Once a Ranger

by Dusty Richards

  Jim Green had a running walk he could hold all day. And he always shortened the ride over to town and back. So Guthrey set out and arrived in midafternoon.

  Things must be quiet. Teddy Baker was behind the desk and reading wanted posters. He stood up and shook Guthrey’s hand. “How are you doing? We had word you’d gone fishing.”

  “I wish.” Guthrey laughed. “Thayer, a rancher in the Dragoons, had four horses stolen. Dan, Noble, and I rode our butts off over to a place the other side of the Chiricahuas called Portal. They’d gone on to New Mexico. So we came back.”

  “He’s the man that married the woman that was an Apache hostage and she walked, I heard, on foot all the way back from the Sierra Madres.”

  “Yes. Nice lady. What’s happening around here?”

  “Some big outfit bought the Whitmore Ranch, or they said they did. The ramrod is pretty much a big mouth. His name is Walter Pierson. He came in here demanding to see you and said the small ranchers were eating his beef and he wanted it stopped. I asked him if he had any proof and he simply went on talking about what he was going to do to them, spouting off about running the other ranchers out or shutting them down. I simply told him there was law here and he was not the judge or jury. I don’t think he liked it, but I think we have more trouble—like you had before.”

  “Should have put him in a box and shipped him back to where he came from.”

  “I damn sure wanted to. I have the funeral home report on the Carlson bodies.”

  Guthrey took it from him and read the report. The missus died from being beaten over the head with a club. George Carlson died from two .44 bullets in his chest. The girl had been raped and smothered to death. The paper had been signed by the doctor and funeral man. They’d done a thorough job.

  He put the paper down. “I have a boot print of a large boot. It’s a real big one. And a goatskin glove with a star on it drawn with indelible ink.”

  The glove, retrieved from Guthrey’s vest pocket, he handed to Baker, who examined it. “Nice job of sewing it. The woman who made that was a real craftsman. You know anyone makes them like that?”

  “No, but we need to find her if she’s in the area. You think a woman made it?”

  Baker nodded. “Those small stitches took lots of care and time. We’ll find the maker if she’s around here, plus she hand worked lots of sheep fat in that leather to ever get it that soft.”

  “She’s probably made hundreds and she won’t recall him, but the star may be a lead. Put it in the file as evidence in those murder cases. We don’t have much to go on, but killers slip up. I sure want them in jail before they kill any more.”

  “The county board finally hired a man to build the scaffold.”

  “Good. You and Zamora be sure it’s solid. I knew a Texas sheriff had one built and when all of them got up there to hang a man, the damn thing collapsed. The sheriff broke his leg and the prisoner got away. Don’t ask me how; I wasn’t there. But it was supposed to have happened.”

  “It will be secure.”

  “Keep an eye and ear on this Walter Pierson. He starts running over small ranchers, I’ll run him out on a rail.”

  Baker agreed.

  “I’m going to the dance tomorrow night with my wife, and plan to have a leisurely day Sunday at the ranch with her, but don’t hesitate to send word if you need me.”

  Guthrey rode back to the ranch and arrived before sundown. His wife rushed out and tackled him. A long ways from the straight-backed young lady he’d met here months ago. Short of flattening him, she let go, rose up, and kissed him, as excited as a yearling filly colt. Whew, he never expected his married life to be such fun. Noble took the horse and the infatuated newlyweds went to the porch, both ignoring the rest, they were so concentrated on each other.

  “Tell me about what you found,” she said.

  He put his hat on her head, rolled up his sleeves, and washed his hands in the enamel washbasin. Then he took a towel down and mopped his face and dried his hands.

  “Let’s see. Someone stole Mrs. Gunzo’s best fighting rooster.”

  Cally laughed. “Did your deputies apprehend him?”

  “I don’t think so but they are hot on his trail.”

  “Good.”

  “On the other side, between Doc and the funeral director, they issued a report on the murders. And some company must have bought the Whitmore Ranch. Their supervisor came in raising hell, saying that folks were eating his beef. His name is Walter Pierson. Teddy Baker wished he’d stayed in hell.”

  “Will he be like Whitmore?”

  “Not for very long. I won’t put up with him.”

  She hugged his arm when he hung the towel on the nail. He raised the hat brim on her head and kissed her. “Good to see you. Maybe we can have some peace this weekend.”

  She smiled. “I hope so.”

  She put food out for him and apologized for it being cold. Then she hung his hat on the rack and joined him. “Our guys thought everything was fine up range. They’re going west tomorrow to check, then ride up to the dance, and Noble’s coming back to milk the cow in the morning. He has a tent for us in the buckboard if that’s okay?”

  “Okay? That sounds wonderful to me.”

  “You sure are easy to please, Phil.”

  “Why not? I have a wonderful, hardworking wife. I simply appreciate you. I have been at so many houses in my life where the woman whines at her husband about the damnedest things. Maybe that’s why I never married until I got you.”

  “Aw, I’m just proud we have each other.”

  “Let me sneak out and shower and shave, and then we can go to bed.”

  She winkled her nose. “I am so anxious for you I don’t know if I can wait.”

  “Lordy, girl, then let’s go to bed.”

  She laughed. “Wonderful.”

  He wiped his mouth, closed his eyes. He needed to write his sister in Texas. Bonny would never believe he’d found a wife. He swept Cally up and kissed her, then they ran off to the bedroom for more honeymoon time.

  SIX

  THEY DROVE THE buckboard leisurely over to the schoolhouse. Guthrey tied his Roman-nosed horse on behind, just in case. At the schoolyard he helped Cally down and then up set the tent. She carried her food dishes up to the table inside and covered them with cheesecloth. He unsaddled his horse and studied the clouds building in the south. By the time he had the three animals on the hitch line, he could feel and smell the rain coming in.

  When Cally came out to check on him, she frowned at the approaching storm. “It may rain here.”

  “I think it will. We should go inside the schoolhouse. Folks are coming in and some will drink coffee if you make it.”

  “Sounds good. It’s thundering hard down there.”

  “It sure is. I’ll get our slickers in case we need to go outside.”

  “Good idea.” She took her ground coffee, a can of milk, and some sugar, and they went inside the building.

  “Heck, it’s going to rain here in a short while,” a large woman named Beulah said, joining them. “Sure enough I do believe it will storm here in a little bit.” She took some things from Cally to help her. “That will be a great thing to have some coffee. You sure came prepared.”

  Guthrey hung their slickers on the wall pegs as others hurried inside and the blowing dust swept in. It would rain mud first, and the hope was that the rain following would wash it off again. Lightning cracked close by and more folks burst through the doors to escape the strikes.

  Heavy rain and some small hail plinked on the shake roof, then the storm opened up in full force. The heavy downpour would make many usual dry wash crossings dangerously flooded.

  “I hope this doesn’t keep too many away,” Cally said over the roar. She and the other women were putting out empty open tin cans under where the roof leaked. Nothing severe
for all the force of the rain, but several cans soon plinked with water falling in them. Guthrey recalled enduring such storms in the Indian Territory and Kansas when he used to drive cattle north. They were sure hard on exposed cowboys trying to hold herds or make them move in formation to keep down any chance of a stampede. Another lightning blast shook the building. They could always use rain but he preferred gentler forms. He hugged Cally’s shoulders.

  “It will be over soon and wrung out. But this is a tough one.”

  With a smile for him, she said, “We needed it.”

  “I could have taken it in smaller doses.”

  They both laughed. In another half hour the storm moved away and the wet attendees arrived. They included Dan and Noble under slickers, but their felt hats weighed a ton.

  Folks talked about how much rain fell. One man had two inches in a pail.

  Dan said they had lots of rain at the ranch. That relieved Guthrey. Many such showers passed over a limited area and left many without any moisture.

  Good, the monsoons have started. Guthrey just hoped they didn’t end too quickly so the six-week grasses would pop up and there’d be a carpet of wildflowers. Those were the good summers in the desert. He visited with some ranchers in a corner of the big room.

  “I heard Whitmore’s bunch sold out and some big company bought the ranch.”

  Guthrey nodded. “The new superintendent is Walter Pierson. He’s been to the county seat and complained to my deputy Teddy Baker that small ranchers were eating his beef.”

  “Maybe his cattle are eating their grass,” one man suggested.

  Guthrey nodded. “My man told him that we would not accept any harassment of ranchers. Enforcing the law is our job.”

  Heads nodded.

  “I hope he listens,” one rancher said.

  “We won’t allow him not to.” Guthrey’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone tries to cause trouble I’ll meet them head-on. That’s my job.”

  One man spoke up, saying, “Thanks. We count on you.”

  “Hey, we’ve had a good rain. Let’s have fun tonight. This new bunch will obey the law or rot in jail.”

  They dispersed and Guthrey went to join Cally.

  “Problems?” she asked.

  “They’re upset about the new company moving in.”

  She frowned at him. “You can’t stop that?”

  “No, but I will watch them close.”

  Satisfied, she nodded and took his arm. “We’ll have a nice crowd despite the rain.”

  “I think you will have when they all get here.”

  “I do too.” Then she went to oversee more table settings for the dishes of food coming in.

  Guthrey shook some hands and whiled away the afternoon talking to new people and old about things happening in the area. The atmosphere in the county sounded much calmer than it had been when Guthrey took over as sheriff, but he knew that was because his men answered requests and investigated all reported crimes.

  Stage robberies had moved over into the adjoining county. Pima County was headquartered at Tucson, and Guthrey had talked to both the U.S. marshal and the sheriff about the men responsible for the robberies. Personally, he suspected it was a secret band of outlaws. But most holdups occurred on that side of the county line. At the U.S. marshal’s suggestion, Guthrey had his men and even the tax auditors keeping an eye out to see if the outlaws were hiding in Crook County. They had to have a hideout to operate so successfully.

  Wells Fargo had as many as three armed men on the stages to discourage the outlaws. But that also was a flag pointing out the value of the strongboxes on board. Guthrey had no idea who the robbers were or where they hid, but he and his men had an ear to the ground. Someone would give them a lead.

  The evening meal went well and more people arrived, celebrating the rain event. The instrument players began with a waltz, and Guthrey took his wife floating across the floor. His chest swelled with pride when he danced with her. Crook County had served him well, with a wife and a job in law enforcement in the place where he wanted to be and felt the most satisfied. He needed to face the fact that leaving the Texas Rangers did not diminish his desire to be sure things were fair and legal.

  When the dance was over, they retired to their tent. They basked in their lovemaking on the narrow cot and finally fell asleep. When Guthrey awoke and went outside, the cool predawn swept his face. Folks were beginning to stir. They needed to get back home. There’d been no drunken altercations the night before, which made him feel even better. He didn’t know how long it would last, but it sure had been peaceful.

  They arrived home midmorning on Sunday. He unloaded their gear and cleaned his guns after lunch. Things were almost too quiet. Dan rode off to see someone female and Noble caught up on his sleep in the bunkhouse. In the afternoon it showered more over by the Chiricahuas. But the storm swung northeast and Guthrey watched the tall thunderheads sail away in the distance.

  “Noble, can you think of a hideout or old ranch where those stage robbers might be located?”

  “There are some places scattered west of us that are like where we burned that ramada. Several folks gave up on ranching or their wells went dry and they just moved away, abandoning them. That country is harsher than this area. Gets less rain too.”

  “You think the Pima County bunch looked at all of them?”

  “No. They do more tax work than being lawmen, to my notion. Oh, they do some police work but that isn’t their main goal.”

  “Why don’t you and I swing up through there and see what we can find on our side of the line this coming week?”

  “Good idea.”

  “There’s a reason they aren’t robbing stages on our side of the line. I think we may be able to stop it.”

  “No telling. What’s the plan?”

  “In the morning we’ll go over to Soda Springs and check with my bunch, then we can ride around and see these old ranches. Maybe take a packhorse and swing back on Wednesday and come home Thursday. Would that be all right, Cally?”

  “I guess. If you two can root out one more bunch of outlaws it will be a safer place to live. Both of you be careful. I am counting on you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  THEIR PLANS MADE, they left before dawn to check things out. Guthrey found Soda Springs quiet and Zamora told him they’d had no big crimes. He’d inquired with several folks about a good glove maker and had no answer. Maybe she was down at Nogales or Tucson. Baker planned to write the sheriff in Tucson and ask if he knew of anyone. Wherever she was, she would be sought after, as good as that glove was made.

  After lunch, they headed into the mountains north for a place called the Devil’s Ranch and found it deep in a canyon. They approached it with care, but anyone could have heard the ring of their horseshoes on the rock-floored canyon. The steep mountainsides above them were covered in talus rock—flat loose rocks all over the slopes to the peaks.

  Some cottonwoods and a few palm trees marked the setting. A palm frond–covered ramada had once served as the house. There were no horses or signs of human inhabitance as they searched the place. Guthrey was ready to scratch it off his list.

  Noble came riding back. “There’s a grave beyond the corral. It looks fresh. You think we should check it out? I think whoever was here didn’t use the corral so no one would know they’d been here.”

  “You’re thinking they never used the corrals or the shade?”

  “Yeah,” Noble said. “They tied their horses up way over there where the horse apples are fresher.”

  When Guthrey saw the fresh dirt mound, he wondered who was planted there. “I hate to dig up a body that’s been dead awhile, but I guess we better to try and identify it.”

  The dirt was loose and they used their short camp shovel. But finally they needed their bandana face masks as the copper and sour st
ink of the decomposing body became evident. Taking turns with the short-handled shovel, they soon unearthed a man, and when Guthrey saw the size of his boots, he knew they had come from the murder scene. The dead man’s face had been obliterated by several shots of a large-caliber pistol at close range. At the sight of him, Guthrey knew the unknown corpse was one of the Carlson killers.

  They bound his remains in a blanket of the least value they had and tied him on the unloaded packhorse. Guthrey said he’d take him back to Soda Springs and return here in the morning. Noble never argued when they parted and Guthrey headed for the county seat.

  Past sundown, he arrived at the Combs Funeral Home and woke the attendant, who was already asleep. The two carried the smelly corpse inside and the young man promised to get Guthrey an autopsy report. Guthrey left him, went to the office, and wrote a note instructing the day deputies to try to learn the dead man’s identity, since he could be one of the Carlsons’ murderers.

  Hard to escape the smell of death; the odor had saturated him and his clothing. He arrived past midnight back at the Devil’s Ranch.

  Noble woke up and greeted him. “You eat anything?”

  “No, I’ll have some jerky. I haven’t wanted to eat much, as bad as I stink.”

  “It sure ain’t a pleasant odor.” Noble shook his head.

  “How far are we from any other old ranch? I wonder why they chose to shoot him here, or bury him here anyway.”

  “They stayed away from the ramada and pens. But I almost forgot, I found a note up there near that grave. I jammed it in my pocket at the time but you need to read it.”

  Guthrey frowned. “What does it say?”

  “It’s a receipt for some goatskin gloves. They cost twelve dollars a pair and Ramona Garcia made them. The man bought them in June. No address. But we know a helluva lot more than we did.”

  “That’s great. This man’s big feet and the glove are about all I have. Does Ramona Garcia sound familiar to you?” Guthrey lit a stub of a candle to read the note and then agreed it was more evidence.