The Big Island Posse

“We must capture them!” Lincoln continued in an agitated voice. “They are killers, too. You know that one of the payroll clerks was shot and killed during the robbery!  It’s time for this branch of the Big Island Posse to act.”

We rode to a slightly higher elevation, still in deep vegetation cover and peered through ferns at the beach below us. The three men had mounted up and were wending their way on a trail coming in our direction.

“If they continue to ride toward us, we might be able to get the drop on them, disarm them, and take them into town and jail,” I said as I studied out a plan to capture them. We rode up the trail for a few minutes and found a spot where extremely thick plant growth hemmed in the trail. We then set up our ambush positions and waited for the scruffy fugitives.

Since I had the most experience in gun-fights--a fact I was not happy about--I was called upon to ride out and confront them face to face, while Lincoln and Jose would draw down on them from each side of the trail. We just barely breathed as they rode into our trap, their nondescript horses carried them along, clumping up the trail on tired legs.

“Hands up! Reach for the sky!” I shouted as I rode out of the ferns.

“You are surrounded!” Lincoln screamed from their left and Jose did likewise from the right. The men raised their thick stubby arms as their heads swung from side to side as if on swivels as they tried to locate the voices coming from the sides of the trail.

“Nice and easy now. Undo you gun belts and let them drop to the ground!” I commanded, as I held my cocked Colt, thinking ruefully that I was using commands and expressions found in Lincoln’s dime novels.

“Do it and no funny moves!” Lincoln shouted.

Funny moves is what we got. In one blink of my eye, each man had spurred his horse forward, drawn his gun, and fired off rounds at my face.

I ducked in the saddle, reined Big Enough in a sideways dance on the edge of the trail, and fired back. Their bullets whizzed by, high over my head. One of mine went true and smashed into the chest of the first rider as he tried to pass by me. He threw up his arms and fell backwards out of the saddle and stuck the ground with a heavy thud. Lincoln and Jose fired off some rounds at the backs of the other two riders after they passed me. One of their slugs slammed into the back of the last horse’s head and horse and rider did a somersault and crashed to the ground with a great deal of noise and dust. Lincoln and Jose rode to the fallen horse and rider, dismounted and pounced on the groaning and bleeding man. I glanced back at the man I had shot. He lay like a dirty scarecrow, discarded, torn, and worn-out from a season in the garden of evil; he had not moved since hitting the ground--I knew he was dead.

One of the outlaws had escaped, the one with the thick, unruly hair. Jose shot the wounded horse, for all intents and purposes already dead, with a large section of its brain pate blown away.

“He still tries to breathe. Hear his lungs heave and rattle!” Jose said and fired a second slug between its eyes. The body gave a final convulsion and then lay still.