by Rusty Davis
She wanted to laugh and cry and put a fist in the air and dance on the nearest table and run off to the hills. Oh, it was good to be alive! For the first time in forever, it was good to breathe and feel and see. She could feel the grin on her face and she knew it was wicked and the grin refused to quit. And it didn’t matter if Double J and Lazy F and every Indian west of the Mississippi descended upon the old Bar C right about then. She stepped back into his arms.
Jess Lewis was more than a little concerned as she drove the wagon over the rough track to Double J. One reason Double J grew so powerful was that Easy Thompson’s personality blunted many of the rough edges of Jackson Jones. She could not imagine what would make the man snap and want to shoot Carrick, although Carrick seemed to have the ability to find trouble on a sunny day.
She took a quick look back. Easy was piled against some sacks of feed. Not very comfortable, but he would get there. His horse was tied to the wagon behind. She was wishing as she drove the team that the valley could be what it had been when the war was on. For all the hard times, people were not at each other’s throats. Everything was different now. Reb had been a playful girl, but now she was fierce, ready to fight anyone who posed a threat to what she held most dear—that old ranch. Jess feared for her niece. Not many men appreciated a strong-minded woman. Carrick? She snorted. They would breed a race of warriors. The image of that made her laugh. She looked back again at Easy. He was stirring again. It was not much farther.
Jess had never been to Double J; she had visited the old Johnson place, but never the new ranch. She was somewhat relieved when Henry Petersen, the ranch manager, was in the yard to greet her. She had been worried how to explain to a fool cowboy how Easy got shot. Petersen seemed to understand. Although the man made Jess’s skin crawl, he had never been anything but polite on the few times they had met in town. Reb had complained once that she thought he was staring at her inappropriately, but since Petersen worked for Double J, Reb was hardly an impartial source.
Petersen ordered some hands to carry Easy from the wagon. Before they did, she checked on him.
“Easy, now no more of this, you understand?”
Easy Thompson smiled amid his discomfort. “Ma’am, Miz Jessie, you give the best scoldin’s ever.”
“Well, I don’t want to give another one, so no more getting shot, Mr. Thompson!”
“Miz Lewis, everybody else calls me Easy. It’s ain’t hard to say. It’s easy.”
“Very well, Easy,” she replied. “And you can call me Jess. I suppose, since we won’t be having a range war, we can start living like civilized neighbors.”
“I’d like that, ma’am, um, Jessie.”
Aware they were attracting a growing audience, Jess Lewis wished Easy Thompson fast healing and went to climb back onto her wagon. Petersen, who had disappeared into the ranch house while Easy was unloaded, returned. He very politely asked Jessie in for tea, which she declined. She noticed that Lucinda Jones did not make an appearance. She assumed the widow was staring out from a window somewhere. She never was very friendly. Reb disliked her.
Petersen discussed the details of the shooting again. Jess, who was by now tired, wanted the questions over. “Mr. Petersen,” she snapped, “I have told you what I know. Easy Thompson was there. Carrick was there. If you want to know what they said and did, you should be asking them. I need to get back before dark.”
After refusing a Double J escort—she wondered if Reb would use them for target practice and decided not to find out—she climbed onto the seat, clucked the team into movement, and rode away from Double J with the vague impression that something was not right there, a feeling she decided was caused by nothing more than too many cowboys with guns. She needed some quiet. This was one of the few times in months she had been out on the plains alone, and she decided that, this one time, she could take a few minutes off from running a ranch that was nothing short of swimming upstream every day. Maybe she would take the long way home and look up at the sky at sunset. It had been a long time since she did anything that simple. She was overdue.
Lincoln Springs was quiet when Carrick rode in the next morning. His head still hurt, but a man lived with hurts. The way of the world. A few people were here and there, moving slowly. Dan Hill, whose attitude toward Carrick veered with the winds of the range and his opinion of whether Carrick was trying to survive or running a deep game Hill could not fathom, was less than happy to see him.
“Thought you’d want to know I shot Easy Thompson yesterday,” Carrick began when the perfunctory greetings were completed.
Hill sputtered his beer across his shirtfront.
“He ain’t dead,” Carrick added. “And it was his own gun that did the shootin’, if that makes it better.”
It didn’t. “Carrick, this range wasn’t perfect before you rode in but it ain’t been nothin’ but trouble since you got here. Why’d you do a fool thing like that? Everybody likes Easy Thompson.”
Carrick explained that Easy suspected him of killing Jackson Jones. He told the lawman about the cabin and the fire. “I did the least I could, Sheriff, to stop him. He was going to shoot me if I didn’t do something. Man’s got a right to defend himself. Easy’s not gonna die; maybe limp a while. Jess Lewis took him home.”
Hill shrugged. Nothing he could do, anyhow. Everybody knew Easy had been on the prowl for revenge and there were more than a few folks who saw Carrick’s arrival and Jones’s death as too close to be coincidental.
“OK, Son,” Hill said at last. “But don’t expect me to play hero if your friends at Double J and your friends at Lazy F pay you a visit one night. Wouldn’t take much to rile a mob into thinking they were vigilantes because of that stunt you pulled at Ramsay’s hanging and his gang living at the ladies’ ranch. Folks wonder if you and your old friend had something in mind. Way the townsfolk see it, you’re the reason for the gunplay and the fighting. I hope that Double J and Lazy F and the ladies figure everything out and all you fools put the guns away when you ride in here. Now let me have my beer. An old man deserves one quiet minute in the morning to have a glass of beer.”
Carrick left the saloon. The quiet on the street was even deeper than when he rode in. Not a soul to be seen. Carrick’s pulse raced. He’d seen streets this empty before, and always for the same reason. He was walking out into some kind of a trap that no one in Lincoln Springs thought he should be warned about.
In the shadows by the dry goods store, watching every step Carrick took, stood a man who could only be Gordon Crowley, still with a bandage on his head. Crowley realized there was no further point in waiting now that he had been seen. He moved forward to stand in the light. There was a shotgun in his hands.
Dan Hill had emerged from the saloon. He looked at Crowley. Shook his head. “Good Book says you reap what you sow, Carrick. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you to keep ridin’.” The doors swung as he walked back through them, giving the doorway to onlookers as the word spread.
Behind Carrick, boots scraped on wood as boys and men pushed to find places for a good view. Crowley held the weapon with his right hand on the trigger, the barrels in his left. Twenty yards. Too far. Carrick knew he might hit Crowley. He might hit a kid watching. No! Abilene was the past. He focused on the man wanting him dead. Patience, he thought. Patience. The Crowleys had been bullies and brawlers. Standing alone in a street required a whole different brand of sand in a man. Carrick started walking. Slowly.
“You killed my brothers, Carrick.” Some men had to talk. Carrick hated talk. Since Abilene, he also hated what was going to happen next.
“They pushed it, Gordon. Didn’t have to be that way then. Don’t have to be this way now. There’s been enough of this. Put the gun down.” Thirty feet. Crowley shifted position, Carrick stopped.
“Heard you killed Jackson Jones, too. Man hired us when no one else would. Man didn’t deserve to be shot down like that.”
“Didn’t kill him.” Carrick had no time for chatter. He was fifteen
feet from Crowley. It would do. When a six-gun faced a shotgun, the six-gun had to fire first. Crowley was not a gunman. He would need to take the time to aim. Carrick hoped so.
“You been ridin’ with rustlers and thieves,” Crowley called out. “Country’s overrun with them now; even them ladies’ ranch is a hole for outlaws. You’re never gonna do anyone’s dirty work again. I’m gonna save the town a hangin’.”
Sweat dripped. Nothing moved except a horsefly. Any second. Carrick saw the gun was cocked. The hammers were visible. He would have no time at all. He had to shoot first. Crowley’s facial muscles showed tension. Maybe fear.
Crowley was raising the shotgun to his shoulder when Carrick’s first bullet hit the man’s hip. He staggered. The second bullet clanged off the barrels of the gun. The third was dead center.
Carrick’s legs smarted from the rocks kicked up as the shotgun slugs plowed into the hard-packed dirt of the street, where they would be dug up for souvenirs by the kids. He walked rapidly through the cloud of dust to Gordon Crowley. Crowley was dying fast. Carrick felt that hollow feeling again.
Dan Hill had emerged from the saloon. Carrick turned his wrath on him. “You happy now, Sheriff? You knew he was in town! I’m sure someone told the sheriff! You could have disarmed that man. He would have listened to you. He didn’t have to do this. I couldn’t let him kill me. You know I don’t run.”
“Crowleys lived by some hard rules, Carrick. Maybe I could have stopped it today, but it was gonna happen. Warned you that the man was going to be primed for you. Don’t think it’s over, even now, Carrick. You and Lazy F and Double J solve your problems outside of town. Or next time you show up, I’ll clap you in jail—all of you, any of you—and find a reason later. Not lettin’ you start a range war to bring back your old spread and I’m tired of buryin’ folks every last day of the week.”
“Never wanted it, Sheriff, but I’m not gonna let two women be pushed off their land. Maybe the law here isn’t about right and wrong; maybe it got sold to the highest bidder; but I didn’t kill nobody that didn’t ask for it.”
Hill’s face was flushed. He stepped down toward Carrick with his hand on the butt of his gun. “You better go, Carrick. You got no claim to talk to me that way. Law doesn’t always come down on the side you want it, but it’s not here to help you when you want it and not when you ignore it. Saddle up and go.”
Carrick unhitched Beast and rode out of town. The crowd around Crowley had grown now that the showdown between Carrick and the sheriff had ended. No one looked him in the eye. He would be condemned for the killing as he would have been equally condemned for running.
Carrick knew he’d been unfair to Hill. He knew that killing Crowley was necessary and was probably better happening in town than anywhere else. If the man didn’t brace him face to face, he would have been sniping in the hills. Jackson Jones was proof that when a man wanted you, he could get you. The murder still disturbed his thoughts. Lazy F’s way wasn’t that direct; he bet his bottom nickel Oliver was basically a coward. If Lazy F was suspected of killing Jones, Easy Thompson would not have been going after Carrick. He would have been focused on Lazy F. But who else would want Jones dead? Carrick had been hoping the rancher was going to find a way to work things out with Reb and Jessie. They didn’t want the man dead. Jones had raved about cleaning out Ramsay’s crew in the broken lands, but Ramsay didn’t have the kind of killer instinct to strike first and strike hard. Something was troubling Easy Thompson about the cabin. Easy had assumed that Carrick had burned it to keep Easy from finding something out. Maybe it was time for another look.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There was still a shimmer of heat radiating off of the blackened pile that once had been Crazy Charlie’s shack. Even with gloves on Carrick all but singed his hands searching. As he swatted aside the remains of the walls, he looked for something in the pile of ruined wood.
Nothing.
Then he saw where the chimney had knocked the floorboards to pieces. Hoping nothing more would fall, he crawled on the wood after clearing away debris, covering himself in soot. He reached through the boards—which were charred on the top but still more or less solid—for something. Anything. Mostly he found rocks. Some dirt. The pass was uneven there; that’s why the floor was built. A piece of floor gave way under him. Carrick decided against rolling down the hill amid the shack’s ruins.
He took a close look around the shack. Carrick looked further, down the hill from the smoking ruin. Sunlight glinted on metal. A fancy cuff link, the kind rich men wore for their fancy shirts with thick, heavy, white starched cuffs, was lying in the tall grass by the edge of the small landslide of dirt that slid downhill when the shack burned and crumbled. It had fancy initials that Carrick could not read. He couldn’t see JJ in them. Nor FO. As for Crazy Charlie, he barely had shirts, let alone jewelry. Somebody who took off his jewelry had been up here—somebody who was fancy enough to have Eastern affectations in the way he dressed. Carrick stuck the link in his pocket and continued looking. He found a long pin, the kind ladies wore to keep their hats perched at the odd angles. It was heavy, and looked like solid gold. His fingers could feel some kind of lines carved into the metal, but he could not read any letters. He pocketed that as well.
The shack had never had a lock. The door barely worked. Anyone who wanted something hidden there would probably not have put it where any passersby could find it. If someone was using the shack for a meeting place, and they left things there that had not been destroyed, there was only one place left to look—the woodpile.
About five rows of wood from the top, tucked in the back were bottles of wine. Wine was pretty scarce on the Wyoming range. It was the fancy drink for fancy ladies and cultured men. Fancy ladies? Lucinda Jones was a fancy woman married to a man who was a slave to his dreams of an empire on the range. She was also at least ten years younger than her deceased husband. He recalled Easy Thompson’s flare of suspicion when he found Carrick with Lucinda. Lucinda would not be the first woman who found someone else’s companionship a substitute if her husband ignored her. Who would drink wine with her? Francis Oliver? Carrick thought he was a whiskey man, but perhaps he would have tried to wound Jones in the most personal ways possible. The shack was not that far from either ranch, so it was possible.
Carrick wanted answers. He needed to find out who drank wine with French labels. And maybe—if Carrick’s reputation was as sinister as Dan Hill painted—he could use that to his advantage to force that whiny clerk Godfrey to tell him if anyone in Buffalo Horn Valley had bought cuff links.
Carrick did not want a showdown with Dan Hill. The sheriff was backed into a corner, and thought Carrick was responsible. He hitched his horse at the end of Lincoln Springs’s main street and took side alleys to the mercantile.
Godfrey insisted that the cuff link came from a St. Louis store, or maybe a fancy place in Denver, but that they were nothing he had ever sold. “Only people who wear starched cuffs use those,” he explained to Carrick. “This is Wyoming. Not even Jackson Jones starched his cuffs.” When asked if he sold wine, he volunteered that only two crates had ever arrived to Lincoln Springs in the past five years—one for Lazy F and one for Double J. Carrick was no closer to an answer. Godfrey did say that Francis Oliver had mentioned buying fancy items lately but had never purchased anything.
Carrick recalled Lazy F. Oliver would never wear anything fancy; he liked to dress like one of the men. There was nothing fancy he ever saw at the ranch.
“When did he talk about buying this stuff? The other day when he was marrying Jessie Lewis?”
“Long before that,” Godfrey said. “He came in and said he had good news; he had been to a meeting that changed his life. At first I thought he meant the tent revival had come through, because my wife likes to go, but he laughed and said that treasures in Heaven were nothing compared to what was right underfoot. I didn’t understand it, but I do not question my customers.”
Godfrey either could not or w
ould not add to that, leaving Carrick mystified.
He walked the street, looking at the signs. Nothing that stood out. Saloons, the barber shop, a few stores that sold dry goods, guns, saddles, and the like. A tiny one selling fancy dresses. He walked past one before he realized it—the sign read, “Union Pacific.”
The railroad was nowhere near Lincoln Springs. Carrick had picked up all kinds of talk around the range, but nothing that said the railroad was coming through any time soon. It was something every rancher wanted, and every town schemed for, but Lincoln Springs seemed too remote.
He walked into the office. It consisted of a desk, a table, and a few chairs. A bored-looking young clerk sat at the desk. He gave Carrick a cursory glance that was not in Carrick’s favor.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I’m curious,” said Carrick. “Why would the railroad have an office here when there’s no line?”
“The Union Pacific is the greatest transportation artery in the world . . .” began the man.
“I didn’t ask for a speech,” said Carrick, stepping closer to loom over the man in his chair. “I want an answer.”
The clerk looked up at the man he was facing. Carrick had unconsciously drifted his hand near his gun. He looked like what he was—a man more used to the saddle than the indoors and a man who was accustomed to settling disputes with violence. The clerk decided quickly that whatever the man wanted, he could have it.
“The railroad buys supplies, mister. There are a lot of ranches around here that sell us supplies.”
It made some sense, but not much. Carrick looked at a vacant desk covered with papers and maps. The top one caught his eye. It was a map of the valley, with a lot of shading in the central and western parts–some of it covered lands occupied by the Lewis women and some of it was the land where Colt Ramsay’s crew had lived.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a map,” the clerk replied.
