by Ralph Cotton
“Then he must’ve been a sheriff,” Harper cut in.
Mackenzie and Brewer gave each other a look. “When I left Thorpe,” said Mackenzie, “he was awake and knew what was going on around him. I expect if he smelled even a whiff of trouble he skinned out of there.”
“But we don’t know that, do we?” Brewer asked.
“That’s right, we don’t,” said Mackenzie. “I told him to head for the cabin up around Marble Canyon. If he doesn’t show up there in a few days . . .” He let his words trail.
Brewer gave him a firm look. “Then we’ll be bound to go to Creasy and start looking for him from there. Wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s right, we will,” said Mackenzie, returning the look. “Every one of us is innocent of any wrongdoing. The only way any one of us gets freed of this is if we all get freed from it.”
“That sounds right to me,” said Brewer. The two nodded at each other, then turned to Harper. “What do you say, Tadpole?” Mackenzie asked.
“Right as rain,” said Harper. He picked up the reins to Mackenzie’s horse and handed them to him. “Are you able to make your saddle left-handed?” he asked Mackenzie with a slight grin.
“Stand back and watch me,” said the tired, wounded trail boss.
“It’s near a two days’ ride to Clel Davis’ cabin,” said Brewer, stepping up into his saddle beside Mackenzie’s horse.
“A hard ride at that,” Harper added, stepping up into his saddle as well and pulling his white-faced roan back a step. “Are you going to need that shoulder looked at?”
“I’ve looked at it,” said Mackenzie.
“Oh, are you a doctor now?” Brewer asked in a gigging manner.
“No, but I watched the doctor’s daughter take care of Thorpe,” said Mackenzie. “I believe I’ve got the hang of it.”
“Mac’s got the hang of taking care of bullet wounds, Tadpole,” said Brewer, nudging his brown-speckled barb forward beside Mackenzie’s claybank dun. “What do you think of that?”
Harper gave the young but senior trail hands the lead and nudged his horse along behind them. “Mac’s the boss,” he said. “Whatever he says is jake with me.”
Evening had drawn long shadows across the high trails when Stanton Parks stepped down from his saddle and led his horse to the stream. Following the same hoofprints he’d trailed throughout the day, he watched a coyote raise its muzzle and slink away as he approached. At the spot where the coyote had stood, he looked down at the blackened bloodstains the coyote had been licking.
Parks grinned to himself and said under his breath, “I hope I find you bled out and dead, you cowpoking son of a bitch.”
Looking all around at the boot- and hoofprints joining Mackenzie’s from across the stream, Parks rubbed his boot toe back and forth in the dirt and said, “That’s good, get all of my money bunched up to where I can take it back at once.”
He turned and mounted and rode on, still following the tracks that had now grown from one single wounded rider to three, two of them well armed and capable. But Parks didn’t care. These were drovers, he reminded himself, not outlaws, not thieves and killers—not men like himself, he thought. Once he got them all rounded up, he would take what was his without any trouble.
True, the young trail boss had gotten the best of him back in Creasy, he thought, rubbing his battered face with a gloved hand. But that had been only a lucky fluke on the drover’s part. He had to admit he’d underestimated the man’s speed and cunning. But that was a lesson learned that he would not have to learn again.
“You’re dead when I get my hands on you,” he growled, recalling the incident as he’d slowed for a moment to look down at the three sets of tracks. Then he batted his heels sharply to his horse’s sides and rode on.
As the last thin mantle of red sunlight sank below the distant horizon and darkness descended behind it, he sat his horse atop a ridge and stared down at a narrow clearing. Thirty yards below him, out in front of a small log and plank shack, a shaggy dog barked threateningly at his shadowy silhouetted presence. The animal lunged wildly on the end of a chain secured around a hitch post.
Parks stared stone-faced as a man stepped from the shack pulling his galluses up over his ragged upper long johns. “Down, Tip!” the man commanded, staring up along the cliff line toward Parks. But the big shaggy dog would have none of it. Finally, the man reached over and kicked the dog soundly with his bare foot. The dog yelped and settled a little, but still strained against the chain and kept a low growl rumbling in its chest.
“Who goes up there?” the man called out, holding up a lit lantern that gave him no assistance, yet provided Parks with a good clear shot had he wanted to take it.
Bang! Parks stared for only a moment, reminding himself how easy it would be. Then he called out, “I’m Sheriff Mandrin, from south of here.”
“Oh, a sheriff . . .” The man’s face look relieved in the dim lantern light. “Welcome, Sheriff, ride on down. Let my woman pour you a cup of coffee and get you a plate of grub, if you ain’t et.”
This was too easy. . . . Parks nudged the animal forward and down a steep cutbank, leaning far back in his saddle until the horse found level ground and walked on toward the front porch of the shack.
Seeing the badge on Parks’ chest in the lantern light, the man said, “I reckon you’d be the first to chastise me, Sheriff, for stepping out unarmed in the dark of night.” He swung an arm toward the front door that stood open a crack. “But the fact is, my woman stands there with a shotgun.” His eyes stayed on the badge. “It would be pointed at you right now, were you not a lawman come calling.”
“The hell you say,” Parks grumbled, seeing the thin dark outline in the opened crack of the door. To the man he said, “That’s wise thinking on your part, friend.” This damned fool. . . . “If more folks were cautious like you, I’d spend less time burying innocent victims, and more time pursuing the lawless . . . which is what I’m now doing.” He stopped his horse as the man gathered the dog’s chain and held the animal near his side.
“I’m Baines Taylor,” the man said. He gave the dog another poke with his bare toes to settle its menacing growl. “This is my woman, Laura Bird Taylor.” The door opened a little farther and a thin woman stepped out wearing a long shapeless linen housedress. She held a shotgun out of sight behind the door. “Laura Bird can’t speak a word, but she’ll shoot a man in half, the least word from me.”
“There’s an admirable trait in a woman. Evening, the both of yas,” said Parks with an air of authority, touching the brim of his hat. “I’m Sheriff Fred Mandrin.” Swinging down from his saddle, a rifle in hand, he stretched and said, “As a lawman I hope I can impose on your hospitality for a night’s rest in a bed. This hard ground is taking me apart.”
“Evening to you as well, Sheriff Mandrin,” said Taylor. “I’ll just hold ole Tip here whiles you step inside. It’s not like to him to carry on in such a manner toward a stranger.”
“I’m afraid it’s me,” said Parks, stepping onto the porch and over to the door as it swung open to accommodate him. “Dogs smell the evil that I have to handle, day in and day out. It’s part of the cross I bear for upholding the law.”
“Well, Sheriff Mandrin, I for one don’t know what we’d do without the law,” said Taylor, stepping inside the shack behind him, trimming the lantern down and handing it to the woman.
“Obliged for you saying so,” said Parks, looking all around the shack. He reached a hand out to the woman and said, “Give me that shotgun, little lady. You can both relax . . . you’ll be under my protection tonight.”
The woman handed the shotgun to him with a thin hand. Parks stared into her dark eyes for a moment, then looked down at her small breasts behind the linen housedress, and down at her bare feet on the dry earth floor. “Not a word, huh?” Parks asked Baines Taylor.
“Not in the seven years she’s been here with me,” Taylor replied. “Although as you can see, she does have a tongue.
” He reached out, took the small woman by her jaws and opened her mouth with his thumb.
“That is curious,” said Parks. “You said something about some grub?”
“Yes, sir, Sheriff, sure thing,” said Baines. He turned to the woman and made a gesture that prompted her toward a coffeepot sitting inside a blackened open hearth.
“All right, then. . . .” Parks sat down at a rough wooden table, unloaded the shotgun and laid it broken down on the tabletop beside him.
When the woman set a cup of coffee in front of him, Parks looked around, saw Baines busily shoving wood into the hearth and roughly clamped his hand up onto the woman’s warm crotch. The woman stiffened for a moment, but made no sound, no effort to remove his hand.
Drawing his hand away from her, Parks chuckled under his breath and said quietly, “I have landed softly this night.”
Later, when he’d finished a plate of food, he wiped his hand on his mouth and said to Baines, “Now for some rest.” He looked Baines Taylor up and down, Taylor sitting with his rough hands folded on the tabletop across from him. “Is that barn out back suitable for a man to sleep in?”
“Yes, I believe it is,” said Taylor. “A circuit preacher has slept in it from time to time, and a stock dealer selling horses to the army—”
“Say no more.” Parks raised a hand. “I look forward to seeing you first thing in the morning.” He wiped his hands on his trousers legs and stared expectantly at Taylor. After a moment when Taylor made no move or comment, Parks said a bit impatiently, “Well? Is there anything else?”
“No.” Taylor shrugged. He sat with a confused look on his bearded face.
Parks drew his Colt and let it point loosely at Taylor’s blank face. “I said, ‘is there anything else?’ ” he repeated.
A light of revelation came on in Taylor’s eyes. He gave Parks a strange look and said, “Now, wait a minute, Sheriff! I won’t stand for nothing like that! You’re welcome to food and hospitality, but—”
“I am the law, Baines Taylor,” Parks said in a fierce tone. “Are you going to argue with the law and do as you’re told, or will you ignore the law and do as you damn well please?” He cocked the Colt and straightened the aim.
Taylor scooted his chair back and stood unsteadily and backed away, his hands chest high.
“Grain my horse while you’re at it.” Parks chuckled under his breath watching Taylor quickly gather his coat, his boots and a ragged blanket on his way out the door. As he opened the door, the dog flew into a barking frenzy. “Take that yapping dog with you,” Parks said. “Don’t come back until I tell you to.”
Listening until Taylor and the dog moved away toward the barn, Parks gestured the woman to him. She came and stood at the table with dull resolve in her eyes. Parks reached up under her dress. “I hope you’re going to cooperate with the law, little lady,” he chuckled.
The woman only nodded stoically.
“Good,” said Parks. “Get that dress off and go stand by the fire till you’re hot all over. Then get yourself into the bed.” He sipped his coffee and grinned to himself. Hell, he thought, he would’ve become a lawman years ago if he’d known it was this much fun.
Chapter 18
In the silver gray before dawn, Parks stood up naked from the bed and walked across the darkened room to the front window. Laura Bird Taylor lay in the bed feigning sleep, naked and trembling beneath a coarse wool blanket. At the front window Parks stared out at the looming black outline of the barn. He gazed along the cliff line where he had sat atop his horse, and he looked away along the dark trail he’d ridden in on.
After a long moment of silence he reloaded the shotgun and walked over to the bed. He lifted the blanket off the woman with the tip of the gun barrel and tossed it aside. The woman lay in a fetal ball, quaking and sobbing the way she had done throughout the long night. “For a person who’s unable to talk, you’ve been the noisiest woman I’ve ever seen,” Parks said in a lowered voice. He fired a blast of buckshot down into her. The bed bounced with the impact. Blood flew.
From the barn, Baines Taylor had held a grim vigil throughout the night, staring hollow-eyed toward the shack through a crack in the barn door. When he saw the fiery streak of blue-orange flash through the dusty window, and heard the accompanying roar of the gunshot, he slammed the barn door behind him and came running barefoot to the shack.
“Did you get him, Laura Bird? Did you get him?” he called out. In the barn behind him, the big shaggy dog barked and scratched at the closed barn door.
At the shack, Taylor threw the door open wide and called out again, “Is he dead, Laura Bird? Did you kill that son of a—”
But inside in the darkness, the other hammer on the shotgun cocked and waiting, Parks said, “I told you to stay away. Now you’ve broken the law!” He pulled the trigger and watched the impact of the shot pick the man up and hurl him backward, out the open door, into the dirt.
At the hitch rail Parks’ spooked horse whinnied and reared and pulled at its tied reins for a moment as the dead man landed at its hooves. Inside the barn the shaggy dog growled and barked and scraped madly at the closed door.
Stanton tossed the empty shotgun aside, picked up his rifle and walked out onto the front porch and stood naked in the cool morning air. Gazing toward the sound of the dog’s scratching and barking, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired shot after shot through the plank barn door until the dog let out a sharp pitiful yelp, then fell silent.
He stood for a moment longer, enjoying the quiet until at length the ringing silence began to annoy him. He scratched his belly and thought about the mute woman, wishing he’d not killed her until after she’d fixed his breakfast. But it was too late now, he reminded himself. He walked inside, dressed, walked back out front, mounted his horse and rode away.
Being a lawman might be something worth doing from now on, he told himself. No wonder so many thieves and gunmen took to wearing a badge at some time or other. There was a feeling to this like nothing he’d ever known, he told himself. So long as folks respected the law, he thought, lawmen do as they damned well pleased. . . . He grinned and batted his boot heels to the horse’s sides, and rode away from the pain and death he’d caused.
Nine hours later in the afternoon heat, Chester Cannidy and Clayton Longworth stopped their horses at the edge of the clearing and stepped down from their saddles. They eyed the body of Baines Taylor lying dead in the dirt. Davin Grissin and Tillman Duvall stayed atop the cliff observing from their horses. Below them, the others had spread out in a circling position within the trees and brush surrounding the shack.
“Hello, the house,” Cannidy called out.
“Damn, hello the house,” said Peyton Quinn, nudging his horse forward, Antan Fellows and Grady Black riding forward flanking him. He gestured toward the body in the dirt, the day’s heat already taking a toll on it. “You can see this son of a bitch is dead. Let’s get on with it. We’ll be pussy-footing around all day here if you have your way about it.”
Cannidy started to step forward, enraged by Quinn. But Longworth stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Let this go,” he said under his breath. “He’s only trying to impress Grissin.”
Quinn and Fellows handed Black their reins and stepped down and walked into the shack, their guns held out before them. A moment passed and the two came back out onto the porch, swapping at flies with their hats. “Whew-iee,” said Peyton Quinn, “they left one in there curing in her own juices.”
Longworth and Cannidy left their horses at the edge of the clearing, walked over and stepped up onto the porch and looked inside. Seeing the remains of Laura Bird Taylor lying dead in a bloody chewed-up ball on the bed, the two stepped back from the open door. Cannidy said, “I’ve got news for you, Quinn, Mackenzie and his drover pals didn’t do this.”
“What makes you so cocksure of yourself, Cowboy Cannidy?” Quinn said, knowing the new nickname Cowboy didn’t set well with the ranch foreman.
“Becaus
e I know Jet Mackenzie,” said Cannidy. “I also know Jock Brewer, and the other two. None of these boys are stage robbers, let alone cold-blooded murderers, like this.” He gestured toward the body in the dirt.
“Well, somebody sure as hell killed these two,” said Quinn. “It ain’t very damn likely that they killed themselves.”
His words brought a dark chuckle from Fellows and Black. “Yeah,” said Black, “you tracked four sets of hoofprints to that ridgeline up there. If the drovers didn’t leave those tracks, who did?”
“I tracked them there,” said Cannidy, “but that doesn’t mean they left the trail and rode down here.” He looked at the dirt again, then said, “We’ll never know for sure, now that you three jumped your horses out here and stirred everything up.”
Quinn, Black and Fellows looked at the ground and the hoofprints. Quinn saw what a mistake he’d made riding over to the shack, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Instead he said, “I’m wondering if maybe you ain’t just a little too friendly with these drovers to be tracking them down for us.”
“I work for Davin Grissin, Quinn,” Cannidy said, bristling. “If he has any problem he’ll be the one to take it up with me, not some lackey who can’t keep from getting his gun taken away from him.”
“You dirty cowpoke!” Quinn spun toward him, his gun hand poised and tense near the butt of his big holstered Colt. “Let me see you take my gun away from me!”
“Nothing would suit me better,” said Cannidy. He pitched his rifle to Longworth, who caught it and stood watching as the hard-bitten ranch foreman spread his feet shoulder-width apart, facing Quinn.
But before either man could make a move, Tillman Duvall called out from the edge of the clearing, “Both of you bad men stand down, before I have to backhand the two of yas.”
Both Quinn and Cannidy cut a glance toward Duvall as he stepped down from his saddle and led his horse forward into the clearing. As he walked he took off his black tight-fitting riding glove, pulling on it one finger at a time.
