all that truly matters

The petals shone brightly as they fell, the promise of spring hanging sweetly in the air. Buckshot smiled, wondering when he had last seen peach trees blossoming in April, certainly not here in New Mexico, but the answer was slow in coming. He was so tired, so very tired as he reclined on the floor of the storage room that he completely forgot why he was even there.

As the image began to sharpen, the remembered cascade of blossoms grew heavier, the vision of it reminding him of a blizzard he had experienced on the Kansas plains many years before when he traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody, the miasma of the haze slowly overtaking his senses before strangely fusing both events into one.

His bewilderment increasing, the air in the room filled impossibly with the frosty breath of hundreds of buffalo, raggedy patches of white clinging to the wooly brown hair atop their thick hides. The smile that had initially graced his features slipping into a frown when the thought That ain’t right caused him to shake his head in an effort to clear his muddled thoughts.

But when the room’s features began to truly slip from his grasp, his vision blurring almost to blindness, his desire to surrender to his exhaustion began to overpower his stubborn will to stay awake.

His eyes slowing closing … consciousness drifting … drifting … till the memory of why he entered the room shook him violently to a state of vigilance, his rifle briefly raised before slipping through his numb fingertips.

Looking down he saw the Springfield lying across his lap, the rough serge fabric of his vest slick and dark with blood. Though he knew if he failed to staunch the flow he’d die, he murmured It don’t matter none, biting his tongue to stay alert, bracing the rifle on his right hip while thinking, I’ll end the life of any poor bastard dumb enough to come in after me, his eyes briefly gleaming in grotesque triumph.

But when the blossoms began to fall again in his thoughts, it puzzled him. He murmured to himself, But there ain’t no wind bringing them down, before remembering the explosions shaking the trembling tree limbs and the heavy artillery shot shrieking overhead.

As if in dream he found himself standing shoulder to shoulder with his fellow soldiers, their rifles and long bayonets glinting in the sunlight.

The commanding general rode past the long front of soldiery, slowly at first, leaning to reach their bayonets with a little tin coffee cup. Rappity, tappity, rappity, tappity striking each bayonet in turn, the sound of it growing faster and faster as his mount found its stride, and Buckshot felt the feral warmth of blood lust growing in his belly.

A cotton tail broke cover in the steely silence before the assault, and a fellow soldier yelled Run, rabbit, run, if’n I was a rabbit I’d run too! while both comrade and foe laughed in a brief moment of shared levity.

But when the general yelled Attack, and spurred his horse for the charge, the great mass of men began to run, their lungs filling their throats with hoarse fury as they charged the enemy waiting for them in the peach blossom snowfall.

Fifty paces from the opponent’s defensive position, their foe’s massed rifle fire began to take deadly effect, some soldiers knocked violently to the blood soaked earth while the uniforms of others were plucked by grazing mini balls filling the surrounding air like thousands of angry bees.

But it’s the memory of the blast from canister rounds that shocks him out of his dreamy revery. The shattering roar of artillery sounding a scant twenty paces from the enemy’s line, fellow soldiers surrounding him dissolving into pink mist under the beautiful and terrifying fall of the snowy blossoms.

Momentarily alert, he stares in confusion at the Springfield lying on the wooden floorboards next to his now prostrate body, but helpless in his growing weakness to prevent his return to the remembered pink mists in the peach orchard on Shiloh's bloody fields of horror.

Earlier that morning, he had rode into town on his mule to collect a check for the sale of his ranch. The feud between the two wealthiest men in the territory had gotten out of hand and with one of them dead Buckshot decided to clear out for safer and more profitable pastures.

He was a solitary man who kept his own counsel and named few men friend in any event, so pulling up stakes was as natural to him as breathing.

It was an unusually warm day, the sky clear and the sun on the back of his neck making it sting and tender to the touch. He mopped his brow several times, his face creased by a hard life into a perpetual frown. Though crippled by a load of buckshot in his right shoulder that made it impossible to lift his arm above his pelvis, he was a deadly shot from the hip with rifle or pistol. Everyone in Lincoln county knew that crossing him would bring a swift reckoning.

Across the street from where he sat waiting for his check, members of the self-styled Lincoln County regulators ate an early lunch. Led by Billy the Kid and Dick Brewer, they had murdered Sheriff William Brady just three days earlier.

They had a sworn warrant for the arrest of one Andrew 'Buckshot' Roberts even while he sat in blissful ignorance a bare twenty paces from where they lounged. He shared the same unfortunate association with James Dolan in his war with John Tunstall as Sheriff Brady had before his violent death.

When Frank Coe casually looked up from his beans, he recognized Buckshot’s mule tied to a post. He elbowed his brother George and said, Aint that Buckshot sitting on the stoop of the trading post?

Buckshot's out there just waiting? Brewer asked with a puzzled expression.

The Kid guffawed, Dumb bastard!

Sometimes people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. For Buckshot it had happened before. Like running into canister fire at the Peach Orchard on the bloodiest acre of the battlefield that day or walking into a saloon just as a gunfight broke out and taking a barrel of buckshot meant for someone else in his shoulder at point blank range.

Or in this particular case an even worse coincidence, riding a mule into Blazer's Mill on April 4th, 1878, to collect a check for the sale of a ranch 'cause he wanted no part of the Lincoln County war and finding instead not one but seven seasoned gunfighters bearing a grudge.

John Middleton drew his colt and checked the cylinder to ensure it was fully loaded. Well? He asked. What are we waiting fer?

Charlie Bowdre shook his head. That's Buckshot out there. He won't go down easy. Some of us will get bloodied. That man is mean through and through.

You ain't scared of a gimp, are you? The Kid sneered.

Coe pushed his plate and chair back, Let me talk to him. Maybe we can do this without anyone's dumb ass getting shot. He walked gingerly out the door with his right hand in plain sight and well clear of his shootin' iron.

Howdy, Buck.

Howdy, Frank.

Did you know the regulators have a warrant for your arrest for the killin' of John Tunstall?

News to me.

I'd be much obliged if you surrendered peacable-like and let justice sort all this out.

Like the Regulators sorted Sheriff Brady? and Buck Morton? And Frank Baker? You know damn well I didn’t shoot John and don’t want nothin’ to do with yer dirty little war.

There's seven of us and only one of you, Buck.

Buckshot’s face turned dark as thunder and Coe found himself wishing his shooting hand was a little closer to his Colt.

Go back to yer lunch, Frank Coe, and Ferget you ever saw me, lessen you want regulator blood on yer hands. If’n you don’t, I'll give you and all you murderous sons a bitches a belly full to remember me by.

But Dick had grown impatient with Frank’s dithering and Charlie stepped out of the door followed close behind by George, John, Doc Scurlock with Dick and the Kid bringing up the rear. Seeing Charlie and George with their colts already pulled from their holsters brought the enraged Buckshot to his feet with his Winchester repeater ready for action and braced on his hip. Both he and Charlie fired immediately while Frank Coe dove away to avoid getting shot by either party.

Buckshot’s first shot pierced Charlie’s belt buckle, dropping his pants and knocking him violently to the ground, Charlie's first and only shot hitting Buckshot in the stomach. But he was impervious to the pain and his next shot blew the thumb off George's shooting hand while George laconically passed his colt to his working hand and managed to put a second slug in his rival’s gut.

But gritting his teeth, Buckshot yanked at his rifle’s action lever to reload again and again, the other regulators ducking for cover after John fell to the ground with a bullet in his chest. The smoke from all the rapid firing had obscured the field of battle when the fatal sound of his Winchester's hammer finally struck home without the following shot.

The Kid hollered and pulled his pistol to rush in for the kill but due to all the smoke did not see Buckshot's raised rifle till it knocked him flat.

Then Buckshot ducked into a doorway and barricaded himself inside. He had already given as good as he got but weren’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.

John Middleton lay in the street groaning for a doctor with a serious chest wound next to Charlie still tangled in his fallen pants. Doc Scurlock was grazed and the infamous Billy the Kid lay in a sorry heap, out to the world while Frank wrapped George's bloody stump.

Dick Brewer alone of all the regulators still had belly for the fight and when none of the others took the initiative sought cover behind a pile of stacked logs across from the room where the fuming Buckshot waited.

He yelled, Buck, ya ornery son o' ah bitch, come on out of there. Ya can't fight us without any bullets. But Buckshot had found an old single shot Springfield rifle in the room where he had retreated and wasn’t going anywhere.

Brewer fired several shots into the room till Buckshot answered his taunt with a single well aimed shot when Brewer foolishly raised his head above the wood pile and then fell hard to the earth the way a man does who is already dead before his body hits the ground.

Buckshot still wasn't finished, but the demoralized regulators were. He loaded a second cartridge in the Springfield and waited for an attack that would never come.

After the town doctor treated the wounded regulators he went to see if anything could be done for poor Buckshot. But Buck had retreated to the hell that was the battle of the peach orchard, attacking its defenders again and again as if a puzzle he needed to solve before he could take his final rest with those who had died while he impossibly lived.

The following morning, he briefly broke free of the haze to witness again the petals gently floating to the earth, the only memory in the whole of his life he cared to ever remember again.

But it was the pink mist that enveloped him when his breath began to rattle in his throat and in his final lucid moment the mist seemed to him a veil, like judgment’s just division of the living from the dead and the good from the damned.

It was the mists that he saw in the end, the final memory remaining of his brothers in arms, the mists at the edge of all that truly mattered.

He died April 5th and they buried him on the 6th, sixteen years to the day after the fight for the peach orchard during that first day on Shiloh’s bloody fields.