Terror of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Tom showed him the message, and the smile left the telegrapher’s face.

  “Oh, I’m very sorry, Mr. Byrd. Forgive me for laughing. I should have known.”

  “No need for forgiveness. Just see to it that this message reaches Cal Woods on the northbound train.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “We’re coming in to San Antonio,” Smoke said. “From what I understand, we’re supposed to be here for almost an hour. We may as well leave the train and get something to eat. I wonder if Cal wants to eat.”

  “Ha!” Pearlie said. “He may be pining over that girl, but have you ever seen a time when that boy wouldn’t eat?”

  Cal did join them and the five were sitting at a table in the dining room of the depot.

  “Smoke, Miz Sally,” Cal started. “I hope you two know that you’re both the most important people in my entire life, up to now. But there’s someone else important too. Maybe you don’t know it, ’cause I haven’t said anything, but me ’n’ Katrina, uh,” he cleared his throat and looked at Sally. “Excuse me, I mean Katrina and I, well, we saw quite a bit of each other during this past month. And the truth is . . .”

  “For cryin’ out loud, Cal,” Pearlie said, interrupting him. “Next, you’ll be tellin’ us that you got blue eyes. Do you think there was even one of us who didn’t know that you ’n’ Katrina had gone nuts over each other?”

  “Yeah. You mean you already knew that?”

  “You might say we figured it out,” Old Mo said.

  “Oh. I thought we was keepin’ it pretty much to our ownselves.”

  “Cal, are you trying to tell us that you’ll be leaving Sugarloaf?” Sally asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I reckon that is what I’m sayin’. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course we don’t mind,” Sally said with a broad smile, reaching her hand across the table to lay it on Cal’s hand. “We are both very happy for you.”

  Now the troubled expression on Cal’s face was replaced with a smile as large Sally’s.

  “It won’t be for at least another month, though. It’s prob’ly goin’ to take me that long to get everythin’ all took care of so’s I can leave.”

  “If it means you’ll get out of my hair any faster, I’ll be glad to help you get ready to go,” Pearlie teased.

  “Ha! You’re goin’ to miss me somethin’ fierce. You know you are,” Cal said.

  As Smoke and the others continued with their good-natured banter over lunch, a boy of about fourteen approached their table. He was wearing a hat with the words “Western Union” written on the front.

  “Excuse me, sir, I’m looking for Mr. Calvin Woods,” the boy said.

  “I’m Woods,” Cal said.

  “This telegram is for you, sir.” The boy handed a folded piece of paper to Smoke.

  “For me? Who would be sending a telegram to me?” Cal asked, the expression on his face showing his curiosity.

  Smoke gave the boy a dime.

  “Thank you, sir,” the boy said with a big smile.

  “Please come back! I can’t live without you!” Pearlie teased.

  Cal was smiling at Pearlie’s antics as he unfolded the paper. Almost instantly, the smile left his face to be replaced by an expression of horror.

  “Cal, what is it?” Sally asked.

  Cal looked up from the message, but he said nothing.

  “Smoke, what is it?” Sally asked. “Cal is frightening me.”

  Smoke reached across the table and, gingerly, removed the paper from Cal’s hand. Smoke was already wearing a look of concern, but as he read the message, the concern changed to sorrow.

  “Smoke?” Sally’s voice was choked with emotion, and the expression on the faces of both Pearlie and Old Mo mirrored hers. They didn’t yet know what had happened, but they prepared themselves for the worst.

  “There was an attack at San Vicente, shortly after we left this morning. Many were killed, and several buildings were burned.”

  “Oh, no! How terrible!” Sally said.

  “One of those killed was Katrina.”

  Sally gasped, and she looked across the table at Cal. Tears were now streaming down Cal’s face, and though he wasn’t crying aloud, it was obvious he was weeping, because his shoulders were shaking.

  Sally got up to move around to Cal’s side of the table. Old Mo got up so she could sit beside Cal, and she put her arms around him, cushioning her head on his shoulder.

  The telegram had not only told of Katrina being killed, it also relayed the information that the entire herd of horses Smoke had brought down from Sugarloaf had been stolen.

  “I’m going back!” Cal said.

  “We all are,” Smoke said. “That is, Sally and I are. Pearlie, you and Mr. Morris can come with us, or go back home. It’s up to you.”

  “I’ll go back with you,” Old Mo said.

  “Cal is my best friend,” Pearlie said. “If he goes back, I’m damn sure going back too. Pardon my language, Miz Sally.”

  Sally, whose eyes were now filled with tears, just nodded at him.

  “No need to pardon your language, Pearlie,” she said. “It is obvious that those words were spoken for the love of a friend.”

  “I’ll get the tickets,” Smoke said. “Pearlie, you get our luggage taken off the train. Mo, you take care of the horses.”

  “I’ll help,” Cal said. Those were the first two words he had spoken since receiving the telegram, and they were quiet, and choked. He started to get up, but Sally held him down.

  “No,” Sally said. “Please, sit here with me.”

  “All right,” Cal said.

  Smoke, Pearlie, and Old Mo left to attend to their tasks.

  “Why, Miz Sally?” Cal asked. “Why did it have to happen?”

  Sally shook her head. “I don’t know, Cal. Nobody knows why such terrible things come into our lives. Preachers will tell you that it is to strengthen your faith, philosophers will say it is to strengthen you. But when you get right down to it, it’s all the same. It’s a pain that is so hard, that it takes everything you have to be able to endure it.”

  “I don’t know that I can endure it,” Cal said.

  Sally put her arms around him, pulled him to her, and patted him on the back.

  “Cal, you are one of the finest and the strongest people I know. Just take joy in the time that you did have with her, keep close to those of us who love you, and you will get through this. I promise you, you will get through it.”

  A half hour later they were all on the southbound train, heading back to San Vicente.

  “What time will we get there?” Sally asked.

  “It’s an all-night train ride,” Smoke said. “We should get there around ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  And talk among the five, when it did occur, was generally quiet and specific. There was no general conversation and when night fell, everyone tended to look out into a black void, interrupted only occasionally by the dim lights of an isolated house alongside the tracks.

  There were no Pullman or Wagner Palace cars on this train, so everyone tried to get as comfortable as they could, right where they sat.

  Katrina was beautiful in her wedding gown . . . but then, why wouldn’t she be? Cal thought she was beautiful, no matter what she wore.

  Once she got married, she had to quit teaching, but that was all right. Cal had over five thousand dollars saved, Smoke gave him twenty-five hundred as a wedding present, and Tom Byrd gave him five hundred acres that not only had a year-round source of water, but was also directly adjacent to fifteen thousand acres of free range land. It didn’t take him long to get a very good ranch going.

  He and Katrina named their son Kirby, and their daughter, Hazel. Kirby was a really big help, learning to ride and rope when he was still just a boy. But it was Kirby’s ambition to go to college, so Cal and Katrina took him to the railroad station to see him off.

  Hazel was married soon after that, and Cal and Katrina became grandparents. Kirb
y graduated from college, then medical school, married, and also had children.

  The whole family was there for Cal and Katrina’s fiftieth wedding anniversary.

  “We have grown old together,” Katrina said.

  “And you are as beautiful today as you were the day I first saw you,” Cal replied.

  Katrina took Cal by his hand and looked into his eyes.

  “It has been a wonderful life,” she said.

  The train whistle nearly drowned out the words.

  The train whistle awakened Cal with a hypnagogic jerk.

  He had been dreaming! The whole thing had been a dream, the wedding, the ranch, the children, the grandchildren, the fiftieth wedding anniversary; it had all been a dream.

  At first, Cal was upset, and he wished he had not had the dream. But, the more he thought about the dream, the more peace it provided him. It was as if, through the dream, he had been able to live an entire lifetime with Katrina. When he closed his eyes to go back to sleep this time, it was with a peace that surpassed all understanding.

  Sally was right. He would take joy in the time that he did have with her, and keep a part of her locked away in his heart, forever.

  As the train rolled into the town of San Vicente, Smoke looked through the window at the damage done by the raid. The leather goods store had been completely destroyed by fire. The apothecary, and a ladies’ shop, showed a charred exterior, but the damage wasn’t so severe that the buildings couldn’t be repaired.

  There was a funeral procession going down the main street, a black hearse pulled by a team of matching black horses, followed by mourners in surreys, buckboards, wagons, and on foot.

  “San Vicente! This is San Vicente!” the conductor called, coming through the car.

  They got off the train in San Vicente, and as Smoke and the others took care of the luggage and the horses, Sally waited in the depot for them. She saw a copy of the Brownsville Cosmopolitan for sale, bought it, and began to read.

  TERRIBLE RAID !

  Fifteen Slain

  But one day previous, a man so foul as to defy description, Taurino Bustamante Keno, came across the Mexican border with as many as fifty men to strike against the Texas village of San Vicente. T. B. Keno portrays himself as a revolutionary and has assumed the title of colonel, but he is neither revolutionary nor colonel. He is, however, known throughout northern Mexico and southwestern Texas as a bandit and a murderer.

  On his most recent adventure twelve innocents were killed in the town of San Vicente, including the schoolteacher, who is said to have surrendered her life that she might save that of one of the young students in her charge. During Keno’s invasion of our country, he committed widespread larceny to include rustling. As many as two hundred head of fine, broken horses were taken from The Wide Loop, the ranch of Tom Byrd.

  In addition to having his horses stolen, Mr. Byrd suffered the terrible, personal loss of his daughter, for the abovementioned heroic teacher was Miss Katrina Byrd. Three of Mr. Byrd’s cowboys were also killed in the raid.

  Because there will be so many funerals conducted in such a short time, morticians have been brought in, not only from Brownsville, but also from San Antonio. Additional ministers have also come to San Vicente that they might assist the lone pastor in residence. Already the bell has commenced rendering its mournful toll so that those unable to attend the funeral will be given the opportunity to stop what they are doing, in order that they may pay a moment of respect to the dead.

  “I was coming back, Mr. Byrd,” Cal said. “I told Katrina before we left that, as soon as I could, I would be coming back. I . . . thought I would be coming back so we could be married. I had no idea I would be coming back to . . . to bury her.”

  Cal choked on the word “bury.”

  “I loved her,” he said.

  “I know you did, son,” Tom said. “And she loved you as well. Her last thoughts were of you.”

  “It would have been a wonderful life,” Cal said.

  Tom gasped. “What did you say?”

  “I said it would have been a wonderful life.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Cal was confused by Tom’s reaction to his comment.

  “I just know that it would have been. We loved each other, how could it be anything but a wonderful life?”

  “No, I mean, how did you know that those were the last words Katrina spoke, before she died?”

  Cal shook his head. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  Tom put his arms around Cal and drew him to him in an embrace.

  “You and she are both right. It would have been.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Katrina’s funeral was held out at the ranch, and because it was the very last funeral to be conducted, it was attended by nearly everyone from town. But that was only part of the reason her funeral was so well attended. She had been a very popular schoolteacher, so the parents of all the children who were in school attended. In addition, news of her saving the life of young Lenny Potts had spread throughout the town and even many of those who had lost their own loved ones had come to pay their final respects.

  The service was to be held in the great room of the Big House, and every ranch hand was there, dressed in his finest and cleanest jeans and work shirt. A very beautiful coffin sat on sawhorses in the parlor, the sawhorses themselves hidden by purple drapery.

  The mourners filed by for one last look at the beautiful young woman who, but a short time earlier, had been a vibrant part of their community. After they viewed the body, they greeted Tom and Hazel Byrd. At Tom and Hazel’s invitation, Cal was standing right beside them. One of the young men who came through the viewing line, then stopped to offer his condolences, was Duke Pearson, the cowboy with whom Cal had had an altercation during the recent dance. He reached out to take Cal’s hand.

  “Pardner, I’m just real sorry about this,” he said. “Miss Katrina was one of the purtiest women I ever seen, and I think you two was just meant for each other.”

  “Thank you, Duke. I very much appreciate that.”

  There weren’t chairs for everyone, but Smoke, Sally, Pearlie, and Old Mo were given reserved seats in the second row. Cal sat on the front row alongside Katrina’s parents.

  Tom Byrd had asked Cal if he would say a few words at the funeral.

  “I couldn’t do that,” Cal said. “I’ve never gotten up in front of people to speak before.”

  “You can do it, Cal,” Sally told him, taking both his hands in hers. “I know you can. And you know that Katrina will be listening.”

  Cal nodded.

  “Would you like me to write a few words for you?”

  Cal shook his head. “No, ma’am. I reckon if I’m goin’ to do this, I’ll just sort of say the words I’m thinkin’.”

  “I was hoping you would say that,” Sally said.

  The church organist played, and Marylou Parker, a good friend of Katrina’s, sang “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.”

  When the song was over, Reverend T. Barnabas Bixby nodded toward Cal.

  Cal stepped up to an ambo that had been placed at the foot of the coffin, cleared his throat, looked out at the many people who had gathered there, then began to speak.

  “Most of you good people don’t know who I am, and you wonder how it is that someone like me, a perfect stranger, would be talkin’ to you at Katrina’s funeral.

  “I may be a stranger to you, but I’m not a stranger to Mr. and Mrs. Byrd, nor am I a stranger to any of the good men who work here on this ranch.

  “I arrived here a little over a month ago with my boss and friends, to bring a herd of horses. I stayed here to help break those horses, and while I was here, I met the most wonderful woman I had ever met in my life.

  “Katrina Byrd was everything a woman should be. I would tell you that she was beautiful, but I don’t have to tell you that. Anyone who had ever seen her knew how beautiful she was. I could also tell you that she was a woman with a he
art as big as all outdoors, but all of the children she taught, as well as mothers and daddies of those children could tell you that.

  “She was courageous, she willingly climbed onto a horse that had just been broken. But I don’t have to tell you about her courage. We all know how she gave up her life to save young Lenny Potts.

  “She was also a loving woman. I know that because she loved me, as much as I loved her. And the reason I am here talking to you about her, is because, had this tragic thing not happened, Katrina and I would have been married.

  “I know that the preacher is going to talk all about Heaven, and maybe streets that are lined with gold, or diamonds and rubies and emeralds everywhere. But I don’t believe that.”

  There were a few gasps of shock and surprise scattered through the room.

  “No, sir, I don’t believe that at all,” Cal continued. “If Heaven is supposed to make us joyful, then Katrina isn’t walking around on golden streets. I believe she is with her ma and pa; she is with her brother, and her niece, she is with all of her schoolchildren, and she is with you, Miss Parker. And she is with me. Anytime I want her to be, all I have to do is think about her, and she is with me.

  “Now, I don’t know about you folks, but I plan to hold on to that for the rest of my life, until we can be together, forever.”

  Cal nodded one more time, then he walked back to his chair and sat there quietly throughout the rest of the funeral.

  When the last song was sung, and the last words spoken, everyone left the house and went out to a small, fenced-in, and beautifully landscaped area where Katrina would be buried, right here on the ranch.

  Sally stepped up to Cal and put her arms around him.

  “Cal, I have never heard more beautiful words spoken, anywhere. I know that Katrina is with you right now, holding on to your arm, and smiling lovingly up at you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cal said, managing a smile. “Yes, ma’am, she is at that.”

  After Katrina was buried, Cal, Pearlie, and Old Mo were invited up to the Big House to take part in the repast, the meal provided by the people of the town.