Korean Mercenary’s Wild West

Four months ago—the Kansas Territory House election.
The Border Ruffians who had driven that day to victory were advancing on the town of Lawrence with it in mind.
All the more since they had brought cannon; taking the town wouldn’t be hard.
Until they saw, far ahead, one man.
“An uppity little Oriental bastard…”
‘And what the hell is that?’
Behind the men, something ringed by canvas tents caught his eye.
Chest-high, and the bulk looked considerable.
It nagged at him, but he couldn’t make it out at all.
The leader frowned between the brows and said,
“Looks like those bastards formed a militia. Do they mean to start a war with us?”
“Tch. You think trash like that can even shoot straight?”
“If it comes to it, we blow ’em away with the cannon.”
He turned his head and cut a glance over his shoulder at his fellows. Twenty armed men. Plenty to take a small town.
Even so, he hesitated.
‘Advance, or don’t.’
Orders from above were what had him wavering.
Their objective was to seize the town and carry the election to victory. “Killing” was not on the option list.
— If the voters die, they might take it as cause to run the election again.
Then what about the other way around?
No one had issued separate instructions about Border Ruffians dying.
‘If one of us gets killed…’
We’d have fallen back by force majeure, so it shouldn’t bring blame.
Having finished the short chain of thought, the leader crooked one corner of his mouth and said,
“If we back off because of trash like that, we’re no Border Ruffians. We advance as is.”
“Damn right! Make ’em pay for taking us lightly!”
Riled up, they pricked their horses on and picked up speed. While the party pushed ahead, the leader pretended to observe the enemy and kept his own horse from accelerating.
A choice to dodge his comrades’ scorn and keep his own hide intact.
The advancing Border Ruffians blasted past the numbered posts at a frightening pace.
“Passed eight.”
The militiamen swallowed hard and waited for Max’s command.
Max kept his muzzle on the enemy and opened his mouth.
“Spread out. If they come into your effective range, shoot. Do what you did in training.”
“We can really kill ’em?”
“If you can hit without killing, then do that.”
The instant the words ended, Max squeezed the trigger.
Taaang!
One of the riders in the charge staggered and screamed.
As Max passed his rifle back, the man beside him held out another. It was preloaded.
Mr. Hutchison—the plump man with no gift for shooting—was helping this way.
As the others scattered at speed to their assigned spots, Max fixed his eye on a second target.
Taaang!
This one toppled out of the saddle.
When Max held out his hand, Hutchison—sweating—still hadn’t finished reloading the rifle that had fired the first shot. The gap between the first and second shots had been so short that he felt extreme pressure with Max’s hand outstretched.
While Max waited, the riders blew past post “6,” closing the distance to 300 yards (274 m).
‘Shooting slow doesn’t inspire fear, does it?’
“Here you go!”
Hutchison thrust the rifle out, and Max, the moment he took it, fixed on the third target.
Taaang!
Taaang!
Two gun reports cracked back to back.
Two Border Ruffians lurched, bending at the waist.
One shot was Max’s. The other was Fitch’s.
‘Bold.’
Her marksmanship—ignoring the gap between training and the real thing—was impressive.
And when the Border Ruffians broke past post “4,” gunfire began in a volley.
Hiiiiiing!
The poorer shots among the militia aimed at horses rather than men.
Cruel, but quite effective at stopping an approach.
‘Damn…’
The multiple shots seeded fear among the Border Ruffians. The driving momentum of their charge faltered, and they started looking to one another.
While that extreme unease was taking hold—
Max glanced at Mr. Hutchison and jerked his chin back over his shoulder.
“Shall we show it?”
“Ah. Got it.”
A distance you could confirm with the naked eye.
Hutchison whipped back the canvas behind them.
Its true nature: a two-wheeled cart.
On it sat a wooden shape carved and over-painted in black.
Shoddy and laughably crude.
A slapdash sculpture—but the leader, watching through his spyglass, blanched and shouted,
“A cannon!”
Max had made it because he knew two cannon were in play today.
All it took was an existing cart and a log gouged with a bore. Not a hard job.
On an ordinary day, a cannon popping up out of nowhere like that would’ve been something to laugh at—but because those men had brought cannon, it made them jump.
“Kh—.”
The charging Border Ruffians yanked reins in unison and halted.
They saw the muzzle trained on them—and Max, unhurried, moving behind the cannon.
By now, their rifles would also be reloaded.
Already rattled, the Border Ruffians had a wedge driven in by the “cannon.”

Why is that thing in town—
There’s no time to ask.
“Fall back!”
The Border Ruffians wheeled and began to run.
The leader stared, dumbfounded, at the cannon they themselves had hauled.
‘Where did those bastards get a cannon?’
The leader ground Max’s face into memory, clenching his molars. Then he turned his back and said,
“We’re returning to Jackson County.”
All he’d done was stare through a spyglass.
The outcome was dismal, but the leader’s heart was comparatively at ease.
‘Force majeure. No one will blame me.’
There were wounded, but perhaps because they’d been hit at relatively long range, there were no dead.
The militiamen and townsfolk cheered as they watched the Border Ruffians run.
“Militia’s the best!”
“We really did elect ourselves the right sheriff!”
Some crowded around the wooden “cannon,” letting out gasps.
“How do you run from that?”
“From a distance it looks like a real cannon.”
“Even so—running when it didn’t even fire?”
All they’d done was rough-bore a log and set it on a cart—and it worked.
‘No way they ran just because of a cannon, right?’
While people were snickering, Fitch’s thinking was different.
Whether the cannon was real or not, the Border Ruffians’ morale had already been broken by the militia’s fire.
In that situation, the cannon gave them a powerful pretext for retreat.
Fitch spoke to Max.
“I take back laughing when I saw you carving a cannon out of wood.”
“Repent while facing a wall.”
“Fine. But tell me—how do you read the enemy’s head that well?”
The tactics using the numbered posts. The first shot, and how Max’s responses shifted with distance—enough to make your tongue hang out.
And starting with the cannon, all of it ran on psychology.
Fitch wanted to know.
Max, instead of an answer, stared at her.
From how she moved, it looked like she had a purpose. Or wanted to become something.
“Teacher?”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“People’s psychology is all more or less the same.”
“Yours and mine can’t be the same, Sheriff.”
“That’s why someone alone is the hardest to deal with.”
“…?”
While Fitch scratched her chin and pondered—
Holliday came up and slung an arm over Max’s shoulders.
“Our Sheriff Max. You must be worn out tangling with the Border Ruffians. You should eat.”
“I’ll pass on potatoes.”
“You think I’d offer you nothing but potatoes.”
Grinning wide, Holliday headed with Max toward the sheriff’s office. On the way, townsfolk they passed gave thumbs up {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} and smiles.
 
****
“Truth be told, when Representative Lane said he was going to Leavenworth, I was worried.”
Holliday said it while working a piece of meat with his teeth.
“But stopping them with a militia not even a month old—I’ll admit, I’m surprised.”
“Luck was with us. I doubt they came planning to do real shooting. The Border Ruffians came thinking about last year’s election.”
Confidence that with gun and knife threats they could take the election easily. They’d done it once, and came thinking that was all it would take.
“The problem is the other towns.”
At Max’s words, Holliday’s face tightened.
If Lawrence took this much, what about the others?
“Lane went to Leavenworth, so that one’s fine, right?”
“Hard to say. Either way, that’s two districts at best.”
“That’s bad…”
“Give it a few days. Results will come.”
On voting day, Lawrence was the same as always.
Without outside interference, they exercised their convictions by vote.
But the other towns were in serious trouble.
Leavenworth.
“Representative Lane—what about the people of Arizona who elected you? And you’re here?”
Surrounded by armed men, James Henry Lane. He glared at the Ruffians like a savage beast and reached toward his holster.
“Oh? So the safety of the townsfolk means nothing to you. We’re here to protect voters, not to fight.”
“Voters? You brazen bastard.”
“Same to you. You helping the abolitionists with guns—how is that any different from us?”
Leavenworth was the largest city in Kansas.
Border Ruffians more than double Lawrence’s rolled in.
People seized by fear gave up voting, and the Border Ruffians cast those ballots.
Lane and his men could do nothing until the voting ended.
They could only watch townsfolk leave the polls with heads down.
The more of that he took in, the more Lane’s anger piled up.
Powerless before violence trampling conviction.
Lane blamed himself for complacency and overhauled his line completely.
He carved in deep: violence must be met with violence.
 
****
Kansas Herald of Freedom editor George Washington Brown.
He’d been in Lecompton with the governor, digging for information—but before he even set type, he came first to the sheriff’s office.
A curse burst from his lips, worn ragged with fatigue.
“Jesus fuck, this is too goddamn much.”
“Results are in?”
Holliday, who’d been sitting, shot to his feet. Max, without much reaction, kept reading an old paper.
“Out of thirty-nine seats, we got three.”
“…?”
“Pottawatomie and Lawrence. Only three got elected—and only from those two!”
Holliday blinked and asked,
“So we lost Leavenworth too.”
James Henry Lane hadn’t been seen since voting day. Rumor had it he’d gone back to Arizona.
“I hear they counted twice the number of ballots as there are voters—plain fraud. We got burned last year, how do we get burned again!”
“Damn.”
Free-state towns hadn’t changed the situation; the slave-state side had only acted more methodically.
The slave-state plan: mass Border Ruffians in, set up camp around towns the day before.
On the day, assault squads seize the polling places—and then the mass of them file in to vote.
The Border Ruffians who marched on Lawrence had been one such assault squad.
Had they succeeded, hundreds of unarmed pro-slavery men would have occupied the town’s polling place.
George Brown and Holliday drooped their heads, faces blank with shock.
They’d expected to lose, but not to be routed like this.
All they’d worked for had turned to foam.
The shock was heavy.
“Lawrence even formed a militia and defended the ballot—what were the others even doing!”
He wasn’t asking for an answer.
Holliday, overheated, was venting fury.
Max tapped the tabletop with a finger and thought.
‘Originally, it would’ve been two seats.’
It had gone up by one.
A kink in history made by Max and the militia.
Of course, this alone wouldn’t change the big current.
“If it’s a fraudulent election, won’t they demand a revote?”
“Who knows. Will they grant it? If that happens, the slave-state side will explode.”
George Brown shook his head.
“Then what about the free-state towns? You think they’ll accept this election?”
“Of course they won’t sit still…”
“If the governor’s been hounded by the slave-state side till now, from here on he’ll be tormented by the free-state side. This isn’t ending like this.”
At Max’s words, Holliday let out a long sigh.
“Phew… anyway, the Missouri bastards are throwing a party about now.”
 
****
“Come on then—on a day like this we all raise a glass.”
Jackson County, Missouri.
David Rice Atchison—who had led the Border Ruffians—lifted his cup.
He had been a Missouri senator, and was the man who founded the town of Atchison, Kansas.
The ones gathered were Missouri’s representative pro-slavery men. They celebrated victory and talked the future.
When the party ended, Atchison met with key men in a cramped room and spoke. Every one of them backed slavery to the marrow.
“Thirty-six out of thirty-nine seats—an overwhelming win. The Kansas constitution will be framed as a slave-state’s without trouble.”
Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow, former Missouri attorney general. He commanded the Border Ruffians, and Atchison wielded his will through him.
“Still, it’s a touch vexing.”
“What is, sir?”
“Those three seats we let slip.”
When Atchison said it with a hard face,
A shadow fell over Benjamin’s as well.
Pottawatomie was one thing—Lawrence was the problem.
A true cannon spooked by a fake cannon—an epic swindle. They hadn’t even entered the town; they’d fled leaving seven casualties, a humiliation stamped on the Border Ruffians.
And the anger fixed on the leader who’d done nothing but gawk through a spyglass and retreat.
A few days ago, he’d ended up dead—shot by a Border Ruffian.
“What about the other man?”
“The other—?”
“I heard it all happened because of some cocky coolie, did it not?”
“Ah—the sheriff of Lawrence.”
“Sheriff?”
Atchison snorted and went on.
“The governor’s not under control now. If the free-state side squeezes him, who knows what he’ll try.”
“Surely it won’t go as far as a revote.”
“That’s not certain. And from what I hear, on account of the idiocy at Lawrence, other places are moving to organize militias.”
“……”
“The little breeze kicked up by that cheap coolie needs to die here. Don’t you agree?”
Meeting Atchison’s gaze, Benjamin nodded. He stepped out with his brother Robert, leaving Atchison alone with one man.
“Lawrence will soon be folded into Douglas County. Once it’s formally organized as a city, they’ll have to elect a county sheriff.”
Atchison looked at the man.
“Samuel—I’m going to seat you as sheriff there. Get ready.”
“Yes.”
Short, dry answer.
Freckled, with a bushy beard, Samuel Jefferson Johnson—mid-twenties—was a gunman trusted by David Rice Atchison.
 
****
Kelly Inn & Pub.
Since the voting ended, the hordes of Missourians hadn’t shown their faces.
Even now, just three men sat at one table.
“So when’s the raid?”
“Tomorrow night. I hear some of the ones who got mauled by that Oriental bastard last time are joining up.”
“They’re sending those useless shits again?”
“The leader was the useless one. What’s it to them. Anyway…”
Hushed talk among the men. But with no customers, anyone who cared to listen could make it out just fine.
And the bouncer—sitting in the corner like a shadow—was no one’s concern at all.