ReadWest

by Elmer Kelton

  The second day, he got up shortly after daybreak and his wife noticed he was shaky.

  He smiled for the first time in years and said, “I’m going into town and see if I can get a job at the Territorial Prison or driving a stagecoach.”

  She had not been so excited and happy in years and made him a heaping breakfast.

  Scottie took all this in and thought about what a hero Joshua Strongheart was and vowed he would grow up to be just like him. In fact, Scottie, at first, decided he would become a Pinkerton agent someday, but then decided he would be a town marshal or a county sheriff.

  It was two days later, in the Cache Le Poudre river canyon where Joshua rode along the river trail. These mountains on both sides were heavily-wooded with tall timber and were on very steep, very high ridges. High up in several places he saw little white spots moving in the alpine areas and knew these were rocky mountain goats. Twice, he passed bighorn sheep herds watering at the river, and he came upon a pack of wolves feeding on a cow moose carcass near the river. In fact, moose tracks were what made him turn left and head southwest away from the river along a raging whitewater creek with many large boulders and waterfalls in it. Strongheart knew it had to lead to some flat areas maybe a lake because that is what moose like. It had to have good moose habitat, or they would not have turned up this offshoot canyon. He figured that would also provide good opportunities for a hideout for a gang for extended periods, plenty of good graze for horses, water, firewood, and plenty of hiding places both rocky and wooded. He knew what his friend Chris Colt, chief of scouts, already knew; common sense was the most important aspect of tracking anybody or any animal.

  Eagle’s ears were where most of Strongheart’s focus remained. They were like radar beacons. If there was a sound off to the side, the ears twisted towards it, if someone approached from behind, they turned backwards. If the big pinto scented someone to the front his ears would go forward listening for any perceptible sound.

  Joshua’s eyes swept the ground in front of him in wide arcs back and forth going out twenty yards ahead, then thirty, and forty. He was riding the stream trail on a hill which ran above the whitewater creek with straight drops down of about fifty feet. Joshua noticed the leaves on the trees were being blown from the left to the right and the longer weeds were bending to the right. At the same time he spotted what he had been looking for: a sloping grade down to the stream with a well-worn trail going to and from. This is where somebody had been getting water, as well as watering horses.

  At the same time, Eagle turned his head to the left and his eyes looked up the steep vegetation-covered ridge, his ears directed that way, and Joshua saw his nostrils were flaring in and out. He whinnied and far up the ridge an answering whinny came back.

  Strongheart patted his neck saying, “Good boy, Eagle. Now we have to keep going because they will watch us to make sure we are not a threat. They heard their horse a lot easier than we did.”

  He kept riding up the trail acting like a hunter or trapper and did not act like he was looking for sign of the gang.

  Up on the ridge, one of The Teamsters watched through his binoculars and saw the man far below nonchalantly riding down the trail. He kept watching until Strongheart was out of sight and rejoined his friends at their game of poker.

  Joshua waited until he was out of sight then turned left and started going up the slope going back and forth in a switchback. He rode Eagle up about two thousand feet, estimating the outlaws were maybe a thousand feet higher than the trail he was on. Strongheart dismounted and let Eagle get rested up after the climb. Directly above him there were cliffs and down below he saw a kind of a broken terrace in the landscape. Apparently, the gang was camped on one of the terraces which were each covered with lush green grass. Unlike the area around Canon City where he lived, which was semi-arid, this was northern Colorado Territory. There was much more rain and snow in this area, and consequently a lot more green vegetation. Right around Canon City there was much vegetation, because the area near the mighty Arkansas River was very fertile and colorful, with numerous apple orchards and grape crops. In fact, years later it would come out that Canon City had a wider variety of types of trees than any city in the entire country. Joshua knew these outlaws could stay up there out of sight for months, like a cat hiding from the dog on top of the china hutch.

  Strongheart knew he was up against big numbers and a couple years earlier he took on a gang of want-to-be-gunslingers in a shootout in Florence, Colorado. He got them all but was shot to doll rags himself, and it took months to recover. He decided back then, while he was healing, he would never just wade in like that again, but think things through.

  He would first ride along the base of the cliffs and work his way around the many giant rock slides with horse-sized and even house-sized boulders in several places. Then, he would get himself into a position above them and make a strategic plan to take on all these men. He could go and fetch a posse, but that literally would take days not hours, and they might well be gone then. He did give his word and shook hands on it. To Joshua Strongheart, that was like engraving it in stone.

  He rode along slowly, carefully for an hour and found a shadowed place among a large jumble of boulders which formed almost a cave with no roof. He let Eagle rest here and nibble on the grasses in the hideout, while he went out and looked down at the outlaw camp. He remained there watching until dusk, and saw they started preparing their cooking fire.

  Strongheart retreated into the rocks himself, gathered some firewood and made a smokeless fire. This is easily accomplished by gathering the driest wood you can find. He made the fire and checked to make sure it would not reflect off the rocks where the men to his northeast and far below could see it or any smoke coming out of his rock formation. A plan was forming in his mind.

  He gave Eagle a bait of oats from an oilskin bag in his saddlebags, then started his own dinner. He ate, and bedded down early, not drinking any coffee, so he could go to sleep.

  Strongheart awakened after midnight and went to his lookout spot in the rocks, glassing with his binoculars. As he figured, they were all sleeping in a circle around their campfire. There was one guard in front of the fire on a log drinking coffee.

  Joshua went to his saddlebags and took out four leather horse boots. He slipped these over Eagle’s hooves and tied them in place with the leather things laced through the tops of each. He saddled up without saddlebags. Eagle stood in anticipation of going on another great adventure with his master. He could not actually think that way, but he sensed something exciting was up.

  Strongheart took off his boots and spurs and replaced them with his soft-soled porcupine-quilled Lakota moccasins. Mounting up, he rode slowly, quietly down the mountainside, noting that the guard was already dozing off by the fire and getting himself into a more comfortable position. Joshua left Eagle under some tall trees one hundred feet above the camp and started moving down on foot through the shadows. He spotted little Johnny Boy grazing with the remuda. He made his way as only a Lakota warrior could do, silently to the horses. He tied a war bridle on Johnny Boy and led him away from the remuda and up to Eagle. The two sniffed each other, touching noses, and seemed to understand they had to be quiet and ignore normal herd seniority blustering like horses normally do. He let each eat a carrot-flavored horse biscuit he pulled from his pocket.

  The Pinkerton Agent then worked his way back to the camp and crawled on his belly from man to man with many snores permeating the silence of the forest night. It took an hour for Strongheart to accomplish his task and sneak away. So far, his plan was working. Not wanting to risk knocking a rock loose, he led both horses up the mountain and returned to his campsite. He did not want to risk sleeping too long, so he poured himself a cup of coffee while he put his boots and spurs back on. He checked his pistol and then retrieved his belly gun from his saddlebag. He made sure it was clean and loaded. He replaced his bedroll and saddlebags behind the seat on his rough-out saddle, then sat and waited whi
le he enjoyed more coffee and a few corn-dodgers.

  The birds were starting to sing and some crows started cawing overhead, but it was the blue jay screaming which awakened the first outlaw. He looked up and saw Strongheart astride Eagle grinning at him. Joshua nodded.

  “Morning boys!” he hollered.

  Within seconds, they were all standing, blinking and rubbing their eyes. Several dropped into a gunfighter’s stance.

  Joshua said, “I wouldn’t reach for those guns, fellas. Might be a good way to get shot. You will be The Team-sters, right?”

  One large one with red hair and twice the bulk of the others stepped forward.

  “Who the hell are you?” he bellowed.

  The Pinkerton said, “Joshua Strongheart,” and he noticed several exchange nervous glances.

  He added, “I work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and I was hired by a young boy named Scottie Middleton to get this pony back you boys stole. I assume you are Crabs Hamrick?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Ain’t ya gonna ask me why I’m called that?” The big man fumed.

  Strongheart said, “No, I don’t really care.”

  “How could that little brat hire ya? What did he pay ya?” Hamrick roared.

  Strongheart smiled and said, “One dollar.”

  “You come all this way to die over a dollar?” Crabs said.

  “No, it was the price we agreed and shook on. I gave my word I would get him his pony back, and a man is only as good as his word.” Strongheart said and his steely stare into the eyes of Crabs unnerved the man.

  “Now, which one of you cowards shot that boy’s father?” he added.

  Crabs puffed his chest out and said, “I did, but it don’t matter. That pony ain’t going nowhere, and you are gonna die where ya stand.”

  His hand flashed first, as he drew, which spurred all the others into drawing, and Strongheart cleared leather before any of them and just grinned as he heard gun after gun make a metallic click sound.

  “Oh yeah,” he said with a smile, “I forgot to tell you. I visited your camp last night while you are all sleeping and unloaded your weapons. The bullets are in my saddlebags here, but then again, you won’t be needing them.”

  One of the other Teamsters stepped up and said, “Bullets or not, we all got knives. We can rush him boys, and he can’t get all of us.”

  He took one step, and Joshua’s left hand gun, his belly gun, fired and half the man’s ear disappeared. The man grabbed what was left of his ear screaming in pain.

  Strongheart said, “You are playing a rough game, mister. You can wrap it with your scarf. The rest of you, see if you can grab a handful of clouds. Except you, Crabs. Load your gun.”

  Crabs Hamrick felt like somebody stepped on his grave. Shaking slightly, he loaded his gun and kept thinking about a snapshot but decided against it. He had heard about this man over and over. He holstered his gun.

  Strongheart said, “You killed an unarmed hard-working man and left his little boy and little girl fatherless for the rest of their lives. You have six shots to kill me Hamrick. You better make everyone count. I am at least giving you a chance. Fill your hand, mongrel.”

  Crabs eyes opened wide as he clawed frantically for his gun and had it almost halfway out of the holster when he looked into the two barrels of Strongheart’s Colt Peacemakers and saw flame shoot out of them. They slammed into his chest, and he saw the trees and the sky as he folded backwards and felt a weakness spreading through him. He was going to die and go to hell.

  He heard the words of the outlaw next to him say, “Gee, two bullets right in the middle of the chest. Crabs is dead, boys.”

  He wanted to scream that he wasn’t, but his mouth would not work, then everything went blank.

  Strongheart said, “Drop the holsters and get ready to move. Fort Collins will have nice warm cells for you. You can order a late breakfast there.”

  Scottie was playing in front of the house with his sister. His uncle was at his new job at The Territorial Prison.

  His aunt was beating a rug, and then with tears glistening in her eyes, she said, “Scottie, here comes Mr. Strongheart, and he’s leading Johnny Boy!

  Looking at the tall handsome man leading his pony down River Drive, Scottie wanted to scream with joy, but he puffed his chest out saying, “I knew he would Auntie. A man is only as good as his word.”

  Elmer Kelton is regarded as the best author to ever have written in the Western genre. The author of over 40 novels, and published over more than 50 years, three of Kelton's novels have appeared in Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Four of his novels have won the prestigious Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City: The Time it Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, The Man Who Rode Midnight, and the text for The Art of Howard Terpning. Seven of his novels have won the Spur award from Western Writers of America: Buffalo Wagons, The Day the Cowboys Quit, The Time it Never Rained, Eyes of the Hawk, Slaughter, The Far Canyon, and The Way of the Coyote.

  Elmer Kelton died in 2009, but his memory lives on, not only through his writing, but with a star on the Texas Trail of Fame in the Fort Worth Stockyards, and a bronze statue of his likeness in the Tom Green County Library in San Angelo, Texas. www.elmerkelton.net.

  THE LAST INDIAN FIGHT

  IN KERR COUNTY

  In later times, Burkett Wayland liked to say he was in the last great Indian battle of Kerr County, Texas. It happened before he was born.

  It started one day while his father, Matthew Wayland, then not much past twenty, was breaking a new field for fall wheat planting, just east of a small log cabin on one of the creeks tributary to the Guadalupe River. The quiet of autumn morning was broken by a fluttering of wings as a covey of quail flushed beyond a heavy stand of oak timber past the field. Startled, Matthew jerked on the reins and quickly laid his plow over on its side in the newly broken sod. His bay horse raised its head and pointed its ears toward the sound.

  Matthew caught a deep breath and held it. He thought he heard a crackling of brush. He reached back for the rifle slung over his shoulder and quickly unhitched the horse. Standing behind it for protection, he watched and listened another moment or two, then jumped up bareback and beat his heels against the horse’s ribs, moving in a long trot for the cabin in the clearing below.

  He wanted to believe ragged old Burk Kennemer was coming for a visit from his little place three miles down the creek, but the trapper usually rode in the open where Matthew could see him coming, not through the brush.

  Matthew had not been marking the calendar in his almanac, but he had not needed to. The cooling nights, the curing of the grass to a rich brown, had told him all too well that this was September, the month of the Comanche moon. This was the time of year—their ponies strong from the summer grass—that the warrior Comanches could be expected to ride down from the high plains. Before winter they liked to make a final grand raid through the rough limestone hills of old hunting grounds west of San Antonio, then retire with stolen horses and mules—and sometimes captives and scalps—back to sanctuary far to the north. They had done it every year since the first settlers had pushed into the broken hill country. Though the military was beginning to press in upon their hideaways, all the old settlers had been warning Matthew to expect them again as the September moon went full, aiding the Comanches in their nighttime prowling.

  Rachal opened the roughhewn cabin door and looked at her young husband in surprise, for normally he would plow until she called him in for dinner at noon. He was trying to finish breaking the ground and dry-sow the wheat before fall rains began.

  She looked as if she should still be in school somewhere instead of trying to make a home in the wilderness; she was barely eighteen. “What is it, Matthew?”

  “I don’t know,” he said tightly. “Get back inside.”

  He slid from the horse and turned it sideways to shield him. He held the rifle ready. It was always loaded.

  A horseman broke out of the timber
and moved toward the cabin. Matthew let go a long-held breath as he recognized Burk Kennemer. Relief turned to anger for the scare. He walked out to meet the trapper, trying to keep the edginess from his voice, but he could not control the flush of color that warmed his face.

  He noted that the old man brought no meat with him. It was Kennemer’s habit, when he came visiting, to fetch along a freshly killed deer, or sometimes a wild turkey, or occasionally a ham out of his smokehouse, and to stay to eat some of it cooked by Rachal’s skillful hands. He ran a lot of hogs in the timber, fattening them on the oak mast. He was much more of a bagman and trapper than a farmer. Plow handles did not fit his hands, Kennemer claimed. He was of the restless breed that moved westward ahead of the farmers, and left when they crowded him.

  Kennemer had a tentative half smile. “Glad I wasn’t a Comanche. You’d’ve shot me dead.”

  ‘‘I’d’ve tried,” Matthew said, his heart still thumping. He lifted a shaky hand to show what Kennemer had done to him. “What did you come sneaking in like an Indian for?”

  Kennemer’s smile was gone. “For good reason. That little girl inside the cabin?”

  Matthew nodded. Kennemer said, “You’d better keep her there.”

  As if she had heard the conversation, Rachal Wayland opened the door and stepped outside, shading her eyes with one hand. Kennemer’s gray-bearded face lighted at sight of her. Matthew did not know if Burk had ever had a wife of his own; he had never mentioned one. Rachal shouted, “Come on up, Mr. Kennemer. I’ll be fixing us some dinner.”