Dueling Dukes Chapter 4: Heartache Tonight, a dukes of hazzard fanfic

4. Heartache Tonight

Somebody's gonna hurt someone
before the night is through
Somebody's gonna come undone.
There's nothin' we can do.*

He'd been young once, full of ambitions and ideals, dreams and aspirations about the mark he was going to leave on this corner of the world. Back then his body had been unscarred and strong and he had been at least somewhat handsome, to hear his mama tell it. He knew what it was to feel his blood rushing, hot and thick like it couldn't stand to be pent up inside him and was just dying to get out any way it could. Or he had once; now it was all a memory worn smooth and dull by decades of trying to create peace out of chaos.

He had gained in age and experience. He knew a thing or two that a boy half his age hadn't had time to figure out. His body might have rusted in spots, gotten creaky and become slow to rouse from rest, but he could still handle any whippersnapper that thought it was a good idea to issue a challenge to the marshal and duly constituted law of this county.

His nose was wider than it had once been, kind of crooked and bulbous from that hit it had taken from the butt of Digger Jackson's gun back in eighty-six. But if it was bigger, it was also stronger, more sensitive. It could smell trouble a mile away.

Or right in front of it; he'd known this was coming. That it had to happen.

Most of the time he dealt with remnants. The leftovers, parts that were too messy to simply wipe away and move on. He got called out to see dead men where they lay and to acknowledge that a crime had clearly taken place. There'd be demands from weeping mothers that he do something, but dead men didn't tell tales and there was no one living who was willing to point a finger. Just rumors of Porters or Hickorys, and he couldn't do much of anything with that.

What he could smell now, strong as gunpowder, and feel deeper than his soul, was a young man's need for vengeance, to assert dominance. It wouldn't be tidy and it wouldn't happen on the secluded corner of someone's wooded property, either. There would be blood on his streets.

Rosco hadn't exactly planned on being the marshal of a feud-torn town. His mama and sisters hadn't wanted him to be a marshal at all. "You'll get yourself killed," Lulu had mourned in that tone that set dogs to barking from here to the far side of Lookout Ridge. The silly girl had no idea what went into being a marshal. Not that he had back then, either, but he'd known that amongst them, Lulu, Hortense and his mama could eat as much as a horse, and he'd also known that food didn't grow on trees. Or, he knew that some kinds of food did, but he didn't own any of those trees, wouldn't know where to find those kinds of trees, and wouldn't have known what to do if that sort of a tree got handed to him.

His daddy had been a banker, had an instinct for numbers and could add large sums in his head. Papa Coltrane done well by his family, owning a big house and fine clothes and pretty much spoiling his family against any other life. Hortense was too ornery to marry and seemed mighty proud of that fact, while Lulu held out romantic dreams, but by now Rosco figured she'd passed the age where they could come true.

Their daddy had gone on to his great reward shortly after the end of the war and the ensuing dearth of money in the crippled region, leaving behind none of his skills or talents. It had fallen to Rosco to keep the females in his family in clothing and food (and he'd had to sell the old homestead and rent them a cheap set of rooms in town) when he was little more than an adventurous boy himself. He didn't know a hoe from a plough, so farming was out. He broke out in a rash when he got too near a pit of coals, so he wouldn't be a blacksmith, and the mines had been shut down for a decade or two after the war.

Meanwhile, the town had lacked for a lawman. It was pretty simple math; he didn't even need his daddy to do the sum for him. Besides, Rosco had figured on chasing off bad sorts that thought this lonely corner of Georgia was ripe for the picking. He'd never imagined that he'd be protecting his citizens from each other.

At least he'd picked up some instincts along the way, along with a fat, misshapen nose that could smell trouble and knew exactly where to wait to watch it play out.

And there it was. The Duke boy, standing right on the chipped cobblestones at the center of Main Street, just as brave as any nineteen-year-old fool could be. Simply waiting, with all the patience in the world.

Rosco waited with him, or near him, silent and undetected. In the shadows of the milliner's porch, where the Duke boy wouldn't bother to look, because the whole of his attention was on the front of the saloon.

After awhile that fortitude paid off, when staid Thackeray ambled out of the saloon's swinging doors and stepped down into the street, perfectly pressed and upright as ever. Doing his usual impression of being a law-abiding citizen and he wasn't fooling anyone. Especially not Rosco.

"Thackeray," Duke called, but there was no need. Standing in the middle of an otherwise empty street where the gaslights illuminated his lean, powerful body, Luke Duke was as obvious as a wart on a frog. Or a toad; Rosco never could remember which of those ugly critters had warts. "You don't want to do that," the boy added when Thackeray reached for his breast pocket. The man was an odd one, dressed in a perfect tweed suit and tailcoat in contrast to the near rags that most of the feuders wore. Top hat too, instead of a Stetson, tidy bowtie and the smallest and shiniest pistol Rosco had ever seen, usually tucked into his breast pocket. It was amazing, really, that Thackeray was still alive, but then he never seemed to be the center of the action. He and the Duke boy had vastly different methods of leading their feuding factions. "I ain't armed," Duke announced, and dang it all if the fool had no gun in his holster, "but I got plenty of men tucked into corners up and down this street just waiting to take your head off if you so much as try to get at your gun."

The Duke boy had his pride and he had a whole passel of men to look out for. There was no avoiding this confrontation, not when the Hickory gang had tried to burn a bunch of Porter men alive in the brothel last week, and had been strutting around town like a conquering army ever since.

But though Thackeray dressed immaculately and gave every impression of being a proper gentleman, Luke Duke was the better man. He had waited until Sunday night when the streets would be empty, and he was—insane as the notion might be—actually trying to negotiate with one of the Hickory lieutenants instead of shooting him in cold blood.

Thackeray, of course, was having none of it. He just kept right on reaching for that gun until a bullet pinged into the cobblestones and dirt at his feet, making him jump and lose his balance. The Duke boy didn't even flinch, just strode forward and offered a hand down to where Thackeray was sitting on his backside in the dust.

The shot had come from somewhere over Rosco's head, probably the roof of the millinery, and had most likely been fired off by that scrawny Yellow-eye. That was one funny-looking boy, dressed in loose rags and he didn't have much heft for fighting skin on skin. Then again, maybe that didn't matter, what with his near-perfect aim. His shot didn't miss Thackeray's boot sole by more than an inch or so.

"I reckon," Duke said, as he helped the older man back to a stand. "You owe me and those men that got their guns aimed at you an apology for what you done last week. And Miss Mabel, too. If you give us them apologies, and assurances that you won't pull no fool stunts like that again, you can walk away from here without any holes in you." It was a generous offer. Or would be, if Thackeray was the sort that liked the taste of crow. But anyone who could remain perfectly pressed and dustless in the middle of a long-term feud was the sort who had far too much pride for anyone's good.

"Well, my boy," came the answer, in carefully pronounced tones. "That seems unlikely."

And it really did, because Yellow-eye's single shot had cracked and echoed enough to bring those of Thackeray's men who had been carousing in the saloon up to the windows and swinging doors. Silence as Duke and Thackeray stared each other down, then the older man's pristinely manicured fingers snapped and the street erupted in flashes of light and thunderous pops with a counterpoint of tinkling glass. Duke made a diving tumble behind the water trough in front of the Post Office and just look at that, how he was flanked by two of his own men back there, one of whom handed him a gun.

"All right, Thackeray," the youngster hollered. "I tried to do this the nice way." Then the muzzle of his gun lit up as he fired back at the Hickory boys in the saloon.

This, right here, was what Rosco knew had to happen. Blood on the streets of his town because Ol' Nut Hickory and Cap Porter were a pair of stubborn old men, still nursing bad feelings over perceived slights and old insults, a deal gone bad and maybe just leftover misery from a war that had taken its toll on the whole south. Whatever it was, those two men were safely tucked into soft beds while a bunch of overgrown boys, most of whom had little sense—of mortality, of peace, of a future, heck they just had little sense at all—did their fighting for them.

The marshal could at least be grateful that this standoff was orchestrated by the Duke boy, who had made sure that there'd be a paucity of innocent civilians present. That boy was a fine strategist and Rosco only wished he could count Duke as a member of his posse.

His pitiful posse. Most of them were cowering in the shop behind Rosco, staying closed behind walls and waiting for a signal to fire. Rosco could only hope it wouldn't come to that.

He stepped off the porch that had held him protectively in its shadows; not far, just a couple of paces and well out of the line of fire. Tipped his hat up, swallowed a couple of times, rested his hands on the guns at his hips. "All right, you boys. Just cease and insist, I mean decease and cyst, I mean quit that now!" His tongue never did much listen to his brain, always mangling his words, but his voice was strong enough. Made the gunfire pause for all of a three-count before it started up again.

When he was these boys' age, he would have shown respect for a man with a badge. Of course, when he was these boys' age, a lot of men with badges were soldiers. He had to admit, he'd only respected the ones that wore gray.

"I'm serious, now!" he screamed out. "You boys just quit or my posse and me, we're just gonna blow you to bits." All right, so in truth he could count on exactly one member of his posse. Big Ed Little had come to him from worse places. He had broad shoulders, both with chips on them a mile wide, and a fearless nature that came from working the mines alongside imported prison labor. The man had lived a hard life and wasn't terribly afraid of being shot, either. "And then we're gonna lock you up in my jail," ping of a random bullet from somewhere in the saloon, but almost all the fools were listening to him now. "And let you rot." Which was, to most of them, a greater threat than death. "I mean it, don't go messing with the law."

"Dang it, Marshal," Duke groused from his scant coverage behind the water trough, but he wasn't mad. He was just putting on a good show.

"All you boys, every last one of you, get out of my town," Rosco insisted. A collective groan went up from the saloon; those fellows figured on going right back to drinking once this diversion was over. But old Doc Appleby would have no objections to Rosco sending them on their way. And the whores that had just moved to his second story would be happy to see this skirmish come to an end, too. They'd had enough excitement for one week. "You Porter boys head south and you Hickory boys head north, and if I see any of you over the next week, I'm gonna lock you up. I mean it now, I'm serious."

It was almost funny to watch the feuders stand up out of hiding, to see them shake their heads and mumble all the dirty words they could muster, but to do what they were told like a bunch of scolded brats. Some of them hobbled, limped and clutched at parts of themselves that hurt and Rosco figured that both the apothecary on Front Street and the doctor up on Possum Hill would see a few visitors by dawn. But no one had to be carried, so all in all, it hadn't been a bad night.

For any of them, really. Duke's mission had been accomplished. He'd gotten the Hickorys kicked out of their very comfortable dominance of the town's streets. Thackeray had been out manned and out gunned, so he was lucky to escape with his life. And Rosco, well Rosco wouldn't have to get yelled at and beaten over the head by a parasol belonging to yet one more broken-hearted mother who had lost her boy to this stupid feud. The marshal took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and watched as the last of the stragglers from of two bands of lost and angry boys hobbled off to opposite ends of the street.