A Dead Man's Tale

by James D. Doss

  A few minutes after sharing breakfast with Daisy and Sarah, Moon retreated to his upstairs sanctum with a third cup of coffee. While standing at the window, he turned on the FM radio and listened to the Gawler Family “Shinglin’ the Roof.” The music from Maine was fine and dandy, the splendid view of snow-capped granite peaks also lifted his spirits, and the flood of golden sunshine streaming inside hinted that Good Times were right around the corner. Maybe I should wait for another day or two before I break the bad news to my employees. But after he’d heard the Morning Farm and Ranch Report, the troubled stockman realized he was all out of reasons and excuses. Cattle prices had taken still another hit and it didn’t take a razor-sharp wit to read the proverbial handwriting on the wall.

  Whether a man is pulling an abscessed wisdom tooth with rusty wire pliers or castrating a wild-eyed bull calf with a Case pocketknife, he gets the job done quickly.

  Moon downed his last gulp of honeyed black coffee, snatched up the telephone, and put in a call to his foreman. As soon as he heard Pete Bushman’s gruff “Hello,” Moon barked back, “I want every man on the Columbine in the bunkhouse at ten A.M. sharp. No exceptions except for the half-wit who’s in jail for throwing another drunk through a barroom window, the bronc rider who’s laid up in the hospital with a busted pelvis, and that pair of West Texas outlaws that’re five miles away riding fence.”

  When the boss of the outfit used that flinty tone, his brash, backtalking second-in-command cleared his throat and rasped, “Yessir, I’ll see right to it.” He’s gonna do it. The foreman returned the telephone to its cradle and turned to his plump wife with a bad-news expression that hinted of deep, dark depression. “I told you this was comin’. He’s shuttin’ the ranch down.”

  The woman sighed and closed her eyes. “Oh, Lord help us all.”

  Dolly’s bushy-faced husband patted her on the shoulder. “Now don’t you worry, ol’ girl—you’n me’ll be all right. Why we’re safe as…as…” As snowballs in hell. Pete turned abruptly, jammed a faded felt cowboy hat down past his ears, and booted his way across the parlor. He was out the front door and stomping across the porch before Dolly could sense the cold fear that twisted his entrails. If I have to, I’ll get me a job fryin’ hamburgers. He blinked bleary eyes at the Too Late Creek bridge. If anybody in his right might would hire an old geezer like me for work a boy can do. “Damn!” The eighty-year-old man kicked one of Dolly’s dead potted plants off the porch.

  This served to boost Pete Bushman’s morale by a notch or two, but did nothing to help his big toe, which was already sore from being deliberately tromped on yesterday by a mare with a mischievous sense of humor.

  10:03 A.M.

  The bunkhouse slept forty, but rarely all at once because the men worked in twelve-hour shifts and a few were generally out tending to sick cattle, hunting predators, or raising bloody hell in Granite Creek saloons and then spending a few days (without pay) in jail. A privileged few (Foreman Pete Bushman, top hand Wyoming Kyd, and the burly blacksmith) had private quarters.

  Charlie Moon, who breathed higher-altitude air than the tallest of his employees, stood like a lone pine at the east end of the crowded shotgun-style building. The Ute waited patiently for the murmuring of some fifty-five toughs to die down. When it didn’t, the owner of the outfit raised his hand. The effect was instantaneous silence.

  “I expect you fellas know what this is all about,” Moon said.

  They did. More or less.

  “Times are tough. I won’t waste my breath telling you how foreign beef is eating our lunch and operating costs keep on going up. You know all about that.”

  Somewhere near the rear of the gathering, a Mexican cowboy spat into a galvanized bucket of sand provided by the management for that purpose.

  A grizzled old hand from Montana spat a salty expletive.

  Moon ignored these pithy comments. “Here’s the deal. I’ve got to sell twelve hundred head of prime stock—and at prices so low it’ll be like slitting my throat.” From the rancher’s grim perspective, Samuel Reed’s hopeful forecast had dropped all the way from long shot to daydream. “With most of the purebred stock trucked out, there won’t be much work to do around here. And even if there was, I couldn’t meet payroll.”

  Fifty-five pairs of eyeballs burned holes in the boss.

  “I don’t know of any fair way to decide who goes and who stays,” Moon said. “You’re all worth your pay and more.”

  Several snorts greeted this exaggeration. There were three notorious malingerers on the Columbine, a couple of drunks who could barely roll out of their bunks, and then there was Six-Toes, a ratty-faced lowlife detested by one and all.

  “So here’s the deal. This’ll be handled more or less like you fellas had yourselves a union. The employees with highest seniority stay on the payroll.” For a couple of weeks.

  This was greeted with several sneers and a few moans and groans. Everyone present knew that Six-Toes had been on the Columbine almost as long as Charlie Moon, and a few months longer than the Kyd.

  The man who boasted an extra digit on each foot displayed a satisfied smirk.

  Moon had to steel himself against an overwhelming temptation to punch the mean cowboy senseless. Which, considering the fact that Six would have had to enroll in a five-year correspondence course to work his way up to moron, seemed more than a little redundant. Realizing that his hands were rolled into fists and weren’t of a mind to unwind, the Ute concealed the pair of knucklear weapons behind him. “Excepting a few of you who have special skills, the forty men with the shortest time are laid off.” Moon passed a sealed envelope to his foreman. “Pete’ll read the names off and see that you get paid off in cash.” After clearing the lump from his throat, Moon managed a few more words. “You’re all welcome to stay on the Columbine until you find another job, or until things pick up here and we need more help, or…till hell freezes over.” This is even harder than I thought it’d be. “You can sleep in the bunkhouse and you’re welcome to all the coffee and biscuits and pinto beans you can choke down.” Until that runs out too. The longtime poker player couldn’t read their stares. Moon took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, men. If I was a better rancher, this wouldn’t be necessary. But I’m not, and it is.” He turned on his boot heel and left the bunkhouse.

  This was very close to being the hardest thing Charlie Moon had ever done—which was wrapping his mother’s frail corpse in an old blanket and laying her to rest in Cañón del Espíritu.

  Inside the Columbine headquarters, Moon collapsed onto a chair by the hearth. I never expected to get rich selling beef on the hoof. He watched the last amber embers die in the fireplace. All I wanted was to be a cattle rancher. Well, a little more than that. A successful cattle rancher. It never entered his mind to blame the five-year drought, the annual scourge of range worms and locusts, the Argentines and South Africans who were underselling American beef, or hard times in general. The buck stopped here and the bottom line was that Charlie Moon was responsible for what happened on the Columbine.

  The on-the-wagon alcoholic who attended AA meetings almost every week got up, took nine long strides across the parlor, and stomped through the headquarters dining room and into the kitchen, where he poured himself a stiff drink that would’ve stopped a runaway freight train on a dime, or a charging buffalo on a nickel.

  No. Not that.

  A man-sized mug of Aunt Daisy’s brackish black coffee.

  Unsweetened and cold as a Yukon toad-frog’s toes.

  After the last gulp, the heartsick rancher set the mug aside, made a grab for the kitchen telephone, and dialed the number of a cattle broker in Denver. Moon listened to the drawling voice mail message that invited him to “tell me what’s on your mind after the tone, podner—and I’ll get back t’you soon as I can.” When the signal beeped in his right ear, the stockman cleared his throat and heard himself say, “Hello, Roy—this is Charlie Moon. Except for a few head of prime breeding stock, I’d like to sell off my
whole herd. I’ll be in and out of the headquarters, so if I don’t pick up on the Columbine landline call me on my mobile number.” Well, that takes care of that. He returned the telephone to its wall-mounted cradle. By this time tomorrow, the Columbine’ll be out of business. The rancher felt himself getting numb all over.

  But not enough to anesthetize the big hurt.

  Charlie Moon wanted to go away for a while. To some quiet place where I won’t have to talk to anybody. Or look a laid-off cowboy in the eye. Maybe I ought to saddle up Paducah and go for a long ride in the mountains. That sounded like just the right medicine. I’ll find a stream where nobody’s fished for a hundred years or more. The Ute sighed. Sleeping on the ground for a few nights would do me a world of good.

  Without a doubt. But he was not about to enjoy an interlude of peaceful solitude.

  Dr. Fate had written an alternative prescription for this soul-weary man who sought a few hours of peace.

  Call it a diversion.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Company’s Coming

  For men like Charlie Moon, the old saying that misery loves company does not apply. The Ute found his healings in solitude. If the troubled rancher had made a list of what he least wanted at the moment, visitors would have been right up there with turpentine in his coffee, an enraged scorpion in his sock, and a registered letter from the Internal Revenue Service. Matter of fact, if Mr. Moon had known that the unlikely pair of hombres was headed thisaway, he would’ve already been straddling his favorite horse and headed for the lonely wilderness north of Pine Knob.

  Most likely because he was distracted by his problems, the keen-eared Ute did not hear the approach of the familiar automobile until it rattled over a half-dozen loose redwood planks on the Too Late Creek bridge—and they don’t call the stream that for nothing. There being no ready escape, Moon was obliged to go to the west porch and greet his best friend and—as it turned out—the grinning citizen the chief of police was hauling in the passenger seat of his sleek GCPD black-and-white.

  Why was Samuel Reed’s happy face split practically ear to ear?

  We are about to find out.

  Braking to a stop under a gaunt cottonwood, Scott Parris addressed his companion. “You stay put while I go talk to Charlie.”

  “Very well.” Professor Reed clasped his hands behind his neck. “Whilst you convince the Indian sleuth to provide his expert assistance, I shall entertain myself by enjoying the picturesque ruralosity of our surroundings and”—he sniffed—“the earthy fragrance of an aromatically authentic cattle ranch.”

  “You do that.” Silly little twerp. On the hour-long drive from Granite Creek, which had taken a week, the no-nonsense chief of police had grown bone-weary of Reed’s incomprehensible witticisms, effete affectations, and other annoying mannerisms. Craving the company of a sure-enough man, Parris slammed the car door and marched across the yard toward the genuine article. “Howdy, Charlie.”

  The melancholy Ute greeted his matukach friend with a nod.

  The white cop bounded up the steps. “I brought somebody to see you.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You have a calendar on your kitchen wall, so you may’ve also noticed that this is the first day of the month that generally follows May.”

  Moon reached out to shake his friend’s hand. “And on Friday the fourth of June—which is Mrs. Reed’s birthday and only three days away—Sam Reed figures somebody’s gonna shoot him dead.”

  “He does, Charlie—and he just might be right.” After reminding Moon of his suspicion that Mrs. Reed’s 911 call about a break-in was a phony, the chief of police described his routine background investigation of Mrs. Reed’s boyfriend. “Whoever this joker is, he ain’t Chico Perez. That name’s bogus as a Lincoln penny dated 99 B.C.”

  “You figure you’re dealing with some kind of outlaw?”

  “Oh, Perez is a bad apple, all right.” By force of habit, the town cop turned to glance at his sleek squad car. “At the very least, the bastard’s probably got a wife and kids somewhere that don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”

  “So who do you figure for pulling the trigger on Reed—the wife or her boyfriend?”

  “Could be either one of ’em.” Parris heaved his big shoulders in a shrug. “Or maybe it’s a conspiracy. They might be working as a team.”

  “Does Sam Reed suspect his missus?”

  “Nah. The guy’s smart about lots of things, but where his pretty wife is concerned, he’s got a blind spot a mile wide.” Parris briefed Moon on how he’d persuaded Samuel Reed to loan his wife a tapped mobile phone to replace the one she had misplaced.

  “And this TracFone that you gave Professor Reed—is that one tapped too?”

  “Sure. And before you insult me by asking, he agreed to both taps.” The white cop gave his Indian friend a pleading look. “Bottom line is this—we gotta find some way to keep this guy alive.”

  Moon returned a puzzled expression. “We?”

  “Sure. That’s why I’m here.” The white cop turned his sunburned face away to avoid the part-time deputy’s earnest gaze. “I don’t have to tell you how shorthanded I am.” He waved off an imagined protest. “And don’t remind me how long it takes the county to pay you.” Now Scott Parris was prepared to beam his blue eyes on Moon, and he did. “But not to worry, my friend—I’ve taken care of both problems.” He shot another sideways glance at his patrol car. “Or maybe it’d be more accurate to say that Sam Reed has.”

  That was a no-brainer. “So he’s agreed pay my wages.”

  “Damn right, Charlie.” Parris’s broad face had the beginnings of a grin. “And the man’s no cheapskate. Wait till you hear—”

  “I’d like to help you, pardner.” Moon squinted at the pale blue sky and sighed. “But I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”

  “Hey, I knew you’d say that. But don’t tell me you’re too busy fattening up beeves to help me save Sam Reed’s life—tell him.”

  “Okay.” Moon’s tone was grim. “Bring him on.”

  Parris waved a come-on gesture at the wealthy investor, who got out of the police car and strutted across the yard like (Moon thought) a banty rooster about to pick a fight with a forty-pound bobcat.

  After exchanging nods with Samuel Reed, Moon accepted the man’s outstretched hand and gave it a shake.

  Releasing the tribal investigator’s big hand, the dapper little man jerked his head toward Parris. “Our highly esteemed chief of police refuses to share the results of his investigation with me. But your bosom buddy is apparently convinced that I am destined to die just as I have predicted, which big event is scheduled for this Friday evening.”

  Despite his gloomy mood, Moon could not help but smile at Reed. “For a man who’s about to be murdered, you’re in a pretty good mood.”

  “Destiny,” Reed replied with a wink, “is transformed by strong-willed men such as we three. With expert assistance from you two bold fellows, I hope to live to—no, permit me to amend that.” He puffed up his chest. “I am determined to live to a ripe old age.”

  “C’mon in,” Moon said. “I’ll brew us a fresh pot of coffee.” The problem was figuring out a way to say no without revealing how the expert investor’s failed prognostication about beef prices had created a situation where the rancher didn’t have time to think about Sam Reed’s serious problem. For once, Scott Parris would have to work things out without any help from his Indian friend. Unless…

  Fate Takes a Twist

  And it was about to.

  While the coffee was percolating in the kitchen, Moon’s mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. After glancing at the caller ID, he said hello and drifted off into the dining room for a private conversation with his cattle broker.

  “Wow, Charlie—it’s a good thing I wasn’t able to take the call when you left that message about selling off your herd.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Well of course it is.” A puzzled silence. �
��Say, haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “You are probably the luckiest man I ever met.” Roy Bivvens chuckled. “But Luck’s a fickle lady, Charlie, so if you want to survive in a rough-and-tumble business like ours, you gotta learn to pay attention to what’s goin’ on.”

  Moon was beginning to get a glimmer, and his hopeful suspicions were making his skin prickle. “Spit it out, Roy.”

  “Hell, Charlie—you must be the only stockman in the state who don’t know that the price of American beef has gone right through the roof during the past couple of hours. New orders from Japan and Mexico alone are gonna make you enough money to buy yourself a sixty-foot yacht and one of them executive jet airplanes and build yourself a five-mile-long runway on the Columbine and—”

  Moon interrupted the absurd hyperbole: “Does this have anything to do with an unmentionable bovine malady somewhere south of the equator?”