Shotgun Charlie Read Free Page A

The pain of it, hot and throbbing, helped him focus his eyes as he reached up without thinking. The laughter that his painful action conjured swiveled his head and locked his eyes on what he hoped weren’t what passed for angels in heaven.
    There before Charlie stood a group of four or five men, all on horseback, ringed before him. Back behind the men stood what looked to be a couple of pack animals, laden with crates and sacks, all lashed down with crisscrossed, well-used hemp rope.
    Charlie’s first thought was surprise that he hadn’t heard all those men and horses coming along the path. As far as he could tell, the men, plus the pack animals, were for real and true. They looked alive enough. In fact, they looked like dozens of other hard men he’d seen over the years, always on the scout for trouble. Early in his days on the road, he’d seen a number of such men, men who treated him like an easy payday.
    They’d robbed him of what little he had, or at least they had tried to. He’d always been much larger than others his age, so when Charlie grew angry, he had come to learn that others, even seemingly robust, frightening men, men whom he would consider fleeing from, all backed away from him. Fear glinted in their eyes, a look that told him they knew they had made a drastic mistake in picking on this lone traveler.
    So when this haggard group of five men woke him, Charlie knew, by the way they were looking at him, that he was about to be robbed. The group of men broke, two walking their horses to one side of him, two to the other, one remaining in the center. Those to the sides slowly circled him, not taking much effort to hide the fact that they were working to get behind him.
    He tried to muster up a big voice to bellow at them. He wanted to tell them they’d better look out because he was fast on his feet and twice as mean as a riled-up rattler.
    He tried to let his shout rage at them, but all that came out was a big, hacking cough that doubled him over as he tried to stand, sending him flopping backward on the rock pile again.
    When he came to, the same men were standing around him, and the older one who’d done the speaking earlier was bent over him. Other than the surprising kindness of the man’s eyes, it looked as if he was about to finish the job that Mother Nature hadn’t quite completed. The old man was missing half of his choppers so that he was gap-toothed. He sported a patchy, dull gray beard that might have had food stuck in it, and topping his lined, pocked face was a dented bowler hat, a bent silk flower, missing petals, drooping from the tatty band.
    â€œWhy, boy, you look plumb awful. You tangle with a she-lion or a boar grizz?”
    â€œNo . . . no, sir,” Charlie responded before he had time to think, and there it was, his tongue running across the forest floor.
    â€œYou hear that, boys? This big young’un here has already shown a heap more sense than the rest of you put together. He knows a sir when he meets one.”
    The mumbles and rolled eyes from the other men told Charlie they paid the man’s comment little heed. Charlie refocused as the old man bent closer. It was then that he also noticed the big skinning knife wagging from the gent’s left hand.
    Charlie tried to back away from him, succeeded only in worming up tighter to the rock pile. The effort tuckered him out and he sagged back again, working to breathe. There was a rank, unwashed sort of smell too that seemed to come from the old man. At least he only noticed it when the old man and the others had come around.
    â€œSteady, boy. Steady. I ain’t gonna harm you. You’re all tangled in them clothes and blankets of your’n. Knotted tighter than a hatband on a banker’s head. You must have done some thrashing in your deliriums. I’m aiming only to cut them loose from you a bit so you can gain your legs. Though from the looks of you I’d say