by Edward Gates
5
Cabin
Charlie didn’t care about the appearance of his home. The old buffalo hunter’s cabin fit the description of a shelter, but that was about it. It was crude and small. He never figured on entertaining house guests so the upkeep of the place was of no concern to him. It kept him warm and dry and that’s all he needed.
The structure was tucked up among the cottonwood trees just up the hill from the Amarillo River. It wasn’t all that much of a river, more of a creek. In drought conditions it occasionally would run dry. In the rainy season it could become a raging torrent.
Outside, along the left side of the cabin, between the back wall and the side of the hill, Charlie had fashioned a stall for Gus. He built it into the side of the hill, and extended an outcropping of wood planks from the hillside to the side of the house. It was large enough for Gus to lie down in and stay out of the weather.
It was almost dark when they entered the cabin of rough-hewn logs sealed with mud and small stones. A stale musty odor of a closed up space hung in the air. Charlie struck a stick match and lit a lantern that was sitting on a small wooden table in the middle of the room. Charlie walked across the mismatched, flat, river-bed rocks that made up the floor of his small rectangular home. He opened the inner shutters covering the only two windows and pushed open the outside shutters to get some air circulating. One wooden chair sat next to the table and a wooden stool rested against the back wall. By the look on Russell’s face it was plain to see that he was surprised at Charlie’s meager living conditions.
“You’re really livin’ high style here, aren’t you?” Russell said.
“I don’t need much. Stay inside here and keep quiet. I’ve got to take care of some things.” Charlie went back outside and led Gus to his stall along the left side of the cabin.
Gus walked under the outcropping and looked into his empty grain bin. He gave a long, low snort at Charlie.
“I’ll get ya’ some oats later. You just hold on a minute.” Charlie pulled a log across the make-shift corral entrance. He grabbed an old wooden bucket and headed down to the stream at the bottom of the hill to get water. It was a small river that was too shallow and moved too fast to have any fish in it. But it was a great source of fresh water. Charlie brought back a full bucket, emptied it into Gus’s trough, and went back for a second bucketful. When he returned, he pulled off the saddle and bridle and poured the water over Gus to clean and cool him down.
After he wiped him down and brushed him, he dug a full shovel of grain from a wooden barrel he kept covered on the side of the house and poured them into Gus’s grain bin. The horse ate them in a few bites.
Russell sat in the chair by the table and looked around the inside of the cabin. Other than the table, chair and stool, a small hand-built rope bed holding a thin straw mattress stood along a side wall. It was crude and looked as if it were fashioned out of old support timbers or railroad ties. Russell curled his lip. That can’t be comfortable. He wondered where he was going to sleep.
At the foot of the bed sat an old, badly worn leather-bound trunk with a rusty padlock securing its lid. In the back corner of the cabin stood a small round iron stove. A coffee pot sat inside an iron skillet that rested on top of the stove. Along the back wall was the only real piece of furniture in the place, a nicely finished washstand with a marble top. A wooden bucket sat on the floor next to the stand and a metal bowl on the marble top. A small, cracked mirror hung from a string above the washstand.
Russell heard Charlie attending to Gus outside. He walked to the stove, opened the small metal door and stared at the remnants of past fires. Where he came from, fires were started with the flick of a switch, a controlled chemical reaction rather than the actual consumption of any fuel, like coal or wood.
When Charlie returned to the cabin he stopped at the open front door and watched Russell stare at the cold empty stove. He smiled. “That’s a stove. When there’s something burning in it, it heats the place up.”
His voice appeared to startle Russell for a moment and the young man turned and backed away from the stove.
“I … I wasn’t sure. I ...” Russell stammered.
“It’s no big mystery, you know. You put some wood in it and light it up. Ain’t you ever built a fire, boy?”
“NO!” Russell shouted. “I never built a fire! And my name is Russell! Not Boy!”
“You’re gettin’ kind of touchy, here.” Charlie paused and gave Russell an icy stare. He saw the fear, the hurt, and the anger in Russell’s face and eyes. He too was cold, sore, hungry, and tired, and he was sure Russell was even more so. The meager corn biscuits and dried beef had done little to satisfy their hunger. Charlie was sure that the last twenty-four hours demanded more physical exertion from Russell than he had ever done in his entire life.
“All right, it’s Russell.” Charlie said with a calm voice. “But remember, you’re the one who came here. I didn’t invite you.”
Russell hung his head and looked away from Charlie. Charlie could see that his last remark hit a nerve.
Charlie stepped to the stove and threw in some paper, dried twigs, straw, small kindling, and a couple of larger sticks. He held a small stick over the top of the lantern and within seconds the tip was ablaze. He carefully lit the kindling in the stove and after a few moments a fire was beginning to blaze. Russell seemed spellbound as he watched the process.
“That’s all there is to it.” Charlie closed the fire door on the stove.
“Oh, I see,” Russell mumbled. “The only fires I know about are enclosed technologically controlled chemical fires. I’ve never seen any actual open flames.”
The small room was beginning to warm. Charlie pulled the stool away from the wall and sat down at the table across from Russell and stared at him.
“What’s wrong?” Russell asked.
“What’s wrong? Everything! All of this is wrong. You don’t belong here.”
“Do you?” Russell snapped.
The comment took Charlie by surprise. His eyes widened and he paused for a second. How much had Russell figured out about him?
“You be careful with me, BOY!” Charlie warned. “Now I want to know why you’re really here. I want to know what I’m supposed to do with you. And, I want to know how I’m going to get rid of you.”
Russell stood up, cast an angry look at Charlie, and moved a little closer to the warmth of the stove. Charlie watched as Russell’s expression changed to a solemn look as the seriousness of his situation appeared to sink in.
“It was a mistake.” Russell lowered his head and his voice. “It really was just a mistake. You can do what you like. I’ll never get back anyway. I’m dead any way you look at it.”
Charlie let out a heavy sigh. He remembered his own past of being alone and lost in a strange place. He reluctantly had to rely on the help of strangers. Charlie began to feel a little sorry for this time traveler. He let the subject drop until later. Until he got the answers he was looking for, he’d have to keep an eye on Russell.
“Come on and sit down. I’ll fix up something to eat.” Charlie offered the chair to Russell and smiled.
Charlie kept the remnants of a large smoked ham butt wrapped in an oil cloth and stored in a wooden box on a shelf near the stove. He cut two large slices and dropped them in the iron skillet and added a little water. From another box he pulled a stale bread loaf and cut two large pieces.
“Use this to sop up any meat drippings. The bread’s too hard to eat otherwise,” Charlie said.
Russell watched Charlie cook. The smell of ham steaks filled the room and caused his digestive system to start rumbling.
“Who’s this Abe Walker guy?” Russell asked.
“He’s a hard case. A fella you don’t want to mess with. That’s who he is,” Charlie said.
“Why?”
“Because he’d kill ya’ just as soon as look at ya’. He’s a big bug in the cattle business. He came through a lot of tough times, and he li
ves by his own rules; always has. Trouble is he tends to push those rules on the people he comes in contact with along the way.”
“Why is he coming here?”
“Hell. You sure got a lot of questions,” Charlie said. “Well, he’s coming here to sell his cows. He used to take his herd to Wichita or Dodge. That’s where his cattle got sold and shipped by rail all over the country. That’s where the money was.”
Charlie turned the ham steaks over, added a little more water to the pan, then set the stale bread chunks on top of them in the skillet so they would steam and soften a bit. Russell came back to the table and sat down, intently listening as Charlie told his story.
“But, in the last few years, with two railroads coming through here, Amarillo has built up a top notch cattle business. Now it’s finally big enough to handle Walker’s herd. He gets as much money here as he would in Wichita and it saves him another few weeks or so on the trail.”
“Why is he so mean?”
“He had a tough time of it. That kind of life would make anybody mean.” Charlie sat on the stool watching the ham steaks cook and occasionally looking at Russell. “Abe came through Texas heading west with his wife and baby boy after the war, sometime in the seventies. I’m not sure exactly when. He and his family were part of a small train heading to California. He had a good bull and a few cows with him.” Charlie stood and checked the steaks. “Way I hear it, as he came through Texas he began picking up strays along the way. He picked up so many, in fact that by the time he reached the Pecos, he had pulled together a pretty good sized herd. He decided to pull out of the wagon train and settle right there along the Pecos River. That area was right on the edge of Indian Territory. At that time, he was one of only a few white men that ever came west to the Pecos.”
“Just him and his family?” Russell asked.
“Yup. Just them,” Charlie answered. “Like everyone else that came west, they were looking to make a new life. At that time, the only people in that part of the country were tribes of Navajo and Ute Indians and a few locals trying to scratch out an existence from some very rough country. Neither group was very friendly to the whites moving into the area. Texas was just a fledgling republic. They were getting used to their independence from Mexico. There was still a lot of bad blood between Mexico and Texas, and no law there. The army and the few towns and outposts were miles and miles away.”
“My God, how did they survive?” Russell asked.
“He did what he had to do. All them settlers did,” Charlie said. “It was that or die. This country is not very hospitable. He had to fight the weather, the land, marauding Indians, and bands of Mexican banditos. It was a daily struggle and it made him a very hard man. He didn’t like or trust nobody.”
Russell just shook his head. “That must’ve been rough. How anybody could go through that every day? It’s unbelievable.”
“It got worse,” Charlie said. “Abe lost his wife in an Indian attack a couple of years in. That loss made him a very bitter man and even more ornery, if that was possible. Then it was just him to raise his only son, Jeremiah.”
“How did he get so many cattle?” Russell asked.
“Walker wasn’t the only one to come out to the Pecos. There were a couple of others and they all just claimed as much land as they could homestead. They had huge cattle empires with thousands of head of cattle on hundreds of thousands of acres. These big ranchers sort of banded together and watched out for each other. They made their own rules as they went. Their law was the only law in the Pecos valley and they dealt it out at will and harshly.”
“I can’t believe someone could live like that.” Russell said again.
“Well, you’ll never forget how hard today’s ride was on you,” Charlie said. “Well, imagine working and living in that every day.”
Charlie set down a knife and a metal pie pan that held a thick ham slice and a steamed chunk of bread. Russell gave a crooked smile to Charlie as a thanks for some hot food.
“The outside of that ham steak is cured and packed in salt to preserve it. You might not like that part.” Charlie stabbed the steak with his knife and took a bite from it.
Russell didn’t seem to care. Salt or no salt, he ate like he was starving.
Charlie continued his story. “Eventually, like everywhere else, settlers, farmers, smaller ranchers, and traders, started moving into the land west of the Pecos. They were all trying to carve out a piece of land and a new life for themselves. These newcomers started little settlements that grew into towns. This was another thorn in Abe’s side. He liked his solitude and hated people. At first, the cattle barons tried to force them out of the area, but they still kept coming. So, since they couldn’t force them out, they decided to control them. The cattlemen set up their own people as law and government officials. They set up their own banks, supply stores, saloons and any other business they could think of to try and drive the settlers out of business and out of the area.”
“Why didn’t the government step in and do something?” Russell asked.
“There wasn’t any government. The army was too far away to be of any use. The only law was the cattlemen’s law. Eventually the town folk got tired of it. They wanted their own elected government, statehood, army protection, and other things civilized people demand. There was a huge power struggle. Most of the other cattle barons just sold off and moved out. Walker decided to stay. A lot of them sold off their herds and land to Abe. In some areas of Walker’s land you can see from one horizon to the other and it would all belong to Abe Walker.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” Russell said
“Over the years, Abe never changed. He kept to himself and ran his land with the same iron-fisted law he first brought to the Pecos. That’s all he knew. And when he traveled anywhere, his law went with him. His cowhands are all hard working, hard living men. Most of them have shady pasts. Abe has a lot of gun hands who are not afraid of a fight. Most of the older ones were seasoned ex-army from both sides in the War. When they get to a town and let loose it’s usually at the expense of some people and property.”
“How’d you get involved with him?” Russell asked.
Charlie explained the story of how he and the deputy marshals first came into contact with Abe Walker. Abe blamed Charlie and all lawmen for the death of his son and vowed he would take an eye for an eye.
“So, how often do they come here?” Russell asked.
“It’s been a couple of years, I guess,” Charlie recalled. “I wasn’t here the last time they came through. But I heard that a couple of Abe’s cowhands got drunk and started a gun fight in Amarillo. A lot of bullets were fired and a lot of those shots went wild. One bullet wounded a woman and another one killed her son. They were just walking by outside. The town was outraged. City Marshall Cook arrested the two gunmen, but Abe came in that night and took the two hands back to camp with him. They broke camp the next day and no one has seen either of them two cowboys since.
“What happened to them?” Russell asked.
Charlie let that question hang. He stopped at this point and looked at his bed.
“Well, morning has a way of sneaking up on us around these parts. We’d better get some sleep.” Charlie stood and grabbed the bedroll and his saddle. “You sleep here on this bed. It ain’t much, but it’s softer than the floor.”
“What about you?” Russell asked.
“I’ll be all right. Gus is pretty warm and he won’t mind the company at all.”
With bedroll in hand he shut the two inside window shutters and blew out the lantern. The glow of the fire burning in the stove seeped out along the edges of the fire door and gave a strange red glow to the cabin’s interior. Charlie stepped out and shut the door behind him. In the darkness he felt his way around to the make-shift corral. Gus stirred a bit but then settled down after realizing who was coming to visit.
Charlie had a plan. He had to get to town first thing in the morning. He had things to do before anyone knew h
e was back.
6
Doc Morgan
The sun shone through the crudely hewn slats that made up the old shutters in Charlie’s cabin. A sudden breeze blew against the house and rattled the door. The noise jostled Russell from his sleep. He looked around and shaded his eyes from the light. Morning did come quick, just as Charlie mentioned. He felt like he’d hardly slept at all.
Outside he heard the birds chirping and the sound of water flowing along the bottom of the hillside. He could hear the breeze as it drifted through the tree limbs and scattered the fallen leaves across the ground. However, he didn’t hear any movement from Gus’s corral. He wondered if Charlie was still asleep.
He rolled on his back and stared at the thatched roof above him, reflecting on the previous day. It was still all so surreal. He was hoping this was all a bad dream and he would awake in his apartment in his complex. He had time-jumped before, but this was the first time there’d ever been a problem. He was rationalizing his situation and was sure that his operators were working on the problem from the other side of the time matrix. Surely they wouldn’t let him hang in another time dimension. They wouldn’t assume the worst and just write him off that quickly as a casualty of a flawed dimensional matrix. Would they?
He was rolling over in his mind the possible causes of the blunder that landed him in the old west during the 19th century. He sat up in bed. Wait a minute, could they have done this intentionally? He was now wide awake. He wondered why someone would do that to him.
The fear of never being able to return to his own time overwhelmed him. A warm flush of blood coursed through his body and beads of sweat emerged on his forehead. What would he do? He was trying to imagine his life in this time. The anxiety of being stuck in a place and time that was so foreign to him consumed him. He was finding it difficult to breathe. He didn’t know the first thing about survival practices. Charlie was right. He’d never survive out here by himself.