A Reason to Die

by William W. Johnstone

  “Howdy, Sheriff,” Billy said when he walked in. “Cliff says you want me to look at a prisoner you got locked up.”

  “That’s right,” Wheeler replied. “Just wondered if you remember him bein’ in the saloon before. Did Cliff tell you his name?”

  “Nope, just that you wanted me to see him,” Billy answered.

  “Good. Come on upstairs.” Wheeler led him up the steps, followed by Cliff and Walter. At the top, Wheeler opened the door and stepped aside.

  Billy walked into the cell room and as soon as he saw the man behind the bars, he exclaimed, “Perley Gates! What the hell are you doin’ in there?” Billy looked back at Wheeler, questioning, then back at Perley. “What did you do to get arrested?”

  “Looked like somebody else,” Perley answered matter-of-factly.

  The remark went right by Billy. “Did you find your grandpa?”

  “I did,” Perley replied. “I found him up in the Black Hills, but I’m sorry to say he didn’t make it back with me.”

  “Well, now, that’s a shame,” Billy said, “but at least you found him and told him about your pa dyin’ and all.”

  Wheeler interrupted then, having seen enough to know he had locked up an innocent man. Still, he was duty-bound to be convinced 100 percent before he let Perley go. “Come on back downstairs,” he said to Billy. “I wanna ask you some more questions.”

  “All right,” Billy said, then turned back to Perley again. “Come on by the saloon when Dan turns you loose and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Much obliged,” Perley said. “I’ll do that.” He was still not sure he’d make it, since Wheeler made no motions toward opening his cell door. His suspense lasted no longer than about half an hour, however, when Wheeler came back upstairs and unlocked the cell. “I’m free to go?” Perley asked.

  “You’re free to go,” Wheeler confirmed. “And you have my apologies for the mix-up. But I swear, I didn’t have much choice. I mean things happenin’ like they did. Evelyn identifyin’ you was what started the whole misunderstandin’. Billy told us about you and your brothers comin’ in the saloon and talkin’ about your grandpa. I’m just sorry we had to inconvenience you.”

  “Ain’t no hard feelin’s, Sheriff,” Perley said. “I seem to find myself steppin’ in a lot of stuff other people don’t. I reckon I ain’t surprised when I do.” He grinned. “And my name don’t help much.”

  Wheeler laughed. “Yes sir, I can rightly understand that.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Downstairs in the sheriff’s office, Perley found the deputy also waiting to offer his apology for the misunderstanding.

  In return, Perley offered an apology on Buck’s behalf for the sore backside Cliff suffered. “Buck ain’t learned a polite way to say get off.”

  Wheeler returned Perley’s gun belt, then they all shook hands and Perley walked out. He went straight to the stable to check on his horses and his packs. It was almost too much to expect that Cliff and Walter had opened those sacks and hadn’t discovered what the corn was hiding.

  Walter greeted him when he came in the barn. “I’ll bet you’re mighty happy to be a free man again.”

  “That’s a fact,” Perley replied. “I reckon I’ll take my horses off your hands now.”

  “You can leave ’em till mornin’ if you want to,” Walter said. “Sheriff Wheeler said he’d pay for stall and grain. Unless you’re set on leavin’ town tonight, you might as well stay over and go in the mornin’.”

  “I might at that,” Perley said, after thinking about it for a second. “I’ll go take a look at my horses. Where’d you put my packs?”

  “In an empty stall next to that bay.” He led Perley back in the stable where Buck and his other two horses were. “Don’t worry ’bout your possibles. Everything’s just like you left it.”

  “Much obliged,” Perley said, then went into Buck’s stall and fussed with the big bay until Walter returned to the barn up front. As soon as he left, Perley went into the stall where his saddle and packs had been stowed. Much to his relief, the sacks holding the gold were undisturbed, although he could see that the strings had been retied. Cliff had evidently not been curious enough to see if anything was buried in the corn, or the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

  Next, Perley checked his saddlebags and found all his cash money still there. With everything in good order, he walked back to the front of the barn, where he found Walter throwing some hay down from the hayloft.

  “I’ve got a couple of places I’ve gotta go before I turn in for the night,” he said to Walter. “How much if I sleep in the stall tonight with my horses?”

  “Nothin’,” Walter answered. “I’ll put it on the sheriff’s bill. How late you think you’re gonna be?”

  Perley said he didn’t anticipate being more than an hour or so, but if he was more than that, and it was time to close, to go ahead and lock up. “I’ve got money to buy a bed in the hotel if I miss you.”

  Leaving the stable, he decided he’d wait until later to have that drink Billy Fowler promised him. He walked on past the Cowboy’s Rest and headed for the hotel. He figured he had something to settle there first.

  “Can I help you, sir?” A man behind the front desk asked when he walked in the front door.

  “I’m headin’ for the dinin’ room,” Perley answered.

  “The dining room’s closed,” the man said. “Won’t open again till six o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Perley hesitated while he decided what to do. “I’m lookin’ to find the lady that runs it. I think her name is Evelyn.”

  “I’m her husband,” the man informed him. “Maybe I can help you.”

  Before Perley could respond, a voice from the small office behind the front desk interrupted. “No, Sam. I think he needs to see me, and I don’t blame him.”

  In a couple of seconds, Evelyn Rooney appeared in the doorway. “I can guess why you’re looking for me,” she said to Perley. “Before you say what you’ve come to say, I want to apologize for causing you so much trouble. Dan Wheeler came to tell us of the terrible mistake I made and I truly am sorry. Go ahead and speak your mind.” She stood next to her husband while they both stared at a puzzled Perley Gates.

  “I just came to pay for my supper,” Perley said. “I didn’t get a chance to pay you before the sheriff hustled me out the door.

  His statement left them both astonished, Evelyn more so than her husband, for she had expected an angry tirade for his treatment at the hands of the law.

  She stopped him when he took some money out of his pocket. Holding up her hand, she said, “Put your money away. I wouldn’t think of charging you after the trouble I caused you.”

  Struck speechless by Perley’s purpose for the visit, Sam spoke up then. “Where are you staying tonight? ’Cause, if you need a room, you can have one here for the night, no charge.”

  It was Perley’s turn to be amazed. The thought of a free room had never occurred to him. “Well, I was plannin’ to sleep in the stable with my horses,” he responded after a long moment to decide if he should sleep close to his seed corn. “I wouldn’t wanna cost you the rent on a room from a payin’ customer.”

  Sam assured him they had several empty rooms that late in the season.

  “Well, I’m much obliged then,” Perley said. “I don’t reckon my horse will miss me for just one night, but give me one of your cheapest rooms. No sense in givin’ away one of your best ones.”

  With a key in his pocket for a room on the second floor facing the street, Perley returned to the stable to get his saddlebags and let Walter know he wasn’t going to sleep there that night.

  “Maybe Evelyn will give you your breakfast free, too, and you won’t have to eat any of that corn you’re totin’,” Walter said. “You sure must love corn.”

  “That corn ain’t fit to eat,” Perley replied. “That’s seed corn for plantin’.”

  “I was wonderin’.” Walter walked out with him and barred the stable doors after
Perley left, then went out the back after locking the padlock on the door.

  Perley walked back toward the Cowboy’s Rest, his saddlebags on his shoulder and his rifle in hand, reasonably sure his corn was safe for the night.

  Billy Fowler called out a cheerful howdy to Perley when he walked in the Cowboy’s Rest, then pulled out a bottle of the good whiskey and filled a glass more suited to hold beer.

  “That’s the expensive stuff, ain’t it?” Perley asked. “I hate to see you waste it on me. I don’t know if I can drink that whole glass and still walk outta here.”

  “Don’t make no difference if you can’t,” Billy said. “Drink as much as you want. I’ll pour what’s left back in the bottle.” He wanted to hear all about finding Perley’s grandpa.

  Perley told him the whole story, except the part about the gold dust in the sacks of corn. They talked through about half of the glass of whiskey, before Perley called it his limit. By the time he had satisfied Billy’s curiosity, it was already later than he had planned to stay, so he thanked Billy for the whiskey and headed to the hotel, with one intermediate stop at the outhouse.

  When he got to his room on the second floor, he found a note on his pillow, inviting him to have breakfast in the morning at no charge. Can’t pass that up, he thought, considering his room and board for the night had come at a mighty inconvenient price.

  Aided by the alcohol he had consumed, he slept solidly through the night, waking at five o’clock, which was later than he had anticipated. He planned to get his horses before he ate breakfast, since the dining room didn’t open until six. He climbed into his clothes as fast as he could, left his room key on the desk as he passed by, then hurried down the street to the stable.

  Walter opened up at five-thirty, surprised to see Perley waiting by the back door. He helped Perley get his horses ready to travel, including his packsaddle. “You best be extra careful on your trip,” he advised as he lifted one of the sacks and handed it to Perley. “They could cause you some trouble you don’t want.”

  Perley paused to look at him.

  Walter continued. “Cliff’s young and always in a hurry. He didn’t take the time to see if there was anything else in these bags besides corn. Me being older and maybe a little more nosey than him, I couldn’t resist diggin’ down in one of these bags to see if there was somethin’ you might not want everybody to see. I figured I oughta tell you to be careful where you leave your horses. Lots of folks are nosey, but all of ’em ain’t as honest as me. I’m fessin’ up to this in case you wanna check those sacks to make sure there ain’t nothin’ missin’, so when you get on down the road, you’ll know you had it all when you left here.”

  Dumbfounded for a moment, Perley was stunned to know his treasure could have been in peril when he had figured it to be safe. At the same time, he was relieved to find an honest man in Walter Bray. He thanked him and took the time to tell him of the series of events that had led to the finding of his grandfather, and his grandfather’s wish that the gold he had come by should be given to his family. “I reckon it’s up to me to get it back to Texas.” He paused to shake his head. “And I damn-near lost it at the first town I hit.”

  “I’d advise you to skip the towns on your way home,” Walter said, “and sleep with one eye open.”

  “That sounds like good advice to me,” Perley agreed. He had been lucky when he left his packs in the stable at Hat Creek, too. Like Walter, Robert Davis was an honest man. It might be that the third time was the charm. He shook Walter’s hand and thanked him again. “I’ve got some money of my own. I can at least pay you for takin’ care of my horses.”

  “No such a thing,” Walter insisted and refused it. “You take care of yourself, son. Good luck on your way home.” He stood watching as Perley rode toward the hotel, thinking the guileless young man was going to need it.

  When he got to the hotel, Perley rode around to the side and tied his horses beside the dining room windows as he had done before.

  Inside, he found Evelyn waiting for him. “Good morning,” she greeted him. “I was afraid you’d left without having breakfast with us. Sam found your room key on the desk and figured you’d gotten an early start.” She placed her hands on her hips in mock impatience. “And after Beatrice make flapjacks this morning, especially for you.”

  “No, ma’am,” Perley insisted. “I wasn’t about to miss a good breakfast before I left town.” He then proceeded to a table by the window where he could keep an eye on his horses. Once he sat down, the food never seemed to stop coming. It would be a breakfast he would not soon forget. When he could eat no more, he insisted that he had to get started back to Texas. “I expect I won’t have to eat anything else before I get through Oklahoma,” he joked.

  “No hard feelings, I hope,” Evelyn said when he finally said good-bye. “You think you’ll ever be this way again?”

  “Most likely next spring,” Perley said. “When the Triple-G drives another herd of cattle up here.”

  “Well, we’ll be expecting you to come back to see us.”

  Much later than he had expected, he climbed up into the saddle, wheeled Buck back toward the street, and led his packhorses out the south end of town, with no thoughts that anyone might be trailing him.

  * * *

  More familiar with the prairie he now rode across, Perley followed the obvious trail left by the thousands of cattle driven up from Texas. It was a long ride to Dodge City, which he intended to bypass, heeding Walter Bray’s advice about staying clear of big towns. The wide expanse of open, rolling prairie emphasized how small and insignificant he and his horses must seem to the Maker of this broad land. He thought of the many days ahead of him before he would reach the Red River and home. Anxious to be free of the responsibility for the small fortune in gold dust he was bound to deliver, he preferred, by far, to return to the carefree way of life he was accustomed to. “There ain’t much I can do about it till I get it home,” he sighed as he approached one of the many small creeks along his path. “I expect you’re about ready for a rest,” he said to Buck.

  As was his custom, the big bay didn’t answer.

  Perley pointed the horse toward a scattering of small trees and bushes on the bank that promised the possibility of some grass. Guiding Buck down through the trees, he was suddenly startled when the branch of a chokecherry tree suddenly snapped in two about a foot from his head. It was followed within a couple of seconds by the report of the rifle. Reacting immediately, Perley gave Buck his heels and the big horse knew what to do.

  At a full gallop, they raced along the creek with rifle shots snapping through the bushes on both sides of them. His first thought was that someone back in Ogallala must have found out what was in those sacks of seed. Possibly Cliff wasn’t as careless as he’d pretended, or maybe Walter Bray had told someone. Perley didn’t figure Walter to be that kind of man, however. Whoever it was, it appeared there was no mistaking their intentions.

  Afraid that at any moment one of those slugs might find him or his horses, all Perley could do was run. With no time to wonder about who or how many, he drove Buck and the packhorses on toward a low rise that formed a high bluff along the creek. He pulled him to a sliding stop at a spot where the bank rose high enough to shield them. Rifle in hand, he was out of the saddle in an instant. After a quick check to make sure his horses were protected behind the creek bank, he scrambled up to the edge in an effort to see where the shots had come from. Looking back toward a prairie of low, rolling, treeless hills, he could only guess.

  In his haste to save his hide, he couldn’t say how many bushwhackers there were. Indians? Outlaws? One man or many? While he’d been running, it had seemed like more than one shooter, but it was possible that one man could shoot and reload that quickly. I need to find out for sure, he thought as he quickly looked upstream and down, promptly deciding that he didn’t have much cover from either side.

  With nothing he could do but sit tight, he checked the loads in his rifle and hand
gun while keeping a sharp eye on the line of low hills before him. Landed in another mess, he thought. At least, I can hold them off as long as I’m behind this bank. That is, if there ain’t enough of them to come at me from the sides. With his foremost thought to keep his head down in case their shooting improved, he drew his skinning knife and began to dig a small trench at the edge of the bank to lay his rifle in to shoot from.

  After a long period with no more shots fired, he began to wonder if the bushwhackers had given up. To find out, he stuck his hat on his rifle barrel and walked it along the bank, just high enough for most of the crown to show. He hadn’t moved it more than a couple of feet before a single shot rang out and kicked up dirt several inches from his hat. When he repeated the test in the other direction, he again attracted a single shot from the low hill. It kicked up dirt no closer to his hat than the first shot had. It ain’t but one man, he thought, and he ain’t that good a shot. Perley had presented him with two targets and the shooter had missed both times.

  No telling when he might get lucky and hit something, however. On the other hand, maybe the shooter was an Indian, and not after Perley’s gold at all. Maybe the shooter was trying not to hit the horses. That made sense if the horses were what he was after. He might be on foot.

  Perley looked up at the sky. It was still early in the afternoon and he had planned to ride at least twenty miles farther before making his camp. I can’t sit on this creek bank all day, waiting for him to make some kind of move. He looked back at the line of hills, straining to see some movement that would indicate his attacker was thinking of circling around to one side or the other. Anxious to get out of the standoff with what he was convinced was an Indian horse thief, Perley decided the Indian was on foot. He would rest his horses for a short while longer then make a dash along the creek bank, hoping the Indian’s marksmanship hadn’t improved. If he was right, and the Indian was on foot, he should be out of range in a very short time. It was a plan, not a very good one, but it was all he could think of. The alternative was to sit there behind that creek bank all afternoon and wait for the Indian to sneak up on him that night.