Jack Parker Comes of Age

by Ed Roberts

  The two men had been sitting in their cabin when there had been a rap on the door. When they went to investigate, they found three men standing outside. They recognized Thad Harker, who was trail boss up at Timothy Carter’s place. Harker had a rifle under his arm and said that it was time for the two men to be moving on, that nobody wanted any unpleasantness, but the land was to be returned to a state of nature. At first they laughed at this, for neither Ed Summerfield nor his friend were men who took kindly to folk trying to bluster them. There was a little shoving and cursing, and then Harker had seemingly cocked his piece and let off a single shot; whereupon Summerfield pulled his pistol and shot the trail boss through the heart. The dead man’s accomplices then cut and ran.

  If matters were as represented by Summerfield, then it was a clear case of self-defence. If somebody starts shooting, then his blood is upon his own head if somebody then puts a bullet in him. Sheriff Parker had no cause to doubt the account as it had been given, but he wished to see for himself. He was sure in his own mind that Summerfield and his partner were distilling liquor, but he didn’t have them pegged for killers.

  Eager as he was to come and view the scene of the shooting, Jack was instead instructed to stay behind and tend to the office in his father’s absence. ‘This is a serious business,’ Tom Parker told him, ‘Matters are coming to a head and I dare not leave the office empty if it can be helped. Besides which, men sometimes take it into their heads to exact revenge in a case of this sort. I surely wouldn’t want you nearby if shooting starts.’ Although he had been excited at the idea of visiting the scene of a recent shooting, Jack knew that his father was right; somebody needed to stay and look after the shop.

  It was coming on towards seven when his father returned; by which time Jack’s stomach was making protesting noises, he not having eaten since midday. There had been a steady stream of people wanting something or other. Sometimes it was information, some of which Jack was able to furnish them with. Others had complaints and problems which only the sheriff would be able to deal with. The folk in town were amused to find Tom Parker’s boy tending the office, like he was a deputy or something. The sheriff was well liked in Mayfield, and most of them thought that he was training up his son to follow in his footsteps. If so, then that was all right with them.

  Tom Parker arrived back at the office at almost precisely the same moment as his deputy. When he was settled behind his desk, the sheriff said, ‘Brandon, we’ve a visit to pay. This has got to stop right now, or me and those fellows running the Wyoming Stock Growers Association are apt to fall out.’ He glanced across at his son and said, ‘You want to come too? You’ve a crow of your own to pluck with Timothy Carter.’ Brandon didn’t ask what this meant, guessing that it was a private matter. The sheriff said, ‘We need to eat afore we ride up there though. I’m nigh on fainting for want of vittles.’

  After the three of them had snatched a hasty meal at a nearby eating house, Jack went off to tack up a horse for himself. His feelings about the projected expedition were jumbled and confused. On the one hand, it was surely exciting to be riding alongside the sheriff on such an important piece of work. On the other though, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to see Timothy Carter again. The thought made him feel a little queasy, and he hoped he would be able to conceal whatever emotions were stirred up by the sight of the man.

  On the way to Carter’s ranch, Sheriff Parker told the two others what had happened up at Ed Summerfield’s place. Just as claimed, there lay Thad Harker, stone dead with a ball through his heart. ‘It looks like a true bill to me. All that I saw tied in with what Summerfield told me. His partner backed it up as well. Mind, they’re a rare pair of scoundrels. For all that they’d done their best to tidy up things, I could smell the poteen from a quarter-mile away. I read them the riot act and I hope they’ll heed my advice.’

  Brandon said, ‘What will you say to Carter?’

  ‘I’ll ask him to stop all this foolishness of trying to drive men off their land. I’ve about had enough of it, and if things go any further, we’ll have a little war on our hands and I don’t mean to have it so, not while I’m sheriff in Benton County.’

  The land actually owned by Timothy Carter was not extensive: it amounted to no more than three hundred acres. It was the open range that surrounded his ranch which made his cattle profitable. Were he ever forced to keep them penned in on his ranch and obliged to supply them with water and hay every day, he would soon be out of business. From that point of view, one could see why he was so eager to see the back of the settlers who were engaged in closing off the range with their barbed-wire fences and stopping his steers from reaching the water they needed.

  Timothy Carter lived in an imposing, stone-built house, as befitted a man of such importance. When Sheriff Parker rode up to it, accompanied by his deputy and son, Carter was standing outside, chatting to a small group of men. He recognized Tom Parker at once and greeted him affably, but with a lazy and mocking air, saying, ‘Sheriff, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Or is it just a social call?’

  The sheriff dismounted and his deputy did likewise. Jack, unsure of his status here, remained in the saddle. He could barely bring himself to look at Timothy Carter, knowing as he did that the man was a murderer. He was afraid that something would show in his face if he looked straight at the man, and that by some means, the other would guess that Jack knew what he had done the week before.

  Carter said, ‘I’m glad that you came by, Sheriff. It gives me a chance to introduce you to my new man. Well, I say mine, but he’s employed by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. With all the rustling going on hereabouts, and the law unable to protect us from the scourge, we’ve engaged the services of Mr Booker here to hunt down those responsible. He’s our range detective. Booker, I’d like you to meet our local lawman, Mr Jackson.’ Booker, an ill-favoured man of about forty stepped forward and extended his hand to the sheriff. Tom Parker ignored the outstretched hand, staring coldly at the owner. Carter said, ‘Dave Booker here is in the same line of work as you, Sheriff. For a spell, he was a sheriff over in Colorado.’

  ‘And before that, bounty hunter, road agent and mercenary in Mexico,’ said Sheriff Parker. ‘I’m well acquainted with this man’s background. Question is, what’s he doing here in Benton County?’ He continued to stare at Dave Booker, who met the sheriff’s gaze unflinchingly, his lips faintly curled as though he found the other man a little amusing.

  ‘Like I said,’ replied Carter, ‘Mr Booker is a range detective. The regular law can’t seem to touch those wretches who are taking our stock and so we must fall back on the services of men like Booker.’

  Dave Booker reached into his pocket and extracted a silver case, from which he took a dark brown cigarillo, which he lit with a lucifer. Even up on his horse and some distance away, Jack caught a sweet and faintly fragrant scent. His father said pleasantly, ‘That’s a rare thing in these parts, Booker. Your smoke is mixed with aniseed.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Nothing at all, just that it’s not common hereabouts. You’re Texan aren’t you?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Lord a mercy,’ said Tom Parker in a good humoured way, ‘But you’re a touchy one! I only ever knew Texans and Mexicans to favour such smokes, that’s all.’ He turned to Timothy Carter and said, ‘Well this isn’t business. I didn’t come here for idle chit-chat. There’s been a tragic death. One of your men.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Carter, noncommittally.

  ‘Your trail boss, Thadeus Harker. He died in a shooting a few hours since.’

  ‘Thank you for notifying me, sheriff. I hope that his assassin has been apprehended?’

  ‘Well, it appears to be as plain an instance of self-defence as you could hope to find. There aren’t likely to be any arrests for it. I don’t suppose that you know what he might have been up to, up by Ed Summerfield’s place today?’

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ said Carter, not bothering to disgu
ise either his amusement or frank contempt for the sheriff, ‘I don’t follow my men about all day to see what they’re about.’

  ‘I see. Thank you, that’s much as I expected.’

  Timothy Carter, Dave Booker and the other half dozen men waited to hear if there was anything more that the sheriff wished to say. He duly obliged them by saying loudly, ‘I want all you men to attend to what I say. There’s been enough killing of late. This is the fourth violent death in a week. Well, it stops right this minute. Were I you Mr Carter, I’d call my men off and stop all these games. If you don’t, then things are like to get ugly and it will be upon your own head. And you, Booker. I know what sort of man you are, and I tell you straight, I’m setting a watch on you. Set a foot wrong and I’ll have you locked up in next to no time. Is that all understood?’

  Nobody answered him and so the sheriff turned on his heel and mounted up again. Brandon followed suit. Timothy Carter said quietly, ‘Two men and a green boy. That what you think it’ll take to try conclusions with me? Well, let’s see what we see.’

  Without deigning to reply to this, Sheriff Parker urged on his horse and the three of them rode off.

  When they were clear of the house, Tom Parker said, ‘That was worthwhile, at any rate.’

  ‘How so?’, said the deputy, ‘I don’t see what use we’ve been. They’ll keep up their games, for a bet.’

  ‘Of course they will,’ agreed his boss, with a grim smile on his face, ‘But now we know what the game is more clearly.’

  ‘Do we?’ asked Jack, ‘Nobody said anything!’

  ‘Well, we know who was responsible for stringing up Frank Carmen, for one thing.’ This had to be explained to Brandon, who had not heard about the finding of the unusual cheroot at the scene of Carmen’s hanging. When he had been told, he observed, ‘Well, I don’t see that that gets us any further forward. So we know who committed a murder, we got no real evidence. You wouldn’t get a jury to hang a man because of some fancy cigar.’

  ‘We know who’s involved,’ explained the sheriff patiently, ‘That counts for something. I know of Dave Booker. He’s a black-hearted killer if ever there was one. Sheriff in Colorado indeed! The things that man was up to there, during the six weeks he was a peace officer, it’s a miracle he wasn’t hanged himself. No matter. We know where we stand now.’

  ‘Where to now, Sheriff?’ asked Brandon Ross. ‘Is that it for the day?’

  ‘Not quite. We can’t leave that body up at Summerfield’s cabin. They’ve a couple of spare horses up there, I’ll borrow one and bring Harker to town. If Timothy Carter wants the corpse of his trail boss, then he can come and fetch it.’

  The moonshiners’ cabin was only a mile or so off their way and Tom Parker was aiming to make the slight detour, collect the body of the late trail boss and then go straight back to town. He was uneasily aware that his son had been working a long day and wanted the boy to have a bit of rest before dusk. It was not to be. As they approached the vicinity of Summerfield’s home, which was nestled among the trees, shots rang out; first one or two, and then a veritable fusillade of firing. Tom Parker turned to his son and said, ‘Stay here. Don’t you move from this spot.’ Then he and Ross spurred on their horses and galloped towards the sound of the firing, which was not slackening off.

  Jack hardly knew what to do. On the one hand, he had a tremendous desire to follow his father and see what was going on. Set against this was a fear of being injured or killed. There was also the fact that if his father told him to stay put, then that was what he expected. Jack treasured the new and more cordial relationship that seemed to be developing with his father, and had no wish to hazard it by an act of pointless disobedience. It was while he was musing along these lines that the youngster came closer to death than he ever would again in the whole course of his life.

  Jack was seated on his horse, athwart of the track leading to the trees. Suddenly, a rider emerged from the trees at a smart canter, heading straight in Jack’s direction. Now whether or not this man thought that Jack was holding the road against him or perhaps because he was just in the mood for killing, the rider drew his pistol without slackening pace at all and without any hesitation fired twice at the boy seated peaceably on his mount. The first ball flew so close to his head that Jack heard it droning by his ear like an angry bee. The second ball struck Jack’s horse, which immediately whinnied and reared up, throwing Jack to the ground.

  The man who had tried to kill him did not halt to check whether or not he had accomplished his purpose; he just kept on riding as fast as he was able. The boy lay on the ground, winded from the fall. He tentatively began flexing his hands and wriggling his toes, to see if the fall had effected some mischief, but from all that he was able to collect, his body was functioning as well as it always did. The horse, though, had collapsed, narrowly missing Jack, and was now making pitiful noises, suggestive of pain and distress.

  It could only have been a few seconds later that Tom Parker came racing from the trees, followed closely by his deputy. Presumably he was in hot pursuit of the man who had tried to kill Jack, but all that was forgotten in an instant when he caught sight of his son lying next to the wounded beast. The sheriff scarcely waited for his mount to come to a complete halt, before leaping from the saddle and hurrying over to where his son lay, still winded and not inclined yet to get to his feet. ‘Are you hit, son?’

  ‘No, the ball missed me. It come close though.’

  ‘You hurt at all?’

  The look of tender solicitude on his father’s face was something he could never have imagined. Tom Parker looked down at his boy with such anxiety and love, that Jack almost felt that it had been worth taking a tumble, just to see his father’s expression. He said, ‘I’m fine, Pa. It just knocked my breath out, falling so.’

  ‘Just stay there for a while.’

  Brandon Ross said, ‘We going after that fellow or not?’

  ‘I’m going nowhere, leastways, not ’til I tended to my son. You want to take him alone, go right ahead.’

  But it appeared that the deputy had no particular desire to go haring off after a ruthless killer and instead helped the sheriff to take care of the situation there. He said, ‘That horse is suffering. Shall I put it out of its misery?’

  Receiving no reply, his boss was too preoccupied with his son, Brandon drew his pistol and went over to the poor creature. He soothed the terrified animal, stroking its head and saying softly, ‘There, there. Don’t take on. It’ll be all right.’ While he spoke these soothing words, he brought up the barrel of the pistol and pointed it directly into the horse’s ear. Then he squeezed the trigger. The beast gave one great convulsive shudder and then lay still.

  It appeared that apart from being a little shaken up and probably pretty bruised, Jack had suffered no real injury from the episode. He felt wobbly on his feet when he stood, though less from the effects of crashing to the ground, and more from the dawning realization that he had come within a hair’s breadth of being killed just a few minutes earlier. To take his mind off this awful thought, he asked his father what they had found when they reached the location of the shooting.

  ‘Well, there’ll be a deal less moonshine being sold hereabouts.’ said the sheriff, before deciding that this flippant approach to the incident wasn’t altogether fitting when talking to a youngster of such years. He said in a changed tone, ‘Ed Summerfield and his friend are dead. I’m not sure how it was done, but as we arrived, a couple of men made off through the trees. Another of ’em came this way and that was the one we chose to go after.’

  It was a sombre party who made their way back to Mayfield. There were now three corpses to transport back to town, but Sheriff Parker was frankly uninterested in this task, being more concerned with getting his son back and safely tucked up in his bed. It was twilight, and if they weren’t swift about it, they would lose the light. Jack was placed on one of the horses tethered near Summerfield’s cabin and the three of them proceeded at a gentle tr
ot, with his father constantly asking if the boy was feeling all right or wished to stop for a rest.

  As soon as they got back to town, before even going to his office, the sheriff delivered Jack to the care of his sister. Aunt Marion could be a real fussbudget at times, but right now Jack was grateful for her attentions. She sat him down and applied arnica to his bruises, before preparing a bowl of broth for him. His father took leave of them and promised to return as soon as he had dealt with the paperwork for the day’s events.

  The circumstance of Jack almost being killed had affected both father and son very greatly, and served to cement the new understanding which had existed between them since the murder of Aggie Roberts and John Baxter. For his part, Jack recalled the look on his father’s face when he feared that his son had been badly injured, and was assured that however much he might conceal his emotions in the usual way of things, his father loved him fiercely. He would do anything at all now for his father, having received this reassurance of how precious he was to him.

  It wasn’t short of half past ten before Tom Parker returned to take Jack home. Aunt Marion had insisted that the boy sit quietly after he had finished his broth, and she tried to get him to relax a little by reading to him from one of Charles Dickens’ books. Doubtless it was kindly meant, but of all things in the world, Jack could imagine nothing less relaxing than to be compelled to listen to Dickens’ description of a case in the Chancery division of the London courts. He resolved that if he lived to be a hundred, he would never trouble himself to read Bleak House.