Death Rattle

by Jory Sherman

  “Enough?” Brad said.

  “I am rich.”

  They both laughed.

  “So long, Ruben,” Brad said. “Ten cuidado. Be careful.”

  “Ah, you speak the tongue. I will be careful.”

  Brad walked Ginger out of the blacksmith shop and down the street to the livery. There he saddled up and tied on his bedroll, slung his saddlebags behind the saddle, and after he climbed up, stuck his Winchester in its scabbard.

  “All set?” Ethan said as he looked up at Brad.

  “See you in a day or two,” Brad said, and rode out into the sunlight. He looked up at the sky and marked the time of day by the sun’s position. He rode out of town at a fast trot, anxious to get home.

  He did not see the two riders who came down the street behind him. They headed for the livery stables, but stopped when they saw Brad ride away.

  “That’s him,” Cole said.

  “Who?” Tom asked.

  “That’s the damned Sidewinder, Tom.”

  “Damned if it ain’t.”

  “That’s fifty dollars riding yonder.”

  “Hell, he’s gone already,” Tom said. “We missed our chance.”

  “We can foller the bastard.”

  “Yeah, we can do that. On empty stomachs. I’m hungry.”

  “Stay here and get you some grub, then. I’m goin’ to go after him.”

  “Not without me, you ain’t. Do we split the fifty?”

  Cole gave it some thought.

  “Yeah, sure. Come on.”

  The two men rode past the livery at a quick trot to the end of the street where they had seen their quarry turn toward the mountains.

  They turned and looked down a road that was empty except for a pair of mangy dogs and a Mexican carrying a load of firewood tied with string on his back.

  “Where in hell did he go?” Tom asked as they slowed their horses and rode down the street to its end, a pistol shot from the corner.

  “Into the mountains, most likely. Look for his tracks.”

  Tom studied the ground.

  “I see ’em,” he said. “Real fresh. Them are the onliest ones can be the Sidewinder’s.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled, Tom. We’ll catch up to the bastard and put his lights out.”

  “We’re supposed to be makin’ calls on them Mexes what Finch told us to see.”

  “Hell, this shouldn’t take more’n a half hour.”

  “Easiest fifty we’ll ever make,” Tom said.

  They followed the tracks up a road that wound through the foothills. It was well rutted and showed signs of travel, but the fresh horse tracks were plain to see.

  Tom’s stomach growled, and he could feel his hunger gnawing away at him. But his mind was on the Sidewinder and half of that fifty dollars they would collect when they brought his body back to town.

  Cole kept looking ahead, but the road was empty. After a few moments it disappeared among the hills. But he knew it would go on, and somewhere ahead of them was the Sidewinder, ripe for a shot in the back whenever they spotted him.

  It would, he thought, be an easy kill.

  SEVENTEEN

  Percy Willits, a cadaverous string bean of a man with a balding head that sprouted only a few bristly gray hairs, set the push broom in an empty cell. He wiped his bony hands on the faded blue bib of his patched overalls and looked in on Barney Jenkins, the jail’s only prisoner.

  Barney Jenkins was sprawled on a cot, his face turned to the wall. His hat lay under his bunk, a lifeless clump of brown felt that was stained with yellow and red condiments, blood and vomit. He wore a checkered shirt and rumpled trousers braced by dark blue suspenders. His work boots were scarred and torn, the heavy soles fairly new but caked with dried mud.

  “You awake, Barney?” Willits called into the small cell with its twin bunks and a slop jar, a rusty drain hole in the center.

  “Harrumph,” Barney responded.

  “Wanta play some cards?”

  Barney turned over and blinked lashes over bloodshot eyes, eyes that looked boiled in beet juice, rheumy, with amber-stained whites.

  He sat up and there was desiccated vomit on the front of his shirt.

  “Naw, Percy. Not now. My head feels like it’s full of hammerheads all jostlin’ around on kettledrums.”

  “You was in better shape last night when Wally brung you in from the Lazy Dog Saloon.”

  “That where I was?”

  “Yeah. Fightin’ over a glitter gal old enough to be your ma.”

  “Suzie? Hell, she’s only about twenty-five.”

  “Yeah, Suzie. She’s forty if she’s a day, and so ugly she gives me a hard-off.”

  “I like Suzie,” Barney said with a tongue thickened by alcohol on a two-day drunk.

  The two men were interrupted by the sound of the door opening in the sheriff’s office out front.

  “I better go see who that is,” Percy said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Want any grub?”

  “Got any whiskey, Percy?”

  Percy laughed and walked through the large room with its three jail cells and into the front office, which was the sheriff’s. He locked the door behind him with a key on a large ring attached to his Sam Browne belt.

  Alonzo Jigger put his hat on a standing rack and walked to the desk. He sat down behind it. Wally followed him in, keeping his hat on, and went to a smaller desk that was against the wall. His desk was stacked high with dodgers, some of which had turned brownish yellow from age. There was a box of thumbtacks, a tin ashtray full of cigarette butts and ashes, and an open package of Piedmont cigarettes.

  “Who’re you?” Percy asked, his voice a deep drone from his emaciated throat.

  “I’m Jig, the new sheriff.”

  “Sheriff, this here is Percy Willits, your jailer. Percy, this is our new sheriff, Alonzo Jigger.”

  “You can call me Jig, Percy. You the only jailer?”

  “No, sir, but Zeke Hunsacker’s down with the croup. I been bunkin’ in an empty cell the past three days.”

  “Well, you ain’t goin’ home today, Percy,” Jigger said. “You et breakfast?”

  “No, sir, I ain’t. Rosie from the Oro Café generally brings lunch for me and my prisoners. I ain’t usually here for breakfast. Zeke works from midnight to ten in the morning when he’s not puny.”

  “Well, Percy, I want you to fetch me your prisoner. Wally says he brought in a drunk last night.”

  “You ain’t takin’ him afore the judge so’s he’ll get fined?”

  “No, not today. You bring in your prisoner and then I want you to fetch me a notary public. There should be one somewhere around here.”

  “Yes, sir, they’s a notary office over by the courthouse.”

  “Fine. Have him come over right away.”

  “You want me to put handcuffs on Barney? He ain’t dangerous, just hungover.”

  “No, just bring him in here and set him in a chair by my desk.”

  “Yes, sir,” Percy said and turned to unlock the door to the jail.

  “Percy, can you read and write?” Jigger asked the jailer.

  “Yes, sir. I had schoolin’.”

  “Good. Now fetch the prisoner.”

  Percy unlocked the door to the jail and went inside. Jigger looked through the desk drawers and pulled out a blank sheet of paper. He placed it on the desk and reached for the inkwell. He plucked a pen from a small wooden box and examined the tip of the quill. He grunted in satisfaction.

  “What are you going to do, Sheriff?” Wally asked.

  Flies buzzed in the room, flitting from window to window and down to Wally, who flicked them away with a wave of his hand. One landed on Jigger’s desk and his hand shot to it. As it rose to fly away, he grabbed it in his left hand, closed his fist, and crushed the fly to a gob of guts and blood, its wings twisted into geometric angles like the broken wings of a bird. He wiped the palm of his hand on his trousers.

  “You’ll see soon enoug
h, Wally,” Jigger said.

  Wally’s mouth was still sagging open in amazement at the speed of Jigger’s hand.

  They heard a jingle of keys in the next room and the metallic sound of a lock being opened. Then the rattle of a cell door and the screech of iron as the door slid open.

  Muffled voices and footsteps seeped into the office before Percy and his prisoner appeared.

  “What’s your name?” Jigger asked the prisoner, who stood next to the desk swaying slightly as if he was off balance on a high wire.

  “Barnaby Jenkins. Folks call me Barney.”

  “Sit down.”

  Barney sat down in a chair that faced the desk.

  “Can you read and write?”

  “When I ain’t in my cups.”

  “Are you in your cups now?”

  “Maybe slightly.” Barney rubbed the stubble on his chin and stared at the sheriff, stared at his badge, at his unruly red hair.

  “Here’s a piece of paper and a pen. Ink’s in the well. I want you to start writing.”

  Percy stood there until Jigger looked at him.

  “The notary,” Jigger said.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot. I’ll go get him.”

  Percy reached the door in four strides, opened it, and went out onto the street. He passed the window like a skeleton wearing clothes and disappeared.

  “What do you want me to write?” Barney asked, dipping the tip of the pen into the inkwell.

  “Write down what I tell you,” Jigger said.

  “My script ain’t none too good.”

  “Write so I can read it.”

  “All right.”

  Jigger began dictating:

  “‘I, Tom Ferguson, witnessed a murder yesterday, east of town. My friend Ned Crawford and I was,’ er no, make that ‘were’.”

  “I didn’t get that far,” Barney said.

  Barney wrote a few more words on the paper, then held the pen suspended.

  “Okay, I got to ‘were.’”

  Jigger continued: “‘Were hunting rabbits when this stranger come up and tried to rob us. Ned shot at him and missed. The stranger shot Ned and killed him dead. The stranger run off, but he said he was called the Sidewinder. I found out his real name is Brad Storm.’”

  Barney finished writing.

  “Got all that?” Jigger asked.

  “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  “Now sign it down at the bottom.”

  “But I ain’t—” Barney started to say.

  “Barney, how would you like to get out of here? No jail time?”

  “That would suit me just fine, sir.”

  “Then sign it ‘Tom Ferguson.’ Real big letters.”

  “But, I ain’t—”

  “You want to get out of jail, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “Just sign it like I told you. Then you can go home or back to the bar where you get your medicine.”

  Barney signed “Tom Ferguson” in large cursive letters near the bottom of the paper.

  Jigger reached over and took the pen from his hands.

  “Now, get the hell out of here, and if you ever mention this to anyone, I’ll kill you. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir, I got that.”

  He got up from his chair and started toward the jail.

  “Where you going?” Jigger asked.

  “I left my hat under the bunk.”

  “Clear out. You can buy another hat.”

  Barney turned and walked out the front door of the office. He stopped at the window and looked in as if to satisfy himself that what he had seen and done had truly happened. Then he ambled away, scratching his bare head.

  Jigger turned to Wally as he held the paper up flat in front of his mouth and blew the ink dry.

  “Wally, when that notary gets here, you’re goin’ to be a witness to this here document.”

  “I am?”

  “You sure as hell are.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. After you sign your name as a witness, you’re going to take this here piece of paper over to the courthouse and ask Judge Leffingwell to issue an arrest warrant for Brad Storm, alias the Sidewinder.”

  “Holy shit,” Wally said.

  Jigger brought another blank sheet of paper out of the drawer and began writing on it with the pen.

  He wrote “WANTED” in large block letters. Underneath, he wrote, in slightly smaller letters, “For the murder of Ned Crawford.” And underneath that, he printed the words “Brad Storm.”

  Then, in larger letters, he wrote “REWARD $200.”

  “There a printer in town, Wally?”

  “They’s one over next to the Leadville Register, Sam Owens. And he does printing for the paper.”

  “Good. I want you to have Sam print up about twenty-five dodgers, and I want you to give the paper this story.”

  “I don’t know,” Wally said.

  “We’re going to get this Sidewinder bastard, Wally.”

  “Is this legal?”

  “It’s a means to an end.”

  “Well, you’re the sheriff. I guess you can do what you want so far as the law is concerned.”

  “You’re damned right I can.”

  Jigger caught another fly in midair and pinched it to goo between his thumb and forefinger.

  His right hand was a blur of speed, Wally noticed. And the fly had appeared out of nowhere.

  A man like Jigger, Wally thought, could probably out-draw any man alive. With a hand that fast, and an eye that good, no man would stand a chance against him in a gunfight.

  Jigger wiped his fingers on the side of his boot, near the sole.

  As he waited for Percy and the notary to arrive, Wally felt the first small temblers of fear in his stomach. He realized that he was in the same room with a very dangerous man, a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his ends.

  If Jigger even suspected that he was helping Pete Farnsworth and Brad Storm in their investigation, Jigger would blow his brains out.

  And never blink an eye.

  EIGHTEEN

  Since his run-in with the rustlers, Brad never took the same road out of town when he meant to return to his modest ranch. Nor did he travel the same trail each time. The mountains around Leadville were crisscrossed with roads, trails, and footpaths. Some of the roads were dead ends. Others wandered into each other like the designs of a mad-man’s maze.

  But now he knew that someone was following him as he rode out of town. He didn’t know who it was, but he had caught a glimpse of two men when he turned the corner. Two men who had made the mistake of riding down a street where riders seldom rode, a street with no stores, no warehouses, no public buildings with any access to them.

  It was a street that was more like an alleyway than a thoroughfare.

  Yet two men had taken that same street. He knew they were behind him. He didn’t have to look back to see them.

  The road he took out of town was more than a stone’s throw from the Arkansas River and it was muddy and clean of wagon or hoof tracks. There were puddles in the ditches where dynamite had been placed to blow a road into the mountains long before he had come to what had once been called Oro City.

  Brad reached back and pulled his canteen from one saddlebag and hung it from his saddle horn. Then he found the food Felicity had made for him in the other bag, beef sandwiches wrapped in paper and oilcloth. He stuck the sandwich inside his shirt with the intent of eating it when he had the chance.

  He knew this country. He hoped the two men who followed him did not.

  He left the muddy road when it made a bend, angling off to the left toward a creek that drained into the Arkansas River. The creek would conceal his tracks and allow him to circle his pursuers and wait for them in a more favorable location.

  Brad’s father had told him once, when Brad intended to go out West from Missouri, that he would find his way if he followed the rivers and the streams.

  “There is where you will find
game to hunt and untouched land,” his father had said. “The mountain men and the Indians thought of these rivers as great highways, and it has proven so since this country began settling west of the colonies.”

  Indeed, Brad’s father had been right, and Brad had found his ranch by following the Arkansas and then the creeks that led him deeper into the mountains. Game trails, sheep trails, and old Indian trails provided him with a living road map of the country he had settled in and come to love.

  White-barked aspen lined the creek, their green leaves all aflutter in the afternoon breeze. They looked like stately Greek columns decorated with laurel garlands, regal and beautiful in the dazzling sunlight that sprayed through them like a golden mist.

  He rode into the grove of aspens, the soil soft and yielding beneath Ginger’s feet, spongy along the bank of the creek. He stopped and looked down at his tracks. They were plain to see, and he smiled in satisfaction. Then he stepped Ginger into the creek and rode upstream for a quarter of a mile. He and Ginger climbed out of the creek at a bend where the water was shallow and he began to circle, heading back on a wide loop to where they had entered the water.

  He rode to a place in the pines and spruce trees where he could see that same stretch of creek. There he concealed himself behind a large juniper tree and waited.

  Brad heard their voices before he spotted them.

  “Where in hell is he goin’?” one of the men asked.

  “Damned if I know, Cole. Maybe his ranch is some-wheres hereabouts.”

  Brad recognized the voice of the second man. It was the man he had disarmed at the guardhouse and sent down to the smelter with his message.

  “Hell of a place for a ranch. Too many trees, not enough grass.”

  “Well, you never know,” Tom Ferguson said, his voice drifting through the trees to Brad’s ears. Brad slipped the set of rattles from inside his shirt and held them in his closed hand. The men were close, no more than fifty yards away, but he could not yet see them.

  The creek burbled and sang as it coursed its way down to the Arkansas, a soft liquid sound like water pouring from a bottle into an oaken bucket.

  “Hear that?” Cole said.

  “Probably a crick up ahead,” Ferguson said, a trace of annoyance in his voice.

  “Shit,” Cole said, and the two men rode into view, a little more than thirty yards from where Brad sat his horse, waiting.