The Hunt for Clyde Borders

Clyde tried to get his fire going again, but found that he couldn't use his right arm very well because of the pain. He finally got the small sticks he put on the coals to burn and then sat down because he felt a little dizzy. It was after he sat down he discovered he wasn't hungry. Clyde went back to his bedroll and tried to find a position that didn't hurt his arm.

Clyde dozed on and off until he thought he heard voices. When he reached for his revolver, he realized his right arm was almost numb. He pulled the revolver from his holster with his left hand and tried to sit up. The pain that effort caused was almost enough to make him lie back down, but he gritted his teeth and pulled himself into a sitting position on his bedroll. There was only one reason anyone would be talking where he could hear them and that reason was the man or men who had shot him before.

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It was almost noon when Jake saw the tracks of a horse turn off the road and into a stand of trees. He held up his hand to stop Elizabeth.

"Looks like somebody rode into that stand of trees. See where the hoof prints trail off into the grass and how the grass is still trampled down? Since we haven't seen anybody else going this direction, that somebody has to be Borders. I don't see any hoof prints coming out and going on down the road, so he's probably still in there."

Jake looked at Elizabeth then.

"I suppose it won't do any good to tell you to stay here, will it?"

Elizabeth smiled.

"You can tell me that if you want, but I won't do it. If Borders is in there, he might be waiting for you to show yourself again so he can finish killing you. No, I'm going with you. That way he'll only be able to shoot at one of us at a time and the one he doesn't shoot at can take care of him."

Jake frowned.

"All right, but keep your eyes open, keep that rifle pointed away from me and don't get ahead of me."

About fifty feet inside the tree line, Jake held up his hand to stop Elizabeth, then whispered, "I smell smoke from a fire. Somebody's still here. You circle around to the left a little and I'll go to the right. If you see somebody, wave your hand. I'll do the same. If I see him first, you stay where you are and cover me. I'll do the same for you."

Jake saw the black horse with four white feet before he saw Borders, but he still raised his hand and looked at Elizabeth. She was waving her hand too. Jake motioned for her to stay where she was. He saw Elizabeth slightly open the action of her rifle, close it, and then cock the hammer.

Jake had taken two more steps when a voice yelled, "Whoever you are, go the hell away. I ain't got nothin' you want 'cept for a bullet as soon as I see you."

Jake stepped behind a tree and yelled back.

"I know you're Clyde Borders, the same man who shot me back there. You have two guns on you right now, and as soon as you shoot, you'll be shot dead. If you put down that revolver you have, I'll take you back to Nacogdoches to stand trial. If you don't you'll get your trial right here."

The answer Jake was waiting on came in the form of the report of a revolver and the whistle of a bullet striking the underbrush off to his right. A second later, Jake heard the crack of Elizabeth's rifle and then the cry from deeper inside the trees.

Jake made his way toward the moans he heard Borders making until he stepped from behind a tree and saw Borders lying on his bedroll and holding his left arm. Jake ran to the man and kicked the revolver out of his reach. A few seconds later, Elizabeth walked into the small clearing.

She grinned.

"Had to save you again, didn't I?"

"No, because you didn't kill him. I don't think you're as good with that rifle as you led me to believe."

Elizabeth smiled again.

"I didn't intend to kill him. He was holding that revolver in his left hand so I shot him in his left arm so he'd drop it. I figured on killing him once we talked about what to do with him."

"Well, you'll have to bandage him enough to travel because I'm taking him back to Nacogdoches as soon as he can ride a horse."

Elizabeth frowned.

"You expect me to take care of the man who tried to kill my whole family?"

Jake smiled.

"That's what nurses do, isn't it, take care of people? Just put a bandage on his arm to stop him from bleeding to death. That's all I'm asking you to do. I'll take care of the rest."

Elizabeth frowned again.

"I need what I have in my saddlebags. You keep him here while I go get our horses. It would be nice to have a fire too. I'm hungry. Once I get him bandaged, I'll cook some beans and bacon."

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When Elizabeth came back leading the three horses, she tied them to trees and then pulled the roll of white cloth and the bottle of whiskey from her saddlebag. Then she walked over to where Borders lay on his bedroll.

"Take off your shirt" she said.

Borders moaned, "I can't. It hurts too bad."

"Well, sit up and I'll take it off for you."

Borders cried out when Elizabeth unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his left arm, and screamed when she pulled it over his right arm. Elizabeth looked up at Jake then.

"His left arm isn't hurt bad, but where I shot him the first time...well, you'll be lucky to get him a day from here before he dies. See how his arm is all red and swelled up? That wound is infected and it has probably spread."

She looked at Borders then.

"Haven't washed this shirt or that neckerchief for a while have you?"

She looked up at Jake then.

"I saw this in the field hospitals a lot. Soldiers would wear dirty uniforms because they were fighting. They'd get shot and the shot would carry some of the dirt into the bullet hole. The doctors would just pull out the bullet and put a bandage on it because they didn't know how dirt causes infections. They were so dumb. Any mother knows to wash out a cut and keep it clean or it'll get infected. It took one of our nurses to convince them to wash their hands between patients and to flush out the wound with alcohol."

Jake shook his head.

"Isn't there anything you can do?"

Elizabeth looked at Borders and grinned.

"I can cut off his arm. That's what the Confederate surgeons would have done. I don't have a bone saw with me though so you'll have to hold him down while I chop through the bone with my hatchet.

She grinned at Borders again.

"Don't worry, Borders. You'll only feel me start to cut through the muscle of your arm. Might hurt because my knife isn't very sharp. Then, you'll pass out from the pain because I don't have any chloroform like the surgeons did."

Jake frowned.

"There's nothing else you can do?"

Elizabeth sighed.

"Yes, there is, but we're going to have to stay here for a few days. I'll have to wash out the bullet wound and scrub it back to raw flesh and then keep it soaked in whiskey until it starts to heal. Late in the war, that seemed to work in the field hospitals. It'll probably take a week or so. It's going to hurt like fire, so you'll have to hold him down. I'll need some boiling water, so get a fire started and put on a pot of water to boil."

Jake nodded.

"I have enough supplies for a week. I'll tie his feet together so he can't go anywhere and then build a fire. After that, I'll hold him down while you do what you have to do."

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For the first time he could remember, Clyde was afraid. The way the woman had grinned at him told him she probably wasn't going to be gentle. If he hurt so bad now, what would that be like?

The other question in his mind was would it work? Would his arm get better? He could smell it now that the woman had taken off the neckerchief, and it smelled like rotting meat. That couldn't be good. Clyde didn't have much faith that the woman really wanted to help him even if she could. What if she just did some things and he ended up dying anyway. The man was just a rancher so he wouldn't know any different. The woman had tried to kill him once. Why wouldn't she try to kill him again?

Clyde knew he had to get away from these two somehow. How to do that was the problem. If there had just been one, he might have been able to get away while that one was asleep. With two, one could stay awake and watch him while the other slept.

As the man tied Clyde's ankles together, he decided he'd just have to bear what the woman was going to do with him and hope for the best. If what she did worked, he had one last chance to escape. That chance was the knife in his left boot. For some reason, the man hadn't felt it when it tied Clyde's ankles together.

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After the pot of water was boiling, Jake took it to where Borders sat on his bedroll. He put it down beside Elizabeth and said, "What do I need to do?"

Elizabeth tore a strip from her roll of white cloth.

"Cut me a green stick about as thick as your little finger and about a foot long, and peel off the bark. I'm going to wrap it in some cloth and use it to clean out the hole the bullet made in his left arm."

When Jake came back with the stick he handed it to Elizabeth. Elizabeth stuck the stick into the pot of water and then looked up at Jake.

"The hot water will make sure there's no dirt on the stick. After I wrap it in cloth, I'll soak the cloth down with whiskey and then use it to scrub out the bullet hole. You sit on his chest and hold that arm up so I can get to it. Once I've done that arm, I'll do the other.

Jake nodded and then looked a Jake.

"I wish I could feel sorry for you, but I can't. Now, don't try to fight me. I'm bigger than you are and fighting will only make it hurt more."

Jake straddled Borders' chest and grabbed his left wrist.

"You want the arm up or stretched out?"

Elizabeth made short work of the wound on Border's left arm. There was a bullet hole in this arm instead of a gouge, but the bullet had only gone through muscle. Elizabeth wrapped a strip of cloth around the stick and then poured whiskey over the cloth.

"Try to hold that arm still while I push in the stick. I need to twist it to clean out the bullet hole so it doesn't get infected too and it's going to hurt."

Jake had underestimated how strong Borders was, but he'd seen men in the war who seemed to get a lot stronger if they were injured. Jake had to hold on to Borders's wrist and pull hard to keep his arm stretched out as soon as Elizabeth pushed the stick into the bullet hole. Borders screamed in pain when Elizabeth began twisting the stick and moving it in and out of the bullet hole.

Elizabeth pulled the stick out, looked at it, and then wrapped a fresh piece of cloth around the stick.

"I'll do this until all I see on the cloth is blood. Then I'll push a cloth plug soaked in whiskey into each side of the hole. The plugs will keep out dirt. I'll wrap that arm in a bandage and we'll start on his other arm."

When Elizabeth had bandaged Borders' left arm, she put the green stick back into the pot of water and then looked at Jake.

"Maybe you should tie his left arm to his side. The way he fought when I worked on his left arm tells me he'll fight harder when I do the right. He'll probably pass out from the pain, but until he does, you'll have to hold that arm still. Once I've scrubbed it clean, I'll have to cut away the dead skin and muscle with my knife and my scissors before I can bandage it. It's going to hurt him really bad until he passes out."

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As Elizabeth wrapped a fresh strip of cloth around the green stick, she hoped she remembered what the surgeons had done because she'd never done it herself. What she did know what that the muscle and skin around the bullet wound was dead or it wouldn't have started oozing pus. She also knew if she didn't cut away all that dead and dying muscle and skin, the infection would just keep eating away at the healthy part of Borders' arm.

She wasn't particularly afraid of doing the wrong thing because she'd watched the Confederate surgeons do it several times. Her only concern was why she'd let Jake basically order her to do this. After that one patient in the field hospital, she'd sworn she'd never let a man tell her what to do again, but she'd just let Jake tell her what to do. It didn't seem the same to Elizabeth, but she couldn't figure out why.

Elizabeth's plan had been to track down Borders, kill him, and leave him to rot. The wound in his right arm would kill him eventually if she refused to treat him. When he pointed his revolver at Jake, she could just have easily shot Borders in the heart but she'd shot him in his left arm instead. She knew she'd shot Borders both times to keep him from killing Jake. The first time, she'd just been protecting a man who couldn't protect himself. The second time...

Elizabeth had let Jake talk her out of her plan, and then when they did find Borders, had told her to stay behind. Why was he so concerned about her? He should have known that she could take care of herself, and yet, he seemed to want to keep her from harm.

Was that the way he treated all women -- keep them from killing a man who'd almost killed her whole family and keep them safe by putting himself in danger? Elizabeth knew Jake had fought for the Confederacy and didn't think Confederate men thought that much about women. The area around any Confederate camp had sprouted an area filled with whores who serviced the soldiers. It seemed to Elizabeth as if Confederate men thought of women as just a way to relive the tensions of war.

Jake didn't seem like that at all. He'd looked at her, that she knew, but he'd never said anything about her other than to try to keep her safe. It was too confusing to continue thinking about that when she had an infected bullet wound to take care of. The nurse in her forced those feelings out of her mind. She poured whiskey over the ball of cloth and then looked up at Jake.

"Hold him still."

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When Clyde woke up it was almost dark and both arms hurt now. The left arm was sort of a dull ache. The right arm was still almost numb, but through the numbness he could feel the sharp stab of pain when he tried moving it.

Clyde remembered the woman working on his left arm and at the time had thought that was more pain than he'd ever experienced before. When she started on his right arm, the pain was even worse. Clyde remembered screaming and then everything had gone black.

He tried moving his left arm so he could feel his right, but found that both his wrists were tied to his waist with a small rope. He cursed, "What the hell?, and heard footsteps coming toward him.

It was the woman. She felt his left arm and then his right. Then, she stood up.

"Borders, you'd best lay still or you'll start those arms bleeding again. I don't care if you bleed to death, but Jake does. If you start bleeding again, I'll have to do it all over again and I don't think you want that.

"If you're hungry, we have some beans left. I don't trust you to not try anything, so I'll feed you."

Clyde didn't want the woman messing with him again, so he shook his head. The woman said, "Suit yourself", and then walked away.

A few minutes later, the man walked up to where Clyde lay.

"You owe Elizabeth a lot, Borders. You'd have died in a day or so if she hadn't taken care of both bullet wounds, and you'd have been in pain the whole time. You'll hang for killing my brother after I take you back to Nacogdoches and you stand trial, but that that will be quick."

Borders spat out the words.

"Your brother was a cripple who shoulda give me what I asked for. That ain't Christian and that's why I shot him. Didn't mean to kill him though. Just meant to teach him a lesson. Weren't my fault he was weak and up an died."

Jake felt his neck getting warm.

"My brother was a better man than you. If he was like you, he'd have shot you out of your saddle when he first saw you. He didn't though because he respected people, no matter who they were. Don't push me, Borders, because I'm not the good man my brother was. Push me and you'll end up dead and left for the buzzards."

With that, Jake stood up and walked back to the fire.

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Clyde lay there trying to think of a way to get away from these two. He had to get away from them both. The woman named Elizabeth wanted to shoot him dead and probably would if the man named Jake wasn't around. Jake wanted him dead as well, but wanted to see him hang. As long as Jake was alive that's what would happen.

The only way to get away from them that Clyde could think of was to kill both of them. With both his hands tied to his waist and his ankles tied together, he couldn't do anything.

If he could just get one hand free, that would change. He could get the knife from his boot and then...

Yes, what then? He'd have to have a gun to kill them both, but how to get one? An idea dawned on him then. The woman didn't seem to care much about anything but killing him. The man though...he'd told Clyde he owed the woman for saving his life. Maybe Jake felt like he should keep Elizabeth safe. Most men would have felt like it was their responsibility to do that. That's why he'd started a fight over Ruth Ann.

Clyde began forming a plan. Once he could get to his knife, he'd grab the woman and threaten to kill her unless Jake did what Clyde said. Clyde would tell him to get his horse and the woman's horse saddled and put his rifle in the scabbard and hang his gunbelt over the saddle horn. Then, he'd hold his knife to the woman's throat while they walked to the horses.

Clyde would pull the revolver from his gunbelt and keep it on the woman while he got on his horse. Then he'd tell her he'd kill her if she didn't get on her horse. Clyde would take her with him and tell Jake if he heard or saw him he'd kill the woman. That probably wouldn't stop Jake from coming after him, but it would give him some time, time for him to get a couple miles away before he shot the woman and then rode to San Marcos.

Jake would find the woman's body and stop to bury her and that would increase his lead. Yes, that would work. San Marcos was only about eight hours from where they were, so he'd beat Jake there. Once Clyde was in San Marcos, he'd steal a few supplies and then start for San Antonio. Jake would have no way of knowing which direction Clyde had taken.

Borders smiled to himself. He'd get out of this yet and he thought he knew of a way to get started.

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The next morning, Clyde woke up to the smell of frying bacon and was ready to try out his plan. He looked toward the fire and saw the man sitting there while the woman was hunched over the fire.

Clyde yelled, "You over there, I got some business I need to take care of. Come untie me so I can."

Jake stood up and walked over to Borders' bedroll.

"I'll untie your ankles and your left hand, and I'll have my rifle on you the whole time so don't try anything or you'll get shot."

Clyde smiled to himself. His plan would work, not now because both his arms still hurt too much, but in a day or two...

"I ain't gonna try to get away. Can't with both arms hurtin' so bad. I just need to see a man about a dog, if you catch my drift."

As Jake walked Clyde out into the trees, Clyde noticed something. The way a Spencer rifle worked, working the lever to load a cartridge moved the hammer at half-cock. He knew this because one of the cowhands on the Murphy ranch had a Spencer rifle and had shown Clyde how it worked. Once the fresh cartridge was in the rifle chamber, the user had to move the hammer to full-cock before the rifle would fire. Jake had kept his rifle at half-cock.

That meant Clyde would have a second or two to grab the woman and threaten to kill her before Jake could shoot him. That second or two would be enough time if Clyde played his cards right.

When they were a ways from the fire, Jake said, "All right Borders. Do what you need to do. I'll be watching you, so don't try anything."