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, clearly 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 before the memory of why he entered the room shook him violently to a state of brief vigilance, his rifle briefly raised before slipping from his numb fingertips.

Looking down he saw the Springfield lying across his lap, a dark spreading crimson patch staining the heavy serge of his coat over his gut. Though he knew if he failed to staunch the flow of the blood 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 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 dissolved 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 terror of the battle for the peach orchard.

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?

Sometimes people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. For Buckshot it had happened before. Like running toward canister fire in 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 eight seasoned gunfighters bearing a grudge.

Coe pushed his plate and chair back and walked gingerly out to talk sense to Buckshot, careful to keep 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 anything to do with yer dirty little war.

There's eight 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 o’ bitches a belly full to remember me by.

But Dick Brewer had grown impatient with the Frank’s dithering and the sudden emergence of several armed men from the building brought the enraged Buckshot to his feet with his Winchester repeater braced on his right hip for action. Both he and they began to rapidly trade fire while Frank Coe dove away from his fellow regulator’s hail of bullets.

Buckshot’s first shot pierced Charlie Bowdre’s belt buckle, dropping his pants and knocking him violently to the ground. But even after being hit twice, Buckshot continued to fire into the Regulators till he ran out of ammunition and the Kid bum rushed him expecting an easy kill and getting a rifle butt in his face for his trouble.

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.

Of the regulators who initially attacked him, John Middleton lay in the street with a serious chest wound with Charlie nearby still tangled in his fallen pants. George Coe's thumb was blown off, Doc Scurlock was grazed and the infamous Billy the Kid lay in a sorry heap, out to the world.

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 and Buckshot shot him when he raised his head above the wood pile before falling to the earth like a stone, the way a man does who is already dead before he hits the dirt.

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.

The town doctor who treated the wounded regulators 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 rest with his friends who had died there 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 pink mist that enveloped him as his breath began to rattle in his throat. He saw the mist like a veil, a liminal curtain separating the living from the dead and the good from the damned. It was the mist that he saw at the end, the final memory remaining of his brothers in arms. The mist at the edge of all that truly mattered.

They buried him on April 6th, sixteen years to the day after the fight for the peach orchard during the bloody first day on the Shiloh battlefield.