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

by James Reasoner

  2

  The rannie on watch stepped out from behind a juniper. I kept both hands on the saddle horn. He didn’t point his rifle at me, but it wasn’t far off.

  “Whatcha think you’re doing, C.P.?”

  “Ron Lacey. You don’t want to go up against me, do you?”

  “How’d you know my name?”

  “More people know you than you might figure, Ron.”

  He straightened up and took a stronger grip on his rifle. “Whatcha doing here?”

  “Come to have a word with Gus Snider.”

  “I need to take your hardware,” Lacey said.

  I shook my head. “No, Ron. I give you my word I’ll not use my guns against Gus Snider, but I’ll not go naked to see him.”

  Lacey stood there a while, like thinking and making up his mind was something he didn’t do all that often. He gave himself a little nod. “OK, C.P. You just follow me.” He started off on the wagon track.

  We made our way around that ridge to where we could see the big house, a two-storey affair, built like the house of some plantation owner down south.

  “Sheriff wants to see Gus,” Lacey hollered.

  I could see a man in the barn’s hayloft off to the south and no doubt there was a long shooter on the ridge. I paid them no special attention.

  “Sheriff Owens to see Gus,” Lacey hollered again.

  A man laid his rifle over the top rail of the ketch pen next to the barn. Another came out the front door, a Greener 12-gauge in the crook of his left arm.

  I pulled Cloudy up a few paces away.

  “You wanting to see Gus?” the shotgun man asked.

  “That’s what he said to me,” Ron Lacey said.

  “That’s what I came for,” I said.

  “You still got your guns.” The shotgun inched its way around so it was pointed nearly straight at me.

  “I do. I’ll not go naked in a rattlesnake den.”

  “You calling Gus Snider snake?”

  I shook my head. The front door opened. “Let the sheriff in,” said a mild voice from inside.

  The shotgunner stepped away. I got off Cloudy and left him ground-hitched, knowing he’d be here when I came out. Three steps up to the porch and three strides put me into Gus Snider’s big house.

  Gus Snider mighta been an outlaw king, but he was a man who liked his comforts, too.

  “You might want to lean the long gun against the wall right there,” Snider said. His well-modulated voice could have belonged to a slicker. He wore a smoking jacket with a velvet collar, gray flannel trousers, and a pair of carpet slippers. “We can sit to talk. Would you prefer the table or the sofa and armchairs?”

  The rich walnut table showed a well-buffed and waxed surface, and ladder-back chairs lined the long sides. One wooden chair with armrests stood at the far end.

  “Table looks good,” I said.

  Snider waved at a chair. “Might want to hang that good Remington on the back. I’ll guarantee no one’s gonna come in here shooting at you.”

  “All right.” I unbuckled my gunbelt and hung it on the chair Snider pointed at. I sat in the one nearest the end of the table, back to the wall. The grips of my Remington hung less than an arm’s length away.

  “You’re a careful man, Commodore Owens.”

  “I stay alive, Snider.”

  “Gus. Call me Gus. There’s no need to be all formal.” Snider sat in the chair with the armrests.

  “Gus.”

  “Now. You come wearing your brand new sheriff’s badge, what can I do for you? Oh. Wait.” Snider raised his voice. “Honey, I wonder if you could bring some of your good coffee out for Sheriff Owens? And me, too, if you please.” He turned back toward me. “A moment, please, Sheriff—”

  “C.P. Most folks call me C.P.,” I said.

  “Right. C.P.”

  A young woman came through the door to what I assumed was the kitchen. She carried a fine wooden tray with porcelain cups and saucers, a little pitcher of cream, a sugar bowl, and a small pot of coffee. She poured our coffee, but all her smiles were for Gus Snider.

  “My wife Ellen,” he said.

  She curtsied. “Pleased,” she said.

  “Thank you, honey.”

  “Of course.” She disappeared back into the kitchen. I didn’t have a chance to say a word to her.

  Snider poured a dollop of cream into his cup and dumped in a spoonful of sugar. He stirred the coffee, lifted the cup, and saluted me. “Welcome, C.P. Can’t say we’re rich, but the good things in life only come once.” He sipped the coffee. Rapture showed on his face. “That girl surely brews fine coffee.”

  I drank mine black, but it was as good as Gus Snider claimed.

  “Now. What can I do for you, C.P.?”

  “I’m the sheriff now, Gus. And people elected me to put a stop to outlawry here in Apache County.”

  Snider’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Are you calling me an outlaw, C.P.?”

  “If the shoe fits . . . .”

  Snider gave me a genuine smile. “C.P., I run a bunch of drovers, men good at getting cows and horses from one place to another. Some outfit gets in touch with me, tells me where to pick up the herd and where to deliver it. Then my drovers get paid about a dollar a day, like any other cowboy.”

  “I know what you do, Gus. Don’t know who hires you, and that could make a difference. But I hear that some of them you call drovers are a little hard on the mail stages to Fort Apache, and are not adverse to driving a few head off the range and over the rim to San Carlos. I won’t have that, Gus.”

  Snider didn’t look me in the eye, and he took his time with the coffee his wife brought. “I’ll be square with you, C.P. I don’t own those drovers. And I don’t always use the same ones. That means I can’t control what they do when they’re not working for me.”

  “Uh huh. So Ken Grizwold gets a free rein, then?”

  “He’s a good foreman on drives.”

  “He’s a purty good stage robber, too.”

  Snider made no retort, and his coffee cup was empty.

  “You tell him, if you would, Gus, that C.P. Owens says he’s to lay off the mail stage and Apache County stock. He doesn’t, and I’ll come after him with these warrants.” I took the warrants from the inside pocket of my vest and laid them on that shiny table. “If you don’t want to tell him, Gus, call him in, and I’ll tell him myself.”

  “He could be trouble.”

  “I’ve seen trouble before. What’ll it be?”

  Snider scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. He picked up the coffee cup, but it was empty. “Well,” he said. “It’ll be best if I tell him, I reckon. I’ll tell him what you said, and I’ll tell you this. If he breaks the law by robbing or rustling, you’re free to take him in, if you can get him to go.”

  “Good enough,” I said, and took the last mouthful of that good coffee. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

  I rode Cloudy away from Gus Snider’s place, and the lookouts let me go. I hoped he’d make Griz listen. I didn’t want to kill nobody.

  3

  April brings longer days in the high country and the snow cover melted off, mostly. Still froze at night, but daytime could be right pleasant. The county supervisors kept me right busy collecting fees and fines, and I heard nothing of Ken Grizwold until after Easter. The news I got wasn’t good.

  For a change, I was sitting at my desk in the sheriff’s office, glaring at a pile of paperwork. A man would never know that a county sheriff is usually buried under a pile of paper, and people wonder, out loud or in the newspapers, how he can be so slothful and not be out arresting wrongdoers. Now there’s a word for you. Wrongdoer.

  Jimmy McDougal, the kid that worked cleaning up the place over to the post office, like to busted down the front door. “Sheriff. They done done it again, they did.”

  “Whoa back, boy. Who done what?”

  “They done robbed the mail stage to Fort Apache, done did it and shot Carl Waite, too.�
��

  “How’s Carl?”

  “Dunno. They’re bringing him in.”

  “Who done it?”

  “Dunno, but it’s done done.”

  “Who come in with the news?”

  “Raymond Westly.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “At the Monarch, I reckon.”

  That made sense. Most men head for a saloon after a long dry ride. I buckled on my Remington and went to the Monarch. Ray Westly was still at the bar.

  “Hey, Ray.”

  “’Lo, C.P. When you gonna ketch them basties what put lead into Carl Waite and took off with gummit cash?”

  “Now Ray, you know I’ll be off after the outlaws as soon as I find out who they are.”

  “I kin tell ya that.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Who’dja think? Griz and a bunch of Round Valley riders. A whole bunch of them and only one of Carl. He never had a chance.”

  “Wonder why they shot him?”

  “I reckon they wanted him dead. He played that way after them no-gooders plugged him. The team took off when Carl fell out, and the owlhoots went after it. Carl, he just played dead where he fell.”

  A man come bustin’ through the batwings. “Buckboard with Carl Waite just come in,” he hollered. “Tooken him over to Doc Miller’s place.”

  None of the drinkers in the Monarch reacted except me. “Thanks, Ray. I’ll get over to the doc’s and talk to Carl, if he can talk.”

  “It were Griz and some Round Valley boys, C.P., just like I said.”

  “Thanks,” I said again, and left.

  Raymond Westly was right. At least Carl Waite told me the same story. He never saw whoever shot him, but when he lay on the ground playing dead, he recognized the horses and the one rider who wore a red neckerchief like Ken Grizwold always did.

  “They was too far away for me to see faces, C.P., but I could tell Griz from the way he set that roan Appaloosa of his. No question in my mind. Griz and his boys put lead into me and made off with army money and whatever was in the mail sack.”

  “You rest easy, Carl. I’ll get them what done this, and I’ll get the money back, too, if I can.”

  Ken Grizwold had broke the deal I made with Gus Snider. Now it was up to me to make good on my promise. It took me the rest of the day to get ready ‘cause I had to get that paperwork done, so I rode out of St. Johns in the late afternoon, begged a place to sleep on the floor of Julius Becker’s warm store while Cloudy ate his fill of good oats. Me and Cloudy left as soon as it was light enough to see. That put me on the wagon track to Gus Snider’s big house just about breakfast time, me with a loaded Winchester and two pistols—the Remington in its holster and a Colt’s Frontier .44-40 behind my gunbelt in the small of my back. That gave me twelve rounds in the pistols and fifteen in the Winchester. I was ready for a small war.

  A little over a mile from the big house, I pulled the Winchester, thumbed its hammer back, and jabbed Cloudy with my blunt spurs, which to him was the signal to run. He did.

  Ron Lacey, who stopped me before, stepped from behind his cover. My bullet took him high in the center of his chest. He staggered and fell over backward. As Cloudy streaked by, I saw his eyes, open to the sky and sightless. Count one down.

  As white men are wont to do, the men at Gus Snider’s place shot at me, not Cloudy. Apaches, now, would put me on the ground by shooting my horse. Powder smoke came from the door to the hayloft where I’d seen a rifleman before. I put three shots into the doorway as quick as I could work the Winchester’s lever. A man rose, hands clutching his throat, and toppled from the second floor opening. Count two.

  But where was the long shooter?

  Cloudy thundered by the big house. A bullet took a hunk out of my hat, and another went by my nose, making a slapping sound as it passed. From the layer of gun smoke that hung over the cold ground, a man’da thought we were fighting Chancellorsville all over again. But no shots came from atop the ridge behind the house. Maybe the long shooter’d not taken his position yet. As Cloudy turned the corner to go between the big house and the horse corral in back of it, I piled off and he kept on running. We’d practiced that move enough that he knew to get away and wait for my whistle.

  No sounds of gunfire now. Just the rank smell of burnt gunpowder in the air. I took the lull as a good time to shove half a dozen cartridges into my Winchester’s magazine. Half a dozen. I only remembered shooting four times, but a man can’t always remember every time he pulls a trigger.

  “The star-packer’s back of the big house.”

  “Littleton’s gone. Damn sheriff shot ‘im right in the eye.”

  “Shut up and move careful. He’s just one shooter.”

  “Griz. You ain’t never had to face Commodore Owens!”

  “Ha. I can face any law dog.”

  My turn to holler. “That you, Grizwold?”

  “I’m right here, and here’s where I’ll stay.”

  I scrambled under the lowest pole of the corral and got hid behind one of the big upright posts. The horses gathered on the far side, ears pricked in my direction. I caught the sound of someone scrambling up the side of the ridge. The long shooter?

  There. Down low at the north corner of the big house. Someone sticking a head out where the ordinary man would look for one. I lined the Winchester on that head of hair. When the eye came in sight, I put a .44 caliber bullet through it. A blast of red filled with little shards of pink misted out from the corner of the house. The head of hair went motionless. Count three.

  The long shooter.

  I put my back against the corral post and sat with legs spraddled and knees raised. That way, I could put my elbows on the knees for a solid rest while aiming the Winchester. And that gun sent lead where I pointed it. They didn’t name it one-in-a-thousand for nothing. I squinted at the ridge.

  Ah. The long shooter carried his weapon in a buckskin boot that covered the whole rifle. Didn’t matter if he had a Ballard or a Whitney or a Browning, he was in my sights.

  I touched off a 44-40 round.

  The bullet thumped into the long shooter just under the ribs of his right hand side. The angle was such that those 200 grains of lead went busting through his stomach, took out the front half of his heart, then went out just under his left hand collarbone. He stopped crawling. His leg stretched out, gave a little spasm, and went limp. Count four.

  Bullets chewed at the post, but were deflected enough to miss me. A rannie pounded across the open space between the barn and the corral. I let him get to the gap in the corral fence that would give me a good shot at him, then put a bullet into his hipbone, right where the leg connects. He went down with a scream and then started calling for his Ma. Count five.

  “You ain’t gonna get me, Griz,” I hollered. “You might as well give up. A few years in Yuma might do you good.”

  Griz swore a blue streak.

  “Cussing ain’t gonna do you no good, Griz, and like you can see, Gus is letting you skin your own skunks.”

  “By the Almighty, Owens, they’s four of us and only one of you. You ain’t gonna come out alive.”

  I didn’t answer him. I just wiggled myself to the gate, which had double posts at the hinge end to bear the weight of the gate. Behind those thick posts, I stood up. I could hear the sounds of men scrambling for position. I leaned the Winchester against the corral poles and opened the gate enough to slip through. With a Remington in one hand and a Colt’s in the other, I strode through the gate and started for the bunkhouse.

  Some people’d say I was crazy to walk right out in the open like that, but men hiding get flustered when the other guy takes no notice of them or the hot lead they fling his way.

  I took the man at the southeast corner of the big house with a shot from the Colt’s. With all the practice I do, shooting at moving tin cans and such, the lead from my handguns goes pretty much where I intend. The bullet from the Colt’s went in the back of his hand, smashed his wrist, I reckon, and range
d up through the flesh of his underarm, mangling as it went. Out of action. Count six.

  “Come on out, you snakes,” I hollered. “Here I am. Right out in plain sight. You all got the gumption to face me and fight?”

  A head showed at the west end of the water trough. I put a bullet in it.

  Count seven.

  Two more. One of them Ken Grizwold.

  I stopped almost dead center between the bunkhouse and the big house. I let my six-guns hang in my hands along the seams of my trousers. “You comin’ out, Griz? Or are you only good enough to backshoot the driver of a mail stage?”

  “I’m here, killer sheriff,” Griz shouted, and stood up from where he’d taken cover behind the woodpile.

  “How do you want to do it, Griz? Face to face at thirty feet? Step it off like the Louisiana boys do? Free for all, you two against me? Your call.”

  Griz stalked around the woodpile. “You lousy son,” he hollered. “I’ll take you here and now.” He raised his cocked pistol, but before he could pull the trigger, a bullet from the Remington in my right hand smashed him in the chest, just to the left of his brisket. His mouth opened and closed like a carp out of water. He went to his knees, then fell on his face.

  I put my six-shooters away. “Son,” I called. “Griz might have seemed like a big strong man to you, but you can see right now that robbing and rustling and such don’t pay. Now you’re a youngster so I’ll look the other way while you skedaddle. You hear me?”

  “Yessir,” the youngster said.

  “I’m going inside to talk to Gus Snider. You be gone when I come out and I’ll never say you were here with Ken Grizwold. You hear?”

  “Yessir.”

  Folks say I killed nine of the Snider Gang that April morning, but I only killed six and wounded two.

  Epilogue

  Arizona’s fondly remembered lawman

  Most people with any interest in the history of Arizona know that Commodore Perry Owens’s single term as Apache Country Sheriff was not his last as a lawman. W.R. Campbell won the election of 1892 and the moment he took the oath in 1893, he hired C.P. Owens as chief deputy. Most everyone who knew him held that he was a topnotch peacekeeper.