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Sheriff Brucker was having a fitful night trying
to sleep, thinking about the bloodthirsty Thomas Brothers gang. The man whom
he locked up was calling himself Wainwright, but, thanks to a distinctive
tattoo, Brucker suspected that was a lie. The prisoner had to be one of the
Thomases.
Brucker sent Deputy Anaya away to Tucson to get
the marshal, and left Deputy Childs behind at the jail to guard the place.
In the morning, Childs was found bound and
gagged. That could only mean Brucker was right and the whole Thomas Brothers
gang on the loose once again.
Episode 15
Somebody had to show the Thomas brothers the way to
the Brucker house. That someone was Dan Calpert, who'd been locked up for
nonpayment of debts to MacMillian's Dry Goods.
Calpert liked the sheriff. Brucker offered the
serious and quiet former cowhand a job as deputy, a proposition Calpert
seriously mulled. Still, he didn't want to forego the chance of making a big
strike. With those proceeds, he figured on paying back the bills he owed to
MacMillian's and other merchants in town. Being a deputy was hard,
occasionally dangerous work in a town like Contention City. Calpert was
interested in keeping his hide bullet free.
Sheriff Brucker and the Contention City businesses
needed employees. One way of getting them was to lock up a few people for
getting behind on their bills and threaten to lock up many more. The
businesses, and the sheriff, encouraged people to apply their efforts toward
holding regular jobs. The merchants didn't want to give up on granting credit
because there was too much money to be made in that direction. It was a cold
fact of economics that a few men would make big strikes and everybody else
would be left with withering dreams.
One of the Thomas brothers held a revolver to the
small of Calpert's back as they marched there.
They
found his body—a bullet in the back and head with a cubic inch chunk blown
out of the back of it—on the road to the Brucker home. A twenty-foot trail
of blood leading back toward town meant Calpert had tried to crawl back to
town before he died.
Mary Brucker and a few neighbors heard the shot that
killed Calpert. It had shattered the still night and set the dogs Prince, King
and Queen to baying. The sheriff calmly got up out of bed and dressed in the
dark.
"What are you doing?" Mary asked.
"Just stay in here. Evil as bad as that doesn't
come to an easy end. Don't let any of the children go outside until the
morning."
"What's going on?"
"Someone's coming to try to kill me, I
believe," he said matter-of-factly.
"How do you know that?"
"Mostly by premonition, I reckon."
It was too late to scold him. Yes, she knew she
would have been worried, had he told her what was going on, but was this
better?
"Be careful," she whispered.
"I always am."
He took his carbine down from the mantle next to
their front door and met up with his eleven-year-old son John in the kitchen.
"I want to go with you, Pa," John said.
"You stay inside here," Brucker told him.
"If I'm shot and they start coming in here, you'll need to fire on them.
"They might try to smoke you out. If that
happens, you've got to get your ma, brother and sisters out of here, but don't
be obvious about it. Shoot as many of the Thomases as you can. The family is
counting on you."
The Thomas brothers underestimated Sheriff Brucker,
or they would have forgotten about revenge and have ridden out of town. Though
he had a reputation, they thought they held the better hand: they outnumbered
him, and they were coming up on him in the middle of the night. They might be
natural killers, but they met their match in Brucker. A man of his caliber is
worth twelve regular men considering the skill, agility and cunning he brought
to a fight.
Sheriff Brucker was out the side door quick as a
striking rattler. Prince, King and Queen bounded out with him. John closed the
door behind his father quietly and quickly.
The sheriff position himself behind some bushes by
the side of the door. From there, he alternately crawled and sprinted to
better spots as his quarter-wolf dogs sought out, distracted and attacked the
brothers. He could see the Thomases' outline partially illuminated by the
moon. He heard their voices discussing plans of murdering of him and his
family immixed with the dogs' growling.
"Where'd they come from?" John heard one
of the Thomases say somewhere near the window he peeked out of. Prince growled
and snapped ferociously.
A dozen shots later, Prince, King and Queen lie
bleeding to death. John heard the yelps and knew what happened. He cried
softly.
The Thomas brothers suspected someone had come out
of the house, though they didn't know where he was.
Brucker dropped behind a corner of his barn and
began picking off the Thomas Brothers, shellacking them with round after round
from his firearm, probably wishing he could see how successful he was.
John got down on his knees and prayed he'd soon hear
his father outside calling for his help moving the bodies.
A total of twelve times he heard the carbine's
familiar report. Then he knew the weapon was spent.
Brucker moved under the concealment of the moonlight
with the stealthiness that came from knowing where to place your feet around
his own property. The Thomases weren't able to do anything but fire wildly.
John knew his dad didn't have another gun and hoped
he had more ammunition. He didn't see him stow any. Curious, he wondered what
was going outside. Holding back as long as he could, John opened the door.
As he did, he heard his father yell from somewhere
out in the yard, "Get back inside, fool kid!"
That was all one of the Thomas Brothers who lay
bleeding to death needed to spot the sheriff who'd outfoxed them.
It had just been a matter of waiting. He'd have sat
out there all night, waiting for the sun to illuminate the area better. He was
safe where he was.
John shut the door and hoped his father would be
okay.
He wasn't. He'd taken a bullet clean through the
front of his face, and was killed instantly.
The family stayed awake in the house throughout the
night, keeping eyes and guns trained on the doors in case the Bruckers came to
exact more vengeance. Mary Brucker cursed herself for not keeping better watch
on the boy.
When the morning finally came, the family crept
outside and found the sheriff's body, his carbine fully loaded, ready to give
the bodies of the Thomas brothers a few shots for good measure.
Marshall Samuel Lincoln arrived later that afternoon
with Anaya. He grimly handed Mary Brucker a $750 check for the capture of the
Thomas brothers.
"There'll be more coming, probably, although
how much I can't say. These men have killed a lot of people," Lincoln
said, holding his ten-gallon hat in his hand.
"That's fine," Mary Brucker replied
tonelessly.
"On behalf of the people of the United States,
I want to offer your family my deepest condolences in this time of tragedy.
We'd not enjoy the freedom we know if we never had folks like your
husband," Marshall Samuel Lincoln said.
The new widow shrugged. She'd finished her crying an
hour before he arrived, and the marshal reminded her too much of her deceased
husband for her to tolerate his presence well. "Okay, marshal. You've
said your piece and paid their bounty. Now why don't you get on that horse and
ride out of here? You and I know you want to anyway."
The swarthy man who stood a head taller than most
other men was taken aback. "I...I ... I don't know what to say. Is
there some way I could help? You name it Mrs. Brucker..."
"Yes. You can leave. Go on," she said,
motioning with her hands as if she were shooing chickens. "I've had my
fill of you heroes."
Lincoln complied, replacing his Stetson and tipping
the brim. "Good day m’am."
"Not so far it ain't," she said bitterly.
"What am I going to do now? To you, he was a good man, someone you might
call ‘hero.’ To me he was my husband. You can and will get another hero.
I’ll never get another husband like that."
“But...”
“Good day, Marshal. I hope you don’t make your
wife a widow. I hope she never feels the way I feel right now.”
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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