Delivery - A Ricky Pardue Tale

Delivery - A Ricky Pardue Tale

By Cleve

After the gunfight in the saloon the undertaker put each of the five dead men in rough hewn coffins, and leaned the coffins upright outside his parlor with the lids open so that the curious could see the men who attacked Ricky Pardue. He left them there for two days, proud of his work, and advertising the quality of his service. When the first smell wafted past his nose he closed the coffins and sent them up to boot hill cemetery for burial. None had any local kin to attend the interment, but three of the saloon keeper's stalwart drinkers were on hand to toast his departure with whiskey taken from the bar right after the shooting.

Things quickly settled down and things normalized. One anonymous report identified two of the dead men as the perpetrators of the burning of Miss Cindy's buggy, and another was reported as the harasser who had thrown rocks through Miss Cindy's windows to intimidate her into selling her property to the saloon keeper.

The saloon keeper left all his possessions, mostly consisting of the saloon and a modest house, to a nephew back east in South Carolina. Nathan, the nephew, newly married and with few prospects in South Carolina, took residence in the house and became the new saloon keeper.

Some time later, back on the Pardue farm, Little James Oakland was performing miracles. Following the advice of the local grocer who committed to buying Pardue eggs and vegetables, James put in plantings of turnips, eggplants, purple hull peas, and potatoes, all products the grocer said he needed. James tilled and fertilized the crops and they had a bountiful harvest with which to supply the farm and the grocer. He planted some corn, but mostly for consumption as feed for the chickens. The farm was producing income, and Ricky and James split the profits fifty-fifty as they had originally agreed.

What eventually changed was Ricky giving James an acre of land that James would own and build a house on. He was in most respects, a partner and not a hireling. As the farm prospered, James rehabilitated and brought in two former slaves to help on the farm. Initially they had discovered that getting a bottle of cheap whiskey was easier to get than steady work. After James found them, they found working for a former slave to be much better than working the fields on a plantation and better than living half inebriated as free men.

One afternoon as James and his helpers were harvesting produce to take to the grocer, and Ricky was laboriously converting hatch mark counts into numbers, Nathan, the new saloon keeper, visited Ricky with disturbing news. He started to tell Ricky about some ruffians he had overheard talking about James.

“Just a minute,” Ricky said. “I want James to hear this. James” he called. Come here a minute, will y’a?”

James heard Ricky call him, and he came over to the porch where Ricky and Nathan sat.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nathan’s got some news for us, and I thought you ought to hear it first hand. Go ahead, Nathan.”

Nathan explained that while he was tending bar he overheard three ruffians talking about how they needed to put James in his place, like he was out at the Pardue farm acting all uppity, acting like he was a white man. One said he’d heard that James was even gonna build a house on the Pardue farm, and he was damned if he was gonna let that happen. They said that the next time James came into town delivering stuff to the grocer, that they were gonna teach him his place. “They don’t much seem to like you, James.”

James said, “Well, I got my Spencer carbine left over from the cavalry. I reckon that might take some of the bluster out of them. I ain’t afraid of them. I’ve stood up to real men. A bunch of misguided bitter losers don’t scare me. If they see me once, they ain’t gonna want to see me twice.”

Ricky laughed. “No doubt in my mind that you could take them James. But considering the unwarranted hostility that would build if you shot those boys, I think that if there is any shooting to be done, I should be the one doin it.”

James nodded. Ricky said, “Nathan, we are going to make a delivery to the grocer tomorrow afternoon. Would you mind letting the grocer know to expect us. And it wouldn’t hurt if somehow those ruffians you mentioned heard about it too.”

“I can do that,” Nathan said and stood up to leave.

“Well, we thank you kindly, sir,” Ricky said. “I much prefer doing business with you than I did with your uncle. You are a welcome addition to the town, And give our regards to your wife.”

Nathan left. Back in town he told the grocer a Pardue delivery would be coming tomorrow afternoon, and as he mentioned the same news to a drinker at the bar, one of the troublemakers accidentally heard the news and excitedly took the news back to the table where he and his buddies were drinking. They immediately started planning.

Back on the farm, Ricky and James filled their wagon with eggplants, turnips and greens, purple hull peas, and six dozen eggs. Ricky noticed James' carbine secreted among the groceries.

“James, I really would like for you to leave your rifle behind today. There will come a time when we will need for you to use it. But today is not the day. We don’t want to do anything that would give any idiot cause to blame you for shooting a white man. Me, on the other hand, would probably disappoint them if I didn’t shoot someone.”

James, disappointed, but recognizing the truth in Ricky’s words, grudgingly removed the rifle and stored it in the house.

Ricky saddled his strawberry roan, strapped on his pair of pearl handled colts, and rode alongside the wagon talking with James as he drove the wagon toward town.

“Keep an eye out, James. These boys are gonna be lying in wait for us. They ain’t the kind to face anybody. Back shooting is more their style.”

“If I see something, I’ll just say “left,up or right, balcony’, like that” James said.

As they entered town James saw movement by the chimney on a house on the left at the same time Ricky saw a rifle protruding out an upstairs window on the right.

“Low chimney left, James said. Before the words were completely out of James mouth, both pistols were drawn, the right pistol firing at the shooter by the chimney and the left pistol cross firing at the sniper in the window, two shots each. The shooter on the left fell by the chimney as the sniper fell forward out the upstairs window and lay splayed on the boardwalk beneath the window. The echo of the shots still reverberating, James shouted, “Straight ahead.”

Ahead, a man came running out of the saloon, a pistol in his hand, cussing loudly, and got one errant shot off before Ricky put two bullets in his chest. By the time the wagon reached the man, he had wheezed his last breath. No other threats appeared.

Witnesses to the shooting reported accurately that Ricky shot in self defence. They also reported that Ricky and James didn’t seem put out about the attack on them, and that they just took their delivery to the grocer and unloaded it as if nothing had happened.