The horse tried every maneuver to throw Cal off. He porpoised and sunfished; he twisted and turned; he reared on his hind legs, then jumped up on his forelegs; he dipped his head and leaned, a maneuver that had been successful with all previous riders. Cal countered that move just as he told Pearlie he would, by jerking the horse’s head back and kneeing him in the neck on the opposite side.
Unable to lose his rider any other way, Cannonball began galloping around the corral, running close to the fence trying to rake him off. Those who were on the fence had to jump back to get out of the way.
When the horse reached the end of the corral, he leaped over the fence, and continued his bucking out in the street. The spectators hurried out into the street to watch.
Cannonball leaped up onto the front porch of Stacey’s Mercantile Store.
“No!” Stacey shouted, running out into the street in front of his store. “Get him down from there!”
Cannonball twisted and kicked, and when he did, he kicked out one of the front windows of the store. A second kick took out the door and a third kick took out the other window. Then, coming down off the porch, Cannonball hit the pillars, causing the porch roof to collapse.
Cannonball came out into the street and, seeing Stacey, started galloping toward him.
“No!” Stacey shouted again. He leaped to the left just in time to keep from being run down, and he landed face-first in a pile of horse apples. He screamed in anger and frustration as he stood up with gobs of manure sticking to him.
Cannonball ran at full speed to the far end of the street, then came to a sliding stop. Cal stayed on his back.
Everyone watched as horse and rider remained motionless at the far end of the street. Then Cal turned Cannonball around, and they walked back up to the corral at a leisurely pace. When they got back, Cal was sitting sideways on the horse’s back.
“How long has it been?” Cal asked.
“One minute and thirty-seven seconds,” the timer said.
“You owe me two hundred dollars,” Cal said as he slid down. He reached up and patted the horse, which stood calmly beside him.
“I never thought you would be able to stay on,” Stacey said.
“Yeah,” Pete said. “Especially after you loosened the saddle.
“I did not loosen the saddle.”
“Then I guess you did it on your own, huh, Jerry?” Pete asked one of the two wranglers.
“I ... I ...” Jerry began nervously. Then he looked over at Stacey and pointed. “I didn’t do it on my own,” he said. “Mr. Stacey, he told me to do it.”
“You’re fired, Jerry,” Stacey said with an angry growl.
“No need for you to be firin’ me,” Jerry replied. “I quit.” Jerry looked at Cal. “Sorry, fella, I ought’n to have done that. I reckon I was just tryin’ to hang onto my job.”
“No need to apologize,” Cal said. “I won’t be holdin’ onto any hard feelings. I just want my money, that’s all.”
Stacey stared at Cal for a long moment; then, with a loud, audible sigh, he pulled a roll of money from his pocket and counted off two hundred dollars. “Here!” he said angrily. “Here’s your damn money!”
“Hey, Mr. Stacey,” one of the cowboys called out. “Does that bet still hold? I think I could ride ole Cannonball now.”
“You go to hell!” Stacey said gruffly as all the cowboys laughed.
“Four hundred twenty-six dollars,” Pearlie said as he and Cal counted their money that night.
“That ain’t the two thousand Smoke needs to save the ranch,” Cal said.
“Maybe it ain’t,” Pearlie agreed. “But it ain’t no small potatoes either. And it might help him. If nothin’ else, it’ll give ’em a little money to start with, if they have to start all over again.”
“Yeah,” Cal said.
“You’re all right with this, ain’t you, Cal?” Pearlie asked. “I mean, givin’ our money to ’em and all. When you think about it, this is a lot of money to be givin’ away like this. In fact, I don’t know as I’ve ever had that much money on my own before.”
“I know I ain’t,” Cal said.
“Are you goin’ to be able to give it up? ’Cause if you don’t, I don’t think anyone would fault you.”
“I’m goin’ to give it up,” Cal said.
Pearlie smiled, then reached out his hand and took Cal’s hand in his.
“Good man,” he said. “Good man.”
Chapter Thirteen
Smoke was lying on the bunk in the small, hot, and airless cell, listening to the sound of the carpenters at work as they were busily constructing a gallows.
The hammers banged and the saws ripped through the lumber.
“Joe? Hey, Joe, hand me up that two-by-four, will you?”
“You are going to need more than one two-by-four there. Jensen is a big man. Hell, he could fall through the floor and break his neck,” Joe called back.
Smoke heard the exchange, as well as the laughter that followed it.
Turnball stepped up to the cell.
“Sorry ’bout all the noise out there,” Turnball said.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like it’s keeping me awake,” Smoke replied.
Turnball chuckled. “I’ll say this for you. For a man who’s about to be hung, you’ve got a sense of humor. Anyway, your lunch will be here in a few minutes. The jail has a deal with Emma’s Café to furnish meals for the prisoners.”
“Thanks,” Smoke said.
“Oh, and I also have some paper and a pencil here,” Turnball said. “If there’s anyone you’d like to write a letter to, I’ll see to it that it gets mailed.”
“Any chance of sending a telegram?” Smoke asked.
Turnball shook his head. “The line is still down. If you want to send word out to anyone, a letter is the only way you can do it.”
“All right, let me have the paper and pencil,” Smoke said.
Turnball nodded, walked over to his desk and got the paper and pencil, then brought them back and passed them between the bars. Smoke took them, then returned to his bunk and sat down. He lifted the pencil to write, but didn’t begin right away.
He didn’t want to hurry into the letter. He realized that by the time Sally got this letter, he would be dead. Because of that, he needed to think, very carefully, about what he would say.
His lunch came before he started writing, so Smoke ate the ham, fried potatoes, and biscuits while he contemplated what he would say to Sally. Then, with his lunch eaten and the sound of construction still ringing in his ears, he began to write.
My Dearest Sally,
If you are reading this letter, it means I am dead.
That’s a very harsh thing to be telling you, so maybe you should pause for a minute so you can catch your breath.
I know this isn’t the kind of opening sentence you would expect to read in a letter from me, and believe me, it’s not one I wanted to write. But there is no other way to say it, other than to come right out and say it.
I also realize that some explanation is in order so, as well as I can, I will bring you up on just what has happened to me since I left home a week ago.
The trip up from Sugarloaf was a lot more difficult than I expected, as there is still a lot of snow in some of the higher elevations. Coming through Veta Pass, which normally should take only a matter of hours, took two days. Stormy had to break through snow that was up to his chest, and by the time we did get through, I had to give both him and me a pretty long breather.
We did not see another living soul for those two days. And that is bad, because if we had seen anyone else, anyone at all, I probably wouldn’t be in this fix.
It’s time now for me to explain just what kind of fix I am in. I am, as of this writing, sitting in a jail in Etna, Colorado. It seems that the Bank of Etna was robbed on the morning of the sixth of this month. As it happens, on the sixth I did see someone else. But by pure coincidence, and the worst luck, the people I encountered were the very m
en who had robbed the Bank of Etna.
Stormy had picked a stone, and I was in the process of taking it out of his shoe when the six men rode up. I was not expecting anything out of the ordinary from my encounter with them, so I was not nearly as vigilant as I should have been. As a result, I was caught off guard and knocked out.
Sally, I know this was a dumb, you might even say a tenderfoot, thing for me to do. And you know me better than that. You know that, normally, I am much more alert.
I suppose my only excuse is that I was tired from the travel. And to be honest, I wasn’t in the best of spirits, due to the fact that I was on my way to Denver to lease our ranch. That is something I know we needed to do, but it wasn’t something I was looking forward to.
Anyway, thanks to my own dumb poor judgment, I was knocked out. But the story gets even stranger, Sally, because when I came to, I realized that I was wearing the shirt of one of the men who had waylaid me. I didn’t have time to wonder about it, though, because almost from the moment I came to, I was face-to-face with a posse from Etna.
It was then that I found out what the shirt was all about, because the posse, seeing me in that very shirt, assumed that I was one of the ones they were looking for. I was arrested, and taken into town.
I was certain that I would be able to prove my innocence, but because I had not encountered anyone during my time on the trail, I was unable to establish an alibi. The posse had not believed me when they picked me up, and neither did the jury. I was found guilty, not only of the robbery, but of the murder of the banker, a man named Rob Clark.
That brings us back to the opening line of this letter. As a result of the verdict, I was sentenced to death by hanging. And now, as I write this letter, I can hear them building the gallows out in the street.
Putting down the tablet and pencil, Smoke climbed up onto the bunk so he could look out through the high window. He couldn’t actually see the gallows, though as it was now late afternoon, he could see its shadow against the side wall of the apothecary. The men had quit work for the day, but Smoke could tell from the projected shadow that they had completed the base of the gallows.
When Pearlie and Cal rode into Big Rock, Pearlie pointed to a buckboard and team that was parked in front of the telegraph office.
“Isn’t that rig from Sugarloaf?”
“Yes,” Cal said. “Smoke must be sending a telegram.”
“Let’s go surprise him,” Pearlie suggested.
Dismounting alongside the buckboard, Pearlie and Cal stepped into the telegraph office. Rather than surprising Smoke, they were themselves surprised to see Sally there.
“Hello, Miss Sally,” Cal said.
There was a look of concern on Sally’s face when she turned, but that was replaced by a big smile the moment she saw Pearlie and Cal.
“Pearlie! Cal!” she said happily. Opening her arms, she embraced each of them in turn. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you. I am so glad you are back!”
“Where’s Smoke?” Cal said. “We’ve got something for him.”
The smile left Sally’s face to be replaced, once more, by a look of concern.
“I don’t know where he is,” she said. “He is supposed to be in Denver, meeting with a land broker. He was going to send me a telegram to tell me that he had arrived safely, but I haven’t heard anything.”
“Well, maybe the telegraph lines are down,” Pearlie suggested. “You know, this was an awful bad winter.”
“The direct lines are down,” Sally said. “But Cody was able to get a message through by relaying it through Wichita. And If I can get through to Denver that way, you know he can get through to me.”
Pearlie was quiet for a moment, then he nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I reckon if there was a way to send you a telegram, Smoke would figure it out,” he said. “I was just tryin’ to keep you from worryin’ too much, that’s all.”
“You say you got through to Denver?” Cal asked.
“Yes. I sent a telegram to the broker, asking if Smoke had arrived. I’m waiting now for the reply.”
Behind them, they heard the telegraph begin clacking. The telegrapher hurried over to the instrument, sat down in front of it, grabbed the key, then sent something back.
“Cody, is that my telegram?” Sally asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I believe it is,” Cody replied.
The machine began clacking again, and Cody picked up a pencil and started recording the message on a little yellow tablet. The instrument continued for several seconds while Cody wrote; then the machine grew silent.
Once again, Cody put his hand on the key to send a message back. Then, clearing his throat, he tore the page from the tablet, stood up, and brought it over to Sally.
“I wish I had somethin’ better to report, Miss Sally,” Cody said as he handed the message to her.
HAVE NOT SEEN SMOKE JENSEN STOP EXPECTED HIM TWO DAYS AGO STOP WILL HAVE HIM SEND MESSAGE IF HE ARRIVES STOP
“Now I am beginning to get worried,” Sally said.
“You want us to go look for him?” Pearlie asked.
“I don’t want you to go without me,” Sally said. “But I want to give it a couple more days. I would hate to be out looking for him, and not be here to get his telegram when it comes.”
“All right,” Pearlie said.
“Thank you, Cody,” Sally called back to the telegrapher.
“Miss Sally, if anything comes for you in the next day or so, I promise I’ll get it out to your ranch,” Cody said.
“I appreciate that,” Sally said. Then to Pearlie and Cal: “Well, I take it you two are back. Shall we go home?”
“We’re back,” Cal said. “And guess what we brung you.”
“What you brung me?” Sally scolded.
“Uh, what we brought you?”
“That’s better. And it doesn’t matter what you brought me. I’m just happy to see the two of you back where you belong.”
“Four hunnert dollars,” Cal said.
“What?” Sally responded with a gasp, surprised by the comment.
“We brung . . . uh, that is, we brought you four hunnert dollars,” Cal said. “To help save the ranch.”
“Where on earth did you get . . . no, never mind, it doesn’t matter where you got it. However you got it, it’s your money. Please don’t feel any obligation toward Sugarloaf.”
“Miss Sally, you don’t want to hurt our feelings, do you?” Pearlie asked.
“What? No, of course not.”
“Well, then, you must know that we consider Sugarloaf our home too. I know we don’t own any of it, or nothin’ like that. But it is our home nonetheless. And like you said, this here money is our money, which means we can pretty much do with it as we please. Ain’t that right?”
Sally sighed. She wasn’t even going to consider the poor grammar.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s your money to do with as you like. And yes, Sugarloaf certainly is your home.”
“Then, we want to give you this money to help save it.”
“Thank you,” Sally said. “I couldn’t be more touched.”
Smoke did not finish writing the letter the first day. For a while, he considered scrapping the entire letter, but realized that, while he was actually writing, it almost seemed as if he were with Sally. So, late in the afternoon of the second day, he picked up the tablet and continued the letter.
As I am sure you have learned by now, I did not get to Denver to see the broker, so I have not been able to rent out Sugarloaf. Maybe you can make all the arrangements by telegraph. Or maybe it would even be better for you to sell Sugarloaf. You should be able to get a lot more money than we owe on the ranch. Then you could move into town somewhere and live comfortably on the money you would get from the sale.
I know that right now, as you read this letter, money is probably the furthest thing from your mind. But it is one of the foremost things on my mind. If something like this had to happen, I wish it could have happened last year, or even the year befor
e. The ranch was solvent then, and you would not have been as foolish as I was to risk so much on the greedy ambition of growing even larger. My only comfort now is in knowing that you are smart enough to be able to salvage what value there remains of the ranch.
I hope Pearlie and Cal return sometime soon. I think having them around will help you deal with this. Or maybe you will help them deal with it. For some reason, women seem to be stronger than men about such things.
I have been writing this letter for two days now, not because I am having a hard time in writing it, but because while I am writing it, I feel myself closer to you. When Smoke heard the sound of construction halt for the day, he put the letter aside and, once more, climbed up onto his bunk to see what he could see. The sun was low in the west, and as it had done the day before, it projected the shadow of the gallows-in-progress onto the wall across the alley from the jail. Today he could see the base and the steps, and just the beginning of the gibbet.
On the third day, Smoke finished his letter.
Sally, I have faced death many times before, and just as I was not afraid then, I am not afraid now. You cannot spend your life in this magnificent country and not be aware that death is a part of life, or that there is something higher than we are. And because I believe in that higher power, I do not think this is the end. It is only a door from this life into whatever God has in store for me. If there is a balance sheet of my life, I am comfortable with the idea that I will be received into His Glory.
My only regret is that I did not have more time to spend with you. You, Sally, have been the purpose and the love of my life. Know that, even though you may not see me, I will find a way to be with you from now on.
Your loving husband,
Smoke
At about the same time Smoke finished his letter, the hammering and sawing stopped, and when he climbed up on his bunk to look at the shadow against the wall, he could see the entire gallows. The instrument of execution was complete, to include the gibbet and dangling rope. The hangman’s noose was already tied.
Betrayal of the Mountain Man Page 11