Chapter 13

The eastern sky was a red glow when Tom left town headed south. He wanted to ride out to the Crooms place to make sure all was well with the family that had caused his stay in Newton in the first place. Tom worried that Missus Croom would fall off the wagon and begin her drinking binge again.

Millie and Danny were in the barn doing their morning chores when they heard the horse come into the yard. They knew before they reached the door in a dead run that it was Tom. They knew the sound of that big horse.

“Tom, you did come back,” Danny yelled.

“Yep, told you I’d see you in a day or two.”

“Well, we sure are glad to see you Tom, come on in ma is fixin’ some breakfast. She’ll be glad to see you too,” Millie said.

“Well, I could use some of that good home cooking I reckon.”

Tom entered the house behind the two kids that were storming through to the kitchen, “Ma, look who’s here, we got company for breakfast.”

“Hello Tom, good to see you again, set down and I’ll cook up some more eggs for you. Millie get Tom some fresh water from the pump.”

“Good to see you up and around Missus Croom, hope you been well these past few days.”

“I don’t know when I’ve been better, I got my family back and my pride too. For a while there I had lost all that mattered to me.”

“Well I’m sure that you and the kids will be just fine now. I’ll try to find someone to help you out around here, you got a good spread and there’s no reason for you not to make a go of it.”

“Thanks Tom for all you’ve done for us, the Lord sure blessed us when He sent you our way.”

Tom sat down at the table and Missus Croom asked the blessing once again and thanked the Lord for sending them a new friend. Tom spent the next two or three hours talking to Missus Croom and the kids about their spread. Tom asked Millie and Danny if they had any schooling at all and they said they both could read and write good.

“Well, if you’re gonna make it out here, you’ll have to have some hired help. I’ll find someone before I leave and send’em to you.

“You can work out the pay and whatever else you can afford so a man can make it working here. Millie and Danny can help you put in a garden and between all of you and a hired hand you can put up enough canned goods to make it through bad times.”

“You got a few hogs and you can feed them out and have salt pork all year. You got chickens and from what I’ve seen about fifty head of cattle. You’ve got some good bottom land over yonder and you can plant some feed for the stock, you folks’ll have to work hard but you can have a good life here.”

The Crooms thanked Tom for helping them once more and they made a promise to him that if the Lord was willing, they would make a go of it.

Tom rode back to Newton and about mid morning he slipped the saddle off his horse and put him in a stall. He stood looking at the young man sleeping in the hay to one side of the front door. He walked over and nudged him with his foot. The young man rolled over and shook the hay from his hair and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“Deputy, I sure didn’t mean any harm last night, I just got some whiskey in me for the first time in my life and it went to my belly like a sack of rocks. Then my head was going in circles so fast I couldn’t walk good. You ain’t gonna lock me up or anythin’ are ya’.”

“No, not unless you give me reason to anyway. Where you from?”

“I been working over cross the river for a couple of years for old man Owen Sharp, but he died and his sons took over the farm and kicked me out.”

“How old are you, and what’s your name?”

“I think I’m eighteen, but I ain’t sure. Ought to be close to that anyway. My name is Junior, that’s the only name I ever been called, don’t even know if I got a last name or not. I was took in by a family over in Iowa when I was a baby they said.”

“If I can find you a job, would you make a good hand and not be gettin’ drunk.?”

“Yes Sir, I’m a good worker, I’ve always worked hard from sunup to sundown and pulled more’n my share of the load too. You know where I might find some work, I don’t need much, just a place to stay and a meal or two a day.”

“I know just the place for you but you better hear me now, if I ever get word that you misbehaved in any way out there, I’ll come back here and take your hide and nail it to the barn door, you hear me plain?”

“Yes Sir, you won’t have to worry none about me makin’ a mess of my job deputy, you’ll see, and I can’t never thank you enough for helping me neither.”

“There’s one other thing I need to tell you. There’s a young girl lives out there and she’s mighty impressionable, you mess with her and I’ll come back in the middle of the night cut your nuts out, you hear me?”

“Yes Sir deputy.”

“Good, now come on down to the sheriff’s office and get your six shooter, I’ll tell you where to go for your new job.”

When Tom had given the boy his gun, he wrote a short note to Missus Croom:

Missus Croom

This young man is named Junior.

He’s a good boy. I highly approve of him as your hired hand.

He will make you some good help.

I have warned him about messing with Millie

and I reckon he will respect you and your two kids well.

Tom Cooper

Tom handed the boy the note and gave him directions to the small ranch.

“I’ll be out there in a day or two and check things out. Tell the Missus Croom and her kids I said Hi.”

“Yes Sir Deputy, I’ll work hard for them and you’ll be proud that you sent me there too, you’ll see.”

Sheriff Keyes sat and listened as he watched the whole thing, he never said a word until the boy ran out the door and down to the stable to get his horse.

“Tom Cooper you’re a good man. I’m gonna be sad to see you leave here. You just seem to have an easy way about you that folks like. There’ll be a lot of folks remember you for being a friend, then some will remember you for different reasons.”

Saturday was even busier than Friday had been and Newton came alive with folks trading and buying supplies. Mr. Miller had a good assortment of seeds and so did the hardware store. Folks were coming in with want lists for spring planting, buying boards for building and repairs, and stocking up on staples like salt, sugar and flour. Newton, Nebraska was jumpin’ with business and the store owners were glad, it had been a long winter.

Sundown came to the plains and the family folks went home to store their goods. The hired hands came back out for one more night of revelry and hell raisin’ before going to work on Monday breaking the soil and rounding up the stock for branding and doctoring. Saturday night was not going to be as quiet as the night before.

Sheriff Keyes and Deputy Tom Cooper were preparing for their first round of the night when they heard the gunshots. Someone must have just emptied their gun. They hurried out the door into the street with shotgun and Henry rifle raised for whatever trouble they saw. What they saw was two men standing in the street a few feet apart facing each other. Tom looked at the man closest to him, he wore a black hat, clean clothes, with shiny boots and spurs that shown in the dim light. He also carried his handgun low on his right hip.

Tom glanced up the street and saw the man facing him wore no gun, he wore a dirty shirt and worn, soiled pants. Tom looked down and saw a six shooter on the ground in front of the man.

“Pick that gun up plow boy, I told you while ago to get out of my way. Now you gonna see what happens to plow boys that take a swing at me.”

“Don’t draw down on that man, he’s not wearing a gun,” Sheriff Keyes said from the side of the stranger with the fancy boots. The man looked to his right to see the sheriff standing there with a scatter gun in the crook of his arm.

“Sheriff, this ain’t none of your God damned concern, this farm boy swung at me with his fist. I aim to teach him a lesson.”

Tom had walked on up the boardwalk a ways and was looking back at the gunman. He walked off the boardwalk and stood twenty feet from the stranger feet apart but relaxed.

“The sheriff asked you not to draw down on that man over there,” Tom said in a slow easy drawl. Just calm down a bit and you two fellers come over to the office and talk this over with us.”

“Go to hell Injun, I ain’t talkin’ nuthin’ over with yer God damned dirty ass.”

“I’m not asking you that for my benefit, I’m trying to save your life.”

“I don’t need you or anyone else to save my life half breed, this is none of your fuckin’ fight.”

“Then you’ll die if you draw that gun,” Tom said with the same easy drawl. The man turned to face Tom, spitting on the ground between them. Tom saw that he had already thumbed the loop off his hammer.

“Don’t die like this,” Tom said.

Tom and Sheriff Keyes knew the man was gonna draw, Mr. Miller was standing near the door of his store listening, he knew the man was gonna draw.

Mayor Dean and Bud the barkeep came out of the saloon to see what was going on, they both knew the man was gonna draw. They could hear it in his voice and see it in the way he faced Tom.

Mayor Dean leaned over, “He’s gonna die Bud.”

Tom looked the man in the eye as they stood in the dim light of the street lamps, he could see his eyelids draw to slits. He could see the thumb of his gun hand jerk one time.

He had his gun half way out of the holster when the .44 slug hit him at the top of his nose right between the eyes. The back of his head came apart in a spray of skull, blood and hair. His hat raised up in the back then slid slowly down over his face. The man fell backwards with the blow of the bullet, his head lying in the middle of a dried dried wagon rut, his arms and legs jerking and twitching as his last breath escaped his open mouth. His gun still in its holster.

No one said a word for at least a minute. Tom looked around at the crowd that had gathered to see the injun deputy try to face the man down. They never thought they would witness what just happened.

Mayor Dean leaned over to Bud, “Come pour me a shot Bud, I told you he was gonna die.”

Sheriff Keyes walked over to Tom, “You alright Tom.”

“Yep,” Tom said as he walked back up on the board walk.

The sheriff walked over to look down at the man lying in the street, then he walked over where the young farm hand was standing.

“What was all this about son?”

“Sheriff, me an’ my wife was just walkin’ down the street to our wagon when this man grabbed my wife’s arm and asked for a kiss, I swung on him but he ducked. I don’t carry a firearm sheriff, he took one out of his belt and shot six times at my feet. Then he loaded the gun and throwed it out in the street. He told me that if I didn’t pick up the gun he was gonna shoot me and my whore.”

“I knew that I couldn’t handle a gun good but I wasn’t gonna let no man call my wife a whore.”

“He’s tellin’ the truth sheriff, I saw and heard the whole thing,” a man spoke up from behind him.

“I saw it the same way sheriff, I was standin’ by the wagon when this man and his woman walked up,” another man spoke.

“Someone go get the undertaker out so he can clean up this mess,” Sheriff Keyes said.

“Son, you and your wife walk over to my office with me.”

Sheriff Keyes turned to see Tom walk out from between two buildings and then to the office. Tom had just puked his guts out.

The sheriff’s office had four lamps in it, two on each side wall. In the light of the coal oil lamps, the sheriff could see that Tom had been sick at his belly.

“The first man to die from yer gun, Tom?”

“Yep”

“It’s not easy Tom, it never gets any easier.”

The man and his wife came in the office and the sheriff asked them to tell him the story again, he took their names and where they lived then told them that he’d walk them to their wagon.

“I’ll walk with them Sheriff, I need some air and I need to check my horse too.” Tom said.

“We’ll both walk with you folks and Tom can ride a ways out the trail with you.”

The four left the office and down to where the team was tied. Sheriff tipped his hat at the man’s wife and shook the farmers’ hand.

“Sheriff I’d be dead right now if you and the deputy hadn’t taken up fer me, I thank you,” the man said.

Tom walked down to the livery stable and got his horse out, he saddled up and stuck his Henry in the side scabbard.

“Deputy, I didn’t see the shootin’ up there while ago, but I heard that you shot him square ‘tween the eyes after he’d already put his hand on his gun,” Langley said.

Tom kneed his horse and went up the street to come along side the wagon.

“Deputy, if you ever need a place to stay or a good meal come look us up, we ain’t got much but we share what we got with our friends and neighbors,” the young farmer told him as they rode out of town.

“I looked at you out there tonight and I knew you were there on account of pride, don’t ever lose pride in who you are or what you are. You were a brave man for standing there in front of that gun hand that way, and you ma’am should be proud that your man was willing to die for your honor,” Tom remembered the words of his dad.

“You folks take care of each other, look in on the sheriff now and then. I’ll be gone in a week or so but I’ll be back this way one of these days and look you up.”

“Thank you deputy, you’re welcome at our house any time,” the woman spoke for the first time.

Tom rode back into town from the back side of the stores and up behind the jail, he slipped the saddle off his horse and patted his neck, as he leaned in and spoke to him.

His big horse walked back behind all the buildings and then out to the front of the livery stable where he blew his breath through his lips as he walked in past Ol’ Langley. The old man just shook his head and grinned as the horse walked into his stall.

Tom carried his saddle into the sheriff’s office and dropped it in a corner.

“Where’s yer horse Tom?” the Sheriff asked.

“He went on back to the livery stable, I told him I had some work to do,” Tom said, as he propped his rifle next to the desk.

Sheriff Keyes looked up at Tom and grinned, he knew his deputy was gonna be alright now.

The night was just now beginning, and the word of mouth tale of the Injun deputy was all over Newton.

Two of the men at the bar said they knew the gun hand that had been so willing to die. They’d seen him down in Omaha a couple of weeks ago when he drew down on two men at the same time. He killed them both. The sheriff had taken four deputies with him to the man’s hotel room and told the man to leave town.

Sheriff Keyes and his deputy, Tom Cooper started the rounds, they were about to start before the action took place in the street. When they walked down the middle of the street, one carrying a scatter gun, the other a Henry rifle in his arm and a Colt strapped to leg, the small crowds grew quiet as they passed.

The two lawmen walked into the saloon and stood in the same place they had the night before. The exact place Tom had stood the afternoon he shot Sam Wilson and his friend Bo.

The saloon was lit with two big wagon wheels suspended from the rafters. Each wheel had six coal oil lamps burning around the rim of the wheel. There was a rope tied to the center of each wheel and thrown over a rafter and tied to a thick boards nailed on opposite walls of the room.

They could be lowered to refill the oil lamps, then raised to just above head high to give more light.