Gasher Creek

by J. Birch

They’d put a black suit on him—a sight Tracker had never seen in his three years as sheriff. Hank had always been a ‘one trousers and shirt’ kind of man. The fabric for the suit must have cost a fortune. Not many men were Hank’s size. Even lying down, his gut was an impressive mass of blubber. Someone had shaved and powdered his face. His hair (what was left of it) was slicked against his head. His fingernails were trim and his hands looked washed. They held his favorite silver flask against his chest.

  Despite being dead, Hank had never looked better.

  Tracker held his breath and bent closer. The skull looked intact—no dents or abrasions. A few scratches showed through the powder on his cheeks, but they wouldn’t have killed him—

  “There,” he said, and got a mouthful of funk. He twisted away and coughed. Cursing himself, he held his breath and turned back.

  There. Although partially hidden under a double chin, he could see the bruises.

  Tracker backed off and breathed.

  So that was it. Jack Devlin was a murderer. He’d strangled Sally and then used the same method to kill Hank. He’d swing for sure now. No judge in the country would let him free, least of all Judge O’Donnell.

  Plink.

  Tracker startled at the tap of a piano key. Looking over, he saw Andy sitting on the stool, his finger still on the key.

  “Andy,” Tracker said. “I didn’t think anyone was here.”

  Andy let his finger fall. “Paying your respects?”

  “I am,” Tracker said. “Thought I’d get to it before the place fills up.”

  Andy leaned forward, his hands on his knees. He looked thinner, somehow. Stubble peppered his cheeks. His hair was unkempt.

  “I don’t know how many folks will show,” he said. “It’s the smell.”

  “I noticed,” Tracker said. “You might want to move him from the light.”

  “That was Delilah’s idea. She thinks it makes him look angelic.”

  Tracker removed his hat. “Well, I am sorry for your loss, Andy.”

  “No you’re not.”

  Tracker stared at him. “I looked for Devlin. It was too dark.”

  “Cole will catch him.”

  “He may prove slippery.”

  Pulling a sleeve cuff over his wrist, Andy said, “You don’t know Cole like I do, Sheriff.”

  Tracker heard someone moving along the upstairs hallway. Looking up, he saw Don at the top of the stairs next to Delilah.

  Tall and husky, with a round pudgy face and thick black hair, Delilah held two reputations in Gasher Creek. One, she was tough (Tracker once saw her knock a rusher unconscious with a single slap), and two, she was rough with the men that paid for her. After a visit to The Ram, the rancher Arthur Bowlan had to lie in bed for a week to heal.

  It’d long been whispered that Delilah was the real proprietor of The Ram whorehouse. Hank may have run the saloon, but Delilah ran the girls. She didn’t call herself a madam, but she didn’t shy away from the idea either.

  “Tom,” Don said, his grin disappearing. “What are you doing here?”

  Tracker nodded at the coffin. “Paying my last respects. What about you? I thought you’d be home resting.”

  “I was,” he said as they moved down the stairs. “But then I thought to myself—self? Where are the finest beds in Gasher Creek? And myself said The Ram. So here I am.”

  Tracker sighed. “Don, if you have energy to fool with the girls, then you have energy to work. I haven’t slept in over a day.”

  “I am an injured man,” Don protested, twirling his finger about his face. “I’m not faking you Tom. You can’t fake this.” Although some of the swelling had gone down, his deputy still looked like Jem Mace after ten rounds. His face was mottled and bruised. His grin was crooked and his eyes looked smoke stung.

  “Not to worry, I’ve been taking care of him,” Delilah said, giving Don an all-too-obvious wink.

  “Yeah, you did at that,” Don said, massaging his shoulder.

  “I want you at the office well before sunset,” Tracker said. “Caroline shouldn’t be alone.”

  Don grinned. “Damn Tom, who’s the midwife in this town, you or Sylvia Platter?”

  Delilah snorted.

  Not for the first time (or, he suspected, the last), Tracker wanted to put his deputy through a wall.

  “Now don’t look at me like that,” Don said. “I was just joshin’.”

  “Now’s not the time for joshin’,” Tracker said, nodding at Andy. “Show some respect.”

  “You’re right,” Don said. “I’m sorry, Andy.”

  Andy gave the slightest of shrugs, stood, and headed back upstairs.

  “We’re going to take care of this for you,” Don called after him. “Cole’s got the bead on Devlin, don’t you fret.”

  Andy reached the top of the stairs and disappeared down the hall. A few seconds later, a door opened and closed.

  Moving over to the coffin, Don placed his hands on the edge and said, “Lord, but he does stink. Couldn’t you move him out of the light?”

  “I like him there,” Delilah said. “It’s a shame we can’t keep him out long enough for his birthday celebration.”

  “You’re still throwing it?” Tracker asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “It’s our biggest night of the year, Sheriff.”

  “Yeah, I know it,” Tracker said. Hank’s birthday was the one night when cowboys and rushers felt it their sacred duty to tear up the town. The Ram filled, bulged, and then spilled out onto the street. Revelers shouted, fought, and shot their guns into the air. It was the one night where the incidence of broken windows jumped considerably. Tracker’s cell was always full by morning.

  “Well, he might go under before his birthday,” Don said, waving his hand over his nose, “but that smell won’t.” He leaned closer. “Devlin sure did a number on him, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Tracker said, looking at the bruises. “Must’ve been stronger than he looked to squeeze the life out of Hank. Sally was tiny, but Hank was…”

  Tracker looked closer at the bruises.

  “I do believe the word you’re looking for, is fat,” Don said.

  Green, brown, and blue.

  Splotches of green, brown, and blue bruises.

  Just like Sally’s bruises.

  Exactly like Sally’s bruises.

  Tracker turned and headed for the front door.

  “Oh, now don’t get up in hitches,” Don said. “There ain’t no harm in calling a dead man fat—he’s dead!”

  Tracker hurried down the front steps and rushed across the street to the Doc’s.

  How had he missed it. How had the Doc not seen it? And if he was right, what did it mean?

  Tracker climbed the side steps and entered the waiting room. “Doc,” he said. No answer. Tracker opened the examination room door, saying, “Doc, I—”

  “What are you doing, Tom!” the Doc exclaimed.

  Archie Parnell stood before the Doc, naked from the waist up, his arms held up and his tongue sticking out. Seeing Tracker, the old man grabbed his shirt and covered his chest, shouting, “Shut the door, you eejit, I’m naked as a plucked chicken and you’re showing me off to the entire town!”

  “My apologies, Mister Parnell,” Tracker said.

  “Is this what I get for taking the time to hitch up my horses and come into town?” he raved. “I expected more from a medical man than to parade me around in the God’s-as-honest-buff so’s everyone in town could get a look at…”

  Archie went on like that for a while as the Doc tried to calm him down.

  “Sorry,” Tracker said feebly.

  “…and then you give me sweet water and tell me it’ll keep me moving, but I spend so much time in the outhouse the wife thinks I should just put a cot in there and be done with it!”

  “Get out of here, Tom,” Doc said.

  “But I have something very important to—”

  “It can wait,” Doc said. “Come back later.”

&nb
sp; “But—”

  “Later!” the Doc said, ushering Tracker out of the room.

  “Dinner,” Tracker said.

  “What?” Doc said, peering at him over his glasses.

  “Dinner, at my home, tonight.”

  “Yes, fine, good,” the Doc said. “Just get the blazes out of here!”

  He slammed the door shut.

  Chapter Nine

  The morning stretched into the afternoon. The sun cooked the grass until it dried and clung to Jack’s ankles. Bugs sizzled in his ears. The wind baked his face. He was hungry. He spied a fat grasshopper—not that hungry. He hoped to spot a farm or a soddy soon. He’d dig a well for a crust of bread or a cup of water. He wished it would rain, but a bowl of blue sky hung above him without a wisp of cloud to tempt a storm. He couldn’t swallow.

  Things were going badly.

  Gradually, the grass thinned. Dirt crumbled under his feet like fragments of old pottery. He found himself heading down a slope into a valley of rocky hillocks. There was a path (of sorts): an old stone riverbed that snaked through the valley. Jack didn’t much like the look of it, but he didn’t want to backtrack or go around. Going around would take twice as long.

  The insects stopped buzzing as he stepped onto the path. They didn’t fade like when you enter a house; they just stopped. It was as if every cricket, grasshopper, and black fly held its breath and watched. Ahead, he saw no life. He saw no prairie dogs or rabbits, no birds above or rodents scurrying along the ground. Even the wind had died.

  He walked on. The path narrowed, cutting its way between two walls of rock. They rose on either side of him and squeezed the sky into a blue stripe. A sudden memory struck him. He remembered lying in his ma’s coffin shortly before she died, staring at the sky between two planks of pinewood. He’d felt constricted and suffocated.

  Now the sensation returned to him. He held his breath.

  Thankfully, it didn’t last. The path widened again, eroding back into rocky hillocks capped with stone shelves. They jutted over the path like the brims of a top hat.

  He took a breath. He started to feel a little better.

  And then he spotted the coyote tracks.

  Jack grabbed a rock. He looked around, trying to blink back a sudden rush of dizziness. His chest ached. His temples throbbed painfully. The black coyote was tracking him. It could smell death on him. It wanted to rip into him, eat his bones and lap up his blood.

  Jack’s tongue touched his dry, cracked lips.

  Blood. A coyote that size would hold buckets of salty, hot blood.

  He could kill it. He could kill it, drink its blood, and eat its meat. Then he’d be full and fat and could run for miles.

  “Come on,” he said, creeping toward the tracks. He scanned the rock shelves above him. He twisted around. He twisted back, poised to attack. “I’ve been cooking in the sun,” he rasped. “I’m ready to eat.”

  He reached the tracks and hazarded a look.

  He dropped the rock.

  They were not coyote tracks, and they weren’t fresh. These tracks were set in the stone bed of the river. They were big as his hand and three-toed like a bird. “Gosh,” he said, kneeling before them.

  He imagined a grouse the size of a horse.

  Then he imagined eating it. A drumstick would take half a day to eat. He’d need a bucket of water to wash it down. Two buckets. And then pie.

  “Pie,” Jack said, smiling.

  Something struck him on the back of the head. He pitched forward onto his face.

  * * *

  Jack’s mouth filled with water. It burned his throat and he coughed most of it up. As he opened his eyes, the sunlight blinded him. “What,” he tried to say.

  “Don’t get up.”

  He couldn’t move. Something bound his wrists and ankles.

  “Don’t struggle, you’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Who are you?”

  Something blocked the sunlight. Slowly, Jack’s eyes adjusted until finally he could see an—

  “Indian!” he cried out. At least he thought it was an Indian. His skin was copper colored and his hair was black, but the hair was short and styled like a white man’s. He wore a white shirt and black trousers. He held up a bowler hat to shade Jack’s eyes from the sun.

  “My name’s Charlie Sewell,” he said.

  At first glance, Jack thought the Indian was wearing war paint, but now he saw that he’d been beaten. Blood stained one cheek. His lips were split. A bruise spread across his forehead. A rip stretched across the brim of his bowler hat.

  “Why did you bind me, Indian?” Jack demanded.

  “I didn’t know if you were one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  “One of the highwaymen who attacked me.”

  “I’m no highwayman.”

  Charlie untied the cloth from Jack’s wrists and helped him sit up. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He touched a sticky wound on the back of his head and hissed. “What did you hit me with, some kind of tomahawk?”

  “No, a rock,” Charlie said. “What’s a tomahawk?”

  “It’s like an axe, but smaller.”

  “You mean a hatchet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. No, just a rock.”

  Jack batted Charlie’s bowler out of the way and looked around. He was sitting on one of the rock shelves that jutted over the riverbed path. In the distance, the sun was descending toward the horizon. He must have been out for a while.

  Keeping his eyes on the Indian, Jack inched back to lean against a rock.

  “Want more water?” Charlie asked, holding up a canteen.

  Jack shook his head, hoping he wouldn’t get sick from the water he’d already drunk. Indians were always sick.

  Leaning forward, he started untying the knots around his ankles. It was a length of black cloth, torn from the cuffs of the Indian’s trousers. As he freed himself, he said, “What are you gawking at?”

  Charlie smiled. “Your name’s Jim.”

  “No.”

  “Jack?”

  “How did you know that,” Jack said. “Some kind of magic?”

  “No,” Charlie said, rising onto his knees. “I’m just good at guessing names.” Leaning forward, he held out his hand. “Nice to meet you Jack.”

  Jack didn’t shake it.

  “Sure is hot,” Charlie said, dropping his hand. “It doesn’t get this hot at the ranch.”

  “Ranch?” Jack said. “You are an Indian, aren’t you?”

  “Chewak nation,” he said proudly.

  “Chewak?” Jack said. “Then why do you look like a white man with your hat and your trousers? Why do you live on a ranch? Where’s your buffalo skins and arrows?”

  Charlie seemed to think about it. “Well, my pa’s white and my ma was Chewak, so I guess that’s why.”

  “A half-breed,” Jack said, nodding. “Sorry for you.” He drew his knees up out of the sun. The shade helped a little, but he was still roasting.

  “You sure you don’t want some water?” Charlie asked.

  “No,” Jack said.

  “You could probably use some food,” Charlie said. “I wish I had some. My horse and pack were stolen. Four men jumped me. They took everything but the canteen, I don’t know why.”

  Jack knew why.

  “There’s nothing to eat around here,” Charlie said. “Just dirt and rocks.” He swished the water in his canteen. “So, how’d you get here?”

  “You hit me over the head with a rock.”

  “No, I mean why are you in the Badlands?”

  “Left home I guess.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Ain’t your business, mixer.”

  Charlie fixed the bowler onto his head. “All right, you don’t have to be that way about it. If you don’t want to talk, then don’t.”

  “I won’t,” Jack said. Talking was useless anyway. It didn’t cool him down, quench his thirst, or fill his belly. And what would he tell th
is half-breed anyway? “Well, I reckon I choked a whore, tore her up with my pecker and then skipped town.” Even a savage wouldn’t take kindly to hearing that.

  Beside the shelf, a rocky slope stretched down to the river path. It was steep, but he could most likely slide down on his backside. Judging from the sun, he had about an hour of light left. He wasn’t sure how far he’d get, but it was better than sitting and jawing.

  “Thanks for the head sore,” Jack said, crawling toward the slope. Moving into a sitting position, he started to inch his way down.

  “Wait,” Charlie said.

  “What?”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not going your way.”

  “Is your way out of this place?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Then maybe we could help each other.”

  “You got nothing and I got nothing,” Jack said. “How could we help each other?”

  “Thieves,” Charlie said, inching toward him. “The sight of two travelers makes for harder pickings than just one, and they might leave us alone.”

  Jack grunted. “You’re just scared.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you haven’t seen this place at night.”

  Jack dug his heels into the slope and looked around. He imagined shadows growing long under the rocks and spilling out of the crevices. He wondered what kind of things might lurk in a place like this.

  “Look,” Charlie said. “I just want out of here, nothing more. When we see grass, we’ll part ways.”

  Jack didn’t trust the Indian, but he had made a good point. The valley held so many caves, crevices, and other hiding places that a man on his own would be easy pickings for a gang of roughriders. Or worse. In the dark, it could be like strolling through a bear cave.

  “Fine,” Jack said. “But as soon as we get out, we split.”

  Charlie held out his hand. Jack hesitated, then shook it. Charlie’s handshake was firm, but soft for a rancher.

  “We move at dawn,” Charlie said.

  “Dawn?” Jack said. “You want to get out of here, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s almost dark.” He nodded at the horizon. “I don’t want to lose the high ground.”