“Well, come on in and sit down,” Pryor said. “You got here just in time for supper. Slide over a little, Grady, and let the man sit down.” He glanced back up at Jason and said, “That is, if you’d care to eat.”
“I’ve never been one to turn down a hot meal,” Jason responded and climbed over the bench to seat himself across from Pryor.
“Otis,” the little man said, “bring our guest a plate and some weapons.” Turning his attention back to Jason, he began his questions. “Now, Mr. . . .” He paused and waited for the name. “Storm,” he repeated after Jason answered. “What have you got in mind? You don’t look much like a farmer to me. You have a wife and family?”
“No, no family,” Jason replied as Otis placed a cup of coffee before him. “Just me. My wife passed away a few years back, and you’re right, I ain’t a farmer. To tell you the truth, I rode through this valley about five years ago and there wasn’t nobody here, so I sorta set it in my mind to come back and fix up a little place to raise some stock of my own. I still like the look of it, and if you’re a reasonable man, I was hopin’ I might be able to buy a small piece from you. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expectin’ the land to be surveyed and folks already settlin’ here, so I didn’t figure on havin’ to pay anything for it. So if the price is too steep, I’ll just keep ridin’ up through Montana till I find someplace I like as well as this.”
Pryor paid strict attention to Jason’s every word, and Jason got the feeling that the man was trying to plumb the depth of his character. “Well, you’re pretty straightforward in what your needs are,” he commented. “Is your name on any Wanted posters anywhere?”
Jason smiled. “Nope, I’m not wanted for any crimes, but I’d have to be a damn fool to tell you if I was.”
Pryor laughed. “I guess you would at that. The boys here can tell you that what I aim to do is build a town where decent folks can be proud to live. Naturally I’d like to see families move in, but I don’t have anything against a hardworking bachelor if he contributes to the welfare of the community.” He hesitated when he read a hint of concern in Jason’s face. “Maybe that’s not what you’re looking for.”
Jason had to pause a moment to chew up a tough piece of beef before answering. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Pryor, I don’t intend to be any trouble for anybody, but I’m not lookin’ to be a big part of the town’s affairs. I’m lookin’ for a place where I can mind my own business, where I ain’t too far from the mountains and the prairies. It doesn’t have to be much as long as there’s water and grass for a few head of cattle and some horses.”
“Blind Woman Creek,” Curly Yates interjected.
Pryor nodded. “Maybe so,” he agreed while he thought about it for a few moments. “Yeah, that might be what you’re looking for, all right. That’s land up a canyon that we aren’t using, and if it suits you, then we’ll talk about the price. Curly can ride up there with you in the morning and you can tell me what you think tomorrow. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” Jason replied.
“Good. You can bunk here tonight if you can stand the company.” His comment brought a laugh from the others at the table. “There’s a couple of empty bunks at the back.”
“Much obliged,” Jason said. “I ain’t slept under a roof for a while.”
After breakfast, Jason waited while Curly assigned the day’s chores to his men. When the work was lined up and the crew dispersed, Curly and Jason rode out to the north, following the general course of the river. Curly set a leisurely pace toward the mountains that appeared to box the valley at the upper end. Jason remembered, however, that there was a narrow pass that led to a second valley beyond. As they rode, Curly talked about the man he worked for, and what he planned to do.
“Mr. Pryor’s a good man, and a damn generous one at that. He hired me and the boys in Cheyenne. We brought a herd up from Texas and was fixin’ to ride back, but he made us an offer to come help him start up this place. He don’t know much about raisin’ cattle, so he pretty much leaves that to me. What he’s good at is buildin’ a town, and before he’s through, Paradise is gonna be a proper city with a church and a school. If me or any of the men decide to settle down and raise a family, he says he’ll see to it that we have a place of our own with a house on it.”
“That’s mighty generous, all right,” Jason said. “All that he’s doin’ takes a helluva lot of money.”
“Ain’t no doubt about that,” Curly replied. “Folks say he made his money in the bankin’ business, and he owned a newspaper back east somewhere.” He couldn’t help but add a word of caution. “Part of my job is to make sure nobody gets no ideas about Mr. Pryor’s money.”
Jason smiled, having not missed the intent of the comment. “Is there a Missus Pryor?”
“No. He’s like you, ain’t got no family. With all his money, he ain’t a fancy man himself—lives in that plain little house with a Mexican couple that takes care of the place. The woman, Juanita, cooks, but Mr. Pryor takes most of his meals with the men down at the bunkhouse.”
It was almost noon when Curly stopped talking about Raymond Pryor and pulled up beside a small creek that emptied into the river at a sharp bend in the river’s course. “Blind Woman Creek,” he announced. “If you follow the creek back through that little gulch there, it’ll lead you to the other side of that ridge yonder. That land on the other side of the ridge is the piece Mr. Pryor is talkin’ about.”
Jason stood up in the stirrups and gazed all around him for a few minutes before settling in the saddle again. Turning Biscuit’s head then, he followed the creek back up through the gulch toward the ridge. Curly followed along behind him. On the far side of the ridge, they found themselves facing a wide expanse of grassy prairie that gradually ascended toward the mountain beyond. Jason knew instantly that he had found the place he had imagined. It had a feel about it that touched his soul. There was no further decision to be made as far as he was concerned, depending upon Pryor’s largesse. An additional hour was spent while Jason looked the land over, fixing in his mind where he would build his cabin, where he would build his barn and corral. He could already see the finished product in his mind.
It was almost suppertime when they returned to the ranch. “Mr. Pryor said he’d come down to the bunkhouse to talk to you after we got back,” Curly said. “You can go ahead and take care of your horse, and he’ll be down directly. Otis ain’t rang the supper bell yet, but he’s probably got some coffee ready if you want a cup while you’re waitin’.”
Jason nodded, guessing that Pryor had instructed Curly to see him before he talked to Jason. Confirming his suspicions, Curly promptly turned his horse and rode toward the house.
“Well, what do you think?” Pryor asked when Juanita led Curly back to the study.
“Far as I can tell, he ’pears to be all right,” Curly replied. “He don’t talk a helluva lot, so I can’t really tell you much about where he came from or what he’s been doin’. But I just get a gut feel that he’s an honest man. He was lookin’ that land over like he was already layin’ it out in his mind.”
“I like that,” Pryor said. “Sounds like he’s planning to build something instead of just squatting on the land.” He got up from his desk. “Come on, we’ll go talk to him.” As they walked to the door, he called out, “Juanita, don’t worry about supper for me. I’ll eat with the men.”
“Sí Señor Pryor,” the patient woman replied. She had prepared only enough for her and her husband, knowing that her employer would go to the bunkhouse as usual.
Pryor walked over to the corral, where he found Jason inspecting the shoes on his packhorse. “Got a problem?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Jason answered, “just checkin’. She’s bad about throwing a shoe once in a while, but she seems to be all right.”
“Well, what did you think about that piece up at Blind Woman Creek? Think it might be suitable for what you’ve got in mind?”
“Yes, sir. I expect it might work out just
fine, dependin’ on whether I can afford it or not.”
Pryor studied Jason’s face for a full minute before making his proposition. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he finally said. “That piece, from the river back to the mountain, has about a hundred and fifty acres of good grazing land. I’ll sell it to you for a dollar an acre. Now, if you’ll keep an eye on any of my stock that wanders too far over that way, I’ll wait a year before we have to settle up, and I’ll help you with some breed stock to boot.”
Jason was surprised. As Curly had said, Pryor was a generous man. “I reckon we’ve got a deal,” he said and extended his hand. They shook on it, and Jason knew he had found the place he had hoped for. “I was fixin’ to ask you about buyin’ some calves from you.”
“We’ll work something out,” Pryor said. “Now, come on, let’s go get some supper.” He grinned and added, “Neighbor.”
The next few weeks were filled with long days of hard work. Jason, still amazed by Pryor’s generosity, labored from dawn to dusk to build a corral and a small cabin on the eastern side of the ridge that stood close to the river. Locating his cabin beside Blind Woman Creek, he had an uncluttered view of the mountain and the gentle grassy apron that surrounded its base.
There was plenty of timber available on the mountain and the task of snaking it down to the creek was made considerably easier when Curly brought a couple of his men and a pair of mules to speed up the construction. Pryor himself checked on Jason’s progress from time to time, always offering praise and encouragement for Jason’s obvious work ethic.
“You’re a hardworking man, Jason Storm,” Pryor commented on one of his visits. “Looks like you weren’t joshing when you said you planned to build a real homestead here.” He reached out to take the cup of coffee Jason offered. After a couple of sips of the steaming-hot liquid, he looked Jason directly in the eye. “You know, I make quite a few trips a year to Helena and occasionally Butte. I hear a lot of things that folks in this valley don’t. Jason Storm,” he repeated. “I heard of a United States deputy marshal over in Wyoming Territory by that name. Had a helluva reputation as a lawman, according to what I heard.”
Jason met Pryor’s gaze without any apparent reaction. “He quit the marshaling business is what I heard,” he responded. “Got tired of the killin’ and chasin’ no-account lawbreakers—left Wyoming to find someplace where folks didn’t know him, hopin’ to find a little peace.”
Pryor paused to give that some thought. In his mind he pictured Oscar Perkins, the farmer who had taken the part-time job as sheriff of his little town. Oscar was a poor comparison to the broad-shouldered, rock-hard man kneeling by this campfire. It was awfully tempting to try to persuade Jason to take over the law enforcement of Paradise, but he resisted. “Fair enough,” he said. “A man’s past is his own business as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
“I appreciate it,” Jason said, assured that Pryor would keep it to himself. It was never mentioned again.
By the middle of the summer, Jason had a dried-in cabin, a corral, and a shed for a barn. It was time to think about laying in a supply of firewood for the winter, but before taking that on, he figured he had earned a day off to go hunting. He knew he would be doing a lot of hunting in the fall for meat to dry, but this trip was simply for the joy of rewarding himself with a feast of roast venison.
Biscuit, equally eager for a holiday, exhibited no objections to the saddle, even though he had not been burdened with it over the past weeks. Stepping up in the stirrup, Jason paused to take a look at his little piece of Paradise. Satisfied that he had landed in a good spot, and an enviable situation, he relaxed his hold on the reins and let the buckskin set the pace, confident that he had found the peace he had craved since Mary Ellen’s death. The crystal blue sky and the lazy wheeling of a hawk high overhead brought him a feeling of deep contentment. All was well in his world as he loped off across the slope, unaware of the evil tempest about to descend upon the sleepy little settlement of Paradise.
Chapter 3
“Riders comin’,” Bob Dawson sang out, and climbed up on top of a flat rock to get a better look. After a minute or so, when the riders were closer, he said, “It’s Doc and Lacey.” He climbed down from the rock and walked back to the fire, where three men were sitting in bored anticipation. None of the three seemed interested enough to reply to Dawson’s report as he picked up the coffeepot and helped himself to a cup. Then he made himself comfortable against the trunk of a cottonwood and waited with the others.
In a few minutes’ time, the two riders loped past the flat rock and pulled up in the trees where the horses were tied. As Dawson had, they headed for the coffeepot after dismounting. “Well?” Mace Cantrell questioned. “What’d you find?”
“Not much,” Doc replied. “There ain’t no bank. Me and Lacey rode into town and rode out the other end before we even knowed it. Didn’t we, Lacey?”
Lacey grunted a laugh. “That’s about right. There ain’t much there. They got a saloon, though.” He wrapped his bandanna around the metal handle of the coffeepot to keep from burning his hand.
“We could sure use one of them,” Junior remarked.
Lacey went on. “A general store, stable, blacksmith, doctor’s office, a dentist, a sawmill, and the saloon; that’s about it except for a couple of houses. There’s a sheriff’s office, but we didn’t see nobody around.” He paused to pour his coffee, only to discover an empty pot. “Dammit,” he cursed, “who’s the lazy son of a bitch that set an empty pot back on the fire?” He went on. “It don’t take a helluva lot to fill it up again if you’re the one that emptied it.”
“We was all waitin’ for you to get back,” Zeke Cheney remarked, giving Bob Dawson a wink. “We know you’re better than anybody at grindin’ the beans.”
Mace Cantrell stared at the stick he had been absentmindedly fiddling with, then threw it into the fire, registering his disgust with the report on the town. “Well, I reckon a body couldn’t expect much of a town way the hell out here fifty miles from the nearest railroad.”
“Might as well saddle up and head on out for Belle Fourche like we planned,” Doc said.
“Maybe,” Mace replied, “but I mighta changed my mind. A drink of liquor would go pretty good right now.” He picked up another dead branch and poked around in the fire with it while he thought it over. “We’ll ride on in. Might as well have a drink and look the place over. Doc and Lacey mighta missed somethin’.”
“You’re the boss,” Junior said. “Course, I wouldn’t likely argue agin a drink of liquor, anyway.”
Mace Cantrell was the boss. There was no uncertainty about that fact among the ruthless gang of six men. Tall and lean as a fence post, he was as deadly as a serpent, with black hair and a week’s growth of jet-black whiskers. His dark, lifeless eyes, set deep beneath heavy brows, were said to have been the last image more than a dozen men had glimpsed before going to hell. Acting as his second, Doc, his older brother by two years, was always at his side for the remote possibility that Mace’s authority might be challenged.
On this day in early July, Mace’s gang of unprincipled back shooters and bushwhackers was running a little ragged, causing Mace to fall into one of his frequent dark moods. Even Doc was reluctant to say much to his brother when he was in one of his black depressions. Things had not gone well for them in Virginia City. The town had grown large enough to deal with their kind, and they had been forced to flee the territory after a foiled bank robbery, only to find that Butte and Helena had been alerted to watch out for them. There was the matter of a slain bank guard, so Mace decided it best to head to the north, away from the main trails, planning to eventually wind up back east in the Dakota Territory. From what Doc and Lacey reported, the little settlement of Paradise seemed unlikely to offer any threat to them. Doc said there were no telegraph lines, so it was doubtful there was any communication with the larger towns.
“Helluva place for a town,” he concluded. “We’ll ride in and
get us a drink in the mornin’.” That said, he got up and walked off into the trees to be alone with his thoughts. Always concerned, his brother watched him till he disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.
“Hell,” Zeke Cheney mumbled when Mace was out of earshot, “what’s wrong with goin’ to get a drink tonight?”
Doc Cantrell cast a warning frown in Zeke’s direction. “Well, why don’t you go tell him you don’t wanna wait till mornin’?”
“I’m just sayin’, that’s all,” Zeke quickly recanted. He was the most recent recruit to join the small band of outlaws, but he had learned not to question an order from Mace Cantrell.
A nagging toothache didn’t serve to improve the gang leader’s somber disposition as he considered the report Lacey and Doc had brought back. He had seen better days. Of that there was no doubt, and the last few years of raiding and running had him longing for the old days, riding with Quantrill and Anderson. He tended to lay most of the blame for his recent hard times on the collection of saddle tramps that now made up his raiding party. Only his brother, Doc, had been with him during the war. The other four were down-and-outers he had picked up along the way. He would have traded the lot of them for one of the men who had ridden with him during the war.
The throbbing of his sore tooth seemed to beat a cadence that took his mind back to those glory days some thirteen years past. He was twenty years of age when he and Doc joined Bill Quantrill’s raiders. They raided and fought the abolitionists in Missouri and Kansas, siding with the Confederates as they slaughtered soldiers and civilians alike. And when the outfit became too big for even Quantrill to effectively command, Mace and Doc broke off with Bill Anderson to form a separate guerrilla force. Bloody Bill Anderson made a name for himself that was feared as much as Quantrill’s, and young Mace Cantrell proved to be a dedicated disciple. He soon became one of Bill’s lieutenants and rode with him on that fateful day in October 1864 when they were lured into a trap set for them by Union soldiers in Ray County, Missouri. Mace and Doc were among the few who escaped, leaving Bloody Bill shot full of holes behind them. Mace formed his own gang from the survivors of the ambush, moving farther west after the war to continue raids on banks and trains, employing the same tactics he had learned from Quantrill and Anderson. Over the years, as it became tougher and tougher to raid the larger towns, most of the men who had ridden with him in the beginning had dropped off to go back to farming. Only his brother, Doc, remained from the original gang. The others were saddle tramps and thieves who needed a leader to direct them.
Storm in Paradise Valley Page 3