Nick Stolter

by Lee Anne Wonnacott

  Southcott was unconscious when they got down into the wash. Worthington got out his medical kit and tended to the bleeding wound. Stolter started a small fire and got water boiling.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. I stopped it but I’m not sure if he’ll pull through. Damn it. I served in the war with this man. He had the rank of a captain and his men loved him.” Worthington wiped his hands on a rag from the saddlebags.

  Elliot paced around the little clearing tugging at his coat and rubbing his face. Well over six foot tall, thick through the chest with broad shoulders and long legs. In all black under the tan duster, he was an imposing figure.

  Worthington asked, “You said the girl came out and stopped you on the road?” Stolter nodded.

  “And you claim you don’t know and have never seen these men before?” Stolter replied that he did not.

  “Her pa was shot in the leg. She said she saw Iverson do it. She was afraid Iverson was going to shoot and kill him or her ma. We figured she was only doing as she was told because they were holding a gun on her family.” Stolter explained how Beulah had helped patch up the man and was driving the wagon east back to Red Springs as they spoke.

  It was a suspicious Elliot that said, “You look like they beat you pretty good.”

  “The man Glass had lost his patience waiting on Iverson to come back from looking for my horses. I said the wrong thing and this is what happened.” Stolter went on to leave out certain facts and embellish others about how he came to have over a dozen horses going back home to Yucca Valley.

  Worthington asked, “This woman, Beulah Vallarian, you say she’s a friend of Southcott’s?” Stolter told them what Southcott had said about his relationship with Beulah. Worthington shook his head and chuckled. He stood up and walked around to the other side of the fire.

  Elliot cleared his throat. “As a Texas Ranger, I’m a suspicious person that investigates what people say and questionable situations, like this one. I think you had something to do with a crime committed here, but I don’t know how. In that you are acquainted with a former army officer and a person of good repute in Mr. Southcott, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  Worthington then said, “We need to go after Iverson if he is still following that wagon to Red Springs. I agree, Mr. Stolter, it doesn’t make any sense for him to go east when most likely his gang went west. It would be in your best interest to be here with Southcott when we return. If you’re gone, I’ll take that as an indication of your guilt.” Both men mounted up and cast one more disapproving glance at Stolter.

  ###

  Two hours later a horse nickered and Stolter peered around the brush. It was Beulah walking into the camp leading the hammerhead. The horseman laughed.

  “How’d you find him?”

  Beulah laughed with a big grin. “He found me. Or rather he found the wagon and followed us back to Red Springs. Came right up to me.” The woman patted the neck of the big hammerhead who chewed on an apple.

  Beulah pointed at a hind leg. “He’s got a scrape on one of his legs where he tangled with something but aside from that, he seems to be okay.”

  Southcott clucked his tongue twice and the big horse ambled over to the unsteady man. Stolter watched the big horse rubbing his head against Southcott. “He seems happy to see you.” They told Beulah about meeting of the Texas Rangers while she tended to the oozing wound of Southcott.

  Southcott rubbed his face. “I was out through the whole thing. I would have liked to seen Worthington, too. I’d wondered on and off over the years about him. Now that I think about it, it was right for him to become a lawman.”

  Beulah told them how the doctor in Red Springs helped Mr. and Mrs. Lambert and their daughter. Stolter asked about the irritated outlaw.

  “I had Desiree sitting on the bench with me driving. I had decided to ignore the lout and he was obnoxious as all get out. Every so often, the girl would sneak a look to see if he was still behind the wagon. About five miles out, she nudged me and said he was gone. I looked around and he was gone alright.” Beulah shrugged and waved a dismissive hand.

  Stolter patted the hammerhead that paid no attention. “So the Rangers never caught up to you? They were serious about riding out to get Iverson.”

  “Maybe that’s why he ran off. He heard a couple of horses coming up on us fast and he must have hightailed it off into the brush. I’ll tell you, though, that man is gonna lose his temper with the wrong person one day and someone is going to leave him out in the middle of nowhere with a sliver of life left in him.”

  Southcott was quiet while Beulah wrapped the fresh bandage around his middle.

  “I’m sorry about your horses, Nick. I know you went through some hardship to get ‘em and now they are probably running on the wind somewheres.” The older man shook his head and kicked at the dirt.

  Stolter wiped off his jeans and rubbed his sore wrists. “Well, the man who helped me round ‘em up showed me a whistle trick to call ‘em. But I don’t set much store in it. The horses’ll run up to you and they expect you to feed them a treat, like oats or an apple. I saw him do it, but I never tried it.”

  Beulah looked incredulous. “A whistle? To call horses?” She started to laugh. Stolter frowned feeling the embarrassment of her eyes and then shrugged.

  “Griff, do you remember Dexter Hawkins from Three Corners? Do you remember that sound he’d make to call his draft horses?” Beulah burst out with a laugh and dragged a hand across her forehead leaving a gritty smudge.

  Southcott chuckled and looked over at Stolter. “You know that high-pitched squealing sound people make to call their hogs? It sounds like someone in really bad pain. Well, Dexter used to hold his arms out to the sides and get a couple of deep breaths before he let out this squeal. To look at him you’d think he was having a pain attack of some sort.” Griff began to laugh and hold his side.

  “You’re gonna hurt yourself, Griff. You settle down and rest a bit.” Stolter tried to calm the laughing Southcott.

  “Down that wash on the other side is an old apple tree. Looks like it was hit by lightning couple years back. Desiree found it when she was crawling around in the brush. Bring one of them sacks and we’ll see if we can find a couple of apples. We’ll try it.” Beulah winked at Stolter to try to cheer him up. The horseman’s face was grim set.

  The afternoon sun had started to move towards the horizon. A flock of noisy crows argued in one of the old trees in the wash. They found six apples that weren’t picked clean from the birds and bugs.

  Back at the clearing, Stolter climbed up on a boulder and had a look around. Beulah sat down on a log and watched him push out three short whistles. He walked out to the edge of the gully and examined the ground for tracks but it was too chewed up to see any marks left by horseshoes.

  “Horses can actually hear pretty good. They sometimes have to figure out where a sound is coming from. My gray mare used to stand in the doorway of the barn and listen to Marcus working with a piece of iron in the forge. He used to laugh at her looking at him.” Beulah looked out at the wash while Stolter made another set of whistles.

  It was maybe twenty minutes later as Stolter had been telling Beulah about his daughter, Kelly, learning a young colt how to cut, when they heard dried brush snapping and breaking in the wash. A chestnut yearling nickered as it nosed in with a tattered and frayed rope end dangling from around its neck. Stolter held out the apple and the young horse went right to it munching on it while Stolter eased the old rope off.

  “Where’s all your friends at, fella? I’d like to find all the rest of you horses.” His hand patted the neck and withers of the colt. While Beulah tended to a loose strand of hair, he felt the underneath mane and was astonished to find the small leather pouch still attached.

  Stolter looked at Beulah with a big grin. “Doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.”

  “Let me try that whistle. I got a loud one so we’ll see if it matters if it’s a man or woman who does it.�
�� She put two fingers in her mouth and took a deep breath. The colt nickered and tossed his head. He danced sideways trying to rear and then bolted down into the wash in a run. Stolter’s hopes fell to his feet.

  Beulah saw the look of dejection on Stolter’s face. “Now, now. Maybe he’s running off to get his friends. He knows where you are at now so maybe he’ll come back.”

  Half an hour went by and Beulah had tried a dozen more whistles without any luck. “We probably need to get back over to Griff and see if he’s okay. He might be sleeping from that bit of laudanum I gave him.”

  Stolter stretched and cracked the knuckles on his left hand. “Now that Griff has his hammerhead back, and if I know him, he is aching to get in that saddle. I know I’d just want to get as far away from this place as I could.”

  “Well, that was the exact reason why I unsaddled the hammerhead. I don’t want him trying to climb up into that saddle,” Beulah said. “Maybe tomorrow he can ride, but not today.”

  Stolter helped Beulah up the steep wash path and when they got up to the rim, the chestnut yearling stood there along with a buckskin filly and a paint colt. All three horses nickered at the same time and Beulah started laughing as she dug out more apples. When Stolter and Beulah started walking back up the road to the camp, the horses followed right along with them.

  “Thank God, you two came back. These horses are worse than little kids begging for candy!” Stolter and Beulah laughed as they watched another chestnut colt and a gray mare with white stockings nudging Southcott for apples. Beulah clucked her tongue twice and the horses walked over to get a sweet piece of apple.

  Stolter checked them over and aside from a couple of raw rope burns they appeared healthy. All but the white stockings still carried the small pouches. Stolter ran his hands down over the gray again.

  “I don’t think this gray was part of my original ten. Beulah, do you recognize her? There isn’t a brand on her.”

  “No, I don’t think I know her. She’s tame and broke, though. You can see the callous on her forehead from a halter.” The horses started to meander out to the grass area on the far side of the wash.

  Stolter rubbed his face again and pushed his hat back. “With the gray mare that makes five out of my ten. I sure hope I find the others before we head on to Tucson.”

  Beulah watched Southcott ease himself back onto the blanket, grimacing in discomfort. She stepped over to the side and gathered up some twigs and broke brush into a pile.

  “Nick, see if you can drag out a couple of big rocks. I need something to hold up this little pan of stew I brought back. It’s not much, but it’s all I could get from the restaurant on short notice. Janie wrapped up a couple of her pastries for us for dessert.”

  The fire crackled, the shadows danced along the crumbling sandstone and clay wash and the three people ate in silence. The tops of the trees on the far hills were bathed in a reddish gold as the last rays of the sun faded. The breeze carried sage, a tangy sweetness and the smell of warmed earth headed into the night.

  ###

  Beulah had made coffee and sat down. “Griff told me that you used to be an outrider for a stage line up in Missouri.”

  Stolter nodded and said, “Yes, in fact, the man that helped me get these horses used to be my riding partner on the stage line. You might have heard his name around. Ginger Whelihan.”

  Southcott chuckled. “Yes. We’ve heard the name. I didn’t know he rode security, though. I always thought that he was, well, in another line of work.”

  Stolter nodded with a chuckle. “I’m sure he has branched out into other business since then.”

  Beulah said, “So do you have any exciting stories about your time riding gun for the stage line? I’d like to hear about one of your adventures.”

  Southcott dropped the stub of his cigarette to the dirt at his feet and crushed it, grinding it into the soil. His eyes had grown dark and had that thousand yard stare into the distance. He had the look of pain on his face as he accepted a cup of the coffee and sat down next to Beulah.

  Stolter sat down on the old stump. “We’d been riding together for probably close to five years. We’d been all over the mid-west and seen all kinds of things happen on the stage route. There was a time at Beatrice Springs that I’ve never been able to figure out. I know it scared the daylights out of Ginger, too.”

  Beulah wrapped the frayed blanket around her shoulders. “There’s been a few times where it was frightening on the stage for me.”

  Stolter nodded. “At first, when we drove up on them, we thought maybe one of them was sick. Ron Bright, the shotgun rider, was laying off to the side, rolling around holding his head. Johnny, the other driver, looked stunned and bewildered.”

  Southcott raised his eyebrows. “You don’t see that every day.”

  Stolter shook his head and said, “At first I didn’t see them when we rode past but Ginger turned to look back at something and shouted for the stage to stop. I didn’t see anything until we both headed back.”

  “Ginger yelled to see if they needed help and Johnny waved us in. It was still that dim darkness, you know. That hour before sun up is that gray light and hard to see. We got down off our horses and by that time a couple of the men from the stage had walked back to us.

  “We sat Bright up and his eyes were shifting left and right and he shaking something awful. I took my flask out and gave him a sip of whiskey and that seemed to settle him down,” Stolter said as he shook his head and rubbed his hands together. “They had been riding east headed for a big cattle ranch in northern Kansas. They’d finished a drive to Dodge, heard about the work and decided to go on to the ranch and get a roof over their heads and feet under a table for the winter.”

  Southcott’s look to Beulah carried an unspoken message. Stolter nodded and cleared his throat.

  “Bright and Stefano had been riding together for many years. When Bright’s wife died, he sold his house and, having no children, he took off on the trail. He hitched up with a cattle drive outfit in Red River, Texas, and that’s where he met Johnny Stefano. You know how you hear about men shooting the breeze with big talk about all the things they’d done? Well, Bright and Stefano had actually ridden over a dozen cattle drives.” Stolter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took a sip of the coffee. Beulah stretched out her legs and leaned back against the tree.

  “After they had gotten to talking, Ginger found out that he’d been on two of those drives with both of them. He had always ridden security at the back helping keep strays up with the herd and watching for rustlers. Stefano and Bright rode up near the front helping to guide the herd and stop stampedes.”

  Stolter put his cup down. “One of the women passengers from the stage had some tonic she’d bought and said it might help him. After a couple of sips, Bright stood up and thanked everybody for taking care of him and apologized for being such a bother.”

  Beulah asked, “So had he been shot or something? What was wrong with him?”

  Stolter raised his eyebrows and nodded. “He said that in the blurry gray darkness, it looked like his wife had appeared in front of him, running at him with her arms waving over her head like to ward him off. It scared him something horrible, and then he thought because he had seen it that he was losing his grip. Said that she had on her favorite blue long sleeved blouse and blue and white plaid skirt that she wore to church on Sundays.”

  Southcott shook his head. “That would scare me something fierce, too.”

  “We made sure he was calmed down, got everyone back on the stage, and Carmichael, the driver, asked me to ride up on top with him until the next water hole. It was another six miles so I tied my horse on and climbed up. We started rolling.” Stolter rubbed his forehead and took a deep breath.

  “After a few minutes of getting the horses up to a run, Carmichael glanced at me and started talking. Turns out, on more than one run, the horses pulling the stages have acted up at that very spot on the road. After the third time it ha
ppened, Carmichael came back alone during the daytime to have a look around and the horse he was on shied away too.”

  Stolter gestured to the general area with a wave of his arm. “Carmichael didn’t find anything. No graves or old camps or Indian totem things. There’s no dried up creek or springs or water anywhere around it. There’s no animal nests or dug out holes or caves like a burrowing critter would make.”

  Southcott said, “Well, there had to be something there.”

  “Here’s the odd part. You can’t see it at night or in the dusk you don’t realize it. The road coming east slowly comes down off a rise and from a gentle left hand curve then straightens out for about fifty yards. That fifty yards is wider than the rest of the road coming up to it and on the other side of it. It’s wider by about ten yards on both sides.

  “It looks like something big, long and wide had been there and then just picked straight up. Or it looks like that part of the road was prepared and meant for something big, long and wide. And I’ve told Ginger that it’s cooler right there than the rest of the road. And there’s no shade trees growing up over the road.” Stolter shook his head again. Southcott drank down the last of the coffee and set the cup on the ground.

  “When Carmichael first told me that, I thought he was still a bit loopy from the drinking of the night before. The next time we rolled through there, I mentioned to Ginger that we had ridden through a cooler place in the road. Then he told me that was what he had been trying to tell me.” Stolter tapped his fingers once to his forehead.

  “Carmichael purposefully tied a big piece of red fabric onto a tree with a heavy rope at the west end of that wide place. You can’t miss it in the daylight. When he gets to that point, he whips the stage horses up to a fast run to get past. If he doesn’t, the horses try to rear and turn back. Damnedest thing. They get spooked there.” Beulah shook her head.

  “Now if you think that is a tad bit unusual, listen to this. Bright’s wife that was running to him waving her arms? That was right near where Carmichael had tied on that red cloth to the tree.” Stolter nodded.