Sunday's Colt and Other Stories of the Old West by Randy D. Smith

Author:Randy D. Smith [Smith, Randy D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Westerns, Short Stories (Single Author), General, American, Literary Criticism, Fiction
ISBN: 9781932482256
Google: CQeHMr-wBBQC
Publisher: C&M Online Media, Inc.
Published: 2004-01-01T20:05:00+00:00

Showdown Along the Cimarron

I

John McKnight stepped to the top of a sandy ridge and gazed upon the valley of the Cimarron River. He paused to catch a breath, placed the butt of his flintlock long rifle on the ground between his feet, tipped his low-crowned black felt hat to the back of his head, and enjoyed a gentle south breeze against his matted, sweat-soaked brown hair.

Tom James groaned as he led two packhorses to the crest of the dune. He scanned the broad, lush floodplain and with a sweeping gesture of his right arm, silently announced a successful crossing.

Jeemy Wilson, the next to top the crest with his packhorses, shouted a war whoop of satisfaction as he stared upon the shallow sluggish waters of the Cimarron. The graybeard had correctly predicted a two-day passage across the plain between the Arkansas and Salt Rivers.

“Looks good, don’t it?” McKnight asked in his customarily quiet manner.

James grinned as he placed the butt of his rifle into the dirt and assumed a twin pose to his partner. “Couldn’t look better.”

Jeemy Wilson squinted and pointed a gnarled finger toward far white bluffs across the valley. “I’ll bet ya them’s buffalo over there to the northwest.”

The rest of the brigade members topped the dune leading their pack animals toward the bottoms. John James was Tom’s younger brother. David Kirkee was a bit older, in his thirties, and the smallest of the men. Bill Shearer, Alex Howard, Ben Potter, and John Ivy were men in their twenties. Frederick Howard was older and had a family in Missouri.

John McKnight was the managing partner of a profitable St. Louis trading company known as McKnight & Brady. He had received word a year earlier that his brother, Robert, was alive in a prison near Santa Fe. Ten years earlier, Robert led a trading expedition to Santa Fe, but the party vanished. John intended to find his brother, buy his freedom, and return home. Tom James and Fred Howard were old friends who needed a chance to make up for failed trading ventures along the Mississippi. If all went well, the brigade would reap a fortune from the twelve thousand dollars worth of goods purchased in St. Louis by James and McKnight.

The last man over the ridge was the interpreter, a Spaniard named Francois Maesaw. He was looked upon with suspicion and avoided by all except McKnight and Jeemy Wilson. When he wasn’t advising McKnight, Maesaw kept to himself.

Approaching his seventieth year, Jeemy Wilson was of that breed of men known as “borderers.” Of Scotch decent and over six feet tall, he chose to live on the frontier as civilization pushed him west. His shoulder-length white hair and chest-length beard surrounded sharp features and crystal blue eyes. A stern glare from Wilson reminded lesser men of the visage of God in his wrath. He laughed and joked with the younger men, advised the older, and treated the Spaniard as an equal. He carried a sawed-off fusel loaded with tear shot rather than a common long rifle favored by the others.

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