Cutthroat Gulch

by Richard S. Wheeler

  The next dawn Acting Sheriff Barlow appeared with two mules and an old saddle horse too. “Put the little ones on that,” he said, “long as you’re hauling them to their doom they may as well ride as walk.”

  Blue grunted.

  “Dammit Blue, you got three options up there: one is, Castle kills you before those tykes, right in front of their eyes. Two is, he kills all three of you, them poor little orphans too. Third is, you kill him right in front of them little ones, and they get to see a slaughter. What kind of sense is that? You’ll scar them for life. Leastwise, if you’re going to make bait of yourself, let me hide two, three men and myself there and we’ll shot that madman before he causes you more grief, the moment he slips into that little valley. The little ones, they won’t even know the difference.”

  “Lots of fat cutthroat waiting for my hook,” Blue said. ‘It’s sort of a private place, Carl.”

  Barlow stared. “You’re the most pig-headed man ever was put in office, and I hate the thought of attending your funeral because I’ll be mad at you.”

  “Well, that’s something for you to overcome, then.”

  Blue offered a hand, and Barlow shook it violently and stalked away. Light had barely seeped into the sky. Blue quietly loaded his packhorses with plenty of comforts, including a wall tent with some mosquito curtains for the children, and tins of corned beef. He didn’t want to come all the way back to Blankenship because he had forgotten something. He stuffed his shotgun into the saddle sheath, wrapped his holster belt around his expanding middle, and pinned the badge to his shirt, poking it through the same old holes so as not to wreck the old shirt more. He usually didn’t bother to wear it when he was fishing, but this time he rubbed the brass on his shirt to shine it up, and put it on over his heart.

  He found a bag of horehound candy, and some ginger snaps, and added those to his kit. Olivia kept a few confections for company, and now Blue had company.

  By seven he was ready. He hustled the silent children through some oatmeal gruel, cleaned up the kitchen, and hoisted them onto the back of that swaybacked old saddler, which turned to look at the load on its back, and yawned. The hush of morning still lay over Blankenship. Dew beaded the grass. The first wood smoke of dawn perfumed the air.

  “Guess we’re going fishing now,” he said.

  Chapter 30

  Sarah snuggled into Blue’s generous lap as he steered the roan up the old trail. His big hand pressed her close and gave her what comfort a hand could give. Behind him, Joey rode the old swayback saddler, and the two pack mules trailed along at the rear. Sarah’s eyes were like Tammy’s, dark and elliptical, and her frank unblinking gaze was like her mother’s too. But now the girl lived behind eyelids squeezed tight, the inner world safer than the real one. Joey was blonder, more like Steve Cooper had been, and seemed even more vulnerable than Sarah, because he was at an age when he blotted up everything and ignored nothing. Blue could scarcely remember how it was to be so young. They left the flatlands just as the July heat began to build, and plunged into cool pine forest that breathed the fragrance of the eternal wilderness into the air. Sometimes Sarah squirmed, and Blue realized she was burrowing even deeper into his arms, as if she could not get enough of the thing she craved. He listened to the clop of mule hoof on the clay, and the occasional snort and wheeze as his four-footed transport conveyed his small family into the wilds. He heard nothing else, nor was he paying close attention to the dangers that might lie ahead. This was a day for fishing.

  The children knew he would care for them. That was a start. But there was a great hole in their lives now that he could not fill; only a mother could do that. He could give them Mother Nature as a solace, but he was at a loss for words. In times past he might have told them that life is hard, and to be strong. Now he couldn’t think of a thing that would help. Absalom would have known what to say, but when it came to comforting someone very small Blue felt as helpless with words as he would have felt wandering the streets of Denver surrounded by all those city sharpers.

  They topped the forest divide, and soon he was peering down into the green meadows of his fishing hole. “Pretty soon now,” he said.

  “Is that man coming?” Joey asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you gonna die?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Are we gonna die?”

  “Not now; not until you’re old and ready.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do. What you need to watch out for is black bears. They like to pick berries this time of year, and they don’t like people around. Sometimes they come to fish in my fishing hole.”

  “I don’t want to see a bear,” Sarah said.

  He led his entourage down the long grade to the meadow, and then out upon the shivering grasses. He glanced swiftly at the place near his favorite perch were he had found the stranger’s body. The grasses had grown there, and nothing remained to remind him of life lost.

  The river ran mysterious and swift at the hole, pausing on its plunge down to the low country, harboring its secrets.

  “We’ll make a camp now,” he said, easing Sarah off his lap and handing her down to the ground. Joey slid off his old horse.

  “Here, grandpa?” he said, pointing to an open but shaded hollow. “That’s a pretty good spot. It’s shady and not hot. But I thought I’d teach you a few things,” Blue said. “Now is that a good place if it rains?”

  Joey stared. “I guess not,” he said. “It would get full of water.”

  “I reckon it would, son,” Blue said.

  Blue dismounted slowly, feeling his years in his legs, and stretched. He tied the mules and horses to a picket line and surveyed the dark and mysterious fishing hole. “There’s fighters in there, Joey, big trout that will give you a tussle. I’ll rig you a pole and a line after a bit.”

  He unloaded the packs and unsaddled the horses and put them out on grass. “When can I go home?” Sarah asked.

  “We’ll make a little home here in a tent,” Blue said.

  “Will it have a mommy?”

  “You’ll be the mommy.”

  “Mommies go away.”

  “I guess they do, sometimes. But most don’t go away. You’ll be a fine mommy, and some day you’ll have boys and girls of your own.”

  “If a man doesn’t come,” she said.

  He dug into a pannier and pulled out the wall tent. He fashioned a ridgepole from a sapling and lashed it between two trees, and then cut tent stakes with his hatchet. An hour later, he ushered his charges into it. “Here you are now. There’s more to do; ditch it so the water drains away.”

  “Will it keep the bad man out?” Sarah asked.

  “It won’t but you will,” he replied. “If you tell the bad man to leave you alone, he will.”

  It took a long time to set up a real camp. Usually his fishing trips started before dawn and ended up at Blankenship by dusk. But this time he was there to stay.

  He hoisted the panniers with his foodstuffs high above ground, built a fire pit and lined it with rock, unrolled the bedding and let it air, sawed brown grass for the mattresses and spread it inside, and then reverently unpacked his fishing gear. His pole, which could be stored in segments and screwed together, resided in a tubular case, along with his reel. He had a canvas vest stuffed with flies, spare line, hooks, weights, and wire leaders. He eyed the heavens; it was too early for fishing, so he cut a slim willow wand, trimmed it, and turned it into a fishing pole for Sarah. For Joey he manufactured a larger rod from an aspen branch, tied a line to it, and a bob and leader and fishhook to the business end.

  “The man is coming, isn’t he?” Sarah said.

  “Maybe not for a while.”

  “He’s coming.” She rubbed her eyes.

  “Sarah, Sarah...” he said. She covered her eyes and peered through the slits between her fingers. Why couldn’t he think of what to say?

  He assembled his own rod, hooked a brown fly
and a small weight to the line, and then stepped to the place where he loved to peer down into the water, where the sun shafted deep into the crystal pool and sometimes he could see the dark forms gliding near the bottom.

  This wasn’t a good time to fish, and his shadow fell on the water anyway, but it might be a time to whip his line outward, to show two children what grace might exist in the swift sweet cast, and to show them that their grandpa was not treading the earth in terror. One could live for the perfect cast, the gyrating line that settled the fly right where he wanted it to rest, where the quiet breezes of high summer cooled his flesh and swept calm into them all. He patrolled the bank of the hole until he found a low point, and then cast from the bank. He never fished standing in the water; he could not afford those English India rubber boots, which sprung leaks every ten minutes.

  He gauged the wind, whipped his long line back and forth, arcing it farther and farther, and then let it sail out upon the pool and settle there. The fly touched the icy current, quivered in the embrace of the water, and drifted slowly downstream, untouched and unwanted by the cutthroats below. That was life. Joey watched solemnly. Sarah had taken to the tent and curled up in her bed. “It’s the wrong time of day, Joey. The trout don’t feed in the middle of the afternoon. They aren’t hungry. They don’t trust the shadows we cast on the water. Half the time they don’t like the flies I hook to the line, either, and then I have to try something else. But I’m showing you how to do it. How to nail those big fat fish just watching us from down there, their fisheye never closing, their caution controlling everything they do.”

  “How come you aren’t watching for the man?”

  “Because I don’t need to, Joey. Now pay attention.”

  Blue watched a fishing bird dive upstream. His eyes failed him and he could not tell what it was, an osprey, or hawk, or kingfisher. He dreaded eyeglasses. He already had a pair to read with, but he was damned if he’d buy another pair just to look at birds.

  The fly drifted toward the lower lip of the pool, just above the place where the river broke into rills and tumbled around gray boulders coated with orange scale. That’s when the cutthroat bit. Blue saw only a flickering around the fly, then a tiny pop and miniature waves radiating in a circle, but the fly vanished and the line spun downward. Surprised, Blue tugged sharply, set the hook, and let the trout have its run. The line rolled out of his reel, spun down the eyes of the rod, quivered tautly into the water, and plowed back and forth, left and right, up and down. Blue was astonished. He hadn’t expected to hook a fish in the middle of the day, while the sun glared down and he and Joey threw shadows onto that mysterious water. This trout never broke water. It circled the bottom of that pool, headed for corners, reeled out the line, quit now and then and let itself be drawn close before bolting. Blue let him run; a fish with that much muscle could snap the line. “He’s big,” said Joey.

  “I know he’s strong,” Blue said.

  “I don’t want him to be caught.”

  Blue eyed the boy sharply. “Why?”

  “Just because.”

  “Because we’ll catch him for dinner?”

  “Because he’s trying to live.”

  Blue almost snapped an answer he would have regretted. Absalom had once expressed the same wish, that the fish deserved to live, and Blue had heckled the boy and called him a sissy. Maybe there was something to learn now. Maybe even a man in advanced years could learn something.

  “He’s putting up a good fight, Joey.”

  “Why do we have to eat him then?”

  “We don’t. I’ll catch fish for myself and Sarah, but you don’t have to eat them... Lots of animals fish. Bears fish. They’re very good at it. Did you know that?”

  “Bears do?”

  “Yes, fish are important in their diet. Birds fish too. Eagles, hawks, kingfishers, they’re all good fishers. Lots of waterfowl eat minnows. And fish eat bugs and worms and lots of living things themselves.”

  “Yeah, they do,” Joey said.

  The cutthroat was tiring at last, and Blue slowly reeled him in. He could see the flash of silver now as the fish zigzagged through the dark waters. “Do you want me to let him go, Joey? I promised I would.”

  The boy nodded. Blue reeled in the fish and slid his net under it. It was a fine three-pounder.

  “All right,” he said, and set the net on the bank. The fish’s gills heaved hard.

  Blue clumsily undid the hook, which had embedded into the trout’s jaw. “Joey, pick him up now and slide him in.”

  Joey did. The trout lay on its side a moment, and Blue thought it might die. But then it flipped its powerful tail lazily, and sank into oblivion. “He’s a good fish,” Joey said. “I will call him Silver.”

  “Silver he is,” Blue said. “If we catch him again, I’ll let him go.”

  Chapter 31

  Some evenings the balsamic scents of the uplands drifted down on the breezes. Other nights the moist earth lifted its own pungency into the valley. Blue built cheerful campfires each evening to throw the darkness back from whence it came. When the wind wasn’t blowing, smoke sometimes hung in the valley for hours.

  He taught the children to fish, using nothing more than poles whittled from sticks, with a hook and line attached to them. Joey crept to the river’s edge where the water ran quiet and deep, and cast his offering upon the dark water, and often as not caught a trout. Sarah paid less attention, but even she caught a few fish, usually when Blue was guiding her, showing her how to whip her little line into a likely corner. She needed her mother and was more fearful than Joey, who came to regard his life in the fishing camp as an adventure. But in the quiet moments, often when a lavender light settled upon their aerie, Blue could read the fear in their faces as night settled. He could not blame them.

  Every other day one of Carl Barlow’s volunteers rode in, sometimes with beef or tins of food, and always with news. Blue didn’t mind. Let them look after him and the children. Each time a deputy rode down the trail and into the flat, the man peered about sharply, half expecting to find a slaughter. But it didn’t happen. Something would. Blue knew that. But meanwhile there were things needing his care, and none more than nurturing the little ones in his charge. He had never done such a thing, hardly knew anything about rearing a child, and now these matters were thrust upon him. His plan was to do as little rearing as possible. Days fishing and hiking and boiling up meals or frying food in a skillet or Dutch oven was an occupation in itself. But Sarah especially had not forgotten. “Is the man coming now?” she asked each day.

  “Sometime, probably,” Blue said. He would not tell her otherwise. He would not betray her.

  Then one day Jack Castle did arrive, riding casually across the meadow, down from the trail that vaulted up to that divide, riding Absalom’s good stock horse, riding armed and confident, for the killer had long since ascertained with his spyglass that Blue wore no weapon at all, set his holster and belt to rest within the tent. So there was the man. Sarah squeaked a small warning and curled into a ball. Joey sat darkly, refusing to move. Blue stood slowly, set aside his rod and reel, and waited. In a moment he would know whether Jack Castle was beyond restraint like a rabid animal, or whether some shred of humanity remained in him.

  Castle made a handsome sight, sitting the horse as if he were born there, owning the world around him, controlling all creatures great and small, as if even the sparrows heeded his every wish. But there was about him a knife-edged sharpness as he rode in, a gaze that swept everything and weighed everything, so that no sparrow avoided his attention.

  The children found Blue’s big hands and clung to them. Castle rode close, his stare missing nothing. His gaze settled on a string of fresh-caught trout that Blue was about to gut and fry. “I’m in time for supper,” Castle said.

  Blue nodded. “Of course I don’t quite measure up. The Smiths are too good for the likes of me. Aren’t they?”

  “You’ve answered your own question,” Blue said.
<
br />   “You going to invite me to light and sit? Sociable?”

  “You will invite yourself, I’m sure.”

  “You’re a good man with trout, Blue. Fry some for me. We’ll have us a reunion. Just like old times.”

  Castle slid easily from Absalom’s horse and stretched. “Nice horse,” he said. “Replaces those you took. Evens it up, don’t you think?”

  Castle walked catlike around the camp, ending at the tent, where he plucked up Blue’s old Navy revolver, and at Blue’s saddle, where he extracted Blue’s battered shotgun. He smiled brightly. “Now it’s more sociable, don’t you think, just between us old neighbors?”

  Blue felt the terror of the children as they clung to his hands. “Come here, Jack,” he said, standing up.

  Castle weighed that, looking for a snare in it, and finally approached. “I want you to meet Joey and Sarah Cooper, Tammy’s children,” he said. “Fine sprouts they are. Joey’s a fine horseman and Tammy’s got the sweetest smile in all the world. Just think, Jack, they might have been yours.”

  Castle’s calm vanished. “But they weren’t.”

  “That’s right. And never will be. You had the chance.”

  “Start cooking, Blue.”

  But Blue didn’t. “Joey, Sarah, this is Jack Castle. We have known him since he was a boy your age. We thought of him almost as a son, and many a time he had trout at our table, with his friends the Smiths.”

  Joey’s lips trembled. Sarah blinked back her fear and clung all the more to Blue’s hands. Gently, he settled her on the grass and looked to the cooking.

  Blue built the fire and continued to fillet the trout with a sharp knife while Castle watched.

  “It is good for little ones to learn civility,” Blue said. “We’ll welcome you to our table once again. And perhaps Joey here, and Sarah, will grow up with manners.”

  Castle laughed. Blue studied him briefly, and returned to his labor. He set the blackened skillet next to the Dutch oven over the flame, which flickered inside a rock-lined firepit.