Coming Home
by C. F. Eckhardt

He hurt. He hurt bad. He knew the slug missed the bone – otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to mount. The blood hadn’t spurted, so it also missed the artery. It didn’t come out in a flood, so it hadn’t hit a major vein, either, but he was still bleeding badly. The bandanna he tied around his leg was soaked in blood. He had to find some help somewhere or he’d bleed to death and Simon Lawton would have succeeded.

Simon Lawton didn’t do his own killing, he hired it done. The gun he hired to do the job was dead. The man got off the first shot, but it was his only one. A load of buckshot caught him square in the chest, right between the nipples. At twenty feet, even a sawed-off shotgun doesn’t spread much.

He finally saw a house as the big buckskin gelding rounded a turn in the road. He headed for it, riding at a slow walk. It had been almost three hours since the shots were exchanged and it was possible the wounds were forming scabs. He didn’t want the jarring of a trot to break them loose. As he reined up in the sand-covered yard he called out. Almost immediately the door opened. A woman stepped out – a nice-looking woman, too. He judged her to be about thirty.

The only thing that didn’t look good about her was the double-barreled shotgun she had leveled on him. “What do you want?” she demanded. Her voice was not friendly.

“Is your man around, ma’am? I been hurt purty bad an’ I ain’t sure I can get outa this saddle on my own.”

“I got no man,” she said. “How’d you get hurt?”

“Well,” he said, “a feller tried to kill me, but he didn’t quite do it.”

“You’ve been shot? Where?”

“Right leg. Been the left ‘un, I wouldn’t never a made it into the saddle. Don’t know if I can get off by myself. That’s how come I asked ‘bout your man.”

She put the shotgun down and came to him. “I’ll help you down,” she said.

“I’m a right big feller, ma’am,” he said. “Heft might near a hunderd an’ ninety. You sure you could do it? You ain’t all that big.”

“I’m a strong woman, mister. You just slide out of that saddle real easy an’ I’ll get you in the house.” He eased out of the saddle, dragging his wounded leg over the high-dished cantle. The pain made him gasp. When his right foot hit the ground the leg started to crumple. The woman got on his right side where he wore his pistol in a crossdraw. She supported him as she guided him toward the steps.

“Better lay me out on the porch, ma’am,” he said. “I’d be liable to soak your beddin’ with blood, I get on your bed.”

“I’ll get you into the kitchen, lay you out on the kitchen floor. I can boil some water, get you cleaned up, get a proper bandage on your leg. Why did a man shoot you? You aren’t on the run, are you?”

“I’m on the run in a manner a speakin’, ma’am, but not from the law. Feller as put this hole in my leg, he was paid to pull the trigger. Man as paid him, he don’t do his own killin’. Leastways, he don’t do it no more. ‘Twas a time he did, but he’s mighty high-falutin’ these days.”

“Why would he pay someone to kill you?” she asked.

“To keep me from killin’ him. It goes back a ways, ma’am. Nothin’ to trouble you ‘bout.”

She put him on the clean kitchen floor. With a pair of scissors she cut the right leg off his brown ducking trousers, then off his drawers, then split both so she wouldn’t have to pull his boot off. “It looks to be a clean wound,” she said. “Dark blood. Not from an artery. I’ll have to clean the blood off, get a proper bandage on it.” She drew water from the inside pump and poured a cup, then handed it to him. He drank greedily. It had been hours since he had water. She got out some huck toweling, cut it into two pieces, then tore a strip off the long side. Then she took a small bottle from the cabinet. “This will hurt,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Iodine. It’s all I have, but it’ll help keep the wound from festering.” She applied the dark-red substance to the holes. He gritted his teeth and gasped at the touch. It was almost as if she’d set his wounds afire. Then she folded the two sections of huck into pads, positioned one on each side of his leg, and tied them in place with the strip. “Can you stand?” she asked.

“Apt to need a mite of a hand gettin’ up, ma’am,” he said. “’At right leg, it’s mighty feeble right now.” Getting behind him, she lifted his shoulders. He grasped the edge of the table and managed to pull himself to his feet.

“You’re southern,” she said. “I can tell by the way you talk.”

“Yes’m. Georgia. Dahlonega County.”

“Were you in the War?”

“Yes’m. I was with Johnston, fightin’ Sherman. I was jus’ a button kid then – sixteen, but I lied ‘bout my age. I was at Kenesaw Mountain, but I got wounded a couple days later so I got left at a farmhouse outa Sherman’s path. By the time I healed up the War was over. Went back home, but there warn’t much to go home to no more. Sherman’s bummers found it. Folks got clear, but they burnt the house an’ barns, burnt Paw’s corn in the field, kilt our ol’ cow an’ the hogs. Butchered the hogs an’ carted ‘em off. Emptied the smokehouse an’ then burnt it down, too.”

“My husband was in the Eighth Ohio Infantry,” she said. “He lost an arm at Cold Harbor. He was just a boy, too – nineteen. He came home. I was just seventeen, he was twenty-eight, when we married. We came west to homestead in Nebraska, but we picked the wrong part of Nebraska. We came down here to New Mexico, to the mountains. We bought this place from a widow. Her husband got killed in Lincoln County in seventy-nine.”

“Ridin’ with the Kid or agin him?” he asked.

“Neither. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the shooting started there was no place to go. He was just crossing the street, she said, when all of a sudden the air was full of bullets and one hit him in the heart. Let’s get that gunbelt off you and get you on the bed.”

“Reckon I better keep my shooter where I can get at it, ma’am, jus’ in case ‘at feller what shot me has some friends. You better put my horse outa sight, too. Anybody comes lookin’ fer a feller with a bullet in him, you ain’t seen one. Don’t wanta kill nobody in your house, but I don’t wanta get kilt here, neither. They get me, they’ll hafta kill you, too. You’d be a witness.”

“What’s your name, mister?” she asked.

“Ben Scarbrough, ma’am. An’ yourn?”

“Alice Bickford. My husband was Robert Bickford. I lost him an’ both of our babies to cholera last year.” Her voice was strained. “It’s hard to think about it, even now. It was a Saturday – town day. It hit them about ten in the morning, on the way to town. Why it passed me by I don’t know, but it did. All three of them were dead by one that afternoon. When I got the wagon to town, cholera was all over the place. It lasted about five days and then it was gone, but it killed my family and about thirty other people – nearly a quarter of all the people in town.

“Mister Scarbrough, who wants to have you killed?”

“Feller name of Simon Lawton.”

“Simon Lawton? The man who owns the Elkhorn Saloon?”

“That’s him.”

“But why would a successful man like Simon Lawton want you dead?”

“Like I said, to keep me from killin’ him.”

“Why would you want to kill him?”

“Goes back a ways. I had a sister. Purty gal she was, too. Real belle a’ Dahlonega County. He’s from Dahlonega County, too. He commenced to sparkin’ my sister. She let him know right off she didn’t want no part a him. He figgered he couldn’t have her, nobody could. He kilt my sister. Shot ‘er down right on the porch of our new house. I was there. Didn’t have a gun on me, so I couldn’t shoot him. He was sittin’ on his horse when he shot her. Then he lit a shuck. Got clean outa Georgia. I been trackin’ him nigh on ten years now. Got a Georgia murder warrant in my saddle pockets. Got a Dahlonega County deputy sheriff badge in there with it. If he’d go peaceable I’d take him back to Dahlonega County to hang – but he ain’t goin’ peaceable.

“He’s got power an’ money now, too. I was to go to law, he’d buy ‘em off. He done that in Miss’sippi, first time I run him down. He ain’t buyin’ off no law this time, an’ he ain’t gonna buy me off. Ain’t ‘nuff money in New Mexico to buy me off. Marybelle’s been in ‘at grave near on ten year now. I aim to put him in one.”

“Ýou’re going to have trouble. He’s in with the government here. It goes all the way to Santa Fe. They may hang you for killing him,” she said.

“’Long’s he’s dead first, don’t matter what happens to me. Marybelle’s killer’ll be six foot under. That’s all I care ‘bout.”

His wound healed slowly but, fortunately, cleanly. He stayed at Alice Bickford’s house, sleeping in the washroom in his soogans. As soon as he could, he began to do chores for her – chopping wood for the stove, feeding the animals. He took her rifle into the woods and brought back a fat white-tailed deer and a couple of hogs that had no earmarks. They salted the venison and smoked the pork. He helped her in her vegetable garden, digging potatoes and onions out of the soft soil, cutting and shelling the peas for her to put up.

Fall became winter and they huddled together in the house next to the kitchen stove, trying to keep warm as the snow fell. And slowly but surely, they fell in love. The kisses were passionate – but there was nothing more.

“No, Alice,” he said. “I ain’t leavin’ you with a baby in your belly an’ no man to go with it. After I finish what I got to do, if I’m still ‘live I’ll put a weddin’ ring on your hand. Then we can think ‘bout babies.”

Come spring his wound was fully healed. He saddled the buckskin, hung the shotgun on its thong from the saddle horn. “You come back to me, Ben Scarbrough,” she said.

“I finally got something to come back for. If I live, I’ll come back to you, Alice.” He put spurs to the buckskin and rode away at a trot.

Midday, he walked into the Elkhorn Saloon. “Lookin’ for Mister Simon Lawton,” he said.

“What you want with Mister Lawton?” the barkeep asked.

“I’m an old friend,” he said. “We growed up together.”

‘Oh. I’ll tell him.” The barkeep headed into the office. Ben Scarbrough stepped behind one of the pillars that held the roof up. He loosened his six-shooter in the leather.

Simon Lawton came into the room. He was wearing striped pants, a blue, watered-silk vest, a fine linen shirt. He had a gold watch chain across his vest. He was smoking a cigar.

“Where’s this so-called ‘old friend?’”

Ben stepped out from behind the pillar. “Right here, Simon,” he said.

“Ben Scarbrough! I thought you was dead!”

“You tried hard ‘nough to make sure I was. It’s over, Simon. I’m either gonna take you back to Dahlonega County to hang, or one of us is gonna die right here. It’s your choice, Simon. You’re gonna be dead either way – or both of us will be.”

Simon Lawton reached for his hip pocket – he kept a Colt Lightning, a short-barreled sheriff’s model, in a leather holster there. Ben’s left hand flew to the crossdraw holster. The forty-five spoke once and a bright red spot appeared just above Simon Lawton’s vest. His hand kept moving and the Lightning came out, but he never fired it as he crumpled to the floor.

“Somebody get the law!” the barkeep yelled. “He’s jus’ murdered Mister Lawton!”

“Fair fight ain’t no murder,” one of the customers said. “Lawton reached first. I seen it. How come you kilt him, mister?”

“I’m a Dahlonega County lawman an’ I got a murder warrant with his name on it in my pocket.”

A deputy, following the sound of the shot, burst through the swinging doors from the cigar apartment into the saloon proper. “What happened here?” he demanded.

“I’m a Dahlonega County, Georgia, deputy. I got a murder warrant with Simon Lawton’s name on it in my pocket. I told him I come to get him, take him back to Dahlonega County to hang, or we could finish it right here. He went for a gun.” Ben reached into the inside pocket of his vest and produced a document.

“You’re a ways from home, mister. What’s your name?” the deputy asked.

“Ben Scarbrough.”

“Says Lawton was wanted for killin’ a Marybelle Scarbrough. Any kin to you?”

“My sister. He shot her down ‘cause she told him she wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man in the world.”

“You say he went for a gun.” He turned to the saloon’s customers. “Anybody else see him go for a gun?” Several responded that they did. “Well, that makes it self defense, any way you look at it. Sheriff’s gonna wanta talk to you, Scarbrough, but I don’t reckon we’ll do anything else. Was I you, I’d watch my back trail, though. Lawton’s got some friends.”

“I know he does,” Ben said. “He hired one of ‘em to kill me last fall.”

“What happened to him?”

“He run head-on into a load a buckshot. If Lawton didn’t collect his carcass the wolves got him. Need to wire the Dahlonega County sheriff’s office, tell ‘em the warrant’s been served.”

“Who’s the sheriff there?” the deputy asked.

“Hell, I don’t even know. I been on this trail nigh on ten years. Ain’t set foot in Dahlonega County since I took it up.”

At dusk, Ben pulled rein in front of the Bickford house and dismounted.

“Alice,” he called. “I’m back.”

She came out the door and looked him over. “At least you don’t have another hole in you,” she said.

“Near thing, but I got him. Marybelle can rest easy now.”

“I can rest easy now, too,” she said. “Welcome home, Ben.” She ran into his arms.