Turnback Creek (Widowmaker)

by Robert J. Randisi

  Sharp, seeing that he was the last man standing, released his horse, threw his hands into the air, and starting shouting, “Hey, hey, wait, wait, wait …”

  Cooper shot him.

  When they reached the fallen party, Locke checked the men and found all but Rome dead. He was amazed that he and Cooper had managed to kill only half of them, while the horses—driven mad by the noise, and the smell of blood and death—had done the rest.

  Three horses were dead. He felt bad about that. The surviving animals had run off, and Rome was rolling around on the ground holding his hip. When he saw Locke and Cooper approaching him, he reached for his fallen gun, but Cooper stepped on his arm to stop him.

  “Not fair …” he muttered, staring up at the two men.

  “What did you think we would do?” Cooper asked. “Wait for you to rush us? Fight fair? The graveyards are full of men who fought fair.”

  “W-White flag …”

  “Fuck you and your white flag,” Cooper said, and shot the man in the head.

  Cooper turned to face Locke. “I didn’t think you’d do it,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Shoot that man under a white flag.”

  “Better that than die,” Locke said. “I’m no fool, Coop.”

  “Obviously not,” Cooper said. “It was your idea to just start shootin’ into the horses. A damn good idea, too.”

  “I figured they wouldn’t expect it,” Locke said. “I thought with them standing among all these horses, something had to happen. That’s a lot of horseflesh to be around when they’re flailing away in a panic.”

  “Looks like they did most of our work for us,” Cooper said.

  “You did the rest,” Locke said. “Shot that man when he had his hands in the air, and that one in cold blood while he was lying on the ground. You’ve changed a lot more than I ever thought a man could, Coop.”

  “So have you, John,” Coop said. “There was a time you never would have shot a man under a white flag.”

  “He made the first move,” Locke said. “He panicked and drew, because he thought we were going to kill him.”

  “I was,” Cooper said. “Would you have shot him if he hadn’t gone for his gun?”

  “I guess we’ll never know.”

  Cooper looked around at the dead men and horses. “I suppose you want to bury them?”

  “No,” Locke said. “I guess they got what was coming to them.”

  The ex-marshal looked up at the sky and said, “Guess there’s no point in movin’ on, then. Might as well camp here and get goin’ in the mornin’—if you don’t mind campin’ near all these bodies.”

  “We’ll be gone before they start to stink,” Locke said. “But get going where, Coop?”

  Cooper looked at him and said, “I guess we can decide that in the mornin’, can’t we, John?”

  “I suppose we can.”

  SIXTY

  As it turned out, it didn’t do them much good to camp for the night, because neither man slept much. Locke was sad that he so distrusted Cooper that he couldn’t close his eyes. The man had changed that much, was no longer the man he knew.

  In the morning, the sun came up, and they had some coffee before they decided where they were going. Mostly, the sun was still behind the clouds, so they had no way of knowing if there were any gold coins still at the bottom of the Devil’s Basin.

  “You might have left a few,” Cooper said, looking down at the water. “We have time to—”

  “I’m not going in there again,” Locke said. He could still feel the chill to his bones. “You can, if you want.”

  “I’d drown.”

  “If you waited long enough, you could probably wade out there.”

  Cooper looked at him. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he asked. “Get the drop on me while I’m knee-deep in water?”

  “Why would I want to do that, Coop?”

  The other man didn’t answer, just kept looking down at the water. “Somebody’ll come along and think they got real lucky when it’s all dried out,” he said.

  “They’ll never know how many men died up here for the gold, will they?” Locke asked.

  “No,” Cooper said. “They won’t.”

  “Will we, Coop?”

  No answer.

  “Will we know how many men died?”

  Still no answer.

  “Seven? Or eight?”

  Cooper turned his head to look at him. “You think I’d kill you for this gold, John?”

  “If I didn’t,” Locke said, “I would have got some sleep last night.”

  “Would you kill me for it?” Cooper asked.

  “No,” Locke said. “But I’m not going to let you have this gold, and since you’d kill me for it, I guess I’d have to kill you to keep you from killing me.”

  Cooper took off his hat and scratched his head.

  “That sounds mighty confusin’ to me, John,” he said. “Why don’t we just split the gold? You can even take your half to the mine. At least that way, we both stay alive, and the miners get some of their money.”

  “Coop,” Locke said, “I’ll bet even if we did that, you’d double back here and wade out there to see if I left any coins.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” Cooper said, “I guess that’s the difference between you and me, John.”

  “No,” Locke said. “The difference between us goes much deeper than that, Coop—much deeper.”

  Cooper turned and walked back to the fire. He dumped the remnants of his coffee onto it, then poured the last of the pot over it, extinguishing it. Locke had his coffee cup in his left hand, so he simply stood there, holding it.

  “John, I’m getting on that buckboard and leavin’ with the gold,” Cooper said. “There are a few loose horses up here, and you’ll probably find one of them. You’ll be fine.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Coop.”

  “You’re gonna have to kill me to stop me,” Cooper said. “I don’t think you’ll do that.”

  “I’ll shoot you in the leg,” Locke said. “That’ll stop you.”

  Cooper put the coffee pot down on the ground and turned to face Locke. “You ain’t gonna let this go, are ya?”

  “No,” Locke said.

  “Why do you care if these miners get paid or not?” Cooper asked. “Or if Molly Shillstone goes out of business?” “I don’t.”

  “You know, she was workin’ with the sheriff to steal this gold,” Cooper said, “only I made him a better deal.”

  “You could afford to make him a better deal,” Locke said. “You never intended to pay him. I don’t care about the miners, Coop, or the sheriff, or Molly. I care about me.”

  “This ’cause I fooled you?” Cooper asked. “Used you? This about your ego, John?”

  “This is about friendship, Coop,” Locke said. “I came all this way to help you because I thought we were friends—but the Dale Cooper I knew, he died a long time ago. So, if you draw on me, force me to kill you, I won’t really be killing him, will I?”

  “You’ll be killin’ me, John,” Cooper said. “Me. I’m Dale Cooper. I’m the only Dale Cooper I can be at my age. And if I can’t be who I want to be, I guess I don’t care if I live or die.”

  “Stop talking, Coop,” Locke said.

  “You’re right,” Cooper said. “The time for talk is over.”

  Cooper kicked the coffee pot toward Locke and drew his gun. Locke ignored the pot, and although Cooper had outdrawn him, the ex-marshal’s first shot went wide because he rushed it. It wasn’t the fastest one who won, Locke knew from experience—maybe he even learned it from Cooper—but the one whose first shot flew true.

  And his did.

  SIXTY-ONE

  John Locke drove the buckboard with the mismatched team into the Shillstone Mining camp to the cheers of the miners, who knew why he was there. They crowded around him when he halted the team in front of a shack that had a handwr
itten sign above the door that said “Shillstone Mining.”

  “Mister,” a man said, grabbing his hand, “we been waitin’ a long time for you.”

  “Are you the foreman up here?” Locke asked.

  “I’m the manager,” the man said. “Name’s Sam Allanson.” Allanson was a barrel-chested man in his fifties, and the dirt on his hands told Locke that he got down into the mines with his men and didn’t manage the operation from a chair.

  “Well, Mr. Allanson,” Locke said, “I got your whole payroll here, maybe minus a few coins.”

  “A few coins?” the man asked with a frown.

  “Yeah,” Locke said. “I’ll explain it to you. Meanwhile, I need a few men for a burial detail.”

  “Burial?”

  “I got a dead man in the back of the buckboard.”

  Locke threw the tarp off the crates and off the body of Dale Cooper. The miners crowded around, to get a look at either the body or the gold.

  “Who is that?” Allanson asked.

  “His name’s Dale Cooper,” Locke said. “Used to be a marshal a few years back.”

  “Yeah,” the manager said. “Yeah, I heard of him. Didn’t know Mrs. Shillstone had hired him to deliver the gold.”

  “Yeah, it was his job to deliver the payroll up here. He called me in to help him. We got hit a few different times by different groups of men bringing the gold up here, and the second time, he caught a bullet.” Locke turned and looked at the assembled miners. “He died so you fellas could have your pay.”

  The men shuffled their feet and looked around.

  “Mister,” one of them finally said, “we really appreciate what you and your friend did, and we’re sorry he’s dead.”

  “We’ll give him a real nice send-off, if you like,” Allanson told Locke. “Won’t we, boys?”

  The miners whooped and hollered their agreement.

  “I’d like that a lot, boys,” Locke said. “And I guess the marshal would, too.”

  At least, the old Marshal Cooper would, he thought.

  On the way back down the mountain to the town of Turnback Creek, Locke stopped the buckboard and retrieved the body of Sheriff Mike Hammet. Some critters had gotten to it, but it was still largely intact, and he wanted to bring it back to town. He also had recovered the man’s badge from the pocket of Hoke Benson.

  However, he had no intention of hiding the sheriff’s part in trying to steal the gold, the way he had hidden Dale Cooper’s. He had nothing to gain by keeping it a secret, and he still had some unfinished business to take care of with Molly Shillstone that the sheriff might help him with, even in death.

  When he reentered Turnback Creek, he drove the buckboard directly to the office of Shillstone Mining. He set the brake and dropped down, went to the door, and knocked.

  “Come in!” a man called out.

  He entered, and George Crowell looked up at him from the desk. He studied the man’s face intently, to see if it would betray surprise at seeing him. It did not. Apparently, Crowell had fully expected Locke to return from the mountain.

  “Mr. Locke,” he said. “Delighted to see you.” Crowell rushed out from behind the desk to shake Locke’s hand. “I assume, since you are here, that the payroll was delivered safely?”

  “Safely, Mr. Crowell,” Locke said, handing him a slip of paper that had been signed by Sam Allanson, “but not without incident. Marshal Cooper is dead.”

  “Oh, no!” Crowell said, looking aghast. “How did it happen?”

  He explained how they’d been jumped several times by men interested in the gold. He lumped in the two men who had tried to kill him, just for the sake of simplicity. Then he told how they’d had a shoot-out with the seven men up at the Devil’s Basin. “They were little more than gold-hungry store clerks, and they all ended up dead.”

  “The Devil’s Basin?” Crowell asked. “What were you doing all the way over there?” Crowell continued to look concerned.

  Locke realized he’d made an error in mentioning the basin. Now he had to cover it.

  “We took a wrong turn, but that’s where we ran into the seven men,” he went on quickly, before Crowell could ask any more questions. “I believe they had been planning it for some time. They had an expert tracker with them. And I wouldn’t be all that surprised if these were the same men who grabbed the first payroll.”

  “And what happened to those men?”

  “They’re all dead,” Locke said. “It was during a gun battle with them that the marshal was also killed.”

  “How terrible,” Crowell said. “Did you bring his body back to be buried, or did you bury him on the mountain?”

  “I took his body to the mine with me, and they were kind enough to bury him there.”

  “They’re a good bunch of men,” Crowell said. “This dispute between them and Molly … it could have been—”

  “Avoided?”

  “Yes,” Crowell said with a frown. “Avoided. It’s almost as if—”

  “Almost as if what, George?”

  Crowell didn’t answer.

  “Almost as if she didn’t want to settle with them?”

  Crowell looked guilty for a moment, and Locke knew that was what he was thinking. But then, like a man in love, he rushed to her defense. “That would be crazy,” he said. “Without a settlement, she could have lost the mine.”

  “Tell me something, George,” Locke said. “The money she sent up there in gold? Was that the last money she could have gotten her hands on if things hadn’t been settled?”

  “Well,” Crowell said slowly, “it was the last of the company’s operating capital.”

  “Why would she put that much money at risk on this mountain?” Locke asked.

  “Well … I’m not sure. She told me the miners demanded the payment in gold.”

  “See,” Locke said, “that’s what I find odd, George. Sam Allanson was surprised at two things when I delivered the payroll. First was that there was so much money.”

  “She told me the miners wanted to be paid in advance.”

  “And second, he was surprised that the payroll was in gold.”

  Now Crowell looked confused. “But … she said that was their idea.”

  “Where is Molly, by the way? We have some business to finish—that is, unless you can pay me?”

  “Certainly,” Crowell said, still confused. “Certainly, I can pay you. What was the amount again?”

  “Five hundred dollars … each.”

  “Yes,” Crowell said. “You’ll want to collect for the marshal as well. I can take care of that.”

  Crowell walked back around behind the desk and knelt in front of a small safe, started to turn the dial. At that moment, the door opened, and Molly Shillstone walked in.

  “George, there’s a buckboard out front. Who’s … Locke!” She reared back and stared at him in obvious shock. Crowell was still crouched over the safe, so she was able to recover her composure before he could see her.

  “Surprised to see me, Molly?” he asked.

  “Surprised to see you … today,” she said, recovering nicely. “Get the payroll delivered already?”

  “Safe and sound into the hands of the miners,” Locke said. “Or isn’t that what you want to hear?”

  She walked to the desk, turned, and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll explain,” he said, “after I get paid.”

  She looked at Crowell, who was taking money out of the safe. “Is that what you’re doing, George? Paying him?”

  “That’s right,” Crowell said. “Only the marshal got killed delivering the payroll.”

  “Did he?” She looked back at Locke. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes,” Locke said. “I’m sure you are.”

  “Here you go, Mr. Locke,” Crowell said, approaching him and handing him the money. “One thousand dollars.”

  “A thousand?” Molly asked.

  “Yes,” Crowell said. “I’m sure Mr. Locke will give
the marshal’s share to his family.”

  “I understood the marshal had no family,” she said.

  “I was the closest thing,” Locke said, pocketing the money. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you, Molly?”

  “Well, I really don’t see why the marshal should get paid … I mean, if he’s dead.”

  “Molly!” Crowell said.

  “Was that why you hired him?” Locke asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You hired Cooper because he had no family? Wouldn’t be missed if he got killed trying to deliver your gold?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Crowell asked. “What are you talking about, Mr.

  Locke?”

  “She never intended for the second payroll to be delivered, George,” Locke explained. “She got the sheriff to agree to steal it from Cooper for her—only she didn’t know I’d be along.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Locke took the sheriff’s badge from his pocket and flicked it into the air. It sailed across the room and landed on the desk.

  “You’re saying the sheriff tried to steal the gold from you and Marshal Cooper?” Crowell asked. “And you killed him?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And that he was working for Molly?”

  “With Molly,” Locke said. “I think the sheriff thought he was working with Molly, not for her.” He didn’t mention that Cooper had turned the sheriff with the promise of a bigger cut, then killed the man after Hammet helped him get away from Locke.

  “This is preposterous,” Crowell said. “Why would Molly want to steal her own payroll?”

  “To get out from under, George,” Locke said. “Out from under her father, the mine—heck, maybe even you. Remember, the miners had no idea she was sending extra money up there or that it was in gold.”

  “You’re crazy,” Molly said.

  “Why would she lie about that?” Crowell asked. “I was bound to find out sooner or later that the miners didn’t request those things.”

  “And by that time, she would have been gone, maybe to Mexico or maybe Canada, since we’re closer to there. Either way, gold would spend just as well.”