William W. Johnstone by Savage Texas

mistakes! No slip-ups! Each must do his part else all of us will have our heads in the noose!
    “Move!”

S IX
     
    Seven men stayed behind at Mace’s Ford for the mopping up of the massacre site. Jeff Parr, one of Kimbro’s sidemen, headed the crew. With him were Neal, Remy Ballew, Wilse, Gordy, Ralph and Dutchie Hiltz.
    Brock Harper and the rest of the bunch were gone. They mounted up and rode out, taking with them the gun wagon and a string of horses that had belonged to the dead men. They went west on the trail and were soon lost from view.
    The blood in the creek took care of itself. The current carried it away downstream, leaving no trace of the gore that had been spilled. That was the good thing about using the creek for a killing ground: it was self-cleaning.
    The flatbed wagon which had been hidden around a bend in the woods trail now stood on the muddy creek bank near the bodies. The four-horse team harnessed to it was unnerved by the presence of blood and violent death. They snorted, pawing the ground. The handbrake on the wagon was set tight.
    A wooden keg was stowed up front in the boot of the wagon. Handpainted red lettering identified its contents: GUNPOWDER .
    “Move that black powder out of the way,” Jeff Parr said. He was big, tough, stolid—a hard case. They were all hard cases, the outlaws of Harper’s Raiders. Jeff was harder than most. He had brown hair and a brown beard and wore leather chaps and a gun on his left hip. He was a left-handed draw.
    Neal hefted the keg with a grunt. “Where you want it?” he asked.
    “Put it on top of that rock for now,” Jeff said. “Out of the way where no damn fool can touch off the powder with a stray match or careless cigar butt.”
    Neal toted the keg to a grassy shoulder on the north side of the trail and set it on top of a flattopped, waist-high boulder.
    “That’ll do,” Jeff said.
    Wilse pushed his hat forward and scratched the back of his head. “What’s the gunpowder for?”
    “You feel like digging a grave deep enough for all these bodies?” Jeff countered.
    “Hell, no!”
    “That’s what the gunpowder is for. We take the bodies north into the hills, dump them in some ravine and blow it up, bringing the sides down on it.”
    “Huh. I get it,” Wilse said. “Pretty good.”
    “The boss’ll be glad to know it meets with your approval,” Parr said. He addressed the others:
    “You men start loading them bodies on the wagon. And be quick about it! We don’t want to spend all day here. Not when the others’ll be long back at the hideout eating up all the grub and drinking all the whiskey.”
    It was early afternoon, hot. There were a lot of bodies, twelve in all. They were dead weight and smelled bad. Fat black flies were starting to swarm them. The buzzing sounded loud as a sawmill.
    Wilse stood at one end of the pile of bodies, the one nearest the wagon. “Somebody lend a hand here. I ain’t gonna do it all by my lonesome.”
    Dutchie Hiltz took up a stance opposite Wilse at the head of the body. Wilse stooped down to take hold of the dead man’s legs. His gun fell out of his holster to the ground. “Damn!”
    He picked up the gun and wiped the mud off on the side of his pants. Holstering the sidearm, he fastened the rawhide loop over the top of the gun to keep it in place.
    He and Dutchie picked up the corpse, Wilse holding it by the feet, Dutchie hooking his hands under the dead man’s arms. Handling it like a heavy feed sack, they heaved the corpse up on to the flatbed wagon.
    “I don’t need no help, I can do it all by myself,” Neal announced.
    “What are you waiting for, applause? Get to it,” Jeff said.
    One of Neal’s big hands grabbed a fistful of a dead man’s shirtfront, the other gripping its belt at the middle. With a grunt Neal lifted and jerked, hefting the body off the ground and swinging it up and onto the flatbed, where it landed with a thud.
    Gordy and Ralph slung-heaved a third body up on the wagon.