Gunsmoke legend, p.1
Gunsmoke Legend, page 1
part #1 of Ash Colter Series
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
By the same author
Gunsmoke Legend
Jack Page was a living legend – a Union Army sharpshooter, scout, Indian fighter and US Marshal. Ash Colter, by contrast, was a mild-mannered orphan. They were complete opposites. And yet theirs was a partnership forged in blood and destined to go down in history.
These were the men who survived the famous Snake River Shootout, the men who led Colonel George Armstrong Custer to one of his most controversial victories against the Cheyenne, the men who tamed the hell-towns of Kansas and Dakota Territory.
They were as close as brothers. It was said that one of them could not exist without the other. And yet they were on opposite sides of the fence when the time came for the final bloody showdown. This time the Gunsmoke Legends were at war with each other.
GUNSMOKE LEGEND
First Published by Robert Hale Limited in 1993, under the name ‘Matt Logan’
Copyright © 1993, 2012 by Ben Bridges
First Kindle Edition: October 2012
This Revised Edition: April 2013
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Our cover depicts a detail from Closing In, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission
Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri
Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.
This is a Bookends Book
Chapter One
‘Forgive me for asking, sir,’ said the young, plain-faced waitress, as she ran her cloth swiftly across the small, scratched table at which he was sitting. ‘But would your name by any chance be ... Page?’
He regarded her curiously out of his glittering blue eyes, for he imagined himself to be unknown in these parts. She was only eighteen or nineteen, perhaps not even as old as that, and she had fine auburn hair set in ringlets and skin that was as pale as milk. He did not think she posed any threat to him, so he said, ‘It would indeed,’ in his quiet, formal, well-enunciated way, adding a question of his own. ‘Might I ask as to why you enquire?’
She straightened up and looked down at him. She appeared very worried. After a brief, jerky nod and a glance out through the window into Le Quince’s single street, she said, ‘Two men were in here earlier this morning. While I ... was out back, preparing their breakfast, they began to talk. They didn’t know that I could hear what they were saying.’
Page’s lean face showed only polite interest. ‘And?’ he prompted.
‘They ... they were plotting to kill a man they knew to be coming this way,’ she went on, trying to pour all her words out in a rush. ‘A man named Jack Page. You, sir.’
He smiled to ease some of her agitation, and the movement of his lips twisted up his long, flowing moustache. ‘Did they, indeed?’ he mused, apparently unconcerned by the revelation. ‘And did they say why they were going to do this thing?’
Another nod. ‘They said you were a sharpshooter, sir. For the Union Army. They said you had picked off as many as fifty of their men with as many bullets, sir, and all in the one day. They said that you were too good at your job to be allowed to live.’
He shrugged modestly, considering what the girl had said. It was true, he allowed. He was good at his job, quite possibly the best damn’ marksman in the whole of the Union Army. The story of his picking off fifty men was something of an exaggeration, certainly. But had he not voluntarily participated in that altercation the Rebs called Elkhorn Tavern and his own side referred to as the Battle of Pea Ridge? Had he not ridden four horses into the ground, running messages back and forth behind enemy lines? Had he not found himself a spot on Cross Timber Hollow and killed thirty-five of the enemy from hiding?
At last his eyes grew sharp again and he fixed the girl with a close scrutiny. ‘And did you by any chance also happen to overhear how they planned to kill me?’ he asked.
She wrung her cloth desperately in her little hands. ‘Yes sir. They are going to wait until you have your food before you, and then one of them is going to come in through the front door and the other is going to come in through the rear. They plan to catch you in a cross-fire and murder you.’
Page looked around their rather drab surroundings. ‘That would explain why I am at present your only customer,’ he muttered. ‘Even though this is the supper hour.’ His smile vanished quite without warning, and ice began to coagulate in his eyes. ‘Very good, little girl. You have done well, and will not find me ungenerous in the matter of reward.’
Her relief was obvious. ‘You will leave, then? While you still can?’
‘And disappoint my would-be executioners? I fear not, little girl.’ Beneath the moustache, Page’s smile came back. ‘No, I will trouble you for a steak, some corn fritters and a generous portion of black-eyed peas instead. Pecan pie to follow, and plenty of good, hot coffee.’
She looked down at him incredulously. Was he mad? Did he not know the meaning of fear?
‘Run along, girl,’ he said gently.
The young waitress did as she was told, weaving back through the maze of tables to the counter, and the kitchen beyond, sorry now that she had involved herself in this business. If what those other men had said was true, then this man, this Page, was himself a killer, and should pay for his crimes. But hearing those whispered plottings had made her feel sick this morning. Murder ... it was an awful word, and an even worse deed! She could not allow herself to become a party to it. A terrible, killing madness had already overtaken her country since the outbreak of war. She did not want to be a part of further killing. And so, perhaps by warning this tall, big-chested man with long, golden-brown hair and the tilted sombrero, she had hoped to save a life instead of see it taken.
But this Jack Page had made no move to rise and leave the restaurant, as she had expected. Instead he had asked for a meal!
She busied herself at the range, glancing up every so often to regard him through the doorless aperture. He had called her a little girl, she remembered, and yet he was only young himself, not even twenty-five yet. He had entered the restaurant in a string of graceful, flowing movements, and if his long black frock coat, silk waistcoat and crimson sash were anything to go by, he was something of a fashion-plate.
Covertly she studied his face. It was long, thin, pale, with pronounced cheekbones and a well-defined jaw. He was, she thought with a blush, quite handsome. His moustache covered the narrow line of his mouth and stretched in a downturned horseshoe to his chin. He seemed quite content sitting there in the centre of his restaurant. In fact, he had closed his very blue eyes and appeared to be dozing.
She frowned when she saw that, for surely he could not have misunderstood her warning, or the gravity of the situation?
She fixed his meal and took the laden plate outside. When she set it down before him, her hands were trembling. ‘I’m obliged,’ he said politely as he picked up his knife and fork. ‘Now, get you to one side. I would not wish for you to get hurt in the overflow.’
Dutifully she went around behind the counter and began to polish it with her cloth, not really concentrating on the task.
The seconds ticked away. Still he just sat at the table in the centre of the restaurant, slicing up his steak. Why don’t you get up and go? she asked him silently. Go on — now, while you still have the chance! She looked though the front window to the big black gelding tied to the rack outside. The horse looked as sleek and powerful as its owner. It would carry him far from this town and the danger in it, if only he would see sense and leave.
But still he sat there, cutting and forking up food, as if he had not a care in the world.
Her eyes darted nervously to the yellow-faced wall-clock. It was a little past six. Barely twelve hours had elapsed since those two men had come in this morning, and yet it seemed as if the day had lasted a lifetime.
She thought she heard a noise — a creaking floorboard. The sound made her start. But then silence settled back over the restaurant. She must have been mistaken.
The wall-clock went tick, tock, tick, tock ...
The girl did not think she could take much more of this waiting game. Her nerves were beginning to get the better of her. Why, she thought she might actually swoon.
Tick, tock, tick, tock ...
Entirely without warning, a tall, skinny man burst in through the front door with a long-barreled gun blazing in his left hand, and at that same moment his partner came in through the kitchen doorway, screaming foul abuse and triggering his own weapon.
The girl screamed and dropped behind the relative safety of the counter and Jack Page powered up out of his chair and spun to face the first of his attackers with his hands already folding around the grips of the Remington New Model Army .44s tucked butt-forward in his sash.
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The glass window shattered with a sharp crash. A bullet thudded into the counter, making the young girl scream all the harder.
Still Page and his attackers continued to trade shots.
Gunsmoke began to drift up to the tin ceiling and fog the air. The would-be assassins kept screaming abuse.
Then —
Two .44-caliber balls slammed into the first man’s chest and all his ear-splitting invective turned suddenly to a screech of pain. As blood ribboned out of him in a crimson dam burst he went backwards like a rag doll, right through the front door with a crash of splintering glass, and sprawled dead on the boardwalk outside.
At last Page turned to face his second attacker, going down into a crouch now but still just as calm as the calmest summer’s day. He brought his right-hand Remington up, thumbed back the hammer, fired it, repeated the procedure with the one in his left, then triggered the right again.
The guns thundered -
boom! boom! boom! boom!
— one after the other.
Page jerked as he took a bullet-crease in the left bicep, but gave no other sign that he’d been hit.
The exchange of gunfire went on and on and on.
At last the second man twitched under the impact of two bullets, hunched up, clutched himself, dropped his gun, fell to the floor and then squirmed around for a while like some enormous snake. His breath sawed in and out quickly. To the young girl he sounded like a dog panting. Then he stopped breathing altogether and absolute silence pressed in on the young girl’s ears.
She remained exactly where she was, hunkered down beneath the counter, shivering. She felt a damp warmth at her crotch and knew with shame that she had wet herself in her terror. After a long, indeterminate time she heard footsteps sounding heavy and ponderous, coming closer. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot... They stopped just the other side of the counter.
‘I am beholden to you, little girl,’ Jack Page said from someplace up above her. She stayed right where she was, unable to move even if she’d wanted to, huddled up, hands clasped over her head, arms pressed tight to her ears to try and drown out the thunder of gunfire. ‘I regret very much that this unpleasantness had to occur in your fine eatery.’
She still remained hidden from view.
‘You will, I trust, find enough money in the pockets of these bushwhackers to pay for the repair of your establishment. This here is for you. My way of saying thank you.’
She heard him set some coins down on the counter.
He turned away then, and walked slowly back around all the empty tables, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, and a moment afterwards she heard the shattered door open, then close, followed by the beat of his horse’s hoofs as he rode steadily away into the approaching night.
Chapter Two
I would not say that Jack Page was a liar, exactly. No man in his right mind would ever dare. But he was what I would call a vain man, and when the lie painted a more flattering portrait of him than the truth ... well, Jack had no qualms about adopting the lie. Neither did it help when, towards the end of his life, the yellow-jacket novelists from back East discovered him and embroidered upon an already well-fabricated tale.
Thus it has, over the years, become almost impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff in the matter of Jack Page. But there are some parts of his history that we do know for a fact. That he was born on the first day of March, 1837, and raised in Walker’s Crossing, Illinois, for example. That his father, William, was a moderately successful farmer, and that Jack himself was the youngest of fourteen children.
The gullible American public has long been led to believe that Jack was born with the spirit of adventure running through his veins. But, like so much of the myth that obscures the real man, this was not so. In fact, Jack was a sickly child who was visited by all manner of illnesses in his formative years. That he came close to death on several occasions and yet still somehow managed to survive and grow all the stronger for it does go to show, however, that even at that age he possessed some of the stubborn, whipcord-toughness which came to mark his succeeding decades.
Similarly, it is true that Jack left home at an early age.
But this was not, as writers such as Mr. Buntline and Colonel Travers would have us believe, because he got into a fight over a girl and nearly killed his opponent, although I will grant you that this story is infinitely more colorful than the truth. The fact is that Jack’s father was a rather pious individual, and Jack, who was anything but pious, often found life in his father’s house oppressive.
Thus it was that he came to set out upon his travels at the tender age of sixteen or so, although it has to be said that he did not remain tender for very long. By the time he wound up in Kansas and became part of General Jim Lane’s Free State Militia, he had already gained something of a reputation as a first-class fighting man. And not just with his fists, either, although he was handy enough with those. No, sir. You could give Jack practically any weapon and he would master it in next to no time. He had what you would call an aptitude for such things. He could be the gentlest man on the face of the earth, and yet God had seen fit to bless him — if that is the right word — with a talent for killing — a talent, in fact, that was soon discovered by those dirty-fighting, slave-holding Missouri Border Ruffians, many to their cost.
Jack was also something of a ladies’ man, and I swear to hear him tell it that he fell in and out of love more than a dozen times before he was twenty. One story says that he fell in love with a half-Shawnee girl in the late ’50s, and lived for a time as that most reviled of species, the squaw man, but since I do not know the exact truth of that, I will not comment upon it further. I will say, however, that Jack Page was about the handsomest man I ever saw, and he knew it, too. He attracted women without even trying, and enjoyed their subsequent attentions to the full. Like I said, he was a vain man.
When the War broke out, he volunteered to serve as a scout for the Army of the Southwest, though he seldom spoke much of those days in southwestern Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma — Indian Territory as it was known back then. I do know for a fact that his proficiency with firearms soon elevated him to the position of sharpshooter, however, and that once his skill at picking off the enemy became common knowledge, the long-suffering Confederate forces made several attempts to assassinate him.
In due course he found favor with his superiors and eventually undertook several hazardous missions for the Union Army — guiding supply trains safely through enemy lines, finding out troop strengths and movements and the like. All through the years he served with the Union Army as scout, spy and sharpshooter, however, he did so strictly as a volunteer, and never as an enlisted man.
After the War, he went to work for the Overland Stage Company, tooling coaches along the Santa Fe Trail, but within a year he was leading freight-trains up from New Mexico to Independence, Missouri, for those enterprising purveyors Russell, Majors and Waddell. It was whilst he was thus employed that another of his more famous exploits took place, and it was indirectly because of it that our trails eventually crossed and I came to call him my close friend.
Jack had just started to lead his wagons through Raton Pass, New Mexico, when he wisely decided to ride on ahead to check the lie of the land. For those among you who have never travelled that stretch of the country, I can tell you that it is a hard, twisting, tricky trail, with steep rock walls and sparse vegetation, and there are some parts of it that are so dangerous that only one wagon at a time should ever attempt to cross them.
Anyway, there was Jack, riding on ahead, when suddenly there appeared out of some stunted pines fifty or sixty feet ahead of him, an enormous grizzly bear.
Seeing the beast, Jack’s horse at once reared up in surprise and threw him. He landed hard by the edge of the trail, lost himself momentarily in a cloud of dust and then quickly regained his feet.
Now, as any man with any sense will tell you, you do not tangle with bears if there is any chance at all that you can avoid it. And whilst it is true that they are critters of usually placid disposition, even one of their more playful taps is likely to knock you into the middle of next week. More often than not, it is enough just to let the bear know you have seen him and acknowledge his right to be there. Pretty soon after that, once he is convinced that you mean him no harm, he will lose interest in you and go on his way.
