Smuggler's Gulch

by Paul Lederer

  ‘It’s Kit,’ she said excitedly. ‘He came back in a fury. I think he’s going to kill someone – possibly me!’

  ‘What’s he so mad about – surely not Sarah’s having run off.…’

  ‘With all his money! Do you know how much she took?’ Christiana asked.

  ‘I have no idea. I didn’t know anything about what she’d done until we reached Lewiston.’

  ‘That may be, but I don’t think you’d want to try to convince Kit of that – with the money missing and two of his men dead.’

  ‘Three,’ Jake told her. ‘Blanco won’t be coming back either.’

  ‘Three, then. I don’t know if I can convince Kit that none of this was my doing, Sarah being my cousin. You – if you get caught here, he’ll kill you for sure.’

  Jake lifted his eyes toward the house in the valley. ‘Where is Kit now?’

  ‘Gone again, but for how long I can’t say. He doesn’t tell me his plans anymore. It’s not like it used to be. He now thinks that I’m untrustworthy too. That’s the way outlaws always get, isn’t it? Trusting no one.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, but yes, it seems so.’ Jake paused, glanced up the backtrail to see if Hutch Gleason and the posse had somehow tracked him up here, then looked again at Christiana Blanchard who had only now let go of his hands.

  ‘What is really the matter with Sarah?’ he asked.

  ‘God knows. She’s gotten worse over the years. She even stole my yellow shirt to wear before she left here. Is that rational! Why would she do that? There are all sorts of small objects missing from my room.’ She ran her fingers through her blond hair; her eyes were still wild.

  ‘What about Worthy? Is he all right?’ Jake asked with some concern.

  ‘My uncle’s well enough, though his strength seems to be fading – it’s partly age, I suppose, partly because Sarah deserted him.’

  ‘Will he be safe here with Kit on a rampage?’

  Christiana shook her head vigorously. And, apparently anticipating what Jake would have asked next, she told him, ‘He’ll never leave the gulch. It’s his home, his land. A man gets attached to such things. When Kit and I first got here he was so pleased to see us – he looked on Kit as the son he had never had. He didn’t know what Kit had in mind.’

  ‘Making an outlaw camp out of the gorge.’

  ‘Exactly. Now things are taking a bad turn. I just want out of here, Jake! You can take me – you’ve made it through before. Of course,’ she added with the venom only an angry female can put into her words, ‘If I encounter Sarah, I shall kill her on sight.’

  SEVEN

  Jake took Christiana’s words and studied the hatred in her eyes, but he said nothing at that moment to try to calm her down. He had more important matters to consider, like staying alive himself. Somewhere behind him was Hutch Gleason and his posse; somewhere below Kit Blanchard and his outlaw band. Somewhere in the far distance Marshal Trouffant would be waiting, ready to hang him if he failed, and Sarah, perhaps waiting to be killed by her pretty cousin.

  And somewhere Cathy also watched and waited, or so he hoped.

  ‘Worthy told me that you know a secret way out of the canyon,’ Christiana Blanchard was saying.

  ‘If you mean back toward the east, we can’t use the trail. There’s an army of men looking for Kit down there.’

  ‘Then the road you traveled when you took Sarah out of here.’

  ‘I don’t think I could fool them twice going that way – as everyone says, Kit is not a stupid man. He’ll have the guards alerted to the Indian cut-off.’

  ‘There might be another way!’ Christiana said, her eyes gathering excitement. ‘I think I might just know one. Sarah has ridden these hills from childhood. Well, she and I used to ride a lot together, just wandering around, talking of woman things. There’s a ridge beyond the falls that feeds the rill. I’ve never gone all the way up and over, but it could be done. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to escape, Christiana’ Jake asked ‘Kit is liable to track you down. He might take your flight as evidence that you and Sarah were plotting together to steal the gang’s treasury.’

  Plus, Jake was thinking, how could he trust this woman? Kit Blanchard’s woman. Did he really want to ride the long land with her? No. But he had to escape from Smuggler’s Gulch. There were no two ways about that.

  ‘He might catch up with me and kill me,’ Christiana said with a sorrowful shrug, ‘or he might decide just to kill me here. He knows where to find a woman to quickly replace me – in Mexico – and he has the money to satisfy one.’

  Jake said nothing. He could sense that Christiana now felt like nothing more than chattel; to be used or discarded at will by Kit Blanchard. He could sense her fear and deep mistrust. He considered deeply, realizing he knew little about women – look at the mistake he had made in trusting Sarah Worthy! But a man can’t let past mistakes cloud his better impulses. He told her:

  ‘If you’ve got a horse, I’m ready to ride.’

  What choice did he have?

  If the wind blew fiercely on the desert, no breeze even touched them in the long valley. It was hot, airless. Christiana Blanchard led the way, seeming eager to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. As was Jake for that matter, but he did not have the faith she apparently had that escaping from Smuggler’s Gulch would settle all of his problems.

  There was still the law. There was still the belligerent Hutch Gleason who had probably decided by now that Jake had intentionally slipped away from them during the sandstorm, probably to warn Kit Blanchard of their approach.

  Christiana was wearing a dark green divided riding skirt and a white blouse. Her blond hair was still fixed in a single long braid which fell to the middle of her back. Jake wondered idly how long it was when unbound and spread. She skillfully guided the piebald horse she had hidden in the cottonwoods up the slope, keeping to the bank of the fast-flowing silver rill. Half of the time they were in the shade of the long row of Mexican palm trees. Reaching the point where he and Sarah had branched off onto the main road into the canyon on his last attempt, Christiana ignored the cut-off and continued on up the ever-steepening trail toward the rocky ridge above them.

  ‘Are you sure this is the way?’ Jake asked, as they paused in the heated shade of a stack of boulders to let their horses blow.

  ‘I’m sure of nothing these days,’ Christiana said. ‘But yes, I think this is the way over the ridge. I’ve only been this far along once, with Sarah, but I think it is. She told me it was possible to make the ride.’

  Jake could only hope it was. He took a drink of tepid water from his canteen and eyed the ridge uncertainly. Only row after row of huge jumbled boulders. High above them a single vulture glided past on motionless wings, sailing on the updraft. A little farther up the trail, Jake spotted a rough-skinned, black and orange Gila monster on a flat boulder, its glittering eyes fixed on them, its sides palpitating as it panted for air in the dry heat. Jake detoured around the great lizard as best he could - not that he thought the creature might leap at him and snap its powerful jaws into his flesh – they were incapable of jumping – but he disliked the very sight of the poisonous, primitive beast.

  He found himself yearning for a place where there were no Gila monsters, sidewinders, scorpions or tarantulas, where a man could dress in the morning without having to shake out his boots to see what might have crawled into them overnight.

  The sun continued to ride high, hot as a branding iron on Jake’s back. He was perspiring freely: chest, back and arms. Christiana looked cooler, females not usually perspiring as freely as males, but her desert tan seemed to have paled. The horses were both laboring to find their way through the staggering collection of ancient boulders. Christiana pulled up again, swore and unreasonably slapped her horse’s shoulder with the ends of her reins, causing the innocent piebald pony to flinch.

  ‘I think I’m lost,’ she said. ‘We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.’ She
put the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘I really can’t remember anymore!’

  The voice beside them was calm, distant, familiar.

  ‘Other way, Missie Chris – by broken pinyon tree.’

  Jake, who had nearly drawn his Colt recognized the voice and now the form of Panda as he stepped toward them, his hand holding a gathered red kerchief with a few items bundled in it. The Yavapai Indian lifted a pointing finger.

  ‘See the broken tree, burned tree? Find a small trail other side of it.’

  Christiana’s face relaxed with relief. Jake managed a tight smile. ‘You’re sure, Panda?’

  ‘Very sure. I take that way to go home, I think.’ He paused, shook his head slightly and then smiled at Jake. ‘Bad days, huh?’

  With that, the short Yavapai disappeared, his shadow seeming to merge with those of the boulders and then disappear into them.

  ‘If Panda is leaving things, must be bad back there,’ Christiana said, turning her horse to follow the indicated trail. ‘He was always satisfied to live here. Worthy did him a great favor at one time in the past, they say, though neither of them talked about it.’

  ‘Kit’s likely on a rampage,’ Jake guessed. ‘That would be a strong reason to move on.’ Thinking about it, Jake considered, maybe the outlaw had good reason to be furious. Sarah had taken a large sum of money from him, and now his wife had fled. What if Kit discovered Jake with his wife? What would he assume about Jake and Christiana?

  ‘If only Sarah had left well enough alone.…’ Christiana said, but she never finished her remark. They rode on, and on, along the craggy hillside.

  The sun was descending, but the day was no cooler when they reached the crest of the ridge. They had somehow managed to bypass the spring that fed the stream and so they had little water left for themselves and for the horses. No matter – they could look out across the high desert now. Somewhere in the distance lay Lewiston. Jake had made the ride before; he could make it again, assuming they could now find a way down through the rocks, but the path seemed much clearer on the north face, an easier ride by far than the road up had been.

  The sandstorm was now only a desert memory. The sky held blue-white, clear and almost motionless. They made their way down onto the flats where spearlike yucca grew and passed an occasional tall ocotillo bush, the crimson flowers at their thorny tips now faded or blown away by the windstorm.

  The land was flat; the day cooled; the sun lowered its face and Christiana Blanchard rode along in high spirits. Then she darkened Jake’s mood with a sour comment:

  ‘What I said back there, Jake … I’m much afraid I really will have to kill Sarah. She’s ruined my life, her father’s life, and I doubt she cares a bit about it.’

  Jake, weary and dry, did not respond. He only hoped that it was just talk. You hear things like that said all the time, but they’re seldom acted upon. However, this wife of the outlaw Kit Blanchard had probably seen more arguments settled with violence than your average person, and might by now have adopted some of the outlaw ways herself. Jake had reason to hate Sarah himself, but he did not want her dead.

  He thought a better alternative to shooting her might be to just give her the sound spanking she so obviously deserved.

  They trailed into Lewiston at sundown. The western sky was colored red. Blood-stained clouds hung lifelessly above the Arizona desert.

  ‘I want to see the marshal,’ Christiana Blanchard said as they walked their weary horses up the main street. ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘All the way to the edge of town,’ Jake said pointing the way. ‘A low yellow-brick building. You’ll see it. What did you need to talk to him about?’

  ‘Why, Sarah of course! She stole from me.’

  ‘Wasn’t it Kit’s money she took?’

  ‘It was part mine! And the horse was mine! I’ll get her for it.’ The look in her eyes signaled deadly intent, but then she softened, smiled and asked, ‘Don’t you want to go to the marshal’s office with me.’

  ‘I’ll be happy if I never see Trouffant again.’ Jake had been fiddling with the badge on his shirt; now he unpinned it and handed it over to Christiana. ‘Tell him I’ve resigned.’

  ‘Where will you be going?’ she asked with what seemed genuine interest.

  ‘Nowhere far away for a time – my horse is beat down, I’m beat down. If they want to come and get me I’ll make it easy on them.’

  ‘I could buy you another horse,’ Christiana said. ‘I had some money of my own tucked away – a wise woman always does.’

  ‘No thanks. Even with a fresh pony under me I wouldn’t try to run. Anyway,’ he added soberly, ‘there’s nowhere to go. I just want to see someone before they lock me up.’

  ‘A girl,’ Christina said.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Just by the way you said it. Look, Jake,’ she said reaching into her saddlebags. ‘Take a little money from me. Buy her a gift – whoever she is – women appreciate that,’ and she slipped him a few coins which Jake didn’t bother to look at or count. ‘Good luck to you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied, ‘it looks like I’ll be needing it.’

  Then, immensely sure of herself, she started her piebald horse forward, toward Marshal Trouffant’s office. That was one trait she shared with her cousin Sarah – that utter confidence. Maybe it was bred into desert women. Jake watched her for a minute, then turned the weary buckskin away from town and headed north toward the little house where he hoped to find Cathy waiting.

  Swinging down in front of the small white house, he caught a blur of movement to his right, glanced toward it and saw Chaser slinking away.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, dog?’ Jake said in a low, stern voice. Chaser turned, wagged his tail indecisively, and for a moment it seemed that he would approach, but he turned and scooted away again.

  The front door to the house opened.

  Cathy stood in the doorway, her slender figure silhouetted against the vague lantern light behind her. Her almost-curly brown hair was unpinned and in near disarray. She clutched a robe to her throat, lifted one hand toward Jake and spoke.

  ‘Oh! I thought I heard a man speaking … and I thought it was you. I just didn’t dare hope – you made it back.’

  ‘I made it back,’ Jake said stepping up onto the sagging porch, surprised at how much he seemed to tower over the small woman. ‘I don’t figure they’ll let me run around free for long, though. There’s too many people holding grudges against me.’

  ‘Come in,’ she said taking his hand. ‘Come in and tell me what happened. All about it. Did the sandstorm change things for you? We saw it here in Lewiston, but it was far to the east. I could tell it was bad, and I knew you were out there.…

  ‘Come sit down. Tell me what happened and what is going to happen now.’

  ‘Aren’t your friends home?’ he asked

  ‘They’ll be off work in a little while. Not just yet.’ She patted her unruly hair uncertainly, realized that she was only partially dressed, seemed to shrug that off as unimportant and continued, speaking rapidly.

  ‘I’ll get you some coffee. Sit at the table.’

  ‘It’s still warm to start a fire in the stove.’

  ‘That’s not important – the day will start cooling off soon, as you know. I’ll just open the back door and start the pot boiling. And I suppose I’d better pull on some other clothes!’ she added sheepishly.

  ‘If you like,’ Jake agreed. He hadn’t even really thought of how she was dressed, how her hair was fixed. It seemed kind of cozy and comforting to have a woman in her natural state bustling about, eager to be helpful, but he supposed she had to consider maintaining some sort of propriety, especially with her housemates due home soon.

  She bustled off toward a back room leaving Jake to sit watching the glow of the fire behind the grill of the black iron stove. Beyond the open door he could see the first stars blinking across the clear twilight sky. There was a scrabbling sound on the back
porch and Jake didn’t even lift his head as he called out, ‘Well come in or don’t, you dumb mutt!’

  Chaser, who might have been considering trying to sneak into the house, turned tail and vanished. Making himself more at home than was probably correct, Jake rose and walked to the cooler in the corner of the room, opened the narrow wooden door, and, using his belt knife, cut a large piece of fat and skin from the ham there. He tossed the meat out onto the porch, listened to more scrabbling and the dog’s low-throated question, returned to the table and sat down wearily, smelling the coffee which had begun to boil on the stove.

  He was beat down. That’s what he had told Christiana Blanchard, and it was the truth. He hadn’t realized just how exhausted he was until now. He could have put his head down on the table and fallen asleep in an instant. How had he ever gotten himself into this, and how long could it go on?

  Even if Marshal Trouffant was willing to let matters rest, Sarah would not be – in her mind she had made a devil’s bargain with Jake to kill or capture Kit Blanchard, and he had failed her. Even without Sarah, there was Hutch Gleason to consider. He must be thinking that Jake had slipped away from them on the desert for some devious reason of his own, and when he learned that Jake had returned with Christiana Blanchard, he would be sure of it.

  Then there was the stolen buckskin horse and Bert Stiles. Would Stiles be willing to expend the time and resources to track Jake down? Who knew? Stiles nursed a grudge well. Cathy came back into the kitchen.

  She had hastily brushed her hair and seemed to have splashed some sort of powder on. She wore a neat little yellow dress with a thin piece of lace around the neckline. Jake smiled at her, trying to tell her in unspoken language that he appreciated the effort she had made. What he said was:

  ‘Doesn’t anyone ever feed that dog!’