by Paul Lederer
‘Of course I do!’ she said. ‘That was what made me love you. You were so bold and sure of yourself when no other man in the company knew the wild country.’
‘But now …?’
Her hand rested lightly on mine and I felt the return of old stirrings that I tried to suppress.
‘Don’t you see, Tom? Times have changed. The days of the rough trailsmen are passing. We have built a town here; things are settled. The long-trail is gone. I suffered enough deprivation on the way West. I want order and peace in my life. You still want to charge about with guns and war cries. Things aren’t like that now. In Stratton we now have a judge, a sheriff, law and order. It’s a new era, Tom. Men like Shelley Peebles know that, that the West is changing. Have you met Shelley?’
‘I’ve seen him,’ I said carefully, noting that Mary had called him ‘Shelley’ and not ‘Mr Peebles.’
I didn’t like the way this conversation was tending. I guess that vague hope of a reconciliation lingered even then, but what if I told her that I was starting a range war, had men ready to shoot it out with the robber barons, had blown up the town’s water supply? That would endear me to her, all right! Hell, maybe Mary was right in her thinking. We certainly did not seem destined ever to reach an understanding of matters. She liked the town life too much, it seemed; I could never persuade her to move upcountry to the stone house, far away from the shops and conveniences. I saw that now. A sort of heavy sadness began to settle over me.
‘What is it you wanted to say to me, Mary?’ I asked wearily.
‘My brothers. Ben and Will are with you, aren’t they?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll kill them one way or the other, won’t you?’ she demanded with unexpected heat.
‘No one needs to be killed at all,’ I answered slowly, wondering what Mary did know, how concerned she really was about Big Will and Ben, whether Shelley Peebles hadn’t put her up to probing me about my plans. These thoughts were ultimately depressing. There is little so sad as realizing that someone you knew – loved – is not at all what you thought they were. I have to be wrong, I thought as her guileless blue eyes met mine again, but then she gave herself away.
‘Why then are you and your men driving Shelley’s steers off their grazing land?’
‘So he did send you,’ I said with deep regret.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said flippantly, her hand falling away from mine.
‘Yes, you do,’ I said, searching her eyes again. ‘You can tell Peebles for me that the reason those beeves are being driven south is because they are on my land. Or,’ I added, rising to my feet, ‘have him read tomorrow’s newspaper.’
The stiffness in Mary’s voice was cutting. ‘Is there anything else I should tell him, Mr Quinn?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘tell him for me that the town of Stratton better get started digging itself some deep water wells.’
Then I spun away on my heel, leaving the puzzled girl in the yellow dress to watch after me. All right, I knew it then. I had been played for a fool. Not the first man in history to have it done to him, but like every other man I had believed – sincerely – that Mary Ford was above such ploys, that she was different. I was three strides away from the boardwalk when I saw Toby Trammel riding down the street, hard, leading my gray. He yelled out to me:
‘Watch it, Tom! They’ve laid an ambush!’
I saw that the loungers I had been watching earlier had disappeared from view. I guessed that they had taken cover in the nearby alley, and as I rolled into the saddle of my gray horse, I pointed warningly at it to Toby and we turned rapidly away. Ten – a dozen – shots rang out from the mouth of the alleyway. We didn’t try to fire back, not from the backs of our hard-running horses. We simply spurred toward the outskirts of town at a flat-out gallop.
Half a mile on we drew our sweating ponies up in the shade of a cottonwood grove. I unsheathed my carbine and watched our backtrail as Toby cursed.
‘Dirty bushwhackers. Rotten bastards,’ he was muttering. ‘They creased my pony’s neck.’
I glanced at the wounded hammerhead sorrel, judged the wound to be superficial and told him, ‘I brought some carbolic with our supplies, Toby. He’ll be OK.’
‘Rotten bastards,’ Toby said again. His hand was shaking as he stroked his beloved horse,
‘You know, Toby,’ I told him as the wind whispered in the cottonwood trees, ‘things are not going to get any easier. They’re going to get a hell of a lot worse, in fact. If you want to ride away from it, it’s still all right with me.’
The blond wrangler looked up at me with unshakeable intent, ‘Tom – you couldn’t drive me away now.’
The sun was heeling over toward the peaks of the high mountains before we reached the house. The snowcaps were flushed to crimson and the light scattered by the dying sun seemed cold, casting cruel shadows beneath the pines. The river had unmistakably withered, I noticed with grim satisfaction. The watercourses were barely trickling.
Toby and I had spoken little on the way back to the ranch. He could read my mood, and I saw that his was not much better. I didn’t like the look of the house at our homecoming.
The plank door was bolted; the boys had forted up. There were three horses I did not recognize hitched to our rail and two men I did not know sitting on the porch. That meant there was one man concealing himself somewhere.
‘Be alert,’ I told Toby Trammel, and I saw him unbutton his heavy coat to make his Colt accessible.
‘Do you know them?’ I asked Toby. He squinted into the low sun and after a moment nodded.
‘Lawmen, Tom.’
My mouth tightened. I hadn’t meant for this sort of trouble to begin so soon. As we reached the yard, I saw that Toby was right. Sunlight glinted off a star pinned to the coat of a walrus-mustached man who was watching our approach, hands on hips.
‘That’s Sheriff Langdbon,’ Toby said in a lowered voice. ‘You wouldn’t know him. He rode in with Peebles.’
I nodded, slowed my gray horse and looked around, wondering whether the boys inside the house were watching from the slit windows, wondering where the third lawman was concealed. I drew up within ten feet of my porch but did not swing down immediately.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Need something?’
‘Need someone to answer the door,’ Langdon said. His voice was muffled by a chaw of tobacco. His mustache, I saw now, was streaked with gray. He was a bulky, broad-shouldered man with an air of arrogance.
‘Sorry. It was by my orders that they locked themselves down.’
The sheriff took another heavy step forward, spat tobacco juice on the porch planks and asked me, ‘You’re Tom Quinn, then?’
‘I am.’
‘You’re the man I came to see, Quinn. I thought you were hiding from me.’
‘Why would I do that, Sheriff? I’ve committed no crimes.’
‘Can we talk then?’ the lawman asked. Still I sat my horse and Toby Trammel remained where he had been, his fingers inches from the butt of his revolver.
‘I don’t mind,’ I told the big-shouldered man, ‘but it would be more comfortable, and more friendly of you if you’d call your other deputy out of hiding. I’m not fond of concealed guns.’
The sheriff’s mustache twitched only slightly in what might have been the briefest of smiles. ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘Jake! Come on out!’
I shifted my eyes briefly to watch as a scarecrow of man with a Winchester in his hands emerged from the stable. Then, nodding to Toby, I swung down, led my horse to the hitch rail and tied him there.
‘Let’s go inside, Sheriff. Your two men can make themselves comfortable out here as best they can.’ I paused before adding, ‘They should know that there are armed men watching from every one of the windows.’
‘I figured as much,’ Langdon said laconically.
‘I remind you just so that they don’t take a notion to get up to any mischief.’
&n
bsp; Langdon briefly conferred with his deputies and then I called to the house: ‘It’s Tom, boys. Open up!’
I heard the bar being thrown and the heavy door creaked open. Inside the stone house were Barney Weber, Randall Holt and Big Will Ford. I did not know where Ben Ford and George Holt were, but I suspected they were out in the forest with their rifles at the ready, watching the activity. I smiled inwardly. The sniper in the stable probably would not have had a chance if he had chosen to try ambushing Toby and me.
I languidly poured coffee for Sheriff Langdon and myself, and settled into my favorite chair. ‘What’s this about?’ I asked him.
‘Rustling, for one thing,’ he said with gravity.
I couldn’t help myself – I laughed out loud.
‘Sheriff,’ I apologized, ‘I’m sorry, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a man being charged with rustling for driving cattle off his land!’
Langdon was nonplussed. Maybe his superiors had sent him out to intimidate me without giving him a true picture of the way matters lay. He found his voice again.
‘Then there’s simple trespassing, Quinn,’ he told me in his low voice.
I shook my head and rose, walking to the thin lock-box I always carried with me. Opening it, I returned to my chair, stretching out my hand to give Langdon a pair of folded papers. ‘I know you haven’t been in this country long, Sheriff. But your bosses must know that I have held this land for seven years, having inherited it from Gil Stratton. This is my land to do with as I like. The only trespassing done around here is being done by Peebles’s riders – who, by the way, had better keep their distance unless they are employed in the honest work of driving cattle off my graze.’
Langdon slowly read the legal documents I had handed him. I couldn’t tell if he was nearsighted or simply unused to reading. He squinted, wiped his eye with a finger, sighed and tugged at his walrus mustache. The expression on his face was that of a man who felt he has been duped. Maybe he had, maybe he was just temporarily buffaloed.
‘I’ll have to take these papers into Stratton for Judge Manx to review,’ he said slowly.
‘No, you don’t,’ I said firmly, reaching for the documents. ‘A notarized copy of my deed is on file at the courthouse. There’s another copy in the Denver bureau of records. I will keep this one, if you don’t mind.’
I don’t know if he had meant to destroy the deed, believing that thereby my claim might be invalidated, but he nodded heavily and handed it back to me. The reason I had filed not only at the courthouse but also had had a certified copy sent to the capital was because old Gil Stratton had advised me to on his death-bed, saying, ‘Son, they’ll steal your land if they can. Our land.’ On my own, I never would have thought of it. I was young and inexperienced. Gil must have had a similar bad experience somewhere in his long life. Now there was no way anyone could dispute my claim to the land or take it from me.
Unless they killed me.
Sheriff Langdon sat watching me in silence, sipping at his coffee while my men watched out the windows for any sign of threatening activity. ‘You plan ahead, don’t you, Quinn?’ Langdon said at length.
‘I try to.’
‘One other matter …’ he hesitated. ‘My deputies and I noticed that the water flow up here is slowing to nothing. Like the Pocono’s suddenly gone dry. You have anything to do with that?’
‘Nature’s unpredictable,’ I said.
‘So are men,’ the sheriff said, rising. ‘You know, young man, if they can’t take care of you legally, they’ll come after you the other way.’
‘Will you be with them, Langdon?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer. Shaking his head heavily he walked to the door, opened it and stepped out without so much as a backward glance.
‘It’s been a hell of a day,’ Toby Trammel murmured.
By the time George Holt and Ben Ford had made their cautious way back to the stone house, young Randall Holt had a pot of stew boiling furiously away on the stove. We gathered again at the table while waiting to eat. I ran briefly through the events of the day for those who had missed a part of them and then assigned new duties.
‘We’re going to have to start running a night-watch, men. The sheriff is onto us now, so is Peebles. They might not know my intent, but they know enough to understand that we mean trouble for them. We need two men up at a time every night. You can divide the schedule up any way you like, just so we have watchers. I don’t know what they might try.’
I left the boys discussing how they were going to work out the shifts and tramped along the hall to the small bedroom that had been Gil’s and was now mine. Further along the corridor was the bunk area, set up for six men, then a pantry that was seldom used for there was also one in the kitchen. Still, if a person was going to winter-up through long, snow-bound months, the extra storage space would prove useful.
I didn’t know whether I would be there over the winter. I didn’t know whether I would be there next week. Alive. I lay on the bed and stared at the faint glimmer of starlight I could see through the high, slit window and the haze of the sky beyond and wondered, more deeply than anyone else, if I wasn’t making a string of bad choices. More than that, whether I had done right by persuading these trusting men to follow along.
I might have accomplished nothing other than to drag these loyal men to the brink of destruction.
SIX
I rode out early that morning with Toby Trammel at my side. I wanted to see for myself how the job of driving the cattle past the seven-mile marker was coming along, and to study the trail north for any horse tracks that did not belong there. Ben Ford and young Randall Holt had ridden out earlier to continue the job of hieing the beeves toward the south. Big Will Ford and George Holt who had taken the last shift on night-watch were still asleep in the bunk room. Barney Weber was keeping himself busy with yard chores and generally keeping an eye out for incoming riders.
The day was cold and bleak. Even though I had brought it about myself, it was surprising how lonesome the empty land looked. No bright new sunlight on the fading river, the snaking rills throttled, no cattle grazing peacefully in the long grass.
I wandered through my meditations deep in thought. It was a surprise when Toby lifted a pointing finger and reined in sharply, saying, ‘Something’s up, Tom!’
I shifted my eyes to see Ben Ford flagging his black horse on either flank with his reins, riding hell-bent toward us. He was hatless and wild-eyed. He drew his lathered horse up beside us.
‘They got him, Tom!’ Ben eventually managed to pant.
‘Who? What happened, Ben. Take a minute, will you?’
The black horse shuddered with exhaustion. There was perspiration glistening on Ben’s forehead.
Calming slightly, he told us: ‘Young Randall Holt. They killed him, Tom. We had split up to drive two small bunches of cattle south. After I reached the seven-mile marker I turned back to find Randall, thinking he might need some help. I found him – dead.’
‘Shot down?’ I asked coldly.
‘No. Come on, I’ll show you.’
At a slower gait, Ben led us across the muddy remains of a creekbed and into a grove of white oak trees beyond. There we found Randall Holt, his hands strapped behind his back, his body hanging from a noose around his neck. I cursed and swung down urgently, although I knew the need for haste was long past. Young Randall Holt was dead. Lynched. Killed before he had ever even matured enough to put a razor to his face.
‘Did you see anyone, Ben?’ I asked the trembling man who stood beside me.
He shook his head heavily. ‘No one, Tom. I shouldn’t have left him working alone.’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ Toby told the anguished man. Toby still sat his sorrel, hands crossed on the pommel. I caught his eye and his meaning. If whoever did this had caught them together, we likely would have two men swinging from the oak-limb instead of one.
‘Cut him down,’ I instructed Toby, who edged his wary hors
e nearer, unsheathed his Bowie knife and sawed through the new hemp of the rope. I tried to soften the fall of the body, but still it dropped with a sickening thud onto the dark earth.
‘Now what?’ Toby asked.
‘Ride back and tell George what’s happened to his brother.’
‘And what are you going to do, Tom?’
‘Take Randall home,’ I told him, looking up through the tangled growth of the old oak tree at the cold sky. ‘Look around and see if you can find his little paint pony, would you?’
The horse was nowhere to be found and so, with Toby’s and Ben’s help, the body of Randall Holt was hoisted up over the withers of my gray. That patient animal shied a little. I don’t know if it was the extra weight he objected to or the near scent of death.
The sun continued its descent toward the snowy mountain peaks. The long shadows of my horse and its sad burden stretched out before me as I entered the Gunnison Notch cut-off. The pine-trees crowded close around me, black as sin except in their highest reaches where the last sunlight touched the treetops with pure gold. The forest was cold and silent. I rode with a heaviness I cannot describe.
What was I going to tell Sadie Holt? Her husband had been killed – some might have blamed me for that. Now her younger son was gone. And some might blame me for that. I steeled myself against the woman’s grief, anger, collapse, whatever was to come as I emerged from the eastern end of the cut-off and rode into the yard of the Holt ranch at purple dusk.
I swung down from the gray horse, wanting to say a few words to Sadie before she was forced to deal with actual sight of the body. The door to the little house stood open. Frowning, I rested my hand on the butt of my Colt and paused, looking around. I saw no horses, no signs of trouble. There was no fire burning in the hearth and the wind was cold; why then was the door open wide?
I stepped up onto the porch carefully, ready for anything. Anything but what I did find.
Young Julia Holt was seated in a rocking-chair before the cold fireplace, her reddish hair loose around her shoulders, slowly, slowly rocking.
‘Julia?’ I said softly. She did not turn her head to look at me. ‘Where’s your mother? I’m afraid … I have some bad news for her.’
