Dead Man's Range

by Paul Durst

  ‘I don’t know what to believe, Caleb,’ she said wearily. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ She said goodnight and went into the bedroom and closed the door. Caleb stood staring at the door for a long time, then he picked up the Sharps and blew out the lamp and went thoughtfully out of the kitchen toward the bunkhouse.

  Despite her weariness Anne did not fall asleep immediately. Doubts and confused thoughts marched through her mind as through an endless maze, seeking outlet. But they found none.

  Only one thing stood out clearly now. She loved Jeff Carmody. Loved him for what he had meant to her life in the brief forty-eight hours he had been with her. Loved him for what might have been if things had been different. But now she knew that she faced the pain of disillusion, that her love for him might be love for a man who existed only in her imagination. For if Anson spoke the truth, then there could be no love but only hatred – hatred all the more bitter because she had believed in him and been betrayed.

  Her eyes came wide open and she sat up in bed to listen, her heart beating rapidly. There was no mistaking it. The dull rumble of many cloven hoofs pounding on the hard-packed earth. Her eyes swept the flat, searching through the cottonwoods and among the scattered sagebrush beyond. Then she saw them. A small herd of cattle, perhaps thirty or forty, leaving a faint cloud of dust in the moonlight as they came down the slope and across the valley floor toward the house. Beside them a rider darted back and forth, guiding the direction of their stampede, urging them on with the loud slapping of his coiled rope against his boots.

  The cattle, she knew instinctively, were hers. It was the rider who held her attention. There was something familiar about him, something in the hat he was wearing, the way the brim rolled, the flat-creased crown. A cry that was almost a sob of anguish escaped her lips. ‘Jeff!’

  Anne tore herself from the window and ran for the door. ‘Caleb!’ she screamed.

  But he had already heard and was stumbling from the door in his undershirt, pulling on his trousers with one hand and carrying the heavy Sharps in the other.

  ‘Caleb – look!’ She flung an arm in the direction of the creek, but the old man was already leaning the Sharps against a corral post to steady it. The big buffalo gun shook the night with its roar but the high whine of a riccochet told he had missed.

  Anne had watched him shoot, her hand at her throat, in that split second not knowing whether she hoped he would hit or miss. Then the rider’s hand moved up and down with a definite motion, the gun in his hand glinting in the moonlight. The window of the bunkhouse burst inward with a tinkle of cascading glass and Caleb bolted through the door cursing and yelling at Anne to get under cover while he got more ammunition for the breech-loading Sharps.

  The rider’s gun exploded again and she saw the lead steer stumble to its knees to be trampled under by the rushing herd, its neck twisting at an awkward angle in the press of heaving bodies. She heard its clear snap above the rumble of the herd and she gave a cry and ran to the kitchen and reached for the Winchester on the wall. The Sharps boomed out again and she spun to the window and peered out. But the rider was still there, firing into the packed and bawling mass of animals. She saw two more go down and she tore the curtain aside and gathered her nightgown above her knees as she rested the rifle across the sill and took aim. But even as she pulled the trigger she knew she had missed in the tricky shadows that surged in the moonlight.

  She levered two shots in quick succession as the rider was turning his horse, saw the man’s hat snatched from his head and sent spinning across the flat. The Sharps boomed again but the battle was already over. The hat-shot had dampened the marauder’s enthusiasm for rifle fire and he spun his mount and disappeared through the trees.

  A few minutes later she heard Caleb’s footsteps outside and she stood up quickly, brushing her eyes. ‘Anne! You all right, Anne!’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right.’ She went to the door. He was standing there with the man’s hat in his hand.

  ‘He got five of ’em, Anne,’ he said sorrowfully. Then he held the hat out to her and said bitterly, ‘I guess there ain’t no question about who that belonged to, is there?’

  She took the hat, thrusting her finger reflectively through the hole in the crown. ‘Just two inches lower,’ she said, her face grim. ‘What a damn shame I missed!’ She flung the hat across the room where it bounced off the wall and rolled under the table.

  ‘I can’t figure it out,’ Caleb said with a slow shake of his head. ‘I just can’t figure it out. Why would he want to do a thing like that?’

  ‘Why?’ Anne said angrily. ‘Because he’s a killer, that’s why! He’s come back to get his revenge for spending eight years in prison. Though God knows why he should want to take it out on me. Haven’t I suffered enough at his hand? Wasn’t it enough for him that I had to lose my husband?’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ Caleb said insistently. ‘He didn’t kill Clint. And it just don’t make sense that he’d have it in for you just because he got sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. You didn’t send him there. The jury did. If he was out for revenge it looks to me like.…’

  Anne was looking at him strangely. ‘You still say he didn’t kill Clint, after what happened tonight?’ Her voice was quiet, puzzled. She half-lifted her hand to point at him. ‘You know something I don’t, Caleb. Why do you keep insisting Carmody didn’t kill him? Unless’ – she took a step toward him as though in a trance, her finger still raised – ‘unless you know who did kill him!’

  ‘Now, Anne, for God’s sake, I.…’

  ‘What happened while I was back East, Caleb? Did Clint have a run-in with Anson?’

  ‘No, Anne. Anson didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. I just.…’

  ‘Anson killed him, didn’t he?’ she said, her voice strangely calm, her face composed. ‘Anson killed him and because you were afraid of what Anson’s men might do to you if you testified against him you lied and said you’d seen him in Canadian the night Clint was shot. Isn’t that the way it happened, Caleb – because you were afraid one of Anson’s men might kill you if you told the truth?’

  ‘I ain’t afraid of Anson! I did see him that night and.…’

  She leaned toward him suddenly, gripping the edge of the table, her eyes blazing. ‘Then why do you keep insisting Carmody is innocent! Do you expect me to believe it after what I saw tonight with my own eyes? Do you? Do you?’

  He stared at her for a minute, half-afraid she might be going out of her mind. Then he dropped his eyes and heaved a sigh. ‘No, Anne,’ he said quietly. ‘I guess I don’t. I just don’t think he killed him, that’s all. About this other business tonight – well, I just can’t figure it out. No matter how hard I try I can’t figure it out.’

  Anne turned slowly away and walked across the kitchen. When she got to the door she turned, pressing her hand hard against her forehead. ‘I’m sorry for what I said, Caleb. I-I don’t know what’s got into me lately. But I’m tired of trying to figure things out. I’ll go see Mose Dalmas in the morning and tell him what happened. I know he’s not much of a lawman, but he can’t afford to ignore what’s happened here tonight.’

  She turned to look at him and smiled. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t shoot straighter. Our problem would all be over if we had.’ She went inside and closed the door.

  Caleb stood staring at the closed door for a long time. ‘She tried hard enough,’ he murmured. ‘Another two inches lower and she’d have killed him. It’s pretty hard, Anne, killin’ somebody you love. But sometimes it’s easier than havin’ to hate them if they’re alive.’ He turned and picked up his Sharps and went out the door and across the yard to the bunkhouse.

  Anne slept little during the remainder of the night and she was up at first light, dressed and started the breakfast. When she had made the biscuits and put them in the oven she found she had no eggs. Calling to Caleb as she crossed the yard she went into the henhouse, puzzled at finding the door still open until she remembered that she had ri
dden off at dusk the night before and neither she nor Caleb had remembered to close it after that.

  The hens stirred from their sleep and began clucking as she groped her way among the nests. Her foot struck something and she prodded it with the toe of her boot, then bent swiftly down with a low cry. It was one of her hens, its neck broken and bloody. She struck a match and found another. A black trail of blood leading out the door told her that the coyote, after having his fun, had carried the third hen off for his own breakfast.

  She took the eggs and left, crossing the yard just as Caleb came out of the bunkhouse. ‘We won’t be in business much longer if we keep losing our stock at this rate,’ she said.

  ‘Not more dead beef?’ Caleb said quickly.

  ‘No, but it’s almost easier to replace a steer in this country than a hen. A coyote got in the henhouse last night. I forgot to shut the door. If you have time today you might try to pick up his trail. That’s seven he’s had this summer.’

  They went into the kitchen and Caleb sat at the table while she went back to the stove. ‘I’ll salt away as much of that beef as I can today,’ Caleb said wearily. ‘Looks like we’ll have enough to last out a siege.’

  Caleb stretched his legs under the table to dig in his pocket for his pipe. Feeling something under his foot he bent down and saw it was Carmody’s hat still lying there where Anne had thrown it. He picked it up and a folded strip of paper fell out of the sweatband. ‘That’s funny,’ he said, looking at the paper. He found another strip under the sweatband and pulled it out.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Anne said from the stove.

  ‘This paper in Carmody’s hat. The hat’s new; I reckon he bought it when he got out of Huntsville. It don’t seem likely he’d buy a new hat that didn’t fit.’

  Anne turned around, frowning. ‘What on earth are you muttering about, Caleb? What makes you think it didn’t fit?’

  He waved a strip of the paper padding. ‘This. The sweatband was stuffed with paper because the hat was too big.’ Curiously, he unfolded a strip. Then he sat up straight with a cry. ‘Anne, come here! Look at this!’

  She moved the frying pan to the back of the stove and came over, wiping her hands on her apron. Caleb laid the piece of paper on the table and she picked it up. ‘It looks like an order blank out of a mail order catalogue.’

  ‘Yeah – and somebody started to fill it in. Read it.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Anne breathed. ‘Allan Vicker, Anvil Ranch, Sand Valley, Texas!’ She looked at Caleb, realisation of the meaning leaving a stunned look on her face.

  Caleb grinned triumphantly. ‘I was right. I said I couldn’t figure why Jeff would do a thing like that. It wasn’t Jeff. It was Vicker, wearin’ Jeff’s hat, maybe wearin’ the rest of his clothes, too.’

  But Anne’s face was grim. ‘You know what this means, Caleb. I was right about Anson – he lied about Jeff. Lied to cover up. Oh, Caleb, I’m afraid something awful’s happened. That blood I saw under the junipers.…’

  ‘There now, gal,’ Caleb said gently. ‘Don’t cross your bridges ’fore you come to ’em. Maybe he’s only wounded and Anson’s got him hid somewhere. Now set down and have your breakfast and when we’ve finished I’ll ride in to town and get hold of Mose. It’s time he begun to earn his pay from the county.’

  ‘No – I’d rather go myself,’ Anne said. ‘It’ll give me something to do; something to occupy my mind.’

  CHAPTER 9

  But the ride to Sand Valley did not take Anne’s thoughts off Jeff Carmody. On the contrary, as the dusty miles rolled beneath the fast-moving hoofs of her bay she found her thoughts alternating between hope and dread. Hope that Caleb was right, that Anson had only wounded Carmody and was holding him someplace out of sight, intending to use him as the scapegoat for the attack on Anne’s cattle. The dread was the thought that her worst fears might be right, that Carmody might already be dead. She tried to put this thought out of her mind but it kept coming back with agonizing persistence.

  When she reached the place on the stage trail where Clint Merriweather’s body had been found she reined in and sat for a long time staring at the grassy spot beside the rutted track. Eight years had passed since her life had been shattered by what had happened here. Eight difficult and lonely years, filled with unhappiness and hardships. She found no strangeness in the realization that she thought of Clint almost impersonally now. She had loved him, yes; and she loved him in memory still. But the passage of time had dimmed her recollection of the man who really was, the man who had been her husband but a short eighteen months. She did find it strange that as she gazed at the spot where her husband had died her thoughts were of Jeff Carmody. Perhaps it was because what had happened here had drawn him into her life in an unexpected way; perhaps it was because she found a similarity between them. Or maybe it was because her mind was still clouded with doubt as to what had actually happened in this spot that night eight years ago.

  She raised her eyes from beside the trail and gazed out across the sweep of plains, the hot and dusty reaches of the high Panhandle that seemed to stretch on endlessly. This was a hard and violent land, she thought, with little tenderness in it. Women seemed to have no place in it, and yet without the women who stood beside the men there would be no land as she saw it now. The men laboured hard in the hot sun and angry dust to make a living for themselves and their women, yet it seemed that in spite of it all it was the women who suffered most when all things were considered. It was more in a man’s nature to face, ungrumbling, the hardships that this land seemed to bring. The violence, the lawlessness; they were part of a man’s world, made by men. Yet it was the women who suffered. In eight years she had twice known love, known hope for the future of this country – only to have it torn from her hands and dashed to bitter fragments.

  Last night she had tried desperately to kill Jeff Carmody. She shuddered now as she thought of it, and yet it had seemed the far better thing to do than to let the torture of an illusion live on in treachery. Now she had a faint hope that he might still be alive.

  The hot wind whipped a whirling column of angry dust along the trail and she closed her eyes against it and moved her horse, spurring him in the direction of town.

  It was barely mid-morning when she rode into Sand Valley and got down from her mount in front of Dalmas’s office. Opening her saddle-bag she took out Carmody’s hat and the folded paper and stepped up to the door. A glance inside told her Dalmas was not around. She went back on the boardwalk and looked up the street and saw him standing under the awning of Gabe Ranson’s store talking to a man in rancher’s garb. She walked toward them and when she got near she recognized the rancher as Will Henstridge who had given Carmody the pup.

  Both men looked up when she approached and touched their hats. Henstridge smiled, but Anne noticed a frown of annoyance flit across Dalmas’s face.

  ‘Mornin’, Anne,’ Will Henstridge said. ‘How’s the pup gettin’ along?’

  ‘Fine, Will. It was good of you to let Penelope have him. She was heartbroken over what happened to the other.’

  ‘Shucks, it wasn’t nothin’ I did. I’d just have had to drown the little feller, much as I hate that kind of thing. Get too many dogs around the place and they start botherin’ the livestock. The man who deserves any credit that’s comin’ is the feller who rode all that way to fetch the pup. Seemed a likeable gent. Connelly, wasn’t that his name?’

  Dalmas gave a snort. ‘Connelly, hell. I didn’t let that name fool me for long. Thought I recognized him when I saw him, but I wasn’t sure where. Then I got to thinkin’ and dug back in my records. His name’s Carmody.’

  Henstridge glanced at Anne, then looked away in quick embarrassment. ‘You don’t mean…?’ he said, looking at the sheriff.

  Dalmas nodded importantly. ‘Same one. He’d still be workin’ for Anne if I hadn’t put her wise that he was the man who’d shot Clint.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Sheriff,’ Anne said evenly.

&n
bsp; The lawman looked at her queerly. ‘Wrong? No, by heck, I ain’t wrong. He’s changed a little in eight years, but it’s the same Carmody or my name ain’t.…’

  ‘I didn’t say he wasn’t Carmody,’ Anne put in quietly. ‘I mean you’re wrong about him killing my husband.’

  Dalmas shoved back his hat and stared at her in amazement. Then he turned to Henstridge. ‘Will, you was at the trial. What did you think?’ His tone indicated that he expected immediate agreement. But the rancher dug his thumbs deeper in his gunbelt and stared hard at the boards.

  ‘Since you ask me, Mose,’ he said slowly, looking up to meet the sheriff’s quizzical gaze, ‘I never was quite set in my mind that he’d done it.’ When Dalmas flushed angrily he hurried on, ‘Oh I know I ain’t talkin’ legal sense – the jury decided he’d done it and that was that. But there was some things about it just didn’t fit. Now, you take for one thing.…’

  She turned to Dalmas. ‘I came to see you. Last night a rider herded about fifty of my steers down in front of my house and shot five of them. I managed to shoot his hat off his head before he got away. Here it is. Do you recognize it?’

  Henstridge glanced at the hat and blurted, ‘Why – that looks like the one.…’ Then he checked himself, glancing swiftly at Anne.

  Dalmas looked up at him, smiling grimly. ‘Go ahead, Will. Say it. It looks like the one Carmody was wearin’.’

  ‘I could be wrong,’ Henstridge muttered.

  ‘No, Will,’ Anne put in. ‘You’re not wrong. It is Carmody’s hat.’

  The sheriff stood turning the hat over in his hand. ‘Well, it looks plain enough to me, Anne. You fired him when you found out who he was. He was burned up about it, decided he’d get even, came back and shot up your steers. I reckon he’s probably left the country by now, but if you want me to have a look for him.…’ He handed the hat back, his words and manner signifying he didn’t think she would want him to. ‘But what puzzles me is why he ever came back here in the first place – unless he had some wild notion about taking revenge on you because you was Clint’s wife.’