A Damn Fine Day by Brandon Barrows

Winner of the 2025 Saddlebag Dispatches Mustang Award for Western Flash Fiction

Someone was coming down the Buckeye Point Road, a rarity in these East Texas swamplands, but Dan Ross paid no attention. He was busy, awkwardly tightening a whiskey-soaked bandage around his left ring finger. A particularly feisty bowfin took a bite from it days earlier and now it was badly infected. The stinging whiskey was a last-ditch effort at saving the digit. He grunted in pain as he finally succeeded in tying the bandage off.

Ross sank into his old rocking chair with a sigh, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes against the throbbing ache. Sounds of jangling harness finally registered, and he opened his eyes to find a group of riders had appeared before his peeled-log cabin. Three strangers—even rarer in the Caddo Lake swamps.

“Howdy, old feller,” the lead rider called, hand lifted. He slid from his mount and approached the porch. He wasn’t very tall, but he had shoulders like an ox. Beneath a black, flat-crowned sombrero, his skin was deeply tanned, and there was something about his eyes Dan Ross did not like.

The broad-shouldered man planted a foot on the bottom step of the porch, and flipped back his duster, flashing a badge. Dan couldn’t help noticing the paired six-guns as well.

“You Ross? Name’s Jameson. We’re officers from downstate a piece, looking for a fugitive, feller called Trace Cooper. He’s a doctor by trade, but he hooked up with a heist-gang and—well, that don’t matter, as he’s the last of ’em. We’ve reason to believe he’s gone to ground in this here swamp.”

Jameson paused, watching Ross, awaiting any response. The old man hadn’t even acknowledged him. It vaguely disturbed Jameson. He’d heard tales about these swamp-rats… how they all seemed a mite touched.

“They told us in town,” Jameson finally continued, “that you know these swamps better’n anyone alive.”

“Reckon so,” Ross said, spitting over the porch railing. “But what’s any of it to do with me?”

“We thought mebbe you—” one of the others began.

“If he don’t know the swamp, he’s dead already most-like,” Ross cut in. He cleared his throat and spat again. “Hell, this peatbog won’t hold nobody ’cept a bantam like me, so without a boat, you got to know where the paths is. That’s all if he went in.”

Jameson said, “We’re sure he did, Mister Ross, and we’d appreciate your help bringing him out.”

“I ain’t no man-catcher.” He raised his bandaged hand. “Cain’t even fire my squirrel-gun proper like this. Anyway, if he went in, this Cooper’s prolly already sunk to the bottom of the bog where nobody can find ’im.”

Jameson stepped onto the porch. From a pocket, he produced a roll of bills, peeling off two tens—more money than Ross saw in six months. “That could well be, but if he’s dead, we gotta be able to show it.” He stuffed the bills into Ross’s shirt pocket and placed a hand on the butt of the revolver on his right hip. “We’ll pay for your time, but we need your help.”

Jameson’s manner, his insistence—these weren’t no “officers,” Ross realized. They were bounty hunters. And if they couldn’t bring their quarry in, they needed proof he was dead to get paid. Suddenly, Ross was disgusted, but the look in Jameson’s eye made plain this wasn’t a request.

Climbing to his feet, Ross asked, “And if I find ’im dead, you fellas gonna help me drag him out?”

“Hell, no!” the third rider declared. “We ain’t goin’ in there. You just bring us some sort of proof if he’s dead.”

Dan Ross spat one last time then, grumbling, went inside to make ready.

Hours later, the September sun was dipping toward evening as Ross poled his scarred old pirogue up the black waterway of the swamp toward Buckeye Point. When he reached the muddy bank, the three bounty hunters hurried from Ross’s cabin to meet him. Jameson helped him pull the pirogue onto dry land, then asked, “Well?”

“I found ’im.” Ross wiped his brow. “Just like I told ya—stuck in a peat bog, dead as a doornail. Looks solid, some places, but they’re right treacherous. That’s how I found ’im—big ol’ hole in the peat, body coupla feet beneath the surface. Musta broke right through and sank like a stone. Couldn’t git ’im out if you wanted.”

Jameson scowled. “Hell, man. So, Cooper’s dead. So, you were right all along. But where’s the proof?”

A cold look appeared in Ross’s eyes. “I got your proof.” He extracted a blood-stained handkerchief from his overalls and slowly unfolded it.

The other men crowded close. A swamp quail’s repeated whistles came from a distance away—the only sound for a moment. Then one of the men made a noise in his throat and turned from the sight—a severed finger with an intricately patterned ring.

Jameson read aloud, “’Amsterdam Medical College,’” and turned toward his partners. “I’d say that’s proof, gen’l’men.” He took the cloth-wrapped digit from Ross, exchanging it for another ten-dollar bill. Moments later, the three men were riding back down the Buckeye Point Road toward town.

Ross watched them go, muttering, “Good riddance. Blood-money bastards.”

He mounted his porch and settled into his chair. Letting out a sigh of both satisfaction and utter exhaustion, he studied the fresh bandage on his hand. Once healed, he’d be near as good as new.

“Bandit or not, that Cooper feller was damn sure one hell of a doctor. Takin’ off that rotten finger didn’t hardly hurt a’tall.”

Neither did the fifty dollars Cooper paid for ferryin’ him to Swanson Landing, where coaches east could be found. Through luck or skill, Cooper was filthy, tired, but plenty alive when Ross discovered him—and Ross found he liked the man a whole lot more than he did Jameson.

Patting the wadded bills in his pocket, Dan Ross chuckled. He was dog-tired, but all in all, it was a damn fine day.

Brandon Barrows is the author of a dozen novels, his most recent Long Before They Die from Full Speed Publishing. He has also published over one hundred short stories for which he is a four-time Mustang Award finalist and a two-time Derringer Award nominee.