West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels

by James Reasoner

  Chapter Ten

  "We lost them," Blue said in disgust. He ground his teeth together 'til I thought he was going to spit out gold fillings like bullets from a rapid-fire Winchester. He stood in the stirrups and craned around like a prairie dog protecting its town, then dropped back into the saddle with a loud smack. "Lost them, dammit."

  "Cain't say we didn't try," Horace said. "None of us is much in the way of a tracker. Twixt the cold and the snow and losin' them in the dark, windy canyons, I don't see no disgrace."

  "I want them. I want to kill the lot of 'em," Blue said.

  Not having anything important to add to the discussion, I stared down the road leading back toward town, trying to figure out where I'd go if I was Hanks and his gang. Truth was, he likely wasn't the leader but only one of the boys. That came as no comfort. Since I had identified him and him alone, the rest of the gang could sidle up to me at a bar and I'd never know it. Never, that is, until they stuck a knife in my ribs or blowed my head off. The only consolation in that was death would come quick. Right now I was so cold that dying would be a mercy. If my hands weren't frostbit and blue, I'd consider helping myself along to the bone yard. Better, though, would be to swill some of Gus' whiskey and warm myself from the inside out.

  I'd even put up with his lousy piano player tinkling on the keys the way he did and singing off-key. It was a good thing he worked in a saloon and not night herd. My singing voice lacked true melody when I crooned to the beeves, but even my songs soothed compared to his caterwauling ways. Of course, it might have been the cattle went to sleep rather than listen to me. The only thing I knew for certain was the singing kept me awake as I circled the herd, hunting for stragglers and heading off any wolf or coyote thinking to find a quick and easy meal.

  "S'ppose we ought to let Marshal Toms know what's happened," I said. "I'm not amiss to findin' how he's healin' back in town."

  "Reckon you have a point, Russell," Horace said. "The law's got to know 'bout them rustlers and where the cattle were hid out."

  "We can't give up," Blue said. "You go on into town, Russell, and the rest of you yellow-bellies hightail it on back to the ranch. I'm huntin' them down."

  "Blue, we done what we could. Come on back and tell Mr. Phillips. He'll send out every last hand he has. Losin' a wrangler as good as Early's not gonna set well with him."

  "You tell him. I'll get me some scalps." Blue turned away from town and trotted off. His horse snorted white plumes and tossed its head, thinking about the warm barn and fodder it was missing out on not going back to the OH.

  "You keep ridin', Blue, and yer fired! I'll tell Mr. Phillips to fire your sorry ass!"

  Blue made an obscene gesture that set Horace to grumbling. He motioned for Rusty to join him, leaving me alone on the road.

  The sky had turned bright blue and the clouds had vanished. This made the day sunny enough but colder than a well digger's destination. Shivering, I let Monte set his own pace toward town. He was as tired as I was and probably colder. I had my sheepskin coat, even if it had gotten soaked through and through. Stretching my arm out caused a starry cascade of ice crystals to flutter about. In a wind, they would have whipped around in a diamond frenzy, but with it clear and cold and calm, all I did was leave behind a tiny cloud showing where I had been.

  Closer to exhaustion than I'd thought, I nodded off for a spell and let Monte find the way. The promise of a livery stable kept the stalwart animal on the road. We walked into town sooner than I thought, even if I had dreamed away most of the miles. Only in my exhaustion they weren't dreams as much as they were nightmares of bears and frosty giants clawing for my eyes and me running. Especially of me running and not being able to get away.

  I turned the dream over in my head a few times, ripping it apart and putting it back together to find the right thread for telling. The boys in a cold bunkhouse or around the campfire after a day on the range appreciated a tall tale. The only problem I had was in not finding a happy ending. Or a funny one. Or even one with a moral. The dream got tucked away when I smelled wood smoke and dinner cooking to occupy me.

  Doc Delacroix was in his office. I left Monte in the stable and poked my head in to see if the marshal still resided on the operating table. A sheep was tied down and bleating as the vet worked on it. He looked up.

  "He's not here. Went back to his office."

  "You need help with the wooly? I was a shepherd for a couple years and seen 'bout every thing possible that can go wrong with 'em."

  "Appreciate the offer, but this one's beyond saving. Tangled with a pack of dogs."

  Moving inside to close the door behind me and steal some of the vet's heat, I saw that both back legs had been chewed up good and proper. The pack had caught first one and then the other of the sheep's most dangerous weapons. Most folks don't think a grass eater's got any fight in it, and if they do there's not much in the way of weapons. Kicking with those hind legs could lay a man's gut right open.

  "If you fix up some mutton stew, I'd be honored to help you eat it," I said.

  Doc Delacroix made an impatient gesture shooing me out. Reluctantly, I left the warmth of his surgery and headed across town to the marshal's office. Getting what me and Rusty had found about the rustlers came at the top of the list of duties to be fulfilled before I found some chow, maybe a beer or two and then bedded down. Tomorrow was soon enough to get back to the ranch. Horace would tell Mr. Phillips what he needed to know. Might be the stolen beeves were even in a pasture close to the ranch house by now. As much as swapping lies with Rusty appealed to me, the need to be alone spoke louder now.

  He was my partner. Giving up my life for him might happen one day, but it was as likely he would do the same for me. Partners. I trusted him with my life, but getting away from him for even a few short hours made me feel more alive. Truth to tell, I felt a small strain with him out on the trail — with him and the others — always coming up with new stories or putting a spin on old ones to keep them entertained. Nobody said so in those words, but I was the clown. It was my job to keep their minds off their aches and pains and brighten their mood just a tad.

  It was a strain, and at the moment I wanted to get away from people. The best I could do was find a spot out along the road with a view of the mountains and draw them. Art always took me away from what I had to do by letting me do what I wanted. Nothing in the world compared with letting what I saw flow out through my paint brush.

  I heard the snoring through the closed door. Opening the jailhouse door slowly let in the cold, and this woke up the marshal. He had flopped back in his chair, head lolling. The cold caress made him snap alert, blinking his eyes as he reached for his iron on the desk.

  "Whoa, Marshal, don't go shootin' me. I got news for you."

  "Better be good. You run down Josiah Hanks?"

  "Came close." I swallowed hard to choke back the urge to spin a story for him. "Him and the rest of the gang got away, but we recovered maybe a hunnerd head of cattle stolen from the OH, the Triangle K and some other ranches."

  "Sounds like you done yerse'f proud, Charlie." He sat up, moving painfully. His chest looked fatter than usual. He wore a wad of bandages under his shirt so thick he barely got his fancy brocade vest buttoned up. The gold watch chain strained across his belly and threatened to bend a link or two.

  "Can't say that's so. The rustlers killed Early when we shot it out with 'em. Blue's gone off on his own to track the bastards down."

  "If he don't git his'sef killed, there'll be a reward in it for him. The Cattle Growers Association put up a five-hunnerd dollar reward."

  Blue Harnois might accept the reward, should he earn it, but bringing to justice the rustlers who had killed his partner was all the recompense he needed. There wasn't any way I saw Blue riding herd for the OH any longer, no matter the outcome. While he might not use reward money to drift back north, Montana would hold too many bad memories for him to dawdle here much longer.

  "You needin' anything more, Marshal?
I got to get these bones back to the ranch. Mr. Phillips isn't payin' me to herd cattle in town."

  "He ain't payin' you to herd cattle at all," Toms said. There was a hint of joshing in his tone that lightened the words and made them go down easier, even if he needed some help figuring out how to sugarcoat his jokes. "But there is one thing you can do. Git on out to the Triangle K and let Jack Cheshire know you found some of his cattle."

  "By now, the boys'll have driven them into OH pastures."

  "All the more reason to inform him of what's happened. You don't want Cheshire thinkin' y'all are the rustlers. I have trouble enough in town without a range war startin' over folks doin' good deeds."

  "And doin' your job," I added, joshing him back a little. The difference between me and him was that I knew how to take the sting out of what might otherwise have been fighting words. I had a certain amount of respect for the marshal, though he could be cantankerous at times and more than once had throwed a bunch of us OH hands into jail for what I thought was only pure cussedness on his part.

  "There's a dollar in it," he said. "This is 'bout the same as servin' process, only you will be givin' important information."

  "Remember the last time we rode out to Triangle K? You got that souvenir of the experience." I pointed toward his chest wound. "Can't imagine it's much safer for a poor ole wrangler like me to go."

  "You won't have the badge for a target," Toms said. He fumbled in his desk drawer, then tossed a silver dollar on the top where it rang clean and pure before laying flat and inviting. "Jist you tell Cheshire how you got his cows and all about the rustlers. Thass all I'm askin' fer you to do."

  The lure of money prodded me to do things against my better nature. Truth was, if he had asked me to do him the favor of letting the Triangle K owner know all that, I'd've done it for nothing. Getting paid in silver to do what I would have for free might be a sin requiring me to wrestle some angels and my own conscience a while. It wasn't a crime. A deft move of my hand caused the dollar to disappear.

  "I'll head out first thing in the mornin'."

  "Good 'nuff," Toms said. He yawned, rubbed his eyes and then sat back. His eyelids drooped and before I got out the door he was snoring to beat the band. He put up a good pretense about being ready for full duty as lawman, but another week or two would prove necessary for his body to catch up with his attitude.

  The cold clawed at me again as I walked down the boardwalk, pressing close to the walls of a half dozen different buildings to conserve my heat, but I passed Gus' Watering Hole in favor of the newspaper office. The Utica Gazette office showed only one ill-trimmed coal oil lamp burning inside, but I made out Mr. Wyatt working to pen another editorial. I ducked inside.

  He looked up but his expression didn't change and his eyes were fixed on something beyond — through — me. I knew the feeling when I painted. The world sorta spun around but no longer mattered. Concentration on the painting — or editorial — faded slowly.

  "You still in the market for some drawings?"

  "Russell? Yeah, surely am. I'm busy. You got something for me or are you just here to warm your hands?"

  The newspaper office was hardly warmer than outside. Mr. Wyatt had either burned all his scrap paper already or chose to save it for colder nights. In a selfish way, I wanted him to stoke a fire in his Franklin stove right now so I could get my fingers moving again.

  "A little of both," I admitted. "I've got a story for you that ought to give plenty of room for an entire extra."

  "Another extra? You might be my salvation, son." Wyatt brushed away the paper he had half filled with the crabbed curlicues of his writing and found a clean sheet.

  "Get me some heat, and I'll not only tell you the story of how the OH wranglers run off a bunch of rustlers and got back a hunnerd head of cattle but will also draw you a picture of it."

  "Make it two," he said, pushing clean sheets of paper across. When I didn't take them, he scowled, grumbled, then got up and lit the stove.

  It took the better part of ten minutes for my fingers to be agile enough to begin the drawings, but the whole time I regaled him with the story of the gunfight. I didn't leave out how Early had met a courageous death. Might be I embellished it more than it deserved, in case Blue read it, if Blue Harnois could even read. There's no harm in lauding the dead when they rode side by side on the trail was the way I thought on it.

  By the time I had a couple fair to middlin' drawings, I had told him everything I could about the raid.

  "So Harnois is out on his own tracking them down?"

  "I'm on my way in the morning to tell Mr. Cheshire he can get back his rustled beeves from the OH pasture. Might be, they are gettin' better fed than even if he had them in his own pastures." I shut up when I saw nothing escaped Mr. Wyatt's notes.

  It had been a matter of debate around the campfire whose spread had the better grazing. Being loyal OH wranglers, we all decided Mr. Phillips came out on top of that contest, but the Triangle K had pastureland up in the foothills none of us had seen.

  "Can you do me a couple more drawings? Don't have to be anything fancy."

  "It would be an undertaking for me to do them over in the stables. I'll be bedding down next to Monte. Conditions aren't all that superior over yonder for drawing, but I can try."

  "Sleep here, then, you thief. Just don't use up all the wood."

  I grinned and set to work on those new drawings. Not only did I have a warm place to sleep for the night, he paid me ten dollars. I convinced myself it was for the pictures and not the story about the rustlers since being paid for what I draw pleased me more than getting paid for gossip, even if I had been there and knew it was the Gospel truth.

  Just after dawn, I fetched Monte, paid for his stay this time, then headed out to the Triangle K. My good feelings dribbled away the closer I got to the spot where the marshal had been gunned down. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I waited for another slug to give me the what-for.

  I rode between the uprights supporting the Triangle K sign and kept from bending low and galloping the whole way. But I wanted to. Anything to avoid a bullet in the back was fair game for me.

  Chapter Eleven

  There had to be times when relief hadn't overcome me the way it did as I dismounted in front of the Triangle K ranch house, but I was at a loss to remember them. I had ridden the whole way without being shot at once. There hadn't even been a hint of a rifle poking out of the woods to draw a bead on me. Rubbing my cold hands together got blood flowing again. If I shook hands with Jack Cheshire it wouldn't do to give a clammy, cold handshake like I was some kind of fish washed onto the river bank.

  I tromped up the steps, noticing how repairs were needed on the wood. The porch creaked and gave way under me as I stepped up to give a solid knock on the door. I expected Mr. Cheshire to answer, and I had my speech all memorized. There hadn't been one mile of the road out here that I hadn't practiced what I was going to say so I could cover all the facts, then get on back to where I belonged.

  The door opened, and I forgot everything. If Rusty had been there, I wouldn't remember his name or even my own.

  Mira Nell Cheshire was about the prettiest woman I ever laid eyes on.

  "Yes?"

  My mouth opened and closed, then my couth came to my rescue.

  "Uh, Miss Cheshire?"

  "I am."

  This put me at a loss for words again since I expected to talk with her pa. Working through things to do and stay polite allowed me to close my gaping mouth, then say, "You are a vision, Miss Cheshire. I'd like to draw you some day."

  "I beg your pardon?" She stepped back and started to close the door in my face.

  "Your pa here? I got some news for him that he'll like."

  "What does it concern?"

  "Well, now, he's gonna be happy to get some of his cattle back. Me and the rest of the wranglers from the OH — that's Mr. Phillips' spread — "

  "I know," she said. She nervously ran a hand through
her lustrous blonde hair and her eyes went wide. Sapphire. That was the color. I have a good color sense and somehow, in spite of gawking like some schoolboy, part of my head worked over colors and brush strokes. Doing Mira Nell Cheshire in watercolor might be good since that could be done fast, but oils! Beauty such as hers had to be captured on canvas with real paint and —

  "Sir?"

  "What?" I snapped out of my reverie.

  "I know the OH is Mr. Phillips' ranch. What did you mean that you had recovered rustled cattle?"

  "If you don't mind, I'd like to tell that to your pa. You can listen in so I don't have to speak it all twice." I bit my tongue at that. Taking the time to tell her wasn't the worst thing that could happen to me. She might even get a sense of how heroic I had been and my real part in running down the rustlers. The first rush of awe at her beauty had passed, allowing me to appreciate it rather than become tongue-tied over it.

  When I tell a story, I watch my audience careful-like and bend the words to give them the most entertainment possible. Given the chance, I knew I could captivate Mira Nell and hold her attention for a good fifteen minutes. If I swung into my best presentation, she wouldn't breathe for half that, but that would be a shame. The rise and fall of her breasts would cease and take away a great deal of pleasure telling the tale. I —

  "Mira, shut the door. You're letting in a draft."

  "Papa, there's a cowboy here saying he . . . he found some of our cattle."

  Jack Cheshire came up behind his daughter. She was taller than I expected, or maybe Jack Cheshire was shorter. He had sandy hair shot with strands of gray. Mira Nell would look even more exotic with colors scampering through her hair, giving it highlights. She wouldn't have to actually dye her hair. A quick brush stroke on my part could place any color into a painting. Blue to match her eyes? With a touch of violet.