by Caleb Rand
Shoeville and Will stood close in the darkness.
‘You and Henri stay with the horses. Me and Latch will go on in,’ Will said quietly.
Shoeville shook his head stubbornly. ‘I’m goin’ with you. Don’t try an’ keep me out o’ this, Will. We’ll have our own fight if you do . . . seriously.’
‘You’re in no shape,’ Will whispered. ‘You nor Henri. For Chris’sake, you’d both be a liability. No disrespect.’
‘The hell with that.’ Shoeville pushed Will away. ‘Me an’ Henri have been sharin’ mescal buttons in case you hadn’t noticed. We won’t be feelin’ much of anythin’ till Mollie’s safe.’
‘Ah, stop your gabbin’,’ Latch said sharply. He pointed towards the Bolas ranch house where the silhouette of a man showed clear against a window blind, as a lamp was lit.
‘They know we’re here . . . must’ve heard somethin’,’ Henri whispered. ‘I’ll calm their horses while you go on in.’ He shook his head at Shoeville. ‘Not yet. Let ’em go. It’s best.’
Most parts of Will’s body stung as the brush scoured him in his dash to the rear of the house. He saw the back wall, a door, windows either side. He glanced around, saw Henri and Shoeville emerge from the bunkhouse, wave their hands for them to go ahead. Then Latch was beside him and they stepped into the enveloping atmosphere of a ranch-house kitchen.
The darkness was intense until their eyes adjusted and objects took on shape and form. They stood very still, taking in the cling of old woodsmoke and grease. They had no way of knowing when Ogden might return, and before they could make a move, a rifle shot cracked out, then another, and glass smashed.
‘They’re comin’ through,’ Deavis shouted. ‘Watch the back door.’
Will took a few steps forward, kicked open the door that led to Ogden’s office. He saw the shadow of a man coming fast towards him, the gleam of a firearm. But Latch pushed him aside as more gunfire flashed in the gloom. He heard Latch gasp as he was hit, saw the running man lower his shoulder in a charge, and bring Latch down.
The gun hands of Deavis and Will moved together and the house rocked with more gunfire. Mollie’s voice shrieked above the noise, the sound of her fists beating wildly against another door.
Will steadied his Colt in a two-handed grip, aimed decisively and pulled the trigger.
Deavis took the bullet in his chest, stumbled as the dark stain spread across the front of his shirt. He half turned, fell against the end of the big desk, gasped and raised his head. His features were warped with pain, sweat gleamed across his forehead. He muttered an oath at Will, moved his gun defiantly and drew back the hammer.
Will fired again and the gunman grunted, buckled into a heap on the floor. He tried to get to his knees, was staring down at his hands as his arms gave way. ‘What’s it to you?’ he mouthed into a fold of the big Navaho rug, then died.
Latch stood up slowly, looked down at the body of the Bolas gunman. ‘Should’ve dealt with beef,’ he grated. ‘Hell, Will. I think I heard some angels sing just then.’
Shoeville came into the room, held up his hand as Latch struck a vesta to light the lamp. ‘Where is she?’ he asked anxiously.
Will turned the latch-lock of the small store room, and opened the door. Mollie almost fell through, almost into the arms of Shoeville. Her hair was loose and tousled, her face drawn with all sorts of alarm.
‘Did they hurt you?’
‘Not hurt, no,’ she replied. ‘I’m all right. But Preston Mower was here. Ogden said he murdered my pa. He shot Turner Foote, too.’
Will saw the dismay in Mollie’s eyes. ‘Where did Ogden go?’ he asked.
‘They’re driving my beef into Mower’s pens. Him and his crew.’
‘Mower, Ogden and Foote,’ Shoeville’s voice rasped with understanding and anger. ‘That’s them . . . the Bruno Ogden Land and Stock Company.’
‘Maybe. But we’ve to prove it,’ Will murmured.
‘We will,’ Shoeville said. He looked at the desk, pulled out the drawers. ‘It’ll be here somewhere. There’s got to be papers an’ documents.’ He tried the drawer above the knee-hole but it was locked. He cursed, stood back, raised his foot and kicked at the handle. The drawer sat firm and he cursed again before shooting the lock.
Sitting in Ogden’s chair he pulled the lamp towards him and leafed through packets and papers. The air was heavy and hot, pungent with low, curling smoke. He took off his hat and flung it down, pulled the crook of his arm across his face. He glanced at the tally sheets, his frustration and anger rising.
Minutes passed before he found the legal document neatly folded inside a Bolas accounts transaction book. He read slowly, looked up at Mollie, his eyes expressing incredulity.
‘Do you know Marge Highgate’s writing?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I think so. What’s that to do with anything . . . all this?’ Immediately, Mollie wanted to yell. An explosion of feeling, like a statement of the obvious. ‘Why do you ask, Ben?’ She repeated.
‘Because, according to what’s here, she owns a quarter share of the Bolas company. She squares the circle.’
Chapter 21
Marge Highgate pushed open the gate in the low picket fence and walked to her porch. She stood a moment, half turned and looked thoughtfully towards the Todo Mercantile. There was something going on with Preston Mower that she couldn’t put a finger on, and it worried her some. Half concealed by the rambling honeysuckle, she sat in the rocker and watched the street. Presaging the downpour, a few drops of rain fell, ruffled the dust in tiny craters.
Minutes later, she stared at the rain-driven night. The rocking got slower, stopping altogether as her rambling thoughts became unexpectedly fearful. There was something that passed between Mower and Ogden she didn’t understand . . . something Mower refused to talk about. And she wondered if it was happenstance that the trader was at once so panicky.
Ben Shoeville’s out there, she thought. Him and three others. But it’s not that . . . not Bluestem he’s scared of.
She manoeuvred her chair back out of the wet, her mind still on Mower. Then it came to her. Slow at first, just an undertone. Then it held, and started to build. Turner Foote’s no longer with us. And soon the Bruno Ogden Land and Stock Company will be in the hands of one man . . . will have grown into its name.
Marge cursed at the thought and stood up. A real gully washer was now sweeping the town. Big teardrops of rain splattered the growing channels and pools of mud. A flash fork of lightning was closely followed by a crash of thunder that shook the house. It pressed and rattled the windows, and Marge cursed again.
Then there was another kind of trembling in the ground. Something was approaching across the range, and Marge recognized the sound of a running cattle herd. Animals frightened by nature’s elements sounded like they were headed straight for White Mesa.
Now Marge shaped oaths that were more explicable, more fulsome. She heard crazy barking of the town’s pariah dogs, assessed the fearful beeves to have already reached the ox-wagon camp on the outskirts of town.
She went into the house and found her slicker. In the parlour, she opened a cabinet, took out a derringer pistol. The weapon was blunt-nosed, carried a single .38 bullet and was effective for up close and personal work. She hurried back out into the night, extinguished the porch lamp and bowed her head against the slanting rain.
Approaching Todo Mercantile, Marge saw a horse she recognized, watched for a moment before stepping behind the cornerpost of the store’s freighter landing. When the sorrel came closer she saw the rider was Bruno Ogden, and had to hold back from reacting. Then there were sounds from inside the mercantile and Mower pushed open the big screen door.
‘Are they here?’ Ogden called out.
‘Who?’ Mower answered, pushing the door shut.
‘Will Chalk . . . Shoeville . . . any of them. Who do you think?’ Ogden reined in beside the raised boardwalk, the water dripping and sliding from his hat and slicker.
Mowe
r stared at him speechless. The rumbling thunder crashed around the town, near drowning the gunfire of the Bolas riders as they contained the running herd.
Ogden stepped down into the mud and hitched his sorrel, oblivious to the storm and Mower’s nervousness. He ducked under the rail and stepped up to the trader. ‘You must’ve heard,’ he said.
Mower stood with his back to his store, gun hanging limply from his weak fingers.
‘You’re like one of them three goddamn monkeys, Mower,’ Ogden rasped. ‘You’ve got a gun in your hand, for Chris’sake. You must be expecting something to happen. Chalk and Shoeville took Mollie Broad. They busted my spread, then rode on to the drive, and set it to flight. The storm did the rest.’
‘I told you not to bring the herd to my pens.’ Mower’s voice was bitter and rash. For a moment he forgot Ogden, was concerned solely for his own immediate wellbeing.
‘Well, it’s happened,’ Ogden stated. ‘It would take more’n any General Jackson to stop them now. Look there.’
Pouring from the creek hollow, near to a thousand steers were on a lumbering run. The herd wasn’t yet stampeding, but it filled the breadth of the street, bringing down hitch-rails, veranda uprights and overhangs, veering left and right into every path and alleyway.
‘Keep away from here.’ Mower raised his gun, aimed it at what appeared to be the leading beeves. But Ogden struck his arm away, shoved the trader back to the wall.
‘Save it. You’re going to need all the ammo you’ve got when Chalk and Shoeville get here,’ he rasped. ‘After you’ve tried to talk yourself out of your past doings.’
Squeezed in between a side wall and two big flour barrels, Marge tried to hear what Mower and Ogden were saying to each other. The first bunch of beeves had lumbered past and the shortest lull followed.
‘You’re a damn fool to come lookin’ for trouble if the Broad girl’s free of Bolas,’ Mower said.
‘Yeah? She was a lot goddamn safer with me than her father was with you,’ Ogden retorted sharply. ‘He was found face down with a bullet in his back. Your bullet, Mower.’
Marge heard the door open, had a look to see the two men walking into the store. She came out of hiding as the main body of cattle, with their wet, shaggy heads lowered, were milling into a tighter circle. Using a clap of thunder for cover she hurried inside the store, silently kneeled behind the counter. With Turner Foote dead, together with his valuable cover of the law, a feeling of uncertainty welled up in her. Now, she thought she had somehow been outsmarted.
It became obvious as she watched the slant of persistent rain through the window, that she was through in White Mesa. She had been for many years, arguably since Elmer Broad’s death, with a chunk of hatred and self-pity to feed off. She had yearned for close, personal company, but the door to that had long been banged shut. Banged shut, and bolted by Preston Mower and his rifle.
From underneath her slicker, Marge eased back the hammer of the pocket pistol and reached for the mercantile office’s door knob. Mower was sitting at his desk and Ogden was standing by the window. Curiously enough, Marge felt nothing but a stony emptiness at the sight of them.
Ogden considered Marge with guarded curiosity as he stepped back into the room. He glanced at Mower, who tensed like a coiled rattler. ‘Hah, the men need a gather, almost as much as those goddamn beeves. I’ll go see to it,’ he said. He moved towards the door, halted when Marge held up her hand.
‘No, you won’t.’ With a faint smile of contempt across her mouth, Marge pushed back the hood of her slicker, revealed pale, drawn features. ‘You stay right here. Bolas is having its last board meeting.’
In the small office, the tension was stretched tight. Mower inched back in his chair, sized Marge as someone about to need a coffin. But her look slashed him like a whip. He looked to Ogden for help, saw there was none coming.
‘You’re a greenhorn in this neck of the woods, Mower,’ Marge continued. ‘The Highgates and the Broads fought just about anything that could move for this land. That was in the days when your store would’ve been Davy Crockett’s privy.’
Mower peered at Marge across the light of the lamp. His right hand moved to rest beside the gun belt on the desk. ‘Spare us the history, sister,’ he returned. ‘What are we goin’ to do?’
‘Do? We?’ There was open scorn in her voice now. ‘If you’re still breathing at first light, you’d best be doing it from the other side of the Llano.’
A dark, angry flush crept across the trader’s face. Marge’s forewarning had cut deep. He knew he was holding the weakest hand, albeit the one he had dealt himself. ‘Bluestem’s got a lynchin’ planned. Tonight,’ he offered.
‘Well, they can go right ahead. They can hang the man who back-shot Sheriff Foote. If that satisfies them,’ Marge said flatly.
‘An’ what would satisfy you?’ Mower asked. But his eyes flicked to Ogden.
‘Seeing you on the end of the rope.’
Mower didn’t move, but his hand was close to the holstered Colt and his fingers flinched. ‘Take it easy, Marge. We’re all in trouble here,’ he said. ‘Something’s gone wrong, an’ if we don’t stick together, we could all hang.’
‘Like hell we could,’ Marge snapped. ‘The best they can prove against me is a part share in Bolas. I’m no murderer. Not yet.’
The two men then saw Marge had a gun in her hand, that it was pointed directly at Mower’s face.
‘But by all that’s legal, I’m soon going to be,’ she continued, her voice calmer, cooler. She leaned across the desk top, water dripping from her glistening chin, tendrils of hair against the sides of her face. ‘You shot dead Elmer Broad. It’s for that I’m going to kill you, nothing else,’ she said. ‘I’d like to have done it a long time ago . . . but I never knew until now. Not really.’
Mower twisted awkwardly, pushing himself away from the desk. In a kill-or-be-killed moment he grasped his Colt, hooked back the hammer.
Marge Highgate’s gun exploded. The bullet struck Mower between the eyes, tearing a neat hole before taking out a lot more at the back.
Mower pulled the trigger as his head was hammered backwards. But he was dead long before he hit the ground, his body half trapped beneath his own big chair.
Marge stood poker-faced, her hand dropping to her side. ‘When I told my ma I was headed out west, she told me I’d probably come to a bad end,’ she said, her voice now thick with emotion. ‘She was nearly right.’
Ogden was breathing deep, staring unfocused down at Mower. ‘He was a murderous son-of-a-bitch, Marge. Good job you were facing him,’ he said, as if justifying the action.
Marge walked slowly across the room, lowered herself into a chair. She blinked back reality, let her eyes close as she listened to the shooting and the cattle bawling, dogs barking in the street.
The outer door opened and slammed shut. Ogden drew his Colt, from his shoulder holster, levelled it across the office.
Copper John appeared in the doorway, his clothing caked with mud, watery blood streaming thinly across his face. He stared at the body of Mower, then at Marge, then at Ogden and the nickel-plated Colt.
‘What the hell happened here?’ he breathed.
Chapter 22
The lamplight from the Bello Hotel floated and flickered across White Mesa. The rain-lashed main street was empty now, except for the debris left by the wild running herd.
The storm had transformed the nearby creek into a torrent of water that now washed across its bankside boulders. A few wagoners who had been sheltering beside the rough-hewn bridge drew aside, let the four horsemen advance unhindered on the town road.
‘Might be difficult, but no shooting until we get real close,’ Will said. ‘And remember, they’re hard men . . . probably won’t let us fire twice.’ He looked at Mollie Broad and shook his head. ‘You’re staying here, boss lady . . . ma’am.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Mollie asked, her concern mainly for her ramrod, Ben Shoeville.
�
��Look for Ogden and Mower. What else?’ he said. With a wave of his hand he indicated that the other three cover any movement in the main street.
As they neared the mercantile, a flash of lightning lit the townscape, revealing three riders advancing towards them.
One of the Bolas men urged his mount ahead of the others. ‘Where are you fellers goin’? An’ who are you?’ he called out.
‘We’re Bluestem,’ Shoeville shouted back. ‘As if you didn’t know.’
‘You’re not wanted here. We’ve orders to shoot you,’ the Bolas rider warned.
Shoeville gave a derisory snort and put his horse straight at the man. He drew his Colt, swung the long barrel at the first slickered rider.
Will and Latch sprang their horses to the left and right of the group and started shooting. It was an army cavalry tactic, calculated to demoralize and disorientate as much as kill. Horses squealed and quaked, reared in fear. A gleaming dark bay slipped in the mud, fell to its knees before rolling and disabling its rider.
Will saw Shoeville firing as he knee’d his horse in a tight circle. A Bolas gunman was returning intense fire, but he was the one who fell. He crumpled forwards, then toppled sideways down to the ooze of mud. Shoeville lost control of his own horse, and they both pitched forwards threshing, gasping breath in the pelter of rain.
Henri rode in, shouted something to his horse, before swinging down from the saddle. He grabbed Shoeville’s leg, dragging him free of the stirrups, and the dying animal. He crouched down close to his wounded partner, cursing. ‘Come on, bring your Bolas guns,’ he yelled. ‘We’re down here waitin’ for you.’
Will looked back, saw the blurred shape of Mollie urging her mount up from the bridge. Ahead, at the Todo Mercantile, the two horses were stamping, nervously shoving each other against their hitches.
‘Ogden’s inside,’ he warned as Latch rode up beside him. ‘Reckon they’ll know we’re here.’ He could see a side window, a weak rectangle of light. ‘Like moths to a flame,’ he added with a grim smile.