by Lou Cameron
He went on scooping as he muttered, “Maybe. I doubt the killer could still be with us, for reasons I just gave you. This was a mighty dumb place to hide a body, when you consider how many miles of miles there are all about this one bitty spread.”
She said she could see that, but, having said that, he’d lost her completely. He now had most of the spoil back atop the dead man, so he began to smooth the shallow grave with the back of the spade as he confided, “I’m a newspaperman, not a detective, or even an experienced lawman, for Pete’s sake. So, we’d best leave some of this to the county coroner and maybe the Rangers.”
“Aren’t we going to tell Marshall Blair when we get back to town?” she asked, with a puzzled frown.
He shook his head and said, “Let’s not and say we did. Whether your local lawmen are corrupt, or just confused, it’s going to take some old pros to untangle this can of worms.”
She gasped, “Good heavens! Are you saying Marshal Blair, or one of his boys, killed Wet Willy, Curly Bill or whoever?”
He shook his head and said, “You haven’t been paying attention. Someone with a lot to hide has been trying to stop me from poking about in these parts. If all it was was a dead body under a dirt floor I’d have never uncovered it just now.”
“Meaning?” she insisted.
“Meaning nobody who’s been trying to stop me could have known where the missing water witch was,” he replied. “Nobody alive, at any rate. The two old gents were exposed as long-lost outlaws about the same time, or so it’s been said officially. When Buckskin Jack called Pete Harlow from this very spread on the matter, the result was one down and one just vanished from human ken. We just found him under Pete Harlow’s floor. Tally it up.”
She did. Then she stammered, “You mean the old stockman out here killed his pal, Wet Willy, buried him under his own floor, and then went into town to shoot it out with the law, without telling the law what they were shooting over?”
He smiled thinly and declared, “That’s close enough to the official version. Only Buckskin Jack’s account of the matter would have him after both old gents and only nailing one. He could be telling the truth the way he sees it. It works a couple of sneakier ways just as well, so, like I said, we’d do best to just ride on back to town and say nothing until I can get us some state or at least county lawmen up this way.”
She asked about the sizzled sniper exposed to the stars out back. He grimaced and said, “Neither one of us had a thing to do with his demise. He’s not going to follow us anymore and it might be interesting to see who discovers him first in such an out-of-the-way corner of the range.”
Then he reached for their rain slickers to add, “Meanwhile, we’d best get on back before anyone notices us missing as well. I’d hate to have a lady stuck with explaining what she’d been up to all this time out here accompanied by a rascal like me.”
She dimpled sweetly and their hands somehow managed to touch as she took her slicker from him, saying, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m good at making up excuses and I sort of like some rascals I’ve met up with.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The night stayed dry and clear, however crisp, so neither of them had on a yellow slicker as they topped the last rise north of the crossing. They’d only figure later how they had likely saved at least one of them from being shot out of a saddle. It was a little after two in the morning. Riding down the bare slope north of the dam, they were only blurs against darkness. A rifle crashed from somewhere upstream, and Susan’s roan was doing a forward somersault down the steep incline, with both mount and rider screaming fit to bust!
Susan was a fine enough horsewoman to fall out of her saddle on the high side as her shot-up pony rolled out from under her with its steel-shod hooves flailing. As she landed gracefully on her boot heels, Stringer reached out from his own mount to sweep her up, then his own paint pony was hit. Both he and the girl were rolling leap-frog down the muddy wagon trace with guns spanging at them from all sides, and hot lead plucking at their tangled forms until they’d somehow rolled into reeds and crack willow at the water’s edge, and the fusillade died away to be replaced by someone yelling, “Where are they? Did we git ’em, cuss their lucky bouncings?”
Susan whispered, “My God, that sounds like Deputy Sanford, the one they call Slim!”
He told her to shut up and crawl after him tight as a tick. Water spilling over the dam served to drown out such noise as they made in their haste. They’d wriggled as far as an old shaggy tree with branches hanging down to hide them like a hollow haystack when they heard Slim call out, behind them, “I suspicion they’re wading across, Jack! I told you we shoulda cut the telegraph lines first!”
Another ominously familiar voice called back, “Hang some crepe on your nose. Your brain just died.” Then the ornery little bastard called out to someone else upstream, “Open the flood gates, and we’ll just see who wades across this night!”
“Jesus!” Stringer muttered, then rose to his knees in the overhang and, regarding how the willow’s roots were already awash on the far side, whispered, “Up in the tree, poco tiempo!”
He didn’t have to explain why. She had a brain as well as good ears. Once he’d followed her up as far as the highest solid fork the old tree had to offer, she protested, “We can’t stay here forever, can we?”
He answered, “Let’s not get any false hopes up,” as they heard the flood gates open, mighty close, and rushing water rose to slowly chase them up the tree.
Susan gasped, “This damned tree’s wobbling like a loose tooth!” All Stringer could say was, “When you’re right you’re right. Hang on to your hat and don’t let go the tree, either, for we seem to be off for the Gulf of Mexico and… Hey, come on, I was only funning, Lord!”
But the Lord, or at least the raging water, wasn’t. For, just then, the whole earthen dam commenced to give way as the open flood gates finished what nature had started. As the churning wall of muddy water plucked the undermined willow from the bank and bore it with its two soggy passengers downstream faster than a cat could have run with turpentine under its tail, they were too busy trying to keep their heads above water to engage in idle conversation. Then, way downstream, as the ancient willow began to drag its roots on the bottom and slow down to a more sedate lope, Susan gasped, “What happened?”
He laughed and asked her, “You mean you didn’t notice? The dam went. The unusual weather we’ve been having must have filled her up more than her builders planned on in these parts.”
She said, “Goody. I’d rather see the infernal nesters drill for their own water in any case. How come the current’s still so strong if old Clem Thorn way’s dam ain’t there no more?”
He said, “Ground water. Reservoirs with earthen banks can’t even begin to fill before the ground around has sopped up all the water it can hold. This normally more modest creek was spring-fed to begin with, wasn’t it?”
She agreed that was about the size of it so he added, “There you go. The springs at the head of the valley will be gushing good as they know how until this land gets back to being dry some more. But why are we discussing hydraulic engineering when its ballistics we have to worry about? Did you manage to hang on to that Dragoon?”
She allowed she had. He said, “All right, that leaves us and our two pistols against who knows how many, and no doubt more than one rifle, lobbing deer rounds, flat, farther than I like to think about in daylight, so we’d best not be anywhere near the rascals when the sun comes up some more!”
She looked around them sort of wild-eyed. There wasn’t much to see past the willow twigs and dimly moonlit ripplies on all sides. She said, “We can’t be more than a mile or so downstream, and if only we can make it to some of my Lazy B riders or, heck, any decent cattlemen in these parts…”
He cut in to point out that choosing the sheep from the goats was apt to be tricky before they found out what in thunder had been going on back there. Then he added back there was more like ten or twenty mi
les by now, explaining, “We’re still moving downstream brisker than most folk walk and the current’s moving even swifter. Do you really want to straggle into town well after sunrise, knowing the other side might have full control of said town?”
She shuddered and said, “Not hardly. Having them catch up with us on open range would hardly be any better. But even as we speak, this fool tree’s carrying us even farther from anyone we can call on for help!”
He shook his head and told her, “You’re wrong. It works the other way as soon as you study on it.” Then he spied a patch of blackness the size and shape of a livingroom rug overtaking them as the current swept it eastward much faster. He disentangled most of himself from the willow branches and stretched his free arm out to snag it if he could. As his questing fingers cupped the upturned framing of the floating barn door, the current swung it in against their tree. He laughed and yelled, “Get aboard before I lose my grip on it!” So, she did. He sure liked gals who didn’t argue when a man made a sensible suggestion. Once he saw she was on to stay, he let go the tree and hauled himself aboard. By the time he was high and halfway dry, with her help, they’d left the willow too far behind them to make out in the meager light. She said, “Whee! I’ve always wanted to raft down to the gulf and be a pirate, ever since I read Huckleberry Finn, but what if we turn over riding this fool thing the length of Cottonwood Draw betwixt here and the Pecos? There’s some mighty swift stretches ahead of us, even at low water, and tonight the water’s high as it gets and, Lord have mercy, we don’t even have us a paddle!”
He soothed, “Don’t fuss about that, little darling. Not knowing the stream and not being able to see more than a few yards ahead in any case, I wouldn’t know what to do with a paddle if I had one.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stringer had been whistling their way past a graveyard and hoping he was only funning, but in point of fact, they had some close calls bobbing down Cottonwood Draw in the dark on their waterlogged barn door. Just how close was hard to determine, since they couldn’t see much, even when they weren’t catching muddy froth with their faces. They could only hang on and hope their soggy craft was too heavy and too wide to flip over entirely when they skimmed up and over a standing wave.
As both lovers and condemned criminals had long agreed, no night can last forever, and as the eastern sky grew pearly they were drifting sedately and a hell of a lot slower down a much calmer surface. Stringer was holding Susan close and she was still quivering like a half-drowned kitten in the predawn chill. She asked for at least the hundredth time where they were and he still had no answer, “I don’t know. From the width of the banks right now I’d be willing to bet we’re mighty close to the Pecos. If I have things mapped right in my head, the combined waters of the Cottonwood and Martine join up with the Pecos just downstream from that Ranger station we have to get to. I wish it was the other way, but it’s not. So, we can figure on some serious walking, once we know where to wade ashore.”
She started to ask why they couldn’t just pull over to the shore. She was learning about pirate rafting, so when they drifted around another bend to spy a railroad trestle spanning the water ahead she said, “I know where we are, now! That has to be the Pecos Valley Southern’s spur down to Toyah. If I’m right, we’re twenty miles or so from Pecos Junction and those Rangers!”
He said he sure hoped she was right and then, since there was no other way to find out, he rolled off his side of the barn door, found the water only thigh deep, and swept her up to carry her ashore, saying, “No sense both of us getting wet.”
She laughed and told him she was already wet as she clung to him almost tenderly. Once ashore amid thick chaparral and even taller prickly pear, they had a time finding their way to the northbound railroad, even knowing where it was. He helped her up the neither high nor steep embankment as the sun peeped over the horizon to the east. As they stood there a moment peering all about, there was nothing much to be seen under the inverted cobalt bowl of a clear West Texas sky. He said, “We’d best get going whilst we’re still covered with wet duds and goose bumps. That sun promises us a scorching this side of noon. You wouldn’t know how often trains come along this spur track, would you?”
She said she’d heard they ran a mail train down to Toyah twice a week. He said it was nice to know they weren’t likely to get run down by a runaway locomotive and they started walking. It didn’t take her long to start bitching. Most everyone did the first time they had to cover any distance at all on railroad ties.
He said, “I don’t know if it’s deliberate, as an old hobo told me one time, but it is a plain fact you just can’t stride comfortable on railroad ties the way they space ’em. You can take mincy-wincy steps or you can take running strides and come down on wood most every time. But if you walk natural you wind up planting one heel on solid wood and the next in ankle-twisty ballast. It takes a little getting used to.”
She grit her teeth and proclaimed, “I don’t see how I’ll ever manage in a mere twenty miles. I don’t see how I’ll ever manage twenty miles on busted ankles either! Wouldn’t we make better time just walking on level ground? There seems to be plenty of that on either side of these uncomfortable tracks.”
He pointed out that aside from cactus and catsclaw thorns, they had to consider their high heels digging in deep for many a mile. She insisted they were going to wind up with sore feet and pulled tendons either way. So, he led the way down the northwest slope, such as it was. Any shade one could manage in country like this was worth the effort, even if they were only walking in the shade from the waist down, for now.
He knew that as the sun crept ever higher they’d recall this as the Ice Age of their sunny stroll to Pecos Junction.
He was right. In army shoes with no gals along, Stringer could manage a steady four miles an hour. In high-heeled Justins, on soft sand, with a woman clinging to one arm and pleading with him not to walk so fast, he figured they might get there somewhere this side of sunset. By the time they’d dried out enough to start feeling sweaty, Stringer figured they’d made it three or four miles, and Susan was saying she couldn’t go on without at least a little rest. He led her into a grove of pear, where there’d be at least some dappled shade, and let her flop on the sand, panting, as he hunkered down to roll a smoke. When he asked her if she’d like one, she looked away and confided tobacco wasn’t one of her vices. He didn’t ask what vices she did go in for.
As they lounged in such shade as there was, she asked if he had all that nonsense back at Comanche Woe figured out better than she did. He told her, “It’s a mite deadly to call nonsense, but you’ve every right to feel confused. The Rangers ought to be able to sort things out, once we tell ’em where at least one body’s buried. Two can keep a secret, provided one of ’em is dead, and the Rangers will have all sorts of suspects to question, separately.”
“Can’t you even hazard a guess?” she demanded.
He lit his Bull Durham, shook out the match, and stuck it headfirst in the sand between them, saying, “It has to be a real can of worms, but if you’re willing to settle for broad brush strokes, let’s say a handful of small-town bigshots hung on after the cattle trail they’d settled a town to serve withered away on ’em.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Local ranchers like my dad and his old pals hung on enough to keep a few shops and the saloon going.”
He blew smoke out his nostrils and told her, wearily, “Survival’s one thing and ambition is another. By the turn of the century, folk knew better than to seek out and fight over surface water this far west. There’s a heap more of the stuff under semiarid range than you’ll ever find running across it. You’d be surprised at some of the folk who know how rich the soil can be where mesquite grows, given a lick of water for something more marketable than chaparral, or even beef. So, homesteaders have commenced to fill in the open range left, and no matter how you cowfolk felt about it, the merchants back in Comanche Woe must have been delighted.”
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p; She shrugged and said, “Pooh, you promised me a mystery. There’s nothing mysterious about a trail town doing better as ever more folk come along the trail.”
“They didn’t do half as well as expected,” he replied. “The town sprung up where it did in the first place because of those natural springs that fed summer water on down the valley as far as old Clem Thornway and his cronies could afford to get water rights. The Rangers can work out the small print on that with their lawyers. I suspect they’re going to need a heap of lawyers by the time it’s all sorted out.”
She took off her hat and unpinned her hair to let it cool and dry as she said, “I’m not surprised to hear Clem Thornway and his old Maud were out to skin folk on water rights. They’ve overcharged for licorice whips since I was in pigtails. Get to all the hired guns moving in on us. Who hired ’em, the nesters or the skinflints running things in town?”
He flatly stated, “The newcomers homesteading all about are as innocent as you cowfolk, much as it may pain you to hear, but there’ll still be plenty of open range ‘til at least the middle of this century, so let’s get back to the real villains.”
She said she wished he would, and unbuttoned the top of her blouse, asking if he didn’t feel stuffy as well right now. He hung his hat on a cactus pad and peeled out of his jacket as he told her, “The merchants running things in town expanded their businesses, even starting a so-called improvement company, and encouraged as many greenhorns to settle around their town as they could manage. Old-timers such as your dad, Rusty Reynolds, and such didn’t like to be crowded and said so, loud. Is it safe to say it got safer for a farmboy to have fun in Comanche Woe once the town had hired itself a famous town tamer like Buckskin Jack?”
She nodded but said, “The boys weren’t so frightened of him alone. He talked big, but it was the small army of deputies backing his big mouth that gave one pause.”
