Open Range

by Lauran Paine

  “I don’t know. Just some big—” Carlin stopped the moment a cold gunbarrel touched the back of his neck.

  Pierce raised his eyes, then went back to reloading. “Sure you know his name, Ed.”

  “It’s the gospel truth, marshal. I never heard his name.”

  “What did you know about him, Ed? Let me tell you something. That feller holdin’ the gun to your neck is likely to blow your brains out if you keep on skirtin’ answers. What did you know about him?”

  “He was a freegrazer. Him and his friends ran cattle over Mister Baxter’s range. He told them to move on. Instead, they—” The gun pressure increased.

  Charley asked Carlin a question. “If you’d killed the boy that night, nobody would have known who raided the wagon-camp, would they?”

  Carlin’s face was sweat-shiny. “The boy? What boy?”

  Charley cocked the weapon, and Marshal Pierce unwound up off the ground to be well out of the way as he said, “Ed, if you’re a prayin’ man you’d better start.”

  Carlin was panting as gun pressure forced his head forward and downward. Charley said it again. “If you’d gone over to make sure the kid was dead, no one ever would have known, would they?”

  Carlin gasped. “Marshal, for Chris’sake, you’re a lawman, you can’t let him—”

  Pierce laughed. “With someone like you, Carlin, I’ll dance the jig when he pulls the trigger.”

  Charley slid the gunbarrel over sweaty flesh. Carlin cried out. “Someone said the kid was bleedin’ like a stuck hawg. I figured he was dyin’. We had to get the hell away because a couple of them freegrazers was missin’. We ran for it.”

  Charley said, “How far out were you when you shot the man in the head who broke your arm? How far!”

  “Pretty close to where you caught me. Maybe fifteen yards southward.”

  Marshal Pierce frowned. “That’s good shooting for a one-armed man on a dark night.”

  “Naw. They had a supper fire goin’. We could see ’em real plain.”

  Charley stepped back, let the Winchester sag, and gazed far out eastward where dawn’s weak paleness showed.

  Marshal Pierce moved back, nudged the younger man, and said, “Sit up. If you want to blubber, go find a towel. Sit up!”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A New Day

  Marshal Pierce let the little fire die as he emptied the pockets of the prisoners and finished a cigar before arising to stretch. He rubbed his stubbled jaw and looked out where the horses were.

  When Charley also stood up, Marshal Pierce looked searchingly at him. “You all right?” he asked.

  Charley nodded and started eastward to bring in their horses while the federal officer rolled the dead men in blankets and rounded up ropes to tie them with.

  Ed Carlin had watched Charley Waite leave the camp, and with that peculiar camaraderie that professional outlaws shared with professional lawmen, said, “I think that damned fool would have shot me.”

  Pierce agreed. “I expect he would, and except for the fact that we only got two saddle horses, it wouldn’t have bothered me if he did.”

  “Two horses . . . ?”

  Pierce bobbed his head in the direction of the younger rider. “Him and you are going to walk. Mister Waite and I’ll ride behind our cantles with these two dead men across the saddle seats.”

  Carlin protested. “Walk all the way back to Harmonville? I got a splittin’ headache. That bastard like to busted my skull.”

  Marshal Pierce smiled. “You’re lucky. Look at your friends. What’s that crybaby’s name?”

  “Joe Evans.”

  “Get him on his damned feet. And, Carlin, don’t give neither of us an excuse on the hike back . . . By the way, in this country they think your name is Butler. Well, I’ve seen your ivory-handled gun before, so when we get back I’ll call you Butler, but as soon as I can get authority to extradite you, you’ll be Carlin. You understand?”

  Whether the outlaw understood or not, he was given no opportunity to say because Charley had returned with the horses, and for a half hour the two lawmen and the two survivors were occupied in loading and tying the dead men.

  The sun was climbing by the time they started across country toward Harmonville. Behind them they left the roundup camp in disarray.

  By the time they were out of sight of the camp, with the sun directly overhead, two men riding bareback arrived at the camp. They could interpret what they saw correctly. What they did not know was whether Denton Baxter had been killed or not. They turned northeastward in the direction of the Baxter homeplace. They were the two men sent westward on foot to catch horses.

  The heat arrived, shimmering waves of it, before the lawman and the freegrazer reached timber shade. The pair of men walking ahead on foot were wilted, but Dallas Pierce kept them moving by pointing ahead where tall trees stood.

  By the time they reached tree shade Carlin was ill, so they had to halt and unburden the horses. Pierce had the whiskey bottle in a saddlebag and handed it to Carlin, but the outlaw waved it away, sank flat out on pine needles, and closed his eyes, his face ashen. The younger rider’s face was red and sweat-shiny. He said nothing unless he was spoken to. At this cooler place when Charley offered him whiskey he drank it, and while his mood did not appear to improve at first, he sweated more than ever.

  They had no water, so Marshal Pierce went exploring on foot. During his absence, Joe Evans told Charley he had hired on with Baxter three months earlier and until day before yesterday when the crew rode into Harmonville, he’d never before seen a man killed.

  Charley listened without expression. When the younger man said, “I was at your wagoncamp,” Charley gazed steadily at him. Evans jutted his jaw in the direction of Carlin. “He said we’d just put a hell of a scare into them. After he shot that big feller he told me it was a mistake, that in the dark a man couldn’t be real accurate.”

  Charley asked a question. “And you believed him?”

  Evans avoided Charley’s gaze while shaking his head. “No. I’ve seen Ed shoot. He don’t miss. Even with that busted arm he don’t miss.”

  Marshal Pierce came back, removed his hat, mopped sweat off, and shook his head. He had found no water.

  The outlaw gave no indication that he heard anything that was happening around him. Pierce hoisted him up, propped him against a knee, and got whiskey down him. Carlin’s eyes were fixed on the lawman. He blew out a fiery breath and said, “I’ll never make it. We ain’t even halfway yet. Where’s the water?”

  Pierce left the outlaw, went over to Charley, and said, “He can ride and I’ll walk. Where is the nearest water?”

  As far as Charley knew, it was in Harmonville, which is what he told the marshal.

  The sun was slanting away when they got under way again, this time with Marshal Pierce leading the horse he had been riding, and with Ed Carlin behind the cantle.

  Nothing was said as they trudged through the heat. Joe Evans was suffering and occasionally stumbled. When he did, Marshal Pierce pulled him back to his feet and growled at him.

  Charley saw buzzards circling through the blurry heat haze. As he brought his gaze down to the onward land he thought he saw riders, decided it was a mirage, rubbed his eyes, and reset his hat so there would be more shade for his face.

  It was riders. Seven of them. Marshal Pierce croaked and gestured toward the wavery silhouettes, then halted the horse he had been leading and moved into its shade.

  When the horsemen came up and halted, they sat a short moment staring, then swung to the ground with canteens. A moment after Charley drank, sweat burst out all over his body in rivulets.

  The leader of the newcomers was, of all people, Judge Ambrose Collins. He was dark with sweat, his face flushed, and when he dismounted he almost fell.

  The others were townsmen. Some Charley had seen before, some he had not, but as they trouped back to gaze at the corpses one man stopped to offer Charley the makings, then stood there as Charley rolled a
smoke and lighted it. As Charley was handing the makings back, the townsman said, “A bigger posse went south.”

  Charley trickled smoke. “How’d you fellers happen to come out this way?”

  “Just a hunch. Doc Barlow an’ a kid stayin’ with him thought Baxter would head out here to find his riders. They’d give him an alibi about killing that old freegrazer in town.”

  Charley stared. “Is he dead?”

  “The freegrazer? Yeah, he died real early this morning. Doc Barlow said there wasn’t nothing he could do; the old gent had been shot through the guts and was bleedin’ internally. But he was tough. He hung on a long while.”

  Charley dropped the smoke, stepped on it, and went over to his livery horse. The others were ready to ride. Marshal Pierce and Judge Collins had been arguing, but as the cavalcade got under way they rode side-by-side as though there had been no argument.

  The men from town were carrying jerky, which they shared with the bedraggled, exhausted, and hollow-eyed men. Two of them rode with Ed Carlin, a man on each side in case he fell. He looked slightly better than he had looked back in the trees, but still had poor color.

  Marshal Pierce rode up front with Judge Collins, explaining everything that had happened since he and Charley Waite rode out of Harmonville. The judge was sweating like a stud horse, half listening and half concentrating on what was far ahead, rooftops, shade, beer with peppermint, and something to sit on that wasn’t moving. To Ambrose Collins, horses were for pulling things, not to sit on.

  It was dusk before the heat diminished, and it was much later and as dark as the inside of a boot when they finally straggled into Harmonville. His Honor left his horse without even looking back and went hobbling painfully in the direction of the saloon.

  Marshal Pierce gave the orders. The dead men were placed in a horse stall for the time being. The prisoners were driven up the boardwalk toward the jailhouse, leaving the livery barn nightman to care for all the animals, something he did with a sullen look. Charley stopped at the stone trough out front to put his hat aside, dunk his head several times, then fling off water and start toward the jailhouse with his hat in his hand, letting the night air dry him.

  The man behind Marshal Poole’s table was Hank Fenwick, who owned the saloon and the poolhall. He stood up as Dallas Pierce pushed his captives into the lighted office, stared in disbelief, and finally got the key ring to lead the way to the cells.

  Charley entered the office, where Marshal Pierce was sprawling, but made no move to sit down, and when the saloon owner returned, Charley asked him about Marshal Poole.

  The saloonman rehung the key ring and sat down at the table before answering. “During the excitement he left town riding toward the foothills like the devil was behind him. He hasn’t come back.”

  Marshal Pierce gazed at Charley. “He’s goin’ to be surprised, isn’t he? The feller he’s riding north to have protect him is lying’ down yonder in a horse stall.”

  The saloonman looked quickly at Pierce. “Baxter?”

  “Deader’n a rock, mister. Him and one of his riders named . . . what was his name, Mister Waite?”

  “Pete Brant.”

  “Yes. Pete Brant. He’s down there too.”

  The saloonman looked at Marshal Pierce. “That freegrazer died in the night. Do you know who shot him from down in front of the livery barn?”

  Dallas Pierce did not reply, but sat gazing steadily across the room waiting for Charley to supply the answer. He did. “Pete Brant.”

  The saloonman blew out a long breath and leaned back in his chair. “How’d you two know where they went after the shooting?”

  Charley was already moving through the ajar door when Marshal Pierce leaned to shove up to his feet. “By the smell,” he said, and left the office a few yards behind Charley.

  He caught up with him across the road, walking in the direction of the roominghouse, and strode beside him in silence until they had reached the sagging roominghouse porch, where an almost overwhelming scent of perfume reached the full length of the old building from a massive vine laden with lavender flowers. Dallas Pierce halted, tapped Charley, and said, “In this life, Mister Waite, if it ain’t happenin’, it’s fixin’ to. Goodnight. I’m goin’ to sleep for a week. Then I’m goin’ to eat a cow and set in a tub of water for two hours.”

  Charley watched the rawboned older man enter the building, then turned to look northward up Main Street as far as the Barlow cottage. It was dark.

  He was hungry, but most of all he was too tired even to think straight. Eventually he also entered the roominghouse, where an elderly man with unkempt hair and close-set watery eyes blocked his passage beneath a hanging lamp. “A room is two bits for the night,” the man said.

  Charley fished for a coin, handed it over, and followed the old man to a room containing a narrow cot, spikes in the wall to hang clothing on, a cigarette-scarred small table holding a white washbasin, and a pitcher of water.

  There was a window in the west wall, which Charley had to struggle to open. Immediately that overpowering fragrance swept in, so he half closed the window and went to sit on the edge of the cot and kick out of his boots, remove his hat, and lie back.

  Boss had been right: the day of freegrazers was passing. He had also been right about something else; he had been too old for the trouble that went with freegrazing.

  He would never buy that saloon and sit comfortably by a crackling stove in wintertime or relax in a cool building during summer.

  His cattle were out yonder, mostly rounded up by Baxter’s riders, the old campwagon was still in place across the alley from the livery barn, and that son of a bitch who shot Boss had paid for his expert marksmanship.

  Charley was drifting off when he thought of Button. What the hell would become of him now? Whatever it was could wait until morning.

  Charley went to sleep. Outside, Harmonville gradually ended this day even up at the saloon, where there had been loud talk for an hour or more after the townsmen returned with a story to tell.

  The last sound at the roominghouse came from two grizzled men wearing rider’s coats that reached below their knees. They had been drinking at the saloon when those townsmen had returned. Their interest in all the excitement of the roadway shooting following the courtroom hearing was less than everyone else’s because they did not know the man who had been shot, nor the town marshal who had fled town. They were just passing through.

  They were cattle buyers. As one grumbled to his companion when they entered their room, “We might as well catch the morning coach. This damned place is too upset for a man to do any business.”

  His friend was closing the door when he replied. “Don’t be so damned hasty, Wes. You heard him say this big cowman named Baxter was killed. Well now, think about that.”

  His friend straightened up from lighting a small lamp. He shucked out of his coat, hung it from a nail, put his hat beside it, and vigorously scratched his head as he faced his partner. “John, I’ve told you before, you got a real devious mind.”

  John shed his coat and hat too, but he hung his on the floor. “If I didn’t have, Wes, we’d have lost out on a lot of deals. . . . What in hell is that smell?” He walked to the ajar window, sniffed, and slammed the window closed. “Flowers!”

  Faintly heard in the room was a wagon being driven southward through town. John cocked his head, wrinkled his brows, and pulled out a large gold watch with elaborate engraving. He flipped open the cover, held the face to the light, and said, “It’s after midnight. Who in the hell is driving a rig at this time of night?”

  His partner did not reply. He was shedding his boots preparatory to dropping back on his cot.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Boss’s Note

  There was considerable activity in town the following morning, but neither Dallas Pierce nor Charley Waite was part of it.

  Harmonville’s temporary town marshal, Hugh Fenwick, had repeated what his prisoners at the jailhouse told him
when he’d taken food down to them. Some folks were willing to believe it because they had never liked Al Poole, but others were skeptical. If Poole returned, the skeptics would have supported him, but he did not return.

  In fact, he never returned.

  The riders who had raced southward on the wrong trail had included those three freighters who’d abducted Paul Sawyer and Alf Owens.

  They arrived early at the jailhouse, during Hugh Fenwick’s interrogation of Ed Carlin and Joe Evans. It was these three men who set Owens and Sawyer against Carlin and Evans, which resulted in the whole story tumbling out—the same story Hugh Fenwick took up to his saloon after leaving the freighters in charge at the jailhouse.

  By the time Charley Waite arose to go down to the cafe for breakfast, just about every detail of what had occurred the previous night was common knowledge.

  Charley had no idea that he had come out of all the recitations as a hero. There had to be one; every situation of this kind was required to produce one. That was how things were. Dallas Pierce was accorded respect, even some admiration; but lawmen were hired and paid to do what Pierce had done. Besides, he was a federal marshal; there was ambivalence about federal marshals, about lawmen in general.

  After breakfast Charley went up to the tonsorial parlor for a shave and haircut. The barber was less inhibited than the diners at the cafe had been. He asked point-blank if it was true that Denton Baxter was dead. Charley replied that it was true. The barber then asked how Baxter had died and who had shot him, and Charley did not say another word, not even after he was presentable and handed over the two bits, which the barber took without a smile.

  After leaving the barbershop, Charley went up to the Barlow cottage. Sue and Button were there. When she admitted Charley, Button came from the back of the house to stand in a doorway. Charley tossed aside his hat as he said, “You’re looking good.”

  Button quietly asked if Charley wanted to see Boss, and led the way to a room off the kitchen. The room had only one window and it had been covered by a pale cloth. Boss was lying on the bed as though he were sleeping. In the poor light, Charley could not see the grayness nor the wasted look, but as he stood gazing down he thought Boss looked old, which he had never seemed to be in life.