Colorado Crossfire Page 2

  Lefty was a troublesome lad whose dad’s heavy army belt laid across his bottom on plenty of occasions. The boy wasn’t exactly mean, but when something went wrong—whether it be a broken cookie jar or a note sent home from the post school by the angry teacher—Lefty was always involved. In a day when “army brats.” were particularly notorious, the boy was a classic example of a misbehaving garrison child.

  Lefty’s existence—long periods of boredom broken by violent moments of physical punishment from his father—went along pretty much the same for a long time. Then an important event occurred in his life on a day when he was participating in one of his favorite pastimes—fishing when he should have been in school.

  It was a warm spring day in that year of 1876. The prairie country had awakened slowly but luxuriously from the long winter. Meadowlarks sung out from their ground nests, prairie dogs scampered in and out of their burrows and the colorful splash of sunflowers, bluebonnets, and goldenrods added color to the balmy atmosphere. Letting the warmth ease over him like an invisible blanket, Lefty dozed on the banks of Cache Creek. He felt deliciously wicked knowing that his classmates were reciting their lessons under the stern supervision of the bad-tempered post schoolmaster while he whiled away the hours in a pleasant pastime. As usual, he gave absolutely no thought to the consequences of his behavior. This was a trait that was to stay with him for the rest of his days. Happy in spirit and relaxed in his heart, Lefty enjoyed his light nap.

  Suddenly nudged to wakefulness by instinct, Lefty opened his eyes and turned his head toward a nearby redbud tree. An Indian boy, about his age but shorter and heavier, stood there calmly looking at him. Lefty was slightly annoyed. “What’re you looking at, you ol’ Injun you?”

  The other youngster, obviously a Kiowa, said nothing.

  “There’s lots o’ bank to this creek,” Lefty said. “Go on and find some other place to hang around.” With that he settled back and closed his eyes. But only for a few moments. Feeling the other still gazing at him, Lefty sat up. “Are you deaf or something?”

  The Indian remained silent but showed a slight smile.

  Lefty, his Irish temper simmering a bit, got to his feet and ambled over to the Indian. “Didn’t nobody ever tell you it ain’t polite not to answer other folks when they’re a-talking at you?”

  The Indian maintained his cheerful silence.

  Lefty pushed him, making the other boy stumble back. The Kiowa boy thought that seemed like a pretty good game. He stepped forward and gave Lefty a shove. Lefty retaliated and the Indian boy repeated the act.

  Lefty figured he’d had enough. “You asked for it, feller.” He leaped forward and grabbed the young Kiowa in a headlock, rocking back and forth. The Indian struggled a bit before he broke the hold, then he quickly slipped around Lefty and grabbed his waist. Lifting high, he threw the white youngster onto the ground.

  Lefty got up and dusted himself off. He made a quick evaluation of the situation. “Want to fish?” he wisely asked. “I got an extra line and hook.” He walked over to his jacket and pulled the items out of one of the pockets. “Here.”

  Within five minutes both boys were settled down side by side, their lines in the water, fishing together as if they’d been friends all their lives. They spent the rest of the day like that. The only time they moved was to yank in their lines to pull in a struggling catfish or crappie. Finally, with the western sky reddening, a distant bugle call from Fort Sill sounded. Lefty imitated it. “That’s mess call,” he said. “Time to eat. And time to go home.”

  The Indian boy seemed to understand that his companion was leaving. He pulled in his line and wound it up while the other did the same.

  Finally Lefty picked up the line that held all their caught fish. “Some of these is yours. You want ’em? Or do you want to come on home and my mall fry ’em up.” He waited a few moments while the other boy simply looked at him. “You got to be the dumbest feller I ever seen.” Lefty sighed. “Well, c’mon. Let’s go.

  The Indian seemed to understand. He silently followed Lefty up the creek bank and across the open country toward the garrison. The two plodded down the row of houses used by the noncommissioned officers and their families. Finally they reached one of the larger ones.

  “My pa is a post staff NCO,” Lefty said proudly. “That’s why we got a better house than some o’ the others.” He led his new friend around the back and into the kitchen.

  If Katy McNally was surprised to see the Indian boy, she didn’t show it. Since there was no meat for the evening meal, she happily accepted the fish. “Sure now and they’ll go fine wit’ the corn and taters,” she said in her brogue.

  “The Injun helped catch ’em,” Lefty said.

  “Then it’s only right we be asking him to jine us,” Mrs. McNally said. She looked at the dark-skinned boy. “Would ye be liking that then?”

  “He don’t talk,” Lefty explained.

  “O’ course he talks,” Mrs. McNally said. “He just don’t do it in English.”

  “Anyhow,” Lefty said. “He understands ever’thing. He’ll stay.”

  The other McNally children crowded into the kitchen to stare at their guest. As with all children, there was no animosity in their frank curiosity, but they were not exactly polite either.

  “Izzat funny Injun gonna stay fer supper?” one of the older boys asked.

  “Sure and he is,” Mrs. McNally answered. “And ye’ll stop looking at him like he just come down from the moon.” She gestured at them. “Out ye go ’cept the girls. We’ve the fish to scale now.”

  The boys went into the dining room in time for Post Commissary Sergeant McNally to step grandly into the house. He took off his kepi and hung it on the hat rack mounted by the door. “Well,” he said spotting the Indian. “Who’s the Kiowa kid then?”

  “He’s a friend o’ Lefty’s,” Paddy, the older boy, answered.

  “Him and me caught some fish today,” Lefty explained. “Ma and the girls is scaling ’em.”

  Sergeant McNally smiled a wise Irish smile. “Well, now, that’ll be grand. And ye must be the fastest fishermen in the world.”

  “How’s that?” Lefty asked.

  “To have time to catch enough fish to feed this family and even invite a guest between the closing of school and mess call,” McNally said.

  The other children snickered.

  The one thing that wasn’t tolerated in the McNally household was lying to the patriarch. Lefty winced. It was time to pay the proverbial piper. “I played hooky.”

  “Then it’s out the back,” McNally said pulling off his belt.

  Lefty dutifully turned and walked through the house with his father following. The Indian boy, sticking close to his new friend, padded after them in his moccasins. When the trio reached the backyard, the young Kiowa was witness to the ritual of an erring boy getting a few correcting strokes of his father’s belt.

  The Indian thought it some sort of test for adolescent boys. He noticed that in spite of the severity of the blows, his new friend made no other sound than an occasional grunt as the heavy leather descended on his backside.

  “That’s the third time I’ve whipped ye that ye’ve not cried, Lefty me boy,” McNally said. He replaced his belt and announced, “I’ll not be whipping ye again, lad, but as sure as the devil breathes fire, I’ll make yer life miserable when ye go against me word.”

  “Yes, Pa.”

  The Kiowa boy had been right. It was a ritual.

  The McNally family shared their table with the Indian youngster that evening. Although he spurned any efforts they made to get him to speak—or even grunt at them he was a pleasant enough guest in spite of his lack of table manners. Shoving the food in with both hands when not spearing it with his knife, he consumed three full platefuls before his appetite was satiated. At that moment, with a full belly, the Kiowa wiped his mouth across his sleeve. Then he stood up and abruptly left the house.

  Sergeant McNally, leaning back in his chair, patted
his fish-stuffed stomach. “Now what’s yer friend’s name, Lefty?”

  “I don’t know, Pa,” Lefty answered. “He don’t talk much.”

  “So I noticed,” Mrs. McNally said. She and the girls turned to the task of clearing the tables.

  “Fetch me pipe and tobacco, Lefty me boy,” Sergeant McNally said. He waited for his son to get him the smoking implements. “I wonder,” he said filling the pipe, “if we’ll ever see that Kiowa kid again.”

  That statement cinched the name for the Indian boy. He became known to the McNally clan—and eventually to their neighbors and others—as the Kiowa Kid.

  The Indian got into the habit of eating two or three times a week with the McNallys. After a while this became an occurrence every evening as mutual affection developed between the Kiowa Kid and the family. With five other kids to feed, Sergeant and Mrs. McNally felt they could take on one more without too much of a strain. Lefty and the Kid developed a sincere fondness for each other, too, until the Irish-American boy felt closer to Kiowa than he did his own brothers.

  As time passed, they learned more about Kiowa. He was a “breed,” the offspring of a Kiowa mother and a white buffalo hunter who had lived with the tribe from time to time. The McNallys also found out that Kiowa could speak passable English. And, as time passed, his skill in the tongue increased until he was as fluent— and ungrammatical—as Lefty.

  The two boys, though physical opposites, were as temperamentally alike as twins. Lefty was tall and lean with straw-colored hair. Kiowa, on the other hand, was much shorter, more muscular and compact. He continued to wear his black hair in the braided style of his tribe. Later on, at Mrs. McNally’s insistence, he finally adopted more civilized dress, but the hairstyle stayed the same.

  By the time Lefty and Kiowa reached manhood, they were as close as natural bothers, and it was as brothers that they struck out into the world together to make their fortunes and seek adventure.

  Two

  When Jim Bigelow stepped off the train in Helena, he didn’t bother to check into a hotel before going straight to the business that had brought him into town. Feeling a need to hurry, and still carrying his leather valise, he strode rapidly from the depot down the boardwalk to the sheriff’s office. He arrived at the local lockup and stepped inside the office, confronting a deputy who was in a decidedly bad mood.

  “Yeah?” the lawman asked giving the stranger a downright unfriendly glare.

  Bigelow reached flipped open his coat to display his badge. “I’m James Bigelow. I work as a detective for the Northwest and Canadian Railroad. I’m here on business.”

  “Then state your damn business.”

  Bigelow’s eyes turned cold. “Kinda in a bad mood, ain’t you?”

  The deputy simmered down a bit under the railroad detective’s hard gaze. He decided there wasn’t much to gain by being feisty toward the stranger. “Mister, I’m putting in long hours on short pay. Now what is it you want?”

  “I got word that you’re holding a couple of fellows by the name of Lefty McNally and the Kiowa Kid.”

  “Are you the feller that sent us the telegram?”

  “That’s me,” Bigelow answered.

  “You damn well knew where to find ’em, didn’t you? And they’re the main reason I ain’t sitting and grinning,” the deputy said. “Them two is enough to keep a dozen deputies busy, I swear. You got a warrant for ’em?”

  “Nope,” Bigelow said. “I want to see ’em.”

  “They’re in a cell back there,” the deputy said. Then he added, “This is about the tenth time them ornery bastards have been in jail since they rode into town a week or so ago.”

  “I may want to bail ’em out,” Bigelow said. “There’s more’n bail involved, mister,” the deputy advised him. “There’s some items of damage and about twenty dollars in fines. In fact, they’re facing a little time in the territorial prison.”

  Bigelow frowned. “What’d they do?”

  “I’ll give it to you day by day,” the lawman said. He pulled a sheaf of papers from the desk drawer. “This herd’s the justice o’ the peace’s report on Mr. Liam Norvall McNally and a Injun who calls hisself the Kiowa Kid. It’s all down here. They was in a fight over to the Dancing Dollar Saloon before they’d been in town five minutes. After they paid their fines for that, they went a day or two without any trouble until they got into a fracas in a whorehouse at the other end of town.”

  Bigelow shrugged. “I hear tell they been scouting for the army a few months. That’d make any man restless and sort of wild, wouldn’t it?”

  The other ignored the question. “Then they got into trouble with a traveling medicine man over some elixir he sold ’em. Evidently, it didn’t hold up to the promises given.”

  “Sounds like they had a right to get riled,” Bigelow said.

  “After that they was drunk and disorderly twice, then they damn near burned down the livery stable,” the lawman said. “That’s what they’ll be going to prison for. We’re holding ’em on a destruction of private property charge and arson. Normally, they’d do six months, but the sheriff don’t want to see ’em again for a coupla years.”

  “Who’s preferring the charges on the livery stable?” Bigelow asked.

  “Jess Ryder,” the deputy said. “He owns the place.”

  “Can I find him there?”

  “Sure. Just keep on walking up the street. His place o’ business is at the edge o’ town.”

  “Thanks,” Bigelow said. “Can I leave my valise here?”

  “I don’t see why not,” the deputy answered. “I’ll put it behind the desk.”

  Bigelow left the office and walked in the direction indicated. When he reached the livery stable he asked for the owner. A workman forking hay from a wagon into a bin directed Bigelow to a small shed in back of the place. He knocked on it. “Jess Ryder?”

  A bewhiskered old man with bowed legs appeared in the doorway. “Yeah?”

  “I hear you had a fire here.”

  Ryder pointed to some fresh boards on the back of the livery barn. “I got her fixed up now.”

  “How much damage was done?”

  “It cost me a hunnerd dollars,” the liveryman said. He squinted at Bigelow with an inquisitive look. “How come you’re asking?”

  “If I paid you damages, would you drop the charges against the two fellows that started it?”

  Ryder became thoughtful. “You a friend o’ them two crazy bastards?”

  “I’ll pay you what’s due you, if there’s no charges brought,” Bigelow said.

  “I want three hunnerd dollars,” Ryder said. “I suffered plenty when I seen my property blazing away to cinders.”

  Bigelow gave the repaired damage another look.

  “Doesn’t look like a lot to me, but I’ll give you two hundred and twenty-five.”

  “I was mortified down to the marrow of my bones,” Ryder said, his face assuming an expression of sorrow. “My livelihood was going up in smoke. If I’d lost that livery barn, I’d starved to death like a lost doggie in a blizzard.”

  “Two hundred and twenty-five dollars,” Bigelow said in a firm voice.

  “Who are you, mister?” Ryder asked.

  “A man that’ll give you two hundred and twenty-five dollars if you won’t press charges against McNally and the Kiowa Kid,” Bigelow answered.

  “You’re a friend o’ theirs?”

  Bigelow was silent.

  “Well … I’m agreeable, I reckon.”

  “C’mon,” Bigelow said. “We’ll go down to the sheriff’s office and settle this thing up.”

  Ryder grinned at the thought of the money. “Hell, yes, mister! The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

  A half-hour later, the deputy came out of the cells pushing Lefty McNally and the Kiowa Kid in front of him. “Here they are,” he said to Bigelow. “But I wouldn’t claim ’em if I was you.”

  Lefty grinned widely. “Hey, Jim.” He nudged Kiowa. “Say howdy
to our ol’ pard who’s bailed us out of jail.”

  “Howdy,” Kiowa said.

  “I did more’n bail you out,” Bigelow said. “The Northwest and Canadian Railroad paid off the damages on that livery barn, too.”

  Kiowa frowned suspiciously. “How come? They need hunters again?”

  “Nope,” Bigelow said. “All the track is laid and the comp’ny is operating full tilt. And I ain’t the head guard no more. I’m the chief of detectives.”

  “You hear that?” Lefty asked Kiowa.

  “Yeah.”

  “You must be a purty big fish now, Jim,” Lefty said. “Anyhow, why are you getting us outta the lockup?”

  “Never mind!” Bigelow snapped. “You two jailbirds just come on with me.”

  “Can we get our stuff?” Lefty asked. “Or is the great Northwest and Canadian gonna buy us new gear?”

  “Get your belongings,” Bigelow said.

  The deputy sheriff went to a padlocked trunk and opened it. He stood back while Lefty and Kiowa fished out saddlebags, pistols, carbines, and bedrolls.

  “Our saddles is with our horses down to the livery,” Kiowa said.

  “We’ll fetch ’em later,” Bigelow said. He turned and went out the door leading his two companions down the boardwalk to the Fletcher Hotel. He went to the counter and turned the register around, signing it.

  “Two rooms,” he said to the clerk.

  “Ain’t but one bed in each room,” the clerk said.

  “I sleep on the floor,” Kiowa said.

  Lefty signed “L. N. McNally” and Kiowa signed with a “KK,” the only thing he knew how to write. It had taken Lefty’s oldest sister almost an entire day to teach him how to properly make the letters.

  “Rooms Three and Four,” the clerk said giving them the keys. “And that’s a dollar each in advance.”

  Lefty looked at Bigelow. “You know we ain’t got any money.”