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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Breakheart Station Master
Tom Sheehan
Deacon Almsbury wasn’t an agent of God. He didn’t come from Heaven, but came right up out of Hell … and he was on his way this day to Breakheart Station. Clothed somewhat in cleric’s black but far from the actual garb, Almsbury’s true shape and dimensions were hidden. So were his weapons, cached in some fold of black cloth and often appeared mysteriously in his hands quicker than a pair of rabbits. Almsbury, it had been known for nearly a dozen years, ran ahead of himself, coming well in advance on wings of gossip, in headlines of weekly papers, and with riders who carried the word like a satchel on their saddle.
Once The Deacon visited a place, the impression stayed in place. Even the Cherokee Nation, all the villages in the territory, knew about him, talked about “The Man in Black, man with quick bullet, man shoot from shadow, man know death like brother.”
His infamy ran wide and free.
Gus Turbit waited for the dust to rise from the road where the stagecoach would come over the hill about a half mile away. The replacement team was tethered in front of the station, ready to continue the incoming stage run to Axle Hill, the next stop.
An uneasy feeling came over him when he saw, down trail, the figure of a tall man on horseback racing toward him and his station of the Dewey Lines Route to Forever and Beyond. Turbit loved the sign saying those exact words painted up over the front door into the station where Maria had a pot of soup handy and a few loaves of freshly-baked bread, the table getting ready for passengers. He had painted the sign himself with a certain flair for the brush he’d found in his wrist.
The rider, he pondered woefully, would be here before the stagecoach, seeing how the horse was running full out. Turbit would rather have a few more guns just in case the rider was not good news in himself. He knew there was trouble due on the stage, with guns in the hands of The Deacon.
Turbit had been told that Deacon Almsbury would be coming in today; his horse, delivered a day earlier by a known friend of Almsbury’s, Dasher Dixon, who said, “Hold the horse for The Deacon, and don’t tell a soul he’s coming in on tomorrow’s stage, or else you’ll be talking to the wrong end of The Deacon’s gun … or mine.” The Peacemaker was in Dixon’s hand with a spirited move and a scowl on his face.
That was enough for Turbit who didn’t even tell his wife Maria that The Deacon was due in today. Maria had a way of blabbing out secrets … but who could she talk to today if she knew anything at all?
There was nobody but him and the unknown rider still coming toward the station. The rider was almost close enough to hail, but the station master did not yell out a welcome.
He slopped another pail of water from the well into the trough, ready to tend the team he’d unhitch from the incoming stage. He loved the power of horses especially when they were teamed up, like the notable set ready and waiting for the transfer.
Bellcap, a big black who carried strength, beauty and command in his presence, was the lead horse on the replacement team and seemed anxious to get going, hoofing the earth into dust, shaking his kingly head. Turbit loved magnificence and saw it in Bellcap.
The station master, without taking his own meal off Maria’s table, would tend the incoming team as soon as he could. “Well,” he’d said in many a discussion, “that’s my job, ain’t it … taking care of horses? What else is there out here besides a good woman to take care of? Horses and women, they rank up there together on top of the pile.” He’d snicker, in the company of gents, assured that Maria was not about, and add, “You put the horse first in some situations … but not in others.” He said it in a way, with his eyebrows raised, that drew a round of laughter.
Never did he mention the care he gave to his secreted weapons, a pair of Colt revolvers and three rifles he had stashed around the station, hidden from prying eyes but readily available to him if needed … a quick move from just about any place in the station would produce a rifle in his hands, or the Colts he rarely wore at his regular duties. Each of those weapons received regular maintenance from Turbit and in less than six months of operation he had used a stashed weapon to thwart a few thefts of property, usually one of the horses, by a cowpoke gone broke at the card table, run out of town without his horse, and looking simply for a way to get home.
Nor did he mention the well, the one he had dug when so directed by the old Cherokee that he’d found wounded from a fall not far from where he now stood. He had taken care of the old one for close to a week. In return, Bent Claw had insisted there was water only at a certain point in the valley. He had heard of the white horseman searching for water and had laughed at his futile efforts.
But it was what drove Turbit in the first place: If he found water, and dug a well, he was guaranteed the Dewey Lines Route would build a station and he’d be the station master. Where directed by Bent Claw, Turbit found water at 9 feet and walled the sides with rocks. He had his station, and his wife Maria came in on the second day of operation to do the cooking for hungry passengers on the roughest leg of the trip from the capital to Washington Heights, the end of the line at the Snake River.
The rider was a hundred yards away, slowed his horse, and finally pulled a big gray to a standstill at the water trough. “Okay to let him drink, ain’t it?”
But it wasn’t a question. It was like a boss talking to a hired hand.
Turbit had never seen him before, this big man, as tall in the saddle as he could remember a man sitting, an odd pistol on his belt, a mean look on his face as if he had just been stung by a hornet or, worse, a card shark on the other side of a big pot. But most significant was his left cheek, decorated with a black birth mark, circular, about an inch in diameter, with a growth of black hair in it as dark as a black beard. It twisted him sideways when Turbit looked at him, trying to size up all the points discernible, and make a lasting character study. As it was from that first look, the hairy birthmark promised to remain longest in the memory; it made Turbit uncomfortable, as if the man had noted that’s what he kept looking at and would remember that stare.
Then the stranger turned Turbit’s day upside down, when he said, “What time does The Deacon’s stage get in? It’s today, isn’t it?” He looked off toward the hill on the incoming road, no sign of dust rising, no horses at a gallop, no driver trying to make the best of time. “I haven’t got all the time in the world. He’s coming today, right?” He kept patting his horse, a red mare, on the neck as she drank from the trough, and whispering words softly to her that Turbit could not hear.
At that moment, Turbit, lover of horses, fond of men who loved their horses like kin, forgot the man’s strange and ugly birthmark and knew that he wholeheartedly liked the man.
And for a bare moment, the station master felt that fate this day had come to Breakheart Station in the person of this tall stranger.
That feeling allowed Turbit to say, “You know The Deacon? He expecting you to meet him?” He had the sudden realization that he could unfold the secret he’d kept to himself. “One of his men brought a horse for him yesterday, so that tells me he’s due, and probably on the stage coming here pretty soon. I keep looking for the trail dust to rise out there on the road. He expecting you, The Deacon?”
“He ought to be,” the stranger said. “He owes me and mine for a whole lot of misery, and I aim to set things straight on the account.” His stare was loosed down the trail behind him the way some folks allow things to catch up to them in times of measurement or accountability. Turbit, working with the public on numerous jobs, had seen such contemplation on many occasions; men sworn to avenge a serious grievance.
Hearing the tone of the stranger’s voice at its clearest, Turbit no longer noticed the strange birthmark any longer, as if the man had clouded it over with his determination of squaring some past account … not yet brought to terms. “Should I expect trouble here when he comes? Should I hide my woman? She’s had her share of problems since she joined me.” He looked the stranger in the eye and said, “I’m not too swift on such accounts myself, but I’d like to know who you are, what your name is. Would you tell me so as I’ll have a grasp on this matter looking like it’s coming my way and me with not much to say about it getting done or not getting done.”
Now the birthmark appeared again to Turbit as the stranger seemed to be mulling things around in his head, his eyes moving out to the trail and back again. Turbit, in a quandary, wondered in what manner it had disappeared because he could not bring it back immediately, the way it had happened with him only moments earlier. Did the folks the stranger mentioned not see the birthmark any longer? Had they forgotten it in time? Because of love? Were siblings or parents conditioned to it? Forgotten it was there after the first shock? What kind of accounts had to be squared between this man and The Deacon?
“I could ask a hundred questions,” Turbit said.
“Don’t bother,” the marked man said. “My name is Dave Kershon. Six months ago The Deacon set fire to my parents’ house and they died in the fire. I was off in the army and got out right away and been looking for him. Almost caught up to him in Cuttersville, but he was a day gone when I got there. I think he knows I’m looking for him.”
Kershon was off his horse. He was six feet tall, wore a gray Stetson the sun and rain and trail dust had darkened considerably, and the rim flopped in a haphazard way as though he did not care how it looked. On his belt was a single Colt, perhaps an army model. It was not worn the way The Deacon most surely wore his weapons, or any other fast gunman. It also was not the kind of weapon fast gunmen usually carried. He wore no spurs on his boots because they were some type of army issue. The pants, showing wear, had faded yellow Union stripes down the legs.
All in all, Turbit thought, Kershon was apparently out of his class opposing The Deacon. Anger and revenge might not carry the load for him.
He remembered quickly, as if testing himself, where his own weapons were hidden about the station. With a quick look he saw two places he could get to in a decent hurry if he had to if a gunfight broke out when the stage came in. With a scene in his mind, he imagined how he could be of use to Kershon.
Kershon’s head snapped when he heard a yell and the two men looked up and saw the dust rise on the road and the stagecoach cross the brow of the small hill. It would be at the station in a short time. He pulled the weapon from its holster, checked the load and replaced the weapon in the holster.
Turbit was convinced again, looking at the weapon, that Kershon stood little chance of doing in The Deacon. He looked about the station yard, refreshing his memory … just in case he had to help the man who already looked to be on the short end of the deal.
He yelled to Maria standing in the doorway, “You put the pot on the table, Maria, and go down in the hole right quick. Right quick, you hear me! Right quick!”
She disappeared from sight.
Kershon tied his horse off at the side of the trough and walked to the open part of the station, the sun in his eyes.
Turbit shook his head at that move, wondering if Kershon really had been through the war and how he had searched for The Deacon for half a year and stayed alive. He’d have been known by the birthmark no matter where he went, and he probably could not hide out in many places if he tried. Turbit saw him squint as he looked toward the east and the stagecoach coming with the sun and then Turbit’s eyes caught sight of another riding coming in from the west and he recognized The Deacon’s friend, Dasher Dixon, galloping toward them.
Rushing to his replacement team, Turbit brought the team right to the front of the station, ready to hitch them up in the exchange. The stage was nearly on them, and Dixon, too, coming up the trail. Kershon seemed oblivious to all but the stagecoach, his eye steady on it, not noticing Dixon at all.
The door to the station was wide open and Turbit knew his wife was hidden in the crawl hole he had dug to escape any threat. The replacement team, with Bellcap standing like a monument a t the lead, stood ready for the transfer.
Kershon had not moved from the position he had taken, in the center of the station yard.
The stage driver, veteran of many trips on the line, and more than once with The Deacon as a passenger, realized that the man standing in the center of the open area was here for a showdown with The Deacon. He had seen it before … and had seen men go down trying to face The Deacon. He saw the other rider, off to one side of the corral, dismount and leave his horse’s reins dragging on the ground. He assumed the scales had been tipped in The Deacon’s favor in the coming fray … just as Turbit did.
The stage was pulled short of its usual stopping place by the driver.
The Deacon, clothes black as Hell could be without fire, stepped down from the stage, eyed the man in the center of the area, saw Dixon at the corner of the corral, and the harmless station master standing by the water trough.
One hand of The Deacon was clearly visible as he moved it slowly out from his side. His other hand was hidden in the folds of his black clothes.
The driver stayed in place, up on the boot of the wagon.
Bellcap nickered either from his impatience to get going or his noting the odor of the incoming horses.
The Deacon said, “Who are you? You the guy been looking for me? You the one with the hairy mark on his face? Before you go down, tell me your name and why you’re looking for me.”
“I’m Kershon and you killed my parents when you burned down their home over in Bridger when I was away in the army. You burnt them to death for no reason and I’m here to make up for murder.”
“Oh,” The Deacon said, “is that so?” and he moved his exposed hand to draw attention to it being empty, and Turbit saw motion beneath the black cloak and knew he had a gun in that hand.
He yelled to Kershon as he dove behind the water trough, “Look out behind you.”
Kershon spun to look behind him.
The Deacon’s hand came free with a weapon in his hand, and Turbit, from the other side of the trough, came to his knees with a rifle as The Deacon took aim at the dumbfounded Kershon drawing his old army weapon to fire at Dixon who already had a revolver in his hand.
When The Deacon fired two rounds at the spinning Kershon, one hit and killed the magnificent Bellcap who fell immediately to the ground, and the other shot raced off into the air.
Turbit screamed at the sight of Bellcap falling down in his traces, stood with the rifle on his hip and unloaded half a dozen rounds at The Deacon. Surprised at firing from the harmless station manager, The Deacon crumbled in place, and Dixon, not yet getting off a round in the excitement, grabbed his horse at the sight of The Deacon on the ground, leaped into the saddle and rode away, down the trail.
Kershon, not yet having fired a round from his old weapon, stood still in the middle of the yard, as the driver urged the team forward a bit, and yelled to his other passengers, “It’s all over folks. You can get down now. Maria will have grub on the table. We have 15 minutes. The Deacon ain’t going anyplace with us.”
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