by Art Isberg
Moses groaned, his eyes opening only to slits in his swollen face. He coughed up blood, struggling to spit out just one word, as his hand came up and gripped Judd by his jacket, trying to pull him closer. ‘Jar . . . ed’ he finally managed to blurt out, before collapsing back down on the blanket.
‘You mean Jared Bass?’ Judd quickly questioned. ‘Is that who did this to you?’
Moses nodded, closing his eyes again, as Judd looked over at Lacey, before slowly getting to his feet, a grim look of determination coming over his face. Lacey had seen that look before, back in Alkali, moments before the gunfight with the three Mexicans. She stood with him, trying to stop what she knew was coming.
‘Don’t go, Judd. Don’t take the chance something could happen to you, too. Stay here with me and help me work on Moses. Please, listen to me!’
‘I’m going. You take care of him until I get back. I won’t be gone too long.’
‘If something happens to you, Moses and I would be done for. We’d have to pack up and leave. Nothing would ever get done about your property, and what happened to your brother. Is it really worth risking all that?’
‘I’ve got to go. I don’t expect you to understand why. I can’t let this pass like it never happened. Jared Bass is the man who tried to kill me, and may have had a hand in killing my brother. He’s going to pay for it. It’s a debt long overdue. I’ll be back, I promise I will.’
Lacey’s shoulders sagged and her head fell to her chest. She took in a long, deep breath, trying to think of something else to say. She couldn’t. Instead she watched in silence as Miller saddled up his horse and rode away into the night, without saying another word. Turning back to the fire she fed it new wood, the rising flames lighting fresh tears running down her checks as she went back to work on Moses.
Judd reached town, riding down deserted back streets one block over from the row of lamp-lit whiskey houses and gambling dens on Main Street. Stopping at one alley, he tied his horse to the hitch rail and entered the passageway between the buildings, walking to its end where it reached the still busy front street. Across from here he could see the Silver Slipper saloon, busy with boisterous customers coming and going in and out the front door. To his left on his side of the street, just one door down, the Slipper’s main competitor, the Rough and Ready Bar, also hosted its share of night-time gamblers and drinkers. He well remembered that the Rough and Ready was one of Jared Bass’s main watering holes.
Pulling his hat down low over his face and his jacket collar higher, Miller stepped out on to the boardwalk, walking the few steps to the front window of the busy saloon, peering into the big room’s smoky interior. His eyes searched the room through the dirty window, until coming to the bar where George La Mont, owner of the establishment, was busy moving back and forth behind the oak countertop, pouring drinks and collecting money for the big cash register against the mirrored wall at his back. Judd pushed his face closer to the glass, studying the outline of one big man at the far end of the bar with his back to him. He stood head and shoulders above other men, and the tan steamer on his head said it could only be Jared Bass. Miller’s jaw tightened, watching men gathered around Bass, laughing and slapping him on the back as he retold the tale of how he’d run that phony preacher out of town.
Judd knew he had to get Bass out of the bar alone without anyone else seeing him. As he tried to come up with a way to do it, a young teenage boy out on the town for the first time to see the sights, came walking down the street towards him. The kid was stopping and gawking into each brightly lit storefront window, and by the time he’d reached the Rough and Ready, Miller had the plan he needed.
‘Hey, kid,’ Judd waved him closer.
‘Yeah, what is it, mister?’
Judd dug into his pants pocket and came up with a few coins. ‘Here’s six bits. I want you to go in here and tell that tall man at the bar that an old friend is waiting outside for him. You think you can do that?’
‘Sure I can, for six bits.’ The young man eagerly took the money, shoving it into his pocket, before heading for the front door.
Judd quickly walked back into the dark alley, edging up just close enough to see around the corner on to the boardwalk. Two minutes later, Bass walked out with the young man at his side, both looking up and down the street. Bass said something to the kid who shrugged, then started back up the street alone. As the big man turned to go back inside, Judd called out. ‘Hey Bass, over here!’
Jared turned on his boot heel, looking towards the narrow passageway. ‘Who is it?’ He started towards the alley, coming closer, when a hand suddenly reached out and grabbed him by his jacket collar – Judd yanked him to the side and swung his heavy six-gun down across his face, knocking him unconscious so he fell in a heap. Judd pulled him into the alley out of sight, then ran back down the alley to his horse, which he led back to Bass’s prone form. He quickly tied Bass’s hands and feet, then untied his bandana and stuffed it in his mouth. Taking his lariat off the horse, Judd looped one end tightly round the big man’s feet, then quickly mounting up, made two turns around the saddle horn with the other end, pulling it tight. Spurring the horse forwards, he dragged Bass’s body out into the middle of the street, then kicked the animal into a hoof-pounding gallop.
Bass’s body twisted and turned, taking the same kind of beating he’d given Moses earlier that evening. At the far end of town, Judd yanked the horse around, spurring it back down the three block-long main street on a second fast run, Jared’s body twisting and crashing down again and again until Judd pulled to a stop back in front of the Rough and Ready. One quick rope loop loosened the lariat from the unconscious man’s feet. Miller quickly coiled it up and spurred his horse away again, out of town, into the night.
Customers ran out of the saloon into the street and surrounded the broken, bloody body of Jared Bass, still tied up hand and foot, moaning in misery. ‘Who in hell was that rider?’ one called out.
‘I don’t know for sure,’ another man answered. ‘But what little look I got at him almost makes me swear it was Judd Miller!’
‘Judd Miller? Naw, he’s probably dead by now, just like his brother. It couldn’t have been him.’
The sun had barely lit the rooftops in Red Bluffs the following morning, as Cyrus Toomey stood staring down at Jared Bass, heavily bandaged and lying in his bed in the small house he rented at the end of town.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know who did this to you? Are you blind?’ Toomey’s mocking voice made his displeasure and concern obvious.
‘I was bushwhacked from out of the dark, I’m tellin’ you. Someone hit me with an ax handle, or something. Look at my face. The rest of me ain’t much better, either!’
Toomey leaned down closer, emphasizing his words. ‘There is no one in town with enough guts to do this to you. What about that scarecrow preacher, could he have had a hand in it?’
‘Hell, no. When I got done dragging him, he couldn’t even get to his feet. We left him lying in the road. For all I know, he might still be out there.’
Toomey began pacing the room, talking to himself. ‘None of this makes any sense. I’ve got to get to the bottom of it, and fast. My contact with the Western Cascade railroad people could be coming even sooner than I thought and I can’t have anything getting in the way of it now. How long before you can get back on your feet again?’
‘Not this week. I’m lucky I didn’t get my neck broke. Doc Owens says I have to stay like this for at least one more week. I can’t even move without feeling like I’m busted up from top to bottom. I have to use a bedpan because I can’t stand up. Looks like you’re on your own until then.’
In the hidden camp outside town, Moses, too, was suffering from being horse dragged, lying in his bed in his wagon. As Lacey spoon fed him hot broth, Judd stood listening to every word the preacher could get out.
‘I talked to a lot of people . . . in town yesterday, before I was jumped last night. Two businessmen mentioned something to me t
hat might be . . . important, especially to you, Judd.’
‘If you’re up to it, tell me about it.’
‘They said they’d heard the railroad might be coming . . . this way. You know what that could mean about . . . any property they might want to . . . buy up, don’t you?’
The stunning news instantly got Judd’s attention. He pulled up a small stool, sitting on it close to the bed. ‘That’s something Toomey would likely know about,’ he nodded, thinking out loud. ‘If you’re right about this, I’ve got to find out where they mean to lay steel.’
‘They said . . . they thought the railhead was about fifty miles east of here . . . somewhere down in the flatlands out of . . . the mountains.’
‘Can you two make it all right, if I leave here?’ Judd asked.
Lacey looked up with worry in her eyes, but not about Judd’s possibly leaving for a while. ‘If you do go, there’s a chance someone might recognize you from a wanted poster. If that happened our very reason for making the trip here would be over, and you’d likely be facing jail, a trial, or worse. If something like that did take place, I’d never forgive myself for letting you go.’
‘Nothing like that will happen. I won’t let it, but I’ve got to find out if what Moses heard is true. It could answer a lot of questions, about what has happened to my brother and me.’
‘You be . . . double careful,’ Moses tries to rise, but sank back down, his face grimacing in pain. Instead he reached up, gripping Judd’s jacket with a bony hand. ‘Get back here safe, you hear? I’ll pray for you every day . . . you’re gone.’
‘I will. You rest easy and let Lacey take care of you. I’ll be careful.’
Miller left that same morning, riding fast and hard the next four days down out of the timbered heights of Red Bluffs, until rolling grasslands of an endless prairie spread before him, filling the horizon. He wasn’t certain how far ahead he had to go, or even exactly in what direction tracks of steel were being laid. Each morning he took bearings from the rising sun in the east, riding on line of sight until it burned out behind him at sundown. Small bands of buffalo parted and ran as he passed, until mid-day on the eighth, when the dark green smudge of low trees ahead rose up out of the sea of grass, the first sign of civilization he’d seen.
Prairie Creek was hardly a town. A small general store by the name of ‘Hall’s Mercantile’, a sometimes blacksmith shop, a horse corral, and three empty wooden buildings ready to fall down, met Judd’s eyes when he rode in. Tying his horse at the hitching rail in front of the store, he stepped inside Hall’s Mercantile. The musty odour of disuse matched the dusty interior.
Josiah Hall stood behind the counter, eyeing him as he started across the creaking floor.
‘Howdy, stranger,’ Hall forced a weak smile through wire-rimmed glasses, quickly noticing Miller’s cross-draw gun rig. ‘You sure ain’t from around here, I can see that right now. What can I do for you?’
‘I can use a good feed of oats for my horse, and something for myself, too. I’d also like some information, if you have any.’
‘About what?’ Hall raised his eyebrows.
‘I’ve been told the railroad is pushing its way west from someplace out here. Do you know where that might be?’
‘Well, I do know some of it. I’m told the railroad is north of here about fifteen or twenty miles. They passed that way two weeks ago. Felix Hays, who lives up there, was in here and told me that. He also said they’re laying a mile of steel a day. If that’s so, they’ll be farther out by now. About the food, we don’t have any restaurant, but I guess you can see that for yourself. I’m about all that’s left here, and I don’t know how much longer I might want to keep the door open, either. I got beans and corn and some salted beef out back. You can use sacked oats for your horse, if you like.’
Judd put the feed bag on his horse, before going back inside, buying supplies to put in his saddle-bags. After paying off Hall, he went back outside with the proprietor following him. ‘You’ve got some tall riding to do catching up with them railroad people. Good luck, young feller!’
Miller gave him a quick wave, kicking his horse north out of town. Two days later Judd saw an elevated gravely berm rising out of tall grass ahead. When he reached it riding up on top, he looked down at shiny new steel rails curving away westward until they disappeared out of sight. He hesitated only long enough to take a quick pull on his water bag, before urging the horse down off the tracks, running parallel with the roadway, at a steady gallop.
Many miles away in his plushly appointed private railroad car, Farris Whitmore Thurston, president of the Western Cascade Railroad Company, lounged in a padded chair eating breakfast made by his private cook. As he ate he looked out of the window watching wagons, mules, and his gangs of men hauling steel rails with rail tongs, thick, wooden ties and heavy caskets of thumb thick spikes to spike the rails down with. Even in the confines of his private car, he could hear the bell-like ring of spike mauls driving spikes down on new steel not far ahead.
F.W., as his friends and business associates called him, was a ‘hands on’ man. An enterprise as costly and daring as this one, bringing a new railroad line across the vastness of the prairie, could not be left to chance or to the decisions of other men. His entire fortune was at stake. Instead, F.W. would run the show himself. Each day after breakfast he donned polished, hand-made, knee-high leather boots and his expensive suit, topped off by a wide-brimmed hat specially ordered to his size and tan colour, and took personal charge of the working gangs. He did this standing on a flatbed railcar where new rails were being laid, with a megaphone to his mouth calling out orders, and pointing with a golden-knobbed cane.
Some grumbling by gang foremen was inevitable. But Thurston got track laid, and on the schedule he’d set for himself. That was all that mattered as he aimed for that first vital notch in the beginning heights of the Rocky Mountains, somewhere ahead in the town named Red Bluffs. If he could drive into the mountains at that precise point, his maps showed that the climb over the top could be the success he needed so badly, and would beat his only competition, the six-horse stagecoach, by a week and one hundred miles.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The endless sweat and toil of the rail gangs, largely made up of Chinese labourers, had been so intense that they were running out of supplies and material, forcing F.W. to realize they would be spiking down the last few miles of steel rails ahead until the supply train caught up. To speed up that delivery, he rode two days by horseback back to the supply yard, immediately taking personal charge of loading the flatbed railcars. Once the goods were tied down, he rode the smoke-belching engine back west, staying up in the engine cab with the engineer and fireman, stoking the firebox. He loved the rumble and roar of the locomotive as it picked up speed, with the trailing flatbeds, loaded high, shaking and swaying behind them.
Judd saw the dissipating cloud of black smoke over a rise in the tracks ahead before he topped it, and saw the supply train pulling away. He instantly spurred his horse after it, in a race to catch it up, pitting horseflesh against hot steel. Slowly, inch by inch, his horse began gaining ground, galloping with nostrils flaring, with Miller spurring it on to run faster.
Ahead in the engine cab, the fireman turned reaching for another armload of wood, when he saw a horse and rider pounding closer, beginning to pass the last of the loaded flatbeds. Fascinated by the sight, he called out to F.W: ‘Would you look at that, Mr Thurston. Some cowboy is racing us!’ He pointed back, surprise on his face.
F.W. grabbed the steel door rail, leaning out to get a better look as Miller’s galloping horse edged closer. He marvelled at the rider’s wild daring and skill, the flying hoofs of his horse a blur of speed.
‘He’s some rider,’ the boss man admitted, a smile coming over his face. ‘Maybe he wants a job!’
‘A job?’ the engineer questioned. ‘Not that cowboy, sir. Look how he’s dressed, and his horse. He’s no gandy dancer.’
Miller drove his h
orse harder, passing the last flatbed and then riding the horse up on the gravel berm, dangerously close to the steel rails and the bucking, belching locomotive. He reached out and grabbed the door rail, at the same time kicking his feet out of the stirrups, and then pulled himself up inside the engine cab in one quick jump, the engineer and fireman shaking their heads in disbelief as he did so.
‘Do you always board a train like that?’ F.W. questioned over the roar of the locomotive.
‘Not hardly,’ Judd shook his head. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever been on a train. You weren’t going to stop, so I had no other choice.’
‘What about your horse?’ Thurston looked back at the still running animal slowly falling behind.
‘He’ll follow us. It’ll just take him a little time to catch up after this thing stops.’
‘So, what is your big rush to take a chance like this to get on board?’
‘I want to get up to the railhead, and see the boss man, whoever that is.’
‘You must have good reason to do so, after all this?’
‘I do. I need to find out if plans for the railroad might go through a piece of ground my brother and I own, outside Red Bluffs. He was murdered by someone who might already know that. They tried to do the same to me, too. The only place I can get that answer is from the boss of this railroad.’
The smile on Thurston’s face vanished, quickly replaced by a furrowed brow of concern. ‘Then I must tell you I am F.W. Thurston, the man you’re looking for. I will also say that the only man I’ve talked to about the area around Red Bluffs is the mayor, Cyrus Toomey.’
‘You’re the owner of this entire outfit?’ Judd pushed his hat back on his head.
‘I am, though I might not look like it, standing here covered in black ashes from the smoke stack. And what is your name, sir?’
‘It’s Judd Miller. I sure didn’t expect to meet you like this, but I guess it’s as good a way as any.’