Snake Eyes (9781101552469)

by Sherman, Jory

  “What do you call that little gelding?” Brad asked when Denver was no more than a memory behind them.

  “I call him Sparrow,” Mike said.

  “Sparrow?”

  “Because he is small but can fly like a bird. We do not have sparrows in the Pyrenees, so there is no word for that bird in the Basque language.”

  “Good name,” Brad said, and they rode on in silence as the mountains emerged from the darkness of night and the faded blush of dawn. A fresh breeze plied the topknots of the two horses with playful fingers and splashed against their faces like cool, dry water.

  “There is a friend waiting for us in LaPorte,” Mike said as they passed small ranches and farms, their fields still fallow on the rim of spring, seemingly deserted at that hour of the morning.

  “You seem sure of that, Mike,” Brad said.

  “He will have word of the other herders who are driving their sheep down from Cheyenne.”

  “Do you expect any trouble on the drive?” Brad asked. “I mean from cattlemen?”

  “No. As long as the herders keep the sheep moving, there will be no trouble. The cattlemen are wrong about sheep.”

  “How are they wrong, Mike?”

  “The cattlemen say the sheep ruin the grass. They say that they chew the grass down to the roots and then eat the roots. This is not true. This is why we herd our sheep. We keep them moving so that they do not eat all the grass. We do not just let our sheep graze in one place.”

  “That’s the story, though,” Brad said.

  “I know. And it is not true. We come to the same places to graze our sheep year after year and the grass still grows and our sheep grow fat. We have even grazed our sheep where cattle feed and there is no difference. Sheep and cattle eat the same grass and do not fight over territory. Only cattlemen and sheepmen fight over the grasslands.”

  “That’s something to think about,” Brad said.

  “You do not believe me,” Mike said.

  “I believe that’s what you think. I may have to see it for myself.”

  “You will see,” Mike promised.

  The two men spoke but little the rest of the way to LaPorte. They waited on the side of the road when a stage rumbled past from Cheyenne or Fort Collins. They touched their hat brims when they encountered a farmer or a rancher passing them with wagons, full or empty, and they acknowledged strangers heading for Denver. None passed them heading north, however.

  Brad was impressed with Mike’s pony, Sparrow, who kept up with Ginger and did not seem to tire. They ate as they rode and did not make camp at night but continued on in the darkness along the moonlit road, hearing the chromatic calls of coyotes and watching the bullbats gobble up flying insects after dusk.

  Just as Mike had said, there was a sheepman waiting for them in LaPorte. Mike introduced Brad to Belen Agapio.

  “You can call me Bill,” Agapio said as the two men shook hands.

  “All right, Bill.”

  Then Bill turned to Mike.

  “The herds should be coming into the valleys by now,” he said. “I saw them leave Cheyenne a week ago.”

  “Good,” Mike said. “I am anxious to see Arramospe.”

  As the three men crossed the South Platte and headed up Poudre Canyon, Mike explained that Joe Arramospe was a kind of foreman. He managed all the herders and the various flocks that would spend the summer getting fat feeding on mountain grass.

  “There will be lambs, soon,” he said, “and they will grow strong in the mountains and be ready to make the trip back to Cheyenne with their mothers.”

  “When will you shear the sheep?” Mike asked.

  “They have all been sheared. They will grow their wool back before the trees shed their leaves.”

  “So they are coming into the high country naked,” Brad said.

  “As jaybirds,” Mike said, with a laugh.

  They veered away from the Cache la Poudre after a day and a half of climbing, and in another day they rode into a wide valley nestled among the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. Sheep flowed like white water over the hillocks and hillsides. At the far end, Brad saw a number of log cabins. They looked small and cramped and too low for him to stand up in once he was inside. Men were hauling downed pines to a new building site while others barked and notched the logs for a new dwelling.

  Joe Arramospe rode out to greet them, his face bathed in sweat. He and Mike spoke to each other in the Basque language before Mike introduced the two men. Joe seemed angry, and while he and Mike spoke, his eyes clenched into tiny fists and tears leaked through the lids and streamed down his face.

  Joe had a moon face, darkened from the sun, and his brown eyes rolled around in their sockets like errant marbles as he spoke and gesticulated wildly with his arms and hands.

  Mike’s and Bill’s faces were somber, their expressions drawn taut with an inward sadness.

  Brad did not understand one word that Arramospe was saying. When he was finished speaking, Mike turned to Brad.

  “We will follow Joe to another valley just beyond this one. He has something to show us.”

  “Something bad, I gather,” Brad said.

  “Very bad, very, very bad.”

  That was all Mike said as he, Bill, and Brad followed Joe Arramospe to a narrow trail through the timber. Brad noticed that each of them had the sawed-off shotguns slung to their saddles and carried rifles, as well. These were rugged men, he decided, not at all what he imagined sheepherders should look like. Joe was round-shouldered, but his arms were muscled and his wrists thick, his hands the hands of a working man, hard and calloused, stained a rich brown by many hours in the sun.

  Before they reached the meadow, Brad heard the faint bleating of sheep. He also heard the high-pitched staccato screams of women, a sound that sent shivers up his spine as if someone had poured icy water on his back.

  They emerged from the woods, and Brad saw sheep scattered all over a grassy hillside that butted up against a small limestone bluff. At the bottom of the bowl-shaped valley, there were a half dozen log shacks that appeared to have been hastily thrown together. A clump of women huddled together in front of one of the huts, their arms around each other, wailing with the trilling sounds he had once heard from Indian women of the Arapaho tribe. The sound chilled him so that his arms broke out in goose bumps and there was an icy freshet coursing up his spine.

  To his surprise, Joe led them away from the keening women and up to one end of the bluffs where there were a number of juniper trees. He saw something dangling from one of the trees, something twisting slowly in the slight breeze that blew down from the high peaks.

  As the riders drew closer, Brad saw what was hanging from the juniper tree.

  There, a few yards away, was a man with a rope around his neck. His head lolled against the upper part of his chest. His eyes were open and glassy as he stared downward in sightless death.

  The men with Brad crossed themselves and halted their horses. Brad reined up and, while the others stared at the hanged man, scanned the surrounding area, the bald spot above the stand of junipers.

  He sensed that something was wrong, that they were not alone. In that clearing, a place where dirt and rocks had run down after rainfall or a heavy snow, there was a thicket of alder and second-growth brush.

  “Cut him down,” Mike said to Bill and Joe.

  “No,” Brad said in a loud whisper. “Don’t go near that man.”

  “But that is the body of our friend, Rafael Polentzi. We must bury him.”

  “Just stay quiet for a minute,” Brad said, his voice barely audible.

  “Who is this man to tell us what to do?” Joe asked.

  “He is a detective,” Mike said as he stared at Brad. “I think he is detecting.”

  The three men looked at Brad, who still stared upward at the thick brush just above the loose dirt and rocks.

  There, in the disturbed tailings from a hidden ledge where the brush stood, he saw depressions that could have
been left by a man’s boots as he climbed up through that soft gravel.

  “Turn your horses,” Brad said as he dismounted and handed the reins to Mike. “Ride off a little ways, while I take a closer look at something.”

  Joe opened his mouth to protest, but Mike waved him to silence. He turned his horse, and the others followed.

  Brad hunched over and started to walk toward the clump of brush. The other men stopped to watch him.

  As he drew close to the small river of dirt, Brad saw some of the brush move. He knew, then, that there was at least one man hiding behind the thick alder. The leaves on the lower branches jiggled slightly while the upper ones ruffled less in the soft breeze.

  As the three Basque men watched, Brad reached for the leather thong that hung around his neck. He pulled out a set of rattlesnake rattles. He crouched even lower and shook the rattles.

  They all heard it, and the sound startled them.

  It startled the man hiding in the brush, too, because he stood up and tried to climb away from the sound. The man was carrying a rifle.

  Then the man turned his head and saw Brad hunched over less than thirty yards away. He whirled and started to bring the rifle to his shoulder.

  Storm drew his pistol and fired at the man with the rifle.

  The rattling stopped, and the explosion from Brad’s Colt rumbled along the bluffs and echoed through the trees. Orange flame and lead spewed from the barrel of the pistol.

  The man clutched his chest as the .45-caliber bullet smashed into his breastbone, flattened, and ripped a bloody hole in his back. Blood flowered on his chest around a black spot where the bullet had entered. He gasped once and gurgled a choking cry of pain. His rifle dropped from his grasp, and he tumbled forward through the brush and slid down the talus slope in a dead heap.

  Brad turned to the sheepmen and held the muzzle of his pistol close to his mouth. He blew away the tassel of smoke that spiraled from the barrel of his Colt. “You can cut your friend down now,” he said softly.

  He ejected the hull of the expended bullet and slid a fresh one in the cylinder.

  None of the Basques moved.

  They just stared at Brad in stark astonishment for a long moment as if they were dumbstruck.

  The women stopped keening and looked at the man standing alone, on foot, near the dead man dangling at the end of a rope from the juniper tree.

  The sheep stopped bleating.

  There was a long silence that seemed to last an eternity as the echoes of the gunshot died away to exist only in the shadowy recesses of memory.

  FIVE

  Brad holstered his pistol and dropped the rattles back inside his shirt.

  The silence was broken as the three men rode up to the juniper tree to cut the rope that held their friend.

  Brad walked over to the man he had just shot. He turned him over and looked at his face. Then he dragged him by the feet to level ground, squatted over him, and went through his pockets. He pulled out cigarettes, matches, a poker chip, and a wallet with the man’s name in it, along with a five-dollar bill.

  Mike rode over and looked down at the body.

  “He is just a boy,” Mike said.

  “No more than fifteen or sixteen, looks like,” Brad said.

  “A pity.”

  “I don’t think he was the one who hanged your friend. This boy had help.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “The others may be watching us right now,” Brad said. He looked up at the bluffs and scanned the rimrock. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a glint of light by some rocks atop the sheer escarpment. He stared and stared but saw it no more.

  Bill and Joe caught the body of their dead friend, and Bill draped his body across his saddle after he scooted to a spot behind the cantle. The two rode toward the women outside the log huts. Brad mounted his horse. He and Mike joined the solemn procession.

  The women pulled at their hair and some scooped up handfuls of dirt and anointed themselves by splashing the dirt onto their heads. Many of them moaned in sorrow and rubbed their reddened eyes or wiped tear streaks from their faces.

  One of the women broke free of the others and rushed out to the body on Bill’s horse. She screamed when she saw the cut rope around the dead man’s neck. She tore at her hair and wailed. Two other women ran out and grabbed the woman and carried her, screaming and kicking, back to their midst where they wrapped her in their arms and stroked her dirt-filled hair.

  “That is the widow,” Mike said. “Her name is Leda. They have a son who is eight years old.”

  Brad dismounted and helped carry the dead man into one of the huts. The women had prepared a table, clearing it off and covering it with a blanket. Bill and Brad laid the man gently atop the table, faceup, and then stepped out of the way while Joe slipped the noose from around his neck.

  “Let us go outside,” Joe said. “Let the women come inside to grieve and wash our friend’s body to prepare him for burial.”

  When they went back outside, five men, ranging in age from eighteen to thirty or so, rushed up and started haranguing Joe in the Basque language. Brad stood aside, trying to look inconspicuous. Mike came over and put an arm on his shoulder. He spoke to the men.

  “This is Brad Storm, the man I hired to help us fight the Snake who murdered two of our compatriots. He is a detective. He is the man who just shot one of those cowboys.” He turned and pointed to the body on the hillside. “Go and take your anger out on that dead man. Scatter his bones to the wind.”

  Joe held a sheet of paper in his hand. He handed it to Mike, who read it and handed it to Brad.

  “What does that paper say?” one of the men asked.

  Brad handed the paper over to Bill.

  “Joe found this inside Polentzi’s shirt,” Mike said, in a loud voice. “It is a warning to all of us.”

  “What does it say?” asked another man, the oldest in the group.

  “It says, ‘Get out you filthy sheepherders or you will die.’ ” The men grumbled and cursed in loud voices. Their anger showed on their faces. Then the oldest man pulled his knife from its sheath on his belt and held it high in the air. He said something in Basque, then started running toward the man Brad had killed. The others followed, all waving knives in the air, knives that flashed silver bolts in the sun.

  A look of sadness came over Mike’s face.

  “By tomorrow,” he said, “the other herders will be here, and these valleys will flow with sheep. I hope you can find this Snake and kill him or take him to Denver to be hanged.”

  “I’m going to see if I can pick up on the tracks of the men who hanged your friend,” Brad said. “I may be gone for a few days.”

  “Do you wish me to come with you?”

  “No. If I need help, I’ll ride back and we’ll put together some men to go after those killers.”

  “I am glad you are on our side, Brad.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mike.”

  “Even though we are sheepherders?”

  “Mike, when I see an injustice it makes my blood boil. I have had my share of troubles with law breakers. You and your friends have been wronged, brutally wronged. And I’ve been hired to help you. It will be my pleasure to bring this Schneck and his henchmen to justice.”

  “What do you mean by justice, Brad?” Mike asked. “Personally or legally?”

  “Personally. I think we both know what is meant by ‘legally.’ ”

  “Yes,” Mike said.

  “Personally, justice to me is that the men I’m after will either face the gallows or the grave.”

  “And, does it make any difference which?”

  “I’d like to bring the murderer or murderers before the court in Denver. But if I am unable to do that, I will bring their dead bodies to Boot Hill.”

  “That is good enough for me, Brad.”

  “I hope it is good enough for the judge in Denver.”

  It was then that three women emerged from the cabin. One
of them was Leda Polentzi, the widow of Rafael. She, like the other women, wore a multicolored dress, consisting of layers of dyed sackcloth—red, green, black, and yellow. Lace-up boots, a woolen sweater, and a bright orange scarf completed her wardrobe.

  “I have just learned that you killed the man who murdered my husband,” she said to Storm. “I am very grateful, and I will pray for you.”

  She reached up and touched his hand. He looked into her hazel eyes. They were brimmed with tears. Her dark hair framed an oval face that was smooth and did not yet show lines of age or furrows of worry on her forehead. Brad figured her to be in her early twenties, although her eyes reflected a wisdom beyond her young years.

  “I am sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Brad said and patted the back of her hand.

  “There is much sorrow here,” she said. “Rafael was a good man, a good husband, and the father of our child. I am so sad that he has gone to heaven.”

  “Yes’m,” Brad said, “so am I.”

  He did not tell her that there were probably more men involved in the hanging than the one he had shot. He just looked at her until she broke their locked gaze and turned and joined the other two women. Together they went back into the gloom of the cabin where her husband lay dead on a table, already stripped of his clothing, naked, awaiting the cleansing of his corpse.

  Brad glanced sidelong at the top of the bluff. He saw the tiny flash of light that told him someone was looking down on them with binoculars.

  “Don’t look at the bluffs, Mike,” he said, “but we are being watched. I’m going up there to see if I can flush out the other men who helped with the hanging.”

  Mike resisted the impulse to look toward the bluffs. He was beginning to trust this quiet man who had given him confidence that the killing would stop.