Rogue Law

by Paul Lederer

  Glancing my way, he could see nothing but the sorrel, my eyes and the muzzle of the Winchester leveled at him.

  ‘I’m just having fun, Lang,’ Cheyenne Baker said, with a laugh that had no fun in it.

  ‘You won’t be in about three seconds, Cheyenne. They tell me that dead is no fun at all.’

  You wouldn’t—’ Cheyenne sputtered, but he was not so sure that I wouldn’t. I wasn’t so sure that I wouldn’t. With some grumbling, a lot of cursing and a few hate-filled backward glances, the three men sauntered away, moving off slowly to show me that they weren’t really afraid. The front sight of my Winchester followed them down the street until they crossed and entered the New Amsterdam again. Matti stood watching the episode with a veneer of amusement that didn’t quite mask her apprehension.

  ‘Rough town,’ she said finally.

  ‘Too rough for you,’ I said, shoving my rifle roughly back into its scabbard. ‘If I were you I’d think about taking the next coach back toward San Francisco.’

  Her look said, ‘You’re not me,’ and she sashayed down the rest of the block, entering the courthouse. I hitched my horses again, glanced at the saloons across the street and followed her inside.

  We sat together on a wooden bench, waiting for the clerk, Nathan Hanson, to come back from wherever he had gone, unspeaking for minutes, Matti thoughtfully twirling her parasol on its ferrule. Eventually, glancing at me, she said, ‘I knew it! You do have what it takes to be the town marshal.’ When my expression remained blank, she explained, ‘The way you backed those three toughs down.’

  ‘What brings that thought up?’

  ‘You will be needing a job, won’t you? Now that you no longer have a ranch. You might want to reconsider being the marshal here.’

  My angry response did not rise to my lips.

  ‘Were you protecting me?’ she asked, pursuing the matter. ‘Or was it that you think those men killed your friend?’

  ‘I don’t like them, that’s all,’ I said, glancing up as Hanson bustled in, banged the door closed and indicated that he would be with us shortly.

  ‘I think it was a little of each,’ Matti went on, wearing out the subject. ‘You must have thought it over and regretted your decision not to take the opportunity to avenge your friend’s murder.’

  ‘When did I ever say that I wouldn’t?’

  ‘Well, you refused to wear a badge!’

  ‘One thing has nothing to do with the other. I won’t wear a badge for a bunch of people whose only interest is keeping themselves safe and comfortable while they’re in bed with the very crowd that is the cause of their trouble.

  ‘As for taking revenge for Les’s murder, that’s a different story,’ I told her.

  Nathan Hanson, his thin silver hair slicked back, bespectacled eyes eager, beckoned to us from behind his polished counter. ‘I’m ready for you now,’ he said, ‘Who’s first, or…?’

  ‘We are together,’ Matti said regretfully. Her human side was again submerged beneath her businesslike exterior. She rose and walked to the counter. I followed. From the little reticule she had been wearing around her wrist, she withdrew what appeared to be a deed – old, much-folded, yellow.

  ‘I want this authenticated. I wish to see the county plat of this property. I believe it is on page 44B of your map book.’

  ‘Let’s look at the map first,’ the clerk said, placing the deed aside. He pulled down a large blue-bound map book from the shelf and opened it … to page 44B where the Whipsaw Creek range was limned in minute detail with precisely drawn black lines of ink. Every dry wash, rise, canyon and hump of earth was meticulously marked out there. Whoever had drawn the map was a man who knew his business and was obsessed with detail. From it I could almost visualize the country as it actually lay.

  ‘Now, for this,’ the clerk was saying as he unfolded the yellow deed Matti had brought along. ‘What was it you wished to know, exactly?’ he asked, thumbing his spectacles higher up the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Just if that is the property recorded on this deed,’ Matti said, her fmgertip thumping the yellowed document, ‘and if the deed is absolutely legal and authentic.’

  The little man’s ears went up as he concentrated. He bent lower over the deed, flicked at a seal with his fingernail, glanced at me and then at Matti and answered, ‘Yes.’ he concluded. ‘And yes.’

  The shooting began in the street before I could snatch up the deed and examine it for myself.

  TWO

  ‘Durn them!’ the county clerk shouted, as he dove for the floor behind the counter. I grabbed Matti by the shoulder and took her to the floor with me as two shots and then another two rang out from in front of or near the New Amsterdam Saloon. We landed roughly. Matti complained in words that were muffled by her position, then held still as I forced her to stay down. After a few minutes of silence, we all rose, dusting ourselves off.

  ‘Is this going to be an everyday thing?’ the clerk demanded of no one in particular. ‘We need some law in this town.’

  ‘There’s an opening,’ Matti said.

  I had eased over to the curtained window, but peering out I could see no damage done. ‘I guess some of the boys just wanted to see if their guns still worked,’ I commented, letting the curtain fall back into place.

  ‘It’s a hell town,’ the clerk said without real passion. ‘I’m going to request that my office be moved to a safer location.’ From the way he said it I decided that it was an often-repeated complaint. If Matti had been shaken, she showed no signs of it now. It was back to business.

  ‘Then everything is in order,’ she said to the clerk. ‘That is the property referred to on the deed and the deed is legal. The land is legally mine.’

  The clerk looked again at the deed and nodded. ‘If your name is Martha Jane Ullman.’

  ‘It is,’ Matti said, reclaiming the deed. I reached for it, but she folded it and put it way in her reticule before I could glance at it. The clerk was scratching his head.

  ‘Ullman? No relation to Hangdog Ullman?’

  ‘Yes,’ Matti replied. ‘He was my uncle.’

  ‘You don’t say!’ the clerk smiled. ‘I recall old Hangdog—’

  I interrupted. There was heat rising to my face now. I wanted answers and I intended to get them. Something in my eyes must have spooked the clerk a little, for he glanced once at me and then gave me his full attention. I leaned across the counter, fists braced against the dark wood and spoke carefully and slowly to him.

  ‘That land is mine,’ I said between my teeth. ‘I have the deed at home under a floorboard, but it was registered here.’

  ‘That was wise, Mr Lang.’

  ‘It’s got a county seal stamped on it. Done by this office. When I bought that land from Henry Trent I had it witnessed by two other parties.’

  ‘That was also wise,’ the clerk said. Matti had edged away, not because she was worried about anything, but because she seemed to believe that her business had been completed and everything else was irrelevant. I caught a glimpse of her once, out of the corner of my eye. She seemed to be silently whistling a tune. The clerk was speaking:

  ‘Before the deed was transferred, you did, of course, have a title search done?’ he asked.

  ‘A title search? No I did not.’

  ‘That, Mr Lang, was unwise,’ the clerk said, shaking his head sorrowfully.

  ‘I had the deed!’

  ‘More than one deed can be printed,’ the clerk pointed out. ‘As one who has been forced to deal frequently with disputed mining claims, I can tell you—’

  ‘I know what I’m saying!’ I said, containing my anger only with difficulty. ‘Henry Trent held that land for a long time. I got the deed directly from him. I paid him one hundred and fifty dollars in gold money for that property.’

  ‘So did someone else, it seems,’ the clerk said. He removed his spectacles to clean them on his handkerchief. ‘This is not infrequent, as I was about to point out—’

  ‘There
are witnesses!’

  ‘You should bring Henry Trent here. A good lawyer could recover your money,’ the clerk suggested.

  ‘Henry Trent is dead!’

  ‘Henry Trent sold that property to my Uncle Hangdog,’ Matt said unhelpfully. ‘Hangdog and Trent had the deed notarized and secured in Santa Fe. This was years before you thought that you had purchased the land. You were bilked. A title search would have shown you that your deed was no good.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ I said. She flinched a little as I raised my voice but soon got back to her whistling.

  ‘All the evidence,’ the clerk told me, ‘bolsters the lady’s position. The land seems to be hers.’

  ‘You’re crazy too,’ I said, not so loudly as before. ‘I even have a brand registered to the land.’

  ‘You don’t even need to have land to register a brand,’ the clerk said uneasily. ‘Anyone can register one.’

  ‘You aren’t listening. I have lived on that land for three years. I built the cabin I live in on it, mucked out the well. I drove those cattle onto the land. It is my land!’

  ‘You do need a lawyer,’ the clerk said. ‘If I were you—’

  ‘You’re not me,’ I said. I spun on Matti again, ‘Don’t you have any cheap advice for me?’

  ‘You’d better plan on moving your cattle unless you want to pay me grazing fees. I would consider that for the time being. It will be awhile before I can bring my own cattle onto the ranch. The cabin, whatever you call it, is an illegal improvement to my ranch. It also belongs to me. As for the rest,’ – she gave a small feminine shrug, barely lifting her silk-clad shoulders – ‘I am sorry you wasted all that time and effort, Mr Lang, but it is really all your own fault.

  ‘My Uncle Hangdog was a scoundrel. In fact, they say that he killed a half-breed named Two Bob in Santa Fe and that was the reason he forever left New Mexico. But one thing I will say for Uncle, he was always very, very careful in business matters.’

  ‘I will sue,’ I said carefully.

  ‘I will be expecting a summons. Although I can’t see how you can hope to prevail.’

  I was burning with anger and there was some shame involved – shame concerning my own ignorance and stupidity. I wanted to yell some more, to curse, but I had shot my wad. Matti simply nodded to the clerk and walked out into the sunlight, unfurling her parasol once more. She was still standing there, waiting, when I exited half a minute later expecting her to be gone.

  ‘I haven’t eaten this morning,’ she said, ‘is there a decent place we can get a breakfast?’

  I only stared. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Apparently, our little dispute now ended, Matti expected that she and I could go back to the ‘old days’ when we had been friends. Slowly I calmed. There was no point in staying mad at her. She had won, it seemed, at least until I could find a lawyer, but how could I possibly pay one? She was smiling pleasantly at nothing, her green eyes as tranquil as ever, her face composed. She looked expectantly at me.

  ‘The Coronet is a decent enough restaurant,’ I said. ‘It’s right next to your hotel.’

  Her eyebrows went up. Surely, they seemed to say, I was not expecting a lady to walk these streets unescorted and be forced to dine alone. And so I untied my horses and walked her down the street toward The Coronet.

  Entering the restaurant which was small, cluttered with polished round tables and decorated with gilt and carved wood by Mrs Blount, the owner and cook, I paused to place my hat on the hat tree and followed Matti across the room to where one of the waitresses wearing a long white apron, her yellow hair pinned up high, offered a corner table to us. To Matti, that is. No one seemed to connect us. The waitress waited while Matti, sweeping her skirts aside, seated herself. The men scattered around the restaurant had their eyes fixed on her. I sat down across from Matti and folks seemed nearly shocked that this unshaven, lanky cowboy in his faded red shirt and worn blue jeans dared to sit near Miss Martha Ullman. The waitress hesitated before giving me a menu, then walked away, studying me oddly.

  ‘I’ll have the Spanish omelet,’ Matti said, placing her menu aside. ‘Now’ – she folded her hands together on the table – ‘we do have some business to discuss, Lang.’

  ‘Can’t it wait until after breakfast?’ I moved my elbows from the table so that the waitress could put down a jug of coffee and two ceramic mugs. I looked up and said, ‘Stack of hotcakes,’ and the waitress frowned. I didn’t get it, then I did. ‘The lady will have the Spanish omelet. I’d like a stack of hotcakes. Please.’ Matti was sitting there, looking at her empty coffee cup. It took me a while to get that as well, but finally a light dawned in my head and I poured her a cup.

  ‘Now,’ Matti said, daintily stirring a little sugar into her coffee, ‘our unfinished business.’

  ‘You’d better rein in your plans for awhile,’ I said, ‘until the court has had its say on matters.’

  ‘That would put me behind schedule,’ she said. I didn’t know she had a schedule, but it figured that a woman like her would. ‘First, I think you should stay on and work for me for the time being. I won’t pay you any wages, of course; we can consider your work payment for your cattle grazing on the property. You will have to remove them when I am ready to move my own herd on. That’s a month or so off,’ she said, waving her hand to indicate that I needn’t worry just yet. Matti had still another thought. ‘You can help me with that, too, bringing my herd to the Whipsaw Range.’

  ‘For free?’ I said, giving the crazy woman the look she deserved.

  ‘I don’t know much about cattle ranching,’ she said as if that explained things satisfactorily.

  ‘Then why, Miss Ullman, are you even bothering? The matrons in San Francisco couldn’t have been that bad! Why are you considering moving out onto that hardscrabble land where even experienced ranchers—’

  ‘Like you.’

  ‘Like myself, can barely make a living?’ I studied her green eyes more carefully. They gave nothing away, but I wondered suddenly. ‘Is it that you ran away, came down here, because you have something to hide? That you had to get out of San Francisco?’

  ‘Do I have a shadowy past?’ She let the waitress put the plates down. ‘No, Lang. I do not. I simply made the decision, and when I make a decision.…

  ‘I’m starting to get the idea on that,’ I said, cutting a wedge away from the stack of hotcakes.

  ‘Who is that?’ Matti asked. I turned slightly. She was looking across the room, her eyes fixed on the tall man with the prematurely gray hair and narrow mustache dressed in a shiny blue suit. He was looking back with interest.

  ‘Reg Kent,’ I said.

  ‘He’s nice-looking.’ She smiled across the room and I turned my head again, enough to see Kent return the smile. ‘Who is he?’ Matti asked.

  ‘Your neighbor. Now. He owns the Hatchet outfit. He’s a high-binder and a thief. Those men who were doing all the shooting this morning – Cheyenne Baker and his friends – work for Hatchet. You don’t need to brand your cattle near his ranch, you need to tie them down.’

  ‘Do they – Hatchet – rustle your cattle, Lang?’

  ‘No, not mine,’ I said, in a way I thought meaningful.

  ‘If he is to be my neighbor, do you think I should introduce myself?’ Matti asked.

  ‘Why on earth would you bother to ask my opinion since you’ll do whatever you please anyway? But, no, he’s low and conniving. He’ll smile while he’s robbing you and some people like his smile so much they’ll let him come back again for a second helping.’

  ‘I suppose he runs a lot of cattle.’

  ‘He does. Hatchet has good water in plentiful amounts. He’s … obtained it over the years from the small ranchers along the Whipsaw.’

  ‘I wonder if he would sell some steers to me,’ Matti pondered, peering at Kent over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘Otherwise stocking my ranch would involve a long drive, would it not?’

  ‘It would,’ I agreed – letting the part about it b
eing ‘her ranch’ slide for the moment – ‘but buying stock from somewhere else would save you the trouble you might have later when other ranchers start showing up to demand a closer look at your brands. Some people around here still look at buying stolen cattle as a criminal offense.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask some trustworthy people around town what they think,’ Matti commented, showing me where I stood. ‘With any luck,’ she continued without taking a breath, ‘my belongings should begin arriving on the afternoon coach.’

  ‘Belongings?’

  ‘Some more clothes, furniture for the house, utensils – you know.’

  ‘You mean to furnish that shack?’ I said with a laugh.

  ‘You must have some furniture in it.’

  ‘Sure. A cot, a table and two chairs. Matti, the place is little more than a hut thrown up to keep the weather off and the critters out.’

  ‘I’ll make do until I can add on or build a new house,’ Matti said with a shrug.

  ‘A new house? You talk as if you’re rolling in dough. A cattle herd, a new house!’

  ‘I never said that all that Uncle Hangdog left me was that patch of land. As for the house,’ she said, before I could make a remark, ‘you will have a day and a half to remove your own possessions. You can throw up a lean-to or something, whatever you people do. Not too close to the main house, but not too far away. I’ll need to be able to summon you concerning ranch business.’

  ‘If you’re thinking I would stay on to work for you, you’re making a wild-eyed assumption, lady.’

  ‘You have to watch your cattle, don’t you? Have you another place to move them?’ Matti went on. ‘If they remain on my land – as we’ve discussed – I will have to charge you forage fees. I can’t have your cows eating the grass my own will need gratis.’

  I tried to interrupt, but she was unstoppable. ‘Are there other hands on the ranch?’

  ‘Only my man, Virgil Sly.’

  ‘Two will be enough for now, I suppose. When I do bring my herd in, perhaps I can convince some of the drovers to stay on as ranch hands.’