Cutthroat Gulch

by Richard S. Wheeler

  He steered the young horse up the forest path and over the ridge, looking back this time on his erstwhile paradise and feeling he had lost a kingdom, and then hurried the horse downslope. His thoughts were on that dead stranger, who remained unidentified in spite of a massive effort by all the lawmen in the area. Had Castle anything against the man, or was he murdered simply because he was nearby and convenient? Had Castle reached the point of depravity that he would murder a man just for sheriff-bait, a man with his own dreams and family and hopes? A man who had done Castle no harm?

  Blue knew the answer.

  He rode into Blankenship after the time most folks took supper—they didn’t call it dinner in these parts, but Olivia would be used to that. The long summer’s light often delayed Blue’s return from the mountains. He unsaddled the strawberry roan in the carriage barn in the back, brushed and fed him, gathered his gear and creel, and headed for the door of his shadowed cottage. “Olivia?” he said, as he entered. No light burned; she didn’t need a flame eating at a wick. She didn’t reply. He set down the creel at the zinc sink and headed for the parlor. She lay on the floor, face up, her throat cut from ear to ear, having bled only a little. Her mouth was primly shut. Her milky eyes gazed at nothing. Beside her, on the oak library table, rested the roll of Absalom’s paintings and etchings and woodcuts, still wrapped in checkered oilcloth. A great silence filled the house.

  Blue felt weak at the knees, his strength flowing away from him. “Olivia, no,” he said, “no.”

  He steadied himself, for he could not walk, and could not stand because his legs failed him. He made it to the place where she lay, on the Brussels carpet, waxen and lifeless. He took her hand. Not all the heat had left it. “Olivia,” he said, “I should have stayed.”

  He slumped on the floor beside her, holding her hand, while the shadows lengthened across the room as the sun died. He had not thought of her death before; he knew he would die before she did. He knew she would come visit him in the graveyard and trace the inscription on the stone with her fingers, and leave him a bouquet. But it wasn’t like that now. His cottage, with the lilacs and roses, was ash.

  He took a great gulp of air, and tried to stand, and couldn’t, having felt his body age twenty years in a few seconds. But he stood at last, not knowing what to do, not wanting Carl Barlow here profaning this place, not wanting to talk to that damned Vinegar Will or the coroner Prentiss or Cyrus Meek or anyone else. He didn’t want to sit through a funeral or any of that. He didn’t want Vinegar Will laying his dirty hands on her, even to get her fixed up in the coffin. Blue stood stupidly, unable to move.

  It had been so easy. Castle walked in, probably talked with her, and she would have known who it was. Probably he just talked and then walked around behind her with a sharp knife and cut the jugulars, and so she died. And he probably walked away from this residential street, unnoticed in sleepy Blankenship, until he reached his horse and quietly disappeared. Somehow he had read Blue’s mind, knew Blue was fishing, knew that murder could be done easily, knew how to torment Blue the most.

  Blue stood dizzily, the blood gone from his head. He had to get help. He had to let Tammy know, and Absalom too, let them know, tell them their mother who’d rocked their cradles and fed them ten thousand meals, that their mother had been murdered, and by the man who had murdered Tammy’s husband, and all because of him, Blue, the sheriff who thought Castle wasn’t right for his daughter.

  He walked heavily out the door, walked down the quiet street toward the courthouse where Barlow might or might not be, it being the supper hour still. Walked, one foot forward, then the next, carrying more burden than any man should ever carry.

  Barlow wasn’t there, and Blue didn’t mind. That gave him another few moments before the world knew. Barlow would be supping at the Silver Slipper, and that was a block away, and that meant Blue’s grief would be his private business for two more minutes.

  He found Barlow sipping java. “You were going to look after her,” he said.

  Barlow looked up, blankly.

  “You didn’t look after her.”

  “What’s eating you, Blue?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Barlow unfolded from his chair. “Olivia? Dead?”

  “Damn you.”

  Half the patrons were staring but Blue didn’t care. He motioned Barlow out the door and into the gloomy street. “He came and killed her.”

  By now Barlow was running, and Blue could hardly keep up on his old legs. It winded him to run like that. Barlow got ahead, and Blue quit because his legs wouldn’t take him there.

  When he got to the cottage Barlow was standing in the dark parlor, staring. “Blue, God, Blue.”

  “Well cover her up. Call Vinegar. Call Prentiss.”

  The deputy knelt beside the still form and took Olivia’s hand, stiff now, and cold. He cried, and that made Blue itch.

  “I got home, few minutes ago, and this...”

  Barlow stood slowly and peered about. “What’s that, Blue?” he asked, spotting the oilcloth.

  “Castle’s calling card. Those are Absalom’s art wrapped up in there. Which Castle got when he took my outfit. He’s just making sure I know he did it, leaving it there.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “What I think happened was that you weren’t watching.”

  Barlow sagged and then straightened. “I walked past here once. I was coming again after supper.”

  “You should have just about camped here.”

  Barlow swallowed back a retort, and then set to work. “Blue, you sit here and wait. I’ve got to get help.” He touched Blue’s shoulder, his fingers gentle. Blue felt the touch, and felt ready to crumple. Wearily, Blue settled in the Morris chair and waited in the gloom while Barlow rounded up the ones he needed. Blue knew he had been hard on the deputy. Too hard. Blue had a sore-tooth feeling. Jack Castle had killed his wife, danced around him as if he were a punch-drunk boxer, and who would be next?

  Blue didn’t keep track of time; he knew only that time passed and then the room was full of people, and some of them were trying to be kind, and he didn’t want their kindness. He should have stayed home instead of gone fishing. He should have looked after her, that killer running around, looked after her and not trusted the likes of Barlow, sat there in the parlor with his revolver in his lap instead of trying to catch Big Eye. He thought all those things and they didn’t work, he didn’t believe his own thoughts, so he stopped, and stared as Dr. Prentiss wrote out a certificate, Barlow wrote up a report, and then Vinegar and his moronic flunky lifted Olivia, lifted his wife, and all too familiarly too, onto a stretcher and hauled her out to his black maria.

  He would go on down to Vinegar’s place when he was ready. Make some damned arrangements. Try to think what Olivia would want. He’d never given it a thought. She had never said. He might have to buy a lot in the boneyard and put up a stone, and where the hell he could find money for that he didn’t know. But she’d get the best money could buy. There was no telegraph between Blankenship and Centerville. If he expected Olivia’s daughter and son to attend the services, he would have to send a rider to her ranch, seventy miles of hard going. And they’d have to catch the thrice-weekly stagecoach, a mud-wagon with open sides, actually. Maybe get to town on Friday. Vinegar would know what to do. Barlow would know someone to send. Barlow should get in touch with Zeke Dombrowski too, put a guard on that coach, shoot any son of a gun that tried to stop it. The boy wouldn’t be worth diddlysquat in a jackpot.

  Damned Barlow; why didn’t he walk past that house once two or three times an hour? He should have, killer on the loose like that. Blue settled into his Morris chair with a shawl over his knees and the old shotgun across his lap, and there he sat into the night, into the blackness. The house wasn’t the same. The fishing hole wasn’t the same. He’d been married to the same woman all his life, and they hardly used words any more because they talked to each other without them. Nothing was the same any mo
re, and he was getting old, and Barlow should be sheriff now. But not yet. Not until the unfinished business was done. Blue whacked his big, rough fist into the cold wooden arm of the chair, and hurt himself.

  Chapter 21

  Blue hated funerals so much he thought he would have to handcuff himself to the chair. He had seen plenty of death. It was the ceremony he couldn’t deal with. Vinegar had taken over, gotten a preacher, made the arrangements. Blue scarcely knew any preachers. That had been Olivia’s department. He didn’t deal with things he didn’t understand, and religion was one of them. He had a sense of God, and God’s world out at the fishing hole, but not religion.

  He sat in the front row, Tammy and Absalom beside him, and itched. The man was saying that now Olivia could see; on earth she had been without vision but in paradise everything was crystal clear. That was fine, but Blue could barely sit. He fumbled with the handcuffs that rested in the pocket of his single suit, ready to by God snap them over the chair arm and his wrist if it came to that. He would by God make himself sit through it. There beside him was Absalom, back in Blankenship after a decade, less pale now than when he arrived. And there was Tammy, two deaths now, husband and mother, sitting sternly. Not just deaths. Murders. The children were being cared for back at the house.

  His son and daughter had come on the stagecoach without incident. Absalom said little, but something burned in his eyes, and Blue sensed that the young man was not saying much about what was going on in his head. Tammy was the one who seemed fearful now; wilted and afraid that the Smith family’s suffering was not over; maybe had scarcely begun. They had barely talked; Blue’s taciturn silence had discouraged it. Half of Blankenship had come. Most of them because they loved Olivia; some out of curiosity; a few because they pitied Blue. Murder enthralled them. But none came because they loved old Blue, that was for sure. He would have arrested them on sight for getting moony about it all.

  Mostly he just ached. She was gone. He missed her. It was so simple. It didn’t require theology. There was nothing profound about it. She was dead.

  They took her in an ebony hearse with black pom-poms on it out to the boneyard, where a hole had been sawed into the hard clay, and there under a grim gray sky they lowered the pine box into the ground, and the preacher offered another prayer. Blue listened, granite-faced, nothing playing across his features except an occasional hard-eyed squint toward the mountains where Jack Castle roamed and was probably celebrating. Then people solemnly shook his hand, or patted him on the back, and drifted away. All except a dozen who lingered on; men of consequence in Blankenship, standing around like penguins.

  “Blue,” said Wiley Gillespie, “we’re thinking maybe it’s time to send out a posse.”

  So that was it. Blue stiffened. “I’ll get him myself,” he said.

  “It’s not just between you and Castle,” Gillespie continued, continuing a much-rehearsed argument. “Castle’s endangering the whole area—here, Centerville, the entire Territory. He’s mocking the law and the peace. This is a public matter. Castle murdered a stranger in cold blood, not just your people. We think it’s time to put together a few dozen able men and clean him out of those mountains before he...rampages again. What if more innocents die? What of the children? There’s frightened children in this county, children whose mothers won’t let them out of their yards. Blue, every man and woman in the county’s worried, some are terrified, and not a one thinks that you should be doing this alone. You alone aren’t enough to protect us. There’s even talk of getting the militia.”

  Blue stared at those earnest faces and those black suits, and the gold watch fobs and wilted collars and paisley cravats, and the black silk top hats, and the boiled white shirts.

  “A posse costs money,” he said, striking at their jugular.

  “Justice and safety are paramount,” Gillespie said. “The commissioners are unanimous. It’s not just you against that killer. They’ll spend.”

  Blue saw how it was going. He could tell them a thing or two about Jack Castle, who would laugh at posses and play jokes on them. Castle was the best wilderness man in the West, except maybe Blue himself. “All right,” Blue said. “Get your men together for the deputizing. I’ll send out Barlow and as many men as the county wants.”

  “We’re thinking forty, in two groups,” Gillespie said.

  Blue nodded. “Done,” he said. “Have them at the office in an hour.”

  “Make it two hours,” Gillespie said. “You get some rest, and let Carl Barlow handle this, Blue.”

  Blue watched the town fathers drift away. They were sure they were going to get results. There were tough men in Blankenship, men who had settled a wilderness, survived the wild mining camps, dealt with Indians and road agents and the ferocity of nature. Relentless trackers, men who had lived in rough weather, men with bullet wounds on their bodies. Maybe they would catch Jack Castle. But Blue knew they wouldn’t unless Castle made a freakish mistake. Jack Castle could walk right through their midst without being seen. They could put hound dogs or bloodhounds on Jack Castle, and he would go unscented. They could put the best horseflesh on Castle’s trail, and Castle would outrun them and keep his mount fresher. They could shoot at him and hit nothing, and lie dying from Castle’s own lead. Still, if the town fathers wanted a posse, Blue had no objection: they were right, it wasn’t just between Blue and Castle. Two hours later he deputized the whole lot and stood silently as they rode out of town, thirty-five temporary lawmen who would be at each others’ throats in a day or two and quitting a day after that. “We’ll see if this works,” Barlow said. “It’s for you, Blue. Castle, dead or alive.”

  Blue nodded.

  They were heading toward his fishing hole, and that made his gut churn. That was his turf. He discovered himself alone on this burial day. Tammy and Absalom were receiving people at the house. That suited Blue fine; he would have had to handcuff himself to the Morris chair to survive that.

  Old Will Parker was at the jail keeping house. Will had been a lawman once, in the old days. Tough one, too, even with a shot-up elbow. Now he helped out sometimes, acted as jailer when they had someone locked up, filled in. Carl had gotten him out of retirement.

  “Will, I’m heading out. You’re going to be the law around here for a while. You up to it?”

  Will chewed on his plug for a moment. “I reckon.”

  “Then put on that badge in the drawer. You’re sworn.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Reckon that’s as good a place as any.”

  Blue’s outdoor clothes were in the house but he didn’t want to go back there, not to all that kindness and sympathy and concern and love. He would just about drown in it.

  Instead, he collected an outfit out of the jail, a shotgun, an old Navy revolver lying in a drawer, some powder, balls and caps for it, a battered slicker for weather, and whatever else he could scrounge. Poor doings. His saddle was at the livery barn. He got everything he needed, including a sack of parched corn.

  He threw the worn saddle over the strawberry roan, loaded up, and rode into the dying day. His first stop was the weed-choked boneyard, deserted now. The gravediggers had filled the hole, and raw yellow clay mounded over Olivia, hiding death. He got down and knelt beside that heaped earth.

  “Not much with words, Olivia. I’m going to miss you every second of every day of my life. You came into it and made me happy. I was lucky. Now you’ll sleep and soon I’ll sleep beside you, for whatever that’s worth. Now I’ve got some business.”

  He started to rise, but the unsaid still lingered in him, the hard part.

  “Olivia, I love you,” he said, glad to let it out. He stood a moment, feeling the bond between his soul and that which lay beyond. He walked to the edge of the cemetery, where a ponderosa pine struggled, broke off a branch, and laid it over the clay. Then he mounted the roan and drifted silently away from town, unnoticed, his departure known only to the retired lawman keeping t
he peace in Blankenship. He rode through the town, a solitary graying man in a rumpled black suit, string tie, and boiled white shirt. At the last he had pinned his badge onto the suit coat. It seemed fitting. He wanted Castle to see that badge. Clothes tell a story. A man in a black suit wearing a silver badge would tell a story. He would by God ride after Castle wearing his funeral suit.

  He truly did not know where to go.

  Somewhere, a killer was stalking his family in order to inflict more grief on him. And ultimately, that killer was stalking him. What next?

  Then he knew where to start. The great coulee. He rode out the rutted trace leading to Centerville, which circled around the southern foothills of the mountains. That’s where he had encountered Castle; that’s where to go find him.

  He crawled with doubts. He was abandoning his family. Not even Carl Barlow was in Blankenship. The old cottage was vulnerable. And yet, he could not help it. And Absalom was armed, for whatever good that would do. Strange young man, his purposes private and cloaked from Blue; his bitterness manifest.

  He encountered no one on that lonely road. He made his solitary way through the late afternoon, riding in silence, alert but drawn deep into himself. He reached the great coulee that led from that road deep into the foothills, and then into Jack Castle’s mountain aerie.

  Chapter 22

  For two days Blue rode that giant coulee into the high country. It formed a great slash in the land, as if the bedrock had pulled apart some unfathomable time in the past. What began as a channel in prairie soon changed to cottonwood-dotted parks, juniper, then deciduous forest, and finally a canyon crowded with spruce.

  He looked for horses. Castle must have stashed his stolen horses in various convenient spots, strategic hideaways where he could trade jaded mounts for fresh. Blue thought that would be a start: quietly pull Castle’s transportation out from under him. That might not be as satisfying as a confrontation with the elusive killer, but it would have its effect.