Paper Sheriff

by Short, Luke;

  To an impartial observer approaching it, Ty Hoad’s Hatchet Ranch would have seemed a sorry affair that held an indefinable aura of failure. The buildings were in bad repair and the sod-roofed house and shadeless yard had a hard-scrabble look about them. The ranch with its poor range had changed hands three times in the last ten years. If a man owning it caught an easy winter and a wet spring, he could make out, but normally he fought a hard winter and a dry spring and summer. Afterwards he started looking for a buyer.

  The buildings were two single-storey log houses connected by a dog run. They were built of huge cottonwood logs by the original builder who sacrificed the pleasure of shade and greenery to the necessity for shelter. The old stumps still pocked the area between the house and the sagging, jerry-built outbuildings of the corrals. No successor, including Ty, had bothered to plant anything.

  Callie dismounted, loosened the cinch of her saddle and, turning her horse into the corral, strode swiftly among the stumps and past the bunkhouse where Ty’s two Mexican cowhands bedded down. She even passed the open door to Ty’s and Buddy’s shack, heading for the spot where she knew she would find her father.

  Turning the corner, she saw her father seated on the dirty shuck mattress of the rusted iron bedframe. Here, on the north side of the house, there was always shade. Ty spent a good part of his days there and slept there at night, preferring it to the airless and almost furnitureless cabin.

  Ty, dressed in his ill-fitting range clothes, did not look up from mending a bridle as Callie came around the corner, crossed before him and sat down on the bed.

  “I saw you coming,” Ty said.

  “Pa, we might be in trouble,” Callie said without preliminaries. She spoke so quickly that Ty, after spitting through his already stained moustache, looked up. “Where’s Buddy?” Callie said then.

  “Him and Orv left early for town yesterday. Ain’t seen him since. What trouble?”

  Callie told him then of her conversation with Reese last night. They had both been feisty, she said, after Callie demanded to know what had gone on in her absence. He had told her of the trail boss’s visit to him, during which he gave Reese his opinion that there were rustlers in Sutton County. Reese, Callie said, didn’t think so but he had abjured her to keep silent lest foolish talk get around.

  “Reese going to do anything about it?”

  “I couldn’t ask him any more for fear of seeming too curious, but I don’t think so.”

  Ty looked off across at the low clay hills, whose now dried out tops trailed faint banners of dust pushed by a persistent though gentle wind.

  “If he’s not curious, then why you worried, Callie?”

  “I don’t rightly know, Pa. I’m just uneasy. Shouldn’t we move those steers?”

  “In a week we will.”

  “Shouldn’t we warn the boys?” Callie persisted.

  Ty snorted and looked pityingly at her. “Orv and his boys and Buddy, but nobody else. Reese was right. Enough people hear stock’s been rustled, they’ll start wondering where it’s hid. Then Reese will start looking, for damn sure.”

  Callie stood up. “Pa, let’s find Uncle Orv and see what he says.”

  “Why, he’ll say the same as me,” Ty said testily. “You fool women panic too easy.”

  “All right,” Callie said coldly. “If those cattle are found with my brand on them, who’s in trouble?” When her father looked at her in astonishment at her tone of voice, she held his glance without faltering.

  “You trying to act like a president of a cattle company?”

  “Yes,” Callie said flatly. “You and Uncle Orv set me up there and you better protect me.”

  Her father sighed and put the bridle down. “All right, Callie. We’ll go.”

  Together they walked to the corral where Ty cinched up Callie’s saddle and saddled his own mount. Watching him Callie knew that she had offended him, but every word she said had been true. If the cattle were discovered, their brands unhealed, it would be she who would be questioned after Reese looked up the brand registration in the company incorporation.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to look up either, for although he had never asked her about the Hoad Land & Cattle Company, he might know of its existence. He could be sly, Callie thought resentfully. Then she wondered if he was being sly when he said he didn’t think there was any rustling in Sutton County. Was he baiting a trap and did he know more than he pretended? These were questions Uncle Orv could answer better than her father, for he was a shrewder man and, Callie admitted to herself now, more of a man than her father.

  As they approached Orville. Hoad’s sagging gate, Callie could see Min Hoad seated in one of the veranda chairs and at this distance Callie guessed by her actions that the big, raw-boned, half-breed Ute woman was shelling peas or stripping beans. Ty opened the sagging wire gate and passed Callie through, then, not bothering to mount, led his horse alongside Callie’s the fifty yards up to the veranda.

  Their greetings were pleasant enough, although Min, while counted a Hoad, was not really one of them. She was a square-faced, pleasantly homely woman who had done an adequate job of raising their children until Orville took them over and shaped them into Hoads. Quiet to tacturnity and shy, she was taken into the family’s councils but her opinions were never sought.

  Callie liked her and at any other time would have enjoyed chatting with her, but immediately upon dismounting now she said, “Min, is Uncle Orv here?”

  “Him and Buddy are asleep in the bunkhouse. They got in a couple of hours ago.”

  Callie turned to her father. “Pa, go wake Uncle Orv or I will.”

  “If he’s sleeping this time of day, he needs to,” Ty protested.

  “Will you do it or will I?” Callie challenged.

  Grumbling under his breath, Ty headed toward the barn lot and bunkhouse close to a thick cluster of giant cottonwoods while Callie mounted the step to the veranda and took one of the rocking chairs. What did it take to make her father see the danger they were in, she wonderd half in anger. Maybe Orville could impress him. Or was it as her father said, she was a panicky woman? Min, who had never started a conversation in anyone’s memory, was not starting one now and Callie was thankful.

  When Ty and Orville appeared, they came through the house. Orville stepped through the doorway, a half-full pitcher of moonshine dangling from his hand. His pale hair was awry and he was shirtless. He had hauled on a pair of pants held up by suspenders over his long underwear and since he didn’t speak to Callie or look at her as he crossed before her to a chair, she guessed that he was in a bad mood. Orville slacked into the chair with a groan he did not try to suppress. Then, before he spoke, he lifted the pitcher and drank not from its spout but from its rim. While he was drinking Ty came over and took the chair beside him.

  When Orville caught his breath, he looked harshly at Callie. “I God, girl, you aim to kill me?”

  “No, Uncle Orv, but I didn’t think this could wait.”

  “Ty’s already told me what you come for. Is that all Reese told you? That this trail boss figured there was rustlers in Sutton County?”

  Callie nodded. “I couldn’t ask him more, could I? He’d think it was funny if I did. I never ask about the sheriffing business, so why should I now?” Only when she finished speaking did Callie realize how shrill her voice had been.

  “He never said anything about what made this R-Cross rider suspicious?”

  “Pa told you what Reese said. I asked him if he thought there were rustlers in Sutton County and he said no. Then he told me to keep my mouth shut about this. He didn’t want rumors starting up.”

  “Now why wouldn’t he?” Orv asked softly.

  “That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you.”

  “You figure this R-Cross rider told him things he wants to check out on the quiet before a lot of talk messes it up?”

  “Do you?” Callie countered.

  Orville leaned back in his chair and scratched under his armpit. �
�The only other reason he’d tell you to keep quiet is because he don’t want to spend a lot of time looking for proof of rustling. I don’t reckon that’d be the reason because Reese ain’t a lazy man.”

  “So you think he might be investigating on the quiet?” Callie asked.

  “If I knew what that trail boss told him, I could answer you. I just don’t know, Callie.”

  “Shouldn’t we move the cattle, Uncle Orv?”

  “When the brands are healed,” Orville said. Now he took another drink of whisky and passed the pitcher to Ty, who shook his head in refusal. Orville cradled the pitcher in his lap between his big hands and continued. “I sent June and Emmett up to Big John this morning.” Now he glanced at his wife. “Them boys have enough Injun in them to find out if there’s any strangers hanging around that Copper Canyon country.”

  “Is that all we can do—just wait?”

  “There’s nothing else to do, unless you can get it out of Reese without him knowing it what this R-Cross rider told him.”

  Ty spoke up now. “Don’t try it, Callie. Reese is smart. If he suspicioned us, we got trouble.”

  Orville swivelled his head to look at him. “If he don’t find the cows, Ty, we ain’t in real bad trouble.”

  “How so?”

  Orville looked at Callie now. “That R-Cross rider ain’t going to complain any more. He just won’t be around again.”

  “You can be sure of that?” Callie asked.

  “Buddy and we made sure,” Orville said.

  For a moment Callie didn’t understand. “You mean you scared him off?”

  “Well, you could call it that,” Orville said judiciously. “He won’t be a witness to anything. He’s at the bottom of a mine shaft.”

  “You’re holding him?” Callie asked.

  Orville shook his head. “Buddy and me ain’t. The mine shaft is.”

  Only then did Callie begin to comprehend. “He’s dead.”

  Quietly then Orville told of seeing the R-Cross branded bay in front of the Best Bet and of talking with Will Reston about R-Cross strays he’d seen. On the road to find them he told of trying to learn what Reston had told Reese and when Reston told him that he was going back to the Little Muddy to get an R-Cross rider who could identify one of the rustlers, Orville knew he had to act. He simply shot Reston, disposed of the body and he and Buddy had ridden over to the Little Muddy looking for the injured man’s camp. It wasn’t there and had never existed. Reston had lied and had died for his lie. What he did not tell Callie was that he and Buddy couldn’t find Reston’s horse.

  Callie heard him out with a strange calm and was not surprised at her own lack of revulsion or feeling of guilt. After all, had she ever really believed her Uncle Orville innocent of Flowers’ death, even though she pretended to Reese she had believed so? And why had she agreed to head the Hoad Land & Cattle Company if she had not believed that her Uncle Orville was strong, a man of decision even if that decision meant violence? This, she had been taught, was the way a strong man should live, taking what he could, fighting for it and doing what was necessary to attain it and hold it. How else could any of the Hoads lift themselves out of this hard-scrabble existence unless they fought? The death of Will Reston was only part of that fight. If it was hard and cruel, that was all right too. Wasn’t she on the receiving end of Reese’s hardness and cruelty? In this last year she had come to believe that this was the way life was—unfair, mean and unrelenting. No, either it seized you by the throat or you seized it.

  Now she felt herself relax for the first time since Reese had told her of the trail boss’s visit. Uncle Orville was right. His boys could guard the camp, the trail boss was out of the way. If the man had told Reese that one of his riders could identify one of the rustlers, then Reese would wait for him in vain. If he hadn’t told him that, then perhaps it was true that Reese really believed that there was no gang of rustlers in Sutton County.

  Now Callie looked at her father to see how he had received the news of Reston’s disposal. His round face held a lingering look of surprise and mild shock as if this news was something he hadn’t bargained for. It held something else too that filled Callie with quiet elation: it was a look of resignation. Once more, it seemed to say, the Hoads had closed ranks.

  Ty said then, “Seems like it’s up to Reese to make the first move.”

  “If he makes any at all,” Orville replied with quiet confidence.

  The Bale House stood catty-corner from the brick Bank, a frame, two-storey building that had a veranda running its length on Main Street, joined with the veranda that ran its depth along Grant Street. There must have been thirty chairs on the big, L-shaped, railed veranda. During the day, when the sun touched the Main Street section, or horse and wagon traffic stirred up too much dust, a man simply left his chair on the Main Street side and went around the corner to a chair on the Grant Street side. At night, of course, Main Street side was the favorite because it had two entrances into the hotel and one of them was the doorway into the quiet saloon. Rather than the court-house or the Best Bet or Maceys, the Bale House veranda was the place to loaf, to trade or to conduct formal business. In a way it took the place of the shaded plazas in the Spanish towns further south, except that the plazas permitted women to mingle and gossip there while no woman, unless accompanied by a man, ever sat on the Bale House veranda.

  Today there was a woman sitting on the Grant Street veranda after the noonday meal and she was Jen Truro. She was accompanied by the required male, who was Reese Branham. Their presence together for dinner in the Bale House dining room had long ceased to attract attention, for it was well known by everyone that the Sheriff must work under the direction of the District Attorney or his Deputy.

  Reese tossed his hat on to one of the empty barrel chairs, then sat down next to Jen. He wiped a match alight on the veranda floor boards and lit a crooked black after-dinner Cheroot.

  On the days when Jen was particularly busy, she fixed a cold lunch for Sebastian, and this was one of those days. A Sheriff’s Sale of a failed boarding house and its contents had to be appraised for the court, and Jen and Reese had spent the morning on this chore and would spend the afternoon. It was a hot day and breathless here in town. Perspiration stained the back and sides of Reese’s starless cotton shirt, but Jen looked wonderfully cool in a primrose-colored cotton dress with green trim.

  “Let’s take our time getting back to that oven,” Reese said, then added resignedly, “Lord, the things a sheriff is supposed to do. Price sheets, and how do you price sheets? Are they well worn, little worn, or new?”

  “How do you price a shuck mattress?” Jen countered.

  They were watching the lazy noon wagon and horse traffic, when Reese saw a rider leading a saddled horse scan the Bale House veranda and then cut across the street to the tie-rail in front of it. He was Con Fraley, who with his childless wife ran a twenty-cow outfit over by the brakes that barely fed them. Con was a little man in shabby range clothes, who was born to failure and seemed to know it and not care. He dismounted now, wrapped the reins of his horse over the tie-rail, then tied the other horse by its lead rope alongside his own. He swung under the tie-rail now and mounted the steps and headed for Reese.

  As he approached he wrenched off his battered hat, revealing a pale, bald skull. Halting before Reese, he said, “Figured to find you here, Sheriff.”

  “What’s on your mind, Con?” Reese asked.

  Con turned to the two horses that he had just haltered and pointed with a thrust of his chin. “Found that gelding yesterday or I reckon he found me. He was with my horses down at the seep below the house. He was saddled just like he is now except the reins were trailing and out. It’s a brand I don’t know, so I can’t return him.”

  “What brand?”

  “R-Cross, I read it.”

  Reese swivelled his glance to Jen and saw her watching him. Now he rose and went down the steps, took the break in the tie-rail and walked over to the two horses. Con tr
ailed him in silence.

  Reese halted and looked over the bay. There was a cut along his right wither that obviously had been doctored recently. He went over to examine the three-inch raw furrow in the flesh. It was not ragged enough to have come from wire or brush, and Reese guessed immediately that a bullet had made it. Furthermore, the bullet had travelled from back to front for the frayed flesh around its exit pointed towards the bay’s head.

  “He had that cut when he come up to our place. Flies been after it, so I cleaned it up.”

  Reese noted the short hoof-cut reins tied over the bay’s neck. The saddle, old and worn, was free of stain and Reese realized suddenly that he was looking for blood stains that weren’t there. He decided now that if Con hadn’t guessed the cut was a bullet wound, he wasn’t going to tell him.

  He only said, “That’s a Texas brand, Con. He’s from a trail herd that’s long gone.”

  Con looked at him admiringly now. “How d’you know that?”

  Reese looked down at him and smiled. “You pick up a lot of stray information in this office, Con.” He looked at the brand again and said, “I’m obliged to you for bringing him in. Drop him off at Millers, will you, Con, and tell them he’s a County charge.”

  Con nodded. “He looks poorly.”

  “A few oats will fix that,” Reese said and turned back to the veranda. He stood beside his chair and watched Con ride off towards the feed stable, then he sat down.

  “That man you said complained to you about being rustled, wasn’t his brand R-Cross?” Jen asked.

  Reese looked at her now. “Yes.”

  “Is that his horse?”

  Reese tossed his half-smoked stub out into the street and said, “That’s what I’m going to find out, Jen. You’re on your own this afternoon. Mind?”