Blood Valley

by William W. Johnstone

  “I don’t have no suspects, Mr. Baker. Hell, it could have been anybody in the county. Big row now is where to plant him. Dolittle is raisin’ Holy hell about him bein’ buried—or plannin’ to be planted—in the main burial grounds. Says he won’t tolerate it. So I reckon Sanchez will go to boot hill. That Dolittle is a strange one.”

  Jeff nodded his head and sipped his tea. I wished they’d both turn their heads so’s I could dump my cup out. “How did someone of Spanish ancestry get to be named Fergus?”

  “Fergus ain’t Spanish. I don’t know what the hell he is. And neither does he. He ain’t no kin at all to the Sanchez family.” I put that tea cup down; I just couldn’t abide no more of it. “Fergus was taken by the ’Paches when he was just a baby; raised up by ’em. Until the Injuns threw him out of the camp. They couldn’t abide him either. And you know that when an Apache can’t abide a person, that person’s got to be rotten through and through.”

  “And then the Sanchez family found him and took him in to raise?” Rolf asked, takin’ a sip of tea.

  “Not really. They was gonna stake him out on an anthill for rapin’ their sister. So the story goes that I heard. Caught ’em both buck-assed nekkid in the barn.”

  Rolf spilled tea down the front of his shirt at that. I’d rather spill it down my shirt than drink the stuff.

  Both men sat and stared at me.

  “Come to find out, so the story goes. Fergus didn’t rape the sister at all. It was a, well, mutual understandin’ between the both of them. She didn’t have no sense either.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Rolf inquired politely.

  “She up and married Fergus. All this was years ago. They had two kids. They grown men by now. Outlaws—Tyrone and Udell. I imagine they’ll be comin’ along with the rest of the family. And they’re crazy, too.”

  There was a look of total disbelief on Rolf’s face. He shook his head and sighed. “What happened to the sister . . . ah, the lady Fergus married?”

  “She ain’t no lady. You can bet your boots on that.”

  “Would you please elucidate?” Rolf said.

  I looked at him. “Huh?”

  “Go into greater detail, please.”

  “Oh. Well, the Apaches took her durin’ a raid. But they brung her back in about a week. Told Fergus they was sorry they ever took her and would he please take her back? They said they’d give him ten horses if he’d take her off their hands. Fergus held out for twenty horses and they settled on fifteen.”

  Mister Baker, he stroked his chin for a moment. “Incredible story.”

  “You ought to see her one time. That woman invented ugly and mean.”

  “Will she be coming along with the others?” Jeff asked.

  “God, I hope not!”

  The Doubtful Informer ran big headlines on the shootin’s.

  TWO VICIOUS KILLINGS IN ONE DAY!

  The Streets of Doubtful Run Red With Blood.

  Then Pritcher ranted and raved for a whole page on the influx of gunfighters in the county.

  I showed the paper to De Graff and the others. “Do any of you know what influx means?”

  “I think it’s something like the croup,” Burtell said.

  “You mean they brung in a disease?” Rusty asked.

  “I reckon.”

  “I’ll ask Pepper. She’ll know. How’s Rick doin’?”

  “Bad,” Rusty said.

  Rick died from complications on the same day Hickman was gettin’ planted. Truby was gettin’ rich in the valley, and the worst was yet to come. The Crooked T boys come ridin’ into town just as the funeral parade was movin’ slow toward the graveyard on the hill. Those professional mourners was shoutin’ and swayin’ and earnin’ their money, the women squallin’ and the men moanin’ low.

  It was a right nice sight.

  The Crooked T wasn’t a real big spread, when held up to the likes of the Circle L or the Rockinghorse, but they had ten hands, and all ten come to town. And they was huntin’ any trouble they could find.

  I rounded up the boys. “That’s it,” I told them. “We just can’t allow this town to be turned into no shootin’ gallery. We’ve got to stop this right now.”

  We checked our guns and filled up our belt loops with .44 rounds, stuffin’ our pockets with shotgun shells. Then the four of us walked right down the center of the big main street, all of us carryin’ Greeners. There was a handful of Rockinghorse and Circle L punchers in the Salty Dog; for once, no gunhawks in town. Rusty and Burtell faced the batwings of the saloon, me and De Graff facin’ the Crooked T boys.

  “You boys want a drink of whiskey or a beer,” I told the grim-faced riders, “that’s fine. Have your refreshments at the Cantina or at the Dirty Dog. But you stay the hell away from this saloon. First one of you starts trouble, I put your butt in the pokey. Now does ever’body understand that?”

  “What about them in yonder?” I was asked, with a jerk of his thumb toward the Wolf’s Den.

  “They’re gonna leave town right shortly. I am personal gonna escort them to the town boundary. After that, they’re on their own. What you boys do outside of the town limits is your own affair. You got all that?”

  The riders inside the saloon was all lookin’ out, not likin’ none of it.

  A faint smile touched the lips of the Crooked T spokesman. He looked to be the foreman—a cowboy can usually tell who’s the boss without bein’ told. “We’ll have our drinks at the Salty Dog, Sheriff Cotton. Then we’ll be leavin’ out—peaceful. Unless we’re pushed into something. If that happens, I can’t guarantee nothin’.”

  “I appreciate that, boys.”

  When they had swung their horses and crossed the street, Rusty said, “You settin’ them punchers in yonder up for a killin’, Sheriff?”

  “No, Rusty, you and Burtell wait until the Crooked T bunch gets inside the saloon. Then you escort the riders in yonder out the back door and to the stable, then out of town. You tell them boys to ride and keep ridin’. Maybe we can pull this thing off.”

  “I hope so,” Burtell said. “I’m sure tired of moppin’ up blood in this town.”

  We lounged around for a few minutes, then Rusty and Burtell stepped casual-like into the Salty Dog and done what I told ’em.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the punchers slippin’ toward the stable and mountin’ up.

  It worked fine, only I wasn’t figurin’ on the Crooked T bunch havin’ a spy watchin’ us. But they did, and he seen Rusty and Burtell leadin’ the punchers out of town, usin’ the back alleys. No sooner than the outnumbered punchers left the rear of the Salty Dog, the Crooked T boys was runnin’ out of the saloon acrost the street and in the saddle, hot after them.

  I caught up with all three brands just in time to witness the shootin’ .

  One Rockinghorse rider was knocked off his horse by the gunfire, head-shot and dyin’ as he slipped from the saddle to the ground. A Crooked T puncher was gut-shot, just barely hangin’ on to the saddle, by the horn.

  “Get the Doc!” I yelled over my shoulder to De Graff. “And Truby, too.”

  As I galloped past the graveyard on the hill, the Reverend Dolittle had been warmin’ up his vocal cords for his service on the Mound.

  I sure hoped he could keep his voice from leavin’ him, for I had me a hunch it was gonna be a record-breakin’ summer for plantin’ folks in the valley.

  And there wasn’t nothin’ I could do to stop the firefight between the brands. Not unless I wanted to ride smack up into the middle of it and probably get myself killed. And I didn’t have no intention of doin’ anything that stupid.

  It was over and done with in about two minutes; but them two minutes seemed like a week and a half. All the Rockinghorse and Circle L riders was down . . . dead, dyin’, or bad wounded. Four of the Crooked T boys had been blowed out of the saddle. I could see right off that two of them were dead.

  The warm early summer’s air, with no breeze to speak of, was filled with gunsmoke
and the smell of sweat and fear and panicked horses. I walked Pronto up into the middle of the now quiet but bloody battleground and sat my saddle, glarin’ at the foreman of the Crooked T. He had took one in the arm and another slug had grazed his hard head.

  “Well, mister, you done it now, and I reckon you know it.”

  He wound a handkerchief around the flesh wound in his arm and didn’t say nothin’ to me until he’d finished with it. Wipin’ the blood from his face, he lifted his eyes and met my stare with a hard one of his own.

  “Had to be, Sheriff. And you know that well as me. Rockinghorse and Circle L has got to be cut down to size. These punchers,” he waved his hand at the dead, them dying, and the wounded, “they’re just as bad as the gunhands. The folks in the valley have had a gut-full of it. So if there’s gonna be a war, let’s do it and get it over with.”

  He was right, and I knowed it. But I didn’t have to like it. “It ain’t gonna be that easy, partner.” Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see a lone rider, walkin’ his horse easy-like towards us, comin’ from the south. Behind us, I could hear Doc Harrison’s buggy comin’ fast. And in the distance, the voice of them on the hillside singin’ a sad song. A mourner cut loose with a long slow wail. Dolittle must have run out of steam.

  A puncher from the Circle L had rode up, sittin’ his horse close to me, listenin’ and eyeballin’ things.

  Doc whoaed his team and jumped out, his black bag in his hand, and begun tendin’ to the wounded. Truby’s meat-wagon—not the fancy one—was comin’ up fast, in a cloud of dust. And I could see that lone rider was mounted on a black horse, and the rider was dressed up all in black.

  My guts churned just a bit, for I had me a sinkin’ feelin’ who it was.

  The rider come close and reined up. We sat our horses and stared at one another. Finally, he pushed back his hat and grinned at me.

  “Well, well,” says he. “Bless my soul. If it ain’t Cotton Pickens!”

  That Circle L rider thought it was funny. Most folks do. He started laughin’. He stopping thinkin’ it was so funny when I leaned over and knocked him clean out of the saddle.

  I’m right touchy about my name.

  BOOK TWO

  I begin to smell a rat.

  —Cervantes

  Chapter One

  “How you doin’, Brother Jack?”

  “Tolerable well. You’re lookin’ fair yourself, Brother Cotton. Howsomever, that badge you’re wearin’ does take something away. I never thought I’d see no kin of mine ever totin’ no goddamned badge around.”

  “I never thought I’d see the day when no brother of mine would turn out to be a cold-blooded killer, neither.”

  The Circle L rider was on the ground, holdin’ his mouth where I’d popped him. And no one else had laughed, neither.

  Jack, he smiled, but it was a cold smile, totally empty of any humor. And his eyes was like that of a dead man. Maybe inside, he was dead.

  “We’ll have to get together for a drink, Brother Cotton. We can talk about our boyhood and such.”

  “We’ll sure do that, Jack. But we’ll have to do it quick.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. You ain’t gonna be in town for very long, Brother Jack.”

  That cold, death’s-head smile touched his mouth agin. But not his eyes. “No warrants out on me, Cotton. None at all. And it’s still a free country. There was a war fought to decide that, remember?”

  “You start trouble in this county, Jack, and I’ll come after you. And that’s a pure-dee promise from me.”

  “I hope you don’t, brother. I wouldn’t want to draw down on my own blood kin.”

  “But don’t think I won’t, Jack.”

  He nodded his head, a wariness touching those cold eyes. “Is there a hotel in town, Cotton?”

  “Doubtful Lodging.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Are you funnin’ me, brother?”

  “Nope.”

  “Weird town, Cotton.”

  “In more ways than one, Brother Jack. And gonna get weirder.”

  Jack, he touched his hat brim and said, “See you around, Brother.” He rode on, without lookin’ back.

  “Is he really your brother, Sheriff?” Burtell asked.

  “Yep.”

  “He somebody we ought to know?” De Graff asked.

  “I reckon. Boys, you just met Jack Crow.”

  Nobody even smiled at that.

  That Circle L rider, he climbed back in the saddle and said, “I’ll get you for sucker punchin’ me, Sheriff.”

  “You better shut that trap ’fore I decide to shoot you.”

  He rode out after that, still holdin’ his bloody mouth.

  “We got more problems, Sheriff,” De Graff called. “Look yonder.”

  I looked. A whole passel of clodhoppers, in buckboards and wagons and ridin’ horses and mules, was comin’ at us. And settin’ back a-ways, another bunch of men and women. I recognized them as small ranchers and their wives.

  “Now, what the hell . . . ?” I muttered. I never have been a man who liked surprises very much.

  “Whatever it is,” Rusty said, “it ain’t no good.”

  I silently agreed with that.

  “Somebody get me another wagon!” Truby hollered. “I can’t carry all the dead.”

  “Hell with the dead!” Doc Harrison yelled. “I’ve got to have more wagons to carry the still living, man!”

  I looked at a bystander, his mouth hangin’ open. “Ride into town and send more wagons out here. Have some of them lined with hay.”

  Lee Jones, one of the small ranchers I’d met on my prowlin’ around the county, was the first to reach us. His eyes took in the bloody scene. I began to put things together then. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the family resemblance between the men was real strong.

  Kilby, the foreman at the Rockinghorse, was some kin to Lee. Brother, I’d guess.

  Looked like to me there was gonna be more than one set of brothers at odds with each other in this valley war.

  “What’s goin’ on here, Sheriff?” Lee asked.

  “Couple of brands got all crossed up with each other. What are you folks up to? You’re a tad late for the funeral.”

  “Hear there’s gonna be a big weddin’ in the valley right soon,” Lee replied, shiftin’ around my original question.

  “Pretty soon, I reckon. You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on with you people, Lee?”

  He didn’t look none too happy about my askin’. “We’re gonna have us a big county meetin’ at the a-rena, Sheriff.” His reply was sullen.

  The arena, I had discovered soon after gettin’ to be made sheriff, was one of them things like folks such as the Greeks and the Romans had—accordin’ to Pepper—but they built theirs, this one was formed up by nature. It was located on the other side of town, and sometimes, so I was told, when a travelin’ show would come through, that’s where they’d play. Course there wasn’t no tables or chairs, but the ground had been picked clean of little rocks, and it was right comfortable. Lots of big flat rocks to sit on or have picnics. And there was a big flat ledge on the base of the hill to use as a stage.

  Pepper wanted us, weather permittin’, to get hitched up there. I thought that idea was a tad showboatish for my tastes.

  But more than likely, that idea was her ma’s—put on a spectacle for the folks to see.

  “First I’ve heard of it, Lee. What’s the meetin’ all about?”

  “Well, Sheriff, you be there at five o’clock and you’ll sure find out.”

  I didn’t like the smart-aleck way he said that. “I’ll sure be there, Lee.”

  We was still moppin’ up the blood and totin’ off the bodies, livin’ and dead, when Matt Mills and his kids and all their hands come ridin’ past. It made quite a show. Matt, he reined up and looked at me.

  “I don’t appreciate not being told about this county meeting, Sheriff.”

  “I just heard of it myself a few minutes
back. I ain’t got no more idea what it’s about than you do.”

  “Ummp!” he said, and rode on.

  “Uppity bastard!” De Graff growled.

  Then, from the other direction, here come A.J. and all his brood and hands and gunslingers. Gettin’ to be a regular circus.

  And then, with a sigh, I looked up the road and here they come, more trouble, Al Long’s brothers, Cledus, Stan, and Luther. They was all narrow-faced, lean-lookin’ men. And they wasn’t known for their friendliness and for overflowin’ with the milk of human kindness.

  “When this place blows,” Burtell said, “it’s gonna go up like a fireworks show.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I looked up at the Long brothers. “Howdy, boys!”

  “Pickens,” Cledus returned the greetin’. They all reined up close together. “I heard a right distressin’ thing the other day, Pickens. It was told to us that you kilt our brother, Al. Is that right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause he was wanted by the law. When I asked him to turn hisself in proper-like, he refused and drew down on me.”

  “You shouldn’t oughtta done that, Pickens.”

  “But I done it. And you boys best not cause no trouble in this county.”

  “You know why we’re here, Pickens, so get ready for it.”

  “Yeah, I got a pretty fair idea, Cledus.”

  “We heard yesterday that Sanchez was back-shot,” Stan managed to speak around the big chaw in his mouth.

  “That’s right. News travels pretty fast, I reckon.”

  “Well, we hurried on when we learned that. We wanted to be the ones to put lead in you ’fore the Mex’s kith and kin got here and done it.” He grinned, exposing stained and broken teeth. For a fact, he wasn’t no thing of beauty. Be a close call between him and a pile of road apples.

  This day had been plumb tryin’. And I had me a gut-full of smart-mouthed people. “I wish you’d shut your mouth, Stan,” I told him. “Somebody’s liable to come along and mistake it for a empty privy hole.”