Range War in Whiskey Hill

by Charles G. West

  J.D. didn’t bother to stop by the kitchen. For once, he didn’t have any appetite. Aside from that, he was never comfortable around Drummond’s irritable housekeeper. She had never made any attempt to hide her disgust for him. His intention upon riding out to talk to Drummond had been to ask that he put a tighter rein on Bone, and confine his activities to the open range outside of town. In Drummond’s presence, he lost the courage to argue his case. As he rode out past the gate of the Rocking-D, his mind was overtaxed with conflicting thoughts and fears. The town council decided who was sheriff of Whiskey Hill, not Frank Drummond. Yet Drummond had held the entire council in his hand for quite a few years. J.D. was afraid that a time of decision had come for him, a moment he had been unwilling to face for some time. During the slow ride back to Whiskey Hill, he thought about his future and the future of the town. When he finally arrived at his office, he was no closer to knowing what to do.

  Seeing Stoney’s horse tied at the hitching rail, he was surprised to find his deputy still there so late in the afternoon. Stepping inside his office door, he found Stoney there, but not at the desk. Instead, he was laid out on a blanket on the floor, stone dead.

  J.D. recoiled, seeing his deputy cold and stiff, his eyes gaping wide as if he had stared into the face of death. Stunned, J.D. just stood there staring at the body until shaken from his stupor by the sound of boot heels on the porch behind him. He turned to face Roy Whitworth, followed closely by Raymond Fletcher, Oscar Anderson, and Barney Samuels. They all crowded around him.

  “I see you found your deputy,” Roy said. “That’s the work of your friend Drummond’s hired killer— shot him down in Oscar’s place while you were gone somewhere.”

  “I was out to talk to Drummond,” J.D. offered weakly.

  The mayor slowly nodded his head as if confirming a suspicion. “J.D., it’s time to pull the reins back on Frank Drummond. This time he’s gone too far. If this keeps up, he’s going to destroy our town.” He looked around him then to receive the nods of support from the other members of the council before continuing. “We’ve been discussing the problem all afternoon, and we’ve decided that it’s time to rid the town of Drummond and his gang of killers and thieves—maybe time to call up the vigilance committee again. You being the sheriff, it’s your job to take charge of that and see that our laws are enforced.”

  J.D. didn’t know what to say. He had not yet recovered from finding Stoney laid out on the floor. He looked at the members of the council, all waiting for his reply, and he thought about his meeting with Drummond just finished. Now was the moment he hoped never to come, when he would have to decide to fight Frank Drummond and his killers. Finally he spoke. “It ain’t gonna be so easy, fightin’ Drummond. Wasn’t but one of you fellers rode with the vigilance committee back in ’sixty-eight.” He nodded toward Barney Samuels, the blacksmith. “The rest of the committee was men from Drummond’s ranch. He’ll most likely hire on more men if we was to come after him.”

  “Dammit, J.D.,” the mayor blurted, “he’s strangling the town. We’ve got no choice but to fight for our homes and businesses. And that means Drummond has to be stopped. No more range wars, no more grabbing free-range land, no more killing of livestock and innocent men. Whiskey Hill could be as big as Cheyenne, but not with Frank Drummond holding a gun over the entire town.”

  “All right,” J.D. conceded, his baleful eyes looking into the determined faces around him. “I reckon if you’ve all made up your minds to take on this fight, then I reckon that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

  “Good, then,” Roy said, turning to nod to his following. “We’ll meet at Fletcher’s store after supper to organize our plans.”

  His decision made, J.D. nodded solemnly and said, “I’ll have to ride out to my place now.” He waited until they had all left before turning to take another look at Stoney’s corpse in the corner. I reckon I oughta go tell the undertaker to come get Stoney, he thought, but he took no action upon it. Walking over to the rack on the wall, he took his extra rifle out and pulled his rain slicker from a peg by the door. Then he took one more look around the room before walking out and closing the door behind him.

  When he reached the modest cabin he called home, he led his other horse from the small corral and loaded his meager belongings into four packs. When that was done, he looked up at the sky to determine how many hours of daylight remained, and satisfied himself that there were maybe a couple. With a weary sigh of resignation, he climbed back in the saddle and led his packhorse toward the hills to the south. He figured to reach his brother’s place southeast of Denver in about a three days’ ride.

  Back in Whiskey Hill, while the members of the town council were beginning to gather in Raymond Fletcher’s dry goods store, Pearl Murray drove her buggy out of the stable, Mary Simmons seated beside her. A lone figure watching from the pine-covered hills above the town waited until they took the south trail, then mounted and followed along behind them.

  After spending the last few nights in the home of Jared Simmons, Mary’s father, Pearl was ready to return to her little cabin. She figured that the man called Bone would hardly have the gall to hang around Whiskey Hill after he killed the deputy. And, besides, she was not comfortable in the same house with Jared Simmons. Most of what little bit of money Mary brought in was spent by her father to buy whiskey, and when he drank, he was a mean drunk, heaping verbal abuse upon his Cheyenne wife and half-breed daughter. Pearl took it as long as she could before telling him he was a sorry son of a bitch who didn’t deserve the two women he abused. Quite understandably she was invited to leave. Mary and her mother tried to intercede on Pearl’s behalf, but she had no desire to stay in the same house with the no-account drunk, and tried to persuade Mary to move in with her. But Mary insisted that she did not want to leave her mother alone with him.

  After driving about a mile from town, Pearl pulled the buggy off the road beside a weathered board house. Mary got out after attempting to persuade Pearl to stay just one more night. Pearl declined, saying she’d rather risk having Bone show up at her cabin than watch another night of Jared Simmons’ abuse.

  “You be careful,” Mary called after her friend as Pearl drove the buggy back on the road.

  “The no-good son of a bitch,” Pearl muttered to herself, still thinking of Jared Simmons, as she guided her horse up the narrow trail to her house. Driving the buggy straight into the barn, she climbed down and unhitched the horse. After watering and feeding it, she turned it out in the corral and stood watching it for a few minutes as it kicked its heels, showing appreciation for being free of the traces. Pearl glanced up at the sky and the growing darkness. “I’d best see if the rats moved in while I was gone,” she said, and walked across the yard to the house.

  Inside, the cabin was dark with just barely enough light from the windows to keep from bumping into things. Making her way to the kitchen, she lit the lamp on the table, while shivering with the cold. “I need to get a fire goin’ in here,” she said as she turned up the wick in the lamp. Leaving it on the table, she turned to the fireplace and the kindling box beside it. Kneeling before the fireplace, she raked some of the old ashes away before placing the kindling, pausing when she suddenly felt a slight breeze across her shoulders as if the back door was open.

  Thinking the latch had come undone, she got up to close it, but before she could take a step, she staggered back, stunned, as if an icy hand had suddenly clutched her throat, sending a surge of ice water racing through her veins. He stood there, motionless, watching her, his dark clothes barely distinguishable from the cabin wall behind him. The flickering lamp reflecting from the metal frame of his gun butts were the only points of light. Like the eyes of an evil spirit, they seemed to be damning her. The stick of stove wood she had just picked up dropped from her hand and clattered noisily to the floor. She did not hear it, aware only of the beating of her heart that seemed to have risen in her throat. For a long moment, she was helpless to move, a fearless woman who was
suddenly met with paralyzing fear.

  Content to let the startled woman experience her fright to the fullest, Bone remained motionless and silent until Pearl showed signs of recovering her senses. “Where is he?” he rasped, his voice low and menacing. When Pearl failed to answer, he took a step toward her. “You caused me a helluva lot of trouble, old woman. I know you carried him off. He ain’t here. Where is he? Is he at that house you stopped at on the way up here?”

  Recovering a measure of her spirit, she tried to regain control of her senses so seriously broadsided moments before. Unable to think of any answer to appease this monster, she said, “He’s dead.”

  “What?” Bone blurted, taken aback. “Whaddaya mean, he’s dead? Where’s his body?”

  Thinking as fast as she could, she stammered, “I don’t know.” Seeing the anger flashing in his evil face, she blurted, “Some of the folks from the church took him up in the hills and buried him! I don’t know where. They just took him off in the hills.”

  Her claims stopped him momentarily. This was not a possibility he had foreseen. His first thought was that he had been cheated. He looked hard into the woman’s eyes. Could she be telling the truth? With newfound defiance, she returned his steely gaze, unblinking. Within those few seconds, his mind raced over the trail he had followed to this cabin. McCrae had been wounded seriously, judging by the amount of blood he had found. It could have been a mortal wound. Still, Bone could not be totally satisfied until he saw the body. “You old bitch,” he suddenly exclaimed. “You’re lyin’ to me.”

  Having recovered most of her grit, Pearl replied matter-of-factly, “Well, he ain’t here, is he?”

  “If you’re lyin’ to me . . .” he threatened, then stopped to decide. He was of a mind to put a bullet in the sassy old woman for the trouble she had caused him. She had lied to him from the start, when the man he hunted was right under her feet in the church. She could be lying to him now. “I want that bastard,” he blurted, and pulled one of his pistols. “You’re lyin’, and I don’t like liars.” He pointed the weapon at her head.

  She was helpless to stop him, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her whimper. “Go ahead, damn you. He’ll still be dead.”

  Although his frustration was growing over a trail that had gone cold, he was still undecided about Pearl’s truthfulness. But it appeared he was not going to scare her enough to admit it if she was lying. Maybe he was dead, but Bone couldn’t be satisfied until he saw the body. “I expect I’ll have a look in that other woman’s house tomorrow,” he said. “If I find out you’re lyin’, I might be back to visit you again. Next time I might not be in such a good mood.”

  Pearl was afraid to move until she heard his horse pull away from the house, but then she ran to the door, closed it, and inserted the crossbar to lock it. Only then did she dare to take a gentle breath and sigh, “Lordy mercy, I thought I was done for.” Then she went to the cupboard to find the bottle she had used when treating Colt’s wound.

  “Damn, I need a drink bad,” Jared Simmons mumbled to himself as he squinted painfully at the plate of food before him. His belly felt as empty as a dry well, but he couldn’t eat. Whiskey had made the thought of food sickening to him. “Blue!” he yelled. Blue was the name he called his wife, shortened from her Cheyenne name meaning Blue Sky In Morning. “Go into town and fetch me a bottle. I’m hurtin’.”

  “There is no money,” his wife replied. “Mr. Coolidge told me not to come back for whiskey unless I had money to pay for it.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Jared groaned. “Tell him to put it on credit, and Mary will pay for it on her next payday.”

  “I did that last week, but he said no,” she lied. Mary’s meager pay barely covered the cost of food for the three of them. There was no money left over for his whiskey.

  He shoved the plate away from him and laid his aching head on the table. “I swear, woman, I’m sick. I need my medicine.” Blue gazed at him for a few moments before shaking her head slowly, thinking of the man she had left her father’s tipi to marry—so many years ago. Her mother had been right about the white man and the white man’s firewater. But the union had produced her daughter, Mary. That was the thought that gave her joy and sustained her. Leaving him there to suffer, she picked up her basket and left to search the cottonwoods by the creek for firewood.

  Only vaguely aware that his wife had left the house, Jared remained with his head on the table, bemoaning his need for strong spirits, and alternately cursing Turk Coolidge for refusing to sell him whiskey on credit. During past years, when he still had a job with a freighter in Cheyenne, he had spent plenty of his pay in Turk’s saloon. “The greedy son of a bitch,” he mumbled. Lost in his sorrows, he failed to hear the front door open.

  Walking quietly until he had a chance to determine what manner of welcome he might receive, Bone eased into the front room of the shabby plank house. Looking straight through the doorway to the kitchen, he could see the man seated at the table, his head down and mumbling to himself. Seeing a door to his left, he stepped over to it and peered inside the bedroom. It was empty. On the opposite wall of the bedroom, another door led to a second room next to the kitchen. Like the bedroom, it, too, was empty. Retracing his steps, he then walked into the kitchen and stopped behind the man at the table. “Looks like there ain’t nobody home but you,” he announced loudly.

  Too miserable to be startled, and too sick to be scared, Jared didn’t bother to lift his head. “Whatever you want, we ain’t got any. Now get the hell outta my house unless you brought a bottle with you.”

  Bone was mildly astonished at the man’s reaction to an intruder in his house. He guessed then the cause of Jared’s malaise. Whiskey could do that to a man, if the man was weak enough. He stepped around in front of the table. “I’m lookin’ for a man—name of Colt McCrae. Maybe you might know where he is.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no Colt McCrae,” Jared slurred. “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Is that a fact?” Bone replied. His anger never far below the surface, he bristled. Drawing his pistol, he grabbed Jared by the hair of his head and jerked his head up from the table. With the barrel of the pistol almost touching his nose, Jared’s eyes opened wide in instant enlightenment. “Suppose I tell you I’m gonna blow a hole in your head if I don’t get an answer outta you?”

  “Hold on, now,” Jared begged. “Just hold on a minute!” A few minutes earlier, he might have welcomed a shot in the head to alleviate his misery. Now with the opportunity at hand, he was of a different mind-set. Until this moment, he had not taken a good look at the intruder. After looking wide-eyed at the sinister face of his visitor, he had no doubt that the man would do exactly as he promised. The problem for Jared was that he did not know where Colt McCrae was. His wife and daughter were careful not to mention it when he was around, feeling him unreliable to keep it secret. “Oh, Lordy, mister, I swear I don’t know where he is.”

  Disgusted, Bone cocked the hammer back, but then another possibility crossed his mind. “What if I was to buy you a bottle? Would that help your memory?”

  Despair turned to salvation for an incurable drunk. He still had no notion where Colt McCrae was, but he could not pass on the possibility of a bottle of whiskey. He had to think of something, and the only thing that came to mind was to send this conveyor of doom off someplace far away from here. “Red Moon’s camp!” he blurted just as Bone looked about ready to pull the trigger. Bone paused. “Red Moon’s camp,” Jared repeated, encouraged by Bone’s hesitation. “It’s a Cheyenne camp my wife came from. If they took him someplace, it was most likely there.”

  “How do I get there?” Bone asked, lowering the pistol.

  “Where’s my money?”

  “Not till you tell me where that Cheyenne camp is.”

  “Let me see the money. How do I know you ain’t gonna cheat me outta it?”

  Bone was losing what little patience he possessed, but he continued to
dicker with Jared. Holstering his pistol, he took a roll of paper money from his pocket and counted out ten dollars. “That’ll buy you enough whiskey to kill you,” he said. “I’ll lay it right here on the table so you can look at it.”

  Jared’s eyes opened even wider. “Mind you, it’s been a spell since I’ve been back to Red Moon’s village, and he don’t stay in one place too long. He moves when the grass is grazed up.” When Bone cocked a suspicious eye, Jared was quick to continue. “But he’ll always stay somewhere along the same line of hills that rim Bear Basin. That’s his huntin’ ground. He’s been movin’ up and down that trough for as long as I can remember. You’ll find him if you scout up and down that basin.”

  “I better,” Bone warned, “or I’ll be back to pay you a little visit.”

  Jared went on to give Bone directions from the north road out of town to the little stream called Bitter Branch. “Follow that branch northwest for a mile or so, you’ll see a table-sized flat rock at the foot of a notch between the hills. That notch will lead you up into the hills to Bear Basin.”

  “Good enough,” Bone proclaimed, and turned to leave while Jared eagerly grabbed the money from the table. He took two steps past Jared before drawing a pistol again and, striking a hard blow against the back of Jared’s skull, knocked the unsuspecting drunkard to the floor, unconscious. Bone reached down and took the money from Jared’s hand, then unhurriedly took his leave.

  Chapter 13

  Colt led the buckskin gelding down to the creek to drink, wincing occasionally when his foot landed unevenly on the ruts close by the water and jolting his sore ribs. He was not fully recovered from the loss of blood, but he could feel himself getting stronger each day, thanks to the meat stew that Walking Woman forced upon him two or three times a day. The bullet wound in his side was healing nicely, although there was still a small amount of blood on the bandage whenever the old woman changed it.