Cheyenne Pass

by Lauran Paine

  CHEYENNE PASS

  LAURAN PAINE

  Copyright © 2019 by Lauran Paine Jr.

  E-book published in 2019 by Blackstone Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

  and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-9825-9503-6

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-9825-9502-9

  Fiction / Westerns

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  Chapter One

  The sheriff was a young man, with all the physical bloom and all the confidence of young men. He sat his horse straight up, his clear eyes drifting from that sharp rise he and his companion stood upon, out over the endless run of countryside.

  He was medium in height but thick and sturdy. His face was good, the lips long, the chin solid, the eyes steady and fearless. There were a few little squint wrinkles at the outer corners of those eyes, but otherwise the sheriff’s face was almost boyishly smooth.

  All around lay a broken country of sage-purpled hills, tilted, grassy meadows, and farther back the dark heights of pine-timbered mountainsides. There were meadows down among those rolling sagebrush hills. There were also cottonwood trees, indicating ample, shallow subsurface water.

  Southward lay a particular valley; it was long and narrow and appeared to end—as it actually did—against the distant flanks of a rawboned rampart which ran east and west, cutting off its continuing southward flow of grassy flatness. There was a town down there. In morning’s golden summertime brightness, that town seemed small, huddled, and dingy.

  For a while the young sheriff sat there gazing at that town. Beside him, the older, more weathered man, atop his muscled-up, big, black horse, also viewed that town. But this older man had lived so long that there was now no vitality to his gaze. He was loose and easy where the young sheriff was upright and tightly wound.

  The older man looked east, and he looked west. Where they sat was the only visible pathway through this rugged mountainous, broken country. There was a road down below them a few hundred yards. It came straining up out of that big valley where the huddled town lay, straight as an arrow. Then it achieved this eminence, ran perhaps a half mile along in a dead-level way, and dipped again, heading steadily northward through interminable twists and turns, sometimes clinging precariously to a sidehill, sometimes plunging down into some gloomy canyon. But that road never stopped, and as far as one could see from up in the pass, there was no other comparable road anywhere about.

  There were some little crooked feeder roads heading toward that town down there, but there were no other genuine thoroughfares heading northward, and this was exactly why the sheriff and his companion were sitting their horses now.

  “One way in,” said the quiet, loose-seeming older man, “and one way out.” He fished around in a vest pocket, found his tobacco sack, and went to work casually twisting up a smoke. “I thought I’d run across every game folks play to make money, but this is a new one on me.”

  The younger man, Sheriff John Klinger, blew off a big sigh, looped his reins, and scratched his head. It was hot up in Cheyenne Pass this time of year. Hot and sometimes dusty, when one of those unaccountable little vagrant breezes came along, and lonely.

  “It’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Klinger, watching his deputy light up and expansively inhale. “No one in his right mind would block a road.”

  The older man’s pleasant, candid face twisted into a tough little grin. “The problem is,” he said quietly, “that no one’s sure who’s in his right mind and who isn’t. When Richard DeFore says he owns something, he isn’t bluffing, and he doesn’t consider himself crazy by a long sight.”

  “That’s for the courts to decide,” snapped the youthful lawman. “All I know right now is that if he tries to have one of the stages stopped for passing through here, he’s going to think he grabbed a lion by the tail.”

  Deputy Sheriff Ethan MacCallister canted a skeptical eye at Sheriff Klinger, wagged his head slightly, and said: “Too bad your first month in office, you had to run into something like this. You know, John, when I used to be sheriff, about the only trouble we had was from some occasional drunk cowboy … or maybe some fly-by-night gambler drifted in, got roughed up, then got locked up.”

  Sheriff Klinger frowned, turned, and put a smoky gaze upon his deputy. “Why’d you take the job? I mean, during the campaign I wasn’t very flattering to you.”

  MacCallister chuckled. “Oh, that,” he murmured. “Why, that didn’t much bother me. In politics when you run against someone, you’re sort of expected to run them down. Wouldn’t hardly do for a fellow to say his opponent was a good man. Men don’t get elected to office saying things like that.”

  “But why, Ethan?”

  The older man stared far out through narrowed, faded eyes. For a long time, he didn’t answer. But ultimately, he said: “Well, John, you’re a good man. Young, maybe. Inexperienced. A mite hotheaded and overzealous, perhaps. But at your age, I wasn’t much different.” Ethan stumped out his cigarette on the saddle horn, tossed it away, and added: “I wanted to see you get started on the right foot, I guess. But aside from that … what else can an ex-sheriff do for a living when he gets to be my age … work in a livery barn, swamp out the saloons?” MacCallister shook his head, and he was no longer smiling. “Naw, he just steps down. Becomes a deputy instead of a sheriff.”

  “Well, whatever your reasons, I want you to know I’m grateful, Ethan. And about those things I said during the campaign …”

  “Forget ’em. Four years from now, you’ll run again, and someone else will most likely be accusing you of worse things. It’s in the game. If every defeated politician stayed mad over what his opponent said about him, this whole country would be full of soreheads.”

  The sheriff returned his attention southward for a time, then drifted it off onto their right and left. After a while, he said: “No sign of DeFore’s riders. I’m beginning to think this whole thing was just a bluff.”

  MacCallister didn’t think that at all. “Never underestimate a man like Richard DeFore,” he admonished. “I’ve known DeFore since you were in knee pants. I’ve never yet known him to make a bluff.”

  “We haven’t seen any patrolling riders up here.”

  “That’s true. But when he said from now on anyone crossing his land had to pay a toll, he meant it. And if we haven’t seen any DeFore men yet, that only means they’ve seen us first and are lying low.”

  “What time is it?” the sheriff asked, shooting a slit-eyed look at the climbing sun.

  “About ten. The stage’ll be along directly. Damned thing is never on time anyway.”

  Sheriff Klinger lowered his face and looked down his nose at the empty, dusty old stage road. “Danged old fool,” he growled, obviously meaning Richard DeFore. “Who’s he think he is anyway? Cheyenne Pass has been an open road ever since the army built it during the Indian wars.”

  “It’s across his land, John.”

  “Well, hell, all roads are across someone’s land, aren’t they?”

  “Originally, sure. But folks sell right of way, or they donate ’em. DeFore swears he never did either one of those things.”

  Klinger ge
stured with an angry fist. “What else could this doggoned pass be used for but a road?”

  “Nothing,” placidly agreed his deputy. “But that’s not the point.”

  The sheriff dropped his hand, became suddenly stiff in the saddle, and after a moment of long study, he said: “Here comes the stage, straight northward out of town.” The sheriff lifted his reins. “We better get down on the road.”

  The two of them reversed their horses, cat-footed it down off their vantage peak to the twisted, broken, hilly country below, and went zigzagging easterly toward the place where eastward and westward hillsides fell back, making a natural pathway through this upended country.

  That oncoming coach they’d seen had been a considerable distance off. In fact, it was still down the far side of Cheyenne Pass a couple of miles, so there was no great hurry. Still, Sheriff Klinger pushed his animal right along, breaking out of a sage stand to impatiently strike the roadway and halt.

  Deputy Sheriff MacCallister didn’t make his horse go through the spiny sage at all. He took his time, came out a hundred yards northward, then walked his mount down where Klinger was waiting.

  Looking around with his dark scowl, the sheriff said: “Where are they? DeFore said he’d have men up here. Well, if he wasn’t running a bluff, where are they?”

  MacCallister also scanned the surrounding hills, peaks, and gloomy little arroyos that opened out upon the southward roadway which was under their observation.

  He said: “Don’t worry, they’ll be here.” He made that pronouncement as a man speaks who has unshakable belief in what another man has said.

  And soon they were. Six horsemen dropped down off a brushy hill a quarter mile ahead, on the west side of the pass, riding loosely and confidently. They were facing Sheriff Klinger and Deputy MacCallister for a hundred yards before they had to swing westerly and complete their descent, strike the edge of the road, and halt there.

  Klinger’s nostrils flared. His face darkened. “They looked straight at us,” he said. “They saw us plain as day, Ethan.”

  “Sure they did. Those boys have their orders. You don’t have to talk to ’em to see they’re set to do exactly what DeFore has ordered them to do.”

  “They won’t do it!” exclaimed Klinger, and started forward.

  MacCallister considered Klinger’s sun-bronzed, iron-set profile and also urged out his animal, trying to explain: “John, there are times when being a live squaw is a lot better than being a dead buck.”

  Klinger didn’t seem to hear. He was concentrating his full attention upon those six riders up ahead, and those cowboys were in turn sitting insolently over there, returning that dark look.

  “John,” said MacCallister, “you better calm down. It’s not up to us to interpret the law … only preserve the peace. Until the courts have had a chance to say whether DeFore’s got the right to close this road or not, your job’s not to force any fights.”

  Klinger looked fiercely around. “DeFore’s got no right to stop that stage.”

  “No? If this is his land and there’s no existing right of way across it, who’s to say he can’t turn it back?”

  “I say so!” the sheriff insisted.

  “John, you can’t make that decision. That’s why we got law courts. You go forcing a fight now, and when the smoke clears, if you’re still alive, you damned well might be in more trouble than Richard DeFore will be in.”

  Suddenly, the sheriff hauled back, stopping his horse. They were still well beyond earshot of those six men down the road who were sitting their saddles like they were carved of stone, watching the pair of law officers.

  “Then what is the law supposed to do in this mess?” demanded Sheriff Klinger, his face sweat-shiny and rusty colored with hot blood. “Let him turn that coach back?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what our kind of law is supposed to do.”

  “Consarn it …”

  “Listen, when you accused me of being too easy as sheriff of Sherman County, you didn’t know what you were talking about. I never said that of you during the campaign, but I’m telling you now because you got the job. You don’t know the first thing about being a sheriff! You draw your gun against those DeFore riders now, and they’ll have every right under the sun to kill you … and I’m betting they’ll do it too. You’ll be at fault, they won’t. A man’s got a right to defend his life even against the law, if the law’s wrong, and right now you’re dead wrong. They can turn that stage back. I’ve been trying to drill that into your stubborn skull for hours now. They can turn it back. You can’t do anything until the courts decide whether you’re right or DeFore’s right, and you’ve got to sit back and await that decision!”

  Chapter Two

  Sheriff John Klinger’s expression slowly and stubbornly turned troubled. He looked from Deputy MacCallister on down the road where DeFore’s men were sitting. They looked back, particularly Richard DeFore’s ranch foreman, Travis Browne, who was obviously the leader of those six men.

  Browne had no reason to like John Klinger. They had known one another four years, since both had arrived in the Cheyenne Pass country with a herd of Texas cattle. At one time they’d been friends. But that had been before Ruth married Klinger. After that had happened, Browne never again spoke to John.

  Browne had been very much in love with Ruth. So had John. It was not a new story, and the result was inevitably as it always must be. Ruth had to decide which man she would marry. She had chosen John, and a friendship that had been under great strain all the time both men were courting her abruptly disintegrated.

  But there had been another complication to that marriage. When Klinger had asked MacCallister, while they sat their horses atop that little peak, why he hadn’t lambasted Klinger during the recent election campaign, MacCallister had skirted all around the real reason why he hadn’t. Ruth MacCallister was his daughter. She and Klinger had been married even then. How could a father, whose only child was blindly in love with his opponent in the election, say anything against that opponent?

  He couldn’t, and MacCallister, realizing this, had not really campaigned for reelection, so he’d lost, and now he was not only the deputy of the man who’d beaten him, he was also the new sheriff’s father-in-law. And actually, these were the true reasons he’d swallowed his pride and taken the deputy’s job under Klinger. The fact that Ruth had come to him in private and begged him to help her husband, and keep him from being killed, was known only to Ruth and Ethan MacCallister. They had always been close, but even if they hadn’t been, Ethan still probably would have taken the deputy’s job, for, as he’d said, what is there for ex-sheriffs to do? They know only lawman work.

  So now, as they watched DeFore’s riders, and were in turn watched by them, they sat ten feet apart with their somewhat divergent, private thoughts, and meanwhile, that oncoming stage made its approaching dust and noise, bringing them constantly closer to crisis.

  Klinger sat stiffly, uncompromising, but the undiluted determination of shortly before seemed, after what Ethan had told him, less virulent, less likely to provoke violence.

  MacCallister, on the other hand, sat easy in his saddle, and it was now upon his craggy, weathered countenance that those six men down the road concentrated. They didn’t fear the former sheriff, they didn’t fear any man, but they mightily respected MacCallister and not just for his fast gun, either. MacCallister, like their boss, was a man who never bluffed, never spoke hastily, and he was slow to make judgment. When Ethan MacCallister appeared somewhere, like now, he meant business, so those DeFore cowboys waited and watched and spoke quietly back and forth among themselves.

  If they meant to back down, they didn’t have much time left to do it in. That oncoming coach was now less than a quarter mile off and would soon come dusting it up over the top out bearing northerly through Cheyenne Pass.

  Browne, a solidly built, curly-headed, dark-eyed m
an of Texas, squared around in his saddle with obvious determination. He looked southward, awaiting the stage’s appearance. It was abundantly clear to everyone—his own men, as well as those two mounted lawmen sitting a hundred yards north—that Browne would stop the stage.

  And he did.

  When the coach broke out over the last little rise, came heavily lurching along, trailing its gray-dun banner of pulverized dust, Browne raised his right hand, made a forward motion, sending his five hard-looking riders across the road in a solid, closed-up rank. As Browne dropped his arm, he threw a long, appraising look up toward the lawmen before urging his mount forward as the stage groaned down to a rattling halt.

  The driver and shotgun guard, sitting atop their high seat, said nothing at all. They simply sat there, watching Browne and his men blocking their onward way. Occasionally, they sent a sidelong glance at the two motionless lawmen farther out. Clearly, both driver and guard had been expecting this. Clearly, too, they’d both received instructions about how to act. For neither of them spoke nor touched their weapons. For that matter, neither showed any expression at all, except a wooden watchfulness.

  Browne rode down to the coach’s side, halted, put a solemn gaze upward at the two men on the high seat, and said to the driver: “Clem, turn it around and head back … or pay a two-dollar toll fee.”

  The driver was a small and wiry man with calm, fearless eyes and a look of capability to him, despite his slightness. He was perhaps thirty years of age but, because of his smallness, seemed younger. Like all the men in that roadway, he knew Browne and all the others within his sight.

  He shook his head gently. “Can’t pay the fee,” he said, and it sounded as though he was repeating something he’d been told to say. “If I did that, Travis, it’d be establishin’ a precedent, and the company manager down in town says we can’t do that.”

  “Then I guess you turn around and head back, Clem,” Browne advised him.