"Cowboy, Change Your Ways Today"
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dochermes"Cowboy, Change Your Ways Today"
6/11/1879
I.
Under a dark sky smothered by thick clouds, the wind had picked up until Tom Pinto could hardly see from squinting against the dust. He reined his chestnut horse to a halt on a ridge overlooking the plains. He had already tied his red kerchief over his nose and mouth but the wind was making progress more difficult. Also, he was growing concerned about his prisoner.
In his early fifties, Tom Pinto had gotten grizzled and weathered by a hard life. His untrimmed beard and hair had as much grey as blond in them, and deep furrows ran down his cheeks like dried creekbeds. Pinto's darkly tanned skin looked tough as worn leather and his deepset blue eyes were sullen. His jeans and shirt were brown, with a short spotted vest over them. It was this black and white vest, made from the hide of a Pinto pony once owned by the famous Indian chief Osawayatotha, that had given him his name. Buckled around his waist was a gunbelt with a single-action .44 tied down low on his thigh. Swinging down off his own horse, the infamous outlaw strode back to the mare he had been towing behind him with its reins in his hand... and to the young man slung sideways across its saddle.
Much smaller than the lanky Pinto, not even twenty years old, Johnny Packard hung face down with his wrists bound tightly behind him by strips of rawhide. The Brimstone Kid was wearing mostly black, boots and jeans and vest, with a red cotton shirt that was stiffened by dried blood across its side. His gunbelt held two empty holsters. As Tom Pinto seized the youth and hauled him off the saddle to land on the rock ridge with a thump, Johnny grunted but tried not to show either pain or fear.
"Damn your mangy soul!" the Brimstone Kid growled. He tried to roll over and sit up but was too weak. His thick red hair was matted with dust and hung down almost over his eyes. Those furious green eyes burned as if with fever when he glared up at his captor.
"At least yore bleedin' has stopped," said Tom Pinto calmly. "I bound it up as well as I could. Twern't that deep but it was bad enough you mighta cashed in your chips if left unattended."
"Where's that red rooster who cut me?" yelled Johnny. He managed to wriggle over onto his side so he could glare up at Pinto. "That was a miserable cowardly act. You held an iron on me while he come around from behind and stuck his blade in my side. Where is he? I'll send him to his Great Mystery all right."
Pinto came around to squat just out reach of the enraged Kid. "Aw, he ain't nobody particular. Just another renegade cast out by his own people. I paid him to do that. He said it pleased him greatly to stab a white man after what's happened to his folk."
"I bet!" Johnny tried to spit but couldn't summon enough moisture in his dry mouth. "What the hell, Pinto? I heard about you all my life. I figgered you for a straight-shooting square deal sorta fella."
The older man scanned the black clouds overhead nervously. "Tornado weather, I reckon. Feel the tingle in the air? Lissen, Kid, you don't know nothin' about me. Never mind the stories about me fightin' oppression and freein' towns from outlaw gangs and all that malarkey. I ain't no choir boy."
Johnny shook his head and kept his gaze squarely on the man. "That ain't what I heard. Not 'tall. I know folks who saw you firsthand take down a gunman who was terrorizing ranchers. I talked to an old widow woman who swore you saved her homestead by getting back mortgage money stolen by the Schueler Brothers.. and them two was never seen again. Even with a price on your head, you always did the right thing and I admired that. Yet here I am, tied up like a hog going to market and I never did you no harm."
Walking away from the redheaded youth, Tom Pinto let out a sigh that turned into a groan that came from deep within him. "You don't know nothin', Kid. Eighteen years I been runnin' and hidin'. Using different name in ever town, shavin' my whiskers and lettin em grow, wearing Mexican clothes, changing hosses alla time. And still, I couldn't ever put my head down to sleep without being worried I'd wake up to find a lawman pointing a barrel at me and takin' me in for the reward. One bounty hunter chased me all over West Texas until I lost him in a flood."
"Yeah? What's that got ta do with me?"
"You're not an outlaw, Johnny," Pinto said wearily. "There's no posters with yore face on it nailed to trees all over Creation like there is for me. But still, you do got enemies. Fella named Bad-Luck offered me money to bring you to him. He's got a grudge agin you, son."
Johnny snorted weakly. "I can believe it. That bastard. I put a lead pill in his leg a year ago, and I swear he deserved worse. 'Back-Luck Buckner' they called him, and I was happy to put an end to his thievin' racket. I thought they hanged them that same week."
"Naw, friends broke him out and snuck him away. Bad-Luck limps now, he can't get up in a saddle without help. He told me he wants to see you agin and he offered a wad of paper money for arrangin' a meeting that's thick as my fist."
Now, the Brimstone Kid got his hands under him and began forcing his upper body up off the ground. "Damn your mangy soul-"
"Settle down, youngster," Pinto said as he went over to nudge the Kid's arms out from under him again. "You ain't got the strength for a fight, and you ain't got your guns. Lie still. With that money, I can move back East. I'll go to farm country in Pennsylvania and start over again where nobody never heard heard of Tom Pinto."
"You know Bad-Luck is gonna kill me, don't ya?" snarled Johnny Packard. "After some torture no doubt. What happened to you anyway that you'd sell your soul for money? You ain't really Tom Pinto no more."
"That's enough talk about souls." Tom Pinto straightened, pushing his battered hat back on his head and seeming to listen for something far away. He shivered visibly. "That ain't just wind a'coming..."
II.
There was an outcropping of rock that created a ledge deep enough to conceal a man. Pinto dragged Johnny Packard under that ledge despite the Kid's curses and objections, jamming him in tightly enough. Fetching a big Army canteen, the gunman let Johnny sip almost half of it before taking it away.
"Don't want you dyin' here and now," Pinto said. He stood up again, staring toward the West where the sky was now black as night. "Ain't never seen weather like this, even durin' hurricane season down by Galveston...."
"Where's my hoss?!" demanded the Kid abruptly. "I swear, if anything's happened to Terror, I'm a-going to skin you the way Comanche squaws skin prisoners. What'd you do with him?"
Pinto laughed. "That black devil of a horse is fine. I left him tied up in a stable back in town. Friend of mine says he'll tend him for a week or two, then if he don't hear from me, he'll sell the critter. That's a good-lookin' stallion you had there, Kid. Someone'll pay handsome for Terror."
"Yeah? Terror will trample them and escape, I guarantee that. Where's my hat?"
"Yore hat?" Pinto turned around and gazed down at the Brimstone Kid thoughtfully. "I reckon it's with your other gear, your irons and your bedroll, in that same stable. What made you think of your consarned hat at a time like this?"
"Never you mind," Johnny muttered. That was his biggest worry right now. No living person knew about the ancient Darthan coin that had been given to him by the shaman Machingtok, the cursed token which he had worn tucked under his hatband ever since. It was that sorcerous coin that had made him the Brimstone Kid in fact as well as in name. Without it, he was just mortal flesh and blood.
Yet, his most troubling thought then was not about his own impending death without that token. It was the concern over who else might find it and what horror they might become under its baleful power. He had been struggling to keep from going on murderous rampages when night fell and he wore that red coin. If it got into the hands of a cold-hearted outlaw or an Apache brave...
By now, the wind was howling at gale force. Tom Pinto snatched his old Stetson just as it started flying off his head and tightened its cord around his chin. "I purely don't like this," he mumbled as he brought both horses over so their heads were facing in under the rock ledge. The gunfighter tied their reins to a sharp stone as best he could.
"If'n it is a tornado comin'," he told Johnny. "You and the hosses have at least a chance of not being torn up into the sky." Then he left them. A second later, the clap of his boots could be heard as he walked up onto the outcropping.
Wedged in under that ledge, arms tied behind him, Johnny Packard could not manage to free himself. The deep aching pain under his ribs made it hard to think. He had been weak like this from loss of blood before and he knew it would only pass with time and rest... two things his future did not hold. The Brimstone Kid had been mortally afraid many times before, although he seldom showed it, but this time he felt a cold sinking certainty that his time was about up.
Then he heard the hoofbeats approaching.
The Kid twisted his head, surprised at the pounding of a herd drawing near. There was no mistaking that sound. And yet, even as the thunder of the hooves got closer, it seemed in some way hollow and far away. He heard the cries of cowhands yelling to steer the cows and the noise was muffled in some way. In another instant, the stampede seemed to pass right over him somehow. Johnny never understood why he didn't yell out for help at that moment. If he could get the attention of a few of the pokes, surely they would rein in and see what was happening to him. But he remained silent and held his breath with an apprehension he could not name. He sensed he was in the presence of something both momentous and perilous.
From far away, sepulchral and mournful, a man's voice called out, "Tom Pinto!" Johnny could not make out the words that followed. The air felt so oppressive and heavy he was fighting to breathe. For long seconds, everything seemed to recede in a haze as he struggled not to pass out. Then the event passed. Silence swelled up to fill his ears. The clouds overhead broke and wide gold sunbeams struck down through the openings. Johnny took a deep breath that didn't even hurt and wondered desperately what was happening.
Tom Pinto came down into view. The old cowboy stumbled, fell to his knees and had trouble getting up again. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and his eyes were vague and unfocused. Rising, he hauled Johnny out from under the ledge out the sunlight. The outlaw's hands were shaking so much he couldn't undo the knots tying the Kid's wrists together.
"What the Hell ails ya?" shouted Johnny. "Damn your mangy soul--"
"Don't say that. Don't ever say that again." Tom Pinto's chest was heaving and it took him a minute to catch his breath. Finally, he tugged a wide-bladed knife from inside his boot and sliced through the rawhide strips binding the Kid. Johnny Packard wriggled away and immediately got to his feet out of reach.
"You have no idea what them words mean," added Pinto. He slowly sank to a seated position on the ground and stared up at the lightening sky.
"Don't appear I'm gonna get any straight answers from you," Johnny said. He judged distances, seeing how Pinto was seated and estimating what the odds were of getting that Colt away from him without getting shot.
Seeing him calculating an attack, Tom Pinto exhaled sharply and placed his hand on the gun butt. "That ain't gonna be needed, Kid. I'm riding with you back to town. You'll get yore hoss and yore guns and all yore kit back agin. Then I'll tell you were Bad-Luck is holed up in the hills and if'n you want, you can settle yore score with him. I'm done with it all."
For a breathless minute, neither man spoke. Finally, Johnny Packard had to ask. "Pinto... Tom.. what happened to you?"
"I'll never say," the grizzled cowboy replied as if to himself. "So long as I live. And, Johnny, pray that you never get in a state where you see what I seen."
6/19/2017
6/11/1879
I.
Under a dark sky smothered by thick clouds, the wind had picked up until Tom Pinto could hardly see from squinting against the dust. He reined his chestnut horse to a halt on a ridge overlooking the plains. He had already tied his red kerchief over his nose and mouth but the wind was making progress more difficult. Also, he was growing concerned about his prisoner.
In his early fifties, Tom Pinto had gotten grizzled and weathered by a hard life. His untrimmed beard and hair had as much grey as blond in them, and deep furrows ran down his cheeks like dried creekbeds. Pinto's darkly tanned skin looked tough as worn leather and his deepset blue eyes were sullen. His jeans and shirt were brown, with a short spotted vest over them. It was this black and white vest, made from the hide of a Pinto pony once owned by the famous Indian chief Osawayatotha, that had given him his name. Buckled around his waist was a gunbelt with a single-action .44 tied down low on his thigh. Swinging down off his own horse, the infamous outlaw strode back to the mare he had been towing behind him with its reins in his hand... and to the young man slung sideways across its saddle.
Much smaller than the lanky Pinto, not even twenty years old, Johnny Packard hung face down with his wrists bound tightly behind him by strips of rawhide. The Brimstone Kid was wearing mostly black, boots and jeans and vest, with a red cotton shirt that was stiffened by dried blood across its side. His gunbelt held two empty holsters. As Tom Pinto seized the youth and hauled him off the saddle to land on the rock ridge with a thump, Johnny grunted but tried not to show either pain or fear.
"Damn your mangy soul!" the Brimstone Kid growled. He tried to roll over and sit up but was too weak. His thick red hair was matted with dust and hung down almost over his eyes. Those furious green eyes burned as if with fever when he glared up at his captor.
"At least yore bleedin' has stopped," said Tom Pinto calmly. "I bound it up as well as I could. Twern't that deep but it was bad enough you mighta cashed in your chips if left unattended."
"Where's that red rooster who cut me?" yelled Johnny. He managed to wriggle over onto his side so he could glare up at Pinto. "That was a miserable cowardly act. You held an iron on me while he come around from behind and stuck his blade in my side. Where is he? I'll send him to his Great Mystery all right."
Pinto came around to squat just out reach of the enraged Kid. "Aw, he ain't nobody particular. Just another renegade cast out by his own people. I paid him to do that. He said it pleased him greatly to stab a white man after what's happened to his folk."
"I bet!" Johnny tried to spit but couldn't summon enough moisture in his dry mouth. "What the hell, Pinto? I heard about you all my life. I figgered you for a straight-shooting square deal sorta fella."
The older man scanned the black clouds overhead nervously. "Tornado weather, I reckon. Feel the tingle in the air? Lissen, Kid, you don't know nothin' about me. Never mind the stories about me fightin' oppression and freein' towns from outlaw gangs and all that malarkey. I ain't no choir boy."
Johnny shook his head and kept his gaze squarely on the man. "That ain't what I heard. Not 'tall. I know folks who saw you firsthand take down a gunman who was terrorizing ranchers. I talked to an old widow woman who swore you saved her homestead by getting back mortgage money stolen by the Schueler Brothers.. and them two was never seen again. Even with a price on your head, you always did the right thing and I admired that. Yet here I am, tied up like a hog going to market and I never did you no harm."
Walking away from the redheaded youth, Tom Pinto let out a sigh that turned into a groan that came from deep within him. "You don't know nothin', Kid. Eighteen years I been runnin' and hidin'. Using different name in ever town, shavin' my whiskers and lettin em grow, wearing Mexican clothes, changing hosses alla time. And still, I couldn't ever put my head down to sleep without being worried I'd wake up to find a lawman pointing a barrel at me and takin' me in for the reward. One bounty hunter chased me all over West Texas until I lost him in a flood."
"Yeah? What's that got ta do with me?"
"You're not an outlaw, Johnny," Pinto said wearily. "There's no posters with yore face on it nailed to trees all over Creation like there is for me. But still, you do got enemies. Fella named Bad-Luck offered me money to bring you to him. He's got a grudge agin you, son."
Johnny snorted weakly. "I can believe it. That bastard. I put a lead pill in his leg a year ago, and I swear he deserved worse. 'Back-Luck Buckner' they called him, and I was happy to put an end to his thievin' racket. I thought they hanged them that same week."
"Naw, friends broke him out and snuck him away. Bad-Luck limps now, he can't get up in a saddle without help. He told me he wants to see you agin and he offered a wad of paper money for arrangin' a meeting that's thick as my fist."
Now, the Brimstone Kid got his hands under him and began forcing his upper body up off the ground. "Damn your mangy soul-"
"Settle down, youngster," Pinto said as he went over to nudge the Kid's arms out from under him again. "You ain't got the strength for a fight, and you ain't got your guns. Lie still. With that money, I can move back East. I'll go to farm country in Pennsylvania and start over again where nobody never heard heard of Tom Pinto."
"You know Bad-Luck is gonna kill me, don't ya?" snarled Johnny Packard. "After some torture no doubt. What happened to you anyway that you'd sell your soul for money? You ain't really Tom Pinto no more."
"That's enough talk about souls." Tom Pinto straightened, pushing his battered hat back on his head and seeming to listen for something far away. He shivered visibly. "That ain't just wind a'coming..."
II.
There was an outcropping of rock that created a ledge deep enough to conceal a man. Pinto dragged Johnny Packard under that ledge despite the Kid's curses and objections, jamming him in tightly enough. Fetching a big Army canteen, the gunman let Johnny sip almost half of it before taking it away.
"Don't want you dyin' here and now," Pinto said. He stood up again, staring toward the West where the sky was now black as night. "Ain't never seen weather like this, even durin' hurricane season down by Galveston...."
"Where's my hoss?!" demanded the Kid abruptly. "I swear, if anything's happened to Terror, I'm a-going to skin you the way Comanche squaws skin prisoners. What'd you do with him?"
Pinto laughed. "That black devil of a horse is fine. I left him tied up in a stable back in town. Friend of mine says he'll tend him for a week or two, then if he don't hear from me, he'll sell the critter. That's a good-lookin' stallion you had there, Kid. Someone'll pay handsome for Terror."
"Yeah? Terror will trample them and escape, I guarantee that. Where's my hat?"
"Yore hat?" Pinto turned around and gazed down at the Brimstone Kid thoughtfully. "I reckon it's with your other gear, your irons and your bedroll, in that same stable. What made you think of your consarned hat at a time like this?"
"Never you mind," Johnny muttered. That was his biggest worry right now. No living person knew about the ancient Darthan coin that had been given to him by the shaman Machingtok, the cursed token which he had worn tucked under his hatband ever since. It was that sorcerous coin that had made him the Brimstone Kid in fact as well as in name. Without it, he was just mortal flesh and blood.
Yet, his most troubling thought then was not about his own impending death without that token. It was the concern over who else might find it and what horror they might become under its baleful power. He had been struggling to keep from going on murderous rampages when night fell and he wore that red coin. If it got into the hands of a cold-hearted outlaw or an Apache brave...
By now, the wind was howling at gale force. Tom Pinto snatched his old Stetson just as it started flying off his head and tightened its cord around his chin. "I purely don't like this," he mumbled as he brought both horses over so their heads were facing in under the rock ledge. The gunfighter tied their reins to a sharp stone as best he could.
"If'n it is a tornado comin'," he told Johnny. "You and the hosses have at least a chance of not being torn up into the sky." Then he left them. A second later, the clap of his boots could be heard as he walked up onto the outcropping.
Wedged in under that ledge, arms tied behind him, Johnny Packard could not manage to free himself. The deep aching pain under his ribs made it hard to think. He had been weak like this from loss of blood before and he knew it would only pass with time and rest... two things his future did not hold. The Brimstone Kid had been mortally afraid many times before, although he seldom showed it, but this time he felt a cold sinking certainty that his time was about up.
Then he heard the hoofbeats approaching.
The Kid twisted his head, surprised at the pounding of a herd drawing near. There was no mistaking that sound. And yet, even as the thunder of the hooves got closer, it seemed in some way hollow and far away. He heard the cries of cowhands yelling to steer the cows and the noise was muffled in some way. In another instant, the stampede seemed to pass right over him somehow. Johnny never understood why he didn't yell out for help at that moment. If he could get the attention of a few of the pokes, surely they would rein in and see what was happening to him. But he remained silent and held his breath with an apprehension he could not name. He sensed he was in the presence of something both momentous and perilous.
From far away, sepulchral and mournful, a man's voice called out, "Tom Pinto!" Johnny could not make out the words that followed. The air felt so oppressive and heavy he was fighting to breathe. For long seconds, everything seemed to recede in a haze as he struggled not to pass out. Then the event passed. Silence swelled up to fill his ears. The clouds overhead broke and wide gold sunbeams struck down through the openings. Johnny took a deep breath that didn't even hurt and wondered desperately what was happening.
Tom Pinto came down into view. The old cowboy stumbled, fell to his knees and had trouble getting up again. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and his eyes were vague and unfocused. Rising, he hauled Johnny out from under the ledge out the sunlight. The outlaw's hands were shaking so much he couldn't undo the knots tying the Kid's wrists together.
"What the Hell ails ya?" shouted Johnny. "Damn your mangy soul--"
"Don't say that. Don't ever say that again." Tom Pinto's chest was heaving and it took him a minute to catch his breath. Finally, he tugged a wide-bladed knife from inside his boot and sliced through the rawhide strips binding the Kid. Johnny Packard wriggled away and immediately got to his feet out of reach.
"You have no idea what them words mean," added Pinto. He slowly sank to a seated position on the ground and stared up at the lightening sky.
"Don't appear I'm gonna get any straight answers from you," Johnny said. He judged distances, seeing how Pinto was seated and estimating what the odds were of getting that Colt away from him without getting shot.
Seeing him calculating an attack, Tom Pinto exhaled sharply and placed his hand on the gun butt. "That ain't gonna be needed, Kid. I'm riding with you back to town. You'll get yore hoss and yore guns and all yore kit back agin. Then I'll tell you were Bad-Luck is holed up in the hills and if'n you want, you can settle yore score with him. I'm done with it all."
For a breathless minute, neither man spoke. Finally, Johnny Packard had to ask. "Pinto... Tom.. what happened to you?"
"I'll never say," the grizzled cowboy replied as if to himself. "So long as I live. And, Johnny, pray that you never get in a state where you see what I seen."
6/19/2017
