Smuggler's Gulch

by Paul Lederer

  He eased around to the front of the house and stepped up onto the sagging plank porch, cursing silently as one of the boards creaked under his tread, a sound which seemed unnaturally loud in the utter stillness of the dark night. Surely that sound had not been loud enough to hear behind the stone wall of the house, he convinced himself. But a man can always be wrong.

  Jake took one more step and found out how wrong he had been. His senses on full alert, his nerves taut and ready, Kit Blanchard had heard the small noise, and he now flung open the cabin door, his gun leveled.

  ‘Thought I’d be meeting you again,’ Kit Blanchard snarled.

  ‘Who is it!’ The voice belonged to Worthy, and Jake glanced toward the interior of the house to see the little round man approaching, shotgun in his hands. Kit did not glance at him. His gaze was steady, unwavering, as if challenging Jake Staggs to make a move.

  ‘Just Staggs,’ Kit said in a low growl.

  ‘Jake? What’s he want here?’ Worthy asked. The stubby little man held back a few steps, peering toward the doorway. It must have been hard to make out Jake’s face in the darkness, but finally he seemed to recognize him. ‘Well, hello Jake.’ Then he asked anxiously:

  ‘Where’s Sarah?’ he looked hopefully beyond Jake into the empty darkness.

  ‘She’s dead,’ Jake had to tell him.

  ‘Dead?’ the man’s eyes glassed over for a minute. He was stunned, staggered by the news. ‘What happened to her? Was it …?’ he looked at Kit Blanchard who now glanced at him long enough to snarl, ‘It wasn’t me, you old fool. I didn’t even know about it until just this minute.’

  ‘Then who …?’ Worthy asked Jake.

  ‘It was Christiana,’ Jake said. ‘She shot her cousin.’

  The news had an impact on Worthy and on Kit who seemed genuinely astonished.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ Kit Blanchard said. ‘She meant what she was saying.’

  Worthy was crushed. His daughter dead, his niece guilty of the killing. His wrath settled on Kit Blanchard. ‘This is all your fault, damn you Kit! All of it. You’ve poisoned everything and everyone since the day you rode onto my land.’

  ‘Quit blathering, you old fool,’ Kit commanded.

  Worthy shot him.

  The shotgun erupted with the roar of a small cannon in the confines of the house. There was a brief spurt of flame from the twin muzzles of the twelve-gauge and the whining sound of buckshot striking the stone walls. The double-ought pellets that hit Kit Blanchard produced a thumping sound like a butcher’s cleaver striking meat, and Kit pitched forward on his face, his pistol clattering free of his hand.

  ‘I should have done that years ago,’ Worthy said, but he said it unsteadily, and Jake saw that his knees were trembling, his face bloodless as he made his way to a rocking chair in the corner and sagged onto it.

  ‘Is there anyone else around?’ Jake asked urgently.

  ‘No, no one’s going to come running. They’re all gone, cleared out.’ Worthy lifted pouched eyes to Jake, ‘Do you suppose they’ll hang me for this?’

  ‘It’s more likely they’ll give you a reward.’

  ‘I don’t want any damn reward!’ Worthy yelled. ‘I want my daughter back!’

  After a minute, Worthy’s face returned to its natural color and he was less shaky, less agitated when he asked Jake, ‘Will you do something for me? Will you take him out of here, Jake? I don’t want to see Kit Blanchard again even if it’s as I’m throwing him into his grave.’

  TEN

  By moonlight, Jake made his way up the road toward the desert flats. Kit Blanchard’s body was draped over the back of the outlaw’s own horse. Or, as Worthy had said, ‘Someone’s horse. Kit Blanchard never paid for a horse he was riding in his life.’

  The thing that worried Worthy the most, of course, was what would become of Christiana, though he expressed no wish to ever see her again if she had killed Sarah. Jake thought he had an idea about that.

  ‘Sarah was killed in Christiana’s hotel room while Kit was shooting it out with Hutch Gleason. It seems to me that it’s most likely she was caught in a crossfire. I’ll have to talk to Christiana. If she’s willing to go along with that story, they’ll probably set her free.’

  ‘Will the law accept that explanation?’ Worthy asked, frowning.

  ‘From what I know of the law in Lewiston,’ Jake told him, ‘they’ll accept almost anything that makes their jobs easier. I don’t think they want to be known for hanging a woman anyway. This will give them a way out.’

  Jake didn’t emerge from his hotel room until nearly noon when the glare of the sun on his window and growing heat within it forced him to rise, sweaty and still trail-weary. He was hungry, but that could wait. He wanted to settle matters with the law. Neither Jake nor Billy Bostwick had been eager to discuss things when Jake trailed into Lewiston well after midnight.

  Bostwick, shirtless, wearing a leather jacket, had come outside, lifted Kit Blanchard’s head and nodded. That was about all. Bostwick had taken the time to inform Jake that Marshal Sam Trouffant had passed away.

  ‘I think it’s those two desert women that gave him a heart attack,’ Bostwick said.

  ‘They were enough to do it,’ Jake agreed.

  Jake had also learned that Christiana was in her hotel room, being held under guard. The rest of it, he decided could wait until morning.

  He had seen the two Fulton brothers riding out of town as he made his way toward the jail. He did not know their names, but knew they had been Hutch Gleason’s men. They had ridden with the posse. It seemed that they had had enough.

  Billy Bostwick was in his usual position at the marshal’s office, boots propped up on the desk. He glanced up to find Jake there without surprise or any other visible emotion.

  ‘Good day, Staggs,’ Bostwick said without enthusiasm. ‘What brings you around?’

  ‘Just decided to turn myself in,’ Jake replied. Bostwick drew a hand across his face and shook his head.

  ‘What’d you do now?’ the deputy asked.

  ‘Stole another horse,’ Jake said. He seemed to be causing Bostwick some discomfort.

  ‘Did you, now?’

  ‘The dun I was riding – it belongs to the man you had locked up here,’ Jake confessed.

  ‘I know it,’ Bostwick said, his eyes growing intolerant. ‘Will Sizemore. He told me that he loaned it to you, that that was what he and you were talking about yesterday. Look, Staggs, I appreciate that you think of yourself as a law-abiding citizen and all, but you’ve got to learn to restrain yourself.’

  ‘I took the dun.’

  ‘You’re the only one accusing yourself of taking that horse. And you’re known around here for making false confessions. Forget it, will you?’ Bostwick reached into the bottom drawer of his desk, withdrew a wide, slender envelope and slid it across toward Jake.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Why, the reward money. It’s a bank draft covering the bounties on Lemon Jack Baker, River Tremaine and Eduardo Blanco. It totals fifteen hundred dollars; five hundred on Blanco, a thousand on the other two combined. Once they disburse the five thousand for Kit Blanchard, you’ll be set pretty good, Staggs.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ Jake said.

  ‘Of course you do. Anyone would,’ Billy Bostwick said. ‘You’re thinking that it was that woman, Sarah Worthy who wanted to go after it, well she’s gone now, isn’t she? The money’s been disbursed. It can’t be sent back. I can’t take it; it would be like I had found some scheme to line my own pockets. Besides,’ he said after a pause, ‘there’s no denying that you’re the man that did the shooting.’

  ‘No,’ Jake said thoughtfully. ‘There’s no denying that.’

  Worthy had pled with Jake not to get him involved in the killing of Kit Blanchard. ‘I’ve enough money to get by on,’ he had said. ‘I don’t need any reward. I don’t want to show my face in Lewiston. I don’t care to talk to the law. They might decide to take me in on charges that I was har
boring the gang. You keep whatever cash might be on Kit’s head, Jake. It’s yours.’

  ‘I guess it’s mine,’ Jake said to Bostwick, and he picked up the envelope, folded it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

  ‘Personally,’ Bostwick said rising from his chair now, his face severe. ‘I think that this might be a good time for you to make the most of this opportunity and leave Lewiston. The truth is, you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Although we will miss Cathy.’

  Cathy? What did she have to do with this?

  Just about everything, Jake realized as he exited the office and stood on the plankwalk, peering up the dusty street through the white glare of day. She had wanted to go somewhere, away from the dry heat and wild winds of the desert, to try to just live decently somewhere else. Wasn’t that what she had said? What if he were to walk into that restaurant right now and tell her to go home and pack up? What would she say?

  Hesitantly, he started that way and nearly walked into Will Sizemore. Jake stiffened and his hand hovered near his pistol. The craggy old outlaw smiled.

  ‘You won’t be needing that, Staggs. I told you that we were sitting on the opposite side of the table, but that was when Kit was alive. A lot of men hated Kit, but I owed him some favors. Now that he’s gone, it’s over.’

  ‘You told the deputy that you let me borrow your horse.’

  ‘Yes I did,’ Sizemore replied, removing his hat to run his hand across his bald head. ‘I was still in jail last night when the stablehand came in to report that he thought a man had acted kind of suspicious – you – when he asked for the dun. And that you had said that you were a deputy marshal. So I told Bostwick that was just what you and me had been talking about: you wanted to borrow my horse. I knew it didn’t matter anymore: Kit would be dead or he would shoot you. Either way, I figured to get my horse back sooner or later. Besides, the dun didn’t cost me nothin’,’ the horse thief said with a wink.

  ‘What did happen to Kit?’ Will Sizemore wanted to know. ‘I can’t imagine you beating him in a fair fight.’

  ‘Worthy shot him,’ Jake said. ‘He blamed Kit for what had happened to the girls.’

  ‘I see,’ Sizemore said. ‘That makes more sense. No offense, Jake, but it’s a good thing the old man was there. Kit Blanchard would have shot you to ribbons. Well, you’re free and clear now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Except for that buckskin horse of mine,’ Jake said gloomily.

  ‘The one with the Broken T brand?’ Sizemore asked with a grin. ‘Why, brother, do you know how many ways there are to change that brand with a hot cinch ring?’

  ‘No, I’ve never been in that business, and I don’t intend to start learning now.’

  Sizemore nodded, planted his hat again and then said, ‘Well then, you darned fool, why don’t you just take the simple way out?’ At Jake’s puzzled look, the old outlaw went on. ‘I was in jail still when the reward money was delivered. Boy, use common sense! You’ve got enough money to pay for that horse ten times over. Write to the man who owned it. Ask him would he like you to ship it to him, or would he take cash money for it. Odds are he’ll take the money.’

  Jake stood there for a moment, stunned at his own stupidity. Well, he thought, sometimes it takes someone on the outside of a problem to solve it.

  ‘I believe I’ll do that. Today.’

  ‘Do that. You deserve to start fresh.’

  ‘What about you, Will?’

  ‘I only know one way to live, Staggs. I think I’ll wander back over to the gulch and see if any of the other boys have come around.’

  ‘I don’t think Worthy will stand for it again.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Sizemore shrugged, ‘we’ll find us a new place. Smuggler’s Gulch never brought any of us any luck anyhow, did it?’

  No, no it hadn’t, Jake reflected as he walked on toward restaurant. Or maybe it had, in a strange convoluted way. He was now free of his concerns and had money in his pocket. And maybe, with just the smallest bit of luck, had Cathy to start a new life with.

  It was early evening before they had gotten all of Cathy’s possessions loaded onto the buckboard. Her friends were still at work, and Jake had offered to wait with her until they came home so that she could tell them goodbye, but she had already said her goodbyes at the restaurant.

  ‘Besides, we should get started,’ she told him. ‘We don’t want to be on the trail after nightfall.’

  She was wearing her yellow dress and a yellow bonnet as Jake helped her to step up onto the buckboard. Her eyes were concerned, determined and doubtful at once.

  ‘It’ll be fine, Cathy,’ Jake told her. ‘I’ll make it my business to see that everything is fine for you.’

  She smiled then, and held the smile until he had clambered up and taken the reins to the two-horse team. The buckskin was tethered on behind, now apparently frisky enough for a new adventure.

  Jake held the team up, looking back at the house. Cathy watched him. ‘Jake, what’s holding us up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said with a grin as Chaser darted from the bushes toward the wagon. ‘Come on then, you dumb mutt! It’s time we were leaving.’

  And Jake started the buckboard forward, following the rough trail across the desert, the red dog with the broom of a tail panting happily after them.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Smuggler’s Gulch is a real place used in the late 1800s as described in the novel. It is actually located in Southern California, not Arizona, and has recently been the site of modern smuggling, chiefly of drugs and of illegal aliens from Mexico.

  About the Author

  Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Logan Winters

  Cover design by Michel Vrana

  ISBN: 978-1-4804-8821-2

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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