Crow Creek Crossing

by Charles G. West

  Cole’s mind was racing. “You think he’s still there?”

  “Why, I wouldn’t have any idea,” Manning said.

  “How far is Laramie City from here?” Cole pressed. “How can I find it?”

  “It’s about forty or fifty miles. Best way to find it is to just follow the railroad right of way. It’s right where we’ll be crossin’ the river. You think you might know that fellow?”

  “Much obliged,” Cole said, ignoring the question, while rising from his chair. “I’m glad I ran into you, Mr. Manning, but I’ve got to go now.” He hurried to the front of the dining room where Maggie had a little desk by the door, leaving his dinner half-finished. He handed Maggie a dollar. “I’ve gotta go,” he told her when she appeared about to start a conversation. “Just keep the change.” She watched him hustle out the door, her eyes and mouth both open in astonishment.

  Outside, he wasted no time climbing into the saddle. He turned Joe’s head toward the railroad tracks and nudged him firmly with his heels. It was the longest of long shots, but he had no choice other than finding out for himself. He might be simply wasting time, but there existed the possibility, no matter how slim, that the Mexican that Manning had seen was the one he was searching for. It was enough to ignite the burning fire in his breast that had been allowed to smolder when thoughts of Mary Lou had invaded his mind. As he rode out along the newly laid tracks of the Union Pacific, he silently apologized to Ann for having lost his purpose temporarily, and renewed his vow to avenge her death.

  Back in the dining room, Mary Lou stopped when she came from the kitchen to see Stephen Manning sitting alone at the table, across from Cole’s half-finished dinner. She walked over to the table. “Is Cole coming back?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Manning said. “He said he had to go.”

  “Did he say where?”

  “No, but he asked me how to get to Laramie City,” Manning said.

  Mary Lou looked over toward the desk where Maggie still sat. Maggie shrugged in response, so Mary Lou walked over to ask, “Cole?”

  “Gone,” Maggie said. “Something put a burr under his saddle. He took off outta here like something was after him. He even tipped me a quarter.”

  “Damn!” Mary Lou swore aloud before she caught herself. Then, deciding that Maggie knew of her interest in the obstinate man anyway, blurted, “I’m tired of worrying about that thickheaded imbecile. If he’s so set on going after that murderer until he gets himself killed, I’m not wasting any more of my thoughts on him.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Maggie said, confident that Mary Lou had finally met a man that had captured her interest. And Maggie knew that there were few men in that category. “He’ll never be free of the ghost of his wife until he’s finished with what he thinks he has to do to make it right. Once he’s free of that obligation, it’ll still take a strong woman to make him want to move on from there. You’re the kind of woman who might be able to do that, and from what I see in Cole Bonner, he’s worth saving. That’s just my opinion. I won’t have anything more to say on the matter.”

  Still seething somewhat from what she perceived as a complete disregard for her feelings, Mary Lou muttered, “To hell with him. Let some other woman save him. Damned if I’m going to wait around for him to go chasin’ off after somebody.” She looked at Maggie, as if expecting her to agree. “He’s not the only man in the territory, and damn sure not my only chance for a husband.”

  “He might be the only one suited to you,” Maggie said, knowing Mary Lou was referring to Gordon Luck, who had been pestering her to marry him for more than six months. “I don’t know if you could make it as a preacher’s wife.”

  “At least he’d be home every night,” Mary Lou replied, still fuming.

  • • •

  Jose Sanchez lolled leisurely with his back against the flat side of a rock outcropping at the top of a treeless mesa. He had been biding his time there since early morning, watching the little grove of trees bordering a small creek, waiting for someone to show up.

  “Well, it’s about time,” he muttered when a man led a team of plow horses through the trees to water them at the creek. He flipped the stubby butt of a cigar he had been smoking into the gravel below his perch, roused himself up from the rock, and casually climbed into the saddle. He guided the bay gelding down the backside of the mesa and circled around toward the creek at a comfortable lope.

  Raymond Anderson was unaware he was about to have a visitor until Sanchez suddenly appeared in the ring of trees surrounding the watering hole. Still holding the traces while his horses drank, Anderson squinted, straining to recognize the rider, but he decided that he was a stranger. Relieved to see that it was not Big Steve Long, or either one of the rogue marshal’s brothers making another call to pressure him into selling them his property, Anderson had no reason to be wary. It was not unusual to see the occasional rider passing through his land on his way to Laramie City, two miles away.

  “Howdy,” he called out cordially as the stranger pulled up at the edge of the creek.

  “I think I water my horse,” Sanchez stated stoically.

  “Help yourself,” Anderson replied. Sanchez stepped down while the bay drank from the creek. He watched his horse for a few moments without saying more, until Anderson sought to break the awkward silence. “You lookin’ for Laramie City?” he asked.

  Sanchez shifted his gaze from his horse to stare at Anderson with eyes seemingly dull and lifeless. Finally he replied, “Nah, I know where Laramie City is. I think maybe you are Anderson.”

  “That’s right,” Anderson said. “I’m Raymond Anderson.” He was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the way the sullen stranger stared at him. “Is there something you wanted from me?”

  “Nah, I don’t want nothing from you. Marshal Long send me to give you final offer for your farm.”

  “I shoulda known,” Anderson responded, at once irritated by the marshal’s persistence. “I told Long and his brothers that he was wasting his time with his ridiculous offers. They don’t want to buy my farm—they wanna steal it. I told him I ain’t interested in sellin’, so you took a ride out from town for nothin’, mister, whatever your offer is.”

  Sanchez shrugged as if bored. “I bring final offer you gonna take.” He suddenly drew the Colt .44 from his holster and leveled it at Anderson’s gut, but he hesitated for a brief moment before pulling the trigger, a contemptuous grin on his face. Anderson doubled over when the bullet ripped into him, then made a desperate effort to turn and run. The fatal bullet blasted a hole in the back of his head, and he crumpled to the ground. It brought a smile of satisfaction to Sanchez’s face. He replaced the two spent cartridges, holstered the Colt, and drew his skinning knife. “Too bad the Injuns got you,” he said to the corpse as he prepared to take his scalp.

  When he had finished the grisly business with his knife, he wiped the blade clean on Anderson’s shirt. Then for a bit of sport, he dragged the body over to a large tree and propped it up in a sitting position, facing the direction of Anderson’s cabin.

  “Now you can see them coming,” he said.

  Expecting to see someone come running when they heard the shots, he pulled his rifle from the saddle scabbard and picked a spot behind another tree to await them. Long had told him that Anderson had two teenage sons, so he prepared to take care of them. He figured it wouldn’t be long, because the cabin and barn weren’t much more than five hundred yards from where he waited.

  He eagerly anticipated the arrival of Anderson’s two sons. Killing them would not give him the pleasure he enjoyed with the assassination of their father, but it would still bring him satisfaction. The father’s killing was done up close so Sanchez could see the terror in his victim’s face when he realized he was about to die. It was much more satisfying than killing at longer range with his rifle. But since there were two targets, he had
to make sure he got both of them before they knew what was happening. He had assured Steve Long that he would take care of the whole family, so when the two boys were dead, he would settle with their mother.

  He looked toward the cabin, wondering why he saw no sign of the two boys yet.

  Maybe they have to get their guns first, he thought. While he waited, his mind returned to the last time he’d had a hand in murdering a whole family. That one caused a lot of trouble, he reminded himself, thinking of Cole Bonner and his dogged pursuit of Slade Corbett’s gang.

  This time I’ll make sure there’s no one left. Thinking of Slade Corbett, he wondered if the posse found him there on the bank of Chugwater Creek. Whether they did or not, he figured Slade would die without a horse or any help. The prospect amused him, for Slade always thought he was the prime stud of the herd. One by one, every one of Slade’s gang was killed, with only one survivor, and Sanchez knew he would always survive.

  His mind was suddenly brought back to the business at hand when he spotted the two boys running across the open plain before the trees bordering the creek—one carrying a rifle, the other a shotgun. Sanchez grinned and unhurriedly raised his carbine to his shoulder, sighting on the larger boy in front. He waited until the boy was in a reasonable range for the rifle, when he was sure he wouldn’t miss. Then he held the front sight on the boy’s chest and squeezed the trigger. Quickly ejecting the empty shell, he laid the sight on the boy’s brother, who had stopped to keep from stumbling over the body. Sanchez hesitated, taking time to enjoy the young man’s apparent confusion, not knowing from where the shot had come. Sanchez squeezed the trigger while he had a stationary target.

  Seventy-five dollars, he thought, one more to collect my hundred dollars. He was working cheap, he knew, but it was the kind of work he enjoyed—and best suited his skills. He felt fortunate to have found someone in Marshal Steve Long who appreciated his talents.

  With no need to hurry now, Sanchez walked back to the edge of the creek to look at the late Mr. Anderson’s horses. A quick inspection was enough for him to decide they were not suited for much beyond pulling a plow, so he climbed up on his horse and headed toward the cabin to finish the job he was hired for. This would be the part of his business that called for caution. He thought of Skinner Roche, walking into a shotgun blast when he broke down the front door of John Cochran’s house.

  That dumb gringo, he thought. He wouldn’t make the same mistake. I’m too smart, and that’s the reason I’m still here and they’re not.

  He kicked the dun into a full gallop as he approached the cabin and started yelling at the top of his voice. “Help! Help! Somebody’s been shot! They need help!” He pulled the horse to a sliding stop before the cabin. His performance was successful in fooling Betty Anderson into opening the door. She stepped out on the small stoop, lowering the double-barreled shotgun, frantic in response to his alarm. Too late, she saw the contemptuous sneer on his face and moments later felt the bullet that slammed into her breast. The shotgun dropped to the stoop and tumbled to the ground as she collapsed beside it.

  He climbed down, holstered the Colt handgun, and went casually to kneel by her side. She was still alive, but he was sure not for long. He lifted her head to look directly into her eyes. “If you were a little bit younger, I would have let you live a little bit longer,” he told her. “You too old and used up. I take the money I get for shooting you and pay a whore for what I need.”

  For a moment, her eyes appeared to clear, as if staring into the next world. “May God forgive you for what you’ve done,” she managed to whisper.

  “Why, thank you, ma’am,” he said sarcastically. “I not a bad man. I help you along.” He drew his knife and sank it deep in her abdomen, then let her head fall back to the ground. “Maybe, if you hurry, you can go to heaven with the rest of your family.”

  Finished with his evil business then, he went inside the cabin to see if there were any spoils to add to his payment for making another homestead available for the marshal and his brothers to take possession of. That thought brought to mind the big lawman and the two outlaws he called his half brothers. Sanchez was smart enough to know that when they felt his usefulness was gone, he would have to be wary of a bullet in the back of his head. He was also confident that they would never get the opportunity. He was ready to move on.

  It was spring, and for the price of goading a couple of farmers into gunfights, he had been allowed to spend the winter in one of the brothers’ confiscated cabins. It was a one-room cabin built by a man named Pickens, who was goaded into picking a gunfight with Big Steve Long. He came in second and Long ended up with the deed to his forty acres.

  Sanchez knew that his reputation as a gunman would put pressure on the marshal to arrest him, and the townsfolk would be planning a hanging after they tried him. But Marshal Long wasn’t likely to let him live long enough to go to trial. He had too much to lose when Sanchez started talking. Clearly the best thing for him now was to voluntarily remove himself from the scene, but before he left, he was going to get his money for the job he just finished.

  • • •

  Ace Moyer was seated at a back table eating his supper when Sanchez walked into the Bucket of Blood. The swarthy assassin paused just inside the door to look over the room before going farther, a longtime habit. Seeing Ace, he nodded, then went to the bar to order a bottle of whiskey before walking back to join him. Always cautious, he pulled a chair back from the table and turned it so that his back was to the wall. He was met with a scowl from Ace.

  “Have a seat,” Ace said sarcastically, irritated by the hired gun’s assumption that he was welcome to sit down without an invitation.

  “You owe me money,” said Sanchez, who was aware of Moyer’s contempt for him and found it amusing.

  “You’ll get paid when I know you did the job,” Ace said. “Your word ain’t enough.”

  “It’s enough for me,” Sanchez said. “If I don’t do the job, then I don’t be sitting here.”

  “All of ’em?” Ace asked.

  Sanchez smirked as he nodded. “Poor folks, they damn unlucky—looked like they got hit by Injuns.”

  “You didn’t set fire to the place, did you? We told you not to burn the damn place down.”

  Sanchez shrugged. “You said don’t burn, so I don’t burn.”

  “I expect you ransacked the house before you were done,” Ace said. “Did you find any papers—anything that looked like a deed?” He and his brothers would claim the place at any rate, but it was much better if they had a deed with Anderson’s signature forged on it.

  “Nah, I don’t see no papers,” Sanchez replied.

  And even if he had, it was unlikely he would have bothered to bring them back with him. He had no interest in papers. His search had been for money, jewelry, weapons, ammunition, and things that benefited him personally. He poured himself a drink from the bottle he had gotten at the bar, and offered to pour one for Ace, but Ace declined. After a few minutes of stony silence, and a couple more drinks of whiskey, Sanchez saw that he was not especially welcome company.

  “All right,” he finally said, “I go now. You talk to the marshal, get me my money.” He got to his feet, grabbed the bottle of whiskey, and headed for the door. When he passed by the bar, the bartender yelled at him, to remind him that he hadn’t paid for the bottle. Sanchez made a casual motion toward Ace. “He pay you,” he said, and walked out the door.

  The bartender started around the end of the bar, but Ace waved him back. He didn’t want to lose a bartender. It was plain to see that their hired gun hand might be a little too hard to handle. Ace and his two brothers were trying to keep some appearance of taking care of the fledgling town while making themselves the principal landowners.

  They were certain that Laramie City would grow to be a bustling town with many new businesses attracted by the coming of the Union Pacific Railroad, and
they planned to own it. They had already acquired much of the prime pieces of land close in to town. Most of it had come from gunfights between the reluctant owners and Big Steve Long, with Long claiming the victims had drawn first. Raymond Anderson was sitting on a prime parcel just two miles from the path of the railroad, and he refused to budge when approached to sell. Anderson was a religious man who didn’t drink, was never in a saloon, and could not be goaded into a gunfight. So it was decided that it was going to take something like an Indian massacre to get their hands on his farm.

  And that’s when Sanchez happened to hit town. The marshal’s first thought was to run him out of town, but then he and the brothers decided that he might be the perfect solution to their problem with Anderson. Now Ace was thinking Sanchez had outlived his usefulness.

  • • •

  Big Steve Long walked from the stables where he had just left his horse, headed for the shack that served as the marshal’s office. He was ready to go to the Bucket of Blood where he usually ate his supper, but he wanted to check in at his office first. He noticed the door standing ajar and the first thought that came to mind was that his half brother Con must have been there. For some unexplained and irritating reason, Con never seemed to have learned how to close the door when he entered a room, or when he left one.

  Long pushed the door open and called out, “Con?” But the room was dark. He went to the desk and lit the lamp. Once it was going, he turned up the wick, lighting the room, and jumped when he heard the door close behind him. Turning back toward the door, he found himself staring into the barrel of a Colt .44 in the hand of Jose Sanchez.

  “Son of a bitch!” Long blurted, caught holding the kerosene lamp in his gun hand.

  “I come to get my money,” Sanchez said, the sputtering light of the lamp casting shadows across his swarthy face and the ever-present smirk.

  Somewhat recovered from his initial fright, since the sneering Mexican had not pulled the trigger, Long railed, “Have you gone loco, pullin’ a gun on me like that?”