by Tony Masero
‘It was so dark and I didn’t know if the man was coming. I was frightened.’
‘I know,’ said Jane, holding him close and stroking his newly washed hair.
‘Who was this man, Peter? Do you know who he was?’
‘He was fast, he moved so quick,’ Peter acknowledge, snuggling in close to Jane, who pulled the covers over them both. ‘But he had on a black mask on so I couldn’t see his face.’
‘Was he bigger or smaller than me?’ asked Slade as he pulled on his shirt.
‘I don’t know,’ Peter answered vaguely, studying him over the end of the bed. ‘Can we leave the candle lit, do you think?’
‘Sure,’ said Jane. ‘That’ll be alright, won’t it Jack?’
Slade looked at her with a rueful expression, disappointed that their proposed union was now a thing of memory. ‘I suppose this is what it means to have kids,’ he muttered.
‘I’m sorry to be a bother, sir,’ Peter said plaintively.
Slade snorted a laugh and began to retie his tie, ‘That’s alright, kid,’ he said. ‘I have something to do anyway.’
‘Where are you going this time of night?’ Jane asked with a frown.
‘Maybe I’m going over to see Lucy Blazer at The Cool House,’ Slade answered, giving her a sly glance. ‘I hear she’s real accommodating.’
‘You do and you ain’t coming back in here,’ Jane replied quickly with a warning note in her voice.
‘Don’t worry on that score, she don’t come a patch on what’s in this bed. No, I’m heading out to the mountains to check out something she said. It may be that Charlie Willows has a hidey-hole up there.’
‘How long for?’ Jane asked.
‘Couple of days, I reckon.’
‘I’m sorry to ask, Jack. But can you leave us some cash money, I don’t have a cent for food and such.’
‘Of course, I should have thought of it,’ said Jack, taking dollar bills from his pocket and laying them on the table beside Peter’s parcel.
‘Thanks and come back safe, will you?’
‘You bet.’
‘You will be careful won’t you, Mister Slade?’ Peter piped up. ‘That man might still be out there.’
‘I’ll be careful, Petey. You just bide what Miss Jane says and stay close, you hear?’
‘I will,’ he promised.
Slade picked up his pony from the livery stables and made his way through the nighttime crush on the lamp lit Main Street of Lincoln. The town was suffering its nightly assault of merry makers and the noisy rabble were still boisterously enjoying themselves as he threaded his way through the crowd and headed for the ford. Once he was across the Rio Bonito and had quit the outer environs of the town, the dark night closed in on him and he had only the stars to navigate by. It was a clear brisk night and even without a moon the stars were bright enough to allow sufficient light for him to make his way.
He rode southwest heading for the foothills that were the source of the Rio Ruidoso, the main river that the Bonito joined ten miles south of Lincoln. He intended to cut a diagonal line across from Lincoln for the twenty-five mile trip to Dowlin’s Mill.
The journey gave Slade time to ponder on a few things and the way his life was changing. He thought back on his interrupted act of passion with Jane and pondered again on the image of her in the bed with the boy in her arms, the pair of them highlighted by the candlelight. Her auburn hair shining in glints of gold against Peter’s tussled mop distressed by restless sleep. A thing moved in his chest at the image. A protective sense of belonging as if it were something he had long wished for and yet avoided for most of his adult life. He was surprised to note then how all thoughts of Julesville and its dark deed had left his mind, how his rape of Joanna and betrayal of Johnny Dollar had taken a back seat in his mind since Jane had come along.
There was a mood of forgiveness in the air, he realized. Perhaps in taking on the relationship with Jane and maybe later, even having children of their own, he could shed himself, under this cloak of responsibility, for his earlier lowly actions. He hoped so.
His mind turned to the mysterious man that had beset Peter and murdered his prosecutor father. There seemed no sense to it. He believed that the deed papers that Causter had supposedly given to Rio were at the root of the matter. But Causter had said that the Colonel had never reached the ranch or received the papers. So what was the purpose of slaying the prosecutor if he had nothing in his possession? Had Causter been lying? Slade wondered. Had he in fact given the deeds to Colonel Friday and then relented to follow after him and take them back by force at the fishing hole? It was a possibility but a pretty thin one at that. And yet if Causter was in cohorts with Billy the Kid and his gang, despite his claim that he was not, it was a factor to consider.
‘Claim rights’ were how Causter had described the papers belonging to the Indian-massacred prospectors. Was then the incentive gold? Some rich vein that the gold hunters had turned up in Mescalero country before they had been slain? That would certainly be a good enough reason for murder in order to retain the claim’s site, to destroy the written rights and reclaim the site under the perpetrator’s name.
It all seemed to hinge on the rancher’s evidence and until he could verify that Rio Palmer had never received any papers, as he maintained he had not, there was no way of assessing the truth of Causter’s assertions.
There was also the outside chance that this had been a random killing. Some unknown drifter taking out the prosecutor for his purse or in plain revenge for a perceived wrong and then hunting down Peter as a witness to his crime.
He had no clear direction and a lot rested on finding Charlie Willows and getting some feedback from him. For if anybody knew the Colonel’s business it would be his clerk. Somehow, Friday had received the call to go visit the Causter ranch and it was this that would eventually lead to the culprit, if Slade could find Willows and get an answer from him he was sure this would take him where he needed to go to solve the crime.
With such things on his mind, Slade dozed as he rode through the night. His only warmth on the chill night the memory of Jane’s warm body pressed against his and the prospect of returning again to the comfort of her willing embrace.
Dowlin's Mill when it came into sight as morning broke the sky with a thin trail of white sunlight was a long, low building constructed of brick and adobe. A great water wheel stood at one end of the structure, it was as high as the Mill’s roof and a long ramp bearing the stream water ran up to the top of the mill wheel.
The place had been built by Captain Paul Dowlin an ex-military man out of Fort Stanton. He had started off intending the place as a lumber mill when the fort needed timber. Water from the Carrizo Creek had to be brought for three miles down a flue built on poles and when it arrived the pressure had proved too weak to power a saw so the place had ended up as a gristmill, grinding grain into flour. When, some time later an ex-employee had shot Dowlin dead with a bullet in the head the rights to the place had passed to his partner, another discharged soldier Frank Lesnett and his wife Annie. The beginnings of a small town had grown up around the mill and it now supported a general store, blacksmith and post office.
When Slade rode into the township some people were already about and he could see smoke coming from a few of the chimneys as the occupants prepared their breakfast. He left off his pony at the blacksmiths with a request that they feed and water the horse whilst he went off to see if the Post Office was open. The place was still shut up and Slade turned back and made his way to the mill itself.
Annie Lesnett greeted him in a wary fashion at first and he was cautiously invited in to join them for breakfast, an invite he gladly accepted.
Over a hot cup of coffee he asked about Charlie Willows.
‘Don’t know no Charlie Willows,’ supplied Frank Lesnett, who had come in to eat, his body coated in white dust from the mill. ‘How about you, honey?’ he asked his wife.
Annie bustled over from the stove with some f
resh made biscuits. ‘What’s he look like, Marshal?’
She had viewed Slade with some suspicion at first and Slade wondered if the stories about the Dowlins and the Lesnett’s being friends with the Kid had been true. The story was that once Annie had hidden the Kid in a barrel of flour when the law had come looking for him.
She had warmed to him though when she found out it wasn’t the Kid that Slade had on his mind and had been more forthcoming since then.
‘He’s a short fella,’ Slade supplied. ‘Bone thin, so I’m told. Used to be town clerk in Lincoln. Don’t have more than that I’m afraid.’
‘What’d he do?’ asked Frank.
‘No kind of crime, as far as I know. His boss, Colonel Friday was murdered and it may be that Charlie can give me some information that may help. The Colonel left a small boy that witnessed the killing, he’s in a bad way and for his sake I’d like to find out what went down.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Annie sympathized. ‘Poor little boy.’
‘Tell you this,’ said Frank, helping himself to biscuits. ‘We had some Mescalero in the other day. They pass by to trade for flour now and then,’ he explained. ‘Mentioned a white man out in the woods on the Sierras. Lives in a cabin up there. I thought he must be a hunter but maybe he’s your man.’
‘Can you direct me?’ Slade asked.
‘Sure,’ said Frank, pointing in the direction of the twelve-thousand-foot high peak through the window. ‘Up there.’
‘Kinda vague,’ frowned Slade.
‘That’s all I got from the Indians, Marshal. It won’t be too hard to find though I reckon. Man goes up there, especially a town clerk; he won’t be no backwoodsman, he’ll leave tracks.’
Slade nodded, ‘I’ll find him.’
‘Just watch out for the Apache. You never know with them.’
Slade wound his way through some bracing country as he climbed higher into the peaks of Sierra Blanca. Pinyon and juniper gave way to Ponderosa pine and the sound of running water was not far away as he followed the rushing sound of the Ruidoso higher. The air was crystal and Slade breathed deep as he searched for sign of the man and his cabin.
He had seen some shoed horse sign earlier but it had been tracked over by deer and what looked like elk. The whole area was rich with wildlife as the tracks told him. Turkey was evident and plenty of gray fox, he had even noted bear prints in the stream bank as he crossed over. Whoever was living up here would not go short of food.
The shot was sharp. It echoed but its origin was nearby, he was sure.
Slade pulled the pony up and listened. Waiting for a second shot so he could hone in on the source. It came, only to be followed by three others one on top of the other. Different weapons he ascertained. It appeared someone was in trouble and he urged the pony on in the direction of the shooting.
The ground was steep here, intermittent belts of tree line and then open pasture and after pounding across a few hundred yards of open ground it was at the top of a sudden declining hillside amongst Pinyon pine that he came across the gunfight. Higher than the fight and hidden amongst the trees, Slade could look down and see all.
He overlooked a small cabin with gunsmoke coming from one of the two shuttered windows. Three Mescalero Apache were attacking the building, two in the front with rifles and one climbing up onto the shingled roof, a firebrand in his hand. It looked to Slade like he was about to fire the place whilst his companions kept the occupant busy below.
Slade dismounted, tied off the pony to a bush and slid his Winchester from its scabbard. He lay full length and sighted a bead on the brave on the roof.
If his man was inside the cabin there was no way he wanted the Apache to make mincemeat of him before Slade had a chance to ask a few questions.
The rifle cracked and the Indian atop the roof paused a moment, he leant forward slowly as if studying the roof with intense curiosity and then he dropped. Sliding down the pitch of the roof, the dead brave left a long scarlet trail behind him as he went and his blazing torch tumbled after before both rolled over the edge and dropped to the grass below.
Slade turned his attention to the other two, who were exposed to him but not to the cabin as they hid amongst brush some hundred feet in front of the building.
Slade fired again as the two braves turned in panic to find the source of their ambusher. His target dropped instantly. No fuss, no bother, he just fell and lay still without a sound.
The last of the three jumped up and began to run off for the surrounding cover of the pines but he was stopped as a burst of firing came from the cabin window. The Indian twisted and shot forward, the slug hitting him high in back. The man was sill alive, wounded he began to drag himself as best he could. Lying full out, he was not visible to the cabin for a finishing shot but Slade had the wounded man clear in his sights.
He ratcheted the Winchester and cranked shell after shell into the chamber making sure that each bullet stitched a line up the back of the Apache’s white shirt in a death dealing trail of red.
The bespectacled occupant of the cabin was already outside stamping out the burning brand when Slade descended the slope leading his pony and checking the lifeless forms in the brush.
‘Stranger, you certainly came along in good time,’ the man called out to him.
Slade could see he fitted the description so he asked. ‘You Charlie Willows?’
The man dropped the wrists of the Apache brave he was dragging away from the cabin and reached to pick up the rifle he had left leaning against the log wall.
‘Who wants to know?’
Slade saw the pair of spectacles flash in the sunlight as the man stared at him, nervously raising the rifle.
‘You can put that down,’ said Slade, coming closer. ‘I don’t mean you no harm. I’m Jack Slade, deputy marshal out of Lincoln.’
‘You working for Sheriff Smith?’ Willows asked cautiously.
‘Nope. Pat Garrett’s the one I answer to.’
Willows bit his lip and studied Slade for a moment, then a decision made, he lowered the rifle.
‘Sorry,’ he apologized, holding out his hand. ‘Yes, I’m Willows. I had to get out of Lincoln in a hurry and I’m afraid there might be someone on my tail that means me no good.’
‘So you’re hiding out up here?’
‘That’s right,’ Willows agreed.
‘Well, excuse me for saying so but you ain’t making too good a job of it. I found you real easy.’
‘Oh,’ said Willows frowning. ‘Is that so? I thought I’d covered my tracks right well.’
‘You must be real worried if you risk living on Mescalero land.’
‘I am,’ agreed Willows. ‘Although up until now the Indians have left me alone. I don’t know what sparked these three off. Probably after my mule and pony out back, that and whatever they thought I had in here. Not that there is anything worth the trouble.’
He bent again and disdainfully picked up the dead brave’s wrists and with a heave began pulling the body away from the cabin.
‘Can you stay a while, Marshal? Been a while since I had company and there’s coffee ready to brew inside.’
‘I didn’t come up here for my health, Mister Willows. There’s questions I must ask of you.’
‘Fine,’ said Willows. ‘You help me shift these bodies and I’ll answer all the questions you want.’
Willows hopped around the small one-room cabin in a brisk businesslike manner. His small body and thin frame moving with a show of tense nervous energy and he quickly had a fire of pinecones started and set a filled coffee pot alongside.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Won’t be but a moment. Sit yourself down, Marshal.’ He offered Slade one of the rough made chairs he had obviously struggled to construct from poorly cut pine fashioned crudely with an axe and bound with twine. Gingerly, Slade sat in the shaky looking object and looked around the room.
There was not much to see. A bed, again badly made and resting dangerously low on the dirt floor. A
table and two chairs, a storage cupboard of sorts and a fireplace built from river stones.
‘Saw a friend of yours the other day,’ he said as Willows cleaned his spectacles on a cloth.
‘Oh yes, and who was that?’ he asked holding the lens up to the light.
‘Lucy Blazer, chippy in The Cool House.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Willows chuckled. ‘Dear Lucy, my little indulgence.’
‘She didn’t look so little to me,’ Slade observed.
‘No, well size isn’t everything, Marshal,’ Willows grinned meaningfully.
‘So I hear,’ Slade answered, remembering Lucy’s assessment of the clerk’s equipment.
‘Well, then,’ Willows bent and checked the coffee pot and blinked as his spectacles steamed up from the opened lid. ‘What is it you want of me?’
‘About your old boss, Colonel Friday.’
‘Yes, the poor Colonel. An honorable man. He did not deserve his end.’
‘You know he’s dead then?’
‘I guessed it,’ Willows agreed, sorting through his pots until he found two tin mugs. ‘Once he disappeared I realized he would be no more. What about his lad though, young Peter, did he follow the same fate?’
‘No, he’s safe.’
‘Thank heavens for that. Poor little fellow, he is a nice boy. How will he manage with no Pa? They have no kin living, I believe.’
‘He’ll get through it I think.’
‘Good to hear, did he see the body responsible?’
‘Man wore a mask, seems Peter can recall no more with much clarity. Poor kid was scared out of his wits.’
‘Hardly surprising for one so young at such a desperate time.’
‘Tell me about these claim rights or deeds of sale or whatever papers the Colonel was bent on retrieving on his way out to Freshwater Ranch.’
‘You know about that? Oh, bless my soul! Word’s got out already. Heavens, nowhere will be safe now.’
‘What do you mean?’
Willows took a deep breath, ‘It’s the land,’ he confessed. ‘The land that’s precious. Those old boys that were put to death by Indians weren’t prospectors, that was just a cover story. In truth they were surveyors for the railroad. Ten years ago the Federal government handed out a hundred and twenty million acres of land to the railroad companies. They wanted this country opened up and the Central Pacific travelling from coast to coast proved it could be done and that made the companies powerful people.’ With a troubled sigh, Willows took a rag and picked up the steaming coffee pot and poured two mugs. ‘These people don’t mess around, you understand? They have agents operating on their behalf who will stop at nothing to acquire the land their surveyors specify as the best route for the railroad. Now, there are businesses in Lincoln that want the railroad to pass through the town, they’re counting on all the trade it will bring to revive the place. What they don’t know and what the surveyors had decided was that the railroad would bypass Lincoln and go by a coming railhead at Carrizozo, way to the east. It’ll kill Lincoln when it starts to act as the main supply center for the region.’