Fatal Justice

by Ralph Compton

  “I never argue with a cocked six-shooter,” the miner said, and tugging loose he flipped the gambler’s cards over.

  The ace of spades was one of them.

  Whispers broke out. Hard looks were cast at Dyson. Next to a horse thief, men on the frontier despised card cheats the most.

  Dyson was sweating. He forced a laugh and declared, “I tell you I dealt that card off the top. This gent is wrong.”

  “My trigger finger is itching,” Templeton said.

  Dyson regarded the ring of cold faces. “A gent can see when he’s not popular.” He put down the deck and slowly rose. “But I insist I’m no cheat. As God is my witness.” He half turned. He removed his derby and mopped at his brow with his sleeve, saying, “Did it suddenly get hot in here?”

  Ash saw the gambler’s other hand dip into the hat. He reacted on pure instinct. He drew his Remington and fired just as Dyson’s hand reappeared holding a derringer. He fired once. His slug caught Dyson in the forehead, snapped Dyson’s head back, and burst out the back of Dyson’s skull, spraying hair and gore all over those behind him.

  A woman screamed. Men ducked or dived flat on the floor. As smoke curled from the Remington’s muzzle, Dyson oozed to the floor. His legs twitched a few times and that was all.

  “Land sakes,” someone said.

  Ash walked over. He frowned at the dead gambler and slid the revolver into his holster. With his toe he poked the derringer lying next to the gambler’s limp fingers. “He was going for this.”

  “We all saw it, Mister,” a man declared. “You did right. And damn me, that was some shooting.”

  Heads bobbed in assent. Someone clapped Ash on the back. He looked at Templeton. “We’re leaving.”

  “I just started to play.”

  “We’re leaving,” Ash said again, and without waiting for a reply, he stalked through the crowd to the flap and on out into the cool mountain night. The tromp of boots behind him only fueled his anger. “You damned simpleton.”

  “Be careful. I don’t let any man talk to me like that. What has you so riled anyway? You did what you had to. I’m obliged.”

  Ash stopped and spun so suddenly that Templeton nearly collided with him.

  “Use your noggin. What will happen now? Everyone in there will tell everyone they know about the shooting. It’s what always happens.”

  “So?”

  “So word is bound to reach the Fraziers.”

  “So?” Templeton said again. “No one in there knows who we are or why we’re here. To them you’re some stranger who shot a cheat.”

  “I still don’t like it.” Ash resumed walking. He hadn’t gone far when there was a holler and a small man in a fancy suit came hurrying up.

  “Hold on there. I’d like to talk to you.”

  Ash looked for a badge on the man’s vest or jacket. “Are you the law?”

  “What? Oh hell, no. Ute City doesn’t have any. The sheriff comes through now and then, but that’s about it.” He reached under his jacket and brought out a pencil and paper. “My name is Horace. I work for the Rocky Mountain News. I’d like to find out who you are and how it is that you’re so slick with your smoke wagon.”

  Ash glared at Templeton, then said, “Go away.”

  “No need to be modest. I was there. I saw the whole thing. I’ve been up here doing a follow-up on the robbery and I’m due to take the stage down to Denver tomorrow.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I can put what you did on the front page.”

  “I’d rather it didn’t get around,” Ash said.

  “Either you’ve been living under a rock or you’re naive. Shootings are big news, Mister. The whole camp will be buzzing about it.”

  “There’s nothing great in killing a man,” Ash said. “God kills people all the time.”

  Horace chuckled. “What a strange thing to say. Are you feeling regret? You shouldn’t. If ever a shooting was justified, that was it. I doubt the sheriff will even bother to look you up.”

  “I refuse to talk about it.” Ash went to walk on but the journalist snagged his sleeve.

  “Be reasonable. This is how I earn my living. All I want is your name and whether you’ve ever shot anyone before and maybe where you’re from and where you’re bound.”

  “Leave me be, you damned nuisance.” Ash pulled away.

  Rin Templeton picked that moment to step between them. To the journalist he said, “You have to forgive my pard. He’s been feeling poorly of late and he’s become a grump. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “Don’t,” Ash said.

  Templeton ignored him. “My friend’s name is Thrall. He’s from Texas. I invited him to my ranch and we decided to go after mountain sheep.” He offered his hand and introduced himself. “I own the Box T. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

  Horace was scribbling away. “Mountain sheep, you say?”

  “They don’t have them down to Texas. I figured Mr. Thrall would find it exciting to hunt up among the high peaks.”

  “Are you still going through with your hunt?”

  “Why wouldn’t we? We can’t let a little thing like shooting a no-account cheat spoil our exercise.”

  “My readers will love that quote. Is there anything else you’d like to say about the incident?”

  Templeton hooked his thumbs in his belt and pursed his lips. “I’m not much for gab but I will say this. A man who cheats sloppy shouldn’t cheat at all.”

  Horace grinned. “You, sir, are a geyser of quotables.”

  Ash had listened to enough. He walked off and was almost to the stand when the rancher caught up.

  “I’d say that went well.”

  “Damn you.”

  “What are you mad about now? I stuck to the story about hunting sheep.”

  Halting, Ash faced him. “You told him my name.”

  “No harm in that,” Templeton said. “It’s not as if you’re somebody famous like Wild Bill Hickok or Bat Masterson. No one in these parts ever heard of a Texas marshal by the name of Asher Thrall, I can guarantee.”

  “What about people not from these parts?” Ash snapped.

  “Who?”

  “Someone I don’t want to know I’m here but will if he reads the News or hears about the shooting from someone who did.”

  “You talking about the man who shot you. What was his name? Sharkey?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Who cares about him? The important thing is that the Fraziers won’t have any idea who you are or that you’re after them.” Templeton put a hand on Ash’s shoulder. “Listen, you need to calm down. Squirt some of that morphine in your veins. You’re always in a good mood when you take that stuff.”

  Ash pushed his hand off. “I’m trying to do without.”

  The rancher sighed. “You ask me, the longer you do, the grumpier you get. Could be you’ve reached a point where you can’t not have it. I’ve heard that happens.”

  Ash remembered both doctors saying the same. He threaded through the oaks to the clearing and over to the fire where Broken Nose was staring morosely into the flames. “What the matter with you?”

  “I am too young to die.”

  “Hell, you must be a hundred.” Ash spread out his blanket and set his saddle at the top and tiredly sank down. He glanced at his saddlebags but didn’t touch them. “I’ll be damned if I will.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  Templeton was filling a tin cup with coffee. “Pay him no mind, Broken Nose. He’s out of sorts.”

  “Thank you,” the Ute said.

  “For what?”

  “That is the first time you have called me by my name. Usually you call me Injun or redskin.”

  “That’s what you are.”

  Broken Nose raised his wrinkled face to the rancher. “Do I call you whiteskin or white man? I do not. I respect you. You should respect me.”

  “Must be something in the air,” Templeton m
uttered, and walked toward the horses. “I think I’ll sit over here where I won’t have to listen to you ladies carp.”

  “Why did he call us women?” Broken Nose asked Ash.

  “He must think as highly of them as he does Indians.” Ash filled his cup and sat back to drink in quiet, but it wasn’t to be.

  “Are you ready for what is to come?”

  “This was my idea, remember?” Ash glanced at his saddlebags a second time and shook his head.

  “I have listened to the wind and I have a bad feeling. It is not too late to change your mind. We can forget about these killers and go back to my lodge. I will drink and you will stick yourself with your needle. We will be happy.”

  “I have it to do.”

  “Why?”

  Ash fidgeted and swallowed and mentally resisted a stronger impulse to reach for his saddlebags. “I’ve already explained. I want to spend the time I have left doing something that has meaning.”

  “Killing has meaning?”

  “Killing bad men does. Killing men who doesn’t deserve to live. Men like these Fraziers.”

  “There will be others?”

  Ash hadn’t given it much consideration. Now that he had to, he said, “If I live I reckon there will. There’s one man in particular I want to find, but it appears fate has other plans.”

  “The Shark man you told me about. And after him, who?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Ash replied. How could he, when each breath might be his last? “I suppose you think poorly of me.”

  “No. You forget I am a Ute warrior. I have killed.”

  “How many coup did you count?”

  Broken Nose picked up a stick and poked at a red ember. “You mistake us with the Cheyenne and the Lakota and the Blackfeet. We do not count coup as they do. The Cheyenne think it is brave to ride up to an armed enemy and strike him with a stick and then ride away again. We think it is stupid.”

  “I figured the Utes were the same.”

  “When a Ute has to kill an enemy he kills him and is done with it. When he steals a horse, he steals it and does not boast of the stealing later.”

  “Sensible people, you Utes.”

  “Not sensible enough.” Broken Nose grinned. “If we had more sense we would have wiped out the first whites who came to our land and kept on wiping out those who came after.”

  “It wouldn’t have stemmed the tide. A lot of my kind have taken something called Manifest Destiny to heart.”

  “What is that?”

  “The belief that white people have the right to take control of all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Some say we should go farther and take over Canada and Mexico too.”

  “Who gave you white people this right?”

  “God.”

  Broken Nose blinked. “It never fails. Is that the expression?”

  “What does?”

  “Just when I think white people cannot do or say anything crazier than they have, they prove me wrong.”

  “There’s another belief, one I’ve grown partial to of late.”

  “That whites should take over the moon and the stars?”

  Ash grinned. “No. That this world is what we call an asylum, a home for crazy people, and all of us are lunatics.”

  “Speak for yourself, white man.”

  Chapter 18

  They were told the Fraziers rode off to the northwest so they did the same.

  Ash figured the brothers would stick to the main trails for as long as they could; the going was easier. At some point they would turn off and head for wherever they had their hidey-hole, be it a cabin deep in the woods, a cave in a cliff or some other spot.

  For five days Ash and his fellow killer hunters followed a trail that paralleled the Roaring Fork River. Eventually they came to a valley that wound toward Glenwood Springs.

  Broken Nose constantly checked both sides, seeking sign.

  Ash soon realized that they needed a stroke of luck or their hard effort would be in vain. It had been too long. He asked people they met with, miners and others, if anyone had seen any sign of three redheads on horseback and the answer was always the same: no.

  The sixth night they made camp beside a small creek. They were so deep in the mountains that many of the towering peaks around them did not have names.

  Ash nursed a cup of coffee and glumly regarded the ink-layered slopes. From on high wafted the howls of wolves and now and again the screech of a mountain lion.

  Templeton was equally glum. “We’re not going to find them. We might as well admit it.”

  “I admit nothing,” Ash said. “I refuse to give up.”

  “We could search for a year and have nothing to show for it. I can’t stay out here that long. I have a ranch to run.”

  “You can go home any time you like.”

  Broken Nose was staring at a mountain to the north. It stood by itself and wasn’t part of a range. At its base was the junction with a trail to Glenwood Springs to the northwest and Gypsum to the northwest. “What is that light?”

  “Eh?” Templeton said.

  The Ute pointed. “Near the top. Do you see it?”

  Ash did. A single yellow pinpoint that had to be two miles higher than they were. That they could see it at all was thanks to the clear mountain air.

  “It’s not a campfire,” Templeton declared. “Flames would flicker more.”

  “A lantern, maybe, or a lamp,” Ash speculated.

  “A cabin, you think?” Templeton said. “But who the hell would live way up yonder?”

  They looked at one another.

  “It might be worth a look-see,” the rancher suggested.

  Ash agreed.

  At daybreak they began to climb. The going was steep, the slopes as rugged as only mountain slopes could be. Twice they had to detour on account of dead-falls and once on account of talus. By noon they were only halfway up the mountain and stopped to rest.

  Broken Nose was roving about when he called Ash’s name and excitedly gestured at the ground.

  Three shod horses had passed that way heading up the mountain. The tracks were old but clear.

  “It could be them,” Templeton said hopefully.

  “I’ll go on alone and make sure,” Ash proposed.

  “Why you and not one of us?”

  “As I keep having to remind you, hunting them was my brainstorm. I’m in charge.”

  Templeton frowned and put his hands on his hips. “I don’t like it. I have a stake in this too.”

  Ash turned to Broken Nose. “How about you? Aren’t you going to object?”

  “You hired me to track, not to fight. I will stay with the horses. If you do not come back I will sell yours for drinking money.”

  “You better not sell mine, Injun,” Templeton declared. “If I die, take mine to the Box T. Tell them I said to give you a reward for bringing it back.”

  “They might not believe me.”

  “Just do it. I’ve had that bay four years now. Sell him, and I swear I’ll come back from the grave to haunt you.”

  “Enough bickering,” Ash broke in. He made sure the Remingtons and his Winchester were loaded, and faced up the mountain. “If you hear shots, light a shuck. It’ll mean they are on to us.”

  Ash was sweating profusely after going only a hundred feet. A hundred yards and his chest spiked with pain. He stopped and touched a hand to his shirt over the wound. He’d left the hypodermic in his saddlebags. An attack now would be the worst thing that could happen.

  Ash had a decision to make. He looked up the mountain and then down at the trees where he had left Broken Nose and Templeton. He continued to climb.

  A quarter of a mile higher Ash regretted his decision. The pain was worse. He had to stop often to catch his breath. He forged on. So far there had been no sign of a camp or a cabin. He needed to rest again so he sat with his back to a fir and placed the Winchester across his legs. A gust of wind sent a slight chill rippling through him.<
br />
  A sparrow alighted in the fir. It chirped gaily, then must have spotted him because it flittered shrilly away.

  Ash breathed deep, wishing the pain would stop. It was as if tiny claws were ripping at his insides. He closed his eyes and willed himself to relax. No sooner did he do so than the brush crackled and he opened them again, thinking a deer or some other animal had happened by. Instead it was a young man with a mane of red hair and a shotgun, which he had trained on Ash.

  “Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing on our mountain?”

  Ash nearly jerked the Winchester up but had the presence of mind not to. The shotgun would blow a hole in him the size of a melon. “I’m hunting,” he replied. “I didn’t know this land belonged to anyone.”

  “Well, it does.” The young man came closer. “You don’t look so good, Mister. Are you feeling poorly?”

  “I have a condition,” Ash said.

  “And you’re climbing mountains?” The redhead chuckled. “Don’t this beat all. My brothers are always saying how I don’t have the brains of a turnip, but you have me beat. Who are you anyhow?”

  “My name is Jackson.” Ash had picked the first one that popped into his head. “What might yours be?”

  “Abimelech.”

  “My God.”

  “It’s my ma’s fault. She was powerful fond of the Bible so she named all of us by turning the pages and touching one when the spirit moved her. If she touched a name we were stuck with it.”

  “I’ve heard of people doing that.”

  “My brothers have better names than me and never stop teasing me about it.”

  “What might theirs be?”

  “Jotham and Zebul.”

  Ash didn’t see how they were much better. “You say this mountain is yours? After I rest up, can I visit your homestead? I could use a cup of coffee or just water if that’s all you have.”

  “My brothers don’t like strangers,” Abimelech said. “They might take it into their heads to shoot you.”

  “They’d kill a man for no reason?”

  “Mister, my brothers . . .” Abimelech stopped. “Jotham is right. I gabble like a goose. Slide that rifle off your legs and set your six-gun next to it. Then stand up with your hands in the air.”

  “I need to rest a little longer.”