Blood on the Hills

by Matt Chisholm

  He tried to think ... maybe they’d hung him and then toted the body away so there would be no evidence. Surely, there was no other answer.

  But there was.

  He heard a sound, faint, somehow pathetic.

  He went forward, deeper into the moon-shadow of the great oak. His boot caught on something and he nearly fell. Steadying himself, he felt down and found the body of a man. He seized the fellow by his shoulders and dragged him out into the moonlight. The soft rays touched the face of a middle-aged man. A middle-aged man with a bullet-hole through his temple. The same man who had been at the adobe with Bret and Olly.

  But this wasn’t the man who had groaned.

  Jody stood up and walked back under the tree.

  “Where you at?” Jody called.

  No answer. Only a dry rustling of the leaves above him in the evening breeze. Jody called again. This time, he received a faint reply. He headed for it and found the man lying on the far side of the tree in the moonlight.

  It was Olly.

  Jody knelt beside him.

  “Where’d you get it?” he asked.

  “Ankle. Bone’s all smashed up.” The man drew in a sobbing breath that carried the message of intense pain. “It hurts like Hell.” He gripped Jody’s arm.

  “What happened?”

  “They jumped us an’ took Shawn. Christ, I should of known this could happen. But we was all excited. You know how it gets. They rode in shootin’. God knows how many they hit.”

  “There’s an old gentleman yonder with a bullet through his head.”

  “That’s Rollins. Poor bastard.”

  “I’m goin’ to tie that foot up so it don’t hang, then I’ll get you on the horse.”

  The grip on his arm tightened.

  “Leave me lie,” the man said. “The ankle’s all smashed up, I tell you. I’ll never ride again.”

  Jody didn’t pay him any heed. He found the man’s knife and cut away the boot. He did this tenderly and with enormous care, but just the same he hurt the man. He could hear Olly grinding his teeth together. He reckoned this fellow wasn’t a bad man, just a damn fool. And God knew there were plenty of those around and a man shouldn’t condemn for it. A natural state for humanity.

  The thought surprised him. Maybe he was growing up after all.

  He unknotted the man’s bandanna and made a figure of eight bandage like he’s seen his mother make for a rider who had bust his ankle.

  “How’s that?” he asked, but Olly had sunk into a merciful unconsciousness.

  Lifting the fellow was no easy task. Jody was bushed and the man was heavy, but he managed to get him across one shoulder and stagger to the horse. He draped Olly across the saddle and climbed aboard behind. He went slowly back to town, taking it easy in case he should do further damage to the injured ankle.

  Once more back in among the folks on the streets, the questions flew, but he didn’t answer any of them. For once in his life, he was beyond words. There was too much going on inside his skull, too much had happened in the last few days. He had been caught up in a whirl of action that had left him stunned.

  When he reached the sheriff’s office the place was crowded with men. They turned to watch him as he toted Olly in over one shoulder.

  “What happened, boy?” an oldster asked.

  “He tripped and fell,” Jody snapped, walked through them into the cell block and lowered Olly carefully onto a truckle bed.

  Back in the office, he looked around. Charlie was sitting with his back to the wall, his head lolling. He looked terrible, but he was conscious. Jody turned and saw Consuelo with Froud. At least he had one ally left. He turned again and saw the mayor in front of him.

  “Young man,” the mayor said, “the situation is out of hand. We must send word to the governor.”

  “The situation is not out of hand, Mr. Mayor,” said Jody. “Your town needs tidyin’ up, is all. Some of your respected citizens bust a killer outa jail to hang him. Just what his friends were waitin’ for. They jumped the hangin’ bee. Shawn’s free. But he ain’t a-goin’ to stay free long.”

  “You mean you know who helped him to escape?”

  “Sure, I know.”

  “Then you must arrest him. This minute.”

  “Not right this minute, sir,” Jody said. “My office is all cluttered up. I have my charges to make up, I just arrested a man.”

  You don’t mean Olly?” a man said.

  “That’s who I mean.”

  “Why, you can’t “

  “Mister, I just did. Now clear outa here or they’ll be some more filled cells in there.”

  A man over by the door said: “Stand back, fellers.”

  Jody looked in his direction and saw that he held a rifle in his hands. It was pointed at Jody’s belly. That gave him an unpleasant sensation.

  The man was tall and he had a long sad face. He said: “Olly’s a friend of ours. You ain’t takin’ him in for nothin’.”

  “Yes, indeed, Storm,” cried the mayor. “It is unthinkable to arrest a man as respected as Olly. He must be released at once. The county commissioners—”

  “First,” Jody said, “this is a county matter. You don’t come into this, mayor. Second, the commissioners approve an elected sheriff. They don’t have nothin’ to do with the law. They’d best stay off my back.”

  “Big talk,” said the tall man by the door. “But I’m holdin’ the rifle.”

  A voice said: “Put away that gun, Smith, or I blow your fool head off.”

  They all turned.

  White as the pillow he rested his head on, Froud held a gun in his hand.

  The man at the door lowered the rifle. He just said: “Froud.” The sheriff lay almost helpless on his bed, but there was still respect and awe for him.

  Froud said softly: “I just saved your life, Smith. You know that?” They all looked at Jody. “That boy can draw a gun before you can pull a trigger. That’s why I hired him.”

  Which was a lie if Jody had ever heard one. But maybe Froud wasn’t doing him any harm. Running this office alone, such a reputation might be a help.

  He said, politely: “If you step outside, gentlemen, I’ll start work.”

  The mayor ventured: “I don’t like the way things’re going, sheriff. No, sir, I can’t say I do.”

  “Me neither, Mayor,” Froud said. “Goodnight to you.”

  They went. Jody shut the door behind them and slipped the bar into its bracket.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “that feller in the cell yonder has been hit in the ankle by a bullet. You think you can handle that?”

  Consuelo looked at Froud.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  When she had gone into the cell block, Froud closed his eyes. Jody walked over to the bed.

  “How do you feel, Froud?” he asked.

  Without opening his eyes, the sheriff said: “I’m too goddamn ornery to die if’n that’s what’s frettin’ you.”

  Charlie said: “Don’t worry about me nobody. I on’y had my skull bust in. I’m just a stove-in ole cowhand nobody don’t give a damn about.”

  “Aw, shet up, Charlie,” Froud said, “you give me a pain in the ass.”

  “That’s real gratitude an’ what I’d expect from you.”

  Jody rode out to the adobe. There was just a chance that Bret would still be there and he wanted him behind bars. But the place was deserted. He made a thorough search of it, but didn’t find much that helped. He rode Bret’s horse back into town and started searching the saloons for the men he wanted, the men who had been in the adobe. But he found none of them. All right, he told himself, they could wait. He’d get them soon or late. Now he had to settle down to a search for Shawn. He could be anywhere, even across the Border into Mexico. He didn’t care where he was, he promised himself. Shawn was going to find himself back in that cell.

  He went to the Rest. There were four men eating in the dining-room and they were being served by a Chinese.

  He
knew Shafter wasn’t in the saloon because he had already searched it when looking for the men at the adobe. He walked out past the bar and down the long corridor into Shafter’s office. The man was sitting at his desk, back to the door, writing. He finished what he was writing and turned slowly.

  A look of surprise and pleasure spread slowly over his face.

  “Why, Mr. Storm, welcome,” he cried. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  Jody turned a high-backed chair and sat on it backward, leaning on the wood.

  “I’ve come for the hundred advance, Mr. Shafter,” he said.

  “Aw, say, I’m real sorry about that,” Shafter said. “I changed my mind. It don’t pay to break the law. You could call it conversion. I seen the error of my ways.”

  “I seen the error of mine, too,” Jody said. “I been too nice. I ain’t aimin’ to be nice no more. Now, you tell me where you have Shawn hid an’ we’ll forget all about it.”

  “Shawn?” cried Shafter in amazement. “Hid? You crazy or something, young man? Shawn’s in jail.”

  “No, sir,” Jody said. “Shawn ain’t in jail. He was busted out for a hangin’ bee. Then the local enthusiasts was jumped by Shawn’s friends. My, you had a lotta luck, Mr. Shafter.”

  “I am amazed,” said Mr. Shafter spreading his hands. “I am purely and unadulterately amazed, Mr. Storm. I do not know what you are talking about.”

  “Where you been all evenin’?”

  “Right here. I had a whole lot of book work to catch up on. A dozen witnesses.”

  “An’ your daughter?”

  Shafter’s surprise was genuine now.

  “Lou? Why, she’s been in her room all evening. That I’ll swear. She had one of those headaches of hers and she made it to bed early.”

  “She got over that headache, Mr. Shafter,” Jody told him. “She walked with me in the moonlight, right through the timber down to the crick. It was sure romantic. Until she pulled my own gun on me an’ I was trussed up by a whole passel of local boys.”

  Shafter whirled around his revolving chair and pointed a finger at Jody.

  “I hate to say this, Mr. Storm,” he declared. “I swear I hate to say it, sir, but you, sir, are a goddam liar, sir.”

  Jody stood up.

  “I could save you if you talked, Mr. Shafter,” he said. “There’s at least one dead man and Olly’s shot bad. Bret is walking around some place with a busted skull, I shouldn’t wonder. Mr. Shafter, you’d best come up with an answer by dawn or I’m goin’ to put you in that jail.”

  “There’s nothing against me.”

  “Froud’ll think of somethin’.”

  He walked out.

  On the sidewalk, he stopped and thought—Where the hell to start?

  He tramped back to the office and talked with Froud, telling him everything. The sheriff seemed untroubled.

  “Son,” he said with unusual gentleness, “what you need is a good night’s sleep. Go ahead now. Forget about it for a few hours.”

  “If I wasn’t suckered...”

  “Soon or late we all git suckered. You ain’t no exception.”

  He walked into the cells and found Olly conscious. Consuelo had made a good job of his ankle. Olly said she reckoned the bone wasn’t broken. She’d removed a piece of lead. It hurt, but the man was easier in his mind.

  Jody sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You been a damn fool, Olly,” he said.

  “I know it.”

  “Make some good of it. Tell me if you knew any of the men that jumped you.”

  He shook his head—”They had their faces covered. I didn’t see much a-tall. They come in so fast. Dropped on us like damn Indians.”

  Jody gave up and lay down on a cell bed and almost instantly fell asleep. His last thought was: Maybe Bret came to let me free after the fight. Maybe I owe him something, doing that when he was hurt.

  Chapter Twelve

  Daylight didn’t bring any solutions to the situation. Jody awoke depressed and worried, added to which he was stiff from his being tied up and from the subsequent fight with Bret. As if this were not enough, he had a skull-splitting headache. Hot coffee, bacon and beans served by Consuelo helped matters a little. Froud, propped up against his pillows and looking as pale as death, took a little broth that the woman made for him. Jody didn’t like the look of him at all. Only the shadow of the irascible Froud seemed to be lying there on the bed. In a word aside to Consuelo, Jody voiced his worry for the sheriff and, though she tried some brave and hopeful words, he knew that she shared his doubts. He asked her what chance there was of getting another doctor. She said that there was a good one in Tucson, but that would entail a four-day ride there and back and she knew he would not come. Beside that, the hiring of the man for such a time would take more money than they could raise between them. She knew that Froud had little money. It was all sunk in land and he would literally rather risk dying than sell that. She had already raised the subject and managed only to anger him.

  Charlie too looked pretty sick and Jody knew it was only the iron will of the man that pushed him to his feet. He moved about the office, morose and silent. When he had eaten breakfast, Jody beckoned Charlie into the cell area and spoke to him in a low voice: “I have to get a lead on Shawn. Maybe Shafter knows something, maybe not. But he ain’t sayin’. So I ride out to the hangin’ tree. There’s sign out there an’ I’m better in the open in a town like this.”

  The deputy gave him a lugubrious stare.

  “You have as much chance of catchin’ Shawn as I have of ridin’ again,” he said.

  Jody told him: “That’s what I like about you, Charlie. You’re real encouraging.”

  He heard a small sound. From the other side of the office.

  “We have Olly in here. Maybe his friends want him free. Takin’ Shawn maybe got ‘em set in their ways. I couldn’t hold a doll’s house, let alone this place.” He held out a shaking hand. “Look at that.”

  Jody walked into the office, picked up Charlie’s shotgun and thrust it into his hands. “If you can miss with this thing, you’re a better man than me.”

  Charlie gave a twisted grin.

  “Go ahead. How long you reckon to be gone?”

  “Depends on the sign. If it gives out on me, no more’n a coupla hours maybe. If I hit lucky, why I could be gone days.”

  “You’ll need supplies. You want any cash?”

  “I’m all right.”

  Jody looked at Froud. The sheriff was asleep. Jody smiled at Consuelo and she smiled back. Charlie said: “Luck an’ look out for yourself. Shawn’d back-shoot you soon as look at you.”

  Jody lifted a hand to him and the woman and walked out. At the livery, he saddled his horse and borrowed a pack-saddle for the spare horse. He was going out prepared for anything. He rode to a store on Main to openly buy supplies. It was no good to be secretive, he thought, the whole town would know he was leaving.

  The storekeeper was a little man with the twitchy face of a rabbit and the unblinking stare of a snake. Where was the deputy-sheriff headed? Jody told him he was going to find Shawn and bring him back. Wasn’t that a tall order? Jody didn’t see that. Him and Froud together had cut six bandits down to size. No, he’d come back with Shawn, all right. He started to read his list of supplies.

  Loading the horse outside on the street, he looked toward the Traveler’s Rest. Lou was standing outside on the sidewalk dressed in a pale green dress and a white apron. She looked nice. She looked worried by the sight of him and uncertain. He grinned at her and raised his hand. Tentatively, she smiled and waved back. He’d bet her old man had given her hell for last night. He wondered just what she had against Shawn. He wondered just as much about Shafter’s interest in the man.

  When he reached the hanging tree, he found that the dead man had been removed and that the tracks of the townsmen who had fetched him were all mixed up in a complete confusion of sign made by the men who had taken Shawn from the jail and those who had
jumped them when it came to hanging time. Jody knew he would never be able to sort that lot out. He started a wide circle of the area, starting in the east and circling north and west, walking his horses slowly and looking over the ground with great care. He started to feel better now that he was in the open and on the back of a horse. He reckoned he hadn’t been born to live in a town. If he lived through the days ahead, he’d hire himself out to a cowman, save his pay and start him a herd of his own.

  He came on the tracks of two horsemen going north. They had been traveling fast. Maybe they continued on north, maybe they turned off further on. They might even turn back for town. But that accounted to a limited extent only for two and there had been a sight more than that in the pro-Shawn party.

  He continued his circle and sure enough he came on the tracks of two horses going north-west. They too had been running hard. It looked like the attacking party had split up into pairs. He continued his circle and came on the tracks of two riders headed directly west. He halted. He reckoned if he continued, he would find yet more tracks of a pair of riders. A choice had to be made. He could circle town and try to pick up returning tracks to find if any had returned to Dufane. But there could be many men unconnected with the raid who had ridden into town from different directions. Cowhands and farmers might well ignore the well-marked trails.

  He decided, as he was ignorant of any useful facts that he might as well strike out along the sign handiest to him. So he turned west. He didn’t hurry. If and when he met up with the two men he was following, he would do so with two horses that had some run left in them. The sun grew insufferably hot and the horses plodded on. Now and then he lifted them into a swinging trot, every hour or so he dismounted and walked, partly to save the saddle horse, partly to loosen up his own still stiff muscles. He felt very much alone in a world of vast vistas, nothing more than a minute dot on a great plain between the blue lines of the sierras.

  By noon, the intense heat had almost sapped all the determination to go ahead from Jody. There was no cover to protect him from the sun while he rested, so he unsaddled the horses to allow them to roll and then lay in their shadows for an hour. After this, he felt a little better, saddled up and went slowly on. While he did not want to hurry and tire his animals, he knew that he must cover as much ground as possible in daylight. Out here in the open country there was no means by which he could predict the direction of the men he was following, so there was no way of taking a short cut. While they could travel on through the cool of the night under cover of darkness, if their horses held out, he could only move during daylight by which he could read sign. The men ahead of him had all the advantages. Just the same, he was determined that he would keep on going until either the sign ran out or he met up with them.