Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (64) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

Thursday,
August 31, 1922

Red and Jumper took a break from nailing fence rails onto posts, and Red pulled out a small flask and took a swig. He handed it to Jumper, who turned it up happily. Joe’s moderate attitude towards alcohol didn’t affect Jumper one bit.
    Red wiped the sweat from his forehead with a blue bandana the size of a dish towel, a present from Rosalijo and the Mexican boys.
    Jumper pulled out a plug of tobacco, bit off a hunk, and offered some to Red. Red shook his head, instead determining to roll a cigarette.
    The cattle in the next field south were jammed in tight, and their irritated bellowing echoed from the far-off lines of trees, signaling how badly they required room to move and grass to eat. Their constant bawling went on day and night, driving Red to distraction, and him a man who’d got up with the roosters his whole life.

Red had never raised or even run cattle

    Red had never raised or even run cattle, and was amazed at the amount of work to be done, at the noise, the danger, the stink. Pig shit, he swore to himself, smelled better than cow shit, by a long shot. If pigs had been fed meat and got a man down, they might eat him, but a God damn cow could kill a fella just by steppin’ on him!
    His own part of this enterprise, the timber cutting and lumber production that had first seemed like an empire in the making, shrank in his mind to a small part of an operation that was simply too big for him to grasp.
    Jumper explained that, as they were able to fence in more grassland, they could spread the cattle out, and enough land would feed and fatten them through the fall and a good part of winter. Skeeter had been counting on the shady land deal Joe had made, which had gone off without a hitch. The rains had raised the grasses nearly knee-high, providing fodder for several times as many cows this year, Jumper told him, than Willis had ever run before. “That is why we build all this. Skeeter, with some help from Harlan, has gathered enough money to buy over three thousand replacement heifers and calves, and the deal Joe set up gave him the land to feed them.”
    Jumper seemed less the country-boy Indian than usual, and Red looked at him a little closer.
    The other man grinned. “It’s a scheme to make the heart of any Indian proud. So much land was stolen from us, but we stole this land back! And there’s nothing old Howey can do about it; it’s all set with the white man’s own Johnny Law. Howey sends his bully boys around here, I’ll send them off with my Winchester, and Johnny Law can go hang!”
    It occurred to Red Dedge that there was a lot more to this half-drunk Indian than showed on the outside.
    Jasper, Miercole and Jueve dragged up more planks through the high, soft grasses of late summer, and laid them along the line of bare poles ahead of them. Red struggled with his rolling paper, spilling the cheap Woodbine’s cut tobacco into the slow, hot southeast wind, until Jasper stepped up to him, hat in one hand, and reached out his other for the tobacco pouch. Red huffed a sigh and handed it over.

Jasper turned his back to the wind

    Jasper put his hat on, took the pouch, and turned his back to the wind. He pulled a paper from the pack and rolled a perfect cigarette, exactly the right size, flat on the ends just like a factory-roll.
    Rufus had told him; let the boy practice a while and he could do anything. He was beginning to believe it. Red took the smoke and thanked the boy, although Jasper would never look him in the eye, and would only answer “Yassuh, Mis’ah Red.”

Friday, September 1, 1922, 5:22 AM

The old farm truck came barreling into the camp before the sun was quite up, sliding to a halt in a cloud of dust and exhaust. Rosalijo jumped out, yelling in English and Spanish. “Oye, ayuda! Culos levitantes!” Hey, get your asses up! Help, help!
    The whole camp erupted, Red struggling into his overhauls, Guy trying to strap on his wooden leg, hobbling out into the fire to get it going and have some light. One headlamp on the truck gave a swath of dim glare that only deepened the pre-dawn shadows.
    “What? What happened?” Red shouted, still tying his left boot.
    Rosalijo shouted back. “El malvado bandido Clarence ha Tío Skeeter y le disparó!”
    Luis, one of the new Mexican boys, spoke loudly from his blanket by the fire. “He says,” and Red snarled, “I know what he said! Is he dead?”
    “Que?”
    Red yelled over the rumble of the old truck, stomping down his steps and across the yard. “Skeeter! God damn it, is he dead?”
    Rosalijo looked at him in the dimness like he was a madman.
    “Tio Skeeter? Muerto? Le han nunca antes había muerto.”
    Luis said, “He says,” and Red roared at him. “I know what he said!”
    Clarence Middleton had come to Jackass Junction after Skeeter Willis. Skeeter had been shot but it didn’t seem too bad. He’d been shot before, and reportedly “hadn’t died yet.”
    Well, that was a relief, he thought. “So, what do we need to do? Where’s Skeeter at? How many guns do y’all have?”

Red couldn’t hear himself think

    Red got to the truck and turned the key off, he couldn’t hear himself think.
    “Oye, Senor Roja, I wish you had not done that. It will take me half an hour to get her started again.”
    Red looked off to where the sun would rise in less than an hour. “It’ll take us that long to get ready anyway. Answer me! Where is Skeeter?”
    Rosalijo straightened and seemed to calm a bit. “Tio Skeeter is at Tio Harlan’s house. Clarence Middleton knows about Tio Harlan’s fish camp, everybody does, but not about here. We need to go to Tio Harlan’s with as many armed men as we can gather. I brought two shotguns, three pistols and a bolt-action hunting rifle I don’t recognize, something Tio Harlan’s brother gave him from the Great War. But I have lots of ammunition for it, whatever it is. Plenty for the other guns too, the least I have is for the shotguns.”
    That made sense. Shotguns were widely carried but rarely fired, unless the hunters were after quail or pigeon. If you didn’t get your pig or your deer with one shot, you seldom got another chance.
    By now all the members of the logging camp were standing around a fire now growing brighter with the efforts of Guy and Jueve as the sun peeked through the eastern pines.
    “Listen up! Gather up some food, there’s a lot of us. Guy, you got the Parker, I got Matthews’ Army .45, and we got Jenny’s arsenal. Guy, would you parcel that out to the boys? Much obliged, ma’am,” he added to Jenny.
    She fixed him with a hard stare and said “You ain’t parcelin’ out shit till I say so. I’m takin’ the Winchester and my Beretta. You can have the two Smiths and the Colt.”
    Red raised a hand, but Guy said “Brother, you ain’t seen this girl shoot. I have. I want her with me.”
    Red just shook his head. “Get on with it then. And we need…” and Guy cut in again. “Jasper, git that jack under that truck and git that tire back on. Jenny, parcel out your other guns to the unarmed boys. Rosalijo, who of your kids is good with a gun or just got balls?”
    Red shouldn’t have been surprised. Guy was a good straw boss, and if you knew how to get folks movin’ in a logging camp you knew how to do it for anything.
    “Luis and Ramon,” Rosalijo replied. “Rufus. Joe and Jumper of course, and they have their own guns.”
    The two Indians just nodded.

“You think Jasper can handle a gun?”

    “Rufus, you think Jasper can handle a gun? Is he up to it?”
    Rufus shook his head a little. “Jasper good wit’ a gun, shootin’ bottles, but fus’t off I ain’t sure he know who to shoot, an’ secon’ he woun’t shoot nobody no way. Ain’t got it in ’im. Not even t’ shoot a hog, ugly as homemade sin an’ chargin’ in hot to gut ’im. Me, I c’n shoot good, an’ if’n it’s somebody done hurt Uncle Skeeter, or any of us, I be more’n happy to shoot him a lot.”
    Good enough, Red thought, and grinned at the boy, grabbing his shoulder. “Good man. Rosalijo, you wanna show me your guns, and we’ll figger what goes where.” They went to the old farm truck while the rest of the clearing clattered with activity.
    Guy was shouting. “Get that cut lumber out th’ way, we’s blocked in now we put in th’ houses. Load your shit in the old truck, but keep your guns, and make damn sure you got the right ammo an’ a lot of it.”

    When they got to the old truck, Red was amazed to find the “hunting rifle” Rosalijo didn’t recognize was a Mauser Gehwer 98, a German sniper’s rifle, the redesigned 1903 model, fitted with a Goerz scope. The ammunition had been redesigned too, now firing a smaller bullet with smokeless powder at a much higher muzzle velocity. This was a fine piece of long-range weaponry, and just might make the difference if they had to go up against a God damn machine gun again.

German WWI ammunition box

    And, Rosalijo hadn’t been kidding; he had boxes of ammo for it. Big boxes.
    Rosalijo had the old truck running by the time the tire was back on the Dodge, and he, Luis and Ramon piled in with the two shotguns and the three pistols he’d brought with him. Joe and Jumper climbed in the back with Ramon.
    All the pistols were the ever-present Army Colt .45’s, all surplus from the War. Red had looked them over, and concluded they were practice pistols, used to train recruits at the range. They had riveted breeches, which meant they couldn’t be tightened. They’d all had several thousand rounds fired through them, which tended to beat them to shit even with light target loads, and were loose pieces of moderately dangerous junk. You might get fifty yards of accuracy with them, but if you hit a man, even in the hand, he was going down; they threw that much whoop-ass. It might not kill him but you’d for sure have time to shoot him again. Maybe even take the hand off, put the guy out of the fight.
    Joe and Jumper both carried 1894 Winchester .30-30 lever-action rifles in perfect, gleaming condition. Like all the Indians Red knew, they preferred the 1894 with the brass breech and underslung cocking lever, because it looked sharp. They slung heavy rawhide bags full of the long, blunt-nosed .30-30 shells over their shoulders as if they were just a light lunch.
    Red carefully placed his new rifle in the back of the Dodge with two boxes of shells, and climbed into the driver’s seat. Guy sat in front with the Parker. He already had the engine cranked, and Rufus, carrying both of Miss Jenny’s .45’s and her rifle, got up in the back with her.

Red was really beginnin’ to like this girl

    Jenny had come up with an outfit of buckskin pants, which Red couldn’t help but notice showed off her world-class ass, with a chambray shirt ready to burst the buttons and snake boots that looked like alligator hide. Down, boy, he told himself; he was really beginnin’ to like this girl.
    He backed the truck over where the pile of lumber had been, turned hard, and followed Rosalijo’s truck out the dirt track that curved west, and then north, up towards Harlan Middleton’s fish camp. He didn’t notice when Jueve slipped over the bed’s drop gate. Rufus and Jenny just looked at him, laying there flat, and said nothing.
    Now they were moving, the Mexican put the pedal down, driving the old clunker as fast as he could navigate the sand and clay ruts, hitting maybe thirty-five or so, which was nearly suicidal, Red thought, but this was family. Not blood to him, but good as, at least for his people, as he now thought of the crew. When family was in trouble, you got your guns and you went. That was it.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens