by Rusty Davis
“Boss said you and Double J were going to raid us. He said you sniped Jones to get your old home range back, and you and that Ramsay crew were coming for us next. It was us or you, Carrick. That’s what the boss told us. Isn’t that right, boys?” A murmur of agreement swept through the ranks of Lazy F riders, who were emerging from cover and walking over to look at their dead boss.
“He lied. Been doin’ nothin’ but tellin’ people I only want to hold this land for these women and I’m gettin’ tired of no one believin’ me. Oliver was looking for his own gain, boys, and he didn’t give a hang about any of you. He was looking at sellin’ off the range to mine coal, and then every one of you would have been out of a job. Harvey, you get these men out of here, take this with you,” he gestured at Oliver’s corpse, “and then maybe we can see about fixin’ all the troubles that he started. We got to find a way that all this land can hold the people in this valley without everyone wantin’ the whole range for themselves. Never thought I’d see a day when this valley needed ink and paper to draw lines people could live by, but I guess the way things changed out here, that’s what it has come to.”
Edwards and the other Lazy F survivors picked up their dead. Two men rode to the pass to collect those who died with Oliver. Once they were done, with prone figures over the backs of too many horses, the remaining dispirited Lazy F riders trooped away.
“Carrick!” Jess Lewis was calling. “Carrick!” There was urgency and panic in her voice. He ran inside.
Lying by the window he picked to defend, Bad Weather was lying on the floor, too much blood next to him to signify much hope for his life.
“I called to him while they were shooting; I didn’t get an answer, but I thought he was trying to stay hidden. When you came back I found him like this,” she said.
Randy was still breathing shallow gasps. Carrick called his name over and over until his eyes flickered. Recognition flared.
“Remember. Lone Warrior. The last journey. Tell me, Carrick. Tell me, Clawing Wolf?”
“I remember.”
Reb’s boots stomped her way in. She saw Carrick openly crying. He had Randy’s head in his lap, and was bending down as he spoke.
“And in the end,” Carrick began, “when all the warriors were gone but one, and the enemy was at the gates of the place of the People, the Lone Warrior listened to the wind. The wind told him of heroes. The wind told him of his purpose. The wind told him that even if there was no other warrior to fight for the people, this warrior had himself. And he believed in himself, and he went forward, and the enemy was defeated.” Carrick looked at the face; at the closed eyes. He could barely form the words. “And the people rose and saw the Lone Warrior bleeding from his wounds and ascending to the sky. He was not dead. And they took strength that the Greatest Spirit would send him when next the People were in need. And the Lone Warrior was honored forever, for he kept faith with the People.”
Randy had stopped breathing during the story. Carrick looked at Reb. “As kids, we agreed when it was our turn to die, the survivor would tell that to the one who was passing.” He sat, holding the body of his friend, eyes focused on the place the friends of the dead go when those they love have left them behind. “Figured . . . I figured, Reb, when this was over we’d have some time to be friends all over again. Never gonna happen is it?”
Reb had no words. She put her arms around them both, the living and the dead, and like that they stayed, undisturbed but for the sound of Carrick’s tears landing on the old wood of the floor.
The standoff had produced relatively few casualties aside from Randy. Two Lazy F riders were killed; one of Ramsay’s old gang was badly wounded but would live. Several Lazy F riders had wounds, but most were minor. Many in the house were wounded by flying wood, but the cuts and scratches would soon heal.
“If they had rushed us it might have been a close call,” Jessie Lewis told Reb later as they inspected the house for damage. “It is one thing to fire a gun through a window; another thing to fight someone up close. I kept waiting, expecting it—especially when you were gone so long. They never did.”
“Maybe they knew somehow that whatever Oliver was up to, it wasn’t worth dyin’ for,” said Reb. “Not much is.”
Jess volunteered to relay the news to Dan Hill at Lincoln Springs so that the story got to him correctly. She returned with the news that Hill seemed to have once again changed his tune about Carrick. Even Hill seemed to understand that the ranch had a right to defend itself. If Oliver had built up any stock of goodwill, it had evaporated before he died. She also mentioned that there was a man in the Lincoln Springs hotel who had checked in, accompanied by two very well-armed men who appeared to be bodyguards. The man, who said he was from Chicago, claimed he was there to do business with a local rancher, but had not moved from the hotel since his arrival. Hill said most of the town was waiting to see what the man was up to.
“I guess now that the sheriff thinks we are not going to be killed off or chased off, and we seem to be either lucky or good at surviving, we might be someone he has to deal with,” she said. “I guess he thinks the man from Chicago is one of those syndicate people we have heard about. I made it clear that no one on this ranch is selling anything, as if everyone in Wyoming doesn’t already know that. He said he’s sick and tired of all of it, by the way, and wondered if this is the end.”
“I wish I knew,” said Reb wistfully. “I wish I knew.”
Carrick saddled Bad Weather’s horse and draped his friend across it. “I’ll be back,” he told Reb. She offered to ride with him. “Nope. This I got to do alone. Randy wanted what he wanted. Back in a couple days.”
While Carrick was gone, Reb had riders stationed at Black Wind Pass and up the hill from the old Bar C to watch for signs of anyone coming. She was taking no chances. If Double J thought they had been wounded, it might be them riding up next.
A day after Carrick left, one of the lookouts reported seeing smoke a range of hills over. “Randy once told me that his Cheyenne ancestors were buried over that way,” Jess told Reb. “He must have told Carrick that, too.”
The next day, Carrick rode back, gaunt and ghostly. He had clearly not slept in the time he was away. He showed no interest in food, or even coffee. He took Randy’s belongings to Eileen Brown, telling her the horse and saddle and guns were hers. Reb had almost forgotten that they had all once been friends together—Carrick, Randy, Eileen, Colt Ramsay, and even that Jones woman.
Reb gave Carrick a day or two in hopes that he would return to normal; then she sought him out.
“Carrick, you got to come back to us. I know he was your friend. I’m sorry he’s dead. We’ve living. I’m living. I need you! You want to talk about what you feel?”
“Reb, I hurt right now in more ways than I thought a person could feel and be alive. Maybe it would have been better for everyone if I had kept riding on, never come back to the valley.”
Her boot shook the ground as she stomped her foot. “No! Jess and I were gettin’ pushed out by two bullies. This whole range was gonna go up in a war that was gonna take them friends sooner or later along with anyone in the way of that weasel Oliver or that bully Jones. I know you lost your friends, Carrick, but don’t it matter at all that I’m safe?”
The hurt in her voice reached him. “ ’Course it does, Reb. Of course it does.” He opened his arms and she held him tightly.
“It’ll get better, Carrick,” she said. “It’ll get better now that it’s over.”
“Not quite,” said Carrick. “It’s not over. The shadow on this range—the one that’s gonna hang over every one of us that ever raised a hand against Jackson Jones—ends the day we find out who killed Jackson Jones,” Carrick said. “Not sayin’ the man was perfect. He was a threat to you and anyone who got in his way. Nobody deserves to die like that. Somethin’ else. Until we know who killed him, there’s gonna be talk I did it. We got to figure that one because until whoever killed him pays for what they did, we’re a
ll going to live looking over our shoulders, when we’re gonna end up like Colt or like Randy—or even like Jones.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Carrick went to feel the night. No moon. Windy. This next step was something he didn’t have to do. He knew that. It was a risk that could get him killed for no gain other than some intangible thing he and Jackson Jones both understood—doing what was right no matter what the world thought. In the end, living and dying didn’t matter. Death was only a moment to spend alone. Not that much different from living on some days. It wasn’t death that drove him. It was fear of failure. And fear that the guilty would go free and the innocent would suffer. There had to be no one left who could pose a threat, and, when all the fancy stuff was through, it still took a man with the nerve to risk it all to make sure that everything was right. Enough of it all. Time to think about nothing else but the final act that he had written, but had yet to play out.
Mortality walks before dawn. Be a shame never to smell the breeze again when it’s Fall and the rocks are damp with a smell that only comes by once a year. Be worse to not do right by a man who never much cared about doing right by anyone except himself. The faint breeze moved the night around him. He smelled distant mown hay and a far-off campfire. There was a horse far, far away talking to the stars. Or another horse. Enough thinking. There was work to do. By this time tomorrow, it would be over. Reb would be safe with no clouds over her future. He’d either be with her, or he’d have spent that moment called dying and be on the other shore. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was thinking fast and shooting straight, and the rest of it would take care of itself. And in the night, beyond fear and anxiety, he could slowly feel the ice, as if it were a sheath, covering the nerves, covering the thoughts, and leaving the mind racing forward to the only thing that mattered anymore.
Retribution Day was going to dawn. About time.
Rebecca Lewis was angrily attempting one last time to persuade Carrick of his folly. She had spent half the night watching him walk around outside the ranch house. She wanted to talk to him, but in the end the only one she talked to was God. Carrick had cast off some of his shell, but since Randy’s death he was distant and withdrawn. She was not entirely sure whether the plan he told her was primarily designed to catch Jones’s killer or risk Carrick’s life. She told him that bluntly. He didn’t seem to care.
“The only thing Double J wants to do with you is kill you!” she insisted one final time.
“Think they can?”
“I’m afraid they can.”
“There is only one way to end this, Reb. We got to find out. I owe the man.”
“And you don’t owe me? Go ahead! Get dead. See if I care.”
“Got a better idea? Got a way to end this once and for all without any risk to anyone? There are not any such things, Reb.”
“You get dead in there and I’m never forgiving you.” She had not liked his plan from the start, and now that it was time to enact it, she was certain it would end in disaster. She knew nothing would stop him. A man had to live with this thing men called honor. Carrick was no different.
“I got faith, Reb.” He left her under the trees with eyes that were no longer dry and rode on alone.
Carrick slowly rode up to the Double J gate. He wondered how many guns were trained on him; how many trigger fingers were itching. The gate was not guarded. He rode in unchallenged. Cowboys watched. No one spoke to Carrick. They might have allowed him to come and go, but they did not have to like it. About the only noise was the black stallion Jones never got to ride. The animal was in a corral alone. No one knew what to do with him. He belonged to Jones; everyone was afraid to get on his back.
Henry Petersen emerged from the big house, adjusting his stiff, starched cuffs again and fidgeting with the black tie around the heavy, thick collar that poked up above the black suit jacket he wore. He walked quickly and nervously to greet Carrick. He escorted Carrick inside the old house that had been used by Jackson Jones as an office. Carrick had asked to meet there. The table by the window was where Carrick remembered it, and was piled high with papers. A grim smile passed across his face. A man’s life so often depended on a stray piece of a memory. The windows near the table offered a spectacular view of an oak grove ten yards off and the mountains beyond. Carrick looked out through the glass—more of it in one place than any house he had ever been in—as Petersen excused himself to find Lucinda. Carrick wondered where Easy Thompson was. It had been long enough since the incident at the shack that Easy should be healed, but not long enough that Easy would have forgotten it. He was hoping not to run into the foreman, at least not until his business was concluded.
Carrick kept looking out the windows, talking to himself and then waiting as though he expected the trees to talk back.
Lucinda Jones swept in, a black armband around the sleeve of her royal-blue dress. The swishing of the voluminous folds of the material preceded her arrival, with Petersen following her.
“Luce,” Carrick said, tipping his hat. He gave the world outside the window one last look, tugged on the brim of his hat once, and turned back to the business he came there to do.
Lucinda Jones exuded the warmth of a ball of ice. She stood at the far end of the table from Carrick and looked over his head as she talked. “I have agreed to this meeting that you requested, Mr. Carrick, because I agree it is time to resolve the issues concerning ownership and grazing rights. I believe that by inheritance you are the person who has legal title to the land occupied by the Lewis women and known on the range as the old Bar C.”
“Guess so. Don’t really care much. Ladies’ land. Think I’ve said that about a thousand times. Some fine day, maybe somebody’ll listen.”
Exasperation crossed Lucinda’s face. Petersen tried to speak but she cut him off. “The papers that Henry has in front of him will formally set out the range limits of Double J and what we will call the Bar C, because the Lewis women never created any registered brand of their own. They are not invited to sign this document because even if they were given use of the property by your late uncle, they are legally nothing more than squatters.” Carrick marveled at Lucinda’s command of business. Then again, he guessed, a woman couldn’t dream of ruling the range without learning something along the way. He also had a sense that this was personal. He wondered what Luce and Reb had done to each other over the years.
“Carrick, are you listening?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her voice had an angry, precise edge to it as she continued. “I believe that the document is a fair proposal. Although my dear late husband had dreamed of owning all the range, I believe that, in the present circumstances, it is best to recognize that acquiring all the land will take a higher price than he may have foreseen. The document is there to be read. If you need assistance, Henry here . . . Mr. Petersen . . . will read it to you.”
“Nope. I can read everything that’s going on, Luce.”
She gave him a very sharp and inquisitive look. “In addition to a formal agreement upon range limits, there is also an agreement between yourself, as the heir of the Bar C, and me, as the heir of the Double J, that there will be peace between the two ranches and that any and all disputes over boundaries and the activities of cowboys who are too trigger-happy will be resolved through the sheriff and the circuit judge in Lincoln Springs.”
“Maybe instead of all that we could simply talk to each other, Luce,” said Carrick.
“Of course,” she replied, barely losing her train of thought. “And, lastly, there is a paper I will sign and you will sign that declares an amnesty for any and all activities taken during these past few weeks that, in the years to come, might be seen as a violation of the laws of the territory of Wyoming. I am willing to forget the past. I understand that, on both sides, passions over the range have run very high and that actions may have been taken that should not have been taken. I believe that the range will be best served by moving forward and not loo
king back to drag up old disputes.”
She caught him staring away again. “Are you listening, Carrick?”
“Not really, Luce. But I am understanding the lay of this land for the first time.”
“You have your ranch; you have your precious gun-toting woman. What kind of riddle are you spouting? And why are you looking up at my hat that way?”
Carrick dug into his pocket. Still there! He hadn’t checked on the ride over to the Double J. He threw the cufflink on the table towards Petersen. It clattered. “You dropped that.”
“Why so I did!” the ranch manager exclaimed. “I looked all over for it. How ever did you find it in the ranch yard?”
“I didn’t.”
Petersen looked puzzled. Lucinda Jones was growing red and frowning. “Where did you find it?”
“Where you lost it. At old Crazy Charlie’s cabin up by Black Wind Pass. You know, the place you went to meet Luce, here.”
There was a brief reaction of horror on both of their faces. Petersen’s urbane mask returned first. “I do not understand you. I have never been to that cabin, which I think you mean is the one that burned. As ranch manager, I do not ride the range. I manage this ranch from here.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Since when is adultery with your boss’s wife managing the ranch?”
“How dare you!”
“Cuz I’m right.” He turned to Lucinda. “Your husband asked Easy how to get to the cabin. Easy thought he wanted to meet me. He wanted to find out what was really happening right under his nose, didn’t he? That would have meant the end for either or both of you. Which of you killed him?”
Petersen took a step towards Carrick. “If anyone in this room killed Jackson Jones, it was you.”
Carrick stood his ground and looked hard at the ranch manager, then Lucinda. “You know, Luce, I wondered about it a few days back when I recalled that Reb was still grousing about some sharpshooting contest at the fair a couple years that she should have won, but you won instead. She said that a while ago and it took a while to settle. Your father hunted buffalo. You’re no stranger to the kind of gun that killed him. You did it, didn’t you? I bet you got a huge bruise on your shoulder where the gun kicked, don’t you? Bet it’s even bigger from trying to kill Francis Oliver in his own ranch house. You missed him, maybe because with a shoulder already hurting you couldn’t hold the gun right, but you killed your own husband. You might not want us men to see that bruise, but I can get Jess and Reb Lewis over here and you can show it to them.”