Thunder Valley

by David Robbins

  Martha prepared a plate for Rondo James and Roy took it out to the barn. At that early hour the interior was cool and quiet. He went to the ladder to the hayloft and looked up.

  “You could have ate with us, you know.”

  There was the rustle of hay and small bits rained down as the Southerner poked his head over the edge. “Not and keep my eyes skinned, I couldn’t.”

  “I have your breakfast,” Roy said, indicating the plate.

  “Bring it on up.”

  Careful not to tip the plate, Roy climbed. The loft smelled of the hay and of dust. The loft door was open and Rondo James was cross-legged in front of it, peering out. Roy sat next to him. “Here you go.”

  “I’m obliged.”

  Roy gazed out the door. From their vantage he could see the house and most of the yard and as far as the road. “It’s been days since they were here. Maybe they’ve changed their mind.”

  “You know better.” Rondo balanced the plate on his lap and picked up the fork. He sniffed the eggs and bacon and buttered toast and smiled. “Makes my mouth water. Your missus is a fine cook.”

  “Why are they waiting so long?” Roy asked.

  “So that we’ll think what you were thinkin’,” Rondo said, “that they’re not comin’ back. Then we let down our guard and make it easy for them.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “They’re assassins,” Rondo said. “Assassins like an edge.” He forked a piece of scrambled egg into his mouth and chewed.

  “Andy might have seen someone watching the house yesterday,” Roy mentioned.

  Rondo stopped chewing. “Oh?”

  “He was taking a turn at an upstairs window so Matt could do his schoolwork and he thought he got a glimpse of a man in the trees to the southwest.”

  “He’s not sure?”

  “It could have been a deer,” Roy said.

  Rondo James resumed eating. “I’m sorry I brought this down on you and yours.”

  “It’s not your fault. Blame whoever hired despicable characters like Shotgun Anderson and Kid Slade.”

  “Some folks would say I’m despicable.”

  “They’re wrong. They don’t know you like I do.”

  Rondo bit off the fatty end of a strip of bacon. “You’re the first friend I’ve had in a coon’s age.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “If anything happens to any of you, I’ll never have another.”

  Roy coughed and looked out the loft door. “I’ve heard that Buchanan is taking over the Olander spread and has hired on the punchers who were left.”

  “How are the other farmers holdin’ up?”

  “Prost’s wife is after him to pack up and leave but he says he’s sticking.”

  Rondo chose a second strip and said, “If there is anything I like more than bacon, I have yet to make its acquaintance.”

  “You’re taking all this calmly. I don’t see how you do it.” Roy plucked a blade of straw and stuck it in his mouth.

  “When you’ve lived with death as long as I have, it doesn’t rattle you as much.”

  Roy saw a buckboard out on the road. Haverman, he thought, and Haverman’s wife, on their way to town. “I could never get used to it. Not in a thousand years.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Rondo said.

  “All I ever wanted was to live in peace,” Roy said. “But the outside world won’t leave us be.”

  “Life does that.” Rondo put a piece of egg on a slice of toast and folded the slice. He licked his lips and took a bite and chewed.

  Roy gazed at his house, awash in the bright morning sunlight. He gazed at the road—the buckboard was gone. He gazed in the other direction, out across his tilled fields, and blurted, “I’ll be damned.”

  A rider was coming up the track that Roy used when he went back and forth. The man wore a light coat and the coat was swept back so his holster was clear.

  “You’ll be damned what?” Rondo asked. He was intent on his food.

  “Look for yourself.”

  Rondo stretched his neck out. “I’ll be damned.” His gray eyes narrowed. “And black, by God.”

  “Do you think he’s with Anderson and Slade?”

  “They work alone.” Rondo James set down the plate and moved to the ladder. “Come on. Let’s go introduce ourselves to the gent and find out what he’s doin’ on your property.”

  Roy spit out the blade of straw and scrambled to catch up. By the time he hurried from the barn, the rider had come around the corral and drawn rein and he and Rondo James were staring at one another. “I’m Roy Sether,” he announced. “This is my farm.”

  “I know,” the man said. He didn’t take his dark eyes off Rondo James.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  The rider tapped a metal circle on his belt.

  Roy moved nearer and received a shock. “A marshal! I didn’t know there was a lawman within two hundred miles.”

  “You must not read the newspapers.” Still eyeing the Southerner, the lawman dismounted. “Tyrell Gibson is my name. I’ve been watchin’ your house for four days now, Mr. Sether.”

  “You have?” Roy realized that it must have been Gibson that Andy saw out in the trees.

  “I was hopin’ to catch Shotgun Anderson and Kid Slade in the act of tryin’ to kill your friend, here.”

  “I declare,” Rondo James said. “Ain’t you the clever fox.”

  “Clever enough to get you and the rest of these folks mentioned in the newspapers,” Tyrell Gibson said.

  “That’s twice you’ve mentioned the newspapers,” Roy said. “What are you talking about?”

  Without taking his gaze off Rondo, Tyrell Gibson turned to his saddlebags. One-handed, he opened one and slid a hand in and pulled out a folded newspaper. Without looking at Roy, Gibson tossed it at him.

  Roy almost dropped it.

  “Read that to your friend,” the lawman directed.

  “What part?” Roy asked as he unfolded it. He saw the name of the paper, and the headline. “It’s the Leader. Out of Cheyenne, no less. And it’s about us.” He read the headline aloud and then the rest of the account, not stopping until he was done. He looked up quizzically. “You say this was your doing?”

  “The mention of him was,” Tyrell said, with a nod at Rondo. “I figured it might scare Anderson and Slade off.”

  “Knowing that you’re around?” Roy said.

  “And everyone knowin’ that they’re after your friend.”

  “His friend has a name,” Rondo James said. “You can use it if you want.”

  “What I want,” Tyrell Gibson said, and began to slowly walk in a circle around the Southerner, who turned so they always faced one another, “is to know where I stand with you.”

  “How’s that again, lawdog?”

  “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  Rondo James glanced down at himself, and grinned. “I wear gray and your skin is black. Is that it?”

  “You’re a clever fox yourself,” the marshal said, and chuckled. He completed his circle and hooked his thumb in his belt so that his hand touched his revolver.

  “I’m not one of them,” Rondo James said.

  “Them who?”

  “Those who hankered to keep your kind in chains. I fought to protect my home and my kin and my state, and that’s all.”

  “Then why keep wearin’ that uniform?”

  “I get asked that a lot.”

  “What do you say when people do?”

  “That I won’t be trod on. The North might have broke the South but the Yankees didn’t break me.” He placed a hand on his gray slicker. “I wear this to rub their noses in it.”

  “Were you good at holdin’ grudges when you were a boy, too?”

  “Grudge, nothin’,” Rondo said. “I call it pride. I call it dignity. I call it bein’ a man.”

  Tyrell Gibson started walking in another circle. “I call it askin’ for a slug between the sh
oulder blades.”

  “Are you one of those back-shootin’ lawmen?” Rondo said, turning as the marshal turned.

  “I always go at my man straight up.”

  “Straight up with me is the same as bein’ buried.”

  “Modest cuss.”

  “Still-breathin’ cuss. And I aim to stay that way.”

  “You’re a puzzlement.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve been here more than a few minutes and you haven’t called me a nigger.”

  “I’m still waitin’ for you to call me a cracker.”

  Tyrell Gibson grinned and said, “Cracker trash.”

  Rondo James grinned and held out his hand. “I’ll let you call me that and go on livin’ since I find myself takin’ a shine to you.”

  “For a gent in gray you are damned decent,” Tyrell said, shaking. “Where are you from, anyhow?”

  “Virginia. You?”

  “Cheyenne, by way of Georgia.”

  Roy looked from one to the other and shook his head. “Are all Southerners as peculiar as you two?”

  “Says the Yankee,” Tyrell Gibson said, and laughed.

  “He’s got a Southern heart when it comes to hospitality,” Rondo James said.

  Roy snorted. “Northerners don’t have hearts?”

  Rondo and Tyrell said at the same time, “No.”

  The screen door banged and Andy came out and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Ma saw that man ride up. She says if we have company, you should invite him in for coffee. Mr. James, too, if he’s so inclined.”

  “Can you stay a while?” Roy asked the lawman.

  “As long as I like.”

  They headed for the house, Rondo and Tyrell walking side by side.

  “It was a good idea you had,” the pistoleer said, “but it won’t work.”

  “Why not?” the lawman asked.

  “I’ve heard tell that once Shotgun Anderson and Kid Slade take a job, they see it through.”

  “Over my dead body,” Tyrell declared.

  “For a man you hardly know?” Rondo said.

  “You’re forgettin’ this,” Tyrell said, and tapped his badge. “This tin means that south of the Mason-Dixon and north of the Mason-Dixon are one and the same.”

  “Not to me they’re not,” Rondo declared. “And they never will be.”

  “Like I said,” Tyrell said. “Stubborn.”

  “Like I said,” Rondo said. “Breathin’.”

  Roy had been waiting for a chance to join in, and said, “Here’s hoping you stay that way.”

  33

  Ritlin had been doing a lot of thinking. As a general rule he tried not to think too much but now it couldn’t be helped. He’d nearly been shot the other night and he’d like to find out who was out to kill him before they put lead in his skull.

  The more thinking he did, the more suspicious he became. One Eye up and disappearing like that could only mean One Eye was dead. The runt had liked money as much as he liked anything and would never quit in the middle of a job.

  Then there was Brule. Ritlin had accepted Axel’s story that the rancher, Olander, was to blame. But all he had to go on was Axel’s word, and when he got down to it, he knew less about Axel than any of the others and not enough to trust him as completely as he had trusted Brule.

  And now that Ritlin was doing some thinking, he remembered a lot of little things that singly didn’t amount to much but taken together added to his suspicion.

  For starters, Axel claimed he was a cowboy from Texas. But there was that time they hired out to kill a well-to-do gent who was dipping his wick into another gent’s wife. The man they killed had a painting in his parlor. Ritlin had come out of the bedroom and saw Axel staring up at it with a smile on his face. Since Axel so rarely smiled, he asked if he liked the painting.

  “It shows a sailboat off the coast back east,” Axel had answered in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. “It reminds me—” And he’d stopped and turned and said in his Texas drawl, “It’s a nice paintin’.”

  Then there was that other incident.

  They were in Dodge City. Ritlin came around a corner and saw Axel talking to another man. The other man wore city clothes and a round-topped hat with a short brim. The man had the top two buttons of his jacket buttoned but not the rest. A bulge on his hip suggested why. The pair were smiling and Ritlin distinctly saw the other man clap Axel on the arm. Then Axel noticed him and said something to the other man, who wheeled and melted into the shadows. Ritlin had gone over and asked, “Who was your friend?”

  “Never saw him before,” Axel had answered. “He was askin’ if I had tobacco to spare.”

  Later, Ritlin spotted the same man again, at a bar in a saloon. He’d asked a poker player across from him if he knew who the man was.

  The player had looked, and paled. Bending and dropping his voice, he’d said, “What are you asking about him for? Do you have a death wish?”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “Why, that’s Dave Mather, himself. Mysterious Dave, folks call him. He’s a man-killer through and through.”

  Ritlin had never heard of him. “Why do they call him Mysterious Dave?”

  “Because no one knows anything about him or his past. He keeps it a secret. Never talks about himself, they say. Never tells where he’s from. Which is pretty smart, if you ask me.”

  “Why smart?” Ritlin had asked.

  “If people don’t know who he is or where he’s been, he’s less likely to end up behind bars for things he’s done.”

  Ritlin thought it silly, being so secretive. He’d gone on playing cards and forgotten about it.

  Until now.

  Ritlin was at a corner table in the Grand Lady nursing a bottle when Axel pushed through the batwings, scanned the room and saw him. Axel came over and pulled out a chair and nodded in greeting.

  “Here you are.”

  “Here I am,” Ritlin said.

  “I’ve been lookin’ all over for you the past few days. Where have you been?”

  Ritlin mentioned that he’d taken a room in a boardinghouse run by a colored woman.

  “We’ve sat around long enough,” Axel said. “We need to get on with the job.”

  “With Brule gone I don’t much care whether we do it or don’t,” Ritlin said.

  “We took money in advance,” Axel reminded him. “We have to finish it.”

  “Brule did most of the plannin’,” Ritlin said.

  “We can do it without him. We start with the farmers and save the other rancher for last.”

  “You have a particular farmer in mind or do we stick a pin in that map of yours?”

  Axel didn’t seem to notice Ritlin’s sarcasm. “As a matter of fact, I do. We start with Roy Sether.”

  “Why him?”

  “From what I can gather, the others look up to him. He’s had meetin’s at his house. He’s the closest thing to a leader they have.” Axel paused. “And he’s the one Rondo James is stayin’ with.”

  Despite himself, Ritlin was suddenly interested. “Rondo James?”

  “You remember when we were being chased?” Axel said. “We waited in the woods to ambush two riders who were after us?”

  Ritlin nodded. “The storm spoiled our little surprise.”

  “I thought one of the riders was a cowboy and the other was a farmer. But now I think it was Sether and Rondo James. We get them out of the way and the rest of the farmers will be so scared, they’ll skedaddle.”

  “I would sure like a chance at that Reb,” Ritlin said.

  “Think of it,” Axel said. “You shoot him, you’ll be as famous as Hickok or Hardin or anyone.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” Ritlin said. “There would have to be witnesses or no one would know, and there can’t be witnesses.”

  “If we do it at the Sether farm. But what if you shoot him here in town?”

  “How would we get him here?” Ritlin sneered. “I send him an invite?”r />
  Axel smiled. “In a manner of speakin’. I have it all worked out.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “We snatch one of Sether’s kids or his wife. I’ll leave a note sayin’ that if Sether wants to see them again, Rondo James is to come into Teton, alone.”

  “What makes you think James will do it?”

  “Word is that they’re friends. When James shows up, you gun him and you’ll have all the witnesses you need.”

  “And you’re sure this will work?”

  Axel’s smile widened. “Trust me.”

  “The lawdog is leavin’,” Kid Slade announced from his perch in the fork of an oak.

  Shotgun Anderson was leaning with his back to the oak, his shotgun propped against the trunk. “About damn time.” It was close to sunset and the shadows were lengthening.

  The tree shook slightly as Kid Slade descended. On reaching the bottom limb, he slid his legs over and swung lithely to the ground. “About damn time is right. James has been there for days. Why didn’t we hit him sooner?”

  “Patience, cub,” Shotgun Anderson said. “By now he’s half convinced we gave up and went elsewhere.”

  “So that’s why you waited.”

  “You shoot a bear when it’s hibernatin’ and you’re less likely to be bit than when it’s awake. You tromp on a snake when it’s sunnin’ itself and you’re less likely to get bit than when it’s coiled to strike.”

  “I don’t need no lecture,” Kid Slade said.

  Shotgun sighed and picked up his prized hand-cannon and moved through the trees to a small clearing and their camp. Their horses were saddled and ready. A small fire crackled, barely giving off smoke, and a coffeepot sat on a flat rock. He sat and filled a tin cup. “Might as well make yourself comfortable. It’ll be a spell. We’ll wait until they turn in.”

  Instead of sitting, Kid Slade commenced to pace, his hands on his short-barreled Colts. “Rondo James, by God,” he said with glee. “I can’t hardly wait.”

  “What have I told you?” Shotgun said. “What have I told you a thousand times?”