Cutthroat Gulch

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Do you figure he’s Protestant, Catholic, or heathen?”

  “Anyone who gets shot must be a heathen.”

  “You like to spread blame where it don’t belong, Blue.”

  “Some of it sticks,” Blue said.

  Blue Smith figured he had done all the damage he could, and headed for home. He lived on Parcel Street, two blocks away from the courthouse and sheriff’s office. He collected Hector, rolled up his slicker and tied it to the cantle, and swung aboard stiffly. The complaint of his body reminded him of his long walk, and the ordeal to come. He put the gelding into his carriage barn, unsaddled it, brushed and fed it, and poured a pail of oats into the manger. He pumped a few buckets of water into the trough, and headed for the weathered gray clapboard cottage that had been his nest for half a lifetime.

  He found Olivia glaring from her blind eyes.

  “Late again, cold chow. Sit your butt and eat cold.”

  “Murder,” he said.

  “No, I don’t intend to go that far, but pretty near,” she said.

  “Found a body.”

  “You did, did you? Whose dog?”

  “No, a body, at the fishing hole. Six bullet holes in it.”

  She paused at last. “Anyone we know?”

  “Stranger.”

  “Why there?”

  “That’s what I ask myself.”

  “Someone wanted you to see it there.”

  “Aw, Olivia.”

  She abandoned the wood stove and found him with her hands. “Someone wanted you to find it there. Someone who knows about that place...and you.”

  Blue found her hand. Ever since cataracts had squeezed sight from her eyes, she had acquired an uncanny sixth sense, and he had learned to heed it.

  “What was he like?” she asked.

  “Thirties, dark complected, black suit, groomed, nothing in any pocket.”

  “So young.”

  “Young and unknown in these parts.”

  “What are going to do?”

  “Go after him.”

  She nodded, and returned easily to her serving. He marveled that she could live as she did, almost as if she could see. She could discern light and shadow, knew night from ivory daylight. Sometimes she said her days were like living inside a pearl. Somehow, she knew where things were, knew how to cope with the wood range, even keep the fire going, knew how close to put her hand to a hot kettle, knew how to wash a dish spotless clean, even though she could see nothing of it.

  Now she ladled beef stew into a bowl, spilling not a drop, and brought it to him.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Soon as I can load up.”

  “I thought so. When will you be back? Foolish damned question.”

  He had no answer for her. He would follow the trail until he caught his man. The stew was a marvel. How did she manage to salt it just right? She couldn’t even see her salt cellar.

  “You be all right? I’ll have Barlow check on you.”

  “I will need stove kindling.”

  “That all?”

  She shrugged. The shrug meant that the longer he took, the more she would need help. He hated like hell to leave her. He could leave in the morning; spend the evening getting her squared away. But he wouldn’t. He wanted to camp this night at the fishing hole and start on that trail at dawn. He wanted to wake up with his senses howling at him, the old hunting instinct commanding his every thought.

  “I’ll send word to Tamara,” he said. “She can come in for a while.”

  Olivia didn’t object. Tamara was their married daughter, Mrs. Steven Cooper, who lived on a ranch beyond Centerville. Olivia had named both children, Tamara and Absalom, names Blue had always found odd. Blue had started life named David, and Olivia said that Tamara and Absalom were children of the biblical king. No one had called Blue by his given name in thirty years, and if anyone did, it would fetch a snarl from him. He couldn’t even remember why he was called Blue. Maybe it was because his black hair had a blue cast to it. He preferred to think it was because he was profane.

  He told her the whole story as he spooned in the stew. Finding the body, six shots, hauling it in, trying for some identification.

  “It was someone the killer didn’t care about,” she said.

  “No, it was someone the killer hated so much he emptied his six-gun.”

  “Didn’t care about,” she said.

  He started to grumble, but checked it. He spent the next hour putting together his kit. He had done this many times, knew exactly what he needed. He would take a pack horse even if it slowed him down. Speed rarely mattered in a manhunt. You get a sense of the quarry, you begin to understand, and you keep on, and sooner or later you catch up, and that’s when a good kit came in handy; beans for two, manacles, spare tack, good pair of blankets, a ground cloth.

  Even as he collected his gear, she was putting together his chow: beans, parched corn, some ground Arbuckle’s, some potatoes and onions, some tins of tomatoes.

  He hefted his Winchester lever action rifle, and knew suddenly he wouldn’t take it. His eyes weren’t so good any more. A man passes fifty and things go to hell. He needed an ear trumpet sometimes, the way people mumbled, and he couldn’t read a word without his wire-rimmed spectacles. A scattergun would be handier. You just pointed, not aimed. Maybe there were several killers, not just one. No doubt male, but he had just better keep his mind open on that score. A woman could pull a trigger just as well as a man, even if the gun bucked worse against her shoulder.

  His double-barreled Browning, then, and some double-ought buckshot. His Peacemaker revolver. His one set of leg irons. Manacles. He laid it all out on the battered kitchen table, along with two boxes of forty-five caliber brass shells. Then he threw a packsaddle and panniers over his nitwitted yawning mule, saddled Hector, loaded up in twilight.

  He found Olivia doing dishes, and turned her into his arms.

  “You be good,” he said.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  He laughed. She not only said it whenever he left town, she meant it. Whenever he returned, there would always be a new story or two about her floating around town. When he left, she took it as permission for a fling. Once Barlow had carefully carried her home, after relieving her of a brandy bottle. Another time Barlow hauled Olivia out of Bessie May’s parlor. God only knows what that was about. It was full dark when he was ready. He slipped into the creaking saddle, took one last glance at the shadowed cottage and his old gal in the open door, and rode into the night, the hoof sounds hollow in the hush.

  Chapter 3

  Hector knew the way. Blue gave him his head and sat back in the creaking saddle. The old mule followed behind, keeping the lead rope slack.

  Blue had often ridden Hector to his fishing hole at night because Blue liked to cast his first line before dawn, when the day was merely a blue promise in the east. That’s when mists rose from the river, and dew coated every blade, and he could feel the glory of the world being born. Maybe it was ownership. If he was there, as dawn patrolled the east, he owned that hole for that day.

  He topped the divide and worked downslope through the forest. Far to the west the sky lit and quieted, and a faint rumble echoed its way to him. Thunderstorm over there. But straight above, the sky was clear and black, the stars at a distance beyond imagining.

  He reckoned it was not yet midnight when he rode softly into the place. He smelled rain on the eddies of chill air flowing down from the high country, and wished he had packed a shelter cloth. Cumbersome thing for a manhunt, but not a bad idea when poking around eleven thousand-foot slopes in a bone-chilling rain, or when trapped in a summer mountain blizzard. He tugged the gear off the horse and mule and picketed them on lush meadow grass. The old hidey-hole felt different this time, violated by manslaughter. He avoided the spot beside the fishing hole where he had found the body, and settled down beside a thicket of whispering aspen. He scraped the sticks and pebbles away, unrolled his India rubberized ground cl
oth, pulled his canvas panniers up for a headrest, and wrapped himself in the blankets. He would not sleep easily. He never did out of doors when a part of him was listening for a bear or coyote or a storm. But the lack of rest rarely bothered him unless he was out for five or six days in a row. He got up, withdrew the scattergun from its scabbard, and tucked it into the blankets, feeling comforted but not knowing why. That killer would be twenty miles away by now.

  Grizzly, he said to himself, but he had never seen a grizzly just there, or seen any grizzly scat, and a scatter gun would not be the weapon of choice.

  He stared at the heavens, wishing that he could plumb the mysteries of the world. An unknown man had been murdered nearby by an unknown killer; he could make no sense of it. Sometimes, in the past, he had been able to crawl inside the mind of the criminal and calculate how to catch the man. Maybe he would this time. People had habits. People had a way of dealing with wilderness. An abandoned campsite could tell a tale.

  Just before he left, Olivia had touched his bristly cheek, her fingers ever so tender as they limned his face and the gray stubble. She saw the world through her fingers now, but that wasn’t why she touched him. She was saying a thousand things to him, and most of all, Be careful, love, be very careful. A dozen times, over the years when he was a sheriff, she had waited for him for days and nights, not knowing. And once when they had carried him into the cottage, his chest wrapped in bloody sheets, she had screamed. Now she would be waiting again, and for a law man slowed down by the weight of years, a man who stubbornly rode alone just when he should be forming a posse, just because he took crime as a personal affront.

  Twice during the night he bolted up and grabbed his shotgun. Once it was nothing. The other time he felt, rather than saw, a deer leap away. He heard a cutthroat trout break the surface and fall back. He felt foolish. Somewhere out there, putting miles between this place and himself, was a killer. He knew dawn was near from the sharp wet cold and the ache in his bones, so he stood up. By the time he could see the slopes, he would be ready to travel. He pulled on his ice-cold boots and slid the scattergun back into its sheath. He wrapped his cold holster and belt around his bulging waist, and was ready for the day. He debated a breakfast fire, some Arbuckle’s coffee, and decided to go ahead. The kindling was wet and didn’t want to catch, and then smoked coldly after Blue had added some fire-starter scraped from the underside of cottonwood bark, but Blue knew the flame would win out, and dug into his possibles for the Arbuckle’s, which Olivia had ground up and poured into a Harvest Maid cracker tin. He filled the old speckled blue pot with ice water from the river, added some coffee, and set it to heating. Soon a low layer of wood smoke drifted across the meadow.

  He eyed his horses. They stood looking at him, not away, which was a good sign. He was getting deaf; they weren’t. He had learned to watch their ears, read their preoccupation.

  He poured some rolled oats into his iron skillet, added water, stirred them and set them to heating. He drifted out to the meadows to collect his horse and mule, which stood like statues, radiating their own heat. That’s when he saw the straw hat. The gloom was so thick he scarcely recognized it, but sure enough, it was a hat. A wide-brimmed woman’s hat, bright with a silky pink band that pierced through slits at either side and formed long streamers that could be tied under the chin. It sure looked familiar.

  It was dew-damped. Blue turned it around in his hand, amazed by its presence. Why hadn’t he seen it yesterday? Because he was so absorbed with death, that’s why. But surely he would have seen it. How could he not see it? How did it get there? He returned to the fire so he could get a better look. Good straw hat. The dead man had a wife, perhaps. Or daughter. Where was she? Were there more bodies here? Was she the killer? Was there more to this than murder? Rape, abduction, family trouble? He would take the hat with him. Someone might recognize it.

  He added a pinch of salt to his gruel, and ate it slowly straight out of the hot skillet as he waited for his coffee to cool. The trout were breakfasting, rising up and out and sliding back so quietly it took a sharp eye to spot them. Why the hell had he come here without a pole? He could have had trout instead of a mouth full of sticky oats. Did she fish? Did he fish? Were they here because it was the likeliest hole on the river? He finished, sipped his java, admiring the strong tang of Arbuckle’s best, and washed out the pot and the spoon in the river.

  The light had stolen in while he ate, still purple and lavender. Now he could look around. He rose stiffly, the night’s hard bed still remembered by his bones, and walked to the place where he had found the body, until yesterday his most favorite place, just over the quiet deep waters of the hole. He found nothing new. No purse or wallet. No signs of struggle. He patrolled in a widening circle, round and round the meadow, looking for another body, a woman, but he found nothing more. Time to go. He doused the fire, packed his gear, loaded the horses, and rode through the meadow, following the plain trail of a dragged body, broken grass, the scrape of a boot, and those flecks of brown that he knew were human blood. The place of execution would not be far away.

  The trail plunged into dark woods, still night-bound, and now the trail was even plainer: scuffed pine needles marked the passage. He struck a place where gray granite vaulted up from the river bottoms, and there, suddenly, his horse nickered and another horse reciprocated. Surprised, Blue slid his revolver out, studied the gloom, and discerned an animal ahead. But no mortal. He waited a minute, uneasy and quick on the trigger, and then eased his horse forward into a small brush-choked clearing walled by a cliff. A handsome copper-colored bay horse stood there, tied to a tree with a stout rope. Its head hung low. Blue knew at once it was suffering from the want of water and feed, and had been there some while.

  The dead man’s horse: handsome, black stockings, a groomed mane and tail, the torso sleek with coppery summer hair. “Whoa,” Blue said, still not trusting the place. He studied the dark and silent woods, seeing nothing. He slid off Hector and approached the tied-up horse, which jittered back, testing the picket line, which was tied to an aspen.

  “Whoa, boy,” Blue muttered. He walked slowly around the wild-eyed animal, looking for a brand and finding none. Gingerly, wary of a kick, he ran a hand over the animal’s thigh muscle, looking for a haired-over mark. Nothing. Eastern horse, then. Maybe fifteen hands. Some Thoroughbred in him. Good dished head, almost Arab. Not a stocky western animal. No mustang blood. Worth plenty. Brought from some long distance away by rail. It all fit: the right horse for a man in a black suit. Almost a flashy horse, speed in him. And now it was desperate for a drink and some feed. He slid a hand down a foreleg and lifted it. Fresh shoe, no cleat on it. Gingerly he tried a rear leg. Same sort of shoe, no cleat. He could read those hoofprints.

  Blue considered: he didn’t need the horse. Let him go. The animal would head for the river and stay there at the fishing hole, plenty of grass, good meadow. Catch him later, take him back to Blankenship. Someone might recognize that animal. The horse had tugged the knot at the aspen so tight that Blue could not loosen it, and he finally cut the rope with his Barlow knife. Then he unbuckled the halter. The bay stood.

  “Go,” Blue said, slapping the horse.

  It squealed, snorted, and ran downslope toward water. Blue sighed. He was not done with this gloomy place. He studied the dark woods uneasily and headed for the wall of granite that rose abruptly just ahead. The light was thickening above; the sky had turned bold blue. The sun had not yet pierced this mountain valley, and wouldn’t for a while. He found what he was looking for almost immediately. Two white pocks chest-level in the granite, and two more lower down. The last of the shots from the six-gun followed the dying man as he slid to the ground. Brown splashes on the pine needles and grass at the foot. Scuffed turf. Sometime only minutes before Blue had arrived at the fishing hole the day before, murder had been done here; cold, calculating, brutal. An execution. He saw design in it, not passion; cold murder, not anger. He thought he knew even less about the kille
r than before. He looked for prints and found none that were legible in the pine needle carpet. No clear hoofprints, no clear boot heels. No women’s shoes or boots.

  Blue stood quietly and let the place speak to him, but learned nothing more. This place was evil. He felt the darkness of it there. He was only a quarter of a mile from his fishing hole, but he had never been just here. His boy probably had. Absalom had never had the patience to fish, and wandered the little basin as if it were a cage while Blue cast for cutthroats. The boy’s name was too much of a mouthful, so they called him Jinx. He didn’t like that, either, but it stuck until Absalom was in his teen years and insisted on being called by his given name. What sort of honest-to-God male didn’t like to fish? Jinx never did, and it irritated Blue to this day. Raise a kid in Paradise, and all he could think of was the bright gaslights of the nearest city. Blue waited a moment longer, but this grim place wasn’t whispering to him, and it was time to move along. He wasn’t even sure where the trail led because the horses of the killer and victim had trod pine needles. It would be a guess. Blue clambered onto his gelding and headed toward the ridge high above, hoping to pick up the trail there. What if the killer had come from that direction and left by another?

  There was no way to know, not just then. Half of tracking was reading the land. Nature was always forcing living things to go one way or another, and people acted much the same as animals when it came to flat ground, obstacles, slopes, fording a river, or dodging danger.

  Blue headed upslope, following a drainage that led to that saddle miles above. The woods told him nothing, but after an hour of labored climbing he emerged upon a sloping meadow, bright-clad in the morning sun, rioting with purple and yellow wildflowers so that he felt he was walking up a rainbow. He could never remember the names of half the damned things. Here were signs of passage, crushed pasque flowers, hoofprints in moist earth. He paused to study them. A single horse, heavily laden judging from the depth of its prints, was heading into the high country. Blue wove left and right, looking for other prints, especially those of the coppery bay. But the stranger had come from some other direction and so had the killer. These prints were larger than those of the bay, and this big horse had carried the killer away from the fishing hole. He could not tell how old they were. For all of his years in this wild land, he had never quite mastered the subtleties of reading sign. If a print was dried out and hard and blurred, it was old; if sharp in moist ground, it was probably fresh, and that’s as much as Blue could manage. But he was damned if he would hire some drunken scout to advise him.