by Rusty Davis
“Carrick, when I hear something, I’ll tell you. We got more important business. Came to talk to you about that shack and the goings-on up at Black Wind Pass.”
“What about it? I slept in it a few nights. Figger other folks use it. Looked used. Not Double J land. Not your concern.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Tell you what?”
“What did you find that made it look used?”
“Easy, you got a reason to ask this stuff?”
“Always have a reason. Talk without a reason is for fools, Carrick.”
It was a standoff of wills. Carrick weighed his options. Double J wasn’t pushing very hard lately. Easy Thompson wasn’t asking anything important. So why did it seem right to be so contrary?
“Blankets, eatin’ stuff. Drinkin’ stuff.”
“You leave it there?”
“Easy, one day I rode away from that shack expectin’ to come back and I haven’t gone back there since. Of course it’s there. Fancy stuff, some of it. Look for yourself. If you see something you want, just take it.”
“I looked. Nothin’ there.”
“Somebody took it, Easy. Not me. Your stuff?”
A scornful glance was all the response Carrick got. Easy Thompson stood like a mountain. The man was lost in thought. His eyes walked the ridge line at the horizon, then focused back on Carrick. “Obliged.”
“Don’t like mysteries, Easy.”
“Lot I don’t like in this valley lately, Carrick. That’s a fact. Don’t know I’d pay unannounced visits to many places if I was you. Weren’t for the fact Dan Hill is drunk and lazy, Lazy F would have had him out here to arrest most of everyone livin’ here including the livestock. Man’s got a grudge. Feel sorry for Miz Lewis not knowing what he was really after. Got to be hard on her, Carrick.”
“Life’s hard. What’s my standing with Double J?”
“The less we see you, Carrick, the better we like you. If I knew you killed the boss, you’d be dead, Carrick. Don’t matter how fast you are; don’t matter nothin’. I’d get you. Some say you did it. Quite a few. It still fits like a bad boot. If I ever figger the boot fits, I’ll be back and it won’t be to talk.”
“Mr. Thompson!”
Easy Thompson moved faster than Carrick thought possible to take off his hat in a sweeping bow as Jessie Lewis brought him coffee. A genuine smile broke across the man’s face.
“If you are only going to visit once a year, you have to at least let me show you around,” she said.
The smile that sprang to Easy’s face transformed the man. He cut his eyes at Carrick, as though ill at ease being seen as someone other than the Double J foreman, but Jess Lewis had her hand through his arm and was pointing out where they had made changes to the ranch. She did not mention most of them were Carrick’s work.
“Now, Mr. Thompson, you must tell me something.”
“Anything, Mrs. Lewis.”
“Jess. The whole world calls me Jess, Mr. Thompson. Do you have a name other than ‘Easy’?”
She watched his face redden like a ten-year-old.
“They were Bible folks, my family, but we was too poor to have one. Named me Ephaniah Zaphaniah ’cuz they thought they was Bible names. Mouthful for a boy to say. It just became easier to be Easy, you might say.” He smiled at her as though he had said a clever thing.
“Well, that mystery is solved,” she said. “Now will you indulge me, Mr. Thompson?”
“Is that a pie I smell, Mrs. Lewis?”
“Jess. Yes; it might not be ready for a while, so we will have to walk a bit longer. I’m sure the valley knows all about me. What about you? What did you do before you came here?”
His face clouded. Easy Thompson knew how far down he had been when Jackson Jones plucked him from the alley in Cheyenne and gave him a place and a purpose in life.
“Rode around some.” It was the best he could do. Jess Lewis understood cowboys. She wondered at times if any of them did not have a part of their lives they were ashamed of. She stopped and they looked out at the range together.
“I suppose we could see if that pie has cooled enough to eat. I could let you have Mr. Carrick’s piece if you’d like.”
Easy Thompson could not restrain himself; Jess Lewis was not only pretty, she was observant. “Guess I could tolerate that,” he replied.
Carrick watched the two walk in companionable conversation around the ranch’s yard and into the house. He could hear Easy Thompson’s rumbling laugh in harmony with Jessie’s low alto tones. And he wondered what bee was buzzing under Easy Thompson’s worn brown hat that had to do with the shack at Black Wind Pass.
The next morning, Carrick saw the smoke. There was only one thing that close to the pass that could burn—the shack. If enough of it had burned to send a huge column of dark smoke smudging the sky it would most certainly be gone, but curiosity is a powerful itch. Carrick figured it was worth a look, at least.
He reached the remains of the shack to find the fire pretty well burned out. There was a lot of charred wood, some still smoking. There was no trace of anyone anywhere. Anyone who burned it could have left the valley through the pass. Carrick had not met any riders, but the fire was probably set around dawn. Maybe even before. He dismounted to look around. He though he smelled some kind of lamp oil, but mostly the place stunk from the smell of the old wood and whatever junk had been lying around. Some of the old wood in the wood pile was partly charred; some was too rotted to burn. There hadn’t been much stuff in the shack to begin with and most of what there had been was now gone. It was another fool’s errand.
He looked up as hoofbeats resounded from a rider coming hard across the valley. His heart sank. It was Easy Thompson, riding hard. Easy had clearly seen Carrick from the way he was looking up at the shack. There was no way to avoid him now. Carrick found a rock a ways from the ruined shack to wait. He stood up when Easy arrived only to find the big man pointing a gun at him.
“Easy, what are you doing?”
“Thought you were square, Carrick. Maybe. Them ladies seem to cotton to you, but you fooled them like that Oliver fooled them.”
Carrick cringed. He could smell the liquor from several feet away. Anger and alcohol. Never good when they mixed. “Easy, what are you talking about? I lived here half the time when I was a kid. I saw the smoke from the house and came looking.”
“That doesn’t square, Carrick. I asked you yesterday about this place, and today it burns. You were the only person off of Double J who knew I was curious about the goings-on up here. I know where the hands were yesterday and today and it wasn’t one of them.”
“Easy, there are probably all kinds of people who come up here. Somebody probably got drunk and careless and started a fire by accident. Old dry wood, it wouldn’t take much.” Especially, thought Carrick, if that oil he smelled was splashed a few places to help a fire along. That was not a thought to share with a man who was already angry, smelled like he had had a few drinks from a bottle of something cheap and powerful, and, worse yet, was aiming a gun at him.
“What did you have to hide, Carrick? What were you up to? What did this shack have to do with the boss? Tell me or I will shoot you here and now.”
“Easy, I did not shoot Jackson Jones, and I did not burn down this old shack. Ask the women where I was last night. I was at the old Bar C.”
“Jessie Lewis is too honest a woman to understand she’s been deceived again, and you probably got that little one fooled,” Easy replied. “Talk or die.”
“Easy!” Carrick felt rising panic. Easy was like a train accelerating down the track and Carrick had no idea how to stop him short of taking a bullet. “Easy, I didn’t do anything to anyone. Why don’t we ride to Bar C and talk this out?”
Easy Thompson had lived his life by the simple code of faithfulness and loyalty. He knew other men were smarter, and other men were better at many things. As he watched Carrick insist upon his innocence, he could see the face of Jackson Jones, l
ying still in death, and the closeness of Carrick and Lucinda Jones when he had told her of her husband’s murder. “We don’t ride nowhere, Carrick,” Easy said. “You pay now.”
Easy clicked back the hammer of the gun. “You deceived me. You deceived Jackson Jones. Not even gonna waste rope hangin’ you.”
Carrick saw the death sentence clear in Easy’s eyes. He feinted running to his left and then dove for Easy Thompson’s legs. Easy had half expected the man would run, but when Carrick came straight at him, he was slow in reacting. Carrick felt the heat of the gun’s barrel over his shoulder as the explosion above his right ear left him deaf to anything but the sound of his own pounding pulse. He reached for Easy Thompson’s gun, but Easy swung it and slammed Carrick’s hand away. He swung it back and caught Carrick on the left cheek. The blood dripped down. Carrick got two hands around Easy’s gun hand, but Easy had one hand free to push Carrick off of him. Easy shoved hard and Carrick felt himself falling. He rolled on the rocks. The muzzle of Easy Thompson’s gun followed him. Then it fired.
Rebecca Lewis had been certain there was gunfire, but she had been in the barn and could not be sure of its origin. She was on edge again. The fire was a bad sign, even if Carrick said it might be an accident. She looked toward the pass.
“Aunt Jess, look!” Two horses were coming down the trail that led to Black Wind Pass. Both had riders slumped in their saddles. The men were silhouettes against the sky, but the gray horse was clearly Carrick’s; the other, the chestnut stallion that was one of the few horses on the range big enough for Easy Thompson to sit comfortably.
“Aunt Jess, somebody’s coming and they’re hurt!” Reb yelled as she ran toward the horses, which were coming at a walk.
Carrick’s face was bloody, and there was blood all over his shirt. He was reeling in the saddle as she came near. “Carrick, what happened?”
“Easy’s hurt,” he gasped. “Shot in the leg. We’ll live.”
“What happened?”
“You got to bandage Easy, first. Move, girl. I only got a cut; he’s hurt.”
Reb reached up to yank the reins of Easy’s horse from Carrick’s hand. Reb walked the horse fast, careful not to bounce Easy out of the saddle.
Jessie Lewis sputtered as they approached. The two women struggled to lift Easy out of the saddle and then half-walk, half-haul him into the house. There was a huge purple bruise by his jaw that looked as though he had been hit with the butt of a gun. The gunshot wound in his leg was high up on the outside of his left thigh, almost as though he had shot himself. It was relatively shallow and had missed doing major damage. The bullet had passed through. All that remained was a hole, and a long time of painful hobbling before he could walk without a limp. The women worked on Easy. It was moments before Reb realized Carrick had not followed them.
He was walking toward the door, staggering slightly. His head and shirt were soaked. There did not appear to be fresh blood on his face, but Reb could see a raw mark where a bullet had missed his right eye. A massive bruise discolored the left side of his face.
“How’s Easy?”
“Shot in the leg. Aunt Jess is bandaging it. He’ll hurt but he’ll live.” She had to repeat it twice for him. “Why do you care so almighty much how he is after you shot him, Carrick?”
“Didn’t want to. He didn’t give me a choice. His gun went off by my ear. Sound is kinda hollow. He’s gonna be all right?”
She nodded.
Carrick plunked down on the porch of the house and stared at the hills. It had been close. Too close. For both of them.
“He’s all set, Reb,” came Jessie’s voice as she emerged from the house. “Carrick! What on earth happened?”
He explained. Talking hurt and it echoed in his ears.
“Fool men!” Jessie Lewis said when he was done. “Always ready to shoot each other. I should give both of you a piece of my mind.”
Reb, with whom Aunt Jess had shared more than a few pieces of her mind over the years, smiled at the picture in her mind of two bandaged, bleeding cowboys on the receiving end of a scolding from Aunt Jess. “And what are you smiling about, young lady? Help me get the wagon hitched so I can take Mr. Thompson home after he wakes up. It is a miracle any work ever gets done here with all of the shenanigans going on.”
The liquor-fueled fever of righteous anger that had been driving Easy Thompson up at the shack had cooled by the time he woke up with Jessie Lewis glowering down at him. It grew even colder as she delivered the promised scolding to both Carrick and Easy, with Reb maintaining a discreet distance and turning away to hide her smirks.
“Easy,” said Carrick when Jessie had ended her summation regarding the juvenile nature of men who shot each other rather than talk calmly, “whatever you think I did, I did not do it. I could swear to you on a Bible, on my mother’s grave, or anything you want. I did not kill your boss. I do not know why someone shot him. It wasn’t me. I didn’t come here to this valley to do anything but see my home. If it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Oliver, maybe it was one of these syndicate things Jackson Jones was talking about. Way I hear it, he killed one of their fellas last year. Maybe somebody wanted to teach ranchers a lesson. I don’t know, Easy. I don’t. I promise you I’m going to find out.”
From the look of doubt on his face, Easy was clearly still suspicious of Carrick but he was also squirming under Jessie’s glare. “Carrick, you say one thing, but it don’t always look that way. Double J is my life, whether the boss is alive or dead. I . . . I know Jessie here and her niece say you don’t potshoot people, but you killed enough folks by now that I know they don’t know you all the way through. Best I can tell you is that I won’t come after you until I get me the kind of proof that will stand up in that circuit judge’s court. Maybe it don’t exist. Maybe you didn’t do it and don’t know anything. But until I know for certain sure who killed the boss, I’m going to suspect everybody.”
There was a silence in the room. Easy’s eyes met Jessie’s stare. “No, not every last person, Jessie. I hope for your sake and his he didn’t do it, but, if he didn’t Jessie, I don’t rightly know who would other than Francis Oliver and he’s too much a weasel to even think on it. Carrick doesn’t look or act like an innocent man to me.”
Jessie took the wagon and drove it to Double J. Easy Thompson was not willing to let a woman drive him home, but after a long lecture about preventing further bleeding, he surrendered. Carrick offered to ride behind to be sure Double J didn’t retaliate, but one glare from Jessie and a reminder from Easy that Double J didn’t act without his orders ended that.
“You been quiet, Carrick,” Reb said after the wagon left as they stood in the ranch’s yard. “Your head still hurt or are you thinking?”
“Easy was after something. Got more questions than answers, Reb. Maybe Lincoln Springs has the answers. So far, we been lucky . . .”
“Call this luck?” she said, waving her arms at his bloody clothing and all of the families and men behind her from Colton Ramsay’s hideout.
“We been lucky,” he stressed. “Lazy F went for Ramsay. If he hadn’t come here that time, it would have been all over for us. Double J barked more than it bit. Hate to say it, but whoever killed Jones bought this ranch some time. What happens when they decide to come after us? It was one thing when Jackson Jones was grabbing for more. He was sure you would fail, and wanted to grab the land first, but he wasn’t going to push too hard to make happen what he was sure would happen anyhow. Now that it looks like you might be around a while, what happens if someone decides to speed up things a mite? And if they could use the law to hang Colt Ramsay, what happens if the law comes after you out here? Easy Thompson is a popular man. I had better square this with Dan Hill before someone else makes it look like what it wasn’t.”
“Dan’s lazy,” she said. “He’ll never come out here to see what went on.”
“We have to clear it with the sheriff. Dan’ll bless vigilantes if two ranches want him to,” he replied. “I kn
ow town’s a risk, but it’s a risk we have to take.”
She nodded. It made sense. It was still a risk. She knew better than Carrick how much the town relied on Double J for business, and how Dan Hill was Double J’s man. Setting up an ambush—even in the motley collection of buildings that comprised Lincoln Springs—would be simple. She could not shake the thought that this could be the last time she saw him.
“Carrick,” she said, not knowing how much emotion was in that one word. He stopped and looked back over his right shoulder. “Did a good job of sewing on you. Don’t really like sewin’ much. Don’t ruin all my work by stopping another bullet.”
“Don’t plan to. Appreciate the concern. Could buy you more thread if you want it.”
“You know what I mean, cowboy. Come back in one piece. I figure all this excitement’s good for Aunt Jess. Only reason you stay on.”
He walked back closer. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
He was now so close the brim of his hat was almost shading her face. “You got any thoughts on the subject of me, or you still spend your dreaming time sighting me down the barrel of your rifle?”
What happened next was a surprise to even her. She put two arms around his neck and leaned up—the heels made it easy—and kissed him hard on the mouth. He rocked back on his heels for a second, but not much longer. Two arms wrapped around her tightly, expelling breath from her mouth into his own. He held tighter and kissed her back.
How long they were like that, she did not know. There was a windy glorious freedom and feeling of strength flowing through her. There was power and joy and happiness and redemption in that one kiss.
Then it hit her that they were in the full view of everyone seeing every last thing she did. She realized that gasping and kissing did not work well in the same minute, and pulled her head away, noticing that no one was staring, which meant everyone was doing so. She moved her head back, and he did the same. She took her arms away slowly. He released her but kept his hands on her waist. She stepped back, out of his arms, breathing faster. She flicked her hair and it felt wild and free. His eyes were glittering.