Sipping Whiskey in a Shallow Grave

by Mark Mitten

  “The school house,” she mentioned. “Maybe they need a new teacher there.”

  Til almost said it, but he didn’t: Garo needed a new station agent.

  “That may be. We can ask on it.”

  Laura was still wrestling over why. She didn’t know Mrs. Dittmore. In fact, she’d never even met the woman before. Laura had only been to Garo once since moving to Hay Ranch. And that was a grocery run. Perhaps she had seen Mrs. Dittmore that day, but Laura did not remember if she had. She couldn’t put a face with the name.

  It would be nice to have other women to talk to. Being around all these males was a little tiresome for her. The conversations tended to repeat themselves and revolve around the same topics: horses, weather and hay prices.

  Being a school teacher would be a good fit. She could continue to watch over Walker, and have something to fill her time, as well. She was not sure how well the boy would do, cooped up in a schoolhouse for lessons. He was an active boy. He had trouble sitting still through a meal.

  Laura decided that yes, she would look into the Garo schoolhouse. Even if they only needed an assistant, it would be a welcome distraction. It would give her a chance to meet the other children’s mothers, too. It would be wonderful to make some friends of her own. The ranch life had become rather lonesome. Perhaps that was Mrs. Dittmore’s problem — being lonesome. Living alone, working out of a train depot, taking telegrams and watching for cinder fires as the trains went by…Laura could guess that had not been a good job for a bereaved widower.

  She looked at Til, who sat there staring at the bag of sugar.

  “Go get the lemonade, Til.”

  Til slid from his chair and went into the kitchen.

  Chapter 7

  Garo

  Being that his clothes were in such a state of disarray, Bill circled the small town of Garo hoping it was someone’s laundry day. He was in luck. Several clotheslines were strung about. A new shirt was the main thing that interested him — given the fact he had just been shot. He found one and tried it on. Green plaid was not a color he would normally wear but it would do.

  Bill’s feet were still sore from walking out of the Arkansas River valley on foot, but his main problem was a new hole below his left clavicle. Stealing a horse in Guffey could not have been easier. However, riding away from Guffey proved to be more difficult. If the shooter had been a bit more spritely in his response time, Bill might have taken a worse hit.

  In addition to this, the horse he stole was not the best pick for an effective getaway. It was an old gelding with a swayback and lost its wind after less than a mile. It was the only horse he saw in Guffey, so he took it. Bill continued to ride the poor beast for the better part of a day before getting off.

  He had been worried the shooter might chase him down, but no one ever appeared on his backtrail. Maybe the old gelding was not worth the recovery effort. The old horse had such an unpleasant trot — if it was Bill’s horse that was stolen, he would have thanked the man who did it.

  If there had been a saddle, Bill might have been happier with the situation. He had looked but didn’t find one…not even in the run-down barn by the corral. In fact, he did not find any tack whatsoever. Bill had to fashion a halter from a length of rope he found where the corral gate should have been. Bill started thinking about it. Perhaps the swayback’s owner was not giving chase because he couldn’t. Perhaps he was too poor to own a second horse — or even a saddle. Obviously, the man was too poor to afford a proper corral gate.

  Bill began to worry about him. Maybe the fellow was too old, or maybe a cripple, which would explain the slow response time and poor aim. Maybe the swayback was the only livestock the man owned. Bill decided he would let the horse wander home on its own, once he reached the next town. So he did. He let it go once he reached Garo. It was strange…Bill never had much of a conscience before. He wasn’t sure where these thoughts were coming from.

  Bill’s newfound conscience did not hold him back from peering in through windows. He checked all twelve homes in town. It did not take long to find an unlatched door and a flour tin with coins buried in the flour. People always tended to choose the same hiding places for their valuables. It was enough to buy a train ticket, head back to Grand Lake, dig out the saddle bags buried on the Divide, and move on.

  Bill could barely believe the hundred thousand in cash was gone. Some angry rancher was a rich man now.

  The fear of being shot down like Granger and Vincent was gone. And the shot he took in Guffey had passed all the way through his shoulder, so he wasn’t too worried about dying. The first creek he came to, Bill packed it with mud. It would work until he could get some proper doctoring. Distance was the most important thing at this point.

  The sun was starting to arc down to the west. The hottest part of the day was over and he hoped it would cool off soon.

  Bill stepped over the train rails and climbed the platform stairs, but discovered the little depot shack was empty. He looked around. There was a general store — perhaps the station agent was in there. The door was open and Bill walked right in.

  “It was unexpected, that’s all I can really say,” Chubb Newitt was saying to Steve and Rufe McGonkin, who stood at the counter.

  Rufe was eyeing the candy jars.

  “It was not unexpected,” Frank Stevens told them. “Tumbleweeds are best left to themselves. And she was a-tumblin’.”

  “How much are them cherry ones?” Rufe asked Chubb. Ever since Til gave Walker that brown paper sack full of cherry hard candies, Rufe had been anxious to purchase some for himself. The ride down had been a long hour of contemplating those cherry candies.

  “Your station agent here?” Bill asked, from the doorway. “I need to buy a ticket.”

  “Nope, she’s dead as a doornail,” Chubb replied. “Talk to the conductor. Train be through in half an hour.”

  “In hard times some folks grin and bear it,” Frank continued, turning to Steve. “Others shoot themself’s. Mrs. Dittmore was the shoot themself type. Stuff like that tends to well up over quite a spell, I’d say. And that’s what happened. Got the habit of dwelling on unhappy thoughts. The straw that broke the camel’s back…was vegetables.”

  “Fudge, Frank,” Chubb cautioned. “I been out to see old missus Dittmore every now and again, especially in the snows. I don’t think it’s wise to speculate about her mental disposition.”

  “Naw, it’s purty clear she husked her brains out over vegetables.”

  Bill turned and headed back outside. His nerves were jumping. He recognized those two cowpunchers! Lem had shot one of them in the shoulder. When was that? Just a few months ago? Bill didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have much of anything at the moment. And he was wounded. In fact, he was wounded in the same place: the shoulder.

  He didn’t think the punchers recognized him. They were too busy chatting. He hoped. Either way, it was best to stay out of sight until that train rolled in.

  Bill hustled back down the platform steps and out into the grass. There wasn’t much to Garo. Not many places to wait for half an hour. Bill swallowed nervously. If those cowpunchers were here, what about the rest of their crew? They could all be in Garo! What if he bumped into another one? Or what if the shirt he was wearing belonged to them? Or any of the locals loafing around the platform? He didn’t want to run into the man who owned it.

  There was a saloon down the way, Steven’s Saloon, but Bill decided against going inside. Since it was the only saloon in town, it would be the one place everyone would go to congregate. Bill saw that the schoolhouse was empty. He walked around back and sat in the shade, leaning against the wall. He checked his watch. A half hour wasn’t too long to sit in the grass and wait.

  Bill hoped he could get on the train without any hassle.

  The minutes dragged by, but no one came around. When the train finally chugged into the station at four o’clock, Bill waited until it was fully parked before he went over. He glanced at the general store as he
crested the stairs. The door was propped open and he could hear the cowpunchers were still inside, talking.

  “Ticket, please,” the conductor asked him, stepping off the train.

  “I need to purchase one.”

  Then Chubb Newitt and Frank Stevens came out of the store and walked over.

  “Well, Monroe. Got to do your own ticket work now,” Frank told the conductor.

  “Heard about that,” Monroe replied, and not unhappily. “Benj wired the rail office from Fairplay, ever’body knows.”

  “Scared Benj so bad,” Frank recounted, “he ran all the way to Guffey before he got around to stopping.”

  “Benj has a big pot belly,” Monroe said thoughtfully. “I’m sure the exercise did him some good.”

  Chubb noticed Bill and bobbed his head proudly.

  “Told you…half an hour. Trains roll in here on time.”

  Bill took out his pocketwatch and opened it.

  “You are right. It has been a half hour on the nose.”

  Frank looked down at the watch in Bill’s hand.

  “That is one fine timepiece. I been needing to order one myself, Chubb. That one there looks like a special-order timepiece. Montgomery Ward?”

  “Sure was,” Bill said. Of course, he didn’t know who bought it or where it came from — beyond the vest pocket of the stage driver he killed.

  “Let me look at that,” Frank said bluntly, holding out his hand.

  Bill raised his eyebrows but handed it to him. If he wasn’t so determined to get on the train unnoticed, Bill might have given this blunt man a fist to the face. He didn’t like intrusive people. And he did not like to pass around his personal objects. Such was the price of blending in.

  Steve and Rufe stepped out of the store, not ten paces away. Bill dropped his eyes down to the watch in Frank’s hand — he felt a sudden urgency to board that train.

  “Absence from those we love is self from self,” Frank read aloud. “That is pure poetry. Hell, I don’t even know what that means. John Frederick Hughes, your wife must actually care for you. How ’bout that, Chubb? Wife buy you a fancy pocketwatch yet?”

  “Well, no,” Chubb admitted sheepishly.

  Bill reached out and snatched the pocketwatch out of Frank’s hand, turned abruptly and got on the train without another word.

  “Scared him off,” Frank said to Chubb.

  “Cuz you’re nosey, Frank.”

  Chapter 8

  Ward

  The Halfway House

  “Was meant for my sister. Family heirloom!” Hugh Hughes said and shook his head bitterly. “Doggone thieves made off with it!”

  “Describe it.”

  Red Creek took another bite of beefsteak. Hugh’s face got flushed the more he talked about what happened.

  “Silver, with a real nice chain — ties to a button. Inscribed, got my father’s name. It says: John Frederick Hughes, from Helena your loving wife: Absence from those we love is self from self.”

  The beefsteak was tough. It was probably left over from the dinner hour, unsold and sitting in a frying pan. And it was well into the afternoon, in between the meal hours. He shouldn’t be too surprised. Red Creek submerged his next bite in the gravy and let it soak. From his coat, he took out a notebook and wrote it all down word for word.

  “That’s Shakespeare,” Hugh said, proudly tapping his finger on the tabletop.

  Red Creek forked the beefsteak and decided it needed more time in the gravy.

  “My pap passed on in April,” Hugh continued thoughtfully. “Funeral was down in Boulder and that pocketwatch was supposed to get to my sister. Poor girl had her heart broke when the old man died. Absolutely broke. Pap had gave it to me, hell I’m the eldest, but I knowed it meant more to Lynn. Never made it. The stage was robbed!”

  Hugh’s face became flushed again as he spoke.

  Giving up on the beefsteak, Red Creek took one last whiskey shot and got to his feet. He glanced across the room at the big plate glass windows. The pine and fir were deep green and covered all the hillsides as far as he could see.

  “If it means anything…couple of ‘em are dead now.”

  “You find that watch, it’ll mean something.”

  Adjusting his hat, Red placidly looked him in the eye. The barkeeper was angry, he could understand that. People got attached to things. Red used to be attached to things. Not anymore. It had been many years since he felt sentimental about anything or anyone. His sense of what normal life was had died in the War.

  “See what I can see.”

  Red went out into the fresh air and took off his overcoat. It was cooler inside the eatery than it was outside in the sun. His horse was down in the corral, so Red set off for the tack room where his saddle was.

  Ward was a hectic little mining town, especially in the midstride of summer. The snow was all gone and the ground was soft enough to dig at with a pick-axe or shovel. Everywhere he looked Red saw miners scurrying around…from the placers to the assayer, from the smelter to the bank, from the saloons to the gambling halls.

  Getting to Cañon City, which was quite a long distance from Ward, would require riding down Lefthand Canyon to get out on the plains. The last time Red Creek went through there was the day the posse called it quits.

  His appaloosa was rested from an afternoon in the corral and ready for the trail again. Even though it was mid-afternoon, Red started down the stage road. He rode through the night. It was almost dawn when he left the foothills behind and rode into Boulder.

  By the time the sun came up, Red was loading his horse onto a freight car and getting his ticket punched. Except for the description of the pocketwatch, the trail was cold in Ward. But he knew it got warm again near Cañon. The two dead men found on the trail to Poncha Springs were part of the gang he was after — one matched the description of the false newspaperman “Judas Furlong.”

  The train was the best way to eat up those miles.

  Chapter 9

  XIT Ranch

  Yellow Houses Division

  Headquarters

  “A hunnert an’ fifty thousand head. Hereford, Shorthorn, Angus. Three million acres and a boat-load of fence. A gall-damn finishing ranch in Mon-damn-tana and I’ve got Barbecue Campbell sittin’ a horse outside my door looking for the OK Corral.”

  AL Matlock was in a fit of outrage. He always thought of himself as unflappable. But this was too much. After all he had done to clean up the XIT, it had come to this.

  “The biggest cow operation in the nation itself — and a bunch of deviants are here to hamstring it.”

  AG Boyce was prying back one of the thin curtains with his fingertip. He was calmly watching the riders outside to see what they would do. Boyce had been through the War beginning to end and recognized that old gut-feeling of chaos swelling up. He spoke evenly, without turning around.

  “There’s ten of them. Plus Campbell.”

  “What about those peckers Bill Ney and Arizona John?”

  “Yep, they’re out there.”

  In the archway leading to the kitchen, George Findlay — the quiet young Scotsman with the unsettling baritone voice — leaned calmly against the wall and lit a cigarette.

  “Richard King would roll over in his grave if he saw what was going on here today,” Matlock ranted and waved his arms angrily. “He never had any mutinous events transpire down his way! No sir, he got blessed with a faithful friendly town to do his cow work. Respect. Honor. Not like the Xmas variety I got saddled with.”

  He glared across the room. Through the thin cotton curtains, he could make out the hazy shapes of horse riders lined up, sitting out there…waiting.

  “Skunks!” he shouted. “Got the numbers on us? Well, bully for you!”

  Matlock heard the click of a firearm and turned to see George Findlay checking over his gun’s action. Matlock shifted his eyes over to Boyce — the man still carried no gun, which was a foolish disposition in Matlock’s opinion. He pulled a Colt .45 from his own belt
and held it out.

  “How about a six-iron, Boyce?”

  Turning from the window, Boyce waved him off.

  “We’ll see how this pans out.”

  “Principles don’t stop lead. Go in heeled, man.”

  Boyce ignored him and walked casually past Findlay into the kitchen. It was early, the sun was barely up and the house was dim. The woodstove was still putting out some warmth. Boyce got a tin cup from the cupboard. Taking the percolator off the stove, he poured himself some hot black coffee.

  “Cup, George?” he asked.

  Findlay merely nodded.

  Striding away fiercely, Matlock left them to their coffee and went into the sun room. Davis was sitting on a low couch. His shirt hung open and Matlock could see bandages had been wrapped clear around his upper body. Davis was busy feeding shells into a shotgun. He glanced up at Matlock with a sparkle in his eyes.

  “Oh-ho-ho! I ain’t a-nappin’!”

  “Fools are lined up like ducks in a pond. You can take half of them with that scattergun by yourself.”

  Davis grunted and got to his feet unsteadily. His back hurt terribly but he was determined to stand and fight with his bosses. Like any loyal cowman, Davis believed in riding for the brand — besides which, Campbell and his boys were clearly bad eggs. Davis could not stand for such epic disloyalty, even with stab wounds. Not when he could step up and do something about it.

  “Yearwood’s out in Black Water with the whole damn outfit,” Matlock noted sourly.

  Davis’s back was sore. The stabs he had suffered were shallow but left him feeling out of sorts. As luck would have it, Lee was off with the crew in Black Water, too. It was just the four of them at the ranch house headquarters. Even Rollin Larrabee the bookkeeper was not present. The day before, Rollin had asked one of the freighters for a ride in to Tascosa. Davis almost went with him. It was tempting to visit town for some kind of distraction but whenever he moved or twisted, the wounds burned like fire. He could guess what a jostly wagon ride would feel like.

  “If I had suspected Campbell of commencing a coup d’etat we would have stocked this house with guns and trustworthy men to operate them,” Matlock told him.