Buckskin, Bloomers, and Me by Johnny D. Boggs

Author:Johnny D. Boggs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2019-11-14T18:26:22+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Leavenworth Post

Leavenworth, Kansas • June 15, 1906

DIDN’T RELISH BLOOMER GIRLS

—

HORTON HEADLIGHT

TELLS ALL ABOUT THEM

—

BALDHEADS WERE FOOLED

—

Some of the Girls Shave Regularly and Chew Tobacco, in Fact They Aren’t Girls—A Sad Look.

Ruth Eagan was sobbing, whilst I was lying one way and the late Charles Gallagher lying the other, us forming a cross, which seemed foreboding to her, because it implied that we had gone to glory together.

While I couldn’t see anything, I could still hear the shouting and the guns firing all around me.

“What’s the number of the police department?”

“Fifty-eight!”

“That’s the doc’s telephone number!”

“Might as well call him, too!”

Horses screamed. The one that had been rode by the late Charles Gallagher was stomping, and had I been thinking right, I would have done all I could do to get out from beneath that dead outlaw and move behind that trough or inside it with Ruth and her new baseball glove. See, I wasn’t thinking much about nothing but visualizing what I’d seen out of the corner of my eye moments before that blood sprayed like a geyser from the dying Charles Gallagher’s chest.

What I’d seen was a girl, a big girl, standing beside a wagon at the train depot, working the lever of a rifle, and bringing that rifle up slowly, and aiming at the man who was pointing a Colt at me and Ruth.

“Buckskin,” I mouthed.

Buckskin Compton had shot that outlaw dead, and that’s when I recalled that conversation I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard on the train to Axtell. Now I understood that I hadn’t dreamt that, no sir. That was what I was thinking till somebody shifted Gallagher off me, sending flies buzzing. It was another Gallagher. And he was kneeling by Charles and crying out: “Charlie. Oh, Charlie!”

Then a bullet slapped the hitching rail just behind him and me, and a second dug up dirt that I could feel hit the soles of my shoes. The Gallagher who was crying aimed his pistol at the shooter and shot twice.

That’s when somebody yelled, “Don’t move,” punctuating that order with a few prime cuss words.

Then I heard water splashing and Ruth coughing, spitting out water, and softly saying my name. This Gallagher heard her, too, and he knew Axtell’s lawmen as well as a number of citizens who’d taken liberty of rifles and shotguns and revolvers inside that hardware store were closing in on him.

“You’re all that’s left. The other two are dead,” said one of the lawmen. “You’d best give yourself …”

“Not Thomas, too,” he muttered. Maybe it was the fear of prison, but whatever it was, this Gallagher, the cousin Jenks, made a dash to the water trough.

“Get away from me or the wench dies!” he ordered, his gun in his hand.

I started to sit up, planning to dive and tackle him and beat him so that there wouldn’t be nothing left even to satisfy the millions of flies buzzing around Axtell, but I didn’t get a chance, because a whistling sounded, then a smacking

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