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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Prairie Kid’s Revenge
Tom Sheehan
The sun, it seemed that day, had been Hades-hot since it came on the horizon nearly blood-red at first. The bushwhacker on the small farm of Colby Dunne had fired at the farmer and hit the woman behind him, the woman loading the exchange of rifles, the woman who was his wife, the woman who was carrying their 8-months old unborn child. When the woman fell down dead, her child with her, the farmer chased the bushwhacker onto his horse and off the farm, the killer and his horse heading for the hills.
Once beyond shooting range, the bushwhacker looked back and saw the settler raise his arms over the body of his woman, his screams crossing the dry grass, the tilled ground, and a boy, maybe 10 or 11 years old, rising from a hiding place behind a pile of fence poles not yet put into the Kansas ground. As he had been taught by his father about strangers and riders who seemed to appear out of nowhere, the boy studied the man on the horse. He memorized all of the man, from hat to boots to attitude in the saddle. He also studied the horse and what he could see of the saddle before the man had jumped into it. Under his breath he muttered, “I’ll know them forever, the man, the horse and the saddle.”
Those memories stayed where he put them, as he swore to wield the swift bearing of the Lord in his mind.
On the brow of a hill on the trail the killer, driven off by the farmer’s rushing at him and his repetitive gunfire, had nothing in his pockets for his quick and deadly attempt at robbery. He was glad he was quit of the place and seemed sure he’d see no more of the farmer and no more of the boy who had been hiding. He was sure he had left nothing behind except the old man who was a poor shot and a kid who showed he was scared to death.
He did not know the boy would wield the swift bearing of the Lord in his mind --- forever. The boy’s name was Adam Dunne, his mother’s name was Abigail, and his sister/brother would have been called Evelyn or David. He liked to think it would have been a sister, and they’d call themselves Adam and Evie.
Four years later Colby Dunne died in his sleep, the hard work on the land calling him down beside his wife and never-born child. Dunne and his son had taken care of arrangements before he died.
Adam Dunne, just past 15 years of age, buried his father beside his wife and child, mounted the family’s lone horse and rode over the same brow of the hill where he had last seen the killer. He didn’t know where he was going, but it was away, on this trail, heading southwesterly … in no great hurry.
When he passed over the hill, the road, the range and all of life opened up for him.
Adam Dunne came of rugged good looks, serious blue eyes, and reddish-blond hair that sat like cotton twirls on his head. Ladies of all ages found him pleasant to look upon.
He got a job at a livery in a town on the trail, worked for several months, bought a handgun and a good horse, and began to get proficient with the Colt and its uses.
So it was, after staying in several more of such settlements and towns on his southwesterly route, without seeing the man, the saddle or the horse that was ingrained in his mind, working at more odd jobs and sleeping in more odd places just to look around, and continued his journey. On a peaceful afternoon he rode into Barstow Bend, just above the Cimarron River and Colorado a day’s ride west.
On his search, and on and off trails and in and out of hot sun, his features darkened with the impact of sun and wind, which made him look older than he was as he sat his horse like an old trail hand. He had learned to keep his mouth shut, his business to himself, and let curiosity come and go with dawn and evening.
It was at Barstow Bend that talk in the saloon drifted his way as he drank a beer at the far end of the bar, his eye on every man who came and went.
At a near table he heard one man say, “Sheriff Flagler, that’s the third time a ranch or a farm has been held up by one man who knows there’s not much around at the time to fight him off. Like a real coward. I’d like to get my hands on him, and I hope you do. Jeff Lightstreet was a good friend of mine, and his daughter often rode with my daughter. Lucky they were out riding when that saddle rat poked a gun in Jeff’s back and killed him like it was Doomsday come calling.”
Adam Dunne was at rapt attention, the details being so similar to what he knew, what he had been seeking. His revenge came back with a rush; he’d keep his eyes open every minute he could. Between a side job at the livery, and riding a freight wagon on short trips, he had places to look or people to check.
The way fate often works, he kept thinking the long-sought killer would walk across a street or a saloon room directly in front of him. It would end there.
But such luck is as rare as the rare earth miners look for, oftentimes those searches going on for years on end.
He was in the general store owned by Mr. Oscar Cosco, in the heart of Barstow Bend, buying peaches, tomatoes and tea, his regular purchases. He kept hearing his mother saying, “Tomatoes and tea will keep the skin clear into old age for you. It’s not an old wife’s tale, but sworn to me by my mother and grandmother. They had skin like mine, deep into old age, and will for me, I hope.”
Young Dunne was not vain, but knew what was coming at him in later years if he did not take care of himself. After all, he was alone, and bound to be alone until his duty in life had been performed. It would take good health as well as good fortune.
And Cosco, having taken a liking to the young man, and having good interest in him, said this day, “No young lady in sight for you yet, Adam?” He bent his head the way savants gain attention and looked at the handsome young man handling the tomatoes at the counter.
Cosco could have known the answer. “Not yet, Mr. Cosco. I don’t have the time.”
“There’s always time for romance, for love, Adam. It’s the way things should go, believe me.”
“Like I said, Mr. Cosco, no time for me. Not now.” On the turn of a far hill on a dusty road, he saw again the figure on horseback as he stopped, paused, and looked back on his doings for the day. In that single view he saw his destiny; it had been bestowed upon him and there was no way to fight it off, if he wanted to in the first place.
Cosco persisted. “There’s one lass pretty as a new kitten, pretty as imagine can make her. She comes in here on this same day with her pa, Briggs Morrison, from the Crescent L Ranch out of town a few hours. I’m surprised you never mentioned her, or at least got a gander at her. They’re on the road to Flitsville, on the southern run. I’ve never been out there, but remember her always turning heads when she comes in with her pa once a month. Today’s the day.” He wandered off, hoping his words had made a small invasion, gained some attention.
He no longer hoped for some success because it happened right then: the door opened and Lucy Morrison walked in, bringing a whole day of sunshine with her, and Cosco’s initiative sat pending for the strike.
Cosco and most everyone would agree that there was something besides sparkle and warmth in Lucy Morrison’s entry, and the day behind her kept shining its reflection on a most selective figure. Golden hair, as long as Adam Dunne had ever seen on a woman, fell down her back and across one shoulder as she spun about and said to the man behind her, while looking directly upon Dunne, “Oh, Pa, looks like we have a new man in town.”
Her voice was melodious, full of meaning and mystery at the same time. The smile she leveled at the stranger was dazzling, bright as a starry night, and appeared to belong to Adam Dunne for that minute. He stood his ground and absorbed as much of her beauty as he could in one sweeping view. He saw the elegance of her lithe frame, the grace of curves held by a pair of riding breeches and a simple blouse full of desert flower colors with prominent gatherings.
Knowledgeable, alert, an old veteran in viewing public patrons on open display in his business, Cosco gathered up the illumination into his past experiences and knew something new had just occurred in front of him, with the privilege of the encounter and ease of charm and satisfaction fully visible to him. He understood he was not a matchmaker in the old way, but knew he had a part in this beginning.
And the way fate and intervention work on the other hand, Adam Dunne for the first time became aware that his mind was doubly occupied; revenge, vengeance, an eye-for-an-eye killing now shared space with a new sensation that did not come screaming out of death. From nowhere really, it came, yet from a sudden and soft illumination starting up in a dark recess inside him.
Cosco could tell the story years down the road, just the way he saw it: “Handsome as the day is long, Adam Dunne’s at the end of the counter when Lucy walked in, more beautiful than ever. It was like two gongs went off on the same bell. and him handling a couple of red tomatoes ripe as old Mother Nature ever makes ‘em, and they go squish as he sets eyes on Lucy and she looks back the way only love at first sight can happen to the good and the few fortunate among us. Like heaven opens its arms to the sinless among us, which isn’t very often, from where I stand.”
“I can tell you this,” he would add time and time again to his many listeners who loved a good story, “that I was not the only one who was onto what happened, what was going on in front of us. Old Briggs looked at his daughter and knew right there, in that split second, that he was suddenly sharing his beautiful Lucy with another man, young as he was. He saw the light, I swear, like a match had been lit.”
Cosco, with a sense of humor, invaded by good feelings when telling the story, liked his pitch with “the match being lit,” and always looked for at least a smile from any audience.
“They’re out there right now, at the Crescent L Ranch,” he’d add to any new listeners, “married with a couple of kids, old Briggs gone down chasing strays one day, Adam putting off his old look and chase attitude about his mother’s killer, the killer of his unborn brother or sister, which I like to think was a girl named Evie. Him and Lucy had love right by the rope and everyone knew it, and Adam’s old ways had likely gone up in smoke, if that’s what you want to call it, and I do,” and he’d toss off that wise grin to those who he figured understood his phrasing.
“He’d told Lucy all about his seeing his mom killed, him and Lucy knowing what their own kids brought into their lives. And she understood what he had been through each time she looked at her own kids, but she was powerful glad that Adam had let it go on into the past. They had new leanings put on them and the world was bright.”
Cosco, a good grocer man, was a pretty good story teller to anyone who had patience. It was like he could pick out a good listener. So it was me who listened one day, the new deputy in town, working for Sheriff Flagler. He knew the whole story about the Dunnes, as he had been here the day Adam Dunne came into town.
So Cosco nabs me and says, “”I guess you know where this is going, don’t you? The two of them come into town one day, and I’m on their list for getting things, like tomatoes and green tea they can’t get along without, according to Lucy who is as beautiful as ever and Adam’s skin is near as pure for a fella that’s in the saddle a lot, under the sun, getting bit by the wind. They’re just about at my door when he stops dead in his tracks, right over there at that corner window, and he sees the saddle he was looking for years. It was on a horse at the rail. Of course, Lucy has always dreaded such a sight, such a day. She sees his attention grabbed by a horse at my tie rail, and she looks at the saddle too, and she knows!”
Oh, that man’s telling me something special.
“Lucy probably didn’t know what to do, but can’t let her husband and father of her kids get into a shooting match, but she sees the look in Adam’s eyes. So what does this beautiful woman do? Why, I tell you she’s about the loveliest and the smartest of the whole bunch. She up out of nowhere kisses her husband in the front of my store, in broad daylight, and he’s stock still with surprise, and Lucy is pointing at the horse frantically, knowing I’m looking at them in front of my store, and she knows I’ve got to see something else going on with her waving and pointing her hand and I see the horse, and right off I know.”
Old Cosco looked me right in the eye and waited for me to say, “What happened next?”
So I said it.
“Fate, like I said a 100 times, was hanging around for them in one corner of the store, and off in the other corner of my store picking up some cans of peaches, Sheriff Flagler sees me pointing at this other fellow in the store and who’s not looking at me, and I wet my finger to my mouth and point like I got a gun and Flagler has a gun on this guy when Adam rushes in the door and Lucy’s out there screaming, and it’s all over. Just like that. All over.”
Cosco snapped his fingers, and said it again, “Just like that.”
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