Firestick. William W. Johnstone
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McQueen began. “I was born and raised a farm lad back on the flatlands of Iowa. One of my pa’s brothers, Uncle Eugene, ran a little country inn on the main road that bordered the south end of our land. Most of the travelers who stopped by his place were headed out West, some were comin’ back. The yarns he heard from those returnin’ and then passed along at family gatherin’s were wondrous tales to the ears of this restless farm boy. I knew at an early age I wasn’t cut out to be chained to a plot of land or a backbreakin’ plow or any of the rest that went with it. Hearin’ those tales of the West pretty much set the course I knew I’d be followin’ the first chance I got.”
McQueen paused for a moment, a trace of sadness passing briefly over his face. “Reckon I’ll always feel a mite guilty about leavin’ my pa with one less set of hands to work the farm,” he continued. “But I think he knew early on, just like I did, that it wasn’t something I was cut out for. So I tell myself I sorta balanced it out by also leavin’ him one less mouth to feed. I remain hopeful he didn’t think poorly of me for the rest of his days.
“At any rate, light out is what I did at about seventeen or so. Headed straight for the Colorado Rockies. The glory days of mountain-mannin’—the beaver-trappin’ and such—had mostly run out by the time I got on the scene. But there was still a livin’ to be made in pelts and hides and huntin’ meat for the minin’ camps. I lucked out by fallin’ in with some fellas here and there who showed me the ropes and didn’t leave a greenhorn to starve or freeze to death those first couple winters. In the end, I had some pretty good years there in the Rockies.
“But then”—the marshal sighed after taking a pull of his beer—“I got a fresh dose of wanderlust, and knew the only way to scratch the itch was to roam farther west. So that’s what I did. Spent some time in and around Yellowstone. Moved on to the Cascades. Looked out on the Pacific Ocean . . . Eventually, though, the Rockies beckoned me back. It was on the way there, at a rendezvous in Wyoming, that I met a couple of rascals who I wasn’t able to shake—and never really wanted to, truth be known. The three of us have stuck together from that point on.”
“Let me guess,” Lofton interjected. “I’m betting I just met one of them, sort of, in Deputy Moosejaw.”
“That’d be another bet you’d win,” McQueen allowed. “His real name is Hendricks, by the way. Jim Hendricks. I’ll get to how he came to be called Moosejaw in a minute, but while we’re at it, you might as well know that the second rascal I ran into at that rendezvous can be found hangin’ around these parts also. He’s my other deputy, in fact. His name is Malachi Skinner.”
“No nickname for him?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute, too.” McQueen took another drink of his beer. “After the three of us throwed in together there in Jackson Hole, we spent the next several years in the high country. Meager years, from a money-earnin’ standpoint, through much of it. But some mighty good times all the same. We were wild and free, and we always had meat to eat and a tight shelter from the cold and rain.
“When the Civil War came along and tore hell out of most of the rest of the country, it never really touched us up there where we were. Hell, the two armies had been fightin’ for months before we ever even heard anything about it. When we did, on account of all three of us livin’ away from so-called civilization for as long as we had . . . well, we never really understood what the fuss was about and we weren’t rightly sure which side we belonged on if we would’ve decided to go off and fight.”
“Too bad more didn’t feel that way,” Lofton said bitterly. “It might’ve saved the senseless slaughter of a lot of innocent young men.”
McQueen shrugged. “What it boiled down to, in the end, was that the war never came around us, so we never went lookin’ for it. Thinkin’ back on that time now, after the passin’ of years, I wonder if we did the right thing. We weren’t cowards, I’m certain of that much. But that’s the only thing I’m certain of. We live in this country, we reap the benefits, such as they are . . . But we never fought for ’em. Maybe we should have.”
“But neither did you fight against the side that prevailed,” Lofton pointed out. “There’s always that to consider.”
“Reckon that’s one way to look at it.” McQueen heaved a sigh. “Anyway, we gradually worked our way down out of Colorado and into the southern Rockies and the San Juans in New Mexico. It was there that we ran into some serious trouble with hostile Indians. Oh, we’d had skirmishes before. Plenty of ’em in plenty of different places. But it was usually a hit-and-run kind of thing, never nothing that dragged out for very long.
“Once we got in amongst the Jicarilla and Coyo-tero Apaches, though, it was a whole different kettle of fish. They got real intense about lettin’ us know we wasn’t welcome in their mountains, and we took a stubborn—and probably not too smart—stance when it came to lettin’ ’em know we wasn’t of a mind to be run out. And so it went for the next handful of years. Lots of run-ins, some of ’em pretty bloody. We managed to keep our hair and our lives, but it came powerful close to goin’ the other way more times than I care to think about.”
McQueen paused for another long pull of his beer. When he lowered his glass, there was a wry smile on his face. “It was from those Injuns, you see, that all three of us got our nicknames. Firestick for me, on account of my skill with a long gun when it came to nailin’ anything I shot at—be it a four-legged critter or the two-legged kind. Moosejaw for Hendricks, due to the time he got caught alone and was ambushed by a party of braves; after he ran out of bullets, they closed in on him with war clubs and tomahawks and he fought ’em off with the jawbone of a moose skeleton that happened to be lyin’ on the ground of the gully where they had him cornered.”
“Samson of the San Juans!” Farrelly cackled. “I never grow tired of hearin’ that yarn.”
“I can see why,” said Lofton in a somewhat awed tone.
“That only leaves Malachi, the fella you ain’t met yet,” McQueen said. “Him they took to callin’ Beartooth on account of the fierce way he handled a knife—one he kept as sharp and deadly as a grizzly fang.”
“I take it the Apaches got a firsthand taste of that skill also?”
“Often enough for ’em to come up with the name. Not that Beartooth didn’t prefer usin’ a gun and bullets as often as he could,” McQueen explained, “but somehow he ended up fightin’ in close quarters on several occasions and, when he did, well . . . it was his knife that got him out alive.”
Lofton wagged his head. “You called Moosejaw the Samson of the San Juans a minute ago,” he said to Farrelly. “I’d say the full trio—Firestick, Beartooth, and Moosejaw—sounds more like the Three Musketeers of the Mountains.”
The puzzled looks Lofton got in response to that remark made it quickly evident his reference to the popular Dumas novel was lost on this particular audience. Instead of trying to press the point, he simply let it go, saying, “Never mind. Trust me, it was meant as a compliment. Though, on second thought, those mountain adventures might very well have surpassed anything they could be compared to.”
“I don’t know about that,” allowed McQueen. “What I do know is that spinnin’ yarns about those days is a sight easier than livin’ through some of ’em was—barely makin’ it through, in some cases. But it was the life we chose, and, by and large, we had some fine times. What’s more, we took those names the Injuns hung on us as badges of honor, sort of, and commenced callin’ each other by ’em, even amongst ourselves. Got to be such a habit, that when we came down out of the mountains and mixed with other folks, they picked up on usin’ ’em, too.”
“I guess the only thing that leaves, if you’ll indulge my curiosity a bit more,” said Lofton, “is how the three of you ended up as lawmen here in the town of Buffalo Peak? What was it that made you finally leave the mountains? I’ll venture another wager that it wasn’t because the Indians finally ran you off.”
McQueen shook his head. “No, our pullin’ out wasn’t on