Johnson

  Johnson turned away from the wind, rain beading his Stetson, and he took a bitter moment to examine his plight. He had nothing to eat, and hadn’t for two days, and he had maybe a small handful of moldy hay for the roan.  Right now, water wasn’t a problem, so the hunger wasn’t yet life-threatening, but it wasn’t nature he feared most, anyway.  No, it wasn’t the elements, as bad as they were; Blackmore was still on his trail, just like he had been all through the Territories, dogged in pursuit, relentless, and getting closer every day.

  Johnson knew the end would be both slow and painful if Blackmore caught him, even though Johnson hadn’t done it, hadn’t done what everyone said.  But Johnson knew Blackmore would never believe him; not after the Glendale incident.  They said Johnson had cut and run, and the Sauder brothers, Mason and Waylon, were shot dead because of him, caught in a crossfire hail of bullets laid down by Meacham’s posse.  Blackmore had escaped, barely, having caught two slugs, one in the shoulder, and, as for the other one, well, there weren’t going to be any little Blackmore’s running around on this here Earth, that was for sure.

  That was six weeks ago, and Johnson had been on the run since then, holing up in deserted barns, and burned out cabins.  Nothing lived out here anymore except greasewood and mesquite; not since the drought had hit in ‘57.  Before then this was some of the lushest grass and best farm land west of the Red River.  Now, it was all wasteland, looking like some vast lunar anomaly, barren all the way to Devil Hills, and the Furnace Mountains beyond.

  Scrawny jack rabbits and prairie dogs were the only meat Johnson had been able to snare; he couldn’t afford to use up his last few bullets; those he had to save for Blackmore, and, just-in-case, one last one for himself.  Johnson figured to head up for the Furnace range, where he could find water, and where he could find water he knew he could find game, but Blackmore knew all this, too, so there would be no rest.

  If he could just explain what happened, Blackmore might let him go, but that wasn’t a chance Johnson could afford to take.

What had happened, on that fateful, sweltering, July afternoon, wasn’t something a man should ever have to face.  Meacham, and his vigilantes, already knew that Blackmore was planning on hitting the Cottonwood Bank;  it was the Sauder brothers themselves who went and let the cat out of the bag, when they got into the whiskey at the Sandy Gulch Saloon.  Johnson, who didn’t drink the stuff, had left the saloon in disgust, and told Blackmore, but the burly outlaw didn’t want to hear it, and said they were still good to go after the Silver Strike Mine payroll, which would be sittin’, fat and juicy, at the Cottonwood bank.

  One of Meacham’s crew was also in the Sandy Gulch, and he heard Mason and Waylon bragging about how they were about to strike it rich, and head on down to Old Mexico.

  Meacham had been a Texas Ranger for almost 20 years, and he could set an ambush as slick as a spider builds a web; for Blackmore and his gng, the bank job had been a disaster.  Johnson had been pinned down by four of Meacham’s men, and he never got to where he was supposed to provide cover for the late Sauder boys.  Blackmore just thought Johnson had chickened out; he didn’t know that Johnson had been shot, too, but clean, through the left arm, without a lot of blood.

  Blackmore didn’t hear about any of that; he just knew that two of his cousins had been killed, and that Johnson was the man to blame, and that Johnson was the man he was going to kill in return.

  The night was black, and the rain poured down, working under the slicker, and Blackmore was soaking wet.  None of it mattered; the only thing that counted was getting Johnson, and making him pay, and pay, and pay. . .