A Western End

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5

Part 4

Marshal Cummings steps off his horse and pulls out a sandwich Agatha packed for him. He sits on the ground to eat as the sun stands high above in the cloudless sky; the frost has melted and the weather warmed, yet the marshal is filled with an eerie feeling that something will go wrong when he reaches the Kindel Gang. Something as awful as the first time he encountered one of the Kindel boys long before he was the law in Red Creek— long before there was a Kindel Gang. Before Shelby led a rampage throughout the American West. Before the name Kindel was synonymous with violence and robberies throughout the godless west.

Storm clouds were rolling into lower Manhattan: an area the marshal hated to go but being as it was a nearly lawless place most of the fugitives that he hunted fled to. He enlisted help from his friend and newly appointed copper, Charles McMurphy, an Irish immigrant who was turned copper when Albany sent down the order to for an organized state-run police force known as the ‘Metropolitans’ that was supposed to replace city run ‘Municipals’. Mcmurphy was a tall thin Irishman, with thick black hair which appeared darker against his pale skin.

“Good ta see ya boyo!” McMurphy smiled and greeted his old friend with a handshake and hug. “Now, let’s get to business. Tha man ya be lookin’ for was seen at tha Ole Brewery.”

“Well, I think it wise for you to not go in there, being as you are in uniform.”

“Aye, ya be right boyo. I’ll walk me route while ya head in an’ fin’ ya man.”

“Thanks for the tip McMurphy, If I am not out soon come find me.”

McMurphy walked around the corner and Marshal Cummings headed into the Old Brewery. His stomach was tied in knots and his heart pounding. The smell of feces and sweat mixed with the scent of rotting flesh. The marshal walked through the halls, looking through every door and down every hall trying to look for the man on the wanted poster back in his office; a man wanted for the murder of a New Jersey man a year and a half prior. Matthew Kindel, a brown haired gray-eyed 24-year-old with a scar across his forehead and a slight limp in his left leg from a fight with other workers in a Paterson mill when he was younger.

Women were having sex out in the open, men divided spoils of robberies, blacks and whites smoked opium together, but no sign of Kindel.

The sun was fading when Marshal Cummings stepped back out into the crowded slum streets. He finally took a deep breath escaping from the wretched air in the Old Brewery, though the scents of the streets weren’t much better.

He found Mcmurphy across the street being harassed by a couple of men from the local Dead Rabbits gang. Marshal Cummings drew his gun and crossed the street. He grabbed the fattest one, whose weight made him a little too slow to escape, by the shirt collar and pressed him against the wall. He put his Colt Peacemaker underneath his crooked nose.

“I see you find it good sport to harass people of the law?”

Instead of answering with his words the pudgy street tough spat in the marshal’s face. Harold reacted by smashing his head into the thug’s forehead.

“Aye, let him be.”

Harold let go of the boy causing him to drop to the ground. He knelt down by the boy who was rolling on the ground in pain.

“Sorry about that, I just thought maybe you could tell me where to find a man named Matthew Kindel. He is known to be running with the scum around here.” The boy remained silent, “Well, if you do see him please let him know that U.S. Marshal Cummings is looking for him.”

The two lawmen left the Five Points and headed back up toward the 6th ward police station on Franklin street.

“Aye, we can try again in tha mornin’, we’ll get him ‘fore long.”

Mcmurphy made his way up the steps into the station house and Marshal Cummings headed over a few blocks to his apartment off of West Broadway.

He had an uneasy feeling of being followed, but he turned and saw nothing suspicious. He entered the building and walked up to his apartment. The scent of potatoes and roasted chicken filled the tiny one bedroom residence. Marshal Cummings walked in and greeted his wife, a red-haired Irish immigrant he met a year prior. Her hair was up in a bun supported with a simple blue ribbon that matched her checkered dress.  She kissed her husband as he sat down at the small kitchen table. She placed a plate with a baked potato and chicken breast. She placed another dish to his left and she took a seat to his right with a plate.

A young boy with his mother’s freckles and his father’s blue eyes walked in from the bedroom and sat down. He smiled up at his father and began eating his dinner.

“Are ya done for tha day darlin’?” His wife spoke softly.

“No, I need to head back to Five Points and find this fugitive before he does more damage.”

His wife reached over and placed her hand over the back of his.

“Just come home safe pops, I got to show ya somethin’.” His son smiled without ever looking up from his plate.

They finished the meal in silence. Marshal Cummings said goodnight to his family and headed back out into the stifling humidity that consumed the Manhattan night. He walked back down to the Old Brewery not knowing what awaited him. The place was dangerous during the day, but under the cover of a clouded night sky it grew much worse. He stopped under a streetlight to make sure his Colt 1851 Navy revolver was fully loaded. His hand was shaking, his nerves always seemed to get to him when facing the unknown.

He crossed the street and entered the dilapidated slum. The foul stench from earlier in the day was only intensified with the brewery now overflowing with the city’s poor and insane. He climbed over bodies that were either dead or too drugged to even notice his presence.

He once again searched the bowels of the Old brewery to no avail: his target wasn't there. He climbed over the motionless meat sacks back out to the sewage covered streets of the Five Points. The city air was stagnate and the sky north of the ghetto glowed an eerie orange. The sounds of screaming women and yelling men echoed through the caverns of buildings.

Harold’s stomach sank.

He ran through the streets pushing past gawking spectators watching two teams of firefighters fighting one another while a building burned: the marshal’s apartment building.

Harold screamed for his wife and son when scanning the crowd for their freckled cheeks. Someone tapped on his shoulder bringing a sense of relief over him, but it quickly dissipated when he turned around to see a pale redheaded girl staring up at him.

“Dey, not out here Marshal. I don’ thin’ dey came out.”

The Marshal turned back to the blaze where the firefighters were still throwing punches in the streets, the only people going in and out of the inferno were a group of Dead Rabbits looting the place. Harold rushed past the brawling firefighters and into the apartment.

Flames were all around him as he bolted up two stories of stairs to his apartment. The door was rigged with rope so it would remain closed regardless of how much someone on the inside tried to pull the door open. He untied the rope and rushed into his apartment.

He found his family lying motionless on the floor behind the door, his wife holding his son and his son gripping a piece of paper close to his chest. Harold tossed his wife over one shoulder and his son over the other and he carried them back through the fire and out into the humid streets where one fire company finally began dousing the fire and looting as the other one fled the scene hoping for another inferno.

The fire illuminated the scene: Harold coughed as a crowd began to gather around him. He held his family close to his body looking at the faces in the crowd as tears rolled down his eyes.

“I see’s who done it.” A child’s voice spoke out above the sound of yelling firefighters and burning city block. Marshal Cummings couldn’t see who was speaking to him through his water filled eyes, but he listened, “It was two kids, dey rans back to five points. One of em had a limp an’ da otha was a short fat man wit a beard an’ a real funny nose an’ a gash on his head.”

His mind wandered back to the young dead thug that was on the receiving end of his ferocious headbutt. Marshal Cummings stood up leaving his family in the street. He pulled out his revolver making his way past the crowd and down the street back into the depths of the Five Points.

He could hear footsteps pounding the street from behind him; he turned and pointed his weapon. Officer McMurphy stood with his arms in the air.

“Aye, it's me, laddie. Put it down, for now, I can’t let ya go on there alone.” Mcmurphy took the copper badge off his chest and slid it in his pocket. “Tonigh’ I’m not tha law.”

Marshal Cummings dropped his gun and shook his friend’s hand. Together they began the trek back to the Five Points.

The slowed down when they neared the Old Brewery and stood across the street in a unlit part of the street where they watched group of five men under a street light rolling dice: one of them had a distinct nose and another had a face the Marshal had etched in his memory and on each of the six bullets in his weapon.

“Now let’s not get carried away, we here fo one man an’ one man only.”

Marshal Cummings ignored his friend’s words and started across the street with his weapon drawn.

“Shit!” One of the kids on the corner screams seeing the approaching lawmen “Get out of here!” The group began to run in different directions.

One of them, one with a pronounced limp, ran toward the Old Brewery. Marshal Cummings fired his weapon hitting the cobblestone street behind the running arsonist. The kid took a peak of over his shoulder to see who was firing at him. The face he saw he thought he had disposed of in a boxed inferno.

Kindel tried to outrun the bullets that were ricocheting all around him, but his limp could not carry him to safety before a bullet ripped through the back of his good leg blowing his kneecap all over the street.

Harold approached with his gun pointing at his family’s murderer as the kid’s blood glistened in the moonlight that now broke through the gray clouds. Kindel tried to drag himself into the old brewery, but before he could creep along the sidewalk the marshal’s foot stomped onto what remained of the back of his knee which was nothing more than a pool of blood and a couple of tendons hanging loosely connecting his thigh to his calf.

“Going somewhere?” The marshal voice shook. “Turn around.” Harold filled the empty chambers of his pistol with steel to steal Kindel’s life.

A gunshot echoed through the streets breaking the near silence. A second gunshot rang out and footsteps clanked the streets headed toward the marshal. Kindel twisted his head around to face the barrel of the marshal’s Colt 1851 Navy.

“A woman. . . A child,” the marshal paused choking back his feelings, “a fucking child.” Harold pulled the hammer back on his pistol.

“Marshal, the otha one be dead. He shot me in tha arm,” Officer McMurphy ran clutching his right shoulder as blood poured out between his fingers. “But I got him righ’ in tha heart.”

“This one is not going to get the same fate.” The marshal holstered his pistol, “This one will sit in the gallows and the city will watch him hang.” Harold took his foot off Kindel’s leg and walked into the moonlight, not sure where to go next.

He could hear McMurphy talk to Kindel as he dragged him along to the police station.

He could still hear him. He could still hear his first family laughing at Sunday dinner in the wind rushing down from the mountains whipping through the plains. He takes off his hat and pulls a slip of paper from its brim and unfolds it. Tears drip down onto the sketch of him his son drew the same one his son had clutched to his chest as he died. It is at times like this that the marshal wishes he had pulled the trigger on that fateful night.

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a horse’s gallop over the frozen ground. His heart races as he removes his Colt Peacemaker from its holster and turns to face the oncoming horse.