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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Rare Consequence
Tom Sheehan
It began right in front of Chester Hills Saloon in Assumption, when Millie Alcott, walking on the boardwalk, was spun around by a drunk and she fell against the door off the saloon and another man, drunk as he could be and thinking she had just come out of the saloon, grabbed her and tried to pull her back into the saloon with him.
All hell broke loose in the saloon.
Some of the men knew Millie and others, new patrons, thought she was one of the girls who worked on the premises. Several fights broke out, an expensive mirror was shattered, some top shelf drinks were smashed, and the bartender, as per orders, fired a shotgun blast into the ceiling to quiet things down. The shot brought down an oil chandelier, on top of a poker table at full staff, and a fire broke out. The patrons, many with full glasses on their tables, sat and watched as the barkeep poured a bucket of beer atop the flames to quelch the fire.
At the door the drunk was a cattle drover just off 7 months on the trail from Texas. One of his opponents in this affair was townsman Hal Coltrin, one-time deputy, twice shot and nearly killed each time, and working at the general store for his former father-in-law. Coltrin’s wife was killed a year earlier by a random shot from another drunken cowpoke not getting his way at the end of a long drive. She was just coming out of a small millinery shop with packages in both hands and had turned to say goodbye to the clerk who had shut the door at the same time the shooting started. She couldn’t get her hand on the doorknob to get back inside and a random or ricochet shot caught her in the back of the head.
Parts of the town hated to see the drovers coming and some welcomed them with open arms … hoping there would be no ruckus in the offing but money being spent was easy as losing it, given the odds.
The cowpoke who grabbed Millie had a riding pard with him who had a level head and made sure his pal didn’t draw his pistol. He let his drunken pal yell all kinds of obscenities at Coltrin, but in the meantime had slipped the pistol away from his pal.
Several times, in plain view of some townsfolk, the drunken cowpoke named Hardy Windom reached for his gun and found an empty holster. Realizing finally that his weapon had been taken away from him, Windom yelled out, “This ain’t over, mister, ‘cause I’ll get you for this when I get my gun back. You ain’t throwin’ me down like I was nothin’. Know damned well I’ll be back.”
He was finally dragged off by his pal, shoved onto his mount and lead out of town, but he was no more peaceful with his pal, yelling at him all the while too.
“That cowpoke’s return to Assumption will end up in a face off,” one old timer was heard to say, “sure as shootin’.”
Sheriff Tate Holley heard the final threat and was mighty glad one of the drovers was thoughtful enough to get his pal away from something he’d be sorry for. He’d been in such fights before, and Coltrin’s wife going down was one of the saddest moments he had ever known.
Of course, sorry as ever over the beating he had taken from Coltrin, the cowpoke Hardy Windom was back in town a few days later looking for Coltrin and saw him as he limped away from the store. He figured he was easy to beat in any fashion, in this or any matter.
Coltrin, though he had trouble riding for any length of time, had not lost his knack with a pistol, or drawing it from his holster. And when Hardy Windom stood ahead of him on the boardwalk, he too stopped and the two stared at each other, each ready to draw down on the other.
Sheriff Tate Holley came out of the barbershop, cleaner than he’d been in a month, and stood between the two. “Look, gents,” he said, “I didn’t get a shave and a haircut just for my good looks. I have an appointment with a widow lady this evening and I sure don’t want to mess it up with no killing one way or the other. But I want Coltrin here,” and he turned to his former deputy, “to tell the cowpoke there what the ruckus was about that brought this around.” And he looked at the cowpoke Windom and added, “And you best listen to him, mister.”
Holley turned to Coltrin and said, “Hal, you best tell him good from both sides, or I’m going to get my whole evening busted in pieces, and I ain’t going to like that one bit.”’
“Okay, Tate, but I’m not begging on this.” He turned to Windom and said, “The girl the other night was a town woman and not a saloon woman, and you were wrong. I didn’t like what I saw you doing because my wife was killed by a drunken drover just over a year ago and you got to know I ain’t over it yet. It was an accident, but he was drunk just like you were, and my wife was not drunk. So, if you want to keep on this matter, go for your gun right now and I’ll kill you easy as looking at you, and I am dead sure of that. I got this bad leg from a gunshot from a bushwhacker, and not straight on like you are. So go draw if that’s your choosing.”
A sudden and convincing revelation came over Windom and he turned around and walked into the saloon. A few hours later he was drunk when he came out but rode alone out of town, the last sight of him was his taking a final look back at the town as he rode over a small rise and disappeared from sight.
It was assumed that his last look was the last that was to be seen of him. But that assumption is often wayward, for in the early west it was the cattle that often lead men to both new and old sights, and not guesswork, not one path taken and another ignored at the insistence of an unknown urge. And travel for a cattle drover, working for a new boss, sometimes went back over a trail that was familiar in many respects. Railhead towns for a few rambunctious years in those times brought men and cattle into towns such as Assumption on the northerly trails out of Texas and Oklahoma and the near-everlasting prairies. And in those towns there was the endless give-and-take on both ends when meat and money changed hands. As ever in such business, it was the innocent who suffered in the clash of forces.
Over a year later the next herd of cattle bound for Assumption was bedded down a few miles from the rail pens while final matters of the sale were being discussed at the saloon, the ready center of many deals.
With the herd was Hardy Windom who knew the land around the herd, saw familiar sights of the near Calton Range that abruptly ran along the north side of the grass and disappeared into the flat horizon. He was glad he had not gone into Assumption with the trail boss and a few other cowpokes. He had volunteered to stay with the herd, help keep them ready for the morning move to the rail pens and eventual loading, all, of course, after the sale was concluded.
That sale was not concluded.
One of the cowpokes that had gone to town with trail boss Skeet Higgins was identified by a townsman as the killer of his daughter several months earlier on the trail from Topeka. Guns were drawn and shots were fired and Higgins was killed, the Assumption sheriff wounded, and the accused killer was jailed by Coltrin along with the rest of the trail hands. Coltrin, with the deputy out of town, volunteered to keep the prisoners in jail and to stand guard on them. It was a surprise move on his part, for he had married Millie Alcott and was still running the general store for his former father-in-law. He was the only ex-lawman in town.
The accused killer was talking in the jail to Coltrin. “I got pards back with the herd and when they hear about this, they’ll be here to spring me. I didn’t take the first shot. Someone shot at me and I shot back. I’m sorry Higgins was killed and the sheriff got himself in the way, but no one can say my shot killed him, and no one’s going to hang me for protecting myself. We heard about this town from one of the boys who’s been here before. Hardy don’t seem to have much good to say about Assumption. I expect it means you can trust the town like you can’t trust a bad horse out on the trail.”
“Are you talking about Hardy Windom who’s been in trouble here before?”
“Same cowpoke, you bet. As quick on the draw as any man I ever seen. I don’t know why he didn’t come to town with us, but it was for a good reason, you can bet. That man’s so fast with his pistol he could have been a hired gun ‘stead of driving mean-ass castle over the worst trails you can imagine.” He paused ass if measuring his own intent of words, then added, “There’s days you just plain can’t figure out some folks for sure.”
“Yes,” Coltrin said, with a sudden firmness in his voice from the other side of the cell bars, “he came close to getting killed by me on his last trip here. If he comes in again, the same thing will happen. So I guess the best thing to do to keep the town quiet is to take a ride out there and talk to him face to face. I don’t want him in here shooting up the place and taking a chance of my wife getting killed. She had trouble with Windom the last time, only we weren’t married then. That’s changed now.”
With the crippling signs all over him, Coltrin limped to the wall rack where his gun belt and pistol hung on a hook, and strapped the belt on.
The prisoner said, “You don’t look like much of an opponent for facing Windom, limping like you do. I’d guess any one of the boys out there could pull the trigger on you seeing what you bring along with yourself all bent up and crippled like you are. Ain’t you scared none of facing a quick gun?”
Coltrin showed little concern over a visit to the herd site. “My wife will bring your lunch at noon if I’m not back. The judge, who’s a fair man from what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen, will be here in a few days. Things can get sorted out then. He’ll see if we’ll have a trial or not. That’ll depend on him and the witness and how reliable he is. A man who losses his wife can see things different than somebody else. We have to keep this town as quiet as we can in the meantime. Best think that over if any of your pals in a rambunctious manner come by to see you while I’m out there with the herd, like trying to break you out of here. That’d be a big mistake.”
Hardy Windom, riding a slow watch on the herd that had been bedded down for the night, saw the lone rider coming in from the direction of Assumption and knew it was not one of the trail hands that had gone into town; but there was an uneasy feeling that he recognized something in the rider’s manner. The way the man sat his saddle was the clincher and he suddenly knew it was none other than Hal Coltrin.
Windom stiffened in the saddle; this was the meeting that he hoped to avoid by not going to town, but he was not about to back down from it now. His gun was loaded and ready if needed, and he drew his mount to a standstill.
But it was Coltrin, sitting the saddle a bit clumsily but ready as a rabbit snare, who made the first conciliatory remark. “There was a patch of trouble in town last night, Hardy. Some of the trail hands and your trail boss were involved. The trail boss was killed, but we don’t know who fired the shot, and the sheriff was wounded too. A customer had identified one of the herd’s trail hands as the man who killed his wife a while back. That got everybody going in a hurry. I guess it couldn’t be stopped, but we got some of your hands in jail. I come out here to try to avoid any more of this kind of action in town, afraid that some innocent person would get hurt or killed, either by protecting their own or just standing around watching the gun play, which would be stupid both ways, if you was to ask me.”
Hardy Windom had a ready picture of the scene as Coltrin painted it for him, and the loss that Coltrin had suffered long before they met probably might never go away. He wanted no further part in such possible actions and had kept himself free from town, temptation and the bottle during the whole drive up from Texas.
“It’s a long stretch out there on the drive. I’d say it was a good thing at any railhead that nothing happens to the people in a town when the cows come in. I like that better than a whole lot of shooting spoiling the whole show.”
He pointed over his shoulder and said, “We got coffee on if you’re wanting some.”
Hal Coltrin and Hardy Windom both knew a change had been made for the good of Assumption, where something good happened without anything really happening. And other changes they must have realized, both in their lives and in the lives of rail towns such as Assumption, were coming in due time, a whole lot of changes.
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