The Outlaw Album: Stories

            “If the boy had freed the rope the hanging would’ve been scotched and required doing over,” I said.

            “Judas worked quick, too,” said Pitt Mackeson.

            Coleman Younger stroked the Enfield and chambered a round. “You did right,” he said. “Dead from the front is no more dead than from the back. It is a question of opportunity.”

            “So is chicken stealing,” Mackeson said.

            My arms ached already from the thought of digging his new home, for I was thinking he would soon be in it.

            “Jake did right.”

            Arch Clements untied the prisoners and told them to stand, then retied them in a file of sorts. “Stay in your line, soldier boys,” he said in his squeaky voice. “For we shall march your meals down.”

            Coleman Younger placed his hand on top of my head as he stood. “It was nothing,” he said, “but right.” He ran his hand along the smooth stock of the Enfield, then raised it to his shoulder. He sighted into the belly of the prisoner at the head of the column.

            “Leave off with the jokes,” the prisoner said.

            The Enfield fired and the first three Yankees tumbled.

            Coleman Younger chambered another round. “I would’ve thought more,” he said. “So far this ain’t special.”

            The rest of the camp was dropping letters, gun rags, needles, tin cups, and favored corncobs to watch. I thought Captain Quantrill might be peeved by this employment of his prisoners, but he made no move to halt it.

            The next shot felled only two, and not cleanly. Their moans sounded like man and wife in a feather bed.

            Coleman Younger chambered another round.

            “Not exactly a Sharps, is it?” he said.

            Little Arch made a straight line of the Yankees again as they had drifted some. Alf Bowden was among the standing, and he called my name, which it must’ve hurt him to do.

            “Let us save one,” I said. I pulled Alf Bowden from the line, he being so limp he fell at my touch. “We can send him back to General Ewing, maybe, as a witness that his new law will cut both ways.”

            There was blood in the air. It drifted over my bare hands, spotting them like some rare mist. Alf Bowden was yet on his knees, his hands clutching at my legs, pulling himself toward me. The rare mist had freckled one of his cheeks, and his hair had been touched up at the ends by the same breeze, giving him a vaguely pheasant aspect.

            The man and wife in the feather bed slept now, and the silence was glass, poised for the shatter.

            “We all had friends,” Coleman Younger said. He chambered another round. He was staring at me more thoughtfully than I found comfortable. “That is all off now.”

            “There is something to be gained by this sparing,” I said. I did not believe what I had said, but I said it, and hoped only to utter more dream-babble that would justify it.

            “I yearn to hear about it,” Coleman Younger said.

            I was losing a comrade, this I could see. I had no retort.

            A murderer of slyer instincts saved me and made of me a hero. Captain Quantrill had cozied up to us as we were engaged. He held a palm toward Coleman Younger, Little Arch, and Pitt Mackeson, who was fiddling with something near his holster. He then fixed me with a reverent gaze, an approving light coming to his eyes.

            Alf Bowden babbled into my toes, his arms encircling my boots, his face between them.

            “I quite see it,” Captain Quantrill said. “Yes. We shall send him over to Sigel’s brigade of Dutchmen near Warrensburg.” Captain Quantrill worked his hands together as if to wash them. His feet were moving in little hops, and he would surely have danced had there been a suitable partner handy. “Oh, yes. They far outnumber us. They will want to make quick time and to do that they will come through Creve Coeur Gap. Oh, my, yes.”

            His plan could not be missed. Creve Coeur Gap was a narrow slit between two long bluffs that flanked the Blackwater River. General Franz Sigel, alerted by the winner from my mistake, and our most hated enemy, would seek the shortest route to our destruction—through the tall bluffs, thick timber, and slender passage afforded by Creve Coeur Gap.

            “Just so,” I said.

            Coleman Younger and the others began to nod, then smile at me, their lips raising only on one side of their mouths.

            “Jake Roedel,” Coleman Younger said. “You are brilliant with mercy.”