Cutthroat Gulch

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Steve?”

  Blue rode ahead, his belly crawling with worry, seeing no sign of Steve Cooper. He reached the tethered horse and mule, noted the rolls of barb wire, the spade and auger and pick. But not Steve.

  He dismounted uneasily, tied his horse to a post.

  “Steve?” he yelled. Maybe Cooper had headed into the thickets nearby.

  “Steve?”

  Then he saw Steve, lying in tall grace, face up, staring sightlessly at the sky, his shirt and britches soaked with blood.

  The sight punched Blue backward. He couldn’t breathe. Steve Cooper dead. Tammy...Tammy...Steve...

  Blue hung onto a fence post.

  Oh, Tammy...How could he say to her what he had to say?

  Chapter 11

  Blue had trouble making his legs move, but at last he stood over Tammy’s husband. Buckshot, he thought, probably from Blue’s own scattergun, close range. None had touched Steve’s face. Steve stared innocently at the sky. Dead at twenty-nine, murdered for nothing more than loving and marrying Tammy, the daughter of the sheriff. Blue watched the green-bellied flies swarm upon the blood-red shirt.

  Blue didn’t know how to tell Tammy. It was beyond him, breaking this news, showing her this.

  He studied the silent slopes, the wind-danced grass, the circling of a hawk. “All right, Jack, I’m coming. I’ll get you,” he said, hoping the breezes would carry his message across the fields, over the mountain tops, down the rivers. He half expected a bullet to sear through him, but it didn’t, and he knew that Castle would play this out his own way, tormenting Blue as much as possible first. Castle’s old curse came to mind, and with it the shape of Castle’s revenge.

  Blue did what he had to do. He untied Steve’s ranch horse and set the mule free. It would trail along behind. Then he knelt over Steve, turned him over, found that the buckshot had blown clean through his son-in-law. Out of old habit, Blue turned Steve’s pockets out, finding nothing but a jackknife. Then he gently slid his arms under the body and struggled to his feet. Steve weighed plenty. Steve’s horse jerked back, wild-eyed. Blue let the horse sniff, but that didn’t calm the animal. It took two more tries to get Steve’s body draped over Steve’s saddle and tied in place. And by the time Blue had finished, he was soaked in Steve’s blood. It was fitting. Steve’s wounds were his own wounds. Steve’s blood was his own blood.

  Blue started back to the ranch house in the summer afternoon’s long light, leading Steve’s horse behind the buckskin and trying to find words to say to Tammy. He had no words. Angry clouds were building; it would rain this night of tears. It seemed longer going back than riding out. Or maybe he was just going slower, delaying the bad moments to come. But in time he debouched from Axe Canyon and rode slowly across the fields, the low light throwing long hard shadows. He stopped apart from the ranch house, not knowing whether he could do this thing. And yet he had to.

  He rode in slowly, and she saw him from the doorway and ran toward him, ran screaming, a wail that chilled his morrow, and then she reached him, took it all in.

  “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,” she cried. “Castle…Oh, Steve!”

  She plunged toward Steve’s nervous horse. It shied. She stopped suddenly, gaping at the blood. “Oh, oh, oh,” she groaned, found Steve’s limp hand and held it, beside the horse.

  Blue dismounted, and threw an arm around her shoulder, knowing he had no comfort to offer. She was shaking. He wished to God he could console her but there were no words. He’d been a sheriff a long time, and had been in the middle of hell more than once, but never with his own. Blue studied the ranch porch, not seeing the children and glad of it. He didn’t want them to see this. “Tammy,” he said gently, “keep the children away.”

  “I knew it, I knew it,” she said.

  He led the horses toward the barn in the long golden light. Somehow he had to deal with all this.

  “Tammy, there’s Joey on the porch.”

  Tammy let go of that limp hand and staggered back to the ranch house. “No, Joey, you stay there,” she cried.

  Blue watched her herd the child inside, and continued on into the big dark barn. Once in that concealing shadow, he untied Steve, lifted him off the horse, set him on some straw bedding. Steve was as heavy a burden as Blue could carry.

  He made himself unsaddle the horses and turn them into the catch-pen. The mule trotted in as well and headed for the hay rick. Blue found a keg and sat on it. It all depended on him now. Keep her safe. Comfort her and the children. Figure this out. He thought of his fishing hole, and the cutthroats lurking in that quiet pool, and his line sailing over them and dropping his fly upon them in the sweet quiet. He thought of her, bereaved, her husband dead because Blue wore the badge and had to deal with badmen.

  He rose wearily, found a horse blanket and covered Steve.

  She returned after a time, he didn’t know how long, slipping into the dusky barn. “They’re in bed,” she said. She stared at the old blanket and the still form under it, and then slumped down beside Steve’s body. She touched the horse blanket. Found Steve’s cold hand and took it. Closed her eyes.

  The barn was very quiet.

  Blue settled down beside her and took her other hand, and they sat beside Steve Castle for a long time. For the moment, Tammy was holding up. The grief would flow later.

  “We’ll go to Centerville in the morning. We’ll need your spring wagon,” he said.

  “I haven’t told the children.”

  Blue nodded. That was her province. She would decide where and when. “You know someone who can look after the place?”

  “Not nearby.”

  “We’ll have to put the animals out on pasture.”

  “There’s the chickens, and the dogs...”

  “I’ll find someone for you, Tammy. Zeke will know of someone.”

  She didn’t reply. She wasn’t crying, but he knew she would, away from him, alone. The Smiths held everything in. He had taught them to. Never let the world see anything. Maybe that was wrong. He hated tears, but now he wished she would weep.

  “Tammy, maybe you should be with the little ones,” he said. “I’ll be along.”

  She rose wordlessly and vanished into the darkness. He had one or two things to do. He found a candle lantern in the tack room, lit it with a lucifer, and hunted for a tarpaulin and some rope. He settled for an ancient blanket, rolled Steve into it and lashed the bundle with thong. Then he tugged the spring wagon into the barn and lifted Steve into the back of it. That would have to do. He found his way to the house mostly by instinct because clouds obscured the stars, and settled in a rocker on the porch, his revolver in hand. He heard no noise within. The crickets were chirping. Steve had died. Who else would? How did the stranger fit in, the one at the fishing hole? Why Steve? Was it simply because Steve was the husband of the woman Castle wanted and could not have? Murdered for nothing more than that, but nothing less? It seemed likely. Or maybe it was all Castle’s plan to torture Blue by destroying his family one by one. Was that it? Maybe Tammy would be next, and then Blue himself. That was the only sense he could make of it. Castle would torment Blue as much as possible, and Blue would be the last to die, filled with grief. Jack Castle was fully capable of thinking like that. Blue grunted. Jack Castle wouldn’t get that far. A man whose criminal design was obvious was a man who could be trapped and brought to justice. But Jack Castle was no ordinary man. Blue had never known a man so able, so audacious, so strong, so devoid of conscience. He had planned this whole thing for seven years, engrossed Blue in a scenario that began with a stranger’s murder. It was as if Castle was a puppeteer, and Blue was dancing on his strings. Castle had that gift; he was always one jump ahead of everyone else.

  Whatever happened next, it would be the unexpected, and it would be designed to hurt Blue as much as possible.

  Blue’s mind worked feverishly. Get Tammy and the children to Centerville and some safety. That seemed the first and most important thing. Then go afte
r Castle, go after him doggedly. Blue knew he was a plodder, not nimble like Castle, but Blue could hang on, sink in his bulldog teeth and maybe Castle would make his mistake. The bright swift ones usually did. Blue slept little that night. He stayed in a rocker on the roofed porch, even when a soft mountain drizzle enveloped the ranch, stayed in that battered chair, his revolver in hand, barring the door. Dawn arrived gray and cold and dripping, and Blue’s old bones ached from the chill.

  But Tammy was safe. That was all he could give her, some safety, and too little of that. In the gloomy dawn Blue threw harness of Steve’s dray, buckled it up, and hooked the dray to the spring wagon, all before he heard any stirring from the house.

  Tammy met him at the door.

  “I’ve told them,” she said. He entered, found them eating silently, sliced bread and preserves, and helped himself to some bread. It was a cold meal.

  Blue headed out, turned the livestock loose, opened the door of the henhouse, and set out scraps for the dogs. Tammy herded the children to the wagon.

  “Is that daddy?” Joey asked, examining the bundle.

  She nodded, settled into the seat, and collected the lines.

  Blue rode Steve’s ranch horse. So they abandoned paradise, which is how the Smiths had seen that ranch, and rode slowly for Centerville. Blue was alert and restless, knowing what a poor defense he could throw up against a man armed with a rifle and shotgun. Somewhere, Castle would be watching. Maybe he would even be amused to see Blue doing exactly what he had to do, getting Tammy to safety.

  But nothing happened. Blue figured nothing would. Castle would take his time. They reached Centerville late in the morning. So mournful was their passage down Center Street that people paused, stared, tried to fathom what lay within that blanketed bundle. At Maisie’s Café Blue halted, looking for Zeke, who emerged into the wan sunlight, studied the wagon, and motioned them toward the town hall and marshal’s office.

  “He’s dead, Zeke. Castle got him.”

  “Dead? Steve Cooper?”

  “Castle was just waiting his chance.”

  “What for, Blue?”

  “Ask Castle.”

  “Because I’m a Smith, and because he was my husband,” Tammy said. Zeke absorbed that. “She needs guarding, Zeke.”

  “She needs a lot more than that, Blue. I’ll look after her.”

  Blue left her there and took Steve to the cabinetmaker because there was no undertaker in Centerville.

  “I want a box, a good box, a proper damned box,” he said.

  “For Steve Cooper, sir, the best wood on my shelves, mahogany.”

  “Make it better than that,” Blue said. “Make it oak or walnut”

  An hour later, with Tammy safe in town, and the marshal looking after her, Blue started back to the ranch. Somewhere in that moist soil, there would be a trail and he would follow that trail to the end of the earth if he had to.

  Chapter 12

  Blue rode all the way out to the ranch again that bitter day, wearing out Steve Cooper’s horse. But there were others, and he had Tammy’s permission to outfit himself. He sat the horse half asleep as it plodded wearily home, needing no direction. Jack Castle wouldn’t expect Blue to start after him. Not yet. Not until after the funeral, not until after the grief. And that would be Castle’s first mistake.

  The Centerville marshal had swung into action, settled Tammy and her two children in the Hjortsberg Hotel, and set up a twenty-four-hour guard. Zeke said he would send a man out to the ranch to look after the stock and dogs. He would post a two hundred dollar reward for Castle, get it printed up by the Centerville Weekly Clarion, and nail it to every damned fence post in the county. The Coopers were well-liked people in Centerville, and Blue knew there would be help and comfort for Tammy. He felt bad about leaving her alone, especially during the funeral, but he did what he had to do, and that was what made him a lawman. He did the hard things, and his family knew it. He had to trust Zeke Dombrowski to look after her. Zeke spent most of his days playing poker, but what else was there for a town marshal to do in Centerville? Zeke was a good constable. One time he’d stopped a bank robbery and sent the whole lot manacled together for trial in Blankenship. Now he would spring into action.

  Blue had taken a moment to write Olivia a letter; it would reach Blankenship before he got back. He scraped out the words with a post office pen, hard words wrought from lumpy post office ink, angular letters dug into paper, and then he blotted up his writing and paid the two cents to the postal clerk in a wicket in the hardware store. Olivia would have someone, maybe Carl Barlow, read it to her and she would learn that the man Blue was after was Jack Castle, who had sat at her kitchen table many a time. Learn that her son-in-law had been shot dead and Tammy was in Centerville under guard. Hard news, scraped onto paper, read to her by someone who could see.

  Blue felt bad about it. She had been a sheriff’s wife for as long as he could remember, and she was tougher than he was. But this news would stagger her. He held back one bit of information, that their son, Absalom, was intending to visit Tammy and Steve and had kept the visit a secret from his parents.

  Now Blue was riding, now he was lawing again, tracking an outlaw, now he was the hunter, not the hunted, and he liked that. As he rode he chewed on the case, nipped at ideas, tried out theories like beaver felt hats, and nothing quite fit. So he would do what lawmen do, plod along, hunting, looking, waiting for the break. And that break might come soon, because Castle would be lounging around out there, not running, and that’s where that killer had underestimated Blue.

  The ranch lay somnolent in that peaceful time of day just before sundown. Blue paused, sharp-eyed, and studied the place, seeing nothing amiss. The horses grazed or stood motionless. Cattle dotted distant slopes. The low sun sinking in the northwest lit the eastern crags, tinting the high snow pack gold. The ranch buildings lay in lavender velvet. How much Steve and Tammy had loved this place. Blue loved it too.

  Blue unsaddled and turned Steve’s horse into the catch-pen. Not a bad mare. He’d done nothing but ride dead men’s horses for days. He missed Hector, a horse who knew what Blue was going to do before Blue did.

  Wearily he trudged to the dark ranch house, once the abode of fresh-baked bread, children’s laughter, dreams, struggle, achievement, and hearty hospitality. Even so, caution did not desert Blue, and he studied the windows, the darkened veranda, the surrounding shrubs, looking for the glint of steel. But he saw nothing.

  The porch echoed hollowly underfoot, and Blue pushed the creaking door open, swung to one side out of the door light, and waited. Only silence met him. He decided not to ignite a lamp; not to give away his presence. He planned to spend the night; he couldn’t do anything until morning, and then he would ride out Axe Canyon and pick up the trail. Blue headed for the hearth, wanting Steve’s rifle, an old Springfield rifled musket, a relic of the civil war, the only weapon Steve kept on the place. It would do. Blue had shot identical rifles during that war, knew how to load the waxed cartridges and cap the nipple, and shoot. Not very fast, those heavy old Springfields, but they had an advantage over the Henry or Winchester repeaters the cowboys were toting these days: range. And accuracy, too. Maybe one of those old cartridges would have Jack Castle’s name on it.

  But it would be a long and heavy piece of iron to haul in a saddle sheath.

  Blue filled a pocket of his duck canvas coat with cartridges and a small box of caps, and then ransacked the kitchen for grub. He was hungry, but first he wanted to put together a kit. A manhunt required some planning. He’d heard of a dozen sheriffs who’d raced off, hot on the heels of their quarry, only to be driven home again by hunger or cold or the want of bullets or some fool thing that a few moments of planning would have eliminated. He ransacked the pantry for corn, beans, and whatever might be handy on the trail. Two loaves of bread dough sat in their tin pans. They had risen and were awaiting the oven. But he would not bake them. He wolfed down the last of Tammy’s bread and pried open a can of
stewed tomatoes and downed that. In the spring house he found some milk and eggs, but decided not to cook eggs. That would make smoke. He shook the milk can until the cream was well blended, poured a glass of it, and sipped.

  In the last light of a hard day, he slid out to the pasture and slowly herded the horses toward the catch-pen. When they were in, he latched the gate and studied the night-hazed slopes, still alert for trouble, and then ghosted his way back to the dark ranch house. He would sleep if he could.

  Steve’s nondescript dogs crowded onto the porch, tails wagging, wanting to be fed, so Blue hunted for some scraps, found nothing, and settled for some beef hanging in the spring house.

  “There’ll be someone coming to care for you fellows,” he said, pitching a piece of beef to each of the three mutts.

  But he wondered what would come of this place. Sleep caught him swiftly; he had driven himself as far as a man could, and he knew nothing until dawn light awakened him. The house lay silent, and he wondered why he felt the imminence of trouble. He was feeling rested but sore. He wasn’t used to so much time on horseback, his legs split so wide apart. This day he would start hunting and he wouldn’t stop hunting until he had his man. He scraped the stubble off his cheeks, using cold water because no hot was in the stove reservoir, dressed, and stepped into the gray hush of the valley, the Springfield in hand. Blue stopped cold.

  A black dog hung by its heels from a cord tied to the porch roof. It had been gutted. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth, which was curled back in the rictus of death. Steve’s favorite dog, the one he called Muttonhead. So Jack Castle was still keeping an eye on him. Toying with him. Mocking him. Blue studied the ranch yard, looking for more trouble, but did not find it. It had taken great skill to do that: Kill a dog, keep the others from barking in the night, while Blue slept. Jack Castle had gifts beyond imagining. But he was showing off, and that could be his mistake. There would be fresh tracks inviting Blue to follow.