North of Forsaken

by Matthew P. Mayo

  He looked to be about Jack’s age, which is to say somewhere north of fifty, but how far I had no idea. He was a man used to work. He also wore no guns. But he did have a sizable coil of hemp rope thonged from his saddle horn, riding where a rifle scabbard would be.

  Before I could beat Jack to a greeting—I have heard his greetings to flint-eyed strangers, and they are rarely words a fellow wants to hear—the brawny little boss man spoke up.

  “I’m Scribley. You’re on my land.”

  “It’s a road, ain’t it?” said Jack. I rolled my eyes, wishing his dander wasn’t up.

  “A road I built. I own the valley.”

  “You own the valley,” echoed Thomas. I gave him a quick, hard stare but he had that blank look he’d worn since we spoke of the girl.

  “Well, Mister Scribley,” I said, forcing a smile and making certain my own hand was positioned near my revolver. “That’s a convenient coincidence, as we are looking to ride through this valley. Now, if this is a toll road, that’s a different matter. We’ll gladly pay for the privilege.”

  “There will be no smooth talk.”

  He flicked his gaze from Jack to me as he spoke. He’d already guessed Thomas was no threat.

  “You are trespassers at a time when the tally of horses on my ranch comes up short. Then we hear shots? That adds up to vermin in my midst. You are but horse-thieving trespassers to me.”

  “Now you hang on there, mister,” I growled. “You have the wrong end of the stick.”

  He ignored me and continued talking in that hard, steel-onstone voice. “And since I own this land, I am the law of this land. And as the law I mete justice as I see fit. You will be hung where you stand.”

  There was a moment of genuine silence, as if someone had blasphemed in the midst of a packed church. I know I heard the man correctly, but something in my mind howled with laughter. Had to be a joke. But no, those eyes and that mouth looked as though they’d never uttered a funny word and hadn’t chosen this moment to begin.

  “You son of a bitch!” That was Jack’s preferred method of breaking the silence.

  The rancher ignored him, reached for his coil of rope. “Who’s first? I have work to do and I only have one rope. You’ll take turns.”

  “Mister, if you think I’m going to get strung up by some two-bit strawboss rancher, you got a buildup of wax in your head. You better clean it right quick, ’cause I have strong words to say to you.” Jack stood in his stirrups, his blotchy beard and hair framed a blazing red face and a mouth baring teeth a wolverine would be proud to own.

  Something changed, the rancher’s right eye twitched and his cheek muscles bunched as if he was chewing on something. “Boys,” he said low. And faster than I would have guessed, those three ranch hands flanking the old chisel-headed dog shucked their weapons. Two palmed revolvers, while the one closest to me worked on whipping a carbine free of its scabbard so clean you would have thought he’d practiced it for a month for this moment. Maybe he had.

  The only advantage I had was my distance from Thomas and Jack. Jack knew this and set up a quick diversion, heeling the mule into a fluster of stomping toward the side of the road. Two of the three armed men bore down on him. I wasn’t worried about Jack or Thomas, who sat his horse, brows knitted as if he could not put a name to a face. I was only worried about the third man, he of the half-shucked rifle, who hadn’t yet taken his eyes off me.

  My revolver was only at half cock and though he shook his head slowly in warning, intimating that his rifle would do the speaking, he hadn’t finished the process of slicking it out of the scabbard. He should have gone for his revolver.

  I leaned wide to my right, thumbed that hammer back all the way, and drummed heels into Tiny Boy’s ribs. He hates that and reacted with his usual vim—a burst of forward indignation. I used the moment to rake that whelp off his horse. He tried to shout but I caught him in the throat and it came out as a strangled gag. His rifle spun free of his grasp and clunked to the roadway dirt.

  I didn’t slow down, trusting that Jack would keep the festivities percolating. Oddly enough I heard no shots, but didn’t have time to ponder it. I scooted Tiny Boy forward, jerked him in line right behind Scribley before the man deciphered a move.

  When he did, it was to my advantage, for he angled his horse sideways between me and his “boys,” the worst spot for him to have bumbled into.

  I leveled the revolver steady on him, the snout but two feet from his hard head. There was not a drop of fear on his face. The only thing working were those jaw muscles and those hair-filled nostrils flexing in counterpoint with his slow, even breaths.

  I chanced the quickest of glances at Jack and Thomas. Jack did as I hoped—he sacrificed his urge to fight for the chance I’d taken to get the drop on the boss. It worked, though I knew Jack, sitting on his horse with his hands up above his head, was one rankled old dog.

  “You’re a hard man, Mister Scribley,” I said in a low growl, hoping my words would offend him. They didn’t. He nodded and that jaw muscle bunched, let go, bunched again, as if he were chewing his terse words before expelling them. I waited.

  The man I’d knocked to the ground had gotten a leg up and over his gasping. I heard the first breaths sucking back into his throat. I felt bad about it for a second or two. It’s possible I hit him harder than I needed to. I tend to do that.

  “I have earned it. Earned the right to be.”

  “I’m in no position to argue that. But to judge people before you hear them out? Based on, oh, let’s see . . . no evidence? That’s raw, mister. I don’t believe I’ve ever stooped that low. Yet.”

  More jaw bunching. “You looking for a commendation?”

  I chose to think that was his attempt at humor. I smiled. “No, not yet, anyway. But I am willing to turn you loose in exchange for a favor.”

  “Let me guess what that might be.”

  “You give us a listen.”

  “What about my men?”

  “Tell them to back off. If you don’t like what we have to say, we all agree to fill each other full of holes.”

  “Naw, boy,” shouted Jack. “I’d rather take these two striplings on right here, right now!”

  Nobody responded to Jack, which I am certain riled him further. If he were a rooster, all his feathers would be stuck out straight.

  Rancher Scribley’s jaw muscles worked double time. “All right, then.”

  It sounded like an admission of defeat. I had a feeling this man never backed down, never turned away until whatever he jousted with was dead or in agreement with him. I also thought he was honest, if a few degrees off true.

  I nodded. “I’ll turn you loose. You tell your men to do the same with my friends, then you get back on your end of the road, keep the guns holstered, and we’ll palaver.”

  “Yeh.” And he did.

  As the tense moment loosened, I watched the eyes, the faces of his men. It was of interest to me that, to a man—even the one I’d worked over—I saw some measure of relief there, as if they had grown weary of Scribley’s hardness and were glad of the reprieve. I don’t believe I thought wishfully.

  “Now,” I said, once we were all assembled much the same as we had been before the silly fracas. “Where were we?”

  The rancher wasted no time. He nodded toward me. “Speak your piece.”

  I was tempted to smile, but as I was certain to be the only one who found a vein of humor in this, I tamped it down and cleared my throat, but Thomas stomped all over my words.

  “It’s all my fault. I caused the whole cursed mess.”

  Jack and I looked at him in surprise. Thomas hadn’t uttered six words since we rescued him and now he spoke fast, his voice trembling. With eyes tearful and wide, he looked at no one in particular, but at all of us, then the ground, the sky, the trees, back to us. He didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but enough to get the story out. He drifted from mention of the deed to a ranch to his arrival in the town of Forsaken. At that, one o
f Scribley’s men sneered.

  “Forsaken’s a hole.” It was the one with the sore throat. His voice came out as a wheeze.

  Anyone who’s been to Forsaken would agree with him, but his boss cut him off with a glance. The man reddened and rubbed his throat, his other hand rested atop his saddle horn.

  “What were you doing in Forsaken, boy?” said Scribley.

  “On my way to my ranch. That’s where I bumped into Scorfano.”

  “Who?”

  Thomas pointed at me. His hand shook and his bottom lip followed suit. I felt as if I was at the receiving end of an accusation.

  “We knew each other when we were younger.”

  Scribley nodded. That’s when Jack, who had been twisting in his saddle and harrumphing and snorting like an old left-behind coon hound, reached his snapping point.

  “Now, see here, this ain’t getting us nowhere. Mister fancyranch-man, you and your boys ain’t got no call to detain us! We’re passing through.”

  “Jack,” I said, hoping to prevent the coming trainwreck, but Scribley surprised us all and held up a hand.

  “Man’s right.” He closed his eyes and pinched between his eyes. “I feel about as tired as you three fellas look, and that’s saying something. If you were lynching material you would have made more sense by now. Come on up to the house and we’ll see if we can’t sort the chaff from the wheat over a bowl of hot stew.”

  And to prove his sincerity, Mr. Scribley turned his horse and waited for his three men to do the same. They all rode ahead of us on up the lane.

  At best we’d reached the noon hour, and already the day had turned into one of the strangest I’d experienced in a long, long while. And it kept heading on the same course.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We were a tense and suspicious lot as we rode toward Scribley’s place. Jack and I never swapped so many looks at each other’s homely maws as we did on that few-mile ride. Were we riding into an ambush? Why the sudden turnabout on the rancher’s part? And why weren’t we getting the cold stare from his ranch hands as we rode?

  Thomas had resumed his slumped-in-the-saddle pose, and didn’t seem capable of stitching together words to form a sentence. I left him alone, but kept an eye on him. I was hesitant to dwell on what might have happened to him while he was in the hands of those two oddballs.

  I also kept a sightline open behind us, difficult to do considering the road wound up and down, left and right through the upper edge of the valley. I saw no sign of anyone following. I was fairly convinced there would be no one back trailing us other than the two folks we’d confronted in the cabin. The woman, from what I’d seen, was the one who required watching. I guessed it was more the man who was a drunkard. Someone was—that table riddled with booze bottles didn’t get that way by itself.

  No matter, they didn’t seem to have hired guns in their employ. So after a mile, while I didn’t abandon backward glances, I concentrated my thinking, such as my ill-fed brain would allow, on the curious rascals ahead of us.

  The landscape opened as we rode, not unexpected should Scribley’s boasts bear more teeth. Below and to our left coursed the river, and to our right, climbing gently upward to the rocky slopes of the Bitterroots, raw woods gave way to stubbled pasture. Each side of the road opened to well-groomed meadows speckled with the dried heads and rattly stalks of wildflowers and buff grass.

  As we walked at a steady clip toward what we assumed was the ranch proper, those meadows tapered down to well-cropped pastures. Soon, those pastures were dotted with horses, finer horses I’d not seen all at one ranch. Buckskins, bays, Palouses, paints, and more, all well-fleshed and so handsome. Tiny Boy thought so, too. He chortled his approval, raising the heads of a number of stallions fenced away from the mares.

  There were cattle as well, but horses were the main job here, that was plain to see. The cattle, though, were as well tended as the horses. Red and white in color—Herefords, I believe.

  We worked our way past yet another curve and there sat Scribley’s ranch house. The building itself was in construction not unlike the home at the previous ranch. But it was somehow cozier seeming, a point I found at odds with the demeanor of the man who lived there.

  While we were still a short distance from the house Jack rode closer to me. I leaned over and listened.

  “What say we cut bait and get the hell out of here? I don’t trust that hothead any more than I do a hydrophoby polecat! Why, at any moment he’s liable to whistle a new tune and unfurl his rope again.”

  I couldn’t disagree with him, but I got the feeling the rancher was over his initial surliness. And I wanted to know more about the neighboring ranch. It seemed as if this man, with all the increasing evidence of his tidiness and efficient ways, had more than a passing connection to it.

  “Aren’t you curious about this Scribley fellow at all?” I asked Jack.

  He looked at me as if I had one too many heads. “Nah. Seen his type before. He’s a hard man in a hard country. Likely a few bad hands were dealt his way, now he’s soured on the whole world. Blaming everyone for his troubles. All except maybe the person he needs to blame the most—himself.”

  “How’d you get so insightful, Jack?”

  “Comes from not riding into fool situations.” We rode in silence another few steps, eyeing the ranch buildings, and watching the backs of our former captors. I glanced at Thomas, found him the same, silent and dazed, as he had been minutes before. Maybe Jack was right, could be we were riding into a death trap.

  Despite my hopes for a peaceable outcome, Jack and I kept our sidearms at the ready.

  We rode by a large barn and the three helpers split off, angling toward a paddock beside it. They kept their backs to us and didn’t appear threatening.

  Now it was us and the rancher. What were his intentions? He rode right up to the hitch rail before the house and swung down stiffly. He still didn’t look at, nor address us. We sat our mounts, Jack angling to take in the entire yard should the hands set upon us in ambush. None came.

  Finally Scribley rested a hand on the near stirrup and looked up at us. “You have the right to be skittish around me, I understand that. But I won’t be threatening any of you with the rope, nor with anything else, for that matter.”

  None of us moved.

  He sighed. “I suspect it won’t help much if I were to tell you that once I change my mind I do not change it back. Anyway, it’s time for hot stew.”

  With that he walked up the four broad steps leading to his wide front settin’ porch and waited at the top. I made the first move and nudged Tiny Boy over to the rail. As a small kindness to the rancher, I tied him well away from the man’s own horse. Tiny can be testy with new acquaintances.

  I walked over and led Thomas’s mount to the rail. Finally, Jack, who had also been leading the bay, dismounted and made his way over, one hand on the revolver wedged in his waist sash, one leading his mule. He looked as excited to be there as a dance-hall girl in a house of worship.

  Speaking of buildings, the cabin was a sumptuous-looking affair, long and low, too shaded for my tastes by the wide porch, but with plenty of windows. A trait shared with the other place. The interior was warm, snug, and well appointed. The honeyed-wood of the interior was filled with comfortable chairs and all manner of richly carved sticks of furniture not made on the premises—unless the surly rancher happened to be an Old World craftsman.

  As to Scribley, he went about stoking the stove and thumping a wooden spoon on the hot rim of a big cast-iron pot. The vessel soon began to give off the unmistakable warm smells of home cooking. And my ample gut gave off its own response by way of grizz-cub growlings. Jack’s followed suit. Pretty soon it sounded as if our paunches were fighting it out in a cinched feed sack.

  If Scribley heard, he made no mention. Though I fancy I saw one corner of his tight-set mouth twitch. The bud of a smile? Not impossible, I’d like to believe. He directed us to a soapstone sink with a hand pump, and set out a
stack of clean hand towels. Then, again as soundlessly, he directed us over to his table. We all sat near one end, closest to the big cast-iron stove, and he dished out some of the tastiest venison stew I have ever had. By the way he tucked in with his customary vigor, I could tell Jack enjoyed it, too.

  Before we commenced, I paused, thinking for certain that the rancher was going to bow in prayer. He did not and I found this curious. I had him pegged as a religious sort. But then again, he might well be, in his own way.

  I consider myself spiritual, though not necessarily enamored of a particular church or persuasion. The out-of-doors is my church and the amazing sights and smells and sounds I experience as I travel are proof enough to me that something larger than me exists.

  I tend to keep all this to myself because I have no desire to have religion foisted on me by others. I imagine a fair lot of other folks feel the same way. In fact, a thoughtful relationship with the deepest part of themselves is about as true as a man or a woman can get in life.

  For some that takes the form of religion, for others, the quiet calm of a mountain meadow as the morning sun steams off a scrim of thick dew.

  As I ate I glanced across the table at Thomas. The boy was troubling me. He had been acting strange for far too long. Had they hit him in the head and dizzied him up? That would certainly account for his odd, quiet demeanor. Though more than likely it was his suspicions of what had befallen the girl.

  When we’d plowed through a bowl of stew in silence, the man ladled out a second helping for all, then sat down. He rested his forearms against the edge of the table and looked not at us but up past the hanging oil lamp toward the low squared beams of the ceiling.

  “As I mentioned, my name is Scribley, Clement Scribley. I am a bachelor. I came to this valley nearly twenty years ago, though I was not alone.” He spooned up a bit of stew, chewed, swallowed. It was plain he would continue, and he did.

  “I paid a terrible cost to get here. I am the last of three brothers, the only Scribleys left after the foul war. We brothers were determined to establish a ranch and prosper. To begin anew with families of our own.” The earlier firmness of his voice was now tinged with a slight waver.