by Rusty Davis
“I would have gotten her,” Carrick said. “I had her lined up.”
“She got one hole in her from you? You even wing her?”
“No.”
Reb snorted her conclusion concerning Carrick’s aim. Easy Thompson worked very hard at not laughing.
Reb stalked away from Carrick, walked up to the windows, looked in at Lucinda’s body through the shattered glass, gave a satisfied grunt, and turned back to Carrick, stone-faced and still intense. “Told you I was better than her, Carrick, even if she got that shooting ribbon at the fair.”
“You did,” answered Carrick. “And you are.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The wheel had come full circle. Once again, Carrick was walking into Everett Morrisson’s saloon in Lincoln Springs. This time, everything had changed. Instead of a man who was unsure what he was doing and where he was going, Carrick was very certain of his purpose. He looked around him. There were familiar faces sprinkled among the crowded tables and along the bar. Not friends, but not enemies. No more Crowleys. No more like them.
In the corner, three men sat facing everyone else. The Chicago man Carrick had bumped into in the street a while back was flanked by two men who gave a hard stare to every person that walked past the table. All three watched Carrick warily as he deliberately walked up to their table. Their hands were by the lapels of their jackets; the whites of their eyes were showing as they looked up at him. He leaned his hands down, palms flat, on the table, spilling some of their whiskey across the wood.
“You leave town today.”
“Somebody appoint you the king around here?” asked the man in the suit. “Free country, friend.” The men on each side were fidgeting. Carrick wondered if their guns were in their jackets or around their waists.
“Not for you. Lucinda Jones is not going to meet you to sell you her range. Neither is Henry Petersen. They’re dead. What anyone in Buffalo Horn Valley does with our range is our business. You go back East and you stay there. Never come back, or you can join them in the ground.”
“You been drinkin’ too much too early, friend, to be talkin’ that way,” the man replied. “I see one man talking wild and three men here who don’t care to listen. Now run along and scare somebody else.”
The table crashed to the floor as Carrick kicked it over. The men rocked back in the chairs to avoid it.
“You’re a dead man, cowboy,” he hissed at Carrick while reaching for a gun in his jacket.
“Don’t think so.”
The men facing Carrick became aware of the silence in the saloon. A small, dark-haired woman had a rifle trained on the three men. She looked very ready to fire. Downright anxious, in fact. All three men showed their hands, palms out.
“I told you to git,” Carrick said. “That means you git. You don’t need anything on your trip, like the checks you brought to pay for the range no one is going to buy.” He pulled pieces of paper from his pants pocket, ripped them into tiny shreds, and scattered them on the floor. “Found ’em in your hotel rooms along with some interestin’ reading. Real interesting. The kind of reading that would tell the army or the territory the things you syndicate men will do to get a toehold on our range. I think once that gets read, you’re going to find your welcome is about worn out here in Wyoming. Now put the guns on the floor, get up, get out, and tell your Chicago bosses and the rest of your high-powered money men that the Buffalo Horn Valley is not for sale to people like you.”
The men fumed in place.
“If you ain’t gone in about the time it takes to count three, I’m gonna step back and let nature take its course, friends,” Carrick said.
Dan Hill walked in. “Sheriff,” the man in the suit called out. “This is illegal. You cannot allow this treatment.”
Hill looked at Carrick. “It ain’t the way the law is supposed to work, Carrick, but your way does kind of grow on a fella.” Hill walked to the back corner and stood before the three men. “If you three were here—which you ain’t because I don’t see you and don’t hear you—and did something to make folks mad that got you killed, which you still might, I wouldn’t know a thing about it. Way the law out here works, if you three were partners with the folks who killed Jackson Jones, why that implicates you in a murder. This valley has been havin’ a terrible problem with vigilantes who hang men from the nearest tree or shoot them in a saloon no matter what the law might say. Terrible problem. Guess it’s a good thing you decided to leave before anything happened. Good thing you decided to leave this minute.”
Sheriff Dan Hill turned away and, after tipping his hat to Reb, walked out, head much higher than the three men who, moments after he left, dropped their weapons to the floor of the saloon and scurried out the door to find their horses saddled and ready. The saloon was quiet as Carrick followed them out to the street. A smattering of townsfolk had come to watch. For a moment, he locked eyes with Willard Godfrey, before the man grimaced and turned his back on Carrick, slamming the door to his store behind him. Always someone unhappy, Carrick thought. Always someone.
The syndicate men mounted. One looked down from his horse at Carrick.
“You can’t stop us,” he threatened.
“Just did,” said Carrick. “Git.”
One rifle clicked. Jed Owens was in front of the stable, aimed and ready to go off. The men snarled at each other and, with baleful glances at Carrick, turned away. Carrick and the settlers of the Buffalo Horn Valley listened to the fading hoofbeats of the syndicate men.
“Now, it’s over,” Carrick said to no one in particular.
The September sun shone on the Buffalo Horn Valley. Jessie Lewis was walking purposefully toward a place her niece and Carrick called Cougar Rock, although anyone who could see a cougar in that weathered hunk of rock had a great imagination. She carried a small metal box, pitted with dents and layered with dirt and dust. For once, she was not carrying a gun. There was no real need. The territory and the army had both gotten wind of the disputes in Buffalo Horn Valley, but by the time they sent anyone to investigate, it didn’t matter. It was over the moment Lucinda Jones died. The army and territory each sent folks for a few days who ate a lot of food and bought a lot of drinks in Lincoln Springs, and then left saying friendly things no one cared about hearing as long as it meant the visitors weren’t coming back. The valley might have had its differences, but there was nothing like a pack of outsiders poking their noses in the valley’s affairs to convince ranchers to stand together.
It would be roundup time soon. Then it would be time for the early winter that followed on the heels of summer—one of Wyoming’s trademarks. Winter would be good, for once. The range could use a rest. The past weeks had seen nothing she had ever seen before. Everyone’s stock was pretty well mixed up, with a lot of riders leaving the valley—riders who had appeared to play a part in a range war and were no longer wanted or needed. New riders showed up who had lots of ambition but not much sense. No one knew who was in charge of what. No one but Reb and Carrick.
Jess had never understood how much her niece knew about running a ranch. Reb had grown up in the space of a few weeks. The girl was giving directions on different days to cowhands running two ranches and if she had made a mistake yet no one had unearthed it. Reb hadn’t pointed a gun at anyone in days. Nothing went according to anyone’s plan, but the work got done, the hands got fed, and the only person shot in the last three weeks had been a foolish young rider who tried to kill a snake and shot off a toe.
Carrick had, in time, shaken off the effects of the episode of violence that had rocked the valley. Jess had difficulty convincing the man to speak in more than the fewest words necessary, but there was no question that his work as a carpenter and a cowhand had helped the ranch. He would be gone hours at a time, eat, then ride out again. Of course, the biggest impact he had was on her niece. They were rarely apart except when ranch work demanded it, and rarely indoors at all. If she wanted them, other than at meals, she had to go looking.
&n
bsp; She came upon them enjoying a rare moment of peace. Reb was nestled in the crook of Carrick’s arm as they looked across the valley. She looked happy; content. The bruise on her shoulder from the buffalo gun—nothing compared to the one they found on Lucinda Jones’s body—no longer pained her, at least not very much. The pine above them danced delicately in the breeze; around them the grass flexed to the rhythm of the wind as shadows from the passing clouds sent dark patches meandering across the range. Jessie had not quite become used to seeing Reb as someone’s woman. The girl would always be a girl to her. But life changed. Some changes were for the better. Easy Thompson had managed to find his way to Bar C twice in the last two weeks for reasons that no one discussed. No fancy words. No fancy promises. She would never be fooled again. But it was nice, she did admit that.
“Told you I had this,” Jessie said, handing Carrick the box. “Took me days to find it and more days to dig it out!”
“What’s in it?” asked Reb.
“Suppose we can find out,” she replied.
Carrick tried to pry open the box, but it would not give. He shot the small, crusted lock to pieces. The box, sealed shut by years of heat, still took a knife to open.
There were two bundles. One was a very short will. “I, Joshua Andrews Carrick, leave everything to my natural son, Rory Carrick, because my other children are either dying or dead. Rory was my son by an Irish girl I knew in Texas who died after he was born. I brought him with me to Wyoming, but when I married I wanted my children by my wife to inherit my lands. If he reads this, I hope he will forgive the deception. He needs to know he had two fathers who loved him.” It was dated the day before Joshua Carrick had died, witnessed by one of the hands with his mark. Jessie did not know he had been that clear at the end.
The other bundle was big. By the time they unfolded it, and sorted through all of its tattered sheaves, it was two documents—a map of the valley and a deed to the old Bar C. It covered a large chunk of what had become Double J and most of what was Lazy F. Between the map and the will, it was clear that Carrick was, in the eyes of the law, the legal owner of a large section of the valley.
Carrick thought about the map, and what it meant. He could be the king Jones never lived to be. One night a few days ago, he and Easy had used the natural features of the land to divide up the valley. Carrick figured there needed to be room for everyone, and a place for everyone. No plan would last forever. There were too many changes buffeting the range to do more than give everyone a breathing space. In the back of his head, he understood the logic Jones espoused: If there was a competition for survival, the best and biggest would win, not necessarily the people who deserved it. He could see the time not far off when that law would rule the range. As the first settlers pushed out the Indians, some day the men from Chicago would be back and push out the small settlers. However, in the Buffalo Horn Valley, that day had not yet dawned.
Eileen Ramsay and her children received a patch of ground that included the largest coal deposits. She was likely going to let the railroad mine the coal. That would feed her and her kids for life and spare her the need to try to run a ranch on her own. Jess and Rebecca Lewis knew too well what that was like.
Double J was deeded to Easy to run as his own, since it had been his as much as it was anyone else’s. It remained a large spread because Carrick couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he owed it to Jones. He was careful not to mention that feeling too often around Reb; she had very firm convictions to the contrary.
The Lewis women received the old Bar C range in between the other two ranches, including the land that was Ramsay’s. The final deeds had not yet been drawn up, because there seemed to be some question about whether Jessie Lewis was going to live much longer on what was now Circle L, or whether she would be moving to Double J as Jessie Thompson. If that happened, the land would belong to Reb. Jess was going to make up her mind any old day, or so she said every day when Reb asked her. Every last thing would be signed by everyone and filed with the territory so there was none of this range war nonsense in the future—at least as long as any of them were alive. Carrick groused again about papers and ink, but he knew the old days of handshake deals and an open range everyone could share were gone forever, if they were ever as real as his memory made them.
Carrick had been very comfortable not owning a thing. Lucinda Jones had been right. He didn’t really want to have it; he only wanted to live on it. Now, he had to make that decision all over again.
“What are you going to do about it, Carrick?” asked Reb once again, elbowing him sharply to get a response this time, after she was done looking at the deed. Her voice tried to mask any emotion she felt. One day she might have owned everything she ever wanted, but she could see now that it had never been hers to have. She’d fought hard, so long, that she could not have kept silent.
Carrick understood. He returned her answer with a smile. “You know if we got married it would all be yours,” he said.
“That’s not an answer, unless it’s the best you can manage by way of asking me to be your wife, which is something you still ain’t managed to say right and proper so a girl could say yes or a girl could say no.”
“Kind of thought we were moving in the direction of yes for quite a while now, Miss Rebecca Lewis who gets all proper.”
“Proper girl needs to be asked proper. I’d like you to do it before I’m so old it don’t matter. But don’t start confusing again. What are you going to do about the land now that you got that paper in your hands?”
“Nobody ever listens to me. Reb, I told you and Jess the day I got here that it was yours, not mine. I happened to get born on it; you put your lives into it. Figure I was meant to own the land the day I was meant to own the wind, girl.”
“Carrick, be serious!” Before she could say another word, he acted.
The match in his hand flared as he scraped it across a rock. He touched it to the dry, cracked papers. In moments, the paper was pieces of black flying about in the wind. Jess Lewis gasped but stood watching, frozen in place, as Carrick threw his inheritance literally to the wind. They watched gusts blow the pieces away and apart. “Maybe a smart man doesn’t own land; maybe he marries someone who does. Then he doesn’t have to work because it’s all her responsibility.”
“Still waitin’ for a proper man to say it the proper way.”
“I’ll think on it.” His grin matched the one she gave up trying to hide. “Plenty of time for saying proper things between now and when that travelin’ preacher shows up next month. Jess told me; maybe she has plans, too.” Reb started blustering; her aunt had never told her! Jess was red as a sunset.
Carrick stood and dusted off his pants. “Well, Reb, it’s been right nice talking about proper things with you, but I got a chore to do been on my mind a while. Want to come to Double J? Figure you got a stake in this business.”
“What business?”
He told her. She smiled.
This time, no one was guarding Double J. They stopped by the white cross that marked Jackson Jones’s final share of the Wyoming range.
Reb had picked some columbines, and left them by the foot of the cross, set on a hillside that overlooked everything Jones owned and everything he wanted to own. “Mr. Jones, you were a hard man who lived by some hard rules and you died a hard death. I forgive you, but I can’t say I’m sorry.” She touched the cross and backed away.
“Man had a dream this valley would amount to something, Reb. Shame he never wanted anyone in that dream but himself,” Carrick said. Turning to the cross, he added, “Wish we could have all ridden the same road, Jackson Jones. Hope that across the river there you finally got what you wanted. Maybe they got enough.”
Reb touched his arm lightly. They left to head down to the ranch yard.
Easy Thompson wasn’t overly friendly, except to Reb, but he agreed that what Carrick proposed was a sound idea. He did make sure to send best wishes to Jessie, something Reb promised to do with more than a
small grin on her face.
“Can’t go back, Easy,” said Carrick, extending a hand. “Got more respect for you than most. There’s a valley to grow, Easy. What do you say?”
Easy Thompson all but crushed Carrick’s hand. “Boss never got what he deserved, Carrick. World works in its own way, I guess. Not gonna forget, Carrick. Not gonna live looking hind-wards, either. Double J and I got a future.” He looked at Reb. “You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
Reb wanted to speak, because Easy Thompson was a man in agony waiting for Aunt Jess to say she would marry the man, but the last time she got into Aunt Jess’s business with someone wanting to marry her it didn’t come out too well. She said nothing.
Carrick swallowed. “Place up north, Easy. Bad Weather and I used to hunt there. Haven’t seen it since I was a kid. Real quiet. Real pretty. Maybe sometime. Me and you. Get to know each other when we ain’t trying to kill each other.”
Easy Thompson measured Carrick, pursed his lips, and nodded. “Some time real soon then,” said Easy.
That settled, Reb and Carrick set to their task. No one helped them, but no one got in the way, either. They rode to the spot where Jackson Jones was killed.
“Stand back,” Carrick commanded. They had alternately dragged and been dragged by the black stallion Reb had trapped all those days ago. The stallion was having none of anything Carrick wanted to do. Carrick was driven back by hooves each time he went to loosen the rope around the animal’s neck. He pulled the knife from his boot and sliced the rope as close to the stallion as he dared, then jumped back as the animal leaped forward.
