by Ralph Cotton
“You’re going to take us back to him, aren’t you?” Randall asked in defeat, letting Ace Tomblin take the bay’s reins from his hand as Delphia slipped down from the horse’s back.
“That’s right,” said Falon, “her anyway. I’ve got a feeling the reverend doesn’t want you around any longer. He’s going to think I’m the cock of the walk, bringing this sweet little wife back to him.” He made a slight gesture with his eyes toward Delphia, then said to Randall, “Believe me, there are worse things that could happen to her than us taking her back to Father Jessup—if you know what I mean.”
Delphia heard the suggestion in Falon’s voice and said quickly, her voice rising in panic, “What are you saying? What are you going to do to him?”
“Tell her what I’m going to do to you, wolfer,” Falon said.
Randall slid down from the saddle and faced Falon, seeing no way out for himself. “Promise me you won’t harm her, Falon.”
“No! Don’t kill him!” Delphia screamed, realizing what Randall already knew Falon had in mind for him. She tried to lunge forward to Randall, but Ace Tomblin grabbed her and held her back.
“Get over there, wolfer,” Falon demanded, using his rifle barrel to gesture Randall to the rocks alongside the steep walls of the pass. “The quicker we get this over with, the quicker everybody can get on back to their own business.”
Before taking step, Randall said, “You’re taking her right back? You’re not going to let any of your men bother her, are you?”
“Damn, you’re getting on my nerves, wolfer!” said Falon, giving him a shove with the tip of his rifle barrel. “You heard the woman. Jessup would kill us all deader than hell if we did what we feel like doing to her. She’s going back. You’re going to hell. We’re going to get a lick on our cheeks for solving Father Jessup’s problem. What more can a man get out of life?” He stopped walking along behind Randall. Allowing Randall to get a few feet farther away from him as he raised his rifle and aimed it at the back of Randall’s head.
Hearing the hammer cock, Randall continued to walk, but began to recite a prayer from the Bible. Hearing Randall pray, Falon gave a dark chuckle and said, “You’re a dumb one, wolfer. God hasn’t done a damn thing for you yet, and He’s about run out of time.”
Randall’s voice continued, low and calmly, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.’”
The sound of Randall praying seemed to anger Falon. He clenched the rifle tighter, taking closer aim, his hand trembling in rage. “Damn it! I told you, it was hearing you talking to God that brought us down on you! Don’t you ever learn, you damned fool!” The rifle hammer dropped with a loud explosion, silencing Randall’s prayer abruptly as he flipped forward, the bullet striking the back of his head.
Delphia screamed long and loud, twisting her face free of Ace Tomblin’s grip, but unable to free herself from the other two men and run to her fallen husband.
More angry now than before, Falon turned quickly from his gruesome handiwork and stomped past Ace and the others as they struggled with the woman. “Shut her up, Gawdamn it!” he shouted. “Everybody mount up. Let’s get moving!”
Ace Tomblin stepped around in front of Delphia while the other two held her. Walking to his horse to slide his rifle into his saddle boot, Falon heard the sound of the punch landing on the woman’s jaw. Spinning quickly toward Ace he said, “Have you lost your mind? What the hell was we just talking about? Jessup will kill us if something happens to her!”
“So?” said Tomblin, looking at Delphia, who had slumped back into Kirby Falon’s arms. “Tell him the wolfer did this to her. If she denies it, tell him she’s accusing us just to cause us trouble.” Ace laughed a little and said with a hand up to his ear, “Anyway, listen how quiet it is without her wailing and carrying on.”
“Damn,” Falon grumbled under his breath. “You better hope she doesn’t have a bruised jaw out of this. That’s all I can say.” He jammed the rifle down into the saddle boot, stepped up into the saddle and rode his horse over beside the big bay. “Lay her up here. We’re headed for Paradise.”
Chapter 14
CC Ellis had ridden the big silver stallion hard throughout the night, staying on Randall and Delphia’s trail ahead of Jessup and his men. When he’d heard the single rifle shot echo up around the rim of the rock walls encircling the wide valley, he pushed the stallion hard in that direction until he slowed to a stop where the ground beneath him lay covered with fresh hoofprints. He started to turn the stallion and follow the prints, but the boot prints leading off the side of the trail caught his attention and he followed them instead, his Colt drawn and ready.
“Oh, Jesus,” he murmured, seeing Randall Turner, facedown in the rocky dirt. In the grainy morning light, he saw the large dark puddle of blood surrounding Randall’s hidden face. Holstering his Colt, Ellis stepped down from his saddle and walked over to body. “You didn’t deserve any of this,” he said quietly.
Ellis stooped down, turned Randall onto his back and dragged him out of the puddle of blood, back toward the stallion. In the silence of morning he asked himself if there was any way in the world to save the woman from Father Jessup now that her young husband was dead. But in asking, he also had to remind himself that none of this affair was his business. He owed this man nothing. He owed this man’s young widow nothing. He reminded himself that the way this thing was playing out, he would be lucky if he could get Callie, Dillard and himself out of Wolf Valley without a fight. Yet, having witnessed the grim outcome that had befallen Randall and Delphia Turner, he found it hard not to take Jessup’s trail and kill him upon sight.
For the sake of Callie and the boy Ellis forced himself to stop thinking about killing Jessup. He reached his hands under Randall’s blood-soaked shoulders and prepared to move him up. “At least I can see to it you get in the ground proper like, you poor son of—” He stopped abruptly at the gurgling sound that rose up from Randall’s chest.
“Help— Help me,” Randall said in a voice so faint it could have been easily missed had Ellis not been stooped down close to him.
“Jesus!” Ellis exclaimed. “You’re alive!” He lowered Randall quickly, keeping a hand behind the mass of blood on the back of his head.
“Help me,” Randall whispered.
“Hold on, Randall! Just hold on! I’ll be right, back,” Ellis said, hearing the surprise and urgency in his own voice. Turning Randall’s head sideways as he laid it back in the dirt, Ellis hurried to the stallion and took down a canteen of tepid water as he untied his bandanna and pulled it from around his neck.
Back at Randall’s side, he washed the heavy blood from around Randall’s weak and trembling lips. “Don’t try to talk,” Ellis told him. “I see what happened here.”
“My—my wife,” Randall managed to say, the words seeming to deplete his strength.
“I know,” said Ellis. “Some of Jessup’s men caught up to you. They must’ve circled around the main body and ridden on ahead.”
“No,” Randall whispered. “Falon…”
“Falon?” Ellis asked, surprised by the information. “Falon and his wolf trappers have your wife?”
“Yes,” Randall answered, his hand managing to find Ellis’s forearm and squeeze it slightly. “A horse…”
“A horse?” Ellis shook his head as he wet the bandanna. He carefully turned Randall’s head sideways again for a closer look at the wound beneath the mass of dark-jellied blood. “I’ve got no more horses for you,” he said. “Besides, you’re not going to be riding for a while.” Judging from the severity of the wound, Ellis was doubtful that the young man would live throughout the coming day.
“I’ve got to. God help me.…” His pleading whisper trailed off into the grainy morning light.
Ellis felt him go limp and almost stopped cleaning the wound, thinking him dead. But he felt Randall take a shallow breath, and remarked to himself, “If I was God, I sure would, as much as
you’ve been through.”
But you’re not God, a warning voice sounded in his mind. Ellis clenched his teeth and concentrated on examining the bloody head wound.
As the mass of blood gave way to the probe of the wet bandanna, he saw that a flap of loosed scalp lay to the side and exposed a long strip of white skull bone before blood began to well and cover it. Before blood obscured it, Ellis saw what he thought to be thin veinlike cracks in the bone matter. He winced at the sight of it and carefully laid the layer of scalp in place. Rather then remove any more of the blood mass and perhaps start the heavy blood flow all over again, Ellis laid the wet bandanna atop the wound and pressed it gently into place. “We’re going to make us a camp here,” he said to the unconscious man in his arms, still doubting if Randall would make it through the day. “As soon as you’re able to ride, we’ll take you somewhere and get you some proper medical care.”
Ellis looked all around in the grainy morning light, realizing with an almost eerie feeling in his gut that every step he took with the young couple drew him in deeper toward a reckoning with Jessup and his followers.
At the rear of Frank Falon’s riders, his brother, Kirby, and Willie Singer rode close together, arguing back and forth secretively between themselves. Warily, Kirby Falon stared forward, watching Frank and Ace Tomblin ride along, with Ace leading Ellis’s big bay behind him. Delphia Turner sat slumped in her saddle, half-conscious, still groggy from the earlier punch to her jaw.
“I don’t know, Willie,” Kirby said. “Seeing that big bay makes me think we better come clean and tell Frank everything the way it really happened that day on the creekbank.”
“I’m telling you, Kirby, that might not even be the same bay the man was riding that day. You act like there’s only one bay horse in the whole damned world!”
Kirby said firmly, “Willie, you know as well as I do, that’s the same bay horse that man was riding the day we all got the hell shot out of us. The man said he was CC Ellis, and I believed him.”
“Well, whoever he was, he’s deader than hell,” said Willie Singer. “And I don’t see how telling your brother, Frank, is going to do anything but get me killed, and you skinned from top to bottom! Now keep your mouth shut and let’s ride this thing out.”
“That wolfer was riding CC Ellis’s bay, Willie,” Kirby insisted. “I don’t know how that happened, but I don’t like it a damn bit.”
“The wolfer could have gotten that bay anywhere, including finding it walking along the trail after the shooting,” said Willie. “Damn it, Kirby! Learn to hold your water! You’re acting as fidgety as a schoolgirl!”
“Watch your mouth, Willie,” Kirby said, his voice rising, drawing attention from the rest of the men riding along the trail.
“Easy, Kirby,” Willie whispered, trying to settle him down. “All I’m saying is let’s keep this thing to ourselves. Odds are CC Ellis is dead. Don’t let this horse undo everything we told Frank!”
At the head of the riders, Frank Falon turned in his saddle at the sound of the two men’s voices. “What’s going on back there, Kirby? Are you and Willie Singer at it again?”
“Now you’ve done it,” Willie whispered sidelong to Kirby. “Go on then. Ride up there and tell him every damned thing. See what it gets us.” He gave Kirby a cold stare. If Kirby made a move toward riding up to his brother, Willie had already made up his mind. He would put a bullet in the young gunman’s back, turn his horse and make a run for it.
“It’s nothing, Frank,” Kirby called out. “You know how Willie and I are always fussing about something.”
“Yeah, well keep it to yourselves,” Frank called back to his younger brother. “You’re both starting to get on my nerves.”
“Sure thing, Frank,” Kirby said, turning his gaze to Willie, seeing how relieved he looked.
Willie settled back into his saddle, saying, “Sometimes I wonder about you, Kirby. You don’t always seem to have good sense.”
Kirby grinned to himself and stared ahead.
The riders pushed on until they came to the trade shack in the clearing where the old wolfers gathered at the doors of their smaller plank huts and stared at the big bay with Randall Turner’s wife sitting slumped in the saddle, her jaw bruised and puffy from the blow Ace Tomblin had dealt her. “Better come take a look, Soupbone,” said one of the grease-smeared attendants wearing dirty rags tied around his hands in place of work gloves. “It looks like Randall and his wife didn’t get very far.”
“Out’n my way, all of yas!” said a gruff voice. From amid the station attendants, Soupbone Pitler shouldered his way to the front of the open doorway and said aloud to himself upon looking out onto the mud street and seeing the woman, “Poor Randall. God help him if this bunch caught him for Jessup. Falon would kill his own kin if he thought it would gain him favor with Father Jessup.”
Beside Soupbone the attendant with rags around his hands said, “I’ll give Randall this much. He said he was going to make a break for it, and by God, he did it!” He looked all around at the other dirty, half-starved attendants and said in a sour tone, “That’s more than the rest of us sorry bastards can say for ourselves.”
“Speak for yourself, Dooley,” said Arch Tidwell, another of the attendants. “Jessup has done right by me. I would have starved to death long ago had he not taken me in.”
“Yeah, you sorry old scab,” said Lloyd Dooley, turning his attention back to the riders coming along the middle of the muddy street. “That’s why you run to tell Jessup everything that anybody says about him.”
“Careful Dooley,” said Soupbone, “or he’ll be telling him what you’ve got to say about him.” He gave Tidwell a dark stare. “Every time I think he mighta been the one to tell on Randall Turner, it’s all I can do to keep from sinking a hatchet into that ugly skull of his.”
Hearing Soupbone, Tidwell turned and slinked away toward the back door of the shack.
“I couldn’t care less what he tells Jessup about me,” Dooley hissed without taking his eyes off the riders. “I’m getting like Randall. I just don’t give a damn anymore. What’s the worst he can do to me, kill me?” He spit and ran a hand over his mouth. “Dying ain’t the worst thing can happen to a man.”
“Hear that, Tidwell?” said Soupbone, calling as Arch Tidwell stepped out of the shack and disappeared from sight. “It’s getting to where folks ain’t worried about Jessup anymore!” But upon realizing that Tidwell hadn’t heard him, he said to the others, “Randall Turner has shown us all something, the way he stood up to Jessup and tried to take back what was his.”
“He might’ve tried,” said Dooley, nodding out toward Delphia Turner, “but he didn’t get very far with it. The trail out of Wolf Valley is too long and hard for a man to get away! It’s impossible!”
“The whole point is he at least tried!” Soupbone snapped. “Everything is impossible until a man puts his shoulder to it and shoves. Even if it defeats him, others see his effort and it causes another man to step up and try his hand at it.” He gave the others a solemn stare. “Look around, those of you who want to leave this hellhole! This whole valley is turning into a keg of black powder. All it’s going to take is the right spark to set it off.”
“You might be right about that, Soupbone,” said Dooley, scratching his dirty beard in contemplation.
“I am right about it,” Soupbone replied. “I just hope I’m standing near that betrayer Arch Tidwell when it happens, so that I can gouge both my thumbs into his sorry eyes.”
“There goes Tidwell now,” said Dooley, staring out across the muddy street.
Crowding in beside him, Soupbone and the others stared out at Tidwell as he ran through the mud past the boiling caldron toward another party of riders coming into sight from the opposite direction of Falon and his men. “What the tarnation is that skunk up to now?” said Soupbone to no one in particular.
Squinting for a better look, Dooley said, “Speak of the devil. Here comes Father Jessup and his believ
ers right now.”
“To gather up Delphia Turner and force her back with him, I reckon,” said Soupbone with a bitter note in his voice. They watched Tidwell hurry along, casting a backward glance in their direction as he slipped, stumbled and raced on through the mud.
At the head of the riders, Father Jessup also saw Tidwell running to meet him and his men. But his eyes only looked toward the running man for an instant, then went to the woman sitting atop the big bay across from the attendants’ shack. “Brother Searcy, get rid of this fool!” Jessup shouted, kicking his horse forward toward Delphia Turner, swerving a bit to avoid Tidwell.
“Father! Father! I have to talk to you!” Tidwell shouted, waving his arms, seeing Jessup hurrying away from him. He started to run along behind Jessup, but Brother Searcy sidled his horse over in front of him, blocking his way.
“What do you want, Tidwell?” Searcy asked in an impatient voice.
“I’ve got to talk to Father! It’s important!” Tidwell cried out, his face turning white because the other wolfers had seen Father Jessup ignore him. “These wolfers are talking awfully harsh! I expect trouble from them!” He glanced back quickly and saw all eyes on him from the door of the shack. “Father’s got to listen to me! He’s got to talk to me! Please! He’s got to!”
“Oh does he?” said Searcy, giving a tap to his horse’s sides, the horse bumping Tidwell backward a step. “You’re forgetting yourself, wolfer!” Searcy gave him a cruel grin. “Father listens to whoever he feels like listening to. No amount of begging or shouting is going to change that!”
“But they’ll kill me!” Tidwell pleaded. “I’ve always done what Father asked me to do! He can’t just let a follower die!”
“Sure he can,” Searcy grinned, seeming to enjoy Tidwell’s pleading. “It happens all the time!” He gave the man another bump backward with his horse. Tidwell went down on his back in the mud, and struggled up to his knees, knowing the others were seeing all of this. “Beside, who said that you’re one of the believers, you grubby, sour-smelling wolfer? Nobody ever let you into the believer’s group.”