For Evil to Prosper

By Andy Decker

This here's the story of Jack Schidtt and how he come to be sheriff. Growing up with a name like that, Jack's learned a few things about what's worth fighting for. He's just 17 years old when Nicholas' gang, they's out of Oregon, starts terrorizing Pergamos, beginning with a murder up at the Platte place. Later on, Mr. Smythe starts missing cattle. Then there's what they did to Luther, Smythe's freed man. When they ride to town cause of the bad weather, Jack's just sure the men are finally going to run 'em out. But it don't happen. Even after they steal the town's safe, and kill Terrance Daniels for no good reason, nobody seems in a hurry to set things right. Jack finally decides to take matters in his own hands after Nicholas shoot's Jack's father, right there in the church building. And if that means he's going to do it by hisself, then so be it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andy Decker
• Release date: Jan 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301748549

Andy Decker

Andy Decker is a Pastor of a small church in central Illinois. Additionally, he teaches different levels of English Composition and introductory literature courses at Illinois Central College. When he is not busy at these two endeavours and when his teenage daughters are at either green or yellow levels of threat potential, he likes to write, eat, and stare off at nothing in particular. Please visit his blog for more information.

Book preview

For Evil to Prosper

Andy Decker

Copyright 2013 Andy Decker

www.jonah2eight.blogspot.com

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

For years there weren’t no law here, no one to go through if a person had the will and the power to do what they wanted. That is not a bad life until someone starts getting all nefarious and hurting others. Then is a good time to have some law. Most people agree about that. We had a Marshal assigned to us but he never come around on account, I have since been told, of his staying busy in other parts of his route. Even after we wrote letters and after Mayor Davis hisself rode to Plattesville to speak with the Judge there, we garnered none of his attention. And though many were willing to wait for the good Marshal James Brady to tend us at his earliest convenience, events unfolded otherwise.

My own thought on the matter is that there should be someone to stand in for the weak or to stand between the weak and the evil, not to say that sometimes the weak ones are not the evil ones. They sure can help it along, and all it takes to grease that rail is for the weak to stay weak. It is the willingness to be harmed. People ought to do the right thing, ought to face their fears. Only the Lord knows how many been killed and raped and kept in forms of complete misery because they would not stand and face their fears; as though life itself were the most precious thing and no matter the cost, as long as they drew breath, they would abide the wickedness. If sin be the seed, and fear the rain, the everlasting sun of this earth would be the timid souls of men. Wrong kinds of things grow under them conditions. Shoot, listen to me.

My name is Jackson, Andrew Jackson Schidtt, named after the great seventh president of this union. People shorten all that to Jack. I know how that sounds. Go ahead and laugh. Our name has been laughed at as long as I remember. But it will not change to spare me and if a man cannot deal with his own name, there is nothing he can deal with.

I come home one day with about my fifth black eye, ten or eleven years old. Daddy set me down and told me I needed a different tack on the matter. I grew to where I could almost ignore the name calling and the laughing though my silence on the matter did not stop it. The worst of it continued until I killed someone when I was fifteen years old.

When telling the story I call him a bandito though I know for a fact he were a white man, same as I. Bandito is just that colorful language I like to use. Some people have it in their heads for that man to have been a terrible outlaw and for a time I did nothing to dispel that thought. More likely he was just a kid, about my age, little older I think.

He was not from around here, could see that right away. No one recognized him. He wore a gun at his side in a loose holster-belt. His hair hung half-down to his eyes, so greasy it looked wet. Had an ugly felt hat with holes in it, and he followed me out to the buckboard where I had just unloaded our fall oats to the back of the platform at the mercantile, it getting later in the day.

I waited until after supper to drive it into town because I always enjoyed the ride home. The sunsets are particularly beautiful and it is also more pleasant to save such work for the cooler portion of the late summer days. Mercantile weren’t as busy then either. That is why no one saw when he pulled his gun nor when he put it to my head. He knew I had just sold our goods and he said he wanted my money and pushed me with his free hand between the trade store and the shoe-maker buildings. They say do not ever bring a knife to a gun-fight. That ain’t always true, especially if all a man has is a knife. In that situation, I say be sure and bring the knife because otherwise a man has no chance. I did not yet own a gun.

Standing in that dusty little alley, he repeated hisself to make it clear. He wanted my money and poked me in the side of the head with the barrel of his pistol. I had in my possession at that time eighty-six dollars in new federal notes representing three seasons of field work and it meant the difference between us eating and of feeding our horses or of probably not making it and being forced to rely on the alms and goodwill others. For him to have that money I would have to first be dead. That is what I recall thinking at the time.

I reached slowly, as though for my bill-fold. I stared at his face and he grinned and some of the strain left his eyes, like everything would be ok, like he won. That’s when I yanked my knife. It were not a Bowie or anything nice like that. It was just a cut and sharpened piece of iron with a wood handle I used to cut lines and open bails. I hoped only it not catch on my belt, as it sometimes does. I come around with it and stuck him just above his hip, driving the blade far as I could. His eyes rolled like those of a horse in a thunderstorm and I tore it towards me, clear to his belly button. After I got done ripping his shirt, he just stood there. I am not certain he at first realized. There was a slobbery sound reminding me of cutting open a cat-fish and we both looked down and saw pink and blue guts and yellow patches of fat sticking out from his shirt tails on the side.

He still had it in him to pull the trigger. He could have. But he did not. He shrugged and his face turned sour and he holstered his gun. I suppose life can become so miserable that even a robber can quit. He said a few common swear words and then it was like his meanness had lived in his belly and when I cut him open it got let out and flew away. He sat down at my feet, slow and deliberate. He folded his legs under hisself, bowed his head and started crying. I am the only one who walked away, so you have to take my word that is what happened.

I walked back inside the mercantile and told the men who yet sat there. Like I said, there weren’t no law then. The older men gathered around and walked back with me to the alley where the young man now sat dead. I repeated the story to them and they kind of shrugged. No one blamed me. Most of them did not say a word. Only old Gaither, the saloon keeper, asked if I were all right. That is how I thought of him then, as an old man. Truthfully he was younger than daddy.

Gaither had hisself a big belly and most days a scraggly chin of a beard. To believe the stories Gaither had been quite a rambler, though settled down of late. Of an afternoon Gaither drank half the beer he sold. He put his hand on my shoulder and asked if I wanted a drink to calm down. I declined his offer. Last thing in the world I needed was to drive home and tell Daddy, with liquor on my breath, I’d killed a man.

Someone run for the casket maker, fuzzy headed Vernon Zelch. Vernon is an older man and making caskets is not all he does. He is a handy outdoor carpenter, though casket-making brings him a more steady income than some would think. He is alive to this day. I forget who run for him.

Gaither told me go on and tell my Daddy what happened. The other men there looked on, staring at that fella in between the buildings. Before I left, Gaither bent down and undid that young man’s gun belt and handed it to me, almost like he knew I would need it later or maybe that I had earned it. Gaither had more to him than I or most anyone understood at that time. He plays a part in this story and I hope no one thinks less of him for the details I give.

I did not at first look at the gun, but it had heaviness to it as I lifted it from Gaither’s hands. The gun belt had nothing fancy about it, just a thick strap of leather with a holster and no cartridge loops along the sides as I had seen on some. Later I found it to be a newer model, a Colt that held five cartridges in the cylinder. Daddy told me it was a thirty-one caliber. At the time I did not know how Daddy would feel about that gun. I hauled myself to the seat of the wagon, slapped reigns to the horses and drove ‘em home, most of the sunset gone. I had plenty to think about and would not have enjoyed the sunset much anyway.

To this day I do not know why I gave that man my knife instead of our money. I did not think about it at the time, but I have learned this stays many a hand. Thinking and then rethinking a matter is often a poor substitute for standing up for oneself.

I never found out that young man’s name. No one ever came looking for him. They buried him in a pine box just like a known person, had a little funeral for him and put a wood cross atop the dirt that covered him. I visited his grave once, wondering about him and wondering about being alone in the world.

Experience like that leaves an impression in a young man. Did me, anyways. Do not think it turned into anything noble or gallant, like I left that situation with a great desire to become a sheriff and save the town. It was more like drinking bad water just downstream from where animals graze. It is like one of them bugs that gets in and stays a time and you wake up and it just ain’t right for a while, the way a long fever might leave a child and yet that child remains touched for the remainder of its days. There is a lot more I could say about that but I have not figured it all out. Being that young and taking another man’s life touched me differently than had I been older. It put a quiet spell on me for some months, and even now when I think of it, and about some of the others, it grows awful quiet inside.

We had our share of bad men travelling through, keeping the whores in busted lips and, less often, giving Mr. Zelch extra business. I suppose that is why he always had a ready-made coffin on hand. These men would fight and tear something up, shoot one another. Someone in town might be robbed, and I do remember at least two times a horse went missing and that is a serious offense for any town. But like I said, Marshal James Brady never bothered hisself with us.

After a while the bad men always moved on. They was tolerated and excused and accommodated and everything else a people can do except stood up to. That is exactly what went on when Nicolas and his men came upon us. They came from out of Oregon, run out actually, and started causing trouble, real trouble. But nobody did anything. People waited for them to get tired and to move on. But Nicolas and his men never tired of hurting us.

What I