Ten Mile Valley

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Mark dug his toe through the dirt, staring at it. His chest hurt. They were good, Amy and Fred Baxes and Bronco Curtis. He didn’t know what he would have done without them, but he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t tell Mrs. Baxes the truth, though, about the dirty house and the smell and everything.

  “He don’t have to decide right now,” Bronco Curtis said.

  “No, of course he don’t,” Mrs. Baxes said. “I’ll go fix dinner.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Mark said, “but I can’t stay here. I guess it’s too close to where they’re buried. I just can’t.”

  Mrs. Baxes nodded. “I reckon I understand. I just wanted you to know you’re welcome.”

  She went into the house.

  Curtis said: “You’ve got the wagon and the team besides the sorrel. You’ve got some real good furniture in the wagon. Now, it don’t look to me like you can live in it. Maybe you could sell the outfit in Prineville. Might be you could get a job on a ranch. During haying, anyhow. After that, you’d know better about what you want to do.”

  Mark looked at Baxes, thinking about the crude, home-made furniture in the cabin. He said impulsively: “You take it. I can’t go driving the wagon all over the country.”

  “Hold on,” Curtis said. “You can’t give your whole outfit away. You need a little money and …”

  “He can have it,” Mark said, thinking of the skinny team he had seen in the corral.

  Curtis threw up his hands. “It’s your rig, but …”

  “I’ll give you all the money I’ve got,” Baxes said eagerly. “I don’t need the wagon, and we can get along with the furniture we’ve got, but I sure could use a good team. You get anything you need out of the wagon, and I’ll fetch your money.”

  Curtis walked beside Mark to the wagon. He said: “You’re a fool, kid. You could get three, four hundred dollars out of this outfit in Prineville.”

  Mark didn’t say anything. He crawled into the wagon. Dark splotches of blood stained the bed. He tried not to look at it. He got his father’s rifle, a box of shells, the cartridge belt and holster, and the bone-handled .44 Colt. He found a clean shirt, a pair of pants, and some socks, and stuffed them into a sack, then took a side of bacon and some biscuits from the grub box and put them into the sack too.

  Curtis was still scowling when Mark stepped down beside him. As Mark started to buckle the gun belt around him, Curtis said: “You ever shoot that revolver?”

  Mark nodded. “Once.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Curtis said. “This ain’t your kind of country, kid. You’d better understand that now. You wear that iron into Prineville and some other kid will decide to find out if you can use it and you’ll be dead.”

  Mark rubbed his forehead. His head was throbbing so bad he couldn’t think. “What’ll I do with it?”

  “Wrap it in your slicker and carry it behind the saddle. You’ll have the rifle in the boot. Use it to shoot any game you need.”

  Baxes came out of the cabin, a small sack in his hand. “This is all I’ve got, $32.47.” He wiped the back of a hand across his mouth. “Amy says for you to come and eat.”

  Mark took the money and shoved it into his pocket. Curtis wheeled away, disgusted. They went into the cabin and sat down at the table, Mrs. Baxes pouring the coffee. She’d warmed up the biscuits and had fried antelope steak. Mark couldn’t eat, but he drank his coffee.

  When the rest finished, Mark rose. “I’ll saddle my horse.” He fought the lump in his throat, and finally managed: “Thank you.”

  “God bless you, Mark,” Mrs. Baxes said, and kissed him. “Don’t forget now. If you change your mind, you come on back.”

  Mark stumbled out of the cabin, not wanting them to see he had started to cry again. He saddled the sorrel and rolled the gun belt and revolver into the slicker, then tied it and the sack behind the saddle. He didn’t know Curtis was there until the man’s big hands appeared beside his.

  “Let me do that,” he said. “Hell, kid, you’d lose the whole works before you’d gone half a mile.”

  Mark stepped back and watched while Curtis pulled the leather thongs tight. He said—“Thanks.”—and climbed awkwardly into the saddle.

  “I’ll ride along with you,” Curtis said. “You might get lost between here and Prineville. I reckon we’d better tell the deputy over there what happened.”

  Mark waited while Curtis saddled and mounted. They rode away, Mark waving at Fred Baxes and his wife, who was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Curtis was silent until they dropped over the ridge and the Baxes place was out of sight, then he turned to Mark, his face dark with suppressed anger. “Just thirty-two bucks! They’re trash, kid, just trash. They’ll never get ahead. They’ll live on that rock pile and starve to death the rest of their lives. Why in hell did you do it?”

  Mark rubbed his forehead again. It was still aching. He looked down at the sagebrush through which his horse was traveling. He shivered, even with the hot afternoon sun pressing down upon his back. Finally he said: “I guess it was because they were good to me.”

  He was afraid Curtis was going to say more, but the man let it drop. He glanced up at the sun that was low in the west, and said: “We won’t get to Prineville before dark. Reckon we better swing back to the river and camp.”

  Mark took a long breath that was almost a sob. At least he wouldn’t be alone tonight.

  Chapter Three

  They reached Prineville shortly after noon, tied their horses in front of a restaurant, and went in and ordered dinner. Mark had ridden a good deal, but never for more than an hour or two at a time, and now he discovered he was so sore he could hardly stand the hard seat of the bench at the table.

  Curtis noticed, and grinned. “You’ll get over it. After a while you’ll be able to sit a saddle from sunup to sundown and do it day after day.”

  “Maybe I’d make out better if I walked.”

  “Not if you’re going to stay in this country,” Curtis said. “Ain’t like the Willamette Valley. People ride, either on a horse or behind one. That’s why a horse thief gets sentenced soon as he’s caught.”

  Their dinners came and Curtis ate with noisy gusto. Mark still found it hard to eat. Everything seemed tasteless. He tried not to think about his parents, tried to keep from seeing them in his mind as he had seen them yesterday morning, but the ghastly scene kept slipping back. More than once during the ride from the Deschutes tears had suddenly filled his eyes and run down his cheeks.

  He always turned his head quickly so Curtis wouldn’t see the tears. He couldn’t help it, he told himself defiantly. He didn’t care. Bronco Curtis could think anything he wanted to.

  But he did care. Right now he wanted Curtis’s respect more than anything in the world, and he knew he didn’t have it. Selling his team and wagon to Fred Baxes for $32.47 had made him look like a fool in Curtis’s eyes. But it was his business, Mark told himself. He still wasn’t sorry about it.

  His prospects worried him more than anything else. He couldn’t live very long on $32.47. He could sell his father’s rifle and the Colt, then the saddle and the sorrel, but what would he do then?

  He could do a man’s work in the field. He was five feet, ten inches tall; he weighed one hundred and fifty-two pounds, and judged by what was considered a day’s work in the Willamette Valley, he could hold his own with any man. But it was a tougher country on this side of the mountains. Even if he was lucky and got a job, haying wouldn’t last long. What would he do then?

  He pushed his plate back and watched Curtis pour coffee into his saucer and drink it. Mark had never met a man like him. He was twenty-three, or so he said last night when they were eating supper, but he looked older. Maybe it was because he had been making his living since he was ten. He had made a point of that to Mark.

  There was little sympathy from him, now that Mark’s parents had been buried and the amenities that the tragedy demanded had been met. There was no softness in him. More than once
Mark had glanced at him during the ride to Prineville and found his dark face strangely bitter and forbidding, as if he harbored thoughts that he found profoundly disturbing.

  Mark sensed a great strength about Curtis, a strength Mark’s father had never possessed. Perhaps it was a quality this country demanded of its people. If a man didn’t have it, he didn’t survive. He must be like the junipers, and the sage and rabbitbrush, and the bare rimrock that frightened Mark because there was nothing like it in the Willamette Valley with its round buttes and lush grass and timbered hills.

  Mark could be sure of only one thing. Bronco Curtis would meet any emergency that came up. If Mark could be with him for a while, he would learn the things he had to know to live in eastern Oregon and this was where he wanted to live. But Curtis hadn’t indicated what he was going to do or where he was going. He hadn’t hinted that he’d put up with Mark after today, either.

  Mark had too much pride to force himself upon Curtis. That was one of the things his father had taught him. If a man doesn’t meet you at least a quarter of the way, he doesn’t want you around. If you push it, he’ll give you nothing but trouble.

  Curtis finished eating and, leaning back in his chair, belched with satisfaction. “This is on me,” he said. He walked to the counter and paid for both meals. When they were outside, he nodded at the Red Front Livery Stable. “The deputy is Bud Ackerman. He runs the stable yonder. He ain’t much of a lawman, but he’s all there is in this end of the county.”

  Mark crossed the street, thinking it was queer that Curtis hadn’t said he was going to be around. But he hadn’t said he was leaving right now, either. When Mark reached the archway of the stable, he glanced back. Curtis was leaning against the hitch pole, rolling a cigarette, his gaze on a saloon on the other side of the street.

  Mark found Ackerman in his office. He looked up when Mark stopped in the doorway. He asked: “What can I do for you, bub?”

  “You’re the deputy?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m the deputy.” Ackerman glanced at the star pinned to his vest and polished it with his sleeve. “I’m all the law there is hereabouts. Got a complaint?”

  “My parents were murdered night before last.”

  Ackerman’s arm dropped away from his vest, his eyes skeptical. “Where’s the bodies?”

  “Buried at the Baxes’ place.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mark Kelton.”

  “What was your pa’s name?”

  “Leonard Kelton. He had $8,000 in a metal box in the wagon. He was coming here to buy the Barnes Ranch up Ochoco Creek.”

  “I remember him,” Ackerman said. “He was here last fall looking around, wasn’t he?” Mark nodded, and Ackerman added: “It’s a pity. He was the kind of man we need in this country.” He reached for his pipe and filled it. “How’d it happen?”

  Mark told him everything he could remember, then Ackerman said: “This fellow had a beard, and, when you fell against him, you felt something sharp. Must have been the box with the money.”

  “I guess so.”

  “But you didn’t get a look at him? You couldn’t identify him if you seen him?”

  “No, sir, I couldn’t.”

  Ackerman snapped his pipe stem against his teeth, his eyes on the ceiling. “Well, bub, I’ll go over and take a look, but it ain’t likely I’ll pick up any tracks after all this time and Curtis sashaying around there like he done. Chances are the killer’s two hundred miles from here by now, and there ain’t no way on God’s green earth of telling which way he went.” He looked at Mark as he said reprovingly: “You should o’ come here and told me right off.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark said, and thought that was a fool thing for Ackerman to say, knowing Mark was new to the country.

  “I’ll ride over there first thing in the morning,” Ackerman said. “Meanwhile I’ll be thinking on it.” He cuddled the bowl of his pipe in his hand and stared at it. “The killer must have followed your wagon all the way from Albany. Nobody would figger there was that kind of money in a wagon. It was foolishment for your pa to be packing so much.”

  “Barnes told him to fetch cash.”

  “That’d be like Lafe Barnes,” Ackerman said. “But Lafe didn’t know he was coming, did he?”

  “Pa wrote a letter to him, but he didn’t say when he’d get here.”

  “Wasn’t Lafe, even if he did know. He was right here in town playing poker till three o’clock in the morning.” Ackerman scratched his cheek. “I can’t figger why the killer waited till your folks was clean over here on the Deschutes, unless he didn’t want to do it in Linn County, with a regular sheriff there in Albany. Or maybe he knew he could make a getaway faster over here where there ain’t many people and nobody likely to see him. I’ll talk to Fred Baxes, but he won’t know nothing.”

  Ackerman laid his pipe on the desk. “This here Bronco Curtis now. Kind o’ funny, him showing up like he done, so quick an’ all.”

  “He was camped three miles down the river. He wouldn’t have come the way he did if he’d been the one.”

  “No, reckon he wouldn’t,” Ackerman conceded. “Well, you run along, son. Like I said, I’ll ride out there in the morning.”

  Mark left the stable, convinced that Ackerman would never find the killer. The only other lawman Mark had ever seen was old Baldy Bridges, an Albany policeman who stood on the street every Saturday afternoon and visited with the farmers when they came to town. Mark had often heard his father say that Baldy couldn’t have caught a fly that settled on his nose on a fall afternoon if its feet had been dipped in molasses.

  Bud Ackerman was no better, Mark thought, and that bothered him because he expected something better in this country. The hard truth was the killer would never be caught, not unless Mark did it himself, and there was no use fooling himself about what he could do. Two years from now, or even one …

  He was halfway across the street when he realized that Curtis was arguing with a man in front of the restaurant. Curtis was angry, so angry his lips were white, and he raised his voice to a shout: “By God, Red, can’t you get it through your thick skull that I ain’t going with you? We’re done. Finished. Haven’t you got sense enough to savvy that?”

  The other man was big, so big he seemed to dwarf Curtis, who stood not more than two paces in front of him. He laughed, a great belly laugh that shook his huge body. His hat was pushed back, a lock of red hair showing against his forehead. Mark stopped, flat-footed, his heart pounding so hard it seemed to be coming out of his chest. The redhead had a beard, a short, wiry beard.

  “You got yourself worked up into quite a lather, now ain’t you, Bronco?” the redhead said. “You best cool off before I soak your head in the horse trough yonder.” It was a deep voice, the same voice Mark had heard yesterday morning when it had said: I found it. A strangled cry came out of Mark’s throat. He ran toward his sorrel and tried to jerk the rifle out of the boot, but he was all thumbs. Somehow he got it into a bind and it stuck.

  “Ackerman!” Mark yelled. “Ackerman! He’s out here! Come and get him!”

  He had the rifle out then, and whirled toward the redhead. He stopped and stood dead still, the rifle pointed at the ground. The redhead had wheeled to face him, his fingers wrapped around the butt of his gun. In that instant Mark knew he had been very close to death. Bronco Curtis had rammed the muzzle of his revolver into the small of the redhead’s back. That, and that alone, had kept the redhead from blasting life out of Mark while he was yelling for Ackerman and tugging at his rifle.

  “Damn it, put that rifle back!” Curtis ordered. He said something in a low voice to the redhead who started across the street on a run to a big black gelding that had been tied in front of a saloon. “That ain’t your man, Mark,” Curtis said. “We were camped together that night.”

  Mark remained motionless, the rifle in his hands. Curtis’s revolver was on Mark. Then he saw the hesitation that held Mark motionless, and he whirled to cover the redhead, w
ho was in the saddle. Again he saved Mark’s life, for the redhead had his gun high in the air and was chopping down for a shot at Mark.

  Curtis threw a shot that must have come within inches of the big man’s face. “Get out of town, you fool!” Curtis yelled. “Get out before I kill you!”

  The redhead needed no more urging. He left on a dead run. Ackerman, in the street in front of the stable, jumped back and sprawled in the dust. If he hadn’t moved fast, he would have been run down by the black horse. He scrambled up, cursing as other men ran into the street.

  Curtis walked toward Ackerman. “Sorry about the excitement. The kid just went off half-cocked. That’s all.”

  Ackerman wiped his face with his hands, fingers leaving long streaks of dirt. The others gathered around him—a bartender, a barber, a storekeeper, a couple of cowboys, all of them puzzled by what had happened.

  “I heard what the kid said.” Ackerman glared at Curtis. “What’d you let that hombre go for?”

  “I said he wasn’t the one.” Curtis held his gun at his side now, but there was no doubt from the expression on his face that he’d use it if Ackerman pushed. Ackerman did not push.

  The bartender asked: “What was the shooting about?”

  “I was hurrying Malone out of town,” Curtis said.

  “What was you in such a damned big hurry for?” Ackerman asked. “If he was the wrong man.”

  “I’ve seen what happens to men when wild talk gets started,” Curtis said. “I didn’t aim to see Malone hang. That’s all. I told you, and I won’t tell you again. The kid was mistaken. Malone wasn’t the man. We were camped together, and I was up a couple of times during the night. Malone never left his blankets.”

  “Why would the kid be wrong?” Ackerman asked. “If he recognized Malone’s voice …?”

  “Oh, hell,” Curtis said. “He didn’t. You can’t remember exactly what a voice sounds like. Anyhow, the kid had been asleep, and he naturally got excited when he jumped the killer. The only thing he’s sure about is that the fellow had a beard. When he left the stable, he saw Malone’s beard. Well, there’s a lot of beards in the country, Ackerman. The kid just made a wrong guess.”