Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man The Eyes of Texas

by William W. Johnstone

  Keith had said that he thought he would be able to recognize the voice if he heard it again, and Sheriff Nelson was about to put that to the test.

  Sheriff Nelson found Charley Keith sitting on the front porch of the hardware store and, again, he bought the man’s time with a pint bottle of whiskey. He told Keith that he wanted him to go down to the sheriff’s office, and stand just under the open window.

  “What do you want me to do while I’m standin’ there?” Keith asked.

  “All I want you to do is listen,” Sheriff Nelson said.

  “Listen to what?”

  “Just listen. It may be nothing. But if it is what I think it is, you will know without being told.”

  “All right,” Keith said. He started to pull the cork on the bottle.

  “No, not yet,” Sheriff Nelson said. “Wait until after.”

  “After what?”

  “After you listen.”

  “Sheriff, I’m the drunk here, but I swear, you aren’t making any sense at all.”

  “If I’m making sense, it will all make sense,” Nelson said. “If I’m not, well, you can keep the whiskey anyway, so what do you have to lose?”

  When they reached the sheriff’s office, Nelson held his finger across his lips, cautioning Keith to be quiet; then he placed him just under the window that was open on the side of the building. With Keith in position, Nelson went back inside. He saw the deputy sitting at the desk, reading a newspaper.

  “Any problems while I was gone? Any wives coming to complain about their husbands or anything like that?” Nelson asked.

  Prichard chuckled. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Say, Abe, that poem you said a while ago, I been thinkin’ about it. Do you know any more of it?”

  “Sure I do,” Prichard replied. “I know the entire poem.”

  “Say it for me. I sure do like the way you do poetry. It’s like an actor on stage, or something.”

  “Why, Sheriff,” Prichard said. “Can it possibly be that I am to have a fellow lover of poetry in this cultural desert?”

  “Well, I do like poetry,” Sheriff Nelson said. “And I’m told that Miss Margrabe liked poetry as well.”

  Nelson studied Prichard’s face as he made the comment, but saw no reaction.

  “Did she? Well, it’s too bad she’s gone, perhaps we could have found common interests. But, you wanted to hear the poem.”

  “Yes.”

  Again, Prichard assumed a studied pose, then began reciting.

  “Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

  Rescue my Castle, before the hot day

  Brightens the blue from its silvery grey.

  “Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you’d say;

  Many’s the friend there, will listen and pray

  God’s luck to gallants that strike up the lay,

  Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

  “Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,

  Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads array:

  Who laughs, Good fellows ere this, by my fay,

  Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!”

  Finishing his recitation, Prichard looked toward Sheriff Nelson for his review, but before either man could say a word, Charley Keith burst into the room.

  “That’s him, Sheriff!” Keith shouted. “Now I know why you wanted me to stand out there under the window. That’s the same voice I heard sayin’ poetry that night. That’s the man that I saw going into the schoolteacher’s house!”

  Sheriff Nelson turned toward Prichard to question him, but it was too late. Prichard already had his gun in his hand. He fired twice, and both men went down.

  Less than thirty seconds later, Prichard was on his horse, galloping away.

  Abandoned cabin

  The small, one-room cabin was empty of all furniture except for one broken chair. There was a built-in shelf to one side, and a water pump stuck up through the shelf.

  Carter tried the pump, moving the handle up and down quickly. Except for some squeaks, clanks, and dust billowing from the mouth of the pump, his effort to get water produced no results.

  “I sure as hell hope Prichard ain’t plannin’ on us stayin’ here for long,” Fletcher said he picked up an empty, rusty can. “There ain’t a damn thing here.”

  “That’s why they call it abandoned,” Carter said.

  “Hey, Carter, now that Prichard is the sheriff an’ all, you don’t think he’d turn us in for the reward, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I mean, he’s wearin’ a badge now. And I don’t trust nobody that’s wearin’ a badge, whether I know them or not.”

  “Trust don’t have anything to do with it,” Carter said. “You seen him when we told him that Mutt got kilt. He wants to go back there and get revenge.”

  “Yeah, well, here’s the thing. I ain’t all that ready to go back to Shady Rest, what with we kilt a whore and that fella at the grocery store,” Fletcher said.

  “I’ve told you before, I don’t think anyone is goin’ to get all that upset about Lila gettin’ kilt. I mean she warn’t nothin’ but a whore, and there don’t nobody care nothin’ about whether or not a whore gets kilt, least of all Bramley. It happens all the time,” Carter said.

  “What about the man we kilt at the store?” Fletcher asked.

  “Yeah, well, Durbin is the law there now, remember? And I don’t see him gettin’ all upset about some cowboy gettin’ hisself kilt either. Prichard is a pretty smart man. If he says he can fix it so we can go back, I believe him.”

  “I wonder how long we’re goin’ to have to stay here in this place.”

  “No long,” Carter said, as he looked out the window. “Not long at all.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know, ’cause Prichard is comin’ up the road now, ridin’ like a bat outta hell.”

  Deputy Curly Lathom, who had picked up the sobriquet because he had been bald since his early twenties, spent most of his time around Fort Stockton. Today, he rode into Pecos to visit with Sheriff Nelson, but when he went into the sheriff’s office, he discovered both Nelson and another man lying on the floor. At first he thought they were dead, but he bent down to examine them, he discovered that they were both alive.

  “Sheriff! Who did this?” Deputy Lathom asked.

  “Conner did it,” Nelson said. “It was Deputy Abe Conner.”

  “Wait here,” Lathom said. “I’ll get the doctor.”

  Despite his wound, Sheriff Nelson chuckled. “Now, Curly, you tell me just where the hell you think I might go.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Lathom said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  As had become his custom in the time since arriving in Shady Rest, Matt had taken another long ride out into the countryside. He had two reasons for doing this. One was just to get out of town for a while, since there was nothing to do in town except spend his time in the saloon, and the other reason was to give Spirit a little exercise.

  Spirit (this was his third horse so named) did not enjoy being cooped up for too long, and Matt knew that he enjoyed, and needed, these long rides as much as Matt did. Today, Matt had explored the Guadalupe Range for most of the day, having a lunch of jerky and water at noon. But now, looking to the west, he saw that the clouds were building up into towering mountains of cream, growing higher and higher and turning darker and darker, until the sky in the west was nearly black as night.

  “I tell you what, Spirit. We need to start back to town. I think we’re about get us a regular gully washer.”

  Matt remounted, and turned Spirit back toward Shady Rest. Soon thereafter, the air stopped stirring, and it became very hushed, with only the sound of Spirit’s hoofbeats interrupting the quiet. Matt thought about putting him into a gallop, but decided not to risk it, for fear of injuring him.

  “We’re goin’ to get wet, boy. There’s just no way around it.” He reached down to pat Spirit on the neck. “But we aren’t made of sugar, so we’ll b
e all right.”

  There was a strange, heavy feeling in the air, and Matt kept an eye on the sky. He could tell that Spirit also sensed that something was about to happen.

  He remembered an incident once when he was still quite young and riding on his very first horse, also named Spirit, and given to him by Smoke Jensen. The horses, then, had seemed to be reacting to a change in the weather, and Matt had commented on it to Smoke.

  “They can smell the sulfur, boy,” Smoke said.

  “Smell the sulfur? What does that mean?”

  “That means that the very gates of hell are about to open.”

  This was a day like that one had been, and Matt could see the lightning, now but flashes buried deep in the clouds, each flash coming several seconds before the thunder, low and rumbling. Then the lightning broke out of the clouds. It streaked down the distant horizon, stretching from the clouds to the ground, and after each strike the following thunder came more closely on the heels of the flash.

  Then the winds came. At first it was no more than a gentle freshening, still hot and dry with the dust of the prairie. But the wind increased and Matt could feel a dampness on its breath.

  The intensity of the lightning increased. Instead of one or two flashes, there were ten or fifteen huge, jagged streaks, each streak giving birth to at least half-a-dozen more splitting off from it. Now the thunder, which was hard and sharp, followed so closely that it was almost concurrent with the lightning. After each flash, the thunder rolled with a long, deep-throated roar.

  “Get ready, Spirit, here it comes,” Matt said as he put on his poncho.

  The rain came then, sweeping down from the west, and he was able to watch it approach, a giant, gray wall. The lightning streaked and the thunder crashed, and then the rain was upon him, the water cascading down on him with as much ferocity as if he had been standing under a waterfall. Matt was drenched, and he felt wet clear through to the bone.

  The skies had opened over Shady Rest, and because of the deluge, no one was out and about. That meant that none of the stores in Shady Rest were doing any business. Annabelle was standing at the front window of her shop, watching the rain. It dripped from the eves, and the water stood in pools. There were no horses tied to any of the hitching posts, and the street was empty. Across the way, she saw Roy Clinton standing in the doorway of his apothecary, looking out at the rain. Near the apothecary, a cat was crouched under the slight overhang of the boardwalk, trying to pull itself back far enough to keep from being drenched, though Annabelle could see that the effort wasn’t successful.

  At the far end of the street she saw a horse and rider approaching and felt sorry for anyone who happened to be out in weather like this. Then she recognized him. It was Matt Jensen! Before she realized what she was doing, she stepped out into the rain and waved at him, bidding him to come over.

  Seeing Annabelle standing in front of her shop, waving at him, Matt turned Spirit toward her.

  “Come in out of the rain,” Annabelle invited, her voice thin in the downpour.

  “I need to get my horse out of the rain as well,” Matt called back.

  “I have a lean-to out back.”

  Matt nodded, rode Spirit around to the back of the shop, dismounted, then led his horse into the shelter.

  “You’ll be all right here, for a while,” Matt said as he wrapped the reins around a stanchion.

  When Matt went inside the shop, Annabelle met him with a towel. Matt dried himself off as best he could; then he handed the towel back. “You look like you could use it as well,” he said.

  Annabelle smiled. “Yes, I did get a little wet, didn’t I? We both need some dry clothes.”

  “I guess we do. The problem is, I don’t seem to have any handy at the moment.”

  Annabelle smiled. “Yes, you do,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I not only sell dresses to women, I also have some nice robes for men. Suppose I pick one out for you, then we can go up my apartment and both of us get into some dry clothes?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Matt said. “You are inviting me up to your apartment, where we are both going to take off our clothes?”

  Her smile was bold and self-confident.

  “Yes,” she said, as she turned the sign around in her door from OPEN to CLOSED.

  Annabelle’s apartment upstairs was diffused by gray rain-light, so Annabelle struck a match and lit a lantern, which pushed out a little golden bubble of light. She raised the match to her lips and blew it out. “You can change out here,” she said. “I’ll go into the bedroom.”

  Matt nodded, and as soon as she went into her bedroom and closed the door, he began stripping out of his wet clothes. A moment later he had them draped over the cold radiator, and he put on the red flannel robe she had given him.

  He waited for a long moment for her, and when she didn’t reappear he decided that she must be waiting to hear from him that it was all right for her to come back out. He knocked lightly on the bedroom door.

  “Annabelle?” he called. “You can come out, now.”

  “Or, you can come in,” Annabelle replied.

  Matt found the answer curious, but he opened the door to step inside. There, he saw her, wearing nothing but a thin, cotton sleeping gown. The nipples of her breasts were prominent against the cloth.

  “Annabelle?” Matt asked.

  “You don’t really want to go back out into the rain, do you, Matt?” Annabelle asked. She put every ounce of seduction she could muster in her voice, and she thrust her hip out to one side, accenting her curves. She’d planned for it to be a provocative pose, and it was.

  “Perhaps I should blow out the lantern,” Matt suggested.

  Smiling, Annabelle pulled her sleeping gown over her head, then stood naked before him.

  “I was hoping you would say that,” she said

  The next morning Annabelle went to see Mayor Trout, carrying with her a carefully wrapped package.

  “Miss O’Callahan,” Mayor Trout said. “What a delight to have you call on me. What is in the package?”

  “I have finished the dress I was making for Mrs. Trout,” Annabelle said. “I thought perhaps, since you have already paid for it, that you might like to deliver it to her personally.”

  “Yes, what a wonderful idea!” Mayor Trout said. “And aren’t you nice to think of it.”

  “Now, Mayor, I have a request to make.”

  “Of course, Miss O’Callahan. Anything, just ask.”

  “Good, I’m glad you feel that way. Mayor Trout, I want you to appoint me to the position of city marshal.”

  “What?” Trout said, his voice a gasp at the request.

  “I want to be appointed as the next city marshal.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would you ask something like that? That is absurd. And were I to grant that request, I would be insane.”

  “Do we or do we not need a city marshal? Or, are you ready to turn all the law enforcement over to Deputy Durbin?”

  “No, I—that is, yes, we do need a city marshal.”

  “And have you been able to find someone to take the job?”

  “No,” Mayor Trout admitted.

  “Then, I ask you, why do you turn me down? You need a city marshal, and I want the job.”

  “I . . . I’ll have to take this up with the city council.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll call a special meeting this afternoon.”

  “Good. Now, I have one more request.”

  “What might that be?” Mayor Trout asked in a resigned voice.

  “I want to be present at the meeting of the city council. I want to plead my own case.”

  Mayor Trout sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. “All right, we’ll meet at three o’clock, here, in the city hall.”

  Matt was having his lunch at Moe’s when he saw Hawkins coming toward his table.

  “You’re going to join me for lunch? Good,” Matt said.

 
; Hawkins ordered his meal, and Matt told the waiter to hold his own lunch back until Hawkins was served.

  “There’s going to be a meeting of the city council at three this afternoon,” Hawkins said. “You might be interested in the subject.”

  Matt took a swallow of his coffee before he answered. “I hope it isn’t another attempt to get me to accept the job of city marshal.”

  “It isn’t,” Hawkins said. “Oh, it is about the city marshal, but you aren’t the one they’ll be considering.”

  “You mean they have a volunteer for the job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Once you have a new city marshal, tell him he can count on my support.”

  Hawkins smiled. “I’ll tell her,” he said.

  Hawkins’s reply came just as their meals were being delivered, and Matt was paying attention to the placement of his plate. But he looked up quickly.

  “What did you say? You will tell her?”

  Hawkins chuckled. “I thought that would get your attention.”

  Matt recalled something Annabelle had said on the day he had given her a shooting lesson.

  “Well, I have too much invested here, in money, labor, and personal commitment, to let Bramley and the others take it away from me. I don’t intend to stand by and let that happen. I will fight them.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Matt said. “You’re talking about Annabelle O’Callahan, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Hawkins said. “Wait a minute. How do you know that? Did you know that Miss O’Callahan was going to do this?”

  “No, I can’t say that I knew she was going to do this,” Matt said. “But neither can I say that I’m surprised.”

  “Well, I’m surprised,” Hawkins said. “I’m damn surprised.”

  “What time did you say the city council was going to meet?”

  “At three o’clock this afternoon.”