by Paul Lederer
‘Tired, that’s all.’
‘So am I – all of us – but having this returned,’ he said, tapping his badge, ‘has given me fresh energy. I suppose I’ll collapse on my bed tonight, but for now, I’m enjoying everything. We’ve got Ross, Blakely and Judge Weems sitting in jail, waiting for transport to Denver if the examiners find enough evidence to prosecute, which I’m told they already have. I passed by the Wabash Saloon on my way over and saw Gentry Cousins sweeping off the porch. He told me that Dan Sumner and Kate had stopped at the preacher’s and were now on their way out to his ranch. No one’s seen Trace; I think he’s sleeping the day away up in Ruby’s room.’
‘Smart man,’ Laredo said, yawning.
‘This is all happening fast – thanks to you, Laredo.’
‘Me? You’re the ones who began the fight, stood up for yourselves. I just happened by.’
‘Maybe. I don’t see it that way. The only other matter is your horse. When Blakely escaped he was trying to ride to his house on your buckskin. So I guess technically he could be tried as a horse thief if you cared to make a complaint.’
‘The man’s got enough problems,’ Laredo said, yawning again, ‘and I don’t feel up to it. Did you see my horse? What kind of shape was it in?’
‘It looked fine to me and it’s been over at the stable eating and resting for awhile, so I suppose he’s trail-ready. Why, are you planning on going home?’
‘Am I not!’ Laredo said. ‘It’s nothing against the people of Lordsberg or of Wakapee Valley, but I’ve seen all I need to see of it.’
‘I understand,’ Curt said, shaking Laredo’s hand again.
‘Is that all of it?’ Laredo asked Deacon Cody.
‘Just about. Cole Lockhart escaped with about half of his crew. He’ll pop up again sometime, I know, but for now he’s taken cover somewhere.’ Deacon hesitated, ‘You sure you aren’t up to looking into those bank robberies down around Mesa?’
‘I’m sure!’ Laredo exclaimed. ‘Send another of your hired lunatics out there.’
Deacon laughed, also shook Laredo’s hand and watched as he strode out the door, saying to Curt Wagner, ‘He’s the best I’ve ever seen. At least the best man I have.’
‘I wouldn’t want him on my trail,’ Curt agreed. Then, shifting his gun in its holster, he told the others, ‘I’d better get out there and start patrolling my town.’ There was a slight emphasis on the word ‘my’ and Deacon Cody smiled faintly as the tall man swaggered from the bank. Then Deacon turned back to confer further with his legal people who had been finding fraudulent entry after fraudulent entry in the bank’s ledgers.
By the time Laredo cleared the town line he was bone tired. He should have stayed over another night, but he needed to get home. By the time he made Arizona he recognized the fact that he had to stop somewhere. He had fallen asleep in the saddle and been jolted awake by a misstep of the buckskin horse. He had driven the horse too hard. Despite its earlier rest, it was obviously being pushed to its limit, and that wasn’t fair to the faithful animal.
‘We’ll halt at Los Coches,’ Laredo told the horse, patting its neck. ‘I’ve had enough, too.’
The little pueblo, mostly of adobe block structures, small and squat, rested along a tiny till surrounded by a scattering of oak trees. The residents had little to support themselves with, but they had been there for generations and so here they stayed.
Laredo aimed his pony toward the La Paloma Restaurant where Maria had always welcomed him when he happened to be passing through. A stout, hearty woman with few teeth, she was prone to embrace Laredo and make him special meals with her own hands. How he had charmed her in the first place, he could not remember, but she treated him like a long-lost son.
Swinging down from the shuddering buckskin as sunset began to streak the sky with color, Laredo entered the restaurant.
The first person he saw was Johnny Johnson.
Johnny was wearing a white apron with food stains on it. He smiled sheepishly, but genuinely as he saw Laredo enter the cool, dark interior of the restaurant. He walked toward him a little warily.
‘Hello, Johnny,’ Laredo said.
‘I guess you’re surprised to find that I’m still here.’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’
Johnny guided Laredo to a booth in the corner where a roughly-made bench provided the seating. Johnny sat opposite him. Beyond in the kitchen something spicy was being prepared – tamales, Laredo thought, his stomach growled.
‘You sent me down here, and I told Maria that you were a friend of mine. I mentioned that I was going to spend the night in the stable, and she would have none of it. She said I was to sleep on a cot in her back room. Then she fed me! Did she feed me! When I was stuffed, I placed the twenty-dollar gold piece you loaned me on the table and she lifted her hands as if horrified. “No, no, no,” she kept saying, then she backed away and left. I had a minute or two to talk to her in the morning and told her that I really had no place to go and she asked me if I wanted to work here for a while. I didn’t, not really, but it’s been fine.’
‘I’ve good news for you, Johnny,’ Laredo informed him. ‘You’ve got your ranch back.’
Johnny didn’t seem as excited by the news as Laredo had expected. Then, looking past Johnny’s shoulder, Laredo saw the kitchen door open and caught a glimpse of a tiny sloe-eyed girl peeking out. She was Johnny’s age, around eighteen or nineteen years old, and Laredo thought he had matters figured.
‘What’s her name?’ he asked Johnny Johnson.
‘Who?’ Johnny spun to look, but the girl had ducked away. ‘It’s Esmerelda,’ he said with a sort of dumb look on his face. ‘Maria’s niece.’
‘Cute little thing.’
‘Isn’t she?’ Johnny said, growing more animated. It was obvious now why he had chosen to remain here, working in a restaurant.
‘She might like to have a place of her own,’ Laredo suggested.
‘Do you think so, Laredo? Things haven’t gotten that far between us yet, but she might like my ranch on the Wakapee, don’t you think?’
‘A lot of women would.’
‘I wonder – do you think I should ask her?’
‘That’s up to you. But these are Spanish people, Johnny. Before you do anything, you should talk to her parents. That’s the way things are done.’
‘She doesn’t have any parents,’ Johnny said. ‘Killed by Apaches years ago. She’s only got her Aunt, Maria.’
‘Well, then—’ At that moment, Maria burst from the kitchen, her arms outstretched, her toothless face grinning broadly. Flushed with pleasure, she approached the table and as Laredo stood she embraced him tightly, welcoming him effusively.
‘Esmerelda,’ she shouted, ‘bring food for this hungry long-riding man!’ To Laredo, ‘I have just now made fresh batch of tamales with pig – what do you say?’
‘Pork?’ Laredo suggested.
‘With pork meat. Let me see you eat!’ She patted his shoulders with her thick, stubby hands. ‘We have to get some meat on your bones. Where is Dusty?’ she asked, glancing around.
‘I’ve been working, Maria. You know she can’t ride with me when I’m working.’
‘Oh, you work too hard, Laredo,’ she said, rolling the ‘r’ in his name.
‘So do you,’ he replied, seating himself again before she could get him into another rib-crushing clinch.
‘Yes, I do – but I like it, Laredo. I like to give a hungry man good food. I enjoy the look on their faces when they finish and compliment me on what I have done for them, and knowing that it was good.’
‘You should marry again, Maria,’ Laredo said. Her first husband had been trampled in a cattle stampede when he was only twenty-five.
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Laredo! I know men, they want so many things. The one thing I know I can still give them is good food in their stomachs.’
‘I think I understand.’
‘I will bring you the tamales y frijoles and maybe a mug
of cold cerveza,’ Maria said. ‘Is there anything else you want?’
‘Not for me,’ Laredo answered. ‘But Johnny might like to have a word with you,’ he added, nodding at the young man across the table. ‘You might not know it but he is a well-to-do rancher over in Colorado. And now he has gotten his land back.’
‘He wants to talk to me about that?’ Maria said, confused by the drift of the conversation. Then Esmerelda arrived at the table, carrying a platter of hot food for Laredo. No one could miss the glance that passed between the two young people. ‘Oh,’ Maria said. ‘He can talk to me anytime he wishes. I think I must put my “Help Wanted” sign back in the window.’
After she had bustled away, Johnny paused long enough to say, ‘Thanks, Laredo.’
‘Just take good care of her, if she does say yes.’
‘Oh I will!’ Johnny promised. ‘And she will,’ he added confidently.
Laredo ate his hot, spicy food with deep enjoyment. A kid who seemed to have nothing else to do wandered past and Laredo gave him fifty cents to take his buck-skin to the nearest stable. Finishing his meal, Laredo leaned back, his stomach full, his eye lids growing heavy. A few local people had wandered in and they sat talking, laughing together. Maria had returned just as Laredo was ready to walk to the stable, close his eyes and sleep there.
‘I made up a bed fresh for you,’ she said. ‘You must sleep here. You can have my huevos rancheros for breakfast in the morning and then be on your way back to Dusty.’
It was an offer he could not refuse, and he rose wearily to his feet. Patting Maria on the shoulder he said, ‘It’s good to have friends.’
There were four small rooms in back of the kitchen as Laredo knew from previous visits. None of them was much wider than the beds installed there. There were no other furnishings. Laredo needed none. He almost managed to put his head down on the pillow before he fell asleep.
If it hadn’t been for the clatter of dishes and utensils in the kitchen beyond his wall, Laredo thought he might have slept the day away. Instead he climbed out of bed, stamped into his boots, wiped back his hair, planted his hat and went out into the corridor which was bright, the sunlight beaming through an open rear door. Maria did not seem to be around, but he was served a hearty breakfast. Finished, he slid a ten-dollar gold piece under his plate, knowing that if Maria saw it she would refuse payment for what she had provided.
He did not stop to say goodbye to her, nor to seek out Johnny. He decided that he was tired of saying goodbye to people. He only wanted to say hello to Dusty. With that in mind he tramped across the sun-bleached street of the small pueblo toward the stable which lay beyond the central plaza, where the local women washed their clothes in the public fountain amid much gossip and general laughter.
Entering the stable, he blinked, trying to adjust his eyes. No one seemed to be around. Finally, spying his buckskin horse at the end of the ranks of stalls, he started that way.
Cole Lockhart stepped out of the shadows to meet him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ the outlaw chief said coldly.
‘Why?’ Laredo asked, glancing around to make sure there were no other men lurking in the shadows of the barn.
‘You have to ask me that! Before you came along everything was under control. We had those Tangle-wood men on the run. In fact, there were only two of them left. Along with a couple of scared women. Ross was running the bank; Blakely was running Ross. We had a big payday coming up when the job was finished. We had the local law in our hip pocket and Lordsberg belonged to us. You ruined all of that, Laredo. And you managed to get eight of my men shot up in the meantime. You ask me “why”?’
‘I asked you why you were waiting for me,’ Laredo said, shifting his weight slightly as his hand settled near the grips of his stag-handled Colt. ‘There’s nothing to be gained now by shooting me.’
‘There is – pure satisfaction,’ Cole said.
‘Where’s the rest of your gang?’ Laredo wondered.
‘Pretty much scattered. They didn’t seem to want to follow my orders anymore. They seemed to believe that I wasn’t that great a general.’
So that was it. Cole Lockhart not only believed that Laredo was the cause of him missing out on a big payday, but of humiliating him in front of the Clinch Mountain boys. Laredo was thinking that people were giving him too much credit. He had been only a small cog in the events that had brought Cole Lockhart down.
‘Look, Lockhart—’ Laredo began reasonably.
‘You look,’ Cole Lockhart screamed as his hand darted down toward his holstered revolver.
Laredo had been waiting for that; Cole Lockhart had given him enough warning. Laredo crouched, drawing his stag-handled Colt with practiced ease and swiftness. Lockhart’s shot, fired at what he assumed to be an unmoving target sailed over Laredo’s head and banged against the adobe wall of the stable, the shot leaving a roaring echo in its wake.
Laredo triggered off twice from his crouch. The first bullet might have tagged nothing, but the second shot took Cole Lockhart full in the chest and he staggered back to be drawn up short by a stall partition. As the rank of wild-eyed horses watched, Cole slid down the partition, his gun falling away from his hand, to end up seated, quite dead.
There was an uproar behind Laredo as a crowd of curious townspeople, drawn by the shots, swarmed through the stable doors. Laredo snatched up his saddle and rigged his buckskin horse. He walked it past the gathered people and swung into the saddle in the bright sunlight beyond.
The spicy meals that Maria had served him had gone down well and satisfied his hunger, but he had a sudden, strong yearning for a sweet dessert to finish them off. A large wedge of Dusty’s shoo-fly pie was what he had in his mind as he trailed out of the small pueblo, heading home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
For those readers who do not know and might be curious, ‘shoo-fly pie’ is a rich traditional dessert dish in the American South, whose chief ingredients are molasses, brown sugar and butter served in a baked pie shell. Often added are raisins, walnuts or pecans (Dusty’s recipe).
As to how it got its name, your guess is as good as mine.
About the Author
Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Logan Winters
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8819-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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