Matches

Henry fingered the smooth ivory handle of his pistol. There was dust and grit in his teeth, his graying black hair slicked back from tinned grease, breath smelling of both coffee and whiskey.

“Damn it Boot, I’m sorry,” cried the man who lay before him. One of Alfred Joubert’s cronies, a dumb one, had the poor sense to break into the house of Leo and Jane, during which he shot and killed Henry’s brother and sister-in-law. Leo was, as always, a little slow on the draw, and Henry came home to find his family swarming with flies, rotting in their own filth. Jane’s dress torn in places, and her nails stained black with dried blood.

“There’s no going back now John.” Henry snapped the hammer back of the colt revolver, making a sickening CLICK. John began to urinate through his breeches; it steamed on the snowy hillside.

“Joubert will get you for this.” He spat a brown-stained tobacco blob toward Henry, missing him by a wide margin.

“Maybe.” BANG. “Can’t dig you a grave, grounds too cold here.”

Henry Boutilier, or Boot, as people called him, mounted his dapple gray horse and left another corpse for the flies. He had killed men before, mostly during the war, this was different. Executing a man for the sake of vengeance stunk like death — he knew it would. Killing the man gave him neither joy, nor sorrow; he was severely lacking in any emotion at all. Henry knew though that the death of this man would likely result in more lives being lived, fewer women assaulted. Jeffrey Monahan was a bad man.

Henry followed the tracks that his horse had made on the way in and headed back south to Taos. He had chased the man a number of days to the northern tip of Utah.

Boot wore a high-collared jacket, and a gray, flat-brimmed hat. His face wrapped in the wool of a rust colored scarf his mother had made him when he was fourteen. On his right was his handgun, and in a long scabbard on the left side of horse’s saddle was a lever-action, hexagonal-barreled, rifle. The journey back would be slow, and arduous.

Taos was covered with a shallow dusting of snow. Boot could see it many miles in the distance as he worked his horse down a steep hillside. Weaving in and out of the ivory aspen trees, some of the orange leaves still clung to the twiggy tops. Boot looked down into the snow, hoping to glean a clear path for the hooves. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he looked up there were people watching him closely. Three Pueblo women, wrapped in brown and red blankets, stared blankly. The wind whipped flakes of snow into his eyes; when he cleared them, the trio had disappeared.

Boot skirted the town on the west side. Giving the Taos Pueblo a wide berth, as well as Joubert’s mines, riding all the way to the Rio Grande, before turning south. When he came to his little hovel at the far end of the town, it was less a temporary homestead and wholly a swirling pile of ash now.

“Hmm” Henry grumbled, then headed into town. “I need a drink.”

Alfred Joubert was in all meanings of the word, a cur. He cheated at cards, whored, and stole — he was a thief, a robber baron. If you didn’t sell your land to him, you could expect your livestock to die, or your fields to burn, or perhaps a bullet between the eyes. Two husbands were surprised when their children were born with the fiery red hair of Joubert. The man took what he wanted and didn’t take no for an answer. He was currently rocking in a chair on his deck, admiring the horizon — all he surveyed now included the modest Boutilier farm after his men Miller and Monahan had their visit. Smiling at his good fortune.

The saloon doubled as a house of ill repute, as many are like to do. There was a livery abutting it, and a post office next door. The main room housed a bar on the eastern wall, and card tables scattered the west. A piano player tapped a subtle tune in the background. Henry stepped in unnoticed, asking for a glass of whiskey. The bartender, Charlie Cox, knew Boot all too well. They had fought in the same regiment together, both of them wounded at Gettysburg.

“Where you been, Boot?” said Tommy Miller, as Henry sat down in the saloon.

“Hunting big game,” Henry replied, had to go north a bit to find a buyer who wasn’t already buying from the Johnsons, or the natives.

“You happen to see John Monahan in your travels?”

“Sure did.”

The air of the saloon froze. They all knew what Monahan had done to those relatives of Boot’s.

“Stuck to the ground, up in Utah. I would’ve buried him, but ground done chilled over.”

“I wonder why he was up there?” Miller continued.

“I wondered that as well… Why would he be up there?” Henry was gentle when he set the glass down on the bar. “Maybe he was running from something… By the way, have you seen my brother? Or Jane?”

Zeb, a young man of seventeen, innocent and kind, spoke up, “You don’t know, Boot?”

“Zebadiah!” Miller cautioned.

“They’re dead.”

“Is that a fact?” He looked to Zeb. The kid had mousy brown hair, and the beginnings of a sandy beard across his cheeks. “Do you know, Zeb, that my brother and I fought over the same girl there? We were both living in rural Maine at a logging company. Our father, God rest his soul, was a worker for Samuel Veazie.”

“We don’t need a history lesson Boot," said Miller.

“Oh, I think you do.” He took a sip of whiskey, and tapped the glass on the bar. “Coffee now please, Charlie,” he said before shifting his attention back. “Miller, I think a history lesson would do you some good.”

There was no reply.

“Well, we grew up on the lumber and mills up there. Father had moved there after the Compromise. We could split matches with axes; you realize how hard that is?”

Zeb spoke, “Honest Boot? You could do that?”

Boot nodded, “We raced across logs bobbing on the rivers, scaled trees with nothing but a length of cord. Anyway, Leo met Jane at school; they were just eighteen, I was nineteen, and Jane liked me more. She and I loved each other completely for a year in utter secret.”

The coffee arrived in his hand.

“Then the war began. I served under Ames, then Chamberlain. And while I was away, Father and Mother both took ill and died. I willingly abandoned my family, and Jane, volunteering to fight for the country. My brother was a little soft of head and hand, and didn’t volunteer. He and Jane fell for each other. I thought…” he looked down at a knot in the floor, “I thought Jane would wait for me. She had a blue dress on the day I came back.”

Miller, along with two other of Joubert’s men, stood up. Leaning against the walls. The whores that were sitting on laps crept out of the room and up the stairs.

“Leo said he wanted to come out west, ‘Gold to be had,’ he said.” I never wanted it, there was plenty money, and land up at home. So Leo, Charlie, and I took off. Why not? We could always come back after all.”

Charlie sat on a stool he kept behind the counter; his leg had been grazed at Little Round Top. Wincing as he sat, he pulled a Derringer from his boot and a shotgun he kept behind the counter into reach, laying it across his lap. Just in case.

“While we were outside of Nashville, Jane was raped.” It was at this point that many of the good patrons decided it was a perfectly good time to head home, leaving Zeb, Charlie, Miller and his men, and Boot to finish his story.

“And I caught the man who did it. I challenged him to a draw; lord knows Leo never would have. He faster and nicked my shoulder.” Henry moved his right hand to the spot. “I was slower, but I struck that bastard square in the chest. I have very little patience for those that hurt my kin — I think a history lesson would benefit you Miller, don’t you think?” Henry turned to Zeb, “You better run off kid.” Zeb bounded through the double doors.

“One last chapter,” said Henry.

“Now, Boot, I had nothing to do with your brother or his wife.”

“Really?”

“I did not.”

“Who's your boss?”

“Mr. Joubert.”

“And who was Monahan’s boss?”

“That would be me.”

Boot couldn’t help but give a sinister smile. “Here goes the last chapter. Three weeks ago I go over to Leo and Jane’s and find out the amazing news that after all these years, she is pregnant. I was so excited for them, and for me. A baby to care for and protect. Five days later, I find them both on the floor, dead.”

“Joubert told him to do it! Not me!”

“I find you both responsible.”

Miller and his men drew their guns.

BANG!

Henry was faster now, and stuck a bullet into the left eye socket of Johnny Miller.

BOOM!

The man closest to Charlie was struck once in the chest with a blast from his shotgun. He flew back into the piano, which chimed with an off-note elegy.

The third man shot. The bullet ripped to the right of Boot, and the left of Charlie shattering the stained, cracked mirror that sat behind the bar.

He hit the floor as Henry struck him in the shoulder, just above his heart. Henry rushed to the floor. “Where is Joubert?”

“You gotta get me to a Doc!”

“After you give me an answer.”

“His house is west of the Rio Grande, you can’t miss it. North of town. Now call the Doctor!

“Sorry son, you’re dead.” The man bled out onto the floor.

“Apologies, Charlie, I’ll fetch the undertaker.

“And the sheriff.”

“I suppose.”

“You going to Joubert’s?”

“Yessir, I think I could still split a match if I put my mind to it.”