An Unfair Fight with a Known Quantity

"If he run with Sem Ramis then I should know him," I said, knowing there were only two of Ramis's Raiders still alive. I looked at the tintype. She was pretty, staring without much smile at the camera in that pose so many people assumed at direction of the photographer. There was a look in her eye, as if to see irony in the whole situation of photograph and wedding and life. The man beside her was just as young, probably just a little young for the war. It was ironic: he was saved from the war to be beaten unconscious at his own wedding.

"You tracked some of them down during the war, didn't you?" the guy said, as I unfolded the paper. I saw Bart and started. I didn't answer him. I considered.

"Calls hisself Bart?" I responded finally.

"Yeah. Maybe 30, black hair, over six foot. Not fat. Nick out of his right ear," the guy said. "HIS right. If his hair's long it might cover it."

I looked at the man. "29. Bart's 29, six foot one. I'll do it."

The man was silent, satisfied at the easy deal. I studied the drawing and the tintype. It was quiet between us.

"You know him? Bart?" he asked.

"I should apologize to you, sir," I said, staring at the wanted poster.

"Oh?" he responded.

"Yeah, if I'd had better aim in the fall of '64 none of this woulda happened,"

It took him a second to realize what I was saying. "Find her. Kill him," he said.

"I'll bring her back if she's alive and wants to return."

*Part 3: Abandoning Hope

I asked around over the next few months. Travelling with the prettiest girl in these parts got him some notice even when he didn't kill anyone. But he did kill, and he never stopped robbing. I just followed the trail of victims until I came to Ft. Worth.

I knew Bart. He and I shared the same bed growing up. He was really Holt Halder, from Limbo, Missouri. His ma was my ma, too. She died in '63 of the shame of his heroic service to the south, heroics so embarrassing she was not sorry to pass.

Ramis was the perfect Reb leader for Holt: he let his men carry on as they would as long as they did what he asked them otherwise. Two girls in our hometown claimed Holt raped them on the same night when Ramis and his crowd come through in '62, then one more in '64 (but they was really runnin', then, because we was after them and in the town that same night). They was more profligates than soldiers.

Holt only ever wanted two things: fucking and as little work as possible. During the war, he added a third: he discovered he loved killing. I think he depraved as the years passed, but I just saw the results after '61. I never talked to him again. He joined up when Ramis talked to him right after Fort Sumter.

Carson Halder, that's me. The war on the western border was more personal, I think. We knew people on the other side, sometimes neighbors or brothers as we. That made it even worser, and meaner. I knew Holt was no good, just as our ma did. I killed most of his men, over the war. He knew I knew how to shoot a long shot. He knew it was me.

I joined up on the other side; I didn't hold with no slavery. I tried to kill him twice but from long range. Nicked his ear, once when he turned his head as I fired. I didn't miss many, and it was a thousand yards, but so small a miss was tragic for some good people over the next years.

We was on them from the spring of 64 to Watie's surrender; it was no longer Ramis and the other famous outlaws, just a remnant, surviving splinter group we were hounding, but we were whittling them down. My splinter group wore blue against Holt's in whatever clothes they could steal. We'd catch up, see them from a distance, I'd line up the Whit, identify the target usually by name, and let fly with a round from so far away they couldn't see us. It was brutal, some would say cowardly. We studied them, wrote files on them. The rules ended when the irregularity became rapes and personal grudges fulfilled. Honor is a long term moral, I decided. Short term was negotiable.

We didn't fuck with no prisoners, neither, by '64. No one was gonna give up unless it was a trick or a trap. A prisoner was a source of information and then would die unnaturally. We practiced irregular warfare at its most worst. I'm already resigned to hell because I ain't sorry. I couldn't carry no prisoners, and there was not enough of us to send some back. Might get our escort killed. No. I'm going to hell, but they'd've done it to us. They did, at least twice. Unlike them, we wanted the whole business over.

"Bart" indeed. When I holed Randall Johnson in April '65 on the horse next to my brother from 890 yards with my Whitworth, Holt held up his middle finger. He knew it was me, and he knew I could see him in the scope. He skedaddled then, knowing each shot took me a might to prepare. I hadn't seen him since that day in April of '65. Holt Halder and one other escaped. Last of a dying breed: the wanton killer. He had to die, or he would keep on, I thought. Watie surrendered in June, only those two on the loose.

He became Bart, and I didn't know it until a grieving father showed me his wanted poster.

In Ft. Worth those days, you didn't hold up a wanted poster and expect help. I was lucky. Someone, perhaps the only man there I might trust, recognized my description of the girl.

"What you doin' hereabouts? You a carpetbagger?" he asked me.

"Nah. Looking for a girl, with a guy with a nicked ear."

He considered so long I wondered if he'd given up on it. I was glad he hadn't. He was about his work. He had lots to consider besides giving me my lead. Information mongering could be unhealthy. He finally spoke up.

"Saw her. With him. Found him a bit for his horse," the man said.

"This girl?" I asked, showing the tintype.

He squinted at it for a few seconds. "Yeah, but not that guy," the blacksmith nodded. "With a guy missing part of an ear." That didn't mean much in 1867 Texas; most men over 20 were missin' somethin' from war or work accidents. The smithy was missing a little finger on his left hand. Probably didn't need it much, anyway.

I liked blacksmiths, especially black blacksmiths making a life in Reconstruction Texas. Any black man doing skill work must be good at the job and not charge what it's worth.

I nodded back. "She look mad, angry? He treat her rough?" I asked.

"Nah. I thought they was married," he said, bellowing air into his forge. My horse needed a shoe. "She had a filthy mouth. I heard fuck and shit from her talking to him."

I raised my eyebrow. He noticed that it was news to me.

"He had his hand on her bum while he talked to me, didn't know I could tell. She was smilin' like it was their secret, like she liked it. I thought they'd fuck right here if I turned to work," he said, shaking his head, cooling a shoe in water and sending steam up. "Indecent."

"Which way do you think they went?" I asked.

"He mentioned Second Circle, but I didn't hear no more of the conversation."

I nodded and took my time to talk. "I'm headed east, other way," I lied, giving him an out, "Dallas, Nacogdoches, Shreveport."

"Good travel. I'll have her shoed soon," he said, dismissing me.

I went to the nearest saloon, carrying my Whit with me in its scabbard. I never leave it; it's worth a sight. I leant it against the bar; I wore my heavy Navy revolver. A woman looked down at me from the stairs above, she looked nice for a whore, but I shook my head. I had bourbon, first I'd had since I got to Texas. It cut the crud in the back of my throat.

I looked in the mirror behind the bar and noticed a big, young, blonde man eyeing me, and then approaching. He stopped a step or two away. I finished the last drop in the glass.

I am not a big man. I am, if anything, slight. I am perhaps five foot six, maybe 150 pounds after a big meal. For some reason, bullies think I'm a victim.

"You," the big guy said. He was over six foot, maybe 210 pounds, but a little paunchy. "YOU!" he said again, more forcefully, looking my reflection in the eye. I turned and faced him, inclined back against the bar but arms free. I didn't want to draw. He was too close, the gun was too heavy, and I might be too slow. I glanced down and noticed he had no pistol belt. Good.

"Yes, sir?" I asked. "Can I buy you a drink?" I sometimes offered, hoping to defuse the anger, but many bullies see it as a sign of fear. It is, but not the kind of fear they could use to advantage.

"You a carpetbagger? Another Yankee?" he demanded.

"No. I'm a Yankee, but not another one," I replied, smiling, wondering if it made any sense. Sometimes I said things I didn't know the meaning of.

Someone at one of the tables laughed at it, but I just watched my new acquaintance.

He must have thought he was being sassed because he swung his big right fist in a roundabout that would have landed in an hour or so if I'd had time to wait. Instead, I caught it with my left hand and stopped it. I held his fist a foot from my left ear. I clung to it a moment as he tried to pull it away, and after that I let it go.

"The offer for the drink still stands, mister," I said.

He just stared at me, obviously surprised at my strength. They always think a little guy can't be strong. Actually, he'd almost succeeded in boxing that ear. But carrying a long rifle like a Whitworth was like lifting weights, and I did that some, too. It helped steady the weapon to be strong enough.

"Well," he said, having considered the situation, "anytime a Yankee offers to buy me a drink, I think I'll take him up on it." The other customers were obviously relieved, I signalled the barkeep, and the bully and I were poured drinks.

I smiled at the keep, who winked. I sipped the second drink for a few minutes, my bully drinking his with a gulp. I nodded to the keep, the other patrons, and the whore up above and walked out, rifle in hand.

I collected my horse a bit later and headed southwest. It took me some days.

Second Circle was where the grassland and the desert mixed. The surrounding countryside was sand, scrub bushes, some grassy plains, and intermittent creeks with a small amount of water this early in spring. The town was not much. I found the general store and went in to ask about Holt and Abigail.

Second Circle, Texas had no reason for existence until Clive Dixon built the Lusty Man Whorehouse, a saloon (attached), a general store (attached), and no sheriff (attached). Using lumber carted in from the east, the town had added an inn, a blacksmithy, another saloon (also owned by Dixon) and now was a favored stop on one of the cattle trails. It grew, if you counted more or less healthy whores, who were often desperate war widows with brats.

I went in the general store looking for jerky and maybe some soap. I needed a new shirt, as my other shirt was now a dishtowel.

I'd searched for five months through Indian Territory, across the Texas panhandle, through northeast Texas. I forded the Red, the Arkansas, and some bitching river called the Sticks ten feet wide and bottomless that almost killed me and my horse. It was as if we'd crossed over some invisible line. I found soap, jerky, and a coarse shirt in a few minutes. I also found Abigail. The kidnap victim walked into the general store alone, pretty, even clean, and acting like she was a regular person.

She walked in with a list of things to get. I walked behind some shelves and averted my eyes, looking at canned goods and sacks of flour, sugar, and feed. I wandered around, replacing the shirt and soap and jerky as I could without much notice. There's not much family resemblance 'tween me and my brother, but there is some. He stood over six foot tall though.

"We may look a little alike, little brother, but I got the big dick," he'd always claim and laugh. "Don't you forget that!" Obviously, I didn't.

Abigail ran down her errand. "If this sad store has 'em, I need flour, some real coffee, some..." she called out several items. The clerk ran about measuring the right amounts, trying to please the beautiful woman before him. I wondered if thieving and murder were so lucrative that they could buy what they needed as if they had a real job like whoring or blacksmithing. The kidnap story seemed to have a hole in it. I thought back to the grieving father's statement about her wildness and his suspicion she was perhaps in league with Bart.

She had bruises around her wrists like ropeburn, so I suspected she was tied up at some recent point, but that was all. I'd heard of victims cowed so much they didn't escape when they could, who would be tied up for certain times but practically free at others. I was skeptical. I didn't see anything like fear in her manner. I heard profanity, asking for some "fuckin' sugar" and "other shit," as if she had gotten over on the world, like an unworthy person born into wealth. In Second Circle profanity was the vernacular, I figured. The clerk didn't think her language odd.

She wore a long riding skirt, boots, a hat, cotton shirt and vest. It was spring and not too hot yet, and her outfit was startling because she was so pretty. Holt never saw a pretty girl he wouldn't want. I remembered Pa saying, that boy is going to have a hundred kids by 50 women. Abigail was redhaired and thin, like the one girl he raped in our hometown and disappointing Ma. I wondered if Holt finally found that girl he always wanted, who wanted sex every which way he did, as much as he did, and was willing to put up with him.

Probably, until her teeth rotted, anyway. I doubted he had a commitment beyond a good time.

She seemed to have no idea she might be watched. I paid no attention but determined to follow. Careful not to meet her gaze, I made my way out when her back was turned. I unhitched my horse and walked her around the building into an alley, where I pretended to adjust her saddle. I tied the Whit on.

The young clerk carried her items out and tied them on a mule she had beside her horse. I checked Karen's shoe and noticed the smith had secured it by a type nail I'd never seen. Abigail mounted her horse, held the reins of the mule, and turned toward the western road. She was quickly out of town, and I stopped by the last building (not a church, but otherwise I ain't sure what it was). It was wide open, scrubby country. I followed from a great distance, using the scope from my rifle, but I was a good mile or so behind. She disappeared down a draw into a creek bottom with puddles but no flowing water. I found her from the flatland above, and watched from that distance.

She made her way to a small abode dug into the other side of the slope, above the first level of flood plain. There was a door that led into the side of the slope. It had several windows facing the river, but no porch; it was a wood facing on a cellar or dugout that would get lots of light from the evening sun, perhaps an early dugout now again used as a house. She put the horse with others in a corral that had a water trough, after she removed the saddle and blanket.

I dismounted and walked Karen away from the track, around some rocks and down into a draw. I tied her up and left the rifle in its sleeve, hoping no one would come by from that direction. I brought her water by following that draw down to the water, where no one was likely to see me, and scooping it up with a bladder bucket I took off a dead Indian during the war.

I watched then from a mile away. There were a few scrawny trees and some sparse grass, but mostly just dust and sand. I lay and watched and burned with the sun, nothing new. As the afternoon reached its hottest, another man on a horse arrived. I watched him, carefully using the scope to avoid glints. I knew him; Ansel Trillinger from Texas, the other survivor of Holt's splinter band. It was probably his place, I thought. There were probably three in the house.

There were several horses in the little corral, and the mule tied to the corner of the house, where I saw a little barrel with water.

I crawled, crawled, waded, and crawled more. I approached the house from the south, which had no window. About a hundred yards away, I heard Abigail crying out, yelling, I thought perhaps in pain. It kept up some time, and I decided it was not pain. I spied the door; it looked like the latch was shot off, but the door was shut, probably jammed or stopped with somethin' on the inside. I crept around the corner to a window. Muddy, I looked in. The evening sun lit the two rooms of the dugout.

Abigail was naked on a bed, her arms up and tied by hemp to an eyebolt in the wall above Holt's head. Holt was also naked and was behind her, holding her by her breasts, which he was mauling roughly. Her legs were free, spread as wide and pretty as any man would want. Ansel was prodigiously naked from the waist down, excited, crawling up on the bed between her legs.

"Give me that big thing, fucker, poke me, I want you in me! Do it, Ans!" she demanded, looking at the big guy coming at her. He was eager too, not bothering with his shirt, and as soon as he could he pressed his big cock into her.

"Yes!" she cried out, as Holt squeezed and Ansel slid into her.

"You sure like a big one between the legs, don't you, bitch?" Ansel said.

Abigail was throwing her head from side to side. "Yes, I do, ram it into me, Ans, sqeeze my tits, Holt. Fuck..." and on she went. She could put words to sex like no woman I ever knew. It went on for an impressive amount of time.

It was getting onto dusk, now, and as the light faded I watched Abigail plead for Holt to put his cock in her too; I wasn't sure if she meant in her ass or to squeeze his cock into her vagina with Ansel's. Instead he swivelled around from under her and put it in her mouth. Both guys were coming soon, Holt in her mouth and Ansel up her cunt, amid shrieking and orgasm on her part.

Suddenly a silence overwhelmed them. Holt idly untied her wrists until she was able to remove the rope. They lay on the bed, filling it completely, exhausted and wet with perspiration and her and them.

"Runnin' off with you was the best decision I ever made," Abigail said. Holt sucked on her tit, at that, which seemed to be a comforting and familiar thing for them, and I wondered if the many bruises on them hurt. She lightly played with Ansel's soft cock while he took a swig from a bottle of whisky. I saw an empty one in a corner, but the shadows were winning and it was hard to make out much more.

Whisky, a bottle mostly full at dusk.

Where were their guns? I saw a belt and holstered pistol on top of some clothes in a corner, not far but not in reach, a Sharps' rifle leaning against a wall away from reach. Maybe one under the bed would be a problem, but what were the odds one would be there? No telling if there were more. A sneak in attack might get all three. It would be risky unless I completely surprised them.

I could just go for Holt. He was my target. Sit up in a perch and wait for him, take him out from a thousand yards, likely. But I knew Ans was no stranger to rape or murder, and even the girl was involved. She could have just run off with Holt; no one would have been hurt, but they wanted the booty.

I ducked down and crawled, waded, and crawled back to my perch. I took off my pants, putting on the only dry change I had and keeping the shirt on until it dried from body heat. I fed Karen and took the saddle and blanket off her, and watched the cabin.

It was a mile. For a good one shot, I needed to be within a thousand yards or so, and unless they lined up perfectly I'd only get one. Perfect long shots protect the shooter. Some people cry foul at it, as if it is cowardly. After all, the targets don't have a chance. But I ascribed to another sentiment, as I explained. I don't shoot good people.

I decided to use the pistol, close in, and in this case the weapon and circumstances determined the plan. I cleaned it. I wasn't a fast draw with the big navy Colt, and it only had five cylinders, but they would be enough if the whisky and dissipation were any indication. The plan depended on getting in the house before they could act. I only fight when I expect to win, and when I think the other guy should lose. There have been many good lawmen killed by a bad guy in a fair fight. This fight would not be fair. They were drunk and self-satisfied and unsuspecting, asleep, and used to being the greatest evil in attendance.