Big Damn Hero

16

The planet Shadow, long ago

They were known as the Four Amigos. Their antics were legendary, at least amongst their peers, although amongst the inhabitants of their hometown, Seven Pines Pass, and most of the neighboring towns, they were considered tearaways and a liability. They drank. They got into and out of scrapes. They drank some more. They fell foul of the law from time to time. They drank even more. But they were essentially good-hearted, a bunch of kids on the cusp of adulthood who liked to mess around a bit and didn’t much care about the consequences.

There was Tobias Finn, the youngest of the four, known to his friends as Toby. Toby was pliant, going along with pretty much whatever the rest of them did, just glad to be in their company. This meant the others sometimes took advantage of him, like that time they persuaded him to shave all his hair off because they said girls found bald men attractive, or that time they dared him to steal Sheriff Bundy’s seven-point-star badge right off his lapel, which earned Toby a night in jail and a hefty fine.

There was Jamie Adare, the oldest of them, who considered himself their leader. Jamie was the one who usually came up with the harebrained schemes which the others would either agree to carry out or not, depending how much booze they’d imbibed and how reckless their collective mood was. He was a clever kid who could have done well at school if he’d made an effort but he preferred to dedicate his brainpower to having fun, and it could be argued that that was a better use for it than learning algebra and slogging through dull-as-ditchwater literary classics from Earth-That-Was.

Then there was Jamie’s sister Jinny. Beautiful Jinny, she of the long, flowing ash-blonde hair and the cute uptilted nose with the smattering of freckles across the bridge like a map of some uncharted star system. Jinny, who was even cleverer than her brother, academically speaking, but possessed just as much of a wild streak. Jamie and Jinny were the despair of their parents, two unbroken colts that would not be tamed. Ma and Pa Adare longed for their offspring to make something of themselves, maybe leave Shadow, where your life options were frankly limited, and relocate to one of the Core planets. Out here on this mudball on the fringes of the Georgia system there was nothing but arable farms and cattle ranches, and that was fine but not necessarily suitable for anyone with smarts and a low boredom threshold. There were worlds where a young man or woman with the right grades and the right attitude could prosper— and maybe send a portion of that prosperity to the folks back home.

The fourth member of the Four Amigos was a handsome devil with too-long hair and a heck of a swagger for a kid scarcely out of his teens. The twinkle in his eye and the twist of his cocksure grin had won him the hearts of countless ladies in this county and the next, and gotten him into their beds too. More than once — many times more, in fact — this incorrigible Romeo had been turfed out of a young woman’s room by an irate father wielding a twelve-gauge, and he had enough buckshot scars peppering his backside to prove it.

His name was Malcolm Reynolds, but he preferred just “Mal.”

Mal’s father was long gone, and his mother ran the family ranch, with forty hands answering to her. Mrs. Reynolds had the lined, pinched face of a woman who was, if not thriving, then at least surviving in a life that never made things easy. The skin around her eyes was heavily wrinkled, and she had a permanent squint from staring so long across Shadow’s prairie vistas. From time to time she would call on her son to help out with work — shoeing, branding, rounding up, plowing, and so forth — and he would, but she knew she couldn’t rely on him; and the older he got, the less reliable he became. Mal had too much else on his mind, namely chasing after girls and trouble. His personality seemed just too big for a small planet like this one to contain, and his feet were itchy. His destiny, Mrs. Reynolds couldn’t help thinking, lay elsewhere, out there in the ’verse. She hated the thought that he would leave Shadow but knew the day would inevitably come. It was simply a question of how soon.

Meanwhile the Four Amigos’ exploits just kept getting more and more outrageous. Perhaps the capstone of their careers in mischief came one especially hot and dusty summer when Mortimer Ponticelli rustled several head of cattle off the Hendricksons’ land, rounding the cows up as though they belonged to him and spiriting them off to his corral. Ponticelli even went to the effort of erasing the Hendricksons’ brand off the cattle’s flanks using dermal menders and replacing it with his own.

It was out-and-out larceny, and everyone knew he was guilty as sin, but there was no proof, at least not as far as Sheriff Bundy was concerned, and anyway Mort Ponticelli and Sheriff Bundy were best buddies — Bundy was actually married to one of the old geezer’s many daughters — so the idea of the theft being investigated, let alone a prosecution being brought, was laughable.

“I say we do something about it,” Jamie Adare proposed one evening at the Silver Stirrup Saloon, the one and only drinking establishment in Seven Pines Pass. “Old Man Ponticelli’s been pulling crap like this since as long as anyone can remember, and it’s about time someone set him to rights.”

“And that’s us, huh?” said Mal.

“You bet your ass it is. Ain’t nobody gonna lift a finger against him, not while Bundy’s in his pocket.”

“In his pocket?” said Jinny Adare. “Sherriff Bundy kisses Ponticelli’s ass so hard, he’s got permanent lip sores.”

“But what?” Toby Finn asked. “What can we do?”

“We can get those cows back,” Jamie said. “We can go there tonight and just take ’em.”

Toby looked dubious. “Mort Ponticelli’ll shoot you soon as look at you. Don’t know about you guys, but I value my life. I got more left to live of it than you.”

“He won’t kill us,” Jamie said. “Wouldn’t dare. Stealing’s one thing, but murder? Not even Bundy could get him off that rap. He’d hang for sure, and he knows it.”

“I don’t know…”

“Oh, come on, Toby,” Jinny said, patting his cheek. “Don’t be scared. I’ll look after you.”

Jinny was always affectionate towards him, and Toby preened at her touch. Though her junior by three years, anyone with eyes in their head could tell that he was madly in love with her. He had been since he was in fifth grade and she was in eighth. Now that he was at last old enough for the age difference not to seem such an unbridgeable gulf, it was only a matter of time before he declared his feelings towards her. He had confided as much to Mal, and Mal had encouraged him to wait at least a little while more. You didn’t just go telling girls you loved them, he had counseled Toby. If, and only if, you were completely sure that she was the one for you, did you ’fess up that you liked her deeply, rather than just in the carnal fashion. In the meantime, Mal’s recommendation to Toby was that he should play the field, just as he himself was. Get some notches on his belt and then go for the big prize. You had to have a few go-rounds on the carousel first before you reached for the brass ring, after all. Otherwise you’d grab for it and miss, and you’d have blown your shot, maybe for good.

Mal gave this advice for reasons that were not entirely honorable and disinterested. ’Cause while he was indeed playing the field, treating himself to many a go-round on that metaphorical carousel, there was one girl he had set his sights on above all the rest; one who captivated him and whose presence never failed to thrill him; one who in the fullness of time, when the moment was right, he would make his. And she was called Jinny Adare.

Now, as Jinny worked her wiles on Toby, all the kid could do was blush and nod.

“Since when has Jamie ever led us astray?” she added.

“I could count the times on my fingers, but I’d run out of hands,” Toby replied. He scrubbed his head. “My hair ain’t ever felt the same since it grew back.”

Jamie chortled. “Fair comment. But this time it ain’t just some prank, Toby old pal. This is serious. Nobody else is gonna hold Ponticelli to account. The old bastard’s been riding roughshod over this town for years. We can show him what we think about that, and if we do it right, he won’t even know it was us.”

Several beers later, the plan — such as it was — had been finalized.

They rode to the Ponticelli ranch on horseback, leaving their mounts tethered to a tree a mile out and going the rest of the way on foot. Mal took point. He was generally agreed to be the best plainsman among them. He knew the lay of the land like nobody’s business, having spent much of his childhood exploring and roaming the county. Growing up with no father at home to curb him and his mother too busy to tend to him, he had been more or less a free agent. His attendance record at school had been patchy verging on nonexistent. He had invariably found the lure of the wilderness far stronger than the lure of the classroom.

The night was moonless but the starlight bright enough to see by as Mal led the other Amigos along a back trail, down a narrow defile, and across a dry creek bed. They moved in a wide circle around Mort Ponticelli’s homestead so that they approached it from the rear, coming at it from the cover of a thicket of tall scrub and knotty cactus. The longhorn cows in the corral lowed nervously as they tiptoed closer.

“Which ones are his and which the Hendricksons’?” Toby whispered.

“No way of telling,” said Jamie. “But it makes no nevermind. He poached a dozen, so we take a dozen, any dozen. That’s fair and square.”

Mal, Jamie and Jinny slipped over the corral fence while Toby kept lookout. There were no lights on in any of the windows of the house, and just a single porch lamp winking on the veranda at the back.

They had brought rope, and carefully they fashioned halters and slipped them around the necks of a dozen cows, joining them together in pairs.

Then Jamie unlatched the corral gate and opened it, nice and slow, and the others began leading the tethered cattle out two by two, like latterday Noahs with a very singular notion of which species they were going to load aboard their Ark.

All was going smoothly until one of the final pair of cows got it into its head to complain. It began to make those anxious, hiccupping moos that signaled bovine distress, and Mal could only assume that it was one of Ponticelli’s own livestock, rather than any of the Hendricksons’. It had been born and raised on this patch of land and didn’t cotton to the idea of being removed.

Jinny laid a hand on the cow’s nose and murmured in its ear in order to quieten it. She had a way with cattle. They seemed to succumb to her charms as readily as any human male. The steer bowed its head, almost as if in apology for having caused a fuss.

Mal cast an anxious eye towards the house. No lights coming on. No one shouting. They’d gotten away with it.

Then they hadn’t.

The back door burst open, and there on the veranda was Mort Ponticelli himself. He powered up a thousand-lumen flashlight and swung the beam towards the corral. It was as bright as the sun, a ray of incandescent brilliance that dazzled all of the Four Amigos, freezing them in place.

“You lousy varmints!” Ponticelli yelled. “I see you. You stop right there. I got a rifle and I ain’t afraid to use it.”

To underscore his point, he loosed off a round. He aimed high deliberately, but not that high. The bullet zipped only a few feet above their heads, buzzing through the air like an angry and very lethal wasp.

“Warning shot,” Ponticelli said. “Next one goes right through one of you.”

They all looked at Jamie.

“What do we do?” Toby said.

Jamie’s jaw was set firm. “What we came here to do.”

So saying, he thwacked the hindquarters of the nearest cow, which was not one of the dozen tied in pairs. It let out a shrill objection and charged for the open gate. The other cattle in the corral saw this as an invitation to stampede. All at once, the whole herd, which numbered close on a hundred, were making a beeline for the gate. As they thundered through, the roped pairs which were already outside started running ahead of them. Freedom beckoned and they were all suddenly keen to seize the opportunity.

It was pandemonium, added to by Ponticelli, who began firing at the quartet of cattle thieves. Ducking low, Mal grabbed Jinny and hauled her towards the fence, using the fleeing cows as a shield. Jamie followed suit. They jumped the fence and kept running, joined now by Toby. Bullet after bullet zinged towards them, one coming so close to Mal that it struck the cow right next to him. The beast went cartwheeling over, 1,500 pounds of flailing legs and meaty body, and Mal had to fling himself to one side to avoid a collision. If the cow had rolled on him, he would have been flattened.

“Sonofabitch!” Ponticelli hollered from the house. He was clearly very upset to have killed one of his own cattle. “You’ll pay for that, you scumbags.”

Mal rose just in time to see another cow plunging towards him, head lowered. He was simply an obstacle in its way and it seemed to have no qualms about mowing him down.

Jinny saved him, yanking him by the scruff of the neck. Together they tumbled backwards onto the ground, and the cow lumbered past. They were back on their feet in no time, but Ponticelli had his range now. The next bullet he fired off came so close, Mal’s hair was wafted by the pressure wave of its passing. He and Jinny sprinted after Jamie and Toby, trying to put distance between them and the house, but a further bullet made the ground directly in front of their feet erupt in a tiny plume of dust. Mal was certain that Ponticelli wasn’t going to miss again.

Desperately he looked around for cover. There was nothing except the thicket, still fifty yards away. Then an idea occurred.

Yet another cow was trundling towards them. Mal grabbed it by the horns and hoisted himself onto its back. It was a feat of athleticism he would never have attempted under any other circumstances, and might never be able to repeat even if he wanted to.

“Jinny! Quick!”

He reached out to her. She accelerated to keep pace with the cow. Hands clasped forearms, and Mal swung her up behind him. The cow lolloped onward. Even burdened with two passengers, it was barely slowed. Better yet, just as Mal had hoped, Ponticelli was loath to take a shot at them and risk losing another head of prime beef. He obviously valued his livestock higher than his desire to see malefactors get their just desserts. His impotent shouts from the veranda trailed after them, dwindling in volume.

Mal and Jinny rode the cow for half a mile, by which time the stampede had begun to lose impetus. As they slowed, they looked around for Jamie and Toby, and discovered that the two of them had copied their example and were also mounted on cows. All four exchanged grins of exhilaration and relief.

“That was about the craziest thing ever, you bareback-riding a steer,” Jamie said to Mal. “Hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never have believed it. But I thought, ‘You know, if Mal Reynolds can manage it, so can I.’”

“I fell off twice,” said Toby. “Reckon my butt’s gonna be black and blue for days. But it was worth it. We did it! We’ve gotten away with it!”

They dismounted and rounded up the roped-up cows, which they drove towards the spot where they’d left the horses. The remaining cows were at liberty to do as they wished, which probably meant traipsing back to the Ponticelli corral eventually. Cows were homebodies that way.

It was a short hop to the Hendrickson farm. Day was dawning as the Four Amigos led the cattle down the front drive, anticipating a heroes’ welcome.

What they got was Anders Hendrickson emerging from the house in the company of Sheriff Bundy. Hendrickson looked perturbed, even frightened. Bundy had his thumbs hooked in his gun belt beneath his bulging gut.

“Get down off of them horses,” he ordered.

The Four Amigos complied. None of them was armed, whereas Bundy had a pistol at his side and a hand hovering close to it.

“Shoulda known it’d be you four,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “You think Mort Ponticelli didn’t call me soon as his cattle were taken? You think I wouldn’t know where they might be coming? Paid Anders here a visit first thing, and he swore to me it weren’t nothing to do with him.”

“It ain’t,” Hendrickson said. “Honest to God.”

“You didn’t put these kids up to it, then?”

“No, Sheriff.”

“Might be as I believe you,” Bundy said, “seeing as how this is just the sorta stunt these four would pull without needing to be asked. It’s you I particularly feel ashamed for, Jamie and Jinny Adare. You two could make something of yourselves, and you’re just fritterin’ it all away. Toby there is too young and callow to know better, while Mal Reynolds ain’t been nothin’ but a disruptive influence since the day he was born and will likely continue to be such till the day he dies, which the way he’s going won’t be that far in the future.”

“I have a problem with authority,” Mal said, “not least when said authority is a big, fat, corrupt lawman with poor personal hygiene and a face that’d give a moose nightmares.”

Bundy strode down the front steps and sauntered over to Mal, thrusting his face up close.

“Say that again, boy,” he growled.

“Did I mention bad breath too?” Mal said. “Because seriously, Sheriff, would it kill you to try a mint every once in a while?”

The backhand slap came out of nowhere, hard enough to send Mal reeling to the ground.

Clutching his face with one hand, the other clenched into a fist, Mal sprang up again. Bundy’s gun, cocked and leveled with his face, halted him in his tracks.

“Just try, Reynolds,” he said. “You just try, you insubordinate piece of fèi wù. I won’t regret blowing your brains out the back of your head. I’ll even take pleasure going and telling your momma what I did and why I did it. Wonder if she’ll cry or she’ll just shrug like she knew you had it comin’?”

Mal ground his teeth. Jinny, who could see he was getting ready to hit Bundy come what may, put a restraining arm across his chest.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t give him the excuse.”

Mal backed down reluctantly. If it had been anyone but Jinny, he might not have heeded the advice.

“We’re sorry, Sheriff,” said Jamie. “It was high spirits, is all. We didn’t mean nothing by it. We’ll return Old Man Ponticelli’s cattle.”

“You better. You’re also gonna pay him reparations.”

“For what?” Mal said.

“Because I damn well say so, that’s for what!” Bundy snapped. He named a figure that was equivalent to a month’s salary for the average working stiff. He knew it was far more than the Four Amigos could readily scrounge up between them. “And I want it in his hands by tomorrow sundown, or else the four of you are going to be spending time in the county lockup and I’m gonna see to it myself that you get half rations and the most lice-ridden bedrolls we got.”

It was Toby who got them the money. The Finns were well off by Shadow standards, Liam Finn being a land surveyor and Marla Finn a practicing lawyer. Toby begged them for a handout, which they gave unwillingly. Every spare coin the four of them earned over the next few weeks went towards paying back the debt.

In hindsight, they’d had a heck of an escapade, but it was a couple of months before the Four Amigos could truly laugh about it, and it was another couple of months before they plucked up the nerve to try anything even near as audacious again. During that time, Toby seemed to stand a little taller and carry himself with a little more confidence. Since he was the one who’d bailed them out — with parental assistance, but even so — he seemed to feel he had attained an elevated status within the group. He was no longer just the kid who tagged along. He was the equal of any of them.

This clearly gave him the impression that he stood a better chance with Jinny now, and he stepped up his campaign to make her his girlfriend.

And, much to Mal’s chagrin, it appeared to work. Jinny, at least, ceased treating Toby like a little brother: she no longer patted him or smiled at him with the same hint of condescension, but had gained a newfound respect for him, mirroring the newfound respect he had gained for himself. Now she and he would share confidences. Mal would catch them, in unguarded moments, with their heads together, chatting, sometimes giggling.

It stuck in his craw. And yet he couldn’t challenge Toby for Jinny’s affections, not now. It wouldn’t have been right. They were the Four Amigos. They were as tight as a knot, as thick as thieves, bonded together by a shared love of roguery, famous for it, notorious.

Mal couldn’t let his jealousy jeopardize that.

Could he?