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Short Stories & Tall Tales
When in Doubt, Which is Not in Texas
Tom Sheehan
Luke Hammard slid off his mount in front of the Lazy Bull Saloon without anyone taking the least notice, dropped the reins over the hitch rail and fell on his face in the dust of the main street of Morgan’s Bend, Texas. At that, on the other side of the dusty road, holding her child’s hand, a young mother screamed for the sheriff.
Dip Allen, recently re-elected for his third term as the sheriff of Morgan’s Bend, looked at the woman who was pointing across the street at someone prone in the road, and a bloody stain beginning to show on his shirt.
Running up the street, Allen yelled to a cowpoke, “Go get Doc Miller. He’s in the store.” Looking down at Hammard, he yelled, “Tell him to hurry. Luke Hammard’s been back shot.”
The sheriff and two men from the saloon carried Hammard into the saloon and laid him across a table as Doc miller pushed his way into the saloon, his bag in hand. He went to work on the wounded man with swift care.
Hammard groaned a few times during the procedure and there followed a clear plunk as the doctor dropped the bullet he had extracted into a tin ash tray. The room sat for moments of silence as the proof-of-cause sound echoed in all corners of the saloon. Without a word being uttered, questions came off many faces, many grimaces; Who did this? Why was it done? How come a nice cowpoke like Hammard had been shot from behind? From a hidden place? By a coward or a devil most likely wearing boots and spurs.
Both Sheriff Allen and Doc Miller exchanged glances, each saying to the other, “This kid didn’t have a known enemy in the whole of Morgan’s Bend.” There was nodding agreement from many patrons in the saloon, enjoying their ease of the day.
Miller said to the bartender, “Greg, find a room upstairs where we can keep Luke while he’s recovering.
If you haven’t got one, kick someone out. The boy needs rest and I won’t let him be hauled out to the ranch for a few days more anyway.”
In half an hour, Hammard was asleep in a room that had been emptied of a tenant’s gear, which was piled in a corner of the hallway.
Sheriff Allen asked the bartender, “Whose room was this?”
“A gent who came in yesterday, right off the stage. Paid cash. But I ain’t seen him all day, and he didn’t stay in his room last night, unless he slipped out of the room this morning before I woke up.”
“He register?”
“Yup. Signed in as Roger Banderly, from KC.”
“Any idea why he’s here?” The sheriff was nodding all the while as if questions, if not being answered, were being openly tossed about in his mind.
“He didn’t say,” the barkeep said, “but I got suspicions he’s a bounty hunter. I know he got the loan of a horse at the livery ‘cause old Chet Greene told me. Got a gray big as your Lucifer, and went out of town when he wasn’t here no more than an hour or two. Lit right out, he did, and had changed his duds, them fancy ones he was wearin’, to riding duds and bought some candy off Dudley at the store, and lit out like I said.”
“Know if he went to the telegraph office?”
“Nope. Don’t know none of that.”
“Okay, Greg, but if this Banderly gent comes in while I’m gone, don’t say anything to him about all this.”
“I sure will, Sheriff. I mean, I sure won’t.”
“See that you do just that, Charlie. Just like you said on your second chance.”
When the sheriff returned from the telegraph office, with nothing new to think about, Luke Hammard was talking to Doc Miller, and both men looked up as Dip Allen came into the room.
Allen said, “I see he’s okay to talk to you, Doc, so is he okay to talk to me?”
“I sure am, Sheriff,” Hammard said. “I was telling the doc that I was riding along the creek, near those two big trees and the big rock, heading down to the Block B to see Mary Barton and I was shot from behind. Knocked me right off my horse. I was lying on the ground and I could hear someone walking toward me, his footsteps echoing on the ground. I couldn’t move much, so I figured I better play dead, so I did. Didn’t even open my eyes to look at him and I heard him say plain as day as he turned my face to look at, “Oh, damn it.”
“Like he knew you weren’t the man he thought you were, like he made a mistake, a real big mistake?”
“Exactly like that, Sheriff. Exactly like that. I wanted so bad to open my eyes, but I was afraid he’d shoot me again, only to cover up the mistake the second time around.”
“Well, Luke, I’m glad you’re still with us. Thanks for the information. I’ll be in tomorrow to see you again.
Get some sleep tonight. I’m going down to the livery now and say hello to Chet Greene. And then I’ve got a few errands to get to, to set things in the right frame for me to get through this situation. I don’t like backstabbers and bushwhackers operating in my town, not any more than you do, I’d guess.”
Allen tied his horse off on the trail out of town, not far from where Hammard was bushwhacked. He walked around the area in large circles, and at each completion of a circuit, moved closer to the trees and rock, his eyes looking for the slightest sign to read, find answers in. All the time something in him telling him he was closing in on an important detail, the scene and the dialogue at the livery sweeping back to him in some clarity.
Another furtive detail came back to him as he studied the ground at his feet, but he held it at a distance. He promised himself that he’d telegraph an old pard back down the line about history on bounty hunters and their ripe rewards of capture. Who could tell him that he was on the wrong trail of bounty hunters? No man that he knew in town, and few out of town, but the legion of law enforcement comrades had always managed to assert itself in many ways. With a clear mind he managed to knock away or discard a number of assumptions, guesses and wild but impractical reasons for the attempted murder, if such was the case, of Luke Hammard.
Luke’s words came back to him, and with all the right inflections demanding appropriate attention: “I was lying on the ground and I could hear someone walking toward me, his footsteps echoing on the ground. I couldn’t move much, so I figured I better play dead, so I did. The critter had shot me, hadn’t he? Didn’t even open my eyes to look at him and I heard him say plain as day as he turned my face to look at, ‘Oh, damn it.’”
Allen thought, had thought from the moment he’d heard those words, that it was a case of mistaken identity, but at that it was still an attempted murder. There was no way around it: the boy, a harmless teen ager, could have been as dead as yesterday’s news, and in a hurry. The boy had been lucky right after being unlucky, not being shot a second time, playing dead like his life was in the balance.
Somewhere along the line, down trail or up river, a sheriff or marshal or deputy would remember other hasty attempts at bounty capture. He was convinced it was inevitable. If that long line of friends and comrades knew the name of Roger Banderly, if he had been in their territory and committed such an errand, he’d have some cause for real questioning if he ever caught up with Banderly.
It didn’t take long for the chain of lawmen to reveal some details about Banderly, but the important one was he’d been in jail himself for a ruckus in a saloon down in Jefferson, about 30 miles away up river, and on the same night Hammard had been back shot. That eliminated Banderly, but an hour or so later another telegraph to the sheriff said that a man often running with Banderly on their bounty hunting trips.
“Morgan Wheelock been running with him for a few years on and off. He was not around when Banderly was put in jail that night.” Jess Marvin, Sheriff, Jefferson.
Wheelock’s name rang a small bell in Allen’s mind, having heard it from some ranch hand in the dim past, perhaps a relative, or one talking about a bounty hunter’s singular exploit. He’d sit on this until it squirmed loose from under him, Allen vowed.
In the saloon one night a few days later, he recognized the voice at the end of the room, in a litany of curses. It belonged to Paul Belonga, from the Harbor spread. He was the one associated with the dimly remembered story of bounty hunting by Morgan Wheelock, a cousin.
Allen leaned over the bar and said to the bartender, “Greg, tell me what you know about that Belonga fellow down there like he’s holding court, and him half the age of the others at the table.”
“Just a noisy kid who ain’t growed up yet, Dip. Thinks he’s a ladies man from the git-go and I bet he still don’t know which end is up.”
“Ever in any trouble you heard of?”
“Just one argument of a serious nature, with George Barton of the Block B spread, about him hanging around his daughter Mary too much, gettin’ too pushy. So he just about run him off one night he come callin’.”
“Any threats?”
“None I heard of, but has an uncle or some relative who makes a bit of noise now and then. Name I can’t remember right now.”
“Wheelock?” Allen said.
The bartender lit up. “That’s it, Dip. How’d you know?”
“I heard it some place, maybe from the kid himself one night.”
The bartender looked straight at Allen. “Any connection with Luke’s gettin’ shot? Luke and Mary been together a few times I know, kid stuff, but together. Luke’s a good kid, not a big mouth like Belonga. Never says a word about anybody and nobody and never nothin’ about Mary.”
“Sounds like Luke has the inside track with her.”
“Got to say it does.”
Allen, in deep study of all he knew, placing characters in conspicuous settings, finding images and pictures in his mind of events and situations he was imagining all the way, walked toward Belonga’s table, the boy still talking away to the older men at the table, saying a whole lot of nothing but hearing himself talk.
Belonga looked up, stopped his blue streak of nothing, and said, “Howdy, Sheriff. Nice quiet night, ain’t it? We was just chattin’ here about things. How’s it with you?”
“Quiet like you say, looking for a few men, got a few questions out with law folk up and down the line about unfinished cases, a few home robberies, a wagon held up out on the river road, a case of mistaken identity in a murder case. All in a day’s work. You gents have a nice week so far?” He sat down on a nearby chair after pulling it close to the table. A couple of the older hands raised their eyebrows at each other about the intrusion, each recognizing Allen at work.
“Just thought I’d keep away from the bar tonight, sit over here and rest my bones, give my mind a break. Work gets at me at times.” He yawned a loud yawn and put his hand over his mouth. The two knowing older hands smiled easily at each other, but said nothing.
“Fact is, I just heard that a bounty hunter I was looking for was in jail the night Luke Hammard was back shot, so that gets him off my list.”
Belonga said, “I didn’t figure it was him in the first place, Sheriff, when I heard he was bein’ looked at. He’s a friend of my cousin. I met him once. Seems like a nice guy for a bounty hunter, though.”
“I guess you’re right there, but we don’t get to see the bounty hunter very often. Not up this way.”
“”Ceptin’ when he’s a relative,” Belonga put in. “I saw my cousin not a week ago. He was passin’ by the spread and dropped in to say hello. But, you’re right, we don’t get to see them too much. I ain’t seen him in months until this time. Maybe a year, but he sends me a few dollars every month, says he owed it to my Pa for helpin’ him a few times in some messy troublin’. Treats me good, he does, even though I don’t get to see him too often.”
Allen believed all he heard from Belonga, but not when he put in his own ideas about over-protection from a relative, and a safe route for a relative’s future. Serious men often carried serious deeds better than other men, and the same for commitments. He’d always run into that wearing the badge.
He walked away from the table, and the saloon, in deep thought, finally realizing that when the shooter stood over Hammard and said, “Oh damn it,” he might not be saying he shot the wrong man, but that the man he had shot was not dead. Hammard must have shown some life sign. He couldn’t shoot him on the ground. Even a back shooter had some rules. The sheriff didn’t doubt that.
It would not take much work to put Wheelock in a ripe position to tell the truth; after all, he could have shot Hammard as he lay on the trail, half dead or most dead, time having a way with all things, all actions.
Sheriff Dip Allen realized he had to take it as far as he could. It was all he had to go on, all he could put his thinking to.
Until something else showed up.
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