by Rusty Davis
“Left Texas for other reasons,” Carrick said, dismissively. “Don’t know that I want the range for myself. Don’t want it taken away from them ladies.”
“Good man!” Oliver clapped him on the back. “Now, promise me even if that girl won’t ride, you’ll hog tie her and git her out of that house this once. If only for a couple of hours. For an old man!”
Carrick promised he would find an excuse to forward the courting and rode back out after shaking hands with Oliver.
The shack was about a half-hour ride from the Bar C house; about an hour from Double J and the same from Lazy F. Carrick had made it plain to the ladies: He needed some place that was his. He’d lived alone the past two years, and indoors wasn’t always comfortable. Even though he hadn’t had a nightmare in two nights, he didn’t want one when they were around. He was glad for the solitude. He needed time and space to sort out everything he had learned.
He was thinking of the cabin as his, even though there were some odd things in the cupboards—two fancy glasses and fancy lace things stashed in a wooden box in one corner that was cleaner than anywhere else. Whoever was using the cabin would have to find some other place.
Carrick gathered some sticks to start a fire after cleaning out what he could from the chimney. It was askew, but it worked. He’d need to build a shelter for Beast. There was lumber at the Lewis ranch. Maybe he could borrow some.
He was wondering if he should make the shack into something a little more permanent. If Oliver was successful, and Carrick figured the conniving old rancher would probably get his way, the old house would be no place for Carrick. He wondered what would happen to Reb if Oliver moved in as Jessie’s husband. Maybe Jess would move to Lazy F and Reb could continue living where she was. Like Oliver or not, what he said made sense. Probably Lazy F wouldn’t hold off Double J forever, but only a reckless man would start a range war with a ranch the size of Bar C and Lazy F combined—and Jackson Jones was far more calculating than reckless.
Would Reb hang onto the house alone? His past was in the place, but her roots were there, deep. Would she want someone to share it with? Fool! She was excited from catching the stallion. That’s all it was. He was putting the wagon ahead of the horses. First, they needed to find out what the day would bring when Francis Oliver asked Jess Lewis to be his wife. Then, maybe he could figure out what he was going to do, and if there was something like a future in the Buffalo Horn Valley.
Jessie Lewis was also thinking about the future. She had walked outside as the day dimmed and the breeze picked up. Introspection was rare in her life. There was work to do; Reb to watch; a life to live. With her hand on the iron railing by the family plot, she looked at the stones of her family and Carrick’s and thought for once about her own future. Clawing a living from the land was a challenge she had accepted, and surmounted. Carrick’s arrival had her thinking. If he and Reb ever married—she laughed at how unthinkable Reb and marriage might have been only a few days ago—she would be in their way, no matter how much they would say otherwise. She thought about Francis Oliver. Funny man. By turns delicate and devious. There was something on his mind other than land, she was sure of it. Reb would never hear of it, but she did like the man; anyone who was a survivor could admire another of the same breed.
She looked off across the land towards Double J. Easy Thompson sprang to mind. The rumbling giant of a man was probably the only reason riders never quit Double J, she mused. He was about the biggest man in the valley. He was about her age; the last time she saw him there were bits of gray in his huge brown mustache. His face proclaimed he had lived outdoors most of his life. His past was lost down the trail, but she always felt that, unlike his boss, he was an honest man. His smile was kind.
She recalled him when they met in town. Every time she said hello to him as part of her effort to teach Reb to be courteous even to the enemy, he blushed and stammered like a little boy in church. He took off his hat to her, as though she were a lady. He had been there that time the drunken cowboy thought she was his sister, and was so overly solicitous Jess was afraid Reb was going to shoot him!
She thought about Carrick. Much like Jackson Jones, he threw his will against what stood in his way. Much like Reb. Sooner or later, they would all collide. Sooner or later. She looked at the stones and the graves. May it be later, Lord, she prayed silently. Much later.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carrick sat up. A blanket had curled over his legs. He frantically kicked it off. Beads of sweat dotted his face. His hand was at his right hip, reaching for what wasn’t there. He was not in the Abilene street. It was his shack near Black Wind Pass, in the hilly country no one cared about between the ranches.
As wakefulness returned, the panic eased. He had been sure there was a shot—a booming sound that penetrated the shrouds of sleep. He listened. Silence. Not even birds. Trouble.
Another shot; then one after. The big booms of a powerful long gun. Then silence.
Hunters were in the hill country all the time. Deer. Big cats. That was the other way. This was out toward the range, the flatlands, where trouble in the form of men lived. Trouble had found him. He tossed off the blanket.
Late summer daylight was filtering in the shack. There were piles here, stuff there. He got up from the floor. He’d lost the bed habit in the war, and never recovered it.
It was still silent outside. Beast looked back from the tree where he’d been loosely tied. Carrick walked to the thin flow of water that dripped from the rocks and splashed himself fully awake. He looked across Buffalo Horn Valley. Somebody was out there. Not moving. He thought he heard a rider moving north, toward Double J, but with the wind in his ears it could have been any kind of noise.
He saddled Beast. They loped down the path between the trees. Long before he reached the flatland, he could see a horse standing in the middle of the field. It wasn’t until they were fifty feet away he could see the lump by the side of a giant white horse. Whoever the rider was, he had a faithful animal.
Beautiful horse, thought Carrick. Beast snorted, as if reading his thoughts. Beast was not beautiful. He was long-legged all right, but his gray coat had so much brown in it he looked mud-splattered on the best of days. But the horse was Carrick’s, and, for weeks on end making their way from Kansas to Wyoming, he had been Carrick’s sole friend in the world. He never chided Beast for any real or imagined shortcomings in the area of looks because he figured the horse might have noted a few of his shortcomings, too—like the beard and hair that didn’t get trimmed much, the old clothes that got washed every so often or not maybe that much, and the face with the scars on the outside that showed and on the inside that didn’t.
They reached the corpse. The shape and the size looked familiar. Carrick rolled him over. Jackson Jones. Double J land was over the hill about a mile or so. They were on the old Bar C’s land, if it belonged to anyone other than the bears and wolves.
He wondered where Jones would have been going, but it didn’t really matter now. The man whose dreams were larger than life had come to the end of his. Too soon, thought Carrick. Jones had been changing, he thought. The man was going to have an empire, but he reckoned that the Lewis women would be allowed a part of it thanks to Reb catching the stallion. Now, it was all up for grabs again. Was this Oliver’s work? Hard to see who else would benefit.
Three bullets. Good shooting. One in the front. Two in the back. Probably one riding and the other two when he was down. There wasn’t as much blood by the second ones. Second wounds never bled as much as first ones. Jones had fought and fought against the world, thought Carrick as he struggled and stumbled until he eventually lifted the big man into his horse’s saddle. The man’s fight was now over. The white horse didn’t like the feel of a man draped across his saddle, and it took Carrick a minute to calm him. He had the feeling Beast was watching closely, as if a horse could get jealous. Didn’t the fool horse know there weren’t anyone in the whole world but each other would know if either of them d
ied? Silly horse.
“Good boy, Beast, you contrary beast,” chided Carrick. “Now c’mon. We got to take this here fella into town. Sheriff’ll have to figure this out. No way after these last few days am I riding to Double J with their boss’s body on his horse.”
Lincoln Springs Sheriff Dan Hill went whiter than a blizzard when Carrick told him the news. Dan was pushing sixty. He was a big man who could wrestle a drunk and was old in the ways of the young and wild. Murder was not in his line. He retreated into the limits of his job as Carrick demanded Hill take charge of Jones.
He shook his head sadly as he looked at Jones’s body. “Best take him home, son. His, not yours. I feel bad for the kin, and I guess it’s all gonna blaze up out of control, but my job’s keeping the boys from wrecking the town here, not riding any range. I’ll see what Wally Perkins and Sam Johnson want done—they’re such of a town council as we got—but I don’t think they want me interfering with this, because the only reason anyone would kill old Jackson Jones is to stop him grabbing land. Man was planning to build a school and church here next year. Now that’s gone. It’s none of our business. Town hired me to keep cowboys in line within the town limits. You better take him home to his ranch, Carrick; then you better tell them women to fort up their place because whatever happened before today is gonna be nothin’ to what comes after. ’Spose someone ought to tell Oliver, if he don’t already know.”
“Sheriff, ain’t there an undertaker here?”
“Sam Morris builds the coffins; he don’t hold the dead. Church never got built. Sorry, Carrick, you’re on your own.” Hill turned away.
Carrick was disheartened and more than a little irked the lawman was able to wriggle out of what should be his job. He half wanted to leave Jackson Jones right there. Not his business. Not his fight. But he knew he could not do that. A man couldn’t leave a dead man lying around to start smelling bad.
“C’mon, Beast. Double J it is. Maybe they won’t shoot first. Least maybe we can get you a bag of oats out of this.” The horse looked back. Carrick wondered what he thought. At least he never said.
They rode slowly across the range. Perfect place for horses and cattle. Dry. Grass grew no matter what anyone did; nothing much else grew no matter what they did, except for the places where the trees grew thick. Wyoming weather meant that if you traveled five miles you could be in a different world. Not the kind of land they had in Kansas, where the plains went on forever, or down South, where the land was thick and rich.
The rough open terrain was all Carrick’s as he rode slowly, trying to find a good way to tell this story on the Double J ranch. Most days, Carrick thought, there would be someone riding around—someone who maybe he could have pawned off this trip on. Today, of course, no such luck.
He swung off the wide trail that led toward the town and onto the one straight for Double J. He figured there were eyes in the distant hills. As he had learned, Double J was vigilant. He was right. Too much dust for one rider was coming toward him. Carrick hated talking on the good days. Today, he hated it worse.
He plodded along. Beast could run if he had to, and if things got ugly, that was the plan. He had been hoping to avoid a war with Double J, not start one. Still, he eased his gun in its holster. A man had to be ready.
Six riders spread out as they came nearer. Carrick stopped and let them know they were in charge. Easy Thompson was the Double J foreman and his unmistakable figure was in the lead as they rode up to Carrick, surrounding him with a cloud of dust that filtered through the air and came to rest on everything from Carrick’s face to the cold body of Jackson Jones.
“Got bad news, Easy!” Carrick called out, trying to size up the legend he had only met through range talk. “Found your boss shot about a mile south of the pass. Lincoln Springs didn’t want anything to do with it. Ask the sheriff. I’m coming from there now. I’m taking him back to Double J.”
Two riders, hands near their guns, suspecting something, anything, came closer. One nodded. The other grabbed the reins.
“You’re Carrick,” rumbled Easy. “Man who came up in my boss’s face when I wasn’t there. Man who killed those Crowleys and Larry Gordon. Heard about you.”
“Man who doesn’t back down, Easy. You want to talk about history or you want to talk about your boss?”
“Tell me about it,” said Easy, who seemed to be blinking a lot after taking a long, close look at the body of his boss.
“I did,” replied Carrick. “I’m done.”
“You’re done talkin’ when I’m done askin’,” Easy replied curtly with the voice of a man whose authority is so solid that no man ever questioned it. “Bring him, boys. Shoot him if he doesn’t cooperate.”
For a moment, defiance flared in Carrick. Easy Thompson’s massive shoulders tensed as he watched it spark. They relaxed as he watched it die. Carrick’s eyes locked onto the foreman’s a mite longer than necessary. Then he let it slide. Man finds his boss dead, a man’s likely to be touchy. Range gossip had nothing bad to say about Easy. Only thing Carrick had heard was that he had some kind of interest in Jessie Lewis, but Easy didn’t look or act like the marrying kind.
Thompson turned the horse to lead the group back to the ranch. Two riders kept to the back behind Carrick. He could kill them and probably get away, but where would there be to run? He had to play this out.
Easy Thompson spurred ahead as they reached the ranch. The rest of the riders accompanied Jones’s body to the stone house he had used as his headquarters. Carrick saw them struggle to carry the man from his horse. Easy watched, then went into the big ranch house.
Carrick was riding behind the rest. Grief was private. He’d had his. Never shared it. Didn’t need a share in anyone else’s. He thought about riding out now that the riders had all dismounted and seemed to have forgotten him, but Easy’s language had been definite and it was not a day to rile a man.
He dismounted and took Beast off to the side of the growing crowd. Maybe he could get food for the horse; oats were a treat the poor animal didn’t get often. Double J was bound to have some.
“Where are you goin’?”
Ken Billings had his gun out and pointed at Carrick. “Horse has been ridin’ all day. I’m gonna take off his saddle, get him some oats. Animal didn’t do nothing to deserve to suffer.”
“And Jones did?”
“Fella, all I did was find him. I don’t like it either, but I didn’t shoot him, didn’t have a thing against any of you. You know that. I been standin’ up for some women who needed a hand. Nothin’ more. What happened to your boss hurts kind of raw now but let it alone. Easy wants me around, so I’m around.”
He didn’t wait for a reply but kept walking. Soon, Beast was in a stall Carrick liked for him; it was by the big door and the breeze. Wally, the stable boy, would look after him and feed him. Beast would be fine. Carrick was less sure about his own fate.
Carrick watched Billings watch him. He rubbed his neck. The need to show Double J he was not going to be watched and hemmed in was like an itch that had to be scratched. A cowboy needed to eat. Carrick went out the far entrance of the barn, where Billings could not see, then hopped the rail fence to cut through the corral. In a moment, he was in the farmhouse’s pantry, then the kitchen.
“Are you here to steal coffee again? Or did you sneak in the back door to steal something else?” a female voice called coyly. Lucinda Jones walked into the kitchen with a playful smile on her face that transformed into something a lot more wooden as soon as she saw Carrick standing there.
“Luce?”
“Carrick? What are you doing here? Did you decide to come and work for Jackson? Oh, wonderful! He rode out this morning but I’m sure he will be back soon.” She moved close enough for him to smell that she had on some perfume that was probably supposed to smell good. She walked funny, though. She held herself like something hurt and she wanted to hide it. Her right shoulder was off; it hung low a little. For a fleeting moment he wondered if she and Jo
nes ever had physical battles and she had been hurt. Anything was possible with people. He could defend her it that’s what she needed. She was looking at him with curiosity. He was trying to decide how to tell her the worst news a wife could hear.
Feet came stomping into the kitchen. Easy Thompson filled the doorway, measuring the closeness between Carrick and this woman that until a few hours ago was his boss’s wife. On a good day, it might have planted the seed for some range gossip. Today, it was grounds for even more trouble.
“What are you up to, Carrick?” growled Easy. “You kill him to get to her?”
Lucinda’s face contorted in the image of anguish. “Kill?” she shrieked. “Kill? Carrick, what did you do to my husband? Easy, where is Jackson?”
“Sorry, Luce, to be the bearer of bad news,” Carrick explained. He told her about the shots and finding her husband. “He was gone when I found him. No idea where the shots came from except the hills give a lot of cover. Tried to tell the law back in Lincoln Springs but the law don’t want to be caught up in anything out here on the range. I was on my way here when your riders met me.”
Black eyes looking back at him were dry. “Did he say anything?”
It was a funny question. People ask strange things about the dead. “He was gone when I got there, Luce. Sorry.” He touched Lucinda’s shoulder; she winced and pulled away.
“Why do they think you killed him?”
“Me and Jackson had a full airing of our differences that day I came here. Not sure we parted friends, Lucy.”
“Did you kill my husband?”
“No, Luce, no. I don’t sniper shoot. I don’t kill people unless I have to. Your man was a man trying to build a dream and it was colliding with some other folks’ dreams. I think we might have figured out a way to let everyone have what they wanted. He was a good man, Luce, and he was starting to understand that this valley could be more than one man’s empire; that it could be everybody’s home.”
