for me and Stanley to stay in that shack.”

  Perley told his sullen prisoner to stop and his newly motivated posse gathered around them. “This is Aunt Clementine. I don’t know her last name. There’s dead and wounded back there that’ll need some help. One was her nephew. Her pa’s lyin’ in your office, Elvis. He got shot in the side when he got off the train. I don’t know if they were plannin’ on robbin’ the train or not, but he didn’t have anything to do with murderin’ Link Drew’s parents. I’m turnin’ Aunt Clementine and her father over to you to do with as you see fit. I’ve already spent more time here than I intended to. I just wanted to stop long enough to get Link a sweater and eat some supper. I’ve got a ways to ride before I’ll be across the Red to Texas.”

  “We can take control of the situation from here,” Tom Brant blustered. “We damn-sure appreciate your help with this trouble, don’t we, fellows?”

  They all nodded vigorously.

  “I’ll lock Aunt Clementine up in my supply shed till Jim Little Eagle gets back from Muskogee,” Wilson volunteered. “Then she can stay in his hoosegow till a deputy comes for her.” He drew his pistol and leveled it at her. “Come on, darlin’. I’ll make you nice and comfortable.”

  Beyond a defiant scowl, she made no effort to resist as he marched her toward his shop.

  Now that Clementine was off his hands, Perley was most anxious to see how Link was doing. He returned to the depot with them only because his rifle was lying on the ground beneath Elvis’s trapdoor. He retrieved it while they surveyed the damage. He was glad to see Tom Brant taking the leadership role as he directed Elvis and Stanley as to what should be done.

  “There was one more that I don’t see here,” Brant said to Perley. “The big fellow, where is he? The woman called him Junior.”

  “T
hat I don’t know,” Perley had to admit. “I put a bullet in him, but he must have run while I was under the platform.”

  That news was disappointing. “Too bad we didn’t get every one of them,” Brant said, “but we sure as hell stopped any mischief they had in mind for our town.”

  “Yeah, we sure did,” Coons said sarcastically.

  * * *

  Eva Brant stood at the window and watched the prisoner exchange in the street until Wilson marched the woman away and the others went back to the depot. Relieved that it had all ended with none of the townsfolk harmed, she turned to go back to the counter, only to stop dead still, her heart seeming to stop for one horrible moment.

  “You make a sound and I’ll rip your head off,” Junior Grissom threatened. Standing in the doorway to the back room with his trouser leg dripping blood, he seemed to fill up the entire door frame. “Come over here,” he ordered, and when she was too frightened to move, he threatened again. “I ain’t got time to fool with you, woman. If you wanna live, you’d best do what I tell you.”

  Terrified, she forced herself to move to the end of the counter where he’d pointed. It registered dimly in her brain that he was holding a bedsheet that he had picked up in the back room. Then while she watched, horrified, he unbuckled his belt and let his trousers fall to his boot tops.

  He ripped the sheet in half and handed one half to her. “Here, wrap this around my leg,” he said, pointing to the bloody patch in his underwear.

  When she had tied the sheet firmly, he pulled his pants up, forcing them over the swath of bandage. Then, glancing out the window to make sure the men were still in the train station, he ordered her to fill a sack with dried apples and beef jerky. When she had done that, he took the remaining half of the sheet and used it to tie her hands behind her back. There wasn’t enough left to reach her ankles, so he cut a long length of hemp cord from a spool on the counter and used that to tie her feet together. To make sure no one could hear her shout an alarm after he left, he picked her up and carried her into the back room, where he left her wide-eyed with fright.