Chapter 61

“Good Morning, Eli. You were right about this storm going to hit. We’re getting a good one, aren’t we?” Marshal Hopkins said, greeting Eli as he shed his long coat and draped it across a chair.

“Yes Sir. When the storm hit earlier this morning, it whipped the back door open where I was sleeping in the storeroom. I came up out that bed like I was shot. Then I remembered where I was. About that time, Grandpa came in to see about the door and we just stayed up.”

“I remember when your dad stayed here that time, he was always up before the sun. He told me it was just a habit he picked up from his pa. I reckon you have the habit too, now.”

“Yes Sir. It’s a good time of day when my brothers and I can catch Dad at the table and talk before he heads out. If he gets away, no telling where he’ll end up before the day is over.

“Grandpa was telling me about the time when Dad first came here, I think it was back in ‘72? He said you liked to tell the story of the first time you saw him. I’d like to hear you tell it, if you would.”

As they sat drinking coffee, eating their biscuits, bacon, and eggs, Dal Hopkins told Little Eli the story he loved to tell the most, to anyone who would listen.

The thunderstorm still raged outside as lightning flashed and the wind blew rain against the windows and the thin board walls of the hotel with a roar of water. When the thunder would boom, the air would shake, at times making the coffee cups rattle in the saucers. The loud thunder would shake the air enough to make the flames in the lamps flicker.

“Eli, I can see it like it was yesterday. I was sitting on the front porch of the jail and the sun was just coming up over the top of the Boones Crossing Bank and the feed store. It was on the 15^th of September and the weather had been really warm for that time of year. I had already eaten my breakfast and was sitting there in the warm morning sun. I was just about to doze off to sleep when I heard a horse coming up the street.

“I looked up and saw a tall skinny kid riding an old nag that had seen better days, ten years ago. The first thing I noticed about the rider was his ragged clothes and shoes. The second thing I noticed was that shiny new Colt revolver he wore strapped on his bony hips. He had his old dust covered, ragged hat pulled down on his head, almost covering his eyes when he rode right up and stopped in front of me at the hitching rail.

“I’ll never forget how he reminded me of my own son, who would’ve been about his age, had he not gotten killed a few years prior. I reckon right then was when I opened my heart and mind to that boy. The more I think about it now, the more I know it happened right then, before he even spoke.

“When he looked at me, there was no sign of life in his pale gray eyes, but he was smiling. Then he spoke.

“If I lived to be a thousand years old, I’d never forget the voice I heard that day. He spoke in a slow drawl, his voice as soft as a whisper in the dark on a windless night. Like the soft flutter of wings on a bird in the wilderness. I doubt a man could have been ten feet from me and heard him speak, it was so soft. Yet it came at me so strong, I could feel it crowding my ears as I listened to him talk.

“From the time he first opened his mouth to talk, I knew the boy had a lot of hurt, hate, and anger packed away in his heart and mind. I could hear it when he spoke. He didn’t talk like folks did here, he wrapped his words around and said, You’d be the marshal, I reckon.

“His voice wasn’t hard, but his face was when he tried to add a smile to what he’d said. His eyes never changed, never blinked, never looked away from me.

“I told him I was and asked him to step down and sit a spell in the warm sun. When he was seated, he squinted his eyes against the sun and he looked like a man. Then I looked at his tall thin body and he looked like a boy.

“I asked about where he was from, what he was doing here, and where he was headed. He told me was looking for work, not a handout. He went on to tell me about his ma being killed, his sister being abducted and raped. He described to me how he found his ma in the yard and the things they’d done to her. How he alone had buried her out on a hillside where she used to sit and sing the songs of the old people, he called her ancestors.

“He told me about getting his pa’s old cap and ball pistol and scattergun out, then tracking the men on foot for days and nights before he caught up with them. He told me all about how he killed all of them but one and that he’d never rest until that last man was dead. He’d left his sister Rose at a church and started after that man.

“He told me plain, that he was looking for that man and he aimed to kill him. He admitted to killing all the others and I told him that he could be arrested as an outlaw on his own admission of taking the law in his own hands.

“Eli, for the life of me, I’ll never forget the way he sounded when he told me that if he hadn’t brought those men to justice in the eyes of the Lord, no man would and if that made him an outlaw, then so be it!”

“He was daring me to try and arrest him. I knew he was, but the boy needed help, he didn’t need to be put down for seeking revenge on those who killed his ma and raped his sister. I reckon that was the second time he reminded me of my son so much.

“I’m just glad he rode into this town when he did, Eli. Your dad would have become one of the most notorious outlaws the west has ever known, had he kept on the same trail he was riding that day.

“I didn’t have a job for him and no one else here did either. I let him clean the jail and my office, for a bed at the jail at night and meals in the day. He stayed maybe two weeks doing odd jobs for little or no pay except for a meal or two, but it seemed like he belonged here to me, and to most folks.

“He started smiling and speaking to folks. He’d help a man no matter what he was doing and folks started giving him more small jobs to earn bits of money. He got into a fight with two young men a few years older than him when they called him names. He nearly killed both of them with his fists before I could get him to stop. He was like a wild, crazed animal and his eyes were cold and hard, his face was all twisted in anger, until he finally recognized me. He cried and told me they had called his ma names and spit on him and he wanted to kill them for that.

“Sam and Gladys cleaned him up for me and put him in a new suit of clothes on my due bill. He protested, but allowed me to do that for all he’d helped me do. I wanted him to stay on and be my deputy one day, but he had a yearning that even young Mary Connor couldn’t back him out of. I gave him a letter of recommendation and told him to try to get into the lawman business somehow. I knew if he didn’t, he’d kill half the people he come across, if they ever made him mad.

“Sam and Gladys told me later that he told Mary he’d try to come back for her one day, but for her not to wait too long. I reckon she was filled with hope that he would, and the rest of us were too. When he came back with his sister Rose to marry your Momma, it was like all our prayers had been answered.

“I knew right then why God had put me on this earth. It was to help one boy become a man. My job was complete. I was done and I was happy.

“Now here I sit, spinning a story about your daddy, telling you things he’d never in a lifetime tell you about himself. I feel once more like my life has been lived in full. I’ve done for both a man and his son, the things I’d have done for my own son, had he lived.”

Marshal Hopkins took his cloth napkin and wiped his eyes as Eli watched him. He too felt heavy in his heart and knew his own eyes were full of tears as he looked at the man who’d befriended his dad when he needed it most. The man who set him on the right path and put the dream of being a U.S. Marshal in his heart.

He knew right then, the things Marshal Hopkins had done for his dad, was what made his dad want to always help another man in need.

Eli Crow Junior knew right then, deep in his own heart, that he too would one day become a U.S. Marshal. No matter what! No matter who stood in his way. He could already see it in his mind, he could feel it in his heart. He was going to be just like his dad! He reached up to feel his gold medicine chain that was itching against his chest, and it was hot to his touch.

As the two friends stood in front of the hotel, the storm raged on, pouring much needed rain down upon the plains, flooding the streets of Boones Crossing. The rain blew in windblown sheets as it swept across the dark and deserted muddy street.

“Marshal, it’ll be light soon. I’m going back over and visit with my grandparents. Thanks for breakfast and for telling me the story of how you met Dad. Come on over when this rain stops. We’ll all visit some more.”

“I’ll be there, Eli. Stay dry and tell the folks I’ll see them later.”

Eli ran across the open space between the hotel and Connors Store, where there was no cover on the boardwalk. Standing in front of the open double doors of the store, he shook the water off the long coat he wore.

He saw his grandpa behind the counter, looking down with his back to the front door. Eli was just about to speak when he cut his eyes toward the middle of the store, at the curtained doorway that led to the living quarters.

There, near the curtains was a red leather traveling bag on the floor!

His hair felt like it was standing up on his arms and back of his neck as he looked at the bag. He knew where it came from, and in an instant he knew what it was doing here. It was too late to back out and try to come in the back way; he knew he’d have to pretend he was unaware of trouble.

“Hey, Grandpa. Where’s Grandma? She asleep?” He asked and Sam Connor quickly glanced over his shoulder, his eyes wide in fear as he looked at Eli.

“Yes, she wanted to stay in bed for a while longer, the storm kept her awake last night and she didn’t get much sleep for pacing the floor by the window and looking out,” Sam told him without turning to face him, just looking over his shoulder as he talked.

Eli knew for sure then, there was trouble. His grandma couldn’t even stand alone!

“Marshal Hopkins said he’d be over later when it stopped raining,” Eli said as he brushed the long coat back with his right hand, so it would stay on his hip behind his Colt. He kept walking slowly toward the counter where his grandpa stood. He knew there had to be someone down behind the counter with him, waiting for his return.

With his left wrist, in one smooth move, he brushed the leather loop off the bone handle of his knife. His eyes never stopped moving as he neared the curtain to the back rooms and moved closer to where Sam Connor stood still facing the bottom shelves.

He saw his grandpa look down and to his left.

Eli reached out to grab a quart jar of pickles from the counter. He drew back and threw the jar as hard as he could, right at the end of the counter where the opening was. The glass shattered, pickles and pickle juice splattering everywhere.

Eli was already in the air.

With his Colt in his right hand, his left hand on the counter, he leaped feet first upon the counter and slid across, knocking his grandpa out of the way. There sat Ol’ Turkey with a sawed-off shotgun in his hand and a shocked look on his face as he looked up from the broken glass and pickles in the floor to see Marshal Eli Crow standing next to him.

“IT’S YOU! GOD-DAMN YOU MARSHAL, HOW’D YOU GET UP HERE?” He yelled as he brought the short barrel of the shotgun around.

He died with two .45 slugs fired point-blank in his face as Eli fanned his Colt and never stopped moving, stepping over Turkey’s body. He knew there were three more men, and the woman who carried the red traveling bag. They had to be back in the living quarters with his Grandma.

“Eli, they have Gladys back there, be careful, Son. They came here to kidnap you, but they’ll kill you and her too if you go back there,” Sam Connor whispered.

“Get down, Grandpa. I’ve got to go back there. They know I’m here now and they’ll kill her anyway if I don’t. Take that shotgun of his and if someone comes out, use it. Don’t ask questions, just shoot.”

Eli stood in front of the curtained doorway reloading his pistol, then with a quick glance at his grandpa, he ran right through it.

He left the floor in a flying leap through the curtains, with the long coat sailing out behind him. Hitting the floor in the storage room, he rolled, looking toward the bedroom first, then toward the back door. There in back of the room was the woman from the train and a man hunkered down in the corner of the storage room near the back door.

She had a small pistol in her left hand, her right hand gripping her left wrist as she pointed the gun at him. He saw the man holding a shotgun pointed right at him; both of them wide eyed in shock at Eli’s sudden appearance.

Still rolling, Eli came to his knees, firing off two quick shots as he fanned his Colt. The first shot hit the man in his right eye, just as he pulled the triggers on both barrels, blasting a hole in the floor at his own feet.