Too Soon to Die

The Pitchfork line camp got its name from a peculiar rock formation atop the ridge that loomed over the grassy bench where the camp was located. Three fingers of rock, all roughly the same height, thrust up and looked like the tines of a pitchfork, especially from a distance where it wasn’t so obvious how gnarled they were. Neither Joe Bob Stanton nor Harley Briggs knew who had first called the camp by that name, and they didn’t care. They were inside the shack, pleasantly full of stew and coffee, and were playing poker for matchsticks.

“Call,” Stanton said as he pushed five more matchsticks into the pot.

“Two pair, jacks and sevens,” Briggs announced as he laid his cards on the rough-hewn table between them.

Stanton laughed. “Three treys,” he said as he revealed his hand. “Threes have always been lucky for me.”

Briggs shook his head glumly. “If we was lucky, we’d be down at the main ranch so’s we could enjoy all the big doin’s tomorrow, instead of stuck up here in this high pasture mindin’ the summer graze.”

“It was our turn. That’s only fair. If Smoke had given us a break, somebody else would’ve had to take our place, and then they’d be grousin’ about missin’ out.”

“Yeah, I reckon.” Briggs brightened a little as he added, “And Cal did promise me that when Andy Sawyer and Tex Bell come up next week with our supplies, Miss Sally’s gonna send along a mess of bear sign.”

Stanton grinned. “That ain’t as good as gettin’ to dance with all the pretty gals who are gonna be there for the party tomorrow, but it’s somethin’, anyway. Shuffle up those cards and deal ’em again.”

The two men were like thousands of other cowboys scattered across the West—somewhere between twenty and forty, their real ages difficult to determine because the life they led had honed them down into strips of rawhide, tough as nails, accepting of an existence devoted to hard work for little reward because at least it left them free.

Briggs gathered up the cards and began shuffling them clumsily with callused fingers while Stanton stood up and headed toward the potbellied stove to see if any coffee was left in the pot. He hadn’t gotten there yet when he stopped short and lifted his head.

After a moment, Briggs noticed and stopped shuffling the cards. “Somethin’ wrong?”

“Hush. Thought I heard somethin’ out by the corral. Horses seem a mite spooked.”

Briggs dropped the cards, scraped his chair back, and came to his feet. “Panther prowlin’ around, maybe?”

“Don’t know, but one of us best go see.”

“You go ahead and get your coffee. I’ll take a look.”

Briggs went to the door of the one-room shack, picked up a Winchester leaning against the wall, and stepped outside. The line camp consisted of the log cabin and a corral with an attached shed the horses could get under if a thunderstorm rolled through. Each of the cowboys had brought three saddle mounts from the Sugarloaf’s remuda, so six horses milled around in the corral.

Briggs couldn’t see very well, his eyes not having adjusted to the starlight after being inside, but he heard the animals nickering and moving around. They were more skittish than usual. Stanton had been right about that.

He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment on the slab of stone that served as a step, getting used to the darkness and listened intently. He didn’t hear a mountain lion’s distinctive growling chuff, but that didn’t rule out the possibility that one of the big cats was skulking around.

The Winchester was fully loaded and had a round already in the chamber. The cowboys left the rifles that way, because they never knew when they might need one in a hurry. Each carried a handgun for killing snakes while they were out riding the range during the day, but Briggs hadn’t buckled on his gun belt before going outside.

When he could see where he was going, he stepped down off the rock and started toward the corral. The horses were still upset, and Briggs wanted to call out to them, assure them that everything was all right. He kept quiet for the moment, though, figuring it was better not to announce his presence just yet.

He came up to the fence made of peeled poles and looked inside the corral. In the dark, he couldn’t make an accurate count of the horses. They were just a dark, shifting mass. He believed all six of them were in there, but he couldn’t be sure.

“What the hell?” he muttered. “What’s got these critters so spooked?”

As Briggs started to circle the corral toward the shed, movement caught his eye. A figure had just stepped out from behind the shed. Not a mountain lion, he realized. This was a two-legged varmint, not a four-legged one. A man, when there wasn’t supposed to be anybody else around the line camp . . .

Briggs lifted the rifle toward his shoulder and opened his mouth to call out a challenge, when orange flame suddenly stabbed through the darkness at him. What felt like a sledgehammer slammed into him, high on his left chest. He went over backward, dropping the Winchester as he fell. He didn’t feel anything, even when his head bounced off the ground. The shock of being shot had made him go numb all over.

The small part of his brain that still worked realized a bullet had crashed into him and knocked him down. He gasped, because he couldn’t seem to get any air in him. His ears rang from the sound of the shot, but he thought he heard footsteps rushing past him.

A man’s voice ordered harshly, “Get the one in the shack. I’ll finish off this one.”

A dark shape loomed over Briggs, blotting out some of the stars that shone brightly in the ebony sky. Starlight glinted on something as the man pointed it at him. Instinct made Briggs fumble around on the ground beside him as the man standing over him chuckled.

“Your luck’s run out, cowpoke.” The man sounded like he was enjoying it.

Not numb anymore, Briggs closed his hand around the Winchester’s stock. Pain had begun flooding through him. He used that fiery agony to give him strength as he tipped the rifle’s muzzle up, thumbed back the hammer, and pulled the trigger.

The Winchester cracked. In the instant that the muzzle flash ripped the darkness apart, no more than a shaved fraction of a second, he saw the man’s ugly, beard-stubbled face. The slug from the rifle struck him somewhere and twisted him around but didn’t drive him off his feet.

The man grunted, caught himself, and then yelled, “You son of a——”

The blasts from the gun in the man’s hand were like a never-ending volley of thunder from the worst storm that ever rolled through those mountains. That gun-thunder was the last thing Harley Briggs ever heard as slug after slug pounded into his chest. His last fleeting thought was the hope that his friend Joe Bob might somehow get away from the killers.

But he died knowing there was little hope of that.