Hell's Jaw Pass

by Max O'Hara

  His being a killer didn’t seem to repel this girl at all. In fact, she seemed attracted by it.

  “You ain’t in any hurry to get home, now, are you?” Sherman asked.

  “What’re you asking?” She was being coy now. She pressed her right index finger to the cleft in his chin. “Are you asking me to . . .”

  “To stay awhile,” Sherman said, and closed his mouth over hers.

  Her lips parted for him. Her body relaxed in his arms.

  “I’m my own boss,” Ivy said.

  CHAPTER 15

  Stockburn rode Smoke up a long hill between slopes of conifers mixed with changing aspens.

  He’d started smelling wood smoke a few hundred yards back along the trail he’d followed out of the canyon in which he’d been ambushed by the bastard with the big rifle. That’s why he wasn’t surprised to see, as he halted Smoke on the hill’s bullet-shaped crest, the Triangle Ranch headquarters sprawled across the broad valley below.

  Smoke lifted from several chimneys. It was around one-thirty in the afternoon, so the stoves in the bunkhouse and main house had been recently stoked to cook the midday meal and had yet to cool down. The fires had probably been kept burning to ward off the early-autumn chill that was always a little more intense in the mountains. Making it feel even colder to Stockburn was the fact that his pants and one shirt sleeve were still damp from his fall in the stream.

  Wolf figured, judging by the way his heart was pumping faster than before, and by the pressure in his ears, that he was probably somewhere around ten thousand feet above sea level. Smoke was breathing a little harder, as well. The long ride out from Wild Horse and into the thin mountain air had tired the mount enough that he hadn’t been hard to run down after Stockburn’s skirmish—if you could call it that—with the man who’d tried to turn him toe down with the hunting rifle.

  The detective sat and surveyed the Triangle headquarters—an impressive layout with the big, frame house set back and at an angle from the barns, stables, and corrals. It also had a low, brick wall, partly concealed by a tangle of green vines, encircling it. Smoke curled from the house’s big fieldstone chimney jutting up from its right end.

  On the yard’s left end, cowboys were working in a corral with a couple of horses; other hands perched on the corral fence to watch the proceedings. Wolf could hear them joking and laughing and occasionally yelling instructions to the men working with the horses.

  Some were smoking cigarettes; others spat chaw in the dirt.

  Three more punchers, clad in batwing chaps, were just then riding down toward the headquarters from the northeast, on the opposite side of the compound from where Wolf sat. A blacksmith was hammering an anvil. Stockburn couldn’t see the smithy, but the sharp rings of the hammer echoed up from the yard.

  Two boys in their early teenaged years were shoeing a mouse-brown horse in front of the small, square building with two big open doors that Stockburn assumed was the blacksmith shop. It lay on the right side of the yard, near one of the several stables.

  The dun just then lurched forward, trying to kick the boy trying to hammer a shoe to its hoof, while the other boy jerked back on the reins he was holding, getting dragged several feet forward.

  “Dammit, hold him, Billy!” the boy holding the hammer screeched.

  The boy with the reins got his boots set, dust licking up around him, and the horse stopped. The other boy, slightly older, continued to scold him though Stockburn could only hear his tone, not the words.

  Near the blacksmith shop, the blades of a windmill turned lazily, the tin blades glinting in the crisp sunshine. Water murmured from a pipe into the corrugated tin tank at the windmill’s base. Stockburn could hear even that. That was how thin the air was. Sounds carried a long way at this altitude.

  Just then a scream rose. A girl’s scream. Wolf thought it had come from the house. The punchers must have thought so, too, because they all turned their heads quickly in the house’s direction.

  A thick-furred, brown dog ran into the yard, barking and looking around as though searching for the source of the commotion.

  The girl yelled again though Wolf couldn’t make out the words, as she was inside the house. A man yelled then, as well—a deep, raspy voice pitched with scolding.

  Smoke heard it, too. Wolf felt the muscles tensing warily beneath his saddle.

  “Easy, boy,” Stockburn said, reaching forward to give the mount’s left wither a reassuring pat. Gazing toward the house, he said, “But I’m with you—wonder what that’s all about.”

  He booted the mount on down the hill.

  Smoke clomped across the wooden bridge spanning a creek then passed under the ranch portal in which the McCrae name and brand had been burned. Two men ran toward him from the group clustered around the corral. Only one wore a six-shooter, and he closed a hand around it now as he and the other man approached.

  Stockburn halted Smoke and raised his right hand to show he wasn’t a threat. “Easy, pards. The name’s Stockburn. I’m a railroad detective here to talk to Mister McCrae.”

  “Rail detective?”

  “That’s right. Wells Fargo.” Slowly, Wolf reached into his black frock coat and pulled out his bonafides.

  The two punchers eyed him cautiously. They might not have been in open war with another spread at the moment but apparently they had been recently enough that a strange man riding into the Triangle compound would draw ire if not fire.

  He held up his shield and identification card.

  As he did, the shouting inside the house grew louder, as did the stomping of angry feet. A girl strode angrily out of the house’s front door and onto the porch.

  Lori McCrae stopped on the porch and, holding her arms straight down at her sides, fists clenched into red balls against her legs, she swung back around and yelled, “You can’t send me away against my will! You can’t! If you try it again, I’ll go to the Tin Cup! If not the Tin Cup, then I’ll go to town . . . and the shame will be on you!”

  She wheeled around and, holding her skirts above her ankles, hurried down the porch steps, heading through the yard toward the gate in the low brick wall.

  A short, old bulldog of a man in a white shirt and light tan vest and bolo tie stomped through the house’s door and onto the porch, pointing a commanding finger at the obviously enraged Lori. “Get back here, young lady!”

  “No!” she screamed, keeping her back to the old man.

  He strode forward, stopped at the top of the porch steps, and bellowed, “Did he answer even one of your letters? Even one?”

  Lori had just opened the gate. Stockburn had stopped Smoke near one of the hitchracks near the gate. The old man’s words had stopped Lori halfway into the yard.

  She stood as though frozen for several seconds then, her face slackening and turning pale, she turned back around and strode a few steps toward the porch and stopped to face the old man facing her, his own craggy features swollen with anger.

  “How, pray tell, Papa, did you know about my letters?” Lori asked. She’d spoken quietly but with barely restrained exasperation and outrage.

  The old man stared back at her, unable to answer the question.

  “Norman!” came a woman’s scolding voice behind him.

  The woman followed her voice out onto the porch. She was a slender, leathery figure clad in men’s rough work garb, with her silver-streaked hair pulled up into a bun. Somehow elegant and queenly despite the humbleness of her attire, she clenched her hands in front of her iron-flat belly.

  “You intercepted them,” Lori said, breathless. Her shoulders swayed from side to side. Stockburn was afraid she was going to faint and prepared to dismount and go to her to catch her if she should fall but waylaid the action when she swung around again and strode angrily out through the gate.

  Her eyes swept across him as he sat there on his tall smoky gray stallion. She stopped.

  “Oh,” she said with mock surprise. “Here he is now, Papa. The man who saved my life on
the train. Wolf Stockburn, rail detective. The great Wolf of the Rails.”

  Her voice was breathless, shrill, her red cheeks mottled white, her eyes glazed with a dangerous anger. “Damn you!” she cried suddenly, bending forward at the waist and firing her rage at Wolf. “Damn you for saving me! Why didn’t you let that scurvy little devil Hennessey blow my head off? Why didn’t you? You’d have done me the biggest favor anyone has ever done me in my whole, damned, wretched, miserable life!”

  She turned and strode away from Stockburn, angling across the yard toward the stable near the blacksmith shop. The blacksmith and the two boys working with him stood in front of the shop’s open doors, regarding the girl in wide-eyed fascination.

  The dog now sat near one of the boys, also staring at Lori with hushed incredulity, tongue sagging down over its lower jaws.

  As she passed the blacksmith shop, Lori yelled, “Billy, saddle Miss Abigail!”

  The boy jerked to life then stopped when the old woman said, “No, Billy!”

  The old woman, who Stockburn assumed was the girl’s mother, had followed Lori out through the gate. She turned now toward where two of the cowboys had been walking toward the house from the corral, their faces taut with tension and worry. “Law, Hy!” the woman said, then jerked her chin toward where Lori was approaching the stable, back ramrod straight, fists still clenched at her sides.

  Both men broke into jogs.

  “Lori,” the oldest one said. “Lori, for godsakes!”

  Stockburn swung down from Smoke’s back and stood helplessly holding Smoke’s reins and watching the two young men, at the direction of the old woman, run up to Lori. Stockburn felt an urge to intervene on the girl’s behalf—they’d gotten to be friends, after all—but this was a family affair.

  “Let me go!” Lori yelled, jerking her hand out of the older of the two young men’s grip. She whipped around toward the two young boys and the blacksmith and the dog. “Billy, I told you to—no, Hy, let me go! Law, let me go—damn you both!”

  Both young men—her brothers, it seemed—grabbed Lori between them and half-carried, half-dragged her back toward where the old woman and now the old man stood to each side of the gate in the brick wall.

  “Let me go!” the girl raged, writhing, trying to pull herself free of the young men’s grips. “I’m going to town! I’ll live as a whore and then won’t you really be ashamed!”

  “Lori, please!” the old man said.

  As her brothers dragged her past where Wolf stood holding Smoke’s reins, looking on and feeling as helpless as he’d ever felt in his life, Lori locked pleading eyes on him and said, “Wolf, don’t let them do this to me! They think I’m crazy! I’m not! Please, Wolf, if you’re any friend at all—stop them!”

  Stockburn stepped forward. “Lori, I’m sorry . . . I . . .”

  “Never mind,” the old woman told him. “She gets this way.” To the young men carrying Lori through the open gate, she said, “Take her up to her room. I’ll bring a sedative.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Wolf asked.

  The old woman turned back to him, looking annoyed. “Yes. She . . . gets like this.” Her annoyed frown turned to a scowl. “Just who are you, sir?”

  “Stockburn, Lori said,” said the old man, stepping up to Wolf. “I’ll handle it, Elizabeth. You’d best tend to the girl.” When the woman had gone back into the house, the old man extended his small but thick and severely work-calloused hand. “Hello, Stockburn. I’m Norman McCrae.”

  He was short and rugged-faced, his body going to seed. His thick hair was entirely gray. His deeply sun- and windburned face was a mask of small dark freckles. His eyes were the same light brown of his daughter’s. Stockburn figured him to be in his late sixties though the hard western years had made him look a good twenty years older.

  Wolf shook, giving the man an affable nod but furtively gnashing his teeth at the sounds of Lori’s struggle echoing around inside the house. “I guess I could have chosen a more opportune time to come calling.”

  “Yes, well . . .” McCrae winced as he glanced toward the house. The sounds of struggle were dwindling. The girl’s brothers had probably gotten her into her room and closed the door. Now, for the sedative. “Lori’s not a well girl and, well . . . her return was unexpected.”

  “I gathered as much. A rather harsh way of treating homesickness, though, wouldn’t you say?” Wolf couldn’t help asking, unable to keep an accusing tone out of his voice.

  “Suppose you leave my family’s concerns to me and my wife, Mister Stockburn.”

  “All right, fair enough. It’s just that I got to know the girl. We came in on the same train, and I wouldn’t want to see her hurt.”

  “She won’t be hurt, I assure you. My wife and myself and Lori’s brothers want nothing but the best for her.” McCrae paused, frowned up at the detective who had several inches on him. “What was that she said about ‘that devil Hennessey’?”

  “Riley Hennessey stopped the train. He tried to take your daughter. I prevented him from doing so.”

  “He tried to rob another train, eh?” McCrae scowled, his jowls swelling, and slowly shook his head. He glanced at Wolf darkly and said, “You stopped him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he hurt Lori?”

  “Roughed her up a little but nothing serious.”

  McCrae asked the next question silently as he continued to frown up at the rail detective.

  “He’s dead,” Stockburn responded.

  Wolf didn’t think Norman McCrae was a man who customarily betrayed his emotions, but the detective’s answer had plainly shocked him. McCrae’s eyes widened, silver brows crawling up into his freckled, brick-red forehead, and his chin rose slowly until he was almost looking up at the sunlit sky for a second. “I see. Does his father know?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Stockburn took note of the painful goose egg on his temple, hidden by his hat.

  “Come on in, Stockburn,” McCrae said, his mood having improved.

  He ran his hands down the front of his doe hide vest that had bright patterns stitched into it, in red and green thread, and considered the ground. He turned toward the house, beckoned over his shoulder with a small, tough hand and said, “You deserve a drink.”

  CHAPTER 16

  A tall, brown-skinned woman in her thirties, obviously Indian—probably Shoshone or Arapaho—brought a silver tray with a liquor decanter and two matching, diamond-cut goblets into McCrae’s study.

  Silent as a church mouse, her broad, black-eyed face devoid of expression, she set the tray on the low table between the two overstuffed leather armchairs in which Stockburn and the rancher had seated themselves.

  Also on the tray were a wooden plate of thickly sliced sausage, several hard-boiled eggs cut in two, a wheel of sliced cheese, and small crackers with nuts and berries baked into them.

  “My favorite afternoon snack,” McCrae said, huffing and puffing as he maneuvered around in the deep chair to lean forward over his knees. Glancing up at the servant, he said, “That will be all, Yellow Feather. Thank you.” The rancher popped half an egg into his mouth and chewed.

  Yellow Feather left the room as silently as she’d entered it.

  McCrae removed the glass stopper from the decanter and splashed two fingers of what appeared to be whiskey into each glass. He set down the decanter and slid one of the heavy glasses toward Stockburn’s side of the table.

  “Go ahead,” he said, picking up the other goblet and sniffing the lip. “Good stuff. I have it shipped here directly from the Scottish Highlands. Just the right balance of peat and smoke.” He swirled the whiskey, took a quick sniff, and sipped. “Ah, yes.”

  Stockburn picked up his own glass, sniffed, then took a deep sip, rolling the liquor, which tasted the way a campfire smells on a cold winter night, across his tongue to savor it before swallowing.

  When it hit his belly, it sent a soothing warmth throughout his body and into his head, tempering the pain of the goose eg
g. “Just what the doctor ordered. Thank you. I have to be careful not to get spoiled. I couldn’t afford anything even close to this on my Wells Fargo salary.”

  “What part of Scotland are you from?” McCrae asked.

  “I was born in Kansas, but my father and mother both came from Speyside. Poor fishing families. They didn’t do much better in Kansas—especially when the Cheyenne came calling.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s life in the West. My life in the West, anyway.” Stockburn took another sip of the Scotch, held it on his tongue, and swallowed as he glanced around the well-appointed study boasting a large, hide-covered desk on the opposite end of the room, near two large bay windows. There were several sturdy gleaming bookcases, varnished tables supporting a globe and an intricate model of a clipper ship.

  A gunrack displayed a good dozen handsome sporting rifles behind its glass door. Game trophies including a huge, snarling grizzly peered dubiously down from the walls. The wooden floors were deep carpeted, and a small, aromatic cedar fire crackled in the hearth near where the two men sat across from each other. The smells of the Scotch and old leather mixed with the perfume of the cedar smoke.

  “You obviously did better,” Wolf remarked with a wry smile.

  “Not necessarily better,” McCrae said, legs crossed, tapping one finger against the rim of his Scotch glass. “I just made more money. Long ago I learned the difference between living well and making a lot of money. The two don’t always walk hand-in-hand.”

  “I’m sure acquiring all this wasn’t easy. Not out here.”

  “Did you really kill Riley Hennessey?”

  “I didn’t know he was Riley Hennessey at the time. Or what the name meant. But, yes, I did.” Stockburn raised and dropped his right hand onto the arm of his chair in capitulation to the fates. “Don’t bother warning me about his father. We’ve already locked horns.”

  “You haven’t killed Kreg, too?”

  “Not yet.”

  That made McCrae laugh. He’d just taken a sip of his Scotch and now he leaned forward, red-faced, coughing. He sat back, pounding his chest with the end of his fist, and said, “Let me know when you do, and I’ll kill a steer and host a barbecue!”