by Dan Arnold
Sage Country Book Two
ALTA VISTA
By DAN ARNOLD
Copyright © 2013 DAN ARNOLD
All rights reserved, both foreign and domestic.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author.
SAGE COUNTRY
Book Two
ALTA VISTA
©
By Dan Arnold
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are a work of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance or reference to any actual locales, events or persons, living or dead is entirely fictional.
Edited by:
Ellenor Wiley Clyde Welch
Cover design: Dan Arnold
Photo credit: Dan Arnold
ALTA VISTA
1.
With two short and one long blast of the whistle, the Union Pacific train from Denver to Cheyenne chugged to its usual stop at Bear Creek, Colorado.
It was the third time I’d arrived there by train, but it wasn’t the first time I’d ever been met at this railroad depot by a beautiful woman. She was wearing a dress she knew would please me. It was emerald green satin with long sleeves, the one with silver piping trim on the collar, cuffs, and as a border along the bottom hem. The bustle made it stylish. Her hat was of matching color and style with a spray of golden plumes, set at an angle on her head. Kidskin gloves in a golden color completed the outfit. She was easily the most beautiful woman in Bear Creek, probably in all of Colorado, maybe even the whole world.
This wasn’t just any beautiful woman either. She was my fiancée, Lora O’Malley. Mrs. O’Malley to be more correct, or the widow O’Malley, some might say. Her husband of many years had died, leaving her alone with no children and a big empty house. Eventually, to make ends meet, she’d been forced to turn her home into a boarding house. She’d made a success of it, in part because she was so beautiful and gracious, she was a renowned cook, and Bear Creek was a boom town.
“Oh, John, thank God you’re home!” Lora cried, as she rushed into my arms.
I dropped my gear on the platform. I knew it was unseemly, perhaps even vulgar, but I kissed her right there in front of everyone at the station. It was becoming a tradition—a tradition I hoped to enjoy for the rest of my life.
“I missed you so, darling,” she whispered in my ear.
I held her at arm’s length and looked into her deep brown eyes. “I couldn’t stay away from you for one more minute.” I said.
“How was California? You’ll have to tell me everything.”
Gathering up my saddle bags and my valise, I took Lora’s arm and we walked down the stairs and off the platform. I tucked my valise and my saddle bags into the back of the Phaeton cab, then helped Lora step up inside.
Taxi cabs were now the preferred form of travel for arriving train passengers in Bear Creek. The nearest hotel was four blocks away and up-hill from the train depot, and the weather could be challenging at almost any time of year. This Phaeton was kind of a luxury. Lora had secured the services of the cabbie to drive her to the station and both of us back to her house on the far western side of town. Lora had a fine carriage and two beautiful horses to pull it, but she was not skilled at harnessing or driving them.
***
I smiled as I observed several fashionably dressed people walking on the new sidewalk bordering the newly bricked street.
When I had first come to Bear Creek, only a year or so ago, the streets had been dirt and they turned to mud every time it rained. There had been no sidewalks, just boardwalks, and those only in front of the businesses surrounding the square.
We were becoming quite the sophisticated metropolis. Now, thanks to the catalogue companies and the railroad, folks in Bear Creek were as well dressed as people in Boston, Chicago, or New York.
Alta Vista County boasted nearly ten thousand people now, and about half of those lived in and around Bear Creek.
Bear Creek was the center of a cross roads for mining, farming, ranching, railroad, banking and shipping. The town had a school through grade twelve, with four teachers. The streets were being bricked and there was talk of a college coming to town. Signs of modern life could be seen everywhere. There were even plans to bring electric lights and telephone lines from Denver.
But like any boom town in the late 19th century, Bear Creek had its share of problems.
I was the new Sheriff of Alta Vista County, having been elected only a few months before. The sitting sheriff had resigned under charges of incompetence and possible involvement in the theft of a mine payroll. Two of his deputies had stolen the payroll in collusion with a third man named Ed Rawlins. Rawlins was a hired killer who had fallen on desperate times. I ended his career one day in the street outside the Bon Ton Café.
That shooting, along with newspaper stories suggesting I’d killed the two payroll thieves at their camp in the mountains, had made me famous, and advanced my reputation as a lawman that killed without hesitation. I didn’t like any of it, not at all.
Because I was living in the dormitory in the basement of the big, new, granite courthouse on the square, we only had a few blocks to ride before we stopped to drop off my gear on the way to Lora’s house.
“I brought you a wedding gift,” I said, giving her a squeeze.
“Really, what is it?”
“You’ll just have to wait till the wedding, to find out. How are the plans coming along?”
“All ready to go. Oh, guess what, we’ve got a new preacher!”
“Really, do we need a new one?”
“Yes, Bud and Mildred were called away. There was some sort of family emergency back east. Bud sent for this new gentleman, and introduced him last Sunday morning.”
“Okay, what’s he like?”
We were approaching the square. I noticed the Palace was all lit up with those new electric light bulbs. The lights were battery powered. The batteries came by train from a place in Cheyenne. It was one of the reasons the Palace was the best known restaurant and saloon in all of Colorado.
Lora turned to face me. She studied my face for a moment. “He’s a little older, but I think he’s kind of like you, John.”
“Is he—in what way?”
She took my arm and we leaned into each other. “He’s a hard man with a hard background. You’ve probably heard of him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Wes Spradlin. Have you heard of him?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of Wes Spradlin. He’s a known gunman; they say a killer for hire. I never heard of him being a preacher.”
The mention of Wes Spradlin got me thinking about Bob Logan. Bob was one of my deputies, a former Pinkerton detective, but he was also a hired gunman and part time bounty hunter. Bob left Bear Creek to hunt for the Thorndyke boys at about the same time that I left for California. It got me to wondering where he was now.
“That’s all in the past. He went to a seminary and got his preacher credentials.”
“Bob?”
“No, silly, Wes Spradlin did. Who said anything about Bob?”
The driver stopped the Phaeton at the courthouse.
“I’ll be right back, Baby. I’ll just drop my things inside and say hello to the boys.”
“John, don’t get caught up in Sheriff’s business. You come right back out here.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll surely do that.”
When I went into the basement of the courthouse, I saw one of the newer deputies down the hall by the jail cells and gave him a wave. I remembered his name was Shelby Matthews.
I found Buckskin Charlie holding down the fort in the downstairs off
ice, he was sitting behind the desk. I had my “official” office upstairs in the main part of the courthouse, but the basement was where the real work got done. Charlie had become my Chief Deputy when Hugh Lomax, the best lawman I had ever known, cashed in his chips about a month back.
Buckskin Charlie Owens had recently been an exhibition shooter in a traveling Wild West show. He could do amazing things with a handgun or pretty much any type of long gun. He had been billed as “Buckskin Charlie Owens, the world’s finest marksman and fast draw artist.” These days, he seldom wore the double holsters or the fancy fringed buckskin coat which had been part of his stage persona, but most folks still thought of him as “Buckskin” Charlie. He had been well on his way to becoming a famous entertainer, until he’d gotten sick of show business.
Before the Wild West show, he was a little known and underappreciated law man. I’d been thrilled when he accepted my job invitation.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in? If it isn’t John Everett Sage, in the flesh! I didn’t expect to see you till tomorrow, John. I thought Lora was meeting you at the station.”
I grinned. “She did, and I would remind you we won’t be married till next Saturday.”
“Why, sure, I know that ... I just meant... er … I figured I would probably already be asleep when you came in.”
I laughed. “Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me. So, what’s new?”
“Well, let’s see … we have four prisoners in overnight. If they can pay their fines, they’ll go home tomorrow. They’re in jail on drunk and disorderly charges. Couldn’t even stay sober till sundown! We’ve also got two more prisoners awaiting trial, one for armed robbery, and one for attempted murder.”
I whistled. “It seems to have been a lively time since I left.”
“No more than usual, but the town is growing.”
“These men were all arrested here, in town?”
“No, the attempted murder happened on the other side of the tracks, on the construction site for the new hotel, out by the rodeo grounds, what we’re calling the fairgrounds now.
The armed robbery was on the road between here and Waller. That feller is just down on his luck and desperate. He stopped a stagecoach and robbed the driver and the passengers at gun point. We caught him the next day. He seemed almost glad to be arrested. The other feller is a construction worker who attacked one of the delivery drivers on the job site. Nearly beat him to death with a claw hammer. He said it had something to do with his wife.”
“How is that attempted murder?”
“He’d already threatened the other man in front of witnesses, and he’d been telling people all over town that he intended to kill him. The delivery driver is hurt bad. He’d be dead if some of the other men out there hadn’t intervened.
I nodded. “How’s Tom doing?”
Tom Smith is the Chief of Police in Bear Creek. We used to be deputy town marshals together. He and his wife Becky took me in when I first came to Bear Creek, and Tom was going to stand by me as my best man at the wedding.
“Tom’s busier than a one armed paper hanger. The city council has him and his ‘police officers’ enforcing every ordinance on the books and some that ain’t in no books—not just the list of rules you left them with when you were town marshal. They have a whole long list of possible infractions, from littering to spitting on the new sidewalks.”
“I guess the city council wants to generate some revenue in addition to the property taxes.”
Buckskin Charlie made a disgusted face. He never was very fond of other people’s rules.
“… And there’s a fair amount of new crime popping up all over town.”
“Really, like what?”
“John, it looks like some of the so called ‘respectable’ business owners are making a little money on the side from shady business in back rooms. The money is in gambling and prostitution mostly, some crooked real estate deals, right and left. There are some rough looking characters loitering around, more drunkenness, and petty crime, too. We’ve got some young kids stealing from the grocery store, and we even have thefts from people’s homes.”
“We saw it coming. A town can’t swell up like this without people trying to steal other people’s hard earned money, one way and another. As the Chief of Police, all of that is in Tom’s bailiwick. He’s responsible for the city. We’ll be focusing on the crime in the rest of the county.”
“Yeah, anyway that’s why we have those four drunks locked up here. Tom’s city jail is too full.”
“Listen, Charlie, I’ve got to go. Lora is waiting for me outside in a cab. We’ll catch up more tomorrow.”
“Yeah, okay, it don’t pay to keep a lady waiting. I’ll look forward to hearing about California. Say ‘hey’ to Miss Lora for me.”
2.
“So, tell me all about California,” Lora said.
We were sitting in the parlor living area on the first floor of what would soon be “our house.” Tonight though, it was still Mrs. O’Malley’s Boarding House, and there were people in and out.
“Well, the train ride alone was something. At times, we were going about a mile a minute! In the time it takes to groom and saddle Dusty, that train might be fifteen or twenty miles down the track! I mean we might travel more than fifty miles in a single hour. That could take two days on horseback.”
“My goodness, it sounds frightening!”
“Naw! It was smooth and gentle. I was on that train for two days going to San Francisco and two days coming back. It was riding in style the whole way.”
“What was San Francisco like?”
“I’d say about as big as Chicago, but with a lot more hills. They have cable cars there, just like in Chicago or the system they’re building in Denver, but there’s the big bay on one side and the whole Pacific Ocean on the other. Chicago just has the big lake that looks like an ocean. San Francisco is a real seaport, and it’s a couple of hundred years old.
You never saw such a busy place, and there are people there from all over the world.
There’s a part of the city they call China Town. I expect just that one part of San Francisco is as big as Bear Creek.”
“Where is your family now?”
“They were camped down the coast a ways, near a place called Carmel-by-the-Sea. It’s beautiful there. The mountains come right down to the ocean. There are towering cliffs above the sea and gravelly beaches with driftwood and tide pools.
I expect they’ll stay there for a while. It seems kind of funny, my people, the Romani, in a ‘gypsy’ camp, and right nearby there’s a fancy hotel and resort called the Del Monte. It was built by some railroad tycoons. It burned down a couple of years ago, so they just rebuilt it, only bigger and better. Rich folks go there to play golf and have dances and picnics and what not.”
“Wait, did you say they play gulf there? What is gulf?”
“No, I said golf. Golf is a game from Scotland. I think the term ‘golf’ comes from the letters that signify “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden. At least that’s what I was told.
Basically, the game involves hitting a little ball with a stick. They call it a golf club, and the goal is to whack at the little ball with the stick and try to knock the ball into a hole in the ground. They have these holes scattered all around. The person who gets the ball into all of the different holes with the least amount of whacking wins.”
“That sounds silly,” Lora giggled.
I snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think golf will ever catch on and become popular with the general public.”
“Tell me about your family.”
“Mother was thrilled to see me of course and she asked all about you. My son, Nick, and his new wife Rachel are very happy. He’s taken a job helping rebuild and restore a big old Spanish mission there in Carmel. It was settled at about the same time as San Francisco, part of the Spanish chain of missions in Alta, California.”
“Oh, I would love to go out there and see all that!”
“Well
then, we’ll just have to do it. Like I said, I expect they’ll be there for some time. With that much available wealth at the Del Monte nearby, they’ll camp there and make a living entertaining the rich and famous for a while. It’s a good place to winter over.
You remember, I told you my mother is a fortune teller? She ‘reads’ other people’s fortunes with tea leaves or tarot cards or her crystal ball, but somehow she never sees what’s coming right at her. I worry they’ll make a mistake in California like they did in New Orleans.
My people didn’t realize when they set up their carnival where they did, they were stealing money from the local fortune teller who belonged to a voodoo sect, and they hadn’t bought the proper ‘permits’ from some local merchants who controlled the law enforcement. My family ran head first into some cut throats and riff raff in New Orleans. The visit ended suddenly and so did the lives of some people.”
“John, you’ve never told me that story. There is so little I know about your life before you came to Bear Creek. What was it like growing up as a Gypsy?”
“As you know, I wasn’t really born a Romani. When I was a ten year old boy, I staggered into a circle of firelight one night. I was nearly frozen, half naked, and covered in blood. Some of that blood was my own. The people with whom I’d been living were massacred by Indians.
The campfire belonged to a group of Romani who saved my life, and, since I had no one else, they became my family. Kergi Alexiev Borostoya and his wife, Sasha, had no children, so Sasha became my mother, and Kergi became my father. We traveled thousands of miles together over the years. I learned many useful skills.
The Romani have learned from hard experience to stay on the move. Some of us are horse traders, tinkers, stage performers, circus folk, migrant workers and so on. Although a few have learned to settle down and grow roots, there has always been little love lost between my people and the people of the towns.
