Slate Creek

by Wallace J. Swenson

  “I don’t know if I can finish that. The legs were dry but I don’t think what’s left is gonna be. Will you hold it against me if I can’t?” The dog tilted his head. “Naw, I didn’t think so. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be okay.”

  Simon looked into the clear water of his bathing pool, forever refreshing itself from the source in the hillside. So clean it could cleanse his body when this was over. He was once again thankful that he’d dug it. How many times had he let the water soak away his fatigue? “That’s what I’m gonna do, Spud,” he said, startling the dog. “I’m gonna dig his grave first so he’ll have a clean place to go soon as I pull him out of there. Exactly.”

  Simon got up and went into the trees for his tools. Stepping back into the sunlight, he dropped the shovel, chose a spot far enough from the trees to avoid the roots, and swung his pick. The point sank to the handle with a satisfying thud sound.

  Two hours later he stood over the skeleton. While shoveling the dirt out of the grave, he’d had to cut a few small roots with the shovel and had an idea. Now he put the point of the shovel on the shoulder joint and gently bore down. After resisting slightly, it came away clean. He swallowed and rapidly blinked his eyes. “I’m sorry fella, but this is the only way I can see doing it.” He did the same to the elbow, then picked up the bones and tatters with the blade, and put them on the hide. Last, he put the point on the man’s neck and pushed. The blade went through to the ground. Simon slipped the shovel under the man’s back and pinned arm, and hoisted it up. The sickly sweet smell nearly knocked him down. Holding his breath, eyes squinted, he moved the head, threw down the shovel, and skidded everything on the elk hide out of the cave.

  He folded the tanned leather over the man, or what used to be a man, then dragged it across the clearing, bumping over exposed roots and around piles of horse manure to the grave. He stood up and stretched his back, then headed back to the cave for the shovel. “Damn.” Halfway to the trees lay the head.

  Stooped over to scoop up the skull, he suddenly stopped and looked closer at the grisly orb. There was a round little-finger-sized hole in the left side of the man’s head and one the size of a chicken egg on the opposite side. Simon shook his head. “Just couldn’t take the dark and lonelys, looks like.” He hauled the head to the graveside and put it with the rest of the bones. Then, catching both edges of the hide, he lowered the whole thing into the hole.

  He stood beside the grave, his hat held in front of him. “I only been to one funeral, and I don’t remember much except something about us all returning to the ground. Well, here you are, and you couldn’t ask for a nicer piece of ground to lie in. I’m sorry I busted you up some getting you here, but it’s all I could manage. I’ll poke around in your things, and see if I can get your name, and maybe find out about your kin. Rest easy.” He picked up the shovel and started to dig again.

  Half an hour later, Simon pounded the back of his shovel on the rounded mound one last time, then wiped his sweating brow on his shirtsleeve. “But where’s the gun?” he asked suddenly, and turned to look toward the clearing. “I didn’t see a gun of any kind.”

  He strode to the cave and ducked inside. He turned up the lamp’s wick and started to examine the interior again. Two empty panniers lay under the bed. Near the entrance, a skillet and two pots, all bottoms up, waited beside a ring of rocks. He searched through the stuff on the table. Then he held the lamp high and scanned the interior. High along the back wall, an uneven natural rock shelf protruded, but from his angle, he could see nothing on it. He went to the bed below it, stood on the frame, and felt around on top. His hand met cold metal and he retrieved a pocket pistol. Next, he found a box. Nothing else. Anxious to leave the stink, he took another quick look around and left the cave.

  The pistol, a break-top single shot, was loaded. He put it aside and laid the box on his lap. The simple clasp wasn’t locked, and he swung the lid open. A folded paper lay on top and he spread it out. He recognized the map immediately. “CHALLIS” identified the four boxes drawn beside a river. Below that, a rectangle with the word “TRADER” written under it would be Spring Creek. Upriver was the word “HOT” and beside it, a south-pointing arrow. The meandering line running off in that direction had to be his creek, and there was another “X” where the line stopped, but it couldn’t be where he sat now. The stream started high in the mountains, high enough that he’d never been there.

  Surely, his hot springs would have been indicated. Maybe the person who drew the map had never actually been up the valley. He folded the map, and took out a packet of papers. Letters. The man’s name was Lemuel, and the cramped handwriting of his wife told of hardship on the farm and the hope that he’d find work. She mentioned two children. Her name was Clara. Simon sat and read five more, all similar to the first. Three were dated in 1871, two in 1872, and the most recent in February. Next, he took out a pale-blue handkerchief.

  Simon gasped. There, in the bottom of the box lay a steel watch, a folding knife, a few dollars, and a three-inch piece of wood, precisely carved in little adjoined diamonds. Justin!

  He’d made the trip back to the cabin the day before in a blind rage. Images of Justin Reed, sitting at the campfire, smiling and talking, taunted him. The innocent questions had taken on their real meaning, and he’d felt sick to his stomach. Then he’d noticed the initials carved in the stock of the rusty musket he’d taken from Toad. “LL.” Lemuel something. Justin and Toad had been in it all along. What a fool.

  He jerked hard on the cinch and slapped the stirrup down so abruptly his horse jumped. With his rifle jammed in the scabbard, he tied on his saddlebags and the musket, and climbed on the horse. In the dim morning light, he looked around the camp once, then kicked his horse in the flanks. “C’mon, Spud. We’re gonna find us a couple of killers and see ’em strung up.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Simon saw very little of the valley as he rode the seven miles to the river. He fixed his thoughts on what he’d do if he saw Justin Reed or Toad. Would the marshal be in town? He plunged into the Salmon River, and crossed without a thought of his last encounter with it. He pushed the horse hard over the trail, now much wider and well-traveled compared to the track of the year before. He camped that evening where a stream half the size of the river drained in from the south. There were half-a-dozen established fire rings, but he spent the night alone.

  He broke camp at sunup the next day, and by late afternoon he arrived at Spring Creek, passing the trading post, now a charred heap of rubble smelling of burned pitch pine. The carefully tended three-and four-acre plots of ground he’d seen now shared the wide valley with several more dwellings and fields of grain and corn thirty acres or more in size. The closest one stood right on the riverbank, and he rode up the trail, now more nearly a rough road, toward it. A figure darted from the shore to the back of the house.

  “Ma, there’s a man here,” a young voice shouted from inside.

  A few seconds later a woman stepped into the sun. Slim, she nonetheless looked very capable in her long gray dress and sturdy shoes.

  Shading her eyes with one hand, she looked up at him. “Hello. Can I help you, sir?” A small head with tousled brown hair peeked around her side, and a pair of intense eyes shifted their gaze back and forth between him and the dog.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m on my way to Challis and I’d like to know about how far it is.”

  “Not far at all, about two hours, maybe two and a half. Put your mind to it, you’d make it by dark easy enough.”

  “Do you know Marshal Hess by any chance?”

  “Sure do.” She cocked her head. “You got trouble?”

  “No, ma’am. I just need to see him.”

  “Well, he come by . . . what’s it been now?” She paused. “Little over a week ago, maybe ten days.”

  “Could you tell me if he was coming or going?”

  “Seems to me he was going. Said something about needing to be up north for a while. Didn’t say much, only stopped
for a drink of water.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, I’m grateful.” He touched the brim of his hat and swung his horse around the end of the house. The child—he could now see it was a boy—waved at him as he urged his horse north.

  He smelled the town long before he saw it. Woodsmoke dominated the array of scents, but underlying that, he picked up the smell of something sour, like vinegar, then the unmistakable perfume of fresh cut meadow grass. Just as he crested a low hill, he detected the scent of curing meat, either bacon or ham—maybe both.

  Challis lay strung out along a wide central street. He hadn’t expected to see so many buildings, and certainly not the three two-story affairs in the middle of town. He found the source of the bacon smell as he passed one of the first businesses, a smokehouse, Solberger’s Meat. Probably where his sausage had come from. For being late in the day, the number of people passing back and forth across the street, dodging each other and a steady stream of wagons, surprised him. He rode up to one of the two-story buildings. A glaring white sign in three-foot letters spelled out Hawke’s Hotel and Saloon across the front. He tied his horse to the rail where a half-dozen others already stood, dull-eyed, their tails swishing flies. They looked bored. “Sit right there, Spud.” Simon pointed to the boardwalk by the door and the dog sat.

  He noticed the high ceilings as soon as he stepped inside. Compared to the saloon in Fort Laramie, this one had at least another four feet in height. The smell of tobacco smoke and beer, pleasantly familiar, followed him across the room. At the bar, he caught the bartender’s eye.

  “Evening, sir. What can I get you?” The barkeep gave him a wide smile.

  “I think a small beer.”

  The man pumped a short glass full, set it down, and leaned both hands on the bar.

  Simon took a sip, and dug into his pocket for some money. The beer was cold. “Could you tell me if Marshal Hess is in town?” He put a dollar on the shiny counter.

  “I don’t rightly know. He comes in when he’s around, but I haven’t seen him lately. We have a sheriff—constable actually—but he likes to be called the other.”

  “You’ve got law right here in town?”

  The man squared his shoulders and sniffed. “Sure do. City fathers hired one last winter. His office is a little farther down the street, same side as we are.” He put Simon’s change down.

  “Do you think he’d be in?”

  “For sure. The freighters try to get here about this time of day, and that’s when it gets noisy.”

  Simon nodded his head, picked up his change and beer, then turned around. Out of habit, he counted fifteen people in the bar, most roughly dressed in common work clothes. None looked like cowboys, and there wasn’t a blue uniform to be seen. A steady low hum of conversation promised not to approach the more boisterous atmosphere of Amos’s place. He tipped the glass back, draining it. “Thanks, that was real good. Just curious, how long does your ice last?”

  “Another month, maybe.”

  Simon saw the curiosity in the man’s face. “I ran a saloon in Wyoming awhile back, and thought about storing winter ice below the floor. Never did it, and just wondered if it would’ve worked.”

  “Works fine. We lay three-foot-thick blocks on a foot or so of sawdust, then cover the ice with another three feet. Customers sure get snarly when it’s gone, though.” The bartender beamed him another proud smile.

  Just friendly, or is he looking to sell me another glass of beer? Simon smiled back as he mentally kicked himself. Been in the hills too long. He pushed his empty glass across the bar. “Thanks, friend.”

  Spud fell in beside him as he walked down the street, looking for the sheriff’s office. It wasn’t hard to find, and neither was the man. He was in a chair, leaned back against the front of the building, his long legs stretched over halfway across the boardwalk. The gold-colored six-pointed badge stuck to the shirt pocket looked heavy on his thin chest. His wide felt hat sat tipped forward to cover his eyes.

  “Excuse me, sir. My name’s Simon Steele, and I’d like to talk to someone about a murder.”

  The chair settled back on all four legs with a thump and the man unfolded to stand. “A murder, you say?” He pushed the hat back to reveal soft gray eyes. They narrowed as he looked Simon over.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve been living back in the sticks about two days west of here. I came on a man . . . more like the remains of a man. He’d been shot in the head.”

  “And you think someone done him in? People have been known to do that sort of thing to themselves.”

  “His gun was a single-shot, and it was still loaded.” Simon handed the lawman the box of personal effects and the musket he had draped over his arm. Then he pulled the pistol out of his pocket. “The box and the pistol were his. The musket I took off a man who might have had a hand in the murder.”

  “Let’s get off the street, Mr. Steele.” The lawman turned, opened the door, and let Simon pass.

  Simon looked at the dog.

  “I don’t care,” the sheriff said. “Bring him in.”

  “C’mon, Spud.”

  The man walked around a small desk, leaned the short gun against it, and laid the box and pistol on top. Then he extended his hand. “I’m Joe Hart. Sit down and tell me what you found.”

  Twenty minutes later Hart rubbed his face with both hands and sighed. “Well, that explains Reed’s face and why he seemed to be in a hurry. We don’t have a proper doctor here, but the vet looked at him and did what he could before Reed left. Been too long though, or so the vet told me. Said it’d gone septic. Reed said a badger bit him—in his sleep, no less.”

  “Was that Toad fella with him?”

  “Not that I know, just Reed. Puttin’ a couple of things together, I’d say your Mr. Toad didn’t make it to town.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Be that as it may, it’s still out of my jurisdiction. You’re right. You need the marshal, and I don’t expect him back before the end of the week. I know he went to Salmon City and sometimes he stays awhile. If you can stick around, I know he’d like to talk to you. He had some suspicions about Justin. We all did.”

  “He sure fooled me.” A blend of anger and sadness welled up, and Simon clenched his teeth.

  “He’s fooled a lot of folks, Mr. Steele.”

  Simon found a stable, and after assuring a skeptical liveryman that Spud would stay with the horse, he went back to Hawke’s and rented a room. He now stood looking at the bed, four feet wide with two pillows, and a turned back coverlet that revealed stark white sheets. Twice in Hart’s office, the sheriff’s raised eyebrows had cued him to the fact he’d been scratching himself in the most unseemly places.

  He turned to the woman who’d showed him the room. “Can I get a bath and a shave this time of day? And maybe a haircut?”

  “Bath and a shave. Haircut will have to wait till tomorrow.”

  Simon chuckled to himself at her instant response and thought I must really stink.

  “Just down the hall.” She gave a slight nod of her head. “Leave your clothes outside the curtain by the tub, and I’ll see they’re washed. Soap and razor are in there too.” The lady gave him one more glance, and went back down the stairs.

  The bath changed his whole demeanor. And a shave, his appearance. When he walked up to the desk an hour later, the clerk looked up and asked if he wanted a room. Somewhat embarrassed, the man answered Simon’s question about where to find the barber, and then Simon made his way to the dining room.

  The next morning Simon picked up Spud and located the barber. An hour later, he was directed to the mercantile store. The man behind the counter assured him the supplies on his list were readily available and, when Simon asked about a packer, directed him to a cluster of corrals and shacks on the north end of town.

  The thick wedge-shaped stump of a man stood beside a mule, his feet set wide apart. With his head craned over his right shoulder, he was looking at the back of his upper arm, which he
rubbed vigorously with his left hand. Then he looked at the mule, murder glinting in his eye. “You sonuvabitch, you bit me.” Before Simon could figure out what was going on, the man’s hand shot out and the heavy gut-wrenching sound of a balled fist smacking into live flesh leapt across the stable-yard.

  The mule bolted sideways, its head raised high against the restraining halter and brayed loudly. The short man followed the animal as it turned, and slugged it again, this time missing the soft tissue of the creature’s nose and hitting it in the neck. The mule protested again with a long coughing rant of outrage.

  Simon was beside him in a second. “Hey, mister, you can’t do that.”

  The man spun around, his face screwed up and red. “What?” His deep-set eyes were hard to see under the heavy brows. “Mind yer own damn business.”

  The raised fist reminded Simon of a small ham. “You have that packsaddle all wrong.” Simon pointed. “Hell’s fire, man, it’s set too far back. I’d bite you too.”

  “What in hell’s going on out here, Whiff?”

  A man in a leather apron stomped across the yard. He looked every inch a blacksmith.

  “This young snot-nose is meddling in my business,” the man with the mule said.

  “He’s beating that mule because the packsaddle’s on wrong,” Simon said. “And it looks like it bit him.”

  The blacksmith glanced at the gear, then at the man. “Ya dumb bastard. He’s right. I showed you how to do that. Gimme that lead.” He snatched the rope from the stumpy man. “Let those girth straps loose and shift the saddle.”

  “And let the sonuvabitch bite me again?” Whiff scowled, first at Simon, then at the mule.

  “I hope he does,” said the blacksmith. “Now let ’em loose.”

  Whiff crept up on the mule, his eyes fixed on the animal’s head. He caught hold of the thick leather straps and started to undo them.