Rolling Thunder

by Paul Lederer

  Ben was rubbing his jaw with the back of his hand. He glared at me silently from the shadows of the alley, his eyes murderous. I did not holster my gun, nor lower the hammer. I spoke evenly to Mary’s two brothers, trying to make them understand.

  ‘I didn’t come here hunting you boys,’ I told them.

  ‘They told us …’ Ben said fiercely.

  ‘Whoever told you that is lying, trying to get you to do their work for them. Can’t you see that? We were trail-mates on the way West! We all took care of each other. I was planning on settling down with Mary! Has it been so long ago that you don’t remember who Tom Quinn is?’

  I turned away, sudden anger building within me. I slid my pistol into leather and muttered, ‘The hell with you, then.’ I picked up my hat and started on toward Sturdevant’s, not bothering to cast them a backward glance.

  The big gray with the splash of white on its chest seemed happy to see me. I have often wondered if horses, like dogs left alone, feel abandoned when their master goes away. I settled my bill with Sturdevant’s stablehand, a kid of no more than fifteen who watched me with a sort of awe I could not explain. After saddling up, I rode my pony at a walk along the wash behind the town where the willow-trees were beginning their spring flourish, toward Tabor’s stable where I was to meet Toby Trammel.

  There were five stables in Stratton – not an unusual number even for such a small town. Every man owned a horse, the stagecoach used them, the freight wagons. Without horses there was no commerce possible, no transportation across the vast distances. The stables where a leg-weary, far-ridden horse could be cooled and provisioned were as vital to any town as any other institution.

  I saw Toby before I reached Tabor’s. Sitting behind the squat, weathered building he held the reins to his hammerhead sorrel – the same horse he had ridden West years before. He looked weary, uncertain, but at the sound of my gray’s hoofbeats he brightened and rose to meet me.

  ‘I was afraid you’d forgotten us,’ he said. ‘I quit my job. I’ve been wondering what’s going to become of me.’

  ‘So do we all,’ I said, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Have you talked to Barney?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, drawing out the word doubtfully. ‘But he wants to see you.’ Toby shrugged. ‘He isn’t quite sure what to do either. He has a job here, you see, a bed in the loft every night. He’s not sure what it is you have in mind, what his chances are.’

  ‘I’m not either,’ I said honestly. ‘I am offering an opportunity for each of you boys to own a parcel of my own land – if we win. It’s a gamble, yes, but tell Barney he has to weigh that against mucking out horse-stalls and sleeping in haylofts. I can’t tell either one of you what to do. It’s only an offer. I don’t want anyone along who doesn’t want to be there. If you don’t want to ride with me, well … there’s always other places that need dishwashers, other stables that need shoveling out.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Barney again,’ Toby said with a smile reminiscent of the old Toby Trammel.

  We trailed out northward at four in the afternoon. Me, Toby Trammel and Barney Weber, who looked now like a man who had shed his doubts and felt liberated: a prisoner who has received an unexpected reprieve. The spirits of the two seemed to lighten as we rode, their shackles undone. The long valley, thick with grass, studded here and there with black-eyed susans and blue lupine, was crossed by silver rills and dotted with bright, sunlit ponds. Above it all the purple Rockies with their snowcaps brooded over the pleasing land. With every mile Toby and the freckle-faced Barney Weber seemed to be regaining their youthful vigor and joy.

  I just hoped I would prove worthy of their blind trust. I had doubts, but I didn’t speak of them on the trail. I listened to the whish of the gray’s hoofs through the long grass, watched as the two younger men joked and laughed, and kept to myself my private thoughts.

  Too many of which concerned Mary Ford.

  We began to pass small herds of cattle fattening on the lush grass. Most of them were longhorns, but we could see dozens of white-faced Herefords among them. Peebles, whatever he was, was not a fool. The day of the longhorn steer was passing and he had begun bringing in the fatter, more choice breed.

  The problem was, the cattle were on my land.

  I had explained matters to Barney and Toby Trammel as we progressed northward on that sunny day, the rich scent of new grass in our nostrils.

  ‘As you boys remember, Stratton Valley was first staked out by Gil Stratton in the late ‘60s. It was virtually worthless, being so far from civilization, nothing but raw land, and Gil himself had trouble making a living off it. He was a trapper and that was all he knew. There’s plentiful timber, but what was there to do with it? Freight it out? To where?

  ‘Me,’ I continued, ‘I ran into Gil in the ’70s when he was already old, bent and tired of the wilderness life. I guess he liked me some. I was drifting aimlessly, and we wintered up together. I was the son he never had, I suppose, and I was fond of the old man. When he passed, I found out that he had willed me his property, that is two hundred and twenty thousand acres of Colorado meadowland.

  ‘Still,’ I told them, ‘that hardly made me a wealthy man. Land was cheap in those times. I had no prospects of finding ore like they had down in Denver or Leadville. Cattle weren’t run in Colorado in those days, winters being what they are, there was no way to bring in hay after the first snows fell. There was still the timber, but no way to harvest it or transport it – besides, I never wished to destroy the beauty of the high country by cutting the forests.’

  ‘Is that when you went East?’ Barney Weber asked.

  I nodded ‘I was still a drifter at heart, I suppose. I wanted to see St Louis. What I found was a group of pilgrims who wanted to find new homes in the West, but were at a loss as to know where to settle.’

  ‘So you led them here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  If it had not been for Mary Ford’s bright eyes I might never have considered it, but …

  ‘Honestly, Mr Quinn,’ the young lady had said as we walked out one night away from the dully glowing camp-fires of their wagon encampment on the outskirts of St Louis, ‘we don’t know what to do. Mr Tyler Holt says it’s still a thousand miles to the Oregon country, and my mother is ill. Father is not an experienced trailsman either. It seems like this rambling will go on forever and is doomed to failure.’

  That was the first time I had met Mary. Determined to help her, I had met with Tyler Holt, a weary, well-meaning man in over his head in the vastness of the West, and offered him a proposition.

  ‘I know a place where there is room enough for all of you to build a home. A place you can put down roots and raise your families. If you will trust me to guide you.’

  Gil Stratton would have wanted it that way.

  ‘I can’t believe you just gave it all away,’ Toby Trammel said, waving a hand around him, indicating the deep blue stands of spruce, the long-grass valleys, the silver rills.

  ‘Maybe there’s some Indian in me,’ I answered. ‘You know that they believe no man can ever own the land he travels. You do what you can to help people.’ Unfortunately, I had not helped anyone much. Now Shelley Peebles had built a cattle empire on the land and the good families had been ruined or driven off or burned out.

  ‘So, how do you figure to …?’ Toby asked as we continued our plodding way northward, leading a pack mule carrying hastily purchased provisions.

  ‘How do I figure to try?’

  Our horses startled a covey of partridge, and I briefly watched them fly away on bright wings. ‘Boys, I am some dumb but not plumb dumb. When I deeded the Stratton sections over to the settlers I retained the upper ten thousand acres for myself. Gill Stratton’s original cabin and the Pocono headwaters. I was saving it for.…’

  For Mary and me to live on.

  ‘That gives me the upper hand,’ I explained to them.

  ‘I don’t see what you mean, Tom,’ Barney Weber said.

  ‘I think I do,
’ Toby said. ‘You mean to cut off the town’s water supply, don’t you, Tom?’

  I only nodded. He had it right.

  ‘But that’s crazy!’ Barney said, his face flushing deeply enough to hide his freckles. ‘It’s a wild plan! Even if it could be done, it would surely lead to an all-out shooting war.’

  ‘Right three times, Barney,’ I answered. ‘If you boys want to turn around now, I won’t hold it against you.’ They only glanced at each other and smiled. Toby said:

  ‘I guess we’ll stick, Tom. It’ll sure be something to see!’

  We continued to pass cattle, fat and sleek in the long grass. We halted at the head of the cut-off through Gunnison. Notch. The wind had freshened. It shifted the tails and manes of our ponies. The pines swayed in peaceful unison on the fringes of the long valley.

  Toby had removed his hat to wipe his forehead with his red bandanna. ‘It occurs to me,’ he said, ‘that we passed your boundary marker about a half a mile back. Peebles’s cattle are on your land, Tom.’

  ‘They won’t be for long,’ I replied. ‘Boys, I am going to take the cut-off.’

  ‘Going to see Mrs. Holt?’ Barney Weber asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s an obligation. I have to see how she is doing, if she needs anything. It can’t be easy for her running that place with Tyler dead.’ They nodded in understanding. ‘I want you two to ride ahead to Gil Stratton’s old place, the stone cabin – you know it, don’t you, Toby? We’ll be staying there for a while.

  ‘I’d like you to look around, sweep the place out, check for packrats, any signs of owl-nests in the chimney, generally clean up, mow down any weeds that might have sprung up in the yard. Chop some firewood – just generally clean up and make yourselves useful.’

  ‘What if some of the Peebles gang comes around?’ Barney asked with some concern.

  ‘Try to avoid any shooting incident. You can tell them the truth: that I just hired you to clean up. That’s all you know. It goes without saying,’ I added grimly, ‘that you have the right to protect yourselves. If you need to fort up in that stone house, it would take an army to get you out of it. Old Gil constructed it to withstand Indian attacks, and he did it well. I’ll be back as soon as I can make it.’

  I watched the two men ride on. I knew they carried some concerns with them, but also I could tell from their expressions that they were pleased to be out in the open county once again, free men. I turned the big gray horse I rode toward the Gunnison cut-off, riding toward the ranch of Tyler Holt’s widow and fatherless children.

  I watched the long skies with their puffball clouds, the mountain peaks and deep forest with the pleasure of a returning prodigal, but I also kept my eyes open for any outriders. Most likely none of Peebles’s crew knew me by sight, nor could they have an idea of my intentions, but by now some word of the return of Tom Quinn must have reached Shelley Peebles’s ears and he might have sent out riders to tell his men to watch for me, discourage me – or worse.

  I cleared the east end of the pass and dropped through a stand of dark pines, startling a covey of mountain quail, hearing the chattering of silver squirrels in the tall trees. When I broke from the forest I saw the little, low-roofed log cabin Tyler Holt had built for his family, promising that in time it would be a home to be proud of. Once his first crop came in.

  It didn’t look now as if that crop had ever arrived. The ground was barren and dry. I could see where there had once been long furrows carved by Tyler’s dawn-to-dusk labors. I saw no cattle, no horses, nothing but a few chickens scratching at the earth before the house, and these scattered at my arrival. I called to the house before swinging down.

  ‘Hello! Anyone to home? Sadie? It’s Tom Quinn!’

  The door opened with the silence of uneasiness and the slow caution of fear.

  ‘Tom?’ an old woman’s voice enquired with disbelief from the darkness of the log house’s interior. ‘Tom Quinn!’

  ‘It’s me, Sadie,’ I assured her, and as I swung down from the gray horse’s back, the door was flung wide and Sadie Holt’s broad, honest face appeared. She hoisted her dark, heavy skirts and stepped out onto the buckled porch, her fearful eyes brightening. I looped my horse’s reins around the hitch rail and stepped up onto the porch, removing my hat before I spread my arms and walked to her, embracing the good-hearted old soul. For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes. I saw kindness, fear, sorrow and the inroads of age in hers. What she saw in mine, I couldn’t guess. She dabbed at her eyes with her apron.

  ‘Come in, Tom. Do come in! You’ve been long on the trail. Let me fix you something to eat, boil some coffee.’

  My stomach was growling, but I considered that the family had little enough to feed itself. ‘I couldn’t eat. Coffee sounds fine, Sadie.’

  ‘Randall and George aren’t here. They’re out hunting game. But Julia is here. I’ll get her. Sit down, Tom, sit down.’

  I did, seating myself at the roughly made puncheon table while Sadie called for her eldest child, Julia. I felt, rather than saw, the poverty shadowing the house. I could guess that the cupboards were almost bare, and that they had simply been living off the land as best they could.

  After a minute Sadie returned, tugging at the hand of her daughter. Julia had blossomed into young womanhood since the days we had ridden West. Her reddish hair was worn loose, her eyes downcast. She had a tragic sense of hopelessness about her.

  ‘Julia, you may not remember Tom Quinn,’ Sadie said.

  ‘I remember him,’ the girl answered, with her eyes still cast down. ‘Nice to see you again, Mr Quinn. Mother, I have to finish the laundry.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to visit with Tom for awhile?’

  ‘If she has work to do, she’d better finish it,’ I said hastily. I had the idea that Julia did not wish to visit with me. Natural shyness or some undefined grudge against the man who had led her family here, I couldn’t say. I smiled at her, and she nodded and scurried away. Sadie looked disappointed in her daughter.

  ‘How about that coffee?’ I asked to break Sadie’s train of thought.

  ‘Surely. The fire’s already built – for supper.’

  As she bustled around the cramped, dark kitchen I asked her about herself, the ranch, Tyler’s death.

  ‘When the Peebles men shot Tyler down I wept for a week,’ Sadie said, her broad back to me. ‘Then I got angry. I was so angry I wanted to take up a shotgun myself and go after him. The boys had to stop me. I was hysterical, Tom. Then I sat down and started crying some more.

  ‘The way it happened was that one night a group of riders appeared just before midnight. They carried torches. Our stock was driven off, the fields intentionally trampled by the herd, and then set ablaze. I stopped Randall and George from going out into the darkness with their guns. I knew what would happen.’

  ‘It’s a wonder they let the house remain standing,’ I commented.

  ‘They weren’t going to, Tom, but one of the riders, a man named Kit Stacy, shouted out that he would shoot any man who set fire to a house with women and children in it. At least one of them had that much pity.’

  Sadie returned to the table with two heavy ceramic cups and a speckled blue coffee-pot. She poured us each half a cup and seated herself with a sigh, jabbing at her gray-streaked hair with agitated fingers so that a few hair pins slipped free and a strand fell across her forehead.

  ‘They left us the cabin, but no stock, not so much as a mule to plow the fields.’

  She shook off the unhappy memories. Her attempted smile was weary but very real. ‘So tell me, Tom, where in the world have you been? What have you been doing all this time?’

  Sipping at the scalding coffee, I told her slowly where I had been since Mary Ford had broken our engagement.

  ‘I found work as line scout for the Colorado and Eastern Railroad. It was my job to find the best route for the new line, and sometimes to negotiate with the Indians. I was the first one in, followed by the surveyors, and finally the steel crews, mos
tly Irishmen. Later I stayed on, working with the surveyors and learned a little about that. I took whatever work the railroad would offer me. I learned to be a powder-man – that is, to use explosives to clear the way through hard rock. I swung a sledge-hammer for a while as well.

  ‘A representative from Denver told me that I had enough experience to supervise a crew and they might even consider moving me to an office job.’

  ‘Impressive!’

  ‘I suppose. But can you see Tom Quinn in an office in Denver, shuffling papers? Besides …’

  ‘Besides, you were still thinking about Mary Ford.’

  I winced, then smiled. ‘You are a wise woman, Sadie Holt. I had more money banked than I’d ever had. A year of not paying for a roof over my head, for food, horses – all of that was covered by the railroad – had left me pretty well fixed. I was still thinking I might be able to get Mary to change her mind.’

  ‘To bribe her into marrying you, you mean?’

  ‘That never works, does it,’ I said darkly. ‘But I think I knew that anyway. It was finding an article in the newspaper about a range war in Stratton that brought me back. There was a list of people who had been shot by unknown assailants. One of them was Tyler Holt.’

  ‘My husband was never involved in a range war. It was murder, Tom.’

  ‘I know that, Sadie. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘There’s nothing that can be done, Tom,’ she said with urgency. Her blue-veined hands reached across the table and briefly covered mine. ‘Don’t try it! There’s too many of them. Nothing is worth your life. Don’t stir things up again. For your own sake.’

  ‘It’s a little too late, Sadie,’ I told her with a crooked smile. ‘I’ve already started the ball rolling.’

  We stood on the porch for awhile, the low sun scattering burnt-orange and crimson streamers across the sky. I watched a flight of doves winging for home, heard distantly the howl of a mountain wolf.

  I was up into the saddle, had half-turned the big gray horse homeward before I asked: