Short Stories & Tall Tales
Duel at Misery Creek
Tom Sheehan
No way was it a lock-down, straight-out shootout between two adversaries, the street blocked down, the whole town looking on from the edges. It was just about dark in Misery Creek when the first gunshot of the day went off, followed by what sounded to be a running battle between two shooters. Townspeople, not knowing where the shots were fired from, scattered for cover and stayed there, aware the sheriff would be on the job soon … unless he was at it already, being not what he was but who he was.
Poles, opposites, and enemies often meet in fated or predestinated sites, as was the case more than 135 years ago involving Bart Mugsden, noted gunsmith of the territory, and Misery Creek’s sheriff, Marco Sandovar. The dark and handsome young sheriff was a self-made man, all the way from nothing; and the gunsmith, who had come west with a hard-working father to live off the land, tired quickly of honest toil and relented on all promises to his father who died on the way west from Pennsylvania.
Their stories have twists and turns in them that reached into many places, the last one being Misery Creek, which will eventually be treated here in its ultimate resolution.
Sandovar, as a lost and displaced 11-year old orphan in South America, stowed away on a sailing vessel for a perilous journey north across the equator. On that voyage he was constantly threatened by the weather as well as by the meanest captain afloat who found the young stowaway and bent him to vile servitude. With help from a kind old sailor, Marco was able to leave the ship in a California harbor for a short swim to freedom. Four years of scrounging survival, forever with a smile on his face, a most charming smile, led him into Colorado where he landed his first good and steady job as a cowboy with a big rancher. His learning, far from complete, had come a long way for a lone young man. From a succession of small jobs across green valleys and high mountains he learned to handle a horse, a gun, a wagon, read the tendencies of range cattle, and have keen sense at tracking a trail in rough country. Every word spoken to him along the way he listened to, as long as those words carried a sense of promise. Twists and turns in the trail came admirably into his ken … how people used them, to get away, to discover differences, to compare. From wagon masters and range bosses and alert cowboys he collected a few centuries worth of learning.
It was as if he had entered a school of survival in the western part of the country.
In good order he became a sensible, solid young cowboy.
The young man often reflected, once on land, about his good fortune with the old sailor, for thereafter he bumped into some people who had little interest in a lad making his way “someplace else.” The last such person was a wagon driver who dropped him at the crossing of two trails on the open grass because he feared to share his water supply. The young man’s fortunes changed with the passing of a small herd of cattle being driven to a different section of the Big A Little c Ranch, “Ac,” when the rancher, Alan Cordwick, offered him a job as a cowpuncher.
The rancher had said to his foreman, “Look how that young one handles things, Roper. He looks like he could stand a few harsh lessons and come out on top. Let’s find a place for him. I got a good feeling about him.”
One of the unfortunate encounters of the young cowboy in that employment was having his horse taken from him at gunpoint by a desperado fleeing a botched bank hold-up and the murder of a teller.
Sandovar was on the trail heading into the town of Misery Creek after working on an “Ac” trail drive. The desperado, in the interests of the story, was of course, Mugsden, who left a sour memory in Sandovar’s mind as well as a complete pictured identity of the thief. Sandovar solidified that identification after viewing wanted posters at the sheriff’s office in Misery Creek. Mugsden’s face would never leave the back acreage of his mind.
“You can shoot him on sight, son, if you ever see him again,” the sheriff said to youthful Sandovar. “He’s wanted for murder in so many places there could be a half dozen of him, or he’s got that many brothers, but I don’t believe that last part because no family could turn out that bad. Bank robberies too, and stage hold-ups he’s done, which we ain’t going to stop too soon, but he always ends up doin’ someone in who’s got lots of time comin’ to him otherwise. Mean he is. All mean. Seems he gets a might low on pocket change and takes the first lot that comes along, and bound to hurt somebody in the takin’. If I see him I’ll shoot him on the spot if I get the chance. He’s got an awful lot of quick in him. So I suppose he’ll remember you if he sees you again, so don’t wait around to say hello … shoot him. I’ll stand by you on any questions.”
Young Sandovar, 16 at the time, thought that over, stepped back from the sheriff and quick-drew his weapon. The sheriff’s face said it all, as Sandovar proudly asked, “He that fast, Sheriff? That quick?”
“Where’d you learn to draw like that, son?”
“I spent nearly six months with Burt Tupelo up in the Rockies.”
“I knowed old Burt, son. Hate to tell you he’s gone, done in by a bear come into his camp over a year ago. His squaw told another mountain man who came down one time to see town and take a bath. Was last spring, that bath, then a whiskey, then gone back up after his comfort reach.”
“Burt must have been loving his squaw, only time a bear could get that close. He was a good man.”
The sheriff of Misery Creek, Burke Kinsella, told the story of the quick-draw kid enough times that it became legend in every saloon and bunkhouse in the territory. That included Mugsden sometime later on, sitting in a corner of a saloon in the Utah territory, a stranger in the town until he hit the bank two days later … successfully. And six months later, in Wyoming, a strongbox was taken from a stagecoach outside Presbyterian Falls by a lone gunman later identified by one passenger as the coming dueler with Marco Sandovar, a history of good and evil building to a meeting down the trail.
Mugsden, doing his thing a number of times across great stretches of the multiple territories, including the bank robbery in Utah, heard the next story about the quick-draw kid, Marco Sandovar, who worked on the “Ac” spread down in Colorado, outside the town of Misery Creek. They had met once on the trail, he knew, and was sure they’d meet again. Trails always cross for old acquaintances, the way fate lays things out for the living, keeping surprise just out of reach until fate takes the rule.
This element of the story came from a freighter wetting his spirits after a dusty drive across the Utah Stretch. A tough old geezer of about 60, the freighter let the whiskey soften his lips, move some dust in his throat and warm his blood. It all felt good enough to make him talk, talk always being most welcome in such places if you came from “away.” He was bursting with all kinds of information that had come to him in his travels, and said to some patrons of the Castle King Saloon, the whiskey gone all the way home to loosen his tongue, “You folks heard about that shooter kid down in Misery Creek who’s still mostly wet behind the ears but who saved the sheriff from gettin’ kilt by bank robbers? Some as call him The Wetback Kid the way I hear it. Has hair as black as deep soot, eyes like a mountain lion in a corner, the way some folks say, them bein’ from down that way.”
With an involuntary move, the way some men might fix their shirt cuffs about their wrists or reset the belt at their waist at a minor discomfort, the story teller tipped his shot glass, which the bartender filled to the brim, having his own curious ear. Three men at the bar nodded their approval of this social etiquette, even as the old gent quaffed it off in one swig and wiped his lips dry with his shirtsleeve.
Customers in all corners of the saloon leaned toward the old freighter to hear the story, for stories made up most of the news that came welcome to them from overland as often as visitors came. Interest stirred all the parties, especially in this town that had no newspaper, or saw one infrequently. The cluster around the freighter thickened, the air thickened, the interest still growing.
One imploring customer spoke up, his voice full of gentle urgency. “Now go back to the beginning, old timer, all the way back and don’t leave out any of them parts you knows of.” He received approval of his request from other listeners.
The freighter smiled, had his glass refilled again as if the story and drink go hand in hand, and said, “The sheriff over there in Misery Creek, like a lost doggie out on the prairie, stepped into the Misery Creek Bank in the middle of a robbery plumb in the middle of the day and found a gun stuck in his back. Had to drop his gun belt on the floor and wait as the robbers, three of them, packed up what money they could get into their hands, and took him as a hostage, not afore one of them pistol-whipped the teller for practically breathin’ on his own. The three of them robbers had the sheriff layin’ over his own saddle, they did, when a kid cowpoke came ridin’ into town, right down the main street. One o’ them robbers put a gun right to the sheriff’s head when the kid approached, but they didn’t know who he was anyway, and the pointer said, ‘Get off your horse, kid, and no tricks less I put one shot in the head of the sheriff here. Get off slow and slap that critter so he runs all the way outta town.’ And he waved his gun at the kid rider.
“The freight agent told me the whole story,” the freighter continued. “Said the kid slid slow as a newborn cow tryin’ for legs off’n his saddle and raised his hand to slap his mount on the rump, him lookin’ away from the pointer, and moved likely as fast as a cornered rattler to shoot that dude right off’n his saddle, then drilled the two others before they took aim on him. Agent swears it was the fastest thing he ever seen in his whole life, he was right there to see it out his station window, and he’s been out here near 30 years in the trade. I don’t doubt him a minute’s worth of talk. Anyway, the sheriff, who must’ve counted his minutes crosswise on that saddle, throwed in his badge not too much later, like he’d been athinkin’ of it anyway, bein’ so long on the job, and the kid cowboy got the job. I don’t know if’n he’s barely 20 years old yet, ‘ccordin' to some folks. And some of them say he’s all the way here to Misery Creek from down in South America or some such place, don’t know as how far that is nor that it makes any difference for wearin’ a badge, but he’s got to be a long way from real home and any real folks of his own, which gotta say a whole lot about how he’s made up.”
Many heads nodded approval, and the freighter finished by saying, “That kid’s gonna be famous out this way, that’s for sure. Famous as all Hell. I can see it happenin’. Word moves around like it was on horseback about kids like that, fast as snakes, young as Hell and bold as they come, not afraid of anybody or anythin’, them little bodies fillin’ saddles like they was supposed to be filled only down the road a few years. Hell, ‘member when we all felt like that. That’s what makes a good sheriff. Probably what the old sheriff lost all of a sudden layin’ across a saddle like that in front of his whole town. That’s kinda hard to put down, don’t you all agree on that? Getting’ showed up like that, lettin’ a kid get him off’n the hook. Kid’ll make a difference down there in Misery Creek, don’t you all agree?” He shook his head in rigid agreement with his own declaration, and then tipped his glass one more time for good luck.
That last bit of the story, about the promise seemed to be fated for the kid, just waiting on him, put Mugsden on his horse not an hour later, bound to check on “The Wetback Kid” with the fast draw who was an old acquaintance … of sorts.
His route, in a matter of days, brought him to the road into Misery Creek from Albensville, where he flagged down a freight wagon and told the driver, “You tell the sheriff down there in Misery Creek that an old friend is coming in to see him in a few days. Name is Bart Mugsden and we met right here on this road a few years ago. Tell him I got business on his street and I’ll see him there in two or three days maybe. I got a few things to do yet.”
Mugsden, though, kept thinking about the story the old freighter told, how the kid took down three gents who did not get their guns clear of their holsters. That set the odds a bit too far to one side for his liking, so it was not bright morning when he came into Misery Creek, when all arrivals are noted, but he slipped in as dusk settled its vast apron across the town, and shadows fell quickly in beside each building from one end of the street to the other, the way a woman fills an apple pie plate for baking, in good chunks. Night noises ensued; the tinkle of saloon glasses, the momentary gaiety of saloon laughter, a saloon girl’s shrill yell of exclamation for one reason or another, such as folding money being exposed. Horses snickered at tie rails. An owl marked his high priorities. A distant dog announced a visitor of unknown origin.
And darkness thickened.
A close study of opposites commences here, as Mugsden looked for his advantage on all issues, making his opportunities count for him first and foremost, which brought him to Misery Creek in his own way, in his secretive and hidden manner. But we can say somewhat the same thing for Sandovar, that he always looked for ways to advance his own cause, to better himself. So, the two adversaries go similar routes for similar ends, but we realize the differences. We assume they do too. It’s as easy as looking at good and evil, and that put it plainly in front of us as the first gunshot went off that night in Misery Creek.
The sheriff had sat for more than an hour in the darkness of his office, looking out the window down much of the length of the main street of Misery Creek. He could identify a few customers going into the saloon, but quickly realized the identifications came from manners of riding or walking or the kind of horse that brought the man to the saloon doors. When Molly Wrentham closed her shop, he counted the seconds from the light going out in the shop until she crossed the front boardwalk to reach her carriage delivered by the livery boy at the same time every night. Sandovar nodded at the ritual timing, as he had seen it plenty of times.
He had been thinking about routines for a few days after the freighter had given him the message from Bart Mugsden. The sheriff, thinking of his own routines, realized he walked out every night, after dark, at probably the same minute of the hour. And he walked the same route, up one side of the street to his right, to circle at the end of the street, and then start down the other side. It made people aware that he was on the job after dark as well as in daylight, even though many of them did not see his night patrol. That routine, in truth, started his thinking in another direction.
As clear as a bell he heard the old freighter say again part of Mugsden’s message: “Tell him I got business on his street and I’ll see him there in two or three days maybe. I got a few things to do yet.” That final part, “I got a few things to do yet,” leaped at him, was weighed, valued, found a specific determination in his mind set … Mugsden was already in town.
At least a half hour before he was to start his initial nightly patrol of the main street, and the businesses located on the street, he slipped out the back door of his office and went in the opposite direction, down behind the livery stable, the bank, Molly Wrentham’s little house at the end of town, with the little white fence out front, the arbor of roses gleaming white in the darkness from a patch of yellow light falling on the front porch, shadows moving inside.
He neither saw nor heard any strange sights or activities, not until he crossed behind Molly’s house, slipped into deeper shadows where some bushes had been planted by the lady and her husband, which allowed him to reach the other side of the road into town. At the back end of the general store, a slight motion or a slight sound caught his attention. He was not sure of which sense alerted him, but he was alert to all entries.
Sandovar froze in place. He knew he had made the right decision; that Mugsden, in his manner, was making the bushwhacker’s move, taking every advantage, just as he had that day so long ago on the road … coming from behind a tree, gun leveled, needing a horse. Now, aware of all that, in this darkness he decided on the spot that he’d not wait for the wanted man to make the first move, but would shake him out of deepest darkness if he could.
The noise came again. The sheriff, still as a dead pony, was tight against the corner of the general store.
He spoke loudly, as if speaking to a cohort. “I think the coward’s under cover someplace in town, Joe. I heard he sneaks in at night to do his planning, that he’s afraid to face up even with anybody, man, boy or old lady.”
The first shot of anger came near the sheriff, hitting the ground in front of him, and then the sound of boots at a run came down the alley from the other side of the general store. Sandovar, with no target, fired two shots directly overhead … no chance of hitting a citizen, then reloaded on the spot.
Two horses snickered in the livery. The livery dog barked. Sandovar fired two more shots and reloaded again. He went back the way he had come, slipped past Molly Wrentham’s house and barn, and listened. He listened with all his attention on the slightest disturbance from any direction.
It was a minor squeak of a hinge. Almost leaping into his mind was a picture of the livery man opening the back door of the stable. Sandovar knew that sound, had heard it many times, and knew that Mugsden was now in the livery.
From the back of the stable he picked up a length of wood and cautiously placed it under the handle of the stable’s back door and planted it in the ground. From the same pile of wood he retrieved another length of wood and silently walked to the front and jammed it slowly and quietly under the handle of the front doors of the stable. That too was planted firmly in the gravel. No shot had come from inside, where he had wondered if Mugsden would shoot at him as he planted the board.
Surveying the situation, the young sheriff pictured his adversary inside the livery, not able to get out without a riot of noise.
He then spoke to his invisible cohorts. “Joe, you go find the livery man at the saloon and ask him if there’s any water or food in the stable. Tell him we got the bushwhacker Mugsden locked in there and he can’t get out. If there’s no water and no food, we’ll sit and wait on him. Tell the others he was planning to bushwhack me as I made my rounds, and I fired a few back. I have the doors blocked so he can’t get out, so I’ll wait here until he gives himself up, throws out his gun. I got a couple of shots left for him. That’s all it’ll take for a measly bushwhacker.”
He made believe someone was running up the street, by stomping his boots on the ground.
A few seconds later, at the door of the hay mow, a shadow showed itself.
Sandovar fired two shots into the wooden frame of the building, above and to the left of the shadow.
Mugsden showed his shadow again, shooting at the spot where the sheriff’s shots had come from.
“Gotcha now, sheriff,” he yelled as he fired his weapon, only to feel two shots in return hit him full in the chest. He fell out the door and down to the gravel, trying to remember if he had counted all the shots fired at him by the kid sheriff.
Nothing but darkness came to Mugsden as he hit the ground at the feet of the kid sheriff.
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