Paper Sheriff

by Short, Luke;

  “I couldn’t stay awake if you built a fire under me,” Reese said. He raised to one elbow, drank the water, then lay down and closed his eyes. Jen pulled the blanket up over him and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled pleasurably without opening his eyes and was immediately asleep.

  When Jen awakened at daylight, Reese was again in delirium. Cool spring water didn’t rouse him and Jen had deep misgivings about leaving him. Still, she couldn’t help him when he was in delirium, and by far the most important thing was to get him to a doctor’s care. She ate a meagre breakfast of jerky and bread and left the remainder alongside a full cup of water by Reese’s head. She waited a few minutes, then ripped Reese’s shirt into narrow strips which she stuffed in both pockets of her divided skirt. Afterwards she rose, went out to where her horse was picketed and brought him back to drink out of the stream. Finished, she saddled him, mounted, took a last look at Reese, who seemed to be sleeping again, and then headed north.

  The country she headed into was a gently rolling grassland with occasional clumps of oak thickets and pinyons. When she put up her first marker, she looked back and in the far distance saw the thrusting pinyon where the seep was. She was surprised that it looked entirely different from what it had looked like when they approached it yesterday from the opposite direction. She saw now why Reese had told her to keep looking back for the country behind her seemed not to be the same country she had just ridden through.

  There were several gullies that seemed to Jen to be dangerously steep, and at these she rode the banks until she found the shallowest portion and marked it.

  It was past mid-morning when she picked up the Moffitt road. There were marks of wagon wheels in the dust of the road, and Jen could not tell if they were new or old tracks, or if they were left by the stage or passing wagons.

  She dismounted in the shade of a big roadside pinyon where she tied her horse, sat down and made herself be patient. The half hour she waited seemed like two hours before she picked up the sound of jangling harness and the loud rumble of the stage teams and the stage. Rising now she saw the stage rounding a curve, the horses at a walk against the grade of the mountain. Jen stepped out into the road and the ears of the horses came forward at sight of her. Joe Early straightened up in the box as if, not believing his eyes, the craning of his neck would make the mirage vanish.

  As the stage rolled toward her, Jen raised her hand to flag it down. Joe pulled the teams to a halt.

  “Jen,” Joe said. “What in hell are you doing here?”

  His lean, tough face was the color of leather and sixty-plus years, every one of them hard, had faded his hair to whiteness. He had a big nose, big mouth, big ears and, because his profession called for it, a very large fund of profanity. Jen couldn’t remember when he hadn’t driven stage teams.

  “Reese sent me for you, Joe. He’s hurt, a gunshot wound, and he can’t ride.”

  “Bushwhack?”

  Jen nodded. “In the leg.”

  Jen was aware that a man passenger had stuck his head out of the stage’s half-door and was listening.

  “Where is he?” Joe asked.

  “Seven or eight miles south. He said you could make it there even without a road.”

  “That I can,” Joe said easily. “He hurt bad?”

  “Bad enough that he’s out of his head most of the time.”

  The passenger, a full-faced man wearing a Derby hat, turned to say something to someone in the stage, then returned his attention to Jen. “What’s the delay, driver?” he called.

  Joe ignored him. “Can you take me to him?”

  “I’m sure I can.”

  “Then get going,” Joe said.

  The passenger had caught enough of the conversation to know that something was wrong. “Driver, what’s the delay?” he called again.

  Jen turned and walked back to her horse, and Joe called down, “Bridge out. Got to bypass it.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” the passenger said angrily.

  “Take the wax out of your ears, mister.”

  Jen untied her horse and set out through the sparse timber, looking back at the stage. The horses, she saw, were reluctant to leave the road. This, of course, called for some cursing and for the whip. They lunged off the road and took the gentle downgrade through the sparse timber with a speed that almost overtook Jen. Once they were behind her, Joe let them settle into her pace.

  The country looked familiar to Jen and when, minutes later, she picked up her first marker a vast relief flooded through her. Presently they came to the first gully where Jen reined up. It was the worst and deepest of the three. Joe reined in the teams, then climbed onto the seat and surveyed the gully.

  “This one is the worst one, Joe. I couldn’t find a shallow crossing.”

  Joe climbed down, reached in the boot and came up with a coiled lariat. Then he descended, first wrapping the reins around the brake handle. Now he moved back to the stage door and said, “Everybody out.”

  The man in the Derby hat, whose fat face matched his fat body, stepped down first, ahead, naturally, of the woman passenger who could only have been his wife.

  “What’s this?” he demanded angrily.

  “Why, Friday, ain’t it?” Joe answered. His attentions were on the third passenger, a youngish man dressed in clean range clothes who, Joe had noticed in Moffitt, favored a gimpy leg.

  “You up to riding maybe fifty yards?” Joe asked him.

  “Maybe sixty,” the young man said good-naturedly.

  Joe nodded and turned to Jen. “Jen, give him your horse.” To the young man he said, “I’ll go straight down and then pull to the right and go up the bank antigodlin’.”

  Jen dismounted now as Joe shut the door, uncoiled the rope, then passed the loop through the window and back out again. He passed the other end of the rope through the loop and drew the rope tight so that it circled door frame and stage frame. He handed the free end to the young man and said, “Dally that and keep her tight, just in case she starts to tip.”

  The young man nodded his understanding and stepped into the saddle Jen had vacated. He dallied the rope around the horn, then moved Jen’s horse until the rope was almost taut.

  Now Joe climbed up into the box, unwound the reins, picked up his whip and looked to see if his helper was ready. When the man nodded, Joe shouted his teams into motion, his whip cracking almost louder than a pistol shot. The lead team was too frightened to balk, and the others followed out of necessity, and the stage plummetted down the slope. When the lead horses hit the gully floor, Joe turned them, angling right. The young man had the rope taut now as Joe lashed out with his whip, urging his horses into a panicked gallop. As they hit the far slope, the young man kept the rope taut, angling his horse at a steeper angle than the stage teams. As the stage began the climb, Jen’s horse sensed his job and, like a sensible cow pony, threw his weight against the rope.

  To Jen, watching from the bank, it seemed that the stage would surely go over as it angled up the slope, but both her horse and its rider knew their jobs. The lead team made the crest of the bank, still at a run, and then the stage hit the lip with such force that its front wheels left the ground, then crashed down again on the flats, beautifully upright.

  Joe pulled the teams to a halt, then looked back to see Jen with the two passengers picking their way down the slope. By the time they reached the stage the young man had coiled up the rope, tossed it to Joe and was holding the reins for Jen.

  “She’d have gone over all right if you wasn’t there,” Joe said.

  “Well, I’d rather have been where I was than inside it, for sure.”

  When Jen approached, Joe looked down at her and asked, almost indifferently, “Got your bearings, Jen?”

  “I think I have. Let’s wait and see,” Jen said.

  She mounted and again led the stage across the flats and picked up the next marker. The other two gullies were shallow enough that, after looking them over, Joe didn’t bother to order t
he passengers out. When Joe halted the teams at the last gully and stood up for his look, the fat passenger stuck his head out of the window. “Would you kindly tell me where you’re taking us,” he called out.

  “Don’t know, but we’re sure to get there,” Joe answered.

  When the clump of pinyons hiding the seep came in sight, Jen breathed a sigh of relief. If it was possible to make it to here, they could make it back, and for the first time since she had watched Reese try and fail to make his lone way to the creek yesterday, she felt hope conquer her despair.

  At the seep they found Reese again in delirium. It was Joe who decided that Reese should ride atop the stage where he could lie down. The Concord’s thoroughbracers would allow him to be exactly as comfortable there as any passenger inside.

  With Joe pulling from the top, and the two men lifting him from the ground, Reese was moved atop the stage onto the blankets Joe had spread out.

  Joe used the lariat now to tie Reese down, anchored within the baggage rails. Jen decided to ride in the box with Joe so she could watch after Reese. Accordingly, her horse was tied to the rear boot and they got under way.

  On the return trip when they came to the last and deepest gully, Joe dropped the stage a mile down the gully course until he found a shallow crossing, and twenty minutes later they were back on the Moffitt road.

  When they pulled into Armistead’s for the team change, Jen turned and saw that Reese was still in delirium. Should she have Reese unloaded here and put in a decent bed rather than take him to Bale? Joe could bring out Dr. Parkinson on the return stage. She looked at his bandage and saw that the wound wasn’t bleeding, and then she made up her mind to take Reese on into Bale. Dr. Parkinson’s two-bed hospital was the place for Reese; there he would never be out of the doctor’s care.

  It was some time after midnight when the stage pulled up before Dr. Parkinson’s house. While Jen roused the doctor, Reese was carefully unloaded, and by the time he was brought into the house, Dr. Parkinson and his wife were up, the lamps were lighted and the bed turned down. Jen was waiting beside it.

  The first thing Jen did the next morning was to hunt up Jim Daley.

  As she went in the small court-house office he greeted her by saying, “I know about it, Jen. The boys at the livery sent a man over to wake me. I talked with Joe and then I dropped by to see Reese. He was out of his head. Tell me what happened.”

  He waited until Jen took the chair beside the desk and then sat down, his expression both grim and angry. The flush of his square face almost matched the color of his red-checked shirt. Jen told him then of Orville Hoad’s bushwhack attempt on Reese, which she had witnessed, and of joining Reese despite Orv’s attempt to frighten her off. She emphasized that Orv could not have known that she had already identified him. She made little of their retreat to the alder thicket but Jim Daley had wits enough to imagine those terror-filled few minutes. The rest of it, of course, had been told him by Joe Early.

  When she had finished, Jim Daley didn’t speak immediately. He pushed his chair away from the desk and began to prowl the room, both hands clasped around his belt in the back. When he finally spoke he left unsaid much that he knew Jen already understood.

  “Jen, Callie’s in this as much as Orv. When Sheriff Braden picks up that herd, she’s headed for jail along with Orville.”

  “Reese knows that.”

  “At least I can arrest her instead of him doing it.”

  “But not till you hear from Braden, Jim.”

  Daley nodded. “Orv is different. I can pick him up today if he’s back here.”

  “There’s no hurry about that, Jim. Remember, he doesn’t know you’re looking for him. Let’s wait till after you’ve talked with Reese.”

  “I’m going to do that this afternoon. Will you come along, Jen?”

  “Of course. Let’s let him sleep the morning.”

  Now Daley came back to his desk and sat down again. He looked at Jen fondly and said, “Anybody beside Reese ever tell you you’re quite a girl?”

  Strangely, Jen blushed. She smiled now and said, “My father did once but then he’s prejudiced.” She rose now and Jim did too.

  “One o’clock at the doctor’s house, Jim?”

  “I’ll be there, Jen.”

  Daley watched her go out, admiring her slim, erect carriage. Afterwards he began to pace the room again, turning over in his mind what Jen had told him. Reese was lucky to be alive, he thought, and if it weren’t for Jen Truro, he wouldn’t be. Orv Hoad’s attack on Reese told Daley many things, one of which he didn’t want to believe, couldn’t quite believe but had to accept as true. Jen hadn’t stated it but she knew too. It was the plain truth that Callie was willing to have Reese murdered to hide the fact that she and her family were cattle thieves. Orv would never have made his try for Reese without telling Callie what he planned. He would never have risked her anger or the possibility of her betrayal of him if they hadn’t come to some sort of understanding about Reese.

  Jim knew, as did everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, that Reese and Callie’s marriage wasn’t working. But for a woman to remain passive while her relatives planned her husband’s murder was nearly incomprehensible to him. It was a throwback to a jungle he’d hoped he would never have to explore.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of many bootheels scuffing down the corridor floor. He hauled up now and eyed the doorway as the first of four men entered the room. The first man halted just inside the door, and the other three took positions around him. The four men, Jim saw, were working cow-punchers. All of them wore leather chaps and had that seedy, unshaven and self-reliant appearance of men whose livelihood was the handling of cattle and horses. Moreover they had a certain tough wariness in their faces.

  The man who had entered first was somewhat undersized and as he coolly looked around the room, Daley saw that he was a redhead.

  “You the Sheriff?” the man asked.

  “Deputy. What can I do for you?”

  “Where’s the Sheriff?”

  “In bed with a gunshot wound.”

  “Where?”

  “Never mind,” Jim said quietly. “I work for him. What’s it you want?”

  The four men exchanged glances before the redhead said, “How long you worked for him?”

  “A year and a half.”

  “So you were here last month?” At Jim’s nod, the redhead went on, “We just come from delivering a trail herd at the railhead up north. Last month we were stampeded over on the National. When we rounded them up, we had more’n two hundred head short count. Our trail boss headed for here, figuring to catch up with us later. We ain’t seen him yet.”

  “His name was Will Reston and you’re R-Cross trail hands. Is that right?” Jim said.

  A look of surprise washed over the faces of the men. “That’s right. Where’s Reston?”

  “I figure he’s dead,” Daley said bluntly.

  The men looked at each other and now a heavyset, older man took over. “Why you figure that?” he asked, both suspicion and belligerence in his tone of voice.

  “Your stock was rustled. They’re over across the Wheelers somewhere in Moffitt County. The Sheriff there will start after them tomorrow.”

  “About Reston,” the man reminded him.

  “The last time he was seen was here in town talking to two of the rustlers. We think he met them later. Anyway he hasn’t been seen since.”

  A gaunt-faced, tall man, heretofore silent, spoke now in a drawling voice. “Now ain’t that purely a hell of a way to run a sheriff’s office. If you knowed they was rustlers, why didn’t you pick ’em up?”

  “We didn’t know it then but we do now. The Sheriff was shot by one of them while he was hunting your cattle.”

  “You know who they are?” the redhead asked.

  Daley nodded. “We know who one of them is. He’s the one who talked with Reston.”

  “Who is he?” the gaunt man asked.

  �
�Oh no,” Jim said gently, mildly. “Well have him in jail by tomorrow night. That good enough for you?”

  The four men exchanged glances. “Just him?” the redhead asked.

  “Him for sure, maybe more. It all depends on you four.”

  “How come us?” the gaunt man asked.

  “You start hitting the saloons and telling what I’ve just told you, we won’t get any of them. They don’t know yet that we’re after them. You tip my hand with your talk and they run out.” He paused. “Make sense?”

  The redhead considered, then nodded soberly. “Why don’t we side you?”

  Daley said, “Ah,” in quiet disgust. “You think they don’t know the brand on the cattle they stole? If they see four R-Cross riders with me, they won’t even have to guess why you’re here.”

  “I reckon that figures,” the redhead said.

  The man who hadn’t yet spoken now said, “You keep saying ‘we.’ You mean that Sheriff who’s flat on his back and you?”

  “I do.”

  The redhead said admiringly, “You talk like you make pretty big tracks, so I reckon you do. Just remember, you give the word and we buy into the fight. It was our boss and our cattle.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be a fight, but thanks anyway. Just stay away from me and don’t talk.”

  As soon as the R-Cross hands left, Jim Daley locked the door to his office, then went out the rear door, heading for his horse. These Texas hands seemed to trust him and they looked all right, but why in hell did they have to come today? he wondered savagely. It would be a miracle if one of the Hoads failed to pick up the brand on their horses and then the whole bunch would be alerted for trouble.

  Jim led his horse out of the shed, mounted and headed for the livery stable. He had a feeling that while things were still under control, they still could very easily get out of hand. In his talk with Reston’s trail hands he had wisely refused to name the Hoads, but if he didn’t get results quickly, they would begin to lean on him. Then, besides watching the Hoads, he’d have to watch them too. This is a sorry way to make a living, he thought.